Adzuma : or The Japanese Wife A play in four acts |
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 | Adzuma : or The Japanese Wife |  |
Scene 1.
—Kyôtô.An outer Guard-Room of the Emperor's Palace. Armed Samurai and Soldiers standing or sitting about.
Hojo.
Saw you young Lord Morito throw Sakamune
in the wrestling-ring to-day?
Adachi.
Aye! a notable shoulder-heave it was!
Sakamune, for all his skill, rolled over the edge of the
platform like a pine-log down the bank of Katsura.
Hojo.
Naruhodo! What a man that is! Every
inch of him soldierly!
He is now in high favour. When came he
first to the Court?
Hojo.
It was just after Morito won back the Emperor's
favourite horse, Tama-jishi, which had been so
boldly stolen by the robber Koroku, whom none of us
could come at.
Doi.
Did he do that?
Hojo.
Yes! he was only a stripling, but he could
swim the sea like a tai; and run so fleetly that a
cord of thirty shaku, tied to his waist, would stream
in a straight line behind him. With Kameju, his retainer,
who is as prudent as Morito is headstrong,
he went to Tosa in Tango, where the outlaw made
his hold.
Doi.
What could they look to do against Koroku?
Hojo.
That which courage does, backed by wit. They
gave themselves out as pilgrims to the thirty-three
shrines, weary and in need: two wandering youths, one
of the presence to please Koroku. So he entertained
them well, and, on a time, questioned them if they
knew the military arts, wanting them for his band.
Doi.
How answered they?
Hojo.
Kameju answered, saying, it was to their
shame that, albeit sons of a Daimio, a peasant had
brought them up, and taught them only to swim, ride,
and wrestle. So the Robber would see them show
their skill. Kameju plunged into the waves, and swam
well, but Morito, taking a knife in his belt, dived from
the rocks and brought up, dead, a large fuka, of a
bow's length. Then they were put to wrestle, in
which Morito, designing that Kameju should win, and
thus be first chosen to ride the great horse, gave his
companion advantage, and was finally thrown; yet not
until they had played before Koroku like young tigers.
So Kameju was to mount the horse first, to show
stallion, which none of the thieves dared bestride.
But hardly was he mounted, and beginning speed,
before Morito, quicker than any deer on Arashiyama,
darts after him, and while all the rogues thought it the
wantonness of the youth, he leaps up behind Kameju,
claps heel to the stallion's flank, and ere the robbers
could so much as get to saddle, they had seen the last
of the Emperor's horse.
Doi.
For this he was taken to favour?
Hojo.
It is so. And ever since he has constantly
bettered his fortunes by deeds of service. Yet there
is a wild spirit under his knightliness which only
Kameju can restrain.
Adachi.
Domo! did we not see to-day, when Sakamune
took him in the “bear's grip,” how young
Morito's teeth clenched; how he breathed; how he
braced; how he set his feet like stone gate-posts, and
would have sent a koku of rice flying?
Hojo.
Nē? But, afterwards he raised Sakamune
full courteously, and wiped the dust out of his mouth
with his own head-cloth.
Adachi.
It was so! it was so! nevertheless Morito's
glance, in that clinch, was like an eagle's look when
it draws the curtain off its eyes.
Doi.
You are honourably right! Meseemed Sir
Sakamune did not show best pleased to be grounded
so rudely before the ladies of the Court.
Hojo.
Ah, you marked that? I, too, thought he
scowled more than a beaten player should, when he rose;
albeit he is a very polished Knight, who lets none see
what is hid in the silk sleeve of his manners. But you,
Adachi! went your speech, just now, deeper than its
words, when you likened Morito's look to an eagle's?
Adachi.
Nay, Sir! I spoke only as I have seen.
'Tis the more strange, because there is told
a tale by the priests and the women—a story of shura
and of hoben
—giving out that in a former existence
our Morito was indeed an eagle.
Adachi.
Naruhodo; honourably make us hear.
Hojo.
In truth, I am but partly versed in the
matter, but here comes one who can tell us all, if he
will speak. Ask Kameju Haruki, the Heimin, if you
would know.
Enter Kameju.
Kameju.
“The day,” fair gentlemen!
Hojo.
To you “the day!”
What news, Kameju?
Kam.
Only soldiers' news;
Morito takes your watch at hour of the Ox.
His name was large this moment on our tongues.
Kam.
They could not wag, sirs! to a nobler one;
Morito Musha Endo, my good Lord,
Can give you talk enough from sun to sun
If what you love to talk upon be deeds
Fitting a warrior, and his Father's son.
Hojo.
We know your mind to him, and his deserts,
And none is minded save to praise him here,
But, when you cast your zori at the gate,
Our speech went on the story of his birth;
An eagle mixed with it, and foregone feuds,
So was it said—and you the one who knows:
An't be not private, will you make it ours?
Kam.
Sirs! what the priests talk at the evening rice
And women in the bath-house, may well come
To all your ears, if soldiers' ears can care
For matter vague and visionary as mist
Driving down Biwa; which the East wind blows
Melting before you name them.
Adachi.
Still, 'tis known
Our past lives build the present, which must mould
The lives to be.
Kam.
Oh, if you hold to that,
I had as lief my honoured Lord drew birth
From eyries, as from any plainer nests.
What? must you have it?
Hojo.
Deign augustly, Sir!
Kam.
Then, since 'tis chatter with us, this they say—
The gossips at the wells—Two reigns ago,
The Emperor Toba ruling, a vast Bird
Haunted Shiki-no-kami's craggy crest,
In Yamato; a monstrous snow-white Bird,
Its spread wings like the mid-sails of a junk,
Its beak a blacksmith's shears, its talons twinned
Hooks of grey bronze. And, when the women laid
A whistle would be heard amidst the pines
As if a typhoon burst, and there would pass
The roar of those wide, terrible, white vans
Casting a quick-gone shadow, and be heard
The scream of the eagle, swooping on the babe
With orbs ablaze, quick silencing the wail—
Save for the mother's ears—of that soft prey
Whose tender limbs the savage talons gripped
And bore aloft; while some ran for their bows,
And some flung foolish stones, and some made speed
To follow, if they might, the Ravisher;
Yet always, to the hollows of his hill
Safe he took flight.
Doi.
They speak in Yamato
Now, of that plague.
Kam.
Well, then, the Emperor heard,
Lord Yasuhira from his list of lords,
Best at the archery; bade him fare forth
And slay the eagle. Now this knight was old;
His wife, Koromogawa, childless still,
And near past nursing-times. So both went up
To Kwannon's temple at the lotus-pool
Praying these two boons—that a child might come
To take the enlarging honours of their name,
And that some happy arrow from his string
Might find the fierce Bird's breast, and save the folk.
Thus, day by day, and night by night, alone—
With Yasuhira gone—his lady prayed
These things unceasingly at Kwannon's shrine
Till answer came—strange answer, were all true!
Adachi.
The Gods do listen, if we ask enough.
I know not; but they say it did befall
That,—one day, in her garden, plucking flowers
To set before the goddess—from the reeds
Koromogawa sees a bright snake creep
Which, with soft rustlings, seeks to come to her.
No loathsome reptile, but a lovely coil
Of gold and green—if one can like a snake—
All living, jewelled silk. Thereon, the maids
Cried out and ran; but Yasuhira's wife
Was one afeard, and stroked the glistering length
Of the cold worm, and let its black forked tongue
Play with her hand; then, put it gently back,
Straightway forgetting.
Doi.
For the life of me
I could not play with serpents.
Kam.
Well, that night,
Lying a-bed, she heard a beat on the screen,
All Knight's wife as she was, she snatched a spear
And slid the shoji back, and look! a form
Oh, passing, peerless, fair; a lovely face
Delicate-featured, as of some young maid
Budding to woman, but the garb a man's,
Dark blue hakama, swinging purple sleeves,
The long, smooth, gleaming hair tied like a man's,
Girdle of 'broidered silk, and from its folds
Two sword-hilts forking. If there dwelt a Dame
Leal to her Lord, 'twas Yasuhira's wife;
Yet, while she eyed him, in herself she said,
“Thou gracious one! if thou be'est man indeed
For thee Komachi's snow-cold blood had thaw'd,
For thee the Princess Chiyo's breast of stone
Had turned to flame! Oh, that thou wert my child!”
Hojo.
Komachi and the other were of those
Whom no man's love could touch?
So 'tis; and when
She put the shoji back, saying: “Who comes
By night-time o'er the fence, is no true man
But kusemono, but a plunderer!”
A gentle voice wailed: “Yasuhira's wife!
Give entrance! think thou not ill thoughts of me
That am thy lover, past all words of love,
And cannot choose but be about thy steps
By day-time, 'mid the flowers; and in the night,
Where thou dost sleep.” “Begone!” the Lady cries:
“My Lord is absent, and I see no man
By day or night! I know thee not, begone!
Or I must strike thee with my husband's spear!”
“Nay! but thou knowest me,” the soft voice says:
“In many shapes I have been nigh to thee,
Because I yearn, out of the shadowy world
And this noon, in the garden, that was I
Who crept, a snake, out from the water-weeds
And would have fondled longer those dear hands
But that, unkind, thou dravest me away
With thy bunched lilies.”
Adachi.
Naruhodo! Sir,
To hear a snake talk so!
Kam.
For very shame
To hear a snake enamoured of her so
Again she lifts the spear: but the form said:
“Strike! if thou wilt, since, in another life,
I shall be woman, and more near to thee
As I am now thy servant and thy friend
Whose life is thine, to live and die for thee.”
On this spake Koromogawa: “If 'tis sooth,
Go where my husband is, and help him kill
The great white eagle haunting Yamato.”
For this is easy, and my destiny
To give myself for thee, whom I shall meet
In other lives, and other—till the end.”
Doi.
Judge you, good Sir! 'twas waking truth, or dream?
Kam.
She would have held it for a dream, but, see!
At day-dawn, on the cover of her bed
Lies a long snake-slough—gold and green and blue
And purple, like the apparel of the Form:
And, afterwards, what did befall, seems more.
Adachi.
Ah! Nama Amida! we long to hear.
Kam.
Her lord comes back with pomp and beating drums,
Four men bearing the vast bird on a pole,
Its white plumes bloodied. And his speech was this
He sate at home again. “I fared, my wife,
To Yamato, and prayed the Goddess long
For those two boons, the first a boy or girl
To bear th'enlarging honours of our house,
And next that I might find and slay the Bird.
Far did I wander over hill and moor
With notch on string, searching the speckless sky,
Threading black pine-woods, rousing spotted deer
From glens unvisited, and startling up
The wild crane from her eggs, the grunting boar
Foul from his lair, and solitary bears
From berry-thickets where no man had come;
Yet nothing nearer won I to my quest:
Till, on the seventh day, ranging at dawn
I spy a sugi-tree, whose swaying top,
A hundred arrow-lengths in air, spread there
The piled sticks of an eagle's eyrie, loud
With clamours of the hungry couplets. See!—
While I get breath and hide—a noise in the blue,
A whir of strong-struck pinions, and there lights,
Shaking the mighty tree, that great white Bird,
Its claws drove deep in the dead velvet meat
Of some poor mother's nursing babe.
How reach
At such a height the tyrant? Pondering this
I mark a bright snake, from beneath the nest,
Glide near and nearer till it flings its coils—
Quick as a sword-blade springing—round the Bird
Chaining his strong wings down, fettering his feet,
Binding him tight with fold on glistening fold;
And—while he screams and tumbles on his tree—
Darting on this and that side of his throat
The venomed daggers of its wide red jaw,
Cries loud for rage, and in its crooked beak
Mashes the Serpent's head; but sick and bound,
Falls to a lower fork, locked with his foe;
And there a shaft can reach him. To my ear
I drew my string, and loosed; the bow sang loud,
The arrow flew, the keen steel pierced and pinned
Serpent and Bird in one close writhing mass
Which bounded, plume and scale, from bough to bough
And rolled down, dead and reddened, at my foot.”
Hojo.
Ma! Kameju! no better tale-teller
Holds the still people on the Yose-mats!
And how fits this with Endo Morito?
Kam.
Since you hold patience yet, that shall be told.
Lord Yasuhira finished, saying thus,
With solemn face: “Once more in Yamato
And slept; but, sleeping, saw One not of our world,
Radiant and great, who spake: ‘Seen lives of men
Intermix close with other lives unseen.
What is done well, obedient to the Law,
Blossoms in bliss, and what is wrongly done
Withers to woe, 'till it be purged. Thy prayers
Were heard! The snake that helped thee must be born
A beauteous daughter to thy wife. The Bird
Hath ended all save one hard penitence
For which once more he meets the Snake, and strives.
He will be Morimitsu's son on earth,
Born of Shiraito. Lest thy waking sense
This vision scorn, a sign is given for faith.’
And, when the morning-cock crowed me awake
With a snake's scale.”
Hojo.
Partly I knew all this before, but never
nearly so well, as to-day. Our thanks, good Kameju!
That's why Koromogawa, then, Adzuma's mother,
would liever have fire take her house, than Morito
Endo and her daughter come together.
Kam.
I have prated too much, already; but, indeed
I deem the fortune of my Lord lies better elsewhere.
These things are as they must be. We talk like
waiting-maids in a tea-house; and 'tis time, I think,
that the guard was shifted.
| Adzuma : or The Japanese Wife | |