the quiet that comes before a tempest reigned for a few days in the household. like a volcano whose pent-up energy is the more violent from long repression, it burst its bounds upon the return of the master.
day and night they renewed the argument. now lord ichigo was in firm agreement with his wife on the subject. there was no other course. moonlight must go. without descendants, who would there be to make the offerings and pray for their souls and those of the ancestors?
and again he was won over to his son’s side. well, it would do no harm to wait another year. moonlight was, as they had pointed out, still very young and healthy. there was every likelihood that she would bear children.
lady saito, however, had set herself stubbornly against all truce. she was determined now to be rid of the spider. the wretched geisha-girl, she alleged, had been forced into their illustrious family through the mere passion of a boy. it was a matter of humiliation that a child should have prevailed, in such a contention, over the parents. they should have vetoed the thing at the outset. their love for their son should have but strengthened their resolve. the main thing now was to be rid of the incubus. the law was perfectly clear upon the matter. never a simpler case. doubtless, it was the workings of the gods, who pitied the ancestors. here was a great family threatened with extinction. should a thousand illustrious and heroic ancestors then be doomed to the cruelest of fates because of a notorious spider woman? it were better, decreed the stern-minded lady, that the family commit honorable suppuku than suffer an extinction so contemptible.
against such a flood of bitter argument and invective the young people could turn only their tears and their prayers.
then it seemed as if the very hand of fate intervened to settle the matter finally. the war with russia had begun. the effect of this news upon the saito family was electrical. it silenced the storm of cruel innuendo and abuse. it stopped the battle of words. all saw at once that the lord saito gonji could now take but one course.
following the steps of his ancestors, he must of course be in the foremost ranks of war. it would be his duty, his hope, to give up his life for the mikado. therefore, before leaving for the seat of war, it would be imperative that he should leave behind him in japan a lineal descendant.
there was no need, the parents now felt assured, to speak another word of urging. even the young wife, of lowly stock as she was, would see the necessity now of self-sacrifice.
dry-eyed, pale, with leaden hearts, the young people now faced each other. the family had mercifully left them alone.
she sought to entrap his gaze, but persistently, gloomily, he averted his face. the delusion which had upheld her through all these dizzy, torturing months, that the gods had chosen one so humble as she to hand down the race of heroes, had dissolved now into thin air. alas, how slender—ah, slenderer than the imaginary web she had spun as the spider!—had been her hold upon the all-highest!
“gonji! my lord gonji!” she caught at his hand, entreating his touch. “do not turn your head. speak to me. pardon me that i have been unable to serve the ancestors—to please you, augustness!”
“you please me in all things,” he said, roughly. “i dare not look at you—now!”
“it will give me strength if you will but condescend. the sacrifice will be sweet, if it gives your lordship pleasure!”
“pleasure! gods!”
he broke down completely and, like a child, buried his face upon her bosom. but no tears came to the relief of the girl. tremulously, tenderly, she smoothed his hair.
presently he put her from him and sat back looking at her now with hungry, somber eyes. she met his glance with a bright bravery. their hands close-locked, they repeated solemnly together the promise to marry in all the lives yet to come and to travel the final journey to nirvana together.
then:
“there is satisfaction in performing a noble duty,” said he, automatically.
and she:
“it is a privilege for one so humble to serve the exalted ancestors of your excellency in even so insignificant a way.”
silence a moment, during which he tried to speak, but could not. then he burst out wildly:
“a thousand august ancestors call to me sternly from the noble past.” he covered his eyes, lest the wistful, appealing beauty of her face might cause him to falter. “they entreat me not to extinguish their honorable spark of life. i am but the honorable custodian of the seed! i cannot prove recreant to its charge!”
a longer silence fell between them now, and when he dared again to look at her, he found she smiled, a gentle, brooding smile, such as a gentle mother might have turned upon him. it irradiated and made beautiful beyond words her thin little face.
“i will speak to my father!” he cried out, wildly. “it is not possible for me to put you away from me, beloved one!”
he made a savage movement toward her, as though again he would enfold her within his arms; but now, as he advanced, she retreated, her little speaking hands held before her, as though she pushed him from her.
“it is—as it should be! you are the all-highest one, and i—but a geisha. with this little hand i cannot dip up the ocean. i have tried, august one, and—and—its waters have engulfed me!”
“i go to service of tenshi-sama!” he cried, hoarsely. “we may never meet again in this honorable life, but, ah, there are a thousand lives we can be sure to share together!”
“a—thousand—lives—together!” she repeated, her eyes closed, her face as white as one dead.
slowly, feeling backward with her hands, she groped her way to the shoji. there she paused a moment and looked at her husband, a long, deep, enveloping look.
he heard the sliding doors trapped between them, and listened vainly for even the softest fall of her footsteps. but the geisha moves with the silence of a moth, and the one who had gone from him forever, as it seemed, had broken her wings against his heart.
