Kimono by John Paris

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They passed under an enormous gateway, like a huge barn door with no
barn behind it. Two threatening gods stood sentinel on either hand.
Under the influence of the moonlight the carved figures seemed to
move.

Yae led her big companion along a broad-flagged path between a
pollarded avenue. Geoffrey still did not know what they had come so
far to see. Nor did he care. Everything was so dreamy and so sweet.

The path turned; and suddenly, straight in front of them, they saw the
God--the Great Buddha--the immense bronze statue which has survived
from the days of Kamakura's sovereignty. The bowed head and the broad
shoulders were outlined against the blue and starry sky; against
the shadow of the woods the body, almost invisible, could be dimly
divined. The moonlight fell on the calm smile and on the hands palm
upwards in the lap, with finger-tips and thumb-tips touching in the
attitude of meditation. That ineffably peaceful, smiling face seemed
to look down from the very height of heaven upon Geoffrey Barrington
and Yae Smith. The presence of the God filled the valley, patient and
powerful, the Creator of the Universe and the Maintainer of Life.

Geoffrey had never seen anything so impressive. He Stooped down
towards his little companion, listening for a response to his own
emotion. It came. Before he could realize what was happening he felt
the soft kimono sleeves like wings round his neck, and the girl's
burning mouth pressing his lips.

"Oh, Geoffrey," she whispered.

He sat down on a low table in front of a shuttered refreshment bar
with Yae on his knee, his strong arm round her, even as she had
dreamed. The Buddha of Infinite Understanding smiled down upon them.

Geoffrey was too little of a prig to scold the girl, and too much of
a man not to be touched and flattered by the sincerity of her embrace.
He was too much of an Englishman to ascribe it to its real passionate
motive, and to profit by the opportunity.

Instead, he told himself that she was only a child excited by the
beauty and the romance of the night even as he was. He did not begin
to realize that he or she were making love. So he took her on his knee
and stroked her hand.

"Isn't he fine?" he said, looking up at the God.

She started at the sound of his voice, and put her arms round his neck
again.

"Oh, Geoffrey," she murmured, "how strong you are!"

He stood up laughing, with the girl in his arms.

"If it wasn't for your big _obi_" he said, "you would weigh nothing at
all. Now hold tight; for I am going to carry you home."

He started down the avenue with a swinging stride. Yae could watch
almost within range of her lips the powerful profile of his big face,
a soldier's face trained to command strong men and to be gentle to
women and children. There was a delicious fragrance about him, the
dry heathery smell of clean men. He did not look down at her. He was
staring into the black shadows ahead, his mind still full of that
sudden vision of Buddha Amitabha. He was scarcely thinking of the
half-caste girl who clung tightly to his neck.

Yae had no interest in the _Dai-Butsu_ except as a grand background
for love-making, a good excuse for hand squeezings and ecstatic
movements. She had tried it once before with her school-master lover.
It never occurred to her that Geoffrey was in any way different from
her other admirers. She thought that she herself was the sole cause of
his emotion and that his fixed expression as he strode in the darkness
was an indication of his passion and a compliment to her charms. She
was too tactful to say anything, or to try to force the situation; but
she felt disappointed when at the approach of lighted houses he put
her down without further caresses. In silence they returned to the
hotel, where a few tired couples were still revolving to a spasmodic
music.

Geoffrey was weary now; and the enchantment of the wine had passed
away.

"Good-night, Yae," he said.

She was holding the lapels of his coat, and she would have dearly
loved to kiss him again. But he stood like a tower without any sign of
bending down to her; and she would have had to jump for the forbidden
fruit.

"Good-night, Geoffrey," she purred, "I will never forget to-night."

"It was lovely," said the Englishman, thinking of the Great Buddha.

* * * * *

Geoffrey retired to his room, where Asako was sleeping peacefully.
He was very English. Only the first surprise of the girl's kiss had
startled his loyalty. With the ostrich-like obtuseness, which our
continental neighbours call our hypocrisy, he buried his head in his
principles. As Asako's husband, he could not flirt with another woman.
As Reggie's friend, he would not flirt with Reggie's sweetheart. As an
honourable man, he would not trifle with the affections of a girl who
meant nothing whatever to him. Therefore the incident of the Great
Buddha had no significance. Therefore he could lie down and sleep with
a light heart.

Geoffrey had been sleeping for half an hour or so when he was awakened
by a sudden jolt, as though the whole building had met with a violent
collision, or as though a gigantic fist had struck it. Everything
in the room was in vibration. The hanging lamp was swinging like a
pendulum. The pictures were shaking on the walls. A china ornament on
the mantelpiece reeled, and fell with a crash.

Geoffrey leapt out of bed to cross to where his wife was sleeping.
Even the floor was unsteady like a ship's deck.

"Geoffrey! Geoffrey!" Asako called out.

"It must be an earthquake," her husband gasped, "Reggie told me to
expect one."

"It has made me feel so sick," said Asako.

The disturbance was subsiding. Only the lamp was still oscillating
slightly to prove that the earthquake was not merely a nightmare.

"Is any one about?" asked Asako.

Geoffrey went out on to the veranda. The hotel having survived many
hundreds of earthquake shocks, seemed unaware of what had happened.
Far out to sea puffs of fire were dimly seen like the flashes of a
battleship in action, where the island volcano of Oshima was emptying
its wrath against the sky.

There were hidden and unfamiliar powers in this strange country, of
which Geoffrey and Asako had not yet taken account.

Beneath a tall lamp-post on the lawn, round whose smooth waxy light
scores of moths were flitting, stood the short stout figure of a
Japanese, staring up at the hotel.

"It looks like Tanaka," thought Geoffrey, "by Jove, it _is_ Tanaka!"

They had definitely left their guide behind in Tokyo. Had Asako
yielded at the last moment unable to dispense with her faithful
squire? Or had he come of his own accord? and if so, why? These Japs
were an unfathomable and exasperating people.

Sure enough next morning it was Tanaka who brought the early tea.

"Hello," said Geoffrey, "I thought you were in Tokyo."

"Indeed," grinned the guide, "I am sorry for you. Perhaps I have
commit great crime so to come. But I think and I think Ladyship not so
well. Heart very anxious. Go to theatre, wish to make merry, but all
the time heart very sad. I think I will take last train. I will turn
like bad penny. Perhaps Lordship is angry."

"No, not angry, Tanaka, just helpless. There was an earthquake last
night?"

"Not so bad _jishin_ (earth-shaking). Every twenty, thirty years one
very big _jishin_ come. Last big _jishin_ Gifu _jishin_ twenty years
before. Many thousand people killed. Japanese people say that beneath
the earth is one big fish. When the fish move, the earth shake. Silly
fabulous myth! Tanaka say, 'It is the will of God!'"

The little man crossed himself devoutly.

* * * * *

A few minutes later there was a loud banging at the door, followed by
Reggie's voice, shouting,--

"Are you coming down for a bath?"

"Earthquakes are horrible things," commented Reggie, on their way to
the sea. "Foreigners are supposed always to sleep through their first
one. Their second they find an interesting experience; but the
third and the fourth and the rest are a series of nervous shocks in
increasing progression. It is like feeling God--but a wicked, cruel
God! No wonder the Japanese are so fatalistic and so desperate. It is
a case of 'Eat and drink, for to-morrow ye die.'"

The morning sea was cold and bracing. The two friends did not remain
in for long. When they were dried and dressed again, and when Geoffrey
was for returning to breakfast, Reggie held him back.

"Come and walk by the sea," he said, "I have something to tell you."

They turned in the direction of the fishing village, where Geoffrey
and Yae had walked together only a few hours ago. But the fires were
quenched. Black circles of charred ashes remained; and the magic world
of the moonlight had become a cluster of sordid hovels, where dirty
women were sweeping their frowsty floors, and scrofulous children were
playing among stale bedding.

"Did you notice anything unusual in my manner last night?" Reggie
began very seriously.

"No," laughed Geoffrey, "you seemed rather excited. But why did you
leave so early?"

"For various reasons," said his friend. "First, I hate dancing, but
I feel rather envious of people who like it. Secondly, I wanted to be
alone with my own sensations. Thirdly, I wanted you, my best friend,
to have every opportunity of observing Yae and forming an opinion
about her."

"But why?" Geoffrey began.

"Because it would now be too late for me to take your advice," said
Reggie mysteriously.

"What do you mean?" Barrington asked.

"Last night I asked Yae to marry me; and I understand that she
accepted."

Geoffrey sat in the sunlight on the gunwale of a fishing-boat.

"You can't do that," he said.

"Oh, Geoffrey, I was afraid you'd say it, and you have," said his
friend, half laughing. "Why not?"

"Your career, old chap."

"My career," snorted Reggie, "protocol, protocol and protocol. I am
fed up with that, anyway. Can you imagine me a be-ribboned Excellency,
worked by wires from London, babbling platitudes over teacups to
other old Excellencies, and giving out a lot of gas for the F.O. every
morning. No, in the old days there was charm and power and splendour,
when an Ambassador was really plenipotentiary, and peace and war
turned upon a court intrigue. All that is as dead as Louis Quatorze.
Personality has faded out of politics. Everything is business, now,
concessions, vested interests, dividends and bond-holders. These
diplomats are not real people at all. They are shadowy survivals
of the _grand siecle_, wraiths of Talleyrand; or else just restless
bagmen. I don't call that a career."

Geoffrey had listened to these tirades before. It was Reggie's froth.

"But what do you propose doing?" he asked.

"Doing? Why, my music of course. Before I left England some music-hall
people offered me seventy pounds a week to do stunts for them. Their
first offer was two hundred and fifty, because they were under the
illusion that I had a title. My official salary at this moment is two
hundred _per annum_. So you see there would be no financial loss."

"Then are you giving up diplomacy because you are fed up with it? or
for Yae Smith's sake? I don't quite understand," said Geoffrey.

He was still pondering over the scene of last evening, and he found
considerable comfort in ascribing Yae's behaviour to excitement caused
by her engagement.

"Yae is the immediate reason: utter fed-upness is the original cause,"
replied Reggie.

"Do you feel that you are very much in love with her?" asked his
friend.

The young man considered for a moment, and then answered,--

"No, not in love exactly. But she represents what I have come to
desire. I get so terribly lonely, Geoffrey, and I must have some one,
some woman, of course; and I hate intrigue and adultery. Yae never
grates upon me. I hate the twaddling activities of our modern
women, their little sports, their little sciences, their little
earnestnesses, their little philanthropies, their little imitations of
men's ways. I like the seraglio type of woman, lazy and vain, a little
more than a lovely animal. I can play with her, and hear her purring.
She must have no father or mother or brothers or sisters or any social
scheme to entangle me in. She must have no claim on my secret mind,
she must not be jealous of my music, or expect explanations. Still
less explain me to others,--a wife who shows one round like a monkey,
what horror!"

"But Reggie! old chap, does she love you?"

Geoffrey's ideas were stereotyped. To his mind, only great love on
both sides could excuse so bizarre a marriage.

"Love!" cried Reggie. "What is Love? I can feel Love in music. I can
feel it in poetry. I can see it in sunshine, in the wet woods, and in
the phosphorescent sea. But in actual life! I think of things in too
abstract a way ever to feel in love with anybody. So I don't think
anybody could really fall in love with me. It is like religious faith.
I have no faith, and yet I believe in faith. I have no love, and yet
I have a great love for love. Blessed are they who have not seen, and
yet have believed!"

When Reggie was in this mood Geoffrey despaired of getting any sense
out of him, and he felt that the occasion was too serious for smiles.

They were walking back to the hotel in the direction of breakfast.

"Reggie, are you quite sure?" said his friend, solemnly.

"No, of course I'm not, I never could be."

"And are you intending to get married soon?"

"Not immediately, no: and all this is quite in confidence, please."

"I'm glad there's no hurry," grunted Geoffrey. He knew that the girl
was light and worthless; but to have shown Reggie his proofs would
have been to admit his own complicity; and to give a woman away
so callously would be a greater offence against Good Form than his
momentary and meaningless trespass.

"But there is one thing you have forgotten," said. Reggie, rather
bitterly.

"What's that, old chap?"

"When a fellow announces his engagement to the dearest little girl
in all the world, his friends offer their congratulations. It's Good
Form," he added maliciously.

CHAPTER XVII

THE RAINY SEASON

_Fugu-jiru no
Ware ikite ir
Ne-zame kana!_

Poisonous delicacies (last night)!
I awake
And I am still alive.

Geoffrey Barrington tried not to worry about Yae Smith; and, of
course, he did not mention the episode of the Great Buddha either to
his wife or to Reggie Forsyth. He did not exactly feel ashamed of the
incident; but he realised that it was open to misinterpretation. He
certainly had no love for Yae; and she, since she was engaged to his
friend, presumably had no love for him. There are certain unnatural
states of mind in which we are not altogether morally responsible
beings. Among these may be numbered the ballroom mood, which drives
quite sane people to act madly. The music, the wine, the giddy
turning, the display of women's charms and the confusing proximity of
them produce an unwonted atmosphere, of which we have most of us been
aware, so bewildering that admiration of one woman will drive sane
men to kiss another. Explanation is of course impossible; and
circumstances must have their way. Scheming people, mothers with
daughters to marry, study the effects of this psychical chemistry and
profit by their knowledge. Under similar influences Geoffrey himself
had been guilty of wilder indiscretions than the kissing of a
half-caste girl.

But when he thought the matter over, he was sorry that it had
occurred; and he was profoundly thankful that nobody had seen him.

Somebody had seen him, however.

The faithful Tanaka, who had been charged by Mr. Ito, the Fujinami
lawyer, not to let his master out of his sight, had followed him at
a discreet distance during the whole of that midnight stroll. He had
observed the talk and the attitudes, the silences and the holding of
hands, the glad exchange of kisses, the sitting of Yae on Geoffrey's
knees, and her triumphant return, carried in his arms.

To the Japanese mind such conduct could only mean one thing. The
Japanese male is frankly animal where women are concerned. He does
not understand our fine shades of self-deception, which give to our
love-making the thrill of surprise and the palliation of romance.
Tanaka concluded that there could be only one termination to the scene
which he had witnessed.

He also learned that Yae Smith was Reggie Forsyth's mistress, that he
visited her room at night, that she was a girl of no character at all,
that she had frequently stopped at the Kamakura hotel with other men,
all of them her lovers.

All this information Tanaka collected with a wealth and precision of
detail which is only possible in Japan, where the espionage habit is
so deeply implanted in the every-day life of the people.

* * * * *

Mr. Ito could scarcely believe such welcome tidings. The Barrington
_menage_ had seemed to him so devoted that he had often despaired
of his boast to his patron that he would divide the wife from her
husband, and restore her to her family. Now, if Tanaka's story were
true, his task would be child's play. A woman charged with jealousy
becomes like a weapon primed and cocked. If Ito could succeed
in making Asako jealous, then he knew that any stray spark of
misunderstanding would blast a black gulf between husband and wife,
and might even blow the importunate Englishman back to his own
country--alone.

The lawyer explained his plan to the head of the family, who
appreciated its classic simplicity. Sadako was given to understand the
part which she was to play in alienating her cousin's affections from
the foreigner. She was to harp on the faithlessness of men in general,
and on husbands in particular, and on the importance of money values
in matrimonial considerations.

She was to suggest that a foreign man would never choose a Japanese
bride merely for love of her. Then when the psychological moment had
struck, the name of Yae Smith was to be flashed into Asako's mind with
a blinding glare.

Asako had been visiting her Japanese cousins almost every day. Her
conversation lessons were progressing rapidly; for the first stages
of the language are easy. The new life appealed to Asako's love
of novelty, and the strangeness of it to her child's love of
make-believe. The summoning of her parents' spirits awakened in her
the desire for a home, which lurks in every one of us; the love of old
family things around us, the sense of an inheritance and a tradition.
She was tired of hotel life; and she turned for relaxation to playing
at Japan with cousin Sadako, just as her husband turned to tennis.

Her favourite haunt was the little tea-house among the reeds at the
edge of the lake, which seemed so hidden from everywhere. Here the
two girls practised their languages. Here they tried on each others
clothes, and talked about their lives and purposes. Sadako was
intellectually the cleverer of the two, but Asako had seen and heard
more; so they were fairly equally matched.

Often the cousins shocked each other's sense of propriety. Asako had
already observed that to the Japanese mind, the immediate corollary
to being married is to produce children as promptly and as rapidly as
possible. Already she had been questioned on the subject by Tanaka, by
_boy sans_ and by shop-attendants.

"It is a great pity," said cousin Sadako, "that you have no baby. In
Japan if a wife have no baby, she is often divorced. But perhaps it is
the fault of Mr. Barrington?"

Asako had vaguely hoped for children in the future, but on the whole
she was glad that their coming had been delayed. There was so much
to do and to see first of all. It had never occurred to her that her
childlessness might be the _fault_ of either herself or her husband.
But her cousin went on ruthlessly,--

"Many men are like that. Because of their sickness their wives cannot
have babies."

Asako shivered. This beautiful country of hers seemed to be full of
bogeys like a child's dream.

Another time Sadako asked her with much diffidence and slanting of the
eyes,--

"I wish to learn about--kissing."

"What is the Japanese for 'kiss'?" laughed Asako.

"Oh! There is no such word," expostulated Sadako, shocked at her
cousin's levity, "we Japanese do not speak of such things."

"Then Japanese people don't kiss?"

"Oh, no," said the girl.

"Not ever?" asked Asako, incredulous.

"Only when they are--quite alone."

"Then when you see foreign people kissing in public, you think it is
very funny?"

"We think it is disgusting," answered her cousin.

It is quite true. Foreigners kiss so recklessly. They kiss on meeting:
they kiss on parting. They kiss in London: they kiss in Tokyo. They
kiss indiscriminately their fathers, mothers, wives, mistresses,
cousins and aunts. Every kiss sends a shiver down the spine of a
Japanese observer of either sex, as we should be shocked by the crude
exhibition of an obscene gesture. For this blossoming of our buds of
affection suggests to him, with immediate and detailed clearness, that
other embrace of which in his mind it is the inseparable concomitant.

The Japanese find the excuse that foreigners know no better, just as
we excuse the dirty habits of natives. But they quote the kiss as an
indisputable proof of the lowness of our moral standard, and as a sign
of the guilt, not of individuals so much as of our whole civilisation.

"Foreign people kiss too much," said cousin Sadako, "it is a bad
thing. If I had a husband, I would always fear he kiss somebody else."

"That is why I am so happy with Geoffrey," said Asako, "I know he
would never love any one but me."

"It is not safe to be so sure," said her cousin darkly, "a woman is
made for one man, but a man is made for many women."

Asako, arrayed in a Japanese kimono, and to all appearance as Japanese
as her cousin, was sitting in the Fujinami tea-parlour. She had not
understood much of the lesson in tea-ceremony at which she had just
assisted. But the exceeding propriety and dignity of the teacher, the
daughter of great people fallen upon evil days, had impressed her. She
longed to acquire that tranquillity of deportment, that slow graceful
poise of hand and arm, that low measured speech. When the teacher
had gone, she began to mimic her gestures with all the seriousness of
appreciative imitation.

Sadako laughed. She supposed that her cousin was fooling. Asako
thought that she was amused by her clumsiness.

"I shall never be able to do it," she sighed.

"But of course you will. I laugh because you are so like Kikuye San."

Kikuye San was their teacher.

"If only I could practise by myself!" said Asako, "but at the hotel it
would be impossible."

Then they both laughed together at the incongruity of rehearsing those
dainty rites of old Japan in the over-furnished sitting-room at
the Imperial Hotel, with Geoffrey sitting back in his arm-chair and
puffing at his cigar.

"If only I had a little house like this," said Asako.

"Why don't you hire one?" suggested her cousin.

Why not? The idea was an inspiration. So Asako thought; and she
broached the matter to Geoffrey that very evening.

"Wouldn't it be sweet to have a ducky little Japanese house all our
very own?" she urged.

"Oh yes," her husband agreed, wearily, "that would be great sport."

Mr. Fujinami Gentaro was delighted at the success of his daughter's
diplomacy. He saw that this plan for a Japanese house meant a further
separation of husband and wife, a further step towards recovery of
his errant child. For he was beginning to regard Asako with parental
sentiment, and to pity her condition as the wife of this coarse
stranger.

Miss Sadako was under no such altruistic delusions. She envied her
cousin. She envied her money, her freedom, and her frank happiness.
She had often pondered about the ways of Japanese husbands and wives;
and the more she thought over the subject, the more she envied Asako
her happy married life. She envied her with a woman's envy, which
seeks to hurt and spoil. She was smarting from her own disappointment;
and by making her cousin suffer, she thought that she could assuage
her own grief. Besides, the intrigue in itself interested her, and
provided employment for her idolent existence and her restless mind.
Of affection for Asako she had none at all, but then she had no
affection for anybody. She was typical of a modern Japanese womanhood,
which is the result of long repression, loveless marriages and sudden
intellectual licence.

Asako thought her charming, because she had not yet learned to
discern. She confided to her all her ideas about the new house; and
together the two girls explored Tokyo in the motor-car which Ito
provided for them, inspecting properties.

Asako had already decided that her home was to be on the bank of the
river, where she could see the boats passing, something like the house
in which her father and mother had lived. The desired abode was found
at last on the river-bank at Mukojima just on the fringe of the city?
where the cherry-trees are so bright in Springtime, where she could
see the broad Sumida river washing her garden steps, the fussy little
river boats puffing by, the portly junks, the crews of students
training for their regattas, and, away on the opposite bank, the trees
of Asakusa, the garish river restaurants so noisy at nightfall, the
tall peaceful pagoda, the grey roofs and the red plinths of the temple
of the Goddess of Mercy.

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