Clive Holland

“ Kotmasu and I step out on to the balcony to await Mousmé’s coming with the lanterns.
There is no moon to-night, and the clouds hang low, making the evening dull and close. Everything is so still, with a deep silence that is at once oppressive and slightly terrifying, until one is accustomed to it. Down below lies the town, like some vast black monster with many twinkling eyes. There is no wind; indeed, there is scarcely enough air to disperse the smoke of our cigars, the ends of which glow like the red eyes of some wild animal. ”

“ At any rate the attendant mousmé should clearly understand that she was not like the party of geishas over there in the brilliantly lighted pagoda near the balcony, who were entertaining and being entertained by some of the gilded youths of Nagasaki.
“What a noise they make!” exclaims Mousmé with a smile of pitying disgust. “Their laugh is as hollow as a drum, and they sing because they must. They will be with some one else to-morrow night, and the next, and the next. While,” and the expression of Mousmé’s face changes and grows very soft and tender, “I have always you.” ”

“ From my position I can overlook the road which runs away up alongside my boundary fence, higher and higher, till at last it vanishes amid the greenery and the tea-gardens. Down below, the older quarters of the town lie huddled together like a flock of sheep crushing each other in the endeavour to avoid some danger, swarming with people of the poorer class. It is not quite so fine an evening as last night was, and the hill-tops are hidden in the woolly masses of threatening clouds. The twilight is gloomy, and not orange-hued as before, and darkness comes more quickly upon its heels. ”

“ I must have kept returning to the subject of Miss Hyacinth, for all at once he makes a discovery, and says without preamble, and as if certain in his own mind that he has “hit the right nail on the head”—
“Her people are rich, but still they might be induced to sell her.”
“Man alive,” I say, without remembering that Kotmasu’s English does not extend to a knowledge of such a phrase, “what do you think I want?”
He is laconic, and smiles. “Hyacinth—the mousmé.” ”

“ We go along the street, brightly illuminated by hundreds of lanterns, pendent and ambulatory, at some small risk of being run over by rikishas taken at a rapid, nay, almost reckless pace by their active drawers.
Mousmé walks along quite gaily, her wooden clogs making a great clatter on the stones which crop up in the street, in concert with those of scores of other women who are out with husbands, brothers or escorts for an evening’s amusement or stroll. She is so naïvely proud of her “English sir,” who is a real husband after all. ”

“ It is pleasant to look upon the green hills, and even to watch the higher ones, bare and brown-topped, break through the fleecy mist hanging about their summits, as I have my breakfast on the verandah in the tiny cups and tinier plates and dishes in which my servants delight.
“Surely Mousmé—Miss Hyacinth” (I have got to call her this soon, in all conscience) —“will like my house,” I speculate as I swallow beans in sugar, prunes in ditto, toy-sized cups of tea, and Huntly and Palmer’s biscuits as my solid dish. She lives down there somewhere, nearer the town. ”

“ Kotmasu keeps up an uninterrupted conversation in a rather grating undertone, whilst Miss Hyacinth and I chatter, and gradually get upon most friendly terms.
I am quite sure that she already thinks I wish to marry her. And possibly the only question now agitating her mind is, “For how long?”
Permanent marriages between Europeans and Japanese women are as infrequent as temporary ones are the reverse.
I am more than ever in love with Mousmé by the time of our departure, and am beginning to feel pained that I cannot relieve her mind as to my intentions being permanent. ”

“ I am going to get some flowers for Mousmé when she awakes. I cross one of the tiny bridges—spanning an equally tiny streamlet—which seem made only in children’s size, and which creak complainingly beneath my tread, and make my way to the thicket of roses in which my soul delights. A big frog contemplates me with an offensively open stare for an instant, from the edge of the basin of the plashing fountain, before diving with outstretched hind-legs beneath the shining surface. ”

“ A lizard scuttles away across the path at her approach, to cower amongst the moss and tea-roses; and as she turns the corner towards the gold-fish pond, I catch a last glimpse of the huge, brilliant bow of her obi which I laboriously tied an hour or so before.
It is very pleasant to have my pretty little mousmé flitting about my home and garden. I wonder somewhat vaguely why her absence has never struck me before. Love apparently is one of those flavours of life which one misses least when one has not enjoyed its piquancy. ”

“ But then, after all, she will be my wife, and because she is pretty and “strange”—I fancy that’s what Lou will call her—she may succeed in a society which, like the Athenians, is always running after some new thing. The latest “craze” is to my mind like a glass of sherbet. It creates the greatest amount of stir for the least space of time.
Not even thoughts of Lou, who is the pink of propriety—why isn’t impropriety dubbed pink?—can terrify me from my purpose, because I am in love. ”

“ Mousmé flutters along at my side, chattering in Japanese, and English of a sort, gay and contented, her sense of the ludicrous being aroused every now and then by the sight of one or other of her countrymen in the garb of civilization—Western civilization, that is. A Japanese in European attire in Europe may be an artistic mistake; in Japan an inartistic atrocity. There are several of these about, in out-of-date pot-hats, and tail-coats of the year before last’s cut. Even Kotmasu, who himself is attached to pseudo-European attire, laughs at them. ”

“ I smile and fancy how Lou would laugh at a trousseau contained in a lacquer box measuring about 20 inches by 12 inches by 10 inches! remembering that hers, which was described at portentous length and with unblushing detail in the columns of the Queen and Lady’s Pictorial, must have occupied little short of six large Saratoga trunks. But what matter? This style of thing is a mere flaunting of wealth by Dives before the aching eyes of Lazarus. Even the wealthiest can only wear one dress at a time, and Mousmé can do this, and with far more grace than some of the salt of society. ”

“ She seems more fairy-like than ever, sitting out under the verandah, wrapped up in an elaborate dressing-gown of silver-grey silk with a delicate rose-pink lining. She doesn't look a whit older—Japanese women never appear so till they are quite old—only more like some toy woman taken bodily from off a screen or jar dec decorated by an artist drawing his inspiration from models of the highest types. ”

“ I soon have my sprigs of gardenias mingled with the roses, and I return to the house, hoping to lay my offering by Mousmé’s side ere she awakes.
I enter the strangely bare bedroom, with its gray panels and vermilion storks, from the verandah. A queer old idol, belonging to the former owner of the house, grins—there is no other word for an accurate description—benign approval from its pedestal in the corner. ”

“ I gather a huge bunch of damask-petalled tea-roses, heavy with perfume, and smelling as attar never smells. As I go along the walk with the mossy edge, in which lizards and strangely beautiful beetles play hide-and-seek in the sun, in search of some gardenias, the stanzas of a native poet stray through my mind, commencing"
“The dew shines on the lily; and the rose opens her crimson heart to greet the rising sun.” ”

“ Kotmasu is coming to take me to see Mousmé at sundown.
I am at home again early in the afternoon, and, with a view to my proposed marriage, I begin to take stock of my surroundings.
I have lived long enough in Japan to see nothing exceptional in a marriage which will probably be concluded in a space of time that would be considered extremely short to a Western mind. The worst of it is, I am returning to England for good in less than nine months’ time, and what will my people say to my choice? ”

“ The evenings we spend together are far from being uninteresting; and Mousmé, who has picked up the art of conversation wonderfully, is delighted to intrude her quaint ideas upon us. She is burning with curiosity concerning the strange country called England, which Kotmasu, willing enough to shine even in the eyes of a married woman, and she my wife, pretends he knows so well. ”

“ Outside our tent-like mosquito-curtain we hear the angry buzzing of the foe; whilst big, heavy-winged moths every now and again come with a tiny thud against the enshrouding gauze, to dart away again towards the small, glowworm-like flame of the pendent lamp, which for no particular reason I always keep alight throughout the night. ”

“ Mousmé, for so I begin to call her, has, it appears, several brothers and sisters; but I reflect placidly that if a man mustn’t marry his grandmother, neither is he obliged, so to speak, to marry his wife’s relations. ”

“ Of course, we carry lanterns—nearly every one does at night—and one constantly meets processions of families or friends, out either for a walk or on their way to some place of amusement, all carrying paper lanterns of various colours, and giving a pretty, fantastic effect to the dark roads and narrow streets of the town. ”

“ Kotmasu to visiting a little playhouse down below in Nagasaki, where some new geishas from Yeddo are to make their début.
I am not so fond of my mother-in-law as I should be, nor of my perplexingly numerous sisters and brothers-in-law, both small and great. The former I suspect of rapacity, an insatiable appetite for “handsome presents,” which, if not always very costly in European eyes, are certainly numerous, and range from rouge fin (imported from Paris) and blanc perle to gay-hued obis and handsome hairpins of tortoise-shell, or of bronze with carved jade heads. ”

“ When once we reach the bottom of the road, which runs past older houses even than mine, villas mostly inhabited by the better-class merchants and the few foreigners who may have protracted business in Nagasaki, we are plunged almost without transition or warning into the heart and life of the town. ”

“ We go through the streets, which at night seem all the same, all gaily lit with flaring oil-lamps, and illuminated with countless numbers of paper lanterns, which throw a mellow-coloured radiance on the faces of the passers-by ”

“ The legal formalities had been all previously arranged with the assistance of my excellent Kotmasu, who is a person of some importance, and of weight with the officials who attend to such matters.
There is really such a very little to do; so few things for Mousmé to transport to her new home; nearly all could be easily packed in a large Gladstone if she possessed such a thing. As it is, her belongings are brought up the hill to my house in an elaborately decorated lacquer box, by a big little brother with a bullet-head, nice eyes, and a great liking for teriyaki (plums in sugar coats) . ”

“ We hear gossip from my queer mother-in-law, but it is usually only a chronique scandaleuse of the doings of the geishas, of her friends, and last, though by no means least, of her enemies, half of whom I do not even know by name. ”

“ But the djins are wonderfully active and intelligent, and avoid obstacles with marvellous ability. There are few corns in Japan, and the wheel of a rikisha over one’s feet, therefore, is of somewhat less moment. ”

“ Japanese tailor near the quay, who has a tendency, so I am told, to make his coats short in the waist.
Mousmé’s mother is delighted—a state of mind perhaps not altogether unconnected with various handsome presents which faithful Kotmasu, who should be a member of the corps diplomatique, naively suggested my making her.
The marriage can be very easily contracted ”

“ We sit out almost all day long; and when I am obliged to leave Mousmé to attend to business in the town, Oka’s wife sits within call, and Mousmé looks at the pictures in the illustrated papers and magazines Lou has from time to time sent me ”