John Luther Long

“ His eyes were closed, the sun shone in his face, and that was pale with here and here the windings of a bandage, like an aureole. Oh, how we both wept! He was so young; and we thought that we could heal him with great care! We wept. My father did the one thing which would stop our tears—brought, him here!"
"Yes—yes!" agreed Isonna.
"Now! Shall I tell him?"
"Oh, no, Lady Hoshi, no! That is a dreadful thing to do," sighed the maid.
"It is not dreadful. It is beautiful."
"But, dear, dear mistress, you must not love a man. That is what your father pays me to prevent!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But presently the glory faded (alas! nothing fades more quickly than glory!) and Arisuga thought again of Hoshiko. Yet it was still good to be back among those whose trade like his own was war. And there were pretty words to listen to—which made the heart swell—and friends joyously to caress one, and others to recount one's courage—for at least two weeks: then all was as before, and Arisuga had only his medal as a surety that all the heroic splendor of Miyagi Field had ever been. It was then that he began not only to think of but to wish for Hoshiko—her hands—her voice—her laughter. ”

“ Before Arisuga became a soldier he had been a poet, a musician, a songster—one who had responded at nature's high behest to all manifestations of beauty. Now, in this time of peace and indolent convalescence, he went back to all that—almost as if the life of the soldier, which intervened, had never been. He had instantly called her "Dream-of-a-Star." And she was all this to him. It was good to lie in his futons and see the perfections of her grace as she moved about intent upon his healing. It was better to hear her pretty voice. ”

“ You, sir, the son of a samurai who died at Jokoji, even if he died on the wrong side, ought not to need to be told that. Sir, no member of this regiment marries below his caste! If you are thinking of such a thing, I regret it. Your decision lies between this woman and the emperor, who gives you life, and who, when he accepts you as his son, takes back that life again to himself to dispose of at his will. You cannot have forgotten the samurai obligation,—not to live under the same heavens nor to tread the same earth with the enemy of your lord. ”

“ Nevertheless he continued to fancy that of all the spirits, from the moon-goddess down, none were so dainty, so fragile, so tender, caressing, and altogether lovely as this Hoshiko, who was not a spirit at all, even though she was there, day after day, at his bedside, suggesting herself to him with either the abandon of a child or the intention of a woman of joy. Had he been as wise about women as he was simple, and she as wise about men as she pretended, who had no wisdom at all concerning them, such a misunderstanding would not have occurred. ”

“ 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 we here 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." ”

“ Often I have wondered that men do not marry her! Isonna!"
Again the girl plunged from the next room.
"Isonna," said her mistress, "ugly little beast, you are to marry the lord soldier when he is a trifle better."
Isonna forgot her manners in the violence of another amazement. Arisuga shouted with happy laughter.
"Vast lord," wailed the maid, as if she believed it all, "there is the same reason in me as in my mistress, that—"
"Sh!"
Hoshiko put her two hands violently upon the garrulous mouth of the servant.
"You little beast! Is not once enough? I dislike to kill you. But I suppose I must!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am Japanese!" answered the lips of Hoshiko, while they slowly smiled. "But your thought—"
"How lucky! For, I suppose here all peoples are mixed."
"Yes. There are all sorts: Russians, Germans, Americans, Frenchmen—"
She was thinking of the allies.
"It looks like Japan."
This was the interior which he was seeing.
"But you think it is China?"
"Yes! Out there it is precisely like the place where we fought."
"Yes," said puzzled Hoshiko.
"I suppose the gods surround us in the heavens with the things which have pleased us most on earth." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The gods may not accept your sacrifice for a time. They may not accept it at all. And there may be no war for you to fight and die in. You may have to come back. No one can know the purposes of the gods. And when you do, I, with my small body and small thought, will be here only to make you happy."
"And, suppose," laughed Shijiro, treating her indeed as if he were suddenly become a man and she were still a little girl, "suppose I go away and forget—that often happens—and never come back?"
And Arisuga laughed again. ”

“ We could not die until the moon was dark; for some one, passing, might see and find our bodies. But I am glad for those three days. Now the moon is gone—the moon which sees our deeds and tells them to the gods of night; and, lord, only to-night, when the moon was gone, could I come to you to say farewell—Ani-San, to-night we die—Isonna and I. Unless you still wish me? ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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?" ”

“ Isonna had not spoken. But she did as she was commanded.
"Isonna!" the mistress called after the maid—who instantly returned—"I have had such a thought! Suppose he should never know! Suppose I should go to some place with him where there is no one who had ever known me? Marry him?"
"I should be there."
"You! Not unless I should first cut out your gossiping tongue!"
"It would be wrong. The gods must punish you!"
"How would the gods know? I should lie to them also."
"It would be very wrong," the maid repeated. "The only woman who deceives a man—"
"Is his wife, you naughty little beast! ”

“ 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? ”

“ So you observe that in Japan, among those who yet believe in the old ways of the gods (and they are many!) , it is perilous to be over-happy. For one is almost certain to pay for it with over-woe. And this is the happy catching of the tai and the melancholy note of the uguisu which wind through the carols of one's joy in the East.
Yet, when one is always happy, as Shijiro Arisuga was before we knew him, it seems difficult to say that here or there was a happier moment. ”

“ All this was quite heinous to his samurai uncles and they did what they could to correct it and instil into the little mind of the boy that love for the glory of combat which they had. But, as often happens, their care and their prayers availed them nothing, while their carelessness and their repinings availed much. Of that I shall stop and tell: the picture—the flying of the carp—how all the life of the little boy was changed in one night,—so that he thought no more of Yoné, the lanterns and the flowers, but only of being a soldier. ”

“ 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 bought for 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. ”

“ Indeed; nothing is anything—no story—until woman enters. Try to fancy Eden without Eve!
Not that Star-Dream is another Eve; nor that this is like the first love story. But there is a Garden and a Serpent; an Apple and a Woman. And, from that Garden, Shijiro Arisuga is driven with a sword which flames. But here my story differs entirely from that of the first love story. For the woman is left in the garden—alone! And it is eternal night. And she can hardly stay there alone. For the uguisu sings. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Glory may fill our lives for a while, but presently it becomes smaller than a woman's steadfast love—as it is smaller. Then he began to think of bringing Hoshiko to Japan. There was that theory, you will remember, that in the army there were neither samurai nor eta—only soldiers. Only sons of the emperor! Understand what that means—to be a son of the emperor. Yet no one but a Japanese can. Remember that the emperor is a god! ”