All the guests had gone but Mr. Todd. He smiled down at Yuki and said, "Well, little girl, I guess Uncle Sam has done your country a good turn."
"Madame la Princesse is not burdened by me with state secrets, your Excellency," interposed Haganè, with more than his wonted haste.
"I understand. I sha'n't say more," laughed the other. "What was it, Yuki, that you tried to tell us just before the meeting?"
Yuki now could afford to smile and look demure; her danger was over. The great strong rock of Haganè's presence was near. "The need is past now, I thank you, Mr. Todd," she said.
"Good-bye, both of you. You're looking mighty young and happy, Prince, if there are hard struggles in the nation!"
He was gone. Yuki, glancing upward to her husband, was surprised and then herself embarrassed to note signs of discomfiture on that bronze countenance. Was it possible that Todd's light words could move him? Yuki went closer still. She could not meet his eyes, but, oh, the restfulness, the relief in his splendid nearness! Her explanation rushed to her lips and hung there. After the manner of good wives, she must first show interest in what was uppermost in his thoughts, and afterward could gently incline him to her own desire.
"Is that the very wonderful paper just signed, Lord?" she asked, putting up a hand.
Haganè glanced at the document, then bent to his wife the look she dreaded, yet longed for. Under it she stirred andquivered. "You are a white flower," said Haganè. "Do you really care to know?"
"I—I—wish not to be disrespectfully inquisitive," stammered Yuki, "only, if the importance is so great, is there not danger to your august person in bearing it about?"
Again Haganè smiled. His young wife hung her crimsoning face. He put out an arm and caught her to him. "Is that your fear—you thing of snow and plum-blossom? Ah, Yuki—Yuki—you are my wife. When this time of stress and peril is at an end, I shall try to teach you something of a brighter hue than duty."
Pierre, high on his knees among the yama-buki, saw and heard it all.
"If there be danger, you must not bear it! The risk is terrible. Think, Lord, how our country needs you!" Her apprehension lifted her a little from self-consciousness. Haganè's answer was calm, steady, with a thrill in it. "Then who is to bear it, small sweet wife, if I should put it down? But, no, there must be no thought of thee and me—not yet. I belong to the land. In all haste must I take the paper to our Imperial Lord. Every moment means a danger. Ring instantly for the carriage,—I must go!"
"The single horse coupé is now being repaired," said Yuki, in a troubled tone, "and, more unfortunate, one of the pair of carriage-horses is ill; but I can order your kuruma with two runners."
"Unfortunate," echoed Haganè, in a lower tone, "yet such small annoyances beset the way of all. Ring for my stoutest kuruma, Yuki, and have three runners. They will bear me as swiftly as any horse."
"Lord," faltered Yuki, not moving from him, "you assured me that after the meeting I should have speech with you. The matter is indeed of importance, perhaps of great danger."
"Well, I will listen, child, if you can be brief. But first touch the bell and give my order."
Yuki went across the room from him. He, frowning slightly at the delay, stood as he had been standing, his back squarely to the office-door, his left shoulder toward the openedFrench window. Yuki, not ten yards before him, had reached the wall where the electric button was set. She raised a slim hand to it, but before she could press it, a certain flicker as of an animated shadow moving in the room behind Haganè drew her curious and anxious glance. The outstretched arm fell, paralyzed. She attempted to speak, to cry aloud, but her throat had turned to cork. Pierre Le Beau was creeping into the room like a thief, a cat, skirting the wall in the direction of the office-door. He caught her frozen stare of terror, and made a defiant gesture, commanding silence.
Haganè raised his head. The delay puzzled him. He had been examining again the crimson seal. The look on his wife's face, come with such terrific suddenness, sent something almost like fear through his heart. He thrust the paper in his breast, and turned to scan the room. Pierre was in the safe shelter of the columnar, massed portière.
Yuki clawed and mowed her way through a jungle of fire toward her lord. "Master, master!" she whispered hoarsely. She could say no more, and fell prone on her knees before him, reaching upward for his grasp.
"What ails you, child? In the name of Shaka, what has hurt you?" He bent to raise her, but she grovelled, eluding his hands.
"I am ill, very ill; let us go quickly to our chamber," she managed to choke out. Now she fluttered backward, luring him, like a wounded bird, her long, gray sleeves trailing after.
"In Shaka's name!" he cried again, "I cannot understand the suddenness."
Pierre now left the portière, and stole softly toward the bent back of the prince. Yuki thought him mad, with a new strength and cunning of murderous intent. She sprang up to her feet, hurling all her slight weight against Haganè with such force that he swerved. With a movement like light she had passed him, set her back to his, and was facing Pierre. "Here—here—kill me—not him—" she panted. "I am ready; I do not fear. See how white my breast and soft! Oh, blood will look so pretty here,—like the red seal!" She tore aside the dove-gray folds of her gown.
Haganè, wheeling to them, half drew the paper from his breast. The Frenchman saw, and as Haganè turned, lowered his head so that his face might still be hidden, reached out a hand, and, with one demon-directed dart of the nervous fingers had touched, had clutched, had wrenched away the long white screed of fate that bore a single drop of blood.
For one awful crash of time, the solid earth split beneath the statesman's feet. Pierre had gone through the low window like a breeze, and his flying track through the shrubs stirred them scarcely more. Haganè staggered as his mind confirmed this strange, annihilating loss. A moment more and he was again calm master of his fate. He took Yuki by a shoulder, held her from him, and scorching her eyes with the scorn of his, said steadily, "So this is what ailed you, Princess Haganè! Why did you give no warning? Tell me the name of the thief."
Yuki blinked and moved her head backward and forward through the air. She put up a hand to her throat of cork, and smoothed it.
"Answer me, Yuki, who was that man?"
She did not answer. Suddenly she sagged to his feet, wrapping her long gray sleeves about his ankles. "Oh, Master, do not kill him! He is a very sick person, yes! I will get the paper for you, Lord. I will get it for you, I will get it!" she chattered in English. Why, at this central crisis of her life, she should have spoken English to a Japanese was something that she never understood.
Haganè looked down upon her silently. He could not move for the coils around his feet. He saw clearly that she had reasons for detaining him, and his mind went naturally to the one solution. "This was a lover she protected." Yet he was calm, his grave dignity unassailable. His lips, his chin, his down-bent lids were of metal; only at the temples, veins sprang and stood like branches of dull red coral.
"I shall not ask again, Yuki; will you tell me the name of the man who has gone?"
Yuki stared up at him through flickering lids. The air snapped into little particles of jet and tinsel. Things were getting the queer look. She feared that she was going to laugh. "Was there a man, Lord?" she questioned.
"Gods!" said Haganè. His nostrils blew in and out, and still his voice was even and kind, "Yuki-ko, your country, the life of our Emperor, may be menaced by this theft. Can any bodily passion exonerate this ultimate crime?"
A great spasm seized the crouching woman. "Lord, have mercy on my weak heart; but I can get the paper—I alone can get it; I will buy it for you with my life!"
"Bah—your life! We do not offer carrion to the Gods. Unloose my feet,—poor soiled thing. Do not touch me!"
Yuki hid her face against his feet. Her arms coiled like steel bands.
Slowly and deliberately he knelt and untwined, as he might the tendrils of a vine he did not wish to bruise, her clinging arms, the long gray sleeves. There was no roughness in any movement except at the instant when he snapped the obi-domè, intending to use it to bind her wrists. She felt his intention, and waited craftily until he had almost drawn the first noose, then slipping her arms away, encircled again his patient feet, babbling, "Let me get it. He was ill; he did not know. Harm him not. I will get the paper." In her distracted thought some other self, anterior to this, seemed to be at a great distance, running side by side with Pierre, and jerking out to him through failing breath: "I hold Haganè back, but it cannot last very long. Do not harm him,—I will do what you wish, Pierre, I will be what you wish; already Haganè casts me off, but do not harm him. Quick, quick, poor mad boy, my strength fails! Haganè is coming—coming—"
His first failure brought no impatience to the statesman. With more elaborate care he again knotted the obi-domè and drew it. He succeeded now in securing the fluttering hands. His one sign of agitation was deep, heavy breathing. As he raised his head from the task, on the white balls of his eyes tiny crimson threads broke through. Yuki stared upward, dazed, into his face. "Look not on me," he said, as he prepared to rise. "Put your false face to the earth. If I thought a shiver of obedience, of loyalty were left in your cringing soul, I would command you to stay here quietly—and seek not to follow, and so make more open this disgrace. Hide your eyes, I say!Sooner would I caress a grave-worm than thee!" He pushed her down with some violence, rose, and hurried to the rear of the house. Yuki turned her face sidewise to follow him. "A kuruma," she heard him call, "and three swift runners! Ten yen each to the men if they start within the moment!"
He stood bareheaded in the sunshine, his watch opened in his hands. As if by invocation, the kuruma and the grinning coolies appeared. Yuki crawled a few inches, and strained her dry throat outward, listening for the address he was to give. No effort had been needed for hearing. His voice had the ring, the resonance of a deep bell, as he said aloud, "To the French Legation!"
Yuki, when she was sure that the whole place had fallen quiet, slowly lifted herself to a sitting posture on the foreign carpet, in the very centre of a huge bunch of vermilion cabbage roses. She gazed with intense scrutiny at one of these unearthly blossoms. It reminded her of something, a very terrible something, which had happened to her long ago. She tried to put a hand out and trace the irregular circle, but something held her hands together. She stared now at the hands, at the twisted obi-domè. Its golden clasps, now broken, hung down and clinked together like the toys on a lady's chatelaine. The sight recalled her to the present, and solved the suggested mystery of the harsh red rose. It was of sealing-wax the flowers had reminded her,—of a great crimson seal, of enamelled paper.
"But I kept him back quite a little while," she said aloud, and nodded in satisfaction. "Less danger will come to both because I held Haganè back. How could he know it was Pierre? How could he think so quickly to go to the French Legation? Will Pierre be really there? Oh, he is a terrible man, that great Haganè! Even the voices of the air speak to him! He called me 'carrion,' rather would he fondle a grave-worm than little Yuki! Ah, his eyes said not so this morning, no, not this morning, my great Lord Haganè."
She moved her hands restlessly in their bonds. "Poor little hands," she murmured. "He tried to bind you. Shall Iset you free?" She put her ear down against them. "Oh, yes, indeed I can release you," she smiled as if the hands had answered. "The obi-domè is soft and insecurely tied. Even a great prince like Haganè cannot tie a knot that a woman's fingers cannot unfasten!" With a few deft turns of the wrist she loosed the cord, letting it slip to the floor.
For an instant she stared at the bright red marks on her wrists, then put both hands upward to smooth the loops of her hair. She seemed a little surprised to encounter such disarray, and began thoughtfully to coil up, foreign fashion, the blue-black hair which fell in streams along her shoulders. With a little shiver she drew her kimono together at the throat. "Why did Pierre wake so soon?" she whimpered. "He came and took something from Haganè. He did not understand his own crime, being so very ill. No, he could not have willingly slain Yuki, had he understood. Haganè said that my country, my Emperor, may be harmed through Pierre. I must get the paper back at once, at once! Why am I waiting? Oh, I must go swiftly, as they went!"
With spasmodic motions she lifted her trembling body upward. The gorgeous obi, stiff with silver pine-boughs and robbed now of the indispensable obi-domè, slipped down about her in coils, as of a huge wooden shaving. She grasped instinctively at the folds. Her eyes continued to search restlessly the corners of space.
"Oh, Pierre, naughty, naughty Pierre!" she went on whispering. "You promised to lie still. You gave your word to Yuki when she helped you. Now they may both need to die,—poor Pierre and little Yuki, too. They may die with the cherry-blossoms all dressed up for them to see! If only my poor head would stop moving, and I could think what I must do!"
She put one icy hand against her temple. With the other she tried to keep the falling robes from catching on her feet. Tottering and stumbling, she reached the hall-way. A frightened servant-woman knelt near the door. "Mistress, Mistress, in Amida's name, tell me what terrible thing is here!"
Yuki half closed her lids and peered forward, trying torecognize the speaker. "Oh, Inè, is that you? Yes, a terrible thing, two terrible things! My hair has fallen and my obi slips away. Arrange me quickly, Inè, quickly, and call a swift kuruma like Prince Haganè's. I must go somewhere now."
"Kashikomarimasu" (I hear and will obey), faltered the woman, but instead of advancing, crouched backward. She was afraid of the strange light in her mistress's eyes.
"Quick, I say! Did you not hear me?" cried Yuki, angrily, and clapped both hands together with a sharp sound. The obi fell, surrounding her in one great shimmering wheel. The terror in Inè's face brought the young wife to her senses. "It really is nothing, Inè," she said, trying hard to smile. "I had a little fall there in the drawing-room, and am dazed. Do not concern yourself or speak to the other servants. Go now at once and bring my long black adzuma-coat, another obi-domè and some foreign hair-pins. I have not the time to be entirely redressed. I will await your coming here."
Yuki stood at the foot of the steps. The servant sped upward. From the far end of the hall came Tora. The prearranged impassivity of his face was noticeable even to one in Yuki's excited state. "Well, Tora!" she said haughtily.
"Did you not wish me, your Ladyship?" asked the man, bowing in exaggerated deference. Yuki felt a hot wave pass along her neck and vanish against the pallor of her cheeks.
"I did not," she answered steadily. "But since you are here, I wish you to order my kuruma with two swift runners."
"Yes, your Ladyship." He did not move.
"You heard my order?"
"Your Highness," said the man, turning pale as he spoke, "I am only a servant, but I once lost by death a daughter of your age. There is something I would like to say."
Yuki bit her lip; a struggle went on within her. The dip of the scales came through Inè, who now hurried down the stairs.
"When I return, Tora," said the young princess; "I amsure you mean to be kind and not presuming. I will speak to you when I return."
Tora shook his head as he turned away. As Yuki's kuruma rattled from the gate, he went back musingly alone toward the Cha no yu rooms.
Mrs. Toddand her daughter, in driving away from the Haganès' official home, had given the order, "Suruga Dai." To be truthful and more accurate, this euphonious, topographical title, spoken in Japanese with a delicious softening of continental "u's," and blurred Italian "g's," was, under Mrs. Todd's crisp American tongue, transformed to the alert and inharmonious "Sew-roo-gar Da-eye." The driver, fortunately inured to these attacks upon national enunciation, drove as straight to the desired spot as if Yuki herself had named it.
Suruga Dai, so called because from its elevation can be seen the distant plain of Suruga with its glittering single treasure, Fujiyama, is a curious little welt of land, rising in a small loaf through the very heart of modern Tokio. Official residences climb the slopes, foreign homes perch at the top, Japanese villas and gardens crown it. A fashionable hospital, endowed by the Empress, has risen there within a decade; but, on Suruga Dai, the dominating presence is a huge Greek Church, built and utilized for her own purposes, by Russia. From far down the bay of Yedo, from car windows on the busy, curved track that leads from Yokohama, this edifice stands as a sort of saturnine beacon. Staring, treeless, defiant, with square white walls that hurt the eyes with their blank brilliancy, and a squat blue-tiled roof fashioned to a Byzantine dome, it rises above the verdure-hidden eaves of the Imperial palace, checks the vista to many a narrow street, and hangs, a menace and a humiliation, above the wide plain of alien interests. Boatmen on the Sumida River, poling down rice, and wood, and charcoal from distant villages, glance up toward it with a scowl and a prayer. If they were Romanists they would cross themselves and ask protection of the Virgin. Being heathen, they merely invoke the great livingnational spirit of their race, bow reverent heads to the thought of their Emperor, and stop at the next police-station to register their names as volunteers for the army. Russia has claimed to believe that the commanding position of this church is indicative of future rulership. They have boasted openly, in the Far East, of this coming thraldom. What the Japanese will do with the inimical temple and its priesthood in case of their ultimate victory over Russia is an interesting problem. With their tolerance for all religious belief, their innate delicacy and dignity, the foreigners who best understand them would certainly predict an unchanged policy of forbearance.
Mrs. Todd did not take a great deal of interest in Tokio street scenes. Her mind generally streamed back like vapor to the exalted personage she had recently left, or blew on before to an anticipated welcome. This was the case to-day. Rudely torn from her Prince, she was thinking of the little Countess K——, now in the Suruga Hospital after an attack of appendicitis, to whom she had promised a visit. Count K——, one of the rising statesmen of the country, was a particular friend of Dodge; Minister Todd also believed great things of his future. Gwendolen, beside her mother in the open carriage, answered intelligently, but with obvious lack of interest, the commonplace remarks addressed to her. A foretaste, a prescience of tragedy, lurked like a fog in the air. Companioning Yuki's dilemma came her own,—recognized even in this moment of irritation as incomparably less important, though still maddening with the sting of nettles,—Dodge's foolish devotion to Carmen, his continued coolness to herself. She was not old yet, or experienced enough, to put herself in another's place. Dodge was trying to hurt and humiliate her. Worse still, he was succeeding. She needed to ponder no further. One does not write a geologic treatise on the pebble in one's shoe. Dodge wished to injure her. It was cowardly, unmanly. Dodge prided himself on his Southern blood. Gwendolen, with a sneer, thought him—or tried to believe she thought him—a degenerate specimen of chivalry. If at last he should attempt another overture to her friendship, she would know well how to scorn him!
A great jerk of the wheels, and renewed vociferation fromthe coachman, started the horses in a nervous scamper up the slope. Gwendolen's head went back, the hatpins tugged at her yellow hair. She clutched at the velvet brim of her hat, and at the same moment her lifted eyes fell on the white walls and sagging dome of the Greek Church. The scowl she gave it might have been borrowed from a rice-seller on his barge. "Detestable barbarians!" she muttered. "If they evershoulddominate this land!"
"Gwendolen," said her mother, also jerked and unnerved by the speed, "you are far too exaggerated in your expression of hatred to Russia. Even Cy says so. You are going to get the Legation into trouble yet!"
Gwendolen threw herself back into a corner and sulked—if a thing the color of light and flowers can be said to sulk. She went at least into partial eclipse, and retained her penumbric mood to the hospital and within it. The pleasure of receiving guests seemed, in the case of this little invalid countess, to be entirely cancelled by her distress at remaining rudely on her back, without a single bow. Mrs. Todd tried to put her at her ease, speaking very loudly, as she often did in talking to the Japanese, as if their ignorance of civilized languages lurked in the ears as well as the tongue. Everything in the room was foreign,—the white and brass bed, tables, chairs, spoons and medicine bottles, vases, even the lithograph framed portraits of the Emperor and Empress hanging on the opposite wall. The nurses wore gingham dresses, aprons, and white caps. The cloven hoof showed literally (and with opprobrious connotation deleted) in the thick-soled white, digitated socks on which they sped with the lightness and swiftness of a breeze in a meadow. Relatives of the countess came in presently, greeting and thanking the illustrious visitors in her behalf. In spite of efforts to be at ease, the whole visit crackled and creaked with starched formality. Gwendolen was glad when her mother rose to go.
In the short drive home they passed directly by the gate of the French Legation, and skirted the brick and plaster wall which hides a fair garden. "It is a shame for a bachelor to keep this lovely place to himself," observed Mrs. Todd, pensively.
"It would be a much worse shame for him to try to marry any decent woman," said the girl, darkly.
"Gwendolen! Gwendolen! What on earth has come to you lately? You are not like yourself, these days! You seem to hate the French as much as the Russians. Neither nation is troubling you, just now, nor Yuki either!" The parent put up her lorgnette to study her daughter's fair, dissatisfied face.
Gwendolen went back to her corner and the sulks.
At the American Legation Mrs. Stunt awaited them. Mrs. Todd went with more than usual willingness to her friend. Gwendolen had not been an inspiring companion. The friendship between the two elder ladies, threatened as we have seen by certain events at Yuki's first reception, had received some skilful soldering, and, being new-painted by Mrs. Stunt's voluminous explanations, had a fictitious lustre. Mrs. Todd was neither far-seeing nor revengeful, yet, quite often now she passed a thoughtful finger across the soldered spot.
Gwendolen went alone to a smaller reception-room. She wished to know above all things whether her father was now with Prince Haganè. There was but a single source of information,—Mr. Dodge. At first she thought of going to him in person. What was that "snip," or his opinions, compared with Yuki's danger? Her courage faltered, and she compromised with it by a short note sent into the office by a servant.
"Mr. T. Caraway Dodge."My dear Mr. Dodge,—Kindly inform me whether my father, Mr. Todd, is in the office. If not, where he has gone, and at what hour he is expected back."Very truly,"Gwendolen de Lancy Todd."
"Mr. T. Caraway Dodge.
"My dear Mr. Dodge,—Kindly inform me whether my father, Mr. Todd, is in the office. If not, where he has gone, and at what hour he is expected back.
"Very truly,
"Gwendolen de Lancy Todd."
In a very few moments she flushed, and bit her lip over the following reply:
"Miss Gwendolen de Lancy Todd."My dear Miss Todd,—Your father, Mr. Todd, is not in this office. I am not at liberty to communicate the name of the place to which he has gone. He expects to return about 2.30p. m."Very truly,"T. Caraway Dodge."
"Miss Gwendolen de Lancy Todd.
"My dear Miss Todd,—Your father, Mr. Todd, is not in this office. I am not at liberty to communicate the name of the place to which he has gone. He expects to return about 2.30p. m.
"Very truly,
"T. Caraway Dodge."
"Pshaw! I might have known it!" said Gwendolen, under her breath, as she tore the note to small pieces. She looked at her watch. "Just one, and he can't get here for an hour and a half. What shall I do until he comes?" As if in answer, the luncheon-bell rang. She moved toward the big dining-room, dreading to see Mrs. Stunt. Yes, she was there, wriggling, smiling, opening her innocent blue eyes, as usual. Gwendolen's greeting was civil, and no more. She sat through the meal in silence, and ate practically nothing. Mrs. Stunt tried a few tactful remarks about the girl's "being in love," as a reason for the lack of appetite. After the unquiet meal, Gwendolen saw, with new dismay, that the ladies were to take possession of the main drawing-room. This deprived her of the solace of her piano. She wandered aimlessly about the big rooms, starting a letter to an American friend, and desisting, after the first page, pulling out bureau drawers, and forgetting why she had opened them, doing, in fact, all those vague, self-irritating things that indicate a perturbed and joyless mind.
She longed for intelligent human companionship,—for her father. When dad should come, she told herself, she would lose this restless heart. She longed for him and his counsel with a physical hunger. Her mind veered again and again to Dodge, only to be whirled off fiercely. Mrs. Todd as a confidante was impossible, even had the wily Stunt not claimed her. Secure in the conviction of a commonplace mind, good Mrs. Todd would have rushed at once to the Haganè residence, demanded instant audience of Haganè, and failing in that have hastened to the Cha no yu rooms to rescue her ailing protégé. No, Mrs. Todd, with all her kind heart, could not be trusted!
The moments passed somehow. Gwendolen saw, through an upper window, her father's approach. He came in a hired street kuruma. Even at this distance she could see that the strain was gone from his face, if not the excitement. He caught a glimpse of her, smiled, and waved to her. Before the girl could reach him, he had entered the office and confronted Dodge. Now she was brave. With dad to guard her, she could brave a hundred such as Dodge. She burst in upon them, giving the coolest of nods to the secretary, and pouring,without warning, a series of petitions and exclamations upon her wondering father. At last he made out that she wished to see him alone. Dodge had been quicker. Already the inner door of the office closed behind him. Todd turned from the blank panel to his daughter. The teasing twitch was on his thin lip, the sparkle in his eye! "No, no, I can't stand it just now,—I'm worried, oh, so horribly worried, and you must help me, dad, as you always do. Am I not your only little girl?"
"You rascal," said Todd, seating himself, and drawing her down.
"Anything but a rascal to-day, dad. This trouble is real. Yuki may be in danger,—I can't help her. I have thought and thought and thought, until my brain goes round like flying ants in the sun. I can't help. I am an impotent, miserable, feminine girl. What did you see at Yuki's house?"
"Why, I saw only what I went to see," answered her father. He gazed with some concern on the chatterer, as if indeed she were light-headed.
"The meeting is over safely, then, and nothing happened?"
"The meeting is over! How did you know of it? The meeting is over and everything happened. History may be changed because of it!"
"Then Pierre did not wake up? Don't think me crazy, dad! I can see that you do. All that time, while you statesmen were closeted with Haganè, Pierre Le Beau lay asleep a little way off, in the garden. Now perhaps you will see what has worried me!" She gave a triumphant look.
"Good Lord!" said he. Then again, on a higher note, "GoodLord!" He put her from him, rose, and began walking the narrow room. Gwendolen nodded in satisfaction. At last he was stirred as deeply as she could wish.
"Yuki isn't to blame. He wandered to that garden in delirium. He must have gone there first thing, for she doesn't know how long he had been in hiding. When she discovered him, the gates were already barred, and Haganè had given her instructions. His fever was awful. She gave him medicine for it, and then a heavy fever mixture, and put him to sleep in the Cha no yu rooms!"
"Haganè being in ignorance?"
"Yes. She said she was going to try her best to tell him before the meeting, though he had commanded her not to distract his thoughts. She was going to try anyhow, but if she failed, there was nothing for it but to trust the good Lord to keep him asleep until after the meeting, and then to tell her husband immediately."
Todd gave a deep breath as of relief. He pushed the hair back from his forehead. "God! It was a risk. She is too young to face such tragic responsibilities! Poor child! poor child! But I guess it's all right now!" Gwendolen heard him mutter.
She caught his arm. "You think she is safe? You left husband and wife together?"
"Yes, and he looked at her as though she were an angel just come down. I even dared to tease him a little. I told him he looked young and handsome! The old War God almost blushed."
Suddenly the smile on his face turned gray. He stood perfectly still, his long arms dangled. Life and youth ebbed from him.
"Father! Father!" cried the girl, in agony. "What is it? A terrible thought has come to you! Don't hold it back. I must hear. I will go mad!"
Todd seated himself, and touched his handkerchief to his lips. "I think I had better not speak it, daughter."
"Tell me,tellme!" said Gwendolen, fiercely. "Look at me,—look into my eyes, father. I have your own strong spirit!"
"As I was coming home," began Mr. Todd, obediently, through whitening lips, "I walked the first part of the way, you know, to cool my excitement. The meeting had been terrific in importance,—terrific—" he paused.
Gwendolen was now on her knees, reaping every look, every word, with her bright eyes. "Yes, yes; Yuki may be in danger."
"A group of fellows were standing in front of the British Legation,—Potter, Wyndham, and some others. They stopped me, and were chaffing and joking as those English try to do, when a rickshaw with three runners whizzed by like a Kentucky handicap, and there was Haganè sitting bolt upright,with a face like an old Nō mask. 'That's deuced odd,' says Wyndham; 'not ten minutes ago a yellow-headed foreigner without a hat went by at the same pace. Looks as if Haganè were on the scent.'"
"Oh, oh; did he say that the first was—Pierre?"
"No, he didn't say it; he didn't need to. They all looked it."
For one instant Gwendolen cowered against her father's knees. Then she rose, straight, tall, self-possessed, and held a hand down to her father. "Come, dad," she said, almost with a smile, "we have no time to lose."
He sprang up, facing her. The faces glowed with the same purpose, a white fire reflected from surfaces of ivory. Both pairs of eyes burned to black jet. "Come, then," he said simply. He took his hat in passing. She was bareheaded. A sealskin cap was lying on Dodge's desk. She caught it up, as her father had done his hat. Hand in hand they hurried out, Dodge, in wonder, watching them. They went down the Legation hill and there summoned kuruma, with two runners apiece, promising a good reward for haste. Only once the girl spoke. "Oh, dad, my heart weighs me to the earth with its whispers."
At the Haganè home they were told that every one was out. Gwendolen's quick eye saw that the servants were frightened, demoralized. She insisted on having English speech with Tora. He came sulkily, and at first refused to understand her words. This man's need for self-control gave Gwendolen her most unbearable twinge of apprehension. "Tora!" she cried aloud, "I love your mistress. I am good friend of Prince Haganè. We wish to do only good things. Don't you understand? I love—good—we will dogood, not harm. Tell us where she went."
Tora studied the two faces intently. "Both Master and the Princess Yuki-ko went ve'y quick, French Legation. Mooch troubles, I think." He turned away, as if wishing to say no more.
The eyes of the two Americans met again. "That is a place where I cannot take you, unannounced, my dear," said Mr. Todd.
"It is a place, too, where I think I could do little good.But she is unharmed; that is certain. Ronsard cannot afford to have violence there."
"Don't fancy things more terrible than they are," said Todd. "I myself am full of hope. If I can get in at all, I can help explain. In the meantime, be very cautious, and go home quietly."
"Yes, go home quietly to wait! Oh, I knew that was coming. To wait, to be stretched out flat on the rack of hours, with every little red-hot minute pinching me. But I will go. I trust you, dad, to do the best. I will wait patiently, as meekly as Yuki herself could wait. That is all I don't like about Yuki,—her meekness. Oh, my poor darling, what will those vile men do to you?"
Again at the Legation gate she dismissed her two coolies, paying them an incredible sum for immunity from bartering, and walked in, along the gravelled driveway, on foot. Dodge, who had never left the neighborhood of his office window, felt a renewed thrill of rapture at the sight of his cap, set like a brown, inverted bird's-nest, on her bright curls. It would be a different cap. No one should wear it after this consecration. He watched the slight figure with yearning tenderness. Something in her walk, a sort of suppressed excitement in her whole person, showed to him. The unusual hung about her. Deliberately he came out from his den to follow. She gave no backward glances.
Across the front of the Legation she hurried, taking a path that led into the garden and wide lawn at the right. At its rim she poised, uncertain; then, as if coming to a swift decision, took a diagonal course across the turf. Exactly in the centre of the wide, green space grew a clump of gigantic mushrooms with white tops and thick blue bodies. As she neared them the mushrooms began to bob and nod in an agitated fashion, while funny little hissing breaths came from the midst. They were the professional lawn-weeders,—little old women with round faces and high cheekbones, each armed with a pygmy sickle. They worked in a tiny grazing squad, devouring, root and all, each intruding tuft of clover, dandelion, pilewort, and even the spring messenger, tsukushimbo, beloved of Japanese children.
"Kon-nichiwa," cried the girl, in her high, sweet voice.
"Kon-nichiwa (good day), o jo san," responded the little company, rising, as corks on a single wave, and bobbing down again as one.
Gwendolen, interested in spite of her anxieties, stood still to watch them. Dodge, unperceived, leaned against a kiri tree at the edge of the lawn, with eyes only for her.
Their blue backs with a white ideograph bore the unanimity of a pack of cards. "I feel just like Alice in Wonderland," thought the girl. "Oh, I know I am Alice. They have been painting all the dandelions white. Was this done by order of the duchess?" she asked aloud, and touched a snowy flower with her foot.
The little dame nearest sent up a shy, sparkling glance, "Hek! hai! Udzukushii tampopo gozaimasu!" (Ha, yes, unusually fine dandelion honorably is!) She flushed crimson, and went feverishly to work again in the shadow of the tall golden one.
Gwendolen watched them for a few moments longer. She seemed again to be undecided, for she looked first toward the house, then outward, to the far end of the garden, where a clump of young sugi trees made a fragrant, shadowy retreat. "That awful Mrs. Stunt must be gone by this. I believe I will go in and let Chopin make me more wretched still," she was thinking. She looked more wistfully toward the far corner. "No, I'll just go over there and have out one big, good cry, with no one to bother me. If I cry in the house, mother will bring me aromatic spirits of ammonia." Acting on the latter impulse, she started, running now toward the trees.
"Arà! it runs well!" whispered one of the grass-cutters to a neighbor. "These foreigners all have big, strong legs."
"I never can tell the foreign men from the foreign women," remarked another.
"Dō-mo! you simpleton!" retorted the first. She was the one to whom Gwendolen had spoken directly, and though covered with confusion at the moment, now vaunted herself upon the incident, and prepared herself to take precedence in all comments concerning the strange doings of "I-i-jin." "Dō-mo! it is easy to observe. The men have upper bodiessquare, like a box, and this box is tightly covered with woollen cloth. From the lower corners of the square come two stiff legs, like posts. Now the women show no legs at all, but the middle of the body is shrunken very small, like a sakè gourd about which a string has been tied when it is green. Poor things, it must surely hurt them to be so bound. It is a practice more strange than that of encasing feet, used by Chinese women."
"They all look alike to me, I say," repeated the first, unimpressed by this erudition. Perhaps the boastful breath of the speaker awoke a small coal of obstinacy. "The children are small in size, so I know them to be children; but all faces are alike, as the faces of cows, pigs, and horses are alike, and all are hideous!"
"That one, now, was not so frightful of aspect," ventured a kindly third, and pointed her sickle to the spot where Gwendolen, having climbed a low hillock, just disappeared beyond.
"That one would have been almost good to look at, but for its nose!"
"The noses of all are like these sickles," said the dogmatic first.
"Buddha teaches us to be content with what cannot be changed. Perhaps to the foreigners themselves the sharp noses are even beautiful!" said the gentler critic.
A chorus of hisses and low laughs greeted this unheard-of generosity. The little speaker flushed under the shower of raillery, but did not abandon her humane position. Something in the American girl's face had flashed excitement, a new interest, a feeling almost like recognition, into her narrow vista. She hoped she would be called to work often in this huge garden, where the bright-haired o jo san might wander.
Upon the hillock which rose in front of the little sugi grove, corners of rough stone stuck out, and shrubs had been planted, chiefly of azalea. Mingled with the many-colored blossoms, there curved long wands of yama-buki, that most golden flower, the gorse of the Far East. For once Gwendolen passed these waves of beauty by. Down there, over among the tree-trunks where the ground was winter-strewn withfragrant brown shreds of leaves, one could sit and cry to one's heart's content. Deliberately she held back the fast-rising sobs until the haven was gained, and then, hurling herself to earth, gave vent to her grief and prophetic fears. "Oh, my poor little Yuki! What are those hard men saying to you now? What will they do if they think you wrong? And I can't help you! I can do nothing! Oh, I wish we hadn't come to this place! Will any of us ever be happy again? I have my own grief, but I hide it, ashamed, before your peril! Oh, my little sister, my only little sister! If I could only catch you up like a drifting petal, and hide you in my heart, and run away with you back to our other home, back to schooldays, and happiness! But we'll never be young again, we'll never be happy. Oh—oh—oh, my heart will break!"
The azaleas stared down in stately dignity; the yama-buki tossed dissent. On a sugi limb quite near, a row of sparrows placed themselves, slowly puffing out their feathers in unison, like so many buns in a warm oven. They cocked their heads suspiciously toward the prostrate girl, and gossiped about her, saying she had stolen her hair from the sun.
Dodge, half ashamed of himself, but led on by something stronger than conventionality, passed the nodding group of weeders, answered their salutation in an absent-minded fashion, and continued a slow but unswerving route toward the sugi trees. At the hillock he paused. A curious sound on the other side drew him upward. His brown head pushed a way through the yama-buki limbs. Gwendolen was crying. He stared, not half believing his senses. Gwendolen, the gay, insouciant, defiant, enchanting Gwendolen, weep like this! Sooner should the stars send down beams of soot!
A big something that partook of the physical nature of a hedgehog burrowed upward in his throat. Something sweet and unaccustomed stung his lids.
"Oh, my heart will break!" sobbed the girl once more. "There 's nobody to help me! There's nobody to listen!"
With a single bound Dodge had cleared the hillock and was on his knees beside her. A startled, upward look met him,—expectation, a wild joy, new bitterness,—these flashed in turn across her expressive face. With a wide movement ofresistance, she turned away from him and buried her tear-stained face upon her knees.
Dodge stood instantly. "Do you mean that I am to go?" he asked.
Sobs alone answered him. She could not drive him away. His presence, his nearness, were appallingly sweet. Neither could she yield tamely where she had promised herself a policy of condescension.
Despairing of further verbal instruction, and glad in his heart that the repulse had not been more vehement, he walked off a few paces, and seated himself against a tree. Gwendolen held her breath until he was safely on the earth again. She could not have borne his instant desertion. All he had to do now, Dodge was well aware, was simply to wait, and be still. The one thing impossible to Gwendolen was indefinite silence. Even before he began to expect them, the hysterical words came fluttering, as on broken wings, to his ear. "I suppose you are glo—glo—gloating on this scene of my—agony! You li—li—like to see me hideous, with red-rimmed eyes and a gar—gar—garnet nose!" Again the head went down, and the tiny lace ball of a handkerchief came into requisition.
"I can't see your eyes, Gwendolen, or your nose, either. I am not looking for them. But if they were emerald green it wouldn't phase me. You are in trouble. I didn't know you could cry like this. I wish I could be of some aid, some little comfort to you."
Never before had he called her "Gwendolen" in this grave assured tone. No mere love-sick boy could have done it. The voice was that of a man, with a man's power and mastery and self-respect. The woman in her put up a protecting hand, but the deeper nature responded with smiles. Reason, instinct, affection; clamored, like insistent children, for the boon of grace. Her heart leaned down to them. "Recognize him,—confide in him,—win him now, forever," cried the voices. "Nothing can help you, in a time like this, as his love might help. You need him, foolish one,—why not admit it and have peace?" But Vanity and Pride put on horrid masks, and frightened the petitioners. She kept her eyes hidden.
"Well, shall I go or stay?" asked Dodge, calmly. The young man listened in admiring wonder at his own smooth tone. How could his thumping heart and brain direct that tranquil flow?
"You are wel—wel—welcome to stay if you care to. I don't own the grove," said the girl.
Dodge picked a bit of leaf from the earth and began to shred the frail, brown lace. "I was awfully sorry, Miss Todd, not to be able to tell you this morning where the Minister had gone. I am only a servant, you know, and must obey orders."
"Oh, it's no matter," said Gwendolen, airily. She was elated to find her spirits, her self-confidence, returning in a tide. "I know all about it now,—a good deal more, I dare say, than you yourself."
"I know nothing, except the place where Mr. Todd was to go and the purpose of the meeting. He was about to tell me the result of it, when you came in and carried him off in triumph!"
"Not in triumph,—good heavens, not in triumph. This is the most awful day of my life!" She lifted her head now, throwing it backward to the slight wind, and drawing deep breaths. She expected him to urge her confidence, to ask, at least, what trouble had come to her. Already she had more than half decided to tell him all. He was a safe confidant,—one of whom her father would approve,—and—she must admit that, at times, he had clear judgment. He kept an irritating silence. Gwendolen began to fidget.
"Well, don't you care whether I suffer or not? I thought you said you wanted to help me!"
"I want it more than I want anything else in the world, except one thing," said Dodge, and moved two trees nearer.
"Well, well," cried the other, nervously, "I shall tell you. I have been simply dying to tell somebody. To bear a suspense like this all alone is like keeping your fist in a water dyke,—or barring a door with your arm, or some of those dreadful heroic things." Hampered at first by a constantly recalled determination to maintain her dignity, she began the exciting history of the day, starting from the momentwhen she heard of Pierre's escape, and ending with the visit of her father and herself to the deserted Haganè mansion.
Dodge listened to all with an interest that a barometer might feel. He was silent, except for a very few terse, direct questions. Not an exclamation escaped him, and not a point. As she neared the end, Gwendolen's voice gave way, and the little handkerchief was raised. Dodge moved a tree nearer.
"Now tell me what you think, tell me truly. I have buried my own thoughts in the earth, and sit here on their grave."
"Let my thoughts go there with yours, dear," said her companion, mournfully. "The affair is as bad as it could well be. Luck alone is going to save your friend, and from what I have seen and known of Miss Yuki, she doesn't seem marked out by good luck."
She did not resent his hopelessness. Apparently she had foreseen it. The telling of her story had eased while it had wearied her. She gave a long, sobbing sigh, like a child, and let her head droop.
Before she knew it Dodge's arm was around her. "I'd give my life to keep this and all other sorrows from you, Gwendolen. But all I can offer now is—myself. Come to me, darling, put your poor tired little head against me, and let me try to comfort you."
The girl began to tremble piteously. In her nervous state, the brimming tears soon overflowed. "No—no—" she whispered, trying to push him off. "It is not me you love,—you are Car-car—car-men's! She said so. You belong to Car-Carmen!"
"I belong to Carmen's cat!" cried Dodge. "What am I to Carmen or Carmen to me?"
"Then you de—ceived her!"
"Pshaw! I'll make Carmen a sugar man in my image. She'll like that lots better. I love only you—only you, you beautiful, golden, tormenting angel of a girl! If you hadn't kept me on pins and needles, I wouldn't say it! I loveyou, I say. How could any man in his senses ever love any other woman after once seeing you?"
Gwendolen tried to be stern. "No," she said again, "you don't love, you don't respect me. You were horrid that day! You defied me to my face. You wouldn't apologize. Will you apologize now?"
"Indeed I won't," he cried with a ring of victory. "I'd be a mucker and a sneak to do so, and you would never want to look at me again. Deny it,—and deny that you love me,—oh, Gwendolen, Gwendolen!"
With a little sob, in which a golden feather had been caught, she leaned to his arms.
He took up the little brown sealskin cap, flung it back to her head, and, in his most boyish, impudent, and ecstatic tone, said in her ear, "You know the penalty for wearing another fellow's hat?"
Inhis favorite small smoking-room at the French Legation, crammed with motley Japanese and Gallic bric-a-brac, Count Ronsard fumbled nervously with his nether-lip.
"You sent for me, your Excellency?" said the secretary Mouquin, at the door.
"Allons! Entrez! It is the devil!—what our English cousins call 'the beastly bore.' But for his mother, the Princess Olga, I would wash my hands entirely!"
He went through the gesture, revolving one fat pudding of a fist about the other, and closing with an outward fling of both, and a shrug that made his body quake. "No news at all, Mouquin?"
"Nothing decisive, your Excellency. A mere hint, a hushed rumor, that Le Beau was last traced to the neighborhood of Prince Haganè's official residence."
"Sacrebleu! You should have probed."
"I asked a few questions guardedly. Your Excellency, one hesitates to put a match to a powder-train."
"Quite true, Mouquin. And when did the hushed rumor have it that he was seen,—what hour?"
"Before noon,—not long, in fact, after his mysterious escape from the nurses."
Ronsard's head dropped forward an inch. A sickly glow drove the usual gray pallor from his face.
"Doubtless," ventured the secretary, "Monsieur Le Beau will find his way sooner or later—to you!"
"Certainement! Certainement!" cried the other, finding relief in sarcasm. "He will come weeping to the arms of Mother France. Bah! I would that Mother France could greet him with the toes of these boots!"
He thrust forward pointed patent-leather tips, and stared at them, as if calculating the punishment they might inflict.
Mouquin, not being asked to find a seat, still stood by the door. The very air of the room held in solution, with its blue smoke, the dampness of foreboding. The first secretary's voice sounded thin.
"The doctors think this mad exposure means his certain death, your Excellency."
"Death! H'm! He'll take good care to stay alive till we're all involved. It's too late for him to die."
The other raised his brows but made no answer.
"Have an absinthe, Mouquin?"
Without noticing that Mouquin shook his head Ronsard leaned over heavily and poured a little of the liquid into a glass, filling it up with water. Without drinking, he stared as if he saw a vision in its milky depths.
"Just a chance—the air is thick with plots—Pierre might be feigning—the Princess Haganè—who knows?—perhaps connives, betrays—Pshaw!" Count Ronsard dreamed under his breath.
"No further orders, your Excellency?" asked the younger man, patiently, his hand on the door.
"No—yes! Bring me the first news of that wandering lunatic—and avoid the police!"
The words fell before a fury of feet that bowled down the outer corridor. The door burst open, nearly flinging Mouquin to the floor. Pierre Le Beau reeled in, crimson, panting, wild-eyed, hatless, and waved at the startled minister a large paper sealed with a red seal, round and clear as a Japanese sun. Ronsard in the millionth part of an instant recalled himself. He sat erect, but his eye gleamed beady and keen as a rat's. He was holding back with impartial judgment a riotous flush of hope. But Mouquin, as if hypnotized, locked the door and backed up against it. Pierre's eyes caught the cloudy green of the absinthe, still standing in the minister's glass. He tottered toward it, tried to speak, but merely pointed in jerks with his free hand. Ronsard silently held out the glass and motioned to an empty chair. Pierre drained the drug standing, then fell rather than sat. A sweat sprang suddenly to his skin. The fair hair plastered itself in little brown sickles on his white forehead.
"What is it, Pierre?"
Ronsard's eyes had not left the document half crumpled in Pierre's fist. His voice had a bracing echo. A returning wave of unhealthy strength warned Pierre to action.
"Yes!" he cried, swaying across the table, holding out the paper and shaking it up and down. "I've done it! What you wanted! Sold my honor to Hell for it! Quick! Quick! America! The war!"
Pierre's head, not yet balanced by the stealthy drug, reeled, and the large envelope dropped on the table. Ronsard recognized the great Cabinet seal. With a wolfish twitching at the corners of the mouth, which his utmost effort could not control, he slowly pushed his hand across the polished mahogany. Then two currents of thought met, and he paused. The fretfulness, the lax instability of flesh, were gone. He sat stiff, a compact mass, in his broad chair. One could see that behind the ample jowl stretched a great square bone.
"First, what is it, Pierre?" he repeated coldly.
Pierre rocked in his seat. "A state paper—of utmost import—signed by Grubb and Todd and all the Japanese!—It means alliance!—I saw them all as I crouched in the garden. Read it, quick! The wax is hardly set."
Ronsard's mouth watered, but his brain grew firm. "Wonderful! Past belief!" he said. "But tell me how did Monsieur—obtain possession?" He was measuring the depth of Pierre's insanity, gazing desperately for signs of returning judgment. "Is it safe forme?" he continued quietly.
"Good God, man!" cried Pierre. "Here I win you, with my life, perhaps, the very key to this war—to history for all time—and you prate about safety! Is war safe? Is anything safe?"
Ronsard's voice came low and stinging. "Tell me! Where—and how—did you get it?"
Pierre was too over-wrought to lie, even had he dared. He swaggered. He stretched forth a hand and snatched the paper defiantly. "I took it—yes, from the body of Prince Haganè! Glorious, wasn't it? Mon Dieu! Think of it! In his official residence!"
"It means the Cross of the Legion of Honor," said Mouquin, weakly, against the door.
"Haganè!" Ronsard had exclaimed in spite of himself. He knew it meant the utmost of something, but which—glory or dishonor? Either was incredible. "Yes, yes, Pierre," he said soothingly, as to a child; "Haganè's body—I understand. But why—didn't—Haganè stop you?"
"Why? It is droll—he could not! He was tied, tangled. His feet were tangled—yes, tightly entangled! He was too busy with that to follow."
Pierre's laugh turned Ronsard sick.
"What orwhoentangled him, Pierre?"
"You keep her name out of this, damn you!"
Ronsard's pendent underlip went gray to the root. "Then she will die, too." He breathed it to himself.
Whether Pierre heard or not, his tense attitude relaxed. He cowered back in his chair. Mouquin, thinking he had fainted, ran forward.
"No! No more absinthe! No medicine! Coffee! For God's sake, coffee! That may keep me up."
A new thought flashed to Ronsard. "Mouquin! Ring, and yourself receive the coffee—just outside the door."
His words rang quick and clear. "We must think, now, like gods or demons for swiftness," he went on to Pierre. "Haganè will be with us at once! How did you keep ahead? You must deny,deny! Don't you see, it compromises France?"
Pierre raised his eyes sleepily. "Haganè—come? No, Excellency! he did not see—"
"Madame will tell him, fool."
"Never! She will die first."
"Ah, allow me, then, to congratulate you," Ronsard permitted himself to sneer. Then swiftly, "You have been seen! The servants! The police—"
"Your Excellency," chattered Mouquin, darting a ghastly face through the door, "Prince Haganè is announced. He is coming down the hall—he ishere!"
"I thought I heard footsteps. Hold him, just a moment." Ronsard rose to his feet. With a low whisper that stungwith the lash of a knout he bent to Pierre. "Stand, you fool! And if you have never known what it is to be a man, try the feeling now! Hide the paper in your breast. There! Smile, though your face crack!"
Pierre thrust the document into his coat and rose to greet Haganè, who entered calm, dignified, and stately, not a fold out of place, nor a hair ruffled. If any characteristic were intensified it was in deliberate tardiness of advance, an undue rigidity of self-restraint. He bowed deeply to Count Ronsard, ignoring, for the moment, the presence of the younger men.
"Your Excellency will be surprised, perhaps annoyed, at this unceremonious call. It concerns a personal matter which could not be delayed. There is nothing official, you understand. It lies between Monsieur Le Beau and myself." He turned now to Pierre with the slightest inclination of the head, and then bowed more deferentially to the flaccid Mouquin by the wall.
"Anything that brings your Highness is an honor," returned Ronsard, himself placing a chair for the great man.
Haganè seated himself with the same painstaking calm. As he did not speak, his host continued, with obvious effort at composure, "What does slightly surprise me, your Highness,—if you will allow me to say it,—is—er—your seeming so certain of finding Monsieur Le Beau here, when your efficient police have been searching—"
"Le Beau has been here for some time," put in Mouquin, who was so nervous that he should have been elsewhere.
Ronsard winced. A sombre fire flickered in Haganè's eyes. "And am I to infer that the efficient police, of whom his Excellency so kindly speaks, have failed to keep in touch with Monsieur's Legation?"
The two young men crossed glances of dismay. Quickly Haganè turned his eyes to Pierre's flushed face. Each moist curl burned it like a scar. "And similarly, I suppose, I am mistaken in thinking that Monsieur Le Beau has but just arrived in great haste."
Before an answer could be found, footsteps and a timid knock made interruption. Mouquin craned his neck aroundto the aperture of the door, altering but slightly the position of his body.
"A servant says, Excellency, that the American minister, Mr. Todd, telephones from his Legation that he must see you immediately."
"Go, Mouquin, and stop him," said Ronsard, glibly. "Say I am out. But if he is already started wait for him at the door, and be careful to usher him into the small drawing-room, and keep him there till I come. Conciliate him. Your conversation, you understand, is to be on the high C of flippancy."
In the short interval Pierre had regained self-control. "Lord Haganè, in what way can I serve you?" He made a great effort to be nonchalant.
Haganè leaned slightly toward Ronsard. "Perhaps you have heard, Excellency, that a few moments since, Monsieur Le Beau picked up, in my humble home, quite by accident, a private letter that I had carelessly let fall."
"A private letter!" Ronsard turned with well-feigned astonishment to his subordinate. "Oh, no! Monsieur Le Beau is the soul of honor!"
Pierre could not think how to weigh the naturalness of indignation against a gentlemanly magnanimity. "The prince is mistaken," he said weakly. "It must have been another man."
Without a flicker of anger or impatience Haganè, still facing the count, inquired, "Does the young man act with your authority?"
"Mon Dieu, your Highness! No. Monsieur Le Beau has a certain official connection—but in such aprivatematter"—Spread hands and a shrug completed the thought.
"Were you not at my villa this morning?" Haganè had turned suddenly to Pierre.
What could the Frenchman say? "No," came the pliant lie.
"Come now, Prince Haganè!" began Ronsard, genially. "You see it's all a mistake. Forgive the boy his embarrassment. He is ill. To accuse him of purloining a private letter! Mother of God! In France it means a duel—"
"Not purloining, your Excellency," corrected Haganè. "Taking by accident,—quite by accident. That is different. If our young friend was suffering from delirium he may have forgotten. Ask him to feel in his pocket."
"It's a damnable lie, hatched for some personal reason," said Pierre.
Haganè slowly rose. It was as if bronze moved. Ronsard instinctively imitated him, watching closely. He was convinced, now, that Haganè knew; but could not guess his next move.
"My time is valuable to-day," said the Japanese, drawling a little. "I must speak with Monsieur Le Beau alone."
Blank silence fell on the group. Haganè looked from one to the other, a slight shade of contempt growing in his eyes. "Is Monsieur Le Beau afraid?" he asked politely. "I assure you, gentlemen, I am unarmed. Even so, he might feel safer with a knife, a pistol. I regret that mine is at home, or I would be pleased to lend it. Perhaps one of these gentlemen can accommodate you."
Pierre's face was growing white in a circle about his mouth. He stepped to Ronsard's desk, took out a revolver, a pearl and silver toy, and slammed it on the table between himself and Haganè.
"Go, your Excellency!" he said, with eyes on Ronsard. "I, too, desire private speech with him."
"Pierre! Pierre! remember France," cried Count Ronsard.
Haganè bowed to the speaker.
As Ronsard hesitated at the door, Mouquin pushed it open cautiously and brought in the coffee. "Not yet, Excellency," he said. Haganè waved his refusal of a proffered cup. Pierre poured himself three cups in succession, draining quickly each scalding draught.
Haganè bowed again to Ronsard. "Now," he said simply.
"Get out, Mouquin. Remember, Prince, the boy is ill."
"I can take care of myself," Pierre said, his boyish head thrown back.
Left alone the two men faced each other. Pierre leaned with one delicate hand on the table. Nervously exalted and chafed by silence he hurled words at his sombre opponent.
"If your time is really valuable you waste it, my Lord. I advise you to inquire elsewhere."
"Let us be seated," said Haganè, with a pleasant smile. Pierre, as at a physical thrust, went backward into a chair. "Now, shall we smoke?" continued the other, his tone deepening in friendliness. Its suavity had the effect of smothering. Pierre fought it off with a rude weapon.
"Certainly, your Highness. Cigarettes or opium?"
"Ah! Do you keep the latter luxury?" inquired the prince, with interest. "Have Frenchmen adopted this—vice—also?"
"I meant for you only," explained Pierre, foolishly.
"You must be a new-comer, unaware that I, myself, had the drug excluded from Japan. You Christian Europeans had already forced it on China."
Pierre did not look up or try to answer. He felt his every move a false one. The steadying of the coffee did not come fast enough. He was in a hurry to get in some telling thrust. He must defend himself and Yuki. Count Ronsard should, after all, acknowledge him a man. The smooth, cool tones of the other now flowed like a refreshing liquid through his brain.
"Am I right in thinking this your first visit to Japan, Monsieur?"
Pierre, half dazed, answered, with instinctive politeness, "My first, yes. But I have for years been interested."
"May I venture to ask what special phase of our civilization has been honored with your interest?"
Pierre's demon nudged him. "It's woman," he said, with a short, ugly laugh.
Haganè's smile grew almost fatherly. "In that you are no exception to the majority of your countrymen, Monsieur."
"To be accurate I should have said—awoman."
The nobleman took a long whiff at his cigarette before remarking thoughtfully, "It is an unending source of wonder to our students, Monsieur, that you of the West, even your greatest thinkers, take women so seriously. Now with us, apart from the one function of becoming the mothers of our sons, they are to men as playthings to children,—as flowers, or bright-colored birds."