The Japanese Lantern

by Isobel Chace

Fortunately they did not have long to wait, for Jason arrived almost immediately, sweeping into the garage with an ease born of long practice and almost running the two of them over.

  “Whatever are you doing?” he asked through the open window.

  “Oh, Jason,” Jonquil cried out, overjoyed to see him. “What did you do with my lantern—you know, the one I left in your car?”

  He gave her a shrewd look, his eyes twinkling with amusement.

  “Have you only just thought of it?” he asked her.

  She nodded her head, not looking at him, because somehow she found his scrutiny rather embarrassing.

  “Hullo, Boko,” he greeted the Japanese girl.

  Mitchi Boko gave him a hasty and rather perfunctory bow.

  “Jason-san,” she acknowledged.

  “I saw your mother just now,” he told her. “She wants your help to choose her new kimono. I left her just round the corner in the draper’s shop.”

  The Japanese girl looked helplessly at Jonquil.

  “Will you find lantern?” she asked.

  “Yes—yes, I’ll manage,” Jonquil reassured her. Not that it was going to be easy, she told herself, for she badly wanted to make a clean breast of it to Jason and leave the whole affair to him.

  Jason waited for Mitchi Boko to say goodbye and to make her way reluctantly out to the road, turning back every few steps to bow once again in the hopes of being recalled to them.

  “Now,” Jason said, as soon as she was gone, “suppose you tell me just what it’s all about?”

  It was silly to play for time. She knew that even as she did so. With some people it was possible to get away with things like that, but with Jason it was useless to pretend. He had a way of looking at one as though he had expected something better and that was rather shaming.

  “I — I was just telling Mitchi Boko about my lantern,” she said.

  “And I suppose she had never seen one before?” he asked, the twinkle of amusement more pronounced now even than it had been.

  “I suppose she must have done,” Jonquil admitted. “But I wanted to show her mine!”

  Jason got out of the car and stood looking down at her. “I think it’s time you and I had a little talk,” he said.

  Her eyes widened at the tone in his voice. He didn’t sound angry exactly, but there was nothing casual about the way he had spoken, none of that easy drawl that he so often affected.

  “Wh-what about?” she asked.

  “Edward Keeving for a start. And Mitchi Boko. And, I rather think, my aunt.”

  She blushed and found the courage to glance up at him.

  “Did you know all the time?” she asked.

  “I still don’t,” he said. “But I can guess a good deal. I’ve known Mitchi Boko for a long time, my dear. Edward Keeving has always been a clumsy operator, preferring trickery to genuine hard research. These things are bound to get around in the trade, and so of course I knew something of him. I even made the mistake of mentioning him to my aunt.”

  “So that’s why—” she began, and broke off. “Mitchi Boko didn’t give him any information in the end,” she said instead.

  “Didn’t she?” The amusement was back in his voice again. “Poor little Jonquil, I should really be quite cross with you! Did you really think Edward was up to my weight? I can assure you that I’m quite capable of dealing with his type, with one hand tied behind my back if necessary.”

  Jonquil felt nettled.

  “I daresay you could. But how was I to know that you knew all about him all the time.”

  He laughed, throwing back his head and genuinely enjoying himself.

  “You’re a darling,” he told her. “Tell me all about it.”

  She told him the whole story, hesitantly at first, but then with greater confidence as he listened to her seriously, questioning her every now and again. She glossed over the part when his aunt had first spoken to her and how she had thought that Yoshiko had been listening outside the door.

  “It could easily have been so,” he said slowly. ‘She was pretty jealous when she first heard you were coming here. She wanted badly to get from under her father’s feet before she was thrust into this marriage. She probably thought my aunt was cooking up some way of getting rid of her.”

  “I never had anything much to go on,” Jonquil said wearily. “I was just frightened because of you.”

  He looked at her hard then.

  “Were you really frightened for me?” he asked. “That was very sweet of you.” He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “I shall take you up on that when I get back from Tokyo!”

  She was aware of the sudden wild beating of her heart. It was too bad of him to say things like that, she thought. Didn’t he know how attractive he was? How much any girl would want to throw her arms round his neck when he looked at her in such a manner?

  “It wasn’t sweet of me at all,” she said curtly. “I just hated the thought of your being deceived—Mostly because of your sister, I think.”

  The smile fell from his face and his eyes took on a more guarded expression.

  “Well, that’s honest, anyhow,” he said bleakly. “I think I’ll go and get packed, so I’ll say goodbye now. If you want your lantern, you’ll find that it’s still in the boot where we left it!”

  He turned on his heel and walked into the house, leaving her standing just where she was, amazed that she really could feel an actual physical pain in her heart. Automatically she went to the rear of the car and opened up the boot, gently lifting the mando out. It was still as pretty as she remembered it, but she knew that she would never be able to feel quite the same about it, and so slowly she took it down to the bonfire the gardener was having at the other end of the garden and put it on the flames. She couldn’t even feel regret when the hot coals tore at it and the whole thing went up in a sheet of orange. She didn’t think she would be able to feel anything ever again.

  She didn’t know how long she had been standing there when she heard Alexander come running towards her.

  “Aren’t you never coming to lunch?” he asked. “ ’Cos it’s past two o’clock and I’m starved. I’m awfully wet too,” he added.

  He tugged at her arm and she realized that he was indeed “awfully wet”!

  “What have you been doing?” she asked him.

  He smiled up at her winningly, using every scrap of charm that he could summon to his aid.

  “I fell in the fish pond,” he confessed.

  Jonquil felt a moment’s sheer panic. He might have been drowned, she thought. She should never have allowed Jason to persuade her to leave him. She had been employed to look after Alexander, not amuse herself—or to get herself involved in Jason’s affairs, she added to herself bitterly.

  “Was it very deep?” she asked.

  Alexander considered that carefully.

  “Not very deep. But,” he added, unable to resist the best bit of information, “it came right over my head. I’d have shouted like anything if Uncle Jason hadn’t told me to keep away from it!”

  Jonquil gave him a harassed look that made him feel even more important.

  “Do you think I might have become a mermaid? Do you think one could, if one practised staying under water for long enough? Do you think one could stay under for minutes?”

  “You’d better come in at once and change into some dry clothes,” she said weakly. She knew that she ought to punish him in some way for disobeying his uncle so blatantly, but she hadn’t the heart to. Instead she pushed him ahead of her into the house, straight into Jason’s arms.

  He summed up the situation at once and called Alexander over to him.

  “I think we’ll go to your room,” he said to the child. “You can wait in the living room,” he added coldly to Jonquil.

  “No!” Jonquil exclaimed, sure that he was going to hit the child. “I won’t let you!”

  But he ignored her protests, leading the way to Alexander’s room with the small boy reluctan
tly following behind him.

  There was silence. Jonquil went into the living room because she couldn’t think of anything else to do, and waited for the ordeal to be over.

  When they came back, they both looked remarkably cheerful, and Alexander was completely clad in dry clothing. Looking at them, Jonquil felt quite unreasonably angry. How dared they look so pleased with themselves? Then Jason smiled at her and she found herself smiling back at him and everything was all right again. This is quite dreadful, she thought, I’m making a complete fool of myself! It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember Yoshiko. In fact one way and another it was rather a relief when he packed his bags into the back of the car and it began to look as though he really was going at last.

  “Will you miss me?” he asked her as he climbed into the driving seat.

  She couldn’t answer. All she could do was to stand foolishly by the car and wish that she had more aplomb.

  “Never mind,” he teased her. “I’ll collect an answer next week!”

  She found her tongue then.

  “Oh, I hate you, Jason Tate,” she said hotly, but the car had already slipped away from her.

  It had seemed a very long afternoon. Jonquil and Alexander had played cowboys and Indians in the garden, to the dismay of the gardener, although they were both exceedingly careful not to do any harm to any of the flowers. Alexander didn’t mention what had passed between himself and his uncle and Jonquil didn’t like to ask him. It was clear that they had emerged the best of friends and she had to be content with that.

  At last it had been time to put Alexander to bed. Nobuko had made him a special supper to make up for the loss of his uncle and he had teased them both by spinning it out for as long as it was humanly possible.

  Then there had been the lengthy evening. Nobuko had explained that she had no idea when Yoshiko would be coming in, if at all, and Jonquil was not really expecting her, for she knew that she would want to spend her father’s first evening home with him.

  So she had gone to bed quite early and slept almost immediately. She hadn’t let herself think about Jason at all. If she had done so, she knew that she would have burst into tears. She had seldom cried until she had come to Japan, but now she felt that she would never be able to stop. Tears of sorrow and tears of joy both seemed very close to the surface, as muddled as her thoughts and her emotions. She felt as though she had gone in off the deep end, without ever having really learned to swim. Growing pains. she told herself firmly. Even now she wouldn’t admit that she had fallen, very deeply, in love.

  She was dead to the world when Yoshiko let herself into the house. Not dropping of wooden sandals on to the polished floor awoke her, and it was not until the Japanese girl descended on her bedroll in a flurry of kimono that she woke up at all.

  “Poor Jonquil,” Yoshiko crooned, not in the least repentant. “I am so sorry to wake you up but I had to tell you! It is all arranged. I am to be married next week!”

  “Next week!” Jonquil repeated. She felt quite unbelievably hurt. Jason could have told her, she thought. He could have prepared her for the shock that it was going to happen quite so soon.

  “My father has agreed!” Yoshiko exulted. “I never thought he would! We are to go to America for my honeymoon and we shall meet all my mother’s family! Oh, Jonquil, I am so happy! I could, laugh and cry at the same time!”

  “I hope you’ll always be very happy,” Jonquil said stiffly.

  “But of course we shall be!” Yoshiko exclaimed. “You are thinking about the things that I said, perhaps. I think I was very silly, because of course I am much more Japanese than American. And now that I am to see the States I shall love living in Japan. Anyway, Taki is Japanese and I love him too much to want to be different from him.”

  “Taki?” Jonquil felt winded and gasped for breath. “But I thought you were going to marry Jason,” she said.

  Yoshiko crowed with laughter.

  “Jason!” she exclaimed. “How could you think such a thing? Didn’t you know that he is in love with you? Kagami-san and I shall never be able to thank him enough, though,” she continued seriously. “It was he who persuaded my father to let us go. My father is terrified that I shall never come back if once I go to America, but now he is quite happy that Taki will make me return with him.” She ended in such satisfied tones that Jonquil was amused.

  “But what did Jason have to say when he heard you were going to marry Kagami-san?” she asked breathlessly.

  “What could he say?” Yoshiko said indifferently. “It has always been understood that I should marry him.”

  “Yes, I know,” Jonquil agreed. “But you didn’t seem very keen.”

  Yoshiko’s eyes gleamed softly in the dark.

  “There is a great deal more to Taki than I thought,” she said. “I’ve always loved him, but it is only since we came to Kyoto that I found that I liked him too! He is so unlike any other Japanese man I know. He will be a great man in modern Japan, for he understands even American elections!”

  “Does he indeed?” Jonquil said with the right degree of awe.

  They went on talking until Yoshiko could hold her eyes open no longer and went off to bed.

  Oh, Jason, Jonquil breathed, I didn’t mean it when I said I hated you! How am I ever going to live through the days until you get back? And when he did get back, would he ever feel quite the same? But he had said that he would collect an answer from her next week! And treasuring that thought to her, Jonquil slept.

  CHAPTER XI

  Yoshiko’s wedding day dawned clear and sunny. The soft autumnal air was balmy with the scent of all the flowers that had been sent to Jason’s house preparatory to being taken to the shrine where the ceremony was to take place. It was exactly one week since Jason had gone back to Tokyo and there had been no word from him since.

  During the week Mr. Matsui had come round to see Jonquil and had reassured her that Edward had been unable to do any harm to his chemical firm. He had sat on a pile of cushions, looking quite at home, and had said:

  “It has been very difficult for Boko-san. Her parents and I have talked the whole matter over and it is agreed that I should find some good husband for her, one who will be able to provide for the family, someone suitable. It will give me great pleasure to do this for her. She is a good girl at heart, and my wife was always very fond of her.”

  “But will Boko like that?” Jonquil had asked uncertainty, for it had seemed rather a precarious kind of future to her.

  “Yes, indeed,” Matsui-san had assured her. “She will be very happy. I should have thought about it long since.”

  Jonquil’s doubts had not been altogether disposed of, but as everyone else approved wholeheartedly of the arrangement she felt there was nothing that she could say, so she had only nodded and offered him another cup of tea.

  When he had gone, Yoshiko had arrived and had demanded her services to help her pack all her personal possessions so that they could be sent round to Kagami-san’s house the evening before the wedding. Both Jonquil and Alexander had thoroughly enjoyed themselves, for Yoshiko’s things had been delightfully new to them and they had marvelled at the little Kokeshi dolls that she had played with as a child, consisting of no more than a round, decorated column with a painted head perched on the top.

  “I shall give you one,” Yoshiko had announced with a sudden spurt of generosity, her green eyes flashing with amusement. “This one, I think.” She had chosen one from amongst her collection and had put it in Jonquil’s hands. “Do you like it?”

  “I do!” Jonquil had affirmed with enthusiasm. It was a comic little doll, a little different from all the others, as though it had been made by a different and not quite so experienced hand.

  “I want one too,” Alexander had put in.

  “Do you?” Yoshiko had teased him. “What does a boy want with a doll?”

  “Well, grown-ups don’t play with dolls either!” he had pointed out.

  Yoshiko had put her h
ead on one side and had considered that.

  “Very well,” she had said at last. “You may have this one.”

  Overjoyed, Alexander had grasped it to him, and thereafter, wherever he went the doll went him.

  But to Jonquil none of the other dolls had quite the droll charm of her own. The face had a curious, whimsical expression that made her want to laugh and the round peg of a body had a slightly lopsided air that added to the clownish look. It was not so perfect, but it was somehow infinitely more human than any of the others.

  It had taken them the whole day to pack up Yoshiko’s clothes and the things that had been collected for her from childhood, waiting for the great day when she would be a wife in her own right. They had packed them traditionally in a chest of drawers, called a “Tansu,” and a long chest, called a “Nagamochi”, and had heaved a sigh of relief when the last thing had been put in and they could still just shut the chest.

  “Not that it really matters,” Yoshiko had said practically. “I could always have come back for the other things later, but it is nice to do the thing properly!”

  Jonquil turned over sleepily on her mattress and peered out at the sunshine. Happy the bride that the sun shines on, she thought. There was no doubt about it, it was going to be a lovely day. She sat up, hugging her knees to her, and wondered what the day was going to bring. Surely Jason would not miss the wedding! Her heart beat faster at the thought. If he did come she could hardly avoid seeing him. Not that she wanted to! Indeed there was nothing she wanted more than to see him! But now that it seemed they would at last be meeting without any of the misunderstandings that had dogged their relationship ever since they had left Manila, she was unexpectedly shy of the thought of seeing him. Supposing he didn’t really want her after all? She didn’t really believe that, but the dreadful possibility had lurked behind everything she had done during the last week.

  “Jonquil.”

  She looked up to find Alexander standing in the doorway.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Can we get up now? And go for a walk before breakfast?” he asked. “I’m not a bit sleepy.”