THE WHITE KAMI

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

THE CHARMED CIRCLE

“Possessed of unusual strength and intensity. His characters are all sharply individualized and fit competently into the picture. They are interesting people and alive to the point of giddiness. Mr. Jewell has touched them with the fresh, electric buoyancy that distinguishes his book throughout.”—The Literary Review

“The extraordinary plot is the plot of a melodrama, but its handling is the work of a literary artist and an authentic humourist.”—The Chicago Evening Post

“As sunny as ‘Seventeen’ and as subtle as ‘The Age of Innocence.’ There will be thousands to delight in it, with tears and chuckles.”—Wilson Follett

NEW YORK: ALFRED A. KNOPF

The White Kami

A NOVEL

BY Edward Alden Jewell

NEW YORK ALFRED · A · KNOPF MCMXXII

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY EDWARD ALDEN JEWELL

Published, April, 1922

Set up and printed by the Vail-Ballou Co., Binghamton, N. Y. Paper furnished by W. F. Etherington & Co., New York, N. Y. Bound by the H. Wolff Estate, New York, N. Y.

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To MY FATHER AND MOTHER

I THE PRINCE

[2]

[3]

CHAPTER ONE FOG

I

Her name was Stella, and she did not like her name. Her hair was quite lustrous, but she did not like her hair, either, and stood combing it jerkily before a glass which possessed in its midst one of those unfortunate waves capable of drawing the face of the beholder into a sad and sometimes startling distortion. Nor did she take the trouble to keep out of range of the wave, which proved beyond any reasonable doubt that things were not going very well with her.

Stella’s face was by no means a discredit to her sex; but a woman is never seen to the best advantage when at odds with her hair—one of the few generalities that may fairly be called safe. Her life was a failure—that worst of all possible failures:—the kind of failure one just misses grasping. She phrased it all supremely: “I guess I’m about as deep in the mire as any one could get without being swallowed up entirely.”

Her eye chanced to light upon a cheaply framed photograph. With an impulsive, half desperately searching air she took it in her hand, and her regard assumed a passing gleam of softness. What she held was the likeness of a young man about her own age—apparently around twenty—with a somewhat groping look. Her inspection became hard, critical, unrelenting. When she put him down it was with a thrust of annoyance. The young man tottered a moment on the dizzy edge of a rouge pot and then fell prostrate. She did not bother to put him on his feet again.

As she reached the dining room, chairs were just being scraped into business-like adjacency with the table. Stella[4] was really supposed to come down in time to set the table for breakfast; but now and then, either despite her high impatience or because of it, she overslept, which was likely to signify that she had been into the small hours with a novel. It also meant, in the ruthless way of life’s dispensations, checks, and balances, that her sister Maud must contrive to set the table between stirrings and slicings and fryings in the kitchen. Maud was plain and capable, always pressed for time, very serious about everything. But she was amiable, and even owned a sense of humour, of a sort—which at any rate was better than none at all.

Exclamations of delight were in the air, emanating from Aunt Alice. “Goody—muffins!” She sniffed approvingly. “Some more of your grand corn muffins, Maud? Or—no, it seems to me—Maud, don’t I get a whiff of graham?” And now her nose was lifted in sheer transport.

“Corn muffins this morning,” Maud replied, a pleased smile on her somewhat formless lips.

“Goody again, say I!” It was a zest which seemed really to congratulate all present.

Stella eyed her aunt dully. God had made her, and she had a good heart: a wide-chested, cheerful, talkative lady of uncertain years, and a little taller than Maud’s husband, even when he wore his special high heels. Ted was far from being a vain man, but he didn’t like to be thought of as a little man, either, and the cobbler said he’d done that kind of work before.

Romance? thought Stella, looking unhappily about her. Where was it? She longed for charm and luxury and brilliant contacts, but her father was in the harness business.

Well—as he bent low over each sibilant spoonful of orange juice, wrinkling both eyes a great deal while he delved into the independable fruit, Frank Meade, stolid and honest and plain, wouldn’t strike any one as perhaps quite bloated with romance; and yet, abruptly, a wisp of remorse softened the daughter’s mood a little as she watched him—almost a[5] little errant burst of spiritual vision. But it faded quickly, and she was brooding: “He might have been worth millions if he’d switched in time!” Millions, not for themselves but what they could do to one’s life. It was a distinction, though perhaps a trifle fine.

Into this sombre reverie broke the quiet voice of her sister: “Stella, dear, another cup?”

“Such delicious coffee!” endorsed Aunt Alice, who could always be depended upon to edge in something with the sly apology of the parenthesis.

Stella suddenly remembered how Irmengarde, in the chapter where they had afternoon tea somewhere in the Tyrol, waved aside the entreaties of all her admirers, declining urged dainties on every hand because the particular romance of her situation recommended an attitude of delicate ennui. Stella would have liked borrowing the technique of the Tyrolese mood, but there you were again. This wasn’t a resort in the Tyrol but just the familiar San Francisco dining room with walls of cracked cream. Her name was not Irmengarde. She was at war with life, but her cup went back to be refilled notwithstanding.

After breakfast Maud called out to her husband: “Ted, dear, I wish you’d bring home one of those new patent wringers with you tonight. The handle’s come off my old one, and the man at the repair shop said if it ever came off again he couldn’t fix it.”

“They’re grand!” echoed Aunt Alice over the rail of the banister. “I think Bert said there were ball bearings inside.”

Ted said all right, his eyes winking behind very bright-looking glasses, and Maud gave him a capable yet withal affectionate kiss. Aunt Alice, though afar off now, heard and shouted unquenchably: “Another one for me, Maud! You’re all right, Teddy! You’re a good boy! ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes....’” Her voice strode irrepressibly off in song.

Stella half consciously heard too; and, out in the kitchen,[6] her hands in the eternal suds of dish-washing, it set her thrilling over one of the golden sentences in that chapter where Irmengarde steals out to view the ruins by moonlight.

“For one who has kissed as I have kissed,” sighed Irmengarde, “there are no longer any mysteries in the world!”

II

So long as her hands were immersed in the kitchen suds, Stella could more or less successfully build up about her an illusion of romance, for it is perhaps the one solid virtue of dish-washing that it releases the mind to rambles far afield. However, this task completed and the pan on its peg, life slumped again badly.

She had not, it is true, always felt this way—until quite recently, in fact, had not been greatly concerned about the things that didn’t go with her destiny. But she had encountered the novel heroine Irmengarde, and then—well, then the letter from Elsa, brief but wonderful, and really the first letter since they were small girls living on the same street—before the Utterbournes began mysteriously to rise. There had been postcards through the years: now and then from the eastern school where Elsa had gone so young to escape domestic unpleasantness; sometimes, later on, a card startlingly from Europe or the Orient. For her part, Stella had answered as many as she could with long, impulsive letters, in which lay revealed the germ which had at length so unhappily sprung to flower.

Of course Elsa was never very demonstrative, and a postcard is only a postcard; but that she hadn’t forgotten was the essential fact. Then, at last, the letter: “I’m going to open the house in Berkeley for dad. He’s been living at his club long enough, he says. When I get there I’ll look you up.”

Stella had waited, and watched the mails eagerly for another glimpse of Elsa’s thrilling scrawl. Perhaps she would ask her over to tea. Or perhaps she would take her to a matinée and they would pour out their hearts to each other afterward.[7] However, the time since Elsa must have reached town had at length run into weeks—and no word.

Stella thought of phoning; had even sketched problematical telephone conversations; but hadn’t, after all, brought herself to do it. There was something about Elsa—well, something that always made approaches a little difficult. This seemed a part of her almost terrible charm. Yet once they had come together again, everything would be quite simple and natural. And so restlessly did she long for a breath of that richer life, that at last she asked herself: “Why not just go and see Elsa without waiting to hear—just drop in as though I happened to be passing by? I’ll do it!” Her day gave promise of turning out rather better than it had begun.

A desperately conventional maid seated her in the Berkeley drawing room. Then there was a long, long wait.

Stella, nervously fingering her gloves, adjusting and readjusting her hat, had plenty of time to note her surroundings: a room sumptuous yet severe, but above all incommunicative—formal to a degree which suggested its ostracism from familiar domestic uses; yes, forbidding. It was like a blind, a decorous façade, behind which who knew what might be in progress? And the silence—something almost ominous—a sense of something beyond or underneath it all....

She rejoiced in the luxury, but at length grew restive, as ten, fifteen, twenty minutes—half an hour crept by. She stirred, coughed. Finally she crossed the room. Just as she reached the door, however, the spell was broken.

A figure came racing down the stairs. It was Elsa—an active girl, yet inscrutably calm, heavy dark curly hair and very droopy eyes at once extremely soft and extremely bold, and possessed of a kind of unassailable bovine quality. She stopped abruptly at sight of Stella, stood a moment facing her with an expression of wholly tactless blankness, then came forward with hands hospitably extended.

“Stella—you old peach! Hello there!” They kissed lightly. “Please forgive me. I forgot all about you.”

[8]

Stella wished she hadn’t come; but her friend went on with really disarming cordiality: “We can talk for a couple of minutes while the car’s being brought round. I’m sorry I have to run off. I’ve been rushed to death getting ready for my dance—the biggest thing I ever attempted, and a good deal of a bore, but I’m horribly indebted.” (The Utterbourne family tree was aristocratic—men now and then in public life, and streaks of real genius, always more or less money—and of course the social fruits were proportionate.) “Sit down.” Her eyes drooped very much indeed at the corners.

Certainly Elsa couldn’t be called a snob; the fact is, she was so very much at ease with everybody that no one could accuse her of not treating all people exactly alike. There was even something a little humorous in her utter disregard of anything even approaching the conventions; and what made it the more surprising just now was her background of the most immaculate conventionality.

Stella leaned forward, obviously constrained, and wriggled nervously. “You mustn’t let me keep you.” But Elsa gazed at her in a perfectly steady yet detached manner, and exclaimed out of a silence which, it was clear, bore no impress of awkwardness for her: “You’re looking ripping!”

Stella longed to throw her arms around Elsa and free her heart of its accumulated turbulence. Instead they merely sat facing each other on conventional chairs.

Talk of the dance resumed. “A week from tomorrow—I’m dreadfully excited.” The girl’s eyes drooped pleasantly, however, and certainly didn’t display any excitement to speak of. She just gazed on, with disconcerting blankness; and since it couldn’t have occurred to her that any embarrassment might accompany this frank chatter about the approaching festivity, it must have been sheer impulse that brought out the suggestion: “If you’d care to come, Stella, I’ll see you get an invitation. Aunt Flora’s engineering everything. If you like I’ll give her your name.”

[9]

All very quiet, ordinary, off-hand; yet Stella flushed and felt her heart plunged into confusion. She was at once delighted and terrified. “I shouldn’t know a single person but you—I’m afraid....” Pride, at first, prevented her framing it any more forcefully; but the next moment she felt so very wretched about her life that her pride just caved in and she was faltering, though with a stiff little laugh: “I’m afraid a ball gown would be a good deal of a problem!” Her eyelids were burning. She was furious. She felt crushed.

Elsa’s gaze was still upon her, yet it was plain her friend’s commotion of soul made no overwhelming impression. Her eyes drooped to signify a forthcoming confidence. “If you’ll promise not to let it out—we’re planning to announce something that night—during the supper dance!” Stella thought miserably of her own lagging and forlorn engagement. But it didn’t appear that the other girl, with everything so bewilderingly romantic, was particularly thrilled. All at once, her expression never changing, she disconcertingly demanded: “Was that the horn?” and strode to the door. “Let me take you wherever you’re bound for, Stella—I’ve a little time to spare. Sorry I can’t stay and talk.”

“Oh, thanks—I think I’ll just be going back to San Francisco. Please don’t bother, Elsa.”

“Come along. I’ll take you as far as the ferry.”

The doggy little car in which one sat luxuriously low gave one a sense of distinction, made one forget, even, that in a few short hours there would be dish water again. Elsa drove expertly. She could almost have driven a locomotive. Stella, a little bewildered by the rate at which things had moved since her slow wait in the silence of the drawing room, watched her friend with awe and admiration. The only trouble with the ride to the ferry was its appalling brevity. And Elsa’s affectionate drawl was in her ears: “Here we are. I’m going to look you up one of these days. Bye-bye.” She nodded pleasantly without smiling, and Stella alighted.

“Oh, by the way—hold on a minute.” Elsa dove into one[10] of the car’s leather pockets and with blithe tactlessness produced a current Vogue. “It will amuse you going across, and you’ll find some nifty patterns near the back.”

A moment later she had departed, full speed in a bath of blue smoke—breezed off exactly as she had breezed in, leaving behind her a vast unhappy vacuum. Stella felt desperately let down. It was only now she realized how much she had counted on Elsa.

“I’ll never hear from her again,” she brooded darkly; for she was rather given to indulging in premonitions. Of course there would be no invitation to the dance. Elsa would tremble for what her friend might arrive in! She beat back the tears angrily with her lashes. This was all that had come of her hopeful, desperate little expedition.

In the plodding ferry boat Stella thumbed the fashions, her mood growing ever darker. “What will come next?” she muttered. The murk of discontent settled thicker and thicker in her heart, like the fog across the harbour, where whistles were hooting “Beware!” on every side.

III

At about the same hour that Stella reached her decision to call on Elsa Utterbourne, the employes of the business houses along lower Market street were streaming out into the hazy noon in quest of lunch, the stomach being sovereign and benevolent tyrant there as in all walks of life. A few had brought lunches from home wrapped in a bit of paper, and among these was Jerome Stewart, an employe of Oaks, Ferguson & Whitley, Ships’ Chandlers. He was one of a little group sprawled on the doorstep of a wholesale candy factory which made a leader of forty-nine-cent chocolates. He sat huddled somewhat, his knees raised so high as to provide a very slanting table indeed for his stock of viands. However, the clerk was quite unconscious of the fact that his position in the universe might not be considered a thing of overwhelming delight.

He never had anything much to say at these times—a[11] dearth which by no means applied all round. A clerk from a fishing tackle store was delivering a very graphic lecture on the difficult art of casting for bass, and exacted the half guarded attention of the little group.

“The mistake most fishermen make is to whip their rod when they cast—like that.” You saw exactly. “But,” he demonstrated, “the right way is like this—v-e-r-y gently.”

Jerome thought he would like to be able to cast well. “I suppose it’s only a knack,” he mused. But how did one go about it to learn the knack? The tackle clerk might have told him, in a general way: application, patience; but Jerome seldom carried his inchoate ambitions that far.

Another clerk, though his profession was selling typewriters, had a passion for architecture, and began expatiating a trifle thickly across his hard boiled egg. And Jerome followed him with considerable interest, musing in much the same strain as before. Still, Jerome had never, at best, felt more than a flirtatious interest in architecture, though he had talked some of studying it on the side. Well, when analysed, it proved to be pretty much in a class with many other idle ambitions: for example, the sea. The sea, oddly enough, had come very near amounting to a passion with Jerome Stewart. He had spoken rather grandly once of taking to the high seas. Even to this day a mild penalty pursued him; one of the group, suddenly leaning over to jog his shoulder, urged:

“Come on! You haven’t done your jig for months. Boys, are we going to let him sit here and hide his talent?”

The crowd laughed goodnaturedly. “Sure! Out you go! Limber up!” And there was a shuffling movement, as though the clerk might be about to find himself precipitated on to the sidewalk, where an admiring ring would form.

Jerome, however, had a very well developed sense of his own dignity. He resisted, and the interest waned; however, it was quite true that he had an accomplishment. In the dim long ago, a seaman at the waterfront had taught him the hornpipe. Those were the brave, adventurous days. But[12] after all, he had been content in the end to take up ship chandlery; and it must ever remain not the least of his humiliations that once when the chance came to go out for a day in a fishing tug he had grown fatally reluctant at the last moment because, to his land-locked eyes, there was a deal of a sea slopping in. Jerome had come at length to take it modestly for granted that nearly everything in life was more or less unattainable.