THE PEONY LANTERN

Old Hanzo stood at the front door bowing double and sucking in his breath as his master stepped into the jinrikisha and stood for a moment to be firmly wrapped about by the dust-robe that the kurumaya held in his hands.

“Good-by, Hanzo,” called the young man gayly as he whirled away. “Do not expect me back until late to-night, and mind that you have something good to eat ready for me when I return.”

The old servant bowed, and clattered off on his clogs to discuss with his wife the carrying out of the master’s order.

Tēichi Ogiwara was a gay young fellow, who, with more wealth than was quite good for him, was living carelessly and idly in his pleasant little house in the Negishi suburb of Tokyo. Of samurai descent, brought up in the stern traditions of his ancestors, he had come to Tokyo a few years before from the castle town of Wakamatsu, an earnest youth, on fire with zeal to so educate himself as to be of use to his beloved country. While his parents lived, their delight in his progress through the University, their joy in the letters in which he breathed forth his high resolves, had kept him steadily at his work and away from the temptations that are set for the feet of unwary students in the capital.

But things had changed greatly for him within a year. His parents had died, leaving to him a substantial little income; and after the first grief was over, the young fellow, looking about him for companionship, had made friends with one of his classmates in the medical school,--a brilliant scholar and amusing talker, popular with classmates and instructors alike, and always ready to engage in any enterprise that promised either pleasure or profit to himself. Tēichi, by nature silent and reserved, was attracted by the gayety and energy of Komura, and Komura, himself of low birth and small financial resources, was only too delighted to be taken up by a young fellow of independent means, and of a social position far higher than his own. And so the friendship grew apace, Komura gaining daily greater influence over Tēichi, until, at the expiration of a few months, he had subtly sapped the high ideals and brought the younger and more innocent man as nearly as possible to his own level.

“You have brains enough and money enough. Why do you dig so at your studies? If I had your chances, wouldn’t I have a good time? Leave the hard work and plain living to us of the heimin. We have to do it because we have neither money nor place. I’d show you how to use your money so as to get some good out of it, if you’d let me!”

This was the general trend of Komura’s influence, and to Tēichi the temptations of a luxury and dissipation that he had always been taught to shun grew irresistible. It seemed as if the asceticism of his early life, the plain living and high thinking that are a part of the samurai creed, had been the mere restraining shell of his pupa state, from which he emerged suddenly as a full-grown butterfly, seeking pleasure wherever it was to be found.

It was at Komura’s suggestion that he had taken the dainty house at Negishi, hidden behind a bamboo fence from the quiet lane that was its only approach, and with a lovely garden shaded by pine and cherry, cool with running water, picturesque with mossy lanterns, rustic bridges, azalea-covered mountain ranges, and pebbly walks. Here, by Komura’s recommendation, old Hanzo had been installed as major domo in a lodge at the gate, where he lived with his old wife Koma, keeping guard in the master’s absence and caring for his comfort when he was at home. Hanzo and Koma were both discreet, and said nothing to any one of the high revels that went on within the house,--of kurumas that came bringing not only gay young blades like Ogiwara himself, but daintier freight in the shape of bright-eyed, black-haired, brilliantly robed geishas, who plied the saké bottle, and danced, and bandied wit, and entertained the uproarious young fellows far into the night. Then there would be times when Hanzo had a long rest, and his master never came home at all, but spent his days and nights wandering about the city to various questionable resorts, or seeking new stimulus for his jaded senses by trips into the country to places famous for the pleasures offered to travelers. If Tēichi ever thought in those reckless days of his stern old samurai father, of the joy of his mother in his high ideals, it was to push the thought out of his mind as quickly as possible, and obstinately shut the door against its reëntrance.

To-day he trundled merrily along in his jinrikisha to meet Komura at Kameido, where, after viewing the plum-blossoms and spending a sentimental afternoon in writing poems to hang upon the branches of the gray old trees, they hoped to pick up a jovial party for an evening together at an eel-house near Megané Bashi. Through the damp greenness of Uyeno Park he sped, along the front of the great temple and pleasure-ground of Asakusa, across the Sumida River, and into the Kameido grounds, where, by the quaint semicircular bridge that arches over the “Pond of the Heart,” he found Komura awaiting him, a big bundle in his hand wrapped in a purple _furoshiki_.

“Hulloa! old fellow, I thought you were never coming. I haven’t seen a soul that we know yet, but I’ve brought some good company along, anyway,” and he shook the suspiciously shaped bundle, from which came a gurgle that explained his meaning. “We shan’t lack inspiration for our poems even if the plums are not in bloom.”

It was early in the season, and the great gray trees of the plum-garden showed only here and there a pink bud pushing its way outward. For a real poet the suggestion of beauty to come might mean more than its later fulfillment, but to the two thoughtless youths who seated themselves upon a blanket-covered bench beneath the trees, clapping their hands loudly until a red-cheeked maid brought them tea and cakes, then took out their writing-cases, poem-cards, and saké-bottles to seek a borrowed inspiration, the bare, gnarled trunks gave little material for composition. For a while they thought and wrote in silence, but the quiet and beauty of the place did not appeal to their excitement-pampered tastes, and it was Komura at last who dashed his effort to the ground, shut up his writing-case with a snap, and jumped into his clogs.

“Come on, old man, I can show you an adventure worth two of this,” he cried,--“an adventure that Yoshitsuné[47] himself might envy!”

Tēichi rose to the bait, glad enough to leave a place in the seclusion of which unwelcome thoughts kept crowding and would not be driven out.

“I’m with you, boy, lead on!” he shouted. “Wait till I pay the tea-money, and then we’re off.”

In the long jinrikisha ride to Fukagawa that followed, Komura took the lead, and Tēichi, sleepy with the saké he had taken, sat loosely in his little carriage, with red face and closed eyes. At last they stopped at a neat gateway in a green bamboo fence, and Komura roused him from his slumbers with a shake.

“Here we are now. Collect yourself and put on your prettiest manners, for we are to make a call upon a real lady,--one whom even you, with all your aristocratic notions, would be glad to marry if you could.”

Tēichi, prepared for any adventure with a young person of doubtful reputation, shrank back at his friend’s words.

“But her father! What would her father think?”

“Old Iijima, her father, is far enough away. No fear of him! He’s taken up with a young wife, and leaves his daughter here alone because the two women cannot live in one house. He’ll never know. Trust the girl to keep her secret. I’ve called on her once or twice before,” and he winked in a meaning way.

Still reluctant, for some spark of honor yet remained to him, but curious to see the young woman, Tēichi pocketed his scruples. Komura rang the bell at the gate, and soon, on clattering clogs, an elderly maid-servant answered the summons.

“Welcome, Dr. Komura,” she said, bowing and smiling. “Come in and bring with you your honorable companion.”

Komura, with an air of professional gravity, entered the gate, introducing his friend as Dr. Ogiwara.

“And how is your mistress since my last visit?” he inquired. “Her father bade me call again and make sure that she was improving.”

“Truly, she is much better, doctor, but still she is restless and feverish at times, and sometimes I fear that all is not well. I will call her and let you see her.”

“Remember, O Kuni San, give her no hint that I am a physician. Tell her only that a friend of her father has come with a message from him.”

“Indeed, doctor, I will give no hint,” answered O Kuni, bowing profoundly as she left the room.

Komura and Ogiwara discussed their tea and cake in silence while the maid was gone, for paper walls have ears, and eyes as well, and discretion in speech and act is a necessary precaution in a Japanese house.

Soon there was a double pattering of feet without, the sliding doors were pushed open, and a graceful, slender girl, dressed in the _montzuki_ or ceremonial dress, crouching at the threshold, bowed humbly to the two young men, greeting them as friends of her father and murmuring polite and hospitable phrases.

Komura bowed in return, introduced Ogiwara, gave a long hypothetical message from her father, and inquired deferentially after her health. When at last the bows and speeches of ceremony were over, the real visit began. Komura, as usual, was the leader of the conversation, but Ogiwara, sitting almost in silence beside him, used his eyes to good effect. Never had he seen such beauty in a woman, never such charming ways, such bashful, winning smiles. He compared her in his mind with the creatures to whom of late his attentions had been given, and with a revulsion of feeling despised himself that he had thought them fascinating. And through his mind went ringing Komura’s words,--“a real lady--one whom even you would be glad to marry.”

Komura, heated by saké and flushed with the success of his adventure, chatted gayly on, growing more and more familiar, less like the gentleman he affected to be, until there came upon the face of his little hostess, and of her maid as well, a look of disgust not unmingled with terror. Little by little he dropped the niceties of language, the subtle use of honorifics that marks the intercourse between persons of gentle breeding, and talked to the little lady with the easy, coarse, patronizing familiarity that he was wont to use toward the women of his acquaintance. Tēichi was wakened from his reverie by seeing his companion lean forward and lay an impudent hand upon the shoulder of his shocked and shrinking hostess. Instantly the samurai training of his youth came to the front. He seized Komura by the wrist.

“Dog!” he hissed between set teeth, “would you insult a lady in her own house?”

Holding him in an iron grasp, he turned to little Tsuyu, crouching frightened with Kuni behind her.

“If the young lady will kindly retire with her maid, I will see that this rude fellow troubles the house no longer.”

With hasty bows and hurried apologies for the trouble they were causing him, the women withdrew, and Ogiwara, partly by force and partly by persuasion, dragged Komura to his kuruma, tumbled him in, and ordered the runner to take him to his lodgings. For himself, the day of careless pleasure was ended, and he went to his home as fast as his men could carry him, thinking the while with remorse of the timid smiles, the frightened, pleading eyes of his little hostess.

For Tēichi, though at first he did not know it, was in love. Day and night the small house by the river, with its charming mistress, seemed calling him. He had relapsed into his old loneliness, for the thought of Komura was hateful to him; and though the two men met at lectures and other university work, they did nothing more than exchange greetings. All intimacy had vanished since the struggle in O Tsuyu’s quiet guest-room. As the months went by, old Hanzo, seeing his master moping alone at home, reading the Chinese classics, studying from huge foreign books, eating sparingly and without relish, drinking not at all, grew alarmed. He had enjoyed the old days of wild dissipation; he did not care for so stern and grave a master, who wanted nothing and was pleased with nothing, and brought no friends nor presents to the house.

“Is the master ill, that he goes abroad no more?” he suggested deferentially.

“Nay, Hanzo, not ill, only sad and lonely.”

“But if you will permit the suggestion from one so unworthy, would it not be well for the master to seek relief from his sadness and loneliness by going out and seeing his friends or some of the sights of the town?”

“Indeed, Hanzo, your care for me is most commendable, but I have already seen too much of my friends and of the town. A little rest is what I need most;” and Tēichi relapsed into silence.

Hanzo sat pondering, his head bowed, his hands drawn up within his blue cotton sleeves. At last he spoke again:--

“Will the master pardon my stupidity if I make a suggestion?”

“Say on, Hanzo, I am listening.”

The old man bowed his head upon his hands.

“Master, I know a man. He is of low birth and a most unworthy person, a cousin of my own. He has a poor, mean boat, with a matted deck-house amidships, and in this boat he sculls along the river, taking out pleasure parties by the day. If it is desired to fish, he will supply the bait and tackle. Would it not save your honor from his sadness to spend a day thus upon the river?”

“Good Hanzo,” said the young man, touched by his servant’s thoughtfulness in his behalf, “send for your cousin. Perhaps a day upon the river is what I need. If he has no other engagement, we will go to-morrow.”

And so it came about that the next day Ogiwara, lying on the mats of a house-boat of spotless white wood, and propelled by strong arms, found himself on the river Sumida, watching with lazy interest the crowds of small craft that fill the stream above the iron bridge. Small steam ferry-boats towing strings of passenger barges sputtered along on their way to Mukojima and Hōrikiri, well patronized to-day, for the great iris-beds were in full bloom. Women and brightly dressed girls were there in plenty, and Tēichi scanned them eagerly in the hope that he might catch some glimpse of the sweet face that haunted his dreams. Other house-boats too, like his own, were there, in which whole families sat and gossiped on the mats, sipping tea, smoking pipes, playing games, and taking vast delight in the life and movement of the river. Fast racing barges, too, came scurrying along under the impulse of the strong young arms of their student crews, picked men from the University, the Naval School, and many other of the higher schools of the city.

As they dropped downstream the pleasure-boats grew fewer, and the cargo-boats--junks, schooners, and small coasting steamers--were moored or anchored near the storehouses from which the city is fed. And then, still lower down, they came into a place where small houses stood in gardens running down to the water’s edge.

Ogiwara left the fishing to Hanzo, and spent his time in a meditation that was still conscious of the continually changing scene through which they moved.

“Look, Hanzo, is not this Fukagawa we are passing?”

“Truly, master, it is Fukagawa.”

“And, Hanzo, do you see that gate that opens toward the river? Bid your cousin bring the boat close to the gate, that I may see therein.”

Softly the boat glided to the open gate, and Tēichi looked into a little garden, green and damp and shady, with an iris-bed in full bloom close to a miniature pond. As he stepped from the boat O Kuni came running to him, her clogs making no sound on the soft, mossy earth.

“Welcome,” she said; “please enter our humble cottage. My young lady has been waiting so long for you, and you did not come! Now she is very ill. She cannot eat, and she is growing thinner every day. She will be so glad that you have come!”

Tēichi walked up through the pleasant garden, stepped upon the polished piazza, and as O Kuni pushed aside the _shoji_, bowed low, murmuring polite phrases of pleasure at meeting O Tsuyu again. As he lifted his head and looked at the lady of his dreams, his heart, just now madly elated, fell like a lump of lead in his breast; for it was the same sweet face and smile, but pale and wan; the same graceful figure, but so thin that the loose robe she wore seemed to have nothing within it.

“Oh, I am so glad,--so glad,” she said, and tears rose in her eyes and rolled down her hollow cheeks. “It is long since you were here! Why did you not come before?”

Very gently he soothed her, and in a long, long talk they told their love. How swiftly the hours passed! It was only when the setting sun turned the river into molten gold that they remembered anything of time and place. Then Tsuyu started with a shudder:--

“Oh, go! go!” she said. “What if my father should find you here!”

“Give me, then, some token of your love,--something to draw me back to you,--a pledge that you are mine and I am yours.”

Hurriedly she drew from a little cupboard in the _tokonoma_ a white wooden case, and from it took a gold-lacquered incense-box.

“Here,” she said, “this was my mother’s. I have always kept it with me until now. The half of it I give to you,--a pledge of love through seven lives.”

He took it from her with eager hands, lifted it to his face and touched it reverently to his forehead, then hid it in his sleeve.

“Through seven lives I will be true,” he said.

Just then there was a loud whirr of kuruma wheels without, a clatter of clogs upon the stone walk. With a hissing rush the sliding-doors flew open, and a man’s face, distorted with rage, was looking down upon them both.

“Fellow, who are you who dare to enter my daughter’s house in my absence?”

There was a rush, a struggle,--Ogiwara felt himself overpowered, and was awaiting death from the sharp, short dirk of his adversary, when O Tsuyu’s soft arm was thrown around him, her gentle voice cried:--

“Father, oh, father, kill me instead! I am the wicked one.”

The voice died in a gurgle, and Ogiwara shouted hoarsely at the wretch, who had buried his knife in the soft round throat of his daughter.

“Master,”--it was Hanzo’s well-trained servant’s voice,--“master, a dream is troubling your slumber, and the boat has reached her mooring-place. Will it please you to permit me to pay my worthless cousin and seek kurumas for our return?”

Tēichi, opening his dazed eyes, saw about him the busy river,--the pleasure-boats, the little steamers, the holiday-makers returning from their flower-viewing,--and knew that it was only a dream. With a sigh, partly of regret that he had not really seen his beloved, and greatly of relief that he might hope to find her some day in the land of the living, he rose, and soon was rattling through the prosaic modern streets toward his home in Negishi.

As he took off his clothing for the night, he felt a flat, hard something in his sleeve, and searching there he found a piece of golden lacquer, the lid of an incense-box. Upon it had been painted by some great artist of the past the seven flowers of autumn, and here and there, on the polished, gleaming surface, slight spots, as of mould, had begun to show themselves. “A pledge of love through seven lives!” Surely it was a dream, and yet--this lacquered box--where did it come from?

Hanzo had no special reason to be proud of the successful issue of his effort for his master’s entertainment. Ogiwara grew more silent and ascetic. He spent long hours alone in his room with closed doors, and once, when the old man had placed his eye to a tongue-made hole in the paper of the _shoji_, he had seen him looking at a gold-lacquered box-lid like one demented.

“The master is surely crazy,” he said to Koma. “I will go to his friend Komura San, and tell him about it.”

Komura heard the story of Ogiwara’s strange freak with unchanging face and half-closed eyes that looked not once upon the humble Hanzo, crouched at the threshold and bowing at the end of every sentence. When he spoke, it was only to chide Hanzo politely for his officiousness, and tell him that he need not fear for his place.

“The master will soon recover,” he said patronizingly. “I have seen young fellows before who thought they were in love. When he knows the girl is beyond his reach, he will be himself again.”

Not many days later, Komura, pocketing his pride, called at the villa in Negishi.

“What’s happened to you, old fellow?” he said to Ogiwara, after the first greetings were over. “You look as if you had been living with ghosts until you were all ready to become one yourself!”

Tēichi started. The color rushed to his face, then left him pale as death. Komura rattled on, observing but giving no sign:--

“You have been shy of all the fellows since our last adventure, at Fukagawa. You need society. What do you say to some kind of a spree to-night?”

Tēichi shuddered. He could not look Komura in the face when he thought of his coarse manners and low behavior, and O Tsuyu’s frightened eyes. He muttered something scarcely intelligible about his studies and the necessity for hard work if he would get his degree with his class. Komura was angry. Here he had gone more than half way, and now Ogiwara refused to take one step toward renewing their old comradeship.

“When you get your degree, if you ever do,” he said with a sneer, “I hope it will bring you better success as a physician than you have had so far. Do you know the effect of your last professional call?”

His companion was at last roused to interest.

“Komura,” he said, “if you are not ashamed to speak of that day, I need not be. Tell me what you mean.”

Into his eyes rushed the spirit of his race. Komura remembered the stories Ogiwara had told him in his roistering days of the practice in jiu-jitsu, in sword-play, in archery, and with modern firearms, that had been his training under his father’s roof. The sneer changed for a wheedling tone of apology as he watched Tēichi’s strong brown fingers twitching with emotion.

“Why, Ogiwara, how long is it since you have become so dignified that you cannot take a joke? I meant no harm, but that hot samurai blood of yours is always on the lookout for an insult. I only meant that the girl was dead. She died a few weeks after our visit.”

“Dead!” Tēichi looked at Komura as if only half comprehending. “Dead! Then it was not a dream! He did kill her after all!”

“No one killed her,” rejoined Komura testily. “How you do go ahead of a fellow’s words! She just died. Kuni told me, and said she grew very ill after our visit, and when she died your name was on her lips.”

“My name!” Tēichi’s voice rose into a wail. “No wonder that I dream of her by night and think of her by day. It is her spirit that comes to me,--her spirit that cannot rest because I love her so.”

He buried his face in his sleeves and his whole body shook with sobs, while Komura, a fierce grin of satisfaction on his face at the revenge that was his, sat and watched him.

When Tēichi lifted his head, Komura, his features moulded into an expression of sympathetic gravity, was still sitting near him.

“Why, Ogiwara, old man,” he said, “I had no idea that you were so hard hit. Can I do anything for you? I have got you into this trouble, and I would do anything to help you out.”

“Go, call me a priest,” said Ogiwara. “I would have masses said for that sweet soul, for it cannot rest.”

“Ogiwara,”--Komura’s voice was as smooth as the rustle of silk, and he laid his hand sympathetically upon his companion’s arm,--“if you will permit one who shares your grief to advise you, let me speak before I carry out your will.”

“Say on,” answered the younger man, “and if you have aught to suggest that will be of help to her or to me, be quick with it.”

“Ogiwara, it is you she loves, and your companionship she seeks. The sing-song prayers of a thousand priests will be nothing to her. Don’t you know that one visit to her grave, one offering of incense and fresh water and flowers from you, will be dearer to her than your whole fortune spent in masses?”

“Let us go to her grave! Come quickly!” Tēichi leaped to his feet and seized Komura. “We will go at once.”

“But we cannot go now. I do not know where she is buried. Rest here quietly for a few days while I find out. Then I will come and lead you to it.”

Komura’s voice was softer than the murmur of the summer breeze through a garden. Tēichi looked into his eyes, which answered back his gaze with the innocent unconsciousness of a kitten, then released his hold.

“I will wait,” he said, “but come soon, for I cannot bear a long delay.” His mouth was twitching, beads of perspiration stood on his forehead, and a deadly pallor followed the flush of anger.

Komura bowed and slipped away, thanking his lucky stars that he was alive, and vowing that it would be a long time before he trusted his precious skin with that lunatic again. Nor would he have been reassured if he had seen his friend shut himself tightly in his room, draw from his sleeve a gold-lacquered box-lid, and sit looking at it with streaming eyes until the long summer day died gently into twilight, and Hanzo with silent step stole into the room to find his master’s head fallen upon his little desk, while in his hand he still clutched the bit of lacquer.

And so the wretched days slipped by, and August with its steaming heat and myriad odors hung over the drooping city. Only the great white lotus[48] blossoms in the Castle moats, drawing their beauty from the black and evil-smelling slime, basked in the sultry sunshine.

“Flowers of the dead,” thought Ogiwara, “spirits that rise like hers from the foulness and evil below, and bear without scathe the heavenly glory that wilts all others!”

The festival of O Bon[49] has come, and along the city streets are kindled fires to light the returning spirits to their homes; on every porch and balcony are hung lanterns, glowing balls of light, some with long streamers that wave and flutter in the breeze, or bits of glass that tinkle as if ghostly hands were making music; and in every home, before the ancestral tablets are set special offerings of fruits and fresh vegetables; while in the graveyards, tombs are cleared from moss, newly served with food and drink, and decorated with lanterns.

In the little house in Negishi, Ogiwara had set beside the tablets of his father and mother a new and costly one on which the name of Tsuyu was engraved. And as he made the offerings which filial piety and his own affection enjoined before the other two, he offered yet more abundant gifts to the memorial of her whom he had come to call his “spirit bride.” He was alone. Hanzo and Koma had for once left their small house in the yard to visit the graves of their parents on the other side of the city. He sat on the veranda, looking into the damp greenness of the garden that seemed resting from the stifling heat of the day. The lanterns above his head glowed softly, great fireflies flickered among the shrubbery. Peace such as he had not known for months stole over his spirit.

There was a clicking of clogs and a sound of gentle voices in the lane. Tēichi started. There was something strange yet familiar in their tones. He stepped down from the veranda into a pair of garden sandals, and walked noiselessly to the hedge, through which he peered. Two figures were moving toward the gate, one of them carrying an O Bon lantern and leading the other by the hand. The light shone upon their white faces, and he could see as they drew near that the lantern-bearer was O Kuni, and by her side walked little Tsuyu.

There was no fear nor hesitation in his walk as he hurried to the gate to welcome them. There she was, not as he had seen her in his dream, pale and hollow-cheeked, but bright, girlish, charming, as she had been on the day of his visit to her home. When she saw him, one little hand went shyly to her face, and her flowing sleeve hid all but her shining eyes from his enchanted gaze.

“Welcome,” he said, bowing low. “Welcome to my humble home. Enter, if it please you, and let me offer you some slight refreshment.”

With many formal bows and deprecating phrases they were at last installed in his guest-room. The lantern, a translucent globe of white paper, with trailing streamers and a bunch of many-colored peonies at the top, was hung from the eaves, where it glowed and waved its paper streamers in the cool breeze that had sprung up at their entrance.

With curious eyes O Tsuyu looked at the tablets on the sacred shelf. The tiny streams of smoke that had been rising straight as needles toward the low ceiling, now wavered and twisted into strange shapes.

“The tablets of your honorable ancestors?” she said.

“Yes, truly,” answered Tēichi, feeling uncomfortable as he thought of the offerings he had just made to the spirit of one who was now beside him in the body.

O Kuni San bowed, and in a humble voice began the story of all that had happened since the memorable visit to the cottage in Fukagawa.

“My young lady,” she said, “could never forget you and how bravely you had saved her from Komura San’s indignities. She hoped that you would return, and waited sadly for you, until at last she grew so ill that her father was anxious. I do not know who told him of your visit,--Komura San, perhaps, for he was very angry at you,--but he learned about it, and then he said that there was nothing to do with such a forward girl but to marry her to the first man that offered. And then”--O Kuni’s voice trembled slightly and O Tsuyu’s head bowed low behind her sleeves,--“he came one day and said that Komura San was willing to marry my young lady in spite of all that had happened, because now you were dead and could not make any further trouble. O Jo Sama[50] could not bear it,--she had always hated the man,--and so at last she escaped, and I with her. She has now a small house at Aoyama, so small a house that perhaps you could not find it if you were to look, but she is happy, and I am still with her to care for her as I have done since she was a baby. But still she thinks of you, and to-night we came to worship before your tablet.”

Ogiwara listened to this recital with growing amazement. It was so like, yet so unlike what he had heard before.

“Komura San told me that O Tsuyu was dead,” he said, “and I have prayed and offered gifts to her spirit. I might have known that he was lying, and that he had some evil plan behind that gentle voice of his. But nothing matters now. We are both alive and together, and no one can part us again.”

It was not until the wan light of the morning had begun to break that Ogiwara let his visitors out and watched their figures vanish softly through the mist, nor knew that Hanzo from his garden lodge had seen the women as they passed. There was a faintness, a smoky, misty look about them as they disappeared from sight that set the old man thinking. Bidding O Koma attend the master if he called, and serve his breakfast, Hanzo slipped into his clogs and clattered along the street and up the hill by wide flights of stone steps to the temple of Kwannon that stood amid its cedars not far away. The priest’s house stood beside the temple, and the old man, stopping before it, bowed low and cried in a humble voice:--

“Excuse the trouble I am making you.”

A little black-robed acolyte, with chubby face and neatly shaven head, answered his summons and bade him enter. Hanzo, sitting on his heels close to the door, waited until, in flowing silken vestment, ready for the great temple service that was soon to begin, an old priest came to learn his need.

“Your Reverence,” he said, “it is on behalf of my master I am come. He lives not far from here, and I am troubled lest evil spirits have bewitched him.”

As Hanzo told his story of the change that had come over his master, the priest listened with an occasional sympathetic exclamation, and when at the end the old servant described the vague, cloud-like figures that had emerged from the house at dawn, the holy man shook his head.

“Clearly,” he said, “some evil ghost is troubling him. For sin committed either in this life or in the past, he is bearing now the punishment. Could you persuade him to come here to me, to study the Master’s Law and learn the control of the flesh, all might yet be well with him.”

Hanzo shook his head. “Your Reverence,” he said, “my master is a man of proud and impetuous spirit. His old servant could hardly persuade him to become a monk,” and he smiled between his hands as he bowed himself to the mats, thinking how little such a course would make for the servant’s welfare. “Is there no other way?”

“A way there is indeed, which may avail, if the young man’s soul is not already knit to the spirit that haunts him. The words of the Lord Buddha have power to drive out evil ghosts, if he whom they seek does not will them to enter.”

Armed with a talisman, the good words of the Law written on white paper by the priest himself, Hanzo went home, to find his master already out.

“Where did the master go?” he asked of O Koma, who had seen him off.

“He told the runners to take him to Aoyama, but gave no street or number.”

“And was he any more sad and strange than he has always been of late?”

“Nay, Hanzo, he was bright and merry, and waved me good-by, and said that he should probably bring guests home with him.”

Still perturbed in spirit, but somewhat cheered by Koma’s account of Ogiwara’s mood, Hanzo pottered about his work; while the master, bowling along behind two fast-running kurumayas, was saying to himself with each revolution of the wheels, “I’ll find her house if it takes all day.”

Through narrow streets and wide, across moats and canals, by grass-grown fortifications topped with leaning pine-trees, along the sentinel-guarded wall of the Crown Prince’s Palace and across the great parade ground where white-clad regiments were drilling, into a suburb of green lanes, bamboo fences, grassy fields, and here and there a rice-swamp, he came at last. Here he dismissed his men and, alone and on foot, wandered from house to house, reading the name-boards that hung before each gate. It was a fruitless search. No Iijima Tsuyu Ko was to be found among them all. His gayety was gone. Tired out with heat and disappointment, he turned at last toward home. In the sultry August afternoon the little open-fronted shops were drowsing under their overhanging eaves. No kuruma was in sight, hardly a foot-traveler was visible. Tēichi stood before the gate of the great cemetery. Within, it looked cool and quiet and green. There was an odor of incense about it. Fresh flowers stood on every stone, and here and there quiet parties of women and children were brushing with reverent hands fallen petals or stray leaves from the graves.

Listlessly he wandered in, thinking of nothing but the quiet green coolness of the place, and walking slowly toward the opposite gate, where he was sure to find a kuruma to take him home. And as he walked with down-dropped head, he saw before him a new-made grave. It had no stone, only an upright pole set up to mark the spot,--sign that the first year had not passed since death,--and hanging above the grave, waving slightly even in the still sultry heat of the August afternoon, was the peony lantern which had glowed from his veranda the previous night.

“Such a small house that perhaps you could not find it, even if you were to look--but I am still with her to care for her--and she is happy.”

O Kuni’s words were in his ears as his tears fell fast above the “small house.”

“At last she escaped, and I with her”--Well he understood now the words which last night had meant so little to his dull brain.

“Happy escape,” he said to himself. “O Tsuyu San, I too must escape and be happy!”

Somehow or other he reached his home in Negishi, and Hanzo’s heart sank when he saw his master’s face. Untouched he sent away the supper that Koma had prepared for his expected guests, and then dismissed his servants for the night.

“I must have a long rest,--I am tired,” he said. “Do not wake me before nine to-morrow morning.”

Hanzo had pasted above the gate the talisman that the good priest had given him, but it was with an anxious heart that he closed up the shutters for the night and then lay and listened like a cat, wondering and dreading what the night might bring forth.

There was a faint clicking of clogs, and then two women’s voices speaking in low tones outside the gate. Then came a stifled sobbing and a wail, thin and piercing, shrilled into words:--

“Tēichi, oh, Tēichi, would you send me away?”

Trembling, but with every sense alert, Hanzo heard the master slide the _amado_ aside, heard him pat-pat in the garden sandals to the gate, heard the heavy bolt move in its socket and the hinges groan. He dared not look, but all his brains were centred in his ears.

“O Tsuyu San,” came in a whisper, “have you come for me? I too would escape and dwell with you in your small house in Aoyama.”

Hanzo opened his eyes, crawled to the ventilating opening in the _amado_, and looked. Two forms like smoke or mist were drifting beside his master. A peony lantern, glowing and waving, lighted their faces, and they were pale as death. The voices died away, the floating vague figures vanished within the house, and softly, very softly, the master’s _amado_ slid back into its place.

By nine o’clock the next morning the August sun had flooded all the little garden with its light, and driven far away the shadows and horrors of the night. Hanzo, obedient to his master’s order, pushed aside the _amado_, his fears almost at rest in the warmth and brightness of the morning. All was quiet within and dark; the light from the one opened shutter fell across the guest-room into the little four-mat room in which the master slept. And he was sleeping still. A peony lantern hung above his head, a smile lingered upon his lips, and clasped tightly in his hand he held a bit of golden lacquer,[51]--an incense-box with little spots of mould that tarnished its brightness, and on its lid the seven flowers of autumn worked by a master hand. Thus the two tokens of a deathless love were joined in one again, and Tēichi too had escaped and was happy.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] A hero of the twelfth century, noted not only for his skill in war, but also for his adventures with the fair sex.

[48] The lotus is always associated with death in the Japanese mind.

[49] See note 1, page 3.

[50] The title used in speaking to or about a young unmarried lady.

[51] It is the custom in Japan to bury with the dead any small keepsakes specially prized during life. The lacquered incense-box seems to have been such a keepsake, given to Tsuyu by her mother, treasured by her in life, and buried with her.