THE DREAMER AND THE DRAGON

They had finished dinner; a dinner which began with tea and bean flour cakes, passed on to fish served on little mats of grass, went on to soup served in lacquered bowls, proceeded to prawns; halted, hesitated, and went back to soup, scratched its head, so to speak, and then, as if with an after-thought, served up a quail, apologized for the substantiality of the quail by presenting a salted plum on a little plate, and then harked shamelessly back to soup, ending deliriously with a shower of little dishes containing everything inconceivable, and a big bowl of rice.

This is an impressionist picture of a Japanese dinner. I have eaten many, but I have never carried away more than an impression, and whether kuchi-tori comes before hachiz-a-kana, I cannot say, or where the seaweed or salted fish come in—but come in they do, they and other things stranger than themselves.

A chamÈcen was thrumming somewhere in the house as they dined, sitting on the soft white matting, and waited upon by two MousmÈs crouched on the matting like little panthers preparing to spring.

A slid back panel of the front wall made a doorway through which they could see the moon wandering over Nikko, casting her cool white light upon the blazing japonica flowers, the glory of the camellias, the roofs of the temples, and the sad dark beauty of the cryptomeria trees.

Nikko by day is fair, but by night, when the moon is overhead, when the air is full of the sounds of wandering waters, and the wind is heavy with the perfume of the wild azaleas, Nikko is a dream.

When the tea and bean cakes had been served, the moon was in the act of washing weakly a house gable across the garden, and a pale lilac-colored flower of the wistaria, which projected above the extemporized doorway; but by the time the quail had made its appearance, the garden was solid in moonlight, the pond was a mirror, and the frog self-marooned on the little island, was as distinct as if seen by daylight.

"I must learn Japanese," said Leslie, taking a cigarette-case from his pocket and lighting a cigarette at the tobacco-mono that stood at his elbow. "My lines are cast in Japan, that's clear, but a man without the language is a helpless baby."

"Ay, ay," said M'Gourley. "You can easily get instruction in the Japanese: take a wumman to live with you."

"I haven't looked at a woman for ten years, and I don't want to look at one again." Then suddenly bursting out: "Why, you old scamp, talking like that—you told me you were a member of the Free Kirk."

"The Wee Kirk," corrected Mac, leisurely lighting his pipe with an ember from the hibachi.

"Well, Free Kirk or Wee Kirk, you ought to be jolly well ashamed of yourself; and were you a member of the Wee Kirk when you were constructing idols in Birmingham with old What's-his-name?"

"Na, na; those were my godless days. I got my releegion late in life, and a vara good releegion it is; a waurkable releegion, one that does not heat in the bearings, but runs smooth."

"And what is this wonderful religion, if I may ask?"

"It is noet so much wonderful as waurkable, and it may be compreezed in the sentence: 'Do unto ithers as ithers would do unto you.'"

"O good Lord! and you call that a religion! Why, you precious old humbug, that means you can rob, and plunder, and murder, and cheat—that is to say, you can act like a beast towards people who would act so to you."

"Just so."

"Well, there's one thing I like about you, you're frank, to say the least of it."

This remark seemed greatly to incense Mac, who, perhaps, misunderstood the meaning of the word frank.

"When y've been in the waurld as long as I have, surrounded on ivry side by scoondrels and robbers, y'll maybee be as fraunk as mysel'. Fraunk.—wid ye give me a defineetion of the waurd—fraunk! I wid have ye to understand I'm an hoenest mon with hoenest men, but I'm a scoondrel wi' scoondrels. Fraunk!" And so he went on, his Scotch accent deepening as deepened his excitement, till at last he broke down into Gaelic, and thundered his remarks at the hibachi, slapping his thigh as he did so, and wakening the echoes of the house, which was resonant as a fiddle. So that by the time he had got to the end of his exordium, Leslie saw a panel waver back an inch, and the lady of the camellia peeping in to see what the Learned One was shouting about.

"Keep your hair on," said Leslie, when Mac, with a final "Fraunk!" delivered in English, began to refill and light his pipe. "I didn't mean to insult you; I only meant to say I like your open-heartedness."

"Ay, I was ever that to those I had a liking for."

"I meant more precisely your open-mindedness—but no matter, let's talk of something else. I wonder where they've put the kid, and oh, by Jove! I wonder if they've got that dragon. Sing out and ask, like a good chap."

Mac clapped his hands, and "Hai tadaima!" came as a response.

It was worth the trouble of clapping one's hands to hear that sweet reply.

A moment later, a panel slid back and the camellia lady appeared.

Campanula San was asleep, and at that very moment Wild-cherry-bud was in search of the Hon. Dragon, with orders to leave no confectioner's stall unvisited till she had secured him.

This with immovable gravity and deep, sweet earnestness of tone.

"Well," said Leslie when she had withdrawn, "of all the people I have struck yet, give me the Japanese."

"Wait till you've had beesiness transactions with them," said Mac darkly. "I am no so unfreenly to the Japs in or'nary life, but in beesiness the Jap's a wrugglin' sairpent—all but one—Danjuro—the man we're going to join in partnership; he's as straight as a Chinee."

"He must be damn crooked then!"

"Cruik'd enough to make his way in Japan, but straight enough to a freend; but you're a poet, man, Leslie, and no beesiness man. I kent y' for a poet when you sang that bit song on the road—the song aboot the camellia trees."

Leslie laughed.

"That rubbish! It's not mine; I read it in the Sydney Bulletin. Funny enough, too, it was the first thing that made me think of coming to Japan! Poetry! Good God! Put a man through the remittance mill in Sydney and see all the poetry that will be left in him! Put a butterfly through a sausage machine and then see how beautifully it will fly! Yes, I was once a poet; years and years ago I was a poet—a poet who never wrote anything, but a poet for all that. I could see the beauty of the world; and then they blinded me. Who? I don't know—the world. Maybe it was myself, maybe not. Maybe it was my father, maybe not. I only state the fact that something in me is dead—the something that took joy in life and found beauty in innocence—or was dead till I came to Japan. Oh, M'Gourley, man, the years I've spent in Sydney under a cloud, mixing with bar loafers, cursing my father and myself; the years I've spent in Sydney have broken my soul in me!"

"Why did ye not waurk?"

"Work! I had just enough money to keep me from starvation and decently dressed. I might have got a clerkship; for what good? To make another hundred a year. To spend on what? Can you not understand, man, that my mainspring was gone, that I was put out of the world I knew, tied by the leg to Sydney, bound to appear every quarter-day at the double-damned lawyer's office, or starve? Two things only kept me alive—tobacco and books—saved me from myself and from drink."

"What sort of a mon was your faither?"

"A hard, dour, just man—a man who could make no allowance for folly."

"Ay, ay! Had y' any brithers and sisters?"

"Never a one, and my mother died when I was two; and he used to leather me. Well, you can fancy my joy when old Bloomfield, the lawyer, sent for me one day and said: 'I've bad news for you, Mr. Leslie.' 'What's that?' said I. 'Your father is dead. He died intestate, and you have inherited his property. I am advised it amounts to over twenty-one thousand pounds.'"

"Twenty-one thousand?" said Mac in admiration.

"Yes; and I said to Bloomfield: 'You must be either a fool or a hypocrite, for that's the best news I ever heard in my life, and you know it.' Then some instinct took me over here to Japan. I was thinking of going to England, but I found all at once I had a horror of England and the English, so I came to Japan; and glad I am I came. Can you fancy what these people here are to me after the population of Sydney—those raucous, horse-racing, drink-swilling beasts? Then I fell in with you at Tokyo, and took a fancy to your old Scotch mug—and here we are."

At this moment a little figure crossed the garden, bearing a lantern on the end of a stick. It was Wild-cherry-bud; and presently she appeared with the much-sought-for dragon wrapped in rice paper.

It was a wonderful creation with a twisted tail, rather stumpy wings, but with a mouth that made up for all defects; nothing so ferocious had ever perhaps before been done in sugar candy.

When the thing had been inspected and approved, Wild-cherry-bud led the way to where Campanula slept, for Leslie wished his present to be placed beside her, so that she might find it when she awoke.

The Lost One, looking very much lost indeed on a huge futon (a quilt thicker than a muffin), and covered by a blue mosquito-net with red bound edges, was so profoundly asleep that the clicking of the net being pulled aside and the light of the night lantern borne by Wild-cherry-bud did not disturb her. She was sleeping on her back, the top futon only drawn to her waist, and her little perfectly shaped white hands were crossed pathetically on her breast.

Leslie knelt down, and lifting one little hand placed the long-sought monster beneath it. The hand clasped the dragon, the long-sought dragon, and across the sleeper's face passed what seemed the ghost of a smile.

"A'weel!" thought Mac as he looked on, "had he a bairn he'd make a better faither to it than his own faither made to him."

Then the mosquito-net was drawn and they departed, leaving Campanula to the possession of her dreams.

Up in their room Leslie steadily refused to undress till the waiting MousmÈ had "cleared out." He had already refused to allow her to rub his back when he was in his tub and now this—

The Tea House of the Tortoise people, good old-fashioned, Japanese inn people, unused to foreign follies, could not make it out.

The Areopagus convened itself again, and held council by the light of an andon, or night lantern.

"What could it mean?" There was simply no meaning in it. Such a thing had never happened before, and the general conclusion was that Leslie had "gone gyte."

Then the Areopagus went to bed all together under the same mosquito-net, and silence reigned with the moon over the Tea House of the Tortoise. The moon wandering over Nikko touching temple and tea-house pointed a pallid finger between the window chinks of the room where the Lost One lay asleep, as if to show her to the night. Clasping the candy dragon whose ferocious eyes shone carbuncle-like in the placid moonlight she made a strange picture, veiled by the blue gauze of the mosquito-net.