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diff --git a/33616.txt b/33616.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..168d9ee --- /dev/null +++ b/33616.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5856 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of the Gods, by John Luther Long + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Way of the Gods + +Author: John Luther Long + +Release Date: September 3, 2010 [EBook #33616] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF THE GODS *** + + + + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + + + + + + + + THE WAY OF THE GODS + + _By_ JOHN LUTHER LONG + + _Author of_ "MADAME BUTTERFLY" + "MISS CHERRY BLOSSOM" "THE FOX WOMAN" + "HEIMWEH" _Etc._ * * * * + + THE MACMILLAN COMPANY + _NEW YORK MCMVI_ + LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. + + COPYRIGHT, 1906, + BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. + + Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1906. + + Norwood Press + J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. + Norwood, Mass., + U.S.A. + + + + TO HIM WHO OWNS + HIS JOY BECAUSE + HE HAS BOUGHT + IT WITH SORROW--OR + WILL * * * * * * + + PAGE + + _TADAIMA!_ (Wait a moment!), 3 + + + + + CONTENTS + + + + PAGE + + _IMPRIMIS_ 13 + + I Nippon Denji 19 + + II The Flying of the August Carp 29 + + III A Good Lie 37 + + IV Yet--a Lie Loosens Fealty 47 + + V Yamato Damashii 55 + + VI Yone 65 + + VII Ping-Yang 75 + + VIII Dream-of-a-Star 81 + + IX Isonna 93 + + X The Task of Jizo 101 + + XI Angel of the Earth-Heaven 109 + + XII Impertinent Isonna 119 + + XIII Only to Take Her 129 + + XIV The Going of the Soldier 137 + + XV But What could He Do? 143 + + XVI The Making of a Goddess 153 + + XVII The Eta 161 + + XVIII To the Emperor 169 + + XIX On Miyagi Field 175 + + XX Faded Glory 183 + + XXI In the Andon's Light 195 + + XXII Tadaima-Tadaima! 203 + + XXIII The Pity of the Gods 215 + + XXIV The Land of the Brave 225 + + XXV Jones 231 + + XXVI The "Tsarevitch" 241 + + XXVII The Small White Death 251 + + XXVIII "Present for Duty" 261 + + XXIX The Reincarnation of Shijiro Arisuga 269 + + XXX Zanzi, Lover of Battles 279 + + XXXI The Tomb of Lord Esas 285 + + XXXII When the Watch Passed 297 + + XXXIII Teikoku Banzai 303 + + XXXIV Afterward 311 + + + + +TADAIMA + + +I thought I saw the bronze god Asamra (he who may speak but once in a +thousand years, and whose friendship I keep by making time stand still +for him in the stopping of the clock and its turning back) shake his +head in doubt as I put the manuscript into its wrappings and addressed +it to the publisher. + +"Well?" I inquired, testily. + +"Suppose They do not like it?" sighed the god. + +"Why should They not?" demanded I, loftily. + +"It has, among other unusualities, (I hope you like the gentleness of +the word!) those dashes which--You ought to have learned by this time +that They don't like to read over dashes." + +"Why not?" asked I, again. "_I_ like them. And, they are my own!" + +"Well, you know a dash necessitates lucubration. It stands for something +which you trust your reader to supply. That is unfair. If you are +writing a book and receiving an honorarium for it, do not expect him to +do it. It is a bit like eating. One does not go to a restaurant, and pay +for his food, then cook it himself." + +"I have seen it done," cried I, "by particular people!" + +"Ahem!" murmured the polite god: more polite on this day than I had +recently observed him--which meant some sort of propaganda. + +"It is not an ahem!" I went on in the unregenerate heat which the +friction of the god often engendered in me. "Have _you_ never seen it +done?" + +"I have," admitted the effigy, "seen a waiter sorely vexed to bring the +materials for a salad--" + +"Aha!" cried I, triumphantly. + +"Gomen nasai," begged the deity, "I had not finished. I have seen a +waiter, I say, sorely vexed to bring the materials for a salad which the +maker has--spoiled!" + +"Then," demanded I, with icy coldness, "you think that if I permit Them +to supply a few thoughts to carry Them over the dashes They will--" + +"Think something you did not think; perhaps something worse," the +effigy finished, calamitously. + +"Or better?" I suggested, bitterly. + +"Or better," agreed the god. "There is a small number of people (but, +extremely small) who like to supply in full what you suggest in dashes. +It tickles Them tremendously to think that you couldn't have done it so +well; that you trust Them to do it better. Often They are certain that +They have helped you over a place you could not help yourself +over--hence the dash." + +"Sometimes," I mused, diffidently, "that is true." + +"Ha, ha!" laughed the image, and our mood became more human. + +"But, do you mean to say," I asked, "that if I leave John and Jane in +the upper hall, and take them up again in the lower hall, I must +acquaint Them with the fact that John and Jane have been obliged to +traverse the stairway to get away from the one and to reach the other? +Am I permitted no ellipsis in so patent a matter as that?" + +"They will expect the stairway," sighed the god. + +"And a page for each step, I suppose! How can They differ from me? What +other thought can They have than that John and Jane descended the +stairway to reach the lower hall?" + +"There may be a back stairway, or a fire escape," chuckled the deity. + +"Then, I suppose, I must spend some pages in telling Them not only that +John and Jane descended the stair, but that they did _not_ descend by +the back stair or the fire escape!" + +"It would be better," said the idol. "They can skip it. But They cannot +deny that it is there, as They can if it is not. They would rather skip +what you supply than supply what you skip. One is Their judgment of your +mental caliber--usually too small--the other is your judgment of +Theirs--usually too generous. Ahem! There is a golden mean." + +"Besides, however bad for literature it may be," laughed I, "at so much +a word, it is good for me!" + +"Well," ventured god, in doubt, "are novels literature?" + +"I am not the one to say," I retorted, with some asperity. "I +manufacture them. But I can swear that they are better literature--if +literature at all--than some of the criticisms of them--if literature at +all." + +"Have I touched a broken, perhaps often mended, place in your armor?" +laughed the god. + +"Well," I admitted, crustily, "I have read criticisms of English--no +matter whose--the English of which was eminently criticisable. Here is +one. The gentleman makes no distinction in the uses of 'which' and +'that,' and he has not a 'who' in his vocabulary." + +"I have my eye on it," laughed the image, "and I admit that a few +whiches and whos for thats, and--even--er--pardon!--a few of your +dashes, would make its teaching more grateful." + +"God," adjured I, happily, "thank you! Now do please stop and think! No +speech, no thought, goes on without dashes. When we write the speech +which flows mellifluous, we do violence to nature. And in all art the +tendency is toward nature." + +"Recently," began the deity, in that high tone which always meant +checkmate to me, "I have seen the statue of an alleged athlete, in which +his bunions were reproduced!" + +"I saw it, too," I laughed. Indeed, the god and I had stared at it +together. + +"Well," the effigy went on, "that was certainly nature!" + +"There is a golden mean," I re-quoted. "An artistic attitude toward all +manifestations of art. If one has this one will appreciate--er--whether +to reproduce the bunions. They may, of course, be picturesque bunions. +Why, god, if one should reproduce human speech, as it is spoken, there +would be a dash after every third word! Mine are quite within bounds." + +"It would look queer," said the god, "and you would be called eccentric +instead of original. Please don't do it! In fact stop it! Placate both +your readers and your critics." + +"Oh, as to that," said I, airily, "the labor would all be lost. Anything +which is unusual to the superficial experience of the average person is +glibly dubbed eccentric. You know how it is. A reader likes to find the +dear old situations in advance of him so that he knows what he is +approaching. There is the same fear of the terra incognita in literature +that there is in nature. A book or a play which is too novel a tax upon +the faculties of a client is not to his liking." + +"Who, pray, do you write books for?" asked the effigy, with the +suspicion of a yawn. + +"The people who read them," said I, cockily. + +"Do They include the critics?" + +"Oh, no," said I, hastily. + +"Aren't they 'people who read them'?" + +"Why, they are critics," cried I. "How can they?" + +"That is hard doctrine," said the god, dully. "If you write for the +people who read, you must submit to their verdict. And the critics are a +part of them." + +"A small part. But they pretend to speak for the whole. Permit me to +explain--" + +The god politely waited. + +"Your critic approaches a book as a lawyer does his +case--temperamentally--not judicially--with an opinion of it in advance +or upon the first pages, which the book must either justify or fail to +justify. The result appears in his published estimate. He states his +view as if it were the only one. And, being delivered ex cathedra, the +multitude take it as they do their preaching--for the gospel of +Literature! But how would you like that in your judge? Who is sworn to +decide upon the evidence adduced alone? + +"So it happens that every book is well cursed and well blessed, +according to the humor of the dissector. And the cursing and blessing +are usually about equal." + +"There does seem to be something wrong about criticism which can be +unanimous both ways," laughed the god. + +"There ought to be some tribunal to which criticism could be referred +upon appeal as lawsuits are," said I. "But," I went on, hastening a bit +to my climax as the god seemed to doze, "the most terrible of all +criticism is the modern humorous kind--" + +"I have heard an odious term used to characterize those who make it," +whispered the deity. + +"The man who can do nothing else--and usually he _can_ do nothing +else--can poke fun. It is a peculiarly tasteful form of iconoclasm." + +Said the god:-- + +"If I should sleep, do not forget to stop the clock." + +He pretended to do so. + +That is his way when I have tired him. + +J. L. L. + + + + +IMPRIMIS + + +Four times on earth and once elsewhere Shijiro Arisuga thought the +happiest moment of his life had come. + +But you are to be warned, in two proverbs, concerning the peril of the +thing called happiness, in Japan. One has it that happiness is like the +tai, the other that it has in it the note of the uguisu. Now, the tai is +a very common fish, and the uguisu is a rare bird of one sad note, +reputed to be sung only to O-Emma, god of death, in the night, most +often when there is a solemn moon. Which, again, is much the same as +saying that, in Japan, at least, happiness is the common lot, and easy +to get as to catch the lazy perch; but that it has its sad note, which +may have to be sung in the darkness, alone, to death. + +For in the East one is taught to be no more prodigal with one's joy than +with one's sorrow. The sum of both joy and sorrow, it is said, are +immutably the same in the world from eternity. And of these each soul +born is allotted its reasonable share as the gods adjudge it. So that if +one takes too much joy out of the common lot, some one, perhaps many +ones, must receive less than they ought. + +Thus, one not only limits the rights of his fellow-men, who has no +warrant to do so, but impiously exercises the prerogatives of the gods, +than which nothing can be more heinous. + +For this larceny of joy, therefore, the culprit must suffer more than +his share of woe, until the heavenly balance is once more restored. And +that may be in this life or another, in this world or another. + +So you observe that in Japan, among those who yet believe in the old +ways of the gods (and they are many!), it is perilous to be over-happy. +For one is almost certain to pay for it with over-woe. And this is the +happy catching of the tai and the melancholy note of the uguisu which +wind through the carols of one's joy in the East. + +Yet, when one is always happy, as Shijiro Arisuga was before we knew +him, it seems difficult to say that here or there was a happier moment. + +Therefore, you are to learn of each of these five occasions in their +order, according to your patience, and, quite at the end, you are to be +left to judge for yourself, which was, indeed, the happiest moment of +Shijiro Arisuga's life. There will come a time, too,--at the end,--when +you will know nothing of Shijiro Arisuga's own views upon the subject: +he will not be there to tell them. I shall try to interpret for him. But +you are not to be prejudiced by this judgment of mine, since you cannot +know Shijiro Arisuga as well as I do until the end is reached--quite the +end. + +And it is nothing--the little story--you are, further, warned, until the +woman enters. Indeed; nothing is anything--no story--until woman enters. +Try to fancy Eden without Eve! + +Not that Star-Dream is another Eve; nor that this is like the first love +story. But there is a Garden and a Serpent; an Apple and a Woman. And, +from that Garden, Shijiro Arisuga is driven with a sword which flames. +But here my story differs entirely from that of the first love story. +For the woman is left in the garden--alone! And it is eternal night. +And she can hardly stay there alone. For the uguisu sings. I wonder if +Eve could have been happy in Eden alone? With the singing of the +death-bird? You will remember that though they were driven forth, it was +together: comrades in misfortune as in joy--yet comrades! + + + + +NIPPON DENJI + + + + +I + +NIPPON DENJI + + +Now, the first of these five great occasions was that day Shijiro was +accepted in the haughty Imperial Guards, most of whom had genealogies +which would best impress us by the yards of illuminated mulberry paper +they covered. Arisuga had many of such yards himself. That was not a +question. But his inches raised many questions. The Guards were tall. +Shijiro Arisuga was small. Though he was a samurai of the samurai, his +ancestors kuge, it seemed impossible to admit him until Colonel Zanzi +spoke. + +"He is a samurai," said Zanzi, gruffly. "Of course all Japanese fight. +But the rest, the commoners, are new to it. It is possible in a pinch +for them to run away. It happened once to my knowledge. But a samurai +goes only in the one direction when he is before an enemy. You all know +what direction that is. The commoner may be as good as the samurai in a +century. But the samurai is always dependable now. I wish the whole of +the Guards were shizoku. His uncles, the Shijiro of Aidzu, though they +were shiro men at Kyoto, and so against the emperor, in that old time, +were, nevertheless, kuge by rank. I do not see how we can keep him out +of the Guards. I don't want to, whether he is tall or small." + +Now Zanzi was an autocrat who constantly pretended that he was not. He +had an iron temper which he nearly always concealed under courteous +persistence, until his men understood what must be without his ever +having precisely said that it must be. So, in this matter, he pretended +to have left it to them. But he had decided upon Shijiro's final +admission to the regiment, even though it was a time of peace, when +one's qualifications were more strictly scanned than in time of war, +simply because he was of the samurai, whom he adored. + +"Nevertheless," warned Nijin, the recruiting major, "he is considerably +below the physical standard." + +"He is _not_ the stuff for the Guards," alleged Yasuki. + +And Matsumoto said:-- + +"I have heard him called 'Onna-Jin.'" + +"Girl-Boy!" laughed Jokichi. "So have I." + +"He used to carry a samisen about with him when he was a child--he and +little Yone, Baron Mutsu's daughter." + +This came from Kitsushima, who added:-- + +"I have seen them at Mukojima, wandering under the cherry-boughs, hand +in hand, and singing childish songs!" + +"I have seen him doing that later, where the lanterns shine in Geisha +street, and the little girl was not Yone." + +They all laughed. This was not seriously against him. + +"Having settled it that he practises the art of music, I will surprise +you with the information that he also pretends to the sister art of +poesy," laughed Asami. "He is the author of 'The Great Death'!" + +"What!" + +From half a dozen of them. + +And they broke into the song: hoarse, iron, clanging, mongolian! Within +the six notes of the old Japanese scale! + +(Do not be surprised at this. The Japanese army is full of poets. +Indeed, the Japanese land is full of them. They will spin you a complete +comedy or tragedy between seventeen or thirty-seven syllables. And, to +practise poetry is not there as here, heinous to one's friends. I know +of a gunner who sat cross-legged under his gun behind Poutuloff and +wrote a poem concerning The-Moon-in-a-Moat. It was finished as the +Russians got his range and dropped a covey of shrapnel upon him. After +the smoke cleared they found him dead. And he is forgotten. But his poem +was also found and lived on.) + +This was "The Great Death" of Shijiro Arisuga. + + "Yell of metal, + Strake of flame! + Death-wound spurting + In my face! + Hail Red Death!" + +"Banzai!" cried Jokichi. + +"Teikoku Banzai!" yelled Asami. + +And, after the tumult, Yasuki, the reserved, himself said:-- + +"By Shaka, it is the very Yamato Damashii itself! The spirit of young +Japan." + +"Nippon Denji!" laughed jolly Kitsushima. + +"Yes! The Boys in Blue--as they called them in America in 1864." + +Matsumoto had been to Princeton. But the thought of war--giving his soul +for his emperor--made him as mad as they who had never left their native +soil. + +"I take all back," cried Nijin, into the tumult. + +"And I," yelled Yasuki, who had agreed with him. + +"Let him in!" shrilled Matsumoto and Jokichi together. "If he can write +songs--" + +"And let him sing! Let him sing war-songs!" adjured Kitsushima! + +Still, the happy Nijin, out of propriety of his office, as +recruiting-major, pretended to wish to stem the current started by the +song. + +"One moment!" he cried. + +But they laughed him down and again started the war-song. + +"I _will_ have a moment!" + +"Take two!" shouted Jokichi. + +"Singing and fighting are two very different occupations." + +"No, they are precisely the same," laughed Kitsushima. + +"I deny it!" + +It was a fierce yell from Nijin, who was happiest, to pretend tremendous +anger. + +"I affirm it!" laughed Jokichi, into his face. + +"Pretender!" cried Asami, shaking a happy fist at his superior. + +Asami and Nijin stood with Zanzi for his admission. + +Still, Nijin said in thunder:-- + +"Remember! poets never practise their preaching." + +Nevertheless, if he had entered then, Arisuga would have been chosen, by +acclaim, because of his song. + +But enthusiasm cools rapidly, and these stoical orientals could be moved +to enthusiasm by but this one thing--war. + +So that after a month--two--it required another word from grizzled +Zanzi, who had been in the war of the Restoration, to let Shijiro in. + +"Jokoji!" That was the word. "His father is at Jokoji!" + +And they demanded, and he told, the story of Jokoji--which, pardon me, I +do not mean to tell. Save this little, so that you may understand, that +it was that last terrible stand of Saigo behind the hills of Kagoshima, +where the Shogunate perished and the empire was born again in 1868. And +the shoguns you may care to know were that mighty line of feodal +chieftains who had usurped the throne from the time of Yoritomo, to that +of Keiki. For all these years the imperial power had rioted at Yedo, in +the hands of two generals, while the emperor, a prisoner in his +palace-hermitage in Kyoto, had been but the high priest of his people. + +They are there yet, at Jokoji, to the last man, Saigo and his gallant +rebels, in a great trench, without their heads, a warning to future +rebels. + +After that other word--Jokoji--Arisuga was chosen. + +Observe that they finally took him because of his father--though he died +a rebel. Indeed, those old insurgents, of 1868, are gradually being +canonized with crimson death-names, because they neither knew dishonor, +no, nor suffered it. + + + + +THE FLYING OF THE AUGUST CARP + + + + +II + +THE FLYING OF THE AUGUST CARP + + +There was a time, of course, when Shijiro was too young to think of +being a soldier--save of the tin-sworded and cocked-hatted kind. And it +must be confessed, nay, it was confessed, by his uncles with profound +sorrow, that he cared little enough for even that. It is quite true that +lighted paper lanterns gleaming in the night, and morning glories with +first sun on them, and his small samisen, pleased him more. All this was +quite heinous to his samurai uncles and they did what they could to +correct it and instil into the little mind of the boy that love for the +glory of combat which they had. But, as often happens, their care and +their prayers availed them nothing, while their carelessness and their +repinings availed much. Of that I shall stop and tell: the picture--the +flying of the carp--how all the life of the little boy was changed in +one night,--so that he thought no more of Yone, the lanterns and the +flowers, but only of being a soldier. + +It was that day when he was ten. All his relatives were present and they +flew a tremendous number of paper carp. For you are to know that this is +the way the gods have of telling one on one's birthday in Japan, whether +one is to be as strong and virile as the open-mouthed carp in a swift +wind, or as flaccid as they when there is no wind. The gods were kind +and sent a propitious day. The carp stood out, straining upon their +poles so that some of them broke loose and whirled cloud-ward--whereat +the multitude of Arisuga's relatives shouted with joy. For this was an +august omen of great good. Arisuga cared nothing for the omen. But the +carp eddying upward, and those straining on their poles, were very fine. + +The tired, happy little boy had been put early to bed, while his uncles +remained to smoke and gossip. For one was from Kobe and the other was +from Osaka, and they did not meet as often as they could have wished. + +For a long time there was no sound save the tapping of their pipes +against the metal rim of the hibachi as they were emptied of their ashes +to be filled again. This is still much the way of ceremonious old men in +Japan. They have learned the comradeship of silence. + +Presently this sound of the tapping pipes woke the little boy from his +dreaming; and hearing whisperings in the room beyond he crept from his +futons to the fusuma, which he silently parted to look and listen. + +His small eyes grew greater as he saw that his two uncles were still +there, and greater yet as he observed that they gesticulated in the +direction of the picture of "The Great Death" while they whispered. + +Now this was a thing which had always troubled him: that they whispered +together about that picture, and that, somehow, he was included in the +mystery. It had hung there at the tokonoma since he could remember. He +had been taught to reverence it; for nowhere have pictures more +influence than in Japan. + +It was divided in the horizontal middle into two panels. In that below +was carnage amazing. On the one side were the hosts of the emperor under +the brocade banner (the most ancient Japanese flag of war), yet armed +with guns and using cannon. On the other side were the rebel hosts of +Saigo with ancient halberds and spears and in bamboo armor, depending +upon the gods alone. Dying upon one of the cannon, with a shout upon his +lips and ecstasy upon every feature, was a soldier in the uniform of the +ancient Imperial Guards. The panel above showed one of the heavens far +toward nirvana. There this same soldier appeared glorified and on the +way to his reward in Shaka's bosom. Of course! He had died for the +emperor! The artist had not spared the glory when he came to write the +picture. And yet he had preserved a certain family likeness, so that +little Arisuga presently came to know, by the subtle presence and +teaching of his uncles, that this was Jokoji, the graveyard-battlefield +in Satsuma, and that the figure informed with the ecstasy of the great +red death for the emperor, was his father! + +That no part of the lesson might be lost, the artist had also shown, in +that lower panel, the obverse of the reward of fealty. Those who had +fought against the emperor were being tossed like dogs into a trench. +Their heads were off. And the little boy had been taught to have no +pity upon them. Of course! He had none. They had impiously rebelled +against that god whose other name is Mutsuhito, Mikado! + +Moreover, in the lower corner of this panel, in an amazing opening among +clouds with blazing edges, was that part of the hells reserved for the +souls of traitors; and there the enemies of the emperor, who had died at +Jokoji, were being variously tortured, in the intervals of their +reincarnations. + + + + +A GOOD LIE + + + + +III + +A GOOD LIE + + +Said Namishima, Arisuga's uncle from Kobe, to Kiomidzu, his uncle from +Osaka:-- + +"The flying of the august carp has been honorably auspicious and +doubtless the gods now design to make him, in spirit, unlike his +regretted father." + +"It was the gods' punishment upon him for fighting against his +emperor--that his son should miserably be an onna-jin," whispered +Kiomidzu. + +"Nevertheless the honorable picture has aided greatly in making him +adore the emperor," protested Namishima. + +"Yes, the money for its painting was augustly well spent," agreed +Kiomidzu, wisely shaking his head. + +"Some day he will know, notwithstanding, that his father was a rebel. +Others know. It cannot unhappily be kept from him always." + +"No." + +"Perhaps then we shall be augustly dead--" + +Both bowed and murmured again. + +"And beyond his most excellent vengeance." + +"Nevertheless," said Namishima, finally, "the august conscience within +informs me that we have brought him up honorably well!" + +"There is excellently no doubt of it!" agreed Kiomidzu. + +They bowed to each other. + +For a while there was silence and the tapping of the pipes. Then they +spoke of a new and weightier matter. + +Said Namishima--and here the little boy's eyes bulged:-- + +"If the soul of our brother continues to wander in the Meido, it will +not be chargeable, now, in the heavens, to us, but to him. We have kept +the lamps alight. We have taught him honor." + +"We are too aged, also," agreed Kiomidzu, "to redeem him forth unto the +way to the heavens by dying in his stead the great death. It is for his +son!" + +"In us, besides," Namishima went on, "the gods could not be augustly +deceived. But the child has his name." + +"Therefore, should he die the great death, the merciful gods may be +deceived by the name into thinking it he who died at Jokoji. In that +case he would not only be redeemed to the way to the heavens, but on +this earth his name would be graciously added to honor." + +So said he from Kobe. And he from Osaka:-- + +"For the gods are merciful!" + +"So merciful, I sometimes abjectly think, that they desire to be +deceived, for our peace of mind." + +"Or, at least," mended Kiomidzu, to whom this was a trifle too much, +"they will close their eyes while we augustly do it." + +Namishima disliked a trifle the correction of his brother:-- + +"Do not the gods so act upon the minds of their creatures that they +remember or forget? Well, then! It is true that now others know that our +brother died on the rebel side at Jokoji. But do we not know that, in +the course of much time, the gods can make this to be forgotten, and +make to be remembered that he died on the emperor's side?" + +"Yea, if his son should die for the emperor." + +"Yea! For the name is the same!" + +"And I have had a sign in a dream," said Kiomidzu, lowering his voice a +little more. "Before me stood a tall god--" + +They both bowed and rubbed their hands. + +"--I knew neither his august name nor his presence. But his face shone +as the sun, so that it is certain he was a god who can see the end from +the beginning, and all between. And thus he spake: 'Rise and light the +lamps and burn the sweet and bitter incense. For Shijiro Arisuga, he who +died at Jokoji, shall have a crimson death-name.'" + +"How shall that come to pass, augustness?" I asked upon my face. + +"'Through his son,'" said the god. "'The names are the same. Arise and +light the lamps and burn the bitter incense.'" + +"And the augustness only vanished with the light of the new lamps I +lighted before Shijiro's tablet." + +"Yet," doubted Namishima, though a deity had spoken, "the vengeance of +the gods must also first be accomplished--yea, satisfied full! And until +he is redeemed by this unhappy onna-jin, must our brother wander in the +dark Meido--so think I! The new lamps will be sacrilege." + +"Nevertheless, one cannot honorably tell," argued the milder uncle from +Osaka, himself not convinced by his vision. "His father was no taller +nor of a greater spirit than he. He may not always be an onna-jin. And, +also, any day the vengeance of the gods may be satisfied and they will +permit him to redeem both his own and the spirit of his father. For I +believe it true that he was not beheaded by the victors at Jokoji, and +cast into the ditch as dogs are cast, but committed the honorable +seppuku upon himself. That he would do." + +"Let it be hoped so. This is our one blot wherefore we cannot speak of +our ancestors." + +And they chafed a prayer from between their hands that it might all be +so. + +The little boy parted the fusuma yet more and looked. He had been taught +that his face must always be as expressionless as if it were always +under observation. And these old uncles had, more than others, taught +him so. Yet now they were not observing their own precepts. Their faces +were unmasked, and showed terror and anxiety. And this communicated +itself to the boy as he looked. + +"Does it matter to the gods," asked Kiomidzu, "how fealty to the +heaven-born-one is augustly inculcated?" + +"'The way does not matter when one is arrived!'" said Namishima. + +"And 'a lie which doeth good,'" quoted Kiomidzu, "'is, manifestly, a +good lie.'" + +"Happy is he," said Namishima, "who, being a liar for the truth, is +willing, like us, to abide by its consequences from the unenlightened, +to whom there is but one office in a lie--evil!" + +"Nembutsu!" agreed the brother of Namishima, his hard hands rasping with +his prayer as do the soles of worn sandals. + +And then they went on, to the end of the story of this picture of "The +Great Death," which had been painted and hung at the tokonoma when +Arisuga was a child to deceive him into thinking that his father had +honorably fought and died for his emperor instead of against him, that +his soul was probably in Buddha's bosom instead of wandering in the +alien dark Meido, unredeemed, that his body had been burned on a pyre +instead of left to rot in that great ditch in Jokoji. This these old +imperialists fancied their duty. The little boy sobbed there behind the +shoji. + +"Sh!" whispered the uncle from Osaka. + +"Sh!" echoed the uncle from Kobe. "He wakes. If he should hear, all +would be of no avail." + +They covered the fire of the hibachi and caused a darkness in which they +stole away. + + + + +YET--A LIE LOOSENS FEALTY + + + + +IV + +YET--A LIE LOOSENS FEALTY + + +The little boy slept no more. He got forth from his small room and made +the offerings, and lighted the incense which he had forgotten that +tired, joyous day, and then he took down his father's ihai, and touching +to it his forehead, pledged all his lives to make true that which had +been made false. For, yes, their names were the same, his father's and +his, and the gods are easily deceived--Shijiro Arisuga should be upon +the brass of those who had died for the emperor! The gods would attend +to the forgetting which must follow. + +But this was not enough. The filial sin they had let him commit vexed +his little soul. + +Where he had made a dim wisp of fibre to burn in oil before the tablet +of his father, he rubbed a prayer from between his small pink palms. + +"Father and all the augustnesses, I did not know," he said childishly, +"that your spirit waited in the dark Meido for me to set it free. There +were lies!" + +Then he stopped and waited, for the tears ran down his face and choked +his voice. + +"It would have been better to teach me truth than lies. For they have +not made me wish to fight and die for the emperor--lies. But this, this +that you wait, wait always in the cold dark Meido for me to set you on +your way to the sleep in Buddha's bosom, this it is which makes me +promise, here, now, by all the eight hundred thousand, by my own soul's +reincarnations, all of them, that you shall be free; that your name +shall yet stand among those on the brass who are not forgotten." + +"I did not know," he sobbed again. "And so I sang songs and made poems +while you wandered there. I did not know. I was only a little boy. But +now I am at once a man. It is true, august father, I must not lie to +you, that I would rather be at Shiba with Yone; I would rather walk on +the hills with her hand in mine; I would rather sing as she plays the +samisen; but I will be a soldier." + +And then a strange thing happened--and you must not fail to remember +that stranger things happen in Japan than here--there came a crackling, +ripping noise at the last word of that prayer, and the upper panel of +the false picture loosed itself from the brocade to which it was +attached and, falling, covered completely the lower panel and blotted +out the whole. And that night yet, the little boy got his father's seal, +and, where it fell, there he sealed it fast. + +So that when his uncles again saw it they grew troubled, kowtowed and +made a prayer. For suddenly, also, Arisuga, from a child, at ten had +become man. All he said to them when they diffidently undertook a +question was:-- + +"I know the samurai commandment: 'Thou shalt not live under the same +heavens nor upon the same earth with the enemy of thy lord!'" + +"The commandments are not for children," said the uncle from Osaka, +gently. + +"That I know well," answered Arisuga. "For I am not a child." + +Said the terrified one from Kobe, "It does not mean that you must quit +the earths and the heavens--" + +"But, rather," supplemented the one from Osaka, "that they shall--" + +"That you shall kill many enemies of your lord and live yourself--my +child--" + +"Cease! I am not a child," said Arisuga again, haughtily, "and I know +the commandments!" + +"Nevertheless that," said the one, "is a manifestation from the gods!" + +He pointed to the picture. + +"There have been many such," said the other. "It means something." + +"Yes," said the little boy, significantly, "it means something!" + +"But were you present when the gods obscured the picture?" ventured +Kiomidzu. + +"I was present," said Arisuga. + +"And is it that which has changed you?" further ventured Namishima. + +"No," declared Arisuga, looking upon them both sternly, and without an +honorific for either. + +"I trust," whined Kiomidzu, "that all is well between us?" + +"All is as well as it ever will be," said the boy. + +Then, after a silence, he added:-- + +"And the sun is setting!" + +Which meant, indeed, that they were driven from the door of their +brother's house by his son! + +When they were in their going the boy said:-- + +"If I have sinned against the honorable hospitality, remember that a lie +loosens fealty!" + +And when they were in the way, one said to the other:-- + +"He knows!" + +After some thought he who was addressed answered:-- + +"I think it very well. I have no regret. Our brother will now be +released from the Meido. He will die for the emperor." + +"However, we shall be unwelcome in his presence, so that I shall come +less often." + +To this his brother agreed with melancholy. + +"Our work is now done." + +Thus, Shijiro was much more alone than before, and had many more +thoughts. But all were of war and the great red death, and none of Yone. + +And then, presently, he came to join the haughty Imperial Guards, who +had never dreamed of being a soldier, but only of poetry, and +cherry-blossoms, and his samisen, and the soft satin hand of the little +Yone. For it was true, as Nijin said, and as they all agreed, Arisuga +among them, that he was not the stuff out of which the empire made its +Imperial Guards--quite. + +It was in this time, in the presence of the obscured picture, that he +wrote his song of "The Great Death." + +And his years grew faster than his inches. + + + + +YAMATO DAMASHII + + + + +V + +YAMATO DAMASHII + + +And, slowly, that fantasy of a great death which infects every Japanese +crept into the life and thought of Shijiro Arisuga. Though it came to +him, in whom it had lain latent, hardly. But, perhaps for that reason, +as is the case with certain diseases, it came with greater certainty and +severity than if it had been always with him. + +Yet the Yamato Damashii outstripped them both: the spirit of war--the +ghost of Japan! + +He still went with little Yone to Mukojima sometimes, though less +frequently. And the small heart of the small girl wondered and grew hurt +at this. So that she asked him one day:-- + +"Little lord, why is it that we so seldom come here and that you no more +sing, no more carry your samisen, and are grown too suddenly for your +years a man with a face as serious as the unlaughing barbarians of the +West--why is it?" + +They were at Shiba. And Shijiro laughed again, as he had used to laugh, +while he answered:-- + +"Sing no more! Listen!" + + "Reign on for a thousand years of peace! + Reign on for a myriad years of ease! + Till the pebbles are boulders, + Moss grows to our shoulders, + O heaven-born lord of Nippon!" + +"The Kimi Gayo!" said the little girl. "You sing the Imperial Hymn with +that light in your face who never sang it before--whose face was never +before so lighted? You answer my fear with fears." + +"I sing a war-song, little moon-maid, because I am now a soldier," cried +Arisuga, with a certain fanatical ecstasy in spite of his gayety. "I am +going to die for the emperor the great death! I am going to set my +father free to pursue his way to the heavens or another reincarnation! +Think! The gods will love me for such a holy thing! Why do not you?" + +"Oh, yes," whispered the little girl, "the gods will love you. And I. +But who, then, will come with me here? And who will hold my hand?" + +"My spirit, I promise you that!" + +A little chill crept over the girl. + +"Yes," she answered doubtfully, "if I cannot have your body." + +Shijiro still laughed. + +"After all, a spirit is a safer comrade than a body. The custodians +cannot drive it away from the tombs. And will you wait here for my +spirit, as you do for my body?" + +"Yes," she whispered, in her awe, once more. + +But he gayly touched her. + +"I will come like that--that--that!" + +"I would rather have you so," said the little girl, touching him, as +flesh touches flesh, not as spirit touches flesh in the East. + +Though she suspected that he was laughing at her, it was in a land where +both the spirits which loved one and hated one were believed to be +always at one's elbow. + +Now that it had all been decided--his career fixed, the way made clear, +and he well in it--much of his absorption had passed away, and he was +both gayer and gentler with her. But it was not as before. + +"There will be others, with bodies," laughed Shijiro. + +The small maiden shook her head. + +"No, there will not be others. I know. Oh, how differently you speak to +me now! You are suddenly grown a man with great thoughts. But you still +think of me as a little girl with small thoughts. Well, perhaps I am. +Yet I shall wait for you here. I can do that. The gods may not accept +your sacrifice for a time. They may not accept it at all. And there may +be no war for you to fight and die in. You may have to come back. No one +can know the purposes of the gods. And when you do, I, with my small +body and small thought, will be here only to make you happy." + +"And, suppose," laughed Shijiro, treating her indeed as if he were +suddenly become a man and she were still a little girl, "suppose I go +away and forget--that often happens--and never come back?" + +And Arisuga laughed again. + +"I will wait," said the girl. + +"What, after I have forgotten?" + +"Do not tell me. Let no one tell me. Let me wait. Then your spirit may +come. It is cruel to wait, always wait. But it is not so cruel as to be +forgotten." + +The soldier still laughed. + +"The spirit of all the goddesses thrives in you!" + +And he touched her gently. + +"But the gods may send it to me soon--the great crimson death." + +"Then," answered the little girl, "I can die the great death, too, and +still be with you--if you should wish!" + +"What!" laughed Shijiro, anew, "little you--gentle Yone--in the wild +glory of the conflict, with a plunge into the fires of all the hells, in +the madness of carnage, with a yell frozen on your lips? Shall little +_you_ experience that arch esctasy: your death-wound spurting your own +warm blood into your own face? Then out, out, out into the eternal +solitude and silence of souls awaiting other reincarnations? To that +place called Meido? Ha ha, my fragile Yone, the great red death--is not +for you--not for perfumed little Yone's. It is a man's death!" + +At this she was reproved, but as he always reproved her, very gently. +Yet it was wonderful that his gentleness held here. She understood well +her presumption in wishing to die the great death of a man. + +"Pardon, small lord," she said humbly. "I spoke when I had not counted +three--instead of nine." + +He laughed happily. + +"Speak whatever comes to your lips. All is good, because it comes from +them--which are all good. But when you speak of the things which are a +man's, I look at your stature and--laugh! I tell you what is +yours--little Yone--and what is mine!" + +She tried to forget that he was not much taller than she. + +"No, forgive me; I must die only the small, white death of women and +children. But, until it comes, I shall be here where you and I were +happy together. And if you die, still caring for me, your spirit will +come and touch me, as you said. That much I know. You have said it! But +if you have forgotten, then there will be no touches; then I will still +wait until I die. It will not be long." + +"Little one," said Arisuga, in pity, "we have lived and loved together +here. All has been good. But it is as a splendid summer day which one +forgets, in the glow, the madness of glory, the moment the call comes! +This we did not know, the madness of glory, and I had never thought to +learn. But it has come, and it is greater than all love. Should the call +sound now, I would leave you where you stand, and go upon the business +of our sovereign. As it is," he laughed, "we shall once more go homeward +hand in hand!" + +And so they did. But still it was not as before. It never could be. As +he had said, this madness of glory had obscured all love. + + + + +YONE + + + + +VI + +YONE + + +The war with China got slowly into the air. Troops were mobilizing. The +Guards were being fitted with uniforms for a warmer climate. The army +was thrilled with that nameless thing which speaks of action to the +soldier. Maps and plans of campaign grew over night. Nurses were +gathered where they could be most easily requisitioned. Plans for +hospital and transportation service were born and matured as certainly +now, as if the army had lived in an atmosphere of war instead of peace +for many years. But when the actual going came near, Arisuga thought of +Yone. There would be no more of that. And when it was said, a certain +sadness came and stayed with him, when the glory dulled a little. For it +had been sweet. And it might be only once again. Marching orders were +imminent. + +So that, though it was even, and Yone might not go out in the even, he +found her one day, when the sadness came, and they stole through the +house's rear to that tomb of Esas in Shiba, where they had made a seat +of stone and moss. They had never before been alone together in the wood +at night, and Yone was terrified, as a maid ought to be, while Arisuga +was brave, as a soldier should be. + +Yet, notwithstanding these adverse circumstances, it was there--at the +tomb of Esas, on this night of nights to Yone--that they made together +that song of "The Stork-and-the-Moon." And it was on this night, while +they sang it (without the samisen, for Yone was reposing too snugly +against one of Arisuga's arms for him to play, though they had the +samisen with them), that the watchman came with lantern and staff and +cried out that he had heard a song in that place of sacred tombs--a +foolish, worldly song--and adjured the sinners to come forth and be +punished. + +Now both were frightened suddenly, and Yone crept deeply into the arms +of her soldier for protection. And she did not vacate her place of +safety when the watchman had passed on; Arisuga prevented her. + +For he had not in the least fancied how sweet that might be. And her +fancies had fallen short of truth. And yet other things passed there at +that tomb of Lord Esas which I shall not stop to tell. + +Later, perhaps, in this story, there may be occasion to tell what +happened there at the tomb of Lord Esas on the seat of stones and mosses +they had made: the promises,--if there were any,--the song, and all the +joy of that night upon which little Yone would have to live until +Arisuga came again--for this was indeed all he left to her. + +It was a disgraceful hour when they stole forth. And had the watchman +seen them then, the gods alone know what the penalty would have been. +They passed the walls safely; but there was yet before them the re-entry +to the house of Yone, which was more terrible. Yet they were strangely +happy in their terrors, though Yone expected, hoped, to be disowned and +driven from home, disgraced in the eyes of the world. But also, in that +case, Arisuga would marry her. Chivalry would demand it. Of course he +had not exactly said so. In order that he might have the opportunity, +Yone protested:-- + +"I do not regret--not a word, not a thing!" + +"No, it is my fault--" + +"If they drive me from home, outcast me, I shall sing in the streets!" + +"You!" + +"Or go to Geisha street." + +"You!" + +"What, then, will I do, lord?" + +"You will marry me--a little sooner than we planned, and live with my +mother while I fight." + +"Yes," breathed Yone, quite content with this. It was more than she had +expected. Indeed, she was so filled with content that it was all she +could say. + +Nevertheless, though this event had been arranged there behind the tomb, +under the influence of the terror of the watchman, yet its consummation +was put a long time off, for the parents of each had to be consulted, +cunningly, as if it had not at all been arranged. And this marred Yone's +happiness a trifle; for, if marriage was anything like that behind the +tomb, it could not come too soon. And, however soon it might come, it +would not be soon enough, for soon enough was now, and that was +passing. + +Besides, she hoped it might happen before his sacrifice; for though she +would then be his widow and quite sure of his spirit, that first +personal contact by the tomb of old Lord Esas had been sweet. + +However, there seemed, happily, no way of escape from an outcasting and +the consequences they had fixed upon, and this grew upon them more and +more as they went homeward, so that as they were yet quite happy in it +they came into the vicinity of Yone's home. Now, by that time all the +details had been arranged: Yone was to go to Arisuga's mother, where a +complete confession would be made. Then, on the morrow, the consent of +the parents would be asked, which, whether it were or were not obtained, +would be the signal for the wedding preparations. For in the one case +Yone would be the daughter of her parents, whose consent would have been +obtained, in the other of his whose consent was sure. + +Then they looked up to find themselves almost in the midst of a great +fire which their absorption had kept them from noticing. And it was at +once but too plain that Yone's home was in that part of the district +already burned clear. Of course there were parents and brothers to +think of at once, and in thought of their safety Yone forgot the +opportunity for her outcasting and the hastening of her happiness. When +she remembered, it was too late. + +She had been pounced upon by her father, and borne in joy to the +rendezvous where all the brothers and sisters, as well as the parents of +Yone, were now in prosaic safety and little perturbation. Shijiro +Arisuga had, upon the appearance of the father, ignominiously +disappeared--which, indeed, was the best thing which could have happened +for Yone, so far as her safety from scandal was concerned, and the worst +so far as her wish for an immediate marriage was concerned. There was, +now, not the least hope of an outcasting. No one had even seen Shijiro, +it appeared, nor knew of their going away or coming back together. + +"How did you escape, my pleasant daughter?" cried the happy father, +embracing her. + +"I do not know," said Yone, with some truth, looking furtively about for +Arisuga. + +"And fully dressed?" asked the father again. + +With a sigh of disgust, Yone answered again that she did not know. + +"It was an interposition of the gods." + +"Yes," sighed Yone, in her heart, "I suppose it was an interposition of +the infernal gods." + +For Shijiro was undoubtedly gone, not at once to return. + +"The smell of fire has not even passed upon your garments," pursued the +delighted parent. + +"It is very strange," sighed the daughter. + +"The gods love you!" declared her father. + +"I suppose so," answered Yone, indifferently, thinking of quite another +escape and another love. + +It happened that the next day the _Kowshing_ was sunk and the Guards +started for Ping-Yang. + + + + +PING-YANG + + + + +VII + +PING-YANG + + +Arisuga sang for the Guards, and made rhymes and laughter, and they +liked him tremendously, as big men are inclined to like little ones, +until they reached Ping-Yang, when they liked him still more for +something better. You will remember how the first assault of the +Japanese was met by the Chinese, who had yet to be taught defeat. The +big Satsuma color-bearer was killed, and the flag fell in the polluting +Chinese dust. It was little Arisuga who raised it--to such a shout as +cost the Chinese the hundred or so men they could spare at that time. +And he stayed out there, with the flag, where the Chinese were, when the +rest retired, and taunted the enemy with polite epithets, kept his +pistol going, and finally came through without a scratch! + +Thus, the smallest member of the Guards had demonstrated to the +greatest, the thing which helped to win their other victories: that +though their enemy was not lacking in courage, as they had thought, yet +he could neither manoeuvre nor shoot. + +Afterward, there was a contest for the picturesque office of +color-bearer. Some of them wanted Okuma. And Arisuga was willing, of +course. He knew how impossible it was to him at his size. But Colonel +Zanzi said the colors belonged to Arisuga. + +"Men get what they win in the army--nothing more, and not less. Here, no +honor goes by favor! A man passes for a man until he is proven +otherwise, no matter who or what he is, or whether he be five feet or +six. In the army there are neither eta nor samurai, only sons of the +emperor." + +After the peace of Shimenoseki there was dull barrack life for little +Arisuga, far from Yone, until he led the allies in their assault upon +the gate of the Hidden City. You will remember that the Japanese were +conceded the advance. After the first repulse they disentangled Arisuga +from a heap of Chinese with the colors still upright in his hands. The +wound was in his forehead. The great death had been near. + +Now it happened that the next day a man with a Japanese name was brought +before Colonel Zanzi and desired to know why it was that wounded +Japanese soldiers were taken to the houses of the Chinese when there +were Japanese houses near where they would be not only welcome +but--Well, he had a pretty daughter, and the Chinese annoyed her by +their attentions. A Japanese soldier in the house, a flag in the yard, +and a pink ticket at the door would be not only glory but protection. + +"I see," laughed the colonel. "Will a wounded one do?" + +The visitor thought he would--if he were the young man who had been +carried to the house of Han-Hai next door to him, the day before. + +"Very good," smiled the colonel. "I observe that we are not only +glorifying the emperor, but assisting a countryman to humble his Chinese +neighbor. Very good!" + +"It is not that," said the Japanese in China. "My daughter has seen +him." + +"Oh-h! Oh-h! He will have good care!" + +Without another word the smiling commanding officer wrote the order for +his transfer. + +And the next day Orojii Zasshi was the proudest Japanese in China. For +the imperial sun-flag waved over his roof; the pink ticket, to indicate +that a soldier was quartered there, was tacked to his door-post; and +within, in the most sumptuous room the house afforded, lay Shijiro +Arisuga, color-bearer. + + + + +DREAM-OF-A-STAR + + + + +VIII + +DREAM-OF-A-STAR + + +When Arisuga saw the face of "Hoshi-no-Yume," some days later--and this +"Dream-of-a-Star," as he at once called her, was well enough worth +seeing--he said first:-- + +"It is not like what I thought it, angel." + +Referring, of course, to the great red death, which he thought he had +suffered--and what had necessarily followed. + +"No," answered Hoshiko, comfortingly, remembering what the surgeon had +said, that when he came out of his delirium he would probably be a bit +queer. + +"I suppose, after all, that the earth-heavens are much like the earth." + +"Yes," from Miss Star-Dream. + +"I don't think you understand me, since you answer only yes and no?" + +"I understand your _words_ perfectly. I am Japanese!" answered the lips +of Hoshiko, while they slowly smiled. "But your thought--" + +"How lucky! For, I suppose here all peoples are mixed." + +"Yes. There are all sorts: Russians, Germans, Americans, Frenchmen--" + +She was thinking of the allies. + +"It looks like Japan." + +This was the interior which he was seeing. + +"But you think it is China?" + +"Yes! Out there it is precisely like the place where we fought." + +"Yes," said puzzled Hoshiko. + +"I suppose the gods surround us in the heavens with the things which +have pleased us most on earth." + +Something made him look at the girl who flitted near, and the same thing +made him connect her with this state of celestial bliss. + +But he sighed and turned from her. In the heavens, of course, she was +incorporeal, and, while patent to the eyes, would fail like the air +itself to the touch. + +He looked through the window, then, at the Forbidden City. + +"But there is no fighting here now," ventured the girl. + +"Naturally," agreed the soldier. + +"The Forbidden City is taken." + +"I am glad to hear it. How long have you been here?" + +"About thirteen years." + +"You couldn't have been more than three or four when you died! I don't +understand." + +But, now, Hoshiko at last did. And she laughed. + +"Excuse my levity," she said. "I am not dead, and you are not. I am not +an angel, and this is not a heaven!" + +"Oh!" said Arisuga; and then, "All right," as if it were a thing to be +endured. He ended by also laughing. "But you must excuse the mistake. It +seems a good deal like a heaven, and you more like an angel." + +Still, as he looked about, and at the girl, he was not sure. That is +what they were likely to tell a sick man. + +"Might I touch you?" he asked. + +"Oh, yes!" cried the girl, with a pleasure which challenged his +attention. She put herself within his reach. + +"It is _not_ a heaven," he agreed, when he had passed his hand along an +exquisite arm. + +"I am honorably glad that you are not dead," breathed the girl, bravely. +"Are not you?" + +And every little atom of her showed that she was glad and begged that he +might be. Though the mists were still in the brain of Shijiro Arisuga, +he could not help knowing both of these things: her innocence had +uncovered them so completely. For a moment he studied her. Then he +answered a tardy yes to her question. + +"For such as you it is good to live--yes--and--" The soldier stopped to +sigh. "Good for others to live near you for the little while." + +"For a little while, lord?" + +She thought it the mere hyperbole of their race. + +"Oh, you shall be old, old, old, and beautiful, with long white hair and +perhaps a beard, and all the earth shall worship your piety--" + +Arisuga laughed and caught a hand to stop her. + +"Lord," she went on, "most vast lord, I will make you. Yes! I have thus +far made it to be. When they brought you they said you would die. So +said my father and mother. But I--" + +She turned and summoned her maid with fierce irrelevance. + +"Isonna, come here!" + +The maid hastened from the next room, where, it is almost certain, she +had lain with her ear to the fusuma, and then Hoshiko's mysterious +purpose appeared. + +"But I--Isonna and me--this is Isonna, my ugly maid--Isonna and me +prayed for you--wept for you; you were so beautiful and bloody. And +Benten--see, I have Benten always near! Benten loves the tears of +sympathy, and to her we prayed, so--" + +"I owe you and Isonna my life," laughed the soldier. + +"No, Benten," whispered the girl, now answering his laugh with a smile. +"And she will grant other prayers of ours--Isonna and me--will she not, +Isonna, you little beast? Why do you not speak?" + +Isonna corroborated her mistress by a deep prostration. + +"And so we have asked for long life for you, very long, until the +pebbles grow to boulders and the moss grows to your shoulders--" + +Arisuga laughed, in frank joy of her. + +"And suppose, you who are so powerful with the goddess of beauty--for +which I do not blame the goddess--suppose I have sworn to die the great +death, to release my father's soul from the Meido so that he can be born +again, and for the glory of the emperor?" + +"Oh!" gasped the girl. + +The soldier went on. + +"--what will the other gods think of me, saving Benten, if I stop here +and forget to die because a woman has hands, a voice, and eyes?" + +"No, no!" cried Isonna, in sudden strange anguish. + +Then she prostrated herself in abjection. + +Arisuga rose on his elbow to look at her. + +"What have I said to cause such sorrow?" he wondered. "Let me see. It +was about your hands and voice and eyes." + +"Yes!" cried mistress and maid together. + +But it was the maid who went on:-- + +"And you must not, mighty lord. You must not find any beauty in my +mistress's eyes and hands and voice. None anywhere. It is evil for both +you and her!" + +"Who said I found any beauty there?" smiled Arisuga, languidly. + +"There is a secret, lord--" the maid went on in a frenzy. + +But Star-Dream, suddenly grasping the place of her heart with both +hands, cried out to the maid, as if she were desperately wounded:-- + +"Go, go, go, little foul beast! What do you do here? Who called you? +Go!" + +The maid disappeared like a spirit. Star-Dream found herself upon her +feet, still gasping with ecstasy and terror together. Then she at last +turned slowly toward the bed and smiled a sick mechanical smile. + +"Lord, you said," she prompted. "Say on. Do not listen--do not observe +the ugly Isonna. She has a trouble of the head." + +Hoshiko drooped her own in some sort of gentle guilt. + +"Ah, but I displeased you also," said Arisuga. + +"Lord--I--no. I have a distemper. In it I am harsh to Isonna. That is +what she is for. That is why my father keeps her. That she may bear my +distemper. Presently I will go and put my arms about her, so, and all +will be well!" + +She illustrated with her own person. + +"So?" asked the soldier, laughing; "certainly all will be well!" and she +came with another laugh and knelt at his bed. She touched him. She +chattered on helplessly. + +"Truly, all will be well. She loves me, wicked as I am to her, and with +a touch I can win her!" + +"Yes!" he agreed. "Or any one, I should fancy!" + +Thus, at least, she had cunningly won him from his wonder at the scene +he had just witnessed, if she had not won all else she had hoped for. + +"May I ask a question?" said the girl. + +"A hundred," said Shijiro. + +"Lord, you said--you called me--" + +"Yes," laughed Arisuga. "The eyes, the hands, the lips--" + +"I am not beautiful--" + +"I did not say so." + +"My hands are not--" + +She held them out that he might see that they were not. The soldier +examined them and then said:-- + +"No, the maid was right. I find no beauty there." + +"And my eyes--they are only beast's eyes--" + +"Let me see," begged the soldier. + +She came closer, and seriously opened them upon him. It was very hard +for Shijiro looking into them to nod his assent that they were beast's +eyes. + +"Then the question is," said the girl, with innocent mirth, "why, if I +am not beautiful, if nothing about me is, why did you do so?" + +"Do what?" demanded the soldier, with a pretence of savagery. + +"Look so into my eyes, touch so my hands, listen so to my miserable +voice?" + +"I supposed that I was in a heaven, and that you were an--attendant," +said Arisuga. + +"But after you knew that you were not in a heaven?" + +The soldier gave up with a laugh. + +"I see that we shall be very good friends," he said. They laughed +together. + +"Lord," she said, "I do not know whether you speak true!" + +"I," said the soldier, "have the impression that I have lied to you +about you." + +"Shaka!" breathed the girl, between laughter and fear. + +"Did you wish it--what I did--said?" + +"Lord," confessed the girl, "I wish to be as beautiful as the +sun-goddess, so that you must--do--say--!" + +She crept closer. It was as if she caressed the soldier. + + + + +ISONNA + + + + +IX + +ISONNA + + +On another day Hoshiko asked:-- + +"Lord, must it be soon--now--that you die?" + +"Now," he said, with a pretence of severity. + +"Is the day fixed?" + +"Yes. Am I to wait here because your eyes are not exactly a beast's, +while my father languishes in the Meido?" + +"Yea, lord, if you are hap--happy. For the spirits of our augustnesses, +no matter where they are, even in the suffering of the hells, are not +sad while they make us happy." + +"In what book did you learn that?" demanded the soldier. + +"In the Bushido," lied the girl, seriously. + +"Then I have not read the commandments of the Bushido with sufficient +care. I must do it all over. I am glad that there is such a doctrine. +One may keep to a holy purpose, but need not hasten it. And to-day I +like to linger from the red death; I like it well!" + +"Yes, lord, that is a filial duty. To die for--for--the repose of your +father's soul. But there is no need of--haste?" + +"No," said the disgraceful young soldier, "there is no need of haste." + +She laughed and touched his face--where he caught and held her hand. + +"Perhaps, many many years?" + +"Perhaps," said Arisuga. + +"Until you are mi--married?" + +"Perhaps until I am married." + +"Beautiful!" cried the girl. + +"And who would you have me marry?" + +"Isonna!" laughed Hoshiko, "if you were not so great, lord. Oh, she is +most sweet to men! Often I have wondered that men do not marry her! +Isonna!" + +Again the girl plunged from the next room. + +"Isonna," said her mistress, "ugly little beast, you are to marry the +lord soldier when he is a trifle better." + +Isonna forgot her manners in the violence of another amazement. Arisuga +shouted with happy laughter. + +"Vast lord," wailed the maid, as if she believed it all, "there is the +same reason in me as in my mistress, that--" + +"Sh!" + +Hoshiko put her two hands violently upon the garrulous mouth of the +servant. + +"You little beast! Is not once enough? I dislike to kill you. But I +suppose I must!" + +When all was well again she turned to Arisuga:-- + +"Then you will need a servant--and I am very industrious, am I not, +Isonna?" + +Isonna said nothing. This seemed safest. + +"Is she industrious, Isonna?" asked the mystified young soldier. "We +will have no servants who are not industrious!" + +"No," said the frightened maid to him, and "Yes" to her when she had +looked, first, the way of her mistress, then the way of the soldier. + +"Do I not curl the futons, dress my hair, fill my father's pipe, clean +the sand out of his sandals, mend his bed-netting, tie his girdle, cook +his rice?" + +Isonna said yes. + +"I am convinced," laughed the soldier. "When I marry Isonna you shall +serve us." + +"Go," said the girl to the maid, "and be ready when the lord commander +wishes." + +And when she was gone the young soldier and the girl laughed again +together. + +"Almost," said the girl, "she lost me my place in your household." + +And one could not be certain from her words that she was not serious. + +The soldier had again the impression that she had barely prevented some +momentous disclosure. It gave his gayety pause and his coquetry caution. + +"Then I am not in a heaven," said he, "and--_you_ are not a heavenly +person?" + +The girl dropped to her knees beside him and asked:-- + +"I wish I might make this a heaven to you, and that I might +seem--truly--like--a heavenly--person!" + +"I never knew one on earth who seemed more like one! Be content." + +"Alas! that is only because you have been ill and I have been kind to +you?" + +"You are very pleasant--very pleasant!" said Arisuga, setting the +current of desire away from the peril of her. "What have you been doing +with me all the while I have been here?" + +Nevertheless, and notwithstanding his retreat from sentiment, the +wounded soldier possessed himself of one of Hoshiko's hands--quite by an +unconscious act of fellowship. But one was not enough; he took the +other. As he did it, he remembered and smiled because his hands and his +will were at such variance. + +The Lady Hoshi did not stay him. Indeed, she had always liked the +stories of those bandits in the mountains, who took pretty girls and +were never heard of again. + +But she had to get away just then, much to her regret, because, out of +her innocent honesty, she was not prepared to answer the question he had +asked her--What had she been doing with him during the period of his +delirious unconsciousness? And he repeated it! + +Now to call one a pleasant person is about as far as a Japanese lover +ordinarily goes. But Hoshiko was disappointed with it. What had gone +before promised more. + +In her disappointment, her humor became as testy as it was possible for +her humor to become, which was, after all, not very testy. And so it +remained for the day. + + + + +THE TASK OF JIZO + + + + +X + +THE TASK OF JIZO + + +"Why didn't he take me?" she demanded savagely of Isonna the maid that +night as she was putting her mistress to bed in the adjoining room. "And +quickly! Like that! I would!" She clapped her hands--and then said: "Sh! +Do you think he heard that?" + +The maid reassured her. + +"But _why_ is a man satisfied with a hand--even two--when by a strong +arm he might have--" she stopped to sigh and to look into the round +mirror which the maid was holding up to her--"all!" + +"All of what?" asked the astonished maid. + +"Me! This." + +"Oh!" said the maid. + +"If a man calls a girl an angel when he thinks he is in heaven, he has +no business to call her only--" she stopped and sniffed disdainfully at +the word--"_pleasant_ when he finds he is not." + +"What would you, then, have him to call you on earth?" questioned the +puzzled maid. + +"Angel still." + +"Permit him a little time, mistress." + +"Time! Time! What do you call time, you ignorant one? It was fifteen +minutes! Yes! We had been talking fifteen minutes when he said I was a +_pleasant_ person! After saying I was an angel!" + +"Oh!" said Isonna--which Hoshiko took for reproof. + +"I have known him two weeks!" + +"Yes," agreed the maid. + +"And if you speak--if you suggest again, that which twice nearly escaped +your lips, I will kill you. One night you will lie down, and, into your +horrid, tattling mouth, I will pour, as you sleep, a something which +will prevent you from ever rising. I have it always ready for you." + +"But, your father?" whined Isonna. + +"I, not my father, am speaking now!" + +"I will be silent," agreed the maid. + +"What is the use to take the trouble to tell him? Soon he will go and +forget both us and that--what is the use?" + +"I will be silent," said the maid, again. "I do not wish to die." + +"And then--O Jizo, punish him!" She broke off and addressed another of +her goddesses. "And then he had the unparalleled audacity to ask me what +I had been doing with him all the while he has been here! After he had +said angel repeatedly! O Jizo, punish him!" + +"Well, well," comforted the maid, "why did you not inform him? Surely +that was not difficult!" + +"Oh! it was not, eh? Well, you blind little beast, do you _know_ what I +_have_ been doing?" + +"You have recovered him from his illness with the utmost tenderness and +beauty," said the maid. + +"Oh, you little fool!" cried her mistress, first striking her, then +embracing her; "I have been falling in love with him. It happened that +day they carried him into the house of Han-Hai, where live three +daughters, all unmarried. You saw it; you were present! Do you not +remember how beautiful and bloody he was? His eyes were closed, the sun +shone in his face, and that was pale with here and here the windings of +a bandage, like an aureole. Oh, how we both wept! He was so young; and +we thought that we could heal him with great care! We wept. My father +did the one thing which would stop our tears--brought, him here!" + +"Yes--yes!" agreed Isonna. + +"Now! Shall I tell him?" + +"Oh, no, Lady Hoshi, no! That is a dreadful thing to do," sighed the +maid. + +"It is not dreadful. It is beautiful." + +"But, dear, dear mistress, you must not love a man. That is what your +father pays me to prevent!" + +"Well, you haven't prevented it. And I shall tell my father, and he, +also, will kill you and get me some one who is more useful. That is two +killings for you!" + +"But I did not know, mistress! Perhaps I do not know love." + +"You do not, Isonna. For it has been right under your nose these two +weeks. After all, I will not tell my father. For he might give me a maid +who would not be as pretty as you," and she hugged Isonna, who was not +pretty at all. "And in exchange for my mercy you must not be odious, +but recognize that it is too late. Is it a bargain?" + +Well, any bargain the lovely Hoshi might propose to the plain Isonna +would meet with her approval, though it should mean her death the next +instant, and so this one was approved. + + + + +ANGEL OF THE EARTH-HEAVEN + + + + +XI + +ANGEL OF THE EARTH-HEAVEN + + +Now, the next day, Arisuga, laughing, greeted her with that very +word--"angel"! Perhaps he did hear a bit of their talk. For the walls +between them were very thin. This was the way of it: He clapped his +hands so early in the morning that he was amazed at the despatch with +which she arrived. But we are not. For we know that she was waiting just +outside of his screens to be called. She meant to dissemble and pretend +that she was at a distance. But you can fancy how instantly she forgot +that when he called:-- + +"Angel! Angel of my earth-heaven!" Though there are no angels in the +Japanese heavens. + +You have seen that, in her presence, he had forgotten his caution! +Observe, now, that he did likewise in her absence! What end but one +could there be to such recklessness! + +"Stand there! I want to look at you!" he cried when she came. For the +light of the morning was in her face--and the light of love, too! "By +your Jizo," he said, then, "I am glad you are _not_ an angel! + + "Cherry blooms are very pink, + But not so pink as you are!" + +he sang, laughing, and her heart was so choked with ecstasy that she had +to put both hands to her face and run from the room hearing him still +call "Angel" after her. + +"O Benten," she cried to the goddess of beauty in her room, "that is +different! He is not careful now--he is awake to-day! _We_ must beware +of him! There is danger!" + +And at once she returned--with the water for his bath! + +For, that was always her way: when he would say something to make her +heart leap into her mouth, to fly from him in the direst panic, suborn +the goddess, then hasten back to have it happen again. + +"A heart is a strange thing," she laughed to him. "Sometimes it is here +(at the proper place for it), sometimes here (in her throat), and +sometimes here (in her sandals)." + +"And sometimes," laughed the young soldier, "one's heart, which should +be here (in his own bosom), is there (in hers)." + +"And again," she rioted with him, "one's heart, which was here (in +herself), is gone--gone--utterly gone--" + +"That is quite proper," the soldier said. "For if you kept your own, you +would have two and I none!" + +"It is trying to get out!" she cried in mock alarm, holding it in. + +"Let it come!" + +But, just then, they heard the sigh of a moving screen, and the acid +face of Hoshiko's mother looked in. She said nothing, only let her eyes +rove from face to face. But that was very cooling. She closed the shoji +and went away--apparently. + +Now, for the benefit of her mother, whom she knew to be still behind the +fusuma, Hoshiko tried to look very severe. She had taken the poppies +from behind her ear and had pinned a napkin about her hair, and turned +up the sleeves of her kimono, making herself all the lovelier as she +very well knew in this fashion of a nurse. + +"You are to wash your hands in this cold water to refresh you. Then I +will take it away and bring you other water for your face." + +But, in the end, she washed his hands for him, and his face, too, amid a +great deal of laughter and splashing. + +"And now," he said, "I will take every advantage of my defenceless +enemy. I will make her give me my breakfast." + +Though she demurred, Hoshiko was quite mad to do it. + +"Beware!" she whispered, as she let a persimmon slip from between her +chopsticks into his mouth. "In the East, walls have not only ears but +eyes!" + +"And no conscience!" + +"What would you?" + +She hoped that he might desire walls without senses, where they might be +fearlessly alone. + +"Another persimmon!" he laughed. + +"No," she pouted, for his punishment, "nothing but the rice." + +"Not all the hard hearts," he sighed, "are behind the walls!" + +Then she gave him the most luscious of the persimmons. + +"You haven't told me yet," he insisted, "what I did and what you did +while I was unconscious. That is always interesting." + +She filled his mouth with rice. + +"But what did you do and what did I do?" + +It came through the rice. + +"Please drink," she said. + +"What did you do, what did I do?" he sputtered. + +"Pardon me while I wipe your mouth." + +"But what--" + +"Nothing. I did nothing, you did nothing." + +"It must have been very dull for you," sighed the defeated soldier. + +"Jizo--" she was praying to the goddess at her small shrine that +night--"I am going to conceal and lie! I pray you to intercede with the +Lord Shaka for my pardon. He loves me--and he must not know. It is for +happiness, Jizo. _His_ happiness, do you understand, dear Jizo?" + +She cried out savagely in her further confidences to Jizo that night, +when she was ready for bed. + +"I _was_ very busy--yes, _very_ busy--falling in love with him! And you +must intercede with Shaka for my forgiveness. It was a lie. But could I +tell him that I was busy falling in love with him?" + +The maid had come in to put her to bed. + +"Strange prayers!" she said. + +The mistress turned, intending to rebuke her. But she laughed. + +"Come here and stop that laughing. He will hear!" + +"Mistress, I did not laugh." + +"Come here!" + +When the maid was abject before her she said:-- + +"Why do you stare?" + +"At the joy." + +"Where?" + +As if it were a symptom of disease. + +"In the face." + +"I have a trouble of the heart. Feel! That is why!" + +"Yes!" said the maid, pretending terror. + +"It will kill me!" + +"Yes!" + +"It will not!" + +"No!" + +They fell, laughing, together, to the floor. + +"He does love me!" + +"I know that much." + +"But he does not know it--yet." + +They laughed again. + +"It WAS for _his_ happiness!" + +"Certainly!" + +"Not mine!" + +"No!" + +"He shall be told that he loves me!" + +She shook her fist at her favorite deity, sitting unruffled in her +shrine. + +"Benten! You shall let him know!" + +"The goddess is too decorous for that," chided the maid. "The only woman +who tells a man that she loves him--" + +"Is me!" cried her mistress to the shocked maid. + +"Aie!" wailed the maid. "There is a kind of woman who does that, but she +is not the lady Hoshi--" + +"Oh, silence!" laughed the girl. "It would not take me a moment to tell +him, if it were not for what he might think! And, perhaps, he is not +wise and will not know enough wisdom to think that!" + +"All men think that!" said Isonna. + +"But, how can they," argued Hoshiko, "if they are not taught? How can he +if I do not teach him?" + +"It is born in them!" + +"But how do you know?" + +"I have studied," said the maid. + +"Well, at all events, it was not that for which I petitioned the +goddess: to tell him--that I loved him, you ignorant little animal. I +asked her to tell him that he loved me!" + +"Oh!" cried the maid, kowtowing. "I misunderstood." + +"Now go to bed, you little scandal-monger!" + +Isonna started. Her mistress recalled her. + +"And--and, if there is a way of letting him know that _he_--" + +"Yes," answered the maid, understandingly. + +"And as to letting him know that I love _him_--" + +"Yes?" + +"Do you think that necessary?" + +"I do not know the ways of love," confessed Isonna. + +"You are a little beast," said her mistress. "That can wait--if he once +knows that he loves me. At all events it is too dangerous. Go to bed, +wicked one!" + + + + +IMPERTINENT ISONNA + + + + +XII + +IMPERTINENT ISONNA + + +But the next day trouble, though not exactly of the heart, did arrive. +It was one of Arisuga's days of retreat from Hoshiko. He asked her why +she lived there--in China--when she might live in Japan, where she +belonged. + +She answered him that her father had come there many years before, when +she was a child. + +"I will ask him the reason if you wish." + +"No, no, no!" laughed Arisuga. "What does it matter, my dear child?" + +She ran away from him again. And all that day she kept repeating:-- + +"'My dear _child_'! I am as tall as he!" + +And at night, again, while the maid was undressing her, it was that +still. + +"Now he shall never know who--what I am. For I _am_ beautiful. The +mirror says so. As beautiful as if I were not--what I am. Look, look and +tell me!" + +This the maid, for the hundredth time since he had come, did. + +"You are, indeed, beautiful, dear mistress, yet, nevertheless, it is +your duty to tell him! Otherwise he might wish to marry you. Already he +loves you." + +"I will not! And if you do, I will kill you!" threatened Hoshiko. "I +will have these few days of heaven. He will go and not think of me +again. He will never know. He will not have been contaminated. But I +will have the few days in heaven! To him I am only a child." + +And she fell to the floor and sobbed for an hour, during which the maid +lay like a graven image at her side. Then she sat up and asked: + +"_Now_ you don't blame me, do you?" + +"No." + +"Anyhow, he will go as soon as possible." + +"No, he will not," said the impertinent Isonna. + +"He will! You know that he will! Say that he will!" + +But the maid knew better. + +"That is what men always do when they find out." + +"He will not," said Isonna. + +"You are very impertinent!" And her mistress punished her maid's +impertinence by flinging her the amber bracelet she wore. + +"Now, disobedient one, you shall tell me why you think such a naughty +thing. Yet you cannot know. No one can see into his large mind. He keeps +it closed. He is as wise as a priest. Not even I can enter it. And you +are very ignorant, Isonna." + +"Nevertheless, his mind is as glass to me!" insisted the maid. + +"I will tell my father and he shall punish you with whips. Now, you dear +little beast, I shall force you to tell me the reason you think in your +evil mind the great color-bearer to the prince of heaven stays here!" + +"You," said the maid, coolly refilling first the pipe of her mistress, +then her own. + +"I shall _not_ tell my father," said Miss Star-Dream, "for I pity you. +It is such a great lie that he would make Ozumi whip you to death. Yet +it is a lie which makes me happy. Was I ever so happy as I am now--since +he came?" + +"No," said the maid. + +"But he _will_ go sometime--we agree upon that?" questioned the +mistress, once more hoping anything but that they did agree upon that. +The maid was not blind to her hope. + +"Not yet," she answered with a decision which gave joy to the girl's +soul. + +"He will. He must die." + +"Not yet," declared the maid again. + +"Do you suppose his love for me--_you_ said it was love, I did not!--is +greater than his love for the spirit of his father?" + +"Yes," answered the maid. + +"Oh, little beast!" cried her mistress, embracing her. "Benten, but I am +happy!" + +She chattered on:-- + +"Also have you noticed how beautiful he is? He has hair like the +pictures of the gods--though he is a shaven samurai. And those songs he +sings he makes himself. I am going to learn a thousand musical +instruments so that I may play them all. I wish I could sing! And, +Isonna, we never laughed--really--until he came, did we? Always that +thing hung over us. But he is not to know it. And we may forget it! And, +Isonna, have you noticed that exquisite habit he has of touching me, +here, here, here?" + +She laughed and made the serving-girl the illustrant of this aberration +of the soldier. + +"That he does when he wants me to look at something--often only himself. +Or when I am not attending to his words. I used to shudder and go away +from it--it was so strange--no one else ever did it. But I now think it +very foolish to start and be frightened by such small things." + +"I have observed you go toward it!" droned the maid. + +"That is a vile lie!" cried Hoshiko. "Say, do you know what causes +that?" + +"No." + +"His wife; he does that to his wife, and she--she is not a nice person, +and likes it! Aha!" + +"He has no wife," said the maid. + +It was this she was hungry to hear. + +"How do you know? Did he tell you?" + +"No. But he wears stockings, not tabi. All soldiers do." + +"Well, you suspicious little beast, what has that got to do with his +wife?" + +"I wash them." + +"Well?" + +"There are no darns." + +"Oh! What then?" + +"Holes." + +"Isonna," said her mistress, solemnly, "I believe that you are as wise +as you say you are! But, then, how do you suppose he learns it?" + +"From you!" + +"Am I so dreadful?" + +"I have observed you giving those touches." + +"He will hate me." + +"Hate is not in the direction he is going," said the wise maid. + +Hoshiko could have endured more of this ecstasy. But it was very late, +and Arisuga had the soldier's habit of early rising. Moreover, the first +thing he was wont to do when he rose was to clap his hands, in that way, +and call for his earth-angel. So she said to Isonna:-- + +"You have been a naughty, impertinent, gossiping little beast. Put me to +bed." + +Yet, when this had been done the mistress embraced the maid and would +hardly let her go. + +"What a shame it is that one must sleep when one might talk of him! But, +then, if one does not, one is hideous in the morning! And he calls the +moment he wakes. Put out the lights and go to bed! I will listen to you +no longer!" + +Isonna had not spoken. But she did as she was commanded. + +"Isonna!" the mistress called after the maid--who instantly returned--"I +have had such a thought! Suppose he should never know! Suppose I should +go to some place with him where there is no one who had ever known me? +Marry him?" + +"I should be there." + +"You! Not unless I should first cut out your gossiping tongue!" + +"It would be wrong. The gods must punish you!" + +"How would the gods know? I should lie to them also." + +"It would be very wrong," the maid repeated. "The only woman who +deceives a man--" + +"Is his _wife_, you naughty little beast! Go straight to bed! I hate +you!" + + + + +ONLY TO TAKE HER + + + + +XIII + +ONLY TO TAKE HER + + +It happened precisely as the wise maid had said. He did not go, but, on +the contrary, protracted his recovery in a scandalous fashion. + +For here it was that Arisuga began to suspect, for the second time, that +the happiest moment of his life had come. If he had known that he was in +love, as he did not, or that there was such a thing as this love he was +experiencing, which he did not, he would have been more certain of that +happiest moment. But a Japanese must be told when this has happened to +him. And it must be in another tongue than his. For in his language +there are no words for it--and he knew no other. He really was not quite +sure, therefore, why he was lingering in China--only suspected it. How +could he know, under the circumstances? No feeling like this had +insidiously crept upon him when he had taken Yone to Mukojima or +Shiba--even upon that great night which now began to go more and more +out of his memory. And he did not even think of what he had laughingly +prophesied to her--that forgetting--her waiting. He simply forgot her. +Perhaps if Hoshiko had known of this defect in the character of Arisuga, +she might not have loved him. What Arisuga remembered most about his and +Yone's excursions was that when they got hungry they went separately +home and ate. But he had the feeling that he would stay here with +Hoshiko and starve--or until some one from the regiment came and took +him back at the point of a bayonet. For this was a most piquant and +unusual condition of affairs between them: that they should be so much +alone together, that there should be so little--almost nothing--of +Hoshiko's parents, that she should be as frankly intimate as a geisha at +a festival, who meant to please at all hazards. It was this volunteer +intimacy which puzzled him most about the girl. But who was there to +tell him that she had known him two weeks longer than he knew her? And +that during all that halcyon time she had had her way with her adoration +of him--and saw no reason in his returned consciousness for changing +it? Or that she had lived here untaught as a child? That to her, since +she frankly adored him, there was only one reason why he might not as +frankly know it--the one she had decided never to tell? + +Before Arisuga became a soldier he had been a poet, a musician, a +songster--one who had responded at nature's high behest to all +manifestations of beauty. Now, in this time of peace and indolent +convalescence, he went back to all that--almost as if the life of the +soldier, which intervened, had never been. He had instantly called her +"Dream-of-a-Star." And she was all this to him. It was good to lie in +his futons and see the perfections of her grace as she moved about +intent upon his healing. It was better to hear her pretty voice. It was +best of all to feel her touch upon him and to see the lighted eyes which +always accompanied it. At first there was the sense of having found a +butterfly by the dusty roadside of his duty which might yield a moment +of joy. But when he knew that, whether he wished it or not, he must lie +here many weeks before he could fight again, the sense that he was +sacrificing duty to pleasure disappeared, and he let himself enjoy his +nearness to the girl and let his poetic spirit revel in her fragile +beauty without further thought of the duty which lay in wait for him. +That, he finally decided, would attend to itself. A soldier is not long +permitted to forget his duty. + +But, the thing which continued to stir and puzzle him most was the fancy +which now and then came, that he might have this wonderful creature +precisely like the butterfly he had thought her. Indeed, he could +scarcely get away from the impression that there were times when she +offered herself to him. Yet though he was not very learned concerning +women himself, he knew that there was only one sort who offered herself +to a man. Sometimes her little timorous darings let him believe, for a +moment, that she was of this kind. But nearly always the idea was +quenched out by some act of such utter innocency as could not be +mistaken for coquetry. Still the recurrence of an idea, originally +erroneous, is likely to be strengthened by each repetition. And this was +what was happening to the sick soldier. + +Nevertheless he continued to fancy that of all the spirits, from the +moon-goddess down, none were so dainty, so fragile, so tender, +caressing, and altogether lovely as this Hoshiko, who was not a spirit +at all, even though she was there, day after day, at his bedside, +suggesting herself to him with either the abandon of a child or the +intention of a woman of joy. Had he been as wise about women as he was +simple, and she as wise about men as she pretended, who had no wisdom at +all concerning them, such a misunderstanding would not have occurred. + +For she was not offering herself to him at all. She was a child with a +toy. And at first the subtraction of this toy, even though the like and +fascination of it exceeded any other she had ever had, would have +portended little of tragedy. But later it was more serious. Something +inside which had never stirred before began to stir now. This contact +with a man, these intimacies with one not much more learned in the art +of loving than she, had awakened the sleeping thing within which would +one day be her womanhood. + +As for her, one must not forget that at the last she wished to be +adored. All women do. But if a woman loves a man too much, he runs +away. If she loves him just enough, he stays. If she loves him a little +less than enough, he runs after her. + +"If I were a man," said Isonna, "I would care for only such pretty +things as you--not for wars and fightings--even great deaths. For what +is the last heaven but a state of bliss! And if one has all the bliss +one can bear or understand here on earth, is that not a heaven? And +truly if I were a man, it would be extreme bliss to touch you, here, and +here, and here, to put an arm about you so, to sit in the andon light, +so--" + +All of which things the adoring maid illustrated, to her saddened +mistress, in the light of the night lamp, and to all of them her +mistress agreed. + + + + +THE GOING OF THE SOLDIER + + + + +XIV + +THE GOING OF THE SOLDIER + + +For the soldier must go. There was not a vestige of excuse for remaining +longer. The terrible mother had entered his chamber, had looked at him, +had said briefly that he was quite well. And Hoshiko herself had done +everything but ask him flatly to stay. How could she do that? Isonna had +warned her constantly of the sort of woman who did that in Japan. The +mere asking would be enough--in such a woman--to advertise her as of +joy. And for want of this word of asking, the heaven she had made was +closing. + +But Isonna and some of the circumstances of the case had taught her more +and more that any more forwardness would be seriously misconstrued by +the invalid. + +"You are awake," said Isonna, mysteriously, who was not blind to the +maturing of the thing called womanhood. + +"Ah," sighed the happy and miserable girl, "if to wake means this, then +I wish that I might always have slept." + +"You did not sleep," said the still mysterious maid. + +"What did I then, little beast?" + +"You dreamed." + +"Then," begged the girl, with a piteous smile, "make me to dream again, +and take care that I never wake." + +"Ah, sweet mistress," said the maid, "there comes to all, in the matter +of men, a time to sleep, a time to dream, and a time to wake. The sleep +is best. For in that one knows nothing. The dream is sweet. But it never +lasts. The waking sometimes is good--sometimes evil. Good it is if all +is fair between a man and a woman. Evil it is if all is not. And, +mistress dear, all is not fair between you and him. So there is another +thing after the waking--which the gods make." + +"What is that, wise little beast?" laughed Hoshiko. + +"It is the forgetting which heals," said the maid. + +"I do not wish to be healed," answered her mistress. + +"Then must you be always ill of this thing." + +"So be it. That is better than a forgetting." + +"But it must go no further," pleaded the servitor. "There must be no +touches, no eyes, no beatings of the heart." + +"Can you stop the beating of the heart? The adoring of the eyes? Can any +one?" + +"Yes. In your room waits always the goddess of tranquillity. Go there. +Stay there. She will soothe you." + +"Yes, when he is gone--quite gone--then we will try for that +tranquillity. We had it before he came!" + +"We shall have it again," cheered the maid. "As soon as he is gone--" + +"Oh!" A flash of Hoshiko's old manner energized her. "I know a better +and happier way to insure that tranquillity." + +"What is it?" + +"Ask him to--stay! You!" + +The maid only gasped. + +"Yes," said her mistress, more timorously than she had ever spoken of +him. + +"Ask a man to stay?" + +"Certainly! That is what I said. Am I so hard to understand?" + +Hoshiko spoke with more pain than asperity. + +"You may--with honor--" pleaded Hoshiko. "He doesn't love you. You do +not love him." + +"And if the asking of these lips and hands and eyes and this voice, all +that are permitted you, are not potent--how shall I be? How shall any +one or anything be? Let him go." + +"Stop!" cried her mistress. "He is a god. We are creatures. What we wish +we must petition for as we do the gods. Yet I dare not--will not you?" + +"No!" said the maid. "I know the penalty. I do not wish you to know +it." + + + + +BUT WHAT COULD HE DO? + + + + +XV + +BUT WHAT COULD HE DO? + + +However, it all came out involuntarily when, at last, he began with +tremendous difficulty to go away. He was already at the courtyard gate +when she sobbed. He was gone--oh, it mattered not now what she did! + +But Arisuga hearing this, of course, returned. His renewed presence only +renewed the Lady Hoshi's tears. + +"But what can I do?" he kept on asking politely. + +"Stay!" cried the Lady Hoshi, madly, forgetting everything but that one +wish. + +"Oh!" said Arisuga. + +"Gods!" breathed Isonna. + +"Only till to-morrow; that is but one day; to-morrow, lord--lord of my +soul!" + +"Oh!" said Arisuga again, and, at once entirely willing, dismissed his +'rik'sha. + +The next day he took her to the Forbidden City and showed her the +tragic, broken wonders of it, while he puzzled out that scene of the day +before. There were times when he had to help her up on broken walls and +over fallen sculptures. And more and more as he possessed her thus for +one day he wanted to possess her indefinitely. For the hands were very +soft, the eyes luminous, the small body where it touched his exquisite. + +He found it hard to believe--that, like a courtezan, she would beg him +to stay. Yet, it was for but one day! No woman of joy would stop there! +At last he spoke:-- + +"Were you educated in Japan--or China, angel of my earth-heaven?" he +asked of her. + +"In China, lord, such things as a girl learns after three years, but in +the Japanese way entirely." + +There was little enlightenment in that. + +"And have you known many men?" + +"Yes," she answered at once, thinking that was what he wished. + +"No!" cried Isonna. + +The two girls turned together. Hoshiko was about to chastise the maid. +But she was terrified at the pallor of her face. Nevertheless she +insisted, with a certain pathetic dignity:-- + +"I said--yes!" + +"I say no!" stubbornly cried the maid. "None! none!" + +Arisuga deprecatingly waved his hand, and courteously believed what they +disagreed about. + +"What does it matter?" he said. + +But the maid whispered tragically to her mistress:-- + +"See what you have done!" + +"What?" asked Hoshiko. + +The maid's whisper was sinister. + +"Do you wish him to think that you have been any one's? Every one's? +That is why he asked." + +"It is not!" protested Hoshiko. "He asked to learn how many others love +me." + +"And why should he ask that?" + +"Because _he_ loves me," was Hoshiko's enigmatic answer. + +There was no time at this moment for further explication. Arisuga had +evidently decided something which was in his mind when he asked his +first question, and Hoshiko fancied that his decision was against her. +For he laughed (not as she would have wished him to laugh), and took an +almost rude and assured possession of her. + +"When the mistress says yes and the maid says no, one must believe his +eyes, which say it is improbable that so fair a flower has bloomed +unseen even in this arid plain of China!" + +"You think, then, that I _have_ had--twenty lovers?" asked Hoshiko. + +"Certainly," laughed Arisuga. + +"No!" still cried the maid in her terror. "You believe, lord, that she +has had none--not one--until you came!" + +"Certainly," laughed the soldier again. + +The two girls looked at each other dazedly. Arisuga laughed again in +that unpleasant way. + +"Now he will never know that I love him," chided the mistress, at an +opportune moment. "If he had thought that I gave up twenty lovers the +moment he came--" + +The maid had not seen the value of creating such a situation. Hoshiko +practised tremendous wisdom. She repeated to Isonna, in the intervals +of the day, the very things Isonna had taught her with great pains. + +"A man will think nothing of you unless he knows that others do. If one +has two lovers, one can easily have twenty. If one has one and is +truthful--that is all one will ever have. If one has none, how is one to +get even one unless she pretends to have many? For if no man cares for +you, no man will. If many men care for you, many more will. If a man +loves one and he sees that no one else does, he persuades himself that +he does not. For he thinks that if no one else loves one, one is not +worth loving. But if many love one, he persuades himself that he does, +because if many love one it must be right and proper for him to do it. +Now, you little beast, you must help, after putting him further off, to +bring him nearer by making him think that he loves and desires me more +than any of the twenty." + +These philosophies of her own teaching, changed and informed with the +aroma of Hoshiko, went far to convince Isonna. + +"Sweet mistress," said the repentant servant, "the gods pardon me--and +you--you also pardon me--if I have done wrong. But this--this I will +do--and swear it on the tablet of my father: If he should offer you +marriage, I will go with you to some place where he can never know. I +will keep your secret forever. Such things have happened. In another +country the gods will not follow. Even to the country of some barbarian +people, like America, I will go. What gods are there? Certainly none of +our gods--such as know you and him. But I will _not_ say that you have +been the creature of twenty lovers!" + +"But only to make him understand that he loves me--now--here--to-day? We +have given him doubt! The rest does not matter." + +Isonna was repentant but not helpful. + +"Well--study--think--you little beast! And be more careful next +time--then whisper it to me. How to make him understand!" + +But there was no further communication from the maid. + +In the evening Arisuga said:-- + +"If what I have been thinking all day--since the events of last +night--is correct, and also meets your approval, I will take you." + +And the little Lady Hoshi, shocked and stunned and shivering at her +heart, answered:-- + +"Yes, lord." + +And again that night she wept--not an hour--many hours. For you will +have observed that Shijiro Arisuga did not say that he would marry--but +only take her. (There is a difference in Japan.) And he did not ask her +parents. + +"You see, he knows!" she sobbed to the faithful maid. "Oh, it was so +sweet--so sweet--that I forgot that I must not. And when I thought he +loved me I was sure he would say 'I will marry you,' even if he did not +mean it. But he only said, 'I will take you.' So--he does not love +me--no! Well, Isonna, he shall have me. And I will enter his very soul! +And then, some day, he will regret those awful words, and when he does I +will die where he can see me afterward. You shall dress my hair in the +shimada fashion, with flowers." + +"He does _not_ know," said the maid. "And he does love you. It is the +result of telling him that you have had twenty lovers!" + +"Ah, Isonna, do not make my sorrow heavier. That would be worse. He +would not dare to say that to even me--if I were not what I am." + +The maid still insisted. + +"Then to-morrow I will tell him. If he would say that to a lady, who he +thinks has dismissed many suitors for him, he shall know that he has +said it to one who is not a lady and who has had no suitor but him +alone." + +"And one who has parents to be consulted! Not like one who goes to +Geisha street without the leave of parents or uncles," advised the maid, +with great severity. + +"Yes," sobbed the girl. "Geisha street! Refuge of the forsaken! Oh, love +exalts, as we do our parents. It does not demean. So, there is no love, +no love! No matter what I am, however low, no matter what he is, however +high, if he loved me he would ask my parents for leave to marry me--even +if he only meant to take me. And I thought he loved me! Do you remember +how, only a little while ago, I wished him only to know well that he +loved me! Alas, he knows now that I love him, but he has told me +odiously, odiously, that he does _not_ love me! Yes, Isonna, he shall +have me. Then I will die." + + + + +THE MAKING OF A GODDESS + + + + +XVI + +THE MAKING OF A GODDESS + + +So she said the next day, not now with the aplomb of a lady, but as a +servant:-- + +"Lord, there is a reason why you cannot--even--" she choked in her +throat--"take me. Do you not know it?" + +"Do not call me lord," he said, "as if you were a servant and I your +master." + +"It is right that I should do so, lord." + +"I won't have it," he laughed. + +And he had never seemed so beautiful nor the sound of his voice so +tender. But she went on as she had planned in her sleepless night. + +She was kneeling at his feet now--her head upon the mats--reaching out +to touch him. + +"Dear lord, I have deceived you," she said. "My only excuse is that it +was sweet. All the sweetness I have had in my small life. Lord, I am +young. But I had scarcely smiled until you came. In Japan we were +accursed. I was beautiful and my father pitied me and brought me here +where no one knew. Lord, I am an eta." + +Arisuga recoiled from the word. The instant would have been +inappreciable to measures of time. But in it the girl's heart leaped and +fell with its own understanding. In the same instant Arisuga knew all +that had so puzzled him concerning the beautiful creature at his feet. +And he understood what his saying must have been to her. For this he +would make a soldier's great reparation--and at once! That was the way +of Arisuga. + +"Then you have known no one--no man but me?" + +"No," whispered the girl. "I thought if I had twenty lovers, you would +wish me the more." + +"And what I have foolishly taken for the advances of experience have +been innocencies!" + +Not she, but Isonna, spoke out:-- + +"Yes, lord. It was as I said. I am here now, when men might wish her, to +see that none approach. There has been no one but you." + +"Little Lady Hoshi," said Shijiro Arisuga, to her bruised heart, "there +is but one reparation I can make for yesterday. It is to wish you to +become my wife--to-day." + +"But, lord, beautiful lord," cried the girl, "you did not hear what I +said. I spoke too low. I was at your feet--" and now she deliberately +raised her agonized face to his that there might be no mistake--"Lord, I +am an eta! The accursed, despised caste! To the samurai we are as +lepers! No samurai in all the thousands of years of our empire has ever +married an eta! None has ever touched one! Lord, you did not hear!" + +"I heard. Pray, call me lord no more, but husband." + +"Li--li--Pardon me, husband, I have been taught that I am not to expect +marriage." + +"Who taught you that?" + +"Even my father! My mother!" + +"Gods! It shall be to-morrow." + +"Yi--yes, li--li--husband," chattered Hoshiko. + +"And on that day there shall be a new goddess to be worshipped, and her +name shall be called Star-Dream! And the first prayer she shall hear +will be from a very brutal soldier to be forgiven for a little start +upon hearing a certain untrue word. For no goddess can be an eta--even +if it were possible for a mortal as beautiful as you to be an eta. So, +even to-day, see," as he gathered her from the floor strongly into his +arms, "you are my goddess--to-morrow you will be my wife." + +"Lord, I have no wedding garments! You know that though a Japanese +maiden has always ready her garments for death or marriage, an eta maid +has only those for death ready. It is presumption to have--the--the +others." + +"Then there shall be no wedding garment but this," and he touched the +dainty thing she wore. "Where are your parents that I may ask their +consent?" + +Hoshiko did not know. But Arisuga suspected that they were close behind +the fusuma listening with staring eyes and gaping mouths. + +He suddenly pushed aside the slides--and there they were. + +"To-morrow I wed your daughter," he said to them with his soldier's +savagery. + +He respectfully gave them time for an answer--but he meant them to +understand that they dare not refuse. And together, when they had the +breath for it, they bowed to the very earth and said:-- + +"Yea, august lord!" + +Arisuga bowed haughtily in return, and closed the slides upon them. + +"You see," he said to Hoshiko, "there is nothing but the three times +three between us and our earth-heaven, goddess!" + +"Yes, lord," she shivered. + +She begged for delay, but he would not grant it, so all that night, +while he slept near, she and Isonna in the next room strove to make a +trousseau out of her shroud. + + + + +THE ETA + + + + +XVII + +THE ETA + + +Now, even when Arisuga had spoken of marriage, he had the thought that +it would probably not be longer than for his stay in China. At his going +there would be a happy understanding that this meant divorce and that +she might marry again. For he was bound by his oath to the great death, +that she knew; and if this were to be all, it mattered little that +Hoshiko was an eta. In China it was not heinous. + +Yet even thus early the thought of some one else finding this wild +flower when he was gone as he had found it--and, alas! of doing as he +was about to do--he did not like that. He did not like his part in it. +It haunted his dreams there in the room next to her and he woke. + +She was sobbing. Then he heard her mother: + +"Here is the sword," she said, in a voice hard as steel. "Be brave! +First pray!" + +"Yes," sobbed Hoshiko. + +Arisuga crashed through the paper wall between them like the +thunder-god. Before him was Hoshiko, preparing the sword for its work. +About her, on the floor, was spread the pitiful evidence that she had +tried to improvise a trousseau out of her funeral garments. There was a +sheer white kimono of silk, the sleeves of which she had lengthened to +the wedding size. (Death and marriage are both white in Japan.) She had +just laid it down. It was with this--all useless now--that she had +wrapped the sword. Above her stood her mother. + +"What does this mean?" demanded Arisuga, taking the sword from Hoshiko. + +"My mother wishes me to die," sobbed the girl. + +"And you?" asked Arisuga, savagely. + +"I wish to live. To marry you, lord." + +"There are no wedding garments," said the mother. + +"Nor any funeral garments now!" said Arisuga, slashing them with the +sword. + +"You wish my daughter for only a little while--then go!" + +"That is my affair. I _take_ her!" + +"O Jizo," Hoshiko whispered within herself, "I thank you! Do not let +your mercy stop! Perhaps--perhaps--O Benten!" + +"You become an eta if you marry her," Hoshiko's mother was saying. + +"In Japan," admitted Arisuga. "That is the way the unwise men of old +worked to prevent the marriage of etas--and so blot out the caste. But +this is China." + +And now as the young soldier looked down upon the pitiful little heap at +his side, a great shame rose in his soul that he had ever thought of +marrying her for a little while, and, quite like Arisuga, he rushed in +his penitence from one extreme to the other. + +"By all the eight hundred thousand gods, I will marry her for all my +lives!" + +No adjuration, no promise, could be greater than that. Some men had +sworn fealty to a woman for two lives--some for three or four--and it +was said that once a man had sworn to love a great poetess for seven +lives; but no one had ever yet, so it was said, sworn his love, much +less marriage, for all his lives. Yet even this did not stop the savage +mother of Hoshiko, bent upon her daughter's honorable death rather than +her dishonorable marriage. + +"How will you assure me of this?" demanded she. + +"By nothing but my word," said Shijiro, with all his samurai's +haughtiness. + +"Gods! Gods! How mighty and wise you are, lord!" sobbed Hoshiko, kissing +his feet. + +"But you will not be satisfied to live in China. You will take her to +Japan, where both will be accursed etas," went on the implacable mother. +"You are a soldier." + +"I am a soldier," answered Shijiro Arisuga. "In the army there is +neither eta nor samurai. All are equal. All are sons of the emperor. +This is Yamato Damashii. The New Japan! And I am Shijiro Arisuga! That +is the end!" + +And it was the end. Here was a soldier who could vanquish the Medusa +mother of Hoshiko by the cold process of words. + +"Witnesses! Sake! I will not leave this lady again until she is my +wife!" + +And so terrible was this Shijiro Arisuga in his wrath that everything +happened as he ordered--and they were married. I wish they might have +lived happily ever after. But it was only a few glad weeks. Yet, in +those little days and hours, she did what she had threatened: crept into +his heart so deeply that he was never to dislodge her quite until he +died. And it was here Shijiro Arisuga thought for the second time, +without suspicion to mar it, that the happiest moment of his life had +come. + +Fancy the joy of it all! Sure, I cannot tell it. I have no fit words. It +was infinitely better than either had dreamed. The dainty little +creature known as Hoshiko bloomed into splendor as Madame +Shijiro--perhaps because she had no thought--absolutely none--for +anything but him. And he was daily more and more amazed at the number of +thoughts he spent upon her, who, he had once fancied, he could leave +behind for some one else--for many others. + +Indeed, it came to such a state that he had little thought for anything +but her. The military death was forgotten--Yone was. + +"Now if we dream," he laughed to her one day, "take heed that we do not +wake. For this dream is such as I have never dreamed before. In it are +perfumes and melodies, caresses and touches, passions and calms, sleeps +and wakings, and all delights." + +"And you," laughed his wife, flinging herself upon him. + +"And you," he laughed back, not putting her away. + +"And that thing the foreigners call love." + +"Grown larger in our sunny East than they know it in their chilly West!" +added her husband. + + + + +TO THE EMPEROR + + + + +XVIII + +TO THE EMPEROR + + +But the little paradise she had made for him there was one day invaded +by two soldiers with some mysterious order, the command of which was +that he must rejoin his regiment at once, though there was now no war. + +"It is 'on to the emperor,'" laughed Arisuga, "and I must go. I had +forgotten--thank _you_! Forgotten the emperor! The death!" + +"Is it far to the emperor?" asked his little wife. + +"Yes," sighed and laughed Arisuga, rubbing her cheek against his--you +know they were of precisely the same height. + +"And there is danger?" + +"Oh, yes," said her husband, indifferently. + +"If you should be killed, you will let me know at once?" + +"Certainly, I will tell you myself," laughed he. "For what is that +killing to this going away from you!" + +"Oh--it is not so sad as waiting--waiting--waiting--for you to come +again! Have I made you happy?" + +"As a god," he said. + +"Then, if you should not be killed--you will come back to be happy +again?" + +"Nothing but death shall keep me from you!" + +"Swear--by your eyes--by your heart--by your soul--by your mother's, +your father's memory!" + +All of which he did--still laughing. + +"What more, beloved one?" + +"Only your own sweet word, my beautiful lord, that you will come back. +Say this: 'Beloved who loves me more than the rest in Buddha's bosom, +and whom I love as much--' That is true, is it not?" + +"That is true," he laughed. + +"'I will come back at the first moment of opportunity, if I live, to +my--wife!'" + +He repeated this after her. + +"Now go! The waiting will be ecstasy. Go! The sooner you go, the sooner +you will return. I am not afraid. I am your wife. You have said it. Here +or there, in the earths or the heavens! For all your lives--all, all! +And I will be no other man's wife while I live! Or after death. And some +day you shall have a son--like you in everything!--to keep the lamps +alight when you are dead. For there will be for you a soldier's shrine. +Now go or my heart will burst. And remember that in China or America or +Germany I am your wife! But in Japan I am an eta--and you. Remember! +Some day there will be a son, some day--_soon_!" + +For if nothing else would bring him back, she thought this untrue +promise would! + +And so they parted--she pulling him back and pushing him off--there by +the Sacred City he had helped to win--until she closed her eyes and +clenched her hands and flung herself on the ground, face down, and would +not touch or speak to him again. When he was out of sight she was sorry, +and ran to the roof whence she could see the hills. There he was, +walking between the two soldiers! And he turned because she so +desperately wished him to--the gods made him do it, of this she was +certain--and waved a hand to her; and with both of hers she sent after +him all the blessings of the immortal gods. + +"I will--I will be brave," she cried terribly to Isonna, who had said +nothing. "I will be brave as he!" + +"But how can we when all our life has gone yonder!" + +And the maid sobbed in utter abandon. + +"You love him too? You! Isonna, the savage, the eta, the man-hater! The +declaimer against him, and me, and love! You! Oh, gods!" + +"Yes," whined the maid. + +"Come," cried her mistress, with tears and laughter. "He shall have two +widows!" + +She embraced her maid violently enough for bodily injury. + +"Oh, is not the world beautiful!" cried Hoshiko. "I, who never hoped to +be a wife at all, am the wife of a god. And he who had no thought of one +goes yonder leaving two widows! Oh, girl brute, we are his wife for all +his dear lives! Yes, we will be brave! We are a soldier's wife!" + + + + +ON MIYAGI FIELD + + + + +XIX + +ON MIYAGI FIELD + + +But the mystery of his summoning was no more than this: One morning the +regiment was aligned on Miyagi field, in parade uniforms, and in such a +tremendous spirit as was never before known. Yet no one seemed to +understand the purpose of it. And, there, at about the centre of all the +glory, was Shijiro Arisuga himself, with his beloved colors once more +above his head--the same that he had twice fallen and risen with! Pale +he was, and ill-looking still. And the bandage on his head yet smelled +of drugs--for this excitement was a bit too much for him after the quiet +of China. Nevertheless it is not safe to let you fancy how happy little +Arisuga was--nor how his heart thumped. You will be likely to fall short +of the fact. + +Now, far away on his right, came a glittering cavalcade, and the +regiment began to sing with the bands massed in his front: first, his +own exultant song, then the Kimi Gayo--hoarse, iron, terrible--announced +the coming of the emperor of Japan. This gave way to acclaim, and, to +the mongolian roll of on-coming "Banzais!" the emperor galloped down the +line, with all his resplendent suite, and, by all the gods, stopped +directly in front of Arisuga and faced the regiment! At that the singing +stopped and the playing of the bands, and there was that silence before +the sovereign which is more impressive than any acclaim. All the colors +of the regiment were trooped in a little square before Arisuga into +which the emperor rode--all the colors but his, whereat he wondered. + +To his last day the little color-guard does not know precisely what +happened after his name was called. + +"Shijiro Arisuga, attention! Forward! To the emperor!" + +Though choked with amazement, the little color-guard forgot nothing of +his mechanical duty. At "Attention!" his flag went straighter, higher, +his chest bulged, his legs grew stiff, and his hand flew to his visor. +"Forward to the emperor!" and, almost unconscious with his emotion, he +yet stepped straightly forward until he stood directly in the Presence. +He knew that before him was a white horse with very pink nostrils, which +gently raised and lowered a hoof, now and then. That on the horse sat a +grave, sad man, the plumes of whose kepi, as he looked kindly down upon +the little color-guard, half veiled his eyes. + +A bit of a smile grew there as his sovereign, for the first time, saw +how small he was. Arisuga did not know the reason for that smile, but he +felt it all through, and a tear started to his eyes. For you will +remember that he was not meant for a soldier, but for simple and +beautiful things. + +Then Mutsuhito spoke to him. + +"Shijiro Arisuga, the emperor is proud of such sons as you! Let him +never regret his pride. It is upon you and such as you that the empire +rests and must always rest. Be steadfast in your patriotism. No one in +the army bears so great a responsibility as he who guards the colors. +With them in sight my sons will follow anywhere--everywhere. When they +are down, their guiding-star has set. For your flag is your whole +country, all your ancestors, your myriad gods, your emperor--your all! +And every eye watches it! Twice in battle, you have raised your flag +when it has fallen. The circumstances show great valor. Your emperor has +a thousand eyes. He is everywhere, and always he knows and sees all the +acts of his sons. He knows and has seen yours. And for them he decorates +you with the order--" + +Shijiro Arisuga's sick head drooped upon his breast and would hold no +more. But presently he knew that the glittering cavalcade had wheeled +and was out of sight, that the colors had returned to their places, that +the regiment singing again his song was marching home, and that, for a +very inadequate reason to him, he wore a medal over his heart and was +nominated by the emperor himself Hero! + +Well, that was all. But for the third time Shijiro Arisuga was certain +that the happiest moment of his life had come--as well as that he had +made a tremendous fool of himself. The tears rolled down his face all +the way to the barracks. + +But after that do you suppose he would ever let the flag go down? Do you +suppose that he could love anything more than his colors? Well, you are +to judge at the end. For now this last obligation was added to that +which first made him a soldier. And the gods, his ancestors, his father, +the emperor, the world, looked always on! + +Whatever we may think, it was true that this tremendous moment blotted +out all others. Long ago he had forgotten Yone. Now he forgot Hoshiko. +He saw before him nothing but the sun-gilt path of glory. The emperor, +the flag, the gods, the shades, his father's honor, were in his +thoughts, and nothing of love. + + + + +THE FADED GLORY + + + + +XX + +THE FADED GLORY + + +But presently the glory faded (alas! nothing fades more quickly than +glory!) and Arisuga thought again of Hoshiko. Yet it was still good to +be back among those whose trade like his own was war. And there were +pretty words to listen to--which made the heart swell--and friends +joyously to caress one, and others to recount one's courage--for at +least two weeks: then all was as before, and Arisuga had only his medal +as a surety that all the heroic splendor of Miyagi Field had ever been. +It was then that he began not only to think of but to wish for +Hoshiko--her hands--her voice--her laughter. In another week he would +have given it all for these! And he had sworn to go back. But how could +he--now? It was like open treason. Yea, so it is! Glory may fill our +lives for a while, but presently it becomes smaller than a woman's +steadfast love--as it is smaller. Then he began to think of bringing +Hoshiko to Japan. There was that theory, you will remember, that in the +army there were neither samurai nor eta--only soldiers. Only sons of the +emperor! Understand what that means--to be a son of the emperor. Yet no +one but a Japanese can. Remember that the emperor is a god! + +The yearning for Hoshiko grew upon him until he knew that he must do +something definitive. Either she must come to him, or he must go to her, +or he must forget her. Forget her! For three nights he strove to keep +her out of his thoughts. When she came he would sing--shout madly. But +she came quite easily through the songs. Then he cursed--everything +which had conspired to bring about his unhappy status, pausing only +before the emperor. She came smiling, seductive, through the curses. + +Then he remembered the kindly face of the emperor and took a moment's +hope. He would understand, and perhaps permit him to live in China. But +when he told Zanzi his hope, that officer grew savage:-- + +"What! After the emperor has decorated you, touched you, you +want--actually _want_--to go away from him? Adopt another country? Sir, +if he should know that you have such small purposes, I think he would +recall your medal." + +Then he thought it might be looked at differently, if they knew that he +was married. Especially if they could see Hoshiko. Of course this was +impossible, since she could not come to Japan. But he felt that, if he +could interest his colonel in the facts, he could give him an adequate +description of Hoshiko. No one, he thought, need know that she was an +eta. Having secured so much, he would intimate that he had no intention +of adopting another country, but that the air of China was necessary for +his recovery; that the retrogression in his convalescence, which all +noticed and spoke of, was because of the now unaccustomed air of Japan. + +He told Colonel Zanzi tentatively, not that he was married--but that he +wished to marry. Zanzi was opposed to marriage for soldiers. + +"I am sorry," grinned the colonel, with a shrug. "Why must you many? It +is peace. Are the yoshiwara and Geisha street empty?" + +"I have given my promise," said Arisuga. + +"Oh, well," replied the colonel, with the air of dismissing a hopeless +and useless topic, "if she is a samurai--" + +"I have not inquired concerning that," said the color-bearer, +untruthfully. + +"But you must," said the officer, sharply. + +"The old order is no more," quoted Arisuga against him. "I have heard +you say yourself, Colonel Zanzi, that in the army there is neither eta +nor samurai,--only sons of the emperor." + +"In time of war, yes," finished the colonel. "We need them all then. +But, these are times of peace. And the old order lives always. I have +never said otherwise. You, sir, the son of a samurai who died at Jokoji, +even if he died on the wrong side, ought not to need to be told that. +Sir, no member of this regiment marries below his caste! If you are +thinking of such a thing, I regret it. Your decision lies between this +woman and the emperor, who gives you life, and who, when he accepts you +as his son, takes back that life again to himself to dispose of at his +will. You cannot have forgotten the samurai obligation,--not to live +under the same heavens nor to tread the same earth with the enemy of +your lord. You must leave it, or the enemy must. This woman, sir, puts +herself in opposition to your emperor. She is, therefore, his enemy, and +consequently yours. Nevertheless the emperor is gracious. He leaves the +choice to his sons. But they must take the consequences. Good morning, +sir." + +But the color-bearer did not move. He stood there still with his hand to +his forehead. + +"Good morning!" thundered the colonel. + +And even that could not frighten him. He was momentously deciding +between the emperor and Hoshiko. + +"I desire to say, sir, that I shall not marry," said Arisuga. + +"I am glad to hear it. The soldier who marries is a fool." + +And therefore the little color-guard set himself to fight again, and to +the end, against the invincible thing called love. It makes me smile as +I think of it. Who has ever vanquished it? At first he stubbornly +thought of other battles he had fought and won. But he was surprised +that this brought no courage to the new kind of conflict. She came in +the visions of night, like the sappers and miners, when he was least +defended against her, smiling, beckoning. He could see her and touch +her, and know that she was at his side. + +Now all things mightily conspired to make that thing he had once thought +of in China--a temporary alliance,--a going away, an easy forgetting, +another marriage, many--to be more fully than he could have hoped. + +It was only necessary that he should remain in Japan. Time would do the +rest. He used to wonder, in the night, under the stars, how long it +would take her to understand, then forget, then to take another husband. +He never got over this latter without waking his sleeping comrade by a +certain wild violence of passion. + +He thought of it with a pitying laugh at himself--now mad to go back +where he was denied the going--to have her there who must not +come--whose coming would be ruin. + +One night he spoke wildly to this comrade:-- + +"I tell you that she will never forget, never take another: if she did, +I would kill her! But I am the liar and the scoundrel--I. She chose +me." Concerning which interruptions of his repose his sleeping-mate +continued to complain to headquarters. + +A dozen times he sat down to write to her. But what comfort was that? It +was herself he wanted: the bodily presence which could softly touch him, +the voice which could gently speak to him, all the beauty which he might +see! A dozen times he threw the unfinished letter from him. + +And so, finally, this fight against Hoshiko became a rout. Every night, +when he should have slept, it came on--like an enemy who knew the time +and place of the weakness of his adversary. If there had only been no +nights to fight through! At last his bunk-mates so complained of him +that the doctor sent him to live out of the barracks, where he would +disturb no one. He had a small house to himself. + +But in this new solitude she came and stayed and possessed him. She made +him again to possess her. She was there always. The night mattered no +more. He saw her eyes in the dusk, heard her voice in daylight. He +often parted the shoji--sometimes to find vacancy--when his mood was +practical and he had slept well; but often when he had not eaten or +slept, and the visions came--to have her swiftly in his arms. + +Presently a certain infidelity came and lodged in him, and the knowledge +of it spread through the army. + +"What a spirit must that be of the emperor--the gods--the +augustnesses--even a father waiting in the Meido--which would not permit +him to have one small woman!" + +That is what he publicly said. And, worse, he had once thought of +throwing his medal into the moat near by and of escaping to China. Of +deserting the emperor he had doubly sworn to serve. His gods, his +father, the shades. Perhaps there was but one thing in the old days, +worse than the eta--the deserter. He thought of this and took terrible +pause. + +Finally it was known in the army that Arisuga was mad--quite mad. The +wound in his head had done it. His talk was of a woman: an houri, if +ever there was one, should his talk of her be believed. He had cursed +the gods, reviled the augustnesses, the spirit of his father, the +emperor who had pinned the medal on his coat. Certainly Shijiro Arisuga +was mad. He himself heard this, and thought to take a cunning advantage +of it. If he were mad, he would be invalided, and then he would see +China again. + + + + +IN THE ANDON'S LIGHT + + + + +XXI + +IN THE ANDON'S LIGHT + + +But one night there came a gentle tapping on his shoji--like the dream. +He sat up and listened. There was more tapping--still like the dream. +And then a whispered voice--not the dream--which woke him to mutiny:-- + +"Ani-San! Beloved! Do you no more wish me? Oh, it is so long--so long! +And we have walked--walked--walked. I would rather know and die. At +first I thought you dead--you said nothing but that should keep you from +me--death! death! And I could not sleep--I never slept! At last I +decided to come and get your body, steal it out of the grave, and take +it back with me, where I might weep over it and make the offerings--only +your dear, dead body I have loved and which has loved me--lain down by +my side, held me in its arms! And so I came with Isonna--faithful Isonna +is here--and learned that you are not dead, and all the glory. O +beloved! My soul swells with joy of you. You, mine, once mine, so +glorious in the eyes of our country! For, oh, Ani-San, it is _my_ +country, too! They shall not take that from me, though it makes me an +outcast. And my feet touch it now. My country! Nippon! Nippon! After all +the evil years of exile. My emperor! My gods! Forgive me, beloved, but +it must all come out of my heart, or it will burst. I know you are +there. I know you listen! I see--touch--adore--your shadow. I have seen +_you_! I have hid in the trees--Isonna and me--for three days, until we +are very hungry and have begged rice. Three times--on each day--we have +seen you. Three nights we have watched your dear shadow. Once it prayed +and then rushed upon the outside and spoke loudly to the heavens--words +which we could not hear. Were they of me? Were they hate or love? +To-night I touch your shadow--put my lips upon it on the paper. +For--yes--I know that is all I am ever to have: the shadow of you. You +do not wish me! That is what my mother said; and laughed. She struck me +and said her words concerning you had all come true. Ah, pardon, lord. +What matter that? It is three days! Three days! We could not die until +the moon was dark; for some one, passing, might see and find our bodies. +But I am glad for those three days. Now the moon is gone--the moon which +sees our deeds and tells them to the gods of night; and, lord, only +to-night, when the moon was gone, could I come to you to say +farewell--Ani-San, to-night we die--Isonna and I. Unless you still wish +me? No! Pardon that. But--if you should! Ah! if you should! Speak one +word though it be Go! Only one word, that I may die in the blessed sound +of your voice! Oh, it has been so lonely! For you first taught me how to +be happy--to laugh, to love. And then you went, and took it all +away--all, all away. Beloved, you do not wish us--No? so, to-night we +die. We shall not harm you, even in our death. As long as this little +paper wall is between us you are not contaminated even while we live. No +one will know us in this far land; and we shall die where no one will +ever find us; only the gods, only the pitying gods. So we do not harm +you in coming here. We would not have come had we known you lived. +Ani-San, it is finished--all quite finished; you wish me no more. I hear +no blessed word. Lo! I listen--listen with my soul--but I hear no word! +All the gods in all the skies bless you. All the gods in all the skies +make you happy. All the gods in all the skies make you glorious. +Ani-San, beloved, farewell, forever and forever, farewell!" + +At first the little color-bearer put his hands madly to his ears; but +not for long. Could you? And at the end he heard her sink slowly to the +earth, slipping, sighing, down the shoji. + +At that moment he would have had her if the empire itself had fallen for +it. He did not wait to part the shoji. He plunged through them as he had +done once before in China. And there at his feet was the pitiful little +heap. Too numb she was to be wakened by his tumult. + +He carried her within and laid her in the lamplight. The pretty face was +ghastly with starvation. The feet were nearly bare, for walking had worn +out her sandals. The kimono was one he knew. But it had been in the rain +and had trailed many tired miles in the dust. He did not need the light +of the andon to tell him of her sufferings. Nor even her voice. And +presently when she woke it was not of that she told. Indeed, of that she +never spoke. It was all forgotten in that waking in his arms. And all +she said--all she ever said of it--was to ask him, with a breath, if she +dreamed. + +She slept a little, then woke and said with terror:-- + +"Isonna!" + +"Yes, beloved," answered Arisuga. "Where is she? You have slept +sweetly." + +"Has the clock struck?" + +"The clock has struck." + +"Then she is dead," whispered Hoshiko. "She was to die first--when the +clock struck. And I was sleeping--sweetly, you said. Oh, gods! Go to the +moat. I will pray." + +At the moat there was nothing but some pebbles dislodged where small +feet might have tracked. Some fresh soil was uncovered, where two large +stones had been taken. One was gone, the other waited at the edge of the +waters. And in this he knew how the manner of their death had been +planned. Each was to take a great stone in her small arms and wade into +the moat until--At the piteous picture he who had seen death by +thousands choked in his throat and followed Isonna into the water. + +But it was too late--much too late. And so he left her there, where she +had chosen to be, for him and for Hoshiko, quite at rest, with her +burden still clasped strongly in her arms, and only a little prayer to +Buddha--nembutsu--Isonna! + + + + +TADAIMA--TADAIMA! + + + + +XXII + +TADAIMA--TADAIMA! + + +It was three days before she could smile. Then she said wanly:-- + +"What will you do with _me_, Ani-San? Must I die, too? You cannot go +back to China with me." + +"By all the gods in all the skies we shall part no more! We can +die--yes--together--but part never!" + +"Alas! that is all we can do now, beloved, for I have harmed you in +coming here." + +"You have brought me the happiness I do not deserve. I will never again +put it in jeopardy." + +But you are to understand that even that, dying together, perhaps, with +her obi binding them close to each other, walking arm in arm, into the +sea, or the moat, until they could but dimly know that the sun was yet +in the heavens, on through the green water, more and more dim unto +darkness, peace, sleep--you are to understand that this, death with him, +was next in its sweetness to life with him. + +He meant to go to the colonel; but not yet. You remember how she raped +those few days of happiness out of the very hand of fate in China. So +now Arisuga said Tadaima! Wait! + +For again his little wife had to have a trousseau, and she was yet very +weak and tired. And on the way she had sold her pretty hair-pins for +food--these had to be replaced. But so potent is happiness, that it was +not three days more till all her loveliness had returned and bloomed +again--just in time to be adorned by the new kimono of blue crepe, and +the new kanzashi of tortoise-shell and gold. + +Still it was Tadaima! + +For three days more Arisuga lived in his paradise and then went +resolutely to the colonel. + +"I am married," he said bluntly, with his salute. + +"What?" roared the colonel. + +"I was married when I was here before." + +Finally the officer smiled. That is the way he would have been likely +to do it at the color-bearer's age. + +"I remember that you said you did not mean to marry! You _were_ married! +Well, well, if she is a samurai--" + +"She is an eta," said Arisuga. "That one in China." + +"Ah! After a little while you can divorce her. No one need know of it." + +"I beg your pardon." + +"You will not?" + +"I cannot." + +"You understand your position the moment this becomes public?" + +"You cannot make me an eta in the army. I am a soldier." + +"You will ask for a furlough. Time indefinite upon recall. It will be +granted," said Zanzi, coldly. + +This was the color-bearer's dismissal from the regiment. For a moment he +could not speak. + +"You are too ill for service," continued the colonel, less coldly. "If, +however, you should think it best to take my advice, let me know of your +recovery." + +"I thank you, sir," said Arisuga, chokingly, "it is impossible. The +flag--my flag--?" he begged. + +"Good morning," said the officer; "I will find some one for the flag." + +But, after he was gone the colonel determined to see what manner of +woman this was who could make Arisuga give up his flag. Orojii had said, +in China, that she was pretty! He pictured her an Amazon, with +tremendous force, and painted cheeks, who had enslaved the little +color-bearer, and he meant to exhibit his authority against hers and +save Arisuga from her. + +"It is always so," he was thinking as he arrived at the little house, in +some haste to be ahead of Arisuga, "a little fellow like Shijiro is sure +to choose some woman twice his size for a wife, and to be under her +thumb ever after." + +You may fancy, therefore, his surprise, when a little flower of a maiden +pushed aside the door for him, and, to his question, announced that she +was Shijiro's wife. For a moment the colonel did not speak. Tremendous +readjustment was necessary. In the meantime she had led him within. + +"Sit down," she said. "I will bring you some tea. My husband will be +here very soon. He has gone to see his colonel. Alas! you must sit on +the floor in the Japanese fashion. We have none of the new foreign +chairs!" + +In an instant she had the tea before him. + +"I do not care for tea," said the soldier. "I am Colonel Zanzi." + +"His colonel!" gasped the little wife. "And--and--you have come to be--" + +"As kind to you as I can be," said the soldier, hastily. "Be at peace!" + +"Oh! Is it true?" The tears ran over her eyes at once. "You know? And +yet you will be kind? Oh, Jizo--that is my favorite goddess--look upon +you! But you will smoke a little? See, here is my own pipe." She +cleansed it and filled it and put it to his lips, and he who smoked only +cigars smoked Hoshi's little metal pipe. "And he is not disgraced? I +have not ruined him? No! Or you would not be here smoking my pipe. You +would be savage. You would wish to kill me. Oh, I know he is the +emperor's and you, also, even me! I know how that is. Everything for the +emperor! Wives! Children! Even parents! Why, was it not Akima Chinori +who killed his child, which was too small to be left alone, so that he +might obey the call? 'I have given you life,' so says the imperial call, +'now give it back to me.' But I will not harm him. I will help him to be +a soldier. Oh, I am brave! You cannot think how brave. It is only +waiting, waiting, waiting, that I cannot endure. Do you know that we +were married away down there? And that Arisuga-Sama left me to go to the +emperor? Did you know that? And that it was I came to him? He did not +bring me. I meant to die here without harm to him. But only Isonna died. +He is not to blame." + +"Who was Isonna?" asked the soldier. + +"She was my little maid. She was to die first when the clock struck, die +there in the moat--then I. But first I came to see his shadow on the +shoji--touch it. Say farewell. To hear a word, if there were one. I am +afraid I wept, fainted with hunger, and he heard me and took me in and +kept me. He _did_ wish me! He _did!_ But Isonna was dead. Yes, while I +slept in his arms! Dead for us. The tea is very good, excellency?" + +And because she put it into his hands with that fear in her great eyes, +and because of that shaking of the little hand, and that chattering +story in the quavering voice, and those tears, he drank the tea, who +drank only hot brandy. + +"Do you mean to say that Isonna killed herself so that--so that--" + +Even the grizzled soldier choked at the thought. + +"So that no disgrace might come to him. And I--I, also, should have +died--before he knew. Then he would not have been harmed. As long as the +thin paper was between us he was safe--safe as if I were yet in China. +But you do not know how sweet that was--to sleep in his arms, to wake in +his arms--with the words he spoke that night he married me again in my +ears? But while I slept the clock struck. Ah, you know him only as a +soldier! I know him as a lover! A husband! A god!" + +Still this soldier, brought up to the religion of sacrifice, thought of +the serving-woman sacrificially dead there in the moat. + +"Was Isonna an eta, too?" + +"She was an eta, too," said Hoshiko. + +"Gods! And we think you lack spirit--courage--devotion!" + +"No! We are brave!" she said piteously. "We are as ready as you to die +for the emperor! If you will only learn to let us!" + +"I believe you!" said Zanzi. + +"Shall I tell you?" she begged. "He is not at fault. Let me plead for +him!" + +"Yes, tell me," he said. + +But she could only repeat the old story:-- + +"We came because we thought he was dead--he said that only death should +keep him from us--to take his body back with us--only his dear, dead +body. That would have been no disgrace. For the Lord Buddha does not +permit any one to disgrace the dead who cannot help themselves. But when +we knew that he was alive, we knew also that, by coming to Japan, we had +harmed him. Then we meant to die without him knowing, keeping always the +thin wall between us. Where no one could find us after. But I could not +without one word of farewell to his shadow--only his shadow! And one +word from him--if there was one. That would not harm him. Oh, yes, I +knew that I must not touch his body in Japan! But his shadow! Was that +harm? And one word? Would not you have touched his shadow? And he _did_ +wish me--he _did_! And then--I woke in his arms! + +"But the clock had struck while I slept. Eight. And that was the signal +for Isonna to take a stone in her arms and walk into the moat. And +Isonna was faithful. For there he found her afterward, asleep, with the +gods, the great stone in her arms. And that one I was to take is still +there, on the edge of the moat, waiting. But now I cannot die. He has +made my life sweet again. Would you die with life all sweet again, as +the morning glories in the morning? So the stone must wait there. +Perhaps he and I shall carry it together. For, so he says, we shall die, +together, rather than part again." + +"You shall not part. Would you like to go to America?" asked the +officer. + +"No. Nowhere but here." + +For America to her was the country of the barbarians--a horrid waste, +where no flowers grew. + +"But if your husband should go there?" + +"Yes!" + +It did not matter then. + +The colonel rose. + +"Tell him to come to see me again." + +"And you will be as kind to him as you have been to me?" + +"No," smiled the colonel. "He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve +you." But, then, seeing that she did not quite understand his +pleasantry, he added: "I shall be as kind to him as I can be, as I am +permitted to be, for your sake. And you are to tell him that!" + +"Shaka, and all the augustnesses bless you!" + +He held the tiny hands a moment at parting. + +"Once I knew a little lady like you. It was long ago, and there is a +tomb for her in Asakusa. Perhaps she was _not_ like you, not as lovely. +But so it seems now--after the years. If she had not died, I would not +have been a soldier." + +And no one had ever heard the grizzled colonel's voice so soft. + +She sent Arisuga back. But she did not tell him that. + + + + +THE PITY OF THE GODS + + + + +XXIII + +THE PITY OF THE GODS + + +There seemed little kindness in Colonel Zanzi's greeting when Arisuga +arrived. He did not even look up. + +"You will be transferred to a Hakodate regiment," he said in a monotone; +"they are ruffians, but good soldiers. You will report to your new +regiment when you are recalled. Your furlough must be spent in America +and in communication with headquarters." + +This was exile, but mitigated by every possible circumstance. + +"Sir," said Arisuga, with emotion, "I do not deserve this +consideration." + +"No," answered his colonel; "but your wife does." + +Have I let you suppose that Hoshiko accepted all this perilous happiness +without question? No Japanese woman ever does that. It is true that, at +first, there was no thought--there could be none. The gods had put them +both suddenly into a position from which they could not retreat. But +after that, when thought came, and Hoshiko knew that it had all been for +her, and how much it was that he had given--then she began to prepare +her recompense. To you it would have been a strange one, but it was not +so to her. What she had taken beyond her share from the universal +happiness, that she would balance with such suffering as came. + +What she had taken from him, the shade of his father, that she would +restore. What he stood in danger of losing because of her, that she +would insure against loss. And the gods would help her. For they always +heeded such constant and faithful praying as she meant to render. At +last she knew that they would. For they sent her a sign. But before I +speak of that I must go on and make plain what her purpose came finally +to be. Nothing less than to make sure in some way (she waited on the +gods to make the way plain to her) that since she prevented Shijiro from +dying for his emperor in his father's stead, his reparation should come +about in some other way--perhaps some way not thought of as yet--even +by the gods. All she could do now was to pray that if he should die the +small white death, the gods would send _her_ some sort of reincarnation +in which _she_ might accomplish his purpose, though he were dead. And of +course, whether she survived him or not, this was possible, to the +immortal gods. But I think she had no idea that she--she herself--might +herself be the instrument--that the gods meant anything as strange and +startling as that--nor that her reincarnation might be in the very form +of her husband while she yet lived. She would not be likely to think of +precisely that. Until that day of the sign from heaven itself--that day +while they were playing as children might do on the mats. Their feet +were against the groove which held the fusuma. The little soldier +reached upward above his head. + +"I can touch the other mat," laughed Arisuga. + +"And I," laughed his wife, doing the same. + +"What!" cried the soldier. "I am taller than you are." + +Then Hoshiko understood that she ought not to have said that. It was +heinous to make herself the equal of her lord in anything. + +"No, lord," she hastened to say, "I lied--a little lie--while we +sported. I am sorry." + +"It is no lie," laughed happy Arisuga once more; for you will remember +that all her daintiness was then his, and that he was not like other +Japanese husbands; "we are exactly the same height." + +"No, no, no, lord," pleaded Hoshiko, who fearfully knew that it was so, +"you are much taller than miserable small me." + +And, to prove it, she bent her knees within her kimono and stood beside +him, for he had risen to prove the matter. + +But he detected the bent knees and straightened them, and, lo! there was +not a shadow of difference in their height. + +And when the little soldier laughed and was very happy about it, she +laughed too, timorously at first, then more joyously than he. For to be +his equal in something, and to see him happy about it--well, she +supposed that no Japanese girl had ever before such felicity, and +perhaps she was right. + +So, in their playing and laughter, he cried: + +"And I shall be punished for my haughty spirit in thinking I was, and +you shall be rewarded for the humility of yours in thinking you were +not." + +And the manner of this punishment and reward was for him to strip off +her kimono and put it on himself, and his uniform and put it on her. Oh, +you may be sure that she tried to fly in her terror of him, that she +fought and wept and at last utterly exhausted had to let him have his +way--even to tucking her splendid hair under his military cap. She lay +there happily crushed and disgraced until he had made himself so like +her that she hardly knew him. + +But she would not see herself until he brought the mirror and told her +that he was looking at himself. Then she looked, and it was true. With +staring eyes she stood upon her feet and passed the mirror up and down. + +Then suddenly she saw the smiling face of a god in the mirror also, and +knew that this was to be the fashion of the reincarnation she had begged +of the gods. + +She whispered her husband to look into the mirror. + +"There is the face of a god there!" + +Arisuga looked and laughed, but saw no god. + +"It is the reflection of your Jizo," he said, pointing to the goddess +behind her. + +But Hoshiko said it was not that. For, you see, she knew what it was, +and her husband did not--and must not--the sign. + +Now after that Shijiro Arisuga was amazed, considering the terrors out +of which it had first been accomplished, to find his little wife often +in his uniform. And more, to learn that this gentle creature was mad for +the learning which is a soldier's. Of course it was great sport in this +happy time, and Arisuga taught her all he knew!--how to stand and step +and march, to load and fire and intrench herself, and all the hoarse +songs and sayings of the army--among others that battle song of his. But +most of all he taught her how to carry the sun-flag, and how to keep it, +nay, how to retake it if it should be captured--which, however, he +instructed her, illogically, must never happen. + +"Our method of advance," he told her, "is never in thick fat lines--such +delectable food for the shrapnel. One at a time we run to a position we +have fixed in advance. Then we dig. Sometimes there are as many as five +all scattered--never more. After digging holes we make another rapid +advance and do the same, and then, again, until there are three chains +of holes parallel to the enemy. Then other troops advance. They have the +first holes to hide in. They make them deeper and wider and advance as +we did until we have a solid line out near the enemy, the holes being +joined to form a trench. And by that time there are two such trenches to +our rear for those who support us--or to retire to--" + +Here he laughed, and added impressively:-- + +"If that should ever become necessary. But a Japanese soldier goes only +in one direction--forward where the flag is. And as to the flag," he +went on, "that goes forward with the first advance, like this--" + +He rolled it into a ball. + +"But, once it is there, the lines formed, the advance ordered, it is +raised, like this, so that the artillery know where we are when they +fire at the enemy. So," he laughed happily, "when you take my flag +forward, you will go like this--" + +He made her run with bent supple back the length of the apartment. + +"Drop like this; now there is nothing but a small lump of earth to see; +dig like this, lying on the flag, and so on till, out there, in the +first trench, you raise it never to return with it. Then you will hear +the bursting of the gates of all the hells. For our enemies are stupid +and never understand, until they see the flag, what our purpose is, then +they waste their ammunition and we _use_ ours. But then it is too late +for them and it is ours only to go forward and defeat them, led by the +sun-flag." + +There was nothing of this which the girl did not treasure up. And +Arisuga laughed, she laughed, and he never asked or wondered why. + + + + +THE LAND OF THE BRAVE + + + + +XXIV + +THE LAND OF THE BRAVE + + +So, presently, they were in America. On the way over they were quite +happy once more. + +"For there are no etas in America," said Hoshiko. + +But there _was_ the Japan Society in America, which turned its back on +them, etas, whereby they were left in a strange land, with only a +strange language and half pay, all of which would have been beggarly +enough. + +However, that is how it happened that Moncure Jones, who had made a +sudden fortune and wanted a Japanese butler, became the happy master of +Arisuga. He had found them in one of his "raids" upon southern New York, +where they had a little room and were starving and studying the +language. + +Arisuga told his small wife one day that the thing called divorce was +going on in the Jones household and in the courts. They laughed +together about it. Divorce in America meant something very different +from what it did in their country. It appeared that it had been preceded +by tremendous quarrels in the house of Jones, of which Arisuga was a +witness, and an amazed one. For Mrs. Jones had rather the better of the +quarrelling. + +"It is not certain that the divorce will be granted by the judges," said +Arisuga. + +"Do they make people live together who do not wish to?" asked his wife. + +"So it seems," laughed Shijiro. + +From day to day Arisuga went with Jones to the courts to testify of the +quarrelling. Then one day he told Hoshiko that the divorce would be +granted because of the cruel and barbarous treatment of Jones by his +wife. But even then the court was many months in doing what would have +been executed in a few minutes in their country. + +Finally the decree was perfect and Jones needed a housekeeper. He asked +Arisuga if he knew of one as efficient as he was. He spoke to Hoshiko. +An income was more and more needed to provide the money for his return +when his summons should come. For it had surprised them, in the +auriferous American country, how their expenditures grew and their +income failed. + +Well, it pleased Hoshiko: for there would be only so much more time in +her husband's company. Shijiro's time spent with Jones had grown much +more than the time spent with her. Indeed, it was here where the rift +began to show in the little lute of their joy. For Shijiro also learned +some habits in America, save for which they would have had a fair start +on their fund for the return: he gambled. + +Jones, it seemed, was vexed with ennui. To teach Arisuga how to gamble, +and even to let him win, gave him both employment and amusement. Indeed, +with his little winnings, Arisuga began to feel opulent. He put away, +now and then, something for his return, and was more often in good +humor. And as he was happy, so was Hoshiko. For she always reflected +only him. Her one great unhappiness was that he was so constantly away +from her, and more and more so as the time went on, so that often he +forgot to come home to her for several days. Then he would explain that +he with Jones had been on a gambling tour. + +So the little unhappiness which had threatened her life fled quite away +the moment she knew that Jones wanted an honorary housekeeper. In her +innocence she did not reason why he might want to set up such an +establishment. Nor did Shijiro. + + + + +JONES + + + + +XXV + +JONES + + +Jones! He had watery gray eyes and thick lips. He stooped a trifle and +was not so shockingly firm in his gait as most Americans are. Yet he +would smile betimes, and then his mouth seemed armed with yellow fangs. + +"Like the dragon on Hanayama," breathed Hoshiko, shivering herself into +Arisuga's arms the night after she had gone for inspection. "He smiled +at me." + +"A smile is good," said Arisuga. + +"You did not see that smile! It was not good!" + +"Hereafter I shall watch it," laughed Shijiro. + +For Jones's maiyi, or "look-at-meeting," as they called it in their own +language, Hoshiko had dressed her hair anew, put her best kanzashi into +it, brought out that worn but still beautiful kimono in which she had +been married, full still of the flower perfume of her maiden-hood, put +her feet into the tall, ceremonious geta of her own land, and so went, +quite in oriental state (Shijiro would have it so), in a hansom to Mr. +Moncure Jones. No wonder he stared and put on his glasses. In all his +sordid life Jones had not had so fresh a sensation as this. In all his +life he had seen no creature at once so dainty and fragile and splendid. + +When they were home again, came that shuddering of which I have spoken. +And since Hoshiko did not at once take to his plan, but shuddered anew +whenever it was mentioned, Arisuga let her wait, putting Jones off, +until he could convince her rather than command her. For more than ever +it, presently, became necessary for her to go to Jones. Now, strangely, +since that day of the look-at-meeting Arisuga did not often win. On the +contrary Jones did, until there was not only nothing for the passage +being put aside, but a huge debt which appalled Arisuga. So that, in the +end, the only argument he used to Hoshiko was of Jones's wealth. + +"I shall win yet--Jones-Sama says so--all I have lost and more in one +great stake. It is always so, therefore it is lucky to lose. I am not +downcast." + +"But, O beloved, that smile!" pleaded the girl. + +"Nevertheless Jones is rich," said Arisuga. + +"Yet a dragon!" cried the girl. + +"And I kill dragons which frighten little wives," laughed her husband, +without fear. "Besides," he said, "it is well to remember that otherwise +we shall not have the money for the passage when my call comes! You will +go? Yes, you will go. Let us make a friend of this Jones." + +Suddenly Hoshiko saw the hand of the gods in this, also, and went to +Jones. Was not this a part of the way she had prayed to be shown? And +she had impiously rebelled! Because of her rebellion she went with a +certain alacrity. + +Jones smiled often at Hoshiko. So often that Arisuga could not but +notice it. + +"The yellow dragon of Hanayama covets the dove of Arisuga," he laughed. +"Yet doves are not good for dragons. This will be better." + +He handed her the small toilet sword which Japanese women carry. + +"I have heard," said Jones to Shijiro one day, "that Japanese husbands +often rent their wives to pay their debts." + +"That is true, lord," bowed his little butler. + +"For a year, don't you know, or six months, or something like that?" + +"It is true, lord," repeated the butler. + +"And that the wives really like it?" + +"True, lord," answered Arisuga. + +"They don't lose caste after the--er--debt has been paid, but go back to +their husbands?" + +"True, lord." + +"Well, that's a pretty sensible arrangement. You Jap chaps are always +sensible; and"--the yellow fangs came out--"I am your creditor for a +couple of thousand dollars. Arisuga, I am willing to be so paid and to +pay you a couple more thousand than you owe me! Then your passage will +be safe. I don't believe, now, it will be otherwise. I have got you in +too deep a hole." + +Jones laughed hoarsely at his own cunning. + +Arisuga received the suggestion as he would have received an unimportant +business proposition. + +"I will consider and let the enlightened eijinsan know," he said. This, +also, as if it were the mere oriental courtesy of bargaining--the sloth +which is polite. + +"I guess it will be all right," laughed Jones. "Take your time. No one +is proof against the blandishments of American gold. Even oriental +virtue yields to it. Don't you think it will be all right?"--a bit +anxiously. + +"Let the honorable American lord so think," said Arisuga. "I will +consider." + +"I shan't be niggardly, understand. If you are not satisfied with a +couple of thousands, we'll make it a quartette. She is about the dearest +little morsel I have ever seen." + +"Ha, ha!" laughed Arisuga, with American politeness, this time. + +"Ha, ha!" laughed Jones. + +And Hoshiko, taking her cue, laughed too, out of the palest face she had +ever had. For she was present--though she was not thought to know +English enough to understand what was said. + +But that night Jones was awakened by something strange at his throat. It +was a steel blade--and an ominous Arisuga. In one hand he had a candle. +In the other Hoshiko's sharp little sword--close against his skin. + +"Ha, ha!" laughed Arisuga. + +Jones was in no laughing mood. + +"Laugh!" said Arisuga. + +Then Jones brought forth a sickly cachinnation which stopped at the +first note; for it made the sword to penetrate his skin. + +"Lie still--quite still!" admonished the Japanese, with deadly quiet, +and Jones did not move a muscle for a moment, which seemed years. + +Then the light went out and Jones expected death. But nothing happened. +He waited long. The sweat poured out until his bed was wet. He was +certain that he felt that blade still at his throat--and the little +stream of blood from it. But there was no more. He was not dead. At last +he cautiously put his hand out. It encountered nothing. Then he raised +it to his throat. Nothing was there. He leaped out of bed on the other +side. Nothing further happened. He did not even call for the police. + +So the opportunity which Jones had seemed to offer for preparation to +return to Japan when the call came vanished, leaving only the vain thing +he had taught Arisuga--his little skill at cards. This he still tried to +use. But though he sometimes won, he more often lost. Yet he played on, +certain of the great luck which would not only recoup all in one night, +but establish his circumstances far beyond what they had ever been. It +was the old, old gambler's lust. It was the old, old consequence. Luck +seemed cruelly delayed, and they fell into desperate poverty. + +And, worse than all, this--the gambler's fetish--was now the thing which +possessed him. But though he loved the life of chance for itself, he +never lost sight of the more and more frenzied necessity of providing +for his return. For, rumors of war began to hover in the air. Hoshiko +saw less and less of him. And he often forgot her for days together. If +he were mad, for another reason, in Japan, he was mad equally in +America. + +Yet nothing was saved; always such pittances as he could raise, or she, +were spent upon the small gambling devices in which the city abounded, +no matter whether he had food or not. Presently his life was that and no +more: a vain search for luck. But miserable as it was, there was hope in +it, and a certain exhilaration. He was like one who has no doubt of +ultimate good fortune, and wakes daily with the uplifting thought that +this may be the grateful day. And his hope and happiness in it brought +hope and happiness, in the brief whiles it reigned, to Hoshiko, where +happiness came of late not often. Nor hope. + + + + +THE "TSAREVITCH" + + + + +XXVI + +THE "TSAREVITCH" + + +So the little exiles lived and starved, and feasted and loved on; happy +sometimes, sorrowing more often, while Japan was yet at peace. + +Always Arisuga kept his address at headquarters, and always he +waited--listened almost--for the call. But it was long--very long. And +his face grew sharp and his eyes narrow. And more and more in the +waiting and listening he forgot, in America, Hoshiko--his Eastern +Dream-of-a-Star. + +For, presently, it was nearly ten years of this exile. Ten years of +prayer which grew only more fervid as the years doubled upon themselves, +and the hope so long deferred made the heart of Arisuga ill. Ten years +of yearning for their own country, which fate denied them and which +nothing but war could again give to them! The heart of Hoshiko +sickened, too. But it was thus because Arisuga more and more often +forgot her rather than with the homesickness which she suffered as he +did. Yet she guiltily knew that while there was no war she might keep +him, even though he forgot her. So it was he alone at last who prayed +for war. It was sacrilege to obstruct the gods; it was impossible to +pray to be kept from her own perfumed land, so--she stubbornly prayed +not at all. + +And then it did come: the great war--though not as he had fancied it +would. Slowly it got into the air. Every day he spent at the bulletins. +But they said Japan would not fight. Russia was getting and would get +what she wished. She was too great for Japan. And some of the newspapers +began to pour contempt upon his country. She was baying the moon, one +said. + +"What! are there no more samurai in Japan?" Arisuga cried out to his +wife that night. She did not reply. Her silence was almost guilt. For as +the threat of war went on, and as Arisuga grew older, he valued the more +what he had lost for her. "Gods," he proceeded with a hollow laugh, "I +am not a samurai myself. And I must wait my call to be even allowed to +fight." + +"Forgive me, dear lord," said his wife. And the words and her attitude +recalled that other time she was servilely at his feet. + +"Rise!" he commanded impatiently. "And do not call me lord. I am no +more--nothing more--than you--eta! It cannot be helped. We must suffer +it." But there were no caresses--there were never any now. + +Then it came, quite according to Arisuga's fancy--a thunder-clap from +the heavens! Togo had sunk the "Tsarevitch"! + +"At last," cried Arisuga, that day, "I am a soldier once more, if not a +samurai! A son of the emperor! Banzai!" And that night it seemed as if +all the old sweetness had come back and she slept in his arms as she had +used to sleep. + +"All that remains now is the call," he said the next day, still happy. + +He went to the consulate to see that they had his address correctly, but +on the way home he remembered that there was no money for the passage. +For, strangely, this passion of war had obliterated that other passion +of chance! He ran all the way. + +"I must--I must," he said roughly to Hoshiko, "have money for the +passage! When my call comes I shall not be ready. And there is none!" + +"I have not forgotten it, lord," she answered, giving him the little she +had been secretly able to save from his gambling for the purpose. + +Arisuga counted it. He did not even stop to thank her for this +unexpected sacrifice and munificence. + +"Gods! It is not one-tenth," he accused. "We must have more at once. +Jones liked you. Why not?" + +"Yes, lord," said Hoshiko, growing pale. + +"Remember the wives of the forty-seven ronins. They gave themselves to +harlotry for their husbands' cause." + +"Yes, lord, to-morrow," answered the trembling little woman. And though +each day there was a little more money, she did not go to Moncure Jones. +She could not. Some things are impossible! + +All day she was gone, and he thought her there, with the yellow-fanged +dragon, and did not care! Nothing had hurt her heart so much as that. +Each night she came back to him with her pitiful wage in her sleeve. +Arisuga might have thought this strange had he not ceased all thought of +her--that Jones permitted her to come home to him each night with each +day's wages. And he might have noticed, if he had still adored the hands +of satin, that they were stained: now with red, now with blue, yellow, +green. But he never touched the hands any more, and was become impatient +when they touched him void of money. But the little wage, the sixty or +seventy cents which he seized eagerly and put away--you will want to +know how she got them. + +Try, then, to fancy as she did that this was the beginning of her +punishment for the happiness of being his wife. To stay away from the +chance of being with him, from early morning until late night. To watch +the slow-going clock; the shadows as they crept up the wall to the red +stain first, then the blue, then that pale yellow one, scarcely to be +seen at seven o'clock; and then still (for her wish always outran the +shadow) to wait until the clock in the cathedral struck before she +might stop making muslin flowers "for the happy occasions" and go wanly +home to unhappiness. She was a flower-maker--this flower of another land +made flowers for weddings, christenings, festivals, soiling them only, +now and then, with a tear. Yet no one had ever made prettier flowers +"for the happy occasions" than she who had, now, no happy occasions. + +But the war went on, on, and he was not called. + +"Gods!--yes!" he cried to her in his madness. "I understand. I am an +eta! The damned word has passed all through the army. It stands opposite +my name. It makes all my oaths, all my obligations before the gods, +naught. There is but one hope. They will not call me unless the last man +must be put into the field. Then--_then_ they will take the eta. Gods of +the skies! Gods of the earth! Gods of the seas and caverns below--let it +be so! Let my country be among the dregs at the bottom of the cup of the +nations' despair! I--I, Shijiro Arisuga, will bring it--lead it--to +victory with my flag! I! For my father's ghosts will fight with me. +That is what we need! The ghosts of our ancestors! Who can vanquish +them? And, O ye augustnesses,--" he addressed the spirits of his own +ancestors,--"bring it about! For ye--ye alone can vanquish this upstart +foe. And ye must--ye _must_ permit me to make for my father the red +death! Ye must--ye must." + +Do you not see that he was gone quite mad? + +Yet every insane word was a stabbing accusation upon the soul of +Hoshiko, for whom it had all been. And she fancied that she was no more +worth the sacrifice than was one of the morning-glories which were now +only a memory. For she was now as pale, as sad, as evanescent and +fleeting, as they: those morning-glories in their garden in happy China, +unto whose beauty in the dewy morning she had once been wont to liken +her life with this mad Arisuga. Unto whose beauty he had used to liken +her! + + + + +THE SMALL WHITE DEATH + + + + +XXVII + +THE SMALL WHITE DEATH + + +He was not called. The war went terribly on. The bewildered giant was +buffeted, dismembered, at will by the shy pygmy. All about Shijiro fell +the pink tickets, everywhere he met his mad, happy countrymen hurrying +to the seaports, looking askance, but nothing came to him. Perhaps it +was this. Perhaps it was too much work, exposure, and anxiety. Perhaps +too little food. Perhaps all of these together. But presently he was in +an hospital with his temperature at a hundred and five. Hoshiko was +there always. And sometimes he forgot the harshness of his later life +and fancied that it was again that day he first saw her by the Forbidden +City. So he would live again through all that happy life until he came +to the battle--whence he always came. Often in his fancy he was in the +very presence of that glorious death he had sworn to die. Then Hoshiko +was forgotten again. And presently she went out of his sick mind as she +had long since gone out of his shattered life, and nothing but battle +lived there. She did not strive to recall herself by so much as a touch. +So the gods wished it to be; this was their will. She had entered upon +her eternal penance for happiness, and she did not again question its +time or place or form. The happiness was gone. It could return no more. +But with the sense that she had impiously raped her joy from the heavens +themselves came the exultation that not even the gods could ever take +that from her. It had been. She had had it. + +He knew, one day, in a sane moment, that he was not leading armies to +battle and himself to the great crimson death, but with an immense +horror that he was confined within four deadly white walls, upon a +narrow cot, not the damp, blood-stricken earth. That there were no +belching cannons in front of him, no hell of hoarse shouts behind him, +no curses and death-groans about him, but quiet, terrible, maddening, +only the still, small white death of women and children. + +He leaped up to fly from it and made this small death all the more sure. +No prayers to his father, none to the augustnesses, none to the myriad +gods availed. There he saw the still small white death of women closing +down upon him while he lay inert, bound to his bed. + +"This is my punishment," he whispered to her in anathema; "this is my +punishment for taking you and forgetting him. Yes, even the gate of the +Meido will be closed on me. I am not fit to meet my father. He must +still wait. And for whom? There is only I! Only I can redeem him! And I +must first descend--and cleanse my sinning face in the waters--the hot, +hot waters of the hells! And when, after many lives, I meet my father--" + +His mind could not endure the horror of this. But he turned his fury +upon her. + +"For you," he cried, "such a thing as you! Eta, jigoku onna! Hell woman! +Yes, you came to me in the form of a goddess. But the hell woman does +that. And now that death is here my vision sees through that and you are +a skeleton with talons--with a beak--with hell's hollow laughter--the +devils sent you to tempt me and I fell--and am lost--my father's soul +is lost--and you laugh--" + +Alas! she did not laugh--she sobbed. For that was one of the days when +the flesh was weak. + +"Yes," she said, "I tempted you; I am all you say!" + +He fell into coma then and remembered no more: leaving her here on earth +with those fearful words in her heart to remember which had loved him +only too well. Sometimes she half believed them. Once she crept from his +side to look in the glass. She saw no talons or beak, but a wanness +which, indeed, suggested a skeleton. + +He knew, before his wits left him, that the objective of the Guards was +the Yalu. And now he fancied himself gloriously leading them. But +half-sane moments came in which he would again suspect the four white +walls. + +"Gods!" he whispered hoarsely, in one of these, "am I going to the small +white death of women and children? Have I only dreamed that I was still +leading them?" + +"No," said his wife. "This is the dream--these white walls. You are to +die the great red death. God has told me." + +"Is it so?" + +He gazed distractedly about and still thought he saw the walls. + +"It is as I say." + +He gripped her hands. + +"By all the gods?" + +"By all the gods," she swore. + +Then, again, for the last time, came full delirium--and again it came in +red. + +"You have told me true!" he shouted. "There the devils come! On, on, on! +Banzai! On! Nippon Denji! On! Ah, my sword slips at the handle--it is +red! And the staff of my flag, too! A little earth!" He rubbed his palms +on the bed covers as if they were the ground, and clenched his hands +again. "Ah, now we are on them! Mutsushima! Up, up, up! Too early to +die! You have not killed enough! Up, Banzai! The gods will not redeem +your samurai vow with so few dead enemies of the emperor to your +credit!" Then he must have been struck. "Father! Father!" he cried, and +held out his hands. + +After that he lay as one dead for a long time, then woke with slow doubt +to find himself still without the heavens. + +"I have not killed enough. That is it. There must be many more before I +can see my father's face. Many more because--because I married an +eta--yes, an eta seduced me. Did you know her? She was a hell woman. She +kept me from my father. Did you know her?" + +He stared up at her with half recollection, and then went on to his +battles. + +In one of them he lost his colors. No one has ever suffered a sharper +agony than he--until they were retaken. + +"But--the flag! The flag! I am hit! Here! Not much! Gods in the skies! +There it is! They have it! The cursed dogs! They have touched it! +Defiled it! Come with me--Kondo--Musima--Tani--Ichimon--now! At them!" + +And she knew that he had retaken the flag and was bringing it gloriously +back; each act was faithfully fought. + +But then he missed it. He looked in his hands. + +"Do you see my flag?" + +"Yes," she cajoled, "it is here." + +But she did not convince him, and he slept under his opium unhappily. +He thought sometimes that the enemy had again taken it. + +When he awoke next morning, still unhappy and in doubt (he had not +forgotten it), the flag was in his hand. There was not one in America +for the little wife. But that night she made one. He shouted with sudden +strength as he gripped it and kept it in his hands until they could feel +no more. And then with it lashed to the foot of his bed he lived the +little remnant of his life in its glory, and in sight of its crimson and +white went out--mad with the supremest ecstasy a Japanese can know--out +in the great red death to another reincarnation, at what, for the fourth +time, he must have thought the happiest moment of his life. + +And then--shall I tell it?--his call came. + +And a letter from Zanzi, now a general commanding a brigade. Almost as +one would write of love, he wrote. + +"Come back, eta," it said joyously; "we need you now. You shall not go +to the Hakodate men. Every one of us clamors for you at the colors. +Come! It is war. Your doctrine prevails. There are now neither samurai +nor eta, but only sons of the emperor. Come! We are going to a glorious +victory. Take your share. Your penance is complete. Your exile is +finished. Come, the emperor himself calls his sons to die for him! Come! +The flag waits. Come! + +"ZANZI." + + + + +"PRESENT FOR DUTY" + + + + +XXVIII + +"PRESENT FOR DUTY" + + +OF Hoshiko I do not speak--I have not spoken--in these last days. I +cannot. I am near her heart as I write. She for whom everything had been +had nothing--was eternally to have nothing. Yet it remained for her now +to make all that be which would have been--but for her. The way of the +gods was quite plain. + +There was no oath to this effect, no tragic undertaking before the +mysterious gods. It became simply her life. Nothing else was possible +with the existences which remained but to make all true which ought to +be true--which would have been true--but for her happiness. She had had +that, and now was to come the recompense which the gods always demanded. +And the plan of it had not consciously grown; it had been +there--inside--always. Save that when she knew he was to die the small +white death, all the details formulated themselves in her mind there at +his side, fixed, she had no doubt, by the gods. + +We know now that the war was fought to its end in the council chambers +in Tokyo long before that torpedo sank the "Tsarevitch." This is the +curious fashion of the Eastern mind: to see the end before the +beginning. So now all that was to follow formed itself in the mind of +Hoshiko as if it were already done and she saw it not from the beginning +but from the end. The means to make it be would have puzzled us. They +puzzled her not at all. She knew that suffering lay there; but no +suffering could matter if the end was achieved and that was safe. + +In due time General Zanzi received a cable, saying:-- + +"Keep colors. Coming. + + "SHIJIRO ARISUGA." + +Then Hoshiko went to the house of Moncure Jones for the second time. The +place of horror to her. That day she dressed once more in her best +kimono,--she had always kept the white one,--and put the new kanzashi +again in her hair, (which you will remember Arisuga bought for her the +day after she had knocked on his shoji,) and painted her face and eyes +to hide their hollowness, and put upon her dainty little body the last +of the "flower perfume"--which every Japanese girl saves from her +marriage for her burial so that she may appear fittingly as a bride +indeed before the gods above. In this matter Jones must be +propitiated--made sure. She did not forget their last parting. So she +went to him arrayed and adorned as she had once meant to go before the +gods. + +And she remembered again, and was repeating their last adjuration to +fealty as she stepped upon the sill of Jones's door, those forty-seven +ronins whose wives lent themselves to harlotry that their husbands might +the better achieve their cause. Are they not upon brass to-day, though a +thousand years have passed? Are their wives not properly forgotten? + +So when she had come to Jones's house she smiled and was very gay, like +a woman of joy, as she had often read had been the way of the wives of +the forty-seven, and said:-- + +"You wish me?" + +"Wish you!" cried the delighted Jones. "I have never wished for anything +so much in all my life. I have never missed any one so much. It was +beastly of you to go away in that fashion. I haven't married yet." + +Hoshiko was very impatient inside, but outside she smiled. + +"You wish me?" she repeated. + +"Yes! But that beastly husband of yours, with his knives--" + +"He--is--dead," said the little woman, forcing each word out of her +heart with agony, laughing shrilly at the end like a creature of +pleasure. + +"Ha, ha!" laughed Jones. + +"Ha, ha, ha," echoed Hoshiko. + +"You're as glad as I am!" + +"Yes," smiled Hoshiko. + +"Sure he's dead?" + +"By your large God!" swore the laughing wife. + +"Oh! I understand. And believe you, too! All right, my little Japanese +doll," cried the delighted Jones. "Here's money." + +What followed I may not tell: save that Hoshiko made a cold +bargain--Jones calls it his Japanese marriage to this day,--whereby she +got a great deal of money in a short time. + +The next day Zanzi got this cable:-- + +"Keep colors. Starting. + + "SHIJIRO ARISUGA." + +Presently (it seemed years, but it was only a little while) the time was +come, and Hoshiko cut her hair, rubbed her face each morning with a +rough brush, put on Arisuga's uniform, pinned his medal over her heart, +and sent her last cable:-- + +"Keep colors. Aboard. + + "SHIJIRO ARISUGA." + +And so it was that the morning the Imperial Guards started for the Yalu, +Shijiro Arisuga, though dead in America, answered to his name at Sendai. + +But how that was accomplished, I must stop my story to tell. + + + + +THE REINCARNATION OF SHIJIRO ARISUGA + + + + +XXIX + +THE REINCARNATION OF SHIJIRO ARISUGA + + +For I think that you will wish to know what Hoshiko did to appear +learned in the trade of the soldier before she joined the Guards. But it +is not easy. For I am very near her now. And the satin hands must be as +leather; the tiny feet must often leave their prints in blood on the +snow; the plump, pink cheeks must be pounded into caverns and scarred +with wounds; the nails must be deliberately torn and broken from the +exquisite hands; the beautiful hair must be shorn. And last and hardest +to tell, in her forehead must be made a ragged scar like that Arisuga +got at Pekin--the one which had brought him to her. That I shall tell +first--the making of the wound. + +For a long time she studied it. This all men knew and it must be +perfect. Once she mistrusted her own skill and went to see a surgeon. +She showed him the picture of Arisuga and asked whether he could +reproduce his wound upon herself. But immediately the doctor began to be +wary. For he was a doctor like all other doctors, and when confronted +with a thing unusual--one which no other doctor had put into the +books--he was not wise. + +"Ugly women," he said, "have often asked me to make them pretty. But +this is the first time, in a somewhat extended practice, that I have had +a pretty one ask me to make her ugly. Tell me the reason for it, and +perhaps I can convince you that such beauty as the creator graciously +gives us ought to be preserved, not destroyed, for it is more rare than +you think." + +But while he opened his case for some instrument of exploration, Hoshiko +fled--so quietly and swiftly that when he turned he wondered if she had +ever been there. Yes, there was in the air the flower perfume with which +she had anointed her pretty body for his offices. + +Of course she could run no such risk again. She must do it herself. So +for long she thought upon wounds and woundings. How they were made; how +they were healed; how that one of Arisuga's had been made; how it was +healed: it was a sabre, and it had cut--so. Then it had been stitched +so--very carelessly she had thought every time she saw it. + +She was entirely capable of striking herself with a sabre; but through +long reasoning she understood that she would not be likely to reproduce +the precise form of Arisuga's wound. Though this was necessary, there +was only one chance in many thousands of accomplishing it. + +She finally knew that she must do it carefully, slowly--very slowly. +There would be none of the ecstasy of the battle. Arisuga had often told +her that he had never felt the wound until it was healed. That, in fact, +he would not have known that he was struck but for the blood in his +eyes. But she must do it as one argues a thing. Do you understand the +difference? Can you see how a wound received in hot carnage and one +slowly carved in one's own flesh may differ? Be sure that Hoshiko +understood all this. + +But she could not in America. It seemed an alien thing to do in a +country which would only have misunderstood and perhaps have laughed. It +needed her native soil and atmosphere, and ancestors and gods, to make +the undertaking simple. Besides, while she was studying the making of +the wound, steam and wind were taking her home. It was there, in the +little deserted house, still deserted, where they had lived so happily +those few days, that everything seemed fortunate. + +And so there, after much preparation, she did it--all in one tortured +day. Early in the morning she sat down before her little round mirror. +She knew what she was to suffer. But she neither shrank from it nor +sought to mitigate its agony. First she prayed the gods--very long. Then +she set his picture before her. Then she washed--very clean. Then she +made very sharp the little toilet sword. Then she bound her body with +many towels and made the first incision bravely. But she had not well +calculated the agony of such slow self-wounding. Her senses slowly left +her as if to protest against what she did. + +It was long before her hands would return to their office of +self-mutilation. Yet no matter how weak the flesh was, the spirit always +drove the hands back to their office until it was done--and well +done--to the stitches--to the anointing--to the binding--the +destruction of the quivering parts of herself. + +Can you fancy her there on the floor before the little mirror which had +once told back to her all her loveliness, with that little sword +deliberately carving out of her own beautiful flesh with her own hand +Arisuga's horrid badge of honor? She knew it so well that she limned it +in her forehead as faithfully as had the Chinese sabre in his. You could +not--no one could--have told the difference. There was a curious curve +upward at the end, and a thickened cicatrice, as if it had been +carelessly gathered up by the surgeon's needle. These she made with her +own needle. + +And then for many days she lay clutching her mattress, not moving for +fear the contour of the wound might be marred. + +That was a splendid morning to her--it would have been one of horror to +you--when she could crawl from the futons and know by the glass that his +wound was set forever in its place on her forehead. She did not observe +that her face was vague and shadowy; her eyes saw nothing but that. Why +should they see anything more? + +Yet, and I must tell you this, she did see something else, presently, as +she looked, day after day. + +The face she saw only vaguely, at first, in her weakness, as she watched +the growing into beauty of the wound, was gradually not hers. And then +it seemed that behind her own a shadow face hovered. Presently she knew +it for the face of Shijiro Arisuga. Then slowly her own face passed away +and his was there. The difference was quite clear--it was his. And in +that way she knew that the pitying gods had fully granted and completed +her a reincarnation without death, and that she was no longer Hoshiko, +but Arisuga. + +Shall you be glad to know further that when she answered to the name of +Shijiro Arisuga that morning at Sendai, (on that same Miyagi Field, +where Shijiro had been decorated!) all that had been the Lady Hoshi was +no more? That she was like the rest of them--a ruffian? That she had an +oath or two, that her voice was harsh, her words which once flowed like +pleasant water few and terrible? + +But she had to sing his songs, to be gay as he had been, and to be +beloved as he had been. And all these things she accomplished, even to +his songs, which fled through smiling lips--laughing, shouting +lips--over the graves within. For the woman always remained in some +subconscious fashion, and it was upon the rebellious singing of his +songs more than anything else that this latent Lady Hoshi awoke. + +Yet I am certain that you will like to be told, since it must have been, +that this made no difference; she made no mistakes. That she did no +discredit to Shijiro Arisuga. That, in fact, in a fashion difficult to +fathom, save by the doctrine of reincarnation, so had she become him in +all matters of action that she never even thought of herself as Hoshiko. +She was Shijiro Arisuga--when there was to be fighting--and always had +been. And this was no easy thing for such a flower as Hoshiko. For +Arisuga had been a man. So that, as one thinks on it, one is not +irreparably offended at the possibility of Hoshiko, by a living +reincarnation, having become another being. How do we know? And, how +else could she have accomplished it? + +But putting aside all possible differences concerning that, in this +rejoice: the sun-flag was never borne with greater daring! + + + + +ZANZI, LOVER OF BATTLES + + + + +XXX + +ZANZI, LOVER OF BATTLES + + +At Tokyo there was a contest between the Hakodate regiment and the +Guards for the color-bearer who had been decorated by the emperor. +Hoshiko wished to go on--mad as Arisuga once was for the fight. + +(Perhaps we had better call her Arisuga from this on? Yet, you may then +forget that she was Hoshiko; you may forget that each moment was a new +expiation for happiness. No, we shall continue to call her Hoshiko--that +you may remember.) + +Said General Zanzi:-- + +"Stay where you are, you little fool. The Guards will move first. We are +going to the greatest victory a nation ever won. Do you want to be left +behind--come when it is won, and march in parade order over the field? +You used to fight, you infernal little eta. What is the matter with you +now? Look at me." + +She did this fearlessly, for the gods were at her elbow. + +"You--you--What is the matter?" + +"Nothing," said Hoshiko. + +"You don't seem quite the Arisuga I banished to America. But then the +Americans have changed you, I suppose. They are a melancholy lot and +have made you so, eh? Of course, if you are less brave than you were, +the Guards don't want you. Go to the Hakodate men." + +"I am not less brave," smiled Hoshiko, with a salute. "And I prefer the +Guards." + +"Well, I ought to have known that. Come! Drink with me." + +He produced a bottle of the foreign sort, and poured her a libation of +terrible brandy. She drank what she could of it and managed to spill the +rest as he drank. + +"Sing!" + +But he gave her no opportunity. + +"Oh, these burly idiots!" he cried, hot and merry with the brandy. "It +is only ten years and they have already forgot! They do not know that +since Shimenoseki we have prepared for this. They do not know that they +have not a secret from us. They do not know that the whole course of +the war is already planned here--here--by Japan. And that as it is +planned so it will be fought. Their navy first--every ship of it. Port +Arthur next. Mukden! Saghalien! Vladivostock! We will meet them at the +Yalu--do you hear? At the Yalu, near Wiju, where we met the Chinese in +1894, only to be robbed of victory by these Russian louts! We are +decoying them to the tryst now as we did the Chinese. They will not +steal our winning this time. They will pay! We shall meet them at the +Yalu. And we shall meet but once there. There will not be a battlefield +we will not ourselves choose. Nor a time to battle which we shall not +fix. Oh, they call us little men--us! But, by the immortal gods, they +will know, presently, that souls are measured not by size. They call us +few; but they fail to reckon the myriad spirits of our ancestors, all +the augustnesses who will fight with us, direct our bullets, lead our +assaults with a knowledge which they, born of beasts, cannot have. Eta, +we shall meet them at the Yalu. Wait here till you are transferred. Then +on with us. Banzai!" + +They laughed together, and Zanzi went out, singing of carnage as if he +were beneath the window of his lady, with a samisen. + + + + +THE TOMB OF LORD ESAS + + + + +XXXI + +THE TOMB OF LORD ESAS + + +It was but two days. Yet in that time Hoshiko hastened to all the dear +places where he had gone in the days he had told her of--when he held +the hand of Yone instead of hers. It was on the second day, in the +evening, at Shiba, that some one spoke his name behind her. The voice +was a woman's--that she at once knew. And also at once, in that strange +intelligence which we have of the spirit and not of any teaching, she +knew that this was Yone--and that she had not forgotten all and married +(as they had laughingly fancied), but was still waiting, as she had +said. And suddenly for a moment, only a moment, she was no longer +Arisuga the color-bearer, but again a woman of those who know the terror +and weariness of hopeless waiting--such as only women, and never men, +know. And she remembered. It was ten years. Yet this faithful one had +waited while she had had her happiness. And what should she do? There +was little question of that. Here she was confronted with the evidence +of how she had destroyed the gods' balance by taking her overdue of joy, +leaving to Yone an overdue of sorrow, and was given the opportunity to +restore, in some part, the account. But how? It was quite plain upon +the briefest reflection. She must be to her, also, Arisuga. She must +touch her as he had done, take her hands as he once did, and +then--perhaps--perhaps--Yone would be comforted and she might go. + +For that moment she was a woman only--only Hoshiko--and the tears ran +down her face. Now she might not turn. What? Tears on the face of a +rough soldier! + +"Shijiro," Yone was saying to Hoshiko's back, "I have waited--waited all +the years. Yet had they been ten times ten they are all blotted out by +this moment. Oh, the gods have been true, as they always are! I prayed +them, and they let me know that they would bring you to me if I would +but wait patiently. Turn and look at me. See whether I am grown too old +for you to touch once more. See whether my hands are yet fit for yours. +I have prayed Benten to keep me young and make me beautiful against this +moment of your coming. And every day--every day, Ani-San--I have come +here, whether it rained or the sun shone--every day--here or at +Mukojima--or the other dear places of our youth. And yet my sandals are +not worn, my kimono is new--see, because ever I renewed them, +remembering that you liked me always so. Will you not look, beloved? +Yone will not trouble you if you do not wish. She will let you go and +will wait still." + +Hoshiko slowly turned. Yone stepped back from her. So they stood a +moment at gaze. Hoshiko saw a creature as small and fragile as she +herself had once been, and more beautiful she thought--much more +beautiful. + +Yone saw a soldier whose face she knew, but whose soul, at first, was +strange. + +"I am Shijiro Arisuga," said Hoshiko. + +"Yes," breathed Yone, "wait. There is something strange. Something I did +not expect. Is it the years? Yes. But your voice is more gentle though +less gay." + +"I can make it harsh," smiled Hoshiko. + +"Nay!" cried Yone, still at gaze. "Did you know me? Did you know my +voice?" + +"Yes," said Hoshiko. + +"And you have a scar--you have fought." + +"In many battles." + +"Yet the gods did not send you the great red death, but sent you to me, +as I prayed." + +"Yes." + +"It is all the gods' will." + +Twilight had fallen and Yone came confidently closer. + +"Will you walk with me as we used? It is the gods' will!" + +"Yes." + +"Will you take my hand?" + +"Yes." + +As Hoshiko felt the small hand curl in hers the tears fell again from +her eyes. But they could not be seen now and she let them fall. Nor need +she talk and thus betray herself. Yone had lost all fear in the giving +of her hand and now chattered on. + +"Come--to the tomb of Lord Esas, where we made the seat of a stone and +moss. It is there yet. I have kept it as it was. Often I have sat there. +Only once before were we here at night--hiding, as perhaps we shall +to-night, when the watchman comes with his lantern and staff. Shall we +go to the tomb of Lord Esas, beloved?" + +"Yes," said Hoshiko. + +"You speak as if you wept--and, when you turned, your face looked as if +you had wept. Oh, it looked for a moment like a woman's--and not a +soldier's! Soldiers do not weep." + +"Soldiers weep. I do." + +"Ani-San! For me?" + +"For you." + +"The waiting?" + +"The waiting." + +"But, then, weep no more, Ani-San. I am here--at your side. All the +waiting is forgot. Blotted out by this one great moment. And +perhaps--Here is the seat. Is it not all as it was? Though it is ten +years--ten years of weary waiting. Here you sat, always, here I sat. And +we are grown too old now to change." + +She laughed timorously, and when Hoshiko had seated herself where +Arisuga had once sat, she took her place as if there were no years +between this and that. Then she went on:-- + +"--perhaps, to-night, you will be as sweet as you were on that other +night--when--Do you remember?" + +"I remember," said Hoshiko. + +"But we have no samisen. Yet I can sing--if you ask me--" + +"Sing." + +"--the song of 'The Moon-and-the-Stork,' which we ourselves +made--here--where the moon looked down upon us. See, it knows. It knows +you are come. There it passes above the great criptomeria now. +And--and--oh, it is an omen of all good! A stork flies over its face. Or +it is a branch of the tree? No matter, the omen is the same, Ani-San; +all is as it was, is it not?" + +"All is as it was, beloved," whispered Hoshiko. + +Yone came diffidently closer at the dear word. + +"When I sang that night I was in your arms--" + +The arms of Hoshiko closed about the girl at her side almost with +violence. + +"That is it," she cried happily, nesting there. "Yes, that is quite it. +Don't you remember how your violence frightened me until you explained +that it was love? And we laughed. Now we are sad. We used to laugh +then. And you could not play the samisen because I was in your arms. And +I would not get out of them. So that I sang without the samisen that +night. Therefore, all will be quite the same if I sing to-night without +it. You have not forgotten the Moon-and-the-Stork song?" + +"No"--for Arisuga had often sung it to her. + +Then she sang:-- + + "O moon get out of my way," said the stork, + "O stork get out of my light," said the moon. + "I will not," said the stork, + "I will not," said the moon: + So that is why the stork is in the light of the moon, + And that is why the moon is in the way of the stork. + +It was a little voice, with no great melody, but well fitted for so +frail a theme. Hoshiko joined her, stumbling upon a word, at which Yone +chided her for forgetting, laughed happily and crept yet closer. Then +she said, after a silence:-- + +"Now!" + +"What?" asked Hoshiko; for that she did not know. + +"Oh, have you forgotten--have you forgotten? That also? Alas--alas! +After the song you spoke of--" + +Her pretty head was burrowed deeply into the space beneath Hoshiko's +chin. + +"What?" Hoshiko had to ask again. + +"Of marriage," whispered the girl, in terror. And the terror of Hoshiko +was no less than that of Yone. + +"You said, you swore by this sacred tomb of a hero, that if the gods did +not send you the red death we should be married one to the other--" + +"But, beloved," breathed Hoshiko, in further terror, "I am still a +soldier, still bound to the great red death. I am here but this day. +To-morrow, this night yet, I go to battle. Would you wish me to marry +you and at once go to the field?" + +"Yes," whispered the girl. + +"And, perchance, fall and never return?" + +"Yes." + +"So that you will be a widow with blackened teeth?" + +"Yes." + +Hoshiko made no other protest. What had been first considered with a +certain horror, seemed beautiful and merciful to this love-lorn maiden +now. She need never know. She would live and die thinking herself +married to Arisuga. At her death she would cut her hair and hang it at a +shrine, and always keep the lamps alight, and always pray for the soul +of Shijiro Arisuga. It was the way of the gods; and, as always, the way +of the gods was best, was beautiful! + + + + +WHEN THE WATCH PASSED + + + + +XXXII + +WHEN THE WATCH PASSED + + +"Sh! sh!" whispered Yone, suddenly, and crushed her small hand upon +Hoshiko's mouth. + +It was the watchman with staff and lantern, crying weirdly in the night. +He passed near. He paused nearer. Yone drew a bit of shrubbery before +them. + +"I heard a song, by all the gods I heard a foolish song in this sacred +place of tombs. Come forth," he cried aloud, "he who sings foolishly in +a sacred place, come forth and be punished of the gods so that you may +repent! Otherwise your punishment will wait until you are unready for +it." + +Now he moved on. His voice came muttering back:-- + +"Come forth, come forth! I heard a song, an unholy song in the sacred +place of tombs." + +Yone let the bush return and laughed happily in the arms of Hoshiko. + +"Oh, is it not all as it was, beloved? It is the same watchman--older. +And they are the same, almost the same, words--more eery. And we are +close, close--as we were then. Oh, it is divine to be close with you! +So--so, my beloved, another omen! Everything else is as it was. Shall +not we be?" + +Hoshiko was silent. + +"Be not afraid, beloved," Yone 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! The nakado has worn bare the mat at the door. But was I not +yours? How could I listen to any one else? And the wedding garments are +all ready. And there is no one to stay us but the old deaf Hana, who +will not even hear. If you must go quickly, to-night, there is the +foreign minister--there is the new registry office--" + +"And for this," said Hoshiko, "the few words of a foreign priest, nine +cups of sake, a line in the registry office, you will give up your dear +life to me?" + +"I will give up all my souls--all my hope of a rest at last in Buddha's +bosom if I must. Oh, Shijiro Arisuga, for this I have waited until it +seemed that I could wait no more. Give it to me now--this night--before +you go!" + +"O love," whispered Hoshiko, "what is like you in all the earths, in all +the heavens! There is no other miracle but you alone. Come! My hour is +almost here. But were it already past, and though a soldier but obeys +the hours, yet you should be a wife before I go." + +And even to that moment Hoshiko had not known how Yone yearned for that +one word to be added to her. Suddenly she grovelled on the earth and +caught the hands and knees of her who had been wife to him they both +loved. + +"All the gods bless you--all the gods--for giving me that one name. For +in all the earths and heavens together there is none so sweet as--wife +to Shijiro Arisuga." + +And there, that night, Hoshiko married little Yone. + +"Now go and die," she wept at farewell, "and here I will wait--wait, +until I, also, die--wait for that touch of your spirit on my arm, wait +for your hand in the dark Meido. But if you do not die? if the gods are +not ready yet for you--you will come?" + +"I will come again," said Hoshiko, weeping, too, which was strange for a +soldier. + +And there they parted, only a moment after they were married, and +Hoshiko was ordered to join the Guards and hurry to the Yalu, where +their prey was fattening. + + + + +TEIKOKU BANZAI + + + + +XXXIII + +TEIKOKU BANZAI + + +Then, at last, after three months of marching and wading and six days of +fighting, they faced the Russian intrenchments at that place beyond +Wiju, which some call, to this day, Hamatan, but which is Yujuho. And +the Imperial Guards were there. Shijiro Arisuga, if he were there, also, +must have observed with joy that the Guards had the right of the line +and would reach the Russian intrenchments first--perhaps off toward +Kiuliencheng, where the battery of six pieces was still stubbornly +firing. He would know that the Guards must give many happy ones their +opportunity for the great red death. Perhaps he could, then, see far +enough into the future to know that his own regiment would have the +advance and be cut to pieces. It would hurl itself straight upon those +stubborn guns. They would tear bloody lanes in its ranks. And Hoshiko +would be in the forefront of it. + +Kuroki's artillery ceased, Zassuliche's ceased, and that stillness which +the soldier knows for the prelude to the assault fell. The two shots +from the right was the advance. Zanzi raised his hand, and into the +smoke raced Hoshiko with the colors. And she did not forget Arisuga's +glory--nor his father's--nor that dream of his when the small white +death was closing down upon him. She understood that he was there. And +not only he. + +His ancestors were looking on--the stately samurai. And hers--the humble +eta. His father whom she here redeemed. The emperor with his thousand +eyes. The myriads of the gods. The army. The world. The heavens! + +Yet she forgot nothing which Arisuga had taught her. She went forward +with two others. To her right, to her left, were other threes zigzagging +onward. But always she was in their front--steadily, carefully, almost +to where the battery of six pieces had fixed a point to reach her, as +she passed. There her three dropped and dug. And there they rested until +the battery lost them. Up then and out again till the gunners once more +noted her like a moving lump of earth and corrected their elevation in +her favor. And so twice more. At the last she dared to look back. Behind +her stretched two lines of trenches. In the nearest a little fringe of +rifle muzzles already showed. She had brought these there. Further back +was a thin line of blue racing for the first trenches. She had set these +going. Still further back the army in vast masses of blue was moving +into position from behind the willows on the bank of the river. + +And these waited also upon the little sun-flag on which Hoshiko lay. She +felt for the first time the soldier's ecstasy, and she understood better +and forgave more the latter years of Arisuga. + +She and her two had rested, and had made of their chain of holes a +shallow trench. They meant to dig this deeper for those who were to come +after them. But the two vast armies they had set in motion began to move +with accelerated speed toward each other, and they stopped the trench +where it was. + +There would be no more digging. Any one might see that. The Russian +battery had again found them. One of the guns was exploding shrapnel +over their heads. The rest were trying for the thin blue line further +back. The willows which yet hid the army were too far away. The moment +was ripe. Hoshiko threw aside the spade and everything else which might +impede action, and went toward the battery. + +From behind her rose the hoarse mongolian yell she had learned to love. +There was no need now for concealment. Their own guns had located the +battery in her front. A wicked shell had just burst over it. She could +hear the song of the fragments. And but three men stood by the gun +afterward. The little figure with the sun-flag raced down upon them, +firing. It was quite alone. The three gave her a weak, magnanimous cheer +and retired, leaving their gun. + +Her own men answered from the rear. And even amid the "Banzais" she +could hear the wild song of Arisuga. One line clanged in her mad +brain:-- + + "Death-wound spurting--" + +Further up the hill a single rapid-fire gun which knew her only as an +enemy came into action. It found her at once and riddled her with +bullets, as, flag in hand, she leaped into the first of the Russian +trenches. + +That line was in her last articulate consciousness:-- + + "Death-wound spurting--" + +Perhaps it only remained in her ears--Arisuga's song. But she fancied +that she could feel her own warm blood spurting into her own face. Was +it as glorious as he had thought it? Or was it only terrible? At that +moment, first, she knew. Perhaps she became in that last instant all +woman once more. Perhaps she saw something not for mortal eyes. Perhaps +she was not as brave with death as she had taught herself to be--gentle +Hoshiko! Her lips moaned, piteously, when she ought to have been dead, +"Arisuga!" + +So that one of the two who had gone forward with her bent hastily and +said to the other, with a pleasant smile:-- + +"He speaks his own name!" + +"Nembutsu," answered the other. "Take the flag." + +The first one tried, but it held fast in her hand. + +"There is no need," he said; "the battle is won. Let him keep it!" + +But they covered her face. For the peace, the ecstasy, of a glorious +death was not on it! What did she learn in that death-instant? + +Others caught at the flag. But her hand held it fast. So that when that +dense line of blue which she had started from the willows reached her, +at first it parted chivalrously at the flag and passed on either side. +But at last it could not part. Some one trod upon the little +color-bearer. Then many. The thick-massed line passed over her. It could +not be helped. Some one took the flag from her hand and planted it on +the Russian redoubt. At last she seemed but part of the earth beneath +their feet, and they who trod on her did not even look down. + + + + +AFTERWARD + + + + +XXXIV + +AFTERWARD + + +Afterward there was a great funeral. The hillside was a temple. The +summer blue was its roof. The jagged mountains were its eaves. Evergreen +trees were its walls. A torii made of firs was its gate. Blossoming +trees held the gohei strips which pledged purity to the august shades +which waited near. The altar was of rifles and a soldier's blanket. The +offerings were the vapors of the simple grains and flowers, of the +country. + +Beyond it was the great pyre--not grim, as death is, but more beautiful +than that on which Dido perished, adorned, perfumed, with aromatic +spring firs and blossoming trees. In the temple, first, the shades of +those who had fought with them were worshipped and exalted by the +brocaded priests. Then fealty was sworn to those who had just died, and +whose shades yet lingered by their greatest incarnation. + +Last, Nisshi read the names of those who had died with glory. And first +among them was that of Shijiro Arisuga. Then with others they put the +blackened, riven little body they had found, upon the pyre, and, +lighting it, gave Hoshiko's ashes to the earth, her spirit to oblivion, +and Arisuga's name to honor. + +It began the next day. Shijiro Arisuga was in the Tokyo newspapers, upon +the dead walls, and in the hoarse voices of the people. It was a story +like the terrible courage of their old warriors, and they loved it. His +medal was hung in a temple. And to-day there is a record of his heroism, +on the brass where it can never fade--though Shijiro Arisuga lies dead, +unknown, in America. + +And that was the fifth time that Shijiro Arisuga must have thought the +happiest moment of his life had come. + +And now we may speculate a little, before we forget, upon this last of +the five occasions. For there may be those who think that Shijiro could +not have been happy in seeing what he saw that day. But we are to +remember that, then, he had knowledge of many things which he had not on +earth. And among these was a more intimate knowing of the heart of +Hoshiko. And in that, it seems to me, he ought to have been happiest of +all. Yet--who knows? + +Perhaps, too, the merciful gods permitted themselves to be deceived into +thinking that the Shijiro Arisuga who died at Hamatan is, indeed, the +one who died at Jokoji. For the life name is the same. Or perhaps they +are only complaisant, and, in the passing years, will permit the people +to think that this is so. Who knows? + +At all events, Shijiro Arisuga, father and son, will take their way hand +in hand from the dark Meido to the heavens. + +And for these some one will reverently write a splendid death name upon +a golden tablet at a beautiful shrine. And before it will burn always +the lights and the incense. Perhaps this happiness will be for gentle +Yone. Perhaps the spirit of her who died at Hamatan, in its boundless +compassion, will also come and touch the little Yone on the arm as she +wanders, lonely, by the tomb of Lord Esas, so that she, too, may have +her heart's desire, and only one, she who bought her happiness with an +eternity of obliteration, have nothing. For, who knows? + +And one wishes it were possible for Shijiro to have defied O-Emma of the +hells and to have taken Hoshiko straight from the great red death, past +all the lesser heavens, to be forever lost in the bosom of the Lord +Buddha in the lotus fields--if the souls of mortals ever fly straight +from earth to the last white heaven. But this could not be. There was +that eternal penance for over-joy to accomplish. + +For Hoshiko there never can be again, in the heavens above or on the +earth beneath or the hells below, a being. All her existences--all her +thousands of years of life--whether of the earths or the heavens or the +hells, were given for Shijiro Arisuga, whom she loved--and who once, for +a little while, loved her. Shijiro Arisuga lives, and the father in the +son will live on the brass forever. + +The Dream-of-a-Star is forever vanished, save for the moment I write +here--save for the moment you read here. + + +Transcriber's note: + +The following have been changed: + +Myagi=>Miyagi + +Damashi=>Damashii + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Way of the Gods, by John Luther Long + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF THE GODS *** + +***** This file should be named 33616.txt or 33616.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/6/1/33616/ + +Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was +produced from scanned images of public domain material +from the Google Print project.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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