IN THE BAMBOO LANE
_What did Bersonin mean?_ Phil replenished his glass, feeling a tense,
nervous excitement.
Why had he listened so intently--made _him_ listen--to what the men in
the next room were saying? He could recall it all--for some reason every
word was engraven on his mind. The visit of the foreign Squadron.
Speculators who had once made quick fortunes through an accident to a
battle-ship. He thought of the look he had seen on Bersonin's face.
"What do you want me to do?" He muttered the words to himself. As he
rose to go he glanced half-fearfully over his shoulder.
He walked along the street, his brain afire. He was passing a moat in
whose muck bottom piling was being driven; the heavy plunger was lifted
by a dozen ropes pulled by a ring of coolie women, dressed like men,
with blue-cotton leggins and red cloths about their heads. As they
dragged at the straw ropes, and the great weight rose and fell, they
chanted a wailing refrain, with something minor and plaintive in its
burden--
"_Yó--eeya--kó--ra!
Yó-eeya--kó--ra!_"
_What do you want me to do?..._ The words wove oddly with the refrain.
Why should he say them over and over? Again and again it came--an echo
of an echo--and again and again he seemed to see the look in the
expert's hollow, cat-like eyes! It haunted him as he walked on toward
Aoyama parade-ground, to the little house in _Kasumigatani Cho_, the
"Street-of-the-Misty-Valley."
Then, as he walked, he saw some one that for the moment drove it from
his mind. He had turned for a short-cut through a temple inclosure, and
there he met her face to face--the girl of the _matsuri_, whom he had
seen wading in the foam at Kamakura. Her slim neck, pale with
rice-powder, rose from a soft white neckerchief flowered with gold, and
a scarlet poppy was dreaming in her black hair. Phil's face sprang red,
and a wave of warm color overran her own.
"_O-Haru-San!_" he cried.
"_Konichi-wa_," she answered with grave courtesy and made to pass him,
but he turned and walked by her side. "Please, please!" he entreated.
"If you only knew how often I have looked for you! Don't be unkind!"
"Why you talk with me?" said Haru, turning. "My Japanese girl--no all
same your country."
"You wild, pretty thing!" he said. "Why are you so afraid of me?
Foreigners don't eat butterflies."
"No," she answered, without hesitation, "they jus' break wings."
He laughed unevenly. Her quickness of retort delighted him, and her
beauty was stinging his blood. He put out his hand and touched her
sleeve, but she drew away hurriedly:
"See!" she said. "My know those people to come in gate. Talk--'bout my
_papa-San_--please, so they will to think he have know you, _né_?"
Phil obeyed the hint, but Haru's cheeks, as she saluted her friends,
were flushing painfully. It was her first subterfuge employed in a
moment of embarrassment with the realization that her home was near and
that she was violating the code of deportment that from babyhood hedges
about the young Japanese girl with a complicated etiquette.
The women they had passed looked back curiously at the foreigner walking
with her. One, a girl of Haru's own age, called smilingly after her:
"_Komban Mukojima de sho?_" Phil understood the query. Was she going to
Mukojima--to the cherry festival--to-night! His eyes sparkled at the
tossed-back, "_Hai!_" Well, he would be there, too! He had appreciated
the quick wit of her subterfuge. The clever little baggage! She was not
such a small, brown saint, after all!
"I think I did that rather well," he said, when they had passed out of
earshot. "They'll think your honorable parent and I exchange New Year
gifts at the very least."
A little smile of irrepressible fun was lurking under Haru's flush. "You
have ask how is _papa-San_ rhu-ma-tis-um," she said. "In our street he
have some large fame, for because he so old and no have got."
Phil laughed aloud. "Look here, little Haru," he said, "you and I are
going to be great friends, aren't we?" He looked down at the slim,
nervous arm, so soft and firm of flesh, so deliciously turned and
modeled. He knew a jade bracelet in Yokohama that would mightily become
it--he would write to-night and have it sent up! "When can I see you
again, eh?"
They had turned into a narrow deserted lane, bordered with
bamboo fences, and opening, a little way beyond, into the wider
Street-of-Prayer-to-the-Gods. She stopped as he spoke and shook her
head. "My no can tell," she answered. "No come more far. My house very
near now."
He caught her hand--it was almost as small as a child's, with its
delicate wrist and slender fingers. "Give me a kiss and I will let you
go," he said.
As she shrank back indignantly against the palings, her free hand flung
up across her face, he threw his arms about her and strained her to him.
She wrestled against him with little inarticulate sobs, but he lifted
her face and kissed her again and again.
He released her, breathing hard, the veins in his temples throbbing, his
lips burning hot. He stood a moment looking after her, as white-faced
and breathless, she fled down the bamboo lane.
"There!" he muttered. "That's for you to remember me by--till next
time!"