The Breath of the Gods Part 63

"Onda will sacrifice to the G.o.ds in grat.i.tude when he knows the whole,"

said Hagane.

Pierre was trying to speak. He vacillated, soul and body, between the dead woman and her husband. "Do not refuse me," murmured Hagane, stepping nearer.

Pierre did not shrink. Instead, he, too, went near, as if fascinated. He cleared his throat, pushed back the damp hair from his girlish forehead, and smiled up at the dark, eager face. "Hagane is a great man," he said, tapping the other's arm. "Oh, he is a terrible man! I can refuse him nothing. Yuki says that the G.o.ds of this land speak with him. I believe it. One is standing just behind him now; that is a terrible G.o.d, too. He looks like Hagane. He sits like a white flint in a ball of fire. On his arms are the coils of rope that bind the pa.s.sions; in his right hand is the wheel of fate. No, I will not refuse. Old G.o.d must have flowers on his altar. Take white flower, old War G.o.d. There she is,--my love--my darling. If only she would not smile!"

Hagane caught the boy as he fell, transferring the burden quickly to Ronsard's outstretched arms. He gazed then anew at the face of his wife.

"Yuki," he said, as if to her listening spirit, "you are soul of my soul through ten thousand lives. I let you die. It was karma. A flower! A flower! Alas, that a flower should be stung by immortality!"

"Get her away, your Highness, before we call the servants and a doctor for Le Beau," whispered Todd, after an agonizing interval. Hagane rose from his knees.

"Yes, little Yuki must go with me," he muttered; "I will take her at once, your Excellency." He went toward the coolie hat and stooped. Onda was before him.

"It is not seemly, Lord, for you to bear so foul a burden. I will wear the hat, and I pray you take these shoes of mine, giving me the straw sandals."

Hagane obeyed pa.s.sively, his eyes fixed always on Yuki's moonlit face.

Now and again he felt in the bosom of his robe for the paper.

"Loosen the robe from your girdle, Master," pleaded the kerai.

Hagane did so, releasing the caught-up ends. The long, dark garment, though of cotton, restored to him the height and dignity of his usual presence.

"Shall I draw the hood of the kuruma?" asked Onda.

"Yes, cover her face,--her small white face; the very night may weep and falter at that smile."

Onda tucked up his robe, put on the wide hat and the straw sandals, placed himself between the shafts, and started along the driveway.

Hagane, moving always slowly, abstractedly, folded his arms, bowed his head, and followed in the att.i.tude of a mourner immediately behind the covered vehicle.

"Take my burden for a moment," pleaded Ronsard, when the sound of wheels had quite died away. "I can support--no longer. Let me summon aid. Mon Dieu! this night has made of me an old man."

"It has made of me a prophet," said Todd, "for I have met Immortals face to face."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The sumptuous obsequies of the young Princess Hagane, become so suddenly and so securely a leading figure in Tokio's official life; her mysterious death (heart failure, the obliging papers called it); Hagane'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, a.s.sisted by members of the native clergy, conducting the ceremony in j.a.panese. Hagane, ponderous, brooding, and self-contained, had walked immediately behind the flower-laden burden. The scowling Tetsujo, with Iriya, followed him.

Suzume was there, alone, for she had refused the pet.i.tion of Maru San.

Next to the family came Gwendolen, s.h.i.+vering, slender, wound in craepe, 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 Suzume, 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 j.a.panese popularity. Also many of the fair s.e.x 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 attache 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.h.i.+mmer 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan worked indefatigably. Few lamentations rose from them. They would have considered tears disloyal. The Emperor, behind his gray moat-walls,--half man, half G.o.d 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 Hagane 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. j.a.panese 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 gla.s.s. The drinking of water as a pledge is used between j.a.panese 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-const.i.tuted 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 j.a.panese Emperor!"