The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Breath of the Gods, by Sidney McCall

THE BREATH OF THE GODS

THE BREATH OF
THE GODS

BY

SIDNEY McCALL

AUTHOR OF "TRUTH DEXTER"

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1905

Copyright, 1905,

By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published May, 1905

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.

BECAUSE OF FAITH AND REVERENCE,

AND IN SPITE OF ERRORS WHICH I KNOW TO BE

INEVITABLE,

I DARE INSCRIBE THIS BOOK TO

YAMATO DAMASHII

PREFATORY NOTE

No character in this book, belonging either to public or private life, is taken as a whole or in part from any person. The characters are wholly imaginary, and no incident is based on any real incident known to the writer. Even in the descriptions of official buildings, memory is laxly used. In the genre studies alone is realism attempted. Most, if not all, of the questions, remarks, and speculations put into the mouths of peasants and servants have been overheard by the writer.

THE
BREATH OF THE GODS

CHAPTER ONE

The stone dwelling of Senator Cyrus C. Todd, usually as indistinguishable from its neighbors as is one piano key from another, presented at nine o'clock on this night of November third, nineteen hundred and three, a claim to individuality in the excess of light pouring from every window, from the perpendicular wink of every opening door (opened but to close again as quickly); oozing, it would seem, from the very pores of the pale façade, thereby giving to the great flat rectangle of the house a phosphorescent value that set it six feet out into the night.

The upper windows shone more brilliantly than those below. A roller shade had been carelessly left high. Through the film of chamber curtains heads could be seen passing. Once, there was the outflung gesture of a slim, bare arm. Everything bespoke approaching festivity. At this brightest window a silhouette suddenly appeared, sharp, dark, complete. It was that of a Japanese girl with wonderfully looped and curved coiffure, shoulders that sloped tenderly, and a small, straight throat.

Just at this moment, on the shadowed entrance-steps below, answering silhouettes began noiselessly to climb. These were men with thin black legs, and strange burdens, black like themselves. They showed angles as of gnarled roots; one, the great curved body of a gigantic spider. The front door, opening instantly to a ring, disclosed them merely as musicians,—Signor Marcellini of Milan and his colleagues,—bearing basso, cello, and flutes, secure in swart cases.

The lower rooms of the house were slightly chill. Though flooded with soft light, they were not yet fully illuminated. All doors within stood open. It looked almost as if walls had been taken down, so long and mysterious had grown the vistas. Through all tingled an aromatic smell, something a little alien, like crushed herbs,—pungent, and full of vague suggestion. Mrs. Cyrus C. Todd, flowing now down the palm-set stairway in a purple tide of skirts, frothed with dim lace, stopped at a switchboard half concealed in vines, sent forth a gloved, determined hand, and in an instant the secret of the odor was revealed. The rooms, to their farthest angles, literally exuded chrysanthemums. Senator Todd was said to have expended five thousand dollars for these flowers alone. Perhaps he wished to stamp in gold upon the memory of Washington this coming-out party of his idolized, only child. The conceit was fair enough, for Gwendolen was bright, and blonde, and golden in herself. Statesmen and the wives of statesmen did not fail to observe that chrysanthemums were the insignia of official Japan, and that November third happened,—they emphasized "happened,"—to be the birthday of Japan's beloved Emperor. These two facts, joined with the third, that Senator Todd even now had aspirations to the Tokio mission, made a trio of keen angles to be used as wedges for further speculation.

The walls of the lower story had been spread for the occasion with yellow satin, upon which alternated delicate upright strokes of silver and of white. Around, under the ceiling, grew a frieze of living flowers. The great, coarse, woody stems crossed in a lattice-work, with clusters of huge blossoms and green leaves breaking the angles at points of decision possible only to a trained artist, or to a Japanese. The white duck floor-covering spread to a border hand-painted, to match the frieze. Where wall and canvas met, the real flowers again arose,—thick parallel stalks of differing heights, upholding a wainscot border of shaggy gold. Mantles were heaped with them. Japanese pots of them in bloom alternated with conventional ferns and palms. Each electric bulb jutted from the heart of a living flower. The very air had an amber tone.

Overhead, invisible footsteps scurried in short flights. They sounded feminine, young, full of excitement. "Heavens!" Miss Gwendolen de Lancy Todd was crying, "where on earth is my other glove? I am sure I just laid it here! And my orchids! Has anybody sat on my orchids? I think I'll have to marry the young person who sent them, though I forget now who it was!"

"A person of the name Dodge, n'est-ce-pas?" ventured the little French dressmaker, on her knees beside the fair white vision. Pins, retained at the corners of her mouth, added a crushed softness to the pronunciation. She rhymed it with "targe."

"Yes, a name like that, I believe," said Gwendolen, indifferently, and craned her long neck over. "Mother called him some sort of a snip. Are you certain that my dress hangs right now, Madame?"

"Oui, oui. It is perfection," declared Madame, sticking the remaining pins into the black front of her dress.

"Then at last I am actually ready. I believe there's mother calling now. Where did Yuki go? Oh, I see, over there by the window, as calm and cool as if we were going to church instead of to our first ball!"

"Then all my coolness is stopping on my outsides," said the Japanese girl, with a little incipient shrug and giggle, breaking at once into the merriest of low laughs. She crossed the room swiftly, with an unusual, swaying rhythm of movement. "Ah, Gwendolen, my heart it go like yellow butterflies to be downstairs."

Gwendolen turned a radiant face to greet her. "Now isn't she a vision!" cried the girl aloud, in fresh access of admiration for her friend. "Madame, what do you think those French painters of yours would say to her—Chavannes, De Monvel, Besnard,—who owe so much to Yuki's art?"

"You omit Monsieur Le Beau, who is a painter," said the little woman, shyly. She was on good terms with the girls, and had made Yuki, as well as Gwendolen, chic gowns with the breath of Paris upon them. "I knew well the family of Monsieur Le Beau in France," she hurried on, seeing the distressed flush in Yuki's face. "Non, non, Mamselles. I am a chattering old femme. Let me look at you together before you descend the stair." She sat back upon her heels to enjoy the picture.

"Yes," cried Gwendolen, "that's right. Take us both in." Laughingly she drew Yuki's arm, with its long, trailing sleeve of gray, tightly within her own. They rested together, swaying,—smiling,—Yuki's cheek still warm with the name of Pierre Le Beau, two types as far apart as the two sides of earth which had given them race.

Gwendolen was fair almost to the extreme of golden blondness. Her features were small and perfectly related; her nose deliciously interrogative at the tip. Her brows and lashes, drawn in a darker hue, gave touches of character and distinction. She was very slender, erect, and was poised as though she grew in the wind. The long tulle draperies shook and stirred as if vitalized by her energy. She was all white and gold. Her heaped-up skeins of hair, amber necklace, gloves, slippers, and stockings gleamed with a primrose hue, and the freckles on her orchids (poor flowers, just caught up hastily from an ignominious corner) repeated the yellow note.

Beside her, Yuki Onda, a few inches lacking in height, impressive, nevertheless, and held with a striking yet indefinable difference of line, smiled out like a frail Astarte. Her pallor had an undernote of ivory, where Gwendolen's was of pearl. Her head, with its pointed chin, bore, like a diadem of jet,—balanced, like a regal burden,—the spread wings of her hair. Beneath a white, low brow her eyes made almost a continuous, gleaming line. The little nose came down, straight and firm, with a single brush stroke. All the humanity, the tenderness, the womanhood of her face lay in the red mouth and the small, round chin. Her smile was startling, even pathetic, in beauty. Gwendolen had once said, "There is sometimes something in Yuki's smile that makes me want to fight God for her."

Yuki's robe, in deference to hours of pleading from Gwendolen and Pierre Le Beau, was Japanese to the least detail. Mrs. Todd had protested in vain for the "civilized" coming-out gown of white. The robe hung about the girl in long, loose folds of crêpe, mist-gray, rising in soft transitions from the dark band of the hem to pearl tones at the throat. Under it were garments of heavier silk, dawn-colored, showing like morning through thin clouds. Into the curdled substance of the crêpe, cherry-flowers were dyed, or rather, breathed in, by a smiling, wrinkled brown magician at the rim of Yuzen Creek,—pale shapes which glimmered and were gone, rose to the surface and sank again, as though borne in moving water. Besides the black note of her hair there was one strong crash of contrast in the obi, or sash, a broad and dominating zone, black, too, with fire-flies of gold upon it. For hair-ornaments she wore a cluster of small pink flowers that had the look of cherry-blooms, and a great carved ivory pin, pronged like a tuning-fork, an heirloom in her father's family.

"Gwendo—len! Yu-kee! Come down instantly!" rose the voice of Mrs. Todd. "You should have been down ten minutes ago."

"Ah, Madame Todd calls," exclaimed the dressmaker, scrambling to her feet.

"But you are sure you really admire us, Madame?" challenged Gwendolen, before she would stir.

"Oui, charmante, charmante, both are perfection apart—and a vision of paradise together. But go, young ladies, the good mother calls again."

The spoiled child stopped for another instant, this time in the doorway. "All right, mother. Coming this instant!" she hurled downstairs; then to the little Frenchwoman she said, "Do not attempt to sit up, Madame. Yuki is to stay all night, and will help me with the pins. After a glimpse at the reception and some of the goodies below, you must hurry home to your little Jeanne. Take plenty of bonbons with you, and I wish to send that great bunch of daisies, with my love. All children love daisies, n'est-ce-pas?"

At last they were off. Madame could hear Mrs. Todd, relieved, yet petulant, scolding them the whole descending scale of the stairs. Moving through the perfumed disorder of the room, Madame sought out the daisies, and, with filling eyes, whispered aloud in French, "Now may the good God be kind to that loving heart, and send to it only blessing."

Stockings, scarfs, fans, underwear,—a thousand dainty trifles must be gathered up before the little Frenchwoman could give herself consent to go. Madame and Miss Todd had been kind friends to the widowed exile.

Far over to one side of the room she stumbled upon a dark heap that showed gleams of a cherry-colored lining. It emitted, as if consciously, an aroma, subtle, faint, unforgettable, strange scented echoes of a distant land. It was Yuki's long black "adzuma-coat," worn from the Japanese Legation, where Baroness Kanrio and the maids had assisted her to dress, and which, in this bright room, she had slipped laughingly to the floor and forgotten. Madame held it out for a moment. Then she folded and laid it softly on the foot of the bed. Her expression had changed slightly. As if with relief, she snatched up a dressing-gown of blue flannel, that cried "Gwendolen" from every turquoise fold.

"Gwendolen, where is your father hiding?" demanded Mrs. Todd, severely, as the two girls reached the hall.

"Why, how should I know? Dad hasn't worried my mind. Isn't Yuki simply a dream of spring?"

"You forget that I have admired Yuki upstairs," said the harassed matron, and turned her back. "There's another carriage sounding as if it wanted to stop! Every wheel goes over my nerve-centre. Cy, Cy—rus! Where is that wretched man? The musicians should be playing now. The guests will pour in any instant. There is a carriage stopping! It has stopped! Heavens, I shall go mad!"

"Shall Yuki and I run for the drawing-room, mother?"

"Yes, yes, dear. Right under that tallest palm. Be sure to stand ahead of Yuki. Cyrus! Cy—rus! Oh, he is never anywhere when I want him." Her wails preceded her down the hall.

"Are you looking for me, dear?" asked the senator, innocently, strolling out in a leisurely manner from his study, where, against orders, he had been smoking a cigar.

"Am I!" panted his wife. "And you've been smoking!" But indignation must be swept aside. "The carriages are stopping, man! Don't you hear them? I'll be in bed for a month if I live through this night! Start up the musicians, and join us immediately in the front drawing-room."

"Musicians,—musicians?" murmured Cyrus, looking about, "where are the musicians?"

"Not under the hatrack, nor yet in my china-closet," cried his lady, with angry vehemence. "Over there! Yes, there—where you saw the piano wheeled this afternoon; behind that hedge of chrysanthemums!"

"Oh, yes, there in the duck-shooters' lodge. All right, old lady. I'll start 'em. Don't get excited!"

Guests now streamed upstairs toward the dressing-rooms. Signor Marcellini began his most seductive waltz; and the senator stood beside his heaving spouse just as the first smiling acquaintance crossed the door-sill.

"Ah, Governor! Ah, my dear Mrs. Jink!" chortled Mrs. Todd. "This is surely a good omen,—my daughter's first official congratulations to come from you. Gwendolen, let me present Governor Jink and Mrs. Jink, fresh from our own dear Western state. Miss Yuki Onda of Tokio, Mrs. Jink,—Gwendolen's most intimate school-friend, and my Oriental daughter, as I call her. Ah, Sir George! Punctuality is one of the British virtues. Mrs. Blachouse, my daughter, Miss Todd."

The reception swung now, full and free, into the sparkling waters of felicity. Laughter, lights, and the rustling of silken skirts on inner mysteries of silk; music held back by the multitudinous small sounds of human intercourse, with now and then a protesting wail from violins and the guttural short snore of a cello! Laughter, and the clink of glasses on metal trays, the scraping of spoons against porcelain, tinkling of ice in fragile vessels, and incessantly the shuffle of footsteps on soundless, unseen floors! Perfumes of dying flowers and foliage, odors of essences, fumes of fresh-cut lemons, and of wine!

Outside, at the curbing, a continuous roar and rattling of carriages went on. The covered entrance-way, like an elastic tent drawn out, sheltered a thin moving stream of faces. Behind them the scrape of wheels, stamping of horses, and vociferous bawling of drivers sent a premonitory tingling through the blood. At intervals there came the snort and hiss of that modern Fafnir, the automobile, followed by the nauseating taint of gasoline.

To Gwendolen and Yuki it seemed as if the line of visitors would never end. "Yuki, Yuki," whispered the former, "if they keep popping by like this, each with that wooden grin, I shall certainly go into hysterics! Did you see how nearly I broke down in the face of that last fat lady in tight gray sleeves? She looked like a young rhinoceros in its little sister's skin."

"I no longer perceive anybody at all," said Yuki, tranquilly. "I only see the small duck called 'oshi-dori' bobbing down, then up, on the Sumida River."

"Hush!" whispered Mrs. Todd, in evident excitement. "Here comes the Russian ambassador with his entire suite. I was wondering whether he would snub us because of the war-talk, and Yuki, and the chrysanthemums, and the Mikado's birthday! Now, girls, smile your sweetest!"

But the good lady was given a surprise. Yuki leaned back to touch her arm. At the look of irritated inquiry the Japanese girl said clearly, "You must excuse me from this, dear Mrs. Todd; I cannot shake hands with that person. If I shook, I would be the hypocrite." Without waiting for permission or remonstrance, she turned and hurried from the direction in which the Muscovites now approached. Mr. Todd, with hand already extended in welcome, saw nothing of the little by-play. Gwendolen heard, sympathized entirely with Yuki, but wisely held her peace. Mrs. Todd, after a gasp of outraged dignity, recalled herself, perforce, for the new greetings.

Yuki had slipped from the line quietly enough. She walked away now quite slowly and with apparent calm. Within, she was turmoil and distress. Had she done right? Had she offended, beyond forgiveness, her kind friends, the Todds? But, looking from the opposite point, how could she touch, even in social insincerity, the hand of a man whom she felt by instinct to be a subtle enemy of her native land? This very minister was suspected by many to be one of the strongest who urged the weak Czar into insult and hostility. Would Mrs. Todd reprove her publicly? Would Baron Kanrio, when he heard, defend the childish impulse?

A greater one than Kanrio would soon be here. In the agitation of the moment she had forgotten that tremendous fact. Prince Haganè, her father's feudal lord, or daimyo, often called the "Living War-God of Japan," was to come, for a few moments, to this reception, and partly because of her. A Japanese, no matter how great, seldom neglects the privileges of humanity. Yuki's parents had written that the Prince was to see her, and deliver news. What would he say now,—what would her father say,—if told of this rude and un-Japanese yielding to a personal distaste? "Yet," muttered Yuki to herself, through small clenched teeth, "even should Lord Haganè himself command me, I think I would not touch that Russian's hand."

Moving forward slowly, but always in a straight line, she came full against a small white surface on a level with her face, a thing shield-shaped, and framed in black. It did not move aside for her, as similar white patches, vaguely seen, had done. Brought up suddenly, she realized it to be a shirt-front, and presumably behind the shirt-front there must be a living man.

"Oh, beg pardon!" she faltered, shrinking back. "I begs much pardons, sir."

Two eager hands caught her own. A gay, low voice said, laughing, "I have watched your coming. I willed it. How straight you sped, you beautiful, strange bird!"

But Yuki, dazed for the moment, did not answer. She panted slightly, and tried to draw her hands away.

"I have waited here, by the conservatory door. You must be tired with standing. Come in with me, and rest."

Still unable to command herself, she let the speaker lead her into the warm shadows. She hoped he had not seen her rudeness to the Russian minister. Mrs. Todd swept round an angry glance just in time to see them disappear.

Pierre Le Beau found a sheltered seat, and gently, yet in a masterful way, forced her down beside him.

"Oh, Yuki, but you are beautiful to-night! Was I not mad enough with love without this new gray snare of mist, these blossoms drifting along an irresistible tide? It is a lifetime since I have seen you."

The beating of the girl's heart slowly slackened. "The lifetime of a flower, then," she said, smiling upward. "It was but last night, you know, when we all work so hard with the decorators and the chrysanthemums."

"Last century!" he laughed. "I really exist only in the moments when I am with you. All else are dungeon hours, locked with your last 'Good-bye.' Do not shrink from me now, darling. Let me hold you in my arms once this wonderful night."

"My hair you will disarrange, and others notice," she pleaded, holding him back with one white hand. "And, dear Pierre, you rumples my mind more than my hair. I must be calm to-night, and cheerful with many. I am the débutante."

"You are hard to win," said Pierre, "but I believe I like it so. Your Japanese etiquette is a thorny hedge. More than once I've torn my soul upon it. Ah, but even that could not keep me quite away. You struggled hard, you elf of pearl and mist, but at last you said you loved me,—that you wished to be my wife."

He brushed away the hand and caught her. She gave a little shuddering movement in his arms. "That was a terrible, bold thing for a girl of the samurai class to say. My heart shake a finger at me yet, that I have confessed so immodest a thought. I should hereafter be very circumspect with you, to pay for that bad thing!"

"Circumspect!" laughed Pierre. "Yes, we shall both be circumspect like this,—and this!" She wrenched herself from his kisses, and stood upright in the narrow path. "No, Pierre; I mean it. Please do not do such things, or my frightened spirit never will return. I must go to Mrs. Todd; I fear she is angered."

"Angered,—with you?" asked Pierre, arrested by the sincerity of the girl's protest. Yuki turned her head away. Suddenly he recalled the Russian minister's approach, and connected it with Yuki's flight. He stared at her averted countenance. "Yuki, did you leave your friends,—would you offend them,—rather than greet the Russian ambassador?"

"Yes," whispered Yuki, trembling.

The radiance of Pierre's face went out, his head sank. "So that was the reason. You would not touch a Russian! As you know, my mother is a Russian."

"Oh, it is not all Russians! Do not think that I would wound you. Many are good. Mr. Tolstoi, Mr. Wittee, your honored mother, too, I am sure. They hate, as we, the tyrants that wish to crush the people, and to bring on this cruel, unjust war. I saw the petals of our Emperor's flowers shrivel as he passed them by! I, too, would have shrivelled,—my soul would have turned black,—at his breath."

"No war will come!" cried Pierre, vehemently. "I have told you this before. I know it from the inside. There will be no war. Your country will not face Imperial Russia!"

"If those bad ones push us just too far,—if they delay replies, and provoke us just a little more,—Nippon will fight, and I think that God will let us win!"

"Your Christian God must side with Russia. He cannot aid a nation that does not believe in him!" Pierre's eyes held curiosity and a challenge.

Yuki turned slowly to him, answered the look with sombre brooding, and then stared upward to where close moisture of the high glass dome curved space into a frosted shell. "Perhaps, though," she said, pausing between each word, "the Christian God—believe—in—us!"

Before his surprise found vent her mood and tone had changed. "But, no, no, Pierre; we talk no more of tragic things this night, not of war, and hate, and destiny. It is our ball, Monsieur Pierre Marie Le Beau,—I begs you to remember that. And me and Gwendolen are now in society. I am in society,—is it not nice? Come, let us return to society at once." She caught his arm, laughing, and tried to urge him from the bench.

"You witch of moods!" said Pierre. "Are other Japanese girls like you? When I hold you closest, then do you seem most far away. I seize you in a thousand tantalizing forms, only to fear, each time, that never yet have I seen the real Yuki. Ah! take me to your land, my love, and make me one with it. What do I care for war, for Russia, even for France, if once I could believe you entirely my own? You know I am fighting hard to sail with you next spring. The French ambassador here gives me much hope, and in France my relatives are working."

"Yes, yes, we shall go together on that great ship," said Yuki, soothingly, "and together we shall seek my dear parents, and ask them for our happiness."

Pierre's face lighted. "But you will be true to me no matter whether they give consent or not?" he cried. "Swear it, Yuki."

"I will be true to you, Pierre," said Yuki. "You wish to hear that many times, do you not? But I cannot say I will marry you without their consent. But they are kind—they must like you, Pierre." She flushed delicately. "We—we will make them to say 'yes,' Pierre."

Still the young man hesitated. "This condition that you hold so stubbornly is our menace," he began. "I don't urge you to marry me at once, without their good wishes, only to promise that, after trying in every way to gain them, you will take your life into your own hands and come to me."

"Why do we fret and worry about such things so far away? You will take from me all joy of our party. Will you not return to the room with me?"

"No," said Pierre, seizing a hand in his, "I shall hold you until this is a bit more clear. No, Yuki—"

"Yuki,—Yuki!" came a cautious voice, an echo, it seemed, to Pierre's last word. "Where are you? Mother has sent me here. Prince Haganè asked for you. She says to come at once."

"Let my hand go. I must hurry. It is Prince Haganè," whispered Yuki, and, slipping deftly from Pierre, she hurried to join her friend. He followed quickly, stopped in the doorway, and stood there, scowling.

The crowd had thinned. He could see the heads and shoulders of the two girls moving and whispering together as they sped. Beyond them, surrounded by his suite of glittering officials, Spanish-looking men in broadcloth and gold lace, rose the dark, impressive figure of Prince Haganè. He was in the dull silken robes of his own land, unornamented but for a single decoration,—the highest that a Japanese subject, not a prince of the blood, had ever received.

Pierre's first thought was an inconsequent one of childish irritation that the man bore no marks of age. On the other hand, no one could have thought him young. The massive features, bronze in tone, and set in a sort of aquiline rigidity, the conscious, kingly poise of head and throat rising from deep brawny shoulders, the stiff black hair, touched evenly throughout with gray, had none of them the color of youth. Yet beside him youth looked tame, and old age withered. This man was on the very summit of life, the central point of storms, rather than their object. His deep-set eyes gazed now far beyond to the future, then back into the past, with equal certainty of vision.

Such was the great man Haganè—"Ko-shaku Haganè," feudal, not imperial, prince; a title signifying the highest rank attainable by a subject not descended from the gods. Native ballads called him the "Right Arm and the Left Ear" of the Emperor. Woodcuts of his splendid, ugly head, set by country farmers within household shrines, proclaimed him the Living War-God of Nippon. His victories and innovations at the time of the Chinese struggle had spread his fame through two worlds.

As Yuki and Gwendolen drew near, Mrs. Todd first perceived them. "Here they are. Present me first, Cyrus,—then Gwendolen, then Yuki," the matron gave whispered command. Haganè responded to the first two greetings with unsmiling courtesy, offering a perfunctory extension of his thick hand.

"Now, your Highness," said Todd, his thin, jovial voice carrying easily to where Pierre stood, "here's somebody that will look more natural. Step up, Yuki-ko. You aren't afraid!"

Haganè had already fixed keen eyes upon the girl. His hands fell to his sides. A faint smile, merely a gleam on metal, hurried across his face. Pierre saw his lips move. Yuki went closer, hesitated, gained courage, and looked up into the broad face. Pierre saw Mrs. Todd and Gwendolen exchange smiling glances. Todd threw back his head to laugh. The smile returned to Haganè, unexpected, intensified, brilliant, as if a new day had broken. Pierre winced. He saw Yuki sway again,—put forth two white hands, falter, then sink suddenly prone, her palms outspread, her white forehead on the floor, her whole slim, crouching body topped by the great black burden of the sash, instinct with reverence not far from adoration.

Haganè lifted her immediately, his smile deepening. Mrs. Todd turned away, embarrassed. The small ripple of excitement in the onlookers died; but Pierre, with angry eyes, sought Yuki, and drew her slightly to one side.

"When you are my wife there will be no such ridiculous kow-towing," he said.

"Who is your friend, Yuki?" asked the great man, stepping condescendingly near.

She performed the introduction well, speaking in English without a tremor of the low voice.

"Ah," said Haganè, speaking also in English, "I am recently from the country of Monsieur, which, I do not mistake in conjecturing, is France? Perhaps you are a visitor here, like myself." He put out the great hand, and after an imperceptible hesitation Pierre thrust his own within it. The grasp turned him pale.

"Your Highness is correct in both surmises," he answered stiffly; "I am of France, and I am a visitor. At an early date I anticipate the pleasure of being in your Highness's country."

"Indeed? Pray remind me of this meeting when you arrive, Monsieur. Shall you sail soon?"

"Not for many months, I fear," said the Frenchman. "But I shall certainly avail myself of your kind suggestion."

Yuki's eyes were urging him to go. The girl herself could not have told why she felt apprehension in the proximity of these two men. Haganè had never been antagonistic to foreigners, and she knew that, in Japan, she and Pierre could not have another friend so powerful. Yet she was uneasy.

Pierre, with a last bow, went. The little episode stirred him. The thought rushed through him, too, that here was possibly an invincible friend. He would make the most of it. Even Yuki's abject obeisance, which before had stung him, shone now in the light of desirable dependence on the great man's word. Let him, Pierre, secure his appointment, and, with Haganè his friend, the old gods might shake their heads and growl in vain.

He went into the street. The long rooms had suddenly grown too small for his aspirations. One friendly cigarette was smoked, and then another. Life seemed a jolly thing, that hour, to Pierre.

CHAPTER TWO

Haganè's entrance had broken the receiving line. He became at once the personage, the dominating influence. Guests moved about now, or gathered into little social groups at will. The long apartment filled evenly, a third to the ceiling, with a shifting surface of triangles which were shoulders,—white shoulders, black shoulders, pink shoulders, sometimes a military pair of gold-lace shoulders, each pair surmounted by a head. The rooms, emptying ever, were ever filling, as in some well-constructed drinking-fountain,—the very walls soaked in the hum and timbre of human voices.

Gwendolen, freed from the thralls of official hostess-ship, gathered to herself young men in passage, as a spray of scented golden-rod gathers bees. She had a smile for all, a witty retort, or an insinuating whisper, followed by a provocative look. Old maids, and mothers with unattractive daughters, were wont to call Gwendolen a heartless coquette. As for the coquetry, it was indefensible; as to the heart, young men held varying opinions with regard to that coveted article.

The social atmosphere, charged with evanescent gayety, intoxicated her. She felt like a flower held under the surface of champagne. Through all the glamour spread a tincture of chrysanthemums. Ever after—sometimes in lands very far away from Washington—the odor of these blossoms had power to bring before her, as in an illuminated vision, the yellow walls, the moving heads, and, clearest of all, the slender, mist-gray figure of Yuki Onda; the delicate, happy face under the great loops of blue-black hair.

As Gwendolen talked and strolled, promising a dance to one, refusing it to another, with unreasoning caprice and the manner of a young empress, her hazel eyes, under their long lashes, shot more than once an undetected glance to a certain corner where, beside a pedestal of drooping fern, stood a lonely guest. This person was young, good to look at in a buoyant, breezy sort of way, and of the sex which (alas, yet beyond contesting!) most keenly interested the fair observer. After such glances she usually fell to fondling her sheaf of orchids, and once pressed it up against her face. At this the brown eyes in the corner gleamed, and took on the alertness of a terrier whose master snaps a playful finger.

Mrs. Todd became solicitous that her guest of honor should be fed, but hesitated to ask him for fear that her "foreign food" might prove unpalatable. This apprehension was finally confided on tiptoe to her lord. "Heavens! Susan," said the unfeeling mate, with the twinkle which she dreaded, "do you suppose a Japanese commissary department has been trotting beside him through Asia, Europe, Boston, and New York? Set him before a mess of caviare, lobster à la Newburg, and extra dry, and see what he does to it. Where did Gwendolen go?"

"She's over there by the punch-bowl, I believe," responded Mrs. Todd, in absent-minded fashion. The good lady still hung, ponderously vague, between her husband's opinion of Haganè's gastronomic culture and her own half-solaced fears.

Todd craned his neck over the crowd. "Oh, there she is, just by the punch-table. The young men are thicker than fleas on a candy kitten. Wonder whether it's Gwennie or the punch."

"A little of both, I presume," said Mrs. Todd, austerely. She often found her spouse unsympathetic.

"I don't blame 'em then,—dinged if I do," cried he, with a joyful, premonitory lurch. A firm hand clutched him.

"I'm going for the prince now. He is talking to Yuki. Shall I send her away? She looks as she did on confirmation day, the little idiot. The way these Japanese worship their country and each other is simply ridiculous. What do you think about keeping her with me and the prince, Cy?"

Todd glanced at Yuki. His face softened. She had indeed an upraised, glorified look, as if a beatified vision instead of a very solid living man leaned down to her words.

"Keep her, by all means. She'll know how to wait on her bronze idol," said he, lightly, and dived into the crowd.

Apart from Yuki, Mrs. Todd found unexpected solution in her task of feeding the lion. His private secretary, Mr. Hirai, was not merely an Oxford graduate, but an accomplished man of the world. He made everything easy. At the hostess's first hint of invitation the Japanese started in a solid body toward the supper-rooms. Several ladies who had met members of the party in Boston or New York adhered, smiling, to the moving group. Yuki fell back with the secretary, and began chattering to him in Japanese, her dark eyes slowly turning to stars, her pale cheeks kindling into rosy fire. All of the company centred about Haganè, as thoughts centre about a master will. The occasion which Mrs. Todd dreaded proved to her one of the pleasantest incidents of the whole successful affair. Haganè, in his enjoyment of the delicate fare, entirely justified his host's prophecy. The true hostess is never quite so happy as when she sees her guests enjoying the good things which she, through anxious hours, has been solicitous in providing.

Meantime Mr. Todd had reached his daughter. The young men drew back a little in deference to the age and relationship of the intruder, but did not get beyond range of allurement.

"It's come, little girl," he whispered, with eyes as young and bright as hers. "It came by wire just a few minutes ago. It's here!" He tapped significantly at the left side of his coat.

"The appointment? Oh! does mother know?"

"Not yet," admitted the senator, with the look of an urchin caught stealing jam. "Perhaps we'd better—"

"You bet we'd better!" She threw back her head and laughed the merriest laugh in all the world. Then she ran her sparkling eyes about the circle of withdrawn, boyish faces. "You must excuse me; dad has a secret, and that means insanity for me if I can't hear it at once. You wouldn't have me go mad—now, would you?—before the first waltz plays!"

"Certainly not!" laughed the chorus.

"But, Miss Gwendolen," ventured a bold swain, "how about that first waltz? For whom are you keeping it?"

"Well," said the girl, pausing, and letting shy archness possess her downcast lids, "I did not want to tell you, but since you force me to it,—I am keeping the first waltz for—mother!"

With another laugh, full of bright mockery, she caught her father's arm, and hurried him away. The excitement of the past hour was nothing to what she now felt. Chattering, sparkling, laughing, tossing, gesticulating at times with her sheaf of flowers, she was a slim fountain of youth, with a noon-day sun above it. "You really have the appointment!" she cried to him, when they were well out of hearing. "I knew you must get it, though the President certainly took his time. And we shall sail next spring with Yuki! What! we go before next spring? Oh, how perfectly delicious! And mother doesn't know? Now, dad, I am surprised at you! You must be sure to let mother know first, or her feelings will be hurt. Oh, aren't we a pair of rascals, dad? Such nice rascals! I do like ourselves,—now don't you, dad?"

Pierre Le Beau had, a few moments before, abandoned his lonely sentinelship at the conservatory door; but, in the corner where the fern stood, the sturdier watcher, brown of face and square of shoulder, held a tenacious post. A deflection of visual lenses (though to outward appearance his eyes seemed clear enough) kept him from beholding more than one person in the crowded rooms. If she had been aware of the silent challenge, her knowledge was cleverly concealed. Yet now, on her father's arm, she drifted steadily, though with seeming unconsciousness, toward that special nook. The watcher put a hand on a Roman chair beside him, suggestively unoccupied.

Abreast of the little group,—the gold chair, great fern, and dim inhabitant—Gwendolen stopped. A smile went forth that lit the shadows, as she said quite clearly, "Thank you, I believe I will. I should like to get a bit of a rest before dancing."

Senator Cyrus C. Todd did not lack intuition. "Ah, there's Skimmer. Very chap I wanted to see!" he mumbled to himself, and hurried off in an opposite direction.

He of the brown eyes leaned confidently down. "You chose my flowers!" he vaunted.

Exultation was not the most desirable note to adopt with Gwendolen. She answered nothing for a moment. She was busy adjusting herself to an "unconscious" pose, as perfect as the bold lines of the chair and her own graceful figure could combine to produce. She looked down upon the orchids with a thoughtful, pensive gaze, then slowly upward to the speaker. "Ah, was it then—you—who sent them?"

"Yes; didn't you know? Was it too cheeky, having met you but a glorious once?"

No reply. Gwendolen lifted the flowers and brushed her soft lips across them. Her companion drew himself erect among the drooping green shadows of the fern, swallowed hard, and asked, in a chastened voice, "Did that bloomin' blot of a florist forget to put my card in, after all I said?"

Gwendolen's upraised eyes were now those of a commiserating dove. "I'm sorry, but I did not see any card among the flowers."

The fern had a short ague and stood still. "I'll take a surgeon along when I go to see that florist."

"I wouldn't," said the girl, pityingly. "It was the loveliest sheaf I ever saw. He deserves something better than broken bones for arranging it."

"Yes, they were jolly. They must have pleased you," said the young man, with a wintry gleam of resignation. "I was bent on finding something that really looked like you. I went all over Washington, New York, and Philadelphia in person. But I was so careful of the card! I told the foo—the man, over and over again, to be sure and enclose it. It was printed out in full,—'T. Caraway Dodge, First Secretary of American Legation, Tokio, Japan.'"

"You think you have found something that looks just like me?" asked the girl, slowly, ignoring the latter half of his speech. Her face was full of deprecating interest. She daintily drew forth a single strange blossom, and held it, poised for contrast, against the dark leaves of the fern. Thus detached, it bore an unfortunate resemblance to a ghostly spider.

"Oh, not stuck off on a cork, like that!" cried the tortured donor. "All in a lump, don't you know,—beaten up like the whites of eggs, with gold-dust sprinkled over, and parsley around the edges!"

"All in a lump—beaten up like eggs—parsley around the edges," began Gwendolen, gravely, when suddenly she tripped and fell against her own laughter. Her pretty shoulders quaked. She bent far over for control, and tried to hide the treacherous mirth.

But Dodge had seen enough for him. "By Jiminy! you've been jollying me all the time! And I swallowed it like a bloomin' oyster!" He came around to the front, drew up a stool, flung himself upon it, and looked up with grins that bespoke a renewed zest for life. "Now honest, Miss Todd, you owe me something for this. Didn't you know who sent them? Didn't you really find that card in the box?"

"No, I didn't—honest—but—m-mother did!" confessed Gwendolen, now half-stifled with laughter.

"And you didn't resent it? And you thought them pretty from the very first moment?" cried the youth, on a high note of satisfaction. He reached up now boldly, took the single flower from her hand, pinched off the end of a long fern-leaf to back it, and deliberately arranged himself a button-hole.

Gwendolen wiped the tears of merriment from her bright eyes. "Pretty?" she echoed. "It is too tame a word. I thought them a dream,—an inspiration,—a visual ecstasy!"

"Yes, I said they were like you," returned the impudent Dodge, as well as he could for the distorted countenance bent above the process of pinning in his flower. "There," he said, anent this finished operation, "it's in. I think it becomes me. I didn't run my finger to the bone but once. Now tell me what ma-ma thought of the flowers and the card?"

In spite of her usual self-possession, the girl was stricken dumb. To add to her confusion, a deep embarrassing blush rose relentlessly to her throat and face, and would not be banished.

"You won't repeat it!" cried the terrible youth. "You don't dare to,—but I will. Mama said,—lifting her lorgnettes (here he deliberately mimicked the air of a middle-aged grande dame),—'T. Caraway Dodge! Who is T. Caraway Dodge? Oh, I see,—a snip of an attaché!'"

A look into the stupefied face above him showed that his bold guess had been true. Intoxicated by success, he ventured another toss.

"If you say the word, I come pretty near repeating your answer."

Behind the astonishment, then the consternation of the girl's face, a harder something flashed. She was not accustomed to have the lead so rudely taken. This young person must be disposed of on the instant. His impudence would have given points to Jonah's gourd. She now rose to her feet, held her chin unnecessarily high, and, with the air of a young Lady Macbeth, drawled out,—"I will spare you the trouble, Mr. T. Caraway Dodge. Much as I dislike to be rude, the words I said were these—" She paused. Dodge rose too. The brown eyes and the hazel were nearly on a level. He was laughing. "Well?" he reminded at length.

His unconsciousness of offence gave the last flare to her indignation.

"I said to those present, 'The sending of so costly a bouquet by Mr. Dodge is a little—er—pushing, and the sender must be told so; but since, by accident,—the flowers just happen to suit my gown—'"

"Nonsense!" laughed the rash Dodge, "you never talked that way in your life, unless you deliberately made it up. That's your stunt now, of course. Any one could see it. What is more likely, you said—what I planned for you to say was,—'Oh, here are the flowers I have been waiting for! I think I'll have to marry the person who sent me these!—There's the music of the first waltz! It's a peach! Come,—you haven't promised it, have you? Everybody is waiting for the hostess to begin. Let us start the ball rolling!"

In sheer incapacity to resist, a weakness wrought of a benumbing conflict of anger, mirth, and amazement, Gwendolen leaned to him,—and her débutante ball opened with her, joyous, whirling in the arms of Mr. T. Caraway Dodge.

After this initial favor, he was rigidly, even scornfully, ignored; but little cared Dodge for that. He had had his day. The impetus given could carry him smiling on through hours of cold neglect. He was determined to be the gayest of that circling round of joy, and succeeded. Stout matrons, lean old maids, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Peruvian, Pole,—just so it wore skirts and could move its feet, all were food for his new mill of ecstasy.

Gwendolen danced oftenest with Pierre. He was literally a perfect dancer, and to-night he said that the champagne all went to his heels. Yuki, in her decorous Japanese draperies, wound about by stiff brocades, did not attempt foreign dancing.

Haganè and the older members of the suite left early. Hirai, the secretary, remained, evidently charmed by the long eyes of his young countrywoman. During the time she was not talking to him or Pierre, Yuki remained near Mrs. Todd, delighting the soberer friends who came to speak with them by her beauty and intelligence. In the pleasure of seeing this enjoyment of her Oriental protégé, Mrs. Todd forgot to scold about the affair of the Russian minister, and made only one remark about Yuki's undignified and un-American "kow-tow" to the prince.

"I was just pushed down, Mrs. Todd," protested Yuki, earnestly. "Some hand from my own land pressed me before I knew. So was I taught to greet our feudal daimyo when I was the very little girl; so all in Nippon, of old customs, greet him now. I will try never again to do such a thing in America."

"Well, well, that's all right!" said the matron, patting her slim shoulder. "You are a good little girl, if you did kow-tow. There's Gwendolen with Pierre again! Doesn't she look well to-night?"

"Well!" echoed Yuki, as her eyes followed the flying shapes. "'Well' is so faint a little word. To me Gwendolen looks beautiful,—beautiful—like the Sun Goddess in our land. She is like a bush of yama-buki in the wind! I never saw nobody at all so beautiful as our Gwendolen!"

"And to think she must give up this brilliant social success, and go to a heathen country for four years!" mused Mrs. Todd, gloomily. She had, of course, been told the great news.

If Yuki heard the muttered words, she did not show resentment. The smile of intense affection had not left her face as she said aloud: "Anywhere that Gwendolen goes, I think she will find happiness. She has in her eyes the light of a happy karma. Evil and sorrow cannot stay with her long."

"Well, and what of you, my little Japanese daughter?" asked Mrs. Todd, touched by the unselfish words.

"Oh, me!" said Yuki, becoming instantly grave. "I do not think about my karma,—each person cannot see his own, or know of it; it clings about him too close. But if I should think—No, I cannot! I am afraid! Ah, here comes back the sunshine. It is Gwendolen, fanning! Ah, so hot a little sunshine is Gwendolen! Sit here, and let me make the fan go fast for you, Gwendolen,—your wrists—your throat—that will make coolness quicker than just your face!"

Both girls laughed now, and talked together; Pierre joined them; Dodge ventured near; the senator came up. It was a sparkling group, with the centre always Gwendolen; yet even to Mrs. Todd's unimaginative eyes, the loneliness of the little gray figure, the strange blue-black hair, and pointed, faintly tinted face, struck a note of mystery,—of something very near to sadness.

CHAPTER THREE

Mr. Cyrus Carton Todd, born in the farming district of Pennsylvania, of English and Scotch ancestry, had, as a mere boy, gone to seek his fortune in the West. This was not, of course, an original thing to do. Young men and old, families and whole communities were, at this time, streaming, like banners, out toward the alluring, unknown lands. Cyrus chose a broad, lonely stretch of moor in the very heart of a state sparsely settled, but not too far from the fertile Mississippi basin. Agriculture, rather than stock-raising, had from the first been his design. The small, hoarded patrimony went into fences, a horse, a plough, and a great lethargic sack of seed. Quick to recognize the advantages of new methods and new machinery, he became, before the age of thirty, one of the successful "large farmers" of his adopted state.

He loved, with a passionate, personal love, his broad black fields. He knew, before they ventured one slim, verdant herald to the air, the stirring of immortal essence in his buried grain. He thrilled, sometimes with the stinging of quick tears, when first the green prophecy ran, like an answering cry, from furrow to swart furrow. He moved, at harvest-time, among the hung, encrusted stalks with the deep joy of a creator who sees his work well done. Every process was vital,—the sowing, reaping, storing, and, last of all, the hissing of the great gold torrents as they plunged headlong into caverns of waiting cars. His acreage was wide, but not too wide for his heart. His great working force of men was organized and controlled with the tact and ease of a leader. Mrs. Todd, the daughter of an Illinois farmer, (of late she was successfully forgetting the fact), came into his life when, as a girl of eighteen, she had "visited" a neighbor's home. Todd was then thirty-one. The difference in age seemed great to him, but apparently not to Susan. She arrived in mid-autumn, at the height of a golden yield. Cyrus loved the whole world then, and it was not difficult for the rosy girl to secure for herself a special niche.

They were married in the following spring, when the planting was over, and Cyrus's fields ran with an emerald fire. The farmer turned, perforce, to contemplation of his house. Bare walls and rough pine floors were well enough for him, but better should be found for Susan. She assisted him in selecting the new furnishings, and then, with the self-possession known only to a woman and a hen, entered upon her kingdom.

Her presence, for a long while after, affected Todd as something in the nature of a miracle. Women had borne little part in his life. The dainty touches of ornament which his wife's quick fingers gave the little home, the good, unheard-of things she cooked for him, the demonstrative affection she was ever ready to bestow (for indeed she loved him dearly), kept him in a sort of daze of unbelieving bliss. He felt that he and life were even. Now he began to learn what money, hitherto a neglected factor in his success, had the power to grant.

The plain cottage grew into an attractive, vine-held home. Going to his fields each morning, after a perfect breakfast, he argued aloud to himself, and frequently pinched his own arm to prove the brightness true. Everything prospered. The men liked him, the dogs fawned upon him, the horses whinnied at his voice. And then, just as he told himself he couldn't possibly make room for another joy,—came Gwendolen.

Cyrus, when his eyes had cleared of the golden blur, drew a chair to the bed, put his two elbows on the rim, set his face upon his hands, and deliberately made acquaintance with his daughter. The miracle of his wife's love, the immortality of springing seed, the awe left over from his boyish dreams of heaven, all hid themselves in that small, pink frame, and looked out upon him through its feeble gaze.

He wished to name her "Susan," after his wife, and, as it happened, after his mother also. Mrs. Todd would not consider it. She desired her child to have a "pretty" name, something high-sounding, even sentimental, that would look well in a novel. Her thought whirred like a distracted magnet between three euphonious points,—"Gwendolen," "Guinevere," and "Theodora." At Guinevere Cyrus at once took an obstinate stand. It suggested to him guinea-hens.

"Then 'Theodora,' Cy. What is the matter with 'Theodora'?"

"It sounds like the tin tail to a fancy windmill. I can just see it spin!" declared the anxious father.

"But the sentiment! It means 'gift of God,'" pleaded Mrs. Todd, in the voice she usually kept for church.

"Shucks! She don't need a label, 'made in heaven,'" said Cy. "Nobody 'd take her as coming up from the other place. Why, if she dropped there now, she'd put out flames like a hand extinguisher,—the blessed cheraphim!"

"Well, 'Gwendolen,' then. Surely you can't find any such ridiculous objections to 'Gwendolen.'" The young wife now was plainly on the verge of tears.

"It's fancy and high-falutin' for my taste," said honest Cyrus, "but it's not so bad as those others. If you want it, have it! I can't stand out against you, darling. I can call her 'daughter' when I'm tired."

So Gwendolen she was christened, and in time Cyrus became not only reconciled, but actually proud of the pretty name, saying that it sounded yellow, like her hair.

In earlier years of struggle,—pleasant stress it had always been—Cyrus Todd, in the wide, lonely life of the prairie, had become a reader of books. His pious English mother had not died before transmitting to her boy her veneration for the great souls of the past. Among his very few possessions, brought originally from Pennsylvania, were three books;—Shakespeare, the Bible, and, strangely enough, a copy of Marco Polo. During the days of poverty these three formed his sole, incessant reading. Afterward he bought more books, generally bound garbage-heaps of literature, perpetrated in rich boards, and disseminated by strenuous agents who urged to purchase with a glibness unknown to any since Beelzebub. A few good books came to him, generally by a fortuitous mischance. Imitating his neighbors, he sent in subscriptions to the "Western Farmer's Evangel" and "The Horn of Plenty." He read everything, bad or good, keeping new words and phrases strictly out of his daily vocabulary. His time had not yet come for mental segregation.

Chiefly because of this modest simplicity of his speech, no one suspected him of the growing passion. Never was a figure less scholarly to view. His keen eyes of bluish green, with their trick of closing slightly from underneath when interested, seemed to look out toward horizons of actual experience, rather than along those shadowy vistas down which the pilgrim band of thinkers moves. His limbs, loosely hung, were made for striding over furrows. His mouth, thin-lipped and straight, sensitive at the corners to any hint of humor or of pathos, showed early lines of shrewdness and self-restraint. Never a great talker, he was, as a listener, an inspiration. His silences in conversation were not of the brooding, introspective kind in which one seems to be planning his own next remark, but of deep and intelligent interest in what his companion was saying. He was alert, practical, interested in many things, sympathetic with many views.

Within the badly printed pages of the "Farmer's Evangel" he found his first clue to the outer world. This was an illustrated article on rice culture,—in Japan. Before he had turned the first column he felt the threads of destiny pull.

"Them little chaps is all right, I guess," he remarked aloud, at the top of the second column.

"No red rust on Johnny Jap!" he murmured admiringly, at the third.

With the fourth and last strip of reading, mated to a pictured group of Chinese coolies flailing rye, he let the paper fall and his soul go straying.

The descriptions of Japanese method and result were bald enough and full of error. Beneath them, as through a tangled undergrowth, he saw reality. Joining this new knowledge to remembered tales of Marco Polo, an electric spark flashed out. Old Marco was not a mere romancer, then, fellow of Sinbad and Munchausen, but a speaker of truths! There existed still, somewhere on earth, those marvellous countries with old, old cultures stored for us with prophecy, and a crowded generation through which must still run the living sap. If one went west, always west, to the edge of a great water, beyond that water he would reach Japan,—as once Columbus cut the sands of Hispaniola. At that first moment came into Todd's mind, half dreamily, though not the less imperishable because of shimmering mist, a determination to travel, some day, to that Far East, and see for himself what Marco Polo must have seen.

Todd, after his marriage, continued to grow rich. The pretty cottage was abandoned for a great house near "town." It had hallways, a porte cochère, and a huge billiard-room which none but the cat ever visited. The town itself, in its spidery focus of busy railways, had not existed when Cyrus first came. He had often strolled, whistling, through future business blocks, and over smoking breweries.

The Todds "grew up," as they termed it, with the place, Cyrus specially clinging with tenacious loyalty to the state which had made the background of so much happiness. As Gwendolen passed from a golden childhood into a maidenhood no less bright, Mrs. Todd was heard to murmur reluctantly mild objurgations against the "rawness" of the West, its unconventionality, and lack of true culture.

At fourteen, Gwendolen was not only precocious in school-work and music, but her beauty promised to be of so unusual and unmistakable a type that Mrs. Todd took fond alarm, and declared that the child must go at once to New York, where she could be decently "finished." Gwendolen protested and wept. She had her father's happy heart, and thought that nothing could be quite so near perfection as their life at home. Mrs. Todd, secure in her conviction, proved inexorable. Cyrus was appealed to, and something in the dejected look of his face gave his wife a thrill of triumph. She soon prevailed, and Todd, in person, prepared to lead his one lamb to the sacrificial altar of "society."

He left her on the brown-stone doorstep in New York, his heart far heavier than her own. The gay metropolis had no attractions then. He took the next train home, tasting his first real sorrow since his mother's death. He felt cold and chill at the thought of the big home emptied now of his idol.

Mrs. Todd met him, not with the expected torrent of tears, but with a face red and twitching in excitement. The leading political party of his state had "split," and he, the farmer, Cyrus Todd, was to be run for United States senator. This strange news proved indeed an antidote for melancholy. In less than an hour he had been into town, and learned for himself how the "land lay." Two candidates, well matched, with equal backing, had just been declared by a great uprising of conservative voters utterly unsatisfactory. Todd was asked to be the dark horse. He would have turned from the proposition flattered and abashed, with the one remark that he "wasn't the cut of cloth for a politician," but ambition had begun to work like a fever in the veins of Mrs. Todd.

Already the magnate of her small community, she wished to test her powers in the capital itself. She knew that Gwendolen was to be a beauty, and recognized the potency of an attractive débutante, allied to a rich father and an aspiring mama. The longest letter ever penned by her fat hand now sped to Gwendolen. Her arguments were good, though turgidly expressed. Gwendolen took fire. In a tumult of violet-tinted letters, chokingly perfumed, she assured her father that the school in which she now languished was a cheerless jail. She said that the plain fare, particularly the raw beef, choked her, and that the rooms were kept so hot that soon she must go into consumption. Above all, she was dying by inches so far away from her "dear, precious, darling, angelic dad!" It was this last representation that won. Todd gave in his name, made a few public speeches that surprised him more than his friends by their humor, sparkle, and good sense, and with little further effort received the nomination.

For more than four years, now, the Todds had lived in Washington. Mrs. Todd's initial step had been to buy a good, substantial home in a fashionable neighborhood. She soon realized that she was not to dominate society; but, after a few months of sulking, she adjusted herself comfortably to the new conditions, and enjoyed her life thoroughly. Gwendolen was put to the best private school in the city. She could be at home now, in the evenings, to play her father "those tinkly, skee-daddly pieces" which he liked. No homely melodies for Senator Todd! His childhood was passed without them, and they bore no tender recollections. Chopin, and an occasional rag-time bit, stirred his veins. Gwendolen's music-master had kept to himself hopes that, in the girl, he might have a brilliant result;—her parents had neither the knowledge nor the insight to perceive it for themselves.

Gwendolen was fashioned for brilliant playing. Elemental or sombre music baffled her. She played with laughter, sometimes with fire,—by preference in the full light of the sun. Through Tschaikowsky's broken rainbows she passed like a spirit. Beethoven, in his glad moods, seemed a mirror in which she saw herself. Chopin as a sentimentalist she despised, even while she thrilled to his unearthly delicacy of phrasing. She grew steadily, yet remained unconscious of the increasing power. She only knew that, in certain moods, it was almost a necessity to play, and that people liked to hear her.

As time went on, Mr. Todd's political estimate of himself began to be echoed jeeringly by his opponents, and sometimes reluctantly by his friends. He had realized early enough that official exigency in Washington was his cross, his penalty, the price he was doomed to pay. The intricacies of method surprised and repelled him; the insincerity met on all sides he designated despairingly as the "San José scale" of humanity. Graft, political jobbery, the oppressions of power, sickened him. "I don't like it, Susan. I wasn't made for this sort of a harness," he complained one day to his wife. "A fellow can't walk straight or talk straight in this life; and some of these old rum-soaked bosses have actually lost the power of saying what they mean. These female lobbyists, too, they make a man ashamed to look a good wife in the face. I wish we could quit. I like politeness and manners,—I've turned off the road for a sick lizard—but I'll be ding-danged if I can grin and scrape in the evening to a man who, in that same morning's newspaper, has called me a liar and a thief!"

Mrs. Todd joined him in a sigh. "I know it's hard, dear. I realize just what you mean. There is some of it in my own career, though of course I don't expect anybody to think of me! The airs put on by these mushroom aristocrats who have pulled themselves up by their own boot-straps are enough to make one ill. But we must not think of ourselves. It's Gwennie! Washington is better for her future prospects than our dear Western home. We must try to endure Washington a little longer for her sake." Mrs. Todd made strong effort to look and feel like an impersonal martyr. She did not succeed very well. Hypocrisy had a tendency to shrivel under the keen eyes that now twinkled appreciatively upon her.

"Just so," drawled Cyrus. "For daughter's sake only we continue to sip the nauseating draught. I agree, then. I guess our inwards will not be seriously impaired." It was perhaps as near insincerity as Todd ever approached, this clinging, despite better knowledge, to uncultured forms of speech. Even in the senate he showed determination to remain a raw Westerner, rather than identify himself with that sandpapered and lacquered body of gentlemen.

His compensations for all discomfort were found in huddled, intoxicating rows on the shelves of the new Congressional Library. Here his interest in the Far East, first awakened by the garrulous Venetian, shone back from a thousand reflecting facets of new truths. He strengthened theory with fact. He knew how many car-loads of Northwestern grain, how many bales of Southern cotton were shipped annually to expanding Asiatic markets from our Pacific ports. He traced the colonial policies of Europe back to the days when adventurous Spaniards had won the timid Philippines, but, seeking further glory, had knocked in vain at the gates of Japan. China, too, the richest prize in the East, he knew to be stirring in her long sleep. He believed that her destiny, central in the future currents of trade, must become the key to the world's development. With keen eyes he watched the joints of the Siberian railway, like a giant centipede, reduplicating, joint by joint, always insidiously, toward the storm centre of the Yellow Sea.

The old Romans argued the future from the flight of a bird. It happened now to Todd that the love of one schoolgirl for another brought before him a clearer knowledge of baffling Eastern questions than had all his years of rapt apprenticeship.

Miss Onda of Tokio (Onda Yuki-ko, the full name had been registered) arrived, as boarding inmate of the fashionable Washington Academy, only a few weeks after Gwendolen. She was dainty, shrinking, friendless, and pathetically homesick. Gwendolen became her champion. With a great ruffling of wings she kept at bay the impertinent and the curious. Yuki, thankful from the first for the protection, responded more slowly to the love. The Japanese girl was by nature silent, meditative, reserved. Above all she was,—to use her schoolmates' expression—"different."

It was fully three months after the initial friendship that the American succeeded in enticing her home. After this, the course of true love ran smooth. Each Friday night not passed with her Japanese friends, the Kanrios, was spent with Gwendolen. Yuki learned to giggle, and to have secrets, and dote on fudge like any American schoolgirl. She learned to dress, too, in the American way, and to heap her soft, dry, blue-black hair into a dusky "pompadour."

From the first she was a delight to Todd. He thought of her as a strange bird of Paradise rather than a dove, sent out from the ark of her country, that floated for him, somewhere, on waters of mystery. He encouraged hesitating confidences regarding her home life. Stoically he kept from laughter when her quaint grammatical errors convulsed Gwendolen and Mrs. Todd. Through Yuki he began to suspect the passionate, vital note of loyalty which is the keynote to Japanese character.

Memories of her happy childhood seemed never far away. Before the little feet touched earth, while still warm on her nurse's back, she had been taught to drink in visual beauty. Heroism was instilled in her through toys and story-books, and through temple feasts to gods who once were men. Old age was something to be revered, almost envied,—white hairs a benediction. The American levity and callousness shown by the young to the old appeared, from the first, in Yuki's mind, and remained ever after, the chief blot upon a country otherwise beloved. Todd saw that the girl in her own land must have moved as though consciously surrounded by spirit. She said to him that, in Nippon, the air was awake and vital; that there, ever went on about men the tangling and untangling of great forces, to which, the living are as but shadows on a moving stream.

Through Yuki, too, he became a friend, even an intimate, of Baron Kanrio, the Japanese minister. To be intimate with any Japanese is a rare privilege, and Todd knew it. Many were the notable evenings spent in Kanrio's small private den, where the two men bent together over records and reports, and over maps whereon they traced with prophetic fingers the contour curves of overflowing races. The insight of the other fairly staggered Todd. Slowly the American breathed in, rather than acquired by grosser senses, something of the patient, confident loyalty to ideals,—the Japanese strength that comes with absolute spiritual unity, the power of race in the living, and, more potent still, in the dead.

Late in the afternoon of a bright March day, the fourth and last of Gwendolen's school years in Washington, Mrs. Todd sat alone at a front window of her handsome bedchamber, looking out dreamily into thickening dusk. The day was Friday. Yuki and Gwendolen giggled over a chafing-dish of fudge in a room across the hall. Merry laughter, more often from Gwendolen, rang through the house, trailing pleasant echoes.

Mrs. Todd seldom sat alone, and seldom indulged in revery. Now, however, she consciously caressed the reflection that, apart from an obstinate increase of flesh, she had not a trouble in the world. She was proud of her husband, proud of her daughter, pleased with herself. Her mind held no regrets, her closet no skeletons. A familiar step on the sidewalk caused her to look down. The senator was returning early from the library. She smiled with wifely comprehension at the pose of the down-bent head, at the hands thrust, Western fashion, to the full depths of new, English trousers. "Cy has something on his mind," she murmured. "He's coming to hunt me up and get it off."

She heard him banging one downstairs door after the other, then running, with the lightness of a boy, up the stairway. His tone expressed relief at seeing her dark shadow-bulk against the window-frame. "Susan! That you?"

"Yes. You are early, dear. Shall I ring for lights?"

"No—no," cried the other hastily. "I'm a little tired—that's all—and a little—excited. This warm dusk just suits me. It's fine to talk in."

After saying this, he remained so long wordless that Mrs. Todd's curiosity urged the question. "Was it anything definite that you had to say?"

"Definite! It's worse than definite. It's colossal!"

"Say it quick, then. I'll be on pins and needles till you do."

"Well, to put it briefly—our U. S. minister at Tokio, Jap-an,—Evans, you know,—Brunt Evans of Illinois,—well, Evans is on the point of resigning because of ill health,—and if I want the appointment—if I really try,—"

"Yes—yes—don't stop!"

"Mother, I want it!" cried the man, in a tone she had not heard him use for years. "You know how I've always felt about that country! I want the appointment as I have never wanted anything since I got you!" His thin hands twitched, his eyes pleaded. He might have been a schoolboy begging for the treasure of a gun, a horse, a holiday.

"To give up—Washington, and live in that strange land!" whispered Mrs. Todd, as though fear touched her.

"It needn't be but for a matter of four years, mother."

"Is there not talk of war with Russia?"

"Yes, and that's my chief reason for wanting to go."

"Do you realize that Gwendolen, our only child, is to graduate this June, and formally come out next season?"

"Yes, and that's my chief reason for wanting to stay."

Mrs. Todd pressed her lips together. A suspicious gleam came to her pale eyes. "This is the work of Yuki Onda! You both are infatuated about that girl."

"My dear Susan, how utterly unjust! Yuki has no more political influence than our cook. She doesn't dream of this possibility, she or Gwendolen either. You are the only one besides myself to hear."

"The girls will be wild when they are told. Gwendolen will be mad to go! Society, flattery, success, a great catch,—all I have worked for—will be nothing!" Todd wisely kept silence. Mrs. Todd rose unsteadily to her feet. "There is no doubt that you all will be frantic to go—all three of you—without a thought for me." Seizing each side of the parted curtain, she stood, as at a tent door, staring out into a blackening sky.

"You'll be a big gun out there, Mrs. Cyrus Carton Todd," wheedled a low voice. "Bigger, in some ways, than you'll ever get to be over here. Those foreign embassies are bargain-counters of dukes and princes. The American globe-trotters will be so many kneeling pilgrims at your shrine."

Mrs. Todd stared on. Slowly upon the night, as upon a transparency, luminous letters began to form. "Mrs. Todd, the stately and distinguished consort of Minister Cyrus Carton Todd, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States to Japan. Miss Gwendolen de Lancy Todd, a famous Washington beauty, now in her first season." Beneath the words appeared, as in a phosphorescent mist, a long, long dining-table, rich with the beauty of lace, cut glass, silver, and flowers; while ringed about it leaned and laughed her guests,—famous men and women of two worlds, members of old nobilities, native princes, and, perhaps, even visitors of blood royal, for who, in these days, would slight an invitation from the representative of earth's greatest republic?

Senator Todd pensively regarded the scallops of his wife's uplifted profile. "You'd make a stunning figure in a court dress, mother."

She wheeled fiercely upon him. "You are sure Gwendolen suspects nothing?"

"Sure. And if you take it like this, dear, she need never know that the chance was offered."

His companion gave a small, irrepressible sob. In an instant the long arms were about her. "Now, Susie, don't you be losing any sleep over this. I won't take a step unless you give the word."

Dreading his tenderness more than any argument, she pushed him away half laughing, half crying, "No—no—go on with you! I won't be honey-fuggled! I know your ways. It has come upon me rather sudden, and I haven't caught my breath! But you might as well tell Gwennie and be done with it! I couldn't keep such a secret from her, even if you could. It's too b-big! And she'll be just wy-wy-wild to go!" The last sentence was a wail.

"Forget it, mother! Drat the whole thing! Let it vanish!" urged Cyrus.

"No!" she cried instantly, and shook her head with vehemence. "I can't accept the sacrifice."

"Do you agree, then, for me to—to—try?" asked Todd, fighting down a desperate joy.

"No-o" she hesitated, "not exactly agree, either; only I'm not willing to take upon myself to stop the whole thing here at the beginning. I'm not the Lord! Maybe this is planned out by higher powers; and then, besides," she added with a gleam of hope, "maybe you won't get it, after all!"

Todd's face bore a curious expression. His under lids closed slightly. "No," he repeated slowly, "maybe I won't get it, after all. But it's only fair to tell you that, if I am turned loose to try, I'm going to try like—hell!"

CHAPTER FOUR

The Todd household slept until late the morning after the party. Next to the efficient hirelings,—those ball-bearing sockets of domestic ease,—the senator himself was first to awake.

He came slowly into the day, as though passing from a fair garden into one more fair. That sense of some great good, new-garnered, and in the warm sweet haze of sleep not quite recalled, caressed his smiling lips. In spite of dalliance, the shining consciousness drew near. His appointment had been given! Ah, that was the new glory! He was in effect, at that instant, "Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary" to a Wonderland! It was not the honor that thrilled him, but the opportunity. He would have a niche near the breathing heart of that strange country. Proving himself worthy, he might go deeper, drinking at that spiritual fountain of eternal youth.

Lying now on his rich, canopied bed, with all the luxury of modern Occidental life heaped close, Todd told himself that, because of the success, he was all the more a soul, an individual, with better things to seek. He scorned to be a pampered animal, possessed by its possessions. He envied anew the clean, sweet poverty of the samurai's code.

He was now at that elevation in life where past events take proper place, as in a landscape, and vistas begin. Yesterday was his fiftieth year. By another coincidence—those clashings of star-beams in his career—his birthday fell on that of the Japanese Emperor.

Looking back now, he could see where streams of tendency, taking rise in boyhood, had worked steadily, though through seeming deviations, towards this one great tide of purpose. His lonely interest in rice-culture had been a hidden spring; his coming to Washington, where Japan's development was a living topic instead of a solitary reader's dream, a winding stream of fate. Yuki herself was a deep well of inspiration. Now at last had come his opportunity to serve, in one life-giving effort, his own beloved country,—and Japan. The future widened for him into a deep harbor where great fleets of achievement might find safe anchorage.

Yuki entered for the ten o'clock breakfast in full street costume. At Mrs. Todd's lifted eyebrows of inquiry, Gwendolen, who was just behind her friend, explained.

"She has an appointment at eleven with her Hindoo idol. Baron Kanrio said last night that dad was to go too. Yuki thought she might be allowed to accompany him, if she were very good."

"Of course!" said the senator, heartily. "Glad to have her. Prince Haganè gave me the date, eleven, a. m., but he didn't mention Yuki."

"Oh, how could you think it?" drawled saucy Gwendolen. "She's only a girl. He wouldn't notice a girl."

"It rather looks as if he had noticed her," retorted Mr. Todd. "A definite appointment! They say his daily average of callers is about two hundred."

"It is only for my father's sake. He will give me a message," explained Yuki, hastily. "Gwendolen is right. So great a man do not think much of girls."

"Humph," said Gwendolen, "that doesn't go! He stared at you as if you were a candied cherry-petal, and he wanted to swallow you at a gulp. Pierre Le Beau saw it, too. Heavens, how he scowled! A regular Medusa! I expect all the chrysanthemums are turned to yellow onyx by his glare."

Yuki gave a start, and then flushed with painful intensity. "Please! Please!" she was beginning, when Mrs. Todd unconsciously interrupted with an exclamation of delight.

After her methodical pouring of the coffee, the good lady had plunged into the morning papers. "Ah, Gwendolen, these notices are splendid!—better than I could have hoped. Society reporters are usually so touchy and carping!"

"There was one youthful Mr. Dooley that I made sure of," said Gwendolen, calmly, as she cracked an egg. "I had the orchestra strike up 'Call me thine own!' while I took him to a corner and plied him with Louis Roederer, Carte Blanche!"

Little Yuki and the senator drove off together. Each had things to think of, though not much to say. The carriage bowled smoothly along asphalt thoroughfares. At close intervals small parks were passed, some round, some angular, but all like emeralds in a web of silver-tinted streets. Now and then the great meerschaum-colored dome of the Capitol came into sudden view, with its suggestion of purpose and of majesty.

The girl's neat fawn-tinted dress was now supplemented by furs, and a wide hat of brown velvet, with a silver chain about the crown, and nodding feathers. Her hair, puffed round her face in recent fashion, completed the Americanizing of her attire. From the dainty gloves, thrust deep into her muff, to the soft brown boots, she was modern, chic, Occidental.

At the Japanese Legation, both Baron Kanrio and the prince's secretary, Hirai, were awaiting them. The eyes of the latter shone with eagerness at sight of his young compatriot. Kanrio sent them, chattering already of Japan, into the drawing-room to await Yuki's summons. With a slight gesture he beckoned to Todd, and they went together along the hall to the well-known den.

Haganè sat in it, alone. The disposition of the few stiff chairs bespoke recent visitors. The library table, covered with green leather, had maps upon it, letters and papers, besides a Japanese smoking outfit and a tray with tea and some small cups.

As they entered, the great man slowly rose. He wore again his plain dark native robes. In the relentless daylight he appeared older, more sallow, and at the same time more impressive. His hand-grasp for the senator was cordiality itself. His deep eyes lighted pleasantly, as he said, "Welcome, your Excellency!"

Todd started, and then flushed like a boy, at the title. Kanrio grinned with delight.

"Oh—er—beg pardon; but it's the first time. Rather knocked me off my pins. Thanks, your Highness! I feel it a good omen to have it come from you."

"Shall we be seated?" asked Haganè.

"Gomen—nasai," (excuse me) murmured Kanrio, with a gesture. He removed the soiled cups from the table to the top of a low bookcase, then rang for fresh cups and a new pot of tea. He and Haganè took a few sips, Japanese fashion; Todd declined.

"I understand, your Excellency, that your appointment as envoy to our small island has come the very recent time?"

"Only last night, your Highness." Todd's eyes met in unembarrassed candor those of Haganè. "Of course I've worked for it. My heart was set on it. The Baron here has been an inspiration!"

"My dear sir, don't trouble to recall my unimportant service," deprecated Kanrio.

"I understand," said Haganè, slowly, "that for some time you have honored our—country—with your studious—interest. If it is not impertinence, may I venture to inquire what—circumstances, what—a—unfamiliar categories—first stung your thought to the pursuit of Far Eastern knowledge?" He spoke very slowly, slurring neither vowel nor consonant, and choosing, it would seem, from a rich vocabulary. Nevertheless he pieced the words together with a slight effort.

Todd knitted his brows, not in lack of understanding, but from desire to answer definitely and concisely the comprehensive question.

Haganè may have mistaken the silence, for he added immediately, "My English is—stiff,—not well—manœuvred. My meanings perhaps become involved. Shall not Baron Kanrio stand as—interpreter—for my heavy thought?"

"No, no," said Todd, eagerly. "Do not think it, your Highness! I understand perfectly. Your very misuse of some of our slippery old timeworn words is illuminating. It was your question that made me pause, not your way of putting it."

"My dear sir," protested Haganè, "I desire you to feel no obligations to answer. I intended, perhaps, a thinner meaning than your own mind has seized. Was it Japanese Art, as with Frenchmen? Statistics, Sociology, Political Economy?" Todd noted the greater ease with which these abstract and philosophic terms were employed.

"None of these, your Highness,—and yet all! My study—you will think me presumptuous, I fear,—might not be called less than—the ultimate destiny of your race!"

Haganè's smouldering eyes leaped into sudden fire. He looked down quickly, as if to deny the flame. Todd felt the air stir and tingle with a new vibration.

"Yes, your Excellency, we are attempting to employ valuable hints from various representative governments of your enlightened West," said he, conventionally.

"Hints!" echoed Todd; "that is just the wonder of you! They are hints in reality, thoughts to be absorbed only just so far as you need them, and the rest chucked. You don't stick them on like plaster to cover up a mediæval birthmark. You have quite as much to give as we, and you know it. Haven't I watched and studied, with Kanrio here to coach? You Japanese alone can combine the best of the two civilizations. You can best fuse the experience, character, insight, humanity—of both long-suffering hemispheres. We Americans are just ourselves; but you are we, and all the rest of it! That's why your old gods set you on the fighting line. You are a whole laboratory experiment in sociology, all to yourselves!"

"I perceive that you have been thinking carefully upon us," said Haganè, still conventional, contained; but his one upward look, instantly withdrawn, had the "swish" of a scythe.

"It isn't all admiration, you know!" exclaimed Todd, with an impulsiveness far more flattering than reserve. "You have made, it seems to me, some thundering bad mistakes,—like the dropping of Port Arthur at the first growl of that bear, Russia. But you've got your second wind all right. You Japanese know, better than any American or Englishman, that Russian preponderance in China means a walled continent of tyranny, the gates guarded by Greek fire. If you conquer, your best interests are at one with the progress of an enlightened twentieth-century world. Now, your Highness, deny it if you can!" He leaned back, his thin face aglow. Haganè apparently had difficulty in keeping eyes upon the table.

"You—er—pass through the waving branches," said he, very slowly, "and cleave to the heart of the tree. So only are the rings of epochs counted. Do others of your countrymen think thus?"

"Well," said Todd, "to be honest, I judge that most of my countrymen would prefer sitting on the bough, stealing apples, rather than counting concentric rings. I guess love of the East must have been born with me."

"Interesting, interesting!" murmured Haganè. "And yet, your Excellency, though indigenous, something must have fed the growth. Every development possess, I think, allotted kind of nourishment."

"Oh, events contributed, I presume. Now and then things turned up just when they were wanted." Todd was surprised at his own ease in the great man's presence. He drew inspiration, not awe, from the intelligent eyes and slow, suggestive smile. "Yes, things came! I planted your Forty-Seven Ronin into my biggest field of wheat! And my old mule, Kuranosukè, did me better work than any span of horses. Then, your Highness, the baron here—oh, you needn't shake your finger, Baron!—pointed me to heavenly manna; and the child Yuki, my daughter's friend, led me into paths that adult eyes could never have seen."

Haganè crushed the red ash of his cigarette, and leaned farther back in his chair. The expression of his face altered slightly,—softened, one might say, were it not still so impressive. If waves of strength and influence had flowed from him before, they ebbed now, leaving consciousness a little thin and dry. Yet all three men smiled faintly, as at a pleasant thought.

"Ah, little Onda Yuki-ko, the child of my old kerai."

"It is a term meaning 'feudal retainer,'" put in Kanrio, amiably, to Mr. Todd.

"Yes," went on Haganè, "I was encouraged last night to see her so strong to look at, and so—pardon vulgarity, your Excellency,—so inoffensive to the eye in personal appearance."

Todd flung back his head and laughed outright. "Inoffensive—that's a good one! Why, your Highness, Yuki is quoted as a beauty here in Washington. Artists beg to paint her, and swell photographers to pose. If she intended casting in her lot with us, she could have the pick and choice of half the young bloods here." He sent a merry glance to Kanrio, as for corroboration, but was met by a stare so blank, so baffling, that his smile faded.

The prince was carefully, very carefully, lighting a fresh cigarette. "Pardonnez moi!" he mumbled, between coaxing, initial puffs. "It is I who am the stupidity! 'Pick and choice,—young bloods'—I fear I do not quite—er—apprehend."

"Your Highness," Kanrio broke in, "Mr. Todd speaks in the idiomatic phrases of society. He desired to transmit the impression that Miss Onda is thought to be beautiful."

"Ah, is that it? And—young bloods?"

"Young men, I should have said. Pardon my slang. Merely young men, your Highness," explained Cyrus, feeling suddenly quite ill at ease.

"Ah, yes," muttered Haganè to himself. "I have a recollection. Last night—" he broke off. His voice was higher and a little careless, as he asked of Todd, directly, "Is Onda Yuki-ko to sail with your family?"

"Yes. She had not intended returning till next spring. She wanted to take an extra course in French or something. But she wouldn't stay behind, now that we are going. She and my daughter are like sisters." Todd rose, muttering words to the effect that he had trespassed too long. Haganè rose also. Todd felt resentful, though he could have assigned no definite cause. "Good-morning, your Highness, or, as Miss Yuki has taught me to say, 'Sayonara'! I thank you for the honor of this interview."

The word "Sayonara" brought Haganè sharply to himself. "The thanks belong not to me, Excellency," he smiled and stretched out a powerful hand. "Seldom do I so deeply enjoy a conversation with one met for the first time. I consider that Nippon, and our-Sacred Emperor"—(he paused, and the two Japanese bowed deeply,) "are to receive the congratulation."

Power and purpose thrilled in his hand-clasp. Todd tingled anew with it. "What a man! What a bottled genius hauled up from a sea of fate!" he said to Kanrio, as they descended the stairs.

"Prince Sanètomo is one who does his duty," admitted Kanrio, in an impassive tone.

Hirai accompanied Yuki to the office door. They went a little slowly, considering the rank of the summoner, and talked hurriedly in the hall-ways, each reluctant to release a topic so dear. There had been not only Japan and childhood to gloat upon, but, already, reference could be made to a past,—twelve hours old. "Do you remember," and "As you were saying last evening," are potent introductory clauses. Both young people had been born in Tokio, and though unnamed to each other before, soon established unity of class, training, inherited ideals, and childish experiences. The secretary had often heard of Sir Onda Tetsujo, Yuki's father, a knight of the old school, famed for his stern rectitude and his loyalty to a vanished past. With some hesitation Hirai ventured to suggest that he should consider it a privilege to be allowed to call upon Sir Tetsujo and his lady, in their Tokio home. Yuki urged this eagerly. She could send by the younger man messages that seemed too trivial for transmission through Prince Haganè. "Yes, yes,—please call upon them—dō-zo! They will receive you so happily. Ah, and to think that you will see them long, long before I can come! You will reach Nippon before the maples have quite burned themselves away, or Fuji lowered upon her opal cone the full white robe of winter. How am I to endure the waiting? I wish I were to start with the suite of Prince Haganè to-morrow!"

Hirai's fine face echoed this sentiment vividly, but he refrained from speech. He was a correct young man, and had no intention of presuming on the young girl's veneer of Americanism. He left her at the door. It had to her fancy, now, the feeling of a shrine, a Shinto temple, approached through paths of childish memories. She lifted one gloved hand to knock, and her lips twitched at the clamorous instinct to raise both hands, rub the palms together, and clap thrice as before a deity. She controlled herself, however, shaking her head a little wistfully, and murmuring as to a voice, "No, though my soul still is Nipponese, I have become a Christian. I am half American, too. I must remember." She gave now a sharp, determined rap.

"O-idè!" boomed a deep voice from within. Yuki's knees melted. Whatever the rest of her, they were evidently not American. She entered with downcast eyes.

Haganè did not seem to recognize her. He looked hard, and asked, "Is this Onda Yuki-ko?"

She lifted the brim of her hat, and let shy eyes rest upon him. "Your Highness, it is Yuki, a worthless young acquaintance with whom you spoke last night." She used the Japanese language, with the full complement of honorifics.

"An odd eventuation," said the other, dryly. "I thought to summon the child of my old kerai, the maiden of last evening,—and, behold, a small, pert shade from the Avenue de l'Opéra!"

"It does not augustly displease your Highness?" murmured the girl, not understanding his full meaning.

"Not at all. It may even prove valuable for Nippon, and Tetsujo could wish no more. But be seated, child. I have scanty moments to dole you, and there are messages."

"Lord," murmured Yuki, seating herself on the hard chair indicated, "it is too much for you to burden your exalted memory for my insignificant satisfaction."

Haganè ignored the deprecating whisper. Taking a seat deliberately, he began, "At the Shimbashi station of Yedo, where, since many notable officers were to accompany me, a great crowd of well-wishers thronged to say farewell, I soon discerned the dark face and the proud head of your father, Onda Tetsujo."

He paused, smiling slightly. The girl said nothing, only bent forward a little, her face full of unconscious excitement.

"Close behind him, gentle, clinging, self-effacing, as a good wife should always be, I saw—"

Yuki, forgetting her breeding, fairly snatched the words from his mouth. "My mother,—I know, Lord, it was my dear mother! And the old nurse Suzumè, was she there?"

"There was, indeed, a female something that incessantly bowed, and drew breath with a ferocity that drowned the hissing of the engine. Has that the air of Suzumè?"

"Yes, yes, her very self. Oh, how can I wait to get back home! Ten weeks, Lord, before I am to start!"

"The words uttered by your parents were these,—I may not recall the exact terms, but I have their purpose clear. First, Iriya said: 'Tell to our child that empty hearts and a cheerless home ache through this night of absence, for her coming.' Her soft eyes touched my heart, though men call me stern. Ere I could bow assent, your father Tetsujo—ah ha! that old kerai, the unreconstructed feudal knight!—pushed rudely past, and cried to me, 'Taint memory with no such puerile demand, my Lord! Say to the girl that hearts and aches are nothing. As long as I have yen to forward, let her remain until she is fitted, though a woman, to be of some slight service to her land. I pray you, Lord, to judge of her. Should she need to stay full ten years longer, I would not repine. I have no son. She is the substitute. Empty hearts, aching nights, bah! Crumbling barley sugar of a weak spirit! Midzu-amè in a human jar! Good Iriya, my wife, I advise you to cease your prayers before concessive deities, and learn to worship more sincerely our God of War. He is to be the flaming incarnation of this epoch!'"

"I can see—I hear them both," said Yuki. "My father is right,—though the tears that must have stung my mother's eyes do now sting mine. Lord, shall you think me fit to go to such a father? I have done what the Americans call—graduate. I have even received prizes for good study."

"Do they offer prizes here for doing duty? An immoral practice, especially for the young,—instilling envy, cupidity. But it concerns me not. Your question, Yuki,—are you fitted to return? I cannot give myself time to be satisfied entirely with the fitness; but, for other reasons, I am well aware that it is time for you to return. His Excellency, Mr. Todd, spoke of the first of the New Year. I wish it were to-morrow."

"Lord," faltered the girl, "are your august utterances heavy with reproof? Have you charges of misconduct against me?" Her guilty heart ran, as a thief for a hidden treasure, to the thought of Pierre Le Beau and the half-troth her weakness had allowed him to secure. The next words of the great man relieved her strangely.

"Nay, nay, little one, I have heard of no wrong. Look not so fearful; one would think me Emma-O, the Lord of Hell, in the flesh. My thought was chiefly that, just now, even your present acquirements might serve Nippon."

"Ah, it is of war you hint! Here, many believe that it will not come. Is it to come, Lord?" She had drawn very close. Haganè perceived, as one looking at a picture, the exquisite balance of features in the pointed oval face, the pale width of brow under clouds of dusty hair, the refinement, the trembling sensitiveness of lips and chin. His eyes held a certain keen, inscrutable intentness of regard. The corners now wrinkled slightly with a smile.

"A nightingale studies not with a maker of swords," he said slowly. "Yet may the nightingale's note give warning where the sword could not avail. What one has not heard, cannot be told. It is a time when the whispering of leaves is to be shunned, and the fall of the petals counted."

Yuki caught her underlip between her teeth to steady its trembling. Again she felt reproved, though nothing could be kinder than the great man's voice.

"Four years," he mused aloud, "four years! Small space of time to us who are on the heights,—but to the young, still wandering happily on flowered-covered slopes, it is long, quite long. Ah, little Yuki, it is but yesterday that you came, as a child, to my Tabata villa. You clung timidly, at first, to Tetsujo's hand; but the serving-maids soon won you to the air. After that, at my request, Tetsujo brought you often. You were a scarlet poppy turned loose in that dim old garden. My eye would follow you through passages of the good Tetsujo's somewhat prosy discourse. You used to perch upon the gray rocks of the pond, and fish for hours, throwing back the small wriggling bits of gold as soon as caught. Do you remember, Yuki?"

"Yes, Lord, well do I remember," said Yuki, her mouth trembling into laughter. The self-consciousness faded. He knew that it would be so. It was for this that he had contrived the long speech of reminiscence. "Once," she went on shyly, "once, into that pond I fell, screaming with terror to think that certainly, now, all the goldfish would make haste to bite their enemy."

"Their best revenge, I take it, was in the cold you caught," laughed the prince.

"Nay, Highness," said she, gravely, "no cold at all did I acquire. The maid-servants and thy divine, pitying princess rescued me. They changed my worthless garments, and urged upon me much hot tea and a small, sweet powder. Indeed, but for the trouble my clumsiness occasioned, I enjoyed more the falling into that august pond than the fishing beside it."

Haganè smiled a little abstractedly. He did not laugh again. He turned to the table and smoothed the corners of a document. "The villa has no princess now, my child. In my many houses I come and go alone."

Yuki looked upon the floor. "My spirit is poisoned by your sorrow, Lord. Forgive my great rudeness in mentioning. I did not know."

He drew a short, impatient sigh. "The princess resides again with her own people in Choshiu. But these matters have interest for none but me. Hark, is that not the hour of noon now striking? I must dismiss you." She rose instantly at his words. He followed with more deliberation. She turned to the door, then wavered back to him, distressed evidently by thoughts she shrank from voicing.

"Speak, child," he said kindly, "no mad haste is necessary. Say what you will."

Still she moved soundless lips. In some inexplicable way she had fallen short. It was not only that she felt she had not reached his highest expectations, but, more definitely, she had failed to reach her own. Her acquired Americanism crackled on her, like a useless husk. She thirsted for new strength. Before her stood one able to give it, yet she could find no words to ask. "It is ten—weeks before I can start home, Lord," she managed at last to articulate. "I am only a girl, but I would die for Nippon, for my Emperor. What—what—" Again she faltered.

Haganè took a small hand in his own and smiled reassurance. "Only the very young and inexperienced think it necessary to state willingness to die for a country. Give me the coming thought."

"In these last weeks what can I do,—what can I suffer,—how shall I pray,—that I may make myself worthy of return?"

The smile on the overhung dark face saddened into a look far tenderer than smiling. Yuki felt virtue, like a fluid, rush through her from his touch. "Keep always to the thought that you are Nipponese,—that you guard, in yourself, an immortal spirit, powerful for good or ill. Let not the tendrils of your outreaching soul cling to alien ideals, for, if so, each in the twining means a wrench and a scar, and the unscarred soul is sweeter to the gods. Think nothing of the body,—of personal desires, of personal reward. Say to yourself always, 'It is enough to be a Nipponese.'"

Yuki was already stilled and comforted. "Lord," she said, lifting brave eyes, "I think it true that the lowliest among us, through self-striving, may become a god. My little spark of light has slept until this moment. I can never again be quite the same girl who came into this room. I will curve the memory of your words about my spirit, as one shields his candle from a wind."

"In Nippon I see you next, my Yuki. And now, 'Sayonara,' till that time."

"Sayonara," whispered Yuki, and hurried out into a new day.

CHAPTER FIVE

Preparations for an unexpectedly early start kept the Todd family in a condition of strained excitement. When the tension did relax (Mrs. Todd had more than once warned them), they would all probably shoot off into eternity, mere dull bits of leaden weight, as from a boy's rubber sling. Yet in these days the good lady had little time for speculations, whether mournful or the reverse. She, Gwendolen, and Yuki began at once a round of shopping and dressmaking. Officious lady friends who had lived or visited in Japan hastened to tell of certain articles necessary to the civilized female which, absolutely, were not to be procured in Japan. At first Mrs. Todd hearkened eagerly, and made lists for future shopping; but she invariably lost the lists, and, after the first week, began to notice that some particular item declared by one gesticulating visitor to be unpurchasable west of San Francisco, would, by the next, be named as a thing produced in full perfection only by Yokohama cobblers, jewellers, cabinet-makers, tanners, or tailors, as the case might be.

Much in the same manner, whereas one matron declared the Japanese servant a fiend, laden with an accumulation of domestic vices from the days of Pharaoh down, the next would congratulate Mrs. Todd on being about to enter upon an experience rare to this hemisphere,—perfect service, intelligently and cheerfully given.

The pleasant home on M street was abandoned, the occupants moving to a hotel. This was done that Mrs. Todd might personally supervise the packing and storing of furnishings grown dear through pleasant association. More than one stealthy tear plashed on an unresponsive packing-case.

Gwendolen's brimming joy gave room for but one regret. That lived and died in a single glance, as she saw her grand piano, ignominiously tilted, pathetically legless, carried past her through the wide front door, and down to the waiting hearse of a van.

Mrs. Todd went to bed, during this strenuous period, immediately after dinner. She urged her daughter to follow the good example and get "rested" for struggles to come. But "No," said Gwendolen, laughing. "There will be plenty of time to rest when I'm old. I can't waste life now!"

Many of the girl's evening hours were devoted to Mr. Dodge and what he was pleased to term "Lessons in Japanese." When Yuki and Pierre were present,—Yuki now resided permanently at the Japanese Legation,—the Oriental listener would often need to bury a crimsoning face in crumpled sleeves to hide her mirth. Mr. Dodge's vocabulary was large, especially in the way of amorous and complimentary phrases, but his syntax and his pronunciation were things new on this planet. Pierre laughed too, with a superiority born of Yuki's private instruction. Gwendolen stoutly defended her professor, saying that his way of speaking the language sounded easier and more natural than Yuki's own.

Mr. Dodge, by one of those fortuitous happenings that lay, for him, like pebbles, in every chosen path, had found that he would be compelled to return to his post of duty by the same steamer on which the Todds were to sail. When he made this bold announcement, accompanied by a triumphant side-glance at Gwendolen, the girl was surprised to feel her heart give a warning throb. Despite her skill in the game and her audacity, she began to realize that in this young person she had probably met her equal. She rallied quickly in the face of danger. Exhilaration took the place of fear. She knew she was in for a good fight, and began at once to employ her other admirers in the way of Indian clubs and dumb-bells. Dodge very properly went home to South Carolina a few weeks before sailing, and did not return to Washington until the time of final departure.

If Yuki trembled at thought of her long days on an enchanted voyage, with Pierre for closest comrade, her new strength, born of Haganè, smiled down the apprehension. Not only would she refuse to yield to that beloved one a deeper pledge, but, if possible, she would win back from him the half-troth already given. She longed to return to her country, to her people, free of obligation. Her reverence demanded it. She should belong only to herself and them. So should she have a clearer road in which to approach the subject of a foreign marriage. Pierre, as yet, refused to see this vital point. He must be made to see. On those long balmy evenings on the ship, with the moon's sweet influence to help her, yes,—she could convince him,—she would triumph!

While Senator Todd made his own few preparations, talked with all manner of congressmen on the ever-present topic of the threatened Far Eastern conflict, or reasoned with brother senators who decried so unconventional a thing as resignation from their august midst,—Pierre harassed the French Legation for confirmation of an appointment almost given, yet now, at the last, tantalizingly withheld. After insistent efforts, the best that he could gain was assurance that, in Tokio itself, in the hands of Count Ronsard, the present French minister, he would almost surely find his credentials waiting. Pierre, at his princess-mother's instigation had written personally to this Count Ronsard. "An old, dear friend of ours, mon fils," wrote Madame Olga. "Quite close, I assure you. He will be felicitated to offer what he can."

Pierre and Yuki in their many talks had come to believe that an assured diplomatic position in Tokio would greatly strengthen their chances for an early marriage. Their young ardors were to blow the drowsy coals of French and Japanese friendship. Their lives must have an influence for good! At such times the future glowed with a heavenly dawn. Pierre, ever since his arrival in Washington, little less than a year ago, had been a special favorite with Mrs. Todd. In the first place, he was a joy only to look upon, having personal beauty to a degree almost irritating in a man. He possessed, also, that subtler and rarer power called "charm." A great factor in his success was unfailing courtesy toward elderly women. He knew well the might of the chaperon. He cared little for men in any country, and the aggressive American he found peculiarly unattractive. But a woman, no matter what her age, race, or weight, was still a woman. Middleaged sighs fed his vanity equally with the giggling of débutantes in their first snare. He was not a Don Juan, far from it,—but a pleasure-loving, life-loving boy, who had never been refused a thing he wanted, and never intended to grudge himself a moment's delight that could be honorably enjoyed. His ideas of this honor,—it may be well to add,—were French. At different stages in his short career, Pierre had been or tried to be, in turn, a hermit, an atheist, a Roman Catholic priest like Francis of Assisi, an actor of old French classics, a poet, and an artist of the Chavannes school. With him one passion burned supreme. One fuse must disappear before a new one could be lighted. He had met Yuki first in the Todd drawing-rooms, on one of those Friday evenings allotted to the schoolgirls for receiving friends. She chanced to be wearing full Japanese attire of a soft, cloudy blue, a sash brocaded in silver ferns, and a cluster of the gold-colored "icho" berries drooping in her blue-black hair. As his eyes fell upon her, Pierre's past visions went to cold ash. All the poetry, the mysticism, the intellectuality, the exaggeration of discarded hopes flared now into a single new white flame of adoration.

December came. Christmas festivities impinged on the travellers' routine of preparations. Days which, at first, Gwendolen had declared interminable, accelerated strangely in progress, like round stones started down a gradual slope. During that last crowded week, Todd had his final, most important interview with the President and the Secretary of State. He was urged to impart with absolute freedom his personal opinions of the coming struggle, and its probable outcome for the world. In return he was given full and satisfactory instructions. He left the executive mansion strengthened in purpose, and clarified in his own beliefs.

At the station, on the morning of departure, an unexpectedly large crowd gathered to say "Farewell." Prominent were the Kanrios and their diplomatic suite. Gwendolen's youthful friends of both sexes advanced like an animated flower-garden, so profuse were the bouquets. The French ambassador also was there. A Russian attaché insisted upon kissing Pierre good-bye.

The two drawing-rooms of the sleeper "Nurino" were so heaped with dulcet offerings that the legitimate occupants—hurrying in to the warning cry of "Buo-o-o-ord!"—were forced to seek temporary accommodation in the open car.

"Why! It's just like setting off for anywhere!" cried Gwendolen, a little blankly, as the train drew out through acrid smoke, and old familiar landmarks began their flight backward, to the city.

"Who cares about the setting off? It's the roosting on, that counts!" carolled the optimistic Dodge.

The train pulled steadily, now, for the South. After much disagreement and discussion, and the bending of yellow, black, and brown heads over countless railroad folders,—each with its own route in a pulsing artery of red,—they had decided for a southern tour. No one of the party except Dodge, who, if one chose to believe him, held acquaintance with all corners of the globe, had been lower than the Potomac River. Mrs. Todd remembered an aunt, native of New Orleans. The aunt had died long since, but the city remained. They were to have a glimpse of the Gulf Coast, and at least two days in the sleepy, picturesque, yet hugely prosperous Crescent City.

The month was January, in most places a bad month for weather; but in this opening of the year 1904 the South was apparently bent upon justifying its conventional adjective of "sunny." The little party left Washington in a scourge of sleet and a pall of gray; it reached New Orleans to find the whole city, creole alleys traced three centuries ago and broad avenues of later wealth, alike glorified,—"paved with afternoon." Scarcely a gulf breeze stirred. The levees by the muddy river lay like saurians, with turpentine and sugar barrels and bursting cotton bales upon their backs, in lieu of scales. In city gardens, palm-trees stood at "present arms" of glossy rectitude. Pansies, daisies, and other small bedding flowers bloomed in the open air. Potted ferns or crotons stood about on broad galleries, or upon the shell-white walks bordering emerald lawns.

Gwendolen declared it a delusion, a mirage, deliberately planned for their entanglement. Yuki admitted that even Japan could not offer so tropic a feast to the eye in January. Mrs. Todd found her greatest satisfaction in "doing" the place. Dodge, of course, was cicerone. He led them to the old French market and gave them a strange, steaming elixir, brewed in huge copper vats and misnamed mere "coffee." He knew the small lair called "Beguet's," where alone on earth, he solemnly affirmed, real breakfasts were to be procured. He hired a box at the French Opera for Sunday night.

"Sunday!" Mrs. Todd gasped, with upraised hands and eyes.

"Sunday!" echoed Yuki, less vociferously, but with a corresponding air of pained astonishment.

"Certainement!" ejaculated Pierre, who was beginning to feel at home. "It is transplanted Paris. Why not Sunday night, better than another? All persons have been to mass, except our naughty selves. The piety of the others may chance to include us. God is good! Allons! The opera is Faust, with the full ballet and music. Time means little here! Vive New Orleans!" After a laughing glance into Mrs. Todd's still dubious countenance he whispered, insinuatingly, "It is never to be known in Washington or—Tokio—dear Madame."

In the end he carried his point and his party. Never had he been in such spirits. Yuki could scarcely keep her eyes from his radiant face. Mr. Todd declared him a mineral spring that had just blown its way through a boulder. He stopped turbaned mammies or wondering children on the banquets,—which in New Orleans means sidewalks,—that he might elicit, by his correct Parisian French, answers in the delicious native patois. At each success he hugged himself anew.

"Ç'est ça, même! Mo pas geignin l'argent pour butin çi lalà!" he murmured ecstatically. "Geignin plein!" Passing the cathedral, Pierre asked of a lounging, large-hipped negress: "Est-ce qu'il y à la messe à la Cathédrale demain?" to receive the impudent answer:

"Sainte Pitie! Est-çe que vous croire que le va levé apres so' bon diner au poisson pou' vini donner nous autres la sainte messe? Bon Dieu la Sainte Vierge! Ha! Ha!"

"Holy Mother! But it is French, en glacé,—crushed, with the cream swimming and the flavor heightened!"

Todd alone stared out across the dim, majestic river through De Soto's eyes. He tried to feel himself the man, to prophesy as that seer had prophesied. The great city and the long levees were builded in that vanished mind, before the first adobe brick was moulded, or the first dark cedar hewn. Now in himself, as Todd the new American minister, he felt the country of his dreams creep nearer, lured by the magnet of the Panama Canal. Within his own life, should God be pleased to spare him to a fair old age, new craft would thread the Mississippi delta, small merchantmen at first, and sailing vessels, each with the banner of the red sun on its mast. Asiatic labor, silent, skilful, insidious, would contest for preeminence with the saturnine Dago, the "cayjin," the Quadroon, and the established African.

Each moment, westward from the city, held a novelty and a delight. The sugar-fields of Louisiana, stretching for leaden-colored miles, and soon to be pierced by myriad tiny spears of awakening green, appeared to Yuki a giant sort of rice-field from her own land.

"If it were cut up into many small piece, all of different shape and size, with little crooked baby-levees binding the edges,—it would be exacterlee the winter rice-fields of Nippon."

Sometimes, in an island of higher ground, the white-columned house of a sugar-planter gleamed, and near it rose mammoth live oaks, huge tumuli of green, the underbranches swaying with grizzled moss. In the open country, such trees crouched low above stealthy creeks, or blotted widening lagoons.

While in the city, they had read and heard of recent heavy rains to the West, flooding a wide agricultural district. On the borderland of Texas, they knew they had reached the threatened fields. Cypress, magnolia, sweet gum, and bay trees stood knee deep in a sea of dull chrome, churned from roads of clay. It seemed a lake of yellow onyx. Between the trunks writhed a tropical disorder of vines, palmetto, and undergrowth. In wide, clear spaces, drifting fence rails or half-submerged buildings told of ruin already accomplished. Now the whole unstable sea was covered by a carpet of the floating "water-hyacinth," which, in later months, was to turn the bayous and lagoons into veins of amethyst. It seemed incredible to the little party, staring solemnly from train windows, that they were in temperate America at all. Every floating spar of wood became an alligator's head, every springing tuft of white swamp flower a meditative stork.

Night fell swiftly upon the watery forest, sucked down into it as to a familiar lair. With the next morning, the world had changed to a dry desert, above which arched an unrelated sky.

"Can we really be on the same planet?" asked Gwendolen; "or in the night, did this little measuring-worm of a train reach up and pull itself to Mars?"

Before, behind, everywhere, stretched spaces of exhausted gray sand, rising now and again into nerveless hills. For vegetation were set innumerable rosettes of the spiked yucca, with small heaps of the prickly pear, a cactus bush built up of fleshy bulbs, leaf out of leaf, like inflated green coral. On some of the thorny ridges perched star-like, yellow blooms. On others were stuck thick, purple fingers, known politely by the name of "figs." Dodge remarked sententiously that it was a very interesting plant; though, by raisers of cattle, not considered desirable. "Stock won't eat it a little bit," he explained cherubically. "Get stickers into their noses."

"Do you call that thing a plant?" cried Gwendolen, pointing. "It may grow, but it is no more a plant than a canary is a crab."

Dodge smiled again, the irritating smile of the well-informed. "Wait till to-morrow in Arizona, if you want to know how it feels to be struck dumb."

Gwendolen tossed her head. Her tendency during these initial days was to overact indifference.

"I rather think I shall not undergo the humiliation of incapacity to speak! Life heretofore has brought no crises in which I could not command a fairly adequate linguistic expression of my visual experiences."

"Whew,—how did you remember it all?" said Dodge under his breath. Yuki turned her intense face from the window. At sight of the absorbed, half-dazed expression, Gwendolen gave a little laugh, crying, "Here is one already nearing the borders of silence! That is Yuki's way. When she begins to feel things, she draws back in her shell, and puts sealing-wax on the door. What is it now, Yuki,—lack of English,—that keeps you so dumb?"

"No, not exacterlee," said Yuki, flushing a little at the turning of all eyes. "I have not good English, of course; but I could not say to myself all that I see, even in Nipponese. When too many new thing come, it is like fat people trying to squeeze together through a door,—all get mashed, and none come through."

Dodge gazed at the speaker in quizzical admiration. "Miss Onda, I long for a phonograph record. That is a masterly exposition of a profound psychological truth!"

Yuki cast a laughing, half-pathetic glance toward Pierre. "Is it very bad names that he is calling me, M. Le Beau?"

In spite of Gwendolen's hyperbolic boast, Arizona, next day, came near to fulfilling Dodge's prophecy. The world stretched bigger and broader, as though here, instead of at the Arctic poles, the "flattening-like-an-orange" of our globe took place. The sky, immeasurably remote and tangibly arched, was a thin crystal dome soldered to earth by the lead-line of the horizon. The red sand was hot to look at. The hills, though of vaster proportions, had more of helplessness and degeneracy in their sprawling curves. Yucca grew very closely now, marching up and down the slopes like fierce explosive little soldiers with bayonets too long for them. The objectionable prickly pears vanished. In their places rose a stranger order of being, cacti in tangled bunches, as of green serpents, sometimes with the licking red tongue of a blossom,—hunched woolly lambs of growth on high, thin stilts of shaggy black,—huge green melons, ribbed, spiked, and lazy, that seemed strangely at ease on their burning couches of sand. Far off, against the rim of nothingness, dry, blue mountain shapes emerged, mere tissue filaments of hue. And now, as part of the unreal perspective, giant cacti rose, at first no more than scratches and cross-marks on a window-pane, but coming steadily close. The first that flashed, tall, stark, and tangible, into the very faces of those who watched, brought small exclamations of wonder and distaste. It passed instantaneously, fleeing backward into nothingness,—a herald to proclaim the coming horde. In a few moments, imagination, the sunshine, and the day became mere mediums for the aggressive race. This scorched eternity was made for them. Isolated and defiant, their laws were to themselves. It seemed a deliberate assumption that they should mock reality, taking on the evil forms of crucifix, gallows, skeleton-trees, and mile-posts, where nothing but a famished death was to be pointed. The desert might have been a vast sea-bottom, set with grim coral trees and hardened polyps.

"They are a race of evil spirits, petrified," whispered Gwendolen. "I feel their sinister association with our human life. See what shapes they have chosen!"

"Yes," said Yuki in return, and caught Gwendolen's hand as if for comfort. "You are right, Gwendolen. I think it is a Buddhist hell of trees."

"But what could cause this doom to befall an innocent tree, little sister?"

"It must be evil karma," said Yuki, with wide yet shrinking eyes upon the desert. "Perhaps a tree where a blameless man was hanged, perhaps the tree of a martyr's sacrifice,—perhaps even,—" here her voice fell to an intense and dramatic whisper which chilled her listeners while it stirred them, "perhaps that terrible—terrible tree whereon our—Saviour—See—see! now, over there—there—where on top of a hill three great crosses, the middle one so great and black and high,—is it not Gethsemane?" She pointed with a shaking finger, unable to utter more.

"Come, Yuki, do not look—I forbid it!" cried Pierre, vehemently. In a moment, with a shudder, he added, "Albrecht Dürer might have dreamed them in a nightmare, had he killed his own child and slept afterward! Mother of God! I shall look no more!"

"Nor I either, Pierre," cried Mrs. Todd, in great relief. "You are right to correct Yuki,—she does have such morbid fancies. I've heard her tell stories of ghosts, and incarnations, and those scary things that would make the flesh creep on your bones. Thank heaven, this day is nearly done! Ugh! See how the lengthening shadows spread them on the sand!" Deliberately she pulled down the small window-shade, leaned back, and closed her eyes.

"What's the matter, dear? Are you faint?" asked Mr. Todd, bending over her.

"No, but I'm thirsty. Ring for some lemonades, Cy. This dust has made my throat as dry as a lime-burner's wig!"

Gwendolen rose. "Well, you can have your lemonades, but I am going to watch the desert until night drives down the last black cactus-peg. It's a thing to remember!"

"Voilà! It's a thing to forget," challenged Pierre. "Nay, Yuki-ko, you must not follow. Tears are on your cheeks. Stay here, and let us talk of your beautiful land, forgetting the harsh ugliness outside."

He, too, leaned over, and pulled down a shade. Yuki made a slight motion of protest, then submitted. "Yes, let us talk of the umè-flowers," she whispered. "They are the first."

Gwendolen had taken a seat to herself at the far end of the open compartment. Here, alone, she watched the red sands smoulder into gray. For a brief half-hour the plant shadows stretched elastically into a network of black. Suddenly they sank, as water, into the sand. The upright stalks themselves began to waver and lose shape. An instant more and they would have vanished like their shadows; but now, in the western sky, just where the heated disc of copper had been lowered, an aftermath of glory mocked the night. The cactus forms, against the gleam, acquired new menace and fresh exaggeration. The brightness shut down quickly, like a box-lid, and a universe of stars sprang out. Tangled in their beams, again loomed up the cacti.

"Fair maid, thy summons to the lemonade!" said Dodge, close behind her. "By Jove! I almost committed a rhyme! Fair maid,—lemonade,—good combination, think I'll write it on my cuff."

At last the girl turned from her desert.

Next day, to the outspoken satisfaction of Mrs. Todd, aridity had begun to retreat before civilization. Even the small spot called Yuma seemed, with its station garden of green, a bit of Paradise. Before reaching it, Dodge had carefully printed a large notice, using the top of one of Gwendolen's florist boxes. This he hung in full view of all, at the end of the car.

"We approach Yuma. No puns aloud. First offence, one bottle. Second offence, five bottles. Third offence, a whole case. By Order of the General Manager."

The few other travellers destined for the long California journey were, by this time, all on friendly terms. No one could have resisted the combined gayeties of Gwendolen, Dodge, and Pierre Le Beau. Yuki, though less responsive, was, as usual, an object both of interest and admiration.

In lower California Mrs. Todd averred that at last she was in America. The trip up the coast, with glimpses of Narragansett surf springing up in dazzling whiteness between rows of eucalyptus, pepper, and live-oak trees, or over the roofs of tiled adobe houses, could not turn her from the belief.

Near San Jose, cottages peered out from arching vines of rose. Gwendolen was distressed and surprised to find that roses, here, did not bloom continuously, and always in abundance. "They must show like glaciers, when they do come," she admitted.

With San Francisco, modern life, society, stress, began, anew. Old acquaintances sent in cards. Gwendolen began a whole volume of new admirers, while Yuki, with Pierre as escort, found certain Japanese friends and acquaintances, one the child of an old family servant of her father's house.

To many thousands of voyagers, San Francisco is but a stopping place, a bird-rest for preening. As a fact it is a city which possesses an unusual share of individuality, of "atmosphere," in the sense that writers use. No where else are to be seen such gray and wind-swept streets, where houses stand sidewise, as if mounting flights of stairs, the parlor windows of one house looking through the chimney-pots of its neighbor. Nowhere else are perched palaces like those of San Francisco, or a growth, as huge and strange in its exotic coloring, as Chinatown. The great, round, shimmering bay and Golden Gate are as a loom, and ships of the harbor, shuttles weaving together the nations of East and West.

On sailing day, new friends and new flowers gave the little party of the Todds "bon voyage."

"If New Orleans is a transplanted Paris, this is a Tschaikowsky Symphonie Orientale translated into terms of American life," said Pierre.

Slowly the city turned from a city to a patch of lichen on a rock. Queer little ditches, which they knew for streets, showed lines of perpendicular-crawling beetles, which they recognized to be whizzing electric cars. They watched it all eagerly, leaning far along the stern rail of the ship.

Then the sea winds caught them, screaming a welcome into shrinking ears. The white, attendant sea-gulls laughed in harsh appreciation of the antics of the wind. The ocean lifted, and strove, and pounded his cosmic greeting; and,—and,—well—there was a good stewardess on board!

CHAPTER SIX

The first days of any voyage are admirable in proportion as little, or nothing, is said of them. In this, as in other phases of human intercourse, delicacy lies in restraint rather than in eloquence. Thus is the bloom of society preserved.

Mr. Dodge, the self-confident, the experienced, the ubiquitous, was first to "show up." The outer reefs of the California coast do not tend toward placidity. Even Dodge did not care to count the hours since he had begun to feel "sleepy" and had sought his cabin.

Mr. Todd next met the sun. To be more accurate, it was a fog, where only a small bright spot, rubbed as in the centre of a tarnished tray, indicated our chief luminary. Todd's cap was pulled very low, his ulster collar very high. His hands disappeared utterly into large pockets. He walked with the jerky directness of a marionette toward the smoking-room.

On the third day, when the sun actually shone and the pewter sky was undergoing a gradual transformation into blue enamel, Mr. Todd was able to sit on deck,—he still remained noticeably near the smoking-room,—and to enjoy unprintable yarns from fellow-smokers. Missionary children began to gambol around the promenade deck, and over the feet of swathed and flaccid mortals, lately exhumed, all with the blinking regard of insects suddenly disclosed beneath a garden stone. Dodge, for a wonder, was not in sight. Mr. Todd had his back toward the main-deck exit from the salon, when one of the group about him thumped a knee, stared up, crying, "By G—, look at that!" and called loudly upon his Maker to witness that the sight was fair.

Out to the deck had blown a golden apparition,—a tall, slim girl with yellow hair crushed under a wide and most unsailor-like hat of yellow sea-poppies. Her skirts and the rest of her were silken browns and yellows. She made straight for the group, rustling like a small eddy in a heap of autumn-leaves. Todd turned a few inches. At the expression on his face a third convive nudged the speaker. "Oh, er—beg ten thousand pardons—didn't have an idea—" mumbled the crimson one.

"Neither did I," said Todd, enigmatically, as he rose.

"Oh, dearest of dads," they heard a fresh voice cry. "Now isn't this a world with the top off? I feel like a bunk caterpillar turned into a butterfly."

Pierre followed his three emancipated comrades, immediately after "tiffin," as the midday meal hereafter must be called. He was, as usual, immaculate in attire, but bore an air of citric melancholy.

Next arose, in all her might, Mrs. Cyrus Carton Todd. In her aggressive costume of starched piqué, fortified by gold lorgnettes and an air carefully adapted from certain acknowledged "grandes dames" of Washington, she took immediate possession of the Captain, the best deck chair, and the passenger list. As wife of a senator and lady of the new American minister to Japan, she was accepted at once, without demur, reigning Empress of the voyage.

Sportive infants, oblivious of comfortably extended limbs of lesser mortals, skirted those of Mrs. Todd. Silent Chinese "boys," dispensing beef-tea and gruel, swung pigtails aside from her austere garments.

Of the party Yuki alone now abode in the mysterious seclusion of her stateroom.

Before sunset, on that third afternoon, the sea, to use the Captain's expression, quieted into a "bloomin' mill-pond." White birds fluttered incessantly about the stern of the ship, sometimes sinking to the waves for an unstable rest, or rising to visit, in one great silver swoop, the startled and delighted passenger deck.

Pierre found a chair beside his chaperon. He moved it a confidential three inches nearer before asking, "Will she not be able to come up sometime before to-morrow? This is perfect."

"She has commissioned me to say that she will try to make the effort this evening, after our dinner; that is, if—" here she shook a playful finger—"if I will play propriety, and any kindly disposed person could be found to assist her upstairs."

"Ah! I'll go down now, and take seat upon her doormat," cried Pierre, in his excitement.

"The Chinese coolie might spill chicken broth upon you."

The day waned slowly. Passengers were beginning already their postprandial walks. Mrs. Todd nodded patronizingly to one and then to another.

"Madame," began Pierre, with his caressing look, "you have been almost as a mother—a good, indulgent mother—to me in that big land of yours. You will continue to be my very good friend in Japan, will you not?"

"Why, silly boy, of course I will," she cried. "Have not I always been your friend and Yuki's,—even to the point of what Cyrus called 'entangling alliances'?"

"It is because of its preciousness that I want to hear you say it, dear Mrs. Todd. After all, I am ignorant of Japan, and of what social phantoms Yuki and I may have to fight. But with your championship, I am strong, invincible!" He gave her fat hand just the most delicate of pressures. It might have been the touch of a devoted son; it might, had Mrs. Todd been twenty years younger, have been—well, almost anything. His dark, impassioned eyes, the color of new-opened violets, hung on her kindly face.

If fault could be found with Pierre, it would be in excess of beauty. From the old blood of France he had received refinement, poise, delicacy,—the throbbing of purple veins in temples as satin-smooth as young leaves, and thin nostrils that shivered at every passing gust of emotion. From the more barbaric, vivid Russian mother had come depth of coloring, the flash of sudden animation, deep blue in the eyes, and gold in the hair. Yet with all its fairness the face was not effeminate. One could think of it, without offence, in the armor of a young crusader, or even behind the mediæval visor of a robber-baron. There might be a hint of cruelty behind the wet crimson of the perfect mouth. To Yuki that face was the epitome of all earthly beauty. Before it, the artist in her knelt, in adoration.

Shortly after twilight came the reverberating clamor of the first dinner-gong. Mrs. Todd and her feminine satellites had agreed to "dress." Mrs. Todd had never made acquaintance with a décolleté gown until her entrance into Washington, not so many years before. Now she was wont to declare loudly that she could not really enjoy her evening meal in covered shoulders,—a statement which always brought the twinkles to Todd's eyes. He openly loathed his "tombstone shirt-front;" but Gwendolen, of a later and more favored generation, wore her pretty low-cut frocks as unconsciously as a flower wears its sheath.

Pierre sat through the interminable courses, scarcely knowing what he ate or to whom he spoke. His thoughts were all with Yuki. He was to see her again after three endless days! The little cool, slim palm would lie, perhaps, in his. He would hear her voice, as different from these chattering table women all around him as is the sound of running water to the whirr of machines. The past ten days of journeying—though indeed they had not been for a moment entirely alone—left a delicious aroma of familiarity, almost of married friendship. What hours the future was to hold for them in Japan, in Europe, in India!

Mrs. Todd's half-teasing voice drew him back from the dear reverie. "Come, Mister Le Beau, dinner is over at last. I noticed that you ate nothing. The Captain has been telling us the most delightful jokes. But we must not forget our promise to Miss Onda. Gwendolen, dear, will you go on deck and see that a chair is made ready for the poor child?" The speaker had been rising ponderously. She turned again to the Captain. "These Japanese are always wretched sailors, I am told."

"No good, any of them!" corroborated the Captain, with emphasis. "The sight of a floral anchor at a landlubber's funeral is enough to make them ill."

"I wonder how it will be with their admirals before the Russian navy," mused Todd, with pensive eyes on a blue-gowned Chinese steward.

"It wouldn't matter either way," sneered the Captain. "No fight is going to come off! I've known these Yokohama Japs for seventeen years, Mr. Todd. A bad lot! They are just trying a game of bluff borrowed from—no offence, gentlemen—from America." The Captain was a Liverpool Englishman.

"Just so!" grinned Dodge, "the kind of bluff that works,—recipe handed down by one G. Washington."

Pierre and Mrs. Todd approached Yuki's cabin. She heard them, and tottered to the entrance of the tiny passage. Her face shone ghastly white above the square black collar of her adzuma-coat. Pierre instantly drew her arm within his own. She clung to him helplessly for an instant, then, with an obvious effort, rallied and stood erect.

"There, there, now, keep to Pierre's arm," encouraged Mrs. Todd, with the smile of a patron deity. "If you'll promise to be good, I'll go ahead and not look around." She preceded them slowly along the passage. Her décolleté back loomed, in the dim light, like the half of a large, round cheese.

Yuki, once safely on deck, tucked lovingly among soft rugs and pillows by Gwendolen, found little indeed to say. Mrs. Todd gave orders, before sweeping off to her game of bridge whist, that Yuki must not be teased into talking, but must lie still, and let the night air and the breeze refresh her. Pierre, of course, remained by her side. He cared little though the whole ship knew that he loved the Japanese girl and longed to make her his wife. Dodge and Gwendolen had affairs of their own to settle, and disappeared around the other side. Gradually the deck was deserted by all but Pierre and his companion. He secured a small hand in his own. The girl was too languid, or perhaps too blissful, to demur.

"Oh, to be seasick is most unpleasantest thing of all!" she whispered once, with a short but very genuine shudder. "I shall never cross back on this water,—never, never! The little bed downstairs it seem like a grave, and one wish hard that it was truly a grave."

After another long silence, broken only by whispered sentences from Pierre, she pointed to a constellation. "How nice and kind the stars are to come out here with us, so far from home! That cluster is exactly the same one I used to watch from my little room at school. When I see it in Japan, and count the stars to be sure all have followed, it will be stranger feeling yet."

"Darling," said Pierre, "sometime we are to carry that little shining group the whole way round the world with us,—when you are my wife."

The great ship rose softly and sank again, as if breathing. The stars stared in, unwinking. Yuki's face was deepening in sweet content. Every shiver of the engine, every angry hurtling of the insulted waters, thrust them consciously nearer to Japan.

Roughening waves, toward the night of the fourth day, indicated, according to the Captain, approach to the Hawaiian Islands. He added, "If any one is keen enough on it to get up at daybreak, he will see the first outlying peaks."

Todd, in a passion of romantic interest that was part of the whole marvellous epic, climbed to the deck before dawn. The stars, he fancied, looked coldly upon him, as if they resented his presence at their coming defeat. He leaned far over, watching waves that lapped the sides of the ship in a strange rhythm. Under the brightening day he stared across an ocean apparently as eternal and infinite as space, that stretched, he knew, north and south beyond him, twelve thousand miles of unbroken liquid desert from pole to pole. And yet through the centuries, this perilous waste had been crossed from oasis to island oasis by the frail canoes of men;—dark Polynesian painted savages with marvellous powers of carving and inlaying, who had left traces of their coming from New Zealand to Alaska, and through the Philippines to Japan. He pictured the advent of that first dusky Ulysses who, in feathered armor and a Greek helmet carved from a cinnamon-tree, had here, ages before, terminated his thousand-mile wanderings from a forgotten South. All this had now become a new world for Todd's own light-haired Saxon race to fall heir to, stepping-stones in its inevitable stride to the teeming coasts of Asia.

Yuki, too, in such excitement that she could barely stop to dress, had been staring out of the port-hole of her stateroom since an early hour. If one of the great birds swooping incessantly along the sides of the ship had paused to look, he would have seen a small face, white as himself, fitted into the round brass frame. She was there before dawn had quickened under the sea. The mystery and the first unspeakable shiver of a newly created day had been hers. "'And God moved upon the face of the waters,'" whispered reverent Oriental lips. She saw the first dark triangle of land glide toward her through the thinning darkness,—the shimmer of rose and green on half-veiled slopes, the gradual lighting up of tapering peaks,—and then, the full orchestration of the risen sun.

She reached the deck to find not only Mr. Todd, but the greater number of the passengers, assembled to watch the gorgeous spectacle from the entrance of Honolulu Bay. Night had rolled up from the sleepy town, and surged in great sails of pearl-tinted cloud up dark blue-green gullies of the hills. Red scars of volcanic slopes burned through the morning, whole peaks seemed incandescent, and terraced gardens, cleared from lower mists, stood outlined in reflected orange light.

A few moments more, and the iridescent pageant vanished. Down on the shore, rude wharves and freight-sheds and cheap, new-painted boat-houses stared out impertinently. Back of the harbor front the little town nestled prettily enough in its setting of tropic greens, and half-way up the volcanic cliffs patches of tilled fields or clumps of forest-trees relieved the sandy wastes. At intervals a tall white house among its palms shone out like a child's block, half imbedded in moss.

As the ship touched the dock, and the company broke up to watch the native boys diving for coppers, Mrs. Todd gathered her clan together for a holiday on shore. Yuki had decided to wear a white American gown. Gwendolen also was in white, like a great lily. Dodge showed up in spotless duck and a pith helmet; Pierre wore immaculate flannels; while Mrs. Todd, in the stiffest of skirts, the thinnest of lawn waists, and a white linen Alpine hat a trifle too small, looked unfortunately like a perfume bottle with a white leather top.

They walked in radiant single-file down the gangway, the faces of all three women changing to sudden blankness at the appalling rigidity of earth, after recent days on a swaying deck. "I—I—don't believe I can walk at all, just yet," said Mrs. Todd, and reached out for her natural protector. In an instant Dodge had whistled up two cabriolets driven by sleepy-eyed Kanakas in California hats. At the market, a low Spanish-looking edifice with no walls, Mrs. Todd insisted upon getting out. Some one on the ship had told her to be sure to see the market; and this the conscientious traveller intended to do, though the very peaks above them seemed to rock and leap with subconscious friskiness. Here thronged a mingled race, both buyers and sellers,—English, Japanese, Chinese, Hawaiians, and Yankees. All the vegetable stands were owned by Chinese, all the fruit by Kanakas. Dodge insisted on the fact as eloquent of racial tendencies. In this magic climate the growth of vegetables is accompanied by an even more fervid growth of weeds, and so requires patient vigilance. Fruit, on the other hand, cultivates itself. "All the lordly Hawaiian has to do," said Dodge, "is to stand or sit under the tree, and let it fall into his lap." Gwendolen took the value from this last remark by indicating a heap of horny "jackfruit,"—a thing the shape and size of a watermelon, which grows out of the trunk, apparently, of live oaks, and asking, scornfully, how much Kanaka would be left when one of those had fallen.

The fish dealers' department gleamed with iridescent color. Shrimps and crabs seemed fashioned in Favrille glass. Lobsters wore polka-dots of blue. None of these crustacea had claws, but whether deprived of them by man or nature was never ascertained.

As they drove up the narrow avenues, the unique mixture of the population became more apparent. Chinese evidently formed the inferior caste of laborer, content with a daily wage. Cleverer Japanese bustled about newly opened shops of foreign wares, or hung out professional signs of doctor, lawyer, or notary public. The Yankee strolled about with a half-disdainful glance; but the lordliest was not so proud as the ragged sons of Kamehameha, who, preëmpting shady nooks in doorways, stared disapprovingly on the passer-by. In the grounds of the former "palace," members of a present legislature lolled on the green, and nibbled peanuts. Pert Kanaka girls, in New York shirt-waists and automobile veils, minced by the side of fat mamas in Mother Hubbard gowns, generally of red, with huge ruffles about the yoke.

"Stop, Cy! Tell the man to stop. There's a druggist! I have several things to get!"

"And look! next to it a book-store advertising the latest novels," supplemented Gwendolen. "Doesn't that seem a joke? We must get some. I see souvenirs, and photographs, and—"

"I'll tell you what we'd better do. You women-folks get out and shop. Le Beau will stick to Yuki, I guess; while Dodge and I take this carriage around to the post-office,—I've heard there was one,—and try to find out the latest news about the war," cried Mr. Todd.

In a quarter of an hour they were back, breathless. "War's coming, and it's coming soon!" panted the senator.

"Yes, that's the ticket. Japan has called, and Russia must show her hand or crawfish," supplemented Dodge.

"But not really, really—yet begun?" whispered Yuki, who had turned very pale.

"What does the young man mean?" asked Mrs. Todd, anxiously, of her spouse. "I can't believe in irresponsible war rumors. I sha'n't believe them. Why, only two days before we left Washington, Prince Breakitoff assured me solemnly that the difficulty would never be allowed to reach the point of war."

Mr. Todd winked toward his secretary. "Well," he said solemnly, "Prince Breakitoff ought to know more about the facts of the case than a Hawaiian newspaper."

"He certainly ought to," said Dodge, ambiguously.

"War! Who dares to hint of war?" cried Pierre. "Look at this sky above us, and that tangle of sun and shower dragging rainbow echoes across a peacock-colored bay! Who could be found to fight on such an earth? Do you not say so, too, my Yuki?"

Yuki started slightly, and hesitated, as if to form her words. Before she could speak, Dodge had interrupted: "As long as we are so close, would you-all mind walking one more block on foot? The prettiest sight in the town is just to the left of that jutting brick wall down there." He pointed. Mrs. Todd was off. Yuki slipped in close to Gwendolen, and clung to her friend's arm. She did not want to think, just now, of war. Past new American shops they went, ice-cream "parlors," dry-goods displays of underwear,—"marked down" sales, of course,—and windows of ready-made gowns on insipid waxen dummies. Dodge had taken a few feet in advance. He now turned sharply, facing into a narrow street, one of the old native thoroughfares, bordered by walls of brick and stone where moss spread and dampness oozed. On an absurdly narrow pavement squatted a row of fat and shapeless beings, presumably women, half buried in wreaths and coils of strange flowers.

"Behold the far-famed lei sellers of Hawaii!" announced Dodge, with an histrionic gesture.

"I see no hens," said Mrs. Todd, through raised lorgnettes.

"These are a different brand of lei," explained Dodge, without a smile; "flower-wreaths that are to the hat of the Hawaiian dandy what an orchid or a gardenia is to the button-hole of a Fifth Avenue sport."

The sellers had sprung instantly into kneeling postures, all as if pulled by a single wire. Brown arms went forth, like those of crabs, flower hung. "Lei, lei, Honolulu lei! Prettie flower! Prettie ladees! Dollar—Fufty cents! Here, ladee, prettie lei, twunty-fi' cents!"

"Offer a quarter for three, and see them hustle," said Dodge.

"Oh, what visions of beauty!" breathed Gwendolen, and flung down silver coin at random. "See, ropes of carnations! Pink oleanders threaded into regular cables! And oh, the lovely yellow things,—my color,—golden acacias, I believe. I shall loop myself like an East Indian idol in these fragrant necklaces. And what are those purple things, and those? Why, why, I don't know the others at all. I thought I was friends with every flower. They smell like heaven!"

"Frangipani, ylang-ylang, stephanotis, plumaria, acacia," rattled Dodge, in the tone and manner of a professional guide.

"What a delightful courier you would make, Mr. Dodge!" cried saucy Gwendolen. "I think I'll bespeak your services, now, for my wedding journey."

"I'm jolly well apt to be along on that particular trip, you know," retorted the young man, with such cool assurance that all laughed—except Mrs. Todd. That good lady had begun to view, with some apprehension, the over-confident tactics of the attaché. Gwendolen, after an unsuccessful attempt to stare him "down," bent flushed cheeks and laughing eyes to the flowers. "We must all wear lei, of course," she cried, a trifle unsteadily. "It's positively the only thing to do on such a day! Yuki, pink carnations will be ravishing on your little white sailor-hat, and also, by a happy coincidence, on Pierre's new Panama. Dad, you and mother must have this divine stephanotis, mixed with a little smilax, for a green old age. Just think of buying strung stephanotis by the yard! And, Mr. Dodge,—last and not least, Mr. T. Caraway Dodge!—" Mockingly she caught up a string of magenta-colored "bachelor buttons," and would have offered them with a curtsey; but already Dodge had carefully wound his helmet in coils of acacia flowers until it had become, in shape and size, an old-fashioned beehive made of gold.

This time she presented her back squarely. The others withheld laughter until they should have read the expression on the chaperon's face. But she, oblivious apparently of this new bit of daring, had lorgnettes at her eyes, and was studying carefully a closely written list,—a composite of suggestions, made up for her by admiring ship friends. "Punch Bowl Crater, The Bishop Museum, Banana Plantations, Waki-ki Beach,—note colors on the shoals,—House where R. L. Stevenson resided," she was murmuring, as though to fix each in her memory. Suddenly she looked up. "Cyrus, the carriages! I doubt whether we can get them all in, but I intend to do my best."

"Mother!" began Gwendolen, in a note of protest. Yuki was smiling, and Pierre also. As long as they were together, nothing else mattered. The countenance of Dodge, however, had an acrobatic fall from elation to horrified disappointment. At sight of this, Gwendolen actually glittered mischief.

"Certainly, mother dear," she hastened to answer. "Let us take everything in,—even a little more, if possible. We all need our minds improved,—and some of us our manners!" Dodge, darting a look into her face, found only trustful innocence. The carriages had arrived. With great ostentation he assisted Mrs. Todd into her place. "I think I shall be able to supply one or two interesting spots not down on that list," he suggested, with a tentative look at the empty cushion beside her. "Claus Spreckels' house, the Infirmary, the Honolulu University with miles of hedges made up of volcanic stone overgrown with night-blooming cereus—you mustn't miss that!" Dodge's eyes and his smile were frankness embalmed and irradiated. Mrs. Todd perforce smiled in reply. "Jump in," she said cordially. "You're quite a treasure in travelling, Mr. Dodge."

Gwendolen meekly took a rear seat by her father. As she pressed lovingly against him, sending upward the tiniest little teased smile of discomfiture, his face broke into merry wrinkles. "I think you've found your match this time, little girl," he whispered.

"You just wait," nodded the oracular Gwendolen.

It is a memorable experience, analogous to nothing else in the world, that landing, for one iridescent day, in the Pacific's mid-ocean, throwing one's fancies and one's heart into strange tropic scenes, and then returning at nightfall, like tired, happy children, to the great old mother-nursery of the ship.

By the next morning, not even a cloud on that horizon from which we are fleeing betrays the hiding-place of land. At once the island takes proper place as a vision, a mirage of the imagination, where souls of certain privileged beings have met, and are henceforth bound in a unity of mystic comradeship. After such a day, Pacific passengers turn to one another with kindlier smiles, the whole ship changes into one heaving picnic party, old Time himself joins in the holiday, and personal dislikes, brought on board, are flung to the waves. That most of these animosities, like the Biblical bread, return to the owners after not so many days, need not affect present hilarity.

As may be supposed, Gwendolen and her closest attendant, Dodge, were small whirling centres in the round of gay diversions. The conventional deck-games were started, and a terminating three days of competitive skill, with prizes bought at Honolulu and marked with the name of the ship and date of voyage, duly announced. Revelry was to culminate in a grand "fancy dress ball," the night before landing, a prize being given to the costumer who showed most skill in fashioning his or her attire from things procurable on board ship, and in carrying out the character assumed. In order to waste no more time upon this function, it may be stated that Mr. T. Caraway Dodge as "Dandy Jim,"—with painted purple rings on a dress shirt and a "claw-hammer" coat a size too small, ebony countenance, lips like two flaming sausages caught loosely at the ends, and a wig fashioned from the hair of his bunk mattress,—sang and cake-walked himself straight to the prize, while defeated contestants rent night with applause and acclamation.

From the smoking-room an incessant clinking, as of fairy castanets, fretted the ears of feminine curiosity. Mr. Todd explained that it was merely the sound of checkers and chessmen rattling to the shiver of the ship's screw.

The sun came up each morning, small and round, like a mandarin orange; expanded himself into a blinding deity; and at evening went down again, a blood-red orange, into the sea. The days he brought were long and golden, but not long enough for all the practising of bull-board, quoits, shuffle-board, and deck tennis. Each morning, after breakfast, certain acrobatic performances, free of charge, were held. Bag-punching was the children's favorite. One could count on an audience there, of upturned faces, wide-eyed and solemn with admiration. Some of the passengers saw fit to attach pedometers, and walk an incredible number of miles each day.

In the evening, Mrs. Todd and bridge whist reigned supreme. The Captain proved to be a player; so, to his present anguish, was Dodge. Gwendolen took an elfish delight in luring this young man to a table, under pretence of desiring to be his partner, and then, at the last moment, slipping in a foreordained substitute; after which she sped off, carolling, to a moonlit deck. Once there, the fuming and impotent Dodge recognized only too clearly what she would do. At least a dozen new acquaintances of the other sex had been made thus far by Gwendolen. It was her wont to dispense Emersonian philosophy and delicately portioned encouragement to those who were fortunate enough to secure her companionship. There was a young Dutch merchant on his way to coffee plantations in Java, very blond and fierce as to mustachios, and mild in the eyes. A Chicago representative, on his way to sell to Eastern potentates his particular make of automobile, had already needed, to quote Gwendolen's own, words, "a slight slackening of speed."

An English "leftenant" returning to South Africa, carried with him his own marvellous outfit for the making of afternoon tea, backed by a mammoth English plum-cake in a tin box. He was one to be propitiated, especially toward eight bells on an afternoon.

An Austrian viscount posed as the slayer of jungle beasts. "Beeg gam," he called them. He doted upon seeing this timid and shrinking maid cower beneath the bloody wonder of his yarns. No one before had inspired such thrilling denouements as Mees Todd. He recognized her at once for his affinity, and on the night before landing condescended to tell her so. The shock was rude, but he deserved what he got.

Pierre and Yuki joined in these several amusements and occupations during the morning and afternoon hours, both being much petted and nattered by the ladies of the ship, as beau ideals of young lovers. In the evenings, on the balmy deck, they were left to themselves. Wonderful talks grew between them,—whispers, sometimes, that the jealous wind tore from their lips before the last word came. Yuki had not won back the half-troth given, nor, on the other hand, had Pierre gained more.

Often their talk was of impersonal things. The young man delighted to draw from Yuki quaint phrases of comment, and hints of the Oriental imagery with which her fancy thrilled. She told him the story of the stars, Vega and Aquilla, called in her land the Herd-Boy and the Weaver-Girl; how, for some fault, committed before this little earth was made, they could cross the milky stream of Heaven, and meet, but one night in a year.

When he pointed to a flock of flying fish skimming in a blue and silver phantasy above a turquoise floor, she called them the souls of birds that had flown too far from land, and been drowned at sea.

Within a few days of landing, a certain change, perceptible, it may be, only to the most sensitive, crept into the elements of air and water, and tinged even the up-piling clouds. Yuki stared now, for long moments, in silence, toward that hidden bank of the West. Pierre felt a change in her; but when he questioned, she laughed a little nervously, and said it was merely the outer edge of Nippon's "aura." Undoubtedly she was restless, a little moody, a trifle excited, and touched, at times, with brooding thoughts. She dreaded the opening with Pierre of topics which, all along, she had tried to avoid. Yet now, so close to home, she must make stronger efforts to free herself.

One afternoon at sundown, when the great reverberating "dressing gong" had sent most of the ladies below-stairs, Pierre, hurrying up to Yuki, where, for a half-hour past she had sat alone in a far corner of the deck looking outward, leaned and said:

"This promises to be the most wonderful sunset of all. It may be our last. The Captain has just told me that, with good luck, we sight land to-morrow. Do you dare come out with me to the very prow of the ship?"

"Yes, I dares," smiled Yuki, rising instantly. "I have wished often to go to that small, lonely point of ship." As they started, he caught up a discarded wrap. "The wind is fresher there," he said.

In a few moments she remarked, in a slightly embarrassed tone, "That will be a very good place to say—something."

Pierre made no reply. He also had been thinking of it as an excellent place in which to say—something.

Together, in silence, they made way over the aerial bridge that connects the triangular front deck with the main one; moving over the heads of steerage passengers, principally Chinese, who squatted in the sunken square to breathe in what they could of the cool, evening breeze. The sun was setting,—"a polished copper gong like that ship one which makes much noise," said Yuki. It sank, clear-cut and very round, just at that point of the horizon where Nippon might be thought to lie.

Pierre placed the girl in the small angle at the peak. An arm was stretched behind her, and a hand clung to the rail, to protect them both. He leaned forward until his cheek almost pressed against her own. The soft incessant rush of wind blew her heavy hair back from a forehead spiritually pure and white. Her long, delicately modelled nose and small curved chin made a cameo against the blue-gray stone of dusk. Pierre, watching her intently, saw the last red ray of the sun quiver on her lips. The little hands were raised, as if unconsciously, and clapped thrice, very softly.

"Are you praying to your sun-god, little Christian Yuki?"

"Oh, no, indeed," said Yuki, quickly. "It is not prayer as we Christians call praying; it is only just our Japanese way of thanking Sun San for his great beauty, and the much good he does flowers, and people, and everything. In Japan we often thanks things just for being beautiful." She smiled up confidingly into his face. Her little hands, now lowered, flecked the rail like bits of white foam.

"Then I should pray to you, my darling, for in all this world never was anything more beautiful."

She made no effort to answer this, not even by her usual small, deprecating smile and shake of the head. The necessity of what she was to say, blotted from those first moments by visual beauty, now came heavily back to her. She steadied herself, turning slightly to see his face.

"Pierre, trust me a little more. Give back that promise,—the promise you won from my weakness. It holds me from my path like a thorn. Our cause will be better without it."

Pierre started, and looked at the girl incredulously. "Have you let me lead you here deliberately to ask me such a thing?"

"Do not admit anger to your thought, dear Pierre," she pleaded. "I must have said some time. I should have said to you long before this; but we have been so—happy."

"Yes," said Pierre, doggedly. "We have been happy; and I intend that we shall be happier still. That promise is all I have to hold you by. I'd draw it tighter if I could."

"You will not understand,—you will not try to understand me," said the girl, in a despairing voice. "Such promise given is disrespect to my parents, particularly to my father. If you do not release, I must tell to him, of course. It will be bad for you and me. Can you not trust me? Oh, Pierre, for love's sake, release—!"

"Release you!" he interrupted wildly. "This is my answer. It is for love's sake that I hold you, and will hold." He seized her in his arms, and held her with cruel strength. The night had come in fast. He did not care that the watchman by the tall, straight mast might see them. No one could hear the wind-driven, hurrying words. "This is my answer. I hold thus all you have given,—and more. You are sincere, I believe, but mistaken. A weak yielding on my part would make your parents, and perhaps yourself, despise me. I keep what I have, I say, and I demand still more. You must be true to me, no matter what occurs!"

"Pierre, Pierre, you trample on your own hope, though you will not see it! To release me generously is your own best way!"

"You are the self-deceived," cried Pierre. "Pledge yourself irrevocably. Then only are we strong."

In the western sky an orange strip of day remained. A single bird, black against the glow, flew screaming across it, beating curved wings in the wind. "He will not see at all," whispered Yuki, as if to the bird.

"Oh, dearest, you cannot know in your calm, innocent heart the scourge of a love like mine! I hunger for you, I thirst! Sobbing, I dream of you, and I wake to new tears that you are still so far away. In pity, in mere mercy to human suffering, say that no other man shall marry you. Say this much at least, that if prejudice and war hold us apart awhile, you will be true to me until we can seek some new road to happiness!"

"Do I not know,—do I not know?" she shivered, in answer to the first part of his speech. "Every day my heart is torn to small pieces, all of different size and shape. I do not understand how in sleep they come together once more. You are not lonely in that human suffering."

"Oh, you love me!" cried the man. "And on this voyage you love me as you had not done before! Is it not true?"

"It is true," sobbed Yuki.

"Mine is not love," said Pierre, again holding her fast; "it is hell,—a raging hell of ecstasies! Oh, kiss me, Yuki; give me your lips before I die of joy! Now swear,—swear,—that no word but my own,—no circumstance but death, can loose you from me!"

"You torture like the old monks," she panted. "Oh, do not make me say!"

"I command you, Yuki," he persisted, feeling new strength as she faltered. "It is my right. We belong to each other. Promise,—promise,—promise,—nothing but death or my word to loose you!" He kissed her again and again, like a madman, pressing his lips down upon hers, catching her hands to kiss, devouring her eyes, cheeks, forehead, hair; while the girl, beaten down by the whirlwind, made no effort to resist.

Pierre took the long white ivory pin from her hair, and split it, thrusting the smaller portion into his coat, and returning that, with the ornament still attached, to her hair.

"I take this pledge, Yuki," he cried. "You have told me that it binds to the death a Japanese lover. We are bound. I hold you by a tangible bond. The next shall be a small, bright circle on this little hand. Give me the promise, Yuki,—no need to struggle now. Give it me!"

"Kwannon protect me," gasped the girl; "I promise!"

A sudden vacuum fell. Pierre's breath was hard to recapture. He thought that Yuki had fainted, for her trembling had stopped. He shook one shoulder and bent down to gaze into her set, white face. Her eyes were wide open, and held two stars. She moved her lips now, and leaned far outward, gazing intently, as if watching the flight of an unseen thing.

"Yuki, Yuki, what is it,—what do you see?" he cried, in terror.

"My soul! I think a small soul fled!" All at once she collapsed into unconsciousness. As Pierre lifted her, he shook springing tears away, and bit his quivering lips as he muttered,—"I feel as if I tortured a child; but she does not realize our perils. Her fast promise is our only hope. Thank God that I could win it!"

CHAPTER SEVEN

The nearness of land as yet invisible gave to the ship next morning that access of animation noted in the approach to Hawaii, and in the day-distant interval from the Golden Gate.

Most of the passengers, scorning to notice a few rough waves, buzzed or moved in groups about the deck. Games were put away. Marine glasses and kodaks came into vogue. Gwendolen's bright eyes, with a pair equally alert and bright beside them, strained vision for the first land. The increase of motion, however slight, served to excuse Yuki's absence. Two persons only assigned a different reason,—her roommate, Gwendolen, and her fiancé, Pierre Le Beau.

Pierre had not breakfasted in the salon,—a fact noted by Gwendolen. He came to the upper deck very late, and lacked his usual eager look. Gwendolen saw him instantly. Making some excuse to the group about her, she went to him, saying in her direct, disconcerting way,—"What have you done to my Yuki-ko? She did not sleep all night, and I am sure she was crying! To cry is an unknown thing for Yuki."

Pierre met her indignation with pathetic sweetness. He smiled. It was difficult to be harsh with Pierre. He looked past her to the shining water. "If Yuki did not speak of her feeling, should I, even though I knew?" he asked, with the extreme of gentleness.

Gwendolen flushed under the implied rebuke. Her purpose, however, was not turned aside. "Yuki is a person whose confidence or whose love should not be forced. From what I know of you both, I believe you coaxed and persuaded her, last night, into some new pledge that her own heart shrank from giving. If this is true, allow me to tell you that you have made a fatal error, Pierre Marie Le Beau."

Pierre wheeled to the sea. It was as well that she could not see his face. No longer gentle, it flared into a cruel anger. His sole answer was the slightest, most exasperating of shrugs.

Gwendolen saw these signs of irritation, and cried to herself, "Halt." With a laugh that was quite successful for its kind she exclaimed, "Come, Pierre, we must not quarrel just because we both love Yuki. I know I seem rude, but I became Yuki's champion at school, and the habit clings. Forgive me for Yuki's sake."

He took the slim, outstretched hand and kissed it, but allowed himself no further words. The girl felt baffled and uncomfortable. She recalled a saying of her father's, "Free speech is a luxury possible only to those whose opinions mean nothing." She felt herself herded with that undesirable class.

"Well, I must get back to them," she cried, nodding in the direction of the group lately deserted. "I promised them I'd come back at once."

"Is Yuki indisposed this morning?" asked Pierre. "May I not expect her on deck?"

His tone was condescending. Gwendolen writhed under it. "She'll be up in half an hour, I guess," she gave answer, and hurried away, rubbing the back of her hand against her dress as she went.

Dodge made room for her at the rail. She wedged herself in place with a sigh of content. "Look hard, now!" whispered her companion. "The others haven't a hint. Yes, right out there in front, hard!"

Gwendolen stared obediently. Surely there was something strange, prophetic on that far blue rim. "Is it—oh, can it be—that little roughened thread in the warp and woof of blue—is it—Japan?"

The rumor spun about the ship,—was caught up in whispers,—tangled,—tossed on to the next group. "Japan,—some one has seen Japan!"

Men, with feet very much apart, steadied themselves behind beetle-like marine glasses. "By Jove, there she is!" The waves outside fawned and bounded in answering excitement. Dolphins leaped high in air. A whole fleet of "Portuguese men-o'-war" rose to the surface and scurried on before them as if leading a swifter way.

"I shall simply pass away with ecstasy!" cried Gwendolen. "Oh, why doesn't Yuki come? Look, Mr. Dodge; I believe I see sails—away off there, between us and the phantom land!"

"Doubtless a squad of detached fishing-smacks," said Dodge, with that courier-like precision which seemed part of him on land or in sight of land.

"Oh! oh! oh!" shrieked she, jumping up and down like a child. "We are rushing straight for one. It has a square sail laced across the slits with white shoestrings. Oh, we are going to run it down!"

"My dear!" remonstrated Mrs. Todd at the girl's impetuous manner. Her own kindly face beamed.

"Not on your life," said Dodge the Oracle. "They know how to look out for number one. You just watch 'em." Even as he spoke the small skiff darted impudently into the very shadow of their looming bulk, and sped off again like a swallow. Two impassive brown faces lifted for an instant from the great shining heap of bonito in the bottom of the boat, and were lowered.

"Not much floral-anchor business about those two, eh, Captain?" asked Mr. Todd, genially, of that magnate, as he strolled toward them.

"I admit the coast population to be amphibious," laughed the Captain, "but you can't make admirals out of fishermen. Miss Gwendolen, it will soon be time to look for Few-ji."

"Oh, oh!" cried Gwendolen again. She was made up, this morning, of wind-tossed golden hair and expletives. "Certainly no one ever saw it, truly, at such a distance!"

"I have," boasted Dodge. "On a clear day I've seen the thing a hundred miles off, when it looked like a little white tee on a blue golf links, don't you know."

"Golf links!" echoed Gwendolen. "What an unworthy simile!"

"Why not links?—first-class thing, a good links! Don't you play, Miss Todd?"

"No," answered Gwendolen, truthfully, "I don't play, but I like to pose, the costumes are so utterly fetching; and I dote on standing with my driver behind me, like girls in illustrated picture papers."

She turned to search the shimmering horizon for the vision it would not yield. "Oh, where is that mountain! I wish Yuki would come. It might appear directly for Yuki-ko."

"Here is Yuki," said the low, strange voice that could have belonged to no other.

Gwendolen seized her. "Good-morning, Miss Onda," smiled Dodge. "Now we are all fit. Kindly invoke your enchanted summit to our wondering gaze. I have been told that it was bad luck to land after a long journey without a glimpse of Fuji-san."

"I think the bad luck for only Nipponese," said Yuki.

"And the good luck too, I presume, if it turns that way? How inhospitable!"

"Yes, I think so. The good luck and the bad luck," was Yuki's serious reply.

Pierre, strolling at the rear end of the passenger deck, must have seen Yuki. He made no sign, however, and continued to stroll alone, smoking cigarettes, with a pleasant look or reply for any chance acquaintance, but a mind evidently involved in its own problems.

Neither of the girls saw him. They leaned together now upon the rail. Gwendolen had an arm about her friend. Together they stared out toward the land. Dodge had been called away. Mr. and Mrs. Todd were seated, the former carefully counting out bills for various "tips" soon to be distributed. The schoolmates were practically alone.

The land showed clearly now its hill and rock formation. Layer after layer, set upright from the sea, vanished into hazy distance. Promontory after promontory tapered down at the far point to a surf-beaten line of rocks. Farther peaks rose in tones of blue,—some thin as water, others rich and dark, like great gentians. On the nearer hills, forests and shaven spots of green appeared. The water around them shone and stirred with sails, the square-laced sails of junks. Bronze-colored boatmen, scantily clad, stood on the swaying edge of a boat and shaded their eyes to peer upward at the strange, white-faced "seiyo-jin." Among the junks, sailless sampan, propelled by one crooked oar, tumbled like queer sea-beetles with a single jointed leg.

"Gwendolen," said Yuki, in a very low voice, "do you see a long, green patch, like moss, over on that brown slope?"

"Yes; I was thinking it looked like curled parsley."

"That is really a forest,—quite a big little forest,—made of sugi, and camphor, and camellia trees. Listen; I thought then that I heard the deep sound of a bell!"

"I hear nothing but water and the wind."

"It was the temple bell," insisted Yuki. "And now, dear, look more close. Do you not see, right on the edge of beach, a small red something?"

"Why, yes; there is a little square of red like the framework of a door."

"It is torii,—red torii, or sacred gate; and beyond that gate are many, many stone steps leading up to the temple. Ah! such steps as those,—so quiet, so deep, so still! They lead the heart up before ever the clumsy feet have climbed."

A little steam launch, bearing the flag of the rising sun, came puffing and squealing toward them. The ship's steps were lowered. Grave, correct Japanese officers took possession. Their news was astounding. War's breath already heated the land. The Japanese minister at St. Petersburg even then made preparation for instant departure, and his Russian colleague in Yedo did the same. The severance of diplomatic relations between the countries meant, of course, no less than a declaration of war.

From the moment of hearing this, neither Mr. Todd nor his secretary had a thought for anything besides,—no, not even for pretty Gwendolen, who, for a while, sulked alone, then, seeing it useless, sought consolation in engaging herself to all the unmarried male passengers, one after the other, and most of the ship's officers, irrespective of connubial ties.

Pierre and Yuki had met, neither looking with entire frankness into the eyes of the other. To Yuki the promise given meant a haircloth shirt beneath her robe of gladness, a stone dragging her back from flight. To Pierre it was, in all sincerity, their one substantial pledge of future happiness. He was the man. It was for him to judge, not Yuki; and he believed the very reluctance with which she gave the word, a proof of its necessity. It was characteristic of both that no reference was made to the subject most vital in their thoughts. Yuki watched with apparent composure the slow approach to Yokohama Bay, Awa's cone-shaped masses, and the long, green northern coast fading into eastern haze. Fuji had not shone for them,—in spite of a cloudless day. "It sometimes went away like that," Yuki had assured the disappointed ones. "Children thought that it went visiting to the gardens of the gods."

The harbor channel was free. The ship went slowly, majestically, like a great deliberate swan, sheer to the stone steps of the wharf. Yuki's reserve faltered. "My people,—oh, my dear people! I think I see their faces in that waiting crowd!" they heard her whisper. She stretched out her arms. A sob choked in her throat. Four years,—four long, long years, and yet how familiar the look of her native land! The little wind-bent pines along the stone dyke had not changed a leaf. Those long, waiting rows of empty jinrikishas might hold one that had been waiting for her through an hour of shopping in the foreign stores of Yokohama. And, oh, the dear welcoming friends there on the steps!

Their party was the first to cross the platform of the lowered flight of stairs. Yuki touched the first stone step, and gazed eagerly above her. Yes, that was her mother, that gentlest, sweetest, most beautiful face among them all! Behind her stood Onda Tetsujo, Yuki's father, with his plain blue robes, and gray, nobly poised head.

"Mother! Okkasan,—Shibaraku!" (How long the absence!) cried the girl, with a broken note of rapture in her voice. Bounding up the steps, she clasped and was clasped again by the slender gray figure. Tetsujo drew back, a fleeting look of perplexity in his face. He had not recognized Yuki, thus seen, for the first time, in her perfectly adapted foreign garments; but Iriya had known, from the moment her eyes caught the small brown-clad figure at the rail. The mother in her swept away, for the instant, high barriers of Japanese etiquette. She clung to her child, fondling her, pressing trembling lips to the soft young cheeks, and murmuring, "My baby,—my little one,—my treasure, who has come back to me!"

A moment later they had drawn apart, both with wet eyes and quivering lips, and small, bashful side-looks of love; for such public demonstration is practically unknown among samurai women. Already these two were a little ashamed of it. Tetsujo realized at last that it was his daughter, but, because of her strange conduct, wore still an uncomprehending wrinkle between his heavy brows.

The Todd party, Pierre and Mr. T. Caraway Dodge included, came hesitatingly near. The Japanese crowd drew back, some in distaste, some in politeness, some because their own friends had arrived, and there was no longer a reason for staying. Yuki, with a hand on Gwendolen's arm, began the introductions. When it came to the two young men, she hesitated slightly. Her father's deep, keen eyes rested on the faces first of one, then of the other. The two names, as she hurried them over, were practically unintelligible.

Kind-hearted Mrs. Todd, observing Yuki's embarrassment and feeling that she had at least a hint as to its cause, rushed gallantly into the breech. Her efforts centred on shrinking Mrs. Onda. "Are you really Yuki's mother?" she demanded in a loud, playful voice. "You look to me like her sister. I wouldn't believe, unless I were told, that you had more than five years between you."

Yuki threw a glance of gratitude toward the speaker. "Mother, Mrs. Todd says that you appear augustly young to be indeed the daughter of a big girl like me."

Iriya flushed and bowed, looking more than ever like her daughter. She answered in Japanese, "Please honorably to thank the lady for her compliment, but acquaint her with the fact that I am already lamentably old. On my next birthday I shall be thirty-nine."

Tetsujo, having accomplished his share of stiff bows,—not forgetting an extra one for the new American minister,—said to his daughter, "My child, we are indeed happy to welcome you. Now thank your good friends in my name. Suitable presents shall be sent them. We must depart for Yedo." He moved one finger toward three waiting jinrikisha men near-by, and the vehicles, like magic, stood beside him.

"Now, already it must be 'Sayonara.' My father desires me to go," said Yuki, and smiled a little tremulously from one foreign face to another. These farewells at the end of a long and pleasant journey are never careless things to say. "Of course I will see all—every one—very soon!"

"Yuki! Why, we never thought of this. You mustn't leave us so!" cried Gwendolen, in consternation.

"No!" added Pierre, with more vehemence. "It isn't to be thought of. Tell your father that we are counting on you for the day." He stepped close to her. Yuki instinctively shrank. The puzzled look came again to the face of Tetsujo.

"Be careful, Pierre! Look at his face! You will make a false move at the start," came Gwendolen's whisper.

"Do you expect me to stand here patiently and see her carried away? Non! Mon Dieu, it was to have been the consecrating day of our lives! I do not give it up. I will try speaking myself with her father."

"Gwendolen is right. Do not speak!" panted Yuki.

But Pierre was not one to relinquish bliss so easily. No move seemed to him quite as undesirable as the one about to take place. Facing the astonished samurai, he began a series of bows which he fondly conceived to embody the finer points of both French and Japanese etiquette.

"Monsieur Onda,—Onda San," he commenced eagerly, "Miss Yuki must not go. Ikimasen! Stay here with friends,—tomodachi. She can go your house—afternoon. Please do not take her now."

Onda looked blankly and in silence upon the antics of the strange creature. Not one gleam of comprehension enlivened his fixed gaze.

"Here, man, let me get to him," said Dodge, thrusting himself in front of Pierre. "I'll translate what you are trying to say, though it isn't a particle of use. Shall I go on?"

"Merci."

Speaking slowly, in fairly good Japanese, Dodge said, "We having hoped to enjoy the company of your daughter on this first day of landing, I am requested to entreat your august permission to allow her to remain. If you and your wife will join our party also, we shall feel honored by your condescension." "Never told a bigger lie in my life!" was his mental note after this last remark.

Tetsujo replied by the courtesy of a stiff bow. With no further glance or word for the speaker, he stepped up into his jinrikisha, and once seated, said to Yuki, "Reply to the speech of the foreigner, my child."

"I am to go with my parents, of course," said Yuki, nervously. "I wish it. I did not know you were planning so sure for me to remain. I must go now, at once, but will see you as soon as I may, to-morrow, or perhaps this very afternoon."

Iriya had bowed to the foreigners and entered her jinrikisha immediately after Tetsujo. Yuki now climbed into the remaining one, neither Dodge nor Pierre retaining enough self-possession to assist her. The three coolies caught up the shafts for starting.

"Here, stop, stop!" cried Gwendolen, springing forward. "Yuki, we don't even know your Tokio address!"

Tetsujo gave a gesture and a "cluck." The coolies sprang into action.

"Ko-ishikawa, Kobinata, Shi—jū—" trailed off Yuki's voice into the rattling of the streets.

"The ogre! I'll catch the next train for Tokio," cried Pierre.

"Better stay with us and see about your baggage, Pierre," said Mr. Todd, speaking for the first time. "The girl should go with her people, and you know it."

"But, poor boy," said Mrs. Todd, soothingly, her hand touching his arm, "I know how he has counted on seeing the sights with Yuki."

Onda Tetsujo's spoken order had been "stenshun!" (station), for so have the Japanese incorporated our familiar word. A train was just leaving for Yedo. Three second-class tickets were bought, and the kuruma-men overpaid and dismissed. Had they been merely "paid," a later train would have been taken.

The short encounter on the Yokohama pier evidently remained in the master's mind as a most disagreeable impression. While in no sense a stupid man, the quality of Onda's intellect was torpid rather than alert. Things came to him slowly, and remained long.

It happened that their train was a "local," stopping at all the small intermediate stations. Between Yokohama and the next stop,—Kanagawa,—not a word was spoken. Yuki felt bewildered, dazed, distressed. What had happened? What was spoiling her home-coming? The promise was not all, for here were her parents, moody and ill at ease, and they as yet knew nothing of her pledge. Surely the few injudicious words Pierre tried to speak should not have wrought all this. Poor Pierre, with his hurt blue eyes and outstretched hand of longing! Well, the American girls used to say that true love never did run smooth. Here she gave a sigh so deep that Iriya started. All three gazed heavily from the windows, only half seeing the villages sweep past, and the wide, gleaming rice-fields in their winter flood, and the long edge of Yedo Bay set with pines, and flecked with shining sails. The gaudy fluttering of small banners above the tea booths of Kawasaki brought a momentary light of pleasure into the girl's eyes. It died down as quickly. Her father's averted face clouded her sun. Yet unconsciously the charm and the glamour of the country was stealing back. At Omori, perhaps the most beautiful of these suburban villages, their compartment, being toward the rear of the train, stopped, it would seem, in the very midst of a grove of "umè" flowers, just coming into bloom. It is an old orchard, knowing many generations of loving care. It is trimmed and tended for beauty alone, the small sour fruit called by foreigners "plums" being uneatable, and no more to the Japanese marketer than are "rose-apples" to us. The trees, set close together so that tips of branches met, were entirely leafless, and frosted over with a delicate lichen growth. On this silver filigree of boughs the blossoms shone, white, crimson, or pink,—translucent gems of flowers. The odor, stealing softly to Yuki in little throbs, smote her as with an ecstasy of remembrance. There is no subtler necromancer than perfume. Through it the past may be reconstructed, dead love quiver into life, and sorrow, often more precious than joy itself, steal back like a loving ghost.

Yuki seemed to wake suddenly, as from a troubled sleep. "Why," she cried to herself, "I am at home again! This is Japan!" She sat upright now, eager and vivid, looking from one window to another, a new brightness in her face. The locomotive, which had been restlessly inactive for a few moments past, gave a long, shrill whistle, drew itself together, and prepared for another run. Just as the wheels were turning, a broad-faced woman of the peasant class, with a fat baby on her back, a toddler of two years led by one hand, and a pair of squawking geese held in the other, wriggled herself through the turnstile and waved the shrieking fowls, as signal for the train to stop. The gatekeeper, clutching after her, seized a limb of the sleeping infant. Instantly a human scream added to the clamor of the geese. Heads were thrust from car windows,—the guard, dropping the infant's leg, seized its mother by the sash. He chanced to be a small man, she an unusually large woman. As a consequence she dragged him after her. At this sight a train official, leaning as far outward as he could for laughing, signalled the engineer to "back." The victorious one hurled herself and her living burdens into an already overcrowded third-class car. A place was made for her, not without many exclamations, such as "Domo! Osoi!" (It is late.) "Kodomo-san itai ka!" (Is Mr. Baby hurt?) and a few gruff sounds of "Iya desu yo!" (How disagreeable!) The locomotive, as if conscious of a good deed, tooted more loudly than before, and made another start.

Yuki sparkled with delight. "Think of a train official doing that in America!" she laughed aloud.

Iriya's answering smile was pathetic in its quickness of response. She moved closer, pressing against Yuki's smart, foreign shoulder. The two began to watch, like happy children, the passing scenes.

Tetsujo drew forth his pipe and smoked himself into serenity. He listened now to what the women said. There were other passengers, of course, but Tetsujo and his companions had preëmpted a little corner in the rear. Iriya spoke of old Suzumè, who was waiting so impatiently at home to see her charge,—of little Maru San, a distant connection of Suzumè, who, since Yuki's departure, had been employed as maid-of-all-work about the house. Messages of welcome from friends and relatives were given. At the last, dropping her voice impressively, Iriya spoke of the coming war. "It is inevitable," she said. "Prince Haganè informed Tetsujo only this morning. There can be no doubt."

The old scenes, the old interests, glowed anew in the girl's heart. Really they had never left it, but, like certain writing, illegible except in warmth, the pictures slept until the breath of her own land awaked them. She had a strange sense of being slowly turned back to a child. In an English fairy-book a certain Alice could grow tall or short at will by nibbling at a magic mushroom. There had always been magic mushrooms in the East, long, long before that book was written,—strange mountain growths which are the only food of the ghost deer that attend the genii of the forest. Perhaps the little brown sembei which she had just bought at Omori from an insistent peddler was, in reality, a scrap of an enchanted mushroom. Perhaps she was really turning back into the little Japanese Yuki who had never been to America at all, who had never known a foreign lover, or given a promise which her reason told her to refuse. Her heart stopped beating for an instant. She took a second bite of sembei. Again the trouble faded. Yes, surely, it was a magic mushroom.

Now merry talk flowed from her smiling lips. Tetsujo moved nearer. She called him "Chichi Sama," as in baby days, and her mother "Haha San."

The train made its final stop. A torrent of blue-robed occupants poured out from every car. The sound of wooden clogs upon the concrete floor was like innumerable hollow shells scraped, lip down, upon an empty box. Yuki's heart swept in with the throng. She loved the noise, the bare station, the hissing car, the very dust of the travellers' feet. Tetsujo and Iriya exchanged glances behind her back, and smiled. Their eyes said, "This is our dear one,—our own; not an American changeling, but the daughter for whom we have been yearning."

CHAPTER EIGHT

From the square, gray platform of Shimbashi station, terraced by stone steps, hung with tiled eaves, and surrounded by a swarming school of black jinrikishas, each with a chattering, gesticulating, blue-clad human horse before it, one dives at will into the iridescent life of modern Yedo. Regarded as a city, it is little more than a collection of villages carelessly swept together; little communities where the same streets catch up altered names; districts with opposing trades, antagonistic feast-days, and rival deities.

Tanners preëmpt an unsavory ward. Shoemakers claim for themselves a network of small streets. The dry-goods merchants command an avenue. Pipe-sellers, wine-merchants, tobacconists, book-sellers, marketmen, carpenters,—each guild tends to make a centre for itself. Perhaps, as one consequence of this segregation, Tokio becomes the stronghold of street peddlers. It matters little to the housewife that the nearest market is four miles away, when sections of that market, strapped to boyish shoulders, go crying past her gate with the punctuality of planets. Tokio is a place where circulating libraries literally circulate; where perambulating oil-shops fill lamps on the patron's kitchen step or in the glass frame at his gate, and then stop to light them; where the tailor finishes a quilt or an overcoat on the bedroom floor, and the hair-dresser needs no local habitation.

In a great semicircle crowded near the Red Gate of the Imperial University, live and study and brawl and bluster the students,—the future Nogis, Togos, Kurokis, Saigos, Itos, and Oyamas of their race,—now no more than restless young spirits in a recognized democracy of their own. Some of them cook their own meals and patch their own faded hakama,—a species of heroism to make death on a battlefield grow tame. Others "board" in one of the long, barn-like dormitories, or in a convenient cheap lodging-house, often three and four in a room, at the enormous rate of fifty cents a week. Poverty seems to them admirable, nothing whatever to be ashamed of. The Japanese youth of the samurai class is bred to a distaste of bodily luxury. Should one of their number show a leaning toward soft cushions and rich food, the others ridicule him, call him "O Sharè Sama," the Tokio equivalent of "Dandy," and say that his soul grows fat.

Yuki sped through all, breathless with the wonder of home-returning. The three jinrikishas, Tetsujo, of course, in the lead, went one after the other in a straight line, as though on an invisible track. Whether in a lane four feet wide, or in an avenue two hundred, this goose-like manner of procedure never changed. Old familiar street-corners, familiar pines, changed shop fronts, appealed to the girl with a sense of reality. Her eyes filled and her heart beat faster as she caught her first glimpse, after four years, of towering moated walls where crawled the "Dragon Pines" of Iyemitsu, and of the high dark roof now sheltering her beloved ruler.

Beyond the palace and its moats came foreignized Yedo. Sidewalks were here, though pedestrians still preferred the middle of the street, turning aside good-naturedly at the warning "Hek! hek!" of approaching vehicles. The streets, conspicuously broad, were paved with concrete or with stone. On every side rose buildings just completed, of brick and stone, or great steel frames for other edifices. It might have been Connecticut. The sidewalk trees, set rigidly in hollowed concrete basins, refused to grow in Japanese fashion, and had the poise of elms. Down centres of these streets horse-cars jangled. Work was already started on the superseding electric line. Yuki observed it all with conscious pride, yet her eyes brightened with new eagerness as another quick turn plunged them once more into the heart of feudal Yedo.

The streets narrowed now to lanes, bordered on each side with shops,—mere open booths,—flung wide to the dim rear plaster wall. Shelves holding various wares came down sheer to the matted floor. In the middle of the space generally sat the master, while skirmishing about, sometimes in a gloomy slit of a passage to the rear, sometimes up or down stepladder-like stairs to a crouching upper story, could be seen the small apprentices, or kozo. The life of the Japanese kozo forms a literature to itself; but this is not the place to begin it. These were the narrow streets Yuki had longed for. Here were the shop signs swinging wonderful tones of blue, dark crimson, and white, here the great gold Chinese ideograph, sprawling across long banners.

In a sort of pause between districts came a hint of suburbs, and, winding through it, Little Pebble River. A river is never more mysterious than when carrying its deep secrets through a busy town. This one, the Koishikawa, dominated the section through which it passed, giving its own name, and establishing certain small industries of dyeing, grinding, fishing, and boating possible nowhere else in Yedo, until the great central artery of the Sumida is reached. Cherry-trees joined finger-tips above the Koishikawa,—real grass crept down its banks to trail finger in the hurrying tide.

It was all beautiful, all real, all familiar. From afar the clanging of beaten metal smote the ears. Yuki remembered that the main bridge led almost to the great gate of the Arsenal. A moment later it came into view. Tall chimneys pulsed black worlds of smoke, and corrugated roofs scowled above spiked, enclosing walls. At every gate stood a sentry-box and a soldier in blue uniform.

"A mighty noise, young lady!" volunteered Yuki's jinrikisha man, in a hoarse shout. He nodded his head toward the clamor, and then looked backward to bestow on her a confidential grin. In the river, just in front of the arsenal, great muddy barges were poled in and beached,—with loads of coal and copper, iron and wood.

"Yes, indeed, it is a terrible noise," answered Yuki politely. "They must be very busy behind those walls." She sighed heavily, but her sigh was lost in the roar of flame. The fact that her country was at that very moment on the verge of war with Russia, perhaps with France also,—with France, Pierre's country!—was one of those thoughts she was trying to keep away.

"They work with double force by lamp and by sun," boasted the jinrikisha man, when they had passed the most deafening uproar. "Oh, but the Russians think us children to be cheated and lied to! But we are preparing a lesson for the cowardly bears,—we do not fear them! Look, O Jo San!" He chuckled loudly, and without relaxing his wonderful mechanical trot or falling an inch behind the pace of the two preceding kuruma, unwrapped from his wrist the inevitable twisted tenugui, or hand towel. Keeping one end under his palm, he let the rest stream backward, like a flag. Instead of the usual bird, flower, or landscape etching in indigo blue, the pattern represented a fleet of Japanese war-ships in full engagement with the Russian navy. Under the water-level great communities of deep-sea fish looked expectantly upward, chop-sticks and rice-bowls in their fins. A few Russian sailors, the first of a gorging repast, had commenced to sink downward. The eyes of the fish were admirable in their expression of calm certainty. Thus, before the firing of Togo's first challenge, did the Tokio populace enjoy prophetic visions.

Beyond the arsenal, and its huddled concourse of working-men's houses waiting just without the walls, the Koishikawa took a more definite turn to the north. The Onda party, following it, came soon to a region of green lanes and pleasant gardens. The clamor of metal-workers died away. One knew that birds lived in the groves. Before them the highland of the district loomed in great dark masses, and splendid trees of camphor and of pine soared clear against the blue. At foot of the hill "Kobinata" (Little Sunshine) the three jinrikishas halted in unison, and the three runners looked with bovine yet inquiring faces, each upon his living burden. The hillside road, now to be taken, rose steep and white between bamboo hedges. Onda motioned his coolie to lower the shafts. "I am a heavy man, and with my own feet will take the slope," he said.

"No, no, honorable master. Indeed I say no!" protested the coolie, while making the greatest haste to obey. "It is not fitting that so exalted a person as your divine lordship should walk. Though I break my worthless bones, I will draw you up that precipice!"

Onda, smiling slightly, stepped into the road. Iriya would have followed his example, but he motioned, bidding her, and likewise Yuki, to remain seated. He paused to tuck his blue robe a few inches higher, catching the pointed end-fold in his belt. Iriya and her grunting bearer went by him. He remained standing, waiting for Yuki. Their eyes met, and both smiled. He put one powerful hand to the back of the girl's vehicle, his face being then about on a level with hers, and, ascending the hill beside her, used his supplementary strength at the very steep or stony places.

The girl sat very slim and straight, looking eagerly about her. "Father, what is it about this land of ours that makes all things so honorably different,—so strangely beautiful?"

"My daughter, it is not well to speak boastfully, even of one's land," answered Tetsujo; but his fine, strong face did not bear out the reproof of his words.

"There will be a gate now, soon to the left,—a little gate of straw thatching, tied with loops of black hemp twine! A pine-tree sends one stiff arm across it. On a clear day one sees, in that green frame, the snows of Fuji-san! Oh, can I bear it, father? I must speak. My heart aches already with the loveliness. See, even the trees know that they are beautiful; each has a soul! The trees of America have no souls."

"No, from what I have heard and seen of the Americans, their trees have only hardwood centres. It is what the Americans would prefer."

"Not all, not all," protested Yuki. "I have a friend, that blonde girl on the hatoba (wharf),—I have other friends who understand us strangely. I think in a previous life they must have been Japanese."

"Bah! It is but poor respect you pay our country," answered Tetsujo, half-teasingly. "Ah," he cried, catching her arm, "the little gate, my child,—the pine-tree." Yuki's coolie had stopped without bidding. His face, too, wore the smile of one who loves and understands. The little gate rose straight and square in its deep gold color of old straw, the black knots made fantastic decoration along the ridge, the pine-tree stretched an arm of everlasting green, and over the straight line of the leaves, far, far out to the West, hung the frail cone of Fuji, like a silver bowl inverted. Yuki did not try to speak. Her father and the coolie feasted also in silence. In a few moments the little procession, still wordless, began again the steep ascent.

Now Tetsujo's eyes went to the pebbled ground. His next remark seemed at first incongruous. "Did you see the belching of black smoke, my Yuki, and did you hear the clashing of scourged steel?"

"Yes, father, and the smoke creeps after us like an evil spirit, even to the foot of Little Sunshine Hill."

"Nippon is soon to enter upon mortal struggle with a great and merciless foe. All arts of war and treachery will be used against us. We may not survive."

"Father, it must not come,—the gods must divert it!"

"Every samurai will give his life. Every child and woman of his race will lie, self-slain, in blood, before the yielding. And yet defeat may be decreed. To be blind is to be weak. We must face unflinchingly the ultimate horror."

"The old gods must protect us!" cried the girl.

"You are a Christian. The Christian gods will be invoked to aid our enemies."

"Oh, father, you hurt me! When I wished to become a Christian, like the other girls, I wrote you many letters,—you did not oppose it then."

"Neither do I oppose it now," said Tetsujo. "In things of religious faith each soul should seek an individual path. Because of your intelligence I allowed you to decide. But in patriotism,—in loyalty to your native land,—I still have responsibility. Ah, you are my one child, and most dearly beloved; but if ever I should see in you one taint of selfish swerving,—if I should suspect that through the foreign education the sinews of your love were weak—"

Yuki stopped him by a gesture. Her head was proudly lifted. Her eyes gleamed, and her thin nostrils shook,—"Such thoughts as these are not to be spoken between a samurai and his child. My very heart is knit of the fibres of that word 'Nippon.'"

"You are certain, Yuki?" Tetsujo's question and his eyes dug deep.

Yuki hesitated less than a fraction of thought. "I am certain," she said.

A silence rose between them. Yuki's bright joyousness felt a drifting cloud. What did her father mean? Had Prince Haganè spoken ill of her? The promise to Pierre gnawed like a hungry worm. She fought anew the phantoms of love and approaching war. The two laden jinrikisha coolies tugged on with ostentatious groans. The hand towels now came into requisition for the mopping of streaming brows. The road began to curve into a level space, from which hedge-bordered lanes radiated. Again Tetsujo spoke.

"That new American envoy,—he with the nose of a sick vulture and the fine yellow eye,—is he favorable to us? Is he one that at all understands us?"

"Indeed, my father, he is of wonderful understanding. He and Baron Kanrio are as brothers in thought. Did not Prince Haganè speak of him?"

Ignoring the question, Tetsujo went on. "The younger of the two women,—that straw-colored maiden who seems standing on the edge of a small typhoon,—she, I suppose, is the school friend, the Miss Todd, you referred to."

"Yes," answered Yuki, a little resentfully. "And she is considered beautiful. I think her augustly beautiful, even as Amaterasu, our Sun Goddess."

"Not ours. It may be that other nations have also sun goddesses," said Tetsujo, significantly. "To me all foreign females are of hideous aspect. They look and strut like fowls. And the two young males,—sons of Mr. Todd, I take it,—they are as the painted toys sold in temple booths. Yet, if the foreigners have been kind, it is well to express gratitude, and to send gifts as costly as my purse will allow."

"The Todds are rich,—very, very rich,—even as our great silk merchants," cried Yuki, in indignation. "They do not want gifts, or expect them. It is not an American custom. Gwendolen, my friend, my sister, wishes only to be with me, freely, as we have been for four years past."

Tetsujo considered. "I could not refuse you a continuance of friendship, my child, though I confess it will irk me greatly to see those strange creatures on my mats. After the first few days of your home-coming,—in a week, perhaps,—you can speak again of this desire."

Yuki's heart sank. A week,—and she had promised to see them to-morrow, perhaps this afternoon! She opened her lips to remonstrate, and then thought better of it. If he felt it a concession to admit Gwendolen, daughter of the new American minister, what would he say to Pierre? Deliberately she fought down the rising host of apprehensions. "No," she whispered, "I shall not dwell upon it. I must not spoil my home-coming with uncertain fears. I shall try to be untroubled until I can tell my father all."

Well along the top of the hill, Onda re-entered his kuruma, and with the word "hidari" (left), started the little string of vehicles down a path that ran in wavering lines between hedges of various growths. Many were of dwarf bamboo or sa-sa, other of a higher bamboo, springing from resilient stems twenty feet in air. A few were of the small-leafed dōdan, a bush which turns to wet vermilion with the frost. Several were of intertwisted thorn, a cruel and relentless guardian. One showed a flat green wall like that of a three-story city house jutting upon a pavement; but the masonry was all of growth, rafters of thick stems, and facing of the close-clipped evergreen mochi-tree. The small tiled gate jutting from the centre of the lower edge seemed the entrance of a cave. Doubtless behind this imposing and misleading front nestled an unpretentious cot, a well-sweep, a small vegetable and flower garden, and a handful of old trees.

Onda's gate, some hundreds of yards further to the north, emerged in wooden simplicity from a sa-sa hedge. Along the street the bamboo only showed. Within it ran a line of well-trained thorn. This fence was characteristic of the race which had planned it; Onda's father and grandfather, and many generations before, had owned this spot of ground in Yedo.

Tetsujo, although the first to arrive, remained in his kuruma, while Iriya and Yuki made haste to descend. The former went at once to the gate, pulling aside a thin wooden panel. A little gate-bell jangled, and at the musical summons wooden-shod feet were heard, running down the pathway from the house. Old Suzumè, shrivelled, yellow, her black eyes darting excitement everywhere, fell on her knees in the gateway. She began immediately to mutter a jumble of ceremonious phrases, in the pauses drawing her breath with ferocious energy. Behind her showed a moon-faced maiden, who stared first, as if bewildered, and then suddenly fell to the earth beside Suzumè.

"That is sufficient," said Tetsujo, now descending and pushing between them as he entered the gate. "Here, Suzumè, take my purse, and let these good rascals rob us as little as possible. Go within, Maru, and prepare to remove the foreign shoes from the feet of your young mistress."

Maru, quaking like a jelly, as she always did when addressed directly by the "august master," obeyed instantly, and knelt at the stone house-step to receive the shoes. Suzumè unwillingly remained at the gate to haggle with the three jinrikisha men.

When the shoes were reverently drawn off, dusted on Maru's blue striped apron, and set side by side on the stone step, the little handmaid disappeared around the corner of the house. A moment later was heard the scurrying of soft stockinged feet within.

Yuki stretched a hand toward the closed shoji.

"No, dear, wait an instant," said Iriya, hurriedly interposing. "Let Maru San open the shoji. She has been rehearsing this for a year."

Yuki drew back. "I have forgotten so many things," she murmured, flushing.

"They are not lost; they will spring quickly in the warm rain of home love," said Tetsujo, behind them.

The shoji were sliding apart, both at once, with noiseless precision. In the opening Maru's globe-like countenance beamed. Now, for the first time, Iriya performed the equivalent of an introduction. "Maru San," she said, in her pleasant voice, "this is our o jo san (honorable young lady of the house), Onda Yuki-ko, for whom we have been longing."

"Hai, o jo san! Go kigen yō! Irasshai!" palpitated the little servant, asking her to enter.

"I have written you often of Maru," Iriya went on, turning to her daughter.

Tetsujo brushed unceremoniously through the group, and strode alone to the big corner guest-room at the rear.

"She is the orphaned child of Suzumè's dead husband's step*-son," continued Iriya, placidly. "About two years ago she was left quite destitute, so of course her natural home was here. Maru is a good girl, and of much help to us."

"Ah, Mistress, Mistress," cried old Suzumè, nearly tripping on her clogs to reach them, "you know well that Maru is a very cat in the sun for laziness." The speaker struggled hard to look severe.

"Hai, hai," said Maru, in deprecating confirmation, and bobbed over to the matting.

"Why, o jo san, in my opinion Maru is not worth the honorable rice she puts in her gluttonous mouth," said Suzumè, on a high note of satisfaction. "Yet the kind mistress here, besides food and occasional outworn garments, allows her sixty sen each month for spending. Ah, Kwannon Sama, of divine compassion, will reward our mistress for her kind heart!"

Iriya laughed, a merry, low laugh, as young as Yuki's own.

"I thank you, Suzumè; but do you realize that the master sits alone in the zashiki, with no tea, no coal, no—"?

"Dō-mo!" exclaimed the old woman, and scrambled rapidly to her feet. "But I become more and more the fool with age, as a tree gathers lichen. I will attend."

"Be at leisure, honorable, ancient relative; I will fetch the tea," said Maru.

"No," cried Yuki, suddenly stretching out a hand; "I want to take it just as I used to as a little girl. I think it will please my father. Let me take it, Suzumè San!"

Maru paused with round, incredulous eyes. "Arà!" cried old Suzumè, scarcely knowing whether she were the more pleased or astonished. "A fashionable, wonderful young lady, educated in America, with numberless young Japanese noblemen waiting to marry her,—and she wishes to bear the tray like a tea-house musumè! Ma-a-a! How strange! Yet it is a good desire. The mistress's face shines with it. It shows your heart has not changed color, o jo san. I will prepare at once. Come, lazy fatling!" This last remark was of course addressed to Maru.

In his wide, dim zashiki, or reception-room,—analogous to the drawing-room of the West,—Tetsujo sat alone. He was glad for a moment of solitude. His mind did not move swiftly on any subject. The bewilderment of his first vision of Yuki, changed from a clinging Japanese child to an alert, self-possessed American, had not altogether passed. Then that bobbing, blue-eyed he-creature on the hatoba,—he had given sour food for thought. What language was it that the thing had tried to speak, what wish to utter? Well, at least Yuki was safe now among her home people, away from the influence of all such mountebanks. In a few days she would be wishing to don again her Japanese dress, and then he could begin to believe he had a child.

The Onda residence faced directly to the north, thus giving the big guest-chamber and the outlying garden a southern exposure. Two sides of the room, the south and the west, had removable shoji. The inner walls were partly of plaster, partly of sliding, opaque panels of gold, called fusuma. These were painted in war-like designs by Kano artists. To-day the western shoji were all closed; but the sun, just reaching them, shed a mellow tone of light throughout the room. All southern shoji were out, admitting, as it were, the fine old garden as part of the decoration of the room. The day had deepened into one of those quite common to the Tokio winter, where the sunshine battles with a white glamour, scarcely to be called mist, and yet with the softening tone of it. No young spring growth was waking in the garden. All was sombre-green, ochre, or cold gray,—pines and evergreen azaleas, heaped rocks, stone lanterns, bridge, and the pear-shaped water of a pond. In line and structure the garden was still a thing of beauty, planned in an artist's mind. It had the look of a stained-glass window done in faded hues, of old tapestry, of wrought metal. At the corner of the guest-room veranda stood a huge old plum-tree just coming into white bloom.

Smiling Yuki, in tailor-made American gown and black stockings, brought in the tray and knelt before her father. The old warrior flushed with pleasure. "Why, this is better than I could have thought!"

"I told you I was just your little girl," said Yuki. "And oh, father, I do feel so queerly young and real again! I see everything around me just as I wish. It is like making things come true in dreams." Tetsujo caught her by a slender shoulder, looking deep, deep into answering eyes. For once, no troubled thoughts rose to blur the vision. Suddenly he smiled. "Then make my dream come true, my Yuki; remove the shapeless foreign garment."

Yuki sprang to her feet, laughing with delight. "Yes, yes, that is the next real thing to do, of course. I will borrow a kimono from mother, as my trunks have not arrived. But don't let them bring in dinner till I get back. I am so hungry for a real dinner!"

"The soup shall not even be poured," promised Tetsujo. She gave a little bow like the dart of a humming-bird, and would have sped past him, but he, catching at a fold of her skirt, detained her. She stopped, and seeing the expression of his face, her own sobered. "Welcome, my daughter," said Tetsujo, in a tone that trembled; "welcome, child of my ancestors,—the last of an honorable race!"

CHAPTER NINE

Next to the zashiki, or guest-room, around by the corner of the big plum-tree on which, now, great snowy pearls of buds opened with every hour, was the master's benkyo-beya, or study, where sets of Chinese and Japanese classics, often running into a hundred volumes, had snug place in fragrant cabinets of unvarnished cypress wood.

Contiguous to this, along the western side, and bounded ten feet farther by the fusuma of her parents' chamber, Yuki's little sleeping-room was tucked away. The stately garden, curving around by the plum-tree, spread here wider paths and less pretentious hillocks. Just in front of Yuki's shoji and the narrow veranda which ran unchecked along the south and west of the house, two sedate gray stones led into a gravelled space. Here were flower-beds somewhat in foreign fashion, but without bordering plants or bricks. Many of the small bushes were resultant from seed-packets mailed by Yuki in Washington. Imported pansies, alyssum, geraniums, marigolds, and ragged-robins grew here in springtime in friendly proximity to indigenous asters, columbine, pinks, and small ground-orchids. These flower spaces were now vacant but for tiny springing communities of chrysanthemum shoots, bare stems of peony with swollen red buds at the tip, and a few indispensable small pines. Beyond it all was the tall hedge of sa-sa shutting out the street, and its ugly inner rind of thorn.

The eastern side of the house contained, so to speak, its executive offices, dining-room, servants' quarters, pantry, kitchen, and well-shed. Along this portion (except by the kitchen, which stepped down unaided to a bare earth floor) strips of narrow veranda and convenient stepping-stones led into a vegetable garden, small wood-yard, and strawberry patch. The longest bit of veranda had the dignity of a rail,—a mere upright strip of board, edged heavily on top with bamboo, and pierced with openings cut into the shapes of swallows.

TETSUJO'S HOUSE AND GARDEN

It was here, the morning after Yuki's arrival, that the women of the household were to be found. Suzumè chattered incessantly as she washed the breakfast-dishes and passed inward to arrange them on the pantry shelves. Little Maru San, a few feet away, out in the sunshine of the garden, scrubbed at pieces of a ripped-up kimono in a tub that stood high on its own three legs. Afterward she rinsed the bits and spread them smoothly to dry on a board. The tailless white cat, disdainfully satiate after a meal of tea, rice, and fish-bones, curled itself up in a fork of the bare persimmon-tree to sleep. Maru's favorite bantam cock, followed at a respectful distance by two wives and an unidentified black chick, sauntered along the kitchen drain, his yellow eye slanted for a swimming flake of white. The clear, windless air had a smell of new-washed leaves and of foreign violets. Yuki's heart stirred with the deep homeliness of it all. Iriya, noting her expression, asked brightly, "Is my dear one just a little happy to be at home?"

"No, mother, not a little happy, but very, very happy. It has been a long time."

Iriya was hanging out a bed-quilt of plaid silk, the squares three feet across and of superb coloring. "Yes," she repeated, "it has been a long time."

"Why did you let me go at all?" cried Yuki, passionately. "I was your only one. You must have missed me sorely. Sometimes I feel that I never should have gone."

"Hush, my jewel." Iriya gave an apprehensive glance toward the other side of the house. "Say not such words where the kind father may hear. He was so proud of you. It was his dearest wish, and Lord Haganè, our daimyo, advised it also. You see, we had no son, and Tetsujo was not willing to give me up that another wife might bring this hope to pass. He has been a good master to me, has Onda Tetsujo."

A glow of loving pride softened the regret that this thought of the son, that had not been given, always brought to her.

Suzumè looked up from her dish-tub, wrinkling with shrewd smiles. "You have no son—but what of it? Some day you will have a grand son-in-law, a young prince, maybe. Yuki-ko will make a marriage to bring glory to us all."

Yuki drooped her head. "I don't want to think of marriage yet. I just want to stay here in this precious home and try to win back some of those four long years which I have lost."

"But you are nineteen, Miss Yuki,—nearer twenty, in fact. A terrible age for a young lady of rank to be caught single."

"I wish it could be as you wish, my Yuki," sighed Iriya. "But, as Suzumè says, you are nearing twenty. I pray the gods that my son-in-law may not be of too exalted station to receive adoption into this family, instead of your being absorbed into his. That would be the greatest joy life holds for me. But, alas! I am a selfish, talkative old woman to let such thoughts escape. I should wish your marriage to be only that which may possibly serve your country and repay your father for his sacrifices."

Yuki lifted a small queer look. "In America, where my father sent me, I was taught, in the matter of marriage, to do some of the thinking myself."

Iriya caught her breath. Suzumè stopped washing to stare. Maru, looking up with her round mouth formed for a "Ma-a-a!" jostled the tub in her excitement. It went over with a "swash." The soapy water, with drifting islands of blue cloth, flowed out swiftly, carrying the pompous bantam and his family on the unexpected tide. The cat opened one green eye, then the other.

"Come, my child," said Iriya, quickly, to Yuki, "condescend to bear me company to the guest-chamber. I have the flowers to arrange. Perhaps, in America, you have learned some new and beautiful composition."

Yuki's queer look deepened into a naughty little laugh and shrug as she turned to obey. She knew perfectly why her mother wished to get her from the hearing of Suzumè and Maru. Tokio is not free from gossip, and, though Suzumè was devoted to the family she served, she dearly loved the start, the incredulity, the deepening interest of a listener's face.

To her mother's last suggestion Yuki replied, "I fear not, mother. The only idea of arrangement they have in America is to get many different flowers together, chop them to the same length of stem, and push them down evenly into a shapeless vase with other flowers painted on the sides."

"Ah," said Iriya, crestfallen and surprised, "we shall not then adopt the foreign arrangement."

The mother and daughter clasped hands, swinging them as children do, and moved along the narrow veranda. They were now skirting the closed shoji of the dining-room. In turning the corner, the plum-tree came into full sight. A hundred blossoms must have opened since the dawn. Yuki broke from her mother with a cry, ran to the tree, and threw her arms about the great trunk. "Oh, you are the most beautiful tree in the whole world!" she said aloud, and looked with adoration up into its shining branches.

As Iriya reached her, she lowered her gaze. "Do you remember, mother, that morning four years ago, when I went away, how I clung to this tree last of all, sobbing from my heart the poem that my father taught me?—

"Though bereft and poor,
I in exile wandering
Far on mount and moor,
Happy plum beside my door,
Oh, forget not thou the spring."

"I remember well," said Iriya, and drew her daughter's outstretched hand to her cheek.

Something shone suddenly in Yuki's eyes. "And I wept so passionately that father, half in tears himself, came and entreated me to cease. He said that if I shed more tears upon it, his tree, like that of Michizanè, might rise through the air and follow me to exile."

"Yes," smiled Iriya; "often have I recalled it in the time of spring, standing under this tree alone."

"It really did follow me after all, you know," the girl went on shyly. "It came at night, in dreams, when you and father could not miss it. Did it ever fail to return before the dawn?"

"No," returned Iriya, with deep gravity. "The dear tree loves us also. Never once did it fail to return."

Tetsujo strode toward them from his study. "How can one ponder on the classics, with pigeons cooing beneath his very eaves?"

Yuki clung to him. "You had the classics for four long years when I was away."

"So had I water through those four long years, small pigeon,—yet while I live must I thirst. The classics feed deep wells of the soul."

He put a strong, loving hand about her, and drew her near. It sprang into Yuki's mind to speak now of her foreign friends, to ask permission to visit them or, at least, to send them her Tokio address. Pierre's beautiful face and blue eyes reproached her. But this moment was too sweet for jeopardy. She pressed her cheek against the rough blue cotton of her father's shoulder. Iriya, stealing nearer, put also a loving arm about the girl. The sunshine made a halo for the three. The plum, loosening its first petals, sent them down in fragrant benediction.

So her day passed, a wonderful day, steeped in love and childish recollections. At night, the winds being chill, and the fear of robbers inherent in the Japanese mind, all shoji, and after them the wooden storm panels (amado), were tightly drawn. In the ashes of the great brass hibachi balls of charcoal glowed like incandescent apples. A lamp was suspended from the ceiling, swinging but a few feet above their heads. Here the four women of the household grouped themselves. Tetsujo had gone out for a call. The pieces of kimono, ripped and washed that morning by Maru San, were now to be refashioned. Iriya, Suzumè, and Maru drew forth little sewing-boxes and prepared for work. Yuki, half sitting, half lying on the floor, fondled the tailless cat, and declared boldly that she hated sewing and was not going to begin that part of a Japanese woman's drudgery quite so early.

"All good wives love sewing, particularly on the master's nightclothes," said Suzumè, reprovingly, and peering over the rim of huge horn spectacles toward the culprit.

"The o jo san will tell us something of foreign habits as we sew," suggested Iriya, the peacemaker.

"Yes—yes—I will be what is called over there the bureau of information," laughed wilful Yuki. "Any questions from you, Mr. Cat?" she cried, holding the drowsy animal high above her and smiling into its blinking eyes.—"Do American cats like rice?" "No." "Queer cats, you say,—and so they think of you." "Do they wear tails?" "Yes, long ones." "What do they use them for?" "For getting pinched in doors." "No more questions, Pussy San? Ah, you will never learn. Ruskin says that curiosity forms tendrils of the mind."

"What I would like to feel sure of, honorable young lady, is this," began Suzumè, primly, with a disapproving glance toward the cat.

"We are ready, Madame Suzumè, speak on," said Yuki, cuddling pussy back into her sleeve.

"Is it really true, as newspapers and pictures say, that women over there, even women of decent character, go to evening entertainments with no clothes above the waist, dance with red-faced men until they are on the verge of apoplexy, and then have to be restored by much fanning and a cold medicine called 'punch'?"

"Not altogether, good nurse," said Yuki, fighting hard to retain a semblance of gravity. "They wear cloth and flowers, feathers and jewelry above the waist, and arrange them with great beauty; but it is true that they dance with men, and that their shoulders and arms are bare."

"That is a strange custom," mused Suzumè. "Even our Sacred Empress condescends to go with bare arms. Why, I wonder, do they wish to expose arms more than legs? There is more leg, and in a supple young girl it is more shapely."

"That is too hard a thing for me," laughed Yuki. "Well, Maru, your eyes are big and solemn like the Owl San in our pine. What is your question?"

Maru, after much giggling and blushing, confessed to a desire to know, once for all, whether foreigners had toes like real people, or whether, as she had been assured from childhood, they possessed but a single horny hoof, which, from desire to hide the ugliness, they kept in pointed leather cases known as shoes.

"That is false entirely. I have seen hundreds of barefoot children in America, and they all had ten toes, even as we."

Maru seemed cast down. "Ma-a-a! what foolish tales are spread," she murmured. "Doubtless the foreigners have similar strange beliefs of us."

"It is what the great creatures eat that turns me sick," cried old Suzumè, and nearly perforated a finger in her vehemence. "Their soup is like the contents of a slop-bucket, with warm grease swimming on the top. The stuff would choke in a decent person's throat. And then the great heaps of animal flesh,—and greasy vegetables, and implements like gardener's tools to eat them with! And then—Kwannon preserve us—the unspeakable nightmares that come even after the tasting of such food!"

"Arà!" cried the maid, roused to new excitement by this recital of horror, "it is said that America is an honorably highly civilized country, and Nippon merely a divine half-civilized country, but I thank the gods who have given me to live in this half-civilized country."

At bedtime, Yuki, creeping between soft, fragrant futons, drew a deep sigh of childish content. The andon in the corner, shedding its gentle, paper-screened light, continued the impression of sunshine. The girl smiled to find herself again counting the lapped cedar boards of the ceiling, "Hitotsu—futatsu—mitsu—yotsu—" following them into uncertain dimness at the far end of the chamber. As in childhood she speculated upon the possibilities of that small black knot-hole left vacant in the wood. How much smaller now it was than four years ago! Still there was a chance, a pygmy probability, that a very small nedzumi might creep through, and, falling to the floor, scamper over mats and bedding, and—here came the shudder!—over the very face of a sleeper. She drew the bedclothes up spasmodically, then smiled to think how bright would be the eyes of the little mouse, twinkling in semi-darkness. In a moment more, with the smile still on her lips, she was asleep.

So a second day passed, and a third,—hushed, golden days, too precious to be imperilled. With the fourth morning, Sunday, came a change. In the night a storm had risen, sweeping down from Kamschatka along the Yezo coast to the wide unsheltered plain of Yedo. Here it wallowed like a great beast in a field, snorting with fury, crushing trees, fences, and houses, and fighting back the black clouds that would have crowded in upon it.

Through Yuki's troubled sleep came the sounds of vehicles rattling on foreign streets, and the blurred chime of church-bells. Her first conscious thought was, "It is Sunday. Gwendolen and I must be sure to go to service."

The wooden amado of the house chattered with fright. The wind gave long, derisive howls as it swept under the low-hanging roof, clutched and shook the rafters, and then darted out to the heart of the storm once more. Yuki realized slowly that she was not in America at all, that she was at home, in Tokio. With a slower, heavier recognition came the knowledge that her friend Gwendolen was here also, and if she were in Washington could not seem more remote.

She heard old Suzumè and Maru straining to open the amado, then Tetsujo's voice calling loudly from his chamber, "Keep them all shut on the eastern side!"

"Oh, my dear plum-tree! It will be torn like mist," said the girl aloud. She sat upright, patting instinctively the loops of her hair, dressed now in Japanese fashion. The floating wick of her andon fell over the edge of the saucer and went out, leaving the room in grayer darkness. The foreign clock that hung in the kitchen rang out the hour of seven. "What gloom! The storm must be terrible indeed!" A moment after the girl said, with a shudder, "This is the day on which I am to speak of my love. I hear his voice calling through the wind. I must wait no longer. Yes, I will speak to-day."

At breakfast the small family of three was silent and preoccupied. The one glimpse they had taken of the shivering, naked plum-tree would have sufficiently accounted for the depression. Iriya and Yuki sat a little behind the master, eating from their small rice-bowls, and attending in turn upon his wants. As Suzumè crept in to remove the half-emptied dishes, Yuki said to her father, "Father, a little later, when you have smoked and read your paper, may I speak with you?"

"Why, certainly, my child," said Tetsujo, kindly, looking up from the damp printed sheet he had already unfurled; "though I may have but few thoughts apart from this terrible storm."

"It is a terrible storm," shuddered Iriya. "A great camphor-tree in the Zen Temple garden has fallen. It was a goblin-tree, and the priests fear evil."

"I spoke not of the storm in the material universe, but of that vast political tempest brewing over us. Our minister leaves St. Petersburg to-morrow. War has practically come."

No comment was made. The three tacitly avoided, each, the glance of the other. Iriya rose quietly, then Yuki. In the door-frame the girl paused. "I shall return in half an hour, father."

Tetsujo nodded. "I shall be here."

In her own room Yuki moved about mechanically, putting into place her few indispensable possessions,—a silver brush, comb, and hand-glass, her white prayer-book and neat Bible, a picture of Gwendolen in a burnt-leather frame, and a lacquered box containing a second photograph, not of Gwendolen, and a package of letters, all addressed in the same hand. She fought to keep her imagination from the coming war. Its dark omen only strengthened her determination to have things understood. She prayed for strength and self-control. Punctual to the moment she entered the guest-room, bowing again to her father. He looked up from his brooding revery. Something in the girl's face made him ask, "Ah, have you indeed a matter of importance? My little Yuki has gone. This is a woman who comes to speak with me."

"Alas, father. Childhood, like the petals of the plum-tree, vanishes at the breath of storms."

"What storm can have found you so early, my little one?"

Yuki drew in a long breath, and steadied herself for a deliberate reply. In the pause Tetsujo leaned out, and with one motion of his powerful hand flung a panel of the shoji to one side, giving a view of the drenched and storm-tormented garden. On the veranda floor, usually so smooth, beaten plum-petals clung like bits of white leather. The drip from the low-tiled roof enclosed them in the bars of a silver cage.

"This is my distress, father," began Yuki. "I am a Japanese girl, with my first loyalty toward you and my native country;—yet, in that new land where you sent me,—I have come—I have grown honorably to feel, almost without warning, the—influence of a—person."

Tetsujo looked faintly surprised. "Indeed, I trust so, my child. You would be but a poor, unresponsive creature to have felt no influences. It is from such things that character and knowledge are builded. There were many persons who influenced you, I take it,—some for good, perhaps some for evil. To an intelligent mind a warning is valuable. Now, at home, you will have the leisure to sort and adapt such impressions, casting away those that are trivial and employing those which may be of service to Japan."

"It is augustly as you indicate, dear father," returned Yuki, the distress in her dark eyes deepening. "I attempted to observe many things. But the influence I spoke of is not that kind you are thinking. It—it—is a very special influence. In America they call it—love." She bowed her head over slightly. A faint pink tide of embarrassment showed on her forehead and in the small bared triangle of her throat.

Tetsujo controlled himself well. "You mean—love—'ai'—the love of a man and a woman who wish to marry?"

"In America one thinks very differently of such matters," said Yuki, her eyes still lowered. "Yet I suppose the feeling is honorably the same everywhere. Yes, father, it is of such love that I now must tell you."

"We have many Japanese terms for Love," mused Tetsujo. "Love of country, of Our Emperor, of parents, of beauty, of virtue,—but the term which you now employ should not be spoken by a samurai to a woman not his wife. You pay a high price for Western knowledge, my poor child, if already the dew-breath of modesty has dried from your young life."

"Father," she pleaded, "I am still a Japanese. I know how it must seem to you. I suffer in the speaking, but still I must speak. I promised. I must speak."

"You promised?" echoed Tetsujo, and looked more keenly into her shrinking face. "To whom could you have promised such a thing?"

"To him—that one—I first alluded to." She did not attempt now to meet his eyes, but fingered nervously along the edge of her sleeve.

"Can it be possible that in that country unmarried youths speak in unmannerly directness to young women of such intimate affairs? I had heard a hint of this unbelievable indelicacy, and once your mother, Iriya, hinted that we should warn you. But I scoffed then at the thought of your needing the admonition. Alas! being a woman, she knew you better than I."

His head sank forward. Yuki twisted her slim hands into wisps. "In America all speak of these things, father. They think us immodest for other reasons, and foolishly sensitive in this. The schoolgirls talk—and the matrons. All theatres treat of it—and books are full of it. You sent me no warning—I could not know, of myself. Please, honorably, restrain anger against me."

"I must not be angry," muttered Tetsujo, who now gave every symptom of a rising storm of wrath. "I must be calm. But gods! this is a foul spectre to meet at the very outset! Am I to understand that this man—this person—spoke directly to you, and you listened without first receiving permission from your parents? He could have gone, at least, to my friend, and my country's representative, Baron Kanrio."

"Father, father," cried the girl, "you are becoming angry. I did not have the time to reflect. In America one does things first and thinks about them afterward. I am not sure that person ever has even met—our noble baron."

If she hoped to palliate by this last disclosure she was quickly undeceived. "The gamester—the oaf! Insolent fool! An impostor unknown even by sight to your natural guardian in a distant land! He must be an alien! No Japanese—not even a Yedo scavenger—could have been guilty of that misdeed!"

"But he spoke quite openly to my best American friends, the Todds," said Yuki, desperately. Tetsujo's rising excitement and anger lapped like flames about this new thought.

"And that Mr. Todd, now come to be minister in our very home,—did he encourage your filial impiety?"

"It was not so much Mr. Todd as Madame, his wife, and my schoolmate, Gwendolen," admitted Yuki, with a sinking heart.

"Ah, I might have known it," said Tetsujo. His relief was evident. "Only women! Mere cackling geese. America echoes to their shrill voices. That is of no consequence."

"In that country women are of much consequence, and everyone speaks openly of affairs of love and—marriage," persisted Yuki, who now clung half hopelessly to this one tangible point.

"And you yourself—ingrate—would willingly bestow yourself, without a word from me or your mother, upon a man who is a stranger, and whose conduct, heard from your partial lips, impresses me as characteristic of a fool and an outcast?"

His brows were black and twitching. Yuki knew that she must take her stand now or never. "You see only the side of Japanese convention, father. I have given to him a promise. When your consent and that of my mother are gained, I shall be glad to be his wife."

Tetsujo started convulsively, then controlled himself. The sudden checking in of passion recoiled through the very air. With rigid hands he stuffed and lighted his small pipe. When he spoke his voice sounded flat and hollow, like beaten wood.

"Such a promise, unratified by me, of course means nothing, unless—it be defiance of heaven and of natural decency. It binds no one—you least of all. Consider it unsaid."

Yuki looked directly upon him. Her soft feminine chin grew a little squarer, more like his. "That promise is given, father. Neither you nor I have power to recall it. It has gained a living growth in the soul of a third person." She turned half-closed eyes to the garden. Tetsujo went forward in two small stiff jerks. His eyes fastened on her face, as though he saw it for the first time. Veins swelled in his neck, and the fingers on his small pipe-stem grew slowly flat, like the heads of adders.

"Is that you speaking, Onda Yuki?" he asked. "The gods grant that I wake from this dream! But if it be reality, then sorrow is to come. If this man be a foreigner, let him stay in his own land! You are mine utterly,—at my disposal in marriage as in all else. There are ways, in Japan, to curb such mad demons as those that now look at me through your eyes. Go! leave me. I shall hear no more of this,—or else it may be that I shall forget my fatherhood, as you your obligations. Go!"

"Father," said Yuki, quietly, "you must hear more of this or drive me from the house. You owe me consideration and justice; for the ideas that I have, you yourself sent me to America to gain. You even let me be a Christian. With the Christians marriage is a sacred thing—"

"Be still!" said Tetsujo, in a terrible, low voice. His pipe dropped to the floor. The coal burrowed itself, a charred and smoking ring, into the fragrant matting. The odor was that of field-grass burning. The man rocked himself to and fro for control. His lean hands plunged deep into his sleeves, and grasped, one each, a jerking arm. He was terrified at his own obsession of fury, and his soul warned him against a yielding to his madness. His greenish twisted lips writhed horribly once or twice before the next words came. One corner of his mouth went far down at the corner. His words hissed from a small distorted aperture near the chin. "You were allowed to turn Christian for the acquiring knowledge of their foolish—creed. I believed that the soul of a samurai's daughter,—of my daughter,—would be untainted by the immoral portions of their doctrine. I see now my credulity! Gods! I will consume myself with this heat! When you marry—wench,—which shall be soon,—if your Japanese husband approves not of Christianity, you will cease to be Christian!"

The two pairs of eyes met, hard, flashing, defiant. Yuki rose to her feet. He sprang after her. His right hand now felt instinctively for the sword-hilts which should have been at his hip. The leering, down-drawn mouth twitched and writhed.

"Your words do not lash from me my heritage of race!" she cried aloud. "I am still your daughter,—a samurai's daughter!" With a movement like light she stripped back her left sleeve, baring a white, blue-threaded arm. "Because I am a samurai's daughter I refuse a coward's obedience! Hot blood of a samurai stings these veins no less than those bronze arteries you clutch. Show me reason and I will listen. Apart from that I defy you! I shall be faithful to the man I love even though your legal rights prevent our happiness. Turn me into the street,—slay me with your own hand,—I shall not be compelled into a marriage of your choosing!"

Onda clutched his throat. The breath came gurgling like a liquid. For an instant it seemed as if he must hurl himself bodily upon her. Then he stumbled backward against the plaster wall of the room, clawing at its tinted surface. Yuki's eyes never left him. Now he lurched again toward her, then fell back, shaken like a jointed puppet by his own consuming rage. "Gods of my Ancestors! Demons of the deepest Hell! Go, go!—lest indeed I slay you. You fiend—you hannia! From my sight, I say!—I cannot endure—"

He cowered again, striking himself into temporary blindness with one powerful fist.

"I go, father, in obedience,—not in fear," said the girl's clear voice. He sprawled forward, and fell, sobbing like an exhausted runner. Yuki covered her face and went.

CHAPTER TEN

With the Imperial Restoration in Japan—an event, in time, just thirty-five years before the date mentioned at the beginning of this story—many of the nobles of Japan met with ruin. This was especially the case with the "hatamoto," a class directly dependent for revenue and patronage upon the favor of the usurping "Shogun." The real Emperor, then a boy of sixteen, living in seclusion at Kioto, was still nominal ruler and spiritual head of the government, forming a sort of "Holy Roman Empire," translated into terms of Buddhism. When, as a result of revolution and many sharp, fierce battles, this boy was brought in triumph to take his rightful place as temporal ruler also, with a new court in the great capital of Tokio, the Shogun, direct descendant of the mighty Iyeyasu, went into dignified retirement. Over-rich monasteries and temples, arrogant after centuries of Tokugawa benefice, were forced to part with broad lands, and even, in certain instances, with personal treasure. The simpler "Shinto" faith, an indigenous nature-spirit and ancestor-worshipping creed, opposed its principles to gorgeous Buddhist forms. The pure spirit of the younger faith and the profundities of its philosophy did not suffer. The blow was aimed at externals. The child-like Japanese soul to-day kneels with equal sincerity at a wayside Shinto shrine or before the gold-hung altars of Sakyamuni.

This revolution, then, was threefold and complete. Politics, religion, society, shifted within their national circle and assumed new aspects. The centre of all was the young ruler, Mutsuhito. Now the "kugè," or court nobles of Kioto, who had willingly shared retirement and comparative poverty with this true descendant of the gods, came again into power. But besides these two classes, the hatamoto and other dependent samurai, and the kugè, was still a third,—the most important,—the daimyo or feudal lords of the empire. Some among these had never yet given satisfactory hostages to the Shoguns, and lived always in a state of insolent pride and suppressed insurrection. At need of their Emperor, the true mettle of their loyalty rang out. Men, money, lives, property, were poured out like water for this beloved cause. Those who had been haughtiest to the Shoguns bowed now in deepest reverence to the boy Mutsuhito, in whose veins ran the blood of their ancient dynasty. He was to them truly divine; not in the impossible, superstitious sense, but as a sort of human channel flowing between the old gods and modern men. Through him were reconstruction and new national glory to be gained. A life laid down in his cause were but newly come alive.

Prominent among such patriots was the old Daimyo of Konda, father of the present Prince Haganè. His title more literally translated would be that of "Duke," or "Feudal Prince." His lands, lying far to the south, with a rough channel to divide them from the mainland, held almost a separate and independent existence. His chief province, and the one from which he took his title, was Konda. "Haganè" was the family name. At the first hint of national uprising the old daimyo, abandoning his own loved home, came at once to Kioto, and later made the journey with the young Emperor to Yedo. By right he assumed the place of guardian and adviser. The old daimyo was, as it chanced, somewhat learned in foreign matters, and this, in spite of the Shogun's rigid exclusion of all things foreign, of the death-penalty to any Japanese attempting to leave Japan, or, having managed to leave, attempting to return. This was a mighty armor of self-protection to the Tokugawa policy; but, in common with most armor, it had just one small flaw. In this case the flaw was a tiny island, granted to the Dutch, called "Deshima." Not far from the Konda borders lay this innocent fleck of earth, surrounded by blue native seas, and overgrown, like other islands, with tall feathery bamboo, camellia, and camphor trees; and yet, because of its existence, Haganè gained foreign books,—from it he smuggled a Dutch interpreter who could read and write not only his own language, but Japanese. Other curious minds drew near this spring of knowledge; and, partly because of it, long before Perry's expedition to the Far East, the Japanese people had become restless, eager, awake, and in ferment for a national readjustment.

Haganè's one son, Sanètomo, a few years older than the boy Emperor, and reared as nearly in friendship with him as reverence would allow, was among the first youths of his class to travel in Europe, and to acquire any European language. Upon his father's death, he was asked by the Emperor to take at once the offices and semi-royal prerogatives of the lamented elder statesman. All the daimyos had received national bonds for the alienation of their fiefs; and thus those who had been most powerful still enjoyed great wealth in their own right.

With the Emperor once firmly established, etiquette and the restrictions of court-life began to prove irksome to Sanètomo. One could have continued to practise fine manners under the Shoguns. Here to-day was something better. A new army was to be formed; after that a new navy. Haganè advised adaptation of tactics from the German military school, its unbending automatonism appearing to him a safe restriction for enthusiastic beginners. From the first, however, his mind had been fixed upon the administrative methods of that marvellous small heart of an enormous empire, England. Japan should be to the Far East what England had become to the West. What one island had accomplished, that also could another do.

The Japanese nation as a whole went reeling drunk with over-potations of foreign ideas. For a while it seemed that everything Japanese was to be swept away. The small opposition party, frenzied by the apparition, took hideous revenge in murder, assassination, and suicide. Haganè's faith did not for a moment waver. After excess comes nausea, reaction. So had his countrymen, in more than one epoch now long past, drunk in the new. In time they would reject the unneedful, and infuse new power in what they had adopted. The thinkers of his empire could afford to wait.

When the new constitution was promulgated in February, 1889, there was rejoicing such as this old earth seldom sees. Haganè was created Minister of War. This position he had continued to hold, with varying intervals. He was now the incumbent. Much of his time was spent, perforce, in the "foreign" official residence, well within sight of the Imperial moats. Most of such edifices in Tokio are depressing. This was particularly cheerless. The house of brick, wood, and plaster, chiefly plaster, stood full two stories high, was of ample dimensions, and had a huge, square, blue-tiled roof. Though planned and built by the most artistic nation now alive, it had not one line of beauty, nor one successful effort after fine proportion. In these early days it seemed an accepted creed among the Japanese that anything to be truly "foreign" must necessarily offend the eye; yet, thought the ingenuous pupils, since ugliness apparently goes in the company of wealth, power, material welfare, and political recognition,—why, by all means, let us be uglier than the foreigners themselves!

Around the house lay something called a garden, a watery emulsion of American flower beds and a Japanese landscape creation. The effect of the whole place was amorphous, unstable, depressing, with the one redeeming feature of bigness.

Onda Tetsujo, speeding toward this haven in his hired jinrikisha, rattled along the uneven stone of the street, and then turned into the one great entrance of the imposing shell. The garden wall had a secret gate or two, but these were generally kept bolted. The storm of the early morning was abating. A drizzling, discouraged rain, with irregular gusts of wind through it, persisted in efforts to exclude all cheer. Onda knocked at one of the rear doors of the Japanese wing, and was but little surprised to hear, from the man who opened for him, that his Excellency the Prince, having transacted all official business for the day, had now retired to his "besso" (villa) on the high land of suburban "Tabata."

Onda re-entered his vehicle and gave the curt order, "Tabata." In the street he added, "Call an atoshi, and pull up the hood and oil-cloth." An atoshi, or "Mr. After," was summoned, the oil-cloth hood of the jinrikisha drawn far over and held in place by a single black cord knotted to one shaft. A sort of oil-cloth lap-robe, hung up in front and hooked to the inner lining of the hood, afforded complete immunity from wetting. Within the careful adjustment sat Tetsujo, blinking and scowling. The day had brought him a new and unwelcomed experience,—defiance from a woman. He wondered, as he was dragged along the viscid street, whether, in the happy, vanished feudal days, any warrior of his clan had known a similar indignity. There was on record the case of a wilful bride who, married against her wishes to an Onda chief, had disguised herself in a suit of armor grown too small for him, and sought heroic death in battle. But even this was better than open insult and defiance. Well, Yuki must be watched closely. Her education and beauty were not to be thrown away on a foreigner who, likely as not, would tire of and desert her. She must marry a young Japanese already well along on the way to official or military promotion. When this Russian war came, Japan would need all her people, men and women. His only child should not be given over to the loose affections of a foreigner. He scowled anew at the thought, and gave so savage a sound that his coolies stopped short in the road to inquire whether the honorable master were in pain.

"No," growled Tetsujo, in return, "a warrior does not feel pain; that is for babes and women."

A few minutes later the redoubled grunts and groans of his bearers—evidently sharing shamelessly the weaker prerogatives of the other sex—told Tetsujo that they had begun the ascent of the Tabata slope. At the eastern edge, where the hill goes down like a cliff, and one looking far out over rice-fields sees the Sumida River finding a shining road to Tokio, and the great twin peaks of Tsukuba-yama standing guard over the other half of the world, spread the broad eaves of Prince Haganè's villa.

Onda gave a sigh of relief as he stepped out under the door-roof.

"O tanomi moshimasu!" (I make request) he called, rapping on the closed shoji panels with his knuckles.

"Hai!" came almost instantly from within, and a housemaid was on her knees pushing the panels softly aside, a hand on each.

"The august one—is he within?" asked the visitor.

"Hai! Illustrious Sir. Deign to mount the step, and, seating yourself on the hard mats, be refreshed by our tasteless tea and worthless cakes, while I hasten to announce your joy-giving appearance."

Tetsujo dismissed his kuruma men, shook off his shoes, and remained seated on the mats, still with folded arms, still deep in thought. The little maid, returning quickly, murmured that "the noble master would receive his honorable guest at once."

Prince Haganè sat alone in the great room, immediately surrounded by boxes and trays with tea, writing, and smoking outfits. There was one beautiful hibachi, or firepot, of hammered brass. An English book on International Law lay on the floor beside him among newspapers in Japanese, Chinese, English, French, and German. Passages in these papers had been heavily marked by the blue and red pencil still held in the reader's hand. He did not rise or bow as Tetsujo entered, merely turning his face toward the opened fusuma and saying, "Most welcome, good Tetsujo. Enter and forget the storm."

"I fear I have brought the storm in with me, your Highness," Tetsujo could not refrain from crying. He fell on his knees just within the door, bowed many times, and drew in his breath loudly. Haganè lifted an unread newspaper and made several markings while Tetsujo continued his genuflections. Having at last completed a number satisfactory to his sense of propriety, he sat upright. Haganè folded this last paper, and put it into a heap with the others.

"Draw nearer," he said with a smile. "It is a day for a chat between old friends. No, be not so humble—nearer yet—I insist. Now—that is better and more companionable. Pour yourself some tea."

"Honors are heaped upon your unworthy servant," rejoined Onda, pouring tea, first for the prince, then for himself. "I have just come from the official residence of your Highness. How cold and un-homelike appear all foreign houses; while this—" he paused to look slowly around—"this warms a man's heart to see."

"Though insignificant, it has a certain restfulness," admitted the host. "Lacking a mistress, it cannot seem in reality a home."

Tetsujo's face clouded. "Speak not to me of mistresses, Lord," he mumbled sourly.

Haganè gave him a queer glance, but said nothing. He understood well the nature of his own kerai. So angular a thought as now distressed him must soon work its way to the surface of speech. "To-day I am in mind of the Chinese sage who taught us that all women are mere manifestations of demoniac force. They are sent here to tempt us—to test—to torment. Would that I could reach a heaven of warriors, untainted by their sex—!"

"Surely, my Tetsujo," interrupted Haganè, gravely, "those of your household bring no torment. I have never known a better wife than Iriya."

"I complain not of Iriya," said the other, a hint of excitement creeping into his voice; "but, Lord, had you seen that ingrate that I must call my daughter! Had you seen Yuki an hour since, you would have perceived what the Chinese mean by she-demons."

"Yuki!" echoed Haganè, this time in genuine surprise. "Is there not some mistake? Yuki is spirited; but I cannot picture her as a—demon!"

"I will honorably relate the event. My heart, with the memory, seethes and bubbles as a small cauldron." In a voice often shaken from control by passion, with a dark countenance slowly deepening into a bronze red of agitation, Tetsujo imparted the story of his child's defiance. Not once did Prince Haganè lift his head, not even when Tetsujo, beating the matted floor in his rage, roared out, "Her eyes flashed, my Lord, like those of a dragon-maid in battle! They scorched me like sparks! They would not fall though I sent out the whole volume of my will to quench them. It was defiance—defiance—naked and unashamed! The very air around me turned to flame. Murder dried my tongue. Had I worn my short swords as of old,—"

Haganè gave an exclamation and looked up. "What then! Are you yourself a demon, Tetsujo,—or a father? Scorn to you, thus speaking of a maid! It was your own strong spirit darting upon you from her bright eyes. Gods! the look of her must have been magnificent!"

"Magnificent! Yes, as hell, perhaps, is magnificent! Think you not, Lord, that she deserves death for such impiety?"

"My poor Tetsujo," said Haganè, "I pray you, quaff more tea and be calm. You alone cannot walk backward, when the rest of the nation races to the fore. Yuki's death for such a cause would certainly mean your hanging, and, in my opinion, a fate that you would well deserve. Come now, let us reason like men, not squirm and crackle like live devil-fish thrown upon coals. The point of the matter is, that your daughter wishes to marry one of her choice, and not one of yours. Naturally, you oppose this."

"Oppose!" echoed Tetsujo, straining in his seat, "I forbid it! I defy her to attempt it! Should she persist, she shall have my curse and that of my ancestors—"

"Nay, nay, my Tetsujo, be calm. Anger is the worst leak in a man's store of self-respect. I cannot talk further until you grow calm." He paused and slowly poured for himself a cup of tea, as if to give the old warrior time for self-recollection.

Tetsujo drew a tenugui from his sleeve, mopped his damp brow, pulled his kimono collar into smoother folds, and settled, by degrees, into an appearance of tranquillity. Now and again a small convulsive shudder still passed over him, a movement involuntary and uncontrollable, such as is seen in a runaway horse brought suddenly to a stand.

"Now let me question," began Haganè's deep tones again. "Answer nothing, my friend, but what I ask. Are you certain that this man, whom our little Yuki thinks she loves, is, indeed, a foreigner?"

"I am not honorably certain, your Highness, even of so much. But I think he is a foreigner. No Japanese, not even a street scavenger of Yedo, as I told her—"

Haganè raised a hand for silence. "You should, first of all, have ascertained his race, his name, and his profession. He may be a hired Russian spy for all we know."

Tetsujo almost bounded from his place. "A Russian spy! God of Battles,—I thought not of that!"

"And did you bethink you to inquire whether the—person—had already followed her to this country?"

Tetsujo's eyes rolled fearfully. He found no ready words. "My Lord—my Lord—" he gasped.

"You now perceive, Tetsujo, there are better things for a man to do with his wits than ignite them, and, with the burning bits, play a foolish jugglery. Our first concern is to find out whether or not that man is here."

Tetsujo bowed over to hide his chagrin. "Your wisdom is that of Dō-ku and Benkei Sama in one," he murmured.

Haganè stuffed and lighted a small pipe. "When you met your daughter on the hatoba at Yokohama were there young males of the party?"

"Hai, master. I recall now two strange and alert ones who appeared to be young."

"Was one of a pink color, like buds of a kaido bloom, and eyes a deep-blue color?"

"All were red and hideous. The one who tried to speak with me had rice-straw on his head in place of decent hair."

"Ah," said Haganè, puffing at his pipe.

"Yes, your Highness, and in our conversation she informed me that the Todds were well aware of her shameful passion, and that the women upheld it."

Silence fell between the men. Tetsujo bit his finger-nails in his impatience.

"In three more days," began the other, slowly, "Mr. Todd will be formally presented to his Sacred Majesty; after that ceremony he will not, I think, permit his women to aid Yuki in a marriage which is against your wishes and—mine."

Onda gave a joyful start.

"Wait," said Haganè, "there is more to be said; I must take a moment's counsel with myself." At these words he fell into a reverie so profound that his spirit seemed to be absent from his breathing body.

Tetsujo controlled himself as best he could. The whole affair was galling to his pride. He resented even Haganè's knowing of the indignity; yet he had no recourse but Haganè. The rain-water, trickling with a sound of dull clinking coins down the tin corner-spouts, irritated him to madness. He hated the little wet sparrows who sat up under the eaves and exchanged uncomplimentary remarks about the weather. Haganè's power of concentration was in itself reproof and another source of irritation. The great man came to himself without a start.

"Listen, Onda Tetsujo, I will offer advice, but it must be taken entire. I will have no variation, mind you, or personal addition."

"I shall receive it humbly, on my head," grumbled the kerai.

Haganè controlled a smile. "Upon your return, treat the maiden gently. Defiance is her best armor. We must not be harsh. Win her confidence by renewed kindnesses. If possible, bend your haughty will to the point of expressing regret for this morning's anger."

"Excuse myself to a woman—to my own daughter!"

"I shall not insist upon that point. I said only if it were possible. Some things are not possible, even to a Buddha."

"And this is even such," cried Tetsujo.

"Let it pass. My purpose may be accomplished without. It is indispensable, however, that you be kind. Give to her, unsolicited, permission to invite the women of the Todd family to your home."

"This, too, is difficult," muttered Tetsujo; "but with the aid of Fudo Bosatsu (Bodhisàttwa of the Fiery Immovability) I can achieve it."

"Excellent," said the other; "now for my part. I will, on the day of Mr. Todd's presentation, arrange for a banquet here at Tabata, to which I will invite the family of Mr. Todd and also the two young men whom you saw at Yokohama. If Yuki's foreign lover is here at all, he is of that party."

"I am not worthy of such deep thought and consideration at your hands, Lord," said Tetsujo, gratefully.

"Be not deceived. It is for Yuki's sake as well. Since her early childhood I have watched with deep interest the growth of her fine intellect and the development of her unusual beauty. Lacking children of my own, I have felt something of a father's affection for her. I too wish to keep her for Japan. I approve not the thought of a foreign marriage."

Tetsujo lifted his head. "One question more, your Highness. Is it your belief that Yuki will surely betray herself, if indeed the foreign devil whom she—she—well, the foreign devil,—should arrive?"

"I think she cannot utterly deceive us both," said Haganè, diplomatically.

Still Onda looked doubtful. "Yesterday I should have said the same; but since this defiance—this exhibition of unwomanly strength—"

"My life has been one long school of human character. Yuki will not deceive us both," reiterated the Prince.

"I am content. I will now remove my worthless body from your sight, having claimed already far too much of your august consideration." Tetsujo bowed and rose. The other rose also, following him half across the room.

"There is yet one bit of counsel," said he. "For the next three days, until the banquet, Yuki must not leave the house alone. Let her go where she will, Tetsujo, but be you always near. If a foreigner should force entrance, or stop your daughter on the street, allow no private speech between them; and if he persist, as mad foreigners will, call the nearest guard, and make free use of my name."

"Your mercy is as wide as Heaven, Lord," murmured the kerai, as he finally took his departure.

Through the gentle and most willing mediator, Iriya, Tetsujo transmitted his willingness to receive Yuki's foreign friends. This sudden clemency, riding on the very back of fury, turned to the girl a masked face of new fear. She knew her father incapable of such sudden reversion, or of the subtlety implied. A stronger power was behind him. She was to be watched and experimented upon. Yet, in spite of this intuitive belief, she could not put aside the opportunity of seeing her friend, of hearing from her lover.

A messenger bore her carefully worded note to the American Legation. Mrs. Todd and Gwendolen responded almost instantly. The former overwhelmed her with endearments and reproaches, an exhibition embarrassing to the girl and terrifying to Iriya. The servants peeped in through chinks in the hall shoji, and at this sight Maru clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from shrieking, and, fleeing to the backyard, rocked to and fro, sobbing, "The big foreign lady is eating our young mistress; oh, what terrible creatures are the foreigners!"

Meanwhile Mrs. Todd, happily unconscious of the effect she was producing, continued her volley of ejaculations. "My dearest child! Such relief when your note came. Gwendolen and I were almost distracted, weren't we, Gwendolen? Of course Cyrus called us geese, and said we were making mountains out of mole-hills; but Cy is always disagreeable when we get into a twitter. But I can assure you, my dear, there is one man at least who does not think us silly; he has been worse off than either of us, hasn't he, Gwennie?"

"Be careful—be careful," said Yuki, in a low voice.

Iriya was in the room, a very figure-head of a hostess with her reserved, timid ways and lack of fluent English. She managed now by gestures, and a very careful use of certain phrases learned by rote from a book of foreign etiquette, to invite her guests to be seated. When this was accomplished, not without many suppressed grunts from the stout lady, Gwendolen managed to get near her friend, and to put out a cool, slim hand, with a pressure of re-assuring love. Yuki clasped the hand quickly, but did not forget another warning look. She leaned next toward the great cluster of hot-house flowers which the American girl wore at her belt, and, under cover of examining them, whispered, "My father is already opposed to me. I do not know what to do. Even writing a letter is impossible. Only tell him to be patient, and have faith."

"He's beside himself," returned Gwendolen, in the same suppressed voice. "He carries on like a girl at a matinée; but this word from you will help him. Of course all of us knew that something was going wrong."

Mrs. Todd, to divert attention from the whisperers, engaged Iriya in vociferous conversation. "Yuki back again! You very happy?" she asked in a loud voice, as if her hostess were deaf.

"Yes," rejoined Iriya, timidly, in English, "we are quite hap-pee."

"Why, she understands beautifully!" cried Mrs. Todd to the two girls, in triumph, as at a personal achievement.

"Mother reads English well, and even in talking she understands things, when one is thoughtful to speak slowly and emphatic, as you have done, dear Mrs. Todd. But she is bashful about the trying," said Yuki.

"She needn't be, I'm sure!" cried the matron. "She pronounces real well. But it's a never-ending marvel to me how these people pick it up. Why, there's hardly a shop in the Ginza where they don't talk it! I'm sure I'll never catch on to your queer language, Yuki-ko, if I live here a hundred years."

"Come look at my dear plum-tree that I used to talk about in America," said Yuki to Gwendolen, rising as she spoke. Iriya looked up in consternation. Her artless face showed perfectly that she had been forbidden to let Yuki from her sight. Behind a certain closed fusuma panel, the one opening directly into Tetsujo's study, came a very low sound, as if of a stifled cough. Yuki threw a sad little smile back over her shoulder to Iriya. "I am not going from the veranda, mother," she said in English.

"Good heavens!" whispered Gwendolen, as they reached the further side of the room, "are you a condemned prisoner already?"

"No," said Yuki, "but I am a watched one. It is too humiliating."

"Are they afraid Pierre will run away with you?"

"They know nothing of Pierre, only that I wish to choose for myself the man I am to marry. They do not even certainly know that he is a foreigner. I must keep them from knowing, or they will be more angrier yet."

"Your father is not exactly a lover of foreigners, is he?" asked Gwendolen, dryly.

Yuki gave a sorry little smile. "And a Frenchman, Gwendolen,—a Frenchman with the Russian mother! It is going to be a long, hard fight, like the coming war itself. But I must be brave. My promise I have given to Pierre."

"Poor darling," cried Gwendolen, clasping her closer, "I almost wish you hadn't; but, of course, when one is in love,—I have a letter for you here. Shall you dare take it?"

Yuki flushed and looked miserable, as she said, "Yes, I shall take it, though I must use the deceit. I will for the first time deceive. When we go back, put it on the floor in your handkerchief, and I will take it up. I feel to be sick at the thought of such treachery to my parents; but what am I to do?"

Neither had much thought for the beautiful plum-tree now opening optimistic blooms after the storm of yesterday. As the girls came into the room together, Mrs. Todd said to Yuki, "Your mother tells me that you are all invited to the banquet of Prince Haganè for next Friday."

"Yes," said Yuki, smiling and seating herself near the speaker, "we have accepted; but at the last moment mother will find some good excuse for staying away. She always does. Is not that true, Mama San?"

The substance of the loving gibe being translated, Iriya blushed and tittered, and put her face to her sleeve, like any schoolgirl. "Naugh-tee Yuki-ko," she managed to say, "make bad talk of Mama San!"

At this moment the bell of the entrance gate gave a jangle unusually loud and abrupt. Immediately bare feet of servants were heard scurrying about the floors of the house. Iriya drew her head erect to listen. "It is another honorable visitor," she murmured, and half arose, sinking back, as she remembered her husband's injunction.

Yuki's heart had begun to beat. There was something most un-Japanese in the harsh, sudden clamor of the tiny bell. Masculine footsteps, unmistakably in foreign shoes, came around by the kitchen side of the house through rows of green "na," and crunched the gravel of the paths. Yuki's face went white. This was a breach of etiquette possible only to a foreigner, and to one newly arrived in Japan.

As the group of four women gazed outward, not knowing what to expect, Pierre Le Beau's high-bred, sensitive face, a little worn by the suspense of the past three days, came around the corner, and stared at them across the narrow, polished veranda. Yuki and Iriya were alike incapable of speech. A sulphurous, low growl was heard behind the fusuma.

"Shake off your shoes and join us," came Mrs. Todd's loud, jovial command.

"If Miss Onda repeats the invitation," said he, with eyes upon the shrinking girl.

Iriya bowed without realizing what she did. It was against all decency for women to receive, alone, a male visitor. She longed to call her husband, but did not dare. For once in her courteous, quiet life, Iriya Onda was at a loss what to do. Yuki made up her mind quickly. Though her heart longed, burned to have him near, she knew that he must be sent away. If he came in, Tetsujo would realize instantly who it was, and would transmit the knowledge to his shrewder and more far-sighted monitor. She was helpless, alone, unarmed, but none the less determined to fight the battle of a love to which she had promised fidelity. With effort she raised herself to a stiff, upright posture, and, keeping her voice clear and cold, she said, "Sir, if my honored father were at home he would doubtless entreat you to enter, but in his absence, neither my mother nor myself have authority to take that pleasant duty upon ourselves. If you will pardon my great rudeness, sir, we shall need to be excused from receiving you at all."

For an instant the young man stared. Slowly his face grew white. He gave one glance of concentrated love, pain, and resentment, and then passed, without a word, along the edge of the veranda, and under the out-leaning plum-tree. Yuki, watching him with a dying heart, felt that never again could she look upon her favorite tree without seeing that fair, bowed head beneath the branches. Mrs. Todd gaped, incredulous, at the girl. Gwendolen alone realized the situation. She sprang to her feet instantly. "Mother!" she cried, "the young man came for us, of course. We have trespassed too long on Mrs. Onda's hospitality; now let us join our unfortunate visitor at the gate and have him ride home with us, I have something of importance to say to him."

Yuki gave a little sob of gratitude and relief. Mrs. Todd, partly comprehending, heaved upward to her feet. "Yes," she said to Gwendolen, but with a disapproving glance poured, full-measure, upon the Japanese girl, "let us ask him to ride home. The poor fellow looked as if the earth had crumbled under his feet."

Yuki felt the reproach. She could have laughed aloud at the irony of it.

Mrs. Todd walked in what she supposed a stately fashion across the room. Her feet pressed into the soft matting as into a stiff dough, leaving behind her a track of shallow indentations.

At parting Gwendolen whispered in her friend's ear, "I understood. Your father has been watching all along. I will make things clear to the other."

When the panelled gate was closed once more, and the little bell cold after long reverberation, Yuki felt a great physical shudder. Her nerves demanded of her the respite of tears, but still she held herself in check. The luxury of weeping and the hidden letter alike must wait until a night hour when the rest of the house was asleep.

She went out into the sunshine of the garden, well within sight of the house. She tried not to think, or to allow forebodings. Against the old plum-tree she leaned, catching idly the white drifting petals. Each might have been a separate poem, so freighted is Japanese lore with fancies and exquisite imagery drawn from this favorite flower. The transience of life, its sweetness, fidelity to natural law, wifehood and womanly tenderness, rebirth, immortality,—all these thoughts and more came to her softly as the petals came. Through each mood, like the clang and clash of brass through low melody, recurred the vision of Pierre—of his yellow hair beneath the old plum-tree. But with the petals fell uncounted moments, heaped less tangibly into hours. So passed the day and succeeding days.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The short interval between the Todds' visit and Prince Haganè's banquet was wrought, within the confines of the Onda home, of small, shifting particles of disquiet, discontent, despondency,—a sort of mist that kept the spirit dark and chill.

Tetsujo found difficulty in meeting his daughter's gaze; though, when her face was averted, he looked long, and moodily enough. He had spoken to her more than once, always in forced, crisp speech, chopping his words into inches and weighing each separate cube. Through this mechanical means he informed her that she was to attend Prince Haganè's banquet without fail, and ride there in a double jinrikisha with him, her father. Iriya and the servants were permitted to resume normal relations with the culprit. Externally things went into their old domestic grooves.

It came to the girl, not with a shock of surprise, but rather as an insidious growth of conviction, that the decision behind Tetsujo's demeanor was inspired by no less a person than Lord Haganè. At first it seemed incredible that so great a man could concern himself with the affairs of a mere girl. At this very moment he was in the midst of a threatened national crisis. Friendship with her father could scarcely account for all. Haganè must have some personal suspicion of the existence of Pierre, of Pierre's family, and of his attitude toward her. Her mind went back to her meeting with the Prince in Washington. She had been the one to introduce Pierre. Now she tried to recall every look and word of that morning interview, which followed her débutante ball. Again she saw Haganè's stern, scarred face, thrilled to the kindness of his voice as he spoke of her childhood, and pondered anew his meaning in the final admonition to loyalty. Perhaps even then he suspected that she and Pierre were more than friends. No, she could not believe it! Even if he did suspect, it was not certain that he would disapprove. Haganè was known everywhere as a friend to foreigners. He had travelled much, and had seen with his own eyes the splendor and the opportunities of foreign courts. He would know that, as wife of a diplomat, no matter what his country, she could serve her own.

At any rate she was soon again to meet the ex-daimyo. She was glad at least of this, and until she judged for herself, would not believe absolutely that the great man was against her. The thought of seeing him, of standing near him, gave her a sort of gentle strength and calm, as one feels when standing beside a great tree. If she could only get a warning to her lover,—to that less strong but dearly loved Pierre! Toward him she was beginning to feel, not only a girl's romantic devotion, but a mother's protecting tenderness. Here in her own country she longed to have her arms around him, shielding and at the same time preventing him from ignorance and prejudice. At Haganè's villa he was possibly to face an ordeal, unwarned by a hint from her. A little hope crept closer. Pierre was a passionate admirer of all the arts of Japan, Haganè an untiring collector. At the Tabata banquet pictures would surely be displayed. It was possible that Pierre's intelligence and appreciation might win him the most powerful of friends.

Most of the night before the banquet the young girl lay awake. The faint light of the andon flowed across her, melting into soft grayness at the far end of the room. It ruled, as with a heavy pencil, the overlapping boards of the ceiling. She counted them, but to no purpose. Sleep perched higher.

"A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,—one after one; bees murmuring—" she quoted under her breath, and lay still as a fallen rose. Sleep grinned down from the small, high branches of night. She thought of dark running water, of a green curtain stretched across nothingness, of a deep, bottomless pool; but sleep, the raven, never stirred a feather.

Beside her bed, on the soft, matted floor, lay a white prayer-book, a tiny vase containing a few sprays of umè (plum-flower), and a chatelaine watch set with pearls. The watch had been a graduation present from Gwendolen. From time to time Yuki lifted the animated toy, turned its face toward the andon, and held it to her ear, only to fall back with a smothered sigh.

"Will the blessed daylight never come?" thought Yuki for the hundredth time. Just as she had relinquished all hope of it, slumber darted down, but in its harsh beak was a dream.

She wandered, silent, on a great black moor. Near her feet, as she moved, a dull light flickered, turning all the dry grass red, and making, as it were, a muffled pathway for her guidance. She was searching, searching, searching,—for what, for whom, she could not recall. Her memory was darkened like the moor, and its dull flashes showed alike only empty space. Suddenly, far off to the right, a steadier beacon sprang. Stars seemed to be climbing up by a stair as yet invisible. The moor quivered into an even glow,—a mist rising as from a sea of blood. Not fifty paces from her eyes stood Pierre. He smiled, and stretched out his arms to her. The red glare whitened as it fell on him. Then she knew for what she had been searching. She would have fled to him, but found she could not move at all.

Out of the Eastern light now came armed men, lances, falchions, spears, all glittering in the unreal glow. She knew it for a daimyo's procession. It came forward swiftly to the gap which held her wide from Pierre. Decked horses, bullock-carts with huge black-lacquered wheels, and countless warriors, some mounted, some on foot, must pass her. There was movement of tramping; the horses reared and struck heavily on the earth, yet no sound came. Staring at that point from which the long procession rose, she saw it still curving up from an illimitable horizon,—first points of spears and banners; then heads; then men, horses, chariots,—an endless chain. She crouched nearer to the ghosts within her reach, hoping to recognize a friendly face, or at least a kind one, whom she could importune to let her through the line. She peered under hoods and helmets and into the bamboo-blinds of bullock-carts, then fell to earth with a scream, for the faces were not human; each was an ape that grinned at her. In Japan no dream is more prophetic of evil than a dream of apes.

At the agonized cry Suzumè ran from her room at the far side of the house. From the adjoining room came Iriya. Fusuma were flung wide.

"Forgive—forgive—my rudeness in honorably disturbing you at this hour," gasped the girl. "It was a dream, so terrible a dream!"

"Oh, tell it to the nanten-bush, Miss Yuki. There is one beside your doorstone!" screamed little Maru as she came.

"Too late!" muttered Suzumè. "Already she has broken silence."

"She shivers with fear, poor jewel," said Iriya, chafing the icy hands. "Suzumè, if a coal of fire can be found, brew hot tea for her. That will be best."

"A coal always sleeps in my ashes," boasted the nurse. "I shall at once prepare the drink."

"Mother, you must not remain awake with me at such an hour," chattered the girl.

"Dawn is very near, my child. I hear,—yes, listen,—I hear the first sparrow."

"Little friendly sparrow, how I thank you!" cried Yuki, aloud; then throwing herself into her mother's arms, she began to sob.

That afternoon, when Yuki stepped into the big double kuruma where Tetsujo was already seated, she had never, in spite of sleeplessness and bad dreams, looked more beautiful. Iriya, as her daughter had predicted, found on this last day many excellent reasons for staying at home.

The robing of Yuki had occupied several hours. First, the thick black hair must be done in the latest fashion. Happily this, ever changing, was for the moment in a style peculiarly becoming to her. A great wing stood out at each side, concealing all but the lower tips of the ears. A third division, puffed high above the forehead, completed a shining framework to the pale, spiritual face. Among the coils at the back, a strip of dull pink silk was interwoven,—a flesh-colored centre to a great orchid of jet. She wore a single hairpin, a filigree toy of gold and tinsel representing fireflies in a tiny cage. Her gray kimono of thin silk showed the pink undergarment. The delicate hue appeared in puffed and wadded edges also at throat, wrists, and around the hem. Cherry-flowers were dyed at intervals into the substance of the gray. The obi, that crowning glory of a Japanese woman's dress, was of blue gray satin, with embroidered fireflies of gold.

Even surly Tetsujo smiled as this fair vision stood upon the doorstone. Little Maru set the high lacquered clogs with pink velvet thongs in readiness. Iriya held out the long black adzuma-coat, while old Suzumè shook odors of incense and sandalwood from the crêpe folds of the head-kerchief called "dzukin."

"Sayonara danna san! (master!) Sayonara o jo san!" called the three women on their knees in the doorway.

"Sayonara, arigato gozaimasu!" (I thank you!) cried Yuki in return, waving a slender hand from the side of the jinrikisha. Tetsujo seemed not to hear.

The unusual proximity brought to the girl, and, as she justly surmised, to Tetsujo also, an unwholesome embarrassment. Each met the difficulty in a characteristic way,—Yuki by throwing her full interest into flashing street scenes about her; Tetsujo by a morose withdrawal into his feudal shell. Twice Yuki spoke concerning some sight that gave her pleasure. Her father's discouraging reply, in both cases, was a grunt. On the slope of Tabata he got out, shook himself like a great dog, and sent Yuki on in the jinrikisha until level land was reached. The girl thought sadly of another hill-ascent, so short a time before; of Tetsujo's kind, loving face as he mounted the slope of Kobinata, his hand on the arm of her little vehicle, his eyes free to her own. Now she was being carried by this same father before a judge, before a man who could help to rule his empire, and yet who, if her fears proved stable, now stooped to coerce a wilful girl.

The entrance gate and court of the Tabata villa had taken on, strangely, the look of its master. The gate was of unpolished cedar, studded with brass nails half a foot across, and barred with hinges that might have swung a hill. The massive panels now stood hospitably ajar. Above them leaned a single pine, red-stemmed and tall, of the indigenous Japanese variety. It, too, resembled Haganè. The house beyond was but little larger or more pretentious than that of Onda the kerai; but the variety of woods used in finishing bespoke both taste and great wealth. The roof, with its dark-blue scalloped tiling was edged at the rim with flattened discs of baked clay, and in the centre of each, in rough intaglio, curved the crest of the Haganè clan.

Sombre shoji opened, before the visitors had time to dismount. Just within, a superb suitatè, or single screen of gold, painted in snow-laden bamboo trees, shut out interior vistas. Yuki was conducted to a woman's apartment, where she could remove her wraps and examine her shining blue-black coiffure for a misplaced hair. Tetsujo strode to the guest-room. At sight of Prince Haganè seated, still alone, he gave a great sigh of relief. Haganè turned with a smile,—"You love not our foreign friends, good Tetsujo."

"I love them as our cat loves pickled plums, my liege."

Haganè laughed indulgently. "At least you can distinguish the men from the women,—be sure to give me the signal should one of the young males prove to be he who was with Yuki on the hatoba, and who so rudely forced an entrance to your premises."

"I shall not forget," said Tetsujo.

The wide room was unchanged but for an unusually elaborate flower-composition in the tokonoma (recess). A most valuable set of pictures, three in number, and all mounted alike on priceless brocade, filled the soft, gray tinted space beyond the flowers.

Yuki entered alone. Neither of the men had heard her soft stockinged step, nor her gentle pushing aside of a golden fusuma.

"Go kigen (august health), your Highness," she murmured, sinking where she stood and touching her forehead to the floor.

"Ah, it is Yuki-ko. Come nearer, child," said the host, kindly. As she moved toward him, his eyes rested with frank delight on the vision of her beauty. "You are now truly a maiden of Japan. That last image of you in Washington, if I remember rightly, was of a small brown wren of Paris."

"So at the time you observed, Augustness, and my spirit thereat was poisoned by deep shame."

"A thing so easily rectified can scarcely be a cause of shame," smiled Haganè. "You are now as truly Japanese as even your jealous father could desire. Will you kindly clap and serve us tea, small pigeon?"

Yuki obeyed instantly and in silence. She was glad to have some occupation for her hands, glad that her eyes had good excuse for drooping. In Prince Haganè's presence the old magnetism, the old troubled sense of his power, again possessed her. Compared with him, nothing else seemed real. He established new values for the spirit. One in the room with him needed no vision to certify his actual place. He dominated and charged the air around him. She felt his eyes as they rested on her slim white hands; she knew when that gaze was turned away.

Haganè, indeed, looked long at the girl. At times he appeared to study her with a gentle, speculative gravity. Of her beauty there had never been a doubt, and to-day she looked her best. Haganè's experience of women had been wide. Now he was saying to himself that this was the fairest maiden of the whole world. Her beauty filled the room like perfume. An old Chinese poet in singing of her would have called her "a flake of white jade held against a star." In the statesman's mind fragments of poetry flitted, similes of moon-light, of white blossoms newly opened in the dew, of hillside grasses in the wind, of a young spring willow with a nightingale in the branches. Poetry is as natural to all classes of Japanese as profanity to the average sailor. Haganè gained new delight in imagery. Should a foreigner be allowed to bear away the sweetness of this flower? No; Tetsujo was justified in his indignation. No foreigner should have her. She must marry some young nobleman of her own land; some honorable and brilliant youth with a future, and at least a hint of personal beauty to match her own. Haganè's mind ran rapidly through a list of eligible men. Objections rose at every point. One was of poor health, another lived a life of open immorality, a third possessed a mother of uncertain temper; Yuki-ko must not have her young life crushed by the tyranny of a shrewish mother-in-law. She should by right be married to a statesman, and be mistress at once of an official home. In this way would her beauty and foreign education be brought into immediate service. If he himself were a young man, what rapture to have that living thing, made up of dew and morning, entirely one's own! Haganè drew a single sharp breath and was calm.

On the gravelled walk of the entrance court came the sound of a carriage.

"His Excellency Mister Todd-u, Madame Todd-u, Mees Todd-u, Mister Douje, and Mister Le Beau," announced a servant in what he thought English.

Haganè went forward to meet them. "Welcome to my cottage. Are we all known, one to the other?"

"Yes, your Highness," answered Mr. Todd, "unless Mr. Le Beau here is the exception."

"Mister Le Beau," repeated Haganè, very distinctly. "I remember with much clearness the meeting with Mister Le Beau. In your admirable dwelling in the capital city of Washington that meeting took place. Yuki—Miss Onda—performed the introduction ceremony. I remember well."

"And I, your Highness," instantly answered Pierre, with a succession of the sprightly bows that had so incensed old Onda. "It is to be supposed that I should bear in memory so great an event; but I could not have dared to hope for so great a condescension from you."

Haganè replied by a smile and a nod. The latter might have served equally for the kerai who, well within the shadow of Mrs. Todd, made vehement signs of corroboration to his daimyo.

The host then asked of the party, "Shall I not order for you foreign chairs? We keep them in the storehouse for such occasions."

"Thank you kindly, Prince," answered Mrs. Todd for all; "we'll take the floor. In Rome we do as the Romans do." With a lunge the good lady disposed herself in the centre of the apartment, sitting, as it were, at her own feet. The others placed themselves near her, making roughly the outline of a horseshoe, Dodge being at one end, with Yuki beside him, and Prince Haganè at the other.

Gwendolen had with difficulty kept Pierre away from Yuki. "Remember," she had warned, "this may be a sort of Sherlock Holmes affair for making you two betray yourselves and each other. You can't be too careful. Old Haganè is a vibrating lodestone of uncanny intuition, and Onda a parental avalanche just ready to slide!"

In the effort to keep his hungry eyes from Yuki, Pierre began to explore the room. His attention was first caught by the arrangement of dwarf pine branches and brown cones, in combination with straggling sprays of a yellow orchid. Then he saw the three paintings beyond. "Saint Raphael! what are those?" he murmured under his breath, and made as if to rise from the floor. All turned to him; he sought only the eyes of his host. "Your Highness," he pleaded, his face vital with intelligence, "if not unpardonably rude, may I rise and examine more closely those marvellous paintings?"

Haganè reflected a hint of his brightness. "With greatest pleasure. They are, of course, hung to be seen. I am honored that they attract your notice."

Pierre rushed to the tokonoma, taking instinctively the attitudes of a self-forgetting connoisseur.

"Say, I can't stay out of this!" cried the minister, and crooked his long legs into the angles of a katydid in his efforts to rise. Following the two others, he reached the tokonoma, planting himself, feet wide apart, exactly in front.

Such pictures, painted in sets of three and mounted in single, flexible panels of rich brocade, were designed for hanging in the broad tokonoma of noblemen's houses, or in the living-rooms of priests. This set was in monochrome, on paper which had been stained by time to the color of old ivory. The central painting represented a famous Chinese poet sitting in meditation upon a misty mountain-ledge. The lateral ones were landscapes, one of winter snow, the other, summer fulness. Each illustrated a well-known verse of the poet.

"So this is Japanese art,—the real thing,—is it?" asked Mr. Todd of Pierre. "You must excuse me, Prince," he went on to his host, "Pierre is always reading and talking about the beauty of it, but I'll be gosh—I'll be shot, I mean,—if I can tell what it is about. Over in my own country, now, I can distinguish a tree from a vase of Johnny-jump-ups, and a farmyard from a nood female; but with these pictures, somehow, the harder I look the more I seem to be standing on my head."

"Cy, I am ashamed of you! I love Japanese art, your Highness, and so does my daughter!" expostulated Mrs. Todd, from the floor. "It is so nice, and thin, and cool. I always recommend Japanese pictures to my friends for their summer cottages, and I am hanging our Legation with them now. Dear Mrs. Y., of Washington,—you know the name, of course,—has the most gorgeous screen of gold-leaf, painted in wildflowers. When she has a big reception she always puts it upside down behind her sofa, because it has more flowers at the bottom than at the top,—and nobody ever notices the difference."

The young Frenchman's cheek flushed. He leaned more closely to the paintings, partly to hide his expression. Gwendolen exchanged horrified glances with Dodge, then the sense of fun in both triumphed. Pierre spoke next in low tones, so that none but Haganè could hear him. "I am only a beginner,—a student. There has been little published in foreign languages about your wonderful art, and European collections are rare. Am I wrong in thinking these to be something unusual? The lines of the three flow together like music, yet each is a separate composition. We have nothing like it!"

"They are masterpieces by Kano Motonobu," said Haganè.

"Mon Dieu!" breathed Pierre, and seemed as if he would devour with new scrutiny the marvellous visions.

The host's eyes remained fastened upon his enthusiastic guest. He watched every flicker of intelligence, of changing expression. Suddenly the young man turned, met the look, and smiled. It was like sunlight on a meadow when Pierre smiled. "Your Highness," he murmured, "a touch of art should make the whole world kin! Is it not so? Teach me something more of this new mystery of beauty,—be my friend!"

Haganè lowered his lids quickly, but in the downward sweep he caught a glimpse of Yuki's eager, upturned face. She had forgotten herself and her immediate companions. Her spirit had crept over to the strangely mated two who stood before the pictures.

"Monsieur honors me by offering such a privilege," said Haganè, in an expressionless tone. He bowed slightly. Pierre drew back, feeling unaccountably rebuffed. Why had the great man said "Monsieur"? Before that, the plain term "Mister" had been employed. Vanity, never very far from the citadel of Pierre's being, posited an explanation. "He calls you by the French title," said Vanity, "because he realizes that no Occidental of another country than France could show such appreciation." Pierre recalled the awful remarks of Todd, the deeper idiocy of his complacent lady. "Yes, that is it," said Pierre to Vanity.

Haganè had now re-seated himself. He was a few yards directly across from Dodge and Yuki. He studied furtively the countenance of Dodge. With this regard he was quickly satisfied. The American's clear brown eyes were as free from guile as those of a setter pup. He turned again to Pierre, who had now thrown himself, in a graceful attitude of lounging, beside fair Gwendolen. Gwendolen deflected the glance from her companion. Her merry hazel eyes dwelt with bright friendliness and an utter absence of awe upon the titled host. For the first time Haganè noticed her, looked directly at her, perceived in her something a little more than blown golden hair and girlish audacity. Something in her gaze gave him an impression of pliant boughs, elastic yet imperishable. This trained commander seldom failed to recognize the intangible, unmistakable flash of the thing we call, for a better name, character. Something in answer to it, a salute of his own brave spirit, rose to the deep eyes. A little thrill passed over Gwendolen. "Gracious!" she thought to herself. "That's no mere war-engine, that's a man, and a great one!" To cover her vague embarrassment she leaned to him, letting coquetry blot the real from her face, and pleaded, "Show us some more pictures, please, your Highness. I hear that you have storehouses crammed with them. Even I, in spite of what mother says, appreciate those in the tokonoma. Please!"

Haganè bowed unsmiling. The mere dainty allurements of a pretty girl seemed to him almost an affront, as if his old nurse should give him a kite to fly, or a top to spin. He fell into thought. After a moment's somewhat uncomfortable silence he said slowly, "There is one painting I should like to show this honorable group of friends; but first its strange history must be told, and I fear that I have not the fluent English."

"Oh, we simply must have the story! Your English is all right, Prince; I'll declare it is. Please tell us," cried Gwendolen the irrepressible, and she moved a few inches closer.

"Yes, your Highness, your English is wonderful. You don't make half the grammatical mistakes that I do now!" supplemented Mrs. Todd.

Haganè drew a slow glance around the semicircle, plunged his hands within his silken sleeves, and began to speak. His voice was very deep, and in some consonant sounds, of a slight harshness. The vowels were full, rich, and resonant. His speech held at command a certain strange, almost benumbing magnetism, a compelling response, such as one experiences in the after-vibrations of a great bell.

"Oh, I feel in my bones that it is going to be a ghost story, a real one," whispered Gwendolen, with a shiver of excitement.

Haganè did not notice the remark. Todd and Mr. Dodge sent her, in unison, a bright glance of appreciation.

"The painting for which I now attempt the speaking," said Haganè, "made, for centuries, the chief altarpiece of a certain old temple in Yamato. It was a very old temple,—yes, among the very first built in Nippon for Buddhist worship. One night, when the black sky was rent with storm, and lightning hurled out many terrible spears, one flash found that temple, burning it swiftly to a square of low red ashes. Everything burned; gold and brass and iron melted like wax—all but the picture; and three days after they found it still on red coals, glowing more fierce and red than they. Nothing was harmed in it except the brocaded edge, and that was soon replaced. This is the picture you shall see."

"Oh!" breathed Gwendolen.

"Afterward it was conveyed to a famous temple of Kioto; but the head priest, the Ajari, being of timid thought, refused to shelter it. By his order it was carried in secrecy to a much smaller temple, very distant, in the province of Konda, where is my father's home of birth."