CHAPTER THIRTY-TWONEWS
“Did you ever hear of Daedalus?” asked Captain Utterbourne dreamily when his caller had been shown into the little white cabin he called his shop. “I’ve just come across a fascinating account of him in a book of myths. Daedalus, it seems, was the man who invented sails. Like all advanced spirits from the beginning of time, he was looked upon as mad—just because he was always experimenting—trying to fasten sails on to his own body, and similar devices—h’m? Isn’t it funny how little it takes to make the world think you mad?”
It wasn’t, perhaps, quite tangible—almost, in fact, as though the master of this romantic freighter were himself, after all, part of a myth. “And anyhow,” puzzled Jerome, “tangible or not, what has Daedalus, even if he did invent sails, to do with this hurry-up call on my last night in Borneo?”
His glance discovered upon the table a sheet of paper scrawled over with anchors in many positions. The Captain had evidently been busy on them prior to his arrival. Then his glance strayed to the map of the world, and again, in a parenthetical flash, he felt its peculiar thrill—almost as though it were a special or enchanted map. Jerome had always more or less responded to the thrill of maps—a little, even, in the funny old school geographies. Now that he was himself abroad upon it, the spell was brightly multiplied. What a pace he had gone! At length he was aboard a ship in the harbour of Sandakan, listening to a story aboutthe man who invented sails.... And back of the story there was something—something.... The suspense was terrific; yet “I must be patient,” he told himself; for he guessed that the Captain was a man who, like certain horses, would only proceed the more slowly if urged.
Finally Utterbourne, perceiving with a quick glance of his little grey eyes that his visitor seemed momentarily absorbed in the map on the wall, swung slowly round in his swivel chair. Appearing to forget Daedalus entirely, he rocked back and forth, his hands spread loosely on his knees. A light of quizzical and devious affection flickered into his face, and, gazing at the young man before him he murmured:
“Stewart, did you ever sit down before a map of the world and just let yourself go? H’m? It’s a gorgeous piece of adventure!”
After that the Captain sat for a time without saying anything at all—only drumming idly with a pencil. There was something fiendish about these silences; yet out of them, one could be sure, great things were wont to grow.
“I’ve been wondering—h’m?” And still he drummed, his upsetting gaze never quite leaving the other’s face, though it wavered a bit at intervals to a point just beyond, only to return at once. The substantial ticking of a brass clock set into the wall above the Captain’s desk added an effect of overtone to the silence which had fallen between them. Jerome, breathless with impatience and excitement, cleared his throat, and Utterbourne said: “H’m?” in a murmur of unbroken meditation. But at last the Captain stirred, laid aside his pencil—which seemed a sign they were making progress—clasped his hands loosely on the table and said:
“I sent for you, Stewart, because I thought—h’m?—I thought you might be able to help us out.” He hesitated, still quizzical. “You’ve been on my mind, rather, ever since I began hearing about your extraordinary exploits this year. To be perfectly frank”—he smiled, and Jerome, guessing what the Captain would say, smiled back easily—“I shouldn’t have quite picked you out—well, say that night in the Pavillond’Orient—as a man I’d ever be likely to see my way clear to using. But,” he went on, his voice subtle with congratulation, “a man—h’m?—a man can’t have the experiences you seem to have had without developing a kind of feeling”—he held the thought a little sensuously suspended a moment—“a feeling for the finer grain in adventure—h’m? It’s pretty hard to phrase; it’s a thing to be sensed.”
Jerome would have spoken, his eyes, now, quite aflame with delighted excitement; but the Captain lifted one hand in a faint gesture and went on speaking: “Stewart, I’ve been thinking you may be one of the men I’ll have need of when we launch a project we have in mind—h’m?—a sort of office and clearing house for our Mediterranean trade—maybe at Naples, or perhaps Tripoli—the plans are still very much in the air. I knew you were sailing in the morning, and I wanted to sound you a little—in fact, I didn’t know but you might be induced to come along with us instead—h’m?”
Again Jerome was eager to voice his sentiments in this connection, and again the Captain, perceiving his eagerness, chose to hold him in a torment of unreleased speech. “I presume,” he drawled, “you’re anxious to get home after your life-and-death struggle with the Dark Angel—h’m?” There was a smile on Utterbourne’s lips, a smile of chilly, faint derision, since, so far as he was concerned, the Dark Angel was at liberty to pause on his threshold whenever the impulse prompted; he would be ready, without question or prayer. “But, as a matter of fact,” he resumed, “I expect to reach San Francisco myself maybe sooner than Curry and his songbirds—or at any rate not very much later. If you care to consider the Mediterranean business at all, but feel you’d rather not run the risk of reaching home a week, a day, or even an hour later, then go on tomorrow with Curry, and I’ll get in touch with you afterward. H’m? If, on the other hand, you’d like to come along with us now, I could perhaps lay a sort of ground-work in your mind between here and San Francisco, which might facilitate matters in case it developedthat we wanted to get things under way rather quickly.”
“I think,” said Jerome (permitted at last to speak) with a voice he tried hard to keep perfectly steady, “that I’ll run the risk!” His eyes sparkled a little. “Would you like me to sleep on board tonight? I’d hate like the devil to wake up somewhere else and find all this was only a dream!”
Then Utterbourne laughed. That is to say, he shouted. And when Jerome was gone, he sat in the dark on deck a long time, smoking one cigarette after another, and gently hummingTo a Wild Roseat intervals.
Jerome couldn’t wait till morning to break the news to Curry, but got the impresario out of bed. There were new lines of worry and care in the good man’s face, but his enthusiasm over the offer which had been made his erstwhile business manager was wholly unfettered. At first he blinked sleepily, and said: “Well—well....” in a somewhat solemn, deliberating way. But when he woke up sufficiently to realize that it wasn’t for advice but for congratulation that the business manager had roused him, then Curry became satisfactorily boisterous. In fact, they both became a little boisterous, for Jerome had smuggled in sandwiches and a bottle of something, and insisted upon an impromptu celebration right on the spot.
It was well along toward morning before the weary maestro was left to a little snatch of needed slumber. As for Jerome, he didn’t go to bed at all. He felt it would be out of the question even to think of bed. And he wanted to be on hand early to corner Lili with the facts and give her, he told himself, some general instructions. He whistled along the waterfront, deserted and very full of echoes at this hour, and finally settled down on a barrel of tar to wait for sun-up.
Jerome had scarcely seen Lili since the arrival in Borneo—and had, indeed, given her deliberately a wide berth. It was essential, he felt, to begin making it plain to all the worldthat they weren’t living together any more. Now he began wondering how she was making out, and what she had been up to. Poor Lili, he thought. She seemed so helpless, so little able to look out for herself. He must see what could be done. Perhaps he could arrange to send her part of his salary for awhile. He would see how reasonably she took the news of his desertion.
The songbirds began to appear, clad in outlandish togs which had been acquired helter-skelter in a mart where there was little in the way of choice. They were all in good spirits, however. “On to Yokohama!” had been adopted as the company slogan. After that—well, no one seemed to care to bother very much yet about the future. Things would turn up, as they always did, somehow or other.
Jerome was just deciding that happy-go-lucky Lili had overslept, as she so frequently did, and debated ascertaining her lodgings and going off to hunt her up, when suddenly he beheld her coming along, garbed in a queer pink dress and wearing an enormous hat trimmed with blue roses and fur. She had a little white dog on a leash, and it strained sniffingly ahead, running in a spindle-legged, sidling manner. She was right upon Jerome before she discovered him.
“Oh, Jerry!” she cried. And at first her eyes beamed with the sheer pleasure of encountering him; but almost at once they took on a hurt, reproachful look, and all the beam was gone out of them. Her lips went into a disappointed little pout.
He wasted no words, but acquainted her simply and frankly with the facts in the case. Their ways were to sever. Tomorrow at this hour they would be hundreds of miles apart. It was unlikely they would ever meet again.
“Oh, but Jerry....” she faltered.
“It’s up to you,” he concluded, “to do the rest. They know we’ve not been getting on. Now it will be very easy. You may tell them anything you like. I don’t care how strong you make your case—I guess I can stand up under the strain. But I should think that simple desertion would beabout as good as anything. Just one request: Please don’t tell them I was in the habit of hitting you with clubs. I’d hate any one to think that of me. But I know you’ll work it out. And if you want to say I fell in love with some one else—if that would help—why, go ahead, only please have a heart and don’t make her some little painted fool. I’ve written my address on this piece of paper”—he handed it over—“and if you have trouble financing things for awhile, just get in touch with me and I’ll see what I can do, though as you know, I’m not by any means a plutoyet!”
She seemed a little bewildered by it all. As a matter of fact, it was a rather bewildering speech. And before she had quite found her bearings, Lili murmured, with tears threatening: “We were so happy together once, Jerry—oh, I could cry my eyes out at the way you’re treating me!”
“But,” he reminded her, “you know it was already agreed we were going to separate. There’s no use going into all that again. And I don’t think we better be too thick together this morning, either. What you tell ’em must be convincing.”
But she had had time to get over the first shock, and her manner now grew assertive. “Oh,” she cried, “that’s all very well, my fine fellow, but you don’t seem to be consideringmyfeelings in the matter. You just skip out and leave the hard part for me. If that isn’t just like a man!”
The blue roses on her hat were shaking, and the absurd dog kept jerking at his leash, sometimes even forcing her to take a step and regain her balance. Jerome was beginning to feel slightly upset.
“Everybody thinks we’re married,” she babbled, rather disconnectedly, “and that makes it just about the same as if we were. All you do is light out, but what aboutme? That’s whatIwant to know!”
“We talked everything over,” he repeated glumly. “I don’tcare to argue about it any more. It’s only fair I have my chance now.”
But she was piqued, and her lips still pouted; and then, out of the muddled wretchedness of her heart, she cast up at Jerome the reminder that if she hadn’t been so honest in the first place he’d be her husband now, this minute—he couldn’t help himself. “And then,” she ended, in truly flaming, if somewhat confused triumph, “I guess you’d be a little more cut up about this divorce business—it wouldn’t look quite so easy to you, anyhow, as it does this way!”
“But you had to, Lili!” cried Jerome, not a little horrified, for a moment, despite his worldly poise, at the vista her sordid dreg of self-revelation opened up. “Youhadto tell about your marriage....”
They looked at each other rather helplessly, till, her mood softening, she faltered: “You never used to be so high and mighty with me, Jerry!”
“But great heavens, Lili, you don’t seem to realize what it means to have two husbands at the same time!”
“How do I know if I’dbehaving two? How could I be sure? How do I know where I stand anyhow? How do I know where my husband is, or if I have any husband by this time any more at all—even one?”
Lili in her pink dress and overloaded hat, with the little dog straining and pouncing at the end of its leash, seemed really an almost tragic figure. There was something so petitioning, so frankly primitive about her outburst.
“You’re just as cosy as an iceburg, Jerry,” she said, even simulating a small shiver. “You seem to forget all about that night—you know—about us being together at Hilo, and how you loved me then. Oh, my Gawd!” she ended in a lamentation of moist bitterness. “It shows you can’t believe a word a man says to you, and I just think I’ll go and commit suicide!” After which she seemed to feel almost cheerful.
And then—then something most unexpected happened!
Just as she was saying, with a weak little resigned sigh,that she’d have to be getting aboard, a dapper man in a check suit came up and tipped his hat.
Lili brightened amazingly. Her manner grew excited and gracious. She began beaming.
“Oh, here you are now!” she laughed. “I was looking for you, and waiting till I didn’t dare wait any longer for fear of missing the boat. I want to introduce you to Mr. Stewart, an old friend of mine,” she went on cordially. And now she was beaming on them both. It was a situation!
The newcomer, whose name Jerome didn’t get exactly, shook hands, with some slight asperity, and began edging up toward Lili in a faintly proprietary way. All at once Jerome noticed that Lili’s wedding ring had mysteriously disappeared; and from that time on he grinned without ceasing until Lili and the new friend she’d picked up and the little prancing dog had moved off out of sight round the corner. Her friend was going on to Yokohama too. “On to Yokohama!”
“Can you beat it?” muttered Jerome.
And then, with just one brief sigh, he went about his own affairs.