Kimono Part 27

Inside, the walls were daubed with earth; and a round window barred with bamboo sticks gave a view into what was apparently forest depths.

"Why, it is just like a doll's house," cried Asako, delighted. "Can we go in?"

"Oh, yes," said the j.a.panese. Asako jumped in at once and squatted down on the clean matting; but her more cautious cousin dusted the place with her handkerchief before risking a stain.

"Do you often have tea-ceremonies?" asked Asako.

The Muratas had explained to her long ago something about the mysterious rites.

"Two or three times in the Spring, and then two or three times in the Autumn. But my teacher comes every week."

"How long have you been learning?" Asako wanted to know.

"Oh, since I was ten years old about."

"Is it so difficult then?" said Asako, who had found it comparatively easy to pour out a cup of drawing-room tea without clumsiness.

Sadako smiled tolerantly at her cousin's naive ignorance of things aesthetic and intellectual. It was as though she had been asked whether music or philosophy were difficult.

"One can never study too much," she said, "one is always learning; one can never be perfect. Life is short, art is long."

"But it is not an art like painting or playing the piano, just pouring out tea?"

"Oh, yes," Sadako smiled again, "it is much more than that. We j.a.panese do not think art is just to be able to do things, showing off like _geisha_. Art is in the character, in the spirit. And the tea-ceremony teaches us to make our character full of art, by restraining everything ugly and common, in every movement, in the movement of our hands, in the position of our feet, in the looks of our faces. Men and women ought not to sit and move like animals; but the shape of their bodies, and their way of action ought to express a poetry. That is the art of the _chanoyu_."

"I should like to see it," said Asako, excited by her cousin's enthusiasm, though she hardly understood a word of what she had been saying.

"You ought to learn some of it," said Sadako, with the zeal of a propagandist. "My teacher says--and my teacher was educated at the court of the Tokugawa Shogun--that no woman can have really good manners, if she has not studied the _chanoyu_."

Of course, there was nothing which Asako would like more than to sit in this fascinating arbour in the warm days of the coming summer, and play at tea-parties with her new-found j.a.panese cousin. She would learn to speak j.a.panese, too; and she would help Sadako with her French and English.

The two cousins worked out the scheme for their future intimacy until the stars were reflected in the lake and the evening breeze became too cool for them.

Then they left the little hermitage and continued their walk around the garden. They pa.s.sed a bamboo grove, whose huge plumes, black in the darkness, danced and beckoned like the Erl-king's daughters. They pa.s.sed a little house shuttered like a Noah's Ark, from which came a monotonous moaning sound as of some one in pain, and the rhythmic beat of a wooden clapper.

"What is that?" asked Asako.

"That is my father's brother's house. But he is illegitimate brother; he is not of the true family. He is a very pious man. He repeats the prayer to Buddha ten thousand times every day; and he beats upon the _mokugy[=o]_ a kind of drum like a fish which the Buddhist priests use."

"Was he at the dinner last night?" asked Asako.

"Oh no, he never goes out. He has not once left that house for ten years. He is perhaps rather mad; but it is said that he brings good luck to the family."

A little farther on they pa.s.sed two stone lanterns, cold and blind like tombstones. Stone steps rose between them to what in the darkness looked like a large dog-kennel. A lighted paper lantern hung in front of it like a great ripe fruit.

"What is that?" asked Asako.

In the failing twilight this fairy garden was becoming more and more wonderful. At any moment, she felt she might meet the Emperor himself in the white robes of ancient days and the black coal-scuttle hat.

"That is a little temple," explained her cousin, "for Inari Sama."

At the top of the flight of steps Asako distinguished two stone foxes.

Their expression was hungry and malign. They reminded her of--what?

She remembered the little temple outside the Yos.h.i.+wara on the day she had gone to see the procession.

"Do you say prayers there?" she asked her companion.

"No, _I_ do not," answered the j.a.panese, "but the servants light the lamp every evening; and we believe it makes the house lucky.

We j.a.panese are very superst.i.tious. Besides, it looks pretty in the garden."

"I don't like the foxes' faces," said Asako, "they look bad creatures."

"They _are_ bad creatures," was the reply, "n.o.body likes to see a fox; they fool people."

"Then why say prayers, if they are bad?"

"It is just because they are bad," said Sadako, "that we must please them. We flatter them so that they may not hurt us."

Asako was unlearned in the difference between religion and devil-wors.h.i.+p, so she did not understand the full significance of this remark. But she felt an unpleasant reaction, the first which she had received that day; and she thought to herself that if she were the mistress of that lovely garden, she would banish the stone foxes and risk their displeasure.

The two girls returned to the house. Its shutters were up, and it, too, had that same appearance of a Noah's Ark but of a more complete and expensive variety. One little opening was left in the wooden armature for the girls to enter by.

"Please come again many, many times," was cousin Sadako's last farewell. "The house of the Fujinami is your home. _Sayonara_!"

Geoffrey was waiting for his wife in the hall of the hotel. He was anxious at her late return. His embrace seemed to swallow her up to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the _boy sans_ who had been discussing the lateness of _okusan_, and the possibility of her having an admirer.

"Thank goodness," said Geoffrey, "what have you been doing? I was just going to organise a search party."

"I have been with Mrs. Fujinami and Sadako," Asako panted, "they would not let me go; and oh!"--She was going to tell him all about her mother's picture; but she suddenly checked herself, and said instead, "They've got such a lovely garden."

She described the home of the cousins in glowing colours, the hospitality of the family, the cleverness of cousin Sadako, and the lessons which they were going to exchange. Yes, she replied to Geoffrey's questions, she had seen the memorial tablets of her father and mother, and their wedding photograph. But a strange paralysis sealed her lips, and her soul became inarticulate. She found herself absolutely incapable of telling that big foreign husband of hers, truly as she loved him, the veritable state of her emotions when brought face to face with her dead parents.

Geoffrey had never spoken to her of her mother. He had never seemed to have the least interest in her ident.i.ty. These "j.a.p women," as he called them, were never very real to him. She dreaded the possibility of revealing to him her secret, and then of receiving no response to her emotion. Also she had an instinctive reluctance to emphasise in Geoffrey's mind her kins.h.i.+p with these alien people.

After dinner, when she had gone up to her room, Geoffrey was left alone with his cigar and his reflection.

"Funny that she did not speak more about her father and mother. But I suppose they don't mean much to her, after all. And, by Jove, it's a good thing for me! I wouldn't like to have a wife who was all the time running home to her people, and comparing notes with her mother."

Upstairs in her bedroom, Asako had unrolled the precious _obi_. An unmounted photograph came fluttering out of the parcel. It was a portrait of her father alone taken a short time before his death. At the back of the photograph was some j.a.panese writing.

"Is Tanaka there?" Asako asked her maid t.i.tine.

Yes, of course, Tanaka was there, in the next room with his ear near the door.

"Tanaka, what does this mean?"