"No, your Ladyship, it is Sir Onda alone. He desires audience with my
august master, but I told him I had received orders to usher all
visitors directly to your presence."
"Quite right, Tora," said Yuki, trying to smile in a pleasant,
unconcerned way. "Now say to my father that his Highness, Prince Hagané
is absent, but may return in the space of two hours. I am engaged on
certain duties at my Lord's command. And, Tora--"
"Yes, your Ladyship."
"See that the visitor issues well into the street on leaving, and close
the iron gate."
"Yes, your Ladyship."
The man's words and his bow had been quite as respectful as usual,
perhaps a little more than usual, yet Yuki could not divest herself of
the impression that there lurked a threat of comprehension, of nearness.
"When I have explained all to my prince, we shall, perhaps, send good
Tora away to some country estate. I could not endure his presence if I
knew he harbored such a belief, and equally impossible is it for me to
condescend to self-defence," thought the young wife. In her morbid state
of consciousness, she could almost see, as a clairvoyant, Tora creeping
to the shoji of the tea-rooms, parting the panels with crafty, expectant
fingers; she could hear his gasp of consternation, of not altogether
displeased agitation, as he discovered the beautiful young foreigner
asleep on the floor, as he gazed, grinning, upon the broken hairpin.
Since the butler's knock, and Yuki's few words with him, absolute
silence had prevailed in the little office; the very door seemed holding
its breath. Yuki heard the panel pushed cautiously to one side, and knew
that her husband listened. She went to her former place by the window.
Now the bees outside, and the buzz of human voices within, recommenced.
Into the latter crept vivacious exclamation. The clink of glasses arose,
and now the sharp detonation of a match; more than once a smothered
laugh was heard. Yuki sat by the window in apparent calm; her agony of
suspense would soon be over. Those were the sounds that come at the end
of an important conference, not in the midst of it. She clenched her
little hands together within gray sleeves, and faced the office-door, to
be in readiness with her smile when the grave procession should emerge.
Another ten minutes elapsed, and another; the garden shadows gained
visibly in length. Like a little image of propriety, she sat, and, for
all her preparation, a small shiver passed along her frame as the
office-door at last went flying aside.
So set had been her eyes, her thoughts, upon this door, that she had not
heard the sound of stealthy footsteps without or the soft brushing aside
of clustered shrubs. Pierre stood, bareheaded, under the weeping cherry.
The drooping branches, each set along its entire length in single pink
amethysts of bloom, enclosed him as in a fountain. The lower part to his
knees was hidden in waves of yama-buki. The wind, now rising, concealed
with tossing sprays his trembling nook.
First the doors of the office, then the thick portiéres had been flung
aside by Prince Hagané. The notable company filed in, the Japanese not
forgetting the slight, ceremonial bow to Hagané, who stood smiling to
let them pass. The last to emerge was Minister Todd. He bore in his hand
a paper folded and sealed. Hagané kept close behind him. As the rest of
the company came forward, making adieux to the flushed and dignified
little hostess, these two stood apart, talking in low tones. Todd now
and again tapped the paper by way of emphasis.
Pierre, crouching among the sprays of yama-buki, saw and heard it all.
His fever and madness were, for the moment, things that had not been.
The price he would later pay for this immunity did not trouble him now.
He seemed all mind and spirit and keen intelligence, with no encumbering
body. Nothing was impossible. He would scarcely have been surprised had
he begun to drift toward that inner room without effort, as one
sometimes drifts in dreams, and to enter unperceived by any one but
Yuki. There she stood, his sweetheart, his promised bride, kept from him
by that great monster who towered near and kept talking to the thin
American, and kept tapping a paper that bore a great seal, red like
blood. It should be blood, Pierre thought, with a slight rise in his
excitement,--the blood of that old toad who had cheated him of this
flower. But did a toad have blood at all? Well, there was a way to find
out! When the American left he would steal in, a new St. George pursuing
an uglier dragon. He felt now feverishly in his pockets for a knife, a
pistol. He remembered now that the pistol, a pretty toy of silver and
pearl given him by a Parisian actress, had been left at the French
Legation. A moment after, reason again grasped him. He smiled bitterly,
calling himself a child, a fool. Nothing could be worse for France or
Yuki either than the death of Hagané at his hands. Some other way must
be found. The Japanese themselves had a saying, "If you hate a man, let
him live." Yes, let the old man live. Yuki's true lover could yet win
her, undrenched in any blood. That paper now,--if he could secure such a
paper--Hagané would give any price for such a paper!
All the guests had gone but Mr. Todd. He smiled down at Yuki and said,
"Well, little girl, I guess Uncle Sam has done your country a good
turn."
"Madame la Princesse is not burdened by me with state secrets, your
Excellency," interposed Hagané, with more than his wonted haste.
"I understand. I sha'n't say more," laughed the other. "What was it,
Yuki, that you tried to tell us just before the meeting?"
Yuki now could afford to smile and look demure; her danger was over. The
great strong rock of Hagané's presence was near. "The need is past now,
I thank you, Mr. Todd," she said.
"Good-bye, both of you. You're looking mighty young and happy, Prince,
if there are hard struggles in the nation!"
He was gone. Yuki, glancing upward to her husband, was surprised and
then herself embarrassed to note signs of discomfiture on that bronze
countenance. Was it possible that Todd's light words could move him?
Yuki went closer still. She could not meet his eyes, but, oh, the
restfulness, the relief in his splendid nearness! Her explanation rushed
to her lips and hung there. After the manner of good wives, she must
first show interest in what was uppermost in his thoughts, and afterward
could gently incline him to her own desire.
"Is that the very wonderful paper just signed, Lord?" she asked, putting
up a hand.
Hagané glanced at the document, then bent to his wife the look she
dreaded, yet longed for. Under it she stirred and quivered. "You are a
white flower," said Hagané. "Do you really care to know?"
"I--I--wish not to be disrespectfully inquisitive," stammered Yuki,
"only, if the importance is so great, is there not danger to your august
person in bearing it about?"
Again Hagané smiled. His young wife hung her crimsoning face. He put out
an arm and caught her to him. "Is that your fear--you thing of snow and
plum-blossom? Ah, Yuki--Yuki--you are my wife. When this time of stress
and peril is at an end, I shall try to teach you something of a brighter
hue than duty."
Pierre, high on his knees among the yama-buki, saw and heard it all.
"If there be danger, you must not bear it! The risk is terrible. Think,
Lord, how our country needs you!" Her apprehension lifted her a little
from self-consciousness. Hagané's answer was calm, steady, with a thrill
in it. "Then who is to bear it, small sweet wife, if I should put it
down? But, no, there must be no thought of thee and me--not yet. I
belong to the land. In all haste must I take the paper to our Imperial
Lord. Every moment means a danger. Ring instantly for the carriage,--I
must go!"
"The single horse coupé is now being repaired," said Yuki, in a troubled
tone, "and, more unfortunate, one of the pair of carriage-horses is ill;
but I can order your kuruma with two runners."
"Unfortunate," echoed Hagané, in a lower tone, "yet such small
annoyances beset the way of all. Ring for my stoutest kuruma, Yuki, and
have three runners. They will bear me as swiftly as any horse."
"Lord," faltered Yuki, not moving from him, "you assured me that after
the meeting I should have speech with you. The matter is indeed of
importance, perhaps of great danger."
"Well, I will listen, child, if you can be brief. But first touch the
bell and give my order."
Yuki went across the room from him. He, frowning slightly at the delay,
stood as he had been standing, his back squarely to the office-door, his
left shoulder toward the opened French window. Yuki, not ten yards
before him, had reached the wall where the electric button was set. She
raised a slim hand to it, but before she could press it, a certain
flicker as of an animated shadow moving in the room behind Hagané drew
her curious and anxious glance. The outstretched arm fell, paralyzed.
She attempted to speak, to cry aloud, but her throat had turned to cork.
Pierre Le Beau was creeping into the room like a thief, a cat, skirting
the wall in the direction of the office-door. He caught her frozen stare
of terror, and made a defiant gesture, commanding silence.
Hagané raised his head. The delay puzzled him. He had been examining
again the crimson seal. The look on his wife's face, come with such
terrific suddenness, sent something almost like fear through his heart.
He thrust the paper in his breast, and turned to scan the room. Pierre
was in the safe shelter of the columnar, massed portiére.
Yuki clawed and mowed her way through a jungle of fire toward her lord.
"Master, master!" she whispered hoarsely. She could say no more, and
fell prone on her knees before him, reaching upward for his grasp.
"What ails you, child? In the name of Shaka, what has hurt you?" He bent
to raise her, but she grovelled, eluding his hands.
"I am ill, very ill; let us go quickly to our chamber," she managed to
choke out. Now she fluttered backward, luring him, like a wounded bird,
her long, gray sleeves trailing after.
"In Shaka's name!" he cried again, "I cannot understand the suddenness."
Pierre now left the portiére, and stole softly toward the bent back of
the prince. Yuki thought him mad, with a new strength and cunning of
murderous intent. She sprang up to her feet, hurling all her slight
weight against Hagané with such force that he swerved. With a movement
like light she had passed him, set her back to his, and was facing
Pierre. "Here--here--kill me--not him--" she panted. "I am ready; I do
not fear. See how white my breast and soft! Oh, blood will look so
pretty here,--like the red seal!" She tore aside the dove-gray folds of
her gown.
Hagané, wheeling to them, half drew the paper from his breast. The
Frenchman saw, and as Hagané turned, lowered his head so that his face
might still be hidden, reached out a hand, and, with one demon-directed
dart of the nervous fingers had touched, had clutched, had wrenched away
the long white screed of fate that bore a single drop of blood.
For one awful crash of time, the solid earth split beneath the
statesman's feet. Pierre had gone through the low window like a breeze,
and his flying track through the shrubs stirred them scarcely more.
Hagané staggered as his mind confirmed this strange, annihilating loss.
A moment more and he was again calm master of his fate. He took Yuki by
a shoulder, held her from him, and scorching her eyes with the scorn of
his, said steadily, "So this is what ailed you, Princess Hagané! Why did
you give no warning? Tell me the name of the thief."
Yuki blinked and moved her head backward and forward through the air.
She put up a hand to her throat of cork, and smoothed it.
"Answer me, Yuki, who was that man?"
She did not answer. Suddenly she sagged to his feet, wrapping her long
gray sleeves about his ankles. "Oh, Master, do not kill him! He is a
very sick person, yes! I will get the paper for you, Lord. I will get it
for you, I will get it!" she chattered in English. Why, at this central
crisis of her life, she should have spoken English to a Japanese was
something that she never understood.
Hagané looked down upon her silently. He could not move for the coils
around his feet. He saw clearly that she had reasons for detaining him,
and his mind went naturally to the one solution. "This was a lover she
protected." Yet he was calm, his grave dignity unassailable. His lips,
his chin, his down-bent lids were of metal; only at the temples, veins
sprang and stood like branches of dull red coral.
"I shall not ask again, Yuki; will you tell me the name of the man who
has gone?"
Yuki stared up at him through flickering lids. The air snapped into
little particles of jet and tinsel. Things were getting the queer look.
She feared that she was going to laugh. "Was there a man, Lord?" she
questioned.
"Gods!" said Hagané. His nostrils blew in and out, and still his voice
was even and kind, "Yuki-ko, your country, the life of our Emperor, may
be menaced by this theft. Can any bodily passion exonerate this ultimate
crime?"
A great spasm seized the crouching woman. "Lord, have mercy on my weak
heart; but I can get the paper--I alone can get it; I will buy it for
you with my life!"
"Bah--your life! We do not offer carrion to the Gods. Unloose my
feet,--poor soiled thing. Do not touch me!"
Yuki hid her face against his feet. Her arms coiled like steel bands.
Slowly and deliberately he knelt and untwined, as he might the tendrils
of a vine he did not wish to bruise, her clinging arms, the long gray
sleeves. There was no roughness in any movement except at the instant
when he snapped the obi-domé, intending to use it to bind her wrists.
She felt his intention, and waited craftily until he had almost drawn
the first noose, then slipping her arms away, encircled again his
patient feet, babbling, "Let me get it. He was ill; he did not know.
Harm him not. I will get the paper." In her distracted thought some
other self, anterior to this, seemed to be at a great distance, running
side by side with Pierre, and jerking out to him through failing breath:
"I hold Hagané back, but it cannot last very long. Do not harm him,--I
will do what you wish, Pierre, I will be what you wish; already Hagané
casts me off, but do not harm him. Quick, quick, poor mad boy, my
strength fails! Hagané is coming--coming--"
His first failure brought no impatience to the statesman. With more
elaborate care he again knotted the obi-domé and drew it. He succeeded
now in securing the fluttering hands. His one sign of agitation was
deep, heavy breathing. As he raised his head from the task, on the white
balls of his eyes tiny crimson threads broke through. Yuki stared
upward, dazed, into his face. "Look not on me," he said, as he prepared
to rise. "Put your false face to the earth. If I thought a shiver of
obedience, of loyalty were left in your cringing soul, I would command
you to stay here quietly--and seek not to follow, and so make more open
this disgrace. Hide your eyes, I say! Sooner would I caress a grave-worm
than thee!" He pushed her down with some violence, rose, and hurried to
the rear of the house. Yuki turned her face sidewise to follow him. "A
kuruma," she heard him call, "and three swift runners! Ten yen each to
the men if they start within the moment!"
He stood bareheaded in the sunshine, his watch opened in his hands. As
if by invocation, the kuruma and the grinning coolies appeared. Yuki
crawled a few inches, and strained her dry throat outward, listening for
the address he was to give. No effort had been needed for hearing. His
voice had the ring, the resonance of a deep bell, as he said aloud, "To
the French Legation!"
* * * * *
Yuki, when she was sure that the whole place had fallen quiet, slowly
lifted herself to a sitting posture on the foreign carpet, in the very
centre of a huge bunch of vermilion cabbage roses. She gazed with
intense scrutiny at one of these unearthly blossoms. It reminded her of
something, a very terrible something, which had happened to her long
ago. She tried to put a hand out and trace the irregular circle, but
something held her hands together. She stared now at the hands, at the
twisted obi-domé. Its golden clasps, now broken, hung down and clinked
together like the toys on a lady's chatelaine. The sight recalled her to
the present, and solved the suggested mystery of the harsh red rose. It
was of sealing-wax the flowers had reminded her,--of a great crimson
seal, of enamelled paper.
"But I kept him back quite a little while," she said aloud, and nodded
in satisfaction. "Less danger will come to both because I held Hagané
back. How could he know it was Pierre? How could he think so quickly to
go to the French Legation? Will Pierre be really there? Oh, he is a
terrible man, that great Hagané! Even the voices of the air speak to
him! He called me 'carrion,' rather would he fondle a grave-worm than
little Yuki! Ah, his eyes said not so this morning, no, not this
morning, my great Lord Hagané."
She moved her hands restlessly in their bonds. "Poor little hands," she
murmured. "He tried to bind you. Shall I set you free?" She put her ear
down against them. "Oh, yes, indeed I can release you," she smiled as if
the hands had answered. "The obi-domé is soft and insecurely tied. Even
a great prince like Hagané cannot tie a knot that a woman's fingers
cannot unfasten!" With a few deft turns of the wrist she loosed the
cord, letting it slip to the floor.
For an instant she stared at the bright red marks on her wrists, then
put both hands upward to smooth the loops of her hair. She seemed a
little surprised to encounter such disarray, and began thoughtfully to
coil up, foreign fashion, the blue-black hair which fell in streams
along her shoulders. With a little shiver she drew her kimono together
at the throat. "Why did Pierre wake so soon?" she whimpered. "He came
and took something from Hagané. He did not understand his own crime,
being so very ill. No, he could not have willingly slain Yuki, had he
understood. Hagané said that my country, my Emperor, may be harmed
through Pierre. I must get the paper back at once, at once! Why am I
waiting? Oh, I must go swiftly, as they went!"
With spasmodic motions she lifted her trembling body upward. The
gorgeous obi, stiff with silver pine-boughs and robbed now of the
indispensable obi-domé, slipped down about her in coils, as of a huge
wooden shaving. She grasped instinctively at the folds. Her eyes
continued to search restlessly the corners of space.
"Oh, Pierre, naughty, naughty Pierre!" she went on whispering. "You
promised to lie still. You gave your word to Yuki when she helped you.
Now they may both need to die,--poor Pierre and little Yuki, too. They
may die with the cherry-blossoms all dressed up for them to see! If only
my poor head would stop moving, and I could think what I must do!"
She put one icy hand against her temple. With the other she tried to
keep the falling robes from catching on her feet. Tottering and
stumbling, she reached the hall-way. A frightened servant-woman knelt
near the door. "Mistress, Mistress, in Amida's name, tell me what
terrible thing is here!"
Yuki half closed her lids and peered forward, trying to recognize the
speaker. "Oh, Iné, is that you? Yes, a terrible thing, two terrible
things! My hair has fallen and my obi slips away. Arrange me quickly,
Iné, quickly, and call a swift kuruma like Prince Hagané's. I must go
somewhere now."
"Kashikomarimasu" (I hear and will obey), faltered the woman, but
instead of advancing, crouched backward. She was afraid of the strange
light in her mistress's eyes.
"Quick, I say! Did you not hear me?" cried Yuki, angrily, and clapped
both hands together with a sharp sound. The obi fell, surrounding her in
one great shimmering wheel. The terror in Iné's face brought the young
wife to her senses. "It really is nothing, Iné," she said, trying hard
to smile. "I had a little fall there in the drawing-room, and am dazed.
Do not concern yourself or speak to the other servants. Go now at once
and bring my long black adzuma-coat, another obi-domé and some foreign
hair-pins. I have not the time to be entirely redressed. I will await
your coming here."
Yuki stood at the foot of the steps. The servant sped upward. From the
far end of the hall came Tora. The prearranged impassivity of his face
was noticeable even to one in Yuki's excited state. "Well, Tora!" she
said haughtily.
"Did you not wish me, your Ladyship?" asked the man, bowing in
exaggerated deference. Yuki felt a hot wave pass along her neck and
vanish against the pallor of her cheeks.
"I did not," she answered steadily. "But since you are here, I wish you
to order my kuruma with two swift runners."
"Yes, your Ladyship." He did not move.
"You heard my order?"
"Your Highness," said the man, turning pale as he spoke, "I am only a
servant, but I once lost by death a daughter of your age. There is
something I would like to say."
Yuki bit her lip; a struggle went on within her. The dip of the scales
came through Iné, who now hurried down the stairs.
"When I return, Tora," said the young princess; "I am sure you mean to
be kind and not presuming. I will speak to you when I return."
Tora shook his head as he turned away. As Yuki's kuruma rattled from the
gate, he went back musingly alone toward the Cha no yu rooms.