A few more days passed. Early on the morrow all the stranded victims of
shipwreck would be aboard a steamer bound for Yokohama—all, that is,
except Miss Valentine, who by hook or by crook must reach Cape Town,
and for whom a circuitous passage had been booked, after much dickering
and consultation. Mr. Curry was taking his songbirds sadly back to San
Francisco, where the little company would disband—not without tears,
surely, when the time came. Indeed, already there had been tears. And,
with the terrors of shipwreck still so fresh in their minds, the loyal
songbirds had got together and drafted a declaration pledging themselves
to stand by the impresario through all the arduous hardships of a slow
reorganization, if he would but say the word. The comedian made a
humorous speech. His voice broke in the midst of it, and then he hurried
on more humorously than ever. Curry was deeply touched. He said he felt
unworthy of such devotion. And then he told them that since he’d lost
everything else, he couldn’t ask them to stand by any longer. It wouldn’t
be fair to them. He must let them go, each his own way. It wrung his
heart, but he must let his songbirds go. However, he would help them all
he could; and if ever fortune smiled upon him again, he would call them
back, even though they might be scattered to the very ends of the earth!
Jerome, on this last evening in Borneo, left the place where he was
lodging and strolled along the waterfront, musing and trying to map
his life. After an hour or so with his pipe as sole companion, and his
thoughts roaming far, he turned back, deciding to go to bed early,
since it would be necessary to rise at dawn. He still felt that vague
loathness to begin the homeward voyage which had more or less bothered
him ever since the disaster at sea. It would be sweet to see his own
people once more; yet he dreaded lest returning to the haunts of his
long obscurity might mean but the beginning of a slump which, however
gradually, would thrust him back again into the same position whence he
had so miraculously risen. Of course Jerome knew perfectly well that he
was his own master, and that, in the highest sense, his future would be
just exactly what he chose to make it. Nevertheless, as he had pointed
out to Elsa in whimsical vein, Borneo was out in the world, whereas San
Francisco wasn’t.
“That’s it,” he muttered, “it’s adventure and life and hustle and bustle
and even danger I’ve come to require. I can’t get along without these
things now I’ve had a real taste of them. I’ve simply got to go on and
on!”
The germ of seeing things happen, and of being himself in the thick of
heavy action, had penetrated into his corpuscles—kept racing through his
arteries like possessed. He was in a state of intoxicated revolution,
underneath his new exterior of worldly poise. Obscurity had been
overthrown with violence; it had been assailed, cast down, trampled
upon; it was extinct. But Jerome, for all his emancipation, was vaguely
fearful of ghosts.
Ventures such as this of Xenophon Curry’s didn’t, he knew, bloom on every
bush along one’s way. And rumination had drawn him into a mood sober and
regretful by the time he reached the house where his bed was: a frame
of mind tending wonderfully to augment the thrill of surprise which
accompanied a sight of Captain Utterbourne’s Chinese boy awaiting his
return with a note.
Jerome took the note, opened it, read it through rapidly. He could feel
his heart thumping. The communication bespoke his immediate presence
aboard the _Star of Troy_ by way of answer. The boy smiled with all
his white young teeth, and, in gentle sing-song English, admitted the
matter must be urgent, since his instructions were to wait all night if
necessary, and to bring back with him no answer but “Misser Stoot.”
What could it mean? Somehow Jerome kept remembering how peculiarly Elsa
had gazed at him when she said: “True, what else could you do?” As a
matter of fact, he had once thought of speaking to Captain Utterbourne
about an opening of some sort; but the opportunity hadn’t just seemed
to develop. Here, as though determined he should be kept vividly in the
swim, fate submitted an eleventh hour opportunity. Did it amount to that?
He followed his oriental guide eagerly.