And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

  I remember an old London popular song that ran “Never introduce your donah to a pal,” and it dealt with precisely the same error as our friend Huntingdon-Meer made with me. The Baron liked me and I liked him, and the Englishman saw it and suffered. In fact he suffered so much that he complained to me about it, and immediately his cause was lost as far as I was concerned. I do not believe there is a woman alive, or ever has been, who can stand whimpering on the part of a full-grown man. Anyhow, I cannot. I was ashamed of my friend. Perhaps I had better express it “ashamed for him.” Not only that, I told him so, and that ended it … or almost.

  The “almost” comes in when, one night, he came rushing to my hotel and made a scene. Talk about your Anglo-Saxon self-control and so-called phlegmatism. It is all right as far as it goes, but when it breaks down there remains a rather pathetic spectacle. I was dining with the Baron in my rooms. My former flirt came up, unannounced, broke into my suite without waiting for my servant, and acted as if he had been my husband, or something.

  I will never forget the contrast between the little, poised man of the East who sat there contemplating his friend, smoking a cigarette, and the tall blond-headed, sunburned India-Service man, broken with self-pity.

  I told him he had no right, no claim to me. I tried to show him that flirtation was a pastime, a device for amusing two intelligent persons and for studying one another. But he had taken it too seriously.

  He became violent. He bellowed and roared at me. He even called me names which were scarcely consistent with the code of a gentleman. It was pretty bad.

  Then something happened.

  The Baron got to his feet, not hurriedly, not in a rage. He stepped over to Huntingdon-Meer, and in the twinkling of an eye that big body was on the floor … almost without any noise … and not only silent but completely paralyzed.

  Then the Baron rang for the servant, said that his friend had had a stroke or something similar, took every care that he was properly treated and carried down to a ’rikisha and sent home to his own apartments with an attendant.

  “He will be well again in perhaps half an hour,” he told me. “It is too very bad.”

  The next day I heard that my Englishman had sailed for Bombay, and that was that.

  Baron Takamini showed me Japan. He revealed the East to me as no one else could have done. He initiated me into the strange cosmopolis that is Yokohama. Its different racial settlements, its dives, its secret places, the sad and curious places along the Bund where sailors of all nations try so hard to amuse themselves.

  But best of all he took me into the most remarkable capital in the world … Tokio … and made me understand his people.

  A thing that struck me, and that I remember even to this very late day in my life, was the process of fusion. Not only the assimilation of European life and thought and methods by the Japanese, but the change that comes over Europeans and Americans who live long enough in that country. There is one story which illustrates this latter point, and I think it is worth telling.

  It concerns a woman. She was the wife of an American exporter, a man much too old for her, but rather a fine fellow in his way. She had grown into the social life of Tokio – as one so easily does – and her routine became one of dinners, official and private, and gatherings more or less formal.

  Personally, I had enough of that sort of thing in my first month in the capital and got away from it as soon as I could.

  Mrs. Blakelock was getting towards forty. She had been a very beautiful girl, and she retained her charm physically in a surprising manner. But her mind had become affected by the constant social demands upon her. Furthermore, her husband, a man of affairs whose entire life was consecrated to the advancement of his company’s business, seemed so occupied that he paid rather less attention to her than a woman likes to receive.

  Result: she had a lover.

  The lover was a youngish American college boy who had “gone wrong,” as they expressed it in the colony there. Actually, he had come over to Japan with the export department of a large American firm, had let the life there go to his head, had started drinking “seriously,” had lost his job, and had found … a “meal ticket.” In our modern times the French word “gigolo” would have found a fair application.

  Larry Meaker had been born for the movies. He would have been a perfect running mate for our “Great lovers of the Silver Sheet,” but there being no silver sheet in those days, he had no natural profession open to him. His face was a little too perfect, his mustache had been trained to droop with the correct Adolph Menjou manner. He was witty, sophisticated, poised and pleasing. He danced well … too well.

  In short, Larry Meaker, when first I met him, was the sort of young man for whom all the Mrs. Blakelocks in the world unavoidably fall, and this Mrs. Blakelock did so, as naturally and naïvely as you please. And he did very nicely, dressed well to attract her, prospered and drank himself into a sort of social position, despised by all the men, loved by his mistress, and afforded her the pleasure of being envied by other dowagers who had not been able to make such a “find.”

  But the husband was no fool.

  A solid, stolid man, trying his best to sell more electrical machinery (or whatever it was he was selling) to the Japanese government than they could use, he failed to notice the liaison for over two years. Then one day, moved by one of those bursts of sentimental feeling that overcome the T.B.M.’s occasionally, he came home unexpectedly to give the “little woman” a pleasant surprise.

  He surprised her, all right. He surprised her in the arms of Larry Meaker, and it broke in him that little catch which separates madness and sanity in all of us. Momentarily insane, he rushed to his study, took out a tremendous old revolver he had carried somewhere in Wyoming years before, and emptied it into the well-tailored body of his wife’s paid lover.

  Such stories are not nice, but this one has a moral.

  The moral came out when, three days after her husband had been apprehended and her lover cremated according to Japanese custom, she appeared at a well-known bar in Tokio and said, with real feeling:

  “Isn’t it horrible? Now I can’t go to the Embassy dinner.”

  But to return to my Baron.

  The first thing he did was to get me away from Tokio’s foreign colony. He rented a house for me in a suburb, and I must confess that there never was such a quaint, curious, and splendid house in the world.

  It had ten rooms and was built of bamboo and paper, and I had a bedroom … something I had always wanted … furnished completely in red lacquer. I had thirty servants, all trained and uniformed, and I began the life of a real Japanese aristocrat … rather more emancipated than any Japanese woman, but quite distinct from life in the foreign colony.

  And there the East poured in on me and filled my very marrow with its mysteries, its secrets, its old-world, oddly civilized way of thinking. My husband was not to return until several months later than he had planned, and I had an opportunity to study this beautiful, pink, hardy, human country of Japan such as is given to few Westerners.

  I think what fascinated me most about the Japanese was their religious side, and their “bushido,” or knightly code, an almost poetic thing which calls to mind the days of knight-errantry, and King Arthur and his Round-Table knights. “Bushido” is the soul of Japan. It is the root of their far-famed politeness, their courtesy, their admirable self-control, their poise.

  But under it all is the deep religious fervor of the race. Christian missionaries have accused them of superficiality and sham, but Christian missionaries are wrong. Buddhists, Confucians, Shintoists, and even Christians, there is a richness of feeling and a reality of emotion in their worship of whatever-it-may-be that I, at least, have never seen equaled among peoples of the West, save, perhaps, among those called “uncivilized.”

  Buddhism and Confucianism I need not comment upon. But some idea of Shinto is worthy of mention.

  In this philosophy, the world of the living is gover
ned by the dead. The dead become gods, and every impulse, every act, every thought of man during life is the work of a god. It is, moreover, a simple code. It is scarcely a religion at all. It is partly a political conception. It runs under the Japanese thought, whatever other religious creeds the people profess. Its architecture is simple, cold, unornate. Its ceremonies are moderate and dry. And, because of it, the bodies of the Japanese are not buried, but cremated, in order that the souls which pass on may be unhampered by the clay of life.

  There were only 127,076 Shinto shrines in Japan in my day. There were also 71,730 temples to Buddha and 180,129 priests consecrated to the worship of that benign deity.

  It is worth thinking about.

  Another curious thing … a thing completely misunderstood by the well-meaning missionaries from America and Europe … is the intertwining of religious ceremony with the so-called “vice” of the country.

  Vice!

  My Baron once took me to the formal opening of one of the houses of vice. It was conducted seriously, like the laying of a corner stone in an American city, but with a religious ceremony as an incorporated part of it.

  I wonder if this is really as shocking as the missionaries would have us believe? What I observed about vice in Japan is that it is not vicious. By that I mean that the government not only tolerates institutions of this sort, but finances them and licenses them. The girls who “work” in such places are often well-educated and are, except in the low dives run for and by foreigners along the water fronts, seldom conscious of anything very wrong with their profession.

  There is an underlying idea which is fundamental. The fact of sex is a perfectly well accepted one in Japan. The sex act is known to be perfectly natural and normal. Prostitution is a profession which antedates any other in the world, for the reason that, like all true trades, there is a real need for it. There is little or no repression in Japan. Prostitution fills a want, and is therefore considered quite in order. The Japanese do not sentimentalize about these things. Their sophistication is as real as it is unconscious.

  Then there is another side to the question. The women. A typical case came to my attention in Tokio. An elegant Japanese gentleman squandered his fortune in trying to become even more elegant. He made debts, and in his country debts are a matter of honor.

  Now the gentleman had two very beautiful daughters who were flowers of rare good breeding and high culture. The father, confronted with debts of honor which he could not pay, delicately carved himself across the stomach in the noble gesture of Hari-kiri, leaving the girls, and a nice, but useless, widow. The family honor was at stake. And the next thing that the two girls did was to apply for a job in one of the government-owned houses of prostitution. They paid the debt, and later married fine young men of some of the best families. Where is the wrong? The Japanese place a stress on virtue, but not upon the man-made symbols of that elusive quality.

  But that is something which every person must figure out for himself, I suppose.

  Speaking of this vague thing called virtue, I have two stories, both conflicting, to tell. One concerns my Baron, and the other some one whom I scarcely even knew. If you, reader, are one who seeks a moral in stories, you can supply it. I will not attempt to do so.

  Things continued very much as described between Baron Takamini and myself. There was no monotony. There were pleasure and observation and a keen sense, on my part at least, that I could learn from him a little about the extraordinary race to which he belonged.

  Himself, he seemed amused at me, especially at the things I considered wonderful in his own race and country. I suppose I appeared naïve to him, and doubtless I was.

  But a shadow appeared upon our horizon.

  Perhaps “shadow” is not the exact word. Perhaps, for him, it was sunshine. But it appeared.

  Its name was Marcia Penelope Darnley, only nobody called her that. In the English-speaking colony of Tokio she was called Penn Darnley, and she was the daughter of the Reverend Carlton Darnley, one-time director of English instruction in one of the important schools controlled by the American missions in Japan. They both hailed from some small town in Wisconsin … I have forgotten which one … and had been only a short time in the country.

  Penn met Baron Takamini and me at the Embassy ball … the one that Mrs. Blakelock was unable to attend, by the way. She was a very pretty girl. She was blonde. She was tall. She had fine, clean features, and the most beautiful hands I have ever seen on any woman. Also she had a careful education of the academic type and was very much better informed on most subjects than the average girl.

  And with her blond hair she had black eyes.

  My Baron was presented to her by Charlie Furst of the Consulate. The Baron did not wait a moment before bringing her to me … he was a gentleman to his fingertips … and I saw immediately that he was more than a little drawn to her.

  Penn Darnley’s attitude towards Baron Takamini was not what one could call condescending, yet it smacked at first of that. It was really one of great dignity, mixed with just a little fear. But she too was “interested.”

  We had a triangular conversation which was not perfectly at ease. We missed dances, and then Charlie Furst took me off while the Baron glided away with her in his perfect European waltz-meter, laughing and looking brighter than I had ever seen him.

  I must confess that there was a slight tinge of jealousy in my voice later on, when I said to him:

  “And what do you think of the new American generation?”

  He answered simply: “She is like a flower.”

  I was not too pleased.

  Next day the Baron was late at my house. He was entirely honest about the fact that he had seen Miss Darnley, had taken her over the same ground of exploration where he and I had begun, had been presented to her father, had accepted invitations for future dinners and teas and croquet (golf had not yet made its appearance in the East) and every other kind of familiar reunion.

  He was not boastful in telling me. Had he been, I would not probably have cared so much. He was rather wistful. He seemed boyish, and I had never seen him like that. I was piqued. My vanity was hurt. After all, she was “only a little Wisconsin girl.” She knew nothing of life, while I was a woman of the world.

  Well, you know how we all are.

  This grew. I made a scene one day. The Baron turned his long eyes upon me, perfectly expressionless, and told me straight out that he loved her. He was honest, Takamini.

  Then I was ashamed. I did not and could not love the Baron, but I was very fond of him. And, woman-like, or even motherlike, I had a premonition that Penn Darnley could not and would not love him either. It was a curious interest on her part. Also on her father’s part.

  Things moved swiftly. One day my Baron came to me very humbly. He said he had a confession to make.

  “It is about Miss Darnley,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I am going to take her away. I am going to take her with me … somewhere. She must go away with me.”

  In a way, I was surprised.

  “Have you mentioned it to her?” I asked him, rather cruelly.

  “No. Tonight I will ask her. She will go.”

  I wish I had known then, had realized exactly, what he was going to ask her.

  That night the Baron came to my house late, very late. One of my servants announced him. I was in bed and had to put on the inevitable kimono to receive him. I do not even remember if the servant was alarmed, but it seems likely that he would have been.

  Takamini looked like death. There was a red welt across his face. His features were composed, as always, but there was a look in his eye that suggested madness.

  “I have come to wish you good-by.”

  “Good-by. Then she will go?” I asked foolishly.

  I should have known.

  “No, my friend.” It was as though a marble statue were speaking. “No, she will not go. But I go.”

  I remember that I made some feeble
remark, and that he kissed my hand stiffly, and then that he was gone.

  Next morning, very early, I had another visitor. It was Penn Darnley.

  She came in very stiffly also. There had never been much love lost between us. She brought her great mastiff Greedy with her on a leash, and she had a dog-whip in her hand.

  “I suppose he came here and told you about it,” she said.

  I told her that I knew nothing, and then she went over a scene that made me ashamed of being an American. That Baron had told her plainly that he loved her, but that he could not marry her on account of family and religious traditions. He proposed that they should go away together, nevertheless … off into the dreamland of poppies … and live in love and bliss (and incidentally his great wealth) and flaunt the conventions.

  Well, the effect was startling.

  Penn Darnley, the little prude, had seen only something that she thought was “dirty.” The man was asking her to become his mistress. Merely that. It was an insult to all our American girlhood. Our American girlhood is taught that it never becomes a mistress.

  And little Miss Prude had been so conscious, too, that she was Anglo-Saxon, and a free member of a White race, and belonged to the Methodist-Episcopal Church. And the Baron Takamini, however “interesting,” however “picturesque,” was of another race. Thus the insult was doubled and magnified.

  “Can you imagine!” she said to me, breathless and furious all over again. “Why, he asked me to live with him … me, a white woman!”

  “Did he?” said I, able to think of nothing better.

  “He did, the pig. Oh, my father warned me against them. I should have known better than to have trusted a Jap. They’re always treacherous. They’re always so polite … on the surface. But this one learned his lesson. He’ll bother no more American girls. I whipped him, the dirty swine. I struck him across the face with this very whip, and if he were here I’d do it again.”

  Yes, and she would have set her dog on him, too.

  She was graphic in telling the story. He had taken her hand and kissed it. He had told her of the lovely flowered country of Japan where poets’ dreams come true, and he had asked her to live with him near Nikko, the most beautiful city in the world, and to love him and to let him love her.