Kimono by John Paris

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"But what did he think of his friends?" asked Geoffrey. "It seems a
low-down sort of trick."

"He was very sore about it at the time," said Lady Cynthia; "but
afterwards he understood that they were heroes, real theatre heroes."

"It looks like rain," said Geoffrey, uneasily.

So they turned back, talking about London people.

The first drops fell as they were passing through the wicket gate; and
they entered the house during a roar of thunder. Reggie was alone.

"I see that my fate is sealed," he said, as he rose to meet them.
"'The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes!'"

CHAPTER XIX

YAE SMITH

_Nusubito wo
Toraete mireba
Waga ko nari_.

The thief--
When I caught him and looked
at him,
Lo! My own child!

A week of very hard work began for Reggie. The Ambassador
was reporting home on every imaginable subject from political
assassination to the manufacture of celluloid. This was part of Lady
Cynthia's scheme. She was determined to throw Yae Smith and Geoffrey
Barrington together all the time, and to risk the consequences.

So Yae though she had her room at the hotel, became an inmate of
Reggie's villa. She took all her meals there, and her siesta during
most of the afternoons. She even passed whole nights with Reggie;
and their relations could no longer be a secret even to Geoffrey's
laborious discretion.

This knowledge troubled him; for the presence of lovers, and the
shadows cast by their intimacies are always disquieting even to the
purest minds. But Geoffrey felt that it was no business of his;
and that Reggie and Yae being what they were, it would be useless
hypocrisy for him to censure their pleasures.

Meanwhile, Asako was writing to him, bewailing her loneliness. So
one morning at breakfast he announced that he must be getting back to
Tokyo. A cloud passed over Yae's face.

"Not yet, big captain," she expostulated; "I want to take you right to
the far end of the lake where the bears live."

"Very well," agreed Geoffrey, "to-morrow morning early, then; for the
next day I really must go."

He wrote to Asako a long letter with much about the lake and Yae
Smith, promising to return within forty-eight hours.

At daybreak next morning Yae was hammering at Geoffrey's door.

"Wake up, old sleepy captain," she cried.

Geoffrey got the boat ready; and Yae prepared a picnic breakfast to be
eaten on the way. Poor Reggie, of course, had work at the Embassy; he
could not come.

It was an ideal excursion. They reached Senju, the wood-cutter's
village at the end of the lake. They ascended the forest path as far
as the upper lake, a mere pond of reeds and sedges, which the bears
are supposed to haunt.

Geoffrey and Yae, however, saw nothing more alarming than the village
curs.

"Returned in safety from the land of danger!" cried the girl, as she
sprang ashore at the steps of the villa.

The air and exercise had wearied Geoffrey. After lunch he changed into
a kimono of Reggie's. Then he lay down on his bed and was soon fast
asleep.

How long he slept he could not say; but he awoke slowly out of
confusing dreams. Somebody was in his room. Somebody was near his bed.
Was it Asako? Was it a dream?

No, it was his comrade of the morning's voyage. It was Yae Smith. She
was sitting on the bed beside him. She was gazing into his face with
her soft, still, cat-like eyes. What was she doing that for? She was
stroking his arm. Her touch was soft. He did not stop her.

Her hair was let down to below her waist, long black hair, more silky
in texture and more wavy than that of a pure Japanese woman. Her
kimono was wide open at the throat. A sweet fragrance exhaled from her
body.

"Big captain, may I?" she pleaded.

"What?" said Geoffrey, still half asleep.

"Just lie by your side--just once,--just for the last time," she
cooed.

Geoffrey was for going to sleep again, well pleased with his dream.
But Yae slipped an arm across his chest, and caught his shoulder in
her hand. She nestled closer to him.

"Geoffrey," she murmured, "I love you so much. You are so strong and
so big, Geoffrey. I want to stay like this always, always, holding
on to you till I make you love me. Love me just a little, Geoffrey.
Nobody will ever know. Geoffrey, it must be nice to have me near you.
Geoffrey, you must, you must want to love me."

She was hugging his body now in an embrace astonishingly powerful
for so small a creature. It was this pressure which finally awoke
Geoffrey. Gently he disengaged her arms and sat up in the bed.

She was clinging to his neck now, wild-eyed like a Maenad. He
felt pitifully ridiculous. The role of Joseph is so thankless and
humiliating. A month ago he would have ordered her sternly to get out
of the room and behave herself. But the hot month in Tokyo had relaxed
his firmness of mind; and familiarity with Reggie's bohemian morality
has sapped his fortress of Good Form.

"Don't be so naughty, Yae," he said feebly. "Reggie may be coming. For
God's sake, control yourself."

Her voice was terrible now.

Geoffrey had lost the first moment when he might have been stern with
her. Clumsily he tried to loosen her embrace. But for the first time
in his life he was in the grip of an elemental natural force, a thing
foreign to his experience of women in marriage or out of it.

"Yae, don't," he gasped, pushing the girl away. "I can't; I'm
married."

"Married!" she screamed. "Does marriage hurt like this? Love me, love
me, Geoffrey. You must love me, you will!"

* * * * *

"The rhapsody is ended!"

A voice which nobody would have recognized as Reggie's put a sudden
end to this frantic assault.

He was standing in the doorway smiling queerly. He had watched the two
from the garden, whence indeed all Chuzenji could have seen them
in the open bedroom. He had slipped off his shoes and had stolen
up quietly in order to listen to them. Now he judged it time to
intervene.

Yae started up from the bed. For a moment she hovered on the edge,
uncertain of her tactics. Geoffrey stared, one hand to his forehead.
Then the girl darted across the room, fell at Reggie's feet, clasped
his knees, and sobbed convulsively.

"Reggie, Reggie, forgive me!" she cried. "It's not my fault. He's been
asking me and asking me to do this--ever since Kamakura--and all the
time here. This is what he came to stay here for. Reggie, forgive me.
I will never be naughty again."

Reggie looked across at his friend for confirmation or denial. The
queer smile had vanished. Good Form decreed that the man must lie for
the woman's sake, if necessary till his soul were damned. But, with
Geoffrey, Good Form had long since been thrown to the winds, like
International Law in war time. Besides, the woman was no better than a
_cocotte_; and Reggie's friendship was at stake.

"No," he said huskily; "that is not true. I was quietly sleeping here
and she came up to me. She is man-mad."

The tangled heap at Reggie's feet leaped up, her green eyes blazing.

"Liar!" she cried. "Reggie, do you believe him? The hypocrite, the
goody-goody, the white slave man, the pimp!"

"What does she mean?" said Geoffrey. Thank God, the woman was clearly
mad.

"Fujinami! Fujinami!" she yelled. "The great girl king! The Yoshiwara
_daimyo_! Every scrap of money which his fool wife spends on sham
curios was made in the Yoshiwara, made by women, made out of filth,
made by prostitutes!"

The last word brought Geoffrey to his feet. In his real agony he had
quite forgotten his sham sin.

"Reggie, for God's sake, tell me, is this true?"

"Yes," said Reggie quietly, "it is quite true."

"Then why did no one tell me?"

"Husbands," said the young man, "and prospective husbands are always
the last to learn. Yae, go back to the hotel. You have done enough
harm for to-day."

"Not unless you forgive me, Reggie," the girl pleaded. "I will never
go unless you forgive."

"I can't forgive," he said, "but I can probably forget."

The wrath of these two men fascinated her. She would have waited if
she could, listening at the door. Reggie knew this.

"If you don't clear out, Yae, I will have to call T[=o] to take you," he
threatened.

To his great relief she went quietly.

* * * * *

Reggie returned to the bare bedroom, where Geoffrey with bowed head
was staring at the floor. In Reggie's short kimono the big man looked
decidedly ridiculous.

"Good," thought Reggie. "Thank God for the comic spirit. It will be
easier to get through with this now."

His first action was to wash his hands. He had an unconscious instinct
for symbolism. Then he sat down opposite his friend.

The action of sitting reduces tragedy to comedy at once,--this was one
of Napoleon's maxims.

Then he opened his cigarette case and offered it to Geoffrey. This,
too, was symbolic. Geoffrey took a cigarette mechanically, and sucked
it between his lips, unlighted.

"Geoffrey," said his friend very quietly, "let us try to put these
women and all their rottenness out of our heads. We will try to talk
this over decently."

Geoffrey was so stunned by the shock of what he had just learned that
he had thought of nothing else. Now, all of a sudden he remembered
that he owed serious explanations to his friend.

"Reggie," he said dully, "I'm most awfully sorry. I had never dreamed
of this. I was good pals with Yae because of you. I never dreamed of
making love to her. You know how I love my wife. She must have been
mad to think of me like that. Besides," he added sheepishly, "nothing
actually happened."

"I'm sure I don't care what actually happened or did not happen. Damn
actual facts. They distort the truth. They are at the bottom of every
injustice. What actually happened never matters. It is the picture
which sticks in one's brain. True or false, it sticks just the same;
and suddenly or slowly it alters every thing. But I can wipe up my
own mess, I think. It is much more serious with you than with me,
Geoffrey. She has bruised my heel, but she has broken your head. No,
don't protest, for Heaven's sake! I am not interested."

"Then what she says is absolutely true?" said Geoffrey, lighting his
cigarette at last, and throwing the match aside as if it were Hope.
"For a whole year I have been living on prostitutes' earnings. I am
no better than those awful _ponces_ in Leicester Square, who can be
flogged if they are caught, and serve them right too. And all that
filthy Yoshiwara, it belongs to Asako, to my sweet innocent little
girl, just as Brandan belongs to my father; and with all this
filthy money we have been buying comforts and clothes and curios and
rubbish."

Reggie was pouring out whiskies and sodas, two strong ones. Geoffrey
gulped down his drink, and then proceeded with his lamentation:

"I understand it all now. Everybody knew. The secrecy and the mystery.
Even at my wedding they were saying, 'Don't go to Japan, don't go.'
They must have all known even then. And then those damned Fujinami,
so anxious to be civil for the beastly money's sake, and yet hiding
everything and lying all the time. And you knew, and the Ambassador,
and Count Saito, and the servants too--always whispering and laughing
behind our backs. But you, Reggie, you were my friend, you ought to
have told me."

"I asked Sir Ralph," said Reggie candidly, "whether you ought to be
told. He is a very wise man. He said, 'No.' He said, 'It would be
cruel and it would be useless. They will go back to England soon and
then they will never know.' Where ignorance is bliss, you understand?"

"It was unfair," groaned Geoffrey; "you were all deceiving me."

"I said to Sir Ralph that it seemed to me unfair and dangerous. But he
has more experience than I."

"But what am I to do now?" said the big man helplessly. "This money
must be given up, yes, and everything we have. But whom to? Not to
those filthy Fujinami?"

"Go slow," advised Reggie. "Go back to England first. Get your
brain clear. Talk it over with your lawyers. Don't be too generous.
Magnanimity has spoiled many noble lives. And remember that your wife
is in this too. You must consider her first. She is very young and she
knows nothing. I don't think that she wants to be poor, or that she
will understand your motives."

"I will make her understand then," said Geoffrey.

"Don't talk like a brute. You will have to be very patient and
considerate for her. Go slow!"

"Can I stop here to-night, then?" asked Barrington, plaintively.

"No," said Reggie with firmness; "that is really more than I could
stick. I told you--truth or untruth, the mind keeps on seeing
pictures. Pack up your things. Call a coolie. The evening walk down to
Nikko will do you more good than my jawing. Good-bye."

An unreal handshake--and he was gone.

Then, of a sudden, Geoffrey realized that, how very unwittingly, he
had deeply wronged this man who was his best friend and upon whom
he was leaning in his hour of trial. Like Job, his adversities were
coming upon him from this side and from that, until he must curse God
and die. Now his friend had given him his dismissal. He would probably
never see Reggie Forsyth again.

As he was starting on his long walk downhill a motor car passed him.
Only one motor car that season had climbed the precipitous road from
the plains. It must be Yae Smith's. Just as it was passing the girl
leaned out of the carriage and blew a kiss to Geoffrey.

She was not alone. There was a small fat man in the car beside her,
a Japanese with a round impertinent face. With a throb of bitter
heart-sickness Geoffrey recognized his own servant, Tanaka.

* * * * *

Next morning Reggie Forsyth crossed the lake as usual to his work at
the Embassy. He met the Ambassadress on the terrace of her villa.

"Good morning, Lady Cynthia," he said, "I congratulate you on your
masterly diplomacy."

"What do you mean?"

Her manner nowadays was very chilly towards her former favourite.

"In accordance with your admirable arrangements," he said, "my
marriage is off."

"Oh, Reggie," her coolness changed at once, "I'm so glad--"

He held up a warning hand.

"But--you have broken a better man than I."

"Why, what do you mean?"

"Geoffrey Barrington. He has learned who the Fujinami are, and where
his money comes from."

"You told him?"

"I'm not such a skunk as all that, Lady Cynthia."

Her Excellency was pondering what had better be done for Geoffrey.

"Where is he?" she asked.

"He stopped the night at Nikko. He is probably in the train for Tokyo
by now."

If she were a hero, a real theatre hero, as Geoffrey had been
apparently, she would go straight off to Tokyo also; and perhaps she
would be able to prevent a catastrophe. Or perhaps she would not.
Perhaps she would only make things worse. On the whole, she had better
stop in Chuzenji and look after her own husband.

"Reggie," she said, "you've had a lucky escape. How did you know that
I had any hand in this? You're more of a girl than a man. A rotten
marriage would have broken you. Geoffrey Barrington is made of
stronger stuff. He is in for a bad time. But he will learn a lot which
you know already; and he will survive."

CHAPTER XX

THE KIMONO

_Na we to wa wo
Hito zo saku naru.
Ide, wagimi!
Hito no naka-goto
Kiki-kosu na yume!_

It is other people who have separated
You and me.
Come, my Lord!
Do not dream of listening
To the between-words of people!

After a ghastly night of sleeplessness at Nikko, Geoffrey Barrington
reached Tokyo in time for lunch. His thoughts were confused and
discordant.

"I feel as if I had been drunk for a week," he kept on saying to
himself. Indeed, he felt a fume of unreality over all his actions.

One thing was certain: financially, he was a ruined man. The thousands
a year which yesterday morning had been practically his, the ease and
comfort which had seemed so secure, were lost more hopelessly than if
his bank had failed. Even the cash in his pocket he touched with the
greatest disgust, as if those identical bills and coins had been paid
across the brothel counter as the price for a man's dirty pleasures
and a girl's shame and disease. He imagined that the Nikko
hotel-keeper looked at his notes suspiciously as though they were
endorsed with the seal of the Yoshiwara.

Geoffrey was ruined. He was henceforth dependent on what his brain
could earn and on what his father would allow him, five hundred pounds
a year at the outside. If he had been alone in the world it would not
have mattered much; but Asako, poor little Asako, the innocent cause
of this disaster, she was ruined too. She who loved her riches, her
jewellery, her pretty things, she would have to sell them all. She
would have to follow him into poverty, she, who had no experience of
its meaning. This was his punishment, perhaps, for having steadily
pursued the idea of a rich marriage. But what had Asako done to
deserve it? Thank God, his marriage had at least not been a loveless
one.

Geoffrey felt acutely the need of human sympathy in his trouble. By
sheer bad luck he had forfeited Reggie's friendship. But he could
still depend upon his wife's love.

So he ran up the stairs at the Imperial Hotel longing for Asako's
welcome, though he dreaded the obligation to break the bad news.

He threw open the door. The room was empty. He looked for cloaks and
hats and curios, for luggage, for any sign of her presence. There was
nothing to indicate that the room was hers.

Sick with apprehension, he returned to the corridor. There was a _boy
san_ near at hand.

"_Okusan_ go away," said the _boy san_. "No come back, I think."

"Where has she gone?" asked Geoffrey.

The _boy san_, with the infuriating Japanese grin, shook his head.

"I am very sorry for you," he said. "To-day very early plenty people
come, Tanaka San and two Japanese girls. Very plenty talk. _Okusan_
cry tears. All nice kimono take away very quick."

"Then Tanaka, where is he?"

"Go away with _okusan_" the boy grinned again, "I am very sorry--"

Geoffrey slammed the door in the face of his tormentor. He staggered
into a chair and collapsed, staring blankly. What could have happened?

Slowly his ideas returned. Tanaka! He had seen the little beast in
Yae's motor car at Chuzenji. He must have come spying after his master
as he had done fifty times before. He and that half-caste devil had
raced him back to Tokyo, had got in ahead of him, and had told a pack
of lies to Asako. She must have believed them, since she had gone
away. But where had she gone to? The _boy san_ had said "two Japanese
girls." She must have gone to the Fujinami house, and to her horribly
unclean cousins.

He must find her at once. He must open her eyes to the truth. He must
bring her back. He must take her away from Japan--forever.

Harrington was crossing the hall of the hotel muttering to himself,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, when he felt a hand laid on his arm.
It was Titine, Asako's French maid.

"_Monsieur le capitaine_" she said, "_madame est partie_. It is not my
fault, _monsieur le capitaine_. I say to madame, do not go, wait for
monsieur. But madame is bewitched. She, who is _bonne catholique_, she
say prayers to the temples of these yellow devils. I myself have seen
her clap her hands--so!--and pray. Her saints have left her. She is
bewitched."

Titine was a Breton peasant girl. She believed implicitly in the
powers of darkness. She had long ago decided that the gods of the
Japanese and the _korrigans_ of her own country were intimately
related. She had served Asako since before her marriage, and would
have remained with her until death. She was desperately faithful. But
she could not follow her mistress to the Fujinami house and risk her
soul's salvation.

"_Monsieur le capitaine_ go away, and madame very, very unhappy. Every
night she cry. Why did monsieur stay away so long time?"

"It was only a fortnight," expostulated Geoffrey.

"For the first parting it was too long," said Titine judicially.
"Every night madame cry; and then she write to monsieur and say, 'Come
back.'" Monsieur write and say, 'Not yet.' Then madame break her heart
and say, 'It is because of some woman that he stay away so long time!'
She say so to Tanaka; and Tanaka say, 'I go and detect, and come again
and tell madame;' and madame say, 'Yes, Tanaka can go: I wish to know
the truth!' And still more she cry and cry. This morning very
early Tanaka came back with Mademoiselle Smith and mademoiselle _la
cousine_. They all talk a long time with madame in bedroom. But they
send me away. Then madame call me. She cry and cry. 'Titine,' she say,
'I go away. Monsieur do not love me now. I go to the Japanese house.
Pack all my things, Titine.' I say, 'No, madame, never. I never go to
that house of devils. How can madame tell the good confessor? How can
madame go to the Holy Mass? Will madame leave her husband and go to
these people who pray to stone beasts? Wait for monsieur!' I say,
'What Tanaka say, it is lies, all the time lies. What Mademoiselle
Smith say all lies.' But madame say, 'No come with me, Titine!' But
I say again, 'Never!' And madame go away, crying all the time: and
sixteen rickshaw all full of baggage. "Oh, _monsieur le capitaine_,
what shall I do?"

"I'm sure, I don't know," said the helpless Geoffrey.

"Send me back to France, monsieur. This country is full of devils,
devils and lies."

He left her sobbing in the hall of the hotel with a cluster of _boy
sans_ watching her.

* * * * *

Geoffrey took a taxi to the Fujinami house. No one answered his
ringing; but he thought that he could hear voices inside the building.
So he strode in, unannounced, and with his boots on his feet, an
unspeakable offence against Japanese etiquette.

He found Asako in a room which overlooked the garden where he had been
received on former occasions. Her cousin Sadako was with her and Ito,
the lawyer. To his surprise and disgust, his wife was dressed in the
Japanese kimono and _obi_ which had once been so pleasing to his eyes.
Her change of nationality seemed to be already complete.

This was an Asako whom he had never known before. Her eyes were ringed
with weeping, and her face was thin and haggard. But her expression
had a new look of resolution. She was no longer a child, a doll. In
the space of a few hours she had grown to be a woman.

They were all standing. Sadako and the lawyer had formed up behind the
runaway as though to give her moral support.

"Asako," said Geoffrey sternly, "what does this mean?"

The presence of the two Japanese exasperated him. His manner was
tactless and unfortunate. His tall stature in the dainty room looked
coarse and brutal. Sadako and Ito were staring at his offending boots
with an expression of utter horror. Geoffrey suddenly remembered that
he ought to have taken them off.

"Oh, damn," he thought.

"Geoffrey," said his wife, "I can't come back. I am sorry. I have
decided to stay here."

"Why?" asked Geoffrey brusquely.

"Because I know that you do not love me. I think you never loved
anything except my money."

The hideous irony of this statement made poor Geoffrey gasp. He
gripped the wooden framework of the room so as to steady himself.

"Good God!" he shouted. "Your money! Do you know where it comes from?"

Asako stared at him, more and more bewildered.

"Send these people out of the room, and I'll tell you," said Geoffrey.

"I would rather they stayed," his wife answered.

It had been arranged beforehand that, if, Geoffrey called, Asako was
not to be left alone with him. She had been made to believe that she
was in danger of physical violence. She was terribly frightened.

"Very well," Geoffrey blundered on, "every penny you have is made
out of prostitution, out of the sale of women to men. You saw the
Yoshiwara, you saw the poor women imprisoned there, you know that any
drunken beast can come and pay his money down and say, 'I want that
girl,' and she has to give herself up to be kissed and pulled about
by him, even if she hates him and loathes him. Well, all this filthy
Yoshiwara and all those poor girls and all that dirty money belongs to
these Fujinami and to you. That is why they are so rich, and that is
why we have been so rich. If we were in England, we could be flogged
for this, and imprisoned, and serve us right too. And all this money
is bad; and, if we keep it, we are worse than criminals; and neither
of us can ever be happy, or look any one in the face again."

Asako was shaking her head gently like an automaton, understanding
not a word of all this outburst. Her mind was on one thing only, her
husband's infidelity. His mind was on one thing only, the shame of
his wife's money. They were like card-players who concentrate their
attention exclusively on the cards in their own hands, oblivious to
what their partners or opponents may hold.

Asako remaining silent, Mr. Ito began to speak. His voice seemed more
squeaky than ever.

"Captain Barrington," he said, "I am very sorry for you. But you
see now true condition of things. You must remember you are English
gentleman. Mrs. Barrington wishes not to return to you. She has been
told that you make misconduct with Miss Smith at Kamakura, and again
at Chuzenji. Miss Smith herself says so. Mrs. Harrington thinks this
story must be true; or Miss Smith do not tell so bad story about
herself. We think she is quite right--"

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