HER real name was as poetical as the one she was known by was forbidding and repelling. Moonlight, it was; though all the gay world which hovers about a famous geisha, like flies over the honey-pot, knew her solely as the “Spider.”
“Spider” she was called because of the peculiar dance she had originated. It was against all classical precedents, but of so exceptional a character that in a night, a single hour, as it were, she found herself from a humble little apprentice the most celebrated geisha in Kioto, that paradise of geishas.
It was a day of golden fortune for Matsuda, who owned the girl. She had been bound to his service since the age of seven with bonds as drastic as if the days of slavery still existed.
Harsh, cunning, even cruel to the many girls in his employ, Matsuda had yet one vulnerable point. That was his overwhelming affection for the geisha he had married, and she was afflicted with a malady of the brain. Some said it was due to the death of her many children, all of whom had succumbed to an infectious disease. From whatever misfortune, the gentle Okusama, as they called her in the geisha-house, was at intervals blank-minded. Still she, the harmless, gentle creature, was loved by the geishas; and, as far as it lay in her power, she was their friend, and often saved them from the wrath of Matsuda. It was into her empty bosom the little Moonlight had crept and found a warm and loving home. With a yearning as deep as though the child were her own, the wife of Matsuda watched over the child. It was under her tutelage that Moonlight learned all the arts of an accomplished geisha. In her time the wife of Matsuda had been very famous, too, and no one knew better than she, soft of mind and witless as she was at times, the dances and the songs of the geisha-house.
Matsuda had watched with some degree of irritation, not unmixed with a peculiar jealousy, his wife’s absorption in the tiny Moonlight. He did not approve of gentle treatment toward a mere apprentice. It was only by harsh measures that a girl could properly learn the severe profession. Later, when she had mastered all the intricate arts and graces, then, perhaps, one might prove lenient. It was no uncommon thing for a geisha to be pampered and spoiled, but an apprentice, never!
However, the child seemed to make happier the lot of the beloved Okusama, and there was nothing to be done about the matter.
Disliking the child, Matsuda nevertheless recognized from the first her undoubted beauty, the thing which had induced him, in fact, to pay an exceptional price to her guardians for her. He had little faith in her future as a geisha, however, since his wife chose to pet and protect her. How was it possible for her to learn from the poor, witless Okusama? When the latter joyously jabbered of the little one’s wonderful progress, Matsuda would smile or grunt surlily.
Then, one day, walking in the woods, he had come, unexpectedly, upon the posturing child, tossing her little body from side to side like a wind-blown flower, while his wife picked two single notes upon the samisen. Matsuda watched them dumb-smitten. Was it possible, he asked himself, that the Okusama had discovered what he had overlooked? But he brushed the thought aside. These were merely the precocious antics of a spoiled child. They would not be pretty in one grown to womanhood. There was much to do in the geisha-house. The fame of his gardens must be kept assiduously before the public. Matsuda had no time for the little Moonlight, save, chidingly, to frown upon her when she was not in the presence of the Okusama. And so, almost unobserved by the master of the geisha-house, Moonlight came to the years of maidenhood.
One night the House of Slender Pines was honored by the unexpected advent of most exalted guests. The chief geishas were absent at an entertainment, and Matsuda was in despair. He was forced, consequently, to put the novices into service, and while he bit his nails frenziedly at the awkward movements of the apprentices, Moonlight slipped to his side and whispered in his ear that she was competent to dance as beautifully as the chief geishas. As he stared at her in wrathful irritation, his wife glided to his other side and joined the girl in pleading. Gruffly he consented. Matters could not be much worse. What mattered it now? He was already disgraced in the eyes of the most high. Well, then, let this pet apprentice do her foolish dance.
Moonlight seized her opportunity with the gay avidity of the gambler who tosses his all upon a final chance. At the risk of meeting the fearful displeasure of her master, the ridicule, disdain, and even hatred of the older geishas, whom it was her duty to imitate, the girl danced before the most critical audience in Kioto.
Her triumph was complete. It may have been the novelty or mystery of her dance, the hypnotic perfection of her art; it may have been her own surpassing beauty—no one sought to analyze the source of her peculiar power. Before the smiling, coaxing witchery of her eyes and lips they fell figuratively, and indeed literally, upon their knees.
She became the mad furore and fashion of the hour. Poets indited lyrics to her respective features. Princes flung gifts at her feet. People traveled from the several quarters of the empire to see her. And at this most dangerous period of her career the young Lord Saito Gonji, last of one of the most illustrious families in Japan, crossed her path.