“Our last night here,” as Mousmé says, with a little choked sob. Everything is now described as “last.”
It is terribly melancholy.
In the morning we go round the garden, and Mousmé gathers a posy of the choicest flowers, pink-cupped lotus, gardenias and roses; she buries her face in it to hide the tears I know are falling in salt dew upon the fragrant blossoms. Then we feed the gold-fish, and watch them poke their red-gold heads just above the surface, making rippling circles which widen and rock the lily-leaves and lotus blossoms. And whilst we are doing all this in the sunlit garden of our late home, we can hear Oka’s deep, gruff voice giving directions to the men who, with dilapidated rikishas now turned into hand-trucks, are loading up our luggage to take it down to the quay and on board the steamer.
“That is the last,” we hear Oka say in gruff tones; “mind that the honourable English sir’s effects are not damaged.”
“Yes, that is the last,” says one of the porters.
“This is the last,” says Mousmé, opening her hand over the gold-fish pond.
We go up the path to the house in silence; look sorrowfully into each of the bare, empty rooms; take leave of Oka, and Oka’s wife, who is in tears; press a shining new yen into each of the innumerable children’s hands, even into that of the brown baby in Oka’s wife’s arms, whose tiny fist is not large enough to hold the shining silver, in which it sees only a new plaything; and then walk away out of the garden of sweet flowers to follow our porters with the luggage.
Next morning we are to sail soon after sunrise, and we get up to see the last of Nagasaki and our home, now a mere matchbox-looking villa (when seen from the deck of our steamer down here in the harbour) perched high up on the hillside, in company with scores of other similar abodes.
As we drift out from our moorings in mid-harbour, we catch sight of it for the last time, and Mousmé through her tears kisses her fingers to it.
We wave our hands and handkerchiefs to those on shore, to Kotmasu, a tiny figure on the quay, and to the men who have congregated in their sampans, like a flock of water-fowl, to see the great jokisen off.