The Crimson Azaleas: A Novel

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Then, behold, she saw that the thing was a man, though in strange clothes, but he did not frighten her in the least, and she gave him her hand at once, and with confidence, whereupon he took her in his arms and carried her to a road where stood another man, all black, even to his hands, but his face was white, and he had a red beard.

Then this man, who was also unfrightful, began to make her remember things that she had for the moment forgotten. To remember her father, and the fact that she had lost her way, and other things too, including the errant dragon. He made her remember that she wished to get back to her father, but she did not remember this so very clearly. In fact she was quite content to go with these two men over the hills and far away, feeling sure she was safe with them, went they where they would.

The scenes on the road to Nikko she remembered: a funny man away in the distance dancing amongst trees, and the entry into Nikko borne sky-high above all the other children, the Tea House of the Tortoise, and—grandest remembrance of all!—the miraculous awakening with the long-lost dragon in her hand. He was so full of mystery that she never had even dreamt of eating him, and she still possessed him. He was upstairs in the drawer of a lacquered cabinet, cracked, it is true, by changes of temperature and warped in the back, for age touched all things, even sugar-candy dragons.

Then there was her life at the House of the Clouds, the mission school; rainy days when she splashed through the mud under a broad paper umbrella; fine days when she flew kites with M’Gourley San, played hop-scotch with Kiku San and Kitsune Ken, with all sorts of other Sans, mostly with shaved heads.

This was Campanula’s childhood as she remembered it. But as you cannot remember your childhood till you have stepped over the line where the child becomes a boy or girl, Campanula had not begun remembering it till about six months ago.

Up till then M’Gourley San, and Leslie San, and Sweetbriar San, and a host of other honorable people surrounded her, one as important as the other, Mac perhaps more important than any.

Then all at once—in a week or so, to be more precise—a host of new ideas came to her, bothersome, formless ideas, as ungraspable yet as insistent as the great Boyg himself.

Then the ideas began to take form. It was in the garden one day. Her eyes fell on one of the flowerless azalea bushes, and she remembered how it had been covered with crimson flowers last year, and how beautiful they were, beautiful above every other flower, even the lordly peony, who seems to hold the whole glory and mystery of summer in the gloom of his splendid heart. And her mind wandered back from spring to spring, led by the crimson blossoms, till she called to mind the valley where Leslie had found her.

It was he who had found her wandering alone there, and he had picked her up.

She had never forgotten the valley; it had lain in the distance in her mind, but she had no use for it till now. Now it came to her in all its splendor, and explained to her why the azalea was the flower she loved above the peony, the lotus, or even that glorious mystery, the dragon-spume chrysanthemum.