We went up a funny little path, and knocked at a funny little door. It was a minute house, purely Japanese. The door slid back. The little fat servant fell on her nose at our feet, and cried out some words of ceremonial greeting. We couldn’t make her understand what we wanted. We couldn’t make her get up. I tried to give her our cards: I might as well have offered her an infernal machine. Her mistress heard our voices and came out. The jolly little woman was not changed a bit. She seized me by one hand and my husband by the other. She had never seen or heard of him,—she hadn’t seen me for ten years,—but she instinctively knew who he must be and adopted him with her funny little motherly way.
She had forgotten most of her imperfect English, and, just at first, we could barely understand each other; and then, somehow, the ten years seemed but as a day. She overwhelmed me with questions about every one we had known in our schooldays; but not until she had made us very welcome, and given us tea. She clapped her hands three times, and the tea came in. In reality, the servant brought it in; but she came on her hands and knees, and the tea-tray was far more conspicuous than she. Shige sent for her five little children; they bobbed us queer little curtsies, with their queer little bodies, and laughed and ran out.
The only hint of Europe I saw in Mrs. Uriu’s little home were three old books and a box of cigars, which she brought out for my husband, with a gleeful laugh.
She was so sorry her husband was away with his ship, he was so nice. He was a lieutenant in the navy. She was teaching music; the Empress had founded a girls’ college, and she, Shige, was professor of the piano.
| [1] | The Countess Oyama is the wife of the Count (sometimes called Marshal) Oyama who has so recently distinguished himself in the Chino-Japanese war. |
CHAPTER XXIV
FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO
Madame Sannomiya
I thought her the most picturesque bit in the picture of Tokio life: a European woman living among the Japanese, speaking their language or her own indiscriminately, as occasion dictated, preserving her individuality and her national traits, and yet wielding an almost incredible influence at the conservative Court of the Mikado.