"When I return, Tora," said the young princess; "I am sure you mean to be kind and not presuming. I will speak to you when I return."
Tora shook his head as he turned away. As Yuki's kuruma rattled from the gate, he went back musingly alone toward the Cha no yu rooms.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Mrs. Todd and her daughter, in driving away from the Haganès' official home, had given the order, "Suruga Dai." To be truthful and more accurate, this euphonious, topographical title, spoken in Japanese with a delicious softening of continental "u's," and blurred Italian "g's," was, under Mrs. Todd's crisp American tongue, transformed to the alert and inharmonious "Sew-roo-gar Da-eye." The driver, fortunately inured to these attacks upon national enunciation, drove as straight to the desired spot as if Yuki herself had named it.
Suruga Dai, so called because from its elevation can be seen the distant plain of Suruga with its glittering single treasure, Fujiyama, is a curious little welt of land, rising in a small loaf through the very heart of modern Tokio. Official residences climb the slopes, foreign homes perch at the top, Japanese villas and gardens crown it. A fashionable hospital, endowed by the Empress, has risen there within a decade; but, on Suruga Dai, the dominating presence is a huge Greek Church, built and utilized for her own purposes, by Russia. From far down the bay of Yedo, from car windows on the busy, curved track that leads from Yokohama, this edifice stands as a sort of saturnine beacon. Staring, treeless, defiant, with square white walls that hurt the eyes with their blank brilliancy, and a squat blue-tiled roof fashioned to a Byzantine dome, it rises above the verdure-hidden eaves of the Imperial palace, checks the vista to many a narrow street, and hangs, a menace and a humiliation, above the wide plain of alien interests. Boatmen on the Sumida River, poling down rice, and wood, and charcoal from distant villages, glance up toward it with a scowl and a prayer. If they were Romanists they would cross themselves and ask protection of the Virgin. Being heathen, they merely invoke the great living national spirit of their race, bow reverent heads to the thought of their Emperor, and stop at the next police-station to register their names as volunteers for the army. Russia has claimed to believe that the commanding position of this church is indicative of future rulership. They have boasted openly, in the Far East, of this coming thraldom. What the Japanese will do with the inimical temple and its priesthood in case of their ultimate victory over Russia is an interesting problem. With their tolerance for all religious belief, their innate delicacy and dignity, the foreigners who best understand them would certainly predict an unchanged policy of forbearance.
Mrs. Todd did not take a great deal of interest in Tokio street scenes. Her mind generally streamed back like vapor to the exalted personage she had recently left, or blew on before to an anticipated welcome. This was the case to-day. Rudely torn from her Prince, she was thinking of the little Countess K——, now in the Suruga Hospital after an attack of appendicitis, to whom she had promised a visit. Count K——, one of the rising statesmen of the country, was a particular friend of Dodge; Minister Todd also believed great things of his future. Gwendolen, beside her mother in the open carriage, answered intelligently, but with obvious lack of interest, the commonplace remarks addressed to her. A foretaste, a prescience of tragedy, lurked like a fog in the air. Companioning Yuki's dilemma came her own,—recognized even in this moment of irritation as incomparably less important, though still maddening with the sting of nettles,—Dodge's foolish devotion to Carmen, his continued coolness to herself. She was not old yet, or experienced enough, to put herself in another's place. Dodge was trying to hurt and humiliate her. Worse still, he was succeeding. She needed to ponder no further. One does not write a geologic treatise on the pebble in one's shoe. Dodge wished to injure her. It was cowardly, unmanly. Dodge prided himself on his Southern blood. Gwendolen, with a sneer, thought him—or tried to believe she thought him—a degenerate specimen of chivalry. If at last he should attempt another overture to her friendship, she would know well how to scorn him!
A great jerk of the wheels, and renewed vociferation from the coachman, started the horses in a nervous scamper up the slope. Gwendolen's head went back, the hatpins tugged at her yellow hair. She clutched at the velvet brim of her hat, and at the same moment her lifted eyes fell on the white walls and sagging dome of the Greek Church. The scowl she gave it might have been borrowed from a rice-seller on his barge. "Detestable barbarians!" she muttered. "If they ever should dominate this land!"
"Gwendolen," said her mother, also jerked and unnerved by the speed, "you are far too exaggerated in your expression of hatred to Russia. Even Cy says so. You are going to get the Legation into trouble yet!"