ON THE KNEES OF DELILAH
The room where Phil sat was softly bright with _andon_, through whose
thin paper sides the candle-light filtered tranquilly.
It had been furnished in a plain, half-foreign fashion; a book-rack and
a French mahogany desk sat in a corner, an ormolu clock ticked on its
top, and beside it was a lounge piled with volumes from the shelves. On
a bracket sat three small carvings in dark wood, replicas of the famous
monkeys of the great Jingoro the Left-Handed, preserved in Iyeyasu
temple at Nikko. With their paws one covered his eyes, another his ears,
the third his mouth, representing the "I see not--I hear not--I tell
not" of the ancient wisdom.
The place, however, to which these had given a suggestion of quaint and
extraordinary art, was now touched with a certain tawdriness. It would
have affected a Japanese almost to nausea. The severity of beauty of its
etched and paneled walls, the plain elegance of its satinwood fittings,
were cheapened with a veneer of vulgarity. A row of picture postcards in
colors was pinned on the wall--the sort the tourist buys for ten _sen_
on the Ginza, too highly tinted and with much meretricious gilding--and
a photograph hung in a silver-gilt frame of interlocked dragons. It
showed a girl in abbreviated skirts and exaggerated posture; on the
mount was printed: "Miss Cissy Clifford in _Gay Paree_." The air was
full of the sickly-sweetish smell of Turkish cigarettes. The desk was a
confusion of pipes, ivory _nets'ke_, cigarette-boxes and what not, and a
man's cloth cap and a gauntlet were tossed in a corner, beside an open
gold-lacquer box heaped with gloves.
Phil, however, felt no qualm. The room fitted him as a scabbard fits its
sword. He had discarded his heavier outer clothing and donned a loose,
wide-sleeved robe of cool silk, tied with a crimson cord.
"Give me the whisky-and-soda," he said to the grizzled servant, in the
vernacular, "and I shan't want you again to-night."
The bottle the Japanese left at his elbow was becoming Phil's constant
comforter. Alone with his thoughts, he fled to it as the _hashish_ eater
to his drug, because it banished his dread and bolstered the courage
that he longed for. To-night, as he sat with the intoxication creeping
like dull fire in his blood, he was thinking of Haru, with her soft
smooth skin, her perfect neck, her lithe, graceful limbs, her eyes that
held caught laughter like moss in amber.
His thought broke off. He had heard a sound outside. It seemed to be a
light tapping on the grill of the outer door. Could it be Bersonin? Had
anything gone wrong? He went hastily into the anteroom and opened the
grill.
For an instant he stared unbelievingly at the figure standing there, the
gay _kimono_, the rouged cheeks, the sparkling eyes. He took a step
forward.
"Haru! Is it really you, little girl?" he cried.
She laughed--a high, clear, flute-like note. "Such an astonish!" she
said. "You not know my _mus'_ come ... after ... after those kiss? Can I
not to come in, Phil-lip?"
With a laugh that echoed her own--but one of ringing triumph--he caught
her hand, drew her into the lighted room and closed the _shoji_. His
look flamed over her.
"I couldn't believe my eyes!" he cried. "I don't half believe them yet!
Why, your hands are as cold as ice. We'll have a drink, eh!"
He went into an outer room, came back with a bottle of champagne and
knocked off its neck against the mantel.
"Yes, yes!" she said. "My mus' drink--so to be gay, Phil-lip!" She drank
the bubbling liquor at a draft. "What are the use of to be good? _Né?_"
"You're right, little girl! The pious people are the dull ones!" He came
to her unsteadily--he had noticed the reversed _obi_. "So you'll train
with me, eh? Well, we'll show them a trick or two! How would you like to
have plenty of money, Haru--as much as you can count on a _soroban_?
Would you think a lot more of me if I got it for you?"
"You so--much clever!" she laughed. "No all same Japan man. He ve-ree
stupid! My think you mos' bes' clever man in these whole worl', to goin'
find so much money--_né?_"
With a savage elation he drew her close in his arms. The great spiral of
her headdress drooped under his caresses, and the blue-black hair fell
all about the white face.