 | Purple-Eyes |  |
THE FEVER JAPONICA
GARLAND was charmed with his reception. Before he could open his head (in his own perhaps too picturesque phrase) the two girls had buried their delightful noses in the mats, and were bobbing vividly up and down, sibilating honorifics at him in the voice and manner used only to personages. The mother joined them an instant later, making a phalanx, and she was nearly as beautiful, and quite as graceful, as her daughters. So that at one moment he would have presented to him the napes of three pretty necks, and at the next, with a conjurer's quick change, three pairs of eyes that smiled always, and three mouths that did their best (which was very well indeed) to assist the eyes. At first, I say, he was charmed, then a little bewildered, then bewitched. And perhaps it was well that his conversation-book was the only thing about him that spoke Japanese; for Garland's vocabulary, even when it was fairly accurate, had grown indiscreet since coming to Japan.
He perceived, however, by a surreptitious glance at the conversation-book when the napes of the necks were in view, that they were addressing him as "Augustness" and "Excellency," and that the mother was insisting that he should take immediate possession of her "miserable" house and its contents. He wondered dreamily and he drifted into dreams with the most curious ease whether the girls would be included.
Finally he began to feel it his duty to be tired of this fawning, as his refluent American democracy insisted upon naming it though, personally, he liked it and all the clever pretences of the Japanese. He sat bolt upright and frowned. But the charming kotowing did not in the least abate. He had heard somewhere that the only way to stop this sort of thing short of apoplexy was to compete in it.
He tried to reach the mats with his own nose. It seemed easy, but it was a disaster. There is a trick in it. He plunged forward helplessly almost into the lap of one of his hostesses. Garland sat up, with their joint assistance, very red in the face, but quite cheerful; for though the mother looked greatly pained, the girls were smiling like two Japanese angels. (The phrase is again Garland's: there are no Japanese angels.) Garland had the instant intelligence to perceive that this had at once stopped the kotowing, and precipitated a piquant intimacy.
"I say," said he, idiomatically, "I nearly broke my neck trying to say howdy-do in your way. Now won't you kindly say it in mine, without the least danger to life and limb?"
He held out his hand invitingly, and the one on his right went into debate as to which one to give him. She knew there was some foreign etiquette in the matter.
"In doubt, shake both," said Garland, doing it.
The one on his left emulated her sister to the last particular (the mother had retired for refreshments), but he noticed that the hands she gave him were long and white. He glanced up, and found himself looking into a pair of blue eyes. He followed the forehead to the brassy hair above. Then he began furiously to turn the leaves of the conversation-book. The one on his right laughed a little, and said:
"What you lig as', please?"
Garland closed the book, and stared. He did not ask what he had meant to, because of something he saw in the questioner's face.
"Ah, if you lig more bedder for do so, speak the English," she said, with a quiet flourish that was lost upon Garland.
He flung the conversation-book into a corner. Black-Eyes, as he had mentally named her, in despair of her Japanese name, which was Meadowsweet, smiled ecstatically.
"Ah-h-h! You lig those those English?"
"Like it? It's heavenly! I say, fancy, if you can but you can't depending upon a dictionary for your most sacred sentiments for three months."
Wherein it will be perceived that Garland had learned the whole art of Japanese politeness gentle prevarication.
"How that is nize!" breathed the blue-eyed one, fervently.
Garland turned suddenly upon her, then questioned her with his eyes. She understood.
"Those thing you speak-ing," she barely breathed once more, in explanation.
"Oh!" said Garland. But it meant more than print can express. "Tell me, if you please, what your name is."
It was Miss Purple-Wistaria; but the Japanese of this was quite as impossible as the other.
"Do you mind me calling you Blue-Eyes?" asked Garland. "When it comes to Japanese proper names I have already taken the liberty of mentally calling your sister Black-Eyes, and if you don't mind "
"You call those blue-eye?" asked Miss Meadowsweet.
"Why, yes," said Garland. "What do you call them?"
"Purple-eye."
"Well, I like that better, anyhow. It shall be Purple-Eyes."
"She got other already English name," confided Black-Eyes, with the manner for her sister he did not like.
"Oh! What is it?"
"Sarann," laughed the dark one. "Tha' 's jus' joke her fadder. He all times joke upon her."
Garland did not quite understand. He decided that he did not wish to, for the blue-eyed one looked very uncomfortable.
"I shall call her Purple-Eyes," he said.
The disagreeableness of the other continued.
"Yaes; tha' 's good name for her," she added, with an intention that was distinctly odious.
"In America that would be the most beautiful name a man could give a beautiful woman," said Garland, severely.
The dark one looked a bit frightened. The blonde one gave him the merest horizon of her eyes as she raised her head. Gratitude was in them.
"Now, won't you go on, and tell me how you knew me before I opened my blooming head?"
He had again addressed himself to Purple-Eyes, but Black-Eyes answered:
"What is that open you' head, an' blooming you' head?"
Garland informed her.
"Oh-h-h!" laughed the dark one. "Tha' 's way know yo' 'fore open you' bloom-ing head!"
She suddenly reached into the bosom of the kimono of the blue-eyed one, and brought forth a photograph of Garland; whereat Garland got red again, and again the blue-eyed one drooped her head,
"Oh, I say," Garland began, without a very distinct idea of what he was going to say, "Brownie sent you that aha, ha, ha!" he had happily drifted into the very thing "and wrote you that I would arrive with a letter from him; so that you would know me you know; and of course when I arrived of course when I arrived why, of course oh, hang it!"
They both waited breathlessly upon his words.
"Of course," echoed Black-Eyes, sympathetically "of course tha' 's correc', an' tha' 's also nize. Of course you arrive when you arrive."
Garland wondered whether she was guying him.
"Yes why, of course," said he once more, and a laugh en masse cleared the air.
Garland, in a panic, was searching his pockets.
"What lot pockets!" sighed Black-Eyes, insidiously desiring to compose his nerves.
"Sixteen," admitted Garland. "I wish they were only one, just now. By Jove, I've lost that letter!"
The graceful mother arrived with the tobacco bon (there appeared to be no servant), and Garland, professing an ignorance which seems problematical after three months in Japan, desired to be initiated into the art and mystery of the Japanese pipe. The tender was made to Purple-Eyes, but Black-Eyes undertook it.
"So," she said, rolling a pellet of the tobacco, and putting it into the pipe; "an' so," as she fearlessly put a live coal upon it with her fingers; "so," as she put it to her own lips and sent out a tiny puff; "an' an' an' so!" as she laughed and put it to his. And yet Garland found himself wishing that the other one had done it, and believing that she could do it better! And this, you perceive, was already perilous business.
It was afternoon when Garland arrived, and the mother's actions, though covered by diplomatic entrances and exits, with a view to impressing him to the contrary, indicated to him that she was cooking. And presently Purple-Eyes got up and lighted the andon. Garland, who delighted in her grace of motion, had not yet learned that each movement was the result of much study and the practice of many stoical rules of decorum. However, he rose as far as his knees, and said he must go. A glance of alarm passed between the girls, and both stiffened in consternation.
"Sa-ay tha' 's not nize for us," accused the dark one, with valor. "Brownie he write unto us that you so kine with him, you give him you' las' pair boots, an' go naked on you' both feet. Tha' 's way we got do you. But account you go'n' go 'way, we can not. Hence we got be always 'shamed 'fore Brownie an' aeverybody. Tha' 's not nize for us." Garland had not risen above his knees, and she came hopefully forward. "Please don' go 'way!" She turned to Purple-Eyes in the peremptory way that Garland resented. "Sa-ay why you don' as' him stay among us? Sa-ay don' you wish?"
Garland's eyes followed. Unconsciously they besought her.
"We lig if you stay among us," said Purple-Eyes, haltingly.
But there was something else just the timid lifting of an eyelid. Garland answered this with a rift of pleasure which shot across his face.
"Me? I lig also if you stay among us I."
But now it was spoken to the mats. There was the edge of a smile visible, nevertheless, and Garland felt the courage it took for this.
"Well, if you like," said Garland he laughed suddenly "I like too."
"Thangs!"
They both said it at once; but some splendid reward passed from Purple-Eyes to Garland.
So presently they had a feast, in which four little tables stood in a circle one for each. There would have been only three had not Garland insisted that the mother should dine with them. He had not the least idea how fearfully he had disarranged domestic matters, for the mother, of course, instantly did as he requested. And then the three of them served him, and cunningly joined in engaging him while one or the other prepared the viands. But finally it was a very joyous meal; and only when the Osaka beer came on did Garland at all suspect how much out of the ordinary it was for them. They had forgotten to be taught how to open the bottles!
| Purple-Eyes | |