want you to take me at once to a china shop.”
“To a what?” I cried.
“To a shop where they sell dishes, – dinner sets and that sort of thing. You know what I mean, – a crockery store.”
I did, but I was so astonished by the request coming right on the heels of the message from her father, and taken in conjunction with his previous order, that I am afraid I stood looking very much like a fool, whereupon she laughed heartily, and I joined her. I saw she was quite a merry young lady, with a keen sense of the humour of things.
“Haven’t they any crockery stores in this town?” she asked.
“Oh, there are plenty of them,” I replied.
“Why, you look as if you had never heard of such a thing before. Take me, then, to whichever is the best. I want to buy a dinner set and a tea set the very first thing.”
I bowed, and, somewhat to my embarrassment, she took my arm, tripping along by my side as if she were a little girl of ten, overjoyed at her outing, to which feeling she gave immediate expression.
“Isn’t this jolly?” she cried.
“It is the most undeniably jolly shopping excursion I ever engaged in,” said I, fervently and truthfully.
“You see,” she went on, “the delight of this sort of thing is that we are in an utterly foreign country and can do just as we please. That is why I did not wish Hilda to come with us. She is rather prim and has notions of propriety which are all right at home, but what is the use of coming to foreign countries if you cannot enjoy them as you wish to?”
“I think that is a very sensible idea,” said I.
“Why, it seems as if you and I were members of a travelling theatrical company, and were taking part in ‘The Mikado,’ doesn’t it? What funny little people they are all around us! Nagasaki doesn’t seem real. It looks as if it were set on a stage, – don’t you think so?”
“Well, you know, I am rather accustomed to it. I have lived here for more than a year, as I told you.”
“Oh, so you said. I have not got used to it yet. Have you ever seen ‘The Mikado?’”
“Do you mean the Emperor or the play?”
“At the moment I was thinking of the play.”
“Yes, I have seen it, and the real Mikado, too, and spoken with him.”
“Have you, indeed? How lucky you are!”
“You speak truly, Miss Hemster, and I never knew how lucky I was until to-day.”
She bent her head and laughed quietly to herself. I thought we were more like a couple of school children than members of a theatrical troupe, but as I never was an actor I cannot say how the latter behave when they are on the streets of a strange town.
“Oh, I have met your kind of man before, Mr. Tremorne. You don’t mind what you say when you are talking to a lady as long as it is something flattering.”
“I assure you, Miss Hemster, that quite the contrary is the case. I never flatter; and if I have been using a congratulatory tone it has been directed entirely to myself and to my own good fortune.”
“There you go again. How did you come to meet the Mikado?”
“I used to be in the diplomatic service in Japan, and my duties on several occasions brought me the honor of an audience with His Majesty.”
“How charmingly you say that, and I can see that you believe it from your heart; and although we are democratic, I believe it, too. I always love diplomatic society, and enjoyed a good deal of it in Washington, and my imagination always pictured behind them the majesty of royalty, so I have come abroad to see the real thing. I was presented at Court in London, Mr. Tremorne. Now, please don’t say that you congratulate the Court!”
“There is no need of my saying it, as it has already been said; or perhaps I should say ‘it goes without saying.’”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Tremorne; I think you are the most polite man I ever met. I want you to do me a very great favor and introduce me to the higher grades of diplomatic society in Nagasaki during our stay here.”
“I regret, Miss Hemster, that that is impossible, because I have been out of the service for some years now. Besides, the society here is consular rather than diplomatic. The Legation is at the capital, you know. Nagasaki is merely a commercial city.”
“Oh, is it? I thought perhaps you had been seeing my father to-day because of some consular business, or that sort of thing, pertaining to the yacht.”
As the girl said this I realized, with a suddenness that was disconcerting, the fact that I was practically acting under false pretences. I was her father’s humble employee, and she did not know it. I remembered with a pang when her father first mentioned my name she paid not the slightest attention to it; but when he said I was the cousin of Lord Tremorne the young lady had favored me with a glance I was not soon to forget. Therefore, seeing that Mr. Hemster had neglected to make my position clear, it now became my duty to give some necessary explanation, so that his daughter might not continue an acquaintance that was rapidly growing almost intimate under her misapprehension as to who I was. I saw with a pang that a humiliation was in store for me such as always lies in wait for a man who momentarily steps out of his place and receives consideration which is not his social due.
I had once before suffered the experience which was now ahead of me, and it was an episode I did not care to repeat, although I failed to see how it could be honestly avoided. On my return to Japan I sought out the man in the diplomatic service who had been my greatest friend and for whom I had in former days accomplished some slight services, because my status in the ranks was superior to his own. Now that there was an opportunity for a return of these services, I called upon him, and was received with a cordiality that went to my discouraged heart; but the moment he learned I was in need, and that I could not regain the place I had formerly held, he congealed in the most tactful manner possible. It was an interesting study in human deportment. His manner and words were simply unimpeachable, but there gathered around him a mantle of impenetrable frigidity the collection of which was a triumph in tactful intercourse. As he grew colder and colder, I grew hotter and hotter. I managed to withdraw without showing, I hope, the deep humiliation I felt. Since that time I had never sought a former acquaintance, or indeed any countryman of my own, preferring to be indebted to my old friend Yansan on the terrace above or the sampan-boy on the waters below. The man I speak of has risen high and is rising higher in my old profession, and every now and then his last words ring in my ears and warm them, – words of counterfeit cordiality as he realized they were the last that he should probably ever speak to me:
“Well, my dear fellow, I’m ever so glad you called. If I can do anything for you, you must be sure and let me know.”
As I had already let him know, my reply that I should certainly do so must have sounded as hollow as his own smooth phrase.
Unpleasant as that episode was, the situation was now ten times worse, as it involved a woman, – and a lovely woman at that, – who had treated me with a kindness she would feel misplaced when she understood the truth. However, there was no help for it, so, clearing my throat, I began:
“Miss Hemster, when I took the liberty of calling on your father this morning, I was a man penniless and out of work. I went
