 | Purple-Eyes |  |
III THE DANCE OF THE RED MAPLE-LEAVES
The question of making one's toilet in the interior of Japan is still a serious one for the American who lives behind closed doors and cherishes his divine right of privacy. Garland had solved the vexation for all his contemporaries (according to Garland) by making his toilet as to half or quarter of his sacred person at a time (depending somewhat upon the danger of surprise), thus reducing the chances of exposure by one-half or three-quarters. Purple-Eyes brought him the requisites for his toilet, and the moment she was gone he bared his shoulders and chest, and plunged into the delightful water, perfumed, like everything else, with the aroma Japonica. But his pretty hostess reappeared through the movable walls at an unwatched place.
He abandoned a momentary impulse to scuttle behind the screen because of the admiration he saw in her eyes, and then he half turned that she might see the muscles of his back.
"How you are beau-ti-ful!" she said slowly, as her eyes traveled, quite without embarrassment, over his athletic uppers.
"Thanks," he laughed, with pleasure in the little incident.
Garland turned a little further, and raised his arms above his head in the way of athletes.
She handed him a towel he had dropped.
"I thing I come tell you we got large tub for bath," she said then.
"Where is it?" asked Garland, suspiciously.
"There."
She pointed.
"That's what I thought. You must excuse me. I can't perform that sacred rite in the fierce light that beats upon a front porch."
"Yaes? Eijinsan don' lig?" She did not understand.
"No," admitted Garland.
"Also, you lig for me go 'way liddle?"
Garland said yes, and she went.
When she returned, it was with a delightful breakfast of fish, rice, and persimmons. She put the little table between them, and on her knees, on the other side, taught him how to eat as a Japanese should. This is really not difficult, except the chopsticks; and with these she had to help him so often that their fingers were in almost constant contact. Alas! Garland made it as difficult as possible. And, alas! Garland was glad of the chopsticks!
Her joy overflowed the mouth and eyes which it seemed should know nothing but tears.
Afterward he helped her, with masculine joy of his own ineptitude, to reform the apartment, and secrete the things which had made it successively a reception-room, sleeping-chamber, and breakfast-room. You may judge whether or not this was delightful to a fellow like Garland, and also whether it was perilous.
It is not often that one has the felicity of ending one's breakfast with a song, and then of ending the song with a dance. Purple-Eyes brought her samisen quite without suggestion from Garland, and said with naivete:
"I go'n' sing you a song. You lig me sing?"
"Try me!" challenged Garland, with an admiration in his eyes which pleased her greatly.
"Long down behine the Suwanee River" was the curious song she sang, in Japanese English.
Garland laughed.
"Don' you lig those?" she pouted. "I learn it for you.'"
He said it was lovely, and begged her to go on.
But his eyes wandered from the fingers on the strings to those on the plectrum, and then away to the lips above; and when she turned into the chorus he joined her with his inconstant eyes still there. It was only an indifferent tenor, but the girl thought it full of fervor. It was only that it joined and mingled with hers as she fancied their spirits doing and might always do.
"How that is nize!" she breathed in frank ecstasy. "You got voice lig lig "
But there was nothing at hand to compare it with, and she laughed confessingly.
"Nothing," said Garland. "It's original."
"Yaes nothing original," she admitted.
"Sing another," begged Garland, with enthusiasm.
She did "When the swallows flying home"; and then still another "'Tis the last rosebud summer."
"Where did you learn them?" asked he.
"That day when I got you' picture. Me? I thing you lig me sing, mebby. Well, I git those song; I make them United States' language, so you comprehend."
"God bless you!" said Garland.
The girl leaned forward with dewy eyes.
"Sa-ay you lig me also dance jus' one liddle dance for you?"
She came bewitchingly nearer. Garland glanced again at her geisha-like costume. Had she thought all this out for his entertainment, he wondered.
"Yes," he said.
"But you naev naever go'n' tell?"
She raised her brows, and held up a finger archly.
"On my sacred honor!" laughed Garland.
"No one?"
"Not a soul."
"Tha' 's go'n' be 'nother secret among jus' you an' me foraever an' aever?"
"Forever and ever," announced Garland, as if it were the Service.
"Account if you aever do, they go'n' kill me!"
"What! Kill you?"
"Dade!" She nodded ominously.
"Who?"
"Black-Eyes an' those modder."
"Oh!" said Garland. He understood.
He was left to guess that this dainty flower had been taught the arts of a geisha to assist also in keeping up Brownie's state.
"I lig dance for you," confessed the girl, joyously. "Others? No; I do not lig. They as' me, 'Where you got those pink face?' Me?' I don' lig those. I rather work in those mill. My modder an' my sister getting all times an-gery account I don' dance. But tha' 's in-sult upon me! I don't lig be insult. So! Me? I jus' don' dance for no one but but but jus' you!"
She vanished through the shoji, and presently returned, a symphony in autumnal reds and browns.
"I go'n' dance for you that red maple-leaf dance. Me? I am that leaf."
"You look it," said Garland, more tenderly than he knew.
The girl spread her garments that he might inspect her.
"This is a forest," she went on; "an' you sa-ay you a tree! Aha, ha, ha!"
She laughed, made him a noble courtesy, and murmured a little tune to which she floated down from the top of a maple-tree. For a while she lay quite still, shivering a little. Then the wind stirred her, and she rose, and swept down upon Garland, then back and into a whirl of other leaves. Then hither and thither, merrily, like an autumn leaf, until she shivered down at his feet, with bowed head.
She was making it more and more perilous for Garland.
| Purple-Eyes | |