Kimono | Page 9

he exclaimed, "but I do not know myself. The money has been paid regularly for nearly twenty years; and I know the Fujinami are very rich. Indeed, Captain Barrington, I do not think Asako would like Japan. It was her father's last wish that she should never return there."
"But why?" asked Geoffrey. He felt that Murata was keeping something from him. The little man answered,--
"He thought that for a woman the life is more happy in Europe; he wished Asako to forget altogether that she was Japanese."
"Yes, but now she is married and her future is fixed. She is not going back permanently to Japan, but just to see the country. I think we would both of us like to. People say it is a magnificent country."
"You are very kind," said Murata, "to speak so of my country. But the foreign people who marry Japanese are happy if they stay in their own country, and Japanese who marry foreigners are happy if they go away from Japan. But if they stay in Japan they are not happy. The national atmosphere in Japan is too strong for those people who are not Japanese or are only half Japanese. They fade. Besides life in Japan is very poor and rough. I do not like it myself."
Somehow Geoffrey could not accept these as being the real reasons. He had never had a long talk with a Japanese man before; but he felt that if they were all like that, so formal, so unnatural, so secretive, then he had better keep out of the range of Asako's relatives.
He wondered what his wife really thought of the Muratas, and during the return to their hotel, he asked,--
"Well, little girl, do you want to go back again and live at Auteuil?"
She shook her head.
"But it is nice to think you have always got an extra home in Paris, isn't it?" he went on, fishing for an avowal that home was in his arms only, a kind of conversation which was the wine of life to him at that period.
"No," she answered with a little shudder, "I don't call that home."
Geoffrey's conventionality was a little bit shocked at this lack of affection; he was also disappointed at not getting exactly the expected answer.
"Why, what was wrong with it?" he asked.
"Oh, it was not pretty or comfortable," she said, "they were so afraid to spend money. When I wash my hands, they say, 'Do not use too much soap; it is waste.'"
* * * * *
Asako was like a little prisoner released into the sunlight. She dreaded the idea of being thrust back into darkness again.
In this new life of hers anything would have made her happy, that is to say, anything new, anything given to her, anything good to eat or drink, anything soft and shimmery to wear, anything--so long as her big husband was with her. He was the most fascinating of all her novelties. He was much nicer than Lady Everington; for he was not always saying, "Don't," or making clever remarks, which she could not understand. He gave her absolutely her own way, and everything that she admired. He reminded her of an old Newfoundland dog who had been her slave when she was a little girl.
He used to play with her as he would have played with a child, watching her as she tried on her finery, hiding things for her to find, holding them over her head and making her jump for them like a puppy, arranging her ornaments for her in those continual private exhibitions which took up so much of her time. Then she would ring the bell and summon all the chambermaids within call to come and admire; and Geoffrey would stand among all these womenfolk, listening to the chorus of "_Mon Dieu!_" and "_Ah, que c'est beau!_" and "_Ah, qu'elle est gentille!_" like some Hector who had strayed into the gynaeceum of Priam's palace. He felt a little foolish, perhaps, but very happy, happy in his wife's naive happiness and affection, which did not require any mental effort to understand, nor that panting pursuit on which he had embarked more than once in order to keep up with the witty flirtatiousness of some of the beauties of Lady Everington's salon.
Happiness shone out of Asako like light. But would she always be happy? There were the possibilities of the future to be reckoned with, sickness, childbirth, and the rearing of children, the hidden development of the character which so often grows away from what it once cherished, the baleful currents of outside influences, the attraction and repulsion of so-called friends and enemies all of which complicate the primitive simplicity of married life and forfeit the honeymoon Eden. Adam and Eve in the garden of the Creation can hear the