The Breath of the Gods Part 56

"Give him the paper, Pierre," said the girl, gently. "Through me it was lost, and if I am to have a human soul hereafter--give him the paper."

Hagane sucked in bitter triumph from Pierre's discomfiture. His eyes crucified the boyish face. Like a brood of dark vultures his conjectures swooped down to the cowering prey. Yet before Yuki's entrance he had, for a moment, felt talons at his own breast. Instinctively Pierre had clutched at his coat, where the doc.u.ment lay concealed. Hagane said softly, "Perhaps it is as well, Madame, that you have disobeyed. Yet on your lover's countenance I do not observe signs of joyous welcome."

"I came looking for no welcome, Lord, nor has personal desire directed me. I have done great wrong. Again has my weakness proved my enemy. But a hope of partial atonement has not gone altogether from me." She stretched both hands to Pierre. "Pierre, if you have known love, give me the paper."

"I do not understand," stammered Pierre. "Are you against me for that man? Here is the chance of our revenge,--our pa.s.sport to happiness. I have not harmed him otherwise. Would you take this one possible chance from me?"

"I am not against you, Pierre. I am not for Hagane. It is myself, my wretched, shivering self, for which I plead. No, you cannot understand.

I am j.a.panese. I must regain the paper. Through my cowardice you won it.

At any sacrifice you can name I must get it back."

Hagane saw how she labored to keep her voice gentle and soothing. She had the accents of a suffering mother who tries to coax a sick child.

The husband saw more in the calm, ashen face. "You have yet patriotism,"

he said, so low that she alone heard.

To these words she gave no recognition. She watched the Frenchman as Hagane studied her. The folds of her dzukin, heaped high and light about the slim throat, stifled her. She tugged nervously at it until one end came loose and fell. By inches the flexible fabric crawled down from hair to shoulder, then down her body to the floor. The disorder of the thick hair, one blue-black lock almost hiding her left temple and streaming to her breast, gave her an unfamiliar, a weird, even a supernatural appearance.

Hagane still held a cigarette in the death-mask of his face. He took it out now carefully. "You speak of revenge, Monsieur, meaning, of course, the personal revenge. Europeans conceive all offences to be personal. You weaklings have your code,--your jumping-jack ethics.

Something touches a spring, and your honor leaps up and crows. You could hardly understand the language we now speak, though our words were purest French. I will attempt to elucidate. This woman refers to an--essence--underlying all personalities and all time. It is a stratum of substance which boils and seethes in our sun, which sets the planets swinging in their steady paths, which ebbs and flows, a thin, resistless tide, down through the world of ghosts. We call it 'En.' You have no better word, I think, than 'Necessity.' This woman had a trust and failed. Sometimes the sabre slash of fatal weakness lays bare a hidden source of strength. I believe it to be so with her. The G.o.ds have smiled a ritual of sacrifice! No,--you do not understand. If I sang an obscene song your eyes would sparkle,--now they are bits of dull blue clay.--Onda Yuki-ko!" he said in another tone, and with a voice slightly raised, "have you the thought that, in winning back for your land this stolen doc.u.ment, you become worthy again to be my wife,--to bear my name?" Yuki's head went up a little. If Death himself could smile he would perhaps own the gleam which for an instant lighted her dark eyes.

"Lord, we agree that I have failed. There is no deeper degradation. As for resuming your name,--you should have understood, before this, that I shall not need it."

Pierre wrinkled his forehead. The three stood. Pierre leaned against the edge of a ma.s.sive table, and sometimes steadied himself with hands upon it. He bore upon the oaken surface now. The drift of their conversation, though in careful English, was indeed beyond him. Hagane did not menace Yuki. In her look toward him was no hint of fear. Yet between them, across from each to each, in all the s.p.a.ce around them, the spider--tragedy--hurried unceasingly, and wove a closing web. They stared out from the black net with faces of calm n.o.bility. An influence shook the Frenchman, vibrated through the particles of his brain, shrank and inflated his soul in its clay vessel. In bewilderment, as one reaches out in the dark, his voice cried, "Is this your sorrow, Yuki? Do you wish still to be his? If you bid me, perhaps I too can sacrifice.

Shall I buy his mercy for you with this paper?" He s.n.a.t.c.hed it out, but instead of presenting it, held the white rectangle again against his breast. The seal glared and winked like the inflamed eye of a pygmy Cyclops.

This was Pierre's supremest moment. Never again did he reach an equal height. The alt.i.tude turned him cold and dizzy. Blood surged in his ears, and tears of self-appreciation, of self-pity, sponged with a misty blur the room and its occupants.

Yuki, catching her underlip between her teeth, and bruising her slim hands together for control, went nearer. "Pierre, I thank you. I shall never forget this greatness,--in another world or this. You do much to restore what you, too, have lost. But I cannot bid you sacrifice. Hagane would not take the paper at that price. I myself must find a way to win it."

Hagane sat like a ma.s.s of clay new fallen from a cliff. Yuki's voice trailed off. An angelic sweetness hung about the echoes.

Now the clay was troubled. It stirred heavily. Hagane rose with his usual ma.s.sive deliberation. "Tell her, Frenchman, the price I had already offered you."

"I shall not do it with that pure face before me, Hagane."

Hagane bowed. No hint of sarcasm cheapened the salutation. "Then, Yuki, I must speak it. I offered him in exchange for the paper your fair, white body to be his, as a dog is his, as a s.n.a.t.c.hed blossom. That was my bargain."

For an instant she swayed and leaned one hand on the table opposite from Pierre. Hagane placed a chair for her. Before sinking to it she spoke, her eyes set on her husband, her voice grave and contained. "Then, Lord Hagane, you have revealed a depth of degradation below the uttermost punishment which I should have thought you willing to bestow."

"Also," continued Hagane, "I ventured to declare, and to believe, that you would go to him willingly." Pierre quivered under this insult to the woman he loved. But Yuki did not look ashamed. Pushing back the hair from both temples she bent her eyes upward, as though invoking strength from unseen powers.

"Yes, Yuki, darling," cried Pierre, coming to her. "He will free you honorably. You shall be mine forever, and we shall soon forget these horrors of the past. I will give him the paper if you wish it. What do I care for Ronsard or for France if I, with this, can buy your life-long happiness?"

Yuki shivered in all the length of her limbs. Hagane turned away. His face could not be seen with the utterance of his next words. Curiously enough they sounded apologetic.

"It was the only way I saw, Yuki, the only bribe that such a man might take. Your body, soiled already, have I offered. Do you understand?"

Pierre's gaze, too, had fallen. Shame weighed all lids. An abnormal silence came to the little group. Yuki broke it with a long, long breath, as of relief and comprehension. The men looked toward her.

Hagane clenched a brown fist to a cl.u.s.ter of throbbing veins. But the Frenchman gaped, incredulous, and gaped again. For Yuki was smiling at something far away. A light already not of earth lay on her waxen brow.

"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, now, at last, I understand. You will not force the gift, Hagane. It must be mine. Why, Pierre, look not so strange because, at last, I understand. You cannot know yet, poor Pierre, but soon you will know too. I must be yours, of course. Have you not planned, and spied, and--stolen for this?"

"Yuki," said Hagane, in a deeply troubled voice, "if Monsieur Le Beau by any chance should give the paper--unconditionally should refuse the price--"

"No! no!" she cried, with a quick note of terror, and sprang to her feet again. "Where would be my atonement, my reparation? Think it not, Lord.

See that your great mercy be not merciless. I shall go, gladly, gladly, to Monsieur Le Beau; my heart falters not for myself,--but him. It is a cruel deed to him."

"And well deserved," muttered Hagane.

"Being myself weak, Lord," said the young wife, "I feel that the deserving is, after all, the hardest pang."

Pierre dashed his hand across his brow, and went to a small sideboard for a liqueur. Again these strange people were talking their mystic gibberish. Yuki was more clear, indeed. She had stated openly to her husband that she wished to be given to another man. Neither seemed to feel the least delicacy or shame. In Pierre's fastidious thought this fact made a tiny stain for Yuki. The old brute evidently wanted to be rid of her, and she, eagerly accepting freedom, did not shrink from claiming at once a more desirable companionship. At the last moment should he, Pierre, refuse to grasp the prize he had turned criminal in pursuing? No, a thousand times no! Yuki's friendless condition demanded his deepest pity. It was with a faint touch of condescension that he leaned to her, saying, "Do not falter now, Yuki. Our goal is in sight. I will be true to you. I will yet make you happy!"

"Happy! happy!" echoed the woman in a ghost's voice. "All foreigners think and say only that one thing,--_happy_! Pierre, Pierre, I need so much more than--happiness!"

The pathos of her voice, her small face, touched him to a manlier emotion. She was so young, so white, so helpless!

"What it is possible for me to give you I live but to bestow, my darling," he said, and, kneeling, kissed a small, scarred hand. "I can promise love, protection, deep respect,--for the slime of this man shall not cling to you!"

Hagane s.n.a.t.c.hed him bodily from the floor. His eyes blazed like a beast's. "Time will come for puling. A few things are yet to be said.

Let us conclude the savory bargain. I must be gone."

"Yes, let us finish quickly," whispered Yuki.

"Gallant lover," continued Hagane to Pierre, "when and how do you wish to claim your prize?"

"Now, at once," cried Pierre, rallying a little under the scorn hurled toward him. "You have the eyes of a demon. She would not be safe alone with you. Take the paper now, and let me have her!"

Yuki shivered again, and hid her face in her sleeve.

"I shall not harm madame. This I can a.s.sure you. But the earliest possible hour for your ecstasy will be--to-night!"

"To-night--to-night!" moaned Yuki.

"It must be so. You cannot pa.s.s another night beneath my roof, and there is none who dares receive you but this brawny champion."

"To-night! It is an eternity away!" cried Pierre. "See, love, the sun already is low. I hear the moat-crows cawing. To-night we shall begin to live!"

"Kwannon Sama--oh, dear Saviour, help me to endure," said Yuki to herself.

"To-morrow I join the army in Manchuria. Whatever is to do must be completed before the dawn."

"To-night! To-night, this very night!" sang Pierre, like a schoolboy.

"They called me sick, but I am already a well man! That was a marvellous draught you gave me in the tea-rooms, Yuki."

For the first time Hagane showed a puzzled frown. Yuki explained quickly. "Oh, I had forgotten that you did not know. Pierre wandered delirious into our garden this forenoon, your Highness, just after your instructions to me. I could think of no way to send him off, so I took him to the Cha no yu rooms and gave him a fever mixture and a sleeping-draught. I believed he would remain asleep until after the meeting."

"But I didn't," laughed Pierre. "It must have been the G.o.d of Good Luck that woke me when he did."

"I tried to tell your Highness before the meeting, although you had given me orders not to disturb your mind," went on Yuki to her husband in the same quiet way. "Perhaps you will recall my effort."