Pine-breeze, with her arm full of towels, or what not, would often come into Leslie’s bedroom through the wall. He might be in his bath, he might be—anything, it was all the same to Pine-Breeze, she was thinking of her duties, not of him.
One night, long ago, he had awakened in the arms of Mother Fir-cone, who was jibbering with fright. There was a mosquito-net between them, for she had rushed through the wall, and literally flung herself upon him, tearing the mosquito-net from its attachments. I do not wonder at her fright. Also San was in eruption, and a fearful earthquake was roaring and billowing under Nagasaki.
Several times had the Mousmés rushed into his room all clinging together, and crying “Dorobo!” (Robbers). Robbers had tried to burgle the house twice, in fact. He had shot one the second time, and they never came again. Yet he always slept with a Smith and Wesson convenient, for a Japanese robber is a business man, without a heart, but with a desire for plunder keen as the edge of a sword.
Leslie’s bedroom was a very bare apartment, furnished mostly with a nothing. A futon and pile of pillows—he had tried the makura or Japanese pillow, but given it up in disgust—under a mosquito-net, a wash-stand, a stick-rack, and some pegs to hang clothes on, constituted the remainder of the furniture. The window was a wide open space crossed by lattice slats, through which the moon was now shining, her light partly intercepted by the dance of a cherry bough waving in the wind.
Leslie undressed and got into bed. Seen through the blue gauze of a mosquito-net, the room had a character all its own.
The House of the Clouds by night was not the place for a person afflicted with insomnia. There were so many noises only waiting to tell strange tales to the strained ear. Tales of mystery and exaggeration. Lying awake you would hear some one leaning close against the attenuated house wall; it was the wind. And now, a scratching sound as of a panther trying to commit a burglary; it was the wind; and now a whisper like the whisper of a lover to his mistress—or maybe of a robber to his mate; it was the wind.
Then the owl sitting on the roof, staring with saucer eyes at the moon, would give one low, whistling cry, and his mate beyond somewhere, would make cautious answer.
Then “tap, tap, tap.” It would be the wind—making the skeleton finger of a dead Samurai out of a loose lattice.
Then a thunder of cats and a yell on the veranda roof, and the drowsy one, just off to goblin land with the dead Samurai, would be brought up all standing, and half rise for a boot, or a boot-jack, or anything hurlable, and sink back with a sigh, remembering that he was in Japan.
The wind played upon the House of the Clouds just as a maestro plays on a fiddle, but with a more distressing result. Sometimes of an autumn or winter night you might have sworn the place was surrounded by a company of old Japanese ghosts escaped from the clutches of Emma O[1] and requestful of succor and safety.