The Breath of the Gods Part 17

"In America one thinks very differently of such matters," said Yuki, her eyes still lowered. "Yet I suppose the feeling is honorably the same everywhere. Yes, father, it is of such love that I now must tell you."

"We have many j.a.panese terms for Love," mused Tetsujo. "Love of country, of Our Emperor, of parents, of beauty, of virtue,--but the term which you now employ should not be spoken by a samurai to a woman not his wife. You pay a high price for Western knowledge, my poor child, if already the dew-breath of modesty has dried from your young life."

"Father," she pleaded, "I am still a j.a.panese. I know how it must seem to you. I suffer in the speaking, but still I must speak. I promised. I must speak."

"You promised?" echoed Tetsujo, and looked more keenly into her shrinking face. "To whom could you have promised such a thing?"

"To him--that one--I first alluded to." She did not attempt now to meet his eyes, but fingered nervously along the edge of her sleeve.

"Can it be possible that in that country unmarried youths speak in unmannerly directness to young women of such intimate affairs? I had heard a hint of this unbelievable indelicacy, and once your mother, Iriya, hinted that we should warn you. But I scoffed then at the thought of your needing the admonition. Alas! being a woman, she knew you better than I."

His head sank forward. Yuki twisted her slim hands into wisps. "In America all speak of these things, father. They think us immodest for other reasons, and foolishly sensitive in this. The schoolgirls talk--and the matrons. All theatres treat of it--and books are full of it. You sent me no warning--I could not know, of myself. Please, honorably, restrain anger against me."

"I must not be angry," muttered Tetsujo, who now gave every symptom of a rising storm of wrath. "I must be calm. But G.o.ds! this is a foul spectre to meet at the very outset! Am I to understand that this man--this person--spoke directly to you, and you listened without first receiving permission from your parents? He could have gone, at least, to my friend, and my country's representative, Baron Kanrio."

"Father, father," cried the girl, "you _are_ becoming angry. I did not have the time to reflect. In America one does things first and thinks about them afterward. I am not sure that person ever has even met--our n.o.ble baron."

If she hoped to palliate by this last disclosure she was quickly undeceived. "The gamester--the oaf! Insolent fool! An impostor unknown even by sight to your natural guardian in a distant land! He must be an alien! No j.a.panese--not even a Yedo scavenger--could have been guilty of that misdeed!"

"But he spoke quite openly to my best American friends, the Todds," said Yuki, desperately. Tetsujo's rising excitement and anger lapped like flames about this new thought.

"And that Mr. Todd, now come to be minister in our very home,--did he encourage your filial impiety?"

"It was not so much Mr. Todd as Madame, his wife, and my schoolmate, Gwendolen," admitted Yuki, with a sinking heart.

"Ah, I might have known it," said Tetsujo. His relief was evident. "Only women! Mere cackling geese. America echoes to their shrill voices. That is of no consequence."

"In that country women are of much consequence, and everyone speaks openly of affairs of love and--marriage," persisted Yuki, who now clung half hopelessly to this one tangible point.

"And you yourself--ingrate--would willingly bestow yourself, without a word from me or your mother, upon a man who is a stranger, and whose conduct, heard from your partial lips, impresses me as characteristic of a fool and an outcast?"

His brows were black and twitching. Yuki knew that she must take her stand now or never. "You see only the side of j.a.panese convention, father. I have given to him a promise. When your consent and that of my mother are gained, I shall be glad to be his wife."

Tetsujo started convulsively, then controlled himself. The sudden checking in of pa.s.sion recoiled through the very air. With rigid hands he stuffed and lighted his small pipe. When he spoke his voice sounded flat and hollow, like beaten wood.

"Such a promise, unratified by me, of course means nothing, unless--it be defiance of heaven and of natural decency. It binds no one--you least of all. Consider it unsaid."

Yuki looked directly upon him. Her soft feminine chin grew a little squarer, more like his. "That promise is given, father. Neither you nor I have power to recall it. It has gained a living growth in the soul of a third person." She turned half-closed eyes to the garden. Tetsujo went forward in two small stiff jerks. His eyes fastened on her face, as though he saw it for the first time. Veins swelled in his neck, and the fingers on his small pipe-stem grew slowly flat, like the heads of adders.

"Is that you speaking, Onda Yuki?" he asked. "The G.o.ds grant that I wake from this dream! But if it be reality, then sorrow is to come. If this man be a foreigner, let him stay in his own land! You are mine utterly,--at my disposal in marriage as in all else. There are ways, in j.a.pan, to curb such mad demons as those that now look at me through your eyes. Go! leave me. I shall hear no more of this,--or else it may be that I shall forget my fatherhood, as you your obligations. Go!"

"Father," said Yuki, quietly, "you must hear more of this or drive me from the house. You owe me consideration and justice; for the ideas that I have, you yourself sent me to America to gain. You even let me be a Christian. With the Christians marriage is a sacred thing--"

"Be still!" said Tetsujo, in a terrible, low voice. His pipe dropped to the floor. The coal burrowed itself, a charred and smoking ring, into the fragrant matting. The odor was that of field-gra.s.s burning. The man rocked himself to and fro for control. His lean hands plunged deep into his sleeves, and grasped, one each, a jerking arm. He was terrified at his own obsession of fury, and his soul warned him against a yielding to his madness. His greenish twisted lips writhed horribly once or twice before the next words came. One corner of his mouth went far down at the corner. His words hissed from a small distorted aperture near the chin.

"You were allowed to turn Christian for the acquiring knowledge of their foolish--creed. I believed that the soul of a samurai's daughter,--of my daughter,--would be untainted by the immoral portions of their doctrine.

I see now my credulity! G.o.ds! I will consume myself with this heat! When you marry--wench,--which shall be soon,--if your j.a.panese husband approves not of Christianity, you will cease to be Christian!"

The two pairs of eyes met, hard, flashing, defiant. Yuki rose to her feet. He sprang after her. His right hand now felt instinctively for the sword-hilts which should have been at his hip. The leering, down-drawn mouth twitched and writhed.

"Your words do not lash from me my heritage of race!" she cried aloud.

"I am still your daughter,--a samurai's daughter!" With a movement like light she stripped back her left sleeve, baring a white, blue-threaded arm. "Because I am a samurai's daughter I refuse a coward's obedience!

Hot blood of a samurai stings these veins no less than those bronze arteries you clutch. Show me reason and I will listen. Apart from that I defy you! I shall be faithful to the man I love even though your legal rights prevent our happiness. Turn me into the street,--slay me with your own hand,--I shall not be compelled into a marriage of your choosing!"

Onda clutched his throat. The breath came gurgling like a liquid. For an instant it seemed as if he must hurl himself bodily upon her. Then he stumbled backward against the plaster wall of the room, clawing at its tinted surface. Yuki's eyes never left him. Now he lurched again toward her, then fell back, shaken like a jointed puppet by his own consuming rage. "G.o.ds of my Ancestors! Demons of the deepest h.e.l.l! Go, go!--lest indeed I slay you. You fiend--you hannia! From my sight, I say!--I cannot endure--"

He cowered again, striking himself into temporary blindness with one powerful fist.

"I go, father, in obedience,--not in fear," said the girl's clear voice.

He sprawled forward, and fell, sobbing like an exhausted runner. Yuki covered her face and went.

CHAPTER TEN

With the Imperial Restoration in j.a.pan--an event, in time, just thirty-five years before the date mentioned at the beginning of this story--many of the n.o.bles of j.a.pan met with ruin. This was especially the case with the "hatamoto," a cla.s.s directly dependent for revenue and patronage upon the favor of the usurping "Shogun." The real Emperor, then a boy of sixteen, living in seclusion at Kioto, was still nominal ruler and spiritual head of the government, forming a sort of "Holy Roman Empire," translated into terms of Buddhism. When, as a result of revolution and many sharp, fierce battles, this boy was brought in triumph to take his rightful place as temporal ruler also, with a new court in the great capital of Tokio, the Shogun, direct descendant of the mighty Iyeyasu, went into dignified retirement. Over-rich monasteries and temples, arrogant after centuries of Tokugawa benefice, were forced to part with broad lands, and even, in certain instances, with personal treasure. The simpler "Shinto" faith, an indigenous nature-spirit and ancestor-worshipping creed, opposed its principles to gorgeous Buddhist forms. The pure spirit of the younger faith and the profundities of its philosophy did not suffer. The blow was aimed at externals. The child-like j.a.panese soul to-day kneels with equal sincerity at a wayside Shinto shrine or before the gold-hung altars of Sakyamuni.

This revolution, then, was threefold and complete. Politics, religion, society, shifted within their national circle and a.s.sumed new aspects.

The centre of all was the young ruler, Mutsuhito. Now the "kuge," or court n.o.bles of Kioto, who had willingly shared retirement and comparative poverty with this true descendant of the G.o.ds, came again into power. But besides these two cla.s.ses, the hatamoto and other dependent samurai, and the kuge, was still a third,--the most important,--the daimyo or feudal lords of the empire. Some among these had never yet given satisfactory hostages to the Shoguns, and lived always in a state of insolent pride and suppressed insurrection. At need of their Emperor, the true mettle of their loyalty rang out. Men, money, lives, property, were poured out like water for this beloved cause.

Those who had been haughtiest to the Shoguns bowed now in deepest reverence to the boy Mutsuhito, in whose veins ran the blood of their ancient dynasty. He was to them truly divine; not in the impossible, superst.i.tious sense, but as a sort of human channel flowing between the old G.o.ds and modern men. Through him were reconstruction and new national glory to be gained. A life laid down in his cause were but newly come alive.

Prominent among such patriots was the old Daimyo of Konda, father of the present Prince Hagane. His t.i.tle more literally translated would be that of "Duke," or "Feudal Prince." His lands, lying far to the south, with a rough channel to divide them from the mainland, held almost a separate and independent existence. His chief province, and the one from which he took his t.i.tle, was Konda. "Hagane" was the family name. At the first hint of national uprising the old daimyo, abandoning his own loved home, came at once to Kioto, and later made the journey with the young Emperor to Yedo. By right he a.s.sumed the place of guardian and adviser. The old daimyo was, as it chanced, somewhat learned in foreign matters, and this, in spite of the Shogun's rigid exclusion of all things foreign, of the death-penalty to any j.a.panese attempting to leave j.a.pan, or, having managed to leave, attempting to return. This was a mighty armor of self-protection to the Tokugawa policy; but, in common with most armor, it had just one small flaw. In this case the flaw was a tiny island, granted to the Dutch, called "Deshima." Not far from the Konda borders lay this innocent fleck of earth, surrounded by blue native seas, and overgrown, like other islands, with tall feathery bamboo, camellia, and camphor trees; and yet, because of its existence, Hagane gained foreign books,--from it he smuggled a Dutch interpreter who could read and write not only his own language, but j.a.panese. Other curious minds drew near this spring of knowledge; and, partly because of it, long before Perry's expedition to the Far East, the j.a.panese people had become restless, eager, awake, and in ferment for a national readjustment.

Hagane's one son, Sanetomo, a few years older than the boy Emperor, and reared as nearly in friendship with him as reverence would allow, was among the first youths of his cla.s.s to travel in Europe, and to acquire any European language. Upon his father's death, he was asked by the Emperor to take at once the offices and semi-royal prerogatives of the lamented elder statesman. All the daimyos had received national bonds for the alienation of their fiefs; and thus those who had been most powerful still enjoyed great wealth in their own right.

With the Emperor once firmly established, etiquette and the restrictions of court-life began to prove irksome to Sanetomo. One could have continued to practise fine manners under the Shoguns. Here to-day was something better. A new army was to be formed; after that a new navy.

Hagane advised adaptation of tactics from the German military school, its unbending automatonism appearing to him a safe restriction for enthusiastic beginners. From the first, however, his mind had been fixed upon the administrative methods of that marvellous small heart of an enormous empire, England. j.a.pan should be to the Far East what England had become to the West. What one island had accomplished, that also could another do.

The j.a.panese nation as a whole went reeling drunk with over-potations of foreign ideas. For a while it seemed that everything j.a.panese was to be swept away. The small opposition party, frenzied by the apparition, took hideous revenge in murder, a.s.sa.s.sination, and suicide. Hagane's faith did not for a moment waver. After excess comes nausea, reaction. So had his countrymen, in more than one epoch now long past, drunk in the new.

In time they would reject the unneedful, and infuse new power in what they had adopted. The thinkers of his empire could afford to wait.

When the new const.i.tution was promulgated in February, 1889, there was rejoicing such as this old earth seldom sees. Hagane was created Minister of War. This position he had continued to hold, with varying intervals. He was now the inc.u.mbent. Much of his time was spent, perforce, in the "foreign" official residence, well within sight of the Imperial moats. Most of such edifices in Tokio are depressing. This was particularly cheerless. The house of brick, wood, and plaster, chiefly plaster, stood full two stories high, was of ample dimensions, and had a huge, square, blue-tiled roof. Though planned and built by the most artistic nation now alive, it had not one line of beauty, nor one successful effort after fine proportion. In these early days it seemed an accepted creed among the j.a.panese that anything to be truly "foreign"

must necessarily offend the eye; yet, thought the ingenuous pupils, since ugliness apparently goes in the company of wealth, power, material welfare, and political recognition,--why, by all means, let us be uglier than the foreigners themselves!

Around the house lay something called a garden, a watery emulsion of American flower beds and a j.a.panese landscape creation. The effect of the whole place was amorphous, unstable, depressing, with the one redeeming feature of bigness.

Onda Tetsujo, speeding toward this haven in his hired jinrikisha, rattled along the uneven stone of the street, and then turned into the one great entrance of the imposing sh.e.l.l. The garden wall had a secret gate or two, but these were generally kept bolted. The storm of the early morning was abating. A drizzling, discouraged rain, with irregular gusts of wind through it, persisted in efforts to exclude all cheer.

Onda knocked at one of the rear doors of the j.a.panese wing, and was but little surprised to hear, from the man who opened for him, that his Excellency the Prince, having transacted all official business for the day, had now retired to his "besso" (villa) on the high land of suburban "Tabata."

Onda re-entered his vehicle and gave the curt order, "Tabata." In the street he added, "Call an atoshi, and pull up the hood and oil-cloth."

An atoshi, or "Mr. After," was summoned, the oil-cloth hood of the jinrikisha drawn far over and held in place by a single black cord knotted to one shaft. A sort of oil-cloth lap-robe, hung up in front and hooked to the inner lining of the hood, afforded complete immunity from wetting. Within the careful adjustment sat Tetsujo, blinking and scowling. The day had brought him a new and unwelcomed experience,--defiance from a woman. He wondered, as he was dragged along the viscid street, whether, in the happy, vanished feudal days, any warrior of his clan had known a similar indignity. There was on record the case of a wilful bride who, married against her wishes to an Onda chief, had disguised herself in a suit of armor grown too small for him, and sought heroic death in battle. But even this was better than open insult and defiance. Well, Yuki must be watched closely. Her education and beauty were not to be thrown away on a foreigner who, likely as not, would tire of and desert her. She must marry a young j.a.panese already well along on the way to official or military promotion. When this Russian war came, j.a.pan would need all her people, men and women. His only child should not be given over to the loose affections of a foreigner. He scowled anew at the thought, and gave so savage a sound that his coolies stopped short in the road to inquire whether the honorable master were in pain.

"No," growled Tetsujo, in return, "a warrior does not feel pain; that is for babes and women."

A few minutes later the redoubled grunts and groans of his bearers--evidently sharing shamelessly the weaker prerogatives of the other s.e.x--told Tetsujo that they had begun the ascent of the Tabata slope. At the eastern edge, where the hill goes down like a cliff, and one looking far out over rice-fields sees the Sumida River finding a shining road to Tokio, and the great twin peaks of Tsukuba-yama standing guard over the other half of the world, spread the broad eaves of Prince Hagane's villa.

Onda gave a sigh of relief as he stepped out under the door-roof.