King drew out a little revolver and emptied its contents rapidly into the
atmosphere. Stella would know by this token he was at hand, and would be
on the lookout for him. Mr. King liked to have his wife at the door or
half way down the path to meet him. It went nicely with his conception
of married life. Also this fusillade, in the nature of a virile salute,
proved an agreeable way now and then of dispersing the shroud of silence
that seemed always to hover like an invisible fog over island and sea,
beneath a mocking sky.
Stella did, indeed, come out a little way to meet her husband. He waved
to her with one of his fine flourishes, dismounted, and when they
met, bent and kissed her, and kept his arm about her in a posture of
comfortable possession as they strolled toward the house.
“You ought to be thankful you can stay in the shade!” he explained. “What
wouldn’t I give for a little ice!”
She made no reply, but walked along as though musing, her head downcast.
“I must say you don’t strike a very hilarious welcome!” he assured her
after a short silence. “Aren’t you glad to see me?”
“Yes,” she faltered.
“What’s the matter? Look up here!” He raised her chin with an
uncompromising hand. Then she smiled faintly and told him: “There’s
nothing the matter—I just don’t feel very lively. Has it been a hard day?”
“So-so. Look here, little girl, your eyes are red. Crying?”
“Only a little.”
“Homesick already?”
“It’s nothing.”
“This won’t do!” he exclaimed; and there was a dash of high romance in
his tone which had never until now failed to thrill her. Perhaps it
thrilled her even now, though she burst into unexpected tears. And the
tears loosed her tongue.
“If I could only write letters,” she sobbed. “It seems so terrible to
think the only word they’ll have at home for maybe a whole year is the
letter Captain Utterbourne took back with him to mail. And even in that,”
she rambled wretchedly, “I was so much in the dark—there was so much that
had to be left unsaid....”
They had reached the house, and she sat huddled on the doorstep. It was
the first time she had really given way to feelings of this sort, and the
flood was proportionate. Her husband stood looking down at her, somewhat
perplexed.
“Stella, my dear child,” he suggested, “it’s no crime, you know, just
because we have to keep a bit still about it. Opium’s a very valuable
medical base—in India there’s even a government monopoly. Yet you
_insist_ on thinking of it only as a dope.” He laughed.
“Yes, I know,” she sighed. “But I try not to, Ferd. It all seems—I don’t
know—so strange sometimes.... And when I learned how they’ve been made to
think of you as a kind of supernatural being, Ferd—oh, I don’t know.... I
can’t tell you how it made me creep when Tsuda....” Her words groped, hot
and half smothered.
King tossed his handsome head and laughed again easily, in his grand
way. “You see,” he told her, “it’s the only sure method of getting hold
of the Ainu imagination. We have to use something a bit extreme. You
mustn’t let a little thing like that disturb you.” His smile was slightly
supercilious. “If the world never treated a man any worse than to make a
god of him, I for one shouldn’t feel like complaining! But”—and now his
look darkened and took on a glint of imperiousness, “I see I’ll have to
caution Tsuda to keep his religious prattle to himself. I won’t have him
giving you the jim-jams with his ridiculous priest-ideas!”
Her emotion had quieted, and her eyes mused. “I really think he’s only a
child at heart,” she said. “But sometimes he frightens me suddenly....”
King sat down beside her on the step, so handsome and protecting; he took
her fingers and caressed them. “You’ve no idea how still it gets after
you’ve gone away to the fields,” she sighed.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “if you like I’ll take you a part of the way so you
can see the Ainu scraping opium—it’s quite a sight.” She brightened.
“And one of these days,” he went on, “we must make a little excursion up
to the grave of Vander Hagen, the martyr Utopian—take our lunch along,
picnic style—and be thankful _we_ didn’t get carried off on the back of
an ideal!”
Somehow, as he laughed in his light, careless way, she remembered how
Elsa had accused her once of having ideals. It set her musing a bit. Then
she found herself remembering, too, how glibly her husband had spoken,
long ago, about whistling up the sun, sitting astride the pyramids. Now
would he whistle on the grave of the man who had come here with a dream
and broken his heart...?
“How long has it been,” King asked, “since the _Star of Troy_ left us?”
“Six weeks, Ferd.”
“_Sure_ we haven’t skipped a month or two somehow?”
“I cross off each day on the calendar,” Stella said, much more cheerful
now the tears were spent. “Come in and I’ll show you. I make quite a
business of it!”
She took his hand and led him in. It was a little cooler than outside;
the mats at the windows made it quite dusky; here and there on the walls
a scrawny spider slept.
They stood together before the calendar: two leaves gone—in a few days
another; then in thirty days....
It was time that must be annihilated. Time—time—time....