Kent saw he had made a faux pas. He was glad when the cadaverous dance-mad Eurasian led her off into the dance.
Dick was laughing. "You certainly got off on the wrong foot, Kent. I'd better do the honors. I know most of them. I ought to. I have lived here all my life. So, fire away."
It was fascinatingly interesting. He was a complete "Who's Who," able to sketch in a few sentences the entire curriculum vitæ of most of the dancers, go-fujin, actresses, stenographers, married women, rich men's daughters, geisha, girl students, who they were, whence they came, approachable or otherwise. Before them, past them, moved the dancing couples, unconscious of the fact that their lives were being laid bare, their characters stripped, good-naturedly, laughingly, but with a sure, quick touch.
"That girl in pink foreign dress, with pink slippers, that's one of the Thompson girls, Eurasians; father is in silk. They live in Honmoku. There are three of them, but one's married. That one, in red, the one with the pink beads, that's a stenographer with the Standard Oil in Yokohama. Now, that one, with the big, gold obi, I am not quite sure, but I think she is geisha. They say she's from Shimbashi. It is odd, you know, most of the fuss in the Japanese papers has been stirred up by the geisha guilds. They are afraid that if the men get used to foreign dancing, it will raise the devil with the geisha business, that they will come to these dances instead of spending fifty or a hundred yen an evening on geisha. And still the geisha themselves can't keep away from the dance places. The lure has got them, too."
He went on. One after one these elusive, dazzling women, who had so baffled Kent's ventures at guessing, were singled out for brief, concise description, as if they were picked out individually, suddenly, by a searchlight, moving hither and yon in the throng, illuminating each one in intense glare for a moment, then allowing her to slip back into the background of the crowd, as the beam shifted to, rested on, stripped the mystery from another kimono-clad enigma; then moved on to still another.
"Now, there are the Kincaids," he went on. Kent had been curious to know who they were, a middle-aged, quiet American, and a young woman, whose kimono, with its marvelously delicate texture, glorious though subdued luxuriance, was noticeable even in that dazzling kaleidoscope of rich Oriental stuffs. He had taken the man to be some wealthy foreigner, "import and export" man probably, who took pleasure in showering his wealth on this slight, fairy-like beauty, to indulge his fancy by arraying her in constantly changing ornate frames for her enchanting loveliness.
"Kincaid is a teacher in one of the most exclusive girls' schools in Tokyo," Dick was going on. "She was a pupil there, comes from an old samurai family, blood blue as indigo, but family estates, riches, glory, the whole business gone, all but pride, tenacious grasp on the old traditions. She's a beauty, isn't she? Exquisite. Kincaid was smitten. How he ever managed to see her alone is a mystery. It was romance. Imagine yourself, in this day of wireless and gasoline, conducting a courtship after the fashion of feudalism, the infinitely obscure and meaningless minutiæ of the days of the Shogunate. It can't have been anything else. The family must have insisted on it. Kincaid is a deep Oriental scholar. He could do it if any one could. He may even have enjoyed it, taken it as a sort of top examination, a supreme test, if he thought of it in that light. I don't know. Nobody knows just what he went through. But he had the devil's own time. Luckily, he had influential Japanese friends, blue-blooded, too, but modern, and they helped him out. And then the girl was infatuated with him, crazy after him. You know they get all kinds of new ideas, these girls, Socialism, free love, careers of their own, art, literature, foreign husbands, it may be one fad or another, anything. Hers evidently was a foreign husband, or, at least, Kincaid. So at last the family gave in; but that was only half the game. Then came the wedding. It had to be Japanese style, most formal ritual, san san kudo, three times three cups of sake drunk by bride and groom and all that. That didn't bother Kincaid. Probably he liked it. But the expense! You know these high-class Japanese weddings sometimes run up to hundreds of thousands of yen. There are all kinds of expensive gowns for the bride, kimonos, obi, ornaments, God knows what. Then the banquet, hordes of guests, at fifteen, twenty, thirty yen a plate, something like that. And then, finally, the presents. You know in Japan the wedded folk must give return presents, usually about twice the value of those they get. You get married. I give you something utterly useless, a vase, a kakemono, and then you must come back with something quite as useless but worth twice the price. They say it cost Kincaid thirty thousand yen, which wasn't so bad under the circumstances. He spent every yen he had. That was over two years ago, and they are still saving, paying off their wedding debts, living in a couple of rooms. She does most of the housework, but they are both happy. You can see it. He gets his pleasure taking her here and there, his prize, in her wonderful kimonos, the trousseau, intensely proud of her; and she adores him. Look at her. Her eyes are always on him. She has realized her dream; he has his. No room for regret, no thought of it. Romance, the new, modern West and the age-old East, they have become one. So it works sometimes."
The orchestra blared into a new dance. Dick went off for a partner somewhere in the other end of the hall. Kent leaned back, summarizing, trying to classify his new knowledge. In a way the glib explanations, the reduction into terms of commonplace of these people, these women, dimmed the picture a little, detracted from its attraction of being unknown; still, he had had but a glimpse behind the veil. What he had learned would but serve to initiate him further, to penetrate more deeply, to insinuate himself more intimately into this attractive, strange world of utterly foreign thoughts, fashions, modes of life.
Behind him, in the garden outside, staring through the open windows, a fringe of Japanese, the ordinary folk who found their pleasures in the slides, and swings and other marvels of the park, were discovering rare entertainment in watching the dancers, the strange new foreign custom of women, gentlewomen at that, dancing together with, in the arms of, men. Abstractedly he listened to their churlish comment.
"They have the luck, these chaps," a burly fellow of the rickshaw man type nudged his friend. "For two yen they can put their arms about these girls, pretty girls, ladies. It's cheaper and better fun than playing with geisha."