TheHaganè villa at Kamakura possessed its own green niche cut deep into encroaching hills, its own curved scimitar of gray sea-beach, its individual rocks, its blue ocean, and bluer sky. A fence of dead bamboo branches, set up on end like fagots, barred out spying curiosity. The house faced directly to the sand. On the three remaining sides the hill-slopes made retreating walls. Upon them grew spindling, wind-tossed pines and loops of wild white clematis and of rose.
Through the big, fragrant rooms of the villa all day the sea-winds passed, stirring the few kakemono, and making flowers in bronze vases nod like those more securely rooted on the hills. No attempt had been made at an ornamental garden, except for a few great, gray stones spread with a lichen sparkling from its diet of salty dew, three curious small pines, and spaces of white sand. The placing of these trees and stones hinted of more organic beauty than all the convolutions of the average Occidental millionnaire's park. It is only fair to add that the millionnaire would not agree to this.
The first two hours after arrival were devoted by Prince Haganè to the writing of telegrams and letters. These were sent off by messengers as soon as finished. The statesman strode out alone to the shore and walked there, his head bent in meditation, until telegraphic answers began to arrive. These apparently bore reassuring news. He sought out Yuki, his sleeves quite stiff with crumpled missives, and told her that already he had arranged his affairs so that he could have two days to belong to himself alone. "Unless some unforeseen matter of gravest importance should transpire," he added, "I shall not be disturbed. I shall give orders to Bunshichi to bring me no letters that do not bear the Imperialseal. And now, my child," here he seated himself near her, "I may be permitted to recall the fact that I have a wife."
For two days Yuki was seldom out of his sight. The shrinking, delicate, humble, exquisite thing, now so entirely his own, fed his stern eyes and heart with ever-deepening satisfaction. Her pallor, her reticence, even the strained smile which she sometimes turned to meet his words, were all as best he liked to have them. An arrogant, self-assertive bride is, to the Japanese, an inhuman monster.
On the third morning Bunshichi brought him with his breakfast the accumulated mail of the two days. At sight of the great heap he sent a quizzical glance to Yuki. "It appears, small sweet one," he remarked, "that I am to have no more hours of happy indolence."
Before the first ten were read Yuki knew herself forgotten. Her bruised soul stirred within her like a wounded thing recalled to animation. She started violently at his next loud words. "I take the earliest train to Tokio. Have my kuruma waiting." His voice was that of a master, not a lover.
Yuki rose swiftly. At the kitchen-step she paused, threw back her head, and took in a few long, long breaths. The servants below waited, open-mouthed, for her orders. Meta's kind voice recalled her.
"What do you wish, August Mistress?"
"Oh, yes, Meta—I was thinking—I forgot. The master takes the next train to Tokio. When does that train start?"
Meta's eye consulted the Waterbury clock. "In twenty minutes, Mistress. Perhaps the Illustrious One will not wish to hasten so swiftly."
"Yes, yes, he desires to go at once. Go quickly, Bunshichi, call a kuruma with two runners. Our master is a heavy man."
Her commission filled, Yuki returned slowly to the room where her husband still sat reading letters. On the way a thought smote her. "Your Highness, the train in twenty minutes honorably departs. Your kuruma will be in readiness. Was it your august intention that I should accompany you?"
Haganè looked up at her in a sort of half-recognition.
"You? Accompany? No, of course not. I would not have the time to give you. In a few days more, perhaps. Put those scattered letters and papers into a leathern portfolio. Bunshichi will know what else I need. How fortunate that a train goes so soon!"
Between this and the starting moment he had for her neither look nor word. Just as he stepped, however, into the vehicle, he turned as with sudden, loving remembrance, and leaning far down to her said, "These days have been as the heavenly island of Horai set in a sea of raging politics. You are a docile and obedient wife. So shall I inform your father."
When he had really gone, and even the heavy clink of jinrikisha wheels on sand was no longer audible, Yuki lifted her head, brushed back the low fall of hair from her forehead, stared at the quiet sea for a moment, and then turned and walked back slowly into the house. For a few moments she wavered, pausing now, now walking swiftly, now looking about as for something she had lost. In such broken, indeterminate angles of advance she reached a little chamber quite remote from the rest, a closet darkened by nearness of a rising cliff. Here she stopped short. A physical shudder ran through the length of her. She moaned, bit her lips back into silence, pressed suddenly white hands upon her vacant eyes, and then, failing all at once, fell to the matting, and lay, face down, along its pallid surface. At last—at last—for a few hours at least this tortured smile, this self-inflicted strain could be shaken off and she, like a driven beast of burden, could lie still, to die, to moan, or slowly to gather back what remained of endurance. Her thoughts buzzed confusedly like a great swarm of bees whose nest has been taken.
Through the sweet spring day she lay prone, inanimate, stirring only at a passing sting of consciousness. "My country—my Emperor!" once she moaned aloud. "O Kwannon the Merciful! O my Christian God!—must I live, can I endure it? Already I am cowed and broken. Shall I ever again look a flower in the face?"
More than once the kind-hearted maid-servant knelt beside her, urging food and drink, or a walk into the reviving air. Yuki seemed not to hear. After one such unsuccessful excursion,Meta returned to the kitchen, shaking her head. "They have married that beautiful young maiden to our august yet somewhat ancient master, and her heart's love dies within her for another. Oh, I know well enough!" she cried, with a touch of defiance, as her father lifted bleared, protesting eyes; "so was I bartered to the wicked man who beat me and drove me forth. I may be of low estate, but I know a woman's heart."
"Then you know the seat of folly," grumbled the old man. "When your husband drove you out, I suppose he had reason; I received you, didn't I?—I allow you still to call me father—"
"Yes, and do all your work and mine too for it," muttered the woman.
"As for our young mistress," went on the old man, ignoring this last impertinence, "all know her for the most fortunate young woman in this empire and, therefore, in the world. Is she not lawfully married to the richest and most powerful of lords, to Prince Haganè?"
Meta seated herself on a low bench and began to clean the fish for dinner. "Yes, father," she answered at length, "and this newly snared fish whose honorable insides I am preparing to remove is to be eaten by that same rich and powerful lord. Does that make the knife in its belly less sharp?"
The round sun was bisected by a western hill-top pine when Meta knelt again beside her mistress. "August Lady, youmustlisten. A telegram has arrived."
Yuki sat up instantly. She had begun to tremble. Her hair, now disordered, fell about an ashen face. "Has my master come?" she cried, a wild look flashing into her eyes, but lapsing almost immediately into dulness. She put up both hands and spread wide the night-black wings of her hair. Meta drew down one little hand and thrust the telegram between its fingers. "Oh, a telegram," said Yuki, embarrassed.
"Why did you not mention—perhaps Lord Haganè will not come back to-night." She read the few words carefully. Again that faint, sickening throb of relief passed over her. She lifted her head and met the woman's eyes as she said, trying to seem calm and unconcerned, "It is true,—ourmaster cannot come to-night. He bids me remain until further message."
Meta bowed. "Condescend to receive my condolence, noble Mistress. You will be honorably lonely, I fear. But such is always the fate of one married to a great statesman like our lord."
"Yes," said Yuki, eagerly, "and, Meta, I wish last of all things to become an obstacle in his illustrious path."
"Mistress," said the servant, in her honest way, with a smile like sunshine dawning upon the broad, fresh-colored face, "all day you have eaten nothing. May I not prepare a little meal to tempt your appetite?"
"You are kind to me, Meta," said the young wife. She put a hand out to the servant's arm. For some reason known only to women, the eyes of both flooded with tears.
"Yes," said Yuki, her own smile dawning, "prepare me the little dinner. I will try very hard to eat. Indeed I think even now I am becoming quite ravenous!"
Meta, laughing outright, hurried back to the kitchen. She was a good cook, and she knew it. In this same villa-kitchen she had served marvellous dishes to prime ministers and princes, but never before had she worked with a heart so full of love and tender compassion. Never was a meal more daintily served. Slices of tai from the salt waves, embellished with grated daikon and small foreign radishes; lily-bulbs dug from the hills around them and boiled with sugar and wine into balls of crumbling sweetness; lotos roots from the temple pond, sliced thin and served with vinegar, ginger-root and shoyu, salad of yellow chrysanthemums, pickles of coleus, cucumber and egg-plant, the whitest of rice, and tea picked but the week before by the dew-wet hands of little maids at Uji. Yuki was literally betrayed into enjoyment. As she ate, Meta and the old man peeped in at her through the shoji, nudging each other joyously at each new mouthful.
Later in the evening, when lamps were lighted, and the shoji all drawn close, the two servants, with that delicate familiarity, that respectful presumption of which they have made an art, found pretext to enter. At first there was but the usual salutation, and the expressions of gratitude that shehad condescended to partake of such badly prepared food. One question led to another. In a few moments the three were chatting and laughing like schoolgirls, the old man bearing, in his double superiorities of age and sex, the greater share of the conversation. Yuki soon found that he had a single theme,—the perfections of Prince Haganè. More from kindness of heart than interest, she encouraged him in these reminiscences; but in a very short time she was listening as Desdemona to her Moor. The tales indeed were marvellous. Once, at the age of six, or so said Bunshichi, the little Sanètomo had gone at night alone to a distant graveyard to bring home, as proof of his courage, the severed head of a criminal that day executed. At eight he had slain with his own hand a monstrous mountain-cat, terror of a cringing village. But the story which most impressed the listener was that of a poor leper, a beggar already eaten away beyond hope of relief, who, having asked alms by the roadway, was questioned, the young prince fixing thoughtful eyes upon him, "You ask for money to buy food, is that the best gift I could offer you?"
"Nay, Master," answered the thing who once was man, "there is a better."
"Name it," said Haganè.
"Death," sobbed the beggar.
"So think I," cried the boy, and, without further speech, sent his short sword to the leper's heart.
Meta always shuddered at this tale; but Yuki raised her head with so still and white a look that the old man felt uneasy, and began to explain at length. "It was really the best gift, Mistress, and after it our princeling had him buried, and many, many prayers said for the rest of his soul. He even caused search to be made for his family."
"Do you think I wish excuse for it?" said Yuki, with her strange smile. "I know not which most I envy, the beggar or Prince Haganè."
The next day, fair and sweet and practically windless, except in gusts of "pine-wind" from the shore, deepened the balm of her preceding hours. Wild pinks sprang up like a fairy people on the hills. Crows perched and chattered in the garden pines. Little red crabs came out, and all day longdrew marvellous maps upon the sand; and the swinging censers of hillside roses burned a little timid incense to the sun. All the forenoon Yuki busied herself about the house. A long letter was written to Iriya filled with descriptions of the day. Frequent excursions to the kitchen kept Meta and old Bunshichi in a condition of expectant smiles. In the afternoon a sudden thought came, bearing to the girl's mind a hint of wonder at her own insensibility. "Why, the Great Buddha is here, not a mile away from me, and not once have I remembered. I will go to him!"
Meta heard the stirring, and peeped. "Our mistress goes for a walk," she told her father. "Even now she lifts her adzuma-coat. I will get her geta (clogs). Nothing could be better for her than a walk. It is the good food that gives her strength."
"These young things beat their wings like the cliff-birds when the cage first snaps, but soon they come to reason and docility," chuckled the old man over his pipe.
"I go to the Great Buddha, Meta San," said Yuki.
"Will you not take an umbrella—not even a foreign bat-umbrella—to protect your illustrious head?"
"On these short days the sun sinks very early. See, already he becomes entangled, like a boy's red kite, in the branches of those tall hill pines. I need no covering."
"Should the august master deign to arrive before your divine reappearance—" suggested Meta, with deference and a deep bow.
Yuki's face changed utterly. "I—I—did not think of him," she stammered. "I will not be long absent, and, Meta, should he come, send quickly a runner and a kuruma for me. Do you think he will be angry, Meta, that I went?"
"Nay, little Mistress, he would wish it. There is no kinder man alive than Prince Haganè."
"I suppose he must be very kind," murmured Yuki, and went with downcast looks into the street. The sense of childish anticipation, of vivid expectancy were gone. Meta, in her effort to be dutiful, had clamped more tightly the manacles her mistress had just begun to endure. Why should she wish to go? What matter that the Buddha waited? It was not forher; she could but drag before it Haganè's obedient wife, a cowed white ghost of duty. She moved forward mechanically. Her head sank still further forward, as if the great black orchid of her hair grew heavier. At every step the lacquered bars of her high clogs went deep into sand, so that it was increasingly hard to walk. A group of children, passing, looked up into the pretty lady's face for a smile, then hurried by in a small panic of fear. It is a strange woman who does not smile at children in Japan.
Now she crossed at right angles the one street of the village, a rough and stony thoroughfare lined with opened booths. The street terminates abruptly at the foot of a hill whereon stands an ancient and famous temple of Kwannon the Merciful. Within a hundred yards of this hill an abrupt turn to the right leads into a country of unfenced fields of egg-plant, peanuts, and sweet potatoes; then comes another bit of hard paved road, and then the towering Red Gate of the temple grounds of Buddha.
Yuki had noted dully that in little gardens the cherry trees, always earlier here than in Tokio, were fashioning their annual robes of pink. The wind from the sea, now rising, threw petals out into the air before her. She watched the fluttering signals eagerly, but for some morbid reason would not lift her eyes to the tree. She had but one thought now,—a hunger for the Buddha's face. She longed to test herself, to find whether, in the gap between the Christian Yuki and the Princess Haganè, a shred of herself still clung. This shred, it must be, that the Buddha would smile upon.
Through the gate she stumbled, her gaze still on the ground. The wide stone pathway stretched soft and pink with fallen bloom. A breeze, entering with her, swept the surface in a mass, as though some one twitched the far end of a long pink rug. Petals filled the air. They came now in a small hurricane, fretting her cheeks with ghostly fingers, burrowing softly in her collar, catching and clinging to the long folds of her robe. A sob stretched in her throat and hurt her. She would not raise her eyes. She reached the two long granite steps leading up to the inner court of the Buddha. Here petals were banked in rosy drifts. She could see the bases of stonelanterns standing before the shrine. An invisible hand seemed pressing on her shoulder.
"Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu!" sobbed her lost childhood through her trembling lips.
An old priest, old beyond the telling, with a face as of wrinkled silver, glided out from among the flower-laden trees. "You are in great grief, my child?"
"Yes, reverend sir, in great grief; and it is of that kind which, to a stronger heart, might not be called a grief."
"I know; that is a kind hard to endure, but its triumph gives greatest enlightenment. Look to the face of Buddha, and pray for his endurance."
"Pitying sir," sobbed the girl, "I have become, while in the foreign land, a Christian."
The smile on the old priest's face did not alter. "All new religions are but forms of the old. Buddha will not pity thee less that thou dost call him 'Ye-sus,' for He, too, was a Buddha, even as you and I, daughter, even you and I, through long striving, may become."
"I will dare, then, raise my eyes to him," answered the girl. The old man stood very close to her, and as he saw the white face lift, joined his hands and whispered, "Namu Amida Butsu!" A moment later he was gone. Petals eddied and settled where he had stood.
At first the young wife felt little emotion of any sort. She gazed steadily into the marvellous, calm face with a glint of gold under the half-closed lids and in the jewel on the forehead. As she looked, it grew to be a thing not smoothed and fashioned by human hands, but by the eyes and hearts of worshippers,—the apotheosis, the embodiment of a majestic faith, so subtly wrought of faith that should belief be changed, it, too, would vanish like a mist, its vibrant particles loosen and dissipate, to recombine in some new symbol. How still it was and calm and self-assured! Its lines were growing rigid like the formula of its creed; but in that changeless, ever-changing, pitying smile, a deathless truth still trembled. Near it the hills seemed little piles of dust; pines, centuries old, mere fern-leaves of a summer.
"Give me calm, give me endurance, for they are yours togive!" said the girl, aloud. "I am less than the insects which crawl unnoticed in the grass,—I am a blown petal, frail as these I crush. If my life can serve this land, or aid, in infinitesimal good, my Emperor, why can I not be glad and desire no more?"
The sun had fallen far below the hills. A crimson light, a more ethereal tide, flowed across the sea, and soaked up into the fibres of blue horizon mist. A cricket with the chill of winter in his little voice woke into querulous chiding. Yuki shivered and rose to her feet, drawing the robe more tightly. She sent a glance about the wide gardens, and saw that, apparently, she was alone. She turned as if to go, but an overpowering instinct made her lift her face again to the brooding face above her. How colossal, how patient, those dark shoulders bent in the deepening twilight! Around the lotos pedestal, the cherry trees, touched now by dull crimson light, changed to great billows of a smouldering sea. Crows darted through them like strange black fish, then flew off, cawing, to homes in the pines. Again Yuki turned to go, when a voice that froze her to the stone said softly, "Ah, Madame Haganè, what felicity to meet!"
Pierre had sprung from some unknown shadow. He must have been watching her and listening to her words. He paused now, debonair, handsome, though a little pale, directly beneath an outcurving granite petal of the Buddha's throne. As she still stared, speechless, he struck a match against the bronze and lighted a cigarette. She could not see, for her own trembling, how his poor hands shook. The red match glare revealed his face as distorted, evil, sinister.
"Well," he remarked once more, "have you nothing to say to me?"
This time she tried to speak, but no sound came. Her power of motion, too, was in abeyance. He moved three deliberate steps nearer. As though the air were glass, and she repelled by its material force, she went backward the answering distance. Her left hand, clutching behind her, found something hard and cold, and fastened to it eagerly. It was the fin of a bronze dragon in full relief, twining upward, about the trunk of a tall lantern. "Yes, go," she whispered. "Do not speak more words. Go!"
Pierre took another stride. She cowered back bodily into the writhing folds.
"For the love of God!" she panted.
"What if one has ceased to love God?"
"In mercy then—in pity—in human pity—go!"
Pierre laughed. "Youenjoin pity, Madame Haganè? How quaint!"
"I am more deeply hurted now than you; but never more must I be weak. I am a wife. I shall serve my native country!"
"Does treachery and faithlessness ever serve? You delude yourself. If Haganè is to be your strength, you will fail,—for either Haganè or I must die. I live now only to revenge myself upon him!"
The emptiness of the boast, the impotence of the suffering boy to wreak the harm he wished, did not then come to her. The words rang sombre and terrible. "No—no, Pierre," she cried, "not that! Our Emperor needs him—our country needs. Revenge on me, Pierre! I only was faithless. I deserve all harm you will give."
"Yes, you were faithless, but it came because of weakness, and the low status of your sex in this barbaric land. Haganè and your father forced you. They threatened, cowed you—tortured you, for all I know. Look at your hands! Mon Dieu, your little hands!"
She held them forth to him with a gesture that might have disarmed Beelzebub. "I tore them myself upon that hedge the night you came,—the night I had promised Prince Haganè."
Pierre glared at her an instant longer. Oh, he had meant to be so harsh! Nothing was to have softened his just wrath. Through sleepless nights he had scourged himself with memory until his soul was flayed. Yuki should not appeal to him or move him. He would get from her own lips some faltering explanation of her perfidy. Yet now, for all his armor of resolve, two little torn hands held out silently through deepening gloom pulled at his heart,—drew down the visor from his quivering face.
Above them bent, like a great cloud, the head and stooping shoulders of the Buddha.
"Yuki, Yuki, you have ruined my life! You have killed my soul! I cannot consent to live unless to revenge myself upon the man who has brought us both this agony!"
"Pierre, if you say such thing, I must—because I am now Japanese wife—warn my master of it."
This new affront to vanity stung Pierre back into some of his assumed relentlessness. "You would defend him,—betray me already? Count Ronsard said it would be so, but I would not listen. Why should you be true to him when you were false as hell to me? I'll kill him, I tell you, and if I cannot kill him in open fight, I will find some way to harm him! I'll have you yet, Madame la Princesse. I do not give you up, even at your own words. You owe me something! Come, come, you owe me reparation,—help me trick him, Yuki. You love me,—ah, I know it! This is my first triumph, that your heart cannot forget. Yes, yes, poor shivering slave, it is Pierre you love. Now, come, deny it! When his arms are around you, do you not think of mine? When his thick lips press you, do you not faint for me? Ah, I have touched you!"
"Go—I say to you again, go, and go quickly! You with your own speech cauterize my wound. You are a coward! Your words are vipers which give their deepest venom first to you!"
In speaking the girl had drawn herself very erect. Her face, through the twilight, gleamed luminous with inner fire. Over her left shoulder the open mouth of the dragon yawned. Pierre could not meet her look. He cowered back, and pressed his eyes with one trembling hand.
"Yuki, Yuki, indeed I scarcely know what I am saying. This misery bewilders me. I cannot eat or sleep. My thoughts surge in my brain like fire in a battened ship. And this is worst of all, that now, so soon, you are tamed,—half reconciled! You have not loved me!"
"If I love or not love, I must not now remember. Pierre, pity me a little. Go from Nippon; help me to be the good woman, and the loyal one."
But to this appeal Pierre could not reach. "I do not give you up," he muttered sullenly. "And I will harm Haganè when and how I can!"
Yuki stepped forward a little, still keeping one hand on the dragon. "Then stand aside, Monsieur Le Beau. I must return."
Pierre did not move. "You shall not go," he said in the same sullen fashion. Yuki cast a despairing glance over toward the small house where the old priest lived, then down the long stone walk, now white with petals. No one was in sight. She gave a heavy sigh. On the instant the sound of Japanese clogs came, mounting, apparently, the stone steps of the great red gate. A form of a man in Japanese robes, unusually tall for his race, slow and majestic in approach, now became visible.
"Haganè!" she said, with a great repressed cry, and bit her lips to keep from sobbing.
"Diable!" echoed Pierre. He gave a single look, a curse, and pitching his cigarette on the stone flag near her, vanished into the shadows of the lotos throne. Yuki, half-fainting now, hung in the coils of the dragon. As though life itself depended on his coming, she watched her husband's calm advance. His stride was slow, splendid, and imposing, each step eloquent of centuries of rulership. On catching sight of her she felt that he smiled. He moved no faster. "My Lord," she murmured, not knowing that she had said it.
The cigarette blinked as with a single malevolent eye, and sent up an acrid smoke between them. He stepped over it, apparently unobservant, and held out a hand. Yuki clutched at it.
"Why, small sweet one, how white your face gleams through the darkness! And you lie, like a crystal ball of fate, in the old dragon's claws! Well, here is a larger dragon come to bear you home."
Yuki tottered toward him. At first touch of his hand had come the sense of renewed power. "I dreamed not, Lord, that your august returning might be so soon, or I should not have left your house. I left with Meta the message—"
"She gave it carefully, but I preferred to come in person for thee, little one. Here, lean on me. You tremble. Perhaps the walk has been too long. To-morrow we are to leave this quiet place, and you will be Madame Haganè, wife of theMinister of War,—Madame Haganè, official mistress of a huge and unattractive residence. But you will brighten it, and your friends of the American Legation shall aid you."
"I shall try with all my soul and strength, Lord, to be worthy of you."
"I do not fear, my child. All things are not to be at once expected of a single small flake of maidenhood and snow. How yet you tremble! Here, I will draw your arm in mine. Cling to me. Never mind if the children on the road laugh at us and say that the old prince is mad with love of his young wife. In the great city I must often forget you. But wait one instant—"
He had been standing, half-turned from the great Buddha. Now he faced it, Yuki falling back a little. He raised both hands, rubbed them softly together in invocation, and Yuki, marvelling at him, heard the reverent words, "Namu Amida Butsu! Namu Amida Butsu!"
So,without further preparation or experience, was the little Lady Yuki, fresh from her American school, not yet completely readapted to her native environment, installed as mistress of a great, official mansion.
The servants, of course, were strangers. A few of these bore to Prince Haganè the relation of "hangers-on," impoverished families of soldiers and retainers left from feudal days. Others had official connection with the place, and remained unmolested through various administrations.
For the first twenty-four hours the young wife moved in an atmosphere of dazed unreality. Her first conscious interest was in the mail. She began to watch for letters from her mother, or Gwendolen,—perhaps from that one whom she must forget. The thought of their last interview remained with her as the cruelest of all her wounds. No letter came. Pierre would not, in any case, have written, believing that Haganè had given orders to have all letters pass first under his inspection. The silence of Iriya and Gwendolen had another cause. Her new and exalted rank necessitated from Yuki the initial step. She did not know this, and Haganè, plunged deep already into affairs of state, had not thought to tell her.
She lived now almost an isolated existence. Only the head butler dared personally address her. Even he, in requesting orders from "her Highness," bowed and smiled with a sort of deprecating commiseration, as though he recognized her bewilderment. Of her husband she saw little. The longing for her mother and her friend grew poignant. Through the great high-ceiled rooms she wandered. The face of the great dark Buddha often loomed above her. From every shadow she shrank, fearing that Pierre Le Beau might be in hiding.Three miserable days dragged by. On the fourth, Haganè was present at the breakfast-table. News of a great victory had come. The Western world was just beginning to realize the true mettle in the Japanese soul. Haganè read aloud several editorials from English and American papers, and made comment upon them, as though his listener were a man, and his equal. He had ordered a foreign meal, and the coffee and excellent food stimulated the girl. Her husband's companionship and condescension exhilarated her. It was part of a brightening future that, even before their meal was over, the butler should announce, "Madame Onda, mother to her Highness."
Yuki gave a small cry of pleasure. Haganè lowered his paper, and paused to smile upon his young wife. He did not give a hint that it was through his direct agency that the visitor had come. "Ah, your eyes brighten at this news more even than at victory!" he laughed. To the servant he said briefly, "Conduct Madame Onda to us here."
The servant hesitated, "Your Highness, there is with her also an old attendant, a dame called Suzumè, who—talks."
"Shall we bid the chatterer enter, Yuki?"
"If your Highness permit," laughed Yuki.
"Admit both," said Haganè, and returned to his editorials.
Yuki rose to welcome her guests. As the door was flung back Iriya hesitated for a moment on the threshold. Without a glance toward Yuki she hurried to the Prince, and, prostrating herself, bowed again and again, with audible, indrawn breaths. Suzumè, at her heels, followed suit, excelling her mistress in the rapidity of repeated bows, and the power of audible suction.
"Nay, little mother of my Yuki," said Haganè, reaching down a hand, "rise now, I pray. Such extreme of deference is not seemly in the mother of a princess. Kindly be at ease in greeting your daughter, and converse as freely as if I were not present."
Iriya allowed herself to be persuaded to perch on the very rim of a leather chair and sip at a cup of coffee, while she and Yuki exchanged compliments and inquiries as to the health of the members of their respective families. This isalways the first social duty in Japan. It takes the place of "weather."
No notice whatever was being taken of old Suzumè, who had continued genuflections and inspiration to the point of vertigo, when Yuki at last came to her assistance. Nothing would induce the old dame to sit on a foreign chair. "She had tried them once," she protested. "They felt like a pile of dead fish on a kitchen bench." Her post, self-assigned, was the extreme corner of the red and green Axminster carpet. While her superiors conversed, she let her keen, sunken eyes dart like dragon-flies from one piece of furniture to the other, from ceiling to floor, from curtain to framed oil-painting, until the very texture of these things must have been photographed on her busy retina.
After a few pleasant if perfunctory questions and replies, Prince Haganè rose, saying that he had work in his private office, and afterward must leave the house. "I hope you will remain with Yuki just as long as your domestic duties permit," he had said last of all. Immediately upon his closing of the door, Iriya began congratulating her daughter upon her splendid fortune, and retailing congratulatory messages from relatives and old friends. The little lady's feet, as she sat on the high dining-room chair, did not quite reach to the floor. The draught on her bare ankles just above the tabi (digitated socks) sawed like ice. With a little gesture of entreaty to Yuki, she hurried over to a comfortable sofa, where she nestled, and drew her feet up under her. Yuki smiled at the naïveté of it. Already she felt years older than her mother. She took her place on a chair, drawing forward a tabouret with smoking outfit, and urged her willing guest to the luxury of a small pipe. A sense of freedom, of delight in this sweet companionship, swept for the moment Yuki's hovering responsibilities.
"Okkasan, dear Okkasan (honorable mother), I am so happy to be with you! But why did you wait so long?" Her voice was rich with tender reproving. "Three long days! Long as the castle moats when the mud is showing. The prince is in this house but seldom. I have been lonely, mother."
"Your father forbade me to write or visit you until official request was made us. Now you are a princess, dear, and far outrank Sir Onda's wife."
Yuki flushed. Her eyes sank in embarrassment. "Oh, I had not heard of the strange fact. I beg your pardon, my mother. I am ashamed that it is so."
Iriya laughed. "Do you beg my pardon for being a princess, for making your father proud and happy, when—when—he was threatened by such disappointment?"
Now Iriya, too, became embarrassed. She had intended not to refer to unhappy topics of the past. Yuki was thinking deeply. "It must be honorably the same cause which keeps my Gwendolen away." A great relief followed the thought. The fear of coldness, of censure, was gone. She smiled into the air before her, thinking of the letter she soon should write.
At first, unnoticed by her companions, old Suzumè had risen from her corner and was trotting stealthily about the room. She touched now, softly, each marvellous object within her reach, and talked to herself, the while, in a queer little sing-song monologue. "Ma-a-a! the honorable, huge room, and the wonderful things, all belonging to our Yuki-ko! Foreign carpets with many-colored vegetables painted on them. Strange, puffy beds, high up on legs, like horses (here she patted a French sofa). High tables,—Ma-a-a! with little carpets on them, too, all ravelled at the edges. Big glass wine-cups (here she lifted an iridescent flower-vase)—merciful Buddha! No wonder the august foreigners are so often drunk! Gold is all about, on walls and furniture,—even the pictures have little fences of gold around them! I see a big singing-box (piano) over in the corner. That alone costs hundreds and hundreds of yen. How rich our o jo san must be!"
Iriya and Yuki, by this time, had begun to notice the antics and to smile at the crooning of the old woman. She saw it,—nothing escaped the arrow of those jetty orbs,—but it pleased her now to pretend unconsciousness of observation. She placed herself in front of Yuki, as if the young wife were a large dressed doll, and could not listen. "Ma-a-a! Our o jo san, last of the Onda race. There she sits, straight and slim in her foreign chair, just like our Gracious Empress herself whenher photograph is taken! Now she is a princess, but once she was only a little girl, carried to school on old Suzumè's bent back. Tee-hee! My back is crooked now as Daruma,—but a princess helped to crook it!"
"Don't say such things, Suzumè!" cried Yuki, quickly. "They hurt me!"
"Why should it hurt you, Yuki-ko,—I mean, your Highness, when old Suzumè is only proud?" chuckled the beldame, with almost malicious enjoyment. "Let me be crooked, by your favor. Let me hump over like the lobster of long life. A princess curved my back, tee-hee! Ma-a-a! Will your kind eyes moisten for such a thing? Arà! I have ceased. Behold me now, your Highness,—straight and slim as a young willow down by the moat." She threw back her shoulders and swaggered comically.
"That is better. How is it that little Maru did not come to-day?" asked Yuki, determined, if possible, to change the current of the old soul's thought. Her effort was strikingly successful. Simultaneously Suzumè's face and hands fell. "Ma-a-a! I am a fool. Moths have eaten my memory! Maru crouches yet outside the street gate, waiting for permission to enter."
"And I, too, forgot. Kwannon, forgive my selfishness," murmured Iriya.
"Oh, poor, poor Maru!" cried the hostess, her face a bright tangle, now, of smiles and tears, "the cold wind blows down that street. Go quickly, Suzumè. Fetch her, instantly!"
The spoiled old servant cast a cunning eye to an electric bell set in its black wood disc. "August Princess," she whined, "deign but to put your smallest finger upon that white pebble yonder, and at once a fine man-servant will enter. Maru will be much comforted to receive her summons from a grandman-servant in foreign clothes!"
Iriya's face showed vexation at the old servant's forwardness, but Yuki laughed and touched the bell. She was beginning to realize, in a sort of glad wonder, that her heart grew lighter with every smile.
Maru came into the room sidewise. At every few steps her knees apparently gave way. She did not know, in a foreignhouse, just when she was expected to kneel and bow, so kept herself in readiness to drop at an instant's notice. Her face was round, like a dish. Her beady eyes snapped and sparkled with excitement. The small button of a nose, blown on by unfriendly winds, glowed in the centre of her countenance like an over-ripe cherry. At sight of Yuki, she found her cue and grovelled. "How is it?" asked Yuki of her mother, when Maru was at last persuaded to hold her head erect, "that, I not having yet written, you and the servants came to me?"
"Why, did you not know of it? Prince Haganè sent, last night, a special messenger."
"No, I had not heard. Prince Haganè is very kind."
At the curious tone Iriya sent a keen look to her daughter. She did not like the expression gathering on the down-bent face. "Come, my jewel, you have not shown us half the wonders of your new home. Shall not Suzumè and Maru be given bliss? We can stay but an hour."
"An hour!" echoed the young wife, in dismay. "That is already half spent. Oh, mother, one hour?"
"Such are your father's orders. You know we do not disobey him."
Yuki sighed. "I know. Well, let us see all that we can in the short space. This room is but the dining-room, where, as you have seen, we eat foreign meals. There is a Japanese wing and smaller dining-room, which I shall often use when my master is absent. Now let us go into the long hall, then into the zashiki, or drawing-room." In passing the hall-way she saw Maru's eyes fasten on the telephone box. It had, indeed, an unrelated, black look, set so squarely against the flowered wall-paper. Yuki felt the tug on an inspiration. "Come, mother; I shall not need to write to my friend. I shall talk to her through this! Like the old sennin (genii), who whispered to each other from peak to crag of far mountains, I shall talk clearly to the slope of Azabu!"
Iriya caught her sleeve. "I fear for you to talk in that strange way, my child. The gods may not like it."
"Ah, mother, in America I have talked for hours and was not injured."
"Our gods were not in America to see," murmured Iriya, and followed with evident reluctance. Suzumè and Maru came close behind. Yuki boldly pulled down the receiver and held it to her ear. The servants uttered short squeaks like mice.
"Moshi, moshi!" called Yuki, giving the Japanese telephone cry.
Maru shuddered. "Is it a deaf devil, that the o jo san speaks so loudly?"
"A whole nest of devils, Maru San," said Yuki, with mischievous and impressive gravity. "There are green and red devils like those that the lightning bolts bring down, and little foreign devils in boots and beards, and—"
"Oh, let us go! let us go!" cried the little maid, and clutched Suzumè's sleeve.
"America no Kōshikwan," Yuki was replying, in apparent unconcern, to the devils. Suzumè had realized the situation. "Fool!" she said to the cringing Maru, giving a scowl and a light cuff on the ear, "the princess is only telegraphing in talk instead of writing. The house-servants laugh at you. We shall have no face!"
By this time the imperilled princess was talking rapidly in English. Her countenance quivered, brightened, changed, as if a person stood before her. In pause of listening she would nod, smile, listen again, giving murmured ejaculations.
The verisimilitude proved too much for Maru. In spite of cuffs fiercely renewed, and a desperate effort to keep her limp body from the floor, she sank from her mentor's grasp, clutching the thin old legs, and sobbing, "They are bewitching our Miss Yuki,—I know they are! Foxes are shut in that black box! She will get full of them, and then they will all fly out to eat our hearts!"
"They'd have a sop of sour jelly with yours, cuttlefish!" said Suzumè, kicking in disgust. Finally, in utter exasperation, she seized the culprit by the ear, sliding her bodily down the hardwood floor, and depositing her in a moaning heap on the back veranda beneath a water-cooler.
"Gwendolen, Gwendolen!" Yuki was crying. "I have just now learned, I think, why you have not come or wrote to me." (Pause.) "Yes, it was just that thing,—my rank, it iscalled. Alas, do you remember, Gwendolen, that poor little sea-maid how she feel when the proud grandmother beckoned eight large oysters to fasten upon her scales? Well, I have now the pinch of such oysters. But I will not care so much if only you will come!" (Pause.) "My mother is with me, and her servants, but they must go very soon. I will be alone.—Yes, he is to be absent all the day. Oh, come quickly,—quickly,—I cannot bear some more long waiting." Yuki wheeled from the telephone. "She will come, mother; my friend will come! Let us go to the long drawing-room and wait for her. I will send tea and cakes to comfort the silly Maru. Some other day we shall see all of this big house. It is very ugly, though costing much money. That is honorably often the case with foreign things. Oh, mother, I have been so hungry for you and my golden friend! She will be brought to us in the long drawing-room. We are in heart and soul, if not in race, true sisters. How kind she was to me at school! I have written you before. The other girls would tease me. They asked impertinent questions, and would always be tormenting me to dance. Gwendolen was the only one to see how I felt. She protected me, and would not let me dance until my heart began to sing. She knew that real dancing, like poetry, should come only when your heart sings,—not just because you are requested. Sometimes in homesickness I would dance, sometimes in joy of springtime flowers. Those girls tried, too, to dance,—the funny American girls! But they could never learn. Not even Gwendolen could learn, though I taught and taught and taught her!"
Excitement bred of the coming visit caught her up like a leaf. Prattling on, she moved swiftly into the long room, beckoning now and then for Iriya to follow. The mother kept at quite a distance, embarrassed by this lack of restraint in a married daughter. In the centre of the room the girl paused, and, as if impelled, threw herself into a pose of wonderful beauty, every bone, every inch of white flesh set, as it were, into visible expression of a poetic thought. "I did not know that ever again I should wish to dance like this," Iriya heard her murmur. "Yes, I am coming back to myself. Eventhat little soul that fled on the ship,—it may come back last of all, but it will come."
Half dreamily she passed into a second pose. The transition was music. Now her long eyes closed into a mere gleaming thread, her lips parted, and trembled. Almost without motion of her mouth she talked on, in broken Japanese phrases, uttering them in rhythms, which subtly related to the gestures of her body. "No, those girls could never dance,—never dance,—with their honorably stiff shoulders and their limbs like trunks of young trees. They attempted it with fervor, but they could not augustly dance. But I will dance again, and my souls will listen. I will dance the dance of the Sun Goddess and of morning, because my friend is coming!" She hummed, now, the tune and the words of a famous classic. Iriya, completely under the spell, sank to the floor in the attitude of a singer, caught up the rhythm, and sang with her: