IN the palace Nijo the latest royal proclamation came like an earthquake shock. The Emperor at last had kept his word to his dead mother. Through word to Nijo, he authorized the nuptials of the Princess Sado-ko to his own son, the Crown Prince of Japan, thus elevating her to the highest position in the land.
This great fortune, sudden and unexpected, gave no satisfaction to the ambitious Masago. The test of life had come. The woman in her triumphed. For the first time since her coming to Tokyo, Masago shut herself alone within the chamber of the Princess Sado-ko.
She sat and stared before her like one struck by so great a weight that she could not lift it. All her life she had longed for wealth and power. Now that the greatest honor in the land was forced upon her, she shrank from it, in loathing.
Masago thought with aching heart of the Prince Komatzu. Throughout the day she sat alone, uttering no word, not even answering the queries of her maid, the woman Natsu-no.
Toward evening she heard the palace bells ringing. Knowing why they rang, she pressed her hands to her ears, a sickening sense oppressing her. She heard the dim voice of the maid.
“Princess, will you deign to robe to-night?”
Slowly, mechanically, Masago arose, permitting the woman to lay upon her a foreign gown which only yesterday had come from Paris. Now its tightening stifled her. Her heavy breathing caused the woman to ask gently:—
“You do not appear augustly comfortable to-night, exalted princess. Are you quite well?”
Masago threw her bare arms above her head, and paced the floor like some tortured being. Suddenly she turned upon the woman, crying out in an hysterical way:—
“Why do you stand and stare at me, woman! Oh-h! My head is throbbing, and my heart beats so—”
She covered her face with her hands. Swiftly the woman withdrew. In the next room she took her stand by the dividing shoji, watching the one within.
“She would treat me like the bird,” she said, “and it is dead.”
Masago called her shrilly, harshly.
“Woman! Maid! Do you not hear me calling?”
“I am here, princess!” said the woman, quietly, stepping back into the room.
“I cannot bear this gown to-night,” said Masago. “It suffocates me. It is ill-fitting.”
The woman patiently removed the gown, then waited for her mistress to command her further.
“Take them all off,” said the girl, in an irritated voice. “These and these.”
She indicated the silk corsets and the frail shoes which gave her such unstable support. Freed of the foreign garments, she seemed to breathe with more ease and comfort.
“Now a kimono,—just a simple, plain one.”
The woman brought the plainest one of all. Soon Masago was arrayed in this.
“Do I appear well to-night?” she asked hysterically.
“Yes, princess.”
“Will not his Royal Highness be astonished at my garb?”
“Enchanted, princess.”
“Enchanted! You speak foolish words! He is a modern prince, this future Emperor of Japan. He will despise a plain kimono.”
The woman closed her lips.
“Say so,” insisted the girl, wildly. “Agree with me, woman, that when he sees me in this garb to-night, he will detest the sight of me, and insist unto his father that he must have another bride. Oh, you do not speak! How I hate you!”
She was sobbing as she left the room in a breathless, piteous way, for no tears came to give relief.
Like one in a dream Masago passed through the halls of the Nijo palace. Soon she was in the great reception hall, where the Crown Prince, guest of her father, Nijo, awaited her appearance. Her courtesy was mechanical. She took her place beside him on the slight eminence reserved for royalty alone.
Masago little cared that night whether her maidens whispered and gossiped at her whim to appear once more in the national dress. It was suggested that she wore the gown in compliment to her exalted fiancée.
As the girl surveyed the brilliant spectacle, an intense weariness overtook her. Half unconsciously she closed her eyes and put her head back against the tall throne chair upon which she sat. Then Masago became deaf—blind to all about her. Strange visions of her home passed through her mind,—her simple home, quiet, peaceful. As in fancy she saw Ohano’s sympathetic face, she felt an aching longing to hear her garrulous voice lowered to her in gossip; she saw again her happy, healthy little brothers, romping in the sunny garden. Even the thought of Kwacho, grave yet always just and kind, despite his narrow prejudices, awoke a vague tenderness.
When some one spoke the name of Princess Sado-ko, she roused herself, then shuddered at the very sound.
“You were so pale, princess, and you closed your eyes just now. I thought, perchance, that you were ill.” The Crown Prince of Japan spoke with polite solicitude to the maid Masago. Her eyes filled with heavy tears.
“Oh, I am homesick—homesick!” she murmured in reply.
He leaned a trifle toward her, as though his boredom were lifted for a second.
“Are you not at home already, princess?”
She shook her head in mute negation.
“What do you call your home, then?” he inquired.
She answered in a whisper:—
“Kamakura!”
“Ah, yes, the castle Aoyama is there.”
She could not speak further. A page brought tea on a small lacquered tray. She touched it with her lips, then again relapsed into her attitude of weariness and languor.
The Crown Prince thought his cousin both stupid and dull. He mentally decided that her beauty had been overrated. Bright, flashing eyes, rosy lips, a vivacious countenance, in these days were considered a more desirable type of beauty than this tired, languid, waxen sort, mysteriously sad, despite perfection.
He wondered whether her allusion to Kamakura had to do with the famous artist there, of whom the young prince had heard.
Report had told him that the capricious Sado-ko had treated this plain artist with familiarity such that the court gossiped. While these thoughts ran vaguely through his mind, the princess interrupted with a question:—
“When is the wedding-day?” she asked.
“It is not set,” he replied somewhat stiffly.
Her hands moved restlessly in her lap.
“Are there not other ladies of the royal house more exalted than I?” she asked.
“None, illustrious princess,” he answered coldly.
She turned her miserable face aside, and stared at the company with eyes that would fill with tears. Suddenly, hardly conscious of her words, she exclaimed, in a low, passionate voice:—
“I hate it all! I hate it all!”
The Crown Prince stared in astonishment at her feverishly flushed face.
“I overheard your words, princess,” he said, with forbidding candor. “I do not know to what you are alluding. The words themselves have an unseemly sound.”
She pressed her lips together, and sat in bitter silence after that. Suddenly she became conscious of compelling eyes upon her. She moved and breathed with a new excitement. Then she heard the Crown Prince speaking in a sarcastic, drawling way, which already she had begun to dislike.
“Our cousin, here, Komatzu, is sick for Kamakura.”
She turned her helpless eyes upon Komatzu’s face. To her passionate, hungry eyes he appeared impassive and unmoved. Had the horrible tidings, then, left him only cold? Were the words of love he had whispered so often in her ear but the carefully prepared words of a formal suitor? Was he so much a prince that he could mask his heart behind so impenetrable a countenance?
Tears, welling up from her aching heart, dropped unheeded from her eyes. She made no effort to wipe them away, or to conceal her childish grief and agony. So this lately elevated princess, affianced to a future emperor, sat by his side in a public place, with tears running down her face. The Crown Prince was impatient at this display of weak emotion, she knew, and her action was unbefitting a princess of Japan; nevertheless she found herself repeating over and over again in her heart:—
“I am not a princess! I am not a princess! I am only the maid Masago. That is all. I have been but playing at a masquerade, and I am tired. I want my home—my parents. My heart is breaking!”
