Kimono Part 36

"And if I drown your fiancee? I don't know anything about sailing."

"I'll show you. It's very easy. Besides, Yae really knows more about it than I do."

So Geoffrey after a short lesson in steering, tacking, and the manipulation of the centreboard, piloted his host safely over to British Bay, the exclusive precinct of the temporary Emba.s.sy on the opposite sh.o.r.e of the lake. He then made his way round French Cape past Russia Cove to the wooden landing-stage of the Lakeside Hotel.

There he found Yae, sitting on a bench and throwing pebbles at the geese.

She wore the blue and white cotton kimono, which is the summer dress of j.a.panese women. It is a cheap garment, but most effective--so clean and cool in the hot weather. Silk kimonos soon become stale-looking; but this cotton dress always seems to be fresh from the laundry. A rope of imitation pearls was entwined in her dark hair; and her broad sash of deep blue was secured in front with an old Chinese ornament of jade.

"Oh, big captain," she cried, "I am so glad it is you. I heard you were coming."

She stepped into the boat, and took over the tiller and the command.

Geoffrey explained his friend's absence.

"The bad boy," she said, "he wants to get away from me in order to think about a lot of music. But I don't care!"

Under a steady wind they sheered through the water. On the right hand was Chuzenji village, a Swiss effect of brown chalets dwarfed to utter insignificance by the huge wooded mountain dome of Nantai San which rose behind it. On the left the forest was supreme already, except where in small clearings five or six houses, tenanted by foreign diplomats, stood out above the lake. A little farther on a Buddhist temple slumbered above a flight of broad stone steps. The sacred buildings were freshly lacquered, and red as a new toy. In front, on the slope of golden sand, its base bathed by the tiny waves, stood the _torii_, the wooden archway which is j.a.pan's universal religious symbol. Its message is that of the Wicket Gate in the Pilgrim's Progress. Wherever it is to be seen--and it is to be seen everywhere--it stands for the entering in of the Way, whether that way be "_Shinto_" (The Way of the G.o.ds), or "_Butsudo_" (The Way of the Buddhas), or "_Bushido_" (The Way of the Warriors).

There was plenty of breeze. The boat shot down the length of the lake at a delicious speed. The two voyagers reached at last a little harbour, Sh[=o]bu-ga-Hama--The Beach of the Lilies--a muddy sh.o.r.e with slimy rocks, a few brown cottages and a saw-mill.

"Let's go and see the waterfall," suggested Yae, "it's only a few minutes."

They walked together up a steep winding lane. The fresh air and the birch trees, the sight of real Alderney cows grazing on patches of real gra.s.s, the distant rumble of the cataract brought back to Geoffrey a feeling of strength and well-being to which he had for weeks been a stranger.

If only the real Asako had been with him instead of this enigmatic and disquieting image of her!

The j.a.panese, who have an innate love for natural beauty, never fail to mark an exceptional view with a little bench or shelter for travelers, whence they can obtain the best perspective. If sight-seers frequent the spot in any number, there will be an old dame _en guerite_ with her picture post-cards and her Ebisu Beer, her "Champagne Cider," her _sembei_ (round and salted biscuits) and her tale of the local legend.

"_Irra.s.shai! Irra.s.shai_;" she pipes. "Come, come, please rest a little!"

But the cascade above Sh[=o]bu-ga-Hama is only one among the thousand lesser waterfalls of this mountain country. It is honoured merely by an unsteady bench under a broken roof, and by a rope knotted round the trunk of a tall tree in mid-stream to indicate that the locality is an abode of spirits, and to warn pa.s.sers-by against inconsiderately offending the Undine.

Geoffrey and Yae were balancing themselves on the bench, gazing at the race of foam and at the burnished bracken. The Englishman was clearing his mind for action.

"Miss Smith," he began at last, "do you think you will be happy with Reggie?"

"He says so, big captain," answered the little half-caste, her mouth queerly twisted.

"Because if you are not happy, Reggie won't be happy; and if you are neither of you happy, you will be sorry that you married."!

"But we are not married yet," said the girl, "we are only engaged."

"But you will be married sometime, I suppose?"

"This year, next year, sometime, never!" laughed Yae. "It is nice to be engaged, and it is such a protection. When I am not engaged, all the old cats, Lady Cynthia and the rest, say that I flirt. Now when I am engaged, my fiance is here to shield me. Then they dare not say things, or it comes round to him, and he is angry. So I can do anything I like when I am engaged."

This was a new morality for Geoffrey. It knocked the text from under the sermon which he had been preparing. She was as preposterous as Reggie; but she was not, like him, conscious of her preposterousness.

"Then, when you are married, will you flirt?" asked her companion.

"I think so," said Yae gravely. "Besides, Reggie only wants me to dress me up and write music about me. If I am always the same like an English doll wife, he won't get many tunes to play. Reggie is like a girl."

"Reggie is too good for you," said the Englishman, roughly.

"I don't think so," said Yae, "I don't want Reggie, but Reggie wants me."

"What do you want then?"

"I want a great big man with arms and legs like a wrestler. A man who hunts lions. He will pick me up like you did at Kamakura, big captain, and throw me in the air and catch me again. And I will take him away from the woman he loves, so that he will hate me and beat me for it.

And when he sees on my back the marks of the whip and the blood he will love me again so strongly that he will become weak and silly like a baby. Then I will look after him and nurse him; and we will drink wine together. And we will go for long rides together on horseback in the moonlight galloping along the sands by the edge of the sea!"

Geoffrey was gazing at her with alarm. Was she going mad? The girl jumped up and laid her little hands on his shoulder.

"There, big captain," she cried, "don't be frightened. That is only one of Reggie's piano tunes. I never heard tunes like his before. He plays them, and then explains to me what each note means; and then he plays the tune again, and I can see the whole story. That is why I love him--sometimes!"

"Then you _do_ love him?" Geoffrey was clutching pathetically for anything which he could understand or appeal to in this elusive person.

"I love him," said Yae, pirouetting on her white toes near the edge of the chasm, "and I love you and I love any man who is worth loving!"

They returned to the lake in silence. Geoffrey's sermon was abortive.

This girl was altogether outside the circle of his code of Good Form.

He might as well preach vegetarianism to a leopard. Yet she fascinated him, as she fascinated all men who were not as dry as Aubrey Laking.

She was so pretty, so frail and so fearless. Life had not given her a fair chance; and she appealed to the chivalrous instinct in men, as well as to their less creditable pa.s.sions. She was such a b.u.t.terfly creature; and the flaring lamps of life had such a fatal attraction for her.

The wind was blowing straight against the harbour. The bay of Sh[=o]bu-ga-Hama was shallow water. Try as he might, Geoffrey could not manoeuvre the little yacht into the open waters of the lake.

"We are on a lee-sh.o.r.e," said Geoffrey.

At the end he had to get down and wade bare-legged, towing the boat after him until at last Yae announced that the centreboard had been lowered and that the boat was answering to the helm.

Geoffrey clambered in dripping. He shook himself like a big dog after a swim.

"Reggie could never have done that," said Yae, with fervent admiration. "He would be afraid of catching cold."

At last they reached the steps of the villa. They were both hungry.

"I am going to stop to lunch, big captain," said Yae, "Reggie won't be back."

"How do you know?"

"Because I saw Gwendolen Cairns listening last evening when he spoke to me through the big trumpet. She tells Lady Cynthia, and that means a lot of work next day for poor Reggie, so that he can't spend his time with me. You see! Oh, how I hate women!"

After lunch, at Chuzenji, all the world goes to sleep. It awakes at about four o'clock, when the white sails come gliding out of the green bays like swans. They greet, or avoid. They run side by side for the length of a puff of breeze. They coquet with one another like b.u.t.terflies; or they head for one of those hidden beaches which are the princ.i.p.al charm of the lake, where baskets are unpacked and cakes and sandwiches appear, where dry sticks are gathered for a rustic fire, and after an hour or more of anxious stoking the kettle boils.

"Of all the j.a.panese holiday places, Chuzenji is the most select and the most agreeable," Reggie Forsyth explained; "it is the only place in all j.a.pan where the foreigner is genuinely popular and respected.

He spends his money freely, he does not swear or scold. The woman-chasing, whisky-swilling type, who has disgraced us in the open ports, is unknown here. These native mountaineers are rough and uneducated savages, but they are honest and healthy. We feel on easy terms with them, as we do with our own peasantry. In the village street of Chuzenji I have seen a young English officer instructing the sons of boatmen and woodcutters in the mysteries of cricket."

In Chuzenji there are no j.a.panese visitors except the pilgrims who throng to the lake during the season for climbing the holy mountain of Nantai. These are country people, all of them, from villages all over j.a.pan, who have drawn lucky lots in the local pilgrimage club. One can recognize them at once by their dingy white clothes, like grave-clothes--men and women are garbed alike--by their straw mushroom hats, by the strip of straw matting strapped across their shoulders, and by the long wooden staves which they carry and which will be stamped with the seal of the mountain-shrine when they have reached the summit. These pilgrims are lodged free by the temple on the lake-side, in long sheds like cattle-byres.