Chapter II: Part 2

“Listen,” she said, “and I will tell you. You know about the troubled times after the foreigners began to come into the country, when the Tokugawa house had fallen. His Majesty was hardly more than a boy, and none knew who were the friends and who the enemies of the Son of Heaven.[12] Your father believed that the great Saigo was right when he withdrew to Kagoshima and took up arms against the new party that had surrounded the Emperor, that had drilled a heimin[13] army, that would take from the samurai the prerogatives that they had held for a thousand years. He believed that Saigo was right, that the Emperor was listening to evil councilors,--and he died fighting to restore the older councilors to their places, and to give back to his own class their ancient privileges. But after it was all over, and he had yielded up his life for his cause and the great Saigo lay dead upon the field, we who remained, and who suffered more than those who gave their lives in battle, learned little by little how blind had been the fight against the will of the Emperor, against the Era of Enlightenment and all it means to Japan. And when at last I knew, I desired most of all, Torao, that you should give to the Emperor and to Japan your life as an atonement for your father’s mistake. You are going, by the grace of his Majesty, to the front. Do not forget that your father’s spirit has through all these years been waiting for you to make his atonement.”

Her voice, which had been throughout her long speech curiously monotonous and inexpressive, so carefully had she maintained her self-control under the strong emotion that possessed her, died away, and she bowed once more to the floor.

“Mother,” said Torao, “I am thankful. It was of you and of your grief in losing me that I thought as I came home. But if to you my going is the fulfillment of a lifelong hope, then I go gladly, and my father shall see that his atonement is made. The Son of Heaven himself has said, ‘Duty is heavier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather.’[14] If I do my duty, my death is nothing to be mourned.”

Little O Fuyu, lonely and desolate in the presence of the rapt exaltation of mother and son, was shaking now with the sobs that she could no longer control. The sun of her life seemed to be setting, and here were these two talking of hopes fulfilled, of honor, of atonement, of duty and death, with no word for her, or for the dear baby whose life and well-being had seemed until now of such consequence to the whole household. At the sound of her sobs Torao turned to where she sat humbly behind him close to the threshold.

“Fuyu,” he said gently, “do not grieve. Mother will take care of you and you of her, and soon you will be happy with our baby to live for. I should not be worthy to be a father if I were not glad to make atonement for my father’s error. And if I come back, how proud you will be to show me the little one! Remember you are a samurai and the wife of a samurai, and soon to be the mother of a samurai,” and he patted her shoulder gently.

“Poor little O Fuyu San.” Go Inkyo Sama’s voice was very tender. “I know how hard it is. I am old now, and this life and the next are very close together. That is why I can let Torao go without a tear. But when I let my husband go, it was different. Life was long then, and I could not look forward to it without him. It has been long, but it has been lived, and the happiness after all has been more than the sorrow. Oh, Fuyu, we women must bear things bravely when they come to us, for courage is in itself happiness.”

O Fuyu lifted her pretty face from behind her sleeves and bowed humbly. “I was wrong, mother, to weep. I will be brave now,” she said simply, and even as she spoke, she forced her trembling lips to smile.

“There speaks a daughter of the samurai!” Go Inkyo Sama smiled approvingly. “And now, if Torao is so soon to leave us, we must prepare all festival dishes for to-morrow. Call O Kō San, and we will make some plans.”

So ended the dreaded interview, and Torao retired from his mother’s presence to the refreshment of a hot bath and the loose Japanese garments, while the women turned their thoughts from the burden of great emotions to the restful details of petty household arrangements.

In the bustle of the morrow, when friends came and went all day making farewell visits, when there were all the preparations for departure to be made and all the arrangements for the little household in its master’s absence, Go Inkyo Sama and O Fuyu San were calm, collected, smiling. They set before each guest a tray of festival food. They chatted and bowed and received with every sign of complete satisfaction the conventional congratulations upon the honor that had come to them. They acted their parts in a way worthy of their pride of race. And though, when it was all over, and the _amado_ closed for the night, O Fuyu could no longer control herself, and retired, for lack of a better place in the small house, to the clothes-closet, there to pour out her soul in tears, Torao, when he found her, a forlorn, crouching, shaking heap, had no word of blame for her weakness, but drew her out and comforted her, and brought back to her face at last a damp and precarious smile.

In the gray of the morning they were all astir, and before the day had fairly dawned the kuruma, with Tetsu standing beside it hat in hand, was ready at the door. There were no tears, or sighs, or kisses; but followed by many bows and tender smiles and low-breathed “Sayo naras,” Torao passed out through the little lattice door and became a part of the great war.

It was then that O Fuyu’s nerve gave way, and all day long Go Inkyo Sama and O Kō San worked over her and petted her and comforted her; and when night came and she was tucked away among the _futons_, she slept at last, worn out with grief, nor knew anything more until the sound of opening _amado_ roused her and O Kō San from their slumbers in the chill before dawn. O Kō San bounded to her feet to see Go Inkyo Sama, lantern in hand, wearing the conventional dress of ceremony, pattering along the stone-paved walk to the street. Where was she going? and at such an hour!

Shivering and frightened, O Fuyu San and O Kō San dressed and set the house to rights, although it was only four o’clock, then sat and awaited the old lady’s return. They talked in a desultory way of the war, of the sufferings of the soldiers, of the ferocity and stupidity of the Russians, and in the intervals of silence O Fuyu surreptitiously wiped the tears from her eyes.

At last, about seven o’clock, when they were beginning to be worried about her strange absence, Go Inkyo Sama came. She was smiling and serene, but her worn face looked more worn, her slender shrunken body more slender and shrunken. In response to their eager questioning, she told them of her early morning visit to the shrine of Fudō.[15]

“It is time for me to pray,” she said simply, “and Fudō Sama is wise and powerful. We all need strength and courage,--Torao and you, little O Fuyu San, and I, so I shall ask it for us all every day.”

In the months that followed, Go Inkyo Sama never failed to rise at four, and after a complete ceremonial cleansing in cold water, to walk the three miles to the Fudō shrine, offer there her prayer, and return in time for the day’s work, whatever it might prove to be. When letters began to come from Torao, and he told of his life at Port Arthur and of the terrible sufferings and great courage and enthusiasm of the soldiers, Go Inkyo Sama added to her daily prayer for her own a petition for all the soldiers of Nippon, and threw herself with feverish energy into the relief work for the families left at home. When, in July, the baby came,--a sturdy brown boy, so like his father that he gave new courage and hope to mother and grandmother alike, she took him as a direct answer to her prayers, and grew stronger than ever in her faith. To the whole of the sad little household the baby was a joy and a delight. “Gunjiri” (Soldier Boy), they called him while they waited for the true name that his father should send him when they had had time to hear from him; and the pet name clung even after the baby had been formally carried to the temple and presented to the tutelar god of the parish under his real name of Heitaro.

The days were never too long for Go Inkyo Sama and O Fuyu San, even though they began at four o’clock, for there was always something to do, and the baby furnished an unfailing subject of care and conversation. When O Kō San carried him out to walk tied to her back, the bereaved mother and grandmother would sit at home and talk about his present charms, his future greatness, what his father would say when he saw him, while their busy fingers flew over stockings that they were knitting for the hard winter that the soldiers had ahead of them in Manchuria, or on the sewing of hospital kimonos or clothes for the orphaned children, or some other work of helpfulness for those who were suffering for the country.

But when the baby came home, his little black slits of eyes usually tightly closed, his head atilt like a sleepy flower on his slender neck, there was a great rush to take him from O Kō San’s back, to hug him and cuddle him and make much of him, and Go Inkyo Sama was almost jealous of O Fuyu because it was to her at last that he must go for food. But as she sat and watched the little mother, and saw the ineffable tenderness of motherhood steal into the girlish face, her heart would lose its soreness, and she would feel once more Torao’s baby head pillowed on her own breast.

“It is what we are glad to give our lives for, isn’t it Fuyu?” she would say; and Fuyu would smile and answer shyly, “It is, indeed!”

The long walks, even in the cool mornings of the hot summer days, seemed to tell a little upon Go Inkyo Sama. She grew more delicate, more worn, as her sweet old face grew more ethereal. O Fuyu, young and inexperienced as she was, watched the change with anxiety, but could do nothing.

“Mother,” she said one day, “do you feel quite well? Aren’t you tiring yourself with your long days and your hard work?”

“Fuyu, can we speak of being tired when we know what our soldiers are doing?” was all the answer that the old lady would give.

“But, mother, Torao told me to take care of you,” persisted the little wife.

“Yes, child, I know, but we must do what we can for the brave men at the front, and for the little ones they have left behind.”

Go Inkyo Sama’s eyes wandered lovingly to the brown baby lying asleep on his quilt close beside her, one crumpled rose-leaf hand, palm upward, thrust outside his wrapping. She leaned over and patted him, and a tear fell and splashed on his unconscious cheek,--a tear that Fuyu could not see.

As the autumn came on, and the mornings grew colder, there was no relaxation of Go Inkyo Sama’s austerities. Every morning, long before day, after the cold water purification, she trotted shivering through the sleeping streets to the temple of her devotion, offered her prayer, and returned, sometimes too tired to eat the warm soup and rice which O Fuyu San set before her. But she was never too tired for the long day of work, for a smile or a pleasant word to her daughter and to O Kō San, for a hug and a pat to the baby, who grew stronger and redder-cheeked every day.

Torao’s letters came regularly, telling not much about what was being accomplished, but something of how they lived and how they fought, and what they hoped and prayed might come from the daily sacrifice of lives offered gladly for the Emperor. Go Inkyo Sama read them again and again, sometimes aloud to O Fuyu San, sometimes alone in her room with streaming eyes. “I will do my best,” he wrote, “and you must not grieve if I change into a spirit at Port Arthur. Even though my perishable body may nevermore be seen in this world, I shall not forget ‘loyalty to our Emperor for seven lives.’”

By the end of October the weather had grown cold and bleak; the early morning walk was taken through dark and silent streets with the aid of a bobbing paper lantern.

“Let O Kō San go with you,” pleaded O Fuyu San.

“No, child, let O Kō San do her duty, this is mine;” and Go Inkyo Sama set forth alone in the darkness.

Along the entrance-way to the great temple, between the rows of shuttered booths that all the day long were gay with toys and notions, and thronged by purchasers, she passed to the heavy gateway on either side of which the gigantic figures of the Two Kings[16] glowered and writhed behind their bars. The dying moon cast strange shadows, the sweeping curves of the temple roof hung over the great lacquered pillars and the dark spaces between. She paused before the shrine where Fudō, the immovable, encircled by flames and carrying in his hands the sword and the robe of justice, sat enthroned. As she knelt with bowed head, closed eyes, and rosary rubbed between her folded palms, chanting in subdued tones the invocation, her whole soul went out in the prayer that Fudō, the immovably just and wise, might grant to her the wish of her heart. She knelt longer than usual, in an ecstasy of devotion, and when she reached home at last, it seemed to poor little anxious O Fuyu San that she looked so frail, so ethereal, that the worn body could scarcely do the will of the lofty spirit that was driving it on.

Go Inkyo Sama hardly tasted her breakfast, though O Fuyu San served it daintily and urged the old lady to eat. At last the young wife retired sorrowfully with the tray and the rice-bucket, handed them to O Kō San in the kitchen, and stopped a few moments in her own room to look after little Heitaro, asleep on his quilt in the corner. As she bent over him she heard Go Inkyo Sama call,--

“Fuyu, come quickly! I must tell you something.”

O Fuyu slid open the door, and crouched at the threshold of the mother’s room.

“Here I am, mother; what is it?”

Go Inkyo Sama’s face was very pale, her eyes were bright, her breath came quickly. “O Fuyu, my prayer is granted. Torao will come home again to you and the baby. All these months I have prayed to Fudō Sama that he would let me die in Torao’s place, and to-day the time has come.”

She fell forward as she spoke and said no more. O Fuyu did all she could. She put her to bed with O Kō San’s aid, and sent for the doctor, the relatives, the near friends. All day there was coming and going at the little house, and Go Inkyo Sama lay breathing faintly. At midnight there came a change. The unconscious face was suddenly transfigured by a radiant smile, and she sat up and spoke, knowing no one of all the weeping relatives who knelt about her.

“Torao, come with me!” she said, and that was all.

Next day the great white lanterns[17] were hung before the door, and little O Fuyu San offered the daily and hourly honors of food and incense to the brave spirit that had passed so suddenly from sight. “How can I ever tell Torao?” she said to herself again and again, while the tears flowed unchecked, for there was no one to be made sadder by her grief.

* * * * *

On the steep slope of a beleaguered Russian fortress, mingled with heaps of dead and dying, lay Torao, breathing faintly through that long October day. Above him shrieked and roared the shells of both sides, about him fell from time to time stray bullets, but his ears were dull, his eyes dim. The sun went down, the search-lights from the forts played over the ghastly scene, the firing never ceased, and still he lay unconscious of it all.

Then, from out the far distance,--a distance of hundreds of miles, it seemed, and of years too remote for memory’s reach,--there came to him a voice.

“Torao,” it said, “come with me.”

Slowly the languid eyes opened. A light that was neither search-light nor rocket, but a clear, steady, bluish flame, was moving toward him. Lazily he watched it, then sat up with a start. Was he dreaming, or was he dying? How could she be here on this ghastly field of death? For there before him was the beautiful young face of his boyhood; not worn or lined, but smooth and fair and oval, the sweet lips smiling, the velvet eyes searching through all that horrible place for him.

“Torao, come,” she said; and at the word, wounded, weak, bleeding, amid the glare of search-lights, the hail of bullets, the boom of guns, Torao rose to his feet, staggered forward, following the guidance of his mother’s voice, and fell at last, safe from danger, behind the shelter of an abandoned trench.

There they found him in the morning with a great hole in his side, but still alive. When, two weeks later, there came to him in the hospital at Dalny O Fuyu’s letter telling him of his mother’s death, he knew, even as she had known, how Fudō answers prayer.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] The present given to one who stays at home by a member of the family returning from a pleasure trip.

[8] The paper lantern used as a night light.

[9] The heavy quilts used in making a Japanese bed.

[10] A bit of bright-colored paper folded about a strip of sea-weed and slipped under the string of a present.

[11] The fire-pot used for heating purposes in a Japanese house.

[12] Go Inkyo Sama refers to the famous Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.

[13] The common people, as distinguished from the military or samurai class.

[14] From the Imperial rescript to the soldiers.

[15] The Buddhist God of Wisdom. His name means “The Immovable.”

[16] Ni-ō, or “Two Kings,” Indra and Brahma, who keep guard at the outer gates of Buddhist temples to scare away demons.

[17] White lanterns are hung before the door of a house where a death has taken place, much as crape or black ribbon is used with us.

III

THE BLUE FLAME

The incident of this story is connected with the disastrous
“snow-march” of February, 1901, when the
Japanese army was testing its ability to meet Siberian
winter conditions.

It had been snowing for weeks in the province of Aomori, and the little city was almost hidden under drifts. The mud-walled, boulder-covered houses were white mounds, the streets were tunneled valleys. As you looked down on the city from the hills above, you could see no signs of life except the wreaths of blue smoke curling into the air.

And yet there was cheer and comfort enough in one of the quaint little houses. O Yuki San was very busy with preparations to receive her husband. She had built a big charcoal fire in the _kotatsu_,[18] for she knew that he would be cold after his two days of snow-marching with his company. In the kitchen the red-cheeked cookmaid was broiling a fish over the coals, preparing a savory soup in a porringer, and keeping an anxious eye on the big rice-pot, to make sure that the staff of life was boiled just right, neither too hard nor too soft,--just as the master liked to have it. O Yuki San must watch the cook, and see that she did everything exactly as she should, and she must make ready her husband’s tray with her own hands. Lovingly she placed in their respective corners the porcelain rice-bowl, the lacquered soup-bowl, the dainty plate on which the broiled fish was to be served, and the chopsticks of clean white pine, joined together at the ends to show that no one had ever used them.

Old Jiiya, the man-servant, decrepit but faithful, came in suddenly out of the driving snow, as O Yuki San, on her knees in the matted end of the kitchen, was cocking her head on one side to make sure that her arrangement of the tray was quite symmetrical. He pulled his feet noisily out of his clogs, and came down on the loosely rattling boards of the floor in a crouching position at the sight of his mistress.

“It’s a cold night, mistress!” he ejaculated, by way of greeting, and dropped his face between his hands on the floor.

“Yes, Jiiya, it is cold, and how it snows! When do you think your master will come?”

Jiiya’s face came up for a moment. “It is thought at the garrison that the troops may be in at any time now. They had only fifteen miles to march to-day, and they would start early. The master will probably be here in a few minutes more.”

O Yuki San rose to her feet. “There, the tray is finished!” she said. “O Kayo, when you hear the master’s voice, bring in his supper; and, Jiiya, be ready to help him off with his boots as soon as he comes, for they will be wet and stiff.”

Jiiya and O Kayo bowed low, and murmured the “Saio de gozaimasu”[19] with which the respectful Japanese servant always receives his master’s commands; and O Yuki San returned to her little sitting-room. On the floor in one corner lay a little heap of bright-colored comfortables. O Yuki San bent over it, turning back the quilts that she might see the round, rosy face, the crumpled, slender hands, and the closely shaven head of her baby boy.

“Oh, baby, how you sleep!” she said. “Don’t you know that papa’s coming home to-night?”

She patted him lightly, and he smiled and gurgled in his sleep; then she covered him tenderly and made a tour of the room. The hanging scroll on the wall bore a picture of a plum-tree in blossom, sign of the spring that was only one month away,--for even in Aomori the plum-trees blossom in March,--and sign, too, of long life and good luck and happiness. That was why the little wife had taken it to-day from the fireproof storehouse and hung-it up to greet her husband on his return. “He will want to think about the spring when he comes in all tired and cold from his snow-march,” she had said to herself as she unrolled it. She laughed gleefully now as she looked at the picture, and sang a little song that had been running in her head all day,--

“When the spring wind is blowing sharp and chill,
Like snowflakes fall the plum-blooms on the hill.”

“Snowflakes now,” she said to herself, “but plum-blooms next month for all of us!”

There was a sound at the outer door, and the sliding lattice flew sharply back. “He has come, Jiiya,” called O Yuki San, as she hurried to the door and flung it wide. She could see the gold-trimmed soldier cap as her husband fumbled with his boots. “Let Jiiya help you,” she said; “he is right here.”

He raised his head and she saw his bearded face. It was so white that it frightened her. The beard was covered with snow, and icicles dripped from the hair and eyebrows.

“Come in! Come in!” she cried. “Never mind the boots or the snow. You are freezing. Come in and let me warm you.”

He looked at her strangely, and his eyes were sunken and dull. Jiiya, who had come around the house, and was bowing obsequiously in the doorway, started and turned pale. The master sat down, and Jiiya seized his boots, but the feet were like stones and the boots would not come off. O Yuki San, wild with anxiety, pushed and pulled her husband into the sitting-room, made him sit down by the _kotatsu_, and pulled the warm comfortables about him. The baby moaned in his sleep, but she had no time to hush him now. She hurried to the kitchen to bring the tray, saying to the red-cheeked cook, “Hurry! Hurry! He is so cold! He will die if you do not hurry!”

Jiiya came shuffling in at the back door just as she took the tray from the hands of the cook and hastened away with it.

“What is the matter with the master?” asked O Kayo of Jiiya.

The old man shook his head doubtfully. “It is hard to say,” was his noncommittal answer. “Strange things happen in this world.--Hark! What is that?”

A shriek rent the air, and another, and then another. Man and maid stood for a moment looking at each other, then Jiiya started to the rescue. Flinging wide the paper screen that separated the kitchen from the sitting-room, they saw nothing there but the baby, who, wakened by the sounds, had rolled out of his comfortables and lay kicking and screaming on the floor. The door beyond was open, and they heard the mistress calling, “Jiiya, come quick! He is gone!” Out through the open door into the snow tunnel that joined the house to the street, they went, seeking. A pale blue flame danced in the tunnel, the mistress lay on her face in the snow, stretching her arms toward the dancing light.

“He was here, and then there was nothing, only that light,” she cried, and her head fell and she knew no more. The flame danced and flickered and disappeared, and with it went the light of O Yuki San’s life.

* * * * *

Four days later, when the news began to come in of the disaster that had overtaken the snow-march, and the first and only men saved from that terrible tragedy were brought back, maimed and almost dead from the long exposure, Lieutenant Maruki told to some of his fellow officers all that he knew of the death of Lieutenant Saito.

“We pushed on together,” he said, “looking for a sign of the village. It was the second day, and we had been wandering, without a path, in snow up to our arm-pits, for more than twenty-four hours. I could see that Saito was freezing. His face was crusted with ice, and his hair and beard fringed with icicles. At last he turned to me and said, ‘I can’t go any farther, Maruki. You must not let them waste any time looking for me. I will tell my wife, and there is no one else who cares.’ Then he dropped and gave up. I tried to rub and shake him back into life, but I knew it was no use when I saw a pale blue flame[20] hovering over his body. I had seen such a flame once before, when my father died,”--his voice sank almost to a whisper,--“and I knew that his spirit had passed. The light moved away across the snow until I lost it in the thickness of the night. I followed the direction it had taken as well as I could. Perhaps that is why I am here to-day.”

“The poor little wife is gone, I hear,” said a listening comrade, “and the old man at the house tells a strange story of the master’s return, and of a blue flame that vanished through the snow tunnel.”

“Then Saito was right,” said Maruki, with a sigh; “he did go and tell his wife. Poor little woman! She was not a widow very long!”

FOOTNOTES:

[18] A fire-box in the floor, over which is set a rack, and the whole covered by a heavy comfortable.

[19] “It is honorably so.”

[20] It is a common belief in Japan that the recently freed soul is visible in the shape of a luminous ball or blue flame immediately after death.

IV

THE INDEPENDENCE OF SABURO

It was the month of June, and a great festival of the Sanno Temple was in full swing. The streets were alive with excitement and brilliant with lanterns. The whole length of Kojimachi-dori was lined with gay booths and crowded with sightseers. Here and there the beat of drums, the clashing of cymbals, and the antics and grimaces of mummers held the crowd for a moment before some fantastic festival car. Off in the side streets were to be heard the rhythmic shouts of boys, who rushed about with square red lanterns, bearing a miniature festival car high on their shoulders.

To Saburo Nozaki, sitting alone at home, in charge of his father’s shop, the cheerful sounds carried nothing but misery. He sat at his little table figuring out the day’s accounts by the light of a small hanging-lamp. The shop front was wide open to the narrow, dark side street, and now and then a wandering jinrikisha-man’s lantern flashed by, but for the most part the street was empty, for it was away from the centre of the festival, and every one who could leave his work had gone to the great celebration. Only Saburo seemed left of all the populous neighborhood, and as he fingered his _soroban_[21] and wrote out his accounts, the cheerful hum of the festival just around the corner simply increased his sense of desertion.

Saburo was thoroughly tired of the shop. He had been born in it, or rather in the room just behind it. His babyhood had been passed watching its business over his mother’s shoulder; and when he had been removed from his perch on her back to make room for a baby sister, he had at once begun to make himself useful. At first he could only run back and forth between the fireproof storehouse and the salesroom, carrying rolls of silk and cotton. Later, he had pulled a small hand-cart about the streets, acting at once as horse and delivery clerk. And now, since he had learned to count with the _soroban_, he sat all day on his heels, bowing and smiling and propitiating customers, measuring and counting and writing out bills, until it seemed to him that he could bear it no longer. His older brothers, Taro and Jiro, good, honest, unambitious youths, adapted themselves readily to the routine of the shop, but Saburo chafed under it and longed for a change. He was eighteen now, and still his only view of the world was what he could see of the street from under the heavy black curtains that draped the front of the salesroom.

How irksome the life was to a proud spirit that felt itself set apart for better things! And now to-night, when the greatest festival in a cycle of sixty years was going on close by, and on the great last night of all the three, his father had taken the rest of the family to see the sights, and had left poor Saburo alone at home to guard the shop and wait upon improbable customers. It was too much! Saburo counted and wrote and counted again, but the bursts of gayety from Kojimachi confused his reckoning, and he gave up at last and settled down to listen and wish.

Suddenly the wish became the father of a thought--a great thought--an audacious thought. It had sometimes come before into Saburo’s head, though he had never seen the way clear to its accomplishment, but to-night was the very night for it.

The boy reached out from where he sat to a drawer in the wall, and drew from thence a heavy, iron-bound box, the till of the establishment. This he opened with a key from his girdle, counted out fifty yen with methodical exactness, set down his name in the account-book opposite to that amount, then closed and locked the box and returned it to its drawer. The money he tucked away in his belt. Then he rose, carried the key into the back room and hung it on the wall, slid all the wooden shutters but one into place across the front of the shop, stepped out into the street, closed the last shutter, and walked off into the darkness, away from the lights and noise of the festival. He did not care where he went. All he wanted was to get away from the close confinement, the unvarying monotony of the shop.

For an hour or so he wandered about dark and narrow streets, not daring to show himself in the wider, brightly lighted thoroughfares, lest he should be recognized by some chance acquaintance and his great plan be frustrated at its beginning.

It was ten o’clock, and even the business streets were putting up their shutters for the night, when the youth drifted aimlessly into a broad avenue, almost deserted at that hour, which he recognized as the one that led to the northern railway station. Then a new thought struck him, and he pushed forward with the energy of a definite purpose. When he reached the station a bell was ringing, and the north-bound train was puffing on the track. He purchased a third-class ticket, selecting his destination--Nishi Nasu-no--at random from the time-table hanging on the wall, rushed through the gate, and curled himself up in the corner of an empty carriage.

By noon of the following day, Saburo found himself, after a long morning’s walk, close to the beautiful mountain region that surrounds the gorge of Shiobara. His morning had not been one of unalloyed pleasure in his independence. The girls at the tea-house, where he had stopped and called for breakfast, had met his air of assumed importance with derisive giggles and mocking obeisances, and had given him, not the cool, retired upper room that he had demanded, but a place close to the street, noisy and sunny, where he had eaten his meal in full sight of the public, and of all the employees of the hotel kitchen. Then the morning’s walk had been hot and tiresome,--a straight, shadeless road pointing directly toward the mountains.

Saburo found himself tired and hungry enough when he sat down to rest and eat his lunch in front of a tea-house that stood just where the road entered a beautiful mountain gorge.

“Elder sister, where does this road go?” he asked of the bright-eyed, red-cheeked girl who waited on him.

“To Shiobara,” she said; adding, “It is seven miles to the first village.”

As Saburo looked at the steep, rocky road ahead, he felt sure that he needed some stimulus to carry him over those seven miles to the village, and he ordered from the “elder sister” a gourd full of saké, which he hung at his belt. Then he pressed on, and the mountains closed about him.

He seemed to be entering the very bowels of the earth, and the roaring of the torrent below him, the awful grandeur of the peaks above, impressed his unsophisticated soul with a strange uneasiness. He remembered all the weird tales that he had heard from his childhood, of the mountain gods and goblins, of the spirits of the dead that mow and gibber by the roadside, of the foxes and badgers that work strange enchantments on unwary travelers, and as each horrid detail came before his mind, he took a pull at the saké bottle to brace up his courage. And so, as the day waned, his steps grew heavier and heavier, and his brain more and more confused, until, at last, he felt sure that he could not reach the village for which he was bound before the night fell.

He sat down by the roadside and wondered what he should do, and how he should pass the night; and as he sat there, he saw a young girl coming out of the woods, carrying a bucket of water. She was dressed after the country fashion, with her kimono tucked up to her knees, showing her red petticoat below. She wore white silk leggins and straw sandals, and she walked lightly and gracefully with her load, in the dog-trot of the mountain peasant.

Saburo rose as she passed, and she stopped and set down her bucket.

“Honorable maiden,” he said, “can you tell me of any house near here where I can get a meal and a bed?”

She bowed and smiled as she answered, “I have a very humble roadside booth just beyond the turn of the road where your honor can obtain refreshment, though of poor quality.”

Saburo started up, his tired, unsteady legs reeling under him, and followed the girl a few paces, to a spot where the smallest of roadside eating-shops had been placed, almost overhanging the torrent. How cool and inviting it looked! Screens of bamboo across the front shut it off from undue publicity. A small stream of water from a bamboo pipe plashed pleasantly into a stone tank close by, and over the _hibachi_ the kettle was bubbling. Cups and plates and various comestibles showed that the small establishment could furnish a meal, and it was with a sigh of relief that Saburo slipped his tired feet out of his clogs, bathed them in the cool sparkling water from the tank, and seated himself on the matted platform that made the guest-room.

“While I am preparing the poor meal, would your honor condescend to drink a cup of ama-zake?”[22] said the silvery voice of the girl.

“Thank you, I shall be glad to take it,” answered Saburo, holding his head up with an attempt at dignity, as he felt that now he had found some one who addressed him with the deference due to his independent position.

The girl, who to Saburo’s eyes grew more beautiful every minute, brought a steaming bowl of the thick white liquor and set it down in front of him. He drank it, sucking-it down with gulps and smacks of satisfaction.

“That is food and drink both,” he said, as the maiden brought him another brimming bowl.

Cheered by the gracious glow which the comforting draught diffused through his entire being, Saburo sat and watched his beautiful friend while she attended to her lowly tasks. At last he spoke, and his voice was husky with emotion.

“It is strange and sad, that so beautiful a maiden as you should waste her life up here in these wild mountains. Why do you stay in such a place? If you went to Tokyo, you would soon make a good marriage.”

The girl looked at him before she answered, and Saburo felt as if his soul were on fire.

“Sometimes I have thought I would like to go out and see the world,” she said, “but I am the only child of my old mother, and she would not consent to my going,” and she wept, holding her sleeves before her face.

“And now my mother is dead, and I have no brother, nor any friends.” She wept quietly behind her sleeves for a space, her body shaking with the violence of her emotion; then she uncovered her face. Saburo felt her eyes looking deep into his heart. “If you do not object to my humble birth,” she continued, “and since you sympathize with my grief, please take me with you to Tokyo, and teach me how to sweep and wash floors.” Then she hid her face once more behind her sleeves.

Saburo’s head was fairly turned by such a show of confidence, and he reached forward and patted the poor girl’s shoulder as she sat with covered face on the edge of the matted platform.

“Do not feel so sad,” he said; “I will find you a place where you will be much better off than here.”

The maiden looked with one eye from behind her sleeves. Saburo gently pulled down her hands until her whole face was visible. “How can I ever reward you for your kindness?” she whispered.

By the time he had eaten supper it was quite dark, and Saburo began to wonder where he could spend the night, for the little tea-house was simply an open booth.

“Where do you live?” he asked of his entertainer.

“Quite near here,” she answered, “and if you can endure my rude and squalid home, I can give you a bed there for to-night.”

She extinguished the coals in the _hibachi_ by dropping them into a pot of water, using for the purpose a pair of fire-sticks, one of bamboo and one of bone. Saburo’s superstitious soul shuddered a little when he saw her do it, for he knew that in Tokyo such sticks were used only in collecting the ashes of the dead. But he remembered that she was only a country girl, and could not be expected to know all the Tokyo customs. Then she closed the shutters about the little guest-room, and taking a white lantern[23] in her hand, she led the way into the woods. To Saburo there was something uncanny about the white lantern. It was like a funeral procession, he thought, but he said nothing.

There was a muttering of thunder among the hills, and zigzag lightning flashed from a black cloud overhead. The way seemed longer than Saburo had expected, but at last his guide stopped, just as a flash of lightning revealed a miserable dilapidated cottage. The paper of the sliding screens was flapping like ghostly garments in the wind, the plaster of the walls had fallen in places, showing the bamboo skeleton of the house, the roof seemed breaking down under its load of stones, and the floor gave and creaked dismally as they stepped up on the dirty mats.

On one side of the room was a broken screen, inverted;[24] two of the floor mats had been taken up, and a clean new tub, bucket, and dipper stood on the rotten boards in the place thus left bare.[25] Saburo shuddered. What did all this mean? His legs, which had been painfully weak for several hours, nearly gave way beneath him.

“My mother lies there dead,” said the girl in explanation. “I have not been able to bury her yet, but I will bury her to-morrow before we start. Wait here a little while, for I must go and find a priest to attend the funeral,” and the maiden disappeared in the darkness, leaving Saburo alone with the dead.

He tried to call, but his voice was choked; he tried to move, but his legs refused to carry him. He could only sit and wait for the return of his hostess, the horror of the place freezing his blood the while.

It was deadly silent in the woods. He would have been grateful even for a thunder-clap to break the silence, but the storm had passed. Suddenly the clouds parted, and the moonlight streamed through a hole in the roof right into the room.

Saburo found himself filled with a strange desire to look behind the screen, to see whether the girl had told him the truth. Slowly, on hands and knees, he crept across the floor. Softly he moved the screen away. It was too true! There, on the floor, covered with a white quilt, sat a rigid figure, its knees drawn up to its chin.

Saburo crept closer and removed the covering from the face. Horror of horrors! It was the face of his beautiful hostess. But even as he looked at it, the hair became snowy white, the eyes grew hollow, the parchment-like skin stretched tense across the nose, and the face changed to that of a demon.

Poor Saburo, not daring to turn his back on the awful object, retreated backward. The dead, raising her head, hitched forward across the floor. Saburo backed again. Once more the thing moved toward him, and once more he backed. It came close,--closer,--then suddenly, opening its mouth wide, it sneezed, and Saburo, forgetting his fatigue, turned and ran madly away from that terrible place.

Next morning a peasant, leading his shock-headed pony loaded with grass along the mountain road, saw, far beneath him, close to the brawling torrent, what looked like the body of a man. Scrambling down, he found poor Saburo, not dead, but badly bruised. With much labor and suffering he was at last dragged up to the road.

How familiar the whole place looked to him when he opened his eyes! There was the turn in the road near which he had sat down, there the footpath along which the girl had come with the bucket of water. A great terror came over him.

“Do not take me to the rest-house beyond the turn,” he begged of his kind-hearted rescuer.

“What rest-house? There is no rest-house near here,” said the bewildered peasant.

Then Saburo told him his story, but the man only shook his head. “There is no rest-house here, nor ever has been,” he said, “but there are foxes that live in the temple of Inari Sama[26] up in the woods there,” and he pointed toward the footpath. “They have bewitched you, and you should thank the gods that you have escaped alive.”

Two days later, Saburo, bruised and tired, stepped out of his clogs and prostrated himself on his face in his father’s shop. “I have returned,” he said, as he bowed to his parents. Then he went back to his measuring stick, his _soroban_, and his account-books.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] The abacus used in the East by all merchants in reckoning.

[22] A thick, sweet, slightly fermented rice-soup.

[23] White lanterns are used only at funerals.

[24] Sign of the presence of a corpse.

[25] Preparations for washing a corpse.

[26] Inari Sama, the god or goddess of rice, whose messenger the fox is supposed to be. Sometimes known as the Fox-God.

V

KITSUNÉ YASHIKI

_Kitsuné Yashiki_, “The Foxes’ Mansion.”

Minokichi sat on the edge of the little open shop, his feet in his clogs, his staff in his hand, ready for the afternoon’s work. His face, bearing the curiously refined expression that belongs to the blind, was turned toward O Koto San, who, with her baby tied to her back, sat on her heels behind the minute stock in trade. So small and so cheap was it that five dollars would probably have bought it all. A few pairs of straw sandals, a pattern or two of blue-and-white toweling, a pile of broad-brimmed hats, a small variety of cakes, and some eggs,--these were the entire contents of the shop. But O Koto San sat at the receipt of custom, as proud and happy in her new business as if she were conducting the great Mitsui[27] silk-store on Ginza.[28]

Minokichi was a blind _amma_, or masseur, who earned a certain but scanty living by his trade. Every afternoon, when the great bell of the temple tolled out its four slow strokes, Minokichi, staff in hand and whistle in mouth, walked up and down the streets of Ushigomé,[29] stopping wherever called, to smooth and rub and soothe and pat any tired body who, after the hot bath, might feel the need of further comforting. Some days, when he was fortunate, he earned as much as twenty cents. Once he had been summoned to a great house, where he had worked for an hour or two over a man whose silken garment proved that he was prosperous, and had pocketed for his fee a fifty-cent note; but such luck had never come to him again. It had taken him a long time to save enough to marry, and when the wedding was over, the go-between and the fortune-teller paid, the presents sent to the bride’s family, the tiny hired house new-papered and fitted up with the very few articles necessary for Japanese housekeeping, and the wedding feast paid for, not only was the long-saved hoard all gone, but he had been obliged to put in pawn every garment he possessed that was not at the time in actual use.

And so O Koto San, a red-cheeked, curly-haired country girl, whose round body seemed always trying to work its way out of her garments, came into the humblest of homes and took up the task of making life for two cheaper and happier than life for one. A good little wife she had proved to be,--in every respect exactly as the go-between had said. She kept the tiny house as neat as her willing hands could make it. She managed the scanty supply of charcoal so that every piece did some work for the family, no grain of rice was ever wasted by her in cooking or in clearing away, and the additional luxuries of the Japanese table, soups, fish, beans, greens, _mochi_[30] at New Year’s, and vermicelli at O Bon, made their appearance with due regularity. She took in cigarettes to roll in her spare time, and added to Minokichi’s earnings the tidy little sum of a dollar to a dollar and a half a month by her own labor. Minokichi brought her all his wages, and whenever he wanted money there was some in her hands for him. He always had wherewith to pay for a hot bath at the public bath-house; his tobacco pouch was never empty; he could entertain his friends at an eel-house, or a macaroni-shop, or in his own home, and O Koto San never told him that there was no money for such foolishness, as did the thrifty wife of the carpenter next door when her husband went to her for change to meet emergencies of like nature.

Surely Minokichi was a lucky man, in spite of his blindness. He had been married nearly two years now, and a baby boy had come to cement the union even more closely. O Koto San worked, if such a thing were possible, more diligently with her baby tied to her shoulders than she had at the beginning. Her rosy face was perhaps a thought less rosy, her curly hair a trifle less abundant, but she was just as cheerful and energetic in her care for two as she had been when her husband was her only thought. The little shop was her idea, and the stock in trade the saving from her cigarette work. They lived on the very edge of Tokyo, just where the city streets turn into narrow lanes and then into the dyked roadways across the rice-fields. Koto’s shrewd business sense realized that if she had to offer to passing jinrikisha-men just such things as they might need when starting out for a long country run or returning, she might make a profit from her savings. And so the things had been bought and set in place, and already more than one kurumaya had discovered the smiling face of the shop-keeper, and had bought from her, exchanging at the same time a few pleasant words, for the sake of her bright eyes, her shining teeth, and her low bows.

Minokichi was waiting for the temple bell to strike, and as the first deep boom sounded he rose to his feet, struck the ground with his staff, and felt his way out into the narrow road.

“If I am late,” he said, “close the shutters, and I will call you when I come. I am going to try a new part of the district. Perhaps I can find that rich man again who gave me so much money once. He was over near Koishikawa.”[31] He moved cautiously down the street, rapping his stick on the ground and blowing his whistle, signs to all passers that a blind _amma_ was on the march.

It was nearly six o’clock, and the sun was low at his back, when Minokichi, tapping and whistling, reached the northeast corner of Ushigomé, close to the Koishikawa district. He had spent about an hour at one of his regular places of call, rubbing and kneading the head and shoulders of an overworked newspaper-man, preparing him for his night at the office. For this service he had received, with many bows and protestations of gratitude, the sum of eight cents, carefully folded in white paper. Then he had felt his way, by the sun at his back and the autumn wind on his left cheek, along the narrow, crooked streets, to the very border of his own district. Here he paused, wondering whether it would be better to go on to Koishikawa, or to return by devious routes to O Koto San, trusting to chance for one or two more calls on the way.