The Breath of the Gods Part 9

"If New Orleans is a transplanted Paris, this is a Tschaikowsky Symphonie Orientale translated into terms of American life," said Pierre.

Slowly the city turned from a city to a patch of lichen on a rock. Queer little ditches, which they knew for streets, showed lines of perpendicular-crawling beetles, which they recognized to be whizzing electric cars. They watched it all eagerly, leaning far along the stern rail of the ship.

Then the sea winds caught them, screaming a welcome into shrinking ears.

The white, attendant sea-gulls laughed in harsh appreciation of the antics of the wind. The ocean lifted, and strove, and pounded his cosmic greeting; and,--and,--well--there was a good stewardess on board!

CHAPTER SIX

The first days of any voyage are admirable in proportion as little, or nothing, is said of them. In this, as in other phases of human intercourse, delicacy lies in restraint rather than in eloquence. Thus is the bloom of society preserved.

Mr. Dodge, the self-confident, the experienced, the ubiquitous, was first to "show up." The outer reefs of the California coast do not tend toward placidity. Even Dodge did not care to count the hours since he had begun to feel "sleepy" and had sought his cabin.

Mr. Todd next met the sun. To be more accurate, it was a fog, where only a small bright spot, rubbed as in the centre of a tarnished tray, indicated our chief luminary. Todd's cap was pulled very low, his ulster collar very high. His hands disappeared utterly into large pockets. He walked with the jerky directness of a marionette toward the smoking-room.

On the third day, when the sun actually shone and the pewter sky was undergoing a gradual transformation into blue enamel, Mr. Todd was able to sit on deck,--he still remained noticeably near the smoking-room,--and to enjoy unprintable yarns from fellow-smokers.

Missionary children began to gambol around the promenade deck, and over the feet of swathed and flaccid mortals, lately exhumed, all with the blinking regard of insects suddenly disclosed beneath a garden stone.

Dodge, for a wonder, was not in sight. Mr. Todd had his back toward the main-deck exit from the salon, when one of the group about him thumped a knee, stared up, crying, "By G--, look at that!" and called loudly upon his Maker to witness that the sight was fair.

Out to the deck had blown a golden apparition,--a tall, slim girl with yellow hair crushed under a wide and most unsailor-like hat of yellow sea-poppies. Her skirts and the rest of her were silken browns and yellows. She made straight for the group, rustling like a small eddy in a heap of autumn-leaves. Todd turned a few inches. At the expression on his face a third convive nudged the speaker. "Oh, er--beg ten thousand pardons--didn't have an idea--" mumbled the crimson one.

"Neither did I," said Todd, enigmatically, as he rose.

"Oh, dearest of dads," they heard a fresh voice cry. "Now isn't this a world with the top off? I feel like a bunk caterpillar turned into a b.u.t.terfly."

Pierre followed his three emanc.i.p.ated comrades, immediately after "tiffin," as the midday meal hereafter must be called. He was, as usual, immaculate in attire, but bore an air of citric melancholy.

Next arose, in all her might, Mrs. Cyrus Carton Todd. In her aggressive costume of starched pique, fortified by gold lorgnettes and an air carefully adapted from certain acknowledged "grandes dames" of Washington, she took immediate possession of the Captain, the best deck chair, and the pa.s.senger list. As wife of a senator and lady of the new American minister to j.a.pan, she was accepted at once, without demur, reigning Empress of the voyage.

Sportive infants, oblivious of comfortably extended limbs of lesser mortals, skirted those of Mrs. Todd. Silent Chinese "boys," dispensing beef-tea and gruel, swung pigtails aside from her austere garments.

Of the party Yuki alone now abode in the mysterious seclusion of her stateroom.

Before sunset, on that third afternoon, the sea, to use the Captain's expression, quieted into a "bloomin' mill-pond." White birds fluttered incessantly about the stern of the ship, sometimes sinking to the waves for an unstable rest, or rising to visit, in one great silver swoop, the startled and delighted pa.s.senger deck.

Pierre found a chair beside his chaperon. He moved it a confidential three inches nearer before asking, "Will she not be able to come up sometime before to-morrow? This is perfect."

"She has commissioned me to say that she will try to make the effort this evening, after our dinner; that is, if--" here she shook a playful finger--"_if_ I will play propriety, and any kindly disposed person could be found to a.s.sist her upstairs."

"Ah! I'll go down now, and take seat upon her doormat," cried Pierre, in his excitement.

"The Chinese coolie might spill chicken broth upon you."

The day waned slowly. Pa.s.sengers were beginning already their postprandial walks. Mrs. Todd nodded patronizingly to one and then to another.

"Madame," began Pierre, with his caressing look, "you have been almost as a mother--a good, indulgent mother--to me in that big land of yours.

You will continue to be my very good friend in j.a.pan, will you not?"

"Why, silly boy, of course I will," she cried. "Have not I always been your friend and Yuki's,--even to the point of what Cyrus called 'entangling alliances'?"

"It is because of its preciousness that I want to hear you say it, dear Mrs. Todd. After all, I am ignorant of j.a.pan, and of what social phantoms Yuki and I may have to fight. But with your championship, I am strong, invincible!" He gave her fat hand just the most delicate of pressures. It might have been the touch of a devoted son; it might, had Mrs. Todd been twenty years younger, have been--well, almost anything.

His dark, impa.s.sioned eyes, the color of new-opened violets, hung on her kindly face.

If fault could be found with Pierre, it would be in excess of beauty.

From the old blood of France he had received refinement, poise, delicacy,--the throbbing of purple veins in temples as satin-smooth as young leaves, and thin nostrils that shivered at every pa.s.sing gust of emotion. From the more barbaric, vivid Russian mother had come depth of coloring, the flash of sudden animation, deep blue in the eyes, and gold in the hair. Yet with all its fairness the face was not effeminate. One could think of it, without offence, in the armor of a young crusader, or even behind the mediaeval visor of a robber-baron. There might be a hint of cruelty behind the wet crimson of the perfect mouth. To Yuki that face was the epitome of all earthly beauty. Before it, the artist in her knelt, in adoration.

Shortly after twilight came the reverberating clamor of the first dinner-gong. Mrs. Todd and her feminine satellites had agreed to "dress." Mrs. Todd had never made acquaintance with a decollete gown until her entrance into Washington, not so many years before. Now she was wont to declare loudly that she could not really enjoy her evening meal in covered shoulders,--a statement which always brought the twinkles to Todd's eyes. He openly loathed his "tombstone shirt-front;"

but Gwendolen, of a later and more favored generation, wore her pretty low-cut frocks as unconsciously as a flower wears its sheath.

Pierre sat through the interminable courses, scarcely knowing what he ate or to whom he spoke. His thoughts were all with Yuki. He was to see her again after three endless days! The little cool, slim palm would lie, perhaps, in his. He would hear her voice, as different from these chattering table women all around him as is the sound of running water to the whirr of machines. The past ten days of journeying--though indeed they had not been for a moment entirely alone--left a delicious aroma of familiarity, almost of married friendship. What hours the future was to hold for them in j.a.pan, in Europe, in India!

Mrs. Todd's half-teasing voice drew him back from the dear reverie.

"Come, Mister Le Beau, dinner is over at last. I noticed that you ate nothing. The Captain has been telling us the most delightful jokes. But we must not forget our promise to Miss Onda. Gwendolen, dear, will you go on deck and see that a chair is made ready for the poor child?" The speaker had been rising ponderously. She turned again to the Captain.

"These j.a.panese are always wretched sailors, I am told."

"No good, any of them!" corroborated the Captain, with emphasis. "The sight of a floral anchor at a landlubber's funeral is enough to make them ill."

"I wonder how it will be with their admirals before the Russian navy,"

mused Todd, with pensive eyes on a blue-gowned Chinese steward.

"It wouldn't matter either way," sneered the Captain. "No fight is going to come off! I've known these Yokohama j.a.ps for seventeen years, Mr.

Todd. A bad lot! They are just trying a game of bluff borrowed from--no offence, gentlemen--from America." The Captain was a Liverpool Englishman.

"Just so!" grinned Dodge, "the kind of bluff that works,--recipe handed down by one G. Washington."

Pierre and Mrs. Todd approached Yuki's cabin. She heard them, and tottered to the entrance of the tiny pa.s.sage. Her face shone ghastly white above the square black collar of her adzuma-coat. Pierre instantly drew her arm within his own. She clung to him helplessly for an instant, then, with an obvious effort, rallied and stood erect.

"There, there, now, keep to Pierre's arm," encouraged Mrs. Todd, with the smile of a patron deity. "If you'll promise to be good, I'll go ahead and not look around." She preceded them slowly along the pa.s.sage.

Her decollete back loomed, in the dim light, like the half of a large, round cheese.

Yuki, once safely on deck, tucked lovingly among soft rugs and pillows by Gwendolen, found little indeed to say. Mrs. Todd gave orders, before sweeping off to her game of bridge whist, that Yuki must not be teased into talking, but must lie still, and let the night air and the breeze refresh her. Pierre, of course, remained by her side. He cared little though the whole ship knew that he loved the j.a.panese girl and longed to make her his wife. Dodge and Gwendolen had affairs of their own to settle, and disappeared around the other side. Gradually the deck was deserted by all but Pierre and his companion. He secured a small hand in his own. The girl was too languid, or perhaps too blissful, to demur.

"Oh, to be seasick is most unpleasantest thing of all!" she whispered once, with a short but very genuine shudder. "I shall never cross back on this water,--never, never! The little bed downstairs it seem like a grave, and one wish hard that it was truly a grave."

After another long silence, broken only by whispered sentences from Pierre, she pointed to a constellation. "How nice and kind the stars are to come out here with us, so far from home! That cl.u.s.ter is exactly the same one I used to watch from my little room at school. When I see it in j.a.pan, and count the stars to be sure all have followed, it will be stranger feeling yet."

"Darling," said Pierre, "sometime we are to carry that little shining group the whole way round the world with us,--when you are my wife."

The great ship rose softly and sank again, as if breathing. The stars stared in, unwinking. Yuki's face was deepening in sweet content. Every shiver of the engine, every angry hurtling of the insulted waters, thrust them consciously nearer to j.a.pan.

Roughening waves, toward the night of the fourth day, indicated, according to the Captain, approach to the Hawaiian Islands. He added, "If any one is keen enough on it to get up at daybreak, he will see the first outlying peaks."

Todd, in a pa.s.sion of romantic interest that was part of the whole marvellous epic, climbed to the deck before dawn. The stars, he fancied, looked coldly upon him, as if they resented his presence at their coming defeat. He leaned far over, watching waves that lapped the sides of the ship in a strange rhythm. Under the brightening day he stared across an ocean apparently as eternal and infinite as s.p.a.ce, that stretched, he knew, north and south beyond him, twelve thousand miles of unbroken liquid desert from pole to pole. And yet through the centuries, this perilous waste had been crossed from oasis to island oasis by the frail canoes of men;--dark Polynesian painted savages with marvellous powers of carving and inlaying, who had left traces of their coming from New Zealand to Alaska, and through the Philippines to j.a.pan. He pictured the advent of that first dusky Ulysses who, in feathered armor and a Greek helmet carved from a cinnamon-tree, had here, ages before, terminated his thousand-mile wanderings from a forgotten South. All this had now become a new world for Todd's own light-haired Saxon race to fall heir to, stepping-stones in its inevitable stride to the teeming coasts of Asia.

Yuki, too, in such excitement that she could barely stop to dress, had been staring out of the port-hole of her stateroom since an early hour.