The Breath of the Gods Part 21

"A thing so easily rectified can scarcely be a cause of shame," smiled Hagane. "You are now as truly j.a.panese as even your jealous father could desire. Will you kindly clap and serve us tea, small pigeon?"

Yuki obeyed instantly and in silence. She was glad to have some occupation for her hands, glad that her eyes had good excuse for drooping. In Prince Hagane's presence the old magnetism, the old troubled sense of his power, again possessed her. Compared with him, nothing else seemed real. He established new values for the spirit. One in the room with him needed no vision to certify his actual place. He dominated and charged the air around him. She felt his eyes as they rested on her slim white hands; she knew when that gaze was turned away.

Hagane, indeed, looked long at the girl. At times he appeared to study her with a gentle, speculative gravity. Of her beauty there had never been a doubt, and to-day she looked her best. Hagane's experience of women had been wide. Now he was saying to himself that this was the fairest maiden of the whole world. Her beauty filled the room like perfume. An old Chinese poet in singing of her would have called her "a flake of white jade held against a star." In the statesman's mind fragments of poetry flitted, similes of moon-light, of white blossoms newly opened in the dew, of hillside gra.s.ses in the wind, of a young spring willow with a nightingale in the branches. Poetry is as natural to all cla.s.ses of j.a.panese as profanity to the average sailor. Hagane gained new delight in imagery. Should a foreigner be allowed to bear away the sweetness of this flower? No; Tetsujo was justified in his indignation. No foreigner should have her. She must marry some young n.o.bleman of her own land; some honorable and brilliant youth with a future, and at least a hint of personal beauty to match her own.

Hagane's mind ran rapidly through a list of eligible men. Objections rose at every point. One was of poor health, another lived a life of open immorality, a third possessed a mother of uncertain temper; Yuki-ko must not have her young life crushed by the tyranny of a shrewish mother-in-law. She should by right be married to a statesman, and be mistress at once of an official home. In this way would her beauty and foreign education be brought into immediate service. If he himself were a young man, what rapture to have that living thing, made up of dew and morning, entirely one's own! Hagane drew a single sharp breath and was calm.

On the gravelled walk of the entrance court came the sound of a carriage.

"His Excellency Mister Todd-u, Madame Todd-u, Mees Todd-u, Mister Douje, and Mister Le Beau," announced a servant in what he thought English.

Hagane went forward to meet them. "Welcome to my cottage. Are we all known, one to the other?"

"Yes, your Highness," answered Mr. Todd, "unless Mr. Le Beau here is the exception."

"Mister Le Beau," repeated Hagane, very distinctly. "I remember with much clearness the meeting with Mister Le Beau. In your admirable dwelling in the capital city of Washington that meeting took place.

Yuki--Miss Onda--performed the introduction ceremony. I remember well."

"And I, your Highness," instantly answered Pierre, with a succession of the sprightly bows that had so incensed old Onda. "It is to be supposed that I should bear in memory so great an event; but I could not have dared to hope for so great a condescension from you."

Hagane replied by a smile and a nod. The latter might have served equally for the kerai who, well within the shadow of Mrs. Todd, made vehement signs of corroboration to his daimyo.

The host then asked of the party, "Shall I not order for you foreign chairs? We keep them in the storehouse for such occasions."

"Thank you kindly, Prince," answered Mrs. Todd for all; "we'll take the floor. In Rome we do as the Romans do." With a lunge the good lady disposed herself in the centre of the apartment, sitting, as it were, at her own feet. The others placed themselves near her, making roughly the outline of a horseshoe, Dodge being at one end, with Yuki beside him, and Prince Hagane at the other.

Gwendolen had with difficulty kept Pierre away from Yuki. "Remember,"

she had warned, "this may be a sort of Sherlock Holmes affair for making you two betray yourselves and each other. You can't be too careful. Old Hagane is a vibrating lodestone of uncanny intuition, and Onda a parental avalanche just ready to slide!"

In the effort to keep his hungry eyes from Yuki, Pierre began to explore the room. His attention was first caught by the arrangement of dwarf pine branches and brown cones, in combination with straggling sprays of a yellow orchid. Then he saw the three paintings beyond. "Saint Raphael!

what are those?" he murmured under his breath, and made as if to rise from the floor. All turned to him; he sought only the eyes of his host.

"Your Highness," he pleaded, his face vital with intelligence, "if not unpardonably rude, may I rise and examine more closely those marvellous paintings?"

Hagane reflected a hint of his brightness. "With greatest pleasure. They are, of course, hung to be seen. I am honored that they attract your notice."

Pierre rushed to the tokonoma, taking instinctively the att.i.tudes of a self-forgetting connoisseur.

"Say, I can't stay out of this!" cried the minister, and crooked his long legs into the angles of a katydid in his efforts to rise. Following the two others, he reached the tokonoma, planting himself, feet wide apart, exactly in front.

Such pictures, painted in sets of three and mounted in single, flexible panels of rich brocade, were designed for hanging in the broad tokonoma of n.o.blemen's houses, or in the living-rooms of priests. This set was in monochrome, on paper which had been stained by time to the color of old ivory. The central painting represented a famous Chinese poet sitting in meditation upon a misty mountain-ledge. The lateral ones were landscapes, one of winter snow, the other, summer fulness. Each ill.u.s.trated a well-known verse of the poet.

"So this is j.a.panese art,--the real thing,--is it?" asked Mr. Todd of Pierre. "You must excuse me, Prince," he went on to his host, "Pierre is always reading and talking about the beauty of it, but I'll be gosh--I'll be shot, I mean,--if I can tell what it is about. Over in my own country, now, I can distinguish a tree from a vase of Johnny-jump-ups, and a farmyard from a nood female; but with these pictures, somehow, the harder I look the more I seem to be standing on my head."

"Cy, I am ashamed of you! _I_ love j.a.panese art, your Highness, and so does my daughter!" expostulated Mrs. Todd, from the floor. "It is so nice, and thin, and cool. I always recommend j.a.panese pictures to my friends for their summer cottages, and I am hanging our Legation with them now. Dear Mrs. Y., of Washington,--you know the name, of course,--has the most gorgeous screen of gold-leaf, painted in wildflowers. When she has a big reception she always puts it upside down behind her sofa, because it has more flowers at the bottom than at the top,--and n.o.body ever notices the difference."

The young Frenchman's cheek flushed. He leaned more closely to the paintings, partly to hide his expression. Gwendolen exchanged horrified glances with Dodge, then the sense of fun in both triumphed. Pierre spoke next in low tones, so that none but Hagane could hear him. "I am only a beginner,--a student. There has been little published in foreign languages about your wonderful art, and European collections are rare.

Am I wrong in thinking these to be something unusual? The lines of the three flow together like music, yet each is a separate composition. _We_ have nothing like it!"

"They are masterpieces by Kano Moton.o.bu," said Hagane.

"Mon Dieu!" breathed Pierre, and seemed as if he would devour with new scrutiny the marvellous visions.

The host's eyes remained fastened upon his enthusiastic guest. He watched every flicker of intelligence, of changing expression. Suddenly the young man turned, met the look, and smiled. It was like sunlight on a meadow when Pierre smiled. "Your Highness," he murmured, "a touch of art should make the whole world kin! Is it not so? Teach me something more of this new mystery of beauty,--be my friend!"

Hagane lowered his lids quickly, but in the downward sweep he caught a glimpse of Yuki's eager, upturned face. She had forgotten herself and her immediate companions. Her spirit had crept over to the strangely mated two who stood before the pictures.

"Monsieur honors me by offering such a privilege," said Hagane, in an expressionless tone. He bowed slightly. Pierre drew back, feeling unaccountably rebuffed. Why had the great man said "Monsieur"? Before that, the plain term "Mister" had been employed. Vanity, never very far from the citadel of Pierre's being, posited an explanation. "He calls you by the French t.i.tle," said Vanity, "because he realizes that no Occidental of another country than France could show such appreciation."

Pierre recalled the awful remarks of Todd, the deeper idiocy of his complacent lady. "Yes, that is it," said Pierre to Vanity.

Hagane had now re-seated himself. He was a few yards directly across from Dodge and Yuki. He studied furtively the countenance of Dodge. With this regard he was quickly satisfied. The American's clear brown eyes were as free from guile as those of a setter pup. He turned again to Pierre, who had now thrown himself, in a graceful att.i.tude of lounging, beside fair Gwendolen. Gwendolen deflected the glance from her companion. Her merry hazel eyes dwelt with bright friendliness and an utter absence of awe upon the t.i.tled host. For the first time Hagane noticed her, looked directly at her, perceived in her something a little more than blown golden hair and girlish audacity. Something in her gaze gave him an impression of pliant boughs, elastic yet imperishable. This trained commander seldom failed to recognize the intangible, unmistakable flash of the thing we call, for a better name, character.

Something in answer to it, a salute of his own brave spirit, rose to the deep eyes. A little thrill pa.s.sed over Gwendolen. "Gracious!" she thought to herself. "That's no mere war-engine, that's a man, and a great one!" To cover her vague embarra.s.sment she leaned to him, letting coquetry blot the real from her face, and pleaded, "Show us some more pictures, please, your Highness. I hear that you have storehouses crammed with them. Even I, in spite of what mother says, appreciate those in the tokonoma. _Please!_"

Hagane bowed unsmiling. The mere dainty allurements of a pretty girl seemed to him almost an affront, as if his old nurse should give him a kite to fly, or a top to spin. He fell into thought. After a moment's somewhat uncomfortable silence he said slowly, "There is one painting I should like to show this honorable group of friends; but first its strange history must be told, and I fear that I have not the fluent English."

"Oh, we simply must have the story! Your English is all right, Prince; I'll declare it is. Please tell us," cried Gwendolen the irrepressible, and she moved a few inches closer.

"Yes, your Highness, your English is wonderful. You don't make half the grammatical mistakes that I do now!" supplemented Mrs. Todd.

Hagane drew a slow glance around the semicircle, plunged his hands within his silken sleeves, and began to speak. His voice was very deep, and in some consonant sounds, of a slight harshness. The vowels were full, rich, and resonant. His speech held at command a certain strange, almost benumbing magnetism, a compelling response, such as one experiences in the after-vibrations of a great bell.

"Oh, I feel in my bones that it is going to be a ghost story, a real one," whispered Gwendolen, with a shiver of excitement.

Hagane did not notice the remark. Todd and Mr. Dodge sent her, in unison, a bright glance of appreciation.

"The painting for which I now attempt the speaking," said Hagane, "made, for centuries, the chief altarpiece of a certain old temple in Yamato.

It was a very old temple,--yes, among the very first built in Nippon for Buddhist worship. One night, when the black sky was rent with storm, and lightning hurled out many terrible spears, one flash found that temple, burning it swiftly to a square of low red ashes. Everything burned; gold and bra.s.s and iron melted like wax--all but the picture; and three days after they found it still on red coals, glowing more fierce and red than they. Nothing was harmed in it except the brocaded edge, and that was soon replaced. This is the picture you shall see."

"Oh!" breathed Gwendolen.

"Afterward it was conveyed to a famous temple of Kioto; but the head priest, the Ajari, being of timid thought, refused to shelter it. By his order it was carried in secrecy to a much smaller temple, very distant, in the province of Konda, where is my father's home of birth."

He paused. The listeners all shifted position a little, all but Yuki, who sat upright and motionless, her soul living in her long dark eyes.

"Even in so small a temple its power began to attract many worshippers and wonder-seekers. The fame of it grew like the gra.s.ses of summer. At the time of our Restoration, the beginning of that cycle of our time called 'Mei-ji,' its destruction was officially decreed. It was designated 'the object of slavish superst.i.tion.' My father was requested, with his own hands, to annihilate it."

"Ah," muttered Pierre, with feeling. "But, thank the good G.o.d, it wasn't destroyed, since you are soon to show it!"

One of Mrs. Todd's thick feet had gone to sleep. She stretched it out under her skirt with great caution.

Hagane looked up into Pierre's bright eyes. "As you observe, Monsieur, it was not annihilated. My father made request of Government that it be sold privately to him, and in return he gave pledge that it never again be used--publicly--as the altarpiece. Thus it came into my possession."

There had been something suggestive, almost sinister, in his use of the word "publicly." His glance had just brushed Yuki's face. Gwendolen's hands turned cold. "But what power needed to be suppressed--what harm could a picture do?" cried the blonde girl, eagerly.

Before attempting an answer, Hagane clapped for a servant, and, with a few low words, sent him off for the picture. He turned, looking first at Gwendolen, then at Yuki. "It is a painting of the Red G.o.d, Aizen Bosatsu. It was prayed to, and sacrificed to by men and women who loved.

Generally they were persons who wished to become the man and wife against the wishes of parents and guardians; less often, of some guilty one already married, and wishing an impure love. Its strange power is this,--that one consumed with pa.s.sion, making offerings, pa.s.sing long nights in prayer, and crying forth incessantly desperate invocation, may see the red flesh and crimson lotos petals fall away like shrivelled bark, revealing the white and shining face of Kwannon the Merciful. This is the reward of those who pray for the strength to be loyal, who wish, in their deeper essence, the ultimate Good. But the painting has another--and more awful power--"

"Yes, yes, Lord," whispered Yuki, speaking now for the first time.

"Should the mad soul clamor on for earthly desire, ignoring what is high,--then will the Red G.o.d burn, burn, burn, even as the heated heart of evil pa.s.sion burns; and the power of that suppliant to do evil will be strengthened. Circ.u.mstances may be compelled, and the wish, however harmful, be attained. With each new triumph of a soul, the merit of the picture deepens; with each malefic use, the evil grows more strong."