"But why drag me into it? It's your own affair."

"In France and in j.a.pan," said Asako, "a girl do not say Yes and No herself. It is her father and her mother who decide. I have no father or mother; so I think he must ask you."

"And what do you want me to say?"

For answer Asako gently squeezed the elder woman's hand, but Lady Georgie was in no mood to return the pressure. The girl at once felt the absence of the response, and said,--

"What, you do not like the _capitaine Geoffroi_?"

But her fairy G.o.dmother answered bitterly,--

"On the contrary, I have a considerable affection for Geoffrey."

"Then," cried Asako, starting up, "you think I am not good enough for him. It's because I'm--not English."

She began to cry. In spite of her superficial hardness, Lady Everington has a very tender heart. She took the girl in her arms.

"Dearest child," she said, raising the little, moist face to hers, "don't cry. In England we answer this great question ourselves. Our fathers and mothers and fairy G.o.dmothers have to concur. If Geoffrey Barrington has asked you to marry him, it is because he loves you. He does not scatter proposals like calling-cards, as some young men do.

In fact, I have never heard of him proposing to anyone before. He does not want you to say 'No', of course. But are you quite ready to say 'Yes'? Very well, wait a fortnight, and don't see more of him than you can help in the meantime. Now, let them send for my _ma.s.seuse_. There is nothing so exhausting to the aged as the emotions of young people."

That evening, when Lady Everington met Geoffrey at the theatre, she took him severely to task for treachery, secrecy and decadence. He, was very humble and admitted all his faults except the last, pleading as his excuse that he could not get Asako out of his head.

"Yes, that is a symptom," said her Ladyship; "you are clearly stricken. So I fear I am too late to effect a rescue. All I can do is to congratulate you both. But, remember, a wife is not nearly so fugitive as a melody, unless she is the wrong kind of wife."

It was a wrench for the little lady to part with the oldest of her friendships, and to give up her Geoffrey to the care of this decorative stranger whose qualities were unknown, and undeveloped. But she knew what the answer would be at the end of the fortnight. So she steeled her nerves to laugh at her friends commiserations and to make the marriage of her G.o.dchildren one of the season's successes. It would certainly be an interesting addition to her museum of domestic dramas.

There was one person whom Lady Everington was determined to pump for information on that wedding-day, and had drawn into the net of her invitations for this very purpose. It was Count Saito, the j.a.panese Amba.s.sador.

She cornered him as he was admiring the presents, and whisked him away to the silence and twilight of her husband's study.

"I am so glad you were able to come, Count Saito," she began. "I suppose you know the Fujinamis, Asako's relatives in Tokyo?"

"No, I do not know them." His Excellency answered, but his tone conveyed to the lady's instinct that he personally would not wish to know them.

"But you know the name, do you not?"

"Yes, I have heard the name; there are many families called Fujinami in j.a.pan."

"Are they very rich?"

"Yes, I believe there are some who are very rich," said the little diplomat, who clearly was ill at ease.

"Where does their money come from?" his inquisitor went on remorselessly, "You are keeping something from me, Count Saito. Please be frank, if there is any mystery."

"Oh no, Lady Everington, there is no mystery, I am sure. There is one family of Fujinami who have many houses and lands in Tokyo and other towns. I will be quite open with you. They are rather what you in England call _nouveaux riches_."

"Really!" Her Ladyship was taken aback for a moment. "But you would never notice it with Asako, would you? I mean, she does not drop her j.a.panese aitches, and that sort of thing, does she?"

"Oh no," Count Saito rea.s.sured her, "I do not think Mademoiselle Asako talks j.a.panese language, so she cannot drop her aitches."

"I never thought of that," his hostess continued, "I thought that if a j.a.panese had money, he must be a _daimyo_, or something."

The Amba.s.sador smiled.

"English people," he said, "do not know very well the true condition of j.a.pan. Of course we have our rich new families and our poor old families just as you have in England. In some aspects our society is just the same as yours. In others, it is so, different, that you would lose your way at once in a maze of ideas which would seem to you quite upside down."

Lady Everington interrupted his reflections in a desperate attempt to get something out of him by a surprise attack.

"How interesting," she said, "it will be for Geoffrey Harrington and his wife to visit j.a.pan and find out all about it."

The Amba.s.sador's manner changed.

"No, I do not think," he said, "I do not think that is a good thing at all. They must not do that. You must not let them."

"But why not?"

"I say to all j.a.panese men and women who live a long time in foreign countries or who marry foreign people, 'Do not go back to j.a.pan,'

j.a.pan is like a little pot and the foreign world is like a big garden.

If you plant a tree from the pot into the garden and let it grow, you cannot put it back into the pot again."

"But, in this case, that is not the only reason," objected Lady Everington.

"No, there are many other reasons too," the Amba.s.sador admitted; and he rose from his sofa, indicating that the interview was at an end.

The bridal pair left in a motor-car for Folkestone tinder a hailstorm of rice, and with the propitious white slipper dangling from the number-plate behind.

When all her guests were gone, Lady Everington fled to her boudoir and collapsed in a little heap of sobbing finery on the broad divan. She was overtired, no doubt; but the sense of her mistake lay heavy upon her, and the feeling that she had sacrificed to it her best friend, the most humanly valuable of all the people who resorted to her house.

An evil cloud of mystery hung over the young marriage, one of those sinister unfamiliar forces which travellers bring home from the East, the curse of a G.o.d or a secret poison or a hideous disease.

It would be so natural for those two to want to visit j.a.pan and to know their second home. Yet both Sir Ralph Cairns and Count Saito, the only two men that day who knew anything about the real conditions, had insisted that such a visit would be fatal. And who were these Fujinamis whom Count Saito knew, but did not know? Why had she, who was so socially careful, taken so much for granted just because Asako was a j.a.panese?

CHAPTER II

HONEYMOON

_Asa no kami Ware wa kezuraji Utsukushiki Kimi ga ta-makura Fureteshi mono wo._

(My) morning sleep hair I will not comb; For it has been in contact with The pillowing hand of My beautiful Lord!

The Barringtons left England for a prolonged honeymoon, for Geoffrey was now free to realise his favourite project of travelling abroad.