His compensations for all discomfort were found in huddled, intoxicating rows on the shelves of the new Congressional Library. Here his interest in the Far East, first awakened by the garrulous Venetian, shone back from a thousand reflecting facets of new truths. He strengthened theory with fact. He knew how many car-loads of Northwestern grain, how many bales of Southern cotton were shipped annually to expanding Asiatic markets from our Pacific ports. He traced the colonial policies of Europe back to the days when adventurous Spaniards had won the timid Philippines, but, seeking further glory, had knocked in vain at the gates of Japan. China, too, the richest prize in the East, he knew to be stirring in her long sleep. He believed that her destiny, central in the future currents of trade, must become the key to the world's development. With keen eyes he watched the joints of the Siberian railway, like a giant centipede, reduplicating, joint by joint, always insidiously, toward the storm centre of the Yellow Sea.
The old Romans argued the future from the flight of a bird. It happened now to Todd that the love of one schoolgirl for another brought before him a clearer knowledge of baffling Eastern questions than had all his years of rapt apprenticeship.
Miss Onda of Tokio (Onda Yuki-ko, the full name had beenregistered) arrived, as boarding inmate of the fashionable Washington Academy, only a few weeks after Gwendolen. She was dainty, shrinking, friendless, and pathetically homesick. Gwendolen became her champion. With a great ruffling of wings she kept at bay the impertinent and the curious. Yuki, thankful from the first for the protection, responded more slowly to the love. The Japanese girl was by nature silent, meditative, reserved. Above all she was,—to use her schoolmates' expression—"different."
It was fully three months after the initial friendship that the American succeeded in enticing her home. After this, the course of true love ran smooth. Each Friday night not passed with her Japanese friends, the Kanrios, was spent with Gwendolen. Yuki learned to giggle, and to have secrets, and dote on fudge like any American schoolgirl. She learned to dress, too, in the American way, and to heap her soft, dry, blue-black hair into a dusky "pompadour."
From the first she was a delight to Todd. He thought of her as a strange bird of Paradise rather than a dove, sent out from the ark of her country, that floated for him, somewhere, on waters of mystery. He encouraged hesitating confidences regarding her home life. Stoically he kept from laughter when her quaint grammatical errors convulsed Gwendolen and Mrs. Todd. Through Yuki he began to suspect the passionate, vital note of loyalty which is the keynote to Japanese character.
Memories of her happy childhood seemed never far away. Before the little feet touched earth, while still warm on her nurse's back, she had been taught to drink in visual beauty. Heroism was instilled in her through toys and story-books, and through temple feasts to gods who once were men. Old age was something to be revered, almost envied,—white hairs a benediction. The American levity and callousness shown by the young to the old appeared, from the first, in Yuki's mind, and remained ever after, the chief blot upon a country otherwise beloved. Todd saw that the girl in her own land must have moved as though consciously surrounded by spirit. She said to him that, in Nippon, the air was awake and vital; that there, ever went on about men the tangling and untanglingof great forces, to which, the living are as but shadows on a moving stream.
Through Yuki, too, he became a friend, even an intimate, of Baron Kanrio, the Japanese minister. To be intimate with any Japanese is a rare privilege, and Todd knew it. Many were the notable evenings spent in Kanrio's small private den, where the two men bent together over records and reports, and over maps whereon they traced with prophetic fingers the contour curves of overflowing races. The insight of the other fairly staggered Todd. Slowly the American breathed in, rather than acquired by grosser senses, something of the patient, confident loyalty to ideals,—the Japanese strength that comes with absolute spiritual unity, the power of race in the living, and, more potent still, in the dead.
Late in the afternoon of a bright March day, the fourth and last of Gwendolen's school years in Washington, Mrs. Todd sat alone at a front window of her handsome bedchamber, looking out dreamily into thickening dusk. The day was Friday. Yuki and Gwendolen giggled over a chafing-dish of fudge in a room across the hall. Merry laughter, more often from Gwendolen, rang through the house, trailing pleasant echoes.
Mrs. Todd seldom sat alone, and seldom indulged in revery. Now, however, she consciously caressed the reflection that, apart from an obstinate increase of flesh, she had not a trouble in the world. She was proud of her husband, proud of her daughter, pleased with herself. Her mind held no regrets, her closet no skeletons. A familiar step on the sidewalk caused her to look down. The senator was returning early from the library. She smiled with wifely comprehension at the pose of the down-bent head, at the hands thrust, Western fashion, to the full depths of new, English trousers. "Cy has something on his mind," she murmured. "He's coming to hunt me up and get it off."
She heard him banging one downstairs door after the other, then running, with the lightness of a boy, up the stairway. His tone expressed relief at seeing her dark shadow-bulk against the window-frame. "Susan! That you?"
"Yes. You are early, dear. Shall I ring for lights?"
"No—no," cried the other hastily. "I'm a little tired—that's all—and a little—excited. This warm dusk just suits me. It's fine to talk in."
After saying this, he remained so long wordless that Mrs. Todd's curiosity urged the question. "Was it anything definite that you had to say?"
"Definite! It's worse than definite. It's colossal!"
"Say it quick, then. I'll be on pins and needles till you do."
"Well, to put it briefly—our U. S. minister at Tokio,Jap-an,—Evans, you know,—Brunt Evans of Illinois,—well, Evans is on the point of resigning because of ill health,—and if I want the appointment—if I really try,—"
"Yes—yes—don't stop!"
"Mother, Iwantit!" cried the man, in a tone she had not heard him use for years. "You know how I've always felt about that country! I want the appointment as I have never wanted anything since I got you!" His thin hands twitched, his eyes pleaded. He might have been a schoolboy begging for the treasure of a gun, a horse, a holiday.
"To give up—Washington, and live in that strange land!" whispered Mrs. Todd, as though fear touched her.
"It needn't be but for a matter of four years, mother."
"Is there not talk of war with Russia?"
"Yes, and that's my chief reason for wanting to go."
"Do you realize that Gwendolen, our only child, is to graduate this June, and formally come out next season?"
"Yes, and that's my chief reason for wanting to stay."
Mrs. Todd pressed her lips together. A suspicious gleam came to her pale eyes. "This is the work of Yuki Onda! You both are infatuated about that girl."
"My dear Susan, how utterly unjust! Yuki has no more political influence than our cook. She doesn't dream of this possibility, she or Gwendolen either. You are the only one besides myself to hear."
"The girls will be wild when they are told. Gwendolen will be mad to go! Society, flattery, success, a great catch,—all I have worked for—will be nothing!" Todd wisely keptsilence. Mrs. Todd rose unsteadily to her feet. "There is no doubt that you all will be frantic to go—all three of you—without a thought for me." Seizing each side of the parted curtain, she stood, as at a tent door, staring out into a blackening sky.
"You'll be a big gun out there, Mrs. Cyrus Carton Todd," wheedled a low voice. "Bigger, in some ways, than you'll ever get to be over here. Those foreign embassies are bargain-counters of dukes and princes. The American globe-trotters will be so many kneeling pilgrims at your shrine."
Mrs. Todd stared on. Slowly upon the night, as upon a transparency, luminous letters began to form. "Mrs. Todd, the stately and distinguished consort of Minister Cyrus Carton Todd, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to Japan. Miss Gwendolen de Lancy Todd, a famous Washington beauty, now in her first season." Beneath the words appeared, as in a phosphorescent mist, a long, long dining-table, rich with the beauty of lace, cut glass, silver, and flowers; while ringed about it leaned and laughed her guests,—famous men and women of two worlds, members of old nobilities, native princes, and, perhaps, even visitors of blood royal, for who, in these days, would slight an invitation from the representative of earth's greatest republic?
Senator Todd pensively regarded the scallops of his wife's uplifted profile. "You'd make a stunning figure in a court dress, mother."
She wheeled fiercely upon him. "You are sure Gwendolen suspects nothing?"
"Sure. And if you take it like this, dear, she need never know that the chance was offered."
His companion gave a small, irrepressible sob. In an instant the long arms were about her. "Now, Susie, don't you be losing any sleep over this. I won't take a step unless you give the word."
Dreading his tenderness more than any argument, she pushed him away half laughing, half crying, "No—no—go on with you! I won't be honey-fuggled! I know your ways. It has come upon me rather sudden, and I haven't caught my breath! But you might as well tell Gwennie and be donewith it! I couldn't keep such a secret from her, even if you could. It's too b-big! And she'll be just wy-wy-wild to go!" The last sentence was a wail.
"Forget it, mother! Drat the whole thing! Let it vanish!" urged Cyrus.
"No!" she cried instantly, and shook her head with vehemence. "I can't accept the sacrifice."
"Do you agree, then, for me to—to—try?" asked Todd, fighting down a desperate joy.
"No-o" she hesitated, "not exactly agree, either; only I'm not willing to take upon myself to stop the whole thing here at the beginning. I'm not the Lord! Maybe this is planned out by higher powers; and then, besides," she added with a gleam of hope, "maybe you won't get it, after all!"
Todd's face bore a curious expression. His under lids closed slightly. "No," he repeated slowly, "maybe I won't get it, after all. But it's only fair to tell you that, if I am turned loose to try, I'm going to try like—hell!"
TheTodd household slept until late the morning after the party. Next to the efficient hirelings,—those ball-bearing sockets of domestic ease,—the senator himself was first to awake.
He came slowly into the day, as though passing from a fair garden into one more fair. That sense of some great good, new-garnered, and in the warm sweet haze of sleep not quite recalled, caressed his smiling lips. In spite of dalliance, the shining consciousness drew near. His appointment had been given! Ah, that was the new glory! He was in effect, at that instant, "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary" to a Wonderland! It was not the honor that thrilled him, but the opportunity. He would have a niche near the breathing heart of that strange country. Proving himself worthy, he might go deeper, drinking at that spiritual fountain of eternal youth.
Lying now on his rich, canopied bed, with all the luxury of modern Occidental life heaped close, Todd told himself that, because of the success, he was all the more a soul, an individual, with better things to seek. He scorned to be a pampered animal, possessed by its possessions. He envied anew the clean, sweet poverty of the samurai's code.
He was now at that elevation in life where past events take proper place, as in a landscape, and vistas begin. Yesterday was his fiftieth year. By another coincidence—those clashings of star-beams in his career—his birthday fell on that of the Japanese Emperor.
Looking back now, he could see where streams of tendency, taking rise in boyhood, had worked steadily, though through seeming deviations, towards this one great tide of purpose. His lonely interest in rice-culture had been a hidden spring;his coming to Washington, where Japan's development was a living topic instead of a solitary reader's dream, a winding stream of fate. Yuki herself was a deep well of inspiration. Now at last had come his opportunity to serve, in one life-giving effort, his own beloved country,—and Japan. The future widened for him into a deep harbor where great fleets of achievement might find safe anchorage.
Yuki entered for the ten o'clock breakfast in full street costume. At Mrs. Todd's lifted eyebrows of inquiry, Gwendolen, who was just behind her friend, explained.
"She has an appointment at eleven with her Hindoo idol. Baron Kanrio said last night that dad was to go too. Yuki thought she might be allowed to accompany him, if she were very good."
"Of course!" said the senator, heartily. "Glad to have her. Prince Haganè gave me the date, eleven,a. m., but he didn't mention Yuki."
"Oh, how could you think it?" drawled saucy Gwendolen. "She's only a girl. He wouldn't notice a girl."
"It rather looks as if hehadnoticed her," retorted Mr. Todd. "A definite appointment! They say his daily average of callers is about two hundred."
"It is only for my father's sake. He will give me a message," explained Yuki, hastily. "Gwendolen is right. So great a man do not think much of girls."
"Humph," said Gwendolen, "that doesn't go! He stared at you as if you were a candied cherry-petal, and he wanted to swallow you at a gulp. Pierre Le Beau saw it, too. Heavens, how he scowled! A regular Medusa! I expect all the chrysanthemums are turned to yellow onyx by his glare."
Yuki gave a start, and then flushed with painful intensity. "Please! Please!" she was beginning, when Mrs. Todd unconsciously interrupted with an exclamation of delight.
After her methodical pouring of the coffee, the good lady had plunged into the morning papers. "Ah, Gwendolen, these notices are splendid!—better than I could have hoped. Society reporters are usually so touchy and carping!"
"There was one youthful Mr. Dooley that I made sure of,"said Gwendolen, calmly, as she cracked an egg. "I had the orchestra strike up 'Call me thine own!' while I took him to a corner and plied him with Louis Roederer, Carte Blanche!"
Little Yuki and the senator drove off together. Each had things to think of, though not much to say. The carriage bowled smoothly along asphalt thoroughfares. At close intervals small parks were passed, some round, some angular, but all like emeralds in a web of silver-tinted streets. Now and then the great meerschaum-colored dome of the Capitol came into sudden view, with its suggestion of purpose and of majesty.
The girl's neat fawn-tinted dress was now supplemented by furs, and a wide hat of brown velvet, with a silver chain about the crown, and nodding feathers. Her hair, puffed round her face in recent fashion, completed the Americanizing of her attire. From the dainty gloves, thrust deep into her muff, to the soft brown boots, she was modern, chic, Occidental.
At the Japanese Legation, both Baron Kanrio and the prince's secretary, Hirai, were awaiting them. The eyes of the latter shone with eagerness at sight of his young compatriot. Kanrio sent them, chattering already of Japan, into the drawing-room to await Yuki's summons. With a slight gesture he beckoned to Todd, and they went together along the hall to the well-known den.
Haganè sat in it, alone. The disposition of the few stiff chairs bespoke recent visitors. The library table, covered with green leather, had maps upon it, letters and papers, besides a Japanese smoking outfit and a tray with tea and some small cups.
As they entered, the great man slowly rose. He wore again his plain dark native robes. In the relentless daylight he appeared older, more sallow, and at the same time more impressive. His hand-grasp for the senator was cordiality itself. His deep eyes lighted pleasantly, as he said, "Welcome, your Excellency!"
Todd started, and then flushed like a boy, at the title. Kanrio grinned with delight.
"Oh—er—beg pardon; but it's the first time. Ratherknocked me off my pins. Thanks, your Highness! I feel it a good omen to have it come from you."
"Shall we be seated?" asked Haganè.
"Gomen—nasai," (excuse me) murmured Kanrio, with a gesture. He removed the soiled cups from the table to the top of a low bookcase, then rang for fresh cups and a new pot of tea. He and Haganè took a few sips, Japanese fashion; Todd declined.
"I understand, your Excellency, that your appointment as envoy to our small island has come the very recent time?"
"Only last night, your Highness." Todd's eyes met in unembarrassed candor those of Haganè. "Of course I've worked for it. My heart was set on it. The Baron here has been an inspiration!"
"My dear sir, don't trouble to recall my unimportant service," deprecated Kanrio.
"I understand," said Haganè, slowly, "that for some time you have honored our—country—with your studious—interest. If it is not impertinence, may I venture to inquire what—circumstances, what—a—unfamiliar categories—first stung your thought to the pursuit of Far Eastern knowledge?" He spoke very slowly, slurring neither vowel nor consonant, and choosing, it would seem, from a rich vocabulary. Nevertheless he pieced the words together with a slight effort.
Todd knitted his brows, not in lack of understanding, but from desire to answer definitely and concisely the comprehensive question.
Haganè may have mistaken the silence, for he added immediately, "My English is—stiff,—not well—manœuvred. My meanings perhaps become involved. Shall not Baron Kanrio stand as—interpreter—for my heavy thought?"
"No, no," said Todd, eagerly. "Do not think it, your Highness! I understand perfectly. Your very misuse of some of our slippery old timeworn words is illuminating. It was your question that made me pause, not your way of putting it."
"My dear sir," protested Haganè, "I desire you to feel no obligations to answer. I intended, perhaps, a thinner meaningthan your own mind has seized. Was it Japanese Art, as with Frenchmen? Statistics, Sociology, Political Economy?" Todd noted the greater ease with which these abstract and philosophic terms were employed.
"None of these, your Highness,—and yet all! My study—you will think me presumptuous, I fear,—might not be called less than—the ultimate destiny of your race!"
Haganè's smouldering eyes leaped into sudden fire. He looked down quickly, as if to deny the flame. Todd felt the air stir and tingle with a new vibration.
"Yes, your Excellency, we are attempting to employ valuable hints from various representative governments of your enlightened West," said he, conventionally.
"Hints!" echoed Todd; "that is just the wonder of you! They are hints in reality, thoughts to be absorbed only just so far as you need them, and the rest chucked. You don't stick them on like plaster to cover up a mediæval birthmark. You have quite as much to give as we, and you know it. Haven't I watched and studied, with Kanrio here to coach? You Japanese alone can combine the best of the two civilizations. You can best fuse the experience, character, insight, humanity—of both long-suffering hemispheres. We Americans are just ourselves; but you are we, and all the rest of it! That's why your old gods set you on the fighting line. You are a whole laboratory experiment in sociology, all to yourselves!"
"I perceive that you have been thinking carefully upon us," said Haganè, still conventional, contained; but his one upward look, instantly withdrawn, had the "swish" of a scythe.
"It isn't all admiration, you know!" exclaimed Todd, with an impulsiveness far more flattering than reserve. "You have made, it seems to me, some thundering bad mistakes,—like the dropping of Port Arthur at the first growl of that bear, Russia. But you've got your second wind all right. You Japanese know, better than any American or Englishman, that Russian preponderance in China means a walled continent of tyranny, the gates guarded by Greek fire. If you conquer, your best interests are at one with the progress of anenlightened twentieth-century world. Now, your Highness, deny it if you can!" He leaned back, his thin face aglow. Haganè apparently had difficulty in keeping eyes upon the table.
"You—er—pass through the waving branches," said he, very slowly, "and cleave to the heart of the tree. So only are the rings of epochs counted. Do others of your countrymen think thus?"
"Well," said Todd, "to be honest, I judge that most of my countrymen would prefer sitting on the bough, stealing apples, rather than counting concentric rings. I guess love of the East must have been born with me."
"Interesting, interesting!" murmured Haganè. "And yet, your Excellency, though indigenous, something must have fed the growth. Every development possess, I think, allotted kind of nourishment."
"Oh, events contributed, I presume. Now and then things turned up just when they were wanted." Todd was surprised at his own ease in the great man's presence. He drew inspiration, not awe, from the intelligent eyes and slow, suggestive smile. "Yes, thingscame! I planted your Forty-Seven Ronin into my biggest field of wheat! And my old mule, Kuranosukè, did me better work than any span of horses. Then, your Highness, the baron here—oh, you needn't shake your finger, Baron!—pointed me to heavenly manna; and the child Yuki, my daughter's friend, led me into paths that adult eyes could never have seen."
Haganè crushed the red ash of his cigarette, and leaned farther back in his chair. The expression of his face altered slightly,—softened, one might say, were it not still so impressive. If waves of strength and influence had flowed from him before, they ebbed now, leaving consciousness a little thin and dry. Yet all three men smiled faintly, as at a pleasant thought.
"Ah, little Onda Yuki-ko, the child of my old kerai."
"It is a term meaning 'feudal retainer,'" put in Kanrio, amiably, to Mr. Todd.
"Yes," went on Haganè, "I was encouraged last night to see her so strong to look at, and so—pardon vulgarity,your Excellency,—so inoffensive to the eye in personal appearance."
Todd flung back his head and laughed outright. "Inoffensive—that's a good one! Why, your Highness, Yuki is quoted as a beauty here in Washington. Artists beg to paint her, and swell photographers to pose. If she intended casting in her lot with us, she could have the pick and choice of half the young bloods here." He sent a merry glance to Kanrio, as for corroboration, but was met by a stare so blank, so baffling, that his smile faded.
The prince was carefully, very carefully, lighting a fresh cigarette. "Pardonnez moi!" he mumbled, between coaxing, initial puffs. "It is I who am the stupidity! 'Pick and choice,—young bloods'—I fear I do not quite—er—apprehend."
"Your Highness," Kanrio broke in, "Mr. Todd speaks in the idiomatic phrases of society. He desired to transmit the impression that Miss Onda is thought to be beautiful."
"Ah, is that it? And—young bloods?"
"Young men, I should have said. Pardon my slang. Merely young men, your Highness," explained Cyrus, feeling suddenly quite ill at ease.
"Ah, yes," muttered Haganè to himself. "I have a recollection. Last night—" he broke off. His voice was higher and a little careless, as he asked of Todd, directly, "Is Onda Yuki-ko to sail with your family?"
"Yes. She had not intended returning till next spring. She wanted to take an extra course in French or something. But she wouldn't stay behind, now that we are going. She and my daughter are like sisters." Todd rose, muttering words to the effect that he had trespassed too long. Haganè rose also. Todd felt resentful, though he could have assigned no definite cause. "Good-morning, your Highness, or, as Miss Yuki has taught me to say, 'Sayonara'! I thank you for the honor of this interview."
The word "Sayonara" brought Haganè sharply to himself. "The thanks belong not to me, Excellency," he smiled and stretched out a powerful hand. "Seldom do I so deeply enjoy a conversation with one met for the first time. I considerthat Nippon, and our-Sacred Emperor"—(he paused, and the two Japanese bowed deeply,) "are to receive the congratulation."
Power and purpose thrilled in his hand-clasp. Todd tingled anew with it. "What a man! What a bottled genius hauled up from a sea of fate!" he said to Kanrio, as they descended the stairs.
"Prince Sanètomo is one who does his duty," admitted Kanrio, in an impassive tone.
Hirai accompanied Yuki to the office door. They went a little slowly, considering the rank of the summoner, and talked hurriedly in the hall-ways, each reluctant to release a topic so dear. There had been not only Japan and childhood to gloat upon, but, already, reference could be made to a past,—twelve hours old. "Do you remember," and "As you were saying last evening," are potent introductory clauses. Both young people had been born in Tokio, and though unnamed to each other before, soon established unity of class, training, inherited ideals, and childish experiences. The secretary had often heard of Sir Onda Tetsujo, Yuki's father, a knight of the old school, famed for his stern rectitude and his loyalty to a vanished past. With some hesitation Hirai ventured to suggest that he should consider it a privilege to be allowed to call upon Sir Tetsujo and his lady, in their Tokio home. Yuki urged this eagerly. She could send by the younger man messages that seemed too trivial for transmission through Prince Haganè. "Yes, yes,—please call upon them—dō-zo! They will receive you so happily. Ah, and to think that you will see them long, long before I can come! You will reach Nippon before the maples have quite burned themselves away, or Fuji lowered upon her opal cone the full white robe of winter. How am I to endure the waiting? I wish I were to start with the suite of Prince Haganè to-morrow!"
Hirai's fine face echoed this sentiment vividly, but he refrained from speech. He was a correct young man, and had no intention of presuming on the young girl's veneer of Americanism. He left her at the door. It had to her fancy, now, the feeling of a shrine, a Shinto temple, approached through paths of childish memories. She lifted one glovedhand to knock, and her lips twitched at the clamorous instinct to raise both hands, rub the palms together, and clap thrice as before a deity. She controlled herself, however, shaking her head a little wistfully, and murmuring as to a voice, "No, though my soul still is Nipponese, I have become a Christian. I am half American, too. I must remember." She gave now a sharp, determined rap.
"O-idè!" boomed a deep voice from within. Yuki's knees melted. Whatever the rest of her, they were evidently not American. She entered with downcast eyes.
Haganè did not seem to recognize her. He looked hard, and asked, "Is this Onda Yuki-ko?"
She lifted the brim of her hat, and let shy eyes rest upon him. "Your Highness, it is Yuki, a worthless young acquaintance with whom you spoke last night." She used the Japanese language, with the full complement of honorifics.
"An odd eventuation," said the other, dryly. "I thought to summon the child of my old kerai, the maiden of last evening,—and, behold, a small, pert shade from the Avenue de l'Opéra!"
"It does not augustly displease your Highness?" murmured the girl, not understanding his full meaning.
"Not at all. It may even prove valuable for Nippon, and Tetsujo could wish no more. But be seated, child. I have scanty moments to dole you, and there are messages."
"Lord," murmured Yuki, seating herself on the hard chair indicated, "it is too much for you to burden your exalted memory for my insignificant satisfaction."
Haganè ignored the deprecating whisper. Taking a seat deliberately, he began, "At the Shimbashi station of Yedo, where, since many notable officers were to accompany me, a great crowd of well-wishers thronged to say farewell, I soon discerned the dark face and the proud head of your father, Onda Tetsujo."
He paused, smiling slightly. The girl said nothing, only bent forward a little, her face full of unconscious excitement.
"Close behind him, gentle, clinging, self-effacing, as a good wife should always be, I saw—"
Yuki, forgetting her breeding, fairly snatched the wordsfrom his mouth. "My mother,—I know, Lord, it was my dear mother! And the old nurse Suzumè, was she there?"
"There was, indeed, a female something that incessantly bowed, and drew breath with a ferocity that drowned the hissing of the engine. Has that the air of Suzumè?"
"Yes, yes, her very self. Oh, how can I wait to get back home! Ten weeks, Lord, before I am to start!"
"The words uttered by your parents were these,—I may not recall the exact terms, but I have their purpose clear. First, Iriya said: 'Tell to our child that empty hearts and a cheerless home ache through this night of absence, for her coming.' Her soft eyes touched my heart, though men call me stern. Ere I could bow assent, your father Tetsujo—ah ha! that old kerai, the unreconstructed feudal knight!—pushed rudely past, and cried to me, 'Taint memory with no such puerile demand, my Lord! Say to the girl that hearts and aches are nothing. As long as I have yen to forward, let her remain until she is fitted, though a woman, to be of some slight service to her land. I pray you, Lord, to judge of her. Should she need to stay full ten years longer, I would not repine. I have no son. She is the substitute. Empty hearts, aching nights, bah! Crumbling barley sugar of a weak spirit! Midzu-amè in a human jar! Good Iriya, my wife, I advise you to cease your prayers before concessive deities, and learn to worship more sincerely our God of War. He is to be the flaming incarnation of this epoch!'"
"I can see—I hear them both," said Yuki. "My father is right,—though the tears that must have stung my mother's eyes do now sting mine. Lord, shall you think me fit to go to such a father? I have done what the Americans call—graduate. I have even received prizes for good study."
"Do they offer prizes here for doing duty? An immoral practice, especially for the young,—instilling envy, cupidity. But it concerns me not. Your question, Yuki,—are you fitted to return? I cannot give myself time to be satisfied entirely with the fitness; but, for other reasons, I am well aware that it is time for you to return. His Excellency, Mr. Todd, spoke of the first of the New Year. I wish it were to-morrow."
"Lord," faltered the girl, "are your august utterances heavy with reproof? Have you charges of misconduct against me?" Her guilty heart ran, as a thief for a hidden treasure, to the thought of Pierre Le Beau and the half-troth her weakness had allowed him to secure. The next words of the great man relieved her strangely.
"Nay, nay, little one, I have heard of no wrong. Look not so fearful; one would think me Emma-O, the Lord of Hell, in the flesh. My thought was chiefly that, just now, even your present acquirements might serve Nippon."
"Ah, it is of war you hint! Here, many believe that it will not come. Is it to come, Lord?" She had drawn very close. Haganè perceived, as one looking at a picture, the exquisite balance of features in the pointed oval face, the pale width of brow under clouds of dusty hair, the refinement, the trembling sensitiveness of lips and chin. His eyes held a certain keen, inscrutable intentness of regard. The corners now wrinkled slightly with a smile.
"A nightingale studies not with a maker of swords," he said slowly. "Yet may the nightingale's note give warning where the sword could not avail. What one has not heard, cannot be told. It is a time when the whispering of leaves is to be shunned, and the fall of the petals counted."
Yuki caught her underlip between her teeth to steady its trembling. Again she felt reproved, though nothing could be kinder than the great man's voice.
"Four years," he mused aloud, "four years! Small space of time to us who are on the heights,—but to the young, still wandering happily on flowered-covered slopes, it is long, quite long. Ah, little Yuki, it is but yesterday that you came, as a child, to my Tabata villa. You clung timidly, at first, to Tetsujo's hand; but the serving-maids soon won you to the air. After that, at my request, Tetsujo brought you often. You were a scarlet poppy turned loose in that dim old garden. My eye would follow you through passages of the good Tetsujo's somewhat prosy discourse. You used to perch upon the gray rocks of the pond, and fish for hours, throwing back the small wriggling bits of gold as soon as caught. Do you remember, Yuki?"
"Yes, Lord, well do I remember," said Yuki, her mouth trembling into laughter. The self-consciousness faded. He knew that it would be so. It was for this that he had contrived the long speech of reminiscence. "Once," she went on shyly, "once, into that pond I fell, screaming with terror to think that certainly, now, all the goldfish would make haste to bite their enemy."
"Their best revenge, I take it, was in the cold you caught," laughed the prince.
"Nay, Highness," said she, gravely, "no cold at all did I acquire. The maid-servants and thy divine, pitying princess rescued me. They changed my worthless garments, and urged upon me much hot tea and a small, sweet powder. Indeed, but for the trouble my clumsiness occasioned, I enjoyed more the falling into that august pond than the fishing beside it."
Haganè smiled a little abstractedly. He did not laugh again. He turned to the table and smoothed the corners of a document. "The villa has no princess now, my child. In my many houses I come and go alone."
Yuki looked upon the floor. "My spirit is poisoned by your sorrow, Lord. Forgive my great rudeness in mentioning. I did not know."
He drew a short, impatient sigh. "The princess resides again with her own people in Choshiu. But these matters have interest for none but me. Hark, is that not the hour of noon now striking? I must dismiss you." She rose instantly at his words. He followed with more deliberation. She turned to the door, then wavered back to him, distressed evidently by thoughts she shrank from voicing.
"Speak, child," he said kindly, "no mad haste is necessary. Say what you will."
Still she moved soundless lips. In some inexplicable way she had fallen short. It was not only that she felt she had not reached his highest expectations, but, more definitely, she had failed to reach her own. Her acquired Americanism crackled on her, like a useless husk. She thirsted for new strength. Before her stood one able to give it, yet she could find no words to ask. "It is ten—weeks before I can start home, Lord," she managed at last to articulate. "I am onlya girl, but I would die for Nippon, for my Emperor. What—what—" Again she faltered.
Haganè took a small hand in his own and smiled reassurance. "Only the very young and inexperienced think it necessary to state willingness to die for a country. Give me the coming thought."
"In these last weeks what can I do,—what can I suffer,—how shall I pray,—that I may make myself worthy of return?"
The smile on the overhung dark face saddened into a look far tenderer than smiling. Yuki felt virtue, like a fluid, rush through her from his touch. "Keep always to the thought that you are Nipponese,—that you guard, in yourself, an immortal spirit, powerful for good or ill. Let not the tendrils of your outreaching soul cling to alien ideals, for, if so, each in the twining means a wrench and a scar, and the unscarred soul is sweeter to the gods. Think nothing of the body,—of personal desires, of personal reward. Say to yourself always, 'It is enough to be a Nipponese.'"
Yuki was already stilled and comforted. "Lord," she said, lifting brave eyes, "I think it true that the lowliest among us, through self-striving, may become a god. My little spark of light has slept until this moment. I can never again be quite the same girl who came into this room. I will curve the memory of your words about my spirit, as one shields his candle from a wind."
"In Nippon I see you next, my Yuki. And now, 'Sayonara,' till that time."
"Sayonara," whispered Yuki, and hurried out into a new day.
Preparationsfor an unexpectedly early start kept the Todd family in a condition of strained excitement. When the tension did relax (Mrs. Todd had more than once warned them), they would all probably shoot off into eternity, mere dull bits of leaden weight, as from a boy's rubber sling. Yet in these days the good lady had little time for speculations, whether mournful or the reverse. She, Gwendolen, and Yuki began at once a round of shopping and dressmaking. Officious lady friends who had lived or visited in Japan hastened to tell of certain articles necessary to the civilized female which, absolutely, were not to be procured in Japan. At first Mrs. Todd hearkened eagerly, and made lists for future shopping; but she invariably lost the lists, and, after the first week, began to notice that some particular item declared by one gesticulating visitor to be unpurchasable west of San Francisco, would, by the next, be named as a thing produced in full perfection only by Yokohama cobblers, jewellers, cabinet-makers, tanners, or tailors, as the case might be.
Much in the same manner, whereas one matron declared the Japanese servant a fiend, laden with an accumulation of domestic vices from the days of Pharaoh down, the next would congratulate Mrs. Todd on being about to enter upon an experience rare to this hemisphere,—perfect service, intelligently and cheerfully given.
The pleasant home on M street was abandoned, the occupants moving to a hotel. This was done that Mrs. Todd might personally supervise the packing and storing of furnishings grown dear through pleasant association. More than one stealthy tear plashed on an unresponsive packing-case.
Gwendolen's brimming joy gave room for but one regret. That lived and died in a single glance, as she saw her grand piano, ignominiously tilted, pathetically legless, carried pasther through the wide front door, and down to the waiting hearse of a van.
Mrs. Todd went to bed, during this strenuous period, immediately after dinner. She urged her daughter to follow the good example and get "rested" for struggles to come. But "No," said Gwendolen, laughing. "There will be plenty of time to rest when I'm old. I can't waste life now!"
Many of the girl's evening hours were devoted to Mr. Dodge and what he was pleased to term "Lessons in Japanese." When Yuki and Pierre were present,—Yuki now resided permanently at the Japanese Legation,—the Oriental listener would often need to bury a crimsoning face in crumpled sleeves to hide her mirth. Mr. Dodge's vocabulary was large, especially in the way of amorous and complimentary phrases, but his syntax and his pronunciation were things new on this planet. Pierre laughed too, with a superiority born of Yuki's private instruction. Gwendolen stoutly defended her professor, saying that his way of speaking the language sounded easier and more natural than Yuki's own.
Mr. Dodge, by one of those fortuitous happenings that lay, for him, like pebbles, in every chosen path, had found that he would be compelled to return to his post of duty by the same steamer on which the Todds were to sail. When he made this bold announcement, accompanied by a triumphant side-glance at Gwendolen, the girl was surprised to feel her heart give a warning throb. Despite her skill in the game and her audacity, she began to realize that in this young person she had probably met her equal. She rallied quickly in the face of danger. Exhilaration took the place of fear. She knew she was in for a good fight, and began at once to employ her other admirers in the way of Indian clubs and dumb-bells. Dodge very properly went home to South Carolina a few weeks before sailing, and did not return to Washington until the time of final departure.
If Yuki trembled at thought of her long days on an enchanted voyage, with Pierre for closest comrade, her new strength, born of Haganè, smiled down the apprehension. Not only would she refuse to yield to that beloved one a deeper pledge, but, if possible, she would win back from himthe half-troth already given. She longed to return to her country, to her people, free of obligation. Her reverence demanded it. She should belong only to herself and them. So should she have a clearer road in which to approach the subject of a foreign marriage. Pierre, as yet, refused to see this vital point. He must be made to see. On those long balmy evenings on the ship, with the moon's sweet influence to help her, yes,—she could convince him,—she would triumph!
While Senator Todd made his own few preparations, talked with all manner of congressmen on the ever-present topic of the threatened Far Eastern conflict, or reasoned with brother senators who decried so unconventional a thing as resignation from their august midst,—Pierre harassed the French Legation for confirmation of an appointment almost given, yet now, at the last, tantalizingly withheld. After insistent efforts, the best that he could gain was assurance that, in Tokio itself, in the hands of Count Ronsard, the present French minister, he would almost surely find his credentials waiting. Pierre, at his princess-mother's instigation had written personally to this Count Ronsard. "An old, dear friend of ours, mon fils," wrote Madame Olga. "Quite close, I assure you. He will be felicitated to offer what he can."
Pierre and Yuki in their many talks had come to believe that an assured diplomatic position in Tokio would greatly strengthen their chances for an early marriage. Their young ardors were to blow the drowsy coals of French and Japanese friendship. Their lives must have an influence for good! At such times the future glowed with a heavenly dawn. Pierre, ever since his arrival in Washington, little less than a year ago, had been a special favorite with Mrs. Todd. In the first place, he was a joy only to look upon, having personal beauty to a degree almost irritating in a man. He possessed, also, that subtler and rarer power called "charm." A great factor in his success was unfailing courtesy toward elderly women. He knew well the might of the chaperon. He cared little for men in any country, and the aggressive American he found peculiarly unattractive. But a woman, no matter what her age, race, or weight, was still a woman. Middleagedsighs fed his vanity equally with the giggling of débutantes in their first snare. He was not a Don Juan, far from it,—but a pleasure-loving, life-loving boy, who had never been refused a thing he wanted, and never intended to grudge himself a moment's delight that could be honorably enjoyed. His ideas of this honor,—it may be well to add,—were French. At different stages in his short career, Pierre had been or tried to be, in turn, a hermit, an atheist, a Roman Catholic priest like Francis of Assisi, an actor of old French classics, a poet, and an artist of the Chavannes school. With him one passion burned supreme. One fuse must disappear before a new one could be lighted. He had met Yuki first in the Todd drawing-rooms, on one of those Friday evenings allotted to the schoolgirls for receiving friends. She chanced to be wearing full Japanese attire of a soft, cloudy blue, a sash brocaded in silver ferns, and a cluster of the gold-colored "icho" berries drooping in her blue-black hair. As his eyes fell upon her, Pierre's past visions went to cold ash. All the poetry, the mysticism, the intellectuality, the exaggeration of discarded hopes flared now into a single new white flame of adoration.
December came. Christmas festivities impinged on the travellers' routine of preparations. Days which, at first, Gwendolen had declared interminable, accelerated strangely in progress, like round stones started down a gradual slope. During that last crowded week, Todd had his final, most important interview with the President and the Secretary of State. He was urged to impart with absolute freedom his personal opinions of the coming struggle, and its probable outcome for the world. In return he was given full and satisfactory instructions. He left the executive mansion strengthened in purpose, and clarified in his own beliefs.
At the station, on the morning of departure, an unexpectedly large crowd gathered to say "Farewell." Prominent were the Kanrios and their diplomatic suite. Gwendolen's youthful friends of both sexes advanced like an animated flower-garden, so profuse were the bouquets. The French ambassador also was there. A Russian attaché insisted upon kissing Pierre good-bye.
The two drawing-rooms of the sleeper "Nurino" were so heaped with dulcet offerings that the legitimate occupants—hurrying in to the warning cry of "Buo-o-o-ord!"—were forced to seek temporary accommodation in the open car.
"Why! It's just like setting off for anywhere!" cried Gwendolen, a little blankly, as the train drew out through acrid smoke, and old familiar landmarks began their flight backward, to the city.
"Who cares about the setting off? It's the roosting on, that counts!" carolled the optimistic Dodge.
The train pulled steadily, now, for the South. After much disagreement and discussion, and the bending of yellow, black, and brown heads over countless railroad folders,—each with its own route in a pulsing artery of red,—they had decided for a southern tour. No one of the party except Dodge, who, if one chose to believe him, held acquaintance with all corners of the globe, had been lower than the Potomac River. Mrs. Todd remembered an aunt, native of New Orleans. The aunt had died long since, but the city remained. They were to have a glimpse of the Gulf Coast, and at least two days in the sleepy, picturesque, yet hugely prosperous Crescent City.
The month was January, in most places a bad month for weather; but in this opening of the year 1904 the South was apparently bent upon justifying its conventional adjective of "sunny." The little party left Washington in a scourge of sleet and a pall of gray; it reached New Orleans to find the whole city, creole alleys traced three centuries ago and broad avenues of later wealth, alike glorified,—"paved with afternoon." Scarcely a gulf breeze stirred. The levees by the muddy river lay like saurians, with turpentine and sugar barrels and bursting cotton bales upon their backs, in lieu of scales. In city gardens, palm-trees stood at "present arms" of glossy rectitude. Pansies, daisies, and other small bedding flowers bloomed in the open air. Potted ferns or crotons stood about on broad galleries, or upon the shell-white walks bordering emerald lawns.
Gwendolen declared it a delusion, a mirage, deliberately planned for their entanglement. Yuki admitted that even Japan could not offer so tropic a feast to the eye in January.Mrs. Todd found her greatest satisfaction in "doing" the place. Dodge, of course, was cicerone. He led them to the old French market and gave them a strange, steaming elixir, brewed in huge copper vats and misnamed mere "coffee." He knew the small lair called "Beguet's," where alone on earth, he solemnly affirmed, real breakfasts were to be procured. He hired a box at the French Opera for Sunday night.
"Sunday!" Mrs. Todd gasped, with upraised hands and eyes.
"Sunday!" echoed Yuki, less vociferously, but with a corresponding air of pained astonishment.
"Certainement!" ejaculated Pierre, who was beginning to feel at home. "It is transplanted Paris. Why not Sunday night, better than another? All persons have been to mass, except our naughty selves. The piety of the others may chance to include us. God is good! Allons! The opera is Faust, with the full ballet and music. Time means little here! Vive New Orleans!" After a laughing glance into Mrs. Todd's still dubious countenance he whispered, insinuatingly, "It is never to be known in Washington or—Tokio—dear Madame."
In the end he carried his point and his party. Never had he been in such spirits. Yuki could scarcely keep her eyes from his radiant face. Mr. Todd declared him a mineral spring that had just blown its way through a boulder. He stopped turbaned mammies or wondering children on the banquets,—which in New Orleans means sidewalks,—that he might elicit, by his correct Parisian French, answers in the delicious native patois. At each success he hugged himself anew.
"Ç'est ça, même! Mo pas geignin l'argent pour butin çi lalà!" he murmured ecstatically. "Geignin plein!" Passing the cathedral, Pierre asked of a lounging, large-hipped negress: "Est-ce qu'il y à la messe à la Cathédrale demain?" to receive the impudent answer:
"Sainte Pitie! Est-çe que vous croire que le va levé apres so' bon diner au poisson pou' vini donner nous autres la sainte messe? Bon Dieu la Sainte Vierge! Ha! Ha!"
"Holy Mother! But it is French, en glacé,—crushed, with the cream swimming and the flavor heightened!"
Todd alone stared out across the dim, majestic river through De Soto's eyes. He tried to feel himself the man, to prophesy as that seer had prophesied. The great city and the long levees were builded in that vanished mind, before the first adobe brick was moulded, or the first dark cedar hewn. Now in himself, as Todd the new American minister, he felt the country of his dreams creep nearer, lured by the magnet of the Panama Canal. Within his own life, should God be pleased to spare him to a fair old age, new craft would thread the Mississippi delta, small merchantmen at first, and sailing vessels, each with the banner of the red sun on its mast. Asiatic labor, silent, skilful, insidious, would contest for preeminence with the saturnine Dago, the "cayjin," the Quadroon, and the established African.
Each moment, westward from the city, held a novelty and a delight. The sugar-fields of Louisiana, stretching for leaden-colored miles, and soon to be pierced by myriad tiny spears of awakening green, appeared to Yuki a giant sort of rice-field from her own land.
"If it were cut up into many small piece, all of different shape and size, with little crooked baby-levees binding the edges,—it would be exacterlee the winter rice-fields of Nippon."
Sometimes, in an island of higher ground, the white-columned house of a sugar-planter gleamed, and near it rose mammoth live oaks, huge tumuli of green, the underbranches swaying with grizzled moss. In the open country, such trees crouched low above stealthy creeks, or blotted widening lagoons.
While in the city, they had read and heard of recent heavy rains to the West, flooding a wide agricultural district. On the borderland of Texas, they knew they had reached the threatened fields. Cypress, magnolia, sweet gum, and bay trees stood knee deep in a sea of dull chrome, churned from roads of clay. It seemed a lake of yellow onyx. Between the trunks writhed a tropical disorder of vines, palmetto, and undergrowth. In wide, clear spaces, drifting fence rails or half-submerged buildings told of ruin already accomplished. Now the whole unstable sea was covered by a carpet of thefloating "water-hyacinth," which, in later months, was to turn the bayous and lagoons into veins of amethyst. It seemed incredible to the little party, staring solemnly from train windows, that they were in temperate America at all. Every floating spar of wood became an alligator's head, every springing tuft of white swamp flower a meditative stork.
Night fell swiftly upon the watery forest, sucked down into it as to a familiar lair. With the next morning, the world had changed to a dry desert, above which arched an unrelated sky.
"Can we really be on the same planet?" asked Gwendolen; "or in the night, did this little measuring-worm of a train reach up and pull itself to Mars?"
Before, behind, everywhere, stretched spaces of exhausted gray sand, rising now and again into nerveless hills. For vegetation were set innumerable rosettes of the spiked yucca, with small heaps of the prickly pear, a cactus bush built up of fleshy bulbs, leaf out of leaf, like inflated green coral. On some of the thorny ridges perched star-like, yellow blooms. On others were stuck thick, purple fingers, known politely by the name of "figs." Dodge remarked sententiously that it was a very interesting plant; though, by raisers of cattle, not considered desirable. "Stock won't eat it a little bit," he explained cherubically. "Get stickers into their noses."
"Do you call that thing a plant?" cried Gwendolen, pointing. "It may grow, but it is no more a plant than a canary is a crab."
Dodge smiled again, the irritating smile of the well-informed. "Wait till to-morrow in Arizona, if you want to know how it feels to be struck dumb."
Gwendolen tossed her head. Her tendency during these initial days was to overact indifference.
"I rather think I shall not undergo the humiliation of incapacity to speak! Life heretofore has brought no crises in which I could not command a fairly adequate linguistic expression of my visual experiences."
"Whew,—how did you remember it all?" said Dodge under his breath. Yuki turned her intense face from the window. At sight of the absorbed, half-dazed expression,Gwendolen gave a little laugh, crying, "Here is one already nearing the borders of silence! That is Yuki's way. When she begins to feel things, she draws back in her shell, and puts sealing-wax on the door. What is it now, Yuki,—lack of English,—that keeps you so dumb?"
"No, not exacterlee," said Yuki, flushing a little at the turning of all eyes. "I have not good English, of course; but I could not say to myself all that I see, even in Nipponese. When too many new thing come, it is like fat people trying to squeeze together through a door,—all get mashed, and none come through."
Dodge gazed at the speaker in quizzical admiration. "Miss Onda, I long for a phonograph record. That is a masterly exposition of a profound psychological truth!"
Yuki cast a laughing, half-pathetic glance toward Pierre. "Is it very bad names that he is calling me, M. Le Beau?"
In spite of Gwendolen's hyperbolic boast, Arizona, next day, came near to fulfilling Dodge's prophecy. The world stretched bigger and broader, as though here, instead of at the Arctic poles, the "flattening-like-an-orange" of our globe took place. The sky, immeasurably remote and tangibly arched, was a thin crystal dome soldered to earth by the lead-line of the horizon. The red sand was hot to look at. The hills, though of vaster proportions, had more of helplessness and degeneracy in their sprawling curves. Yucca grew very closely now, marching up and down the slopes like fierce explosive little soldiers with bayonets too long for them. The objectionable prickly pears vanished. In their places rose a stranger order of being, cacti in tangled bunches, as of green serpents, sometimes with the licking red tongue of a blossom,—hunched woolly lambs of growth on high, thin stilts of shaggy black,—huge green melons, ribbed, spiked, and lazy, that seemed strangely at ease on their burning couches of sand. Far off, against the rim of nothingness, dry, blue mountain shapes emerged, mere tissue filaments of hue. And now, as part of the unreal perspective, giant cacti rose, at first no more than scratches and cross-marks on a window-pane, but coming steadily close. The first that flashed, tall, stark, and tangible, into the very faces of those who watched, brought small exclamations of wonder anddistaste. It passed instantaneously, fleeing backward into nothingness,—a herald to proclaim the coming horde. In a few moments, imagination, the sunshine, and the day became mere mediums for the aggressive race. This scorched eternity was made for them. Isolated and defiant, their laws were to themselves. It seemed a deliberate assumption that they should mock reality, taking on the evil forms of crucifix, gallows, skeleton-trees, and mile-posts, where nothing but a famished death was to be pointed. The desert might have been a vast sea-bottom, set with grim coral trees and hardened polyps.
"They are a race of evil spirits, petrified," whispered Gwendolen. "I feel their sinister association with our human life. See what shapes they have chosen!"
"Yes," said Yuki in return, and caught Gwendolen's hand as if for comfort. "You are right, Gwendolen. I think it is a Buddhist hell of trees."
"But what could cause this doom to befall an innocent tree, little sister?"
"It must be evil karma," said Yuki, with wide yet shrinking eyes upon the desert. "Perhaps a tree where a blameless man was hanged, perhaps the tree of a martyr's sacrifice,—perhaps even,—" here her voice fell to an intense and dramatic whisper which chilled her listeners while it stirred them, "perhaps that terrible—terrible tree whereon our—Saviour—See—see! now, over there—there—where on top of a hill three great crosses, the middle one so great and black and high,—is it not Gethsemane?" She pointed with a shaking finger, unable to utter more.
"Come, Yuki, do not look—I forbid it!" cried Pierre, vehemently. In a moment, with a shudder, he added, "Albrecht Dürer might have dreamed them in a nightmare, had he killed his own child and slept afterward! Mother of God! I shall look no more!"
"Nor I either, Pierre," cried Mrs. Todd, in great relief. "You are right to correct Yuki,—she does have such morbid fancies. I've heard her tell stories of ghosts, and incarnations, and those scary things that would make the flesh creep on your bones. Thank heaven, this day is nearly done! Ugh!See how the lengthening shadows spread them on the sand!" Deliberately she pulled down the small window-shade, leaned back, and closed her eyes.
"What's the matter, dear? Are you faint?" asked Mr. Todd, bending over her.
"No, but I'm thirsty. Ring for some lemonades, Cy. This dust has made my throat as dry as a lime-burner's wig!"
Gwendolen rose. "Well, you can have your lemonades, but I am going to watch the desert until night drives down the last black cactus-peg. It's a thing to remember!"
"Voilà! It's a thing to forget," challenged Pierre. "Nay, Yuki-ko, you must not follow. Tears are on your cheeks. Stay here, and let us talk of your beautiful land, forgetting the harsh ugliness outside."
He, too, leaned over, and pulled down a shade. Yuki made a slight motion of protest, then submitted. "Yes, let us talk of the umè-flowers," she whispered. "They are the first."
Gwendolen had taken a seat to herself at the far end of the open compartment. Here, alone, she watched the red sands smoulder into gray. For a brief half-hour the plant shadows stretched elastically into a network of black. Suddenly they sank, as water, into the sand. The upright stalks themselves began to waver and lose shape. An instant more and they would have vanished like their shadows; but now, in the western sky, just where the heated disc of copper had been lowered, an aftermath of glory mocked the night. The cactus forms, against the gleam, acquired new menace and fresh exaggeration. The brightness shut down quickly, like a box-lid, and a universe of stars sprang out. Tangled in their beams, again loomed up the cacti.
"Fair maid, thy summons to the lemonade!" said Dodge, close behind her. "By Jove! I almost committed a rhyme! Fair maid,—lemonade,—good combination, think I'll write it on my cuff."
At last the girl turned from her desert.
Next day, to the outspoken satisfaction of Mrs. Todd, aridity had begun to retreat before civilization. Even the small spot called Yuma seemed, with its station garden of green,a bit of Paradise. Before reaching it, Dodge had carefully printed a large notice, using the top of one of Gwendolen's florist boxes. This he hung in full view of all, at the end of the car.
"We approachYuma. No puns aloud. First offence, one bottle. Second offence, five bottles. Third offence, a whole case. By Order of the General Manager."
The few other travellers destined for the long California journey were, by this time, all on friendly terms. No one could have resisted the combined gayeties of Gwendolen, Dodge, and Pierre Le Beau. Yuki, though less responsive, was, as usual, an object both of interest and admiration.
In lower California Mrs. Todd averred that at last she was in America. The trip up the coast, with glimpses of Narragansett surf springing up in dazzling whiteness between rows of eucalyptus, pepper, and live-oak trees, or over the roofs of tiled adobe houses, could not turn her from the belief.
Near San Jose, cottages peered out from arching vines of rose. Gwendolen was distressed and surprised to find that roses, here, did not bloom continuously, and always in abundance. "They must show like glaciers, when they do come," she admitted.
With San Francisco, modern life, society, stress, began, anew. Old acquaintances sent in cards. Gwendolen began a whole volume of new admirers, while Yuki, with Pierre as escort, found certain Japanese friends and acquaintances, one the child of an old family servant of her father's house.
To many thousands of voyagers, San Francisco is but a stopping place, a bird-rest for preening. As a fact it is a city which possesses an unusual share of individuality, of "atmosphere," in the sense that writers use. No where else are to be seen such gray and wind-swept streets, where houses stand sidewise, as if mounting flights of stairs, the parlor windows of one house looking through the chimney-pots of its neighbor. Nowhere else are perched palaces like those of San Francisco, or a growth, as huge and strange in its exotic coloring, as Chinatown. The great, round, shimmering bay and Golden Gate are as a loom, and ships of the harbor, shuttles weaving together the nations of East and West.
On sailing day, new friends and new flowers gave the little party of the Todds "bon voyage."
"If New Orleans is a transplanted Paris, this is a Tschaikowsky Symphonie Orientale translated into terms of American life," said Pierre.
Slowly the city turned from a city to a patch of lichen on a rock. Queer little ditches, which they knew for streets, showed lines of perpendicular-crawling beetles, which they recognized to be whizzing electric cars. They watched it all eagerly, leaning far along the stern rail of the ship.
Then the sea winds caught them, screaming a welcome into shrinking ears. The white, attendant sea-gulls laughed in harsh appreciation of the antics of the wind. The ocean lifted, and strove, and pounded his cosmic greeting; and,—and,—well—there was a good stewardess on board!