I
The visit of the old chief, though informally handled, was a really quite
momentous affair.
Cha-cha-kamui (English version: Very-Old-and-Very-Wonderful) had dressed
up in his robe of state, a most gaudy creation of red and white cloth. He
wore a great crown made of cocoanut palm shavings and embellished with
beautiful gilt paper and wild cotton. The crown was necessarily a great
one, because Cha-cha-kamui possessed a head of enormous dimensions—truly
quite the head of some mythical though very mild and somewhat fussy old
giant. His hair was getting pretty thin on top—the Ainu were sadly on the
toboggan. The crown, therefore, performed a two-fold service.
It was a state affair. King received his august visitor in the “parlour,”
where he spent a good deal of time these days. Tsuda, as he entered,
sniffed the air, and his eyes glittered subtly.
As for Cha-cha-kamui, he was shaking all over from sheer excitement. He
had never been in the immediate presence of a kami before. He was a great
chief, and had brought his people down here inside a whale; he was close
to the gods, but was not himself a god. Thus the ordeal was considerable,
and he was glad to squat as quickly as possible.
The longer the old chief stayed, however, the more his nervousness fell
away from him—especially after King had brought out some of the excellent
brandy that had come all the way from San Francisco. He smacked his
lips over it in touching appreciation. It was a great deal better than
Tsuda’s saké. Tsuda would have to look to his laurels!
Cha-cha-kamui gazed at King, his old eyes lit with affectionate devotion.
He wrinkled his eyelids until he could hardly see, and lifted up the
corners of his mouth with such vigour that he lifted his cheeks right
along with them. He fawned. He massaged his aged hands, and made his
scalp wiggle back and forth. It was a spectacle!
And then, obedient to a private signal from Tsuda, the old man came to
the real business of the session. He launched out fervently upon a long
and very confidential speech, which Tsuda, feigning some surprise and
displaying touches of modest delicacy here and there, translated into
English of his usual colloquial and even slangy sort: English that was
sly and shrewd and not a little waggish.
As for the speech itself—well, it was all about Cha-cha-kamui’s wives;
and since the Great Wife must naturally go right on enjoying the high
prestige of a position bestowed for life, and since she couldn’t be
expected to retain in full vigour the charms of her now far distant
youth, there was nothing to prevent a little harmless alliance on the
side; and what Cha-cha-kamui had above all come to tell the White Kami
was that he wanted the White Kami to have his Small Wife for his very
own. The theme rose to heights of eloquence; it became an oration; he had
never in all his life tasted anything half so fine as the brandy from San
Francisco. He wanted the White Kami to take his Small Wife; he wanted to
show his homage—and could mortal man give more?
The speech amazed King greatly. It was, in truth, an amazing speech. King
hardly knew how to take it at first, and looked at Tsuda in a complex,
searching way. But presently he laughed, with a laugh that had a sort of
catch or rattle in it; and he thanked the royal octogenarian and replied
much as he had once replied to Tsuda respecting another issue: “You’re
very kind. Perhaps I’ll avail myself of your generosity one of these
days—who knows?”
Yes—who knew? He had been used to a life of movement and diversion, and
Hagen’s Island was a little remote. He felt broken and reckless. Often
he longed to fall back into old voluptuous ways. Yes, who knew? He had
fallen so far; let all the old passions rush and confound his soul.
Besides, ever since the day Stella had pleaded with him so earnestly,
and he had crumpled and wept and murmured: “God help me!” King had had a
feeling that he was no longer master. He had shown her a weakness which
put him, however intangibly, in her power. Often a muddy desire came upon
him to reassert his manhood and resume full moral sway. The very episode
which at the time had seemed drawing them closer together had in reality
plunged them farther apart.
He argued weakly and gropingly. His soul snarled for opium.
Cha-cha-kamui departed well pleased, and marched proudly back to the
village. His crown was a trifle awry, and perhaps he walked a little
unsteadily; but no one could expect to emerge from the presence of the
gods behaving quite as usual.
Tsuda, also, departed well pleased.
Left alone, King stood a few moments, irresolute, his mind carrying on
the argument it had been engaged with, but in a more and more febrile
fashion. Yes, he groped, perhaps this maiden of the old chief’s could
give him back the sense of supremacy which had so lapsed and failed of
late. Stella.... He rambled darkly. She had grown too strong for him
... he scarcely knew her any more. Then he laughed again, a reckless,
unnerved laugh; and there was a hollowness in it, and a catch; it slyly
rattled.
King’s mind, at the time of the old chief’s arrival, had been morbidly
clear, as it always was when under an immediate spell of narcotic. Opium
never muddled him, but on the contrary stimulated his faculties, set them
in exquisite if sombre harmony. But when the hunger for more swept upon
him, then a cloud seemed to descend, and he saw all things darkly.
The house was full of an immense stillness. He had a sense of wavering
all alone in space. After a moment he slunk to his cot and lay down. A
heaviness like the pain of a nameless, black remorse, beat dully at his
pulses. There was no longer within him even the power to struggle. He was
shadowed by nightmare, cursed with impotence of will, chained down by
a fatal languor and could only move in the direction dictated by drug.
Reaching out for the little spirit lamp, he lighted it. His eyes gleamed
with eagerness and torture. As the tiny sphere of ecstasy sizzled and
browned over the flame, he longed with a terrible longing to be free once
more even while he knew that to be free would cost an effort such as he
had not any longer the moral courage to make.
He drew in deeply and expelled the vapour with a long sigh of delight.
Almost in an instant he was a prince again, and the empires of the earth
and of the skies were his.
The island was a test. However, he was busy with other harvests now.