The Breath of the Gods Part 16

"It really did follow me after all, you know," the girl went on shyly.

"It came at night, in dreams, when you and father could not miss it. Did it ever fail to return before the dawn?"

"No," returned Iriya, with deep gravity. "The dear tree loves us also.

Never once did it fail to return."

Tetsujo strode toward them from his study. "How can one ponder on the cla.s.sics, with pigeons cooing beneath his very eaves?"

Yuki clung to him. "You had the cla.s.sics for four long years when I was away."

"So had I water through those four long years, small pigeon,--yet while I live must I thirst. The cla.s.sics feed deep wells of the soul."

He put a strong, loving hand about her, and drew her near. It sprang into Yuki's mind to speak now of her foreign friends, to ask permission to visit them or, at least, to send them her Tokio address. Pierre's beautiful face and blue eyes reproached her. But this moment was too sweet for jeopardy. She pressed her cheek against the rough blue cotton of her father's shoulder. Iriya, stealing nearer, put also a loving arm about the girl. The suns.h.i.+ne made a halo for the three. The plum, loosening its first petals, sent them down in fragrant benediction.

So her day pa.s.sed, a wonderful day, steeped in love and childish recollections. At night, the winds being chill, and the fear of robbers inherent in the j.a.panese mind, all shoji, and after them the wooden storm panels (amado), were tightly drawn. In the ashes of the great bra.s.s hibachi b.a.l.l.s of charcoal glowed like incandescent apples. A lamp was suspended from the ceiling, swinging but a few feet above their heads. Here the four women of the household grouped themselves. Tetsujo had gone out for a call. The pieces of kimono, ripped and washed that morning by Maru San, were now to be refas.h.i.+oned. Iriya, Suzume, and Maru drew forth little sewing-boxes and prepared for work. Yuki, half sitting, half lying on the floor, fondled the tailless cat, and declared boldly that she hated sewing and was not going to begin that part of a j.a.panese woman's drudgery quite so early.

"All good wives love sewing, particularly on the master's nightclothes,"

said Suzume, reprovingly, and peering over the rim of huge horn spectacles toward the culprit.

"The o jo san will tell us something of foreign habits as we sew,"

suggested Iriya, the peacemaker.

"Yes--yes--I will be what is called over there the bureau of information," laughed wilful Yuki. "Any questions from you, Mr. Cat?"

she cried, holding the drowsy animal high above her and smiling into its blinking eyes.--"Do American cats like rice?" "No." "Queer cats, you say,--and so they think of you." "Do they wear tails?" "Yes, long ones."

"What do they use them for?" "For getting pinched in doors." "No more questions, p.u.s.s.y San? Ah, you will never learn. Ruskin says that curiosity forms tendrils of the mind."

"What I would like to feel sure of, honorable young lady, is this,"

began Suzume, primly, with a disapproving glance toward the cat.

"We are ready, Madame Suzume, speak on," said Yuki, cuddling p.u.s.s.y back into her sleeve.

"Is it really true, as newspapers and pictures say, that women over there, even women of decent character, go to evening entertainments with no clothes above the waist, dance with red-faced men until they are on the verge of apoplexy, and then have to be restored by much fanning and a cold medicine called 'punch'?"

"Not altogether, good nurse," said Yuki, fighting hard to retain a semblance of gravity. "They wear cloth and flowers, feathers and jewelry above the waist, and arrange them with great beauty; but it is true that they dance with men, and that their shoulders and arms are bare."

"That is a strange custom," mused Suzume. "Even our Sacred Empress condescends to go with bare arms. Why, I wonder, do they wish to expose arms more than legs? There is more leg, and in a supple young girl it is more shapely."

"That is too hard a thing for me," laughed Yuki. "Well, Maru, your eyes are big and solemn like the Owl San in our pine. What is your question?"

Maru, after much giggling and blus.h.i.+ng, confessed to a desire to know, once for all, whether foreigners had toes like real people, or whether, as she had been a.s.sured from childhood, they possessed but a single h.o.r.n.y hoof, which, from desire to hide the ugliness, they kept in pointed leather cases known as shoes.

"That is false entirely. I have seen hundreds of barefoot children in America, and they all had ten toes, even as we."

Maru seemed cast down. "Ma-a-a! what foolish tales are spread," she murmured. "Doubtless the foreigners have similar strange beliefs of us."

"It is what the great creatures eat that turns me sick," cried old Suzume, and nearly perforated a finger in her vehemence. "Their soup is like the contents of a slop-bucket, with warm grease swimming on the top. The stuff would choke in a decent person's throat. And then the great heaps of animal flesh,--and greasy vegetables, and implements like gardener's tools to eat them with! And then--Kwannon preserve us--the unspeakable nightmares that come even after the tasting of such food!"

"Ara!" cried the maid, roused to new excitement by this recital of horror, "it is said that America is an honorably highly civilized country, and Nippon merely a divine half-civilized country, but I thank the G.o.ds who have given me to live in this half-civilized country."

At bedtime, Yuki, creeping between soft, fragrant futons, drew a deep sigh of childish content. The andon in the corner, shedding its gentle, paper-screened light, continued the impression of suns.h.i.+ne. The girl smiled to find herself again counting the lapped cedar boards of the ceiling, "Hitotsu--futatsu--mitsu--yotsu--" following them into uncertain dimness at the far end of the chamber. As in childhood she speculated upon the possibilities of that small black knot-hole left vacant in the wood. How much smaller now it was than four years ago!

Still there was a chance, a pygmy probability, that a very small nedzumi might creep through, and, falling to the floor, scamper over mats and bedding, and--here came the shudder!--over the very face of a sleeper.

She drew the bedclothes up spasmodically, then smiled to think how bright would be the eyes of the little mouse, twinkling in semi-darkness. In a moment more, with the smile still on her lips, she was asleep.

So a second day pa.s.sed, and a third,--hushed, golden days, too precious to be imperilled. With the fourth morning, Sunday, came a change. In the night a storm had risen, sweeping down from Kamschatka along the Yezo coast to the wide unsheltered plain of Yedo. Here it wallowed like a great beast in a field, snorting with fury, crus.h.i.+ng trees, fences, and houses, and fighting back the black clouds that would have crowded in upon it.

Through Yuki's troubled sleep came the sounds of vehicles rattling on foreign streets, and the blurred chime of church-bells. Her first conscious thought was, "It is Sunday. Gwendolen and I must be sure to go to service."

The wooden amado of the house chattered with fright. The wind gave long, derisive howls as it swept under the low-hanging roof, clutched and shook the rafters, and then darted out to the heart of the storm once more. Yuki realized slowly that she was not in America at all, that she was at home, in Tokio. With a slower, heavier recognition came the knowledge that her friend Gwendolen was here also, and if she were in Was.h.i.+ngton could not seem more remote.

She heard old Suzume and Maru straining to open the amado, then Tetsujo's voice calling loudly from his chamber, "Keep them all shut on the eastern side!"

"Oh, my dear plum-tree! It will be torn like mist," said the girl aloud.

She sat upright, patting instinctively the loops of her hair, dressed now in j.a.panese fas.h.i.+on. The floating wick of her andon fell over the edge of the saucer and went out, leaving the room in grayer darkness.

The foreign clock that hung in the kitchen rang out the hour of seven.

"What gloom! The storm must be terrible indeed!" A moment after the girl said, with a shudder, "This is the day on which I am to speak of my love. I hear his voice calling through the wind. I must wait no longer.

Yes, I will speak to-day."

At breakfast the small family of three was silent and preoccupied. The one glimpse they had taken of the s.h.i.+vering, naked plum-tree would have sufficiently accounted for the depression. Iriya and Yuki sat a little behind the master, eating from their small rice-bowls, and attending in turn upon his wants. As Suzume crept in to remove the half-emptied dishes, Yuki said to her father, "Father, a little later, when you have smoked and read your paper, may I speak with you?"

"Why, certainly, my child," said Tetsujo, kindly, looking up from the damp printed sheet he had already unfurled; "though I may have but few thoughts apart from this terrible storm."

"It is a terrible storm," shuddered Iriya. "A great camphor-tree in the Zen Temple garden has fallen. It was a goblin-tree, and the priests fear evil."

"I spoke not of the storm in the material universe, but of that vast political tempest brewing over us. Our minister leaves St. Petersburg to-morrow. War has practically come."

No comment was made. The three tacitly avoided, each, the glance of the other. Iriya rose quietly, then Yuki. In the door-frame the girl paused.

"I shall return in half an hour, father."

Tetsujo nodded. "I shall be here."

In her own room Yuki moved about mechanically, putting into place her few indispensable possessions,--a silver brush, comb, and hand-gla.s.s, her white prayer-book and neat Bible, a picture of Gwendolen in a burnt-leather frame, and a lacquered box containing a second photograph, not of Gwendolen, and a package of letters, all addressed in the same hand. She fought to keep her imagination from the coming war. Its dark omen only strengthened her determination to have things understood. She prayed for strength and self-control. Punctual to the moment she entered the guest-room, bowing again to her father. He looked up from his brooding revery. Something in the girl's face made him ask, "Ah, have you indeed a matter of importance? My little Yuki has gone. This is a woman who comes to speak with me."

"Alas, father. Childhood, like the petals of the plum-tree, vanishes at the breath of storms."

"What storm can have found you so early, my little one?"

Yuki drew in a long breath, and steadied herself for a deliberate reply.

In the pause Tetsujo leaned out, and with one motion of his powerful hand flung a panel of the shoji to one side, giving a view of the drenched and storm-tormented garden. On the veranda floor, usually so smooth, beaten plum-petals clung like bits of white leather. The drip from the low-tiled roof enclosed them in the bars of a silver cage.

"This is my distress, father," began Yuki. "I am a j.a.panese girl, with my first loyalty toward you and my native country;--yet, in that new land where you sent me,--I have come--I have grown honorably to feel, almost without warning, the--influence of a--person."

Tetsujo looked faintly surprised. "Indeed, I trust so, my child. You would be but a poor, unresponsive creature to have felt no influences.

It is from such things that character and knowledge are builded. There were many persons who influenced you, I take it,--some for good, perhaps some for evil. To an intelligent mind a warning is valuable. Now, at home, you will have the leisure to sort and adapt such impressions, casting away those that are trivial and employing those which may be of service to j.a.pan."

"It is augustly as you indicate, dear father," returned Yuki, the distress in her dark eyes deepening. "I attempted to observe many things. But the influence I spoke of is not that kind you are thinking.

It--it--is a very special influence. In America they call it--love." She bowed her head over slightly. A faint pink tide of embarra.s.sment showed on her forehead and in the small bared triangle of her throat.

Tetsujo controlled himself well. "You mean--love--'ai'--the love of a man and a woman who wish to marry?"