Ithad been said of Mr. Cyrus C. Todd that one might recognize him for an American half a mile away. The alertness, buoyancy, and self-confidence of a growing nation had expression through him. He held himself like a flagstaff from which waved the Stars and Stripes. To-day the bright invisible folds clung about him like a shroud. He felt the weight of tears upon them, tears that soon must be shed. Look where he would, no door of escape for Yuki opened. After all it was so much more Haganè's affair and Pierre's and even Ronsard's! But what comfort would this reply bring to Gwendolen? Ah, there was the pang! Gwendolen, who had known no sister but this frail bit of pearl and moonlight that held so deep a soul! Todd's head sagged between his shoulders. His step lost firmness. He was a man aged, to outward appearance, ten years in a day.
An inspiring bit of news had come during that forenoon from Manchuria. The land-engagements by which Russia was to restore her prestige lost at sea, and inflict a terrible retribution on her audacious enemies, had begun, and Japan, as on sea, was victor. At another time Todd would have rejoiced with the nation. Now the whole campaign became to his fevered imagination a colossal Juggernaut destined to crush one little girl,—a wheel of fate (karma, Yuki would have termed it) on which a white moth should be broken.
Todd seldom gave himself over to self-communion, yet those long days in the bright loneliness of his wheat-fields had once bred the habit. An ominous and most mysterious factor in his thought was a sense of pre-knowledge, of a relentless inevitability, of the desirability, even, of the sacrifice. The thing came, like a predestined growth, from the soil of necessity. "Joint knit to joint expands the full formed fate." As if, indeed, some ghostly counsellor leanedto him, the event, from which his human, his conventional selves recoiled, shuddering, seemed to his spirit a thing designed, not cruelly, by the Gods themselves. Yet to think of Yuki—his little Yuki—dead with her youth folded like helpless wings about her! The man groaned and stumbled in his path, as, weeks before, Pierre Le Beau, dazed with a more ignoble grief, had groaned and stumbled on these very stones.
The day was Friday, the hour approaching five of the afternoon. Little girls in brilliant-colored kimonos played ball, or hop-scotch, or hide-and-seek around the corners of the streets. Solemn-looking babies, with a mat of black hair tipped to the backs of otherwise smoothly shaven heads, loitered, engrossed apparently in Zen meditation, in the vicinity of their elders. The clothes of these pygmy abbots being wadded both in front and back, one, in his abstraction, toppling over, might regain his equilibrium with a single bound, like round-bottomed toys that always stand on end. Infants of a size smaller had warm swallows' nests slung from the backs of elder sisters. These living burdens made no difference at all in the freedom of sports, or in the slumbers of those carried. In hop-scotch, the heads of the babes went up and down with each hop, until the slender necks should have snapped. But, no, babies were meant to pass most of their existence in this manner, and being Japanese, they took it philosophically. Sun, wind, or even a light snow might fall on the upturned faces, and sleep still line the swallow nest.
Schoolboys, in little squads, passed at intervals. Some among them must have been of the very lot who had once informed Pierre of the meaning of "Ikusa!" Many wore the foreign school uniform of dark-blue woollen cloth made into scanty trousers and "bob" jackets. With this outfit went, inevitably, coarse leather shoes. Other students had been to their homes to change the regulation school garb for the more comfortable wadded kimono, held in place by soft white girdles in endless yards of cloth, and completed with Japanese geta or clogs. All alike wore dark-blue military caps with the names of their school across the front in Chinese ideographsof gold. Their faces were smooth and brown; their eyes like dark jewels. They looked fearlessly upon the tall American. A few lifted their caps lightly, in token of respect, but many more stared, and often turned away with an independence very close upon audacity. Todd, in spite of his troubled reverie, was beguiled into smiling at them. Few indeed responded to his pleasant look. It savored to them of condescension. Abreast with a small battalion of young swaggerers, Todd, for an experiment, said distinctly, "Banzai Nippon!" The boys stood as if electrified. Todd pointed to his button of the Order of the Rising Sun. Suddenly caps and voices went high in air. "Banzai Nippon! Banzai Nippon!" they shouted. They crowded now about the minister, their faces all smiles, the mistrust vanished. They examined his button eagerly, then his watch-charm, his necktie, pin, and signet-ring.
"A-rr-e you the A-mer-i-kan?" asked one, in rheumatic English.
"Yes," answered Todd. "I am the new American minister,—A-mer-i-ca no Kōshi." This was one of the few Japanese phrases he had acquired.
"Banzai Nippon! Banzai Nippon!" came the renewed shout. "American good friend to Nip-pon—yes?" asked another lad.
"Huh! We all same lick off Russia's boots," growled a surly youth.
"Well, I hope you do,—though you mustn't say I said it!" laughed Todd. "Good-bye! Good-bye! You are fine boys!"
"Good-bye! Good-bye, sirr!" called out the boys after him, with caps in hand. It is to be regretted that most of them said, "Gooroo-bye-roo!" but the sentiment, at least, was faultless.
Todd, looking back to them, wondered whether there were any incipient Togos, Kurokis, and Haganès among the striplings. He sighed. The untarnished enthusiasms of youth are always saddening,—though very precious. One of the boys looked like Yuki. The likeness led him back, like a jailer, to his dark cell of meditation.
"What am I to say to Gwendolen?" was now his despairing cry. Gwendolen's eager questions, Gwendolen's clear eyes,—they would soon be torture-irons. She knew enough of the situation to have a right to all, yet how on earth was he to tell of a thing which no one had stated to himself,—a fleck of terrible certainty drifting to his gaze from Yuki's soul? Now a revulsion against the whole morbid situation flooded his being. He felt as he had sometimes felt in dreams when a horrible thing crept near, and he, though half-conscious that it was only a dream, still sub-consciously must endure the pangs of reality until he could wrench himself awake. Perhaps this also might prove a phantasm of the night! He snatched at the delusion. The voices of young children, the whirr of the low red sun through fleeting jinrikisha wheels, the gentle, restraining touch upon his hand of falling petals, jeered softly at the self-deceiver.
The city streets shortened now to purple vistas. Across from the smouldering west a single planet, isolated by its own brightness, preened itself with feathers of light. Todd's thoughts moved on like the shadow-pictures of a revolving lantern. Each was a silhouette, black, angular, menacing. If Yuki had indeed held Haganè inert, if an impulse of love, even of pity for a sick man, had prevented the instant regaining of such a paper, naturally she must get it back, though at the price of her life. But what did the babbling sick boy mean by saying that he had offered to return the paper to Haganè, if only Yuki would be forgiven, and that both as with one voice had refused? Here was the knot that pulled.
Haganè did not hate or scorn his young wife; Todd would stake his honor on that point. Never had a human countenance shone with deeper tenderness than that which Haganè had turned on Yuki within a few moments, too, of her wrongdoing. The more urgently she had insisted upon fulfilling the bargain, the brighter the faith in her that Haganè's eyes had betrayed. Yuki's secret was plain enough. She was to die by her own hand, giving her hostage of a soul to Haganè, the body of her death to Pierre. Both she and Haganè had been assiduous to use the one term "body." Todd could understand this much, but what was Haganè's hidden sourceof light? Here conjecture failed. If Yuki's death were the only possible way of redeeming the paper, all motives would be plain; but Pierre said that he had offered to restore it. This was a great thing for Pierre to have done. Todd's heart ached for the poor, weak, tortured boy, so soon to be overwhelmed in an iridescent wreck of his own making.
Yuki was to die! This one thing alone was terrible enough. His weary thought went on in a creaking treadmill. To Haganè the mere fact of death would, of course, be less terrible and less important. Mere animal existence, for its own sake, no matter how pleasant the surroundings, is scorned by a true Japanese. They have other lives to live, even on this old planet. They are to come again, soothed and strengthened by the few years of interval, each in the fresh, new body of a little child. In such tender blossoms of their own race they re-enter a world from which, smiling or shivering, as karma may have tended, they departed. Returning, they are dazed, a little wistful, a little timorous, yet grateful for the new chance. Believing that great sorrow and great temptation come always from the deeds of a previous existence, they meet them bravely, carrying their own burdens, clear in determination to retrieve that past, and mark out for the future a straighter and a higher way. The gentle Amida, Kwannon of Mercy, Jizo with the tender smile,—all may help them. Fudo Sama, immovable in a torment of flame, Monju, Aizen, and the old Shinto Gods may give them strength; but each human soul has wrapped in itself the power of growth and of decay. So, mounting, striving, failing, reconquering, at last the pilgrim may approach that shining mystery the world calls "Nirvana,"—that glare of glory where the soul is swallowed up in light, and so passes on to new realms of a radiance so ineffable that human thought falls helpless and blind before it.
He had heard Yuki tell all this to Gwendolen before the days of her Christian conversion. His listening had been more eager than he cared to show. Gwendolen had voiced his thought, as she replied, with a long sigh of wonder, "It does seem reasonable. So many things that we have to guess at are explained by this thing you call reincarnation. Loveat first sight, sudden aversions, family tendencies, that queer feeling of having been in a new place many times before—I think I'll turn Buddhist, Yuki; but don't hint it to mama."
Yuki had become a Christian. She believed her early religious training to have passed forever. She was sincere and earnest in the new faith. Her face turned, as by a gentle instinct, to the Star of Bethlehem. All that she professed, she believed truly and without question. Yet this life of hers was, after all, but a flower sprung from an eternal stem, whose roots were packed, burrowed, and buried deep in centuries of Eastern mysticism. She had drawn her convictions from her mother's breast, while, to belief of the tender nurse, ancestral spirits hovered and smiled above them both. She had breathed it in each year at Bon Matsuri, the Festival of the Dead, when little boats, laden with prayer and incense and the warmth of human food, went forth to comfort the souls of those who had died at sea, when each hillside cemetery stirred with the soft clashing of ghostly lanterns, luminous in a spectral ether, when little steaming cups of tea, and flowers, and children's toys, were offered to the dead ghost-people. Here were the meeting-places of the living and the dead. Here the two worlds answered, face to face, as reflections in still water. Yuki, in those childish days, no more doubted that hordes of spirits moved about her, lifting her hair, creeping into her sleeve, reaching even to the shelter of her faithful heart, than, later, in America she had doubted the presence of her human schoolmates, sitting in rows before wooden desks.
And now, above the blood-wet battlefields, the spirits of the great heroes of the past, worshipped by generations of the Japanese faithful, were hovering, to test, by their supreme standards of valor and endurance, the gray hosts of new aspirants for immortality. Yuki would feel that they were her judges also.
And the gentle Gods would be near,—Kwannon, Jizo, Amida—standing in great shining nebulæ of faith on the rim of night.
These sweeter visions passed, and the dark monitor inTodd's brain set him the task of fathoming Pierre's deed. The boy had stolen. Contempt swept from the thinker's mind its late compassion. Illness alone might partially excuse it; but in delirium, as in drunkenness, the latent impulse often shows itself. And Pierre, a young French dandy, a thief, expected to make, that night, such a woman as the Princess Haganè utterly his own. Yuki had probably saved his life at the expense of hers. His grateful reward would be to defame her. Then why would Haganè not take her back? Was she unworthy, simply through the act of saving Pierre, or was there a lower reason? No—no—no—the man cried out to himself. Yuki could not be evil. If Haganè believed it of her, he could not have so smiled; he had the look of a high-priest bent upon a beloved penitent. And that Ronsard should have believed,—a man who could speak and understand the Japanese language, who had lived among the people for eleven years! Having faced another blank wall, Todd turned.
He fell now to wondering in what way Yuki would choose to die. The long strain began to tell on him. Morbid thoughts and fancies assailed him. He almost gloated over the anticipation of Pierre's agony when he should be paid his price. But how would Yuki die? Would she be alone, or Haganè with her? Would her hand or his deal the final blow—give Death his first sweet sip of her? The two would be together; yes, it must be so; and the scene, unwitnessed though it was, one of unrivalled heroism, the silent speech of two Gods alone on a cloudy mountain-top. And what was he to say to Gwendolen!
The treadmill creaked again, and registered the notch of another empty revolution. Now Todd shook himself and raised his eyes to see how far he had come. Not a hundred yards ahead of him began the slope of Azabu. Blackening swiftly against the copper sky loomed the great Japanese entrance to his Legation. Evidently he must decide swiftly what to tell or not to tell his daughter. He thought of Dodge. Dodge knew the Japanese better than he; maybe he knew girls better. In the breaking of the news to Gwendolen he might be of great help. Then the tiny flicker of comfort died.Dodge and Gwendolen were playing at being enemies. They scarcely spoke. It was a lover's quarrel, Todd supposed, for Dodge certainly loved her; and the sudden friendship, on the girl's part, of a successful rival betrayed clearly her sentiments. Lovers' quarrels were well enough in their way; but why should this have come just now when Dodge could be of use?
He drew a sigh that racked the meagre frame, and started up the slope. "Kuruma, Dan-na San! Rick-shaw,—Dan-na San?" cried a group of coolies who had a little station at the base of the hill. Their accents were persuasive, even plaintive. They moved forward in a body, the empty black vehicles (inseparable from them as shells from snails) rattling behind them. They clamored like crows.
"No, I don't want you. No, I say, I-I-yè! Go back," he cried, and waved them off, with some irritation at their persistence.
The smooth gravelled driveway of the hill might have been a trough of viscid red clay, to judge from the slow and dragging steps of the one who now ascended it. The rejected coolies, staring up from the street level, assured one another that the tall foreigner was both sick and stingy. For the latter fault they hoped he would fall down before reaching the top of the hill. Then they would run to him, and charge a yen apiece for picking him up. They began to ascend, stealthily, like human vultures.
The dark spot of his ascending head could scarcely have been seen through the opened gate, when, in a whirl of rustling skirts, Gwendolen came down upon him. "I cannot tell her," he muttered between clenched teeth, as she came. "I shall die. She must not know what I believe!"
Gwendolen did not reproach him for being late, though he had thought her first words would be a playful chiding. She did not speak at all, only took his arm, pressed it lovingly with her own, and with cheek sometimes laid for an instant against his shoulder made the rest of the ascent with him. The tenderness, the consideration of her manner, touched him profoundly. He looked down into her face, white and fair even in the dying light. She smiled up at him. Hesaw a new beauty, a hint of new strength in her. For a moment his harassed sense clutched the impossible. Maybe good news of Yuki had come to her!
"What is it, child? You look different? What has happened?"
She gave a low little laugh, and did not answer. They had nearly reached the gate. In the great shadow a smaller shadow stepped out to join them. Gwendolen put out a white hand and drew it near. "This is what has happened, father—" she whispered. "We are—friends again."
"Friends?" echoed Todd; "you and Mr. Dodge,—thank God!"
"Friends!" came Dodge's pleasant voice; "well I rather guess not!"
"Gwendolen," said her father, drawing her close, "is this true?"
She clung to him, crying just a little in her excitement. "Yes, dad, if you are willing—if it will not make you unhappy. He has talked with me,—of the other thing; he has comforted me,—though he believes it to be, oh, so terrible! Are you—willing, dearest father?"
Todd put an arm around each, pressing the brown and the golden heads close. "I wish it of all things," he said. "Dodge is an American and a gentleman; nothing is better than that. Just now this—happiness of yours is a gift of God, for I bring nothing joyous."
"Tell us everything," pleaded Gwendolen. "I can stand anything now; my heart couldn't break with you one side of it, and h-him the other." Dodge went around to his side.
"I—I—guess it would be safer to tell it in the private office," said Todd, beginning to fumble for a handkerchief. "To tell you the truth, Gwen,—I'd really like—if you don't mind, my dears,—to turn woman and have one good cry."
"Come on," said Gwendolen; "I'll cry with you. I am so mi-mi-miserable and hap-hap-happy, I just can't—" She broke off in tears.
"I'm in!" said Dodge, pulling out his handkerchief.
Laughing and crying together, with arms around one another,they went in at the tall gate and to the ambassador's little den.
In the big house, in the drawing-room, Mrs. Stunt and Madame Todd exchanged mild confidences and cooking recipes. The latter had refused for once to discuss the affairs either of Pierre or Madame Haganè.
And so the night came in.
Nightin Japan, when the day has been all or partly clear, is a deepening mystery, a revelation of purple tones and velvet shadows. In the French Legation garden (designed originally for the delight of a feudal daimyo and afterward given as part of the French concession for official buildings) the soft blurred dusk concealed all but the vaguest suggestions of copse and path and hillock. A wanderer on the dew-drenched gravel might perceive about him, as by instinct, the beauty of line and mass. The smell of daphne and azalea flowers rose with pungent sweetness. Higher trees and mounds, set with rolling shrubs, rose against the sky-line and the stars like great crouching earth-clouds.
Pierre moved up and down the driveway just below the steps that led down from a balcony on the quiet west side of the house. Ignoring the doctor's orders, he had come a full hour before the appointed time. Ronsard, seeing his intention, had expostulated vehemently, using both language and gesticulation, but soon shrugged off the obligation with the reviving thought, "Only an hour more, and it will be over!"
So Pierre had walked at will. He drew in heavy breaths of the scented, humid air. He believed himself impervious now to further illness. He would not have listened or believed if one had told him that his present interlude of fictitious strength was like the shade of a upas-tree in a scorching desert. One cigarette after another was smoked and thrown at random among the shrubs, where each in turn lay like a malicious glow-worm, hissing and winking away an acrid spite. In the west a faint shining stirred the advent of the moon.
At ten minutes to eight o'clock Mr. Todd arrived. He was ushered at once, by order, into the small drawing-room where Ronsard sat. His face had new lines of struggle, and wasvery pale, but self-possession was evident in every gesture. His first act on reaching Ronsard was to draw out the paper, saying, "This, sir, has not left my body, or been touched by any hand but mine, or been referred to by any speech, since the moment, a few hours since, when I left you."
In his long, earnest explanation to Gwendolen and Dodge, Todd had, indeed, carefully refrained from letting them know that he was personal guardian of the document. It might have opened for them another blind trail of argument. During that agonizing interview he had thanked fate a hundred times for the part that Dodge had so opportunely been qualified to play. The clear judgment, intense sympathy, and clever resourcefulness of the young diplomat delighted him even in the midst of tragic exercise. It had taken the utmost skill of both men to overpower Gwendolen's first keen desire to go to her friend, to make the girl see that interference on her part had become impossible. He had left her half-fainting, though still insistent in her belief that God could not allow such a crime!
Ronsard rose as the guest entered. He, too, had gained a certain fatalistic calm. In reply to Todd's elaborate explanation, he had said simply, "Return the paper to its place, your Excellency. The farce will soon be over. Shall we not join our young imbecile in the garden?"
They paced together wide dimly lighted rooms, and emerged upon the uncovered western balcony. Pierre looked up and, wordless, continued his rapid, nervous strides.
"He'll kill himself, the fool," muttered Todd. "The mist piles in like thin cotton."
"It is too late even for his death to be of assistance," said Ronsard, with bitter animosity. His small eyes darted loathing after his young compatriot. He thrust pudgy hands deep into pockets below the equator of his belt, and rocked to and fro on his heels. Suddenly the pent-up discomfort, the apprehension, the strain of the situation clutched him anew. "God!" he cried aloud, and shook himself until the fat trembled. "As you say, Monsieur, no man is worth all this, nor woman either, least of all that puling hind yonder! Only a great cause is worth it,—the service for one's nativeland. I have tried to think of France—of France only. My country is to be cheated. I can do nothing; yet still I wallow in this tepid slime! How has it come about? You will give Haganè the paper, if he brings the woman with him!" He broke off, and after a keen look into Todd's unresponsive face began to walk in short, broken steps up and down the stone flooring.
His words had rung out clearly. Pierre must have heard each one; but if so, he made no sign. Pierre had now but one thing to think of,—his price, the woman that would soon be here.
Todd leaned against a corner pedestal, and Ronsard, after a moment, paused in his meaningless exercise, and stood again before his colleague. The two pairs of eyes met and fenced. Todd might have been made of wood. After a long glance Ronsard freed his right hand from its pocket and began pulling at the moist, red underlip. "You will of course, in any case, give up the paper at first appearance of Haganè and Madame?" His voice slid querulously upward with interrogation in the pause.
"Yes," said Todd, distinctly. "I conceive it to be my part to return the paper at that moment."
"Er—had we not better pause to see whether Madame tends to prove after all—recalcitrant?"
"The bargain said nothing of that. Pierre gets his price,—the person of Yuki, so they always worded it; Haganè gets the paper. It is simple enough. We don't need a lightning-calculator."
"Hark!" said Pierre, pausing, stricken, just beneath them. "Is it not the sound of—wheels?"
All became silent, alert, intent. The faint, low crackle and clatter of a kuruma on gravel, a vehicle slowly drawn, came apparently from the far end of the garden, just under the spot where the moon rose.
From the battlements of the white house beside them, the great pale house standing upright like an opened volume in the night, a queer flutter came, swart wings went beating against the stars, and a crow laughed aloud with raucous joy.
"A crow at night! It means, among these people, death!" said Ronsard.
Pierre started violently, and dropped his last cigarette. "Damn the flying fiend!" he cursed aloud.
The crunching of wheels drew near. They moved with increasing sluggishness. Each click had a sound of protest. To Pierre's tortured hearing, all noises crawled backward.
By this the moon was in the tops of enoki, camphor, and tall camellia trees. Where its light touched curves of shelled and smoothly gravelled paths, the spaces were of snow.
Out from the great red pagoda of Shiba temple, not half a mile away, came the first stir, the throb, the murmur of a great bell struck tentatively by its swinging cedar beam, before receiving in full strength the initial stroke of eight. "One!" the great bronze pendant boomed. "Two!" came more slowly and on a higher note, sending swifter ripples to overtake the first scurrying elves of sound. "Three!" "Four!" It swung majestically until the last stroke, piling echoes deep, filled the whole shell of night with discontent, and sank, a dew of sound, on listening leaves.
With the first tone, the jinrikisha wheels had stopped. The great crow, shaken from his height, had fled. Pursued far off by melodious echoes, he flapped his wings and screamed. A cricket near the steps awoke, jarred from his winter sleep by vibrant summons. The needle of his shrill, incongruous song pierced to the listeners' hearts.
"Mother of God!" cried Pierre, smiting his clammy forehead, "how is it that I live at all?"
Around a curved hillock directly bordering a path, straight into unhindered light, came the white hat and stooping shoulders of a coolie. Behind him dragged the dark bulk of a covered vehicle. Pierre half fainted against the steps. "She has come alone—alone—" he cried in exultation. Regaining his feet he wheeled to the two men watching from the balcony. "Gentlemen," he cried with a gesture, "may I entreat you to leave,—for these first moments?"
The coolie came on like a heavy machine.
Ronsard, at Pierre's question, transferred his weight from one foot to the other, and then looked at Todd. The latterdeliberately walked down the shallow steps and stood on the gravel beside Pierre. The white hat of the coolie fronted them like a silver shield. Pierre scowled upon the American, and gave a sound of anger.
"I'm sorry," said Todd, calmly. "But I promised to be present during just these first moments. Prince Haganè has my word."
"Prince Haganè!" echoed Pierre, with a hoarse laugh that was kin to the crow's. "Where is Prince Haganè? Backed out at the last, as I thought he would—like the coward and bully that he is! There has no Haganè come, don't you see? Only Yuki—my darling—my poor little love. I see her white dress yonder!"
The coolie straightened himself, flung the wide hat sideways with a single fierce sweep of arm, and turned to the wondering observers the set, livid face and burning eyes of Haganè.
"Prince Haganè is here," he said quietly, and tried to smile.
His peasant hat, skimming along the gravel, touched now and again with a hissing sound the surface of small stones. At length in a small patch of moonlight it came to rest, and lay rocking slightly, and gaping upward like a mendicant's bowl.
Pierre cowered. Ronsard nearly fell. "Prince Haganè in coolie's garb! What new horror is this?"
"Suppose we call it—delicacy," suggested Haganè. "Could any secrecy be too great for such a meeting?"
Todd narrowed his lids. Haganè kept a hand close upon one shaft of the little vehicle, conserving the upright posture. The black hood, bent far over to the front, completely concealed the occupant; but the dazzling white of a gown with pale embroideries, and the faint odor of flowers and of sandalwood now stealing upon the night air, should, in any case, have betrayed her sex.
"Yuki—Yuki, you have really come!" cried Pierre, and would have rushed to her but for the obstruction of Haganè's arm.
"First, the paper," said Haganè.
Todd jerked out the document. Ronsard held him.
"Wait; there is something damnable in that still white thing there in the rickshaw. Wait and see whether it is really Madame la Princesse, or a substitute."
Haganè stared one moment upon the speaker with lips that writhed backward, showing teeth like a baited boar. "His Excellency is always prudent. See, gentlemen, for yourselves, that I have brought my wife. Mr. Todd, have the document ready!"
With an almost imperceptible motion Haganè slipped from its nail the black, taut twine that held the lowered hood. It rattled back with the noise of the spokes of a giant fan. Yuki sat upright,—the full moon just behind her,—smiling. The little hands were clasped tightly in her lap. The coils of her orchid hair had the glint and sheen of the crow's wing.
"It is Yuki,—certainement!" screamed Pierre, in ecstasy.
"Hold back that paper!" roared Ronsard.
Todd stood on tiptoe. One long thin arm went up like the derrick of a dredging-machine. His hand held something square and white with a black blotch on it. The arm lowered. Haganè reached up, took the paper, and thrust it deep into the breast of his coolie robe.
"The paper—" groaned Ronsard; "it is gone forever!"
"But Yuki," cried Pierre, "has come to be mine forever!"
"One moment, gentlemen," said Haganè, again restraining Pierre. "You were all present at the agreement between Monsieur Le Beau and me. The paper is now regained, and here is its price; here is Onda Yuki-ko." He placed the shafts of the little vehicle on the lowest stair, and stepped out sheer upon the walk. Pierre, like an animal released, sprang to Yuki, knelt by her, caught her hands, and began whispering words of love.
Now for the first time Todd groaned aloud, and walked to a little distance. Ronsard followed him. But the Japanese stood immovable, his eyes on Yuki's face.
"My beloved, my beloved,—I know now that I have not believed in this ecstasy! But you are here! Come, dear one, you must be chilled in the night air. How quiet youare and pale! It must be the moonlight. And your little hands are cold! Why do you not speak, love! Are you trying to frighten me? This is not the time for dainty trickery! Speak, for God's sake! I have been so long on the rack my very soul is sore! Why do you smile so, and never change? Your cheek is colder than your hands.—O God, a thought is coming that will turn me, too, into ice! Yuki, Yuki, what strange thing is this rooted in your heart,—what grim hilt with twisted dragons? I see the crest of the Haganè clan! Yuki—Yuki—"
"She wishes the dagger not removed, Monsieur. It keeps her sacrificial robes—immaculate." Haganè spoke like a machine.
Pierre, the other side of Yuki, rose to his feet. His eyeballs swelled and rolled in the moonlight, giving him a look of frenzy. "Who is that that speaks to me? Has night a voice? What spirit hides behind that mask?"
"Death," said Haganè, calmly.
Pierre writhed beside the vehicle, and then became very still. The other listeners turned, expecting an outburst of maniacal grief,—perhaps a murderous assault on Haganè. Pierre's composure was more terrible than any speech. He smoothed one of Yuki's hands, and, after a pause, began speaking directly to her.
"So this has been his plan, dear? I might have guessed. He knew he was to kill you. Oh, the deed suited him! He called me a thief; but what has he not stolen? Wait for me somewhere, darling,—I cannot say just where it will be; but after—I will meet you. If sickness does not free me, I myself will loose this tortured soul and find you."
"She died by her own hand. That dagger was already in her heart as you, with the stolen paper, left my room."
"Oh, he is trying to hide,—to shield himself behind you, poor little one!" said Pierre to the dead woman.
A shadow on the nearest hillock moved. Todd went nearer to examine it, but could see no living thing.
"Time presses," said Haganè, speaking always in the same dull, hopeless way. "Our bargain was clearly stated. Shall I now leave with you the body, Monsieur Le Beau, or shall Iretrace my steps as I came, giving honorable burial to the Princess Haganè?"
"Le Beau, you cannot hesitate at such a question," cried Todd.
"Pierre, Pierre, in the name of France, compromise us no further! You have done harm enough. Let the poor sacrifice go in peace!"
Pierre caught Yuki to him, his arm about her shoulder, her glossy hair, with the white flowers, strained against his heart. Like a trapped beast he defied them all.
"No, I'll not give her up. You are all false,—all have betrayed me. If I am to have nothing else, I keep at least the frail shell of what she was! Oh, I shall kiss—kiss—kiss—her into life, or myself into her cold, white death. Yes, go, you toad of Hell!" he screamed toward Haganè. "Leave my price with me."
"Though dead, she still has reputation—family honor," Haganè said.
Pierre threw back his head for a derisive laugh. Just then a strange thing happened. From the hillock nearby a crouching shrub seemed to detach itself and spring. It was a man,—the old samurai Onda. Haganè had told him to be there. Before interposition could be made, he had thrown himself on Pierre, taken Yuki from his arms, thrown her back in the kuruma, and stood in an attitude of menace between them. "Keep your hands from my daughter! Keep your devil's hands from the Princess Haganè!"
"Shall we interfere?" whispered Todd to Haganè.
"No, I can do all," he said. Then to Onda, "Keep back, old friend. It is his right,—the price that we have paid."
"Master, Master," cried the kerai, almost sobbing in his excitement, "let me slay him—let me slay all three! I will die the self-death, or be hanged, with equal satisfaction. Only let me slay!"
"These others are just men, and my friends," said Haganè gravely. "The young madman yonder is protected by my word. We must think, too, of Nippon."
Old Onda's breathing rasped the silence.
"Monsieur Le Beau," said Haganè again, "you are fully determined to retain the body—and give her name to public defamation?"
"What else is there for me, devil?"
"That you have been her lover,—that you have so deeply injured me,—is that not enough to gloat over?"
For an instant Pierre stared. The meaning of the words came to him with a relish. Haganè really believed this thing; then of course he suffered! Very good! A look of malignant triumph grew in Pierre's face. Haganè drank the bitterness with his eyes. Here, at last, thought Pierre, was the undipped heel, the pervious crown. Yuki's body sagged an inch. Pierre stooped to it. Again she was in his arms, and he devoured, with despairing looks, the small, dead face.
Haganè, by a fierce gesture, commanded Onda to be still. Todd felt his heart stop, then rise slowly to his throat, and Ronsard, shivering, gripped the American's arm. The moon sailed full into a cloudless sky. Beneath it the great tragedy lay bare.
The trend of Pierre's thoughts at this moment he could never afterward recall. His flesh felt as though it melted from him. His brain stirred and pulled at possibilities before unfelt. Voices not of earth said strange things which he almost understood. Yuki's dead smile changed. He saw her lips quiver. Her white face grew to one still prayer. Something like a cooling fluid went into his hot and empty veins. He felt strong again and noble. He regarded Yuki's accuser with a new look.
"You lie in saying that thing, Haganè. Is it not enough that you have used, and then slain her, that you now traduce her name? No, you dare not resent my words, coward, liar, slanderer! What is the theft of a paper compared to this? For Yuki's sake, I tell you that no flower hidden in green leaves, no girl-child at its mother's breast, no flake of snow, new-fallen, is purer than this woman. Yes, grin now and tremble!"
He went swiftly to the stricken man, and dealt him a blow upon the lips.
With gasps of horror the others rushed in. Haganè caught Pierre to his side, and fought off the frenzied Onda. "Back, all of you, stand off, I say!" he thundered. "The man gives me life. Let him strike. Yes, yes," he cried to Pierre, all the hauteur and the terrible bronze composure melted in this new fierce joy; "tear my eyes from their sockets, my tongue from its base,—only repeat that she is pure! How could I know? She let me think it,—your boasts, the broken hairpin! Did she not give you the pledge of the hairpin?"
"I took it myself," said Pierre, "and would not give it back, though she pleaded. How could I guess the gross sentiment that is attached to the silly business by such minds as yours? She was pure, I say; give me her body and let me go!"
Haganè followed him to the kuruma. He stretched out both hands, now as one entreating mercy. "Poor boy, bound with me on the wheel of fate, listen just a little, if you can command your strength. She shielded you. Then, with her life, she rebought the paper. When you had offered to give it back, if I would consent to the restitution of her wifehood, I asked her if she was worthy to return, and in her conscious innocence, she gave the answer, 'No.' She thought only of the unworthiness of weakness—she whose soul, diluted into eternity, might stock a Christian heaven. In her self-death, she deliberately let me believe her evil, that her atonement might have this added bitterness. Also she may have feared that, being undeceived, I might falter in my promise not to restrain her from expiation. She knew of my love, and we have pledged ourselves to reunion and joint service after death. You cannot understand these things, Monsieur."
"No!" said Pierre, in bewilderment, putting his hand to his forehead, "I cannot understand, of course; she was always saying that. I cannot understand, but something whispers—"
"Monsieur," cried Haganè, "I am an older, graver man. I have suffered as I think you cannot suffer. Give me back the boon of her body!"
Pierre blinked and wavered in the path. These sudden shifting currents of purpose dazed him. The strain wastightening again, and he felt the premonitory breath of fever. He grasped outward into the air. He looked at Yuki, as if for the first time, and moved dumb lips.
"You believed this of your wife, yet forgave—helped—loved her—You look forward to having her as your wife in a coming re-birth?" asked Todd, wondering.
"Had it been true, it was but sin of the flesh. By death and expiation, she would have cleansed it. The soul would have risen, free."
"Mon Dieu, what people!" gasped Ronsard. "There stands the man Onda, scowling at us all,—and not even resenting, from Haganè, his only daughter's death."
"Onda will sacrifice to the Gods in gratitude when he knows the whole," said Haganè.
Pierre was trying to speak. He vacillated, soul and body, between the dead woman and her husband. "Do not refuse me," murmured Haganè, stepping nearer.
Pierre did not shrink. Instead, he, too, went near, as if fascinated. He cleared his throat, pushed back the damp hair from his girlish forehead, and smiled up at the dark, eager face. "Haganè is a great man," he said, tapping the other's arm. "Oh, he is a terrible man! I can refuse him nothing. Yuki says that the Gods of this land speak with him. I believe it. One is standing just behind him now; that is a terrible God, too. He looks like Haganè. He sits like a white flint in a ball of fire. On his arms are the coils of rope that bind the passions; in his right hand is the wheel of fate. No, I will not refuse. Old God must have flowers on his altar. Take white flower, old War God. There she is,—my love—my darling. If only she would not smile!"
Haganè caught the boy as he fell, transferring the burden quickly to Ronsard's outstretched arms. He gazed then anew at the face of his wife.
"Yuki," he said, as if to her listening spirit, "you are soul of my soul through ten thousand lives. I let you die. It was karma. A flower! A flower! Alas, that a flower should be stung by immortality!"
"Get her away, your Highness, before we call the servantsand a doctor for Le Beau," whispered Todd, after an agonizing interval. Haganè rose from his knees.
"Yes, little Yuki must go with me," he muttered; "I will take her at once, your Excellency." He went toward the coolie hat and stooped. Onda was before him.
"It is not seemly, Lord, for you to bear so foul a burden. I will wear the hat, and I pray you take these shoes of mine, giving me the straw sandals."
Haganè obeyed passively, his eyes fixed always on Yuki's moonlit face. Now and again he felt in the bosom of his robe for the paper.
"Loosen the robe from your girdle, Master," pleaded the kerai.
Haganè did so, releasing the caught-up ends. The long, dark garment, though of cotton, restored to him the height and dignity of his usual presence.
"Shall I draw the hood of the kuruma?" asked Onda.
"Yes, cover her face,—her small white face; the very night may weep and falter at that smile."
Onda tucked up his robe, put on the wide hat and the straw sandals, placed himself between the shafts, and started along the driveway.
Haganè, moving always slowly, abstractedly, folded his arms, bowed his head, and followed in the attitude of a mourner immediately behind the covered vehicle.
"Take my burden for a moment," pleaded Ronsard, when the sound of wheels had quite died away. "I can support—no longer. Let me summon aid. Mon Dieu! this night has made of me an old man."
"It has made of me a prophet," said Todd, "for I have met Immortals face to face."
Thesumptuous obsequies of the young Princess Haganè, become so suddenly and so securely a leading figure in Tokio's official life; her mysterious death (heart failure, the obliging papers called it); Haganè's immediate departure for the seat of war; Pierre Le Beau's re-capture and long, desperate illness (with relapses brought on by further crafty flights, terminating always in a certain hillside grave),—these events co-existent, co-related, formed, inevitably, dazzling bits of speculation pieceable together into various strange patterns.
Outwardly the tragedy was as free from suspicion as any such shocking occurrence well could be. The funeral, in deference to Yuki's Christian conversion, was held in the little American Episcopal chapel in Tsukijii, Tokio; the American Bishop, assisted by members of the native clergy, conducting the ceremony in Japanese. Haganè, ponderous, brooding, and self-contained, had walked immediately behind the flower-laden burden. The scowling Tetsujo, with Iriya, followed him. Suzumè was there, alone, for she had refused the petition of Maru San. Next to the family came Gwendolen, shivering, slender, wound in crêpe, on the arm of Mr. Dodge. Behind her walked Cyrus Todd and Mrs. Todd, both in mourning.
The strained decorum of the crowded congregation was threatened twice; first, when old Suzumè, bearing a sprig of the mystic mochi tree, tottered up the aisle, and began praying aloud to the black thing into which her nursling had been nailed; and later, just after the words of the Bishop, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," when Gwendolen fainted quietly away.
After the prescribed nine days of gossip and conjecture, ill-natured ones turned their eyes to the Todds, and chiefly to Gwendolen. The deep withdrawal of the two ladies from thesocial world of Tokio, the mourning garments worn by them, were interpreted by some observers as mere stinginess, an excuse to abstain from lavish Legation hospitality; but by a larger number as "bids" for Japanese popularity. Also many of the fair sex among European Legations declared (Mon Dieu! it was obvious!) that Gwendolen had seized upon this dank method for the securing of Dodge,—the young American attaché known to be so madly in love with Carmen Gil y Niestra. Gwendolen's ever-growing intimacy with Iriya Onda, and the pathetic content shown by the elder woman in the company of her dead child's closest friend, were charged to the columns of the former category. "The Hawk's Eye" expatiated upon these congenial themes. The Misses Stunt gave an afternoon tea with all of the catering done in Yokohama.
Later on, when cherry-blossoms covered the whole land in a perfumed glory, Mrs. Todd answered timidly by a bunch of artificial violets on her spring bonnet. Gwendolen still kept to simple black, and it was averred that she did so knowing how marvellously it contrasted with the pearly tints of her flesh and the nervous gold tendrils of her hair. Never had Gwendolen been more beautiful nor, in a strange, deep, half-comprehending way, more tranquilly happy. The light of heroism had come too near ever quite to fade. Love, also, had come, and on the very wings of despair. Yet, behind these facts, was a something unspeakable, precious, vague,—a something apprehended by Dodge also. Even as the two happy ones stood together with eyes looking level toward vistas of almost certain human joy, each felt that compared with the passion of the two immortals, now gone from their lives, this rapture was like the glad hearts of children. Often they spoke of Yuki and her husband. "Oh, but they knew that they were to meet," Gwendolen had cried again and again. "Yuki is with him now,—and after this war, after his last duty to his country and to his Emperor,—they will find each other!"
Of poor Pierre, after his departure for France accompanied by Count Ronsard, none of the Todd household ever spoke.Once, some months after the return of the latter to Tokio, Mrs. Todd, in a hushed whisper, as if she were guilty of an indiscretion, asked a single question. The answer was as brief and furtive. In a certain sense it relieved the conscience of the interlocutrix, while it shadowed her complacency. Neither question nor answer was ever retailed to Gwendolen.
But all this came much later. The spring immediately following Yuki's death went by in a shimmer of winds, scurrying clouds, and whirling petals. Summer smiled her deeper green in rice-fields under the glint and blur of rain. Then, like a stately deity for whose feet the shining carpet had been spread, a golden autumn came.
On the hills vermilion maples burned, each leaf so deeply dyed that its shadow on the sand was red. Hedges of dodan ruled fiery angles over the green lines that summer had drawn. Small carts, man-pulled, with pots of sunny, stiff chrysanthemums, crawled in by dewy morning lanes toward the focus of the capital. Harvesting of grain began, and, presiding over it, the deity of a large, slow moon. In suburban districts the people held festivals and made offerings of tea, vegetables, and money to Inari Sama and her two lean fox-spirits, for the slaying of rice-insects, demanded by the summer's agricultural toil.
Meantime war had raged on land and sea. The slopes of Port Arthur had been drenched already in insufficient blood. Great battles on the Yalu, epoch-making in enormity and heroism, had been not quite great enough. The Russians, always strongly fortified, numbering always more than the army of their opponents, were able to keep decisive ruin for themselves at bay. The Japanese people did not know a wavering strand of faith. They believed always in their ultimate victory. Each hero, checked in his duty by Russian steel, became on the instant a flaming spirit of war. The mangled body might be tucked away in Manchurian clay, or sent, as a sacred relic, to the beloved homeland; but the freed spirit hung about its brethren, and fought with invincible weapons for the common cause. The women of Japan workedindefatigably. Few lamentations rose from them. They would have considered tears disloyal. The Emperor, behind his gray moat-walls,—half man, half God to them,—sent down his heart among the people. His was the suffering and the loss,—and victory, when it came, was to be his.
Late in October, at the American Legation, the doors once more stood wide. Pots of chrysanthemums in full bloom crowded near the entrance, and climbed, in groups of two and three, the edges of the stone steps, as if leading a golden invitation. Gwendolen, that morning, standing among them, had dwelt in thought upon another time, scarcely a year past, when she and Yuki had laughed together among such shaggy blooms, when their hands had been tinctured by the stems of them and the air of long reception-rooms flooded with the medicinal fragrance. She did not weep, only stretched her arms outward, whispering, "Yuki, Yuki,—I know you are with him; but just this one day,—my wedding-day,—come back to me!"
The marriage ceremony was to take place in the drawing-room. After a luncheon to a score or more of intimate friends, the young couple were to go for a quiet sojourn to Nara. This was the first occasion since Yuki's death that the American girl had worn a color. At the appointed hour she stood within the green-hung window recess like an Easter lily, all white and gold,—a broad white cloth hat, touched with knots of amber. The silent little wedding company drew close. The Bishop cleared his throat professionally. One heard the words, "Dearly Beloved" before he uttered them. At that moment, a bird, attracted maybe by the tall white flower within, flew straight against the pane, and beat against it with fluttering wings. Gwendolen looked up quickly. Her lips moved. "Yuki! Yuki! is it you?" she was saying. Dodge pressed tightly the arm within his own.
In spite of strong efforts on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Todd to be at ease, a vague mist of sadness floated in the wide rooms.
"There's something awfully doleful about things here," confided a guest to the ubiquitous Mrs. Stunt.
"Oh, it's that Haganè woman who died—or was murdered in her bed—last spring. The Legation has been about as cheerful as a morgue ever since. Very inconsiderate to us Americans, I take it!"
Mr. Todd saw the faces of the whisperers, and could guess the trend of their words. He shook himself together, and swore that in some way he would manage to dispel the gathering gloom. Now he rushed from one guest to another, his dry wit and quaint remarks soon attracting general attention. Dodge understood, and seconded him with zest. Mrs. Todd stopped the sniffling she had just begun, and produced a diluted smile; the company, catching the infection, tumbled, one over the heels of another, in the race for a precarious joy. The rooms began to echo laughter,—servants smiled as they stole about. A twig of mistletoe, sent all the way from North Carolina, was discovered hanging from the tongue of the floral bell. Kissing of the bride was attempted, and the time-worn jests, pertinent to the occasion, indulged in up to the point of friction.
It was at last a company of real wedding guests that took places at the table. Japanese flower symbols of wedded bliss touched elbows with still American vases jammed thick with stemless flowers. The favors were chrysanthemums in enamel, gold, and topaz. Todd saw that the champagne was not delayed. He knew the potency to scatter thought sent up by those springing globules of mirth. "Fill,—all!" he cried, standing, "a toast, a toast to the bride!"
Laughing faces turned as one toward Gwendolen, enthroned in a great teakwood chair. She flushed to a rose, under the big hat, but murmured, so that her words could be heard,—"I accept, and drink with you,—against precedent!"
As the others lifted brittle stems, she, emptying swiftly the sunny fluid, poured a little water into her glass. The drinking of water as a pledge is used between Japanese as a token of death, of love, in death and beyond it. Dodge, his bright eyes swimming in tenderness, did as she had done. While the company drained the conventional felicity,—this young couple, in silence, unnoticed by those who crowded most closely, drank the pledge of love and loyalty to Yuki'sfreed spirit. Had it been possible for any face to be more beautiful than Gwendolen's, she—on catching sight of her husband as the water touched his lips—now outrivalled herself.
Todd had seen but could not join them. He was self-constituted master of ceremonies. "Next, my new son, Mr. Dodge!" he cried aloud.
"Hear! hear!" clamored the company.
"And next," said Todd, "to that great man, the Japanese Emperor!"
"The Emperor, the Emperor!" ejaculated Dodge, with such vehemence that the assembly had to join or be deafened. "Banzai Nippon!" roared Dodge. "Banzai Nippon!" vociferated Todd.
"Banzai Nippon!" the servants echoed in excited underbreaths as they hurried back to pantry and kitchen.
"Banzai Nippon!" cried the waiting betto and the kuruma men outside, at first hint of the call.
"Banthai Nip-pon!" lisped the the cook's baby, who sat well under the kitchen-table to escape being trod upon, and scraped out a foreign cake-bowl with a single chopstick.
But Yuki—a snowflake fallen on the windy slope of Aoyama—slept on, smiling, with Haganè's dagger in her heart; and on a rocky promontory across from the impregnable fortress of Liau Tung, a grim, quiet warrior sat alone, with field-glasses dangling limply from his hands, and eyes that saw only a white, white face upturned to his, and lips that murmured, "I know you now, my husband,—and shall wait! Banzai Nippon!" while the cold steel crept nearer to a warm and shrinking heart.
Banzai Nippon!
The Most Lovable Heroine in Modern Fiction