The Breath of the Gods Part 41

"They'd have a sop of sour jelly with yours, cuttlefish!" said Suzume, kicking in disgust. Finally, in utter exasperation, she seized the culprit by the ear, sliding her bodily down the hardwood floor, and depositing her in a moaning heap on the back veranda beneath a water-cooler.

"Gwendolen, Gwendolen!" Yuki was crying. "I have just now learned, I think, why you have not come or wrote to me." (Pause.) "Yes, it was just that thing,--my rank, it is called. Alas, do you remember, Gwendolen, that poor little sea-maid how she feel when the proud grandmother beckoned eight large oysters to fasten upon her scales? Well, I have now the pinch of such oysters. But I will not care so much if only you will come!" (Pause.) "My mother is with me, and her servants, but they must go very soon. I will be alone.--Yes, he is to be absent all the day. Oh, come quickly,--quickly,--I cannot bear some more long waiting." Yuki wheeled from the telephone. "She will come, mother; my friend will come!

Let us go to the long drawing-room and wait for her. I will send tea and cakes to comfort the silly Maru. Some other day we shall see all of this big house. It is very ugly, though costing much money. That is honorably often the case with foreign things. Oh, mother, I have been so hungry for you and my golden friend! She will be brought to us in the long drawing-room. We are in heart and soul, if not in race, true sisters.

How kind she was to me at school! I have written you before. The other girls would tease me. They asked impertinent questions, and would always be tormenting me to dance. Gwendolen was the only one to see how I felt.

She protected me, and would not let me dance until my heart began to sing. She knew that real dancing, like poetry, should come only when your heart sings,--not just because you are requested. Sometimes in homesickness I would dance, sometimes in joy of springtime flowers.

Those girls tried, too, to dance,--the funny American girls! But they could never learn. Not even Gwendolen could learn, though I taught and taught and taught her!"

Excitement bred of the coming visit caught her up like a leaf. Prattling on, she moved swiftly into the long room, beckoning now and then for Iriya to follow. The mother kept at quite a distance, embarra.s.sed by this lack of restraint in a married daughter. In the centre of the room the girl paused, and, as if impelled, threw herself into a pose of wonderful beauty, every bone, every inch of white flesh set, as it were, into visible expression of a poetic thought. "I did not know that ever again I should wish to dance like this," Iriya heard her murmur. "Yes, I am coming back to myself. Even that little soul that fled on the ship,--it may come back last of all, but it will come."

Half dreamily she pa.s.sed into a second pose. The transition was music.

Now her long eyes closed into a mere gleaming thread, her lips parted, and trembled. Almost without motion of her mouth she talked on, in broken j.a.panese phrases, uttering them in rhythms, which subtly related to the gestures of her body. "No, those girls could never dance,--never dance,--with their honorably stiff shoulders and their limbs like trunks of young trees. They attempted it with fervor, but they could not augustly dance. But I will dance again, and my souls will listen. I will dance the dance of the Sun G.o.ddess and of morning, because my friend is coming!" She hummed, now, the tune and the words of a famous cla.s.sic.

Iriya, completely under the spell, sank to the floor in the att.i.tude of a singer, caught up the rhythm, and sang with her:

"Night is where thou art not, Oh, my beloved!

Night lies in the stone rolled close against thy door.

Let the sighs of spring, (My sighing, oh, divine one,) Let the salt waves' weeping (my salt tears) allure thee!"

The beautiful gestures flowed one into the next, like currents of living water.

"Lo, she awakens; light with shining fingers frets the dark rock fissure.

She approaches; see the black rock melt."

"Hark! listen!" cried the dancer, and paused with arms outspread. It was as if winds stood still, as if a flower-branch, tossed in air, lost suddenly its power to return. Iriya caught her breath. She too rose.

Jinrikisha wheels were on the gravel. "My hour is gone," said Iriya; "I know it from the shadows. I will now return home, taking the servants with me. You remain here, my child, and greet the friend who now enters."

"Yes, I will remain here, mother, my dear, dear mother, I will greet my friend," whispered the girl. The glamour of the dance had swept back and held her. Half in the world of poetry, half in the material present, she wavered. The dawn of her friend's coming shone through both. Iriya, with a last, tender look, slipped from the room. Yuki's lip quivered like a child's as she saw her mother go. But now, down the long hall, came the tap-tap of high-heeled foreign shoes. A new tremor stirred Yuki's lips, a little hint of fear hid in her eyes.

Gwendolen paused on the threshold. For a long moment the two stood transfixed,--gazing, searching, each the face of the other. Yes, a barrier had grown between them,--the mystery of marriage, the recollection (on Gwendolen's part) of unspeakable slanders, the ghostly, intangible stirring of race antagonism, to which they themselves could not have given name. Yuki began slowly to whiten, but Gwendolen, with a backward toss of the head like Diana on a hilltop, cried out aloud, "My sister!" and the two friends, crashing through phantoms, found each other's arms. They clung close, sobbing and swaying. Whispers started, but never found conclusion. Names were repeated with every intonation of deep love. "My friend,--my Gwendolen!" "Yuki! Yuki! Yuki!" A dozen times they drew back, looked again, and clung closer. Finally they succeeded in reaching a sofa, and sat down, with hands still intertwined.

"And you, little you, are the mistress of all this great house! You are to give receptions, and be the chief hostess. I suppose you will chaperon _me_, you chicken! Isn't it a joke?"

"It do seem joky," admitted Yuki, with another sigh of full content.

"Well, Madame la Princesse, may I give you now my first social commission? I want a prince of my own,--a j.a.panese prince. Let him be poor,--all the better,--but his trademark, I mean his crest, I insist on having it warranted as the real thing."

"What would then become of poor Mr. Dodge?"

"Mr. Dodge!" echoed the other, with greatest scorn. "You certainly never had any idea I would look twice at Mr. Dodge! Besides, he is making a fool of himself over that fat, ogling Carmen Niestra. Ugh! She reminds me of a huge suet pudding with sweet sauce. I always suspected Dodge of low sentiments."

"I know not of this Miss Carmen," said Yuki, in a troubled voice. "But I like Mr. Dodge, always, very, very much; and I am sure he loved you--distractionately!"

"That just about expresses it!" cried Gwendolen; and little Yuki never knew why her friend laughed so heartily, while the dark shadow of an unspoken pain still clouded her bright eyes. "Let's change the subject,"

the American said quickly. "Dad told me to give you lots of love, and to say that all of us were looking forward to that grand first reception of yours. Next Thursday, isn't it? No, Friday. We got our cards yesterday."

"You will come and a.s.sist me in the preparing, won't you, dear Gwendolen?"

"I couldn't be kept away!"

"And Mrs. Todd, too. Your kind mother, will she not come?"

Gwendolen averted her face. "The truth is, Yuki, mother takes Pierre's part. Nothing that dad or I can say has influence. That awful Mrs. Stunt owns mother now, body and soul; and Mrs. Stunt has no tender feelings to spare for her own s.e.x."

"I am not surprised at your mother, or even greatly hurt. It is right that--he--should have friends to sympathize. Say to your mother, please, that I do not resent."

"I'll say nothing of the kind!" cried Gwendolen, indignantly. "It would please Mrs. Stunt too much. Oh, they will be waiting to question me about you. Mrs. Stunt's eyes will glare like those of a hungry hyena. I shall tell them that you are superbly indifferent. That will fetch them! Mrs. Stunt, as it is, will be the first to enter your reception-rooms,--the odious little painted ghoul!"

All brightness had faded from the young faces. Each stared upon troubled visions. "Since we are on such topics, Yuki," Gwendolen began, "I might as well tell you and have done with it,--Pierre himself is acting like a spoiled child, a cad. He wants to make trouble."

"His threat is to harm Prince Hagane, is it not?"

"Yes! But who told you?" She looked sharply at her companion. Yuki apparently had not heard. Gwendolen went on. "Dad simply laughs at him for a foolish bl.u.s.terer. He says a cricket might as well shake its fists at a grain elevator."

"There is no rumor at all that Pierre may go home to France?"

"Absolutely none. Ronsard is using him as a cat's-paw. Since your marriage Pierre has been openly announced Second Secretary of the French Legation. A sinecure, but it gives him entree to all court functions,--to official receptions,--to--_your_ reception, Yuki."

"I have thought of this also," said Yuki. "He could not harm my husband in such an open place."

"No, but with that demon of a Ronsard behind him he could embarra.s.s, perhaps mortify, both you and Hagane."

Yuki fell silent. Her slim hands clasped and unclasped nervously. Her eyes were fixed on a spot of carpet near her feet. "Of course it is certain that so great statesman as Hagane thought of all such dangers before he wished to marry me," she murmured, as much to herself as her companion.

"Good gracious, Yuki Onda!" broke in Gwendolen, with startling abruptness. "What are those fearful scars on your hands? Did they torture you after all?"

Gwendolen's shocked face and horrified tone expressed more than she would willingly have admitted.

Yuki's eyes flashed once. She drew her hands within her sleeves. "How can you say such silly thing? Nipponese do not torture!"

Gwendolen, to hide her emotion (for she did not entirely believe Yuki's vehement a.s.severation) sprang up and began walking up and down the room, near the sofa where Yuki sat, watching her. "What is it that you were about to warn me of Monsieur Le Beau?" asked the latter, calmly.

"He is weak--silly--sentimental; bleating all over the place about his blighted hopes,--his ruined life. He makes me ill!" The girl was thankful to expend on the absent Pierre indignation to which she dared not ascribe the real source. Those gashes on her friend's small hands were burned already on her own heart. It did not occur to her that accident had caused them. In a time of such conflict, they must be, necessarily, the marks of cruelty and violence. Yuki guessed the pent-up fount of pa.s.sion in her friend, for she remarked quite coolly, "I a.s.sure you, Gwendolen, those little scratches were made by me,--myself, on our garden hedge. I was the stupidity. No one caused but myself. You know I have never told to you an untruthful thing. As for Monsieur Le Beau, he has all reasons for saying that I have ruined his life."

"Ruined his grandmother!" cried the other. "There you are, looking meek again. No wonder that all men are bullies when we turn coward at the first frown. I thank Heaven it was no man, however, that made those scars on you. If it had been--" She stopped short, looking so fierce that Yuki had to smile at her. "Well, Amazon?" she asked.

"Oh, I hate all men!--young ones in particular. Pierre thinks his heart is bleeding, but, after all, it is chiefly his precious vanity. He don't like being jilted! Subtract vanity from the average man and you don't leave much beside the fillings of his front teeth. They are all alike! I know them!" She flung herself to the sofa and clasped her arms once more tightly around her friend. The outburst had relieved her; but a new sadness came. Yuki was still very pale. A little pathetic drooping had begun to show at the corners of her lips. Gwendolen was by nature the antagonist of resignation. She hated the dawning look of it on Yuki's face. "Yuki, Yuki, shall we ever be happy again as we were at school?

Yet we were restless there. All our thoughts flew westward, far, far westward, and over that broad ocean, to your j.a.pan. We could never be really happy, we thought, until we had reached, together, this country of your birth. Oh, it is beautiful, as you told me! Each day its beauty deepens. I know now what you meant by yama-buki fountains all of gold,--and the wide, still yellow lakes of 'na.' In our Legation garden the cherry-trees are crusted over with tiny pointed rubies, which soon--yes, very soon--must turn to flowers. All that I see is beautiful, and yet, Yuki, think in how short a time life has brought us both deep sorrow!" She drew a sigh, the long, luxurious, despairing sigh of untried youth. Yuki, having griefs more real, echoed it in softer cadence.

"Yes, the cherry-buds will open, and the fountain of your yama-buki toss, no matter what we are feeling! Is it not kind to be so? I have heard that your Legation garden is not very--harmonious. Will there be many bright spring flowers in it?"

"The garden is a blot, but it is a big blot, and things grow there, thank Heaven! Haven't you ever been to the American Legation at all?

Yuki, I have an idea!"

"No," Yuki had answered. At the new sparkle of excitement in the fair face she unconsciously sat more erect.

"I have an idea!" Gwendolen repeated. "You are now your own mistress.

Why can't you drive home with me, and give mother a surprise? Nothing would soften her like that,--the Princess Hagane to call in person!"

"Yes, yes, I will do that thing!" cried Yuki, taking fire at once. "How clever you are, Gwendolen! I would sit here mourning for the month and not have such bright idea. I tell you, listen! We will send your jinrikisha off, then you stays to luncheon with me, and after luncheon we takes the pumpkin and some rats and turn them into a great coach with horses, and drive off in splendor, like two little Cinderellas, to your mother's house! Oh, what jolliness! let us go upstairs and remove your hat!"