A Japanese romance

Chapter I

THE wide expanse of sea through which the Orient Queen was steadily ploughing her way at a good fifteen knots was like a sheet of hammered brass. The fan-shaped wake, with its narrow, lacelike edge of white-churned foam, and the rounded swell of the North Pacific, sweeping through the Loochoo Islands, was all that disturbed its monotonous horizon-bounded surface.

Underneath the white awnings of the promenade deck most of the passengers were lounging in chairs, keeping even their feet out of any lozenge-shaped patches of sunshine which, straying through too loosely laced edges of the awning, fell on the deck beneath. Those who were not too hot, or talking, j:udgelled their brains into imagining they were cool.

The officers not on duty, or below snatching a little belated sleep, were chatting with the passengers, their preference being obviously for the ladies.

On the port side of the ship in a corner near the after deck-house were two people, a man and a young girl, quite apart from the rest of the passengers, their two canvas deck-chairs placed with the propinquity which the two months' shipboard acquaintance of their occupiers would be considered as justifying.

The girl was fair, as judged against the bronze of some of the other lady passengers; and when compared with the olive-tinted Japanese women returning to Nagasaki from Shanghai she looked fragilely pale. Her face was oval and pretty, notwithstanding its lack of colour, whilst her figure, the lines of which were scarcely disguised by the folds of the thin, white muslin dress she wore, was singularly graceful.

The man was about thirty, good-looking, and rather above middle height. His attire only differed from that of the rest of the male passengers in that he wore a silk tie of the butterfly order, a relic of his art student days in the Quartier Latin.

"A few more hours," said the girl after a somewhat lengthy pause in the conversation, changing her pose languidly, " and we shall be at Nagasaki."

" Yes," her companion assented. " And I shall have to look up my comical friend Yumoto, Mc- Kenzie, and the rest, and find a house which I can convert into a studio."

" I often wonder, Mr. Somerville, why you think so much of Art, with a capital 'A,' and so little of "

There was a pause.

"Well?" interjected the Hstener encouragingly.

" So little of humanity, even with a small, unsocialistic ' h.' "

" So little of feminine humanity. Miss Desborough ? " quizzed the speaker, laughing.

" I did not say so," replied the girl, a shade of colour stealing into her cheeks ; " but, after all, what does it matter? In a few hours we shall all be scattered," waving her hand towards a knot of passengers further along the deck. " You will go to your lotus ponds, wistaria-covered tea-houses, — you cannot imagine how fascinating they are, — and I to my family group in Tokio, comprised of a dear old uncle, an unconscionable aunt, and three impossible cousins. In a word, we shall all forget our fellow-passengers."

" I am not so sure of that," said the man, thinking of a dainty water-colour sketch that he had made of his companion. " I hope if I find myself near Tokio I may call, and that if you hear of an Englishman in trouble you will interest your uncle to get the authorities to let him off."

"' I am sure my people will be very pleased to see you. They owe you a debt of gratitude for having amused me during the last few monotonous weeks."

" And yet you were regretting a little while ago that the monotony would soon be at an end."

" Because when one is lazy," replied Miss Desborough thoughtfully, " one regrets anything which means a change. Although I have called the voyage monontonous, I shall not forget that I have made at least one pleasant acquaintance, and have learned something during the last few weeks."

It was on the tip of Somerville's tongue to ask to what she referred, but he said nothing and regarded her somewhat curiously, wondering whether she would say more. There was a pause, and then she continued inconsequently :

" But I have a few more lines to add to my mail, and I think I must go and write them in case we catch the homeward-bound steamer at Nagasaki."

Leslie Somerville studied her face for a moment as she rather petulantly kicked away the clinging folds of her skirt preparatory to rising, and then got up to assist her, for the vessel was rolling.

" Now ! " he exclaimed, and just when the deck was steady he give a slight upward pull on the girl's wrists.

" Thanks. This deck-chair is my favourite, but it's no joke getting up out of it when the ship is rolling. I shall see you at lunch. I have read ^ Le Fin d' Amour,' and will bring it back for you then. I am afraid my aunt would have a fit on the spot if she knew you had lent it to me. Good-bye till lunch."

Somerville watched her till she vanished in the doorway of the deck-house, and then, tossing the stump of his cigar overboard, he strolled forward.

He was almost angTy with himself for regarding Violet Desborough from so purely an artistic standpoint. She had said something to the effect that shipboard friendships were the least satisfactory of all. People met, liked each other, amused one another, parted at the end of the voyage, and — forgot.

He would not forget — no. But probably only because the memory of Violet Desborough was enshrined in one of the daintiest and most successful plein air sketches he had ever made — a sketv^h which she had coveted, but had been, to tell the truth, only too willing that he should retain. He ought, perhaps, to have fallen in love with her in two months. There had been plenty of time, and no opportunity of escapi!2^ from any influence or fascination that she was able to exert. But he had not done so; and he realised that he still personally regarded marriage vaguely and rather in the light of a joke, though his male friends of the Quartier Latin had always told him, with quasi-serious faces, that the joke was less apparent after the fact. Meanwhile he would let the matter rest.

He would doubtless marry some day ; it might be a model, even one of the dainty Japanese maidens of the flower-decked land he had travelled so many thousand miles of sea to study. Who could tell ?

His memory leapt back to Petite Suzanne with the flashing eyes. When he wa.s a nouveau at Colorossi's, before he had come in'co his money, he had been about to marry her. But. she vanished one fine June morning and returned M.adame Semperson, having preferred a young American friend of his own who Hved less near the sky, and possessed more money and less application.

Half an hour passed s;peedily enough in these reminiscent musings, and Somerville was not recalled to an appreciation of his surroundings until the luncheon bell, clanging horri Dly but welcomely between decks, caused a stream of hungry fellow-passengers to surge past him.

"A slight rearrangement of the tables of the saloon, to permit of a platform being erected for the final evening concert of the voyage, had separated Somer- "•'iVie and Miss Desborough. They could only smile, perhaps she somewhat sadly, across the tables; and after lunch Somerville felt compelled to start the packing up, which, man-like, he had postponed almost till the last moment.

At dinner the separation was repeated, and in the confusion following the meal, whilst the stewards rushed hither and thither clearing out the tables as far as possible and rearranging the chairs, neither Somerville nor Violet Desborough found an opportunity for anything more than a casual remark.

The concert commenced almost immediately, and as Miss Desborough was to sing she sat in the front row near the mimic stage with the rest of the performers, and consequently away from Somerville.

Beyond an occasional glance back at him sitting in the fourth row, or a nO'^i — that unsatisfactory substitute for speech — when their eyes happened to meet, there was no opportunity fs)r any sort of communication until the performance came to an end.

At length, however, the last notes of Madame Kian- San's plaintive little voice melted away, and the last thin notes of her samiscn accompaniment were lost in the stir of the audience as they ros« at the opening bars of " God Save the Queen." A feeling of sadness, of the inevitable end of things, swept over even those who expected to rejoin relatives or friends twelve hours later. From the saloon nearly every one went on deck. A slight breeze had sprung up. Cool it could scarcely be called, but it served to ruffle the moonlit surface of the sea into the semblance of frosted silver.

The com.pany split up into its usual knots and coteries, more accentuated than ever to-night, perhaps because of the partings on the morrow.

In the stillness of the night, in the vastness of the silvery horizon, unbroken save at rare intervals when for a brief moment a trading or fishing junk with huge, oblong mat sails stood up in the steamer's course, a sharp, black silhouette in the moonlit track, there seemed to many the sadness of farewell.

8 A JAPANESE ROIV ANCE

So it seemed to Violet standing with Somerville near the weather rail gazing at the phosphorescent wake.

" I hope you will find a ni :e studio," the former remarked, in lieu of anythi ig better to say, and making an effort to avoid ser.timent, " but there should be little difficulty; the Japanese are an ingenious lot, and will carry out suggestions, or copy anything you show and explain to them accurately enough."

" So I have heard," Somerville assented. " I remember what you told me about your work-box and its chipped top. But let us talk of something less prosaic. Don't you realise. Miss Desborough, that you are encouraging me in art, which you have hinted I already pursue too closely?"

" You are not grateful."

" Alas ! I fear I am not a grateful man ; I do not make a right use of my opportunities," — glancing into the face of the woman at his side.

Violet Desborough moved ever so slightly away from him ; with her the tension was growing painful to embarrassment.

In the moonlight her slender figure appeared almost ethereal ; if it had seemed less so, it is possible Somerville's life might have taken a new trend.

A junk swam ghostlike across the broad, moonlit track.

" How much more to be desired is progress such

"'ala.>! 1 ! i.Ai; 1 it<» Not m \ki. a i;it.iir isK ur mv as that," said Somerville musingly, "than the hurrying-scurrying, throbbing onward rush of this modern Hner. Steam has knocked half of the poetry out of existence, and given us in its stead the spirit of unrest."

" Yes," replied the girl, as though her thoughts were elsewhere; adding, "And yet, I fancy, most women read poetry because they vaguely hope some day to live it."

She congratulated herself that she could speak so calmly. So long as her companion did not touch her she felt almost sure of herself. Three generations of forebears in the diplomatic service had endowed her with an unusual power of control, and the power to keep the one secret of a woman's life which so few can dissemble.

An ocean-going steamer on a long voyage would be an anomaly without the presence of at least one match-making, hyper-inquisitive woman, and the Orient Queen had proved no exception to the rule.

Somerville and Violet Desborough had right out from Aden been so much together that their apparent identity of tastes and pursuits had long ago aroused a considerable amount of interest in the minds of fellow-passengers not themselves equally absorbed. A Mrs. Thriston had for some weeks regarded them as an interesting young couple and — her legitimate prey. Not being afflicted with undue delicacy of perception or feeling, — such women seldom are, — she had at first by covert hints, and later by but thinly veiled pleasantries, endeavoured to let them see that, though every other soul on board were blind, she saw which way the wind blew. That they took no notice of her scarcely disturbed her equanimity. Indeed, it only made her keener on the scent and less guarded in her remarks. Her friends on board, people who either feared her or were amused by her love of scandal, were kept well posted in Somerville's and Miss Desborough's movements, and every glance which passed between them and every hour they spent together was noted down by the Argus-eyed little busybody as so much drift further towards the maelstrom of matrimony.

On this last night of the voyage she had determined to bring the matter to a climax, and to add one more instance to her list of " people made happy ; you know, they never would have made up their silly minds but for me." That the two persons most concerned would possibly resent her interference apparently did not occur to her.

On this last night she came along the promenade deck vivaciously as usual, with a shawl thrown round her shoulders, glancing sharply into shadowed corners where deck-chairs nestled together, or isolated couples stood gazing out over the moonlit waters in suspicious propinquity. At length she espied Somerville and Miss Desborough.

They were evidently talking earnestly, and with a feeling of an artist in matrimonial matters she feared for a moment lest an unkind fate should have deprived her of the glory of putting the finishing touches to what she considered her subtle work of weeks.

As she approached quietly she overheard Somerville exclaim, *' The last night ! There is always something sad in the last of anything, especially in the last of gaiety and pleasant companionship. Despite the adage, anticipation is not always the greater part of pleasure. I, for example, did not want to come this

voyage at all. And now " The listener lost the

conclusion of the sentence in the shrill laugh of a girl who ran hoydenishly along the deck, still in her briefskirted tableau dress, pursued by a couple of boisterous admirers.

Violet Desborough was speaking by the time Mrs. Thirston was again able to catch the conversation.

"... you will never forget your first impressions. ..."

The listener coughed. The chaplain's services would evidently not be required, though matters were progressing so favourably. It would doubtless be a wedding at the Legation in Tokio ; she must watch the columns of the //;/ Shimpo for an announcement.

At the sound Somerville turned his head. He recognised the cough, and if the expression which flitted across his face as the light from the deck-house fell upon it could have embarrassed Mrs. Thirston, she would have moved away.

But the latter was not easily abashed.

" Ah ! you young people ! " she exclaimed, with a jaunty assumption of age and seriousness. " Last nights of a voyage would indeed be sad were it not for the happy to-morrows. Yes, I know what it is to be young. Love's young dream, and all the rest. How does it go ? " And she hummed a few bars of an ultrasentimental song which a thin-voiced soprano had sung at the concert an hour ago.

Her victims made no reply. Somerville was biting his moustache savagely; whilst his companion had turned away to lean over the rail and gaze down at the water with something like tears of mortification in her eyes. Mrs. Thirston paused, and then said, with the pleasantry of a mortified inquisitor, " There, you must excuse me. It is only my deep interest in you young people, and my wish that you may be very happy, that had caused me to venture to speak ..."

" Curse her impudence ! " muttered the man under his breath, as he felt the girl at his side give a little convulsive heave of her shoulders.

" I shall look in the Herald and Jiji Shimpo for an interesting announcement. Of course, Mr. Somerville, you will find your way to Tokio — such a very interesting place, old temples, and all that. You really must go."

He might have been mistaken, but Somerville thought he detected a strain of maHce in the tone, and he made up his mind quickly. The situation was intolerable.

*' It is none of my business," Mrs. Thirston was continuing in a quickly assumed aggrieved tone.

" Obviously," interjected Somerville sarcastically, " and I must ask you to excuse us. Come, Miss Desborough," he said, slipping his arm through hers, " we shall find it pleasanter forward."

Mrs. Thirston stood watching their retreating figures as they strolled away along the deck, Violet with her head slightly bent and Somerville inwardly fuming and erect as a ramrod.

When they were out of earshot, and away from the rest of those on the port side of the deck, Somerville spoke.

" Violet," he said slowly, resting his hand for a moment on hers, which lay upon the rail, " you must know what I am going to say to you ; I want you to love me and marry me. We have seen a great deal of each other on the voyage, and I'm sure I could make you very happy. And then, after we had seen Japan together, we would return to England, which you love, and settle down — I to work to gain a name and love you, and you to love me and be the mistress of my home. What do you say? Don't you care for me just a little, dear? "

U A JAPANESE ROMANCE

And then, ere she could reply, he added with a flash of brightness, which almost served to cover his too matter-of-fact proposal, *' Or is living with the impossible cousins too great an attraction ? "

But he was not a good liar, and the girl at his side knew too well the difference between liking and loving. He could not, therefore, deceive her, even though she were willing enough to permit the deception.

Her voice, when she spoke, was not very steady, but there was a note of unmistakable finality in it.

" It must be no, Mr. Somerville — believe me, it must ! " she said, ignoring his last remark. " I shall always think of this voyage with pleasure, and remember all your goodness and kindness with gratitude. You have paid me the greatest compliment it is possible for a man to pay a woman, and under circumstances which only a woman can quite truly appreciate. Do not ask me to say more. Believe me, it must not be ; think of me as grateful, and even proud, not as the frivolous girl I may have appeared. Good-bye. No," as he moved along the deck at her side, " I would rather go alone."

When he had released her hand and she had gone he waited a few minutes thinking vaguely, and then went below to his state-room. He could almost imagine now that he did love her, that he was cut up by her refusal. That she cared for him he had no doubt.

At last he recognised that he had been too precipitate. Of course she had seen through it all, how the whole business had been as it were forced upon him. She was a plucky girl, and he had not been so wise as he might have been.

He turned in, and fell asleep thinking of his good intention which had failed through no great fault of his own.

Chapter II

SHORTLY after sunrise Goto Shima was sighted — a bluish, indistinct Hne on the port horizon. Most of the passengers were on deck, and Mrs. Thirston, in no way discomposed by her encounter of the previous night, was chatting gaily to a knot of acquaintances who had never before beheld the glories of a Japanese sunrise.

Violet Desborough, however, had not yet appeared, and Somerville, noting this, had betaken himself forward to the turtle-deck so that he might gain an uninterrupted view of the glories of the growing day.

A pearl haze floated lightly on the surface of the water, transparent as gossamer, through which the climbing sun seemed to strike in iridescent beams, the pink light giving an almost weird look to the people and objects on the steamer's deck. Soon Goto Shima was sinking below the horizon astern and its place taken on the starboard bow by wooded Nomo Saki, thrusting its pointed nose out into the grey-blue sea.

The onward rush of the vessel, the thud of whose engines seemed to have increased as though she were hurrying towards the nearing port, created a light, cool air which blew wreaths of mist across the deck to speedily vanish in the haze astern.

Somerville, with the seeing eye of an artist rather than the devouring but the non-receptive vision of a globe-trotter, noted with wonder and admiration the ever-changing beauties of this first, fresh, Japanese morning. To the look-out men the opalescent haze was no more than the merest Channel wrack, stirred into movement by a southerly breeze, which might hide danger, and spelt for them strained attention and discomfort.

The huge, oblong sail of a junk floating bodiless dead ahead above the shallow sea of mist and tipped rose-pink in the sunrise caused a momentary confusion as the steamer's course was altered a couple of points. And as she swept past the motionless craft the sail flapped lazily, and then sharply and quicker, against the mast as the ungainly bulk of the fishing vessel felt the steamer's wash, whilst from the mist-enshrouded deck arose shrill shouts of '^Abunaiyo! Ahiinaiyo ! " as though the occupants thought the liner was on top of them. Then, as she vanished astern, there came, clear above the thud of the engines, a chorus of morning greetings, '' Ohayo! " with, perhaps^ an ironical '' Sayonara."

The morning cofTee-bell clanging brazen-tongued between the decks drowned the good-byes of the fishermen, and brought Somerville to a sense of hunger and more mundane things. With a sigh of regret at losing even a few minutes of such a scene, as the now melting haze disclosed in mysterious, ethereal vistas, he hurried below to the saloon, crowded by the throng of early risers and noisily gay with the babel of talk.

Violet Desborough was not there. Perhaps it were better so, he thought, as he hastily gulped down the steaming coffee. He would be sure to see her at the last to say good-bye, and anything but a hurried farewell would be embarrassing for both of them.

The third officer came into the saloon. Above the bable of various questionings his voice could be heard exclaiming, "How can I tell, Mrs. Jones? You'll be told at the proper time. A good hotel, Mr. Blayner? the * Bellevue,' on the Bund, would be about your ticket. In a couple of hours. Why, bless me, yes, coolies? Scores of them."

Escaping his interrogators, he crossed to where Somerville was standing, and said cheerily, " We have just sighted Cape Saki, Mr. Somerville, and if you want to see Japan you can do so, for the haze has lifted."

" Thanks, Mr. Elderson," replied Somerville, just as a lady passenger anxiously questioned the former as to whether her luggage would be ransacked.

When Somerville reached his point of vantage in the bows the blue outlines of Japan were creeping up out of the sea right ahead. The smoke of a tramp in b'allast, her screw churning white and at times half out of water, hung on the port bow Hke a patch in the sky over the Nagasaki hills as though they were volcanoes, with scarcely any air to draw it into a streaky veil along the horizon. Trading junks, at first mere dots on the scarcely ruffled water, became gradually larger as the Orient Que en drew rapidly in towards the land.

Soon the wooded heights flanking the entrance to the harbour channel on either side took more definite form, their grey-green tones of pine and cryptomerias and more vivid tints of bamboo, palms, and elms gradually disclosing themselves.

The stir which pervades a vessel on nearing port was now audible ; and it must have been this which summoned Violet Desborough to leave her cabin.

As the steamer entered the channel which led to the anchorage Somerville left his post and came down to the forepart of the promenade deck. He had caught a glimpse of Violet as she came out of the deck-house and crossed to the lee side.

She was very pale, and there was the strained look which comes from sleeplessness in her eyes.

In the wakeful hours of the hot night, when the monotonous thud of the engines seemed to beat itself into her brain, she had realised that happiness had slipped from her grasp. Fate had never been very kind to her; and now in the person of Mrs. Thirston she felt it had been cruel. She even persuaded herself that she might, but for the latter, have been happy instead of miserable in the thought that Somerville had cared for her.

As he approached she pulled herself together; it would be added bitterness if he detected her distress.

" You have missed the sunrise. Miss Desborough," he said almost reproachfully.

" I am afraid I have," she replied after shaking hands, turning away to gaze at the now sunlit hills. " But you must remember it is not my first sunrise in Japan."

" I had forgotten. I have never seen anything like it before." Then changing his tone he continued, " Before long we shall be in port. Let me assure you, I trust you will believe me, how truly sorry I am for Mrs. Thirston's impudence — I can call it nothing else. I have had very little experience of such women, thank God, or I should doubtless have known better than to have given her a chance of meddling. It may be a lesson." And the speaker laughed somewhat bitterly.

" Think no more about it," the girl replied sadly. " I was as much to blame as you, perhaps more. But it was a temptation to talk to one who knows so much, and who has been so amusing and kind. Mrs. Thirston was only an episode, a thunder-streak in a clear sky. Let us forget it."

" You are very generous," exclaimed Somerville, still feeling somewhat contrite as he noted the speaker's unusual pallor. " You will always think of me as a friend, will you not? If it were not for the Mrs. Thristons of this world a good deal of mischief might be avoided."

'' I shall always do so," said the girl, replying to his question, '' and I shall not forget the pleasant things of the voyage. See, we are quite in the Channel now, half an hour or so and we shall be at anchor off the quay. Those are the hills above and at the back of the town," she continued '' Lovely, are they not ? But wait till you see them in their full glory, when the maples change colour It is doubtless up on the hillside that you will find your studio "

A rush of excited and voluble passengers, full of wonder at the beauty of the panorama gradually unfolding itself, and the strange, stagey look of the exquisite, fresh green hills now closing in upon them, drowned her concluding words. When their voices fell her companion heard her say:

" Let us bid one another good-bye. If you come to Tokio I hope you will call on my uncle ; I daresay he might be able to put you in the way of things you might otherwise miss. Good-bye, do not forget."

She held out her hand, which Somerville clasped warmly.

" Sayonara, then," he said, using one of the words she had laughingly taught him ; *' but, after all, I prefer an revoir."

n A JAPANESE ROMANCE

" Sayonara," she replied. And disengaging her hand, with one glance at his face she left him.

As she threw herself sobbing on her state-room couch she remembered the novel; and this too, then, for her was le £n d'amour, or, rather, the end of the dream of it.

Round a slight bend the steamer, still in the subdued light caused by the overhanging hills, on the higher summits of which the dazzling white sunlight was shining, passed into the open sunshine of the wide bay around which the town is built. Flowers seemed to have perfumed the warm air, unexpected gradations of colour in wonderful freshness of tint met the eye on the hillsides behind the scatttered town, on the heights of which could be seen the matchbox-like villas of the merchants and more wealthy classes.

Across the lagoon-like expanse of water, the surface just ruffled here and there by the draughts of air stealing down the mountains, giving transient motion to the white sails of the flocks of picturesque though unwieldly junks, the Orient Queen swept along at half-speed. A shouting arose from the half-naked, yellowish or copper-skinned rowers of the crowd of sampans that, like flocks of waterfowl, skurried with apparent aimlessness hither and thither, hampering the steamer's progress at imminent risk of being run down. The boom-boom of the steam siren reverberated from the gorges and rock-strewn hillside. Ahead was the Bund,