Chapter XII: Impertinent Isonna

But the next day trouble, though not exactly of the heart, did arrive. It was one of Arisuga's days of retreat from Hoshiko. He asked her why she lived there--in China--when she might live in Japan, where she belonged.

She answered him that her father had come there many years before, when she was a child.

"I will ask him the reason if you wish."

"No, no, no!" laughed Arisuga. "What does it matter, my dear child?"

She ran away from him again. And all that day she kept repeating:--

"'My dear _child_'! I am as tall as he!"

And at night, again, while the maid was undressing her, it was that still.

"Now he shall never know who--what I am. For I _am_ beautiful. The mirror says so. As beautiful as if I were not--what I am. Look, look and tell me!"

This the maid, for the hundredth time since he had come, did.

"You are, indeed, beautiful, dear mistress, yet, nevertheless, it is your duty to tell him! Otherwise he might wish to marry you. Already he loves you."

"I will not! And if you do, I will kill you!" threatened Hoshiko. "I will have these few days of heaven. He will go and not think of me again. He will never know. He will not have been contaminated. But I will have the few days in heaven! To him I am only a child."

And she fell to the floor and sobbed for an hour, during which the maid lay like a graven image at her side. Then she sat up and asked:

"_Now_ you don't blame me, do you?"

"No."

"Anyhow, he will go as soon as possible."

"No, he will not," said the impertinent Isonna.

"He will! You know that he will! Say that he will!"

But the maid knew better.

"That is what men always do when they find out."

"He will not," said Isonna.

"You are very impertinent!" And her mistress punished her maid's impertinence by flinging her the amber bracelet she wore.

"Now, disobedient one, you shall tell me why you think such a naughty thing. Yet you cannot know. No one can see into his large mind. He keeps it closed. He is as wise as a priest. Not even I can enter it. And you are very ignorant, Isonna."

"Nevertheless, his mind is as glass to me!" insisted the maid.

"I will tell my father and he shall punish you with whips. Now, you dear little beast, I shall force you to tell me the reason you think in your evil mind the great color-bearer to the prince of heaven stays here!"

"You," said the maid, coolly refilling first the pipe of her mistress, then her own.

"I shall _not_ tell my father," said Miss Star-Dream, "for I pity you. It is such a great lie that he would make Ozumi whip you to death. Yet it is a lie which makes me happy. Was I ever so happy as I am now--since he came?"

"No," said the maid.

"But he _will_ go sometime--we agree upon that?" questioned the mistress, once more hoping anything but that they did agree upon that. The maid was not blind to her hope.

"Not yet," she answered with a decision which gave joy to the girl's soul.

"He will. He must die."

"Not yet," declared the maid again.

"Do you suppose his love for me--_you_ said it was love, I did not!--is greater than his love for the spirit of his father?"

"Yes," answered the maid.

"Oh, little beast!" cried her mistress, embracing her. "Benten, but I am happy!"

She chattered on:--

"Also have you noticed how beautiful he is? He has hair like the pictures of the gods--though he is a shaven samurai. And those songs he sings he makes himself. I am going to learn a thousand musical instruments so that I may play them all. I wish I could sing! And, Isonna, we never laughed--really--until he came, did we? Always that thing hung over us. But he is not to know it. And we may forget it! And, Isonna, have you noticed that exquisite habit he has of touching me, here, here, here?"

She laughed and made the serving-girl the illustrant of this aberration of the soldier.

"That he does when he wants me to look at something--often only himself. Or when I am not attending to his words. I used to shudder and go away from it--it was so strange--no one else ever did it. But I now think it very foolish to start and be frightened by such small things."

"I have observed you go toward it!" droned the maid.

"That is a vile lie!" cried Hoshiko. "Say, do you know what causes that?"

"No."

"His wife; he does that to his wife, and she--she is not a nice person, and likes it! Aha!"

"He has no wife," said the maid.

It was this she was hungry to hear.

"How do you know? Did he tell you?"

"No. But he wears stockings, not tabi. All soldiers do."

"Well, you suspicious little beast, what has that got to do with his wife?"

"I wash them."

"Well?"

"There are no darns."

"Oh! What then?"

"Holes."

"Isonna," said her mistress, solemnly, "I believe that you are as wise as you say you are! But, then, how do you suppose he learns it?"

"From you!"

"Am I so dreadful?"

"I have observed you giving those touches."

"He will hate me."

"Hate is not in the direction he is going," said the wise maid.

Hoshiko could have endured more of this ecstasy. But it was very late, and Arisuga had the soldier's habit of early rising. Moreover, the first thing he was wont to do when he rose was to clap his hands, in that way, and call for his earth-angel. So she said to Isonna:--

"You have been a naughty, impertinent, gossiping little beast. Put me to bed."

Yet, when this had been done the mistress embraced the maid and would hardly let her go.

"What a shame it is that one must sleep when one might talk of him! But, then, if one does not, one is hideous in the morning! And he calls the moment he wakes. Put out the lights and go to bed! I will listen to you no longer!"

Isonna had not spoken. But she did as she was commanded.

"Isonna!" the mistress called after the maid--who instantly returned--"I have had such a thought! Suppose he should never know! Suppose I should go to some place with him where there is no one who had ever known me? Marry him?"

"I should be there."

"You! Not unless I should first cut out your gossiping tongue!"

"It would be wrong. The gods must punish you!"

"How would the gods know? I should lie to them also."

"It would be very wrong," the maid repeated. "The only woman who deceives a man--"

"Is his _wife_, you naughty little beast! Go straight to bed! I hate you!"

ONLY TO TAKE HER