Part 7

THERE came not many letters during the winter months to the little Kurukawa family, but the ones that did come were all the more precious. Before the first flowers of the year had begun to tint the plum-trees with their pink beauty, all Japan knew that the war would have but one ending. Victory followed victory. Instances of heroism became so frequent they could scarcely keep count of them. People, smiling, would hear the tale of a certain officer or soldier’s self-sacrifice for his country, then they would say, still with that mysterious smile so common in Japan: “He has done only what any soldier of Japan would do.”

The newspapers, little, slim sheets, containing less than a quarter of the words an American newspaper would give to the war-story, seemed to drift about the empire. Everywhere they were found, everywhere people carried them.

It was in April that the _Far East_ published a story of a certain act of surpassing heroism performed by a Japanese officer. Mrs. Kurukawa had seen the head-lines, and stopping in the street had bought the paper. She read it through slowly, still standing there in the street. As she stood, perfectly still, her white face tense and drawn, curious passers-by stopped to look at her, wondering what it was the foreign woman found in the paper to make her look so strangely. It was the act of a child which aroused her. Passing, he lightly pulled the sleeve of her kimono. She started as if struck, the paper fluttered from her hand. Mechanically she reached for it, but a sudden wind caught it up and blew it hither and thither about the street. She stood there watching its flight until it had passed out of sight. It disappeared utterly. Surely it had never been at all, she had not really held it in her hand and read the story of her husband’s terrible fate! Walking unsteadily and blindly, she started down the street.

Madame Sano came swiftly from the garden-path to meet her, for the news had reached the house in Mrs. Kurukawa’s absence.

Japanese women are not demonstrative, but they are exquisitely tender. The touch of Madame Sano’s hands upon her face was balm itself. The stricken woman’s features quivered. Sobs burst from her lips, and in the other woman’s arms she wept as though she had found the haven of a mother’s breast. Without speaking, Madame Sano led her into the house. The children, a pitiful, frightened group, were in the hall, waiting for her. Passionately, Marion called her mother by name, and clung to her a moment, but Madame Sano gently put the little girl aside and took the mother to her room. There she induced her to lie down until she waited upon her, murmuring words in soothing Japanese. When the younger woman was calmer, Madame Sano gently spoke of the sad news. She said, in a reverent voice:

“God is good, my daughter. How gloriously he has rewarded your husband!”

The woman on the bed did not stir or speak. Madame Sano continued:

“Think how many families there are in Japan whose men have never had the opportunity to give such august service to their Emperor. We are fortunate indeed.”

Mrs. Kurukawa covered her face with her hands. The tears came slipping through them; helpless, silent tears which would not be held back. Her voice was choked but inexpressibly sweet:

“I know,” she said, “it is all—very—glorious—but—I will not give up hope.”

“Hope?” repeated Madame Sano. “Our best hopes are realized, my daughter. Kurukawa Kiyskichi has made the supreme sacrifice. He has given his life to his Emperor and to his country.”

Now, Mrs. Kurukawa raised herself. Two spots of red appeared in her cheeks. Her eyes were feverish, her nervous fingers clasped each other spasmodically.

“I will tell you my hope—my belief. I feel, in spite of what we have heard, that my husband is not dead. I _feel_ it somehow. I cannot explain. Only this I do know: he promised he would return, and he must! Oh, I am sure he will!”

Gently the old woman spoke, smoothing the hands of the other woman as she did so.

“My child, he will truly return to you as he has promised. All Japanese soldiers expect to return to their wives, but in the spirit!”

Mrs. Kurukawa drew her hands passionately away.

“That was not his meaning,” she said.

Madame Sano shook her head sadly.

“Ah, my child, be reconciled to the august inevitable.”

There was a smile upon the pale lips of the younger woman.

“You do not understand my faith,” she said, “and I cannot explain it. When I read that story in the street I felt as if something had struck me. I tried to push it from me with my hands, and I do not know how I found my way home. I still feel as if I had been hurt and bruised in some way, and yet I know—I feel—that it is not true—that he is—dead.”

Her voice whispered the word, and for a long interval there was silence in the room. Then she said, slowly: “It is a mistake—a horrible mistake. God give us courage to bear the mistake. But that is all it is.”

“You do not believe the story of your husband’s magnificent heroism?”

“I do believe it.”

“Then you must admit that he has passed away. Is it not clearly stated that after he had saved almost the entire division that was caught in the ambush that he himself was struck down and his body carried away by the Russians, for what purposes can only be surmised?”

Mrs. Kurukawa was silent. After a while she arose, and, though her hands were trembling, she dressed herself afresh with calmness. Madame Sano watched her in silence.

After a while she asked:

“You are going out?”

“Yes, to learn what I can. If necessary I will go again to Tokio, leaving the children with you.”

The old woman nodded.

“They will make an honorable effort,” she said, “to obtain possession of your husband’s body, and he will be given an exalted funeral. ‘He died gloriously for Dai Nippon’ will say all loyal Japanese.”

Mrs. Kurukawa smiled wearily.

“He is not dead,” she said. “Do not, dear Madame Sano, rob me of my hope. I want to be courageous, for while I feel he is not gone truly from me, I do not know what may have befallen him. It may be that he is wounded—sick—tortured—a prisoner. Oh, I cannot bear to think of it!”

“Better, my child,” urged the old woman, gently, “to believe he is at rest. Cherish not false hopes. Ah, had you been a true daughter of Japan, you would have looked for, expected, and even hailed this bereavement, but—”

“Do not reproach me,” cried Mrs. Kurukawa. “My husband would not have done so. Oh, I have tried to be as he would wish me, and—and—I feel that he would have me believe as I do. I know he will keep his promised word. He will return to me.”

XXIV

TWO weeks later the mail for Tokio contained several pathetic epistles. Most of them were written in the wandering, crude, yet peculiarly attractive handwriting of little children. Mrs. Kurukawa read them over and over again, crying softly as she did so.

“DARLING MAMMA,—Do please let us come to you in Tokio. You do not know how sad we are without you. Little girls have little hearts, but I know that they can suffer much, just the same. Grandmother, too, is very sad, and Norah is crying, ‘Wirrah, wirrah, wirrah!’ all the time, and, oh, mamma, she says she hears the banshee every night wailing outside our house. Grandmother says it’s only that old gray cat of Summer’s. You probably remember her. But Norah says it is the banshee, and it means that some one in our family is dead. Oh, mamma, _how_ it made me cry! Grandmother has made us all the strangest-looking kimonos. They are of black crêpe, and I cannot bear to put mine on. She says that black is not the mourning color in Japan, but we must wear black in honor of you, mamma, because black crêpe is mourning in America. So yesterday we all went to church in those black kimonos, and everybody stared at us, and I put my head down on the pew, and cried and cried. Plum Blossom and Iris also hid their faces, and though they say _they_ did not cry, I think they did, for their eyes were all red. Everybody treats us as if we were great people. In church they all bowed so deeply to us as we went in. Sometimes the men we meet on the street will cheer when they see us. Taro says it is because father did such heroic things. Taro has no heart, I sometimes think, for he seems to be proud and happy that father is gone, and he says he wishes he could have the chance to do what father did. Billy is very serious these days. He thinks he ought to be with you in Tokio, to take care of you and protect you. Oh, dear mamma, do let us know all the news you hear, and if we cannot come to you, _please_, please come home to us soon.

“Your affectionate and loving,

“MARION.”

“BELOVED DAUGHTER-IN-LAW,—I hope that your health is excellent and that you will return home soon. The servants weep for their okusama (honorable lady of the house). The children are augustly sad without you. Billy has lost his appetite for food. He has the pale face got. When I request, ‘Are you ill, Billy?’ he makes reply, in boy rough way, ‘No, but I ought to be with my mother.’ Marion spoils her pretty eyes with too much weep. She and Juji weep enough tears for all the honorable family. Plum Blossom does all your work most neatly, and is learning excellently to be a good house-keeper. You chose wisely to put her in your place, and she feels proudly your august confidence in her. Iris assists her in all things, but neither does she appear in good health. She has too much paleness in the face also. Taro is a great comfort. His father’s heroism has inspired him with noble ambitions. He is a worthy son, though young. The baby has more words to say each day. Yesterday she spoke of the white moon which appeared in the sky while it was yet day as “ball,” and she said, ‘It is too high!’ Those are many words for one so young. She has her august mother’s eyes.

“Excellent daughter-in-law, I beseech you to earnestly seek details concerning the fate of our beloved Gozo. It is said in some of the papers that he did accompany his father upon this expedition. I entreat you to think first of all of your august health and happiness. I sign myself, Your unworthy mother-in-law,

“SANO-OTAMA.”

“DEAR MOTHER,—Since father is dead, _I_ ought to take care of you. I think about it all the time and want to come to you. I don’t think it right for a woman to be alone, and I must come to you at once. Taro and I have not felt like doing anything lately. I don’t know what’s the matter with everything. The house doesn’t seem the same without you. I can’t write much. I want to be with you, mother.

“Your boy,

“BILLY.”

“ESTEEMED MOTHER,—The plum-trees have much buds again got now, but very sad they make us this year. I think only of those cherry blossoms we did see with our honorable father. They are so like the plum. Billy says they make him sick if he look upon those trees. So we go not out much, as it makes so sorrow in the hearts to see those same trees shine.

“Earnestly I endeavor to follow your honorable counsel about the house, and it is unworthily clean to your honor. I am become like Marion. Always my eyes those tears in them when I think about you, and several times I make my pillow wet. Therefore I praying until you _please_ come home with us. Tha’s very sad that our father die and go way, but tha’s sadder that we lose our mother also.

“Unworthy and insignificant,

“PLUM BLOSSOM.”

“DEAR MAM,—I thought I would write you a letter, hoping that you are well. i like you very much, mam, and i love the precious lambs, both the babby and Juji, but, mam, i cannot bear any longer so much sorrow, and it’s a letter to you i’m writing to say i must go back to the old country, for i cannot bear so much trouble and i have heard the banshee cry at night and it’s afraid i am that there’s death hovering about. Will you buy my ticket, please, mam? And it’s breaking my heart sure to leave you and the lambs.

“Respectfully,

“NORAH O’MALLEY.”

XXV

THE letters brought the mother back to her home. She had altered strangely in the two months she had been in the city. Always slim, she seemed now a mere shadow of a woman—slight and frail as if a breath would blow her away. But the thin face still retained its gentle sweetness of expression and the eyes held that smile of hope.

The children were glad to see her. Laughing and crying they clung to her.

“Why,” she said, as if she had only just realized it, “what a lot there is to live for!”

“Seven of us, mother,” said Marion; “no, eight!—for there’s Gozo, too.”

She took no one into her confidence, but began, in secret, a correspondence with the Minister of War. All of her inquiries were answered. In Japan her husband had not been without high influence, and his heroism had made his name revered by all Japanese. Hence the requests of his widow were given the greatest attention. Soon they had reached the highest authorities. Orders went straight to the field of action. At last there came a day when she knew that a special search was to be made for her husband—dead or alive.

The Russians would tell if he were with them. If not, then, at least, his body must be found. Such were the orders issued from a high place.

She was like a flower opening to the sunshine and spring rain. The color came back to her pale cheeks and lips. Back also came the light of health to her eyes. She moved like a new person.

The assurance that no stone would be left unturned to learn her husband’s fate, and her strange faith that he was still alive, invigorated her. The change effected in her rapidly spread to the entire household. Gloom slipped out of the door and sunshine ventured in with summer. And this is as it should be in the house of children.

While the cherry blossoms were still flying like myriad pink-and-white birds in the skies and all the mossy ground was white with the flowery carpet blown from the trees, the family went out once again on a flower picnic.

In the same little flowery gowns, the sleeve-wings weighted with petals, they started gayly for the picnic grounds where “father” had taken them only a year before. A gentle melancholy which pervaded even the youngest of them, at the memory of that absent one, was dispersed with the mother’s thought!

“Father would have you happy to-day, children. This is _his_ day, darlings. So be happy.”

And so they were. They played the games popular in Japan, engaged in the fascinating sport of kite-flying, listened with eager ears to the tales of the grandfather, and then, sleepy, homeward bound in their jinrikishas, lazily attacked passing festival-makers with the petals, to be smothered in turn with the flowery shower.

When they reached home it was gloaming. Norah made the discovery that most of the children were asleep.

“Shure,” said the girl, “they’re all babbies, mam, just look at the darlints,” and she indicated the heads of the three little girls all resting asleep on the back of the seat. Marion was in the middle with a hand of each step-sister in her own. Mrs. Kurukawa stood silently looking at them, then Norah interrupted her thoughts again.

“Did you think, ma’am, I’d have the heart to leave them?”

“I hoped not, Norah,” she answered, gently, “but I know it has been hard for you, and you are a good girl.”

She helped the Irish girl lift the sleeping Juji from the carriage. As a maid from the house came to the jinrikisha Mrs. Kurukawa turned to direct her to assist Norah. Something in the girl’s face startled her. The usual impassive expression was gone, and in the dim light of the evening her mistress saw the silent tears rolling down her face.

“Why are you crying, Natsu?” she said. “Are you in trouble?”

The girl shook her head.

“What is it? You are unhappy about something.”

Suddenly the girl slipped to the ground and buried her face in the folds of her mistress’s kimono. Madame Sano drew her almost roughly away.

“What is it?” she demanded, harshly, in Japanese. “It is unseemly to act so in the okusama’s presence. Keep your troubles for your own chamber.”

“But I have no troubles,” said the girl, rising and wiping her eyes with her sleeves. “I w-weep because I am happy.”

She brought the last word out with such hysterical vehemence that she woke the older sleepers. They sat up, looking about them, startled from their dreams. But Mrs. Kurukawa shook the girl by the arm. Her voice was hoarse.

“What is it, Natsu? Tell me quickly!”

For answer the girl turned towards the house and pointed to the silent figure standing there by the doorway. Even in the twilight the Japanese children knew him. They jumped tumblingly from the jinrikishas and ran towards him, calling his name aloud:

“Gozo! Gozo! Gozo!”

Mrs. Kurakawa turned and blindly followed the children.

He put the clinging children aside from him and advanced a step towards her. Then suddenly he stopped short, standing uncertainly. She spoke with a note of irresistible appeal in her voice.

“Oh, you bring me news of my husband—your father!” she said.

He made a sort of smothered sound; then, with a movement strangely reminiscent of his father, he seized her hand suddenly in his own and fell on his knees before her.

“Good news—for good woman!” he said.

“He is alive!” she cried.

“In Japan—the hospital at Saseho. I unworthily brought him home on—”

He noticed that her hand fell feebly from his. Then he caught her as she reeled. She had fainted.

XXVI

THE following morning Mrs. Kurukawa was with her husband, having travelled all night, accompanied by Gozo. He had known she would come. When she approached his bed he raised himself on his elbow and greeted her cheerily, with an airy wave of his arm. When she saw his dear, familiar face, with the kindly smile lighting up the features, she rushed with an inward sob towards him. She could not speak, so deep were the emotions that assailed her, but she clung to his hand as he whispered to her.

Later, when she was calmer, she took the chair Gozo placed for her; then, with broken sentences, she poured out to her husband all that was in her heart.

The days that followed were cheery ones for the soldiers in Mr. Kurukawa’s ward. His wife would come each day loaded with flowers, books, magazines, and food of various sorts. She seemed to forget no one in the ward. Sometimes her impatient and selfish husband actually begrudged the little time she spent away from his side, as she went from cot to cot with her gifts and her words of comfort and praise. He would hold her hand greedily when she would come to him and say:

“There! At last, you have come. Tell me everything now. Ah! the letters. Read them, please, at once.”

They always began the day with her reading of the pile of letters that came from the impatient children at home.

Taro wanted his father’s sword sent, unwashed, by express. If he waited until they returned home he feared that some one might steal the precious weapon in the interval. Of course, Gozo, as the eldest son, was rightfully entitled to the sword, but he had a sword of his own already, and Taro had none. If his father would only give him this one he would swear by it to use it only in glorious service. Billy, apparently inspired at his step-brother’s request, wrote an eloquent plea for his father’s rifle. If his father could spare his uniform, which must be all ragged and worn from bullet wounds and blood, Billy would cherish it as his choicest possession. Marion’s epistles were always blurred by tear marks. They were sometimes almost undecipherable. Because the invalid insisted on hearing every word she had written, Mrs. Kurukawa usually spent more time over her letters than any of the other children’s. The little girl was given to dissecting her inmost emotions. Her letters were usually a recital of how she felt when she heard this and that about her dear, dear, _dear_, brave father, whom she loved so much.

Plum Blossom wrote pages of flowery words. The father had simply made a bird of her, she said. She wanted to sing and laugh all the time. She had a calendar on which she chalked off each day the date, so she could keep count of the days until her father would return. The baby had fallen down the stairs, she wrote, but the floor, fresh padded with rice-paper, in anticipation of the return of “father,” was so soft that she only bounced when she reached the bottom. When Norah had picked her up the baby had actually laughed, and said: “Coco faw down.” The baby could make long sentences now. She could even say a prayer Marion had taught her, but she was very rude, and often said “Amen” right in the middle.

There were three soldiers in the town, and everybody was making a great fuss over them. Miss Summer had said she wished she could marry one of them, which showed she had no sense, since Gozo already was a soldier. Anyhow, the soldiers never deigned to look at little girls, and they only marched by the Kurukawa house because they wanted to see Norah, who said they were “small, but grand!”

Iris’s letters brimmed over with the same expressions of love and entreaties for the quick return of her parents.

Finally, there came an extraordinary little document penned by Juji. It was written in English, apparently under the direction of the faithful Norah, for at the bottom of the sheet she had written:

“If you please, mam, it was Norah that taught the little lad to write the beautiful letter.”

Beautiful it was to the eye of the fond father. Every letter was printed and loving words misspelled. There were three smudges of ink on the page. One distinct little mark, where a dirty little finger had rested for a moment, pleased him.

“Do you know,” said Mrs. Kurukawa, very earnestly, “I would still be in Tokio if it had not been for the children’s letters. They used to come in every mail—little, soiled epistles of love, all bearing their childish pleas for mother to return. Why, I could not stay away from them. They just drew me back.”

Her husband looked at her fondly.

“What a _mother_ you are!” he said.

“Yes,” said she, “that’s my strongest trait—maternity. I love all children. There’s nothing sweeter in the world than baby arms about one’s neck, baby voices, baby kisses, baby touches. Oh, they are the most precious things in life!”

He looked a trifle injured.

“You think more of babies than of husbands, then.”

She laughed with the tears in her eyes.

“Why, husbands are the biggest babies of all!” she said. “I’ve always felt like a mother to you, you know.”

“You have?”

She nodded brightly.

“Don’t you know what first appealed to me in you?”

“No.”

“Well, it was your utter loneliness in a strange country. You seemed so strangely alone in America, and you wanted so much to be friendly. I saw it in your face.”

“Yes, I did want to be friendly—with you,” he admitted, gravely.

“You did not find it hard, did you?” she asked, still smiling.

“Yes, I did.”

“Why, I gave you every encouragement.”

“I know, but still I could not know that.”

Gozo came into the ward, and, joining them, tossed upon the bed a number of newspapers and periodicals.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, noting their smiling expressions.

Blushing like a girl, the wife looked at her husband shyly.