CHAPTER XXVII
THE “EMPRESS OF JAPAN”
If Mr. Kamamura had sent a special messenger to Paradise to pick from the aviary there a blue-winged and bright-eyed day for his garden-party, he would not have obtained a better one than that which came by chance.
A haze hid its coming. Just after sunrise, looking from Leslie’s garden one could scarcely see Nagasaki down below—a toy town, seen through faint blue gauze, it seemed. The wind came in puffs, hot from the Pacific, shaking the cherry branches.
The great double cherry-blossoms were falling. The close, even moss under the trees was white, like ground after a mild snowstorm.
There was something in the atmosphere which loosened the petals this morning. At each puff of wind a fresh shower fell, sifting through the air to scatter softly on the ground. It was a ghostly sight in the gray and silent dawn; the trees seemed despoiling themselves, casting their blossoms from them in sorrow or fear.
In the veranda stood the crimson garden umbrella, all damp with dew, and four pairs of clogs in a row. The house was deathly still; and one might have likened it to a tomb, had it not possessed so much the appearance of a bandbox, looped and latticed.
Presently a faint sound might have been heard. A panel slid back, and a figure appeared, holding in its hand a lighted paper lantern.
It was Campanula, clad in blue, her feet peeping from beneath her skirt like two white mice.
She put out the lantern, and hung it on a hook. Then she put on a pair of clogs, and clicked down the steps. She went down the path, through the little gate, and vanished from sight; and as her footsteps died away, silence returned to the house and the garden.