And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

  By the time we reached Yokohama my husband and I had become very good friends with her, and we prevailed upon her to bring her two little devils and to stop at our hotel until the parents should come down from Osaka, the father’s Eastern headquarters, and claim them. She did, and she was very glad to have our company. So was I, for a woman sometimes needs the company of women.

  The first signs of what was going to happen escaped me completely, for who would have imagined anything so startling from a Bellows Falls old maid? She sat beside me while our ’rikisha runner pulled us through the lovely city, chattering about this and that, and we both amused ourselves at the odd signs of the tradesmen in front of the shops of the foreign quarter. These were funny enough, by the way. One read: “Respectable ladies and gents invited to have fits” in front of an enterprising tailor shop. Another, an eager furrier, read: “Furs made from our skins or yours,” and another, a barber’s, stated brutally: “American and British gentlemen’s heads cut.”

  Well, I did notice that Miss Stebbins grew more and more ill at ease in the ’rikisha. I remember remarking to her about the magnificent torso of our runner as he pattered along with our 260 or more pounds behind him, his muscles rippling under his yellow-tanned skin, his solid legs pulling tirelessly. I remember later also that she was a little tense in her reply to my remark, and that she mumbled something about his being handsome.

  We drew up at the One Hundred Stairs of the famous Fujita tea-house where all the foreign colony of Yokohama daily has its rice-cakes and tea and conversation, and there we got down, preliminary to climbing up there. Miss Stebbins went up to our runner, and tried in pidgin English to tell him to wait for us. She had scarcely uttered ten words, however, before she wavered, choked and collapsed right on the little man. Impassively, he took her elbows in his hands and held her there while I ran to her assistance. She had not fainted, but she seemed to be suffering from some sort of emotional shock. As I took her in my arms, she reached out wildly and seemed to be clawing at the chest of the little runner. The incident lasted only a matter of seconds, and an English gentleman, getting out of another ’rikisha, offered us his help. He practically carried the young woman up the long flight of stairs. A brandy and soda revived her a little, but she was still restless and seemed not inclined to talk, not even to explain, if she could, what had happened nor to be pleasant to the very nice Englishman who had carried her … no mean gallantry, either … up all those stairs.

  Suddenly she excused herself, saying that she felt badly again, and that she wanted to get the air for a few moments. I remembered later that she did seem a little wild-eyed. At all events, I began to worry when she did not return after some twenty minutes, and I went to look for her. Not a sign.

  Upon inquiry, I discovered that she had taken the ’rikisha and had gone off, leaving me to find another to return in. I took advantage of the Englishman’s kind offer to see me back to the hotel, and I left Fujita without having enjoyed at all my first tea in the most curious tearoom in the world.

  At the hotel, no sign of Miss Stebbins. No word. Nothing. She had disappeared. I told the story to my husband, who did not take it very seriously, but when dinner was over and she made no appearance he was as worried as I.

  After dinner we went to the American consul and told the story, and the concern he showed told us that there was a certain danger. Not only that, but we had the two incorrigible children on our hands all night, for Miss Stebbins did not come back.

  Inquiry on the part of the Yokohama police revealed that the ’rikisha runner who had taken her away from Fujita had not returned to his post, but that was absolutely all that could be learned, and the hotel was in a buzz of worried excitement.

  Three days later the parents of the two children were due, and I was prepared to tell them a story which I thought pretty tragic. But that morning early, as I was dressing for town, there was a rapid knock on my door and Miss Stebbins appeared.

  I scarcely recognized her at first. Not only because she was so bedraggled and drawn and changed-looking, but because there was a new light in her eyes, almost a new personality.

  “Oh, my friend!” she kept saying, and clung to me, almost as though she were frightened. “Oh, my friend!”

  Then it came out.

  I was never so surprised in my life as when I heard her amazing story. The fact is that her imagination and her normal desires had been struggling against her Puritanical training, and finally, under the influence and freedom and trance of the East, she had succumbed. And in succumbing she had gone to an extreme that most people would have been squeamish about.

  She had, in fact, fallen in love with the ’rikisha runner.

  Perhaps “love” is not the word. It was a physical thing. She raved on about his strength, his quiet power, his calm, his manly simplicity. It was almost funny.

  I gathered that she had taken the poor man by storm, and that her disappearance was “one of those things.”

  Well, the upshot of it was that I had to save her from scandal and from criticism. We concocted a story about her having been lost. I forget the details now, but it was a fairly good one and perfectly possible because things of that kind had happened before. I got her dressed decently again and made into a respectable-appearing woman once more, and we presented her at dinner in such a way that she became a sort of popular heroine. I imagine the American consul suspected something, but he was a good fellow, and did not ask too many embarrassing questions. As to the parents of the brats, they came, and were too smug to suspect anything out of the way.

  Anyhow, they departed, all four of them, and I never heard of her again except to have a little note about three weeks afterwards, saying:

  “Keep my secret, dear friend. The book is open.”

  I wonder what that meant, that last.

  Japanese acrobat performer Hayatake Torakichi. Ukiyo-e by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, 1857.

  ✥

  So much for one set of influences exposed to the Orient. But my story is bigger than that, and while we are at it, let me tell a curious piece of history concerning the 100 steps and the Fujita tearoom which has nothing to do with Miss Stebbins and her troubles.

  Anyone who has been to Japan will remember it, doubtless, but for those who have never been able to get away from Main Street or Broadway (are they not much the same place after all?) here is a story which never could have happened anywhere except in the Orient.

  There was once upon a time … and not such a very long time ago either … (about 1881) … a Japanese acrobat. Now an acrobat in Japan is, shall we say, of a different mentality from those we see in American vaudevilles and continental music-halls. This was a man not only intelligent but also religious, and his art … he called it so … was inspired by Buddha.

  After many years of public display and glory, when he was getting to be an old man, he decided to perform his greatest and most dangerous feat. This was to ride on horseback up the 100 stairs leading to Fujita with his little daughter standing on his shoulders, and then to come down again (alone this time) standing on his head, holding the reins with his feet.

  He did just this, while a great crowd applauded, and he consecrated his “stunt” to the praise of Buddha.

  But this was not enough. He decided then that his art could only express his gratitude to Buddha by riding up and down all the long stairs in Japan and performing the same acrobatic feat … and there are many high places with stairs leading to them in the country.

  For one year the acrobat continued his strange performance, a sort of vow of gratitude and recognition, until one day, having returned to Yokohama, he again mounted the 100 steps of Fujita and came down, with his legs waving in the air.

  But it appears that on the night before he had committed the sin of stealing (only for a short time, mind you) the wife of a fellow circus rider, and so the Great Buddha willed it that he should be punished. At the forty-third step his horse stumbled and down he came, breaking his neck, and landing at the
bottom definitely dead. The rival acrobat completed the punishment by stealing the daughter of the dead man, and everything was all right, naturally.

  Map of Tokyo, 1896. Brockhaus Encyclopedia.

  ✥

  But to return to my own adventures. One thing I recall about my first trip to Japan is most amusing. About a month after the departure of Miss Stebbins, my husband and I started on a sort of tour in the country. I say tour; perhaps it would be more correct to say journey of exploration, for actually we rumbled off in a sort of cart drawn by oxen, piled high with our baggage, and incidentally containing my very uncomfortable spouse and my equally uncomfortable self.

  Our direction, in general, was Kyoto, although we never got there, for reasons which will appear later. Actually we got about thirty miles away from Yokohama in some three days, stopping at little paper or bamboo places as substitutes for hotels and having rather a time of it.

  Our way led more or less over high rugged hills, and for that reason we had been advised to take the ox-cart. Of that, no matter. On the third day my husband and I were pretty tired and decided to rest from the bouncing and jouncing of the journey. We accomplished this in another paper-walled house in a town whose name I do not remember. I do recall that I slept for several hours, in spite of the fact that the only bed I had in this primitive “hotel” was the floor, a mat and a little wooden rest for my head. (The Japanese women use this sort of thing to preserve their very complicated head-dress.) On the second day, my husband went out, rather stiffly and sorely, but with a lot more courage than I had. I remained “in bed” and cursed the day I had taken the ox-cart.

  I recall that I heard some sort of disturbance … voices or something … next door, but paid little attention to it. Suddenly and without warning there was a great crash and the body of a man came through the paper wall … right on top of me.

  It was an Englishman. And strangely enough it was the very Englishman who had carried my friend Daphne Stebbins up the long stairs on the day of her great adventure.

  He was embarrassed, to say the least.

  Imagine being in a drowse and having a strange man come hurtling through the wall on top of you! But it was so funny … or so I thought … that I did nothing but laugh, while he babbled apologies. These were accepted with laughter, and my Englishman and I had a long conversation, quite unmindful of the buzzing of the Japanese proprietor who was lamenting his broken partition.

  On top of all this my husband came in and there was more embarrassment because he could not see the joke. In fact all he could see was the Englishman … a rather fine-looking fellow … sitting there smoking a cigarette on the floor while I was in my boudoir and clad in little else than a kimono.

  Well, it was all very absurd. Huntingdon-Meer, as the Englishman was called, was pitifully embarrassed. Why are British persons of a certain class always so embarrassed and pink? And my husband was very angry and gruff to him. He went away, naturally, and moved into another room where the wall was still undamaged, and left me to face my irate spouse alone.

  Then began something which was really unfortunate. I wish the male of my species had more sense of humor, for my husband was vaguely under the impression that I had planned all this, and that the paper wall’s breaking was merely part of an immense flirtation.

  Net result: I did have a flirtation with my wall-crashing acquaintance, and a lot of fun it was too.

  But that is the other part of this story.

  You will gather, if you have not already done so, that all my life I believed in what are cheaply called “flirtations.” Our good friend Mrs. Grundy will insist that they are immoral, impolite, cheap, etc., etc., etc., etc. Especially so for married women or married men.

  But let me explain my idea, boldly and frankly, and I am willing to stand for anybody’s opinion after that.

  In the first place flirtation is only a word, a name, for something which is not only amusing but instructive. There is no fact more fundamental than this: the basic relationship between male and female (whether human or animal) is that of pursuit and evasion. Not only biology and history prove it, but common observation. Now the human animal has the advantage over other animals (if indeed it is an advantage) in that he has a reasoning, imaginative mind. So this pursuit really becomes something much more than sex-pursuit. There is still that, of course, but it is enlarged and developed into a much more amusing game in proportion as the humans who engage in it are gifted with reason, imagination, intuition, and so forth.

  Flirtation, as I mean it, is or can be the most fascinating pastime in the world. It can employ more wit than political intrigue, more imagination than writing novels, more comprehension of your fellow humans than applied psychology, and more intuition than gambling in Wall Street. If your opponent in the game is clever and your equal or superior at this sort of fencing, there is nothing more thrilling. If not, there is no better way to discover a bore and discard him than to flirt a little.

  A friend of mine once expressed it pretty well. “You push Button A, and Thing A happens. Then you push Buttons B, C, D, and so on. If it all works out according to formula, you have discovered just another uninteresting person. But if, when you push Button D, something happens that you’ve not bargained for … then you get interested.”

  Well, that’s the way I feel about flirting.

  It does not always end in love, nor in bed, nor in any of the conventional story-book ways. Thank God. Sometimes it gives you a real friend whom you respect. Sometimes it just peters out after you’ve had your fun. Sometimes it gets you into trouble. You never know. That, of course, is part of the thrill.

  But to go back to my Englishman who fell through the wall. I have never been overly drawn to Englishmen. Nor to Americans nor to any of the Nordic races, for that matter. Perhaps my prejudice, if it is one, came from some early experience.

  Anyhow, here’s the story.

  Huntingdon-Meer was the India-Service type of Oxonian. (Perhaps he was Cambridge, or some other University, but he was the type I mean.) He was tall, well-made, strong-minded, traveled, and knew his Orient like a book. After he had gotten over his shocked embarrassment at discovering I had a husband (they all get over husbands, given half a chance) he really interested me with his stories about India. I tried to get my husband interested too, but … well I was young enough to believe it could be done. I tried to explain to my spouse, too, that flirtation had absolutely no bearing on my regard and love for him. Well, women who will read this will realize how silly that was. And when Huntingdon-Meer finally broke down, flushing and stammering and eager and boyish, and told me that he had followed us all the way from Yokohama and had crashed the wall on purpose, just to get to know me … well, that settled it. I played the princess, and he was my very overgrown, very eager page.

  Naturally, to keep peace with my husband our conversations were infrequent and more or less under cover. Then one day my husband wanted to go on with our exploration. I did not want to, not only because I was having fun with my page, but also because it was too uncomfortable. A breach was saved when my Englishman appeared with three horses … pretty good ones, which he had procured mysteriously … and proposed that we all three go on together on horseback, sending the baggage along in the ox-cart.

  The idea won out, and off we set, albeit my husband was not very enthusiastic and in fact rather gruff about it. It did not last long, however, for an accident happened.

  His horse shied at something imaginary, tripped, stumbled, and fell with him, and we had to take him, pretty badly shaken but not seriously hurt, back to the hotel. There we all decided to return to Yokohama.

  We did, and there things began to happen.

  In the first place, a telegram awaited my husband at the American consulate, calling him hurriedly to San Francisco. It was not a matter of life and death, but one of comfort or poverty, which, in its way, is just as or more important. A matter of business.

  Off he went for two months. There was nothing else
for him to do but to go. And it was better all round that I should stay behind.

  I stayed, although at the last minute I did not want to and later circumstances proved that I was correct in my intuition.

  Right then and there began what I like to call my “English Episode in Japan.” An unkind person might call it something less euphemistic, but it seems that my word is as good as any.

  Huntingdon-Meer (not his right name, of course, but a convenient and “near” substitute) projected himself violently into my life as soon as my husband departed. He began by protesting his platonic affection for me, and he ended by stammering about this thing he called “love.” We played about the city (which he knew intimately), but he made the tactical error of presenting me to Baron Takamini, and that ruined everything.

  Takamini was a man, a real one. Small, as are most Japanese, he was none the less the most perfect specimen of man I have ever seen. He was immensely rich (not that it mattered), politically and socially prominent, of old and noble family who were supposed to have descended from one of the last great Shoguns, and endowed with a singularly intense mind which had been developed at Yale, Heidelberg, and at the Sorbonne. He was a curious combination of Eastern and Western personality and culture. Furthermore, he was handsome as only an Oriental can be handsome.