Into the wide, white streets of modern Yedo, Pierre stumbled alone.
There had been no definite thought in his hurried flight, only a craving
to flee from the polluting face and soft, compelling voice of his
compatriot. How was it possible for a man with the intelligence of
Ronsard to harbor such ideas of Japanese character? Yuki's very presence
breathed purity; yet that old man had said--had dared to hint-- Pierre
broke away from the recollection, hid his eyes, and groaned. As a
consequence he was nearly hurled to earth by a passing kuruma-man, whose
warning cry of "Hek! Hek!" had been ignored.
Pierre recovered himself with difficulty. The occupant of the vehicle, a
stout burgher of the middle class with sulphur-colored socks and a gaudy
watch-chain, essayed some laughing excuse; but the wiry human steed,
deliberately putting his shafts to the ground, squared himself before
the offending "Seiyo-jin" to deliver a volley of heterogeneous oaths,
selected at random from the stores of other nations. Pierre, unmoved by
these comic insults, apologized to the burgher in three languages, and
hurried on.
Now for the first time he noticed that flags were being hung at every
door. Flags fluttered from the backs of jinrikishas and were stuck on
top of pull-cart loads. Past him hurried newsboys with printed
hand-bills held eagerly upward. Small bells jangled at their hips.
"Nan desu ka?" (What is it?) he asked politely of a passer-by.
"Ikusa," was the brief response, accompanied, as Pierre could not help
seeing, by a disdainful, yet triumphant scowl. "Ikusa" was a word not
included in the Frenchman's short vocabulary.
Four University students, with the exaggeratedly short skirts, and the
brawny, bare legs of the Satsuma faction, came lurching toward him. All
grinned at sight of the alien, and shouted with one voice, "Banzai
Nippon!"
Pierre understood this phrase at least. "An excellent sentiment," he
remarked gravely in English; "but now will you kindly inform me why it
seems appropriate to the present moment?"
The boys nudged one another and giggled. One of them at length answered
in careful English, "Mr. Togo has war already begun. Many Russian
battle-ships, having been this day fired upon, have into sea-bottom
sinked. All will be sinked! Banzai Nippon!"
"Banzai Nippon!" roared his comrades; and the four, with sundry
delighted, backward glances at the bewildered foreigner, hurried on.
Pierre, ignoring consequences, again stood still. Jinrikishas clattered
past him to the right, to the left, singly, or now in long, black
strings. The faces of human horses and vehicle occupants were alike
vivified by a singular excitement. Many of the little trotting men
conversed volubly with those whom they bore. "Ikusa! Ikusa!" was the
burden of all speech.
"Ikusa," repeated Pierre, dully. "This 'Ikusa' undoubtedly means 'war.'"
He knew in his soul that the rumor was true. Visions of the scowling
Onda, of Prince Hagané, of the leering, intelligent eyes of Count
Ronsard, flew past him with the real faces of the streets. He cursed
aloud. "War!" a new wedge between himself and Yuki.
He walked on now with nervous energy. "Yu-ki--Yu-ki--Yu-ki,"--his heart
and steps kept pace with the refrain. The whole world fell into the
despairing swing of it. "Yu-ki--Yu-ki--Yu-ki!"
A little Japanese matron, hastening to a sick neighbor's house with the
great news, gave him a commiserating glance. Her husband was a sailor on
one of the battle-ships now fighting. She was proud and happy. What
sorrow could it be that made the young foreigner's eyes so deep and
blue? Surely this was not war! It must be love. She had heard that in
the affairs of love the foreigners found strange griefs.
"D[=o]-mo!" murmured the little dame to herself, "I am grateful to the
gods this day to be a Japanese with my husband in a glorious fight."
Pierre walked now, still unheeding, in a direction almost due west from
the French Legation. On his right hand stretched the long moats edged
stiffly with young willows. He had been told that these trees were
planted by an adoring people on the day, just fifteen years before, that
the Emperor, out of his wise and loving heart, had given to them a
parliamentary government. Only fifteen years! The willows had none of
them attained full growth, and yet the nation that had planted them had
that morning fired upon one of the proudest and most implacable empires
of old Europe.
On the enormous campus directly in front of the Imperial gates, citizens
by thousands were assembling. They surged here and there in a
breathless, whispered excitement. Their lowered voices and moving
garments made a sound as of the sea.
All eyes were turned upward to the Imperial moat walls, where white dots
of faces belonging to the court ladies peered over for an instant and
vanished.
The Emperor was not visible. The crowd did not expect to see him, and
had he suddenly manifested himself would have felt chagrin rather than
exultation. They knew that his heart was with them, and they reverenced
him thus silently with the feeling one has in a vast cathedral, just
before the service begins.
The Frenchman hurried by with down-bent head, knowing himself an
intruder. At the Sakurada gate of the moat system he again took his
bearings, and saw that by continuing in a straight course he would reach
the American Legation. He realized on the instant that this was the
place where he wished to go. In all this beautiful, mysterious land he
had but two friends, Mrs. Todd and Gwendolen.
On a steep slope facing to the northeast, and leading up by several
roads to the broad and thickly populated district of Azabu, Tokio, can
be seen a Japanese gate which is large without being imposing, and
severe without being dignified. Perhaps the peculiar contours of the
land in this unfavored spot, the infelicitous swerve of the road, and an
awkward grading of the hill, make the tall gateway always appear just a
little uneasy. This is the main entrance of the American Legation.
Behind it stands a large structure of wood with office-buildings
attached. The contrast of buildings and gate is not cheerful. Nor is the
large surrounding garden of less amorphous aspect. A wide stretch of
well-kept lawn with no particular outline, disheartening attempts along
the edges at bits of Japanese hill and rock formation, together with
certain unrelated patches of shrub and tree, coexist in a sort of
Eurasian tolerance.
Pretty Gwendolen openly called her present domicile a barn. Mrs. Todd
had begun at once buying blindly and indiscriminately from peddlers,
hawkers, and "curio-men," who infest the official homes of new-comers.
As a result, the high walls of the Legation rooms were being rapidly
covered with atrocious kakémono, some too high, some too low, and all,
from the standpoint of art, utterly vicious. On tables, shelves, and
mantelpieces stood gaudy Japanese vases such as a native rag-picker
could hardly have been persuaded to use (though the price given by Mrs.
Todd for a single article might have educated his son), and various
household utensils, each, to the eye of a Japanese visitor, uttering a
shriek of incongruity.
Should a Japanese lady fill one of her low-ceiled, spacious rooms with
foreign lithographs representing lambs, blue-eyed children, baskets of
fruit, nude women, jockeys, and landscapes, each in a flaring gold
frame, hanging them anywhere from two feet above the matting to the
ceiling line itself,--should she, between these rectangular blasphemies,
suspend bits of foreign underwear, old neckties, garters, belts,
hair-brushes, and egg-beaters, and, to complete the artistic impression,
set about on the floor decorated soup-tureens, water-coolers with
growing plants, and lard-baskets piled high with Japanese cakes,--an
American visitor, entering for the first time, would get much the same
impression that Japanese visitors derived from Mrs. Todd's
drawing-rooms.
On this clear morning of February 9, 1904, the American Legation, in
company with all others of the great Eastern capital, hummed and
vibrated to the excitement of war. Telephone wires were kept hot.
Messengers went back and forth ceaselessly with "chits" (notes) written
in English, French, Spanish, German, and other tongues. Carriage-wheels
rolled and rattled in every street. Pierre was ushered into the main
drawing-room, a place which always made him shudder and think of William
Morris. Mrs. Todd, Gwendolen, and Mr. Dodge were already there. The two
latter were standing; Dodge evidently was on the point of departure.
Mrs. Todd sat close to the soft-coal fire, sewing some green American
fringe on a kesa--a Buddhist priest's robe--which she was to use for a
piano cover.
Gwendolen, first catching sight of the visitor, went forward in her
bright, impetuous way. "Thank goodness that you came! Isn't this
war-news exciting? Wasn't that banquet last night, after the Red God
appeared, a regular skeleton's feast? Have you heard from Yuki this
morning?"
Before Pierre could segregate the necessary replies, Minister Todd was
in the room. He walked slowly, studying, with his thin quaint smile, a
large visiting card, apparently just received. He nodded all around, and
then addressed himself directly to Dodge.
"Prince Hagané has called. Would you advise me to see him alone?"
"No, no, Cy. I won't hear to it!" protested Mrs. Todd. "With this war
started, he may be intending you bodily harm!"
"Nonsense, my dear," said her spouse, patting one plump shoulder.
Dodge had been scrutinizing the legend on the pasteboard.
"This is his Highness's most rigidly official card. Yes, sir, you will
have to see him alone. But don't commit yourself by the faintest hint.
We have as yet received no instructions from Washington."
"Why, what was that great bunch of cables that came this morning?" asked
the lady, with childlike eyes.
Todd grinned toward his secretary, who now cast a grinless and
apprehensive look in the direction of Pierre. Dodge answered for the
office, "Those related to an entirely different matter, Mrs. Todd, a
personal matter. Your husband, Minister Todd, has had no instructions
with regard to this war just begun."
Pierre, reddening slightly, beckoned Gwendolen across the room. They
stood staring out across the wide brown lawn. Mr. Todd and his assistant
left the room together. Above the Buddhist garment she was desecrating,
Mrs. Todd murmured plaintively, "I've known it all along,--though Count
Breakitoff in Washington assured me it could not come. I was certain
that just as soon as I got over here the horrid thing would break out.
Just suppose the Russians capture Tokio! They boast already that they
will dictate terms of peace in Tokio before next Christmas day, and the
Russian troops are like wild beasts." Here she gave a shudder, and
raised her voice. "Oh, Gwendolen, why did we leave Washington, or even
our peaceful Western home? I'd give ten thousand dollars to be set down
right now in a good Christian wheat-field. This is awful, simply
_awful_!"
"And I think it glorious, simply glorious!" sang Gwendolen from the
window. "Already the prospect tingles in my veins. It is better than a
coming-out party, better than auto-mobiling on a road of green glass! I
feel that delicious, tragic, matinée feeling I used to have as a child,
just as the curtain starts to rise."
"And you are not afraid something is going to happen?" asked Mrs. Todd.
"I'm only afraid that something isn't going to happen," returned the
intrepid one.
Pierre sauntered toward the hearth. "I come of a fighting race, yet now
I share Madame's views rather than those of her spirited daughter. This
war means a new gulf between Yuki and me."
Gwendolen's face sobered. "I've thought of that. You are right. It means
a wider gulf; it ought to mean a wider gulf."
Pierre moved nearer the fire and spread his delicate hands to the flame.
"Your tone, Mademoiselle," he began with a most pathetic attempt at
lightness, "might imply that the gulf is already of sufficient width to
admit despair."
Gwendolen threw back her head and looked at him from under long lashes.
"I didn't say so," returned she.
"Speech is the least satisfactory form of intelligent communication,"
answered Pierre, still trying to smile himself and her into the delusion
that he was but partly in earnest.
"Did you see the way that Yuki's father watched us all last night?"
asked the girl, irrelevantly.
"No, I cannot say I bestowed much attention. Whenever possible, I keep
my eyes from unpleasing objects."
"You do well, Pierre," asserted Mrs. Todd; "especially in this case. I
was next him most of the time, and though I did not look, I have
acquired neuralgia in the shoulder which was nearest him."
"He wasn't what one would call exactly--gushing," mused Gwendolen. She
seated herself now, and fell into a sort of reverie, dropping her chin
and catching it in one hand,--a gesture ludicrously like Mr. Todd.
Pierre's glance into her face added, it would seem, to his uneasiness.
"I presume it is only war that has brought Prince Hagané to call so
promptly," said he, tentatively, with a note of challenge in his voice.
Gwendolen gave a small sniff. "War! He may call it war,--but it is Yuki!
Prince Hagané stands behind that old pickled samurai, Onda; I felt it
last night. I tried to hint it to you then, but you were determined not
to see." She rose to her feet again, and began to flutter near, in the
fashion most disastrous to Mrs. Todd's always sensitive nerves.
"Do sit down, Gwendolen, or you will have my brains as tangled as this
knot of silk," cried the matron. She began now to jerk at the shining
strands, as if they were partly the cause of her irritation. In an
instant they were reduced to the condition of a small demented rainbow.
Pierre took a low stool, seated himself near the knee of his hostess,
and began deftly to unravel the tangle.
He had not tried to answer Gwendolen's last remark; perhaps he could
not. Something in his face smote the girl's generous heart. She knelt at
the other side of Mrs. Todd's ample knee-space, crying, "Pierre, I have
hurt you! I am a horrid, brusque girl. I ought to be a telephone
'central.' I didn't mean to hurt."
"That's just your way, Gwendolen," admonished Mrs. Todd. "You will do
things first, and repent them after. How often have I told you that an
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?"
"Nay, Madame," entreated Pierre, "speak not so harshly. Miss Gwendolen
is merely impulsive. I know her for a good friend of my Yuki, and, I
hope, of myself. Such candor may smart a little, but it is beneficial.
The truth is, I am sore, wounded, aching, from a talk just held with his
Excellency Count Ronsard. I think I came here for balm."
"You told him of your--attachment?" questioned Mrs. Todd, eagerly.
Gwendolen rose slowly, went over to a divan and seated herself.
"Yes," said Pierre, "I told him. And for reasons quite different, quite
apart from any that Yuki's friends or relatives might urge, he is
antagonistic to the idea of my marriage. Of course his opposition means
nothing to me. I care not if the whole of France sailed East to prevent
me. My faith is bound to Yuki, and I shall not give her up. But in the
matter of official appointment Count Ronsard can make difficulties.
Indeed I am convinced that he has been holding my credentials all along,
and, for his own whim, will not give them."
Gwendolen had listened quietly to the full speech, though her eyes were
shining with anger. "The old sinner!" she exclaimed; "the idea of his
daring to object to Yuki! What were his reasons, I would like to know!"
Pierre flushed. "To put it delicately,--that Yuki is not of French
descent."
Gwendolen bridled. "Oh, I see! You needn't say any more. Probably he
would object to me for the same reason, thinking me an alloy of red
Indian and buffalo. For sheer, crass ignorance, commend me to the
European savant! Well, I would like to go to Mr. Ronsard and just inform
him that there is no king nor emperor of Europe who need not be proud to
win my Yuki-ko!"
"You may be sure I told him, with enough of vehemence to suit even you,
Mademoiselle."
"The miserable old wretch!" murmured Mrs. Todd, above the kesa.
Gwendolen's gaze, now that the anger died, went moodily to Pierre. He
met the look with a smile no less winning for its sadness.
"Pierre, you are a dear boy," she said, her own eyes suddenly stung by
tears; "I know Yuki loves you, and I can't blame her. I wish--oh, I wish
you could be happy together; but--"
"Can you not omit that last small word?"
The girl sighed deeply, then leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.
"Pierre," she was beginning in great seriousness; she had in her mind to
ask whether, if once convinced of the impossibility of marriage with
Yuki either now or ever, he would still demand from her fidelity,
defiance of her parents, and of all the established rules of her
class,--still hold her to that promise he had wrung.
Since that banquet of the Red God, only the evening before, and now
fleeing with strange rapidity into the past,--since she had seen
Pierre's very charm and artistic sensitiveness used as clever traps for
his entanglement, he meantime suspecting nothing, Gwendolen felt not
only that the marriage would be indefinitely postponed, but that it
would be finally prevented. The subtlety, the ideality, the
self-sacrificing impulses of a Japanese nature indissolubly bound to
Pierre must mean sorrow, if not degeneration to both. As well try to
graft a French geranium upon the stem of a young bamboo! Before she
could put her question, Mr. Todd, re-entering, diverted all interest to
himself.
Mrs. Todd was first to speak. "Oh, Cy, tell me quick! Has war really
begun, or were those reports only to frighten us? Did he confess that
war had come?"
"He didn't confess, exactly. He admitted war, as he might have admitted
that the day was cold or the wind blowing. I never feel quite myself
before that man! He charges me with electricity first, and then
hypnotizes me afterward. As clearly as I can make out, it was a friendly
visit, its particular object being to ascertain correctly the amount of
indisposition acquired by each separate guest from last night's
revelry."
"Revelry," murmured Gwendolen.
"I hope you did not tell him that I had nightmare, Cy!" said Mrs. Todd,
anxiously.
"I did not."
"I hope you did tell him that I think Japanese food delicious, and would
like to live on it," cried Gwendolen.
"I did," said her father. "He looked bored. Evidently charming young
American women are nothing to Prince Hagané. His chief concern, it
seemed, was Pierre."
"I--Monsieur?" echoed Pierre, with a nervous start.
"Yes, I can't recall now any very direct questions,--he didn't exactly
'pump,' yet in his esoteric way he let me know that all I could tell him
of you he would be glad to learn."
Pierre tried to meet Gwendolen's eyes, but she had turned away.
"Did you speak of my Russian mother, Mr. Todd?"
"No; I had the chance, but dodged it. I thought it none of his
Highness's business."
"Merci," murmured the other.
"Speaking of Dodging it," put in Gwendolen; "where is your secretary?"
"He got a 'chit' from the Spanish Legation, and asked for an hour's
leave of absence."
"That fat Carmen Gil y Niestra," puffed Mrs. Todd. (Mrs. Todd's own
weight was over the two hundred mark, yet she was scathing in her scorn
of avoirdupois in another.) "These European women are shameless in the
way they run after men. She's shadowing Dodge now. I wonder what she can
want of him." The good lady applied herself with renewed diligence to
her robe. Gwendolen studied the stucco-work of the ceiling. In the
somewhat strained silence Pierre rose. Mr. Todd was close to him. He put
a hand affectionately on the boy's shoulder, and looked down into his
face. Pierre, in spite of efforts for self-control, shrank back, his
lips quivering with a prescience of new pain.
Gwendolen ran to his defence. "We know what you are going to say. It has
been spoken already. Spare us, dad. We are all upset this morning, and
when one is upset good advice is an insult. I challenge you to a set at
tennis, Pierre. Come, come, the court is perfect, though the skies be
gray."
Pierre turned eagerly. "Capital, nothing could be better. But my
costume,--I have not the necessary flannels, shoes--" He looked himself
over in concern.
"You have your legs and arms, I presume," said Gwendolen, dryly.
Catching up the rackets and a box of balls, she hurried out, leaving the
glass door open.
"Shut the door, Pierre," called Mrs. Todd.
Todd watched the slim young figure as he went. Faithful to Mrs. Todd's
admonition, he closed the panel with the greatest care, rattling the
knob to show that the latch had caught.
Mr. Todd sighed. "I wish that door opened into France, and that I held a
St. Peter's key to it," he murmured, as if to himself.
Mrs. Todd wondered above the robe. "What's that pretty thing you're
making?" asked her spouse, quickly. "A piano cover? Gwendolen ought to
play a regular 'Streets of Cairo' potpourri under that. Aren't you
afraid the old priest's ghost will haunt you?"
"You do talk such nonsense for a grown-up, intelligent man," reproved
his dame, but her lips and her eyes smiled.
"Those are the times when I make my most sensible remarks," said he, in
return.
"I suppose you know," retorted his Susan, with doubt in her voice.