And then it did come: the great war—though not as he had fancied it would. Slowly it got into the air. Every day he spent at the bulletins. But they said Japan would not fight. Russia was getting and would get what she wished. She was too great for Japan. And some of the newspapers began to pour contempt upon his country. She was baying the moon, one said.
"What! are there no more samurai in Japan?" Arisuga cried out to his wife that night. She did not reply. Her silence was almost guilt. For as the threat of war went on, and as Arisuga grew older, he valued the more what he had lost for her. "Gods," he proceeded with a hollow laugh, "I am not a samurai myself. And I must wait my call to be even allowed to fight."
"Forgive me, dear lord," said his wife. And the words and her attitude recalled that other time she was servilely at his feet.
"Rise!" he commanded impatiently. "And do not call me lord. I am no more—nothing more—than you—eta! It cannot be helped. We must suffer it." But there were no caresses—there were never any now.
Then it came, quite according to Arisuga's fancy—a thunder-clap from the heavens! Togo had sunk the "Tsarevitch"!
"At last," cried Arisuga, that day, "I am a soldier once more, if not a samurai! A son of the emperor! Banzai!" And that night it seemed as if all the old sweetness had come back and she slept in his arms as she had used to sleep.
"All that remains now is the call," he said the next day, still happy.
He went to the consulate to see that they had his address correctly, but on the way home he remembered that there was no money for the passage. For, strangely, this passion of war had obliterated that other passion of chance! He ran all the way.
"I must—I must," he said roughly to Hoshiko, "have money for the passage! When my call comes I shall not be ready. And there is none!"
"I have not forgotten it, lord," she answered, giving him the little she had been secretly able to save from his gambling for the purpose.