The Breath of the Gods Part 28

It is too wonderful--too splendid. It will solve all difficulties. I must not believe--"

On the cowering girl white snowflakes, her namesakes, fell now quickly, dotting her dark hair. One, falling on a cheek as white, melted slowly, and pretended that it was a tear.

"Call the girl!" said Tetsujo. Iriya rose in haste. Yuki sped back along the narrow veranda to her own room. "And summon the two serving-women also!" came Tetsujo's voice, on a higher note.

Yuki entered with what calmness she could. The two servants already squatted like bright-eyed toads in the doorway.

"Here, girl! Read this letter from his Highness, Prince Hagane," said Onda. "Bow, as you receive it into your unworthy hands."

The girl bowed obediently. She read the letter through without a flicker of change on her downcast face. Folding it with scrupulous care she returned it, again bowing, to her wondering father.

"Well," he cried, "are your wits gone? What have you to say?"

"His Highness does our house too much honor," answered Yuki, quietly.

Iriya, watching breathlessly, saw what the puzzled Onda did not see, that, in spite of superb self-control, a slow, sick pallor was stealing into the girl's face. Behind Iriya the two servants, drawn closer as by a magnet, vibrated to suppressed excitement.

Onda caught the look of their faces. "Suzume!" he said, "your young mistress has just been asked in marriage by his Augustness, Prince Hagane, daimyo of our clan."

"Ma-a-a!" breathed the women in unison, and fell forward on their faces.

"You see what _they_ think of it," said Tetsujo, with a half-contemptuous wave of his hand.

"Oh, my daughter," cried Iriya, "it is an honor so great that I cannot yet meet the thought of it. You will be like a Princess of the Blood.

Our sacred Empress will meet you face to face as a friend."

Tetsujo broke in. "You can serve your country, girl! That's the best of it. The opportunity is incredible. It does not need argument. Well, Yuki! Will you write your humble and grateful acceptance in person, or shall I convey it for you?"

"I have not accepted yet."

Tetsujo bounded in his place. Iriya caught her breath, and stretched forth two pleading hands, one to each.

"Do not anger me, girl!" muttered the father, with visible effort to contain himself. "I am in no mood for violence."

"Nor I, father, being already spent with much contention," answered Yuki, wearily. "Indeed, I should attempt no speech at all, but that I see his Highness s.h.i.+elds me by commands against rough argument, and the condition that I be given full time to decide."

"Bah," cried Tetsujo. "Even a G.o.d must have some small weaknesses. Pity to women has always been his.--Well, when shall your answer go--to-night, in the morning, on the first rays of the sun? Speak! for my choler trains me hard!"

But Yuki did not hasten to reply. Behind her rigid calm a thousand frightened fancies sped. No thought could be followed to a conclusion in this first whirl of atoms. They went by her in a soundless hurricane,--torn bits of hope, filaments of fear, thin flakes of readjustment. She saw that time must be gained--time, and the opportunity to think. An unqualified refusal would bring upon her immediately consequences and new conditions which she was neither physically nor mentally able to combat. She must achieve an armistice.

After an interval that seemed long to her but interminable to the quivering Onda, she raised her face, saying quietly: "After a s.p.a.ce of three days, at the hour of twilight, I will myself deliver an answer to Prince Hagane. Will you kindly convey this message?"

"She will answer in three days! Lord of h.e.l.l! she will condescend to answer my daimyo in three days! This bit of spoken offal--must I present to a deity who burdens himself with you--that your family may be honored, and your cheap foreign attainments used! His magnanimity is inconceivable. To a lesser man it would seem impossible. To marry you openly,--make you a princess,--you, a s.h.i.+vering wench he could have for the taking!"

"He could _not_ have me for the taking, and you know it!" said Yuki's low voice, that held an undercurrent of his own. "You shame yourself and me by such raving. If you insult me further I will refuse at once."

"Come, Yuki! Come quickly!" whispered the terrified Iriya, dragging at her daughter's sleeve. "Your honored father will strangle in his rage.

Never, never, in all our married life have I seen his eyes glare thus!

Hasten!"

"Yes--hasten--drag her away!" gasped Tetsujo, throwing back his head and clutching his collar. "She is not my daughter! Would that my bones had crumbled--" His words broke off in a gurgle.

In her little room Yuki stood gazing down moodily upon the convulsed form of her mother. "I know I ought to feel more pain to see you weep so bitterly, my mother," she said at length. "I tell myself that I should feel, but I cannot feel. Somehow I seem to be wearing armor inside instead of outside. Think of it, mother, what it means to me! I love a man who loves me honorably. I do not ask a sudden marriage,--I would wait patiently until the war is over, and perhaps your heart and father's would be softened toward my hope. I will work for you,--I will go out and be a servant, a teacher,--anything to relieve you of my burden. All I ask is to remain uncompelled toward other marriage. Yet here my father, and an old man older than my father, are trapping me,--they condescend to trap me! Prince Hagane cannot possibly wish me for his wife. He has seen me but twice since I was a child. A man like Hagane does not know love in the sense I have been taught it. Oh, I am like a bird ensnared in chains--in chains so heavy--that I can scarcely stir a link! Being a samurai's daughter I cannot even die."

"Yuki! Would you indeed disgrace us by marrying--a Russian?"

"Not so long as it seems to you a disgrace. But that will not last forever, mother. This war is to change many things. Can I not belong to myself, just for the time of this war, mother? Will you not plead with father for this boon?"

"I dare not! I dare not!" shuddered Iriya. "I fear your father, for the first time in my life.--There! He is calling. I must go." She caught one of the girl's dangling hands and pressed it convulsively against a tear-wet cheek. "May Kwannon soothe your bewildered heart, my loved one!" she murmured, and was gone.

"I prefer you to have as little as possible to do with that hardened and ungrateful wretch!" came Tetsujo's voice, as Iriya entered to him. Yuki knew that it was raised purposely for her to hear. Iriya evidently attempted some conciliatory reply, for he burst out angrily, "Don't defend her, woman! It is disrespect to me. I tell you she shall consent, whether she wishes it or not!"

Yuki smiled the smile that leaves a taint upon the soul. "There are a few things that even a father--even a j.a.panese father--cannot do!" she said aloud.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

If previous days in the Onda household had been tense, those following were to reach the ultimate limit of nerve-endurance. Immediately after his last tempestuous scene with Yuki, Tetsujo had left the house. Yuki was minded to call after him, protesting that her promise given him on the first day of war did not hold indefinitely. She moved forward, the words nearly sped, when he turned on her a look and gesture so repellent that she cowered, and let him pa.s.s. It did not seem at all her father who now looked at her, but rather some angry Spirit of War, in temporary a.s.sumption of Onda's body.

War! War! War! The streets thrilled to it. The sparrows chirped it. The jinrikisha wheels rattled a pygmy fusillade. In this flare of national ardor all pa.s.sions burned more hotly, and among them, Tetsujo's indignation against his only child. Iriya, being more inexperienced than Yuki herself in interpretation of men's fiercer moods, could not tell her that such caloric outbursts would die the sooner from their own exaggeration. Yuki moaned, and shut her hot eyes from a future where her father should always be angry, and her mother always trembling.

Early next day, after the reading of Hagane's letter, the women of Onda's house were surprised to find their domestic retinue silently increased by the addition of two grim, middle-aged men who called themselves gardeners. From their reading of all "War Extras" that the jangling bell of the newsboy announced, and from their sporadic and often devastating attacks on harmless shrubs, one might have doubted their skill in the professed art. Tetsujo disdained explanation, and gave the one order that they were to be suitably fed at meal-times in the kitchen, and treated with the consideration due to servants hired specially by himself. Iriya had not the heart, scarcely the curiosity, to question. All that day she moved about, a silent, timid figure of protesting obedience. Yuki understood at once that her mother had been told to ignore her. She understood, also, the meaning of the so-called "gardeners," and turned to her father slow, scornful eyes, which he refused to meet.

What the young seldom realize, in a case like this, is the suffering of those in authority, who, according to adolescent eyes, delight in imparting sorrow. Yuki was convinced that this strange changeling of a father revelled in his cruelty. She forced herself into defiant composure, chiefly in the hope of detracting from his supposed enjoyment. Her mother's white face was another matter. She looked on that just as little as possible. Old Suzume and Maru grew to partake of their master's elfish obsession. Their peering faces and bright eyes, quickly withdrawn, maddened her.

No hope or thought of solution had come through the troubled night, nor, as yet, with the gray day. Tetsujo had gone, presumably, to convey the detested message to his prince. Yuki's one conscious determination was to send another message to Pierre, which should state clearly and comprehensively the new difficulty that had a.s.sailed her. Almost certainly her father had arranged that no more letters should go forth or be received. The gardeners and Suzume would see to that. At times she had a wild fancy of attempting flight, urging Pierre to rescue her in the fas.h.i.+on of mediaeval romance, and to take her to the Todds, or to some Christian missionary, where they could be married and so set beyond the reach of Hagane and her father. But would it set her beyond the black tide of her own remorse? How then should she reconcile her fondest belief, that in a union with Pierre she might serve to bring closer French and j.a.panese friends.h.i.+p? This would be outrage, anarchy, at the start. Yet something must be done,--something at least to remove her, temporarily, from her father's loathing sight after she should have refused Hagane's proposition. In this, perhaps, Pierre himself could a.s.sist, or Gwendolen,--if she could only see Gwendolen. "Gwendolen!" She stretched out her arms to the sunless, vacant sky, and called her friend's name aloud.

Whether telepathy is a fact, or merely a pet child of some philosophers, whether or not the ether of the East holds subtler vibrations than our own, it is certain that exactly at this moment Gwendolen awoke in her foreign bed from hurrying dreams of Yuki, and lay awake, staring, a sudden weight of apprehension full upon her. The excitement of war may have sharpened American senses also. Gwendolen's mind ran back for the hundredth time to that strange, memorable banquet. Its meaning grew now more sharp and sinister. Something had taken place there, something intangible, but very real, something decisive, fatal, the effect of which would first appear in Yuki. Gwendolen had as her birthright some of her father's intuitive judgment of character. She had read that night the hatred of foreigners in Tetsujo's sullen face, and did not dislike him for it. Hagane baffled her; but she had noted how deep were the eyes fixed now on Yuki, now on Pierre. Neither of them would wish for Yuki to become the wife of Pierre, and neither did Gwendolen wish it. The girl smiled curiously at her feeling of distaste. It did not seem right for Yuki to marry a foreigner, even an utterly charming and immorally beautiful foreigner like Pierre Le Beau.

"I guess I must have been a j.a.panese in lots of my former incarnations,"

she said to herself. "Yuki declares it's so, and she should know. But--"

here she stopped and drew out her long, unbound yellow hair in two diaphanous, glittering wings. "The fates certainly have put my Oriental soul, this time, into a misleading body!" She was dressing now, and stood before her pretty silver-laden bureau by a sunny south window of the Legation.

About two hours later of the same day Minister Todd and his secretary, sitting alone in the thrice-guarded sanctum of the former's private office, looked up in incredulous astonishment as a dainty tapping betrayed a feminine guest. Then Todd's thin smile widened. "Gwennie, I'll bet!--and on the war-path! Only that little rascal would have the cheek."

Dodge turned away to hide the glow in his brown face. Gwennie it proved to be. She entered, dainty, perfumed, exquisite, in tan-cloth dress and seal-skins that exactly matched her brows and lashes.

"I don't expect to be welcomed," she said aggressively, her little white chin high in air. "But I simply had to come."

"Well?" This was from the minister.

Before stating her plea, Gwendolen threw a bewildering look of entreaty upon the gloating Dodge. "Dad, I can't stand it! I haven't seen or heard anything from Yuki for a week. Pierre Le Beau is driving me mad; and last night I had the scariest dream about Yuki. I feel in my bones that she needs me. Let me go to her, dad! Dearest, darlingest diddy-daddy, say I can go!"

Todd put a loving arm about the supplicant, but at the same time he shook his head. "Can't you be patient just a little longer, girlie?