"and now," karsten was laughing across his glass, "i take it that i'm not premature——"
"but you are." realization had suddenly flashed upon kent that he had nothing to celebrate; he had accomplished nothing, had been brought no nearer a decision in his relationship with this girl. all this feeling of certainty, this sense of having won her, was entirely self-created, elation of auto-intoxication based on nothing tangible. he became instantly irritated. "drop this horse-play, karsten. i don't mind telling you i wish there were something to celebrate; but you spoiled it all, rushing in as you did. if you hadn't, i might now have known——"
"fiddlesticks, there's not a shadow of a doubt. of course, i realized it the moment i rushed in upon you two, just what was about to pass; and after that, when i was alone with her after you had left, it was plain enough. i used to think i knew something about women; i'm certainly not mistaken now. and, kent, old man, while i shall be sorry to lose you, i'm glad this has come about. i'm getting to be an old man. i have come to enjoy my sensations in respect to women vicariously, by watching others, men and women whom i like, and you won't mind my telling you that i've had not a little such vicarious pleasure through you, enjoying, at second hand, your experiences, what little you told me and what i might deduce and add thereto, with these japanese girls; and, old man, i'm honestly glad that you are now finally coming to the end, and that it is not a japanese girl."
[pg 294]
"what!" he had not entirely liked karsten's confession, had sensed a trace of annoyance that the other should thus have been watching him critically, as if he were some one more or less impersonal, detached, performing on a stage for his edification. but he forgot all this in his astonishment at this last pronouncement—coming from karsten of all men. why not a japanese girl? "why," he asked him the question. "why not a japanese? i thought you liked the japanese?"
"for myself, yes; for you, no," karsten laughed, filled his pipe, lit it. "you know there's a tremendous lot of talk and argument on the question of mixed marriages. people say this and they say that, and yet essentially i think the matter resolves itself into the question of what a man seeks in marriage, what he expects in the woman he joins himself with for life. it depends on whether a man loves with his intellect or whether he loves with his senses. you and i furnish good examples. you love essentially with your brain. of course, you enjoy brilliance and color, beauty, charm, and all that; you saw them in these japanese girls, and they fascinated you, entranced you. and that was what i was a little afraid of, that you might succumb to it, that you might suffer yourself to be overcome by this scintillating, ephemeral fascination of the exotic; for it would have been fatal for you; the newness is bound to wear off; and what you look for in marriage, the thing in a woman which can hold you, is intellect. you want beauty, charm, of course, but for you the great essential thing is brains, a woman who can be a companion, a comrade, who can have all your interests in common with you. that's the only kind of a relation that may be lasting in your case.
"now take my own. i love essentially with my[pg 295] senses. of course, i want a woman with sense, intelligence; a fool would irritate me immeasurably; i have no patience with fools; but i would be just as intolerant with what we may call the 'trained intellect' in a woman who was my constant companion. i enjoy that, greatly even, when i chance across it in other women; but in the case of my own woman, the one with me always, i want no arguments, no discussions in respect to my own essential intellectual pursuits and interests. bluntly, i want to supply all the brains for the household. it's intolerant, of course, but that's how i am. what i want is not a woman who'll discuss politics, or freud, or relativity with me. i want one whom i may enjoy as i do a picture, music, fragrance. of course, you see that i don't mean mere physical enjoyment—the man who marries for that is obviously a fool—but what i'm trying to drive at is that i enjoy woman companionship through esthetic impressions, through the visions and dreams that her presence, her loveliness, her charm, her womanliness, bring to me, not through ideas or debates. and that's why in my case i felt that i might find happiness best with a japanese, who might be all of these things to me, playmate, doll, companion, picture—everything but an encyclopedia or text-book on philosophy. and i had it, kent. i had all that with jun-san—i have told you. my god, those were years of happiness. but it was too perfect. i thought i had life all solved for me, that i had finally gained serenity, peace; that i was about to accomplish something worth while—and then," he picked up his glass, smashed it deliberately into the brass bowl for pipe litter, "then to have it all smashed, like that—and by my own son!"
"your son," kent leaned forward, hands gripping chair arms. "your son! you don't mean mortimer?"
[pg 296]
"he's the only son i have, isn't he?" karsten had been pacing the floor; now he turned, facing kent, glaring. "i didn't mean to tell you; but now you know it. of course, i mean mortimer."
"but it's impossible, it's absurd, it's preposterous, karsten, man; you don't mean to say that you've been wrecking your life over such an insane fever fancy as that?"
"fancy, hell! it's good enough in you, kent, to stick up for the boy, to believe it impossible; but, hang it, man, i saw it with my own eyes."
"by the gods, karsten, you lie." he had jumped up, flung the challenge into his face, eyes flashing, lips parted.
"i don't take that from any man, kent." karsten's fist flung backwards in swing for attack. kent faced him, left arm on guard. for a moment they stood facing each other, glaring, then karsten's fist dropped, he relaxed, flung wide his hands. "oh, what's the use, kent. i'm sorry. it is good of you to stick up for the boy; but, i tell you, i know. let us drop this, old man. finish. let us have a drink and say no more about it."
"no, hold on." kent had dropped into his chair and sat there, chin resting in cupped hand, the other stretched towards karsten in a gesture warding off interruption. "karsten, you know i'm not trying to probe into this just out of idle curiosity; but i have an idea. i wonder—— now i want you to tell me exactly, in every detail, just what you did see, the whole thing."
"but what good can it do? do you think i enjoy this? oh, very well, then," he shrugged his shoulders. "since you seem so curiously set on it, i'll tell you.
"it happened when mortimer came to japan to visit[pg 297] me for a few months when he was through college, before he went to europe. of course, i was living with jun-san then, but he didn't know it. she was living in her cottage, just as she is now. i'm sure he suspected nothing. of course, i couldn't have him suspect. it was easy enough. then one night i came home late, and sat in the garden for a while, and then i saw it. they were both in her cottage. i could see their shadows against the paper of the shoji, sharply cut, silhouetted as in a shadow play; there was no room for doubt; and then i saw him advance and place his arm about her neck, and the two heads melted into one. my god, wasn't that enough! do you think i would want to wait and see more, to stand passively and contemplate a love scene between her, my woman, who was as much wife to me as if we had gone through a thousand ceremonials, and my son, my own son? no, i ran out there into the temple grounds. i sat down and i thought; and i walked up and down, and thoughts, and ideas, and every sort of inspiration of madness passed in and out of my mind. one moment i wanted to rush in and confront them, tear them apart, throw them out, humiliate them, kill her. i learned that night what it was to be mad, crazy, insane. i wanted to do a thousand things, and at the same time i felt utterly helpless, that there was nothing i could do. in my imagination i could see them, jun-san and mortimer, my love and my son, in each other's arms, kissing, embracing. but what could i do? surely i couldn't rush in and say, 'here, mortimer, that's my woman you have stolen.' the whole thing was impossible, a sardonically grotesque masque contrived for my utter humiliation by some demoniacal, superbly malicious fate. i even worked myself up to believing, or at least half believing, that this was a sort of retribution, punishment for my irregularities,[pg 298] for my fool play with women in the past, just as our puritan forefathers might have done. yes, i was on the verge of being crazy, actually, pathologically insane, that night. but i came finally to a conclusion, the only logical conclusion—there was nothing for me to say or do; it simply marked the end with me for women in my life. so in the early morning i sneaked to my room; and a few weeks later mortimer sailed for san francisco; and i never said a word to him, or to jun-san. so there you are. you see how it is. as our japanese friends say, shikataganai; it can't be helped."
"and that was all you ever saw?" kent's voice had become calmly cold, inquisitorial. "so that was all?"
"my god, wasn't that enough!" karsten flung it at him irritatedly. "what more could you want? did you expect me to play the rôle of spy on my son and my——? honestly, now, you seem to have become absurdly dense."
but kent had come up to him and was shaking him, laughing nervously after the fashion of one who has passed into the trembling relief of reaction after excitation of nervous strain. "oh, karsten-san, you big damn fool, with your pride of intellect and finesse of reasoning and all that; how much better it would have been for you if you had only reacted as would have a sailor, or a butcher, or a coal-heaver, if you had jumped in and had had it out on the spot. now listen. i have the whole explanation. i can show you what an absurd, blundering fool you have been all these years—and i myself, here i've been going about with the key to the whole story, and i have seen how it was between jun-san and you, and still i've never had the sense to tell you. what fools we are, all of us. now listen——
[pg 299]
"on that night, the night all this happened, mortimer had been to a cinema show, had he not?"
"i suppose so. as a matter of fact, he had; but what of that?" karsten had caught the infection of excitement, suspense at impending revealment. his fingers were drumming on the table. "don't sit there as if you were about to drag a rabbit out of a hat. get down to essentials."
"easy. that is essential. it all hinges on that. mortimer had been to see one of those american films that had been censored by the police. he told me about it, after he had returned to san francisco and was telling me about japan. he thought it amusing, that just as the picture reached the climax, the point where the heroine, whoever she may have been, fell into the arms of the hero, there came a blur, and, presto, they were again six feet apart. the censor had cut out the kissing scene. as i say, he thought it intensely funny, the idea of an entire nation being kept from knowledge of kissing by a censor. and it worked, he told me. 'they really don't know what kissing is,' he said. for the idea had intrigued him. he had wondered; and when he came home and he happened to be telling about it to a pretty servant—that's what threw me off, his speaking of jun-san as a servant; though, of course, i see now that that's how he must naturally have looked upon her——"
"for the good lord's sake, man, don't babble so," the rat-tat-tat of karsten's fingers seemed to crackle and snap like electricity. "get to the point."
"i am. keep quiet. let me think, won't you? so it occurred to him that here was a chance where he might find out for himself, experiment. nothing to get excited about, karsten. we've both done as much. so he kept coming closer to her; just mischief, you know. it was plain she suspected nothing of the[pg 300] kind, he told me. he got his arm about her neck. she didn't move. she was utterly astounded, struck aghast, transfixed in surprise. and then, when she did move, as he brought his lips close to her mouth, she didn't struggle, she didn't cuff his ears after western fashion. she just placed her hands on his wrists and looked at him. it must have been impressive. he told me that he felt a greater sense of rebuff, of being ashamed of himself, than if she had struck him. and that's how he left her. that was all that happened. and here you've let that woman suffer for years, karsten, and i never had the sense to——"
but karsten had strode past him, was not listening. he flung open the sliding door at the head of the stairway. "jun-san," he was calling down into the dimness below. "jun-san, come, come here right away."
in her haste even the softness of her zori made a clatter on the stairs. she entered, breathless, wide-eyed in anxiety at the sudden call, stood astounded, staring at karsten who was standing—arms stretched towards her.
kent edged towards the door. they paid no attention to him. she was still standing there, trembling, lips parted, unable to believe. now he had almost gained the door. it seemed unreal, like a theatrical situation, these two, in their trembling intensity.
"erik-san, oh, erik-san!" she was in karsten's arms now, high hair-dress against his shoulder. as he slid the partition shut, kent caught a glimpse of the man's head bending down towards her. it was dramatic, affecting. he caught his breath sharply, blinked his eyes, and at the same time the thought came to him, frivolously erratic—it was just like the cinema film; he had cut the picture at the very most intense moment.
