THE following morning dawned clear and bright, not a remnant of mist or fog remaining to recall the previous night. A bright yellow sun arose from behind the hills and beat away every vista of gloom from the skies. It poised above the river Hayama, as though to look upon its own reflected light; then swept along its early course, flooding the land with new light, and piercing the shoji walls of the chamber of the maid Masago.
The Princess Sado-ko opened her eyes, looked half dazedly, half wonderingly, a moment at the unfamiliar ceiling overhead, then sat up on the mattress. Her eyes wandered about the room in a helpless, bewildered fashion for a moment, then suddenly a little flickering smile of recollection came. She slipped from the mosquito netting.
She was in pale blue linen. Below her gown her little bare feet twinkled over the matting as she hastily crossed the room, pushed the casement a small way open, and peeped without. A breath of delight escaped her, for from Masago’s chamber her eyes looked out upon the old delightful scenes of her childhood, the far-reaching meadows, sloping hills, and Fuji-Yama smiling in the morning light.
For some time she remained by the casement, enjoying simply the morning and its gentle breezes. Almost unconsciously she found herself waiting for the attendance of her maiden, Natsu-no. Then recalling Masago’s words that henceforth she must robe herself, she laughed.
She had no difficulty in dressing. Masago’s wardrobe was of the simplest, Yamada Kwacho limiting her in dress expenditure. Sado-ko donned a pretty plum-colored crêpe kimono and a dark, gold-figured obi. Her hands fluttered delightedly over Masago’s clothes; they were so simple and comfortable, she thought.
When she was quite dressed, she forgot to put away the bed,—a duty Masago always performed,—but stepping out upon the balcony loitered for a moment in the sun. Then the garden’s fragrance captivating her, she ran down the little flight of stairs into the garden.
Flowers grew abundantly there,—simple and common flowers they were, but preferred by Kwacho because of their very lack of cultivation, and hence their naturalness.
Almost recklessly Sado-ko plucked them, filling her arms with blossoms. She had an inclination to sing and laugh and pick flowers all the day, she felt so strangely free and happy.
When a servant came and watched her from the kitchen door, the girl smiled toward her. The woman appeared taken aback at the good will in the girl’s face. Masago had been over-bearing toward her father’s servants, which had made her generally unpopular among them. The servant’s voice was not so sharp as she had intended it to be. Would Masago have her morning meal?
The young girl in the sunny garden nodded cheerfully, then hastened toward the house, her flowers in her arms. She drank her morning tea in happy silence, but smiled so often at the waiting maid, that the latter marvelled at her amiability of mood. When Sado-ko had finished, the woman said, almost in a deprecating tone:—
“I did not mean to give offence last night, Masago.”
“Offence?” repeated Sado-ko. “Did you give offence—to me?”
“Why, yes. Do you not recall my looking at the picture in your hands?”
“What picture? Oh, yes, yes. Did you do so? Now I do recall it.”
She moved toward the door to cover her confusion, then turned her head backward, smiling sweetly at the servant.
“Do not worry, maid. I am not offended.”
A moment the woman stared at her in bewilderment. Then she said with some hesitancy:
“Before you went to Kyoto, Masago, I always took the liberties with you, which since your late return you appeared not to desire. I, being long in your family service, as you know, was hurt.”
Sado-ko paused in the doorway.
“When—when did I return?” she asked, in a curious tone, as though she could not recall the exact date. “I have been away it seems—yes—I have been away; but when did I return?”
“Why, only two days since,” declared the maid, in astonishment.
“How absent is my little mind,” she laughed. “Two days ago. Why, yes, of course—and let me see, I have been gone—” She appeared to calculate the time.
“But half a year,” said the servant. “You were to have stayed one year, but your affianced, having acquired such great fame at court, your father wished to hasten on your honorable marriage.”
“Oh,” said the girl, and then repeated in a low, happy voice, “hasten on my marriage.”
She turned suddenly toward the maid.
“Do you find me changed?” she asked.
The woman regarded her dubiously.
“Ye-es—no. Last night I thought you more than usually impatient, Masago.”
“Ah—was I so? I did not mean it.”
“But to-day you seem more kind than even as a child, though you were the most gentle, passive, and best of little ones.”
“And so I am just now,” said Sado-ko, merrily. “I am not changed one little bit. Think of me, if you please, as a child.”
“Perhaps the fault was mine last night,” pursued the woman, glad to prolong the conversation with Masago.
“Look!” exclaimed the girl, pointing to the garden. “See, some little children!”
“Your brothers, Masago. Can you not see?”
“Brothers—mine! Oh-h!”
Dropping her flowers on the veranda, she ran lightly down the path, as though to meet the little boys. Halfway down the path a sense of panic seized upon the princess. She paused in painful hesitancy, scarce knowing which way to turn.
Would not these little brothers of Masago recognize the deception? Could the likeness be so strong as to deceive Masago’s own family? A maid’s judgment was but a poor criterion.
She stood quite still, waiting, yet dreading their approach. Her first impulse had been to run in loving fashion to meet the little boys. Her sudden fear of these individuals saved her from doing that which Masago never had done, caress or fondle her small brothers.
While Sado-ko possessed an innate love of nature and of children, these things but irritated poor Masago, who called the country dull, the town enchanting, children wearisome, and fashion fascinating. Though each feature of the faces of these two sisters was identically alike, their natures vastly differed. Sado-ko was all her mother in nature, and even the cold harshness of her life had frozen but her exterior self. Masago was the complement of Prince Nijo. Her previous environment, association with Ohano, and possibly a little portion of the latter’s nature made her what she was,—a girl of weak and vain ambitions.
Now the princess stood hesitating, fearfully, before the little army of Masago’s brothers, five in all. The older ones spoke her name respectfully, as they had been taught to do. The smaller ones pulled her sleeves and obi mischievously, as though they sought to tease her; but when she laughed, they seemed abashed, and ran to hide behind a tree from whence they peered at her.
The maid who brought them from the neighbor’s bade the girl an apathetic good morning, and seemed surprised at the cordiality of the other’s greeting.
Sado-ko breathed with some relief as the children disappeared within the house. Then for the first time she sighed wistfully.
“If they had loved Masago,” she said, “surely they would miss her. But no, a stranger steps into her clothes, takes her place within the house, and fickle childhood cannot see.”
In gentle depression she moved toward the house, then slowly up the steps to Masago’s balcony, from which she watched the children take their morning bath in the family pond. It was a pretty sight, she thought, to see their little bare, brown bodies shining in the sun. A little later the elder children went whistling down the path to school while the nurse disappeared with the younger ones.
“Strange,” said Princess Sado-ko, “that none of them seemed glad to see their sister. Was not Masago loved, then?”
She pushed the doors open and thoughtfully entered the chamber.
“Perhaps,” she said, “the foreigners speak truth. What is that pretty proverb of their honorable religion? Is it not, ‘The love begets the love’? Masago plainly did not love her little brothers. Hence they have but indifference for her.”
Again she sighed.
“Ah,” she said, “what kind of maiden, then, is this I have exchanged for me?”
She saw the tumbled couch upon which she had slept. She recalled the fact that Masago had told her she would be required to make her own bed and attend her own chamber, for Kwacho deemed such household tasks desirable and admirable in a woman.
Therefore the exalted Princess Sado-ko, the daughter of the sun-god, as she was called by all loyal Japanese, fell to work upon the homely employment of rolling up a mattress bed, beating the little rocking pillow, folding the quilts and the netting. Suddenly she sat down breathlessly among the simple paraphernalia which constituted Masago’s bed. She had forgotten where the maid Masago had told her the clothes were kept! The little thought perplexed and troubled the Princess Sado-ko.
