The Breath of the Gods Part 22

"What, Lord, would be the penalty--what to a wicked soul would be the price?" asked Yuki's bloodless lips.

"Your early training was Buddhistic, child," answered Hagane, in the gentlest of voices. "You know the doctrine of rebirth! Instinct tells you the price already."

Tetsujo had withdrawn his eyes from their fierce contemplation of his daughter, as if the sight continually fed his anger. He rocked now, with downcast eyes and folded arms, on his cushion, ignoring everything but his own black thoughts.

Gwendolen tried in vain to catch Yuki's eye. She saw that already Yuki was betraying what Hagane and old Onda wished to know. The moment was fatal and memorable.

The servant now returned, bearing a long box of dull red lacquer. Yuki shivered so that all saw her.

"Examine the quaint carvings of devils, Monsieur," said Hagane to Pierre, with light affability. As Pierre leaned to take the box, Yuki gave an imperceptible start forward, caught her breath, and then resumed self-control.

"Gems, all of them!" cried Pierre, in impersonal delight. "They are unbelievable in cleverness. Each seems an evil pa.s.sion caught in fleeting human form."

"Monsieur is intuitive. They are hungry spirits of the Gaki underworld, creatures of ever aching, ever unsatisfied desires. The Hindoo scriptures call them 'preta.' Perhaps you Christians have not such uncomfortable pa.s.sions, ne?"

Gwendolen had another shock to receive. In this new light, flashed past before one realized its presence, Hagane showed to her the eyes of a demon, a creature of power and of pa.s.sion. She recoiled from him as from the supernatural. The new discomfort was vented on the box. "Let us have the picture, Prince, or I'll go wild. Please, somebody sit on that box,--the squirming devils give me a waking nightmare. Why did anybody want to carve such things?"

Hagane smiled a very quiet smile, just on the borderland between his demon and his statesman's self. Yuki, too, watched him, with an intensity of which she was not aware. Slowly he lifted the lid of the box, and took out a long cylindrical roll wrapped in some faded stuff that exhaled a strange, stifling perfume, as of old shrines. Then he rose, with his usual dignified, deliberate motions. The servant, who had been waiting, handed him a small wand tipped with a claw of ivory, such as is used everywhere in j.a.pan for hanging kakemono. Pa.s.sing the cord over a bra.s.s stud on the wall, he leaned over and downward, unrolling the painting by slow inches.

At first nothing appeared but a groundwork of dark silk, a surface crackled and blackened as by heat and time. A pointed, thin flame first arose, then a fiery crown of filigree work that hid suggestions of strange animal forms, then a staring countenance of an archaic, Hindoo type, provocative, menacing, appalling! Shoulders rose, swathed thick in springing flame; a body hung with jewels of red gold; arms bended at the elbow, crossed legs just visible through drapery, and lastly the incandescent throne of a vermilion lotos. The thing glowed wet and fresh, like new-spilled blood. Before its artistic wonder was the wonder of vitality, for the image lived,--not in a world of heavy human flesh, nor yet in realms ethereal, but in some raging holocaust where the two worlds chafe and meet. One flaming hand grasped a bunch of golden arrows; from the other depended coils of gold and orange rope. Each petal of the lotos throne stood sharp and clear in an outline of hot gold, and the long, parallel veinings were of copper. In a room suddenly darkened it should spring out in illumination of its own. A scorching breath blew from it. The leer on the G.o.d's face deepened.

"Ugh!" shuddered Mrs. Todd. She tried to check the exclamation, and apparently none but Dodge, who sat beside her, heard the cry.

"Be careful," whispered Dodge. "He does not tell you half. Men have fought and died for that painting. It is one of the famous things of j.a.pan, and almost impossible to see. He surely has a reason in this display."

Yuki and Gwendolen were equally still and voiceless.

"Mother of G.o.d!" Pierre e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, ignoring ceremony, and running to the place where the painting, now in full length, hung. "What a masterpiece! What torment of genius! There is pa.s.sion in the very curves of the petals,--how they answer the lines of drapery, even the lines of his ugly face! The flaming halo repeats it like a fugue. Mon Dieu! One scarcely can endure such supreme beauty." His voice broke. He turned away. Hagane watched him curiously. "Your Highness," said he, after a very brief interval, and now with frank, tear-bright eyes on the prince, "I know not the morality of it, but I, for one, would not be willing to pray in such fashion that this superb and glorious monster should fade to a silly white. Rather would I add fury to him, and evil,--if that would keep his flame inspired!"

Abruptly Hagane turned his face to Yuki. For some moments past he had ignored her. She had no time to struggle for self-control. Her thought lay beached on the ashen face. The two eyes met. In an instant, as if weary, Hagane turned away, and, crossing the room, seated himself near Onda.

"Shall we proceed to serve the food, your Highness?" asked another servant, on his knees, in the doorway.

"Yes, at once. First roll the picture up, and remove it to the kura."

The banquet was in pure j.a.panese fashion. The entertainment began with the usual foolish mistakes on the part of the foreigners. Yuki was last of all to drift back into the world of the commonplace; Pierre, of the party, being in highest spirits. Everything delighted him,--the food, the trays, the little "ne-san" hired for the occasion to pour sake, the sake itself, the sake bottles,--all! Recklessly now, he forced a position beside Yuki, taking her unresponsiveness as part of the decorum expected of a young girl in j.a.pan. Hagane showed him special favor, plying him with wine, and exchanging numberless tiny cups, each one a step, for Pierre, into further indiscretion. Yuki felt hope slowly die within her. She saw beyond doubt that Hagane was against Pierre and with her father. She knew that she had been chief factor in the betrayal of their love. For a moment she hated, she even despised a little, the man she had been taught to look on as a G.o.d.

Never had a sweeter sound come to her ears than Mrs. Todd's loud command, "Well, Cy, if we are to go at all, we had better start. This sake is beginning to do queer things to my legs!"

At the farewell ceremonies on the doorstep, Hagane managed to whisper to his kerai, "Watch her closely. Let her not leave your sight until you have heard again from me. There is instant danger!"

CHAPTER TWELVE

Prosper Ronsard, the French minister to Tokio, had formed very early in life the ambition to be a Far Eastern diplomat. His way to the goal was made in regular steps of enjoyment. First there had been Morocco, scarcely more to him now than a far-off memory of yellow sands and white cubes of houses, both emphasized, at effective intervals, by theatrical groups of palms. Then came Cairo,--gay entrancing Cairo! His life there held experiences that old age might lick its chops over. Leaving all else aside, the one flame-tree near his hotel window in Cairo would have burned that memory deep. Then there were French Siam, Tonquin, Nagasaki, and, at last, Tokio.

The hot blood of the East flowed now, as native, in Ronsard's veins; but the keen, calculating, questioning judgment of the European statesman kept cool tenure of his brain. In Tokio he found all past Eastern trickery to be useless chaff. Here were no inferior Orientals to browbeat, threaten, or cajole. From Tonquin to Nagasaki he had crossed more than the Yellow Sea; he had sailed over three submerged centuries and landed on a green cliff. Here, in j.a.pan, were men with reasons as clear as his own, and methods that often proved themselves more effective. In the mission to Tokio he soon realized that his full ambition had been won. Every faculty, trained through long apprenticeship, was here needed; and it was part of his intelligence that at times he realized them all as insufficient. That span of "Mysterious Asia" stretched between Algiers and Tonquin, brilliant and pleasurable indeed, was, from the diplomatic standpoint, a mere dank subway coming up at the central station, Tokio.

The fascinations of the East, potent as they were, could not quite wean the Parisian from love of his native home. Visits to France were made with strict regularity. It was his wont to declare, and with much show of verity, that the perpetual resident of Paris could never know its real charm. To live there always, paying bills, meeting disappointments, enduring illnesses with the inartistic accompaniments of medicine boxes and physicians, was like having an inexhaustible supply of one's favorite vintage kept in a water-cooler on the back gallery. Ronsard had the true sensualist's gift of extracting flavors.

On these home visits he was eagerly sought after by his friends and club fellows, and by the more intelligent among fashionable women. In this latter category shone pre-eminent the widowed Princess Olga Le Beau.

Rumor often had it that his next return to the East would be brightened by the wedded companionship of this lady, but each time Rumor hid her face.

The princess had married while yet a schoolgirl. Pierre, her only child, was born within the year of the marriage. Before the boy was ten, his father, Gaston Le Beau, died by accident. Slander called it suicide, and hinted that the princess was the cause. Nothing, however, could have been more decorous or more becoming than the mourning of the princess.

As slowly she came back to the world of fashion, Pierre was sent away to England to be educated. A growing stripling of a boy is a fatal gauge to his mother's waning youth. He was seldom pressed to come home during the holidays, Princess Olga preferring to visit him in England (a country which she loathed), or sometimes to take small tours with him through infrequented parts of Europe.

After his very creditable career at an English university, she urged him tenderly further to improve his mind by travel, and hinted that she would prefer a diplomatic career for him. As she spoke, she was thinking of Ronsard, but doubtless had her reasons for not mentioning him. It was not until the young man's year of residence in America, and his own choice of Tokio as a place at which to open his diplomatic primer, that the power of this intimate family friend had been invoked. As we have seen, Princess Olga gave the name, by letter, to her son. Pierre wrote promptly, but the hastened departure of the Todds, and his determination to sail with them and Yuki, would have given him no time to receive a long and thoughtful answer, even had such been written.

Count Ronsard's motto, more or less rigidly adhered to in dealings with his own s.e.x, was "never to write a letter or to destroy one." Knowing that the young man was soon to appear, he calmly waited the event. In official life the French minister was, of course, designated by the simple republican t.i.tle of "Monsieur." With his friends, the old aristocratic "Count" was permitted and enjoyed. To have slipped Pierre into a second, third, or fourth secretaryship would have been a simple matter. Count Ronsard, however, wisely determined to judge the character of the applicant before admitting him into the bachelor comradeship of the Legation. This square white residence, set in the midst of a fine, walled, daimyo garden left over from feudal days, had never, during the count's long term of service, known feminine sway. High orgies, b.a.l.l.s, and state dinners were held there in plenty, but the only women who appeared at them were invited guests or hired geisha. The master of the house carried his bachelor fancy so far that he insisted upon a similar undetached state being preserved by his subordinates.

Count Ronsard was a dilettante in music and art, and a professional lover of beauty, especially in the form presented by his friend and countryman, Bouguereau. His favorite writer was Daudet; his favorite luxury, eating. Withal, he was a trained statesman and a subtle diplomat.

Pierre, upon his arrival in Tokio, had been urged to make the Legation his temporary home. His first question was, of course, for the appointment. Count Ronsard gave evasive reply. As this continued to be the case, Pierre felt, in decency, that he must cease to press the matter. As days pa.s.sed, and the count, so indulgent, fatherly, and candid in other things, continued to avoid the discussion of Pierre's hopes, the young man could not fail to draw the conclusion that the elder had his personal reasons for not wishing to come to a decision.

Pierre did not greatly care. The anxiety about Yuki kept his thoughts busy. More than once he had been on the point of confiding in Count Ronsard and of asking advice, but each time something prevented. Mrs.

Todd, in this stress, was his unfailing sympathizer. Gwendolen was kind, but he knew well that there was now, and always had been, a certain reserve in her approbation of his love-affair. The laxity of hours at the French Legation, and the absence of all restrictions, suited well the boy's present restless temper.

The morning after Prince Hagane's banquet he woke to a feeling of heaviness and depression that sake could not altogether account for.

Small bits of recollection began to sting him like brier-points left under the skin. He saw now, in Yuki's white face, a protest which, twelve hours before, he had wilfully ignored. Gwendolen's eyes flashed again indignant warning. The extreme attentiveness of the host, a lurid after-image of the pictured G.o.d, the innumerable small cups that, at the time, had seemed innocuous, came over him in humiliating memories.

"Gwendolen was right. It was all a test, and I, as usual, played the impulsive fool!" thought he, bitterly.

On reaching the breakfast-room he was pleasantly surprised to find his host still at table. A heap of letters, opened and unopened, showed the cause of delay. Several with foreign postmarks were at Pierre's plate.

As the young man entered, Ronsard touched an electric b.u.t.ton, giving four short, peculiar rings. A few seconds later a servant appeared with a tray of steaming coffee and food.

"What news from war-centres, your Excellency?" was Pierre's perfunctory question.

"Mon Dieu, war is surely coming! We are upon the very verge, though our friends the Russians pretend not to believe. Kurino is to abandon St.

Petersburg. I still have a gleam of hope that the j.a.panese will have common intelligence, and withdraw."

"If Kurino leaves, then the Russian minister here must withdraw. I was told yesterday that he too made preparations."

"Each move may be a feint. Diplomacy is largely made up of feints." Here he gave a fleshy shrug. "But, my young friend, our speculations will not change events. As the j.a.panese say, 'Shi-ka-ta ga nai,' which, being interpreted, means, 'Way out, there is none.' Tell me of yourself. You are pale. Do the joys of Tokio prove too arduous?"

The speaker, lolling back in his leathern chair, lighted another cigarette, his eighth since breakfast, and turned an inquiring leer upon his companion. Pierre was staring into the smoky coal fire. He had scarcely heard Ronsard's last words. Yet all at once he felt that here was an opportunity to ask the advice he had been craving.

"Last night I was at a j.a.panese banquet, an affair splendid, but small, given to the family of the newly presented American minister, Mr. Todd, by Prince Hagane," he began.

Ronsard showed unmistakable interest. "Ah, the prince! The old toad who sits at the heart of empire in j.a.pan. And at his private villa! You are fortunate, Monsieur."

Pierre nodded.

"And you said a family affair. I hear there is a Miss Todd. Am I to understand that you and the charming Mademoiselle--"

Pierre gave a gesture. "No," he said, "not she,--though the charm is unquestioned. Mr. Dodge and I were included because of being ship-comrades with the Todd party. There were also present Miss Onda and her father. Miss Onda was on the ship with us. She was educated in Washington. I knew her there."

"Ah," murmured the other, more thoughtfully. "Rumors of Miss Onda's great beauty are already abroad. They will contemplate an official marriage for her with some fortunate heathen, honored in his own land.