place of tombs. Come forth," he cried aloud, "he who sings foolishly in
a sacred place, come forth and be punished of the gods so that you may
repent! Otherwise your punishment will wait until you are unready for
it."
Now he moved on. His voice came muttering back:--
"Come forth, come forth! I heard a song, an unholy song in the sacred
place of tombs."
Yone let the bush return and laughed happily in the arms of Hoshiko.
"Oh, is it not all as it was, beloved? It is the same watchman--older.
And they are the same, almost the same, words--more eery. And we are
close, close--as we were then. Oh, it is divine to be close with you!
So--so, my beloved, another omen! Everything else is as it was. Shall
not we be?"
Hoshiko was silent.
"Be not afraid, beloved," Yone said. "I will be true always until we
meet in the heavens. Always I will be your widow with blackened teeth if
you fall--my hair blowing at a shrine. Think! But for me there will be
no one to keep the lamps alight before you if you die--but for me. And
I--they shall never fail. For, if you fall, I will wait as I have
done--keeping the lamps, hoping that you will hold out your hand in the
black Meido when I pass to death, and that then we shall, somehow, never
part. Oh, beloved, there have been suitors and suitors and always
suitors! The nakado has worn bare the mat at the door. But was I not
yours? How could I listen to any one else? And the wedding garments are
all ready. And there is no one to stay us but the old deaf Hana, who
will not even hear. If you must go quickly, to-night, there is the
foreign minister--there is the new registry office--"
"And for this," said Hoshiko, "the few words of a foreign priest, nine
cups of sake, a line in the registry office, you will give up your dear
life to me?"
"I will give up all my souls--all my hope of a rest at last in Buddha's
bosom if I must. Oh, Shijiro Arisuga, for this I have waited until it
seemed that I could wait no more. Give it to me now--this night--before
you go!"
"O love," whispered Hoshiko, "what is like you in all the earths, in all
the heavens! There is no other miracle but you alone. Come! My hour is
almost here. But were it already past, and though a soldier but obeys
the hours, yet you should be a wife before I go."
And even to that moment Hoshiko had not known how Yone yearned for that
one word to be added to her. Suddenly she grovelled on the earth and
caught the hands and knees of her who had been wife to him they both
loved.
"All the gods bless you--all the gods--for giving me that one name. For
in all the earths and heavens together there is none so sweet as--wife
to Shijiro Arisuga."
And there, that night, Hoshiko married little Yone.
"Now go and die," she wept at farewell, "and here I will wait--wait,
until I, also, die--wait for that touch of your spirit on my arm, wait
for your hand in the dark Meido. But if you do not die? if the gods are
not ready yet for you--you will come?"
"I will come again," said Hoshiko, weeping, too, which was strange for a
soldier.
And there they parted, only a moment after they were married, and
Hoshiko was ordered to join the Guards and hurry to the Yalu, where
their prey was fattening.
TEIKOKU BANZAI
XXXIII
TEIKOKU BANZAI
Then, at last, after three months of marching and wading and six days of
fighting, they faced the Russian intrenchments at that place beyond
Wiju, which some call, to this day, Hamatan, but which is Yujuho. And
the Imperial Guards were there. Shijiro Arisuga, if he were there, also,
must have observed with joy that the Guards had the right of the line
and would reach the Russian intrenchments first--perhaps off toward
Kiuliencheng, where the battery of six pieces was still stubbornly
firing. He would know that the Guards must give many happy ones their
opportunity for the great red death. Perhaps he could, then, see far
enough into the future to know that his own regiment would have the
advance and be cut to pieces. It would hurl itself straight upon those
stubborn guns. They would tear bloody lanes in its ranks. And Hoshiko
would be in the forefront of it.
Kuroki's artillery ceased, Zassuliche's ceased, and that stillness which
the soldier knows for the prelude to the assault fell. The two shots
from the right was the advance. Zanzi raised his hand, and into the
smoke raced Hoshiko with the colors. And she did not forget Arisuga's
glory--nor his father's--nor that dream of his when the small white
death was closing down upon him. She understood that he was there. And
not only he.
His ancestors were looking on--the stately samurai. And hers--the humble
eta. His father whom she here redeemed. The emperor with his thousand
eyes. The myriads of the gods. The army. The world. The heavens!
Yet she forgot nothing which Arisuga had taught her. She went forward
with two others. To her right, to her left, were other threes zigzagging
onward. But always she was in their front--steadily, carefully, almost
to where the battery of six pieces had fixed a point to reach her, as
she passed. There her three dropped and dug. And there they rested until
the battery lost them. Up then and out again till the gunners once more
noted her like a moving lump of earth and corrected their elevation in
her favor. And so twice more. At the last she dared to look back. Behind
her stretched two lines of trenches. In the nearest a little fringe of
rifle muzzles already showed. She had brought these there. Further back
was a thin line of blue racing for the first trenches. She had set these
going. Still further back the army in vast masses of blue was moving
into position from behind the willows on the bank of the river.
And these waited also upon the little sun-flag on which Hoshiko lay. She
felt for the first time the soldier's ecstasy, and she understood better
and forgave more the latter years of Arisuga.
She and her two had rested, and had made of their chain of holes a
shallow trench. They meant to dig this deeper for those who were to come
after them. But the two vast armies they had set in motion began to move
with accelerated speed toward each other, and they stopped the trench
where it was.
There would be no more digging. Any one might see that. The Russian
battery had again found them. One of the guns was exploding shrapnel
over their heads. The rest were trying for the thin blue line further
back. The willows which yet hid the army were too far away. The moment
was ripe. Hoshiko threw aside the spade and everything else which might
impede action, and went toward the battery.
From behind her rose the hoarse mongolian yell she had learned to love.
There was no need now for concealment. Their own guns had located the
battery in her front. A wicked shell had just burst over it. She could
hear the song of the fragments. And but three men stood by the gun
afterward. The little figure with the sun-flag raced down upon them,
firing. It was quite alone. The three gave her a weak, magnanimous cheer
and retired, leaving their gun.
Her own men answered from the rear. And even amid the "Banzais" she
could hear the wild song of Arisuga. One line clanged in her mad
brain:--
"Death-wound spurting--"
Further up the hill a single rapid-fire gun which knew her only as an
enemy came into action. It found her at once and riddled her with
bullets, as, flag in hand, she leaped into the first of the Russian
trenches.
That line was in her last articulate consciousness:--
"Death-wound spurting--"
Perhaps it only remained in her ears--Arisuga's song. But she fancied
that she could feel her own warm blood spurting into her own face. Was
it as glorious as he had thought it? Or was it only terrible? At that
moment, first, she knew. Perhaps she became in that last instant all
woman once more. Perhaps she saw something not for mortal eyes. Perhaps
she was not as brave with death as she had taught herself to be--gentle
Hoshiko! Her lips moaned, piteously, when she ought to have been dead,
"Arisuga!"
So that one of the two who had gone forward with her bent hastily and
said to the other, with a pleasant smile:--
"He speaks his own name!"
"Nembutsu," answered the other. "Take the flag."
The first one tried, but it held fast in her hand.
"There is no need," he said; "the battle is won. Let him keep it!"
But they covered her face. For the peace, the ecstasy, of a glorious
death was not on it! What did she learn in that death-instant?
Others caught at the flag. But her hand held it fast. So that when that
dense line of blue which she had started from the willows reached her,
at first it parted chivalrously at the flag and passed on either side.
But at last it could not part. Some one trod upon the little
color-bearer. Then many. The thick-massed line passed over her. It could
not be helped. Some one took the flag from her hand and planted it on
the Russian redoubt. At last she seemed but part of the earth beneath
their feet, and they who trod on her did not even look down.
AFTERWARD
XXXIV
AFTERWARD
Afterward there was a great funeral. The hillside was a temple. The
summer blue was its roof. The jagged mountains were its eaves. Evergreen
trees were its walls. A torii made of firs was its gate. Blossoming
trees held the gohei strips which pledged purity to the august shades
which waited near. The altar was of rifles and a soldier's blanket. The
offerings were the vapors of the simple grains and flowers, of the
country.
Beyond it was the great pyre--not grim, as death is, but more beautiful
than that on which Dido perished, adorned, perfumed, with aromatic
spring firs and blossoming trees. In the temple, first, the shades of
those who had fought with them were worshipped and exalted by the
brocaded priests. Then fealty was sworn to those who had just died, and
whose shades yet lingered by their greatest incarnation.
Last, Nisshi read the names of those who had died with glory. And first
among them was that of Shijiro Arisuga. Then with others they put the
blackened, riven little body they had found, upon the pyre, and,
lighting it, gave Hoshiko's ashes to the earth, her spirit to oblivion,
and Arisuga's name to honor.
It began the next day. Shijiro Arisuga was in the Tokyo newspapers, upon
the dead walls, and in the hoarse voices of the people. It was a story
like the terrible courage of their old warriors, and they loved it. His
medal was hung in a temple. And to-day there is a record of his heroism,
on the brass where it can never fade--though Shijiro Arisuga lies dead,
unknown, in America.
And that was the fifth time that Shijiro Arisuga must have thought the
happiest moment of his life had come.
And now we may speculate a little, before we forget, upon this last of
the five occasions. For there may be those who think that Shijiro could
not have been happy in seeing what he saw that day. But we are to
remember that, then, he had knowledge of many things which he had not on
earth. And among these was a more intimate knowing of the heart of
Hoshiko. And in that, it seems to me, he ought to have been happiest of
all. Yet--who knows?
Perhaps, too, the merciful gods permitted themselves to be deceived into
thinking that the Shijiro Arisuga who died at Hamatan is, indeed, the
one who died at Jokoji. For the life name is the same. Or perhaps they
are only complaisant, and, in the passing years, will permit the people
to think that this is so. Who knows?
At all events, Shijiro Arisuga, father and son, will take their way hand
in hand from the dark Meido to the heavens.
And for these some one will reverently write a splendid death name upon
a golden tablet at a beautiful shrine. And before it will burn always
the lights and the incense. Perhaps this happiness will be for gentle
Yone. Perhaps the spirit of her who died at Hamatan, in its boundless
compassion, will also come and touch the little Yone on the arm as she
wanders, lonely, by the tomb of Lord Esas, so that she, too, may have
her heart's desire, and only one, she who bought her happiness with an
eternity of obliteration, have nothing. For, who knows?
And one wishes it were possible for Shijiro to have defied O-Emma of the
hells and to have taken Hoshiko straight from the great red death, past
all the lesser heavens, to be forever lost in the bosom of the Lord
Buddha in the lotus fields--if the souls of mortals ever fly straight
from earth to the last white heaven. But this could not be. There was
that eternal penance for over-joy to accomplish.
For Hoshiko there never can be again, in the heavens above or on the
earth beneath or the hells below, a being. All her existences--all her
thousands of years of life--whether of the earths or the heavens or the
hells, were given for Shijiro Arisuga, whom she loved--and who once, for
a little while, loved her. Shijiro Arisuga lives, and the father in the
son will live on the brass forever.
The Dream-of-a-Star is forever vanished, save for the moment I write
here--save for the moment you read here.
Transcriber's note:
The following have been changed:
Myagi=>Miyagi
Damashi=>Damashii