Part 2

On arriving in Tokio four days before, and reporting himself at the Japanese ministry of marine, he found that his services were not immediately required. He was asked to hold himself in readiness to assume his duties at a few hours' notice; meanwhile his time was his own. It was unlucky that his arrival in Japan was in the very middle of the New-year celebrations, for business being at almost a total stand-still for a fortnight on end, the two English merchants to whom he had brought letters of introduction had gone away with their families for a holiday, and among the two million people in Tokio there was not one that he knew. There was company at the hotel, to be sure, but it consisted chiefly of tourists and globe-trotters eager to "do" everything, and Bob had never had a taste for frantic sight-seeing. He accordingly chose his own course, and wandered about pretty much by himself, taking the keenest interest in the novel scenes that everywhere met his eyes.

A stranger could hardly have arrived in Tokio at a more interesting time. For ten days after the year has opened Japan is more characteristically Japanese, perhaps, than at any other period. It is one universal festival. Among the upper classes visits of ceremony are exchanged; the streets are crowded with rickshaws drawn by coolies in fantastic costume--mushroom hats and waterproofs of reeds. They worm their way through throngs of adults and children bouncing balls, playing at battledore and shuttlecock, flying kites, tumbling over each other in their happy frolicsomeness. Shopkeepers are to be seen carrying specimens of their wares to their customers; brightly-clad geishas add grace and picturesqueness to the scene. Every variety of costume is to be met with, from the correct frock-coats of the government officials to the strange mixture of billycock and kimono which lesser folk sometimes affect. Every house is decorated; here and there a juggler or a showman provides elementary entertainment at the price of three-farthings, and the unwary visitor, enticed into a booth by the promise of great marvels, finds that the magic is nothing more startling than an electric shock, or that the advertised fire-breathing dragon is no more than a moon-faced performing seal. At night paper lanterns dangle from every rickshaw shaft, making the streets a moving panorama of fairyland; and from the low one-storied houses proceeds the quaint barbarous music of the samisen--the native guitar twanged by smiling geishas entertaining their employers' guests with dance and song.

Bob spent many delightful hours in witnessing these things, and in strolling through the streets, looking into the curio shops, sometimes venturing a discreet purchase. But amid all the merriment there seemed to him to be a something in the air--an undercurrent of seriousness, which was the theme of incessant talk in the hotel smoking-room. Was it to be war? That was the question which was discussed from morning to night. Everybody knew that negotiations were proceeding between the foreign offices at Tokio and St. Petersburg: what was the result to be? Opinion veered this way and that. Russia apparently would not keep her pledges: would Japan fight? What were the rights of the case? Was Russia merely concerned with holding an ice-free port and developing her trade, or was she aiming at aggression and conquest? Was Japan strong enough to enforce unaided what the diplomacy of European powers had failed to accomplish? Would China come to the assistance of her conqueror? Would Britain be involved in the struggle? These and similar questions were canvassed to the point of weariness; and Bob all the time felt that it was talk in the air, for nobody knew. There was no excitement, no mouthings, no boastfulness. The little soldiers in their trim uniforms were not much to be seen in the streets; yet it was not long before Bob learnt that preparations were quietly, unostentatiously, being made to throw vast armies across the Korea Strait; and as to the navy, was not his presence there in itself a proof that the government was determined to have everything at the top of condition should the struggle which many deemed inevitable actually begin?

On the second morning after the adventure in the Ueno Park, Bob, having finished breakfast, went to the reading-room to glance at the papers preparatory to his usual stroll. There were illustrated European magazines in plenty with which he was familiar, and a five-weeks' old copy of the _Times_, which he looked through without much interest, the news being so obviously stale. There was the _Japan Mail_, a little more interesting, in which he was glad to find an account of the last match between the Australians and Warner's eleven, as well as news of the British doings in Tibet and Somaliland. But having brought himself up to date with those journals in his own tongue, he turned, as he usually did, to the native papers, and stared at them as earnestly as though only assiduous poring was needed to give him a thorough grasp of Japanese. He wished he could read the strange hieroglyphics--some shaped like gridirons, others like miniature barns, others like the little dancing imps drawn by school-boys with a few straight lines on the margins of their grammars. He wondered what meaning lay behind the strangely picturesque tantalizing characters, and sighed as he replaced one of the papers on the table.

"Not understand, sir?" said a passing Japanese waiter, with the smiling courtesy of all the hotel attendants.

"I don't, I confess," replied Bob, returning the smile. "What do you call this, for instance?"

"That, sir? That _Ninkin Shimbun_--very good paper. My uncle belong that paper one time--prison editor."

"Prison editor?" Bob looked puzzled.

"In Japan, sir, newspaper two editors one time. Number one editor he write War Minister bad man. Policeman he come say: 'Be so kind cease publish hon'ble paper; hon'ble publisher, hon'ble printer, hon'ble editor be so kind enter hon'ble prison'. Number two editor he go prison, number one editor he stay home."

"I suppose they pay number two well for that," remarked Bob laughing.

"No, sir; my uncle very poor man. His wages four yen a month; but no spend much, in prison every time."

"Poor fellow! He earns his four yen."

The little waiter's countenance took on a lugubrious expression.

"He prison editor not now no longer," he said. "Everything change in Nippon. These days number one editor go prison, number two he out of work. My poor uncle sell _Ninkin Shimbun_ Shimbashi railway-station."

At this moment the hall-porter entered, and bowed to Bob with a deep Japanese obeisance.

"Japanese gentleman, sir, beg you be so kind give him interview."

"Oh! who is it?" said Bob, thinking that it must be the bearer of the expected summons from the minister.

"Japanese gentleman, sir; say you not know his name. But he very great man, he very noble Samurai." Then, looking with an air of imparting important information, he added: "His name, sir, Rokuro Kobo San."

Surprised that so important a personage should have been chosen to wait upon him, Bob rose and made his way across the corridor to the reception-room. The porter shut the door behind him, and as he advanced a slight figure stepped lightly across the room to meet him. Whatever dim picture of a Samurai Bob had formed in his mind was banished at the sight of a trim, exquisitely-dressed Japanese, wearing a frock-coat that would have done credit to Poole's, and carrying with practised ease a silk hat, which might have been twin-brother of Bob's unused Lincoln & Bennett. He was short, though perhaps rather above the average height of his nation. In feature he resembled the Japanese of better class whom Bob had seen at the government offices, but with an indefinable touch of added refinement, due partly, no doubt, to his Samurai blood, but partly also, as Bob surmised, to his evident familiarity with western civilization. He was sallow, like all his race; his jet-black hair was thick and strong, and a narrow moustache graced his upper lip. It is always difficult to judge the age of an alien in race, and Bob had little or no experience to guide him; but the impression made upon him by his visitor's general bearing was that he was in the prime of life.

"Good-morning, sir," said Bob pleasantly.

"Good-morning, sir," said the Japanese with perfect accent at almost the same moment, bowing with inimitable grace. Bob instinctively bowed in response, but felt that his salutation was awkward and stiff by contrast.

"I trust, sir, that you will pardon my intruding upon you at this hour. I feared lest I should not have the opportunity of thanking you in my own person for the very great service which you have rendered to me and to my house."

His mode of speech was measured, even, and perfectly correct, somewhat stilted perhaps, with an old-world flavour that belonged to a courtlier age than our own.

"You may remember, sir, two days ago, in our Ueno Park, you rescued one of my countrymen from the hands of a Chinaman, who I have every reason to think would have killed him but for your generous intervention. The Chinaman was a man of evil character, a desperate man, a villain; the Japanese, who owes his life to you, is--my servant. I thank you."

"Really, sir," said Bob, somewhat embarrassed, "it was a very small matter; I merely hauled the fellow off, and he bolted."

"To you, sir, it may have been a small matter. It is an instinct with your countrymen to help the man who is down. To you it is a mere nothing; but to me, it represents much, very much. The man you rescued is my servant; his forefathers have served mine these five hundred years."

"I am very glad, sir, that I happened to be passing just at the moment. May I congratulate you on your man? He tackled the big Chinaman with fine courage."

"He is a brave man indeed, but he grows old. Ten years ago he was with me in the China war; he was in his prime; there was not his equal in our army. The Manchu, as you saw, is a man of more than common strength, but in single fight with my servant at Feng-huang-cheng he escaped with difficulty, and the loss of an ear."

"The loss of an ear!" repeated Bob. "Surely he cannot be the man we picked up off Nagasaki?"

Kobo San's expression betrayed just a hint of enquiry, and Bob proceeded to give an account of the Chinaman's rescue. This was the beginning of a long conversation, which, starting with Kobo's previous relations with the Manchu, drifted away into a variety of subjects, giving Bob every now and again a suggestion of his visitor's extraordinary range and versatility. He was clearly a man of wide reading and many interests, had been a great traveller in his younger days, and spoke as though at home equally in all the great capitals of the west. So interested was Bob that he did not notice the increasing number of rickshaws halting at the entrance to the hotel, depositing guests laden with strange bundles, the spoils of long chaffering in the Naka-dori.

This influx was the sure indication of approaching tiffin, and when the Japanese rose to take his leave, Bob awakened to the fact, and with some diffidence begged the pleasure of his visitor's company. Kobo San, however, explained that he had but just time to keep an appointment with his excellency the minister of war, and while courteously expressing his regrets, extended to Bob an invitation to his own house on the following day. Bob accepted with genuine pleasure, and escorted his visitor to the street. The two shook hands almost with the cordiality of old friends.

As Bob turned to re-enter the hotel, he encountered the little waiter gazing after the retreating form with a mixture half of admiration half of awe.

"Rokuro Kobo San, he very great man," he said, confidentially. "He kindly send my poor uncle to hon'ble prison."

*CHAPTER III*

*A Samurai's Home*

A Japanese Interior--An Oriental Menu--Tales of Old Japan--The Quarrel with Russia--Chang-Wo--Raiding the Raiders--Good-bye

"Takaki ya ni Noborite mireba--"

Bob rubbed his eyes, and became conscious of a crick in the neck. He thought for a moment he must be in a railway-train; the sensation was just the same that he had experienced on a night journey to London, when he had had a compartment to himself, and lay stretched on a seat with his head on the elbow cushion at the end. But no: he had never heard in England such a thin soft voice, singing in utter tunelessness such strange words--

"Kemuri tatsu; Tami no kamado wa Nigiwai ni kere".

He lifted his head from the low neck-rest, and remembered. The voice came through the wall of his room; but it was not a wall--only a slight paper partition. It was evidently time to get up. He flung off the wadded quilt, and sat up--not in bed, but on the stretch of straw matting that formed almost the only furniture of his room. The neck-rest fell down, making a slight noise; the voice in the next room ceased singing; he heard the swish of soft garments; a few moments later a sliding paper panel in the partition was pushed back and a form appeared--the form of a little Japanese carrying a bath and a pitcher of water.

"Morning, sir," said the little fellow with a smile and a bow. "Bath in morning, sir?"

"Thank you," said Bob, springing to his feet. "By the way, I don't think I have heard your name yet?"

"My name, sir, Taru. You sleep well, sir?"

"Oh yes, though I found the head-rest a little strange. Was it you singing just now, Taru?"

"No, sir; no sing at all. The little lady, hon'ble mistress, sir; O Toyo San."

"Indeed!"

Bob forbore to ask questions. He had only arrived the night before at Kobo San's country house near Nikko, tired and chilled after the uphill railway journey from Tokio, and quite ready to retire to his sleeping-chamber after a cup of warm sake. It was three days since his first meeting with the Japanese gentleman who had called upon him at the hotel. During those three days Kobo San had proved himself a most delightful companion. He had taken the young Englishman here, there, and everywhere about Tokio: to an entertainment at the Maple Club, where Bob had seen the prettiest geishas in Japan dance to the barbarous music of the samisen and the koto; to a wrestling match between two huge athletes; to a theatrical performance which, though tragic in intention, gave him considerable amusement, so strangely were the actors' faces painted, so ludicrous (to the European eye) were their gestures and grimaces. Bob was intensely interested in all that he saw, and sincerely grateful to his indefatigable guide; but his delight was increased tenfold when he received an invitation to spend a few days at Kobo San's country house; it was a unique opportunity of seeing for himself something of the domestic life of Japan.

Two things had struck him specially during those three days. The one was that Kobo San was a man of great note and influence; wherever he went he was treated with exceeding respect and deference. The second was that, though he himself knew almost nothing about Kobo, Kobo appeared to know a good deal about him. No confidences had been given, none asked; but Bob had the strange consciousness that his new friend was perfectly acquainted with the errand upon which he had come from the island empire of the West to the island empire of the East. When inviting him to Nikko, Kobo had said "My house is within easy reach of the telegraph", as though to reassure him that if the summons he was expecting should come suddenly, while he was there, nothing need hinder his prompt obedience to the call. Bob had never learnt how his host had discovered the whereabouts of the stranger who had rescued his man from the one-eared Manchu. The explanation was simple. The Japanese, finding his vengeful hunt for Chang-Wo fruitless, had next day made enquiries at all the European hotels, and learning that a young Englishman staying at one of them somewhat answered to the description he gave, had sat down on his heels at the gate for hours, and waited there until the man he was in search of passed by.

And now Bob was actually a guest in the house of a Japanese samurai. The house was really a sort of two-storied bungalow, standing on rising ground, and approached by a flight of stone steps. A mountain rose sheer into the sky behind it; a stream dashed over a cascade, filled a fish-pond in the neat garden, and plunged into the river below. There was no furniture to speak of; nothing but straw covered with finely-woven bamboo, spotlessly white, a pot or two of flowers, and a curious-shaped stand for a paper lantern, by which, as he learnt afterwards, Kobo San sometimes read at night. But his surprise was mingled with admiration. The walls were plastered with sand of varied hues, inlaid with fragments of shell and mica; the ceiling was of light polished wood crossed by bars of a darker colour, and supported on light posts. Near the ceiling ran a long strip of exquisitely-painted paper; along the bottom of the wall a narrow border of the same was fixed. On one wall, from floor to ceiling, there was a kakemono,--a painted panel, representing storks standing in water dotted with moss-grown rocks. In a corner was a sort of inlaid cabinet let into the wall, where the futon, the thickly-wadded quilts, were kept; for every room in a Japanese house is a bed-room in case of need. Let into the floor was a charcoal brazier, with which alone the room was heated. Everything was spotless; the harmony of colour was perfect; and Bob could not help contrasting this charming simplicity with the elaborate tasteless furniture of the conventional English home.

While he was still admiring, Kobo came in. But it was a different Kobo from the frock-coated gentleman he had known in Tokio. His host was clad in the costume of his country,--the flowing wide-sleeved kimono, his feet encased in the mitten-like tabi--socks with a separate pocket for the big toe. He bowed very low as he entered the room, and there was a slight smile on his face as he explained:

"When I am at home, as you see, Mr. Fawcett, I preserve the old customs--the old dress, the old manners. I work in the present, I take my recreation in the past. Did you sleep well?"

"Very well; though I woke once with the idea that I was falling out of bed."

"Ah, you will soon become accustomed to the makura. No doubt you are now hungry."

He called, without raising his voice, and from the distance came a long-drawn answering cry: "Hai-i-i, tadaima!" Presently there entered two ladies, followed by four maids bearing food on little lacquer trays. The ladies went down lightly on their knees and bent over till their heads touched the ground, murmuring "O hayo!" Bob was somewhat embarrassed, but Kobo said something in Japanese; the ladies rose, advanced, and said "Good morning!" with the prettiest accent imaginable. Kobo explained that they were his wife and daughter, O Kami San and O Toyo San. Bob would have taken them for sisters, so alike were they in the graceful kimonos of lilac-coloured silk, girt with rich brocaded obi. They knew but a few words of English, but Bob felt almost instantly at home, so simply and charmingly did they welcome him.

Soon all four were seated on cushions on the floor, while the four musumes knelt in front of them, offering the first course of Bob's first Japanese breakfast. It consisted of beautiful white cakes made of bean-flour and sugar, and little cups of weak tea. This was followed by a sort of fish broth in lacquer bowls, with a condiment made of shredded daikon--the Japanese radish--mingled with green herbs. Bob found that he had to pick morsels of fish from the broth with a pair of chop-sticks, dip them into the condiment, and poke them into his mouth; and his first clumsy attempts with these novel utensils did not call the shadow of a smile to the faces of his polite entertainers. Then came prawns in batter, fish cakes, rice in bowls of gold lacquer, preserved plums, crystallized walnuts, and other dishes, in many of which fish figured in some form or other: all in such midget quantities that Bob felt he would still be hungry if he swallowed the portions of all four. He felt as Gulliver might have felt at a state banquet in Lilliput. At his side throughout the meal stood a beautiful porcelain bottle filled with sake, a liquor tasting like weak beer and water. Bob did not like it, but he had accepted Kobo San's invitation, and he was resolved to endure without flinching all that Japanese hospitality might involve.

When the meal was finished the ladies withdrew, and Bob was asked by his host to accompany him in a drive. At the door the former found his boots, and the latter a pair of sandals, which he fastened by passing a thong between his big toe and the rest of his foot. Outside there waited two handsome rickshaws with their coolies, who set off down the hill towards the magnificent avenue of cryptomerias that stretches in one almost unbroken line for twenty miles.

That was the beginning of as pleasant a week as Bob had ever spent. He grew accustomed to the simple ways of the house: took off his boots instinctively on entering; learnt to squat more comfortably on the floor, and to enjoy the novel fare; even to tolerate the plunky-plunketing of the koto when O Toyo San played to him, and sang strange songs which she tried in her pretty broken English to translate. On some days Bob was left much to himself; Kobo received many letters and telegrams which kept him busy for long hours in his own room, and at such times Bob would chat with Taru, the servant, who gave him many precious bits of information about his master's family, always with infinite discretion. Kobo was the descendant of a long line of samurai, who had themselves been the vassals of a daimio or great baronial family illustrious in the history of Japan. Taru himself remembered the time when Kobo's family had fought in the great civil war from which dates the wonderful advance of modern Japan. Previous to that time, foreigners and all things foreign had been regarded with the intensest hatred by the Japanese; Kobo's father had been among those who fired on the foreign settlement at Hiogo in 1868, and had been condemned to hara-kiri by the Mikado. Bob learnt the terrible details of that mode of execution, when the condemned man, without a murmur or a sign of reluctance or fear, deliberately took his own life at the bidding of his lord. Kobo was a boy of nine when his father thus died; he had grown up under the new system; he had played a considerable part in the Japanese Diet, and had won great honour in the war with China; and he now enjoyed the peculiar confidence of the Mikado's government. Taru did not explain what position he held, and Bob, for all his curiosity, did not care to ask; it was evident that the man held the master in boundless veneration.