Lady Everington was silent for a moment; her flippant companion had become quite serious.
"After all," she said, "is it any worse than Piccadilly Circus at night?"
"It is not a question of better or worse," argued Laking. "Such a purely mercenary system is a terrible offence to our most cherished belief. We may be hypocrites, but our hypocrisy itself is an admission of guilt and an act of worship. To us, even to the readiest sinners among us, woman is always something divine. The lowest assignation of the streets has at least a disguise of romance. It symbolises the words and the ways of Love, even if it parodies them. But to the Japanese, woman must be merely animal. You buy a girl as you buy a cow."
Lady Everington shivered, but she tried to live up to her reputation of being shocked by nothing.
"Well, that is true, after all, whether in Piccadilly or in the
Yoshiwara. All prostitution is just a commercial transaction."
"Perhaps," said the young diplomat, "but what about the Ideal at the back of our minds? Passion is often a grotesque incarnation of the Ideal, like a savage's rude image of his god. A glimpse of the ideal is possible in Piccadilly, and impossible in the Yoshiwara. The divine something was visible in Marguérite Gautier; little Hugh saw it even in Nana. For one thing, here in London, in the dirtiest of sordid dramas, it is still the woman who gives, but in Japan it is always the man who takes."
"Aubrey," said his friend, "I had no idea that you were a poet, or in other words that you ever talked nonsense without laughing. You think such a shock is strong enough to upset the Barrington ménage?"
"It will give furiously to think," he answered, "to poor old Geoffrey, who is a very straight, clean and honest fellow, not overused to furious thinking. I suppose if one married a monkey, one might persuade oneself of her humanity, until one saw her kindred in cages."
"Poor little Asako, my latest god-daughter!" cried Lady Everington.
"Really, Aubrey, you are very rude!"
"I did not mean to be," said Laking penitently. "She is a most ingratiating little creature, like a lazy kitten; but I think it is unwise for him to take her to Japan. All kinds of latent orientalisms may develop."
* * * * *
The spring was at hand, the season of impulse, when we obey most readily the sudden stirrings of our hearts. Even in the torrid climate of Egypt, squalls of rain passed over like stray birds of passage. Asako Barrington felt the fresh influence and the desire to do new things in new places. Hitherto she had evinced very little inclination to revisit the home of her ancestors. But on their return from the temples of Luxor, she said quite unexpectedly to Geoffrey,—
"If we go to Japan now, we shall be in time to see the cherry-blossoms."
"Why, little Yum Yum," cried her husband, delighted, "are you tired of
Pharaohs?"
"Egypt is very interesting," said Asako, correctly; "it is wonderful to think of these great places standing here for thousands and thousands of years. But it makes one sad, don't you think? Everybody here seems to have died long, long ago. It would be nice to see green fields again, wouldn't it, Geoffrey dearest?"
The voice of the Spring was speaking clearly.
"And you really want to go to Japan, sweetheart? It's the first time
I've heard you say you want to go."
"Uncle and Aunt Murata in Paris used always to say about now, 'If we go back to Japan we shall be in time to see the cherry-blossoms.'"
"Why," asked Geoffrey, "do the Japanese make such a fuss about their cherry-blossoms?"
"They must be very pretty," answered his wife, "like great clouds of snow. Besides, the cherry-flowers are supposed to be like the Japanese spirit."
"So you are my little cherry-blossom—is that right?"
"Oh no, not the women," she replied, "the men are the cherry-blossoms."
Geoffrey laughed. It seemed absurd to him to compare a man to the frail and transient beauty of a flower.
"Then what about the Japanese ladies," he asked, "if the men are blossoms?"
Asako did not think they had any special flower to symbolise their charms. She suggested,—
"The bamboo, they say, because the wives have to bend under the storms when their husbands are angry. But, Geoffrey, you are never angry. You do not give me a chance to be like the bamboo."
Next day, he boldly booked their tickets for Tokyo.
The long sea voyage was a pleasant experience, broken by fleeting visits to startled friends in Ceylon and at Singapore, and enlivened by the close ephemeral intimacies of life on board ship.
There was a motley company on board S.S. Sumatra; a company whose most obvious elements, the noisy and bibulous pests in the smoking-room and the ladies of mysterious destination with whom they dallied, were dismissed by Geoffrey at once as being terrible bounders. Beneath this scum more congenial spirits came to light, officers and Government officials returning to their posts, and a few globe-trotters of leisure. Everybody seemed anxious to pay attention to the charming Japanese lady; and from such incessant attention it is difficult to escape within the narrow bounds of ship life. The only way to keep off the impossibles was to form a bodyguard of the possibles. The seclusion of the honeymoon paradise had to be opened up for once in a way.
Of course, there was much talk about the East; but it was a different point of view, from that of the enthusiasts of Deauville and the Riviera. These men and women had many of them lived in India, the Malay States, Japan, or the open ports of China, lived there to earn their bread and butter, not to dream about the Magic of the Orient. For such as these the romance had faded. The pages of their busy lives were written within a mourning border of discontent, of longing for that home land, to which on the occasion of their rare holidays they returned so readily, and which seemed to have no particular place or use for them when they did return. They were members of the British Dispersion; but their Zion was of more comfort to them as a sweet memory than as an actual home.
"Yes," they would say about the land of their exile, "it is very picturesque."
But their faces, lined or pale, their bitterness and their reticence, told of years of strain, laboriously money-earning, in lands where relaxations are few and forced, where climatic conditions are adverse, where fevers lurk, and where the white minority are posted like soldiers in a lonely fort, ever suspicious, ever on the watch.
* * * * *
The most faithful of Asako's bodyguard was a countryman of her own, Viscount Kamimura, the son of a celebrated Japanese statesman and diplomat, who, after completing his course at Cambridge, was returning to his own country for the first time after many years.
He was a shy gentle youth, very quiet and refined, a little effeminate, even, in his exaggerated gracefulness and in his meticulous care for his clothes and his person. He avoided all company except that of the Barringtons, probably because a similarity in circumstances formed a bond between him and his country-woman.
He had a high, intellectual forehead, the beautiful deep brown eyes of Asako, curling, sarcastic lips, a nose almost aquiline but starting a fraction of an inch too low between his eyes. He had read everything, he remembered everything, and he had played lawn tennis for his university.
He was returning to Japan to be married. When Geoffrey asked him who his fiancée was, he replied that he did not know yet, but that his relatives would tell him as soon as ever he arrived in Japan.
"Haven't you got any say in the matter?" asked the Englishman.
"Oh yes," he answered, "If I actually dislike her, I need not marry her; but, of course, the choice is limited, so I must try not to be too hard to please."
Geoffrey thought that it must be because of his extreme aristocracy that so few maidens in Japan were worthy of his hand. But Asako asked the question,—
"Why is the choice so small?"
"You see," he said, "there are not many girls in Japan who can speak both English and French, and as I am going into the Diplomatic Service and shall leave Japan again shortly, that is an absolute necessity; besides, she must have a very good degree from her school."
Geoffrey could hardly restrain himself from laughing. This idea of choosing a wife like a governess for her linguistic accomplishments seemed to him exceedingly comic.
"You don't mind trusting other people," he said, "to arrange your marriage for you?"
"Certainly not," said the young Japanese, "they are my own relatives, and they will do their best for me. They are all older than I am, and they have had the experience of their own marriages."
"But," said Geoffrey, "when you saw your friends in England choosing for themselves, and falling in love and marrying for love's sake—?"
"Some of them chose for themselves and married barmaids and divorced persons, just for the reason that they were in love and uncontrolled. So they brought shame on their families, and are probably now very unhappy. I think they would have done better if they had let their relatives choose for them."
"Yes; but the others who marry girls of their own set?"
"I think their choice is not really free at all. I do not think it is so much the girl who attracts them. It is the plans and intentions of those around them which urge them on. It is a kind of mesmerism. The parents of the young man and the parents of the young girl make the marriage by force of will. That also is a good way. It is not so very different from our system in Japan."
"Don't you think that people in England marry because they love each other?" asked Asako.
"Perhaps so," replied Kamimura, "but in our Japanese language we have no word which is quite the same as your word Love. So they say we do not know what this Love is. It may be so, perhaps. Anyhow Mr. Barrington will not wish to learn Japanese, I think."
Geoffrey liked the young man. He was a good athlete, he was unassuming and well-bred, he clearly knew the difference between Good and Bad Form. Geoffrey's chief misgiving with regard to Japan had been a doubt as to the wisdom of making the acquaintance of his wife's kindred. How dreadful if they turned out to be a collection of oriental curios with whom he would not have one idea in common!
The company of this young aristocrat, in no way distinguishable from an Englishman except for a certain grace and maturity, reassured him. No doubt his wife would have cousins like this; clean, manly fellows who would take him shooting and with whom he could enjoy a game of golf. He thought that Kamimura must be typical of the young Japanese of the upper classes. He did not realize that he was an official product, chosen by his Government and carefully moulded and polished, not to be a Japanese at home, but to be a Japanese abroad, the qualified representative of a First Class Power.
Kamimura left the boat with them at Colombo and joined them in their visit to some tea-planting relatives. He was ready to do the same at Singapore, but he received an urgent cable from Japan recalling him at once.
"I must not be too late for my own wedding," he said, during their last lunch together at Raffles's Hotel. "It would be a terrible sin against the laws of Filial Piety."
"Whatever is that?" asked Asako.
"Dear Mrs. Barrington, are you a daughter of Japan, and have never heard of the Twenty-four Children?"
"No; who are they?"
"They are model children, the paragons of goodness, celebrated because of their love for their fathers and mothers. One of them walked miles and miles every day to get water from a certain spring for his sick mother; another, when a tiger was going to eat his father, rushed to the animal and cried, 'No, eat me instead!' Little boys and girls in Japan are always being told to be like the Twenty-four Children."
"Oh, how I'd hate them!" cried Asako.
"That is because you are a rebellious, individualistic Englishwoman. You have lost that sense of family union, which makes good Japanese, brothers and cousins and uncles and aunts, all love each other publicly, however much they may hate each other in private."
"That is very hypocritical!"
"It is the social law," replied Kamimura. "In Japan the family is the important thing. You and I are nothing. If you want to get on in the world you must always be subject to your family. Then you are sure to get on however stupid you may be. In England you seem to use your families chiefly to quarrel with."
"I think our relatives ought to be just our best friends," said Asako.
"They are that too in a way," the young man answered. "In Japan it would be better to be born without hands and feet than to be born without relatives."
CHAPTER IV
NAGASAKI
Hono-bono to
Akashi no ura no
Asa-giri ni
Shima-kakure-yuku
Fune wo shi zo omou.
My thoughts are with a boat
Which travels island-hid
In the morning-mist
Of the shore of Akashi
Dim, dim!
After Hongkong, they let the zone of eternal summer behind them. The crossing from Shanghai to Japan was rough, and the wind bitter. But on the first morning in Japanese waters Geoffrey was on deck betimes to enjoy to the full the excitement of arrival. They were approaching Nagasaki. It was a misty dawn. The sky was like mother-of-pearl, and the sea like mica. Abrupt grey islands appeared and disappeared, phantasmal, like guardian spirits of Japan, representatives of those myriads of Shinto deities who have the Empire in their keeping.
Then, suddenly from behind the cliff of one of the islands a fishing boat came gliding with the silent stateliness of a swan. The body of the boat was low and slender, built of some white, shining wood; from the middle rose the high sail like a silver tower. It looked like the soul of that sleeping island setting out upon a dream journey.
The mist was dissolving, slowly revealing more islands and more boats. Some of them passed quite close to the steamer; and Geoffrey could see the fishermen, dwarfish figures straining at the oar or squatting at the bottom of the boat, looking like Nibelungen on the quest for the Rhinegold. He could hear their strange cries to each other and to the steamer, harsh like the voice of sea-gulls.
Asako came on deck to join her husband. The thrill of returning to Japan had scattered her partiality for late sleeping. She was dressed in a tailor-made coat and skirt of navy-blue serge. Her shoulders were wrapped in a broad stole of sable. Her head was bare. Perhaps it was the inherited instinct of generations of Japanese women, who never cover their heads, which made her dislike hats and avoid wearing them if possible.
The sun was still covered, but the view was clear as far as the high mountains on the horizon towards which the ship was ploughing her way.
"Look, Asako, Japan!"
She was not looking at the distance. Her eyes were fixed on an emerald islet half a mile or less from the steamer's course, a jewel of the seas. It rose to the height of two hundred feet or so, a conical knoll, densely wooded. On the summit appeared a scar of rock like a ruined castle, and, rising from the rock's crest, a single pine-tree. Its trunk was twisted by all the winds of Heaven. Its long, lean branches groped the air like the arms of a blinded demon. It seemed to have an almost human personality an expression of fruitless striving, pathetic yet somehow sinister—a Prometheus among trees. Geoffrey followed his wife's gaze to the base of the island where a shoal of brown rocks trailed out to seawards. In a miniature bay he saw a tiny beach of golden sand, and, planted in the sand, a red gateway, two uprights and two lintels, the lower one held between the posts, the upper one laid across them and protruding on either side. It is the simplest of architectural designs, but strangely suggestive. It transformed that wooded island into a dwelling-place. It cast an enchantment over it, and seemed to explain the meaning of the pine-tree. The place was holy, an abode of spirits.
Geoffrey had read enough by now to recognize the gateway as a "torii"; a religious symbol in Japan which always announces the neighbourhood of a shrine. It is a common feature of the country-side, as familiar as the crucifix in Catholic lands.
But Asako, seeing the beauty of her country for the first time, and unaware of the dimming cloud of archaeological explanations, clapped her hands together three times in sheer delight; or was it in unconscious obedience to the custom of her race which in this way calls upon its gods? Then with a movement entirely occidental she threw her arms round her husband's neck, kissing him with all the devotion of her being.
"Dear old Geoffrey, I love you so," she murmured. Her brown eyes were full of tears.
* * * * *
The steamer passed into a narrow channel, a kind of fiord, with wooded hills on both sides. The forests were green with spring foliage. Never had Geoffrey seen such a variety or such density of verdure. Every tree seemed to be different from its neighbour; and the hillsides were packed with trees like a crowded audience. Here and there a spray of mountain cherry-blossom rose among the green like a jet of snow.
At the foot of the woods, by the edge of the calm water, the villages nestled. Only roofs could be seen, high, brown, thatched roofs with a line of sword-leaved irises growing along the roof-ridge like a crown. These native cottages looked like timid animals, cowering in their forms under the protecting trees. One felt that at any time an indiscreet hoot of the steamer might send them scuttering back to the forest depths. There were no signs of life in these submerged villages, where the fight between the forester's axe and primal vegetation seemed still undecided. Life was there; but it was hidden under the luxuriance of the overgrowth, hidden to casual passers-by like the life of insects. Only by the seaside, where the houses were clustered together above a seawall of cyclopean stones, and on the beach, where the long narrow boats, sharp-prowed and piratical, were drawn up to the shore, the same gnome-like little men, with a generous display of naked brown limbs, were sawing and hammering and mending their nets.
The steamer glided up the fiord towards a cloud of black smoke ahead. Unknown to Geoffrey, it passed the grey Italianate Catholic cathedral, the shrine of the old Christian faith of Japan planted there by Saint Francis Xavier four hundred years ago. Anchor was cast off the island of Deshima, now moored to the mainland, where during the locked centuries the Dutch merchants had been permitted to remain in profitable servitude. Deshima has now been swallowed up by the Japanese town, and its significance has shifted across the bay to where the smoke and din of the Mitsubishi Dockyard prepare romantic visitors for the modern industrial life of the new Japan. Night and day, the furnace fires are roaring; and ten thousand workmen are busy building ships of war and ships of peace for the Britain of the Pacific.
The quarantine officers came on board, little, brown men in uniform, absurdly self-important. Then the ship was besieged by a swarm of those narrow, primitive boats called sampan, which Loti has described as a kind of barbaric gondola, all jostling each other to bring merchants of local wares, damascene, tortoise-shell, pottery and picture post cards aboard the vessel, and to take visitors ashore.
Geoffrey and Asako were among the first to land. The moment of arrival on Japanese soil brought a pang of disappointment. The sea-front at Nagasaki seemed very like a street in any starveling European town. It presented a line of offices and consulates built in Western style, without distinction and without charm. Customs' officers and policemen squinted suspiciously at the strangers. A few women, in charge of children or market-baskets, stared blankly.
"Why, they are wearing kimonos!" exclaimed Asako, "but how dirty and dusty they are. They look as though they had been sleeping in them!"
The Japanese women, indeed, cling to their national dress. But to the Barringtons, landing at Nagasaki, they seemed ugly, shapeless and dingy. Their hair was greasy and unkempt. Their faces were stupid and staring. Their figures were hidden in the muffle of their dirty garments. Geoffrey had been told they have baths at least once a day, but he was inclined to doubt it. Or else, it was because they all bathed in the same bath and their ablutions were merely an exchange of grime. But where were those butterfly girls, who dance with fan and battledore on our cups and saucers?
The rickshaws were a pleasant experience, the one-man perambulators; and the costume of the rickshaw-runners was delightful, and their gnarled, indefatigable legs. With their tight trunk-hose of a coarse dark-blue material and short coat to match like an Eton jacket and with their large, round mushroom hats, they were like figures from the crowd of a Flemish Crucifixion.
Behind the Barrington's sampan, a large lighter came alongside the wharf. It was black with coal-dust, and in one corner was heaped a pile of shallow baskets, such as are used in coaling vessels at Japanese ports, being slipped from hand to hand in unbroken chain up the ship's side and down again to the coal barge. The work was finished. The lighter was empty except for a crowd of coal-stained coolies which it was bringing back to Nagasaki. These were dressed like the rickshaw-men. They wore tight trousers, short jackets and straw sandals. They were sitting, wearied, on the sides of the barge, wiping black faces with black towels. Their hair was long, lank and matted. Their hands were bruised and shapeless with the rough toil.
"Poor men," sighed Asako, "they've had hard work!"
The crowd of them passed, peering at the English people and chattering in high voices. Geoffrey had never seen such queer-looking fellows, with their long hair, clean-shaven faces, and stumpy bow-legs. One more disheveled than the others was standing near him with tunic half-open. It exposed a woman's breast, black, loose and hard like leather.
"They are women!" he exclaimed, "what an extraordinary thing!"
But the children of Nagasaki—surely there could be no such disillusionment. They are laughing, happy, many-coloured and ubiquitous. They roll under the rickshaw wheels. They peep from behind the goods piled on the floors of the shops, a perpetual menace to shopkeepers, especially in the china stores, where their bird-like presence is more dangerous than that of the dreaded bull. They are blown up and down the temple-steps like fallen petals. They gather like humming-birds round the itinerant venders of the streets, the old men who balance on their bare shoulders their whole stock in trade of sweetmeats, syrups, toys or singing grasshoppers. They are the dolls of our own childhood, endowed with disconcerting life. Around their little bodies flames the love of colour of an oriental people, whose adult taste has been disciplined to sombre browns and greys. Wonderful motley kimonos they make for their children with flower patterns, butterfly patterns, toy and fairy-story patterns, printed on flannelette—or on silk for the little plutocrats—in all colors, among which reds, oranges, yellows, mauves, blues and greens predominate.
They invaded the depressing atmosphere of the European-style hotel, where Geoffrey and Asako were trying to enjoy a tasteless lunch—their grubby, bare feet pattering on the worn lino.
It pleased him to watch them, playing their game of Jonkenpan with much show of pudgy fingers, and with restrained and fitful scamperings. He even made a tentative bid for popularity by throwing copper coins. There was no scramble for this largesse. Gravely and in turn each child pocketed his penny; but they all regarded Geoffrey with a wary and suspicious eye. He, too, on closer inspection found them less angelic than at first sight. The slimy horror of unwiped noses distressed him, and the significant prevalence of scabby scalps.
* * * * *
After their dull lunch in this drab hotel, Geoffrey and his wife started once more on their voyage of discovery. Nagasaki is a hidden city; it flows through its narrow valleys like water, and follows their serpentine meanderings far inland.
They soon left behind the foreign settlement and its nondescript ugliness to plunge into the labyrinth of little native streets, wayward and wandering like sheep-tracks, with sudden abrupt hills and flights of steps which checked the rickshaws' progress. Here, the houses of the rich people were closely fenced and cunningly hidden; but the life of poverty and the shopkeepers' domesticity were flowing over into the street out of the too narrow confines of the boxes which they called their homes.
With an extra man to push behind, the rickshaws had brought them up a zigzag hill to a cautious wooden gateway half open in a close fence of bamboo.
"Tea-house!" said the rickshaw man, stopping and grinning. It was clearly expected of the foreigners that they should descend and enter.
"Shall we get out and explore, sweetheart?" suggested Geoffrey. They passed under the low gate, up a pebbled pathway through the sweetest fairy garden to the entrance of the tea-house, a stage of brown boards highly polished and never defiled by the contamination of muddy boots. On the steps of approach a collection of geta (native wooden clogs) and abominable side-spring shoes told that guests had already arrived.
Within the dark corridors of the house there was an immediate fluttering as of pigeons. Four or five little women prostrated themselves before the visitors with a hissing murmur of "Irasshai! (Condescend to come!)."
The Barringtons removed their boots and followed one of these ladies down a gleaming corridor with another miniature garden in an enclosed courtyard on one side, and paper shoji and peeping faces on the other, out across a further garden by a kind of oriental Bridge of Sighs to a small separate pavilion, which floated on a lake of green shrubs and pure air, as though moored by the wooden gangway to the main block of the building.
This summer-house contained a single small room like a very clean box with wooden frame, opaque paper walls, and pale golden matting. The only wall which seemed at all substantial presented the appearance of an alcove. In this niche there hung a long picture of cherry-blossoms on a mountain side, below which, on a stand of dark sandalwood, squatted a bronze monkey holding a crystal ball. This was the only ornament in the room.
Geoffrey and his wife sat down or sprawled on square silk cushions called zabuton. Then the shoji were thrown open; and they looked down upon Nagasaki.
It was a scene of sheer enchantment. The tea-house was perched on a cliff which overhung the city. The light pavilion seemed like the car of some pullman aeroplane hovering over the bay. It was the brief half-hour of evening, the time of day when the magic of Japan is at its most powerful. All that was cheap and sordid was shut out by the bamboo fence and wrapped away in the twilight mists. It was a half-hour of luminous greyness. The skies were grey and the waters of the bay and the roofs of the houses. A grey vapour rose from the town; and a black-grey trail of smoke drifted from the dockyards and from the steamers in the harbour. The cries and activities of the city below rose clear and distinct but infinitely remote, as sound of the world might reach the Gods in Heaven. It was a half-hour of fairyland when anything might happen.
Two little maids brought tea and sugary cakes, green tea like bitter hot water, insipid and unsatisfying. It was a shock to see the girls' faces as they raised the tiny china teacups. Under the glaze of their powder they were old and wise.
They observed Asako's nationality, and began to speak to her in
Japanese.
"Their politeness is put on to order," thought Geoffrey, "they seem forward and inquisitive minxes."
But Asako only knew a few set phrases of her native tongue. This baffled the ladies, one of whom after a whispered consultation and some giggling behind sleeves, went off to find a friend who would solve the mystery.
"Nésan, Nésan (elder sister)" she called across the garden.
Strange little dishes were produced on trays of red lacquer, fish and vegetables of different kinds artistically arranged, but most unpalatable.
A third nésan appeared. She could speak some English.
"Is Okusama (lady) Japanese?" she began, after she had placed the tiny square table before Geoffrey, and had performed a prostration.
Geoffrey assented.
Renewed prostration before okusama, and murmured greetings in
Japanese.
"But I can't speak Japanese," said Asako laughing. This perplexed the girl, but her curiosity prompted her.
"Danna San (master) Ingiris'?" she asked, looking at Geoffrey.
"Yes," said Asako. "Do many Englishmen have Japanese wives?"
"Yes, very many," was the unexpected answer. "O Fuji San," she continued, indicating one of the other maids, "have Ingiris' danna San very many years ago; very kind danna san; give O Fuji plenty nice kimono; he say, O Fuji very good girl, go to Ingiris' wit him; O Fuji say, No, cannot go, mother very sick; so danna san go away. Give O Fuji San very nice finger ring."
She lapsed into vernacular. The other girl showed with feigned embarrassment a little ring set with glassy sapphires.
"Oh!" said Asako, dimly comprehending.
"All Ingiris' danna san come Nagasaki," the talkative maid went on, "want Japanese girl. Ingiris' danna san kind man, but too plenty drink. Japanese danna san not kind, not good. Ingiris' danna san plenty money, plenty. Nagasaki girl very many foreign danna san. Rashamen wa Nagasaki meibutsu (foreigners' mistresses famous product of Nagasaki). Ingiris' danna san go away all the time. One year, two year—then go away to Ingiris' country."
"Then what does the Japanese girl do?" asked Asako.
"Other danna san come," was the laconic reply. "Ingiris' danna san live in Japan, Japanese girl very nice. Ingiris' danna san go away, no want Japanese girl. Japanese girl no want go away Japan. Japanese girl go to other country, she feel very sick; heart very lonely, very sad!"
A weird, unpleasant feeling had stolen into the little room, the presence of unfamiliar thoughts and of foreign moralities, birds of unhealth.
The two other girls who could not speak English were posing for Geoffrey's benefit; one of them reclining against the framework of the open window with her long kimono sleeves crossed in front of her like wings, her painted oval face fixed on him in spite of the semblance of downcast eyes; the other squatting on her heels in a corner of the room with the same demure expression and with her hands folded in her lap. Despite the quietness of the poses they were as challenging in their way as the swinging hips of Piccadilly. It is as true to-day as it was in Kaempffer's time, the old Dutch traveler of two hundred and fifty years ago, that every hotel in Japan is a brothel, and every tea-house and restaurant a house of assignation.
From a wing of the building near by came the twanging of a string, like a banjo string being tuned in fantastic quarter tones. A few sharp notes were struck, at random it seemed, followed by a few bars of a quavering song and then a burst of clownish laughter. Young bloods of Nagasaki had called in geisha to amuse them at their meal.
"Japanese geisha," said the tea-house girl, "if danna san wish to see geisha dance—?"
"No thank you," said Geoffrey, hurriedly, "Asako darling, it is time we went home: we want our dinners."
CHAPTER V
CHONKINA
Modashi-ite
Sakashira suru wa
Sake nomite
Yei-naki suru ni
Nao shikazu keri.
To sit silent
And look wise
Is not to be compared with
Drinking saké
And making a riotous shouting.
As soon as the meal was over, Asako went to bed. She was tired out by an orgy of sight-seeing and new impressions. Geoffrey said that he would have a short walk and a smoke before turning in. He took the road which led towards the harbour of Nagasaki.
Chonkina, Chonkina, Chon, Chon, Kina, Kina,
Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hakodate—Hoi!
The refrain of an old song was awakened in his mind by the melodious name of the place.
He descended the hill from the hotel, and crossed a bridge over a narrow river. The town was full of beauty. The warm light in the little wooden houses, the creamy light of the paper walls, illuminated from within, with the black silhouettes of the home groups traced upon them, the lanterns dancing on the boats in the harbour, the lights on the larger vessels in stiff patterns like propositions of Euclid, the lanterns on carts and rickshaws, lanterns like fruit, red, golden and glowing, and round bubble lamps over each house entrance with Chinese characters written upon them giving the name of the occupant.
Chonkina! Chonkina!
As though in answer to his incantation, Geoffrey suddenly came upon Wigram. Wigram had been a fellow-passenger on board the steamer. He was an old Etonian; and this was really the only bond between the two men. For Wigram was short, fat and flabby, dull-eyed and pasty-faced. He spoke with a drawl; he had literary pretensions and he was travelling for pleasure.
"Hello, Barrington," he said, "you all alone?"
"Yes," answered Geoffrey, "my wife is a bit overtired; she has turned in."
"So you are making the most of your opportunity, studying night-life, eh, naughty boy?"
"Not much about, is there?" said Geoffrey, who considered that a "pi fellow" was Bad Form, and would not be regarded as such even by a creature whose point of view was as contemptible as that of Wigram.
"Doesn't walk the streets, old man; but it's there all the same. The men at the club here tell me that Nagasaki is one of the hottest spots on the face of the globe."
"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 Saturday 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 Japan, 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 tittering and squeaking voices in the corridor. The partition 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 butterfly 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 Japanese 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 Japan, 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 anticipation, 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 butterflies 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 attitudes. 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 titterings 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 breasts 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 substitute 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 anticipation. 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!
The dance was more expressive now, not of art but of mere animalism. The bodies shook and squirmed. The faces were screwed up to express an ecstacy of sensual delight. The little fingers twitched into immodest gestures.
Chonkina! Chonkina! Hoi!
Geoffrey had never gazed on a naked woman except idealised in marble or on canvas. The secret of Venus had been for him, as for many men, an inviolate Mecca towards which he worshipped. Glimpses he had seen, visions of soft curves, mica glistenings of creamy skin, but never the crude anatomical fact.
An overgrown embryo she seemed, a gawkish ill-moulded thing.
Woman, thought Geoffrey, should be supple and pliant, with a suggestion of swiftness galvanising the delicacy of the lines. Atalanta was his ideal woman.
But this creature had apparently no bones or sinews. She looked like a sawdust dummy. She seemed to have been poured into a bag of brown tissue. There was no waist line. The chest appeared to fit down upon the thighs like a lid. The legs hung from the hips like trouser-legs, and seemed to fit into the feet like poles into their sockets. The turned-in toes were ridiculous and exasperating. There was no shaping of breasts, stomach, knees and ankles. There was nothing in this image of clay to show the loving caress of the Creator's hand. It had been modelled by a wretched bungler in a moment of inattention.
Yet it stood there, erect and challenging, this miserable human tadpole, usurping the throne of Lais and crowned with the worship of such devotees as Patterson and Wigram.
Are all women ugly? The query flashed through Geoffrey's brain. Is the vision of Aphrodite Anadyomene an artist's lie? Then he thought of Asako. Stripped of her gauzy nightdresses, was she like this? A shame on such imagining!
Patterson was hugging a girl on his knee. Wigram had caught hold of another. Geoffrey said—but nobody heard him,—
"It's getting too hot for me here. I'm going."
So he went.
His little wife was awake, and disposed to be tearful.
"Where have you been?" she asked, "You said you would only be half an hour."
"I met Wigram," said Geoffrey, "and I went with him to see some geisha dancing."
"You might have taken me. Was it very pretty?"
"No, it was very ugly; you would not have cared for it at all."
He had a hot bath, before he lay down by her side.
CHAPTER VI
ACROSS JAPAN
Momo-shiki no
Omiya-bito wa
Okaredo
Kokoro ni norite
Omoyuru imo!
Though the people of the
Great City
With its hundred towers
Be many,
Riding on my heart—
(Only) my beloved Sister!
The traveller in Japan is restricted to a hard-worn road, dictated to him by Messrs. Thos. Cook and Son, and by the Tourists' Information Bureau. This via sacra is marked by European-style hotels of varying quality, by insidious curio-shops, and by native guides, serious and profane, who classify foreigners under the two headings of Temples and Tea-houses. The lonely men-travellers are naturally supposed to have a penchant for the spurious geisha, who haunt the native restaurants; the married couples are taken to the temples, and to those merchants of antiquities, who offer the highest commission to the guides. There is always an air of petty conspiracy in the wake of every foreigner who visits the country. If he is a Japan enthusiast, he is amused by the naive ways, and accepts the conventional smile as the reflection of the heart of "the happy, little Japs." If he hates the country, he takes it for granted that extortion and villainy will accompany his steps.
Geoffrey and Asako enjoyed immensely their introduction to Japan. The unpleasant experiences of Nagasaki were soon forgotten after their arrival at Kyoto, the ancient capital of the Mikado, where the charm of old Japan still lingers. They were happy, innocent people, devoted to each other, easily pleased, and having heaps of money to spend. They were amused with everything, with the people, with the houses, with the shops, with being stared at, with being cheated, with being dragged to the ends of the vast city only to see flowerless gardens and temples in decay.
Asako especially was entranced. The feel of the Japanese silk and the sight of bright colours and pretty patterns awoke in her a kind of ancestral memory, the craving of generations of Japanese women. She bought kimonos by the dozen, and spent hours trying them on amid a chorus of admiring chambermaids and waitresses, a chorus specially trained by the hotel management in the difficult art of admiring foreigners' purchases.
Then to the curio-shops! The antique shops of Kyoto give to the simple foreigner the impression that he is being received in a private home by a Japanese gentleman of leisure whose hobby is collecting. The unsuspecting prey is welcomed with cigarettes and specially honourable tea, the thick green kind like pea-soup. An autograph book is produced in which are written the names of rich and distinguished people who have visited the collection. You are asked to add your own insignificant signature. A few glazed earthenware pots appear, Tibetan temple pottery of the Han Period. They are on their way to the Winckler collection in New York, a trifle of a hundred thousand dollars.
Having pulverised the will-power of his guest, the merchant of antiquities hands him over to his myrmidons who conduct him round the shop—for it is only a shop after all. Taking accurate measurement of his purse and tastes, they force him to buy what pleases them, just as a conjurer can force a card upon his audience.
The Barringtons' rooms at the Miyako Hotel soon became like an annex to the show-rooms in Messrs. Yamanaka's store. Brocades and kimonos were draped over chairs and bedsteads. Tables were crowded with porcelain, cloisonné and statues of gods. Lanterns hung from the roof; and in a corner of the room stood an enormous bowl-shaped bell as big as a bath, resting on a tripod of red lacquer. When struck with a thick leather baton like a drum-stick it uttered a deep sob, a wonderful, round, perfect sound, full of the melancholy of the wind and the pine-forests, of the austere dignity of a vanishing civilisation, and the loneliness of the Buddhist Law.
There was a temple on the hill behind the hotel whence such a note reached the visitors at dawn and again at sunset. The spirit of everything lovely in the country sang in its tones; and Asako and Geoffrey had agreed, that, whatever else they might buy or not buy, they must take an echo of that imprisoned music home with them to England.
So they bought the cyclopean voice, engraved with cabalistic writing, which might be, as it professed to be, a temple bell of Yamato over five hundred years old, or else the last year's product of an Osaka foundry for antique brass ware. Geoffrey called it "Big Ben."
"What are you going to do with all these things?" he asked his wife.
"Oh, for our home in London," she answered, clapping her hands and gazing with ecstatic pride at all her treasures. "It will be wonderful. Oh, Geoffrey, Geoffrey, you are so good to give all this to me!"
"But it is your own money, little sweetheart!"
* * * * *
Never did Asako seem further from her parents' race than during the first weeks of her sojourn in her native country. She was so unconscious of her relationship that she liked to play at imitating native life, as something utterly peculiar and absurd. Meals in Japanese eating-houses amused her immensely. The squatting on bare floors, the exaggerated obeisance of the waiting-girls, the queer food, the clumsy use of chop-sticks, the numbness of her feet after being sat upon for half an hour, all would set her off in peals of unchecked laughter, so as to astonish her compatriots who naturally enough mistook her for one of themselves.
Once, with the aid of the girls of the hotel, she arrayed herself in the garments of a Japanese lady of position with her hair dressed in the shiny black helmet-shape, and her waist encased in the broad, tight obi or sash, which after all was no more uncomfortable than a corset. Thus attired she came down to dinner one evening, trotting behind her husband as a well-trained Japanese wife should do. In foreign dress she appeared petite and exotic, but one would have hesitated to name the land of her birth. It was a shock to Geoffrey to see her again in her native costume. In Europe, it had been a distinction, but here, in Japan, it was like a sudden fading into the landscape. He had never realised quite how entirely his wife was one of these people. The short stature and the shuffling gait, the tiny delicate hands, the grooved slit of the eyelids, and the oval of the face were pure Japanese. The only incongruous elements were the white ivory skin which, however, is a beauty not unknown among home-reared Japanese women also, and, above all, the expression which looked out of the dancing eyes and the red mouth ripe for kisses, an expression of freedom, happiness, and natural high spirits, which is not to be seen in a land where the women are hardly free, never natural, and seldom happy. The Japanese woman's face develops a compressed look which leaves the features a mere mask, and acquires very often a furtive glance, as of a sharp-fanged animal half-tamed by fear, something weasel-like or vixenish.
Flaunting her native costume, Asako came down to dinner at the Miyako Hotel, laughing, chattering, and imitating the mincing steps of her country-women and their exaggerated politeness. Geoffrey tried to play his part in the little comedy; but his good spirits were forced and gradually silence fell between them, the silence which falls on masqueraders in fancy dress, who have tried to play up to the spirit of their costume, but whose imagination flags. Had Geoffrey been able to think a little more deeply he would have realized that this play-acting was a very visible sign of the gulf which yawned between his wife and the yellow women of Japan. She was acting as a white woman might have done, certain of the impossibility of confusion. But Geoffrey for the first time felt his wife's exoticism, not from the romantic and charming side, but from the ugly, sinister, and—horrible word—inferior side of it. Had he married a coloured woman? Was he a squaw's man? A sickening vision of chonkina at Nagasaki rose before his imagination.
When dinner was over, and after Asako had received the congratulations of the other guests, she retired upstairs to put on her négligé. Geoffrey liked a cigar after dinner, but Asako objected to the heavy aroma hanging about her bedroom. They therefore parted generally for this brief half hour; and afterwards they would read and talk together in their sitting-room. Like other people, they soon got into the habit of going to bed early in a country where there were no theatres playing in a comprehensible tongue, and no supper restaurants to turn night into day.
Geoffrey lit his cigar and made his way to the smoking-room. Two elderly men, merchants from Kobe, were already sitting there over whiskies and sodas, discussing a mutual acquaintance.
"No, I don't see much of him," one of them, an American, was saying, "nobody does nowadays. But take my word, when he came out here as a young man he was one of the smartest young fellows in the East."
"Yes, I can quite believe you," said the other, a stolid Englishman with a briar pipe, "he struck me as an exceptionally well-educated man."
"He was more than that, I tell you. He was a financial genius. He was a man with a great future."
"Poor fellow!" said the other. "Well, he has only got himself to thank."
Geoffrey was not an eavesdropper by nature, but he found himself getting interested in the fate of this anonymous failure, and wondered if he was going to hear the cause of the man's downfall.
"When these Japanese women get hold of a man," the American went on, "they seem to drain the brightness out of him. Why, you have only got to stroll around to the Kobe Club and look at the faces. You can tell the ones that have Japanese wives or housekeepers right away. Something seems to have gone right out of their expression."
"It's worry," said the Englishman. "A fellow marries a Japanese girl, and he finds he has to keep all her lazy relatives as well; and then a crowd of half-caste brats come along, and he doesn't know whether they are his own or not."
"It is more than that," was the emphatic answer. "Men with white wives have worry enough; and a man can go gay in the tea-houses, and none the worse. But when once they marry them it is like signing a bond with the devil. That man's damned."
Geoffrey rose and left the room. He thought on the whole it was better to withdraw than to hit that harsh-voiced Yankee hard in the eye. He felt that his wife had been insulted. But the speaker could not have known by whom he had been overheard. He had merely expressed an opinion which, as a sudden instinct told Geoffrey, must be generally prevalent among the white people living in this yellow country. Now that he came to think of it, he remembered curious glances cast at him and Asako by foreigners and also, strange to say, by Japanese, glances half contemptuous. Had he acquired it already, that expression which marked the faces of the unfortunates at the Kobe Club? He remembered also tactless remarks on board ship, such as, "Mrs. Barrington has lived all her life in England; of course, that makes all the difference."
Geoffrey looked at his reflection in the long mirror in the hall. There were no signs as yet of premature damnation on the honest, healthy British face. There were signs, perhaps, of ripened thought and experience, of less superficial appreciation. The eyes seemed to have withdrawn deeper into their sockets, like the figurines in toy barometers when they feel wet weather coming.
He was beginning to appreciate the force of the advice which had urged him to beware of Japan. Here, in the hotbed of race prejudice, evil spirits were abroad. It was so different in broad-hearted tolerant London. Asako was charming and rich. She was received everywhere. To marry her was no more strange than to marry a French girl or a Russian. They could have lived peaceably in Europe; and her distant fatherland would have added a pathetic charm to her personality. But here in Japan, where between the handful of whites and the myriads of yellow men stretches a No Man's Land, serrated and desolate, marked with bloody fights, with suspicions and treacheries, Asako's position as the wife of a white man and Geoffrey's position as the husband of a yellow wife were entirely different. The stranger's phrases had summed up the situation. They were no good, these white men who had pawned their lives to yellow girls. They were the failures, the ratés. Geoffrey had heard of promising young officers in India who had married native women and who had had to leave the service. He had done the same. Better go gay in the tea-houses with Wigram. He was the husband of a coloured woman.
And then the crowd of half-caste brats? In England one hardly ever thinks of the progeny of mixed races. That bitter word "half-caste" is a distant echo of sensational novels. Geoffrey had not as yet noticed the pale handsome children of Eurasia, Nature's latest and most half-hearted experiment, whose seed, they say, is lost in the third generation. But he had heard the tone of scorn which flung out the term; and it suddenly occurred to him that his own children would be half-castes.
He was walking on the garden terrace overlooking the starry city. He was thinking with an intensity unfamiliar to him and terrifying, like a machine which is developing its fullest power, and is shaking a framework unused to such a strain. He wanted a friend's presence, a desultory chat with an old pal about people and things which they shared in common. Thank God, Reggie Forsyth was in Tokyo. He would leave to-morrow. He must see Reggie, laugh at his queer clever talk again, relax himself, and feel sane.
He was nervous of meeting his wife, lest her instinct might guess his thoughts. Yet he must not leave her any longer or his absence would make her anxious. Not that his love for Asako had been damaged; but he felt that they were traveling along a narrow path over a bottomless gulf in an unexplored country.
He returned to the rooms and found her lying disconsolate on a sofa, wrapped in a flimsy champagne-coloured dressing-gown, one of the spoils of Paris. Her hair had been rapidly combed out of its formal native arrangement. It looked draggled and hard as though she had been bathing. Titine, the French maid, was removing the rejected débris of kimono and sash.
"Sweetheart, you've been crying," said Geoffrey, kissing her.
"You didn't like me as a Jap, and you've been thinking terrible things about me. Look at me, and tell me what you have been thinking."
"Little Yum Yum talks great nonsense sometimes. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of going on to Tokyo to-morrow. I think we've seen about all there is to be seen here, don't you?"
"Geoffrey, you want to see Reggie Forsyth. You're getting bored and homesick already."
"No, I'm not. I think it is a ripping country; in fact, I want to see more of it. What I am wondering is whether we should take Tanaka."
* * * * *
This made Asako laugh. Any mention of Tanaka's name acted as a talisman of mirth. Tanaka was the Japanese guide who had fixed himself on to their company remora-like, with a fine flair for docile and profitable travelers.
He was a very small man, small even for a Japanese, but plump withal. His back view looked like that of a little boy, an illusion accentuated by the shortness of his coat and his small straw boater with its colored ribbon. Even when he turned the illusion was not quite dispelled; for his was a round, ruddy, chubby face with dimples, a face with big cheeks ripe for smacking, and little sunken pig-like eyes.
He had stalked the Barringtons during their first excursion on foot through the ancient city, knowing that sooner or later they would lose their way. When the opportunity offered itself and he saw them gazing vaguely round at cross-roads, he bore down upon them, raising his hat and saying:
"Can I assist you, sir?"
"Yes; would you kindly tell me the way to the Miyako Hotel?" asked
Geoffrey.
"I am myself en route," answered Tanaka. "Indeed we meet very à propos."
On the way he had discoursed about all there was to be seen in Kyoto. Only, visitors must know their way about, or must have the service of an experienced guide who was au fait and who knew the "open sesames." He pronounced this phrase "open sessums," and it was not until late that night that its meaning dawned upon Geoffrey.
Tanaka had a rich collection of foreign and idiomatic phrases, which he must have learned by heart from a book and with which he adorned his conversation.
On his own initiative he had appeared next morning to conduct the two visitors to the Emperor's palace, which he gave them to understand was open for that day only, and as a special privilege due to Tanaka's influence. While expatiating on the wonders to be seen, he brushed Geoffrey's clothes and arranged them with the care of a trained valet. In the evening, when they returned to the hotel and Asako complained of pains in her shoulder, Tanaka showed himself to be an adept at massage.
Next morning he was again at his post; and Geoffrey realized that another member had been added to his household. He acted as their cicerone or "siseroan," as he pronounced it, to temple treasuries and old palace gardens, to curio-shops and to little native eating-houses. The Barringtons submitted, not because they liked Tanaka, but because they were good-natured, and rather lost in this new country. Besides, Tanaka clung like a leech and was useful in many ways.
Only on Sunday morning it was the hotel boy who brought their early morning tea. Tanaka was absent. When he made his appearance he wore a grave expression which hardly suited his round face; and he carried a large black prayer-book. He explained that he had been to church. He was a Christian, Greek Orthodox. At least so he said, but afterwards Geoffrey was inclined to think that this was only one of his mystifications to gain the sympathy of his victims and to create a bond between him and them.
His method was one of observation, imitation and concealed interrogation. The long visits to the Barringtons' rooms, the time spent in clothes-brushing and in massage, were so much opportunity gained for inspecting the room and its inhabitants, for gauging their habits and their income, and for scheming out how to derive the greatest possible advantage for himself.
The first results of this process were almost unconscious. The wide collar, in which his face had wobbled Micawber-like, disappeared; and a small double collar, like the kind Geoffrey wore, took its place. The garish neck-tie and hatband were replaced by discreet black. He acquired the attitudes and gestures of his employer in a few days.
As for the cross-examination, it took place in the evening, when
Geoffrey was tired, and Tanaka was taking off his boots.
"Previous to the fiancée," Tanaka began, "did Lady Barrington live long time in Japan?"
He was lavish with titles, considering that money and nobility in such people must be inseparable; besides, experience had taught him that the use of such honorifics never came amiss.
"No; she left when she was quite a little baby."
"Ladyship has Japanese name?"
"Asako Fujinami. Do you know the name, Tanaka?"
The Japanese set his head on one side to indicate an attitude of reflection.
"Tokyo?" he suggested.
"Yes, from Tokyo."
"Does Lordship pay his devoir to relatives of Ladyship?"
"Yes, I suppose so, when we go to Tokyo."
"Ladyship's relatives have noble residence?" asked Tanaka; it was his way of inquiring if they were rich.
"I really don't know at all," answered Geoffrey.
"Then I will detect for Lordship. It will be better. A man can do great foolishness if he does not detect."
After this Geoffrey discouraged Tanaka. But Asako thought him a huge joke. He made himself very useful and agreeable, fetching and carrying for her, and amusing her with his wonderful English. He almost succeeded in dislodging Titine from her cares for her mistress's person. Geoffrey had once objected, on being expelled from his wife's bedroom during a change of raiment:
"But Tanaka was there. You don't mind him seeing you apparently."
Asako had burst out laughing.
"Oh, he isn't a man. He isn't real at all. He says that I am like a flower, and that I am very beautiful in 'deshabeel.'"
"That sounds real enough," grunted Geoffrey, "and very like a man."
Perhaps, innocent as she was, Asako enjoyed playing off Tanaka against her husband, just as it certainly amused her to watch the jealousy between Titine and the Japanese. It gave her a pleasant sense of power to see her big husband look so indignant.