OF A PROMISE BROKEN BY LAFCADIO HEARN Ⅰ
僕は今こんなことをやりかけているのです――その１
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OF A PROMISE BROKEN BY LAFCADIO HEARN
［やぶちゃん注：以下の原文は“K.Inadomi”氏の英文 LAFCADIO HEARN サイト“K.Inadomi's Private Library”の“Of a Promise Broken by Lafcadio Hearn”の本文部分を使用させて頂いた。］
I
"I am not afraid to die," said the
dying wife; — "there is only one thing that troubles me now. I wish that I
could know who will take my place in this house."
"My dear one," answered the
sorrowing husband, "nobody shall ever take your place in my home. I will
never, never marry again."
At
the time that he said this he was speaking out of his heart; for he loved the
woman whom he was about to lose.
"On the faith of a samurai?" she
questioned, with a feeble smile.
"On the faith of a samurai," he
responded, — stroking the pale thin face.
"Then, my dear one," she said,
"you will let me be buried in the garden, — will you not? — near those
plum-trees that we planted at the further end? I wanted long ago to ask this;
but I thought, that if you were to marry again, you would not like to have my
grave so near you. Now you have promised that no other woman shall take my
place; — so I need not hesitate to speak of my wish. . . . I want so much to be
buried in the garden! I think that in the garden I should sometimes hear your
voice, and that I should still be able to see the flowers in the spring."
"It shall be as you wish," he
answered. "But do not now speak of burial: you are not so ill that we have
lost all hope."
"I have," she returned; — "I
shall die this morning. . . . But you will bury me in the garden?"
"Yes," he said, — "under the
shade of the plum-trees that we planted; — and you shall have a beautiful tomb
there."
"And will you give me a little
bell?"
"Bell — ?"
"Yes: I want you to put a little bell in
the coffin, — such a little bell as the Buddhist pilgrims carry. Shall I have
it?"
"You shall have the little bell, — and
anything else that you wish."
"I do not wish for anything else,"
she said. . . . "My dear one, you have been very good to me always. Now I
can die happy."
Then
she closed her eyes and died — as easily as a tired child falls asleep. She
looked beautiful when she was dead; and there was a smile upon her face.
She
was buried in the garden, under the shade of the trees that she loved; and a
small bell was buried with her. Above the grave was erected a handsome
monument, decorated with the family crest, and bearing the kaimyô: —
"Great Elder Sister, Luminous-Shadow-of-the-Plum-Flower-Chamber, dwelling
in the Mansion of the Great Sea of Compassion."
. .
. . . .
But, within a twelve-month after the death
of his wife, the relatives and friends of the samurai began to insist that he
should marry again. "You are still a young man," they said, "and
an only son; and you have no children. It is the duty of a samurai to marry. If
you die childless, who will there be to make the offerings and to remember the
ancestors?"
By
many such representations he was at last persuaded to marry again. The bride
was only seventeen years old; and he found that he could love her dearly,
notwithstanding the dumb reproach of the tomb in the garden.