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.