Were any of these her relatives? Asako shuddered. How much did she actually know about these far-away cousins? She could just remember her father. She could recall great brown shining eyes, and a thin face wasted by the consumption which killed him, and a tenderness of voice and manner quite apart from anything which she had ever experienced since. This soon came to an end. After that she had known only the conscientiously chilly care of the Muratas. They had told her that her mother had died when she was born, and that her father was so unhappy that he had left Japan forever. Her father was a very clever man. He had read all the English and French and German books. He had left special word when he was dying that Asako was not to go back to Japan, that Japanese men were bad to women, that she was to be brought up among French girls and was to marry a European or an American. But the Muratas could not tell her any intimate details about her father, whom they had not known very well. Again, although they were aware that she had rich cousins living in Tokyo, they did not know them personally and could tell her nothing.
Her father had left no papers, only his photograph, the picture of a delicate, good-looking, sad-faced man in black cloak and kimono, and a little French book called Pensées de Pascal, at the end of which was written the address of Mr. Ito, the lawyer in Tokyo through whom the dividends were paid, and that of "my cousin Fujinami Gentaro."
CHAPTER VII
THE EMBASSY
Tsuyu no yo no
Tsuyu no yo nagara
Sari nagara!
While this dewdrop world
Is but a dewdrop world,
Yet—all the same!—
The fabric of our lives is like a piece of knitting, terribly botched and bungled in most cases. There are stitches which are dropped, sometimes to be swallowed up and forgotten in the superstructure, sometimes to be picked up again after a lapse of years. These stitches are old friendships.
The first stitch from Geoffrey's bachelor days to be worked back into the scheme of his married life was his friendship for Reggie Forsyth, who had been best man at his wedding and who had since then been appointed Secretary to the Embassy at Tokyo.
Reggie had received a telegram saying that Geoffrey was coming. He was very pleased. He had reached that stage in the progress of exile where one is inordinately happy to see any old friend. In fact, he was beginning to be "fed up" with Japan, with its very limited distractions, and with the monotony of his diplomatic colleagues.
Instead of going to the tennis court, which was his usual afternoon occupation, he had spent the time in arranging his rooms, shifting the furniture, rehanging the pictures, paying especial care to the disposition of his Oriental curios, his recent purchases, his last enthusiasms in this land of languor. Reggie collected Buddhas, Chinese snuff-bottles and lacquered medicine cases—called inro in Japanese.