CHAPTER EIGHTTHE AWAKENING
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 hadgone 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 facingof 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.
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 theSkipping Goone, and he was launched, along with the rest, on Xenophon Curry’s great world tour.
As for its being theSkipping 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, gazingtoo. 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 suspicionsthey 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 hecoulddo.
“Ain’t it just too rich?” giggled Lili, beaming upon him with her gay, widening eyes.
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.Gladhe was at sea—with Lili!
Naturally theSkipping Goonedidn’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 upHome Sweet HomeorRocked in the Cradle of the Deepthere 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 theSkipping Goonenosing 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 benow? 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!”
“You can’t have any of my peanuts,When your peanuts are gone!”
“You can’t have any of my peanuts,When your peanuts are gone!”
“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!’
‘Little Annie Roonie is my sweetheart!’
‘Little Annie Roonie is my sweetheart!’
‘Little Annie Roonie is my sweetheart!’
Bravo!”