When August snow fell upon St. Moritz, the Barringtons descended to Milan, Florence, Venice and Rome. Towards Christmas they found their way to the Riviera, where they met Lady Everington at Monte Carlo, very indignant, or pretending to be so, at the neglect with which she had been treated.

"Fairy G.o.dmothers are important people," she said, "and very easily offended. Then, they turn you into wild animals, or send you to sleep for a hundred years. Why didn't you write to me, child?"

They were sitting on the terrace with the Casino behind them, overlooking the blue Mediterranean. A few yards farther on, a tall, young Englishman was chatting and laughing with a couple of girls too elaborately beautiful and too dazzlingly gowned for any world but the half-world. Suddenly he turned, and noticed Lady Everington. With a courteous farewell to his companions, he advanced to greet her.

"Aubrey Laking," she exclaimed, "you never answered the letter I wrote to you at Tokyo."

"Dear Lady Georgie, I left Tokyo ages ago. It followed me back to England; and I am now second secretary at Christiania. That is why I am in Monte Carlo!"

"Then let me introduce you to Asako Fujinami, who is now Mrs.

Barrington. You must tell her all about Tokyo. It is her native city; but she has not seen it since she was in long clothes, if j.a.panese babies wear such things."

Aubrey Laking and Barrington had been at Eton together. They were old friends, and were delighted to meet once more. Barrington, especially, was pleased to have this opportunity to hear about j.a.pan from one who had but lately left the country, and who was moreover a fluent and agreeable talker. Laking had not resided in j.a.pan long enough to get tired of orientalism. He described the quaint, the picturesque, the amusing side of life in the East. He was full of enthusiasm for the land of soft voices and smiling faces, where countless little shops spread their wares under the light of the evening lanterns, where the tw.a.n.g of the _samisen_ and the _geisha's_ song are heard coming from the lighted tea-house, and the shadow of her helmet-like _coiffure_ is seen appearing and disappearing in silhouette against the paper _shoji_.

The East was drawing the Barringtons towards its perilous coasts.

Laking's position at the Tokyo Emba.s.sy had been taken by Reggie Forsyth, one of Geoffrey's oldest friends, his best man at his wedding and a light of Lady Everington's circle. Already, Geoffrey had sent him a post-card, saying, "Warm up the _sake_ bottle," (Geoffrey was becoming quite learned in things j.a.panese), "and expect friends shortly."

However, when the Barringtons did at last tear themselves from the Riviera, they announced rather disingenuously that they were going to Egypt.

"They are too happy," Lady Everington said to Laking a few days later, "and they know nothing. I am afraid there will be trouble."

"Oh, Lady Georgie," he replied, "I have never known you to be a prophetess of gloom. I would have thought the auspices were most fortunate."

"They ought to quarrel more than they do," Lady Everington complained.

"She ought to contradict him more than she does. There must be a volcanic element in marriage. It is a sign of trouble coming when the fires are quiet."

"But they have got plenty of money," expostulated Aubrey, whose troubles were invariably connected with his banking account, "and they are very fond of each other. Where is the trouble to come from?"

"Trouble is on the lookout for all of us, Aubrey," said his companion, "it is no good flying from it, even. The only thing to do is to look it in the face and laugh at it; then it gets annoyed sometimes, and goes away. But those two poor dears are sailing into the middle of it, and they don't even know how to laugh yet."

"You think that Egypt is hopelessly demoralising. Thousands of people go there and come safely home, almost all, in fact, except Robert Hichens's heroines."

"Oh no, not in Egypt," said Lady Everington; "Egypt is only a stepping-stone. They are going to j.a.pan."

"Well, certainly j.a.pan is harmless enough. There is n.o.body there worth flirting with except us at the Emba.s.sies, and we generally have our hands full. As for the visitors, they are always under the influence of Cook's tickets and j.a.panese guides."

"Aubrey dear, you think that trouble can only come from flirting or money."

"I know that those two preoccupations are an abundant source of trouble."

"What do you think of Mrs. Barrington?" asked her Ladyship, appearing to change the subject.

"Oh, a very sweet little thing."

"Like your lady friends in Tokyo, the j.a.panese ones, I mean?"

"Not in the least. j.a.panese ladies look very picturesque, but they are as dull as dolls. They sidle along in the wake of their husbands, and don't expect to be spoken to."

"And have you no more intimate experience?" asked Lady Everington.

"Really, Aubrey, you have not been living up to your reputation."

"Well, Lady Georgie," the young man proceeded, gazing at his polished boots with a well-a.s.sumed air of embarra.s.sment, "since I know that you are one of the enlightened ones, I will confess to you that I did keep a little establishment _a la_ Pierre Loti. My j.a.panese teacher thought it would be a good way of improving my knowledge of the local idiom; and this knowledge meant an extra hundred pounds to me for interpreter's allowance, as it is called. I thought, too, that it would be a relief after diplomatic dinner parties to be able to swear for an hour or so, big round oaths in the company of a dear beloved one who would not understand me. So my teacher undertook to provide me with a suitable female companion. He did. In fact, he introduced me to his sister; and the suitability was based on the fact that she held the same position under my predecessor, a man whom I dislike exceedingly. But this I only found out later on. She was dull, deadly dull. I couldn't even make her jealous. She was as dull as my j.a.panese grammar; and when I had pa.s.sed my examination and burnt my books, I dismissed her."

"Aubrey, what a very wicked story!"

"No, Lady Georgie, it was not even wicked. She was not real enough to sin with. The affair had not even the excitement of badness to keep it going."

"Do you know the j.a.panese well?" Lady Everington returned to the highroad of her inquiry.

"No, n.o.body does; they are a most secretive people."

"Do you think that, if the Barringtons go to j.a.pan, there is any danger of Asako being drawn back into the bosom of her family?"

"No, I shouldn't think so," Laking replied, "j.a.panese life is so very uncomfortable, you know, even to the j.a.ps themselves, when once they have got used to living in Europe or America. They sleep on the floor, their clothes are inconvenient, and their food is nasty, even in the houses of the rich ones."

"Yes, it must be a peculiar country. What do you think is the greatest shock for the average traveller who goes there?"

"Lady Georgie, you are asking me very searching questions to-day. I don't think I will answer any more."

"Just this one," she pleaded.

He considered his boots again for a moment, and then, raising his face to hers with that humorous challenging look which he a.s.sumes when on the verge of some indiscretion, he replied,--

"The _Yoshiwara_."

"Yes," said her Ladyship, "I have heard of such a place. It is a kind of Vanity Fair, isn't it, for all the _cocottes_ Of Tokyo?"

"It's more than that," Laking answered; "it is a market of human flesh, with nothing to disguise the crude fact except the picturesqueness of the place. It is a square enclosure as large as a small town. In this enclosure are shops, and in the shop windows women are displayed just like goods, or like animals in cages; for the windows have wooden bars. Some of the girls sit there stolidly like stuffed images, some of them come to the bars and try to catch hold of the pa.s.sers-by, just like monkeys, and joke with them and shout after them. But I could not understand what they said--fortunately, perhaps.

The girls,--there must be several thousands--are all dressed up in bright kimonos. It really is a very pretty sight, until one begins to think. They have their price tickets hung up in the shop windows, one shilling up to one pound. That is the greatest shock which j.a.pan has in store for the ordinary tourist."

Lady Everington was silent for a moment; her flippant companion had become quite serious.

"After all," she said, "is it any worse than Piccadilly Circus at night?"

"It is not a question of better or worse," argued Laking. "Such a purely mercenary system is a terrible offence to our most cherished belief. We may be hypocrites, but our hypocrisy itself is an admission of guilt and an act of worship. To us, even to the readiest sinners among us, woman is always something divine. The lowest a.s.signation of the streets has at least a disguise of romance. It symbolises the words and the ways of Love, even if it parodies them. But to the j.a.panese, woman must be merely animal. You buy a girl as you buy a cow."

Lady Everington shivered, but she tried to live up to her reputation of being shocked by nothing.

"Well, that is true, after all, whether in Piccadilly or in the Yoshiwara. All prost.i.tution is just a commercial transaction."

"Perhaps," said the young diplomat, "but what about the Ideal at the back of our minds? Pa.s.sion is often a grotesque incarnation of the Ideal, like a savage's rude image of his G.o.d. A glimpse of the ideal is possible in Piccadilly, and impossible in the Yoshiwara. The divine something was visible in Marguerite Gautier; little Hugh saw it even in Nana. For one thing, here in London, in the dirtiest of sordid dramas, it is still the woman who gives, but in j.a.pan it is always the man who takes."

"Aubrey," said his friend, "I had no idea that you were a poet, or in other words that you ever talked nonsense without laughing. You think such a shock is strong enough to upset the Barrington _menage_?"

"It will give furiously to think," he answered, "to poor old Geoffrey, who is a very straight, clean and honest fellow, not overused to furious thinking. I suppose if one married a monkey, one might persuade oneself of her humanity, until one saw her kindred in cages."

"Poor little Asako, my latest G.o.d-daughter!" cried Lady Everington.