Every evening since the ship left Vancouver he has presided over the
round table in the middle of the smoking-room. There he sips his coffee
and liqueur, and holds forth on every subject known to the mind of man.
Each subject is his subject. He is an elderly person, with a bad
face and a drooping left eyelid. He wears a monocle; and carries his
handkerchief in his left sleeve.
They tell me that he is in the British Service--a judge somewhere down
in Malaysia, where they drink more than is good for them. I believe
it. He tosses about his _obiter dicta_ as if he were pope of the human
intellect. A garrulous pope. Surely the mind of a judge, when exposed,
is a dreadful thing!
Go where I will, of an evening, there is no peace for me. In the “social
hall” some ungoverned young thing is eternally at the piano--“On the
Mississippi” and “The Robert E. Lee” and the other musical literature
of the turkey trot. I could not possibly sit five minutes there without
shrieking. Outside, on deck, it has been raw and chill for a week, with
rain penetrating my clothing and misting the lenses of my spectacles and
rousing my slumbering rheumatism. And you can not sit long in a stuffy
cabin, with the port screwed fast; it is unpleasant enough sleeping
there.... So I have huddled myself each night in a corner of the
smoking-room. I have played at dominoes. I have played at solitaire with
cards. _And I loathe games!_ But anything is a relief that will divert
my mind, even for an instant now and then, from thoughts of that loose,
throaty voice, and of the truly awful mind that animates it.
Few of the passengers ever give me more than a nod; for I am not what is
called a “mixer.” Except the Port Watch. He has looked confidingly at
me twice over his siphon. But I have not encouraged him, for he has
an over-intense eye and the flush of drink is on his cheek. Every day,
hours on end, he paces the deck; hence his nickname. He is, like myself,
a lonely man; and a little wild--distinctly a little wild.
Sir Robert outdid himself this evening. No man could possibly know so
much. I have made a list (not complete, of course) of the subjects on
which he speaks with dogmatic authority--very positive, very technical,
with a glib use of catch phrases, with emphasis always on the peculiarly
significant point in the matter. The list runs:
Aëronautics; the American temperament as affected by immigration;
archery; art; ballistics; dog-breeding; engineering (civil and
military); ethnology; folk-lore of all nations; geology; horticulture;
inferiority of Latin peoples (particularly the French); laces and
embroideries; modern accounting; navigation (which he explained last
night in detail to the Chief Officer, a silent person); psychology (all
branches); Roman law; rugs (and textiles generally); _Weltpolitik_;
wireless telegraphy; and, at all times and places, the glory of England
and the superiority of English blood.
This evening he was dismissing, with a torrent of apparently precise
ethnological and historical data, the recent Japanese pretension
to Aryan origin--doubtless for the benefit of that little Japanese
commercial agent with bad teeth who sat in the corner opposite me
working out problems on a go-board. The usual group of weak-minded
persons were sitting about Sir Robert's table, listening with the usual
awe.
Now, I rather like that Japanese. Only this morning he was so kind as
to sing several examples of the folk-song of his country into my
phonograph. Five records he gave me, so that my work is begun even
before we land. Excellent specimens, two of them, of the Oriental
tone sense, with observably different intervals for the ascending and
descending scales.
He exhibited no sign that Sir Robert's talk annoyed him; quietly went
on placing the little black and white shells on the board. (It is
interesting to note, at this point, that the Japanese handle small
objects with the first three fingers only, without employing the thumb
as we do.) But I felt myself becoming angry. My forehead grew hot and
flushed, as it always does when I am stirred. I tried to calm myself
by constructing a house of dominoes; but the pitching of the ship
overturned it.
Still that throaty voice. “Thank God,” I thought, “in another day we
shall be at Yokohama!”
I tried to read a four-weeks-old copy of the _Illustrated London News_.
No use; the voice held me.
It occurred to me, as an exercise in self-control, to interest myself
in speculating on the emotions and the characteristics back of the faces
here in the smoking-room. I achieved some success at this exercise.
Why, when you come to think of it, should each particular unit in this
haphazard assemblage of men and women be journeying away off here to the
other side of the earth? There are surely dramas in our little company.
The two middle-aged ladies with the firm chins, for instance, who dress
so quietly and speak so discreetly--it is whispered among the men
that they are high and prosperous in a sad business on Soo-chow Road,
Shanghai. And the young German adventurer with the scars across his
nose, who borrowed fifteen dollars from me, to be repaid when we land at
Yokohama--if he approaches me again I shall refuse him firmly. And the
fat vaudeville manager from Cincinnati, who plays fan-tan every night
with a heap of Chinese brass _cash_ and a bowl borrowed from the ship's
dining-room!
As I mused, I felt the Port Watch gazing at me again over his siphon. I
believe he would pour out his story, were I to permit it. But I do not
choose to hear. After all, I am not a romancer, but a scientific man.
My concern is not with the curious and personal tangle of human affairs,
but with impersonal fact and sober deductions therefrom.
Sir Robert was now defining culture as the touchstone of
civilization--from the British point of view, of course. God, that
voice! And then, without a thought in my head as to where the talk was
leading--suddenly--he plumped squarely down on my subject. It was the
first time in the twelve days of our voyage. Until this moment, the
tribal god referred to in his national anthem had spared him. _My
subject!_ The one thing I know more about than any other human being. I
had him.
“The surest test of the culture of a people,” said he, _ex cathedra_,
“is the music of that people. Primitive races invariably express their
emotions in primitive music. They try to tell me that the Chinese are a
civilized people. 'Very well,' I say then; 'let me hear their music.'
No nation has progressed far along the great highroad of civilization
without coming into an understanding of the diatonic system. The Chinese
civilized? When their finest musical instrument is the little _sheng_,
a crude collection of twelve pipes that are not even in tune? When they
have failed to arrive at even a rudimentary perception of tonality and
scale relationships? No; I tell you, the Chinese civilization is to
the European as the little _sheng_ is to the grand piano. The piano,
on which all scales are related, all harmomes possible, is the supreme
artistic achievement of the highest civilization.”
This was enough. I got right up and went over to the round table. My
forehead was burning; I must have been red as fire.
“You do not know what you are talking about,” I cried out. I had to
lean over the shoulder of one of the weak-minded in order to catch Sir
Robert's eye. “It is the piano that has killed music in Europe! The
piano is a lie from end to end of the keyboard. Bach confirmed that
lie with his miserable triumph of the well-tempered clavichord. And in
finally fastening his false scale upon us he destroyed in us the fine
ear for true intervals that is to-day found only in your primitive
peoples. The Chinese have it. The Javanese have it. The Siamese, most
wonderful of all, have a true isotonic scale. But we of the _cultured_
West (I put a wonderful sneering emphasis on that word) can not even
_hear_ true fluid music to-day, because our tone perception goes no
farther than the barbarous mechanical compromise of the piano keyboard.
You do not know what you are talking about. You are a fool!”
When I am excited my voice rises and becomes shrill. I talked rapidly,
so that no one could interrupt. And the weak-minded ones sank back in
their chairs. They were actually afraid, I think now. In fact, when I
paused the whole smoking-room was still as death.
I swept my eye about--commandingly, I think. The fat vaudeville man--he
sat behind Sir Robert--was grinning at me with delight in his eyes, and
was softly clapping his hands behind the fan-tan bowl. The Port Watch
with red face and suddenly twinkling eyes, had clapped his hand over his
mouth as if to smother an outright laugh. Sir Robert was looking up at
me, his left eyelid drooping, a sort of perplexed uncertainty on his
face--his old face that was all lines and wrinkles.
Now that I had the floor, it seemed worth while to make a thorough job
of it, so I swept on:
“You make the piano the test of civilization. Greece had a
civilization--where were the pianos of Greece? Oh, I am tired of your
talk. I have listened to you for twelve long days and nights. I have
suspected your accuracy, but I could not be sure, for you luckily
avoided _my_ subject. But now I have you! And I know you for a fraud
on all subjects! I see confusion in your face. You are groping for
something to say about the music of Greece. Very well; I will say it for
you. The Greeks had no piano, because they had no harmony. They did not
know that harmony was possible. And if they had heard it, they would not
have liked it.”
“Ah,” cried Sir Robert, flushing under the parchment of his skin, and (I
must say) taking up the gage of battle, “but Greece gave us our diatonic
system. The root of our scale, the tetrachord, came to us from the
Greeks.”
I laughed him down. The intervals of that Greek tetrachord were not the
same as ours. They used intervals that actually can not be written in
our notation--three quarter tones, one and a quarter tones. Pythagoras
states, 'The intervals in music are rather to be judged intellectually
through numbers than sensibly through the ear.' For they followed the
acoustic laws, _like the Chinese!_ The fragments we have of the worship
of Apollo are more nearly like the ancient Confucian hymn than like
anything known in modern music. “Tell me, sir, did you know that? And
tell me this--does not the quality you call 'culture' imply that we
should seek sympathetically for the standpoint of other minds? Has it
never occurred to you that when Oriental music sounds absurd and out of
key to you, it is your own ear that is at fault--that the intervals are
too fine and true for your false, piano-trained sense? For such is the
fact.”
I was shaking my finger under his nose, so closely that he had to lean
back.
“And I will tell you,” I added, standing right over him, “that the
Chinese _sheng_ has seventeen pipes, not twelve.”
“Ah,” he broke in, “but the other pipes are mute.”
“Two are mute,” I replied triumphantly. “And two are duplicates of
others. The correct number of speaking pipes is fifteen.”
His eyes were kindling now. “See here!” he cried. “Who and what are
you?”
“I am a banker!” I shouted--the first thing that came to my tongue. Then
I turned and walked straight out on deck. It was precisely the moment
for leaving; even the weak-minded could see that their oracle was
tripped. Besides, I had to be alone. For I was breaking into a profuse
sweat. The drops were running down my forehead into my eyes and clouding
my spectacles; I had to take them off and carry them in my hand.
My under lip was quivering so that my teeth chattered. And my heart was
palpitating, and skipping beats.
It was wet and wild and dark out there on deck; but in my intense moods
I like the rough, elemental thing.
I stood right up to the storm, clinging to the weather-rail. The
ship rolled away down, then away up, until I could see only the dim,
scurrying clouds. The rain beat into my face. I felt happy, in a way.
A hand came down on my shoulder. I sprang away, and turned. I dislike
exceedingly to have any one lay hands on me.
It was the Port Watch. He had put on a long raincoat, and a cap that was
pulled low on his forehead. Under it I could see his eyes shining in a
nervous, excited way. He certainly is a wild man, if there ever was one.
But then I saw that he was grinning at me, and felt relieved.
“You sure did hand it to the old cock,” he said, shouting against the
storm. “It was great. I don't know a dam' thing about music. But I know
when a bluff is called. He's gone below.”
“Well,” said I, for there was no need of being uncivil to the man, “I
got sick of his voice. And then, he was wrong.”
“Any one could see that,” chuckled the Port Watch.
We walked around together to the lee side of the ship, so that he could
light a cigar. And while I did not like his taking my arm, still he
seems to be a decent fellow enough, after all. We exchanged cards. He is
connected with a Stock Exchange house in New York. He is a big,
vigorous man, surely not past his middle thirties. I rather envy him
his strength, I am so thin and frail myself. He is one of those who
know nothing of what we weaker ones go through who have to husband our
energies. A rather primitive person, I should say. He occupies one of
the high-priced cabins on the promenade-deck, with a private bath. It
must be pleasant to travel that way.
When we parted at the after stairway, I said: “I did n't think I should
like you. Shall I tell you why?”
“Yes,” said he.
“Because you drink too much.”
At this he stood still, his hands plunged into the pockets of his
raincoat, chewing his under lip. Finally he said, with a break in his
voice:
“You're right there. I _am_ drinking too much. But--God, if you knew!”
Then, without so much as a good night, he plunged off down the passage
toward that comfortable room of his, with bath. And I went below to my
stuffy cabin, where the port has been screwed fast for a week.
His name is Crocker, Archibald Crocker, Jr., son of the well-known and,
truth to tell, rather infamous millionaire and manipulator of stocks.
Our worlds lie wide apart, his and mine. I realized that much when he
looked at my card. The name of Anthony Ives Eckhart conveyed nothing
to him--the name that is known and respected by Boag and the great von
Stumbostel of Berlin, by de Musseau, Ramel, and Fourmont at Taris, by
Sir Frederick Rhodes of Cambridge; the name that spells anathema to that
snarling charlatan, von Westfall, of Bonn.
Crocker has offered to guide me through the Yoshiwara district at
Yokohama to-morrow evening. He says that the music will interest me.
I think I shall go with him. He says that every traveled white man
in the world has been to “Number Nine”--that it is a legitimate, even
necessary part of a man's experience. Certainly I do not wish to appear
unmanly.
My room proved intolerable, and I was still too excited to rest; so I
came back to the deserted smoking-room to write up my journal.
It is very late. The steward is hovering anxiously about, yawning now
and then. I may as well let the poor fellow get to his berth. God knows,
he sees little enough of it.
But first I will have him fetch me a mug of their wonderful English
stout. I find that this is even better than ale for inducing sleep. At
least, in my own case.
_Yokohama, Grand Hotel, March 20th._
|IT was past three o'clock to-day when the ship came to anchor and the
steam tender brought us ashore. It interested me to see the rickshaws
with their bare-legged coolies. By the time we had ridden along the Bund
to the hotel and secured our rooms it was four o'clock. We went down to
the “lounge,” Crocker and I, and had tea brought in. Or I did. He drank
a whisky and _Tan San_. Then pretty soon he drank another.
Several couples from the ship were about, but not many of the men who
were traveling alone.
“Where are they all?” I asked.
“Who?” said he.
“The men from the ship. Have they gone to other hotels?”
“Some of them--perhaps,” he replied. Then he looked away and smiled.
Sometimes, when I talk with a hard, practical man of the world, I find
myself feeling vaguely out of it all. My life, devoted as it is to the
discovery and classification of facts, is certainly a practical life;
yet I seem to dwell aside from the main current. I do not quite catch
the point of view of a rough-handed rich man like Crocker. And when I
speak my mind, as I always endeavor to do, men do not resent it. I do
not understand this. Come to think of it, I was decidedly outspoken last
night with Sir Robert. He should have struck me; at least, he should
have exhibited some anger. He would have struck Crocker, I think, in
such a case--or jailed him for contempt.
We lingered nearly an hour over our tea and whisky. The experience was
wholly new to me--comfortably seated in a large European hotel, with
English folk and Americans all about, and yet with Japanese servants,
and yellow, shrewd little Oriental faces behind the desk, and a Chinese
cashier in a blue rote, and Chinese tailors pressing in on one, samples
on arm, offering to make suits of clothes overnight. And out the window,
floating about the glittering harbor, sampans and a great Chinese junk
or two, and the fleet of fishing-boats with ribbed sails just skimming
in between the breakwaters. We were the West, we and our absurdly
Anglo-Saxon hotel; but all about us were hints and flavors of the
eternal East.
Suddenly I realized that Crocker had been for quite a little time
twisting restlessly in his armchair. I looked at him now. He was tapping
the carpet softly but very rapidly with his right foot, and rubbing his
chin with his hand. Crocker's chin is of good size and shape, the sort
we usually speak of as “strong.” He is a dark man, inclined to fullness
in the face and figure, but still athletic in appearance. His eyes are
brown. He is not at all a bad-looking fellow, when you study him out.
I rather like the blend in him of vigor, and perhaps stubbornness,
with frankness. I should say that apart from the abnormal experiences,
whatever they may be, that have driven or drawn him to this part of the
world, he is a man of will and spirit. He would fight, I think, in a
pinch. When fully himself, in his own home and business environment, he
must be a man's man. He is nearly a head taller than I.
He caught me looking at him, and smiled.
“Well,” said he, “shall we go along?”
“Where?”
“On that little expedition we spoke of last night.”
“Oh!” I remembered now. “But--is n't it--do we want to go to such a
place now--in the day-time?”
He raised his eyebrows. “You old sybarite!” he chuckled, and hummed,
“_Et la nuit, tous les chats sont gris!_” Then he added, more seriously:
“But really, Eckhart, three ships are in to-day--the Pacific Mail and
the French finer besides ours--and if we wait until evening we shall
have no choice at all.”
“Very well,” said I then, briskly, for I do not like to be ridiculed.
“Just wait until I can get my phonograph.”
“Your _what?_” said he.
“My phonograph,” I repeated, with dignity. And I went upstairs for ft.
When I came down, with the heavy instrument in its case under one arm
and a box of new record cylinders under the other, he was not in the
lounge. I passed on out to the porch, and found him there with two
rickshaws waiting. When he saw me with my heavy burdens, he began
laughing in that nervous, jumpy way he has. But I ignored him, and
placed the boxes carefully in my rickshaw. We were about to start when I
realized that I had forgotten my record-taking horn, so I went back for
it.
“Look here, old man,” said Crocker, from his rickshaw, when I
reappeared, “it's all right, of course,--I don't mind,--but what on
earth are you bringing all that junk for?”
“You were so good as to explain that I would find the music
interesting,” I replied. “You surely don't suppose that I trust my ear
in this delicate research work. Why, my dear fellow, in my studies of
our American Indian songs I have succeeded in recording intervals as
close as the sixteenth part of a tone.”
He was still grinning. “All right,” he said; “don't get stuffy. I'll be
good. Hop into your rickshaw.”
I did so. The coolies turned for directions. Crocker was about to give
them when two of our fellow passengers, accompanied by their wives,
stepped out of the hotel. Crocker waited, and we sat there, looking
rather foolish, until they had passed on out of ear-shot; then he leaned
forward and said in a low voice:
“Number Nine.”
“Heh!” cried the two coolies instantly, as one man, and wheeling about
they ran the little vehicles out of the court and into the street.
I must admit that my first impression of the Yokohama streets was
rather disappointing--that is, until we turned a corner unexpectedly and
entered the Yoshiwara district. The streets were much more like England
than the Japan of my fancy. Crocker tells me that Yokohama was built up
as a foreign concession for purposes of trade, and therefore is really
not Japanese at all. But once in the Yoshiwara quarter my nerves began
to tingle; for this was a bit of Japan.
Crocker insists that it is small and tawdry compared to the Tokio
Yoshiwara. Never having explored that portion of the capital, I can
not say. To me it was quite enchanting. The houses were higher than is
customary in Japanese cities. In color all were of the unpainted but
pleasantly weathered shade of light brown that is so agreeable to the
eye--very possibly they stain the wood, as we do in the case of our
modern bungalows. There were little hanging balconies on the upper
stories, with decorative festoons of colored paper lanterns. Through the
windows and the open doorways one caught glimpses of the spring flowers
and blossoms that play so great and fine a part in the esthetic life
of this extraordinary people. And here and there, at a window or over
a balcony railing, could be seen a face--a quaint and girlish face with
glossy black hair done up fantastically high over wide shell combs and
with glimpses of flowered silks about slim shoulders. The fragrance of
the early cherry and plum blossoms was in the air.
The famous “Number Nine” proved to be a large house at the end of the
street. The door stood invitingly open. A well-trained servant took my
two boxes and the horn and carried them in. Another servant guided us
upstairs.
The interior was cool and spacious. It differed in so many respects from
photographs of typical Japanese house interiors that I decided it is
really a foreign resort. Later inquiries this evening have confirmed
this conclusion. In the actual Japanese house, the floor is elevated a
foot or more and is also the seat; and in entering one passes first into
a tiny hall on the street level, removes his shoes, then steps up to the
floor proper. Here there was no such arrangement. We mounted steps,
then walked through a broad hall that led into a central court full of
flowers. The woodwork of floor and walls was of that characteristic and
agreeable tan or natural shade. The rugs were simple and quiet in design
and color.
Our guide led us to a stairway. The boy with my apparatus looked to
me for instructions, and I motioned him to follow. Then we mounted the
stairs, and passed along a broad corridor overlooking the court to an
office-like room in the corner that was furnished with European tables
and chairs. On the way we passed an open doorway, and I caught a passing
glimpse of a dim, large room, in which the only furniture appeared to be
a low platform covered with a rug of light red.
“That's where the geisha girls dance,” Crocker whispered.
I nodded. I was looking forward with a good deal of interest to hearing
the music that accompanies this performance.
In the corner room we were welcomed very civilly by a little old woman,
and tea was brought us. Then she said something to Crocker in a sort of
pidgin-English which I did not quite catch. He nodded eagerly.
It occurred to me, with some bitterness I am afraid, that the little
old woman would never have thought of turning to me as the leading
spirit--never in the world. She hardly looked at me. So I went on
sipping my tea.
A door opened, and in came a file of girls--fourteen of them. All
were young; one, I thought, of not more than thirteen or fourteen
years--though it is difficult for us of the West to judge accurately
the age of Orientals. They shuffled along in their curious little
shoes. Several seemed to me extremely pretty; all were small and dainty.
Everything considered, they made a pleasing picture as they stood there,
looking at us with a demure twinkling in each almond eye. I wondered
what would come next. A dance, perhaps.
Crocker had hitched forward in his chair and was looking rapidly from
one end of the line to the other. His face was more flushed even than
usual; his eyes were eager. Finally his gaze rested on the third girl
from the right end of the line. I began to feel uncomfortable.
After a moment he rose, and nodded toward that third girl. She promptly
stepped forward. “See you later, old man,” he said to me bruskly, hardly
looking at me, and then, laying down a gold coin and taking the girl's
arm, hurried from the room with her.
Left alone there, with the old woman and the thirteen girls, I found
myself rather confused. It had not occurred to me that the business was
to be rushed through with so mechanically, so brutally. The beauty of
the building and the charm of these quaint little girls in soft-colored
costumes had up to this moment held a strong lure for me. But suddenly
the situation rang hard and metallic. It was, after all, just the
problematic, age-old business in a new dress.
And then I began to feel ashamed. After all, most men are direct and
practical in these puzzling matters. They do not theorize, they do not
shrink from rough facts. They take life as they find it, and pass on.
Here am I (so ran my thoughts) drawing hack, refusing life, and that not
in any firmness of purpose, but in a sort of fright!
“I should like to see the geishas dance,” I managed to say.
“No can do,” replied the old woman, with a gesture of her skinny hands.
“One day--three day--must tell.” And she held up three fingers.
“I don't understand you,” said I.
“Geisha girls no have got--must go catchee two, three, four piecee girl;
two, three, four piecee music. Two--three day you tell. No can do.”
She evidently meant that it was necessary to give notice if one wished
the geisha dance. And she was grinning at me now and pointing to the
girls. I was being swept along in this brutal business. Otherwise, they
would feel, why had I come to take up their time?
I felt the color rushing into my face as I raised my hand and pointed at
random. One of the girls came forward. The old woman held out her hand.
I found a gold coin and dropped it on her palm; then turned for my
apparatus, which the boy had set on a chair by the door. I made a rather
awkward matter of picking it up, dropping the horn with a clatter. The
other girls and the old woman were leaving the room and seemed not to
observe my confusion. The girl whom I had selected picked up the horn;
then led the way out the door and along the corridor overlooking the
wide court where the flowers were.
We entered a room, and she closed the door. My heart was palpitating,
and I knew that my face was red; so I busied myself setting down the two
boxes on the table and opening them.
I felt her brush against my arm, and looked at her. She was rather
older than I had thought, though still young enough, God knows, for the
pitiful trade she plies. And she was smiling, with what appeared to be
genuine good humor. Probably I amused her. Worldly-wise women, when they
observe me at all, usually look amused; so I make it a rule to avoid
them when I can.
“Wha' ees eet?” she asked, nodding toward the instrument. She spoke in
quite understandable English, though with a strong accent.
I told her it was a phonograph, and asked if she would sing into it. She
seemed pleased.
I had her sing all the native songs she was able to think of at the
moment, making notes of the title of each, as nearly as I could
catch the sound of the words. To make sure that I had each correctly
identified, I repeated it to her. She laughed a good deal over my
attempts to pronounce these titles. The seven songs that interested me I
then requested her to sing into the phonograph. This she did, with
only fair satisfaction to me; for she laughed a good deal, and would
occasionally turn her head to look up at me, thus directing the tone
away from the horn. I had to make her sing four of them twice. I
regretted this, as four cylinders were thereby wasted, and I can not
replace these specially made cylinders on this side the Pacific. I began
to see that the twenty-two hundred I have brought with me will be used
up pretty rapidly when my investigation gets under full headway on the
farther side of the Yellow Sea.
I have, later to-night, played over these seven records here in my room
at the hotel, with some sense of disappointment. One of them I think
will prove, on careful analysis, to have for its basis the ancient
pentatonic scale. The intervals of two are very nearly those of the
oldest known Greek scales of a tone and two conjunct tetra-chords.
But in the case of the other four I shall be greatly surprised if they
employ any other intervals than those of our own equal temperament scale
of twelve semitones to the octave.
That, of course, is really the trouble with Japan as a field of
research; these marvelous little people pick up and assimilate Western
ideas with such rapidity that their ancient traditions become hopelessly
confused.
The girl seemed to tire after a while. Her voice became hoarse and she
fell to coughing. I realized then that I had been holding her pretty
closely to this work, and told her that she could rest a little while.
At this, she sat on the edge of the European ted, and looked at me, half
smiling.
“You lig hear the _koto?_” she asked suddenly.
I nodded eagerly. The _koto_, as I have long known, is closely related
to the ancient Chinese instrument, the _ch'in_, beloved of Confucius.
Many investigators hold, indeed, that it is the same instrument,
transplanted in the earliest times and changed a little in its new
environment.
She slipped out of the room, and shortly returned with the instrument,
which remotely resembles a modern zither--at least, in the fact that
it has a number of strings (thirteen in this instance) stretched over
a board and played by plucking with the fingers. It was a beautiful
object, the _koto_ of this nameless little inmate of the Yoshiwara,
highly lacquered, with fine inlays of polished woods, tortoise-shell,
ivory, and silver; and I could see by her smiling breathlessness and the
engaging, almost shy glances she gave me as she curled up on the bed to
play it, that she was inordinately proud of it.
“You lig hear me pray?” she murmured.
The word “pray” came to me with a curious shock in this place. Then I
remembered the Japanese confusion of our _r_ and _l_ sounds, and knew
that she meant “play.”