"I gathered petals, to show thee, love.But now, in my hands they have melted—"
"I gathered petals, to show thee, love.But now, in my hands they have melted—"
she quoted aloud from a classic.
Her parents had been talking together in the main corner-room, where now a servant brought lights. On the closed paper shoji, just beside her, the silhouettes of two beloved forms sprang into sudden vivid blackness. Tetsujo's stern, Indian-like profile was turned, while Iriya showed only the outlines of her coiffure, with the droop of slender shoulders and the flower-like poise of a delicate throat. His attitude,—all dignity, self-assertion, manliness; and hers, concessive, yielding, and full of feminine grace,—symbolized to the girl the true relations, in Japan, of man and wife. "And is it not better?" she thought to herself. "Are the aggressive American women happier or more beloved?" She thought of the domestic scandals, the unhappy marriages openly discussed at Mrs. Todd's table. Here, at least, though such sad things did sometimes occur, they seldom became topics of general conversation.
The bell of the front gate rang out through the gray air. Yuki, with a sudden leap of the heart she could not account for, threw an arm about the tree and clung to it, listeningbreathlessly. Through the paper-walled house came clearly the sounds of old Suzumè as she opened the door. "Hai! Hai! Sayo de gozaimasu. Hai, danna!" (Yes, yes. It is augustly so! Yes, master.) Even the sharp indrawn breath was audible. Surely it was a visitor of importance,—and not a foreigner. In an instant a third silhouette was added to the two in the room. This bore a small parcel in its hands, and bowed very deeply before Tetsujo.
"A messenger direct from the august Prince Haganè!" said Suzumè's proud voice.
Yuki saw the shadow of her father snatch the package and toss aside the cloth furoshiki in which it was wrapped. She saw the shadow open a letter, start, bend his head nearer. She saw strong shadow-hands tremble, and heard a voice, which strove in vain for steadiness, give the orders: "Fold the furoshiki carefully, and return it done up in clean paper. Give to the messenger my respects. There is no immediate reply. Offer him fresh tobacco, tea, and cakes—the best we have."
"Hai! Hai! Kashikomarimasu" (Yes, yes! I hear and respectfully obey), murmured Suzumè's voice. Her shadow bobbed once, twice, to the matting, and vanished.
Yuki gripped the tree hard. A messenger from Prince Haganè! and that deep, triumphant note in her father's voice! What could it mean?
The shadow of Iriya was now reading the note. A cry came. "O my husband! It is too wonderful—too splendid. It will solve all difficulties. I must not believe—"
On the cowering girl white snowflakes, her namesakes, fell now quickly, dotting her dark hair. One, falling on a cheek as white, melted slowly, and pretended that it was a tear.
"Call the girl!" said Tetsujo. Iriya rose in haste. Yuki sped back along the narrow veranda to her own room. "And summon the two serving-women also!" came Tetsujo's voice, on a higher note.
Yuki entered with what calmness she could. The two servants already squatted like bright-eyed toads in the doorway.
"Here, girl! Read this letter from his Highness, PrinceHaganè," said Onda. "Bow, as you receive it into your unworthy hands."
The girl bowed obediently. She read the letter through without a flicker of change on her downcast face. Folding it with scrupulous care she returned it, again bowing, to her wondering father.
"Well," he cried, "are your wits gone? What have you to say?"
"His Highness does our house too much honor," answered Yuki, quietly.
Iriya, watching breathlessly, saw what the puzzled Onda did not see, that, in spite of superb self-control, a slow, sick pallor was stealing into the girl's face. Behind Iriya the two servants, drawn closer as by a magnet, vibrated to suppressed excitement.
Onda caught the look of their faces. "Suzumè!" he said, "your young mistress has just been asked in marriage by his Augustness, Prince Haganè, daimyo of our clan."
"Ma-a-a!" breathed the women in unison, and fell forward on their faces.
"You see whattheythink of it," said Tetsujo, with a half-contemptuous wave of his hand.
"Oh, my daughter," cried Iriya, "it is an honor so great that I cannot yet meet the thought of it. You will be like a Princess of the Blood. Our sacred Empress will meet you face to face as a friend."
Tetsujo broke in. "You can serve your country, girl! That's the best of it. The opportunity is incredible. It does not need argument. Well, Yuki! Will you write your humble and grateful acceptance in person, or shall I convey it for you?"
"I have not accepted yet."
Tetsujo bounded in his place. Iriya caught her breath, and stretched forth two pleading hands, one to each.
"Do not anger me, girl!" muttered the father, with visible effort to contain himself. "I am in no mood for violence."
"Nor I, father, being already spent with much contention," answered Yuki, wearily. "Indeed, I should attempt no speech at all, but that I see his Highness shields me bycommands against rough argument, and the condition that I be given full time to decide."
"Bah," cried Tetsujo. "Even a god must have some small weaknesses. Pity to women has always been his.—Well, when shall your answer go—to-night, in the morning, on the first rays of the sun? Speak! for my choler trains me hard!"
But Yuki did not hasten to reply. Behind her rigid calm a thousand frightened fancies sped. No thought could be followed to a conclusion in this first whirl of atoms. They went by her in a soundless hurricane,—torn bits of hope, filaments of fear, thin flakes of readjustment. She saw that time must be gained—time, and the opportunity to think. An unqualified refusal would bring upon her immediately consequences and new conditions which she was neither physically nor mentally able to combat. She must achieve an armistice.
After an interval that seemed long to her but interminable to the quivering Onda, she raised her face, saying quietly: "After a space of three days, at the hour of twilight, I will myself deliver an answer to Prince Haganè. Will you kindly convey this message?"
"She will answer in three days! Lord of Hell! she will condescend to answer my daimyo in three days! This bit of spoken offal—must I present to a deity who burdens himself with you—that your family may be honored, and your cheap foreign attainments used! His magnanimity is inconceivable. To a lesser man it would seem impossible. To marry you openly,—make you a princess,—you, a shivering wench he could have for the taking!"
"He couldnothave me for the taking, and you know it!" said Yuki's low voice, that held an undercurrent of his own. "You shame yourself and me by such raving. If you insult me further I will refuse at once."
"Come, Yuki! Come quickly!" whispered the terrified Iriya, dragging at her daughter's sleeve. "Your honored father will strangle in his rage. Never, never, in all our married life have I seen his eyes glare thus! Hasten!"
"Yes—hasten—drag her away!" gasped Tetsujo, throwingback his head and clutching his collar. "She is not my daughter! Would that my bones had crumbled—" His words broke off in a gurgle.
In her little room Yuki stood gazing down moodily upon the convulsed form of her mother. "I know I ought to feel more pain to see you weep so bitterly, my mother," she said at length. "I tell myself that I should feel, but I cannot feel. Somehow I seem to be wearing armor inside instead of outside. Think of it, mother, what it means to me! I love a man who loves me honorably. I do not ask a sudden marriage,—I would wait patiently until the war is over, and perhaps your heart and father's would be softened toward my hope. I will work for you,—I will go out and be a servant, a teacher,—anything to relieve you of my burden. All I ask is to remain uncompelled toward other marriage. Yet here my father, and an old man older than my father, are trapping me,—they condescend to trap me! Prince Haganè cannot possibly wish me for his wife. He has seen me but twice since I was a child. A man like Haganè does not know love in the sense I have been taught it. Oh, I am like a bird ensnared in chains—in chains so heavy—that I can scarcely stir a link! Being a samurai's daughter I cannot even die."
"Yuki! Would you indeed disgrace us by marrying—a Russian?"
"Not so long as it seems to you a disgrace. But that will not last forever, mother. This war is to change many things. Can I not belong to myself, just for the time of this war, mother? Will you not plead with father for this boon?"
"I dare not! I dare not!" shuddered Iriya. "I fear your father, for the first time in my life.—There! He is calling. I must go." She caught one of the girl's dangling hands and pressed it convulsively against a tear-wet cheek. "May Kwannon soothe your bewildered heart, my loved one!" she murmured, and was gone.
"I prefer you to have as little as possible to do with that hardened and ungrateful wretch!" came Tetsujo's voice, as Iriya entered to him. Yuki knew that it was raised purposely for her to hear. Iriya evidently attempted some conciliatory reply, for he burst out angrily, "Don't defend her, woman!It is disrespect to me. I tell you she shall consent, whether she wishes it or not!"
Yuki smiled the smile that leaves a taint upon the soul. "There are a few things that even a father—even a Japanese father—cannot do!" she said aloud.
Ifprevious days in the Onda household had been tense, those following were to reach the ultimate limit of nerve-endurance. Immediately after his last tempestuous scene with Yuki, Tetsujo had left the house. Yuki was minded to call after him, protesting that her promise given him on the first day of war did not hold indefinitely. She moved forward, the words nearly sped, when he turned on her a look and gesture so repellent that she cowered, and let him pass. It did not seem at all her father who now looked at her, but rather some angry Spirit of War, in temporary assumption of Onda's body.
War! War! War! The streets thrilled to it. The sparrows chirped it. The jinrikisha wheels rattled a pygmy fusillade. In this flare of national ardor all passions burned more hotly, and among them, Tetsujo's indignation against his only child. Iriya, being more inexperienced than Yuki herself in interpretation of men's fiercer moods, could not tell her that such caloric outbursts would die the sooner from their own exaggeration. Yuki moaned, and shut her hot eyes from a future where her father should always be angry, and her mother always trembling.
Early next day, after the reading of Haganè's letter, the women of Onda's house were surprised to find their domestic retinue silently increased by the addition of two grim, middle-aged men who called themselves gardeners. From their reading of all "War Extras" that the jangling bell of the newsboy announced, and from their sporadic and often devastating attacks on harmless shrubs, one might have doubted their skill in the professed art. Tetsujo disdained explanation, and gave the one order that they were to be suitably fed at meal-times in the kitchen, and treated with the considerationdue to servants hired specially by himself. Iriya had not the heart, scarcely the curiosity, to question. All that day she moved about, a silent, timid figure of protesting obedience. Yuki understood at once that her mother had been told to ignore her. She understood, also, the meaning of the so-called "gardeners," and turned to her father slow, scornful eyes, which he refused to meet.
What the young seldom realize, in a case like this, is the suffering of those in authority, who, according to adolescent eyes, delight in imparting sorrow. Yuki was convinced that this strange changeling of a father revelled in his cruelty. She forced herself into defiant composure, chiefly in the hope of detracting from his supposed enjoyment. Her mother's white face was another matter. She looked on that just as little as possible. Old Suzumè and Maru grew to partake of their master's elfish obsession. Their peering faces and bright eyes, quickly withdrawn, maddened her.
No hope or thought of solution had come through the troubled night, nor, as yet, with the gray day. Tetsujo had gone, presumably, to convey the detested message to his prince. Yuki's one conscious determination was to send another message to Pierre, which should state clearly and comprehensively the new difficulty that had assailed her. Almost certainly her father had arranged that no more letters should go forth or be received. The gardeners and Suzumè would see to that. At times she had a wild fancy of attempting flight, urging Pierre to rescue her in the fashion of mediæval romance, and to take her to the Todds, or to some Christian missionary, where they could be married and so set beyond the reach of Haganè and her father. But would it set her beyond the black tide of her own remorse? How then should she reconcile her fondest belief, that in a union with Pierre she might serve to bring closer French and Japanese friendship? This would be outrage, anarchy, at the start. Yet something must be done,—something at least to remove her, temporarily, from her father's loathing sight after she should have refused Haganè's proposition. In this, perhaps, Pierre himself could assist, or Gwendolen,—if she could only see Gwendolen. "Gwendolen!" She stretched out herarms to the sunless, vacant sky, and called her friend's name aloud.
Whether telepathy is a fact, or merely a pet child of some philosophers, whether or not the ether of the East holds subtler vibrations than our own, it is certain that exactly at this moment Gwendolen awoke in her foreign bed from hurrying dreams of Yuki, and lay awake, staring, a sudden weight of apprehension full upon her. The excitement of war may have sharpened American senses also. Gwendolen's mind ran back for the hundredth time to that strange, memorable banquet. Its meaning grew now more sharp and sinister. Something had taken place there, something intangible, but very real, something decisive, fatal, the effect of which would first appear in Yuki. Gwendolen had as her birthright some of her father's intuitive judgment of character. She had read that night the hatred of foreigners in Tetsujo's sullen face, and did not dislike him for it. Haganè baffled her; but she had noted how deep were the eyes fixed now on Yuki, now on Pierre. Neither of them would wish for Yuki to become the wife of Pierre, and neither did Gwendolen wish it. The girl smiled curiously at her feeling of distaste. It did not seem right for Yuki to marry a foreigner, even an utterly charming and immorally beautiful foreigner like Pierre Le Beau.
"I guess I must have been a Japanese in lots of my former incarnations," she said to herself. "Yuki declares it's so, and she should know. But—" here she stopped and drew out her long, unbound yellow hair in two diaphanous, glittering wings. "The fates certainly have put my Oriental soul, this time, into a misleading body!" She was dressing now, and stood before her pretty silver-laden bureau by a sunny south window of the Legation.
About two hours later of the same day Minister Todd and his secretary, sitting alone in the thrice-guarded sanctum of the former's private office, looked up in incredulous astonishment as a dainty tapping betrayed a feminine guest. Then Todd's thin smile widened. "Gwennie, I'll bet!—and on the war-path! Only that little rascal would have the cheek."
Dodge turned away to hide the glow in his brown face.Gwennie it proved to be. She entered, dainty, perfumed, exquisite, in tan-cloth dress and seal-skins that exactly matched her brows and lashes.
"I don't expect to be welcomed," she said aggressively, her little white chin high in air. "But I simply had to come."
"Well?" This was from the minister.
Before stating her plea, Gwendolen threw a bewildering look of entreaty upon the gloating Dodge. "Dad, I can't stand it! I haven't seen or heard anything from Yuki for a week. Pierre Le Beau is driving me mad; and last night I had the scariest dream about Yuki. I feel in my bones that she needs me. Let me go to her, dad! Dearest, darlingest diddy-daddy, say I can go!"
Todd put a loving arm about the supplicant, but at the same time he shook his head. "Can't you be patient just a little longer, girlie? Something is bound to turn up soon."
"If Prince Haganè is in it, it will be worse than a turn-up; it will be a heave," said Dodge, shaking his head also.
"But, dad, Ihavebeen patient. You know how I hate being patient. I'm perfectly on edge when I have to wait. Every little bit of me begs to be cut off, and allowed to run in scraps. Oh, don't look so solemn! I'm only a girl. I can't upset the earth. Everything has gone wrong this morning from the minute I stepped out of bed on a tailless cat. You can make it well, daddy. My heart simply tugs in me toward Yuki."
At mention of her heart Dodge gave a prolonged and envious sigh. Todd smiled, but Gwendolen only looked indignant. Tears stood in her pretty eyes, and Dodge felt himself to be a brute.
"Your Excellency," he said, "if I might be allowed to suggest, why not let me be Miss Todd's escort? If I am along, I think, perhaps—" He broke off with a significant intonation. The two men exchanged glances, and the elder, catching his chin with a characteristic gesture, walked away thoughtfully.
"Oh, when dad looks like that, he is going over the entire American Constitution before he answers," cried Gwendolen, in despair. "May I not sit somewhere, Mr. Dodge?"
There were but three chairs in the room, the two revolving desk-chairs, and one suggestively rigid and slippery, meant for visitors. Generally, as now, it was heaped with a tottering mass of papers. Dodge, with suspicious alacrity, leaned forward to wheel the minister's chair. Before he could reach it, Gwendolen had thrown herself into the other, and faced the open vitals of his private desk.
In the very centre, just out of range of the minister's eye, stood an unframed photograph of Carmen Gil y Niestra, a languorous Spanish beauty lately arrived in Tokio. The picture had come that morning by mail, and was only waiting to be carried to Dodge's rooms; but Gwendolen could not know that. She was humiliated and annoyed to feel a deep, dry sob rise to her throat. At another time, when her best friend was not in trouble, and she hadn't stepped on the cat, she would have made some bright remark about it; but now she dared not trust her voice.
Dodge, carefully removing the papers to the floor, seated himself on the visitor's chair, and let his eyes rest with a curious, half-triumphant look upon Gwendolen's downcast face. This young man, unlike others to whom she had chosen to show favor, had not hastened to throw himself at her feet, pleading to be sat upon, trod upon, built upon, anything but the one obvious suggestion that he rise and walk away. He had never tried to take her hand; never once said that he loved her, though the girl until this moment had felt certain of it. Sometimes she had tried to flatter him into the declaration; again she would pique and goad him. The result had been the same. Dodge followed her everywhere, paid her all possible attentions, and said everything but the one thing she had determined to hear. With an instinctive coquette, the desire is not so much to overcome her quarry, as to feel that there is no quarry she cannot overcome. But even from the seductive moonlit decks of the steamship Dodge had escaped, uncommitted. The situation was both piquant and exciting.
"Well, Dodge," said the ambassador, at length. "I am willing to take your suggestion. Is the carriage ready, Gwen?"
"It's been at your door for hours."
"I'll let you go, since you seem to feel so set on it. But be careful of what you say or do, and don't promise anything. Give little Snowflake my love, and tell her I miss her about the house."
Gwendolen, without a word of thanks, walked toward the door. "Now, Dodge, remember," warned her father, in a semi-whisper.
"If Mr. Dodge is being sent along as a sort of diplomatic nurse, or a keeper to an idiot, I won't have him," flashed the girl.
"Nonsense, child!" said her father. "You'd better run along in a hurry before I change my mind. I don't know but as I'm weak—"
Without waiting for more, the girl literally ran from the room. Clerks and visitors in the outside offices looked up in wonder. That dry sob in her throat had stirred again. Even her dad, on this horrid day, was cross.
Outside the sun had begun to shine brilliantly. The high winds, those scourges of the Tokio winter, were, for the time, at rest. The people in the streets appeared contented and happy enough, trudging along on wooden clogs, or trotting with noiseless, straw-sandalled feet between the shafts of vehicles. The small boys wore miniature flags in their caps.
When again she felt mistress of her voice, she said, with an attempt at her usual gay levity, "Now, Mr. Dodge, I intend to know what all that mysterious interchange of glances in the office was supposed to convey."
Dodge seemed to think. "I should fancy you'd know by instinct," he answered. "Japan and Russia are at war. America is neutral."
"Yes," challenged Gwendolen, "and the earth goes around the sun, and the moon around the earth. But what is that to Yuki and to me?"
"You are the daughter of the American minister, and Miss Yuki is under the protection of Prince Haganè. It's the bother of marriage. You must see that she can never marry Le Beau. The worst of it all is that Le Beau's such an ass!"
"I don't consider my friend, Mr. Le Beau, an—er—animal,"said Gwendolen, all the more stiffly that her statement was not quite true.
"I beg your pardon," said her companion, meekly, and relapsed into careful silence.
Gwendolen fidgeted. This did not suit her mood at all. She wanted to quarrel. "Yuki and Pierre are frantically in love, poor things! But of course an incipient diplomat doesn't take into consideration anything so trivial as—love."
Dodge smiled into her petulant eyes, a sort of elder-brother smile that stung her. "If I am the incipient referred to, you have missed your mark."
"You pretend to be Pierre's friend, but you never did like him."
"When have I pretended?"
"You are jealous because he is so good-looking. All men are that way."
"Aren't girls sometimes that way too?" asked he, with elaborate innocence.
The shot told. She reddened angrily. "You are very disagreeable this morning, Mr. Dodge."
Again fell silence.
"Come," said the girl, changing her tactics swiftly. "It is I who am beastly, I know it. I'm going to try now to be good. Tell me honestly, as a friend, do you think that Pierre has absolutely no chance of marrying Yuki?"
Dodge studied the restless eyes for sincerity before he answered. "He has a chance. If she is willing to throw over her parents, her Emperor, and her native land, in order to run away to him,—they may find protection. But if I know Japanese character at all, Miss Yuki would die first—and she ought to. The one decent thing for Le Beau is to release her."
"But to run away, by night perhaps, in actual danger of her life—oh, how romantic!" sighed Gwendolen, clasping her hands. It was done to irritate, and it succeeded.
"Romantic? Damfoolic!" sniffed Dodge, before he could stop himself.
"Mr. Dodge!"
"By George, it slipped out! I beg your pardon, Miss Todd, I should not have said it."
"For what do you ask pardon—the expression, or the thought?"
"The expression, of course. I was a mucker to use it in your presence."
"Am I to understand that the thought underlying your remarkable utterance is unchanged?"
"Why, er—that such a step would be foolish, and—er—unworthy?" stammered the wretched youth, now as greatly disconcerted as even Gwendolen could wish; "why, of course I still think it. I have to think it!"
"I approved of it openly. I demand retraction of the thought also."
Gwendolen's chance had come. Here was a bone,—a flimsy cartilage, it is true, but still a thing to pick her quarrel over. In the making-up she might find compensation for other recent chagrins. Gwendolen liked to make up. The magnanimous yielding, the condescension on her part, added to the humble gratitude of the recipient, brought a sense of pleasant power.
"You demand retraction of the thought," repeated Dodge. He faced her slowly. She was deliberately studying the two American flags embroidered between the blue cotton shoulders of the carriage-driver, high on the box. The delicate profile, uplifted in sunlight, had a translucency in the outline like the petal of a rose. Dodge gazed with hungry heart, but deepening frown. "You didn't mean that." He said it soothingly. "You couldn't insist on anything so utterly childish as the retraction of a personal thought. I've apologized for the words."
"Do you refuse, then?" said Gwendolen, with a toss of the head she had seen Julia Marlowe give.
"You really mean such a thing?"
"I mean it."
"Then—I refuse."
The girl turned. This time it was Dodge's somewhat ragged profile held against the sky. "You dare to refuse me?" she gasped. Her hazel eyes grew inky; they seemed to shoot off sparkles of jet.
"I am at your service for everything else," he said steadily.
No other word was spoken until they reached the foot of Kobinata Hill, where the betto, springing lightly to earth, preceded the galloping horses up the slope.
"You know," said Dodge, slowly, "this may mean to me giving up every hope of happiness. And it's such a nasty little cause,—like having one's eye put out by a spitball."
"Yet you prefer it to retracting one rude, silly thought!"
"For God's sake!" cried the badgered youth, "how can a man retract what he still thinks? Do you want me to lie, and say I don't think a thing when I do think it."
"Yes," said Gwendolen, with a strange glint in her face. "Lie! Say that you do not think it. I shall be satisfied with that."
"I'll be damned if I do!" said Dodge. "I'll lie to please myself, but I won't lie at the bidding of another,—not even you! Shall I stop the carriage and get out?"
Gwendolen, with a little choking sound in her throat, turned away. Her gesture seemed an assent. Miserably the young man realized that he was bound by Mr. Todd to remain with her, and overhear the conversation that might ensue. In a moment more he helped her from the carriage in silence, allowing her to precede him to the Onda gate, and up the garden stones to the door.
Old Suzumè answered the knock. She parted the entrance shoji very craftily, one bent eye to the crack. Her left cheek could not have been two inches from the floor. This gave an uncanny look, as if a severed head, or one of those long gourd-necked ghosts of Japanese mountains, had appeared to receive them.
Gwendolen said, "Oh!" and retreated. Dodge stepped forward boldly, and put one gloved hand into the crack. The old dame shivered at this, and seemed to cower for a spring. A swift, soft rush of feet came through the house, and Yuki, flinging both doors wide, sent a crooked smile toward them.
"Come quickly," she panted; "I pray you wait not to remove the shoes. My father is absent. I have prayed for Gwendolen; there is great thing to be said."
Dodge shut his teeth together. He was to be needed.Without a look for him, Gwendolen, obeying Yuki's injunction as to shoes, sprang up the one stone doorstep and followed Yuki along a dim corridor. Dodge, more deliberately, motioned Suzumè to remove his shoes, standing first on one foot, then on the other, and balancing himself by the aid of a shoji frame. The untying of shoestrings was a difficult task for excited old fingers. Her beady eyes darted incessantly back into the house.
"No harm can be done. I am from the American Legation, and was sent to accompany Miss Todd," said he, in Japanese, pitying the old dame's nervousness.
"Hai! hai! Sayo de gozaimasuka?" mumbled she, greatly relieved. She loved and was proud of Yuki; she adored her mistress; but there was a single voice in that house, and it belonged to Tetsujo.
Dodge went alone into the house, guiding himself by the voices. They had reached the guest-room. All fusuma and shoji had been closed. Without knocking Dodge pushed aside a silver panel painted with birds. At the same moment Iriya entered by the opposite wall of the room, a mere white ghost of propriety.
Yuki, almost in Gwendolen's arms, was pouring out rapid, disjointed, incorrect phrases of English,—sometimes with a whole sentence in her own tongue,—so that the listener could catch the meaning only in fragments.
Dodge, after a bow to Mrs. Onda, walked straight to Yuki, took a seat near her, and by his quiet eyes compelled her attention. He began to speak in slow, deliberate Japanese that the mother also might understand. Whether interpreting through his careful pronouncing or divining from his emphasis, Gwendolen, too, seemed to follow him.
"In allowing Miss Todd to call this morning, Miss Onda, her father, Minister Todd, has commissioned me to say to you—"
"Don't you believe him!" cried Gwendolen, flinging herself bodily before Yuki. She turned flashing eyes upon the speaker. "The poor child has enough to bear already, without your giving more!"
"I must deliver your father's message, Miss Todd. And Ishall do so, though I have to wait until Miss Onda's father comes."
At sound of that dreaded name Gwendolen's courage for the moment fell. Dodge quietly resumed, in Japanese, "While Mr. and Mrs. Todd have only the most affectionate feelings toward Miss Onda, they beg to recall the very delicate international questions raised by the present war. America being neutral—er—Miss Todd's official position—"
"Miss Todd's official fiddlestrings," interrupted Gwendolen. "There, Yuki! He's through! That's all he had to say! Now can't we go into your bedroom, or out to the garden, and finish our conversation in peace?"
"Gwendolen, dear,—no!" said Yuki, pressing her hand. "It is most terribly serious time with all. I am glad to have Mr. Dodge here; he will not prevent any help,—he will give it. I must now relate, Mr. Dodge," she went on, very brave and self-possessed, "the new, strange circumstance—" Suddenly she flushed the color of a peony, dropped her face in her hands, and murmured to Gwendolen, "Yes, you must say it, Gwendolen. It is such immodest things for Japanese girl to speak! You tell him."
"I'm not sure that I understand very clearly myself," said Gwendolen, with a puzzled frown.
Iriya stared on, white, motionless, unsmiling.
"As far as I can make the trouble out," said Gwendolen, flinging her words to Dodge, rather than speaking them, "Prince Haganè backs Yuki's father, utterly, against Pierre. They won't consider the possibility of her ever marrying him. Worst of all, while her heart is sore with this, they are trying to force her into marriage with some rich old man,—some influential relative, I believe, of Haganè. Isn't he a relative, Yuki?"
"No-o! He is not the relative," said Yuki, from behind sheltering hands. "It is himself—he—the Prince Haganè!"
"Prince Haganè! Prince Sanètomo Haganè?" cried Dodge, in incredulous surprise. "Good Lord! Why, he's the biggest man in this kingdom, next to the Emperor and the Crown Prince! Has—has he made your father a formal offer of marriage for you, Miss Yuki?"
Yuki nodded "Yes."
"The old sport! So this has been his game," muttered Gwendolen to herself.
At the full name of Haganè, a wintry smile of pride had flashed into Iriya's set face.
"Whe-e-ew!" whistled Dodge, again. He could not get this wonder fixed. "I see now why your family is wound up like a spring, Miss Yuki. It's a superlative opportunity for you!"
Gwendolen sat so still that first Yuki, then Dodge, stared at her.
"What is it you think I can do with Pierre for you, Yuki?" asked the American girl, in a voice as strange as her silence.
Yuki was slightly disconcerted. "Only, dear, that I want to be sure the truth is known to Mr. Le Beau. I would have more peace to feel that he knows correctly. And he then will understand why I cannot write to him, or see him, or answer when he sings the song of Carmen I told you."
"You intend then to hold to Pierre, and throw over Prince Haganè, no matter what the consequences?" asked Gwendolen, curiously.
"I know not about 'throw over.' It sounds a disrespectful word to so great a man. But I am bound to Pierre, as you know, by the promise." Again her face flushed.
"I'll wager your father does not consider that promise binding," put in Dodge.
"No, not my father, and not Prince Haganè," said Yuki, simply. "But then, you know, they is not me!"
"I—er—presume not," answered he, absently.
Now that the conversation was all in English, the pale effigy of Iriya did not even turn its eyes from one face to the other. It was her duty to her husband to be present, and so she remained.
"Miss Yuki!" flashed out the young man, with new animation. "You haven't asked my advice, and you may not desire it. But let me say one thing. It seems awful to me,—even though I am an American, and can't know all the fine points of Japanese feeling,—to throw over a chance like this for a Frenchman! Is he worth it—?"
"How would it seem if you were in the place of Pierre Le Beau?" cried Gwendolen, angrily, before Yuki could speak.
The Japanese girl evidently was glad of the question. "Yes, yes!" she repeated. "How would you be?" She hung on his answer.
The young man's eyes were cool, his voice crisp and convincing, as he said slowly, "In the first place, I could not imagine myself having forced any binding promise from a girl so far from her home and friends. I might have let her see I loved her,—a fellow can't always help that; but I wouldn't have tied her up in her own words until she had the backing of her own people."
Gwendolen was all ready with a scornful word, but Yuki's small ice-cold hand upon her wrist restrained her. Yuki was leaning toward the young man, an eager gleam in her eyes. "Mr. Dodge, what was it that you meant by the su-per-lative opportunity—?"
"I seem to be turned into a sort of Information Bureau on other people's morals to-day," smiled Dodge. "But this is an easy one. I meant just what a Japanese would mean,—a rousing good chance for patriotism. Isn't that what you thought?"
Yuki's face fell, and her lips trembled. "Yes," she whispered like a child. "That is Japanese thought."
"How lofty and superior! A Confucius come to judgment!" cried Gwendolen to Dodge. His calmness, his power of thought, so soon after their fatal quarrel, irritated her. It almost seemed to make light of her influence. Since she could not command, she wished at least to sting him.
"And, Yuki, nowIhave advice to give. If I loved Pierre as you do,—if I loved any man so that the thought of another turned me sick,—I'd be faithful to him until those old moat pines turned somersaults and came up again as grass! I'd marry him, though Jimmu Tenno, with a new sword and mirror, came down to prevent! You say that Pierre goes by here whistling. What's to hinder you from going to him? The women here would not prevent. Some time like this, when your father is absent,—mind, I don't advise the doing it,—only, I say, if you were tortured and driven to despair—"
Yuki stopped her by a gesture. "Even that terrible thought has been thinked by me. But even if I wished it,—go to those garden shoji, Gwendolen. Open with some noisiness, and see what occurs."
Gwendolen obeyed with vehemence, placing one still booted foot defiantly upon the veranda. Instantly, as if by magic, the two blue-clad gardeners crouched, in threatening attitudes, on the gravelled path below. At sight of the tall blonde girl the men literally froze into grizzled gargoyles. Gwendolen drew back with a cry, then instantly realized the situation.
"Vile spies!" she exclaimed. "Hired assassins! If there were a man here, he would drown you in that pond! Go away! Shoo!" she shrieked at the astonished natives. Without a word, they exchanged slow, wondering glances, nodded, and withdrew.
Gwendolen slammed the shoji together again. "No wonder you are pale, Yuki," she said, her voice trembling with excitement and indignation; "I never dreamed anybody would dare a thing like this!"
"But how intensely romantic!" remarked Dodge, in a low voice, to the ceiling.
Yuki did not try to answer. Her head drooped lower, lower, with each instant. Tears were coming in uncontrollable throbs to eyes that had, through deeper troubles, remained dry. This humiliation before friends of another world touched some secret personal spring of pride. She lifted first one gray sleeve, then the other, apologizing in low, broken sentences for the vulgarity of thus displaying grief. Gwendolen threw herself to the floor beside her friend, her own bright eyes becoming springs of sorrow. Dodge rose, standing helplessly near, and wishing himself somewhere else.
Upon this lachrymosal tableau entered Tetsujo Onda, and stood for a moment incredulous, in the parted fusuma, like some image of Ojin Tenno, the God of War, a scowl carved deep in his brow. Gwendolen first caught sight of him. Rising to her knees, she tried by looks to wither him away. She might as well have blown seed-arrows from an iron dandelion. Dodge, the diplomat, rushed gallantly to the fore.
"Good-morning, Mr. Onda," he began, bowing spasmodically."Fine morning, isn't it? We were just making a little call in the neighborhood, and ran in to see your wife and daughter,—foreign custom, you know!—and the young ladies have to talk and weep sometimes over their happy, vanished school days!"
"Ugh!" grunted the unwilling host, scantily returning one of the many bows.
"Just so—just so," said Dodge, with increasing cordiality. "And now we must bid you good day. Miss Todd and I were just on the point of starting. This is the daughter—the only child, you know—of the new American minister to Japan."
"I know of her, and you, and the Frenchman, and much else," said Onda, with a disconcerting warp of the lips meant for a smile.
"Go! If you love me, make quick goings," whispered Yuki, with her arms around Gwendolen's neck.
"With nothing settled—no appointment for you and—"
"It is hopeless," put in Yuki, instantly. "Mention no name! They will guard me now much closer. Oh, it's my father's doing, not Haganè; he is noble!"
"Then I will see—the other, and tell him clearly. How shall I let you know?"
"A telegram. No one will keep that from me. Send it in English,—in hard words, you understand! And, oh, Gwendolen, send it to-morrow before twilight. Pray for me!"
Ignoring Tetsujo's increasing rage, Yuki followed her friend to the very door, pausing for a last embrace. "You are my good friend—my golden friend! Nothing between our hearts can ever come. Ne?"
"Never! Never! Ne?" answered Gwendolen, trying to smile.
Yuki turned, and went back as a prisoner to an inky cell.
Out on the street, at the carriage-step, two pleasing Americans paused, and eyed each other much with the expression of a pair of young game-cocks.
"Well!" said the tan-colored fowl, superbly, "why do you hesitate? Is it to beg paw-don of some one?"
"I beg paw-don?" echoed the other, in mild surprise. "No,certainly not! How could you fawncy such a thing? Doyou?"
Gwendolen, with a muffled exclamation, sprang unaided into the carriage. "Go on! Hurry up! American Legation—Koshikwan, I mean! This beastly lingo—" she cried to the driver, and so far forgot herself as to prod him in the American flags.
The startled servant looked down and over her, to Dodge, for confirmation.
"It's all right, betto!" said Dodge, airily, in Japanese. "I prefer walking back. Take the august young lady home by a long, long road! She has become honorably overheated!"
Gwendolen gave the speaker one helpless glare, threw herself back in the seat, and was gone.
Dodge stood in the middle of the road, looking after the carriage until bamboo hedges closed in upon it, and the noises of its rattling wheels faded into the myriad sounds of the city below him.
Themonth of March was at hand. Tempestuous winds howled and whirled in the pine and camphor trees, in the flame-like, springing bamboo groves, and under temple eaves. The air was full of petals and scraps of green. Sometimes a tiny flake of flint stung the face, and between the teeth an uncomfortable grit blew in. Angry gray clouds piled high from the north, westward from the Atlantic, eastward from that "rough and black" water we call the Yellow Sea. The very firmament was in torment. The wind, combated at once by many currents, tore at times great eddies in the gray, letting the sun down in avalanches of light. Yuki saw the shadow and the sun pass, like fleeting ghosts, across the garden; felt the chill and warmth alternating in their wakes. The wind tossed cruelly the branches of cherry-trees, where sharp-pointed buds in clusters, just showing a first hint of pink, were set. The plum-tree was bare but for a few timid green leaves. Now and then a twig or branch snapped, and fell sharply on the gravelled pathway, where instantly one of the blue-robed gardeners advanced to pick it up.
In the cowed house Yuki moved like some waxen automaton, living only in the one sense of hearing. Every cry from the street, every wind-jangle of the gate-bell, sent her currents of hope and apprehension. Tetsujo grimly ignored the intensifying strain, but Iriya's pitying eyes turned more often to her child. The servants kept to themselves, whispering and exchanging glances.
Now the bamboo hedges which shut out the main street-line bent over, at times almost to the earth, writhing, stretching, and squeaking at the confining strips of wood that sought to hold them erect. Besides the hedge-bamboo, "sa-sa," the fence had an inner line of cruel orange-thorn.
Yuki had watched the elemental conflict greedily. Suddenly a snatch of Carmen's love-song rode the wind. It was the sound she had expected. Her little hands sought each other within the silken sleeves, and clutched so fiercely that a nail snapped. Again came the song, nearer this time, just without the gate. It was a strange, incongruous note, as if an English lark should rise from the bruised and battered hedge. Yuki heard a movement in the next room, where Tetsujo sat among his books. Perhaps it was coincidence that Suzumè brought her, exactly at this moment, a fresh tray of tea. The blue gardeners strolled together into full view, and stooped, as if to discuss the condition of a botan bush, now beaten down.
Square upon the back of one of them fell a queer winged missive, a scrap of foreign paper weighted with a pebble. Yuki saw it clearly. Old Suzumè, with a stifled gasp, crouched in her place. The girl poured tea for herself, and drank it calmly. The pelted gardener, without so much as a look around, lifted the scrap of paper as if it had been a broken bud, and slipped it, weight and all, into his sleeve.
The Carmen song stopped. Suzumè, with a last sly glance, slipped from the room. Yuki pressed one hand to her throat. It would be no harm to sing the answering strain. What though her father and her jailers heard? If once the song sped forth, not even their craft could recall it. Pierre would understand, then, that she heard, but was a prisoner; that even the written note he threw could not be received. Once, twice, the white lips parted, and the slender throat stiffened for an answering phrase; but no sound came. It was as in nightmare dreams, where one seeks to cry aloud, and finds that the voice is gone.
Now her father was on his feet. She heard his long, swinging stride go through the house. At the door she heard him kick his wooden clogs, and give a gruff order to O Maru San. Then the harsh scraping feet passed along the garden stones, the little bell clamored, and the gate-panel closed with a bang.
"Ma-a-a!" she heard old Suzumè cry. "This is not themaster I have known for fifty years. He must be bewitched by a fox." Maru gave a little giggle, which the elder woman quickly suppressed. Iriya, in the guest-room, moved like a cat. Yuki knew that all were against her,—spies, enemies. Passages from the Psalms of her Christian Bible came to the girl. "They compass me round about on every side. I am set in the midst of snares." She ran out into the garden, now, listening for sounds of violence from the street. Nothing came but the wailing of wind. Tetsujo returned as abruptly as he had gone. Yuki, steeling herself against the look of aversion certain to be met, went before him, not questioning, but searching his face with haggard eyes for some possible sign of at least a will-conflict between him and Pierre. She fancied, in her abnormal state of mind, that something of Pierre's thought must cling to his enemy, and so be transmitted to her. But Tetsujo's face was as blank and expressionless as the glazed side of one of Suzumè's tea-jars on the kitchen shelf.
Unable to breathe longer that overweighted air, Yuki caught up a gray shawl from her room, and went boldly out again into the garden. The rain had ceased entirely. The wind, though fiercer when it came, came at increasing intervals. Through one of these temporary lulls Yuki reached the bleak little pond. The encircling rocks appeared older, grimmer, and more shrunken. A few of the bordering plants had been twisted and split. One was overturned, its ochre roots clutching at the unfriendly air, the evergreen branches plunged deep into quivering gray water.
As if in wonder that so frail a creature as a girl should dare its strength, the storm, crouching and growling for a last effort, hurled the full bulk of its viewless majesty upon her. She was beaten bodily upon the rocks. But for the protecting shawl she might have been blinded, or the long black hair torn from her. For an instant breath stopped; but in the wake of it came exultation. Lifting her head, she smiled a challenge to the storm to snatch her faint soul from her lips, and bear it far, like a petal, on that streaming tide of heaven. The blue-robed gardeners, crouching in the shelter of a rock, stared at her in wonder. Iriya's face came for one white instant tothe veranda and vanished. Yuki could hear the very timbers groan. The bands of dead bamboo, lashed in horizontal strips to the living hedge, squeaked and buckled, and squeaked again, in absurd imitation of animate torture. In the pond the pear-shaped water was smitten into one gelatinous, cowering mass.
Suddenly the wind went. Sounds all about her of stress and terror changed into whimpers, whispers, moans, and small complainings. The pond-water sprang up in small simultaneous waves which all pawed and clamored at the rooks for explanation. Yuki stood upright, realizing dully her slow return to sanity and poise. The storm had swept her, for a moment, out of her own reach. In the recoil she grudged her soul its habitation.
Now the nonchalant gardeners crossed her path, making respectful salutation in transit. Her eyes followed them absently, but all at once became glued to a small sagging point in the left sleeve of the shorter man. As they disappeared around the corner plum-tree, she sank to one of the rocks. As if she had not enough to bear already, without the torture of speculation on the purport of those written words she was never to see! Her hands fell limp, her head sank. The gray shawl crept by unnoticed inches to the earth.
Wearily the girl opened the portals of her thought to the same hopeless throng of shrouded visitors,—conjectures, all of them, moving solemnly one behind the other,—creatures without a face,—half-animate forms with no clear direction or purpose except to move on. What was to be the end of it all, for her? There was no answer to that. Tetsujo apparently would neither disown her nor relinquish his determination to marry her quickly. It did not seem much to ask, only to be let alone; and yet in some strange way this had come to be a priceless, impossible boon. Pierre's note she would never see. She had not been able to answer his Carmen song. One way alone remained open for communication, and that was Gwendolen's telegram. She had faith that, in some way, this would get to her. At the cry, "Dempo!" she had determined to rush out in person and demand it. Even though this succeeded, she could not fix great hope on its content.Surely no thought would come to Pierre but the old loving, desperate, appealing cry, "Be true, be faithful, and we may yet find happiness!" How the foreigners harped upon that thought of personal happiness! It was, to most of them, the one definite aim in life. To Pierre—dear, beautiful, joyous Pierre—it was life itself. A Japanese is taught from childhood to look upon happiness as the casual flower of his evergreen garden,—the lotos on a still pond of duty. It is never an incentive, never in itself a conscious reward. She had tried to teach Pierre this, but he had laughed at her, and said it was because Japanese did not know how to love.
Yuki fixed thoughtful eyes on a small shrivelled tuft of fern near her feet. Its once graceful fronds were cruelly bruised and twisted, first by frost, and now by this pitiless storm. "I know how it feels," thought Yuki. "My father's harshness, my mother's suffering, and my own desire to be faithful have so wrung and bruised my heart." After a pause she said aloud, "I wonder if it thinks itself really dead?" She stooped down slowly, and parted the sodden, clinging scraps of brown. In the heart a nest of tiny leaflets curled, like baby glow-worms, close wrapped in silky filaments of down. They seemed to shrink from her icy fingers, as if to say: "Let us be still! We are only asleep. Those tattered brown bed-curtains keep us warm."
Yuki stood upright again. The expression of her face was altered, and her eyes now slowly softened into tears. "My poor Pierre! my poor Pierre!" she whispered. "If he were just a little more noble, if he were a Japanese, he would say, 'It is best that you should obey your parents, and serve at once your native land.' But he will not say it! And I have promised!" She leaned over for another moment, heaping the dead fern-leaves above their sleeping youth, then walked slowly to the house.
One star, at least, shone clear in her troubled firmament. If Pierre should, through Gwendolen's intercession, or through some awakened vision of his own, telegraph, urging her to be true to her better self, no matter what the grief to her plighted love,—then she could wish to marry that great man, Haganè, to pay her filial debt to the now stricken parents, to showher love and loyalty to Nippon! Of course there was no hope that Pierre would do this; but if he should,—if he should—!
The wind came again and again, but never so terribly as for that one moment by the pond. Ordinary sounds of domestic life arose from the Onda household, and from the neighbors around it. Cocks began to crow, as if the storm-clearing was of their own contrivance; sparrows chirped. The white tailless cat picked a dainty way along the outer edges of bamboo gutters. Cries of belated peddlers came cheerily from the street.
"To-o-fu-u! To-o-fu-u-u!" called the bean-curd man, with his characteristic upward inflection on the last syllable.
"Chi-chee! Ichiban chi-chee!" cried the milk-peddler, trotting between the shafts of his small, closed cart. He was very proud of this cart, and because of it considered himself the most aristocratic kitchen-visitor on the hill. Its color was a loud, blasphemous blue. On the sides, in letters of yellow edged with black, were two inscriptions. The first, in Chinese ideographs, announced prompt delivery of the richest and freshest milk. Below it, in English, glowed the startling line, "Fresh Ox-Milk Every Hours." Suzumè had long been a patron of the blue cart. A little thin-necked milk-bottle dangled, now empty, by a bit of white cord, just without the gate. This the milk-boy removed, substituting one that was full, though equally stopperless.
The soba-ya (buckwheat-man), lurching and skimming along under a bent kiri-wood pole that bore at one end a chest of drawers and at the other a steaming furnace with bowls, copper-pots, and a ladle, naturally had little voice left for vociferous proclamation. His coming was indicated, at long range, by the click and shiver of copper drawer-handles beating in unison against half-filled boxes. According to the quantity of dry buckwheat in each drawer, the handle uttered a different note. Needless to say, this burdened hawker loitered long at each gate; but at the Onda entrance he stayed longest of all. It was Maru's happy privilege to bargain with these several venders. Her heart found an answering thump and shiver as the soba-ya drew near.
"Honorably steamed, or augustly raw, O maiden of the lovely countenance?" asked he of the blushing one.
"Augustly boiled, to-day, kind sir,—if you can graciously condescend to bestow the amount of two sens' worth," rejoined Maru, sucking in her breath with ceremonious emphasis as she presented a small green bowl.
This flirtation was already becoming talked of in the neighborhood. More than one curious "ba-san" (old woman), relieved by age from personal domestic cares, sought peepholes and crannies in neighboring hedges when the smell of buckwheat warmed the air.
The buckwheat man bestowed an encouraging smile. "The noblest of my customers invariably prefer my worthless viands honorably boiled," said he, with a side glance from under the brim of his malachite Derby.
"As for that, you, by preparing so deliciously the delectable food, make buying necessary," simpered the purchaser with a rosier glow.
A slim and seemingly boneless cur, who also had nostrils for hot buckwheat, scraped a stealthy way along the hedge toward them. He felt that the flirtation might have possibilities for him.
"Dō-mo!" said the peddler, with deprecating nods. "The stuff is poor, I fear. It is but your divine condescension and pitying heart that make you encourage me." He lifted the copper lid of his cauldron, and began ladling out a goodly portion of the slippery ware.
"Who is the mad young foreigner with yellow hair who now haunts the foot of this hill?" asked the peddler, during his precarious occupation.
"Ma-a!" cried Maru under her breath. She craned her neck to look furtively up and down the street, and then asked in a confidential whisper, "Is there indeed such a person at the foot of this august hill?"
"I speak simple truth. Surely you know of him. In all the roads he is to be seen. He moves so quickly the children say there are two of him. They cry at his approach, though he flings them many rin and sen, and hide faces in their mothers' sleeves."
"Repeat it not from me," cautioned Maru. "Aunt Suzumè would surely scorch me with her pipe, should she hear me gossiping. But he is a grand foreigner, son of a king, who is wild with love to marry our Miss Yuki; but she repels him, for she is asked in marriage by a much greater person, of Japan,—a very, very great prince!" Maru swelled her fat chest like a pigeon. The interest in her auditor's face thrilled her. She opened her mouth for further revelations, when a sneeze from the kitchen brought her caution. "I—I dare not tell his name," she added weakly.
"You are honorably to be commended for your prudence," gravely declared the soba-ya, though he was swallowing hard this lump of disappointment. "Prudence is an excellent quality, particularly in a wife. Is it true—er—ahem!—is it true, small round one, that the ancient dame who presides over the kitchen of your noble household is, indeed, your one surviving relative?"
"Te-he-he!" giggled little Maru in blissful discomfort. "She truly is, O most worthy sir,—but why should you wish to know?"
"Much reason is existent," said the other, with such meaning that Maru, after an enraptured gasp, let the entire contents of the bowl tilt, and then fall with a wet thud to the earth. The white cur, having well calculated his chances, reaped the reward of intelligence if not of virtue, and went down the hill with a yelp of joy.
"Kwannon help me!" cried the girl at this catastrophe. "For this a great beating may be honorably bestowed upon me!"
"Nay, maiden, be calm!" said the gallant youth. "Free of charge will I restore it. Give me the bowl!" Tremblingly she did so. Their fingers met beneath the sage-green rim. Maru's round face glowed more like a peony than ever.
"Maru! Ma-roo!" came a voice from within. "Is the buckwheat-man boiling you, that so long you remain? Worthless vagabond! Let him leave at once!"
"It is Aunt Suzumè! I must go! Again to-morrow you will augustly pause at our broken-down step, will you not?"
"Though in the night I should make divine retirement, yetto-morrow at this hour would my ghost return to bring your buckwheat!" protested the swain. With one more gasp of ecstasy, and the crossing of two pairs of small slanting eyes, the lovers separated. A moment later the peculiar click and chitter of the metal handles came back through dying gusts of wind.
Tetsujo, immediately after luncheon, returned to his book-room, where now he spent all his waking hours. After some indeterminate search among his well-worn favorites, he took down a volume of Toemmei's poems, a venerable old Chinese classic, and began to read aloud. Iriya, in the kitchen, had already begun to discuss the evening meal. Yuki sat, listlessly, with folded hands, in her own room, next to the library. Her one thought now was to hear the cry "Dempo!" which should announce the coming of Gwendolen's telegram. To look out upon an indefinite period of such days as these was almost more than the girl's brave spirit could endure. Yet, to Pierre she had given an oath. She had let him break the long hairpin. If he commanded her "Be firm and true," she would be true, no matter what came!
Through these dark, monotonous thoughts, her father's voice, low, rich, and sonorous, with the jerky melodic chant and rhythm imposed by long reading aloud of Chinese literature, flowed up and finally compelled her. So had she been taught to read in childhood, before her long sojourn in a foreign land.
"'Let me now return, for my farm and garden are growing wild! As the boat skims lightly along the water, the wind plays with my sleeves. O boatman! how far yet to my home? So far, and yet the hour so late! Now, now at last I see my own loved gate, and enter with joyous rush.'" The deep tones rose as in triumph, then sank again to infinite tenderness. "'The paths to my steps are growing up wild with grass, but the pine and the chrysanthemums still flourish. With my children in my arms I enter the house, drink a refreshing draught, and gaze, and gaze again at the shadows under the garden trees.
"'Return! Return! Why should I not return? Let me renounce the intercourse and pleasure of the world! Letme and the world renounce each other! There is nothing more for me to derive from the world!—
"'The farmers come in and tell me that spring is approaching. There are rumors of war in the West. But why should they interfere with my rambles? The trees put on a smile and begin to bud. The streams look busy and begin to flow. What joy to see all things fall due at their season! And yet I am reminded that my season, too, is almost come. Alas! The lodging of man in this Inn of the Universe is but for a single season!'"
Yuki's hands were pressed against her breast. In the samurai's slow, fervid utterance one could feel each word fill and thrill the heroic heart before utterance came to the lips. He was deriving strength and comfort from the immortal ode. "'Commit then, O soul, thyself upon the current of things!'" rose the exulting pæan. "'Let me choose my own time. Let me go out for my solitary walk! Let me hobble about the farm on my friendly cane. Let me toil up the Eastern hill, look the clear brook in the face, and sing it my dying songs. So let me end my days as days of themselves may end. So shall my joy flow on with the eternal will of Heaven!'"
Yuki sat upright, her wide eyes fixed, as it were, upon the viewless flight of echo. "And they of the Western world say that my people have no true religion, no deep belief. Their souls crawl, where ours take wings! Nippon, Nippon, my country!"
The magnificence of her nation's past, the heroism, self-sacrifice inherent in her countrymen, the passionate craving for what is spiritual and sublime, the belief in watchful spirits of dead ancestors, in the divinity and guidance of dead Emperors manifest in the living flesh, came in a flood and bore up the girl's spirit in a tide of light. What were foreign education, foreign friendship, foreign pledges,—love itself,—to a girl of Yamato Damashii? She was Japanese, one small animate cell in a living tissue of race. To serve her country, that, indeed, should be life's worth. "Pierre, Pierre," she sobbed. "I shall not bring you joy, nor can you give to me the duty that it is my part to bear. Let me go, dearone, let me go, and pray to our Christian God that your kisses fade from me, and your blue eyes be turned away. If I were only myself I would die, or defy for you everything. But I am not myself; I am what my ancestors, my parents and my country have made me; I am only one shivering mote of dust in my country's shining destiny. Let me go, my dear; Kwannon will bless you!"
Slow, helpful tears began to course, unfelt, along her white cheeks. All at once the physical exhaustion of long, sleepless nights and days unendurable began to tell on her. The glossy head bent over, lower and lower. Tetsujo, after a long pause, had begun an heroic epic of the Heiké clan. The words were indistinct, a sort of splendid blur. She had an impression of horses, arms, war-shouts, and of fluttering banners on distant hills. Then all sounds began to die away. She smiled faintly, and stretched out her slender young limbs upon the soft matting. Soon she was asleep, with the long, regular breaths of childhood.
Without stirring, she remained in the unconscious pose for hours. Iriya, peeping in upon her, choked back a little sob of thanksgiving, and turned away to kneel, in her room, before the ancestral shrine. Lights burned here always, and the pleasant aroma of fresh tea was seldom absent. With hands struck very softly together, that the sleeper should not be disturbed, Iriya supplicated the gods of her home and of her nation that the child should be given clearer vision. A European would have demanded personal happiness for her daughter. The Japanese soul sees deeper, and asks, as the highest boon, power to carry out, in this life, that which has been decreed, and so, for the future, to achieve a nobler attitude.
Just at the hour of twilight Iriya returned, and kneeling, called softly, "Yuki-ko—my heart's treasure—you must awake."
Yuki sat upright instantly. "Has the dempo come?"
"Yes," said Iriya, presenting a pink sealed missive. "And in the guest-room waits Prince Haganè."
Yuki tore the telegram apart, threw open the shoji formore light, and read: "Find it impossible to do anything with P no logic or reason pathetic but a child we all think case hopeless forever in your place would accept H whatever happens I am your loving faithful G."
"It is a terribly long message to come in such an expensive way. Surely it is from a foreigner," ventured Iriya.
"How long has it been here, mother?"
Iriya showed embarrassment. "Since about noon, I believe. Suzumè honorably received it and gave it to her master, as she was bid. Your father would not let you have it now, but that Prince Haganè took it from his hands and sent it. He says you are to read and consider it; also that you must not hasten. What marvellous kindness he always shows, that great man!"
Yuki rose slowly. "He is great and kind. Give thanks to him, my mother, and say that I shall enter within a few moments."