July 30.—We are living in the clouds; below, above, and around us they swirl and writhe in the wind, sometimes breaking a little to show us the edge of the lake, but then directly driving together again and shutting us out from all but our own garden. Below us in the plain the sun will be shining and the people sweltering, but we are cool—and damp.
July 31.—Still the mist and clouds dance past and wreathe round the trees in such enchanting wise that they make poems and pictures and mysteries of the swift visions they are allowed to reveal.
Sad that I am ill—terrible pain in the night, so that I had to rouse the house; and all day I have done nothing—but grin sometimes when it returned.
August 1.—Clouds still there; and I am a little better though not well. The household in which I am staying is unconsciously amusing. It is to join J—— that I came; the other inmates are missionaries of uncertain age,—very high church, with prayers night and morning, grace before and after meat, with devout crossings and bows, till I long to tell them they are popish idolaters, but refrain, for J——’s sake. The first night I felt too crushed to venture a remark at meals; the book I brought (a clever light thing by Barry Pain) was said to be “such weak rubbish it seemed a pity to read it” by the lady who told us all one evening that she “had read a very great deal—and among it no rubbish!”
J—— begs me not to catch her eye at meals, and I refrain. The Pan-Anglican Congress and the Bishops attending it are the staple articles of interest at present.
While we are not supposed to be seen in a kimono “because the Japanese think us ridiculous in them” (with which I quite agree in one way), the Japanese servants are brought into prayers, and I wonder whether prayers said in Japanese by an English woman escape the ridiculous!
The village street was illuminated last night and to-night with square paper lanterns, for to-day is a great festival at the temple by the lake; and there will be a week’s matsuri, during which time the carpenter cannot mend the boat because he wishes to play with his children. Sunshine came for a couple of hours and we went in a boat to the temple. The boat was beached at the end of a little path, leading straight up from the water to the temple, by a flight of grey stone steps, moss-grown and decked with ferns. On either side were great Cryptomerias and bamboo, a cool deep wood in which the greyness and the greenness were set off by huge white lilies and their visitors, black butterflies with blue-tipped wings. Our path was solitary, but by another meeting it trooped gaily dressed villagers, brilliant in blue, red, and pink—sometimes whole families, father, mother, sons, and daughters in blue kimonos all alike.
The temple service was already well begun before we got there, but we came in time to see the presentation of the first-fruits. In the outer part of the temple the congregation sat on the floor,—the front rows all occupied by elderly gentlemen clad in their black haori with white mons, behind them sat the small boys, and at the back the young girls. By accident, or for some reason I do not understand, there were no women at all in the temple, though a few old ones with babies stood outside. They made no difficulty about us entering, so perhaps it was the preparations for the feasts to follow which kept (as it so often does at home) the women from worship. While the solemnity of presentation went on a man with a ridiculously flat face, dressed in semi-foreign style, played a harmonium, like the ones missionaries use on the seashore in the summer holidays. It was only given the chance of droning half a dozen notes with no tune audible to Western ears, but it was solemn enough, and had a certain fitness for the occasion. Three priests officiated, one in white and one in yellow over-dress with baggy trousers, just like a Turkish lady’s, beneath, and one in a lovely peach-coloured satin dress, an exquisite “Liberty” colour, and a great contrast to the harsh yellow one. The other brought the lacquer trays of offerings to him, with many slow reverences, and he walked up the altar steps and presented them. The walking up the steps was quite a feat—he turned his body sideways, at right angles to the steps, and brought both his feet together on each step. I noticed that his toes were moved up and down in the way prescribed in the ceremonial walk of the Nō.
One of the missionary ladies amused me as we were coming away. She dropped behind with another missionary and said in a tragical stage whisper, “Did you see that English lady in a red-striped dress? She was buying charms and mementoes of the priest! Oh, I hope she is not one of them! It is so horrible to think of——” This dear lady takes all things very seriously, and is as devoid of humour as any one I have met. I marked the lady in a red-striped dress, and discovered that she was carrying a quite new scarlet Kelly & Walsh (a little phrase-book used by all tourists). We all buy little odds and ends when we are touristing.