The guide translated. The servant was ignobly unacquainted, as yet, with the danna-San's illustrious habits. He arrogantly presumed to suggest that he might augustly be in any one of a hundred esteemed spots.
Ware thought a moment, frowningly. "Tell him I am Ware-San's brother," he said then, "and that I have just arrived in Tokyo. I shall wait in the house till he comes."
The old man bowed profoundly at the statement of the relationship. He spoke at some length to the guide. The latter looked at Ware questioningly but hesitated.
"Well?" asked the other tartly.
"He think better please you wait to the hotel."
Ware struck open the gate with a flare of irritation. "You can go now," he said to the guide, and disdaining the servant, strode along the gravel path to the house entrance.
The old man looked after him with an enigmatic Japanese smile. It was not his fault if the foreigners (the kappa devour them!) ate dead beasts and were all quite mad! He tucked up his kimono, stacked his gardening-tools neatly under the hedge, and betook himself across the street for a smoke and a game of Go with the neighbor's betto.
Under the trailing vine Ware slid back the shoji and entered the house.
As he stood looking at the interior his lip curled. He hated the cheapness and vulgarity to which Phil turned with instinctive liking, and he had long ago come thoroughly to despise his younger brother and to relish the whip-hand which the law, with its guardianship, gave him. The place fitted Phil, from the cigarette odor to the loud photograph in the dragon-frame and the partly open wall-closet with its significant array of bottles. It expressed his idea of "a good time!"
He slid open a shikiri. It showed a room, evidently unused, littered with tools, a dusty table with models of curious wing-like propellers, a small electric dynamo and a steel-lathe. He opened another, and stood looking at the room it disclosed with a faint smile. It was scrupulously clean and orderly, and, in contrast to the outer apartment, had an atmosphere of delicate refinement. On the wall hung a tiny gilt image of Kwan-on and below it on an improvised shelf an incense rod was burning with a clean, pungent odor. At one side was suspended a mosquito-bar of dark green gauze, and across a low stool was laid a kimono, with silver camelias on a mauve ground. He picked this up and looked at it curiously, half conscious of a faint perfume that clung to it.