Jones smiled often at Hoshiko. So often that Arisuga could not but notice it.
"The yellow dragon of Hanayama covets the dove of Arisuga," he laughed.
"Yet doves are not good for dragons. This will be better."
He handed her the small toilet sword which Japanese women carry.
"I have heard," said Jones to Shijiro one day, "that Japanese husbands often rent their wives to pay their debts."
"That is true, lord," bowed his little butler.
"For a year, don't you know, or six months, or something like that?"
"It is true, lord," repeated the butler.
"And that the wives really like it?"
"True, lord," answered Arisuga.
"They don't lose caste after the--er--debt has been paid, but go back to their husbands?"
"True, lord."
"Well, that's a pretty sensible arrangement. You Jap chaps are always sensible; and"--the yellow fangs came out--"I am your creditor for a couple of thousand dollars. Arisuga, I am willing to be so paid and to pay you a couple more thousand than you owe me! Then your passage will be safe. I don't believe, now, it will be otherwise. I have got you in too deep a hole."
Jones laughed hoarsely at his own cunning.
Arisuga received the suggestion as he would have received an unimportant business proposition.
"I will consider and let the enlightened eijinsan know," he said. This, also, as if it were the mere oriental courtesy of bargaining--the sloth which is polite.
"I guess it will be all right," laughed Jones. "Take your time. No one is proof against the blandishments of American gold. Even oriental virtue yields to it. Don't you think it will be all right?"--a bit anxiously.
"Let the honorable American lord so think," said Arisuga. "I will consider."
"I shan't be niggardly, understand. If you are not satisfied with a couple of thousands, we'll make it a quartette. She is about the dearest little morsel I have ever seen."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Arisuga, with American politeness, this time.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Jones.
And Hoshiko, taking her cue, laughed too, out of the palest face she had ever had. For she was present--though she was not thought to know English enough to understand what was said.
But that night Jones was awakened by something strange at his throat. It was a steel blade--and an ominous Arisuga. In one hand he had a candle.
In the other Hoshiko's sharp little sword--close against his skin.
"Ha, ha!" laughed Arisuga.
Jones was in no laughing mood.
"Laugh!" said Arisuga.
Then Jones brought forth a sickly cachinnation which stopped at the first note; for it made the sword to penetrate his skin.
"Lie still--quite still!" admonished the Japanese, with deadly quiet, and Jones did not move a muscle for a moment, which seemed years.
Then the light went out and Jones expected death. But nothing happened.
He waited long. The sweat poured out until his bed was wet. He was certain that he felt that blade still at his throat--and the little stream of blood from it. But there was no more. He was not dead. At last he cautiously put his hand out. It encountered nothing. Then he raised it to his throat. Nothing was there. He leaped out of bed on the other side. Nothing further happened. He did not even call for the police.
So the opportunity which Jones had seemed to offer for preparation to return to Japan when the call came vanished, leaving only the vain thing he had taught Arisuga--his little skill at cards. This he still tried to use. But though he sometimes won, he more often lost. Yet he played on, certain of the great luck which would not only recoup all in one night, but establish his circumstances far beyond what they had ever been. It was the old, old gambler's lust. It was the old, old consequence. Luck seemed cruelly delayed, and they fell into desperate poverty.
And, worse than all, this--the gambler's fetish--was now the thing which possessed him. But though he loved the life of chance for itself, he never lost sight of the more and more frenzied necessity of providing for his return. For, rumors of war began to hover in the air. Hoshiko saw less and less of him. And he often forgot her for days together. If he were mad, for another reason, in Japan, he was mad equally in America.
Yet nothing was saved; always such pittances as he could raise, or she, were spent upon the small gambling devices in which the city abounded, no matter whether he had food or not. Presently his life was that and no more: a vain search for luck. But miserable as it was, there was hope in it, and a certain exhilaration. He was like one who has no doubt of ultimate good fortune, and wakes daily with the uplifting thought that this may be the grateful day. And his hope and happiness in it brought hope and happiness, in the brief whiles it reigned, to Hoshiko, where happiness came of late not often. Nor hope.
THE "TSAREVITCH"
XXVI
THE "TSAREVITCH"
So the little exiles lived and starved, and feasted and loved on; happy sometimes, sorrowing more often, while Japan was yet at peace.
Always Arisuga kept his address at headquarters, and always he waited--listened almost--for the call. But it was long--very long. And his face grew sharp and his eyes narrow. And more and more in the waiting and listening he forgot, in America, Hoshiko--his Eastern Dream-of-a-Star.
For, presently, it was nearly ten years of this exile. Ten years of prayer which grew only more fervid as the years doubled upon themselves, and the hope so long deferred made the heart of Arisuga ill. Ten years of yearning for their own country, which fate denied them and which nothing but war could again give to them! The heart of Hoshiko sickened, too. But it was thus because Arisuga more and more often forgot her rather than with the homesickness which she suffered as he did. Yet she guiltily knew that while there was no war she might keep him, even though he forgot her. So it was he alone at last who prayed for war. It was sacrilege to obstruct the gods; it was impossible to pray to be kept from her own perfumed land, so--she stubbornly prayed not at all.
And then it did come: the great war--though not as he had fancied it would. Slowly it got into the air. Every day he spent at the bulletins.
But they said Japan would not fight. Russia was getting and would get what she wished. She was too great for Japan. And some of the newspapers began to pour contempt upon his country. She was baying the moon, one said.
"What! are there no more samurai in Japan?" Arisuga cried out to his wife that night. She did not reply. Her silence was almost guilt. For as the threat of war went on, and as Arisuga grew older, he valued the more what he had lost for her. "Gods," he proceeded with a hollow laugh, "I am not a samurai myself. And I must wait my call to be even allowed to fight."
"Forgive me, dear lord," said his wife. And the words and her attitude recalled that other time she was servilely at his feet.
"Rise!" he commanded impatiently. "And do not call me lord. I am no more--nothing more--than you--eta! It cannot be helped. We must suffer it." But there were no caresses--there were never any now.
Then it came, quite according to Arisuga's fancy--a thunder-clap from the heavens! Togo had sunk the "Tsarevitch"!
"At last," cried Arisuga, that day, "I am a soldier once more, if not a samurai! A son of the emperor! Banzai!" And that night it seemed as if all the old sweetness had come back and she slept in his arms as she had used to sleep.
"All that remains now is the call," he said the next day, still happy.
He went to the consulate to see that they had his address correctly, but on the way home he remembered that there was no money for the passage.