University of Virginia Library

Scene 6.

Time, early morning. An apartment in Wataru's house. Kameju and a group of lamenting people discovered. Wataru apart, lost in grief.
[Morito is seen forcing the entrance by an inner door.]
Kameju.

Nay, Sir! you cannot come in. There
is great woe here.

Morito.

Give me way!

Kam.

Enter not, for your own comfort! You do

not know that the Lady Adzuma hath been found
this morning most foully murdered.

Mor.

Give me way! Stand aside, I say! Where
is Wataru?

Kam.
He cannot speak with you.

Mor.
Stand back! give way! Oh, Watanabe! Sir!
Let me have leave, and listen just so long
Till I have spoke enough to force thy blade
Make bloody period to my speech and me.

Wataru.
What can'st thou say, in this fate-stricken house,
Such heavy sorrow as to-day's could hear?

Mor.
This! I am he who murdered Adzuma!
Here is her beauteous, gentle, bleeding head
Severed, in place of thine, by this vile hand!
I—fool, and beast, and butcher—being misled,
Being gone mad with passion, being beguiled,
Took her white purity for wantonness,
And forged scripts for the message of her hand.
With that, by hateful words, and cruel threats,
Perplexed her for her mother's sake, and thine,
Drove her to edge of dreadful precipice
Where no way seemed how Virtue could come safe.
Sudden resolved (—oh! as I now do know
Whispered by Heaven, which helps fidelity—)
She turns: bids me break in; slay thee; and then,
It should be as it should be. Look, what's come!
How, dying, she hath shamed me. Sir! she lay
Meek, unafeared, in thy bed, for thy sake;
Hair cropped, head wet, on a man's pillow put;
And so I killed her, thinking to kill thee;
And so I killed stone-dead the calumny
Wherewith we smirched her stainless nobleness;
And so I killed my name, and fame, and peace,
And thy peace and the sweet joy of thy life.
And I am come, with naked breast, to lay
This fair head in thy hands, and this same sword
Which struck it off; and to beseech of thee
Now, with its edge, to lop my head away,
Which here I bend in broken humbleness.

Wat.
Thou miserable Lord, whose great sin mates
The greatness of my sorrow,—sheathe the steel!
I'll use it not. Had I encountered thee
Knowing one tittle of this before she died,
I had cloven thee, like a wolf, from chin to chine.
Hadst thou come thus, when first I found her dead,
With such a prayer,—before the half was out
I had split thy heart, if underneath such breast
Beats any heart. But now, thy punishment
Must be to live! Thou art crept penitent,
Ashamed, judging thyself, before my feet,
I cannot therefore kill thee. Live! I say!
Ask no large grace like death! Nay, see what's left
Upon my pillow, it shall gash thy soul
Worse than sword could thy body.
He reads Adzuma's last letter.

“To my most noble and loving Lord—Wataru
Watanabe!—I was already dead for thy peace and
honour, while we talked together this night. When I
took boldness to ask that thou wouldest never marry
again after my death, it was my heart's deep love spoke,
rather than my duty. I beseech you, forgive this, but
take my thanks and blessings for thy most sweet words.
Yet do thy will, and be happy. Here, and in all the
worlds, my heart is thine, and my soul. I have very
much more to say, but tears will not suffer me to write
it. Farewell! thy true and unspotted wife—in fast
fidelity,

And, for her mother, this is what she left.

“I have, indeed, heard that wedded wives can be
false, but I have never understood it—loving nothing so
much as my husband's love, and my duty to him, and
to you, mother! The nets woven around me by wicked
men were very strong, and therefore I have cut them

with Morito's sword. You will now know how clear
I was of evil; and your life and good name will be safe,
and my Lord will live in peace and honour, assured of
Adzuma. I kiss the kind hand which struck me, for
it was rightly done had I indeed failed so shamelessly
from my fidelity. I am very sorrowful to leave you,
mother, now so old and lonely; but Wataru this night
—not understanding why I asked it—hath promised
always to protect you. Now I die; glad because I
know you will again call me your daughter Adzuma.

Kam.
Oh, heart of gold! Oh! noble Nippon wife!
Oh! tender Daughter! Thou too lonely Lord,
What thinkest thou to do?

Wat.
The funeral o'er
For this dear dead, I shall lay wholly down
Armour and swords, and, from to-day's hard time,
With shorn head, in the holy Temple's shade
A Priest I'll live, 'till good hap come to die.

Mor.
I, whom thou biddest live, humbly obey,
And, with my face in the dust, take thy vow, too,
That daily, and that nightly, I may pray
For this pure soul.

Wat.
Why, be it so! And she
May thus, in Heaven, find prayers to make for thee.

Exeunt Omnes.