In her own room Yuki moved about mechanically, putting into place her
few indispensable possessions,--a silver brush, comb, and hand-glass,
her white prayer-book and neat Bible, a picture of Gwendolen in a
burnt-leather frame, and a lacquered box containing a second photograph,
not of Gwendolen, and a package of letters, all addressed in the same
hand. She fought to keep her imagination from the coming war. Its dark
omen only strengthened her determination to have things understood. She
prayed for strength and self-control. Punctual to the moment she entered
the guest-room, bowing again to her father. He looked up from his
brooding revery. Something in the girl's face made him ask, "Ah, have
you indeed a matter of importance? My little Yuki has gone. This is a
woman who comes to speak with me."
"Alas, father. Childhood, like the petals of the plum-tree, vanishes at
the breath of storms."
"What storm can have found you so early, my little one?"
Yuki drew in a long breath, and steadied herself for a deliberate reply.
In the pause Tetsujo leaned out, and with one motion of his powerful
hand flung a panel of the shoji to one side, giving a view of the
drenched and storm-tormented garden. On the veranda floor, usually so
smooth, beaten plum-petals clung like bits of white leather. The drip
from the low-tiled roof enclosed them in the bars of a silver cage.
"This is my distress, father," began Yuki. "I am a Japanese girl, with
my first loyalty toward you and my native country;--yet, in that new
land where you sent me,--I have come--I have grown honorably to feel,
almost without warning, the--influence of a--person."
Tetsujo looked faintly surprised. "Indeed, I trust so, my child. You
would be but a poor, unresponsive creature to have felt no influences.
It is from such things that character and knowledge are builded. There
were many persons who influenced you, I take it,--some for good, perhaps
some for evil. To an intelligent mind a warning is valuable. Now, at
home, you will have the leisure to sort and adapt such impressions,
casting away those that are trivial and employing those which may be of
service to Japan."
"It is augustly as you indicate, dear father," returned Yuki, the
distress in her dark eyes deepening. "I attempted to observe many
things. But the influence I spoke of is not that kind you are thinking.
It--it--is a very special influence. In America they call it--love." She
bowed her head over slightly. A faint pink tide of embarrassment showed
on her forehead and in the small bared triangle of her throat.
Tetsujo controlled himself well. "You mean--love--'ai'--the love of a
man and a woman who wish to marry?"
"In America one thinks very differently of such matters," said Yuki, her
eyes still lowered. "Yet I suppose the feeling is honorably the same
everywhere. Yes, father, it is of such love that I now must tell you."
"We have many Japanese terms for Love," mused Tetsujo. "Love of country,
of Our Emperor, of parents, of beauty, of virtue,--but the term which
you now employ should not be spoken by a samurai to a woman not his
wife. You pay a high price for Western knowledge, my poor child, if
already the dew-breath of modesty has dried from your young life."
"Father," she pleaded, "I am still a Japanese. I know how it must seem
to you. I suffer in the speaking, but still I must speak. I promised. I
must speak."
"You promised?" echoed Tetsujo, and looked more keenly into her
shrinking face. "To whom could you have promised such a thing?"
"To him--that one--I first alluded to." She did not attempt now to meet
his eyes, but fingered nervously along the edge of her sleeve.
"Can it be possible that in that country unmarried youths speak in
unmannerly directness to young women of such intimate affairs? I had
heard a hint of this unbelievable indelicacy, and once your mother,
Iriya, hinted that we should warn you. But I scoffed then at the thought
of your needing the admonition. Alas! being a woman, she knew you better
than I."
His head sank forward. Yuki twisted her slim hands into wisps. "In
America all speak of these things, father. They think us immodest for
other reasons, and foolishly sensitive in this. The schoolgirls
talk--and the matrons. All theatres treat of it--and books are full of
it. You sent me no warning--I could not know, of myself. Please,
honorably, restrain anger against me."
"I must not be angry," muttered Tetsujo, who now gave every symptom of a
rising storm of wrath. "I must be calm. But gods! this is a foul spectre
to meet at the very outset! Am I to understand that this man--this
person--spoke directly to you, and you listened without first receiving
permission from your parents? He could have gone, at least, to my
friend, and my country's representative, Baron Kanrio."
"Father, father," cried the girl, "you _are_ becoming angry. I did not
have the time to reflect. In America one does things first and thinks
about them afterward. I am not sure that person ever has even met--our
noble baron."
If she hoped to palliate by this last disclosure she was quickly
undeceived. "The gamester--the oaf! Insolent fool! An impostor unknown
even by sight to your natural guardian in a distant land! He must be an
alien! No Japanese--not even a Yedo scavenger--could have been guilty of
that misdeed!"
"But he spoke quite openly to my best American friends, the Todds," said
Yuki, desperately. Tetsujo's rising excitement and anger lapped like
flames about this new thought.
"And that Mr. Todd, now come to be minister in our very home,--did he
encourage your filial impiety?"
"It was not so much Mr. Todd as Madame, his wife, and my schoolmate,
Gwendolen," admitted Yuki, with a sinking heart.
"Ah, I might have known it," said Tetsujo. His relief was evident. "Only
women! Mere cackling geese. America echoes to their shrill voices. That
is of no consequence."
"In that country women are of much consequence, and everyone speaks
openly of affairs of love and--marriage," persisted Yuki, who now clung
half hopelessly to this one tangible point.
"And you yourself--ingrate--would willingly bestow yourself, without a
word from me or your mother, upon a man who is a stranger, and whose
conduct, heard from your partial lips, impresses me as characteristic of
a fool and an outcast?"
His brows were black and twitching. Yuki knew that she must take her
stand now or never. "You see only the side of Japanese convention,
father. I have given to him a promise. When your consent and that of my
mother are gained, I shall be glad to be his wife."
Tetsujo started convulsively, then controlled himself. The sudden
checking in of passion recoiled through the very air. With rigid hands
he stuffed and lighted his small pipe. When he spoke his voice sounded
flat and hollow, like beaten wood.
"Such a promise, unratified by me, of course means nothing, unless--it
be defiance of heaven and of natural decency. It binds no one--you least
of all. Consider it unsaid."
Yuki looked directly upon him. Her soft feminine chin grew a little
squarer, more like his. "That promise is given, father. Neither you nor
I have power to recall it. It has gained a living growth in the soul of
a third person." She turned half-closed eyes to the garden. Tetsujo went
forward in two small stiff jerks. His eyes fastened on her face, as
though he saw it for the first time. Veins swelled in his neck, and the
fingers on his small pipe-stem grew slowly flat, like the heads of
adders.
"Is that you speaking, Onda Yuki?" he asked. "The gods grant that I wake
from this dream! But if it be reality, then sorrow is to come. If this
man be a foreigner, let him stay in his own land! You are mine
utterly,--at my disposal in marriage as in all else. There are ways, in
Japan, to curb such mad demons as those that now look at me through your
eyes. Go! leave me. I shall hear no more of this,--or else it may be
that I shall forget my fatherhood, as you your obligations. Go!"
"Father," said Yuki, quietly, "you must hear more of this or drive me
from the house. You owe me consideration and justice; for the ideas that
I have, you yourself sent me to America to gain. You even let me be a
Christian. With the Christians marriage is a sacred thing--"
"Be still!" said Tetsujo, in a terrible, low voice. His pipe dropped to
the floor. The coal burrowed itself, a charred and smoking ring, into
the fragrant matting. The odor was that of field-grass burning. The man
rocked himself to and fro for control. His lean hands plunged deep into
his sleeves, and grasped, one each, a jerking arm. He was terrified at
his own obsession of fury, and his soul warned him against a yielding to
his madness. His greenish twisted lips writhed horribly once or twice
before the next words came. One corner of his mouth went far down at the
corner. His words hissed from a small distorted aperture near the chin.
"You were allowed to turn Christian for the acquiring knowledge of their
foolish--creed. I believed that the soul of a samurai's daughter,--of my
daughter,--would be untainted by the immoral portions of their doctrine.
I see now my credulity! Gods! I will consume myself with this heat! When
you marry--wench,--which shall be soon,--if your Japanese husband
approves not of Christianity, you will cease to be Christian!"
The two pairs of eyes met, hard, flashing, defiant. Yuki rose to her
feet. He sprang after her. His right hand now felt instinctively for the
sword-hilts which should have been at his hip. The leering, down-drawn
mouth twitched and writhed.
"Your words do not lash from me my heritage of race!" she cried aloud.
"I am still your daughter,--a samurai's daughter!" With a movement like
light she stripped back her left sleeve, baring a white, blue-threaded
arm. "Because I am a samurai's daughter I refuse a coward's obedience!
Hot blood of a samurai stings these veins no less than those bronze
arteries you clutch. Show me reason and I will listen. Apart from that I
defy you! I shall be faithful to the man I love even though your legal
rights prevent our happiness. Turn me into the street,--slay me with
your own hand,--I shall not be compelled into a marriage of your
choosing!"
Onda clutched his throat. The breath came gurgling like a liquid. For an
instant it seemed as if he must hurl himself bodily upon her. Then he
stumbled backward against the plaster wall of the room, clawing at its
tinted surface. Yuki's eyes never left him. Now he lurched again toward
her, then fell back, shaken like a jointed puppet by his own consuming
rage. "Gods of my Ancestors! Demons of the deepest Hell! Go, go!--lest
indeed I slay you. You fiend--you hannia! From my sight, I say!--I
cannot endure--"
He cowered again, striking himself into temporary blindness with one
powerful fist.
"I go, father, in obedience,--not in fear," said the girl's clear voice.
He sprawled forward, and fell, sobbing like an exhausted runner. Yuki
covered her face and went.