The Way Of The Gods Part 7

"The smell of fire has not even pa.s.sed upon your garments," pursued the delighted parent.

"It is very strange," sighed the daughter.

"The G.o.ds love you!" declared her father.

"I suppose so," answered Yone, indifferently, thinking of quite another escape and another love.

It happened that the next day the _Kowshing_ was sunk and the Guards started for Ping-Yang.

PING-YANG

VII

PING-YANG

Arisuga sang for the Guards, and made rhymes and laughter, and they liked him tremendously, as big men are inclined to like little ones, until they reached Ping-Yang, when they liked him still more for something better. You will remember how the first a.s.sault of the j.a.panese was met by the Chinese, who had yet to be taught defeat. The big Satsuma color-bearer was killed, and the flag fell in the polluting Chinese dust. It was little Arisuga who raised it--to such a shout as cost the Chinese the hundred or so men they could spare at that time.

And he stayed out there, with the flag, where the Chinese were, when the rest retired, and taunted the enemy with polite epithets, kept his pistol going, and finally came through without a scratch!

Thus, the smallest member of the Guards had demonstrated to the greatest, the thing which helped to win their other victories: that though their enemy was not lacking in courage, as they had thought, yet he could neither manoeuvre nor shoot.

Afterward, there was a contest for the picturesque office of color-bearer. Some of them wanted Ok.u.ma. And Arisuga was willing, of course. He knew how impossible it was to him at his size. But Colonel Zanzi said the colors belonged to Arisuga.

"Men get what they win in the army--nothing more, and not less. Here, no honor goes by favor! A man pa.s.ses for a man until he is proven otherwise, no matter who or what he is, or whether he be five feet or six. In the army there are neither eta nor samurai, only sons of the emperor."

After the peace of Shimenoseki there was dull barrack life for little Arisuga, far from Yone, until he led the allies in their a.s.sault upon the gate of the Hidden City. You will remember that the j.a.panese were conceded the advance. After the first repulse they disentangled Arisuga from a heap of Chinese with the colors still upright in his hands. The wound was in his forehead. The great death had been near.

Now it happened that the next day a man with a j.a.panese name was brought before Colonel Zanzi and desired to know why it was that wounded j.a.panese soldiers were taken to the houses of the Chinese when there were j.a.panese houses near where they would be not only welcome but--Well, he had a pretty daughter, and the Chinese annoyed her by their attentions. A j.a.panese soldier in the house, a flag in the yard, and a pink ticket at the door would be not only glory but protection.

"I see," laughed the colonel. "Will a wounded one do?"

The visitor thought he would--if he were the young man who had been carried to the house of Han-Hai next door to him, the day before.

"Very good," smiled the colonel. "I observe that we are not only glorifying the emperor, but a.s.sisting a countryman to humble his Chinese neighbor. Very good!"

"It is not that," said the j.a.panese in China. "My daughter has seen him."

"Oh-h! Oh-h! He will have good care!"

Without another word the smiling commanding officer wrote the order for his transfer.

And the next day Orojii Za.s.shi was the proudest j.a.panese in China. For the imperial sun-flag waved over his roof; the pink ticket, to indicate that a soldier was quartered there, was tacked to his door-post; and within, in the most sumptuous room the house afforded, lay Shijiro Arisuga, color-bearer.

DREAM-OF-A-STAR

VIII

DREAM-OF-A-STAR

When Arisuga saw the face of "Hoshi-no-Yume," some days later--and this "Dream-of-a-Star," as he at once called her, was well enough worth seeing--he said first:--

"It is not like what I thought it, angel."

Referring, of course, to the great red death, which he thought he had suffered--and what had necessarily followed.

"No," answered Hoshiko, comfortingly, remembering what the surgeon had said, that when he came out of his delirium he would probably be a bit queer.

"I suppose, after all, that the earth-heavens are much like the earth."

"Yes," from Miss Star-Dream.

"I don't think you understand me, since you answer only yes and no?"

"I understand your _words_ perfectly. I am j.a.panese!" answered the lips of Hoshiko, while they slowly smiled. "But your thought--"

"How lucky! For, I suppose here all peoples are mixed."

"Yes. There are all sorts: Russians, Germans, Americans, Frenchmen--"

She was thinking of the allies.

"It looks like j.a.pan."

This was the interior which he was seeing.

"But you think it is China?"

"Yes! Out there it is precisely like the place where we fought."

"Yes," said puzzled Hoshiko.

"I suppose the G.o.ds surround us in the heavens with the things which have pleased us most on earth."

Something made him look at the girl who flitted near, and the same thing made him connect her with this state of celestial bliss.

But he sighed and turned from her. In the heavens, of course, she was incorporeal, and, while patent to the eyes, would fail like the air itself to the touch.