Chapter XI: Angel of the Earth-Heaven

Now, the next day, Arisuga, laughing, greeted her with that very word--"angel"! Perhaps he did hear a bit of their talk. For the walls between them were very thin. This was the way of it: He clapped his hands so early in the morning that he was amazed at the despatch with which she arrived. But we are not. For we know that she was waiting just outside of his screens to be called. She meant to dissemble and pretend that she was at a distance. But you can fancy how instantly she forgot that when he called:--

"Angel! Angel of my earth-heaven!" Though there are no angels in the Japanese heavens.

You have seen that, in her presence, he had forgotten his caution! Observe, now, that he did likewise in her absence! What end but one could there be to such recklessness!

"Stand there! I want to look at you!" he cried when she came. For the light of the morning was in her face--and the light of love, too! "By your Jizo," he said, then, "I am glad you are _not_ an angel!

"Cherry blooms are very pink,
But not so pink as you are!"

he sang, laughing, and her heart was so choked with ecstasy that she had to put both hands to her face and run from the room hearing him still call "Angel" after her.

"O Benten," she cried to the goddess of beauty in her room, "that is different! He is not careful now--he is awake to-day! _We_ must beware of him! There is danger!"

And at once she returned--with the water for his bath!

For, that was always her way: when he would say something to make her heart leap into her mouth, to fly from him in the direst panic, suborn the goddess, then hasten back to have it happen again.

"A heart is a strange thing," she laughed to him. "Sometimes it is here (at the proper place for it), sometimes here (in her throat), and sometimes here (in her sandals)."

"And sometimes," laughed the young soldier, "one's heart, which should be here (in his own bosom), is there (in hers)."

"And again," she rioted with him, "one's heart, which was here (in herself), is gone--gone--utterly gone--"

"That is quite proper," the soldier said. "For if you kept your own, you would have two and I none!"

"It is trying to get out!" she cried in mock alarm, holding it in.

"Let it come!"

But, just then, they heard the sigh of a moving screen, and the acid face of Hoshiko's mother looked in. She said nothing, only let her eyes rove from face to face. But that was very cooling. She closed the shoji and went away--apparently.

Now, for the benefit of her mother, whom she knew to be still behind the fusuma, Hoshiko tried to look very severe. She had taken the poppies from behind her ear and had pinned a napkin about her hair, and turned up the sleeves of her kimono, making herself all the lovelier as she very well knew in this fashion of a nurse.

"You are to wash your hands in this cold water to refresh you. Then I will take it away and bring you other water for your face."

But, in the end, she washed his hands for him, and his face, too, amid a great deal of laughter and splashing.

"And now," he said, "I will take every advantage of my defenceless enemy. I will make her give me my breakfast."

Though she demurred, Hoshiko was quite mad to do it.

"Beware!" she whispered, as she let a persimmon slip from between her chopsticks into his mouth. "In the East, walls have not only ears but eyes!"

"And no conscience!"

"What would you?"

She hoped that he might desire walls without senses, where they might be fearlessly alone.

"Another persimmon!" he laughed.

"No," she pouted, for his punishment, "nothing but the rice."

"Not all the hard hearts," he sighed, "are behind the walls!"

Then she gave him the most luscious of the persimmons.

"You haven't told me yet," he insisted, "what I did and what you did while I was unconscious. That is always interesting."

She filled his mouth with rice.

"But what did you do and what did I do?"

It came through the rice.

"Please drink," she said.

"What did you do, what did I do?" he sputtered.

"Pardon me while I wipe your mouth."

"But what--"

"Nothing. I did nothing, you did nothing."

"It must have been very dull for you," sighed the defeated soldier.

"Jizo--" she was praying to the goddess at her small shrine that night--"I am going to conceal and lie! I pray you to intercede with the Lord Shaka for my pardon. He loves me--and he must not know. It is for happiness, Jizo. _His_ happiness, do you understand, dear Jizo?"

She cried out savagely in her further confidences to Jizo that night, when she was ready for bed.

"I _was_ very busy--yes, _very_ busy--falling in love with him! And you must intercede with Shaka for my forgiveness. It was a lie. But could I tell him that I was busy falling in love with him?"

The maid had come in to put her to bed.

"Strange prayers!" she said.

The mistress turned, intending to rebuke her. But she laughed.

"Come here and stop that laughing. He will hear!"

"Mistress, I did not laugh."

"Come here!"

When the maid was abject before her she said:--

"Why do you stare?"

"At the joy."

"Where?"

As if it were a symptom of disease.

"In the face."

"I have a trouble of the heart. Feel! That is why!"

"Yes!" said the maid, pretending terror.

"It will kill me!"

"Yes!"

"It will not!"

"No!"

They fell, laughing, together, to the floor.

"He does love me!"

"I know that much."

"But he does not know it--yet."

They laughed again.

"It WAS for _his_ happiness!"

"Certainly!"

"Not mine!"

"No!"

"He shall be told that he loves me!"

She shook her fist at her favorite deity, sitting unruffled in her shrine.

"Benten! You shall let him know!"

"The goddess is too decorous for that," chided the maid. "The only woman who tells a man that she loves him--"

"Is me!" cried her mistress to the shocked maid.

"Aie!" wailed the maid. "There is a kind of woman who does that, but she is not the lady Hoshi--"

"Oh, silence!" laughed the girl. "It would not take me a moment to tell him, if it were not for what he might think! And, perhaps, he is not wise and will not know enough wisdom to think that!"

"All men think that!" said Isonna.

"But, how can they," argued Hoshiko, "if they are not taught? How can he if I do not teach him?"

"It is born in them!"

"But how do you know?"

"I have studied," said the maid.

"Well, at all events, it was not that for which I petitioned the goddess: to tell him--that I loved him, you ignorant little animal. I asked her to tell him that he loved me!"

"Oh!" cried the maid, kowtowing. "I misunderstood."

"Now go to bed, you little scandal-monger!"

Isonna started. Her mistress recalled her.

"And--and, if there is a way of letting him know that _he_--"

"Yes," answered the maid, understandingly.

"And as to letting him know that I love _him_--"

"Yes?"

"Do you think that necessary?"

"I do not know the ways of love," confessed Isonna.

"You are a little beast," said her mistress. "That can wait--if he once knows that he loves me. At all events it is too dangerous. Go to bed, wicked one!"

IMPERTINENT ISONNA