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:--