M’GOURLEY’S LOVE AFFAIR
Mac had gone down to the office that morning in a temper.
The staff consisted of himself and Ah Hop Sing, the Chinese office boy.
He could not quarrel with himself, so he quarreled with Ah Hop Sing,
using a rattan cane to enforce the argument, till Ah Hop Sing hopped and
sang in a fashion that justified his title.
Then Mac wrote business letters and whilst he wrote, the thoughts of
this dusty and unlovable-looking Scot went far astray on pleasant and
picturesque roads, under blue skies, by brakes all gay with the crimson
japonica flowers and the glorious beauty of the red camellias, and
beneath the solemn darkness of the cryptomeria woods of Nikko.
That is to say, they would stray to these places, and then he would
recall them to indite letters of advice to Maconochie of Glasgow, a
letter of abuse to Mr. Oyama—a gentleman who never fulfilled his
contracts when they threatened loss, sheltering his business self behind
the ample kimono of the Tokyo guild—and letters to divers other people
in trade.
And still his thoughts would stray whilst he gummed and stamped the
envelopes, and they would be buying dolls now at booths in Jinrikisha
Street, or helping to fly kites at the House of the Clouds.
They would stand watching a small person playing kitsune-ken with
another person of her own age; and the same small person laboring up the
Hill to the House of the Clouds, burdened with a bundle of books, and
sheltered beneath a many-ribbed crimson umbrella.
Then they would glance at the same person, bigger grown, and suddenly
become beautiful; then they would heave their shoulders and sigh, and
all come back to help in the addressing of a letter to M’Clintock of
Osaka, or some other magnate of the Jap Rubbish Trade.
Mac was in love, as I have before indicated: in love with three people.
A tiny dot in a blue kimono and stiff sash; a person somewhat similarly
dressed, whom he had sometimes helped of evenings with her lessons, or
watched as she pricked her fingers over needlework; and a Mousmé as
pretty as seven.
He had been in love for years without knowing it; a flower had been
growing in this dusty soil, where one could not fancy any green thing
finding nutriment, unless, perhaps, a weed. A white flower, pure and
without stain.
Nothing could be more ideal than this love, nothing with legs and arms
attached to it could be more un-ideal than Mac. And the strange thing
was that this pure blossom of the soul did not improve the soul it grew
from a bit, at least as far as human eye could see, for the man of the
Great Tung Jade and the Lessar papers incidents was, morally, just the
same—worse, if anything—as the wailing clients of Danjuro could
testify.
When Campanula was alone with Leslie in these later days, she wore a
grave and thoughtful air. Watching her, one could perceive that he alone
possessed her mind; all the quaint and charming ways of her childhood,
all things frivolous and light, she seemed to have dropped and left
behind her with her toys.
When Campanula was quite alone with M’Gourley, a subtle change came over
her. The child came out and played.
Though Leslie had adopted her as a daughter, she had by no means adopted
him as a father.
Tod M’Gourley was her adoptive father, or, at least, she treated him as
such. He acted also as uncle, aunt, grandmother, brother and general
playmate all combined; and any half-holiday during the last few years,
you might have seen Campanula and her family strolling along Jinrikisha
Street, or on the Bund: the family in an old top hat, black broadcloth
suit, and bearing a gamp umbrella in its hard fist.
They would stray together through the wonders of the town, Mac and she,
and pause and gaze in at shops like two children, buy sweets and eat
them unashamed and openly. Stop to look at performing monkeys, or listen
to street ballad-singers, or criticize passing funerals.
He had never seen so much of life round town as Campanula showed him,
clapping beside him in her little clogs when the streets were damp, or
gliding beside him sandal-shod in the warm, dry days of spring.
Where Campanula was concerned, this dour and dusty Scot had all the
delicate and instinctive feelings of a woman; he had noticed “fine” the
change that had come over her of late, and the change in her manner
towards Leslie.
The thing pleased him, yet it made him sigh—and frown, when he called
to mind “that wumman,” the mental label he had attached to Jane du
Telle.
When he had finished business he went to Danjuro’s shop, where he had an
appointment, as we have seen, with an Englishman. The Englishman having
been duly plundered, Mac looked at his watch, found it was nearly
twelve, and was struck by a bright idea.
He would go to the House of the Clouds, fetch Campanula out, and have
luncheon with her.
Ten minutes later found him on the veranda.
Campanula had just returned, having left O Toku San.
M’Gourley sat down on the veranda, and Campanula sat down beside him on
a little fur rug made from the skin of an Ounce, or some such small
animal. She looked sad and depressed, and her eyes wandered about the
landscape garden as if questioning its hills, its streams, its old, old
forests.
“Campanula,” said Mac, taking her little hand between his great rough,
red paws, “what ails you, child? You look sad and fashed, what’s been
worrying you?”
“I have been to see O Toku San,” replied Campanula, speaking in
Japanese. “She is dying. Her heart is dead,” said Campanula, putting her
other little hand over her own heart. “I am—oh, so sad! for to-day the
thought of death has come to me, a thought that I never knew before.”
“Child, child,” said M’Gourley, “dinna speak like that. We must all die
soon or later—ay, ay, we must all die, sure enough.”
“But not so sadly as she,” replied Campanula with a little sob.
M’Gourley looked at her; she was in tears.
He drew her close to him just as a mother might have done, and held her
to him whilst she rested her head against his old coat, and sobbed and
wept like a little child, gazing at the landscape garden through the
veil of her tears.
He rocked her gently to soothe her, but said nothing, holding her just
as he had held her that day in the gardens of Dai Nichi Do, as if to
protect her against Death, as he had that day protected her against the
vision of the terrible Akudogi.
Her sobs slowly ceased, but still she kept her cheek rested against his
coat.
“What is Death?” she suddenly asked. The question was quite beyond
M’Gourley.
“Dinna ask me,” he said. “It’s what we all must come to some day.”
“And will O Toku San see him she loved when she goes—there?” continued
she, as if unheeding his reply. “Perhaps”—after a long pause—“he will
know her love for him when he too is there, and make her happy.”
“Mayhap,” said M’Gourley, who did not know the facts of the case, or
perhaps he would not have taken so cheerful a view of O Toku San’s
lover’s future state. “Mayhap.” He looked down at her little face. Her
eyes were dry, but a tear was still wet on her cheek. He took out his
handkerchief and dried it.
Campanula smiled faintly, pressed her cheek ever so slightly against his
arm as if in thanks, and drew away from him, resuming her position on
the little rug.
M’Gourley took out his pipe, lit it, and began to smoke.
“Now,” said he, “just put on those sandal shoes of yours again, for I am
going to take you out with me.”
“Where?” asked Campanula.
“No matter where,” replied Mac, rising from the veranda. “A nice place
where you and I’ll go—you and I together, as we did along the Nikko
road, only not on my shoulder. Na, na! you’re ower big for that. Do you
remember the sugar-candy dragon?”
“Ah! the Hon. Dragon!” replied she in the vernacular, as she bent to
pass the sandal-strap past the great toe of her white tabi. “He is
upstairs with—other things, but the Hon. Dragon is very old now.”
Then she took her umbrella and opened it, and M’Gourley and she passed
down the path to the gate.
He held the gate open for her, and she passed through with a murmured
word of thanks, and then she led the way down hill under the perfumed
beauty of the lilac boughs.
About half-way down, Campanula stepped aside as if to let some one pass.
M’Gourley, close on her heels, and in a reverie, did the same thing
unconsciously. If someone had passed, that someone must have effaced
himself amidst the lilac trees on the left of the path.
“Poor blind man!” said Campanula, looking back up the path.
“Whoat?” cried Mac. “Whoat did y’ say?”
“Blind man,” replied Campanula; “he who came last night—you remember!”
M’Gourley took off his old top hat, and drew his coat sleeve across his
forehead. Beads of sweat had sprung there all of a sudden.
He stood for a second or two looking at Campanula, and then for a second
or two looking up the path, pied with sunshine and shadow, the pretty
path that for him had suddenly been made horrible. There was nothing to
be seen, nothing but the sunshine and shadow.
“My eyes are growing auld,” he said at length. “Do you see him still,
Campanula?”
She had turned away to look at a fern that was growing on the bank.
“I do not see him now,” she replied. “He has gone through the gate.”
“Are you sure,” said Mac, speaking in a subdued voice, “that he was the
same man that came last night?”
Campanula was quite sure.
“Wait for me,” said Mac, “and I’ll run up and tell them to give him some
food.”
He came hurriedly back up the path, very much against his will.
There was nobody in front of the house, he went round to the kitchen.
The Mousmés were there, preparing luncheon—at least, preparing to
prepare it in a leisurely way.
Had they seen anyone about the house, a blind man?
No, they had seen nobody, only the poulterer, who had been with eggs an
hour ago.
Had they seen a blind man last night—had a blind man called round at
the kitchen to ask for food?
No; nobody had been for food to the kitchen last night, least of all a
blind man.
Then Mac hurried off, and the Mousmés dropped everything to discuss the
meaning of all these questions asked by the Learned One; and Pine-breeze
embarked on a story about two blind men and a frog, and the fox-faced
representative of the rice god, a story that put the luncheon back half
an hour.
Campanula was plucking flowers when Mac returned. Just three or four
with a delicate fern frond, such a charming little bouquet, a veritable
work of art made in a moment with unerring taste and a few turns of her
deft fingers. She made Mac bend, and fixed the tiny bouquet in his
coat-lapel.
Then they pursued their way, Mac vastly perturbed in his mind.
There was just now living in the pleasant city of Nagasaki an inn-keeper
of the name of Yamagata, who owned a tea house named “The Full-blown
Peony Flower.”
Mr. Yamagata was a Progressive. He believed that a tea house where a
real English luncheon or dinner could be obtained would, judging from
his compatriots’ passion for things European, be a success.
And it was, till half Jinrikisha Street nearly died of indigestion.
His tea house was a tiny affair situated up an entry near Danjuro’s
shop, and surrounded by a little courtyard, wherein grew
dyspeptic-looking plum trees in pale amber-colored pots.
Danjuro, who was a friend of Yamagata’s, had been chanting the praises
of the place so long, that Mac had become obsessed by the idea of it;
and casting about for somewhere new to take Campanula, the idea had
turned up like a horrible sort of trump card.
The tea house was on its last legs, and practically deserted, so they
had the place to themselves; and having ordered the meal they sat on the
matting of a desolate room and waited for it to come.
“Campanula,” said Mac, “you have never seen that blind man before?”
She shook her head.
“Never; nor one so ugly as he.”
“Campanula,” said Mac earnestly, “if you see him again dinna speak with
him; he’s an ill man and bodes no good.”
Oh, indeed, she did not wish to speak with him, but he was so old and
poor and ugly she could not but feel sorrow for him; and he said last
night that he had come such a long way off, and must soon return.
M’Gourley shuddered.
“Ay,” said he to himself, “a dom long way off;” then to Campanula: “Said
he anything else?”
“No,” replied Campanula, “for I told him to go to the back entrance, and
he went.”
At this moment the soup was brought in by three somewhat faded-looking
Mousmés, each armed with a plate, a real English soup plate.
The soup was thin and not exuberantly hot, but it seemed vastly to amuse
Campanula when it was put before her. “A,” said she, pointing with her
spoon-tip to something at the bottom of the plate, “B—C”—she was
pointing to the little Italian paste letters floating, or rather sunk,
in the mixture. “D—and look—a cow!”
Mac looked over to admire.
“Ay, ay, it’s a coo, right enough, an’ there’s a cock and hen; but eat
it up before it gets cold.”
Campanula ate her alphabet, and the next course appeared. A boot sole
labeled a beef-steak, which vanished, uneaten, and was replaced by what
seemed to be an old stone cannon-ball, such as they used to fire out of
Mons Meg. The O.S.C.B. was labeled a pudding.
It was the caricature of an ordinary English middle-class country
luncheon.
But it was an amazingly clever caricature: a perfect work of art.
After luncheon, M’Gourley returned to business, and Campanula to the
House of the Clouds.