He was very keen on his tennis. It was also a great pleasure to see so much of Reggie Forsyth. Besides, he was conscious of the mission assigned to him by Lady Cynthia Cairns to save his friend from the dangerous connection with Yaé Smith.
Reggie and he had been at Eton together. Geoffrey, four years the senior, a member of "Pop," and an athlete of many colours, found himself one day the object of an almost idolatrous worship on the part of a skinny little being, discreditably clever at Latin verses, and given over to the degrading habit of solitary piano practicing on half-holidays. He was embarrassed but touched by a devotion which was quite incomprehensible to him; and he encouraged it furtively. When Geoffrey left Eton the friends did not see each other again for some years, though they watched each other's careers from a distance, mutually appreciative. Their next meeting took place in Lady Everington's drawing-room, where Barrington had already heard fair ladies praising the gifts and graces of the young diplomat. He heard him play the piano; and he also heard the appreciation of discerning judgment. He heard him talking with arabesque agility. It was Geoffrey's turn to feel on the wrong side of a vast superiority, and in his turn he repaid the old debt of admiration; generosity filled the gulf and the two became firm friends. Reggie's intelligence flicked the inertia of Geoffrey's mind, quickened his powers of observation, and developed his sense of interest in the world around him. Geoffrey's prudence and stolidity had more than once saved the young man from the brink of sentimental precipices.
For Reggie's unquestionable musical talent found its nourishment in love affairs dangerously unsophisticated. He refused to consider marriage with any of the sweet young things, who would gladly have risked his lukewarm interest for the chance of becoming an Ambassador's wife. He equally avoided pawning his youth to any of the maturer married ladies, whose status and character, together with those of their husbands, license them to practice as certificated Egerias. His dangerous penchant was for highly spiced adventuresses, and for pastoral amourettes, wistful and obscure. But he never gave away his heart; he lent it out at interest. He received it again intact, with the profit of his musical inspiration. Thus his liaison with Véronique Gerson produced the publication of Les demi-jours, a series of musical poems which placed him at once in the forefront of young composers; but it also alarmed the Foreign Office, which was paternally interested in Reggie's career. This brought about his banishment to Japan. The Attente d'hiver, now famous, is his candid musical confession that the coma inflicted upon him by Véronique's unconcern was merely the drowsiness of the waiting earth before the New Year brought back the old story.
Reggie would never be attracted to native women; and he had not the dry inquisitiveness of his predecessor, Aubrey Laking, which might induce him to buy and keep a woman for whom he felt no affection. The love which can exchange no thoughts in speech was altogether too crude for him. It was his emotions, rather than his senses, which were always craving for amorous excitement. His frail body claimed merely its right to follow their lead, as a little boat follows the strong wind which fills its sails. But ever since he had loved Geoffrey Barrington at Eton it was a necessity for his nature to love some one; and as the haze of his young conceptions cleared, that some one became necessarily a woman.
He soon recognized the wisdom of the Foreign Office in choosing Japan. It was a starvation diet which had been prescribed for him. So he settled down to his memories and to L'attente d'hiver, thinking that it would be two long years or more before his Spring blossomed again.
* * * * *
Then he heard the story of the duel fought for Yaé Smith by two young English officers, both of them her lovers, so people said, and the vaguer tale of a fiancé's suicide. Some weeks later, he met her for the first time at a dance. She was the only woman present in Japanese dress, and Reggie thought at once of Asako Barrington. How wise of these small women to wear the kimono which drapes so gracefully their stumpy figures. He danced with her, his right hand lodged somewhere in the folds of the huge bow with the embroidered peacock, which covered her back. Under this stiff brocade he could feel no sensation of a living body. She seemed to have no bones in her, and she was as light as a feather. It was then that he imagined her as Lilith, the snake-girl. She danced with ease, so much better than he, that at the end of a series of cannons she suggested that they might sit out the dance. She guided him into the garden, and they took possession of a rustic seat. In the ballroom she had seemed timid, and had spoken in undertones only; but in this shadowy tête-à-tête beneath the stars, she began to talk frankly about her own life.
She told him about her one visit to England with her father; how she had loved the country, and how dull it was for her here in Japan. She asked him about his music. She would so like to hear him play. There was an old piano at her home. She did not think he would like it very much—indeed, Reggie was already shuddering in anticipation—or else? Would she come to tea with him at the Embassy? That would be nice! She could bring her mother or one of her brothers? She would rather come with a girl friend. Very well, to-morrow?
On the morrow she came.
Reggie hated playing in public. He said that it was like stripping naked before a multitude, or like having to read one's own love letters aloud in a divorce court. But there is nothing more soothing than to play to one attentive listener, especially if that listener be feminine and if the interest shown be that personal interest, which with so many women takes the place of true appreciation, and which looks over the art to the artist.