Part 4 (1/2)
”What nonsense!” exclaimed Geoffrey, taken aback by this sudden reproof: ”they are dear little things like you, darling, and they bring you tea and wave fans behind your head, and I would like to have twenty of them--to wait upon you!”
He would tease her about a supposed fondness for rice, for chop-sticks, for paper umbrellas and _jiujitsu._ She liked him to tease her, just as a child likes to be teased, while all the time on the verge of tears. With Asako, tears and laughter were never far apart.
”Why do you tease me because I am j.a.panese?” she would sob; ”besides, I'm not really. I can't help it. I can't help it!”
”But, sweetheart,” her Captain Geoffrey would say, suddenly ashamed of his elephantine humour, ”there's nothing to cry about. I would be proud to be a j.a.panese. They are jolly brave people. They gave the Russians a jolly good hiding.”
It made her feel well to hear him praise her people, but she would say:
”No, no, they're not. I don't want to be a j.a.p. I don't like them.
They're ugly and spiteful. Why can't we choose what we are? I would be an English girl--or perhaps French,” she added, thinking of the Rue de la Paix.
They left Paris and went to Deauville; and here it was that the serpent first crawled into Eden, whispering of forbidden fruit.
These serpents were charming people, amusing men and smart women, all anxious to make the acquaintance of the latest sensation, the j.a.panese millionairess and her good-looking husband.
Asako lunched with them and dined with them and sat with them near the sea in wonderful bathing costumes which it would be a shame to wet.
Conscious of the shortcomings of her figure as compared with those of the lissom mermaids who surrounded her, Asako returned to kimonos, much to her husband's surprise; and the mermaids had to confess themselves beaten.
She listened to their talk and learned a hundred things, but another hundred at least remained hidden from her.
Geoffrey left his wife to amuse herself in the cosmopolitan society of the French watering-place. He wanted this. All the wives whom he had ever known seemed to enjoy themselves best when away from their husbands' company. He did not quite trust the spirit of mutual adoration, which the G.o.ds had given to him and his bride. Perhaps it was an unhealthy symptom. Worse still, it might be Bad Form. He wanted Asako to be natural and to enjoy herself, and not to make their love into a prison house.
But he felt a bit lonely when he was away from her. Occupation did not seem to come easily to him as it did when she was there to suggest it.
Sometimes he would loaf up and down on the esplanade; and sometimes he would take strenuous swims in the sea. He became the prey of the bores who haunt every seaside place at home and abroad, lurking for lonely and polite people upon whom they may unload their conversation.
All these people seemed either to have been in j.a.pan themselves or to have friends and relations who knew the country thoroughly.
A wonderful land, they a.s.sured him. The nation of the future, the Garden of the East, but of course Captain Barrington knew j.a.pan well. No, he had never been there? Ah, but Mrs. Barrington must have described it all to him. Impossible! Really? Not since she was a baby?
How very extraordinary! A charming country, so quaint, so original, so picturesque, such a place to relax in; and then the j.a.panese girls, the little _mousmes_, in their bright kimonos, who came fluttering round like little b.u.t.terflies, who were so gentle and soft and grateful; but there! Captain Barrington was a married man, that was no affair of his. Ha! Ha!
The elderly _roues_, who buzzed like February flies in the suns.h.i.+ne of Deauville, seemed to have particularly fruity memories of tea-house sprees and oriental philanderings under the cherry-blossoms of Yokohama. Evidently, j.a.pan was just like the musical comedies.
Geoffrey began to be ashamed of his ignorance concerning his wife's native country. Somebody had asked him, what exactly _bus.h.i.+do_ was. He had answered at random that it was made of rice and curry powder. By the hilarious reception given to this explanation he knew that he must have made a _gaffe_. So he asked one of the more erudite bores to give him the names of the best books about j.a.pan. He would ”mug it up,”
and get some answers off pat to the leading questions. The erudite one promptly lent him some volumes by Lafcadio Hearn and Pierre Loti's _Madame Chrysantheme_. He read the novel first of all. Rather spicy, wasn't it?
Asako found the book. It was an ill.u.s.trated edition; and the little drawings of j.a.panese scenes pleased her immensely, so that she began to read the letter press.
”It is the story of a bad man and a bad woman,” she said; ”Geoffrey, why do you read bad things? They bring bad conditions.”
Geoffrey smiled. He was wondering whether the company of the fict.i.tious _Chrysantheme_ was more demoralizing than that of the actual Mme. Laroche Meyerbeer, with whom his wife had been that day for a picnic lunch.
”Besides, it isn't fair,” his wife continued. ”People read that book and then they think that all j.a.panese girls are bad like that.”
”Why, darling, I didn't think you had read it,” Geoffrey expostulated, ”who has been telling you about it?”