A string of glowing lanterns festooned the piazza of the Campbell villa, while within the warm reflection of wood fires and shaded lamps made each window a square of hospitable brightness. The house inside was a blaze of color. Splendid bunches of scarlet maple leaves and chrysanthemums of amazing size and beauty filled the vases and jars.
The Motor Maids, dressed in their very best party frocks, had gathered in the drawing-room early before the arrival of the three guests. Each maid sat in a large chair and gazed about her from side to side. The riot of color, the scarlets and oranges, the tawny browns, pale pinks and delicate yellows seemed to bewilder them.
"I suppose it wasn't truly Japanese to decorate a room with all these masses of flowers and leaves," said Billie. "But I don't care. It's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen and since this is our last night here we want to make it a festive one."
Their last night! Was it possible that time had slipped by so fast? Here it was already November, the season of greatest beauty in Japan, when Nature has dipped her brush into the most brilliant colors on the palette and touched the foliage with red and gold, the skies with deepest blue, and the chrysanthemums, favorite flower of the Emperor, with every gorgeous shade.
After a good rest in the mountains broken by excursions to various interesting places about the country, the Campbell party had returned to Tokyo in time to marvel at the wonders of the chrysanthemum festival, which is a national affair.
Away off at the other side of the world a certain High School was now in full swing. But even Mary Price had lost all scruples concerning her education.
"I don't care," she remarked recklessly. "I think all this beauty is just as good for the mind as bare plastered walls and plain geometry."
"It's better," exclaimed Nancy, "because it makes one so much happier to look at chrysanthemums and red maples than to try and understand why the sum of the three angles of a triangle of any old size must always equal two right angles. What makes one happy is far more educational than what makes one aggravated."
Here was a Pagan theory that Elinor felt inclined to doubt.
"We shall have to study double time all during the Christmas holidays," she said.
"It will be rather fun, I think," put in Billie, always the optimist of the quartette. "We'll all just have a small private school of four and jump in and work together. To me, working together is almost as nice as playing together. I suppose I appreciate it more than the rest of you because I had to work and play alone for so many years."
"Billie, you are a perfect dear," ejaculated Nancy. "You furnish all the amusement and fun and thank us for sharing it with you."
Billie looked as pleased and happy as if she had never had a compliment before in her life. The joy of having regained Nancy after that brief eclipse into shadow was still too recent to be forgotten. The two girls exchanged one of those telegraphic glances of intimate friends who need no words to express their meaning.
"We've had a wonderful time," broke in Mary. "There is something about the land that makes one forget the realities. If poor little Kenkyo hadn't died—"
"Be careful! Onoye is in the next room," interrupted Billie, lifting a warning finger.
Onoye had indeed been the wife of Yoritomo as Billie had guessed. No doubt it was poor old O'Haru who had thrown the stone into the summer house that day. Billie had mercifully never inquired. And now the little son, for whom the two women had yearned with a passion that is extraordinarily deep in Japanese women, had been gathered to his forefathers. Onoye was dumb and silent with misery during his brief illness. When he died, she had disappeared for a few days and returned at last calm and still. No one had seen her shed a tear. Yoritomo, it was said, was stricken with the wildest grief. But sorrow had cleared his brain and brought him to his senses. He had made a really manly apology to Mr. Campbell and had even asked that Onoye might be restored to him. But this was not to be. Miss Campbell had taken Onoye under her wing.
"I want you to go back to America with me and be educated, child," said the kind little lady, "and after a few years, you may return to Japan and teach the women here how to be independent."
Onoye had joyfully and gratefully consented to this arrangement, providing she might act as Miss Campbell's maid in the meantime.
O'Haru had made an heroic effort to be glad, also. She would continue to be the Spears' housekeeper, she said, and wait for her daughter to return to Japan with "muchly honorable learning."
During the hot weeks when Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids were sojourning in the mountains, old "great grandmama Nedda" had also passed into another sphere. Her ending was peaceful, they said; she had slipped quietly away one day at sunset. The faithful servants buried the gentle creature in the garden not far from the shrine of the Compassionate God. When the girls returned they set up a little wooden monument in her memory on which Mary printed in India ink the following inscription:
Died August 27, 19—
Aged 21.
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,Hath had elsewhere its settingAnd cometh from afar."
"Here comes someone," announced Billie, peering from the window of the drawing-room. "It's Mr. Buxton, I think, and he's heavily laden with parcels, apparently."
In another moment, the bachelor himself stood in the doorway regarding the charming picture with his half-humorous, half-grave expression.
"There were only three Graces, were there not?" he asked. "I've forgotten. It's been so long since I met them. But there should have been four."
"And why not five, since you are adding to the number," asked Mary.
"Meaning for the fifth the beauteous lady who lingers in her room?" he demanded.
"She out-graces us all," exclaimed Billie. "But what did you bring with you? Do tell us. We are dying of curiosity."
The bachelor's lips twitched with a crafty smile and he shook one finger at them like the sly old comedian he was.
"Walt!" he said, disappearing into the hall and reappearing in a moment with an aged, gnarled dwarf apple tree growing in a green vase, and a lacquered box beautifully inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
"Do you think I have the ghost of a chance?" he asked them in a whisper.
The girls were consumed with giggles.
"Not the ghost," laughed Billie. "She wouldn't stay in Japan, not if you brought her all the Emperor's chrysanthemums in a single bunch."
"But what's in the box, Mr. Buxton?" demanded Nancy.
"You shall see," he answered. "Wait until the Fifth Grace appears."
"Here she is," they cried in a chorus, as Miss Campbell swept into the room, resplendent in mauve satin covered with billows of fine lace.
"Madame, you blind me with your magnificence," exclaimed the bachelor, making a low bow.
"I'm glad you like my dress," said the elegant little lady.
"It's not the dress but the eyes," he corrected her, just as Mr.Campbell, followed by Reggie Carlton and Nicholas Grimm, appeared.
"We meet to meet again," cried Nicholas, joyfully.
The two young men were sailing for America on the same ship with theCampbells, and many a long happy day they were all to have together.
"And I am to be the only figure left on the Japanese screen," said Mr. Buxton sadly. "I shall have to walk across the curved bridges alone and consume tea for two under the flowering cherry tree."
"I am afraid you will, sir," said Miss Campbell.
"Madam, permit me," he said solemnly, placing the apple tree at her feet."Is this any inducement?"
"Not the slightest," answered Miss Helen with a laugh.
Mr. Buxton gazed sadly from one smiling face to another.
Then he opened the lacquered box and presented each of the Motor Maids with a beautiful embroidered silk robe.
"Have an empty box, then, Madam," he announced, placing the casket in her lap, and because of the riotous and unseemly laughter, no one heard her reply.
So ended the last day of the Motor Maids in their pretty Japanese villa. It was as happy and beautiful an evening as that land of flowers and hospitality could make it. We should not be sorry ourselves to linger with them on those lovely shores, but the winter is at land and the season of dreams has passed.
Komatsu and O'Haru and old Saiki, the gardener, the four little maids, the grandmothers and the children remain picturesque figures in a picturesque land; and behind them, glistening In the sunlight, looms Fujiyama, sacred mountain of dazzling whiteness and perfect beauty.
For the Motor Maids this memory will live as the type of all the experiences and scenes of fair Japan. Above the remembrance of stormy crises—within and without—of their sojourn there, rises the happy consciousness of a firmer, larger friendship which they may take with them as the choicest souvenir of the summer.
And in their homeland, if we wish, we may join them again to find what another year of life has revealed to them. In the meantime, let us anticipate the pleasure in store for us with "The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp."
End of Project Gutenberg's The Motor Maids in Fair Japan, by Katherine Stokes