Kimono Part 14

Geoffrey could only think of the vivid gentleman, who had been talking with Tanaka. The guide was sent for and questioned, but he knew nothing. The gentleman in green had merely stopped to ask him the time.

CHAPTER VIII

THE HALF-CASTE GIRL

_Tomarite mo Tsubasa wa ugoku Kocho kana!_

Little b.u.t.terfly!

Even when it settles Its wings are moving.

Next morning it was snowing and bitterly cold. Snow in j.a.pan, snow in April, snow upon the cherry trees, what hospitality was this?

The snow fell all day, m.u.f.fling the silent city. Silence is at all times one of Tokyo's characteristics. For so large and important a metropolis it is strangely silent always. The only continuous street noise is the grating and crackling of the trams. The lumbering of horse vehicles and the pulsation of motor traffic are absent; for as beasts of burden horses are more costly than men, and in 1914 motor cars were still a novelty. Since the war boom, of course, every _narikin (nouveau riche)_ has rushed to buy his car; but even so, the state of the roads, which alternate between boulders and slush, do not encourage the motorist, and are impa.s.sable for heavy lorries. So incredible weights and bundles are moved on hand-barrows; and bales of goods and stacks of produce are punted down the dark waterways which give to parts of Tokyo a Venetian picturesqueness. Pa.s.sengers, too proud to walk, flit past noiselessly in rubber-tyred rickshaws--which are not, as many believe, an ancient and typical Oriental conveyance, but the modern invention of an English missionary called Robinson.

The hum of the city is dominated by the screech of the tramcars in the princ.i.p.al streets and by the patter of the wooden clogs, an incessant, irritating sound like rain. But these were now hushed by the snow.

Neither the snow nor the other of Nature's discouragements can keep the j.a.panese for long indoors. Perhaps it is because their own houses are so draughty and uncomfortable.

This day they were out in their thousands, men and women, drifting aimlessly along the pavements, as is their wont, wrapped in grey ulsters, their necks protected by ragged furs, pathetic spoils of domestic tabbies, and their heads sheltered under those wide oil-paper umbrellas, which have become a symbol of j.a.pan in foreign eyes, the gigantic sunflowers of rainy weather, huge blooms of dark blue or black or orange, inscribed with the name and address of the owner in cursive j.a.panese script.

Most of these people are wearing _ashida_, high wooden clogs perilous to the balance, which raise them as on stilts above the street level and add to the fantastical appearance of these silent shuffling mult.i.tudes.

The snow falls, covering the city's meannesses, its vulgar apings of Americanisms, its crude advertis.e.m.e.nts. On the other hand, the true native architecture a.s.serts itself, and becomes more than ever attractive. The white purity seems to gather all this miniature perfection, these irregular roofs, these chalet balconies, these broad walls and studies in rock and tree under a close-fitting cape, its natural winter garment.

The first chill of the rough weather kept Geoffrey and Asako by their fireside. But the indoor amenities of j.a.panese hotel life are few.

There is a staleness in the public rooms and an angular discord in the private sitting-rooms, which condemn the idea of a comfortable day of reading, or of writing to friends at home about the Spirit of the East. So at the end of the first half of a desolate afternoon, a visit to the Emba.s.sy suggested itself.

They left the hotel, ushered on their way by bowing _boy sans_; and in a few minutes an unsteady motor-car, careless of obstacles and side-slips, had whirled them through the slushy streets into the British compound, which only wanted a robin to look like the conventional Christmas card.

It was a pleasant shock, after long traveling through countries modernized in a hurry, to be received by an English butler against a background of thick Turkey carpet, mahogany hall table and Buhl clock.

It was like a bar of music long-forgotten to see the fall of snowy white cards acc.u.mulating in their silver bowl.

Lady Cynthia Cairns's drawing-room was not an artistic apartment; it was too comfortable for that. There were too many chairs and sofas; and they were designed on broad lines for the stolid, permanent sitting of stout, comfortable bodies. There were too many photographs on view of persons distinguished for their solidity rather than for their good looks, the portraits of the guests whom one would expect to find installed in those chairs. A grand piano was there; but the absence of any music in its neighbourhood indicated that its purpose was chiefly to symbolize harmony in the home life, and to provide a s.p.a.cious crush-room for the knick-knacks overflowing from many tables.

These were dominated by a large signed photograph of Queen Victoria.

In front of an open fireplace, where bright logs were crackling, slept an enormous black cat on a leopard's skin hearthrug.

Out of this sea of easy circ.u.mstances rose Lady Cynthia. A daughter of the famous Earl of Cheviot, hers was a short but not unmajestic figure, encased in black silks which rustled and showed flashes of beads and jet in the dancing light of the fire. She had the firm pose of a man, and a face entirely masculine with strong lips and chin and humourous grey eyes, the face of a judge.

Miss Gwendolen Cairns, who had apparently been reading to her mother when the visitors arrived, was a tall girl with fair _cendre_ hair.

The simplicity of the cut of her dress and its pale green color showed artistic sympathies of the old aesthetic kind. The maintained amiability of her expression and manner indicated her life's task of smoothing down feelings ruffled by her mother's asperities, and of oiling the track of her father's career.

"How are you, my dears?" Lady Cynthia was saying. "I'm so glad you've come in spite of the tempest. Gwendolen was just reading me to sleep.

Do you ever read to your husband, Mrs. Barrington? It is a good idea, if only your voice is sufficiently monotonous."

"I hope we haven't interrupted you," murmured Asako, who was rather alarmed at the great lady's manner.

"It was a shock when I heard the bell ring. I cried out in my sleep--didn't I, Gwendolen?--and said, 'It's the Beebees!'"

"I'm glad it wasn't as bad as all that," said Geoffrey, coming to his wife's rescue; "would that have been the worst that could possibly happen?"

"The very worst," Lady Cynthia answered. "Professor Beebee teaches something or other to the j.a.panese, and he and Mrs. Beebee have lived in j.a.pan for the last forty years. They remind me of that old tortoise at the Zoo, who has lived at the bottom of the sea for so many centuries that he is quite covered with seaweed and barnacles. But they are very sorry for me, because I only came here yesterday. They arrive almost every day to instruct me in the path in which I should go, and to eat my cakes by the dozen. They don't have any dinner the days they come here for tea. Mrs. Beebee is the Queen of the Goonies."

"Who are the Goonies?" asked Geoffrey.

"The rest of the old tortoises. They are missionaries and professors and their wives and daughters. The sons, of course, run away and go to the bad. There are quite a lot of the Goonies, and I see much more of them than I do of the _geishas_ and the _samurais_ and the _harakiris_ and all the Eastern things, which Gwendolen will talk about when she gets home. She is going to write a book, poor girl. There's nothing else to do in this country except to write about what is not here.

It's very easy, you know. You copy it all out of some one else's book, only you ill.u.s.trate it with your own snapshots. The publishers say that there is a small but steady demand, chiefly for circulating libraries in America. You see, I have been approached already on the subject, and I have not been here many months. So you've seen Reggie Forsyth already, he tells me. What do you think of him?"

"Much the same as usual; he seemed rather bored."

Lady Cynthia had led her guest away from the fireside, where Gwendolen Cairns was burbling to Asako.

Geoffrey could feel the searchlight of her judicial eye upon him, and a sensation like the pause when a great man enters a room. Something essential was going to invade the commonplace talk.

"Captain Barrington, your coming here just now is most providential.

Reggie Forsyth is not bored at all, far from it."

"I thought he would like the country," said Geoffrey guardedly.

"He doesn't like the country. Why should he? But he likes somebody in the country. Now do you understand?"

"Yes," agreed Geoffrey, "he showed me the photograph of a half j.a.panese girl. He said that she was his inspiration for local colour."

"Exactly, and she's turning his brain yellow," snapped Lady Cynthia, forgetting, as everybody else did, including Geoffrey himself, that the same criticism might apply to Asako. However, Geoffrey was becoming more sensitive of late. He blushed a little and fidgeted, but he answered,--

"Reggie has always been easily inflammable."

"Oh, in England, perhaps, it's good for a boy's education; but out here, Captain Barrington, it is different. I have lived for a long time East of Suez; and I know the danger of these love episodes in countries where there is nothing else to do, nothing else to talk about. I am a gossip myself; so I know the harm gossip can do."

"But is it so serious, Lady Cynthia? Reggie rather laughed about it to me. He said, 'I am in love always--and never!'"

"She is a dangerous young lady," said the Amba.s.sadress. "Two years ago a young business man out here was engaged to be married to her. In the autumn his body was washed ash.o.r.e near Yokohama. He had been bathing imprudently, and yet he was a good swimmer Last year two officers attached to the Emba.s.sy fought a duel, and one was badly wounded. It was turned into an accident of course; but they were both admirers of hers. This year it is Reggie's turn. And Reggie is a man with a great future. It would be a shame to lose him."

"Lady Cynthia, aren't you being rather pessimistic? Besides, what can I do?"

"Anything, everything! Eat with him, drink with him, play cards with him, go to the dogs with him--no, what a pity you are married! But, even so, it's better than nothing. Play tennis with him; take him to the top of Fujiyama. I can do nothing with him. He flouts me publicly.

The old man can give him an official scolding; and Reginald will just mimic him for the benefit of the Chancery. I can hear them laughing all the way from here when Reggie is doing what he calls one of his 'stunts'. But you--why, he can see in your face the whole of London, the London which he respects and appreciates in spite of his cosmopolitan airs. He can see himself introducing Miss Yae Smith in Lady Everington's drawing-room as Mrs. Forsyth."

"Is there a great objection?" asked Geoffrey.

"It is impossible," said Lady Cynthia.

A sudden weariness came over Geoffrey. Did that ruthless "Impossible"