The Breath of the Gods Part 40

So, without further preparation or experience, was the little Lady Yuki, fresh from her American school, not yet completely readapted to her native environment, installed as mistress of a great, official mansion.

The servants, of course, were strangers. A few of these bore to Prince Hagane the relation of "hangers-on," impoverished families of soldiers and retainers left from feudal days. Others had official connection with the place, and remained unmolested through various administrations.

For the first twenty-four hours the young wife moved in an atmosphere of dazed unreality. Her first conscious interest was in the mail. She began to watch for letters from her mother, or Gwendolen,--perhaps from that one whom she must forget. The thought of their last interview remained with her as the cruelest of all her wounds. No letter came. Pierre would not, in any case, have written, believing that Hagane had given orders to have all letters pa.s.s first under his inspection. The silence of Iriya and Gwendolen had another cause. Her new and exalted rank necessitated from Yuki the initial step. She did not know this, and Hagane, plunged deep already into affairs of state, had not thought to tell her.

She lived now almost an isolated existence. Only the head butler dared personally address her. Even he, in requesting orders from "her Highness," bowed and smiled with a sort of deprecating commiseration, as though he recognized her bewilderment. Of her husband she saw little.

The longing for her mother and her friend grew poignant. Through the great high-ceiled rooms she wandered. The face of the great dark Buddha often loomed above her. From every shadow she shrank, fearing that Pierre Le Beau might be in hiding. Three miserable days dragged by. On the fourth, Hagane was present at the breakfast-table. News of a great victory had come. The Western world was just beginning to realize the true mettle in the j.a.panese soul. Hagane read aloud several editorials from English and American papers, and made comment upon them, as though his listener were a man, and his equal. He had ordered a foreign meal, and the coffee and excellent food stimulated the girl. Her husband's companions.h.i.+p and condescension exhilarated her. It was part of a brightening future that, even before their meal was over, the butler should announce, "Madame Onda, mother to her Highness."

Yuki gave a small cry of pleasure. Hagane lowered his paper, and paused to smile upon his young wife. He did not give a hint that it was through his direct agency that the visitor had come. "Ah, your eyes brighten at this news more even than at victory!" he laughed. To the servant he said briefly, "Conduct Madame Onda to us here."

The servant hesitated, "Your Highness, there is with her also an old attendant, a dame called Suzume, who--talks."

"Shall we bid the chatterer enter, Yuki?"

"If your Highness permit," laughed Yuki.

"Admit both," said Hagane, and returned to his editorials.

Yuki rose to welcome her guests. As the door was flung back Iriya hesitated for a moment on the threshold. Without a glance toward Yuki she hurried to the Prince, and, prostrating herself, bowed again and again, with audible, indrawn breaths. Suzume, at her heels, followed suit, excelling her mistress in the rapidity of repeated bows, and the power of audible suction.

"Nay, little mother of my Yuki," said Hagane, reaching down a hand, "rise now, I pray. Such extreme of deference is not seemly in the mother of a princess. Kindly be at ease in greeting your daughter, and converse as freely as if I were not present."

Iriya allowed herself to be persuaded to perch on the very rim of a leather chair and sip at a cup of coffee, while she and Yuki exchanged compliments and inquiries as to the health of the members of their respective families. This is always the first social duty in j.a.pan. It takes the place of "weather."

No notice whatever was being taken of old Suzume, who had continued genuflections and inspiration to the point of vertigo, when Yuki at last came to her a.s.sistance. Nothing would induce the old dame to sit on a foreign chair. "She had tried them once," she protested. "They felt like a pile of dead fish on a kitchen bench." Her post, self-a.s.signed, was the extreme corner of the red and green Axminster carpet. While her superiors conversed, she let her keen, sunken eyes dart like dragon-flies from one piece of furniture to the other, from ceiling to floor, from curtain to framed oil-painting, until the very texture of these things must have been photographed on her busy retina.

After a few pleasant if perfunctory questions and replies, Prince Hagane rose, saying that he had work in his private office, and afterward must leave the house. "I hope you will remain with Yuki just as long as your domestic duties permit," he had said last of all. Immediately upon his closing of the door, Iriya began congratulating her daughter upon her splendid fortune, and retailing congratulatory messages from relatives and old friends. The little lady's feet, as she sat on the high dining-room chair, did not quite reach to the floor. The draught on her bare ankles just above the tabi (digitated socks) sawed like ice. With a little gesture of entreaty to Yuki, she hurried over to a comfortable sofa, where she nestled, and drew her feet up under her. Yuki smiled at the navete of it. Already she felt years older than her mother. She took her place on a chair, drawing forward a tabouret with smoking outfit, and urged her willing guest to the luxury of a small pipe. A sense of freedom, of delight in this sweet companions.h.i.+p, swept for the moment Yuki's hovering responsibilities.

"Okkasan, dear Okkasan (honorable mother), I am so happy to be with you!

But why did you wait so long?" Her voice was rich with tender reproving.

"Three long days! Long as the castle moats when the mud is showing. The prince is in this house but seldom. I have been lonely, mother."

"Your father forbade me to write or visit you until official request was made us. Now you are a princess, dear, and far outrank Sir Onda's wife."

Yuki flushed. Her eyes sank in embarra.s.sment. "Oh, I had not heard of the strange fact. I beg your pardon, my mother. I am ashamed that it is so."

Iriya laughed. "Do you beg my pardon for being a princess, for making your father proud and happy, when--when--he was threatened by such disappointment?"

Now Iriya, too, became embarra.s.sed. She had intended not to refer to unhappy topics of the past. Yuki was thinking deeply. "It must be honorably the same cause which keeps my Gwendolen away." A great relief followed the thought. The fear of coldness, of censure, was gone. She smiled into the air before her, thinking of the letter she soon should write.

At first, unnoticed by her companions, old Suzume had risen from her corner and was trotting stealthily about the room. She touched now, softly, each marvellous object within her reach, and talked to herself, the while, in a queer little sing-song monologue. "Ma-a-a! the honorable, huge room, and the wonderful things, all belonging to our Yuki-ko! Foreign carpets with many-colored vegetables painted on them.

Strange, puffy beds, high up on legs, like horses (here she patted a French sofa). High tables,--Ma-a-a! with little carpets on them, too, all ravelled at the edges. Big gla.s.s wine-cups (here she lifted an iridescent flower-vase)--merciful Buddha! No wonder the august foreigners are so often drunk! Gold is all about, on walls and furniture,--even the pictures have little fences of gold around them! I see a big singing-box (piano) over in the corner. That alone costs hundreds and hundreds of yen. How rich our o jo san must be!"

Iriya and Yuki, by this time, had begun to notice the antics and to smile at the crooning of the old woman. She saw it,--nothing escaped the arrow of those jetty orbs,--but it pleased her now to pretend unconsciousness of observation. She placed herself in front of Yuki, as if the young wife were a large dressed doll, and could not listen.

"Ma-a-a! Our o jo san, last of the Onda race. There she sits, straight and slim in her foreign chair, just like our Gracious Empress herself when her photograph is taken! Now she is a princess, but once she was only a little girl, carried to school on old Suzume's bent back.

Tee-hee! My back is crooked now as Daruma,--but a princess helped to crook it!"

"Don't say such things, Suzume!" cried Yuki, quickly. "They hurt me!"

"Why should it hurt you, Yuki-ko,--I mean, your Highness, when old Suzume is only proud?" chuckled the beldame, with almost malicious enjoyment. "Let me be crooked, by your favor. Let me hump over like the lobster of long life. A princess curved my back, tee-hee! Ma-a-a! Will your kind eyes moisten for such a thing? Ara! I have ceased. Behold me now, your Highness,--straight and slim as a young willow down by the moat." She threw back her shoulders and swaggered comically.

"That is better. How is it that little Maru did not come to-day?" asked Yuki, determined, if possible, to change the current of the old soul's thought. Her effort was strikingly successful. Simultaneously Suzume's face and hands fell. "Ma-a-a! I am a fool. Moths have eaten my memory!

Maru crouches yet outside the street gate, waiting for permission to enter."

"And I, too, forgot. Kwannon, forgive my selfishness," murmured Iriya.

"Oh, poor, poor Maru!" cried the hostess, her face a bright tangle, now, of smiles and tears, "the cold wind blows down that street. Go quickly, Suzume. Fetch her, instantly!"

The spoiled old servant cast a cunning eye to an electric bell set in its black wood disc. "August Princess," she whined, "deign but to put your smallest finger upon that white pebble yonder, and at once a fine man-servant will enter. Maru will be much comforted to receive her summons from a grand _man_-servant in foreign clothes!"

Iriya's face showed vexation at the old servant's forwardness, but Yuki laughed and touched the bell. She was beginning to realize, in a sort of glad wonder, that her heart grew lighter with every smile.

Maru came into the room sidewise. At every few steps her knees apparently gave way. She did not know, in a foreign house, just when she was expected to kneel and bow, so kept herself in readiness to drop at an instant's notice. Her face was round, like a dish. Her beady eyes snapped and sparkled with excitement. The small b.u.t.ton of a nose, blown on by unfriendly winds, glowed in the centre of her countenance like an over-ripe cherry. At sight of Yuki, she found her cue and grovelled.

"How is it?" asked Yuki of her mother, when Maru was at last persuaded to hold her head erect, "that, I not having yet written, you and the servants came to me?"

"Why, did you not know of it? Prince Hagane sent, last night, a special messenger."

"No, I had not heard. Prince Hagane is very kind."

At the curious tone Iriya sent a keen look to her daughter. She did not like the expression gathering on the down-bent face. "Come, my jewel, you have not shown us half the wonders of your new home. Shall not Suzume and Maru be given bliss? We can stay but an hour."

"An hour!" echoed the young wife, in dismay. "That is already half spent. Oh, mother, one hour?"

"Such are your father's orders. You know we do not disobey him."

Yuki sighed. "I know. Well, let us see all that we can in the short s.p.a.ce. This room is but the dining-room, where, as you have seen, we eat foreign meals. There is a j.a.panese wing and smaller dining-room, which I shall often use when my master is absent. Now let us go into the long hall, then into the zas.h.i.+ki, or drawing-room." In pa.s.sing the hall-way she saw Maru's eyes fasten on the telephone box. It had, indeed, an unrelated, black look, set so squarely against the flowered wall-paper.

Yuki felt the tug on an inspiration. "Come, mother; I shall not need to write to my friend. I shall talk to her through this! Like the old sennin (genii), who whispered to each other from peak to crag of far mountains, I shall talk clearly to the slope of Azabu!"

Iriya caught her sleeve. "I fear for you to talk in that strange way, my child. The G.o.ds may not like it."

"Ah, mother, in America I have talked for hours and was not injured."

"Our G.o.ds were not in America to see," murmured Iriya, and followed with evident reluctance. Suzume and Maru came close behind. Yuki boldly pulled down the receiver and held it to her ear. The servants uttered short squeaks like mice.

"Mos.h.i.+, mos.h.i.+!" called Yuki, giving the j.a.panese telephone cry.

Maru shuddered. "Is it a deaf devil, that the o jo san speaks so loudly?"

"A whole nest of devils, Maru San," said Yuki, with mischievous and impressive gravity. "There are green and red devils like those that the lightning bolts bring down, and little foreign devils in boots and beards, and--"

"Oh, let us go! let us go!" cried the little maid, and clutched Suzume's sleeve.

"America no K[=o]s.h.i.+kwan," Yuki was replying, in apparent unconcern, to the devils. Suzume had realized the situation. "Fool!" she said to the cringing Maru, giving a scowl and a light cuff on the ear, "the princess is only telegraphing in talk instead of writing. The house-servants laugh at you. We shall have no face!"

By this time the imperilled princess was talking rapidly in English. Her countenance quivered, brightened, changed, as if a person stood before her. In pause of listening she would nod, smile, listen again, giving murmured e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

The verisimilitude proved too much for Maru. In spite of cuffs fiercely renewed, and a desperate effort to keep her limp body from the floor, she sank from her mentor's grasp, clutching the thin old legs, and sobbing, "They are bewitching our Miss Yuki,--I know they are! Foxes are shut in that black box! She will get full of them, and then they will all fly out to eat our hearts!"