The Crimson Azaleas: A Novel

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

The thing had been laid out as a New Year’s gift for Campanula, and it had cost Leslie about the price of a Steinway Grand.

Azalea bushes grew right up to it, azaleas bordered the house, and there was a wilderness of azaleas in the open space near the cherry trees.

Crimson azaleas, imported all the way from the azalea valley at Nikko in the very first year of Leslie’s residence in Nagasaki. It was a pretty thought, and it had cost a good penny, and caused much grumbling from Mac, and great admiration in Mr. Initogo, who had turned out the most delightful of landlords, a good hand at whist, and most adaptable about repairs. He was a modern Japanese agnostic when he was well, was Mr. Initogo, and a Shinto when he was ill or in trouble; but he was an all-round good landlord at all times.

One bright afternoon Leslie was seated beneath the cherry trees in a deck chair, his hat tilted back, and the pipe he had just been smoking lying on the ground at his feet. He was asleep. Lately he had been suffering from a touch of fever and chills caught on a duck-shooting expedition down the coast; he had been taking opium for it, and now as he sat beneath the cherry trees the opium was troubling his dreams.

Just before dropping off, his eye had fallen on a single azalea blossom that had burst into flame, as if spring had just touched off with her torch the fire of crimson flowers that soon would blaze round the house.

Then he fell asleep, and Opium plucked the crimson blossom, and followed him with it into the land of dreams.

He was in a Hongwanji temple, and there were people there, Europeans seemingly, dressed in European clothes; but though in a specious disguise, they were soon perceived to be not the people of this earth. They had strange and distorted faces, and forms that surely never were made in God’s image. One man, who suddenly hid himself behind a screen of lacquer, Leslie could have sworn was made of stone.

Then in great tribulation of spirit he was escaping from the company of these people, passing down a corridor where soft matting took the foot; but something was following him with a hissing sound, a sound such as Danjuro made by way of welcome when you entered his shop. Of a sudden the opium spirit touched the corridor wall with the flower he had been patiently carrying, the Hongwanji temple vanished, and Leslie found himself on the Nikko road.

The valley of azaleas lay before him and the mournful cypress trees, the country where the moving clouds cast their shadows, and the far blue hills beyond.

There was something moving amidst the azaleas. He knew it was a child, but, by some curious and subtle freak of the opium fiend, the child was hidden from him, all but vague glimpses; were it to make itself half visible for a second a phantom azalea bush would come before it, but he could see a tiny white hand busy plucking the crimson blossoms.