The Breath of the Gods Part 37

The present inc.u.mbent was a Mrs. Stunt, resident in Tsukiji, Tokio, wife of an American merchant who had lived in j.a.pan for nearly twenty years.

Naturally, Mrs. Stunt knew everything. She was a little woman, with white hair brushed high from a smooth, pink forehead. Her face was round and youthful. Although not an Englishwoman she exuded odors of pink soap. Her eyes were blue, bright, and hard as gla.s.s. Her reputation was that of a model wife and mother, a pattern housekeeper, and an exemplary member of the church. People hastened to speak well of her; they raised loud voices in her praise, yet every one knew that Mrs. Stunt, when mounted upon the perfectly kept bicycle she affected, was a wheeled and leaking reservoir of scandal.

To the new-comer, or the casual observer, she appeared the very incarnation of trustful candor, speaking of her domestic affairs and those of her neighbors with a simplicity and directness that startled while they convinced. Mrs. Stunt, however, had her secrets. One of these, unshared even by the conjugal ear of timid Mr. Stunt, was her connection,--virtually that of foreign editor,--with a Tokio newspaper, called, of course in j.a.panese terms, "The Hawk's Eye." In addition to voluminous printed sheets of hurrying ideographs this journal dispensed each day a page of excellent English, and for weekly supplement issued a pamphlet entirely in the borrowed tongue. Mrs. Stunt was never seen to enter the shabby gates of the "Hawk's Eye" building. She turned her face away even in pa.s.sing the place. She often denounced newspaper women, and, more than once in the company of a friend who tingled or wept under the lash of a personal item, joined in indignation against the cowardly villain, and wondered aloud, "Who on earth that man could be!"

The very brief notice of Lord Hagane's coming marriage, tucked away in important j.a.panese papers like a small spark in a chimney, might have been altogether overlooked, for news of war came in daily, and political excerpts from European papers took much s.p.a.ce. But "The Hawk's Eye"

found that smouldering spark, the mysterious breath of the foreign editor blew it into new heat, piling tinder of comment high about it, fanned it with the wind of gentle persistency, and lo, the social world of Tokio leaped into flames!

Long since, the demure little lady,--having in mind spring clothes for four lanky daughters,--had extracted from her new intimate, saleable particulars concerning Pierre's betrothal, Onda's persecution, and now Yuki's forced acceptance of Prince Hagane. "Nonsense, my dear," had Mrs.

Stunt retorted to this concluding bit of romanticism. "j.a.panese girls don't give a fig who they marry! For a catch like old Hagane your Yuki would have thrown over a dozen spry young Frenchmen, blue eyes and all."

From the first instant of meeting Mrs. Stunt and Gwendolen had been inimical. To herself Gwendolen had called the little lady a "bargain-counter sn.o.b." In return Mrs. Stunt, keenly aware of the impression she had produced and resentful of it as people usually are of truth, began a.s.sorting items for the coming Sat.u.r.day "Hawk's Eye."

Gwendolen's affair with Dodge, their quarrel, his immediate transfer of outward devotion to the shrine of Carmen Gil y Niestra, and Gwendolen's irritability ever since the disagreement, were as bill-boards to the mental gaze of Mrs. Stunt. Kindly injudicious Mrs. Todd did not betray her daughter. There was no need for it. When she wept above a "Hawk's Eye" paragraph that called her idol a "raw Western heiress, who naturally cultivated her acquaintance with ploughs and harrows," it was the part of Mrs. Stunt to comfort her. That small lady, sitting near some more generous and less judicious female friend, her eyes drooping tenderly over a "pinafore for Nan," or a knitted sock for "Baby Tom,"

absorbed scandal as a sponge absorbs warm water.

Yet let us be just. Too much may have been ascribed to Mrs. Stunt.

Perhaps even without her thrifty and unfriendly zeal the marriage of so great a lord as Hagane must inevitably have filled the papers and overflowed in irresponsible wide tides of talk. Yet scarcely without her would Pierre's hinted personality have been so openly involved, his parentage stated, and his future course of action philosophized about.

The story in its parent "Hawk's Eye" was given with a wealth of imaginative detail possible only to the born "society reporter." In substance it was as follows: Miss Onda had come from America with the Todds. With their approbation she had been openly betrothed, in Washington, to a young Frenchman of pleasing appearance and high connections. (Here a secret marriage, twisted about an interrogation mark, found place.) When asked for his blessing the j.a.panese father, hitherto unsuspicious of French designs, fell into a fit, out of which three eminent physicians were required to haul him. Yuki was forbidden to hold communication with her lover. The next step was to adorn her in sacrificial and becoming robes and offer her in marriage,--or anything else,--to a certain powerful n.o.bleman, whose third wife,--or was it really his sixth?--had recently, by a fortuitous occurrence, been "returned." Touched by the sorrow of his faithful knight, and influenced perhaps by the lackadaisical beauty of the girl, the n.o.bleman agreed to take her on trial, even going through the form of a legal marriage, that the aspirations of the French lover might be the more certainly destroyed. Pierre, who read and brooded morbidly on these things, was neither soothed nor enn.o.bled thereby. But what of it? Mrs. Stunt's four lanky daughters each had a new spring dress with hats to match!

j.a.panese of the better cla.s.s, brushing aside like gnats these stinging personalities, approved openly of the father's conduct and of Yuki's swift acquiescence. It was the only thing conceivable. Their only blame for Yuki was that she had listened to a foreigner without first obtaining her father's approbation, an encouragement that might now urge him to be troublesome. They felt indignant that the rejected one should continue to repine for what a j.a.panese prince had deigned to accept. Old samurai blood grew warm. The daughter of Onda Tetsujo marry a Frenchman with a Russian mother! The very G.o.ds held their Asiatic noses.

English and American men took, for the most part, the j.a.panese view.

Many Europeans, on the contrary, said openly that they hoped Le Beau would yet "get even" with old Hagane for stealing his sweetheart. With few exceptions, indeed, all women sympathized with Pierre. Pierre was the beau ideal of a despairing lover. His sensitive, beautiful face took on with ease the lines of sleepless grief. His blue eyes, at a moment's warning, could darken from melancholy to tragic anguish. He could sigh in such a manner that his quivering listeners, should Donne happen to be familiar, might have quoted, "When thou so sighest thou sighest not wind, thou sighest my soul away." Pierre's sorrow was genuine enough, but he liked witnesses to his grief. Needless to say that Mrs. Todd and her satellite Stunt were among Pierre's most vociferous supporters.

Gwendolen fought many a battle for her school-friend, but the bitterest were pitched under her own roof.

"Now, my very dear Miss Todd," expostulated the "Hawk's Eye," "do you not consider at all the misery of Monsheer Le Beau? Miss Onda is to be a princess, happy, courted, with a position in the highest circles. Life can offer her no more. On the other hand look at the jilted lover. I never saw a face that expressed such patient grief. When he turns to me those slow, beautiful blue eyes I'll declare I feel as if I'd like to kill that girl for making him suffer."

"Pooh!" said Gwendolen, rudely; "and when he slowly turns them round to me I want to open my parasol and say 'Shoo!' thinking it a cow. I like Pierre well enough. A good deal better than you, I think, if the truth were known, but he is among men what Chopin is among musicians. He enjoys his sufferings and makes music out of them. Of course you wouldn't understand that." Rudely she wheeled and walked away, Mrs.

Stunt following with venomous eyes.

Gwendolen scarcely recognized herself during these days of trial. She, the joyous one, the sun-maid, now wished to quarrel with the whole world. Of course Dodge's defection, and the ridiculous paragraphs appearing in "The Hawk's Eye," had nothing to do with her nervous condition. The causes were obvious,--Yuki's hurried marriage and Pierre's mischievous pose of despair.

Meanwhile the absurdities of gossip increased. Once, stung beyond endurance, the girl threw herself into her father's arms. "Dad, how shall I endure these spreading slanders about my friend? Is there nothing we can do,--n.o.body to shoot, or challenge, or anything like that?"

"Go fire at those sparrows on the lawn."

"Don't joke. I can't stand it. Oh, father, you don't know what awful things they whisper. They stop when I come near, saying it is because 'I'm not yet married.' Now just think of the pitchy subtlety of that.

Why should people talk so?"

Todd held her close. "My little girl," he began, "wherever lonely, sour-hearted women--or men--congregate, there will the cancer-growth of scandal spread. They are the disseminators of half our domestic tragedies. It is a disease like other foul things,--cancer itself, leprosy, diphtheria,--though not so fatal, for the thing they tackle is a man's soul and character, immortal essences, never to be truly tarnished but from within. As I figure it out, scandal is a good deal like fungus. It may be planted anywhere, but it sticks and thrives only where it finds a rotten spot."

"Oh, you help me, dad,--you do help me. Of course these rumors cannot hurt the white heart of my darling,--but she must not hear them. One question more, daddy--"

Todd stopped her. "It is mail-morning, and that means a busy one. You've had a sermon long enough for one day. Come to think of it, why does Dodge get out of the way when you appear? What have you been doing to my secretary?"

Gwendolen gave a small gasp and vanished. Todd looked after her. "I thought that would send her flying." He turned to his desk. His face was very tender. "Poor little one," he murmured, "she's up against her first experiences all in a bunch. G.o.d help her! Things hurt worse when we are young. But all will come right, with His help. I know my child was made for happiness. She has the hall-mark of it under her skin. But Yuki--poor little Yuki--!" He shook his head, seated himself, and soon became lost in the voluminous foreign mail.

Yuki, pale, white, and docile, moved like a determined ghost through vistas of gray hours. In that quiet household came no hint of scandal, and for Yuki's part, had she heard, she would not have greatly cared.

The first brief chapter of her life was gone, shut down, like a book, and in its pages was the living flower of her love. She did not suffer now. She felt a dull gladness that she was inevitably committed to her duty. Temptation and further striving had vanished from her days. Except for the sorrow of that dear one there would be no regret. What anguish came personally, through remorse for her broken faith, she would be glad to bear. She had, through faithlessness, won the level of a higher faith. Let her wounds gape and her heart's blood fall like rain! She wished to feel more sorrow than she felt, but nothing came very clearly in these days of preparation. More than once she thought, with a tiny pang of apprehension, "If I have lost the power to feel pain, then are sacrifice and duty alike robbed of their essential oil."

Now, in place of averted faces and blank eyes, those of the Onda household fawned about her. Onda made grim overtures. The giggling of Maru San ceased only with her slumber--that, too, was audible--while old Suzume, darting about the rooms like a gray ferret, babbled out the many t.i.tles that her nursling soon would wear, and made coa.r.s.e jests and prophecies about the future.

Iriya alone moved in the silence of her daughter's spirit. The two women grew very close, though no spoken word was used to show it.

Wednesday, the marriage day, arrived softly. Yuki neither dreaded nor welcomed it. She had not seen Prince Hagane since the night he took her answer. Quite a number of her parents' relatives, some from distant provinces, came in and gathered in the house to bid the bride farewell, to throw, laughingly, the dried peas after her, to sweep the abandoned dwelling to its farthest corner, and light a bonfire at the gate when she pa.s.sed through.

Yuki, in her white bridal robes and concealing veil of white silk, thin in texture but stiffened in a way that brought it into angular folds about her shoulders, stepped alone into a new jinrikisha. Tetsujo and Iriya, in a double vehicle, followed. These three alone went to Tabata, where they met a corresponding party of the same small number, Prince Hagane, his nearest male relative, the old Duke Shirota, and young Princess Sada-ko, the old duke's granddaughter.

Hagane was unmistakably preoccupied. His thoughts did not attach themselves with ease to things or persons. He had an air of relief when the short ceremony came to an end. Yuki now changed her white robe for a dark-hued silk, superb in texture, the gift, according to j.a.panese etiquette, of her husband. A hairdresser was in readiness to change forever the wide loops of a girl's coiffure into the more elaborate structure of a young matron. The Princess Sada-ko fluttered near, talking prettily and congratulating herself on the acquisition of a new relative. Yuki scarcely heard her. She felt almost nothing. As the last touch came, the thrusting-in of a great tortoise-sh.e.l.l pin, she shuddered very slightly, thinking of that ivory one broken with Pierre Le Beau on the moonlit prow of a ship.

With a great clattering and stamping the Hagane coach of ceremony drew up to the entrance-door. Magnificent gray horses in new trappings snorted impatience to be off. Hagane stepped in without a word to Yuki, who, at a nudge from the little princess, meekly followed. The domestic retinue fell on its knees in the doorway and along the pebbled drive.

Hagane gave the order, "Shimbashi," waved a hand abstractedly, and the equipage dashed away.

The short railway journey was made practically in silence. Hagane said once, as if by way of explanation, "Important and somewhat alarming news has come by secret wire to-day. It is necessary for me to ponder over it."

"Honorably do not concern your august mind with a person so insignificant," said Yuki. Far from resenting his silence, the girl was thankful to be left to herself. She watched the scenes outside with eyes at first vague and unintelligent, but which soon gained a soft, increasing brightness. Earth was waking from its long sleep. Yuki felt what many of her own and other races have in such crises felt,--a grat.i.tude to nature that human grief is given no part in it. The gra.s.s still is busy, small waxen blossoms lift the leaves of a fallen year, no matter what men may suffer. In moments of keen personal bereavement, when the soul is dazed and blinded by the wonder of its agony, a certain resentment comes. Like the Ayrshire poet we cry, "How can ye be so fresh and fair?" But such grief was not yet Yuki's. Her emotion still partook more of bewilderment than loss. Pierre was not dead. He might yet be happy, happier than with her. This thought brought no personal sting.

Hers was not a nature for jealousy.

Because of her marriage, through this stern, grave man who sat beside her, she was to be given her opportunity for loyal service. Mistrust of self, apprehensions that mocked and taunted her, a certain shrinking from responsibilities so thickly heaped, rushed inevitably to her mind.

On the other hand she had for guidance his great spirit of untarnished patriotism; she had vindicated to her parents all filial obligation, and springtime peeped at her from among the hills.

She saw that a thousand nameless, beloved little flowers traced with bright enamelling the leaden d.y.k.es of fields. Seedling rice brimmed with gold-green, small, separate pools. Straw-shod farmers trampled, one by one, the rotting stubs of last year's crop into the slime of fields to be new-planted. On low-thatched huts the old leaves of the roof-lilies fed a springing growth. Everywhere decay pa.s.sed visibly into re-birth.

So, thought little Yuki, "The very sorrow I have endured shall feed my new resolves."

At the small Kamakura station jinrikishas were awaiting them, accompanied by two persons, an old man and a comely woman of the peasant cla.s.s, whom Yuki rightly took for family servants. They prostrated themselves upon the cement floor in an excess of demonstration, whispering old-fashioned phrases of congratulation and of welcome.

Hagane came back for an instant to things around him.

"These are my faithful servants, Bunshichi and his daughter. I do not now recall her name," said he to Yuki, with his kind smile. "They form our entire domestic retinue at Kamakura, for it is here that I come only when in need of true repose and relaxation."

"Hai! hai! Danna-San," cried the servants in polite corroboration, and began a new series of deep bows.

"Hai!" murmured Yuki, as if in echo of their subservience. The woman, for an instant, met her young mistress's eyes. There was something in the look of wonder, of great kindness, and then,--or so it seemed to Yuki,--of compa.s.sion.

Hagane entered his kuruma and started off. Yuki and the two servants followed. And so, on this fair March day, the little Princess Hagane approached the first of her many new homes.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Hagane villa at Kamakura possessed its own green niche cut deep into encroaching hills, its own curved scimitar of gray sea-beach, its individual rocks, its blue ocean, and bluer sky. A fence of dead bamboo branches, set up on end like f.a.gots, barred out spying curiosity. The house faced directly to the sand. On the three remaining sides the hill-slopes made retreating walls. Upon them grew spindling, wind-tossed pines and loops of wild white clematis and of rose.

Through the big, fragrant rooms of the villa all day the sea-winds pa.s.sed, stirring the few kakemono, and making flowers in bronze vases nod like those more securely rooted on the hills. No attempt had been made at an ornamental garden, except for a few great, gray stones spread with a lichen sparkling from its diet of salty dew, three curious small pines, and s.p.a.ces of white sand. The placing of these trees and stones hinted of more organic beauty than all the convolutions of the average Occidental millionnaire's park. It is only fair to add that the millionnaire would not agree to this.

The first two hours after arrival were devoted by Prince Hagane to the writing of telegrams and letters. These were sent off by messengers as soon as finished. The statesman strode out alone to the sh.o.r.e and walked there, his head bent in meditation, until telegraphic answers began to arrive. These apparently bore rea.s.suring news. He sought out Yuki, his sleeves quite stiff with crumpled missives, and told her that already he had arranged his affairs so that he could have two days to belong to himself alone. "Unless some unforeseen matter of gravest importance should transpire," he added, "I shall not be disturbed. I shall give orders to Bunshichi to bring me no letters that do not bear the Imperial seal. And now, my child," here he seated himself near her, "I may be permitted to recall the fact that I have a wife."

For two days Yuki was seldom out of his sight. The shrinking, delicate, humble, exquisite thing, now so entirely his own, fed his stern eyes and heart with ever-deepening satisfaction. Her pallor, her reticence, even the strained smile which she sometimes turned to meet his words, were all as best he liked to have them. An arrogant, self-a.s.sertive bride is, to the j.a.panese, an inhuman monster.