IV
Six months later I was passing down the Rue Royale, when I saw René Beauregard at a little table outside Maxime’s with two companions, who were engaged in a fierce dispute about the never-ending Affaire, while his whole attention was absorbed by a letter, which I knew from the texture of the paper to be Japanese. Greeting him with effusion—for we had not met since the Belgic sailed from Kōbe—I asked whether he had any news of O Maru since his return to Paris. For answer he handed me the letter, which, with some trouble, I deciphered. It was to the following effect:
“To Borega Sama, 120, Avenue de Clichy, Paris.
“From the time of your coming to Nippon to the time of your going back to your own country, as you have been so very kind to me, I humbly render thanks. To learn by your letter that you had safely crossed so many countries and great seas was indeed good news. I had fasted for twenty-three days and offered daily prayers to Watazumi-no-Mikoto that you might not fall into danger before reaching the house of your honourable mother. I am living with my aunt at Shiogama, and shall wait seven years in the hope that you will come back. I pray for you every day, and shall never forget the happy times we spent together in Kose and Kyōto. However long I write, there is no end to it, so I shall look for a further occasion to tell you my love. In respectful obedience,
“O Maru.”
The letter contained an enclosure, which it required the intervention of a Japanese friend to interpret. Whether the girl had herself written the six poems which follow, or, as it seems to me more probable, had adapted them with slight alterations from a popular song-book, I cannot say. They form both epilogue and moral to this typical tale.
1.
“Could I but meet you!
Could I but see you!
Waves roll between us;
Wishing is vain.
2.
“Thinking about you,
Watching your likeness;
Yet the watched likeness
Says not a word.
3.
“You, my French master,
Living in Paris,—
I am Awazu’s
Single lone pine.
4.
“In mine ears waking,
In mine ears dreaming,
Ever one sound is,
That of thy voice.
5.
“Heard though the voice be,
Unseen thy body;
So, on the mountains,
Nightingales sing.
6.
“Now—though we once slept
Pillow by pillow—
‘Where and how are you?’
Asking, I weep.”
AFTERNOON CALLS