“Say, fellows, we’ve got bastards. Make them drink. Get them loaded. You gents got to stay here.”
And they pushed me who never attempted to escape against the wall. Surveying the scene, I found there was no dish in which any edibles were left. Some one had eaten all his share, and gone on a foraging expedition. The principal was not there,—I did not know when he left.
At that time, preceded by a coquetish voice, three or four geishas entered the room. I was a bit surprised, but having been pushed against the wall, I had to look on quietly. At the instant, Red Shirt who had been leaning against a pillar with the same old amber pipe stuck into his mouth with some pride, suddenly got up and started to leave the room. One of the geishas who was advancing toward him smiled and courtesied at him as she passed by him. The geisha was the youngest and prettiest of the bunch. They were some distance away from me and I could not see very well, but it seemed that she might have said “Good evening.” Red Shirt brushed past as if unconscious, and never showed again. Probably he followed the principal.
The sight of the geishas set the room immediately in a buzz and it became noisy as they all raised howls of welcome. Some started the game of “nanko” with a force that beat the sword-drawing practice. Others began playing morra, and the way they shook their hands, intently absorbed in the game, was a better spectacle than a puppet show.
One in the corner was calling “Hey, serve me here,” but shaking the bottle, corrected it to “Hey, fetch me more sake.” The whole room became so infernally noisy that I could scarcely stand it. Amid this orgy, one, like a fish out of water, sat down with his head bowed. It was Hubbard Squash. The reason they have held this farewell dinner party was not in order to bid him a farewell, but because they wanted to have a jolly good time for themselves with John Barleycorn. He had come to suffer only. Such a dinner party would have been better had it not been started at all.
After a while, they began singing ditties in outlandish voices. One of the geishas came in front of me, and taking up a samisen, asked me to sing something. I told her I didn’t sing, but I’d like to hear, and she droned out:
“If one can go round and meet the one he wants, banging gongs and drums …… bang, bang, bang, bang, bing, shouting after wandering Santaro, there is some one I’d like to meet by banging round gongs and drums …… bang, bang, bang, bang, b-i-n-g.”
She dashed this off in two breaths, and sighed, “O, dear!” She should have sung something easier.
Clown who had come near us meanwhile, remarked in his flippant tone:
“Hello, dear Miss Su-chan, too bad to see your beau go away so soon.” The geisha pouted, “I don’t know.” Clown, regardless, began imitating “gidayu” with a dismal voice,—“What a luck, when she met her sweet heart by a rare chance….”