Gradually life became smoothed into the old routine existence. News seemed to occur in cycles, like the and depressions of a chart; at times the press would be filled with accounts of disturbing events, strikes, mass meetings of workmen, of demanding this or that, establishment of shop committees in factories, recognition of the government; reports of arrests and police ; and this would be followed by hiatus-like when it seemed almost as if all these things had been forgotten, as if the excitement had outworn itself. Kent found himself going often to the dances at Tsurumi; there was little else to do. He began to find Tokyo dull.
He was sitting with Karsten one evening in the study upstairs, talking idly of this and that. It was late; the brilliant glitter of the machiai below was gradually fading. Some one in the entrance hall was talking with Jun-san; they could hear the faint of voices. Suddenly Jun-san appeared.
"Kent-san," wide-open eyes showed surprise, bewildered wonder. "A young lady has come to see you, Suzuki Kimiko-san. She says she must see you. What shall I do?"
"Well, I'll be hanged! Just wait a moment, Jun-san." He turned to Karsten, met only his smile as he blew great smoke clouds against the ceiling. "Damn it, Karsten, don't sit there like an . I haven't the slightest idea what that girl has come here for. I have been with her often at Tsurumi and[Pg 249] at hotel dances, you know, but, by the gods, there isn't the slightest reason why she should come here, a girl of her class, at this time of the night, a go-fujin, a lady. Why it's even more serious in Japan than it would be at home."
"Seems to me the only thing you can do is to ask her up here. You can't in let her stand there in the hall. Ask Suzuki-san to come up, Jun-san. Kent, you've got to find out what is the trouble, anyway. By Cæsar, for a man of your continent tastes, you seem to have more than your share of exciting episodes with women."
They could hear the exchange of the usual ritual of polite phrases between the women as they were mounting the stairs. "Please enter." Jun-san drew the partition aside.
Kimiko stood in the , hands , quivering a little, lips trembling as she , words issuing haltingly in short breaths. "Kent-san. I've come to you. I've run away."
"You've run away." He had risen to meet her; stood dumbly gazing at her as if she had suddenly dropped from the ceiling. She had run away! It seemed as if his brain could grapple with just that one idea, that he could not get beyond it.
"Sit down please, Suzuki-san," Karsten came to the rescue. "Jun-san, will you please have some tea brought. Get to your senses, Kent. We must do what we can to assist this young lady. Here, let me take your wraps, Suzuki-san," he took them, pressed her gently into a chair, about to give Kent time to collect himself.
But Kent was still bewildered. "So you have run away. Why?"
"Oh, it's a long story. I'll tell you presently, to-morrow; only find some place for me here to-night."[Pg 250] She was fighting hard for control of her voice, hands clenched tightly to the chair arms. "Only let me stay here to-night."
"But what about your family? You must go home, Kimiko-san, or you'll have all kinds of trouble. I'll see you home, little girl, and then to-morrow you can come and tell me all about your troubles. Can't you see that that will be better," he spoke . "I'll see you home."
"I can't go home. There's no one there. They have all gone to the country. They don't know yet that I have run away."
That, at least, was some relief. She explained that the family had left Tokyo a few days before, while she stayed with friends, expecting her to join them later. "But then I heard, oh, then I heard——" she glanced at Karsten. He looked to Kent. Jun-san and the servants entered with the tea things. The matter-of-fact mechanics of having tea brought the situation down to a more natural level. "I wonder, Suzuki-san, whether it would not be better to wait until to-morrow," suggested Karsten. "Then you'll be less excited. We'll take care of you. What do you think?" She nodded eagerly. In the reaction of the commonplace she wished only to gain . It was arranged that she should stay the night in Jun-san's cottage.
After breakfast, Kent found himself alone with Kimiko. Karsten and Jun-san had to withdraw inconspicuously. "And now, Kimiko-san," he drew his chair close to hers. "Tell me all about it."
She brought both hands up to her hair, smoothed it back slowly. "I ran away," she spoke evenly, measuredly—evidently she had rehearsed carefully what she intended to say—"I ran away because I heard that they wanted me to marry Kikuchi-san."
[Pg 251]
During the night he had puzzled the matter over and had come to the conclusion that it must be something like that, that the family, after the old Japanese fashion, must have that now that she had reached the age when girls must marry, arrangements must be made for contracting a suitable alliance. He had even thought that young Kikuchi might be the one; the families were close, and the Suzuki money might fit in well with the noble but not over-wealthy Kikuchi house. It seemed natural enough; Kikuchi had shown that he liked the girl. He had wondered whether this young Japanese might not resent the evident of a foreigner with this bright, young beauty, though he had never given sign thereof. And now, why the deuce had she come to him? That, too, had puzzled him. Could it be that——? No, of course, not. Still, the thought had insisted. What if she wanted him to marry her? The idea had had . He liked her very much, could almost to believe that he might love her. But he held out against the thought; the family would be sure to set itself against it; and even if they should marry first and confront it with the fact, the papers would be sure to in the incident, as they always did where daughters of the aristocracy followed the unconventional. They would make her out a , wantonly abandoning the decent traditions, would her into unhappiness with their and cry. And then he himself; he had made up his mind that Karsten had been right, that in spite of its allurement, marriage with a Japanese girl would not work out in his case. He had reasoned it all out that time at Hakone. But was that why she had come to him?
She seemed to read his thought. "I came to you, Kent-san, because I could go to no Japanese. They would have been shocked, would have sent me home.[Pg 252] And I wanted to talk to some one, to get away from the family where I was. I knew that the go-between would be coming in a few days, and I wanted to get advice first. I didn't know what to do.
"But why don't you want to marry Kikuchi-san? Don't you like him?" he was sparring, trying to from her something that might give a clew.
"Yes, I like him, but I would never marry a Japanese like him, to be just like these other old-fashioned Japanese married women, always obedient, always compelled to serve him, to have to regard whatever he might do as right, even if he had geisha sweethearts; never to have a right to have a personality of my own."
"But surely Kikuchi-san is modern. I know him. Sometimes I think he's almost . He takes after foreign ideas in everything. It seems to me——"
"Oh, yes, of course, he's modern. He goes to the dances, and dresses after the haikara fashions, and plays golf, and talks very advanced politics, and all that. And in all that he is really modern, advanced, like so many of our young men; but when it comes to marriage, to the matter of the of women, he's like the rest of them, too. They want modernism and liberalism, but only for the men. In regard to us women their view is different; there they want to stick to the old, hidebound rules. They want the modern freedom of thought and of action—but only for the men.
"But we women, we want the right to think too, to live our own lives just as your women do. We are no more stupid, no more old-fashioned than the men. But they are all against us, all the men. See how often the Fujin Koraon, the Public Opinion of Women paper, is suppressed by the police. But still we learn and we know. Women are going into business and[Pg 253] into politics; there are even many women Socialists, and the police are afraid of them. And in the matter of marriage; we want now to have a right to say whom we want to marry, to have a right to marry—for love." She looked him straight in the eye, compelling her glance to meet his, blushing a little, but only finger tips rubbing restlessly against one another betraying her nervousness. "Even in school we talked about love, yes, even free love. It is right if people love each other, if there's no other way. Shikataganai. It can't be helped then. And the principal called in Shinto priests, and had them perform, right in the school, the 'soul-quieting ceremony,' and eighteen of us had to assist them, all dressed in white. And we laughed at it all. It was so silly.
"That is the reason why you hear about the Clover Leaf Club, which receives letters from men and women who want to marry, and the officers sort them out and bring together the couples which they think are well matched. That's why you see sometimes in the newspapers advertisements for husbands, occasionally even for foreign husbands," she laughed . "Oh, that's silly, I know, but still it all shows how we feel. And that's how I feel. I don't want to marry, at least, not now; but if I ever do, I shall want to make my own choice, and I shall surely choose a man who believes as I do.
"That's the trouble in Japan, if a girl grows a few years older than twenty, the family consider that it is a disgrace if she doesn't marry. That is why they are beginning to worry about me, especially as they have had to give it up about my sister; but then they think that in her case it is the fault of the she received abroad. So now they are doubly anxious on my account; they don't want two old maids well over twenty in the family. But now that I have run away,[Pg 254] that would be an even worse scandal. The papers would play it up as they did the countess who tried to commit double suicide with a , or as they did with Akiko-san, the millionaire's wife who ran away with a poet. You know, I have been in the papers once already. That was when they were making such a fuss about Japanese girls dancing foreign fashion, and some of them even published the names of girls who went to dances. One of them mentioned my name, and my parents were so angry. Now, if they don't leave me alone, I won't go home, and the papers will learn about my having run away, and that will be worse than ever, especially because I have run away to a foreigner."
She leaned back, crossed one knee over the other, looked at him expectantly. She had gained her composure entirely, even enjoyed the situation, now that the difficult part, the telling, was done with. She evidently anticipated approval from him, praise of her cleverness. But the revelation of her in coming to him was like a douche of cold water. Of course, he ought to be pleased. What he had taken to be the unfolding of a , tragedy possibly, developing slowly, , towards an inescapable woeful , had suddenly become transformed into a , fantastic but harmless. But the suddenness of the metamorphosis irritated him, the sense of finding himself taking a rôle in where he had, gravely, been preparing himself for . So all his vain imaginings that she might have sought him out because of affection on her part, because of her having greater confidence in him, was fancy. The little minx was using him merely as a convenient lay figure where a moment before he had thought himself to be cast in a principal rôle. What an anti-climax!
[Pg 255]
"And now that you have planned it all out so well, what do you propose to do now? What do you expect me to do?"
She caught the in his voice. "Now, please, Kent-san, don't be angry. I thought you would be pleased when I got it all arranged so nicely. I thought it all out last night. You wouldn't really want me to run away to you, with you, would you now?"
Was she in earnest? Was the serious note that had crept into her voice, the appeal to be sensed therein, something more than mere anxiety to his displeasure with her ? How much did she think of him, or how little? It seemed as if he might detect the faintest undertone of earnestness under the words from her lips, a hint of dark shadow deep in her eyes. For a moment the temptation to grasp her hands, to draw her to him, to learn just what was passing in her mind, gripped him; but instantly came the other thought,—what if she should be in earnest? He shoo............