But between the early morning when the beauty of Japan dawned upon us, and the night in whose deep dusk we lost sight of the incomparably lovely islands, we had many weeks of rare delight,—weeks spent in Hondo.
The little voyage up the “Inland Sea” was well-nigh marvellous. The lakes and the mountains were as intricate as a Chinese puzzle, and as beautiful as we fancy the Garden of Eden.
Kobe—the Hiogo of yore—broke the sylvan panorama of our sail and Fusiyama accented it. Fusiyama rose between the green Japanese hills and the blue Japanese sky like a white point of holy exclamation. It was dormant, but a dozen lesser volcanoes threw up tongues of flame as we passed.
In Kobe we found old friends—friends from London, from Boston, and from Nevada. We found shelter in a cosy, well-cuisined hotel, and its presiding genius had once been our Boniface in Montano. We were given great hospitality in Kobe. We made some charming Japanese friends. I revelled in the Japanese shops. And the fierce, rainy day that we sailed for Yokohama, I was given such a roll of sumptuous black satin, on which wonderfully skilled Japanese fingers had embroidered great clusters of purple fleur-de-lis!
CHAPTER XXII
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO
Mrs. Keutako
Three of them were Japanese. One was the Anglo-Saxon wife of a Japanese gentleman. Two of them I had known in America. Two of them I met for the first time in Japan.
The two girls whom I knew at Vassar College as Stamatz Yamakawa and Shige Nagai had become the Countess Oyama and Mrs. Uriu. My new acquaintances were Mrs. Keutako and Madame Sannomiya. Mrs. Keutako was a dear bit of Japanese femininity whom I always longed to seize upon and cuddle. We were really very good friends, though our conversation was very limited. She knew two words of English. I had the advantage of her inasmuch as I knew three words of Japanese.
Madame Sannomiya was one of the most powerful personalities of the Japanese Court; she was English, but her husband was a high functionary of the Mikado’s household. I called upon her with no vouchment but that of a few common acquaintances. I went to ask her kindly offices for a performance of the Merchant of Venice we were ambitious to give before the Emperor. The attempt upon the life of the Tsarevitz threw the Japanese Court into a trembling, mortified state of chagrin that doomed our little plan. But I gained the acquaintance of one of the most uniquely interesting women I ever met.