X
“Three times, he told my father, he had made offer of marriage for you, and each time it was refused.”
Soichi looked down upon her where she sat by the big rock, and his black eyes shone with a great tenderness. She did not look up, but gazed away toward the sea and made no reply. All the time since she had read his letter she had wondered what to say to him. For she had wished earnestly that he might not know. There was trouble enough already for them, and it could do no good totell him. It could only add to his disquiet, and as it was they seldom met without some shadow of their specter falling over them. So she meant to bear this alone, and if by and by the barriers were destroyed, then it would add to their joy. But now it had come, through the foolish gabble of old Chukei. She looked up at him standing there, so strong and manly, and the sadness she saw smote her heart.
“Three times,” he repeated.
The old roguish smile came into her eyes. “But none of them was from a banker,” she said softly.
As always, she had only to seem merry to drive away his sober mood, and now the light-hearted answer brought its quick smile in return.
“But why did you not tell me?” he demanded.
“Thou art dull, Big One,” she answered, “to ask me such questions. Surely thou must have guessed.”
“I am not quick with riddles,” he said.
Manlike he had but one way. He must know it all and she must tell. The intuition that would have conjured up the whole scenefor her was utterly lacking in him, and as she watched him, she saw the shadow settle on his brow that warned her of his shifting mood.
“For one,” she said quickly, “how could I tell when you were not here, and thought so little of me you had not even told me where you were?”
He did not understand, and she laughed at his puzzled look. Then he saw.
“So long ago,” he said, “before I came home?”
“Is it so very long?” she asked. “I do not remember. It seemed but yesterday I saw you here. How many years is it, man to whom it has been so long?”
He gazed at her bewildered. He was no match for her at such fencing of wits. He flung himself down beside her and said shortly:
“Have the kindness to explain, if you please. Do you not see how I am tortured?”
“No, no!” she cried, “not that! Were they not all refused? For what are you tortured? Ah, if you had been a woman you would have been taught in childhood how foolish it is toadmit jealous thoughts. Well, then, since you insist so much, the first one was refused—I did not know why. My father gave me my wish and I said No. Then one day I went to visit an old shrine I love very much, and I found out why. After that, with the others—there was no other reason. Now is the torture ended?”
He turned to her and the smile in his eyes was complete reward. “I am very glad,” he said.
“And very foolish,” she added softly.
“I wished very much to know,” he said after a pause. “To-morrow I am summoned to the temple for examination.”
“To-morrow!” she cried. She knew it was to come but had not thought it was so near. “To-morrow!” she repeated, whispering, as if to herself. “Are you glad to go? Perhaps you will not be taken.”
“Nay,” he said, “if there is war I shall be glad and proud, and if there is no war the time will soon be ended.”
“Very soon,” she said demurely, and made as if counting on her fingers. “When a few months may seem so many years how long will three years be?”
“Long enough for more refusals,” he answered, and she laughed at the retort.
“But it is by lot that they are chosen,” she said, “and it may not fall on you.”
He smiled fondly at her eagerness and innocence. “Yes, by lot,” he answered. “But your Samurai policemen know well where to make the lots fall.”
She knew what he meant. Young men as tall and sturdy as he did not escape, even though the selection was by chance. There was a keen-eyed, patriotic, military intelligence that supervised the casting of the lots, and the girl, who gloried in his strength, foresaw the certainty that he would be chosen. Nor was he, in truth, unwilling to go. If it should happen that the wheel of the lottery left him free to stay at home, as it did some quite as fit as he for service, he would accept the result with a clean conscience. For brief and infrequent as were his opportunities for seeing O-Mitsu, even they would be lost if he were in the army. Thus far his loyalty and sense of duty to the empire let him go. Before the lots were drawn he could hope that they would miss him. When the decision was made, if he were taken he would set his heartto his work with a will and devotion no tie of home, no merely personal consideration, would ever cause to waver for an instant. And of all who knew and loved him none would urge him on more eagerly than the girl. She was looking at him proudly as he sat before her, and it came to her that he was of the build and stature sought for throughout the empire for the distinguished regiments which had the honor of bearing the imperial name.
“You will go to the Guards,” she said.
“Oh, no,” he answered quickly; “I could not hope for such an honor.”
“Honor!” she said with a smile. “It will be an honor to the Guards to have such a soldier.”
That was too much and he laughed at the joke. “But I am not a soldier,” he protested.
“You will be,” she answered confidently. “There are some things about you, Big One, which you do not know yourself, but I know. Come, it is time to go. You must drink no sake to-night, and sleep well, to be ready for the examination.”
There was plenty of company for Soichi atthe temple the next morning. All the young men of his age in the district had been summoned, and there was a clatter of eager talk among them as they awaited their turns with the examiners. But Soichi had little to say. He heard with amusement the boastful words of some who knew themselves to be at the threshold of distinction and honor, and he had a strange sympathy for some who hoped to escape. For himself, a night of agitated reflection, sleepless in spite of O-Mitsu’s parting injunction, had brought him a day of calm indifference. He was ready for whatever might come. The businesslike surgeon, working rapidly but carefully, pronounced his verdict with prompt decision, and one after another was set free or sent on to the recruiting captain. At length it was Soichi’s turn. The brusque doctor’s eyes glistened as he saw the rippling muscles of the broad shoulders, and an exclamation of professional pleasure broke from his lips as he caught the rhythmic note of the deep breathing.
“Lungs like a bellows,” he cried to his assistant.
Weight, height, and measurements were quickly taken, and with an enthusiasm he hadnot displayed in many a day the surgeon called to the recording sergeant:
“Ichiban” (first-class).
Already Soichi knew his fate. His university degree would take the place of the recruiting captain’s mental examination, and after that there would be only the certainty of the lots. It did not take the captain long to repeat the surgeon’s “Ichiban,” and as Soichi turned away from giving his record at the desk, he heard the recruiting officer say to the inspector major, who had just come in:
“There is one for the Guards. Just look at him.”
O-Mitsu’s judgment was confirmed, and he went home to await the notice of his selection, and to write perhaps his last letter to her. For he would not dare to write to her home when he was away, and they had no friend whom they would trust with their secret. It was a sober letter. There seemed little chance now that war would be avoided. Already men said that the throat of the Dragon had been touched, and throughout the Empire preparations were going on rapidly for the time when he should strike.
With simple directness Soichi told hisnews, and spoke proudly of the intimation he had had that he should go to the Guards. There would be a few weeks of drill and preliminary work, he supposed, in the barracks at division headquarters in the near-by city, and it might be that once or twice more he should have the opportunity of seeing her before he went to Tokyo to join his regiment. After that would come the war and the battlefield. She would know he did not say it to boast, but he meant to do a soldier’s duty. It would have been sweet, it there had been no war (he spoke of it as if it were already begun), to live on there with her, for in some way it would have worked out for them. But that was impossible now; a dream to be forgotten. The dearest wish of his heart was to die for the Emperor, and he prayed only that Shaka would permit him to meet his fate gloriously and with honor.
That was all. Not a word to her of the love that filled his heart. Not a message of hope or farewell, not a hint of constancy or patience. All that was behind him. His duty lay to the future and to the grim chance of war.
It was a raw, cold night, with a bitter windsearching through the bare branches of the plum tree, and Soichi shivered as he lifted the cap of the bamboo post and thrust in his letter. Then he patted the cap back into place and turned away, nor noticed that a telltale corner of the envelope projected through the joint he had not closed tightly. And of all the evenings in the year, that was the one Jukichi chose to visit the plum tree.
Next day the notification came. Soichi had been selected for immediate service and was to go to the Guards. His record in the military work at school was such that the preliminary training at adjacent division headquarters would be waived and he would report directly to his regiment. He would start the following day.
He went to the bank and finished up his work there in preparation for indefinite absence. Then he wrote a little note to O-Mitsu, telling her the orders he had received, and started home. The early winter evening had fallen before he reached the house in Timber Street, and he stopped at the bamboo post to leave his note and perhaps to find a letter from her. He lifted the cap with excited eagerness and felt in the hollow.There, sure enough, was a letter. He took it out with thumping heart and dropped in his own; then hurried around the corner home, impatient for light to read her words.
The first glance at the envelope sent a queer sensation of coldness through his heart, as if he had suddenly been struck chill. The writing was strange. The delicate characters of O-Mitsu, beautiful as the work of a famous artist, were replaced by the strong, heavy, brush strokes of an angry man. For an instant he stared at them with mind a blank. Then he knew. Someone had found them out. He stood as if paralyzed by shock, nerveless, inert, expecting some dire calamity. Then he tore open the envelope.
A single glance was sufficient to tell the story. The signature was the first thing his eye caught, and after that he could hardly see the other words. Those two dominated everything—“Kudo Jukichi”—her father! The new-clothed dignity of the law that made him a Commoner slipped from him like a kimono unfastened; the honor of his new service, the pride of his regimental assignment faded away, and he was again the Eta of the old days, outcast, despised, a very pollution. Allthat he had done, all that his father had done, the position they had won in the community, the consideration of their fellows were made as nothing by the simple apparition of those two words.
But after a little the old inborn pride of race came back to him and he straightened up like a new man. He was one of whom the Emperor had deigned to think; what should he care what others said? What mattered it after all that her father had learned their secret? Nothing but that was changed, and sooner or later that must have come. He had done no wrong. He was not changed. The law that had given him citizenship was still the law. The Emperor’s care was over him. It was his Sovereign’s wish that he was what he was. He took new heart and began to read the letter. His brain was cooler now. In the mental numbness that followed the first shock he had felt only a vague terror of the fury of Kudo. But as he read, the words that had seemed so awful in anticipation lost some of their dreaded force. The wild outburst of rage was not there, but in its place a cool, fine sarcasm that cut as if the Samurai who wrote had wielded his sword instead.
A curious calm possessed him as he finished the letter. The haughty pride of the Samurai, his bitter contempt for the “outcast” who dared presume to think of his daughter, his jeers at the “upstart trader” had lost their sting. It was a soldier of the Empire, a man of the Guards, who folded the letter and replaced it in its envelope. With a smiling face he met his father and mother and sat down to supper.
After the meal, when the pipes were brought out, he handed the letter to his father to read. It might as well be told now. His poor little secret, stripped of its veil, seemed very small and miserable. But he was going away to-morrow, and unknown to-morrow might do what it would with him. He listened unmoved while Chobei slowly read aloud the bitter, mocking words of the man for whom he had done so much. O-Koyo covered her face with her kimono sleeves and wept openly; but father and son sat with steady features and gave no sign, save that when the reading was ended the Commoner laid his strong arm across his son’s shoulder in shy, unaccustomed caress, and said:
“My son! My son!” No more.