All has gone well, and I am to be married to-morrow. Kotmasu is to be best man, and for this purpose he has hunted out from the depths of his disused steamer-trunk an antiquated suit of Bond Street “morning attire,” a relic of his stay in London; which, if less modern, is more correct than the creations of Kinew, the Anglo-Japanese tailor near the quay, who has a tendency, so I am told, to make his coats short in the waist.

Mousmé’s mother is delighted—a state of mind perhaps not altogether unconnected with various handsome presents which faithful Kotmasu, who should be a member of the corps diplomatique, na?vely suggested my making her.

The marriage can be very easily contracted;[66] and Kotmasu, who still seems to have little or no faith in my constancy, has assured me, over and over again, that if, after all, I should change my mind about taking Mousmé with me back to England, a few more handsome presents to Mousmé’s mother, and the gift of a couple of hundred yen, with a handsome dress or two, to Mousmé herself, will simplify matters.

But I am vain enough to think that this is not so; and that the gleams of Western ideas which I have detected in Mousmé’s conversations, picked up doubtless at the school, may cause liking to ripen into a lasting affection on her side, and be the forerunners of greater breadth of mind. There is a great deal of complexity about relationship in Japan, and I had long ago ceased to be surprised at anything in this way; but I received a mild shock on my wedding day when I discovered to what[67] innumerable families—to say nothing of individuals—I had allied myself. In fact, I somewhat ruefully thought that I must be brother-in-law, son-in-law or grandson-in-law to half the Japanese population of Nagasaki.

The marriage company was a study—if I had been in the humour to make one—of all sorts and conditions of men, women, children and babies, all gathered together to do honour to the marriage of their kinswoman, Miss Hyacinth, with “the most honourable English sir.”

Mousmé’s mother was resplendent in one of my “handsome presents,” and her compliments were interminable. She advanced smilingly to meet me, and remained in the same condition throughout the whole proceedings. I felt almost as nervous as I should have been expected to be had I contracted an aristocratic alliance in England, culminating in a smart wedding.[68] I have very little recollection of the details of a day, or rather part of a day, which seemed to resolve itself into a series of oft-repeated salutations and endless congratulations, refreshments, smoke and discreetly repressed excitement.

At length it was over.

I had plucked my Hyacinth, and was free to lead her away to my home.

Mousmé in all her bridal finery of flowered satin gown, and obi of plum-coloured silk; Mousmé with the shy face, and pretty ways which might or might not be artificial.

I was to discover all this, perhaps, and many other things.

The legal formalities had been all previously arranged with the assistance of my excellent Kotmasu, who is a person of some importance, and of weight with the officials who attend to such matters.

There is really such a very little to do;[69] so few things for Mousmé to transport to her new home; nearly all could be easily packed in a large Gladstone if she possessed such a thing. As it is, her belongings are brought up the hill to my house in an elaborately decorated lacquer box, by a big little brother with a bullet-head, nice eyes, and a great liking for teriyaki (plums in sugar coats). This box is a fit ornament for the boudoir of a princess, I think, as the youngster puts it down in a corner with a sigh, produced by aching arms.

I smile and fancy how Lou would laugh at a trousseau contained in a lacquer box measuring about 20 inches by 12 inches by 10 inches!—remembering that hers, which was described at portentous length and with unblushing detail in the columns of the Queen and Lady’s Pictorial, must have occupied little short of six large Saratoga trunks. But what matter? This style of thing is a mere flaunting of wealth by[70] Dives before the aching eyes of Lazarus. Even the wealthiest can only wear one dress at a time, and Mousmé can do this, and with far more grace than some of the salt of society.

As for Mousmé, she seems quite at home. She soon unpacks her tiny box; and, noticing that things connected with my toilet, such as my razors, hair-brushes, comb, and tin of shaving soap, are arranged near the window on an improvised dressing-table which was (when I first took the house) in reality an idol stand, she arranges hers there too. How queer they look, to be sure!

Alongside my shaving soap now stands a tiny lacquer pot with a jade lid, on which is carved a wonderfully pretty group of storks, containing the rouge which gives a delicate sunset flush to her cheeks. She puts a little on at once, right in front of me, as naturally as another woman might[71] wash her hands, probably because she feels she must do something before a glass which is, as she puts it, “so big and great and bright,” compared to those to which she has been accustomed. Then there is a little pot—also with a jade lid—containing a white face preparation, the use of which I shall at once inhibit; this she puts close beside the other by the force of association of ideas. The tiny brushes, with backs of tortoise-shell, the combs of the same, the hairpins with big eccentric knobs, are all placed near my gigantic brushes.

Then her few garments are taken from the box and hung—also like mine—on pegs which I have had put up on the wall near my mattress-like bed.

Mousmé is satisfied with her work, exclaiming, “Velly good ting that!” in the monotonous voice of a person speaking an unaccustomed tongue, and we are ready for our first meal.

[72]

She is pleased with herself, with me, with her new home, with everything. And after our dinner, during which she has chattered in most diverting English, learned at school from an “English teacher,” anxious to please me, whom she still, I fear, looks upon as her owner, she proposes to sing.

What queer English it was!—often almost unrecognizable from mispronunciation. She still calls me “Mister,” and almost makes me choke with smothered laughter each time.

Fully twenty minutes are occupied in attempts to master the appalling intricacies of “Cyril”—my name. The nearest approach as yet is “Cy-reel,” which must do for the present, with lapses into “Mister” when she forgets.

Whilst I smoke, Mousmé sings songs in a soft little tone, to the accompaniment of her long-necked samisen.

[73]

She has a rather pretty voice, and more idea of expression than any other Japanese singer I have heard.

Night comes at last, and after a long look down from the verandah at the hundreds of lights gleaming far below, we go to rest upon the mattresses which Oka’s wife has unrolled ready for us upon the floor; Mousmé with her head fixed into the groove of a block of mahogany, which serves her as a pillow, and preserves her wonderful erection of hair intact.

We are under a huge mosquito-net, of course—one of steel-blue gauze. When I first came I used to detest the confinement, and tried to do without it. But mosquitos are invincible, humanity frail, and the epidermis easily punctured. I returned to the protection of what I laughingly got to call “my meat-safe,” after the second night.

Outside our tent-like mosquito-curtain[74] we hear the angry buzzing of the foe; whilst big, heavy-winged moths every now and again come with a tiny thud against the enshrouding gauze, to dart away again towards the small, glowworm-like flame of the pendent lamp, which for no particular reason I always keep alight throughout the night.

When I awake next morning with the sunlight streaming in through one of the shutters, which the warmth of the previous night induced me to leave open, Mousmé is sleeping still, sleeping as peacefully as a child, her face wreathed in the smile of a happy dream, and her head still resting upon her little wooden pillow.

I creep out from beneath the environing curtain without disturbing her, after carefully reconnoitring lest one of the enemy should gain entrance.

I blow out the tiny flame of the lamp, which looks so horribly yellow and sickly[75] in the daylight, put on my flannels, and go out into the garden.

I am going to get some flowers for Mousmé when she awakes. I cross one of the tiny bridges—spanning an equally tiny streamlet—which seem made only in children’s size, and which creak complainingly beneath my tread, and make my way to the thicket of roses in which my soul delights. A big frog contemplates me with an offensively open stare for an instant, from the edge of the basin of the plashing fountain, before diving with outstretched hind-legs beneath the shining surface. The red-gold noses of the fish, which are poked just above the water as they nibble at the edges of the lily leaves, disappear instantly the surface is ruffled.

I gather a huge bunch of damask-petalled tea-roses, heavy with perfume, and smelling as attar never smells. As I go along the walk with the mossy edge, in[76] which lizards and strangely beautiful beetles play hide-and-seek in the sun, in search of some gardenias, the stanzas of a native poet stray through my mind, commencing:
“The dew shines on the lily; and the rose opens her crimson heart to greet the rising sun.”

I soon have my sprigs of gardenias mingled with the roses, and I return to the house, hoping to lay my offering by Mousmé’s side ere she awakes.

I enter the strangely bare bedroom, with its gray panels and vermilion storks, from the verandah. A queer old idol, belonging to the former owner of the house, grins—there is no other word for an accurate description—benign approval from its pedestal in the corner. I had retained it because it filled a niche; because I have rather a penchant for curios; and lastly, because, as an irrepressible midshipman nephew once put it, “It’s the jolliest-looking[77] old idol I’ve ever seen—a combination of J. L. Toole and Madame Blavatsky.”

Mousmé is still asleep when I enter, but the creaky floor awakes her ere I have half crossed it. She rubs her eyes in a somewhat bewildered fashion, and then with a smile promptly buries her little retroussé nose in the posy I have brought.

Then she rises from the mattress-like bed, a blue linen gowned little figure with tiny bare feet, and nails on them like rose leaves, and trots across the matting floor to a position in front of our improvised dressing-table.

She peers into the glass anxiously to see whether her slumbers have disturbed her hair, touches the thick, neatly-arranged plaits with deft fingers on either side of her smiling face, and then laughs at my amusement.

Mousmé’s toilet is a very simple matter. She has few garments to put on, no hair to[78] do, or rather no hair which wants doing, her elaborate coiffure being a permanent erection for some considerable time. She tells me that it took “nearly a large day to do it,” and I quite believe her; it is such a wonderful erection.

All is so delightfully simple. She puts on her little patches of rouge—with a less reckless hand, in deference to my opinions on the subject—in a trice, puffs some white powder upon her cheeks and charmingly impudent nose, reddens her lips with the certitude of a practised hand, slips into her gown of flowered silk, and with a pretty little pleading moue entreats me to tie the enormous bow of her brilliantly coloured obi; and hey, presto! as the conjurer says, almost in less time than it takes a Western woman to put on her bonnet, Mousmé’s toilet is complete, and she is ready for our make-believe playing at breakfast.

She eats her sugared plums with dainty[79] grace, and drinks an astonishing number of cups of pale amber-coloured tea; but then the cups are so small that her doing so provokes little wonder in my mind. She has, perhaps, a misgiving that she has eaten more than I can afford, although I overheard my mother-in-law telling her that I was a very rich man; for she says, interrogatively, “I eat too great velly much? Not eat so again?”

I smilingly assure her that she is to eat as much as she can, and she laughs and gets up to attend to the flowers on the verandah, and place fresh blossoms in the blue china bowls which stand on eccentric perches on the walls, in the corners of the room, on a bamboo and lacquer cabinet, and on my English-pattern knee-hole writing-table in the window.

Mousmé has deft fingers and good taste, and the flowers seem to arrange themselves in negligently artistic masses beneath her touch.

[80]

She makes an exquisite picture as she flutters about in the bright sunshine of this white, airy room, in her dress of rich, gay colours.

I sit still, and desist from my mail letter to watch her. And as I do so, I become aware that a journalist who “did” Japan may be forgiven much for one true, picturesque phrase, “Japanese women are butterflies—with hearts.”

The cicalas chirp unceasingly, making a natural orchestral accompaniment to her movements—the chirping cicalas, which seem to rest neither day nor night.

The only bowl still unfilled with flowers is that on the table at which I am sitting. Perhaps she is still too shy of me to touch it. A thought has evidently flitted through her pretty head, for she goes out on to the balcony, and a minute later I see her slender, quaint little figure going down one of the sunlit garden-walks, evidently[81] in search of something. A lizard scuttles away across the path at her approach, to cower amongst the moss and tea-roses; and as she turns the corner towards the gold-fish pond, I catch a last glimpse of the huge, brilliant bow of her obi which I laboriously tied an hour or so before.

It is very pleasant to have my pretty little mousmé flitting about my home and garden. I wonder somewhat vaguely why her absence has never struck me before. Love apparently is one of those flavours of life which one misses least when one has not enjoyed its piquancy.

I take up the thread of my letter to Lou again. It is a thousand pities, I think as I do so, that I cannot present Mousmé to her some such bright morning as this, and in Japan. The rarest gem is best seen in its proper setting. How surprised Lou will be! She is large and fresh-coloured.[82] There is sure to be an explosion. How well I know the sort of thing which is certain to occur! Her handsome face will redden, and the letter will be tossed across to Bob with a sharp, “How ridiculous of him! He really should think of us a little. I only hope he won’t bring the woman here. Fancy a Japanese sister-in-law! Why, Bob, you’re laughing! It’s no laughing matter, I can assure you. A yellow-faced, painted scrap of a woman. There——” I can hear her in imagination saying all this, and in my mind’s eye see her expression. Ah! Lou, I also remember that all your roses are not of Dame Nature’s giving, and that others—malicious, no doubt—have remarked upon the fact.

I hear the patter of feet coming up the verandah steps. It is Mousmé returning. Ah! Mousmé, you and I will conquer London together! You with your dainty[83] grace and piquante face, I with my wealth, as you esteem it, and family name.

Her hands are so full of flowers that she has to push aside the panel with one knee ere she can enter.

She comes across to my table and places the blossoms in the empty bowl of bronze.

By a stroke of genius in coquetry the flowers are hyacinths![84]

When she has finished their arrangement, she says smilingly, her lips parted, and twin rows of white pearls showing between them:

“They are me. You never forget me when you see them!”

“No! Mousmé, I never shall.”