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Transcriber’s note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capitals were replaced with ALL CAPITALS.
THE CRIMSON AZALEAS
A Novel
by
H. DE VERE STACPOOLE
Author of “The Blue Lagoon”
[Illustration]
New York
Duffield & Co.
1910
CONTENTS
PART ONE
THE TRAGEDY OF THE NIKKO ROAD
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ROAD TO NIKKO 5
II. THE BLIND ONE 11
III. THE LOST ONE 20
IV. AMIDST THE HILLS 25
V. THE TEA HOUSE OF THE TORTOISE 31
VI. THE DREAMER AND THE DRAGON 44
VII. HOW CAMPANULA BROUGHT FORTUNE TO THE
HOUSE OF THE TORTOISE—AND OTHER
THINGS 54
VIII. THE SURPRISING STORY OF MOMOTARO—AKUDOGI
AND SPOTTED DOG 61
IX. THE HOUSE OF THE CLOUDS 71
X. OF MOUSMÉS AND OTHER THINGS 82
PART TWO
THE MASSACRE OF THE BLUE-BELLS
XI. THE DREAM 91
XII. THE FOREIGN DEVILS 101
XIII. THE MONASTERY GARDEN 107
XIV. NAGASAKI BY NIGHT 119
XV. M’GOURLEY’S LOVE AFFAIR 124
XVI. THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVIL 135
XVII. THE HOUSE BY NIGHT 141
XVIII. MOSTLY ABOUT FLOWERS 151
XIX. THE STORK AND THE TORTOISE 172
XX. THE SONG OF THE MUSHI 183
XXI. M’GOURLEY’S LOVE AFFAIR 194
XXII. THE COMPLETE GEOGRAPHER 206
XXIII. THE STRUGGLE 213
XXIV. GEORGE DU TELLE 223
XXV. RETROSPECTION 232
PART THREE
THE BROKEN LATH
XXVI. THE BROKEN LATH 241
XXVII. THE “EMPRESS OF JAPAN” 247
XXVIII. M’GOURLEY’S LOVE AFFAIR 262
XXIX. THE GARDEN-PARTY 268
XXX. THE FALSE REPORT 280
XXXI. FAREWELL 284
XXXII. HER HOUSE IN ORDER 292
XXXIII. THE “LA FRANCE” 296
XXXIV. AMIDST THE AZALEAS 302
XXXV. BON MATSURI 307
CHAPTER I
THE ROAD TO NIKKO
“Upon the road to Nikko,
Where the pilgrims pray,
Along the road to Nikko
Either side the way,
Thundering great camellia trees
Decked with blossoms gay,
Adorn the road to Nikko,
The mountain road to Nikko,
In the month of May.”
The singer stopped singing and began to whistle. Then he broke out into
prose.
“Damn boots! I’ll be lame in another mile. Why can’t we be content with
sandals like our ‘brithers’ the Japs!”
“Dinna damn boots, but their makers,” replied his companion, a sandy
Scot of fifty or more, dressed in broadcloth and a bowler, a figure at
once a blot upon the lonely road and a blasphemy against Japan—a blot
whose name was M’Gourley. “I vara well remember when I was in Gleska—”
“Oh, don’t!” said the poet of the Nikko road, Dick Leslie by name, a
young man, or rather a man still young, very tall, straight, dark, and
good-looking, and a gentleman from the crown of his close-clipped, curly
black head to the soles of the boots that were torturing him. “Don’t
haul up your factory chimneys, your smoke and whisky bottles in this
place of places. I believe if a Scot ever gets into heaven he’ll start
his first conversation with his first angel by making some reference to
Gleska: Look there!”
“Whaur?”
“There!” cried Leslie, turning from the direction of Fubasami and the
beginning of the great Nikko valley before them, and pointing backwards
away towards Kureise over an expanse of distant country where the clouds
were drawing soft shadows across the rice fields and the sinuous hills;
over little woods of fir and cryptomeria trees, lakes where the lotus
flowers spread in summer, and the king-fisher flashed like a jewel; over
occasional fields of flowers, flowers that grew by the million and the
million.
Many of these details were absorbed and dulled by distance, yet still
lent their spirit to the scene, producing a landscape most strange and
quaint.
Nearly every other country seems flung together by nature, but Japan
seems to have been imagined by some great artist of the ancient
days—imagined and constructed.
“Look there,” said Leslie, “saw you ever anything better than that in
Clackmannan?”
“Ay, have I,” replied M’Gourley, contemplating the view before him,
“many’s the time. What sort of country do you call that? Man! I’d as
soon live on a tea-tray if I had ma choice.”
“Well, you’ve lived in Japan long enough to be used to it. It’s always
the way; put a man in a paradise like this where there are all sorts of
flowers and jolly things around him, and he starts grumbling and
growling and pining after rain, and misery, and cold, and sleet, and
peat smoke—if he’s a Scotchman. How long have you been in Japan, Mac,
did you say?”
“Near ever since the Samurai took off their swords and turned
policemen.”
“What kept you in the East so long if you don’t like it?”
“Trade, like the wind, blaweth where it listeth, and a man must e’en
follow his trade,” said M’Gourley; and they resumed their road.
They were walking to Nikko together, this strangely assorted pair,
strangely assorted though they were both Scotchmen. They were
approaching the place, not by that splendid avenue of cryptomeria trees
that leads from Utso-no-Miya, but by the wild hill road, which runs from
Kureise, or rather by the higher hill road, for there are two, and they
had taken the loneliest and the longest by mistake (M’Gourley’s fault,
though he swore that he knew the country like the palm of his hand).
They had come twenty or twenty-five miles of the way by riksha, and were
now hoofing the remainder, their luggage having been sent on to Nikko by
train.
“And talking of trade,” said M’Gourley, “let’s go back to the matter we
were on a moment ago; there’s money in it, and I know the beesiness. I
ken it fine; never a man knows better the Jap Rubbish trade.”
“You were talking of starting at Nagasaki.”
“Ay, Nagasaki’s best.”
“Well, I’ll plank the money,” said Leslie. “I’ll put up a thousand
against a thousand of yours.”
M’Gourley stopped and held out a hand sheathed in a mournful-looking
black dogskin glove.
“Is’t a bargain?” said he.
“It’s a bargain. Funny that we should have only met the other day in
Tokyo, and that you should have come along to Nikko to show me the
sights. I believe all the time you were bent on trepanning me into this
business.”
“I was that,” said M’Gourley, with charming frankness; “for your own
good. A man without a beesiness is a man astray, and when you told me in
the hotel in Tokyo you were a boddie with money, and nothing to do with
it, I said: ‘Here’s my chance.’”
“If I had met you two months ago,” said Leslie bitterly, “I wouldn’t
have been much use, for my father would not have been dead, and I would
not have come into his money. Do you know what I have been?—I have been
a remittance man.”
“I’ve met vera much worse people than some of _them_,” said Mac, who if
his newly found partner had declared himself a demon out of Hades would
perhaps have made the same glossatory remark—the capital being assured.
“I’m hanged if I have,” said Leslie bitterly. “Give me a Sydney
Larrikin, a Dago, a Chinee, before your remittance man. I know what I’m
talking about for I have been one—see?”
“What, may I ask—” began M’Gourley, then he paused.
“You mean what was the reason of my being flung off by my father?
Youthful indiscretions. Let’s sit down; I want to take my boot off.”
The road just here took a bend, and became wilder and more lovely, a
stream gushed from the bank on which they took their seats, and before
them lay a little valley, a valley hedged on either side by cypress
trees, and thronged with crimson azaleas.