AT THE SHRINE OF FUDŌ

It had come at last. Torao had been wondering all day how he should tell his mother. The reserve regiment of which he was a member had been ordered to the front, and he must go day after to-morrow. As he whirled homeward through the Tokyo streets, his fast-trotting kurumaya rushing headlong into the crowds with loud shouts of “He! He!” he looked straight in front of him with knitted brows and unseeing eyes, hoping one moment that she had not yet returned from her visit to her sister, the next, that she would be waiting for him, and that he could see her at once and have it over.

He had passed through the thronged avenues of Uyeno Park, now in its full glory of cherry blossoms, and was winding along the narrow lanes of the Negishi quarter, and he had not yet decided whether it would be best to tell her to-night, or to let her have one more night of rest and happiness without knowing what the future had in store for her. He did not think of himself at all. All his life he had hoped, and for months he had expected, that he would have his chance to serve the Emperor, and if so it should be ordained, to die in that service. Now that the time had come and he was called, if he had thought of himself at all, it would have been with the exaltation that comes from the near fulfillment of a high destiny. Nor did Fuyu, his young wife, add greatly to the burden of his mind. She loved him, to be sure, with a supreme devotion that would give him her very soul, if need be; a love to which he responded with the condescending though sincere affection that Japanese husbands are apt to bestow on their wives. But when he thought of her, it was with a calmness that could reason out her future and derive a comfort that was almost satisfaction from the forward look. If he should fall, and their child, whom he might never see, should live, Fuyu would find a hope and pleasure in its existence that would go far toward cheering her life. If, through some mischance, their baby should not live, Fuyu would then be free to return to her father’s house. She was young, she could begin life anew, and might in the future become again a happy wife and the mother of children.

But his mother,--his brows knitted more closely,--she was old; she had reached the age of rest and freedom from care, after a long life of labor and sorrow. His mind ran back to those days, long ago, when in her early widowhood, ruined in estate by the same war that had taken her husband from her, she had been father and mother, comrade and friend, to his babyhood. How long the days seemed when she was away at the government school in which she earned, by eight hours of absence from her home and her baby, the pittance that kept them both alive! Kind old Bāya, the nurse and general servant, would while away the time for the little fellow as best she could, by songs and stories, by taking him out for long walks to see the temples and the shops and the flowers,--walks so long that sometimes his feet would falter and fail, and she would have to pick him up and carry him on her back, holding his dirty little clogs in her hand so that they should not soil her dress.

Bāya was kind and amusing, and a very comfortable person for a small boy to depend upon, but she was not his mother, and so he was lonely all those days, and only at night did he feel that he was really satisfied. For when she came home from her long hours of work, what a wonderful coziness the little house took on suddenly! He would watch for her every night in the front room, and when he heard her clogs stop at the lattice, he would bounce quickly out and fling it open wide, and shout “O kaeri!” and seize her bundle of books and pull her into the house. And they had such good times together. She was never too sad or too tired or too busy to listen with the most absorbed interest to the story of his day, to laugh at the funny paper toys he brought home to her for _o mi age_,[7] to explain to him all the strange things that he had seen, and to cuddle him and make much of him until at last, when Bāya had spread the beds upon the floor and he had crept into his, the dim light of the _andon_[8] would shine upon his mother’s face close beside him, the last and loveliest object upon which his sleepy eyes rested.

Torao shut his eyes now to call up again that face of his childhood,--smooth, oval, with velvet eyes and firm, beautiful lips that flashed from their wonted seriousness into the most brilliant of smiles in response to his baby wit or awkward boyish affection. The abundant hair grew to a little point on the low, broad forehead, and was combed smoothly back and cut short at the nape of the neck, the cropped ends held in place by a clasp.

“Poor mother,” said Torao, thinking of the many years that she had worn this sign of her widowhood, nor knew that he had spoken until the kurumaya in the shafts turned his head over his shoulder as he ran, to inquire, “Did the master speak?”

With an impatient phrase he answered the man, but the vision of his early boyhood had faded from his mind, and in its place was the little, worn, tired mother of to-day. The smooth, oval face was lined and hollow-cheeked, the soft, deep eyes were dim, the abundant black hair was thin and iron-gray, the sweet mouth, with its soft curves, had taken on an expression of resignation and patient endurance,--signs of the prolonged toil and continual self-sacrifice by means of which she had managed to educate her son, until at last, in a good position in the Bank of Japan, he was giving back to her in her old age something of the care and service with which she had surrounded his boyhood.

Since his marriage, less than a year ago, the mother had become Go Inkyo Sama, “the honorable retired one,” and free from the cares which had been her lot for thirty years, she lived in her own portion of her son’s house, honored and beloved by her son and her daughter-in-law. Instead of the long days at school, she could devote her time to visiting her friends or receiving them in her own rooms. There was now abundant leisure for days at the theatre, for attendance at the temple festivals, for excursions to the parks and gardens to see the flowers as they came into bloom in the orderly procession of the seasons.

Torao, even as he groaned inwardly over the sorrow that must come to darken these sunny days of old age, could not but smile as he thought how difficult it had been for his mother to acquire the rest habit. It was hard for her, who had waited upon herself and her son for thirty years, to sit still and let Fuyu do the little things that were now her care. From early morning, when the _amado_ were to be opened and the house made ready for the day, till bedtime, when the _futons_[9] must be spread on the floor and the night lights lighted behind their white paper shades, O Fuyu needed to be brisk indeed, if she would attend to her work before Go Inkyo Sama could attempt it. And as for the visits and festivities which Torao had hoped that his mother would enjoy in the freedom of her new position, she had so long been forced to leave her home each day, whether she would or no, that to her there seemed no pleasure comparable to sitting down with O Fuyu when the morning work was done, and sewing, chatting, reading, writing, and smoking tiny pipefuls of tobacco from time to time, through the pleasant, restful days. And now the prospect of a grandchild had made her so solicitous for O Fuyu’s health that she had taken almost the entire work of the house upon herself, so that Torao had been driven to add to the family a little girl to wait upon his mother; and O Kō San, a child of fourteen, neat, smiling, slender, and most anxious to learn the polite ways of the gentry, had been imported from their native province to save Go Inkyo Sama from her own zeal.

The high, breathless “O kaeri!” of the kurumaya, as he dashed in at the gate, roused Torao from his reverie. Panting and dripping, hat in hand and blue wing-sleeves rolled to the shoulder, the kurumaya bent double beside the little carriage as his master stepped to the ground. There was a pattering of feet within the house, and as Torao sat to let the man unlace his shoes,--for he wore his business dress with all its foreign accompaniments,--O Kō San slid open the _shoji_ and prostrated herself face downward in the vestibule, murmuring her “O kaeri!”

“Has my mother returned?” he asked.

O Kō San lifted her head and bowed again. “Go Inkyo Sama returned not half an hour ago, and is now awaiting the master in her room. She brought many gifts home from her sister’s.”

“Torao,”--it was O Fuyu now who was bowing and smiling with the pleasure of his return and of the gifts that Go Inkyo Sama had brought,--“Torao, forgive me that I was not at the door to meet you, but mother has just returned and I was with her.”

She looked up at him after her low bow, and caught from his face some premonition of the coming sorrow. “Oh, Torao! What is it? What has happened? Why do you look so strange?”

His voice was gentle as he answered her, “Come, we will go to mother’s room, and there we can talk it all over.” There was no question now of when or how he should tell the news. Certainty was better than the fear that came into O Fuyu’s eyes when she saw his face.

Go Inkyo Sama was sitting in her room, surrounded by the presents that her sister had heaped upon her after the all-day visit she had been trying so long to make. The great box of cake, the bolt of soft gray silk, the wooden case containing a rare curio, each wrapped neatly about with a sheet of white paper, tied with red-and-white strings, and adorned with a _noshi_,[10] relieved the spotless simplicity of the matted room, giving it almost a furnished aspect. The old lady sat by the _hibachi_,[11] for the day was cool with the damp chilliness of the springtime, and with tiny pipe in hand was taking her comfort in a leisurely smoking bout while she awaited her son’s return.

“O kaeri,” she said, as he and Fuyu entered, and it was only after his face was lifted from the bow with which he responded “Tadaima,” that she could see the cloud upon it.

“Mother,” he said, and he paused a moment.

“Yes, my son.” The look of patient endurance that the years had taught her was behind the caressing smile that always came to her lips when she spoke to him.

“Mother,” he began again; then with a plunge, “I have been ordered to the front. I must go the day after to-morrow.”

Even Torao’s years of closest intimacy with his mother had not prepared him for the change that swept across the gentle, refined old face. It was as if a light had been suddenly lighted from within; as if the faith and patience of a lifetime had been at last crowned by fulfillment. She bowed in reverence, her face between her hands upon the matted floor.

“How great is the honor vouchsafed to us by our lord the Emperor!” she murmured softly,--“to us, who have waited all these years to make atonement!”

Torao listened in amazement. O Fuyu at the threshold bowed in grief and awe, while little O Kō San in the passage beyond snuffled audibly as she crouched with her nose flattened against the polished floor. Go Inkyo Sama lifted her head at last. Her eyes were bright and tearless, her withered cheeks slightly reddened with the excitement.

“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.