THE “LA FRANCE”
The fair that had been going on all day in the street leading to the
Bund was still in full swing. A lurid sight the street presented, lit by
lanterns of all colors, and flare lamps near the booths.
Leslie was glad of the noise and bustle around him; one cannot think
much when pressing one’s way through a Japanese fair, colored lamps
dancing, Mousmés laughing, and showmen shouting, rikshas passing at a
trot, or attempting so to do, children blowing trumpets, babies whirling
rattles, men-of-war’s men from the ships in harbor walking four abreast
and arm in arm, singing “Jean Francis de Nantes,” or “We won’t go Home
till Morning.” _Chamécens_ and moon fiddles buzzing and tinkling, dogs
barking, and gakunin wailing.
It was ten when he reached the hotel. In the entrance-hall, where the
orange trees in tubs reflected the lamp-light from their glossy leaves,
a Chinese hall porter in a blue silk blouse sat on guard. From the
half-open door of the _salle à manger_, where a party of Russian
officers were at dinner, came the sound of laughter and the clinking of
glasses.
As he entered the hotel the whole world around him changed. Campanula
vanished from his mind. He was no longer in Japan. He was in the same
house with Jane, and in a few more hours she would be his.
The Chinaman rose from his seat when he saw Leslie enter and led him
down a corridor to the door of the private sitting-room where he had
dined with Du Telles. He had promised Jane to wait for her there till
the morning.
The sphinx-like Celestial closed the door, and Leslie found himself
alone.
The windows were open on account of the warmth, and they gave a view of
the narrow mysterious harbor that seems to have been cut in the old
heroic days by some giant who was also a poet. The high cliffs cast
their shadows like sable robes upon the water, jeweled with the lights
of the shipping. The sky all silence and stars, paling now in the
moonlight, was almost the sky of Europe. Orion was there, and the
Pleiades, and Cassiopæa dreaming in her diamond-studded chair.
The room itself was a strange mixture of Japan and Europe. The floor was
the matted floor of Japan, the cane sofas might have been bought at
Shoolbred’s. The walls were as plain and unadorned as the walls of a
Japanese house are wont to be—that is to say, under the fans which the
hotel proprietor had fastened to them—fans from Kioto, Tokyo, and Nara
crucified against the white paneling and looking like great butterflies
in some giant’s collection.
He lit a pipe. Jane was upstairs in some room, but there were still nine
hours of waiting to be done; and he had promised that he would not go
upstairs if permitted to pass the night in the hotel, but wait patiently
for her to come to him at the hour of starting.
He felt that if he thought about her he would break his oath, so he
drove her from his mind.
He watched the twinkling lights in the harbor; those darting about like
fire-flies were the sampans; that long hulk all crusted with light was
the _La France_, the ship in which Jane had intended to sail for Osaka.
It was after ten now, and she was overdue to leave. That sister-hulk,
equally gemmed, was the Nord Deutscher Lloyd boat leaving at dawn for
Colombo. Those three lights in a triangle were the anchor lights of the
great Russian cruiser _Rurik_—the ill-fated _Rurik_.
Suddenly a horn of light shot out from the bow of the _La France_, and
she began to move like a glittering town towards the sea, and the wind
from the west brought the faint music of a band. The _La France_ had
unbuoyed and was away.
He watched her as she picked her course through the shipping stealthily
like a robber. Now with all side lights showing, now with them half
extinguished as she veered to avoid the bell-buoy of the Atraska shoal;
now a vague phantom swallowed by the shadows of the night.
The hotel was silent now, the Russians had gone off to their ship.
Somewhere outside, somewhere in the gloom of the mysterious night, a
_chamécen_ was tinkling to the muttering of a little drum. What dancing
girl was setting her steps to that tune—and where?
He rose to his feet and began to pace the room, then he turned the lamp
up till it smoked, and turned it down till it was nearly out, and cursed
the burner for his own stupidity.
Still the distant _chamécen_ kept up its buzzing to the devil’s tattoo
of the distant drum.
He walked to the window and shut it. Result—absolute silence and
stifling heat. No matter; anything was better than that infernal drum.
He had shut out the drum, but he had shut in a mosquito. It was in the
lace curtain, and its twang brought him again to his feet. He tried to
find it in the curtain, failed, pulled the whole curtain down from its
attachment, and trampled it under-foot.
Silence, this time unbroken, until one of the fans upon the wall
rustled, and from beneath it crept a frightful-looking spider as brown
and as broad as a penny.
He did not see it; he was sitting in the arm-chair with his head between
his hands, breaking his promise to Jane.
When it was broken he got up, crossed the room, opened the door, and
went into the hall.
The Chinese night-porter was sitting like a figure of stone in a blouse
of blue silk. Leslie went up to him, spoke some words in a low tone, and
handed him some money.
The Chinaman rose and led the way upstairs. Down a passage they went
till the guide stopped, pointed to a door, turned, and vanished as
silently as he had come.
Leslie went to the door and knocked softly. No answer. He turned the
handle, the door opened and he entered—an empty room.
A lamp was burning on a table in one corner, a bed stood close to the
window: the bed was empty.
It was Jane’s room, for there lay her trunks. A glove lay on the floor.
He picked it up, looked at it, smelt it, and then threw it down. The
dressing-table held none of those articles of the toilet one might have
expected to see. Beside the lamp on the side-table lay a letter.
He had seen the letter almost on the first moment of his entering the
room, with that vague, half-terrified comprehension which we may imagine
in the brain of the bull when the sun-light flashes on the sword of the
matadore.
He approached it now, and read the superscription: “Richard Leslie, Esq.
Important.”
He opened it, and a number of bank notes came out. These he laid on one
side, took the letter that was with them, and began to read.
He read the letter, not as if he were reading a letter, but the face of
some scoundrel he had dragged by the ears into the zone of lamplight. He
envisaged it, took whole sentences in _en bloc_. He read first at the
end, then in the middle, then at the beginning.
“And now good-bye for ever. Oh, Dick, don’t think badly of me for this;
I have only done what was right.
“When you get this I shall be gone. I am leaving by the _La France_ to
meet George.
“I leave you money. Half what I have is yours; remember we are cousins,
and ought to help one another.
“Oh, Dick! Dick! I _can’t_ do what you want. I am not thinking of myself
but of my people. Imagine the disgrace and ruin it would bring them. My
dear old father, it would kill him.”