The Breath of the Gods Part 26

"I hope you did not tell him that I had nightmare, Cy!" said Mrs. Todd, anxiously.

"I did not."

"I hope you did tell him that I think j.a.panese food delicious, and would like to live on it," cried Gwendolen.

"I did," said her father. "He looked bored. Evidently charming young American women are nothing to Prince Hagane. His chief concern, it seemed, was Pierre."

"I--Monsieur?" echoed Pierre, with a nervous start.

"Yes, I can't recall now any very direct questions,--he didn't exactly 'pump,' yet in his esoteric way he let me know that all I could tell him of you he would be glad to learn."

Pierre tried to meet Gwendolen's eyes, but she had turned away.

"Did you speak of my Russian mother, Mr. Todd?"

"No; I had the chance, but dodged it. I thought it none of his Highness's business."

"Merci," murmured the other.

"Speaking of Dodging it," put in Gwendolen; "where is your secretary?"

"He got a 'chit' from the Spanish Legation, and asked for an hour's leave of absence."

"That fat Carmen Gil y Niestra," puffed Mrs. Todd. (Mrs. Todd's own weight was over the two hundred mark, yet she was scathing in her scorn of avoirdupois in another.) "These European women are shameless in the way they run after men. She's shadowing Dodge now. I wonder what she can want of him." The good lady applied herself with renewed diligence to her robe. Gwendolen studied the stucco-work of the ceiling. In the somewhat strained silence Pierre rose. Mr. Todd was close to him. He put a hand affectionately on the boy's shoulder, and looked down into his face. Pierre, in spite of efforts for self-control, shrank back, his lips quivering with a prescience of new pain.

Gwendolen ran to his defence. "We know what you are going to say. It has been spoken already. Spare us, dad. We are all upset this morning, and when one is upset good advice is an insult. I challenge you to a set at tennis, Pierre. Come, come, the court is perfect, though the skies be gray."

Pierre turned eagerly. "Capital, nothing could be better. But my costume,--I have not the necessary flannels, shoes--" He looked himself over in concern.

"You have your legs and arms, I presume," said Gwendolen, dryly.

Catching up the rackets and a box of b.a.l.l.s, she hurried out, leaving the gla.s.s door open.

"Shut the door, Pierre," called Mrs. Todd.

Todd watched the slim young figure as he went. Faithful to Mrs. Todd's admonition, he closed the panel with the greatest care, rattling the k.n.o.b to show that the latch had caught.

Mr. Todd sighed. "I wish that door opened into France, and that I held a St. Peter's key to it," he murmured, as if to himself.

Mrs. Todd wondered above the robe. "What's that pretty thing you're making?" asked her spouse, quickly. "A piano cover? Gwendolen ought to play a regular 'Streets of Cairo' potpourri under that. Aren't you afraid the old priest's ghost will haunt you?"

"You do talk such nonsense for a grown-up, intelligent man," reproved his dame, but her lips and her eyes smiled.

"Those are the times when I make my most sensible remarks," said he, in return.

"I suppose you know," retorted his Susan, with doubt in her voice.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Returning home from the princely banquet side by side in the double jinrikisha, not a word had been spoken between Tetsujo Onda and his child. The master went at once into his little study, banging shoji and fusuma close around him.

Yuki, forcing back her sad thoughts, related to her mother and the eager servants an account of the many beautiful dishes at the feast. For their amus.e.m.e.nt she even told a few of the queer foreign mistakes. Some of these were received by Maru San in gasping horror.

"Ma-a-a-a!" she cried once. "A foreign lady, rich and educated, leave--one--chopstick--standing on its head in a bowl of rice! Ma-a! But how can I believe that? Miss Yuki must be joking."

"Just think what foolish things you would do at a foreign banquet, with their awkward knives, forks, and spoons," said Yuki, smiling.

Maru shook her head. This revolution of the poles of etiquette was too much for her brain.

Each article of Yuki's attire, beginning with the heavy satin obi (sash), was carefully folded, pressed smooth by the hands, and put away lovingly in a lacquered clothes-chest. Sometimes Iriya performed this service, sometimes Suzume. Yuki and Maru were both considered too inexperienced for such careful manipulation.

That night it was the old warrior's turn to remain awake, staring at the ceiling, spelling out the future by the andon's dim light, and planning ways to rescue his daughter from her mad attachment without inflicting unnecessary pain. For Yuki was indeed the pride of his heart. It was a humiliation as well as a sorrow that she should be willing to repudiate her nationality.

With his slow wits and somewhat rigid cast of mind he had not caught the full importance of the evening just pa.s.sed, or the significance of the test in which the Red G.o.d had played so large a part. Yet in his daimyo's eye, as it rested on Yuki, he had seen something that stirred the blood in the old samurai's veins. Surely not even the ladies of the golden Fujiwara age had been more beautiful than Yuki-ko. Then, Hagane was not indifferent to beauty in women. Could it be possible-- But no!

Tetsujo dared not let this fancy spread. His skull would split with it.

Groaning, he turned on his wooden pillow and tried to sleep--but in vain.

Meanwhile his daughter, not twenty feet away, behind her silver fusuma, lay in dreamless quiet. The certainty of Hagane's implication, and the tremendous opposition it involved, steadied and concentrated her. She knew what she had before her and deliberately willed the sleep that should bring strength.

In the early dawn, within the sound of her father's restless tossing, she crouched against a shoji, and in the faint pink glow wrote an English letter. Every motion showed care. The rustling of the long sheets of j.a.panese paper would have betrayed her, so she wrote in pencil on a little pad that bore the name of a stationer in Washington. From time to time she consulted an open letter in a man's writing, a wild, illogical, despairing letter,--the one that Gwendolen had brought some days before.

"How will your thoughts be this gray morning, my dear?" she wrote to him. "Last night you were as one stung by happy madness. You would not see nor hear my warnings. Now you will be realizing why I wished to make warnings. Lord Hagane is with my father against us. They wish me not to marry with a foreigner. That terrible painting was a test, and I have betrayed us by my woman's soft heart. Now they are sure that the one I love is in Tokio they will take stronger care against me. Dear Pierre, I do not think there is any hope! We can wait,--or we can die!--just now I believe nothing else is possible. O Pierre! If my weakness offend you, and if already it seem to you far beyond any help,--if you, being the impatience, have not heart to so long wait,--let me go! Forget poor Yuki! Indeed, I should not have promised at all. I belong to my country, as in previous time I said. I must not make sad your bright life. Rather would I be forgotten than bring you to grief. Your Yuki-ko."

This letter she addressed to Pierre at the French Legation, stamped, sealed it, and slipped it into the long, hanging sleeve of her kimono, intending, at the first opportunity, to get it into the hands of a postman. After this she arranged her hair and obi quickly and went out into the kitchen where already she heard old Suzume and Maru San at work. Hardly had she entered when the front gate opened and the newspaper-boy ran in, his small copper bell clamoring on his hip. His bovine face was crimson with suppressed joy. Beside the usual morning sheet he held out a printed extra, shaking it toward her.

"Look at this! Honorably read these headlines, o jo san! Banzai Nippon!"

he cried.

Yuki reached forward for the hand-bill. "It is war! War! Togo has fired!" she read, in a low, tense voice. "War with that great brutal nation, and we have fired! O Nippon! O my Emperor! The ancient G.o.ds be with you!"

"Three ships already sunk! Three!" screamed the boy, wildly, and tossed up his foreign jockey-cap.

"Kwannon preserve us! What has happened--an earthquake?" cried old Suzume, hastening from the well-curb, and wiping red hands on her ap.r.o.n as she came.

"War! War, nurse! Our country is at war this minute, and three Russian battle-ships are already sunk!"

"We'll teach the bears that we are not to be trampled--Banzai Nippon!"

boasted the paper-boy, as he hurried back to the street.

Iriya, not quite dressed, thrust her head from the parted fusuma.

"War, Mistress! War, Master! The honorable Mr. Togo has sunk all the Russian battle-ships and beheaded all the generals with his own hand!"

shrieked Suzume. Maru began to cry.

"War!" faltered Iriya, and shrank back into the dim room.