We talk gaily enough in Japanese, Mousmé describing to me all the delights she is anticipating from the proposed excursion, and telling me all that has occurred during my two hours’ absence.
What a charming little vis-a-vis she proves as we, seated on our squares of spotless matting, pretend to make a good meal off impossible dishes, as to the constituents of which, even now, after some years of experience, I am frequently in mysterious doubt! Oka, our cook, is of an inventive turn of mind, and to-day he serves on the tiny blue plates wee potatoes à la marrons glacés, and cherries in vinegar! But Mousmé pronounces them a success, and insists on leaning across the elaborate square of magenta silk worked with white cranes fishing, which she has instituted as a tribute to European ideas of a table-cloth, to put the larger of the cherries in my mouth on the end of a chop-stick. All this is very frivolous, doubtless; but very charming. To be anything but gay with such make-believe surroundings, and Mousmé sitting opposite playful and smiling, would be out of place. I assert this to myself whenever the thought of Lou crosses my mind. I am compelled to do so to lay the ghost of Lou’s outraged sense of propriety, for, truth to tell, she is very proper over some things, a somewhat hide-bound devotee of society etiquette with the responsibilities of a rapidly upgrowing daughter.
What a child Mousmé is! And yet there is an indefinable charm inseparable from womanhood about her. She was pouting just now because the camellia she had stuck in the front of her gown had fallen in a shower of scarlet petals into a tiny cup of tea on her knees. Now she is smiling again, and giving herself a lesson in English.
“Cy-reel! Cy-reel!” She always seems to practise this first; and then, “I luv yew. I luv yew velly much.” This over and over again, till we both burst out laughing, and the scene ends in the usual way.
At present our life is a dainty comédie à deux, and is nothing approaching the farce with its underlying tragic note which timorous Kotmasu feared and predicted.
Soon after sunset we start out—Mousmé and I—to make our way to the temple. The moon swims up rapidly into the cloud-clear vault of heaven, and floods our scented garden with a pure silver radiance. We have our paper lanterns all the same, although in competition with the strong white moonbeams they look almost trumpery.
Our garden, with its narrow paths and tangled vegetation, is full of exquisite perfumes released by the blossoming flowers, scents wafted under one’s nostrils by the faintest breath of air, which causes the full-blown tea-roses to shiver and then shatter in a hail of falling petals.
As we turn the corner of the path near the largest of our several fountains, we look back (as we always do) at our home. The door-panels of the rooms leading on to the verandah are open, and I can see right into our bed-chamber. On its bracket a little lamp is burning, and near it Mousmé has placed a tiny image of Buddha—an ivory god with a fixed smile. She does not pray to it now, however. I am vaguely conscious that I have ousted the ivory Buddha from its temple. Why Mousmé keeps it there I have been as yet unable to discover. How strange it seems to leave the whole side of one’s house open after dark! Ere we step out on to the road through the bamboo wicket with its quaintly chased brass hinges, I take one more look back, and see Oka’s wife with her funny little squat figure pass along the verandah on her way to tidy the rooms.
Mousmé is charmingly dressed to-night in a peach-coloured silk gown, so stiff and rich, and an amber-yellow sash. Her hair is done into a marvellous butterfly, and her head is full of half a score of the most handsome of her many pins. The moonlight gives a silver sheen to her ebon locks; and did I not know how black they are, I might have a chill come to my heart because of Mousmé’s getting grey.
We make our way as rapidly as we can down into the town.