THE FOREIGN DEVILS

The female Foreign Devil having failed to uproot the oak, which clung to its native soil with a tenacity highly Japanese, returned to the garden path. And then came the voice of Pine-breeze kow-towing to the strangers, bidding them welcome, and imploring them to make the honorable entrance.

They passed from view into the house, and Leslie rose from his chair.

"Wait here awhile, Campanula," he said, "and then follow me in. I think I know them, but I will go and see."

"Yes," said Campanula.

He walked to the house and kicked his garden shoes off in the veranda, noting the fact that the Foreign Devils had committed the unspeakable outrage of entering with their shoes on.

"Richard!" cried the tall woman, advancing to him with outstretched hand as he entered the room where they were. "Why, you've grown!" She spoke as though they had parted yesterday, but her voice had an hysterical quaver, then she presented her cheek to him for a cousinly kiss.

"This is Richard Leslie," said the woman, turning to the little stout man in tweed. "We grew up together; that's why I'm so tall, I suppose. Dick—my husband George. Gracious, Dick, where are your chairs and things? Have you nothing to sit down on?"

"Only the floor," said Leslie, fetching some square cushions and placing them on the matting. "See, this is how it's done," and he sat down on one of the cushions, whilst his companions followed suit.

Jane du Telle, once Jane Deering, was, despite her vivacity and carelessness of manner, evidently in a state of high nervous tension.

Leslie, notwithstanding the years that had passed since their last meeting, saw in her mentally little change. She was the same Jane who had once hacked his shins, when they were boy and girl together, up in Scotland, and then flung herself on his neck in a burst of repentance and tears. Emotional, good-hearted, selfish—giving herself away one moment, but always saved the next by a latent discretion that was to her flighty nature as a gyroscope. The same Jane with whom he had fished for salmon and played at tennis in the past, seated before him now on a floor in Japan, chattering of everything and nothing just in the old familiar way.

"And that's the fellow she has married!" thought he, as he glanced across at George du Telle, a podgy, red-headed little man, a globe-trotting Briton of the most blatant description.

"How did you know I was here?" asked he, after Jane had somewhat talked her hysterical feelings off.

"Mr. Channing told us last night at the hotel. He's a friend of yours. He told us he knew an Englishman named Richard Leslie living in the native fashion, and I asked him if he was good-looking and tall and dark, and he said, 'Yes.' He said you lived at the House of the Clouds—sounds like an address in a dream, doesn't it?—so we took rikshas and came."

She put her hand to her back, where the "floor stitch" had seized her. The floor may be a convenient enough resting-place for a MousmÈ who sinks down upon it quite naturally in the likeness of a compressed and joyously colored Z, but for an English woman of five feet eight or more, dressed in a tailor-made gown, and laced in a corset parfait it is at first rather difficult.

"I would have got chairs," said Leslie, "if I had known you were coming; but of all the people of the world, you were the last I expected to see. Where did you come from? I mean, how did you strike Nagasaki?"

"We came from Colombo."

"Beastly hole," put in her husband, who was stroking Sweetbriar San, the cat of the establishment, who had just come in to inspect the strangers. "We stayed at the Beach Hotel two nights, and d'you know what they charged us? Just think."

"Don't think," said Jane, who had wriggled into a more comfortable attitude. "Give me that cat, George; and I wish you would try to repress your hotel bills. Dick, I was so sorry to hear the news about your father."

"What news?"

"About his death."

"Well, you were sorrier than I was."

"Oh, Dick! but don't let us talk about it, it's all so sad. And have you been living here in Japan ever since?"

"Ever since."

"Just like this on the floor?"

"Just like this on the floor."

"You must find it rather flat, I should think," said the carroty-headed George.

"Richard," said Jane suddenly, ignoring her husband, "you're not married to a Japanese—or anything—are you?"

"No."

"Do you live here alone?"

"Well, I have three servant girls, and a daughter, if you call that 'alone.'"

"A daughter!" said Jane.

"Yes; and she's Japanese, too."

"Japanese!"

"Yes; I adopted her."

George du Telle snorted, and fortunately at that moment a panel slid back, and Pine-breeze appeared with the tea, followed by Lotus-bud with an hibachi and Cherry-blossom with a heap of tiny plates.

"Are these your—I mean is one of these your—"

"Daughter? No. Turn round, and you will see her,"

Jane was seated with her back to the drawn-back panel that made a doorway on to the veranda. She turned, and there in the sunlit space stood Campanula in her blue kimono, broad scarlet obi, and with a scarlet flower in her hair. Behind her, as a background, lay the picture garden, antique hills, spun-glass torrents, and tiny, twisted fir trees, that looked, oh, so old, and tired of the world, and tormented by the wind.

Campanula went right down on her knees upon the matting, and murmured the usual Japanese welcome.

Now this was a practice that Leslie disliked. He had tried to break her of it, and in the attempt he had come across a strange fact.

Campanula in her heart of hearts was a real child of Old Japan. She might have been a sister to the seven-and-forty Ronins in the time before Osaka was defiled by factory chimneys, and the monastery of Kotoku-in by the presence of Cook's tourists.

She tried honestly to be modern, as it was the wish of Leslie, but in times of emotion, back her intellect would go to Old Japan, and she would act as her ancestors had acted in who knows what lotus-strewn and blossom-scented ages.

"What does she say?" asked Jane, as George du Telle rose to his feet. "Tell me, and ask her to excuse me for not getting up, for when I get up, I'll have to be pulled up."

"She is bidding you welcome and at the same time apologizing for the fact of her own miserable existence."

"I accept the apology," said Jane, as Campanula, her devotions over, sank down before the tea-service, and prepared to act as hostess. "Freely and frankly, Dick, I must congratulate you on your taste—she is lovely."

Campanula looked up with a faint, apologetic smile.

"I speak English," she said.