Throughout the months of March and early April this strange hiatus in
war bulletins hung, like a gray sky, above national enthusiasm. The more
dignified of the newspapers still adjured the populace to patience,
still exhorted them to have faith in their wise and careful leaders.
"The Hawk's Eye," on the other hand, bereft of inflammatory battle
themes, served up, with new condiment of ingenious suggestion, the
personal gossip of the hour. Few of the weekly issues (those printed
entirely in English) omitted a guarded slur upon the conjugal felicity
of the Hagané household. Gwendolen came in for her share of veiled
allusion. Yuki-ko, each week stung by the contemptible malice of the
attack, promised herself that never again should the paper be opened in
her home. Gwendolen, at the American Legation, weekly did the same. The
results of both resolutions were equally humiliating.
This was not a happy time for Gwendolen, creature of sunshine and spring
breezes as she seemed. The continued strained relations between herself
and Dodge interfered quite seriously at times with the young man's
official duties. Mr. Todd leaned more heavily than he knew upon his
attaché's four past years of experience in Tokio life, and resented an
attitude of one of his own family, which kept Dodge so rigidly within
the paling of mere officialdom. Mrs. Todd, who had never professed great
friendship for the secretary, now most loudly denounced his "outrageous
flirtation" with the Spanish girl, and even declared it an affront upon
her Legation. Gwendolen, urged one moment to stop the affair, "as she
certainly could by the lifting of a finger," was, the instant after,
taunted by her inability to do so.
The public friendship between Dodge and the charming Señorita deepened
obviously with each day. Hints of an early marriage flecked "The Hawk's
Eye." Mrs. Todd began to feel herself personally injured by her wilful
daughter. Finally, goaded into action and spurred by her own restless
heart, the girl made a counter-move of a sudden and desperate intimacy
with Carmen herself. Such things are not unknown in the history of
adolescence. Carmen yielded to the American's bright fascination with
the caressing languor characteristic of her. The two girls lunched
together, dined, drove, and had tea together, and spoke of each other in
exaggerated terms of endearment. Dodge, whatever his private surmises,
retained an unaltered front. Naturally he and Gwendolen were more often
together. She showed to him an air of cherished hostility, varied by
small lightning-flashes of appeal. Two feminine currents blew full upon
him. Dodge kept his hat on. The beautiful Castilian bore toward him the
attitude of an indulgent conqueror. Gwendolen aided this, and whenever
possible threw Dodge into the position of Carmen's accepted lover. Also,
for some reason known only to herself, she encouraged the Spanish girl
in her belief in Dodge's overwhelming adoration.
Gwendolen soon discovered that her new friend had an uncontrollable
yearning for "dulces," and eagerly embraced this opportunity for
demonstrating her new affection. Gwendolen scoured the alleys of old
Yedo for novel sweetmeats; she purveyed from the French shops of
Yokohama imported dainties; she sent a telegraphic order to a certain
New York confectioner. Carmen appreciated and devoured all results. The
Japanese confections, which many other European ladies might (without,
of course, having tasted) pretend to despise, she declared delicious.
The "ama-natto," or small purple bean, boiled and sugar-coated with
lilac frosting, she called "fairy marron." Mikan, or small oranges
preserved whole, with a flake of cinnamon and ginger, gained an
established place on the Spanish Legation table. "Hakka ame," that
delicious triangle of peppermint cream, improved from an American
missionary's original recipe, vied in public favor, as a hors-d'oeuvre
with French bonbons, salted almonds, and olives.
Once Carmen's French maid, suspecting, perhaps, more than a purely
altruistic intention in Gwendolen's persistent offerings, warned her
young mistress against immoderate indulgence in sweet foods, and
protested, with many gesticulations and a hint of tears, that the very
last importation of Paris gowns already needed the letting out of seams,
and would soon be unwearable. "Nonsense, Lizette," smiled the pampered
one, "not eat dulces? I have always eaten dulces. How, in the Virgin's
name, would one get through a novel without a plate of dulces beside
it?"
The maid sent a hostile glance to Gwendolen, which the blonde beauty had
the conscience not to resent. Rapidly increasing embonpoint was Carmen's
one menace to beauty. She had already begun to pray to her patron saint
for diminution. On the prie-dieu invariably lay a half-nibbled
chocolate. Were not Gwendolen's friendship so open, so obvious, one
might have suspected that she connived with fate to circumvent her
Carmen's petition; that actually she assisted in the mournful process of
burying perfect features and luscious, languorous dark eyes in warm
cushions of pink fat. But no, we must not think such things of
Gwendolen.
Because of the new intimacy and an increasing activity in Tokio society
Gwendolen now saw much less of her schoolmate, Yuki. Perhaps it was as
well. The Princess Hagané had her own lessons to learn, and they were
Japanese lessons. Following close upon her first sewing-meeting came
Yuki's presentation to Their Majesties. The court ladies welcomed her
into their midst. As in humbler Japanese circles she was immediately
asked innumerable questions. In return she began learning, from her
high-born interrogants, the new language of extreme court ceremony.
Another reception and another sewing-meeting fell due. To the latter of
these functions a mere handful of foreign ladies came. Gwendolen and
Mrs. Todd were detained, actually, by some globe-trotting Washington
associates, who landed that very day at Yokohama. In the two subsequent
gatherings foreign attendance ceased altogether.
Each reception was, however, a "crush." Gossip is a magnet; the presence
of eligible young men not exactly detraction. Mrs. Stunt and others of
her kind went openly to see whether Pierre Le Beau would attend, and how
he would conduct himself before host and hostess. It was the secret
craving of such social vultures that a scene, the more disgraceful the
better, be enacted for their entertainment, and the disappointment was
correspondingly keen when neither Pierre nor Count Ronsard attended. The
count, indeed, sent cards and a gift of flowers. No mention at all was
made of the younger man.
Three of the Hagané official functions had taken place. March hurled
itself gruffly into the outstretched arms of spring. Gwendolen knew why
Pierre stayed away and why Ronsard remained so impassive. She had good
reasons for not telling Yuki. At her friend's silence the latter
wondered. Instinct told her that there was a deeper explanation than
mere forgetfulness. More than once she had nerved herself to inquire;
but always, just on the point of asking, something had happened to
interfere.
A new cry, which affected Yuki far more openly, began to ring through
the current press. "If complications have arisen in Manchuria let Prince
Hagané go and unravel them!" This demand grew in insistence with each
day. Presently the whole nation had arisen, and was clamoring, "Send our
War Lord, Hagané, to the front!" Yuki waited patiently for her husband
to inform her of the reception of this demand in high quarters. Like a
good Japanese wife she dared not force the issue. On every side her
part, it seemed, was to wait, to command herself, to endure suspense. To
an impatient nature such as Gwendolen this would have been torture. To
Yuki, trained through centuries of brave ancestors to play her woman's
part of uncomplaining quiescence, the strain was not so great. Her
ignorance of Pierre seemed, indeed, the heaviest burden. She scanned now
the English columns of every paper, hoping against hope that her eyes
would seize the printed assurance of his return to France. This was the
young wife's prayer, uttered on her knees each night, muttered through
pale lips a hundred times each day, that Pierre would go quietly home,
and in his own dear land forget the woman who had broken faith with him.
His threat against Hagané's life did not sound to her absurd. It
re-echoed to her, always with a pang of fear. Love and hate alike give
preternatural insight. By injury to Prince Hagané alone could Pierre
gain full revenge. By this means he could strip the flesh from the bones
of her loyal sacrifice, laying bare the grinning skeleton of a national
disaster, wreaked through her.
Of course she could not speak these fears to Hagané. There was no one,
not even Gwendolen, to whom she could whisper them. Hagané was now
seldom at his home. She gathered, once or twice, from gossip of the
servants, that he had spent the previous night and day at the Tabata
villa, with a small company of statesmen as his guests. In the
infrequent visits, she, studying his face with unconscious intensity,
saw the same power, the same sadness, the invincible strength unshadowed
and unexcited by this renewal of popular hero-worship. The thought that
he might leave her alone, to fulfil the duties of his position, brought
to the young wife a pang of terror, of misgiving. She believed it to be
merely a shrinking from heavy responsibility. To outward appearance she
and Hagané stood on opposite shores of an increasing chasm; but in her
heart, when she dared listen to its timid pleadings, she knew it to be a
narrowing, not a widening, void their joint lives spanned. She could not
doubt that he felt some grave pleasure in seeing her on his expected
visits to the great shell of his official home. The weekly receptions,
where she bore herself with ever-increasing dignity and poise, did
indeed give to the husband a deep impersonal satisfaction. It was more
than satisfaction that he felt, as he saw the great filled packing-cases
sent away each week to suffering soldiers in Manchuria.
Once, coming in upon her unannounced, as was his custom, he had suddenly
taken the white thing in his arms, thrown her head back to his shoulder,
and gazed into her eyes as though to drag from some hidden depth an
awakening thought,--a cradled possibility. Yuki's lids drooped under the
blinding force of his look. She felt as though a great silent wind blew,
pinning her against a rock. Surely in his twitching face was more than a
calm self-congratulation! It was the man, the master, summoning by right
what was rightly his. Love--strong, terrible, yet tender, showed for an
instant in his dark eyes. He went from her as quickly as he had come. No
word had broken the silence. During the rest of that day Yuki rocked in
her heart a new-born hope, a possibility so strange, so ineffable that
she dared not open her eyes to its tiny face. With bowed head and
fast-closed lids she hushed it. That day set her feet on the
temple-stair of shining prophecy. But how dare she, already to one
pledge so faithless, climb upward, even on bleeding knees, to that
splendid portico above?
April spread her witchery of green and flowers over a thousand barren
hills. Wild azaleas, wigelia, and boké (pyrus Japonica) barred the
slopes with pink and crimson radiance. Valleys, so lately brown, spread
now a wide bloom of violets, a curdled residue of purple morning mists.
Earth-dwarfs, congeners of Loki, who people the under-world, drove
upward from their subterranean caves huge copper spikes of young
bamboo--ten inches across, some of it, as it pierced the mould--a
marvellous springing column climbing by joints, two feet a day, toward
the sun, and casting off brown sheaths, like outgrown jackets. Children
roamed the hedges, the rice-field dykes, and copses (forgotten and
unbuilded, sometimes in the very heart of Yedo) for tsukushimbo and the
yellow chrysanthemum. All gardens, even those amorphous products of
Eurasian uncertainty surrounding the American Legation and Yuki's
official home, needed to be fair. Birds came to them, and early
butterflies. The sun poured down upon them in equal measure his golden
cataracts of joy.
Saturday of the first week came. Pierre Le Beau had not been mentioned
to the Princess Hagané, nor had she found a printed notice of him
containing a hint of information. Cleverly insulated wires of venom, it
is true, attached to her name and Hagané's. Sometimes Pierre was subtly
referred to, but never openly. Next day, thought Yuki, she would go to
church. Perhaps something would be said of him by the ladies who always
crowded so eagerly about her carriage door. This weekly service, in the
Episcopal church at Tsukijii, formed now the closest tie that bound Yuki
to her Western memories. It was anticipated with eagerness. This link,
at least, she told herself should not be snapped. Hagané's consent that
she continue openly her Christian devotions had been unqualified.
The mail that Saturday morning proved unusually large. An American
mail-ship was in. Several letters and papers came from trans-Pacific
friends, a great many Tokio social invitations, a few notes relating to
Red Cross matters, and one folded pamphlet with a Japanese postmark. She
knew from its pink wrapping that it was "The Weekly Hawk's Eye." With a
slight shudder she put the evil thing aside, with a vague reawakening of
the intention to burn it unopened. Slowly she read her letters and
invitations. She glanced through the few American papers for any blue
markings. All were finished. She leaned to gather them up and have them
taken to her private desk upstairs, when the sun, pointing one bright
finger through a blind, fell upon the pink wrapper and rested on her
name. "Princess Sanétomo Hagané." It looked very cheerful and
suggestive. The dull pink of the cheap paper glowed into a rosy hue.
Perhaps it was an omen. Perhaps if she were brave and opened the sheet
boldly she would find, instead of the usual malicious innuendoes, the
announcement that Pierre was leaving for France. Thinking of Hagané's
eyes as they had probed her own she flushed, trembled a little, and
murmured aloud, "Oh, if he would only go--if Pierre would only go--how
happy--" She broke off. A wave of compunction, pity for Pierre, scorn of
her own fickleness, rushed upon her. She took the paper hastily, set her
lips for what might be in store, and opened at random.
Her name was plain enough, and Prince Hagané's. This time headlines had
been dared. "Prince Hagané soon to leave his young wife. The Nation
demands his presence at the centre of martial differences. Hagané loath
to leave his young wife. Who knows what may happen? M. Le Beau raving in
delirium at the German hospital in Yokohama."
So much she read and paused. Very quietly she folded the paper and
slipped it within a gray silk sleeve. She stooped for the crumpled pink
wrapping, smoothed it also, and dropped it in her sleeve. Next she
gathered into a neat package the mail she had been reading, rang for a
maid-servant, and sent the mail up to her boudoir. Her orders were given
in the usual low, pleasant voice. In closing, she said, "Should visitors
come I am to be found in this room."
Again alone, she walked to a western window and stared out at the great
square shadow of the house thrown across the awkward garden. Beyond the
straight line of the shadow, paths shone brilliantly in the sun, and
flowers danced. Spring had come a little early. Everything that had a
blossom to show rushed, it would seem, to the perfumed exhibition.
Yuki shivered slightly. For the first time she knew that her hands were
growing cold. She moved slowly toward the fireplace, an ordinary foreign
grate with coal fire burning. Nearer the warmth she drew out again the
pamphlet, unfolded and deliberately read the article from the first word
to the last. Some passages she dwelt upon, extracting to its full flavor
the bitterness of frustrated hope.
According to the "Hawk's Eye" correspondent, Pierre had caught germs of
malignant malaria, perhaps of typhus, while wandering in a state of
great mental agony along the moats that border a certain official
dwelling. He was now at the crisis of his malady. Two nurses watched him
night and day, for his dementia had made of him a cunning schemer, full
of sly efforts to escape. When detained he raved fearfully, saying that
he had "things to do." "The Hawk's Eye" ingenuously marvelled as to what
these "things" could possibly be. As is usual with articles so inspired
the suggestions were far more damaging than any actual statement.
She let her hands fall limp. One still clasped the ugly journal. Only a
few moments before she had accused herself of heartlessness toward one
she had wronged. In her generosity she had almost demanded a deeper
suffering, if only it could be directed personally to her offending
self, and not include, in its consequences, that great man whose name
she now bore. Well, here was her punishment,--a fetid, scalding stream
of venom, hurled full and straight at her. Attacks like this were, she
knew, less to Hagané than the mud children throw against the base of a
lofty statue. His mind moved in a stratum far above such contamination.
The nation spoke direct to him. His ear was for his Emperor, the old
gods of his race. "Yes," thought the young wife, "I wished to suffer for
the wrong I have done, but these writhings of a polluted personality can
scarcely be dignified by the name of suffering. It is as if one went
forth bravely to combat a knight in armor and encountered a filthy
swine. One cannot retaliate upon a beast. Nor,"--here, with a nervous
transition to energy, she tore out the offending page,--"nor can I,
being his wife, attempt punishment for this defilement." The sound of
tearing paper soothed her. One by one she snatched the sheets, crumpling
them loosely, and threw each in turn upon the coals, where it twisted,
opened its angles, caught in a little puff of smoke, and burned quickly.
A sound came to the front door. Some one opened it. She gathered the
remaining pages, rolled them hastily into a pithy sphere, and tossed the
whole mass to the grate. A soft explosion of smoke and brightness
followed. Red light fawned upward to the slender gray figure and excited
face. A door of the drawing-room opened, and the draught pulled out from
the grate before her a long, pliant tongue of flame. She felt Hagané
catch her backward. "That is a risk, to burn papers in these great,
ill-constructed chimneys, my little one," he said. Yuki clung to him,
staring up into his face to try to judge whether he had already seen the
offensive article. He had an unusual animation. She even fancied that
his voice shook; but it was not the excitement of anger or disgust. Some
national crisis had come. His next words proved the truth of this
supposition. "I wish you not cremated this day of all days," he smiled,
trying, as she could see, to speak with some lightness. "I need my wife.
An opportunity for service has come, more important than all that has
gone before. Are you ready, my Princess?"
"Lord, I live but to serve you and my land."
"We are in a national crisis, Yuki," said her husband. He began to walk
up and down the long room with an abandonment to agitation which she had
not seen in him before. "A crisis," he repeated. "I shall not explain
the matter of it. You need not have the weight and burden of such
knowledge, but you can aid me greatly." He paused now near a window.
Yuki followed. "I await your pleasure, Lord," she said.
He turned to her the deep magnetic gaze she dreaded, yet, strangely
enough, longed, at times, to provoke. One massive hand leaned on her
shoulder. She had no impulse now to shrink from him. She longed to cower
against the strong defence of him, to hide in his breast, in his
sleeves, as the frightened souls of little dead children hide in the
sleeves of Jizo Sama. As though understanding the unspoken longing he
drew her very near. His words were still impersonal. "Some terrible,
hidden things long suspected have come to light. I do not believe the
wrong past mending. The first step in restitution comes to-day. It is a
secret meeting here, in this house,--a small gathering of statesmen, but
it may mean to us defeat or victory."
"Yes, Lord, I listen. A meeting at this house."
"It must appear to be a casual assembling. No servant, not even the good
Tora, is to be trusted. When I have given you full instructions I return
at once to the palace. Should any unforeseen chance call me back before
the hour of one, I charge you speak no words into my ear, nor seek to
deflect my thoughts from their ominous course. I bear a heavy burden,
Yuki. But the Gods will aid me in my strength."
"I will not honorably accost or fret you, Lord."
"The statesmen,--and here are the written initials of their names,"--he
drew a small scrap of paper from his sleeve--"these seven statesmen,
including Sir Charles Grubb and Mr. Todd, will be ushered as usual into
these drawing-rooms. If no other guests be present, say to these men in
turn, after the first salutations, these exact words: 'I have received
from my lord instructions and the initials of your name.' Can you repeat
precisely?"
Yuki did so.
"That is well. Thirteen words, remember. They make to these seven a sort
of password. Each, as you speak, is to be conducted to my small
office-room to which the wooden doors, and the heavy portiéres also, are
to be drawn."
"I understand, your Highness. But what am I to do if other visitors
come?"
"Ah, little Princess Hagané, it is in such straits that your experience
of foreign social hypocrisy must be made to serve you. It is of
imperative need that you do not leave this room after the hour of the
Rat (1 P. M.). Yet it is also imperative that you receive, equally, all
guests. Those unbidden you must get from the house."
"It is a difficult task, Lord, but it may be done."
"That is a brave wife. Remember that not only from the time of the Rat,
but this hour, too, this very moment, commences your vigilance.
Tale-bearers and enemies may be lurking near. If human ingenuity can
keep a meeting secret this will be kept, but, alas, in a time of great
issues the dragon's teeth sow spies instead of men. Do you understand
all I have said, my Yuki?"
"I understand, your Highness, and am honored to do your august bidding."
Before leaving her he gazed for another moment steadily into her
upraised face. "You are pale to-day as your name, my small snow-wife;
yet your eyes move and glitter with a strange unrest."
"I beseech your Highness concern not your weighty thoughts with my
unimportant outer appearance."
"I must not do so, indeed," murmured her husband. "My chief thought now
must be my Imperial Master. Farewell, little one. I shall arrive at one,
if not before."
Yuki followed him to the door for a last wifely obeisance. The carriage
had been waiting for some moments. After the loud rattling of wheels
came a hollow silence. Yuki stood on the granite doorsteps looking
outward with unseeing eyes. The house-shadow shrank closer to the huge
cube that cast it. Sunshine, like a golden fluid, brimmed up the azure
walls of day. From garden-beds nearby, and from path-borders leading
into hazy distance, blossoms beckoned. She saw only an iridescent blur.
The jinchoké (called by foreigners Daphen Odora) rose in waxen masses of
white or arbutus pink. Azaleas heaped formless hillocks with Tyrian
hues, and the long yellow sprays of yama-buki, to which Gwendolen had so
often been compared, poised waiting for the breeze, or else tossed in
bright indignation at the sudden desertion of a bird. Sweet odors flowed
inward, and whispered her to follow. Still half unconsciously she
stepped down to the gravelled path and began to walk in the garden.
Sometimes, among the beautiful familiar blooms, an alien flower smiled,
a budding rose-tree, or a purple blotch of English violets. The thought
of Pierre's danger came now with less of acid pain. Perhaps this illness
was to save them both--and Hagané. The long hospital days might bring to
the young Frenchman clearer judgment, and perhaps a more forgiving
heart. In convalescence, surely, he would wish to return to his own
land. At such times the spirit is fain to leave the weak body, and speed
on before, to childhood's home. She had reached a cluster of the early
iris. These were Pierre's flowers, the lilies of his France. She stroked
the silken petals as though they were hands. "Pierre, my poor, poor
Pierre," she breathed aloud.
"My Yuki-ko," came as an echo.
Yuki started and looked around in fear. "Little flowers, was it you that
spoke my name?"
"Yuki," came the low voice again. "Do you grieve for Pierre? Poor Pierre
is dead!" He stepped out from behind a cluster of dark cypress-trees.
Yuki bit her lips to keep from screaming. Was this the ghost of the man
she had loved?
"Yuki," said the phantom, with a little chill whine in his voice, "won't
you even speak to me?"
"Is it you, Pierre, or is it indeed your newly fled spirit come to
reproach me?"
Pierre ran his hands through his short, dry hair, then dropped them, as
if the effort had been too great. He took a step forward. "Why, yes, it
is Pierre, after all. I thought I was dead, but I am not. Yes,
sweetheart, you may come to me. It is your Pierre."
Yuki ran to him and caught one dangling hand. It burned her like hot
metal. "You escaped, in spite of your two nurses?" she cried.
Pierre began to whimper. "Yes, yes, Yuki, I got away at last. I had
things to do. Don't send me back there, Yuki! My room has bars, like a
cage."
"How did you get away?"
"Little Jap nurse couldn't resist me. Told me of a back entry. Nice
little nurse in white cap. Jap--cap; cap--Jap. Ha--ha!"
"Come, dear," said Yuki, pulling him gently. "I will not send you back.
You shall go with me to the little Cha no yu rooms at the far end of
this garden. There you can lie down until you feel better. Will you
follow me quickly and in silence along this little path?" She pointed.
"Indeed I will--no need to ask twice," cried the sick man, and began to
giggle like an excited child. "I'd follow you anywhere, Yuki. Are we
running away to be married?"
"Hush, Pierre; if you laugh and speak so loud others will hear you and
send you back to prison. We must be very, very quiet."
"Very quiet," echoed Pierre, solemnly. "Never do for old prince to hear
us, oh, no!" He began to mince along on the tips of his toes, giggling
every now and then at the thought of the trick they were playing.
Yuki sped on before him, like a fawn. At the tea-rooms she sprang to the
narrow, railless veranda, drawing a single shoji panel carefully to one
side. The two small rooms were in order. Sunken into the floor of one
was the copper hibachi, two feet square and now filled with cold ashes,
an article indispensable to tea-rooms of ceremony. The sun pouring
against translucent paper walls flooded the small space with radiance.
"What dear little rooms!" exclaimed Pierre, as he scrambled in, panting.
"She would call them 'cunning little rooms,' that yellow-haired American
girl. What was her name, Yuki? She is not a good friend to poor Pierre;
she could not swear it when I asked her. Are these the little rooms
where we are to live, Yuki, now that we have run away from the old
prince and are married?"
"Yes, dear," said Yuki, soothingly. "Here is where Yuki will care for
you until a betterness comes. See, I shall heap for you these nice
cushions. They are your Japanese pillows. You must lie on them very
still, and keep all these shoji shut close until I can go and get some
medicine for you."
"No!" said Pierre, fractiously. "Medicine no go! Kusuri, ikanai! Too
much kusuri every day at hospital. Nurses all carry spoons in their
belts. I don't need more medicine, Yuki; only for you to kiss me. You
haven't kissed me all day!" He threw himself among the bright cushions
and began tossing his head from side to side.
"I will kiss you when I get back," said Yuki. "Only promise to lie here
very quietly until I can come, and many times I will kiss you."
Pierre raised himself on an elbow and looked dubious. "Kiss me before
you start," he demanded. "You break promises, you know. And this morning
you have such a droll fashion of going suddenly far away, and then
starting back quickly, just like the end of a trombone that one is
playing. You must be a witch, Yuki, to move so swiftly through the air.
Kiss me, or I shall not believe it is really you."
With a heart strained to the limit of endurance Yuki knelt beside him on
the matted floor and pressed her ashen lips to the red coal of his
mouth. Pierre, seizing her with superhuman strength, kissed her again
and again, until the tortured woman felt that she must rend the air in
clamor to some native god or demon who might save her. This passion,
branded on the soul of Prince Hagané's wife, gained a new and terrible
power of defilement. In a spasm of anguish she wrenched herself free,
went backward from him, and seized the shoji's edge to hold herself. "I
will kiss you no more until you take the medicine," she said, with a
steadiness that surprised them both.
He lurched forward, grasping at a swaying sleeve. She eluded him. "If
you are not more controlled I will leave you altogether, and send police
to take you back to Yokohama!" He grovelled at her feet and whimpered.
"I'll be good. Don't send me, Yuki. But if I lie quite still you'll kiss
me many, many times again when you return, won't you?"
Yuki hesitated. He dragged himself half upright. "You shall. I'll kill
you! I'll kill myself, here! You must kiss me. A wife always kisses her
husband. Swear that you will kiss me!" The light of increased madness
glared in his beautiful eyes.
"Yes, I'll kiss you, I swear it," faltered the girl. Pierre laughed
foolishly in his satisfaction. "Then I'll lie still among your pillows,
little wife. Old prince sha'n't find us. Put us in boiling oil, that old
prince. Don't be gone too long, little wife."
Yuki hurried along the intricate paths toward the house. Dry sobs rose
one after another slowly, coming relentlessly upward in her slender
throat with a distention that grew to agony. "I must not stop to think,
I cannot give up now," she panted. "O Kwannon Sama, what am I to do?"
This black hour, like some dark chemical, was turning the memory of all
other grief to light. The one conscious thought which her mind hugged
jealously was Pierre's necessity for medicine. Fortunately, she knew a
little of this, and kept a well-filled chest. His fever was terrific.
Human pity demanded that she first allay this raving torment of the
blood before delivering him to cold officials, or even to Count Ronsard
of the French Legation. Her thoughts and plans in this present
bewilderment could get no further than the fever-draught now to be given
the sick man. With shaking hands she prepared it, and then a second
drink, a powerful sleeping-potion. She got back to him as noiselessly as
she had come. Apparently no one had seen her. Pierre was now in actual
fever-madness. He had thrown coat, waistcoat, and watch in various parts
of the room. The cushions were strewn wide. A corner of one rested in
hibachi ashes. In one of his hands he clasped tightly the half of a long
ivory hairpin.
With the patience of a mother and the ingenuity of a wife she coaxed
him, at length, into swallowing one of the draughts. He did not demand
the promised kisses. He did not know her now, or, rather, the
recognitions came in short flashes, like heat lightning. Sometimes he
took her to be Gwendolen and accused her angrily of connivance with
Hagané and the ambitious Onda family. Again he thought her the German
head physician and raved of his wrongs. He passed rapidly from one
language to the other, essaying at times his broken Japanese. It was
generally in English that he denounced his faithless sweetheart, and the
epithets directed against her caused Yuki's heart to sink with
shame,--not for herself, but for him.
A longer interval of sanity came. He recognized his companion with
piteous little cries and tears of joy. He believed that at last they
were married, and prattled on of the long, happy future, of their little
home in France, until Yuki, having come for the moment to the end of
suffering's capacity, listened with a dreary smile and dull ears.
The second draught, the sleeping-potion, was to be given in half an
hour. Through that interminable time she waited, his head upon her
aching knees, his fevered hands reaching ever for her face, her
shoulder, until lethargy alone saved her from an answering insanity. The
plan was half formed in her dull thoughts to administer this potion,
then, when slumber overcame him, to close the shoji, and leave Pierre to
sleep away the fiercest fever while she could think out a way of getting
him from the garden. But for the political meeting, falling so strangely
on this very day, the situation would have possessed no great peril. It
would have been merely a sick man who, in delirium, had wandered
unknowingly into Hagané's garden. The servants might have found him;
Ronsard have been telephoned for, and Prince Hagané himself asked what
was best to do. This was what might have been; but here was the matter
as it really lay. A Frenchman, and attaché of the Legation,--ill or well
no less a Frenchman--concealed in Hagané's garden, sheltered and
protected by Hagané's young wife! Yuki gave a convulsive shudder. The
sick man gasped, and clutched the air as if he thought himself falling
from a height. Fate smiled a thin, hard smile down into Yuki's eyes.
The girl did not resent Fate's prophetic stare. Already she knew herself
trapped. Her wild thoughts had run since the beginning of eternity in
this same ring of fire. There was time for nothing. The one frail chance
was that Pierre should sleep on through the meeting undiscovered.
Already twelve o'clock had come. From the high land near the samurai
Onda's home, a big bell boomed and quivered out over the city. The
echoes stirred and shifted tranquil layers of the noon. Fear sank down
like soot upon a crouching woman with the sick man on her knees.
Pierre, for some moments past, had gradually ceased the restless tossing
of his head, and was forgetting to utter short, disjointed words. The
fair hair, that had been so stiff and dry, clung now in moist locks
about his temple. His delicate hands ceased twitching and picking at
Yuki's gown, and fell over limply on the floor. Caught loosely in the
right hand lay the broken hairpin. To any Japanese, of any class, this
would be fatal evidence. Under her fairy-like touch he gave a start,
clutched more firmly at the pin she was trying to take, and threw his
hand upward above his heart. Again Fate smiled, and Yuki bowed her head.
Now a soft, regular breathing began. The healing sleep was on the
sufferer. His face was growing young and gentle. Yuki stared down into
it, tearless. Her heart, like some living entity beaten and tortured too
long, had lost the power of sensitive response. There was only a dull,
incessant aching that was becoming, already, an acknowledged part of
her.
He was safe. To-day's crisis, at least of the devouring heat, was over.
He would awake refreshed and clear. As for her, everything had grown so
vague and far-away she cared very little what might happen. The
insensibility of reaction bore her outward on a warm tide. Danger lost
its meaning, and grew but a shadow-play on life. A Frenchman in Hagané's
garden, and a crucial meeting to go on in the house! There was something
piquant, fetching, in the idea. Yuki nodded above it and smiled. Oh, she
was so tired, so tired of everything! A little malicious something was
tapping, tapping, just at the base of her brain. The ache at her heart
benumbed her. A desire, dull and insistent as the pain itself, crept to
her, just to lie upon the matting near poor Pierre and rest. They
belonged together, the weak ones. Chance and disappointment had thrown
them about like toys. What had such as they to do with the God Hagané?
Yes, she had better fail once more, and it would be the last. Let the
grave statesmen come and go, let Hagané seek her! She had nothing to do
but the easiest of all things, just to do nothing, and all this
benumbing misery would be at an end.
She wondered, still smiling, in what way Hagané would kill her. She
fingered curiously the stops of a dozen fearful thoughts, and felt no
fear. Had law permitted him to carry the two swords of his class, the
short one would deal a quick and merciful death. Since he was unarmed
perhaps he would simply let one of the servants slay her, not caring to
soil his hands with such feeble stains.
An influence was coming over her in rhythms, like tepid waves. A
delicious lightness blew upon her brain. She gasped for insensibility as
for music, dumb, perfumed music, drunk in by pores of the flesh. One
small nerve of desire began to tingle. "Oh, let it go on," she cried to
her soul; "have no interference! Let me pass into nothingness by this
heavenly gliding!"
As from a great distance came footsteps and the sound of commonplace
voices. Yuki moaned aloud, and crept an inch nearer her companion.
"She was seen last coming in this direction," said a speaker; "Ii, the
gardener, saw her."
"She is not in the adzuma-ya! Can it be that our gracious lady has gone
for repose to the tea-rooms?"
"Baka!" exclaimed the other whom she now recognized as Tora, the butler;
"is not that great official residence sad enough and lonely, that the
poor child seeks a more desolate place? I pity her."
"Luncheon becomes honorably cold upon the table," murmured the boy,
showing compassion in his own way. "And foreign food when chilled, with
the grease becoming as wax about the edges, is of all sights the most
disgusting."
"Arà," sighed Tora, "she eats little enough even when the food is hot."
"Those many disgraceful things said of our lady in the newspapers,"--the
younger servant was beginning, when Tora stopped him fiercely. "Gossip
not of your betters, boy! You should not read such things. There are no
truths in printed scandals. Come, not that way, she is not in the
tea-rooms. I see a fresh disturbance of the gravel along this path."
To the listener's intense relief they turned sharply to the left. Wide
awake now with an intensity of sensitiveness that made every stirring
leaf an enemy, the young wife crept outward from between two shoji,
closing them with the extreme of care. In full sight, on the veranda,
lay her little foreign handkerchief. No other woman on the place used
lace-bordered handkerchiefs. Tora must have seen and recognized it, and,
in an instant, perhaps, of protection, have led the boy aside. Yuki's
cheek burned. She dared not think Tora's thoughts. This humiliation was
a wound made with a weapon of poor metal, yet she could not, even then,
refuse gratitude for the delicate consideration.
As the two servants came again into the main part of the garden, their
mistress walked quite leisurely a few yards before, stooping now and
then to a flower, or gazing up with smiles to a blossoming
cherry-branch.
"Luncheon is served, your Ladyship," said Tora, gravely, and bowed
before her in the path.
"I will come immediately," returned Yuki. She did not meet his eyes.