creature, her body as thin as her wise little face, above which her hair was piled in elaborate imitation of the coiffure of her mistress and preceptress. She fell to work at once, solicitously arranging the dress and hair of the Spider and complaining bitterly that the maids had neglected, shamefully, her beloved mistress’s toilet.
“Although it is not the proper work for an apprentice-geisha,” she rattled along, “yet I myself will serve your honorable body, rather than permit it to suffer from such pernicious neglect.”
She smoothed the little hands of her mistress, manicured and perfumed them, talking volubly all the time upon every subject save the one the Spider was waiting to hear about. At last, unable to bear it longer, Moonlight broke in abruptly:
“How you chatter of insignificant matters! You tease me, Omi. I shall have to chastise you. Tell me in a breath about the matter.”
Omi grinned impishly, but at the reproachful look of her mistress her natural impulse to torment even the one she loved best in the world gave way. She began in a gasp, as though she had just come hastily into the room.
“Oh, oh, you would never, never believe it in the world. Nor could I, indeed, had I not seen it with my own insignificant eyes.”
“Yes, yes, speak quickly!” urged the Spider, eagerly hanging upon the words of the apprentice.
Omi drew in and expelled her breath in long, sibilant hisses after the manner of the most exalted of aristocrats.
“There are six of them at the gates, not to count the servants and runners down the road!”
Moonlight looked at her incredulously, and Omi nodded her head with vigor.
“It is so. I counted each augustness.” She began enumerating upon her fingers. “There was the high-up Count Takedo Isami, Takedo Sachi, Takedo—there were four Takedos. Then the Lord Saito Takamura Ichigo, Saito—”
“Do not enumerate them, Omi. Tell me instead how you came, in spite of the watchful ones, in spite, too, of Matsuda, to reach his lordship.”
As she spoke the last word reverently, a flush deepened in her cheeks and her eyes shone upon the apprentice with such a lovely light that the adoring little girl cried out sharply:
“It is true, Moonlight-san! Thou art lovelier than Ama-terasu-o-mi-kami!”
“Hush, foolish one, that is blasphemy. Indeed I should be very unhappy did I outshine the august lady of the sun in beauty. But no more digressions. If you do not tell me—and tell me at once—exactly what happened—how you reached the side of his lordship—how he looked—just how! What was said—the very words—how he spoke—acted. Did he smile, or was he sad, Omi? Tell me—tell me, please!” She ended coaxingly; but, as the pert little apprentice merely smiled tantalizingly, she added, very severely:
“It may be I will look about for a new understudy. There is Ochika—”
At the mention of her rival’s name Omi made a scornful grimace, but she answered quickly:
“The Okusama helped me. She pretended an illness. Matsuda was afraid, and remained by her side, chafing her hands and her head.” She laughed maliciously, and continued: “I slipped out by the bamboo-hedge gate. Omatsu saw me—” At the look of alarm on the Spider’s face: “Pooh! what does it matter? Every servant in the house—ah! and the maids and apprentices—yes, and the most honorable geishas too—know the secret, and they wish you well, sweet mistress!”
She squeezed Moonlight’s hands with girlish fervor, and the latter returned the pressure lovingly, but besought her to continue.
“The main gates were closed. Just think! No one is admitted even to the gardens. Why, ’tis like the days of feudalism. We are in a fortress, with the enemy on all sides!”
“Oh, Omi, you let your imagination run away with you, and I hang upon your words, waiting to hear what has actually happened.”
“I am telling you. It is exactly as I have said. Matsuda dares not offend the powerful family of the Saito, and it is at their command that the gates of the House of Slender Pines are closed rigorously to all the public. No one dare enter. No one dare—go out—save—I!” and she smiled impudently. “It is said”—lowering her voice confidentially—“that Matsuda has been paid a vast sum of ‘cash’ to keep his house closed. Mistress, there are great notices in black and white nailed upon the line of trees clear down the road. ‘The House of Slender Pines is closed for the season of greatest heat!’ And just think,” and the little apprentice-geisha pouted, “not a koto or a samisen is permitted to be touched! Who ever heard of a geisha-house as silent as a mortuary hall? It is very sad. We wish to sing and dance and court the smiles of noble gentlemen; but you have made such a mess with your honorable love affair that every geisha and every apprentice is being punished! We are not permitted to speak above a whisper. Our lovers must stand beyond the gates and serenade us themselves. It is—”
“Oh, Omi, you wander so! Now tell me, sweet girl, exactly what I am perishing to know.”
“I will, duly! You preach patience to me so often,” declared the impish little creature; “now you must practise it also. I resume my narrative. Pray do not interrupt so often, as it delays my story.” With that she leisurely proceeded.
“Mistress, the entire gardens of the House of Slender Pines are patrolled—yes, and by armed samourai!”
“Samourai! You speak nonsense. There is no such thing to-day as a samourai. Swords, moreover, are not permitted. Omi, you are tormenting me, and it is very unkind and ungrateful. You will force me to punish you very severely, much as I love you!”
“It is as I have said. I speak only the truth. The ones who guard our house are exalted ones—samourai by birth at least, relatives of his lordship. They do not permit even the smallest aperture to be unwatched, whereby his lordship might slip into the gardens, and from thence into my mistress’s chamber—”
“Omi!”
“—for it has gone abroad through all the Saito clan that the peace of the most honorable ancestors is about to be imperiled.”
Moonlight’s color was dying down, and as the little girl proceeded her two hands stole to her breast and clung to where the love poem was hidden.
“As the relatives cannot by entreaty force his lordship from your vicinity, loveliest of mistresses, they are bent upon guarding him, in case by the artful intrigues known only to lovers”—and the little maiden shook her head with precocious wisdom—“he may actually reach your side despite the care of Matsuda.”
Moonlight now seemed scarcely to be listening. She was looking out dreamily before her, and her fancy conjured up the inspired face of her lover. She felt again the warm touch of his lips against her hair, and heard the ardent, passionate promise he had made in the little interval when she had come to consciousness within his arms there in the gardens of his ancestors. “If it is impossible to have you—ay, in this very life—then I will wed no other. No! though the voices of all the ancestors shout to me to do my duty!”
Now she knew he was very near to her. For days they had been unable to induce him to leave the vicinity of her home. Outside the gates of the closed geisha-house he had taken his stand, there to importune the implacable Matsuda and try vainly, by every ruse and device, to reach her side.
Though she knew that never for a moment would the watchful relatives permit him to be alone, still at last he had eluded them sufficiently to send her word through the clever little Omi. Now she listened with tingling ears, as Omi glibly and with exaggeration told how, as she flew by on her skipping-rope, he had slipped the note into her sleeve. Only this acute child could have outwitted Matsuda in this way. A few moments of hiding in the deserted ozashiki, a chance to toss the note aloft to her mistress, and then to await her opportunity when the lower halls should be clear and slip upstairs! Apprentices were not permitted to be thus at large, and Omi knew that, if caught, her punishment would be quite dreadful; but she gaily took the risk for her beloved mistress.