The Breath of the Gods Part 39

Through the gate she stumbled, her gaze still on the ground. The wide stone pathway stretched soft and pink with fallen bloom. A breeze, entering with her, swept the surface in a ma.s.s, as though some one twitched the far end of a long pink rug. Petals filled the air. They came now in a small hurricane, fretting her cheeks with ghostly fingers, burrowing softly in her collar, catching and clinging to the long folds of her robe. A sob stretched in her throat and hurt her. She would not raise her eyes. She reached the two long granite steps leading up to the inner court of the Buddha. Here petals were banked in rosy drifts. She could see the bases of stone lanterns standing before the shrine. An invisible hand seemed pressing on her shoulder.

"Namu Amida Butsu, Namu Amida Butsu!" sobbed her lost childhood through her trembling lips.

An old priest, old beyond the telling, with a face as of wrinkled silver, glided out from among the flower-laden trees. "You are in great grief, my child?"

"Yes, reverend sir, in great grief; and it is of that kind which, to a stronger heart, might not be called a grief."

"I know; that is a kind hard to endure, but its triumph gives greatest enlightenment. Look to the face of Buddha, and pray for his endurance."

"Pitying sir," sobbed the girl, "I have become, while in the foreign land, a Christian."

The smile on the old priest's face did not alter. "All new religions are but forms of the old. Buddha will not pity thee less that thou dost call him 'Ye-sus,' for He, too, was a Buddha, even as you and I, daughter, even you and I, through long striving, may become."

"I will dare, then, raise my eyes to him," answered the girl. The old man stood very close to her, and as he saw the white face lift, joined his hands and whispered, "Namu Amida Butsu!" A moment later he was gone.

Petals eddied and settled where he had stood.

At first the young wife felt little emotion of any sort. She gazed steadily into the marvellous, calm face with a glint of gold under the half-closed lids and in the jewel on the forehead. As she looked, it grew to be a thing not smoothed and fashioned by human hands, but by the eyes and hearts of worshippers,--the apotheosis, the embodiment of a majestic faith, so subtly wrought of faith that should belief be changed, it, too, would vanish like a mist, its vibrant particles loosen and dissipate, to recombine in some new symbol. How still it was and calm and self-a.s.sured! Its lines were growing rigid like the formula of its creed; but in that changeless, ever-changing, pitying smile, a deathless truth still trembled. Near it the hills seemed little piles of dust; pines, centuries old, mere fern-leaves of a summer.

"Give me calm, give me endurance, for they are yours to give!" said the girl, aloud. "I am less than the insects which crawl unnoticed in the gra.s.s,--I am a blown petal, frail as these I crush. If my life can serve this land, or aid, in infinitesimal good, my Emperor, why can I not be glad and desire no more?"

The sun had fallen far below the hills. A crimson light, a more ethereal tide, flowed across the sea, and soaked up into the fibres of blue horizon mist. A cricket with the chill of winter in his little voice woke into querulous chiding. Yuki shivered and rose to her feet, drawing the robe more tightly. She sent a glance about the wide gardens, and saw that, apparently, she was alone. She turned as if to go, but an overpowering instinct made her lift her face again to the brooding face above her. How colossal, how patient, those dark shoulders bent in the deepening twilight! Around the lotos pedestal, the cherry trees, touched now by dull crimson light, changed to great billows of a smouldering sea. Crows darted through them like strange black fish, then flew off, cawing, to homes in the pines. Again Yuki turned to go, when a voice that froze her to the stone said softly, "Ah, Madame Hagane, what felicity to meet!"

Pierre had sprung from some unknown shadow. He must have been watching her and listening to her words. He paused now, debonair, handsome, though a little pale, directly beneath an outcurving granite petal of the Buddha's throne. As she still stared, speechless, he struck a match against the bronze and lighted a cigarette. She could not see, for her own trembling, how his poor hands shook. The red match glare revealed his face as distorted, evil, sinister.

"Well," he remarked once more, "have you nothing to say to me?"

This time she tried to speak, but no sound came. Her power of motion, too, was in abeyance. He moved three deliberate steps nearer. As though the air were gla.s.s, and she repelled by its material force, she went backward the answering distance. Her left hand, clutching behind her, found something hard and cold, and fastened to it eagerly. It was the fin of a bronze dragon in full relief, twining upward, about the trunk of a tall lantern. "Yes, go," she whispered. "Do not speak more words.

Go!"

Pierre took another stride. She cowered back bodily into the writhing folds.

"For the love of G.o.d!" she panted.

"What if one has ceased to love G.o.d?"

"In mercy then--in pity--in human pity--go!"

Pierre laughed. "_You_ enjoin pity, Madame Hagane? How quaint!"

"I am more deeply hurted now than you; but never more must I be weak. I am a wife. I shall serve my native country!"

"Does treachery and faithlessness ever serve? You delude yourself. If Hagane is to be your strength, you will fail,--for either Hagane or I must die. I live now only to revenge myself upon him!"

The emptiness of the boast, the impotence of the suffering boy to wreak the harm he wished, did not then come to her. The words rang sombre and terrible. "No--no, Pierre," she cried, "not that! Our Emperor needs him--our country needs. Revenge on me, Pierre! I only was faithless. I deserve all harm you will give."

"Yes, you were faithless, but it came because of weakness, and the low status of your s.e.x in this barbaric land. Hagane and your father forced you. They threatened, cowed you--tortured you, for all I know. Look at your hands! Mon Dieu, your little hands!"

She held them forth to him with a gesture that might have disarmed Beelzebub. "I tore them myself upon that hedge the night you came,--the night I had promised Prince Hagane."

Pierre glared at her an instant longer. Oh, he had meant to be so harsh!

Nothing was to have softened his just wrath. Through sleepless nights he had scourged himself with memory until his soul was flayed. Yuki should not appeal to him or move him. He would get from her own lips some faltering explanation of her perfidy. Yet now, for all his armor of resolve, two little torn hands held out silently through deepening gloom pulled at his heart,--drew down the visor from his quivering face.

Above them bent, like a great cloud, the head and stooping shoulders of the Buddha.

"Yuki, Yuki, you have ruined my life! You have killed my soul! I cannot consent to live unless to revenge myself upon the man who has brought us both this agony!"

"Pierre, if you say such thing, I must--because I am now j.a.panese wife--warn my master of it."

This new affront to vanity stung Pierre back into some of his a.s.sumed relentlessness. "You would defend him,--betray me already? Count Ronsard said it would be so, but I would not listen. Why should you be true to him when you were false as h.e.l.l to me? I'll kill him, I tell you, and if I cannot kill him in open fight, I will find some way to harm him! I'll have you yet, Madame la Princesse. I do not give you up, even at your own words. You owe me something! Come, come, you owe me reparation,--help me trick him, Yuki. You love me,--ah, I know it! This is my first triumph, that your heart cannot forget. Yes, yes, poor shivering slave, it is Pierre you love. Now, come, deny it! When his arms are around you, do you not think of mine? When his thick lips press you, do you not faint for me? Ah, I have touched you!"

"Go--I say to you again, go, and go quickly! You with your own speech cauterize my wound. You are a coward! Your words are vipers which give their deepest venom first to you!"

In speaking the girl had drawn herself very erect. Her face, through the twilight, gleamed luminous with inner fire. Over her left shoulder the open mouth of the dragon yawned. Pierre could not meet her look. He cowered back, and pressed his eyes with one trembling hand.

"Yuki, Yuki, indeed I scarcely know what I am saying. This misery bewilders me. I cannot eat or sleep. My thoughts surge in my brain like fire in a battened ship. And this is worst of all, that now, so soon, you are tamed,--half reconciled! You have not loved me!"

"If I love or not love, I must not now remember. Pierre, pity me a little. Go from Nippon; help me to be the good woman, and the loyal one."

But to this appeal Pierre could not reach. "I do not give you up," he muttered sullenly. "And I will harm Hagane when and how I can!"

Yuki stepped forward a little, still keeping one hand on the dragon.

"Then stand aside, Monsieur Le Beau. I must return."

Pierre did not move. "You shall not go," he said in the same sullen fashion. Yuki cast a despairing glance over toward the small house where the old priest lived, then down the long stone walk, now white with petals. No one was in sight. She gave a heavy sigh. On the instant the sound of j.a.panese clogs came, mounting, apparently, the stone steps of the great red gate. A form of a man in j.a.panese robes, unusually tall for his race, slow and majestic in approach, now became visible.

"Hagane!" she said, with a great repressed cry, and bit her lips to keep from sobbing.

"Diable!" echoed Pierre. He gave a single look, a curse, and pitching his cigarette on the stone flag near her, vanished into the shadows of the lotos throne. Yuki, half-fainting now, hung in the coils of the dragon. As though life itself depended on his coming, she watched her husband's calm advance. His stride was slow, splendid, and imposing, each step eloquent of centuries of rulership. On catching sight of her she felt that he smiled. He moved no faster. "My Lord," she murmured, not knowing that she had said it.

The cigarette blinked as with a single malevolent eye, and sent up an acrid smoke between them. He stepped over it, apparently un.o.bservant, and held out a hand. Yuki clutched at it.

"Why, small sweet one, how white your face gleams through the darkness!

And you lie, like a crystal ball of fate, in the old dragon's claws!

Well, here is a larger dragon come to bear you home."

Yuki tottered toward him. At first touch of his hand had come the sense of renewed power. "I dreamed not, Lord, that your august returning might be so soon, or I should not have left your house. I left with Meta the message--"

"She gave it carefully, but I preferred to come in person for thee, little one. Here, lean on me. You tremble. Perhaps the walk has been too long. To-morrow we are to leave this quiet place, and you will be Madame Hagane, wife of the Minister of War,--Madame Hagane, official mistress of a huge and unattractive residence. But you will brighten it, and your friends of the American Legation shall aid you."

"I shall try with all my soul and strength, Lord, to be worthy of you."

"I do not fear, my child. All things are not to be at once expected of a single small flake of maidenhood and snow. How yet you tremble! Here, I will draw your arm in mine. Cling to me. Never mind if the children on the road laugh at us and say that the old prince is mad with love of his young wife. In the great city I must often forget you. But wait one instant--"

He had been standing, half-turned from the great Buddha. Now he faced it, Yuki falling back a little. He raised both hands, rubbed them softly together in invocation, and Yuki, marvelling at him, heard the reverent words, "Namu Amida Butsu! Namu Amida Butsu!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE