I
Strange forces were at work in the world; but the sun came up still and flashing out of the sea, and the birds had business of their own to attend to.
Tsuda stirred stiffly and opened his eyes; but it took him some seconds to regain his bearings. He got up slowly and rather rheumatically. His asthma seemed pretty bad this morning. He rubbed himself, and studied with rueful attention some of the badges of his fray. One eye he could only open a little way, and the flesh all about it was deeply discoloured.
Presently Sutherland came and led him to Utterbourne’s cabin, where the Captain and Tsuda remained closeted a long time. Then the others were called into conference.
“Come in, please,” the Captain called to them in his quaint sing-song. “We were just discussing—h’m?” He sat drumming on his desk with a pencil, and gazed at Tsuda in a thoughtful, detached way. His face was serious and impassive, but a wan smile flitted across it, too, in little vague waves, and he began again mildly: “We seem to be making a failure of it. We don’t seem quite to have grasped the technique—h’m?” He looked with a faintly mocking appeal from one face to another; but on Tsuda’s his gaze kept lingering, and he always drew it off with a quizzical debating wrench. “I pick up a man at sea,” the Captain went on, “and the minute I look at him I think of my island. King fell right into my hands, as though from heaven—as though from heaven,” he murmured dreamily; “and what really extraordinary qualifications he seemed to have. It doesn’t require much genius—mostly an unfailing, indescribable sense of adventure—plenty of imagination—h’m?—the sort that attains a momentum and can live on itself—you know? And an appreciation of picturesque values.... Yes, King seemed the man in a million. And we really needed him, too. He couldn’t be thought of as a luxury. What if Tsuda had suddenly got heart failure, or dropped dead of apoplexy, without another soul on the island but the Ainu? As a corporation we were always a little too close. That was our weakness. But,” he continued, “no sooner is he nicely established here than he falls victim to the thing itself! Isn’t it funny? Isn’t it simply amazing where weakness will crop out in the human animal?” There seemed almost a note of whimsical, detached, and even philosophic triumph in his voice. “With King it turned out to be opium, and with Tsuda,” he smiled like Mona Lisa, “it’s turned out to be—King’s wife!”
There was a sharp edge to his words, though he remained otherwise without passion. An expression of weariness etched itself about his mouth, and he flung out a little petulant gesture, staring at Tsuda with a sleepy gleam of reproach. Tsuda leaned forward anxiously, as Utterbourne turned to the other men in the cabin. “Rutherford—Sargeant—any suggestions? Sutherland? Do you think the island isn’t perhaps worth the candle?”
But they knew him too well to avail themselves of the extended invitation, and so merely smiled like a whole row of Mona Lisas, for they glimpsed that the Captain had already come to his decision, whatever it might prove. And it developed that they were right, for, after more characteristic word-play, and a quotation from Amiel about taking illusions seriously, Utterbourne announced, his look holding at last a devious and forgiving note: “Tsuda had thought a little of journeying to Tōkyō and offering himself, because of some obligation or other, to his Emperor, for whom it seems he harbours a really touching regard; but I’ve managed to convince him that he ought to stay right on here with these people who look upon him as almost a kind of emperor himself—with due respect of course, for Cha-cha-kamui, who has such a fetching way of wearing his crown this year! Tsuda will temporarily oversee the whole business. He’s such a dangerous man that I tremble to supply him with another Kami. They’re pretty scarce, I’m afraid—like lark puddings, or the perfume of the magnifica.”
So Tsuda was escorted ashore and reinstated; and soon the tiny waterfront swarmed with Ainu. In an hour the chests of opium were coming aboard. All was hustle and bustle, and Tsuda had been instructed, as soon as the last chest was stowed, to declare a little Ainu holiday by way of celebrating the completion of the year’s work. Utterbourne had delivered a few fresh casks of saké, and these promised to make the affair really memorable.
The Captain strolled up to the house of the White Kami, his soul somehow afflicted with a mood of uneasiness. The situation was certainly not all he could desire.
He entered and found King stretched out lifeless.
Stella met him at the door, and the look in her eyes—a wonderful look of sorrow and release combined—told him, even there on the threshold, that the end had come.
Soon after dawn King had called out to her very feebly; and when she reached him she knew at once that it was the end. After the long, long horror he died quite peacefully. Just at the last his brain seemed to clear. A little light crept into his eyes, making them for a moment faintly blue and round again. He half stretched out his arms, and Stella, bending down close to his lips, heard him murmur her name. He sighed a few times and was gone. They closed his eyes and folded a sheet smooth across his sunken breast which rose and fell no longer.
Stella now was tearless and calm. Her look brought a quick emotion to Jerome’s throat; and, as he entered the room, an elusive tenderness seemed to come also upon the enigmatic Captain.
“My God,” they thought they heard him say again, very softly.
There was something fugitively poetic and sublimating about it—a devious spiritual touch, as though the Captain perhaps saw, even more poignantly than Jerome, that she was a woman at length. Stella fancied there a gleam of shy sympathy, with a hitherto impregnable barrier for a fleeting instant broken down.
They buried Mr. King, just at the hour of a radiant tropical sunset, in a scented bower near the house; and they remained a little while in silence gazing at the plot of vexed earth beneath which lay all that remained of that being who had played so curious a part in the affairs of the universe.
Meantime the Ainu, uncognizant of their irreparable loss, had assembled in the house of the great chief, Cha-cha-kamui, who was present in all his grandeur, wearing the robe of red and white cloth, and on his gigantic head the crown of shavings and gilt. Outside, children played about in a noisy unimaginative way, and the women of the tribe sat on the ground working their distaffs dully. Cha-cha-kamui’s Small Wife passed among them, a little distant and haughty—for it was known that in former days the White Kami had looked with favour upon her.
Later on Tsuda would stage some sort of learned pagan ritual celebrating the return of the White Kami to the Brotherhood of the Blessed. But such processes require time—as they do in the mystic Shinshū mountains—and for the present it sufficed that there was plenty of saké.
When revelry was at its height, Tsuda, who had drunk nothing and seemed very sad and cast down, slipped out of the house of the chief and away to the edge of the sea.
The Star of Troy was hoisting her anchor. Every sound was vividly audible in the hush of early evening.
He sat down in a despondent heap on the dock and leaned wearily up against the tilted derrick. In a little while there would be only a drifting plume of smoke along the horizon.
Elsa, on deck, under the festive bit of awning aft, was gazing through her glasses.
“The Ainu,” she observed, letting her eyes droop very much, “must still be carousing. There’s no one to be seen on the whole island but that Japanese. I hear you attacked him like a lot of Indians last night,” she smiled.
“Yes,” Jerome replied, “I’m afraid I was a little more noisy than the situation really called for.”
“On the contrary,” she assured him, her brown eyes full of moist yet undemonstrative appreciation, “it must have been really quite splendid. I’m sorry I had to miss it.”
“How did you spend the evening?”
“After you went ashore? Oh, I read a few chapters in my stupid book, and tried to walk myself sleepy—well, what kind of an evening would you expect me to put in, with no thrills but those I could stir up myself? And all the while you were having wild and impossible adventures—you and Stella and the Japanese and Stella’s prince.... It really seems unfair, doesn’t it? I shall never forgive the Captain for keeping me cooped up out here.” And then she added with feeling, yet very evenly: “How I hate being a woman!”
Stella watched them from a little distance. She seemed eagerly observing every detail of their conduct together, with eyes which contained only a look of quiet inevitability.
“Of course,” she murmured to herself, “it would be like that. It would have to be.”
“Do you suppose,” asked Elsa, smiling up at him in her grave, unassailable way, “you’ll be having such adventures in Tripoli?”
He shrugged, and Stella heard him laugh.
“Why not?” Stella thought. She didn’t know what they were talking about, but was merely carrying on the thread of her own speculations. “It would have to turn out some such way as this—to be quite perfect and complete. Yes, it would have to.” And in a moment she thought, with a little more agitation: “How familiar they are—like old, old friends. He finds in her all he’s missed in me. How complete! How perfect—that I should come out of it with nothing but a moral....”
Her heart was flooded with a rush of passionate regret.
They were taking turns peering through Elsa’s binoculars.
“Looks peaceful, doesn’t it, with all the palms and the sunset?”
“Yes—may I have a look?”
“Your Japanese seems rather dejected. I’m afraid you were a bit rough.”
“What would you have done under the circumstances?”
“Just what you did, I’m sure. Let’s have another peep before we are out of range.”
Slowly the Star of Troy picked her path among the reefs and wore to sea. But for a long time the figure of Tsuda, huddled on the ruined dock in the sunset, was still visible.
II
It was about eight o’clock in the evening, and Flora Utterbourne sat by a lamp in her little apartment. She was wearing the same gown she wore the day she met Mr. Curry on the way to Crawl Hill. A book lay in her lap. She was expecting some people who were to drop in and look the apartment over with an eye to subletting from her. She read a little and cut a few pages with her tiny Swiss paper knife. A small clock was ticking somewhere in shadow. It was very quiet: no sounds but the ticking of the clock and the rustle of pages. After a bit she closed the book upon a long first finger and let her head drop back against the Egyptian shawl which so beautifully disguised and enriched a very plain little second hand arm chair. She closed her eyes and sat musing.
Presently there was a ring at the door. Ah, she thought, the people to look at the apartment. And she glanced lovingly about as she went to admit them to her sanctum. The rooms were somehow so entirely hers. One would suppose she had lived here always. Everything delighted and refreshed the eye. Here one encountered the most harmonious sort of colour combination. The little drawing room illustrated the fine compatibility of cream white, Burgundy rose, quiet apple green and plum and there were delicate touches here and there of red and indigo, and even warm, bright orange. Over the little white wood mantle was an antique-looking reproduction of Burne-Jones’ familiar panel of angels on a winding stair; in a dimmer spot was a madonna of Raphael’s. Flora took it all in as she crossed, with just a tremor of wistful hesitation.
But lo! no sooner had she opened the door than she uttered an incredulous cry. Then she held out her hand, and a moment later a man had her right in his arms—a big man in a Palm Beach suit, wearing gay rings and a beautiful new shiny toupee. Curry had paused for only one thing after landing. A new toupee. He couldn’t call the way he was—it might have proved positively fatal!
Well, as one may imagine, the first quarter of an hour or so was simply indescribable. No, it is useless even to attempt it. Both talked at once nearly the whole of the time, and laughed. After that things began to quiet down a little, though there were still intermittent outbursts. How could they help themselves?
It developed that the impulsive impresario, who was behaving just exactly like a kid, hadn’t had a mouthful of dinner. There was talk of slipping out together for something; but then Flora remembered she had promised to be at home all evening on account of the people who were coming to look at the apartment. And Curry wouldn’t go out alone. He said he’d starve first. So Flora said: “Let’s go and see what there is in the ‘ice box,’ though I’m dreadfully afraid there isn’t enough to satisfy such a big hungry man!”
But behold! there was! Oh, yes—there was a really sumptuous dinner in the ice box! Flora evolved a fine crisp salad, and produced a little platter of cold chicken. She made a pot of coffee, while, under her cordial and excited directions, the impresario spread a cloth on their gate-legged table and brought out the requisite silver and china. In ever so short a time they were seated with their table between them. And Flora said that of course she couldn’t really eat a thing, but that she would just nibble a little to keep him “company.”
Her face took on a look of exaggerated, grave, and high concern as he told her more about the wreck of the Skipping Goone than it had been possible to squeeze into a cable. His eyes brimmed for a moment with the unhappy memory. But then her face lighted, for he was reminding her that, after all, here he was, safe and sound—“alive to tell the tale, though Good Lord! when the bolt struck us I never expected to be!”
Her voice was rich with happiness. “And Africa,” she laughed, “—I was ‘reading up’ on it so diligently. I thought I’d even try to go down there, since my agent says he hears there are delightful ‘apartments’ in Johannesburg!”
But Mr. Curry shook his head slowly, and his eyes looked suspiciously moist again. He was thinking of his songbirds. When he spoke there was a tone of deep sadness in his voice. “We’ve come to the end of our world tour that was going to mark such an epoch in the history of opera—” He sighed a little.
“But,” she told him warmly, “I think it has, anyhow!”
“Everything went,” he mused, “—scenery, properties—even my glorious prima donna—”
“What?” cried Flora in alarm. “Miss Valentine? She—she wasn’t drowned?”
“Oh, no,” he laughed. “Merely gobbled up by one of the big bugs, that’s all.”
She showed him, nevertheless, a face full of sympathetic despair. “It’s the most outrageous thing I ever heard of!”
But it all seemed to matter so little to him now. He seized her hands and gave her a look of such delightful impetuosity that she couldn’t help looking down at her plate.
“Don’t you see?” he cried in a loud gay voice. “It’s brought us to the way out!”
“Has it?” she asked softly.
“There’s a chance, if we hold hands tight and jump, of getting off the merry-go-round at last!”
“Oh—tell me about it!” she begged, her face brimming with eagerness.
“Well,” he said, “since I’m ruined, what’s to be done but make the best of things? There may be brighter days ahead, but right this minute things might be worse than they are. The fact is, I know of a job—it’s as leader of the orchestra in a theatre here in San Francisco. I—I believe it’s a movie theatre, but what of that? It wouldn’t last forever, and I’d keep my eyes open all the time for a chance to put over my great dream. In the meantime, though humble, the job would pay—well, enough for two to live on, I guess, if we didn’t sail too high. And at least it would be all in one place—the job, I mean—which is an advantage that couldn’t be claimed by the world tour, you see! Lord, it’s too beautiful to think of!”
And she was quite as excited and pleased as he. “Why, I’m sure we could manage, and it would really be the finest kind of adventure to have to skrimp and ‘figure,’ and I’ve a small ‘income,’ you know, from all those apartments in the East, so that if the ‘wolf’ ever actually threatened to break in, why we could sell some of the things, though of course I know,” she embroidered, “your job at the ‘movies’ couldn’t last forever, since new opportunities are sure to open up—we’ll make them!” For suddenly she remembered, and not without a quick little heartache, how he had poured out to her his big, ardent dreams that day at the Hoadley auction. “I’ll ‘back you up’ with all my might,” she said in her gracious, heartening way. “We’ll manage by ‘hook or crook’ to keep advancing, and in the meantime, we can stay right on here in this little place, which is so comfortable, though of course small, and to which I think I’ve grown more ‘attached’ than to any of the others—”
There was an interrupting ring. Her face fell.
“Oh—I’d forgotten! The people who are thinking of sub-letting....” She rose, a little upset.
But Curry kept his head—and afterward bragged of it, too. “Don’t even let ’em cross the doorstep!” he commanded, very firmly. “Tell ’em you’re out. Tell ’em you’ve changed your mind. Tell ’em anything at all, but don’t let them in!”
And when the intruders were safely disposed of, the big, joyous impresario, smiling as he certainly never smiled before in his whole life, made Flora tie one of her aprons around his waist; and he insisted on washing the dishes, while she dried them.
III
Three weeks later the Star of Troy slipped in. She never arrived with any fanfare—that was not her way.
It was agreed that Stella should go home alone, and, with such fortitude as she could summon, convey to her family the tragic aspect of this return. She preferred it that way. A cable had gone out to them from India; but nothing had been said about King, and she faced a task which brought its shudder. Better, almost better, she thought at times, to have them carry home her dead body, than to come back with things as they stood. But in her stronger moments she grimly welcomed the ordeal.
First there was just a moment of overwhelming happiness, with her father’s arms about her, and Maud stretching out her dear formless lips for a kiss, and Ted with his near-sighted eyes full of welcome behind their bright-looking glasses, and the incorrigible voice of Aunt Alice rushing pell-mell down the stairs. Stella felt as though she could not endure the almost terrible happiness, while it lasted. And then—
Well, she slumped down into a chair and told them about her husband. She spoke of him tensely, yet her voice was not clouded with blame. She cried a little. And then she was in her father’s arms again, and all he could say was: “Stella—Stella....”
After that life settled down in the house. Stella gradually took up her old duties, quietly and gratefully; yet she could not quite believe, sometimes, that the long, long horror was forever still. Her nights at first were troubled, even terrible; and by day, she never smiled.
Jerome fell easily into the way of dropping in to spend an evening. He held them all breathless with his multiple adventures, though the darker phases were not touched upon.
At first he and Stella were but little alone together. He had become, it would seem, just a good comfortable friend of the family, and his tongue was always gayest when they were all assembled in the cosy back parlour. She felt his aloofness, as she had felt it first on that far-off night in the temple, though it was warmer now, and somehow less oppressively personal. Yet this way, to Stella, it seemed an even harder thing to face. His unfailing cheerfulness and that most amazing worldly nonchalance seemed thrusting their destinies ever farther and farther apart. Her tragedy seemed indeed complete. Had he really fallen in love with Elsa? she asked herself. And the answer was always the same, patiently, inevitably: “It would be like that. It would have to be.”
One evening, however, a curious change came. Jerome and Stella were sitting out together on the front steps. He had been gay as usual an hour ago in the back parlour; but now, here in the thoughtful dark, seemed sunk in a deep realm of reverie. As a matter of fact, Jerome was busy with far-flung conjecture. There was a good deal to plan—his whole life, for that matter, which, at his age, represented a contract of no mean proportions. The Mediterranean project was definitely on, and in two weeks Jerome would depart for Tripoli—and the Lord knew what! It was immensely exciting. It seemed the dawn of a real career for him.
He had been perhaps a little more worldly than usual tonight; but now his mood seemed to warm and soften. “Stella,” he began, then hesitated, and ended by reaching out and taking her hand. He held it a long time in silence.
At last he began to speak, his voice a little husky with new emotion. Stella felt her heart respond in a dumb, incredulous way. But he had said only a few words when an unexpected interruption occurred.
A smart little car darted up and stopped, and out of it came Elsa with a boyish bound, which had about it, however, a certain trim and self-sufficient grace. Stella drew her hand gently out of Jerome’s warm clasp, and they rose to welcome the newcomer.
There was a very faint and echoy trace of the old romantic flutter in Stella’s voice as she suggested they go into the parlour. But Elsa, in her cool, blunt, even subtly tactless way, would not hear of it. “I like it much better outside, and anyway I can only stop a minute. I’m picking up dad at the club.”
She gazed at Jerome, just an instant, somewhat queerly; and then she gazed at them both without any expression at all. Her heart was not without its emotion—but emotion so jealously guarded that no one on earth could possibly hope to obtain the slightest clue to it.
She sat down with them on the steps and talked of trivial things. Jerome was unexpectedly silent. Finally she turned to him, drawling:
“You’re getting to be an awful stranger over our way. I suppose the journey scares you out.”
And before he could make any reply at all, she had turned calmly back to Stella with unrelated matters, her tone just a shade too eager, perhaps, to be quite worthy of the established Utterbourne imperturbability.
When she was gone, Stella mused: “Elsa never changes. She’s always just the same.” And then, on an undercurrent of dark brooding: “It must be wonderful to be able to go through life that way,” the woman tensely murmured.
“I suppose so,” replied Jerome, not quite at his ease still, but behaving more normally now the other girl had departed.
Stella almost surrendered, right on the spot, to a throbbing impulse to ask him: “What is Elsa to you, and what are you to her?” But she merely sat silent; and in a way perhaps more convincing than any words, the unformed query was answered, after a moment or two, by Jerome’s gently seeking her hand again.
“Jerome....” she faltered, but her look was growing almost radiant.
“Stella, dear....” His voice was husky once more. “I love you.”
And then everything seemed altered, and she said, because she simply couldn’t help it: “Jerome—I thought it was—I thought you loved Elsa....”
He smiled, reminiscent and a little grave. “If things had turned out differently with you, there might have come a time.... You see we met just when I felt—well, when I felt, or thought I did, about everything a good deal the way she did. I don’t know....” But after a tiny silence he ended, very simply: “As it is, I only want you, Stella.”
And then—oh, well, it was a wonderful night. Love seemed to rush back and overwhelm them. It was far more thrilling than anything in the old days, yet it was all very quiet and simple.
Bracing himself just a little, and in secret glad of the dark, Jerome told her the rest about Lili, while she turned wide eyes upon him and listened. He kept nothing back, because—well, because it was such a wonderful night; and besides, he had a feeling that the foundations of their whole future happiness were, in a sense, being laid now, and there must be no false masonry. At first it seemed so strange to her that she couldn’t speak.
He wondered, a little darkly, what was passing in her mind. There were misgivings; but at length she gave his hand a pressure, and she said:
“I see, Jerome. I’m glad you told me.”
Naturally, after that, he breathed more easily. And then he went on talking about all the things that had gone to make up the fabric of his life since it was sundered from hers. He poured out to her the love that had been in his heart for the little son they had had to leave at sea, and felt her sympathy, warm and intimate. A glow seemed to envelop them both.
Here they were, on the steps, holding hands—just as in the old days, only of course now it was all more wonderful. Strange, they thought—so strange: somehow as though the tiny seed of return had been present even in that dark and groping lovers’ quarrel up Market street....
She snuggled against him softly. Thoughts of the new life just setting in flooded her heart with solemn happiness. She watched the dim trees stirring in the night wind. Stella was quite as far from Irmengarde as before. Alas, she would never be like Irmengarde, after all. But she didn’t care. And when it came to life and the serious facts of living—good heavens! she had had experiences that would make Irmengarde faint right away and never come to again.
She leaned against Jerome’s shoulder in a happy, tired way. Life had snatched them up and set them down again. Yes, life had played pranks with them both, as life will sometimes—incredibly or not, it makes no difference; tragically or absurdly, there remains nothing to be said. And Jerome grasped his happiness, too.
“Somehow,” she said, her voice all warmth and tenderness, with a touch of humour also, at last, “I wish you weren’t going away, but were going to get back your old job at Oaks-Ferguson’s!” And for the first time, almost, since that night the little dinner wasn’t eaten—Stella smiled. “But I know,” she went on humorously, “you’d never be happy there again, and—well, as soon as you can come back to marry me, I’ll be ready to go away with you.”
“Back to Tripoli?” he murmured, his eyes full of love, but touched also with ambitious, worldly dreams.
“Wherever the work takes you,” she said.
Then there came a subtle twinkle in his eye, and, though with great tenderness, he couldn’t resist reminding her: “You used to talk so much about visiting Paris. Some day—well, some day, you know, it might be even that—you never can tell, Stella. Wouldn’t it be funny,” he laughed, “to think of us living in Paris!”
They kissed, like children, without embracing.
And just as he went away, he pressed a ring into her hand. “I know you don’t want to wear it now,” he said, “but just keep it where you can look at it sometimes. It will help you to remember. And later on,” he added, “we’ll trade it in at Ascher’s for a bigger stone. But the man told me that it’s a good little diamond, at that, for its size.”