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.