She performed the introduction well, speaking in English without a tremor of the low voice.
"Ah," said Hagane, 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 antic.i.p.ate 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. Hagane had never been antagonistic to foreigners, and she knew that, in j.a.pan, 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 Hagane his friend, the old G.o.ds 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
Hagane"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 pa.s.sage, 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 s.e.x 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 j.a.panese commissary department has been trotting beside him through Asia, Europe, Boston, and New York? Set him before a mess of caviare, lobster a 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 Hagane"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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese, her dark eyes slowly turning to stars, her pale cheeks kindling into rosy fire. All of the company centred about Hagane, 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. Hagane, 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 st.u.r.dier 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, j.a.pan.""
"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!"