The Breath of the Gods Part 43

Princess Sada, whose t.i.tle Gwendolen took pains to enunciate distinctly, came in for her share of compliment. The American girl next her, half-angry, half-hysterical with suppressed laughter, was hastily whittling a mental arrow, her keen eye searching, meanwhile, for some weak spot in the self-love of her foe. Mrs. Stunt, scenting trouble,--her perceptions in this regard were canine,--would have avoided the girl, but farther down the line were more j.a.panese. Another princess might be stowed among them. Mrs. Stunt could not relinquish a possible princess. She gathered up her mantle of effrontery, and went to her doom.

"Oh, Mrs. Stunt, not that high, fashionable hand-shake between old friends," cried the clear, sweet voice. Guests now poured into the doors. Many paused to hear the next sound of that pleasing voice. "I can't tell you how glad I am that you have met at last my friend Yuki, the Princess Hagane! You have talked so much about her, and now you have really met. I saw Yuki's joy in the meeting. You were intoxicating in your sincerity, dear Mrs. Stunt, a pewter-mug literally frothing with felicitations! Why, and here is Miss Stunt and Miss Leonora Stunt! Yes, I am glad to see you both; but move on, children; you must get mama to bring you with her on some of her frequent visits to the Legation!"

Mrs. Stunt carried her tarnished pewter bravely down the line. She was actually dull, leaden-toned with rage. It was not so much Gwendolen's impertinence that stung her, but the fact of the loud, clear voice, pitched for all to share. Whatever Mrs. Stunt's good opinion of herself, she could not but realize that most of those who overheard rejoiced in the Stunt humiliation.

The moment she had spoken, Gwendolen regretted it. "A mean, tawdry, contemptible bit of revenge!" she muttered to herself. "I feel already nearly as vile as she." The girl looked up to meet her father's deep-set eyes. A pathetic little moue, a single pleading gesture, and the tenderness returned to them; but his first look rankled.

It had been decided between Mr. Todd and his daughter that he should remain near some door or window in the thick of arriving-time, where at each loud carriage entrance he could draw aside the drapery and try to recognize the equipage. When the French coat-of-arms appeared he was to signal Gwendolen. Of course Le Beau would accompany his chief. The two now were inseparable. The only plan which Gwendolen's thought had suggested was to intercept Pierre at the door, and with what wit and invention then came to her aid, try to separate him from his evil genius, Ronsard, and, if possible, keep him away from Yuki.

Dodge entered airily alone. He wore a crimson carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole and dove-gray "spats" above his patent leather shoes. Seldom now did he accompany the Todd family to any social function. Gwendolen had been asked by her parents the cause of this sudden aloofness, and they had received in turn the ambiguous and not altogether respectful reply, "How should I know? Am I our secretary's keeper?"

Dodge paused now near the door through which he had entered. The rooms were filling rapidly. His clear, dog-like eyes of hazel brown threaded the crowd, resting the fraction of an instant on each form. He searched, apparently, for some special object. Gwendolen, in her pretty debutante's gown which should, by rights, have evoked pensive memories, received but the usual light stroke of observation. The brown eyes shot on past her, swept around the walls, came back to the door where the owner of them stood, and then turned about to the entrance hall. "Ah!"

said Dodge, under his breath. The eagerness of the sound carried it to Gwendolen's ear. She saw him disappear. A moment later he re-entered with Carmen Gil y Niestra, languid and beautiful, in cream lace and crimson carnations.

The two young people came down the line together. Yuki gazed with some curiosity on the face of the Spanish girl. Gwendolen waited for them.

She held herself like a young Empress receiving coronation felicitations. The white debutante's dress seemed to become alive as Dodge neared it. One long tulle fold streamed after him as he went by.

Gwendolen caught at it angrily.

Mr. Todd touched his daughter on the shoulder. She slipped out quietly to the hall-way, threw on the long dark cloak she had left there for the purpose, and was in the doorway before the French barouche had entirely stopped. Pierre issued first, and without having observed her, stood ready to a.s.sist his chief. He gave a nervous start as Gwendolen touched him. "Let the count go in alone," she pleaded. "I must speak with you."

The minister now emerged, a pendulous and unstable bulk. Gwendolen flew to his side. He looked into a face vital with excitement, hurt pride, vague apprehension. Her eyes were fairly black, her usually pale cheeks, red as Carmen's flowers. Her beauty smote the old sensualist with delight. "Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, but you are lovely," he murmured partly to himself. Ignoring physical disadvantages, he paused to make her a deep and courtly bow, his hand pressed reverently upon that portion of his torso where, beneath layers of unhealthy fat, squatted the small toad of his heart with the cross of the Legion of Honor about its neck.

"I am glad that you think me lovely at this moment," said the girl, coquettishly, swallowing hard her rising disgust. "I want you to help me. Please go in without Pierre. Do not let the usher call his name just yet. I must speak alone with him."

Count Ronsard's admiration was supplemented by a shrewd and contaminating look. He and Pierre crossed glances. The minister bowed again, this time with less ceremony. "Whatever beauty asks is already granted."

He whispered something to a servant who had stepped up to take Pierre's place. The servant hurried in before. Ronsard climbed heavily, alone, the two stone steps of the portico. Gwendolen had drawn near Le Beau, when the bawl of the usher, in a voice unusually loud and distinct, arrested her. "His Excellency Count Ronsard, Minister of France, Monsieur Pierre Le Beau, Second Secretary to the French Legation."

Gwendolen caught her breath. Her eyes began to blaze. At this instant Count Ronsard, now on the top step, gave a cry, tottered, and would have fallen but for Pierre's agile spring.

"My ankle, my infernal ankle! I have sprained, perhaps broken it!" he groaned aloud in English. "Your arm, my son, I cannot walk alone."

Thus supported, he limped heavily into the drawing-room. Yuki hurried to meet him. A low cushioned chair was wheeled for his convenience. He dominated at once the entire a.s.semblage. Formal greetings ceased. Half a dozen different nationalities crowded in to inquire about the accident.

He and Pierre took turns in explanation. French, German, Spanish, Italian, English, j.a.panese, each was answered courteously in his own tongue. Yuki sent upstairs to her medicine-case for bandages and liniment; but this attention the gallant count repelled. His boot would keep the swelling down, he said, until the sick chamber of his own house could be reached.

Gwendolen let fall her cloak in the hall way; whoever would might rescue it. Slowly she entered the drawing-room, paused near the interesting group about the sufferer, and stood watching, her whole slight frame in a hot tingle with impotent anger. No mark of pain rested on the flabby countenance of Ronsard. Pierre looked far more ill. This fact but added to Gwendolen's uneasiness. Yuki had a tender heart for human suffering.

She heard the count's brave self-control admired, and her disgust turned to a mental nausea. For the moment no counter-stroke occurred to her.

Even the keen eyes of Prince Hagane were, apparently, deceived. He stood near the Frenchman expressing grave concern. Yuki, perforce, remained within calling of her afflicted guest. Hagane at length moved off.

Pierre, Ronsard, and Yuki were together, a meeting that Gwendolen had striven against, and plotted to prevent. Gwendolen fancied that her schoolmate already turned more wan, that she trembled and shrank from the low words that were spoken. She was a white dove picked upon by vultures. Mrs. Stunt stood across the room gleaning items with her steely gaze.

Discomfited, utterly worsted, Gwendolen trailed slow steps down the lighted vista. She longed for her father, but now he and Prince Hagane had begun to talk. A vacant window, half-hidden in trailing vines, allured her. She hurried to it, threw aside the curtain, and looked out into the deepening twilight. All of this fair March day had been blue and windless. The night was a bowl of liquid sapphire, a deep aerial sea into which the house had been lowered, like a great illuminated bell. So tangible, so intense, was the outer blueness that it seemed to Gwendolen, should she lift the sash an inch, a gentian tide must gurgle in through the fissure, steal along the wall to the shadowy floor, and silently fill the long rooms with a purple flood.

That moment brought to the girl her first tinge of worldly bitterness.

Heretofore, with the one exception of her quarrel, things had seemed naturally to come right just because she wished it. Even in dreams, things always came right for her. Now, by some shabby turn of fortune, the reverse was true; failure marked every effort. Being young, healthy, and totally unacquainted with real sorrow, it was inevitable that she should luxuriate in an imaginary despair. She stared into the night, envying its cool blue depths of silence and oblivion. She raised long lashes to the stars, gleaming faintly now like small phosph.o.r.escent mushrooms springing on a damp blue field, and wondered, sighing, whether on those distant planets lived any girl so miserable as she.

"Miss Todd," murmured a low voice. She wheeled back to the lighted room with a gesture so sudden that two large tears splashed upon her cheeks.

Dodge stood beside her half-abashed, altogether eager, deeply flushed by the late battle with his pride. Gwendolen's heart gave a bound toward him, then sank down whimpering. The girl, too, felt an overwhelming need for tears. One kind word more from Dodge, one faint concession on her part, and she must surrender utterly, bend down with her face hidden, and sob out her anxieties and her relief. Oh, if they were but alone, and she could "make up" as she longed to do! But now, because all eyes might turn to them, because she had not the self-control to explain, his tenderness must be met by scorn, in self-protection she must lash herself to stoicism by blows rained on him. She drew herself upright. He could not see how feverishly one primrose-colored hand clutched the window-frame. "You have--mis-taken your--corner, Mr. Dodge," she jerked out in a voice that needed to balance every word, like an acrobat on a wire. "Miss Niestra is, I think, in another part of the room."

"I have, as you say, mistaken the corner. I shall not offend again,"

said Dodge.

The girl's heart called out after him. She bit her lips to keep back the gush of tears. "Now he will hate me forever and ever! He'll never want to speak to me again," she told herself. She threw her head back, and stepped out into the light. Scrutiny would help to steady her. Count Ronsard still held court, his two attendants being Pierre and Yuki.

Gwendolen's generous heart flared into new anger for her friend. "What are my stings to Yuki's!" she cried to herself. "Those two men are devils to torture a woman as I know they are doing!" Gwendolen felt a sense of returning energy. She had found a definite task.

Count Ronsard, who flattered himself that he understood all women, to whom raw debutantes were as gla.s.s candy jars in a village shop-window, felt a little surprise, perhaps even a little excitement, as Gwendolen, smiling like a tall white angel, bore down upon him, and announced, in her sweetest voice, that she had come to "keep him company."

Enlightenment and a challenge lay in her two next sentences. "Bring me that footstool, Pierre. Yuki, darling, let me take your place now as ministering angel to the count. Other guests may need you."

Like a snowy bird of Paradise flecked with gold, she perched beside the caged Frenchman. He saw through her feint as clearly as she had seen through his. Having avowed himself incapable of walking, he had no choice but to remain where he was, or to return home. In sheer intellectual delight at the girl's wit and daring, he yielded himself to her snare. Her sentences enwrapped him in bright skeins. Excitement gave her pungency. She realized that she had never talked so well, and even in the midst of it regretted that it had to be wasted on an "old pig."

Pierre hovered about sullenly until released by a nod from his chief. No further speech did he obtain with Yuki. Gwendolen noted, with malicious satisfaction, how close the young wife kept to her husband's side, how tenderly the great man leaned and spoke with her. Together they now moved through the crowded rooms, delivering invitations to the sewing-meeting on the following Monday, the first to be held. The air of the room crackled to eager acceptances. Mrs. Stunt's was the explosion of a small torpedo. Tranquillity and her usual pale-rose flush came back to the face of the little princess. Gwendolen's sparkling eyes jeered light into those of Count Ronsard. The man was a great man in his distorted way. As yet life's greatest values were, for him, of the mind.

Rising at last with ostentatious and smothered groans, as he prepared to limp to his waiting carriage, he gave the girl her meed of praise.

"Mademoiselle," he said gravely, "it would be a happy day for France were you to become the wife of one of her diplomats."

"Merci," said Gwendolen, with a French curtsy. "The profession allures me, but--an American diplomat will be good enough for me!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

A short whispered colloquy between Hagane, the little Princess Sada-ko, and Yuki, during the reception, a few days before, resulted in the decision that the j.a.panese ladies should be asked to come quite early to the sewing party; the foreign contingent to be bidden later, about one in the afternoon. To all j.a.panese the early hours of the day are best.

Yuki knew that this was not the case with foreigners. Besides, to have served a hot foreign luncheon to an indefinite number of guests would have taken from the purpose of such a meeting most of its charitable intent, and, very likely, all of the material profit. The simplest of j.a.panese collations,--a bowl of thin fish soup, rice, tea, a fairy dish of pickles, one sweetmeat, maybe, this could be served with propriety to the Empress herself, had that gracious lady been present. These women worked for their own hero soldiers, for their own adored Nippon. Their utmost efforts were privileges; what the foreign ladies gave might, among themselves, be considered alms.

When all had arrived, that is, the foreigners as well as j.a.panese, they were to be given for entertainment, music of the two worlds. First, English songs from a charming soprano, a Mrs. Wyndham of Yokohama, justly celebrated in the East, as in her own land, for an unusually pure and lovely voice. For j.a.panese they were to have improvisation and martial chanting from a Satsuma biwa player, a court musician in highest favor with their Majesties. The lending of him to Yuki for this meeting had been a royal answer to Hagane's modest statement of his young wife's plan.

The j.a.panese ladies, mostly of the n.o.ble cla.s.s, began to arrive before the blue morning mists had quite lifted from the long, gleaming surfaces of castle moats; before the wild white herons, perching on great down-sweeping arms of castle pines, had warmed their chilly feathers to the skin; before the budding cherry-boughs had dared unfold a single dripping leaf. By eight o'clock that end of the huge upstairs hall set apart for their exclusive use had few vacant places. The j.a.panese ladies brought scissors, thimble, and needles; material and thread were contributed by Prince Hagane. Yuki's mother was among the first. Iriya grew younger and prettier with each day, in this new pride and happiness won through her only child. She had not brought the servants. Yuki insisted that they be sent for. They came as upon the chariot of the wind, released by a gruff sound of acquiescence from their master, their blue sleeves flying horizontally in the morning air. Little Maru, whose excessive love for candy kept her in a condition of pink rotundity, gasped joyously for breath. "Ma-a-a!" she cried at first sight of a courtyard filled with crested kuruma; and "Ma-a-a!" again, as she tripped on the top step and fell full-length into the hall; and "Ma-a-a!" once more as the obliging butler stooped to rescue her, until Suzume, frowning heavily, called her a bean-curd, and bade her cease exclaiming.

It was a gentle company that worked in the upper hall. Shining black heads bent as one above tumultuous yards of white cotton cloth. The peculiar odor of cambric and unbleached domestic was mixed with j.a.panese perfumes of sandalwood and incense, and with the unique aroma of hair-oil made from camellia berries. Work went on steadily. Great white towers of bandages were finished, and removed by servant-maids, who staggered, laughed, and joked softly, as they bore the tottering burdens to the packing-room downstairs. Sounds of hammer and nails arose as the packages went into boxes. They could hear workmen haggling over the spelling of certain Manchurian addresses.

In the big hall the n.o.bly-born seamstresses talked, smiled, raised eyebrows, nodded, shook their heads over bad news, and gave small, half-finished exclamations over good, much as a roomful of Western women might have done. The fortunes of war dominated interest. Bereavement had already fallen upon more than one of the gentle company. Death was spoken of quite simply, with no affectation of distress. Universal contempt was expressed for a certain young widow who had been coa.r.s.e and self-centred enough to faint at her husband's tomb. "Hirotsune's spirit must have covered his eyes with shame at that sight, and thanked the G.o.ds she had borne him no son," said an elderly aunt of the dead hero, Hirotsune.

But not all the conversation was of war. The rise in the price of provisions was commented upon by anxious housewives. In all cases the household expenses had been cut down, and the money deflected to the national treasury. This seemed as natural to them all as that water should flow. "The poor food makes, of course, no difference to us who are adult, or to our boy children," murmured one sweet-faced matron.

"But sometimes the babes, and the very old servants, grumble a little at having barley mixed with their rice." Fashions, since no one thought of buying new gowns, was, for once in a female gathering, utterly ignored.

Gossip concerning foreign residents, especially women, remained, as usual, an engrossing theme. The latest Yokohama and Tsukijii scandals were whispered, not without zest. These high-nosed, fierce-looking creatures of their own s.e.x were a source of constant marvelling to j.a.panese women. "Kitsui" (mannish) they were called, as the extreme of disapprobation. Yuki defended them, and gave a softer coloring to some of the alleged misdeeds. Gwendolen she cited as an example of a Western girl who must, in her past incarnations, have been entirely j.a.panese.

The guests listened politely, but Yuki read skepticism on their calm faces.

During the long forenoon not once was a voice raised or a loud laugh heard. Yet not one face ever lapsed into indifference. One might have gained from the resilient poise of slender throats an impression of yielding strength. Their chatter was a murmur, with tripping, short interludes of sound, and cooing, long-drawn vowels soft as their own white hands. They were a flock of gray doves in a sheltered niche.

Never, one would have said, were creatures more tender, more feminine, more dependent. So would a foreigner have thought, to see them; but a j.a.panese knows the truth. Not a woman there but might be the child, the parent, the wife of a hero. Many had looked calmly on death. Not one among them would falter at the extremest test of heroic sacrifice, and should the call come, this little sewing band would rise, arm itself with swords, and deal what desperate death it could upon intruding enmity, before at last plunging sharp surrender into its own brave heart.

At noon the j.a.panese meal was served. After it came a little pause of rest, enlivened by smoking from small gold pipes, and the drinking of added cups of tea. Just before one o'clock the sewing was resumed. Then the little silk-clad ladies waited, in deeper agitation than they would have felt in facing Kuropatkin, for the coming of their foreign friends.

Mrs. Todd was punctual almost to the minute. With her came Gwendolen and Mrs. Stunt. A slight coolness now existed between the two elder ladies.

Mrs. Stunt's explanation that her effusiveness to the Haganes was merely "sarcasm" had failed to convince even so trustful a nature as Mrs. Todd.

Coolness, however, did not keep Mrs. Stunt from a neighborhood where she might derive profit.

She had walked on foot to the Legation, declaring that her jinrikisha-man was shockingly drunk, and had begged a seat in the American carriage. It was, of course, given, and by the time Yuki's residence was reached the artful one had regained some of her lost favor with Mrs. Todd, and deepened the loathing of the silent Gwendolen.

The three came up the stairs together, their foreign shoes pounding in unison, causing the huge, badly constructed house to rattle at every window.