"Nevertheless, one cannot honorably tell," argued the milder uncle from Osaka, himself not convinced by his vision. "His father was no taller nor of a greater spirit than he. He may not always be an onna-jin. And, also, any day the vengeance of the gods may be satisfied and they will permit him to redeem both his own and the spirit of his father. For I believe it true that he was not beheaded by the victors at Jokoji, and cast into the ditch as dogs are cast, but committed the honorable seppuku upon himself. That he would do."
"Let it be hoped so. This is our one blot wherefore we cannot speak of our ancestors."
And they chafed a prayer from between their hands that it might all be so.
The little boy parted the fusuma yet more and looked. He had been taught that his face must always be as expressionless as if it were always under observation. And these old uncles had, more than others, taught him so. Yet now they were not observing their own precepts. Their faces were unmasked, and showed terror and anxiety. And this communicated itself to the boy as he looked.
"Does it matter to the gods," asked Kiomidzu, "how fealty to the heaven-born-one is augustly inculcated?"
"'The way does not matter when one is arrived!'" said Namishima.
"And 'a lie which doeth good,'" quoted Kiomidzu, "'is, manifestly, a good lie.'"
"Happy is he," said Namishima, "who, being a liar for the truth, is willing, like us, to abide by its consequences from the unenlightened, to whom there is but one office in a lie--evil!"
"Nembutsu!" agreed the brother of Namishima, his hard hands rasping with his prayer as do the soles of worn sandals.
And then they went on, to the end of the story of this picture of "The Great Death," which had been painted and hung at the tokonoma when Arisuga was a child to deceive him into thinking that his father had honorably fought and died for his emperor instead of against him, that his soul was probably in Buddha's bosom instead of wandering in the alien dark Meido, unredeemed, that his body had been burned on a pyre instead of left to rot in that great ditch in Jokoji. This these old imperialists fancied their duty. The little boy sobbed there behind the shoji.
"Sh!" whispered the uncle from Osaka.
"Sh!" echoed the uncle from Kobe. "He wakes. If he should hear, all would be of no avail."
They covered the fire of the hibachi and caused a darkness in which they stole away.
YET--A LIE LOOSENS FEALTY
IV
YET--A LIE LOOSENS FEALTY
The little boy slept no more. He got forth from his small room and made the offerings, and lighted the incense which he had forgotten that tired, joyous day, and then he took down his father's ihai, and touching to it his forehead, pledged all his lives to make true that which had been made false. For, yes, their names were the same, his father's and his, and the gods are easily deceived--Shijiro Arisuga should be upon the brass of those who had died for the emperor! The gods would attend to the forgetting which must follow.
But this was not enough. The filial sin they had let him commit vexed his little soul.
Where he had made a dim wisp of fibre to burn in oil before the tablet of his father, he rubbed a prayer from between his small pink palms.
"Father and all the augustnesses, I did not know," he said childishly, "that your spirit waited in the dark Meido for me to set it free. There were lies!"
Then he stopped and waited, for the tears ran down his face and choked his voice.
"It would have been better to teach me truth than lies. For they have not made me wish to fight and die for the emperor--lies. But this, this that you wait, wait always in the cold dark Meido for me to set you on your way to the sleep in Buddha's bosom, this it is which makes me promise, here, now, by all the eight hundred thousand, by my own soul's reincarnations, all of them, that you shall be free; that your name shall yet stand among those on the brass who are not forgotten."
"I did not know," he sobbed again. "And so I sang songs and made poems while you wandered there. I did not know. I was only a little boy. But now I am at once a man. It is true, august father, I must not lie to you, that I would rather be at Shiba with Yone; I would rather walk on the hills with her hand in mine; I would rather sing as she plays the samisen; but I will be a soldier."
And then a strange thing happened--and you must not fail to remember that stranger things happen in Japan than here--there came a crackling, ripping noise at the last word of that prayer, and the upper panel of the false picture loosed itself from the brocade to which it was attached and, falling, covered completely the lower panel and blotted out the whole. And that night yet, the little boy got his father's seal, and, where it fell, there he sealed it fast.
So that when his uncles again saw it they grew troubled, kowtowed and made a prayer. For suddenly, also, Arisuga, from a child, at ten had become man. All he said to them when they diffidently undertook a question was:--
"I know the samurai commandment: 'Thou shalt not live under the same heavens nor upon the same earth with the enemy of thy lord!'"
"The commandments are not for children," said the uncle from Osaka, gently.
"That I know well," answered Arisuga. "For I am not a child."
Said the terrified one from Kobe, "It does not mean that you must quit the earths and the heavens--"
"But, rather," supplemented the one from Osaka, "that they shall--"
"That you shall kill many enemies of your lord and live yourself--my child--"
"Cease! I am not a child," said Arisuga again, haughtily, "and I know the commandments!"
"Nevertheless that," said the one, "is a manifestation from the gods!"
He pointed to the picture.
"There have been many such," said the other. "It means something."
"Yes," said the little boy, significantly, "it means something!"
"But were you present when the gods obscured the picture?" ventured Kiomidzu.
"I was present," said Arisuga.
"And is it that which has changed you?" further ventured Namishima.
"No," declared Arisuga, looking upon them both sternly, and without an honorific for either.
"I trust," whined Kiomidzu, "that all is well between us?"
"All is as well as it ever will be," said the boy.
Then, after a silence, he added:--
"And the sun is setting!"
Which meant, indeed, that they were driven from the door of their brother's house by his son!
When they were in their going the boy said:--