Kimono | Page 4

dried flesh of the fish called katsuobushi by the Japanese, whose absence also would have brought misfortune to the newly married. Behind them, on a little tray, stood a miniature landscape representing an aged pine-tree by the sea-shore and a little cottage with a couple of old, old people standing at its door, two exquisite little dolls dressed in rough, poor kimonos, brown and white. The old man holds a rake, and the old woman holds a broom. They have very kindly faces and white silken hair. Any Japanese would recognise them at once as the Old People of Takasago, the personification of the Perfect Marriage. They are staring with wonder and alarm at the Brandan sapphires, a monumental parure designed for the massive state of some Early-Victorian Lady Brandan.
Asako Fujinami had spent days rejoicing over the arrival of her presents, little interested in the identity of the givers but fascinated by the things themselves. She had taken hours to arrange them in harmonious groups. Then a new gift would arrive which would upset the balance, and she would have to begin all over again.
Besides this treasury in the dining-room, there were all her clothes, packed now for the honeymoon, a whole wardrobe of fairy-like disguises, wonderful gowns of all colours and shapes and materials. These, it is true, she had bought herself. She had always been surrounded by money; but it was only since she had lived with Lady Everington that she had begun to learn something about the thousand different ways of spending it, and all the lovely things for which it can be exchanged. So all her new things, whatever their source, seemed to her like presents, like unexpected enrichments. She had basked among her new acquisitions, silent as was her wont when she was happy, sunning herself in the warmth of her prosperity. Best of all, she never need wear kimonos again in public. Her fianc�� had acceded to this, her most immediate wish. She could dress now like the girls around her. She would no longer be stared at like a curio in a shop window. Inquisitive fingers would no longer clutch at the long sleeves of, crinkled silk, or try to probe the secret of the huge butterfly bow on her back. She could step out fearlessly now like English women. She could give up the mincing walk and the timid manner which she felt was somehow inseparable from her native dress.
When she told her protectress that Geoffrey had consented to its abandonment, Lady Everington had heaved a sigh.
"Poor Kimono!" she said, "it has served you well. But I suppose a soldier is glad to put his uniform away when the fighting is over. Only, never forget the mysterious power of the uniform over the other sex."
Another day when her Ladyship had been in a bad mood, she had snapped,--
"Put those things away, child, and keep to your kimono. It is your natural plumage. In those borrowed plumes you look undistinguished and underfed."
* * * * *
The Japanese Ambassador to the Court of St. James proposed the health of the bride and bridegroom. Count Saito was a small, wise man, whom long sojourn in European countries had to some extent de-orientalised. His hair was grizzled, his face was seamed, and he had a peering way of gazing through his gold-rimmed spectacles with head thrust forward like a man half blind, which he certainly was not.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "it is a great pleasure for me to be present on this occasion, for I think this wedding is a personal compliment to myself and to my work in this splendid country. Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Barrington are the living symbols of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance; and I hope they will always remember the responsibility resting on their shoulders. The bride and bridegroom of to-day must feel that the relations of Great Britain and Japan depend upon the perfect harmony of their married life. Ladies and gentlemen, let us drink long life and happiness to Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Barrington, to the Union Jack and to the Rising Sun!"
The toast, was drunk and three cheers were given, with an extra cheer for Mrs. Geoffrey. The husband, who was no hand at speechmaking, replied--and his good-natured voice was quite thick with emotion--that it was awfully good of them all to give his wife and himself such a ripping send-off, and awfully good of Sir George and Lady Everington especially, and awfully good of Count Saito; and that he was the happiest man in the world and the luckiest, and that his wife had told him to tell them all that she was the happiest woman, though he really did not see why she should be. Anyhow, he would do his best to give her a jolly good