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; then his hands would go out to the tabouret, and with fingers no longer altogether steady, but which had taken on of late a curious flutter, he would seize the pipe. After that, absorption would claim him utterly, as though he inhabited a separate universe.
He would draw a large drop of opium, twirl it on the point of the dipper, round and round, with uncanny deftness, over the flame of the spirit lamp, hold it there like meat on a skewer till it roasted. He had learned to an exquisite fineness when the tiny browning ball was cooked to the proper pitch—never the least bit burned, never toasted a shade too dry, yet never drawn off underdone, either. Occasionally he would bring the opium away from the flame and roll it gently on the bowl of his pipe. At last he would hold the pipe itself over the flame a moment, and then would quickly thrust the laden end of the dipper into the bowl, just over the orifice—always sure, with fluttering fingers; always uncannily sure. Then he would relax. And there he would lie, a spectacle of manhood in the wrecking, the stem of the pipe between his lips, which had taken on a bloated look and seemed no longer quite the cupid’s bow of old. The pipe would sway slowly back and forth, trembling a little over the fire of the spirit lamp. And as the sphere of drug inside the bowl began to sizzle, the White Kami, who had once been Ferdinand King, that figure extraordinary of beauty and romance, would draw in with all the fervour of his captured soul; and the spent smoke would drift in clouds from mouth and quivering nostrils.
She brooded it with a breaking heart when he was away from her; when he returned she looked at him with eyes full of fear and disillusion. Gradually—and there was time to do full justice to every faintest shade of thought and feeling here—she came to doubt in her heart whether the dreams she had dreamed would ever come true. During these endless hours and days and months with their silence and their augmenting thrill of terror, she came to feel that it was all too late—too wretchedly, tragically late.
Stella had been happy, she remembered with a pang, at first—a little feverishly, perhaps, even at best, though still undoubtedly happy. The voyage and the first weeks here on the island had been like some lovely dream, with only vague, uncharted doubts and tremors of uneasy fancy....
Now her whole life seemed suddenly uncharted.
III
The opium “factory” stood just at the edge of the Ainu village: a mere palm-thatched shed, with rafters strung along inside, from some of which double bags of sheeting were suspended. The bags contained the crude drug or “chick,” which had been standing in linseed oil to prevent evaporation, and which was now in process of being drained dry. A basin underneath each bag received the oily residue; but the bags had been hanging there a good while, and the drippings were only occasional. In one corner was a vat, half full of a sluggish dark substance which several Ainu women were patiently kneading with bare feet. Tsuda stood watching them, critical, keen-eyed.
Presently Mr. King came in. He glanced about sharply, frowned, sniffed. Tsuda reluctantly dropped on to one knee, while the labourers prostrated themselves, awaiting a sign from the White Kami which would signify to them that they might resume their work. King waved an impatient arm, then moved about restlessly, it almost seemed a bit aimlessly, inspecting the premises.
His whole bearing appeared somewhat altered. The lordliness, if anything, was exaggerated, at the same time that he impressed one as being subtly less in control. Certainly he was noticeably thinner; his former look of florid fulness was giving place to a muddy pallor, tending to make his eyes somewhat sunken. Tsuda flashed a glance at him, then looked doggedly back at the ground.
King approached the vat and investigated with one finger the consistency of the opium.