In Kodamamachi Gotoh and I the next day called on General Kodama, who was living in the Russian Mayor’s house. In a side room where the secretary ushered us we waited for the General, then in his bath. This gave us time to examine the house. The Mayor was the engineer who laid out Dalny, and, naturally, he spread himself on his own home. Three stories high, with a wide balcony, a yard full of flowers and a big brick fence, it looks out on the convergence of the two main streets. It is built like the early palaces on what is now Tar Flat in San Francisco, with casements two feet thick, buttressed by solid masonry. The walls are thick enough to harbor great Russian stoves and bear evidence to the coming cold. The ceilings are enormously high, the double windows stained glass, the balustrades massive, the flooring of matched hardwood polished, all conveniences in the latest modern style. I know of no house in all Japan so fine. The panels were scratched in places where the Chinese bandits had sacked, and there was little furniture. Otherwise, all was in good condition. In scorn of the place the Japanese guard had slipped his neat, low futon into an alcove, but in respect he stood at “present arms,” his rifle loaded, to prevent outlawry. The silence was deep, the dispatch of business swift. Occasionally a messenger passed through the hall, with no hurry and with no dignity. It would have been difficult to persuade Sherlock Holmes that the army was about.
Presently the secretary announced that the General was ready, and led us down a corridor to a side room on the west, which the sunlight, falling through the stained windows, dyed purple and gold. As we advanced I could not but think of the superb setting Mansfield gave the throne room scene in “Richard III,” and how he knelt by the dais as the light died out, whispering to himself, “Richard, to thy work!”
Here there was no false splendor, only the light of purple and gold--and a great character. I felt his presence before he advanced to meet me with a lithe stride. He shook hands with the intensity of the night before and again I felt that clasp as of a palm all sinew and nerves. But there was gayety in his gesture as he threw his hands out, palms up, like a Frenchman, and bade me welcome. He wore a kimono and slippers--nothing more. I could see the bare V sloping in to his chest, thin and skin-drawn, and it was plain where the brown of sun-tan shaded into the clothes-covered white. He stepped back around a table and, dropping the slippers, climbed into a great chair, against whose russet leather he nestled the kimono and became lost, curling his bare toes under, whence, from time to time, they peeked and wiggled.