Part 36 (2/2)
”Reggie is too good for you,” said the Englishman, roughly.
”I don't think so,” said Yae, ”I don't want Reggie, but Reggie wants me.”
”What do you want then?”
”I want a great big man with arms and legs like a wrestler. A man who hunts lions. He will pick me up like you did at Kamakura, big captain, and throw me in the air and catch me again. And I will take him away from the woman he loves, so that he will hate me and beat me for it.
And when he sees on my back the marks of the whip and the blood he will love me again so strongly that he will become weak and silly like a baby. Then I will look after him and nurse him; and we will drink wine together. And we will go for long rides together on horseback in the moonlight galloping along the sands by the edge of the sea!”
Geoffrey was gazing at her with alarm. Was she going mad? The girl jumped up and laid her little hands on his shoulder.
”There, big captain,” she cried, ”don't be frightened. That is only one of Reggie's piano tunes. I never heard tunes like his before. He plays them, and then explains to me what each note means; and then he plays the tune again, and I can see the whole story. That is why I love him--sometimes!”
”Then you _do_ love him?” Geoffrey was clutching pathetically for anything which he could understand or appeal to in this elusive person.
”I love him,” said Yae, pirouetting on her white toes near the edge of the chasm, ”and I love you and I love any man who is worth loving!”
They returned to the lake in silence. Geoffrey's sermon was abortive.
This girl was altogether outside the circle of his code of Good Form.
He might as well preach vegetarianism to a leopard. Yet she fascinated him, as she fascinated all men who were not as dry as Aubrey Laking.
She was so pretty, so frail and so fearless. Life had not given her a fair chance; and she appealed to the chivalrous instinct in men, as well as to their less creditable pa.s.sions. She was such a b.u.t.terfly creature; and the flaring lamps of life had such a fatal attraction for her.
The wind was blowing straight against the harbour. The bay of Sh[=o]bu-ga-Hama was shallow water. Try as he might, Geoffrey could not manoeuvre the little yacht into the open waters of the lake.
”We are on a lee-sh.o.r.e,” said Geoffrey.
At the end he had to get down and wade bare-legged, towing the boat after him until at last Yae announced that the centreboard had been lowered and that the boat was answering to the helm.
Geoffrey clambered in dripping. He shook himself like a big dog after a swim.
”Reggie could never have done that,” said Yae, with fervent admiration. ”He would be afraid of catching cold.”
At last they reached the steps of the villa. They were both hungry.
”I am going to stop to lunch, big captain,” said Yae, ”Reggie won't be back.”
”How do you know?”
”Because I saw Gwendolen Cairns listening last evening when he spoke to me through the big trumpet. She tells Lady Cynthia, and that means a lot of work next day for poor Reggie, so that he can't spend his time with me. You see! Oh, how I hate women!”
After lunch, at Chuzenji, all the world goes to sleep. It awakes at about four o'clock, when the white sails come gliding out of the green bays like swans. They greet, or avoid. They run side by side for the length of a puff of breeze. They coquet with one another like b.u.t.terflies; or they head for one of those hidden beaches which are the princ.i.p.al charm of the lake, where baskets are unpacked and cakes and sandwiches appear, where dry sticks are gathered for a rustic fire, and after an hour or more of anxious stoking the kettle boils.
”Of all the j.a.panese holiday places, Chuzenji is the most select and the most agreeable,” Reggie Forsyth explained; ”it is the only place in all j.a.pan where the foreigner is genuinely popular and respected.
He spends his money freely, he does not swear or scold. The woman-chasing, whisky-swilling type, who has disgraced us in the open ports, is unknown here. These native mountaineers are rough and uneducated savages, but they are honest and healthy. We feel on easy terms with them, as we do with our own peasantry. In the village street of Chuzenji I have seen a young English officer instructing the sons of boatmen and woodcutters in the mysteries of cricket.”
In Chuzenji there are no j.a.panese visitors except the pilgrims who throng to the lake during the season for climbing the holy mountain of Nantai. These are country people, all of them, from villages all over j.a.pan, who have drawn lucky lots in the local pilgrimage club. One can recognize them at once by their dingy white clothes, like grave-clothes--men and women are garbed alike--by their straw mushroom hats, by the strip of straw matting strapped across their shoulders, and by the long wooden staves which they carry and which will be stamped with the seal of the mountain-shrine when they have reached the summit. These pilgrims are lodged free by the temple on the lake-side, in long sheds like cattle-byres.
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