Miss Jill Read online

  “I see. I must have looked like a–what would you call it, a one-timer?”

  “Well, never mind now.”

  “But, my dear little Jill, I am not going upstairs with you.”

  “Oh, I know. I called you up. I–well, I wanted to talk.”

  Lionel listened gravely to the story of Teddy Jarrett and the money; he shrugged. “I agree with him,” he said. “Put it down to experience.”

  “But he was so nasty. There’s no way one can get back at him, you know. If only I could do something bad enough, make a scene when he’s out with big shots or something— Oh, I hate their guts, I do, really.”

  She stared miserably into her glass, and Dr. Lionel traced figures on the little table and hummed. Then he leaned over and patted her hand. “Valuable experience,” he insisted. “Suppose you had liked him!”

  “Oh no, no chance of that. I’ve been had for a sucker too often before, for that. No, he’s not my type. It was the way he behaved that got under my skin, as if it couldn’t possibly matter what he said to a tart. Don’t you see, he wouldn’t have acted that way with anybody else. He’d even pay his tailor before— Don’t you see, all those women he knows, they think he’s a nice fellow, they like him. He gets away with it. He’s polite to them. It isn’t only him, either, that I care about: he’s only one of the whole bloody lot.”

  “I see.”

  “So sometimes I don’t think I can stand it any more.”

  “But why? What else would you do? Yes, I know, you can get other jobs, as salesgirl or waitress, but you wouldn’t like it, Jill. You’d come back to this. This is much easier.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She frowned thoughtfully.

  “You would hate them just the same if you were a salesgirl.”

  “But they wouldn’t act as if they had the right to snub me, then. Not the way they do now. Don’t you see, it isn’t fair. I’m not a beggar. I don’t go around asking people for money; some of the girls can, but I can’t. It’s not snubbing from the women that I mind so much. I mean, if one of these society women does try to freeze me out, that’s all very well; we don’t see things the same way, perhaps, but I don’t let it get me down, do you see, on account of I know what it is. She’s jealous and scared, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” asked Dr. Lionel, raising his eyebrows.

  “Well, you know what I mean. Anyway, I’m not after anything from her. I’m not asking her for anything, or her husband either. Nothing I don’t pay for. So long as I’ve got something to offer in fair trade I keep my self-respect.”

  “So.”

  “So,” said Jill. “Anyway, some of those women are okay. I knew one once …” She stopped. “I did start to earn my living another way once,” she said.

  “So?”

  “So,” she mocked him. “Oh, the hell with it.”

  “So now we talk about other things,” said Dr. Lionel. “Or, no, we will continue, if you like, to talk about you.”

  “Yes, let’s.” She smiled like a happy child.

  “I thought you would like that.”

  III

  If Jill seemed unduly sensitive as to the manner in which she earned her living, there were two explanations: her youth and the fact that she had spent the first years of her career not as a European whore but as a Japanese mistress. There is a good deal of difference between the two. Comparatively speaking, hers was a sheltered life. At first she was able, indeed, to maintain toward the world that appearance of respectability which was to be such a passion with her later, when her Botchan no longer protected her with the glamour of his wealth and his exoticism. The faҫade of those early, happy days was not affected by Jill’s private knowledge, which she shared only with his immediate household, of her true guilt.

  For Jill had a strong sense of sin, though it had never interfered. Only her constant desire for drama and a fear of seeming banal had led her into her one important lie to Dr. Lionel Levy, when she told him she had left the convent at the age of three. This was certainly not true: Jill had been an itinerant visitor and sometime boarder at the convent until, at fifteen, her destiny led her to talk to the Japanese banker that sunny afternoon on the beach. It was the sisters who gave her an anxious desire to learn languages, to be accomplished, to be good and respected. It was another influence entirely which occasionally carried her out of their quiet little school: a hap-hazard series of visits to her mother, a bewildering succession of homes in differing degrees of luxury, the example of a pretty, greedy woman juggling a number of men who were all called Jill’s stepfathers and who resented or accepted the little girl’s presence according to the tact with which they were juggled. Jill learned to simper and bridle before she was out of pinafores, but until the banker took her in hand she had no idea of carrying on like that after she grew up. Japanese women, she learned, are in no hurry to grow up; accordingly, at fifteen, Jill stayed where she was, growing older and wiser only in regard to Man and how to manage him.

  Hers was no shockingly brutal seduction. She liked Botchan and eloped with him quite willingly. He was rich, and that thrilled her; he was different, and that pleased her more than his wealth. A small Australian town is no place for a dreamy discontented girl. And he was kind in his way, which could almost be called a fatherly way, for his daughter, the ostensible reason he gave for hiring Jill, was just the age of his golden mistress. The two young girls, whispering and giggling together, brought tears of sentimental pleasure to his eyes.

  They traveled at leisure, where and when they pleased– the Continent, England, South America, and England again. As a distinguished party they moved in a perpetual glamour–this was long before the Tripartite Pact–and as an oriental group, nobody questioned any oddity about them. There was Botchan, there was the trio of servants, there was the young daughter and her little blond companion, altogether a picturesque and charming party. They stayed at the best hotels or with the leading Japanese of the place, and Botchan went to parties, and sometimes his daughter and her companion accompanied him, both of them sitting in modest silence unless they were spoken to, when they replied in identical little chirping voices and smiled identical little smiles. Jill learned how to behave, living with Botchan. She developed the timid manners which were later to be voted charming on the China Coast. She also developed a childish awe and admiration for long words, the reflection of her awe and admiration for Botchan, whose English was carefully polysyllabic. Peering through a train window at a rain-soaked scene, where anyone else would have said, “Just look at that flood!” Botchan instead said, “Jill, regard the inundation!”

  Very high-class, thought Jill, and looked at him worshipingly.

  It was not always an idyllic love affair. Botchan was forty-five and a Japanese plutocrat, which meant that he was sophisticated and a little tired out in sex matters. Also, like many of his compatriots, he had no objection to an occasional flutter in homosexuality, a tendency much regretted by some of the more Americanized of his circle, who made a scandal of it in Tokyo. But Botchan had centuries of tradition to support him. It was not a very big or exclusive scandal, and anyway he didn’t live in Tokyo any more than he could help. When Jill discovered that she had a rival for her master’s affections in his masseur, she was not as badly shocked as an older woman would have been, a woman who was set in the ways of her own society. Jill was only very, very jealous. She made scenes, but Botchan was used to those. He made scenes too. He accused his little governess of flirting with handsome Frenchmen or Englishmen, the aides-de-camp and such who were assigned to partner her at dinners.

  “You look too young,” he would storm; “it’s ridiculous.”

  It was indeed ridiculous. Jill at fifteen was wise enough to dress like a fifteen-year-old, and a frugal habit which was never to forsake her had made her keep to her convent clothes, childish middy blouses and short skirts. One afternoon in London Botchan suddenly lost his last shreds of patience. He had never claimed much discretion. Seizing Jill’s skinny
little arm with his skinny little hand, he marched her into a dress shop.

  “There,” he said, propelling her into the arms of the astonished manageress. “She is a governess; dress her like one. Something black.”

  There were other scenes. One night Jill woke up to find a drunken Botchan standing above her bed with a knife held over her heart. He cast the knife away when she opened her eyes, and collapsed, blubbering, on the counterpane.

  “I meant to kill you. You are too beautiful to live, and you make me so miserable. But I thought of my family and my honor.… I cannot.”

  “Hidei,” asked Jill of the daughter the day after the knife episode, “do you like your father?” She spoke with some rancor, for she had been badly frightened, and Botchan had waked in the morning with a bad head and a worse temper, making her massage and pummel his arthritic arm for an hour. Even the vicious pleasure of twisting his arm more than was strictly necessary had not soothed her.

  Hidei lifted her head from her sewing. “Not always,” she said. “Sometimes I hate him, when he is cruel to my mother.” She concentrated again on her sewing. “But he is my father, and often he is very kind,” she added. “One must remember that my mother is not well.”

  Often when they discussed the necessity of returning to Japan Jill would ask Botchan about his wife and persisted in her questions to a degree which to his mind showed bad breeding. Reluctantly he doled out bits of information; she was a good wife, not very young, not very beautiful, not very clever. In fact, definitely not clever. Sometimes when she was not in good health her mind seemed to give way, especially when Botchan lived at home too long. There were many children; Hidei was the eldest and would soon be married.

  “And when she is,” said Botchan, relieved at the change of subject, “we will have to think of some other explanation for you, little Jill. Of course you can always be governess to my next daughter. That will be a good reason for keeping you in the house.”

  “But will your wife let me stay?”

  “Trust me,” he said grandly. “I will arrange it all.”

  Jill had observed her sixteenth birthday–”Good, good,” said Botchan; “you grow older”–when Hidei’s betrothal was settled, and it became necessary to take her home for trousseau buying. The family sailed immediately, by the most direct route, in full strength–masseur, Jill, and all.

  “You’re sure it’ll be all right?” asked Jill fearfully.

  “Of course,” said Botchan. Hidei was silent.

  At first it was quite all right, at any rate about Botchan’s wife, though many other things surprised Jill when she came to live in Tokyo. Botchan and his family owned a large European house full of elaborate furniture, which was kept for entertaining foreign celebrities or for parties which he had to give from time to time to his own younger compatriots. There were wire-haired fox terriers, horses, golf clubs, all the expensive refinements which Botchan had learned to admire while he accomplished his years of study abroad. Between occasional and necessary public exhibitions, however, the entire family retired to a smaller, much more modest edifice farther back in the grounds, a house completely Japanese in appearance and appointments. It was there that Botchan’s wife managed her household during those periods when she was in a state of health and comparative happiness. In between, when she was not well, things nevertheless seemed to run just as smoothly. There were trusted old servants to keep them going. Botchan spent most of his time somewhere else, and Jill learned at last not to ask him too many questions.

  She was delighted with the doll-house life to which Hidei introduced her. The clean empty spaces of the rooms, the chaste, sparse decorations, the endless politeness and ceremony gave fresh opportunity for her play-acting tendencies. She was proud of the quickness with which she adapted herself to sitting on the floor, dealing with the younger children, putting on the new-style clothes which Botchan’s wife smilingly furnished her. She eagerly practiced the language, which came easily to her. As for the much-feared lady of the house, one look at her calmed Jill’s trepidation. There could be no danger from that little wizened woman with the gold teeth; she was all softness and gentle unselfishness. Botchan had been right; there would be no trouble at all.

  It was all silence and peace in the Japanese house. The first days passed swiftly because there was so much to learn and so much to do indoors, especially what with Hidei’s wedding preparations, but after her companion had married and gone Jill began to look about her and to feel that the time lagged. The doll’s house became a doll’s house indeed, with all its lack of space. She felt cramped, for Botchan would not let her wander about freely in the city; he was, in fact, quite scandalized at the suggestion. Never once did he allow her to go down into the shopping district alone. He was particularly horrified at her desire to visit the Imperial Hotel and take a look at the European tourists.

  “It would start those people gossiping,” he said. “They would ask questions of the police, and then the police would come and ask me questions. Besides, why do you want to go? Have you a lover at the hotel?”

  “But you’re always going out! Why can’t I go with you?”

  “I go to parties,” said Botchan with dignity. “A woman does not go to these parties; a good woman stays at home with her children and her work. Why can’t you teach the children and be quiet?”

  “What can I teach them? Your wife won’t let me teach them anything, not even English.”

  Botchan’s reply was evasive; instead of arguing, he arranged that Jill should have painting lessons. She liked the lessons, but she still sighed sometimes and chafed for liberty. Nevertheless, there was a fascination in the little house, and she remained submissive. There was little of the rebel in Jill. If she had been kept there much longer she would have adapted herself more and more to the quiet emptiness, her spirit ceasing to flutter, her mind forgetting those early sensations of freedom she had enjoyed as a little girl in Australia. She was still very young, still malleable.

  A few months after Hidei’s marriage, however, the banker’s wife entered one of her bad times, which went on for several weeks. Jill did not see her during all that time. She heard her voice, though, especially when Botchan was home; he spent more time than was his custom, those weeks, closeted with his wife, and when he was there Jill heard her almost unceasingly. Sometimes the words were loud and distinct enough to understand, and then Jill knew that she herself was the grievance; at other times she heard only screams and sobs. Once there was evidently a terrible scene, when Botchan’s wife tried to kill herself with poison. Serving-women ran in and out of her quarters, and doctors came, and the children cried, and Jill sat in out-of-the-way corners and was more miserable than she could ever remember having been in all her life before.

  She was a sinner. Worse, she was forgotten. It seemed better to neglect the simple tasks which she had taken on herself, for wherever she went in the house she was in somebody’s way, and whenever she attracted the attention of a servant or a female relative she felt the loyal indignation underlying their chill politeness. She was homesick even for the once-hated little Australian town; she thought of brief friendships she had formed aboard ship or in European capitals, and she wept softly.

  Botchan, of course, could not be expected to pay attention to her now, of all times in the world, but she longed violently to see him. She had never been so fond of him as now, when her mind was made up; she must go. She would have one long last talk, to explain her reasons, and then Botchan must release her. Thinking of that scene of noble renunciation, Jill smiled faintly and was comforted.

  Then Botchan did come to talk to her. He looked sorrowful and haggard, but he gave her no chance to be noble. “Jill,” he said, “you must go away from here.”

  “Oh yes, Botchan, of course, I wanted to tell you—”

  “I have a plan,” said Botchan. “There is a place for you to go. It will be much better; you are not happy here.”

  “Oh, I’ve been very happy,” she protested, au
tomatically slipping into oriental courtesy. “I’m completely happy and very comfortable,” said Jill, who was violently hungry at the moment. “I hate myself for having made so much trouble, and I want—”

  “My wife is not well, or none of this need have happened, but I have a very good plan by which we can see more of each other.” As he talked Jill made little affirmative noises and watched his hands appreciatively. She admired his hands and feet; they were small and beautifully shaped; they were cute, she often told him.

  Botchan’s plan sounded quite logical and well thought out. As a young man, he told Jill, he had followed the usual custom of young aristocrats in Japan and had fallen very much in love with a well-known geisha of the day. He had remained faithful to Kikusan in his fashion, always going to see her when he made one of his infrequent visits to his fatherland and helping her along financially whenever she needed it, even after her youthful beauty faded. Aside from Jill, he said tactfully, Kikusan was the great love, in a manner of speaking, in his life. In the past ten years she had made a pretty good thing of a geisha house which she managed very competently down in the town, and most of the parties Botchan gave, those parties from which Jill had naturally been excluded and which she resented so much, were held in Kikusan’s geishaya. Such a place, he explained, was really a high-class restaurant as much as anything, except that the girls, professional entertainers, lived there as well. Botchan now proposed that Jill move to Kikusan’s house.

  She clapped her hands. “As a geisha?”

  “No, no, certainly not. You could never be a geisha, little Jill; it takes years of training, dancing, singing, I don’t know what. Besides, one must be licensed, and I do not wish to ask the police to license you.… No, it will be very discreet. You shall visit my dear old friend Kikusan, that is all, as a friend, and she will take good care of you. She will love you for my sake.”