Part 31

Without speaking the maid drew the robe about the princess, now upon the couch. Then she spread her own quilt-mattress at the feet of her mistress.

“Good night, kind maid,” said Sado-ko, and closed her eyes.

“Princess!” cried the maid, in a choked voice, “forgive the insignificant one, but whither do we journey to-morrow?”

“To Kamakura,” said the princess, in a dragging voice; she was tired now. “We will go for a little while—just a little while, Natsu-no, to the castle Aoyama.”

The maid was speechless. When she found her tongue, its faltering sentences betrayed her agitation.

“Princess—the artist-man—”

“Has gone to-night. Take peace, restless maid. Good night.”

“But whither, Lady Princess, whither went the artist-man?”

“I bid you speak no more. Good night.”

* * * * *

The house party of the Prince Komatzu ended the following day. A special train carried the exalted ones back to Tokyo, whither they went at once to the palace Nijo, for there Komatzu always made his home in Tokyo, with his cousin, the Prince of Nijo.

There was much gossip and idle conjecture in the party as to the caprice of the Princess Sado-ko. At the last moment she had despatched word to Komatzu, saying that she would not travel in the unholy barbarian train, but preferred to proceed leisurely to Tokyo in the old-fashioned but honorable mode of travel,—by kago or norimono. Should the journey prove too tiresome for her strength, she would stop a little while in Kamakura, at the castle Aoyama, and there it was possible she might spend a day or two in maidenly retirement. She desired, however, that her suite should not await her, but proceed with the train to Tokyo. She did not wish to deprive them of the enjoyment (to them) of the peculiar foreign method of travel, and would need only her personal attendants,—eight men retainers, whom she still termed “samurai,” the chaperon, old Madame Bara, and her waiting-woman, Natsu-no.

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CHAPTER XII

MISTS OF KAMAKURA

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CHAPTER XII

MISTS OF KAMAKURA

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.