CHAPTER XX

THE KIMONO

Na we to wa wo Hito zo saku naru.  Ide, wagimi!  Hito no naka-goto Kiki-kosu na yume!

  It is other people who have separated
  You and me. 
  Come, my Lord! 
  Do not dream of listening
  To the between-words of people!

After a ghastly night of sleeplessness at Nikko, Geoffrey Barrington reached Tokyo in time for lunch.  His thoughts were confused and discordant.

“I feel as if I had been drunk for a week,” he kept on saying to himself.  Indeed, he felt a fume of unreality over all his actions.

One thing was certain:  financially, he was a ruined man.  The thousands a year which yesterday morning had been practically his, the ease and comfort which had seemed so secure, were lost more hopelessly than if his bank had failed.  Even the cash in his pocket he touched with the greatest disgust, as if those identical bills and coins had been paid across the brothel counter as the price for a man’s dirty pleasures and a girl’s shame and disease.  He imagined that the Nikko hotel-keeper looked at his notes suspiciously as though they were endorsed with the seal of the Yoshiwara.

Geoffrey was ruined.  He was henceforth dependent on what his brain could earn and on what his father would allow him, five hundred pounds a year at the outside.  If he had been alone in the world it would not have mattered much; but Asako, poor little Asako, the innocent cause of this disaster, she was ruined too.  She who loved her riches, her jewellery, her pretty things, she would have to sell them all.  She would have to follow him into poverty, she, who had no experience of its meaning.  This was his punishment, perhaps, for having steadily pursued the idea of a rich marriage.  But what had Asako done to deserve it?  Thank God, his marriage had at least not been a loveless one.

Geoffrey felt acutely the need of human sympathy in his trouble.  By sheer bad luck he had forfeited Reggie’s friendship.  But he could still depend upon his wife’s love.

So he ran up the stairs at the Imperial Hotel longing for Asako’s welcome, though he dreaded the obligation to break the bad news.

He threw open the door.  The room was empty.  He looked for cloaks and hats and curios, for luggage, for any sign of her presence.  There was nothing to indicate that the room was hers.

Sick with apprehension, he returned to the corridor.  There was a boy san near at hand.

“Okusan go away,” said the boy san.  “No come back, I think.”

“Where has she gone?” asked Geoffrey.

The boy san, with the infuriating Japanese grin, shook his head.

“I am very sorry for you,” he said.  “To-day very early plenty people come, Tanaka San and two Japanese girls.  Very plenty talk. Okusan cry tears.  All nice kimono take away very quick.”