In his favorite small smoking-room at the French Legation, crammed with
motley Japanese and Gallic bric-a-brac, Count Ronsard fumbled nervously
with his nether-lip.
"You sent for me, your Excellency?" said the secretary Mouquin, at the
door.
"Allons! Entrez! It is the devil!--what our English cousins call 'the
beastly bore.' But for his mother, the Princess Olga, I would wash my
hands entirely!"
He went through the gesture, revolving one fat pudding of a fist about
the other, and closing with an outward fling of both, and a shrug that
made his body quake. "No news at all, Mouquin?"
"Nothing decisive, your Excellency. A mere hint, a hushed rumor, that Le
Beau was last traced to the neighborhood of Prince Hagané's official
residence."
"Sacrebleu! You should have probed."
"I asked a few questions guardedly. Your Excellency, one hesitates to
put a match to a powder-train."
"Quite true, Mouquin. And when did the hushed rumor have it that he was
seen,--what hour?"
"Before noon,--not long, in fact, after his mysterious escape from the
nurses."
Ronsard's head dropped forward an inch. A sickly glow drove the usual
gray pallor from his face.
"Doubtless," ventured the secretary, "Monsieur Le Beau will find his way
sooner or later--to you!"
"Certainement! Certainement!" cried the other, finding relief in
sarcasm. "He will come weeping to the arms of Mother France. Bah! I
would that Mother France could greet him with the toes of these boots!"
He thrust forward pointed patent-leather tips, and stared at them, as if
calculating the punishment they might inflict.
Mouquin, not being asked to find a seat, still stood by the door. The
very air of the room held in solution, with its blue smoke, the dampness
of foreboding. The first secretary's voice sounded thin.
"The doctors think this mad exposure means his certain death, your
Excellency."
"Death! H'm! He'll take good care to stay alive till we're all involved.
It's too late for him to die."
The other raised his brows but made no answer.
"Have an absinthe, Mouquin?"
Without noticing that Mouquin shook his head Ronsard leaned over heavily
and poured a little of the liquid into a glass, filling it up with
water. Without drinking, he stared as if he saw a vision in its milky
depths.
"Just a chance--the air is thick with plots--Pierre might be
feigning--the Princess Hagané--who knows?--perhaps connives,
betrays--Pshaw!" Count Ronsard dreamed under his breath.
"No further orders, your Excellency?" asked the younger man, patiently,
his hand on the door.
"No--yes! Bring me the first news of that wandering lunatic--and avoid
the police!"
The words fell before a fury of feet that bowled down the outer
corridor. The door burst open, nearly flinging Mouquin to the floor.
Pierre Le Beau reeled in, crimson, panting, wild-eyed, hatless, and
waved at the startled minister a large paper sealed with a red seal,
round and clear as a Japanese sun. Ronsard in the millionth part of an
instant recalled himself. He sat erect, but his eye gleamed beady and
keen as a rat's. He was holding back with impartial judgment a riotous
flush of hope. But Mouquin, as if hypnotized, locked the door and backed
up against it. Pierre's eyes caught the cloudy green of the absinthe,
still standing in the minister's glass. He tottered toward it, tried to
speak, but merely pointed in jerks with his free hand. Ronsard silently
held out the glass and motioned to an empty chair. Pierre drained the
drug standing, then fell rather than sat. A sweat sprang suddenly to his
skin. The fair hair plastered itself in little brown sickles on his
white forehead.
"What is it, Pierre?"
Ronsard's eyes had not left the document half crumpled in Pierre's fist.
His voice had a bracing echo. A returning wave of unhealthy strength
warned Pierre to action.
"Yes!" he cried, swaying across the table, holding out the paper and
shaking it up and down. "I've done it! What you wanted! Sold my honor to
Hell for it! Quick! Quick! America! The war!"
Pierre's head, not yet balanced by the stealthy drug, reeled, and the
large envelope dropped on the table. Ronsard recognized the great
Cabinet seal. With a wolfish twitching at the corners of the mouth,
which his utmost effort could not control, he slowly pushed his hand
across the polished mahogany. Then two currents of thought met, and he
paused. The fretfulness, the lax instability of flesh, were gone. He sat
stiff, a compact mass, in his broad chair. One could see that behind the
ample jowl stretched a great square bone.
"First, what is it, Pierre?" he repeated coldly.
Pierre rocked in his seat. "A state paper--of utmost import--signed by
Grubb and Todd and all the Japanese!--It means alliance!--I saw them all
as I crouched in the garden. Read it, quick! The wax is hardly set."
Ronsard's mouth watered, but his brain grew firm. "Wonderful! Past
belief!" he said. "But tell me how did Monsieur--obtain possession?" He
was measuring the depth of Pierre's insanity, gazing desperately for
signs of returning judgment. "Is it safe for _me_?" he continued
quietly.
"Good God, man!" cried Pierre. "Here I win you, with my life, perhaps,
the very key to this war--to history for all time--and you prate about
safety! Is war safe? Is anything safe?"
Ronsard's voice came low and stinging. "Tell me! Where--and how--did you
get it?"
Pierre was too over-wrought to lie, even had he dared. He swaggered. He
stretched forth a hand and snatched the paper defiantly. "I took
it--yes, from the body of Prince Hagané! Glorious, wasn't it? Mon Dieu!
Think of it! In his official residence!"
"It means the Cross of the Legion of Honor," said Mouquin, weakly,
against the door.
"Hagané!" Ronsard had exclaimed in spite of himself. He knew it meant
the utmost of something, but which--glory or dishonor? Either was
incredible. "Yes, yes, Pierre," he said soothingly, as to a child;
"Hagané's body--I understand. But why--didn't--Hagané stop you?"
"Why? It is droll--he could not! He was tied, tangled. His feet were
tangled--yes, tightly entangled! He was too busy with that to follow."
Pierre's laugh turned Ronsard sick.
"What or _who_ entangled him, Pierre?"
"You keep her name out of this, damn you!"
Ronsard's pendent underlip went gray to the root. "Then she will die,
too." He breathed it to himself.
Whether Pierre heard or not, his tense attitude relaxed. He cowered back
in his chair. Mouquin, thinking he had fainted, ran forward.
"No! No more absinthe! No medicine! Coffee! For God's sake, coffee! That
may keep me up."
A new thought flashed to Ronsard. "Mouquin! Ring, and yourself receive
the coffee--just outside the door."
His words rang quick and clear. "We must think, now, like gods or demons
for swiftness," he went on to Pierre. "Hagané will be with us at once!
How did you keep ahead? You must deny, _deny_! Don't you see, it
compromises France?"
Pierre raised his eyes sleepily. "Hagané--come? No, Excellency! he did
not see--"
"Madame will tell him, fool."
"Never! She will die first."
"Ah, allow me, then, to congratulate you," Ronsard permitted himself to
sneer. Then swiftly, "You have been seen! The servants! The police--"
"Your Excellency," chattered Mouquin, darting a ghastly face through the
door, "Prince Hagané is announced. He is coming down the hall--he is
_here_!"
"I thought I heard footsteps. Hold him, just a moment." Ronsard rose to
his feet. With a low whisper that stung with the lash of a knout he bent
to Pierre. "Stand, you fool! And if you have never known what it is to
be a man, try the feeling now! Hide the paper in your breast. There!
Smile, though your face crack!"
Pierre thrust the document into his coat and rose to greet Hagané, who
entered calm, dignified, and stately, not a fold out of place, nor a
hair ruffled. If any characteristic were intensified it was in
deliberate tardiness of advance, an undue rigidity of self-restraint. He
bowed deeply to Count Ronsard, ignoring, for the moment, the presence of
the younger men.
"Your Excellency will be surprised, perhaps annoyed, at this
unceremonious call. It concerns a personal matter which could not be
delayed. There is nothing official, you understand. It lies between
Monsieur Le Beau and myself." He turned now to Pierre with the slightest
inclination of the head, and then bowed more deferentially to the
flaccid Mouquin by the wall.
"Anything that brings your Highness is an honor," returned Ronsard,
himself placing a chair for the great man.
Hagané seated himself with the same painstaking calm. As he did not
speak, his host continued, with obvious effort at composure, "What does
slightly surprise me, your Highness,--if you will allow me to say
it,--is--er--your seeming so certain of finding Monsieur Le Beau here,
when your efficient police have been searching--"
"Le Beau has been here for some time," put in Mouquin, who was so
nervous that he should have been elsewhere.
Ronsard winced. A sombre fire flickered in Hagané's eyes. "And am I to
infer that the efficient police, of whom his Excellency so kindly
speaks, have failed to keep in touch with Monsieur's Legation?"
The two young men crossed glances of dismay. Quickly Hagané turned his
eyes to Pierre's flushed face. Each moist curl burned it like a scar.
"And similarly, I suppose, I am mistaken in thinking that Monsieur Le
Beau has but just arrived in great haste."
Before an answer could be found, footsteps and a timid knock made
interruption. Mouquin craned his neck around to the aperture of the
door, altering but slightly the position of his body.
"A servant says, Excellency, that the American minister, Mr. Todd,
telephones from his Legation that he must see you immediately."
"Go, Mouquin, and stop him," said Ronsard, glibly. "Say I am out. But if
he is already started wait for him at the door, and be careful to usher
him into the small drawing-room, and keep him there till I come.
Conciliate him. Your conversation, you understand, is to be on the high
C of flippancy."
In the short interval Pierre had regained self-control. "Lord Hagané, in
what way can I serve you?" He made a great effort to be nonchalant.
Hagané leaned slightly toward Ronsard. "Perhaps you have heard,
Excellency, that a few moments since, Monsieur Le Beau picked up, in my
humble home, quite by accident, a private letter that I had carelessly
let fall."
"A private letter!" Ronsard turned with well-feigned astonishment to his
subordinate. "Oh, no! Monsieur Le Beau is the soul of honor!"
Pierre could not think how to weigh the naturalness of indignation
against a gentlemanly magnanimity. "The prince is mistaken," he said
weakly. "It must have been another man."
Without a flicker of anger or impatience Hagané, still facing the count,
inquired, "Does the young man act with your authority?"
"Mon Dieu, your Highness! No. Monsieur Le Beau has a certain official
connection--but in such a _private_ matter"--Spread hands and a shrug
completed the thought.
"Were you not at my villa this morning?" Hagané had turned suddenly to
Pierre.
What could the Frenchman say? "No," came the pliant lie.
"Come now, Prince Hagané!" began Ronsard, genially. "You see it's all a
mistake. Forgive the boy his embarrassment. He is ill. To accuse him of
purloining a private letter! Mother of God! In France it means a duel--"
"Not purloining, your Excellency," corrected Hagané. "Taking by
accident,--quite by accident. That is different. If our young friend was
suffering from delirium he may have forgotten. Ask him to feel in his
pocket."
"It's a damnable lie, hatched for some personal reason," said Pierre.
Hagané slowly rose. It was as if bronze moved. Ronsard instinctively
imitated him, watching closely. He was convinced, now, that Hagané knew;
but could not guess his next move.
"My time is valuable to-day," said the Japanese, drawling a little. "I
must speak with Monsieur Le Beau alone."
Blank silence fell on the group. Hagané looked from one to the other, a
slight shade of contempt growing in his eyes. "Is Monsieur Le Beau
afraid?" he asked politely. "I assure you, gentlemen, I am unarmed. Even
so, he might feel safer with a knife, a pistol. I regret that mine is at
home, or I would be pleased to lend it. Perhaps one of these gentlemen
can accommodate you."
Pierre's face was growing white in a circle about his mouth. He stepped
to Ronsard's desk, took out a revolver, a pearl and silver toy, and
slammed it on the table between himself and Hagané.
"Go, your Excellency!" he said, with eyes on Ronsard. "I, too, desire
private speech with him."
"Pierre! Pierre! remember France," cried Count Ronsard.
Hagané bowed to the speaker.
As Ronsard hesitated at the door, Mouquin pushed it open cautiously and
brought in the coffee. "Not yet, Excellency," he said. Hagané waved his
refusal of a proffered cup. Pierre poured himself three cups in
succession, draining quickly each scalding draught.
Hagané bowed again to Ronsard. "Now," he said simply.
"Get out, Mouquin. Remember, Prince, the boy is ill."
"I can take care of myself," Pierre said, his boyish head thrown back.
Left alone the two men faced each other. Pierre leaned with one delicate
hand on the table. Nervously exalted and chafed by silence he hurled
words at his sombre opponent.
"If your time is really valuable you waste it, my Lord. I advise you to
inquire elsewhere."
"Let us be seated," said Hagané, with a pleasant smile. Pierre, as at a
physical thrust, went backward into a chair. "Now, shall we smoke?"
continued the other, his tone deepening in friendliness. Its suavity had
the effect of smothering. Pierre fought it off with a rude weapon.
"Certainly, your Highness. Cigarettes or opium?"
"Ah! Do you keep the latter luxury?" inquired the prince, with interest.
"Have Frenchmen adopted this--vice--also?"
"I meant for you only," explained Pierre, foolishly.
"You must be a new-comer, unaware that I, myself, had the drug excluded
from Japan. You Christian Europeans had already forced it on China."
Pierre did not look up or try to answer. He felt his every move a false
one. The steadying of the coffee did not come fast enough. He was in a
hurry to get in some telling thrust. He must defend himself and Yuki.
Count Ronsard should, after all, acknowledge him a man. The smooth, cool
tones of the other now flowed like a refreshing liquid through his
brain.
"Am I right in thinking this your first visit to Japan, Monsieur?"
Pierre, half dazed, answered, with instinctive politeness, "My first,
yes. But I have for years been interested."
"May I venture to ask what special phase of our civilization has been
honored with your interest?"
Pierre's demon nudged him. "It's woman," he said, with a short, ugly
laugh.
Hagané's smile grew almost fatherly. "In that you are no exception to
the majority of your countrymen, Monsieur."
"To be accurate I should have said--_a_ woman."
The nobleman took a long whiff at his cigarette before remarking
thoughtfully, "It is an unending source of wonder to our students,
Monsieur, that you of the West, even your greatest thinkers, take women
so seriously. Now with us, apart from the one function of becoming the
mothers of our sons, they are to men as playthings to children,--as
flowers, or bright-colored birds."
"Am I to infer, then, that to your Highness one woman would be about as
desirable as another?"
"Ah, Monsieur! You are caustic. Not quite that, I protest. There is
discrimination, even in playthings. And we must always take into account
the effect of physique,--and character,--upon possible sons."
At repetition of this sickening thought Pierre's rage gave a convulsive
bound. The veins in his temples burned the skin. His delicate hands
clenched themselves into steel. He grasped the pistol, brandished it
wildly, and putting his face close to Hagané hissed, "Leave out the name
of Yuki, and your satyr's thoughts of her, if you expect to live!"
The prince's raised hand concealed an expression of amusement. Sadness,
not altogether convincing, took its place. Pierre sank back to his chair
sulkily, ashamed of his violence.
Hagané's eyes lowered themselves, as if in embarrassment, to the table.
He toyed with the brittle stem of a wine-glass. "It is unfortunate you
are so excitable. For it was just about--Yuki--no, never mind the
pistol--that I was thinking to take you into my confidence."
Le Beau stared. The prince continued thoughtfully: "You have been her
friend--"
"I _am_ her friend!"
"Exactly. I thought you ought to be told. After to-day there will
be--_no_ Princess Hagané. She leaves my roof and must publicly
relinquish my name."
The prince spoke blandly. Pierre's eyes seemed to protrude. The shock of
this menace counteracted the coffee. "She is innocent--" He corrected
himself. "Why? What has she done?"
Hagané smiled pleasantly. "Her innocence, as you call it, is too
dangerous. My duties, you know. She distracts me, tires me. A mere
child!"
"You never cared for her. You took her from me to show your hellish
power. Now you will cast her out, dishonor her--relentlessly, for a new
whim!"
"Monsieur should know best why I cannot trust her."
A wild thought leaped like flame about Pierre's distorted fancy. "Can
you mean that she goes utterly free--free to be happy--back to her
father's home?"
Hagané lowered his eyes. When he spoke his tone was conciliatory, even
regretful.
"Onda, being my kerai, will scarcely consent to receive her."
"Monsters! both of you. I see--I might have known. But the Todds, thank
God, are her friends!"
Hagané half lifted heavy lids. "Minister Todd,--who has signed that
stolen paper,--may--er--hesitate."
"Mother of Christ! What will you have me think? What is to be her fate?
Some foul black thought still bubbles behind those reptile eyes of
yours! Out with it! Is she to be cast forth helpless, friendless, at the
mercy of the first charitable stranger--"
Hagané lifted a hand. "Now we approach reason though by a somewhat
frenzied path. You are the succoring knight. Merely return to me, with
unbroken seal, the document I saw you take, and for reward I ask you to
receive free, and untrammelled, the person of the present Princess
Hagané."
Suspicion drove back into shadow a host of eager thoughts. After one
incredulous look Pierre burst into a clamor of mirthless laughter. "So
it is a bribe! What fools you must truly think all foreigners. Give the
princess to me bodily? This is melodrama. Even had I the paper and
should return it--I still deny, damn you!--you would take powerful
precaution that she did not come."
"Do you so greatly distrust your powers of attraction?"
"No, nor her love, God bless her! But I distrust you and your Oriental
subtleties. She would come--she loves me--but you would not let her.
What guarantee can you offer?"
Hagané looked pained. "No one has ever doubted my word. But if you need
it, take Japan's most sacred oath--by the life of our Emperor! Prevent
her? Oh, no. I shall urge--compel."
Pierre struggled to preserve his balance. "Even in this barbaric
country--have even--_you_--such power? Can you not be called to some
account?"
"I regret the necessity of being vulgar," said Hagané, in a
composed voice, "but I see I must explain. It is my--what you call
position--my--er--rank. It might not be possible to every Japanese,
Monsieur. But as things are, the woman is as much mine as a French
spaniel would be yours. Again I assure you, by the life of my Emperor,
she will come. Again I ask, Do you accept my bargain?"
Pierre whispered to himself Count Ronsard's words, "Remember France!" He
tried to keep his reason, but the wave of hope had surged high. He saw
as in a vision Yuki, disgraced, rejected, wandering alone through the
wind-swept streets. He saw her face sheltered upon his arm,--that little
face so pure, so delicate, so well-beloved. Her desolation touched him
for a moment with an unselfish grief. "She is proud--she is brave!" he
cried aloud. "Even at your orders will she come?"
"I think so, Monsieur. She might possibly consider it a last chance to
serve the country she has wronged."
"Yes, and she might prefer to die."
Hagané sent a curious, cold look to search the young man's thought. "Do
Christians dare--to die?"
The acid scorn bit deep. "Yes," raved Pierre. "And they dare to live,
and, sometimes, they dare to slay! I do not consent, remember. I believe
it yet to be a trick, a mockery. If I find it so, I swear in the name of
that Christian God whom you blaspheme--if I find that you are holding
out the one bribe that you know I would sell my soul to the devil
for--thinking to gloat over the new deviltry of snatching it
away--I'll--I'll--" He broke off, mouthing for words that would not
come.
His hand unconsciously fingered the cold surface of the pistol. Again
Hagané looked bored, and made a gesture of distaste.
"Don't sneer like that, you toad of hell!" shrieked his companion. "You
think this bluster,--but I mean it. I mean it terribly!" A sudden sound
in the outer hall cut short the threat. Footsteps, in stockinged feet,
or in the Japanese tabi, came swiftly. Both men by instinct fixed eyes
upon the door.
Yuki walked straight to her husband and stood still. Their eyes met. "I
thank the Gods that you are safe," she said aloud. Her glance moved
quickly to Pierre, surprising on his face a hurt, incredulous
expression.
"Monsieur, be comforted. It is for the country, not for me," mocked
Hagané.
"And now, Madame," he said, with bloodshot eyes on Yuki, "have you
explanation for this new act of disobedience, of affront to my dignity?"
Yuki did not hasten to reply. Whether the power had grown from without
or within that childish form, a new strength was now hers. She had the
look of one who, after long wandering in a dangerous forest, has spied a
path.
The gray robe, hastily caught back to decorous lines, showed traces of
rough handling. Over her head she had thrown a light wrap called a
dzukin. It hid her forehead with a nun-like band, was crossed under the
chin, and knotted loosely behind the head. Not a strand of hair emerged.
Her face, in the dull silver setting, gleamed like a long white pearl.
Hagané observed the change in her. The repulsion left his eyes. He
waited in patience, and with some curiosity, for her answer. "I came,
your Highness," she vouchsafed at length, "because without me you cannot
get the paper."
Hagané's eyes went instantly to Pierre.
"Yuki, for God's sake are you mad?" cried the Frenchman. "I know of no
paper. I have assured him that I do not know of it!"
"Give him the paper, Pierre," said the girl, gently. "Through me it was
lost, and if I am to have a human soul hereafter--give him the paper."
Hagané sucked in bitter triumph from Pierre's discomfiture. His eyes
crucified the boyish face. Like a brood of dark vultures his conjectures
swooped down to the cowering prey. Yet before Yuki's entrance he had,
for a moment, felt talons at his own breast. Instinctively Pierre had
clutched at his coat, where the document lay concealed. Hagané said
softly, "Perhaps it is as well, Madame, that you have disobeyed. Yet on
your lover's countenance I do not observe signs of joyous welcome."
"I came looking for no welcome, Lord, nor has personal desire directed
me. I have done great wrong. Again has my weakness proved my enemy. But
a hope of partial atonement has not gone altogether from me." She
stretched both hands to Pierre. "Pierre, if you have known love, give me
the paper."
"I do not understand," stammered Pierre. "Are you against me for that
man? Here is the chance of our revenge,--our passport to happiness. I
have not harmed him otherwise. Would you take this one possible chance
from me?"
"I am not against you, Pierre. I am not for Hagané. It is myself, my
wretched, shivering self, for which I plead. No, you cannot understand.
I am Japanese. I must regain the paper. Through my cowardice you won it.
At any sacrifice you can name I must get it back."
Hagané saw how she labored to keep her voice gentle and soothing. She
had the accents of a suffering mother who tries to coax a sick child.
The husband saw more in the calm, ashen face. "You have yet patriotism,"
he said, so low that she alone heard.
To these words she gave no recognition. She watched the Frenchman as
Hagané studied her. The folds of her dzukin, heaped high and light about
the slim throat, stifled her. She tugged nervously at it until one end
came loose and fell. By inches the flexible fabric crawled down from
hair to shoulder, then down her body to the floor. The disorder of the
thick hair, one blue-black lock almost hiding her left temple and
streaming to her breast, gave her an unfamiliar, a weird, even a
supernatural appearance.
Hagané still held a cigarette in the death-mask of his face. He took
it out now carefully. "You speak of revenge, Monsieur, meaning, of
course, the personal revenge. Europeans conceive all offences to be
personal. You weaklings have your code,--your jumping-jack ethics.
Something touches a spring, and your honor leaps up and crows. You
could hardly understand the language we now speak, though our words
were purest French. I will attempt to elucidate. This woman refers to
an--essence--underlying all personalities and all time. It is a stratum
of substance which boils and seethes in our sun, which sets the planets
swinging in their steady paths, which ebbs and flows, a thin, resistless
tide, down through the world of ghosts. We call it 'En.' You have no
better word, I think, than 'Necessity.' This woman had a trust and
failed. Sometimes the sabre slash of fatal weakness lays bare a hidden
source of strength. I believe it to be so with her. The gods have smiled
a ritual of sacrifice! No,--you do not understand. If I sang an obscene
song your eyes would sparkle,--now they are bits of dull blue
clay.--Onda Yuki-ko!" he said in another tone, and with a voice slightly
raised, "have you the thought that, in winning back for your land this
stolen document, you become worthy again to be my wife,--to bear my
name?" Yuki's head went up a little. If Death himself could smile he
would perhaps own the gleam which for an instant lighted her dark eyes.
"Lord, we agree that I have failed. There is no deeper degradation. As
for resuming your name,--you should have understood, before this, that I
shall not need it."
Pierre wrinkled his forehead. The three stood. Pierre leaned against the
edge of a massive table, and sometimes steadied himself with hands upon
it. He bore upon the oaken surface now. The drift of their conversation,
though in careful English, was indeed beyond him. Hagané did not menace
Yuki. In her look toward him was no hint of fear. Yet between them,
across from each to each, in all the space around them, the
spider--tragedy--hurried unceasingly, and wove a closing web. They
stared out from the black net with faces of calm nobility. An influence
shook the Frenchman, vibrated through the particles of his brain, shrank
and inflated his soul in its clay vessel. In bewilderment, as one
reaches out in the dark, his voice cried, "Is this your sorrow, Yuki? Do
you wish still to be his? If you bid me, perhaps I too can sacrifice.
Shall I buy his mercy for you with this paper?" He snatched it out, but
instead of presenting it, held the white rectangle again against his
breast. The seal glared and winked like the inflamed eye of a pygmy
Cyclops.
This was Pierre's supremest moment. Never again did he reach an equal
height. The altitude turned him cold and dizzy. Blood surged in his
ears, and tears of self-appreciation, of self-pity, sponged with a misty
blur the room and its occupants.
Yuki, catching her underlip between her teeth, and bruising her slim
hands together for control, went nearer. "Pierre, I thank you. I shall
never forget this greatness,--in another world or this. You do much to
restore what you, too, have lost. But I cannot bid you sacrifice. Hagané
would not take the paper at that price. I myself must find a way to win
it."
Hagané sat like a mass of clay new fallen from a cliff. Yuki's voice
trailed off. An angelic sweetness hung about the echoes.
Now the clay was troubled. It stirred heavily. Hagané rose with his
usual massive deliberation. "Tell her, Frenchman, the price I had
already offered you."
"I shall not do it with that pure face before me, Hagané."
Hagané bowed. No hint of sarcasm cheapened the salutation. "Then, Yuki,
I must speak it. I offered him in exchange for the paper your fair,
white body to be his, as a dog is his, as a snatched blossom. That was
my bargain."
For an instant she swayed and leaned one hand on the table opposite from
Pierre. Hagané placed a chair for her. Before sinking to it she spoke,
her eyes set on her husband, her voice grave and contained. "Then, Lord
Hagané, you have revealed a depth of degradation below the uttermost
punishment which I should have thought you willing to bestow."
"Also," continued Hagané, "I ventured to declare, and to believe, that
you would go to him willingly." Pierre quivered under this insult to the
woman he loved. But Yuki did not look ashamed. Pushing back the hair
from both temples she bent her eyes upward, as though invoking strength
from unseen powers.
"Yes, Yuki, darling," cried Pierre, coming to her. "He will free you
honorably. You shall be mine forever, and we shall soon forget these
horrors of the past. I will give him the paper if you wish it. What do I
care for Ronsard or for France if I, with this, can buy your life-long
happiness?"
Yuki shivered in all the length of her limbs. Hagané turned away. His
face could not be seen with the utterance of his next words. Curiously
enough they sounded apologetic.
"It was the only way I saw, Yuki, the only bribe that such a man might
take. Your body, soiled already, have I offered. Do you understand?"
Pierre's gaze, too, had fallen. Shame weighed all lids. An abnormal
silence came to the little group. Yuki broke it with a long, long
breath, as of relief and comprehension. The men looked toward her.
Hagané clenched a brown fist to a cluster of throbbing veins. But the
Frenchman gaped, incredulous, and gaped again. For Yuki was smiling at
something far away. A light already not of earth lay on her waxen brow.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, now, at last, I understand. You will not
force the gift, Hagané. It must be mine. Why, Pierre, look not so
strange because, at last, I understand. You cannot know yet, poor
Pierre, but soon you will know too. I must be yours, of course. Have you
not planned, and spied, and--stolen for this?"
"Yuki," said Hagané, in a deeply troubled voice, "if Monsieur Le Beau by
any chance should give the paper--unconditionally should refuse the
price--"
"No! no!" she cried, with a quick note of terror, and sprang to her feet
again. "Where would be my atonement, my reparation? Think it not, Lord.
See that your great mercy be not merciless. I shall go, gladly, gladly,
to Monsieur Le Beau; my heart falters not for myself,--but him. It is a
cruel deed to him."
"And well deserved," muttered Hagané.
"Being myself weak, Lord," said the young wife, "I feel that the
deserving is, after all, the hardest pang."
Pierre dashed his hand across his brow, and went to a small sideboard
for a liqueur. Again these strange people were talking their mystic
gibberish. Yuki was more clear, indeed. She had stated openly to her
husband that she wished to be given to another man. Neither seemed to
feel the least delicacy or shame. In Pierre's fastidious thought this
fact made a tiny stain for Yuki. The old brute evidently wanted to be
rid of her, and she, eagerly accepting freedom, did not shrink from
claiming at once a more desirable companionship. At the last moment
should he, Pierre, refuse to grasp the prize he had turned criminal in
pursuing? No, a thousand times no! Yuki's friendless condition demanded
his deepest pity. It was with a faint touch of condescension that he
leaned to her, saying, "Do not falter now, Yuki. Our goal is in sight. I
will be true to you. I will yet make you happy!"
"Happy! happy!" echoed the woman in a ghost's voice. "All foreigners
think and say only that one thing,--_happy_! Pierre, Pierre, I need so
much more than--happiness!"
The pathos of her voice, her small face, touched him to a manlier
emotion. She was so young, so white, so helpless!
"What it is possible for me to give you I live but to bestow, my
darling," he said, and, kneeling, kissed a small, scarred hand. "I can
promise love, protection, deep respect,--for the slime of this man shall
not cling to you!"
Hagané snatched him bodily from the floor. His eyes blazed like a
beast's. "Time will come for puling. A few things are yet to be said.
Let us conclude the savory bargain. I must be gone."
"Yes, let us finish quickly," whispered Yuki.
"Gallant lover," continued Hagané to Pierre, "when and how do you wish
to claim your prize?"
"Now, at once," cried Pierre, rallying a little under the scorn hurled
toward him. "You have the eyes of a demon. She would not be safe alone
with you. Take the paper now, and let me have her!"
Yuki shivered again, and hid her face in her sleeve.
"I shall not harm madame. This I can assure you. But the earliest
possible hour for your ecstasy will be--to-night!"
"To-night--to-night!" moaned Yuki.
"It must be so. You cannot pass another night beneath my roof, and there
is none who dares receive you but this brawny champion."
"To-night! It is an eternity away!" cried Pierre. "See, love, the sun
already is low. I hear the moat-crows cawing. To-night we shall begin to
live!"
"Kwannon Sama--oh, dear Saviour, help me to endure," said Yuki to
herself.
"To-morrow I join the army in Manchuria. Whatever is to do must be
completed before the dawn."
"To-night! To-night, this very night!" sang Pierre, like a schoolboy.
"They called me sick, but I am already a well man! That was a marvellous
draught you gave me in the tea-rooms, Yuki."
For the first time Hagané showed a puzzled frown. Yuki explained
quickly. "Oh, I had forgotten that you did not know. Pierre wandered
delirious into our garden this forenoon, your Highness, just after your
instructions to me. I could think of no way to send him off, so I took
him to the Cha no yu rooms and gave him a fever mixture and a
sleeping-draught. I believed he would remain asleep until after the
meeting."
"But I didn't," laughed Pierre. "It must have been the God of Good Luck
that woke me when he did."
"I tried to tell your Highness before the meeting, although you had
given me orders not to disturb your mind," went on Yuki to her husband
in the same quiet way. "Perhaps you will recall my effort."
"I do," said Hagané. "It goes far to exonerate you. Tell me more in
detail." Yuki closed her lips. She did not wish to be exonerated, at
least by Hagané. This was her one supreme opportunity for full
expiation,--for sacrifice. No one should wrest it from her.
"I woke in good time," babbled Pierre, to whose brain the liquor was
giving a strange lightness. "I saw the statesmen come and go. They
whispered and leaned down. I saw Todd, and Sir Charles,--and Yuki by the
window. I saw my Lord Hagané come to her with the great paper in his
hand. She was going to betray poor Pierre to him, but first the great
lord must have his say. He told her of the paper--and then he made iron
love--that old lord. I could hear his joints rasp. 'Yuki, you are my
wife! When this time of stress and strain is over I shall teach you
something of a brighter hue than duty!' Ah, ha! making love, like any
schoolboy! She never kissed you as she has kissed me, Hagané. Oh, she
cared for me in the little tearooms. We played we were married. Go
there; you will find the cushions, the trinkets strewn around, the
broken hairpin."
A dull purple tide rushed upward to Hagané's face and stayed there. No
battle-wounds could sting and torture like the mincing mimicry of the
Frenchman's words. His control was superhuman. He leaned an instant
nearer the fireplace to flip off a cigarette ash, then faced his
companions coolly. "I must remember to investigate the scene of
romance."
Yuki bowed. If she had craved martyrdom, here were assuring
circumstances. Pierre's thoughtless words, Hagané's passionate calm,
were prison manacles. They snapped on wrists already scarred. She
welcomed the cold compulsion.
"Well," Pierre hurried on, "let us get back to business. To-night, you
say? I agree, but where?"
"Should the noble count permit such base use of it, the most suitable
spot would be your Legation," said Hagané.
Pierre gave a hiss. His head was on fire again. He must hurry and have
things settled before the full conflagration came. "More melodrama! I
feel the sincerity of your suggestion. Shall I summon the noble count to
be asked?"
"Certainly. I shall await him here. Kindly hasten, as the day already
wanes."
Pierre fell back a little, half in derision, half in apprehensive
credulity, like a harlequin in two shades.
"You really mean it! Well, I shall go. I will get him if he is to be
brought. He must come,--I shall be in need of him. It is all a dream, a
fever dream. Will you give parole to stay here till I come back,--you
and Yuki?" His bright eyes shot suspiciously from one to the other.
There was still so much he did not understand.
Hagané sighed. He assumed the expression of one who has had an insect
light upon him and whose dignity forbids him to brush it off.
"Answer the Frenchman, Yuki-ko."
"We will remain, Monsieur Le Beau," said Yuki.
Left alone, the husband and wife instinctively drew nearer. After gazing
for a long moment Hagané suddenly put out his hands. Yuki thrust hers
within them and lifted wide eyes. Her face had a look of blurred
moonlight. Out of the mystic whiteness her eyes gleamed like deep
spiritual wells, where hopes and possibilities, already death-shadowed,
drifted in a spectral sheen. Hagané tightened his clasp, and at the same
instant let his own soul come full into his face. Yuki shivered. Her
lips parted. Virtue flowed in upon her from his touch. She thought, as
in a vision, of the Kioto statue worn smooth by the touch of dying men.
What ghostly comfort that image could have held was but a feeble
emanation beside the blinding power of this living god.
"All things are not yet clear to me," said the man. "Something is
hidden, and you jealously conceal the hiding-place. Yet you sheltered
that spy. You prevented me from following. Speak your whole heart,
Yuki."
"If I have a secret, Lord, it is one which aids to purify and consecrate
my sacrifice. I long for that sweet hour, Lord. My parched spirit
strains toward it."
Hagané's lips twitched once. "Yuki, as to the ear of your ancestral
gods, tell me, should this paper be regained by means less
terrible,--are you worthy to be my wife?"
Thinking of her weakness, her great and not ignoble efforts doomed
always, it would seem, to failure, and with the knowledge of this man's
greatness full upon her, Yuki answered simply, "No." Her very innocence
betrayed her and sealed the doom of death.
Hagané had a man's thoughts. Pierre's boast--the disordered rooms of the
tea-house--the broken hairpin--lashed him with a fiery hail. He groaned
and dropped his face.
"Yuki, Yuki!" came a voice as though from a mangled soul. "Did you not
begin to feel it? I love you! From that first instant in Washington--I
have loved you more dearly than I ought. The Gods punish me for my
infatuation!"
Yuki's cheeks grew faintly tinged. "Once, nay, twice, Lord, my heart
bespoke it, but I dared not listen. If a star had slid through the night
to my hand, I would sooner believe that I dreamed, awake, than that the
heavens had lost a star."
"A soul--a face--a heart like thine, Yuki--to be befouled by a
Frenchman's love!" he cried in agony.
"Dear Lord," whispered the girl, "perhaps by suffering greatly in this
life--perhaps in my completeness of expiation--I shall, in the next
life, be near thee!"
Hagané could only groan. The black spider busied itself about them. A
strange stillness fell on Yuki. She put up a hand to her husband's
shoulder, drawing him closer. "My soul is like a quiet pool, my husband.
Gaze in, softly, and see your own face there. Nay, break not the shining
by thy tears. You must help me to suffer greatly. Let no interference
come. This last treachery to the weak boy who has loved me is part of
the pain. He will forgive me and forget. He will even be happier than
for me to live on as your wife--your loved wife! That is too heavenly a
thing for one so frail as I. Let me die, Lord, as you and I, though
without speech, have agreed upon. At last I shall serve. Will you
promise to befriend me to that hour, my husband?"
"To that hour and beyond!" groaned Hagané. A moment after, he said, "Do
you realize, my Yuki, what may be the power of a soul freed like
yours,--shot suddenly from the bowstring of a fixed purpose? It is a
thunderbolt of the Gods! Not only in your body's death, but through your
free soul, after, shall you aid Nippon!"
The wonder in her wide gaze grew. A dawn, it spread circling to outer
rims of darkness. Currents of unseen force seemed to whirl in the air
about them.
"Soul of my Yuki, I shall summon you to fields of death. Stand near me
in perplexing hours, cleave to him who is to be thy mate in a nobler
rebirth! Breathe your power through me in moments of despair, lift up
your voice when a thousand guns roar death, when ghosts spring up like
flames, and the commander sobs to hear the cry of 'Victory!' So shall
you be worthy!"
"Lord! Lord! Already art thou a God, and I thy chosen comrade! Wield my
freed spirit to our country's need! At last I shall be strong. Into thy
hands--Lord--"
Things of the flesh flared up and blew back forever, like scraps of
burnt moor-grass. The white flint of her soul had struck from him its
spark of immortality!