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_, naïvely suggested my
making her.
The marriage can be very easily contracted; 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
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. 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; 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
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 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.
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_.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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.
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 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!
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.”
[Illustration: CHAPTER FIVE]