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.
[87]
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[88] 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[89] 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!”