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 deathhe 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 sentyou 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 sleptunder his opium unhappily. He thought sometimes that the enemy had again taken it.
When he awoke next morning, still unhappy and in doubt (he had not 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! Weare 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."
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 wasto 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 boughtfor 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 inall 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.
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 Arisugaand 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 ofArisuga'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 theanointing—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!
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 nota 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.
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 Yoné 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 Yoné—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 waitedwhile 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 Yoné 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—Yoné 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," Yoné 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. Seewhether 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? Yoné will not trouble you if you do not wish. She will let you go and will wait still."
Hoshiko slowly turned. Yoné 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.
Yoné saw a soldier whose face she knew, but whose soul, at first, was strange.
"I am Shijiro Arisuga," said Hoshiko.
"Yes," breathed Yoné, "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 Yoné, 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 Yoné 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. Yoné 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 wehere 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 sweetas 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.
Yoné 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:—
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 Yoné 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 Yoné.
"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!
"Sh! sh!" whispered Yoné, 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. Yoné drew a bit of shrubbery before them.
"I heard a song, by all the gods I heard a foolish song in this sacred 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."
Yoné 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," Yoné 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 evenhear. 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 saké, 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 Yoné 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 Yoné.
"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.
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 elevationin 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 restwere 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 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. Andamong 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 Yoné. Perhaps the spirit of her who died at Hamatan, in its boundless compassion, will also come and touch the little Yoné 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 aneternity 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.