IT was the season of greatest cold. The she hills of Kioto were enwrapped in a garment of snow, and with the glistening sun upon them they looked as beautiful as a dream. The pines and hemlocks seemed to spread out their dark-green arms, as if to support the glorified burden.
The gateman of the Saito shiro, squatting upon his heels, with his face buried in the great, absorbing book of the West, chanced to look up over his bone-rimmed glasses, and saw a lone traveler coming on foot along the path which led to the lodge gates. Kiyo hobbled down to the gates just as the visitor reached them. In a high, thin voice the ancient gateman challenged the traveler. Then, as the latter did not respond to his call, but peered up at him curiously and suddenly, the old retainer began to tremble so violently that his shaking hands could hardly unbar the gates.
As the young man entered, Kiyo dropped upon his knees, and bumped his bald head repeatedly upon the frozen ground, emitting strange little cries of excitement and joy over the return of the long-absent one.
Deeply touched, Gonji, who had always loved old Kiyo, bent over the gateman, patting his head, and finally even assisting him to his feet. He inquired solicitously after the health of Kiyo and his kindred, and then asked how his own family now were. Kiyo had answered joyously and willingly all the inquiries of his master touching upon his own kinsfolk, but at the questions regarding the family he served he became suddenly constrained and wretched. His silence apparently but aroused the further curiosity and anxiety of Gonji. He persisted, his voice becoming almost peremptory in tone.
“I condescended to ask you regarding the health of my family. You do not answer me, good Kiyo-sama! Is there sickness, then, within the shiro?”
“Iya, iya! (No, no!)” hastily protested Kiyo. “All is well. It is good health within the shiro, praise be to the gods!”
Still his questioner noted something strange about the manner in which the gateman avoided his glance. He studied old Kiyo curiously, as though from his own sad reveries, in which he had been absorbed to the exclusion of all else, he had been reluctantly aroused at the thought of possible danger to his people. Gonji had hardened his heart, as he thought, against the ones who were responsible for his unhappiness—nay, who had deliberately cast forth a pure and beautiful soul. Nevertheless, he experienced a sense of uneasiness at the thought that all had not been well with them.
“Come,” he urged. “Do not hesitate to confide in your master, good Kiyo-sama. Tell me the news, be it good or bad.”
“All is well. All is well,” almost sobbingly chanted the gateman. “I pray you enter the shiro. There you will see for yourself.”
Gonji turned a bit uneasily toward the house, then halted abruptly.
“I read in your face,” he said, “a tale of some calamity to my family. Already I know of my father’s glorious sacrifice for Tenshi-sama”—bowing as he spoke the Mikado’s name—“for I was with my father at the end. So if it is that—but no, there is something else troubling you, Kiyo. I know you too well not to read your face. Is it my mother?”
His voice broke slightly, and for the first time in years he was conscious of a sense of tenderness toward his mother. She had been the main source of all his misery; but she loved him. This Gonji knew, despite all.
Again Kiyo hastened to reassure him, this time eagerly and proudly.
“Iya, master. Thy mother is in excellent health. Happy, moreover, as never before, with the honorable Lord Taro, thy son, embraced within her arms!”
The young man was staring at him now strangely. He seemed unable to speak or move. A look as of almost troubled awakening was in the face of Gonji. It was as if a thought, long thrust aside, had suddenly recurred to him. During all these agonizing months, when he had wandered about from city to city, he had been possessed with but one idea—the finding of his wife. Now, suddenly, the gateman’s words came to him as a very revelation. Strange that he had not even thought upon this matter since he had left Japan. He was a father!
“It is—possible!” he gasped. “I have a—”
“Son! Gloriously a son, master!” cried Kiyo, grinning joyously.
The young man continued to stare almost incredulously at the gateman, but in his face was no reflection of the joy visible in that of the faithful retainer. He was overwhelmed with the sense of a new emotion whose very sweetness tore at his heart, and brought unbidden tears to his eyes.
Suddenly, against his will even, there came vividly before his mind’s eye a vision of Ohano as he had seen her last, crawling upon her knees toward him and beating her hands futilely together, as she besought him piteously to permit her to attend him through the dark paths that led to the Lotus Land.
How the gods had comforted the unloved wife, was his thought, and with it came a sense of overwhelming grief and bitterness that they had not shown a similar charity toward the beloved Moonlight. He pictured Ohano, cherished, protected, praised, within the honorable house of Saito, with the long-desired heir of all the illustrious ancestors upon her bosom. Then his mind reverted to the wandering outcast, Moonlight, and a lump rose stranglingly in his throat. As he made his way blindly toward the house, all the pride and joy of fatherhood, which had uplifted him as on a flood but a moment since, seemed to drop from him no less suddenly, leaving him as before, hopeless, uncomforted, and utterly forlorn.
Within the shiro, the Lady Saito Ichigo sat drowsily swaying by the hibachi, ceaselessly smoking, and muttering incoherent prayers for the soul of her lord and for Ohano’s. She was very feeble, helpless, and childish now. Her body had lost much of its vigor, and the sternness which had once made her so formidable seemed to have entirely left her.
Moonlight’s da............