THE "EMPRESS OF JAPAN"

If Mr. Kamamura had sent a special messenger to Paradise to pick from the aviary there a blue-winged and bright-eyed day for his garden-party, he would not have obtained a better one than that which came by chance.

A haze hid its coming. Just after sunrise, looking from Leslie's garden one could scarcely see Nagasaki down below—a toy town, seen through faint blue gauze, it seemed. The wind came in puffs, hot from the Pacific, shaking the cherry branches.

The great double cherry-blossoms were falling. The close, even moss under the trees was white, like ground after a mild snowstorm.

There was something in the atmosphere which loosened the petals this morning. At each puff of wind a fresh shower fell, sifting through the air to scatter softly on the ground. It was a ghostly sight in the gray and silent dawn; the trees seemed despoiling themselves, casting their blossoms from them in sorrow or fear.

In the veranda stood the crimson garden umbrella, all damp with dew, and four pairs of dogs in a row. The house was deathly still; and one might have likened it to a tomb, had it not possessed so much the appearance of a bandbox, looped and latticed.

Presently a faint sound might have been heard. A panel slid back, and a figure appeared, holding in its hand a lighted paper lantern.

It was Campanula, clad in blue, her feet peeping from beneath her skirt like two white mice.

She put out the lantern, and hung it on a hook. Then she put on a pair of clogs, and clicked down the steps. She went down the path, through the little gate, and vanished from sight; and as her footsteps died away, silence returned to the house and the garden.

Then in a few minutes a glorious transformation scene took place. The haze turned to a golden mist; it became sundered by rivers of clear air, and from it leaped the sun, like Helios from the sea.

Instantly the silence of the orchard became broken by the bickering of birds; a cock crowed somewhere in the back premises, and he was answered by the cock that lived half-way down the hill at the cooper's shop—who was answered, a minute later, by all the roosters in Nagasaki.

The mist vanished entirely now, the sun began steadily to mount into the vault of perfect blue; his slanting rays shot through the cherry orchard, striking here the bole of a tree glistening with great tears of fragrant gum, and there on the ground besnowed with blossom, even the fierce old hills of the landscape garden lost something of their ruggedness in the warm and mellow light.

Then the house began to awaken. Pine-breeze appeared on the veranda, and after Pine-breeze the other MousmÈs all busy, or appearing so, dragging out futon to air for a moment in the morning brightness, and lacquer screens to be dusted.

"Summer has come in the night," said Lotus-bud, pointing out the fallen cherry-blossoms.

"Yes," chimed in Pine-breeze, "but spring has gone."

"I dreamt last night of frost." This from Cherry-blossom, who was busily engaged watching the others at work.

Frost is a bad dream in Japan, and the MousmÈs conferred in murmurs as to what it might mean.

"I know," said Lotus-bud suddenly, with an air of conviction.

"What?"

"The riksha man will die."

"Which?" asked Pine-breeze.

Then the two MousmÈs began to "guy" Cherry-blossom as to the number of the riksha man destined to die.

"Ichi-ban, Ni-ban, San-ban,"[3] murmured Lotus-bud.

[Footnote 3: Number one, number two, number three.]

"Shi-ban, Go-ban, Roku-ban," rippled Pine-breeze.

"Hachi-ban!" suddenly cried Lotus-bud, with an air of inspiration.

"Ku-ban!" replied Pine-breeze, with the air of going one better.

"Leslie San!" said Cherry-blossom: and Pine-breeze got up and scuttered into the house, where Leslie San was calling for his bath to be heated.

An hour later he appeared on the veranda, fully dressed.

He noticed the promise of heat in the air; he noted the great fall of cherry-blossoms that had occurred during the night; he noted the lantern that Campanula had hung on the hook.

Then he left the veranda, came down into the garden path, and through the gate.

Outside the gate there was a little by-path that led upwards and to the left, between a double bank of bushes to an open space like a natural platform, from which a splendid view of the harbor and hills could be obtained, A great camellia tree forty feet high grew here, alone in its splendor, and beneath it he stood gazing at the harbor.

He could hear the faint monosyllabic cry of the brown hawks ever circling above the blue water, and the distant sound of a drum from the Rurik where she lay at anchor. He could see the sampans shooting hither and thither, carrying fruit and what not to the ships in the anchorage, and the Junks floating like brown phantoms past the shadow of the opposite cliffs.

But his eye was searching for something that was not there.

He looked at his watch, put it back in his pocket with an impatient gesture, and continued to gaze.

Suddenly—Hrr-'mph!—Haa-aar!—the blast of a syren came shouting up the harbor, and chasing the echoes through the hills. The brown hawks rose and circled in wild flight, and past a bend came a great, white, double-funneled steamer.

It was the Canadian Pacific boat, the Empress of Japan, touching at Nagasaki, and due to leave the morning following for Yokohama and Vancouver.

He watched her for a moment as she swam to her berth, beautiful and graceful as a swan. Then he turned to the house.

To-morrow morning he and Jane would be on board that boat, bound northward up the Inland Sea, past Tsu-shima, past Osaka, past Yokohama, and away across the blue Pacific to Vancouver.

The whole plan was cut and dried. Jane had given no consent; that did not matter. She would consent; he felt the power in himself to make her consent.

Men of his stamp, lazy, neurotic, yet strong-willed, stung into action by love or hate, sometimes assume momentary but terrible command over events; they infect with their passion, infuriate with their hate, or paralyze with their love.

He entered the house, ordered breakfast, and enquired for Campanula.

She had gone down at dawn, said Pine-breeze, to see O Toku San, the poor girl who was so ill, and was now dying. He was glad Campanula was out, and determined if possible to get his preparations over before her return. Jane and he would return from Mr. Kamamura's about six that evening. It would be time enough then to tell Campanula of his journey.

As he breakfasted, he completed that part of his plans which had reference to Campanula.

She would be safe and well looked after by M'Gourley, till—he came back. He told himself he would come back some day; perhaps in six months or so he would come back.

And why should he worry about leaving Campanula for a time? He had often gone away before, once as far as London; he had always come back.

Why should Campanula mind his going away again?

Why, indeed!

He tried to forget how her little hand had stolen into his on the evening before as if for protection. How, when he had kissed her, she had suddenly flung aside her timid reserve, and with her arms around his neck, but without a word, had told him what only a woman can tell without speech.

Perhaps it was because he loved her far more than he knew, that his mind was filled with gloom and apprehension.

But it was the time for action, not for thought; only a few hours lay before him in which to prepare for this journey—the journey from which he would return quite soon perhaps.

He would leave the house just as it was to Campanula and the MousmÈs till he came back and made other arrangements. M'Gourley, as his agent, would supply them with all the money needful just as he had done before.

Then he called Pine-breeze and told her to get his portmanteau up to his room, as he was going on a journey.

He packed hurriedly, whilst Lotus-bud handed him things. He wanted to get the packing over and done with.

The strong sunlight reflected from the matting lit up the room with a golden glow. Pine-breeze in the kitchen below was singing a song about a lilac bough—the same song he had heard in the orchard that day when Campanula had cried: "Hist, some one at the gate!"

He leaned back sitting on his heels to listen. He heard the end of the song now. He did not hear it that day, for Jane, knocking at the veranda, had cut it short.

This was the gist of the last verse:

Then he went on with his packing at a furious rate, stuffing in shirts, collars, handkerchiefs, his mind wandering over all sorts of subjects.

His packing finished, he went to the window, took out his pocketbook, and examined its contents. Three hundred and ten pounds, half in circular notes, half in notes of the Bank of England.

Then he took out a check-book and a stylograph pen, and wrote a check for five hundred, payable to himself.

Ten minutes later he was in a riksha making for the Bund, where he stopped at Holme & Ringers, the shipping agents, bought two first-class tickets for Vancouver, and changed his check, receiving part in cash, and part in a check upon the National Specie Bank of Yokohama.

It was now eleven o'clock, and he had practically completed his preparations. He had now to see Mac, and he turned his steps to the office, which was only a stone's throw from the shipping agents. Mac was writing letters.

"Morning," said he, glancing up, and seeming surprised to see his partner at that hour.

"What's agate?"

"I am," said Leslie, trying to assume a jovial manner. "I'm off for a holiday, and I want you to look after things same as you've done before."

"This is sudden," said Mac, going on with his correspondence without looking up.

"Oh, it's never too sudden for a holiday. And see here, I'd better leave you some ready cash: here's a check for two fifty. I want you to look after the bairn whilst I'm away."

"Keep the money," said Mac, "and pay me—when y' come back. Ay, ay, it'll be soon enough then—soon enough then."

"I'd sooner leave you the money."

"Weel, put it in that drawer."

"Well, you are a bear this morning. See here, I've put it in the drawer, but I'll see you again before I go: I'm not off till to-morrow."

"Imphim!" replied the Dour One, and Leslie went off.

Your true Scot has a very nasty habit of expressing his bad opinion of a man. He does it in a round-about way, using hints and innuendoes, instead of coming to the matter by a direct route.

What Mac suspected or what he knew, Leslie could not tell; judging from his manner, however, he knew or suspected a lot.

However, he had no time to trouble about Mac. He had one thing more to do before meeting Jane, Mr. Initogo the landlord had to be interviewed, and the rent paid.

There was a fair of a sort on in the street that formed the shortest cut to Mr. Initogo's. It was filled with a many-colored crowd, flags were fluttering, awnings flapping in the wind; every shop had some extra advertisement to attract customers, and during the past night, like mushrooms, extra booths had sprung into being.

A roaring trade was going forward; here, all kinds of fruit, there all kinds of fish, some with bunches of violets in their mouths; cakes reposing on branches of cherry or myrtle; cakes in the form of donkeys and monkeys and goats; cakes shaped like spinning-tops; cakes in the shape of suns, moons and stars; candied beans, beans mixed with comfits, kites, masks, and paper dragons. Paper fish shaped like carp for the Little-boys' Festival of the 5th of May.

The noise and bustle somehow pleased Leslie, and soothed him; and he drifted along with the chattering stream of men, women, MousmÈs, little boys and mere babies. Some of the children had long, curved trumpets of glass, from which they blew the most horrible of hobgoblin sounds. Here a man was frying pancakes, wrapping them in rice paper, and flinging them to unseen customers in the crowd, who flung him back the money. Here a person in spectacles, who looked like a professor of chemistry gone mad, was blowing from a glass-blower's tube dragons and fish in sugar-candy. Apothecaries, with great golden eyes painted on their booths, were selling little rice paper charms, one to be taken dissolved in water for the stomach-ache, two for lumbago, three for migraine. Here stood a man who would pull your teeth out with his fingers, three sen a tooth.

The cheap curio dealers were in evidence with their wares cheap and bad; those quaint perambulating curio dealers, who, as a rule, only start business at sundown, and whose stock-in-trade include old top hats, old boots, old—anything—European. "Caw—caw—caw!" You look up, and see a great kite straining at its strings.

And then the umbrellas! Leslie had a good view of them, for he was head and shoulders taller than any one in the crowd. Red, pink, gray, gray-green, pink-and-white, blossom-bestrewn, stork-bestrewn, a shifting mass of color reflecting the sunlight.

But though he saw all this, and though the noise and bustle and laughter and general atmosphere of festivity fell in with his humor, his thoughts were far away at Osaka; he was wondering what George du Telle was doing, and what George du Telle would say in a day or so, and how he would look. He had never hated George du Telle really till now that he had determined to rob him of his wife.

Now that he was about to commit, or attempt to commit, a vile and abominable act against George du Telle, that person seemed to him the acme of all things vile and abominable.

Suddenly, through an opening in the crowd, Leslie caught a glimpse of a face, the face of a blind man, stolid, stony, with a flattened nose and wearing an indescribable expression of eld, weariness, and misfortune.

It was only a momentary glimpse, but revealed just for a moment, and contrasted with the shifting colored mass around him, with the noise and laughter, the sunlight and the movement of life, it was like a vision of death.

Leslie stood for a moment startled and chilled; the joyous exaltation in his mind a moment ago had vanished: it was as if a cloud had come between him and the sun.

Why were these things always occurring to fret his soul and trouble his imagination? This blind man was nothing but an ordinary blind man of Japan such as one might see any day. The broken lath that had troubled him all night was but a broken lath; the song of the mushi that had started that infernal sound in his head was but the sound of an insect buzzing; the azalea that had caused that frightful dream was but a flower.

These slight things, he told himself, acting on a brain made over-sensitive by opium, were not warnings, but simple causes of complex effects. And he passed on his way, cursing himself for a fool, till he reached the shop of Mr. Initogo.

That gentleman, for a wonder, was not making tea, but the sight of Leslie San instantly inspired the desire for his favorite beverage, caused him to clap his hands, and the tea-tray to appear in the hands of his wife almost instantly upon the sound.

He received his rent, which he put away with an appearance of indifference, expressed sorrow on hearing that Leslie was going away for even a short time, but joy at the thought that the journey might benefit his honorable health.

He was really fond of Leslie, this old Japanese gentleman; but the worst of the flowery Japanese language is that it remains always, so to speak, at boiling point, and towards friend or perfect stranger is the same. You can't cool it, and you can't warm it.

Whilst they were talking Kiku came in; her eyes were red and she had a snuffle in her voice.

She had been, it seems, to see the poor girl who was dying, O Toku San; Campanula was with her.

"Ah, yes," said Mr. Initogo, as his daughter retired upstairs. "Most sad, poor girl. A man whom she loved left her, and she is dying of it, just as a flower dies from want of water."

Leslie looked at his watch: it was after twelve. He hastened from the shop of Mr. Initogo, and securing a riksha drove to the Nagasaki Hotel on the Bund.