A few moments later Sadako-san returned to the room. "So you have bathed too, Kent-san?"
"Why, yes; and why did you give me the slip like that?"
"Oh, I knew that it would be like that, with so many people here, bathing together. Certainly, I did not want to bathe with you."
"But when you bathed, did you not bathe with men?"
"Of course, but that—that's different."
"Because I'm a foreigner?" He was pleased enough that matters had turned out as they had. Somehow, he felt, with her he should have experienced a shyness and uneasiness, such as had not occurred with the girls who were unknown to him; that it would in some odd, intangible way have vitiated the state of purity of intimacy which he wanted to maintain with her. But the suggestion that she, Sadako-san, should feel the race difference, especially when these othershad not thought thereof, irritated him. "Just because I'm a foreigner?" he repeated.
She came close to him, took his face between her slim, small hands, looked at him intently, reprovingly. "Hugh-san, you know that between you and me that doesn't matter. These other men, I didn't know them, but with you," she blushed furiously, "with you, I couldn't. Can't you see? It's because you're a man you are so stupid. If you were a woman, you'd understand."
In his turn he brought his hands to her cheeks, brought her face close to his, looked deeply into these great, darkly luminous eyes which had ever held such a fascination for him. He sensed a thrill pass through him, delicious, suffusing his entire being. No; he caught himself. This wouldn't do; he was slipping into dangerous waters. "Sadako-san," he said, holding control in his voice, "I understand, even if I am a man, and—you're a dear girl." But still they held each other. He felt a shivering, gasping tenseness, nervous, electrical, as if the next instant must bring some new, astounding, overwhelming development.
Patter of feet in the corridor. They sprang apart, faced each other embarrassed, in reaction of surprise at the nearness of love to which their feelings had so unexpectedly brought them. The maid brought supper. It was necessary to make an effort to appear natural, to get back to the commonplace. The presence of the servant, unsuspecting, business-like, arranging the table, helped them. They seated themselves on their cushions, self-consciousness fell away; soon they were chatting as if nothing had taken place.
Darkness had fallen. The lights were lit. The maid brought in huge bundles offutonand arranged beds, great heaps of wadded quilts on the floor, side by side. Evidently these two were man and wife, orsweethearts; it was all the same to her. Sadako-san went out on the narrow veranda, sat with her back turned to the room. The maid made the finishing touches. "Good-night,o yasumi nasai." She left the room, closed theshoji, the patter of her feet faded away down the hallway.
Kent went out to Sadako-san. She was squatting on the floor, head resting against the low rail, staring abstractedly out over the scattered roofs below, towards the hillside over which was rising a white crescent moon, faintly silvering the trees along the ridges. "Sadako-san." She gave no answer. Far down below the stream was murmuring; cicada violins shrilled a quavering treble serenade. "Sadako-san," he took her hand, drew her towards him, placed his arm about her, brought her close, held her tightly. She offered no resistance, her gaze directed fixedly, dreamily, into the distance, sadly. The poor, dear, lovely girl. Suddenly all idea of abstaining from caresses, from love, seemed distant, a thing utterly of the past. As he felt the pulsating warmth of her body, sensed the beating of her heart, the heaving of her bosom, the implied consent of her inertness, that old thought of avoiding love seemed stupid, absurdly futile. She was beautiful, lovable; they were young, what was life for? He loved her. He turned her face towards his own. Slowly, looking steadily, deeply into her eyes, he brought it close. Then he kissed her. They clung lips to lips. Her arms went about his neck. The murmur of the stream and the cicada violins faded into an indefinite, soft, distant obligato.
"Sadako-san, I love you."
Slowly she drew her face from his, eyes wide as if in surprise, fear. Suddenly she threw his hands from her, held out her own against him, stared at him, lips parted. "Hugh-san, oh, Hugh-san, why didyou do it?" Her hands grasped the rail and she buried her face on her arms. He could hear her sobbing. With gentle hands he tried to soothe her, but the mere touch caused her to tremble convulsively, it seemed almost hysterically. "Sadako-san, Sadako-san." He spoke soothingly as he might have done to a frightened child. Gradually the sobbing ceased, the nervous tenseness of her body gave way to passive inertness. He contrived to place his arm about her. "And now, Sadako-san, little girl, don't be frightened of me. I shan't hurt you, or kiss you, or do anything you don't wish me to do. But don't you understand that I love you? Don't you care for me at all?"
"Hugh-san, I know you are good. I am not afraid of you. I'd do anything you want, but—I can't. It's impossible, oh, oh, Hugh-san." He could see tears tremble on long, black lashes, enhancing the depth, the luster of these dark eyes, the quality that had so overcome him when he first saw her. Beautiful, unhappy, wholly adorable. "Sadako-san, of course, it is not impossible. Dearest, I want to marry you."
But she shook her head, kept shaking it, rocked her whole body. Again he soothed her, brought her cheek up against his. "Sadako-san, little girl, what is the matter? Tell me, dear, only tell me." Presently she straightened, took his arm from her waist, grasped both his hands, held them, looked straight at him. "All right, Hugh-san, I shall tell you all, all about myself. Then you'll understand.
"While I was still small, my mother died, and my father didn't marry again; he didn't want me to have a stepmother. Oh, he was a good man, my father. He was a professor in the Imperial University, in political economy, and all he lived for was to make me wise and good. I went to a good school and he taught me much himself, many things that he did not dareteach his classes, showing me how Japan is being corrupted by the money evil, the big capitalist houses that are gradually sucking into themselves all the money, all the treasures, all the happiness of Japan; and the narikins, the new profiteers, who are like jackals that take what the lions leave, so there's nothing at all left for the people. He told me that all that was good, all that was fine and noble about old Japan was being thrust out of the way by the money worshipers; the samurai, the Bushido code, the splendid old courtesy and customs, all were being sacrificed that these people might make money, by any means, fair or foul, by corrupting the government and by grinding down the common people. He told me so much about it because he dared not talk to others. He was afraid he might lose his position or even go to jail for harboring 'dangerous thoughts.' For himself he wouldn't have minded that, but he was saving up money for my education, for he wanted me to go to the big universities in America and Europe, and every month he went down to Yokohama and put money in the Machi Bank. I didn't care much about these things then, politics, economics; I wanted to be a doctor; but later I remembered everything he had said.
"Then came the big crash in business and Machi failed. We lost all we had; so did the other poor depositors. No one would do anything for us; the rich men and the other banks were all sorry for Machi, who had lost so many millions. But he still has his automobiles and his villa at Hayama—and we had nothing. My father had been failing for some time before that. Then he died. I am sure that disappointment killed my father."
Her voice died away in a whisper. She fell silent, looked out over the valley, absorbed in her memories. So she was another of the victims of the Machi failure.He had reason to remember the incident well. The Machi Bank had been the first big concern to tumble in the crash, and in working up the story he had learned his first astounding lesson in Japanese high finance. Out of his bank's assets of some seventy million yen, Machi had invested sixty millions in his own silk and menthol speculations, and had lost it all. The very point made by Sadako-san, the wave of sympathy for Machi on the part of the rest of the plutocrats, the absolute unconcern regarding the depositors, had caused him to wonder. He had interviewed one of Japan's leading financial authorities, a high official in the Treasury Department, about it. But it had been very unsatisfactory. Why, hadn't Machi lost all his capital, millions and millions? Of course, one must be sorry for him.
"Then Machi is lucky that he's in Japan," Kent had said. "If he had been in America, he would be in jail now." But the official had refused to believe it. Why? Had followed a long discussion. Had they then no laws whereby bankers were prevented from gambling with funds placed in their care? The official had plainly thought that Kent was childish in his ignorance of high finance. Did he not understand then that bankers had to invest the funds entrusted to them; that was the very essence of banking. But was there then nothing to prevent a Japanese banker from investing the funds in his charge in a poker game or in roulette, if he so pleased? No, naturally the Japanese Government did not wish to limit its financiers in the exercise of their talents. And, anyway, of course, the bankers did not put the money in poker games? No, possibly not, but what about Machi? As a gamble, poker became a child's game as compared with silk and menthol. The great authority had shown signs of impatience; anyway, poker was gambling and silkwas business; every one knew that, and, of course, there was always a certain element of chance in business. Kent had tried once more. "But now that you have the example of the Machi case before you, with more like that almost certain to come, don't you think it would be well to regulate such business by law? What do you trust to, anyway?" No, the Japanese laws were quite satisfactory, quite, and the authority had drawn himself up with great dignity. "We trust," he had said solemnly, "we trust in the integrity of our bankers."
Kent had picked up his hat and had left. What was the use? Could you beat it? Here Machi had gambled away sixty millions, and still they babbled inanely about trusting in the integrity of such. At the time he had felt intense sympathy with the victims, unknown to him, orphans, widows, old men doubtless,—and now here he saw at first-hand one of the countless little tragedies left in the wake of Japanese high finance indiscretion. So she really had good reason for her peculiar aversion to the plutocracy, poor little girl. He leaned forward, intercepted her glance. "And then?"
"Then," she shrugged her shoulders. He hated to see the bitter smile on these childishly curved lips. "Then I had no father, and I had no money, all because Mr. Machi had wanted to take a gambler's chance to increase his millions. But he kept his motor and his villa, and we, whose money he had used, we kept nothing. Then I remembered what my father had so often told me, and then I decided that I would do what I could to help the poor against the rich, to do my share to put an end to a government which allows such things, that cares only for the plutocrats. So I got a job in a silk filature. I might have done better, of course, but I wanted to see first what the life ofthe workers was like, and I had no money, anyway, so it made no difference.
"I thought I would begin cautiously; so I found a position in one of the Ohara 'model mills.' I thought I was lucky. Of course, I didn't like the looks of the high board fence that surrounded the whole place and made it appear like a prison; and it was a prison, too, I soon found out. They never let us out except on what they called 'excursions' and then there were always guards with us. They made a great fuss about these excursions, but the fact is that most of us stayed home to sleep—we could never get enough sleep—and then they scolded us and said we were lazy and ungrateful. It was the same way with the flower garden and the tennis courts that they were always showing visitors—for it was a model factory, you remember. It is true, we had the right to use them, but we almost never did; we were too tired, we never had the time. We wanted to sleep, just rest.
"There were hundreds of girls in the factory, most of them young, who had come there because they had been shown pictures of these fine flower gardens and tennis courts and thought they would have a much nicer time than they had on the farms or in the tenements where they came from. I worked in a room with over a hundred girls, taking the silk from the cocoons from the boiling water in great big kettles and winding it on machines. We couldn't sit down and we couldn't speak or hear others speak. We couldn't even look up from our task. The boiling kettles made the heat almost unbearable and the stench from the pupæ was nauseating. My head ached most of the time, and we had to work from four in the morning until seven at night. Of course, I always wanted to sleep, and I was lucky that it was a model factory, for the dormitory was clean, even though there weresixteen of us in each room; and we were allowed a fulltatami, a mat six by three, you know, each. But even there thefutonwere thin and hard like boards. There had been sheets once, some of the older girls said, but some had been stolen by girls leaving the factory, so they had done away with sheets.
"I became just like an animal, only thinking of time to rest. I had heard how in other factories the girls sometimes got better conditions by banding together or by complaining. In one of the textile mills the girls composed a song about the hem of the silk crepe shift of Mrs. Ohara being dyed crimson with blood from working girls' fingers, and I thought I would like to make up songs like that, do something to bring the girls together, but I was too weak to think. Sometimes I was afraid I might get consumption, as so many of the working girls do, but if we were sick, they only scolded us and said we were shamming. I was sorry I had come there, but I couldn't get away till my time was up. That's what the fence was for. The food was poor, but I didn't mind that so much, for poor food costs very little, and I had decided to save my money so when I got out I might go to typewriter school."
Again she paused. She was looking straight at Kent; he could almost feel her gaze, as were she trying to look into his mind, appraising him.
"You poor, dear girl," he tried to draw her closer. The thought of that frail, sweet beauty being cooped up in that steaming hell that she had depicted incensed him, made him want to take her in his arms and hold her, protect her, comfort her. But she waved him aside impatiently.
"Hugh-san, don't caress me. I am going to tell you something I have never told any one, and then, Hugh-san, you'll understand why you and I can neverbe more than this, just friends. Maybe you won't want to be even that then, but I'm going to tell you." There was an uncanny high pitch of excitement in her voice. She was becoming overwrought, possibly a little hysterical. He tried to quiet her. "No, Sadako-san, don't think of these things. They are all over now. I don't want to hear any more about all that. I shall take care of you and protect you."
"But you must hear." He could feel the small hands lying in his clench tightly as she fought for self-control. She looked straight into his eyes. "In that factory the Oharas themselves never came, but they had a banto, a young clerk, who came often to look after the business. Once when I was so sick that I had not been able to drag myself to work, he inspected the dormitory and found me alone there. He was very kind. We talked and we became very friendly. He said he felt sorry for me, that I was different from the other girls and that he would get me better work. And he did. I got a job in the office, and gradually things became better with me. I saw him often then; and, Hugh-san," by an effort of will she was keeping her gaze straight into his, "I came to think that I loved him.
"Then one night, it was fine moonlight, and I walked out into the garden. My work was not so hard, and I didn't have to think of sleep always. There had been a little party over at the head overseer's house, and that man, the man I'm telling you about, came back from there, through the garden. He saw me. He had been drinking sake, but he was not drunk, and I was always glad to see him, and I ran up to him. But he just took me in his arms roughly, and pulled me over into the shadow and forced me down on the ground, and—oh, Hugh-san——" Her eyes wavered, fell. She threw herself forward, on hisshoulder, voice half-smothered, sobbing. "And I had really loved him. There in that horrible factory, he had been good to me, and had helped me, and he was the only one in the world who cared for me, and—and I think that if he had only held me gently, and spoken softly to me and loved me,—yes, Hugh-san, I think I should have done anything he wanted. But now I hated him, even more than I would have hated any other man, and I shall always hate him.
"And that's one more reason why I shall always hate capital and its men, and that's why I have made friends with those who feel like I do, the Socialists, the Communists and all those, the young men in Tokyo, the labor leaders, the anti-militarists. That's why I finally managed to get into Viscount Kikuchi's office, so I might learn all I could about what they are doing, the bureaucrats and the plutocrats—and, Hugh-san, that's the reason that I can't love you."
"But why, dear girl, why?" He gathered her into his arms. She did not resist, yet he sensed in her body a sort of stiffness, coldness; the flood tide of ecstatic emotion had passed. "But, Sadako-san, why should you waste your future, why place your back on happiness because your past has been wretched? Don't you care for me at all? Couldn't you love me just a little if you tried?"
She raised her head, smiled up to him wistfully. "Yes, I think I could love you, Hugh-san. But I'm not going to. I won't try. Can't you see how impossible it is. I'm unclean. I'm soiled. Do you think that I should want to come to you like that?"
He started to answer, but she placed a hand over his mouth. "Please, Hugh-san, don't talk. Just let us sit like this; yes, hold me, just a little while." She nestled close up to him, like a tired child, and he held her, wondering at the unexpected and strangeperversities of women in matters of love, the impossibility of foreseeing or refuting the baffling obliquities of their reasoning. In old Japan such a mishap might have been looked upon with the merciful eye of tolerance; and in new Japan, the complaint of teachers in even the highest girl schools was that the maidens were babbling sophisticatedly of free love and the like. These young Japanese obtained their ideas from the oddest corners of Western modes of thought, from chance-bought or borrowed books, taking for gospel whatever they happened to absorb, be it from long antiquated volumes picked up in a Kanda second-hand bookshop or from the misconstrued conceptions of Western philosophy casually heard from these fanatic professors and students. But where could she have gotten this absurd idea that she was soiled, that her value, that wondrous gift of beauty and charm, had been vitiated, rendered utterly worthless, like that? At last he asked her, "Sadako-san, how did you get such a foolish idea like that? Of course, you're good, and sweet, and pure, and beautiful. You must never think of yourself as soiled, unclean; it's unhealthy, absurd. Of course, you don't believe such nonsense."
She answered, a little wearily. "But, of course, I do know, and you know. I am a Christian."
He almost shook her. "Of all the foolish things! Who ever taught you Christianity like that?" He tried to argue with her, became voluble. He was not familiar with intricacies of doctrine, but surely this was a ridiculously antiquated interpretation of the spirit of Christianity of to-day, absurd, monstrous. He became voluble, tried to break down or persuade. And, anyway, what was really Christianity to her? He knew very well that many of the Japanese Christians were so merely because it washaikara, modern, placed them a little aside from the mob in the rôle of independent,advanced thinkers. But why should she be like the rest of the shallow fools?
"Yes, I know what you say is true. There are many Christians like that. Even my father, who first taught me Christianity, was like that. I know he really had more confidence inNichiren. But, Hugh-san, I am so tired. I want to rest. Go in and sleep. I shall sleep here."
The recollection of the two beds in there, side by side, suggestively, brought his mind to the problem of the moment. "Of course not, dearest. Go in and rest. I can sleep out here." But she would not have that. Both grew insistent. It seemed an impasse. Finally he went in and dragged the two beds apart, one to each end of the long room. Around hers, designated by the curved wooden headrest designed to support woman's elaborate coiffure, he built a rampart with the screens.
"And now, Sadako-san, here is a place for you. Can't you trust me?"
She came up to him. "Of course, I trust you." She raised herself on her toes, placed her hands to his head, pressed her cheek against his, warm, soft. He moved his arms to clasp her, but she slipped away, disappeared. He could hear the dropping of her garments to thetatamibeyond the barrier of screens.
When he awoke sunlight was filtering in through the papershoji. He called, "Sadako-san," but there was no answer. He went over to the screens which guarded her, knocked, called again, but she had gone. Evidently she had taken the opportunity to go to the bath.
He went out on the veranda, seated himself on the rail, back against a post, reflecting. What a rack of emotional storm and stress had suddenly swept upon them, engulfing them, unexpectedly, whirling themabout like straws in a typhoon. So that had been the result of his carefully planned pure, passion-free relationship; how little man might control such things. And he had asked her to marry him. Jun-san's words came to him. What if she had consented? He would then have been tied to her now, for life. For life, with this Japanese girl! Would happiness have come of it, not merely the swirling high tide of youthful passion of the first years, but during the long years, decades, when constant living together would reduce existence to the humdrum of every day. He tried to imagine the situation a score of years hence, when she would be over forty, when the glamor of youth, the sparkle of newness, the exotic charm of kimono and strange ornaments should have passed away, when her mode of thought would no longer be fresh and original to him, but when the oddness of her ideas would have become stale, irritating even. They might at such time be living in San Francisco, or New York, or London; he did not intend to live the rest of his life in Japan. How would life in such places be for them, an elderly-aged American and a middle-aged Japanese woman? Marriage must have a firmer foundation to build upon than mere attraction of beauty, spell, fascination of exotic charm; to last it must depend on the ingredient of intelligence, common growth of mind, ideals. His first marriage came back into his mind warningly, and even there chances for endurance of the relation had been so much stronger. And yet he did love this girl. Were it not for the appalling thought of the possibility of what coming decades might bring, he would not hesitate. Could he, for instance, be certain that he would live but three, or five years longer, he would have insisted, persuaded, won her by sheer impetuosity of wooing. But—— No, Jun-san was probably right; did he venture to tie himself to thisgirl for life, he would be playing a game of chance with fate with the cards probably stacked against him. And still he wanted her, craved for her, would probably be able to overcome her misgivings; but what if he did? Would not come the time when she might recall to him that she had been right, that he had brought only unhappiness to her? No, he must give her up.
"Good-morning,asenebo-san, sleepy-head." She had crept up to him playfully, like a child and stood beside him laughing, radiant, with a freshness like a flower from the bath. Not a trace of the soul-stirring emotions of the night before. "Soon we shall have breakfast, and after lunch we shall go back to Tokyo."
"You forget that the trains may not be running then. Have they had any news down below?"
"Oh, it will be only a twenty-four hour strike. That was decided. Of course, they don't know anything, the inn people, but I know." She was enjoying her superiority of knowledge. "That was decided on some time ago, only I didn't know it would come so soon. Don't you know that while workers are allowed to organize unions, the Imperial Railways men are not allowed to form them, because they are Government employees. That's just why we wanted this strike, the first real nation-wide strike, to come from them, just to strike fear into these governing classes, to show them how powerless they really are. So a lot of the most important railroad men, engineers and conductors, all over Japan, wherever we could find them, were organized secretly, and we trusted that when they struck the others would come along, for they are all resentful since the Government cut the freight rates and cut their wages for the benefit of the rich people who own the freight. Of course, the authorities suspected something, but they couldn't find out just what was going to happen and when it wasgoing to come off. And they will punish a lot of the leaders, no doubt. But let them put them in jail; it will only make us stronger. I'm so glad that this really happened; we thought it would be almost impossible to bring it through."
How intensely he disliked hearing her talk like this. Who the devil were these "we"? Why should this beautiful, slender girl be stirring her white fingers in this mess. These words, the sordid jargon of class passion and hate, seemed so grotesquely incongruous issuing from rose-petal child lips that should have been humming the lilting songs of maidenhood.
"Sadako-san," he could not keep impatience out of his voice, "what the deuce are you doing in this mess, anyway? Such things are not for girls like you. It will bring you only unhappiness. Why don't you drop it?"
"I have told you. Some one must do this work. I have no one who cares for me; and there are many other girls in this, just as in your country where women do their share. Why shouldn't Japanese women be as brave and strong as yours?"
Damn this craze after modernity! He wished Japan had never been opened to the Western civilization, to suffering the pangs of re-birth, the seething flux of reconstruction that sucked so many lives inexorably into the maelstrom.
She noticed his frown. "You are angry with me, Hugh-san. Is it because I didn't tell you about this before?"
"No, I want none of your confidences about all that stuff; I don't want to hear you talk about it." He snapped his fingers impatiently. Hang it all!
"Don't be angry, Hugh-san. I was so afraid that this would happen. I liked you so much. You seemed so honest, and then when I heard the Viscount lyingto you, why, I just couldn't help telling you. I hate all these militaristic plots, their subtle plans, keeping up to the letter of their promise, but preparing all the time, in so many ways, for war, for building up their machine in other ways. And so I told you. I wanted to do anything to help stopping them, to hurt their plans. But then, afterwards, I came to think it over. I'm Japanese, and you're a foreigner. Oh, I trust you, but, after all, had I the right to go against my own people, my own country? Oh, I thought over it so long, and sometimes one thing seemed right and sometimes the other, and I couldn't make up my mind, and I grew afraid; so I decided to say nothing more till I was sure what was right. Now, don't be angry. I do trust you, but——" From the floor where she was kneeling she reached up, grasped his hands, pulled him down towards her. He sensed the trembling of her tightly clasping fingers, tenseness of her body. She brought her face close to his, eyes intense, staring into his.
"Hugh-san, if you say that it is right, I'll tell you all that I know. Anyway, I am afraid that soon I shall not be able to tell much, for I think that they are watching me, that they will send me from Kikuchi's office. But I don't care," her voice broke. "Oh, Hugh-san, don't be angry with me. I'll tell you everything if only you say that it is right."
Her face had become drawn; the eyes staring into his were bright with luminous tears. It was as if he could feel on himself infection of quivering approach of hysteria. He shook himself together. By the gods, he'd have no more of these high-pitched, feverish scenes with their trembling reactions. He wanted no news at such a cost. The girl, this poor, fanatical flower-like thing, frantic under her visionary obsessions, she was the only thing that mattered now.
He rose, lifted her and carried her high in his arms up and down the length of the great room. "You dear baby," he rocked her back and forth soothingly. "You dear pretty little baby. 'Rock-a-by baby in the tree top.' That's how we sing to naughty little babies in my country." She had struggled a moment when he picked her up, surprised, frightened, but now she lay quiet; the tremble had left her, the flicker of overwrought excitation in her eyes had given place to wonder; her body relaxed, a wistful smile crept over her lips. "But, Hugh-san, I'm not a baby, don't——"
"Keep quiet, you're only a baby, my baby, cry-baby. Listen, 'When the wind blows, the cradle will rock. When the wind blows, the cradle will fall, and,'" he gave her a great swing, "'down comes baby, cradle and all.'"
He tumbled her into the nest of soft silkfuton. She lay there, laughing. "Oh, but you are silly, Hugh-san. I had never thought that you could be like that. And what a funny song. Sing me some more like that, and tell me what they mean."
He was overjoyed that the remedy had been so potent. He would have her all right in a jiffy. Out of his almost forgotten store of Mother Goose rimes he conjured the Old Woman who Lived in a Shoe, the Ride a Cock Horse, and others; he remembered the fairy tales which had delighted Kimiko-san and brought them to bear. But she liked the songs best, insisted on his singing an odd potpourri of nursery nonsense transformed into labored Japanese. The maid coming with breakfast found them in high spirits.
After the meal, they went for a walk through the village. There they heard the news; the trains would be running that afternoon. "I told you so," triumphed Sadako-san, but he turned her attention to a bent-backed crone who, he insisted, was the living image ofthe Old Woman in the Shoe. He wanted no more of the other. At luncheon they had more nursery entertainment. She was as happy, as eagerly receptive as a young bird stretching out its beak clamorous for ever more food. It was wholly delightful. Why could she not always be like that, this entrancing, absurd girl revolutionist who could be enticed in a moment from Karl Marx to Mother Goose?
They left for Tokyo in the afternoon, but the trains were crowded and there was opportunity for only commonplace talk. From the Tokyo station they walked towards Kanda-bashi. Seriousness had returned to her; she said very little. "Kent-san, you have been very, very good to me. I shall never forget it; and, I shall never forget you. And you won't forget me, will you, not altogether?"
"But what are you talking about, Sadako-san? I shall see you again often, as usual." He took her hand, but she was looking away from him, over her shoulder. She pulled her hand away quickly. He followed her gaze. In the shadow of the buildings on the other side of the street he detected a slinking figure, indefinite, sinister in its stealthy movement.
She turned to him. "So you can see yourself now, Hugh-san. It was just as I thought. That man over there, he has been following me before. I knew this must come sooner or later. No, come on, walk quietly. It can't be helped." They reached the bridge. She took his hand, held it between her slim fingers, gripping it tightly. "Good-by, Hugh-san. You have been too good to me. How I wish—— I shall never forget how good you have been. And don't forget me, Hugh-san—dear."
She pressed his hand again, turned, and disappeared in the shadows on the other side of the bridge. From the other sidewalk the dark form of the spy waswatching. The swine! What filthy curs they were, these masters of armies and battleships, to pester and harry a slight, frail thing like this girl! He started for home and turned down a side street. Suddenly he wheeled about. Yes, the fellow was following him, inexpertly, but doggedly. Well, he would show the brute that shadowing a man, a foreigner, was not such an easy game as badgering a girl. Abruptly he stepped into the dark shadow of a narrow alley, waited, fist clenched. What if he were a policeman; of course, trouble might follow, but he would at least give him the drubbing of his life, the swine! He waited, bent forward for assault, strangely elated, expectant. But the minutes passed; he peered out. The fellow was not in sight. Kent stepped out from the alley. No, he had disappeared. He had smelt a rat, the damned coward!
Whew, what a day, and what a night! What a grotesque bedlam this was becoming to be, this Japan in transition that he had begun to pry into, this monstrous anamorphosis where the rare quaintness and daintiness of feudal richness of thought and beauty were anachronistically intermingled with the crass, clamorous ugliness of riotous, strident cry, uneasy, hectic pulsing of dissatisfaction, hating mob thought. And then this girl; she was like a flower ground in the relentless wheels of some gigantic, pitiless machine—and he couldn't drag her out. What a price Japan was paying for her modernism, with the fair, sweet souls of girlhood tattered and wasted as a part of the sacrifice. This, then, was the end of this relationship that he had hoped so much from. The premonition was uncanny, overwhelming; he could not ward it off. This, then, was the end.
A few days later he went to Viscount Kikuchi's office. A young fellow occupied the seat at the head of the stairway. "You are new here, aren't you?" Kent ventured. Yes, he had come here only yesterday. Kent tried a few more discreet questions, but the lad was uncommunicative. Still his manner indicated clearly enough that he regarded himself as a permanency. Kent was glad to learn that the Viscount was absent; he would have hated to face those piercing old eyes. It was impossible to tell just how much he might know.
For days he kept up the search, made occasion to linger about Kanda-bashi, visited the places where they had been together. He even had Ishii make inquiries, but beyond ascertaining that she had left her lodgings at Kanda, he could learn nothing. Again he went for council to Karsten. He laughed a little.
"By the gods, but you are the damndest man for losing ladies, for futile amours. However," he added more seriously, "it's probably as well that things have turned out as they have. The fact is that you have not the light, care-free touch to make a successful philanderer. You're a 'one woman' man. You take your affairs of the heart seriously, and for that reason it's the more essential that you make no mistake. As I say, you're a born monogamist. It's an enviable condition; you'll be happy, serene, content with just one woman, provided you find the right one. These affairs you have had recently count for nothing. You've been lonesome, in a susceptible mood. Let itpass. Some day you'll run into the right one and your problem will be solved for good. And, one thing more, you're not the sort of a fellow who is cut out for a Japanese woman. Run along, go to the dances, play with Kimiko-san and the rest, but don't get involved, for their sake, for they take such matters seriously and you have no right to cause them heartache; and for your own sake as well, for you, too, take such matters seriously. Go to work and forget serious thoughts about women, Sadako-san and the rest. Heavens knows, there ought to be enough going on in Japan just now to keep a newspaperman occupied."
It was true. The atmosphere had become hectic. The railroad strike had alarmed capitalists and bureaucrats. The police were frantic, and strike leaders and Socialists, any one thought to be harboring the detested "dangerous thoughts," were being jailed right and left. Strikes became frequent. Those who incited them were put away by the police mercilessly. The method seemed successful, but soon the workers resorted instead to what they called "sabotage," grasping fondly at the foreign word, though the movement involved no violence, but consisted entirely in organized effort to do as little as possible; "going slow" was a more descriptive phrase for it. The men went to work as usual, went through the motions of performing their tasks, remained at their posts during the prescribed number of hours, but production fell to a minimum. Machinery revolved as busily as usual, but raw material was fed to it but sparingly; lathe tools moved around, back and forth, but found no steel to shape, looms whirred hummingly but empty of fabric. It was especially conspicuous in the case of the tramcar men, who would run a car a block or so, stop for half an hour while making pretense ofsearching for some break, then progress a block or two only to halt again. Fights were staged in all the big cities between car crews and irate passengers. The police were helpless; there was no way of making men work quickly. The capitalists groaned; here were the economists calling all the time for reduction of production cost in order that Japanese goods might meet the competition of foreign wares, and yet their output was becoming absurdly expensive. But the workers were in high feather. Capital had closed so many factories and had discharged so many workmen in order to keep the stock of goods in the domestic market so low that prices would remain high—unable to grasp any theory except that high prices meant high profits—and now it was compelled to employ more workers in order to make up for the loss caused by the "go slow" tactics.
Labor leaders, Socialists, Communists, Syndicalists, and all the worshipers of half-understood 'isms found fine fishing in troubled waters, certain of responsive audiences wherever they might find places in which to shout their lurid, variegated doctrines. The police were ubiquitous. By scores, even hundreds, they would attend meetings, breaking them up and jailing leaders whenever occasion offered. The Seiyukai party hired bands ofsoshi, professional ruffians, to raise disturbances at these gatherings, and free fights and broken heads became commonplace. Still, the various movements gathered force, came together in common interest as streamlets flow together and form a river. The many feeble unions joined hands, formed federations. Where heretofore strikes had been mainly isolated, men in this shop or factory striking solely in the interests of their own purely personal concerns, demanding discharge of unpopular foremen, shorter hours, higher pay, they now amalgamated and strucktogether, the entire body of workers of one industry, striking in sympathy with other unions. The dockyard workers went out because the employers would not pay a full year's salary to discharged workmen; the seamen threatened to follow suit unless the demand were granted, and the employers gave in. Capital became frightened, tried to stave off the evil day by paying ever greater allowances, hoping desperately to soothe the clamor by doles of money; but the situation had gone beyond this. The day of the old feudal relation between master and workman, the personal touch of a feeling of common interest, had passed. As if born over-night, class consciousness loomed forth, overshadowed the entire situation. Demands for higher pay, shorter hours, became subordinated, fell into the background; now the cry was for a share by the workmen in control of industries, abolition of capitalism.
It became almost impossible to segregate fact from fiction. One could not know what might have happened. It was impracticable to depend on the reports of the press; one knew that the most important news was not allowed to see the light of day. Kent tried to get what he could from original sources. What was capital thinking of all this; what was it doing about it? He sought bankers and industrial leaders. They all professed that there was no cause for great worry, brought forth sheafs of statistics compiled by various government offices and capital-labor harmony societies, trying to console themselves with patently absurd figures proving that there was no unemployment, that more men were given work than lost employment, that all was serene. Ostrich-like they buried their heads in the convenient mess of figures, insistent on not seeing the truth.
"It's only a phase of the depression which we arepassing through just like other countries," they insisted. "Things are no worse here than they were in America and Europe a few decades ago when your workmen were in a similar condition. Remember, we have in a few years almost caught up industrially with the countries which were several centuries ahead of us. Give us a few years more and conditions here will be the same. Anyway, the situation here is not as bad as in the United States and England, for example. Our strikes are insignificant in comparison. We have never had business held up for weeks and months by nation-wide strikes. In New York and Chicago you have daylight bank robberies and hold-ups. In Japan a man may walk safely anywhere with a roll of bank notes in his hand, even in the poorest quarters. And the industrial workers are too few in proportion to the total of population to count for much; only they make lots of noise. The bulk of the people is agricultural. There's nothing very much to worry about."
He pointed out that danger lay in the fact that the agricultural population also had become infected with resentment against capital. Thousands of unions of tenant farmers, who constitute half of the agriculturists, had been formed and clamored against the exactions of rapacious landlords. Some of them had made united demands for rent reduction, had refused to till the soil when such were not granted, and had proclaimed that if other tenants were brought in to cultivate the land, these men would be ostracized; so the fields now lay idle. What about the formation of the gigantic federation of farmers' unions and its great convention in Kobe? What about the report that soldiers who had served their term in the army in Siberia were sowing the seeds of Bolshevism throughout the peasantry? Did not that show that the farmerswere likely to make common cause with the industrial workers?
But they remained stubbornly sanguine here also. This, too, was only a phase. A general of the Siberian expedition had said that this Bolshevism was only on the surface, like face powder, which would speedily wash off. So that was that, so to speak. Presently there would be a big rice crop; there were all indications of a bumper yield, and then the farmers would be happy again, and quiet. Anyway, capital was doing what it could. A horde of scholars and statisticians was studying the situation, and obviously it would be unwise to move in the dark, until these experts had reported. And the Government had appointed a commission for studying the problem of universal suffrage, which would report some day. It was a grave question whether the masses were ripe for the vote. It would not do to be over-hasty.
The task of obtaining reliable data with respect to the other side of the situation was equally baffling. A woman Socialist had sprung into fame through her articles in various magazines advocating the cause of the masses; partly, also, from the fact that her husband, a university professor, had been placed in jail. Kent went to see her in her small house crammed from floor to ceiling with books and pamphlets, the inevitable Karl Marx tomes looming forth with glorious prominence. She hailed him with joy, chanted a tirade of almost unbelievable accusations; the capitalists were holding the workers—men, women, and even children—in slavery. Many of them were kept far underground in mines and were not allowed to see light of day for months; they tried purposely to kill them by means of unwholesome food and unsanitary quarters in order to prevent them from going back to the country districts and spreading the cause ofSocialism. It was easy to get young men and girls to replace them, owing to the general unemployment. But he wanted something more definite, data, figures. Certainly, he should have them. She would send him such in a few days. She sent him a vast bundle of papers, a mass of laboriously contrived compilations of figures, going back into the early days of Japanese industrialism, showing by minutely detailed statistics that one-half of the factory work women died from consumption within two years of employment in the great textile mills. It seemed almost incredible, and as he went into the matter he found that figures had been given for periods before the time when vital statistics of any kind had been kept by the Government or any one else; still closer examination showed that the tables did not check, were wildly contradictory in many cases. Evidently the author had drawn her data, enthusiastically, from her inner consciousness. He went back to her, told her that her information must be more consistent, more reliable. She tore the bundle from his hands. A few days later one of the vernacular papers published a lurid account from her, mentioning him by name as a capitalist spy who had been frustrated by the famous lady Socialist.
He called on Ikeda, the head of the federation of labor, a rotund, pleasant-faced man with humorous eyes beaming from behind great round spectacles. "Yes, it is getting worse all the time," said the leader. "Of course, all this helps to bring the unions together, but it is difficult to keep them in hand. We all want abolition of capitalism, but while some of us want it accomplished peacefully, by evolution, many of the workers, most of the smaller unions especially, want nothing short of revolution. They are Sovietists, Communists, Syndicalists, Anarchists, all kinds. They are getting more and more out of hand."
"Would universal suffrage content them any?" asked Kent. "I should think if you centered on the suffrage movement, gave them that to think about, you might maintain control. Anyway, it seems to me that labor must remain powerless as long as it is voiceless and has no control in the government. I take it that you people will back up the universal suffrage agitation at the next session of the Diet?"
The eyes behind the great lenses became serious. "No, we're going to leave it alone. In fact, we dare not take it up. The workmen look upon that as futile, a mere sop, a process that's altogether too slow to suit them. We're afraid that if we took up suffrage as an organized movement, the unions would get out of hand; it would set them thinking of more revolutionary measures; they would insist on them and would sweep aside us who are trying to lead them along a constructive line of action. Anyway, the masses are hardly ripe for suffrage yet. They must be educated first; that's what we are trying to do now, to educate them."
So here, too, was temporizing. Labor leaders, like capitalist leaders, were trying to play for time, to avoid facing the music, while the steam in the kettle kept becoming denser and stronger, with ever more insistent force striving against the walls of repression. But how much was there really behind all this clamor of labor? He came to wonder to what extent these complaints were justified. It was true, what the capitalists said, that conditions in Japan were no worse, or not much worse, than they had been in America and Europe not so many decades ago. Of course, the unrest was due to the fact that workers and farmers, heretofore satisfied with feudal conditions not knowing that they could be otherwise, had suddenly been shown by the Socialists, the soldiers coming back fromSiberia, the radical press, that workmen in other countries lived in what seemed to frugal Japanese eyes the luxury of millionaires, and now they wanted similar privileges, yes, rights. But capital was right in its contention that workers who could individually bring forth only one-fifth the result produced by the white workmen could be paid wages only in proportion to their output capacity—otherwise Japanese production cost would rise to the point where Japanese goods would be helpless in world competition and industry must cease. The point seemed to be whether capital was holding down labor to unduly harsh conditions.
He took to rambling about in the poorer quarters of Tokyo, but could learn but little. The houses were frail, of thin boards and paper, but so were those of the wealthier classes; it was the form of construction adopted by a hardy people. Even if these buildings were dirtier, dingier, the population showed no sign of abject poverty, of misery. Children played merrily in the streets; men and women moved about or sat chatting in the open stores. A Japanese might have learned something, might have penetrated more intimately into their lives, might have entered their dwellings, have drawn from them their confidential thoughts, but as a foreigner he felt himself baffled by an invisible veil of reserve. They were courteous, friendly, but impenetrable. Only occasionally might he detect a hostile, wondering glance—what might this foreigner be doing in such places—or he might hear childish voices behind his back uplifted in song to the effect that the foreigner's father was a cat. One night a couple of fellows mellowed by sake wanted to take him to their bosom, tried to embrace him, overcome by all-enfolding love of mankind generally, insisted on his joining them in their festive circumambulations. It was annoying. They were harder to deal with thanif they had been unpleasant. He was trying to hold them off, irritated at the laughing crowd that had gathered, to escape, in some way. Suddenly the ranks of the onlookers parted and a Japanese in foreign clothes strode through, a middle-aged man, muscular, authoritative. "Here, you fellows, run along; can't you see that this foreigner wishes to pass?" The men stood back shamefacedly, murmured some apology. "All right, now run along." He cleared a way through the crowd. "They mean well enough," he explained to Kent, "but probably you had better let me go with you for a moment."
"Oh, I'm all right. Still, I want to thank you for your help." He began to explain why he had come; it was only due this unknown rescuer, and then the man had spoken in English, and evidently held some authority that the people here recognized. Who might he be, anyway?
"So you come to see poverty," the man laughed. "Well, if you really want to see it, the real thing, I think you may find no better man to guide you. That's my specialty, you see." He went on to explain. He was an official, it appeared, had charge of a government home for unemployed, where men might sleep for fifteen sen a night and board for forty sen a day. "But there are too few of these places," he complained. "We can take care of less than one tenth of the thousands who need it. There are no free sleeping places, no free food. The Capital-Harmony Society has provided a few reading rooms, playgrounds and all that; every now and then some rich man gives a small park; but they all give a few hundred thousands where they ought to be giving in millions. They can't see that if they don't give now, freely, these people will come some day and take it from them by force. If you care to come along, I'll show you how these people live."
He led Kent through a maze of narrow alleys, into the Fukagawa quarter, through dark lanes illumined only by faint light from open doorways. They must walk warily over rotten boards covering the slimy gutters which served as sewers, to avoid the deepest of the universal mud. Presently they came to a collection of buildings more squalid than the rest,—long, barn-like houses of filthy, rotting wood.
"Here you are," said the guide. "These are the 'Nagaya Tunnels'; they are famous for being the worst place in the city."
They entered. Through the length of the building ran a narrow passage, faced on both sides by cubicles of three mats each, spaces of six by nine feet, each housing a family, several adults and swarms of children. In the passageway all cooking and washing was done. It was cluttered withhibachi, firewood, cooking utensils, buckets for water brought from a pump outside, heterogeneous implements. Women were busy cooking, and acrid smoke ascended idly against the roof, escaping through a large hole and numerous cracks and crevices. As they passed down this corridor they could look into the minute rooms, packed with goods, raggedfuton, tattered clothing, poor belongings of every kind, leaving only a scant space in the middle where humans sat huddled together or lay asleep. Some of the rooms, particularly those where a few men maintained slovenly bachelor housekeeping, were ill-kept, with paper hanging in streamers from brokenshojiribs, and goods scattered about haphazardly. Others formed striking contrast with desperate attempts at cleanliness, where woman hands had tried pathetically to create some kind of home atmosphere in the box-like spaces allotted them in this turmoil of poverty. Kent caught a glimpse of a family seated about a low Japanese table, father, mother and a coupleof children, sitting decorously, with the same display of graceful manners as might be seen in the abodes of the rich, daintily picking with their chopsticks fish and vegetables from cheap earthenware. A tiny glass globe with a couple of goldfish was suspended from the window frame. The little tableau was like a ray of light in the mass of grime and poverty all about it, a pitiable insistence on maintenance of the spirit of family life, of decency despite the squalor hemming it in on all sides.
As they fumbled on, some of the inhabitants recognized the guide, crowded up to him with tales of their troubles. These were men only; the women eyed them curiously, dully, but remained apathetic. From the shadows unkempt wretches emerged. An old fellow with only one eye insisted on removing his bandage. He had lost his eye in an accident while working for the municipal electric light works; but they had given him nothing. Now, he had been trying to peddle small fish, but they had stopped him because he had no license. Where could he get money for a license? He had nothing to eat; others could find no employment. They wanted assistance, money, jobs.
But, oddly, try as he might, Kent could not draw even from the all-surrounding evidences of abject poverty an impression of suffering, of heart-rending misery. It was revolting that here several hundreds of humans were forced to find shelter in these miserable hovels, collections of rotten wood worth probably less than a thousand yen as kindling and fit for nothing else. But while presence of Americans or Europeans in such quarters would have caused him indignation, intense sympathy, here these people, inured to hardship by generation after generation of Spartan frugality, possessed a happy faculty of making the best of these wretched circumstances, of accepting them stoically.Mingled with the complaints, the stories of distress, had been laughter of children, the glimpse of the family at table, triumphantly wringing content from even such mean material. He was annoyed that he should feel like this, essentially unsympathetic, unable to register the distress which the plight of these people should produce; but the fact was that there seemed to be no anguish, no grinding, torturing grief.
He mentioned it to his companion. "It seems strange to me; here is poverty, and squalor and even want, and yet most of these people do not seem to be altogether unhappy; some even seem fairly well satisfied."
"Yes, that's true, but, as a matter of fact, you've come at the wrong time. Yesterday was the first of the month, and those of them who had jobs got their pay, and even those without jobs benefit from that. Those who have money share with the rest. But you ought to have been here last month, during the rains. I was down here trying to help, and the water came up to my armpits, tide and rain water mixed. The whole district was flooded, and the houses. In the single-story ones like the Tunnels the water stood several feet over the floors and the people had to construct makeshift shelves for themselves and their belongings. There they sat for several days, wet, hungry, cold. I've heard the cry of little children for food and their mothers trying to hush them, explaining that the father could not work during the flood. And that sort of thing is not unusual; it happens several times a year, as often as half a dozen times, whenever there is a heavy rain. This entire quarter is not fit for human habitation, but the factories have been built here because the location is convenient and the land comparatively cheap; and the workers must live near the factories. The whole district should be filled, but thesepeople have no voice in the government. Only the rich can vote for city councilmen, and the government funds are spent for the benefit of the rich, in wide avenues in the fine residence districts, by hundreds of thousands for celebrations—but there is no money for rescuing the poor from the floods.
"And do you know that the odd thing is that it's these very same poor people who are carrying the burden of maintaining the city. Tokyo collects less than four million yen a year from land and house taxes, and yet she is the sixth largest city in the world. The revenue is collected by indirect taxation, by the huge profits of the car system, by the imposts and stamp duties and licenses for every conceivable thing. The proportion of business tax paid by the magnates is infinitesimally small when compared with that wrung from the peddlers and small shopkeepers. So you see, the poor wretches who must cling to their walls like bats while the flood waters sweep over their floors, are at the same time paying for the boulevards and improving the property whose owners contribute almost nothing. Until a few years ago they did not think of that; they didn't know that things could be different. But now they're being taught, and they're beginning to figure things out. This is the kind of a place that breeds 'dangerous thoughts,' and, I tell you, when I am down here during flood time, I come pretty close to having 'dangerous thoughts' myself."
A few days later Kent was telling of this experience to a group of friends, Japanese and foreign, chance-met at the Imperial Hotel bar. "It's damnable. Of course, in every country we have rich rolling in luxury and poor ones groaning in misery, but in no place is the gulf between the classes so great, and nowhere else are the plutocrats so utterly unfeeling, so heartless; in no place are the poor ground so hard to makesuch absurdly high profits, your sixty and seventy per cent. dividends, your constant subsidies to giant companies and industries, your tariffs for protection of profiteers. I tell you, when I was mucking about down there in Fukagawa and heard of what it was like during the rains, and what it will continue to be like, I felt that I should like to meet these people, the Watanabes, the Inouyes, the Yamanakas, the Oharas, the lady with the blood-dyed silken shift of the song, you know, and I should like to kick the whole damned outfit, yes, the lady, too, by the gods."
"Look out, Kent, you're getting 'dangerous thoughts.'" They laughed and dismissed the subject, but one of them, Hata, leaned across the table to Kent.
"You know, Kent-san, I don't think you'd want to kick them at all, if you met them. In fact, you'd like them. I'll bet you a tiffin on it."
"All right, you're on," he replied thoughtlessly. The others had taken up the question of the Chinese demand for the return of the Liaotung peninsula, and he was interested.
A few days later Hata appeared at his office. "I have an invitation for you, you and your friend, Mr. Karsten, to have luncheon with Baron and Baroness Ohara, almost any day that would suit you. Would next Friday do? You know," he had noted the surprise on Kent's face, "you said you'd like to meet them."
Could ever such an absurd situation occur outside of Japan? How the devil could he accept the hospitality of people whom he had said he would like to kick, the Baroness at that? And still he was greatly tempted to grasp this opportunity to see at first hand, in their intimate home surroundings, these people, these heartless plutocrats who ground down the poor that they might amass wealth in a measure far greaterthan they could possibly use by even the most extravagant luxury. He hesitated.
"Did you by any chance say anything to the Oharas about my desire to kick them, Hata-san? Of course, you see that——"
"No, of course, not," he interrupted eagerly. "You know, I'm fairly close to Baron Ohara, and I really wanted you to meet him and the Baroness. They are charming people; you'll revise your opinion. I've told them of your investigation of the conditions of the poor in Tokyo, and they are much interested and really want you to tell them about it all. Anyway, do you think it would be fair for you to see only one side and then condemn the other? How about Friday?"
Kent accepted. What an odd proposition. Of course, Hata was right enough; he must seek both sides before passing judgment; but what the devil interest might Hata have in this? He did not know much about him, a suave, frock-coated gentleman, highly intelligent, fluent in English and French, ubiquitous in all places where Japanese and foreigners intermingled. He was known to be more or less definitely connected with the big interests—some even claimed that he was obscurely identified with the Foreign Office—but he was clever, an excellent companion, always ready to be of service in giving information or obtaining it for the foreigners. They accepted him as a sort of unofficial liaison officer maintained by the Japanese for the purpose of keeping them informed as to what the foreigners thought; also, in some measure, to elucidate the Japanese point of view. He was a bit of a mystery, but a pleasant one.
On the appointed day Hata came to escort them in one of the Baron's automobiles. "Here we are; this is the place," he pointed with almost proprietary pride to a long brick wall rising well above the height of atall man's head, hiding from view whatever might be enclosed within. "How do you like that gate?" Liveried commissionaires held open the massive iron-grille work, flanked on each side by tower-like buttresses. "The Baron had it brought from France; it's an exact copy of that of some château somewhere there."
"Frankly, I'd rather have seen in its place one of those great wooden, brass-studded gates of old Japan," said Karsten. "Wouldn't you, Kent?" But Kent did not answer. He recalled a picture he had seen in the Japanese papers, some months ago, of this very gate, closed, with a score of women clamoring, gesticulating through its ornate bars, workers who had vainly tried to bring their complaints direct to the owner of the factories in which they were employed. Eventually they had been hustled away by the police.
The automobile swept round a miniature mountain cleverly built up from carefully placed rocks. Trees had been planted amongst them; vines sprang from the interstices; skillful hands had laboriously contrived to reproduce a picture of untouched, untrammeled nature, an atmosphere of the free and restful mountainous country that made it difficult to realize that the grimy tangles of the city were but a hundred yards behind.
More liveried servants met them at the door of the mansion, a large modern thing, but well planned, with the quiet air of great wealth which disdainfully avoided garishness. The Baron met them in the hall, a young man—Kent judged him to be about thirty-five—slim, seeming tall with his trim athletic figure, almost like some young French aristocrat as is a type which recent years has brought forth among the wealthy classes of Japan. He was graceful, pleasantly placing them at ease. Harvard, then Cambridge, hadobliterated the stamp of race; it did not enter one's thought; one felt exactly as if he might have been a young Frenchman, Italian, Spaniard. He led them into an immense living room, high-ceilinged, with French windows giving on to an Italian garden which had been laid out behind the house. This also was entirely modern, with the same atmosphere of wealth carefully restrained by unfailing taste, excellently chosen furnishings, each thing of value and elegance, but harmonious, with an air of comfort, of a delightful living place. Possibly a hint of excess, over-crowding, might be conveyed by the superabundance of paintings which covered the walls everywhere. At first glance the display seemed too lavish, garish even, but this soon wore away as one came to look more closely, appreciating the beauty of each individual piece. Here was a gallery of modern art with here and there an almost priceless thing by some old master, and one sensed that this profusion was due, not merely to a desire for display, but to a genuine affection for these pictures, a real wish to have them ever before the eye.
Karsten became enthusiastic immediately, could not keep away from the paintings. In a moment he and the Baron had become as if they were old friends, passing from one thing to the other, appraising, commenting, sharing enthusiasm. Even Kent became absorbed. A discreet clearing of the throat from Hata recalled them. "Baroness Ohara."
In this atmosphere of modern Europe she seemed almost out of place as she came up slowly, with tripping gait in her softzori, absolutely Japanese in her garb of soft, neutral-hued kimono silks and great obi band; only the coiffure showed some concession to the modern, the hair, free from the oil of conventional hairdressing, being arranged in its natural softnessinto a wavy crown hiding part of the forehead and protruding over the ears.
The Baron made the introductions and she bowed deeply, gravely, extending her welcome to the guests in the polished refinement of Japanese phrase.
"It's a good thing you speak Japanese," commented the Baron to Karsten and Kent. "My wife speaks only Japanese. She has never been abroad." So for a moment the commonplaces were exchanged in Japanese, but soon he and Karsten were back at the pictures again. Two other guests, Japanese, joined them. One of these spoke French as his only foreign language. The conversation became polyglot, as they conversed in English or French about the pictures, or in Japanese with the Baroness. Kent was asked to take her in to luncheon.
At table, also, everything was in European style. It was with difficulty that Kent could compel himself to realize that here he was really in Japan; he could succeed only by glancing at the pretty, dainty figure at his side, listening to her soft, melodious Japanese. At the beginning the talk concerned itself about the poor quarters. Kent tried to describe what he had seen. They were all interested, receptive; but somehow he felt that he was not speaking well, that he was failing entirely to convey the picture, the sensations which he had felt; he could not drive himself into the vein in these surroundings. He tried to conjure before his mind the miserable realities of the "Tunnels," to revive the sense of indignation caused by contrast of the misery there and the luxury here, at the unfeelingness of these plutocrats whose most trifling bit of ornament was worth many times the value of the Tunnel shacks and all they contained. But he could not make himself despise these people, or hate them. He caught a glance from Hata. Was he thinking of his expressedwish to kick them, this graceful, petite incarnation of charm who was sitting right next to him, eyes wide with interest as if he were telling of matters of a distant country, things which were far from her, which had not the least direct concern with her. The thought confused him. He felt with irritation that his talk was unconvincing, featureless, lame. He was glad when the interest of Karsten in the pictures brought the main drift of the conversation to that subject. The talk became general, the Baron and Karsten leading. When they left the table, they returned to examination of the pictures, followed them down along the walls, Karsten and the Japanese, into the hallway beyond. Presently Kent found himself alone with the Baroness.
"Tell me some more about these poor people," she asked. "You know, they came here once, a lot of poor women, and wanted to talk to my husband. But he was not here. I crept outside and hid in the shrubbery so I could watch them. They were standing there by the gate and stretching their arms in through the iron grilles. I felt so sorry for them. I wanted to go and talk to them, to have them come in here and talk to me; but I was afraid. I know nothing about business. They might not have liked it, the men in charge of the business. I was afraid of them, these grave, old men who are in charge of the factories and the mines and all that. I was more afraid of them than of my husband. He knows so little of the business, too, you know."
So this was the lady whose silken shift was dyed crimson with blood from working girls' fingers. He wondered if she knew the song; probably not; she lived as if she were thousands of miles removed from the grim sordidness whence was evolved almost miraculously all this wealth of beauty and art. Butas he began to tell her about it, it seemed so futile, so incongruous, like trying to contaminate the frail fairness of a hothouse orchid with thought of the grimy coal mines which furnished fuel for the heat which gave it life. He could understand how it was possible for these people, the plutocrats, to be innocent of realization of the meanness of the sources of their wealth. Again he wanted to get away from the subject.
"This is a wonderful garden," he stepped up to a window. "I admire the artistry with which it has been fashioned. Here you can see but a bit of Italy. You would never know that Tokyo is right beyond."
"I'm so glad you like it. That is my great interest, the gardens," she was quite radiant. "And beyond that, below the terrace, we have a typical Japanese garden, just like real, old Japan. You must see it some time. I'm often quite lonesome, you know. Some day, when you are not too busy, you must come and have tea with me, and I will show you all the gardens."
She went on, telling of the plans for an artificial waterfall, run by an invisible electric pump, which she was having constructed; about the chrysanthemums which she was nurturing carefully for exhibition at the great November show at Hibiya. He enjoyed her, just like that, with her natural, ingenuous concern with beauty of flowers, the congruous interest of a gentlewoman of Japan. And as she went on, with bright eyes and soft voice, and the picture flashed into his mind of the women, hard-voiced, stridently storming at the gate, the conviction came to him that should this occur while he was here, were they to come this moment, he would do what he could to keep this dainty, pure, flower-like little woman away, removed from the grim realities which must not be suffered to enter disturbingly into the serenity of her existence.