It is clear to me from Kotmasu’s talk, glances, and conduct in general, that he has not yet got to consider Mousmé in the light of the mistress of the house. I am also sure that he even yet cannot understand that my marriage with her is anything more serious than a passing freak, a fancy of the hour.

He is very familiar with her, and she with him—they have known each other so long—chatting together quite freely. I am not jealous, surely; but I suddenly discover that it is time to go out. Kotmasu at once agrees that it is, and Mousmé seems delighted.

Where shall we go?

That is the all-important question, which is not easily settled.

[104]

Mousmé inclines to paying her mother a visit; Kotmasu to visiting a little play-house down below in Nagasaki, where some new geishas from Yeddo are to make their début.

I am not so fond of my mother-in-law as I should be, nor of my perplexingly numerous sisters and brothers-in-law, both small and great. The former I suspect of rapacity, an insatiable appetite for “handsome presents,” which, if not always very costly in European eyes, are certainly numerous, and range from rouge fin (imported from Paris) and blanc perle to gay-hued obis and handsome hairpins of tortoise-shell, or of bronze with carved jade heads.

Fancy supplying one’s mother-in-law with rouge! But it was Kotmasu’s doing. He was evidently in her confidence; for he said one day, just as my marriage arrangements were nearing completion:

“You give Madame Choto some rouge.[105] The woman very fond of it. You make her like you.”

This being what I wished her to do, I did as friend Kotmasu desired, expending three yen (12s.) upon a box at Yan’s, the best druggist in Nagasaki, and paying at least four times its original price. The only satisfaction I have is the knowledge that my mother-in-law’s complexion is of the best!

Mousmé clearly is to-night all for going down to Madame Choto’s, but I have one trump card to play against that. I am destined to find it in the future—as in the past—of great service. I have merely to say, “Let us go and look at the shops.”

“Yes, yes,” answers Mousmé with alacrity, clapping her small hands.

And so it is settled.

The recollection of Madame Choto and the little brothers and sisters she was half a minute ago so bent on visiting, speedily fades from her mind.

[106]

Kotmasu agrees readily enough, no doubt thinking that there is still a chance of our dropping in, later on, at the Willow Tree Theatre, to see the famous geishas from Yeddo.

To get down into the town at night is a matter of some difficulty, the path being so rough and unlighted. Of course, we carry lanterns—nearly every one does at night—and one constantly meets processions of families or friends, out either for a walk or on their way to some place of amusement, all carrying paper lanterns of various colours, and giving a pretty, fantastic effect to the dark roads and narrow streets of the town.

It is far more interesting to go down into the older quarter of the town, the true Japanese, if so I may call it—the native quarter unalloyed by European customs and commerce.

Mousmé leaves us for an instant to look[107] out three paper lanterns with their slender, quivering carrying-sticks of bamboo. She at any rate is all eagerness to be off, visions of possible purchases for her personal adornment doubtless flitting through her mind.

It is nicer out under the verandah; the dry wood roof, in which the cicalas live a chirping existence, seems to be giving out the heat with which a thorough sun-baking has stored it during the day.

Kotmasu and I step out on to the balcony to await Mousmé’s coming with the lanterns.

There is no moon to-night, and the clouds hang low, making the evening dull and close. Everything is so still, with a deep silence that is at once oppressive and slightly terrifying, until one is accustomed to it. Down below lies the town, like some vast black monster with many twinkling eyes. There is no wind; indeed,[108] there is scarcely enough air to disperse the smoke of our cigars, the ends of which glow like the red eyes of some wild animal. I can just see Kotmasu’s face when his glows brighter as he inhales.

“And you are not getting bored?” he asks, puffing a cloud of smoke amongst the foliage of a creeper trailing at his elbow.

I know what he means, although he mentions no name, because we are talking in Japanese, and Mousmé may even now be creeping silently, as is her wont, across the room behind us.

“No; I am charmed. She is even more charming than I thought. I shall certainly go home to England as soon as I can.”

“And take her?”

“Certainly; why not?”

Kotmasu can on occasion be fairly concise, if not epigrammatic.

“Mousmé in Bond Street!” he ejaculated; and if he had been English, I[109] knew instinctively that he would have whistled.

“Why Bond Street?” I asked somewhat feebly, with just a shade of chilliness at my heart from the incongruity conjured up by his words.

“Because,” he replied slowly, “that would be a good test.”

I might have attempted a reply, but there is a sudden glow of light on the verandah, a yellow-red, diffused light, which fails to pierce the gloom at the far end, and Mousmé and Oka appear with the lanterns.

Mousmé gives me a kiss, to the peril of her lantern with its monster of a crayfish painted in vermilion on its yellow side; at which Kotmasu smiles indulgently; then we start off.

We go away down our garden—which has such narrow paths, some of them scarcely less pigmy than those associated in my memory with the garden of childhood’s[110] days—now so dark and full of mysterious shadows, heavy with the strong scent of flowers, alive with the incessant noise of the cicalas, and movements of huge, soft-winged night-moths, which circle round the light of our lanterns, beating their wings with a soft, quick rattle against their distended sides, and every now and again flying into our faces and making Mousmé give a little scream of simulated terror, at which Kotmasu and I laugh.

I shut the gate after us, and then taking Mousmé’s arm, we make our way down the rapidly sloping road. There is another party ahead of us, also with lanterns; and so steep is the path, that in the black darkness we almost seem as though we should step off into the abyss, right down on to the swaying lights below us.

Such strange shadows are set dancing on the road by the swaying lanterns we carry, that Mousmé, who must, after all, have[111] seen such things dozens of times before, clings closer to me for protection, and in a low, frightened undertone she says:

“Cy-reel! Cy-reel! I am frightened! I shall shut my eyes and take hold of you!”

But when I look down at her a few paces further on, I see that it is but her delightful coquetry; for her dark-brown eyes, which in the lantern light have shadows like a lake, are open, and are watching Kotmasu, who is a little in advance of us two.

She catches sight of me, and bursts out laughing. She is never a bit ashamed of being caught like this.

When once we reach the bottom of the road, which runs past older houses even than mine, villas mostly inhabited by the better-class merchants and the few foreigners who may have protracted business in Nagasaki, we are plunged almost without transition or warning into the heart and life of the town.

[112]

We go along the street, brightly illuminated by hundreds of lanterns, pendent and ambulatory, at some small risk of being run over by rikishas taken at a rapid, nay, almost reckless pace by their active drawers.

Mousmé walks along quite gaily, her wooden clogs making a great clatter on the stones which crop up in the street, in concert with those of scores of other women who are out with husbands, brothers or escorts for an evening’s amusement or stroll. She is so na?vely proud of her “English sir,” who is a real husband after all.

We go through the streets, which at night seem all the same, all gaily lit with flaring oil-lamps, and illuminated with countless numbers of paper lanterns, which throw a mellow-coloured radiance on the faces of the passers-by; looking in this shop and that as we walk slowly along.

The sense of possession is very strong in[113] Mousmé. Every now and again she clutches my hand or arm—though, strictly speaking, to do so is not Japanese etiquette—and fires off little nods to acquaintances. Every clutch at the sleeve of my coat means that she has caught sight of some one to whom she wishes to exhibit me as her real husband. When Kotmasu, who is a wonderful recounter of tales relating to those we meet and nod to, laughingly reproaches her with indecorousness, she says:

“What you say well enough; but I Engleesh now, you know,” with a moue and a little quick turn of her dainty head, which makes both of us laugh, and the passers-by stare in astonishment at our sudden merriment.

Yes, Mousmé is so English—in everything except what really constitutes Englishness. What a revelation England will be to her, and she to my respected relatives!

[114]

These streets we walk through are wonderful. They are all alike; the houses, of frailest woodwork and paper panelling, are scarcely varied in any particular, save that of ornamentation, from one end of the long row to the other. There are no shop fronts, no glass windows; so that intending purchasers, or even those who have no intentions other than curiosity, can take up the various articles so openly displayed, and examine them at their leisure.

This is what Mousmé delights in doing. She likes best the shops in which rich dress fabrics and women’s ornaments play an important part.

A tiny parcel, done up neatly in rice-paper, betrays the fact that she has already coaxed me into purchasing “a little present.” The shopkeepers, who squat in the midst of their wares, offer no objection to Mousmé’s inspection; and as it amuses her, why should I mind?

[115]

As we go along towards the lower and harbour end of the town, the crowd of people gets denser and denser. If the terrors of horses—Nagasaki is as guiltless of horses as Venice itself—driven or ridden, were added to the djin-harnessed rikishas, one would walk along at momentary risk of annihilation.

But the djins are wonderfully active and intelligent, and avoid obstacles with marvellous ability. There are few corns in Japan, and the wheel of a rikisha over one’s feet, therefore, is of somewhat less moment.

Mousmé flutters along at my side, chattering in Japanese, and English of a sort, gay and contented, her sense of the ludicrous being aroused every now and then by the sight of one or other of her countrymen in the garb of civilization—Western civilization, that is. A Japanese in European attire in Europe may be an artistic[116] mistake; in Japan an inartistic atrocity. There are several of these about, in out-of-date pot-hats, and tail-coats of the year before last’s cut. Even Kotmasu, who himself is attached to pseudo-European attire, laughs at them. How queer they look!—the pot-hat cum a fringe of black, shining hair beneath its brim, and other really picturesque garments.

We are getting tired, and Mousmé’s natural lust of buying useless things is increasing.

Unfortunately, she has been told I am “one very much rich man.” Kotmasu—who is beginning to pine for the geishas—and I have our arms uncomfortably full of purchases——little lacquer boxes, fantastic hair-combs and pins, silk sashes, a tiny silver tobacco-pipe with tortoises, frogs and tiny lizards scarcely bigger than a pin’s head crawling up the chased stem, boxes of plums preserved in sugar, and[117] French bonbons purchased at a ruinous price. All this is very strange, and even Mousmé’s recklessness is charming, captivating.

There is no time for the theatre now, so Mousmé and I make our way to a tea-house, and Kotmasu, who has been such a long-suffering companion of our peregrinations, goes off to see the geishas, and, I fear, a somewhat improper variety entertainment.

The chaya is full of its patrons. Such a crowd of mousmés and their escorts; and very few of the crimson-and-gold covered futons (cushions), which are negligently arranged for the use of the guests under the verandah overlooking the garden, are vacant. So we step out into the garden, and enter a quaintly constructed summer-house built to accommodate two.

We have scarcely seated ourselves, after my having drawn aside the paper shutters[118] on the garden side, ere a charming little scrap of an attendant mousmé, with a dress of yellow silk and scarlet satin obi, presents herself to take our orders.

She stands in the lantern-light just outside the doorway, caressing her knees with her tiny hands, and smiling and showing her pretty teeth in anticipation of receiving a “good order.”

After a hurried consultation with Mousmé, who says, “Sugar plums! Oranges! Tea!” the little gay-hued waitress flits away in search of what we have ordered.

The garden, of which the owner is so proud that he calls it that of “The Hundred Beautiful Lights,” is a quaintly pretty one. Just behind our little summer-house, with its octagon roof of thin split laths of mahogany and paper shoji, with French-grey backgrounds adorned with country views by a local artist who[119] has shamefully overlooked all the canons of perspective, are lotus-ponds—tiny, toy-like expanses of water in which doubtless the inevitable gold-fish swim and mouth for air bubbles; miniature waterfalls, stone votive lamps, and grotesquely trained trees, dwarfed by some strange process to accord with the minuteness of their surroundings.

Whilst we are observing all these things, and the now blossomless wisterias in their belated garb of light green, our mousmé returns, staggering along with two huge iron candlesticks three feet high, one in each hand, which are to light us at our feast. With great exactitude, she sticks two wax candles upon their respective spikes, and lights them; and then vanishes, like the genie of the lamp, to carry out further bidding.

Although the garden and tea-house were so full of patrons, we had not long to wait[120] for our refreshments. Our mousmé knew that I was English—not, of, course, a difficult matter; and to be English spells generosity in Japanese eyes in the matter of sen for her own little pocket. So we were waited on quickly.

In a few minutes we seemed positively surrounded by tiny dishes and plates.

As an Irish gentleman who came to Japan for three months, and made my acquaintance, once said, “Everything relating to meals is so singularly numerous.”

This exactly puts it.

We had ordered a simple enough meal, in all conscience, and yet we were literally surrounded by it.

Mousmé sipped her light-coloured tea, which was suffused with cherry blossoms, with the air of a princess, and behaved as a great lady. At any rate the attendant mousmé should clearly understand that she was not like the party of geishas over[121] there in the brilliantly lighted pagoda near the balcony, who were entertaining and being entertained by some of the gilded youths of Nagasaki.

“What a noise they make!” exclaims Mousmé with a smile of pitying disgust. “Their laugh is as hollow as a drum, and they sing because they must. They will be with some one else to-morrow night, and the next, and the next. While,” and the expression of Mousmé’s face changes and grows very soft and tender, “I have always you.”[122]

“Yes, always me,” I answer, taking her hand that she has rested on my knee whilst talking.