“Oh, very nice.”
“Gembey has just brought it back from the town. I hope it is good enough for your taste.”
Gembey must have stopped overnight in the town, I thought; but I made no answer. It made no difference to me where the thing was got or by whom. The thing being beautiful, I should be content with thinking that it is beautiful.
“This celadon bowl is exquisite in shape and superb in tint. It makes a worthy match to the yokan.”
The woman smiled a smile that betrayed a shadow of contempt playing about her mouth. It was probable that she thought I was jesting. If that is the case, my words, I must confess, fully deserved contumely. When a witless fellow tries to be jocular, he generally lands himself on a sorry exhibition of this kind.
“Is this Chinese?”
“I have no idea.” The celadon had no place in her eyes.
“Somehow it appears Chinese to me.” I looked at its base by holding up the bowl.
“Do you take interest in things of that sort, Sensei? Would you like to see more?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Father is very fond of bric-a-brac and has quite a collection. I shall tell father about you, and let him invite you to a cup of tea.”
Tea? The word called up before me a picture I am not very enthusiastic about. In fact it made me shrink back. I am persuaded that there is no refined idler that so unwarrantably puts on airs as the frothing tea imbiber. He almost suffocatingly narrows the wide world of poetry and does things most self-importantly, most over-studiedly and most hair-splittingly. He drinks of foamy froth in altogether unnecessarily abject humility, and finds himself in the seventh heaven of joy. Such is the tea man. If there be any pleasure and interest in this intricate tangle of rules, then the denizens of the regimental barracks at Azabu must have joys and pleasures knocking about their nose. The “right-turn!” and “march-on!” lads must be all great tea men. Pshaw! They—the so-called tea-men—are, to tell the truth, merchants, tradesmen, and the like; with no real taste-culture, who have no idea of what makes nature-loving refinement, and swallow mechanically the tea-rules adopted since the days of the great tea-master, Rikyu, of three centuries ago, and delude themselves into being men of refinement. Theirs is a trick to make fools of real men of nature-loving refinement.
“Tea? You mean the tea drinking ceremony?”
“No, Sensei; but tea with no ceremony, which you need not drink if you don’t wish to, take a cup or even two.”
“If that is the kind, then, I may just as well.”
“Father is very fond of showing his collection.”
“Must I praise them to the skies?”
“Well, Sensei, he is growing old and compliments gladden him.”
“I may go about it lightly then.”
“You may be generous into the bargain.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha. Pardon my observing that you do not speak the countryside language.”
“Not in language, but in person, you mean?”
“In personality it is better for one to be of the countryside.”
“Then I may give myself airs?”
“But you have lived in Tokyo?”
“Yes, I have been there, and also in Kyoto. I am a bird of passage and I have been in many places.”
“Which do you like best, here or the capital?”
“It is all the same to me.”
“You feel more at home in a quiet place like this, don’t you?”
“At home, or not at home, the life in this world depends all upon how you train your mind. It would be of no use to move into a land of mosquitoes, when you got sick of the country of fleas.”
“It would be all well if you emigrated into a country, where there were neither mosquitoes nor fleas?”
“If there be any such country, just show it to me, please Sensei. Show it to me now,” says the woman earnestly.
“If you wish, I certainly will.” I took out my sketch book and let my brush spin out a woman on horse back, looking up to a mountain cherry blossom—just an imaginary impression. A work of the instant, it hardly made a picture, but to give an idea. I speedily finished it and said:
“Now get in here, there is neither flea nor mosquito in this land,” putting it under her nose. Will she be seized by a surprise or by bashfulness? To judge by her looks, I felt sure that embarrassment would be the last thing she would allow to overtake her. I watched her for the moment.
“What a cramped up world! It is all width. You are fond of a place like this? You must be a regular crab.” Thus she got herself out, and I laughed out aloud:
“Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
A sweet warbler that had come near the eve of the house, broke its note in the middle of its song and hopped to a tree a little way off. We purposely stopped our talk and listened in silence; but the little throat that lost its tune would not recover it easily.
“You met Gembey on the mountain,
