The Breath of the Gods Part 38

On the third morning Bunshichi brought him with his breakfast the acc.u.mulated mail of the two days. At sight of the great heap he sent a quizzical glance to Yuki. "It appears, small sweet one," he remarked, "that I am to have no more hours of happy indolence."

Before the first ten were read Yuki knew herself forgotten. Her bruised soul stirred within her like a wounded thing recalled to animation. She started violently at his next loud words. "I take the earliest train to Tokio. Have my kuruma waiting." His voice was that of a master, not a lover.

Yuki rose swiftly. At the kitchen-step she paused, threw back her head, and took in a few long, long breaths. The servants below waited, open-mouthed, for her orders. Meta's kind voice recalled her.

"What do you wish, August Mistress?"

"Oh, yes, Meta--I was thinking--I forgot. The master takes the next train to Tokio. When does that train start?"

Meta's eye consulted the Waterbury clock. "In twenty minutes, Mistress.

Perhaps the Ill.u.s.trious One will not wish to hasten so swiftly."

"Yes, yes, he desires to go at once. Go quickly, Bunshichi, call a kuruma with two runners. Our master is a heavy man."

Her commission filled, Yuki returned slowly to the room where her husband still sat reading letters. On the way a thought smote her. "Your Highness, the train in twenty minutes honorably departs. Your kuruma will be in readiness. Was it your august intention that I should accompany you?"

Hagane looked up at her in a sort of half-recognition.

"You? Accompany? No, of course not. I would not have the time to give you. In a few days more, perhaps. Put those scattered letters and papers into a leathern portfolio. Bunshichi will know what else I need. How fortunate that a train goes so soon!"

Between this and the starting moment he had for her neither look nor word. Just as he stepped, however, into the vehicle, he turned as with sudden, loving remembrance, and leaning far down to her said, "These days have been as the heavenly island of Horai set in a sea of raging politics. You are a docile and obedient wife. So shall I inform your father."

When he had really gone, and even the heavy clink of jinrikisha wheels on sand was no longer audible, Yuki lifted her head, brushed back the low fall of hair from her forehead, stared at the quiet sea for a moment, and then turned and walked back slowly into the house. For a few moments she wavered, pausing now, now walking swiftly, now looking about as for something she had lost. In such broken, indeterminate angles of advance she reached a little chamber quite remote from the rest, a closet darkened by nearness of a rising cliff. Here she stopped short. A physical shudder ran through the length of her. She moaned, bit her lips back into silence, pressed suddenly white hands upon her vacant eyes, and then, failing all at once, fell to the matting, and lay, face down, along its pallid surface. At last--at last--for a few hours at least this tortured smile, this self-inflicted strain could be shaken off and she, like a driven beast of burden, could lie still, to die, to moan, or slowly to gather back what remained of endurance. Her thoughts buzzed confusedly like a great swarm of bees whose nest has been taken.

Through the sweet spring day she lay p.r.o.ne, inanimate, stirring only at a pa.s.sing sting of consciousness. "My country--my Emperor!" once she moaned aloud. "O Kwannon the Merciful! O my Christian G.o.d!--must I live, can I endure it? Already I am cowed and broken. Shall I ever again look a flower in the face?"

More than once the kind-hearted maid-servant knelt beside her, urging food and drink, or a walk into the reviving air. Yuki seemed not to hear. After one such unsuccessful excursion, Meta returned to the kitchen, shaking her head. "They have married that beautiful young maiden to our august yet somewhat ancient master, and her heart's love dies within her for another. Oh, I know well enough!" she cried, with a touch of defiance, as her father lifted bleared, protesting eyes; "so was I bartered to the wicked man who beat me and drove me forth. I may be of low estate, but I know a woman's heart."

"Then you know the seat of folly," grumbled the old man. "When your husband drove you out, I suppose he had reason; I received you, didn't I?--I allow you still to call me father--"

"Yes, and do all your work and mine too for it," muttered the woman.

"As for our young mistress," went on the old man, ignoring this last impertinence, "all know her for the most fortunate young woman in this empire and, therefore, in the world. Is she not lawfully married to the richest and most powerful of lords, to Prince Hagane?"

Meta seated herself on a low bench and began to clean the fish for dinner. "Yes, father," she answered at length, "and this newly snared fish whose honorable insides I am preparing to remove is to be eaten by that same rich and powerful lord. Does that make the knife in its belly less sharp?"

The round sun was bisected by a western hill-top pine when Meta knelt again beside her mistress. "August Lady, you _must_ listen. A telegram has arrived."

Yuki sat up instantly. She had begun to tremble. Her hair, now disordered, fell about an ashen face. "Has my master come?" she cried, a wild look flashing into her eyes, but lapsing almost immediately into dulness. She put up both hands and spread wide the night-black wings of her hair. Meta drew down one little hand and thrust the telegram between its fingers. "Oh, a telegram," said Yuki, embarra.s.sed.

"Why did you not mention--perhaps Lord Hagane will not come back to-night." She read the few words carefully. Again that faint, sickening throb of relief pa.s.sed over her. She lifted her head and met the woman's eyes as she said, trying to seem calm and unconcerned, "It is true,--our master cannot come to-night. He bids me remain until further message."

Meta bowed. "Condescend to receive my condolence, n.o.ble Mistress. You will be honorably lonely, I fear. But such is always the fate of one married to a great statesman like our lord."

"Yes," said Yuki, eagerly, "and, Meta, I wish last of all things to become an obstacle in his ill.u.s.trious path."

"Mistress," said the servant, in her honest way, with a smile like sunshine dawning upon the broad, fresh-colored face, "all day you have eaten nothing. May I not prepare a little meal to tempt your appet.i.te?"

"You are kind to me, Meta," said the young wife. She put a hand out to the servant's arm. For some reason known only to women, the eyes of both flooded with tears.

"Yes," said Yuki, her own smile dawning, "prepare me the little dinner.

I will try very hard to eat. Indeed I think even now I am becoming quite ravenous!"

Meta, laughing outright, hurried back to the kitchen. She was a good cook, and she knew it. In this same villa-kitchen she had served marvellous dishes to prime ministers and princes, but never before had she worked with a heart so full of love and tender compa.s.sion. Never was a meal more daintily served. Slices of tai from the salt waves, embellished with grated daikon and small foreign radishes; lily-bulbs dug from the hills around them and boiled with sugar and wine into b.a.l.l.s of crumbling sweetness; lotos roots from the temple pond, sliced thin and served with vinegar, ginger-root and shoyu, salad of yellow chrysanthemums, pickles of coleus, cuc.u.mber and egg-plant, the whitest of rice, and tea picked but the week before by the dew-wet hands of little maids at Uji. Yuki was literally betrayed into enjoyment. As she ate, Meta and the old man peeped in at her through the shoji, nudging each other joyously at each new mouthful.

Later in the evening, when lamps were lighted, and the shoji all drawn close, the two servants, with that delicate familiarity, that respectful presumption of which they have made an art, found pretext to enter. At first there was but the usual salutation, and the expressions of grat.i.tude that she had condescended to partake of such badly prepared food. One question led to another. In a few moments the three were chatting and laughing like schoolgirls, the old man bearing, in his double superiorities of age and s.e.x, the greater share of the conversation. Yuki soon found that he had a single theme,--the perfections of Prince Hagane. More from kindness of heart than interest, she encouraged him in these reminiscences; but in a very short time she was listening as Desdemona to her Moor. The tales indeed were marvellous. Once, at the age of six, or so said Bunshichi, the little Sanetomo had gone at night alone to a distant graveyard to bring home, as proof of his courage, the severed head of a criminal that day executed. At eight he had slain with his own hand a monstrous mountain-cat, terror of a cringing village. But the story which most impressed the listener was that of a poor leper, a beggar already eaten away beyond hope of relief, who, having asked alms by the roadway, was questioned, the young prince fixing thoughtful eyes upon him, "You ask for money to buy food, is that the best gift I could offer you?"

"Nay, Master," answered the thing who once was man, "there is a better."

"Name it," said Hagane.

"Death," sobbed the beggar.

"So think I," cried the boy, and, without further speech, sent his short sword to the leper's heart.

Meta always shuddered at this tale; but Yuki raised her head with so still and white a look that the old man felt uneasy, and began to explain at length. "It was really the best gift, Mistress, and after it our princeling had him buried, and many, many prayers said for the rest of his soul. He even caused search to be made for his family."

"Do you think I wish excuse for it?" said Yuki, with her strange smile.

"I know not which most I envy, the beggar or Prince Hagane."

The next day, fair and sweet and practically windless, except in gusts of "pine-wind" from the sh.o.r.e, deepened the balm of her preceding hours.

Wild pinks sprang up like a fairy people on the hills. Crows perched and chattered in the garden pines. Little red crabs came out, and all day long drew marvellous maps upon the sand; and the swinging censers of hillside roses burned a little timid incense to the sun. All the forenoon Yuki busied herself about the house. A long letter was written to Iriya filled with descriptions of the day. Frequent excursions to the kitchen kept Meta and old Bunshichi in a condition of expectant smiles.

In the afternoon a sudden thought came, bearing to the girl's mind a hint of wonder at her own insensibility. "Why, the Great Buddha is here, not a mile away from me, and not once have I remembered. I will go to him!"

Meta heard the stirring, and peeped. "Our mistress goes for a walk," she told her father. "Even now she lifts her adzuma-coat. I will get her geta (clogs). Nothing could be better for her than a walk. It is the good food that gives her strength."

"These young things beat their wings like the cliff-birds when the cage first snaps, but soon they come to reason and docility," chuckled the old man over his pipe.

"I go to the Great Buddha, Meta San," said Yuki.

"Will you not take an umbrella--not even a foreign bat-umbrella--to protect your ill.u.s.trious head?"

"On these short days the sun sinks very early. See, already he becomes entangled, like a boy's red kite, in the branches of those tall hill pines. I need no covering."

"Should the august master deign to arrive before your divine reappearance--" suggested Meta, with deference and a deep bow.

Yuki's face changed utterly. "I--I--did not think of him," she stammered. "I will not be long absent, and, Meta, should he come, send quickly a runner and a kuruma for me. Do you think he will be angry, Meta, that I went?"

"Nay, little Mistress, he would wish it. There is no kinder man alive than Prince Hagane."

"I suppose he must be very kind," murmured Yuki, and went with downcast looks into the street. The sense of childish antic.i.p.ation, of vivid expectancy were gone. Meta, in her effort to be dutiful, had clamped more tightly the manacles her mistress had just begun to endure. Why should she wish to go? What matter that the Buddha waited? It was not for her; she could but drag before it Hagane's obedient wife, a cowed white ghost of duty. She moved forward mechanically. Her head sank still further forward, as if the great black orchid of her hair grew heavier.

At every step the lacquered bars of her high clogs went deep into sand, so that it was increasingly hard to walk. A group of children, pa.s.sing, looked up into the pretty lady's face for a smile, then hurried by in a small panic of fear. It is a strange woman who does not smile at children in j.a.pan.

Now she crossed at right angles the one street of the village, a rough and stony thoroughfare lined with opened booths. The street terminates abruptly at the foot of a hill whereon stands an ancient and famous temple of Kwannon the Merciful. Within a hundred yards of this hill an abrupt turn to the right leads into a country of unfenced fields of egg-plant, peanuts, and sweet potatoes; then comes another bit of hard paved road, and then the towering Red Gate of the temple grounds of Buddha.

Yuki had noted dully that in little gardens the cherry trees, always earlier here than in Tokio, were fashioning their annual robes of pink.

The wind from the sea, now rising, threw petals out into the air before her. She watched the fluttering signals eagerly, but for some morbid reason would not lift her eyes to the tree. She had but one thought now,--a hunger for the Buddha's face. She longed to test herself, to find whether, in the gap between the Christian Yuki and the Princess Hagane, a shred of herself still clung. This shred, it must be, that the Buddha would smile upon.