NAGASAKI BY NIGHT
“I wish you wouldn’t tell me stories like that,” she suddenly broke out.
“I’ll be dreaming about it all to-night.” She shuddered, and gazed at
Koma-ino. “Japan seems a horribly creepy sort of place; I think I’ll
make George come away to-morrow.”
“One side of it,” said Leslie, “is simply crawling; you have no idea,
and I who have lived here five years have only a glimmering of the mind
of the people. Do you know what I think?”
“Yes?”
“I think that in the sleeves of their kimonos—I mean their frock coats,
for they’ve put off their kimonos for a while for business
purposes—they are simply laughing at us.”
“At whom?”
“At the English—at Europe.”
“Like their impudence!”
“Perhaps it’s impudence, perhaps not, anyhow—I distrust them—”
“Dick,” said his companion, “look! It’s getting dusk: let’s go and look
for George and your ‘adoptive daughter.’ Mercy! What’s that!”
A deep hum filled the air; it seemed to come at first from the statue of
Koma-ino—a soul-disturbing hum that deepened and swelled and then
leapt, leapt into a deafening roar that rushed over Nagasaki, to die on
the distant sea.
Jane clung to her companion like a child, hugged him as a child might
hug a nurse; her straw hat was pushed sideways, and he found his face
buried in the masses of her perfumed hair. His arm had slipped round her
waist, her arm was over his shoulder, and her fingers pressing his neck;
for a moment he felt as if he were absorbing her being—drinking her.
Then the sound died away.
“_What_ was it?” gasped she, pushing away from him and gazing at him
with a white, drawn face. “Why, you seem half dazed; you were more
frightened than I. Dick, what was it?”
“I’m all right,” said Leslie, in the voice of a man waking from the
effect of an opiate. “I wasn’t frightened. It was only the big gong of
the monastery; I’ve heard it lots of times.”
“Then why couldn’t you have told me?” cried Jane, flying from fright to
fury. “Think what it must have looked like, you hugging me like that.”
She sprang to her feet. “You bring me here and tell me ghost stories,
and frighten me to death with gongs and things, and then—I believe
you’re half a Japanese already, you’ve grown so horrid.”
“There wasn’t any one to see,” said Leslie, rising to his feet. “And
talking about hugging—”
“I don’t want to talk about hugging—talk about hugging! Do you fancy
yourself on Hampstead Heath? Come, let us find George. I want something
common-place after all this.”
They found George and Campanula—the most strangely matched pair in the
world—waiting for them at the gates.
“You’ll come and dine with us at the hotel, won’t you?” asked Jane as
they got into the rikshas.
“I’ll come right enough,” said Leslie. “Wait, please.”
He went to Campanula’s riksha and asked her, but she prayed to be
honorably excused—she had a headache.
She passed her hand across her forehead as if in confirmation of her
words. Leslie tucked the riksha blanket round her knees, and explained
to the Du Telles, and they started.
The quaint city they had come through had changed to a quainter city
still. Night had blotted out the traces of Europe on Nagasaki—at least,
in the purely native streets. All sorts of strange little trades that
sleep in the daytime had awakened with the dusk. Things queer in the
daytime were now mysterious, and things common, quaint. The fish shop,
with its huge paper lantern, besides the fish and the sea-weed on its
slabs, disposed of dreams which it flung away gratis to the passing
traveler in the running riksha, and the booth of the sandal merchant,
with the tiny potted rose tree in front of the wares, became at once an
apology and atonement for all the commonplace villainy condensed in the
word “shop.”
Mousmés passed, now half Mousmés, half glowworms, each bearing a
colored lantern on the end of a little stick; and then the shadows
half lit by lamp-light, where a cherry tree was attempting to peep
into the street: the light of lamps glimmering through paper shutters,
the light of lanterns swinging in the wind—red, blue, white, and
yellow, some pictured with chrysanthemums; the stork that stands so
boldly forth in Japanese pictures but is nearly gone from Japan,
cherry-blossoms, and fish that seem swimming vigorously in a bowl of
water lambent and green; and then the sounds, ten _chamécens_ for one
in the day. The riksha whisks by a booth, whence comes the squalling of
cats—seemingly. It is the gaku, Japanese poetry set to music and flung
into the lamp-lit street to make things stranger, and heighten, if
possible, the charm. At the corner of the by-street leading to the
House of the Clouds they met Pine-breeze simply laden with all sorts of
weird and wonderful paper boxes, and lighting herself on her way with a
lantern pictured with a cuttle-fish and carried on the end of a short
bamboo rod. She had been marketing. It was a fortunate meeting, for she
could escort Campanula home.