A Japanese Sword [pp. 137-140]

A JAPANESE SW()RD
blow, which is saying a great deal more
than you can safely say about the courage
of a Bonaparte or of him who taketh a
walled city.
"Disgrace or no disgrace, the boy shall
know the truth. I will fall at his hand."
He ended his reflection with the half-uttered
prayer, "0, eight million gods, grant that
his sword may be too powerful for the defense mind may afford!"
HIDA celebrated the twentieth birthday
of Nobuwo at his house. Many noted
swordsmen of the city were there. At the
banquet Hida read a public declaration to
the effect that Nobuwo should be his successor in case he. from any cause, became
unable to fill his duties as a master. The
sword dance, the tin-rii tei-ch, n of the
samisen, the singing of Chinese poems, the
fan dance of the geishos, helped to pass the
.akc cups around the merry circle.
"STEADY, my boy!" Hida was saying to
Nobuwo, by the solitary off house, far from
the noise of the carousal, under the midnight stars. "Steady — yes, it is true.
Believe me. For what reason, you, do I
deceive?"
"'Even a word, I believe not. 0, master,
how such things be possible?"
Truth, the whole naked truth, was told
him.
Within, the merry-making, the drinking,
and dancing, went on far into the night,
and the men, with their brains soaked in
~.,kLe, met the dawn coming down the Orient hills in her white silk gown.
But Nobuwo met her a sober man, in
fact, that was the first sober moment since
he was born
HAVE you ever heard a hair-stiffening
ghost story? and then have you gone into
a dark, dark room? Do you remember how
you felt? Did you want to rush out madly?
And then at the same time did you not try
to sit down where you stood and compose
yourself? Man's soul experiences something like that when a huge octopus, otherwise known as a combination of circumstances, comes along and makes a spittoon
out of it.
Nobuwo's soul was in the dark. The new
light that fell upon his life was too strong
for him, blinding, scaling his eyes. He did
not know what to do; but he wanted to
know how to act, so badly.
His father's enemy, he was there within
his grasp, you might say. His oath appeared before him, and he recognized that
that was the only kind of bread his spirit
had fed upon all its life.
His hero-lover, his arch-angel! he was
also there within his embrace. And the
gods to whom he had bowed night and
morning recalled to him his prayers and
woke them in echoes in his heart: "Grant,
0, ye gods, that one day I may tell him
(meaning his master) how grateful I am, by
giving my life for him."
Many others before him had torn their
hair, but never as he did; many others had
had their hearts broken (for this has been
a wretched world for a long time), but
never so brutally, so helplessly.
"Dark, dark! no light?" he cried over
and over again.
You can hardly believe that a young man
of twenty could strike a chord that is truly
touching, but there was that in Nobuwo's
cry which would have made any miserable
wretch happy,- by comparison, I mean.
That was his first experience, and it went
hard with him. He acted like a silly, crazy
baby, in good faith, and my hero awaits the
first stone from one of you who have had a
similar experience.
He did not know what to do. Light was
what he wanted.
IN THAT old dingy room, alone with the
sword, - three days after the great revelation. He was gazing at it, as he had
done every night when all else went into
the big star-domed cathedral to worship in
devout silence. As he looked at the sword
as if it were a thing of great depth, he remembered how his mother appeared in his
dreams, two nights in succession. She
came to him with the same smile with
which she died; stood at his pillow and
pointed to the sword which Nobuwo was
hugging in his sleep. She did not speak.
He was looking at the sword, because, as
I have said, he wanted light, and because
he did not know where else he could go for
it. He was sure that if he could but read
the handwriting that came and went there,
he could get what he wanted. The dull
lamp-light fell upon the stainless sword in
stars and at every turn Nobuwo gave to it,
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