Edward Alden Jewell

“ The island simmered and baked. This was, indeed, an unusual spell of drought in a realm so lush, and where scarcely a day passed by without its brief, warm drenching. In the valley they prayed for rain, and some capered solemnly, sprinkling each other with water. Nobody remembered at length how the curious custom had begun. Its origin lay swallowed up in the void that stood in lieu of history. These Ainu had no heritage: a weary race devoid of yesterdays.... Tsuda had seized upon this piece of ritual, but he had subtly touched it, too, with the finer genius of Shintō. ”

“ Sometimes in the evening Stella would watch her husband, fascinated by the fearful process of opium smoking, as she had once been fascinated by the sheer dazzle of his eyes and the romance of manners such as she had never dared hope to encounter outside of books. She would sit, almost spellbound, and see the resistless hunger take possession of him. Perhaps he would be working away on his report for Captain Utterbourne; but at length he would fling himself upon the cot. He would scowl at her with eyes which showed a dull glow of something ominous ”

“ And of course he talked a little wildly about his great dream—New York and the capitals of Europe.... Yet the serene and glacial Captain Utterbourne felt in spite of himself a little touched, and merely thought it expedient at last to observe, his voice slipping out between reluctant lips like a thin ribbon of lazy ice: “You must take care, Mr. Curry—h’m?—not to let a possible material success ... I mean,” he cleared his throat with faint petulance, “you mustn’t let your sideline turn you into a rival of ours rather than of Gatti Cassazza’s.” ”

“ Jerome did a lot of thinking these days. His adventures were coming more and more to stand for elemental phases of human relationship. He thought about Lili and his feeling for Lili; thought about his strange and fugitive dip into matrimony; saw his brief first happiness grow tarnished. When their baby was born, what then? Would they go on living together like this all the rest of their lives? A child would mean a new responsibility—another obligation that couldn’t be dodged....
“I guess I’m in for it,” he muttered, with real, disillusioned grimness. ”

“ The evenings were rich and unforgettable, with the Star of Troy slipping so steadily on through tropic seas and the little white cabin, with the map of the world covering all one wall, so cheerful and bright. They would gather here after dinner: Utterbourne, Elsa, Jerome, and usually one or two of Utterbourne’s men—Sutherland or Sargeant or maybe Rutherford, keen-faced and clever, playing their parts in the mysterious game about which no mind save one could really know all. ”

“ Jerome braced himself and stared out. Occasionally a wave would slap against the glass. He had let the fishing boats go without him. Now he was at sea!
He was bewildered, then scared, then more scared. Yet underneath it all a queer little wisp of daring insinuated itself—something almost akin to self-congratulation; and the whimsical query leapt: “Has the whole business of Oaks-Ferguson’s been a dream, and did I go to sea after all?” ”

“ Then their lives had intertwined, and they had married. She had been so eager to thrust her destiny into his hands. She had run neck and neck with glittering Irmengarde....
“Irmengarde!” she muttered. “Only think of it!”
Now the pace had retarded. How far back all that seemed! How little she had understood life; how little she had understood her own heart. Time stood drowsy and stagnant, and her prince was tampering with a dread elixir. Yes, the gay, magnetic prince, with white at either temple, who had murmured so enchantingly in the long-ago: “Curly Locks, Curly Locks, wilt thou be mine?” ”

“ THE ANCIENT URGE I Jerome had failed with Stella; she had thrown him over for another man; now he had found Lili—had almost desperately, without quite realizing it, seized upon her. He needed her—that is, his ego needed her. It wasn’t an aggressive or egregious ego; certainly there was nothing of a Don Juan about it! But it was a decently masculine ego, and stood possessed of a salient sense of dignity. Under the circumstances, even had Lili’s spell been less rare and beautiful, it could have required no prodigious effort to convince himself that he loved her. ”

“ And indeed, for a time the child seemed to be drawing Jerome and Lili a little together again. Lili had hated her baby before it came; now she had it she responded to the appeal of the little new life also. She had her glimmerings: dim, errant aspirations toward something better in life than she had known. Being a mother awakened what was finest. When he saw the baby at her breast, Jerome looked down at Lili with hopeful eyes. ”

“ At the foot of the table sat Xenophon Curry, his rings flashing and his smile, of such singular sweetness, making the whole place bright. Yes, Mr. Curry had a wonderfully heartening and stabilizing influence. Had he been a shade austere, or less impulsively open and human, he could never hope to lure out a flock of songbirds and flute players and cabaret violinists and snare drummers into the precarious bosom of an antique schooner on a world tour packed with the Lord alone knew what. ”

“ Elsa warned her young friend against “letting any man make a ninny” of her. “You seem to be quite hypnotized, Stella. It’s all very well,” she observed, her eyes drooping so much that it looked as though she were pulling the corners down with her fingers, “to let a man think he can run his business without you to begin with. They always lead off like that. But unless you mean to be a traitor to your sex, you can’t begin too soon letting it be known (I don’t care if he is a prince!) that the old lord-and-master idea has been converted into a sieve.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then he remembered. “I know,” he said softly. “They spoke of that, too, Stella....”
Yes, they had spoken of that. But they did not know (except Tsuda) how in one of his frenzies King had attacked her with a knife; and not even Tsuda knew that the knife had actually entered her body. But Tsuda had seized upon King’s madness as an admirable and timely pretext for insisting upon the hospitality of the gods.
Through one of the little high windows Jerome could see the moon, mounting in sublime unconcern. There is something always so utterly calm and unhurried about the moonlight. ”

“ Jerome slept. He could breathe up here under the open sky, and wanted to be alone. For the first time, consciously, in his life, he felt a full sufficiency in his own being. He had made a mess of wedding his destiny to other destinies. He was through with women, and wanted to feel himself free of them, quite free. It was sweet to lie up here in the dark all alone and mourn his baby’s death, and begin to pull himself together a little, and look toward the future. ”

“ It was a day when everything grated, nothing went well; a day when blouse strings knotted and buttons flew off; a day aggravated by everything and everybody. By this time her mood of revolt was poignant indeed. Jerome looked at her in mild, inquisitive amazement.
Stella was groping. She saw herself deep in a mire of eventlessness and humdrum, and longed to reach out after the dazzling things in life—romance, excitement, the luxury of gay, brilliant contacts. In her heart rose a blind little cry of opaque desire. ”

“ Here seemed eventlessness of a new and sinister order. Values were subtly changing. Love was a thing less sheer and unshakable. In a month—two months—how all life seemed altered! One felt that invisibly and silently, deep underneath the calm, there were mysterious forces at work here on Hagen’s Island. Stella, as time drew forward so slowly, found herself immersed in a world of intangible agents. ”

“ Opium! A terrible new doubt had torn its way into the shadowy alarm of Stella’s soul. Opium—opium! How had it come about? What did it mean? What might it end by doing to both their lives?
Opium! Already, without her knowing it, Ferdinand must have been steeping himself in the drug—perhaps from almost the moment of their arrival. Just when had it begun, she wondered darkly. Opium! Had he tried it first in just a mood of adventurous experiment? ”

“ And she grew sick at heart and terrified. A barrier seemed rising stealthily between them—between her heart and all the radiant happiness which had glorified its dreams. Love merged with fear and became sorely baffled. Life was beset with groping.
At last it had come to July. Six leaves were gone from the calendar, and midway across the leaf which would next stand uncovered, was the date set by Captain Utterbourne as possibly marking his first return to the island. August the fifteenth! Stella had put in a background of red, so that the figures stood out crisply. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Jerome had a feeling from the very first that the Star of Troy wasn’t altogether a typical tramp freighter. She possessed a most remarkable captain, for one thing, and a most remarkable captain’s daughter. Also there seemed something cryptic about her whole destiny. The Skipping Goone had always seemed like a nice, plump, amiable, sensible old lady, whereas about the Star of Troy there was something ageless, lithe, and alert, something unfathomable: the very rush of water under her bow had a mysterious thrill behind it. ”

“ Whenever Utterbourne grew absorbed in anchors it was plain to those who knew him as well as it is ever possible to know a man with a poker face, that he was concentrating on some new enterprise.
The Captain, half sheepishly noticing that his handiwork had been detected, muttered: “No doubt every one has his own unconscious emblem—a stray out of the past, perhaps—h’m?” His lips moved with apparent reluctance, as though it annoyed him to think that nobody, even after all these centuries of progress, had been able to render speech possible without visible effort. ”

“ King and Tsuda stood together under some date palms at the edge of a field—a mass of vivid green—white blossoms tossing in the tropical breeze—petals here and there whirling and floating idly. The field was aswarm with bare-legged Ainu labourers in short, rough tunics. They bent dully to their task, an expression of unbroken hopelessness on their sad, hairy faces. “A little experiment in transplanting—h’m?” the Captain called it. When King passed any of the Ainu they would suspend their work and clumsily prostrate themselves. ”