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, assisted by members of the native clergy, conducting the ceremony in Japanese. Haganè, ponderous, brooding, and self-contained, had walked immediately behind the flower-laden burden. The scowling Tetsujo, with Iriya, followed him. Suzumè was there, alone, for she had refused the petition of Maru San. Next to the family came Gwendolen, shivering, slender, wound in crêpe, 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 Suzumè, 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 Japanese popularity. Also many of the fair sex 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 attaché 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 passion 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 shimmer 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 shining 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.