He goes, but I go
Never, to France.”
I accompanied them to Kōbe, where the Belgic was waiting to take passengers to San Francisco, and charged myself with the duty of sending O Maru home to her family. She came with us on the liner, and was overawed by the huge steamer, with its crowd of loud-voiced, whisky-drinking barbarians. Once she crept closer to René, and asked him if he would return as soon as his mother died. Filial affection, she knew, had the first claim. Then she gave him a small wooden wedge, on which was the name of her sea-god, Watazumi-no-Mikoto, with injunctions to press it to his bosom every day at the hour of noon. At last the bell sounded to clear the decks. O Maru took off her wooden geta and climbed down into the tug. Up to that moment she had borne herself bravely, but when she saw the lessening figure of her lover recede for ever into the waste of waters, she sank down in a storm of passionate sobs at my feet.
IV
Six months later I was passing down the Rue Royale, when I saw René Beauregard at a little table outside Maxime’s with two companions, who were engaged in a fierce dispute about the never-ending Affaire, while his whole attention was absorbed by a letter, which I knew from the texture of the paper to be Japanese. Greeting him with effusion—for we had not met since the Belgic sailed from Kōbe—I asked whether he had any news of O Maru since his return to Paris. For answer he handed me the letter, which, with some trouble, I deciphered. It was to the following effect:
“To Borega Sama, 120, Avenue de Clichy, Paris.
“From the time of your coming to Nippon to the time of your going back to your own country, as you have been so very kind to me, I humbly render thanks. To learn by your letter that you had safely crossed so many countries and great seas was indeed good news. I had fasted for twenty-three days and offered daily prayers to Watazumi-no-Mikoto that you might not fall into danger before reaching the house of your honourable mother. I am living with my aunt at Shiogama, and shall wait seven years in the hope that you will come back. I pray for you every day, and shall never forget the happy times we spent together in Kose and Kyōto. However long I write, there is no end to it, so I shall look for a further occasion to tell you my love. In respectful obedience,
“O Maru.”
The letter contained an enclosure, which it required the intervention of a Japanese friend to interpret. Whether the girl had herself written the six poems which follow, or, as it seems to me more probable, had adapted them with slight alterations from a popular song-book, I cannot say. They form both epilogue and moral to this typical tale.