Part 25 (1/2)
”Hm! A good thing, and the husband?”
”He is a soldier, an honourable man. He seemed foolish, or else he is very cunning. The English people are like that. They say a thing. Of course, you think it is a lie. But no, it is the truth; and so they deceive.”
”_Ma, mendo-kusai_ (indeed, smelly-troublesome!) And why has this foreigner come to j.a.pan?”
”Ito says he has come to learn about the money. That means, when he knows he will want more.”
”How much do we pay to Asa San?”
”Ten per cent.”
”And the profits last year on all our business came to thirty seven and a half per cent. Ah! A fine gain. We could not borrow from the banks at ten per cent. They would want at least fifteen, and many gifts for silence. It is better to fool the husband, and to let them go back to England. After all, ten per cent is a good rate. And we want all our money now for the new brothels in Osaka. If we make much money there, then afterwards we can give them more.”
”Ito says that if the Englishman knows that the money is made in brothels, he will throw it all away and finish. Ito thinks it would be not impossible to send the Englishman back to England, and to keep Asa here in j.a.pan.”
The old man looked up suddenly, and for once his jaw stopped chewing.
”That would be best of all,” he exclaimed. ”Then indeed he is honourable and a great fool. Being an Englishman, it is possible. Let him go back to England. We will keep Asa. She too is a Fujinami; and, even though she is a woman, she can be useful to the family. She will stay with us. She would not like to be poor. She has not borne a baby to this foreigner, and she is young. I think also our Sada can teach her many things.”
”It is of Sada that I came to speak to father,” said Mr. Gentaro. ”The marriage of our Sada is a great question for the Fujinami family. Here is a letter from Mr. Osumi, a friend of the Governor of Osaka. The Governor has been of much help to us in getting the concession for the new brothels. He is a widower with no children. He is a man with a future. He is protected by the military clan. He is wishful to marry a woman who can a.s.sist his career, and who would be able to take the place of a Minister's wife. Mr. Osumi, who writes, had heard of the accomplishments of our Sada. He mentioned her name to the Governor; and His Excellency was quite willing that Mr. Osumi should write something in a letter to Ito.”
”Hm!” grunted the old gentleman, squinting sidelong at his son; ”this Governor, has he a private fortune?”
”No, he is a self-made man.”
”Then it will not be with him, as it was with that Viscount Kamimura.
He will not be too proud to take our money.”
The truth of the allusion to Viscount Kamimura was that the name of Sadako Fujinami had figured on the list of possible brides submitted to that young aristocrat on his return from England. At first, it seemed likely that the choice would fall upon her, because of her undisputed cleverness; and the Fujinami family were radiant at the prospect of so brilliant a match. For although nothing had been formally mentioned between the two families, yet Sadako and her mother had learned from their hairdresser that there was talk of such a possibility in the servants' quarter of the Kamimura mansion, and that old Dowager Viscountess Kamimura was undoubtedly making inquiries which could only point to that one object.
The young Viscount, however, on ascertaining the origin of the family wealth, eliminated poor Sadako from the compet.i.tion for his hand.
It was a great disappointment to the Fujinami, and most of all to the ambitious Sadako. For a moment she had seen opening the doorway into that marvellous world of high diplomacy, of European capitals, of diamonds, d.u.c.h.esses and intrigue, of which she had read in foreign novels, where everybody is rich, brilliant, immoral and distinguished, and where to women are given the roles to play even more important than those of the men. This was the only world, she felt, worthy of her talents; but few, very few, just one in a million j.a.panese women, ever gets the remotest chance of entering it. This chance presented itself to Sadako--but for a moment only. The doorway shut to again; and Sadako was left feeling more acutely than before the emptiness of life, and the bitterness of woman's lot in a land where men are supreme.
Her cousin, Asako, by the mere luck of having had an eccentric parent and a European upbringing, possessed all the advantages and all the experience which the j.a.panese girl knew only through the glamorous medium of books. But this Asa San was a fool. Sadako had found that out at once in the course of a few minutes talk at the Maple Club dinner. She was sweet, gentle and innocent; far more j.a.panese, indeed, than her sophisticated cousin. Her obvious respect and affection for her big rough husband, her pathetic solicitude for the father whose face she could hardly remember and for the mother who was nothing but a name; these traits of character belong to the meek j.a.panese girl of _Onna Daigaku_ (Woman's Great Learning), that famous cla.s.sic of j.a.panese girlhood which teaches the submission of women and the superiority of men. It was a type which was becoming rare in her own country. Little Asako had nothing in common with the argumentative heroines of Bernard Shaw or with the desperate viragos of Ibsen, to whom Sadako felt herself spiritually akin. Asako must be a fool. She exasperated her j.a.panese cousin, who at the same time was envious of her, envious above all of her independent wealth. As she observed to her own mother, it was most improper that a woman, and a young woman too, should have so much money of her own. It would be sure to spoil her character.
Meanwhile Asako was a way of access to first-hand knowledge of that world of European womanhood which so strongly attracted Sadako's intelligence, that almost incredible world in which men and women were equal, had equal rights to property, and equal rights to love. Asako must have seen enough to explain something about it; if only she were not a fool. But it appeared that she had never heard of Strindberg, Sudermann, or d'Annunzio; and even Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde were unfamiliar names.
CHAPTER XIII
THE FAMILY ALTAR
_Yume no ai wa Kurus.h.i.+kari keri?
Odorokite Kaki-saguredomo Te ni mo fureneba._
(These) meetings in dreams How sad they are!
When, waking up startled One gropes about-- And there is no contact to the hand.