I
The marriage of Jerome and Lili naturally caused quite a bit of romantic stir among the members of Xenophon Curry’s little troupe. A very hilarious party was given to celebrate the event, at which the happy bride and bridegroom were toasted, and after which (for all this occurred just on the eve of departure from Tahiti) they were sent down to the Skipping Goone in a species of hack, much festooned with ribbon and old shoes, and spattered with rice.
Jerome felt the confusion of his curious position rather keenly; but Lili appeared to fall in with the whole idea easily enough. She enjoyed the send-off almost as much as though it had been legitimate. Indeed, she had nearly all the sensations of a legitimate bride. It was wonderful to be able to find so agreeable and so entire a solution for her problem!
From Tahiti the course of the Skipping Goone lay southwest, and the next stopping point in the world tour was New Zealand, where, in the words of the comedian, a prosperous fall season was “had by all.” New Zealand became ardent in its endorsement of Xenophon Curry and his aggregation of songbirds. But this endorsement was, in turn, entirely outdone by that heaped up by Australia, where the company left its “private yacht,” as they liked to call it, and went on tour.
This carried them through the winter, and even into the spring, for the tour was a little prolonged.
Lili dreaded the coming of her baby—dreaded it enormously. Lili didn’t want any children; she looked upon the ordeal with horror. Her mood was increasingly difficult to meet as the months dragged on; and the brunt of this meeting was borne by Jerome.
After the supreme night in Hawaii, his feeling for Lili had begun to grow complex. The scene in the hotel in Tahiti, again, had introduced new values into the picture. And then—well, his marriage was not proving altogether a bed of roses. No, it wasn’t. He could not deceive himself. Almost from the beginning he had felt that it wasn’t going to be a bed of roses. Yet how little he had foreseen such unhappy developments as these back in San Francisco, when, so callow and so lonely, he had first fallen under the fatal charm of her beaming eyes!
Just after leaving Tahiti, it is true, they passed a few almost happy weeks together, Lili being able so far to forget herself and her own troubles a part of the time at least as to accord Jerome all the affection even he could desire. On her side, of course, it was affection subtly touched with gratitude; but he responded to it eagerly, and made the most of this fleeting sense of married felicity—even tried to assure himself it was somehow a condition that might be brought to endurance, despite all the unfortunate circumstances.
But more and more surely, as the weeks went by, he knew that their marriage was but a word scrawled upon the sand when the tide was low. He wasn’t wedded to Lili in any lasting sense. He was, indeed, merely saving her from an unpleasant experience. At length Jerome came to look upon what he had done as a sheer act of duty—and an act which, despite his own abiding sense of responsibility, grew slyly irksome.
Lili revealed herself to him during these months at sea and in New Zealand, and especially in Australia, when she became wrapped up in her own mantle of brooding and petulance and terror, as a being almost entirely devoid of any real sympathy. Utterly shallow, he told himself. Utterly selfish.
Of course Jerome didn’t begin to appreciate the unhappiness of her condition. He didn’t know anything about such things, and only saw stark qualities. In spite of rallying efforts, his feeling for her cooled and cooled, till at length there was little sentiment of any sort left. He even developed latent subtleties in the way of avoiding her, and finally assured himself it was a matter of profound thanksgiving that their marriage wasn’t real, but only a word in the sand.
Yet he wondered, sometimes, too, whether they might have been happier together if there had been a license, and if he had bought the wedding ring.... For he had loved her once, very extravagantly, and it bewildered him when he asked himself where his love for her had gone—what had happened to it.
Well, here were more “supreme emotions” to grapple with, certainly.
Almost nothing notable had befallen him, he always felt, during his existence previous to this amazing year; but once the era of notable experiences set in, each seemed to make in him a permanent and reorganizing difference. Jerome did a lot of thinking these days. His adventures were coming more and more to stand for elemental phases of human relationship. He thought about Lili and his feeling for Lili; thought about his strange and fugitive dip into matrimony; saw his brief first happiness grow tarnished. When their baby was born, what then? Would they go on living together like this all the rest of their lives? A child would mean a new responsibility—another obligation that couldn’t be dodged....
“I guess I’m in for it,” he muttered, with real, disillusioned grimness. Yes—very darkly in for it. And this was what had come of his unshakable desire for—a hearth and kiddies.
Sometimes his consciousness of the dilemma attained rather acute poignancy, and seemed on occasions, often trifling enough, to dramatize itself—each repetition widening the gulf a little. One night they had quarrelled, and she had pouted and wept; then, all at once she had fallen asleep.
He watched her as she lay, undried tears on her cheeks. Her eyelids were dropped like perfectly blank curtains, robbing the face of its most essential expression. There was a relaxed, earthy quality about the moulding of all the features, such as even the most spiritual faces sometimes show in sleep. As Jerome stood looking down at her, he was afflicted in a breath with compassion and disgust. Poor Lili looked so utterly and helplessly common: how had he ever deceived himself to the extent of fancying he really loved her? He remembered now with merely a feeling of cold repugnance how naïvely he had begged her, in the old days, to marry him. He judged and condemned himself, it is true, from the standpoint of a subsequent development; but this was a nicety which didn’t now enter into his scope of vision. Jerome blamed Lili, but he also blamed himself; and it was with entire frankness he realized his feeling for this woman, nominally his wife, was a feeling of steadily entrenching distaste.
What a strange and tragic predicament to have wriggled into!
II
However, when the baby finally came, a new and very wonderful experience developed for Jerome.
He had spent little thought beforehand on what it would seem like to find himself a father. Now the fact rushed upon him and unexpectedly overwhelmed him with its grandeur.
Jerome was a father!
Yes, the great miracle had happened to him. He was a father. There was a baby boy, and the boy was his son. He hadn’t realized what it would be like to have a son. Now he knew, and the knowledge thrilled him—deeply. Jerome remembered how the clerk from the tackle store had exulted in his superb technique of casting, and how the fellow who sold typewriters had talked about his great dream, architecture; and he thought: “How very, very little all these things are compared with having a son!” These things, only because he happened to think of them, and all things like them on which men set their hearts. Even love. Yes, he thought, even love was not quite in a class with having a son. Love had come to him twice and failed. He was through with it now. He had loved Stella; she had thrown him down and married another man (how far away all that seemed!); then he had loved Lili, and had come gradually to love her no longer. But he was the father of Lili’s child.
He had a little son—and that, he told himself, was something that would last! He had given up so much; but having a son seemed to recompense for everything.
And indeed, for a time the child seemed to be drawing Jerome and Lili a little together again. Lili had hated her baby before it came; now she had it she responded to the appeal of the little new life also. She had her glimmerings: dim, errant aspirations toward something better in life than she had known. Being a mother awakened what was finest. When he saw the baby at her breast, Jerome looked down at Lili with hopeful eyes. She had failed to hold his love, but she was the baby’s mother; and love itself, he dimly felt, might steal back somehow as time went on....
All these mighty and often quite overpowering emotions transpired during the first two weeks of his august fatherhood. When Jerome had been a father two weeks, he, together with Lili and the baby and Xenophon Curry’s entire troupe of songbirds, bade farewell to Melbourne and travelled back to Sydney, the port where the first Australian engagement had been played, and from which they were to embark.
It really was a joy to see the dear old Skipping Goone once more. Some of the salutations of affection were perhaps just touched with satire; but upon the whole the troupers had settled into a state of romantic enthusiasm over this novel style of beating about the world. Even Captain Bearman, though he could scarcely be termed a popular favourite, was made the recipient of cherry smiles and waves and nods. The Skipping Goone’s master had voyaged to New Zealand and back twice with mixed cargoes. Now they were off to New Guinea (merely a cargo call); and then would come Manila.
III
Lili’s baby was the center of an enormous manifestation of interest. Xenophon Curry was simply wild, and wanted to do all sorts of reckless things with it from the very first. Indeed, the impresario took such a violent and paternal interest in the youngster that an outsider suddenly coming upon a characteristic tableau would decide at once that the man with the gay rings and the black toupee must be the baby’s father—or at the very least its grandfather. One would scarcely think, at first glance, of connecting Jerome with any phase of immediate ownership. It only showed in his eyes. If he took the baby up in his arms (which wasn’t very often) he held it so awkwardly as to make every one laugh.
The tiny boy became the company mascot. “They say a little baby often brings good luck,” observed the superstitious impresario, his honest black eyes very shiny and serious.
And naturally, if the baby was to be the company mascot, everybody in the company wanted to have a hand in the baby’s affairs. All the women who knew how to handle a needle at all began sewing every conceivable article of wardrobe which could possibly fit an infant’s needs. No mother was ever before so favoured!
Of course some of the garments turned out to be a little queer, because opera singers aren’t necessarily authorities on baby’s clothes. But a great deal of genuine affection and good will was sewed into them—even the queerest.
The mascot was petted and pampered like a poodle. Its host of admirers took turns holding it and walking with it and talking baby-talk to it. In short, the mascot was treated like a little king.
Naturally the parents were very proud. As for Lili, she could never get over this most prodigious novelty. “I just can’t believe it’s mine!” she would exclaim. Jerome felt much the same way; yet when he voiced the sentiment, Lili, remembering that wretched little soldier in Honolulu, would always look vaguely guilty. How did she know, after all, whether the baby did belong to Jerome too?
However, of course no such dark uncertainties bothered Jerome. His marriage could hardly be called better than a failure. But at least, to him, this little son was a success.
He liked to drop down beside the cradle, his hands pressed together between his knees, and just look. He couldn’t get enough of just gazing, without saying anything at all. Sometimes Lili would make fun of his silent devotion; she took the baby a great deal more sensibly than Jerome did.
And yet, however sensibly, it was rather a fortunate thing that there were so many eager and competing hands always ready to relieve her of the burden of care; otherwise, it is to be feared, the happy and beaming mother would too often have felt bored and miserable, being so much tied down. Dear Lili, though she really loved the baby, in her own happy-go-lucky way, was never cut out to be a mother.