The Breath of the Gods Part 24

"You--you--do not--spare--" Pierre managed to gasp at length.

Ronsard wore, if anything, a look of satisfaction. He now lifted a jewelled hand to press and pinch and fondle the moist, warm cushion of the protruding lip. His eyes, from under their drooping lids, darted sharp fusillades of meaning upon his shrinking companion. The very sting restored Pierre. "Yes," resumed the other, as if Pierre had spoken, "in such mariages de convenance personal affection is left aside. Yet how deplorable--how impossible--that a Botticelli in ivory and pearl should never know the joys of ardent love! Opportunities always arise. And then, as wife of a j.a.panese official, Mademoiselle Onda might prove invaluable to France--invaluable!"

Pierre rose this time slowly. Both delicate hands gripped the rim of the table hard. For a moment he shut his eyes that the vision of the sneering, sensual face might not tempt the blow his young arm tingled to inflict. "It is enough," he said, "I was wrong in thinking that I could listen. If your Excellency will now be so good as to excuse me--"

Ronsard gave a gesture of good fellowship. He smiled cunningly to himself as Pierre vanished from the room. Self-congratulations fawned upon him. His aim had been true. The poisoned arrow was in place, and though Pierre might snap, or draw it forth, the wound would fester.

Among his morning letters one had been carefully concealed. It was of the latest tint and shape of fashion. It smelled of Paris and intrigue.

The last words were these, "Say nothing to my headstrong boy of this letter, but, for my sake, keep him from serious entanglement. I object not, you will understand, to pa.s.sing follies; but let not the handcuffs of a j.a.panese marriage click. Mon Dieu, think of grandchildren! Yours, for the old time's sake, Olga Le Beau." The count read it through once more, rubbed it thoughtfully against his red lip, and finally, with a sentimental sigh, placed it on the coals.

Dropping his head forward, he began to dream. At first it was of Paris, only Paris, with its gay streets, beautiful women, its theatres and supper-rooms. What waste of years to have lived so long away! Yet in the East had been compensations. Diplomacy, as he conceived it, was the highest form of gambling; life itself, a spinning roulette table.

Diplomacy was the only profession for one with romance, poetry, pa.s.sion in his veins, and brains in his skull. Pierre, Olga Brekendorff's child, was fitted for the career, if, at the outset, he did not manacle his own hands. He must not marry, least of all marry a j.a.panese girl of high connections. Let the girl love him, and be given to another. Visions of purloined state papers, of secrets won in the marriage chamber only to be given France next morning, of j.a.panese chagrin at the mysterious betrayal of plans, caressed him with leprous fingers. Ah, to be young once more and beautiful, like Pierre! How like his eyes were to the Russian mother! No wonder the j.a.panese girl loved him!

A sharp knock roused him.

"Entrez! Oide!"

Mouquin rushed in as if pursued, leaving the door open. Within a few feet of Ronsard he stood still, shivering in an ague of excitement.

"Well, what is it? Speak, man. You chatter and grimace like an ape."

Mouquin waved a small square of paper printed in j.a.panese. "An extra!

War! They say Togo has fired!"

Ronsard leaned forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper. He read j.a.panese well.

"War! Togo fired this morning! Three Russian boats already sunk! Mother of G.o.d!"

The telephone began a frantic ringing. Mouquin went to it sidewise.

"Your Excellency, the Russian minister."

"Hold the wire." Ronsard got to his feet. Mouquin still chattered. His words came now in a torrent. He was drunk with the bigness of the hour.

"Fired, your Excellency! j.a.pan the pygmy, with no further provocation, has dared fire upon Imperial Russia!"

Ronsard eyed the speaker with a sort of scorn. "True, Monsieur, and, as I understand, j.a.pan the pygmy has begun already to sink Imperial Russia."

Mouquin stared for a moment at the speaker, seeking a clue to the unexpected words. Perhaps he saw for himself a chance at singularity. He bowed over, gave a low laugh, and backing toward the door cried out, "And has begun to--_sink_ Imperial Russia! Banzai Nippon!" He went out quickly.

Ronsard stood quiet by the telephone. It hissed and bubbled like an impaled crab. He lifted the receiver slowly, his eyes still on the door.

"I know it now," he murmured, "I have long suspected it. Somewhere in this desert of gray huts Mouquin has a j.a.panese wife. It was her lips that uttered through him that 'Banzai Nippon.' And so I think it would soon be with the impressionable Pierre. h.e.l.lo! Oui, it is Ronsard."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Into the wide, white streets of modern Yedo, Pierre stumbled alone.

There had been no definite thought in his hurried flight, only a craving to flee from the polluting face and soft, compelling voice of his compatriot. How was it possible for a man with the intelligence of Ronsard to harbor such ideas of j.a.panese character? Yuki's very presence breathed purity; yet that old man had said--had dared to hint-- Pierre broke away from the recollection, hid his eyes, and groaned. As a consequence he was nearly hurled to earth by a pa.s.sing kuruma-man, whose warning cry of "Hek! Hek!" had been ignored.

Pierre recovered himself with difficulty. The occupant of the vehicle, a stout burgher of the middle cla.s.s with sulphur-colored socks and a gaudy watch-chain, essayed some laughing excuse; but the wiry human steed, deliberately putting his shafts to the ground, squared himself before the offending "Seiyo-jin" to deliver a volley of heterogeneous oaths, selected at random from the stores of other nations. Pierre, unmoved by these comic insults, apologized to the burgher in three languages, and hurried on.

Now for the first time he noticed that flags were being hung at every door. Flags fluttered from the backs of jinrikishas and were stuck on top of pull-cart loads. Past him hurried newsboys with printed hand-bills held eagerly upward. Small bells jangled at their hips.

"Nan desu ka?" (What is it?) he asked politely of a pa.s.ser-by.

"Ikusa," was the brief response, accompanied, as Pierre could not help seeing, by a disdainful, yet triumphant scowl. "Ikusa" was a word not included in the Frenchman's short vocabulary.

Four University students, with the exaggeratedly short skirts, and the brawny, bare legs of the Satsuma faction, came lurching toward him. All grinned at sight of the alien, and shouted with one voice, "Banzai Nippon!"

Pierre understood this phrase at least. "An excellent sentiment," he remarked gravely in English; "but now will you kindly inform me why it seems appropriate to the present moment?"

The boys nudged one another and giggled. One of them at length answered in careful English, "Mr. Togo has war already begun. Many Russian battle-ships, having been this day fired upon, have into sea-bottom sinked. All will be sinked! Banzai Nippon!"

"Banzai Nippon!" roared his comrades; and the four, with sundry delighted, backward glances at the bewildered foreigner, hurried on.

Pierre, ignoring consequences, again stood still. Jinrikishas clattered past him to the right, to the left, singly, or now in long, black strings. The faces of human horses and vehicle occupants were alike vivified by a singular excitement. Many of the little trotting men conversed volubly with those whom they bore. "Ikusa! Ikusa!" was the burden of all speech.

"Ikusa," repeated Pierre, dully. "This 'Ikusa' undoubtedly means 'war.'"

He knew in his soul that the rumor was true. Visions of the scowling Onda, of Prince Hagane, of the leering, intelligent eyes of Count Ronsard, flew past him with the real faces of the streets. He cursed aloud. "War!" a new wedge between himself and Yuki.

He walked on now with nervous energy. "Yu-ki--Yu-ki--Yu-ki,"--his heart and steps kept pace with the refrain. The whole world fell into the despairing swing of it. "Yu-ki--Yu-ki--Yu-ki!"

A little j.a.panese matron, hastening to a sick neighbor's house with the great news, gave him a commiserating glance. Her husband was a sailor on one of the battle-ships now fighting. She was proud and happy. What sorrow could it be that made the young foreigner's eyes so deep and blue? Surely this was not war! It must be love. She had heard that in the affairs of love the foreigners found strange griefs.

"D[=o]-mo!" murmured the little dame to herself, "I am grateful to the G.o.ds this day to be a j.a.panese with my husband in a glorious fight."

Pierre walked now, still unheeding, in a direction almost due west from the French Legation. On his right hand stretched the long moats edged stiffly with young willows. He had been told that these trees were planted by an adoring people on the day, just fifteen years before, that the Emperor, out of his wise and loving heart, had given to them a parliamentary government. Only fifteen years! The willows had none of them attained full growth, and yet the nation that had planted them had that morning fired upon one of the proudest and most implacable empires of old Europe.

On the enormous campus directly in front of the Imperial gates, citizens by thousands were a.s.sembling. They surged here and there in a breathless, whispered excitement. Their lowered voices and moving garments made a sound as of the sea.

All eyes were turned upward to the Imperial moat walls, where white dots of faces belonging to the court ladies peered over for an instant and vanished.

The Emperor was not visible. The crowd did not expect to see him, and had he suddenly manifested himself would have felt chagrin rather than exultation. They knew that his heart was with them, and they reverenced him thus silently with the feeling one has in a vast cathedral, just before the service begins.

The Frenchman hurried by with down-bent head, knowing himself an intruder. At the Sakurada gate of the moat system he again took his bearings, and saw that by continuing in a straight course he would reach the American Legation. He realized on the instant that this was the place where he wished to go. In all this beautiful, mysterious land he had but two friends, Mrs. Todd and Gwendolen.

On a steep slope facing to the northeast, and leading up by several roads to the broad and thickly populated district of Azabu, Tokio, can be seen a j.a.panese gate which is large without being imposing, and severe without being dignified. Perhaps the peculiar contours of the land in this unfavored spot, the infelicitous swerve of the road, and an awkward grading of the hill, make the tall gateway always appear just a little uneasy. This is the main entrance of the American Legation.

Behind it stands a large structure of wood with office-buildings attached. The contrast of buildings and gate is not cheerful. Nor is the large surrounding garden of less amorphous aspect. A wide stretch of well-kept lawn with no particular outline, disheartening attempts along the edges at bits of j.a.panese hill and rock formation, together with certain unrelated patches of shrub and tree, coexist in a sort of Eurasian tolerance.

Pretty Gwendolen openly called her present domicile a barn. Mrs. Todd had begun at once buying blindly and indiscriminately from peddlers, hawkers, and "curio-men," who infest the official homes of new-comers.

As a result, the high walls of the Legation rooms were being rapidly covered with atrocious kakemono, some too high, some too low, and all, from the standpoint of art, utterly vicious. On tables, shelves, and mantelpieces stood gaudy j.a.panese vases such as a native rag-picker could hardly have been persuaded to use (though the price given by Mrs.

Todd for a single article might have educated his son), and various household utensils, each, to the eye of a j.a.panese visitor, uttering a shriek of incongruity.

Should a j.a.panese lady fill one of her low-ceiled, s.p.a.cious rooms with foreign lithographs representing lambs, blue-eyed children, baskets of fruit, nude women, jockeys, and landscapes, each in a flaring gold frame, hanging them anywhere from two feet above the matting to the ceiling line itself,--should she, between these rectangular blasphemies, suspend bits of foreign underwear, old neckties, garters, belts, hair-brushes, and egg-beaters, and, to complete the artistic impression, set about on the floor decorated soup-tureens, water-coolers with growing plants, and lard-baskets piled high with j.a.panese cakes,--an American visitor, entering for the first time, would get much the same impression that j.a.panese visitors derived from Mrs. Todd's drawing-rooms.

On this clear morning of February 9, 1904, the American Legation, in company with all others of the great Eastern capital, hummed and vibrated to the excitement of war. Telephone wires were kept hot.

Messengers went back and forth ceaselessly with "chits" (notes) written in English, French, Spanish, German, and other tongues. Carriage-wheels rolled and rattled in every street. Pierre was ushered into the main drawing-room, a place which always made him shudder and think of William Morris. Mrs. Todd, Gwendolen, and Mr. Dodge were already there. The two latter were standing; Dodge evidently was on the point of departure.

Mrs. Todd sat close to the soft-coal fire, sewing some green American fringe on a kesa--a Buddhist priest's robe--which she was to use for a piano cover.