The short interval between the Todds' visit and Prince Hagané's banquet
was wrought, within the confines of the Onda home, of small, shifting
particles of disquiet, discontent, despondency,--a sort of mist that
kept the spirit dark and chill.
Tetsujo found difficulty in meeting his daughter's gaze; though, when
her face was averted, he looked long, and moodily enough. He had spoken
to her more than once, always in forced, crisp speech, chopping his
words into inches and weighing each separate cube. Through this
mechanical means he informed her that she was to attend Prince Hagané's
banquet without fail, and ride there in a double jinrikisha with him,
her father. Iriya and the servants were permitted to resume normal
relations with the culprit. Externally things went into their old
domestic grooves.
It came to the girl, not with a shock of surprise, but rather as an
insidious growth of conviction, that the decision behind Tetsujo's
demeanor was inspired by no less a person than Lord Hagané. At first it
seemed incredible that so great a man could concern himself with the
affairs of a mere girl. At this very moment he was in the midst of a
threatened national crisis. Friendship with her father could scarcely
account for all. Hagané must have some personal suspicion of the
existence of Pierre, of Pierre's family, and of his attitude toward her.
Her mind went back to her meeting with the Prince in Washington. She had
been the one to introduce Pierre. Now she tried to recall every look and
word of that morning interview, which followed her débutante ball. Again
she saw Hagané's stern, scarred face, thrilled to the kindness of his
voice as he spoke of her childhood, and pondered anew his meaning in the
final admonition to loyalty. Perhaps even then he suspected that she and
Pierre were more than friends. No, she could not believe it! Even if he
did suspect, it was not certain that he would disapprove. Hagané was
known everywhere as a friend to foreigners. He had travelled much, and
had seen with his own eyes the splendor and the opportunities of foreign
courts. He would know that, as wife of a diplomat, no matter what his
country, she could serve her own.
At any rate she was soon again to meet the ex-daimyo. She was glad at
least of this, and until she judged for herself, would not believe
absolutely that the great man was against her. The thought of seeing
him, of standing near him, gave her a sort of gentle strength and calm,
as one feels when standing beside a great tree. If she could only get a
warning to her lover,--to that less strong but dearly loved Pierre!
Toward him she was beginning to feel, not only a girl's romantic
devotion, but a mother's protecting tenderness. Here in her own country
she longed to have her arms around him, shielding and at the same time
preventing him from ignorance and prejudice. At Hagané's villa he was
possibly to face an ordeal, unwarned by a hint from her. A little hope
crept closer. Pierre was a passionate admirer of all the arts of Japan,
Hagané an untiring collector. At the Tabata banquet pictures would
surely be displayed. It was possible that Pierre's intelligence and
appreciation might win him the most powerful of friends.
Most of the night before the banquet the young girl lay awake. The faint
light of the andon flowed across her, melting into soft grayness at the
far end of the room. It ruled, as with a heavy pencil, the overlapping
boards of the ceiling. She counted them, but to no purpose. Sleep
perched higher.
"A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,--one after one; bees
murmuring--" she quoted under her breath, and lay still as a fallen
rose. Sleep grinned down from the small, high branches of night. She
thought of dark running water, of a green curtain stretched across
nothingness, of a deep, bottomless pool; but sleep, the raven, never
stirred a feather.
Beside her bed, on the soft, matted floor, lay a white prayer-book, a
tiny vase containing a few sprays of umé (plum-flower), and a chatelaine
watch set with pearls. The watch had been a graduation present from
Gwendolen. From time to time Yuki lifted the animated toy, turned its
face toward the andon, and held it to her ear, only to fall back with a
smothered sigh.
"Will the blessed daylight never come?" thought Yuki for the hundredth
time. Just as she had relinquished all hope of it, slumber darted down,
but in its harsh beak was a dream.
She wandered, silent, on a great black moor. Near her feet, as she
moved, a dull light flickered, turning all the dry grass red, and
making, as it were, a muffled pathway for her guidance. She was
searching, searching, searching,--for what, for whom, she could not
recall. Her memory was darkened like the moor, and its dull flashes
showed alike only empty space. Suddenly, far off to the right, a
steadier beacon sprang. Stars seemed to be climbing up by a stair as yet
invisible. The moor quivered into an even glow,--a mist rising as from a
sea of blood. Not fifty paces from her eyes stood Pierre. He smiled, and
stretched out his arms to her. The red glare whitened as it fell on him.
Then she knew for what she had been searching. She would have fled to
him, but found she could not move at all.
Out of the Eastern light now came armed men, lances, falchions, spears,
all glittering in the unreal glow. She knew it for a daimyo's
procession. It came forward swiftly to the gap which held her wide from
Pierre. Decked horses, bullock-carts with huge black-lacquered wheels,
and countless warriors, some mounted, some on foot, must pass her. There
was movement of tramping; the horses reared and struck heavily on the
earth, yet no sound came. Staring at that point from which the long
procession rose, she saw it still curving up from an illimitable
horizon,--first points of spears and banners; then heads; then men,
horses, chariots,--an endless chain. She crouched nearer to the ghosts
within her reach, hoping to recognize a friendly face, or at least a
kind one, whom she could importune to let her through the line. She
peered under hoods and helmets and into the bamboo-blinds of
bullock-carts, then fell to earth with a scream, for the faces were not
human; each was an ape that grinned at her. In Japan no dream is more
prophetic of evil than a dream of apes.
At the agonized cry Suzumé ran from her room at the far side of the
house. From the adjoining room came Iriya. Fusuma were flung wide.
"Forgive--forgive--my rudeness in honorably disturbing you at this
hour," gasped the girl. "It was a dream, so terrible a dream!"
"Oh, tell it to the nanten-bush, Miss Yuki. There is one beside your
doorstone!" screamed little Maru as she came.
"Too late!" muttered Suzumé. "Already she has broken silence."
"She shivers with fear, poor jewel," said Iriya, chafing the icy hands.
"Suzumé, if a coal of fire can be found, brew hot tea for her. That will
be best."
"A coal always sleeps in my ashes," boasted the nurse. "I shall at once
prepare the drink."
"Mother, you must not remain awake with me at such an hour," chattered
the girl.
"Dawn is very near, my child. I hear,--yes, listen,--I hear the first
sparrow."
"Little friendly sparrow, how I thank you!" cried Yuki, aloud; then
throwing herself into her mother's arms, she began to sob.
* * * * *
That afternoon, when Yuki stepped into the big double kuruma where
Tetsujo was already seated, she had never, in spite of sleeplessness and
bad dreams, looked more beautiful. Iriya, as her daughter had predicted,
found on this last day many excellent reasons for staying at home.
The robing of Yuki had occupied several hours. First, the thick black
hair must be done in the latest fashion. Happily this, ever changing,
was for the moment in a style peculiarly becoming to her. A great wing
stood out at each side, concealing all but the lower tips of the ears. A
third division, puffed high above the forehead, completed a shining
framework to the pale, spiritual face. Among the coils at the back, a
strip of dull pink silk was interwoven,--a flesh-colored centre to a
great orchid of jet. She wore a single hairpin, a filigree toy of gold
and tinsel representing fireflies in a tiny cage. Her gray kimono of
thin silk showed the pink undergarment. The delicate hue appeared in
puffed and wadded edges also at throat, wrists, and around the hem.
Cherry-flowers were dyed at intervals into the substance of the gray.
The obi, that crowning glory of a Japanese woman's dress, was of blue
gray satin, with embroidered fireflies of gold.
Even surly Tetsujo smiled as this fair vision stood upon the doorstone.
Little Maru set the high lacquered clogs with pink velvet thongs in
readiness. Iriya held out the long black adzuma-coat, while old Suzumé
shook odors of incense and sandalwood from the cræpe folds of the
head-kerchief called "dzukin."
"Sayonara danna san! (master!) Sayonara o jo san!" called the three
women on their knees in the doorway.
"Sayonara, arigato gozaimasu!" (I thank you!) cried Yuki in return,
waving a slender hand from the side of the jinrikisha. Tetsujo seemed
not to hear.
The unusual proximity brought to the girl, and, as she justly surmised,
to Tetsujo also, an unwholesome embarrassment. Each met the difficulty
in a characteristic way,--Yuki by throwing her full interest into
flashing street scenes about her; Tetsujo by a morose withdrawal into
his feudal shell. Twice Yuki spoke concerning some sight that gave her
pleasure. Her father's discouraging reply, in both cases, was a grunt.
On the slope of Tabata he got out, shook himself like a great dog, and
sent Yuki on in the jinrikisha until level land was reached. The girl
thought sadly of another hill-ascent, so short a time before; of
Tetsujo's kind, loving face as he mounted the slope of Kobinata, his
hand on the arm of her little vehicle, his eyes free to her own. Now she
was being carried by this same father before a judge, before a man who
could help to rule his empire, and yet who, if her fears proved stable,
now stooped to coerce a wilful girl.
The entrance gate and court of the Tabata villa had taken on, strangely,
the look of its master. The gate was of unpolished cedar, studded with
brass nails half a foot across, and barred with hinges that might have
swung a hill. The massive panels now stood hospitably ajar. Above them
leaned a single pine, red-stemmed and tall, of the indigenous Japanese
variety. It, too, resembled Hagané. The house beyond was but little
larger or more pretentious than that of Onda the kerai; but the variety
of woods used in finishing bespoke both taste and great wealth. The
roof, with its dark-blue scalloped tiling was edged at the rim with
flattened discs of baked clay, and in the centre of each, in rough
intaglio, curved the crest of the Hagané clan.
Sombre shoji opened, before the visitors had time to dismount. Just
within, a superb suitaté, or single screen of gold, painted in
snow-laden bamboo trees, shut out interior vistas. Yuki was conducted to
a woman's apartment, where she could remove her wraps and examine her
shining blue-black coiffure for a misplaced hair. Tetsujo strode to the
guest-room. At sight of Prince Hagané seated, still alone, he gave a
great sigh of relief. Hagané turned with a smile,--"You love not our
foreign friends, good Tetsujo."
"I love them as our cat loves pickled plums, my liege."
Hagané laughed indulgently. "At least you can distinguish the men from
the women,--be sure to give me the signal should one of the young males
prove to be he who was with Yuki on the hatoba, and who so rudely forced
an entrance to your premises."
"I shall not forget," said Tetsujo.
The wide room was unchanged but for an unusually elaborate
flower-composition in the tokonoma (recess). A most valuable set of
pictures, three in number, and all mounted alike on priceless brocade,
filled the soft, gray tinted space beyond the flowers.
Yuki entered alone. Neither of the men had heard her soft stockinged
step, nor her gentle pushing aside of a golden fusuma.
"Go kigen (august health), your Highness," she murmured, sinking where
she stood and touching her forehead to the floor.
"Ah, it is Yuki-ko. Come nearer, child," said the host, kindly. As she
moved toward him, his eyes rested with frank delight on the vision of
her beauty. "You are now truly a maiden of Japan. That last image of you
in Washington, if I remember rightly, was of a small brown wren of
Paris."
"So at the time you observed, Augustness, and my spirit thereat was
poisoned by deep shame."
"A thing so easily rectified can scarcely be a cause of shame," smiled
Hagané. "You are now as truly Japanese as even your jealous father could
desire. Will you kindly clap and serve us tea, small pigeon?"
Yuki obeyed instantly and in silence. She was glad to have some
occupation for her hands, glad that her eyes had good excuse for
drooping. In Prince Hagané's presence the old magnetism, the old
troubled sense of his power, again possessed her. Compared with him,
nothing else seemed real. He established new values for the spirit. One
in the room with him needed no vision to certify his actual place. He
dominated and charged the air around him. She felt his eyes as they
rested on her slim white hands; she knew when that gaze was turned away.
Hagané, indeed, looked long at the girl. At times he appeared to study
her with a gentle, speculative gravity. Of her beauty there had never
been a doubt, and to-day she looked her best. Hagané's experience of
women had been wide. Now he was saying to himself that this was the
fairest maiden of the whole world. Her beauty filled the room like
perfume. An old Chinese poet in singing of her would have called her "a
flake of white jade held against a star." In the statesman's mind
fragments of poetry flitted, similes of moon-light, of white blossoms
newly opened in the dew, of hillside grasses in the wind, of a young
spring willow with a nightingale in the branches. Poetry is as natural
to all classes of Japanese as profanity to the average sailor. Hagané
gained new delight in imagery. Should a foreigner be allowed to bear
away the sweetness of this flower? No; Tetsujo was justified in his
indignation. No foreigner should have her. She must marry some young
nobleman of her own land; some honorable and brilliant youth with a
future, and at least a hint of personal beauty to match her own.
Hagané's mind ran rapidly through a list of eligible men. Objections
rose at every point. One was of poor health, another lived a life of
open immorality, a third possessed a mother of uncertain temper; Yuki-ko
must not have her young life crushed by the tyranny of a shrewish
mother-in-law. She should by right be married to a statesman, and be
mistress at once of an official home. In this way would her beauty and
foreign education be brought into immediate service. If he himself were
a young man, what rapture to have that living thing, made up of dew and
morning, entirely one's own! Hagané drew a single sharp breath and was
calm.
On the gravelled walk of the entrance court came the sound of a
carriage.
"His Excellency Mister Todd-u, Madame Todd-u, Mees Todd-u, Mister Douje,
and Mister Le Beau," announced a servant in what he thought English.
Hagané went forward to meet them. "Welcome to my cottage. Are we all
known, one to the other?"
"Yes, your Highness," answered Mr. Todd, "unless Mr. Le Beau here is the
exception."
"Mister Le Beau," repeated Hagané, very distinctly. "I remember with
much clearness the meeting with Mister Le Beau. In your admirable
dwelling in the capital city of Washington that meeting took place.
Yuki--Miss Onda--performed the introduction ceremony. I remember well."
"And I, your Highness," instantly answered Pierre, with a succession of
the sprightly bows that had so incensed old Onda. "It is to be supposed
that I should bear in memory so great an event; but I could not have
dared to hope for so great a condescension from you."
Hagané replied by a smile and a nod. The latter might have served
equally for the kerai who, well within the shadow of Mrs. Todd, made
vehement signs of corroboration to his daimyo.
The host then asked of the party, "Shall I not order for you foreign
chairs? We keep them in the storehouse for such occasions."
"Thank you kindly, Prince," answered Mrs. Todd for all; "we'll take the
floor. In Rome we do as the Romans do." With a lunge the good lady
disposed herself in the centre of the apartment, sitting, as it were, at
her own feet. The others placed themselves near her, making roughly the
outline of a horseshoe, Dodge being at one end, with Yuki beside him,
and Prince Hagané at the other.
Gwendolen had with difficulty kept Pierre away from Yuki. "Remember,"
she had warned, "this may be a sort of Sherlock Holmes affair for making
you two betray yourselves and each other. You can't be too careful. Old
Hagané is a vibrating lodestone of uncanny intuition, and Onda a
parental avalanche just ready to slide!"
In the effort to keep his hungry eyes from Yuki, Pierre began to explore
the room. His attention was first caught by the arrangement of dwarf
pine branches and brown cones, in combination with straggling sprays of
a yellow orchid. Then he saw the three paintings beyond. "Saint Raphael!
what are those?" he murmured under his breath, and made as if to rise
from the floor. All turned to him; he sought only the eyes of his host.
"Your Highness," he pleaded, his face vital with intelligence, "if not
unpardonably rude, may I rise and examine more closely those marvellous
paintings?"
Hagané reflected a hint of his brightness. "With greatest pleasure. They
are, of course, hung to be seen. I am honored that they attract your
notice."
Pierre rushed to the tokonoma, taking instinctively the attitudes of a
self-forgetting connoisseur.
"Say, I can't stay out of this!" cried the minister, and crooked his
long legs into the angles of a katydid in his efforts to rise. Following
the two others, he reached the tokonoma, planting himself, feet wide
apart, exactly in front.
Such pictures, painted in sets of three and mounted in single, flexible
panels of rich brocade, were designed for hanging in the broad tokonoma
of noblemen's houses, or in the living-rooms of priests. This set was in
monochrome, on paper which had been stained by time to the color of old
ivory. The central painting represented a famous Chinese poet sitting in
meditation upon a misty mountain-ledge. The lateral ones were
landscapes, one of winter snow, the other, summer fulness. Each
illustrated a well-known verse of the poet.
"So this is Japanese art,--the real thing,--is it?" asked Mr. Todd of
Pierre. "You must excuse me, Prince," he went on to his host, "Pierre
is always reading and talking about the beauty of it, but I'll be
gosh--I'll be shot, I mean,--if I can tell what it is about. Over in
my own country, now, I can distinguish a tree from a vase of
Johnny-jump-ups, and a farmyard from a nood female; but with these
pictures, somehow, the harder I look the more I seem to be standing on
my head."
"Cy, I am ashamed of you! _I_ love Japanese art, your Highness, and so
does my daughter!" expostulated Mrs. Todd, from the floor. "It is so
nice, and thin, and cool. I always recommend Japanese pictures to my
friends for their summer cottages, and I am hanging our Legation with
them now. Dear Mrs. Y., of Washington,--you know the name, of
course,--has the most gorgeous screen of gold-leaf, painted in
wildflowers. When she has a big reception she always puts it upside down
behind her sofa, because it has more flowers at the bottom than at the
top,--and nobody ever notices the difference."
The young Frenchman's cheek flushed. He leaned more closely to the
paintings, partly to hide his expression. Gwendolen exchanged horrified
glances with Dodge, then the sense of fun in both triumphed. Pierre
spoke next in low tones, so that none but Hagané could hear him. "I am
only a beginner,--a student. There has been little published in foreign
languages about your wonderful art, and European collections are rare.
Am I wrong in thinking these to be something unusual? The lines of the
three flow together like music, yet each is a separate composition. _We_
have nothing like it!"
"They are masterpieces by Kano Motonobu," said Hagané.
"Mon Dieu!" breathed Pierre, and seemed as if he would devour with new
scrutiny the marvellous visions.
The host's eyes remained fastened upon his enthusiastic guest. He
watched every flicker of intelligence, of changing expression. Suddenly
the young man turned, met the look, and smiled. It was like sunlight on
a meadow when Pierre smiled. "Your Highness," he murmured, "a touch of
art should make the whole world kin! Is it not so? Teach me something
more of this new mystery of beauty,--be my friend!"
Hagané lowered his lids quickly, but in the downward sweep he caught a
glimpse of Yuki's eager, upturned face. She had forgotten herself and
her immediate companions. Her spirit had crept over to the strangely
mated two who stood before the pictures.
"Monsieur honors me by offering such a privilege," said Hagané, in an
expressionless tone. He bowed slightly. Pierre drew back, feeling
unaccountably rebuffed. Why had the great man said "Monsieur"? Before
that, the plain term "Mister" had been employed. Vanity, never very far
from the citadel of Pierre's being, posited an explanation. "He calls
you by the French title," said Vanity, "because he realizes that no
Occidental of another country than France could show such appreciation."
Pierre recalled the awful remarks of Todd, the deeper idiocy of his
complacent lady. "Yes, that is it," said Pierre to Vanity.
Hagané had now re-seated himself. He was a few yards directly across
from Dodge and Yuki. He studied furtively the countenance of Dodge. With
this regard he was quickly satisfied. The American's clear brown eyes
were as free from guile as those of a setter pup. He turned again to
Pierre, who had now thrown himself, in a graceful attitude of lounging,
beside fair Gwendolen. Gwendolen deflected the glance from her
companion. Her merry hazel eyes dwelt with bright friendliness and an
utter absence of awe upon the titled host. For the first time Hagané
noticed her, looked directly at her, perceived in her something a little
more than blown golden hair and girlish audacity. Something in her gaze
gave him an impression of pliant boughs, elastic yet imperishable. This
trained commander seldom failed to recognize the intangible,
unmistakable flash of the thing we call, for a better name, character.
Something in answer to it, a salute of his own brave spirit, rose to the
deep eyes. A little thrill passed over Gwendolen. "Gracious!" she
thought to herself. "That's no mere war-engine, that's a man, and a
great one!" To cover her vague embarrassment she leaned to him, letting
coquetry blot the real from her face, and pleaded, "Show us some more
pictures, please, your Highness. I hear that you have storehouses
crammed with them. Even I, in spite of what mother says, appreciate
those in the tokonoma. _Please!_"
Hagané bowed unsmiling. The mere dainty allurements of a pretty girl
seemed to him almost an affront, as if his old nurse should give him a
kite to fly, or a top to spin. He fell into thought. After a moment's
somewhat uncomfortable silence he said slowly, "There is one painting I
should like to show this honorable group of friends; but first its
strange history must be told, and I fear that I have not the fluent
English."
"Oh, we simply must have the story! Your English is all right, Prince;
I'll declare it is. Please tell us," cried Gwendolen the irrepressible,
and she moved a few inches closer.
"Yes, your Highness, your English is wonderful. You don't make half the
grammatical mistakes that I do now!" supplemented Mrs. Todd.
Hagané drew a slow glance around the semicircle, plunged his hands
within his silken sleeves, and began to speak. His voice was very deep,
and in some consonant sounds, of a slight harshness. The vowels were
full, rich, and resonant. His speech held at command a certain strange,
almost benumbing magnetism, a compelling response, such as one
experiences in the after-vibrations of a great bell.
"Oh, I feel in my bones that it is going to be a ghost story, a real
one," whispered Gwendolen, with a shiver of excitement.
Hagané did not notice the remark. Todd and Mr. Dodge sent her, in
unison, a bright glance of appreciation.
"The painting for which I now attempt the speaking," said Hagané, "made,
for centuries, the chief altarpiece of a certain old temple in Yamato.
It was a very old temple,--yes, among the very first built in Nippon for
Buddhist worship. One night, when the black sky was rent with storm, and
lightning hurled out many terrible spears, one flash found that temple,
burning it swiftly to a square of low red ashes. Everything burned; gold
and brass and iron melted like wax--all but the picture; and three days
after they found it still on red coals, glowing more fierce and red than
they. Nothing was harmed in it except the brocaded edge, and that was
soon replaced. This is the picture you shall see."
"Oh!" breathed Gwendolen.
"Afterward it was conveyed to a famous temple of Kioto; but the head
priest, the Ajari, being of timid thought, refused to shelter it. By his
order it was carried in secrecy to a much smaller temple, very distant,
in the province of Konda, where is my father's home of birth."
He paused. The listeners all shifted position a little, all but Yuki,
who sat upright and motionless, her soul living in her long dark eyes.
"Even in so small a temple its power began to attract many worshippers
and wonder-seekers. The fame of it grew like the grasses of summer. At
the time of our Restoration, the beginning of that cycle of our time
called 'Mei-ji,' its destruction was officially decreed. It was
designated 'the object of slavish superstition.' My father was
requested, with his own hands, to annihilate it."
"Ah," muttered Pierre, with feeling. "But, thank the good God, it wasn't
destroyed, since you are soon to show it!"
One of Mrs. Todd's thick feet had gone to sleep. She stretched it out
under her skirt with great caution.
Hagané looked up into Pierre's bright eyes. "As you observe, Monsieur,
it was not annihilated. My father made request of Government that it be
sold privately to him, and in return he gave pledge that it never again
be used--publicly--as the altarpiece. Thus it came into my possession."
There had been something suggestive, almost sinister, in his use of the
word "publicly." His glance had just brushed Yuki's face. Gwendolen's
hands turned cold. "But what power needed to be suppressed--what harm
could a picture do?" cried the blonde girl, eagerly.
Before attempting an answer, Hagané clapped for a servant, and, with a
few low words, sent him off for the picture. He turned, looking first at
Gwendolen, then at Yuki. "It is a painting of the Red God, Aizen
Bosatsu. It was prayed to, and sacrificed to by men and women who loved.
Generally they were persons who wished to become the man and wife
against the wishes of parents and guardians; less often, of some guilty
one already married, and wishing an impure love. Its strange power is
this,--that one consumed with passion, making offerings, passing long
nights in prayer, and crying forth incessantly desperate invocation, may
see the red flesh and crimson lotos petals fall away like shrivelled
bark, revealing the white and shining face of Kwannon the Merciful. This
is the reward of those who pray for the strength to be loyal, who wish,
in their deeper essence, the ultimate Good. But the painting has
another--and more awful power--"
"Yes, yes, Lord," whispered Yuki, speaking now for the first time.
"Should the mad soul clamor on for earthly desire, ignoring what is
high,--then will the Red God burn, burn, burn, even as the heated heart
of evil passion burns; and the power of that suppliant to do evil will
be strengthened. Circumstances may be compelled, and the wish, however
harmful, be attained. With each new triumph of a soul, the merit of the
picture deepens; with each malefic use, the evil grows more strong."
"What, Lord, would be the penalty--what to a wicked soul would be the
price?" asked Yuki's bloodless lips.
"Your early training was Buddhistic, child," answered Hagané, in the
gentlest of voices. "You know the doctrine of rebirth! Instinct tells
you the price already."
Tetsujo had withdrawn his eyes from their fierce contemplation of his
daughter, as if the sight continually fed his anger. He rocked now, with
downcast eyes and folded arms, on his cushion, ignoring everything but
his own black thoughts.
Gwendolen tried in vain to catch Yuki's eye. She saw that already Yuki
was betraying what Hagané and old Onda wished to know. The moment was
fatal and memorable.
The servant now returned, bearing a long box of dull red lacquer. Yuki
shivered so that all saw her.
"Examine the quaint carvings of devils, Monsieur," said Hagané to
Pierre, with light affability. As Pierre leaned to take the box, Yuki
gave an imperceptible start forward, caught her breath, and then resumed
self-control.
"Gems, all of them!" cried Pierre, in impersonal delight. "They are
unbelievable in cleverness. Each seems an evil passion caught in
fleeting human form."
"Monsieur is intuitive. They are hungry spirits of the Gaki underworld,
creatures of ever aching, ever unsatisfied desires. The Hindoo
scriptures call them 'preta.' Perhaps you Christians have not such
uncomfortable passions, ne?"
Gwendolen had another shock to receive. In this new light, flashed past
before one realized its presence, Hagané showed to her the eyes of a
demon, a creature of power and of passion. She recoiled from him as from
the supernatural. The new discomfort was vented on the box. "Let us have
the picture, Prince, or I'll go wild. Please, somebody sit on that
box,--the squirming devils give me a waking nightmare. Why did anybody
want to carve such things?"
Hagané smiled a very quiet smile, just on the borderland between his
demon and his statesman's self. Yuki, too, watched him, with an
intensity of which she was not aware. Slowly he lifted the lid of the
box, and took out a long cylindrical roll wrapped in some faded stuff
that exhaled a strange, stifling perfume, as of old shrines. Then he
rose, with his usual dignified, deliberate motions. The servant, who had
been waiting, handed him a small wand tipped with a claw of ivory, such
as is used everywhere in Japan for hanging kakémono. Passing the cord
over a brass stud on the wall, he leaned over and downward, unrolling
the painting by slow inches.
At first nothing appeared but a groundwork of dark silk, a surface
crackled and blackened as by heat and time. A pointed, thin flame first
arose, then a fiery crown of filigree work that hid suggestions of
strange animal forms, then a staring countenance of an archaic, Hindoo
type, provocative, menacing, appalling! Shoulders rose, swathed thick in
springing flame; a body hung with jewels of red gold; arms bended at the
elbow, crossed legs just visible through drapery, and lastly the
incandescent throne of a vermilion lotos. The thing glowed wet and
fresh, like new-spilled blood. Before its artistic wonder was the wonder
of vitality, for the image lived,--not in a world of heavy human flesh,
nor yet in realms ethereal, but in some raging holocaust where the two
worlds chafe and meet. One flaming hand grasped a bunch of golden
arrows; from the other depended coils of gold and orange rope. Each
petal of the lotos throne stood sharp and clear in an outline of hot
gold, and the long, parallel veinings were of copper. In a room suddenly
darkened it should spring out in illumination of its own. A scorching
breath blew from it. The leer on the god's face deepened.
"Ugh!" shuddered Mrs. Todd. She tried to check the exclamation, and
apparently none but Dodge, who sat beside her, heard the cry.
"Be careful," whispered Dodge. "He does not tell you half. Men have
fought and died for that painting. It is one of the famous things of
Japan, and almost impossible to see. He surely has a reason in this
display."
Yuki and Gwendolen were equally still and voiceless.
"Mother of God!" Pierre ejaculated, ignoring ceremony, and running to
the place where the painting, now in full length, hung. "What a
masterpiece! What torment of genius! There is passion in the very curves
of the petals,--how they answer the lines of drapery, even the lines of
his ugly face! The flaming halo repeats it like a fugue. Mon Dieu! One
scarcely can endure such supreme beauty." His voice broke. He turned
away. Hagané watched him curiously. "Your Highness," said he, after a
very brief interval, and now with frank, tear-bright eyes on the prince,
"I know not the morality of it, but I, for one, would not be willing to
pray in such fashion that this superb and glorious monster should fade
to a silly white. Rather would I add fury to him, and evil,--if that
would keep his flame inspired!"
Abruptly Hagané turned his face to Yuki. For some moments past he had
ignored her. She had no time to struggle for self-control. Her thought
lay beached on the ashen face. The two eyes met. In an instant, as if
weary, Hagané turned away, and, crossing the room, seated himself near
Onda.
"Shall we proceed to serve the food, your Highness?" asked another
servant, on his knees, in the doorway.
"Yes, at once. First roll the picture up, and remove it to the kura."
The banquet was in pure Japanese fashion. The entertainment began with
the usual foolish mistakes on the part of the foreigners. Yuki was last
of all to drift back into the world of the commonplace; Pierre, of the
party, being in highest spirits. Everything delighted him,--the food,
the trays, the little "ne-san" hired for the occasion to pour saké, the
saké itself, the saké bottles,--all! Recklessly now, he forced a
position beside Yuki, taking her unresponsiveness as part of the decorum
expected of a young girl in Japan. Hagané showed him special favor,
plying him with wine, and exchanging numberless tiny cups, each one a
step, for Pierre, into further indiscretion. Yuki felt hope slowly die
within her. She saw beyond doubt that Hagané was against Pierre and with
her father. She knew that she had been chief factor in the betrayal of
their love. For a moment she hated, she even despised a little, the man
she had been taught to look on as a god.
Never had a sweeter sound come to her ears than Mrs. Todd's loud
command, "Well, Cy, if we are to go at all, we had better start. This
saké is beginning to do queer things to my legs!"
At the farewell ceremonies on the doorstep, Hagané managed to whisper to
his kerai, "Watch her closely. Let her not leave your sight until you
have heard again from me. There is instant danger!"