Hidden Flower

by Pearl S. Buck

  “The Colonel himself doesn’t know,” Allen exclaimed.

  “Don’t stand here, Allen,” Cynthia said. “People are beginning to stare.”

  He moved abruptly forward and she tried to catch his step. She laughed. “Don’t let’s run, either! What doesn’t the Colonel know?”

  He slowed his pace. “I married Josui. Nobody knows that except you. I want you to know because I need your help. I went straight off to Kyoto and married her, so that we couldn’t be parted. I knew why I was given leave—it was so that I would forget Josui. The Colonel and his wife thought that if I got home to all this—” his long gaze swept the tree-shaded street, the shops, the big white houses set back from the sidewalks. “They thought I’d forget. So that damned woman wrote to my mother!”

  He frowned, and Cynthia looked at him sidelong with a rage which made her ashamed. What right had he to go off to a foreign country and find a foreign wife? What of women like her, growing old in little towns and villages all over America? Foreign women ought to marry their own men. Allen belonged to her. If he had not been sent away by force—for what was the draft except force—they would have been married by now, it was inevitable, and she would have lived one day in the Kennedy house where she had almost belonged ever since she had been born. Had he not been so handsome, had his head not towered above hers—she could never marry a man smaller than herself, and nearly all men were smaller—she might not have made the decision she now made as suddenly and as instinctively as though she were not a civilized woman living in a civilized country. She would ally herself with Allen’s mother and not with him. She would do her best to keep the Japanese girl from coming here. …

  He was talking fast in a low monotone. “I am sending for her as soon as I can get her over. Lucky she is an American citizen! She was born here. In fact, Cynthia, she didn’t go to Japan until she was fifteen years old. She even went to school here. Her English is perfect—well, almost. She calls me Allenn Ken-neddy, unless she stops and thinks.”

  “I thought it was rather difficult to marry a Japanese girl,” Cynthia said. Under her brimmed hat of cream-colored felt she was smiling steadily, gazing up the street, waving now and again to someone she knew.

  They were stopped every few minutes by someone they both knew and before Allen could answer now they were stopped again.

  “Allen Kennedy, isn’t it?”

  A bevy of pretty girls on their way to a Friday morning bridge club surrounded them. “I reckon we won’t see you at the club this morning, Cynthia!”

  “I reckon we can’t blame you!”

  Their high sweet voices rang in the cool autumn air, their new autumn garments, the bright little jackets, the flying skirts, the tight gay little hats, the shining hair and bright shallow eyes and fluttering pretty little hands surrounded Allen and Cynthia with a warmth that was innocent and yet shrewdly female. Young female eyes examined Allen and red lips parted. Upon each pretty painted face appeared the searching stare of the young female who stalks alone, ready at any moment to desert her kind when the desirable male appears. It was every woman for herself, but Cynthia was the fortunate one, with whom he walked. The impulse of revenge clung to Cynthia’s usually gentle heart. She smiled at them all and said in her lovely voice, “Allen was telling me some wonderful news. He married a beautiful Japanese girl, just before he came home.”

  It was pitiful to see the changed looks and the striving against the change, the instant effort at control, the bright artificial looks of happiness, the false congratulations. “Oh, Allen, how wonderful!”

  “Tell us about her.”

  “Do you have her picture?”

  He cast upon Cynthia a look of outrage. “Well, I hadn’t meant to announce it in just this way,” he managed to say. He did have a small picture that Josui had given him before they parted, a snapshot of herself in her school dress. It was not a good picture. Her look was grave, the dress unbecoming, her hair plain. But they snatched it and passed it from one to the other, and seeing that solemn young face they cried out in relief and triumphant pity. “She’s real sweet, Allen.”

  They gave the picture to Cynthia with nods and smiles and went away and she walked along studying Josui’s face. The eyes were strange.

  “It is a poor likeness,” Allen said. “She is really beautiful, and she looks especially so in her own Japanese dress.”

  “She wouldn’t be able to wear Japanese clothes here, would she?” Cynthia suggested. “It would make her very conspicuous, wouldn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” Allen said. He took the picture from her and put it back into his wallet.

  They walked along for a few minutes. “You didn’t tell me how you were married,” Cynthia said.

  “We were married in a Buddhist temple,” he said abruptly. “Buddhism is their family religion.”

  “How interesting,” she said. “Tell me, is it like our Episcopal service?”

  “No, well, yes. I suppose the essentials are the same in any religion. There was a minister and his priests, and the gods.”

  “Gods?”

  “Images, like the Catholics have. They don’t really worship the images, of course. Images only serve to fix the mind upon some great saint or upon God.”

  “And did you promise to cherish—and all that?”

  “I made all the promises,” he said firmly.

  Why, he wondered, did she press him so closely, and was she entirely his friend? “What on earth made you tell all those women?” he demanded. “It will go all over town.”

  “That is why I did it,” she said with more than her usual calm. “The sooner everybody knows it the better. Good-by, Allen, this is where I have to stop. It’s a hat shop and I don’t believe you’ll want to come in.”

  So she was not his friend!

  Josui had his first letter. She was at college again, nobody knowing. Her father would not allow an announcement of her marriage, he said, until the legal papers arrived from America. The letter came while she was away. Her mother received it, recognized it, and gave it to her father. Dr. Sakai put it in the top drawer of his desk. He did not give it to Josui for two days. While he came and went to the hospital and busied himself with his patients he thought about the letter and did not touch it. He was visiting Mr. Matsui every day just now, for his old friend had an inflammation of the gall bladder which had flared because of autumn crabs. Mr. Matsui was very abstemious but each autumn he felt he must eat a few crabs with wine. It was one food which he liked exceedingly. Sometimes the crabs made him ill and sometimes they did not, depending upon what they had themselves eaten. This autumn they had been malevolent. He had been extremely ill, and for several days Dr. Sakai had been anxious and Kobori had stayed near him. He was better at last, and although Kobori had not yet left the house, he was working in his study and was no longer constantly beside his father’s bed.

  Mr. Matsui was grateful indeed that he had not died, and he was ashamed enough of his annual indulgence to declare to Dr. Sakai that this year was a lesson to him and he would never eat crabs again. At last he was so much better that he begged Dr. Sakai today to come in after his hospital hours were over and spend a little time in friendly talk. This Dr. Sakai did. He was tired, but he felt he could never atone for his daughter’s behavior to the Matsui family and could never show gratitude enough for their magnanimity. When he had tried to say this, Mr. Matsui had merely smiled and waved his right hand. “Such things are not important,” he had declared. He had never allowed the slightest sign of anger or revenge to appear in his manner or behavior. Perhaps the matter was not really important. Nevertheless, Dr. Sakai was too proud to forget.

  This day, late in the afternoon, sitting beside his friend’s bedside, he felt the impulse to confide. The house was still, the doors closed and because of the rising autumn chill, a brass brazier of charcoal stood on three legs in the middle of the floor, glowing and sending out a shimmer of heat. A slight current of air passed through the room from a narrowly
opened window to purify the fumes.

  Mr. Matsui lay on his mattress, his head and shoulders covered with a gray silk short coat, crossed on his chest and tied under his arms. He looked almost himself. The yellowness of his skin was gone, and his face, which had been agonized with pain, was at peace again.

  “I owe my life to you,” he said.

  “I did only my duty,” Dr. Sakai replied,

  “Something more,” Mr. Matsui insisted. “All debts are now paid.”

  Dr. Sakai understood and warmth gathered about his heart. He leaned forward to speak in a low tone. “I have to ask your advice. A letter has come for my daughter. It lies in my desk. If I do not give it to her, would it be a fault? It is for her own happiness that I still hope to separate her from the American. For her own sake, you understand. I am sure she will be unhappy in America, as I myself was,”

  Mr. Matsui considered, merely as a friend. He did not now wish to have this young woman in his family, for he understood that the marriage had been consummated, and only a virgin would be suitable for his son.

  “I think you must give her the letter,” he said. “After all, she is your daughter. I agree with you, but in a family the correct relationships must be maintained.”

  Dr. Sakai bowed slightly.

  Mr. Matsui changed the subject at once. “I am thinking of enlarging the entrance room to the ceremonial teahouse.”

  In the evening when Josui came to bid her parents good night Dr. Sakai opened the drawer of his desk.

  “This came for you,” he said. “It was while you were away.”

  He did not say what day the letter had come, and she did not stay to ask. She bowed deeply to her father and then to her mother and hastened away to her own room. Oh, the letter! At first she could not open it. She held it to her cheeks, to her breast, and then to her lips. Then she examined it closely. Her name was written so clearly, Mrs. Allen Kennedy, and under it Josui Sakai, just in case, and the street address, Kyoto, Japan, and the bright stamps. It had come by air mail and at what cost! But he wanted her to have it quickly and so she must read it carefully, but not until she was washed and clean. So the letter lay on her little low chest of drawers while she made ready for sleep, and when she was clothed in her soft silk blue and white sleeping garments, and her hair was brushed and braided, but no cream rubbed into her skin for fear of soiling the letter, she took her scissors and cut the envelope carefully without touching the stamps, and then drew out the sheets of paper within.

  She read it carefully word by word, each word so indispensable and so precious, trying as she read to see exactly what he saw, and seeing it after her fashion, built up out of her memories of Los Angeles. But in Virginia everything was better than anything she remembered, and she must stretch her imagination to see the rolling hills and the gardens and the palace which was his home, and most tenderly to be dwelt upon were his own rooms, where she would one day be with him. He told her of everything, a great bed hung with a satin coverlet of golden brown, the same golden tints in the curtains and the rags, and with it were touches of crimson, and pale yellow, but still it was a very plain room, he said, but how could it be plain? A fireplace was in the sitting room. He had two whole rooms for himself—and for her—and they were so big, as big as the garden here, very nearly, and the big window, and books against the walls by the fireplace, and deep chairs, each being wide enough, he said, to hold them both. She read again and again the pages about the rooms, for there was her house and she must grow familiar with them so that when she entered she would know she was at home. His parents were well. He had not yet told them. But she was not to be frightened for they were kinder than ever to him. They would welcome her first for his sake and then for her own. She must bring many pretty kimonos, not to wear on the street, of course, but here in the house.

  She put out the lamp at last, she curled under the quilts and with the letter clasped to her breast she cried quietly for a long time, because she was so far away, so alone, and so happy.

  He had to tell his parents—now, immediately. When he thought of his parents he meant his mother. That mild man who was his father could be brought to any reasonableness. He loitered when he left Cynthia. The question was, should he tell his father first and hope for his help or should he go to his mother and tell her abruptly, straightly, taking it for granted that what he had done would be approved? He weighed the relationship between the man and the woman who were his parents. He knew intuitively what this relationship was. All his life in lesser matters he had weighed the very question he asked himself today. When he was a child and something of a coward, or because he had always longed so intensely for what he wanted that he had felt denial was unbearable, he had sometimes gone to his father and together they had approached the mother. In his adolescence he had perceived, again only by intuition and experience, that his father was no help to him. His mother would be hostile if the approach was made through his father. It was better—as for example, when he wanted a convertible car so badly when he was at the university in Charlottesville—to go straight to his mother. It was his father who had been doubtful and the doubt had made his mother firm.

  “I think Allen ought to have it,” she had declared. “He needs independence.”

  He drew a deep sighing breath. Well, he had the same need now. He would go straight to her, immediately, because telephones would begin to ring soon and she would be distant with him because he had not told her.

  He ran up the white marble steps, into the big pillared porch, and thence into the house, shouting for her. “Mother, where are you?” She liked to hear him calling her.

  “Here!” her distant voice answered. “Here in the conservatory.”

  The house had an old-fashioned octagonal conservatory, built on the back of the left wing by his grandfather, and opening into the present dining room, which in that day had been part of the old ballroom, later built into the library and the lengthening of the downstairs parlors. His father called the ballroom out of style and pretentious.

  She was digging at some huge tubs of high ferns, her hands gloved, her brass trowel shining bright. The morning sun shone down upon the ferns and potted chrysanthemums.

  “What chrysanthemums!” he exclaimed. “They’re almost as big as the ones in Japan.”

  She showed no interest in Japan.

  “I was thinking we ought to give a dance,” she said. “Everybody wants to see you. The telephone has been ringing every minute.”

  He plunged in at that. “I’d better tell you something before the damned telephone does. Cynthia says you already know. But you don’t know everything, I reckon. She says the Colonel’s wife felt she had to write you.”

  His mother went on digging carefully among mossy roots. “You mean about that Japanese girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I don’t take that seriously,” she said in her lightest voice. “I know how it was. You were way off there, and I dare say there weren’t any nice American girls. But you’re home now—”

  “Wait, Mother.”

  She looked up and saw his face white, his mouth drawn and dry.

  “Why, what’s the matter, Allen?”

  “You’re all wrong about Josui. That’s her name. She’s my wife.”

  “Allen Kennedy!” So she had cried at him from the time he was a baby, whenever he had been naughty, when he had bitten her breast, when he had thrown down his toys, when he had muddied his first little suits, had played hooky at school, had taken a dollar bill from her purse, had smoked his first cigarette, had come home from a dance drunk.

  “We are married, Mother,” he said. “I want to bring her home right away.”

  She put down the trowel, she took off the gloves, “Come into the library,” she said, “let’s talk about this.”

  “There isn’t much to talk about, Mother. It’s done.” But he followed her and they sat down on either side of the fireplace in which there was no fire.

  “Just tell me,” she insis
ted. She sat there, her hands clasped, her voice so carefully light, a slight smile upon her face, but her eyes—he saw her eyes were sick.

  So he told her, enraged with himself and with her that he, a man, was haunted by the ghosts of old guilt, the childish sins for which she had scolded him here so often in this very room. He had always to apologize, to tell her that he was sorry and that he would never do it again, and that he loved her. The process had been unchanging, her anger, her hurt, and then her forgiveness and the need to have him tell her he would be good because he loved her.

  He would not follow those steps now, he insisted to himself. He would simply tell her. If she did not want him in the house, she could say so. The world was wide, and he had traveled far.

  But she did not behave as usual. He had to confess when it was all told, all except the deeply sacred private hours of the two nights he had spent with Josui, that his mother was being very generous. She listened, she was not angry, though he could see that she was dangerously shaken. That she struggled so plainly against herself made him unwillingly gentle. He would have preferred her anger, so that he could have been strengthened by his own.

  “You will soon love Josui,” he said, and hated the sound of his almost pleading voice. “She isn’t really like a Japanese girl, Mother. She speaks beautiful English, she knows our ways.”

  “Did you say her blood is entirely Japanese?” she asked.

  “Yes, but she was born in California. Did I tell you that?”

  He had told her, but he wanted to tell her again.

  “Then she looks Japanese?” his mother said.

  “They aren’t dark, Mother. I mean they are nothing like the colored people here.”

  “They certainly are not white,” she said a little sharply. He could not answer this. There was silence between them for a moment. Then she said, still with the touch of sharpness, “It seems SO strange that we were fighting the Japanese, they were our enemies. It was no time ago, and now you are asking me to receive a Japanese girl here.”