Kimono by John Paris

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That evening, when Lady Everington met Geoffrey at the theatre, she
took him severely to task for treachery, secrecy and decadence. He,
was very humble and admitted all his faults except the last, pleading
as his excuse that he could not get Asako out of his head.

"Yes, that is a symptom," said her Ladyship; "you are clearly
stricken. So I fear I am too late to effect a rescue. All I can do
is to congratulate you both. But, remember, a wife is not nearly so
fugitive as a melody, unless she is the wrong kind of wife."

It was a wrench for the little lady to part with the oldest of
her friendships, and to give up her Geoffrey to the care of this
decorative stranger whose qualities were unknown, and undeveloped. But
she knew what the answer would be at the end of the fortnight. So she
steeled her nerves to laugh at her friends commiserations and to make
the marriage of her godchildren one of the season's successes. It
would certainly be an interesting addition to her museum of domestic
dramas.

* * * * *

There was one person whom Lady Everington was determined to pump for
information on that wedding-day, and had drawn into the net of her
invitations for this very purpose. It was Count Saito, the Japanese
Ambassador.

She cornered him as he was admiring the presents, and whisked him away
to the silence and twilight of her husband's study.

"I am so glad you were able to come, Count Saito," she began. "I
suppose you know the Fujinamis, Asako's relatives in Tokyo?"

"No, I do not know them." His Excellency answered, but his tone
conveyed to the lady's instinct that he personally would not wish to
know them.

"But you know the name, do you not?"

"Yes, I have heard the name; there are many families called Fujinami
in Japan."

"Are they very rich?"

"Yes, I believe there are some who are very rich," said the little
diplomat, who clearly was ill at ease.

"Where does their money come from?" his inquisitor went on
remorselessly, "You are keeping something from me, Count Saito. Please
be frank, if there is any mystery."

"Oh no, Lady Everington, there is no mystery, I am sure. There is one
family of Fujinami who have many houses and lands in Tokyo and other
towns. I will be quite open with you. They are rather what you in
England call _nouveaux riches_."

"Really!" Her Ladyship was taken aback for a moment. "But you would
never notice it with Asako, would you? I mean, she does not drop her
Japanese aitches, and that sort of thing, does she?"

"Oh no," Count Saito reassured her, "I do not think Mademoiselle Asako
talks Japanese language, so she cannot drop her aitches."

"I never thought of that," his hostess continued, "I thought that if a
Japanese had money, he must be a _daimyo_, or something."

The Ambassador smiled.

"English people," he said, "do not know very well the true condition
of Japan. Of course we have our rich new families and our poor old
families just as you have in England. In some aspects our society is
just the same as yours. In others, it is so, different, that you would
lose your way at once in a maze of ideas which would seem to you quite
upside down."

Lady Everington interrupted his reflections in a desperate attempt to
get something out of him by a surprise attack.

"How interesting," she said, "it will be for Geoffrey Harrington and
his wife to visit Japan and find out all about it."

The Ambassador's manner changed.

"No, I do not think," he said, "I do not think that is a good thing at
all. They must not do that. You must not let them."

"But why not?"

"I say to all Japanese men and women who live a long time in foreign
countries or who marry foreign people, 'Do not go back to Japan,'
Japan is like a little pot and the foreign world is like a big garden.
If you plant a tree from the pot into the garden and let it grow, you
cannot put it back into the pot again."

"But, in this case, that is not the only reason," objected Lady
Everington.

"No, there are many other reasons too," the Ambassador admitted; and
he rose from his sofa, indicating that the interview was at an end.

* * * * *

The bridal pair left in a motor-car for Folkestone tinder a hailstorm
of rice, and with the propitious white slipper dangling from the
number-plate behind.

When all her guests were gone, Lady Everington fled to her boudoir and
collapsed in a little heap of sobbing finery on the broad divan. She
was overtired, no doubt; but the sense of her mistake lay heavy upon
her, and the feeling that she had sacrificed to it her best friend,
the most humanly valuable of all the people who resorted to her house.
An evil cloud of mystery hung over the young marriage, one of those
sinister unfamiliar forces which travellers bring home from the East,
the curse of a god or a secret poison or a hideous disease.

It would be so natural for those two to want to visit Japan and to
know their second home. Yet both Sir Ralph Cairns and Count Saito, the
only two men that day who knew anything about the real conditions,
had insisted that such a visit would be fatal. And who were these
Fujinamis whom Count Saito knew, but did not know? Why had she, who
was so socially careful, taken so much for granted just because Asako
was a Japanese?

CHAPTER II

HONEYMOON

_Asa no kami
Ware wa kezuraji
Utsukushiki
Kimi ga ta-makura
Fureteshi mono wo._

(My) morning sleep hair
I will not comb;
For it has been in contact with
The pillowing hand of
My beautiful Lord!

The Barringtons left England for a prolonged honeymoon, for Geoffrey
was now free to realise his favourite project of travelling abroad.
So they became numbered among that shoal of English people out of
England, who move restless leisure between Paris and the Nile.

Geoffrey had resigned his commission in the army. His friends thought
that this was a mistake. For the loss of a man's career, even when it
is uncongenial to him, is a serious amputation, and entails a lesion
of spiritual blood. He had refused his father's suggestion of settling
down in a house on the Brandan estate, for Lord Brandan was an
unpleasing old gentleman, a frequenter of country bars and country
barmaids. His son wished to keep his young bride as far away as
possible from a spectacle of which he was heartily ashamed.

First of all they went to Paris, which Asako adored; for was it not
her home? But this time she made the acquaintance of a Paris unknown
to her, save by rumour, in the convent days or within the discreet
precincts of Monsieur Murata's villa. She was enchanted by the
theatres, the shops, the restaurants, the music, and the life which
danced around her. She wanted to rent an _appartement_, and to live
there for the rest of her existence.

"But the season is almost over," said her husband; "everybody will be
leaving."

Unaccustomed as yet to his freedom, he still felt constrained to do
the same as Everybody.

Before leaving Paris, they paid a visit to the Auteuil villa, which
had been Asako's home for so many years.

Murata was the manager of a big Japanese firm in Paris. He had spent
almost all his life abroad and the last twenty years of it in the
French capital, so that even in appearance, except for his short
stature and his tilted eyes, he had come to look like a Frenchman with
his beard _a l'imperiale_, and his quick bird-like gestures. His wife
was a Japanese, but she too had lost almost all traces of her native
mannerisms.

Asako Fujinami had been brought to Paris by her father, who had died
there while still a young man. He had entrusted his only child to the
care of the Muratas with instructions that she should be educated in
European ways and ideas, that she should hold no communication with
her relatives in Japan, and that eventually a white husband should be
provided for her. He had left his whole fortune in trust for her, and
the interest was forwarded regularly to M. Murata by a Tokyo lawyer,
to be used for her benefit as her guardian might deem best. This money
was to be the only tie between Asako and her native land.

To cut off a child from its family, of which by virtue of vested
interests it must still be an important member, was a proceeding
so revolutionary to all respectable Japanese ideas that even the
enlightened Murata demurred. In Japan the individual counts for
so little, the family for so much. But Fujinami had insisted, and
disobedience to a man's dying wish brings the curse of a "rough ghost"
upon the recalcitrant, and all kinds of evil consequences.

So the Muratas took Asako and cherished her as much as their hearts,
withered by exile and by unnatural living, were capable of
cherishing anything. She became a daughter of the well-to-do French
_bourgeoisie_, strictly but affectionately disciplined with the proper
restraints on the natural growth of her brain and individuality.

Geoffrey Barrington was not very favourably impressed by the Murata
household. He wondered how so bright a little flower as Asako could
have been reared in such gloomy surroundings. The spirits dominant in
the villa were respectable economy and slavish imitation of the tastes
and habits of Parisian friends. The living-rooms were as impersonal as
the rooms of a boarding-house. Neutral tints abounded, ugly browns
and nightmare vegetable patterns on carpets, furniture and wallpapers.
There was a marked tendency towards covers, covers for the chairs
and sofas, tablecloths and covers for the tablecloths, covers for
cushion-covers, antimacassars, lamp-stands, vase-stands and every kind
of decorative duster. Everywhere the thick smell of concealed grime
told of insufficient servants and ineffective sweeping. There was not
one ornament or picture which recalled Japan, or gave a clue to the
personal tastes of the owners.

Geoffrey had expected to be the nervous witness of an affecting scene
between his wife and her adopted parents. But no, the greetings were
polite and formal. Asako's frock and jewellery were admired, but
without that note of angry envy which often brightens the dullest talk
between ladies in England. Then, they sat down to an atrocious lunch
eaten in complete silence.

When the meal was over, Murata drew Geoffrey aside into his shingly
garden.

"I think that you will be content with our Asa San," he said; "the
character is still plastic. In England it is different; but in France
and in Japan we say it is the husband who must make the character of
his wife. She is the plain white paper; let him take his brush and
write on it what he will. Asa San is a very sweet girl. She is very
easy to manage. She has a beautiful disposition. She does not tell
lies without reason. She does not wish to make strange friends. I do
not think you will have trouble with her."

"He talks about her rather as if she were a horse," thought Geoffrey.
Murata went on,--

"The Japanese woman is the ivy which clings to the tree. She does not
wish to disobey."

"You think Asako is still very Japanese, then?" asked Geoffrey.

"Not her manners, or her looks, or even her thoughts," replied Murata,
"but nothing can change the heart."

"Then do you think she is homesick sometimes for Japan?" said her
husband.

"Oh no," smiled Murata. The little wizened man was full of smiles.
"She left Japan when she was not two years old. She remembers nothing
at all."

"I think one day we shall go to Japan," said Geoffrey, "when we get
tired of Europe, you know. It is a wonderful country, I am told;
and it does not seem right that Asako should know nothing about it.
Besides, I should like to look into her affairs and find out about her
investments."

Murata was staring at his yellow boots with an embarrassed air. It
suddenly struck the Englishman that he, Geoffrey Harrington, was
related to people who looked like that, and who now had the right to
call him cousin. He shivered.

"You can trust her lawyers," said the Japanese, "Mr. Ito is an old
friend of mine. You may be quite certain that Asako's money is safe."

"Oh yes, of course," assented Geoffrey, "but what exactly are her
investments? I think I ought to know."

Murata began to laugh nervously, as all Japanese do when embarrassed.

"_Mon Dieu_!" he exclaimed, "but I do not know myself. The money has
been paid regularly for nearly twenty years; and I know the Fujinami
are very rich. Indeed, Captain Barrington, I do not think Asako would
like Japan. It was her father's last wish that she should never return
there."

"But why?" asked Geoffrey. He felt that Murata was keeping something
from him. The little man answered,--

"He thought that for a woman the life is more happy in Europe; he
wished Asako to forget altogether that she was Japanese."

"Yes, but now she is married and her future is fixed. She is not going
back permanently to Japan, but just to see the country. I think we
would both of us like to. People say it is a magnificent country."

"You are very kind," said Murata, "to speak so of my country. But the
foreign people who marry Japanese are happy if they stay in their own
country, and Japanese who marry foreigners are happy if they go away
from Japan. But if they stay in Japan they are not happy. The national
atmosphere in Japan is too strong for those people who are not
Japanese or are only half Japanese. They fade. Besides life in Japan
is very poor and rough. I do not like it myself."

Somehow Geoffrey could not accept these as being the real reasons. He
had never had a long talk with a Japanese man before; but he felt that
if they were all like that, so formal, so unnatural, so secretive,
then he had better keep out of the range of Asako's relatives.

He wondered what his wife really thought of the Muratas, and during
the return to their hotel, he asked,--

"Well, little girl, do you want to go back again and live at Auteuil?"

She shook her head.

"But it is nice to think you have always got an extra home in Paris,
isn't it?" he went on, fishing for an avowal that home was in his arms
only, a kind of conversation which was the wine of life to him at that
period.

"No," she answered with a little shudder, "I don't call that home."

Geoffrey's conventionality was a little bit shocked at this lack
of affection; he was also disappointed at not getting exactly the
expected answer.

"Why, what was wrong with it?" he asked.

"Oh, it was not pretty or comfortable," she said, "they were so afraid
to spend money. When I wash my hands, they say, 'Do not use too much
soap; it is waste.'"

* * * * *

Asako was like a little prisoner released into the sunlight. She
dreaded the idea of being thrust back into darkness again.

In this new life of hers anything would have made her happy, that is
to say, anything new, anything given to her, anything good to eat or
drink, anything soft and shimmery to wear, anything--so long as her
big husband was with her. He was the most fascinating of all her
novelties. He was much nicer than Lady Everington; for he was not
always saying, "Don't," or making clever remarks, which she could not
understand. He gave her absolutely her own way, and everything that
she admired. He reminded her of an old Newfoundland dog who had been
her slave when she was a little girl.

He used to play with her as he would have played with a child,
watching her as she tried on her finery, hiding things for her to
find, holding them over her head and making her jump for them like
a puppy, arranging her ornaments for her in those continual private
exhibitions which took up so much of her time. Then she would ring the
bell and summon all the chambermaids within call to come and admire;
and Geoffrey would stand among all these womenfolk, listening to the
chorus of "_Mon Dieu!_" and "_Ah, que c'est beau!_" and "_Ah, qu'elle
est gentille!_" like some Hector who had strayed into the _gynaeceum_
of Priam's palace. He felt a little foolish, perhaps, but very happy,
happy in his wife's naive happiness and affection, which did not
require any mental effort to understand, nor that panting pursuit
on which he had embarked more than once in order to keep up with the
witty flirtatiousness of some of the beauties of Lady Everington's
_salon_.

Happiness shone out of Asako like light. But would she always be
happy? There were the possibilities of the future to be reckoned
with, sickness, childbirth, and the rearing of children, the hidden
development of the character which so often grows away from what
it once cherished, the baleful currents of outside influences, the
attraction and repulsion of so-called friends and enemies all of which
complicate the primitive simplicity of married life and forfeit the
honeymoon Eden. Adam and Eve in the garden of the Creation can hear
the voice of God whispering in the evening breeze; they can live
without jars and ambitions, without suspicion and without reproaches.
They have no parents, no parents-in-law, no brothers, sisters,
aunts, or guardians, no friends to lay the train of scandal or to
be continually pulling them from each other's arms. But the first
influence which crosses the walls of their paradise, the first being
to whom they speak, which possesses the semblance of a human voice,
is most certainly Satan and that Old Serpent, who was a liar and a
slanderer from the beginning, and whose counsels will lead inevitably
to the withdrawal of God's presence and to the doom of a life of pain
and labor.

There was one cloud in the heaven of their happiness. Geoffrey was
inclined to tease Asako about her native country. His ideas about
Japan were gleaned chiefly from musical comedies. He would call his
wife Yum Yum and Pitti Sing. He would fix the end of one of her black
veils under his hat, and would ask her whether she liked him better
with a pigtail.

"Captain Geoffrey," she would complain, "it is the Chinese who wear
the pigtail; they are a very savage people."

Then he would call her his little _geisha_, and this she resented;
for she knew from the Muratas that _geisha_ were bad women who took
husbands away from their wives, and that was no joking matter.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed Geoffrey, taken aback by this sudden
reproof: "they are dear little things like you, darling, and they
bring you tea and wave fans behind your head, and I would like to have
twenty of them--to wait upon you!"

He would tease her about a supposed fondness for rice, for
chop-sticks, for paper umbrellas and _jiujitsu._ She liked him to
tease her, just as a child likes to be teased, while all the time
on the verge of tears. With Asako, tears and laughter were never far
apart.

"Why do you tease me because I am Japanese?" she would sob; "besides,
I'm not really. I can't help it. I can't help it!"

"But, sweetheart," her Captain Geoffrey would say, suddenly ashamed
of his elephantine humour, "there's nothing to cry about. I would be
proud to be a Japanese. They are jolly brave people. They gave the
Russians a jolly good hiding."

It made her feel well to hear him praise her people, but she would
say:

"No, no, they're not. I don't want to be a Jap. I don't like them.
They're ugly and spiteful. Why can't we choose what we are? I would be
an English girl--or perhaps French," she added, thinking of the Rue de
la Paix.

* * * * *

They left Paris and went to Deauville; and here it was that the
serpent first crawled into Eden, whispering of forbidden fruit.
These serpents were charming people, amusing men and smart women, all
anxious to make the acquaintance of the latest sensation, the Japanese
millionairess and her good-looking husband.

Asako lunched with them and dined with them and sat with them near the
sea in wonderful bathing costumes which it would be a shame to wet.
Conscious of the shortcomings of her figure as compared with those
of the lissom mermaids who surrounded her, Asako returned to kimonos,
much to her husband's surprise; and the mermaids had to confess
themselves beaten.

She listened to their talk and learned a hundred things, but another
hundred at least remained hidden from her.

Geoffrey left his wife to amuse herself in the cosmopolitan society of
the French watering-place. He wanted this. All the wives whom he
had ever known seemed to enjoy themselves best when away from their
husbands' company. He did not quite trust the spirit of mutual
adoration, which the gods had given to him and his bride. Perhaps it
was an unhealthy symptom. Worse still, it might be Bad Form. He wanted
Asako to be natural and to enjoy herself, and not to make their love
into a prison house.

But he felt a bit lonely when he was away from her. Occupation did not
seem to come easily to him as it did when she was there to suggest it.
Sometimes he would loaf up and down on the esplanade; and sometimes he
would take strenuous swims in the sea. He became the prey of the bores
who haunt every seaside place at home and abroad, lurking for lonely
and polite people upon whom they may unload their conversation.

All these people seemed either to have been in Japan themselves or to
have friends and relations who knew the country thoroughly.

A wonderful land, they assured him. The nation of the future, the
Garden of the East, but of course Captain Barrington knew Japan
well. No, he had never been there? Ah, but Mrs. Barrington must have
described it all to him. Impossible! Really? Not since she was a baby?
How very extraordinary! A charming country, so quaint, so original,
so picturesque, such a place to relax in; and then the Japanese girls,
the little _mousmes_, in their bright kimonos, who came fluttering
round like little butterflies, who were so gentle and soft and
grateful; but there! Captain Barrington was a married man, that was no
affair of his. Ha! Ha!

The elderly _roues_, who buzzed like February flies in the sunshine
of Deauville, seemed to have particularly fruity memories of tea-house
sprees and oriental philanderings under the cherry-blossoms of
Yokohama. Evidently, Japan was just like the musical comedies.

Geoffrey began to be ashamed of his ignorance concerning his wife's
native country. Somebody had asked him, what exactly _bushido_ was. He
had answered at random that it was made of rice and curry powder. By
the hilarious reception given to this explanation he knew that he must
have made a _gaffe_. So he asked one of the more erudite bores to give
him the names of the best books about Japan. He would "mug it up,"
and get some answers off pat to the leading questions. The erudite
one promptly lent him some volumes by Lafcadio Hearn and Pierre Loti's
_Madame Chrysantheme_. He read the novel first of all. Rather spicy,
wasn't it?

Asako found the book. It was an illustrated edition; and the little
drawings of Japanese scenes pleased her immensely, so that she began
to read the letter press.

"It is the story of a bad man and a bad woman," she said; "Geoffrey,
why do you read bad things? They bring bad conditions."

Geoffrey smiled. He was wondering whether the company of the
fictitious _Chrysantheme_ was more demoralizing than that of the
actual Mme. Laroche Meyerbeer, with whom his wife had been that day
for a picnic lunch.

"Besides, it isn't fair," his wife continued. "People read that book
and then they think that all Japanese girls are bad like that."

"Why, darling, I didn't think you had read it," Geoffrey expostulated,
"who has been telling you about it?"

"The Vicomte de Brie," Asako answered. "He called me _Chrysantheme_
and I asked him why."

"Oh, did he?" said Geoffrey. Really it was time to put an end to
lunch picnics and mermaidism. But Asako was so happy and so shiningly
innocent.

She returned to her circle of admirers, and Geoffrey to his studies of
the Far East. He read the Lafcadio Hearn books, and did not perceive
that he was taking opium. The wonderful sentences of that master of
prose poetry rise before the eyes in whorls of narcotic smoke. They
lull the brain as in a dream, and form themselves gradually into
visions of a land more beautiful than any land that has ever existed
anywhere, a country of vivid rice plains and sudden hills, of gracious
forests and red temple gateways, of wise priests and folk-lore
imagery, of a simple-hearted smiling people with children bright as
flowers laughing and playing in unfailing sunlight, a country where
everything is kind, gentle, small, neat, artistic, and spotlessly
clean, where men become gods not by sudden apotheosis but by the easy
processes of nature, a country, in short, which is the reverse of our
own poor vexed continent where the monstrous and the hideous multiply
daily.

One afternoon Geoffrey was lounging on the terrace of the hotel
reading _Kokoro_, when his attention was attracted by the arrival of
Mme. Laroche Meyerbeer's motor-car with Asako, her hostess and another
woman embedded in its depths. Asako was the first to leap out. She
went up to her apartment without looking to right or left, and before
her husband had time to reach her. Mme. Meyerbeer watched this arrow
flight and shrugged her shoulders before lazily alighting.

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