CHAPTER EIGHT
THE AWAKENING I The first thing of which Jerome was conscious was a feeling that the covers had slid off. They sometimes did, for he was a trifle too long for his bed and frequently threshed the blankets loose at the foot. Yes, he dully decided, without yet definitely opening his eyes at all, that the bed clothes must have slid off onto the floor. He felt chilly, yet not so chilly as to force him to any really energetic effort toward a recovery of the obstreperous quilt. He groped futilely about with one hand, then gave it up. There seemed to be something desperately wrong with his head. He couldn’t seem to concentrate—no, not even on the quilt. Some time later he again emerged into a realm of hazy half-consciousness, and began remembering, very sketchily, the crimson night out of which the present condition had evolved; saw once more the boisterous gathering at Girardin’s, with himself in the midst; seemed still to feel Lili beaming at him in her wonderful way. Then it came to him that he had finally succumbed to prolonged persuasion and had done his little stunt. He blushed unhappily and told himself his dignity was now permanently shattered. How had they managed so to overcome his every better scruple? Girardin’s—he had lost all count of the number of glasses—everybody so jolly—Lili—the way she looked at one.... He groaned. Then he remembered that by now she must be far to sea. What time was it? What time? It seemed very dusky. He couldn’t hear his alarm clock on the commode. Of course—it hadn’t been wound. He had gone out and made a night of it, and his clock had run down. And then—then he blinked his eyes a little and began, very dully at first, to establish a groping connection with the objects they encountered. The particular object which first arrested his attention was a crack which ran in a perfectly straight line across the ceiling over his head. It puzzled him, rather, because he couldn’t remember any such crack as this in his ceiling. There were plenty of cracks, but all zig-zag. Curious, how he had managed to sleep all these years under a perfectly straight crack without ever seeing it! He groaned again and shut his eyes. These puzzling inconsistencies made his head rock more and more acutely. He tried to turn over and go back to sleep—tried to put all that was baffling out of his wretched head. But the one query that now kept at him with dogged persistence was: how did he ever get to bed without being able to remember a single circumstance connected with the process? His next discovery was that he had gone to bed in his clothes. His hand encountered the clip which still staunchly held his tie in place. The clip proved beyond possible doubt that he wasn’t in his customary nightshirt. And then—ah, but then the action seemed speeded up enormously! His eyes were wide now; he was growing sober by leaps and bounds. There was the undeviating crack above his head, and six inches to either side of it were identical cracks. The ceiling wasn’t composed of plaster at all, but painted boards; and the most staggering thing about it was the fact that, without even sitting up he could stretch out his hand and touch it! As a matter of fact, he wasn’t in any actual bed, but on a shelf underneath a rough board cupboard. And now, at last, he had reached the inevitable point of exclaiming: “Where am I?” and sent his leaden feet hurtling through space in the direction of the floor. He sat for a moment on the edge of the shelf, holding his vertiginous head in his hands and trying to steady himself to a facing of whatever ordeal might be in store for him. One awful thought kept pounding against his feverish temples: “Perhaps I’m in jail!” Mightn’t the cell of a jail conceivably look like this? But when he came face to face with a tiny port, his almost entirely cleared though still very painful brain registered the indisputable fact that he was at sea. II 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?” The first terrible and confusing instant behind him, panic was dominant again, and he reeled away to explore his dilemma. Jerking open the door of the tiny cabin, which appeared to be nothing more nor less than a supply closet, he emerged into a stuffy corridor and groped his way toward a flight of steps ahead which led up into daylight. As Jerome groped toward the light it may be intimated that his mental complex was one which must defy the most patient attempt at analysis. When he came out at last on deck, the whole awful, wonderful, terrifying truth flared up like a rocket: this was the Skipping Goone, and he was launched, along with the rest, on Xenophon Curry’s great world tour. As for its being the Skipping Goone, there could be no shadow of doubt; for here, as in a vision, with lurid sunset in their still excited faces, were all his new theatrical friends. He beheld at once a throng and each separate face. There stood Xenophon Curry in his Palm Beach suit and gay adornments, like an amazed exotic potentate, gazing at him with dropped jaw. There was the comedian, who always treated him with such irreproachable respect, gazing too. And there, with a sun-tinted sail behind her, looking, he thought, just like some radiant goddess, was Lili. She wasn’t beaming now, simply gazing like the rest. There was a space of perfectly blank silence, as Jerome stood there before them. It was decidedly an awful moment. Curry was the first to break through. “Good Lord, boy!” he cried, making futile gestures and taking almost equally futile steps toward the very substantial looking apparition. Next to break through were two singers, Tony and Alfredo, who amazed everybody by suddenly beginning to hurl Italian at each other in torrents. Jerome, of course, couldn’t understand a word they said, although, even in the midst of all the confusion, he felt somehow certain that what they were hurling directly concerned this startling mystery of which he had so abruptly become the centre. Curry was grasping his arm. “How did you get aboard?” he cried, a look of honest amazement supreme, now, in his so warmly expressive face. “I don’t know, sir,” replied Jerome in a rather weak and husky voice. Genuine pandemonium set in. It was almost a riot. But gradually, as some semblance of law and order returned, Tony Riforto was made out adjuring Alfredo Manuele with the full solemnity of a wagging forefinger: “You’ve got to help me think, I tell you! How can you expect me to figure the whole thing out myself?” “Figure what?” voices demanded. “Good Lord!” exclaimed Curry, “I begin to see—you took him in tow—yes, it was you two—at Girardin’s—in the confusion of closing—what then?” “What then?” spluttered Alfredo. He seemed to grasp at a ray of hope. “There was a cab!” “That’s it!” cried the other in exultation. “I begin to remember something—we had to take him somewhere—he’d caved in. I remember—” “Yes,” brightened Alfredo, “we couldn’t take him home. It would never have done, maestro—and that’s the truth indeed!” No, it would never have done, as he seemed to imply, to wake up a trustful and unsuspecting family to such a spectacle as the clerk had then presented. No one would have had the heart. “He had fallen under the table, maestro!” “Besides, how did we know where he lived?” “But what then?” asked Curry, his face crowded more than ever with a real desperation of concern. “Tony,” muttered Alfredo weakly, “how was it after that?” “Wait a minute!” commanded Tony solemnly. “Maestro, we thought it would be best to bring him aboard for the night!” “Yes, yes!” the other brightened. “How it all comes back to me! A few hours sleep on the schooner, and then....” From the vicinity of the comedian something strangely like an incipient chuckle was detected. “Well, maestro,” faltered Tony ruefully, scarcely daring to look at the victim at all, “after that—after that....” But it was all too plain at length. “For you see,” as Alfredo appended in his dire extremity, “we were in so much the same fix ourselves!” They stood aghast at what they had done. Everybody stood aghast. There seemed something almost cataclysmic about Jerome’s being here in their midst instead of back in San Francisco where he belonged. But at length delightful Lili, who had by this time shed her amazement and awe (as in the living presence of a ghost) and had begun to beam in quite her accustomed manner, cried out: “The old dear!” and made for Jerome, her heart seeming vaguely touched at the expression on his face. It was Lili who really introduced the first ray of cheer and serenity and humour into the situation. She seized his hand. It was a perfectly solid hand. She had held it before. Even had she had lingering suspicions they were now dispelled. This was no ghost. No, it was the clerk himself. And then, somehow, the humour of it all took possession of the throng, and Lili led him about, and welcome, almost congratulation, was showered upon him. As for Jerome, while explanations were in progress he had looked greener and greener; but now a grin was emerging. It was at first a pretty sickly grin, but it helped lighten the awfulness of his position. He had to grasp at things to keep his balance—not because he was still unsteady himself, but because the schooner was performing such violent antics; a panic he dared not profess made him somewhat faint. They would never cease tormenting were the fact to come out, after his boasting the night before, that the man who had danced the sailor’s hornpipe so convincingly was scared. He grinned instead; and the longer he grinned, the easier, as a matter of fact, it became. For the present, indeed, there was nothing else he could do. “Ain’t it just too rich?” giggled Lili, beaming upon him with her gay, widening eyes. III Long before the excitement over Jerome had begun to abate, the cabin boy went about beating on a tom-tom, the summons being met by a mixed chorus of cheers and groans. There were those who had by this time settled down with white, set expressions, who wished the ship would sink, and rolled their eyes reproachfully; even a few had crawled into their bunks and would not be seen again. But there were also those for whom the sea would hold no discomfort unless it became unduly incensed; Lili, anticipating trouble, was as yet carrying on serenely, while Jerome, rather surprisingly, felt no symptoms at all—nothing but the sense of panic he dared not show. Every time the schooner heeled over, Jerome mentally gasped. But there was nothing to do but keep the grin active. The saloon was not quite big enough comfortably to contain the table set to accommodate them all, and the cabin boy who waited had to squeeze a bit here and there. But nothing could daunt the blithe hilarity of the diners themselves, who thrust their legs in amongst wooden horses which formed the table’s sub-structure, and declared they’d never tasted anything half so good as the ship’s plain fare. At the head of the table, looking exactly like an admiral, sat Captain Bearman. On his right was Miss Valentine, who could sing up to F, while on his left was the comfortable contralto. It was very delightfully arranged, and should have melted the stoniest heart; yet Captain Bearman, incessantly smoothing and fingering his flaming beard (parted in the middle and flying grandly two ways in an almost horizontal line) absolutely refused to unbend beyond ungracious monosyllables. People instinctively wanted to be impressed by him and take him for an admiral, yet he instinctively wouldn’t let them because of that fatal sense of his own inferiority. 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. Lili had invited Jerome to sit next her, and through dinner kept up an entrancing conversation with the clerk, constantly patting on the back that manly and dashing phase of his ego which insisted upon the deceptive grin, and which, in high-handed spurts of confidence, actually began convincing him that whatever might be the outcome he was glad to be right where he was! Yes, glad this miracle had befallen him. Glad he had been dumped into the supply closet. Glad he was at sea—with Lili! IV Naturally the Skipping Goone didn’t possess a lounge in any true ocean liner sense. But there was a rough space aft, out of which improvised sleeping quarters opened; and into this cabin, forlorn enough in itself, and lighted only by a couple of very smoky lamps, had been introduced certain truly voluptuous notes. There were benches with bright red cushions, and—yes, there actually was a piano. It seemed a wonderful thing indeed, coming upon a piano in such a dismal coop of a place. But there it was—a perky, cheap little upright, not quite full grown and apparently lined with tin. It was shabby and perky at the same time; Mr. Curry had purchased it at second hand, and it looked as though it had passed through rather a good many hands even before it reached the dealer at all. But it was still indomitable, and possessed a red felt scarf with an amazing border of yellow and green stitching. As for the “soft” pedal, it no longer worked; but the “loud” pedal was perfectly intact—and that, as the impresario joyously pointed out to Miss Valentine, was “just fifty per cent. better than no pedal of any description.” Round the piano they gathered after dinner and made as much merry noise as they could in an effort to keep their spirits from sagging. It was a very different picture from that framed by the tiny lone cabin where Captain Bearman, surrounded by august nautical implements and with the impressive book of the log spread open before him, sat busy with his finger nails, gnawing them in sullen solitude. The perky piano dominated another scene altogether. Mr. Curry himself sat at the piano, pounding with incorrigible cheerfulness. The drummer from Kentucky had brought out his queer little old snare drum for the occasion—no room, alas, for the kinglier kettles here! And the temperamental violinist from Vienna vigorously added his best technique to swell the melodic pleasures of the convivial hour. The family of songbirds pressed close about them, bawling old comic songs and parodies at the top of their lungs, laughing with many symptoms of hysteria, and having the gayest sort of time imaginable. Yes, gayety was the rule and goal of the hour; and if any one, in a moment of unfortunate abstraction, had struck up Home Sweet Home or Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep there would have been a riot indeed. The offender would have been put right off the ship. It was a glorious night—sheer and immortal—this first night at sea. All about spread darkness and lonely ocean, with stars burning dimly overhead. The stars looked down through empyreans of silence and saw the Skipping Goone nosing along under full sail with her romantic miscellany of merchandise and songbirds, dogged and unafraid, conquering through plain cheek. In the cabin with the smoky lamps the impresario and his children blithely challenged the elements to do their worst. Jerome, of course, was in the cabin with them. “Lord, Lord!” Curry had exclaimed, his kindly face a real pageant of perplexity, “it’s just one of those things that happen. Boy, it might be worse, though I guess you’re in for a little taste of the world, eh? You’ll have to take pot luck with us, but the Lord knows you’re welcome!” In the midst of the spritely din Jerome and Lili were discussing the predicament. “Oh,” gurgled Lili, “it will come out in all the papers: ‘Last seen departing for Girardin’s.’ What grand publicity—if you only needed it, like me! Gawd knows I could use a little of that kind!” Then she added: “How are you going to let them know where you are?” It was a question indeed. The comedian cupped his hands and shouted across the hubbub: “Write a note and put it in a bottle!” It would be somehow painfully appropriate—in a bottle—though the chances of delivery couldn’t be reckoned very brilliant. Jerome thought of his people—his home—saw everything perhaps more vividly than ever before in his life. If this amazing calamity hadn’t befallen him, where would he be now? At the movies, probably. Yes, he was pretty likely to be at the movies of an evening now that Stella had slipped out of his life. It seemed unlikely he would ever have need of the movies again! Lili began singing along with the others, her strong and somewhat brazen voice entering in with irrepressible verve. Jerome gazed at her. His heart grew furtively undaunted. As a matter of fact, before long the clerk was almost openly applauding his calamity. And then he even began looking upon it as something he had accomplished himself, in a sense. Certainly nothing could have been accomplished without him. He had been an obscure clerk, and was an obscure clerk no longer. What would come of all this in the end? Perplexity held him in a rather shivery embrace. But Lili slipped an affectionate arm through his and made him sway with her to the rhythm. “You can’t have any of my peanuts, When your peanuts are gone!” She clapped time with her large, rather beautiful hands. They romped from song to song, growing more abandoned all the time. “Come on, now!” shouted the impresario joyously, dominating in his irresistible way even the deafening din about him. “Strong on the chorus—swell out on the second bar, and then—piano—piano! Tum te tum tum! Now, then, all together: ‘Little Annie Roonie is my sweetheart!’ Bravo!”
CHAPTER NINE
LOVE ON A SCHOONER— I It was very curious to feel that he had lived with himself, in a condition of rather close intimacy, all these years without realizing that he was capable of supreme emotions. Jerome didn’t feel entirely at home with himself any more. No, to tell the truth he felt on terms of slight formality. There was, of course, no mirror in the supply closet, and, since he had never before faced the obligation of dressing without the aid of a mirror, Jerome spent an anxious thought on the possibility of being unable to negotiate his cravat. The absence of his own familiar looking glass reminded him, over again, of the vertiginous fact that he had said good-bye, though so informally, to all that had gone to compose his erstwhile existence. Could he manage to reorganize his entire life in an instant? And how could he spend his days if not behind the counters of Oaks, Ferguson & Whitley’s? But then the more back-patting problem presented itself: How could they ever manage without him? Yes, this bore earmarks of a supreme emotion. Carefully attaching the clip to the ends of his tie, he snipped its pincher against the edge of his bargain counter shirt. It signified that he was now ready for whatever the day might hold. Gradually the members of Mr. Curry’s little troupe came straggling up into the welcome sunshine, wearing an aspect of determined cheerfulness—which was, indeed, beginning to grow a bit seaworthy. “Everybody happy, no bones broken,” the comedian estimated in his twinkling way, as he went about slapping people on the back irrespective of sex. Curiously enough—even somewhat bafflingly—this was a comedian a great deal funnier off the stage than on. “Ah, there, Mr. Stewart!” He approached and shook hands with tremendous respect. And Jerome amazed everybody by turning, even as he acknowledged the sober salutation, and winking broadly at the singers who stood looking on with an edge of amusement. The wink seemed to warn them they would have to be guarded from now on if they were to have fun at his expense. Jerome was making progress. II Lili didn’t appear at breakfast. Jerome hated to ask about her, but at length did; and they told him, without quite the old satirical respect, that she was lying low. It even got to Lili that her friend had been enquiring after her; and she sat up in her bunk and romantically scribbled him a few lines on a bit of wrapping paper torn off a package containing a new eleventh hour corset. “Hello, old dear!” she scrawled. “How’s every little thing? It’s a gay life if you don’t weaken! I haven’t—I’m only taking a long beauty sleep, and if it gets calmer I’ll meet you on deck tonight.” Jerome was quite excited over the note. He had never received a note like this before. While they were still engaged, Stella had written him three or four letters from Los Gatos, where she had gone on a trip in the summer; but these letters had differed acutely from the note just received from Lili. There was something about Lili’s note, with its vague department store aroma, that made Jerome tingle excitedly. He was very sure none of the clerks he knew in Market street had ever received such a note. There was no moon, but the stars were rich and wonderful. She had dragged up blankets from her bunk, and sat snug in them on deck—a trifle subdued, perhaps, by the mighty sway of the sea, though she beamed almost as dazzlingly as ever, her eyes opening wider and wider in the starlight till the poor clerk was nearly beside himself. She asked him if he didn’t want part of her blankets, and he said, very earnestly, oh no, he wasn’t cold. “But you haven’t any overcoat.” No, that was true—because he hadn’t worn one to Girardin’s. Everything seemed to date back to Girardin’s. “Say,” he demanded, “has it seemed long since that night?” “Has it seemed long!” she exclaimed. “My Gawd!” “A lot can happen in a little while sometimes,” he mused. “It seems as though more has happened since that night than altogether in my whole life!” She grabbed the clerk frantically. “I thought we were going clear over that time! Don’t it seem so to you when we tip so far?” Sensations rather similar had not been stranger to his own brain; indeed, furtively, once or twice earlier in the day he had thought: “I’m a goner!” and tried to recall a very concise prayer, and had seen his whole life drawn into a swift, convenient synthesis; but the loyal old craft, somehow or other, always managed to come creaking back, and went right on about her business. “It’s perfectly safe,” he assured her. The calm may have been egregious, but there was a genuine throb back of his suggestion: “Would you like me to hold onto you so you’d feel more steady?” “Listen to him!” she tittered, snuggling down into her nest and gazing over at him enticingly. She half closed her eyes and gave him a vampire look. Jerome, just then, felt as though he would be willing to do anything in the world for Lili. Anything she might ask. He had reached an abject phase in his romantic feeling for her. Lili charmed and hypnotized him, made the blood go racing. No girl had ever affected him just this way before. “Aren’t the stars grand tonight?” she cried, wrinkling her smooth forehead a little, as though making a real and quite taxing effort to appreciate God’s celestial accomplishment. “Did you ever see ’em so big?” Jerome never had. “I just love to be out on the ocean,” she sighed, “but ain’t-it-awful-Mabel to think where we’d go to if the boat would go all the way over?” The Skipping Goone plowed steadily along through a warm sea under the stars. “I’m crazy to get to Honolulu,” the girl observed. So was Jerome. “Have you ever been there?” “No.” “I hear there’s a wonderful beach where it’s always moonlight, and everybody plays on those things—” “Ukuleles?” “That’s it!” “I used to have one.” “You did? What a pity you didn’t bring it along—to Girardin’s,” she added with a little humorous smile. “It would sound sweet a night like this on the water, wouldn’t it?” He agreed. There was a warm silence. Then she began singing, in a dreamy voice: “I want to be the leading lady, I want to have the all-star part....” She yawned, in a pleasantly relaxed way, and snuggled. “I hate to go to bed a night like this,” she sighed. Jerome suggested daringly: “Let’s stay up all night!” Then she tittered again and narrowed her eyes. But for all her lightness, it was becoming obvious that Lili’s attitude toward Jerome had altered somewhat since the day she had gone around with the petition about tie clips. She still beamed on him, of course, because Lili wouldn’t know how to look at any man without more or less beaming. But she also looked at him not a little seriously. He didn’t, somehow, seem quite so funny to look at as he had at first, and he didn’t talk so stiffly. After a little she asked: “What are you going to do when we get there?” Jerome didn’t know. “Haven’t you any idea?” He shrugged and lamented: “I’ve only got forty cents to my name!” She poised it with a faint but very friendly smile. “I know one thing,” he declared stoutly. “I don’t like the idea of going back—honest I don’t!” “Then why do you go back?” “What can I do?” “If you could only sing, you might join us in the chorus!” (Stella, it vaguely occurred to him, would have replied: “Can’t you think of anything yourself?”) “I wish I could sing,” he said. “Ever try?” “Yes. I sound like one of the fog horns on Yerba Buena during a tule fog!” She laughed. “It’s a pity, because you could stick around.” “I’ve often thought I’d like to go on the stage if I ever got a chance....” “Why don’t you speak about it to Mr. Curry?” “Do you think he’d take me on?” “He’s awful good-hearted,” she evaded, adding: “Are you sure it’s as bad as a fog horn?” “I suppose I could learn how. Is it very hard to follow those highbrow tunes?” “N-no,” she replied. “Do you think I ought not to go back?” “I’m not much at handing out advice,” she replied, quite seriously, the stars making her big eyes strangely bright, “but if I was you I’d certainly keep on going, now you got started.” “Yes,” he said, a new determination in his voice. “I guess you’re right. Great Scott! It certainly does seem years since Girardin’s!”
CHAPTER TEN
—AND ELSEWHERE I Before port was reached two facts important to this history had been established: the first that Jerome was to join the troupe—not, indeed, as a member of the chorus (since he had satisfactorily demonstrated to the impresario that his allusion to fog horns had not been in exaggeration) but instead as a clerical assistant to Mr. Curry; and the second, that he had fallen madly in love with Lili. The first fact was simple enough; as for the second, no doubt the gods on far Olympus smiled a little. But love spurns the orthodox, and after all heeds few conventions. Of course everybody knew about it, for the Skipping Goone was poor soil in which to cultivate secrets. So the clerk’s love affair was discussed, just as any issue of general public interest would be anywhere. That a clerk should fall in love with a girl who sang on the stage could not possibly cause any surprise, though that Lili should likewise be smitten with the clerk might seem a little less true to type. But somehow Lili wasn’t quite a type. She rather baffled. Besides, she hadn’t exactly fallen in love with Jerome the way he had fallen in love with her. However, it was a most interesting case; Mr. Curry’s songbirds found it so, and adapted themselves to its oddities in the easy manner of men and women of the world. It wasn’t, for that matter, the first time they had beheld the alluring little singer with a beau. Any one who had known Jerome intimately during the slow-moving years in San Francisco would have been astonished enough upon encountering him in the flushed midst of this new phase of his career. One of the first momentous changes was an entire absence of the classic tie clip, which Lili, in playful mood, had snatched off one day and flung far out to sea. Thus, in a flash, one of the most eloquent emblems of his whole former life vanished away. It was really wonderful how much less obscure Jerome looked without the clip. But that was only that. As for the rest—well, Lili’s beaming eyes alone were a liberal education. And, though she often enough shocked Jerome with brazenries for which he wasn’t yet altogether prepared, and while she never seemed to take anything quite so seriously as he did, her knowledge of the great world opened his mind to somewhat wider horizons (despite her occasional deficiencies in grammar and manners) than he had even remotely glimpsed during the epoch when he used sometimes to think of “cutting quite a figure in the world some day.” Well, he was cutting a figure now! No, he didn’t feel altogether at home with himself any more. But it was broadening not to—there was such a thing, he now began to realize, as feeling too much at home. Gradually his entire viewpoint changed, so that it was with amazement he perceived how he had been satisfied just to drudge along in San Francisco, with nothing ever happening. He had definitely shaken the dust of the past off his shoes. He was through with the old life forever. A persisting lightness in Lili troubled him some. She had what at first struck him as an unnecessarily vulgar way of shouting to her friends: “I’ve got a man! I’ve got a man!” And he could never, for instance, begin seriously talking about the way he felt, and about the future but Lili would laugh it all away with some perfectly frivolous, or at least irrelevant remark. Her tolerance of the incessantly interrupting pleasantries of the comedian was distinctly a bore. Jerome’s incorrigibly healthy ego assured him something was wrong, and that while the mock-respect of earlier days had largely worn off, he still wasn’t treated with that degree of honest respect which the majesty of his ambitious manhood demanded. Jerome had buried his past with its mistakes and its follies and humiliations, and he demanded of the world that it treat him accordingly. Sometimes the startling suddenness of everything would momentarily overcome. And he didn’t know ... well, at any rate, he mustn’t permit life to run away with him; to have life run away with him might not be so bad as to have it crawl away with him; but it would be bad enough. Sometimes when Lili laughed he had a feeling that life was running away with him. He had moments of feeling a trifle wobbly about life. Only one thing seemed, through everything, perfectly clear: it was too late now to think of turning back! II Arrival at Honolulu was plentifully exciting. Naturally every one was on deck. Captain Bearman set up a sort of preliminary barking through his splendid whiskers. Mr. Curry’s press agent, though not conspicuous for creative ingenuity, had carried out with tolerable success most of the “advance” ideas with which the impresario had eagerly and patiently supplied him. There was a throng down to welcome in the band of venturesome troupers. The newspapers sent their most gifted reporters, and had reserved space on their front pages for a generous human-interest yarn. A native orchestra was strumming on the dock. Of course all the songbirds were wild to debark. Shore connections established, the reporters descended and tongues were ardently loosed. Most of the songbirds had a very efficiently developed sense of publicity. Miss Valentine, the coloratura who could sing up to F, turned from one to another, talking with elaborate elegance and conveying the impression that she considered this a very great lark indeed—something in the nature of a playful interlude between triumphs of the past (a little yawn and much patting of curls) and radiant contracts in the future. The comedian told funny stories of life aboard the Skipping Goone, and agreeably noted out of a corner of his eye that some of them were being reduced to hieroglyphics. One story they all seized upon was the story of the clerk who had failed to wake up; and the clerk must be found and interviewed, and somebody even snapped his picture. As for the impresario—of course he was made use of to the fullest advantage. “Like a conquering monarch,” one of the papers next day proclaimed his arrival; nor was this an exaggeration, for Xenophon Curry in all his bright habiliments did look like a conquering monarch, and carried himself like one, too, so proud was he—oh, a very human sort of conquering monarch: one with a smile such as, in the words of another paper, “it would be worth walking all the way around Oahu to see.” III Preference might have carried Xenophon Curry out to the Beach, but ars longa; vita brevis—he settled cheerfully at the Alexander Young so as to be near the theatre. Scarcely had he descended from his room when a most surprising circumstance developed. Over in one corner of the lobby stood a small booth where ladies of social prominence were selling flowers for the benefit of a local charity. All at once the impresario stopped and gazed, unbelieving, fascinated. And at the very same moment there was a stir inside the booth, and lo! one of the ladies came forth from it, came smiling and nodding toward him across the lobby, her face shining with welcome, and a ready hand outstretched. Flora Utterbourne—yes, it was really she! Their greeting, as may well be imagined, was effusive and faintly loud. It was really beautiful! “But—I left you on the dock...!” he faltered lamely, but happily. “I know,” she laughed, with warm joyousness, though without his amazement, “but you see—I took the next steamer down, for there were some friends who had been planning to spend a few weeks here and asked me to go along, and I found I could get away, though I really hadn’t intended leaving town just at this time!” They chattered, then, delightedly, and for ever so long couldn’t seem to exhaust the stock of superlative congratulations, self and mutual. At last, however, they seated themselves, and she went on flowingly: “It really was my friends”—just a faintly blushing insistence—“who ‘carried me off’—the Trents, originally of Toronto—perhaps you know them?—and Mrs. Clyde, who was Miss Spurling,—she is the friend I was with in Madeira, the year we met Signora Martinella, who nearly ‘took her life’ in such a strange and tragic way!” And Flora was enthusiastically launched, right then and there, upon a most amazing digression, all about the Signora Martinella, who was encountered first in the ball room—“rather flirting, we thought—quite a frivolous little thing!” And then it developed—oh, well, it was a very absorbing affair, and the Signora in the end didn’t take poison. Oh yes, it was most elaborately enthusiastic; and when the end was reached she and the impresario sat facing each other in a state of breathlessness: it was several seconds before they seemed to realize that all this had no essential point for them! When at length they did realize this, she smiled, a little self-consciously, while he was humorously devouring her with his bright black eyes, and trying to convince himself that this incredible fact really was a fact. “We’ve been scanning the ‘horizon’ with such anxiety,” she told him, “hoping each day for a glimpse of the schooner—trusting and praying that nothing had ‘gone wrong’, and in the meantime we’ve been advertising your ‘songbirds’ really most extensively, and are planning to attend the ‘first night’ of each new production, which quite takes me back to the old days in Paris, when I was doing a little studying myself, though of course I knew I never had anything more than a ‘parlour’ voice, and only wanted to train it a little so that I could give pleasure to my friends, in a way!” And then—it seemed so irresistibly to fit in here—he was told all about the funny old Italian teacher who would jump up and down, exclaiming: “Troppo apperto!” till she would ask in despair: “But what can I do about it?” whereupon the Italian would cry: “Chiudi! Chiudi!” Flora smiled richly over the reminiscence. And then, as they proceeded, she was so very sympathetic that the impresario just poured out, on the spot, all his business and artistic troubles, and told her about the clerk—“Lord, a sheer stroke of luck from my point of view!” And she humorously sighed: “It’s always puzzled me how you’ve managed to keep everything going in your own head!” And he asked: “But you see how mysteriously life works? Isn’t it really remarkable? You never know if people you just casually meet may be destined....” It trailed off in the wake of a gesture just a little wild; for obviously both had instantly caught from this a personal not to say a most thrilling application. Well, in a word, both of them rejoiced—like a couple of youngsters—at being together again! “I know you’ve a thousand things to do,” she said at last, rising, “and I mustn’t keep you any longer, though I couldn’t help ‘waylaying’ you the first thing! You see, I’m helping some of my friends—we’re selling flowers for homeless babies!” She laughed softly. “I really feel almost like a ‘native’, and you know—I’ve taken a house, and have it nearly all furnished, though I’d intended merely to rest here in Honolulu! I understand how busy you are, and that it won’t be possible for you to ‘drop in’ quite so frequently as before, though the little ‘villino’ by the sea will be always wide open to welcome you, and I must show you my charming Japanese ‘breakfast’ dishes!” “I think you’ll find I’ll manage,” he said, stroking his toupee delightedly with a couple of deft, tender fingers. He was perfectly radiant. “Perhaps I’ll give a little garden tea one day, for I’ve a really most delicious terrace, and invite your ‘songbirds,’ and maybe Miss Valentine would sing!” Whereupon the big impresario almost whooped—yes, right there in the lobby—because his temperamental heart was making such an enormous commotion. And for that matter the lady’s heart was making a commotion also. “Addio, signore!” she murmured cordially—and was gone, her skirts rustling very much. IV Jerome made off as soon as he could—or rather as soon as the intense delight of this new type of excitement permitted him to think of it—and sent a cable to his family. Mr. Curry paid him a month’s salary in advance, so that he wasn’t quite penniless. Indeed, he felt himself rolling in riches. He supplied himself with a small trunk and considerable necessary apparel. In a shop window where he saw them displayed Jerome hesitated over the necessity of a new clip; but he astutely argued that since Lili had snatched off his old clip and flung it to sea, evidently there was something about clips—or at any rate as associated with himself—which made sophisticated people laugh; the temptation was stoutly resisted. He purchased a haircut, too, which helped enormously; and went about smoking his short-stemmed pipe—not exactly jauntily, as in the old days when he thought he knew so much and really knew so little, but rather in a resolute, sober manner, which seemed proclaiming at least one highly important milestone passed. Everybody was furiously busy, getting settled and trying to see the sights and do the required rehearsing and necessary shopping all at the same time. As for the sight-seeing, that could no doubt have waited; but in the case of most of Mr. Curry’s songbirds, temperament dictated otherwise. And it frequently happened, during the first days in Honolulu, that members of the troupe would bow to each other, sometimes a shade haughtily but usually with whole-hearted zest, from carriages in which they were being driven everywhere. Jerome and Lili did a little sight-seeing together, though (being not, as one has already seen, quite a type) she very sensibly wouldn’t hear of his hiring a carriage, but insisted that “Gawd knows I’m not too elegant to ride on a street car yet!”
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