THERE were marsh lands and boggy rice-fields in the valley country along the Hayama, and during the season of White Dew (end of August) the river was low and scarcely seemed to stir.
In the early morning a white mist arose from it, eerily enshrouding the land like a veil of gauze, evaporating, and disappearing slowly. Sometimes, too, at night heavy fogs rose up even to the hills and obscured all sight of land. Oftentimes the traveller, even the native, lost his way. Tales were told of the smiling, languorous river, whose beauty, siren-like, lured her victims to destruction.
Even the villagers, whose homes nestled so cosily in the fragrant valleys, did not venture out on foggy nights in the direction of the river, unless attended by the Hayama guide, Oka, who boasted he could find his way blind-folded among the familiar paths of Kamakura, even to the very water’s edge.
Almost beyond sight of the village, above the heads of the sloping hills, the lordly castle Aoyama looked over the mists of the valley at Fuji in the sky distance.
It was five o’clock in the afternoon. A young girl sat by an open shoji, motionless and silent, staring up at the ghost-like hills. The descending mists told her that long before the darkness came all sight of the spot upon which she gazed would be obliterated. She lingered on in melancholy discontent, her chin upon her hand, her embroidery frame idle at her side.
Beyond a few servants of the household no one was at home save Masago. She knew that her thoughts and meditations would be free from interruption, and so she gave herself up to them unreservedly, with inward passion.
The Yamada house was situated on a rising eminence. From the maiden Masago’s casement the golden peaks of the palace Aoyama were visible. It was upon these points that the young girl fixed her eyes with a vague expression of suffering, wistfulness, and yearning.
What were the thoughts of Masago, fresh from the training of a modern and fashionable school in the old capital of Kyoto? The dreams that had stirred the apathetic mind of Ohano’s daughter into vague discontent had not been removed by the months of schooling, but were more definite, and therefore more painful.
In Masago’s hands was the same picture of the martial prince-hero which she had once cut from a Chinese magazine, and which since then she had never ceased to adore. Always this shining prince was entangled in her other dreams. Hands and eyes now both were fixed upon her heart’s desire.
To her the stately palace Aoyama bespoke that other world, intoxicating, ecstatic, desirable, upon the very edge of which she might not even cling,—she who had been born to it. The innate craving of the Prince of Nijo for the sensations of the upper world ate at the very heart of the daughter of Ohano. To her, life in this world was the most desirable thing on earth; it must satisfy every craving of the mind and heart, and in it, Masago knew, belonged her hero-prince. She was not the only humble maiden of Japan who secretly worshipped the nation’s martial hero, but possibly her love for him was a more personal thing, because deep in the girl’s consciousness always was the knowledge that she might have been worthy of him, had not the irony of fate willed it otherwise, and set her here, a thing apart from him, caged and guarded by such surroundings,—she, a daughter of the Prince of Nijo and blood niece to the Emperor of Japan.
Only three days before the royal fiancée of her hero had arrived at the palace Aoyama. There, sheltered, nurtured, and watched over, the favored daughter of the gods, report had said, had gone into maiden retirement pending her nuptials. Masago thought of her with feelings akin to hatred, impotent and desperate, but ceaseless. She knew that on the morrow this Princess Sado-ko would resume her journey to the city of Tokyo. Soon she would have joined her lover, her future husband, in the capital.
“To-night,” said Masago, moistening her dry lips, “she will think of him, and all night long,—it is her privilege. While I—I, too, will think of him—”
She hid her miserable face within her hands and rocked herself to and fro, thinking of what the morrow must do for her. She knew that Kamura Junzo, her affianced, had returned to Kamakura. Had not her parents gone this very day to attend a family council? Masago had been glad of the creeping fog which slowly spread across the land, as she knew this would prevent her parents’ return that night. She had craved for these moments of maiden privacy. Soon they must cease when she had been given to this man for wife.
A servant brought Masago her evening tea, which the girl mechanically drank as she nibbled at the crisp rice cakes. She did not speak to the attendant while she dined, but continued to stare before her through the opened shoji. When she had finished, she clapped her hands, at which signal the tray was carried away.
The shadow and the fog intermingled, darkening the sky without and deepening the twilight gloom of the room. A little later the servant returned, bringing a lighted andon, which she set significantly by the silent girl. Then Masago stirred from her abstraction. She saw the eyes of the servant upon the picture in her hand. On a sudden, savage impulse she leaped to her feet and fairly sprung upon the woman, clutching her by the shoulders.
“Always look! Always see! Foolwoman!” she said in a whisper which was yet a cry.
The woman shook the hands from her shoulders by simply shrugging the latter angrily. Then she replied:—
“Eyes are made to look, and when one looks one sees; yet eyes have not the tongue to tell what they see, Masago.” Turning her back upon the servant, the girl walked away.
The woman glided soundlessly across the room and disappeared into the narrow hall outside. Silent as was her going, yet Masago knew she was gone. She turned about with a sudden movement of passionate feeling.
“The woman knows!” she said, and clasped her hands spasmodically.
Then up and down she paced with unquiet feet, to stand still a moment, beating her hands softly together and biting the nails, and then again to pace the room. She threw herself upon the floor. Once again she drew the picture from her sleeve, to press it to her lips. After a while she sat up stiffly, as though she listened.
“Some one is without my shoji!” she said, rising uncertainly.
She heard dim voices whispering in the corridor; then suddenly the loud, shrill cry of a runner outside the house and the sing-song, mellow answer of the guide Oka.
“Heu! Heu! This way! Ah-ho! So!”
Her parents had returned home she thought, as she ran to the balcony. She leaned over the railing, forgetting the murmured voices she had already heard within the house itself.
“Mother! Father! You have returned!”
The cry of the runner floated up to her through the dark mist. Then the loud, hoarse cry of Oka, the guide, proclaiming:—
“August guests for the maid Masago-san.”
The girl’s eyes expressed astonishment.
Guests for her! and at such an hour! Surely that stupid maid would not admit them till she had learned their names and mission. She, Masago, was but a maiden and little used to receiving guests unchaperoned within her father’s house. Masago had forgotten her vague thoughts of but a moment since. Now she was the simple daughter of a respectable household, agitated at the unexpected advent of evening guests.
“No doubt,” she thought, “they come to see my father, who is not at home. I must descend and beseech them to remain and venture not out again into the fog, though Shaka knows I little wished for guests to-night.”
Sighing, she turned back to her room. Within the light was soft but clear, for an officious one had brought in other andons, and by the hall sliding doors, which were opened, Masago saw a bright Takahiri (lantern) flickering without. By this light she saw a kneeling form, crouching with head to mats. Over her the servant who had brought Masago her evening meal stretched a hand to close the shoji.
Then Masago’s eyes turned to that other one within her chamber, and coming to her face, were fixed. She started back a pace, her lips apart. Her visitor did not move or speak. In silent, strange absorption her eyes were fixed upon Masago’s face. Thus for a long moment these two stood and looked upon each other, neither speaking, neither moving.
