"When Yuki comes to me to-night, and not before," said Pierre,
valiantly. He was pleased with the sound of his own bravado.
Yuki threw a piteous glance toward her husband. "Then shall I accompany,
now? I think I can do all, alone."
Hagané did not answer her. He held Pierre in a hard gaze. "To-night?" he
questioned. "How can I be sure that the seal will be intact?"
"Sir!" said Pierre, indignantly, "your suggestion is an insult!"
"Ah! do thieves who enter other men's homes to rob them still wave the
flag of honor?" Pierre drew back, flushed and scowling, with a muttered
curse. Todd gave a great start. It was the first time he had heard the
specific charge. How then, if Pierre were a mere common thief, could
Yuki be involved? Again he was baffled. He shook his head sadly, and
kept silence. Hagané had begun to speak again. "I am willing to refer
the matter to arbitration, but shall not consent to the document
remaining here. Let it be put into the hands of a third party, until
to-night."
"Yes," said Yuki, eagerly. "Mr. Todd will keep it. All trust him!"
Pierre and Ronsard exchanged apprehensive glances. To refuse was
impossible. "An--an--excellent plan," said Ronsard, with a watery beam.
"But, since Russia is our ally--"
"Utterly unofficial, you know. A purely personal misunderstanding,"
reminded Todd, not without a gleam of malice. "In your present attitude,
Count Ronsard, you can scarcely claim anything further. France's honor
hardly rests on--felony! I am willing to hold it; and, if the prince
should fail to drive in the sacrificial lamb, otherwise Yuki, France
gets the paper, I presume."
"Exactly," said Hagané, and Ronsard in a breath.
"Only," interpolated Yuki, in her low, clear voice, "no sacrificial lamb
is to be driven, your Excellency,--only a woman gaining her soul's
desire."
Pierre triumphed in glances about the room. Couldn't the fool American
see that Yuki was simply dying to get away from old Hagané and come to
him! Why this continued talk of sacrifice? It sounded like the Japanese
themselves. Pierre sent an ardent, encouraging look to the girl. To his
surprise, her face was set steadily upon Hagané, and in his answering
gaze was the same embarrassing rapture.
"Well," said Todd, sharply, "am I to keep the paper or not?"
"My dear colleague," stuttered Ronsard, paddling the air with gestures
of concession, "of course, in your keeping it is as safe as--say--in my
private desk. Pierre!--" There was a sharp tang to the name.
The young man reluctantly handed the envelope to Todd. He took it with a
crooked smile. Hagané and Yuki remained calm as statues.
"Madame," the host said, with fictitious gayety, "perhaps, as a matter
of delicacy, congratulations are not in order; yet allow me to assure
you of my good-will and homage!"
Yuki met his look. Her face was still expressionless, like a Japanese
painting of a high-born lady where repose is the desired essential.
Something underlying the white calm disturbed him. After her few gentle
words, "I thank your Excellency," he was glad to turn away.
"To-night at eight," said Hagané, moving toward the door. "Can all be
present at eight?"
The three men bowed gravely. Ronsard for once had forgotten etiquette.
He was allowing his visitors to leave alone. Yuki, with no further look
for Pierre, prepared to follow her husband, but Todd came to himself
with a queer, choking little sound. In two long strides he overtook her.
"Yuki,--how can. I stand it? You are like my other child! I am in a bed
of nettles, and you have tied my hands! I have agreed to take this paper
chiefly on the hope that I may stir Le Beau to a nobler issue. You must
agree,--you _must_--to a less awful price."
Yuki's lifted face was whiter now than any death, but somehow, under the
icy surface a flower was frozen. "Pierre will not agree, because I have
said I wish to go to him. You have understood the Japanese heart
strangely; but even yet,--there are spaces you have not dreamed. I pray
God for you to fail, dear Mr. Todd, but I ask his blessing on your
kindness. Give to those dear ones at your home, my Sayonara, and my
undying love!"
Todd writhed as if stung by an unseen serpent. "And yet, within my
bounds of confidence and honor, I must reason with Pierre, must speak
more fully with Ronsard!"
"I trust you utterly," said Yuki, as she faded through the doorway.
Ronsard, recalled perhaps by the mention of his name, hurried forward
now, and accompanied the noble guests to the portico. Left together,
Pierre and Todd eyed each other. On the younger, more beautiful face,
vanity and self-satisfaction were spread as scented unguents. The hour
was his. He had triumphed! Yuki, in spite of all these grave men, was to
be his own. Oh, he would make her happy!
It is said that the colorless color 'white' is merely a cunning
admixture of all hues. In the same way, the iridescent struggle of
contempt, pity, incredulity, disapprobation, whirling together in the
American's mind, coalesced into blankness,--the consciousness of a
situation hopeless, irremediable. Without a word or exclamation he sank
to the nearest chair, put his long, lean arms out upon the table, and
laid his face upon them. So the two men remained, until the heavy
footsteps of Ronsard came back into the hall,--until he entered, and,
casting an eye on the prostrate form, asked of Pierre, in a whisper, "Is
his Excellency ill?"
"No," said Pierre, irritably. "He is not, but I am. Nobody seems to
think of the strain I've been under all this time. With your permission,
Excellency, I'll have one of the servants telephone for a physician.
This hellish fever is on me again. I must keep my reason until this
night is over!"
Ronsard, without answering, waddled to a chair, moved his short legs
outward, and let the attraction of gravitation do the rest. The room
shook with the impact, jangling empty cups and glasses on the table. He
drew out a silken handkerchief, and with it odors of violet and vervain.
"Oui, oui," he made answer at length, "have your physician. You will
need him before you are through. And when the servant comes, kindly
order tea, sandwiches, coffee, liqueurs, anything which may strengthen.
Bah! It is vaudeville tragedy!" He settled himself with grunts and short
groans of distaste. Todd was deliberately overlooked. The silent form
gave both observers a sense of uneasiness.
Pierre's orders given, strength suddenly deserted him. He went to a
couch, where pillows in Japanese brocades were heaped. "With your
permission, gentlemen," he muttered. He threw himself down upon his
back, bending his head upward into the soft squares, until the profile
was drawn thin and clear, as that of a mediæval figure on a tomb. All
day long, ever since his escape from the hospital (and could it be
possible that his flight had taken place since dawn of this very day?),
illness had toyed with him as a jungle tiger with its prey, letting him
go free for a moment, only to spring back, fastening deeper claws. Now
the fever held him, and moved like a tumultuous sea across which was
hung a molten, blinding sheet of brass. Down in the valleys of the waves
it was dark, and cold, and terrible. Sea-creatures grimaced at him,
holding out long, wavering arms. Oh, the valleys were terrible indeed!
But up on the swelling crest was far worse, for there he burned.
Sometimes his brain went wild in the torment of flame. His lips
blistered and cracked. Once, when he threw a hand suddenly upward, a
pink finger-nail split to the flesh. The intervals had a rhythm, a
relentless, horrible recurrence. He knew in anticipation the agony of
each moment just before it came. Now,--now he was beginning to rise, to
be borne up from the liquid, icy trough toward a plane of fire. He
groaned aloud, and cowered. Soft footsteps went around the room.
Porcelain or some such brittle substance went clashing gently. To him it
was as shells of the sea, caught up with him in the wave; caught up from
slimy depths, like him; torn from a nether world of cold despair and
whirled upward, as he was being whirled! Soon they would crack, too, and
the pretty colors be burned and blackened. A voice came out of the
water. It sounded like Ronsard's voice. "Look at the young Monsieur!
Diable! Fever is gaining. I would he were safely back in the hospital."
"Then why not take the responsibility of sending him there?" drawled the
American's voice,--that thin, nasal, self-confident voice that Pierre
hated. It lashed now, like sea-nettles, in his face.
Pierre writhed, and tried to toss aside the pillows. "I won't go back!
You need not plan! You cannot force me!" he tried to scream. His parched
lips opened. A hissing noise came from his throat. He thought he had
really screamed the words, but the quiet, uninterrupted flow of
conversation, behind the wall of the wave convicted him terribly of
delusion. He gnashed his teeth, struggling to rise.
"Good God!" cried Todd, reaching him at a bound. "The man is in
convulsions. A doctor, quick, or he'll die here!"
Ronsard pressed a bell in frantic haste, and sent all the Legation
servants forth in search of physicians, warning each to go in an
individual direction. As a natural consequence, they went in a
frightened phalanx. Police-officers, seeing the confusion, hurried in.
Everywhere was dismay and disorganization. Todd alone retained a little
judgment, giving the sick man ammonia to smell, and bathing his
forehead with cold water.
It was a young American practitioner who first gained the house. Had it
been a German (of whom there are several of world-wide reputation
resident in Tokio), he, in behalf of his reputation,--not to mention
common sense, would certainly have insisted upon sending the invalid
back to Yokohama, where, indubitably, he belonged. The American being
younger, more imaginative, and with less reputation to jeopardize, might
lend himself the more readily to the unusual. Ronsard and Todd, each in
his own way,--both, of course, intensely desirous of getting Pierre
safely in hospital walls,--nevertheless advanced persuasions to keep him
away from the desirable haven until the following morning. The physician
was evidently puzzled by the presence of conflicting motives. As a final
statement of his own position, he said, "I insist that you gentlemen
recognize the measures I must employ to give him an interval of strength
and lucidity must take away at least fifty per cent of the patient's
chances of recovery!"
Todd answered for both. "We understand. It is the dickens of a thing for
us to have to decide on; yet, since the man, if in his senses, would
consider us traitors to shut him up before eight to-night, I don't see
anything else but to let you dose him until that time."
"Exactly," corroborated the French minister.
"And, doctor," added Todd, in a slightly embarrassed tone, "it is a
mess. We can't explain. Mum's the word, you know."
"Oh, I knew before you told me," said the young doctor. Then he went to
work.
An hour later Pierre, gasping, and pouring out from his entire frame the
very sap of vitality, still lay on the sofa, his fever gone, his mind
clear, uplifted, pellucid, as it had been on awakening in Yuki's
tea-rooms three hours before.
The doctor had departed. Neither Todd nor the French minister had left
the room. The two politicians tacitly understood that neither trusted
the other, yet, strange to say, neither resented it. The issue at stake
was too big for personal irritation. In the reaction of his excitement
Todd pondered anew, with ever deepening foreboding, upon the thing that
Yuki's eyes had told him. Ronsard, overflowing in his cushioned chair,
brooded of France and her already humiliated ally, Russia.
"Le Beau," said Todd, at length, rising and walking in the direction of
the sofa, "you're too sick a man to be pounded by all the arguments I
have been getting together for you, but there are just a few things I
must say, and which his Excellency Count Ronsard here should hear me
say."
"Speak," said Pierre, languidly; "it will make no difference at all,
Monsieur, but I shall listen."
"I want you to return that paper quietly, as a gentleman should, and I
want you to go back to the hospital, as a rational being should. You are
precipitating a crisis that Napoleon in his best days might shrink from,
and you are too ill to stand on your feet. You don't know yet what you
are doing. Rely on stronger men, just now, and in all your future life
you will thank God that you listened!"
Pierre shifted his position slightly and tried to smile. Ronsard placed
himself at the other end of the couch. His eyes held Todd. "Before
Pierre tries to answer, it is but right to him, to France, that I should
speak, your Excellency." He went close to Pierre and touched him.
"Pierre, I urge, with all the fervor, all the loyalty, all the passion
of a son of France, that you give up--not the paper; that is ours,--but
the woman. None but a coward and a sensualist would sell away from his
country a paper which commands so terrible a price."
"I am impaled upon the diameter of widely differing opinions," said
Pierre, sarcastically.
Todd's next words were very quiet. They were addressed to Ronsard. "The
advice of your Excellency is both just and creditable. You speak as a
diplomat; I merely as a man. I know what was in the paper, and I know
also that a man's honor, that nameless, indescribable essence which
makes him a man, once blackened, with the stain eaten in, can never be
brightened. Pierre has but an hour or two to change himself from a low
thief to a man. Give up the paper, Pierre, and save the woman you say
you love!"
"Bah!" Ronsard interrupted with a rudeness the others scarcely had
believed possible to him; "you accuse Frenchmen of sentimentality, Mr.
Todd. What is this desire of yours but sentiment, false sentiment,
puerile, absurd? You spur the boy's honor in order to save a woman who
probably does not wish to be saved. You play upon him! I see a tear in
his youthful eye. He thinks of Madame, deserted,--in need of comfort!
Who should condole with her but he? Pouf! If you yearn to be a hero,
Pierre, make of that very desire a nobler sacrifice for France! Break
your heart if you will, but with the shattered fragments trace the name
of France! Upon this paper that you hold, the future of a great war may
hang. It has written instructions,--values,--perhaps a secret treaty.
Think what it may mean, not only to our own land, to Russia, but to
you!" He leaned to finger a little red ribbon dangling from a cigar-box
on the table. Pierre's eyes shot a dull gleam. "When Hagané comes, defy
him,--break your word, retain the paper, but give back the wife he so
easily discards!"
Pierre had fallen back in his pillows. "You don't know what you are
talking of,--neither knows," he said, tossing his head feverishly. "You
will set my veins on fire again with your chatter. Yuki, Hagané and I
understand each other--" he broke off with a querulous gesture.
Todd had begun to bristle. Sneers were rare to him, but now his lean
face assumed one. He caught up the red ribbon which Ronsard had let
fall, and cried to him, "You scorned the motive of honor, of pity for a
woman, yet wave the red flag of personal ambition. Pierre, can you not
see for yourself how flimsy is his argument? You think you understand
Yuki and her husband, but you do not. A terrific tragedy hangs over us
all. I insist, I implore you, Pierre, try to reason this out for
yourself, not as a Frenchman, a lover, or a diplomat, but just as a
man,--a man, and what makes him a man, with a little fuse of God
sputtering in him, and not an animal minus the fuse, made up of
intellect, tastes, and inclinations! Think of that shivering,
white-faced girl,--that Oriental Jeanne d'Arc who faced us all so
bravely an hour ago. I tell you, man, if you loved her decently, you
would turn sick at the thought of receiving her at the hands of her
lawful husband. Boy, try to think for once in your life of some one
besides yourself,--and may God have mercy on you and my little Yuki."
His voice broke on the last word. Ronsard jerked his body, and gave a
low sound of irritation. Pierre flared up into feeble passion.
"And I tell you, Mr. Todd, that you talk nonsense! I have thought of
Yuki,--only Yuki! I think now of no one but Yuki. I too pitied her, and
did what I could. I offered to give the paper back into her hands, with
the one condition that Hagané should pardon what he fancies her offence
and should receive her back openly as his wife. They both refused!"
"You did what? Hagané refused _what_?" exclaimed Todd. He thought that
the fever was again upon its victim. Ronsard looked concerned and felt
Pierre's white forehead. He met their eyes triumphantly. He was pleased
at the effect of his words. Something in his boyish face impressed the
diplomats with the truth of the unbelievable statement just made. "Now,
perhaps you will let me alone for a while," he said disdainfully, and
turned his back.
The elder men exchanged glances of dismay, and by a common impulse left
the couch. Pierre felt himself again a conqueror. His words, like a
querulous barking, followed them. "I really do not feel able to endure
more talk, or more tobacco-smoke, just now, gentlemen. The doctor said I
must have sleep before to-night. If I could only sleep! After a fine
deep sleep I should be strong again, the doctor said it! But they will
not let me alone,--they talk and argue, but they are ignorant. Yuki and
I understand each other." With little childish, spasmodic movements he
settled himself among the sheens of brocade, keeping his face to the
wall. Small sounds of discontent, passing into moans and feverish
starts, came from him.
Todd stood, perplexed, by the table. Ronsard, in equal agitation,
hovered near, and then with a side glance at the sick boy, crushed his
cigarette into a tray. Todd's lean shoulders bent over as with a weight.
"After that last," he muttered, "I guess I might as well clear out. Is
there anything further to discuss, your Excellency?" he asked of
Ronsard.
The Frenchman's eyes shifted. His protruding underlip trembled until he
felt it shake, and raised a perfumed laden handkerchief for a screen.
Todd saw the uncertainty, the battle between etiquette and fear in his
colleague's face, and, with a dry smile, took the paper from his breast,
slapping it down upon the bare table.
"My dear sir, my most valuable friend," began Ronsard, in his oiliest
manner, "you tear my heartstrings with the implied doubt. Your honor is
not to be questioned. Yet I would be glad to know just where you intend
to remain this fateful afternoon." The contrast between his tone and the
relief in his fat face were too much for Todd. He threw back his head to
laugh. Pierre, already dragged far out in an undertow of sleep, did not
turn, but Ronsard glanced up suspiciously. His half-buried eyes had a
tinge of red.
"It's just this way, Count," said the other, easily. "I know what is in
this little billet,--you don't. I assure you that the price is not big
enough by half for the promised reward. Yet if it were a thousand times
bigger, and if I dreaded and disapproved of the whole business ten
thousand times more than I do, yet, having given my word to Prince
Hagané and Yuki, and having accepted the--er--shall I call it
confidence?--of you and Le Beau, I should keep strictly both to the
letter and the spirit of my bargain. I can't imagine, to be frank, the
inner workings of a man who could do anything else. I am an American. I
have been a senator, and I now represent my Government in a land which
fills me with the most intense admiration. Does that put any lubricator
on your troubled waves?"
"My dear sir," purred the Frenchman, "let us be seated for a moment
more. I thank your Excellency for these new assurances, and appreciate
the generosity of them. This has been an afternoon of trial for me,--of
deep humiliation. Your nobility adds but one more pang, and, in the name
of France, I can bear it! I shall give five hundred yen to the poor of
Tokio when this most detestable affair is at an end. It is my first
experience of the kind, and shall be my last. Pierre's public dismissal
from the service of this Legation will be in the morning papers. I
shelter him no longer."
Todd made no comment. He had refused to take the proffered seat. "Your
Excellency, I feel the need of fresh air. I must go. But before leaving
you I have two questions to put,--answer or not as you think best."
"At your service, Monsieur."
"Have you any knowledge of the motive which prompts Yuki to take so
strong, so vital a part in this hellish arrangement--and--do you know
her offence?"
"I can answer both. The first is obvious enough. Madame has the natural
desire to pass from the arms of winter to that of spring. The other
query,--I cannot give a positive reply, but will share the data."
Todd waited in silence. Ronsard arranged his words with some nicety.
"In the first excitement of Le Beau's arrival,--as he came in like a
maniac, waving a white screed, and gasping out to me its nature,--I
cried, 'Then where is Hagané? He must be close behind you!' Pierre,
with a meaning glance, assured me that the great man could not
follow, being--detained."
"Detained? Well, go on!"
"I marvelled, as you do, at the phrase. 'Detained,' Pierre
said,--entangled, tied, quite cleverly, by Madame and her long gray
sleeves. Did you not notice the disarray of Madame's toilette?" Ronsard
looked up now full at his colleague, as if to enjoy the effect. Todd
steadied himself. He would not give this man the satisfaction of
gloating over new wounds. The whole terrible thing came clear to him. He
saw why Yuki needed to die. It was no punishment inflicted by Hagané,
but a last desperate self-atonement.
"Ah!" he answered Ronsard, with wonderful coolness, "I thank your
Excellency for the elucidation. It is complete. Now, with your
permission, and if your mind is entirely at rest, I will say 'Good-bye
until to-night at eight.'"
"Certainly," bowed the count, who did not relish this acrobatic
reversion to tranquillity. "The disclosure, I trust, makes no difference
in your--sentiments."
"Heavens, man! how could it? I'm not a tin fish on a red barn, to wheel
round with every wind! Don't you see it is as much to me as anybody else
that the thing gets back, unopened, to Hagané?"
"Yes, yes, I presume so," muttered Ronsard, and accompanied his
colleague to the door. The American went out on foot. Ronsard slowly
retraced his heavy steps to Pierre. Stopping beside the sleeper, he
stared down, first thoughtfully, then in growing antipathy and disgust.
France, America, political acumen, possible distinction for himself or
Todd,--all were blocked by this sick animal who lay, inert as a log,
clear across the current of affairs. Well, endurance came with the
thought that a few hours more would see the end!
Ronsard turned away at length, moved restlessly around the room, and at
last, with a resigned sigh, took out a pack of cards, drew a table
before a long pier-glass, and, solemnly dealing two hands, played piquet
with his silent, gray shade, until the day went out, and the first
purple waves of night came rushing in across a soundless shore.