"I am more deeply hurted now than you; but never more must I be weak. I
am a wife. I shall serve my native country!"
"Does treachery and faithlessness ever serve? You delude yourself. If
Hagané is to be your strength, you will fail,--for either Hagané or I
must die. I live now only to revenge myself upon him!"
The emptiness of the boast, the impotence of the suffering boy to wreak
the harm he wished, did not then come to her. The words rang sombre and
terrible. "No--no, Pierre," she cried, "not that! Our Emperor needs
him--our country needs. Revenge on me, Pierre! I only was faithless. I
deserve all harm you will give."
"Yes, you were faithless, but it came because of weakness, and the low
status of your sex in this barbaric land. Hagané and your father forced
you. They threatened, cowed you--tortured you, for all I know. Look at
your hands! Mon Dieu, your little hands!"
She held them forth to him with a gesture that might have disarmed
Beelzebub. "I tore them myself upon that hedge the night you came,--the
night I had promised Prince Hagané."
Pierre glared at her an instant longer. Oh, he had meant to be so harsh!
Nothing was to have softened his just wrath. Through sleepless nights he
had scourged himself with memory until his soul was flayed. Yuki should
not appeal to him or move him. He would get from her own lips some
faltering explanation of her perfidy. Yet now, for all his armor of
resolve, two little torn hands held out silently through deepening gloom
pulled at his heart,--drew down the visor from his quivering face.
Above them bent, like a great cloud, the head and stooping shoulders of
the Buddha.
"Yuki, Yuki, you have ruined my life! You have killed my soul! I cannot
consent to live unless to revenge myself upon the man who has brought us
both this agony!"
"Pierre, if you say such thing, I must--because I am now Japanese
wife--warn my master of it."
This new affront to vanity stung Pierre back into some of his assumed
relentlessness. "You would defend him,--betray me already? Count
Ronsard said it would be so, but I would not listen. Why should you be
true to him when you were false as hell to me? I'll kill him, I tell
you, and if I cannot kill him in open fight, I will find some way to
harm him! I'll have you yet, Madame la Princesse. I do not give you up,
even at your own words. You owe me something! Come, come, you owe me
reparation,--help me trick him, Yuki. You love me,--ah, I know it! This
is my first triumph, that your heart cannot forget. Yes, yes, poor
shivering slave, it is Pierre you love. Now, come, deny it! When his
arms are around you, do you not think of mine? When his thick lips press
you, do you not faint for me? Ah, I have touched you!"
"Go--I say to you again, go, and go quickly! You with your own speech
cauterize my wound. You are a coward! Your words are vipers which give
their deepest venom first to you!"
In speaking the girl had drawn herself very erect. Her face, through the
twilight, gleamed luminous with inner fire. Over her left shoulder the
open mouth of the dragon yawned. Pierre could not meet her look. He
cowered back, and pressed his eyes with one trembling hand.
"Yuki, Yuki, indeed I scarcely know what I am saying. This misery
bewilders me. I cannot eat or sleep. My thoughts surge in my brain like
fire in a battened ship. And this is worst of all, that now, so soon,
you are tamed,--half reconciled! You have not loved me!"
"If I love or not love, I must not now remember. Pierre, pity me a
little. Go from Nippon; help me to be the good woman, and the loyal
one."
But to this appeal Pierre could not reach. "I do not give you up," he
muttered sullenly. "And I will harm Hagané when and how I can!"
Yuki stepped forward a little, still keeping one hand on the dragon.
"Then stand aside, Monsieur Le Beau. I must return."
Pierre did not move. "You shall not go," he said in the same sullen
fashion. Yuki cast a despairing glance over toward the small house where
the old priest lived, then down the long stone walk, now white with
petals. No one was in sight. She gave a heavy sigh. On the instant the
sound of Japanese clogs came, mounting, apparently, the stone steps of
the great red gate. A form of a man in Japanese robes, unusually tall
for his race, slow and majestic in approach, now became visible.
"Hagané!" she said, with a great repressed cry, and bit her lips to keep
from sobbing.
"Diable!" echoed Pierre. He gave a single look, a curse, and pitching
his cigarette on the stone flag near her, vanished into the shadows of
the lotos throne. Yuki, half-fainting now, hung in the coils of the
dragon. As though life itself depended on his coming, she watched her
husband's calm advance. His stride was slow, splendid, and imposing,
each step eloquent of centuries of rulership. On catching sight of her
she felt that he smiled. He moved no faster. "My Lord," she murmured,
not knowing that she had said it.
The cigarette blinked as with a single malevolent eye, and sent up an
acrid smoke between them. He stepped over it, apparently unobservant,
and held out a hand. Yuki clutched at it.
"Why, small sweet one, how white your face gleams through the darkness!
And you lie, like a crystal ball of fate, in the old dragon's claws!
Well, here is a larger dragon come to bear you home."
Yuki tottered toward him. At first touch of his hand had come the sense
of renewed power. "I dreamed not, Lord, that your august returning might
be so soon, or I should not have left your house. I left with Meta the
message--"
"She gave it carefully, but I preferred to come in person for thee,
little one. Here, lean on me. You tremble. Perhaps the walk has been too
long. To-morrow we are to leave this quiet place, and you will be Madame
Hagané, wife of the Minister of War,--Madame Hagané, official mistress
of a huge and unattractive residence. But you will brighten it, and your
friends of the American Legation shall aid you."
"I shall try with all my soul and strength, Lord, to be worthy of you."
"I do not fear, my child. All things are not to be at once expected of a
single small flake of maidenhood and snow. How yet you tremble! Here, I
will draw your arm in mine. Cling to me. Never mind if the children on
the road laugh at us and say that the old prince is mad with love of his
young wife. In the great city I must often forget you. But wait one
instant--"
He had been standing, half-turned from the great Buddha. Now he faced
it, Yuki falling back a little. He raised both hands, rubbed them softly
together in invocation, and Yuki, marvelling at him, heard the reverent
words, "Namu Amida Butsu! Namu Amida Butsu!"