He tried to beat down the wave-crest of emotion, happiness, that surged over him, gripped him and shook him. He wanted none of it, wished to fight against it. It was all right for him to be pleased to see her again, to be with her, but this on the of transports of joy—he would simply have to keep a tight hold on himself. The situation held too many potentialities of complications, , . Even the way in which the news of her coming had reached him had , oddly, the curious blend of the bitter and the sweet which the situation held. It had been the Tinker hag again. She had caught him at tea, had seized upon him and led him to a corner that she might enjoy in every detail, undisturbed, his reaction to the dénouement. Probably she had overcome a desire to fare and shout out the news in the market place, had kept it for him, so that she might be the first to communicate it. It was her hobby, probably the only interest which kept her alive, this interest in living, this complicated situations among her acquaintances in order that she might satisfy a curious and taste for the dramatic by gloating over their display of the more unusual emotions, their unguarded laying bare before her eye the reactions usually held in check. He had been irritatedly aware of the greedy glare of this old woman; it was almost indecent; as she watched him[Pg 264] lest she fail to catch the slightest indication of face or voice which might betray his feelings. He did not think she could have gotten much out of it. He thought he had played up well. Still, one could never know. Anyway, it was , disgusting, that the return of Sylvia, after all this time, should immediately revive the of the idle women, should so wantonly render complicated, almost impossible, intimate relation with this girl.
And, now, what about Sylvia? Did she know that he had become free? How long had she known it? Had she just heard of it and returned forthwith? No; he dismissed that thought. But might she not have heard some time ago and simply allowed a decent to elapse in order to avoid giving the gossips grist for their mills? But he caught himself up sharply. What an he was to imagine, vaingloriously, that he had entered into her considerations at all. Presumably she had been governed by different , something not even remotely connected with him. What grounds had he to imagine that his presence was of the slightest moment to her. Of course, it did seem as if she must have left Tokyo on account of the gossip connecting him with her; but, after all, that proved nothing, could certainly not by even the most fanciful of imagination be into an indication of feeling related to affection. No, he was an ass.
The only thing he could do would be to sit tight and suffer matters to occur as they might. He was curious to meet her—he sternly insisted to himself that that was all—and yet he rather it, wondered what he should say, how he should act. He would leave it to her to take the lead. Women did these things better than men, had finer perceptions, an [Pg 265]instinctive sureness with which they could handle such delicate situations.
So when he met her, he was not much surprised that the incident seemed almost commonplace. Luckily, there were others at the time whom she met also for the first time since her return. She treated him exactly like these, included him with those others with the usual drab, conventional commonplaces. It almost irritated him that the meeting had been so trivial. Was she then not interested? It him. Well, why shouldn't he find out. He was free now, and if he did care for her—there was no denying that she interested him immensely, that she still had that old charm for him, yes, hang it, that he did care for, that he might easily come to love her. And why not? Came back to his mind the charm of the days when he and she had been close, when he had been afraid to with the thought of her in the place of Isabel. He need not fear that now. He had the right to. And if it had been pleasant then, why not now, why not allow himself the felicity of dreaming that dream. He warmed to the thought, a glow of sheer pleasure and happiness him. Of course. He would be careful to be tactful. She was tremendously sensitive and he must take care not to spoil everything by being too , but he would watch his chance.
It took time, still, as he felt his way slowly, with anxious care, holding himself in check, carefully such little gains as he made before venturing an small step forward, he felt that they were gradually approaching something like the old relation. He had even come to the point where they had made a few small excursions together. But they were few and separated by that seemed infinitely long, and he under the necessity of keeping himself in hand. Now that he was allowing himself to consider,[Pg 266] at least as a remote potentiality, the idea of love, the situation became ever so much more complicated, was more difficult to manage. He must not allow himself to think of this too much. In the back of his mind remained the uneasy thought that he had loved Isabel, had desired to marry her—and then his marriage had been a failure, anyway. If one failed once, one might do so twice. After all, love was often mainly something by oneself. One took love of an image up by one's imagination for love of the woman; it might be a sort of auto-intoxication. He must be sure of himself. He must force himself to be rational, to refrain from letting fancy take charge of what should be the function of the brain. Anyway, there was plenty of work to do. He would use work as a counterirritant.
Japan had suddenly launched into one of its periods of excitement. First came news from Manchuria, where Chang Tso-lin was moving a great expedition to drive the troops out of Mongolia. Conservative papers registered perfunctory surprise at the completeness of his equipment, motor transport, field , even airplanes; but most of the papers, the people generally, contemptuously, shoulders. It was an old story. Of course, the Manchurian war-lord could have obtained them from only one source, the militarists. The War Office issued its usual denial, which no one believed. Presently came news of attacks by Chinese bandits on settlements in the South Manchuria Railway territory, of Japanese , clashes with Japanese police, burning of a or two. From high official sources, unnamed, but generously quoted in the press, were given out alarming statements. It was the Bolshevik menace, irresponsible of Manchuria, Koreans, being on by mysterious machinations[Pg 267] from Moscow. It would be necessary to move troops into Manchuria to protect the railway region, especially now that Chang Tso-lin was engaged in Mongolia and could not protect neighboring territory. The divisions in Korea were moved inland. It would be necessary to send fresh troops to Korea. Of course, it would be impossible to consider the proposition to reduce the army at the session of the Diet which was just about to meet.
The people murmured; again the feeling became prevalent that a great militaristic scheme was being carried out, cleverly hidden by the uniformed old men up there in the copper-roofed building towering on the hill beyond the Foreign Office. Opinions were divided. Some insisted that Japanese lives must be , colonists protected, the dignity of the Empire upheld; others cried out bitterly that the entire was but part of a great plot ingeniously hatched out by the General Staff. Some papers claimed to have proof that this was but another attempt to carry out the favorite old military plan, to have a state created by Chang Tso-lin and remnants of White Russian ; that the bandits were backed by Chang, that the very rifles which had dealt out death to Japanese had been furnished in mysterious roundabout ways by the War Office. It was hinted that the massacres were, in fact, quite welcome to the General Staff, that they were a part of the whole scheme.
It was a busy period for Kent. News was breaking constantly, here and there, in unexpected quarters. It was intensely interesting at first, sending story upon story over the wire, each one conveying the feeling of that each day was bringing nearer some great event, some , indefinite but gradually assuming certainty, something overwhelming, big news. But events were happening too quickly,[Pg 268]—the staccato hammering of situation after situation, the Manchurian affair, army bill, rice scandal, Diet fights, police charges, and revelations, farmer revolts and riots in the cities, all became a of excitement, a whirl of incidents by with dizzily shifting changes, making concentration on any one of them almost impossible. Like the nation in general, Kent found himself unable to maintain the high key of excited absorption; one became overwhelmed as if by a succession of great waves, one following so closely after the other that the mind, and bewildered, failing to register complete, clear impression of each one, became in reaction dulled, , almost . After all, this ubiquitous clamor, this constantly flickering and flashing of new pictures, produced finally but an impression of a stupendous ; one became exhausted by the repetition of explosions of excitement, causing one to hold one's breath, , in of some dénouement, a political , that constantly but which always seemed to fall just short, to evaporate harmlessly as each happening became overshadowed by the occurrence of some new and development.
It became necessary to remain almost constantly near the center of affairs, to be in readiness to snap up the news events which flashed forth with explosive suddenness, like lightning from a thunder cloud. It became his custom to spend much of his time at the Imperial Hotel. It was close to the Diet building, the Foreign Office, the central police station, and when things were quiet, when there was nothing to do but wait, he enjoyed the atmosphere, the feeling of remoteness from the surroundings of everyday modernity, which was conveyed to him by this enormous structure of fantastic where genius had[Pg 269] contrived to work out in permanencies of stone and bronze the delicate and ephemeral fancies of an opulent dream image. Resting in a remote corner among the corniced which gave on the vestibule, his eye found constant delight in the intricacy of detail, embroidery-like stone pillar, fretwork and balustrades, together complicated interlacing designs; the flood of colors of rugs and cushions—browns, ocher, terracotta and , and , ultra-marine, lapis lazuli, indigo—in a riot of shadings and combinations, and all of it, colors and contours, blended into a great whole, impressive, inspiring, so it seemed almost a sacrilege that this mirage-like should be by the comings and goings of hotel guests and townsfolk on concerns of business.
In the afternoon, at tea time, it was especially pleasant, when the Russian orchestra played. of color of butterfly-winged kimonos would the scene with a of exotic rich life. They really fitted into the picture, these young girls of the Japanese aristocracy, with their undulating, polychromatic , and when the music lent itself to the forming of a picture, some symphony or bit of opera, one might dream oneself surrounded by an Arabian Nights setting, or a scene from "Aïda."
Here one might meet every one who counted at all in the ultra-modern life of Tokyo, foreigners and Japanese, business men, newspapermen, young fellows from the embassies, in the bar; and, upstairs, in the lobby or in Peacock , the women at tea. Kent often saw the Suzuki girls there. Kimiko seemed happy enough, showed no trace of the incident which had brought her to him. But he came principally for the chance that it afforded him to see Sylvia.
[Pg 270]
It had been a
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