"Beethoven may have smiled like that, or St. Francis of Assisi," thought Gwendolen. "It is a look, not of race, but of immortality."
The player's head lifted slightly. He was losing consciousness of material presences. His part was with the unseen world; he must draw down currents of a mighty past, and send them as new streams of influence, on through a menaced future. For he was to improvise, not to repeat. His theme alone was set,—a most heroic incident of civil wars, resulting in extermination of a dominating clan. The annihilation of the Heikè might give him text, but the flow of rhythmic words should vibrate, thrill, moan, quicken, purl, or shatter, as the mood of the moment might demand. Doubtless in this pause he was invoking, in full faith, the souls of those dead heroes; offering them possession of his human frame, and entreating higher gods to make him worthy of the test.
His low voice and the first three slow notes rose together. The minor quality suggested lamentation. A short passage, rapidly chanted without accompaniment, made the hearts of the listeners beat a little faster. Then voice and instrument clashed together; both whirled nearer, until, all at once,—silence! The player looked about the room in bewilderment. He stared down upon the biwa. He closed his eyesand swayed slightly backward, then forward, then back again. Suddenly he reopened his eyes. They were larger, more brilliant; they flashed a new fire, the glare of battle reflected in their depths. Words now came rapidly. His sentences fell of themselves into long, unstable rhythms. Cadences were lacking. All phrasing, except in rarest intervals, broke into the air with a sob, a sigh, a shuddering gasp. Often now the biwa strings were slashed across by the ivory plectrum, and the human wail rang through vibrating response. Then voice and strings plunged into a seeming discord, a frantic wrack of sound exorcised an instant later by pure calm notes struck separately, like the drip of slow water.
In the sense of Western harmony there was none, but something in the weird vibrations of long notes, the intricacies of overtone, and, above all, the unbelievable subtleties of rhythm, gave to one eager American listener, at least, her first insight into a new world of sound. "They are nearer in this, as in all their other arts, to nature," she thought to herself. "They summon the very essences of being, and find skeins for entangling them. Without conscious representation, they suggest to the human ear the lisp of sea winds, the flutter of fire, the rushing monologue of mountain streams. They hear sounds we Westerners never hear. I believe the very mists are audible."
As the emotion increased and the subject became more martial, the time of the music grew rapid, broken, syncopated, involved. Soft, melodious passages shattered into jarring notes. Like European troubadours of France, or the meistersingers of mediæval Germany, he yielded himself to the unconscious swing of impulse, and sang what was given him. Lines shortened. Syllables became more staccato. It was dramatic, undidactic—the deeds rather than the thoughts of men. His diction became more simple and direct, with sharp, incisive verbs at the end that rang like smitten steel. His whole body, at times, was shaken. After some terrific passage, while the sobbing lute-strings sustained the passion, his body would bend over and down, as if, in its abandonment to joy, grief, or battle ardor, it would hug the instrument that had become its soul.
Now he sang of the hero youth, Atsumori, of his insistence upon honorable death at the hand of his conqueror, Kumagayè.
"The Hour of the Hare comes at last, and the red sun advances,Raised like a cry and a shield in the mists of the morning,"Warriors and chiefs and the dauntless brave youth AtsumoriDrive to the sea all the hordes of the sweating red demons."
"The Hour of the Hare comes at last, and the red sun advances,Raised like a cry and a shield in the mists of the morning,
"Warriors and chiefs and the dauntless brave youth AtsumoriDrive to the sea all the hordes of the sweating red demons."
The dove-gray garments of the Japanese women, folded so modestly across seemingly quiet breasts, began to stir and palpitate. More than one tear fell upon the bandages. Yuki's face, set now unfalteringly upon the singer, grew ever more white; her long eyes burned, and trembled apart. Unconsciously she went close to him, and, kneeling upon the hard floor, drank of his voice. The group of Japanese maidens hid faces in their bright sleeves. The air stirred and tingled with invisible influences. Gwendolen began to shiver like an animal which knows not its own source of fear. The charged atmosphere, the face, the voice of the singer, Yuki's great glowing eyes, swept in her soul strained chords of unknown feeling. She felt in herself the vibrations of that trembling lute. In its cell a soul, just wakened, fumbled at a new discovered latch. "Surely it must be reincarnation," whispered the girl. "Surely I have felt and seen all this before! Yuki and I together have listened; that look was on her face. Yuki!" The cry was scarcely a whisper. Yuki, many feet away, could not possibly have heard, yet instantly she turned,—the eyes, night-black and hazel, caught and clung together, with half ghostly memories that were the same.
"Hissed there the sea with the scorching of steel and of passion,Rolled up the clouds from the sky and the shore in a tumult,There on the sand lies the body of young Atsumori."
"Hissed there the sea with the scorching of steel and of passion,Rolled up the clouds from the sky and the shore in a tumult,There on the sand lies the body of young Atsumori."
One great crashing across the strings, "like the tearing of brocade," and the singer's head fell forward,—his frame trembled and shrank, he quivered into stillness. Yuki half crawled to him, holding out a protecting arm, and facing her guests like a young tigress. "Do not any one speak. Donot crowd about him," she cried in English. "His soul will be weary from the long journey."
The Japanese women understood, and returned quietly to their sewing. The foreigners tittered, shrugged, and exchanged glances, then they, too, began to work. A servant brought tea to the singer, and a glass of cold water. At length he stretched out a trembling hand to the latter, and having finished the draught, rose quietly and went from the room, with Yuki close behind. A few moments later Gwendolen heard her returning, unaccompanied, along the hall. She went out to meet her, thankful indeed for the privilege of a few words alone.
"Yuki-ko," she faltered, "I just wanted to say that at last I understand,—I think I understand entirely."
Yuki, still half in the world of shadows, gave her a strange look. "You understand, Gwendolen? Is it my marriage you speak of?"
"Oh, so much more than that!" cried the other, with a little sob. "Had you been what the conventional foreigner calls 'faithful,' you would have been the most faithless girl in all the world!"
"You are a wonderful friend," said Yuki. Her voice had the strange quality of her look. Both had caught the rhythm of low martial chanting. "But even you, my Gwendolen, did not hear or understand it all. There is tragedy before me. You did not hear that in the music?"
"I thought I heard it, darling, but I shut my ears! I shall not believe. We can compel even tragedy, Yuki. Nothing can harm you with Haganè's love!"
"It is of that the tragedy come. But do not trouble. If I can serve Nippon, I asks no more of this life."
"Yuki, what can you mean?" cried the other, holding her back.
"Hush, dearest; do not trouble," smiled Yuki. "See, the guests turn their heads to listen. I must go to them. I have no fear at all."
Throughoutthe months of March and early April this strange hiatus in war bulletins hung, like a gray sky, above national enthusiasm. The more dignified of the newspapers still adjured the populace to patience, still exhorted them to have faith in their wise and careful leaders. "The Hawk's Eye," on the other hand, bereft of inflammatory battle themes, served up, with new condiment of ingenious suggestion, the personal gossip of the hour. Few of the weekly issues (those printed entirely in English) omitted a guarded slur upon the conjugal felicity of the Haganè household. Gwendolen came in for her share of veiled allusion. Yuki-ko, each week stung by the contemptible malice of the attack, promised herself that never again should the paper be opened in her home. Gwendolen, at the American Legation, weekly did the same. The results of both resolutions were equally humiliating.
This was not a happy time for Gwendolen, creature of sunshine and spring breezes as she seemed. The continued strained relations between herself and Dodge interfered quite seriously at times with the young man's official duties. Mr. Todd leaned more heavily than he knew upon his attaché's four past years of experience in Tokio life, and resented an attitude of one of his own family, which kept Dodge so rigidly within the paling of mere officialdom. Mrs. Todd, who had never professed great friendship for the secretary, now most loudly denounced his "outrageous flirtation" with the Spanish girl, and even declared it an affront upon her Legation. Gwendolen, urged one moment to stop the affair, "as she certainly could by the lifting of a finger," was, the instant after, taunted by her inability to do so.
The public friendship between Dodge and the charming Señorita deepened obviously with each day. Hints of an early marriage flecked "The Hawk's Eye." Mrs. Todd beganto feel herself personally injured by her wilful daughter. Finally, goaded into action and spurred by her own restless heart, the girl made a counter-move of a sudden and desperate intimacy with Carmen herself. Such things are not unknown in the history of adolescence. Carmen yielded to the American's bright fascination with the caressing languor characteristic of her. The two girls lunched together, dined, drove, and had tea together, and spoke of each other in exaggerated terms of endearment. Dodge, whatever his private surmises, retained an unaltered front. Naturally he and Gwendolen were more often together. She showed to him an air of cherished hostility, varied by small lightning-flashes of appeal. Two feminine currents blew full upon him. Dodge kept his hat on. The beautiful Castilian bore toward him the attitude of an indulgent conqueror. Gwendolen aided this, and whenever possible threw Dodge into the position of Carmen's accepted lover. Also, for some reason known only to herself, she encouraged the Spanish girl in her belief in Dodge's overwhelming adoration.
Gwendolen soon discovered that her new friend had an uncontrollable yearning for "dulces," and eagerly embraced this opportunity for demonstrating her new affection. Gwendolen scoured the alleys of old Yedo for novel sweetmeats; she purveyed from the French shops of Yokohama imported dainties; she sent a telegraphic order to a certain New York confectioner. Carmen appreciated and devoured all results. The Japanese confections, which many other European ladies might (without, of course, having tasted) pretend to despise, she declared delicious. The "ama-natto," or small purple bean, boiled and sugar-coated with lilac frosting, she called "fairy marron." Mikan, or small oranges preserved whole, with a flake of cinnamon and ginger, gained an established place on the Spanish Legation table. "Hakka ame," that delicious triangle of peppermint cream, improved from an American missionary's original recipe, vied in public favor, as a hors-d'œuvre with French bonbons, salted almonds, and olives.
Once Carmen's French maid, suspecting, perhaps, more than a purely altruistic intention in Gwendolen's persistent offerings, warned her young mistress against immoderate indulgencein sweet foods, and protested, with many gesticulations and a hint of tears, that the very last importation of Paris gowns already needed the letting out of seams, and would soon be unwearable. "Nonsense, Lizette," smiled the pampered one, "not eat dulces? I have always eaten dulces. How, in the Virgin's name, would one get through a novel without a plate of dulces beside it?"
The maid sent a hostile glance to Gwendolen, which the blonde beauty had the conscience not to resent. Rapidly increasing embonpoint was Carmen's one menace to beauty. She had already begun to pray to her patron saint for diminution. On the prie-dieu invariably lay a half-nibbled chocolate. Were not Gwendolen's friendship so open, so obvious, one might have suspected that she connived with fate to circumvent her Carmen's petition; that actually she assisted in the mournful process of burying perfect features and luscious, languorous dark eyes in warm cushions of pink fat. But no, we must not think such things of Gwendolen.
Because of the new intimacy and an increasing activity in Tokio society Gwendolen now saw much less of her schoolmate, Yuki. Perhaps it was as well. The Princess Haganè had her own lessons to learn, and they were Japanese lessons. Following close upon her first sewing-meeting came Yuki's presentation to Their Majesties. The court ladies welcomed her into their midst. As in humbler Japanese circles she was immediately asked innumerable questions. In return she began learning, from her high-born interrogants, the new language of extreme court ceremony.
Another reception and another sewing-meeting fell due. To the latter of these functions a mere handful of foreign ladies came. Gwendolen and Mrs. Todd were detained, actually, by some globe-trotting Washington associates, who landed that very day at Yokohama. In the two subsequent gatherings foreign attendance ceased altogether.
Each reception was, however, a "crush." Gossip is a magnet; the presence of eligible young men not exactly detraction. Mrs. Stunt and others of her kind went openly to see whether Pierre Le Beau would attend, and how he would conduct himself before host and hostess. It was the secret cravingof such social vultures that a scene, the more disgraceful the better, be enacted for their entertainment, and the disappointment was correspondingly keen when neither Pierre nor Count Ronsard attended. The count, indeed, sent cards and a gift of flowers. No mention at all was made of the younger man.
Three of the Haganè official functions had taken place. March hurled itself gruffly into the outstretched arms of spring. Gwendolen knew why Pierre stayed away and why Ronsard remained so impassive. She had good reasons for not telling Yuki. At her friend's silence the latter wondered. Instinct told her that there was a deeper explanation than mere forgetfulness. More than once she had nerved herself to inquire; but always, just on the point of asking, something had happened to interfere.
A new cry, which affected Yuki far more openly, began to ring through the current press. "If complications have arisen in Manchuria let Prince Haganè go and unravel them!" This demand grew in insistence with each day. Presently the whole nation had arisen, and was clamoring, "Send our War Lord, Haganè, to the front!" Yuki waited patiently for her husband to inform her of the reception of this demand in high quarters. Like a good Japanese wife she dared not force the issue. On every side her part, it seemed, was to wait, to command herself, to endure suspense. To an impatient nature such as Gwendolen this would have been torture. To Yuki, trained through centuries of brave ancestors to play her woman's part of uncomplaining quiescence, the strain was not so great. Her ignorance of Pierre seemed, indeed, the heaviest burden. She scanned now the English columns of every paper, hoping against hope that her eyes would seize the printed assurance of his return to France. This was the young wife's prayer, uttered on her knees each night, muttered through pale lips a hundred times each day, that Pierre would go quietly home, and in his own dear land forget the woman who had broken faith with him. His threat against Haganè's life did not sound to her absurd. It re-echoed to her, always with a pang of fear. Love and hate alike give preternatural insight. By injury to Prince Haganè alone could Pierre gain full revenge. By this means he could strip the flesh from thebones of her loyal sacrifice, laying bare the grinning skeleton of a national disaster, wreaked through her.
Of course she could not speak these fears to Haganè. There was no one, not even Gwendolen, to whom she could whisper them. Haganè was now seldom at his home. She gathered, once or twice, from gossip of the servants, that he had spent the previous night and day at the Tabata villa, with a small company of statesmen as his guests. In the infrequent visits, she, studying his face with unconscious intensity, saw the same power, the same sadness, the invincible strength unshadowed and unexcited by this renewal of popular hero-worship. The thought that he might leave her alone, to fulfil the duties of his position, brought to the young wife a pang of terror, of misgiving. She believed it to be merely a shrinking from heavy responsibility. To outward appearance she and Haganè stood on opposite shores of an increasing chasm; but in her heart, when she dared listen to its timid pleadings, she knew it to be a narrowing, not a widening, void their joint lives spanned. She could not doubt that he felt some grave pleasure in seeing her on his expected visits to the great shell of his official home. The weekly receptions, where she bore herself with ever-increasing dignity and poise, did indeed give to the husband a deep impersonal satisfaction. It was more than satisfaction that he felt, as he saw the great filled packing-cases sent away each week to suffering soldiers in Manchuria.
Once, coming in upon her unannounced, as was his custom, he had suddenly taken the white thing in his arms, thrown her head back to his shoulder, and gazed into her eyes as though to drag from some hidden depth an awakening thought,—a cradled possibility. Yuki's lids drooped under the blinding force of his look. She felt as though a great silent wind blew, pinning her against a rock. Surely in his twitching face was more than a calm self-congratulation! It was the man, the master, summoning by right what was rightly his. Love—strong, terrible, yet tender, showed for an instant in his dark eyes. He went from her as quickly as he had come. No word had broken the silence. During the rest of that day Yuki rocked in her heart a new-born hope, a possibility so strange, so ineffable that she dared not open her eyes to itstiny face. With bowed head and fast-closed lids she hushed it. That day set her feet on the temple-stair of shining prophecy. But how dare she, already to one pledge so faithless, climb upward, even on bleeding knees, to that splendid portico above?
April spread her witchery of green and flowers over a thousand barren hills. Wild azaleas, wigelia, and bokè (pyrus Japonica) barred the slopes with pink and crimson radiance. Valleys, so lately brown, spread now a wide bloom of violets, a curdled residue of purple morning mists. Earth-dwarfs, congeners of Loki, who people the under-world, drove upward from their subterranean caves huge copper spikes of young bamboo—ten inches across, some of it, as it pierced the mould—a marvellous springing column climbing by joints, two feet a day, toward the sun, and casting off brown sheaths, like outgrown jackets. Children roamed the hedges, the rice-field dykes, and copses (forgotten and unbuilded, sometimes in the very heart of Yedo) for tsukushimbo and the yellow chrysanthemum. All gardens, even those amorphous products of Eurasian uncertainty surrounding the American Legation and Yuki's official home, needed to be fair. Birds came to them, and early butterflies. The sun poured down upon them in equal measure his golden cataracts of joy.
Saturday of the first week came. Pierre Le Beau had not been mentioned to the Princess Haganè, nor had she found a printed notice of him containing a hint of information. Cleverly insulated wires of venom, it is true, attached to her name and Haganè's. Sometimes Pierre was subtly referred to, but never openly. Next day, thought Yuki, she would go to church. Perhaps something would be said of him by the ladies who always crowded so eagerly about her carriage door. This weekly service, in the Episcopal church at Tsukijii, formed now the closest tie that bound Yuki to her Western memories. It was anticipated with eagerness. This link, at least, she told herself should not be snapped. Haganè's consent that she continue openly her Christian devotions had been unqualified.
The mail that Saturday morning proved unusually large. An American mail-ship was in. Several letters and paperscame from trans-Pacific friends, a great many Tokio social invitations, a few notes relating to Red Cross matters, and one folded pamphlet with a Japanese postmark. She knew from its pink wrapping that it was "The Weekly Hawk's Eye." With a slight shudder she put the evil thing aside, with a vague reawakening of the intention to burn it unopened. Slowly she read her letters and invitations. She glanced through the few American papers for any blue markings. All were finished. She leaned to gather them up and have them taken to her private desk upstairs, when the sun, pointing one bright finger through a blind, fell upon the pink wrapper and rested on her name. "Princess Sanètomo Haganè." It looked very cheerful and suggestive. The dull pink of the cheap paper glowed into a rosy hue. Perhaps it was an omen. Perhaps if she were brave and opened the sheet boldly she would find, instead of the usual malicious innuendoes, the announcement that Pierre was leaving for France. Thinking of Haganè's eyes as they had probed her own she flushed, trembled a little, and murmured aloud, "Oh, if he would only go—if Pierre would only go—how happy—" She broke off. A wave of compunction, pity for Pierre, scorn of her own fickleness, rushed upon her. She took the paper hastily, set her lips for what might be in store, and opened at random.
Her name was plain enough, and Prince Haganè's. This time headlines had been dared. "Prince Haganè soon to leave his young wife. The Nation demands his presence at the centre of martial differences. Haganè loath to leave his young wife. Who knows what may happen? M. Le Beau raving in delirium at the German hospital in Yokohama."
So much she read and paused. Very quietly she folded the paper and slipped it within a gray silk sleeve. She stooped for the crumpled pink wrapping, smoothed it also, and dropped it in her sleeve. Next she gathered into a neat package the mail she had been reading, rang for a maid-servant, and sent the mail up to her boudoir. Her orders were given in the usual low, pleasant voice. In closing, she said, "Should visitors come I am to be found in this room."
Again alone, she walked to a western window and staredout at the great square shadow of the house thrown across the awkward garden. Beyond the straight line of the shadow, paths shone brilliantly in the sun, and flowers danced. Spring had come a little early. Everything that had a blossom to show rushed, it would seem, to the perfumed exhibition.
Yuki shivered slightly. For the first time she knew that her hands were growing cold. She moved slowly toward the fireplace, an ordinary foreign grate with coal fire burning. Nearer the warmth she drew out again the pamphlet, unfolded and deliberately read the article from the first word to the last. Some passages she dwelt upon, extracting to its full flavor the bitterness of frustrated hope.
According to the "Hawk's Eye" correspondent, Pierre had caught germs of malignant malaria, perhaps of typhus, while wandering in a state of great mental agony along the moats that border a certain official dwelling. He was now at the crisis of his malady. Two nurses watched him night and day, for his dementia had made of him a cunning schemer, full of sly efforts to escape. When detained he raved fearfully, saying that he had "things to do." "The Hawk's Eye" ingenuously marvelled as to what these "things" could possibly be. As is usual with articles so inspired the suggestions were far more damaging than any actual statement.
She let her hands fall limp. One still clasped the ugly journal. Only a few moments before she had accused herself of heartlessness toward one she had wronged. In her generosity she had almost demanded a deeper suffering, if only it could be directed personally to her offending self, and not include, in its consequences, that great man whose name she now bore. Well, here was her punishment,—a fetid, scalding stream of venom, hurled full and straight at her. Attacks like this were, she knew, less to Haganè than the mud children throw against the base of a lofty statue. His mind moved in a stratum far above such contamination. The nation spoke direct to him. His ear was for his Emperor, the old gods of his race. "Yes," thought the young wife, "I wished to suffer for the wrong I have done, but these writhings of a polluted personality can scarcely be dignified by the name of suffering. It is as if one went forth bravely to combata knight in armor and encountered a filthy swine. One cannot retaliate upon a beast. Nor,"—here, with a nervous transition to energy, she tore out the offending page,—"nor can I, being his wife, attempt punishment for this defilement." The sound of tearing paper soothed her. One by one she snatched the sheets, crumpling them loosely, and threw each in turn upon the coals, where it twisted, opened its angles, caught in a little puff of smoke, and burned quickly. A sound came to the front door. Some one opened it. She gathered the remaining pages, rolled them hastily into a pithy sphere, and tossed the whole mass to the grate. A soft explosion of smoke and brightness followed. Red light fawned upward to the slender gray figure and excited face. A door of the drawing-room opened, and the draught pulled out from the grate before her a long, pliant tongue of flame. She felt Haganè catch her backward. "That is a risk, to burn papers in these great, ill-constructed chimneys, my little one," he said. Yuki clung to him, staring up into his face to try to judge whether he had already seen the offensive article. He had an unusual animation. She even fancied that his voice shook; but it was not the excitement of anger or disgust. Some national crisis had come. His next words proved the truth of this supposition. "I wish you not cremated this day of all days," he smiled, trying, as she could see, to speak with some lightness. "I need my wife. An opportunity for service has come, more important than all that has gone before. Are you ready, my Princess?"
"Lord, I live but to serve you and my land."
"We are in a national crisis, Yuki," said her husband. He began to walk up and down the long room with an abandonment to agitation which she had not seen in him before. "A crisis," he repeated. "I shall not explain the matter of it. You need not have the weight and burden of such knowledge, but you can aid me greatly." He paused now near a window. Yuki followed. "I await your pleasure, Lord," she said.
He turned to her the deep magnetic gaze she dreaded, yet, strangely enough, longed, at times, to provoke. One massive hand leaned on her shoulder. She had no impulse now to shrink from him. She longed to cower against the strongdefence of him, to hide in his breast, in his sleeves, as the frightened souls of little dead children hide in the sleeves of Jizo Sama. As though understanding the unspoken longing he drew her very near. His words were still impersonal. "Some terrible, hidden things long suspected have come to light. I do not believe the wrong past mending. The first step in restitution comes to-day. It is a secret meeting here, in this house,—a small gathering of statesmen, but it may mean to us defeat or victory."
"Yes, Lord, I listen. A meeting at this house."
"It must appear to be a casual assembling. No servant, not even the good Tora, is to be trusted. When I have given you full instructions I return at once to the palace. Should any unforeseen chance call me back before the hour of one, I charge you speak no words into my ear, nor seek to deflect my thoughts from their ominous course. I bear a heavy burden, Yuki. But the Gods will aid me in my strength."
"I will not honorably accost or fret you, Lord."
"The statesmen,—and here are the written initials of their names,"—he drew a small scrap of paper from his sleeve—"these seven statesmen, including Sir Charles Grubb and Mr. Todd, will be ushered as usual into these drawing-rooms. If no other guests be present, say to these men in turn, after the first salutations, these exact words: 'I have received from my lord instructions and the initials of your name.' Can you repeat precisely?"
Yuki did so.
"That is well. Thirteen words, remember. They make to these seven a sort of password. Each, as you speak, is to be conducted to my small office-room to which the wooden doors, and the heavy portières also, are to be drawn."
"I understand, your Highness. But what am I to do if other visitors come?"
"Ah, little Princess Haganè, it is in such straits that your experience of foreign social hypocrisy must be made to serve you. It is of imperative need that you do not leave this room after the hour of the Rat (1p. m.). Yet it is also imperative that you receive, equally, all guests. Those unbidden you must get from the house."
"It is a difficult task, Lord, but it may be done."
"That is a brave wife. Remember that not only from the time of the Rat, but this hour, too, this very moment, commences your vigilance. Tale-bearers and enemies may be lurking near. If human ingenuity can keep a meeting secret this will be kept, but, alas, in a time of great issues the dragon's teeth sow spies instead of men. Do you understand all I have said, my Yuki?"
"I understand, your Highness, and am honored to do your august bidding." Before leaving her he gazed for another moment steadily into her upraised face. "You are pale to-day as your name, my small snow-wife; yet your eyes move and glitter with a strange unrest."
"I beseech your Highness concern not your weighty thoughts with my unimportant outer appearance."
"I must not do so, indeed," murmured her husband. "My chief thought now must be my Imperial Master. Farewell, little one. I shall arrive at one, if not before."
Yuki followed him to the door for a last wifely obeisance. The carriage had been waiting for some moments. After the loud rattling of wheels came a hollow silence. Yuki stood on the granite doorsteps looking outward with unseeing eyes. The house-shadow shrank closer to the huge cube that cast it. Sunshine, like a golden fluid, brimmed up the azure walls of day. From garden-beds nearby, and from path-borders leading into hazy distance, blossoms beckoned. She saw only an iridescent blur. The jinchokè (called by foreigners Daphen Odora) rose in waxen masses of white or arbutus pink. Azaleas heaped formless hillocks with Tyrian hues, and the long yellow sprays of yama-buki, to which Gwendolen had so often been compared, poised waiting for the breeze, or else tossed in bright indignation at the sudden desertion of a bird. Sweet odors flowed inward, and whispered her to follow. Still half unconsciously she stepped down to the gravelled path and began to walk in the garden.
Sometimes, among the beautiful familiar blooms, an alien flower smiled, a budding rose-tree, or a purple blotch of English violets. The thought of Pierre's danger came now with less of acid pain. Perhaps this illness was to save them both—andHaganè. The long hospital days might bring to the young Frenchman clearer judgment, and perhaps a more forgiving heart. In convalescence, surely, he would wish to return to his own land. At such times the spirit is fain to leave the weak body, and speed on before, to childhood's home. She had reached a cluster of the early iris. These were Pierre's flowers, the lilies of his France. She stroked the silken petals as though they were hands. "Pierre, my poor, poor Pierre," she breathed aloud.
"My Yuki-ko," came as an echo.
Yuki started and looked around in fear. "Little flowers, was it you that spoke my name?"
"Yuki," came the low voice again. "Do you grieve for Pierre? Poor Pierre is dead!" He stepped out from behind a cluster of dark cypress-trees. Yuki bit her lips to keep from screaming. Was this the ghost of the man she had loved?
"Yuki," said the phantom, with a little chill whine in his voice, "won't you even speak to me?"
"Is it you, Pierre, or is it indeed your newly fled spirit come to reproach me?"
Pierre ran his hands through his short, dry hair, then dropped them, as if the effort had been too great. He took a step forward. "Why, yes, it is Pierre, after all. I thought I was dead, but I am not. Yes, sweetheart, you may come to me. It is your Pierre."
Yuki ran to him and caught one dangling hand. It burned her like hot metal. "You escaped, in spite of your two nurses?" she cried.
Pierre began to whimper. "Yes, yes, Yuki, I got away at last. I had things to do. Don't send me back there, Yuki! My room has bars, like a cage."
"How did you get away?"
"Little Jap nurse couldn't resist me. Told me of a back entry. Nice little nurse in white cap. Jap—cap; cap—Jap. Ha—ha!"
"Come, dear," said Yuki, pulling him gently. "I will not send you back. You shall go with me to the little Cha no yu rooms at the far end of this garden. There you can lie downuntil you feel better. Will you follow me quickly and in silence along this little path?" She pointed.
"Indeed I will—no need to ask twice," cried the sick man, and began to giggle like an excited child. "I'd follow you anywhere, Yuki. Are we running away to be married?"
"Hush, Pierre; if you laugh and speak so loud others will hear you and send you back to prison. We must be very, very quiet."
"Very quiet," echoed Pierre, solemnly. "Never do for old prince to hear us, oh, no!" He began to mince along on the tips of his toes, giggling every now and then at the thought of the trick they were playing.
Yuki sped on before him, like a fawn. At the tea-rooms she sprang to the narrow, railless veranda, drawing a single shoji panel carefully to one side. The two small rooms were in order. Sunken into the floor of one was the copper hibachi, two feet square and now filled with cold ashes, an article indispensable to tea-rooms of ceremony. The sun pouring against translucent paper walls flooded the small space with radiance.
"What dear little rooms!" exclaimed Pierre, as he scrambled in, panting. "She would call them 'cunning little rooms,' that yellow-haired American girl. What was her name, Yuki? She is not a good friend to poor Pierre; she could not swear it when I asked her. Are these the little rooms where we are to live, Yuki, now that we have run away from the old prince and are married?"
"Yes, dear," said Yuki, soothingly. "Here is where Yuki will care for you until a betterness comes. See, I shall heap for you these nice cushions. They are your Japanese pillows. You must lie on them very still, and keep all these shoji shut close until I can go and get some medicine for you."
"No!" said Pierre, fractiously. "Medicine no go! Kusuri, ikanai! Too much kusuri every day at hospital. Nurses all carry spoons in their belts. I don't need more medicine, Yuki; only for you to kiss me. You haven't kissed me all day!" He threw himself among the bright cushions and began tossing his head from side to side.
"I will kiss you when I get back," said Yuki. "Only promiseto lie here very quietly until I can come, and many times I will kiss you."
Pierre raised himself on an elbow and looked dubious. "Kiss me before you start," he demanded. "You break promises, you know. And this morning you have such a droll fashion of going suddenly far away, and then starting back quickly, just like the end of a trombone that one is playing. You must be a witch, Yuki, to move so swiftly through the air. Kiss me, or I shall not believe it is really you."
With a heart strained to the limit of endurance Yuki knelt beside him on the matted floor and pressed her ashen lips to the red coal of his mouth. Pierre, seizing her with superhuman strength, kissed her again and again, until the tortured woman felt that she must rend the air in clamor to some native god or demon who might save her. This passion, branded on the soul of Prince Haganè's wife, gained a new and terrible power of defilement. In a spasm of anguish she wrenched herself free, went backward from him, and seized the shoji's edge to hold herself. "I will kiss you no more until you take the medicine," she said, with a steadiness that surprised them both.
He lurched forward, grasping at a swaying sleeve. She eluded him. "If you are not more controlled I will leave you altogether, and send police to take you back to Yokohama!" He grovelled at her feet and whimpered. "I'll be good. Don't send me, Yuki. But if I lie quite still you'll kiss me many, many times again when you return, won't you?"
Yuki hesitated. He dragged himself half upright. "You shall. I'll kill you! I'll kill myself, here! You must kiss me. A wife always kisses her husband. Swear that you will kiss me!" The light of increased madness glared in his beautiful eyes.
"Yes, I'll kiss you, I swear it," faltered the girl. Pierre laughed foolishly in his satisfaction. "Then I'll lie still among your pillows, little wife. Old prince sha'n't find us. Put us in boiling oil, that old prince. Don't be gone too long, little wife."
Yuki hurried along the intricate paths toward the house. Dry sobs rose one after another slowly, coming relentlesslyupward in her slender throat with a distention that grew to agony. "I must not stop to think, I cannot give up now," she panted. "O Kwannon Sama, what am I to do?" This black hour, like some dark chemical, was turning the memory of all other grief to light. The one conscious thought which her mind hugged jealously was Pierre's necessity for medicine. Fortunately, she knew a little of this, and kept a well-filled chest. His fever was terrific. Human pity demanded that she first allay this raving torment of the blood before delivering him to cold officials, or even to Count Ronsard of the French Legation. Her thoughts and plans in this present bewilderment could get no further than the fever-draught now to be given the sick man. With shaking hands she prepared it, and then a second drink, a powerful sleeping-potion. She got back to him as noiselessly as she had come. Apparently no one had seen her. Pierre was now in actual fever-madness. He had thrown coat, waistcoat, and watch in various parts of the room. The cushions were strewn wide. A corner of one rested in hibachi ashes. In one of his hands he clasped tightly the half of a long ivory hairpin.
With the patience of a mother and the ingenuity of a wife she coaxed him, at length, into swallowing one of the draughts. He did not demand the promised kisses. He did not know her now, or, rather, the recognitions came in short flashes, like heat lightning. Sometimes he took her to be Gwendolen and accused her angrily of connivance with Haganè and the ambitious Onda family. Again he thought her the German head physician and raved of his wrongs. He passed rapidly from one language to the other, essaying at times his broken Japanese. It was generally in English that he denounced his faithless sweetheart, and the epithets directed against her caused Yuki's heart to sink with shame,—not for herself, but for him.
A longer interval of sanity came. He recognized his companion with piteous little cries and tears of joy. He believed that at last they were married, and prattled on of the long, happy future, of their little home in France, until Yuki, having come for the moment to the end of suffering's capacity, listened with a dreary smile and dull ears.
The second draught, the sleeping-potion, was to be given in half an hour. Through that interminable time she waited, his head upon her aching knees, his fevered hands reaching ever for her face, her shoulder, until lethargy alone saved her from an answering insanity. The plan was half formed in her dull thoughts to administer this potion, then, when slumber overcame him, to close the shoji, and leave Pierre to sleep away the fiercest fever while she could think out a way of getting him from the garden. But for the political meeting, falling so strangely on this very day, the situation would have possessed no great peril. It would have been merely a sick man who, in delirium, had wandered unknowingly into Haganè's garden. The servants might have found him; Ronsard have been telephoned for, and Prince Haganè himself asked what was best to do. This was what might have been; but here was the matter as it really lay. A Frenchman, and attaché of the Legation,—ill or well no less a Frenchman—concealed in Haganè's garden, sheltered and protected by Haganè's young wife! Yuki gave a convulsive shudder. The sick man gasped, and clutched the air as if he thought himself falling from a height. Fate smiled a thin, hard smile down into Yuki's eyes.
The girl did not resent Fate's prophetic stare. Already she knew herself trapped. Her wild thoughts had run since the beginning of eternity in this same ring of fire. There was time for nothing. The one frail chance was that Pierre should sleep on through the meeting undiscovered. Already twelve o'clock had come. From the high land near the samurai Onda's home, a big bell boomed and quivered out over the city. The echoes stirred and shifted tranquil layers of the noon. Fear sank down like soot upon a crouching woman with the sick man on her knees.
Pierre, for some moments past, had gradually ceased the restless tossing of his head, and was forgetting to utter short, disjointed words. The fair hair, that had been so stiff and dry, clung now in moist locks about his temple. His delicate hands ceased twitching and picking at Yuki's gown, and fell over limply on the floor. Caught loosely in the right hand lay the broken hairpin. To any Japanese, of any class, this would be fatal evidence. Under her fairy-like touch he gave a start,clutched more firmly at the pin she was trying to take, and threw his hand upward above his heart. Again Fate smiled, and Yuki bowed her head. Now a soft, regular breathing began. The healing sleep was on the sufferer. His face was growing young and gentle. Yuki stared down into it, tearless. Her heart, like some living entity beaten and tortured too long, had lost the power of sensitive response. There was only a dull, incessant aching that was becoming, already, an acknowledged part of her.
He was safe. To-day's crisis, at least of the devouring heat, was over. He would awake refreshed and clear. As for her, everything had grown so vague and far-away she cared very little what might happen. The insensibility of reaction bore her outward on a warm tide. Danger lost its meaning, and grew but a shadow-play on life. A Frenchman in Haganè's garden, and a crucial meeting to go on in the house! There was something piquant, fetching, in the idea. Yuki nodded above it and smiled. Oh, she was so tired, so tired of everything! A little malicious something was tapping, tapping, just at the base of her brain. The ache at her heart benumbed her. A desire, dull and insistent as the pain itself, crept to her, just to lie upon the matting near poor Pierre and rest. They belonged together, the weak ones. Chance and disappointment had thrown them about like toys. What had such as they to do with the God Haganè? Yes, she had better fail once more, and it would be the last. Let the grave statesmen come and go, let Haganè seek her! She had nothing to do but the easiest of all things, just to do nothing, and all this benumbing misery would be at an end.
She wondered, still smiling, in what way Haganè would kill her. She fingered curiously the stops of a dozen fearful thoughts, and felt no fear. Had law permitted him to carry the two swords of his class, the short one would deal a quick and merciful death. Since he was unarmed perhaps he would simply let one of the servants slay her, not caring to soil his hands with such feeble stains.
An influence was coming over her in rhythms, like tepid waves. A delicious lightness blew upon her brain. She gasped for insensibility as for music, dumb, perfumed music,drunk in by pores of the flesh. One small nerve of desire began to tingle. "Oh, let it go on," she cried to her soul; "have no interference! Let me pass into nothingness by this heavenly gliding!"
As from a great distance came footsteps and the sound of commonplace voices. Yuki moaned aloud, and crept an inch nearer her companion.
"She was seen last coming in this direction," said a speaker; "Ii, the gardener, saw her."
"She is not in the adzuma-ya! Can it be that our gracious lady has gone for repose to the tea-rooms?"
"Baka!" exclaimed the other whom she now recognized as Tora, the butler; "is not that great official residence sad enough and lonely, that the poor child seeks a more desolate place? I pity her."
"Luncheon becomes honorably cold upon the table," murmured the boy, showing compassion in his own way. "And foreign food when chilled, with the grease becoming as wax about the edges, is of all sights the most disgusting."
"Arà," sighed Tora, "she eats little enough even when the food is hot."
"Those many disgraceful things said of our lady in the newspapers,"—the younger servant was beginning, when Tora stopped him fiercely. "Gossip not of your betters, boy! You should not read such things. There are no truths in printed scandals. Come, not that way, she is not in the tea-rooms. I see a fresh disturbance of the gravel along this path."
To the listener's intense relief they turned sharply to the left. Wide awake now with an intensity of sensitiveness that made every stirring leaf an enemy, the young wife crept outward from between two shoji, closing them with the extreme of care. In full sight, on the veranda, lay her little foreign handkerchief. No other woman on the place used lace-bordered handkerchiefs. Tora must have seen and recognized it, and, in an instant, perhaps, of protection, have led the boy aside. Yuki's cheek burned. She dared not think Tora's thoughts. This humiliation was a wound made with a weapon of poor metal, yet she could not, even then, refuse gratitude for the delicate consideration.
As the two servants came again into the main part of the garden, their mistress walked quite leisurely a few yards before, stooping now and then to a flower, or gazing up with smiles to a blossoming cherry-branch.
"Luncheon is served, your Ladyship," said Tora, gravely, and bowed before her in the path.
"I will come immediately," returned Yuki. She did not meet his eyes.
Duringthe short, uncomfortable meal Tora stood like a painted stake behind his mistress's chair. The "boy," attempting to supply the watchful efficiency his senior for once appeared to lack, kept his small eyes darting from her white face to the "dirty wax" at the edge of her plate, until Yuki thought she must deliver herself over to an attack of laughing hysterics. Tora poured and brought her wine unbidden. Again she resented his presumption, again felt a cowed sense of thanks for his solicitude.
Abandoning the table at the first possible moment, she went swiftly upstairs to her own chamber and rang for the maid. The simple morning robe of smooth silk must be changed for a more elaborate afternoon toilette. She selected a curdled gray crêpe with tiny silver pine-leaves sprinkled through it. The under-robe was turquoise blue; her wide sash of blue-black satin brocaded in conventionalized silver pine-branches.
The transfer went on with breathless celerity, yet the hands of the mantel clock moved faster still. Ten minutes only lacked to the hour of the Rat. The sound of carriage-wheels crunching gravel rose from the drive below her. Yuki gave a restless motion of her entire body, and turned her face around to the maid, who now tied the great loop of the sash.
"Patience an instant longer, your Ladyship," smiled the maid. "Let me but girdle your illustrious person with the obi-domè and I shall be done."
"Here is the obi-domè," cried Yuki, her voice betraying her impatience. "I shall retain one clasp while you wind it around the sash." She took up from among the American toilet articles on her dresser the article desired, a flat, soft braid of silk with golden clasps. Yuki, as she had said, held one end against the front of her sash, while the maid dexterouslythreaded the high sash loop at the back, and brought the answering clasp to its mate. It clicked like an old-fashioned bracelet.
A servant knocked on the door. Yuki herself answered. With mingled relief and perturbation she read on the cards the names of Mrs. Todd and Miss Todd. It was an unfortunate time for their visit, yet now as always the thought of Gwendolen's presence brought a little stir of excitement, a sweet glow of true happiness. During her flight downstairs Yuki formed the clearest resolution that had come to her in the distracting day. She would tell Gwendolen of Pierre's presence. If help were possible, Gwendolen would find a way. The new hope brought a little glow to the face which greeted her American friends. A little talk on unimportant, pleasant matters would refresh and steady her. For a moment only did the bright illusion abide. Gwendolen and her mother bore, in common, an air of hesitating excitement.
"Oh, what is wrong now?" cried Yuki to them both.
"Well, youarequick!" said Gwendolen; "have we become mere transparencies, or do your wits acquire a preternatural alertness in these big rooms? Yes, there is something wrong—not fatally so, only a menace."
"We felt it our duty, Yuki—" began Mrs. Todd, on her lowest register.
"Now, mother," Gwendolen interrupted, "you promised faithfully to let me tell Yuki in my own way. You sound as if you hooted from a cave. It isn't anything horrid, darling!" This last speech was directly to the princess. "Don't begin to fade away. It is simply that Pierre, who has been ill at the German hospital in Yokohama, escaped this morning, in delirium, and the authorities are after him."
"In delirium—raving indelirium—the poor tortured boy!" echoed Mrs. Todd's sepulchral tones.
"Oh, is that all?" breathed Yuki. Her face showed unmistakable relief. Gwendolen stared at her, incredulous.
Mrs. Todd put up her lorgnette. "All! Did I understand you to say all? Is it not enough? Have you known before to-day of his terrible illness?"
"No, indeed, I have not, dear Mrs. Todd. And by 'all' Idid not mean the heartlessness, as you think. I only meant—I meant—"
"Humph!" said the matron, suspicion deepening with the sight of the young wife's confusion. "Perhaps Pierre has been here already. Has he been here, Yuki?"
Yuki looked more embarrassed than ever. She hesitated the fraction of an instant. Gwendolen's eyes sent out one hazel gleam. "No, dear Mrs. Todd," answered Yuki; "Monsieur has not set foot in this house since my first reception, many weeks ago."
"Humph!" said Mrs. Todd again, and closed her lorgnette with a disappointed snap. "Well, there's time for him yet! You had better look out, for if he is found here—" She shut her lips with a snap like the lorgnette-case. Because of avowed sympathy with Pierre, the good lady had assumed an air of displeasure with Yuki which all the new rank and wealth could not overcome. Yuki, strange to say, liked her the better for it. She hugged the memory of Mrs. Todd's cool looks as a fanatic might have hugged his haircloth shirt.
Gwendolen had turned away. She did not wish either Yuki or her mother to gain a hint of her personal thoughts. At Yuki's last statement, her quick mind had supplemented, "He has not set foot in this house. No—but the garden is wide, the steps and galleries inviting." Yuki hid some gnawing secret, of this she was sure. More carriage-wheels crunched the gravel and Yuki's heart at once.
"Ah," said Gwendolen, coolly, now beside a window, "here's the Emperor come to see you, Yuki!"
Yuki ran forward gasping. Anything might have happened on this reeling day.
"No," laughed the other. "I just teased you. But it is some magnate, I assure you. My heavens, what a swagger!"
Mrs. Todd, hastening to her daughter's side, drew the window-curtain farther. Her face glowed with satisfaction. "Prince Korin," she announced, "he is a dear man! I shall be pleased to meet him again."
"Come along, mother," said Gwendolen, a little brusquely; "he hasn't called on us."
"I sha'n't do anything of the kind," said the matron, indignantly."Prince Korin took me in to dinner last week at the German Legation. Doubtless he will be as much pleased as I to renew the acquaintance."
"Please do not urge your mother to depart," Yuki flung back over her shoulder as she went toward the door; "I want to speak with you, Gwendolen, on some important matter." Without a qualm she delivered the wondering peer into the outstretched hands of the American lady. Drawing Gwendolen to a corner of the big room she said, in a low and agitated voice, "He—that one we spoke—he is even now asleep in this garden. It is terrible, but I could not send him off. I gave medicine; he was nearly to die of great illness. Make no sound or look of surprise; no one suspects, unless it is the butler, Tora. Perhaps you can help me. What makes all more dangerous, more terrible, is a secret meeting of state to be held here this very hour. Prince Korin is the first. You and Mrs. Todd must go before Haganè come, or he will feel great anger to me. Your father is to arrive. Oh, Gwendolen, do you see any way to save?"
"It is the most frightful complication I ever knew in my life," said Gwendolen, awed for once into calm. "Why, of all days, should the meeting fall on this?"
"Some terrible crisis in war. All may depend on this hour,—our very national existence."
"I knew something was up. Dad is cross as a bear, and Dodge struts like a turkey. Yuki, there is but one thing. Your husband must be told the moment he enters this house!"
"Oh, if I could do that!" cried Yuki. "No such tearing thoughts could I have felt. But he has given orders to me not to disturb his mind on anything until this meeting has passed."
"Nonsense, you must disobey of course," said the other; "unless I myself could get Pierre out of the garden." Her practical American wits worked rapidly. "I can do it I think. You must have smaller gates to these high walls."
"Yes, yes, on all other days," said Yuki. "But not just for this one day. Everything—everything—for these few hours are bolted. I think it to be karma, Gwendolen. No use to fight for me!"
"Now look here, don't go into despair so soon. You say you gave medicine. Is it a sleeping draught?"
"Yes, first the strong fever-cure; then, half-hour later, a sleeping potion. It is strong. It would keep the Japanese asleep for many hours."
"Go to your husband, Yuki. You must do it; never mind disobedience!"
"But if some strange thing that you, not being Japanese, cannot foresee should hold me back, do you think there is other chance?"
"Of course," said Gwendolen, "everything is in your favor. He will sleep until after the meeting, and then you can tell your husband. Only the risk—even a tiny risk—is so dreadful I shrink from having you take it."
"Yesterday Haganè said to me, 'A wise man never leaves something to chance,'—only in such way does chance surely serve him."
"You'll come through. Don't you fret, darling. The police would not dare search for him here. Ah, more statesmen!—this time in humble jinrikishas. The prime minister in a street kuruma! It is time for me to get mother away!"
Ignoring the scandalized side-looks of Prince Korin, Gwendolen stooped to her friend, folded her very closely, and whispered a low torrent of words of love, of encouragement, and of confidence that she did not altogether feel. Fate hung dark banners on the false battlements of Yuki's official home. The great square shadow, creeping now toward the east, gathered dampness. Gwendolen shivered violently as she passed under the porte-cochère.
"You needn't have been in such a nervous hurry, Gwendolen," said Mrs. Todd, with tart asperity. "Prince Korin and I were having a delightful chat."
A beggar, unusual sight for Tokio, crept in through the wide gates toward the fine waiting carriage. The driver leaned over, menacing the intruder with a long whip. Gwendolen stopped him. A sudden impulse made her open and invert her pretty purse. A few silver coins fell into one gloved hand. She leaned down, pressed them on the wondering supplicant, and whispered in English, "You are a Japanese.You have a soul in that foul body. Pray for my Yuki!"
Yuki welcomed the new arrivals, repeated her password, and ushered them personally into the office. She stationed herself by a window, now watching and praying that her husband might come soon, and alone. Three more kuruma rattled in,—common street kuruma. In the first two were Sir Charles and a Japanese cabinet minister; in the last, Haganè. The three fell into deep speech before the drawing-room could claim them. Haganè led them, as if by instinct, to the office-door. None seemed to perceive the little hostess, clutching at a window-curtain.
"My Lord," she faltered, coming forward swiftly to within a few feet of her husband, "may I speak—"
He turned half-recognizing eyes. "Who already have seats in the inner office?"
She named the two men. "Two more of our countrymen and Mr. Todd to come," he murmured. "That makes the number."
"Cannot I see your Highness a brief instant?" she pleaded.
Two more Japanese gentlemen entered on foot. Haganè conducted them to the door of the office. Yuki kept close to him.
"Lord, Lord—my husband!" she cried in desperation.
The note of appeal at last carried. "Any personal matter must wait, my child," he said, not unkindly, but with a decision that blighted hope. "I thought I instructed you as to this also."
Minister Todd arrived. He appeared both anxious and excited. In his hand he carried a leathern portfolio filled with papers. His nod toward her had absent-minded indirectness. "Oh, Yuki, it's you, is it? I suppose you have been coached. Have the rest come?"
"Yes,—in the office there, where I am to conduct you. May—may I speak a moment, Mr. Todd?"
"Is that the office?" he asked, pointing. "I tell you, little Princess Yuki-ko, big things are doing this day of our Lord. You wish to speak with me?"
Haganè's face appeared between the portières. "Ah, it ishis Excellency of America. Now are all come. This way, if you please, Mr. Todd. Remember, Yuki-ko, leave not this room until I speak with you again, and, if possible, let no guest enter."
"My husband," cried the girl, "this matter on my heart is no light thing. I must speak!" Both men turned, frowning slightly. "We cannot attend to hearts just now, my child," said Haganè. "You must defer your communication."
"That wasn't like Yuki at all to stop us at such a time," mused Todd, as he followed his host. "Your Excellency," he said to the broad silk-clad back before him, "are you sure that we did well to rebuff that little girl?"
"I am only sure, this hour, that our land is menaced." Salutations from the other statesmen interrupted this personal trend of talk.
They had passed into the office together. Yuki, standing alone in the centre of the big room, wan with the new rejection, watched them with a curious external interest, and dwelt in her mind upon the difference of character exhibited in the two vanishing backs. The hollow brass rings of the portières hissed and clashed together. A steady arm drew the wooden panels of the door. She heard a key turn. She was alone on guard. With a gesture so common to Japanese women she put both hands up lightly to her hair, patting abstractedly the shining loops. A dizziness crept under her eyelids. The ugly walls of the room began slowly to turn on axes of silence. She felt her head droop with the strange drowsiness she had known an hour before; a low moan came from whitening lips. Staggering to a window she threw up a sash, flung the blinds apart, and, clasping her clenched hands upon the sill, knelt, and let her head rest upon them.
The inrush of the sweet spring winds, and this interval of quiet, following so closely upon a series of bewildering events, brought soon a balm of healing. Yuki had a nature essentially calm and self-contained. Emotion stirred and sometimes swept her from her feet, but it was an emotion that had no surface-play. Each quiver of her face answered but weakly some fundamental throb of being. She had not the usual girlish terror to bestow on scampering mice and dark corridors.Excitement generally steadied her. The one unruly, unclassifiable influence in her life had been Pierre,—his strange love-making, his exotic fascination.
In a little while she rose from her knees, drew a chair toward the opened window, and seated herself. Her eyes, instead of seeking the natural loveliness without, fell, in a new abandonment to thought, upon the great bouquets of Hanoverian roses woven in the foreign carpet at her feet. In the garden-bed just beneath her, bushes of daphne, of azalea and the golden yama-buki were in bloom. A bird, swinging on a spray of the weeping pink cherry just across the path, sang to inattentive ears. Bees droned incessantly. From the closed doors of the little office came a reflected murmur. Now from the blur of tone shot a sudden slap as of a hand struck upon a bare table. A voice cried in English, "Gentlemen! gentlemen!" and a chorus of voices, "Sh-h-h—." Yuki caught herself back to the terrific import of the moment. What were those great men thinking and saying behind the closed doors? And what was her small single danger to the issues they represented? She walked down the west wall of the room in the direction of the office. Two low French windows, opening, indeed, to the very floor, gave upon an uncovered balcony. She parted the glass door-frames of a window and stood still, gazing outward, this way and that, down and along curved paths where sunshine lay like yellow silk, and flying shattered waifs of blossoms made wonderful wind-blown patterns. Her eyes clung longest to a little path just skirting a great stone lantern, for this led to certain tea-rooms at the far end of the garden. Now she walked slowly all around the room, pausing at the main door which led in from the front hallway. Footsteps were advancing. Yuki opened to them.
"The noble Sir Onda has arrived,—father to your Highness," said Tora.
Yuki hesitated. "Does my mother accompany him?"
"No, your Ladyship, it is Sir Onda alone. He desires audience with my august master, but I told him I had received orders to usher all visitors directly to your presence."
"Quite right, Tora," said Yuki, trying to smile in a pleasant, unconcerned way. "Now say to my father that hisHighness, Prince Haganè is absent, but may return in the space of two hours. I am engaged on certain duties at my Lord's command. And, Tora—"
"Yes, your Ladyship."
"See that the visitor issues well into the street on leaving, and close the iron gate."
"Yes, your Ladyship."
The man's words and his bow had been quite as respectful as usual, perhaps a little more than usual, yet Yuki could not divest herself of the impression that there lurked a threat of comprehension, of nearness. "When I have explained all to my prince, we shall, perhaps, send good Tora away to some country estate. I could not endure his presence if I knew he harbored such a belief, and equally impossible is it for me to condescend to self-defence," thought the young wife. In her morbid state of consciousness, she could almost see, as a clairvoyant, Tora creeping to the shoji of the tea-rooms, parting the panels with crafty, expectant fingers; she could hear his gasp of consternation, of not altogether displeased agitation, as he discovered the beautiful young foreigner asleep on the floor, as he gazed, grinning, upon the broken hairpin.
Since the butler's knock, and Yuki's few words with him, absolute silence had prevailed in the little office; the very door seemed holding its breath. Yuki heard the panel pushed cautiously to one side, and knew that her husband listened. She went to her former place by the window. Now the bees outside, and the buzz of human voices within, recommenced. Into the latter crept vivacious exclamation. The clink of glasses arose, and now the sharp detonation of a match; more than once a smothered laugh was heard. Yuki sat by the window in apparent calm; her agony of suspense would soon be over. Those were the sounds that come at the end of an important conference, not in the midst of it. She clenched her little hands together within gray sleeves, and faced the office-door, to be in readiness with her smile when the grave procession should emerge. Another ten minutes elapsed, and another; the garden shadows gained visibly in length. Like a little image of propriety, she sat, and, for all her preparation,a small shiver passed along her frame as the office-door at last went flying aside.
So set had been her eyes, her thoughts, upon this door, that she had not heard the sound of stealthy footsteps without or the soft brushing aside of clustered shrubs. Pierre stood, bareheaded, under the weeping cherry. The drooping branches, each set along its entire length in single pink amethysts of bloom, enclosed him as in a fountain. The lower part to his knees was hidden in waves of yama-buki. The wind, now rising, concealed with tossing sprays his trembling nook.
First the doors of the office, then the thick portières had been flung aside by Prince Haganè. The notable company filed in, the Japanese not forgetting the slight, ceremonial bow to Haganè, who stood smiling to let them pass. The last to emerge was Minister Todd. He bore in his hand a paper folded and sealed. Haganè kept close behind him. As the rest of the company came forward, making adieux to the flushed and dignified little hostess, these two stood apart, talking in low tones. Todd now and again tapped the paper by way of emphasis.
Pierre, crouching among the sprays of yama-buki, saw and heard it all. His fever and madness were, for the moment, things that had not been. The price he would later pay for this immunity did not trouble him now. He seemed all mind and spirit and keen intelligence, with no encumbering body. Nothing was impossible. He would scarcely have been surprised had he begun to drift toward that inner room without effort, as one sometimes drifts in dreams, and to enter unperceived by any one but Yuki. There she stood, his sweetheart, his promised bride, kept from him by that great monster who towered near and kept talking to the thin American, and kept tapping a paper that bore a great seal, red like blood. It should be blood, Pierre thought, with a slight rise in his excitement,—the blood of that old toad who had cheated him of this flower. But did a toad have blood at all? Well, there was a way to find out! When the American left he would steal in, a new St. George pursuing an uglier dragon. He felt now feverishly in his pockets for a knife, a pistol. He remembered now that the pistol, a pretty toy of silver andpearl given him by a Parisian actress, had been left at the French Legation. A moment after, reason again grasped him. He smiled bitterly, calling himself a child, a fool. Nothing could be worse for France or Yuki either than the death of Haganè at his hands. Some other way must be found. The Japanese themselves had a saying, "If you hate a man, let him live." Yes, let the old man live. Yuki's true lover could yet win her, undrenched in any blood. That paper now,—if he could secure such a paper—Haganè would give any price for such a paper!