And then she had to hurry away, which really left them about where they had begun, so far as their curious little lagging love affair went.
II
But he made another determined effort under the romantic influence of Flora Utterbourne’s garden tea-party. The tea was strong and dreamy. He made Lili stroll off with him onto the beach, though she wanted to stay and enjoy every moment of what seemed to her a function of the highest social prestige. And he kissed her, behind a friendly palm tree, and begged her once more to marry him, but she wouldn’t be serious, and kept singing and making eyes in the most tempting yet at the same time exasperating way, and sometimes she said, “Boo-o-o!”
Try as he might, Jerome couldn’t seem to arrive anywhere with Lili, even though she did admit she was desperately in love with him: she always proclaimed the heartening fact loudly and brazenly—didn’t care at all who knew it—was candidness itself. Well, the combination was beyond Jerome, and it humiliated him; it made his ego squirm. There seemed to be a hoo-doo at work somewhere.
He brooded over his troubles of the heart. The same thing seemed happening that had happened before, though with the notable exception that whereas Stella had simply ceased to love him and had married another man, Lili went right on loving him—she admitted it! She was pretty deep.
And she seemed—yes, he glimpsed the fact indistinctly—she seemed to be having certain flirtations on the side, which darkened the issue considerably. There was a soldier he had seen her with one day—a mere little shrimp in khaki, on duty here in Honolulu. It troubled him greatly, and he reproached her with it afterward; and she beamed on him and evaded the point, even cried a little, and made him end by feeling abject and penitent. Upon the whole, Jerome appeared doomed.
However, all this made no particular stir in the great world. The tea-party went right ahead. The songbirds were all having a beautiful time, and the coloratura, Miss Valentine, thrilling still over her Honolulu notices, walked about haughtily, not seeing any one at all, and holding her teacup with a poise which would have thrown Galesburg (whence she had been rescued from a career of choir-singing nonentity) into a spasm of amazement and envy. She talked with a mysteriously acquired “eastern” accent, almost never forgetting that the letter r did not legitimately belong in the alphabet.
Small tables were set out under an awning: you could sit with your tea or stroll with your tea, just as you chose. The hostess poured the tea and smiled in her unflagging way, conversing steadily; the river flowed cordially on, its rhythm unflecked by churning millwheel or breaking rapids: a deep and gracious river, quiet and gliding, yet sunny, too, and always singularly fresh and aglow with enthusiasm.
There was one distinguished guest who hadn’t been invited, and whose calm, sauntering arrival upon the scene created a genuine little sensation. This was Captain Utterbourne, whose Star of Troy had slipped into the harbour like a clever grey mouse. He was on his way back from somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Attired in cool flannels, he sat taking in the mixed picture which kept constantly breaking into new composition against the plush of the lawn and the blue of the sea. His eyes were amused, yet otherwise inexpressive.
Flora was enthroned like a very queen behind a comfortable big yellow teapot, with her enigmatic brother on one side and the impresario on the other. Mr. Curry looked about him dreamily, while a sense of peace seemed creeping into his heart. It was amazing that a place like this should have so utterly settled an appearance. It had been a mere empty house, and she had come and waved a wand or something, and lo! you would say she had always lived here. In a little while she would be gone—vanished; there would be strangers. So it went with her.