The sumptuous obsequies of the young Princess Hagané, become so suddenly
and so securely a leading figure in Tokio's official life; her
mysterious death (heart failure, the obliging papers called it);
Hagané's immediate departure for the seat of war; Pierre Le Beau's
re-capture and long, desperate illness (with relapses brought on by
further crafty flights, terminating always in a certain hillside
grave),--these events co-existent, co-related, formed, inevitably,
dazzling bits of speculation pieceable together into various strange
patterns.
Outwardly the tragedy was as free from suspicion as any such shocking
occurrence well could be. The funeral, in deference to Yuki's Christian
conversion, was held in the little American Episcopal chapel in
Tsukijii, Tokio; the American Bishop, assisted by members of the native
clergy, conducting the ceremony in Japanese. Hagané, ponderous,
brooding, and self-contained, had walked immediately behind the
flower-laden burden. The scowling Tetsujo, with Iriya, followed him.
Suzumé was there, alone, for she had refused the petition of Maru San.
Next to the family came Gwendolen, shivering, slender, wound in cræpe,
on the arm of Mr. Dodge. Behind her walked Cyrus Todd and Mrs. Todd,
both in mourning.
The strained decorum of the crowded congregation was threatened twice;
first, when old Suzumé, bearing a sprig of the mystic mochi tree,
tottered up the aisle, and began praying aloud to the black thing into
which her nursling had been nailed; and later, just after the words of
the Bishop, "I am the Resurrection and the Life," when Gwendolen fainted
quietly away.
* * * * *
After the prescribed nine days of gossip and conjecture, ill-natured
ones turned their eyes to the Todds, and chiefly to Gwendolen. The deep
withdrawal of the two ladies from the social world of Tokio, the
mourning garments worn by them, were interpreted by some observers as
mere stinginess, an excuse to abstain from lavish Legation hospitality;
but by a larger number as "bids" for Japanese popularity. Also many of
the fair sex among European Legations declared (Mon Dieu! it was
obvious!) that Gwendolen had seized upon this dank method for the
securing of Dodge,--the young American attaché known to be so madly in
love with Carmen Gil y Niestra. Gwendolen's ever-growing intimacy with
Iriya Onda, and the pathetic content shown by the elder woman in the
company of her dead child's closest friend, were charged to the columns
of the former category. "The Hawk's Eye" expatiated upon these congenial
themes. The Misses Stunt gave an afternoon tea with all of the catering
done in Yokohama.
* * * * *
Later on, when cherry-blossoms covered the whole land in a perfumed
glory, Mrs. Todd answered timidly by a bunch of artificial violets on
her spring bonnet. Gwendolen still kept to simple black, and it was
averred that she did so knowing how marvellously it contrasted with the
pearly tints of her flesh and the nervous gold tendrils of her hair.
Never had Gwendolen been more beautiful nor, in a strange, deep,
half-comprehending way, more tranquilly happy. The light of heroism had
come too near ever quite to fade. Love, also, had come, and on the very
wings of despair. Yet, behind these facts, was a something unspeakable,
precious, vague,--a something apprehended by Dodge also. Even as the two
happy ones stood together with eyes looking level toward vistas of
almost certain human joy, each felt that compared with the passion of
the two immortals, now gone from their lives, this rapture was like the
glad hearts of children. Often they spoke of Yuki and her husband. "Oh,
but they knew that they were to meet," Gwendolen had cried again and
again. "Yuki is with him now,--and after this war, after his last duty
to his country and to his Emperor,--they will find each other!"
Of poor Pierre, after his departure for France accompanied by Count
Ronsard, none of the Todd household ever spoke. Once, some months after
the return of the latter to Tokio, Mrs. Todd, in a hushed whisper, as if
she were guilty of an indiscretion, asked a single question. The answer
was as brief and furtive. In a certain sense it relieved the conscience
of the interlocutrix, while it shadowed her complacency. Neither
question nor answer was ever retailed to Gwendolen.
But all this came much later. The spring immediately following Yuki's
death went by in a shimmer of winds, scurrying clouds, and whirling
petals. Summer smiled her deeper green in rice-fields under the glint
and blur of rain. Then, like a stately deity for whose feet the shining
carpet had been spread, a golden autumn came.
On the hills vermilion maples burned, each leaf so deeply dyed that its
shadow on the sand was red. Hedges of dodan ruled fiery angles over the
green lines that summer had drawn. Small carts, man-pulled, with pots of
sunny, stiff chrysanthemums, crawled in by dewy morning lanes toward the
focus of the capital. Harvesting of grain began, and, presiding over it,
the deity of a large, slow moon. In suburban districts the people held
festivals and made offerings of tea, vegetables, and money to Inari Sama
and her two lean fox-spirits, for the slaying of rice-insects, demanded
by the summer's agricultural toil.
* * * * *
Meantime war had raged on land and sea. The slopes of Port Arthur had
been drenched already in insufficient blood. Great battles on the Yalu,
epoch-making in enormity and heroism, had been not quite great enough.
The Russians, always strongly fortified, numbering always more than the
army of their opponents, were able to keep decisive ruin for themselves
at bay. The Japanese people did not know a wavering strand of faith.
They believed always in their ultimate victory. Each hero, checked in
his duty by Russian steel, became on the instant a flaming spirit of
war. The mangled body might be tucked away in Manchurian clay, or sent,
as a sacred relic, to the beloved homeland; but the freed spirit hung
about its brethren, and fought with invincible weapons for the common
cause. The women of Japan worked indefatigably. Few lamentations rose
from them. They would have considered tears disloyal. The Emperor,
behind his gray moat-walls,--half man, half God to them,--sent down his
heart among the people. His was the suffering and the loss,--and
victory, when it came, was to be his.
* * * * *
Late in October, at the American Legation, the doors once more stood
wide. Pots of chrysanthemums in full bloom crowded near the entrance,
and climbed, in groups of two and three, the edges of the stone steps,
as if leading a golden invitation. Gwendolen, that morning, standing
among them, had dwelt in thought upon another time, scarcely a year
past, when she and Yuki had laughed together among such shaggy blooms,
when their hands had been tinctured by the stems of them and the air of
long reception-rooms flooded with the medicinal fragrance. She did not
weep, only stretched her arms outward, whispering, "Yuki, Yuki,--I know
you are with him; but just this one day,--my wedding-day,--come back to
me!"
The marriage ceremony was to take place in the drawing-room. After a
luncheon to a score or more of intimate friends, the young couple were
to go for a quiet sojourn to Nara. This was the first occasion since
Yuki's death that the American girl had worn a color. At the appointed
hour she stood within the green-hung window recess like an Easter lily,
all white and gold,--a broad white cloth hat, touched with knots of
amber. The silent little wedding company drew close. The Bishop cleared
his throat professionally. One heard the words, "Dearly Beloved" before
he uttered them. At that moment, a bird, attracted maybe by the tall
white flower within, flew straight against the pane, and beat against it
with fluttering wings. Gwendolen looked up quickly. Her lips moved.
"Yuki! Yuki! is it you?" she was saying. Dodge pressed tightly the arm
within his own.
In spite of strong efforts on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Todd to be at
ease, a vague mist of sadness floated in the wide rooms.
"There's something awfully doleful about things here," confided a guest
to the ubiquitous Mrs. Stunt.
"Oh, it's that Hagané woman who died--or was murdered in her bed--last
spring. The Legation has been about as cheerful as a morgue ever since.
Very inconsiderate to us Americans, I take it!"
Mr. Todd saw the faces of the whisperers, and could guess the trend of
their words. He shook himself together, and swore that in some way he
would manage to dispel the gathering gloom. Now he rushed from one guest
to another, his dry wit and quaint remarks soon attracting general
attention. Dodge understood, and seconded him with zest. Mrs. Todd
stopped the sniffling she had just begun, and produced a diluted smile;
the company, catching the infection, tumbled, one over the heels of
another, in the race for a precarious joy. The rooms began to echo
laughter,--servants smiled as they stole about. A twig of mistletoe,
sent all the way from North Carolina, was discovered hanging from the
tongue of the floral bell. Kissing of the bride was attempted, and the
time-worn jests, pertinent to the occasion, indulged in up to the point
of friction.
It was at last a company of real wedding guests that took places at the
table. Japanese flower symbols of wedded bliss touched elbows with still
American vases jammed thick with stemless flowers. The favors were
chrysanthemums in enamel, gold, and topaz. Todd saw that the champagne
was not delayed. He knew the potency to scatter thought sent up by those
springing globules of mirth. "Fill,--all!" he cried, standing, "a toast,
a toast to the bride!"
Laughing faces turned as one toward Gwendolen, enthroned in a great
teakwood chair. She flushed to a rose, under the big hat, but murmured,
so that her words could be heard,--"I accept, and drink with
you,--against precedent!"
As the others lifted brittle stems, she, emptying swiftly the sunny
fluid, poured a little water into her glass. The drinking of water as a
pledge is used between Japanese as a token of death, of love, in death
and beyond it. Dodge, his bright eyes swimming in tenderness, did as she
had done. While the company drained the conventional felicity,--this
young couple, in silence, unnoticed by those who crowded most closely,
drank the pledge of love and loyalty to Yuki's freed spirit. Had it been
possible for any face to be more beautiful than Gwendolen's, she--on
catching sight of her husband as the water touched his lips--now
outrivalled herself.
Todd had seen but could not join them. He was self-constituted master of
ceremonies. "Next, my new son, Mr. Dodge!" he cried aloud.
"Hear! hear!" clamored the company.
"And next," said Todd, "to that great man, the Japanese Emperor!"
"The Emperor, the Emperor!" ejaculated Dodge, with such vehemence that
the assembly had to join or be deafened. "Banzai Nippon!" roared Dodge.
"Banzai Nippon!" vociferated Todd.
"Banzai Nippon!" the servants echoed in excited underbreaths as they
hurried back to pantry and kitchen.
"Banzai Nippon!" cried the waiting betto and the kuruma men outside, at
first hint of the call.
"Banthai Nip-pon!" lisped the the cook's baby, who sat well under the
kitchen-table to escape being trod upon, and scraped out a foreign
cake-bowl with a single chopstick.
* * * * *
But Yuki--a snowflake fallen on the windy slope of Aoyama--slept on,
smiling, with Hagané's dagger in her heart; and on a rocky promontory
across from the impregnable fortress of Liau Tung, a grim, quiet warrior
sat alone, with field-glasses dangling limply from his hands, and eyes
that saw only a white, white face upturned to his, and lips that
murmured, "I know you now, my husband,--and shall wait! Banzai Nippon!"
while the cold steel crept nearer to a warm and shrinking heart.
Banzai Nippon!
_The Most Lovable Heroine in Modern Fiction_