Part 56

“Was there a council of our family?”

“Why, yes, my son,—that day you went to Tokyo.”

He passed his hand across his brow, then seemed to listen for a space. Slowly a look of horror crept across his face.

“It was my marriage council!” he gasped.

“Why, yes, dear Junzo; your marriage to the maid Masago. Ah, you are quite ill, my son.”

He sprang to his feet, and stood in quivering thought. She heard him mutter half aloud, despairingly:—

“But she had gone away—to Tokyo. They told me so.”

“Why, no, it is a mistake. Who told you that she went to Tokyo, my son?”

“The palace guards,” he said, not looking at his mother.

“Oh, you are surely ill, my son.”

“I am not ill,” he said, with persistent gentleness; “but I am speaking truth, dear mother. Do I not know of what I speak, for was I not close by the palace walls throughout the length of one whole night? I tell you, mother, that I saw her go to Tokyo.”

His mother threw her arms about his neck, then, bursting into tears, clung to him.

“Son,” she sobbed, “do not speak of Tokyo. The parent of your fiancée, Yamada Kwacho, is even now within our domicile, and the chaste maiden is safe in her home.”

He spoke with slow and hazy positiveness:—

“She went to Tokyo that night. I was so close unto her norimon that I could even touch it, and through the fog and the dim night I cried her name aloud. It sounded wildly in the night air.”

He undid the clinging arms about his neck, and stood as though plunged deep in moody thought. When his father and brother came into the room, he did not lift his head.

“Junzo, do you know your brother?” asked the youth Okido, stepping to his side.

Junzo raised his head.

“Why, yes, you are my younger brother, Kido-sama. Good morning!”

“Oh, ani-san!” cried the youth, in mournful tones. “How strangely you speak, how strangely you look!”

“Son,” said the father, sternly, laying his hands on Junzo’s shoulder, “it is your father speaking now. I named you Junzo (obedience). From youth you have obeyed my voice. Now come! I bid you go to your chamber. There you shall lie, your mother and young sister will attend you, and Kido here shall hasten for a learned doctor, a foreign man of science lately come to Kamakura. You are distraught and ill.”

“But I am well, most honored parent.”

“I say that you are ill.”

“I am quite well, excellent father, and I must go at once to Tokyo.”

“I command obedience to my will! Come, Junzo!”

“Command! A little while ago—or maybe it was long ago, within another lifetime, she said it was an ancient practice to obey parental command. Yet I always was so fond of the old rules of life that I will recognize my duty, father. I bow in filial submissiveness to your high will.”

But as he bowed his head in mock obedience he was so weak he would have fallen down, but that the sturdy Kido and his father supported him.

For days and weeks the artist-man of Kamakura tossed upon a bed of illness, a prey to violent fever of the brain, so termed by the great Dutch doctor visiting the little town. After many days there came a calm. Junzo slept and dreamed.