Iris kept the cables hot with orders for clothes, caramels and shoes, while I lingered and hung upon her lightest slang and encouraged her in the idea that education in her case was a sinful waste of time; and I comforted her father for the loss of his native buckwheat cakes and consoled her mother, who found that seven of the perfect English servants of the story-books did less than the three she had maintained at Zanesville. I lingered in Oxford two months, and helped them get out of town when Iris was dropped from college for telling the principal that the Zanesville High School had Lady Margaret over the ropes for general educational efficiency, and that, moreover, she would not go to the Established Church because the litany bored her. Whereupon--their dependence on me having steadily increased--I got them out of Oxford and over to Dresden, and Iris and I became engaged. Then I went to Ireland on a matter of business, made an incendiary speech in Galway, smashed a couple of policemen and landed in jail. Before my father, with, I fear, some reluctance, bailed me out, Iris had eloped with a lieutenant in the German army and her family had gone sadly back to Zanesville.
This is the truth, and the whole truth, and I plead guilty to every count of the indictment. Thereafter my pulses cooled and I sought the peace of jungles; and the eyes of woman charmed me no more. When I landed at Annandale and opened my portfolio to write _Russian Rivers_ my last affair was half a dozen years behind me.
Sobered by these reflections, I left the terrace shortly after eleven and walked through the strip of wood that lay between the house and the lake to the Glenarm pier; and at once matters took a turn that put the love of woman quite out of the reckoning.
There was a man in our town, And he was wondrous wise, He jump'd into a bramble-bush, And scratch'd out both his eyes; But when he saw his eyes were out, With all his might and main He jump'd into another bush, And scratch'd them in again. --_Old Ballad_.
As I neared the boat-house I saw a dark figure sprawled on the veranda and my Japanese boy spoke to me softly. The moon was at full and I drew up in the shadow of the house and waited. Ijima had been with me for several years and was a boy of unusual intelligence. He spoke both English and French admirably, was deft of hand and wise of mind, and I was greatly attached to him. His courage, fidelity and discretion I had tested more than once. He lay quite still on the pier, gazing out upon the lake, and I knew that something unusual had attracted his attention. He spoke to me in a moment, but without turning his head.