CHAPTER VI
THE DREAMER AND THE DRAGON
They had finished dinner; a dinner which began with tea and bean flour cakes, passed on to fish served on little mats of grass, went on to soup served in lacquered bowls, proceeded to prawns; halted, hesitated, and went back to soup, scratched its head, so to speak, and then, as if with an after-thought, served up a quail, apologized for the substantiality of the quail by presenting a salted plum on a little plate, and then harked shamelessly back to soup, ending deliriously with a shower of little dishes containing everything inconceivable, and a big bowl of rice.
This is an impressionist picture of a Japanese dinner. I have eaten many, but I have never carried away more than an impression, and whether kuchi-tori comes before hachiz-a-kana, I cannot say, or where the seaweed or salted fish come in—but come in they do, they and other things stranger than themselves.
A chamécen was thrumming somewhere in the house as they dined, sitting on the soft white matting, and waited upon by two Mousmés crouched on the matting like little panthers preparing to spring.
A slid back panel of the front wall made a doorway through which they could see the moon wandering over Nikko, casting her cool white light upon the blazing japonica flowers, the glory of the camellias, the roofs of the temples, and the sad dark beauty of the cryptomeria trees.
Nikko by day is fair, but by night, when the moon is overhead, when the air is full of the sounds of wandering waters, and the wind is heavy with the perfume of the wild azaleas, Nikko is a dream.
When the tea and bean cakes had been served, the moon was in the act of washing weakly a house gable across the garden, and a pale lilac-colored flower of the wistaria, which projected above the extemporized doorway; but by the time the quail had made its appearance, the garden was solid in moonlight, the pond was a mirror, and the frog self-marooned on the little island, was as distinct as if seen by daylight.