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.