"But the clock had struck while I slept. Eight. And that was the signal for Isonna to take a stone in her arms and walk into the moat. And Isonna was faithful. For there he found her afterward, asleep, with the gods, the great stone in her arms. And that one I was to take is still there, on the edge of the moat, waiting. But now I cannot die. He has made my life sweet again. Would you die with life all sweet again, as the morning glories in the morning? So the stone must wait there.
Perhaps he and I shall carry it together. For, so he says, we shall die, together, rather than part again."
"You shall not part. Would you like to go to America?" asked the officer.
"No. Nowhere but here."
For America to her was the country of the barbarians--a horrid waste, where no flowers grew.
"But if your husband should go there?"
"Yes!"
It did not matter then.
The colonel rose.
"Tell him to come to see me again."
"And you will be as kind to him as you have been to me?"
"No," smiled the colonel. "He doesn't deserve it. He doesn't deserve you." But, then, seeing that she did not quite understand his pleasantry, he added: "I shall be as kind to him as I can be, as I am permitted to be, for your sake. And you are to tell him that!"
"Shaka, and all the augustnesses bless you!"
He held the tiny hands a moment at parting.
"Once I knew a little lady like you. It was long ago, and there is a tomb for her in Asakusa. Perhaps she was _not_ like you, not as lovely.
But so it seems now--after the years. If she had not died, I would not have been a soldier."
And no one had ever heard the grizzled colonel's voice so soft.
She sent Arisuga back. But she did not tell him that.
THE PITY OF THE GODS
XXIII
THE PITY OF THE GODS
There seemed little kindness in Colonel Zanzi's greeting when Arisuga arrived. He did not even look up.
"You will be transferred to a Hakodate regiment," he said in a monotone; "they are ruffians, but good soldiers. You will report to your new regiment when you are recalled. Your furlough must be spent in America and in communication with headquarters."
This was exile, but mitigated by every possible circumstance.
"Sir," said Arisuga, with emotion, "I do not deserve this consideration."
"No," answered his colonel; "but your wife does."
Have I let you suppose that Hoshiko accepted all this perilous happiness without question? No Japanese woman ever does that. It is true that, at first, there was no thought--there could be none. The gods had put them both suddenly into a position from which they could not retreat. But after that, when thought came, and Hoshiko knew that it had all been for her, and how much it was that he had given--then she began to prepare her recompense. To you it would have been a strange one, but it was not so to her. What she had taken beyond her share from the universal happiness, that she would balance with such suffering as came.
What she had taken from him, the shade of his father, that she would restore. What he stood in danger of losing because of her, that she would insure against loss. And the gods would help her. For they always heeded such constant and faithful praying as she meant to render. At last she knew that they would. For they sent her a sign. But before I speak of that I must go on and make plain what her purpose came finally to be. Nothing less than to make sure in some way (she waited on the gods to make the way plain to her) that since she prevented Shijiro from dying for his emperor in his father's stead, his reparation should come about in some other way--perhaps some way not thought of as yet--even by the gods. All she could do now was to pray that if he should die the small white death, the gods would send _her_ some sort of reincarnation in which _she_ might accomplish his purpose, though he were dead. And of course, whether she survived him or not, this was possible, to the immortal gods. But I think she had no idea that she--she herself--might herself be the instrument--that the gods meant anything as strange and startling as that--nor that her reincarnation might be in the very form of her husband while she yet lived. She would not be likely to think of precisely that. Until that day of the sign from heaven itself--that day while they were playing as children might do on the mats. Their feet were against the groove which held the fusuma. The little soldier reached upward above his head.
"I can touch the other mat," laughed Arisuga.
"And I," laughed his wife, doing the same.
"What!" cried the soldier. "I am taller than you are."
Then Hoshiko understood that she ought not to have said that. It was heinous to make herself the equal of her lord in anything.
"No, lord," she hastened to say, "I lied--a little lie--while we sported. I am sorry."
"It is no lie," laughed happy Arisuga once more; for you will remember that all her daintiness was then his, and that he was not like other Japanese husbands; "we are exactly the same height."
"No, no, no, lord," pleaded Hoshiko, who fearfully knew that it was so, "you are much taller than miserable small me."
And, to prove it, she bent her knees within her kimono and stood beside him, for he had risen to prove the matter.
But he detected the bent knees and straightened them, and, lo! there was not a shadow of difference in their height.
And when the little soldier laughed and was very happy about it, she laughed too, timorously at first, then more joyously than he. For to be his equal in something, and to see him happy about it--well, she supposed that no Japanese girl had ever before such felicity, and perhaps she was right.
So, in their playing and laughter, he cried:
"And I shall be punished for my haughty spirit in thinking I was, and you shall be rewarded for the humility of yours in thinking you were not."
And the manner of this punishment and reward was for him to strip off her kimono and put it on himself, and his uniform and put it on her. Oh, you may be sure that she tried to fly in her terror of him, that she fought and wept and at last utterly exhausted had to let him have his way--even to tucking her splendid hair under his military cap. She lay there happily crushed and disgraced until he had made himself so like her that she hardly knew him.
But she would not see herself until he brought the mirror and told her that he was looking at himself. Then she looked, and it was true. With staring eyes she stood upon her feet and passed the mirror up and down.
Then suddenly she saw the smiling face of a god in the mirror also, and knew that this was to be the fashion of the reincarnation she had begged of the gods.
She whispered her husband to look into the mirror.
"There is the face of a god there!"
Arisuga looked and laughed, but saw no god.
"It is the reflection of your Jizo," he said, pointing to the goddess behind her.
But Hoshiko said it was not that. For, you see, she knew what it was, and her husband did not--and must not--the sign.