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.