Kimono | Page 2

an
aristocracy and society and all that kind of thing?"
"I'm sure I don't know. I shouldn't think so. They don't look real
enough."
"She is very rich, anyhow," a third lady intervened, "I've heard they are
big landowners in Tokyo, and cousins of Admiral Togo's."
* * * * *
The opportunity for closer inspection of this curiosity was afforded by
the reception given at Lady Everington's mansion in Carlton House
Terrace. Of course, everybody was there. The great ballroom was
draped with hangings of red and white, the national colours of Japan.
Favours of the same bright hues were distributed among the guests.
Trophies of Union Jacks and Rising Suns were grouped in corners and

festooned above windows and doorways.
Lady Everington was bent upon giving an international importance to
her protégée's marriage. Her original plan had been to invite the whole
Japanese community in London, and so to promote the popularity of
the Anglo-Japanese Alliance by making the most of this opportunity for
social fraternising. But where was the Japanese community in London?
Nobody knew. Perhaps there was none. There was the Embassy, of
course, which arrived smiling, fluent, and almost too well-mannered.
But Lady Everington had been unable to push very far her programme
for international amenities. There were strange little yellow men from
the City, who had charge of ships and banking interests; there were
strange little yellow men from beyond the West End, who studied the
Fine Arts, and lived, it appeared, on nothing. But the hostess could find
no ladies at all, except Countess Saito and the Embassy dames.
Monsieur and Madame Murata from Paris, the bride's guardians, were
also present. But the Orient was submerged beneath the flood of our
rank and fashion, which, as one lady put it, had to take care how it
stepped for fear of crushing the little creatures.
"Why did you let him do it?" said Mrs. Markham to her sister.
"It was a mistake, my dear," whispered Lady Everington, "I meant her
for somebody quite different."
"And you're sorry now?"
"No, I have no time to be sorry--ever," replied that eternally graceful
and youthful Egeria, who is one of London's most powerful social
influences. "It will be interesting to see what becomes of them."
Lady Everington has been criticised for stony-heartedness, for
opportunism, and for selfish abuse of her husband's vast wealth. She
has been likened to an experimental chemist, who mixes discordant
elements together in order to watch the results, chilling them in ice or
heating them over the fire, until the lives burst in fragments or the
colour slowly fades out of them. She has been called an artist in

_mésalliances_, a mismatch-maker of dangerous cunning, a dangler of
picturesque beggar-maids before romantic-eyed Cophetuas, a daring
promoter of ambitious American girls and a champion of musical
comedy peeresses. Her house has been named the Junior Bachelors
Club. The charming young men who seem to be bound to its hospitable
board by invisible chains are the material for her dashing
improvisations and the dramatis personae of the scores of little
domestic comedies which she likes to keep floating around her in
different stages of development.
Geoffrey Barrington had been the secretary of this club, and a favourite
with the divinity who presided over it. We had all supposed that he
would remain a bachelor; and the advent of Asako Fujinami into
London society gave us at first no reason to change our opinion. But
she was certainly attractive.
* * * * *
She ought to have been married in a kimono. There was no doubt about
it now, when there was more liberty to inspect her, as she stood there
shaking hands with hundreds of guests and murmuring her "Thank you
very much" to the reiterated congratulations.
The white gown was perfectly cut and of a shade to give its full value
to her complexion, a waxen complexion like old ivory or like a
magnolia petal, in which the Mongolian yellow was ever so faintly
discernible. It was a sweet little face, oval and smooth; but it might
have been called expressionless if it had not been for a dimple which
peeped and vanished around a corner of the small compressed mouth,
and for the great deep brown eyes, like the eyes of deer or like pools of
forest water, eyes full of warmth and affection. This was the feature
which struck most of us as we took the opportunity to watch her in
European dress with the glamour of her kimono stripped from her.
They were the eyes of the Oriental girl, a creature closer to the animals
than we are, lit by instinct more often than by reason, and hiding a soul
in its infancy, a repressed, timorous, uncertain thing, spasmodically
violent and habitually