Yodo-dono

“ The officers on the Tycoon's side set the example of flight, and their men could not resist the temptation, so that the rout became general. After Yodo was passed no more fighting occurred on the road to Ozaka. At Hirakata the drilled infantry broke into the storehouses of the townspeople who had run away, and disguised themselves in the finest garments they could find; other townspeople pursued the marauders and killed six of them. ”

“ I went to make friends with some of the Aidzu wounded, who were waiting for boats to put them on board of Tokugawa ships. They asserted that they would have beaten the enemy if they had been properly supported, but Tôdô had turned traitor at Yamazaki (on the right bank of the river, nearly opposite Yodo) , which was the most important point of the defence, and Keiki's general Takénaga had gone over to the enemy at Yodo itself. Moreover, the drilled infantry were useless; if one man ran the rest followed like a flock of sheep (as we should say) . ”

“ But with the leaders of these divisions Iyeyasu had come to an understanding by which they could be trusted to abide so long as victory did not declare against him. Such incidents were naturally common in an era when every man fought for his own hand. The southerners suffered a crushing defeat. The survivors fled pell-mell to Osaka, where in a colossal fortress, built by Hideyoshi, his son, Hideyori, and the latter’s mother, Yodo, were sheltered behind ramparts held by 80,000 men. ”

“ Hear me, O Benten, O Yodogima, O Eternity; I must have life, shall survive the grave. Grant me this, mother of time, goddess on earth, and love to men; I can do no more; the blood of man is final; it is supreme, an only offering. Let me survive,” begged Hideyoshi, utterly oblivious of anything and everything, except the one woman who stood over with anxious, motionless face.
“It shall be done,” replied she, not any less driven or conscious of the broad seas of uncertainty raising and lowering their frail bark upon its never ceasing, always mysterious trend or disregarding travail. ”

“ Oyea awaited patiently some response from this newly proclaimed Savior, whom the priests had set over her and home—no other voice than conscience answered; and therein she conjured many thoughts, divined a reason for things, and fell hopelessly at the shrine of an uncontrollable, undenying, born-unto impulse. Yodogima possessed an attraction, Kami in his wisdom had equated life and death, and no man’s blood or woman’s want could save a soul or regenerate an unregenerate. ”

“ God himself shall stand revealed, and the world attain its destined end—a heaven here where men are doomed, and none denied, of treasures yet undreamed.”
Sitting within the confines of her own allotted environment, far removed from the turmoils of rendering, shorn of creation’s compensatory appeal, but clothed with the choicer products of highest endeavor, Yodogima, too, pondered the complexity of human nature, and its languor or celerity in rendering the tidy milestones so highly prized or bitterly condemned as we go. Yet, unlike Ieyasu, she had partaken thereof a self-suffered resignation. ”

“ Esyo flushed, and Yodogima read her as written.
“Come closer, Jokoin; I want to feel the warmth and cheer of your presence; it is an inspiration, if not a reason: Esyo is so cold; oh, so unsatisfying, yet also inspiring. Between the two of you I am thrust back upon heart, and shall answer neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no.’ Let them fight, if they will, but tell them, both alike, that they are men: that Yodogima shall let neither one answer to his God for a mistake of hers. It is a woman’s province to bear and not to succor man. ”

“ It is impossible!”
“But, my son, Ieyasu out of the way the empire shall fall directly into your hands; there is none else to dispute you, and war is—”
“Hell—all of which Kitagira advised me long ago; but you see them anxious on all hands—just now, since that message was written, a shell has been fired into our midst. There is no end to fighting as long as men’s blood runs red.”
Yodogima paused; it had come to a parting with the one or the other. Blood and love are elemental within the human, but only for love there had been none to measure in the light of soul ”

“ Yodogima looked aloft and all around. Peace on earth and good-will toward men whispered from every nook and cranny. The birds sang it, the flowers smelled it, the world looked consistent, but the heart discerned a discordant note. Were death heaven’s only beginning, life’s sole end? No, no; it must not be, for I see with closed eyes, hear with muffled ears, feel without the sense of touch a Kami, whose works neither begin with worlds nor end in man ”

“ Hideyoshi had been proud, would have prostituted every virtue that he possessed to proffer it the crown he had wrought, but—
“Ieyasu!” conjured he, half in rage, half in fear.
Yodogima turned white, then livid; the child’s doom induced the former, but duty quickly inspired thoughts restoring a healthier, heartier action of that one sense underlying the most vital of nature’s primal instincts.
“Calm yourself, Yodogima; have no fear of man or devil; Hideyoshi would burn down there before the name or a hair of that child’s mother should suffer the discredit of a moment’s reflection. ”

“ Oyea pondered now. She, too, felt the agony with which Yodogima—whom she had come to love—must receive the news: news that to her seemed otherwise impossible of coming. And Oyea had taken great pride in her husband’s achievements; next to her love for him, it had been her greatest concern. Then she thought of her own position and Yodogima’s chance should Ieyasu fall; Hideyoshi spared not an enemy, and halted nowhere in the resolving of his plans: if not by force, then by subtler means—still harder to bear. ”

“ Hideyoshi knew better; and smarting with shame or repenting of foolhardiness turned again toward Ozaka.
No such joy had come to Yodogima since the day Ieyasu promised his love and protection. While Oyea had never broken faith, and still professed friendship, the younger wife had long ago amply discovered the reason, and knew fairly in her own heart that once a wife in fact no husband might share his love or respect or favor without breaking the tenderer thread, no matter what the demands or the edicts of society and of law, or both. ”

“ Ieyasu went as permitted and directed.
Had she driven her lover from her? Should she have accepted him on faith, granted his unchallenged desire, and ignored truth? Might either passive, or, if needs be, active lying have resolved better their happiness? Could heaven be attained without knowledge? Buddhism said no; Christianity claimed yes, but deeper than these, broader than either, more compelling than any other, Yodogima’s religion searched, expanded, and enforced truth’s unclaimed adherence. ”

“ Hoshiko was silent.
"Be not afraid, beloved," Yoné said. "I will be true always until we meet in the heavens. Always I will be your widow with blackened teeth if you fall—my hair blowing at a shrine. Think! But for me there will be no one to keep the lamps alight before you if you die—but for me. And I—they shall never fail. For, if you fall, I will wait as I have done—keeping the lamps, hoping that you will hold out your hand in the black Meido when I pass to death, and that then we shall, somehow, never part. Oh, beloved, there have been suitors and suitors and always suitors! ”

“ Not so at Ozaka; Yodogima had looked as far into the working of social, religious, and political complexities as the sage of Yedo had thought to enter; understood the San Felipe threat equally as well, but regarded it rather as a source, not as much as any sort of finality—Yodogima knew better the hearts of men; as a woman, she had had an experience that no man can have: she believed that Ieyasu’s act in seeking the shogunate were no less personal than had been Hideyoshi’s purpose in denying her the privileges of an inherent love ”

“ The next day, in consequence, brought with it a train of circumstances as swift as it had been unexpected—to all except, perhaps, Hideyoshi. Matsuda, Hojo’s main reliance, had succumbed, not to valor but to gold, and that night his master’s head graced a place at table—opposite to Ieyasu: who now, once more, faced at greater distance Yodogima, but entertained as before, close at hand, Saji, in whom the now startled and cringing daimyo from Mikawa may have found some little consolation, if not a rising prospect. ”

“ The green turf, the broken sky line, birds of plumage and the fragrance of flowers, the open expanse or covered nook, all bespoke a care and a concern intended to move and to weld mankind.
Yodogima remained seated, underneath the shade, amid an environment made, not creative. The sun drove its rays fiercer and more propellingly against Ieyasu’s stand. It remained for him to give; she could but receive. Love beamed from every distance, floated in close upon them, arose subtilely within, grew hard without, compelling, exacting, and vital. ”

“ Ieyasu shall, hereafter, select his own assistants. Sakuma, at least, taught me a lesson.”
“And Katsutoya shall teach you a better one, though you do refuse me. Hideyoshi shall have hunted out and claimed your Yodogima long before Ieyasu has made up his mind to do more than wait. And to show you that Katsutoya is your friend and not a rival, as you have it, I lend you my disguise, that you may find a way home; there to pander to jealousy and defend your life. Greatness lies rather in aggressiveness. ”

“ Conjure that God as we may, borrow if we can, proclaim Him from the house tops though we do, worship whom we will, there is no salvation till the eye has responded to conscience; and going there, as he did, had Ieyasu but answered to the call that emanated betwixt duty and neglect? Had Yodogima found a haven that is neither of the real nor of the ideal? ”

“ There is no subtler hold than that we know; the things we see are but the shades of reality. Truth vainly lives apart and is infinite.
Sitting there enveloped, within a world as distinct as sublime, as far above earth as its canopy is broad, the mystic spell touched and warmed her as though [pg 128] its complement were at hand. The province of sex fastened upon her as the sun’s rays congeal and expand with each unhindered contact: communing, Yodogima had been less than human, had worse than mocked His divinest precept, were the bread and wine passed untasted. ”

“ Yodogima sniffed the enamour of contest, of powers gained and a will unhampered, and the gods could not have swerved her in the test a Taira, of ages gone, had fought for the pleasure.
“I will rule, and men shall bow to a force subtler, fiercer, and mightier than any man has got,” shouted she, at her shadow, in the open, at Ozaka, and the echo, from the hills at Sawayama, as well of Yedo, burst back upon her their hitherto unchallenged answer. ”

“ Hideyoshi knew. Nor was any opportunity neglected to let those little surmisings reach and sear the trend of another’s confidence, yet Yodogima’s love for Ieyasu flamed on; faith, hope, and charity rounded out the dull monotony of neglected opportunity, making life to her after all worth the living, the striving, and the getting. ”

“ Policy had been his stronghold, from the first; the one battle risked and fought, at Sekigahara, had been forced and won at the instance of Yodogima, and the reaper of its booty knew it, had extended his hand as recompense, and in the frenzy of madness brought about an unthought catastrophe, seemingly as needless as destructive.
Only the pinched of face and sycophant at heart surrounded him now; men waxing corpulent, and others anxious to coddle them; the philosopher because he could afford to be one; possessors of endowed chairs at colleges, the gifts of one another ”

“ Yodogima and Ieyasu, two lovers at heart, loomed the more formidable as enemies, measuring each other in the luminous cauldron of a perfect understanding, and did not their souls unite in the attainment of a common, supreme, an overwhelming obligation—the means as widely divergent as the uplift had been ideal—courage had failed either, and humanity must have lost a most ardently conceived, if untimely wrought, exemplification. ”

“ Do with it and with me as you like; you are both strong of arm and quick to see,” urged Hideyoshi, approaching and tendering with much reverence the hilt of his unsheathed, if vain, resolver of ethics.
Yodogima frowned. All the womanhood within her revolted at such boasted display of wanton cowardice. That man never is right till might has made him so, she could well believe; that might is right in the eyes of the gods were as incomprehensible to her as it seemed satisfying to him. ”

“ Dodo sank down, overcome with loneliness and the melancholy of other existences.
She had come indeed to set the seal on the past, to tie up old bundles, old memories, sweet and sad, regrets and failures; to arrange them into compact moral bundles, to be placed carefully on the shelves of oblivion, but she had not contemplated eliminating Snyder. Yet the pitiless verity had penetrated and convinced her. Nothing of the old life could travel with her into the new. When she had recovered herself she went rapidly to the narrow window and flung down the shade to blot out the impending side of brick. ”

“ Ieyasu listened and Yodogima rendered; sang as if possessed of a spirit never before felt or touched, and Ieyasu hurled at constancy’s feet all that tradition or enlightenment had vainly invoked.
A power unseen, unfelt, unknown, held supreme. The best that the energies of men had yet devised stood symbolized in this one man Ieyasu—nobody disputed that: not even he himself at heart could deny the truth. The exigencies of birth, the value of training, and the force of purpose alike marked this man as a leader among men. ”