Flora, full of her new theme, went straight to her brother about it
that very evening. “Oh, Chris—such an interesting _impresario_—clear
around the world in a schooner: the _Skimming Duckie_, or something like
that—quite daring and _original_”—it was just a little breathless and
sketchy at first. But her brother bantered, in his freezing way: “You
make it all crystal clear, Flora. A schooner?” And then he shouted. He
did not laugh, he shouted. It was a little uncouth; but the Captain
liked to be a little uncouth sometimes. It helped him with the sea
captain atmosphere, which, after all, as has been suggested, wasn’t quite
a native emanation. Utterbourne had perhaps out of sheer perversity
taken to the sea, and made a success of it; yet he had a meditative,
quizzical trend of mind, and leaned a little to hesitancies, a great
deal to analysis. He was an enigma of the first water; yet to those who
knew him best it sometimes seemed as though he possessed the heart of a
mystic—almost of a poet.
“Oh, well,” was the upshot of the talk, “if you like. I’m busy—h’m?
But tell him to phone in for an appointment.” The tone was one of cold
generosity, which never failed more or less to frighten the listener—a
stab of formality that not even his own sister could hope to escape.
But she didn’t mind in the least, even though she may have been a little
frightened. She just arched her fine brows gratefully and said: “Thank
you so _much_, Chris! You’ll _never_ regret it, I _know_, and he’s really
quite _celebrated_, in a way—though I presume the ‘world tour’ will
add a great deal to his _fame_!” And her hand rested a moment upon her
brother’s responseless arm.
Well, in no time at all the excited impresario was phoning for an
appointment. Then he called at the smoky offices of the Hyde Packet
company, which he brightened enormously with his glowing, optimistic
enthusiasm. Utterbourne, from the first, of course, looked upon Flora’s
new friend as a figure of comedy; nevertheless it only showed a little in
the quivering of his lips; and he knew of a skipper, he said—a Captain
Bearman—who might be prevailed upon to take hold, in case he happened to
be without a ship just now.
Luck was kind. Captain Bearman was very much without a ship, and, in
his own rather acid fashion, seized almost avidly upon the opportunity
at hand. His fashion, it developed, was full of snarls and shrouded in
a rind of perpetual crustiness. But he was an authentic sea captain,
notwithstanding, and the impresario rejoiced over him ardently.
A little dinner was arranged at the Pavillon d’Orient—an Armenian resort
famous for its skewered meats and imported cheeses. Utterbourne actually
came himself, and brought Bearman along; while, out of the warm abundance
of his generosity the impresario invited a certain young clerk of his
acquaintance. (“He’s got such a shut-in, humdrum look.”) And there was
champagne, which more or less went to the clerk’s head, and made him
feel, for the time-being, a person of considerable consequence.
Naturally Utterbourne talked of everything under the sun except the
subject that had brought them together. He spoke poisingly of fate and
art and habit and flayed immortality within an inch of its life and said
“H’m?” a great many times and hummed _To a Wild Rose_. And when, later
on, Curry referred to the merchandise which the _Skipping Goone_ would
carry by way of defraying expenses as a “sideline,” then Utterbourne
drawled over his shish kébab: “It’s to be presumed we all have our
sidelines, of one sort and another—h’m? With some it’s gambling, with
others art, literature, some branch of scientific research—h’m? With most
of us, perhaps, it’s just women”—more sea captain atmosphere.
But Curry staunchly defended his sideline—said it had come to him in
Oshkosh while he was directing the last act of the _Gondoliers_ one
night—really an inspiration, nothing short of that! And Utterbourne
said “Yes,” while the other captain, out of a flaming profusion of
auburn whiskers, echoed it: “Er—yes,” with a most curious, quick little
side-glance of his narrow green eyes, which somehow instantly set him
down as a satellite.
Captain Bearman was big and bluff-looking, with the sea quite oozing from
his whole personality; there was even a little gold braid, and, in spite
of some rather doubtful cuffs, he looked like an admiral; yet for all
that it was only too plain he fawned on Captain Utterbourne—and fawned
very acutely. He couldn’t seem to be obsequious and echoing enough—it was
rather baffling. He would always echo: “Er—yes,” or “Er—no,” as the case
might be, and ordered all the dishes the other captain ordered, and, in
brief, took the cue from him in everything.
At first Utterbourne by no means went out of his way to avoid conveying
the impression that the project of the _Skipping Goone_ was unseaworthy;
and Captain Bearman, simply because he possessed what the psychologists
call an “inferiority complex,” and though it might mean a lapsing of
his present opportunity, made his embittered lips curl in sympathetic
disdain. But as the impresario climbed to higher and ever higher
levels of honest zeal, gradually Utterbourne thawed somewhat, leaning
negligently back, his knife prying about the base of his goblet, often
rather gravely menacing its equilibrium; and at once, of course, the
other captain began to thaw too. From that time on the prospects were
ever so much better.
Of course Xenophon Curry was an enthusiast, and of course the champagne
had made him exhort a good deal about the supreme virtue of his songbirds
(“It’s not that they’ve all got million dollar voices, for I can’t keep
that kind; but they’ve all got million dollar hearts!”) And of course he
talked a little wildly about his great dream—New York and the capitals of
Europe.... Yet the serene and glacial Captain Utterbourne felt in spite
of himself a little touched, and merely thought it expedient at last to
observe, his voice slipping out between reluctant lips like a thin ribbon
of lazy ice: “You must take care, Mr. Curry—h’m?—not to let a possible
material success ... I mean,” he cleared his throat with faint petulance,
“you mustn’t let your sideline turn you into a rival of ours rather than
of Gatti Cassazza’s.”
It was finally settled, and Bearman became the master of the _Skipping
Goone_, and the radiant impresario, as he hailed a taxi for the entire
party by way of ending the evening in a blaze of style, cried: “The
schooner will turn the trick—you’ll see!”
In a word, it was nothing short of a triumph.