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If you should ever have good and sufficient reason to enter the house, pushing open that lantern-slide of a door which sets a gong-bell ringing to announce visits, you might be able to see Kimika, provided her little troupe be not engaged for the evening. You would find her a very intelligent person, and well worth talking to.
Next upon the left comes the House of Kajita; and in that house are Kohana, the Flower-Bud, and Hinako, whose face is pretty as the face of a doll. Opposite is the House Nagaye, wherein live Kimika and Kimiko.... And this luminous double litany of names is half-a-mile long.
She had actually said good-by to Kimika, and had gone away with somebody able to give her all the pretty dresses she could wish for, somebody eager to give her social position also, and to silence gossip about her naughty past, somebody willing to die for her ten times over, and already half-dead for love of her.
The story of the first Kimiko belongs to the last class. It is not one of the most extraordinary; but it is one of the least difficult for Western people to understand. There is no more Ichi-dai-me Kimiko: she is only a remembrance. Kimika was quite young when she called that Kimiko her professional sister. "An exceedingly wonderful girl," is what Kimika says of Kimiko.
The mother wept, and made no reply. Ai did not weep, but went out alone. She remembered that in other days, when banquets were given in her father's house, and dancers served the wine, a free geisha named Kimika had often caressed her. She went straight to the house of Kimika. "I want you to buy me," said Ai; "and I want a great deal of money."
She had been taught how to conduct herself under almost any possible circumstances; for what she could not have known Kimika knew everything about: the power of beauty, and the weakness of passion; the craft of promises and the worth of indifference; and all the folly and evil in the hearts of men. So Kimiko made few mistakes and shed few tears.
She can tell, when she pleases, the most remarkable stories, real flesh-and-blood stories, true stories of human nature. For the Street of the Geisha is full of traditions, tragic, comic, melodramatic; every house has its memories; and Kimika knows them all. Some are very, very terrible; and some would make you laugh; and some would make you think.
Rewards were offered for any news especially a reward to Kimika, who was really attached to the girl, and would have been only too happy to find her without any reward at all. But the mystery remained a mystery.
By and by she proved to be, as Kimika wished, slightly dangerous. So a lamp is to night-fliers: otherwise some of them would put it out. The duty of the lamp is to make pleasant things visible: it has no malice. Kimiko had no malice, and was not too dangerous. Anxious parents discovered that she did not want to enter into respectable families, nor even to lend herself to any serious romances.
The inscription on the lantern of the last-named house reveals the relationship between Kimika and Kimiko, and yet something more; for Kimiko is styled Ni-dai-me, an honorary untranslatable title which signifies that she is only Kimiko No.2.
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