Part 5

"See what you have done!"

"What?" asked Hoshiko.

The maid's whisper was sinister.

"Do you wish him to think that you have been any one's? Every one's? That is why he asked."

"It is not!" protested Hoshiko. "He asked to learn how many others love me."

"And why should he ask that?"

"Because _he_ loves me," was Hoshiko's enigmatic answer.

There was no time at this moment for further explication. Arisuga had evidently decided something which was in his mind when he asked his first question, and Hoshiko fancied that his decision was against her. For he laughed (not as she would have wished him to laugh), and took an almost rude and assured possession of her.

"When the mistress says yes and the maid says no, one must believe his eyes, which say it is improbable that so fair a flower has bloomed unseen even in this arid plain of China!"

"You think, then, that I _have_ had--twenty lovers?" asked Hoshiko.

"Certainly," laughed Arisuga.

"No!" still cried the maid in her terror. "You believe, lord, that she has had none--not one--until you came!"

"Certainly," laughed the soldier again.

The two girls looked at each other dazedly. Arisuga laughed again in that unpleasant way.

"Now he will never know that I love him," chided the mistress, at an opportune moment. "If he had thought that I gave up twenty lovers the moment he came--"

The maid had not seen the value of creating such a situation. Hoshiko practised tremendous wisdom. She repeated to Isonna, in the intervals of the day, the very things Isonna had taught her with great pains.

"A man will think nothing of you unless he knows that others do. If one has two lovers, one can easily have twenty. If one has one and is truthful--that is all one will ever have. If one has none, how is one to get even one unless she pretends to have many? For if no man cares for you, no man will. If many men care for you, many more will. If a man loves one and he sees that no one else does, he persuades himself that he does not. For he thinks that if no one else loves one, one is not worth loving. But if many love one, he persuades himself that he does, because if many love one it must be right and proper for him to do it. Now, you little beast, you must help, after putting him further off, to bring him nearer by making him think that he loves and desires me more than any of the twenty."

These philosophies of her own teaching, changed and informed with the aroma of Hoshiko, went far to convince Isonna.

"Sweet mistress," said the repentant servant, "the gods pardon me--and you--you also pardon me--if I have done wrong. But this--this I will do--and swear it on the tablet of my father: If he should offer you marriage, I will go with you to some place where he can never know. I will keep your secret forever. Such things have happened. In another country the gods will not follow. Even to the country of some barbarian people, like America, I will go. What gods are there? Certainly none of our gods--such as know you and him. But I will _not_ say that you have been the creature of twenty lovers!"

"But only to make him understand that he loves me--now--here--to-day? We have given him doubt! The rest does not matter."

Isonna was repentant but not helpful.

"Well--study--think--you little beast! And be more careful next time--then whisper it to me. How to make him understand!"

But there was no further communication from the maid.

In the evening Arisuga said:--

"If what I have been thinking all day--since the events of last night--is correct, and also meets your approval, I will take you."

And the little Lady Hoshi, shocked and stunned and shivering at her heart, answered:--

"Yes, lord."

And again that night she wept--not an hour--many hours. For you will have observed that Shijiro Arisuga did not say that he would marry--but only take her. (There is a difference in Japan.) And he did not ask her parents.

"You see, he knows!" she sobbed to the faithful maid. "Oh, it was so sweet--so sweet--that I forgot that I must not. And when I thought he loved me I was sure he would say 'I will marry you,' even if he did not mean it. But he only said, 'I will take you.' So--he does not love me--no! Well, Isonna, he shall have me. And I will enter his very soul! And then, some day, he will regret those awful words, and when he does I will die where he can see me afterward. You shall dress my hair in the shimada fashion, with flowers."

"He does _not_ know," said the maid. "And he does love you. It is the result of telling him that you have had twenty lovers!"

"Ah, Isonna, do not make my sorrow heavier. That would be worse. He would not dare to say that to even me--if I were not what I am."

The maid still insisted.

"Then to-morrow I will tell him. If he would say that to a lady, who he thinks has dismissed many suitors for him, he shall know that he has said it to one who is not a lady and who has had no suitor but him alone."

"And one who has parents to be consulted! Not like one who goes to Geisha street without the leave of parents or uncles," advised the maid, with great severity.

"Yes," sobbed the girl. "Geisha street! Refuge of the forsaken! Oh, love exalts, as we do our parents. It does not demean. So, there is no love, no love! No matter what I am, however low, no matter what he is, however high, if he loved me he would ask my parents for leave to marry me--even if he only meant to take me. And I thought he loved me! Do you remember how, only a little while ago, I wished him only to know well that he loved me! Alas, he knows now that I love him, but he has told me odiously, odiously, that he does _not_ love me! Yes, Isonna, he shall have me. Then I will die."

THE MAKING OF A GODDESS

XVI

THE MAKING OF A GODDESS

So she said the next day, not now with the aplomb of a lady, but as a servant:--

"Lord, there is a reason why you cannot--even--" she choked in her throat--"take me. Do you not know it?"

"Do not call me lord," he said, "as if you were a servant and I your master."

"It is right that I should do so, lord."

"I won't have it," he laughed.

And he had never seemed so beautiful nor the sound of his voice so tender. But she went on as she had planned in her sleepless night.

She was kneeling at his feet now--her head upon the mats--reaching out to touch him.

"Dear lord, I have deceived you," she said. "My only excuse is that it was sweet. All the sweetness I have had in my small life. Lord, I am young. But I had scarcely smiled until you came. In Japan we were accursed. I was beautiful and my father pitied me and brought me here where no one knew. Lord, I am an eta."

Arisuga recoiled from the word. The instant would have been inappreciable to measures of time. But in it the girl's heart leaped and fell with its own understanding. In the same instant Arisuga knew all that had so puzzled him concerning the beautiful creature at his feet. And he understood what his saying must have been to her. For this he would make a soldier's great reparation--and at once! That was the way of Arisuga.

"Then you have known no one--no man but me?"

"No," whispered the girl. "I thought if I had twenty lovers, you would wish me the more."

"And what I have foolishly taken for the advances of experience have been innocencies!"

Not she, but Isonna, spoke out:--

"Yes, lord. It was as I said. I am here now, when men might wish her, to see that none approach. There has been no one but you."

"Little Lady Hoshi," said Shijiro Arisuga, to her bruised heart, "there is but one reparation I can make for yesterday. It is to wish you to become my wife--to-day."

"But, lord, beautiful lord," cried the girl, "you did not hear what I said. I spoke too low. I was at your feet--" and now she deliberately raised her agonized face to his that there might be no mistake--"Lord, I am an eta! The accursed, despised caste! To the samurai we are as lepers! No samurai in all the thousands of years of our empire has ever married an eta! None has ever touched one! Lord, you did not hear!"

"I heard. Pray, call me lord no more, but husband."

"Li--li--Pardon me, husband, I have been taught that I am not to expect marriage."

"Who taught you that?"

"Even my father! My mother!"

"Gods! It shall be to-morrow."

"Yi--yes, li--li--husband," chattered Hoshiko.

"And on that day there shall be a new goddess to be worshipped, and her name shall be called Star-Dream! And the first prayer she shall hear will be from a very brutal soldier to be forgiven for a little start upon hearing a certain untrue word. For no goddess can be an eta--even if it were possible for a mortal as beautiful as you to be an eta. So, even to-day, see," as he gathered her from the floor strongly into his arms, "you are my goddess--to-morrow you will be my wife."

"Lord, I have no wedding garments! You know that though a Japanese maiden has always ready her garments for death or marriage, an eta maid has only those for death ready. It is presumption to have--the--the others."

"Then there shall be no wedding garment but this," and he touched the dainty thing she wore. "Where are your parents that I may ask their consent?"

Hoshiko did not know. But Arisuga suspected that they were close behind the fusuma listening with staring eyes and gaping mouths.

He suddenly pushed aside the slides--and there they were.

"To-morrow I wed your daughter," he said to them with his soldier's savagery.

He respectfully gave them time for an answer--but he meant them to understand that they dare not refuse. And together, when they had the breath for it, they bowed to the very earth and said:--

"Yea, august lord!"

Arisuga bowed haughtily in return, and closed the slides upon them.

"You see," he said to Hoshiko, "there is nothing but the three times three between us and our earth-heaven, goddess!"

"Yes, lord," she shivered.

She begged for delay, but he would not grant it, so all that night, while he slept near, she and Isonna in the next room strove to make a trousseau out of her shroud.

THE ETA

XVII

THE ETA

Now, even when Arisuga had spoken of marriage, he had the thought that it would probably not be longer than for his stay in China. At his going there would be a happy understanding that this meant divorce and that she might marry again. For he was bound by his oath to the great death, that she knew; and if this were to be all, it mattered little that Hoshiko was an eta. In China it was not heinous.

Yet even thus early the thought of some one else finding this wild flower when he was gone as he had found it--and, alas! of doing as he was about to do--he did not like that. He did not like his part in it. It haunted his dreams there in the room next to her and he woke.

She was sobbing. Then he heard her mother:

"Here is the sword," she said, in a voice hard as steel. "Be brave! First pray!"

"Yes," sobbed Hoshiko.

Arisuga crashed through the paper wall between them like the thunder-god. Before him was Hoshiko, preparing the sword for its work. About her, on the floor, was spread the pitiful evidence that she had tried to improvise a trousseau out of her funeral garments. There was a sheer white kimono of silk, the sleeves of which she had lengthened to the wedding size. (Death and marriage are both white in Japan.) She had just laid it down. It was with this--all useless now--that she had wrapped the sword. Above her stood her mother.

"What does this mean?" demanded Arisuga, taking the sword from Hoshiko.

"My mother wishes me to die," sobbed the girl.

"And you?" asked Arisuga, savagely.

"I wish to live. To marry you, lord."

"There are no wedding garments," said the mother.

"Nor any funeral garments now!" said Arisuga, slashing them with the sword.

"You wish my daughter for only a little while--then go!"

"That is my affair. I _take_ her!"

"O Jizo," Hoshiko whispered within herself, "I thank you! Do not let your mercy stop! Perhaps--perhaps--O Benten!"

"You become an eta if you marry her," Hoshiko's mother was saying.

"In Japan," admitted Arisuga. "That is the way the unwise men of old worked to prevent the marriage of etas--and so blot out the caste. But this is China."

And now as the young soldier looked down upon the pitiful little heap at his side, a great shame rose in his soul that he had ever thought of marrying her for a little while, and, quite like Arisuga, he rushed in his penitence from one extreme to the other.

"By all the eight hundred thousand gods, I will marry her for all my lives!"

No adjuration, no promise, could be greater than that. Some men had sworn fealty to a woman for two lives--some for three or four--and it was said that once a man had sworn to love a great poetess for seven lives; but no one had ever yet, so it was said, sworn his love, much less marriage, for all his lives. Yet even this did not stop the savage mother of Hoshiko, bent upon her daughter's honorable death rather than her dishonorable marriage.

"How will you assure me of this?" demanded she.

"By nothing but my word," said Shijiro, with all his samurai's haughtiness.

"Gods! Gods! How mighty and wise you are, lord!" sobbed Hoshiko, kissing his feet.

"But you will not be satisfied to live in China. You will take her to Japan, where both will be accursed etas," went on the implacable mother. "You are a soldier."

"I am a soldier," answered Shijiro Arisuga. "In the army there is neither eta nor samurai. All are equal. All are sons of the emperor. This is Yamato Damashii. The New Japan! And I am Shijiro Arisuga! That is the end!"

And it was the end. Here was a soldier who could vanquish the Medusa mother of Hoshiko by the cold process of words.

"Witnesses! Sake! I will not leave this lady again until she is my wife!"

And so terrible was this Shijiro Arisuga in his wrath that everything happened as he ordered--and they were married. I wish they might have lived happily ever after. But it was only a few glad weeks. Yet, in those little days and hours, she did what she had threatened: crept into his heart so deeply that he was never to dislodge her quite until he died. And it was here Shijiro Arisuga thought for the second time, without suspicion to mar it, that the happiest moment of his life had come.

Fancy the joy of it all! Sure, I cannot tell it. I have no fit words. It was infinitely better than either had dreamed. The dainty little creature known as Hoshiko bloomed into splendor as Madame Shijiro--perhaps because she had no thought--absolutely none--for anything but him. And he was daily more and more amazed at the number of thoughts he spent upon her, who, he had once fancied, he could leave behind for some one else--for many others.

Indeed, it came to such a state that he had little thought for anything but her. The military death was forgotten--Yone was.

"Now if we dream," he laughed to her one day, "take heed that we do not wake. For this dream is such as I have never dreamed before. In it are perfumes and melodies, caresses and touches, passions and calms, sleeps and wakings, and all delights."

"And you," laughed his wife, flinging herself upon him.

"And you," he laughed back, not putting her away.

"And that thing the foreigners call love."

"Grown larger in our sunny East than they know it in their chilly West!" added her husband.

TO THE EMPEROR

XVIII

TO THE EMPEROR

But the little paradise she had made for him there was one day invaded by two soldiers with some mysterious order, the command of which was that he must rejoin his regiment at once, though there was now no war.

"It is 'on to the emperor,'" laughed Arisuga, "and I must go. I had forgotten--thank _you_! Forgotten the emperor! The death!"

"Is it far to the emperor?" asked his little wife.

"Yes," sighed and laughed Arisuga, rubbing her cheek against his--you know they were of precisely the same height.

"And there is danger?"

"Oh, yes," said her husband, indifferently.

"If you should be killed, you will let me know at once?"

"Certainly, I will tell you myself," laughed he. "For what is that killing to this going away from you!"

"Oh--it is not so sad as waiting--waiting--waiting--for you to come again! Have I made you happy?"

"As a god," he said.

"Then, if you should not be killed--you will come back to be happy again?"

"Nothing but death shall keep me from you!"

"Swear--by your eyes--by your heart--by your soul--by your mother's, your father's memory!"

All of which he did--still laughing.

"What more, beloved one?"

"Only your own sweet word, my beautiful lord, that you will come back. Say this: 'Beloved who loves me more than the rest in Buddha's bosom, and whom I love as much--' That is true, is it not?"

"That is true," he laughed.

"'I will come back at the first moment of opportunity, if I live, to my--wife!'"

He repeated this after her.

"Now go! The waiting will be ecstasy. Go! The sooner you go, the sooner you will return. I am not afraid. I am your wife. You have said it. Here or there, in the earths or the heavens! For all your lives--all, all! And I will be no other man's wife while I live! Or after death. And some day you shall have a son--like you in everything!--to keep the lamps alight when you are dead. For there will be for you a soldier's shrine. Now go or my heart will burst. And remember that in China or America or Germany I am your wife! But in Japan I am an eta--and you. Remember! Some day there will be a son, some day--_soon_!"

For if nothing else would bring him back, she thought this untrue promise would!

And so they parted--she pulling him back and pushing him off--there by the Sacred City he had helped to win--until she closed her eyes and clenched her hands and flung herself on the ground, face down, and would not touch or speak to him again. When he was out of sight she was sorry, and ran to the roof whence she could see the hills. There he was, walking between the two soldiers! And he turned because she so desperately wished him to--the gods made him do it, of this she was certain--and waved a hand to her; and with both of hers she sent after him all the blessings of the immortal gods.

"I will--I will be brave," she cried terribly to Isonna, who had said nothing. "I will be brave as he!"

"But how can we when all our life has gone yonder!"

And the maid sobbed in utter abandon.

"You love him too? You! Isonna, the savage, the eta, the man-hater! The declaimer against him, and me, and love! You! Oh, gods!"

"Yes," whined the maid.

"Come," cried her mistress, with tears and laughter. "He shall have two widows!"

She embraced her maid violently enough for bodily injury.

"Oh, is not the world beautiful!" cried Hoshiko. "I, who never hoped to be a wife at all, am the wife of a god. And he who had no thought of one goes yonder leaving two widows! Oh, girl brute, we are his wife for all his dear lives! Yes, we will be brave! We are a soldier's wife!"

ON MIYAGI FIELD

XIX

ON MIYAGI FIELD

But the mystery of his summoning was no more than this: One morning the regiment was aligned on Miyagi field, in parade uniforms, and in such a tremendous spirit as was never before known. Yet no one seemed to understand the purpose of it. And, there, at about the centre of all the glory, was Shijiro Arisuga himself, with his beloved colors once more above his head--the same that he had twice fallen and risen with! Pale he was, and ill-looking still. And the bandage on his head yet smelled of drugs--for this excitement was a bit too much for him after the quiet of China. Nevertheless it is not safe to let you fancy how happy little Arisuga was--nor how his heart thumped. You will be likely to fall short of the fact.

Now, far away on his right, came a glittering cavalcade, and the regiment began to sing with the bands massed in his front: first, his own exultant song, then the Kimi Gayo--hoarse, iron, terrible--announced the coming of the emperor of Japan. This gave way to acclaim, and, to the mongolian roll of on-coming "Banzais!" the emperor galloped down the line, with all his resplendent suite, and, by all the gods, stopped directly in front of Arisuga and faced the regiment! At that the singing stopped and the playing of the bands, and there was that silence before the sovereign which is more impressive than any acclaim. All the colors of the regiment were trooped in a little square before Arisuga into which the emperor rode--all the colors but his, whereat he wondered.

To his last day the little color-guard does not know precisely what happened after his name was called.

"Shijiro Arisuga, attention! Forward! To the emperor!"

Though choked with amazement, the little color-guard forgot nothing of his mechanical duty. At "Attention!" his flag went straighter, higher, his chest bulged, his legs grew stiff, and his hand flew to his visor. "Forward to the emperor!" and, almost unconscious with his emotion, he yet stepped straightly forward until he stood directly in the Presence. He knew that before him was a white horse with very pink nostrils, which gently raised and lowered a hoof, now and then. That on the horse sat a grave, sad man, the plumes of whose kepi, as he looked kindly down upon the little color-guard, half veiled his eyes.

A bit of a smile grew there as his sovereign, for the first time, saw how small he was. Arisuga did not know the reason for that smile, but he felt it all through, and a tear started to his eyes. For you will remember that he was not meant for a soldier, but for simple and beautiful things.

Then Mutsuhito spoke to him.

"Shijiro Arisuga, the emperor is proud of such sons as you! Let him never regret his pride. It is upon you and such as you that the empire rests and must always rest. Be steadfast in your patriotism. No one in the army bears so great a responsibility as he who guards the colors. With them in sight my sons will follow anywhere--everywhere. When they are down, their guiding-star has set. For your flag is your whole country, all your ancestors, your myriad gods, your emperor--your all! And every eye watches it! Twice in battle, you have raised your flag when it has fallen. The circumstances show great valor. Your emperor has a thousand eyes. He is everywhere, and always he knows and sees all the acts of his sons. He knows and has seen yours. And for them he decorates you with the order--"

Shijiro Arisuga's sick head drooped upon his breast and would hold no more. But presently he knew that the glittering cavalcade had wheeled and was out of sight, that the colors had returned to their places, that the regiment singing again his song was marching home, and that, for a very inadequate reason to him, he wore a medal over his heart and was nominated by the emperor himself Hero!

Well, that was all. But for the third time Shijiro Arisuga was certain that the happiest moment of his life had come--as well as that he had made a tremendous fool of himself. The tears rolled down his face all the way to the barracks.

But after that do you suppose he would ever let the flag go down? Do you suppose that he could love anything more than his colors? Well, you are to judge at the end. For now this last obligation was added to that which first made him a soldier. And the gods, his ancestors, his father, the emperor, the world, looked always on!

Whatever we may think, it was true that this tremendous moment blotted out all others. Long ago he had forgotten Yone. Now he forgot Hoshiko. He saw before him nothing but the sun-gilt path of glory. The emperor, the flag, the gods, the shades, his father's honor, were in his thoughts, and nothing of love.

THE FADED GLORY

XX

THE FADED GLORY