Not that Star-Dream is another Eve; nor that this is like the first love story. But there is a Garden and a Serpent; an Apple and a Woman. And, from that Garden, Shijiro Arisuga is driven with a sword which flames. But here my story differs entirely from that of the first love story. For the woman is left in the garden—alone! And it is eternal night. And she can hardly stay there alone. For the uguisu sings. I wonder if Eve could have been happy in Eden alone? With the singing of the death-bird? You will remember that though they were driven forth, it was together: comrades in misfortune as in joy—yet comrades!
NIPPON DENJI
I
NIPPON DENJI
Now, the first of these five great occasions was that day Shijiro was accepted in the haughty Imperial Guards, most of whom had genealogies which would best impress us by the yards of illuminated mulberry paper they covered. Arisuga had many of such yards himself. That was not a question. But his inches raised many questions. The Guards were tall. Shijiro Arisuga was small. Though he was a samurai of the samurai, his ancestors kugé, it seemed impossible to admit him until Colonel Zanzi spoke.
"He is a samurai," said Zanzi, gruffly. "Of course all Japanese fight. But the rest, the commoners, are new to it. It is possible in a pinch for them to run away. It happened once to my knowledge. But a samurai goes only in the one direction when he is before an enemy. You all know what direction that is. The commoner may be as good as the samurai in a century. But the samurai is always dependable now. I wish the whole of the Guards were shizoku. His uncles, the Shijiro of Aidzu, though they were shiro men at Kyoto, and so against the emperor, in that old time, were, nevertheless, kugé by rank. I do not see how we can keep him out of the Guards. I don't want to, whether he is tall or small."
Now Zanzi was an autocrat who constantly pretended that he was not. He had an iron temper which he nearly always concealed under courteous persistence, until his men understood what must be without his ever having precisely said that it must be. So, in this matter, he pretended to have left it to them. But he had decided upon Shijiro's final admission to the regiment, even though it was a time of peace, when one's qualifications were more strictly scanned than in time of war, simply because he was of the samurai, whom he adored.
"Nevertheless," warned Nijin, the recruiting major, "he is considerably below the physical standard."