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!