The Breath of the Gods Part 30

"I am at your service for everything else," he said steadily.

No other word was spoken until they reached the foot of Kobinata Hill, where the betto, springing lightly to earth, preceded the galloping horses up the slope.

"You know," said Dodge, slowly, "this may mean to me giving up every hope of happiness. And it's such a nasty little cause,--like having one's eye put out by a spitball."

"Yet you prefer it to retracting one rude, silly thought!"

"For G.o.d's sake!" cried the badgered youth, "how can a man retract what he still thinks? Do you want me to lie, and say I don't think a thing when I do think it."

"Yes," said Gwendolen, with a strange glint in her face. "Lie! Say that you do not think it. I shall be satisfied with that."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I do!" said Dodge. "I'll lie to please myself, but I won't lie at the bidding of another,--not even you! Shall I stop the carriage and get out?"

Gwendolen, with a little choking sound in her throat, turned away. Her gesture seemed an a.s.sent. Miserably the young man realized that he was bound by Mr. Todd to remain with her, and overhear the conversation that might ensue. In a moment more he helped her from the carriage in silence, allowing her to precede him to the Onda gate, and up the garden stones to the door.

Old Suzume answered the knock. She parted the entrance shoji very craftily, one bent eye to the crack. Her left cheek could not have been two inches from the floor. This gave an uncanny look, as if a severed head, or one of those long gourd-necked ghosts of j.a.panese mountains, had appeared to receive them.

Gwendolen said, "Oh!" and retreated. Dodge stepped forward boldly, and put one gloved hand into the crack. The old dame s.h.i.+vered at this, and seemed to cower for a spring. A swift, soft rush of feet came through the house, and Yuki, flinging both doors wide, sent a crooked smile toward them.

"Come quickly," she panted; "I pray you wait not to remove the shoes. My father is absent. I have prayed for Gwendolen; there is great thing to be said."

Dodge shut his teeth together. He was to be needed. Without a look for him, Gwendolen, obeying Yuki's injunction as to shoes, sprang up the one stone doorstep and followed Yuki along a dim corridor. Dodge, more deliberately, motioned Suzume to remove his shoes, standing first on one foot, then on the other, and balancing himself by the aid of a shoji frame. The untying of shoestrings was a difficult task for excited old fingers. Her beady eyes darted incessantly back into the house.

"No harm can be done. I am from the American Legation, and was sent to accompany Miss Todd," said he, in j.a.panese, pitying the old dame's nervousness.

"Hai! hai! Sayo de gozaimasuka?" mumbled she, greatly relieved. She loved and was proud of Yuki; she adored her mistress; but there was a single voice in that house, and it belonged to Tetsujo.

Dodge went alone into the house, guiding himself by the voices. They had reached the guest-room. All fusuma and shoji had been closed. Without knocking Dodge pushed aside a silver panel painted with birds. At the same moment Iriya entered by the opposite wall of the room, a mere white ghost of propriety.

Yuki, almost in Gwendolen's arms, was pouring out rapid, disjointed, incorrect phrases of English,--sometimes with a whole sentence in her own tongue,--so that the listener could catch the meaning only in fragments.

Dodge, after a bow to Mrs. Onda, walked straight to Yuki, took a seat near her, and by his quiet eyes compelled her attention. He began to speak in slow, deliberate j.a.panese that the mother also might understand. Whether interpreting through his careful p.r.o.nouncing or divining from his emphasis, Gwendolen, too, seemed to follow him.

"In allowing Miss Todd to call this morning, Miss Onda, her father, Minister Todd, has commissioned me to say to you--"

"Don't you believe him!" cried Gwendolen, flinging herself bodily before Yuki. She turned flas.h.i.+ng eyes upon the speaker. "The poor child has enough to bear already, without your giving more!"

"I must deliver your father's message, Miss Todd. And I shall do so, though I have to wait until Miss Onda's father comes."

At sound of that dreaded name Gwendolen's courage for the moment fell.

Dodge quietly resumed, in j.a.panese, "While Mr. and Mrs. Todd have only the most affectionate feelings toward Miss Onda, they beg to recall the very delicate international questions raised by the present war. America being neutral--er--Miss Todd's official position--"

"Miss Todd's official fiddlestrings," interrupted Gwendolen. "There, Yuki! He's through! That's all he had to say! Now can't we go into your bedroom, or out to the garden, and finish our conversation in peace?"

"Gwendolen, dear,--no!" said Yuki, pressing her hand. "It is most terribly serious time with all. I am glad to have Mr. Dodge here; he will not prevent any help,--he will give it. I must now relate, Mr.

Dodge," she went on, very brave and self-possessed, "the new, strange circ.u.mstance--" Suddenly she flushed the color of a peony, dropped her face in her hands, and murmured to Gwendolen, "Yes, you must say it, Gwendolen. It is such immodest things for j.a.panese girl to speak! You tell him."

"I'm not sure that I understand very clearly myself," said Gwendolen, with a puzzled frown.

Iriya stared on, white, motionless, unsmiling.

"As far as I can make the trouble out," said Gwendolen, flinging her words to Dodge, rather than speaking them, "Prince Hagane backs Yuki's father, utterly, against Pierre. They won't consider the possibility of her ever marrying him. Worst of all, while her heart is sore with this, they are trying to force her into marriage with some rich old man,--some influential relative, I believe, of Hagane. Isn't he a relative, Yuki?"

"No-o! He is not the relative," said Yuki, from behind sheltering hands.

"It is himself--he--the Prince Hagane!"

"Prince Hagane! Prince Sanetomo Hagane?" cried Dodge, in incredulous surprise. "Good Lord! Why, he's the biggest man in this kingdom, next to the Emperor and the Crown Prince! Has--has he made your father a formal offer of marriage for you, Miss Yuki?"

Yuki nodded "Yes."

"The old sport! So this has been his game," muttered Gwendolen to herself.

At the full name of Hagane, a wintry smile of pride had flashed into Iriya's set face.

"Whe-e-ew!" whistled Dodge, again. He could not get this wonder fixed.

"I see now why your family is wound up like a spring, Miss Yuki. It's a superlative opportunity for you!"

Gwendolen sat so still that first Yuki, then Dodge, stared at her.

"What is it you think I can do with Pierre for you, Yuki?" asked the American girl, in a voice as strange as her silence.

Yuki was slightly disconcerted. "Only, dear, that I want to be sure the truth is known to Mr. Le Beau. I would have more peace to feel that he knows correctly. And he then will understand why I cannot write to him, or see him, or answer when he sings the song of Carmen I told you."

"You intend then to hold to Pierre, and throw over Prince Hagane, no matter what the consequences?" asked Gwendolen, curiously.

"I know not about 'throw over.' It sounds a disrespectful word to so great a man. But I am bound to Pierre, as you know, by the promise."

Again her face flushed.

"I'll wager your father does not consider that promise binding," put in Dodge.

"No, not my father, and not Prince Hagane," said Yuki, simply. "But then, you know, they is not me!"

"I--er--presume not," answered he, absently.

Now that the conversation was all in English, the pale effigy of Iriya did not even turn its eyes from one face to the other. It was her duty to her husband to be present, and so she remained.

"Miss Yuki!" flashed out the young man, with new animation. "You haven't asked my advice, and you may not desire it. But let me say one thing. It seems awful to me,--even though I am an American, and can't know all the fine points of j.a.panese feeling,--to throw over a chance like this for a Frenchman! Is he worth it--?"

"How would it seem if you were in the place of Pierre Le Beau?" cried Gwendolen, angrily, before Yuki could speak.

The j.a.panese girl evidently was glad of the question. "Yes, yes!" she repeated. "How would you be?" She hung on his answer.

The young man's eyes were cool, his voice crisp and convincing, as he said slowly, "In the first place, I could not imagine myself having forced any binding promise from a girl so far from her home and friends.

I might have let her see I loved her,--a fellow can't always help that; but I wouldn't have tied her up in her own words until she had the backing of her own people."

Gwendolen was all ready with a scornful word, but Yuki's small ice-cold hand upon her wrist restrained her. Yuki was leaning toward the young man, an eager gleam in her eyes. "Mr. Dodge, what was it that you meant by the su-per-lative opportunity--?"

"I seem to be turned into a sort of Information Bureau on other people's morals to-day," smiled Dodge. "But this is an easy one. I meant just what a j.a.panese would mean,--a rousing good chance for patriotism. Isn't that what you thought?"