The Breath of the Gods Part 7

"Ah, it is of war you hint! Here, many believe that it will not come. Is it to come, Lord?" She had drawn very close. Hagane perceived, as one looking at a picture, the exquisite balance of features in the pointed oval face, the pale width of brow under clouds of dusty hair, the refinement, the trembling sensitiveness of lips and chin. His eyes held a certain keen, inscrutable intentness of regard. The corners now wrinkled slightly with a smile.

"A nightingale studies not with a maker of swords," he said slowly. "Yet may the nightingale's note give warning where the sword could not avail.

What one has not heard, cannot be told. It is a time when the whispering of leaves is to be shunned, and the fall of the petals counted."

Yuki caught her underlip between her teeth to steady its trembling.

Again she felt reproved, though nothing could be kinder than the great man's voice.

"Four years," he mused aloud, "four years! Small s.p.a.ce of time to us who are on the heights,--but to the young, still wandering happily on flowered-covered slopes, it is long, quite long. Ah, little Yuki, it is but yesterday that you came, as a child, to my Tabata villa. You clung timidly, at first, to Tetsujo's hand; but the serving-maids soon won you to the air. After that, at my request, Tetsujo brought you often. You were a scarlet poppy turned loose in that dim old garden. My eye would follow you through pa.s.sages of the good Tetsujo's somewhat prosy discourse. You used to perch upon the gray rocks of the pond, and fish for hours, throwing back the small wriggling bits of gold as soon as caught. Do you remember, Yuki?"

"Yes, Lord, well do I remember," said Yuki, her mouth trembling into laughter. The self-consciousness faded. He knew that it would be so. It was for this that he had contrived the long speech of reminiscence.

"Once," she went on shyly, "once, into that pond I fell, screaming with terror to think that certainly, now, all the goldfish would make haste to bite their enemy."

"Their best revenge, I take it, was in the cold you caught," laughed the prince.

"Nay, Highness," said she, gravely, "no cold at all did I acquire. The maid-servants and thy divine, pitying princess rescued me. They changed my worthless garments, and urged upon me much hot tea and a small, sweet powder. Indeed, but for the trouble my clumsiness occasioned, I enjoyed more the falling into that august pond than the fishing beside it."

Hagane smiled a little abstractedly. He did not laugh again. He turned to the table and smoothed the corners of a doc.u.ment. "The villa has no princess now, my child. In my many houses I come and go alone."

Yuki looked upon the floor. "My spirit is poisoned by your sorrow, Lord.

Forgive my great rudeness in mentioning. I did not know."

He drew a short, impatient sigh. "The princess resides again with her own people in Choshiu. But these matters have interest for none but me.

Hark, is that not the hour of noon now striking? I must dismiss you."

She rose instantly at his words. He followed with more deliberation. She turned to the door, then wavered back to him, distressed evidently by thoughts she shrank from voicing.

"Speak, child," he said kindly, "no mad haste is necessary. Say what you will."

Still she moved soundless lips. In some inexplicable way she had fallen short. It was not only that she felt she had not reached his highest expectations, but, more definitely, she had failed to reach her own. Her acquired Americanism crackled on her, like a useless husk. She thirsted for new strength. Before her stood one able to give it, yet she could find no words to ask. "It is ten--weeks before I can start home, Lord,"

she managed at last to articulate. "I am only a girl, but I would die for Nippon, for my Emperor. What--what--" Again she faltered.

Hagane took a small hand in his own and smiled rea.s.surance. "Only the very young and inexperienced think it necessary to state willingness to die for a country. Give me the coming thought."

"In these last weeks what can I do,--what can I suffer,--how shall I pray,--that I may make myself worthy of return?"

The smile on the overhung dark face saddened into a look far tenderer than smiling. Yuki felt virtue, like a fluid, rush through her from his touch. "Keep always to the thought that you are Nipponese,--that you guard, in yourself, an immortal spirit, powerful for good or ill. Let not the tendrils of your outreaching soul cling to alien ideals, for, if so, each in the twining means a wrench and a scar, and the unscarred soul is sweeter to the G.o.ds. Think nothing of the body,--of personal desires, of personal reward. Say to yourself always, 'It is enough to be a Nipponese.'"

Yuki was already stilled and comforted. "Lord," she said, lifting brave eyes, "I think it true that the lowliest among us, through self-striving, may become a G.o.d. My little spark of light has slept until this moment. I can never again be quite the same girl who came into this room. I will curve the memory of your words about my spirit, as one shields his candle from a wind."

"In Nippon I see you next, my Yuki. And now, 'Sayonara,' till that time."

"Sayonara," whispered Yuki, and hurried out into a new day.

CHAPTER FIVE

Preparations for an unexpectedly early start kept the Todd family in a condition of strained excitement. When the tension did relax (Mrs. Todd had more than once warned them), they would all probably shoot off into eternity, mere dull bits of leaden weight, as from a boy's rubber sling.

Yet in these days the good lady had little time for speculations, whether mournful or the reverse. She, Gwendolen, and Yuki began at once a round of shopping and dressmaking. Officious lady friends who had lived or visited in j.a.pan hastened to tell of certain articles necessary to the civilized female which, absolutely, were not to be procured in j.a.pan. At first Mrs. Todd hearkened eagerly, and made lists for future shopping; but she invariably lost the lists, and, after the first week, began to notice that some particular item declared by one gesticulating visitor to be unpurchasable west of San Francisco, would, by the next, be named as a thing produced in full perfection only by Yokohama cobblers, jewellers, cabinet-makers, tanners, or tailors, as the case might be.

Much in the same manner, whereas one matron declared the j.a.panese servant a fiend, laden with an acc.u.mulation of domestic vices from the days of Pharaoh down, the next would congratulate Mrs. Todd on being about to enter upon an experience rare to this hemisphere,--perfect service, intelligently and cheerfully given.

The pleasant home on M street was abandoned, the occupants moving to a hotel. This was done that Mrs. Todd might personally supervise the packing and storing of furnishings grown dear through pleasant a.s.sociation. More than one stealthy tear plashed on an unresponsive packing-case.

Gwendolen's br.i.m.m.i.n.g joy gave room for but one regret. That lived and died in a single glance, as she saw her grand piano, ignominiously tilted, pathetically legless, carried past her through the wide front door, and down to the waiting hea.r.s.e of a van.

Mrs. Todd went to bed, during this strenuous period, immediately after dinner. She urged her daughter to follow the good example and get "rested" for struggles to come. But "No," said Gwendolen, laughing.

"There will be plenty of time to rest when I'm old. I can't waste life now!"

Many of the girl's evening hours were devoted to Mr. Dodge and what he was pleased to term "Lessons in j.a.panese." When Yuki and Pierre were present,--Yuki now resided permanently at the j.a.panese Legation,--the Oriental listener would often need to bury a crimsoning face in crumpled sleeves to hide her mirth. Mr. Dodge's vocabulary was large, especially in the way of amorous and complimentary phrases, but his syntax and his p.r.o.nunciation were things new on this planet. Pierre laughed too, with a superiority born of Yuki's private instruction. Gwendolen stoutly defended her professor, saying that his way of speaking the language sounded easier and more natural than Yuki's own.

Mr. Dodge, by one of those fortuitous happenings that lay, for him, like pebbles, in every chosen path, had found that he would be compelled to return to his post of duty by the same steamer on which the Todds were to sail. When he made this bold announcement, accompanied by a triumphant side-glance at Gwendolen, the girl was surprised to feel her heart give a warning throb. Despite her skill in the game and her audacity, she began to realize that in this young person she had probably met her equal. She rallied quickly in the face of danger.

Exhilaration took the place of fear. She knew she was in for a good fight, and began at once to employ her other admirers in the way of Indian clubs and dumb-bells. Dodge very properly went home to South Carolina a few weeks before sailing, and did not return to Washington until the time of final departure.

If Yuki trembled at thought of her long days on an enchanted voyage, with Pierre for closest comrade, her new strength, born of Hagane, smiled down the apprehension. Not only would she refuse to yield to that beloved one a deeper pledge, but, if possible, she would win back from him the half-troth already given. She longed to return to her country, to her people, free of obligation. Her reverence demanded it. She should belong only to herself and them. So should she have a clearer road in which to approach the subject of a foreign marriage. Pierre, as yet, refused to see this vital point. He must be made to see. On those long balmy evenings on the ship, with the moon's sweet influence to help her, yes,--she could convince him,--she would triumph!

While Senator Todd made his own few preparations, talked with all manner of congressmen on the ever-present topic of the threatened Far Eastern conflict, or reasoned with brother senators who decried so unconventional a thing as resignation from their august midst,--Pierre hara.s.sed the French Legation for confirmation of an appointment almost given, yet now, at the last, tantalizingly withheld. After insistent efforts, the best that he could gain was a.s.surance that, in Tokio itself, in the hands of Count Ronsard, the present French minister, he would almost surely find his credentials waiting. Pierre, at his princess-mother's instigation had written personally to this Count Ronsard. "An old, dear friend of ours, mon fils," wrote Madame Olga.

"Quite close, I a.s.sure you. He will be felicitated to offer what he can."

Pierre and Yuki in their many talks had come to believe that an a.s.sured diplomatic position in Tokio would greatly strengthen their chances for an early marriage. Their young ardors were to blow the drowsy coals of French and j.a.panese friendship. Their lives must have an influence for good! At such times the future glowed with a heavenly dawn. Pierre, ever since his arrival in Washington, little less than a year ago, had been a special favorite with Mrs. Todd. In the first place, he was a joy only to look upon, having personal beauty to a degree almost irritating in a man. He possessed, also, that subtler and rarer power called "charm." A great factor in his success was unfailing courtesy toward elderly women.

He knew well the might of the chaperon. He cared little for men in any country, and the aggressive American he found peculiarly unattractive.

But a woman, no matter what her age, race, or weight, was still a woman.

Middleaged sighs fed his vanity equally with the giggling of debutantes in their first snare. He was not a Don Juan, far from it,--but a pleasure-loving, life-loving boy, who had never been refused a thing he wanted, and never intended to grudge himself a moment's delight that could be honorably enjoyed. His ideas of this honor,--it may be well to add,--were French. At different stages in his short career, Pierre had been or tried to be, in turn, a hermit, an atheist, a Roman Catholic priest like Francis of a.s.sisi, an actor of old French cla.s.sics, a poet, and an artist of the Chavannes school. With him one pa.s.sion burned supreme. One fuse must disappear before a new one could be lighted. He had met Yuki first in the Todd drawing-rooms, on one of those Friday evenings allotted to the schoolgirls for receiving friends. She chanced to be wearing full j.a.panese attire of a soft, cloudy blue, a sash brocaded in silver ferns, and a cl.u.s.ter of the gold-colored "icho"

berries drooping in her blue-black hair. As his eyes fell upon her, Pierre's past visions went to cold ash. All the poetry, the mysticism, the intellectuality, the exaggeration of discarded hopes flared now into a single new white flame of adoration.

December came. Christmas festivities impinged on the travellers' routine of preparations. Days which, at first, Gwendolen had declared interminable, accelerated strangely in progress, like round stones started down a gradual slope. During that last crowded week, Todd had his final, most important interview with the President and the Secretary of State. He was urged to impart with absolute freedom his personal opinions of the coming struggle, and its probable outcome for the world.

In return he was given full and satisfactory instructions. He left the executive mansion strengthened in purpose, and clarified in his own beliefs.

At the station, on the morning of departure, an unexpectedly large crowd gathered to say "Farewell." Prominent were the Kanrios and their diplomatic suite. Gwendolen's youthful friends of both s.e.xes advanced like an animated flower-garden, so profuse were the bouquets. The French amba.s.sador also was there. A Russian attache insisted upon kissing Pierre good-bye.

The two drawing-rooms of the sleeper "Nurino" were so heaped with dulcet offerings that the legitimate occupants--hurrying in to the warning cry of "Buo-o-o-ord!"--were forced to seek temporary accommodation in the open car.

"Why! It's just like setting off for anywhere!" cried Gwendolen, a little blankly, as the train drew out through acrid smoke, and old familiar landmarks began their flight backward, to the city.

"Who cares about the setting off? It's the roosting on, that counts!"

carolled the optimistic Dodge.

The train pulled steadily, now, for the South. After much disagreement and discussion, and the bending of yellow, black, and brown heads over countless railroad folders,--each with its own route in a pulsing artery of red,--they had decided for a southern tour. No one of the party except Dodge, who, if one chose to believe him, held acquaintance with all corners of the globe, had been lower than the Potomac River. Mrs.

Todd remembered an aunt, native of New Orleans. The aunt had died long since, but the city remained. They were to have a glimpse of the Gulf Coast, and at least two days in the sleepy, picturesque, yet hugely prosperous Crescent City.

The month was January, in most places a bad month for weather; but in this opening of the year 1904 the South was apparently bent upon justifying its conventional adjective of "sunny." The little party left Washington in a scourge of sleet and a pall of gray; it reached New Orleans to find the whole city, creole alleys traced three centuries ago and broad avenues of later wealth, alike glorified,--"paved with afternoon." Scarcely a gulf breeze stirred. The levees by the muddy river lay like saurians, with turpentine and sugar barrels and bursting cotton bales upon their backs, in lieu of scales. In city gardens, palm-trees stood at "present arms" of glossy rect.i.tude. Pansies, daisies, and other small bedding flowers bloomed in the open air. Potted ferns or crotons stood about on broad galleries, or upon the sh.e.l.l-white walks bordering emerald lawns.

Gwendolen declared it a delusion, a mirage, deliberately planned for their entanglement. Yuki admitted that even j.a.pan could not offer so tropic a feast to the eye in January. Mrs. Todd found her greatest satisfaction in "doing" the place. Dodge, of course, was cicerone. He led them to the old French market and gave them a strange, steaming elixir, brewed in huge copper vats and misnamed mere "coffee." He knew the small lair called "Beguet's," where alone on earth, he solemnly affirmed, real breakfasts were to be procured. He hired a box at the French Opera for Sunday night.

"Sunday!" Mrs. Todd gasped, with upraised hands and eyes.

"Sunday!" echoed Yuki, less vociferously, but with a corresponding air of pained astonishment.