Kimono Part 15

apply to his case also? Would Lady Everington's door be closed to him on his return? Was he guilty of that worst offence against Good Form, a _mesalliance_? Or was Asako saved--by her money? Something unfair was impending. He looked at the two girls seated by the fireside, sipping their tea and laughing together. He must have shown signs of his embarra.s.sment, for Lady Cynthia said,--

"Don't be absurd, Captain Barrington. The case is entirely different.

A lady is always a lady, whether she is born in England or j.a.pan. Miss Smith is not a lady; still worse, she is a half-caste, the daughter of an adventurer journalist and a tea-house woman. What can one expect?

It is bad blood."

After taking leave of the Cairns, Geoffrey and Asako crossed the garden compound, white and Christmas-like under its covering of snow. They found their way down the by-path which led to the discreet seclusion of Reggie Forsyth's domain. The leaping of fire shadows against the lowered blinds gave a warm and welcoming impression of shelter and comfort; and still more welcoming were the sounds of the piano. It was a pleasure for the travellers to hear, for they had long been unaccustomed to the sound of music. Music should be the voice of the soul of the house; in the discord of hotels it is lost and scattered, but the home which is without music is dumb and imperfect.

Reggie must have heard them coming, for he changed the dreamy melody which he was playing into the chorus of a popular song which had been rife in London a year ago. Geoffrey laughed. "Father's home again!

Father's home again!" he hummed, fitting the words to the tune, as he waited for the door to open.

They were greeted in the pa.s.sage by Reggie. He was dressed in all respects like a j.a.panese gentleman, in black silk _haori_ (cloak), brown wadded kimono and fluted _hakama_ (skirt). He wore white _tabi_ (socks) and straw _zori_ (slippers). It is a becoming and sensible dress for any man.

"I thought it must be you," he laughed, "so I played the watchword.

Fancy you're being so homesick already. Please come in, Mrs.

Harrington. I have often longed to see you in j.a.pan, but I never thought you would come; and let me take your coat off. You will find it quite warm indoors."

It was warm indeed. There was the heat of a green-house in Reggie's artistically ordered room. It was larger too than on the occasion of Geoffrey's visit; for the folding doors which led into a further apartment were thrown open. Two big fires were blazing; and old gold screens, glittering like Midas's treasury, warded off the draught from the windows. The air was heavy with fumes of incense still rising from a huge bra.s.s brazier, full of glowing charcoal and grey sand, placed in the middle of the floor. In one corner stood the Buddha table twinkling in the firelight. The miniature trees were disposed along the inner wall. There was no other furniture except an enormous black cushion lying between the brazier and the fireplace; and in the middle of the cushion--a little j.a.panese girl.

She was squatting on her white-gloved toes in native fashion. Her kimono was sapphire blue, and it was fastened by a huge silver sash with a blue and green peac.o.c.k embroidered on the fold of the bow, which looked like great wings and was almost as big as the rest of the little person put together. Her back was turned to the guests; and she was gazing into the flames in an att.i.tude of reverie. She seemed unconscious of everything, as though still listening to the echo of the silent music. Reggie in his haste to greet his visitors had not noticed the hurried solicitude to arrange the set of the kimono to a nicety in order to indicate exactly the right pose.

She looked like a jeweled b.u.t.terfly on a great black leaf.

"Yae--Miss Smith," said Reggie, "these are my old friends whom I was telling you about."

The small creature rose slowly with a dreamy grace, and stepped off her cushion as a fairy might alight from her walnut-sh.e.l.l carriage.

"I am very pleased to meet you," she purred.

It was the stock American phrase which has crossed the Pacific westwards; but the citizen's brusqueness was replaced by the condescension of a queen.

Her face was a delicate oval of the same creamy smoothness as Asako's But the chin, which in Asako's case receded a trifle in obedience to j.a.panese canons of beauty, was thrust vigorously forward; and the curved lips in their Cupid's bow seemed moulded for kissing by generations of European pa.s.sions, whereas about j.a.panese mouths there is always something sullen and pinched and colourless. The bridge of her nose and her eyes of deep olive green, the eyes of a wildcat, gave the lie to her mother's race.

Reggie's artistry could not help watching the two women together with appreciative satisfaction. Yae was even smaller and finer-fingered than the pure-bred j.a.panese. Ever since he had first met Yae Smith he had compared and contrasted her in his mind with Asako Barrington. He had used both as models for his dainty music. His harmonies, he was wont to explain, came to him in woman's shape. To express j.a.pan he must see a j.a.panese woman. Not that he had any interest in j.a.panese women, physically. They are too different from our women, he used to think; and the difference repelled and fascinated him. It is so wide that it can only be crossed by frank sensuality or by blind imagination. But the artist needs his flesh-and-blood interpreter if he is to get even as far as a misunderstanding. So in figuring to himself the East, Reggie had at first made use of his memory of Asako, with her European education built up over the inheritance of j.a.pan.

Later he met Yae Smith, through the paper walls of whose j.a.panese existence the instincts of her Scottish forefathers kept forcing their unruly way.

Geoffrey could not define his thoughts so precisely; but something unruly stirred in his consciousness, when he saw the ghost of his days of courtship rise before him in the deep blue kimono. His wife had certainly made a great abdication when she abandoned her native dress for plain blue serges. Of course he could not have Asako looking like a doll; but still--had he fallen in love with a few yards of silk?

Yae Smith seemed most anxious to please in spite of the affectation of her poses, which perhaps were necessary to her, lest, looking so much like a plaything, she might be greeted as such. She always wanted to be liked by people. This was her leading characteristic. It was at the root of her frailties--a soil overfertilized from which weeds spring apace.

She was voluble in a gentle cat-like way, praising the rings on Asako's fingers, and the cut and material of her dress. But her eyes were forever glancing towards Geoffrey. He was so very tall and broad, standing in the framework of the folding doors beside the slim figure of Reggie, more girlish than ever in the skirts of his kimono.

Captain Barrington, the son of a lord! How fine he must look in uniform, in that cavalry uniform, with the silver cuira.s.s and the plumed helmet like the English soldiers in her father's books at home!

"Your husband is very big," she said to Asako.

"Yes, he is," said Asako; "much too big for j.a.pan."

"Oh, I should like that," said the little Eurasian, "it must be nice."

There was a warmth, a sincerity in the tone which made Asako stare at her companion. But the childish face was innocent and smiling.

The languid curve of the smile and the opalescence of the green eyes betrayed none of their secrets to Asako's inexperience.

Reggie sat down at the piano, and, still watching the two women, he began to play.

"This is the Yae Sonata," he explained to Geoffrey.

It began with some bars from an old Scottish song:

"Had we never loved so sadly, Had we never loved so madly, Never loved and never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted."

Insensibly the pathetic melody faded away into the _staccato_ beat of a _geisha's_ song, with more rhythm than tune, which doubled and redoubled its pace, stumbling and leaping up again over strange syncopations.

All of a sudden the musician stopped.

"I can't describe your wife, now that I see her," he said. "I don't know any dignified old j.a.panese music, something like the _gavottes_ of Couperin only in a setting of Kyoto and gold screens; and then there must be a dash of something very English which she has acquired from you--'Home, Sweet Home' or 'Sally in our Alley.'"

"Never mind, old chap!" said Geoffrey; "play 'Father's home again!'"

Reggie shook himself; and then struck up the rolling chorus; but, as he interpreted it, his mood turned pensive again. The tone was hushed, the time slower. The vulgar tune expressed itself suddenly in deep melancholy, It brought back to the two young men more forcibly than the most inspired _concerto_, the memory of England, the sparkle of the theatres, the street din of London, and the warmth of good company--all that had seemed sweet to them in a time which was distant now.

Reggie ceased playing. The two girls were sitting together now on the big black cushion in front of the fire. They were looking at a portfolio of j.a.panese prints, Reggie's embryo collection.

The young diplomat said to his friend:

"Geoffrey, you've not been in the East long enough to be exasperated by it. I have. So our ideas will not be in sympathy."

"It's not what I thought it was going to be, I must admit. Everything is so much of a muchness. If you've seen one temple you've seen the lot, and the same with everything here."

"That is the first stage, Disappointment. We have heard so much of the East and its splendours, the gorgeous East and the rest of it. The reality is small and sordid, and like so much that is ugly in our own country."

"Yes, they wear shocking bad clothes, don't they, directly they get out of kimonos; and even the kimonos look dingy and dirty."

"They are." said Reggie. "Yours would be, if you had to keep a wife and eight children on thirty shillings a month."

Then he added:

"The second stage in the observer's progress is Discovery. Have you read Lafcadio Hearn's books about j.a.pan?"

"Yes. some of them," answered Geoffrey. "It strikes me that he was a thorough-paced liar."

"No, he was a poet, a poet; and he jumped over the first stage to dwell for some time in the second, probably because he was by nature short-sighted. That is a great advantage for discoverers."

"But what do you mean by the second stage?"

"The stage of Discovery! Have you ever walked about a j.a.panese city in the twilight when the evening bell sounds from a hidden temple? Have you turned into the by-streets and watched the men returning to their wise little houses and the family groups a.s.sembled to meet them and help them change into their kimonos? Have you heard the splashing and the chatter of the bath-houses which are the evening clubs of the common people and the great clearing-houses of gossip? Have you heard the broken _samisen_ music tracking you down a street of _geisha_ houses? Have you seen the _geisha_ herself in her blue cloak sitting rigid and expressionless in the rickshaw which is carrying her off to meet her lover? Have you heard the drums of Priapus beating from the gay quarters? Have you watched the crowds which gather round a temple festival, buying queer little plants for their homes and farthing toys for their children, crowding to the fortune-teller's booth for news of good luck and bad luck, throwing their penny to the G.o.d and clapping their hands to attract his attention? Have you seen anything of this without a feeling of deep pleasure and a wonder as to how these people live and think, what we have got in common with them, and what we have got to learn from them?"

"I think I know what you mean," said Geoffrey. "It's all very picturesque, but they always seem to be hiding something."