“She must have been charming.—I wish I was here to see her.”
“Haw, haw, but you may see her. She will come out, I am sure, to receive you, if you put up at the hot-spring hotel of Nakoi.”
“Why, then, is she back in her father’s house, now? I wonder if I could see her in her bridal dress, with her hair done up in the shimada.”
“Only ask her; she will most likely oblige you by appearing in the dress of her bridal tour.”
Impossible! I thought, but my bah-san15 was quite in earnest. After all, my “unhuman” tour would be insipid, if it were all commonplace with no such characters. My good woman went on:
“There is so much alike between the Jo-sama and Nagarano Otome.”
“You mean in their looks?”
“No, I mean in their life.”
“But who is this Nagarano Otome?”
“Long, long ago, there was the maid of Nagara, the beautiful daughter of a rich man, and the pride of this village.”
“Yes?”
“Well, Danna-sama, two men, Sasada-otoko and Sasabe-otoko fell in love with her both at once.”
“I see.”
“Shall she accept the hand of the Sasada man or should give her heart to the Sasabe man? She tormented herself for days, weeks, and months, with the perplexing problem, until unable to allow herself the choice of one in preference to the other, she ended her life by throwing herself into a river, leaving behind her an ode:
“Akizukeba Obanaga Uyeni
Okutsuyuno
Kenubekumo Wawa
Omohoyurukana.”16
I had little expected to hear such a quaint romance told in such old-fashioned language, least of all from such an old woman in the depth of a mountain like this.
“You go down about 600 yards East from here Danna-sama and you will come upon the ‘five elements’ spiral tombstone on the roadside, that marks the eternal home of Nagarano Otome. You should pay a visit to the grave, on your way to Nakoi.”
I resolved by all means to see the grave. The Bah-san went on to tell me:
“The Jo-sama of Nakoi had, in her evil days, her hand sought by two suitors. One of them was a young man she met while she was at school in Kyoto, and the other a son of the wealthiest man in the castled town.”
“So? Which did she choose?”
“The Jo-sama herself would have had her lover in Kyoto if she could make her own choice; but her father forced her to accept the young man of the castled-town.”
“That is to say, she fortunately escaped drowning herself in the river?”
“To her young husband she was as dear as his own life, and he did all he could to please her; but she was not happy to the worry of all. Soon after the present war had broken out her husband lost his job, the bank where he was working closing its doors, while the same cause wrought the ruin of his own family. This made the Jo-sama come back to her father’s house in Nakoi, and gossip has been busy making a heartless and ungrateful woman of her. As a girl, the Jo-sama was always coy and gentle; but she has latterly been changing into a woman of unwomanly high spirits. So says Gembey every time he passes here, as he feels really sorry for her.”
I did not want to hear more, to have my fancies spoiled. The woman’s story was beginning to smell of human ills and worries and I felt as if somebody was wanting back the fairy wand, when I was just becoming celestial. It cost me uncommon pains to negotiate the perils of the “Seven Bends,” and reach here. All that and the very reason of my wandering out of my house would have been lost, if I were now to be so recklessly brought back to the everyday world. This and that of life are all very well up to a certain point; but past that limit it brings a worldly odor that enters you through the pores of the skin and makes you feel heavy with dirt. So I started to go, with this departing word, after depositing a silver piece on the bench: “The road is straight to Nakoi, is it not O-bah-san?”
“Turn right, down the slope from the tomb of Nagarano Otome and you will make a saving of some half a mile. The road is not very good; but a young gentleman like you would make a shortcut. … God bless you for such generosity. Take good care of yourself, Danna-sama.”
III
I had a queer time of it last night.
About eight o’clock I reached the hotel. It had already closed up for the night, and was but dimly lighted. I could not, of course, tell, then, the plan of the house or the layout of its garden, to say nothing of its bearing on the points of the compass. I was led by the nose, as it were, through a long, long winding sort of passage, at the end of which I was put in a small room of about six mats. I could not at all tell where I was; the place had so completely changed since I was here last. After supper, and then a dip in the hot spring bath, I was sipping tea in my room, when a young girl came in, and asked me if she should make my bed.
What struck me as not a little strange was that it was the same girl who had come out to let me in when I arrived; it was this same girl who had brought me supper and waited on me; it was this same girl who had showed me to the bath room; and it
