VIII
It was a good thing for Soichi that he had received the proper Japanese training in emotional self-repression or he certainly would have betrayed his secret very soon after his return to the house in Azalea Street. It not only filled him to the overflowing point; it enveloped him roundabout. He was drowned in it. Only the strong force of habit saved him, and the preoccupation of his parents prevented them from noticing his sudden distraction and absent-mindedness. Four days went by, two so long that night seemed never to come, and two so short that he remembered of each nothing but the blissful hour whenhe had seen O-Mitsu. They had lived over again the past and drunk the joy of the present. Then came the specter. Boys and girls who fall in love in Japan, where thenakododoes most of the wooing, have even less chance than Western lovers for the proverbially rare smooth course of affection. And when he is of such humble descent as Soichi and she the daughter of a Samurai, that little chance is very small indeed. But they were true Japanese and had no lack of courage. They looked their trouble squarely in the eyes and questioned only how to meet it.
“Do you remember the teacher who frightened me so that first day at school?” she asked, going back again to the beginning of all things. “When they told me first that I should not play with you I asked him if it were so. Do you know what he said?”
“Yes, I know,” he answered, a little sadly, for he saw how always the specter stood between them.
“He was a Samurai,” she went on, “and he knew. He said the Emperor had destroyed the old distinction and we were all alike.”
“Yes,” he replied, “before the law. But there are some things that not even the Emperor’s law can reach.”
“Treason!” she cried lightly. “The Emperor’s law reaches everywhere and touches everything.”
He looked at her with a smile. “Do you think,” he said, “that the Emperor wishes us two to be married?”
Her eyes dwelt fondly on his face, and she answered bravely:
“He wishes the old barriers to be utterly thrown down and all his people to be one.”
The picture of that day at his father’s school when he had asserted his manhood came back to him with a rush.
“Ah, yes,” he said soberly, “that is true. Perhaps it might have been, but I spoiled it.”
“Thou?” she said, using again that fond expression that sent the blood surging through him.
“I struck your brother,” he answered. “Perhaps but for that——”
“No, no!” she cried. “I know about that. It was right. There would have been no hope if you had not done it. You do not know Kokan, how proud and hard he is, how he despisesfear. He thought you were afraid of him, and he hated you for it. If you had not shown him you were not, and—and this had come, he would have killed you.”
“Perhaps,” he said coolly.
His tone startled her. It was only a little, after all, that she knew of men, and there was a side of Soichi that she did not suspect, because of the difference in their training.
“Ah, but he would,” she declared earnestly. “You do not know how quick and hot his temper is.”
“Perhaps I should have killed him,” Soichi answered. “It would have been a fight, not a murder.”
The words surprised him almost as much as they did her, but for a different reason. That he had said them to her was the wonder to him; that he should have the feeling they disclosed was her amazement. It was the spirit of the Samurai, the spirit that all her training told her belonged only to them, and yet he revealed it as lightly as if it were a thing of supreme indifference, a commonplace, the matter-of-fact possession of every man. A new joy came to her with the unexpected knowledge, and instantly new hopesprang up, vague and undefined, but none the less profound. Somehow, some way this unimagined quality in him would throw down the hateful barrier of prejudice and set them free. There was a deepened tenderness in the eyes that answered his gaze.
“You said there would have been no hope if I had not done that,” he went on, after a little. “Did you think Kokan would ever forgive that blow?”
“He is brave and true,” she answered softly, “even if he is proud and scornful. Too brave himself not to admire bravery in another. He thought you were afraid, but now he knows and in time his anger will die away.”
“You do not know him so well, I am afraid,” he said. “To be struck by one he despised so much was an insult he will never forget or forgive. Hope, for us, must count on something else, yet we must not be without hope. You know the saying, ‘Even a calamity, if left alone three years, may turn into a fortune.’”
She was strangely happy again. It seemed quite natural now that they should face hopefully forward. She looked out over theshining sea and began to build dreams, queer dreams that left the Now by unknown paths and reached the Then by unmarked roads. But always they arrived there, and it was a country of unclouded happiness where she and he lived in perfect peace. A long time he sat silent, watching her with eyes that signaled his mood. At length she turned to him with a little sigh.
“I must go home,” she said. “My father will say I stay very long at the shrine and go very often.”
“So long a time and yet so short,” he said, and rose to his feet. An unpleasant thought crossed his mind and she saw its shadow.
“What is it?” she asked.
“To-morrow the work at the bank begins,” he replied, “and I must go there.”
“Well,” she said, “are you not glad of it? It is an honorable occupation.”
He gave her a puzzled, sorrowful look that brought a peal of merry laughter.
“Is it so bad as that?” she asked.
“When I go to the bank I cannot come here,” he said gravely. “Then when shall I see you?”
At once her own face fell. “You are here now,” she said, “and that was enough. I did not think of to-morrow.”
“Not merely to-morrow,” he rejoined, “but all the days after that.”
“Two,” she answered lightly; “there will be always two in seven. We can thank the new ways that have brought us Saturday and Sunday.”
“Yes, two in seven,” he responded, so gloomily that she laughed outright.
“Greedy!” she cried. “Know you not that the avaricious man prepares his own downfall? How much better are two days than none, as it has been so long?” She held up her slender fingers and made as if to count the years he had been away. “And for the other days,” she went on, “there are paper and ink and brushes, when one knows how to write.”
She was too happy at her new discovery of him to let so small a matter as this conjure up clouds. He caught the contagion and her smile chased away his frown.
“Good thought!” he said. “Now I know why that troublesome art was taught me.”
So, laughing and jesting, they starteddown the hill. They had almost reached the bottom when a new difficulty arose.
“If I send you a letter,” he said soberly, “will not Kudo-san know it?”
She had thought of that, too, only it did not disturb her.
“In the roof over the gate,” she said, “there is a split in the shingle. Underneath one could easily leave a letter that would never be seen unless someone should look for it.”
But he, more practical, at once objected. It would be tempting fate to leave their letters where any day her father might so easily find them. If he should chance to look over-closely at the gate, or perhaps to have it repaired when a letter was there, discovery would be certain.
“If you do not enter the tiger’s den,” she said, “you cannot catch her cub.”
“Oh, yes,” he answered; “if one is patient by and by the cub will come out. There is a better place. In the corner of the yard by the plum tree there is a big bamboo post in the angle of the fence. To-night, after dark, I will make a cap for it, and in the hollow beneath shall be our letter box.”
“Yes,” she said, “that is best.”
Satisfied of his skill and ingenuity she gave him her prettiest bow and a radiant smile, and moved down the path toward Timber Street. He watched until the far turn shut out from his view the dainty figure in its silver-gray kimono and iris-violetobi, and then thoughtfully took his own way homeward.
It was in the time of “Little Heat” when Soichi fitted the cap to the post. So cleverly he did his work that no one could tell, except by the closest examination, that there was a seam in the bamboo. On the inside he made a deep groove in the post and fastened a tongue to the cap so that it should fit tight always in the same place and never betray what had been done. Often, after that, he would watch his chance and when no one was in sight slip up to the post and stealthily lift the cap to take out or put in a letter.
The days passed swiftly, in spite of his inability to see O-Mitsu, for the work at the bank was new and hard, and as the business prospered there was much for him to do. SoHandonandDonkatu(half Sunday and Sunday), as the country people still call them, came around more quickly than he hadthought, and nearly always they had contrived to arrange a meeting. Oftenest it was at their favorite big rock back of the pines, where there was seldom a straggling sight-seer to interrupt them. But sometimes, on holidays and festivals, it would be at the big Buddhist temple; and that they liked less, for the crowd interfered, and it was difficult to find a secluded place or to have more than a few words together without observation.
The weeks ran on into months, and the period of the “Cold Dew” came all too quickly, with its short afternoons and early descending sun, that cut down their brief hour together and sent them home to write more letters. For the conversation of lovers is as never-ending in the Mikado’s realm as in the less fettered courtships of happier lands, and there was always so very much between them that had to be said and answered.
And now a new, dread subject was looming up. All over the land traveled the same sinister whisper, and men said the Dragon was rousing himself, and talked of the terrible rustling of his great scales. The winds of war were beginning to blow lightly from the north, and far and near the people waitedanxiously to see if they could not be diverted. As time went on, and stronger and stronger came the hostile currents, more and more soberly Soichi and O-Mitsu discussed the darkening future. Much it meant to them, for Soichi would be a soldier. His last birthday had brought him to the age for conscription service, and although his university course would give him some exemption, he was not one to claim it, if the Emperor were engaged in deadly strife; nor indeed would O-Mitsu have him. As autumn dipped into winter the wrath of the people toward their great antagonist grew and deepened, and anxiety lest there should be war gave place to desire for it.
They were sitting again by their great rock one late fall afternoon when the grass was brown and dead, and through the bare branches that waved above the housetops the wind blew bleak and cold from off a sullen sea. They had talked of war and what it might bring to them. Each felt it would be the end of all their dreams, for a soldier’s duty is to die for the Emperor, and Soichi would not come back when once he had been called to the front.
“It will be a very great honor for me,” he said at length, turning from a long, silent look at the wide-stretching water.
She glanced up at him questioningly.
“It is the first time a Kutami has had the privilege of serving the Empire as a soldier,” he went on, “and I shall be very proud to go. It has done a great deal for us.”
She made no answer, but sat with her slender hands folded across her lap.
“Will you pray to Kwannon when I am gone?” he asked gravely.
“Yes, and to Shaka,” she said softly.
“Ah, to him also,” he returned; “yes, to him, too. We commit it all to Shaka.”
The low-hanging sun warned them that their all-too-short hour was ended, and they started down the familiar path in silence. At the turn, where they separated, he paused, and she looked up into his eyes.
“To Shaka, too,” he said, and strode on.