The Breath of the Gods Part 31

Yuki's face fell, and her lips trembled. "Yes," she whispered like a child. "That is j.a.panese thought."

"How lofty and superior! A Confucius come to judgment!" cried Gwendolen to Dodge. His calmness, his power of thought, so soon after their fatal quarrel, irritated her. It almost seemed to make light of her influence.

Since she could not command, she wished at least to sting him.

"And, Yuki, now _I_ have advice to give. If I loved Pierre as you do,--if I loved any man so that the thought of another turned me sick,--I'd be faithful to him until those old moat pines turned somersaults and came up again as gra.s.s! I'd marry him, though Jimmu Tenno, with a new sword and mirror, came down to prevent! You say that Pierre goes by here whistling. What's to hinder you from going to him?

The women here would not prevent. Some time like this, when your father is absent,--mind, I don't advise the doing it,--only, I say, if you were tortured and driven to despair--"

Yuki stopped her by a gesture. "Even that terrible thought has been thinked by me. But even if I wished it,--go to those garden shoji, Gwendolen. Open with some noisiness, and see what occurs."

Gwendolen obeyed with vehemence, placing one still booted foot defiantly upon the veranda. Instantly, as if by magic, the two blue-clad gardeners crouched, in threatening att.i.tudes, on the gravelled path below. At sight of the tall blonde girl the men literally froze into grizzled gargoyles. Gwendolen drew back with a cry, then instantly realized the situation.

"Vile spies!" she exclaimed. "Hired a.s.sa.s.sins! If there were a man here, he would drown you in that pond! Go away! Shoo!" she shrieked at the astonished natives. Without a word, they exchanged slow, wondering glances, nodded, and withdrew.

Gwendolen slammed the shoji together again. "No wonder you are pale, Yuki," she said, her voice trembling with excitement and indignation; "I never dreamed anybody would dare a thing like this!"

"But how intensely romantic!" remarked Dodge, in a low voice, to the ceiling.

Yuki did not try to answer. Her head drooped lower, lower, with each instant. Tears were coming in uncontrollable throbs to eyes that had, through deeper troubles, remained dry. This humiliation before friends of another world touched some secret personal spring of pride. She lifted first one gray sleeve, then the other, apologizing in low, broken sentences for the vulgarity of thus displaying grief. Gwendolen threw herself to the floor beside her friend, her own bright eyes becoming springs of sorrow. Dodge rose, standing helplessly near, and wishing himself somewhere else.

Upon this lachrymosal tableau entered Tetsujo Onda, and stood for a moment incredulous, in the parted fusuma, like some image of Ojin Tenno, the G.o.d of War, a scowl carved deep in his brow. Gwendolen first caught sight of him. Rising to her knees, she tried by looks to wither him away. She might as well have blown seed-arrows from an iron dandelion.

Dodge, the diplomat, rushed gallantly to the fore.

"Good-morning, Mr. Onda," he began, bowing spasmodically. "Fine morning, isn't it? We were just making a little call in the neighborhood, and ran in to see your wife and daughter,--foreign custom, you know!--and the young ladies have to talk and weep sometimes over their happy, vanished school days!"

"Ugh!" grunted the unwilling host, scantily returning one of the many bows.

"Just so--just so," said Dodge, with increasing cordiality. "And now we must bid you good day. Miss Todd and I were just on the point of starting. This is the daughter--the only child, you know--of the new American minister to j.a.pan."

"I know of her, and you, and the Frenchman, and much else," said Onda, with a disconcerting warp of the lips meant for a smile.

"Go! If you love me, make quick goings," whispered Yuki, with her arms around Gwendolen's neck.

"With nothing settled--no appointment for you and--"

"It is hopeless," put in Yuki, instantly. "Mention no name! They will guard me now much closer. Oh, it's my father's doing, not Hagane; he is n.o.ble!"

"Then I will see--the other, and tell him clearly. How shall I let you know?"

"A telegram. No one will keep that from me. Send it in English,--in hard words, you understand! And, oh, Gwendolen, send it to-morrow before twilight. Pray for me!"

Ignoring Tetsujo's increasing rage, Yuki followed her friend to the very door, pausing for a last embrace. "You are my good friend--my golden friend! Nothing between our hearts can ever come. Ne?"

"Never! Never! Ne?" answered Gwendolen, trying to smile.

Yuki turned, and went back as a prisoner to an inky cell.

Out on the street, at the carriage-step, two pleasing Americans paused, and eyed each other much with the expression of a pair of young game-c.o.c.ks.

"Well!" said the tan-colored fowl, superbly, "why do you hesitate? Is it to beg paw-don of some one?"

"I beg paw-don?" echoed the other, in mild surprise. "No, certainly not!

How could you fawncy such a thing? Do _you_?"

Gwendolen, with a m.u.f.fled exclamation, sprang unaided into the carriage.

"Go on! Hurry up! American Legation--Koshikwan, I mean! This beastly lingo--" she cried to the driver, and so far forgot herself as to prod him in the American flags.

The startled servant looked down and over her, to Dodge, for confirmation.

"It's all right, betto!" said Dodge, airily, in j.a.panese. "I prefer walking back. Take the august young lady home by a long, long road! She has become honorably overheated!"

Gwendolen gave the speaker one helpless glare, threw herself back in the seat, and was gone.

Dodge stood in the middle of the road, looking after the carriage until bamboo hedges closed in upon it, and the noises of its rattling wheels faded into the myriad sounds of the city below him.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The month of March was at hand. Tempestuous winds howled and whirled in the pine and camphor trees, in the flame-like, springing bamboo groves, and under temple eaves. The air was full of petals and sc.r.a.ps of green.

Sometimes a tiny flake of flint stung the face, and between the teeth an uncomfortable grit blew in. Angry gray clouds piled high from the north, westward from the Atlantic, eastward from that "rough and black" water we call the Yellow Sea. The very firmament was in torment. The wind, combated at once by many currents, tore at times great eddies in the gray, letting the sun down in avalanches of light. Yuki saw the shadow and the sun pa.s.s, like fleeting ghosts, across the garden; felt the chill and warmth alternating in their wakes. The wind tossed cruelly the branches of cherry-trees, where sharp-pointed buds in cl.u.s.ters, just showing a first hint of pink, were set. The plum-tree was bare but for a few timid green leaves. Now and then a twig or branch snapped, and fell sharply on the gravelled pathway, where instantly one of the blue-robed gardeners advanced to pick it up.

In the cowed house Yuki moved like some waxen automaton, living only in the one sense of hearing. Every cry from the street, every wind-jangle of the gate-bell, sent her currents of hope and apprehension. Tetsujo grimly ignored the intensifying strain, but Iriya's pitying eyes turned more often to her child. The servants kept to themselves, whispering and exchanging glances.

Now the bamboo hedges which shut out the main street-line bent over, at times almost to the earth, writhing, stretching, and squeaking at the confining strips of wood that sought to hold them erect. Besides the hedge-bamboo, "sa-sa," the fence had an inner line of cruel orange-thorn.

Yuki had watched the elemental conflict greedily. Suddenly a s.n.a.t.c.h of Carmen's love-song rode the wind. It was the sound she had expected. Her little hands sought each other within the silken sleeves, and clutched so fiercely that a nail snapped. Again came the song, nearer this time, just without the gate. It was a strange, incongruous note, as if an English lark should rise from the bruised and battered hedge. Yuki heard a movement in the next room, where Tetsujo sat among his books. Perhaps it was coincidence that Suzume brought her, exactly at this moment, a fresh tray of tea. The blue gardeners strolled together into full view, and stooped, as if to discuss the condition of a botan bush, now beaten down.

Square upon the back of one of them fell a queer winged missive, a sc.r.a.p of foreign paper weighted with a pebble. Yuki saw it clearly. Old Suzume, with a stifled gasp, crouched in her place. The girl poured tea for herself, and drank it calmly. The pelted gardener, without so much as a look around, lifted the sc.r.a.p of paper as if it had been a broken bud, and slipped it, weight and all, into his sleeve.

The Carmen song stopped. Suzume, with a last sly glance, slipped from the room. Yuki pressed one hand to her throat. It would be no harm to sing the answering strain. What though her father and her jailers heard?

If once the song sped forth, not even their craft could recall it.

Pierre would understand, then, that she heard, but was a prisoner; that even the written note he threw could not be received. Once, twice, the white lips parted, and the slender throat stiffened for an answering phrase; but no sound came. It was as in nightmare dreams, where one seeks to cry aloud, and finds that the voice is gone.

Now her father was on his feet. She heard his long, swinging stride go through the house. At the door she heard him kick his wooden clogs, and give a gruff order to O Maru San. Then the harsh sc.r.a.ping feet pa.s.sed along the garden stones, the little bell clamored, and the gate-panel closed with a bang.

"Ma-a-a!" she heard old Suzume cry. "This is not the master I have known for fifty years. He must be bewitched by a fox." Maru gave a little giggle, which the elder woman quickly suppressed. Iriya, in the guest-room, moved like a cat. Yuki knew that all were against her,--spies, enemies. Pa.s.sages from the Psalms of her Christian Bible came to the girl. "They compa.s.s me round about on every side. I am set in the midst of snares." She ran out into the garden, now, listening for sounds of violence from the street. Nothing came but the wailing of wind. Tetsujo returned as abruptly as he had gone. Yuki, steeling herself against the look of aversion certain to be met, went before him, not questioning, but searching his face with haggard eyes for some possible sign of at least a will-conflict between him and Pierre. She fancied, in her abnormal state of mind, that something of Pierre's thought must cling to his enemy, and so be transmitted to her. But Tetsujo's face was as blank and expressionless as the glazed side of one of Suzume's tea-jars on the kitchen shelf.

Unable to breathe longer that overweighted air, Yuki caught up a gray shawl from her room, and went boldly out again into the garden. The rain had ceased entirely. The wind, though fiercer when it came, came at increasing intervals. Through one of these temporary lulls Yuki reached the bleak little pond. The encircling rocks appeared older, grimmer, and more shrunken. A few of the bordering plants had been twisted and split.

One was overturned, its ochre roots clutching at the unfriendly air, the evergreen branches plunged deep into quivering gray water.

As if in wonder that so frail a creature as a girl should dare its strength, the storm, crouching and growling for a last effort, hurled the full bulk of its viewless majesty upon her. She was beaten bodily upon the rocks. But for the protecting shawl she might have been blinded, or the long black hair torn from her. For an instant breath stopped; but in the wake of it came exultation. Lifting her head, she smiled a challenge to the storm to s.n.a.t.c.h her faint soul from her lips, and bear it far, like a petal, on that streaming tide of heaven. The blue-robed gardeners, crouching in the shelter of a rock, stared at her in wonder. Iriya's face came for one white instant to the veranda and vanished. Yuki could hear the very timbers groan. The bands of dead bamboo, lashed in horizontal strips to the living hedge, squeaked and buckled, and squeaked again, in absurd imitation of animate torture. In the pond the pear-shaped water was smitten into one gelatinous, cowering ma.s.s.

Suddenly the wind went. Sounds all about her of stress and terror changed into whimpers, whispers, moans, and small complainings. The pond-water sprang up in small simultaneous waves which all pawed and clamored at the rooks for explanation. Yuki stood upright, realizing dully her slow return to sanity and poise. The storm had swept her, for a moment, out of her own reach. In the recoil she grudged her soul its habitation.