THE SONG OF THE MUSHI

"It almost makes one wish one were dead," sighed Jane. They were sitting on a moss-grown tussock near a grave adorned with a fresh spray of cherry-blossom, contained in a joint of bamboo. Beneath them the hill stretched downwards, terrace after terrace, casting before their eyes the cold color of marble, and the mournful green of cryptomeria trees, the delicate tracery of ferns, and the glory of the wild camellias. Beyond lay the blue of the harbor, black-blue where the wooded cliffs met the water; from the water the hills led the eye past camphor woods and the green of the young bamboo, up and away to where the brown of their summits cut the dazzling azure of the sky. "I have never seen anything so beautiful, so peaceful. What are you thinking of, Dick?"

"I was thinking," said Leslie, rousing himself, "that we might have luncheon at my place."

"You are perfectly disgusting!" said Jane. "I'll never go to a cemetery with you again. Luncheon! Who wants luncheon here?"

"Very few," said he grimly, gazing over the tombs.

"Now you're trying to be smart—at the expense of these poor things. Ah! look at that tiny grave with the white flower in the little vase."

"Some child."

"Yes; a thing with a great sash that was flying its kite or spinning its top the other day, and now it's here."

"Or hitting shuttlecocks about the street."

"Yes," wiping her cheek where the shuttlecock had hit her—then suddenly: "I think men are beasts," addressing the distant hills.

"I'm with you there."

"No, you're not; all men are just the same."

"I suppose you mean to infer in a roundabout way that I'm a beast. Thanks."

"There's nothing to be thankful for, only—they don't understand."

He took her hand in his as if to make friends, and she let him hold it for a moment, then she suddenly drew it away.

"Had not we better be going? What's the time?"

"Twelve."

"Will you come and have luncheon at the hotel?"

"No, thanks; why not come and lunch at my place? I'll give you all sorts of funny Japanese things to eat. Luncheon won't be till half-past one, but you can have a talk with Campanula. It will only take us ten minutes or so to get there from here."

They came down to where the rikshas were waiting; he helped her in, tucked the linen apron round her, and gave the men their direction.

Campanula San had not yet returned, declared Pine-breeze, as she kow-towed before them on the matting.

"Well, she won't be long," said Leslie. "Shall we go into the house or the garden?"

"The house," replied Jane. "I'm tired of the sunlight; let's go in, and sit on the floor and talk."

"Right. But do you mind—"

"What?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, there's a clause in the lease that no one is to go in with their boots on."

"Why, for goodness sake?"

"They say it spoils the matting."

"All right," said Jane, holding up a small foot, and trying to unbutton the shoe on it.

"Let me," said Leslie, going down on his knees.

The shoe came off, and the little foot in its bronze silk stocking lay in his hands for half a second—half a second during which he was seized with a wild desire to kiss it. Next moment it was out of his hands, and the other was presented to him.

"You are all thumbs!" said Jane. "Do be quick! I'm not a stork to stand on one leg for an hour. There, you've burst a button off! I knew you would. Stupid!"

"Pine-breeze will sew it on," said he, hunting for the button on his knees.

"No, she won't. It doesn't in the least matter. Gracious, Dick! when I see you just like that, crawling about on your knees—"

"What?"

"I can't help remembering—Do you remember the rainy day at Glenbruach, when you and I were playing marbles in the pistol gallery, and I said you cheated, and you said you didn't, and I said you did, and you called me a liar?"

"And you hacked my shins?"

"Yes; and old Mrs. Johnstone, the housekeeper, came in and saw me and said I was an 'awfu' lassie!' Can it be that all that really happened, and that we are the same people? Imagine me hacking your shins now! Imagine us both playing marbles on the veranda!"

"And we didn't speak to each other for a day," said he, following her into the house. "And you looked so stiff and sour, and all of a sudden you came up from behind and flung your arms round my neck."

"And you shouted: 'Oh, get away, you little brute!'"

"Yes; because I thought you were making another attack on me, and all the time you only wanted to k—"

"I didn't. I only wanted to apologize."

"Well, apologize, then!" said he, arranging the cushions on the floor, and placing the rose tree and the parcel containing the sword in a corner.

"It is sad to look so far away," said she, taking as comfortable a position as she could upon the cushions. "Life was so jolly then. Oh! a good old day's trout-fishing is worth all the money in the world. Money is no use; what's the good of it? It just makes one not care for the simple pleasures of life. Do you remember the picnic you and I and those American children, who were staying at Callander, had, when the soda-water bottle burst, and we found we'd left everything behind but the jam and the eggs? Dick, I—I—want to ask you something."

It was one of the peculiarities of Jane's mind that a question formulating there would work its way along like a worm, under, maybe, ten minutes of conversation, and then come out at the end of a paragraph, rise for air, so to speak, in a manner irrelevant and sometimes startling.

"Yes?"

"What became of you all those three years before you came here to Japan?—you vanished. You told me the other day you were in Australia; were you?"

"I was in prison."

She turned deathly pale, and stared at him as if he had struck her.

"Oh, you need not be so alarmed; it was not a criminal but a social prison. My father allowed me a hundred and fifty a year, paid quarterly, as long as I lived in Sydney, and as I had no trade and no money I lived in Sydney for three years—tied by the leg."

"I think you take a pleasure in frightening me; first you told me you were a shopman, now a prisoner. Dick, why do you always make your own case out worse than it really is? Tell me, what was the last quarrel with your father about?"

"Debts."

"And, Dick—you know you used to—"

"I know I used to drink, but I don't drink now."

They were silent for a while, then he began to speak and tell her the story of his life as a remittance man, and he did not spare black in the composition of his picture.

She listened at first interested and amused by the thought of Dick tied by the leg in Sydney, hobbled, so to speak, and made to behave.

Then her amusement gave way to compassion. She saw him wandering in the Domain, by the sea-shore, in the streets, a lonely figure, a man with no interest in life, an exile banned by society.

She thought of all the men she knew and the number of them who were just as wicked and foolish as Dick had ever been, yet who by keeping on the right side of their bank balance retained their social position and the respect of all men.

And thinking of all this the heart in her was moved. A most dangerous condition just now, for Jane, Bessemer steel in her everyday laughing mood, became wax when her compassion was aroused.

"Why didn't you write and tell me?" said she. "I'd have gone and seen your father. Oh, it was wicked to send you off like that, away from every one. How could a father treat his child so!"

They were silent again for a moment.

"Poor Dick!" said Jane suddenly, and she took his hand in both hers and stroked it. A little shiver went through him.

Then, all at once, she felt an arm around her waist and his breath upon her cheek, and she did not try to take her hand from his or struggle, nor, after the first second of troubled alarm, did she feel the wish to struggle.

She had ceased for the moment to be Jane du Telle, a married woman, a person with a stainless reputation. All these facts were swept away by nature, just as shrubs and fir trees are swept away by the rush of the avalanche.

A great faintness came over her. She clung to him, and sinking backwards, fell upon the matting; his arms were around her, his breath on her cheek, her lips were returning his kisses, yet all the time her lips were murmuring: "Don't—don't—don't!"

At this supreme moment came a sound strangely alien to the situation—the jingling of tea-cups no less—and through the wall, or at least the opening of a panel, entered Pine-breeze, followed by Cherry-blossom, with the luncheon.

"Dick!" she cried, sitting up with her cheeks raging red, "tell them to go away."

But Dick was not heeding her. He was sitting up with his hands to the side of his head, and an expression on his face that made her almost forget her own position before the MousmÈs.

"Do you hear it?" said he.

"What?"

"That noise, my God, that noise."

A tiny cage was hanging from a hook on the wall. In it was a thing much beloved by Campanula—an insect like a grasshopper that sang a buzzing and tremulous sort of song. The mushi was a creature that only sang by night as a rule, but some spirit had moved its poetic soul, for it was singing now.

"It's that thing in the cage," said Jane, pointing to it tremulously, thankful for any excuse to escape the glances of the MousmÈs.

He looked up, sprang to his feet, went to the cage, and tore it from its hook.

The MousmÈs screamed out, for from his furious manner and the expression of his face they felt he was about to dash cage and mushi on the matting, and trample them underfoot.

And he was, for one horrible moment. Then something in him prevailed—the something that had made him pick the Lost One up and kiss her, and carry her all the way to Nikko; the spirit of good that had made him always not so bad as he might have been.

He rehung the little cage on the hook, and the thing in it became dumb; the sound in his head that troubled him had died away, and he returned to where Jane was sitting, and resumed his position on the cushions near her.

Then he told the MousmÈs to leave what they had brought on the floor, and to go away till he called them.

"Oh," said Jane, when they were alone again, "to think they should have seen me like that. Oh, Dick! How could we—how could I—"

"They don't matter," said he gloomily.

"Oh, don't talk to me!" She wrung her hands.

"For goodness sake," said Leslie, "don't make mountains out of molehills. They saw me kiss you, well, what of that? and they don't talk English—at least, English that any one can understand."

"But like that on the floor," murmured Jane, comforted somewhat by the last statement.

"Well, what of that? We are in Japan, where people live on the floor. I admit if a servant in England came in and saw—"

"Don't!" screamed she; "don't speak about it again. It was a moment of weakness; let us forget forget it. I mean, let us remember it as a warning."

"Do you feel like eating luncheon?" he asked, looking at the pathetic little dishes and tea-cups, each on its sea-green mat.

"No; I feel like nothing. I only want to go and bury myself."

He poured her out some tea and took some himself.

"You frightened me," she said in a tremulous voice after they had sat for a moment in silence. "I thought you were going to do something dreadful."

"When?"

"When you took that cage down with the buzzing thing in it that annoyed you—poor atom!"

"It didn't annoy me; that was not the sound I heard. It was the sound I heard in the dream I told you of—that devil—"

A figure stood in the doorway: it was Campanula returned.