HE Lady Wistaria was carried to her father’s home at night. There was no gorgeous cortÈge, no gayly bedecked attendants or retainers to bend the back and knee to her. She travelled alone, in a covered palanquin borne on the shoulders of hired runners, beside whom the tall, lank figure of her father strode. They set her down in the heart of the city, the rest of the journey being made on foot. When she had last visited her father’s home he had carried her on his back, after he had dismissed the palanquin, for she was then but a small girl of ten. Now she walked silently, dumbly, by his side. As they reached and passed through the silent little village that had impressed her as a child, strange fancies flitted in and out of Wistaria’s mind. There was none of that strange up-leaping of the heart, experienced on returning to a home not seen for years. The old mystic horror and fear of the place had taken possession of Wistaria, but now, with a woman’s wide-open eyes, her wonder and fear began to form themselves into vague fancies.

Slowly passing along the silent, spiral streets, climbing up and around hillock after hillock, they came finally before the small, whitewashed house with its dark, empty, cold interior. The old, old woman who had fondled and sung to the child Wistaria came hobbling and mumbling to the door. She wept over Wistaria’s hands, caressed them, and drew her head to her bosom with a crooning laugh that was almost a sob.

“I am very weary and would fain retire at once,” said Wistaria, as she returned the old woman’s caress.

Madame Mume attended Wistaria tenderly towards the stairway which led to the upper part of the house. But, as she did so, Shimadzu called to his daughter in his hollow voice of command.

“Stay,” he said. “I have much to say to you to-night.”

Bowing obediently, if wearily, to her father, Wistaria handed her cape to the old woman and mechanically followed him into the ozashiki.

“My daughter,” began the father, “do you know where you now are?”

This strange question surprised Wistaria, but she replied, with a gentle smile:

“In my honorable father’s house.”

“That is true, but do you know where your father’s house is situated?”

“No.”

“Very well; I will tell you, then. My house, though seemingly apart, because of its situation on the hill, is built in the heart of an Eta settlement.”

“Eta?” repeated Wistaria, mechanically. She had heard the word somewhere before, but just what it signified her mind at the moment could not recall. So she repeated the word again, as though it troubled yet fascinated her. “Eta!—Eta!”

“Eta,” repeated her father. “In other words, the social outcast, the despised pariah class of Japan.”

Then silence fell like a swift, blank darkness upon them. Wistaria trembled with a creeping horror she could not fathom or grasp.

Somewhere, somehow, vaguely, dimly, she had heard of this class of people. Perhaps it was at school. Perhaps her aunt had instructed her in their condition. One thing was certain, she was suddenly made aware of just what the one word Eta signified.

It described a class in Japan upon whom the ban of ostracism and isolation had been placed by an inviolate heritage and a cruel custom. So virulent and bitter was the prejudice against them and the contempt in which they were held, that in the enumerations of the population they were omitted from the count and numbered as cattle.

Herded in separate villages, their existence ignored by the communities, none but the most degraded tasks were assigned to them—that of burying criminals, slaughtering cattle, that of the hangman and public executioner.

Whence they had come, why they were held in the contempt of all other citizens, what their origin, none could tell. When had there been a time in the history of the nation that they did not exist? Some old histories aver that they were originally captives from the great Armada of the Tartar invaders who dreamed of conquering the sacred realm. Others declare that they were the descendants of the public executioners from time immemorial; and again, more recent students assert that they were descendants of the family and retainers of Taira-No-Masakado-Heishimo, the only man in Japan who ever seriously conspired to seize the imperial throne by armed force. Whatever their origin, they were the outcast people of the realm. They were not permitted to mingle with or marry outside of their own class, and any one who chose to marry among them must either suffer the penalty of death or become one of them.

The long silence which ensued after Shimadzu had spoken the word Eta was broken by the Lady Wistaria.

“And why,” she asked, with a tremor she could not keep from her voice—“why does my honorable father make his home among this outcast people?”

“Because,” quickly came the passionate response, “your honorable father is an Eta, as is also my lady his daughter.”

Wistaria’s eyes, wide with shocked surprise, stared mutely up into her father’s face. What! she—the Lady Wistaria, the dainty, cultivated, carefully guarded and nurtured lady—an Eta girl! Her mind could not grasp, would not hold the thought.

“Listen,” said her father, slowly. “I was born in a city of the south, the seat of a daimio of eight hundred thousand koku. My father’s house stood within the outer fortifications surrounding this prince’s castle. I was trained in the school of the samurai. I grew up, honoring and swearing by this prince. When I became of age I entered his service. No love of man for woman was more persistent than my loyalty to his cause. Devotion to him was my highest ideal.

“My prince had a bitter rival and enemy. He was a good and powerful lord, though a Shogun favorite. This lord loved my sister and was loved by her. In an evil moment I listened to her entreaties, and forgot my allegiance to my prince in so far as to assist his rival to win and wed my sister, now the Lady of Catzu. Immediately I brought down upon my head the bitterest detestation of my own prince. I was assigned to the poorest and most degrading of posts, that of the spy and the suppressor of petty broils, and finally detailed to live in and protect a certain Eta settlement. So much of my time was thus forcibly spent among these people that I came to study, to understand, and finally to sympathize with them.

“I was young, as I have said, impressionable, and I had been trained in the school of chivalry. It fell to my lot to be the protector of an Eta maiden of such beauty of person and purity of soul that—”

He broke off in his recital, and, to clear his husky voice, raised with a shaking hand a tumbler of sake to his lips and swallowed it at a gulp. He began again, with passionate fierceness. His eyes glittered with inward fire.

“I married the maiden!”

With a sudden little sob, Wistaria moved closer to him and drew his hands up to her lips.

“My mother?” The words passed her lips as a quick, burning question.

“Thy mother,” he repeated, and then she saw in the dim light of the room the great, shining tears roll down the hard crevices in her father’s face. She moaned and crept closer to him.

“For her I became an Eta—an outcast. Do not shudder, my daughter. Has the word, then, so evil a sound? Then I perceive you have been wrongly bred—in the school of prejudice. The Eta, though an outcast, is a human being—more human, indeed, than many of our disdainful lords who ride over their heads and trample them like insects beneath their feet.”

“Tell me of my mother,” she whispered.

“Of her antecedents I know naught and care less. Her honorable grandmother still abides here in my house.”

“Old Madame Mume?”

“Yes.”

“Continue. Pray do so.”

“After my marriage I was cast off immediately by my prince, my titles and honors were taken from me, my property confiscated. For all this I cared nothing. I was content and happy to be left at peace with my wife.”

His long, thin fingers unclenched. He moistened his lips, biting into them.

“Did I say that this prince under whom I served was arrogant and cruel? Did I tell you he had a heart of flint and a pride so indomitable that he would not brook one of his samurai being other than of noble birth? Six of his vassals, the most graceless and worthless in the province, to humor his pleasure, undertook to seek me out in my exiled happiness and engage to make life intolerable for me. Whether their actual intention was evil or not, I cannot say; that they wrought evil is all I know, and that they came with the express knowledge and consent of their prince.”

Wistaria observed that her father was trembling so violently that he scarce could speak. She pressed his hands convulsively within her own.

“Speak quickly, my father,” she implored.

“They murdered her,” he whispered, hoarsely. “Curses and maledictions upon their souls!”