The Motor Maids in Fair Japan Part 12

"I think we had better get into the house at once," ordered Miss Campbell, and taking Mme. Ito's arm, she hurried the little lady up the path, calling to the others to follow. Once in the drawing-room, all the windows were ordered closed and the doors locked, while Komatsu was sent to search the premises.

"What is your opinion, Mr. Ito?" asked Billie. "Was it an enemy of yours or some one who wanted to exterminate us because we are foreigners?"

But Yoritomo could not enlighten her.

"I cannot say," was all they could get out of him.

He was only deeply chagrined, as was his mother, that the American ladies should have been subjected to such treatment in j.a.pan.

The Campbell party finally arrived at the conclusion that it was an insane person, and Mr. Campbell immediately engaged a day and night watchman and reported the matter to the police.

CHAPTER IX.

A BIRTHDAY PARTY.

It so happened that the dinner to Mme. Fontaine became a triple celebration. Billie recalled that it was her father's birthday, for one thing.

"He's forgotten it himself," she said. "He never did remember that he was ent.i.tled to a birthday."

Furthermore, it was the occasion always of great rejoicing in j.a.pan, being the fifth day of the fifth month on which the Boys' Festival--_O Sekku_, as it is called there--is celebrated.

"Think of my sweet old boy being born on this lucky day!" cried Billie.

"Why can't we give him a real j.a.panese surprise party, Cousin Helen, and invite those nice men to come? Mr. Ito will tell us what to do."

When Mr. Campbell departed for Tokyo that lovely morning on the fifth of May he had no idea of the plans that were hatching in his home. Scarcely had his 'riksha disappeared down the road, when the entire household became actively busy. Komatsu made a hurried visit to town, bearing notes of invitation to the few acquaintances of the Campbells and returned later in the day accompanied by two men carrying large bales on their backs. That evening when the master of the house returned in time to dress for dinner he scarcely recognized his abode, which had been decorated in a most extraordinary manner.

Across the front of the house on long poles were at least six enormous paper carp, which rose and fell and became realistically inflated with every pa.s.sing breeze. Very fantastic they appeared with their gaping mouths, their enormous bulging eyes and fins and their scales s.h.i.+ning in the sunlight.

The carp, it must be known, is the sacred emblem of the male child in j.a.pan. It also signifies courage, endurance and other admirable though not exclusively masculine qualities. This valiant fish can accomplish the difficult feat of swimming up the rapids, even as a brave youth must conquer difficulties and surmount obstacles. His name is synonymous with perseverance and fort.i.tude. The fifth of May is every boy's birthday in j.a.pan, no matter what his real birthday is, and on that day a feast is kept in every home, rich or poor, where there is a son.

"I suppose, because we have only one son in our house, we are ent.i.tled to only one carp," observed Billie, "but I think our nice old boy is good enough for us to string up twenty carp."

This statement was unanimously acceded to by all persons connected with the feast.

All the afternoon the girls had worked over the decorations. The garden was strung with lanterns much more beautiful and artistic in design than any that ever reach America; and the house, under the supervision of Onoye and her mother, was made beautiful with the splendid iris in all its varying shades from deep purple to pale mauve. Among their long, slender, delicate leaves the flowers seemed to be growing in the shallow dishes in which devices of soft lead held them in place.

"Are we entertaining a family of sons this evening or have we just decided to celebrate whether we have sons or not?" asked Mr. Campbell, greeting his daughter on the piazza.

"We are entertaining for our only son, the most promising and delightful young man in the entire universe," answered Billie, kissing him.

"I always thought you were a singularly fortunate young man, Duncan,"

remarked Miss Campbell, "but I shall no longer attribute it entirely to industry, intelligence and good looks."

"What's the reason, then, Cousin Helen?" asked Mr. Campbell, laughing.

"Why, have you forgotten, boy, that this is your birthday? Forty-five years old, and you don't remember it!"

"I did forget it," said Mr. Campbell, "but I don't see where the luck comes in."

They explained the meaning of the Boys' Festival and the lucky coincidence that had brought him into the world on that auspicious day.

"Go in now and get dressed, for the Widow of Shanghai will be arriving pretty soon and other company besides," ordered Billie.

The girls had dressed early and their pretty summer frocks gleamed softly against the green of the shrubbery as they flitted about the garden and the lawn in the twilight. Nancy was wearing her first train that night; it was only a wee bit of a train, nothing regal and sweeping; but it gave her a secret thrill to throw it over one arm, displaying her lace trimmed petticoat underneath, while she tripped along the garden path. The dress was of pink batiste and delicate lace, and from the round neck her throat rose soft and white like a column. She was the first of the four friends to wear a train. Even Elinor, tall and slender in her white lingerie frock, had not aspired to that dignity. Billie was wearing her best blue mulle that became her mightily because it was near the shade of her blue-gray eyes, and little Mary was dressed in one of the dainty muslin frocks that her mother excelled in making.

"They are no longer little girls," thought Miss Campbell, rather sadly, it must be confessed. She was sitting in a long-chair on the piazza watching her four charges flit about the lawn. "They are almost young ladies now, and how pretty they are, too; each is so different from the other and each charming in her own way. Billie, I think, is too much of a tomboy to worry about yet. Elinor is far too dignified; Mary is too shy.

But I feel I shall have to keep a sharp eye on Nancy. Those blue eyes of hers are simply wells of coquetry. I believe the child would flirt with a stone. I doubt if half the time she realizes herself how eloquent she can make them. Little mischief!"

The little lady smiled indulgently, recalling her own blue eyes and the mischief they had been known to stir up.

"And now this Widow from Shanghai comes and breaks in on us," her thoughts proceeded irrelevantly. "I don't in the least wish to cultivate her friends.h.i.+p, but I know her kind. Once she gets her foot in the door there'll be no shaking her off."

As a matter of fact, Miss Helen Campbell, spinster, was never very enthusiastic about widows.

"I don't care for them," she used to say. "They are a knowing, designing lot."

Once when she was asked by a missionary society in West Haven to contribute to a fund for the widows in India, to induce them not to mount their husbands' funeral pyres and permit themselves to be consumed by mortuary flames, Miss Campbell indignantly refused.

"I am sure, if they are so foolish, that's much the best place for them,"

she announced. "I prefer to give my money for more worthy causes."

And now a widow, who, far from having mounted any funeral pyre, appeared to enjoy life immensely, had placed them under obligations.

"She is a slant-eyed widow with a yellow skin," Miss Campbell thought uncharitably, "and her hair that ought to be dark is light. Of course that isn't her fault and neither is her peculiar complexion nor her slant eyes, but I do wish she were one thing or the other and not half and half."

Of course all these inhospitable and unfriendly notions the little lady was careful to keep to herself. When presently the Widow of Shanghai rode up in a 'riksha and was helped to alight by three maids at once, Miss Campbell was all graciousness and affability.

Mme. Fontaine wore a beautiful white embroidered crepe dinner dress. Her figure was so slender Miss Campbell feared it might sway and bend with the least breath of wind. Her curious fluffy hair was arranged on top of her head and her only ornament was a string of small pearls wound twice around her throat. They were very beautiful pearls, each one perfect to the casual eye.

"But then, who can tell the real from the unreal nowadays," thought Miss Campbell, regarding the jewels critically. "They might be imitation, every one of them."

"Reggie" Carlton, as he came to be known to the girls, and Nicholas Grimm soon followed the widow, and after them came Mr. Buxton. Yoritomo could not appear that evening, because of the celebration in his own home where he must remain and share in the family feast.

Mme. Fontaine was reserved almost to the point of shyness with the four men of the party, whom she now met for the first time. But she drew the girls around her by a kind of irresistible attraction. Billie found herself talking as freely as she talked with her three friends. The widow had a curiously sympathetic way of listening that provoked confidences.

There was a good deal of friendly rivalry among the Motor Maids for her society. They took turns sitting by her side during the half hour before dinner was announced; but Nancy felt a certain superiority over the others. Was she not bound by a secret tie to this fascinating person because of their chance meeting in the garden in the rain?

"These four girls of mine seem to have acquired a monopoly over you, Mme.

Fontaine," observed Mr. Campbell, just returned from a short conference with Mr. Buxton in the library. "They don't give the rest of us half a chance. They have fenced you around as if you were a sacred image of Buddha."

"I feel that they have paid me a great compliment," answered the widow, smiling, "To a lonely woman the friends.h.i.+p of four charming young girls is very sweet."

Mr. Campbell somehow felt extremely sorry for this lonely lady. Mr.

Buxton also was touched with commiseration, and the younger men, too, were moved to cast glances of sympathy in her direction.

For the first time in her life Miss Campbell experienced the same sensation a young girl feels when she is left sitting against the wall at a dance while her friends are being whirled about. At first she thought the sensation was a touch of indigestion which frequently brings with it, its near relative, depression. But when the circle closed in around the Widow of Shanghai, and Helen Campbell, spinster, of America, was left sitting quite alone to contemplate the view, she decided that it was not indigestion nor any of its ramifications that ailed her. What the sensation was she could not name, but she felt a profound and entirely human irritation with the Widow of Shanghai and her ingratiating methods.