CHAPTER XXI

SAYONARA (GOOD-BYE)

Tomo ni narite Onaji minato wo Izuru fune no Yuku-ye mo shirazu Kogi-wakari-nuru!

  Those ships which left
  The same harbour
  Side by side
  Towards an unknown destination
  Have rowed away from one another!

Reggie Forsyth, remaining in Chuzenji, had become a prey to a most crushing reaction.  At the time of trial, he had been calm and clear-sighted.  For a moment he had experienced a sensation of relief at shaking off the shackles which Yae’s fascination had fastened upon him.  He had been aware all along that she was morally worthless.  He was glad to have the matter incontestably proved.  But his paradise, though an artificial one, had been paradise all the same.  It had nourished him with visions and music.  Now, he had no companion except his own irrepressible spirit jibing at his heart’s infirmity.  He came to the reluctant conclusion that he must take Yae back again.  But she must never come again to him on the same terms.  He would take her for what she really was, a unique and charming fille-de-joie, and he knew that she would be glad to return.  Without something, somebody, some woman to interest him, he could not face another year in this barren land.

Then what about Geoffrey, his friend who had betrayed him?  No, he could not regard him in such a tragic light.  He was angry with Geoffrey, but not indignant.  He was angry with him for being a blunderer, an elephant, for being so easily amenable to Lady Cynthia’s intrigues, for being so good-natured, stupid and gullible.  He argued that if Geoffrey had been a wicked seducer, a bold Don Juan, he would have excused him and would have felt more sympathy for him.  He would have thoroughly enjoyed sitting down with him to a discussion of Yae’s psychology.  But what did an oaf like Geoffrey understand about that bundle of nerves and instincts, partly primitive and partly artificial, bred out of an abnormal cross between East and West, and doomed from conception to a life astray between light and darkness?  He had been disillusioned about his old friend, and he wished never to see him again.

“What frauds these noble natures are!” he said to himself, “these Old Honests, these sterling souls!  And as an excuse he tells me, ’Nothing actually happened!’ Disgusting!”

  ’To play with light loves in the portal,
  To kiss and embrace and refrain!’

“The virtue of our days is mostly impotence!  Lust and passion and love and marriage!  Why do our dull insular minds mix up these four entirely separate notions?  And how can we jump with such goat-like agility from one circle of thought into another without ever noticing the change in the landscape?”

He strolled over to the piano to put these ideas into music.