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Updated: June 28, 2025
They were approaching the lake, which already showed through the tree-trunks. A path led away to the left across a rustic bridge. "That's the way to the hotel. Yaé is there. Farther along are the Russian, French and British Embassies. That's about half an hour from here."
But Geoffrey felt that it was no business of his; and that Reggie and Yaé being what they were, it would be useless hypocrisy for him to censure their pleasures. Meanwhile, Asako was writing to him, bewailing her loneliness. So one morning at breakfast he announced that he must be getting back to Tokyo. A cloud passed over Yaé's face.
As the result of an affecting scene with his wife, Geoffrey's opposition to the Yoshiwara project collapsed. If everybody went to see the place, then it could not be such very Bad Form to do so. Asako rang up Reggie; and on the next afternoon the young diplomat called for the Barringtons in a motor-car, where Miss Yaé Smith was already installed. They drove through Tokyo.
Geoffrey was sleeping upstairs in his bedroom. Yaé was sleeping downstairs on the sofa. He had expected her to return to the hotel after lunch, but her attitude was that of "J'y suis, j'y reste." He awoke with a start to find the girl standing beside his bed. Afterwards he became sure that he had been awakened by the touch of soft fingers on his face. "Wake up, big captain," she was saying.
The Hidetsugu catastrophe accentuated the lines of division, and the Korean campaign had a similar effect by affording a field for bitter rivalry between the forces of Konishi Yukinaga, who belonged to the Yodo faction, and Kato Kiyomasa, who was a protege of Hideyoshi's wife, Yae.
"Reggie, for God's sake, tell me, is this true?" "Yes," said Reggie quietly, "it is quite true." "Then why did no one tell me?" "Husbands," said the young man, "and prospective husbands are always the last to learn. Yaé, go back to the hotel. You have done enough harm for to-day." "Not unless you forgive me, Reggie," the girl pleaded. "I will never go unless you forgive."
Later he met Yaé Smith, through the paper walls of whose Japanese existence the instincts of her Scottish forefathers kept forcing their unruly way. Geoffrey could not define his thoughts so precisely; but something unruly stirred in his consciousness, when he saw the ghost of his days of courtship rise before him in the deep blue kimono.
It is honoured merely by an unsteady bench under a broken roof, and by a rope knotted round the trunk of a tall tree in mid-stream to indicate that the locality is an abode of spirits, and to warn passers-by against inconsiderately offending the Undine. Geoffrey and Yaé were balancing themselves on the bench, gazing at the race of foam and at the burnished bracken.
"Don't flirt with Yaé Smith," she smiled, as he gave her the last kiss, "or Reggie will be jealous." At first Geoffrey was bored. He did not know many of the dancers, business people from Yokohama, most of them, or strangers stopping at the hotel. Their appearance depressed him. The women had hard faces, the lustre was gone from their hair, they wore ill-fitting dresses without style or charm.
"Mither, Rob's taken twa sups of milk to yae bite o' tattie," little Mary would say. "Ay, an' what did you do?" Robert would reply. "When you thought naebody was lookin', you took three spoonfu' to yae wee tattie. I was watchin' you." "Now that'll do," the mother would admonish them. "Try and make it gang as far as ye can. Here you!" she would raise her voice to another, "dinna be so greedy on it.
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