16

The old nun, the bishop's mother, had caught a dim echo of a flute. She tottered eagerly forward, coughing and sputtering, her voice tremulous as she made her wishes known. Though she should have been overwhelmed by memories, she said nothing of the old days. Perhaps she did not recognize their guest.

“Play, play! Play on flute and koto. Oh, but a person does want a flute on a moonlit night. Come on, you over there. Bring out a koto.”

The captain had guessed who was addressing him. So she still lived on in these mountains! How was it possible? Life dealt itself out capriciously, giving some people more than their share of it. He offered the old lady a deft melody in the _banjiki_ mode.

“Now for the koto.”

“I think you have improved,” said the younger nun, rather a connois-seur, “but then you always were good. It may be that I have listened too long to the wind in the pines. I am sure to disgrace myself in such competition.” And she played a melody on the koto.

Not much in vogue these days, the seven-stringed koto had its own charm. The wind blew a counterpoint through the pines, and the flute seemed to be urging the moon to new splendors. Delighted, the old nun was prepared to stay up until dawn.

“I used to do tolerably well on the Japanese koto myself; but my son tells me it is in bad taste. I suppose the fashions have changed. He says he can't bear the thing, and besides I am wasting my time. I ought to be spending my time with my beads, every last minute of it, he says, and so I am out of practice. If I could just give you something on that koto of mine, such a fine, clear tone it does have.”

She would like nothing better than to perform for them, the captain could see. “Your reverend son has strange ideas of what you should and should not be doing. Does he not know, and like all the rest of us think it admirable, that the powers above play on instruments like these and the angels dance to them? What sin can there be in music, what harm can it do to your prayers? I for one cannot think of any. Come, let's have a tune or two.”

The old lady was in ecstasy. “Tonomori,” she coughed. “Bring me that koto, the Japanese one.”

The others looked forward to the performance with a certain dread, but since even her son had aroused her ire, it hardly seemed politic to discourage her. Not bothering to ask what mode the captain had been using, she smartly plucked out a gamut that suited her fancy. The flutist had fallen silent, doubtless, she thought, lost in admiration.

“_Takefu chichiri chichiri taritana_”.* It was a brave, sturdy effort, though not a very modish one.

“How interesting,” said the captain. “Not the sort of thing one hears very often these days.”

She did not quite catch his words, which had to be relayed to her by someone a little nearer.

“Young people seem to have given up this sort of thing,” she cackled. “Take the girl who has been with us these last few weeks. She's very pretty, I'm sure, but she lives in a world all her own. None of our little frivolities for _that_ one, I can tell you.”

To her daughter and the others she was beginning to seem a bit too pleased with her own world; and a beautiful night was being spoiled.