The Breath of the Gods Part 33

Yuki rose slowly. "He is great and kind. Give thanks to him, my mother, and say that I shall enter within a few moments."

Iriya prepared to leave. She had searched her daughter's eyes for a loving recognition, but in vain. On the threshold she wavered. "My baby,--my only one!" she cried aloud brokenly, and held out her arms. In an instant, before Yuki could respond, she closed the fusuma and ran toward the guest-room.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Prince Hagane sat in the place of honor, his back to the tokonoma, where new flowers bloomed and incense perfumed the s.p.a.ce. His robes, of the usual magnificent quality of silk, had to-night a deep bronze color. The candles, placed one on each side of him, threw down a yellow light, which took the wrinkles from his scarred face and some of the sadness from his mouth. To Tetsujo's feasting eyes he appeared as a G.o.d; not the meek, forgiving Buddha whom women and children adore, but some splendid old war-G.o.d of Shinto tradition, young with the immortality of youth, yet old as the world in wisdom.

The outer shoji stood well apart, letting in the chill, wet sweetness of the night. The storm had now quite died away. The air of the room was so still that the candle-flames stood like balanced flakes of topaz, and the white smoke of the burning incense hung like a silver cord from the gloom above.

The moment that Yuki entered, Hagane, with his trained vision, saw that some great spiritual change had taken place. The look of miserable defiance he feared was not there. Iriya had waited for her. The two women advanced to the great visitor, and bowed before him three times, then went back modestly to the far end of the room. Suzume brought fresh tea, and two new b.a.l.l.s of charcoal for the hibachi. As the servant left, Iriya asked of her husband, "Shall I also withdraw?"

"It is according to our lord's will," answered Tetsujo, his eyes turning to the prince.

"What would you prefer, Yuki-ko?" Hagane's voice was kind.

"I should prefer my mother to remain," answered Yuki, without hesitation.

"Madame Onda, I beg you to honor us with your presence," said Hagane, with a slight bow.

Onda Tetsujo frowned. If his loyal nature allowed him to make one criticism of his daimyo, it was of a certain lax, foreign politeness toward women. The fault seemed to increase with years. Whether Prince Hagane suspected this disapprobation or not, on this occasion at least he made no attempt to modify it.

"I have come in person, little Yuki-ko, to hear your thought. No, do not speak yet!" he interpolated, with a slight lifting of the right hand.

"Wait until I give you questions to answer! At the beginning there must be quiet discussion between us four, with no haste or opposition on the part of--any." He looked, with these last words, directly at his old retainer.

"My Lord, my Lord!" fumed Tetsujo, "shall I be able to contain myself while you condescend to bandy words with a mere girl?"

"If I command it, I think you will contain yourself," said the prince, easily. Tetsujo rocked on the matting, gripped his arms tightly, and was silent.

"The G.o.ds seem to have decreed no happiness for me in marriage," said Hagane, impersonally, to all. "Perhaps they have only new mockery in store, if now, in my old age, I dare take to myself this fair flower.

Yet am I tempted; by the good for her, as it seems to me; by my friendship for you, Onda Tetsujo; and by the need for an official mistress of my house. I can give her unusual opportunity to serve Nippon, as in my letter I wrote."

Iriya, in her corner, put her face to the floor. "My Lord, even that you have thought it, makes richer the traditions of our house--through ten succeeding generations."

"I would not have the child consent because of family honors, my good dame," said Hagane, a little sadly.

"Shall I speak now, Lord?" asked Yuki, in her sweet, steady voice.

Tetsujo ground his teeth, but managed to keep silent.

"Would you speak of the young Frenchman, whose mother is a Russian?"

Yuki's eyes fell and her chin quivered. "Yes, your Highness."

"Speak!--fully!" said he, after a pause.

"He offered me marriage many times, your Highness, and I refused, saying that not without my parents' consent could I answer. Then, at one hour, being weak, I promised. In the foreign land, where you and my father sent me, such promises bind,--even as the oaths of men. I have been bound."

"G.o.ds of my ancestors! Must I listen to this cat-mewing?" groaned Onda.

"Be quiet! The girl shall speak. Yes, Yuki," he continued, his eyes softening as they returned to her white face, "I felt that you had promised. And so, in my letter, if you will recall, I a.s.sured you that you were not bound."

"Your Highness!" ventured the girl, at length. "It was your n.o.ble thought, your decision, not my own. I am bound."

Hagane looked at her in mild wonder, with the faintest touch of a smile.

"And not even your daimyo's word can free your childish promise? You have courage."

"The mad lynx! Let me deal with her!" panted Tetsujo.

"He, my father, so speaks and thinks of me!" broke in the girl, with pa.s.sionate protest and a wide-flung gesture toward Onda. "In that country no shame is felt for such a promise. Yet my father treats me as an outcast, a blot upon the family name! I ask you, Lord, who are great and strong, to help me!"

"To what shall I help you, little one? To marriage with an alien?--repudiation of a country that I serve?"

"No, Lord; for of myself I could not marry him, now, with my dear land at war. When I first knew him, war had not become even a threat. Only against--misunderstanding--and, Lord,--being forced--!"

Hagane interrupted her with his slight gesture. "You will be forced to nothing!--not now, nor so long as my voice can use the speech of living men! Your decision is valueless unless it be your own. It may be even harmful; for the young branch, held down by force, slashes heaven in its rebound. Nay, child! I would have you bend slowly to my proffered opportunity, weighted by your own ripening desire for loyalty and service. To compel you would be impiety. Believe yourself protected by my word, and by my faith in you! Be calm and think seriously, for upon this hour depends more than you can fathom!"

His deep voice boomed into a silence long maintained. One of the tall candles sputtered and flared. Iriya rose quickly to mend it. Tetsujo's arms, within short blue cotton sleeves, were folded and pressed tightly down upon his chest, as if to keep back straining utterance. Through the stillness his quick breaths ran. The girl gazed out now, motionless, beyond Hagane into the wet blankness of the garden. Familiar outlines of rock and bridge and pine kept there, she knew, their changeless postures. Only a fallen darkness hid them. So in her heart must be immovable shapes and living growths of heroism and selfless devotion. An Occidental training superimposed upon a child's fresh fancy; a foreign love, jealously guarding for its own purpose the tissues of new thought,--these things hid the garden of her heart as night now hid her father's garden. Hagane's look and words were bringing dawn, a dawn perhaps of sorrow, a day dragged up from an heroic past, and trailing its own hung clouds of tears.

Hagane spoke again. His deep voice calmed and satisfied the unstable silence. He changed his position very slightly, facing Yuki more squarely. He raised his ma.s.sive chin, and a smile played on a mouth that seemed made for stern sadness. Quite irrelevantly, he began to relate to his small audience an incident of his crowded day.

"Do you remember, Tetsujo,--Yuki also may recall from her childhood's impression,--that, as one stands on the jutting corner of my Tabata land, by the large leaning maple,--a corner so steep that it must be upheld by the hewn trunks of pines,--exactly at foot of the cliff stands a very small cottage, with roof patched by the rusted sides of old foreign kerosene cans?" He paused for an answer. Yuki's eyes would not leave the dark mystery of the night.

"I remember most clearly, your august Highness," murmured Onda, with a respectful inclination of his head toward the great man, but an indignant scowl in the direction of Yuki.

"An aged woman and her only child, a son, live in that house. He is a good son, for though hot with the desire for military service, he has kept steadily to his labor as under-gardener on my place. There seemed to be no one else with whom his mother could find a home. Of late the boy has looked ill. I have overheard the servants say that his soul was attempting to leave the chained body and go off, as it wished, to the battlefield. Such agony as this repression, I believe only our countrymen are capable of experiencing or of enduring."

Now, at last, Yuki turned and fixed her look on Hagane. He did not notice this any more than he had seemed to observe her previous indifference.

"The youth dutifully kept this longing from the old dame. But she questioned, and through her slow round of domestic services she pondered. Then she came to understand. Perhaps the young soldier-husband, dead for thirty years, had returned--to whisper.

Whatever the cause, she came--to--understand." He paused an instant, as if to take a firmer hold upon his voice. "To-day,--scarcely an hour ago, Yuki,--the youth, returning from labor, found his mother--dead--before the family shrine. She had used her husband's short sword. It will be buried with her. The smile upon her old face had gained already the youth and glory of a G.o.d's. She left no message; the smile told him all.--To-morrow the son takes pa.s.sage for Manchuria."

Yuki's dawn had come. It hurt her, like the birth of a soul. Hagane saw the same look which, for one fleet instant, he had evoked from her at Washington. His strong heart reeled toward the girl. Iriya was sobbing softly. Tetsujo sat square like a box. He envied the mother and the son.

He saw no pathos in the tale, only victory. Those two would be together on the Yalu; while he, Tetsujo, famed warrior, skilled swordsman, must pine at home and listen to the pulings of weak women!

The glory grew on Yuki. Above the flowers of the tokonoma, above Hagane's head, hung a tattered battle-flag of their own clan. She recognized it now. Her hands trembled. She lifted them toward Hagane.

"Onda Yuki-ko!" he almost whispered, so deep and tense his voice became.

"This year, this day, this very hour, may be the pivot of human history upon this planet! And is not the diamond-point on which that mighty turning rests, the Spirit of j.a.pan?"

"Banzai Nippon! Dai Nippon! Banzai! Banzai!" shouted Tetsujo, and beat his fists on the matting.

Hagane, with a smile that seemed to deprecate yet condone his kerai's vehemence, went on directly to Yuki. "Strange that Western minds--the astute American politician, the journalist, even the cleverest of Europe's statesmen--hardly claim to look forward more than a few years,--five, ten, at best half a century! They want results they shall live to see--after them the deluge! As they have forgotten the very names of their grandfathers, so they ignore their descendants. But we of the East count time in other lengths. We do not bound our horizon with personal aim or the catchword of a day. We owe,--we owe ourselves,--all, to a future that we may not comprehend, but have no right, in our ignorance, to cramp. What we are fighting for at this moment will not be fully realized for two hundred years. Then it will be seen as a great landscape in a valley. Your foreigners are like children that play now in that valley. But every j.a.panese patriot stands lonely on a mountain,--very lonely, very lonely!"

"Is one alone in a shining company of spirits, Lord?" asked Yuki, a wonderful glow now kindling in her long eyes. "Will that youth of whom you told us be lonely, though he stand singly against a squadron of Cossacks? Where is his mother's soul? O G.o.ds of my country! O my dear Christian G.o.d! why was it not given to me to be a man?"