Kotmasu turned up in good time. He brought Mousmé the tiny dog she has been longing for. A charming present, which she will almost want to wear round her neck with a chain, lest it be lost.
It was only when our little home almost trembled and our garden seemed to swarm with the incursion of Mousmé’s relatives that I realised how throughly I was married. By the time the sun had commenced its downward flight into the sea behind the hills, many had arrived, and little moon-faced Aki had taken the usual and seemingly inevitable plunge into the water-lily pond in search of the sprites who are supposed to dwell therein.
These obsequious relatives by marriage amuse me immensely. They all take so much au sérieux. But how truly polite they all are. Even the sampanman (a cousin of whom Mousmé is not quite sure) is a polished gentleman, and the new suit with which he has managed to start the year, with the manners thrown in, gave him quite a distinguished air. I noticed that the box of sweets was reserved by Mousmé for those who were drinking tea, surrounded by many plates and cups—the favoured few, mostly girl friends.
If only I might have believed the charming prevarications of my relatives, how beautiful everything belonging to me must have been.
At length the last of them disappeared down the road. And the paper lanterns, whose dull white surfaces challenge the moon swinging in the sky above the amethyst hills, swung round the corner. Mousmé waved her hand sympathetically, and then we sat down together on the veranda to watch the last hours of a New Year’s Day glide into the æons of the past.
One day is so very much like another to me in this strange land, where I have the lightest of business duties to perform, few friends other than Kotmasu, and no great desire to gain any more, though I find the natives I know vastly more interesting than the few English who are settled more or less permanently in Nagasaki for business or other purposes.
Everything has a certain charm—Mousmé always—but four long years have robbed my surroundings of that subtlest of all interests, novelty. I am eager to test my experiment, which is answering here so admirably, with a new environment.
“Mousmé in Bond Street.” Kotmasu’s phrase haunts me with a sinister purpose, but I am not to be daunted easily, for I have my own opinions. Have I not? I ask myself.
I remember the Frenchman who, with some delicacy, sums up the question of marriage in every clime where any ceremony is attached to the rite: “Given a woman and one possesses the possibility of great happiness—or its exact antithesis,” and I am thankful that my experiment so far has resulted well.