CHAPTER IV.

Under such surroundings grew up the fairest maiden to be found in the province of Kuwana. All who had seen her were unanimous in according this tribute to O Tetsu. The people often wondered how such a beautiful, lovely being could spring from such a coarse, knotted stock, even when her mother’s fair, delicate nature was grafted upon it. There are many points of beauty for which the daughters of Japan have always been favored beyond those of most other nations. In no country probably will there be found so many possessing those delicate hands and feet, that gloriously beautiful neck, and those bright, shining eyes which seem to be the birth-right of the maidens of the Land of the Rising Sun. All these advantages and many others were found to perfection in O Tetsu; and she added to them a grace of movement and a witchery of manner which caused the poets of the court to lament the poverty of their language, because it failed to supply them with adequate terms to describe all these endearing qualities to their satisfaction. Fair and fresh and beautiful as a summer morn, graceful as a Japanese lily, with wonderful eyes, lustrous and brilliant, and shining with a peculiar humid brightness which suffused or rather covered them as if with a refulgent and yet a transparent veil, and with a voice whose sweet melody, if you were young and impressionable, lingered in your ears for days andweeks after you heard it, O Tetsu might well lay claim to be considered peerless throughout the land. Her hands and feet might have belonged to a child half her age, and her form was slight and delicate; yet she was no tender, hothouse plant, but in reality strong and robust. When on cold, frosty wintermornings, the ground being covered with snow, she walked out with her bare feet thrust into high-heeledgetas, her rich, warm blood mantling neck and face, she looked a picture of physical health, and formed a striking contrast to many damsels whose coarser build did not prevent them from shivering, and showing hands and feet and noses that were blue and ugly with the cold. In spite of her generally mild and demure looks, there was something of her father’s nature in her after all,—a certain imperious way, which, rarely displayed, might have been taken for a faint, a very faint, counterpart of the old smith’s headstrong obstinacy. There was some slight resemblance between them also in outward looks,—a resemblance in general hardly conceivable, but which became apparent in O Tetsu when her eyes were momentarily closed. Then her small mouth and chin showed its resolute cast, and the whole outline of the face was not lacking in a certain determined look, which, as shrewd observers said, would have developed into something of a temper if circumstances had favored it. All these latent traits, however, were not visible, or failed to be noticed, when you saw her eyes—those beautiful eyes, with their unfathomable depth of bright, roguish tenderness. Although her father doted on her, yet the stern, fierce nature of his strong and powerful individuality rendered disobedience or self-willed pertinacity an impossibility, and the girl’s feminine graces were thus saved from being marred by tendencies which a different education might have aggravated into faults.

LANDING-PLACE AT KUWANA.

Young as O Tetsu was, offers of marriage,—some of them of a kind to satisfy very exacting demands on the score of birth, family, position, and personal accomplishments,—had not been wanting. There were those who would have wooed her forher father’s reputed wealth; there were others, and probably the greater number, who were attracted mostly by the charms of her person and manners; while not a few of high position and noble birth would have been content to give her their name if she had possessed neither beauty nor wealth, being actuated by the sole hope of getting one of her father’s swords as a dowry. The social taint attaching to her escutcheon on account of her reputed Eta mother, the mere suspicion of which in the case of most others would have been an all-powerful objection, not to be outweighed by the possession of wealth, was disregarded in the daughter of this clever artisan. In her it would have been condoned, even if it had stood out as a well-known and established fact. This, however, was not the case, as it was after all but a vague report, which anybody who chose might disbelieve. The lovers of O Tetsu looked for no other reason to ignore its existence but their own desire and inclination; while the smith’s fame, his reputed influence, which it was known would carry great weight if he chose to exert it, and above all the secret superstitious awe which he inspired, were so many deterrent influences to prevent people from talking above their breath of what might be distasteful to him if it should reach his ears.

A RONIN.

This fear and awe had its origin in another of those rumors which arise no one knows how or when, and which sometimes, having a substratum of truth, or assuming its semblance from accidental circumstances, come to be accepted as undoubted facts. In this instance it had long since been so accepted. It was said that in the manufacture of his swords the smith needed newly-shed human blood. The age was superstitious enough to believe that such a procedure correctly carried out would entail marvellous results; and the wonderfulexcellence of Muramasa’s productions favored this reasoning. There were sufficient grounds beside to make such a belief plausible. The smith’s weird appearance and manner, and the dreary, lonely character of the neighborhood wherein he lived, had undoubtedly contributed to this end. Moreover, the dead bodies which were found so often near his house,—much more frequently, it was said, than ever before,—whether they had belonged tosamuraislain in brawl or duel, merchants robbed and killed for their money or beggars probably cut down from mere wanton lust, were always cut and slashed in a terrible manner, leaving hardly any blood in the body, while traces of it were often found suspiciously near the smith’s dwelling. Nobody thought of accusing the latter of sordid motives, and his solitary life prevented him from having many enemies. It was only the blood he wanted to temper his steel; and when the time came that he needed it, and no accident supplied him, then, as people said, he took care to furnish an accident himself. If such had been the case, known and proven, it would probably have entailed no unpleasant consequences upon the smith, unless some one, specially interested and high in authority, had chosen to take the matter in hand. Human life was held cheap enough, while good swords were rare; and if it required human blood to make one, a few merchants and vagrants could well be spared. Muramasa himself was doubtless aware of this report, and was even believed by some to encourage it. At least, whether true in any degree or altogether a fabrication, he never by word or sign contradicted it; he probably had enough worldly wisdom to know that the atmosphere of dread mystery in which, bycommon report, he thus lived, created a spell which could not but enhance the value of the products of his marvellous handicraft.

As far as O Tetsu was concerned, none of these rumors had ever reached her. It was known that in her case the smith objected to and would resent such a piece of tale-bearing; and the mysterious fear of him was sufficient to prevent anything of the kind. Once only had such an attempt been made.

As the girl one forenoon passed out of the house on her way to the town to make a few purchases, accompanied, as she always was, by her old servant, she was stopped not far from her door by two old beldames with whom she had a slight acquaintance. The latter had been loitering under pretence of looking at some tumble-down buildings on the other side of the street, to which both of them pointed now and then in apparently a deeply interested way; in reality, however, they were waiting, hoping perhaps to meet the smith’s daughter, who went out only two or three times a month, but generally at this hour. It was not the first time that these women, who were known as confirmed gossips, had been seen in the neighborhood; but they had never before met the young girl, whom, when they saw her now, they accosted with such a show of affection and caressing words that she could not but stop and make some sort of reply. As the conversation continued, however, she, knowing that her father objected strongly to anything like street gossip, became uneasy and bent a significant look on her servant. The latter, who in general was quick enough in her perceptions,and of her own accord had often stopped suchrencontres, sometimes in a very abrupt and unceremonious manner, seemed in this instance unable to understand the meaning of her young mistress’s uneasiness, and, contrary to all her habits, even took a lively interest in the conversation.

DESERTED BUILDINGS.

“Miss O Tetsu is getting to be very proud now,” said one of the women, the wife of a small sugar-baker, in the course of the conversation which followed numerous minute inquiriesafter the other’s health. “Yet when you were a child you never passed our poor, humble place without calling for your candy, which I took so much pleasure in giving to the dear, pretty little thing.”

“Oh, yes!” her companion, the shrewish spouse of anomochaya(dealer in toys), chimed in, “and at that time she rarely passed our place without accepting some little toy or plaything; and bless her little heart, how she did enjoy the sight of the picture-books, and the tops which she began to spin as soon as she passed out into the street! But Miss O Tetsu has become a great lady now, with more beauty and wealth than any other girl in the province, and poor people like us can hardly expect to be noticed by her.”

“You are both certainly mistaken,” replied O Tetsu, vexed with the others as well as herself. She could not understand the meaning of all this talk; she only remembered going to these women’s shops, as she went to others, to make occasional purchases, and she was at a loss to account for this fervor and extreme show of friendly sympathy. Still, above everything she would not be thought proud or unkind to inferiors, and so she continued: “I am not a child any more, and do not now care for sweetmeats or toys; but I do not mean to forget any kindness done to me, and if you care for my company, I will call upon you the next time I go out.”

“I knew it; I knew what a kind-hearted and good-natured little fairy you are,” the former speaker quickly and rather illogically rejoined. “And how is your dear father?” she continued abruptly, noticing the other’s impatience to get away.

“I have not seen my father for some days; he is finishing a sword now, and at such times he always shuts himself up with my brother in the smithy, allowing not even me to disturb him.”

“So now is the time when your father is finishing one of his wonderful swords? I ought to have known it. They found two corpses fearfully hacked to pieces on the lot opposite to you. Strange,—is it not?—but at such times corpses are always found over there. Strange, is it not, Miss O Tetsu?”

“There is nothing strange about it,” the old servant here quickly spoke up. “When Muramasa is engaged on one of his swords, he is utterly absorbed in his work, and robbers and thieves know they need not fear his interference; so they pursue their evil ways without danger of being disturbed by one who would be a match for a dozen of them.”

“I suppose that may be it,” was the response, slowly given. “We think, however, at such a time the smithy could show many strange and queer, perhaps some fearful, scenes, and I would give anything to be able to get a glance at it to-day.”

“I will afford you that pleasure,” said a deep, harsh voice; and turning round, the woman who had spoken saw the smith himself at her elbow. The sight of him at that moment would have appalled even a strong, stout-hearted man, much more the shrinking creature whom he had just addressed. His mouth was firmly compressed, his face looked unnaturally broad, and its repulsive features new seemed perfectly hideous, with the coal-dust and soot which covered them as well ashis whole body. The furrow on his forehead was filled with this floating dust, and glistening with the great drops of sweat that had gathered there, had become a shining jet black. But the worst feature of all were those large, restless, glaring eyes, surrounded as they now were with red, inflamed brows, which spoke of long nights of watching and labor.

“You can go on now, O Tetsu,” he said, addressing his daughter, “while I take charge of these ladies. Go on,” he continued in a more peremptory way, as the other loitered; “I must fulfil the wish of these ladies who have such very kind feelings for you and me;” and taking hold of each by an arm, he led them along, while the girl, unaccustomed to hear severe tones from him, hurried away with her servant.

What the two gossips who were now led away into the smithy heard or saw there, they could or would never give a rational account of. They were both in such a state of abject fear and terror that the smith had to change his hold from their arms to their waists to bring them to his place, which was only a few feet away. They remembered the smithy,—large, dark, and gloomy, all the darker and gloomier for the contrast with the bright air and light outside. They remembered seeing a hot, lurid fire at one end, before which the smith’s son was working half naked with an immense hammer on a white-hot bar of iron. All around him were numberless tools and instruments with sharp edges and bright surfaces glistening in the glare of the flame, which came out with a hissing noise. The place also contained a quantity of large and small tubs,some apparently empty, and some containing liquid which looked black as tar, but which, when the firelight fell upon it, shone red as blood. Queer and fantastic shadows, which elongated or contracted as the flame on the hearth shot out or subsided, filled the place. Half-dead with terror, they remembered being led, or rather carried, by the smith close to the fiery heat, and they had a dim recollection of being told by him how a human being could be burned to cinders here in a few moments, and how those cinders could be put to use again in forging a sword. An idle vagrant unwilling to work, or a good-for-nothing, peeping, spying chatterbox, who neglected her home but minded everybody’s business, could hardly be put to any better use than this.

O TETSU AND THE TWO BELDAMES.

The terrible heat, and partly their own feelings, must have overpowered these two beldames, for they remembered nothing further until they found themselves out in the yard by the well, drenched from head to foot with several buckets of water which the smith had thrown over them. With a grim smile he said he thought they were satisfied with their visit; and while he gave it as his opinion that the air of the smithy hardly agreed with them, he added that if he ever heard of their expressing any further curiosity, he would certainly be ready to contrive means of giving them another glimpse of his workshop. Then, without further ceremony, he conducted them to the gate, which he closed in their faces, leaving the poor drenched women, chattering with cold and still shaking and quaking with fright, to find their way home as best they could. It was said that from this day the henpeckedomochayafound his wife marvellously changed for the better. Queerly enough,although neither of them spoke of their adventure, the affair gradually came to be known and talked about; and the guarded, evasive answers which, although otherwise voluble enough, they gave when interrogated by their acquaintances, only heightened the interest without satisfying it, thereby giving new food for mysterious tales about the smith.

SWORD-GUARD.

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