A Japanese Marriage

Front matter

BOOK'S BY THE AUTHOR ON THE CARS AND OFF. Second Edition. iSs. THE JAPS AT HOME. Fifth Edition. 2s. 6d. FRITHJOF AND INGEBJORG. _%. AUSTRALIAN LYRICS. Is. A POETRY OF EXILES. IS. A SUMMER CHRISTMAS. 6s. IN CORNWALL AND ACROSS THE SEA. 6s. EDWARD THE BLACK PRINCE. 4s. THE SPANISH ARMADA. 6d. LESTER THE LOYALIST. 2s. 6d. WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, LIMITED. BY DOUGLAS SLADEN AUTHOR OF 'THE JAPS AT HOME' AND (ON THE CARS AND OFF ' LONDON ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK i895 DEDICATED TO 'cEfjc (Earl of 2Dunrai)nt THE MOST ELOQUENT ADVOCATE OF THE RIGHTS OF THE DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER

Preface

THE fact of the most unpleasant personage in this story being a clergyman of the Church of England renders it necessary, I think, for me to mention that I have not the slightest wish to make any attack on The Church. I only attack the particular type which is Pharisaic to human happiness. Bryn Avon went further. Because of the mis behaviour of one particular specimen of that type, she argued that The Church in general was un worthy of the sacrifice she was making for it, and abandoned the principle she had at stake. Bryn's argument was wrong, but what she did, I think, was right. For the increase of human happiness is the highest end of existence, and Bryn's sacrifice had been decidedly against it. The rights of the individual in the case of human happiness, as in the case of Society, must not inter fere with the comfort of the community of which he is a unit.

But, subject to this limitation, the increase A JAPANESE MARRIAGE of human happiness should take precedence of everymore rational share of it the New Woman Move to think, has been largely thing. The desire for a was a great purpose of ment, and, I am thankful achieved. which women are as freed Any age is golden in as men. Douglas Sladen. Authors' Club, London. NOTE 'A Japanese Marriage' is an attempt to present the life of the English in Japan, as The saps at Home attempted to present the life of the Japanese themselves. There has, I think, been but one widely-read novel on the subject, and that dealt with the old Japan of Samurai days. Of the Japanese this book touches only the lower class, as they were in the Japan before the war, which has proved Dai Nippon, 'Great Japan,' a first-class Power.

It is said that the Japanese gave their islands the name of Great Japan, because they felt that their nation would be the Great Britain of the Far East. It is.

Book I Chapter

I The Yokohama United Club is an oasis in a green land where you are hardly ever out of sight of water — an intellectual oasis, for in its snug library you are surrounded by all the old familiar books and all the newest, by the thousand. Men as a rule only go there when they are homesick. The three who have the responsibility of opening this story were not in the library, but under the verandah staring out on the narrow, dusty Bund with its straggling avenue of half-fledged fir trees, douched by the spray every time the wind gets up. They were not looking at the road, or the men-of-war, or the merchant steamers of half a dozen nations, or the blue hills of Kanozan, for one of the troupes of performers which haunt the Club and the two big hotels on the Bund was in full swing amidst a ring of admiring riksha boys and tiny girls carrying the next baby in the haori on their backs. i I This time the performers were trained monkeys — monkey mendicants, two-sworded monkey Samurai, and monkey samisen players.

It was a delicious day, blue sky and softest breeze. ' Are Japanese Aprils always as lovely as this ? ' asked the man in the light tweed suit 'of two others in immaculate flannels with crimson sashes round their waists and puggarees folded in cunning plaits round their broad Terai hats. ' Except when they aren't,' said Charley Dacres, whose riding and tennis were ahead of his conversational powers, a short, dark, wiry man, with a clear eye and fresh ' about the gills.' His face, on which he wore only a moustache clipped short enough to show a good mouth with very white and even teeth, struck you as being good-looking because it was so well-bred, though his nose had been broken and one eyebrow distorted by a pony treading on him as a conclusion to his first glorious spill in the hunting field.

He was good form, and could do anything a ' Johnnie ' ought to do ; but these were his limitations. ' It sometimes rains, you know,' explained Robert Mathdine, whose clothes (sent out from England) fitted him so well that you felt sure he must be a stupid man. He was a tall, loosely-made man, decidedly handsome with his bright blue eyes, florid cheeks, and fair hair elaborately parted behind, because there was not enough to part on the top. The short retrousse' nose and crisp fair moustache made his face very English. ' I see,' said their questioner. But Mr. Mathdine saw that he didn't, for he added : ' It rains like the very devil when it does begin here.' Philip Sandys didn't see yet. ' Oh, it always rains here in the summer, you know.' ' Oh — I understand now.' ' Aren't you tired of watching those monkeys yet, Sandys ? ' ' No, I never saw them before.' ' I think these shows are so dull,' said Mathdine ; ' I rather like the little chaps that go about in red flannel and cock's feathers, and tumble, though they don't do it a bit well — but these monkeys and jugglers, I can't stand them at any price.' Philip was not listening to him— he exclaimed suddenly : ' Look at that jolly little girl who's tumming the samisen and changing the monkey's togs.

How blasee she is, she does the whole thing as if it were such an awful bore ; she's very handsome too with her scarlet lips and wild dark eyes.' Presently Mr. Mathdine said : ' Let's go up to the Avons now.' Charley Dacres moved off with alacrity, but the new-comer made no sign. ' Aren't you coming up, Sandys ? ' ' No, I don't know them.' ' Not know the Avons ! Oh, that isn't the least consequence, it's open house there, and the jolliest house in Japan. They've crowds of coolies in smart liveries, and the curios in the house would be a fortune.' Philip pricked his ears. 'Curios? I should like Mr. Avon, I've a mania for curio-hunting.' ' Curio-hunting ! God bless your soul, old Avon doesn't go curio-hunting ; don't believe he knows one from another. It's Wan Hing, his compradore, who buys all these things for him.

Haven't you dis covered what useful things these Chinese compradores are yet ? ' 'Oh, well, I couldn't get on without my com pradore ; of course he does all my business with the Japs. I should be cheated all round if I tried to do it myself ; but I don't make him buy my curios for me.' ' Old Avon does, and he gets the very best new things that come into the market.' ' I don't care for new things. I don't think I should like a man who collected his curios in that fashion.' ' But you should see his daughter ; she's the best thing in all Dai-Nippon.' ' What is she like ? ' ' Oh, I can't describe her — she's beautiful.' ' Has he only one daughter?' ' No, he has another. Man, you must see Bryn Avon ; she's stunning.' ' Are you sure they won't mind ? ' ' Mind ? No ! they won't mind. They're glad to see anybody that's decent ; and as manager of your Governor's Line of steamers, you're worth cultivating by a merchant who doesn't charter his own ships.' Well, if you'll take the responsibility. ' Oh, come along,' said Charley Dacres. ' Rikshas — Kuruma-ya ! ' Hardly were the words out of his mouth when there was a race of all the riksha boys on the stand.

They chose the three with the cleanest rikshas and the smartest white topees, which, however, the boys took off before they commenced running, and hung on the shafts. In less than half a minute they were flying along the Bund behind their swarthy charioteers in dark blue mediæval-looking tunics and hose, past the hotels and the deserted French hatoba, and over the little wooden bridge, spanning the creek, which divides the ' Settlement ' where Europeans work, from the ' Bluff' where every European lives as soon as he has enough money. There was another competition at the foot of the Bluff to see which of the bare-legged coolies hanging about with coils of rope upon their arms should push the rikslias behind as they crawled up the steep incline. They passed a little row of curio-shops. ' There, Sandys,' said Mr. Mathdine, ' you'd better try those — No, not now — ' he added anxiously, as he saw him preparing to pull up, ' they won't stick you much there ; their customers are the people who live on the Bluff, and know the value of the trash too well ; it's off the beat of globe-trotters.

They never go up the Bluff except to feed with the residents, and that after dark. ' Here we are,' he said presently, after they had turned off the main road for a while and rattled along a narrow lane between high banks topped with English shrubs, and looking for all the world like an outskirt of Tunbridge Wells. They drew up momentarily outside an ancient Japanese gate over shadowed by a heavy roof, with turned-up toes of the orthodox Far East fashion, the whole elaborately carved and painted red. ' Another of the compradore's bargains,' said Mr. Mathdine under his breath ; ' he got it for ten dollars, and it's said to be ten hundred years old.' The gate was open. The Avons' gate was never closed until the last guest had sped at night. A smiling Japanese, in a dark blue cotton kimono with a Cambridge -blue worm squirming over his back, knew them and said, ' Ohayo, Mathdine San, Ohayo, Daker San.' Mr. Mathdine said that Mr. Avon liked to shed an Oriental air over his establishment and entertain ments, and instructed his servants to intermix plenty of Japanese in their conversation with his guests.

All his dining-room servants spoke some English. He further added that the Cambridge-blue worm was the Japanese symbol for water, which some savant had told Mr. Avon to be the meaning of his name. ' Ohayo, sir,' the servant said to Sandys, who was a stranger, and whose name he did not know. ' Ohayo! said Philip, who had been studying his vocabulary, and knew it meant good morning. It was 4 p.m. by the clock on the Bluff Assembly Rooms. From the Temple doorway to the house it was not far, and the interval was roofed over like the approach to a temple. The house was what rich Melbourne people would call a cottage — a cottage with a ball-room, a billiard-room and a score of bedrooms, covering a good slice of an acre. Having only one story constitutes a cottage in Melbourne. Its lowness made no difference to the view, for it stood on the very summit of the Bluff, one of the queer crumpled hills so typical of Japan that they have been immortalised on the willow pattern plate.

Distance and height are no object when you have every usable kind of conveyance from a carriage and pair to a jinriksha. There are not many carriages and pairs in Japan ; the proud possessor almost ranks with an ambassador. ' We won't go into the house, Sandys,' said Mr. Mathdine, leading the way out sideways (Japanese covered ways have no side walls) into a garden that recalled to Philip, but certainly not to Mr. Mathdine or Mr. Dacres, the original meaning of the word paradise. Very likely they had never noticed the clumps of palmettos, the coppices of bamboo, the avenue of flowering fruit trees, and the hundred architectural devices of that paragon of taste, the Japanese landscape gardener. Probably the sole comment they had ever made on the garden was ' the only decent tennis court in Yokohama.' It was the landscape gardening that riveted Philip's attention ; he hardly noticed the brilliantly attired players on the several courts, and the swarm of coolies fielding the balls or scuffing along to bring relays of refreshment.

Suddenly out of one of the sets a girl emerged, escorted by a tall auburn-haired young Englishman of the aristocratic type, and the grave, brave face so often immortalised by Lady Butler. ' I'm so glad you've come, Mr. Mathdine and Mr. Dacres ; you know Lord Romney, I think.' They exchanged greetings in the rather effusive way you contract when over 10,000 miles from home. ' We've brought Mr. Sandys with us, Miss Bryn.' Bryn took him in at a glance with her quick eye, without appearing to look at him. A well-knit man of medium height with a straw-coloured beard, and rather severe features, softened by kindly gray eyes, and at rare intervals by a smile which lit up the whole face. Not very well dressed, hardly above the average in form, probably tiresomely in earnest. She did not ask, nor did his friends vouchsafe, any ex planation as to who he was.

They promptly got up a new game of tennis, from which he was left out, standing like the last lamp-post in an unfinished street. Mr. Mathdine and Bryn were to play Lord Romney and Mr. Dacres. The people who had been playing with Bryn when the last comers arrived simply drifted away ; they were evidently not astonished at being left in this unceremonious fashion.

Chapter II

Earlier in the afternoon there had been a breeze at Netheravon, as the merchant had called his seat, without seeing any inappropriateness in the name for the highest ground in Yokohama. There had been two little breezes in fact. ' Bryn,' said her sister, ' I do wish you'd see if the boys (as they call servants in Japan) have got all the refreshments right. I am tired out with bustling round Lane and Crawford's, the French Store and Mei-Di-Ya's, trying to get a change — we always seem to have the same thing.' ' Oh, Mary, you must do it. I'm resting before the people come.' ' But you haven't done anything all the morning.' ' But I'm going to play tennis all the afternoon ; and you can go and lie down when the people come.' Hardly had she composed herself again to her novel when there was a knock at the door, and her father came in, a liberty that indulgent and laissez faire parent had not ventured to take for several years.

Bryn smelt battle, and jumping up went to the looking-glass and began smoothing her glorious sun coloured hair, infinitesimally disarranged by lying back as she read. There was pride in every line of features that might have been taken from an old Greek coin, of a figure that would have done for the divine Huntress of the old Greek mythology. There was breed in every point, from her dainty head to her dainty feet. Arranging her hair put the onus of commencing the conversation on her father ; she could go on ad infinitum fiddling with hair-pins or brushing the glossy coils no one had ever seen disordered. Mr. Avon felt very nervous ; he stood in complete awe of his beautiful daughter ; she had a way of looking at him with her calm blue eyes that made him analyse a subject, which would ill bear analysis.

This afternoon for some reason or other he had determined to pull himself together ; and having ventured into the lioness's den, he thought he might just as well put his head into the animal's mouth. ' What are you going to say to Lord Romney when he comes here this afternoon, Bryn ? ' ' I'm sure I don't know; it depends on what he says to me. His conversational powers don t as a rule make much demand on one's intelligence. ' But don't you know what he will say to you this afternoon, Bryn ? ' ' Mighty little, I should say, judging by his pre vious efforts.' ' It's no use equivocating ; you know he'll ask you to marry him either this afternoon or in the next day or two.' 'Well, I shall say to him what I've said to all the rest, that, so far, marriage has never offered me a greater prospect of complete happiness than I at present enjoy.' ' But just think of Lord Romney ! his estates are unpauperised and he is certainly distingue'Aooking ; most people would call him very handsome ' 'Oh!

Red hair and freckled face suit his style, and you can't help admitting that he looks what he is.' ' Well, in any case, I should never marry a man whose looks ' ' Well, think what else he has to offer ; title, an ancient and unimpeachable name, youth, popularity, and quite a fair share of brains.' ' I could never marry Romney, father, I couldn't love him.' ' It's too bad of you, Bryn. You have had offer after offer from the very best people who come out to Japan. You would not accept Captain Graceby, the world-famed cricketer, with his splendid mill property in Lancashire, or Clement Smith the M.P., who is sure of an Under-Secretaryship when his party get back into power after the general election ; you re fused the Marquis of Dorset point blank ; you wouldn't listen to Mr. Bogardus, the handsome young Boston millionaire who has acclimatised the sporting regime of England in New England ; and, to come nearer home, you have never allowed Mr. Mathdine or Mr. Dacres to broach the subject to you, though their fathers are heads, of the two princi pal firms in Japan, one of them a baronet, and it is notorious you could have either of them to-morrow.

I could mention a dozen others — good enough matches for an earl's daughter every one of them — you have either prevented from coming to the point or unceremoniously rejected.' ' But, father, why do you want me to marry so particularly ? I am only twenty, and I am so happy in my home that I regard with absolute repulsion the idea of surrendering myself to the desires and caprices of a man. You may think me a butterfly. I own that amusement is the central fact of my existence, and that my demeanour to men must seem heartless ; but I have feelings which amount to something like convictions, on this point. Father,' she added, suddenly presenting her red, haughty lips for a kiss, ' why do you want me to leave my home, that is such a paradise to me ? ' The handsome, pretentious Dundreary-whiskered face of Latimer Avon winced ; but he recovered his guard with a little stereotyped speech in the voice of superiority that sounds as if it came from a mouth full of sawdust. ' Well, you know, er-er, I might die any time, you know, er-er ; and your poor sister is not a marrying girl, and I should like to see one of you settled in life, don't you know, er-er, so as to give the other the status of a home.

I should like you to contemplate an early marriage, and if Lord Romney could be the man I should not be dis pleased. Think of that, Brynhild, my love. I don't think we ought to call you Bryn any longer now — it was only a baby abbreviation. Think over what I've said, don't you know. There's a good girl, er-er.' Bryn, christened Brynhild, sighed, and, noticing that the guests were arriving, stepped across the grass with the elastic grace which was so conspicuous a charm in her, showing her lovely white teeth in the laugh that was half welcome and half insouciance.

Chapter III

Philip stood where the quartette left him, riveted by Bryn's charms. He saw at a glance that Mr. Mathdine and Mr. Dacres felt quite at home in the household, and were both captives to her proud beauty and splendid physique. And envy smote him. He hardly expected her to make much of a show at tennis. Her dress, which was in the latest London fashion, fitted her so clingingly, and she was so per fectly corseted that activity seemed out ofthe question. And yet, as the game went on she displayed an activity and dexterity which few girls achieve, and this without her childish fairness flushing to any thing deeper than a becoming rose, without a lock straying from her glossy coils. He was relieved to notice that she was too absorbed in the game to allow either Mr. Mathdine or Mr. Dacres or the Peer any attention beyond the recognition of a brilliant stroke.

But he argued ill of her approachability ; a woman who does not turn a hair with violent exercise is not apt to relax her reserve. As the game progressed it grew obvious that her partner and she were overmatched. After his weeks on board ship Lord Romney could not be expected to be in much practice, but cricket and racquets had quickened his eye, and when one of his slashing volleys chanced to come to Bryn, there was nothing for her to do but to cover her collapse with a half beseeching smile to her partner that made her in finitely girlish and attractive. To Philip it seemed as if the stars in their courses were fighting for Mr. Mathdine. For the more that Bryn was unamazoned by Lord Romney's slashes, the more superbly he rose to the occasion. Time after time her white teeth shone as he served off the game, or her blue eyes flashed over his heavy cutting returns.

Mr. Mathdine, though not a person of intellect, was level headed enough to appraise these blandishments at their real value — compliments to his play ; but Philip, who had never seen her before that afternoon, felt as if he would have given a year's income to be Robert Mathdine — the most fortunate man on the earth we inhabit, the acceptable lover to this woman. How queenly the curved mouth was, with its hauteur in repose, its rare resistless smile ; what wonderful blue eyes they were, the clear violet coloured American eyes, dewy but unconquerable ; what gold there was in the hair ; what a touch there was in that quiet measured voice of the Amazon deaf to love but worth a kingdom to con quer into love ! Philip Sandys's heart went out to this imperial woman ; he stood on and on, watching every motion of the lithe body, the proud repose habitual to the face.

Had he known her full name of Brynhild its aptness would have rejoiced him. While he stood gazing at her physical perfections he heard a soft, almost timid-sounding voice, which said nothing more sentimental than : ' Won't you come and have a cup of tea ? ' pointing to a little summer-house on the other side ofthe lawn, copied from the solemn tea-drinking chamber of a temple in Kyoto. There was a whole army of boys ; queer spindle-legged, monkey-faced dwarfs of men, looking in their tight doublets and hose for all the world like so many retainers from one of Pin turicchio's pictures, or varlets from the Elizabethan stage, only instead of gay silks these picturesque garments were made of indigo-coloured Bombay cotton, adorned in the middle of the back, like the porter's, with that monstrous Cambridge-blue worm ; and their feet were cloven into sandals instead of elongated in preposterous slippers.

They were carrying on costly old Japanese dishes all the luxuries procurable in Yokohama, and a good many specially imported by Mr. Avon himself; but Philip hardly ■4 deigned these a glance. He was not a gourmet and was far more interested in the native delicacies, in and out of season, oranges scarcely bigger than cherries and destitute of pips ; persimmons long past their time, and biwas (called by the Australians loquats, and by the Yokohama colony Japanese medlars) not yet in. There were even little cups of the straw coloured Japanese tea, which the ordinary Briton in Japan despises, but which Mr. Avon liked to have handed round at his parties with choice sake", costly seaweeds, and all manner of Japanese confectionery, because he thought this little touch of the Oriental might prove an extra attraction to the globe-trotting big-wigs whom it was part of his system to entice to his house while they were in Yokohama.

Philip Sandys made his selection from the trays offered him by at least five or six kow-towing boys, while he was taking in the personality of Bryn's sister. After Mr. Mathdine's innuendo he owned to him self a certain agreeable surprise. She had not Bryn's style, but then she had never been a queen with kneeling crowds of faithful subjects. Her slender figure had not the exquisite rounding of Bryn's, but then it was slender, and her hair, though it was brown instead of golden, had a distinct auburn tint in it. Nothing could have been more perfect than the shape and set of her head. But her features, though perhaps as regular as Bryn's, lacked their uniqueness, and her eyes were only bluey gray, sadly stinted in blue. She was in brief a little, colourless, and rather meagre edition of Bryn.

She had a good deal of quiet grace ; but, after her sister's glorious combination of dash and glow, one could not look at the wan clear-cheeked face without contracting the idea that Bryn's wonderful vitality had in some way nourished itself on her sister's, as the young pelicans in mythology fed upon their mother's blood. Mary Avon's one object in life seemed to be to avoid doing anything that might grate on Bryn's rather aggressive sensibilities. The Avon establishment was conducted for two ends — Bryn's gratification, and entertaining the best people : the little magnates of the little settlement of Europeans in Japan, and the big magnates who had left home to see the world in three months, a week of which they spent in the Grand Hotel at Yokohama. When he had finished tea they drifted into a walk round the garden.

He couldn't help confessing to himself what a poor creature she looked beside Bryn. Then an idea struck him. ' You're looking very tired ! ' ' I'm feeling very tired,' she replied, but did not add why. ' Perhaps you'd rather sit down ? ' ' Oh, presently, when we find a shady place.' Mary Avon was one of those people with whom you feel you can be inquisitive. He could not resist hazarding : 'Your sister seems to like Mr. Mathdine very much ? ' ' Bryn doesn't like anybody very much.' ' Except, of course, your father and yourself. ' I don't know.' He began to feel sorry for the girl. > t A JAPANESE MARRIAGE ' If it isn't a very rude question to ask, how old are you, Miss Avon ? ' ' Only twenty-two.' Why only ? She certainly did not look more ; did she mean to imply that she felt an old maid already ? ' Would you like to see our Chinese garden ? ' ' Oh yes ; I love anything typically Oriental.' ' Don't you have them in England ? ' ' No ; I don't think I exactly know what they are.

Why, haven't you ever been to England ? ' ' No ; neither of us has ever been out of Japan, except down to the China ports. Papa is a merchant, you know, and is haunted by the idea that something would happen to his business if he left it and went so far as England.' ' Were you born in Japan, then ? ' ' Oh yes, here in Yokohama, both of us.' She led the way to where a depression on the hill top, perhaps a crater once, had been formed into a tiny lake studded with islands, connected by toy bridges and decorated with votive lanterns, pagodas, and shrines — all of stone. There were carefully trimmed maples, green, pink, copper, white, and variegated, and fir trees trained in the fantastic Japanese fashion round its shores, excepting at the north end, where there was a mass of the fantastic rock-work so prized in Japan and China ; and on one island there was a fir tree clipped and tortured into the shape of a peacock with its tail spread, which had been trans ferred, as it stood, from the garden of a daimio's palace, at a huge cost.

It was from the garden in question that Mr. Avon's had been imitated. Philip was lost in admiration, and she was evi dently very much gratified with his enthusiastic exclamations, though her replies were not very adequate. She had not much experience of enthusiasm, and, if the truth was told, she would probably have found it more difficult to picture their home without Oriental adjuncts than with. ' Will these little bridges bear ? ' ' Oh yes.' ' I'd like to go over all the islands — shall we ? ' Certainly.' ' But you'retired.' ' No ; I'm better now.' He interested her ; Mary Avon was not often interested. Perhaps people did not often try to interest her. ' Why — the goldfish have three or four tails each.' ' Six, some of them ; don't they everywhere ? ' ' I never saw a goldfish with more than one tail before.' ' How funny,' she said. ' How do you manage that little stream and waterfall at the end of the lake ; is it natural ? ' ' I don't know.' Then she broke away from her monosyllables, and added : ' Just there is my favourite place in the garden, where the Wistaria's out.