A MAN NAMED WARE
The three-storied front of the Cherry-Moon Tea-House, when Daunt's party
arrived, was glowing with tiers of large round lanterns of oiled-paper
bearing a conventionalized moon and cherry-blossoms. At the door sat
rows of little velvet-lined sandals. Here shoes were discarded, and
servants drew on the guests' feet loose slippers of cotton cloth, soft
and yielding. One other guest was awaiting the party at the entrance.
This was Captain Viscount Sakai, of the General Staff, spruce,
fine-featured and in immaculate European evening dress. He had a clear,
olive complexion, and, save for the narrow, Japanese eye, might have
been a Spaniard.
The small second-story _shokudo_ in which they dined was floored in soft
_tatamé_ edged with black and laid in close-fitting geometrical pattern.
Save for a plain alcove at one end, holding a dwarf pine and a single
_nanten_ branch with clusters of bright red berries, it was empty. There
was no drapery. The walls were sliding screens of gold-leaf on which
were finely drawn etchings of pine-trees covered with snow, the effect
suggested rather than finished. It was brilliant with electric light.
Tiny square tables of black lacquer were disposed along three sides of
the room, one for each guest. They were but four inches high and on the
floor behind each lay a thin, flat _zabuton_ or cushion of brocade. The
bowing _geisha_ in wonderful rainbow _kimono_ who awaited them might
have stepped from the temple stage at Mukojima. These pointed to the
tables with inviting smiles:
"Plee shee down!" they said in unison.
"I never _could_ 'shee down' gracefully when any one is looking!"
complained Patricia, as she tucked her small feet under her on the
kneeling-cushion.
"_Banzai!_" commented Voynich, setting his monocle. "You have practised
before a mirror!" He collapsed beside her with a groan. "I shall be
reincarnated an accordion!"
"Count," said Patricia plaintively, "no bouquets, please. I know when
you are stringing me."
He looked blank and the Japanese officer hastily produced a lavender
note-book and a gold pencil. "That is a new one," he said. "I must--what
is it?--ah yes! I must _nail_ it. Excuse me. I write it in my
swear-album."
"The Viscount is learning American slang," Patricia informed Barbara.
"One of these days you must tell him some of the very latest."
He looked across with gravely twinkling eyes. "I shall be--ah--tickle to
die!" he said. "It is my specialty. Nex' year I become Professor in
Slang Literature at the Imperial University."
The meal began merrily. Barbara sat on Daunt's left, with one of the
_attachés_ next her. Baroness Stroloff was on Daunt's other hand.
Barbara remembered it afterward as a meal of elfish daintiness--of warm,
pungent, wine-like liquor in blue porcelain bottles, of food of strange
look and cloying taste, highly colored and seasoned, in a hundred tiny
red and black lacquer dishes that carried her back to her doll-days,
with covers patterned in gold, served by prostrating _geisha_ whose
_kimono_ were woven with violet Fujis, winged dragons and marvelous
exotic blossoms.
Daunt pointed to a dish which had just been set before her. "You must
try the _hasu-no-renkon_," he said. "That's cooked lotos-root. It's
nearly as good as it looks."
"How do you ever remember the names!"
"Oh, it's quite easy to talk Japanese," he replied recklessly. "There
are only fifty syllables in the language, and any way you string them
together it means something or other. It doesn't matter whether it's the
right thing or not, if you just bow and smile. There are seventeen ways
of drawing in your breath which are a lot more important than what you
say!"
"What disgraceful nonsense! What is that pink thing?"
"Raw bonito. The refuge of dyspeptics. Voynich, over there, eats nothing
else at home, they say. The variegated compound is _kuchitori_. It's
made of sugared chestnuts, leeks and pickled fish. May I compliment you
on the way you handle your chopsticks? At my first Japanese dinner I bit
one in two. Isn't Baroness Stroloff stunning, by the way!"
The latter was deep in discussion with Patricia, moving her hands in
quick, vivacious gestures which clusters of opals made into flashes of
blue fire. "But you must send to Hakodate for your furs," she was
saying. "I will give you the address of my man there. You should get
them now, not wait till fall, when the tourists have bought all the
best."
"I'm dying for an ermine stole."
"Oh, my _dear_, not ermine! Get sables. One can be so insulting in
sables!"
Barbara laughed with the rest. "What a nice lot you are," she said, "all
knowing each other, all friendly. I thought diplomatists were always
poring over international law books and drawing up musty treaties."
"It's not all cakes and ale," he asserted. "I worked till three this
morning on a cipher telegram."
"After the melodrama?"
"Ah, it was opera!" he protested. "It has left me memories of only
flowers, and scents and music!"
"You made most of the music, if I remember rightly."
"How unkind! I could no more help it than fly."
"On your Glider?"
He laughed again. "Don't forget what is to happen one day with that same
machine."
"What is that?"
"I am to swoop down and carry you off. It was your own suggestion, you
know."
"But it was to be at the Imperial Review. That doesn't happen again for
a year."
"I won't wait that long!"
She turned her head; her eyes sparkled in the caught light. Her fingers
were fluttering a square of red paper that had been rolled about her
chopsticks. On it was a line of tiny characters. "What is that writing?"
"That is a love-poem," he answered. "You know a Japanese poem has only
thirty-one syllables. You find them everywhere and on everything, from a
screen to a fire-shovel. I've seen them printed on tooth-picks. Your
huckster composes them as he brings the fish from market, and your
_amah_ writes them at night by a firefly lantern."
"Can you read it?"
He translated: "_I thought my love's long hair drooped down from the
gate of the sky. But it was only the shadow of evening._"
"How delicately pretty!" she exclaimed. "It's written in _kana_, the
sound-alphabet, isn't it?"
"Yes. How much you have learned already!"
"Haru has begun teaching me. Let me show you my proficiency." She took
his pencil and wrote:
[Japanese: Donto]
"There! who would guess that was Japanese for 'Daunt.' And what an
impression you must have made on Haru for her to select your name as my
first lesson!"
Across the soft _shoo-shoo_ of spotless, _tabi_-clad feet, the flitting
of bright-hued _kimono_, the gay badinage that flew about the low
tables, Daunt felt her beauty thrill him from head to foot like a
garment of mist and fire. As she dropped her hand to the cushion it had
touched his, and for an instant their pulses had seemed to throb into
one. The tiny, lacquered cup she took up trembled in her fingers.
She started when the young army officer nearest her said: "Speaking of
sailing, give me a steam-yacht like the one that berthed yesterday at
Yokohama. She belongs to a man named Ware--Austen Ware--a New Yorker, I
understand. Perhaps you know him, Miss Fairfax."
"I have met him," she answered.
The young army officer looked up quickly--he was an enthusiastic
yachtsman. "A beautiful vessel!" he said. "I noticed her to-day, but she
was too far away to make out her name."
"It is the _Barbara_," said Voynich.
"Why--" exclaimed Patricia, "that's--" She bit her tongue, caught by
something in Barbara's face. "Good gracious!" she ended. "My--my foot's
asleep!"
Barbara had felt her flush fading to paleness. She felt a quick relief
that none there, save Patricia and Daunt, knew her first name. In the
diversion caused by Patricia's helpless efforts to stand up, she stole a
glance at Daunt.
A shadow had fallen on his face. He did not look at her, but in his
brain the yacht's name was ringing like a knell. She knew Phil's
brother! Austen Ware's yacht had arrived in Yokohama on the same day as
her ship. And it was named the _Barbara_. Yet to-night he had
dreamed--what had he been dreaming? These thoughts mixed themselves
weirdly with the gaiety and nonsense that he forced himself to render.
Barbara felt this with an aching sense of resentment. What was he
thinking of her? And why should she care so fiercely? The courses
passed, but the lightness and blitheness of the scene were somehow
chilled. The decorative food: the numberless, tiny cups and trays; the
taper, pink-tinted fingers that poured the warm drink; the _kimono_, the
music and lights,--all palled.
She was glad when the Baroness decreed the dinner over by repeating
Patricia's experiment of painful unfolding, and calling for her wraps.