The Breath of the Gods Part 27

"Banzai! May our Emperor live a thousand years!" roared Tetsujo. Those outside could hear him hurtling about the narrow room. "Tell them to hang the flags above the gate, woman! Quick! Every moment wasted is a sacrilege! G.o.ds of my Ancestors, at last we fight! Would that I were with Togo!"

Iriya, after giving orders for the flags, threw herself before the family shrine, where lights burned always in small, steady, pointed flames. "Ancestral spirits of our home, old deities of this land, give strength to our soldiers and sailors!" she whispered.

Tetsujo brushed past her, fully equipped for walking. His old face twitched with eagerness.

"Do you not wait for your worthless breakfast, honorable master?"

ventured Suzume.

Onda gave a loud laugh and tossed the old dame a handful of coin.

"Breakfast! I'm eating and drinking food of the G.o.ds! Here! Take this money, and all of you women go to your temple and make offering! I seek the public places where men a.s.semble." Suddenly he halted. Hagane's last words came to his ears. His face turned black, and he slowly walked into the house with bent head. "I had forgotten--I cannot go. Serve the breakfast as usual," he muttered in the voice of an old man. Stumbling into the main room he said under his breath, "Hachiman Sama, help me to endure! On a day like this--I, Onda Tetsujo--I a warrior of Hagane's clan--I must be held here like a tame c.o.c.k in a bamboo basket! Had I not seen the look in his Highness's eye--I might hurl all aside and take the risk--"

Soft footsteps had been following him. He wheeled, to face Yuki. Her eyes were gleaming and steady, though her face had crimsoned with shame.

"Father," she began proudly, "I know the reason of your return. All your heart burns to be with other men, and to hear full news of this mighty event. Go, I entreat you! There is no fear of what--you and Prince Hagane think."

The old warrior himself now showed embarra.s.sment. He would not meet her gaze, but let his eyes move restlessly about the floor as he answered: "Yes, my old heart strains like a bowstring to be gone--and I do not dare! You defied me once,--my blood grows hot at the thought of it."

"Still, I am your daughter," said Yuki. "And I think you will believe me when I offer you my pledge that, from this moment till your return, even though it be a week hence, I shall not leave this house and garden, shall not admit a foreign guest to it nor listen to foreign speech."

"I believe you," said Tetsujo, with great relief in his face. "You will neither go nor admit a foreign guest--nor write and receive letters?"

Yuki caught up her sleeve. Onda's face darkened. Deliberately drawing forth the letter she offered it to her father, saying, "Here is one I have already written and shall send. Will you not trust me even further and be the one by whose hand it goes?"

"Me post it? Me put it in a box?" he asked in amazement.

"The meaning it bears is not against your desire, father. Rather may it destroy an evil that already lives. I ask you to take it."

"To bargain thus with a mere girl--" the samurai muttered. Then he threw his head back. "My blood is in your veins. I trust you. Give it."

Yuki, choking back a little sob, fell at his feet and touched her forehead to the floor. She heard his quick and heavy tread s.h.i.+ver through the house. Then followed, coming in her direction, the gentler steps of Iriya.

Yuki lifted her arms. "Mother, mother!" she cried pa.s.sionately, "why could I not have been born a man? To die for one's country, in battle, with the thought of the Emperor like a cooling draught at the lips! To stand on the great black s.h.i.+p, smiling in storm and snow and fog, driven in like fate itself to glorious chances! Oh, that is to _live!_ But to be a woman--"

"Yes," said Iriya, quietly seating herself. "The fortunate are those who know, in this incarnation, full expression of a burning heart."

"Do you feel so too, mother?--you, who are always so tranquil and so dear?"

"I too am a samurai's daughter. In the strife of Restoration days I saw my father and my brother die--I saw my mother live."

"Oh, dearest one, how selfish we young souls are. We are like green fruit that has no mellowness. You have suffered so deeply--and I never guessed."

Iriya, with half-closed eyes on the garden, uttered words which until the hour of her death never quite loosed their echoes from the girl's heart. "Young souls are indeed unripe in the ways of love. That suffering of mine was mere indifference to the grief I shall know if, at an hour like this, with Nippon in the throes of re-birth, my only child should become the wife of her enemy."

Yuki cowered back. She could not look her mother in the face. Up to this moment she had never dreamed that Iriya had been told anything. The sense of comrades.h.i.+p and of interdependence between a j.a.panese husband and wife is very strong; but in this case, where Tetsujo's angry violence had been so out of keeping with the whole tenor of his life, Yuki was perhaps justified in feeling that he would prefer to maintain a sullen reticence.

Iriya's words, and the way she spoke them, showed not only that she was conversant with the whole threatening situation, but that she had thought and prayed deeply. It did not seem at all the every-day domestic Iriya that spoke, but an older and more impersonal spirit, issuing from borrowed human, lips.

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Iriya sat rigid and upright, as a silver image in a Buddhist niche. Little Yuki, feeling very small and young and human, crept noiselessly to her own room.

Tetsujo did not return until the following day. He showed evidences of strong excitement, and could not for a while be seated, but strode up and down the matted floor of the house, throwing off e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns and phrases of war-news. He had much to tell in his irritating, disjointed way. But j.a.panese women do not show impatience. They knelt out of range of his feet, but within good hearing, following his motions with feverish eagerness, and s.n.a.t.c.hing at his words as at whizzing fireflies.

Names of those killed, quotations from foreign newspapers, reports from the Tokio war-office, maledictions upon himself that he was too old to go,--all came in a scurrying swarm from the samurai's lips.

"Refused me--they refused me,--those grinning, foreignized apes at the war-office. Even my daimyo will not help me. An age limit? G.o.ds! Trained men must twirl their thumbs while boys with soft hearts and flabby muscles defend the Emperor! Would that I had ten thousand lives to give, and that each life in pa.s.sing held the agonies of ten thousand deaths.

Even that would be but a handful of blown petals to the whirling majesty of Nippon in the breath of the Eternal.--But wait! There are many young men now, there are hills of powder and river-beds of shot; but when that powder melts like snow in a spring rain, when the last shot stings the air, then may the sword-arm leap to usefulness. The Cossacks cut and slay like demons,--why not we? For whom then will be the cry but for old Onda? Onda Tetsujo! who has cut three bodies through with one slow, steady stroke; who has bared a living bone so swiftly that the slain creature turned inquisitive eyes on death! Bah, I babble and rave like a Meiji actor."

"Yet, Lord, it may come,--it may come," whispered Iriya, aloud. "Daily I shall pray and sacrifice that this desire of our hearts be granted."

Yuki looked upon these heroic beings that had given her life, and knew the pangs of self loathing. What was she, their only child, now doing for the land they loved? Planning ways of remaining faithful to a foreign lover! She drooped her head still lower. Alas! Had Pierre not taken that promise from her unguarded soul! If Pierre even now would give her up--would understand.

Tetsujo, still fuming in a n.o.ble rage, cut the floor in cross-lines of hasty striding. He turned at intervals, catching back his flight, raising himself up to silence as if he heard a bugle-note, staring, unseeing, into the garden, then clenching his fists, muttering new imprecations, and throwing himself again into his restless walk. The essence of Yamato Damas.h.i.+ breathed from him. One listened for the clank of steel and shark's-skin armor. His right hand felt incessantly for the vanished sword-hilts. All at once he stopped directly before Yuki, transfixed her with fierce, tormented eyes and cried, "Onda Yuki, you are a samurai's daughter."

Yuki met his look. "I am a samurai's daughter."

"See that you forget it not."

For an instant longer he glared into her upraised face, then flinging himself away he muttered, "Oh, that I had a son to offer,--one son only to serve my land! They would not let me go." He seated himself at last; folded his arms within the short, blue, cotton sleeves; and sank into a brooding revery.

With a few days the first frenzy and tumult of the war were over. The nation settled into a state of watchful and sober patriotism. Men turned to practical work, raising money for the war fund, for all knew that it was indeed a struggle for life or death.

Yuki had received by mail another letter. Tetsujo was present when it came. She read and re-read it slowly, under his very eyes, and then tore it into sc.r.a.ps, letting them fall in small white flecks upon the red coals of the hibachi. Onda stared at her, fascinated, but found nothing to say.

The note was in Pierre's most appealing vein. He urged her, for the sake of both, to be a heroine. He forgave her, a thousand times over, her hint of betrayal of the night before. Again he congratulated himself and her on his foresight in compelling the stricter pledge. "You must see now, my poor, sorrowful darling, that it is the only thing to hold us back from despair." Yuki's heart sagged within her. She attempted no reply. She wondered dully how so flaming a love failed to illuminate reason. Pierre simply could not understand. Well, she must be calm and clear enough for both. Her deepest fear, but half admitted, was that Tetsujo, with Prince Hagane behind, would now attempt to end the matter by marrying her to some young n.o.ble of their acquaintance. She hardly dared face the thought of what her home life might become after her repudiation of such an offer.

Gwendolen remained apart, and Yuki rightly guessed that it was at Minister Todd's instigation. She never for a moment doubted Gwendolen's loyal affection. This restraint was a proof of it, as also of Mr. Todd's clear judgment.

Pierre began now, in his restless misery, to haunt the streets immediately surrounding Yuki's home. Apparently he wished to establish, as a signal, a certain little quaint air from Carmen that he loved. He would whistle a phrase and pause, evidently expecting her to continue with the answering melody. At twilight, one day nearly a week after "the banquet of the Red G.o.d" (as she always thought of it), she was standing alone beside her plum-tree, now almost bare of flowers. The sky stretched low and heavy, as a giant tent hung with unspilled rain. No sunlight had come with the day. The wind pinched and stung with dampness. As she stared mournfully upon the falling petals, holding out a languid hand to stay their flight, a few large flakes of snow came down.

"I gathered petals, to show thee, love.

But now, in my hands they have melted--"

she quoted aloud from a cla.s.sic.

Her parents had been talking together in the main corner-room, where now a servant brought lights. On the closed paper shoji, just beside her, the silhouettes of two beloved forms sprang into sudden vivid blackness.

Tetsujo's stern, Indian-like profile was turned, while Iriya showed only the outlines of her coiffure, with the droop of slender shoulders and the flower-like poise of a delicate throat. His att.i.tude,--all dignity, self-a.s.sertion, manliness; and hers, concessive, yielding, and full of feminine grace,--symbolized to the girl the true relations, in j.a.pan, of man and wife. "And is it not better?" she thought to herself. "Are the aggressive American women happier or more beloved?" She thought of the domestic scandals, the unhappy marriages openly discussed at Mrs. Todd's table. Here, at least, though such sad things did sometimes occur, they seldom became topics of general conversation.

The bell of the front gate rang out through the gray air. Yuki, with a sudden leap of the heart she could not account for, threw an arm about the tree and clung to it, listening breathlessly. Through the paper-walled house came clearly the sounds of old Suzume as she opened the door. "Hai! Hai! Sayo de gozaimasu. Hai, danna!" (Yes, yes. It is augustly so! Yes, master.) Even the sharp indrawn breath was audible.

Surely it was a visitor of importance,--and not a foreigner. In an instant a third silhouette was added to the two in the room. This bore a small parcel in its hands, and bowed very deeply before Tetsujo.

"A messenger direct from the august Prince Hagane!" said Suzume's proud voice.

Yuki saw the shadow of her father s.n.a.t.c.h the package and toss aside the cloth furos.h.i.+ki in which it was wrapped. She saw the shadow open a letter, start, bend his head nearer. She saw strong shadow-hands tremble, and heard a voice, which strove in vain for steadiness, give the orders: "Fold the furos.h.i.+ki carefully, and return it done up in clean paper. Give to the messenger my respects. There is no immediate reply. Offer him fresh tobacco, tea, and cakes--the best we have."

"Hai! Hai! Kas.h.i.+komarimasu" (Yes, yes! I hear and respectfully obey), murmured Suzume's voice. Her shadow bobbed once, twice, to the matting, and vanished.

Yuki gripped the tree hard. A messenger from Prince Hagane! and that deep, triumphant note in her father's voice! What could it mean?

The shadow of Iriya was now reading the note. A cry came. "O my husband!