Kent drifted into his daily routine quickly and easily. His Japanese clerk watched the papers for him, read over the headlines, and translated into queer, but fairly understandable English the articles which Kent called for. He had made friends with several Japanese newspapermen, keen, elderly men, always pleasantly ready to comment on and to amplify the news of the day, popular tendencies and drift of thought, and who often took pains to keep him informed of the spot news. Then he visited the departments, Foreign Office, Home Office, War and Navy departments, a rather tedious and not very remunerative procedure, interviewing second-rank officials, laboriously extracting formal information, always meeting the unfailing courtesy and polite blankness which makes the Japanese the hardest men to interview in the world. The highest officials, Ministers, for instance, might as a rule be interviewed only by submission of written questions. It seemed as if the human element, the touch of man to man, was constantly deliberately shrouded in an impenetrable veil of bureaucratic formalism. Was it instinctive passion for secrecy, suspicion of the foreigner in general, or merely the deadening influence of worship of official form? He could not make up his mind, but he wished it were possible to talk frankly and openly, with return in openness and frankness, and not always under the peculiar feeling of restraint, of necessity of being constantlyen guard, as if one were fencing with an adversary in the dark. They were always talking about frankness, about their desire forit, and yet he felt that it was always one-sided, that all the frankness came from the foreigner, but that for him there could be no penetrating through an impalpable wall of instinctive reserve, into the real, innermost thought of the Japanese.
Still, it was after all a pleasant life and, generally, an easy one. He concluded that Japanese reserve was racial, rather than consciously, deliberatively individual. And still there were times when they would be surprisingly frank, almost incredibly outspoken. Even about such a subject as the Imperial House they would sometimes, even officials, like young Kikuchi, speak in terms entirely democratic, as would an American, expressing carelessly ideas which he knew were well within the "dangerous thought" category of the police. It amazed Kent, left him a little at a loss as to how to reply, careful as he felt that he must be in such matters. At first he thought that the opinions were merely thrown out as bait, to draw him out, sound his views, but he soon concluded that this was not the case, that the spread of liberalism had extended far beyond the masses and was finding converts among the young aristocracy, even among some of its older men. Some of it was pose, he felt, the constant desire to show the foreigner that Japanese were as advanced in modern thought as was he, but at the same time he became convinced that substantially, generally, these men spoke truthfully, just what they thought.
He was speaking about it one morning at his office, to Kittrick, when the door opened noiselessly, and Terada appeared, drifted in, floated in rather, as if without movement. He had introduced himself a few weeks after Kent's arrival as an official of the police department, whose business it was to keep a watchful eye on foreigners, particularly correspondents. Since then he had come at intervals of a few weeks. Thedoor would open, and he would enter, soundlessly, almost apologetically. In his gray kimono, gray felt hat, he seemed like a sort of genii out of Arabian Nights; it was almost as if he materialized, a smoky, indefinite figure, mysteriously growing out of the empty space of the room. It was his habit to make some commonplace observation and then sit smoking, for ten minutes often, before he would make his next remark, also quite commonplace, about the weather, the cherry blossoms, anything. Thus he would sit for an hour at a time, a courteous, self-effacing gentleman, saying something entirely inconsequential; then smoking silently, thinking up his next triviality. But out of the dozen or score of remarks would always be one which Kent felt was the one that counted, the question which he evidently hoped would pass unnoticed among all the others. Who was going to be the new correspondent for thePost, what did he think of the action of the Cabinet on such and such a matter? There would come some more camouflage remarks, polite leave-taking, and he would vanish, dissolve, fade away, leaving Kent to wonder whether he had really managed to get any information that he had come for.
He made his usual remarks. Everything seemed to stop, while they waited for him to frame the next one. It became a bore. Kittrick's patience gave out.
"Do you really know so much about us foreigners, Terada-san?" he asked banteringly. "What do you really find out about us?"
"Oh, we know. You were at Ringo-san's tea house last Monday night, with Sato-san, but you only stayed till ten," he smiled sourly. "You got a new cook yesterday. Mr. Kent is to dine at Baron Saiki's to-morrow night."
He smoked for a while silently. Then he faded away.
"He's a queer bird," said Kent, as Terada disappeared. "I'm sure I don't see what he gets out of coming to me? His questions are too transparent, with the main one so carefully sandwiched in among all the rot that he so laboriously contrives. What does he do with it all, the back-door gossip that he gathers so painstakingly?"
"Oh, it all goes down in reports, I daresay, good, bad and indifferent," said Kittrick. "It is all stored away somewhere. It is all a part of their marvelously ramified secret service system, which they copied from Germany. It is a good system. On the whole, it is a good idea for the authorities to keep track of every one, foreign and Japanese, and I don't see why any one should object. The bad ones should be watched. The innocent ones shouldn't mind; in fact, they get protection from the others in that way. I know that some foreigners object to the detectives, but the police are usually polite. Old-timers who have detectives following them often make friends with them—you know they don't hide the fact that they are trailing you—and use them to buy railroad tickets, to help with the luggage; they are willing enough to act as kind of free couriers. Of course, there are some damned stupid officials who look on every foreigner as a potential spy, but much of the talk of newcomers about their being followed by detectives is buncombe. They like to think they are being shadowed. It gives them a sense of importance."
"Ishii-san, run out and get me a package of Golden Bats, please." Kent waited until the clerk had left the room. "I wanted to get him out of the way," he explained to Kittrick. "The fact is that I know positively that my desk is being systematically examined. I lock it; still I find things disarranged. I keep nothing of consequence in it, but it annoys me to have someone constantly going through my private letters, and I don't know who it can be."
"I don't think it is Ishii," said Kittrick. "I have reason to believe that he is a young man inclined to have 'dangerous thoughts.' That is one reason why I picked him out for you; so he wouldn't be a spy. It is far more likely to be your good landlord. I'm pretty certain that he is in Foreign Office pay. I have had several indications. Tokyo is full of them, people who get information for the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the police, the militarists. They are clerks, rickshaw men, business men, high and low, all kinds. You see, they not only copied the system, but they tried to elaborate on it. But all they got, as usual, was the form, but not the intelligence. They go through the motions of a secret service, but the whole thing is ramified in numberless useless ways. They dovetail and overlap and get all kinds of stupid information. I often wonder at what they do with all they get, all the stuff about my being at a tea house and getting a new cook and the like; but I think that it all goes down in reports, that many of them don't care much what they get, as long as they get something they can put in their reports, any old thing to fill the pages. And still, you know, from all the trash they must undoubtedly get something worth their while every now and then. At times you find evidences of really skillful and clever work. And after all, why should you or I care? They are discreet enough. Nothing comes out of what little foibles they may learn about. Probably they don't care. Remember that, as far as personal freedom is concerned, this is truly The Land of the Free, where no one gives a hang if you have a drink or kiss a pretty geisha behind theshoji."
"But how are they in business?" asked Kent. "Do they watch the stuff we send out?"
"I wish I knew. I think every correspondent wishes he knew," said Kittrick. "Sometimes I think a copy of every cable we send goes to the Foreign Office. There is no reason why it shouldn't; in fact, I can see no great objection. Still, I never knew them to interfere with our cables. I have sent stuff that I thought would be stopped; but it went through. At the time of the so-called 'serious affair,' when old Prince Yamagata tried to interfere with the engagement of the Crown Prince, and the whole nation was whispering about it, and the censors were working overtime to keep the thing quiet, I cabled the whole thing. Now, if they ever interfere, they would have done it then; but the cable went. I know most of us feel a bit suspicious, and once or twice old Kubota has quoted almost word by word cables which I had sent the day before. It may have been coincidence, but it is funny. It makes you wonder. In fact, you will find that most of the fellows send mail stuff that they want to be sure of, through friends who are going across to the States, but, frankly, I don't actually know how far we are being watched."
"By the way, I heard that you were going to dinner at the Saiki's," he added. "If he is a friend of yours, you will find him a good one."
Kent had hoped that the dinner at the Saiki's would be given in Japanese style, that he might thus have an opportunity to get a glimpse of the more intimate life in an aristocratic Japanese household, but the moment he and Karsten drove into the grounds, it was plain that he would be disappointed in this. The house was a large hybrid affair, with a foreign style section and another part purely native, weird and ungainly combinations which are becoming common in Tokyo and which do their share in degrading the architecture ofthe city. The Japanese part lay in semi-darkness, but the other wing was brilliantly lighted. Servants in foreign livery took their things, and they were ushered into a large drawing-room, furnished punctiliously in French fashion, almost too correct. One suspected immediately the hand of the professional decorator behind it all. There was even less to indicate Japan than is usual in foreign homes in Tokyo. The pictures, the bric-a-brac, all was European. A splendid cloisonné vase in a corner was the only bit characteristic of Japan; but then such a thing might be found in any drawing-room in Paris or London. At table it was the same,—a cocktail, then French courses, wines, decorations, served by servants in black and gold livery. The kimonos of some of the women, the high helmet-like coiffures of a few, served only to accentuate the European atmosphere: and then some of the younger women, even though they wore kimonos, dressed their hair in the foreign mode which was becoming fashionable in Tokyo, the hair arranged, in its natural softness, without the usual oily dressing, in soft rolls hiding the ears.
Kent found himself seated between Baroness Saiki and Miss Suzuki. Farther on sat young Kikuchi, then another Miss Suzuki, then Karsten, with Kikuchi's sister at his right. Among the others were Templeton of theExpressand Butterfield of theTimes. The rest were all Japanese officials and their wives.
Conversation was carried on in English and Japanese. The men were all fluent in English. The women, even when they spoke it, smiled much, charmingly, but said little, seemed to be a peculiarly happily contrived background rather than a material element of the affair. Kent found himself absurdly ill at ease when Baroness Saiki insisted on speaking Japanese. He knew that only few foreigners attain the perfectionwhere they may venture with safety to attempt the language of the aristocracy, with its honorifics and a vocabulary containing many words and idioms entirely different from those of the common tongue. He felt as might a Frenchman who had learned his English on the Bowery and who suddenly finds himself under necessity to speak with agrande dameof ancient Boston lineage. He tried it, hesitantly, fearing momentarily that he would make afaux pas; then he made a clean breast of his trouble to her. She was amused, encouraged him to go on; but even then it was irritatingly difficult to devise subjects which might interest her. Books, the opera, mutual friends, all the usual topics were useless. It was almost like trying to interest a woman who had come forth, suddenly, from the seclusion of a seraglio. Fortunately she had been abroad. He grasped at the usual banalities: how did she find Japan after Washington and Paris. She answered quietly, always smiling, charming, gracious; but she would reply in only a sentence or two. Then he must find something new. She had always, when he knew her on the steamer, been very quiet, discreetly non-assertive, but even with that it seemed as if she had changed, become even more retiring, self-effacing since she had come to Japan. He had to think hard to devise pabulum for conversation and began to get a little desperate. It was a relief when Kubota addressed her and she turned to him.
It gave Kent an opportunity to speak to Miss Suzuki. He had been relieved to see that she still wore foreign dress. Evidently her family had not Japanized her to the extent of insisting on her wearing kimono, as did her sister, an extremely pretty girl, in gorgeous silks, with, however, her hair dressed in the modern mode. Kent was extremely pleased to meet Miss Suzuki again; he had thought of her often and hadwondered how he might manage to see her, but it had seemed oddly impossible; there had seemed to be no way of contriving to meet her. But she did not seem as spontaneously gay as she had been on theTenyo. Momentarily a hint of her American animation would appear like a glint of heat lightning, a vivacious bit of high spirits, but it flashed out, subdued into a vague, intangible quietness, smiling gentleness, suggesting a sense of restraint, an almost imperceptibly subtle change in manner and mind.
Baron Saiki addressed him from across the table, a matter of current politics. Templeton and Kubota came into the discussion. Gradually the conversation became general among the men, the presence of the women being sensed, rather than forming an equal part, as a lovely and delicately enchanting obligato beside the dominating pervasion of the men.
Later, in the drawing-room, he found chance to meet the Suzuki girls again. They formed a striking contrast, Kimiko, the younger, resplendent in brilliant silks, gracefully drooping, wide kimono sleeves, stiff brocade obi, recalling a picture of imagination, a fanciful Oriental fairyland vision, picturesque, fantastic almost, against the modestly cut pink evening gown of the sister. Here, removed from the immediate presence of the others, she proved a lively, capricious little damsel. She extended her hand frankly when the elder girl introduced her to Kent.
"Don't you think that I am not modern, just because I speak no English and have always lived in Japan," she flashed at him. "Nous sommes moderne, nous autres Japonnaises, n'est-ce-pas, Kikuchi-san?" It suited her. French harmonized better with her air of being a resplendent illusion of whimsical imagination.
Kikuchi came over. "Of course, we are modern,le dernier cri. We must show Kent. Now, how wouldit be if we all went to Tsurumi, to Kagetsuen. We will show him how Japan and jazz mix. I am sure my sister can fix it so you girls can go. Would you like it, Kent? I'm sure you would. All right, I'll let you know the day later."
The girls were radiant. "You must not think, Mr. Kent, that because we wear the kimono, we can't dance," bubbled Kimiko, protestingly. "I have been dancing for two years now, even at some of the public places, like Kagetsuen. But they are beginning to make a fuss about it, the newspapers and the old fogeys. I hope they don't stop it. My sister has never even been to Tsurumi. We'll have—what is it you say in English, Tsuyuko, oh, yes, a hellu off a time."
"Oh, be careful," the sister glanced about hastily. "Kimiko is so crazy to be modern that she wants to learn English phrases, and she likes the swear words best, I'm sorry I taught her. She won't be careful. She is irresponsible. Please pardon her. I wonder what Baroness Saiki would say."
Karsten came over, but even his rather grave manner could not daunt Kimiko-san. It seemed as if she wished to startle the sister, to impress her with the fact that she, at least, was not old-fashioned. "You look so grave, Mr. Karsten, so dignified, just like our old-fashioned Japanese men. You should be a Japanese, and have a Japanese wife, old-fashioned, of course. Would you like to have one?" She was laughing up at him, like a pretty, mischievous child enjoying its naughtiness.
Karsten laughed. "But I am so stupid about women. Now, if I do, will you find me one, a pretty one? Will you be mynakodo, my go-between?"
"Certainly. Of course, an old-fashioned man like you must have a marriage by arrangement, throughanakodo; but Tsuyuko and I, when we marry, we are modern, we shall marry for love,l'amour, n'est-ce-pas?We shall——"
"Ssst." Kikuchi made a quick warning gesture. Baroness Saiki came over to them. There was no perceptible hush, but the bright sparkle of the manner of the girls changed. They were still smiling, conversing, but it was the gentle, quaint loveliness of the Orient. The moment of glitter had gone. It was nothing as definite as palpable restraint which had come over them; still there seemed to be an indefinite barrier.
The groups broke up, changed, reformed. Every one left early. Kent saw the girls again only when they took leave. He thought he sensed a barely perceptible, still almost definite pressure of Kimiko's hand, as she said good-by, the slightest hint of a glint in the dark brilliancy of her eyes. But he could not be sure; he wondered.
The Saiki mansion was close to the Karsten house, and they walked home in the moonlight, through the streets of the geisha quarter with the opaquely lightedshojicontrasting, brilliantly white, against the dark walls, tinkle of samisen and ripples of women's laughter coming out to them in the night.
"Well, back in Japan again," said Kent. "For what we saw to-night wasn't really Japan, was it? Still, it wasn't America or Europe either. What do you think?"
"It is hard to say," said Karsten. "Even if what we saw to-night is not Japan now, it is certain to become more and more so, while this——" he pointed to amachiaijust ahead. Theshojihad been drawn aside, and they could see a geisha, resplendent in gold and crimson, languidly posturing, fan slowly sweeping before her in obedience to the rhythm of anunseen samisen in the background. "This is not the real Japan, either. The other was Japan to-morrow. This is Japan yesterday. It is difficult to say what is Japan to-day."
Even as they made their way up the hill, among the booths, animal cages, swinging bridges and slides of the amusement park which formed an adjunct of the Kagetsuen, the crash and cry of the jazz orchestra came down to them. Dancing began early and a number of couples filled the floor of the large hall. The musicians, some fifteen of them, were all Japanese, but they had mastered their peculiar art, the latest phase of the modernity invading Japan. Emphasis seemed to have been laid on modernity. With the exception of a few Japanese lanterns, some characteristic masks, the arrangements were entirely in foreign style. Wicker tables and chairs lined two sides of the hall, where tea was served, English fashion. For a moment this modern air struck Kent as disappointing. Then he looked about at the people, the dancers, those sitting at the tables, and the feeling vanished. A glitter of color shimmered and moved inside this tedious frame, brilliant kimono, gorgeous obi, rich silk, blazing reds, radiant blues, color in all shades and tints scintillating in motion. The colorless space, the commonplace garb of the men, seemed rather to heighten the effect of the exotic radiance of the women.
Kipling's "For East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet" came to his mind. It might be true, but the scene before him seemed to belie it. Was there ever such a melting-pot, raiment of a civilization thousands of years old, substantially unchanged, absorbed in the arms of extrememodernism, the unimaginative West and the evanescent romance of the Orient moving and mingling in the rhythm of jazz. It was bizarre, discordant, but it made a picture odd, almost incongruously anachronistic, but interesting, strikingly illustrative of New Japan.
They found a table and sat down to tea, Kikuchi, his sister, the Suzuki sisters and Kent. They made up programs, but Kent reserved only a few dances. He wished to have opportunity to watch, to study this heterogeneous potpourri of humanity.
Japanese predominated, the men all in European clothing, most of the women in kimonos, though many wore foreign dress, generally simple, but well tailored, becomingly worn. There were many Europeans and Americans, nearly all men. It was difficult to determine their status; they were so much alike, most of them in pongee. Of the women many were apparently business girls, stenographers from Yokohama probably, though here and there might be seen one a bit indeterminable, who caused the mind to hesitate for a moment, in question.
Then there were the Eurasians, slim young men, inclined to be a shade dandified, smooth, graceful dancers; the girls slim also, but with a svelte luxuriance of body, a starry-eyed, almost tropical hint of potentialities of fiery passion slumbering lightly behind their sinuous grace. But, after all, his eyes would revert constantly to the kimonos. They made the high light and luster of the scene, stirring the imagination to wonder who were they, what were they, what were the thoughts, the ambitions, the desires and passions, in these faintly contoured breasts held tightly under silken folds above the stiff brocade sashes? Difficult as it was to determine the character of the others, Europeans and Eurasians, he felthimself utterly baffled by the Japanese women. Any one of them might be a daughter of the aristocracy, or she might be a geisha, for all he could know. All the usual minute signs, the hints conveyed by dress, speech and gesture familiar in white women, the indescribable, subtle nuances, which made it possible at home to distinguish between the gentlewoman and the demimonde, were unknown to him here. It added to the fascination, the bewildering sense of not being able to know, to determine, even to guess with reasonable certainty, as if one were hesitatingly, cautiously venturing into a marvelously fascinating, strange, unexplored country.
A hundred questions clamored for explanations. Who was this one; what could that one be? But his companions gave him little information. They did not know these people, they said. Their tone conveyed to him that he must restrain his curiosity. It was plain that they insisted on being exclusive. They showed acquaintance with only one or two other groups, a party, much like their own, in which young Watanabe, son of the shipping magnate, was the leader; another composed of the sons and daughters of wealthy silk merchants from Yokohama. These, quite evidently, formed a set aside, remote from the gay throng about them.
He had indicated a girl who had passed them in the dance, rather full-figured, Eurasian apparently, with large, languid eyes, who moved with a slow swaying grace before them. It was the sense of dreamlike voluptuousness that had attracted him.
"Eurasian. I hear she is a moving-picture actress," answered Kikuchi. "It is democratic, you see. There are all kinds here, girls of gentle birth and geishas, stenographers and actresses. It is queer to have that kind of thing here in Japan, don't you think? Ourgirls couldn't come into such mixed company abroad, you know. But we must dance, and there are only these places, this and a few smaller ones in Tokyo; and the management is strict; in fact, I believe they pretend to keep out the geisha element, though I'm sure they wink at their coming so long as they behave themselves. It is really entirely respectable, and our girls are quite all right here so long as we keep to ourselves."
Kent took the hint. He would have liked to have mingled at close range with the others, to venture into the tangle of dazzling, mysterious femininity where your partner of chance might turn out to be a demoiselle of ancient samurai lineage or a motion-picture queen, a stenographer or a geisha. Still, he enjoyed his growing intimacy with the girls in his own party. The fact that they were confined mainly to their own circle brought them together, made it necessary to dance more often with his companions than would otherwise have been the case. He found special pleasure in Kimiko-san. It was his first experience in dancing with a girl in kimono. He enjoyed the strange sense of grasping about the thick, stiff obi; it was something new. He was surprised at her agile vivacity. The orchestra was playing an amazing adaptation of "Zigeunerweisen," stolen almost bodily by the enterprising pseudo-composer, retaining the gipsy fire and sparkle of the original, and she seemed to radiate the electric tingle, the flushing abandon thereof, confusing with the sense of odd contrast of hot, pulsing passion contained within the feudal conventionality of her gorgeous costume.
They sat out the next dance. They were alone at their table. "Do you like to dance with me? Can I dance?" Her eyes flashed at him.
"It is marvelous. It seems so impossible that youcan be so wonderful. And inzori; how do you do it?"
She laughed, delighted, looked about. Then she slipped from her small foot, clad intabi, the mitten-like white silk covering which takes the place of a stocking, azori, sandal-like flat footgear, held in place by cross bands. She passed it to him in the shadow of the table. "See, it is slit. We have them made especially for dancing."
It seemed almost impossible that this might be such a prosaic thing as a shoe, this dainty, small object in his hand, surfaced with figured crimson and gold brocade, like a precious work of art, with its red silk cross bands.
"It simply adds to the illusion," he told her. "Out of the mysterious Orient has come to me a gorgeous Cinderella slipper."
"Who is Cinderella?"
He explained, tritely and mechanically at first, restrained by the oddness of bringing forth such a puerility. But she was interested, leaned towards him intently. He warmed to the telling. How was it possible that she might be so interested in such a simple thing? A moment ago she had been a woman, palpitating, warm, in his arms. Now she was a child, listening with eager wonder to a fairy tale. What was she; what were they, anyway, these girls,—children or women, or both? He enjoyed her intentness; tried to apply in the telling all the skill and artistry that he could contrive.
"Oh, what a lovely story! I didn't know you could tell stories. You must tell me many more. I love it." She was radiantly delighted. It pleased him immeasurably. It would be a novel thing, a new experience in life, to recall to memory the half-forgotten childhood tales and to dress them up for her, in terms suitable to fanciful Oriental setting, enjoying thetremulous reactions which he might thus cause in this beautiful creature with the clear, innocent mind of a child, clothed in the budding curves of the body of a woman.
They were silent for a moment, then she placed her hand on his arm. "But you still have myzori."
He had forgotten it. It lay in his hand, absurdly small and elegant. "If it were not really necessary for you to have it, I should like to keep it, as a souvenir, a reward for my story."
"But I can't give it to you now, you know," she was smiling, with just a shade of seriousness. "But you shall have your reward, if you really want such a trifling thing as this, for I wish to have many more stories from you. You must see me often and tell me many just like Cinderella."
After that telling stories to Kimiko-san became a regular part of their evenings at Tsurumi. They came often, and he fell into the habit of thinking up his tales in advance, finding his themes among the rich treasures of the West, from mythology and history, folk tale and medieval romance, even from the Old Testament. It amused him to take the essential dramatic values, coloring the action so as to render it understandable to the Japanese mind, dressing the material in Oriental form. Samson became a valiant samurai and Delilah a perfidious geisha. Hercules performed his prodigies in the atmosphere of the legendaryMomotaro. He became interested as the thought began to take definite form that here was an idea that he might some day work out into more concrete shape, and in the meantime he enjoyed the breathless interest, the childishly intent response which he always awakened in the girl.
It brought them closer together. Their intimacy became recognized gradually by tacit understanding intheir little group. He became her acknowledged cavalier. He wondered at times why this girl had become so much more attractive to him than the elder sister. He was still fond of Tsuyuko-san, but the feeling remained the same, neither increasing nor decreasing, while he sensed that Kimiko-san and he were coming constantly nearer to each other, more intimately parts of each other's thoughts. Could it be that what attracted was in its intrinsic essence the glamor of the East, the charm of the seductive, unknown Orient? The question would come to his mind—were they drifting towards a more definite relation; might not the love element already be germinating, unconsciously developing? He recalled the words of Miss Elliott that these girls were not children, that they were moved and driven by the same passions as those which dominate the more sophisticated women of the West. But he put the thought from him. His moral code was a simple and rigid one. He was married, and he must keep the faith. Even though marriage had been a failure, as long as the bond existed he would play the game. He, at least, would keep his record clean, and while the relation remained there would be no dalliance for him with other women. So in the case of Kimiko-san, as with other women, there could be no question of love relations. There were times when a lingering of her hand, a sidelong glance from dark almond eyes would cause a nervous titillation of agreeable unrest, would quicken his blood, give a flashing hint of something pleasantly, subtly dangerous, but sweet; but it was so evanescent, so intangible. The next moment she would be the gay, virginal child.
He felt that it was rather stupid, an absurd exaggeration of caution; still he had made opportunity to tell her of his wife, in California; but she had notbeen interested. "Oh, she is far away," had been her only comment, carelessly laughing, with no accentuation of meaning; and she had turned instantly to light chatter of the moment. Quite apparently it meant nothing to her. So the play kept on. He allowed himself to take pleasure from her radiant presence, her beauty, to rest his eye on her flower-like features, dark eyes, to enjoy the slenderness of her fingers, sense the palpitating magnetism of her lithe body and inhale the perfume of her hair, as he held her, swaying, in the rhythm of the dance. He felt pleasure in the thought that he might enjoy all this rich beauty, as one might that of a flower, a butterfly, unvitiated by sordid taint of sex interest.
But his delight in the charm of Kimiko-san did not dull his interest in the others, the great throng of women, shimmering about him in their glimmering silks, unknown, mysterious to him. They piqued his curiosity. He wanted to know who they were, what they were, what were their lives, their thoughts, to come to know them as intimately as did these care-free youths who held them in the dance, chattered gayly with them at the tables. He felt as if he were being withheld from the familiarity of the charmed circle, resented a little the restraint which he was under when he was with Kimiko-san and her sister. Finally he decided that he would come alone. Lüttich seemed to be there always. Through him he would contrive himself to become a part of this marvelously fascinating butterfly whirl of strangely unknown femininity.
So he came alone, one afternoon, and sought out Lüttich.
"I shall be glad to show you about," said the Russian, "but the fact is that I have little time. I am busy. You see, I am here professionally. For themoment, at least, dancing has taken the upper hand over music with young Japan, so I have become a dancing teacher. I have more than I can do. I dance from morning till night, giving lessons. It is not bad. They learn more easily than you would think. Then, when they become a bit proficient, I take them out here; but I must dance with them myself, at first, to give them confidence. A lot of these girls, and men, too, for that matter, are my pupils. So you see I am busy as a matter of duty.N'importe.It pays, and one must live.
"However, let us sit down for a moment. Have a drink." He called a boy. "You want to know who they are. Well, they are a mixed crowd. All kinds; that's part of the charm, is it not? See that pretty young woman over there, just passing the pillar. She is the wife of the Buddhist priest of the big temple on the other side of the hill. The young fellow with her is an American boy in some company in Yokohama. Priestess and office clerk. Odd, isn't it? Bizarre. Still, I daresay mighty few of them realize it, or give it a thought. See that cadaverous Eurasian with his Japanese wife? They are pupils of mine. They dance well, don't they? Well, two years ago they had never danced a step. Now that is all they do; it is their whole life interest, a new step, the latest fox-trot. You can still see when she walks that she has not gotten over the duck-walk that they get from Japanesegeta; but you don't see it when she dances. These two have reduced life to terms of fox-trot. That has become their sole standard of measurement; they regard people as good or bad, according to how well they dance."
It was interesting. "Tell me about more of them," said Kent. "I have an absolutely insatiable curiosity."
"I'll do what I can, when I get the chance, but,as I told you——" He caught by the arm a young chap who was passing. "Here, Dick, I want you to look after my friend, Kent. He wants to know some of the girls. Show him about." He turned to Kent. "Dick here can do the honors better than I can. He knows nearly all of them. Duty calls, I am off. Be good."
Dick grinned pleasantly. Kent had noticed him often, a slim, vivacious man of about thirty, always laughing behind his small mustache, radiating effervescent vitality, infectiously bubbling over with joy of life.
"First of all you must know Madame Hirano," he said. "She's the boss. It pays to be on the good side of her. She rules with a hand of iron in a velvet glove, not so much velvet, either, if she should catch you here with a girl too much on the off side. Then she'd give you the quick bounce. She's done it often enough. But she's a good fellow really. Come along over and I'll introduce you."
They went over to a corner where the tyrant had a place of vantage, whence she might survey the entire hall. She was an elderly woman, handsomely dressed. As she sat there, surrounded by a small court of girls from the neighborhood, attached in an indefinite way to the establishment, with her sharp, black eyes constantly roving among the dancers, it was easy to see that here was one of these rather exceptional Japanese women with will power and executive ability; that she was, as Dick had said, the "boss."
She acknowledged the introduction graciously, with the slightest hint of condescension, consciousness of her power. It was evidently in Kent's favor that he was a newspaperman. She told him, annoyedly, of the inimical attitude towards foreign dancing of the Japanese press. They were so stupid, she complained,so old-fashioned. He began to ask her questions about the dancers. She looked at him sharply, as if a bit suspicious. He explained his motive—curiosity—how all these types which were familiar to her were strange to him. He wanted to become acquainted with the new woman of Japan. For instance, he should like to meet some of the motion-picture actresses, a type which seemed so characteristic of the most modern tendencies of the country.
Yes, some of them came here, she acknowledged, but she let it go at that, and gave him no information. He tried to press the subject. A slight, vivacious girl, in a splendid kimono in the black and white checkerboard-like pattern which was fashionable that year, fox-trotted nimbly past them. He had often noticed the passionate pleasure which she took in the dance, the cat-like grace with which she swung her body in intoxicated undulations, clinging to her partner, smiling up to him, teeth flashing in an alluring smile—a Japanese Theda Bara, it seemed to him. There now, he ventured, was undoubtedly a lady of the screen.
"But no," she was shocked, with quick intake of breath. "What a mistake. That is ago-fujin, a lady of good, oh, extremely fine family. Certainly not."
Kent saw he had made afaux pas. He was glad when the cadaverous dance-mad Eurasian led her off into the dance.
Dick was laughing. "You certainly got off on the wrong foot, Kent. I'd better do the honors. I know most of them. I ought to. I have lived here all my life. So, fire away."
It was fascinatingly interesting. He was a complete "Who's Who," able to sketch in a few sentences the entire curriculumvitæof most of the dancers,go-fujin,actresses, stenographers, married women, rich men's daughters, geisha, girl students, who they were, whence they came, approachable or otherwise. Before them, past them, moved the dancing couples, unconscious of the fact that their lives were being laid bare, their characters stripped, good-naturedly, laughingly, but with a sure, quick touch.
"That girl in pink foreign dress, with pink slippers, that's one of the Thompson girls, Eurasians; father is in silk. They live in Honmoku. There are three of them, but one's married. That one, in red, the one with the pink beads, that's a stenographer with the Standard Oil in Yokohama. Now, that one, with the big, gold obi, I am not quite sure, but I think she is geisha. They say she's from Shimbashi. It is odd, you know, most of the fuss in the Japanese papers has been stirred up by the geisha guilds. They are afraid that if the men get used to foreign dancing, it will raise the devil with the geisha business, that they will come to these dances instead of spending fifty or a hundred yen an evening on geisha. And still the geisha themselves can't keep away from the dance places. The lure has got them, too."
He went on. One after one these elusive, dazzling women, who had so baffled Kent's ventures at guessing, were singled out for brief, concise description, as if they were picked out individually, suddenly, by a searchlight, moving hither and yon in the throng, illuminating each one in intense glare for a moment, then allowing her to slip back into the background of the crowd, as the beam shifted to, rested on, stripped the mystery from another kimono-clad enigma; then moved on to still another.
"Now, there are the Kincaids," he went on. Kent had been curious to know who they were, a middle-aged,quiet American, and a young woman, whose kimono, with its marvelously delicate texture, glorious though subdued luxuriance, was noticeable even in that dazzling kaleidoscope of rich Oriental stuffs. He had taken the man to be some wealthy foreigner, "import and export" man probably, who took pleasure in showering his wealth on this slight, fairy-like beauty, to indulge his fancy by arraying her in constantly changing ornate frames for her enchanting loveliness.
"Kincaid is a teacher in one of the most exclusive girls' schools in Tokyo," Dick was going on. "She was a pupil there, comes from an old samurai family, blood blue as indigo, but family estates, riches, glory, the whole business gone, all but pride, tenacious grasp on the old traditions. She's a beauty, isn't she? Exquisite. Kincaid was smitten. How he ever managed to see her alone is a mystery. It was romance. Imagine yourself, in this day of wireless and gasoline, conducting a courtship after the fashion of feudalism, the infinitely obscure and meaninglessminutiæof the days of the Shogunate. It can't have been anything else. The family must have insisted on it. Kincaid is a deep Oriental scholar. He could do it if any one could. He may even have enjoyed it, taken it as a sort of top examination, a supreme test, if he thought of it in that light. I don't know. Nobody knows just what he went through. But he had the devil's own time. Luckily, he had influential Japanese friends, blue-blooded, too, but modern, and they helped him out. And then the girl was infatuated with him, crazy after him. You know they get all kinds of new ideas, these girls, Socialism, free love, careers of their own, art, literature, foreign husbands, it may be one fad or another, anything. Hers evidently was a foreign husband, or, at least, Kincaid.So at last the family gave in; but that was only half the game. Then came the wedding. It had to be Japanese style, most formal ritual,san san kudo, three times three cups of sake drunk by bride and groom and all that. That didn't bother Kincaid. Probably he liked it. But the expense! You know these high-class Japanese weddings sometimes run up to hundreds of thousands of yen. There are all kinds of expensive gowns for the bride, kimonos, obi, ornaments, God knows what. Then the banquet, hordes of guests, at fifteen, twenty, thirty yen a plate, something like that. And then, finally, the presents. You know in Japan the wedded folk must give return presents, usually about twice the value of those they get. You get married. I give you something utterly useless, a vase, akakemono, and then you must come back with something quite as useless but worth twice the price. They say it cost Kincaid thirty thousand yen, which wasn't so bad under the circumstances. He spent every yen he had. That was over two years ago, and they are still saving, paying off their wedding debts, living in a couple of rooms. She does most of the housework, but they are both happy. You can see it. He gets his pleasure taking her here and there, his prize, in her wonderful kimonos, the trousseau, intensely proud of her; and she adores him. Look at her. Her eyes are always on him. She has realized her dream; he has his. No room for regret, no thought of it. Romance, the new, modern West and the age-old East, they have become one. So it works sometimes."
The orchestra blared into a new dance. Dick went off for a partner somewhere in the other end of the hall. Kent leaned back, summarizing, trying to classify his new knowledge. In a way the glib explanations, the reduction into terms of commonplaceof these people, these women, dimmed the picture a little, detracted from its attraction of being unknown; still, he had had but a glimpse behind the veil. What he had learned would but serve to initiate him further, to penetrate more deeply, to insinuate himself more intimately into this attractive, strange world of utterly foreign thoughts, fashions, modes of life.
Behind him, in the garden outside, staring through the open windows, a fringe of Japanese, the ordinary folk who found their pleasures in the slides, and swings and other marvels of the park, were discovering rare entertainment in watching the dancers, the strange new foreign custom of women, gentlewomen at that, dancing together with, in the arms of, men. Abstractedly he listened to their churlish comment.
"They have the luck, these chaps," a burly fellow of the rickshaw man type nudged his friend. "For two yen they can put their arms about these girls, pretty girls, ladies. It's cheaper and better fun than playing with geisha."
The voice of a woman cut in; her hair, dressed high, with a great, heavily oiled knot, proclaimed that she was married. "I don't like it. It's dirty."
A girl sitting next to Kent laughed. She had noticed that he had caught the remark. "Funny, isn't it?" she remarked to him. He aroused himself from his thoughts. He had not noticed her. It was the priestess. She chatted on. He had not been introduced, but, would she dance? Why, certainly; he was a friend of Dick's. So he found himself in the midst of the whirl, enjoying the thought that he, himself, had now become part of this bewildering inconsistency, fox-trotting with a Buddhist priestess, absurd, amusing, but delectable. She danced with full-bodied enjoyment, chatting vivaciously, with a nimble, flash-like wit. When they had returned to their seats, he ledher to tell him about the others. She knew them well, as did Dick, but he enjoyed her characterizations, the Japanese point of view.
The full-figured Eurasian girl, whose dreamy voluptuosity had attracted his attention the first night, when he had been with the Suzuki girls, passed in the dance, nodded over her partner's shoulder to the priestess.
"Do you know that girl? I hear she is a motion-picture actress?"
"Naruhodo," she was noncommittal. "Yes, I see her often here. I have spoken to her."
"Then introduce me, please. I know so few people here."
She hesitated for a moment, overcame her doubts. "All right, come."
The dance had finished. The girl was sitting at one of the large tables, with two or three other girls and some young foreigners. He hesitated in his turn. It was a bit awkward. Still, the die had been cast. He must see it through. The priestess laid her hand on his sleeve. "This is Mr. Kent. He wants to meet you."
The girl nodded to him slightly, looking at him, her big eyes wide in surprise. The others at the table stared. Utter silence. He wished he were a hundred miles away. But he was in for it. "Please, Miss ——" Hang it, the priestess had not even given her name. He slid over it. "I am quite strange here. I wonder if you would be kind enough to give me a dance?"
"I am sorry. My dances are all taken." The others still stared. He bowed. The priestess was already in retreat. He trailed after her, to the corner of the lady tyrant. Damn it. He bit his lip in resentment. Who was she, this Eurasian, to holdherself too high, too precious, as if he were not good enough for her? Still, of course, the girl was right. What a fool he was immediately to think of race, when he had always insisted, did, in fact, maintain that he had no race prejudice. Good for her, whoever she might be. But he had been an ass. He had made a bad beginning.
Dick appeared. Kent told him. He laughed. "By Jove, but that's funny. You do need a guardian. The moment I leave you, you start adventuring on your own. That's a very respectable girl, a stenographer in Tokyo, nice parents, you know. She's no motion-picture lady. You can't do like that. If you are so anxious to meet the motion-picture folk, why didn't you tell me. The fact is that there are a couple right here. I had sort of a halfway date with them. Come on. We'll take them to dinner down in one of the tea houses below in the park. You eat Japanese chow, don't you?"
The two girls were at a table at the farther end of the hall. He had noticed them often. One of them, the elder, he had guessed to be professional of some sort, theatrical, because of her kimono, a bit too bright, and especially her unusual coiffure, after some eccentric foreign fashion, in a mode which he had never seen, a sort of high, long cone, reminiscent of an Assyrian helmet, which showed to advantage her luxuriant hair, black with a faint tinge of chestnut, effective, but odd. The other was one of the girls who had eluded classification. She had puzzled him, with her large, voluptuous mouth, slow smile showing teeth which might really be described as pearly, but with her quiet manner, almost diffident, giving the lie to those sensuous lips.
"O-Tsuru-san. Kin-chan." There was no trouble over these introductions. The girls laughed, maderoom at the table. "No," said Dick. "It's time to eat. Let us go below."
The tea house was typically Japanese. They slipped off their shoes and squatted down at a low table, onzabuton. The girls were at ease, friendly. He felt as if he had known them for years. Kin-Chan, the elder, evidently lived for excitement. She drank continuously. "Dick-san," she complained, "we should have had a koku-tail before we came down here, but, never mind, we'll have some by-and-by."
She chattered incessantly, flitting from subject to subject, light gossip of Tokyo, dancing, acting, kimono styles, fashions in rings—she let it be known that she was fond of rubies set in platinum—places to go to, hot spring resorts, how she liked foreigners, the wiles of geisha. It amused him to listen to her. As they went back to the dance hall, up the hill, she leaned on his arm confidentially. The perfume from her hair came to him pleasantly. He inhaled it, enjoying it, and her warm, close presence, the bewildering chatter affording flash-like glimpses of the mind of an engaging phase of modern feminine japan.
As they danced, she chattered on, touched on this subject and that, one thought crowding away the other before it had been more than half expressed, giving him a sense as were he surrounded, enveloped, in an aura of bright, strange, girlish musings, a glimmering of myriad fragmentary ideas, oddly, entrancingly interesting. He was beginning to learn what lay inside these budding breasts under the tensely tightened kimono silks—at last.
The other girl said little, smiled, with glimmer of white teeth behind her full, soft lips, but she seemed to absorb her pleasure by feeling it, through the senses, silently. Little by little he tried to induce her to tell about herself. Was she, too, a motion-picture actress?Oh, no! She went to higher school. She lived with her parents.
He mentioned it to Dick, in English. It was delightfully safe, even right in front of the girls.
"She's a liar," said Dick bluntly. "She's an actorine of some sort at the Imperial. Probably a minor one. I don't know. But in a way she's my girl, for the present. She probably wants to throw you off, to hold you off. They have more guile than you think, these girls, behind all their childishness."
So Kin-chan, Little-Gold, fell to Kent, and he saw the girls home, to Tokyo, as Dick lived in Yokohama. He enjoyed Kin-chan, arranged with her to come to Tsurumi again. After that, when the Suzukis could not come, she was often his companion.
He found constant pleasure in studying her thoughts, in seeing Japan, Japanese life, through Japanese eyes; learned that in her he might experience a frankness which could never be obtained from the men. It was evident that she liked him. At times she even quite openly encouraged him, as if she were impatient with his slowness in response. As they became more intimate, she told, without reserve, of her life. Impatience at the drudgery and bonds of a lower middle-class family. Then she had begun to go to foreign motion-picture shows. At first it had been the pictures of foreign children which had taken her fancy.Kawaii; they were so dear! So she had run away, to Yokohama, where there were many foreigners. She had wanted to take care of children. Then, after a while, she had become an actress.
Gradually, as their friendship became older, she gave more detail. He was amazed at the frankness with which she displayed to him her intimate life. At last, one evening when they were alone in a discreet little tea house in Tokyo to which she had taken him—she had become his wondrously efficient guide into the innermost mazes of the great rambling metropolis—she threw an arm about his neck, as they were sitting at a window, looking out over the roofs and told him about herself.
It was a girl friend who had persuaded her to come to Yokohama, and she had taken her to a house, a bad house, where foreigners came. She had been frightened, she had cried. She had wanted to return home; but she was afraid of the parents. And it had been a nice class of foreigners who had come there. They had treated her courteously, been kind to her, kinder than the Japanese men had been at home. So—shikataganai, it couldn't be helped. But she had hated it. She had stayed only a few months. She had learned to be independent. And then luck had come her way. One of the foreigners, who was in Japan selling American films, had obtained employment for her with a Japanese company which made pictures. Oh, that wasn't the end; she smiled bitterly. The Japanese men were just like the rest, one must let them have their way if one would succeed. "But now I have succeeded, and I can be independent of them. And I am. There are only half a dozen real Japanese stars, and I am one of them. Pictures of me go abroad. I get two hundred yen a month."
It surprised him, the wage, so infinitesimally small as compared with the fortunes harvested by the Pickfords, the Chaplins, in the United States. Why?
"Oh, it is these Japanese men. They never want to give us women a chance. They won't advertise our names. They won't feature us, as they do in America. They are afraid that then we should get popular and ask for more money." But she was impatient at the interruption. This phase of the matter was not what she wanted to dwell on. "I don't likeJapanese men. They don't treat us nicely, courteously, as do you foreigners. If they do, it is only in the beginning. In the end, very soon, they are all the same. I like foreigners. I am not a bad girl any more. I never wanted to be. But, sometimes I feel that I should like a sweetheart, a foreign sweetheart, who would love me, as foreigners do, and be good to me——" The clasp of the arm about his neck tightened. The fragrance from her hair, the subtle, evanescent perfume which he delighted in, which had become to him characteristic of her, became overpoweringly sweet. She would be his. She was his now, if he cared to take her. They were tempting, these Japanese girls, with their quaint, childlike ways, unsophisticated, even though this one had passed through the mud. The charm of the Japanese women! Kimiko-san flashed into his mind. It was difficult to hold out against their seductiveness. Still, he had made up his mind to play the game with his wife. And yet? He felt that he was hovering. How deliciously soft she was as she clung to him, closer.
The sliding door behind them clattered. A maid came in. The tenseness dissipated. It was like a shock in its suddenness. Trite common sense came back to him, over him, like a shower of cold water, irritating, but dominatingly. By Cæsar, it had been a close call.
The return to Tokyo of Sylvia Elliott at this very time seemed an especially kind dispensation of Providence. Kent had seen practically nothing of her since his arrival in Japan. In his eagerness to immerse himself in the Japanese life, to steep himself therein, he had felt as if he had no time for intermingling with the foreign element, had almost resented its intrusion where he had not been able to avoid it. The whites, Americans, British, French and the rest were, after all, commonplace, incapable of affording the stimulus of the new, the attraction of the unknown, the piquancy of the constant zest to peek and penetrate beyond the mysteries behind theshoji. He had known people like that all his life; now, in Japan, he wanted to be with the Japanese; in that way only was it possible to attain to the full the charm of living in a foreign country, strange, picturesque, exotic, to taste with the critical appreciation with which a connoisseur sips a rare vintage, in slow sips, the impressions and sensations derivable from the colorful life stirring all about him.
And then she had been in the country most of the time, on sketching tours in the mountain regions about Nikko, Chuzenji, Ikao. He had noted with half-attentive curiosity that in spite of his instinctive avoidance of the foreign element he was pleased to see her again, that she formed an exception. As he came to see her more often, he was surprised, delighted, that instead of intruding as a discordant note in the symphony of life which he was trying to compose byblending his life in tune to his surroundings, she fitted herself into it, even enhanced his pleasure therein. She had the capacity for enjoyment, the appreciative understanding of the essential soul of Japan, which is so rare with foreign women, who, though their eye for beauty admits and even admires the charm of carved temple gate, or picturesquely gnarled pine projecting from rocky crag, stop short with the externals, refuse to extend sympathetic understanding to the people themselves, the Japanese, blinded by the instinctive resentment of the white woman at the competitive charm of womankind of another race. She had none of that. As he did, so she chose to overlook the blots that they might not disturb her enjoyment of the colors. Possibly it was that the artist in her was stronger than the woman. He concluded that it must be so—but what was the difference! He found that when he was with her, delight in the discovery of beauty, of landscape, a bit of garden, the harmonious blending of color in a woman's dress, or even a beautiful face, became heightened, keener, as if concentrated, more clearly defined, through the doubled capacity for appreciation of two minds which functioned harmoniously as one.
For a while they saw much of each other, were constantly together on expeditions into the surrounding country, or, oftener, on haphazard rambles through remote quarters of the great, labyrinthic capital, voyages of discovery in unknown streets where every turn of the road might lead to new adventure, or bizarre incident which might be added to the treasures in their common storehouse of memories. They delighted to lose themselves entirely in some section unfrequented by foreigners, where one might wander about through the whole day without seeing a white face, and then to exercise their ingenuity infinding their way precariously through the maze to some guiding landmark.
"My God, if my wife had only been like that," or rather, he hastened to amend the thought, if only Isabel had been with him and he might have taught her, guided her to become like this. But instantly his intelligence interrupted disturbingly; Isabel couldn't. She would be like the majority of the women, instinctively antagonistic, magnifying the stupidity of a cook, the petty rascality of a peddler to the point where they warped her entire view of all Japan. It persisted as a voice clamoring at him, and he forced himself to try to think otherwise, as if he might, by forced violence of the voice of his will, over-shout, drown utterly the insistent sardonic irony of his intelligence.
So he came to compel himself to resist the thought, to think of other matters, politics, money, even to work out in his head mathematical problems. But it was difficult at times. After a day with Sylvia, permeated with her presence, returning through winding lanes, past bamboo fences, when the thrill of cicadas mingled with the whimper of unseen samisen, and the moonlight transformed the world into a glamorous black-and-white tracery of silhouetted branches, sharply drawn roof-tree contours standing out against a translucent sky, his entire being would be singing within him, and he would step lightly, head thrown back, whistling, enamored with the world, with life.
And then like a pang, sharply, suddenly, like a stitch in the side, would snap into his brain the inspiration of the devil: "Why all this gayety?" It was as if the damnable thought took shape, personified itself into a hideous, leering, grinning imp, with an insidious wink. "You fool, of course, you are in——" But he was used to it, was on guard, too quick for the imp; would fling him a mental kick, indignantly,"Shut up, of course, I am not, you beast." But again, "It is no use. You can't deceive me. You can't even deceive yourself. You know damned well that you are in——" Would come again violation of his thoughts to calculation of algebra, enumeration of bills due at the end of the month, any beastly thing. He had even tried to think tenderly of Isabel, to recall the high lights of courtship, red-letter days of early marriage, to try to conjure a reluctant hope, to compel himself to wish that she might come back to him, make another attempt to blow into flame the ashes of dead love.
For, of course, he did not love Sylvia. He snapped his defiance back into the teeth of the grinning satyr-face popping forth, irritatingly, from the corners of his mind. He did not love her—with thought of her came weakness, softness—at least, he could not love her, would not. It was impossible; not to be thought of. So long as he was married to Isabel, he would play the game, keep his side of the slate clean, not place himself in the wrong. Popped into his mind an incident of a few days before. He had been dancing with Sylvia at a tea dance at the Imperial Hotel. The orchestra leader, slim, debonair, one of these men who seem capable of radiating vitality, joy of life, had been singing, eyes flashing across the length of his fiddle, leaning forward towards the couples swaying to his rhythm before him, infusing them with his flame. It had been a trivial thing, one of the myriad of new fox-trots which spring forth like lush weeds, the words utterly banal. As Hugh was passing, he had glanced up, his eyes had met those of the happy fiddler for the flash of a moment, and as he sang the words, the silly, inane stuff, "When you play the game of love, are you playing fair," he had laughed to him. It seemed almost as if there had beenthe slightest suggestion of a knowing wink, conveying the suggestion that he, the fiddler, was sharer of a secret between the two, and as if he had, friendlily insinuating, tilted his head toward Sylvia. Even at the moment, Kent had been certain that it was all a play of imagination, a trumpery pleasantry sardonically contrived by his accursed imp familiar, but the thing had stuck in his mind with absurdly exaggerated force.
Confound it! It was exactly the opposite thing. He was playing fair. There was not even suggestion of a game of love, of love at all. Platonic love, then? It was almost as if the suggestion had been shouted at him; he could even perceive the ring of sarcastic intonation, the incredulous sneer with which the world usually accompanies the phrase. It made him angry. Why that stupid sneer? Why, after all, should not platonic love be possible? To swine no, of course not. But he did not expect to be a swine, was not one, in fact. If the majority, the ruck of humanity, were too gross to conceive of the possibility, the worse for them. That was none of his affair. He could be, he was capable of intimate association with a beautiful woman unblemished by thought, suggestion, even hint of sex.
The idea came to please him. It seemed capable of placing at an end the indefinite suggestiveness of his thoughts, reduced the whole matter to a concrete basis, the definitiveness of something recognized as an existing phenomenon. His mind became easier. Might flash before him a glimpse of what Karsten, for instance, would say should he have divined his conclusion. He saw in his mind's eye the friendly irony of his indulgent smile. Karsten was not unimaginative, just the contrary: still he had dulled fineness of perception by over-indulgence in affairs of love. Historyhad examples of it, Dante and Beatrice, and Petrarch and Laura, and—— For the moment he could think of no others. Instantly the imp. "Damned rare, eh!" He snapped his fingers. What was the difference; the rarer, the more precious.
So he drifted on, more happily, more at peace with himself; felt that he might safely, without feeling of guilt or apprehension, continue in this delightful relation; need not studiously, conscientiously confine himself to enjoying only the mind, the sympathy of thought with this woman, but might allow himself, continently, to find pleasure in the play of light on her hair, in letting his eye rest with satisfied appreciation on the curve of her cheek, the contour of her svelte figure. Life was being good to him. Even if an inspiration of a moment might pounce upon him when least expected, "What if there had been no Isabel?" He had gotten himself in hand now; his course was set, he had but to steer watchfully, carefully, but, after all, safely.
And then, just as he had contrived to reduce his problem to safe and definite tangibility, the whole thing dissipated, shattered abruptly into a baffling void as does a glorious, iridescent bubble shimmering brilliantly in the sunlight suddenly vanish into utter nothingness without Visible cause or agency. She became elusive. The accustomed places saw her no more. On rare occasions he might run across her, but the circumstances were almost inauspicious,—a meeting on the Ginza, at the Imperial, always with a background of entirely inconsequential persons irritatingly intruding their irritating presence. Even when he might manage to attain an occasional moment alone with her, nothing was gained. She was not cold, not even formal, but without appearing to wish to avoid him, she contrived to do so. There were always reasons,each one manifestly valid, why she could not accept this or that invitation. There were no more rambles together, no more dances. He marveled at the skill with which she maintained the appearance of continuance of the old friendliness and yet erected, with deft sureness, an invisible barrier. He felt like a fly dashing itself against a clear pane of glass, hopelessly frustrated by the unsurmountable opposition of the invisible. What the devil could be the matter? He racked his brain, trying to seek a cause, to recall whatever incident, some error of omission or commission, careless or clumsy phrase, but always with the same result. He could think of nothing; there was nothing. And she was manifestly not capricious, not a flirt endeavoring to season more highly a man-woman relationship by the spurious artifices of coquetry. It was disquieting, irritating, maddening. What a damnable capacity for torment was possessed by even the best of women! Was that one of the traits of the eternal feminine, an unescapable remnant of the Old Eve, just as all men must have in them some trace of the Old Adam? Probably the phenomenon was nothing very intricate or perplexing to men who knew women, who had experience in diagnosing such symptoms. He had never envied Karsten; had rather been inclined to pity him as one who had dulled his capacity for enjoyment of the best things in female companionship by over-indulgence; still, for the purposes of this occasion, at least, he wished that he possessed his facility with women, whatever advantages his experience might give him for grappling with such problems.
Then, Karsten came to his aid unexpectedly. They were smoking after dinner. Nothing much was being said. Karsten was wandering up and down the floor, chewing the stem of his pipe. Suddenly heblurted out, apropos of nothing whatever, pipe-stem waving in the direction of Kent:
"I say, Kent, mind you, I am not trying to intrude on your affairs, but, I just wonder, have you ever mentioned to Miss Elliott anything about your wife, anything about your being married?"
"What? What's that?" He was gaping at him surprised, fish-like. "I say, old man, what in the devil are you driving at, anyway?"
He had been thinking of Sylvia just then, forcing his mind to travel wearily over the same old ground, trying to discover some tangible foothold from which to gain his way out from the baffling intangibility, the vagueness of it all. Karsten's question was right in line with his thoughts, fitted in as a marvelously apposite thing, as if he had been trying to work out a fretwork puzzle and Karsten had, by some surprising intuition, dumped before him one of the pieces for which he had been looking to effect the solution. He shook himself together. It seemed as if he must know something, have some idea, anyway, some kind of factor which might aid in puzzling it all out.
He repeated, "And what are you driving at, anyway?" Absurdly, he felt his chest contracting, the pulses in his temples swelling. He had no business to be so excited.
"Well, I was wondering. I came across the fag end of a bit of gossip to-day at the Imperial. Old Mrs. Tinker, the chief lady cat, you know, called me over to her table, at tea. She doesn't usually so favor me, you know. She's had enough to say about my foibles, what she could find out and what she could imagine. But she simply couldn't contain herself. She had just gotten hold of something that was too good to keep, that she must get off her chest to some one, any one, I fancy, and then I was your friend. I musthave been just like a find. Maybe the old lady has some kind of rudimentary, perverted sense of the dramatic—or she may have hoped to get something more in the way of detail out of me. Anyway, she was full with it right up to the neck. She couldn't even show a bit of finesse. She just blurted it at me. She knew, of course, that you were a great friend of mine, and of Sylvia Elliott's, and that you were a man of honor, a gentleman. She took pains to repeat that, several times. But she wondered, she said, 'You know I'm an old woman,' she said, and God knows, she spoke the truth for once in her life. She wondered, the dear old soul, whether you had realized that with a young, innocent girl like Sylvia—And then it came again, like a refrain; she kept saying it, she must have said it a dozen times, 'I am an old woman, you know,' but she wondered, the foul old beast, whether you could really perceive the seriousness of it, the woeful consequences of toying with the affections of an 'innocent girl.' You know how such an old woman can say it so it becomes almost an insult. Good God, even the worst of us have a pride in taking the innocence of such a girl for granted, but such an old cat can contrive to use the term with the most insidious innuendo. Why the devil do our absurd rules of conduct prevent one from kicking an old beast like that. I felt like doing it more than I've ever done it with respect to any man. But there I must stand, deferentially, with a teacup waving in my hand, with a show of courtesy, while she meandered on. You know, it strikes me that such an absolutely useless old woman, an encumbrance on earth, with no apparent purpose than that of making it a worse place to live in for all the rest of us, can, while employing apparently all the ordinary polite phraseology of courteous intercourse, produce more of aneffect of the most vicious foulness than can the most common harlot or the roughest obscenity of a salt-water second mate. By the gods, it seems to me——"