"No!" said Pierre, fractiously. "Medicine no go! Kusuri, ikanai! Too much kusuri every day at hospital. Nurses all carry spoons in their belts. I don"t need more medicine, Yuki; only for you to kiss me. You haven"t kissed me all day!" He threw himself among the bright cushions and began tossing his head from side to side.
"I will kiss you when I get back," said Yuki. "Only promise to lie here very quietly until I can come, and many times I will kiss you."
Pierre raised himself on an elbow and looked dubious. "Kiss me before you start," he demanded. "You break promises, you know. And this morning you have such a droll fashion of going suddenly far away, and then starting back quickly, just like the end of a trombone that one is playing. You must be a witch, Yuki, to move so swiftly through the air.
Kiss me, or I shall not believe it is really you."
With a heart strained to the limit of endurance Yuki knelt beside him on the matted floor and pressed her ashen lips to the red coal of his mouth. Pierre, seizing her with superhuman strength, kissed her again and again, until the tortured woman felt that she must rend the air in clamor to some native G.o.d or demon who might save her. This pa.s.sion, branded on the soul of Prince Hagane"s wife, gained a new and terrible power of defilement. In a spasm of anguish she wrenched herself free, went backward from him, and seized the shoji"s edge to hold herself. "I will kiss you no more until you take the medicine," she said, with a steadiness that surprised them both.
He lurched forward, grasping at a swaying sleeve. She eluded him. "If you are not more controlled I will leave you altogether, and send police to take you back to Yokohama!" He grovelled at her feet and whimpered.
"I"ll be good. Don"t send me, Yuki. But if I lie quite still you"ll kiss me many, many times again when you return, won"t you?"
Yuki hesitated. He dragged himself half upright. "You shall. I"ll kill you! I"ll kill myself, here! You must kiss me. A wife always kisses her husband. Swear that you will kiss me!" The light of increased madness glared in his beautiful eyes.
"Yes, I"ll kiss you, I swear it," faltered the girl. Pierre laughed foolishly in his satisfaction. "Then I"ll lie still among your pillows, little wife. Old prince sha"n"t find us. Put us in boiling oil, that old prince. Don"t be gone too long, little wife."
Yuki hurried along the intricate paths toward the house. Dry sobs rose one after another slowly, coming relentlessly upward in her slender throat with a distention that grew to agony. "I must not stop to think, I cannot give up now," she panted. "O Kwannon Sama, what am I to do?"
This black hour, like some dark chemical, was turning the memory of all other grief to light. The one conscious thought which her mind hugged jealously was Pierre"s necessity for medicine. Fortunately, she knew a little of this, and kept a well-filled chest. His fever was terrific.
Human pity demanded that she first allay this raving torment of the blood before delivering him to cold officials, or even to Count Ronsard of the French Legation. Her thoughts and plans in this present bewilderment could get no further than the fever-draught now to be given the sick man. With shaking hands she prepared it, and then a second drink, a powerful sleeping-potion. She got back to him as noiselessly as she had come. Apparently no one had seen her. Pierre was now in actual fever-madness. He had thrown coat, waistcoat, and watch in various parts of the room. The cushions were strewn wide. A corner of one rested in hibachi ashes. In one of his hands he clasped tightly the half of a long ivory hairpin.
With the patience of a mother and the ingenuity of a wife she coaxed him, at length, into swallowing one of the draughts. He did not demand the promised kisses. He did not know her now, or, rather, the recognitions came in short flashes, like heat lightning. Sometimes he took her to be Gwendolen and accused her angrily of connivance with Hagane and the ambitious Onda family. Again he thought her the German head physician and raved of his wrongs. He pa.s.sed rapidly from one language to the other, essaying at times his broken j.a.panese. It was generally in English that he denounced his faithless sweetheart, and the epithets directed against her caused Yuki"s heart to sink with shame,--not for herself, but for him.
A longer interval of sanity came. He recognized his companion with piteous little cries and tears of joy. He believed that at last they were married, and prattled on of the long, happy future, of their little home in France, until Yuki, having come for the moment to the end of suffering"s capacity, listened with a dreary smile and dull ears.
The second draught, the sleeping-potion, was to be given in half an hour. Through that interminable time she waited, his head upon her aching knees, his fevered hands reaching ever for her face, her shoulder, until lethargy alone saved her from an answering insanity. The plan was half formed in her dull thoughts to administer this potion, then, when slumber overcame him, to close the shoji, and leave Pierre to sleep away the fiercest fever while she could think out a way of getting him from the garden. But for the political meeting, falling so strangely on this very day, the situation would have possessed no great peril. It would have been merely a sick man who, in delirium, had wandered unknowingly into Hagane"s garden. The servants might have found him; Ronsard have been telephoned for, and Prince Hagane himself asked what was best to do. This was what might have been; but here was the matter as it really lay. A Frenchman, and attache of the Legation,--ill or well no less a Frenchman--concealed in Hagane"s garden, sheltered and protected by Hagane"s young wife! Yuki gave a convulsive shudder. The sick man gasped, and clutched the air as if he thought himself falling from a height. Fate smiled a thin, hard smile down into Yuki"s eyes.
The girl did not resent Fate"s prophetic stare. Already she knew herself trapped. Her wild thoughts had run since the beginning of eternity in this same ring of fire. There was time for nothing. The one frail chance was that Pierre should sleep on through the meeting undiscovered.
Already twelve o"clock had come. From the high land near the samurai Onda"s home, a big bell boomed and quivered out over the city. The echoes stirred and shifted tranquil layers of the noon. Fear sank down like soot upon a crouching woman with the sick man on her knees.
Pierre, for some moments past, had gradually ceased the restless tossing of his head, and was forgetting to utter short, disjointed words. The fair hair, that had been so stiff and dry, clung now in moist locks about his temple. His delicate hands ceased twitching and picking at Yuki"s gown, and fell over limply on the floor. Caught loosely in the right hand lay the broken hairpin. To any j.a.panese, of any cla.s.s, this would be fatal evidence. Under her fairy-like touch he gave a start, clutched more firmly at the pin she was trying to take, and threw his hand upward above his heart. Again Fate smiled, and Yuki bowed her head.
Now a soft, regular breathing began. The healing sleep was on the sufferer. His face was growing young and gentle. Yuki stared down into it, tearless. Her heart, like some living ent.i.ty beaten and tortured too long, had lost the power of sensitive response. There was only a dull, incessant aching that was becoming, already, an acknowledged part of her.
He was safe. To-day"s crisis, at least of the devouring heat, was over.
He would awake refreshed and clear. As for her, everything had grown so vague and far-away she cared very little what might happen. The insensibility of reaction bore her outward on a warm tide. Danger lost its meaning, and grew but a shadow-play on life. A Frenchman in Hagane"s garden, and a crucial meeting to go on in the house! There was something piquant, fetching, in the idea. Yuki nodded above it and smiled. Oh, she was so tired, so tired of everything! A little malicious something was tapping, tapping, just at the base of her brain. The ache at her heart benumbed her. A desire, dull and insistent as the pain itself, crept to her, just to lie upon the matting near poor Pierre and rest. They belonged together, the weak ones. Chance and disappointment had thrown them about like toys. What had such as they to do with the G.o.d Hagane?
Yes, she had better fail once more, and it would be the last. Let the grave statesmen come and go, let Hagane seek her! She had nothing to do but the easiest of all things, just to do nothing, and all this benumbing misery would be at an end.
She wondered, still smiling, in what way Hagane would kill her. She fingered curiously the stops of a dozen fearful thoughts, and felt no fear. Had law permitted him to carry the two swords of his cla.s.s, the short one would deal a quick and merciful death. Since he was unarmed perhaps he would simply let one of the servants slay her, not caring to soil his hands with such feeble stains.
An influence was coming over her in rhythms, like tepid waves. A delicious lightness blew upon her brain. She gasped for insensibility as for music, dumb, perfumed music, drunk in by pores of the flesh. One small nerve of desire began to tingle. "Oh, let it go on," she cried to her soul; "have no interference! Let me pa.s.s into nothingness by this heavenly gliding!"
As from a great distance came footsteps and the sound of commonplace voices. Yuki moaned aloud, and crept an inch nearer her companion.
"She was seen last coming in this direction," said a speaker; "Ii, the gardener, saw her."
"She is not in the adzuma-ya! Can it be that our gracious lady has gone for repose to the tea-rooms?"
"Baka!" exclaimed the other whom she now recognized as Tora, the butler; "is not that great official residence sad enough and lonely, that the poor child seeks a more desolate place? I pity her."
"Luncheon becomes honorably cold upon the table," murmured the boy, showing compa.s.sion in his own way. "And foreign food when chilled, with the grease becoming as wax about the edges, is of all sights the most disgusting."
"Ara," sighed Tora, "she eats little enough even when the food is hot."
"Those many disgraceful things said of our lady in the newspapers,"--the younger servant was beginning, when Tora stopped him fiercely. "Gossip not of your betters, boy! You should not read such things. There are no truths in printed scandals. Come, not that way, she is not in the tea-rooms. I see a fresh disturbance of the gravel along this path."
To the listener"s intense relief they turned sharply to the left. Wide awake now with an intensity of sensitiveness that made every stirring leaf an enemy, the young wife crept outward from between two shoji, closing them with the extreme of care. In full sight, on the veranda, lay her little foreign handkerchief. No other woman on the place used lace-bordered handkerchiefs. Tora must have seen and recognized it, and, in an instant, perhaps, of protection, have led the boy aside. Yuki"s cheek burned. She dared not think Tora"s thoughts. This humiliation was a wound made with a weapon of poor metal, yet she could not, even then, refuse grat.i.tude for the delicate consideration.
As the two servants came again into the main part of the garden, their mistress walked quite leisurely a few yards before, stooping now and then to a flower, or gazing up with smiles to a blossoming cherry-branch.
"Luncheon is served, your Ladyship," said Tora, gravely, and bowed before her in the path.
"I will come immediately," returned Yuki. She did not meet his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
During the short, uncomfortable meal Tora stood like a painted stake behind his mistress"s chair. The "boy," attempting to supply the watchful efficiency his senior for once appeared to lack, kept his small eyes darting from her white face to the "dirty wax" at the edge of her plate, until Yuki thought she must deliver herself over to an attack of laughing hysterics. Tora poured and brought her wine unbidden. Again she resented his presumption, again felt a cowed sense of thanks for his solicitude.
Abandoning the table at the first possible moment, she went swiftly upstairs to her own chamber and rang for the maid. The simple morning robe of smooth silk must be changed for a more elaborate afternoon toilette. She selected a curdled gray craepe with tiny silver pine-leaves sprinkled through it. The under-robe was turquoise blue; her wide sash of blue-black satin brocaded in conventionalized silver pine-branches.
The transfer went on with breathless celerity, yet the hands of the mantel clock moved faster still. Ten minutes only lacked to the hour of the Rat. The sound of carriage-wheels crunching gravel rose from the drive below her. Yuki gave a restless motion of her entire body, and turned her face around to the maid, who now tied the great loop of the sash.
"Patience an instant longer, your Ladyship," smiled the maid. "Let me but girdle your ill.u.s.trious person with the obi-dome and I shall be done."
"Here is the obi-dome," cried Yuki, her voice betraying her impatience.
"I shall retain one clasp while you wind it around the sash." She took up from among the American toilet articles on her dresser the article desired, a flat, soft braid of silk with golden clasps. Yuki, as she had said, held one end against the front of her sash, while the maid dexterously threaded the high sash loop at the back, and brought the answering clasp to its mate. It clicked like an old-fashioned bracelet.
A servant knocked on the door. Yuki herself answered. With mingled relief and perturbation she read on the cards the names of Mrs. Todd and Miss Todd. It was an unfortunate time for their visit, yet now as always the thought of Gwendolen"s presence brought a little stir of excitement, a sweet glow of true happiness. During her flight downstairs Yuki formed the clearest resolution that had come to her in the distracting day. She would tell Gwendolen of Pierre"s presence. If help were possible, Gwendolen would find a way. The new hope brought a little glow to the face which greeted her American friends. A little talk on unimportant, pleasant matters would refresh and steady her. For a moment only did the bright illusion abide. Gwendolen and her mother bore, in common, an air of hesitating excitement.
"Oh, what is wrong now?" cried Yuki to them both.
"Well, you _are_ quick!" said Gwendolen; "have we become mere transparencies, or do your wits acquire a preternatural alertness in these big rooms? Yes, there is something wrong--not fatally so, only a menace."
"We felt it our duty, Yuki--" began Mrs. Todd, on her lowest register.
"Now, mother," Gwendolen interrupted, "you promised faithfully to let me tell Yuki in my own way. You sound as if you hooted from a cave. It isn"t anything horrid, darling!" This last speech was directly to the princess. "Don"t begin to fade away. It is simply that Pierre, who has been ill at the German hospital in Yokohama, escaped this morning, in delirium, and the authorities are after him."
"In delirium--raving in _delirium_--the poor tortured boy!" echoed Mrs.
Todd"s sepulchral tones.
"Oh, is that all?" breathed Yuki. Her face showed unmistakable relief.
Gwendolen stared at her, incredulous.
Mrs. Todd put up her lorgnette. "All! Did I understand you to say all?
Is it not enough? Have you known before to-day of his terrible illness?"
"No, indeed, I have not, dear Mrs. Todd. And by "all" I did not mean the heartlessness, as you think. I only meant--I meant--"