"Come back, eta," it said joyously; "we need you now. You shall not go to the Hakodate men. Every one of us clamors for you at the colors. Come! It is war. Your doctrine prevails. There are now neither samurai nor eta, but only sons of the emperor. Come! We are going to a glorious victory. Take your share. Your penance is complete. Your exile is finished. Come, the emperor himself calls his sons to die for him! Come! The flag waits. Come!
"Zanzi."
"PRESENT FOR DUTY"
XXVIII
"PRESENT FOR DUTY"
OF Hoshiko I do not speak—I have not spoken—in these last days. I cannot. I am near her heart as I write. She for whom everything had been had nothing—was eternally to have nothing. Yet it remained for her now to make all that be which would have been—but for her. The way of the gods was quite plain.
There was no oath to this effect, no tragic undertaking before the mysterious gods. It became simply her life. Nothing else was possible with the existences which remained but to make all true which ought to be true—which would have been true—but for her happiness. She had had that, and now was to come the recompense which the gods always demanded. And the plan of it had not consciously grown; it had been there—inside—always. Save that when she knew he was to die the small white death, all the details formulated themselves in her mind there at his side, fixed, she had no doubt, by the gods.
We know now that the war was fought to its end in the council chambers in Tokyo long before that torpedo sank the "Tsarevitch." This is the curious fashion of the Eastern mind: to see the end before the beginning. So now all that was to follow formed itself in the mind of Hoshiko as if it were already done and she saw it not from the beginning but from the end. The means to make it be would have puzzled us. They puzzled her not at all. She knew that suffering lay there; but no suffering could matter if the end was achieved and that was safe.
In due time General Zanzi received a cable, saying:—