Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 18

"He ain't come!" announced one of the women in tragic tones.

"Ben Schenk ain't here?" asked Mrs. Beaver in accents so awful that her listeners quaked. "Well, I'll see the reason why!"

Out into the night she sallied, picking her way around the puddles until she reached the saloon at the corner.

"Where's Ben Schenk?" she demanded sternly of the men around the bar.

There was an ominous silence, broken only by the embarra.s.sed shuffling of feet.

Drawing herself up, Mrs. Beaver thumped the counter.

"Where's he at?" she repeated, glaring at the most embarra.s.sed of the lot.

"He don't know where he's at," said the man. "I rickon he cilebrated a little too much fer the weddin'."

"Can he stand up?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.

"Not without starchin'," said the man, and amid the t.i.tter that followed, Mrs. Beaver made her exit.

On the corner she paused to reconnoitre. Across the street was her gaily lighted cottage, where all the guests were waiting. She thought of the ignominy that would follow their abrupt dismissal, she thought of the refreshments that must be used to-night or never, she thought of the little bride sitting disconsolate on the kitchen table.

With a sudden determination she decided to lead a forlorn hope. Facing about, she marched weightily around to the rear of the saloon and began laboriously to climb the steps that lead to the hall. At the door she paused and made a rapid survey of the room until she found what she was looking for.

"Joe Ridder!" she called peremptorily.

Joe, haggard and listless, put down his billiard-cue and came to the door.

Five minutes later a breathless figure presented himself at the Beaver kitchen. He had on a clean s.h.i.+rt and his Sunday clothes, and while he wore no collar, a clean handkerchief was neatly pinned about his neck.

"Everybody but the bride and groom come into the parlour," commanded Mrs. Beaver. "I'm a-going to make a speech, and tell 'em that the bride has done changed her mind."

Joe and Mittie, left alone, looked at each other in dazed rapture. She was the first to recover.

"Joe!" she cried, moving timidly towards him, "ain't you mad? Do you still want me?"

Joe, with both hands entangled in her veil and his feet lost in her train, looked down at her through swimming eyes.

"Want yer?" he repeated, and his lips trembled, "gee whiz! I feel like I done ribbeted a hoop round the hull world!"

The signal was given for them to enter the parlour, and without further interruption the ceremony proceeded, if not in exact accordance with the plans of Mrs. Beaver, at least in obedience to the mandate of a certain little autocrat who sometimes takes a hand in the affairs of man even in Rear Ninth Street.

THE SOUL OF O SANA SAN

O Sana San stood in the heart of a joyous world, as much a part of the radiant, throbbing, irresponsible spring as the golden b.u.t.terfly which fluttered in her hand. Through the close-stemmed bamboos she could see the sparkling river racing away to the Inland Sea, while slow-moving junks, with their sixfold sails, glided with almost imperceptible motion toward a far-distant port. From below, across the rice-fields, came the shouts and laughter of naked bronze babies who played at the water's edge, and from above, high up on the ferny cliff, a mellow-throated temple bell answered the call of each vagrant breeze. Far away, shutting out the strange, big world, the luminous mountains hung in the purple mists of May.

And every note of color in the varied landscape, from the purple irises whose royal reflection stained the water below, to the rosy-tipped clover at the foot of the hill, was repeated in the kimono and _obi_ of the child who flitted about in the gra.s.ses, catching b.u.t.terflies in her long-handled net.

It was in the days of the j.a.panese-Russian War, but the constant echo of the great conflict that sounded around her disturbed her no more than it did the birds overhead. All day long the bugles sounded from the parade-grounds, and always and always the soldiers went marching away to the front. Around the bend in the river were miniature fortifications where recruits learned to make forts and trenches, and to shoot through tiny holes in a wall at imaginary Russian troopers. Down in the town below were long white hospitals where twenty thousand sick and wounded soldiers lay. No thought of the horror of it came to trouble O Sana San.

The cherry-trees gladly and freely gave up their blossoms to the wind, and so much the country give up its men for the Emperor. Her father had marched away, then one brother, then another, and she had held up her hands and shouted, "Banzai!" and smiled because her mother smiled.

Everything was vague and uncertain, and no imagined catastrophe troubled her serenity. It was all the will of the Emperor, and it was well.

Life was a very simple matter to O Sana San. She rose when the sun climbed over the mountain, bathed her face and hands in the shallow copper basin in the garden, ate her breakfast of bean-curd and pickled fish and warm yellow tea. Then she hung the quilts over poles to sun, dusted the screens, and placed an offering of rice on the steps of the tiny shrine to Inari, where the little foxes kept guard. These simple duties being accomplished, she tied a bit of bean-cake in her gaily colored handkerchief, and stepping into her _geta_, went pattering off to school.

It was an English school, where she sat with hands folded through the long mornings, pa.s.sively permitting the lessons to filter through her brain, and listening in smiling patience while the kind foreign ladies spoke incomprehensible things. Sometimes she helped pa.s.s the hours by watching the shadows of the dancing leaves outside; sometimes she told herself stories about "The Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Blossom,"

or about "Momotaro, the Little Peach Boy." Again she would repeat the strange English words and phrases that she heard, and would puzzle out their meaning.

But the sum of her lore consisted in being happy; and when the shadow of the mountains began to slip across the valley, she would dance back along the homeward way, singing with the birds, laughing with the rippling water, and adding her share of brightness to the suns.h.i.+ne of the world.

As she stood on this particular morning with her net poised over a b.u.t.terfly, she heard the tramping of many feet. A slow cavalcade was coming around the road,--a long line of coolies bearing bamboo stretchers,--and in the rear, in a jinrikisha, was a foreign man with a red cross on his sleeve.

O Sana San scrambled up the bank and watched with smiling curiosity as the men halted to rest. On the stretcher nearest her lay a young Russian prisoner with the fair skin and blond hair that are so unfamiliar to j.a.panese eyes. His blanket was drawn tight around his shoulders, and he lay very still, with lips set, gazing straight up through the bamboo leaves to the blue beyond.

Then it was that O Sana San, gazing in frank inquisitiveness at the soldier, saw a strange thing happen. A tear formed on his lashes and trickled slowly across his temple; then another and another, until they formed a tiny rivulet. More and more curious, she drew yet nearer, and watched the tears creep unheeded down the man's face. She was sure he was not crying, because soldiers never cry; it could not be the pain, because his face was very smooth and calm. What made the tears drop, drop on the hard pillow, and why did he not brush them away?

A vague trouble dawned in the breast of O Sana San. Running back to the field, she gathered a handful of wild flowers and returned to the soldier. The tears no longer fell, but his lips quivered and his face was distorted with pain. She looked about her in dismay. The coolies were down by the river, drinking from their hands and calling to one another; the only person to whom she could appeal was the foreigner with the red cross on his arm who was adjusting a bandage for a patient at the end of the line.

With halting steps and many misgivings, she timidly made her way to his side; then placing her hands on her knees, she bowed low before him. The embarra.s.sment of speaking to a stranger and a foreigner almost overwhelmed her, but she mustered her bravest array of English, and pointing to the stretcher, faltered out her message:

"Soldier not happy very much is. I sink soldier heart sorry."

The Red Cross orderly looked up from his work, and his eyes followed her gesture.

"He is hurt bad," he said shortly; "no legs, no arms."

"_So--deska_?" she said politely, then repeated his words in puzzled incomprehension: "Nowarms? Nowarms?"

When she returned to the soldier she gathered up the flowers which she had dropped by the wayside, and timidly offered them to him. For a long moment she waited, then her smile faded mid her hand dropped. With a child's quick sensitiveness to rebuff, she was turning away when an exclamation recalled her.

The prisoner was looking at her in a strange, distressed way; his deep-set gray eyes glanced down first at one bandaged shoulder, then at the other, then he shook his head.

As O Sana San followed his glance, a startled look of comprehension sprang into her face. "Nowarms!" she repeated softly as the meaning dawned upon her, then with a little cry of sympathy she ran forward and gently laid her flowers on his breast.

The cavalcade moved on, under the warm spring sun, over the smooth white road, under the arching cryptomerias; but little O Sana Sun stood with her b.u.t.terfly net over her shoulder and watched it with troubled eyes.

A dreadful something was stirring in her breast, something clutched at her throat, and she no longer saw the suns.h.i.+ne and the flowers. Kneeling by the roadside, she loosened the little basket which was tied to her _obi_ and gently lifted the lid. Slowly at first, and then with eager wings, a dozen captive b.u.t.terflies fluttered back to freedom.

Along the banks of the Upper Flowing River, in a rudely improvised hospital, lay the wounded Russian prisoners. To one of the small rooms at the end of the ward reserved for fatally wounded patients a self-appointed nurse came daily, and rendered her tiny service in the only way she knew.

O Sana San's heart had been so wrought upon by the sad plight of her soldier friend that she had begged to be taken to see him and to be allowed to carry him flowers with her own hand. Her mother, in whom smoldered the fires of dead samurai, was quick to be gracious to a fallen foe, and it was with her consent that O Sana San went day after day to the hospital.

The nurses humored her childish whim, thinking each day would be the last; but as the days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, her visits became a matter of course.

And the young Russian, lying on his rack of pain, learned to watch for her coming as the one hour of brightness in an interminable night of gloom. He made a sort of sun-dial of the cracks in the floor, and when the shadows reached a certain spot his tired eyes grew eager, and he turned his head to listen for the patter of the little _tabi_ that was sure to sound along the hall.