When the fun was at its height, Curry waved a gem-encrusted hand, gave his songbirds a departing smile, and removed himself to a distant corner of the restaurant where he could spread out all those “dreadful lists and things” which Captain Bearman insisted must be checked up. His retreat was deplored by a prodigious groan, and impulsively covered by Lili, who chased after him with a slopping goblet of wine and a depleted plate of sandwiches. “So you won’t starve to death, old dear!” And she flung her arms spontaneously round his neck before returning to beam upon her clerk.
“You’d think it ought to be an easy thing to run a schooner,” Curry smiled up wanly at M. Girardin, who had strolled over from his little cash booth in a relaxed mood. “But Lord! there’s been nothing but trouble from the word go!” Captain Bearman was turning out to be a master full of whines and unforeseen exactions. There had been endless fault to find with the Shipping Goone. “What a vessel! Sails rotten, hull rotten! Rudder in the last stages!” Apparently there was nothing quite right about the poor old Skipping Goone, of which the impresario had been so proud, except perhaps the new coat of paint—and even the colour of that had been grumblingly objected to as unnautical. “And then,” Girardin was told, “the cargo!”
“But mon dieu, do you intend to handle it all yourself? Have you no business manager, par example?”
“Well, perhaps not in the strict sense,” admitted Mr. Curry in his petitioning, confidential way. “There’s a sort of treasurer—you see that man just waving the bottle? But he just handles the box office receipts. Then I’ve got a kind of assistant, too, who’s supposed to do things; but he’s been so crazy to go on the stage that I’ve had to let him sing in the chorus, and that seems to make him not much good for anything else.”
An unusual amount of commotion on the other side of the restaurant made them look across. Most of the troupers had had sense, but a few were in a very mellow condition—notably Jerome, who wasn’t used to stimulants and so reacted to them with awful completeness. The songbirds were grouped in a crowding and boisterous circle. One of the men was whistling a jig tune, and several were clapping their hands in syncopated time, while in the centre, very much flushed and largely unable to keep his balance, was Jerome, doing the sailor’s hornpipe.
IV
In the cold grey dawn of the great sailing day, shadowy figures began going aboard the Skipping Goone. The city delivered them up. Then gradually the city awoke, and the waterfront went about its usual occupations.
As morning advanced, the Skipping Goone became a setting for some of the wildest scenes in the history of opera in America. Red-eyed sopranos were bumped by stevedores; a stout lady whose forte was contralto matrons, went madly about in search of a trunk. Sailors were puttering, while Captain Bearman croaked out sullen orders through his beautiful flaming whiskers. Finally, the lord of all commotion, Xenophon Curry, who was sure, yes desperately and perspiringly sure, half the important things had been forgotten.
And of course Flora Utterbourne was on hand to see them off. She walked right aboard the Skipping Goone, her face smilingly full of every good wish for the impresario as she stood beside him on deck conversing with unbroken animation, yet always in that fluid, gliding manner which he knew so well now. Yes, Flora in her speech flowed on like a gracious river. And there was just a faint sadness behind her frank gaze, which meant that this departure was going to leave an unexpected emptiness. However, if there was sadness in her gaze, there was sadness also in the impresario’s. Xenophon Curry, though borne up by unquenchable optimism, realized that it was going to be surprisingly hard to say good-bye—maybe for years or a lifetime—to the lady who had asked him the way to Crawl Hill.