"Seems sleepy enough," answered Geoffrey.

"Oh, here! these are just English warehouses and consulates.

They're always asleep. But you come with me and see them dance the _Chonkina_."

Geoffrey started at this echo of his own thoughts, but he said,--

"I must be getting back; my wife will be anxious."

"Not yet, not yet. It will be all over in half an hour, and it's worth seeing. I am just going to the club to find a fellow who said he'd show me the ropes."

Geoffrey allowed himself to be persuaded. After all he was not expected home so immediately. It was many years since he had visited low and disreputable places. They were Bad Form, and had no appeal for him. But the strangeness of the place attracted him, and a longing for the first glimpse behind the scenes in this inexplicable new country.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_

Why shouldn't he go?

He was introduced to Wigram's friend, Mr. Patterson, a Scotch merchant of Nagasaki, who lurched out of the club in his habitual Sat.u.r.day evening state of mellow inebriation.

They called for three rickshaws, whose runners seemed to know without instructions whither they had to go.

"Is it far from here?" asked Geoffrey.

"It is not so far," said the Scotchman; "it is most conveniently situated."

Noiselessly they sped down narrow twisting streets with the same unfamiliar lights and shadows, the glowing paper walls, and the luminous globes of the gate lamps.

From the distance came the beat of a drum.

Geoffrey had heard a drum sounded like that before in the Somali village at Aden, a savage primitive sound with a kind of marching rhythm, suggestive of the swing of hundreds of black bodies moving to some obscene festival.

But here, in j.a.pan, such music sounded remote from the civilisation of the country, from the old as from the new.

"_Chonkina, Chonkina_," it seemed to be beating.

The rickshaws turned into a broader street with houses taller and more commanding than any seen hitherto. They were built of brown wood like big Swiss chalets, and were hung with red paper lanterns like huge ripe cherries.

Another stage-like entrance, more fluttering of women and low prostrations, a procession along shining corridors and up steep stairways like companion-ladders, everywhere a heavy smell of cheap scent and powder, the reek of the brothel.

The three guests were installed, squatting or lounging around a low table with beer and cakes. There was a chorus of t.i.ttering and squeaking voices in the corridor. The part.i.tion slid open, and six little women came running into the room.

"Patasan San! Patasan San!" they cried, clapping their hands.

Here at last were the b.u.t.terfly women of the traveller's imagination.

They wore bright kimonos, red and blue, embroidered with gold thread.

Their faces were pale like porcelain with the enamelling effect of the liquid powder which they use. Their black shiny hair, like liquorice, was arranged in fantastic volutes, which were adorned with silver bell-like ornaments and paper flowers. Choking down Geoffrey's admiration, a cloud of heavy perfume hung around them.

"Good day to you," they squeaked in comical English, "How do you do? I love you. Please kiss me. Dam! dam!"

Patterson introduced them by name as O Hana San (Miss Flower), O Yuki San (Miss Snow), O En San (Miss Affinity), O Toshi San (Miss Year), O Taka San (Miss Tall) and O Koma San (Miss Pony).

One of them, Miss Pony, put her arm around Geoffrey's neck--the little fingers felt like the touch of insects--and said,--

"My darling, you love me?"

The big Englishman disengaged himself gently. It is Bad Form to be rough to women, even to j.a.panese courtesans. He began to be sorry that he had come.

"I have brought two very dear friends of mine," said Patterson to all the world, "for pleasure artistic rather than carnal; though perhaps I can safely prophesy that the pleasure of the senses is the end of all true art. We have come to see the national dance of j.a.pan, the Nagasaki reel, the famous _Chonkina_. I myself am familiar with the dance. On two or three occasions I have performed with credit in these very halls. But these two gentlemen have come all the way from England on purpose to see the dance. I therefore request that you will dance it to-night with care and attention, with force of imagination, with a sense of pleasurable antic.i.p.ation, and with humble respect to the naked truth."

He spoke with the precise eloquence of intoxication, and as he flopped to the ground again Wigram clapped him on the shoulder with a "Bravo, old man!"

Geoffrey felt very silent and rather sick.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_

The little women made a show of modesty, hiding their faces behind their long kimono sleeves.

A servant girl pushed open the walls which communicated with the next room, an exact replica of the one in which they were sitting. An elderly woman in a sea-grey kimono was squatting there silent, rigid and dignified. For a moment Geoffrey thought that a mistake had been made, that this was another guest disturbed in quiet reflection and about to be justly indignant.

But no, this Roman matron held in her lap the white disc of a _samisen_, the native banjo, upon which she strummed with a flat white bone. She was the evening's orchestra, an old _geisha_.

The six little b.u.t.terflies lined up in front of her and began to dance, not our Western dance of free limbs, but an Oriental dance from the hips with posturings of hands and feet. They sang a harsh faltering song without any apparent relation to the accompaniment played by that austere dame.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_

The six little figures swayed to and fro.

_Chonkina! Chonkina! Hoi!_

With a sharp cry the song and dance stopped abruptly. The six dancers stood rigid with hands held out in different att.i.tudes. One of them had lost the first round and must pay forfeit. Off came the broad embroidered sash. It was thrown aside, and the raucous singing began afresh.

_Chonkina! Chonkina! Hoi!_

The same girl lost again; and amid shrill t.i.tterings the gorgeous scarlet kimono fell to the ground. She was left standing in a pretty blue under-kimono of light silk with a pale pink design of cherry-blossoms starred all over it.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_

Round after round the game was played; and first one girl lost and then another. Two of them were standing now with the upper part of their bodies bare. One of them was wearing a kind of white lace petticoat, stained and sour-looking, wrapped about her hips; the other wore short flannel drawers, like a man's bathing-pants, coloured in a Union Jack pattern, some sailor's offering to his _inamorata_. They were both of them young girls. Their b.r.e.a.s.t.s were flat and shapeless.

The yellow skin ended abruptly at the throat and neck with the powder line. For the neck and face were a glaze of white. The effect of this break was to make the body look as if it had lost its real head under the guillotine, and had received an ill-matched subst.i.tute from the surgeon's hands.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_

Patterson had drawn nearer to the performers. His red face and his grim smile were tokens of what he would have described as pleasurable antic.i.p.ation. Wigram, too, his flabby visage paler than ever, his large eyes bulging, and his mouth hanging open, gazed as in a trance.

He had whispered to Geoffrey,--

"I've seen the _danse du ventre_ at Algiers, but this beats anything."

Geoffrey from behind the fumes of the pipe-smoke watched the unreal phantasmagoria as he might have watched a dream.

_Chonkina! Chonkina!_