diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-8.txt | 21901 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-8.zip | bin | 0 -> 444459 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 1094991 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/15384-h.htm | 22460 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_1.png | bin | 0 -> 62676 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_2.png | bin | 0 -> 46374 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_3.png | bin | 0 -> 100089 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_4.png | bin | 0 -> 81205 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_5.png | bin | 0 -> 58189 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_6.png | bin | 0 -> 70352 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_7.png | bin | 0 -> 61722 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_8.png | bin | 0 -> 69998 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384-h/images/Illus_9.png | bin | 0 -> 93642 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384.txt | 21901 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 15384.zip | bin | 0 -> 444408 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 |
18 files changed, 66278 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/15384-8.txt b/15384-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ae43cf5 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21901 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Real Adventure, by Henry Kitchell +Webster, Illustrated by R. M. Crosby + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Real Adventure + +Author: Henry Kitchell Webster + +Release Date: March 16, 2005 [eBook #15384] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL ADVENTURE*** + + +E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Gene Smethers, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 15384-h.htm or 15384-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15384/15384-h/15384-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15384/15384-h.zip) + + + + + +THE REAL ADVENTURE + +A Novel + +by + +HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER + +Illustrated by R.M. Crosby + +Indianapolis +The Bobbs-Merrill Company +Publishers +Serial Version 1915 +The Ridgway Company +Press of Braunworth & Co. +Bookbinders and Printers +Brooklyn, N.Y. + +1916 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "We can't talk here," he said. "We must go elsewhere."] + + + + +CONTENTS + +BOOK I + +THE GREAT ILLUSION + +CHAPTER + + I A Point of Departure + II Beginning an Adventure + III Frederica's Plan and What Happened to It + IV Rosalind Stanton Doesn't Disappear + V The Second Encounter + VI The Big Horse + VII How It Struck Portia + VIII Rodney's Experiment + IX After Breakfast + + +BOOK II + +LOVE AND THE WORLD + + I The Princess Cinderella + II The First Question and an Answer to It + III Where Did Rose Come In + IV Long Circuits and Short + V Rodney Smiled + VI The Damascus Road + VII How the Pattern Was Cut + VIII A Birthday + IX A Defeat + X The Door That Was to Open + XI An Illustration + XII What Harriet Did + XIII Fate Plays a Joke + XIV The Dam Gives Way + XV The Only Remedy + XVI Rose Opens the Door + + +BOOK III + +THE WORLD ALONE + + I The Length of a Thousand Yards + II The Evening and the Morning Were the First Day + III Rose Keeps the Path + IV The Girl With the Bad Voice + V Mrs. Goldsmith's Taste + VI A Business Proposition + VII The End of a Fixed Idea + VIII Success--and a Recognition + IX The Man and the Director + X The Voice of the World + XI The Short Circuit Again + XII "I'm All Alone" + XIII Frederica's Paradox + XIV The Miry Way + XV In Flight + XVI Anti-Climax + XVII The End of the Tour +XVIII The Conquest of Centropolis + + +BOOK IV + +THE REAL ADVENTURE + + I The Tune Changes + II A Broken Parallel + III Friends + IV Couleur-de-rose + V The Beginning + + + + + +BOOK ONE + +The Great Illusion + + + +CHAPTER I + +A POINT OF DEPARTURE + + +"Indeed," continued the professor, glancing demurely down at his notes, +"if one were the editor of a column of--er advice to young girls, such +as I believe is to be found, along with the household hints and the +dress patterns, on the ladies' page of most of our newspapers--if one +were the editor of such a column, he might crystallize the remarks I +have been making this morning into a warning--never marry a man with a +passion for principles." + +It drew a laugh, of course. Professorial jokes never miss fire. But +_the_ girl didn't laugh. She came to with a start--she had been staring +out the window--and wrote, apparently, the fool thing down in her +note-book. It was the only note she had made in thirty-five minutes. + +All of his brilliant exposition of the paradox of Rousseau and +Robespierre (he was giving a course on the French Revolution), the +strange and yet inevitable fact that the softest, most sentimental, +rose-scented religion ever invented, should have produced, through its +most thoroughly infatuated disciple, the ghastliest reign of terror that +ever shocked the world; his masterly character study of the "sea-green +incorruptible," too humane to swat a fly, yet capable of sending half of +France to the guillotine in order that the half that was left might +believe unanimously in the rights of man; all this the girl had let go +by unheard, in favor, apparently, of the drone of a street piano, which +came in through the open window on the prematurely warm March wind. Of +all his philosophizing, there was not a pen-track to mar the virginity +of the page she had opened her note-book to when the lecture began. + +And then, with a perfectly serious face, she had written down his silly +little joke about advice to young girls. + +There was no reason in the world why she should be The Girl. There were +fifteen or twenty of them in the class along with about as many men. +And, partly because there was no reason for his paying any special +attention to her, it annoyed him frightfully that he did. + +She was good-looking, of course--a rather boyishly splendid young +creature of somewhere about twenty, with a heap of hair that had, in +spite of its rather commonplace chestnut color, a sort of electric +vitality about it. She was slightly prognathous, which gave a humorous +lift to her otherwise sensible nose. She had good straight-looking, +expressive eyes, too, and a big, wide, really beautiful mouth, with +square white teeth in it, which, when she smiled or yawned--and she +yawned more luxuriously than any girl who had ever sat in his +classes--exerted a sort of hypnotic effect on him. All that, however, +left unexplained the quality she had of making you, whatever she did, +irresistibly aware of her. And, conversely, unaware of every one else +about her. A bit of campus slang occurred to him as quite literally +applicable to her. She had all the rest of them faded. + +It wasn't, apparently, an effect she tried for. He had to acquit her of +that. Not even, perhaps, one that she was conscious of. When she came +early to one of his lectures--it didn't happen often--the men, showed a +practical unanimity in trying to choose seats near by, or at least where +they could see her. But while this didn't distress her at all--they were +welcome to look if they liked--she struck no attitudes for their +benefit. A sort of breezy indifference--he selected that phrase finally +as the best description of her attitude toward all of them, including +himself. When she was late, as she usually was, she slid +unostentatiously into the back row--if possible at the end where she +could look out the window. But for three minutes after she had come in, +he knew he might as well have stopped his lecture and begun reciting the +Greek alphabet. She was, in the professor's mind, the final argument +against coeducation. Her name was Rosalind Stanton, but his impression +was that they called her Rose. + +The bell rang out in the corridor. He dismissed the class and began +stacking up his notes. Then: + +"Miss Stanton," he said. + +She detached herself from the stream that was moving toward the door, +and with a good-humored look of inquiry about her very expressive +eyebrows, came toward him. And then he wished he hadn't called her. She +had spoiled his lecture--a perfectly good lecture--and his impulse had +been to remonstrate with her. But the moment he saw her coming, he knew +he wasn't going to be able to do it. It wasn't her fault that her teeth +had hypnotized him, and her hair tangled his ideas. + +"This is an idiotic question," he said, as she paused before his desk, +"but did you get anything at all out of my lecture except my bit of +facetious advice to young girls about to marry?" + +She flushed a little (a girl like that hadn't any right to flush; it +ought to be against the college regulations), drew her brows together in +a puzzled sort of way, and then, with her wide, boyish, good-humored +mouth, she smiled. + +"I didn't know it was facetious," she said. "It struck me as pretty +good. But--I'm awfully sorry if you thought me inattentive. You see, +mother brought us all up on the Social Contract and The Age of Reason, +things like that, and I didn't put it down because ..." + +"I see," he said. "I beg your pardon." + +She smiled, cheerfully begged his and assured him she'd try to do +better. + +Another girl who'd been waiting to speak to the professor, perceiving +that their conversation was at an end, came and stood beside her at the +desk--a scrawny girl with an eager voice, and a question she wanted to +ask about Robespierre; and for some reason or other, Rosalind Stanton's +valedictory smile seemed to include a consciousness of this other +girl--a consciousness of a contrast. It might not have been any more +than that, but somehow, it left the professor feeling that he had given +himself away. + +He was particularly polite to the other girl, because his impulse was to +act so very differently. + +There is nothing cloistral about the University of Chicago except its +architecture. The presence of a fat abbot, or a lady prioress in the +corridor outside the recitation room would have fitted in admirably with +the look of the warm gray walls and the carven pointed arches of the +window and door casements, the blackened oak of the doors themselves. + +On the other hand, the appearance of the person whom Rose found waiting +for her out there, afforded the piquant effect of contrast. Or would +have done so, had the spectacle of him in that very occupation not been +so familiar. + +He was a varsity half-back, a gigantic blond young man in a blue serge +suit. He said, "Hello, Rose," and she said, "Hello, Harry." And he +heaved himself erect from the wall he had been leaning against and +reached out an immense hand to absorb the little stack of note-books she +carried. She ignored the gesture, and when he asked for them said she'd +carry them herself. There was a sort of strategic advantage in having +your own note-books under your own arm--a fact which no one appreciated +better than the half-back himself. + +He looked a little hurt. "Sore about something?" he asked. + +She smiled widely and said, "Not a bit." + +"I didn't mean at me necessarily," he explained, and referred to the +fact that the professor had detained her after he had dismissed the +class. "What'd he try to do--call you down?" + +There was indignation in the young man's voice--a hint of the protector +aroused--of possible retribution. + +She grinned again. "Oh, you needn't go back and kill him," she said. + +He blushed to the ears. "I'm sorry," he observed stiltedly, "if I appear +ridiculous." But she went on smiling. + +"Don't you care," she said. "Everybody's ridiculous in March. You're +ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he"--she nodded along the corridor--"he's +plumb ridiculous." + +He wasn't wholly appeased. It was rather with an air of resignation that +he held the door for her to go out by. They strolled along in silence +until they rounded the corner of the building. Here, ceremoniously, he +fell back, walked around behind her and came up on the outside. She +glanced up and asked him, incomprehensibly, to walk on the other side, +the way they had been. He wanted to know why. This was where he +belonged. + +"You don't belong there," she told him, "if I want you the other way. +And I do." + +He heaved a sigh, and said "Women!" under his breath. _Mutabile semper_! +No matter how much you knew about them, they remained incomprehensible. +Their whims passed explanation. He was getting downright sulky. + +As a matter of fact, he did her an injustice. There was a valid reason +for her wanting him to walk on the other side. What gave the appearance +of pure caprice to her request was just her womanly dislike of hurting +his feelings. There was a small boil on the left side of his neck and +when he walked at her left hand, it didn't show. + +"Oh, don't be fussy," she said. "It's such a dandy day." + +But the half-back refused to be comforted. And he was right about that. +A woman never tells you to cheer up in that brisk unfeeling way if she +really cares a cotton hat about your troubles. And a candid deliberate +self-examination would have convinced Rose that she didn't, in spite of +the sentimentally warm March wind that was blowing her hair about. She +was less moved by the half-back's sorrows this morning than at any time +during the last six months. She'd hardly have minded the boil before +to-day. + +Six months ago, he had been a very wonderful person to her. There had +been a succession of pleasant--of really thrilling discoveries. First, +that he'd rather dance with her than with any other girl in the +university. (You're not to forget that he was a celebrity. During the +football season, his name was on the sporting page of the Chicago papers +every day--generally in the head-lines when there was a game to write +about, and Walter Camp had devoted a whole paragraph to explaining why +he didn't put him on the first all-American eleven but on the second +instead--a gross injustice which she had bitterly resented.) + +There was a thrill, then, in the discovery that he liked her better than +other girls, and a greater thrill in the subsequent discovery that she +had become the basis of his whole orientation. It was her occupations +that left him leisure for his own; his leisure was hers to dispose of as +she liked; his energy, including his really prodigious physical prowess, +to be directed toward any object she thought laudable. Six months ago +she would not have laughed--not in that derisive way at least--at the +notion of his going back and beating up the professor. + +There had been a thrill, too, in their more sentimental passages. But at +this point, there developed a most perplexing phenomenon. The idea that +he wanted to make love to her, really moved and excited her; set her +imagination to exploring all sorts of roseate mysteries. The first time +he had ever held her hand--it was inside her muff, one icy December day +when he hadn't any gloves on--the memory of the feel of that big hand, +and of the timbre of his voice, left her starry-eyed with a new wonder. +She dreamed of other caresses; of wonderful things that he should say to +her and she should say to him. + +But here arose the perplexity. It was her imagination of the thing that +she enjoyed rather than the thing itself. The wonderful scenes that her +own mind projected never came true. The ones that happened were +disappointing--irritating, and eventually and unescapably, downright +disagreeable to her. There was no getting away from it, the ideal lover +of her dreams, whose tenderness and chivalry and devotion were so highly +desirable, although he might wear the half-back's clothes and bear his +face and name, was not the half-back. She might dote on his absence, but +his presence was another matter. + +The realization of this fact had been gradual. She wasn't fully +conscious of it, even on this March morning. But something had happened +this morning that made a difference. If she'd been ascending an +imperceptible gradient for the last three months, to-day she had come to +a recognizable step up and taken it. Oddly enough, the thing had +happened back there in the class-room as she stood before the +professor's desk and caught his eye wavering between herself and the +scrawny girl who wanted to ask a question about Robespierre. There had +been more than blank helpless exasperation in that look of his, and it +had taught her something. She couldn't have explained what. + +To the half-back she attributed it to the month of March. "You're +ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he's ridiculous." That was about as well as +she could put it. + +She and the half-back had walked about a hundred yards in silence. Now +they were arriving at a point where the path forked. + +"You're elegant company this morning, I must say," he commented +resentfully. + +Again she smiled. "I'm elegant company for myself," she said, and held +out her hand. "Which way do _you_ go?" she asked. + +A minute later she was swinging along alone, her shoulders back, +confronting the warm March wind, drawing into her good deep chest, long +breaths. She had just had, psychically speaking, a birthday. + +She played a wonderful game of basket-ball that afternoon. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +BEGINNING AN ADVENTURE + + +It was after five o'clock when, at the conclusion of the game and a cold +shower, a rub and a somewhat casual resumption of her clothes, she +emerged from the gymnasium. High time that she took the quickest way of +getting home, unless she wanted to be late for dinner. + +But the exhilaration of the day persisted. She felt like doing something +out of the regular routine. Even a preliminary walk of a mile or so +before she should cross over and take the elevated, would serve to +satisfy her mild hunger for adventure. And, really, she liked to be a +little late for dinner. It was always pleasanter to come breezing in +after things had come to a focus, than to idle about for half an hour in +that no-man's-land of the day, when the imminence of dinner made it +impossible to do anything but wait for it. + +So, with her note-books under her arm and her sweater-jacket unfastened, +at a good four-mile swing, she started north. In the purlieus of the +university she was frequently hailed by friends of her own sex or the +other. But though she waved cheerful responses to their greetings, she +made her stride purposeful enough to discourage offers of company. They +all seemed young to her to-day. All her student activities seemed young. +As if, somehow, she had outgrown them. The feeling was none the less +real after she had laughed at herself for entertaining it. + +She noticed presently that it was a good deal darker than it had any +right to be at this hour, and the sudden fall of the breeze and a +persistent shimmer of lightning supplied her with the explanation. When +she reached Forty-seventh Street, the break of the storm was obviously a +matter of minutes, so she decided to ride across to the elevated--it was +another mile, perhaps--rather than walk across as she had meant to do. +She didn't in the least mind getting wet, providing she could keep on +moving until she could change her clothes. But a ten-mile ride in the +elevated, with water squashing around in her boots and dripping out of +her hair, wasn't an alluring prospect. + +She found quite a group of people waiting on the corner for a car, and +the car itself, when it came along, was crowded. So she handed her +nickel to the conductor over somebody's shoulder, and moved back to the +corner of the vestibule. It was frightfully stuffy inside and most of +the newly received passengers seemed to agree with her that the platform +was a pleasanter place to stay; which did very well until the next stop, +where half a dozen more prospective passengers were waiting. They were +in a hurry, too, since it had begun in very downright fashion to rain. + +The conductor had been chanting, "Up in the car, please," in a +perfunctory cry all along. But at this crisis, his voice got a new +urgency. "Come on, now," he proclaimed, "you'll have to get inside!" + +From the step the new arrivals pushed, the conductor pushed, and finally +he was able to give the signal for starting the car. The obvious +necessity of making room for those who'd be waiting at the next corner, +kept him at the task of herding them inside and the sheep-like docility +of an American crowd helped him. + +Regretfully, with the rest, Rose made her way to the door. + +"Fare, please," he said sharply as she came along. + +She told him she had paid her fare, but for some reason, perhaps because +he was tired at the end of a long run, perhaps because he saw some one +else he suspected of being a spotter, he elected not to believe her. + +"When did you pay it?" he demanded. + +"A block back," she said, "when all those other people got on." + +"You didn't pay it to me," he said truculently. "Come along! Pay your +fare or get off the car." + +"I paid it once," she said quietly, "and I'm not going to pay it again." +With that she started forward toward the door. + +He reached out across his little rail and caught her by the arm. It was +a natural act enough--not polite, to be sure, by no means chivalrous. +Still, he probably put into his grip no more strength than he thought +necessary to prevent her walking by into the car. + +But it had a surprising result--a result that normally would not have +happened. Yet, on this particular day, it could not have happened +differently. It had been a red-letter day from the beginning, from no +assignable cause an exciting joyous day, and the thrill of the hard fast +game, the shower, the rub, the walk, had brought her up to what +engineers speak of as a "peak." + +Well, the conductor didn't know that. If he had, he would either have +let the girl go by, or have put a good deal more force into his attempt +to stop her. And the first thing he knew, he found both his wrists +pinned in the grip of her two hands; found himself staring stupidly into +a pair of great blazing blue eyes--it's a wrathful color, blue, when you +light it up--and listening uncomprehendingly to a voice that said, +"Don't dare touch me like that!" + +The episode might have ended right there, for the conductor's +consternation was complete. If she could have walked straight into the +car, he would not have pursued her. But her note-books were scattered +everywhere and had to be gathered up, and there were two or three of the +passengers who thought the situation was funny, and laughed, which did +not improve the conductor's temper. + +Rose was aware, as she gathered up her note-books, of another hand that +was helping her--a gloved masculine hand. She took the books it held out +to her as she straightened up, and said, "Thank you," but without +looking around for the face that went with it. The conductor's +intentions were still at the focal point of her mind. They were, +apparently, unaltered. He had jerked the bell while she was collecting +her note-books and the car was grinding down to a stop. + +"You pay your fare," he repeated, "or you get off the car right here." + +"Right here" was in the middle of what looked like a lake, and the rain +was pouring down with a roar. + +She didn't hesitate long, but before she could answer a voice spoke--a +voice which, with intuitive certainty, she associated with the gloved +hand that had helped gather up her note-books--a very crisp, finely +modulated voice. + +"That's perfectly outrageous," it said. "The young lady has paid her +fare." + +"Did you see her pay it?" demanded the conductor. + +"Naturally not," said the voice. "I got on at the last corner. She was +here then. But if she said she did, she did." + +It seemed to relieve the conductor to have some one of his own sex to +quarrel with. He delivered a stream of admonition somewhat sulphurously +phrased, to the general effect that any one whose concern the present +affair was not, could, at his option, close his jaw or have his block +knocked off. + +Rose hadn't, as yet, looked round at her champion. But she now became +aware that inside a shaggy gray sleeve which hung beside her, there was +a sudden tension of big muscles; the gloved hand that had helped gather +up her note-books, clenched itself into a formidable fist. The thought +of the sort of thud that fist might make against the over-active jaw of +the conductor was pleasant. Still, the thing mustn't be allowed to +happen. + +She spoke quickly and decisively. "I won't pay another fare, but of +course you may put me off the car." + +"All right," said the conductor. + +The girl smiled over the very gingerly way in which he reached out for +her elbow to guide her around the rail and toward the step. Technically, +the action constituted putting her off the car. She heard the crisp +voice once more, this time repeating a number, "twenty-two-naught-five," +or something like that, just as she splashed down into the two-inch lake +that covered the hollow in the pavement. The bell rang twice, the car +started with a jerk, there was another splash, and a big gray-clad +figure alighted in the lake beside her. + +"I've got his number," the crisp voice said triumphantly. + +"But," gasped the girl, "but what in the world did you get off the car +for?" + +It wasn't raining. It was doing an imitation of Niagara Falls, and the +roar of it almost drowned their voices. + +"What did I get off the car for!" he shouted. "Why, I wouldn't have +missed it for anything. It was immense! It's so confounded seldom," he +went on, "that you find anybody with backbone enough to stick up for a +principle ..." + +He heard a brief, deep-throated little laugh and pulled up short with a, +"What's the joke?" + +"I laughed," she said, "because you have been deceived." And she added +quickly, "I don't believe it's quite so deep on the sidewalk, is it?" +With that she waded away toward the curb. + +He followed, then led the way to a lee-wall that offered, comparatively +speaking, shelter. + +Then, "Where's the deception?" he asked. + +On any other day, it's probable she'd have acted differently; would have +paid some heed, though a bit contemptuously, perhaps, to the precepts of +ladylike behavior, in which she'd been admirably grounded. The case for +reticence and discretion was a strong one. The night was dark; the +rain-lashed street deserted; the man an utterly casual stranger--why, +she hadn't even had a straight look into his face. His motive in getting +off the car was at least dubitable. Even if not sinister, it could +easily be unpleasantly gallant. A man might not contemplate doing her +bodily harm, and still be capable of trying to collect some sort of +sentimental reward for the ducking he had submitted himself to. + +Her instinct rejected all that. The sound of his voice, the +general--atmosphere of him had been exactly right. And then, he'd left +undone the things he ought not to have done. He hadn't tried to take +hold of her arm as they had splashed along through the lake to the curb. +He hadn't exhibited any tenderly chivalrous concern over how wet she +was. And, to-day being to-day, she consigned ladylike considerations to +the inventor of them, and gave instinct its head. + +She laughed again as she answered his question. "The deception was that +I pretended to do it from principle. The real reason why I wouldn't pay +another fare, is because I had only one more nickel." + +"Good lord!" said the man. + +"And," she went on, "that nickel will pay my fare home on the elevated. +It's only about half a mile to the station, but from there home it's +ten. So you see I'd rather walk this than that." + +"But that's dreadful," he cried. "Isn't there ... Couldn't you let +me ..." + +"Oh," she said, "it isn't so bad as that. It's just one of the silly +things that happen to you sometimes, you know. I didn't have very much +money when I started, it being Friday. And then I paid my subscription +to _The Maroon_...." She didn't laugh audibly, but without seeing her +face, he knew she smiled, the quality of her voice enriching itself +somehow.... "And I ate a bigger lunch than usual, and that brought me +down to ten cents. I could have got more of course from anybody, but ten +cents, except for that conductor, would have been enough." + +"You will make a complaint about that, won't you?" he urged. "Even if it +wasn't on principle that you refused to pay another fare? And let me +back you up in it. I've his number, you know." + +"You deserve that, I suppose," she said, "because you did get off the +car on principle. But--well, really, unless we could prove that I did +pay my fare, by some other passenger, you know, they'd probably think +the conductor did exactly right. Of course he took hold of me, but that +was because I was going right by him. And then, think what I did to +him!" + +He grumbled that this was nonsense--the man had been guilty at least of +excessive zeal--but he didn't urge her, any further, to complain. + +"There's another car coming," he now announced, peering around the end +of the wall. "You will let me pay your fare on it, won't you?" + +She hesitated. The rain was thinning. "I would," she said, "if I +honestly wouldn't rather walk. I'm wet through now, and it'll be +pleasanter to--walk a little of it off than to squeeze into that car. +Thanks, really very, very much, though. Don't _you_ miss it." She thrust +out her hand. "Good-by!" + +"I can't pretend to think you need an escort to the elevated," he said. +"I saw what you did to the conductor. I haven't the least doubt you +could have thrown him off the car. But I'd--really like it very much if +you would let me walk along with you." + +"Why," she said, "of course! I'd like it too. Come along." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +FREDERICA'S PLAN AND WHAT HAPPENED TO IT + + +At twenty minutes after seven that evening, Frederica Whitney was about +as nearly dressed as she usually was ten minutes before the hour at +which she had invited guests to dinner--not quite near enough dressed to +prevent a feeling that she had to hurry. + +Ordinarily, though, she didn't mind. She'd been an acknowledged beauty +for ten years and the fact had ceased to be exciting. She took it rather +easily for granted, and knowing what she could do if she chose, didn't +distress herself over being lighted up, on occasions, to something a +good deal less than her full candle-power. To Frederica at thirty--or +thereabout--the job of being a radiantly delightful object of regard +lacked the sporting interest of uncertainty; was almost too simple a +matter to bother about. + +But to-night the tenseness of her movements and the faint trace of a +wire edge in the tone in which she addressed the maid, revealed the fact +that she wished she'd started half an hour earlier. Even her husband +discovered it. He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him +and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that +characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed +beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ten +minutes before his wife. + +She shot a glance of rueful inquiry at him--"Now what have _you_ come +fussing around for?" would be perhaps a fair interpretation of it--and +asked him what time it was, in the evident hope that the boudoir clock +on her dressing-table had deceived her. It had, but in the wrong +direction. + +"Seven twenty-two, thirty-six," he told her. It was a perfectly harmless +passion he had for minute divisions of time, but to-night it irritated +her. He might have spared her that thirty-six seconds. + +She made no comment except with her eyebrows, but he must have been +looking at her, for he wanted to know, good-humoredly, what all the +excitement was about. + +"You could go down as you are and not a man here to-night would know the +difference. And as for the women--well, if they have something on you +for once, they'll be all the better pleased." + +"Don't try to be knowing and philosophical, and--Havelock Ellish, +Martin, dear," she admonished him, pending a minute operation with an +infinitesimal hairpin. "It isn't your lay a bit. Just concentrate your +mind on one thing, and that's being nice to Hermione Woodruff...." + +She broke off for a long stare into her hand-glass; then finished, +casually, "... and on seeing that Roddy is." + +He asked, "Why Rodney?" in a tone that matched hers; looked at her, +widened his eyes, said "Huh!" to himself and, finally, shook his head. +"Nothing to it," he pronounced. + +She said, "Nothing to what?" but abandoned this position as untenable. +She despatched the maid with the key to the wall safe in her husband's +room. "Why isn't there?" she demanded. "Rodney won't look at young +girls. They bore him to death--and no wonder, because he freezes them +perfectly brittle with fright. But Hermione's really pretty intelligent. +She can understand fully half the things he talks about and she's clever +enough to pretend about the rest. She's got lots of tact and skill, +she's good-looking and young enough--no older than I and I'm two years +younger than Roddy. She'll appreciate a real husband, after having been +married five years to John Woodruff. And she's rich enough, now, so that +his wild-eyed way of practising law won't matter." + +"All very nice and reasonable," he conceded, "but somehow the notion of +Rodney Aldrich trying to marry a rich widow is one I'm not equal to +without a handicap of at least two cocktails." He looked at his watch +again. "By the way, didn't you say he was coming early?" + +She nodded. "That's what he told me this morning when I telephoned him +to remind him that it was to-night. He said he had something he wanted +to talk to me about. I knew I shouldn't have a minute, but I didn't say +so because I thought if he tried to get here early, he might miss being +late." + +They heard, just then, faint and far-away, the ring of the door-bell, at +which she cried, "Oh, dear! There's some one already." + +"Wait a second," he said. "Let's see if it's him." + +The paneled walls and ceiling of their hall were very efficient +sounding-boards and there was no mistaking the voice they heard speaking +the moment the door opened--a voice with a crisp ring to it that sounded +always younger than his years. What he said didn't matter, just a +cheerful greeting to the butler. But what they heard the butler say to +him was disconcerting. + +"You're terribly wet, sir." + +Frederica turned on her husband a look of despair. + +"He didn't come in a taxi! He's walked or something, through that rain! +Do run down and see what he's like. And if he's very bad, send him up to +me. I can imagine how he'll look." + +She was mistaken about that though. For once Frederica had overestimated +her powers, stimulated though they were by the way she heard her husband +say, "Good lord!" when the sight of his brother-in-law burst on him. + +"Praise heaven you can wear my clothes," she heard him add. "Run along +up-stairs and break yourself gently to Freddy." + +She heard him come squudging up the stairs and along the hall, and then +in her doorway she saw him. His baggy gray tweed suit was dark with the +water that saturated it. The lower part of his trousers-legs, in +irregular vertical creases, clung dismally to his ankles and toned down +almost indistinguishably into his once tan boots by the medium of a +liberal stipple of mud spatters. Evidently, he had worn no overcoat. +Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained to the utmost to +accommodate what looked like a bunch of pasteboard-bound note-books, +now far on the way to their original pulp, and lopped despondently +outward. A melancholy pool had already begun forming about his feet. + +The maddening, but yet--though she hadn't much room for any other +emotion--touching thing about the look of him, was the way his face, +above the dismal wreck, beamed good-humored innocent affection at her. +It was a big featured, strong, rosy face, and the unmistakable +intellectual power of it, which became apparent the moment he got his +faculties into action, had a trick of hiding, at other times, behind a +mere robust simplicity. + +"Good gracious!" he said. "I didn't know you were going to have a +party." + +It seemed though, he didn't want to make an issue of that. He hedged. "I +know you said something about a birthday cake, but I thought it would +just be the family. So instead of dressing, I thought I'd walk down from +home. It takes about the same time. And then it came on to rain, so I +took a street-car--and got put off." + +It appeared from the way she echoed his last two words that she wanted +an explanation. He was painting with a large brush and a few details got +obliterated. + +"Got into a row with the conductor, who wanted to collect two fares for +one ride, so I walked over to the elevated--and back, and here I am." + +"Yes, here you are," said Frederica. + +She didn't mean anything by that. Already she was making up her mind +what she would do with him. His own suggestion was that he should decamp +furtively by the back stairs, the sound of new arrivals to the dinner +party warning him that the other way of escape was barred. Waiters could +be instructed to rescue his hat for him, and he could toddle along +down-town again. + +She didn't give him time to complete the outline of this masterly +stratagem. "Don't be impossible, Rod," she said. "Don't you even know +whose birthday party this is?" + +He looked at her, frowned, then laughed. He had a great big laugh. + +"I thought it was one of the kid's," he said. + +"Well, it isn't," she told him. "It's yours. And those people down there +were asked to meet you. And you've got just about seven minutes to get +presentable in. Go into Martin's bathroom and take off those horrible +clothes. I'll send Walters in to lay out some things of Martin's." + +She came up to him and, at arm's length, touched him with cautious +finger-tips. "And do, please, there's a dear boy," she pleaded, "hurry +as fast as you can, and then come down and be as nice as you can"--she +hesitated--"especially to Hermione Woodruff. She thinks you're a wonder +and I don't want her to be disappointed." + +"The widdy?" he asked. "Sure I'll be nice to her." + +She looked after him rather dubiously as he disappeared in the direction +of her husband's room. + +She'd have felt safer about him if he had seemed more subdued as a +result of his escapade. There was a sort of hilarious contentment about +him that filled her with misgivings. + +Well, they were justified! + +But the maddening thing was, she had afterward to admit, that the +disaster had been largely of her own contriving. She had been caught in +the net of her own stratagem--hoist by her own petard. + +She had made it a six-couple dinner in order to insure that the talk +should be by twos rather than general, and she had spent a good +half-hour over the place-cards, getting them to suit her. + +Hermione had to be on Martin's right hand, of course. She was just back +in the city after an absence of years, and everybody was rushing her. +She put Violet Williamson, whom Martin was always flirting with in a +harmless way, on his left, and Rod to the right of Hermione. At Rodney's +right, she put a girl he had known for years and cared nothing whatever +about, and then Howard West--who probably wasn't interested in her +either, but would be polite because he was to everybody. Frederica +herself sat between Carl Leaventritt of the university--a great +acquisition, since whatever you might think of him as an empirical +psychologist, there was no doubt of his being an accomplished +diner-out--and Violet's husband, as he vociferously proclaimed himself, +John Williamson, an untired business man who, had their seasons +coincided, could have enjoyed a ball game in the afternoon and stayed +awake at the opera in the evening. Doctor Randolph's pretty wife she +slid in between Leaventritt and Howard West, and, in happy ignorance of +what the result was going to be, she put Randolph himself between Violet +and Alice West. He was a young, up-to-the-minute mind and nerve doctor. + +It was an admirable plan all right, the key-note of it being, as you no +doubt will have observed, the easy unforced isolation of Rodney and the +rich widow. Before that dinner was over, they ought to be old friends. + +And, for a little while, all went well. Rodney came down almost within +the seven minutes she had allowed him, looking much less dreadful than +she had expected, in her husband's other dress suit, and not forgetful, +it appeared, of the line of behavior she had enjoined on him; namely, +that he was to be nice to Hermione Woodruff. + +From her end of the table, she saw them apparently safely launched in +conversation over the hors-d'oeuvre, took a look at them during the soup +to see that all was still well, then let herself be beguiled into a +conversation with John Williamson, whom she liked as well as Martin did +Violet. She never thought of the objects of her matrimonial design again +until her ear was caught by a huge seven-cornered word in her brother's +voice. He couldn't be saying it to Hermione; no, he was leaning forward, +shouting at Doctor Randolph, who apparently knew what he meant and was +getting visibly ready to reply in kind. + +According to Violet Williamson's account, given confidentially in the +drawing-room afterward, it was really Hermione's fault. "She just +wouldn't let Rodney alone--would keep talking about crime and Lombroso +and psychiatric laboratories--I'll bet she'd got hold of a paper of his +somewhere and read it. Anyway, at last she said, 'I believe Doctor +Randolph would agree with me.' He was talking to me then, but maybe that +isn't why she did it. Well, and Rodney straightened up and said, 'Is +that Randolph, the alienist!' You see he hadn't caught his name when +they were introduced. And that's how it started. Hermione was game--I'll +admit that. She listened and kept looking interested, and every now and +then said something. Sometimes they'd take the trouble to smile and say +'Yes, indeed!'--politely, you know, but other times they wouldn't pay +any attention at all, just roll along over her and smash her flat--like +what's his name--Juggernaut." + +"You don't need to tell me that," said Frederica. "All I didn't know was +how it started. Didn't I sit there and watch for a mortal hour, not able +to do a thing? I tried to signal to Martin, but of course he wasn't +opposite to me and ..." + +"He did all he could, really," Violet answered her. "I told him to go to +the rescue, and he did, bravely. But what with Hermione being so miffy +about getting frozen out, and Martin himself being so interested in what +they were shouting at each other--because it was frightfully +interesting, you know, if you didn't have to pretend you understood +it--why, there wasn't much he could do." + +In the light of this disaster, she was rather glad the men lingered in +the dining-room as long as they did--glad that Hermione had ordered her +car for ten and took the odd girl with her. She made no effort to resist +the departure of the others, with reasonable promptitude, in their +train. When, after the front door had closed for the last time, Martin +released a long yawn, she told him to run along to bed; she wanted to +talk with Rodney, who was to spend the night while his own clothes were +drying out in the laundry. + +"Good night, old chap," said Martin in accents of lively commiseration, +"I'm glad I'm not in for what you are." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +ROSALIND STANTON DOESN'T DISAPPEAR + + +Rodney found a pipe of his that he kept concealed on the premises, +loaded and lighted it, sat down astride a spindling little chair that +looked hardly up to his weight, settled his elbows comfortably on the +back of it, and then asked his sister what Martin had meant--what was he +in for? + +Frederica, curled up in a corner of the sofa, finished her own train of +thought aloud, first. + +"She's awfully attractive, don't you think? His wife, I mean. Oh, James +Randolph's, of course." She turned to Rodney, looked at him at first +with a wry pucker between her eyebrows, then with a smile, and finally +answered his question. "Nothing," she said. "I mean, I was going to +scold you, but I'm not." + +"Why, yes," he admitted through his smoke. "Randolph's wife's a mighty +pretty woman. But I expect that lets her out, doesn't it?" + +Frederica shook her head. "She's a good deal of a person, I should say, +on the strength of to-night's showing. She kept her face perfectly +through the whole thing--didn't try to nag at him or apologize to the +rest of us. I'd like to know what she's saying to him now." + +Then, "Oh, I was furious with you an hour ago," she went on. "I'd made +such a nice, reasonable, really beautiful plan for you, and given you a +tip about it, and then I sat and watched you in that thoroughgoing way +of yours, kicking it all to bits. But somehow, when I see you all by +yourself, this way, it changes things. I get to thinking that perhaps my +plan was silly after all--anyhow, it was silly to make it. The plan was, +of course, to marry you off to Hermione Woodruff." + +He turned this over in his deliberate way, during the process of +blowing two or three smoke rings, began gradually to grin, and said at +last, "That was some plan, little sister. How do you think of things +like that? You ought to write romances for the magazines, that's what +you ought to do." + +"I don't know," she objected. "If reasonableness counted for anything in +things like that, it was a pretty good plan. It would have to be +somebody like Hermione. You can't get on at all with young girls. As +long as you remember they're around, you're afraid to say anything +except milk and water out of a bottle that makes them furious, and then +if you forget whom you're talking to and begin thinking out loud, +developing some idea or other, you--simply paralyze them. + +"Well, Hermione's sophisticated and clever, she's lived all over the +place; she isn't old yet, and she was a brick about that awful husband +of hers--never made any fuss--bluffed it out until he, luckily, died. Of +course she'll marry again, and I just thought, if you liked the idea, it +might as well be you." + +"I don't know," said Rodney, "whether Mrs. Woodruff knows what she wants +or not, but I do. She wants a run for her money--a big house to live in +three months in the year, with a flock of servants and a fleet of +motor-cars, and a string of what she'll call cottages to float around +among, the rest of the time. And she'll want a nice, tame, trick husband +to manage things for her and be considerate and affectionate and +amusing, and, generally speaking, Johnny-on-the-spot whenever she wants +him. If she has sense enough to know what she wants in advance, it will +be all right. She can take her pick of dozens. But if she gets a +sentimental notion in her head--and I've a hunch that she's subject to +them--that she wants a real man, with something of his own to do, +there'll be, saving your presence, hell to pay. And if the man happened +to be me ...!" + +Frederica stretched her slim arms outward. Thoughtful-faced, she made no +comment on his analysis of the situation, unless a much more observant +person than Rodney might have imagined there was one in the deliberate +way in which she turned her rings, one at a time, so that the brilliant +masses of gems were inside, and then clenched her hands over them. + +He had got up and was ranging comfortably up and down the room. + +"I know I look more or less like a nut to the people who've always known +us--father's and mother's friends, and most of their children. But I +give you my word, Freddy, that most of them look like nuts to me. Why, +they live in curiosity shops--so many things around, things they have +and things they've got to do, that they can't act or think for fear of +breaking something. + +"Why a man should load himself up with three houses and a yacht, a +stable of motor-cars, and God knows what besides, when he's rich enough +to buy himself real space and leisure to live in, is a thing I can't +figure out on any basis except of defective intelligence. I suppose +they're equally puzzled about me when I refuse a profitable piece of law +work they've offered me, because I don't consider it interesting. All +the same, I get what I want, and I'm pretty dubious sometimes whether +they do. I want space--comfortable elbow room, so that if I happen to +get an idea by the tail, I can swing it around my head without knocking +over the lamp." + +"It's a luxury though, Rod, that kind of spaciousness, and you aren't +very rich. If you married a girl without anything ..." + +He broke in on her with that big laugh of his. "You've kept your sense +of humor pretty well, sis, considering you've been married all these +years to a man as rich as Martin, but don't spring remarks like that, or +I'll think you've lost it. If a man can't keep an open space around him, +even after he's married, on an income, outside of what he can earn, of +ten or twelve thousand dollars a year, the trouble isn't with his +income. It's with the content of his own skull." + +She gave a little shiver and snuggled closer into a big down pillow. + +"You will marry somebody, though, won't you, Roddy? I'll try not to nag +at you and I won't make any more silly plans, but I can't help worrying +about you, living alone in that awful big old house. Anybody but you +would die of despondency." + +"Oh," he said, "that's what I meant to talk to you about! I sold it +to-day--fifty thousand dollars--immediate possession. Man wants to build +a printing establishment there. You come down sometime next week and +pick out all the things you think you and Harriet would like to keep, +and I'll auction off the rest." + +She shivered again and, to her disgust, found that her eyes were +blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack and edgy to-day, +anyhow. + +But really there was something rather remorseless about Rodney. It +occurred to her that the woman he finally did marry would need to be +strong and courageous and rather insensitive to sentimental fancies, to +avoid a certain amount of unhappiness. + +What he had just referred to in a dozen brisk words, was the final +disappearance of the home they had all grown up in. Their father, one of +Chicago's great men during the twenty great years between the Fire and +the Fair, had built it when the neighborhood included nearly all the +other big men of that robust period, and had always been proud of it. +There was hardly a stone or stick about it that hadn't some tender happy +association for her. Of course for years the neighborhood had been +impossible. Her mother had clung to it after her husband's death, as was +of course natural. + +But when she had followed him, a year ago now, it was evident that the +old place would have to go. Rodney, who had lived alone with her there, +had simply stayed on, since her death, waiting for an offer for it that +suited him. Frederica had known that, of course--had worried about him, +as she said, and in her imagination, had colored his loneliness to the +same dismal hue her own would have taken on in similar circumstances. + +All the same, his curt announcement that the long-looked-for change had +come, brought up quick unwelcomed tears. She squeezed them away with her +palms. + +"You'll come to us then, won't you?" she asked, but quite without +conviction. She knew what he'd say. + +"Heavens, no! Oh, I'll go to a hotel for a while--maybe look up a +little down-town apartment, with a Jap. It doesn't matter much about +that. It's a load off, all right." + +"Is that," she asked, "why you've been looking so sort of--gay, all the +evening--as if you were licking the last of the canary's feathers off +your whiskers?" + +"Perhaps so," he said. "It's been a pretty good day, take it all round." + +She got up from the couch, shook herself down into her clothes a little, +and came over to him. + +"All right, since it's been a good day, let's go to bed." She put her +hands upon his shoulders. "You're rather dreadful," she said, "but +you're a dear. You don't bite my head off when I urge you to get +married, though I know you want to. But you will some day--I don't mean +bite my head off--won't you, Rod?" + +"When I see any prospect of being as lucky as Martin--find a girl who +won't mind when I turn up for dinner looking like a drowned tramp, or +kick her plans to bits, after she's tipped me off as to what she wants +me to do ..." + +Frederica took her hands off, stepped back and looked at him. There was +an ironical sort of smile on her lips. + +"You're such an innocent," she said. "You've got an idea you know +me--know how I treat Martin. Roddy, dear, a girl's brother doesn't +matter. She isn't dependent on him, nor responsible for him. And if +she's rather sillily fond of him, she's likely to spoil him frightfully. +Don't think the girl you marry will ever treat you like that." + +"But look here!" he exclaimed. "You say I don't know you, whom I've +lived with off and on for thirty years--don't know how you'd treat me if +you were married to me. How in thunder am I going to know about the girl +I get engaged to, before it's too late?" + +"You won't," she said. "You haven't a chance in the world." + +"Hm!" he grunted, obviously struck with this idea. "You're giving the +prospect of marriage new attractions. You're making the thing out--an +adventure." + +She nodded rather soberly. "Oh, I'm not afraid for you," she said. "Men +like adventures--you more than most. But women don't. They like to dream +about them, but they want to turn over to the last chapter and see how +it's going to end. It's the girl I'm worried about.... Oh, come along! +We're talking nonsense. I'll go up with you and see that they've given +you pajamas and a tooth-brush." + +She had accomplished this purpose, kissed him good night, and under the +hint of his unbuttoned waistcoat and his winding watch, turned to leave +the room, when her eye fell on a heap of damp, warped, pasteboard-bound +note-books, which she remembered having observed in his side pockets +when he first came in. The color on the pasteboard binding had run, and +as they lay on the drawn linen cover to the chiffonier, she went over +and picked them up to see how much damage they'd done. Then she frowned, +peered at the paper label that had half peeled off of the topmost cover, +and read what was written on it. + +"Who," she asked with considerable emphasis, "is Rosalind Stanton?" + +"Oh," said Rodney very casually, behind the worst imitation of a yawn +she had ever seen, "oh, she got put off the car when I did." + +"That sounds rather exciting," said Frederica behind an imitation yawn +of her own--but a better one. "Going to tell me about it?" + +"Nothing much to tell," said Rodney. "There was a row about a fare, as I +said. The conductor was evidently solid concrete above the collar-bone, +and didn't think she'd paid. And she grabbed him and very nearly threw +him out into the street--could have done it, I believe, as easily as +not. And he began to talk about punching somebody's head. And then, we +both got put off. So, naturally, I walked with her over to the elevated. +And then I forgot to give her her note-books and came away with them." + +"What sort of looking girl?" asked Frederica. "Is she pretty?" + +"Why, I don't know," said Rodney judicially. "Really, you know, I hardly +got a fair look at her." + +Frederica made a funny sounding laugh and wished him an abrupt "good +night." + +She was a great old girl, Frederica--pretty wise about lots of things, +but Rodney was inclined to think she was mistaken in saying women didn't +like adventures. Take that girl this afternoon, for example. Evidently +she was willing to meet one half-way. And how she'd blazed up when that +conductor touched her! Just the memory of it brought back something of +the thrill he had felt when he saw it happen. + +"You're a liar, you know," remarked his conscience, "telling Frederica +you hadn't had a good look at her." + +On the contrary, he argued, it was perfectly justifiable to deny that a +look as brief as that, was good. He wouldn't deny, however, that the +thing had been a wholly delightful and exhilarating little episode. That +was the way to have things happen! Have them pop out of nowhere at you +and disappear presently, into the same place. + +"Disappear indeed!" sneered his conscience. "How about those note-books, +with her name and address on every one. And there's another lie you +told--about forgetting to give them to her!" + +He protested that it was entirely true. He had gone into the station +with the girl, shaken hands with her, said good night, and turned away +to leave the station, unaware--as evidently she was--that he still had +her note-books under his arm. But it was equally true that he had +discovered them there, a good full second before the girl had turned the +corner of the stairs--in plenty of time to have called her back to the +barrier, and handed them over to her. + +"All right, have it your own way," said Rodney cheerfully, as he turned +out the light. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE SECOND ENCOUNTER + + +Portia Stanton was late for lunch; so, after stripping off her jacket +and gloves, rolling up her veil and scowling at herself in an oblong +mahogany-framed mirror in the hall, she walked into the dining-room with +her hat on. Seeing her mother sitting alone at the lunch table, she +asked, "Where is Rose?" + +"She'll be down presently, I think," her mother said. "She called out to +me that she'd only be a minute, when I passed her door. Does your hat +mean you're going back to the shop this afternoon?" + +Portia nodded, pulled back her chair abruptly and sat down. "Oh, don't +ring for Inga," she said. "What's here's all right, and she takes +forever." + +"I thought that on Saturday ..." her mother began. + +"Oh, I know," said Portia, "but Anne Loomis telephoned she's going to +bring Dora Wild around to pick out which of my three kidney sofas she +wants for a wedding present. That girl I've got isn't much good, and +besides, I think there's a chance that Dora may give me her house to do. +Her man's stupidly rich, they say, and richly stupid, so the job ought +to be worth eating a cold egg for." + +You'd have known them for mother and daughter anywhere, and you'd have +had trouble finding any point of resemblance in either of them to the +Amazonian young thing who had so nearly thrown a street-car conductor +into the street the night before. Their foreheads were both narrow and +rather high, their noses small and slightly aquiline, and both of them +had slender fastidious hands. + +The mother's hair was very soft and white, and the care with which it +was arranged indicated a certain harmless vanity in it. There was +something a little conscious, too, about her dress--an effect difficult +to describe without exaggeration. It was not bizarre nor "artistic," but +you would have understood at once that its departures from the +prevailing mode were made on principle. If you took it in connection +with a certain resolute amiability about her smile, you would be +entirely prepared to hear her tell Portia that she was reading a paper +on Modern Tendencies before the Pierian Club this afternoon. + +A very real person, nevertheless, you couldn't doubt that. The marks of +passionately held beliefs and eagerly given sacrifices were etched with +undeniable authenticity in her face. + +Once you got beyond a catalogue of features, Portia presented rather a +striking contrast to this. Her hair was done--you could hardly say +arranged--with a severity that was fairly hostile. Her clothes were +bruskly cut and bruskly worn, their very smartness seeming an impatient +concession to necessity. Her smile, if not ill-natured--it wasn't +that--was distinctly ironic. A very competent, good-looking young woman, +you'd have said, if you'd seen her with her shoulder-blades flattened +down and her chest up. Seeing her to-day, drooping a little over the +cold lunch, you'd have left out the adjective young. + +"So Rose didn't come down this morning at all," Portia observed, when +she had done her duty by the egg. "You took her breakfast up to her, I +suppose." + +Mrs. Stanton flushed a little. "She didn't want me to; but I thought +she'd better keep quiet." + +"Nothing particular the matter with her, is there?" asked Portia. + +There was enough real concern in her voice to save the question from +sounding satirical, but her mother's manner was still a little +apologetic when she answered it. + +"No, I think not," she said. "I think the mustard foot-bath and the +quinine probably averted serious consequences. But she was in such a +state when she came home last night--literally wet through to the skin, +and blue with cold. So I thought it wouldn't do any harm ..." + +"Of course not," said Portia. "You're entitled to one baby anyway, +mother, dear. Life was such a strenuous thing for you when the rest of +us were little, that you hadn't a chance to have any fun with us. And +Rose is all right. She won't spoil badly." + +"I'm a little bit worried about the loss of the poor child's +note-books," said her mother. "I rather hoped they'd come in by the noon +mail. But they didn't." + +"I don't believe Rose is worrying her head off about them." said Portia. + +The flush in her mother's cheeks deepened a little, but it was no longer +apologetic. + +"I don't think you're quite fair to Rose, about her studies," she said. +"The child may not be making a brilliant record, but really, considering +the number of her occupations, it seems to me she does very well. And if +she doesn't seem always to appreciate her privilege in getting a college +education, as seriously as she should, you should remember her youth." + +"She's twenty," said Portia bluntly. "You graduated at that age, and you +took it seriously enough." + +"It's very different," her mother insisted. "And I'm sure you understand +the difference quite well. Higher education was still an experiment for +women then--one of the things they were fighting for. And those of us by +whom the success of the experiment was to be judged ..." + +"I'm sorry, mother," Portia interrupted contritely. "I'm tired and ugly +to-day, and I didn't mean any harm, anyway. Of course Rose is all right, +just as I said. And she'll probably get her note-books back Monday." +Then, "Didn't she say the man's name was Rodney Aldrich?" + +"I think so," her mother agreed. "Something like that." + +"It's rather funny," said Portia. "It's hardly likely to have been the +real Rodney Aldrich. Yet, it's not a common name." + +"The _real_ Rodney Aldrich?" questioned her mother. But, without waiting +for her daughter's elucidation of the phrase, she added, "Oh, there's +Rose!" + +The girl came shuffling into the room in a pair of old bedroom slippers. +She had on a skirt that she used to go skating in, and a somewhat +tumbled middy-blouse. Her hair was wopsed around her head anyhow--it +really takes one of Rose's own words to describe it. As a toilet +representing the total accomplishment of a morning, it was nothing to +boast of. But, if you'd been sitting there, invisibly, where you could +see her, you'd have straightened up and drawn a deeper breath than you'd +indulged in lately, and felt that the world was distinctly a brighter +place to live in than it had been a moment before. + +She came up behind Portia, whom she had not seen before that day, and +enveloped her in a big lazy hug. + +"Back to work another Saturday afternoon, Angel?" she asked +commiseratingly. "Aren't you ever going to stop and have any fun?" Then +she slumped into a chair, heaved a yawning sigh and rubbed her eyes. + +"Tired, dear?" asked her mother. She said it under her breath in the +hope that Portia wouldn't hear. + +"No," said Rose. "Just sleepy." She yawned again, turned to Portia, and, +somewhat to their surprise, said: "Yes, what do you mean--the _real_ +Rodney Aldrich? He looked real enough to me. And his arm felt real--the +one he was going to punch the conductor with." + +"I didn't mean he was imaginary," Portia explained. "I only meant I +didn't believe it was the Rodney Aldrich--who's so awfully prominent; +either somebody else who happened to have the same name, or somebody who +just--said that was his name." + +"What's the matter with the prominent one?" Rose wanted to know. "Why +couldn't it have been him?" + +Portia admitted that it could, so far as that went, but insisted on an +inherent improbability. A millionaire, a member of one of the oldest +families in the city--a social swell, the brother of that Mrs. Martin +Whitney whose pictures the papers were always publishing on the +slightest excuse--wasn't likely to be found riding in street-cars, in +the first place, and the improbability reached a climax during a furious +storm like that of last night, when, if ever during the year, the real +Rodney Aldrich would be saying, "Home, James," to a liveried chauffeur, +and sinking back luxuriously among the whip-cord cushions of a palatial +limousine. + +I hasten to say that these were not Portia's words; all the same, what +Portia did say, formed a basis for Rose's unspoken caricature. + +"Millionaires have legs," she said aloud. "I bet they can walk around +like anybody else. However, I don't care who he is, if he'll send back +my books." + +Portia went back presently to the shop, and it wasn't long after that +that her mother came down-stairs clad for the street, with her _Modern +Tendencies_ under her arm in a leather portfolio. + +It had turned cold overnight, and there was a buffeting gusty wind which +shook the windows and rattled the stiff branches of the trees. Her +mother's valedictory, given with more confidence now that Portia was out +of the house, was a strong recommendation that Rose stay quietly within +doors and keep warm. + +The girl might have palmed off her own inclination as an example of +filial obedience, but she didn't. + +"I was going to, anyway," she said. "Home and fireside for mine to-day." + +Ordinarily, the gale would have tempted her. It was such good fun to +lean up against it and force your way through, while it tugged at your +skirts and hair and slapped your face. + +But to-day, the warmest corner of the sitting-room lounge, the quiet of +the house, deserted except for Inga in the kitchen, engaged in the +principal sporting event of her domestic routine--the weekly baking; the +fact that she needn't speak to a soul for three hours, a detective story +just wild enough to make little intervals in the occupation of doing +nothing at all--presented an ideal a hundred per cent. perfect. + +She hadn't meant to go to sleep, having already slept away half the +morning, but the author's tactics in the detective story were so +flagrantly unfair, he was so manifestly engaged trying to make trouble +for his poor anemic characters instead of trying to solve their +perplexities, that presently she tossed the book aside and began +dreaming one of her own in which the heroine got put off a street-car in +the opening chapter. + +The telephone bell roused her once or twice, far enough to observe that +Inga was attending to it, so when the front door-bell rang, she left +that to Inga, too--didn't even sit up and swing her legs off the couch +and try, with a prodigious stretch, to get herself awake, until she +heard the girl say casually: + +"Her ban right in the sitting-room." + +So it fell out that Rodney Aldrich had, for his second vivid picture of +her,--the first had been, you will remember, when she had seized the +conductor by both wrists, and had said in a blaze of beautiful wrath, +"Don't dare to touch me like that!"--a splendid, lazy, tousled creature, +in a chaotic glory of chestnut hair, an unlaced middy-blouse, a plaid +skirt twisted round her knees, and a pair of ridiculous red bedroom +slippers, with red pompons on the toes. The creature was stretching +herself with the grace of a big cat that has just been roused from a nap +on the hearth-rug. + +If his first picture of her had been brief, his second one was +practically a snap-shot, because at sight of him, she flashed to her +feet. + +So, for a moment, they confronted each other about equally aghast, +flushed up to the hair, and simultaneously and incoherently, begging +each other's pardon--neither could have said for what, the goddess out +of the machine being Inga, the maid-of-all-work. But suddenly, at a +twinkle she caught in his eye, her own big eyes narrowed and her big +mouth widened into a smile, which broke presently into her deep-throated +laugh, whereupon he laughed too, and they shook hands, and she asked him +to sit down. + +[Illustration: At sight of him she flashed to her feet.] + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE BIG HORSE + + +"It's too ridiculous," she said. "Since last night, when I got to +thinking how I must have looked, wrestling with that conductor, I've +been telling myself that if I ever saw you again, I'd try to act like a +lady. But it's no use, is it?" + +He said that he, too, had hoped to make a better impression the second +time than the first. That was what he brought the books back for. He had +hoped to convince her that a man capable of consigning a half-drowned +girl to a ten-mile ride on the elevated, instead of walking her over to +his sister's, having her dried out properly, and sent home in a motor, +wasn't permanently and chronically as blithering an idiot as he may have +seemed. It was a great load off of his mind to find her alive at all. + +She gave him a humorously exaggerated account of the prophylactic +measures her mother had submitted her to the night before, and she +concluded: + +"I'm awfully sorry mother's not at home--mother and my sister Portia. +They'd both like to thank you for--looking after me last night. Because +really, you did, you know." + +"There never was anything less altruistic in the world," he assured her. +"I dropped off of that car solely in pursuit of a selfish aim. And I +didn't come out here to-day to be thanked, either. I mean, of course, +I'd enjoy meeting your mother and sister very much, but what I came for +was to get acquainted with you." + +He saw her glance wander a little dubiously to the door. "That is," he +concluded, "if you haven't something else to do." + +She flushed and smiled. "No, it wasn't that," she said, "I was trying to +make up my mind whether it would be better to ask you to wait here ten +minutes while I went up and made myself a little more presentable.... I +mean, whether you'd rather have me fit to look at, or have me like this +and not be bored by waiting. It's all one to me, you see, because even +if I did come down again presentable, you'd know--well, that I wasn't +that way naturally." + +Whereupon he laughed out again, told her that a ten-minute wait would +bore him horribly, and that if she didn't mind, he much preferred her +natural. + +"All right," she said, and went on with the conversation where she had +interrupted it. + +"Why, I'm nobody much to get acquainted with," she said. "Mother's the +interesting one--mother and Portia. Mother's quite a person. She's Naomi +Rutledge Stanton, you know." + +"I know I ought to know," Rodney said, and her quick appreciative smile +over his candor rewarded him for not having pretended. + +"Oh," she said, "mother's written two or three books, and lots of +magazine articles, about women--women's rights and suffrage, and all +that. She's been--well, sort of a leader ever since she graduated from +college, back in--just think!--1870, when most girls used to +have--accomplishments--'French, music, and washing extra,' you know." + +She said it all with a quite adorable seriousness and his gravity +matched hers when he replied: + +"I would like to meet her very much. Feminism's a subject I'm blankly +ignorant about." + +"I don't believe," she said thoughtfully, "that I'd call it feminism in +talking to mother about it, if I were you. Mother's a suffragist, +but"--there came another wave of faint color along with her +smile--"but--well, she's awfully respectable, you know." + +She didn't seem to mind his laughing out at that, though she didn't join +him. + +"What about the other interesting member of the family," he asked +presently, "your sister? Which is she, a suffragist or a feminist?" + +"I suppose," she said, "you'll call Portia a feminist. Anyway, she +smokes cigarettes. Oh, can't I get you some? I forgot!" + +He had a case of his own in his pocket, he said, and got one out now +and lighted it. + +"Why," she went on, "Portia hasn't time to talk about it much. You see, +she's a business woman. She's a house decorator. I don't mean painting +and paper-hanging. She tells you what kind of furniture to buy, and then +sells it to you. Portia's terribly clever and awfully independent." + +"All right," he said. "That brings us down to you. What are you?" + +She sighed. "I'm sort of a black sheep, I guess. I'm just in the +university. But I'm to be a lawyer." + +Whereupon he cried out "Good lord!" so explosively that she fairly +jumped. + +Then he apologized, said he didn't know why her announcement should have +taken him like that, except that the notion of her in court trying a +case--he was a lawyer himself--seemed rather startling. + +She sighed. "And now I suppose," she said, "you'll advise me not to be. +Portia won't hear of my being a decorator. She says there's nothing in +it any more; and my two brothers--one's a professor of history and the +other's a high-school principal--say, 'Let her do anything but teach.' +One of mother's great friends is a doctor, and she says, 'Anything but +medicine,' so I suppose you'll say, 'Anything but law.'" + +"Not a bit," he said. "It's the finest profession in the world." + +But he said it off the top of his mind. Down below, it was still engaged +with the picture of her in a dismal court room, blazing up at a jury the +way she had blazed up at that street-car conductor. It was a queer +notion. He didn't know whether he liked it or not. + +"I suppose," she hazarded, "that it's awfully dull and tiresome, though, +until you get way up to the top." + +That roused him. "It's awfully dull when you do get to the top, or +what's called the top--being a client caretaker with the routine law +business of a few big corporations and rich estates going through your +office like grist through a mill. I can't imagine anything duller than +that. That's supposed to be the big reward, of course. That's the +bundle of hay they dangle in front of your nose to keep you trotting +straight along without trying to see around your blinders." + +He was out of his chair now, tramping up and down the room. "You're not +supposed to discover that it's interesting. You're pretty well spoiled +for their purposes if you do. The thing to bear in mind, if you're going +to travel their road, is that a case is worth while in a precise and +unalterable ratio to the amount of money involved in it. If you question +that axiom at all seriously, you're lost. That's what happened to me." + +He pulled up with a jerk, looked at her and laughed. "If my sister +Frederica were here," he explained, "she would warn you, out of a long +knowledge of my conversational habits, that now was the time for you to +ask me,--firmly, you know,--if I'd been to see Maude Adams in this new +thing of hers, or something like that. In Frederica's absence, I suppose +it's only fair to warn you myself. Have you been to see it? I haven't." + +She smiled in a sort of contented amusement and let that do for an +answer to his question about Maude Adams. Then the smile transmuted +itself into a look of thoughtful gravity and there was a long silence +which, though it puzzled him, he made no move to break. + +At last she pulled in a long breath, turned straight to him and said, "I +wish you'd tell me what _did_ happen to you." + +And under the compelling sincerity of her, for the next two hours and a +half, or thereabouts, he did--told it as he had never told it +before--talked as Frederica, who thought she knew him, had never heard +him talk. + +He told her how he had started at the foot of the ladder in one of the +big successful firms of what he called "client caretakers," drawing up +bills and writs, rounding up witnesses in personal injury suits, trying +little justice-shop cases--the worst of them, of course, because there +was a youngster just ahead of him who got the better ones. And then, +dramatically, he told of his discovery amid this chaff, of a real legal +problem--a problem that for its nice intricacies and intellectual +suggestiveness, would have brought an appreciative gleam to the eye of +Mr. Justice Holmes, or Lord Mansfield, or the great Coke himself. He +told of the passionate enthusiasm with which he had attacked it, the +thrilling weeks of labor he had put on it. And then he told her the +outcome of it all; how the head of the firm, an old friend of his +father, had called him in and complimented him on the work that he had +done; said it was very remarkable, but, unfortunately, not profitable to +the firm, the whole amount involved in the case having been some twenty +dollars. They were only paying him forty dollars a month, to be sure, +but they figured that forty dollars practically a total loss and they +thought he might better go to practising law for himself. In other +words, he was fired. + +But the thing that rang through the girl's mind like the clang of a +bell--the thing that made her catch her breath, was the quality of the +big laugh with which he concluded it. He didn't ask her to be sorry for +him. He wasn't sorry for himself one bit,--nor bitter--nor cynical. He +didn't even seem trying to make a merit of his refusal to acquiesce in +that sordid point of view. He just dismissed the thing with a +cymbal-like clash of laughter and plunged ahead with his story. + +He told her how he'd got in with an altruistic bunch--the City Homes +Association; how, finding him keen for work that they had little time +for, the senior legal counselors had drawn out and let him do it. And +from the way he told of his labors in drafting a new city building +ordinance, she felt that it must have been one of the most fascinating +occupations in the world, until he told her how it had drawn him into +politics--municipal, city council politics, which was even more +thrilling, and then how, after an election, a new state's attorney had +offered him a position on his staff of assistants. + +In a sense, of course, it was true that he had, as Frederica would have +put it, forgotten she was there--had forgotten, at least, who she was. +Because, if he had remembered that she was just a young girl in the +university, he would hardly, as he tramped about the room expounding the +practise of criminal law in the state's attorney's office, have +characterized the state's attorney himself as a "damned gallery-playing +mountebank," nor have described the professions and the misdeeds of +some of the persons he prosecuted in blunt Anglo-Saxon terms she had +never heard used except in the Bible. + +The girl knew he had forgotten, and her only discomfort came from the +fear that the spell might be broken and he remember suddenly and be +embarrassed and stop. + +In the deeper sense--and she was breathlessly conscious of this too--he +hadn't forgotten she was there. He was telling it all because she was +there--because she was herself and nobody else. She knew, though how she +couldn't have explained,--with that intuitive certainty that is the only +real certainty there is,--that the story couldn't have been evoked from +him in just that way, by any one else in the world. + +At the end of two years in the state's attorney's office, he told her, +he figured he had had his training and was ready to begin. + +"I made just one resolution when I hung out my shingle," he said, "and +that was that no matter how few cases I got, I wouldn't take any that +weren't interesting--that didn't give me something to bite on. A lot of +my friends thought I was crazy, of course--the ones who came around +because they liked me, or had liked my father, to offer me nice plummy +little sinecures, and got told I didn't want them. Just for the sake of +looking successful and accumulating a lot of junk I didn't want, I +wasn't going to asphyxiate myself, have strings tied to my arms and legs +like a damned marionette. I wasn't willing to be bored for any reward +they had to offer me. It's cynical to be bored. It's the worst +immorality there is. Well, and I never have been." + +It wasn't all autobiographical and narrative. There was a lot of his +deep-breathing, spacious philosophy of life mixed up in it. And this the +girl, consciously, and deliberately, provoked. It didn't need much. She +said something about discipline and he snatched the word away from her. + +"What is discipline? Why, it's standing the gaff--_standing_ it, not +submitting to it. It's accepting the facts of life--of your own life, as +they happen to be. It isn't being conquered by them. It's not making +masters of them, but servants to the underlying things you want." + +She tried to make a reservation there--suppose the things you wanted +weren't good things. + +But he wouldn't allow it. + +"Whatever they are," he insisted, "your desires are the only motive +forces you've got. No matter how fine your intelligence is, it can't +ride anywhere except on the backs of your own passions. There's no good +lamenting that they're not different, and it's silly to beat them to +death and make a merit of not having ridden anywhere because they might +have carried you into trouble. Learn to ride them--control them--spur +them. But don't forget that they're _you_ just as essentially as the +rider is." + +It was with a curiously relaxed body, her chin cradled in the crook of +her arm that lay along the back of the couch, her eyes unfocused on the +window, that the girl listened to it. + +Primarily, indeed, she wasn't exactly listening. Much of the narrative +went by almost unheard. Much of the philosophy she hardly tried to +understand. What was constantly present and more and more poignantly +vivid with every five minutes that ticked away on the banjo clock, was a +consciousness of the man himself, the driving power of him, the +boisterous health and freshness and confidence. She was conscious, too, +of something formidable--carelessly exultant in his own strength. She +got to thinking of the flight of a great bird wheeling up higher and +higher on his powerful wings. + +He had caught her up, too, and was carrying her to altitudes far beyond +her own powers. He might drop her, but if he did, it wouldn't be through +weakness. At what he said about riding on the backs of one's own +passions, her imagination varied the picture so that she saw him +galloping splendidly by. + +At that, suddenly and to her consternation, she felt her eyes flushing +up with tears. She tried to blink them away, but they came too fast. + +Presently he stopped short in his walk--stopped talking, with a gasp, +in the middle of a sentence, and looked into her face. She couldn't see +his clearly, but she saw his hands clench and heard him draw a long +breath. Then he turned abruptly and walked to the window and for a +mortal endless minute, there was a silence. + +At last she found something--it didn't matter much what--to say, and the +conversation between them, on the surface of it, was just what it had +been for the first ten minutes after he had come in. But, paradoxically, +this superficial commonplaceness only heightened the tensity of the +thing that underlay it. Something had happened during that moment while +he stood looking into her tear-flushed eyes; something momentous, +critical, which no previous experience in her life had prepared her for. + +And it had happened to him, too. The memory of his silhouette as he +stood there with his hands clenched, between her and the window, would +have convinced her, had she needed convincing. + +The commonplace thing she had found to say met, she knew, a need that +was his as well as hers, for breathing-space--for time for the recovery +of lost bearings. Had he not felt it as well as she--she smiled a little +over this--he wouldn't have yielded. The man on horseback would have +taken an obstacle like that without breaking the stride of his gallop. + +What underlay her quiet meaningless chat, was wonder and fear, and more +deeply still, a sort of cosmic contentment--the acquiescence of a +swimmer in the still irresistible current of a mighty river. + +It was distinctly a relief to her when her mother came in and, +presently, Portia. She introduced him to them, and then dropped out of +the conversation altogether. As if it were a long way off, she heard him +retailing last night's adventure and expressing his regret that he +hadn't taken her to Frederica (that was his sister, Mrs. Whitney) to be +dried out, before he sent her home. + +She was aware that Portia stole a look at her in a puzzled penetrating +sort of way every now and then, but didn't concern herself as to the +basis of her curiosity. She knew that it was getting on toward their +dinner-time, but didn't disturb herself as to the effect Inga's +premonitory rattlings out in the dining-room might have on her guest. As +a matter of fact, they had none whatever. + +She smiled once widely to herself, over a thought of the half-back. The +man here in the room with her now, chatting so pleasantly with her +mother, wouldn't ask for favors--would accept nothing that wasn't +offered as eagerly as it was sought. + +It wasn't until he rose to go that she aroused herself and went with him +into the hall. There, after he'd got into his overcoat and hooked his +stick over his arm, he held out his hand to her in formal leave-taking. +Only it didn't turn out that way. For the effect of that warm lithe grip +flew its flag in both their faces. + +"You're such a wonder!" he said. + +She smiled. "So are y-you." It was the first time she had ever stammered +in her life. + +When she came back into the sitting-room, she found Portia inclined to +be severe. + +"Did you ask him to come again?" she wanted to know. + +Rose smiled. "I never thought of it," she said. + +"Perhaps it's just as well," said Portia. "Did you have anything at all +to say to him before we came home, or were you like that all the while? +How long ago did he come?" + +"I don't know," said Rose behind a very real yawn. "I was asleep on the +couch when he came in. That's why I was dressed like this." And then she +said she was hungry. + +There wasn't, on the whole, a happier person in the world at that +moment. + +Because Rodney Aldrich, pounding along at five miles an hour, in a +direction left to chance, was not happy. Or, if he was, he didn't know +it. He couldn't yield instantly, and easily, to his intuitions, as Rose +had done. He felt that he must think--felt that he had never stood in +such dire need of cool level consideration as at this moment: + +But the process was impossible. That fine instrument of precision, his +mind, that had, for many years, done without complaint the work he gave +it to do, had simply gone on a strike. Instead of ratiocinating +properly, it presented pictures. Mainly four: a girl, flaming with +indignation, holding a street-car conductor pinned by the wrists; a girl +in absurd bedroom slippers, her skirt twisted around her knees, her hair +a chaos, stretching herself awake like a big cat; a girl with wonderful, +blue, tear-brimming eyes, from whose glory he had had to turn away. Last +of all, the girl who had said with that adorable stammer, "So are +y-you," and smiled a smile that had summed up everything that was +desirable in the world. + +It was late that night when his mind, in a dazed sort of way, came back +on the job. And the first thing it pointed out to him was that Frederica +had undoubtedly been right in telling him that, though they had lived +together off and on for thirty years, they didn't know each other. The +pictures his memory held of his sister, covered no such emotional range +as these four. Did Martin's? It seemed absurd, yet there was a strong +intrinsic probability of it. + +Anyway, it was a remark Frederica had made last night that gave him +something to hold on by. Marriage, she had said, was an adventure, the +essential adventurousness of which no amount of cautious thought taken +in advance could modify. There was no doubt in his mind that marriage +with that girl would be a more wonderful adventure than any one had ever +had in the world. + +All right then, perhaps his mind had been right in refusing to take up +the case. The one tremendous question,--would the adventure look +promising enough to her to induce her to embark on it?--was one which +his own reasoning powers could not be expected to answer. It called +simply for experiment. + +So, turning off his mind again, with the electric light, he went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HOW IT STRUCK PORTIA + + +It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to +marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of +surprise than, hitherto, she had experienced in the sixty years of a +tolerably eventful life. + +Rose found her neatly writing a paper at the boudoir desk in the little +room she called her den. And standing dutifully at her mother's side +until she saw the pen make a period, made then her momentous +announcement, much in the tone she would have used had it been to the +effect that she was going to the matinée with him that afternoon. + +Mrs. Stanton said, "What, dear?" indifferently enough, just in +mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's +voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her +daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick. +What did you say?" + +Rose repeated: "Rodney Aldrich and I are going to be married." + +But when she saw a look of painful incomprehension in her mother's face, +she sat down on the arm of the chair, slid a strong arm around the +fragile figure and hugged it up against herself. + +"I suppose," she observed contritely, "that I ought to have broken it +more gradually. But I never think of things like that." + +As well as she could, her mother resisted the embrace. + +"I can't believe," she said, gripping the edge of her desk with both +hands, "that you would jest about a solemn subject like that, Rose, and +yet it's incredible!... How many times have you seen him?" + +"Oh, lots of times," Rose assured her, and began checking them off on +her fingers. "There was the first time, in the street-car, and the time +he brought the books back, and that other awful call he made one +evening, when we were all so suffocatingly polite. You know about those +times. But three or four times more, he's come down to the +university--he's great friends with several men in the law faculty, so +he's there quite a lot, anyway--but several times he's picked me up, and +we've gone for walks, miles and miles and miles, and we've talked and +talked and talked. So really, we know each other awfully well." + +"I didn't know," said her mother in a voice still dull with astonishment, +"that you even liked him. You've been so silent--indifferent--both times +he was here to call...." + +"Oh, I haven't learned yet to talk to him when any one else is around," +Rose admitted. "There's so little to say, and it doesn't seem worth the +bother. But, truly, I do like him, mother. I like everything about him. +I love his looks--I don't mean just his eyes and nose and mouth. I like +the shape of his ears, and his hands. I like his big loud voice"--her +own broadened a little as she added, "and the way he swears. Oh, not at +me, mother! Just when he gets so interested in what he's saying that he +forgets I'm a lady. + +"And I like the way he likes to fight--not with his fists, I mean, +necessarily. He's got the most wonderful mind to--wrestle with, you +know. I love to start an argument with him, just to see how easy it is +for him to--roll me in the dirt and walk all over me." + +The mother freed herself from the girl's embrace, rose and walked away +to another chair. "If you'll talk rationally and seriously, my dear," +she said, "we can continue the conversation. But this flippant, +rather--vulgar tone you're taking, pains me very much." + +The girl flushed to the hair. "I didn't know I was being flippant and +vulgar," she said. "I didn't mean to be. I was just trying to tell +you--all about it." + +"You've told me," said her mother, "that Mr. Aldrich has asked you to +marry him and that you've consented. It seems to me you have done so +hastily and thoughtlessly. He's told you he loves you, I've no doubt, +but I don't see how it's possible for you to feel sure on such short +acquaintance." + +"Why, of course he's told me," Rose said, a little bewildered. "He can't +help telling me all the time, any more than I can help telling him. +We're--rather mad about each other, really. I think he's the most +wonderful person in the world, and"--she smiled a little +uncertainly--"he thinks I am. But we've tried to be sensible about it, +and think it out reasonably. We're both strong and healthy, and we like +each other.... I mean--things about each other, like I've said. So, as +far as we can tell, we--fit. He said he couldn't guarantee that we'd be +happy; that no pair of people could be sure of that till they'd tried. +But he said it looked to him like the most wonderful, magnificent +adventure in the world, and asked if it looked to me like that, and I +said it did. Because it's true. It's the only thing in the world that +seems worth--bothering about. And we both think--though, of course, we +can't be sure we're thinking straight--that we've got a good chance to +make it go." + +Even her mother's bewildered ears couldn't distrust the sincerity with +which the girl had spoken. But this only increased the bewilderment. She +had listened with a sort of incredulous distaste she couldn't keep her +face from showing, and at last she had to wipe away her tears. + +At that Rose came over to her, dropped on the floor at her knees and +embraced her. + +"I guess perhaps I understand, mother," she said. "I didn't +realize--you've always been so intellectual and advanced--that you'd +feel that way about it--be shocked because I hadn't pretended not to +care for him and been shy and coy"--in spite of herself, her voice got +an edge of humor in it--"and a startled fawn, you know, running away, +but just not fast enough so that he wouldn't come running after and +think he'd made a wonderful conquest by catching me at last. But a man +like Rodney Aldrich wouldn't plead and protest, mother. He wouldn't +_want_ me unless I wanted him just as much." + +It was a long time before her mother spoke and when she did, she spoke +humbly--resignedly, as if admitting that the situation she was +confronted with was beyond her powers. + +"It's the one need of a woman's life, Rose, dear," she said, "--the +corner-stone of all her happiness, that her husband, as you say, 'wants' +her. It's something that--not in words, of course, but in all the little +facts of married life--she'll need to be reassured about every day. +Doubt of it is the one thing that will have the power to make her +bitterly unhappy. That's why it seems to me so terribly necessary that +she be sure about it before it's too late." + +"Yes, of course," said Rose. "But that's true of the man, too, isn't it? +Otherwise, where's the equality?" + +Her mother couldn't answer that except with a long sigh. + +Strangely enough, it wasn't until after Rose had gone away, and she had +shut herself up in her room to think, that any other aspect of the +situation occurred to her--even that there was another aspect of it +which she'd naturally have expected to be the first and only critical +one. + +Ever since babyhood Rose had been devoted, by all her mother's plans and +hopes, to the furtherance of the cause of Woman, whose ardent champion +she herself had always been. For Rose--not Portia--was the devoted one. + +The elder daughter had been born at a time when her own activities were +at their height. As Portia herself had said, when she and her two +brothers were little, their mother had been too busy to--luxuriate in +them very much and during those early and possibly suggestible years, +Portia had been suffered to grow up, as it were, by herself. She was not +neglected, of course, and she was dearly loved. But when, for the first +time since actual babyhood, she got into the focal-plane of her mother's +mind again, there was a subtle, but, it seemed, ineradicable antagonism +between them, though that perhaps is too strong a word for it. A +difference there was, anyway, in the grain of their two minds, that +hindered unreserved confidences, no matter how hard they might try for +them. Portia's brusk disdain of rhetoric, her habit of reducing +questions to their least denominator of common sense, carried a constant +and perfectly involuntary criticism of her mother's ampler and more +emotional style--made her suspect that Portia regarded her as a +sentimentalist. + +But Rose, with her first adorable smile, had captured her mother's heart +beyond the possibility of reservation or restraint. And, as the child +grew and her splendid, exuberant vitality and courage and wide-reaching, +though not facile, affection became marked characteristics, the hope +grew in her mother that here was a new leader born to the great Cause. +It would need new leaders. She herself was conscious of a side drift to +the great current, that threatened to leave her in a backwater. Or, as +she put it to herself, that threatened to sweep over the banks of +righteousness and decorum, and inundate, disastrously, the peaceful +fields. + +She couldn't expect to have the strength to resist this drift herself, +but she had a vision of her daughter rising splendidly to the task. And +for that task she trained her--or thought she did; saw to it that the +girl understood the Eighteenth Century Liberalism, which, limited to the +fields of politics and education, and extended to include women equally +with men, was the gospel of the movement she had grown up in. With it +for a background, with a university education and a legal training, the +girl would have everything she needed. + +She expected her to marry, of course. But in her day-dreams, it was to +be one of Rose's converts to the cause--won perhaps by her advocacy at +the bar, of some legal case involving the rights of woman--who was to +lay his new-born conviction, along with his personal adoration, at the +girl's feet. + +Certainly Rodney Aldrich, who, as Rose outrageously had boasted, rolled +her in the dust and tramped all over her in the course of their +arguments, presented a violent contrast to the ideal husband she had +selected. Indeed, it should be hard to think of him as anything but the +rock on which her whole ambition for the girl would be shattered. + +It was strange she hadn't thought of that during her talk with Rose! + +Now that the idea had occurred to her she tried hard to look at the +event that way and to nurse into energetic life a tragic regret over the +miscarriage of a lifetime's hope. It was all so obviously what she +ought to feel. Yet the moment she relaxed the effort, her mind flew back +to a vibration between a hope and a fear: the hope, that the man Rose +was about to marry would shelter and protect her always, as tenderly as +she herself had sheltered her; the terror--and this was stronger--that +he might not. + +That night, during the process of getting ready for bed, Rose put on a +bath-robe, picked up her hair brush and went into Portia's room. Portia, +much quicker always about such matters, was already on the point of +turning out the light, but guessing what her sister wanted, she stacked +her pillows, lighted a cigarette, climbed into bed and settled back +comfortably for a chat. + +"I hope," Rose began, "that you're really pleased about it. Because +mother isn't. She's terribly unhappy. Do you suppose it's because she +thinks I've--well, sort of deserted her, in not going on and being a +lawyer--and all that?" + +"Oh, perhaps," said Portia indifferently. "I wouldn't worry about that, +though. Because really, child, you had no more chance of growing up to +be a lawyer and a leader of the 'Cause' than I have of getting to be a +brigadier-general." + +Rose stopped brushing her hair and demanded to be told why not. She had +been getting on all right up to now, hadn't she? + +"Why, just think," said Portia, "what mother herself had gone through +when she was your age; put herself through college because her father +didn't believe in 'higher education'--practically disowned her. She'd +taught six months in that awful school--remember?--she was used to being +abused and ridiculed. And she was working hard enough to have killed a +camel. But you!... Why, Lamb, you've never really _had_ to do anything +in your life. If you felt like it, all right--and equally all right if +you didn't. You've never been hurt--never even been frightened. You +wouldn't know what they felt like. And the result is ..." + +Portia drew in a long puff, then eyed her cigarette thoughtfully through +the slowly expelled smoke. "The result is," she concluded, "that you +have grown up into a big, splendid, fearless, confiding creature that +it's perfectly inevitable some man like Rodney Aldrich would go straight +out of his head about. And there you are." + +A troubled questioning look came into the younger sister's eyes. "I've +been lazy and selfish, I know," she said. "Perhaps more than I thought. +I haven't meant to be. But ... Do you think I'm any good at all?" + +"That's the real injustice of it," said Portia; "that you are. You've +stayed big and simple. It couldn't possibly occur to you now to say to +yourself, 'Poor old Portia! She's always been jealous because mother +liked me best, and now she's just green with envy because I'm going to +marry Rodney Aldrich.'" + +She wouldn't stop to hear Rose's protest. "I know it couldn't," she went +on. "That's what I say. And yet there's more than a little truth in it, +I suppose. Oh, I don't mean I'm sorry you're going to be happy--I +believe you are, you know. I'm just a little sorry for myself. Curious, +anyway, to see where I've missed all the big important things you've +kept. I've been afraid of my instincts, I suppose. Never able to take a +leap because I've always stopped to look, first. I'm too narrow between +the cheek-bones, perhaps. Anyhow, here I stay, grinding along, wondering +what it's all about and what after all's the use.... While you, you +baby! are going to find out." + +What Rose wanted to do was to gather her sister up in her arms and kiss +her. But the faint ironic smile on Portia's fine lips, the twist of her +eyebrows, the poise of her body as she sat up in bed watching the +blue-brown smoke rising in a straight thin line from her diminishing +cigarette, combined to make such a demonstration altogether impossible. + +"Mother thinks, I guess," she said, to break the silence, "that I ought +to have looked a little longer. She thinks Rodney would have 'wanted' me +more, if I hadn't thrown myself at him like that." + +Portia extinguished her cigarette in a little ash-tray, and began +unpacking her pillows before she spoke. "I don't know," she said at +last. "It's been said for a long time that the only way to make a man +want anything very wildly, is to make him think it's desperately hard to +get. But I suspect there are other ways. I don't believe you'll ever +have any trouble making him 'want' you as much as you like." + +The color kept mounting higher and higher in the girl's face during the +moment of silence while she pondered this remark. "Why should I--make +him want me?--Any more than ... I think that's rather--horrid, Portia." + +Portia gave a little shiver and huddled down into her blankets. "You +don't put things out of existence by deciding they're horrid, child," +she said. "Open my window, will you? And throw out that cigarette. +There. Now, kiss me and run along to bye-bye. And forget my nonsense." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +RODNEY'S EXPERIMENT + + +The wedding was set for the first week in June. And the decision, +instantly acquiesced in by everybody, was that it was to be as quiet--as +strictly a family affair--as possible. The recentness of the death of +Rodney's mother gave an adequate excuse for such an arrangement, but the +comparative narrowness of the Stantons' domestic resources enforced it. +Indeed, the notion of even a simple wedding into the Aldrich family left +Portia rather aghast. + +But this feeling was largely allayed by Frederica's first call. Being a +celebrated beauty and a person of great social consequence didn't, it +appeared, prevent one from being human and simple mannered and +altogether delightful to have about. She was so competent, too, and +intelligent (Rose didn't see why Portia should find anything +extraordinary in all this. Wasn't she Rodney's sister?) that her +conquest of the Stanton family was instantaneous. They didn't suspect +that it was deliberate. + +Rodney had made his great announcement to her, characteristically, over +the telephone, from his office. "Do you remember asking me, Freddy, two +or three weeks ago, who Rosalind Stanton was? Well, she's the girl I'm +going to marry." + +She refused to hear a word more in those circumstances. "I'm coming +straight down," she said, "and we'll go somewhere for lunch. Don't you +realize that we can't talk about it like this? Of course you wouldn't, +but it's so." + +Over the lunch table she got as detailed an account of the affair as +Rodney, in his somnambulistic condition, was able to give her, and she +passed it on to Martin that evening as they drove across to the north +side for dinner. + +"Well, that all sounds exactly like Rodney," he commented. "I hope +you'll like the girl." + +"That isn't what I hope," said Frederica. "At least it isn't what I'm +most concerned about. I hope I can make her like me. Roddy's the only +brother I've got in the world, and I'm not going to lose him if I can +help it. That's what will happen if she doesn't like me." + +Frederica was perfectly clear about this, though she admitted it had +taken her fifteen minutes or so to see it. + +"All the way down-town to talk to Rodney," she said, "I sat there +deciding what she ought to be like--as if she were going to be brought +up to me to see if she'd do. And then all at once I thought, what good +would it do me to decide that she wouldn't? I couldn't change his +relation to her one bit. But, if she decides I won't do, she can change +his relation to me pretty completely. It's about the easiest thing a +wife can do. + +"Well, I'm going to see her, and her mother and sister--that's the +family--to-morrow. And if they don't like me before I come away and +think of me as a nice sort of person to be related by marriage to, it +won't be because I haven't tried. It will be because I'm just a +naturally repulsive person and can't help it." + +As it happened though, she forgot all about her resolution almost with +her first look at Rose. Rodney's attempts at description of her had been +well meaning; but what he had prepared his sister for, unconsciously of +course, in his emphasis on one or two phases of their first +acquaintance, had been a sort of slatternly Amazon. But the effect of +this was, really, very happy; because when a perfectly presentably clad, +well-bred, admirably poised young girl came into the room and greeted +her neither shyly nor eagerly, nor with any affectation of ease, a girl +who didn't try to pretend it wasn't a critical moment for her but was +game enough to meet it without any evidences of panic--when Frederica +realized that this was the Rose whom Rodney had been telling her about, +she fell in love with her on the spot. + +Amazingly, as she watched the girl and heard her talk, she found she was +considering, not Rose's availability as a wife for Rodney, but Rodney's +as a husband for her. It was this, perhaps, that led her to say, at the +end of her leave-taking, just as Rose, who had come out into the hall +with her, was opening the door: + +"Roddy has been such a wonderful brother, always, to me, that I suspect +you'll find him, sometimes, being a brother to you. Don't let it hurt +you if that happens." + +The most vivid of all the memories that Frederica took away with her +from that memorable visit was the smile with which Rose had answered +that remark. She had her chauffeur stop at the first drug store they +came to and called up Rodney on the telephone, just because she was too +impatient to wait any longer for a talk with him. + +"I'm simply idiotic about her," she told him. "I know, now, what you +meant when you were trying to tell me about her smile. She looked at me +like that just as I was leaving, and my throat's tight with it yet. +She's such a darling! Don't be too much annoyed if I put my oar in once +in a while, just to see that you're treating her properly." + +She walked into his office one morning a few days later, dismissed his +stenographer with a nod, and sat down in the just vacated chair. She was +sorry, she said, but it was the only way she had left, nowadays, of +getting hold of him. Then she introduced a trivial, transparent little +errand for an excuse, and, having got it out of the way, inquired after +Rose. What had the two of them been doing lately? + +"Getting acquainted," he said. "It's going to be an endless process, +apparently. Heavens, what a lot there is to talk about!" + +"Yes," Frederica persisted, "but what do you do by way of being--nice to +her?" And as he only looked puzzled and rather unhappy, she elucidated +further. "What's your concession, dear old stupid, to the fact that +you're her lover--in the way of presents and flowers and theaters and +things?" + +"But Rose isn't like the rest of them," he objected. "She doesn't care +anything about that sort of thing." + +Whereat Frederica laughed. "Try it," she said, "just for an experiment, +Roddy. Don't ask her if she wants to go, ask her to go. Get tickets for +one of the musical things, engage a table for dinner and for supper, at +two of the restaurants, and send her flowers. Do it handsomely, you +know, as if ordinary things weren't good enough for her. Oh, and take +our big car. Taxis wouldn't quite be in the picture. Try it, Roddy, just +to see what happens." + +He looked thoughtful at first, then interested, and at last he smiled, +reached over and patted her hand. "All right, Freddy," he said. "The +handsome thing shall be done." + +The result was that at a quarter past one A.M., a night or two later, he +tipped the carriageman at the entrance to the smartest of Chicago's +supper restaurants, stepped into Martin's biggest limousine, and dropped +back on the cushions beside a girl he hardly knew. + +"You wonder!" he said, as her hand slid into his. "I didn't know you +could shine like that. All the evening you've kept my heart in my +throat. I don't know a thing we've seen or eaten--hardly where we've +been." + +"I do," she declared, "and I shall never forget it. Not one smallest +thing about it. You see, it's the first time anything like it ever +happened to me." + +He exclaimed incredulously at that--wanted to know what she meant. + +He felt the weight of her relaxed contented body, as she leaned closer +to him--felt her draw in a long slow sigh. "I don't know whether I can +talk sense to-night or not," she said, "but I'll try. Why, I've been +quite a lot at the theater, of course, and two or three times to the +restaurants. But never--oh, as if I belonged like that. It always seemed +a little wrong, and extravagant. And then, it's never lasted. After the +theater, or the dinner, I've walked over to the elevated, you know. So +this has been like--well, like flying in a dream, without any bumps to +wake me up. It sort of goes to my head just to be sitting here like +this, floating along home. Only--only, I wish it was to our home, +Rodney, instead of just mine." + +"You darling!" he said. And, presently: "I'll tell you what we'll do +to-morrow, if you'll run away from your dressmaker. We'll go and buy a +car for ourselves. It's ridiculous I didn't get one long ago. +Frederica's always been at me to. You see, mother wouldn't have anything +but horses, and I sold those, of course, when she died. I've meant to +get a car, but I just never got round to it." + +A small disagreeable voice, hermetically sealed in one of the remoter +caverns of him, remarked at this point that he was a liar. A motor-car, +it pointed out, was one of the things he had always denounced as a part +of the useless clutter of existence that he refused to be embarrassed +with. But it didn't speak with much conviction. + +She picked up his hand and brushed her lips softly against the palm of +it. "You're so wonderful to me," she said. "You give me so much. And +I--I have so little to give back. And I want to--I want to give you all +the world." And then, suddenly, she put her bare arm around his neck, +drew his face to hers and kissed him. + +It was the first time she had ever begun a caress like that. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AFTER BREAKFAST + + +For their honeymoon, Martin had loaned them his camp up in northern +Wisconsin--uncut forest mostly, with a river and a lot of little lakes +in it. There were still deer and bear to be shot there, there was +wonderful fishing, and, more to the point in the present instance, as +fine a brand of solitude as civilization can ask to lay its hands on. It +was modified, and mitigated too, by a backwoods family--a man and his +wife, a daughter or two, and half a dozen sons, who lived there the year +round, of course; so that by telegraphing two or three days in advance, +you could be met by a buckboard at the nearest railroad station for the +twenty-five-mile drive over to the camp. You could find the house itself +(a huge affair, decorously built of logs, as far as its exterior +manifestations went, but amply supplied on the interior with bathrooms, +real beds and so forth) opened and warmed and flavored with the odor of +fried venison steak. Also, there was always a boy to paddle a canoe for +you, or saddle a horse, if you didn't feel like doing it for yourself. + +Rodney and Rose spent a night in this establishment, then rigged up an +outfit for camping of a less symbolistic sort, and repaired to an island +out in the lake, where for two weeks they lived gorgeously, like the +savages they both, to a very considerable extent, really were. + +But, at the end of this fortnight, a whipping north wind, with a fine +penetrating rain in its teeth, settled down for a three-days' visit, and +drove them back to adequate shelter. One rainy day in an outdoor camp is +a good thing; a second requires fortitude; a third carries the +conviction that it has been raining from the first day of Creation and +will keep on till the Last Judgment, and if you have anywhere to go to +get dry, you do. + +Of course the storm blew itself away when it had accomplished its +purpose of driving them from their island paradise, but they didn't go +back to it. Two weeks of camp-fires, hemlock boughs and blankets, had +given them an appreciation for sleeping between smooth sheets, and +coming down to a breakfast that was prepared for them. And one morning +Rose came into the big living-room to find Rodney lounging there, in +front of the fire, with a book. + +It wasn't the first time he had done that. But always before, on seeing +her come in, he had chucked the book away and come to meet her. This +time, he went on reading. + +She moved over toward him, meaning to sit down on the arm of his chair, +cuddle her arm around his neck, and at the same time, discover what it +was that so absorbed him. But half-way across the room, she changed her +mind. He hadn't even reached out an unconscious hand toward her. He went +on reading as if, actually, he were alone in the room. Evidently, too, +it was a book he'd brought with him--a formidable-looking volume printed +in German--she got near enough to see that. So she picked up an old +magazine from the table, and found a chair of her own, smiling a little +in anticipation of the effect this maneuver would have. + +She opened the magazine at random, and, presently, for the sake of +verisimilitude, turned a page. Rodney was turning pages as regularly as +clockwork. It was a silly magazine! She wished she'd found something +that really could interest her. It was getting harder and harder to sit +still. He couldn't be angry about anything, could he? No, that was +absurd. There hadn't been the slightest trace of a disagreement between +them. She wouldn't go on pretending to read, anyhow, and she tossed the +magazine away. + +She had meant it to fall back on the table. But she put more nervous +force than she realized into the toss, so that it skittered across the +table and fell on the floor with a slap. + +That roused him. He closed his book--on his finger, though--looked +around at her, stretched his arms and smiled. "Isn't this great?" he +said. + +It wasn't a sentiment she could echo quite whole-heartedly just then, +so she asked him what he meant--wasn't what great. + +"Oh, this," he told her. "Being like this." + +"Sitting half a mile apart this way," she asked, "each of us reading our +own book?" + +She didn't realize how completely provocative her meaning was, until, to +her incredulous bewilderment, he said enthusiastically, "Yes! exactly!" + +He wasn't looking at her now, but into the fire, and he rummaged for a +match and relighted his pipe before he said anything more. "Being +permanent, you know," he explained, "and--well, our real selves again." + +She tried hard to keep her voice even when she asked, "But--but what +have we been?" + +And at that he laughed out. "Good heavens, what haven't we been! A +couple of transfigured lunatics. Why, Rose, I haven't been able to see +straight, or think straight, for the last six weeks. And I don't believe +you have either. My ideas have just been running in circles around you. +How I ever got through those last two cases in the Appellate Court, I +don't see. When I made an argument before the bench, I was--talking to +you. When I wrote my briefs, I was writing you love-letters. And if I'd +had sense enough to realize my condition, I'd have been frightened to +death. But now--well, we've been sitting here reading away for an hour, +without having an idea of each other in our heads." + +By a miracle of self-command, she managed to keep control of her voice. +"Yes," she said. "That--that other's all over, isn't it?" + +"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," he demurred around a comfortable +yawn. "I expect it will catch us again every now and then. But, in the +main, we're sane people, ready to go on with our own business. What was +it you were reading?" + +"I don't believe I'll read any more just now," she said. "I think I'll +go out for a walk." And she managed to get outside the room without his +discovering that anything was wrong. + +It was, indeed, her first preoccupation, to make sure he shouldn't +discover the effect his words had had on her--to get far enough away +before the storm broke so that she could have it out by herself. The +crowning humiliation would be if he came blundering in on her and asked +her what was the matter. + +She fled down the trail to the little lake, ran out a canoe, caught up a +paddle and bent a feverish energy to the task of getting safely around +into the shelter of a fir-grown point before she let herself stop, as +she would have said, to think. It wasn't really to think, of course. +Not, that is, to interpret out to the end of all its logical +implications, the admission he had so unconsciously made to her that +morning. + +She had never seriously been hurt or frightened, Portia had said weeks +ago. And when she said it, it was true. She was both hurt and frightened +now, and the instinct that had urged her to fly was as simple and +primitive as that which urges a wounded animal to hide. + +Indeed, if you could have seen her after she had swung her paddle +inboard, sitting there, gripping the gunwales with both hands, panting, +her wide eyes dry, you might easily have thought of some defenseless +wild thing cowering in a momentary shelter, listening for the baying of +pursuing hounds. + +He didn't love her any more, that was what he had said. For what was the +thing he had so cheerfully described himself as cured of, what were the +symptoms he had enumerated as if he had been talking about a +disease--the obsession with her, the inability to get her further away +than the middle ground of his thoughts, and then only temporarily; the +necessity of saying everything he said and doing everything he did, with +reference to her; the fact that his mind could focus itself sharply on +nothing in the world but just herself?--What was all that but the +veritable description, though in hostile terms, of the love he had +promised to feel for her till death should--part them; of the very love +she felt for him, this moment stronger than ever? + +Recurrent waves of the panic broke over her, during which she would +catch up her paddle again and drive ahead, blindly, without any +conscious knowledge of where she was going. And in the intervals, she +drifted. + +The relief of tears didn't come to her until she saw, just ahead, the +island where, for two paradisiacal weeks, she and Rodney had made their +camp. Here she beached her canoe and went ashore; crept into a little +natural shelter under a jutting rock, where they had lain one day while, +for three hours, a violent unheralded storm had whipped the lake to +lather. The heap of hemlock branches he had cut for a couch for them was +still there. + +At the end of half an hour, she observed with a sort of apathetic +satisfaction, that the weather conditions of their former visit were +going to be repeated now--a sudden darkness, a shriek of wind, a wild +squall flashing across the surface of the little lake, and a driving +rain so thick that small as the lake was, it veiled the shore of it. + +She watched it for an hour before it occurred to her to wonder what +Rodney would be doing--whether he'd have discovered her absence from the +house and begun to worry about her. She told herself that he +wouldn't--that he'd sit there until he finished his book, or until they +called him for lunch, without, as he himself had boasted that morning, a +thought of her entering his mind. + +She wept again over this notion, luxuriating rather, it must be +confessed, in the pathos of it, until she caught herself in the act and, +disgustedly, dried her eyes. Of course he'd worry about her. Only there +was nothing either of them could do about it until the storm should be +over; then she'd paddle back to the house as fast as she could and set +his mind at rest. + +Suddenly she sat erect, looked, rubbed her eyes, looked again, then +sprang to her feet and went out into the driving rain. A spot of white, +a larger one of black, two moving pin-points of light, was what she saw. +The white was Rodney's shirt, the black the canoe, the pin-points the +reflection from the two-bladed paddle as, recklessly, he forced his way +with it into the teeth of the storm. He wanted her, after all. + +So, with a racing heart and flushed cheeks, she watched him. It was not +until he had come much nearer that she went white with the realization +of his danger--not until she could see how desperately it needed all his +strength and skill to keep his little cockle-shell from broaching to +and being swamped. + +[Illustration: "Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"] + +She went as far to meet him as she could--out to the end of the point, +and then actually into the water to help him with the half-filled boat. + +They emptied it and hauled it up on the beach. Then, looking up at him a +little tremulously, between a smile and tears, she saw how white he was, +caught him in her arms and felt how he was trembling. + +"I thought you were gone," he said, but couldn't manage any more than +that because of a great shuddering sob that stopped him. + +"Don't!" she cried. "Don't.--Oh, my dear! I didn't know!" + +Presently, back in the shelter again, she drew his head down on her +breast and held him tight. + +Logically, of course, the situation wasn't essentially changed. It +couldn't be a part of their daily married routine that he should think +he'd lost her and come through perils to the rescue. When the storm had +blown over and they'd come back to the house--still more, when after +another few weeks they'd gone back to town, he'd still have a world of +his own to withdraw into, a business of his own to absorb him, and she, +with no world at all except the one he was the principal inhabitant of, +would be left outside. But you couldn't have expected her to think of +that while she held him, quivering, in her arms. + + + + +BOOK TWO + +Love and the World + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE PRINCESS CINDERELLA + + +When the society editor of "America's foremost newspaper," as in its +trademark it proclaims itself to be, announced that the Rodney Aldriches +had taken the Allison McCreas' house, furnished, for a year, beginning +in October, she spoke of it as an ideal arrangement. As everybody knew, +it was an ideal house for a young married couple, and it was equally +evident that the Rodney Aldriches were an ideal couple for it. + +In the sense that it left nothing to further realization, it was an +ideal house; an old house in the Chicago sense, built over into +something very much older still--Tudor, perhaps--Jacobean, anyway--by a +smart young society architect who wore soft collars and an uptwisted +mustache, and who, by a perfectly reciprocal arrangement which almost +deserves to be called a form of perpetual motion, owed the fact that he +was an architect to his social position, and maintained his social +position by being an architect. + +He had cooperated enthusiastically with Florence McCrea, not only in the +design of the house, but in the supplementary matters of furniture, +hangings, rugs and pictures, with the effect that the establishment +presented the last politely spoken word in things as they ought to be. +The period furniture was accurate almost to the minute, and the +arrangement of it, the color schemes and the lighting, had at once the +finality of perfection and the perfection of finality. If you happened +to like that sort of thing, it was precisely the sort of thing you'd +like. + +The same sort of neat, fully acquired perfection characterized the +McCreas' domestic arrangements. Allison McCrea's income, combined with +his wife's, was exactly enough to enable them to live in this house and +entertain on the scale it very definitely prescribed, just half the +time. Every other year they went off around the world in one direction +or another, and rented their house furnished for exactly enough to pay +all their expenses. They had no children, and his business, which +consisted in allowing his bank to collect his invariable quarterly +dividends for him and credit them to his account, offered no obstacle to +this arrangement. On the alternate years, they came back and spent two +years' income living in their house. + +Florence was an old friend of Rodney's and it was her notion that it +would be just the thing he'd want. She made no professions of +altruism--admitted she was fussy about whom she rented her darling house +to, and that Rodney and his wife would be exactly right. Still, she +didn't believe he could do better. They'd have to have some sort of +place to live in, in the autumn. It would be such a mistake to buy a lot +of stuff in a hurry and find out later that they didn't want it! The +arrangement she proposed would leave him an idyllically untroubled +summer--nothing to fuss about, and provide ... Well, Rodney knew for +himself what the house was--complete down to the cork-screws. + +Even the servant question was eliminated. "Ours are so good," Florence +said, "that the last time we rented the house, we put them in the lease. +I wouldn't do that with you, of course, but I know they'll be just what +you want." And six thousand dollars a year was simply dirt cheap. + +To clinch the thing, Florence went around and saw Frederica about it. +And Frederica, after listening, non-committally, dashed off to the last +meeting of the Thursday Club (all this happened in June, just before the +wedding) and talked the matter over with Violet Williamson on the way +home, afterward. + +"John said once," observed Violet, "that if he had to live in that +house, he'd either go out and buy a plush Morris chair from +feather-your-nest Saltzman's, and a golden oak sideboard, or else run +amuck." + +Frederica grinned, but was sure it wouldn't affect Rodney that way. +He'd never notice that there _wasn't_ a golden oak sideboard with a +beveled mirror in it. As for Rose, she thought Rose would like it--for a +while, anyway. Of course it wasn't forever. But this wasn't the point. +It was something else she had to get an unprejudiced opinion on, "simply +because in this case my own isn't trustworthy. I'm so foolish about old +Roddy, that I can't be sure I haven't--well, caught being mad about Rose +from him. It all depends, you see, on whether Rose is going to be a hit +this winter or not. If she is, they'll want a place just like that and +it would be a shame for her to be bothered and unsettled when she might +have everything all oiled for her. But of course if she doesn't--go (and +it all depends on her; Rodney won't be much help)--why, having a house +like that might be pretty sad. So, if you're a true friend, you'll tell +me what you think." + +"What I really think," said Violet, "--of course I suppose I'd say this +anyway, but I do honestly mean it--is that she'll be what John calls a +'knock-out.' To be sure, I've only met her twice, but I think she's +absolutely thrilling. She's so perfectly simple. She's never--don't you +know--_being_ anything. She just is. And she thinks we're all so +wonderful--clever and witty and beautiful and all that--just honestly +thinks so, that she'll make everybody feel warm and nice inside, and +they'll be sure to like her. Of course, when she gets over feeling that +way about us...." + +"She's got a real eye for clothes, too," said Frederica. "We've been +shopping. Well then, I'm going to tell Rodney to go ahead and take the +house." + +Rose was consulted about it of course, though consulted is perhaps not +the right word to use. She was taken to see it, anyway, and asked if she +liked it, a question in the nature of the case superfluous. One might as +well have asked Cinderella if she liked the gown the fairy godmother had +provided her with for the prince's ball. + +It didn't occur to her to ask how much the rent would be, nor would the +fact have had any value for her as an illuminant, because she would have +had no idea whether six thousand dollars was a half or a hundredth of +her future husband's income. The new house was just a part--as so many +of the other things that had happened to her since that night when +Rodney had sent her flowers and taken her to the theater and two +restaurants in Martin's biggest limousine had been parts--of a +breath-arresting fairy story. + +It takes a consciousness of resistance overcome to make anything feel +quite real, and Rose, during the first three months after their return +to town in the autumn, encountered no resistance whatever. It was all, +as Frederica had said, oiled. She was asked to make no effort. The whole +thing just happened, exactly as it had happened to Cinderella. All she +had to do was to watch with wonder-wide eyes, and feel that she was, +deliciously, being floated along. + +The conclusion Frederica and Violet had come to about her chance for +social success was amply justified by the event, and it is probable that +Violet had put her finger on the mainspring of it. One needn't assume +that there were not other young women at the prince's ball as beautiful +as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one +provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should +say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for +unalloyed delight. No other young girl, beautiful as she may have been, +if she were accustomed to driving to balls in coaches and having princes +ask her to dance with them, could possibly have looked at that prince +the way Cinderella must have looked at him. + +While a sophisticated woman can affect this sort of simplicity well +enough to take in the men, the affectation is always transparently clear +to other women and they detest her for it. But it was altogether the +real thing with Rose, and they knew it and took to her as naturally as +the men did. + +So it fell out that what with the Junior League, the woman's auxiliary +boards of one or two of the more respectably elect charities, the +Thursday Club and The Whifflers (this was the smallest and smartest +organization of the lot--fifteen or twenty young women supposed to +combine and reconcile social and intellectual brilliancy on even terms. +They met at one another's houses and read scintillating papers about +nothing whatever under titles selected generally from _Through the +Looking-glass_ or _The Hunting of the Snark_)--what with all this, her +days were quite as full as the evenings were, when she and Rodney dined +and went to the opera and paid fabulous prices to queer professionals, +to keep themselves abreast of the minute in all the new dances. + +But it wasn't merely the events of this sort, sitting in boxes at the +opera and going to marvelous supper dances afterward, that had this +thrilling quality of incredibility to Rose. The connective tissue of her +life gave her the same sensation, perhaps even more strongly. + +Portia had been quite right in saying that she had never _had_ to do +anything; the rallying of all her forces under the spur of necessity was +an experience she had never undergone. And it was also true that her +mother, and for that matter, Portia herself had spoiled her a lot--had +run about doing little things for her, come in and shut down her windows +in the morning, and opened the register, and on any sort of excuse, on a +Saturday morning, for example, had brought her her breakfast on a tray. + +But these things had been favors, not services--never to be asked for, +of course, and always to be accepted a little apologetically. She never +knew what it was really to be served, until she and Rodney came back +from their camp in the woods. The whole mechanism of ringing bells for +people, telling them, quite courteously of course, but with no spare +words, precisely what she wanted them to do and seeing them, with no +words at all of their own, except the barest minimum required to +indicate respectful acquiescence--carrying out these instructions, was +in its novelty, as sensuously delightful a thing to her feelings as the +contact with a fine fabric was to her finger-tips. + +"I haven't," Rose, in bed, told Rodney one morning, "a single, blessed, +mortal thing to do all day." Some fixture scheduled for that morning had +been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling +seedy and had called off a little luncheon and matinée party. So, she +concluded with a deep-drawn sigh, the day was empty. + +"Oh, that's too bad," he said with concern. "Can't you manage +something ...?" + +"Too bad!" said Rose in lively dissent. "It's too heavenly! I've got a +whole day just to enjoy being myself;--being"--she reached across to the +other bed for his hand, and getting it, stroked her cheek with +it--"being my new self. You've no idea how new it is, or how exciting +all the little things about it are. State Street's so different +now--going and getting the exact thing I want, instead of finding +something I can make do, and then faking it up to look as much like the +real thing as I could. Portia used to think I faked pretty well. It was +the one thing she really admired about me, because she couldn't do it +herself at all. But I never was--don't you know?--right. + +"And then when I was going anywhere, I'd figure out the through routes +and where I'd take transfers, and how many blocks I'd have to walk, and +what kind of shoes I'd have to wear. And coming home in time for dinner +always meant the rush hour, and I'd have to stand. And it simply never +occurred to me that everybody else didn't do it that way. Except"--she +smiled--"except in Robert Chambers' novels and such." + +It wasn't necessary to see Rose smile to know she did it. Her voice, +broadening out and--dimpling, betrayed the fact. This smile, plainly +enough, went rather below the surface, carried a reference to something. +But Rodney didn't interrupt. He let her go on and waited to inquire +about it later. + +"So you see," she concluded, "it's quite an adventure just to say--well, +that I want the car at a quarter to eleven and to tell Otto exactly +where I want him to drive me to. I always feel as if I ought to say that +if he'll just stop the car at the corner of Diversey Street, I can +walk." + +He laughed out at that and asked her how long she thought this blissful +state of things would last. + +"Forever," she said. + +But presently she propped herself up on one elbow and looked over at him +rather thoughtfully. "Of course it's none of it new to you," she +said--"not the silly little things I've been talking about, nor the +things we do together--oh, the dinners, and the dances, and the operas. +Do you sort of--wish I'd get tired of it? Is it a dreadful bore to you?" + +"So long as it doesn't bore you," he said; "so long as you go +on--shining the way you do over it, and I am where I can see you +shine"--he got out of his bed, sat down on the edge of hers, and took +both her hands--"so long as it's like that, you wonder," he said, "well, +the dinners and the operas and all that may be piffle, but I shall be +blind to the fact." + +She kissed his hands and told him contentedly that he was a darling. +But, after a moment's silence, a little frown puckered her eyebrows and +she asked him what he was so solemn about. + +Well, he had told her the truth. The edge of excitement in his voice +would have carried the irresistible conviction to anybody, that the +thing he had said was, without reserve, the very thing he meant. But +precisely as he said it, as if, indeed, the thing that he had said were +the detonating charge that fires the shell, he felt the impact, away +down in the inner depths of him, of a realization that he was not the +same man he had been six months ago. Not the man who had tramped +impatiently back and forth across Frederica's drawing-room, expounding +his ideals of space and leisure--open, wind-swept space, for the free +range of a hard, clean, athletic mind. Not the man who despised the +clutter of expensive junk--"so many things to have and to do, that one +couldn't turn around for fear of breaking something." That man would +have derided the possibility that he could ever say this thing that he, +still Rodney Aldrich, had just said to Rose--and meant. + +To that man, the priceless hour of the day had always been precisely +this one, the first waking hour, when his mind, in the enjoyment of a +sort of clairvoyant limpidity, had been wont to challenge its stiffest +problems, wrestle with them, and whether triumphant or not, despatch him +to his office avid for the day's work and strides ahead of where he had +left it the night before. + +He spent that hour very differently now. He spent all his hours, even +the formal working ones, differently. And the terrifying thing was that +he hadn't resisted the change, hadn't wanted to resist, didn't want to +now, as he sat there looking down at her--at the wonderful hair which +framed her face and, in its two thick braids, the incomparable whiteness +of her throat and bosom--at the slumberous glory of her eyes. + +So, when she asked him what he was looking so solemn about, he said with +more truth than he pretended to himself, that it was enough to make +anybody solemn to look at her. And then, to break the spell, he asked +her why she had laughed a little while back, over something she had said +about Robert W. Chambers' novels. + +"I was thinking," she said, "of the awful disgrace I got into yesterday, +with somebody--well, with Bertram Willis, by saying something like that. +I'll have to tell you about it." + +Bertram Willis, it should be said, was the young architect with the +upturned mustaches and the soft Byronic collars, who had done the house +for the McCreas. And I must warn you to take the adjective young, with a +grain of salt. Youth was no mere accident with him. He made an art of +it, just as he did of eating and drinking and love-making and, +incidentally, architecture. He was enormously in demand, chiefly +perhaps, among young married women whose respectability and social +position were alike beyond cavil. He never carried anything too far, you +see. He was no pirate--a sort, rather, of licensed privateer. And what +made him so invincibly attractive--after you had granted his other +qualities, that is--was that he professed himself, among women, +exceedingly difficult to please, so that attentions from him, even of a +casual sort, became _ex hypothesi_ compliments of the first order. If he +asked you, in his innocently shameless way, to belong to his _hareem_, +you boasted of it afterward;--jocularly, to be sure, but you felt +pleased just the same. The thing that had given the final cachet of +distinction to Rose's social success that season, had been the fact that +he had shown a disposition to flirt with her quite furiously. + +Rose didn't need to tell her husband that, of course, because he knew it +already, as he also knew that Willis had asked her to be one of the +Watteau group he was getting up for the charity ball (the ball was to +be a sumptuously picturesque affair that year), nor that he had been +spending hours with her over the question of costumes--getting as good +as he gave, too, because her eye for clothes amounted to a really +special talent. + +All that Rodney didn't know, was about the conversation the two of them +had had yesterday afternoon at tea-time. + +Rose, intent on telling him all about it, had postponed the recital +while she made up her own mind as to how she should regard the thing +herself; whether she ought to have been annoyed, or seriously +remonstrant, or whether the smile of pure amusement which had come so +spontaneously to her lips, had expressed, after all, an adequate +emotion. + +The look in her husband's face made an end of all doubts, reduced the +episode of yesterday to its proper scale. Married to a man who could +look at her like that, she needn't take any one else's looks or speeches +very seriously. It was at this angle that she told about it. + +"Why," she said, "of course he's always talked to me as if I were about +six--sixteen, anyway, no older than that, and the names he makes up to +call me are simply too silly to repeat. But I never paid any attention, +because--well, everybody knows he's that way to everybody. 'Flower face' +was one of his favorites, but there were others that were worse. Well, +yesterday he brought around some old costume plates, but he wouldn't let +me look at them without coming round beside me and--holding my hand, so +that didn't work very well. And then he got quite solemn and said +I'd--given him the only real regret of his life, because he hadn't seen +me until it was too late." + +"I didn't know," said Rodney, "that he ever let obstacles like husbands +bother him." + +"That's what I thought he meant at first," said Rose, "but it wasn't. He +didn't mean it was too late because of my being married to you. He meant +too late because of him. He couldn't love me, he said, as I deserved, +because he'd been in love so many times before, himself. + +"And then, of course, just when I should have been looking awfully sad +and sympathetic, I had to go and grin, and he wanted to know why, and I +said, 'Nothing,' but he insisted, you know, so then I told him. + +"Well, it was just what I said to you a while ago--that I didn't know +any men ever talked like that except in books by Hichens or +Chambers--why do you suppose they're both named Robert?--and he went +perfectly purple with rage and said I was a savage. And then he got +madder still and said he'd like to be a savage himself for about five +minutes; and I wanted to tell him to go ahead and try, and see what +happened, but I didn't. I asked him how he wanted his tea, and he didn't +want it at all, and went away." + +As she finished, she glanced up into his face for a hardly-needed +reassurance that the episode looked to him, as it had looked to her, +trivial. Then, with a contented little sigh, for his look gave her just +what she wanted, she sat up and slid her arms around his neck. + +"How plumb ridiculous it would have been," she said, "if either of us +had married anybody else." + +If Rodney, that is, had married a girl who'd have taken Bertram Willis +seriously; or if she had married a man capable of thinking the +architect's attentions important. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE FIRST QUESTION AND AN ANSWER TO IT + + +But within a day or two, when a conversation overheard at a luncheon +table recalled the architect to her mind, a rather perplexing question +propounded itself to her. Why had it infuriated him so--why had he +glared at her with that air of astounded incredulity, on discovering +that she wasn't prepared to take him seriously? There could be only one +answer to that question. He could not have expected Rose to be properly +impressed and fluttered, unless that were the effect he was in the habit +of producing on other women. These others, much older that Rose all of +them (because no débutantes were ever invited to belong to the +_hareem_), these new, brilliant, sophisticated friends her marriage with +Rodney had brought her, did not, evidently, regard the dapper little +architect with feelings anything like the mild, faintly contemptuous +mirth that he had roused so spontaneously and irresistibly in Rose. +Every one of them had a husband of her own, hadn't she? And they were +happily married, too. Well, then ...! + +She found Violet Williamson in Frederica's box at the Symphony concert +one Friday afternoon, and took them both home to tea with her afterward. +And when the talk fairly got going, she tossed her problem about Bertie +Willis and his _hareem_ into the vortex to see what would come of it. + +It was always easy to talk with Frederica and Violet, there was so much +real affection under the amusement they freely expressed over her youth +and inexperience and simplicity. They always laughed at her, but they +came over and hugged her afterward. + +"I'm turned out of the _hareem_," she said, apropos of the mention of +him, "in disgrace." + +Violet wanted to know whatever in the world she had done to him. +"Because, he's been positively--what do you call it?--dithyrambic about +you for the last three months." + +"I laughed," Rose acknowledged; "in the wrong place of course." + +The two older women exchanged glances. + +"Do you suppose it's ever been done to him before," asked Frederica, "in +the last fifteen years, anyway?" And Violet solemnly shook her head. + +"But why?" demanded Rose. "That's what I want to know. How can any one +help thinking he's ridiculous. Of course if you were alone on a desert +island with him like the Bab Ballad, I suppose you'd make the best of +him. But with any one else that was--real, you know, around ..." + +Only a very high vacuum--this was the idea Rose seemed to be getting +at--might be expected, _faute de mieux_, to tolerate Bertie. So if you +found him tolerated seriously in a woman's life, you couldn't resist the +presumption that there was a vacuum there. + +"Don't ask me about him," said Frederica. "He never would have anything +to do with me; said I was a classic type and they always bored him +stiff. But Violet, here ..." + +"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I lasted one season, and then he dropped me. He +beat me to it by about a minute. All the same--oh, I can understand it +well enough. You see, what he builds on is that a woman's husband is +always the least interesting man in the world. Oh, I don't mean we don't +love them, or that we want to change them--permanently, you know. Take +Frederica and me. We wouldn't exchange for anything. Yet, we used to +have long arguments. I've said that Martin was more--interesting, witty, +you know, and all that, than John. And Frederica says John is more +interesting than Martin. Oh, just to talk to, I mean. Not about anything +in particular, but when you haven't anything else to do." + +She paused long enough to take a tentative sip or two of boiling hot +tea. But the way she had hung up the ending to her sentence, told them +she wasn't through with the topic yet. + +"It's funny about that, too," she went on, "because really, we see each +other so much and have known each other so long, that I know +Martin's--repertory, about as well as Frederica. I mean, it isn't like +Walter Mill, when he was just back from the Legation at Pekin, or even +like Jimmy Wallace, who spends half his time playing around with all +sorts of impossible people--chorus-girls and such, and tells you queer +stories about them. There's something besides the--familiarness that +makes husbands dull. And that's what makes Bertie amusing." + +"Oh, of course," said Frederica, "everybody likes to flirt--whether they +have to or not." + +"Have to?" Rose echoed. She didn't want to miss anything. + +Frederica hesitated. Then, rather tentatively, began her exegesis. + +"Why, there are a lot of women--especially of our sort, I suppose, who +are always ... well, it's like taking your own temperature--sticking a +thermometer into their mouths and looking at it. They think they know +how they ought to feel about certain things, and they're always looking +to see if they do. And when they don't, they think their emotional +natures are being starved, or some silly thing like that. And of course, +if you're that way, you're always trying experiments, just the way +people do with health foods. In the end, they generally settle on +Bertie. He's perfectly safe, you know--just as anxious as they are not +to do anything really outrageous. Bertie keeps them in a pleasant sort +of flutter, and maybe he does them good. I don't know.--Drink your tea, +Violet. We've got to run." + +That was explicit enough anyway. But it didn't solve Rose's +problem--broadened and deepened it rather, and gave it a greater basis +of reality. It was silly, of course, always to be asking yourself +questions. But after all, you didn't question a thing that wasn't +questionable. There had been no necessity for a compromise between +romance and reality in her own case. She hadn't any need of a +thermometer. Why had they? + +Of course she knew well enough that marriage was not always the blissful +transformation it had been for her. There were unhappy marriages. There +were such things in the world as unfaithful husbands and brutal drunken +husbands, who had to be divorced. And equally, too, there were +cold-blooded, designing, mercenary wives. (In the back of her mind was +the unacknowledged notion that these people existed generally in novels. +She knew, of course, that those characters must have real prototypes +somewhere. Only, it hadn't occurred to her to identify them with people +of her own acquaintance.) But the idea had been that, barring these +tragic and disastrous types, marriage was a state whose happy +satisfactoriness could, more or less, be taken for granted. + +Oh, there were bumps and bruises, of course. She hadn't forgotten that +tragic hour in the canoe last summer. There had, indeed, been two or +three minor variants on the same theme since. She had seen Rodney drop +off now and again into a scowling abstraction, during which it was so +evident he didn't want to talk to her, or even be reminded that she was +about, that she had gone away flushed and wondering, and needing an +effort to hold back the tears. + +These weren't frequent occurrences, though. Once settled into what +apparently was going to be their winter's routine, they had so little +time alone together that these moments, when they came, had almost the +tension of those that unmarried lovers enjoy. They were something to +look forward to and make the delicious utmost of. + +So, until she got to wondering about Bertie, Rose's instinctive attitude +toward the group of young to middle-aged married people into which her +own marriage had introduced her, was founded on the assumption that, +allowing for occasional exceptions, the husbands and wives felt toward +each other as she and Rodney did--were held together by the same +irresistible, unanalyzable attraction, could remember severally, their +vivid intoxicating hours, just as she remembered the hour when Rodney +had told her the story and the philosophy of his life. + +Bertie, or rather the demand for what Bertie supplied, together with +Frederica's explanation of it, brought her the misgiving that marriage +was not, perhaps, even between people who loved each other,--between +husbands who were not "unfaithful" and wives who were not +"mercenary"--quite so simple as it seemed. + +The misgiving was not very serious at first--half amused, and wholly +academic, because she hadn't, as yet, the remotest notion that the thing +concerned, or ever could concern, herself; but the point was, it formed +a nucleus, and the property of a nucleus is that it has the power of +attracting to itself particles out of the surrounding nebulous vapor. It +grows as it attracts, and it attracts more strongly as it grows. + +An illustration of this principle is in the fact that, but for the +misgiving, she would hardly have asked Simone Gréville what she meant by +saying that though she had always supposed the fundamental sex +attraction between men and women to be the same in its essentials, in +all epochs and in all civilizations, her acquaintance with upper-class +American women was leading her to admit a possible exception. + +Since that amiable celestial, Wu Ting Fang, made his survey of our +western civilization and left us wondering whether after all we had the +right name for it, no one has studied our leisured and cultivated +classes with more candor and penetration than this great Franco-Austrian +actress. She had ample opportunities for observation, because during the +first week of her tour the precise people who count the most in our +informal social hierarchy took her up and, upon examination, took her +in. Playing in English as she did, and with an American supporting +company, she did not make a great financial success (the Continental +technique, especially when contrasted so intimately with the one we are +familiar with does not attract us), but socially she was a sensation. So +during her four weeks in Chicago, while she played to houses that +couldn't be dressed to look more than a third full, she was enormously +in demand for luncheons, teas, dinners, suppers, Christmas bazaars, +charity dances and so on. (If it had only been possible to establish a +scale of fees for these functions, her manager used to reflect +despairingly, he might have come out even after all.) Any other sort of +engagement melted away like snow in the face of an opportunity of +meeting Simone Gréville. + +Rose had met her a number of times before the incident referred to +happened, but had always surveyed the lioness from afar. What could she, +whose acquaintance with Europe was limited to one three-months trip, +undertaken by the family during the summer after she graduated from high +school, have to say to an omniscient cosmopolite like that? + +So she hung about, within ear-shot when it was possible, and watched, +leaving the active duties of entertainment to heavily cultured +illuminati like the Howard Wests, or to clever creatures like Hermione +Woodruff and Frederica, and Constance Crawford, whose French was good +enough to fill in the interstices in Madame Gréville's English. + +She was standing about like that at a tea one afternoon, when she heard +the actress make the remark already quoted, to the effect that American +women seemed to her to be an exception to what she always supposed to be +the general law of sex attraction. + +It was taken, by the rather tense little circle gathered around her, as +a compliment; exactly as, no doubt, Gréville intended it to be taken. +But her look flashed out beyond the confines of the circle and +encountered a pair of big luminous eyes, under brows that had a +perplexed pucker in them. Whereupon she laughed straight into Rose's +face and said, lifting her head a little, but not her voice: + +"Come here, my child, and tell me who you are and why you were looking +at me like that." + +Rose flushed, smiled that irresistible wide smile of hers, and came, not +frightened a bit, nor, exactly, embarrassed; certainly not into +pretending she was not surprised, and a little breathlessly at a loss +what to say. + +"I'm Rose Aldrich." She didn't, in words, say, "I'm just Rose Aldrich." +It was the little bend in her voice that carried that impression. "And I +suppose I was--looking that way, because I was wishing I knew exactly +what you meant by what you said." + +Gréville's eyes, somehow, concentrated and intensified their gaze upon +the flushed young face; took a sort of plunge, so it seemed to Rose, to +the very depths of her own. It was an electrifying thing to have happen +to you. + +"_Mon dieu_," she said, "_j'ai grande envie de vous le dire_." She +hesitated the fraction of a moment, glanced at a tiny watch set in a +ring upon the middle finger of her right hand, took Rose by the arm as +if to keep her from getting away, and turned to her hostess. + +"You must forgive me," she said, "if I make my farewells a little soon. +I am under orders to have some air each day before I go to the theater, +and if it is to be done to-day, it must be now. I am sorry. I have had a +very pleasant afternoon.--Make your farewells, also, my child," she +concluded, turning to her prisoner, "because you are going with me." + +There was something Olympian about the way she did it. The excuse was +made, and the regret expressed in the interest of courtesy, but neither +was insisted on as a fact, nor was seriously intended, it appeared, even +to disguise the fact, which was simply that she had found something +better worth her while, for the moment, than that tea. It occurred to +Rose that there wasn't a woman in town--not even terrible old Mrs. +Crawford, Constance's mother-in-law, who could have done that thing in +just that way; no one who felt herself detached, or, in a sense, +superior enough, to have done it without a trace of self-consciousness, +and consequently without offense. An empress must do things a good deal +like that. + +The effect on Rose was to make complete frankness seem the easiest thing +in the world. And frankness seemed to be the thing called for. Because +no sooner were they seated in the actress' car and headed north along +the drive, than she, instead of answering Rose's question, repeated one +of her own. + +"I ask who you are, and you say your name--Rose something. But that +tells me nothing. Who are you--one of them?" + +"No, not exactly," said Rose. "Only by accident. The man I married +is--one of them, in a way. I mean, because of his family and all that. +And so they take me in." + +"So you are married," said the French woman. "But not since long?" + +"Six months," said Rose. + +She said it so with the air of regarding it as a very considerable +period of time that Gréville laughed. + +"But tell me about him then, this husband of yours. I saw him perhaps at +the tea this afternoon?" + +Rose laughed. "No, he draws the line at teas," she said. "He says that +from seven o'clock on, until as late as I like, he's--game, you +know--willing to do whatever I like. But until seven, there are +no--well, he says, siren songs for him." + +"Tell me--you will forgive the indiscretions of a stranger?--how has it +arrived that you married him? Was it one of your American romances?" + +"It didn't seem very romantic," said Rose. "I mean not much like the +romantic stories you read, and of course one couldn't make a story about +it, because there was nothing to tell. We just happened to get +acquainted, and we knew almost straight off that we wanted to marry each +other, so we did. Some people thought it was a little--headlong, I +suppose, but he said it was an adventure anyway, and that people could +never tell how it was going to come out until they tried. So we tried, +and--it came out very well." + +"It 'came out'?" questioned the actress. + +"Yes," said Rose. "Ended happily, you know." + +"Ended!" Madame Gréville echoed. Then she laughed. + +Rose flushed and smiled at herself. "Of course I don't mean that," she +admitted, "and I suppose six months isn't so very long. Still you could +find out quite a good deal ..." + +"What is his affair?" The actress preferred asking another question, it +seemed, to committing herself to an answer to Rose's unspoken one. "Is +he one of your--what you call tired business men?" + +"He's never tired," said Rose, "and he isn't a business man. He's a +lawyer--a rather special kind of lawyer. He has other lawyers, mostly, +for his clients, he's awfully enthusiastic about it. He says it's the +finest profession in the world, if you don't let yourself get dragged +down into the stupid routine of it. It certainly sounds thrilling when +he tells about it." + +The actress looked round at her. "So," she said, "you follow his work as +he follows your play? He talks seriously to you about his affairs?" + +"Why, yes," said Rose, "we have wonderful talks." Then she hesitated. +"At least we used to have. There hasn't seemed to be much--time, lately. +I suppose that's it." + +"One question more," said the French woman, "and not an idle one--you +will believe that? _Alors!_ You love your husband. No need to ask that. +But how do you love him? Are you a little indulgent, a little cool, a +little contemptuous of the grossness of masculine clay, and still +willing to tolerate it as part of your bargain? Is that what you mean by +love? Or do you mean something different altogether--something vital and +strong and essential--the meeting of thought with thought, need with +need, desire with desire?" + +"Yes," said Rose after a little silence, "that's what I mean." + +She said it quietly, but without embarrassment and with full meaning; +and as if conscious of the adequacy of her answer, she forbore to +embroider on the theme. There was a momentary silence, while the French +woman gazed contemplatively out of the open window of the limousine, at +a skyscraping apartment building which jutted boldly into a curve of the +parkway they were flying along. + +"That's a beauty, isn't it?" said Rose, following her gaze. "Every +apartment in that building has its own garage that you get to with an +elevator." + +The actress nodded. "You Americans do that;" she said, "better than any +one else in the world. The--surfaces of your lives are to marvel at." + +"But with nothing inside?" asked Rose. "Is that what you mean? Is--that +what you mean about--American women, that you said you'd tell me?" + +Madame Gréville took her time about answering. "They are an enigma to +me," she said, "I confess it. I have never seen such women anywhere, as +these upper-class Americans. They are beautiful, clever, they know how +to dress. For the first hour, or day, or week, of an acquaintance, they +have a charm quite incomparable. And, up to a certain point, they +exercise it. Your _jeunes filles_ are amazing. All over the world, men +go mad about them. But when they marry ..." She finished the sentence +with the ghost of a shrug, and turned to Rose. "Can you account for +them? Were you wondering at them, too, with those great eyes of yours? +_Alors_! Are we puzzled by the same thing? What is it, to you, they +lack?" + +Rose stirred a little uneasily. "I don't know very much," she said. "I +don't know them well at all, and of course I shouldn't criticize ..." + +"Ah, child," broke in the actress, "there you mistake yourself. One must +always criticize. It is by the power of criticism and the courage of +criticism, that we have become different from the beasts." + +"I don't know," said Rose, "except that some of them seem a little +dissatisfied and restless, as if--well, as if they wanted something they +haven't got." + +"But do they truly want it?" Madame Gréville demanded. "I am willing to +be convinced, but myself, I find of your women of the aristocrat class, +the type most characteristic is"--she paused and said the thing first +to herself in French, then translated--"is a passive epicure in +sensations; sensations mostly mental, irritating or soothing--a pleasant +variety. She waits to be made to feel; she perpetually--tastes. One may +demand whether it is that their precocity has exhausted them before they +are ripe, or whether your Puritan strain survives to make all passion +reprehensible, or whether simply they have too many ideas to leave room +for anything else. But, from whatever cause, they give to a stranger +like me, the impression of being perfectly frigid, perfectly +passionless. And so, as you say, of missing the great thing altogether. + +"A few of your women are great, but not as women, and of second-rate men +in petticoats, you have a vast number. But a woman, great by the +qualities of her sex, an artist in womanhood, I have not seen." + +"Oh, I wish," cried Rose, "that I knew what you meant by that!" + +"Why, regard now," said the actress. "In every capital of Europe--and I +know them all--wherever you find great affairs--matters of state, +diplomacy, politics--you find the influence of women in them; women of +the great world, sometimes, sometimes of the half-world; great women, at +all events, with the power to make or ruin great careers; women at whose +feet men of the first class lay all they have; women the tact of whose +hands is trusted to determine great matters. They may not be beautiful +(I have seen a faded little woman of fifty, of no family or wealth, +whose salon attracted ministers of state), they haven't the education, +nor the liberties that your women enjoy, and, in the mass, they are not +regarded--how do you say?--chivalrously. Yet there they are! + +"And why? Because they are capable of great passions, great desires. +They are willing to take the art of womanhood seriously, make sacrifices +for it, as one must for any art, in order to triumph in it." + +Rose thought this over rather dubiously. It was a new notion to her--or +almost new. Portia had told her once she never would have any trouble +making her husband "want" her as much as she liked. This idea of making +a serious art of your power to attract and influence men, seemed to +range itself in the same category. + +"But suppose," she objected, "one doesn't want to triumph at it? Suppose +one wants to be a--person, rather than just a woman?" + +"There are other careers indeed," Madame Gréville admitted, "and one can +follow them in the same spirit, make the sacrifices--pay the price they +demand. _Mon dieu!_ How I have preached. Now you shall talk to me. It +was for that I took you captive and ran away with you." + +For the next half-hour, until the car stopped in front of her house, +Rose acted on this request; told about her life before and since her +marriage to Rodney, about her friends, her amusements--anything that +came into her mind. But she lingered before getting out of the car, to +say: + +"I hope I haven't forgotten a single word of your--preaching. You said +so many things I want to think about." + +"Don't trouble your soul with that, child," said the actress. "All the +sermon you need can be boiled down into a sentence, and until you have +found it out for yourself, you won't believe it." + +"Try me," said Rose. + +"Then attend.--How shall I say it?--Nothing worth having comes as a +gift, nor even can be bought--cheap. Everything of value in your life +will cost you dear; and some time or other you'll have to pay the price +of it." + +It was with a very thoughtful, perplexed face that Rose watched the car +drive away, and then walked slowly into her house--the ideal house that +had cost Florence McCrea and Bertie Willis so many hours and so many +hair-line decisions--and allowed herself to be relieved of her wraps by +the perfect maid, who had all but been put in the lease. + +The actress had said many strange and puzzling things during their ride; +things to be accepted only cautiously, after a careful thinking out. But +strangest of all was this last observation of hers; that there was +nothing of worth in your life that you hadn't to pay a heavy price for. + +Certainly it contradicted violently everything in Rose's experience, for +everything she valued had come to her precisely as a gift. Her mother's +and Portia's love of her, the life that had surrounded her in school and +at the university, the friends; and then, with her marriage, the sudden +change in her estate, the thrills, the excitement, the comparative +luxuries of the new life. Why,--even Rodney himself, about whom +everything else swung in an orbit! What price had she paid for him, or +for any of the rest of it? It was all as free as the air she breathed. +It had come to her without having cost even a wish. Was Rodney's love +for her, therefore, valueless? No, the French woman was certainly wrong +about that. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +WHERE DID ROSE COME IN + + +However, it was one thing to decide that this was so, and quite another +thing to dismiss the preposterous idea from her mind. There was still an +hour before she need begin dressing for the Randolph dinner, but as she +had already had her tea and there was nothing else to do, she thought +she might as well go about it. It might help her resist a certain +perfectly irrational depression which the talk with the actress, +somewhat surprisingly, had produced. And besides, if she were all +dressed when Rodney came home, she'd be free to visit with him while he +dressed--to sit and watch him swearing at his studs, and tell him about +the events of her day, including their climax in the ride with the +famous Simone Gréville. And he'd come over every now and then and +interrupt himself and her with some sort of unexpected caress--a kiss on +the back of her neck, or an embrace that would threaten her +coiffure--and this vague, scary, nightmarish sort of feeling, which for +no reasonable reason at all seemed to be clutching at her, would be +forgotten. + +It was a queer sort of feeling--a kind of misgiving, in one form or +another, as to her own identity--as if all the events since her marriage +were nothing but a dream of Rose Stanton's, from which, with vague +painful stirrings, she was just beginning to wake. Or, again, as if for +all these months, she had been playing a part in a preposterously long +play, on which the curtain was, presently, going to be rung down. She +wished Rodney would come--hoped he wouldn't be late, and finally sat +down before the telephone with a half-formed idea of calling him up and +reminding him that they were dining with the Randolphs. + +Just as she laid her hand upon the receiver, the telephone bell rang. It +was Rodney calling her. + +"Oh, that you, Rose?" he said. "I shan't be out till late to-night. +I've got to work." + +She wanted to know what he meant by late. + +"I've no idea," he said. "Ten--twelve--two. I've got to get hold of +something, but I've no idea how long it will take." + +"But, Roddy, dearest," she protested. "You have to come home. You've got +the Randolphs' dinner." + +"Oh, the devil!" he said. "I forgot all about it. But it doesn't make a +bit of difference, anyway. I wouldn't leave the office before I finished +this job, for anybody short of the Angel Gabriel." + +"But what shall we do?" she asked despairingly. + +"I don't know," said Rodney. "Call them up and tell them. Randolph will +understand." + +"But,"--it was absurd that her eyes should be filling up and her throat +getting lumpy over a thing like this,--"but what shall I do? Shall I +tell Eleanor _we_ can't come, or shall I offer to come without you?" + +"Lord!" he said, "I don't care. Do whichever you like. I've got enough +to think about without deciding that. Now do hang up and run along." + +"But, Rodney, what's happened? Has something gone wrong?" + +"Heavens, no!" he said. "What is there to go wrong? I've got a big day +in court to-morrow and I've struck a snag, and I've got to wriggle out +of it somehow, before I quit. It's nothing for you to worry about. Go to +your dinner and have a good time. Good-by." + +The click in the receiver told her he had hung up. The difficulty about +the Randolphs was managed easily enough. Eleanor was perfectly gracious +about it and insisted that Rose should come by herself. + +She was completely dressed a good three-quarters of an hour before it +was time to start, and after pretending for fifteen interminable minutes +to read a magazine, she chucked it away and told her maid to order the +car at once. If she drove straight down-town, she could have a +ten-minute visit with Rodney and still not be late for the dinner. She +was a little vague as to why she wanted it so much, but the prospect +was irresistible. + +If any one had accused her of feeling very meritorious over not having +allowed herself to be hurt at his rudeness to her or annoyed at the way +he had demolished their evening's plans, and of hoping to make him feel +a little contrite by showing him how sweet she was about it, she might, +with a rueful grin, have acknowledged a tincture of truth about the +charge; but she didn't discover it by herself. As she dreamed out the +little scene, riding down-town in the car, she'd come stealing up behind +him as he sat, bent wearily over his book, and clasp her hands over his +eyes and stroke the wrinkles out of his forehead. He'd give a long sigh +of relaxation, and pull her down on the chair-arm and tell her what it +was that troubled him, and she'd tell him not to worry--it was surely +coming out all right. And she'd stroke his head a little longer and +offer not to go to the dinner if he wanted her to stay, and he'd say, +no, he was better already, and then she'd give him a good-by kiss and +steal away, and be the life of the party at the Randolphs' dinner, but +her thoughts would never leave him.... + +She knew she was being silly of course, and her beautiful wide mouth +smiled an acknowledgment of the fact, even while her checks flushed and +her eyes brightened over the picture. Of course it wouldn't come out +exactly like that. + +Well, it didn't! + +She found a single elevator in commission in the great gloomy rotunda of +the office building, and the watchman who ran her up made a terrible +noise shutting the gate after he had let her out on the fifteenth floor. +The dim marble corridor echoed her footfalls ominously, and when she +reached the door to his outer office and tried it, she found it locked. +The next door down the corridor was the one that led directly into his +private office, and here the light shone through the ground-glass. + +She stole up to it as softly as she could, tried it and found it locked, +too, so she knocked. Through the open transom above it, she heard him +say "Hell!" in a heartfelt sort of way, and heard his chair thrust +back. The next moment he opened the door with a jerk. + +His glare of annoyance changed to bewilderment at the sight of her, and +he said: + +"Rose! Has anything happened? What's the matter?" And catching her by +the arm, he led her into the office. "Here, sit down and get your breath +and tell me about it!" + +She smiled and took his face in both her hands. "But it's the other +way," she said. "There's nothing the matter with me. I came down, you +poor old boy, to see what was the matter with you." + +He frowned and took her hands away and stepped back out of her reach. +Had it not been for the sheer incredibility of it, she'd have thought +that her touch was actually distasteful to him. + +"Oh," he said. "I thought I told you over the phone there was nothing +the matter!--Won't you be awfully late to the Randolphs'?" + +"I had ten minutes," she said, "and I thought ..." + +She broke off the sentence when she saw him snap out his watch and look +at it. + +"I know there's something," she said. "I can tell just by the way your +eyes look and the way you're so tight and--strained. If you'd just tell +me about it, and then sit down and let me--try to take the strain +away...." + +Beyond a doubt the strain was there. The laugh he meant for a +good-humored dismissal of her fears, didn't sound at all as it was +intended to. + +"Can't you tell me?" she repeated. + +"Good heavens!" he said. "There's nothing to tell! I've got an argument +before the Court of Appeals to-morrow and there's a ruling decision +against me. It is against me, and it's bad law. But that isn't what I +want to tell them. I want some way of making a distinction so that I can +hold that the decision doesn't rule." + +"And it wouldn't help," she ventured, "if you told me all about it? I +don't care about the dinner." + +"I couldn't explain in a month," he said. + +"Oh, I wish I were some good," she said forlornly. + +He pulled out his watch again and began pacing up and down the room. + +"I just can't stand it to see you like that," she broke out again. "If +you'll only sit down for five minutes and let me try to get that +strained look out of your eyes...." + +"Good God, Rose!" he shouted. "Can't you take my word for it and let it +alone? I'm not ill, nor frightened, nor broken-hearted. I don't need to +be comforted nor encouraged. I'm in an intellectual quandary. For the +next three hours, or six, or however long it takes, I want my mind to +run cold and smooth. I've got to be tight and strained. That's the way +the job's done. You can't solve an intellectual problem by having your +hand held, or your eyes kissed, or anything like that. Now, for God's +sake, child, run along and let me forget you ever existed, for a while!" + +And he ground his teeth over an impulse that all but got the better of +him, after she'd shut the door, to follow her out into the corridor and +pull her up in his arms and kiss her face all over, and to consign the +Law and the Prophets both, to the devil. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +LONG CIRCUITS AND SHORT + + +James Randolph was a native Chicagoan, but his father, an intelligent +and prosperous physician, with a general practise in one of the northern +suburbs, afterward annexed to the city, did not belong to the old +before-the-fire aristocracy that Rodney and Frederica, and Martin +Whitney, the Crawfords and Violet Williamson were born into. The medical +tradition carried itself along to the third generation, when James made +a profession of it, and in him, it flowered really into genius. From the +beginning his bent toward the psychological aspect of it was marked and +his father was sympathetic enough to give it free sway. After graduating +from one of the Chicago medical colleges he went to Johns Hopkins, and +after that to Vienna, where he worked mostly under Professor Freud. + +It was in Vienna that he met Eleanor Blair. She, too, was a native of +Illinois, but this fact cut a very different figure in her life from +that which it cut in his. Her grandfather, a pioneer, forceful, thrifty +and probably rather unscrupulous, had settled on the wonderfully fertile +land at a time when one had almost to drive the Indians off it. He had +accumulated it steadily to the day of his death and died in possession +of about thirty thousand acres of it. It was in much this fashion that a +feudal adventurer became the founder of a line of landed nobility, but +the centrifugal force of American life caused the thing to work out +differently. His son had an eastern college education, got elected to +Congress, as a preliminary step in a political career, went to +Washington, fell in love with and married the beautiful daughter of an +unreconstructed and impoverished southern gentleman. She detested the +North, and as her love for the South found its expression in passionate +laments over its ruin, uncomplicated by any desire to live there, she +spent more and more of her time--her husband's faint wishes becoming +less and less operative with her until they ceased altogether--in one +after another of the European capitals. + +So Eleanor, two generations away from the fertile soil of central +Illinois, was as exotic to it as an orchid would be in a New England +garden. Two or three brief perfunctory visits to the land her income +came from, and to the relatives who still lived upon it, became the +substitute for what, in an older and stabler civilization, would have +been the dominant tradition in her life. + +She must have been a source of profound satisfaction to large numbers of +French, Italian, Austrian and English persons, to whose eminent social +circles her mother's wealth and breeding gained admittance, by embodying +for them, with perfect authenticity, their notion of the American girl. +She was rich, beautiful, clever in a rather shallow, "American" way, she +had a will of her own, and was indulged by her mother with an astounding +amount of liberty; she was audacious, yet with a tempering admixture of +cool shrewdness, which kept her out of the difficulties she was always +on the brink of. + +Kept her out of them, that is, until, in Vienna, as I have said, she met +James Randolph. That she fell in love with him is one of those facts +which seem astonishing the first time you look at them, and inevitable +when you look again. Physically, a sanguine blond, with a narrow head, a +forward thrusting nose, and really blue eyes, his dominating spiritual +quality was the sort of asceticism which proclaims not weak anemic +desires, but strong unruly ones, curbed in by the hand of a still +stronger will. He was highly imaginative, as a successful follower of +the Freudian method must be. He was capable of the gentlest sympathy, +and of the most relentless insistence. And he thought, until he met +Eleanor Blair, that he was, indisputably, his own master. + +The wide social gulf between them--between a beautiful American heiress +with the entry into all circles of aristocratic society, except the +highest, and an only decently pecunious medical student, caught both of +them off their guard. The utter unlikelihood of anything coming of such +an acquaintance as theirs, was just the ambush needed to make it +possible for them to fall in love. They would, probably, have attracted +each other anywhere. But, in a city like Vienna, where all the sensuous +appurtenances of life are raised to their highest power, the attraction +became irresistible. + +He did resist as long as he could--successfully, indeed, to the point of +holding himself back from asking her to marry him, or even explicitly +from making love to her. But the thing shone through his deeply-colored +emotions, like light through a stained-glass window. And when she asked +him to marry her, as she did in so many words--pleaded her homesickness +for a home she had never known, and a loneliness she had suddenly become +aware of, amid would-be friends and lovers, who could not, not one of +them, be called disinterested, his resistance melted like a powder of +April snow. + +It was the only serious obstacle she had to overcome. The terms of her +father's will left her share of the income of the estate wholly at her +disposal. And so, in spite of her mother's horrified protest, they were +married, and not long afterward, her mother, who was still a year or two +on the sunny side of fifty, gratified her aristocratic yearnings by +marrying a count herself. + +The Randolphs came back to America and, somewhat against Eleanor's +wishes, settled in Chicago. With her really very large income, her +exotic type of beauty and her social skill, she was probably right in +thinking she could have made a success anywhere. One of the larger +eastern cities--preferably New York or Washington, would have suited her +better. But Chicago, he said, was where he belonged and where his best +chance for professional success lay, and she yielded, though without +waiving her privilege of making a more or less good-humored grievance of +it. However, she found the place much more tolerable than riding into +and out of it on the train a few times had led her to expect. + +She knew a few people of exactly the right sort and she neatly and +almost painlessly detached her husband from his old Lake View +associations. She looked out a house in precisely the right +neighborhood, and furnished it to combine the splendor of her income +with the simple austerity of his profession in just the right +proportions. She trailed her game with unfailing precision, never barked +up the wrong tree, could distinguish a goat from a sheep as far as she +could see one, and in no time at all had won the exact position she +wanted. + +Her attitude toward her husband (you have already had a sample of it at +Frederica's famous dinner, where Rodney was supposed to take the +preliminary steps toward marrying Hermione Woodruff) attracted general +admiration, and it was fortified, of course, by the story of their +romantic marriage. It was conceded she had done a very fine and splendid +thing in marrying the man she loved, settling down to live with him on +so comparatively simple and modest a scale, and devoting herself so +whole-heartedly to his career. She had an air--and it wasn't consciously +assumed, either--of living wholly with reference to him, which people +found exceedingly engaging. (A cynic might observe at this point that +the same quality in a homely unattractive woman would fail of producing +this effect.) + +Indeed, he had much to be grateful for. But for the fact that his wife +was accepted without reserve, a man whose principal preoccupation was +with matters of sex psychology, who was said to cure hysterical and +neurasthenic patients by the interpretation of their dreams, would have +been regarded askance by the average run of common-sense, golf-playing +men of affairs. Even his most miraculous cures would be attributed to +the imaginary nature of the disease, rather than to the skill of the +physician. + +Not even his wife's undeniable charm could altogether efface this +impression from the mind of this sort of man. But though his way of +turning the theme of a smoking-room story into a subject for serious +scientific discussion might make you uncomfortable, you couldn't meet +James Randolph and hear him talk, without respecting him. He was +attractive to women (it amounted almost to fascination with the neurotic +type), and to men of high intelligence, like Rodney, he was a boon and +a delight. And the people who liked him least were precisely those most +attracted by his wife. Anyhow, no one refused an invitation to their +dinners. + +Rose's arrival at this one--a little late, to be sure, but not +scandalously--created a mild sensation. None of the other guests were +strangers, either, on whom she could have the effect of novelty. They +were the same crowd, pretty much, who had been encountering one another +all winter--dancing, dining and talking themselves into a state of +complete satiety with one another. They'd split up pretty soon and +branch out in different directions--the Florida east coast, California, +Virginia Hot Springs and so on, and so galvanize their interest in life +and in one another. At present they were approaching the lowest ebb. + +But when Rose came into the drawing-room--in a wonderful gown that dared +much, and won the reward of daring--a gown she'd meant to hold in +reserve for a greater occasion, but had put on to-night because she had +felt somehow like especially pleasing Rodney--when she came in, she +reoxygenated the social atmosphere. She won a moment of complete +silence, and when the buzz of talk arose again, it was jerky--the +product of divided minds and unstable attentions. + +She was, in fact, a stranger. Her voice had a bead on it which roused a +perfectly unreasoning physical excitement--the kind of bead which, in +singing, makes all the difference between a church choir and grand +opera. The glow they were accustomed to in her eyes, concentrated itself +into flashes, and the flush that so often, and so adorably, suffused her +face, burnt brighter now in her cheeks and left the rest pale. + +And these were true indices of the change that had taken place within +her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd +walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an +intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had +found herself suddenly feeling lighter, older, indescribably more +confident. That dinner was to be gone through with, was it? Well, it +should be! They shouldn't suspect her humiliation or her hurt. She was +conscious suddenly of enormous reserves of power hitherto unsuspected--a +power that could be exercised to any extent she chose, according to her +will. + +Her husband, James Randolph reflected, had evidently either been making +love to her, or indulging in the civilized equivalent of beating her; he +was curious to find out which. And having learned from his wife that +Rose was to sit beside him at the table, he made up his mind that he +would make her tell him. + +He didn't attempt it, though, during his first talk with her--confined +himself rigorously to the carefully sifted chaff which does duty for +polite conversation over the same hors-d'oeuvres and entrées, from one +dinner to the next, the season round. It wasn't until Eleanor had turned +the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in the game. + +"No need asking you if you like this sort of thing," he said. "I would +like to know how you keep it up. You have the same things said to you +seven nights a week and you make the same answers--thrust and parry, +carte and tierce, buttons on the foils. It can't any of it get anywhere. +What's the attraction?" + +"You can't get a rise out of me to-night," said Rose. "Not after what +I've been through to-day. Madame Gréville's been talking to me. She +thinks American women are dreadful dubs,--or she would if she knew the +word--thinks we don't know our own game. Do you agree with her?" + +"I'll tell you that," he said, "after you answer my question. What's the +attraction?" + +"Don't you think it would be a mistake," said Rose, "for me to try to +analyze it? Suppose I did and found there wasn't any! You aren't +supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, you know." + +"Is that what's the matter with Rodney?" he asked. "Is this sort of"--a +gesture with his head took in the table--"caramel diet, beginning to go +against his teeth?" + +"He had to work to-night," Rose said. "He was awfully sorry he couldn't +come." + +She smiled just a little ironically as she said it, and exaggerated by +a hair's breadth, perhaps, the purely conventional nature of the reply. + +"Yes," he observed, "that's what we say. Sometimes it gets us off and +sometimes it doesn't." + +"Well, it got him off to-night," she said. "He was pretty impressive. He +said there was a ruling decision against him and he had to make some +sort of distinction so that the decision wouldn't rule. Do you know what +that means? I don't." + +"Why didn't you ask him?" Randolph wanted to know. + +"I did and he said he could explain it, but that it would take a month. +So of course there wasn't time." + +"I thought," said Randolph, "that he used to talk law to you by the +hour." + +The button wasn't on the foil that time, because the thrust brought +blood--a bright flush into her cheeks and a sudden brightness into her +eyes that would have induced him to relent if she hadn't followed the +thing up of her own accord. + +"I wish you'd tell me something," she said. "I expect you know better +than any one else I could ask. Why is it that husbands and wives can't +talk to each other? With people who live the way we do, it isn't that +they've worn each other out, because they see no more of each other, +hardly, than they do of the others. And it isn't that they're naturally +more uninteresting to each other than the rest of the people they know. +Because then, why did they marry each other in the first place, instead +of any one of the others who are so easy to talk to afterward? Imagine +what this table would be if the husbands and wives sat side by side! +Would Eleanor ever be able to turn it so that they talked that way?" + +"That's a fascinating speculation," he said. "I wish I could persuade +her some time to indulge the wild eccentricity of trying it out." + +"Well, why?" she demanded. + +"Shall I try to say something witty," he asked, "or do you want it, as +near as may be, absolutely straight?" + +"Let's indulge," she said, "in the wild, eccentricity of talking +straight." + +The cigarettes came around just then, and he lighted one rather +deliberately, at one of the candles, before he answered. + +"I am under the impression," he said, "that husbands and wives can talk +exactly as well as any other two people. Exactly as well, and no better. +The necessary conditions for real conversation are a real interest in +and knowledge of a common subject; ability on the part of both to +contribute something to that subject. Well, if a husband and wife can +meet those terms, they can talk. But the joker is, as our legislative +friend over there would say," (he nodded down the table toward a young +millionaire of altruistic principles, who had got elected to the state +assembly) "the joker is that a man and a woman who aren't married, and +who are moderately attracted to each other, can talk, or seem to talk, +without meeting those conditions." + +"Seem to talk?" she questioned. + +"Seem to exchange ideas mutually. They think they do, but they don't. +It's pure illusion, that's the answer." + +"I'm not clever, really," said Rose, "and I don't know much, and I +simply don't understand. Will you explain it, in short words,"--she +smiled--"since we're not married, you know?" + +He grinned back at her. "All right," he said, "since we're not married, +I will. We'll take a case ..." He looked around the table. "We'll be +discreet," he amended, "and take a hypothetical case. We'll take Darby +and Joan. They encounter each other somewhere, and something about them +that men have written volumes about and never explained yet, sets +up--you might almost call it a chemical reaction between them--a +physical reaction, certainly. They arrest each other's attention--get to +thinking about each other, are strongly drawn together. + +"It's a sex attraction--not quite the oldest and most primitive thing in +the world, but nearly. Only, Darby and Joan aren't primitive people. If +they were, the attraction would satisfy itself in a direct primitive +way. But each of them is carrying a perfectly enormous superstructure of +ideas and inhibitions, emotional refinements and capacities, and the sex +attraction is so disguised that they don't recognize it. Do you know +what a short circuit is in electricity?" + +"I think so," said Rose, "but you'd better not take a chance. Tell me +that, too." + +"Why," he said, "the juice that comes into your house to light it and +heat the flat-irons and the toaster, and so on, comes in by one wire and +goes out by another. Before it can get out, it's got to do all the work +you want it to do--push its way through the resistance of fine tungsten +filaments in your lamps and the iron wires in your heaters that get +white hot resisting it. When it's pushed its way through all of them and +done the work you want it to do, it's tired out and goes away by the +other wire. But if you cut off the insulation down in the basement, +where those two wires are close together, and make it possible for the +current to jump straight across without doing any work, it will take the +short circuit instead of the long one and you won't have any lights in +your house. Now do you see what I mean? + +"Darby and Joan are civilized. That is to say, they're insulated. The +current's there, but it's long-circuited. The only expression it's got +is through the intelligence,--so it lights the house. Absence of common +knowledge and common interests only adds to the resistance and makes it +burn all the brighter. Naturally Darby and Joan fall victims to the very +dangerous illusion that they're intellectual companions. They think +they're having wonderful talks. All they are doing, is long-circuiting +their sex attraction. Well, marriage gives it a short circuit. Why +should the current light the lamps when it can strike straight across? +There you are!" + +"And poor Joan," said Rose, after a palpable silence, but evenly enough, +"who has thought all along that she was attracting a man by her +intelligence and her understanding, and all that, wakes up to find that +she's been married for her long eyelashes, and her nice voice--and her +pretty ankles. That's a little hard on her, don't you think, if she's +been taking herself seriously?" + +"Nine times in ten," he said, "she's fooling herself. She's taken her +own ankles much more seriously than she has her mind. She's capable of +real sacrifices for them--for her sex charm, that is. She'll undergo a +real discipline for it. Intelligence she regards as a gift. She thinks +the witty conversation she's capable of after dinner, on a cocktail and +two glasses of champagne, or the bright letters she can write to a +friend, are real exercises of her mind--real work. But work isn't done +like that. Work's overcoming something that resists; and there's strain +in it, and pain and discouragement." + +In her cheeks the red flared up brighter. She smiled again--not her own +smile--one at any rate that was new to her. + +"You don't 'solve an intellectual problem' then;" she quoted, "'by +having your hand held, or your eyes kissed?'" + +Whereupon he shot a look at her and observed that evidently he wasn't as +much of a pioneer as he thought. + +She did not rise to this cast, however. "All right;" she said, +"admitting that her ankles are serious and her mind isn't, what is Joan +going to do about it?" + +"It's easier to say what she's not to do," he decided, after hesitating +a moment. "Her fatal mistake will be to despise her ankles without +disciplining her mind. If she will take either one of them seriously, or +both for that matter--it's possible--she'll do very well." + +He could, no doubt, have continued on the theme indefinitely, but the +table turned the other way just then and Rose took up an alleged +conversation with the man at her right which lasted until they left the +table and included such topics as indoor golf, woman's suffrage, the new +dances, Bernard Shaw, Campanini and the Progressive party; with a +perfectly appropriate and final comment on each. + +Rose didn't care. She was having a wonderful time--a new kind of +wonderful time. No longer gazing, big-eyed like little Cinderella at a +pageant some fairy godmother's whim had admitted her to, but consciously +gazed upon; she was the show to-night, and she knew it. Her low, finely +modulated voice so rich in humor, so varied in color, had to-night an +edge on it that carried it beyond those she was immediately speaking to +and drew looks that found it hard to get away again. For the first time +in her life, with full self-consciousness, she was producing effects, +thrilling with the exercise of a power as obedient to her will as +electricity to the manipulator of a switchboard. + +She was like a person driving an aeroplane, able to move in all three +dimensions. Pretty soon, of course, she'd have to come hack to earth, +where certain monstrously terrifying questions were waiting for her. + +Madame Gréville's final apothegm had suggested one of them. Was all she +valued in the world just so much fairy gold that would change over night +into dry leaves in her treasure chest because she had never earned +it--paid the price for it that life relentlessly exacts for all we may +be allowed to call ours? + +Her tragi-comic scene with Rodney suggested another. What was her value +to him? Was she something enormously desirable when he wanted his hand +held and his eyes kissed, but an infernal nuisance when serious matters +were concerned? A fine and luxurious dissipation, not dangerous unless +recklessly indulged in, but to be kept strictly in her place? Before her +talk with Randolph she'd have laughed at that. + +But did the horrible plausibility of what he had said actually cover the +truth? Did she owe that first golden hour with Rodney, his passionate +thrilling avowal of his life's philosophy, to nothing deeper in herself +than her unconscious power of rousing in him an equally unconscious, +primitive sex desire? Was the fine mutuality of understanding she had so +proudly boasted to her mother clear illusion? Now that the short circuit +had been established, would the lights never burn in the upper stories +of their house again? Turned about conversely the question read like +this: Was the thing that had, in Randolph himself, aroused his vivid +interest in the subject--well, nothing more than the daring cut of her +gown, the gleam of her jewels, the whiteness of her skin ...? + +Those questions were waiting for her to come back to earth; and they +wouldn't get tired and go away. But for the present the knowledge that +they were there only made the aeroplane ride the more exhilarating. + +She was called to the telephone just as she was on the point of +starting reluctantly for home, and found Rodney on the wire. He told her +that he had got hold of the thing he was looking for, but that there +were still hours of work ahead of him while he was fortifying himself +with necessary authorities. He wouldn't come home to-night at all, he +said. When his work was finished, he'd go to the club and have a Turkish +bath and all the sleep he had time for. When he got through in court +to-morrow afternoon, he'd come home. + +It was all perfectly reasonable--it was to her finely tuned ear just a +shade too reasonable. It had been thought out as an excuse. Because it +wasn't for the Turkish bath nor the extra hour's sleep that he was +staying away from home. It was herself he was staying away from. He +wanted his mind to stay cold and taut, and he was afraid to face the +temptation of her eyes and her soft white arms. And in the mood of that +hour, it pleased her that this should be so--that the ascetic in him +should pay her the tribute of fear. + +Afterward, of course, she felt like lashing herself for having felt like +that and for having replied, in a spirit of pure coquetry, in a voice of +studied, cool, indifferent good humor: + +"That's a good idea, Roddy. I'm glad you're not coming back. Good +night." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +RODNEY SMILED + + +It was with a reminiscent smile that Rose sat down before her telephone +the next morning and called a number from memory. Less than a year ago, +it had been such a thrilling adventure to call the number of that +fraternity house down at the university and ask, in what she conceived +to be a businesslike way, for Mr. Haines. And then, presently, to hear +the voice of the greatest half-back the varsity had boasted of in years, +saying in answer to her "Hello, Harry," "Hello, Rose." + +It was really less than a year, and yet it was so immensely long ago, +judged by anything but the calendar, that the natural way to think of +him was as a married man with a family somewhere and faint memories of +the days when he was a student and used to flirt with a girl called Rose +something--Rose Stanton, that was it! + +It was during one of the interminable waking hours of last night that +she had thought of the half-back as a person who might be able, and +willing, to do her the service she wanted, and she had spent a long +while wondering how she could get track of him. Then the logic of the +calendar had forced the conviction on her, that he was, in all +probability still at the university, dozing through recitations, or +lounging about the corridors, in a blue serge suit and a sweater with a +C on it, waiting for some other girl to come out of her class-room; and +that between the hours of ten-fifteen and eleven, it was altogether +likely that she'd find him again, as she had so many times in the past, +at his fraternity house, going through the motions of getting up an +eleven o'clock recitation. It was absurd enough now to find herself +calling the old number and asking again for Mr. Haines. The dreamlike +unreality of it grew stronger, when the voice that answered said, "Just +a minute," and then bellowed out his old nickname--"Hello, Tiny! Phone!" +and, after a wait, she heard his own very deep bass. + +"Hello. What is it?" + +"Hello, Harry," she said. "This is Rose Aldrich. Do you remember +me?--Rose Stanton, you know." + +The ensuing silence was so long, that she said "Hello" again to make +sure that he was still there. + +"Y--yes," he said. "Of--of course I haven't forgotten. I--I only ... +I ..." + +She wondered what he was so embarrassed about, but to save the +situation, she interrupted. + +"Are you going to be awfully busy this afternoon? Because, if you +aren't, there's something you can do for me. You're in the law school +this year, aren't you?" + +"Yes," he said. "Of course I'm not busy at all." + +"It'll take quite a little while," she warned him, "an hour or so, and I +don't want to interfere with anything you've got to do." + +Again he assured her that he hadn't anything. + +"Well, then," she said rather dubiously, because his voice sounded still +so constrained and unnatural, "I'll come down in the car and pick you up +about half past one. Is that all right?" + +"Yes," he said. "Yes, of course. Thank you very much." + +Had inclination led Rose to do a little imaginative thinking about the +half-back, from his own point of view, she might, without much trouble, +have approximated the cause of his embarrassment. + +Here is a poor but honest young man, who has devoted himself, heart, +brain and good right arm, to the service of a beautiful young fellow +student at the university. They must wait for each other, of course, +until he can graduate and get admitted to the bar and make a success +that will enable him to support her as she deserves to be supported. The +girl declines to wait. A much older man--a great, trampling brute of a +man, possessed of wealth and fame, and a social altitude positively +vertiginous--asks her to marry him. She, woman-weak, yields to the +temptation of all the gauds and baubles that go with his name, and +marries him. Indeed, few young men at the university ever have as valid +an excuse for becoming broken-hearted misogynists as the half-back. He +would he faithful, of course, though she was not. And some day, years +later, it might he, she would come hack broken-hearted to him, confess +the fatal mistake that she had made; seek his protection, perhaps, +against the cruelties of the monster she had come to hate. He would +forgive her, console her--in a perfectly moral way, of course--and for a +while, they would just be friends. Then the wicked husband would +conveniently die, and after long years, they could find happiness. + +It made a very pretty idea to entertain during the semi-somnolent hours +of dull lectures and while he was waiting for the last possible moment +to leap out of bed in the morning and make a dash for his first +recitation. Written down on paper, the imaginary conversation between +them would have filled volumes. + +But to be called actually to the telephone--she had telephoned to him a +thousand times in the dream--and hear her say, just as in the dream she +had said--"This is Rose; do you remember me?" was enough to make even +his herculean knees knock together. To be sure her voice wasn't choked +with sobs, but you never could tell over the telephone. + +What did she want to do? Confront her husband with him, perhaps, this +very afternoon, and say, "Here is the man I love?" And what would he do +then? He'd have to back her up, of course--and until his next mouth's +allowance came in, he had only a dollar and eighty-five cents in the +world! + +Rose couldn't have filled in all the details, of course, but she might +have approximated the final result. Indeed, I think she had done so, +unconsciously, by half past one, when her car stopped in front of the +fraternity house and, instantaneously, like a cuckoo out of a clock, the +half-back appeared. He was portentously solemn, and Rose thought he +looked a little pale. + +"Get in," she said holding out a hand to him. "I'm going to take you +down-town to do an errand for me--well, two errands, really. My, but +it's a long time since I've seen you!" + +She didn't look tragic, to be sure--not as if there were livid bruises +underneath her furs. And nothing about the manner of her greeting +suggested that she was on the point of sobbing out a plea to be +forgiven. Still, what did she mean by an errand? It might be anything. + +"You see," she explained, "I happened to remember that you were going to +begin studying law this year, and that you were just the person who +wouldn't mind doing what I want." + +"Divorce!" thought the half-back with a shudder. + +"I want you," she went on, "to tell me just how you begin studying +law--what text-books you get, and where you get them. I want you to come +along and pick them out for me. You see, I've decided to study it +myself." + +It was a fact that the half-back was enormously relieved. But it was a +brutal derisive fact--an unescapable one. He wasn't heart-broken over +the dashing of a suddenly raised hope. He was, in his heart of hearts, +saying, "Thank the Lord!" + +If he had been pale before, he was red enough now. He felt ridiculous +and irritable. + +"Your husband knows all that a great deal better than I, of course," he +said. + +"Yes, of course," Rose was thoughtless enough to admit, "but you see, I +don't want him to know." She flushed a little herself. "It's going to be +a--surprise for him," she said. + +"And, after we've got the books," she went on, "I want you to do +something else. He's making an argument in court to-day, and I want to +go and hear him. Only--I'm so ignorant, you see, I don't know how to do +it and I didn't want to tell him I was going. So you're to find out +where the court room is and how to get me in. Now, tell me all about +everything and what's been happening since I went away. I saw you made +the all-American last fall, and meant to write you a note about it, but +I didn't get a chance. That was great!" + +But even at this new angle, the talk didn't run smoothly. Because, +precisely as the half-back forgot his terrors and the hopes that had +prompted them, and the absurdity of both--precisely as he began to feel, +after all, that it was a very superb and grown-up thing to be a familiar +friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur, +and wonderful clothes and an air of taking them all for +granted--precisely as he made up his mind to this, he became so very +mature, and wise and blasé, modeled his manners and his conversation so +strictly on John Drew in his attempt to rise to the situation, that the +schoolboy topics she suggested froze on his tongue. So that, by the time +he had picked out the books for her and seen them stowed away in the +car, and then had telephoned Rodney's office to find what court he was +appearing before, and finally taken her up to the eighth floor in the +Federal Building and left her there, she was, though grateful, +distinctly glad to be rid of him. + +What heightened this feeling was that just as she caught herself smiling +a little, down inside, over his callow absurdity, she reflected that a +year ago they had been equals; that, as far as actual intelligence went, +he was no doubt her equal to-day--her superior, perhaps. He'd gone on +studying and she hadn't. Except for the long-circuited sex attraction +that Doctor Randolph had been talking about last night, he was as +capable of being an intellectual companion to her husband as she was. +That idea stung the red of resolution into her cheeks. She would study +law. She'd study it with all her might! + +She was successful in her project of slipping into the rear of the court +room without attracting her husband's attention, and for two hours and a +half, she listened with mingled feelings, to his argument. A good part +of the time she was occupied in fighting off, fiercely, an almost +overwhelming drowsiness. The court room was hot of course, the glare +from the skylight pressed down her eyelids; she hadn't slept much the +night before. And then, there was no use pretending that she could +follow her husband's reasoning. Listening to it had something the same +effect on her as watching some enormous, complicated, smooth-running +mass of machinery. She was conscious of the power of it, though +ignorant of what made it go, and of what it was accomplishing. + +The three stolid figures behind the high mahogany bench seemed to be +following it attentively, though they irritated her bitterly, sometimes, +by indulging in whispered conversations. Toward the end, though, as +Rodney opened the last phase of his argument, one of them, the +youngest--a man with a thick neck and a square head--hunched forward and +interrupted him with a question; evidently a penetrating one, for the +man sitting across the table from Rodney looked up and grinned, and +interjected a remark of his own. + +"I simply followed the cases cited in _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_," he +said. "I have a copy of the work here, in case Mr. Aldrich didn't bring +one along himself, which I'd be glad to submit to the Court." + +Rose gasped. It was his own book they were quoting against him. + +"I propose to show," said Rodney, "if the Court please, that an +absolutely vital distinction is to be made between the cases cited in +the section of _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_, which my honorable opponent +refers to, and the case before the Court." + +Then the other judges spoke up. They knew the cases, it appeared, and +didn't want to look at the book, but it was clear that they were +skeptical about the distinction. For five minutes the formal argument +was lost in swift flashing phrases in which everybody took a part. +Rodney was defending himself against them all. And Rose, in an agony +because she couldn't understand it, was reminded, grotesquely enough, of +the Gentleman of France, or some other of the sword-and-cloak heroes of +her girlhood, defending the head of the stairway against the +simultaneous assault of half a dozen enemies. And then suddenly it was +over. The judges settled back again, the argument went on. + +At half past four, the oldest judge, who sat in the middle, interrupted +again to tell Rodney, with what seemed to Rose brutally bad manners, +what time it was. + +"If you can finish your argument in fifteen minutes, Mr. Aldrich, we'll +hear you out. If it's going to take longer than that, the Court will +adjourn till to-morrow morning." + +"I don't think I shall want more than fifteen minutes," said Rodney, and +he went on again. + +And, presently, he just stopped talking and began stacking up his notes. +The oldest judge mumbled something, everybody stood up and the three +stiff formidable figures filed out by a side door. It was all over. + +But nothing had happened! + +Rose had been looking forward, you see, to a driving finish; to a +dramatic summoning of reserves, a mighty onslaught. And at the end of +it, as from the umpire at a ball game, to a decision. She had expected +to leave the court room in the blissful knowledge of Rodney's victory or +the tragic acceptance of his defeat. In her surprise over the failure of +this climax to materialize, she almost neglected to make her escape +before he discovered her there. + +One practical advantage she had gained out of what was, on the whole, a +rather unsatisfactory afternoon. When she had gone home and changed into +the sort of frock she thought he'd like and come down-stairs in it in +answer to his shouted greeting from the lower hall, she didn't say, as +otherwise she would have done, "How did it come out, Roddy? Did you +win?" + +In the light of her newly-acquired knowledge, she could see how a +question of that sort would irritate him. Instead of that, she said: +"You dear old boy, how dog tired you must be! How do you think it went? +Do you think you impressed them? I bet you did." + +And not having been rubbed the wrong way by a foolish question, he held +her off with both hands for a moment, then hugged her up and told her +she was a trump. + +"I had a sort of uneasy feeling," he confessed, "that after last +night--the way I threw you out of my office, fairly, I'd find +you--tragic. I might have known I could count on you. Lord, but it's +good to have you like this! Is there anywhere we have got to go? Or can +we just stay home?" + +He didn't want to flounder through an emotional morass, you see. A firm +smooth-bearing surface, that was what, for every-day use, he wanted her +to provide him with; lightly given, casual caresses that could be +accepted with a smile, pleasantness, a confident security that she +wouldn't be "tragic." And on the assumption that she couldn't walk +beside him on the main path of his life, it was just and sensible. But +it wasn't good enough for Rose. + +So the very next morning, she stripped the cover off the first of the +books the half-back had picked out for her, and really went to work. She +bit down, angrily, the yawns that blinded her eyes with tears; she made +desperate efforts to flog her mind into grappling with the endless +succession of meaningless pages spread out before her, to find a germ of +meaning somewhere in it that would bring the dead verbiage to life. She +tried to recall the thrill in Rodney's voice when he had told her, on +that wonderful wind-swept afternoon, that the law was the finest +profession in the world. Also, he had told her, he'd never been bored +with it--it was immoral to be bored. It was a confession of defeat, +anyway, she could see that. And she wouldn't--she absolutely would not +be defeated. + +In a variety of moods which included everything except real hope and +confidence, she kept the thing up for weeks--didn't give up indeed, +until Fate stepped in, in her ironic way, and took the decision out of +her hands. She was very secretive about it; developed an almost morbid +fear that Rodney would discover what she was doing and laugh his big +laugh at her. She resisted innumerable questions she wanted to propound +to him, from a fear that they'd betray her secret. + +She even forbore to ask him about the case--it was The Case in her +mind--the one she knew about, and as she struggled along with her heavy +text-books, and a realization grew in her mind of the countless hours of +such struggling on his part which must have lain behind his ability to +make that argument that day, the thing accumulated importance to her. +How could he, under the suspense of waiting for that decision, +concentrate his mind on anything else? + +She discovered in the newspaper one day, a column summary of court +decisions that had been handed down, and though The Case wasn't in it, +she kept, from that day forward, a careful watch--discovered where the +legal news was printed, and never overlooked a paragraph. And at last +she found it--just the bare statement "Judgment affirmed." Rodney, she +knew, had represented the appellant. He was beaten. + +For a moment the thing bruised her like a blow. She had never succeeded +in entertaining, seriously, the possibility that it could end otherwise +than in victory for him. She read it again and made sure. She remembered +the names of both parties to the suit, and she knew which side Rodney +was on. There couldn't be any mistake about it. And the certainty +weighed down her spirits with a leaden depression. + +And then, all at once, in the indrawing of a single breath, she saw it +differently. Now that it had happened--and she couldn't help its +happening--didn't it give her, after all, the very opportunity she +wanted? She remembered what he had said the night he had turned her out +of his office. He wasn't sick or discouraged. He was in an intellectual +quandary that couldn't be solved by having his hand held or his eyes +kissed. + +She saw now, that that had been just enough. She couldn't help him out +of his intellectual quandaries--yet. But under the discouragement and +lassitude of defeat, couldn't she help him? She remembered how many +times she had gone to him for help like that. In panicky moments when +the new world she had been transplanted into seemed terrible to her; in +moments when she feared she had made hideous mistakes; and, most +notably, during the three or four days of an acute illness of her +mother's, when she had been brought face to face with the monstrous, +incredible possibility of losing her, how she had clung to him, how his +tenderness had soothed and quieted her--how his strength and steady +confidence had run through her veins like wine! + +He had never come to her like that. She knew now it was a thing she had +unconsciously longed for. And to-night she'd have a chance! Oddly +enough, it turned out to be the happiest day she'd known in a long +while. There was a mounting excitement in her, as the hours passed--a +thrilling suspense. Perhaps, after all, it wasn't going to be necessary +to grind through all those law-books in order to win the place beside +him that she wanted. If she could comfort him--mother him in his defeat +and discouragement--hold him fast when his world reeled around him, that +would be the basis of a better companionship than mere ability to chop +legal logic with him. She could he content with the shallow sparkle of +the stream of their life together, if it deepened, now and then, into +still pools like this. + +She resisted the impulse to call him up on the telephone, and a stronger +one to go straight to him at his office. She'd wait until he came home +to her. She had been feeling wretched lately--headachy, nervous, +sickish;--probably, she thought, from staying in the house too much and +bending over her heavy law-books. Perhaps she had strained her eyes. But +to-day these discomforts were forgotten. Every little while she +straightened up and stood at an open window drawing in long breaths. He +should see her at her best to-night--serene--triumphant. The pallor of +her cheeks he had commented on lately, shouldn't be there to trouble +him. + +For two hours that afternoon, she listened for his latch-key, and when +at last she heard it she stole down the stairs. He didn't shout her name +from the hall, as he often did. He didn't hear her coming, and she got a +look at his face as he stood at the table absently turning over some +mail that lay there. He looked tired, she thought. + +He saw her when she reached the lower landing, but for just a fraction +of a second his gaze left her and went back to the letter he held in his +hand, as if to satisfy himself it was of no importance before he tossed +it away. Then he came to meet her. + +"Oh!" he said. "I thought you were going to be off somewhere with +Frederica this afternoon. It's been a great day. I hope you haven't +spent the whole of it indoors. You're looking great, anyway. Come here +and give me a kiss." + +Because she had hesitated, a little perplexed. Did he mean not to tell +her--to "spare" her, as he'd have said? The kiss she gave had a +different quality from those that ordinarily constituted her greetings, +and the arms that went round his neck, didn't give him their customary +hug. But they stayed there. + +"You poor dear old boy!" she said. And then, "Don't you care, Roddy!" + +He returned the caress with interest, before he seemed to realize the +different significance of it. Then he pushed her away by the shoulders +and held her where he could look into her face. + +"What do you mean?" he asked. "Don't care about what?" + +It didn't seem like bravado--like an acted out pretense, and yet of +course it must be. + +"Don't," she said. "Because I know. I've known all day. I read it in the +paper this morning." + +From puzzled concern, the look in his face took on a deeper intensity. +"Tell me what it is," he said very quietly. "I don't know. I didn't read +the paper this morning. Is it Harriet?" Harriet was his other +sister--married, and not very happily, it was beginning to appear, to an +Italian count. + +A revulsion--a sort of sick misgiving took the color out of Rose's +cheeks. + +"It isn't any one," she said. "It's nothing like that. It's--it's that +case." Her lips stumbled over the title of it. "It's been decided +against you. Didn't you know?" + +For a moment his expression was simply the absence of all expression +whatever. "Good lord!" he murmured. Then, "But how the dickens did you +know anything about it? How did you happen to see it in the paper? How +did you know the title of it?" + +"I was in the court the day you argued it," she said unevenly. "And when +I found they printed those things in the paper, I kept watch. And to-day +..." + +"Why, you dear child!" he said. And the queer ragged quality of his +voice drew her eyes back to his, so that she saw, wonderingly, that they +were bright with tears. "And you never said a word, and you've been +bothering your dear little head about it all the time. Why, you +darling!" + +He sat down on the edge of the table, and pulled her up tight into his +arms again. She was glad to put her head down--didn't want to look at +his face; she knew that there was a smile there along with the tears. + +"And you thought I was worrying about it," he persisted, "and that I'd +be unhappy because I was beaten?" He patted her shoulder consolingly +with a big hand. "But that's all in the day's work, child. I'm beaten +somewhere nearly as often as I win. And really, down inside, leaving out +a little superficial pleasure, I don't care a damn whether I win or +lose. A man couldn't be any good as a lawyer, if he did care, any more +than a surgeon could be any good if he did. You've got to keep a cold +mind or you can't do your best work. And if you've done your best work, +there's nothing to care about. I honestly haven't thought about the +thing once from that day to this. Don't you see how it is?" + +He couldn't see how it was, that was plain enough. What he very +reasonably expected was that after so lucid an explanation, she would +turn her wet face up to his, with her old wide smile on it. But that was +not what happened at all. Instead, she just went limp in his arms, and +the sobs that shook her seemed to be meeting no resistance whatever. It +wasn't like her to work herself up in that way over trifles, either; +yet, surely a trifle was all this could be called--a laughable mistake +he couldn't help loving her for, or a touching demonstration of +affection that he couldn't help smiling at. Either way you took it, it +was nothing to make a scene about. Where was her sense of humor? That +was the thing to do--get her quiet first, and then persuade her to laugh +at the whole affair with him. + +He was saved from carrying out this program by the fact that Rose, of +her own accord, anticipated him. At least she controlled, rather +suddenly, her sobs, sat up, wiped her eyes and, after a fashion, smiled. +Not at him, though; resolutely away from him, he might almost have +thought--as if she didn't want him to see. + +"That's right," he said, craning round to make sure that the smile was +there. "Have a look at the funny side of it." + +She winced at that as from a blow and pulled herself away from him. +Then she controlled herself and, in answer to his look of troubled +amazement, said: + +"It's all right. Only it happens that you're the one who d-doesn't know +how awfully funny it really is." Her voice shook, but she got it in hand +again. "No, I don't mean anything by that. Here! Give me a kiss and then +let me wash my face." + +And for the whole evening, and again next morning until he left the +house, she managed to keep him in the only half-questioning belief that +nothing was the matter. + +It was about an hour after that, that her maid came into her bedroom, +where she had had her breakfast, and said that Miss Stanton wanted to +see her. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE DAMASCUS ROAD + + +It argued no real lack of sisterly affection that Rose didn't want to +see Portia that morning. Even if there had been no other reason, being +found in bed at half past ten in the morning by a sister who inflexibly +opened her little shop at half past eight, regardless of bad weather, +backaches and other potentially valid excuses, was enough to make one +feel apologetic and worthless. Rose could truthfully say that she was +feeling wretched. But Portia would sit there, slim and erect, in a +little straight-backed chair, and whatever perfunctory commiseration she +might manage to express, the look of her fine eyebrows would be +skeptical. Justly, too. Rose could never deny that. Not so long as she +could remember the innumerable times when she had yielded to her +mother's persuasions that she was over-tired and that a morning in bed +was just what she needed. Portia, so far as she could remember, had +never been the subject of these persuasions. + +But this was only the beginning of Rose's troubles to-day. She was +paying the price of yesterday's exaltation and her spirits had sunk down +to nowhere. What a fool's paradise yesterday had been with its vision of +her big self-sufficient husband coming to her for mothering because he +had lost a law-suit! What a piece of mordant irony it was, that she +should have found herself, after all her silly hopes, sobbing in his +arms, while he comforted her for her bitter disappointment over not +being able to comfort him! She had told the truth when she said he was +the one, really, who didn't know how funny it was. + +Well, and wasn't her other effort just as ridiculous? If ever he found +her heap of law-books and learned of the wretched hours she had spent +trying to discover what they were all about in the hope of promoting +herself to a true intellectual companionship with him, wouldn't he take +the discovery in exactly the same way--be touched by the childish +futility of it and yet amused at the same time--cuddle her indulgently +in his arms and soothe her disappointment;--and then urge her to look at +the funny side of it? He must know hundreds of practising lawyers. Were +there a dozen out of them all whose minds had the power to stimulate and +bring into action the full powers of his own? + +Well then, what was the use of trying? If James Randolph was right--and +it seemed absurd to question it--she had just one charm for her +husband--the charm of sex. To that she owed her hours of simulated +companionship with him, his tenderness for her, his willingness to make +her pleasures his own. To that she owed the extravagantly pretty clothes +he was always urging her to buy--the house he kept her in--the servants +he paid to wait on her. Well then, why not make the best of it? + +Only, if she went on much longer, feeling sick and faded like this, +she'd have nothing left to make the most of, and then where would she +be? + +Oh, she was getting maudlin, and she knew it! And when she got over +feeling so weak and giddy, she'd brace up and be herself again. But for +the present, she didn't feel like seeing Portia. + +But Rose's shrinking from a talk with Portia that morning was a mild +feeling compared with Portia's dread of the impending talk with Rose. +Twice she had walked by the perfect doorway of the McCrea house before +she entered it; ostensibly to give herself a little more time to +think--really, because she shrank from the ordeal that awaited her in +there. + +Her sister's ménage had been a source of irritation to Portia ever since +it was established, though a deeper irritation was her own with herself +for allowing it to affect her thus. Rose's whole-hearted plunge into the +frivolities of a social season, her outspoken delight in it, her finding +in it, apparently, a completely satisfactory solution to the problem of +existence, couldn't fail to arouse Portia's ironic smile. This was the +sort of vessel her mother had freighted with her hopes! This was the +course she steered. + +She had fought this feeling with a bitter self-contempt. The trouble +with her was, she told herself in icy self-communings, that she envied +Rose her happiness, her opportunities, her husband--even her house. Why +should all that wonderful furniture have been wasted on Rose, to whom a +perfect old Jacobean gate-legged table was nothing but a surface to drop +anything on that she wanted out of her hands? Why should a man of +Rodney's powerful intelligence waste his time on her frivolous +amusements, content, apparently, just to sit and gaze at her, oblivious +of any one else who might happen to be about? She knew that she, Portia, +out of her disciplined experience of life, and her real eagerness for +knowledge of it, was better able to challenge the attention of his mind +than Rose. And yet she had never really got it. She remained half +invisible to him--some one to be remembered with a start, after an +interval of oblivion, and treated considerately--even affectionately, +for that matter--as Rose's sister! + +They had been seeing each other with reasonable frequency all winter. +The Aldriches had Portia and her mother in to a family dinner pretty +often, and always came out to Edgewater for a one-o'clock dinner with +the Stantons on Sunday. The habit was for Rose to come out early in the +car and take them to church, while Rodney walked out later, and turned +up in time for dinner. + +Mrs. Stanton had taken a great liking to Rodney. His manner toward her +had just the blend of deference and breezy unconventionality that +pleased her. So, while Portia would worry through the dinner, for fear +it wouldn't be cooked well enough, or served well enough, not to present +a sorry contrast to the meals her guests were accustomed to, her mother +would sit beaming upon the pair with a contentment as unalloyed as if +Rose were the acknowledged new leader of the great Cause and her husband +her adoring convert, as they had been in her old day-dream. + +As far as Rodney went, the dream might have been true, for he showed an +unending interest in the Woman Movement--never tired of drawing from his +mother-in-law the story of her labors and the exposition of her beliefs. +Sometimes he argued with her playfully in order to get her started. More +often, and as far as Portia could see, quite seriously, he professed +himself in full accord with her views. + +After this had been going on for about so long, Rose would yawn and +stretch and sit down on the arm of her mother's chair, begin stroking +her hair and offering her all manner of quaint unexpected caresses. And +then, pretty soon, Rodney's attention to the subject would begin to +wander and at last flag altogether and leave him stranded, gazing and +unable to do anything but gaze, at the lovely creature--the still +miraculous creature, who, when he got her home again, would come and sit +on the arm of his chair like that! When this happened, Portia found it +hard to stay in the room. + +Until Mrs. Stanton's terrifying illness along in January, these meetings +constituted the whole of the intercourse between the families. Rose had +done her best to carry Portia with her, to some extent at least, into +her new life--to introduce her to her new friends and make her, as far +as might be, one of them. And in this she was seconded very amiably, by +Frederica. But Portia had put down a categorical veto on all these +attempts. She hadn't the inclination nor the energy, she said, and her +mother needed all the time she could spare away from her business. Once, +when Rose pressed the matter, she gave a more genuine reason. Rose's new +friends, she said, would regard her introduction to them solely as a bid +for business. She didn't want them coming around to her place to buy +their wedding presents "in order to help out that poor old maid sister +of Rose Aldrich's." She was getting business enough in legitimate ways. + +Sometimes she told herself that if Rose had really wanted her, she'd +have pressed the matter harder--wouldn't have given up unless she was +clutching with real relief at an excuse that let her out of an +embarrassment. But at other times she accused herself of having acted in +a petty snobbish spirit in declining the chance not only for pleasant +new friendships, especially Frederica's, but for a closer association +with her sister. Well, the thing was done now, and the question +certainly never would rise again. + +The reason why it couldn't arise again was what Portia came to tell Rose +this morning. She hoped she'd be able to tell it gently--provide Rose +with just the facts she'd have to know, and get away without letting any +other facts escape, so that afterward she'd have the consolation of +being able to say to herself, "That was finely done." All her life, she +told herself, she had been doing fine things grudgingly, mutilating them +in the doing. If she weren't very careful, that would happen this +morning. If she could have known the truth and made her resolution, and +confided it to Rose during the first hours of her mother's illness, when +the fight for life had drawn them together, it would not have been hard. +But with the beginning of convalescence, when Rose, with an easy visit +and a few facile caresses, could outweigh in one hour, all of Portia's +unremitting tireless service during the other twenty-three, and carry +off as a prize the whole of her mother's gratitude and affection, the +old envy and irritation had come back threefold. + +Rose greeted her with a "Hello, Angel! Why didn't you come right up? +Isn't it disgraceful to be lying around in bed like this in the middle +of the morning?" + +"I don't know," said Portia. "Might as well stay in bed, if you've +nothing to do when you get up." She meant it to sound good-humored, but +was afraid it didn't. "Anyhow," she added after a straight look into +Rose's face, "you look, this morning, as if bed was just where you ought +to be. What's the matter with you, child?" + +"Nothing," said Rose, "--nothing that you'd call anything at any rate." + +Portia smiled ironically. "I'm still the same old dragon, then," she +said. And then, with a gesture of impatience, turned away. She hadn't +meant to begin like that. Why couldn't she keep her tongue in control! + +"I only meant," said Rose very simply, "that you'd say it was nothing, +if it was the matter with you. I've seen you, so many times, get up +looking perfectly sick and, without any breakfast but a cup of black +coffee, put on your old mackintosh and rubbers and start off for the +shop, saying you were all right and not to bother, that I knew that was +what you'd say now, if you felt the way I do." + +"I'm sorry," said Portia. "I might have known that was what you meant. I +wonder if you ever want to say ugly things and don't, or if it's just +that it never occurs to you to try to hurt anybody. I didn't mean to say +that either. I've had a rather worrying sort of week." + +"What is it?" said Rose. "Tell me about it. Can I help?" + +"No," said Portia. "I've thought it over and it isn't your job." She got +up and went to the window where Rose couldn't see her face, and stood +looking out. "It's about mother," she concluded. + +Rose sat up with a jerk. "About mother!" she echoed. "Has she been ill +again this week? And you haven't let me know! It's a shame I haven't +been around, but I've been busy"--her smile reflected some of the irony +of Portia's--"and rather miserable. Of course I was going this +afternoon." + +"Yes," said Portia, "I fancied you'd come this afternoon. That's why I +wanted to see you alone first." + +"Alone!" Rose leaned sharply forward. "Oh, don't stand there where I +can't see you! Tell me what it is." + +"I'm going to," said Portia. "You see, I wasn't satisfied with old +Murray. That soothing bedside manner of his, and his way of encouraging +you as if you were a child going to have a tooth pulled, drove me nearly +wild. I thought it was possible, either that he didn't understand +mother's case, or else that he wouldn't tell me what he suspected. So +a week ago to-day, I got her to go with me to a specialist. He made a +very thorough examination, and the next day I went around to see him." +Her voice got a little harder and cooler. "Mother'll never be well, +Rose. She's got an incurable disease. There's a long name for it +that I can't remember. What it means is that her heart is getting +flabby--degenerating, he called it. He says we can't do anything except +to retard the progress of the disease. It may go fast, or it may go +slowly. That attack she had was just a symptom, he said. She'll have +others. And by and by, of course, a fatal one." + +Still she didn't look around from the window. She knew Rose was crying. +She had heard the gasp and choke that followed her first announcement of +the news, and since then, irregularly, a muffled sound of sobbing. She +wanted to go over and comfort the young stricken thing there on the bed, +but she couldn't. She could feel nothing but a dull irresistible anger +that Rose should have the easy relief of tears, which had been denied +her. Because Portia couldn't cry. + +"He said," she went on, "that the first thing to do was to get her away +from here. He said that in this climate, living as she has been doing, +she'd hardly last six months. But he said that in a bland climate like +Southern California, in a bungalow without any stairs in it, if she's +carefully watched all the time to prevent excitement or over-exertion, +she might live a good many years. + +"So that's what we're going to do. I've written the Fletchers to look +out a place for us--some quiet little place that won't cost too much, +and I've sold out my business. I thought I'd get that done before I +talked to you about it. I'll give the house here to the agent to sell or +rent, and as soon as we hear from the Fletchers, we'll begin to pack. +Within a week, I hope." + +Rose said a queer thing then. She cried out incredulously, "And you and +mother are going away to California to live! And leave me here all +alone!" + +"All alone with the whole of your own life," thought Portia, but didn't +say it. + +"I can't realize it at all," Rose went on after a little silence. "It +doesn't seem--possible. Do you believe the specialist is right? They're +always making mistakes, aren't they--condemning people like that, when +the trouble isn't what they say? Can't we go to some one else and make +sure?" + +"What's the use?" said Portia. "Suppose we did find a man who said it +probably wasn't so serious as that, and that she could probably live +all right here? We shouldn't know that he was right--wouldn't dare trust +to that. Besides, if I drag mother around to any more of them, she'll +know." + +Rose looked up sharply. "Doesn't she know?" + +"No," said Portia in that hard even voice of hers. "I lied to her of +course. I told her the doctor said her condition was very serious, and +that the only way to keep from being a hopeless invalid would be to do +what he said--go out to California--take an absolute rest for two or +three years--no lectures, no writing, no going about. + +"You know mother well enough to know what she'd do if she knew the truth +about it. She'd say, 'If I can never be well, what's the use of +prolonging my life a year, or two, or five; not really living, just +crawling around half alive and soaking up somebody else's life at the +same time?' She'd say she didn't believe it was so bad as that anyway, +but that whether it was or not, she'd go straight along and live as +she's always done, and when she died, she'd be dead. Don't you know how +it's always pleased her when old people could die--'in harness,' as she +says?" + +Her voice softened a little as she concluded and the tenseness of her +attitude, there at the window, relaxed. The ordeal, or the worst of it, +was over; what she had meant to say was said, and what she had meant not +to say, if hinted at once or twice, had not caught Rose's ear. She +turned for the first time to look at her. Rose was drooping forlornly +forward, one arm clasped around her knees, and she was trying to dry her +tears on the sleeve of her nightgown. The childlike pathos of the +attitude caught Portia like the surge of a wave. She crossed the room +and sat down on the edge of the bed. She'd have come still closer and +taken the girl in her arms but for the fear of starting her crying +again. + +"Yes," Rose said. "That's mother. And I guess she's right about it. It +must be horrible to be half alive;--to know you're no use and never will +be. Only I don't believe it will be that way with her. I believe you +told her the truth without knowing it. It's just a feeling, but I'm sure +of it. She'll get strong and well again out there. You'll think so, too, +when you get rested up a little.--You're so frightfully tired, poor +dear. It makes me sick to think what a week you've had. And that you've +gone through it all alone;--without ever giving Rodney and me a chance +to help. I don't see why you did that, Portia." + +"Oh, I saw it was my job," Portia said, in that cool dry way of hers. +"It couldn't work out any other way. It had to be done and there was no +one else to do it. So what was the use of making a fuss? It was easier, +really, without, and--I didn't want any extra difficulties." + +"But all the work there must have been!" Rose protested. "Selling your +shop, and all. How did you ever manage to do it?" + +"That was luck, of course," Portia admitted. "Do you know that Craig +woman? You may have met her. She's rather on the fringe of your set, I +believe. She's got a good deal of money and nothing to do, and I think +she's got a fool notion that it'll be _chic_ to go 'into trade.' She +came and offered to buy me out a month ago, and of course I wouldn't +listen. But just by luck she called me up again the very day I went to +talk to the specialist. I asked for twenty-four hours to think it over, +and by that time I'd made up my mind. I got a very good price from her, +really. She bought the whole thing; lease, stock and good-will." + +It wasn't more than a very subconscious impression in the back of Rose's +mind, that Portia must be pretty callous and cold to have been able on +the very day of the doctor's sentence to look as far ahead as that, and +to drive a good bargain on the next--awfully efficient, anyway. "I wish +I was more like you," she said. + +But she didn't want to be questioned as to just what she meant by it +and, aware that Portia had just shot a queer searching look at her, she +changed the subject, or thought she did. + +"Anyway, I'm glad it worked out so well for you," she went on; "selling +the shop so easily, and all. And I believe it'll do you as much good as +mother. Getting a rest.... You do need it. You're worked right down to +the bones. And out there where it's warm and bright all the time, and +you don't have to get up in the dark any more winter mornings and wade +off through the slush to the street-car.... And a nice little bungalow +to live in--just you and mother.... I--I sort of wish I was going too." + +Portia laughed--a ragged, unnatural sounding laugh that brought a look +of puzzled inquiry from Rose. + +"Why, nothing," Portia explained. "It was just the notion of your +leaving Rodney and all you've got here--all the wonderful things you +have to do--for what we'll have out there. The idea of your envying me +is something worth a small laugh, don't you think?" + +Rose's head drooped lower. She buried her face in her hands. "I do envy +you," she said. There was a dull muffled passion in her voice. "Why +shouldn't I envy you? You're so cold and certain all the time. You make +up your mind what you'll do, and you do it. I try to do things and just +make myself ridiculous. Oh, I know I've got a motor and a lot of French +dresses, and a maid, and I don't have to get up in the morning, because, +as you say, I have nothing else to do--and I suppose that might make +some people happy." + +"You've got a husband," said Portia in a thin brittle voice. "That might +count for something, I should think." + +"Yes, and what good am I to him?" Rose demanded. "He can't talk to +me--not about his work or anything like that. And I can't help him any +way. I'm something nice for him to make love to, when he feels like +doing it, and I'm a nuisance when I make scenes and get tragic. And +that's all. That's--marriage, I guess. You're the lucky one, Portia." + +The silence had lasted a good while before Rose noticed that there was +any special quality about it--became aware that since the end of her +outburst--of which she was ashamed even while she yielded to it, because +it represented not what she meant, but what, at the moment, she +felt--Portia had not stirred; had sat there as rigidly still as a figure +carved in ivory. + +Becoming aware of that, she raised her head. Portia wasn't looking at +her, but down at her own clenched hands. + +"It needed just that, I suppose," she heard her older sister say between +almost motionless lips. "I thought it was pretty complete before, but +it took that to make it perfect--that you think I'm the lucky one--lucky +never to have had a husband, or any one else for that matter, to love +me. And lucky now, to have to give up the only substitute I had for +that." + +"Portia!" Rose cried out, for the mordant alkaline bitterness in her +sister's voice and the tragic irony in her face, were almost terrifying. +But the outcry might never have been uttered for any effect it had. + +"I hoped this wouldn't happen," the words came steadily on, one at a +time. "I hoped I could get this over and get away out of your life +altogether without letting it happen. But I can't. Perhaps it's just as +well--perhaps it may do you some good. But that's not why I'm doing it. +I'm doing it for myself. Just for once, I'm going to let go! You won't +like it. You're going to get hurt." + +Rose drew herself erect and a curious change went over her face, so that +you wouldn't have known she'd been crying. She drew in a long breath and +said, very steadily, "Tell me. I shan't try to get away." + +"A man came to our house one day to collect a bill," Portia went on, +quite as if Rose hadn't spoken. "Mother was out, and I was at home. I +was seventeen then, getting ready to go to Vassar. Fred was a sophomore +at Ann Arbor, and Harvey was going to graduate in June. You were only +seven--I suppose you were at school. Anyhow, I was at home, and I let +him in, and he made a fuss. Said he'd have us black-listed by other +grocers, if it wasn't paid. + +"It was the first I ever knew about anything like that. I knew we +weren't rich, of course--I never had quite enough pocket money. But the +idea of an old unpaid grocery bill made me sick. I talked things over +with mother the next day--told her I wasn't going to college--said I was +going to get a job. I got her to tell me how things stood, and she did, +as well as she could. The boys were getting their college education out +of the capital of father's estate, so that the income of it was getting +smaller. She had meant that I should do the same. But the income wasn't +really big enough to live on as it was. + +"Mother could earn money of course, lecturing and writing, but money +wasn't one of the things she naturally thought about, and when there was +something big and worth while to do, she plunged in and did it whether +it was going to pay her anything or not. And there were you coming +along, and mother wasn't so very strong even then, and I--well, I saw +where I came in. + +"I got mother to let me run all the accounts after that, and attend to +everything. And I got a job and began paying my way within a week." + +"If I had a thing like that to remember," said Rose unsteadily, "I'd +never forget to be proud of it so long as I lived!" + +"I wish I could be proud of it," said Portia. "But, like everything else +I do, I spoiled it. I knew that mother was doing a big fine work worth +doing--worth my making a sacrifice for, and I wanted to make the +sacrifice. But I couldn't help making a sort of grievance of it, too. In +all these years I've always made mother afraid of me--always made her +feel that I was, somehow, contemptuous of her work and ideas. That's +rather a strong way of putting it, perhaps. But I've seen her trying to +hide her enthusiasms from me a little, because of my nasty way of +sticking pins in them. + +"Oh, of course in a way I was making the enthusiasms possible--I knew +that. She never could have gone on as she did if she'd been nagged at +all the time for money. Big ideas are always more important to her than +small facts, but without some narrow-minded, literal person to look +after the facts her ideas wouldn't have had much chance. I grubbed away +until I got things straightened out, so that her income was enough +to live on--enough for her to live on. I'd pulled her through. But +then ..." + +"But then there was me," said Rose. + +"I thought I was going to let you go," Portia went on inflexibly. "You'd +got to be just the age I was when I went to work, and I said there was +no reason why you shouldn't come in for your share. If things had +happened a little differently, I'd have told mother how matters stood +and you'd have got a job somewhere and gone to work. But things didn't +come out that way--at least I couldn't make up my mind to make them--so +you went to the university. I paid for that, and I paid for your +trousseau, and then I was through." + +Rose was trembling, but she didn't flinch. "Wh--what was it," she asked +quietly, "what was it that might have been different and wasn't? Was +it--was it somebody you wanted to marry--that you gave up so I could +have my chance?" + +Portia's hard little laugh cut like a knife. "I ought to believe that," +she said. "I've told myself so enough times. But it's not true. I wonder +why you should have thought of that--why it occurred to you that a +cold-blooded fish like me should want to marry?" + +Rose didn't try to answer. She waited. + +"You have always thought me cold," Portia said. "So has mother. I'm not, +really. I'm--the other way. I don't believe there ever was a girl that +wanted love and marriage more than I. But I didn't attract anybody. I +was working pretty hard, of course, and that left me too tired to go out +and play--left me a little cross and acid most of the time. But I don't +believe that was the whole reason. It wouldn't have worked out that way +with you. But nobody ever saw me at all. The men I was introduced to +forgot me--were polite to me--got away as soon as they could. They were +always craning around for a look at somebody else. The few men--the two +or three who weren't like that, weren't good enough. But a man did want +me to marry him at last, and for a while I thought I would. Just--just +for the sake of marrying somebody. He wasn't much, but he was some one. +But I knew I'd come to hate him for not being some one else and I +couldn't make up my mind to it. So I took you on instead. + +"I stopped hoping, you see, and tried to forget all about it--tried to +crowd it out of my life. I said I'd make my work a substitute for it. +And, in a way, I succeeded. The work opened up and got more interesting +as it got bigger. It wasn't just selling four-dollar candlesticks and +crickets and blue glass flower-holders. I was beginning to get real jobs +to do--big jobs for big people, and it was exciting. That made it easier +to forget. I was beginning to think that some day I'd earn my way into +the open big sort of life that your new friends have had for nothing. + +"And then, a week ago, there came the doctor and cut off that chance. +Oh, there's no way out, I know that! That's the way the pattern was cut, +I suppose, in the beginning. I've always suspected the cosmic Dressmaker +of having a sense of humor. Now I know it. I'm the lucky one who isn't +going to have to wade through the slush any more. I'm to go out to +southern California and live in a nice little bungalow and be a nurse +for five or ten years, and then I'm going to be left alone in genteel +poverty, without an interest in the world, and too tired to make any. +And I'll probably live to eighty. + +"And yet,"--she leaned suddenly forward, and the passion that had been +suppressed in her voice till now, leaped up into flame--"and yet, can +you tell me what I could have done differently? I've lived the kind of +life they preach about--a life of noble sacrifice. It hasn't ennobled +me. It's made me petty--mean--sour. It's withered me up. Look at the +difference between us! Look at you with your big free spaciousness--your +power of loving and attracting love! Why, you even love me, now, in +spite of all I've said this morning. I've envied you that--I've almost +hated you for it. + +"No, that's a lie. I've wanted to. The only thing I could ever hate you +for, would be for failing. You've got to make good! You've had my share +as well as yours--you're living my life as well as yours. I'm the branch +they cut off so that you could grow. If you give up and let the big +thing slip out of your hands the way you were talking this morning, +because you're too weak to hold it and haven't pluck enough to fight for +it...." + +"Look at me!" said Rose. The words rang like a command on a +battle-field. + +Portia looked. Rose's blue eyes were blazing. "I won't do that," she +said very quietly. "I promise you that." Then the hard determination in +her face changed to something softer, and as if Portia's resistance +counted no more than that of a child, she pulled her sister up in her +arms and held her tight. And so at last Portia got the relief of tears. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HOW THE PATTERN WAS CUT + + +Through the two weeks that intervened before Portia and her mother left +for the West, Rose disregarded the physical wretchedness--which went on +getting worse instead of better--and dismissed her psychical worries +until she should have time to attend to them. She helped Portia pack, +she presented a steady cheerful radiance of optimism to her mother, that +never faltered until the last farewells were said. + +Just how she'd take up the fight again for the great thing Portia had +adjured her not to miss, she didn't know. She supposed she'd go back to +her law-books--at any rate until she could work out something better. + +But the pattern, it seemed, was cut differently. She went to the +doctor's office the day after Portia took her mother away, and +discovered the cause of her physical wretchedness. She was pregnant. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +A BIRTHDAY + + +Rodney heard young Craig, who deviled up law for him, saying good night +to the stenographer; glanced at his watch and opened the door to his +outer office. + +"You may go home, Miss Beach," he said. "I'm staying on for a while but +I shan't want you." Then, to the office boy: "You, too, Albert." + +He waited till he heard them go, then went out and disconnected his own +desk telephone, which the office boy, on going home, always left plugged +through; went back into his inner office again and shut the door after +him. + +There was more than enough pressing work on his desk to fill the clear +hour that remained to him before he had to start for home. But he didn't +mean to do it. He didn't mean to do anything except drink down thirstily +the sixty minutes of pure solitude that were before him; to let his mind +run free from the clutch of circumstance. That hour had become a habit +with him lately, like--he smiled at the comparison--like taking a drug. +When something happened that forced him to forego it, he felt +cheated--irrationally irritable. He was furtive about it, too. He never +corrected Rose's assumption that the thing which kept him late at the +office so much of the time nowadays was a press of work. He even +concealed the fact that he pulled his telephone plug, by sticking it +back again every night just before he left. + +He tried to laugh that guilty feeling out of existence. But he couldn't. +He knew too well whence it sprang. He knew whom he was stealing that +hour from. It wasn't the world in general he intrenched himself against. +It was his wife. The real purpose of that sixty minutes was to enable +him to stop thinking and feeling about her. + +It was not that she had faded for him--become less the poignant, vivid, +irresistible thing he had first fallen in love with. Rather the +contrary. The simple rapture of desire that had characterized the period +of their engagement and the first months of their marriage, had lost +something--not so much, either--of its tension. But it had +broadened--deepened into something more compelling, more +pervasive--more, in his present mood, formidable. + +She hadn't seemed quite well, lately, nor altogether happy, and he had +not been able to find out why. He had attributed it at first to the +shock occasioned by her mother's illness and her departure with Portia +to California, but this explanation seemed not to cover the ground. Why +couldn't she have talked freely with him about that? Inquiries about her +health, attempts--clumsily executed, no doubt--to treat her with special +tenderness and guard her against overexertion, only irritated her, drove +her to the very edge of her self-control--or over it. She was all right, +she always said. He couldn't force confidences from her of course. But +her pale face and eyes wide with a trouble in them he could not fathom +stirred something deeper in him than the former glow and glory had ever +reached. + +And there was a new thing that gripped him in a positively terrifying +way--a realization of his importance to her. The after-effect of her +invasion of his office the night of the Randolphs' dinner and of his +learning of the tremulous interest with which she had afterward followed +the case he was then working on, had been very different from his first +irritation and his first amusement. + +He had discovered, too, one day--a fortnight or so ago, in the course of +a rummage after some article he had mislaid, a heap of law-books that +weren't his. He had guessed the explanation of them, but had said +nothing to Rose about it--had found it curiously impossible to say +anything. If only she had taken up something of her own! It seemed as +essentially a law of her being to attempt to absorb herself in him, as +it was a law of his to resist that absorption of himself in her. + +But resistance was difficult. The tendency was, after his perfectly +solid, recognizable duties had been given their places in the cubic +content of his day, that Rose should fill up the rest. It was as if you +had a bucket half full of irregularly shaped stones and filled it up +with water. And yet there was a man in him who was neither the +hard-working, successful advocate, nor Rose's husband--a man whose +existence Rose didn't seem to suspect. (Was there then in her no woman +that corresponded to him?) That man had to fight now for a chance to +breathe. + +He got a pipe out of a drawer in his desk, loaded and lighted it, +stretched his arms, and sat down in his desk chair. In the middle of his +blotter was a stack of papers his stenographer had laid there just +before she went out. On top of the heap was a memorandum in her +handwriting, and mechanically he read it. + +"Please ask Mrs. Aldrich about this bill," it read. "The work done seems +to be the same that was paid for last month." + +The rest of the month's bills lay beneath, all neatly scheduled and +totaled; and the total came to more than three thousand dollars. He +damned them cordially and moved them over to one side. + +But the mood of quiet contentment he had, for just a moment, captured, +had given place to angry exasperation. He felt like a bull out in a ring +tormented by the glare and the clamor and the flutter of little red +flags. + +There was nothing ruinous about his way of living. Including his +inherited income with what he could earn, working the way he had been +working lately, he could meet an expenditure of thirty-six thousand +dollars a year well enough. It meant thinking about his fees of course, +seeing to it that the work he undertook was profitable as well as +interesting. Only, declared the man who was not Rose's husband, it was +senseless--suffocating! Rodney tried, with an athletic sweep of his +will, to crowd that train of thought out of his mind as, with his hand, +he had swept the papers that gave rise to it. + +He leaned his elbows on the cleared blotter and propped up his chin on +his fists. The thing exactly in front of his eyes was his desk calendar. +There was something familiar about the date--some subconscious +association that couldn't quite rise to the surface. Was there something +he had to do to-day, that he'd forgotten? No, Miss Beach would have +reminded him of anything except a social engagement. And he distinctly +remembered that Rose had said this morning that the evening was clear. +And yet, surely ... Then, with a grunt of relief and amusement, he got +it. It was his birthday! Another mile-stone. + +Where had he been, what had he been doing a year ago to-day? It would be +interesting if he could manage to remember. + +A year ago--why, good lord! That was the day it had all begun. He'd sold +the old house that day and then had started to walk over to Frederica's +for dinner, and got caught in the rain and taken a street-car. He had +heard a vibrant young voice say, "Don't dare touch me like that," and, +turning, had seen the blazing glorious creature who held the conductor +pinned by both wrists. That had been Rose--his Rose; whom he was +spending these sixty minutes out of the twenty-four hours trying to +forget about! + +And that was only a year ago. It was curiously hard to realize. Their +identities had shifted so strangely--his own as well as hers. Well, and +in what direction had, he changed? How did he compare--the man who sat +here now, with the man who had unhesitatingly jumped off the car to +follow a new adventure--the man who had turned up water-logged at +Frederica's dinner and made hay of her plan to marry him off to Hermione +Woodruff? + +They had had a great old talk that night, Frederica and he, he +remembered. He remembered what he had talked about, and he smiled grimly +over the recollection--space and leisure; the defective intelligence +that trapped men into cluttering their lives with useless junk; so many +things to have and to do that they couldn't turn around without breaking +something. Had he been a fool then, or was he a fool now? Both, +perhaps. But how old Frederica must have grinned over the naiveté of +him. Which of the two of him in her candid opinion would be the better +man? + +He believed he could answer that question. Oh, he was succeeding all +right--increasing his practise, making money, getting cautious--prudent; +he didn't bolt the track any more. And the quality of his work was good, +he couldn't quarrel with that. Only, the old big free dreams that had +glorified it, were gone. He was in harness, drawing a cart; following a +bundle of hay. + +He sprang impatiently to his feet, thrust back his chair so violently as +he did so that it tipped over with a crash. The one really footling, +futile, fool thing to do, was what he was doing now--lamenting his old +way of life and making no effort to recapture it! Let him either accept +the situation, make up his mind to it and stop complaining, or else +offer it some effective resistance--sweep the flummery out of his +life--clear decks for action. + +Well, and that was the most asinine consideration of all. Because +of course he couldn't do one thing or the other. As long as +the man who wasn't Rose's husband remained alive in him, he'd +protest--struggle--clamor for his old freedom. And yet, as long as the +million tiny cords that bound hum, Gulliver-like, went back to Rose, +talk of breaking them was sophomoric foolishness. He'd better go home! + +The building was pretty well deserted by now, and against the silence he +heard the buzzer in his telephone switchboard proclaiming insistently +that some one was trying to get him on the telephone. His hour of +recollection hadn't been a success, but the invasion of it irritated him +none the less. He thought at first he wouldn't answer. He didn't care +who was on the wire. He didn't want to talk to anybody. But no one can +resist the mechanical bell-ringers they use in exchanges nowadays--the +even-spaced ring and wait, ring and wait, so manifestly incapable of +discouragement. At the end of forty-five seconds, he snatched open his +door, punched the jack into its socket, caught up the head-piece, and +bellowed, "Hello!" into the dangling transmitter. + +And then the look of annoyance in his face changed to one of +incredulous pleasure. "Good God!" he said. "Is that you, Barry Lake? Are +you here in Chicago? And Jane, too? How long you going to be here?... +Lord, but that's immense!" + +And five minutes later he was calling Rose on the wire. "Rose, listen to +this! Barry Lake and his wife are here. He just called up. They got in +from New York at five o'clock, and I've asked them out to dinner. Barry +Lake and Jane! What's the matter? Can't you hear me?... Why, they're +about the best friends I've got. The magazine writer, you know, and his +wife. And they're coming out to dinner--coming right out. I told them +not to dress. I'll come straight home myself--get there before they do, +I guess.... Why, Rose, what's the matter? Aren't you well? Look here! If +you're below par, and don't feel like having them come, I can call it +off and go over to the hotel and dine with them.... You'd rather we came +out to the house? You're sure? Because they won't mind a bit. I can take +them to a restaurant or anywhere.... All right, if you're sure it won't +be too much for you. I'll be home in fifteen minutes. Lord, but it was +good to hear old Barry's voice again! I haven't seen him for over a +year. You're sure you'd rather?... All right. Good-by." + +But he sat there frowning in a puzzled sort of way for half a minute +after he'd pulled the plug. Rose's voice had certainly sounded queer. He +was sure she hadn't planned anything else for to-night. He distinctly +remembered her saying just before he left for the office that they'd +have the evening to themselves. And it was incredible that she minded +his bringing home two old friends like the Lakes on the spur of the +moment, to take pot-luck. Oh, well, you couldn't tell about people's +voices over the telephone. There must have been something funny about +the connection. + +An opportune taxi just passing the entrance to his office building as he +came out, enabled him to better the fifteen minutes he'd allowed for +getting home. But in spite of this he found Rose rather splendidly +gowned for her expected guests. + +"Good gracious!" he cried excitedly. "What did you do that for? I +thought I told you over the phone the Lakes weren't going to dress." + +"I was--dressed like this when you telephoned," Rose said. "And I was +afraid there wouldn't be time to change into anything else." + +"We weren't going anywhere, were we?" he asked. "There's nothing I've +forgotten?" + +"No," she said, "we weren't going anywhere." + +"And you dressed like that just for a--treat for me?" + +She nodded. "Just for you," she said. "Roddy, who are the Lakes? Oh, I +know his articles, I think! But where were they friends of yours, and +when?" + +"Why, for years, until they moved to New York. They used to live here. I +know I must have told you about them. I was always having dinner with +them--either out in Rogers Park, where they lived, or at queer, terrible +little restaurants down-town. They were always game to try anything, +once. He's the longest, leanest, angularest, absent-mindedest chap in +the world. And just about the best. And his wife fits all his angles. +She's a good chap, too. That's the way you have to think of her. They're +a great pair. She writes, too. Oh, you're sure to like them! They're +going to be out here for months, he says. He's going to specialize in +women, and he's come back here where they've got the vote and all, to +make headquarters. Lord, but it's great! I haven't had a real talk with +anybody since he went away, over a year ago!" + +Then, at the sound of the bell, he cried out, "There they are!" and +dashed down into the hall ahead of the parlor maid, as eagerly as a +schoolboy anticipating a birthday present. + +Rose followed more slowly, and by the time she had reached the landing +she found him slapping Barry on the back and shaking both hands with +Jane, and trying to help both of them out of their wraps at once. + +The last thing she could have thought of just then, was of making, for +herself, an effective entrance on the scene. But it worked out rather +that way. The three of them, Rodney and the Lakes, at the foot of the +stairs, in the clothes they had been working and traveling in all day, +looked up simultaneously and saw Rose, gowned for a treat for Rodney, on +the first landing; a wonderful rose-colored Boucher tapestry (guaranteed +authentic by Bertie Willis) on the wall behind her for a background, and +the carved Gothic newel-post bringing out the whiteness of the hand that +rested upon it. The picture would have won a moment's silence from +anybody. And Barry and Jane simply gazed at her wide-eyed. + +[Illustration: "Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"] + +Rodney was the first to speak. "It's really the Lakes, Rose. I couldn't +quite believe it till I saw them. And the lady on the landing," he went +on, turning to his guests, "is really my wife. It's all a little +incredible, isn't it?" + +When the greetings were over and they were on the way up-stairs again, +he said: "I told Rose we weren't going to dress, but she explained she +didn't put on this coronation robe for you, but for a treat for me +before I telephoned, and hadn't time to change back." + +And when Jane cried out, as they entered the drawing room, "Good +heavens, Rodney, what a house!" he answered: "It isn't ours, thank God! +We rented it for a year in a sort of honeymoon delirium, I guess. We +don't live up to it, of course. Nobody could, but the woman who built +it. But we do our damnedest." + +The gaiety in his voice clouded a little as he said it, and his grin, +for a moment, had a rueful twist. But for a moment only. Then his +untempered delight in the possession of his old friends took him again +and, with the exception of one or two equally momentary cloud-shadows, +lasted all evening. + +They talked--heavens how they talked! It was like the breaking up of a +log-jam. The two men would rush along, side by side, in perfect +agreement for a while, catching each other's half expressed ideas, and +hurling them forward, and then suddenly they'd meet, head on, in +collision over some fundamental difference of opinion, amid a prismatic +spray of epigram. Jane kept up a sort of obbligato to the show, +inserting provocative little witticisms here and there, sometimes as +Rodney's ally, sometimes as her husband's, and luring them, when she +could, into the quiet backwaters of metaphysics, where she was more than +a match for the two of them. Jane could juggle Plato, Bergson and +William James, with one hand tied behind her. But when she incautiously +ventured out of this domain, as occasionally she did--when, for example, +she confessed herself in favor of a censorship of the drama, she was +instantly demolished. + +"The state's got no business with morals," said Barry. + +"That's the real cause of most of our municipal corruption," said +Rodney. "A city administration, for instance, is corrupt exactly in +ratio to its attempt to be moral. The more moral issues you import into +politics--gambling, prostitution, Sunday closing, censored movies, and +the rest--the more corrupt and helpless and inefficient your government +will be." And, between them, for the next half-hour, they kept on +demonstrating it until the roar of their heavy artillery fairly drove +Jane from her trenches. + +But all this was preliminary to the main topic of the evening, which got +launched when Rodney seized the advantage of a pause to say: + +"A series of articles on women, eh! What are you going to do to them?" + +With that the topic of feminism was on the carpet and it was never +thereafter abandoned. "Utopia to Brass Tacks," was the slogan Barry's +chief had provided him with, he said. We were about the end of the +heroic age of the movement, the age of myths and saints and prophecies. +A transition was about due to smaller, more immediate things. The +quality of the leaders would probably change. The heroines of the last +three or four decades, women like Naomi Rutledge Stanton, to take a fine +type of them. + +"She's my mother," said Rose. + +Barry Lake's aplomb was equal to most situations, but it failed him +here; for a moment he could only stare. The contrast between the picture +in his mind's eye, of the plain, square-toed, high-principled and rather +pathetic champion of the Cause--pathetic in the light of what she hoped +from it--facing indifference and ridicule with the calm smile of one +who has climbed her mountain and looked into the promised +land,--between that and the lovely, sensitive, sensuous creature he was +staring at, was enough to stagger anybody. He got himself together in a +moment, said very simply and gravely how much he admired her and how +high a value, he believed, the future would put on her work; then he +picked up his sentence where Rose had broken it. + +The heroines and the prophets were going to be replaced, he believed, by +leaders much more practical and less scrupulous, and the movement would +follow the leaders. As far as polities went, he not only looked for no +millennium, but for a reaction in the other direction. There'd be more +open graft, he thought. + +Rose asked him if he meant that he thought women were less honest than +men. + +"It isn't a lack of old-fashioned honesty that makes a man a grafter," +he said. "It's seeing the duties and privileges of a public office in a +private and personal way, instead of in a public, impersonal one; being +kind to old friends who need a helping hand, and grateful to people +who've held out helping hands to you. Well, and women have been trained +for hundreds of years to see things in that private and personal way, +and to exalt the private and personal virtues. Just as they've been +trained to stick to rule of thumb methods that more or less work, rather +than to try experiments. So, on the whole, I think their getting the +vote will mean that politics will be crookeder and more reactionary than +they've been in a good many years. All the same I'm for it, because it's +a part of democracy, and I'm for democracy all the way. Not because you +get good government out of it; you don't. You get as good as you +deserve, and in the long run I think a society that has to deserve as +good a government as it gets, grows stronger and healthier than one that +gets a better government than it deserves." + +"That old tory radical over there," said Jane, with a nod at Rodney, +"has been grinning away for half an hour without saying a word. I'd like +to know what you think about it." + +"'Tory radical'?" questioned Rose. + +"That's what Barry calls him," Jane explained. "He's so conservative +about the law that he calls Blackstone an upstart and a faker, but the +things he'd do, when it comes, down to cases--on good old common law +principles, of course, would make the average Progressive's hair curl. +Why, when people were getting excited over Roosevelt's recall of +judicial decisions--remember?--Rodney was for abolishing the Bill of +Rights altogether." + +"What's the Bill of Rights?" asked Rose. + +Jane headed Rodney off. "Oh, life, liberty and property without due +process of law," she said. "Neither of these men has any opinion of +rights. The only natural inalienable right you've got, they say, is to +take what you can get and keep it until somebody stronger than you, that +you can't run away from, catches you. What you call your individual +rights are just what society has made and doesn't for the moment need, +to keep itself going. If it does need them, it takes them back. Only, of +course, it has got to keep itself going. If it doesn't, people get up +and kick it to bits and start again." She turned to Rodney. "But what do +you think about it, really? What Barry's been talking about, I mean. Are +you for it?" + +"For what?" Rodney wanted to know. + +"For what women want," said Jane. "Economic independence, equality, easy +divorce--all the new stuff." + +"I'm not against it," Rodney said, "any more than I'm against to-morrow +being Tuesday. It's going to be Tuesday whether I like it or not. But +that conviction keeps me from crusading for it very hard. What I'm +curious about is how it's going to work. When they get what they want, +do you suppose they're going to want what they get?" + +"I knew there was something deadly about your grin," said Jane. "What +are you so cantankerous about?" + +"Why, the thing," said Rodney, "that sours my naturally sweet +disposition is this economic independence. I've been hearing it at +dinner tables all winter. When I hear a woman with five hundred dollars' +worth of clothes on--well, no, not on her back--and anything you like in +jewelry, talking about economic independence as if it were something +nice--jam on the pantry shelf that we men were too greedy to let them +have a share of--I have to put on the brakes in order to stay on the +rails. + +"We men have to fight for economic independence from the time we're +twenty, more or less, till the time we die. It's a sentence to hard +labor for life; that's what economic independence is. How does that +woman think she'd set about it, to make her professional services worth +a hundred dollars a day--or fifty, or ten? What's she got that has a +market value? What is there that she can capitalize? She's got her +physical charm, of course, and there are various professions besides the +oldest one, where she can make it pay. Well, and what else?" + +"She can bear children," said Jane. "She ought to be paid well for +that." + +"You're only paid well," Rodney replied, "for something you can do +exceptionally well, or for something that few people can do at all. As +long as the vast majority of women can bear children, the only women who +could get well paid for it would be those exceptionally qualified, or +exceptionally proficient. This is economics, now we're talking. Other +considerations are left out. No, I tell you. Economic independence, if +she really got it--the kind of woman I've been talking about--would make +her very, very sick." + +"She'd get over being sick though, wouldn't she," said Rose, "after a +while? And then, don't you think she'd be glad?" + +Rodney laughed. "The sort of woman I've been talking about," he said, +"would feel, when all was said, that she'd got a gold brick." + +Rose poured his coffee with a steady hand. They were in the library by +now. + +"If that's so," she said, "then the kind of woman you've been talking +about has already got a profession--the one you were just speaking of +as--as the oldest. As Doctor Randolph says, she's cashed in on her +ankles. But maybe you're mistaken in thinking she wouldn't choose +something else if she had a chance. Maybe she wouldn't have done it, +except because her husband wanted her to and she was in love with him +and tried to please. You can't always tell." + +It was almost her first contribution to the talk that evening. She had +asked a few questions and said the things a hostess has to say. The +other three were manifestly taken by surprise--Rodney as well as his +guests. + +But surprise was not the only effect she produced. Her husband had never +seen her look just like that before (remember, he had not been a guest +at the Randolphs' dinner on the night he had turned her out of his +office), the flash in her eyes, the splash of bright color in her +cheeks. + +Barry saved him the necessity of trying to answer, by taking up the +cudgels himself. Rodney didn't feel like answering, nor, for the moment, +like listening to Barry. His interest in the discussion was eclipsed for +the moment, by the thrill and wonder of his wife's beauty. + +He walked round behind her chair, on the pretext of getting his coffee +cup, and rested his hand, for an instant, on her bare shoulder. He was +puzzled at the absence of response to the caress. For there was none, +unless you could call it a response that she sat as still as ivory until +he took his hand away. And looking into her face, he thought she had +gone pale. Evidently though, it was nothing. Her color came back in a +moment, and for the next half-hour she matched wits with Barry Lake very +prettily. + +When Jane declared that they must go, her husband protested. + +"I haven't managed yet to get a word out of Rodney about any of his +things. He dodged when I asked him how his Criminal Procedure Reform +Society was getting on, and he changed the subject when I wanted to know +about his model Expert Testimony Act." He turned on Rodney. "But there's +one thing you're not going to get out of. I want to know how far you've +come along with your book on Actual Government. It was a great start you +had on that, and a bully plan. I shan't let you off any details. I want +the whole thing. Now." + +"I've had my fling," said Rodney, with a sort of embarrassed good humor. +"And I don't say I shall never have another. But just now, there are no +more intellectual wild-oats for me. What I sow, I sow in a field and in +a furrow. And I take good care to be on hand to gather the crop. Model +Acts and Reform of Procedure! Have you forgotten you're talking to a +married man?" + +On learning their determination to walk down-town, he said he'd go with +them part of the way. Would Rose go, too? But she thought not. + +"Well, I can't pretend to think you need it," he admitted. Then, turning +to the Lakes: "You people must spend a lot of evenings with us like +this. You've done Rose a world of good. I haven't seen her look so well +in a month of Sundays." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A DEFEAT + + +The gown that Rodney had spoken of apologetically to the Lakes as a +coronation robe, was put away; the maid was sent to bed. Rose, huddled +into a big quilted bath-robe, and in spite of the comfortable warmth of +the room, feeling cold clear in to the bones--cold and tremulous, and +sure that when she tried to talk her teeth would chatter--sat waiting +for Rodney to come back from seeing the Lakes part way home. + +It was over an hour since they had gone, but she was in no hurry for his +return. She wanted time for getting things straight before he came--for +letting the welter subside and getting the two or three essentials clear +in her mind. She hadn't cried a tear. + +The old Rose would have cried--the Rose of a month ago, before that +devastating, blinding scene with Portia, and what had happened since. +She even managed to smile a little satirically, now, over the way that +child would have taken it. Here it was their first anniversary of the +day--the great day in their two lives--their birthday, as well as his! +And he'd forgotten it! He had remained oblivious that morning, in spite +of all the little evocative references she had made. She hadn't let +herself be hurt about that--not much, anyway; had managed to smile +affectionately over his masculine obtuseness, as if it had meant no more +to her than it would have, say, to Frederica. She had impressed him +strongly, though--or tried to--with the idea that the evening was to be +kept clear just for their two selves. And then she had arranged a +feast--a homely little feast that was to culminate in a cake with a +hedge of little candles around the edge for his birthday, and a single +red one in the center, for theirs. + +Well, and that was only part of it. She had planned, when the cake +should have come in, all lighted up, and the servants had gone away and +the other lights had been put out,--she had planned to tell him her +great news. She hadn't told him yet, though it was over a fortnight +since her visit to the doctor. + +She had no reasoned explanation of her postponement of it. The instinct +that led her to keep it wholly to herself, was probably one of the +reflections of that morning with Portia. She was still in a penitential +mood when she went to the doctor--a mood which the contemplation of +Portia's frustrated life and her own undeservedly happy one, had bitten +deep into her soul. It was a mood that nothing but pain could satisfy. +The only relief she could get during that fortnight of packing and +leave-taking, came in flogging herself to do hard things--things that +hurt, physically and literally, I mean; that made her back ache and +cramped the muscles of her arms. Her spiritual aches were too +contemptible to pay any attention to. + +Conversely, in that mood, the thing she couldn't endure, that made her +want to scream, was precisely what, all her life, she had taken for +granted; tenderness, concern, the smoothing away of little difficulties +for which the people about her had always sacrificed themselves. That +mood made it hard to go to the doctor. But, after she had fainted dead +away twice in one morning, a saving remnant of common sense--the +reflection that if there were anything organically wrong with her, it +would be a poor trick to play on Rodney, not to take remedial measures +as soon as possible--dictated the action. + +When the doctor told her what had happened, she was a little bewildered. +She hadn't, in her mind, any prepared background for the news. She and +Rodney had decided at the beginning not to have any children for the +first year or two--in view of Rose's extreme youth, the postponement +seemed sensible--and the decision once made, neither of them had thought +much more about it. + +Rodney's vigorously objective mind had always been so fully occupied +with things as they were that it found little leisure for speculation +on things as they might be. The day's work was always so vividly +absorbing to him that day-dreams never got a chance. His sex impulses +had always been crowded down to the smallest possible compass, not +because he was a Puritan, but because he was, spiritually and mentally, +an athlete. He had never thought of marriage as a serious possibility, +Frederica's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding, until, in a moment +of bewilderment, he found himself head over ears in love with Rose +Stanton. That this emotion had been able to fight its way into the +fortress of his life spoke volumes for the power and the vitality of it. +Once it got inside, it formed a part of the garrison of the fort. And, +just as the contemplation of marriage had had to wait until there was a +Rose Stanton to make it concrete and irresistible, so the contemplation +of fatherhood would have to wait for a concrete fact to drive it home. + +With certain important differences, Rose was a good deal like him. She +had never had time to dream much. The pretending games of +childhood--playing with dolls, playing house--had never attracted her +away from more vigorous and athletic enterprises. A superb physique gave +her an outlet for her emotional energy, so that she satisfied her wants +pretty much as she became aware of them. And, conversely, she remained +unaware of possibilities she had not, as yet, the means to realize. + +They were both rather abnormally normal about this. Persons of robust +emotions seldom think very much about them. The temperament that +cultivates its emotional soil assiduously, warms it, waters it and +watches anxiously for the first sprouts, gets a rather anemic growth for +its pains. Which of these facts is cause and which effect, one need not +pretend to say: whether it is a lack of vitality in the seed that +prompts the instinct of cultivation, or whether it is the cultivation +that prevents a sturdy growth. But, feeble as the results of cultivation +may be, they produce at least the apparent advantage of running true to +form. The thing that sprouts in cultivated soil will be what was planted +there--will be, at all events, appropriate. + +But in Rose's penitential mood, and in the absence of a prepared +background, it was the processes of her pregnancy rather than the issue +of it, that got into the foreground of her mind. She was in for an +experience now that no one could call trivial. She had months of misery +ahead of her, she assumed, reasoning from the one she had just gone +through with, surmounted by hours of agony and peril that even Portia +wouldn't deny the authenticity of. + +Well, she was glad of it; glad she was going to be hurt. She could get +back some of her self-respect, she thought, by enduring it all, first +the wretchedness, then the pain, with a Spartan fortitude. There would +he a sort of savage satisfaction in marching through all her miseries +with her head up. + +She couldn't do that if Rodney knew. He wouldn't let her. He'd want to +care for her, comfort her, pack her in cotton-wool. And there was a +terrible yearning down in her heart, to let him. For just that reason, +he mustn't be told. + +But, as the sharp edges of this mood wore off, she saw a little more +justly. Already he suspected something. She caught, now and again, a +puzzled, worried, almost frightened look in his face. It was a poor +penance that others had to share. So, at the end of her feast to-night, +when the candles were lighted and the servants gone away, she'd tell +him. And, oh, what a comfort it would be to have him know! + +That was the moment she was waiting for when he telephoned that he was +bringing the Lakes out for dinner. The old Rose might well have cried. + +But now, as she sat trembling in front of her little boudoir fire, the +door open behind her so that she'd surely hear him when he came in, the +disappointment and the hurt that had clutched at her throat when she +turned from the telephone, were wholly forgotten. As I said, she hadn't +shed a tear. + +The situation she was confronted with now was beyond tears. Portia's +stinging words went over and over through her mind. "If you let the big +thing slip out of your hands because you haven't the pluck to fight ..." +and her own, "I promise I won't do that." It would mean a fight. She +must keep her head. + +She gave a last panicky shiver when she heard his latch-key, then +pulled herself together. + +"Come in here, Roddy," she called, as he reached the head of the stairs. +"I want to talk about something." + +He had hoped, evidently, to find her abed and fast asleep. His cautious +footfalls on the stairs made clear his intention not to waken her. + +"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, pausing in the doorway to her dressing-room, +but not coming in. "I didn't know you meant to sit up for me. If I'd +known you were waiting, I'd have come back sooner. But we got to talking +and we were at the hotel before we knew it, and it was so long since I'd +seen them ..." + +"I haven't minded," she told him. "I've been glad of a chance to think. +But now ... Oh, please come in and shut the door!" + +He did come in, but with manifest reluctance, and he stayed near the +door in an attitude of arrested departure. + +"It's pretty late," he protested with a nonchalance that rang a little +flat. "You must be awfully tired. Hadn't we better put off our pow-wow?" + +She understood well enough. The look in her face, some uncontrolled +inflection in the voice she had meant to keep so even, had given her +away. He suspected she was going to be "tragic." If he didn't look out, +there'd be a "scene." + +"We can't put it off," she said. "I let you have your talk out with the +Lakes, but you'll have to talk with me now." + +"We spent most of the time talking about you, anyway," he said +pleasantly. "They're both mad about you. Barry says you've got a fine +mind." + +She laughed at that, a little raggedly. Whereupon Rodney looked hurt and +protested against this imputation of insincerity against his friend. + +"When you know him better," he said, "you will see he couldn't say a +thing like that unless he meant it." + +"Oh, he meant it, all right," said Rose. And she added incomprehensibly, +"It isn't his fault, of course. It's just the way the world's made." + +She had been in good looks to-night, she knew; hurt, humiliated, +confronted with a crisis, she had rallied her powers just as she had +done at the Randolphs' dinner. She had been aware of the color in her +cheeks, the brightness in her eyes, the edge to her voice. Each of the +two men had responded to the effect she produced. Barry had talked with +her all the last part of the evening--brilliantly, eagerly, and had come +away saying she had a fine mind. Her husband had come across to her and +put his hand on her bare shoulder. And the two of them had responded to +an identical impulse, although they translated it so differently--one +over the long circuit, the other over the short. + +Lacking the clue, Rodney, of course, didn't understand. The look in +Rose's eyes softened suddenly. + +"Don't mind, dear;" she said. "I'm truly glad if they liked me. It will +make things a lot easier." + +At that his eyes lighted up. "Do you seriously think any one could +resist you, you darling?" he said. "You were a perfect miracle to-night, +when they were here. But now, like this ..." He came over to her with +his arms out. + +But she cried out "Don't!" and sprang away from him. "Please don't, +Roddy--not to-night! I can't stand it to have you touch me to-night!" + +He stared at her, gave a shrug of exasperation, and then turned away. +"You _are_ angry about something then," he said. "I thought so when I +first came in. But I honestly don't know what it's about." + +"I'm _not_ angry," she said as steadily as she could. She mustn't let it +go on like this. They were getting started all wrong somehow. "You +didn't want me to touch you, the night when I came to your office, when +you were working on that case. But it wasn't because you were angry with +me. Well, I'm like that to-night. There's something that's got to be +thought out. Only, I'm not like you. I can't do it alone. I've got to +have help. I don't want to be soothed and comforted like a child, and I +don't want to be made love to. I just want to be treated like a human +being." + +"I see," he said. Very deliberately he lighted a cigarette, found +himself an ash-tray and settled down astride a spindling little chair. +(It was lucky for Florence McCrea's peace of mind that she didn't see +him do it.) "All right," he said. "Now, come on with your troubles." He +didn't say "little troubles," but his voice did and his smile. The whole +thing would probably turn out to be a question about a housemaid, or a +hat. + +Rose steadied herself as well as she could. She simply mustn't let +herself think of things like that. If she lost her temper she'd have no +chance. + +"We've made a horrible mistake," she began. "I don't suppose it's either +of our faults exactly. It's been mine in a way of course, because it +wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been--thoughtless and ignorant. I +might have seen it if I'd thought to look. But I didn't--not really, +until to-night." + +He wanted to know what the mistake was. He was still smiling in +good-humored amusement over her seriousness. + +"It's pretty near everything," she said, "about the way we've +lived--renting this house in the first place." + +He frowned and flushed. "Good heavens, child!" he said. "Can't you take +a joke? I didn't mean anything by what I said about the house--except +that--well, it is a precious, soulful, sacred--High Church sort of +house, and we're not the sort of people, thank God--I'll say it +again--who'd have built it and furnished it for ourselves. You _aren't_ +right, Rose. You're run down and very tired and hypersensitive, or you +wouldn't have spent an evening worrying over a thing like that." + +"You can make jokes about a thing that's true," she persisted. "And it's +true that you've hated the way we've lived--the way this house has made +us live.--No, please listen and let me talk. I can't help it if my voice +chokes up. My mind's just as cool as yours and you've got to listen. It +isn't the first time I've thought of it. It's always made me feel a +little unhappy when people have laughed about the 'new leaf' you've +turned over; how 'civilized' you've got, learning all the new dances and +going out all the time and not doing any of the--wild things you used to +do. In a joking sort of way, people have congratulated me about it, as +if it were some sort of triumph of mine. I haven't liked it, really. +But I never stopped to think out what it meant." + +"What it does mean," he said, with a good deal of attention to his +cigarette, "is that I've fallen in love with you and married you and +that things are desirable to me now, because I am in love with you, that +weren't desirable before. And things that were desirable before, are +less so. I don't see anything terrible about that." + +"There isn't," she said, "when--when you're in love with me." + +He shot a frowning look at her and echoed her phrase interrogatively. +She nodded. + +"Because you aren't in love with me all the time. And when you aren't, +you must see what I've done to you. You must--hate me for what I've done +to you. I remember the first day we ever talked--when you laughed at my +note-books. You talked about people who wore blinders and drew a cart +and followed a bundle of hay. That's what I've made you do." + +His face flushed deep. He sprang to his feet and threw his cigarette +into the fire. "That's perfectly outrageous nonsense," he said. "I won't +listen to it." + +"If it weren't true," she persisted, "you wouldn't be excited like that. +If I hadn't known it before, I'd have known it when I saw you with the +Lakes. You can give them something you can't give me, not with all the +love in the world. I never heard about them till to-night--not in a way +I'd remember. And there are other people--you spoke of some of them at +dinner--who are living here, that you've never mentioned to me before. +You've tried to sweep them all out of your life; to go to dances and the +opera and things with me. You did it because you loved me, but it wasn't +fair to either of us, Roddy. Because you can't love me all the time. I +don't believe a man--a real man--_can_ love a woman all the time. And if +she makes him hate her when he doesn't love her, he'll get so he hates +loving her." + +"You're talking nonsense!" he said again roughly. He was pacing the room +by now. "Stark staring nonsense!" + +Of course the reason it caught him like that was simply that it echoed +so uncannily the things that went through his own head sometimes in his +stolen hours of solitude--thoughts he had often tried, unavailingly, to +stamp out of existence. + +"I'd like to know where you get that stuff. Is it from James Randolph? +He's dangerous, that fellow. Oh, he's interesting, and I like him, but +he's a cynic. He doesn't want anybody to be happier than he is. But what +may be true of him, isn't true of me. I've never stopped loving you +since the first day we talked together. And I should think I'd done +enough to prove it." + +"That's it," she said. "You've done too much. And you're so sorry for me +when you don't love me, that it makes you do all the more." + +She had found another joint in his armor. She was absolutely clairvoyant +to-night, and this time he fairly cried out, "Stop it!" + +Then he got himself together and begged her pardon. "After all, I don't +see what it comes to," he said. "I don't know what we're fighting about +to-night. You're saying you think we ought to do more playing around +with the Lakes and people like that; not spend all our time with the +Casino set, as we have done this winter. Well, that may be good sense. +I've no objection certainly." + +"Well, then," she said, "that's settled--that's one thing settled. But +there's something else. Oh, it all comes to the same thing, really. +Roddy,"--she had to gulp and draw a long breath and steady herself +before this--"Roddy, how much money have you got, and how much are we +spending?" + +"Oh, good lord!" he cried. "_Please_ don't go into that now, Rose. It's +after one o'clock, and you're worn to a frazzle. If we've got to go into +it, let's do it some other time, when we can be sensible about it." + +"When I am, you mean?" + +"Yes," he said. + +"Well, I'm sensible now. I can't help it if my--voice chokes and my eyes +fill up. That's silly, of course, but down in my mind, I don't believe +I've ever been as sensible as I am right now. And I've had the nerve to +ask--I don't know when I will again--and I know you won't bring the +subject up by yourself. I've been trying to for ever so long. But +money's always seemed the one thing I couldn't b-bear to talk about with +you. + +"You see, when I first told mother and Portia about you--about how you +helped me with the conductor that night, I told them your name, and +Portia said she didn't think it could be you, because you were a +millionaire. I supposed she knew. Anyway, I didn't think very much about +it. You yourself,--just being with you and hearing you talk, were so +much more important. After we got engaged, and you began doing all +sorts of lovely things for me, I enjoyed it of course. But it was just +something that went with you. After we were married and took this +house ... Well, I knew, of course, I hadn't married you for money, but +I thought it would sound sort of queer and prying to ask questions about +it; because I hadn't anything." + +He had looked up two or three times and drawn in his breath for a +protest, but apparently he couldn't think of anything effective to say. +Now though, he cried out, "Rose! Please!" + +But she went steadily on. "You were always so dear about it. You never +let me feel like a beggar, and--well, it was the easy way, and I took +it. I got worried once during the winter when I heard the Crawfords +talking. All those people were millionaires, I'd supposed. They were +going on at a dinner here, one night, about being awfully hard up, and I +began to wonder if we were. I spent a week trying to--get up my courage +to ask you about it. But then Constance got a new necklace on her +birthday, and they went off to Palm Beach the next week, so I persuaded +myself it was all a joke. The thing's come up again several times since, +but never so that I couldn't side-step it some way, until to-night. But +to-night--oh, Roddy ...!" Her silly ragged voice choked there and +stopped and the tears brimmed up and spilled down her cheeks. But she +kept her face steadfastly turned to his. + +"That's what I said about being married and not sowing wild oats, I +suppose," he said glumly. "It was a joke. Do you suppose I'd have said +it if I meant it?" + +"It wasn't only that," she managed to go on. "It was the way they looked +at the house; the way you apologized for my dress; the way you looked +when you tried to get out of answering Barry Lake's questions about what +you were doing. Oh, how I despised myself! And how I knew you and they +must be despising me!" + +"The one thing I felt about you all evening," he said, with the patience +that marks the last stage of exasperation, "was pride. I was rather +crazily proud of you." + +"As my lover you were proud of me," she said. "But the other man--the +man that's more truly you--was ashamed, as I was ashamed. Oh, it doesn't +matter! Being ashamed won't accomplish anything. But what we'll _do_ is +going to accomplish something." + +"What do you mean to do?" he asked. + +"I want you to tell me first," she said, "how much money we have, and +how much we've been spending." + +"I don't know," he said stubbornly. "I don't know exactly." + +"You've got enough, haven't you, of your own ... I mean, there's enough +that comes in every year, to live on, if you didn't earn a cent by +practising law? Well, what I want to do, is to live on that. I want to +live however and wherever we have to to live on that--out in the suburbs +somewhere, or in a flat, so that you will be free; and I can work--be +some sort of help. Barry and the others--your real friends, that you +really care about, won't mind. And as long as we want to get rid of the +other people anyway, that's the way to do it." + +"You can wash the dishes and scrub the floors," he supplemented, "and I +can carry my lunch to the office with me in a little tin box." He looked +at his watch. "And now that the thing's reduced to an absurdity, let's +go to bed. It's getting along toward two o'clock." + +"You don't have to get to the office till nine to-morrow morning," said +Rose. "And I want to talk it out now. And I don't think I said anything +that was absurd." + +The devil of it was she hadn't. The precise quality about her +suggestions that pointed and barbed them, was their fantastic logic. It +would be ridiculous--impossible--to uproot their life as she wanted it +done. One simply couldn't do such a thing. Serious discussion of it was +preposterous. But to explain why ...! He was apt enough at explanations +generally. This one seemed to present difficulties. + +"I shouldn't have called it absurd," he admitted after a rather long +silence. "But it's exaggerated and unnecessary. I don't care to make a +public proclamation that I'm not able to support you and run our +domestic establishment in a way that we find natural and agreeable;--and +that I've been a fool to try. The situation doesn't call for it. You've +made a mountain out of an ant-hill. When our lease is up, if we think +this house is more than we want, we can find something simpler." + +"But we'll begin economizing now," she pleaded; "change things as much +as we can, even if we do have to go on living in this house. It won't +hurt me a bit to work, and you could go back to your book. We'd both be +happier, if I were something besides just a drag on you." + +"Discharge a couple of maids, you mean," he asked, "and sweep and make +beds and that sort of thing yourself?" + +"I don't know exactly how we'd do it," she said. "That's why I said I +needed your help in figuring it out. Something like that, I suppose. +Sweeping and making beds isn't very much, but it's something." + +"The most we could save that way," he said, "would be a few hundred +dollars a year. It wouldn't be a drop in the bucket. But everything +would run at cross-purposes. You'd be tired out all the time--you're +that pretty much as it is lately, we'd have to stop having people in; +you'd be bored and I'd be worried. When you start living on a certain +scale, everything about your life has to be done on that scale. Next +October, as I said, when the lease on this house runs out, we can +manage, perhaps, to change the scale a little. There you are! Now do +stop worrying about it and let's go to bed." + +But she sat there just as she was, staring at the dying fire, her hands +lying slack in her lap, all as if she hadn't heard. The long silence +irked him. He pulled out his watch, looked at it and began winding it. +He mended the fire so that it would be safe for the night; bolted a +window. Every minute or two, he stole a look at her, but she was always +just the same. Except for the faint rise and fall of her bosom, she +might have been a picture, not a woman. + +At last he said again, "Come along, Rose, dear." + +"It'll be too late in October," she said. "That's why I wanted to decide +things to-night. Because we must begin right away." Then she looked up +into his face. "It will be too late in October," she repeated, "unless +we begin now." + +The deep tense seriousness of her voice and her look arrested his full +attention. + +"Why?" he asked. And then, "Rose, what do you mean?" + +"We're going to have a baby in October," she said. + +He stared at her for a minute without a word, then drew in a deep breath +and pressed his hands against his eyes. All he could say at first was +just her name. But he dropped down beside her and got her in his arms. + +"So that's it," he said raggedly at last. "Oh, Rose, darling, it's such +a relief! I've been so terrified about you--so afraid something had gone +wrong. And you wouldn't let me ask, and you seemed so unhappy. I'd even +thought of talking to Randolph. I might have guessed, I suppose. I've +been stupid about it. But, you darling, I understand it all now." + +She didn't see just what he meant by that, but she didn't care. It was +such a wonderful thing to stop fighting and let the tension relax, +cuddle close into his embrace, and know nothing in the world but the one +fact that he loved her; that their tale of golden hours wasn't +spent--was, perhaps, illimitable. She was even too drowsily happy to +think what he meant when he said a little later: + +"So now you won't let anything trouble you, will you, child? And if +queer worrying ideas get into your head about the way we live, and about +being a drag on me and making me hate you, you'll laugh at them? You'll +be able to laugh, because you'll know why they're there." + +It wasn't until the next day that she recalled that remark of his and +analyzed it. It meant, of course, that she was beaten; that her first +fight for the big thing had been in vain. There would be no use, for the +present, in renewing the struggle. He'd taken the one ground that was +impregnable. So long as he could go on honestly interpreting every plea +of hers for a share in the hard part of his life as well as in the soft +part of it, for a way of life that would make them something more than +lovers--as wholly subjective to herself, the inevitable accompaniment of +her physical condition--the pleas and the struggles would indeed be +wasted. She'd have to wait. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE DOOR THAT WAS TO OPEN + + +She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch, as Rose was forced by +her husband's attitude to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a +wonderful anodyne. And so it proved in her ease. Indeed, within a day +after her talk with Rodney, though it had ended in total defeat, she +felt like a person awakened out of a nightmare. There had taken place, +somehow, an enormous letting-off of strain--a heavenly relaxation of +spiritual muscles. It was so good just to have him know; to have others +know, as all her world did within the next week! + +Ultimately nothing was changed, of course. The great thing that she had +promised Portia she wouldn't fail in getting--the real thing that should +solve the problem, equalize the disparity between her husband and +herself and give them a life together in satisfying completeness beyond +the joys of a pair of lovers;--that was still to be fought for. + +She'd have to make that fight alone. Rodney wouldn't help her. He +wouldn't know how to help her. Indeed, interpreting from the way he +winced under her questions and suggestions, as if they wounded some +essentially masculine, primitive element of pride in him, it seemed +rather more likely that he'd resist her efforts--fight blindly against +her. She must be more careful about that when she took up the fight +again; must avoid hurting him if she could. + +She hadn't an idea on what lines the fight was to be made. Perhaps +before the time for its beginning, a way would appear. The point was +that for the present, she'd have to wait--coolly and thoughtfully, not +fritter her strength away on futile struggles or harassments. + +The tonic effect of that resolution was really wonderful. She got her +color back--I mean more than just the pink bloom in her cheeks--and her +old, irresistible, wide slow smile. She'd never been so beautiful as she +was during the next six months. + +People who thought they loved her before--Frederica for example, found +they hadn't really, until now. She dropped in on Eleanor Randolph one +day, after a morning spent with Rose, simply because she was bursting +with this idea and had to talk to somebody. That was very like +Frederica. + +She found Eleanor doing her month's bills, but glad to shovel them into +her desk, light up a cigarette, and have a chat; a little rueful though, +when she found that Rose was to be the subject of it. + +"She's perfectly wonderful," Frederica said. "There's a sort of look +about her ..." + +"Oh, I know," Eleanor said. "We dined there last night." + +"Well, didn't it just--get you?" insisted Frederica. + +"It did," said Eleanor. "It also got Jim. He was still talking about her +when I went to sleep, about one o'clock. I don't a bit blame him for +being perfectly maudlin about her. As I say, I was a good deal that way +myself, though a half-hour's steady raving was enough for me. But poor +old Jim! She isn't one little bit crazy about him, either--unfortunately." + +"_Un_fortunately!" thought Frederica. This was rather illuminating. The +Randolphs' love-match had been regarded as establishing a sort of +standard of excellence. But when you heard a woman trying to arrange +subsidiary romances for her husband, or lamenting the failure of them, +it meant, as a rule, that things were wearing rather thin. However, she +dismissed this speculation for a later time, and went back to Rose. + +"I had been worrying about her, too;" she said. "Rodney was so funny +about her. _He_ was worried, I could see that. And he means the best in +the world, the dear. But he could be a dreadful brute, just in his +simplicity. Oh, I know! He and I were always rather special pals--more +than Harriet. But no man ever learned less from his sisters,--about +women, I mean. He's always been so big and healthy and even-minded, you +couldn't tell him anything, except what you could print right out in +black and white. So when you were feeling edgy and blue and miserable +you either kept out of his way or kept your troubles to yourself. He was +always easy to fool--there was that about it. If you wiped your eyes and +blew your nose, he always thought you had a cold. Which is all very nice +about a brother; but in a husband ..." + +Something that Eleanor did with her shoulders, the way she blew out her +smoke and twisted her mouth around, caught Frederica's eye. "What did +you mean by that?" she asked. "Oh, I know you didn't say anything." + +Eleanor got up restlessly, squared the cushions on her _chaise longue_, +tapped her cigarette ash into a receiver and said that Rose was happy +enough now, anyway, if looks were anything to go by; hesitated again, +and finally answered Frederica's question. + +"Why," she said, "whenever I hear a woman miaouling about being +misunderstood, I always want to tell her she doesn't know her luck. Wait +till she marries a man who really does understand--too well. Let her see +how she likes it, whenever she turns loose and gets--going a little, to +have him look interested, as if he were taking notes, and begin asking +questions that are--a little too intelligent. How does she think it'll +feel never to know, _never_--I mean that, that she isn't +being--experimented on!" + +It was a rather horrible idea, Frederica didn't try to deny it. But not +being understood wasn't very agreeable either. What did they want then? + +Eleanor laughed. "Did you ever think," she asked, "that one of these +regular stage husbands would be rather satisfactory? Terribly +particular, you know, and bossy and domineering. The kind that discovers +a letter or a handkerchief or sees you going into some other man's +'rooms' and gets frightfully jealous, and denounces you without giving +you a chance to explain, and drags you round by the hair and threatens +to kill you? And then discovers--in the last act, you know,--that you +were perfectly innocent all the while, and repents all over the place +and begs you to forgive him and take him back; and you do? Do you +suppose any of the men we know would be capable of acting like that? +Don't you think we'd like it if they were? Not if they really did those +things, perhaps, but if we thought they might?" + +Frederica was amused, but didn't think there was much to that. Of +course, if the play was very thrilling, and you liked the leading man, +you might build yourself into the romance somehow. But when it came to +the real thing ... + +"No, there is something in it," Eleanor insisted. "There's something you +can't get in any other way. Whom do you think I'd pick," she asked +suddenly, "for the happiest wife I know? Edith Welles. Yes, really. Oh, +I know, her husband's a slacker and no real good to anybody. And he goes +out every now and then and drinks too much and doesn't know just what +happens afterward. But he always comes back and wants to be forgiven. +And he thinks she's an angel,--which she is--and he thinks he isn't +worthy to put on her rubbers--which he isn't, and--well, there you are! +She knows she's _got_ him, somehow. + +"But you take Jim. I can get my way with him always. I can outmaneuver +him every time. He's positively simple about things, unless they happen +to strike him--professionally. But there's always something that gets +away. Something I'm no nearer now than I was the day I first saw him. +And I sometimes think that if there were--something horrible I had to +forgive him for--if I could get something on him as they say.... It's +rather fun, isn't it, sometimes, just to let your mind go wild and see +where you bring up. Awful rot, of course. Can you stop for lunch?" + +Frederica thought she couldn't; must run straight along. But the talk +had been amusing. "Only--you won't mind?--don't spring any of that stuff +on Rose. She's just a child, really you know, and entitled to any +illusions that Rodney leaves; especially these days." + +"You, as an old hen fussing about your new chicken!" Eleanor mocked. +"Wait till you can look the part a little better, Frederica, dear. But +really, I'm harmless. Talk to Jim and Rodney and those fearful and +wonderful Lakes of his. They were there, and--well, you ought to have +heard the talk. I thought I was pretty well hardened, but once or twice +I gasped. Jim's pretty weird when he gets going, but that Barry Lake has +a sort of--surgical way of discussing just _anything_, and his wife's as +bad. Oh, she's awfully interesting, I'll admit that, and she's as crazy +about Rose as any of the rest of us, which is to her credit. + +"We never got off women all the evening. Barry Lake had their history +down from the early Egyptians, and Jim had an endless string of +pathological freaks to tell about. And then Rodney came out strong for +economic independence, only with his own queer angle on it of course. He +thought it would be a fine thing, but it wouldn't happen until the men +insisted on it. When a girl wasn't regarded as marriageable unless she +had been trained to a trade or a profession, then things would begin to +happen. I think he meant it, too, though he was more than usually +outrageous in his way of putting things. + +"Well, and all the while there sat Rose, taking it all in with those big +eyes of hers, smiling to herself now and then; saying things, too, +sometimes, that were pretty good, though nobody but Jim seemed to +understand, always, just what she meant. They've talked before, those +two. But she didn't mind--anything; no more embarrassed than as if we'd +been talking embroidery stitches. You don't need to worry about her. And +she absolutely seemed to like Jane Lake." + +Frederica did worry. Seriously meditated running in on Rodney before she +went home to lunch and giving him a tip that a young wife in Rose's +condition wanted treating a little more carefully. It was not for +prudential reasons that she decided against doing it. She was perfectly +willing to have her head bitten off in a good cause. But she knew Rodney +down to the ground; knew that it was utterly impossible for him, +whatever his previous resolutions might be, to pull up on the brink of +anything. Once you launched a topic that interested him, he'd go through +with it. So the only thing that would do any good would be to ban the +Lakes and James Randolph completely. And Rodney, if persuaded to do +that--he would in a minute, of course, if he thought it would be good +for Rose--would be incapable of concealing from her why he had done it; +which would leave matters worse than ever. + +The only outcome, then, of her visit to Eleanor and her subsequent +cogitations, was that Martin, when he came home that night, found her +unusually affectionate and inclined to be misty about the eyes. "I'm +a--lucky guy, all right"--this was her explanation,--"being married to +you. Instead of any of the others." + +He was a satisfactory old dear. He took her surplus tenderness as so +much to the good, and didn't bother over not knowing what it was all +about. + +Eleanor was right in her surmise that Rose had really taken a fancy to +Jane Lake. She was truly--and really humbly--grateful to Jane, in the +first place, for liking her, finding her, in Jane's own phrase, "worth +while," and her ideas worth listening to. Because here was something, +you see, that she could take at its face value. There was no +long-circuited sex attraction to discount everything, in Jane's case. +But she had another reason. + +Rodney, it seemed, had told the Lakes about the prospective baby the +very morning after he'd learned the news himself, and Jane--this was +perfectly characteristic of her--had come straight up to see Rose about +it; even before Frederica. And about the first thing she said was: + +"Which do you want--a boy or a girl?" + +Rose looked puzzled, then surprised. "Why," she said at last, "I don't +believe I know." + +"It's funny about that," said Jane. "The one thing I was frightened +about--the first time, you know--was that it might be a girl. I think +Barry really wanted a girl, too. He does now, and we're going to try to +have one, though we can't rightly afford it. But I'm just primitive +enough--I'm a cave person, really--to have felt that having a girl, at +least before you had a boy, would be a sort of disgrace. Like the Hindoo +women in Kipling. But don't you really care?" + +"Why, the queer thing is," said Rose, who had been in a daze ever since +Jane's first question, "that I hadn't thought of it as anything at all +but--It. Hardly that, really. I've known how miserable I've been, and +that there were things I must be careful not to do,--and, of course, +what was going to happen. But that when it was all over there'd be a +baby left,--a--a son or a daughter, why, that's ..." + +Her surprise had carried her into a confidence that her budding +friendship for Jane was hardly ripe for, and she pulled up rather +suddenly. "I didn't know you had any children," she concluded, by way of +avoiding a further discussion of the marvel just then. "Are they here +with you now?" + +Jane explained why they were not. They weren't babies any more, two +husky little boys of five and three, and they were rejoicing in the care +of a grandmother and a highly competent nurse. "One of those terribly +infallible people, you know. Oh, I don't like it. I get a night letter +every morning, and, of course, if one of them got the sniffles I'd be +off home like a shot. I'd like to be a regular domestic mother; not let +another soul but me touch them (Jane really believed this) but you see +we can't well afford it. Barry pays me five dollars a day for working +for him. I scout around and dig up material and interview people for +him--I used to be a reporter, you know. He'd have to hire somebody, and +it might better be me and keep the money in the family. Because the +nurse who takes my place doesn't cost near so much as that. All the +same, as I say, I don't half like it. You can preach the new stuff till +you're black in the face, but there's no job for a woman like taking +care of her own children." + +Rose listened to all this, as well as to Jane's subsequent remarks, with +only so much attention as was required to keep her guest from suspecting +that she wasn't really listening at all. Jane didn't stay long. She had +to go out and earn Barry's five dollars--she'd lose her job if she +didn't, so she said, and Rose was presently left alone to dream, +actually for the first time, of the wonders that were before her. + +What a silly little idiot she'd been not to have seen the thing for +herself! She'd been, all the while, beating her head against blind +walls when there was a door there waiting to open of itself when the +time came. Motherhood! There'd be a doctor and a nurse at first, of +course, but presently they'd go away and she'd be left with a baby. Her +own baby! She could care for him with her own hands, feed him--her joy +reached an ecstasy at this--feed him from her own breast. + +That life which Rodney led apart from her, the life into which she had +tried with such ludicrous unsuccess to effect an entrance, was nothing +to this new life which was to open before her in a few short months now. +Meanwhile, she not only must wait; she could well afford to. + +That was why she could listen with that untroubled smile of hers to the +terrible things that Rodney and James Randolph and Barry Lake and Jane +got into the way of hurling across her dinner table, and to the more +mildly expressed but equally alkaline cynicisms of Jimmy Wallace. + +(Jimmy was dramatic critic on one of the evening papers, as well as a +bit of a playwright. He was a slim, cool, smiling, highly sophisticated +young man, who renounced all privileges as an interpreter of life in +favor of remaining an unbiased observer of it. He never bothered to +speculate about what you ought to do;--he waited to see what you did. He +knew, more or less, everybody in the world,--in all sorts of worlds. He +was, for instance, a great friend of Violet Williamson's and Bella +Forrester's and was, at the same time, on terms of avuncular confidence +with Dotty Blott of the Globe chorus. And he was exactly the same man to +the three of them. He fitted admirably in with their new circle.) + +Well, in the light of the miraculous transformation that lay before her +Rose could listen undaunted to the tough philosophizings her husband and +Barry Lake delighted in as well as to the mordant merciless realities +with which Doctor Randolph and Jimmy Wallace confirmed them. She wasn't +indifferent to it all. She listened with all her might. + +If there was anything in prenatal influence, that baby of hers was going +to be intelligent! + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +AN ILLUSTRATION + + +So far as externals went, her life, that spring, was immensely +simplified. The social demands on her, which had been so insistent all +winter, stopped almost automatically. The only exception was the Junior +League show in Easter week, for which she put in quite a lot of work. +She was to have danced in it. + +This is an annual entertainment by which Chicago sets great store. All +the smartest and best-looking of the younger set take part in it, in +costumes that would do credit to Mr. Ziegfeld, and as much of Chicago as +is willing and able to pay five dollars a seat for the privilege is +welcome to come and look. Delirious weeks are spent in rehearsal, under +a first-class professional director, audience and performers have an +equally good time, and Charity, as residuary legatee, profits by +thousands. + +Rose dropped in at a rehearsal one day at the end of a solid two hours +of committee work, found it unexpectedly amusing, and made a point +thereafter of attending when she could. Her interest was heightened if +not wholly actuated by some things Jimmy Wallace had been telling her +lately about how such things were done on the real stage. + +He had written a musical comedy once, lived through the production of +it, and had spent a hard-earned two-weeks vacation trouping with it on +the road, so he could speak with authority. It was a wonderful Odyssey +when you could get him to tell it, and as she made a good audience she +got the whole thing--what everybody was like, from the director down, +how the principals dug themselves in and fought to the last trench for +every line and bit of business in their parts, and sapped and mined +ahead to get, here or there, a bit more;--how insanely hard the chorus +worked.... + +The thing got a sociological twist eventually, of course, when Jane +wanted to know if it were true, as alleged by a prominent woman writer +on feminism, that the chorus-girls were driven to prostitution by +inadequate pay. Jimmy demolished this assertion with more warmth than he +often showed. He didn't know any other sort of job that paid a totally +untrained girl so well. There were initial requirements, of course. She +had to have reasonably presentable arms and legs and a rudimentary sense +of rhythm. But it took a really accomplished stenographer, for instance, +to earn as much a week as was paid the average chorus-girl. The trouble +was that the indispensable assets in the business were not character and +intelligence and ambition, but just personal charms. + +Rose grinned across at Rodney. "That's like wives, isn't it?" she +observed. + +"And then," Jimmy went on, "the work isn't really hard enough, except +during rehearsals, to keep them out of mischief." Rose smiled again, but +didn't press her analogy any further. "But a girl who's serious about +it, who doesn't have to be told the same thing more than once, and +catches on, sometimes, without being told at all,--why, she can always +have a job and she can be as independent as anybody. She can get +twenty-five dollars a week or even as high as thirty. It's surprising +though," he concluded, "considering what a bunch of morons most of them +are, that they work as well as they do; turn up on time for rehearsals +and performances, even when they're feeling really seedy, stand the +awful bawling out they get every few minutes--because some directors are +downright savages--and keep on going over and over a thing till they're +simply reeling on their pins, without any fuss at all." + +"They can always lose their job," said Barry. "There's great merit in +that." + +The latter part of this conversation was what she was to remember +afterward, but the thing which impressed Rose at the time, and that held +her for hours looking on at the League show rehearsals, was what Jimmy +had told her about the technical side of the work of production, the +labors of the director, and so on. + +The League was paying their director three hundred dollars a week, and +by the end of the third rehearsal Rose decided that he earned it. The +change he could make, even with one afternoon's work, in the +effectiveness, the carrying power, of a dance number was astonishing. It +wasn't at all a question of good taste. There stood Bertie Willis simply +awash with good taste and oozing suggestions whose hopeless futility was +demonstrated, even to him, the moment an attempt was made to put them +into effect. The director was concerned with matters of fact. There were +ascertained methods of getting a certain range of effects and he knew +what they were and applied them--as well as the circumstances admitted. +He was working under difficulties, poor chap! Rose, enlightened by Jimmy +Wallace, could see that. A man habituated to bawling at a girl, when the +spirit so moved him, "Here, you Belmont! What do you think you're trying +to do? You try sleeping at night and staying awake at rehearsal. See how +it works!"--accustomed to the liberty of saying things like that, and +then finding himself under the necessity of swallowing hard and counting +ten, and beginning with an--"I think, if you don't mind ...!" was in a +hard case. + +Bertie Willis had his usefulness here. Sometimes Rose heard the director +whisper hoarsely, "For God's sake, don't let her do that! She _can't_ do +that!" and then Bertie would intervene and accomplish wonders by +diplomacy. + +But it must be wonderfully exhilarating, Rose thought, to know exactly +why that girl was ridiculous and what to do to make her look right. And +to be able to sell your knowledge for three hundred dollars a week. This +was the sort of thing Rodney did, when one came to think of it. She +wondered whether he could sell his special sort of knowledge for as +much. That must be: the sort of possession Simone Gréville had had in +mind when she said that nothing worth having could be bought cheap. +Neither Rodney nor the director had found his specialty growing on a +bush! + +But her specialty, which in her life was to fill the place a knowledge +of stage dancing filled in the director's, was to come in a different +way. You paid a price, of course, for motherhood, in pain and peril, but +it remained a miraculous gift, for all that. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +WHAT HARRIET DID + + +She must wait for her miracle. As the weeks and months wore away, and as +the season of violent and high-frequency alternations between summer and +winter, which the Chicagoan calls spring, gave place to summer itself, +Rose was driven to intrench herself more and more deeply behind this +great expectation. It was like a dam holding back waters that otherwise +would have rushed down upon her and swept her away. + +The problems went on mounting up behind the dam, of course. All the +minor luxuries of their way of living, which had been so keen a delight +to her during the first unthinking months of their married life; all the +sumptuous little elaborations of existence which she had explored with +such adventurous delight, had changed--now that she knew they had been +bought by the abridgment of her husband's freedom, by the invasion of +the clear space about himself which he had always so jealously +guarded--into a cloud of buzzing stinging distractions. + +And they were the harder to bear now that she recognized how hard they +were going to be to drive away. It would have to be effected without +wounding Rodney's primitive masculine pride--without convicting him of +being an inadequate provider. + +The baffling thing about him was that he had, quite unconsciously and +sincerely, two points of view. His affection for her, his wife, lover, +mistress, was a lens through which he sometimes looked out on the world. +As she refracted the facts of life for him they presented themselves in +the primitive old-fashioned way. + +But there was another window in his soul through which he saw life with +no refractions whatever; remorselessly, logically. Looking through the +window, as he did when he talked to Barry Lake, or James Randolph, he +saw life as a mass of unyielding reciprocities. You got what you paid +for. You paid for what you got. And he saw both men and women--though +chiefly women--tangling and nullifying their lives in futile efforts to +evade this principle; looking for an Eldorado where something was to be +had for nothing; for panaceas; for the soft without the hard. + +He was perfectly capable of seeing and describing an abstract wife like +that in blistering terms that would make an industrious street-walker +look almost respectable by comparison. But when he looked at Rose, he +saw her through the lens, as some one to be loved and desired,--and +prevented, if possible, from paying anything. + +Somehow or other those two views must be reconciled before a life of +real comradeship between them was possible; before the really big thing +she had promised Portia to fight for could be anything more than a +tormenting dream. + +Would the miracle solve this? It must. It was the only thing left to +hope for. In the shelter of the great dam she could wait serene. + +And then came Harriet, and the pressure behind the dam rose higher. + +Rose had tried, rather unsuccessfully, to realize, when during the +earlier days of her marriage she had heard Harriet talked about, that +there was actually in existence another woman who occupied, by blood +anyway, the same position toward Rodney and herself that Frederica did. +She felt almost like a real sister toward Frederica. But without quite +putting the notion into words, she had always felt it was just as well +that Harriet was an Italian _contessa_ four thousand miles away. Rodney +and Frederica spoke of her affectionately, to be sure, but their +references made a picture of a rather formidably correct, seriously +aristocratic sort of person. Harriet had always had, Rose could see, a +very effective voice in the family councils. She hadn't much of a mind, +perhaps; Rodney described it once as a small, well oiled, easy running +sort of mind that stitched away without misgivings, to its conclusions. +Rodney never could have been very fond of her. But she had something he +knew he lacked, and in matters which he regarded as of minor +importance--things that he didn't consider worth bothering much about +one way or the other--he'd submit to her guidance, it appeared, without +much question. + +She had written, on the occasion of Rodney's marriage, a letter to Rose, +professing with perfect adequacy, to give her a sisterly welcome into +the family. But Rose felt pretty sure (a fragment of talk she overheard, +an impatient laugh of Rodney's, and Frederica's "Oh, that's Harriet of +course," had perhaps suggested it) that the _contessa_ regarded Rodney's +marriage as a _mésalliance_. She had entertained this notion the more +easily because at that time what Harriet thought--whatever Harriet might +think--seemed a matter of infinitesimal importance. + +She'd discovered, along in the winter sometime, that Harriet's affairs +were going rather badly. Neither Rodney nor Frederica had gone into +details. But it was plain enough that both of them were looking for a +smash of some sort. It was in May that the cable came to Frederica +announcing that Harriet was coming back for a long visit. "That's all +she said," Rodney explained to Rose. "But I suppose it means the finish. +She said she didn't want any fuss made, but she hinted she'd like to +have Freddy meet her in New York, and Freddy's going. Poor old Harriet! +That's rather a pill for her to swallow, if it's so. We must try to +cheer her up." + +She didn't seem much in need of cheering up, Rose thought, when they +first met. All that showed on the _contessa's_ highly polished surface +was a disposition to talk humorously over old times with her old +friends, including her brother and sister, and a sort of dismayed +acquiescence in the smoky seriousness, the inadequate civilization, the +sprawling formlessness of the city of her birth, not excluding that part +of it which called itself society. + +In broad strokes, you could describe Harriet by saying she was as +different as a beautiful woman could be from Frederica. She wasn't so +beautiful as Frederica, to be sure, but together they made a +wonderfully contrasted pair--Harriet almost as perfect a brunette type +as Frederica was a blonde, and got up with her ear-rings and her hair +and all to look rather exotic. Her speech, too, and the cultivated +things she could do with her shoulders, carried out the impression. She +had a trick--when she wanted to be disagreeable an ill-natured observer +would have said--of making remarks in Italian and then translating them. + +She wasn't disagreeable though--not malicious anyway, and the very hard +finish she carried, had been developed probably as a matter of +protection. She must have been through a good deal in the last few +years. She'd had two children stillborn, for one thing, and she was +frankly afraid to try it again. She never wanted any sympathy from +anybody. If it came down to that, she'd prefer arsenic. She resisted +Rose's rather poignant charm, as she resisted any other appeal to her +emotions. With the charm left out, Rose was simply a well meaning, +somewhat insufficiently civilized young person, the beneficiary, through +her marriage with Rodney, of a piece of unmerited good fortune. She +didn't in the least mean to be unkind to her, however, and didn't dream +that she was giving Rose an inkling how she thought of her. + +Her manner toward this new member of the family was studiously +affectionate. She avoided being either disagreeable or patronizing. Rose +could see, indeed, how carefully she avoided it. She knew, too, that +Frederica saw the same thing and tried to compensate for it by a little +extra affectionateness. She even thought--though perhaps this was mere +self-consciousness--that she detected a trace of the same thing in +Rodney. + +The tie of blood is a powerful thing. Rose had never realized before how +powerful. With Harriet's arrival, she became aware of the Aldrich family +as a sodality--something she didn't belong to and never could. It was +quite true, as Frederica had said, that she and Rodney had always been +special pals. Harriet fitted into the family on the other side of +Frederica from her brother. She was a person with a good deal of what +one calls magnetism, and she attracted Frederica toward herself--made +her, when she was about, a somewhat different Frederica. She even +attracted Rodney a little in the same way. + +The time of the year (it was after the end of the social season) made it +natural for them to be together a good deal. And of course Harriet's +return, after an absence of years, made them seek such meetings. The +result was that Rose, at the end of almost a year of marriage, got her +first real taste of lonesomeness. When the four of them were together, +Rose felt like an outsider intruding on intimates. They didn't mean her +to feel that way--made a distinct effort, Rodney and Frederica, anyway, +to prevent her feeling that way; which of course only pointed it. They +had old memories to talk about; old friendships. They had, like all +close knit families, a sort of shorthand language to talk in. If Rose +came into the room where they were, she'd often be made aware that the +current subject of the conversation had been dropped and a new one was +getting started; or else there'd be laborious explanations. + +It wouldn't have mattered--not so much anyway, if Rose had had a similar +sodality of her own to fall back on--a mass of roots extending out into +indigenous soil. But Rose, you see, had been transplanted. Her two +brothers were hardly more than faint memories of her childhood. One was +a high-school principal down in Pennsylvania; the other a professor of +history at one of the western state universities. Both of them had +married young and had been very much married--on small incomes--ever +since. The only family she had that counted, was her mother and Portia. +And they were gone now to California. + +She had had a world of what she called friends, of course, of her own +age, at the high school and at the university. But her popularity in +those circles, her easy way of liking everybody, and her energetic +preoccupation with things to do, had prevented any of these friendships +from biting in very deep. None of them had been solidly founded enough +to withstand the wavelike rush of Rodney Aldrich into her life. She had +gone over altogether into her husband's world. The world that had been +her own, hadn't much more existence, except for her mother and sister +out in California, than the memory of a dream. + +But it took Harriet's arrival to make her realize this. And the +realization, when it was pressed home particularly hard, brought with it +moments of downright panic. Everything--everything she had in the world, +went back to Rodney. Except for him, she was living in an absolute +vacuum. What would happen if the stoutly twisted cable that bound her to +him should be broken, as the cable that bound Harriet to her husband +was, apparently, broken? What would she have then of which she could +say, "This much is mine"? Well, she'd have the child. That would be, +partly at least, hers. + +But Harriet's contribution to Rose's difficulties, to the mounting +pressure behind the dam, was destined to be more serious--more actual, +anyway--before very long. + +The question where Rose and Rodney were going to live after their lease +on the McCrea house ended, had begun to press for an answer. October +first was when the lease expired and it wasn't far from the date at +which they expected the baby. Rose wouldn't be in any condition for +house hunting during the hot summer months. Things would have to be +settled somehow before then. A heavy calendar of important cases had +kept Rodney from giving as much attention to the problem as he himself +felt it needed. He had delighted Rose with the suggestion that they go +out into the country somewhere. Not the real country of course, but up +along the shore, where the train service was good and the motor a +possible alternative. + +They spent some very lovely afternoons during the early days of the +emerging spring, cruising about looking at possible places. They talked +of building at first, but long before they could make up their minds +what they wanted it had become too late for that, and they shifted to +the notion of buying an old place somewhere and remodeling it. One +reason why they made no more progress was because they were looking for +such different things. Rodney wanted acres. He'd never gardened a bit, +and never would; was an altogether urban person, despite the physical +energy which took him pounding off on long country walks. But when he +heard there was a tract just west of Martin Whitney's, up at Lake +Forest, that could be had at a bargain--thirty-five thousand dollars--he +let his eye rove over it appreciatively. And Frank Crawford and Howard +West knew of advantageous sites, also, on which to expatiate with +convincing enthusiasm. The kind of house you'd have to build on that +sort of place would cost you an easy thirty thousand more. + +Rose didn't even yet know much about money, to be sure, but she knew +enough to be aghast at all that. What she tried to make Rodney look for +was a much more modest establishment--a yard big enough to hold a tennis +court, perhaps, and a house, well, that could be added to as they needed +room. + +Neither of them stuck very close to the main point on these expeditions. +They always had too good a time together--more like a pair of children +on a picnic than serious home-hunters, and they frittered a good deal of +time away that they couldn't well afford. + +This was the situation when Harriet took a hand in it. It was a +situation made to order for Harriet to take a hand in. She'd sized it up +at a glance, made up her mind in three minutes what was the sensible +thing for them to do, written a note to Florence McCrea in Paris, and +then bided her opportunity to put her idea into effect. She went out +cruising with Rose in the car two or three times, looking at places, but +gave her no indications that she felt more than the most languid +interest in the problem. She could seem less interested in a thing +without being quite impolite, than any one Rose knew. + +When she got Florence McCrea's answer to her letter, she took the first +occasion to get Rodney off by himself and talk a little common sense +into him. + +"What about where to live, Rodney?" she asked. "Made up your mind about +it yet? I suppose you know how many months there are between the first +of June and the first of October." + +"We haven't got much of anywhere," he admitted. "We know we want to live +in the country, that's about all." + +"Out in the country just as winter's getting started?" she asked. +"Settling into a new place--Rose with a new baby--everybody else back in +town;--simply no _chance_ of keeping servants? Roddy, old man, you're +entitled to be a babe in the woods, of course. Any man is who does the +kind of work you do. But it is time some one with a little common sense +straightened you out about this." + +Harriet couldn't be sure from the length of time he took seeing that his +pipe was properly alight, whether he altogether liked this method of +approach or not. + +"Common sense always was a sort of specialty of yours, sis," he said at +last, "and straightening out. You were always pretty good at it." Then, +out of a cloud of his own smoke, "Fire away." + +"Well, in the first place;" she said, "remodeling is the slowest work in +the world, and the fussiest. And you can't just tell an architect, with +a wave of the hand, to go ahead. You have to do your own fussing, which +would drive you crazy. If you had your house to-day, you'd be lucky if +the paint was dry and the thing was fit to move into by the first of +September. And next September, if it's blazing hot, won't be exactly the +time for Rose to go ramping around trying to buy furniture for a whole +establishment--because you haven't a stick yourselves, of course--and +getting settled in, hiring servants, getting the thing going. You can't +be sure you'll have till the first of October. Things like that don't +always happen exactly as they are expected to. But suppose you have good +luck and manage it. Then where are you? Out in the woods somewhere at +the beginning of winter, just when you ought to be settled comfortably +somewhere in town. + +"Oh, I know it's all very poetic, sitting in front of a roaring fire of +logs, while the wind bangs the shutters, and that sort of thing, Rose +singing to the baby and all. But you're not an Arcadian one bit. Neither +is she, really, and you'll simply perish out there, both of you, and be +back in town before the holidays. + +"Rose oughtn't to be in town this summer. But she'll have to be to put +this through. She ought to be down at York Harbor, or one of those Cape +Cod places, instead of in this horrible smoky hole. Because she's not so +very fit, really do you think? Bit moody, I'd say." + +"But good lord, Harriet, we've got to get out of here anyway, in +October. And that means we've got to have some sort of place to get +into. It is an awkward time, I'll admit." + +"No, you haven't," she said. "You can stay right here another six +months, if you like. I've heard from Florence. I met her in Paris in +April, and found she wasn't a bit keen to come back and take this house +on. Their securities have gone down again, and they're feeling hard-up. +Florence has got an old barn of an _atelier_, and she's puttering around +in the mud thinking she's making statuary. Well, when I found how things +stood here, I wrote and asked her if she'd lease for six months more if +she got the chance, and she wrote back and simply grabbed at it. All +you've got to do is to send her a five-word cable and you're fixed. +Then, next spring, when your troubles are over, and you know what you +want, you can look out a place up the shore and have the summer there." + +Rodney smoked half-way through his pipe before he made any comment on +this suggestion. + +"This house isn't just what we want," he said. "In the first place, it's +damned expensive." + +Harriet shrugged her shoulders, found herself a cigarette and lighted +it; picked up one of Florence's poetry books and eyed the heavily tooled +binding with a satirical smile before she replied. She could feel him +looking at her, and she knew he'd wait till she got ready to go on. + +"I'd an idea there was that in it," she said at last. "Freddy said +something ... Rose had been talking to her." Then after another little +silence, and with a sudden access of vehemence, "You don't want to go +and do a regular _fool_ thing, Roddy. You're getting on perfectly +splendidly. You'll be at the head of the bar out here in ten years, if +you keep on. Frank Crawford was telling me about you the other day. +You've settled down, and we thought you never would. It was a corking +move, your taking this house, just because it made you settle down. You +can earn forty thousand dollars next year, just with your practise, if +you want to. But if you pull up and go to live in a barn somewhere, and +stop seeing anybody--people that count, I mean ..." + +Rodney grunted. "You're beyond your depth, sis," he said. "Come back +where you don't have to swim. The expense isn't a capital consideration, +I'll admit that. Now go on from there." + +"That's like old times," she observed with a not ill-humored grimace. "I +wonder if you talk to Rose like that. Oh, I know the house is rather +solemn and absurd. It's Florence herself all over, that's the size of +it, and I suppose you are getting pretty well fed up with it. But what +does that matter for six months more? Heavens! You won't know where +you're living. But the place is comfortable, and there's room in it for +nurses and all and the best doctor in town in the line you'll want, is +right around the corner. And, as I say, when your troubles are over and +you know what you want ..." + +He pocketed his pipe and got up out of this chair. + +"There's something in it," he admitted. "I'll think it over." + +"Better cable Florence as soon as you can," she advised. "She'll want to +know ..." + +Rose protested when the plan for living six months more in Florence +McCrea's house was broached to her. She made the best fight she could. +But Harriet's arguments, re-stated now by Rodney with full conviction, +were too much for her. When she broke down and cried, as she couldn't +help doing, Rodney soothed and comforted her, assured her that this +notion of hers about the expensiveness of it all, was just a +notion--obsession was the word he finally came to--which she must +struggle against as best she could. She'd see things in a truer +proportion afterward. + +Then it came out that he had made all his plans for a long summer +vacation. There was no court work in July and August anyway. He was +going to carry her off to a quiet little place out on Cape Cod that he +knew about, and just luxuriate in her; have her all to himself--not a +soul they knew about them. They would lie about in the sands all day, +building air castles. If she got tired of him, any person she wanted to +see should be telegraphed for forthwith. The one thing she had to bear +in mind was that she was to be happy and not bother about things; leave +everything to him. + +This plan was carried out, and in a paradise, made up of blue sea, white +sands, warm sun and Rodney--Rodney always there, and queerly content to +drowse away the time with her, she almost forgot the great dam and the +pressure of the waters that had mounted up behind it. Was it an +obsession just as Rodney said? Would she find when it was all over and +she rallied herself for the great endeavor, that there was, after all, +no battle to be fought--nothing but a baby at her breast? + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +FATE PLAYS A JOKE + + +Traveling bars flowing along parallel, black and white; the white ones +incandescent;--and a small helpless harried thing struggling to keep in +the shadow of the black ones, or to regain it again across the pitiless +zone of white that the little helpless thing called pain.--Traveling +bars flowing along endlessly. + +And then a great ball whirling in planetary space, half dark, half +incandescent white, having for its sole inhabitant, the small harried +thing that struggled to keep in the dark out of the glare of that +pitiless white pain.--One watched its struggles from a long way +off--like God.--But the ball whirled drunkenly and it made one sick to +look.--And then a supervening chaos--no longer a ball but still +whirling, reeling, tottering. Rectangles of light, which, had they kept +still, would have been windows--a mirror. + +And then, very fine and small and weak, something that knew it was Rose +Stanton--Rose Stanton lying in a bed with people about her. She let her +eyes fall heavily shut again lest they should discover she was there and +want her to speak or think. + +The bars came back, but the whiteness of them was no longer so white, +and slowly they faded out. Then, for a long time, nothing. Then sounds, +movements--soft, skilful, disciplined sounds and movements. And, +presently, a hand--a firm powerful hand, that picked up and supported a +heavy limp wrist--Rose Stanton's wrist--and two sensitive finger-tips +that rested lightly on the upper surface of it. After that, an even +measured voice--a voice of authority, whose words no doubt made sense, +only Rose was too tired to think what the sense was: + +"She's out of the ether now, practically. That's a splendid pulse. +She's doing the best thing she can, sleeping like that. It's been a +thoroughly normal delivery from the beginning. Oh, a long difficult one, +I'll admit. But there's nothing now, that you could want better than +what you've got." + +And then another voice, utterly unlike Rodney's and yet unmistakably +his--a ragged voice that tried to talk in a whisper but couldn't manage +it; broke queerly. + +"That's all right," it said. "But I'll find it easier to believe +when ..." + +She must see him--must know what it meant that he should talk like that. +With a strong physical effort, she opened her eyes and tried to speak +his name. + +She couldn't; but some one must have been watching and seen, because a +woman's voice said quickly and quietly, "Mr. Aldrich." + +And the next moment, vast and towering, and very blurred in outline, +but, like his voice, unmistakable, was Rodney--her own big strong +Rodney. She tried to hold her arms up to him, but of course she +couldn't. + +And then he shortened suddenly. He had knelt down beside her bed, that +was it. And she felt upon her palm, the pressure of his lips, and his +unshaven cheek, and on her wrist, a warm wetness that must be--tears. + +Why was he crying? What had happened? She must try to think. + +It was very hard. She didn't want to think, but she must. She must begin +with something she knew. She knew who she was. She was Rose--Rodney's +Rose. Here was his mouth down close to the pillow saying her name over +and over and over again. And she was in her own bed. But what had +happened? She must try to remember. She remembered something she had +said--said to herself over and over again an illimitable while ago. +"It's coming. The miracle's beginning." What had she meant by that? + +And then she knew. The urgency of a sudden terror gave her her voice. + +"Roddy," she said. "There was going to be a--baby. Isn't there?" + +Something queerly like a laugh broke his voice when he answered. "Oh, +you darling! Yes. It's all right. That isn't why I'm crying. It's just +because I'm so happy." + +"But the baby!" she persisted. "Why isn't it here?" + +Rodney turned and spoke to some one else. "She wants to see," he said. +"May she?" + +And then a woman's voice (why, it was the nurse, of course! Miss Harris, +who had come last night) said in an indulgent soothing tone, "Why, +surely she may. Wait just a minute." + +But the wait seemed hours. Why didn't they bring the baby--her baby? +There! Miss Harris was coming at last, with a queerly bulky, shapeless +bundle. Rodney stepped in between and cut off the view, but only to +slide an arm under mattress and pillow and raise her a little so that +she could see. And then, under her eyes, dark red and hairy against the +whiteness of the pillow, were two small heads--two small shapeless +masses leading away from them, twitching, squirming. She stared, +bewildered. + +"There were twins, Rose," she heard Rodney explaining triumphantly, but +still with something that wasn't quite a laugh, "a boy and a girl. +They're perfectly splendid. One weighs seven pounds and the other six." + +Her eyes widened and she looked up into his face so that the pitiful +bewilderment in hers was revealed to him. + +"But the _baby!_" she said. Her wide eyes filled with tears and her +voice broke weakly. "I wanted a baby." + +"You've got a baby," he insisted, and now laughed outright. "There are +two of them. Don't you understand, dear?" + +Her eyes drooped shut, but the tears came welling out along her lashes. +"Please take them away," she begged. And then, with a little sob she +whispered, "I wanted a baby, not those." + +Rodney started to speak, but some sort of admonitory signal from the +nurse silenced him. + +The nurse went away with her bundle, and Rodney stayed stroking her limp +hand. + +In the dark, ever so much later, she awoke, stirred a little restlessly, +and the nurse, from her cot, came quickly and stood beside her bed. She +had something in her hands for Rose to drink, and Rose drank it +dutifully. + +"Is there anything else?" the nurse asked. + +"I just want to know," Rose said; "have I been dreaming, or is it true? +Is there a baby, or are there twins?" + +"Twins, to be sure," said the nurse cheerfully. "The loveliest, +liveliest little pair you ever saw." + +"Thank you," said Rose. "I just wanted to know." + +She shut her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. But she didn't. It was +true then. Her miracle, it seemed somehow, had gone ludicrously awry. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE DAM GIVES WAY + + +She began getting her strength back very fast after the next two or +three days, but this queer kink in her emotions didn't straighten out. +She came to see that it was absurd--monstrous almost, but that didn't +help. Instead of a baby, she had given birth to two. They were hers of +course, as much as one would have been. Only, her soul, which had been +waiting so ecstatically for its miracle--for the child which, by making +her a mother, should supply what her life needed--her soul +wouldn't--couldn't accept the substitution. Those two droll, thin +voiced, squirming little mites that were exhibited to her every morning, +were as foreign to her, as detached from her, as if they had been +brought into the house in a basket. + +There was a certain basis of reason back of this. At some time, during +those early hours of misty half-consciousness, it had been decided that +two children would be too much for her to attempt to nurse. + +She had a notion that this idea hadn't originated with the doctor, +though it was he who had stated it to her with the most plausible +firmness. Rodney had backed the doctor up, firmly, too. Rose was only a +girl in years--why, just a child herself; hadn't had her twenty-second +birthday yet; the labor had been long, she was very weak, the children +were big and vigorous, and she couldn't hope to supply them both for +more than a very few weeks, anyway. And, at this time of year, as the +doctor said, there was no difficulty to be apprehended from bottle +feeding. It would be better on all accounts. + +Still, it didn't sound exactly like Roddy's idea either. + +When Harriet came in for the first time to see her, Rose knew. Harriet +was living here now, running the house for Rodney, while Rose was laid +up. Doing it beautifully well, too, through all the confusion of nurses +and all. Not the slightest jar or creak of their complex domestic +machinery ever reached Rose in the big chamber where she lay. Harriet +said: + +"I think you're in great luck to have had two at once; get your duty to +posterity done that much sooner. And, of course, you couldn't possibly +be expected to nurse two great creatures like that." + +Rose acquiesced. What was the use of struggling against so formidable a +unanimity? She would have struggled though, she knew, but for that queer +trick Fate had played her. Her heart ached, as did her breasts. But that +was for the lips of the baby--the baby she hadn't had! + +When she found that struggling with herself, denouncing herself for a +brute, didn't serve to bring up the feelings toward the twins that she +knew any proper mother ought to have, she buried the dark fact as deep +as she could, and pretended. It was only before Rodney that the pretense +was necessary. And with him, really, it was hardly a pretense at all. He +was such a child himself, in his gleeful delight over the possession of +a son and a daughter, that she felt for him, tenderly, mistily, +luminously, the very emotion she was trying to capture for them--felt +like cradling his head in her weak arms, kissing him, crying over him a +little. + +She wouldn't have been allowed to do that to the babies anyway. They +were going to be terribly well brought up, those twins; that was +apparent from the beginning. They had two nurses all to themselves, +quite apart from Miss Harris, who looked after Rose: one uncannily +infallible person, omniscient in baby lore--thoroughgoing, logical, +efficient, remorseless as a German staff officer; and a bright-eyed, +snub-nosed, smart little maid, for an assistant, who boiled bottles, +washed clothes, and, at certain stated hours, over a previously +determined route, at a given number of miles per hour, wheeled the twins +out, in a duplex perambulator, which Harriet had acquired as soon as the +need for it had become evident. + +Miss Harris was to go away to another case at the end of the month. But +Mrs. Ruston (she was the staff officer) and Doris, the maid, were +destined, it appeared, to be as permanent as the babies. But Rose had +the germ of an idea of her own about that. + +They got them named with very little difficulty. The boy was Rodney, of +course, after his father and grandfather before him. Rose was a little +afraid Rodney would want the girl named after her, and was relieved to +find he didn't. There'd never in the world be but one Rose for him, he +said. So Rose named the girl Portia. + +They kept Rose in bed for three weeks; flat on her back as much as +possible, which was terribly irksome to her, since her strength and +vitality were coming back so fast. The irksomeness was added to by a +horrible harness largely of whalebone. Rose got the notion, too, that +the purpose of all this was not quite wholly hygienic. Harriet had said +once: "You know the most distinguished thing about you, Rose, +dear--about your looks, I mean--is that lovely boyish line of yours. It +will be a perfect crime if you let yourself spread out." + +This wasn't the sort of consideration to make the inactivity any easier +to endure. She might have rebelled, had it not been for that germinant +idea of hers. It wouldn't do, she saw, in the light of that, to give +them any excuse for calling her unreasonable. + +At the end of this purgatorial three weeks, she was carried to a chair +and allowed to sit up a little, and by the end of another, to walk +about--just a few steps at a time of course. One Sunday morning, Rodney +carried her up-stairs to the nursery to see her babies bathed. This was +a big room at the top of the house which Florence McCrea had always +vaguely intended to make into a studio. But, in a paralysis of +indecision as to what sort of studio to make it (book-binding, pottery +and art weaving called her about equally) she had left the thing bare. + +Rodney had given Harriet _carte blanche_ to go ahead and fit it up +before he and Rose came back from the seashore, and the layette was a +monument to Harriet's thoroughgoing practicality. There had been a wild +day of supplementing of course, when it was discovered that there were +two babies instead of one. + +The room, when they escorted Rose into it, was a terribly impressive +place. The spirit of a barren sterile efficiency brooded everywhere. And +this appearance of barrenness obtained despite the presence of an +enormous number of articles; a pair of scales, a perfect battery of +electric heaters of various sorts; rows of vacuum jars for keeping +things cold or hot; a small sterilizing oven; instruments and appliances +that Rose couldn't guess the uses or the names of. Mrs. Ruston, of +course, was master of them all, and Doris flew about to do her bidding, +under a watchful and slightly suspicious eye. (Doris was the sort of +looking girl who might be suspected of kissing a tiny pink hand when no +one was looking.) + +Rose surveyed this scene, just as she would have surveyed a laboratory, +or a factory where they make something complicated, like watches. That's +what it was, really. Those two pink little objects, in their two +severely sanitary baskets, were factory products. At precise and +unalterable intervals, a highly scientific compound of fats and proteids +was put into them. They were inspected, weighed, submitted to a routine +of other processes. And in all the routine, there was nothing that their +mother, now they were fairly born, was wanted for. Indispensable to a +certain point, no doubt. But after that rather the other way about--an +obstacle to the routine instead of a part of it. + +Rose kept these ideas to herself and kept her eye on young Doris; +listened to the orders she got; and studied alertly what she did in the +execution of them. + +Rodney had a lovely time watching the twins bathed. He stood about in +everybody's way, made what he conceived to be alluring noises, in the +perfectly unsuccessful attempt to attract the infants' attention, and +finally, when the various processes were complete, on schedule, like a +limited train, and the thermometrically correct bottles of food were +ready, one for each baby, he turned suddenly to his wife and said: +"Don't you want to--hold them, Rose?" She'd have held a couple of +glowing brands in her arms for him, the way he had looked and the way +he had said it. + +A stab of pain went through her and tears came up into her eyes. "Yes, +give them to me," she started to say. + +But Mrs. Ruston spoke before she could frame the words. It was their +feeding hour, she pointed out; a bad time for them to be excited, and +the bottles were heated exactly right. + +By that time Rose's idea had flowered into resolution. She knew exactly +what she was going to do. But she mustn't jeopardize the success of her +plan by trying to put it into effect too soon. + +She waited patiently, reasonably, for another fortnight. Harriet by that +time had gone off to Washington on a visit, taking Rodney's heartfelt +thanks with her. Rose expressed hers just as warmly, and felt ashamed +that they were so unreal. She simply mustn't let herself get to +resenting Harriet! At the end of the fortnight, the doctor made his +final visit. Rose had especially asked Rodney to be on hand to hear his +report when the examination was over. Rose and the doctor found him +waiting in the library. + +"He says," Rose told her husband, "that I'm perfectly well." She turned +to the doctor for confirmation, "Don't you?" + +The doctor smiled. "As far as my diagnostic resources go, Mrs. Aldrich, +you are perfectly well." + +Rodney was pleased of course, and expressed this feeling fervently. But +he looked across at his glowing radiant wife, with a touch of misgiving. + +"What are you trying to put over on me?" he asked. + +"Not a thing," said Rose demurely. "I thought you'd be glad to know that +I needn't be kept in cotton-wool any more, and that you'd feel surer of +it if he told you." + +"I feel surer that you've got something up your sleeve," he said. And, +to the doctor: "I don't imagine that in saying my wife is perfectly +well, you mean to suggest an absence of all reasonable caution." + +The doctor took the hint, expatiated largely; it was always well to be +careful--one couldn't, in fact, be too careful. The human body at best, +more especially the--ah--feminine human body, was a delicate machine, +not to be abused without inviting serious consequences. He was even a +little reproachful about it. + +"But there's no more reason, is there," Rose persisted, "why I should be +careful than why any other woman should--my nurse-maid for example? Is +she any healthier than I am?" + +It was indiscreet of the doctor to look at her before he answered. Her +eyes were sparkling, the color bright in her cheeks; unconsciously, she +had flattened her shoulders back and drawn a good deep breath down into +her lungs. The doctor smiled a smile of surrender and turned back to +Rodney. "I'll confess," he said, "that in my experience, Mrs. Aldrich is +almost a _lusus naturae_--a perfectly sound, healthy woman." + +Rose smiled widely and contentedly on the pair of them. "That's more +like it," she said to the doctor. "Thanks very much." + +But after he had gone, she did not spring anything on Rodney, as he +fully expected she would. She took him out for a tramp through the park +in the dusk of a perfect autumn afternoon, and went to a musical show +with him in the evening. She might have been, as far as he could see, +the Rose of a year ago. She had the same lithe boyish swing. She even +wore, though he didn't know it, the same skirt for their walk in the +park that she had worn on some of their tramps before they were married. +And when they had had their evening at the theater, and a bite of supper +somewhere, and come home, she let him drop off to sleep without a word +that would explain her insistence on getting a clean bill of health from +the doctor. + +But the next morning, while Doris was busy in the laundry, she found +Mrs. Ruston in the nursery and had a talk with that lady, which was +destined to produce seismic upheavals. + +"I've decided to make a little change in our arrangements, Mrs. Ruston," +she said. "But I don't think it's one that will disturb you very much. +I'm going to let Doris go--I'll get her another place, of course--and do +her work myself." + +Mrs. Ruston compressed her lips, and went on for a minute with what she +was doing to one of the twins, as if she hadn't heard. + +"Doris is quite satisfactory, madam," she said at last. "I'd not advise +making a change. She's a dependable young woman, as such go. Of course I +watch her very close." + +"I think I can promise to be dependable," Rose said. "I don't know much +about babies, of course, but I think I can learn as well as Doris. +Anyhow, I can wheel them about and wash their clothes and boil bottles +and things as well as she does. For the rest, you can tell me what to do +just as you tell her." + +Mrs. Ruston took a considerably longer interval to digest this reply. +"Then you're meaning to give the girl her notice at once, madam?" she +asked. + +"I'm not going to give her notice at all," said Rose. "I'm going to find +her another place. I shan't have any trouble about it though. As you +say, she's a very good nurse-maid, and she's a pleasant sort of a human +being besides. But as soon as I can find her another place, I'm going to +take over her work." + +To this last observation it became evident that Mrs. Ruston meant to +make no reply at all. She gave Rose some statistical information about +the twins instead, in which Rose showed herself politely interested and +presently withdrew. + +It soon appeared, however, that though Mrs. Ruston might be slow and +sparing of speech, she was capable of acting with a positively +Napoleonic dash. Rodney wore a queer expression all through dinner, and +when he got Rose alone in the library afterward, he explained it. Mrs. +Ruston had made her two-hour constitutional that afternoon into an +opportunity for calling on him at his office. She had given him notice, +contingently. She made it an inviolable rule of conduct, it appeared, +never to undertake the care of two infants without the assistance of a +nurse-maid. She was a conscientious person and she felt she couldn't do +justice to her work on any other basis. Rose had informed her of her +intention to dispense with the services of the nurse-maid, without +engaging any one else to take her place. If Rose adhered to this +intention, Mrs. Ruston must leave. + +It was some sort of absurd misunderstanding, of course, Rodney concluded +and wanted to know what it was all about. + +"I did say I meant to let Doris go," Rose explained, "but I told her I +meant to take Doris' job myself. I said I thought I could be just as +good a nurse-maid as she was. I said I'd boil bottles and wash clothes +and take Mrs. Ruston's orders exactly as if I were being paid six +dollars a week and board for doing it. And I meant it just as literally +as I said it." + +He was prowling about the room in a worried sort of way, before she got +as far as that. + +"I don't see, child," he exclaimed, "why you couldn't leave well enough +alone! If it's that old economy bug of yours again, it's nonsense. You'd +save, including board, about ten dollars a week. And it would work out +one of two ways: If you didn't do all the maid's work. Mrs. Ruston would +have a real grievance. She's right about needing all the help she gets. +If you did do it, it would mean that you'd work yourself sick.--Oh, I +know what the doctor said, but that's all rot, and he knew it. You had +him hypnotized. You'd have to give up everything for it--all your social +duties, all our larks together. Oh, it's absurd! You, to spend all your +time doing menial work--scrubbing and washing bottles, to save me ten +dollars a week!" + +"It isn't menial work," Rose insisted. "It's--apprentice work. After +I've been at it six months, learning as fast as I can, I'll be able to +let Mrs. Ruston go and take _her_ job. I'll be really competent to take +care of my own children. I don't pretend I am now." + +"I don't see why you can't do that as things are now. She'll let you +practise bathing them and things like that, and certainly no one would +object to your wheeling them out in the pram. But the nurse-maid would +be on hand in case ..." + +"I'm to take it on then," said Rose, and her voice had a new ring in +it--the ring of scornful anger--"I'm to take it on as a sort of polite +sentimental amusement. I'm not to do any real work for them that depends +on me to get done. I'm not to be able to feel that, even in a +bottle-washing sort of way, I'm doing an indispensable service for them. +They're not to need me for anything, the poor little mites! They're to +be something for me to have a sort of emotional splurge with, just +as"--she laughed raggedly--"just as some of the wives you're so fond of +talking about, are to their husbands." + +He stared at her in perfectly honest bewilderment. He'd never seen her +like this before. + +"You're talking rather wild I think, Rose," he said very quietly. + +"I'm talking what I've learned from you," she said, but she did get her +voice in control again. "You've taught me the difference between real +work, and the painless imitation of it that a lot of us women spend our +lives on--between doing something because it's got to be done and is up +to you, and--finding something to do to spend the time. + +"Oh, Rodney, _please_ try to forget that I'm your wife and that you're +in love with me. Can't you just say: `Here's A, or B, or X, a perfectly +healthy woman, twenty-two years old, and a little real work would be +good for her'?" + +She won, with much pleading, a sort of troubled half-assent from him. +The matter might be borne in mind. It could be taken up again with Mrs. +Ruston. + +But Mrs. Ruston was adamant. Under no conceivable circumstances could +she consent to regard her employer's wife as a substitute for her own +hired assistant. There were other nurses though, to be got. Somewhere +one could be found, no doubt, who'd take a broader view. + +Given a fair field, Rose might have won a victory here. But, as Portia +had said once, the pattern was cut differently. There was a sudden alarm +one night, when her little namesake was found strangling with the croup. +There were seven terrifying hours--almost unendurable hours, while the +young life swung and balanced over the ultimate abyss. The heroine of +those hours was Mrs. Ruston. It was her watchfulness that had been +accessible to the first alarm--her instant doing of the one right thing +that stemmed the first onrush. That the child lived was clearly +creditable to her. + +Rose made another effort even after that, though she knew she was beaten +in advance. She waited until the storm had subsided, until the old calm +routine was reestablished. Then, once more, she asked for her chance. + +But Rodney exploded before she got the words fairly out of her mouth. + +"No," he shouted, "I won't consider it! She's saved that baby's life. +Another woman might have, but it's more likely not. You'll have to find +some way of satisfying your whims that won't jeopardize those babies' +lives. After that night--good God, Rose, have you forgotten that +night?--I'm going to play it safe." + +Rose paled a little and sat ivory still in her chair. There were no +miracles any more. The great dam was swept away. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE ONLY REMEDY + + +The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's +soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to +become at last rather apologetic. He said he didn't know why her request +had got him like that. It had seemed to him for a moment as if she +didn't realize what the children's lives meant to them--almost as if she +didn't love them. He knew that was absurd, of course. + +Her own rather monstrous comments on these observations had luckily +remained unspoken. What if she did lose a child as a result of her +effort to care for it herself? She could bear more children. And what +chance had she to love them? Where was the soil for love to take root +in, unless she took care of them herself? These weren't really thoughts +of hers--just a sort of crooked reflection of what he was saying off the +surface of a mind terribly preoccupied with something else. + +She was in the grip of an appalling realization. This moment--this +actually present moment that was going to last only until she should +speak for the next time, or move her eyes around to his face--was the +critical moment of her life. She had, for just this moment, a choice of +two things to say when next she should speak--a choice of two ways of +looking into his face. A mountaineer, standing on the edge of a +crevasse, deciding whether to try to leap across and win a precarious +way to the summit, or to turn back and confess the climb has been in +vain, is confronted by a choice like that. If ever the leap was to be +made, it must be made now. The rainbow bridge across the crevasse, the +miracle of motherhood, had faded like the mist it was composed of. + +She was a mother now. Yet her relation to her husband's life was the +same as that of the girl who had gone to his office the night of the +Randolphs' dinner. And no external event--nothing that could _happen_ to +her (remember that even motherhood had "happened" in her case) could +ever transmute that relation into the thing she wanted. If the alchemy +were to be wrought at all, it would be by the act of her own will--at +the cost of a deliberately assumed struggle. There was nothing, any +more, to hope from waiting. The thing that whispered, "Wait! +To-morrow--some to-morrow or other, it may be easier! Wait until, for +yourself, you've thought out the consequences,"--that was the voice of +cowardice. If she turned back, down the easier path, to-night, it must +be under no delusion that she'd ever try to climb again, or find a pair +of magic wings that would carry her, effortless, to what she wanted. + +Well, then, she had her choice. One of two things she might do now. It +was in her power to look up at him and smile, and say: "All right, +Roddy, old man, I'll stop being disagreeable. I won't have any more +whims." And she could go to him and clasp her hands behind his head and +feel the rough pressure of his cheeks against the velvety surfaces of +her forearms, and kiss his eyes and mouth; surrender to the embrace she +knew so well would follow. + +She could make, after a fashion, a life of that. She had no fear but it +would last. Barring incalculable misfortunes, she ought to be able to +keep her looks and her charm for him, unimpaired, or but little +impaired, for twenty years--twenty-five, with care. For the rich, the +resources of modern civilization would almost guarantee that. Well, +twenty-five years would see Rodney through his fifties. She needn't, +barring accident, have any more children. He'd probably be content with +two; especially as they were boy and girl. + +The other man in him--the man who wasn't her lover--would struggle of +course. Except when she was by, the lover would probably have a bad time +of it. She'd have to find some amusing sort of occupation to enable her +to forget that. But when she was there, it would be strange if she and +her lover together couldn't, most of the time, keep the other man locked +up where he wouldn't disturb them much. + +Lived without remorse or misgivings, played magnificently for all it +was worth, as she could play it--she knew that now--it would be a rather +wonderful life. They must be decidedly an exceptional pair of lovers, +she thought. Certainly Madame Gréville's generalization about Americans +did not apply to them, and she was coming to suspect it did apply to the +majority of her friends. She could have that life--safely, surely, as +far as our poor mortality can be sure of anything. She had only to reach +out her hands. + +But if, instead, she took the leap ...! + +"Roddy ..." she said. + +He was slumped down in a big easy chair at the other side of the table, +swinging a restless foot; drumming now and then with his fingers. It was +many silent minutes since the storm of reproach with which he had +repelled her plea for a part in the actual responsible care of her +children had died away. He had spoken with unnecessary vehemence, he +knew. He had admitted that--said he was sorry, as well as he could +without withdrawing from his position. But he had been met by that most +formidable of all weapons--a blank silence--an inscrutable face. Some +sort of scene was inevitable, he knew. And he sat there waiting for it. +She had been hurt. She was undoubtedly very angry. + +He thought he was ready for anything. But just the way she spoke his +name, startled--almost frightened--him, she said it so quietly, +so--tenderly. + +"Roddy," she said, "I want you to come over here and kiss me, and then +go back and sit down in that chair again." + +He went a little pale at that. The swing of his foot was arrested +suddenly. But, for a moment, he made no move--just looked wonderingly +into her great grave eyes. + +"Something's going to happen," she went on, "and before it's over, I'm +afraid it's going to hurt you terribly--and me. And I want the kiss for +us to remember. So that we'll always know, whatever happens afterward, +that we loved each other." She held out her arms to him. "Won't you +come?" + +He came--a man bewildered--bent down over her and found her lips; but +almost absently, out of a daze. + +"No, not like that," she murmured. "In the old way." + +There was a long embrace. + +"I wouldn't do it," she said, "I don't believe I'd have the courage to +do it, if it were just me. But there's some one else--I've made some one +a promise. I can't tell you about that. Now please go back and sit over +there where you were, where we can talk quietly.--Oh, Roddy, I love you +so!--No, please go back, old man! And--and light your pipe. Oh, don't +tremble like that! It--it isn't a tragedy. It's--for us, it's the +greatest hope in the world." + +He went back to his chair. He even lighted his pipe as she asked him to, +and waited as steadily as he could for her to begin. + +But she couldn't begin while she looked at him. She moved a little +closer to the table and leaned her elbow on it, shaded her eyes with one +hand, while the other played with the stump of a pencil that happened to +be lying there. + +"Do you remember ..." she began, and it was wonderful how quiet and +steady her voice was. There was even the trace of a smile about her +wonderful mouth. "Do you remember that afternoon of ours, the very first +of them, when you brought home my note-books and found me asleep on the +couch in our old back parlor? Do you remember how you told me that one's +desires were the only motive power he had? One couldn't ride anywhere, +you said, except on the backs of his own passions? Well, it was a funny +thing--I got to wondering afterward what my desires were, and it seemed +I hadn't any. Everything had, somehow, come to me before I knew I wanted +it. Everything in the world, even your love for me, came like that. + +"But I've got a passion now, Rodney. I've had it for a long while. It's +a desire I can't satisfy. The thing I want, and there's nothing in the +world that I wouldn't give to get it, is--well, your friendship; that's +a way of saying it." + +What he had been waiting to hear, of course, she didn't know. But she +knew by the way he started and stared at her, that it hadn't been for +that. The thing struck him, it seemed, as a sort of grotesquely +irritating anti-climax. + +"Gracious Heaven!" he said. "My friendship! Why, I'm in love with you! +That's certainly a bigger thing. Go back to your geometry, child. The +greater includes the less, doesn't it?" + +"I don't know whether it's a bigger thing or not," she said. "But it +doesn't include the other. Love's just a sort of miracle thing that +happens to you. You don't have it because you deserve it. The person I +made that promise to would have earned it, if any one could. But it +doesn't come that way. It's like lightning. It strikes or else it +doesn't. Well, it struck us. But friendship--there's this about it. You +can't get it any way in the world, except just by earning it. Nobody can +give it to you, no matter how hard he tries. So when you've got it, you +can always say, 'There's something that I'm entitled to--something +that's mine.' Your love isn't mine any more than the air is. I never did +anything to earn it. + +"And that's why it can't satisfy me.--Because it doesn't, Roddy. It +hasn't for ever so long. It's something wonderful that's--_happened_ to +me. It's the loveliest thing that ever happened to anybody. And just +because it's so wonderful and beautiful, I can't bear to--well, this is +hard to say--I can't bear to use it to live on. I can't bear to have it +mixed up in things like millinery bills and housekeeping expense. I +can't bear to see it become a thing that piles a load of hateful +obligations on your back. I could live on your friendship, Roddy; +because your friendship would mean that somehow I was earning my way, +but I can't live on your love; any more than you could on mine. Won't +you--won't you just try to think for a moment what that would mean to +you?" + +Now that he had sensed the direction her talk was headed in, even though +he hadn't even vaguely glimpsed the point at which she was going to +bring up, he made it much harder for her to talk to him. He was tramping +up and down the room, stopping and turning short every now and then with +a gesture of exasperation, or an interruption that never got beyond two +or three words and broke off always in a sort of frantic speechlessness. + +She knew he couldn't help it. Down underneath his mind, controlling +utterly its processes, was a ganglion of instincts that were utterly +outraged by the things she was saying to him. It was they and not his +intelligence she had to fight. She must be patient, as gentle as she +could, but she must make him listen. + +"You've got my friendship!" he cried out now. "It's a grotesque +perversion of the facts to say you haven't." + +She smiled at him as she shook her head. "I've spent too many months +trying to get it and seeing myself fail--oh, so ridiculously!--not to +know what I am talking about, Roddy." + +And then, still smiling, rather sadly, she told what some of the +experiments had been--some of her attempts to break into the life he +kept locked away from her and carry off a share of it for herself. + +"I was angry at first when I found you keeping me out," she said, "angry +and hurt. I used to cry about it. And then I saw it wasn't your fault. +That's how I discovered friendship had to be earned." + +But her power to maintain that attitude of grave detachment was about +spent. The passion mounted in her voice and in her eyes as she went on. + +"You thought it was because of my condition, as you called it, that my +mind had got full of wild ideas;--the wild idea that I wasn't really and +truly your wife at all, but only your mistress, and that I was pulling +you down from something free and fine that you had been, to something +that you despised yourself for being and had to try to deny you were. +Those were the obsessions of a pregnant woman, you thought--something +she was to be soothed and coddled into forgetting. You were wrong about +that, Roddy. + +"I did have an obsession, but it wasn't the thing you thought. It was an +obsession that kept me quiet, and contented and happy, and willing to +wait in spite of everything. The obsession was that none of those things +mattered because a big miracle was coming that was going to change it +all. I was going to have a job at last--a job that was just as real as +yours--the job of being a mother." + +Her voice broke in a fierce sharp little laugh over the word, but she +got it back in control again. + +"I was going to have a baby to feed out of my own body, to keep alive +with my own care. There was going to be responsibility and hard work, +things that demanded courage and endurance and sacrifice. I could earn +your friendship with that, I said. That was the real obsession, Roddy, +and it never really died until to-night. Because of course I have kept +on hoping, even after I might have seen how it was. But the babies' +lives aren't to be jeopardized to gratify my whims. Well, I suppose I +can't complain. It's over, that's the main thing. + +"And now, here I am perfectly normal and well again--as good as ever. +I've kept my looks--oh, my hair and my complexion and my figure. I could +wear pretty clothes again and start going out to things now that the +season's begun, just as I did a year ago. People would admire me, and +you'd be pleased, and you'd love me as much as ever, and it would all be +like the paradise it was last year, except for one thing. The one thing +is that if I do that, I'll know this time what I really am. Your +mistress, Roddy; your legal, perfectly respectable mistress,--and a +little more despicable rather than less, I think, because of the +adjectives." + +"I've let that word go by once," he said quietly, but with a dangerous +light of anger in his eyes. "I won't again. It's perfectly outrageous +and inexcusable that you should talk like that, and I'll ask you never +to do it again." + +"I won't," she flashed back at him, "if you'll explain why I'm not +exactly what I say." And after ten seconds of silence, she went on. + +"Why, Roddy, I've heard you describe me a hundred times. Not the you +that's my lover. The other you; talking all over the universe to Barry +Lake. You've described the woman who's never been trained nor taught nor +disciplined; who's been brought up soft, with the bloom on, for the +purpose of making her marriageable; who's never found her job in +marriage, who doesn't cook, nor sew, nor spin, nor even take care of her +own children; the woman who uses her sex charm to save her from having +to do hard ugly things, and keep her in luxury. Do you remember what +you've called her, Roddy? Do you remember the word you've used? I've +used a gentler word than that. + +"Oh, you didn't know, you poor blind boy, that I was the woman you were +talking about. You never saw it at all. But I am. I was brought up like +that.--Oh, not on purpose. Dear old mother! She wasn't trying to make me +into a prostitute any more then you are trying to make me into your +mistress. You both love me, that's all. It's just an instinct not to let +anything hurt me, nor frighten me, nor tire me, nor teach me what work +is. She thought she was educating me to be a lawyer so that when the +time came, I could be one of the leaders of the woman movement just as +she'd been. And all the while, without knowing it, she was educating me +to be the sort of person you'd fall in love with--something precious and +expensive--something to be taken care of. + +"I didn't understand any of that when you married me, Roddy; it was just +like a dream to me--like a fairy story come true. If any one had told me +a year ago, that I should ever be anything but perfectly happy in your +love for me, I'd have laughed at him. I remember telling Madame Gréville +that our marriage had turned out well--ended happily. And she did laugh. +That was before I'd begun to understand. But I do understand now. I know +why it was you could talk to me, back in those days before we were +married, about anything under the sun--things ten thousand miles above +my head; what it was that fooled me into thinking we were friends as +well as lovers. I know why you've never been able to talk to me like +that since. And I know--this is the worst of all, Roddy,--this is the +piece of knowledge that makes it impossible--I know what a good mistress +I could make. I know I could make you love me whether you wanted to or +not; whether I loved you or not. I could make other men love me, if I +could make up my mind to do it--make them tell me all their hopes and +dreams, and think I had a fine mind and a wonderful understanding. Oh, +it's too easy--it's too hatefully easy! + +"Do you know why I told you that? Because if you believe it and +understand it, you will see why I can't go on living on your love. +Because how can you be sure, knowing that my position in the world, my +friends--oh, the very clothes on my back, and the roof over my head, are +dependent on your love,--how are you going to be sure that my love for +you is honest and disinterested? What's to keep you from +wondering--asking questions? Love's got to be free, Roddy. The only way +to make it free is to have friendship growing alongside it. So, when I +can be your partner and your friend, I'll be your mistress, too. But +not--not again, Roddy, till I can find a way. I'll have to find it for +myself. I'll have to go...." + +She broke down there over a word she couldn't at first say, buried her +face in her arms and let a deep racking sob or two have their own way +with her. But presently she sat erect again and, with a supreme effort +of will, forced her voice to utter the word. + +"I've got to go somewhere alone--away from you, and stay until I find +it. If I ever do, and you want me, I'll come back." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ROSE OPENS THE DOOR + + +The struggle between them lasted a week--a ghastly week, during which, +as far as the surface of things showed, their life flowed along in its +accustomed channels. It was a little worse than that, really, because +the week included, so an ironic Fate had decreed, Thanksgiving Day and a +jolly family party at Frederica's, with congratulations on the past, +plans for the future. And Rose and Rodney, as civilized persons will do, +kept their faces, accepted congratulations, made gay plans for the +twins; smiled or laughed when necessary--somehow or other, got through +with it. + +But at all sorts of times, and in all sorts of places when they were +alone together, the great battle was renewed; mostly through the dead +hours of the night, in Rose's bedroom, she sitting up in bed, he +tramping up and down, shivering and shuddering in a big bath-robe. It +had a horrible way of interrupting itself for small domestic +commonplaces, which in their assumption of the permanency of their old +life, their blind disregard of the impending disaster, had an almost +unendurable poignancy. A breakfast on the morning of an execution is +something like that. + +The hardest thing about it all for Rose--the thing that came nearest to +breaking down her courage--was to see how slowly Rodney came to realize +it at all. He was like a trapped animal pacing the four sides of his +cage confident that in a moment or two he would find the way out, and +then, incredulously, dazedly, coming to the surmise that there was no +way out. She really meant to go away and leave him--leave the babies; go +somewhere where his care and protection could not reach her! She was +actually planning to do it--planning the details of doing it! By the end +of one of their long talks, it would seem to her he had grasped this +monstrous intention and accepted it. But before the beginning of the +next one, he seemed to manage somehow to dismiss the thing as an +impossible nightmare. + +An invitation came in from the Crawfords for a dance at the Blackstone, +the fifth of December, and he said something about accepting it. + +"I shan't be here then, Roddy, you know," she said. + +He went completely to pieces at that, as if the notion of her going away +had never really reached his mind before. + +The struggle ranged through the widest possible gamut of moods. They had +their moments of rapturous love--passionate attempts at self-surrender. +They had long hours of cool discussion, as impersonal as if they had +been talking about the characters out of a hook instead of about +themselves. They had stormy nerve-tearing hours of blind agonizing, +around and around in circles, lacerating each other, lashing out at each +other, getting nowhere. They had moments of incandescent anger. + +He tried, just once, early in the fight, to take the ground he had taken +once before; that she was irresponsible, obsessed. There was a fracture +somewhere, as James Randolph's jargon had it, in her unconscious mind. +She didn't let him go far with that. He saw her blaze up in a splendid +burst of wrath, as she had blazed once--oh, an eternity ago, at a +street-car conductor. Her challenge rang like a sword out of a scabbard. + +"We'll settle that before we go any further," she said. "Telephone for +James Randolph, or any other alienist you like. Let him take me and put +me in a sanatorium somewhere and keep me under observation as long as he +pleases, until he's satisfied whether I'm out of my mind or not. But +unless you're willing to do that, don't call me irresponsible." + +He grew more reasonable as a belief in her complete seriousness and +determination sobered him. He made desperate efforts to recover his +self-control--to get his big, cool, fine mechanism of a mind into +action. But his mind, to his complete bewilderment, betrayed him. He'd +always looked at Rose before, through the lens of his emotions. But now +that he forced himself to look at her through the non-refracting window +from which he looked at the rest of the world, she compelled him again +and again to admit that she was right. + +"Why shouldn't I be right?" she said with a woebegone smile. "These are +all just things I've learned from you." + +After a long and rather angry struggle with himself, he made up his mind +to a compromise, and in one of their cooler talks together, he offered +it. + +"We've both of us pretty well lost our sense of proportion, it seems to +me," he said. "This whole ghastly business started from my refusing to +let Mrs. Ruston go and get a nurse who'd allow you to be your own +nurse-maid. Well, I'm willing to give up completely on that point. You +can let Mrs. Ruston go as soon as you like and get a nurse who'll meet +with your ideas." + +"You're doing that," said Rose thoughtfully, "rather than let me go +away. That's the way it is, isn't it?" + +"Why, yes, of course," he admitted. "I was looking at things from the +children's point of view, and I thought I was right. From their point of +view, I still think so." + +She drew in a long sigh and shook her head. "It won't do, Roddy. Can't +you see you're giving way practically under a threat--because I'll go +away if you don't? But think what it would mean if I did stay, on those +terms. The thing would rankle always. And if anything did happen to one +of the babies because the new nurse wasn't quite so good, you'd never +forgive me--not in all the world. + +"And," she added a little later, "that would be just as true of any +other compromise. I mean like going and living in a flat and letting me +do the housework--any of the things we've talked about. I can say I am +going away, don't you see, but I couldn't say I'd go away--_unless_ ... +I couldn't use that threat to extort things from you without killing our +whole life dead. Can't you see that?" + +His mind infuriated him by agreeing with her--goaded him into another +passionate outburst during which he accused her of bad faith, of being +tired of him, anxious to get away from him--seizing pretexts. But he +offered no more compromises. The thing he fell back on after that was a +plea for delay. The question must be decided coolly; not like this. Let +them just put it out of their minds for a while, go on with the old +routine as if nothing threatened it and see if things didn't work +somewhat better--see if they weren't, after all, better friends than she +thought. + +"If I were ill, Roddy," she said, "and there was an operation talked +about; if they said to you that there was something I might drag along +for years, half alive, without, but that if I had it, it would either +kill or cure, you wouldn't urge delay. We'd decide for or against it and +be done. It's--it's taking just all the courage I've got to face this +thing now that I am excited--now that I've thought it out and talked it +out with you--now that I've got the big hope before my eyes. But to wait +until I was tangled in the old routine and the babies began to get a +little older and more--human, so that they knew me, and then do it in +cold blood! I couldn't do that. We'd patch up some sort of a life, +pretending a little, quarreling a little, and when my feelings got +especially hurt about something, I'd try to make myself think, and you, +that I was going away. And we'd both know down inside that we were +cowards." + +He protested against the word, but she stuck to it. + +"We're both afraid now," she insisted. "That's one of the things that +makes us so cruel to each other when we talk--fear. The world's a +terrible place to me, Roddy. I've never ventured out alone in it; not a +step. A year ago, I don't think I'd have been so frightened. I didn't +know then--I'd never really thought about it--what a hard dangerous +thing it is, just to earn enough to keep yourself alive. I haven't any +illusions now that it's easy--not after the things I've heard Barry Lake +tell about. But sometimes I think you're more afraid than I; and that +you've got a more intolerable thing to fear--ridicule--an intangible +sort of pitying ridicule that you can't get hold of; guessing at the +sort of things people will say and never really quite knowing. And we +have each got the other's fear to suffer under, too.--Oh, Roddy, Roddy, +don't hate me too bitterly ...! But I think if we can both endure it, +stand the gaff, as you said once, and know that the other's standing it, +too, perhaps that'll be the real beginning of the new life." + +Somehow or other, during their calmer moments toward the end, practical +details managed to get talked about--settled after a fashion, without +the admission really being made on his part that the thing was going to +happen at all. + +"I'd do everything I could of course, to make it easier," she said. "We +could have a story for people that I'd gone to California to make mother +a long visit. You could bring Harriet home from Washington to keep house +while I was gone. I'd take my trunks, you see, and really go. People +would suspect of course, after a while, but they'll always pretend to +believe anything that's comfortable--anything that saves scenes and +shocks and explanations." + +"Where would you go, really?" he demanded. "Have you any plan at all?" + +"I have a sort of plan," she said. "I think I know of a way of earning a +living." + +But she didn't offer to go on and tell him what it was, and after a +little silence, he commented bitterly on this omission. + +"You won't even give me the poor satisfaction of knowing what you're +doing," he said. + +"I'd love to," she said, "--to be able to write to you, hear from you +every day. But I don't believe you want to know. I think it would be too +hard for you. Because you'd have to promise not to try to get me +back--not to come and rescue me if I got into trouble and things went +badly and I didn't know where to turn. Could you promise that, Roddy?" + +He gave a groan and buried his face in his hands. Then: + +"No," he said furiously. "Of course I couldn't. See you suffering and +stand by with my hands in my pockets and watch!" He sprang up and seized +her by the arms in a grip that actually left bruises, and fairly shook +her in the agony of his entreaty. "Tell me it's a nightmare, Rose," he +said. "Tell me it isn't true. Wake me up out of it!" + +But under the indomitable resolution of her blue eyes, he turned away. +This was the last appeal of that sort that he made. + +"I'll promise," she said presently, "to be sensible--not to take any +risks I don't have to take. I'll regard my life and my health and all, +as something I'm keeping in trust for you. I'll take plenty of warm +sensible clothes when I go; lots of shoes and stockings--things like +that, and if you'll let me, I'll--I'll borrow a hundred dollars to start +myself off with. It isn't a tragedy, Roddy,--not that part of it. You +wouldn't be afraid for any one else as big and strong and healthy as I." + +Gradually, out of the welter of scenes like that, the thing got itself +recognized as something that was to happen. But the parting came at last +in a little different way from any they had foreseen. + +Rodney came home from his office early one afternoon, with a telegram +that summoned him to New York to a conference of counsel in a big public +utility case he had been working on for months. He must leave, if he +were going at all, at five o'clock. He ransacked the house, vainly at +first, for Rose, and found her at last in the trunk-room--dusty, +disheveled, sobbing quietly over something she held hugged in her arms. +But she dried her eyes and came over to him and asked what it was that +had brought him home so early. + +He showed her the telegram. "I'll have to leave in an hour," he said, +"if I'm to go." + +She paled at that, and sat down rather giddily on a trunk. "You must +go," she said, "of course. And--Roddy, I guess that'll be the easiest +way. I'll get my telegram to-night--pretend to get it--from Portia. And +you can give me the hundred dollars, and then, when you come back, I'll +be gone." + +The thing she had been holding in her hands slipped to the floor. He +stooped and picked it up--stared at it with a sort of half awakened +recognition. + +"I f--found it," she explained, "among some old things Portia sent over +when she moved. Do you know what it is? It's one of the note-books that +got wet--that first night when we were put off the street-car. And--and, +Roddy, look!" + +She opened it to an almost blank page, and with a weak little laugh, +pointed to the thing that was written there: + +"'March fifteenth, nineteen twelve!' Your birthday, you see, and the day +we met each other." + +And then, down below, the only note she had made during the whole of +that lecture, he read: "Never marry a man with a passion for +principles." + +"That's the trouble with us, you see," she said. "If you were just an +ordinary man without any big passions or anything, it wouldn't matter +much if your life got spoiled. But with us, we've got to try for the +biggest thing there is. Oh, Roddy, Roddy, darling! Hold me tight for +just a minute, and then I'll come and help you pack." + + + + +BOOK THREE + +The World Alone + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE LENGTH OF A THOUSAND YARDS + + +"Here's the first week's rent then," said Rose, handing the landlady +three dollars, "and I think you'd better give me a receipt showing till +when it's paid for. Do you know where there's an expressman who would go +for a trunk?" + +The landlady had tight gray hair, a hard bitten hatchet face, and a back +that curved through a forty-degree arc between the lumbar and the +cervical vertebræ, a curve which was accentuated by the faded +longitudinal blue and white stripes--like ticking--of the dress she +wore. She had no charms, one would have said, of person, mind or manner. +But it was nevertheless true that Rose was renting this room largely on +the strength of the landlady. She was so much more humanly possible than +any of the others at whose placarded doors Rose had knocked or rung ...! + +For the last year and a half, anyway since she had married Rodney +Aldrich, the surface that life had presented to her had been as bland as +velvet. She'd never been spoken to by anybody except in terms of +politeness. All the people she encountered could be included under two +categories: her friends, if one stretches the word to include all her +social acquaintances, and, in an equally broad sense, her servants; that +is to say, people who earned their living by doing things she wanted +done. Her friends' and her servants' manners were not alike, to be sure, +but as far as intent went, they came to the same thing. They presented, +whatever passions, misfortunes, dislikes, uncomfortable facts of any +sort might lie in the background, a smooth and practically frictionless, +bearing surface. A person accustomed to that surface develops a soft +skin. This was about the first of Rose's discoveries. + +To be looked at with undisguised suspicion--to have a door slammed in +her face as the negative answer to a civil question, left her at first +bewildered, and then enveloped in a blaze of indignation. It was perhaps +lucky for her that this happened at the very beginning of her +pilgrimage. Because, with that fire once alight within her, Rose could +go through anything. The horrible fawning, leering landlady whom she had +encountered later, might have turned her sick, but for that fine steady +glow. The hatchet-faced one she had finally arrived at, made no +protestations of her own respectability, and she seemed, though rather +reluctantly, willing to assume that of her prospective lodger. She was +puzzled about something, Rose could see; disposed to be very watchful +and at no pains to conceal this attitude. + +Well, she'd probably learned that she had to watch, poor thing! And, for +that matter, Rose would probably have to do some watching on her own +account. And, if the fact was there, why bother to keep up a +contradictory fiction. So Rose asked for a receipt. + +The matter of the trunk was easily disposed of. Rose had a check for it. +It was at the Polk Street Station. There was a cigar and news stand two +blocks down, the landlady said, where an expressman had his +headquarters. There was a blue sign out in front: "Schulz Express"; Rose +couldn't miss it. + +The landlady went away to write out a receipt. Rose closed the door +after her and locked it. + +It was a purely symbolistic act. She wasn't going to change her clothes +or anything, and she didn't particularly want to keep anybody out. But, +in a sense in which it had never quite been true before, this was her +room, a room where any one lacking her specific invitation to enter, +would be an intruder--a condition that had not obtained either in her +mother's house or in Rodney's. + +She smiled widely over the absurdity of indulging in a pleasurable +feeling of possession in a squalid little cubby-hole like this. The +wall-paper was stained and faded, the paint on the soft-wood floor worn +through in streaks; there was an iron bed--a double bed, painted light +blue and lashed with string where one of its joints showed a disposition +to pull out. The mattress on the bed was lumpy. There was a +dingy-looking oak bureau with a rather small but pretty good plate-glass +mirror on it; a marble topped, black walnut wash-stand; a pitcher of the +plainest and cheapest white ware standing in a bowl on top of it, and a +highly ornate, hand-painted slop-jar--the sole survivor, evidently, of a +much prized set--under the lee of it. The steep gable of the roof cut +away most of one side of the room, though there would be space for +Rose's trunk to stand under it, and across the corner, at a curiously +distressing angle, hung an inadequate curtain that had five or six +clothes hooks behind it. + +In the foreground of the view out of the window, was a large oblong +plateau--the flat roof of an extension which had casually been attached +to the front of the building and carried it forward to the sidewalk over +what had once been a small front yard. The extension had a plate-glass +front and was occupied, Rose had noticed before she plunged into the +little tunnel that ran alongside it and led to the main building, by a +dealer in delicatessen. Over the edge of the flat roof, she could see +the top third of two endless streams of trolley-cars, for the traffic in +this street was heavy, by night, she imagined, as well as by day. + +The opposite façade of the street, like the one of which her own wall +and window formed a part, was highly irregular and utterly casual. There +were cheap two-story brick stores with false fronts that carried them up +a half story higher. There were little gable-ended cottages with their +fronts hacked out into show-windows. There were double houses of brick +with stone trimmings that once had had some residential pretensions. The +one characteristic that they possessed in common, was that of having +been designed, patently, for some purpose totally different from the one +they now served. + +The shops on the street level had, for the most part, an air of shabby +prosperity. There was, within the space Rose's window commanded, a cheap +little tailor shop, the important part of whose business was advertised +by the sign "pressing done." There was a tobacconist's shop whose +unwashed windows revealed an array of large wooden buckets and dusty +lithographs; a shoe shop that did repairing neatly while you waited; a +rather fly-specked looking bakery. There was a saloon on the corner, and +beside it, a four-foot doorway with a painted transom over it that +announced it as the entrance of the Bellevue Hotel. + +The signs on the second-story windows indicated dentist parlors, the +homes of mid-wives, ladies' tailors and dressmakers, and everywhere +furnished rooms for light housekeeping to let. + +The people who patronized those shops, who drank their beer at the +corner saloon, who'd be coming hurriedly in the night to ring up the +mid-wife, who smoked the sort of tobacco that was sold from those big +wooden buckets; the people who lounged along the wide sidewalks, or came +riding down-town at seven in the morning, and back at six at night, +packed so tight that they couldn't get their arms up to hold by the +straps in the big roaring cars that kept that incessant procession going +in the middle of the street--they all inhabited, Rose realized, a world +utterly different from the one she had left. The distance between the +hurrying life she looked out on through her grimy window, and that which +she had been wont to contemplate through Florence McCrea's exquisitely +leaded casements, was simply planetary. + +And yet, queerly enough, in terms of literal lineal measurement, the +distance between the windows themselves, was less than a thousand yards. +Less than ten minutes' walking from the mouth of the little tunnel +alongside the delicatessen shop, would take her back to her husband's +door. She had, in her flight out into the new world, doubled back on her +trail. And, such is the enormous social and spiritual distance between +North Clark Street and The Drive, she was as safely hidden here, as +completely out of the orbit of any of her friends, or even of her +friends' servants, as she could have been in New York or in San +Francisco. + +Having to come away furtively like this was a terrible countermine +beneath her courage. If only she could have had a flourish of defiant +trumpets to speed her on her way! But, done like that, the thing would +have hurt Rodney too intolerably. His intelligence might be twentieth +century or beyond. It might acquiesce in, or even enthusiastically +advocate, a relation between men and women that hadn't existed, anyway +since the beginning of the Christian Era; it might accept without +faltering, all the corollaries pendent to that relation. But his +actuating instincts, his psychical reflexes, stretched their roots away +back to the Middle Ages. Under the dominance of those instincts, a man +lost caste--became an object of contemptuous derision, if he couldn't +keep his wife. It was bad enough to have another man take her away from +him, but it was worse to have her go away in the absence of such an +excuse; worst of all, to have her go away to seek a job and earn her own +living. + +Rose didn't know how long the secret could be kept. Wherever she went, +whatever she did, there'd always be the risk that some one who could +carry back the news to Rodney's friends, would recognize her. It was a +risk that had to be taken, and she didn't intend to allow herself to be +paralyzed by a perpetual dread of what might at any time happen. At the +same time, she'd protect the secret as well as she could. + +But there were two people it couldn't be kept from--Portia and her +mother. Rose had at first entertained the notion of keeping her mother +in the dark. It wasn't until she had spent a good many hours figuring +out expedients for keeping the deception going, that she realized it +couldn't be done. She had been writing her mother a letter a week ever +since the departure to California--letters naturally full of domestic +details that simply couldn't be kept up. The only possible deception +would be a compromise with the truth and compromises of that sort are +apt to be pretty unsatisfactory. They suggest concealments in every +phase, and to an imaginative mind, are more terrifying, nine times in +ten, than the truth you're trying to soften. Then, too, the story given +out to Rodney's friends being that Rose was in California with her +mother and Portia, left the chance always open for some contretemps +which would lead to her mother's discovering the truth in a surprising +and shocking way. + +But the truth itself, confidently stated, not as a tragic ending, but +as the splendid hopeful beginning of a life of truer happiness for Rose +and her husband, needn't be a shock. So this was what Rose had borne +down on in her letter to Portia. It wasn't a very long letter, +considering how much it had to tell. + + "... I have found the big thing couldn't be had without a fight," + she wrote. "You shouldn't be surprised, because you've probably + found out for yourself that nothing worth having comes very easily. + But you're not to worry about me, nor be afraid for me, because I'm + going to win. I'm making the fight, somehow, for you as well as for + myself. I want you to know that. I think that realizing I was + living your life as well as mine, is what has given me the courage + to start.... + + "I've got some plans, but I'm not going to tell you what they are. + But I'll write to you every week and tell you what I've done and I + want you to write to Rodney. I want to be sure that you understand + this: Rodney isn't to blame for what's happened. I don't feel that + I am, either, exactly. We're just in a situation that there's only + one real way out of. I don't know whether he sees that yet or not. + He's too terribly hurt and bewildered. But we haven't quarreled, + and I believe we're further in love with each other than we've ever + been before. I know I am with him.... + + "Break this thing to mother as gently as you like, but tell her + everything before you stop...." + +This letter written and despatched, she had worked out the details of +her departure with a good deal of care. In her own house, before her +servants, she had tried to act--and she felt satisfied that her attempt +was successful--just as she would have done had her pretended telegram +really come from Portia. She had packed, looked up trains, made a +reservation. She had called up Frederica and told her the news. The +train she had selected left at an hour and on a day when she knew +Frederica wouldn't be able to come and see her off. Frederica had come +down to the house of course to say good-by to her, and carrying her +pretense through that scene, that had for her so much deeper and more +poignant a regret than she dared show--because she really loved +Frederica--was, next to bidding the twins good-by, the hardest thing she +had to go through with. Lying and pretending were always terribly hard +for Rose, and a lie to any one she was fond of, almost impossible. The +only thing that enabled her to see it through, was the consideration +that she was doing it for Rodney. He'd probably tell Frederica what had +happened in time, but Rose was determined that he should have the +privilege of choosing his own time for doing it. + +Her bag was packed, her trunk was gone, her motor waiting at the door to +take her to the station, when the maid Doris brought the twins home from +their airing. This wasn't chance, but prearrangement. + +"Give them to me;" Rose said, "and then you may go up and tell Mrs. +Ruston she may have them in a few minutes." + +She took them into her bedroom and laid them side by side on her bed. +They had thriven finely--justified, as far as that went, Harriet's +decision in favor of bottle feeding. Had she died back there in that bed +of pain, never come out of the ether at all, they'd still be just like +this--plump, placid, methodical. Rose had thought of that a hundred +times, but it wasn't what she was thinking of now. + +The thing that caught her as she stood looking down on them, was the +wave of sudden pity. She saw them suddenly as persons with the long road +all ahead of them, as a boy and a girl, a youth and a maid, a man and a +woman. They were destined to have their hopes and loves, fears, +triumphs, tragedies perhaps. The boy there, Rodney, might have to face, +some day, the situation his father confronted now; might have to come +back into an empty home, and turn a stiff inexpressive face on a coolly +curious world. Little Portia there might find herself, some day, gazing +with wide seared eyes, at a life some unexpected turn of the wheel of +Fate had thrust her, all unprepared, into the midst of. Or it might be +her fate to love without attracting love--to drain all the blood out of +her life in necessary sacrifices; to wither that some one else might +have a chance to grow. Those possibilities were all there before these +two solemn, staring, little helpless things on the bed. What toys of +Chance they were! + +She'd never thought of them like that before. The baby she had looked +forward to--the baby she hadn't had--had never been thought of that way +either. It was to be something to provide her, Rose, with an occupation; +to enable her to interpret her life in new terms; to make an alchemic +change in the very substance of it. The transmutation hadn't taken +place. She surmised now, dimly, that she hadn't deserved it should. + +"You've never had a mother at all, you poor little mites," she said. +"But you're going to have one some day. You're going to be able to come +to her with your troubles, because she'll have had troubles herself. +She'll help you bear your hurts, because she's had hurts of her own. And +she'll be able to teach you to stand the gaff, because she's stood it +herself." + +For the first time since they were born, she was thinking of their need +of her rather than of her need of them and with that thought, came for +the first time, the surge of passionate maternal love that she had +waited for, so long in vain. There was, suddenly, an intolerable ache in +her heart that could only have been satisfied by crushing them up +against her breast; kissing their hands--their feet. + +Rose stood there quivering, giddy with the force of it. "Oh, you +darlings!" she said. "But wait--wait until I deserve it!" And without +touching them at all, she went to the door and opened it. Mrs. Ruston +and Doris were both waiting in the hall. + +"I must go now," she said. "Good-by. Keep them carefully for me." Her +voice was steady, and though her eyes were bright, there was no trace of +tears upon her cheeks. But there was a kind of glory shining in her face +that was too much for Doris, who turned away and sobbed loudly. Even +Mrs. Ruston's eyes were wet. + +"Good-by," said Rose again, and went down composedly enough to her car. + +She rode down to the station, shook hands with and said good-by to +Otto, the chauffeur, allowed the porter to carry her bag into the +waiting-room. There she tipped the porter, picked up the bag herself, +and walked out the other door; crossed over to Clark Street and took a +street-car. At Chicago Avenue she got off and walked north, keeping her +eye open for placards advertising rooms to let. It was at the end of +about a half mile that she found the hatchet-faced landlady, paid her +three dollars, and locked her door, as a symbol, perhaps, of the bigger +heavier door that she had swung to and locked on the whole of her past +life. + +Amid all the welter of emotions boiling up within her, grief was not +present. There was a very deep-reaching excitement that sharpened all +her faculties; that even made her see colors more brightly and hear +fainter sounds. There was an intent eagerness to get the new life fairly +begun. But, strangest of all, and yet so vivid that even its strangeness +couldn't prevent her being aware of it, was a perfectly enormous relief. +The thing which, when she had first faced it as the only thoroughfare to +the real life she so passionately wanted, had seemed such a veritable +nightmare, was an accomplished fact. The week of acute agony she had +lived through while she was forcing her sudden resolution on Rodney had +been all but unendurable with the enforced contemplation of the moment +of parting which it brought so relentlessly nearer. There had been a +terror, too, lest when the moment actually came, she couldn't do it. +Well, and now it had come and gone! The surgery of the thing was over. +The nerves and sinews were cut. The thing was done. The girl who stood +there now in her three-dollar room was free; had won a fresh blank page +to write the characters of her life upon. + +She felt a little guilty about this. What heartless sort of a monster +must she be to feel--why, actually happy, at a moment like this? She +ought to be prone on the bed, her face buried in the musty pillow, +sobbing her heart out. + +But presently, standing there, looking down on the lumpy bed, she smiled +widely instead, over the notion of doing it as a sort of concession to +respectability. She had got her absolution from Rodney himself out of +the memory of their first real talk together. Discipline, he'd said, was +accepting the facts of life as they were. Not raising a lamentation +because they weren't different. The only way you had of getting anywhere +was by riding on the backs of your own passions. Well, her great ride +was just beginning! + +Rose dusted the mirror with a towel--a reckless act, as she saw for +herself, when she discovered she was going to have to use that towel for +a week--and took an appraising look at herself. Then she nodded +confidently--there was nothing the matter with her looks--and resumed +her ulster, her rubbers and her umbrella, for it was the kind of +December day that called for all three. Her landlady could stick the +receipt under the door, she reflected, as she locked it. + +Two blocks down the street, she found, as predicted, the cigar store +with the blue sign, "Schulz Express," and left her trunk check there +with her address and fifty cents. Then, putting up her umbrella, and +glowingly conscious that she was saving a nickel by so doing, she set +off down-town afoot to get a job. She meant to get it that very +afternoon. And, partly because she meant to so very definitely, she did. + +I don't mean to say that getting a job is a purely volitional matter. +There is the factor of luck, always large of course, though not quite so +large as a great many people suppose, and the factor of intelligence. +Rose's intelligence had been in pretty active training for the last +year. Ever since her talk with Simone Gréville had set her thinking, she +had been learning how to weigh and assess facts apart from their +emotional nebulæ. She'd taught herself how to look a disagreeable or +humiliating fact in the face as steadily and as coolly as she looked at +any other fact. + +She had accumulated a whole lot of facts about women in industry from +Barry Lake and Jane. She knew the sort of job and the sort of pay that +the average untrained woman gets. She knew some of the reasons why the +pay was so miserably, intolerably small. She knew about the vast army of +young women who weren't expected to be fully self-supporting, who +counted on marrying comfortably enough some day, and accepted board and +lodging at home as one of the natural laws of existence. But who, if +they wanted pocket money, pretty enough clothes to make them attractive +enough for men to want to marry; who, if they wanted to escape the +stupid drudgery of housework at home, had to go to work. They'd rather +get eight dollars a week than six, of course, or ten than eight. But as +long as even six was velvet (cotton-backed velvet, one might say) they'd +take that, cheerfully oblivious to the fact, as naturally one might +expect them to be, that by taking six, they established a standard at +which a girl who had to earn her own living simply couldn't live. + +Rose knew exactly what would happen to her if she went to one of the big +State Street department stores and asked for a job. Jane had been trying +some experiments lately, and stating her results with convincing +vivacity at their little dinners afterward. There was no thoroughfare +there. + +She knew too, what sort of life she'd have to face if she offered +herself out in the West Side factory district as a cracker packer, a +chocolate dipper, a glove stitcher; any of those things. You got a sort +of training, of course, at any one of these trades. You learned to +develop a certain uncanny miraculous speed and skill in some one small +operation, as remorseless and unvaried as the coming into mesh and out +again of two cogs in a pair of gears. But the very highest skill could +just about be made to keep you alive, and it led to nothing else. You +wore out your body and asphyxiated your soul. + +Rose didn't mean to do that. She was holding both body and soul in +trust. The penitential mood that had resulted from her talk with Portia +was utterly gone. She wasn't looking for hurts. Deliberately to impose +tortures on herself was as far from her intent as shirking any of the +inevitable trials that should come to her in the course of the day's +work. The only way she could see to a life of decent self-respecting +independence lay through some sort of special training--business +training, she thought. She'd begin by learning to be a stenographer--a +cracking good stenographer. Miss Beach had begun that way. She had a +real job. + +Only, Rose had first to get a job that would pay for her training; and +not only pay for it, but leave time for it; a problem which might have +seemed like the problem of lifting yourself by your boot straps, if it +hadn't been for Jimmy Wallace--Jimmy with his talk about chorus-girls. + +The trouble with that profession, Jimmy had said, was that the +indispensable assets in it were not industry, intelligence, ambitions, +but a reasonably presentable pair of arms and legs (a good-looking face +would surely come in handy too) and a rudimentary sense of rhythm. +Another demoralizing thing about it, he had said, was the fact that the +work wasn't hard enough, except during rehearsal, to keep its votaries +out of mischief. + +When the notion first occurred to her that these statements of Jimmy's +might some day have an interest for her that was personal rather than +academic, she had dismissed it with a shrug of good-humored amusement. +It wasn't until her idea of leaving Rodney and going out and making a +living and a life for herself had hardened into a fixed resolution, and +she had begun serious consideration of ways and means, that she called +it back into her mind. There was no use blinking the facts. The one +marketable asset she would possess when she walked out of her husband's +house, was simply--how she looked. + +Well then, if that was all you had, there was no degradation in using it +until you could make yourself the possessor of something else. And the +merit of this particular sort of job, for her, lay precisely in the +thing that Jimmy had cited as its chief disadvantage--it left you +abundant leisure. You might occupy that leisure getting into +mischief--no doubt most chorus-girls did. But there was nothing to +prevent your using it to better advantage. + +With this in mind, on the Sunday before Rose went away, she had studied +the dramatic section of the morning paper with a good deal of care and +was rewarded by finding among the news notes, an item referring to a +new musical comedy that was to be produced at the Globe Theater +immediately after the Christmas holidays. _The Girl Up-stairs_ was the +title of it. It was spoken of as one of the regular Globe productions, +so it was probable that Jimmy Wallace's experience with the production +of an earlier number in the series would at least give her something to +go by. The thing must be in rehearsal now. + +Granted that she was going to be a chorus-girl for a while, she could +hardly find a better place than one of the Globe productions to be one +in. According to Jimmy Wallace, it was a decent enough little place, and +yet it possessed the advantage of being spiritually as well as actually, +west of Clark Street. Rodney's friends were less likely to go there, and +so have a chance of recognizing her, than to any other theater in the +city, barring of course the flagrantly and shamelessly vulgar ones of +the purlieus. + +Among her older friends of school and college days, the chances were of +course worse. But even if she were seen on the stage by people who knew +her, even though they were to say to each other that that girl looked +surprisingly like Rose Aldrich, this would be a very different thing +from full recognition. She would be well protected by the utter +unlikelihood of her being in such a place; by the absence of anybody's +knowledge that she had flown off at a tangent from the orbit of Rodney's +world. Then, too, she'd be somewhat disguised no doubt, by make-up. Of +course with all those considerations weighed at their full value, there +remained a risk that she would be fully discovered and recognized. But +it was a risk that couldn't be avoided, whatever she did. + +She entertained for a while, the notion of taking Jimmy Wallace into her +confidence--he had as many depositors of confidences on his books, as a +savings bank, and he was just as safe. It was altogether likely that he +could get her a job out of hand. He was still on the best of terms with +the Globe people, and he was a really influential critic. But even if he +didn't get her a job outright, he could at least tell her how to set +about getting one for herself--where to go, whom to ask for, the right +way to phrase her request, which makes such an enormous difference in +things of that kind. + +But she wasn't long in abandoning the notion of appealing to Jimmy at +all. The corner-stone of her new adventure must be that she was doing +things for herself; that she was through being helped, having ways +smoothed for her, things done for her. If she owed her first job even +indirectly to Jimmy, all the rest of her structure would be out of +plumb. Whatever success she might have would be tainted by the misgiving +that but for somebody else's help, she might have failed. Rose Stanton +who had rented that three-dollar room was going to be beholden to +nobody! + +The news item in the paper gave her really all she needed. It told her +that a production was in rehearsal and it mentioned the name of the +director, John Galbraith, referring to him as one of the three most +prominent musical-comedy directors in the country; imported from New +York at vast expense, to make this production unique in the annals of +the Globe, and so forth. + +They hadn't rehearsed Jimmy's piece, she knew, in the theater itself, +but in all sorts of queer out-of-the-way places--in theaters that +happened for the moment to be "dark," in dance-halls; pretty much +anywhere. This was because there was another show running at the time at +the Globe. She had looked in the theater advertisements to see whether a +show was running there now. Yes, there was. Well, that gave her her +formula. + +When she asked at the box office at the Globe Theater, where they were +rehearsing _The Girl Up-stairs_ to-day, the nicely manicured young man +inside, answered automatically, "North End Hall." + +Evidently Jimmy Wallace couldn't have phrased the question better +himself. But the quality of the voice that asked it had, even to his not +very sensitive ear, an unaccustomed flavor. So, almost simultaneously +with his answer, he looked up from his finger-nails and shot an +inquiring glance through the grille. + +What he saw betrayed him into an involuntary stare. He didn't mean to +stare; he meant to be respectful. But he was surprised. Rose, in the +plainest suit that she could hope would seem plausible to her servants +for a traveling costume to California, an ulster and a little beaver hat +with a quill in it, had no misgivings about looking the part of a +potentially hard-working young woman renting a three-dollar room on +North Clark Street and seeking employment in a musical-comedy chorus. A +realization that her neat black seal dressing-case wasn't quite in the +picture, helped to account for the landlady's puzzlement about her. But +it hadn't been introduced in evidence here. And yet the young man behind +the grille seemed as surprised as the landlady. + +He repeated his answer to her question with the lubricant of a few more +words and a fatuous sort of smile. "I believe they rehearse in the North +End Hall this afternoon." + +Rose couldn't help smiling a little herself. "I'm afraid," she said, +"I'll have to ask where that is." + +"Not at all," said the young man idiotically, and he told her the +address; then cast about for a slip of paper to write it down on, +racking his thimbleful of brains all the while to make out who she could +be. She wasn't one of the principals in the company. They'd all reported +and he hadn't heard that any of them was to be replaced. + +"Oh, you needn't write it," said Rose. "I can remember, thank you." She +gave him a pleasant sort of boyish nod that didn't classify at all with +anything in his experience, and walked out of the lobby. + +He stared after her almost resentfully, feeling all mussed up, somehow, +and inadequate; as if here had been a situation that he had failed +signally to make the most of. He sat there for the next half-hour +gloomily thinking up things he might have said to her. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY + + +With her umbrella over her shoulder, Rose set sail northward again +through the rain, absurdly cheered; first by the fact that the opening +skirmish had distinctly, though intangibly, gone her way; secondly by +the small bit of luck that North End Hall would be, judging by its +number on North Clark Street, not more than a block or two from her +three-dollar room. + +The sight of the entrance to it gave her a pang of misgiving. A pair of +white painted doors opened from the street level upon the foot of a +broadish stair which took you up rather suddenly; there was space enough +between the foot of the stair and the doors for a ticket-window, but it +was too small to be called a lobby; an arc lamp hung there though, and +two more--all three were extinct--hung just outside. What gave the place +its air of vulgarity, a suggestion of being the starting and finishing +point for lewd, drink sodden revels, she couldn't determine. It did +suggest this plainly. But, in the light of what Jimmy Wallace had told +her, she didn't think it likely there'd be any reveling to speak of at +rehearsal. + +At the head of the stairway, tilted back in a kitchen chair beneath a +single gas-jet whose light he was trying to make suffice for the perusal +of a green newspaper, sat a man, under orders no doubt, to keep +intruders away. + +Rose cast about as she climbed for the sort of phrase that would +convince him she wasn't an intruder. She would ask him, but in the +manner of one who seeks a formal assurance merely, if this was where +they were rehearsing _The Girl Up-stairs_. Three steps from the top, she +changed her tactics, as a result of a glance at his unshaven face. The +thing to do was to go by as if he weren't there at all--as if, for such +as she, watchmen didn't exist. The rhythmic pounding of feet and the +frayed chords from a worn-out piano, convinced her she was in the right +place. + + +Her stratagem succeeded, but not without giving her a bad moment. The +man glanced up and, though she felt he didn't return to his paper again, +he made no attempt to stop her. But right before her was another pair of +big white doors, closed with an effect of permanence--locked, she +suspected. A narrower door to the left stood open, but over it was +painted the disconcerting legend "Bar," flanked on either side, to make +the matter explicit even to the unlearned, by pictorial representations +of glasses of foaming beer. She hadn't time to deliberate over her +choice. The watchman's eyes were boring into her back. If she chose +wrong, or if she visibly hesitated, she knew she'd hear a voice say, +"Here! Where you going!" + +She caught a quick breath, turned to the left and walked steadily +through the narrower door into the bar. It proved to be a deserted, +shrouded, sinister-looking place, with an interminable high mahogany +counter at one side, and with a lot of little iron tables placed by +pairs, their tops together, so that half of them had their legs in the +air. Its lights were fled, its garlands dead all right, but there wasn't +anything poetic about it. However, there was another open door at the +far end of the room, through which sounds and light came in. And the +watchman hadn't interfered with her. Evidently she had chosen right. + +She paused for a second steadying breath before she went through that +farther door, her eyes starry with resolution, her cheeks, just for the +moment, a little pale. If the comparison suggests itself to you of an +early Christian maiden about to step out into an arena full of wild +beasts, then you will have mistaken Rose. The arena was there, true +enough. But she was stepping out into it with the intention of, like +Androcles, taming the lion. + +The room was hot and not well lighted--a huge square room with a very +high ceiling. In the farther wall of it was a proscenium arch and a +raised stage somewhat brighter than the room itself, though the stained +brick wall at the back, in the absence of any scenery, absorbed a good +deal of the light. On the stage, right and left, were two irregular +groups of girls, with a few men, awkwardly, Rose thought, disposed among +them. All were swaying a little to mark the rhythm of the music +industriously pounded out by a sweaty young man at the piano--a swarthy, +thick young man in his undershirt. There were a few more people, Rose +was aware without exactly looking at any of them, sprawled in different +parts of the hall, on sofas or cushioned window-seats. + +It was all a little vague to her at first, because her attention was +focused on a single figure--a compact, rather slender figure, and tall, +Rose thought--of a man in a blue serge suit, who stood at the exact +center of the stage and the extreme edge of the footlights. He was +counting aloud the bars of the music--not beating time at all, nor +yielding to the rhythm in any way; standing, on the contrary, rather +tensely still. That was the quality about him, indeed, that riveted +Rose's attention and held her as still as he was, in the doorway--an +exhilarating sort of intensity that had communicated itself to the +swaying groups on the stage. You could tell from the way he counted that +something was gathering itself up, getting ready to happen. "Three ... +Four ... Five ... Six ... Seven ... _Now!_" he shouted on the eighth +bar, and with the word, one of the groups transformed itself. One of the +men bowed to one of the girls and began waltzing with her; another +couple formed, then another. + +Rose watched breathlessly, hoping the maneuver wouldn't go wrong;--for +no reason in the world but that the man, there at the footlights, was so +tautly determined that it shouldn't. + +Determination triumphed. The number was concluded to John Galbraith's +evident satisfaction. "Very good," he said. "If you'll all do exactly +what you did that time from now on, I'll not complain." Without a pause +he went on, "Everybody on the stage--big girls--all the big girls!" And, +to the young man at the piano, "We'll do _Afternoon Tea_." There was a +momentary pause then, filled with subdued chatter, while the girls and +men re-alined themselves for the new number--a pause taken advantage of +by an exceedingly blond young man to scramble up on the stage and make a +few remarks to the director. He was the musical director, Rose found out +afterward. Galbraith, to judge from his attitude, gave his colleague's +remarks about twenty-five per cent. of his attention, keeping his eye +all the while on the chorus, to see that they got their initial +formation correctly. Rose looked them over, too. The girls weren't, on +an average, extravagantly beautiful, though, with the added charm of +make-up allowed for, there were no doubt many the audiences would +consider so. What struck Rose most emphatically about them, was their +youth and spirit. How long they had been rehearsing this afternoon she +didn't know. But now, when they might have gone slack and silent, they +pranced and giggled instead and showed a disposition to lark about, +which evidently would have carried them a good deal further but for the +restraining presence of the director. They were dressed in pretty much +anything that would allow perfect freedom to their bodies; especially +their arms and legs; bathing suits mostly, or middy-blouses and +bloomers. Rose noted this with satisfaction. Her old university +gymnasium costume would do perfectly. Anything, apparently, would do, +because as her eye adjusted itself to details, she discovered romper +suits, pinafores, chemises, overalls--all equally taken for granted. +There weren't nearly so many chorus men as girls. She couldn't be sure +just how many there were, because they couldn't be singled out. As they +wore no distinctly working costume, merely took off their coats, +waistcoats and collars, they weren't distinguishable from most of the +staff, who, with the exception of the director, garbed themselves +likewise. + +Galbraith dismissed the musical director with a nod, struck his hands +together for silence, and scrutinized the now motionless group on the +stage. + +"We're one shy," he said. "Who's missing?" And then answered his own +question: "Grant!" He wheeled around and his eyes searched the hall. + +Rose became aware for the first time, that a mutter of conversation had +been going on incessantly since she had come in, in one of the recessed +window-seats behind her. Now, when Galbraith's gaze plunged in that +direction, she turned and looked too. A big blonde chorus-girl was in +there with a man, a girl, who, with twenty pounds trained off her, and +that sulky look out of her face, would have been a beauty. She had +roused herself with a sort of defiant deliberation at the sound of the +director's voice, but she still had her back to him and went on talking +to the man. + +"Grant!" said John Galbraith again, and this time his voice had a +cutting edge. "Will you take your place on the stage, or shall I suspend +rehearsal until you're ready?" + +For answer she turned and began walking slowly across the room toward +the door in the proscenium that led to the stage. She started walking +slowly, but under Galbraith's eye, she quickened her pace, +involuntarily, it seemed, until it was a ludicrous sort of run. +Presently she emerged on the stage, looking rather artificially +unconcerned, and the rehearsal went on again. + +But just before he gave the signal to the pianist to go ahead, Galbraith +with a nod summoned a young man from the wings and said something to +him, whereupon, clearly carrying out his orders, he vaulted down from +the stage and came walking toward the doorway where Rose was still +standing. The director's gaze as it flashed about the hall, had +evidently discovered more than the sulky chorus-girl. + +The young man wasn't intrinsically formidable--a rather limp, +deprecatory sort, he looked. But, as an emissary from Galbraith, he +quickened Rose's heart-beat a trifle. She smiled though as she made a +small bet with herself that he wouldn't be able to turn her out, even in +his capacity of envoy. + +But he didn't come straight to Rose; deflected his course a little +uncertainly, and brought up before a woman who sat in a folding chair a +little farther along the wall. + +Rose hadn't observed her particularly before, though she was aware that +one of the "big girls" who had responded promptly to Galbraith's first +call for them, had been talking to her when Rose came in, and she had +assumed her to be somebody connected with the show; at least with an +unchallengeable right to watch its rehearsals. But she had corrected +this impression even before she had heard what John Galbraith's +assistant said to the woman and what she said to him; for she drew +herself defensively erect when she saw him turn toward her, assumed a +look of calculated disdain; tapped a foot inadequately shod for +Chicago's pavements in December, although evidently it had experienced +them--gave, on the whole, as well as she could, an imitation of a +duchess being kept waiting. + +But the limp young man didn't seem disconcerted, and inquired in so many +words, what her business was. The duchess said in a harsh high voice +with a good deal of inflection to it, that she wanted to see the +director; a very partic'lar friend of his, she assured the young man, +had begged her to do so. "You'll have to wait till he's through +rehearsing," said the young man, and then he came over to Rose. + +The vestiges of the smile the duchess had provoked were still visible +about her mouth when he came up. "May I wait and see Mr. Galbraith after +the rehearsal?" she asked. "If I won't be in the way?" + +"Sure," said the young man. "He won't be long now. He's been rehearsing +since two." Then, rather explosively, "Have a chair." + +He struck Rose as being a little flustered and uncertain, somehow, and +he now made a tentative beginning of actually bringing a chair for her. + +"Oh, don't bother," said Rose, and now she couldn't help smiling +outright. "I'll find one for myself." + +But, whenever he had begun rehearsing, it was evident that John +Galbraith didn't mean to stop until he got through, and it was a long +hour that Rose sat there in a little folding chair similar to the one +occupied by the duchess; an hour which, in spite of all her will could +do, took some of the crispness out of her courage. It was all very well +to reflect with pitying amusement on the absurdities of the duchess. But +it was evident the duchess was waiting with a purpose like her own. She +meant to get a job in the chorus. Her rather touching ridiculousness as +a human being wouldn't stand in her way. It was likely that she had had +dozens of jobs in choruses before, knew exactly what would be wanted of +her, and was confident of her ability to deliver it. + +As Rose's heart sank lower with the dragging minutes she even took into +account the possibility that the duchess had spoken the truth about John +Galbraith's "partic'lar friend." Just the mention of a name might settle +the whole business. Then her spirits went down another five degrees. +Here she had been assuming all along that there was a job for either of +them to get! But it was quite likely there was not. The chorus looked +complete enough; there was no visible gap in the ranks crying aloud for +a recruit. + +When at last, a little after six o'clock, Galbraith said, "Quarter to +eight, everybody," and dismissed them with a nod for a scurry to what +were evidently dressing-rooms at the other side of the ball, the ship of +Rose's hopes had utterly gone to pieces. She had a plank to keep herself +afloat on. It was the determination to stay there until he should tell +her in so many words that he hadn't any use for her and under no +conceivable circumstances ever would have. + +The deprecatory young man was talking to him now, about her and the +duchess evidently, for he peered out into the hall to see if they were +still there; then vaulted down from the stage and came toward them. + +The duchess got up, and with a good deal of manner, went over to meet +him. Rose felt outmaneuvered here. She should have gone to meet him +herself, but a momentary paralysis kept her in her chair. She didn't +hear what the duchess said. The manner of it was confidential, in marked +protest against the proximity of a handful of other people--the blond +musical director, the thick pianist in his undershirt, a baby-faced man +in round tortoise-shell spectacles, three or four of the chorus people, +each of whom had serious matters to bring before the director's +attention. + +But all the confidences, it seemed, were on the side of the duchess. +Because, when John Galbraith answered her, his voice easily filled +the room. "You tell Mr. Pike, if that's his name, that I'm very much +obliged to him, but we haven't any vacancies in the chorus at present. +If you care to, leave your name and address with Mr. Quan, the assistant +stage manager; then if we find we need you, we can let you know." + +[Illustration: "I want a job in the chorus."] + +He said it not unkindly, but he exercised some power of making it +evident that as he finished speaking, the duchess, for him, simply +ceased to exist. Anything she might say or do thereafter, would be so +much effort utterly wasted. + +The duchess drew herself up and walked away. + +And Rose? Well, the one thing she wanted passionately to do just then, +was to walk away herself out of that squalid horrible room; to soften +her own defeat by evading the final sledge-hammer blow. What he had said +to the duchess licensed her to do so. If there were no vacancies ... But +she clenched her hands, set her teeth, pulled in a long breath, and +somehow, set herself in motion. Not toward the door, but toward where +John Galbraith was standing. + +But before she could get over to him, the pianist and the musical +director had got his attention. So she waited quietly beside him for two +of the longest minutes that ever were ticked off by a clock. Then, with +disconcerting suddenness, right in the middle of one of the musical +director's sentences, he looked straight into her face and said: "What +do you want?" + +She'd thought him tall, but he wasn't. He was looking on a perfect level +into her eyes. + +"I want a job in the chorus," said Rose. + +"You heard what I said to that other woman, I suppose?" + +"Yes," said Rose, "but ..." + +"But you thought you'd let me say it to you again." + +"Yes," she said. And, queerly enough, she felt her courage coming back. +She managed the last "yes" very steadily. It had occurred to her that if +he'd wanted merely to get rid of her, he could have done it quicker than +this. He was looking her over now with a coolly appraising eye. + +"What professional experience have you had?" he asked. + +"I haven't had any." + +He almost smiled when she stopped there. + +"Any amateur experience?" he inquired. + +"Quite a lot," said Rose; "pageants and things, and two or three little +plays." + +"Can you dance?" + +"Yes," said Rose. + +He said he supposed ballroom dancing was what she meant, whereupon she +told him she was a pretty good ballroom dancer, but that it was +gymnastic dancing she had had in mind. + +"All right," he said. "See if you can do this. Watch me, and then +imitate me exactly." + +In the intensity of her absorption in his questions and her own answers +to them, she had never given a thought to the bystanders. But now as +they fell back to give him room, she swept a glance across their faces. +They all wore smiles of sorts. There was something amusing about +this--something out of the regular routine. A little knot of +chorus-girls halted in the act of going out the wide doors and stood +watching. Was it just a hoax? The suppressed unnatural silence sounded +like it. But at what John Galbraith did, one of the bystanders guffawed +outright. + +It wasn't pretty, the dance step he executed--a sort of stiff-legged +skip accompanied by a vulgar hip wriggle and concluding with a +straight-out sidewise kick. + +A sick disgust clutched at Rose as she watched--an utter revulsion from +the whole loathly business. She could scrub floors--starve if she had +to. She couldn't do the thing he demanded of her here out in the middle +of the floor, in her street clothes, without the excuse of music to make +it tolerable--and before that row of leering faces. + +"Well?" he asked, turning to her as he finished. He wasn't smiling at +all. + +"I'm not dressed to do that," she said. + +"I know you're not," he admitted coolly, "but it can be done. Pick up +your skirts and do it as you are,--if you really want a job." + +There was just a faint edge of contempt in that last phrase and, +mercifully, it roused her anger. A blaze kindled in her blue eyes, and +two spots of vivid color defined themselves in her cheeks. + +She caught up her skirts as he had told her to do, executed without +compromise the stiff-legged skip and the wriggle, and finished with a +horizontal sidewise kick that matched his own. Then, panting, trembling +a little, she stood looking straight into his face. + +The first thing she realized when the processes of thought began again +was that even if there had been a hoax, she was not, in the event, the +victim of it. The attitude of her audience told her that. Galbraith was +staring at her with a look that expressed at first, clear astonishment, +but gradually complicated itself with other emotions--confusion, a glint +of whimsical amusement. That gleam, a perfectly honest, kindly one, +decided Rose to take him on trust. He wasn't a brute, however it might +suit his purposes to act like one. And with an inkling of how her blaze +of wrath must be amusing him, she smiled slowly and a little +uncertainly, herself. + +"We've been rehearsing this piece two weeks," he said presently, looking +away from her when he began to talk, "and I couldn't take any one into +the chorus now whom I'd have to teach the rudiments of dancing to. I +must have people who can do what I tell them. That's why a test was +necessary. Also, from now on, it would be a serious thing to lose +anybody out of the chorus. I couldn't take anybody who had come down +here--for a lark." + +"It's not a lark to me," said Rose. + +Now he looked around at her again. "I know it isn't," he said. "But I +thought when you first came in here, that it was." + +With that, Rose understood the whole thing. It was evidently a fact that +despite the plain little suit, the beaver hat, the rough ulster she was +wearing, she didn't look like the sort of girl who had to rely on +getting a job in the chorus for keeping a roof over her head. Looks, +speech, manner--everything segregated her from the type. It was all +obvious enough, only Rose hadn't happened to think of it. It accounted, +of course, for the rather odd way in which the landlady, the +ticket-seller at the Globe, and meek little Mr. Quan, the assistant +stage manager, all had looked at her, as at some one they couldn't +classify. John Galbraith, out of a wider experience of life, had +classified her, or thought he had, as a well-bred young girl who, in a +moment of pique, or mischief, had decided it would be fun to go on the +stage. The test he had applied wasn't, from that point of view, +unnecessarily cruel. The girl he had taken her for, would, on being +ordered to repeat that grotesque bit of vulgarity of his, have drawn her +dignity about her like a cloak, and gone back in a chastened spirit to +the world where she belonged. + +A gorgeous apparition came sweeping by them just now, on a line from the +dressing-room to the door--a figure that, with regal deliberation, was +closing a blue broadcloth coat, trimmed with sable, over an authentic +Callot frock. The Georgette hat on top of it was one that Rose had last +seen in a Michigan Avenue shop. She had amused herself by trying to +vizualize the sort of person who ought to buy it. It had found its +proper buyer at last--fulfilled its destiny. + +"Oh, Grant!" said John Galbraith. + +The queenly creature stopped short and Rose recognized her with a jump, +as the sulky chorus-girl. Dressed like this, her twenty pounds of +surplus fat didn't show. + +Galbraith walked over to her. "I shan't need you any more, Grant." He +spoke in a quiet impersonal sort of way, but his voice had, as always, a +good deal of carrying power. "It's hardly worth your while trying to +work, I suppose, when you're so prosperous as this. And it isn't worth +my while to have you soldiering. You needn't report again." + +He nodded not unamiably, and turned away. Evidently she had ceased to +exist for him as completely as the duchess. She glared after him and +called out in a hoarse throaty voice, "Thank Gawd I don't _have_ to work +for you." + +He'd come back to Rose again by this time, and she saw him smile. "When +you do it," he said over his shoulder, "thank Him for me too." Then to +Rose: "She's a valuable girl; had lots of experience; good-looking; +audiences like her. I'm giving you her place because as long as she's +got those clothes and the use of a limousine, she won't get down to +business. I'd rather have a green recruit who will. I'm hiring you +because I think you will be able to understand that what you feel like +doing isn't important and that what I tell you to do is. The next +rehearsal is at a quarter to eight to-night. Give your name and address +to Mr. Quan before you go. By the way, what is your name?" + +"Rose Stanton," she said. "But ..." She had to follow him a step or two +because he had already turned away. "But, may I give some other name +than that to Mr. Quan?" He frowned a little dubiously and asked her how +old she was. And even when she told him twenty-two, he didn't look +altogether reassured. + +"That's the truth, is it? I mean, there's nobody who can come down here +about three days before we open and call me a kidnaper, and lead you +away by the ear?" + +"No," said Rose gravely, "there's no one who'll do that." + +"Very good," he said. "Tell Quan any name you like." + +The name she did tell him was Doris Dane. + +It was a quarter to seven when she came out through the white doors into +North Clark Street. The thing that woke her out of a sort of daze as she +trudged along toward her room in the unrelenting rain was a pleasurable +smell of fried onions; whereupon she realized that she was legitimately +and magnificently hungry. In any other condition, the dingy little +lunch-room she presently turned into, would hardly have invited her. But +the spots on the frayed starchy table-cloth, the streakiness of the +glasses, the necessity of polishing knife and fork upon her damp napkin, +couldn't prevent her doing ample justice to a small thick platter of ham +and eggs, and a plate of thicker wheat-cakes. + +It occurred to her as she finished, that a quarter to eight probably +meant the hour at which the rehearsal was to begin. She'd have to be +back at the hail at least fifteen minutes earlier, in order to be +dressed and ready. She had no time to waste; would even have to hurry a +little. + +She didn't try to explore for the reason why this discovery pleased her +so much. It was enough that it did. She flew along through the rain to +her tunnel, charged up the narrow stair, and in the unlighted corridor +outside her room, collided with her trunk. Well, it was lucky it had +come anyway. She tugged it into her room after she had lighted the gas. + +You might have seen, if you had been there to see, just a momentary +hesitation after she'd got her trunk key out of her purse before she +unlocked it. It was a sort of Jack-in-the-box, that trunk. Would the +emotions with which she'd packed it, spring out and clutch her as she +released the hasp? The saving factor in the situation was that it was a +quarter past seven. In fifteen minutes she must be back at North End +Hall, getting ready to go to work at her job. Suppose she hadn't found a +job this afternoon? The thought turned her giddy. + +She plunged into her trunk, rummaged out a middy-blouse, a pair of black +silk bloomers, and her gymnasium sneakers, rolled them all together in a +bundle, got into her rubbers and her ulster again, and--I'm afraid there +is no other word for it--fled. + +She was one of the first of the chorus to reach the hail and she had +nearly finished putting on her working clothes before the rest of them +came pelting in. But she didn't get out quickly enough to miss the +sensation that was exciting them all--the news that Grant had been +dropped. A few of them were indignant; the rest merely curious. The +indignant ones allowed themselves a license in the expression of this +feeling that positively staggered Rose; made use in a quite +matter-of-fact way of words she had supposed even a drunken truck-man +would have attempted to refrain from in the presence of a woman. She +made a discovery afterward, that there were many girls in the chorus who +never talked like that; and among those who did, the further distinction +between those who used vile language casually, or even jocularly, and +those who were driven to it only by anger. But for these first few +minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some +foul pit abysmally below the lowest level of decency. + +One of the girls advanced the theory that Grant hadn't finally been +dropped; it was absurd that she should be. She was one of the most +popular chorus-girls in Chicago. The director was merely trying to scare +her into doing better work for him. She'd come back, all right. She had +reasons of her own, this girl intimated, for wanting to work, despite +the possession of French clothes and the use of a limousine. Her +"friend," it seemed, needed to be taught some sort of lesson. Grant +would come around before to-morrow night, and eat enough humble pie to +induce Galbraith to take her back. + +If this theory were sound, and it had a dreadful plausibility to Rose, +her only chance for keeping her job would be to do as well as Grant +could do, to-night, in this very first rehearsal; and she went out on +the stage in a perfect agony of determination. She must see everything, +hear everything; put all she knew and every ounce of energy she had, +into the endeavor to make John Galbraith forget that she was a recruit +at all. + +The intensity of this preoccupation was a wonderful protection to her. +It kept away the sick disgust that had threatened her in the +dressing-room; prevented her even glancing ahead to a future that would, +had she taken to guessing about it, utterly have overwhelmed her. The +intensely illuminated present instant kept her mind focused to its +sharpest edge. + +It is true that before she had been working fifteen minutes, she had +forgotten all about Grant and the possibility of her return. She'd even +forgotten her resolution not to let John Galbraith remember she was a +recruit. Indeed, she had forgotten she was a recruit. She was nothing at +all but just a reflection of his will. She'd felt that quality strongly +in him even behind his back during the afternoon rehearsal. Now, on the +stage in front of him, she was completely possessed by it. + +She didn't know she was tired, panting, wet all over with sweat. Really, +of course, she was pretty soft, judged by her own athletic standards. +She hadn't done anything so physically exacting as this for over a year. +But she had the illusion that she wasn't _doing_ anything now; that she +was just a passive plastic thing, tossed, flung, swirled about by the +driving power of the director's will. It wouldn't have surprised her if +the chairs had danced for him. + +It couldn't of course have occurred to her that she was producing her +own effect on the director; she couldn't have surmised that he was +driving his rehearsal at a faster pace and with a renewed energy and +fire because of the presence, there in the ranks of his chorus, of a +glowing, thrilling creature who devoured his intentions half formed, met +them with a blue spark across the poles of their two minds. + +She realized, when the rehearsal was over, that it had gone well and +that it couldn't have gone so if her own part had been done badly. She +hesitated a moment after he'd finally dismissed them with a nod, and an, +"Eleven o'clock to-morrow morning, everybody," from a previously formed +intention of asking him if she'd do. But she felt, somehow, that such a +question would be foolish and unnecessary. + +He had marked her hesitation and shot her a look that she felt followed +her as she walked off, and she heard him say to the world in general and +in a heartfelt sort of way, "Good God!" But she didn't know that it was +the highest encomium he was capable of, nor that it was addressed to +her. + +She carried away, however, a glow that saw her back to her room, and +through the processes of unpacking and getting ready for bed, though it +faded swiftly during the last of these. But when the last thing that she +could think of to do had been done, when there was no other pretext, +even after a desperate search for one, that could be used to postpone +turning out her light and getting into bed, she had to confess to +herself that she was afraid to do it. And with that confession, the +whole pack of hobgoblin terrors she had kept at bay so valiantly since +shutting her husband's door behind her, were upon her back. + +Here she was, Rose Aldrich, in a three-dollar-a-week room on North Clark +Street, having deserted her husband and her babies--a loving honest +husband, and a pair of helpless babies not yet three months old--to +become a member of the chorus in a show called _The Girl Up-stairs!_ Was +there a human being in the world, except herself, who would not, as the +most charitable of possible explanations, assume her to be mad? Could +she herself, seeing her act cut out in silhouette like that, be sure she +wasn't mad? Hysterical anyway, the victim of her own rashly encouraged +fancies, just as Rodney had so often declared she was? Oughtn't she to +have let James Randolph explore the subconscious part of her mind and +find the crack there must be in it, that could have driven her to a +crazy act like this? + +It didn't matter now. She couldn't go back. She never could go back +after the things she had said to Rodney, until she had made good those +fantastic theories of hers. Probably he wouldn't want her to come back +even then. He'd find out where she was of course--what she was doing. +Why had she been such a fool, going away, as not to have gone far enough +to be safe? He'd feel that she'd disgraced him. Any man would. And he'd +never forgive her. He'd divorce her, perhaps. He'd have a right to, if +she stayed away long enough. And, without her there, with nothing of her +but memories--tormenting memories, he'd perhaps fall in love with some +one else--marry some one else. And her two babies would call that +unknown some one "mother." She must have been crazy! She'd thought she +didn't love them. That had been a delusion anyway. Her heart ached for +them now--an actual physical ache that almost made her cry out. And for +Rodney himself, for his big strong arms around her! Would she ever feel +them again? + +She told herself this was a nightmare--something to be fought off, kept +at bay. But how did that help her now, when the armor must be laid +aside? Sometime or other she must turn out that light and lie down in +that bed, defenseless. She had never in her life asked more of her +courage than when, at last, she did that thing. There were nine hours +then ahead of her before eleven o'clock and the next rehearsal. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +ROSE KEEPS THE PATH + + +Rose rehearsed twice a day for a solid week without forming the faintest +conception of who "the girl" was or why she was "the girl up-stairs." +She didn't know what sort of scene it was for instance that they burst +in on through the space marked by two of the little folding chairs +brought up from the floor of the dance-hall for the purpose. The group +of iron tables borrowed from the bar and set solidly together in the +upper right-hand corner of the stage whenever they rehearsed a certain +one of their song numbers, might with equal plausibility represent a +mountain in Arizona, the front veranda of a house or a banquet table in +the gilded dining-hall of some licentious multi-millionaire. They got up +on the insecure thing and tried to dance; that was all she knew. + +During the entire period, and for that matter, right up to the opening +night she never saw a bar of music except what stood on the piano rack, +nor a written word of the lyrics she was supposed to sing. Rose couldn't +sing very much. She had a rather timorous, throaty little contralto that +contrasted oddly with the fine free thrill of her speaking voice. But +nobody had asked her what her voice was, nor indeed, whether she could +sing at all. She picked up the tunes quickly enough, by ear, but the +words she was always a little uncertain about. + +It all seemed too utterly haphazard to be possible, but Rose decided not +to ask any of the authorities about this, because, while the possibility +of Grant's return dangled over her head, she didn't want to remind +anybody how green she was. But she finally questioned one of her +colleagues in the chorus about it, and was told that back at the +beginning of things, they had had their voices tried by the musical +director, who had conducted three or four music rehearsals before John +Galbraith arrived. They had never had any music to sing from but there +had been half a dozen mimeograph copies of the words to the songs, which +the girls had put their heads together over in groups of three or four, +and more or less learned. What had become of this dope, and whether it +was still available for Rose in case she were animated by a purely +supererogatory desire to study it, the girl didn't know. + +She was a pale-haired girl, whom Rose thought she had heard addressed as +Larson, and she had emerged rather slowly as an individual personality, +out of the ruck of the chorus; a fact in her favor, really, because the +girls who had first driven themselves home to Rose through the shell of +her intense preoccupation with doing what John Galbraith wanted, had +been the vividly and viciously objectionable ones. The thing that had +prompted her to sit down beside Larson and, with this question about how +one learned the words to the songs, take her first real step toward an +acquaintance, was an absence of any strong dislike, rather than the +presence of a real attraction. + +She made a surprising discovery when the girl, with a friendly pat on +the sofa beside her, for an invitation to her to sit down, began +answering her question. She was a real beauty. Or, more accurately, she +possessed the constituent qualities of beauty. She was pure English +eighteenth century; might have stepped down out of a Gainsborough +portrait. Dressed right, and made up a little, with her effects +legitimately heightened (and warned not to speak), she could have gone +to the Charity Ball as the Honorable Mrs. Graham, and Bertie Willis +would have gone mad about her. Only you had to look twice at her to +perceive that this was so; and what she lacked was just the unanalyzable +quality that makes one look twice. + +Her speaking voice would have driven Bertie mad, too--foaming, biting +mad. It was disconcertingly loud, in the first place, and it came +out upon the promontories of speech with a flat whang that fairly +made you jump. Its undulations of pitch gave you something the same +sensation as riding rapidly over a worn-out asphalt pavement in a +five-hundred-dollar automobile; unforeseen springs into the air, +descents into unexpected pits. Her grammar wasn't flagrantly bad, though +it had, rather pitiably, a touch of the genteel about it. But now, when +she spoke to Rose, and with the lassitude of fatigue in her voice +besides, Rose heard something friendly about it. + +"I don't know what you should worry about any of that stuff for," she +said. "How you sing or what you sing don't make much difference." + +Rose admitted that it didn't seem to. "But you see," she said (she +hadn't had a human soul to talk to for more than a week and she had to +make a friend of somebody); "you see, I've just got to keep this job. +And if every little helps, as they say, perhaps that would." + +The girl looked at her oddly, almost suspiciously, as if for a moment +she had doubted whether Rose had spoken in good faith. "You've got as +good a chance of losing your job," she said, "as Galbraith has of losing +his." + +"I don't worry about it," said Rose, "when I'm up there on the stage at +work. It's too exciting. And then, I feel somehow that it's going all +right. But early in the morning, I get to imagining all sorts of things. +He's so terribly sudden. The girl whose place I got,--she hadn't any +warning, you know. It just happened." + +The Larson girl gave a decisive little nod. Not so much, it seemed, in +assent to what Rose had just said, but as if some question in her own +mind had been answered. + +"You'll get used to that feeling," she said. "You've got to take a +chance anyway, so why worry? We can work our heads off, but if the piece +is a fliv the opening night, they'll tack up the notice, and there we'll +be with two weeks' pay for eight weeks' work, and another six weeks' +work for nothing in something else if we're lucky enough to get it." + +This was a possibility Rose hadn't thought of. "But--that isn't fair!" +she said. + +The other girl laughed grimly. "Fair!" she echoed. "What they want to +print that word in the dictionary for, I don't see. Because what it +means don't exist. Not where I live, anyway. But what's the good of +making a fuss about it? We've got to take our chance like everybody +else." + +"I don't believe this piece will fall, though," said Rose. "I don't +think Mr. Galbraith would let it. I think he's a perfect wonder, don't +you?" + +The Larson girl looked at her again. "He's supposed to be about the best +in the business," she said, "and I guess he is." She added, "Dave tells +me he's going to put you with us in the sextette." + +Dave was the thick pianist, and Rose had found him in the highest degree +obnoxious. He seemed to occupy an indeterminate social position in their +ship's company, between the forecastle, which was the chorus, and the +quarter-deck, which comprised Galbraith (you might call him the pilot), +the baby-faced man with the tortoise-shell spectacles, reputed to be the +author, two awesome intermittent gentlemen identified in the +dressing-room as the owners of the piece, and the musical director, +together with one or two more as yet unclassified. The principals, when +they should appear, would, Rose assumed, belong on the quarter-deck too. +The social gap between this afterguard and Rose and her colleagues in +the chorus, was not so very wide, but it was abysmally deep. +Nevertheless, the pianist, buoyed up on the wings of a boundless +effrontery, seemed to manage to remain unaware of it. + +He had started rehearsals with this piece, it appeared, as a chorus-man, +and had become a pianist, thanks to the interposition of Fate (the real +pianist had fallen suddenly and desperately ill), and to his own +irresistible assurance that he could do anything. He could keep time and +he hit perhaps a third of the notes right. + +The chorus liked him. The girls all called him Dave, seemed to +appreciate his notion of humor, and accepted his hugs and pawings as a +matter of course. But he took his jokes, his familiarities, and his +apparently impregnable self-esteem, upon the quarter-deck--slapped the +author on the back now and then, and had even been known to address John +Galbraith as "Old man." Incidentally, he hung about within ear-shot +during conferences of the powers, freely offered his advice, and +brought all sorts of interesting tidbits of gossip and prophecy back to +the chorus. + +His announcement that Rose was going to be put into the sextette was +entitled to consideration, even though it couldn't be banked on. There +were three mediums and three big girls in the sextette. (Olga Larson was +one of the mediums and so needn't fear replacement by Rose, who was a +big girl.) Besides appearing in two numbers as a background to one of +the principals, they had one all to themselves, a fact which constituted +them a sort of super-chorus. Galbraith used to keep them for endless +drills after the general rehearsal was dismissed. + +But the intimation that Rose was to be promoted to this select inner +circle, didn't, as it first came to her, give her any pleasure. Somehow, +as Larson told her about it, she could fairly see the knowing greasy +grin that would have been Dave's comment on this prophecy. And in the +same flash, she interpreted the Larson girl's look, half incredulous, +half satirical, and her, "You've got as good a chance of losing your job +as Galbraith has of losing his." + +"I haven't heard anything about being put in the sextette," she said +quietly, "and I don't believe I will be." + +"Well, I don't know why not." There was a new warmth in the medium's +voice. Rose had won a victory here, and she knew it. "You've got the +looks and the shape, and you can dance better than any of the big girls, +or us mediums, either. And if he doesn't put that big Benedict lemon +into the back line where she belongs, and give you her place in the +sextette, it will be because he's afraid of her drag." + +Rose forbore to inquire into the nature of the Benedict girl's drag. +Whatever it may have been, John Galbraith was evidently not afraid of +it, because as he dismissed that very rehearsal, calling the rest of the +chorus for twelve the following morning, and the sextette for eleven, he +told Rose to report at the earlier hour. And a moment later, she heard +Dave say to the big show girl named Vesta Folsom (some one with a vein +of playful irony must have been responsible for this christening), +"Well, maybe I didn't call that turn." + +"You're the original wise guy, all right," Vesta admitted. "You're +Joseph to all the sure things." + +Barring Olga Larson, the chorus was probably unanimous, Rose reflected, +in looking at it like that. They accounted for her having got a job in +the first place at Grant's expense, and a promotion so soon thereafter +to the sextette, by assuming that John Galbraith had a sentimental +interest in her. Whether his reward had been collected in advance, or +was still unpaid, was an interesting theme for debate. But that, past or +present, the reward was his actuating motive, it wouldn't occur to +anybody to question. + +There was no malice in this. Rose didn't lose caste with any of them on +account of it. But a chorus-girl is the most sentimental person in the +world. If there's anybody who really believes that love makes the world +go round, she is that one. It's love that actuates men to deeds of +heroism or of crime; it's love that makes men invest good money in +musical comedies; love that makes stars out of her undeserving sisters +in the chorus; love that is always waiting round the corner to open the +door to wealth and fame for her. + +So when Grant came back and ate her humble pie in vain, and later, when +Benedict was relegated to a place in the back line, the natural +explanation was that Galbraith was crazy about the new girl. + +Of course it set Rose all ablaze with wrath when she became aware of +this. It was precisely because she had rebelled against the theory that +love was what made the world go round, that she was here in the chorus. +Had she been content to let it make her world go round, she never would +have left Rodney. The only way she had of refuting the assumption in +this case would be by making good so demonstrably and instantaneously, +that they'd be compelled to see that her promotion had been inevitable. + +It was in this spirit, with blazing cheeks and eyes, that she attacked +the next morning's rehearsal. She was only dimly aware of Benedict out +in the hall in front, viperishly waiting for the arrival of one of the +owners to make an impassioned plea for reinstatement. Her tears or her +tantrums were matters of supremely little importance. But that John +Galbraith should see that he had promoted her on merit and on nothing +but merit, mattered enormously. + +Lacking the clue, he watched her in a sort of amused perplexity. Her way +of snatching his instructions, her almost viciously determined manner of +carrying them out, would have been natural had she been working under +the spur of some stinging rebuke, instead of under the impetus of an +unexpected promotion. + +"Don't make such hard work of it, Dane," he said at last. "You're all +right, but have a little fun out of it. There are eight hundred people +out there," he waved his arm out toward the empty hall, "who have paid +their hard-earned money to feel jolly and have a good time. If you go on +looking like that, they'll think this piece was produced by Simon +Legree." + +There came the same gleaming twinkle in his eye that had disarmed her +resentment once before, and as before, she found herself feeling rather +absurd. What mattered the microcephalic imaginings of greasy Dave and +his friends among the chorus? John Galbraith wasn't the sort of man to +get infatuated with a chorus-girl. The gleam in his eye was enough, all +by itself, to make that plain. + +So, flushing up a little, she grinned back at him, gave him a nod of +acquiescence, and fell back to her place for the beginning of the next +evolution. + +"If she smiles like that," thought John Galbraith, "she'll break up the +show." At the end of the rehearsal, he said to her, "You're doing very +well indeed, Dane. If I could have caught you ten years ago, I could +have made a dancer out of you." + +It was a very real, unqualified compliment, and as such Rose understood +it. Because, by a dancer, he meant something very different from a +prancing chorus-girl. The others giggled and exchanged glances with Dave +at the piano. They didn't understand. To them, the compliment seemed to +have been delivered with the left hand. And somehow, an amused +recognition of the fact that they didn't understand, as well as of the +fact that she did, flashed across from John Galbraith's eyes to hers. + +"Just a minute," he said as they all started to leave the stage, and +they came back and gathered in a half-circle around him. "We'll rehearse +the first act to-night with the principals. You six girls are supposed +to be young millionairesses, very up-to-date-bachelor-girl type, +intimate friends of the leading lady, who is a multi-millionairess +that's run away from home. You've all got a few lines to say. Go to Mr. +Quan and get your parts and have them up by to-night." + +At half past four that afternoon, when the regular chorus rehearsal was +over, Rose asked John Galbraith if she might speak to him for a minute. +He had one foot on a chair and was in the act of unlacing his dancing +shoes, so he seemed to be, for him, comparatively permanent. He had a +disconcerting way, she had noticed, of walking away on some business of +his own in the middle of other people's sentences, intending to come +back, no doubt, in time to hear the end of them, but forgetting to. + +"Fire away," he said, looking around at her over his shoulder. Then, +with reference to the blue-bound pair of sides she held in her hand, +"What's the matter? Isn't the part fat enough for you?" + +"Fat enough?" Rose echoed inquiringly. "Oh, you mean long enough." She +smiled in good-humored acknowledgment of his joke, and let that do for +an answer. + +John Galbraith hadn't been sure that it would be a joke to Rose. He'd +been a musical-comedy producer so long that no megalomaniacal absurdity +could take him by surprise. There were chorus-girls no doubt in this +very company, who, on being promoted to microscopic parts, would be +capable of complaining because they weren't bigger. + +"All the same," said Rose, "I'm afraid I've got to tell you that I can't +take this, and to ask you to put me back into the regular chorus." + +He wasn't immune to surprise after all, it seemed. He straightened up in +a flash and stared at her. "What on earth are you talking about?" he +asked. + +"If I have words to say, even only a few, wouldn't anybody who happened +to be in the audience, know who I was?--I mean if they knew me already." + +"Of course they would. What of it?" + +"I told you," said Rose, "the day you gave me a job, that it wasn't a +lark. I had to begin earning my own living suddenly, and without any +training for it at all, and this seemed to be the best way. That's--all +true, and it's true that no one could come and, as you say, lead me away +by the ear. Nobody's responsible for me but myself. But there are people +who'd be terribly shocked and hurt if they found out I'd gone on the +stage. They know I'm earning my own living, but they don't know how I'm +doing it. I thought that as just one of the chorus, made up and all, I'd +be safe. But with these lines to say ..." + +"Now listen to me," said John Galbraith; "listen as hard as you can. +Because when I've done talking, you will have to make up your mind. In +the first place you wouldn't be 'safe,' as you said, even in the chorus. +A make-up isn't a disguise. You will be rouged and powdered, your +eyelashes blackened, your lips reddened and so on, not to make you look +different, but to keep you looking the same under the strong lights. +You're not the sort of person to escape notice. That's the reason I made +up my mind to hire you before I knew you could dance. I saw you standing +back there in the doorway. You've got the quality about you that makes +people see you. That's one of your assets. + +"So, if you're ashamed of being recognized in this business, you'd +better get out of it altogether. On the other hand, it seems to me that +if you've got to earn your living, it's nobody's business but your own +how you do it. You're the one who'll go hungry if you don't earn it, not +these friends of yours. So, if it seems a legitimate way of earning a +living to you, if you don't feel disgraced or degraded by being in it, +you'd better forget your friends and go ahead. You've made an excellent +start; you've earned a legitimate promotion. It will mean that instead +of getting twenty dollars a week when the show opens, you will get +twenty-five. It's a long time since I've given a person without +experience a chance like that. I gave it to you because you seemed +ambitious and intelligent--the sort who'd see me through. But if you +aren't ambitious, if the game doesn't look worth playing to you, and you +aren't willing to play it for all it's worth--why, good as you are, I +don't want you at all. So that's your choice!" + +His manner wasn't quite so harsh as his words, but it convinced her that +he meant every one of them right to the foot of the letter. + +She couldn't answer for a moment. She hadn't guessed that the choice he +was going to offer her would be between taking the little part he had +given her and playing it for all it was worth, defiant of Rodney's +feelings and of the scandal of the Lake Shore Drive--and going back to +her three-dollar room this afternoon, out of a job and without even a +glimmering chance of finding another. + +"Take your time," he said. "I don't want to be a brute about it, but +look here! Try to see it my way for a minute. Here are my employers, the +owners of this piece. They're putting thousands of dollars into the +production of it. They've hired me to make that production a success. +Well, I don't know about other games, but this game's a battle. If we +win, it will be because we put every bit of steam and every bit of +confidence we've got into it and _make_ it win. That goes for me, and +for the principals, and right down through to the last girl in the +chorus. Every night there'll be a new audience out there that you will +have to fight--shake up out of the grouch they get when they pay for +their tickets; persuade to laugh and loosen up and come and play with +you. + +"Will you be able to do your share, do you suppose, if you're slinking +around, afraid of being recognized? We don't care whether your pussy-cat +friends get their fur rubbed the wrong way or not. The only thing we +care about is putting this show across. Well, if you feel the way we do +about it, if you can make it the one thing you do care about, too--why, +come along. Let the pussy-cats go ..." He finished with a snap of his +fingers. + +"The only one that really matters isn't a pussy-cat," said Rose, with a +reluctant wide smile, "and--he'd agree with you altogether, if he didn't +know you were talking to me. And I'm really very much obliged to you." + +"You will come along then?" + +"Yes," said Rose, "I'll come." + +"No flutters?" questioned Galbraith. "No eleventh-hour repentance?" + +"No," said Rose, "I'll see it through." + +John Galbraith went away satisfied. Rose had the same power that he had, +of making a simple unemphatic statement irresistibly convincing. When +she said that she would go through, he knew that unless struck by +lightning, she would. But there had been something at once ironic and +tender about the girl's smile, when she had spoken of the only one who +really mattered, that he couldn't account for. Who was the only one that +really mattered, anyway? Her husband? He didn't think it likely. Young +women who quarreled with their husbands and ran away from them to go on +the stage, wouldn't, as far as his experience went, be likely to smile +over them like that. More probably a brother--a younger brother, +perhaps, fiercely proud as such a boy would be of such a sister. + +She certainly had sand, that girl. He was mighty glad his bluff that he +would put her out of the chorus altogether, unless she took the little +part in the sextette, had worked. He'd have felt rather a fool if she +had called it. + +Of course the thing that had got Rose was the echo, through everything +John Galbraith had said, of Rodney's own philosophy; his dear, big, +lusty, rather remorseless way. And now again, as before when she had +left him, it was his view of life that was recoiling upon his own head. + +She was really grateful to Galbraith. What had she left Rodney for, +except to build a self for herself; to acquire, through whatever pains +might be the price of it, a life that didn't derive from him; that was, +at the core of it, her own? Yet here, right at the beginning of her +pilgrimage, she'd have turned down the by-path of self-sacrifice; have +begun ordering her life with reference to Rodney, rather than herself, +if John Galbraith hadn't headed her back. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE GIRL WITH THE BAD VOICE + + +The Girl Up-stairs had quite a miscellaneous lot of plot; indeed a plot +fancier might have detected nearly all the famous strains in its +lineage. Its foci were Sylvia Huntington, the beautiful +multi-millionairess, and Richard Benham, nephew of Minim, the Cosmetic +King and head of the Talcum Trust. Sylvia, tired of being sought for her +wealth, and yearning to be loved for herself alone, has run away to +Bohemia and installed herself in an attic over a studio occupied by two +penniless artists, one a poet, the other a musician. Only they aren't +penniless any more, having leaped to wealth and fame with an immensely +successful musical comedy they have just written. And, like Nanki Poo, +the musician isn't really a musician, but is the talented, rebellious +nephew of the Cosmetic King, none other than Dick Benham himself, a +truant from his tyrannical uncle's determination to make him into a +rouge and talcum salesman. He falls in love with Sylvia, not knowing her +as Sylvia, of course, but only as the girl up-stairs, a poor little +wretch to whom in the goodness of his heart, he is giving singing +lessons. And she falls in love with him, knowing him neither as Dick +Benham, nor as the successful composer (because his authorship of the +musical comedy has been kept a secret from her), but only as a poor +struggling musician. Poor Dick's affections are temporarily led astray +by the mercenary seductions of the leading lady in his opera, who has +learned the secret of his true identity and vast wealth, and means to +marry him under the cloak of disinterested affection. He gets bad advice +from his poet friend, too, who has dishonorable designs on the girl +up-stairs and so warns Dick against throwing himself away on a nobody, +of, possibly, doubtful virtue. It is, of course, essential to Sylvia +that Dick should ask her to marry him before he learns who she really +is, in order that she may be sure it isn't for her wealth that he is +seeking her. + +This was the general lie of the land, though the thing was complicated, +of course, by minor intrigues, as for instance in the first act, when +Minim, the uncle, came to inquire of the successful composer what his +terms would be for introducing a song into his opera, extolling the +merits of Minim's newest brand of liquid face-powder. Then there was the +comic detective, whom Sylvia's frantic father had given the job of +finding her, and who, considering that he was the typical idiot +detective of musical comedy, came unaccountably close to doing it. + +Then in the second act, there was the confusion produced by the fact +that Dick and his poet friend gave a midnight party on the roof, unaware +of the fact that Sylvia made it a practise, during these hot nights, to +crawl out from her attic, on to this same roof and sleep there. And on +this particular night, she had invited her six bachelor-girl friends, +who were in her confidence, to come and share its hospitalities with +her. The mutual misunderstandings, by this time piled mountain high, +were projected into the third act by the not entirely unprecedented +device of a mask ball in the palatial Fifth Avenue mansion of Sylvia's +father, in celebration of her return home--a ball whose invitation list +was precisely coincident, even down to the detective, with the persons +who had appeared in the first two acts. One minute before the last +curtain, Dick and Sylvia manage to thread their way out of the tangle of +scandal and misconception, and satisfy each other as to the +disinterested quality of their mutual adoration, falling into each +other's arms just as the curtain starts down. + +It was not, of course, until after a good many rehearsals that Rose +could have given a connected account of it like that. They worked for +three hours on this first occasion, merely getting through the first +act--a miserable three hours, too, for Rose, owing to a little +misfortune that befell her right at the beginning. + +The glow of determination Galbraith had inspired her with, to put her +own shoulder to the wheel and do her very topmost best, for the one +great desideratum, the success of the show, had kept her studying her +little handful of lines long after she supposed she knew them perfectly. +They weren't very satisfactory lines to study--just the smallest of +conversational small change, little ejaculations of delight or dismay, +acquiescence or dissent. But the trouble with them was, they were, for +the most part, exactly the last expressions that a smart young woman of +the type she was supposed to represent would use. + +So, remembering what Galbraith had said about everybody down to the last +chorus-man doing the best he knew for the success of the show, Rose +sought him out, for a minute, just before the rehearsal began, and asked +if she might change two of her lines a little. + +Galbraith grinned at her, turned and beckoned to the baby-faced man in +spectacles who stood a dozen paces away. "Oh, Mr. Mills!" he called. +"Can you come over here a minute?" + +"He's the author," Galbraith then explained to Rose, "and we can't +change this book of his without his permission." + +Then, "This is Miss Dane of the sextette," he said to Mills, "and she +tells me she'd like to make one or two changes in her lines." + +It didn't need a sensitive ear to detect a note of mockery in this +speech, though Galbraith's face was perfectly solemn. But the face of +the author went a delicate pink all over, and his round eyes stared. "My +God!" he said. + +The exclamation was explosive enough to catch the ear of an extremely +pretty young woman who stood near by with her hands in her pockets. She +wore a Burberry raglan and an entirely untrimmed soft felt hat, and she +came over unceremoniously and joined the group. + +"Miss Devereux," said the author, with hard-fetched irony, "here's a +chorus-girl in perfect agreement with you. She's got about six lines to +say, and she wants to change two of them." + +"What are your changes, Dane?" Galbraith asked. + +Queerly enough, the curt seriousness of his speech was immensely +grateful to her--suggested that she perhaps hadn't been, wholly anyhow, +the object of his derision before. + +"I only thought," said Rose, "that if instead of saying, 'My gracious, +Sylvia!' I said, 'Sylvia, _dear_!' or something like that, it would +sound a little more natural. And if I said, 'I _do_ wish, Sylvia' +instead of, 'I wish to goodness, Sylvia ...'" + +She had said it all straight to the author. + +"I suppose," he said, sneering very hard, "that your own personal +knowledge of the way society women talk is what leads you to believe +that your phrases are better than mine?" + +"Yes," said Rose, serenely matter-of-fact, "it is." + +Sarcasm is an uncertain sort of pop-gun. You never can tell from which +end it's going to go off. + +"I don't know," said Miss Devereux, turning now a deadly smile on him, +"whether Miss--what's-her-name--agrees with me or not. But, do you know, +I agree with her." + +"Oh, I don't care a _damn_!" said Mr. Harold Mills. "Go as far as you +like. I don't recognize the piece now. What it'll be when you--butchers +get through with it ...!" He flung out his hands and stalked away. + +"Go find Mr. Quan," said Galbraith to Rose, "and tell him to mark those +changes of yours in the book. Tell him I said so." + +It was, though, a pretty unsatisfactory victory. Everybody was grinning; +for the tale spread fast, and while Rose knew it wasn't primarily at +her, her sensations were those of a perfectly serious, well-meaning +child, in adult company, who, in all innocence has just made a remark +which, for some reason incomprehensible to him, has convulsed one member +of it with fury, and the others with laughter. More or less she could +imagine where the joke lay. Harold had evidently been quarreling with +pretty much all of the principals, over more or less necessary changes +in his precious text, until everybody was rather on edge about it, +loaded and primed for all sorts of explosions; when, cheerfully along +came Rose, a perfectly green young chorus-girl, unsuspectingly carrying +the match for the mine, or the straw for the camel, whichever way you +wanted to put it. + +She wouldn't have minded the way she had blundered into the focus of +public attention, if, in other particulars, the rehearsal had been +going well with her. Unluckily, though, she started off wrong foot +foremost in the very first of their numbers, with a mistake that snarled +up everything and brought down an explosion of wrath from Galbraith. +Even if she'd been trying, he groaned, to make mistakes, he didn't see +how she'd managed that one. But the real nightmare didn't begin till the +first of her scenes with Sylvia, where she had to talk. + +She'd said her lines over about a thousand times apiece, and practised +their inflection and phrasing in as many ways as she could think of, but +she had neglected to memorize her cues. Not altogether, of course; she +thought she'd learned them, but they were terribly scanty little cues +anyway, just a single word, usually, and never more than two, and +nothing short of absolutely automatic memorization was any good. So she +sat serene through a five-second stage wait while Quan frantically spun +the pages of his book to find the place--he ought to have been following +of course, but he'd yielded to the temptation of trying to do something +else at the same time and had got lost--and then dry-throated, incapable +of a sound for a couple of seconds more--hours they seemed--after she +had been identified as the culprit who had failed to come in on a cue. + +The sight of the author out in the hall invoking his gods to witness +that this girl who had presumed to change his lines, was an idiot +incapable of articulate speech, brought her out of her daze. But even +then she couldn't get anything quite right. There seemed to be no golden +mean between the bellow of a fireman and a tone which Galbraith assured +her wouldn't be audible three rows back. And when they came to one of +the lines she'd been allowed to change, in her panic over the thing, she +mixed the two versions impartially together into a sputter of words that +meant nothing at all, whereupon the author, out at the back of the hall, +laughed maniacally. + +She would have gone on stuttering at it until she got it straight, if +Galbraith hadn't put her out of her misery by striding over, snatching +the book from Quan, and reading the line himself. She hadn't anything +more to say in the first act, and she managed to get through the rest of +the song numbers without disaster, if equally without confidence or +dash. She felt as limp as if she had been boiled and put through the +clothes-wringer. And when, as he dismissed the rehearsal Galbraith told +her to wait a minute, she expected nothing less than ignominious +reduction to the ranks. + +"That matter of putting your voice over, Dane," he said, to her +amazement quite casually, "is just a question of thinking where you want +it to go. If you'll imagine a target against the back wall over there, +and will your voice to hit it, whatever direction you're speaking in, +and however softly you speak, you will be heard. If you forget the +target and think you're talking to the person on the stage you're +supposed to be talking to, you won't be heard. Say your lines over to me +now, without raising your voice or looking out there. But keep the +target in mind." + +Rose said all the lines she had in the whole three acts. It didn't take +a minute. He nodded curtly. "You've got the idea." He added, just as she +turned away, "You were quite right to suggest those changes. They're an +improvement." + +That rehearsal marked the nadir of Rose's career at the Globe. From then +on, she was steadily in the ascendent, not only in John Galbraith's good +graces, which was all of course that mattered. She won, it appeared, a +sort of tolerant esteem from some of the principals, and even the owners +themselves spoke to her pleasantly. + +They entertained her vastly, now that a confidence in her ability to do +her own part left her leisure to look around a bit. The contrast between +the two leading women, Patricia Devereux, who played the title part, and +little Anabel Astor, who played the mercenary seductress, was a piquant +source of speculation. As far as speech and manners went, Miss Devereux +might have been a born citizen of the world Rose had been naturalized +into by her marriage with Rodney; in fact, she reminded her rather +strikingly of Harriet. She was cool, brusk, hard finished, and, as was +evident from Galbraith's manifest satisfaction with her, thoroughly +workmanly and competent. Yet she never seemed really to work in +rehearsal. She gave no more than a bare outline of what she was going to +do. But the outline, in all its salient angles, was perfectly +indicated. She rehearsed in her ordinary street clothes, with her hat +on, and as often as not, with a wrist-bag in one hand. She neither +danced, sang, nor acted. But she had her part letter perfect before any +of the other principals. She never missed a cue, and though she sang off +the top of her voice, and let the confines of a very scant little tailor +skirt mark the limits of her dancing, she sang her songs in perfect +tempo and always made it completely clear to Galbraith and the musical +director, just how much of the stage in every direction, her dances were +going to occupy and precisely the _tempi_ at which they were to be +executed. In a word, if her work had no more emotional value than a +mechanical drawing, it did have the precision of one. + +Rose mightn't have appreciated tins, had she not seen and admired Miss +Devereux from the front in a production she and Rodney had been two or +three times to see the season before. + +Little Anabel Astor presented as striking a contrast to all this as it +would be possible to imagine. She, too, had attained a good deal of +celebrity in the musical-comedy world--was to be one of the features of +the cast. She'd come up from the ranks of the chorus. She'd been one of +the ponies, years ago, in some of George M. Cohan's productions, and she +was still just a chorus-girl. But a chorus-girl raised to the third, or +fourth, or, if you like, the _n_th power. She had an electric grin, and +a perfectly boundless vitality, which she spent as freely on rehearsals +as on performances. She always dressed for rehearsals just as the chorus +did, in a middy-blouse and bloomers, and she worked as hard as they did, +and even more ungrudgingly. + +She was a pretty little thing, with nothing very feminine about +her--even her voice had a harsh boyish quality--and she never looked +prettier to Rose than when, her face flushed with an hour's honest toil, +she would wipe the copious sweat of it off with her sleeve, and panting, +look up with a smile at John Galbraith and an expectant expression, +waiting for his next command, which reminded Rose of the look of a +terrier alert for the stick his master means to throw for him. Her +speech was unaffectedly that of a Milwaukee Avenue gamin, and it served +adequately and admirably as a vehicle for the expression of her emotions +and ideas. + +She formed her likes and dislikes with a complete disregard of the +social or professional importance of the objects of them. She took an +immediate liking to Rose; gave her some valuable hints on dancing, took +to calling her "dearie" before the end of the second rehearsal and, with +her arm around her, confided to her in terms of blood-curdling +profanity, her opinion of Stewart Lester, the tenor, who played the part +of Dick Benham in the piece. + +The queer thing was that she and Patricia were on the best of terms. +They didn't compete, that was it, Rose supposed, and they were both good +enough cosmopolites to bridge across the antipodal distances between +their respective traditions and environments. Patricia hated the tenor +as bitterly as Anabel. And, in her own way, she was as pleasantly +friendly to Rose. There were no endearments or caresses, naturally, but +her brusk nods of greeting and farewell seemed to have real good feeling +behind them. + +The men principals--this was rather a surprise to Rose--weren't nearly +so pleasant nor so friendly. Most of them professed to be totally +unaware of her existence and the one or two who showed an +awareness--Freddy France, who played the comic detective, was chief of +these offenders--did it in a way that brought the fighting blood into +her cheeks. + +My astronomical figure for the expression of Rose's rise in her +profession is, in one important particular, misleading. There was +nothing precalculable about it, as there is about the solemn swing of +the stars. The impetus and direction of Rose's career derived from two +incidents that might just as well not have happened--two of the flukiest +of small chances. + +The first of these chances concerned itself with Olga Larson and her bad +voice. Olga, as I think I have told you, was one of the sextette. And, +oddly enough, she owed her membership in this little group of quasi +principals, to her voice and nothing else. Because it was a bad voice +only when she talked. When she sang, it had a gorgeous thrilling ring to +it that made Patricia Devereux, when she heard it, clench her hands and +narrow her eyes. She'd never been taught what to do with it, but then, +for what Galbraith wanted of her she needed no teaching. Her ear was +infallible; let her hear a tune once and she could reproduce it +accurately, squarely up to time, squarely, always, in the middle of the +pitch. When she opened her rather dainty-looking mouth and sang, she +could give you across the footlights the impression that at least four +first-class sopranos were going uncommon strong. She hadn't a salient or +commonplace enough sort of beauty to have singled her out from the +chorus and she was no better a dancer than passable. But none of the +girls who would be picked out by a committee of automobile salesmen as +the prettiest and the best dancers in the chorus could sing a note, and +the sextette would have been dumb without her voice. + +It was natural enough that Patricia didn't like it. She owed her own +position as a leading light-opera soprano to the cultivation to its +highest possible perfection of a distinctly second-rate voice, to a +precise knowledge of its limitations and to a most scrupulous economy in +its effects. Inevitably, then, the raw splendors that Olga Larson +dispensed so prodigally gave Patricia the creeps. + +Inevitably, too, without any conscious malice about it, she made up her +clear, hard little mind the moment she heard Olga talk, that she was +utterly impossible for the sextette. "Really, my dear man," she told +Galbraith after the first rehearsal, "you'll have to find some one else. +American audiences will stand a good deal, I know, in the way of +atrocious speech, but positively she'll be hooted. They'll all sound +frightful enough, especially because that Dane girl, if that's her name, +talks like a lady, but this one ...!" She gave a cruelly adequate little +imitation of Olga's delivery of one of her lines. "Like some one who +doesn't know how, trying to play the slide trombone," she commented. + +Galbraith couldn't pretend that she exaggerated the horrors of it, but +explained why the girl was indispensable. The explanation didn't please +Patricia any too well, either. + +"Sing!" she cried hotly. "But she sings detestably!" + +"No doubt," Galbraith admitted, "but she makes a great big noise always +on the right note, and that's what that bunch of penny whistlers can't +do without. Give her a little time," he concluded diplomatically, "and +I'll try to teach her." + +"It can't be taught," said Patricia. "That's too much even for you." + +So it happened that when Rose came out of her own nightmare, got her +breath and found leisure to look around, she found some one else whose +troubles weren't so transitory. The little scene in the first act, +between Sylvia and the sextette, was held up again and again, endlessly, +it seemed to Rose,--and what must it have seemed to the poor +victim?--while Galbraith bellowed Larson's lines after her, sometimes in +grotesque imitation of her own inflections, sometimes in what was meant +as a pattern for her to follow. The girl whose ear was so wonderfully +sensitive to pitch and rhythm, was simply deaf, it seemed, to the +subtleties of inflection. She reduced Galbraith to helpless wrath, in +her panic, by mistaking now and again, his imitations for his models. +The chorus tittered; the spectators suffocated their guffaws as well as +they could. Patricia grew more and more acutely and infuriatingly ironic +all the while. + +Evidently Galbraith didn't mean to be a brute about it. He began every +one of these tussles to improve her reading of a line, with a gentleness +that would have done credit to a kinder-gartener. But, after three +attempts, each more ominously gentle and deliberate than the last, his +temper would suddenly fly all to pieces. "--No--no--no!" he would roar +at her, and the similes his exasperation would supply him with, for a +description of what her speech was like, were as numerous as the acids +in a chemical laboratory; and they all bit and burned just as hard. + +Rose looked on with rather tepid feelings. She sympathized with +Galbraith on the whole. The poor man was doing his best; and the girl, +queerly, didn't seem to care. She confronted him in a sort of stockish +stupidity, saying her lines, when he told her to try again, with the +same frightful whang he was doing his best to correct, so that he was +justified, Rose felt, in accusing her of not trying, or even listening +to him. + +It was in the dressing-room one night, after one of these rehearsals, +that she caught a different view of the situation. She sat down on a +bench to unlace her shoes and looked straight into Olga Larson's face--a +face sunken with a despair that turned Rose cold all over. The tearless +tragic eyes were staring, without recognition, straight into Rose's own. +It must be with faces like this that people mounted the rails on the +high bridge in Lincoln Park, intent on leaving a world that had become +intolerable. Packed in all around her in the inadequate dressing-room, +the other girls were chattering, squealing, scrambling into their +clothes, as unaware of her tense motionless figure, as if it had been a +mere inanimate lump. She couldn't have been more alone if she had been +sitting out on the rock of Juan Fernandez. + +Rose invented various pretexts to delay her own dressing until the other +girls were gone. She could no more have abandoned that hopeless creature +there, than she could have left a person drowning. When they had the +room to themselves, she sat down on the bench beside her. + +"You're all right," she said, feeling rather embarrassed and inadequate +and not knowing just how to begin. "I'm going to help you." + +"It's always like this," the girl said. "It's no use. He'll put me back +in the chorus again." + +"Not if I can help it," Rose said. "But the first thing to do is to put +on your clothes. Then we'll go out and get something to eat." + +Even that little beginning involved a struggle--a conscious exertion of +all the power Rose possessed. She learned, for the first time, what the +weight of an immense melancholy inertia like that can be. The girl was +like one paralyzed. She was willing enough to talk. She told Rose the +whole story of her life; not as one making confidences to a friend; +rather with the curious detachment of a melancholy spectator discussing +an unfortunate life she had no concern with. + +She knew how good her voice was, and, equally, how badly it needed +training. She'd had, always, a passionate desire to sing and a belief in +her possibilities. If she could get a chance, she could succeed. She'd +undergone heartbreaking privations, trying to save money enough out of +her earnings at one form of toil after another, to take lessons. But, +repeatedly, these small savings had, by some disaster, been swept away: +stolen once, by a worthless older brother; absorbed on another occasion +by her mother's fatal illness. Two years ago she had drifted into the +chorus, but had been altogether unlucky in her various ventures. She +wasn't naturally graceful--had been slow learning to dance. Again and +again, she'd been dropped at the end of three or four weeks of rehearsal +(gratuitous of course) and seen another girl put in her place. When this +hadn't happened, the shows she had been in had failed after a few weeks' +life. + +When Galbraith had put her into the sextette in _The Girl Up-stairs_, a +hope, just about dead, had been awakened. She'd at last learned to dance +well enough to escape censure and she had seen for herself how +indispensable her singing voice was to the group. And then it had +appeared she'd have to talk! And, inexplicably to herself, her talking +wasn't right. The thing had just been another mirage. It was hopeless. +Galbraith would put her back into the chorus--drop her, likely enough, +altogether. + +The thing that at first exasperated Rose and later, as she came vaguely +to understand it, aroused both her pity and her determination, was the +girl's strange, dully fatalistic acquiescence in it all. The sort of +circumstances that in Rose herself set the blood drumming through her +arteries, keyed her will to the very highest pitch, quickened her brain, +made her feel in some inexplicable way, confident and irresistible, laid +on this girl a paralyzing hand. It wasn't her fault that she didn't meet +her difficulties half-way with a vicious, driving offensive--rout them, +demoralize them. It was her tragedy. + +"All right," Rose apostrophized them grimly. "This time you're up +against me." + +"Look here!" she said to Olga, when the story was told (this was across +the table in the dingy lunch-room where, as Doris Dane, she had had her +first meal, and most of her subsequent ones), "look here, and listen to +what I'm going to tell you. I know what I'm talking about. You're going +to learn to say your lines before to-morrow's rehearsal, so that Mr. ... +So that Galbraith won't stop you once." (This was a trick of speech that +came hard to Rose, but she was gradually learning it.) "We're going up +to my room now, and I'm going to teach you. We've got lots of time. +Rehearsal to-morrow isn't till twelve o'clock. You're going to stay in +the sextette, and when the piece opens, you're going to make a hit." + +She hesitated a moment, then added in the same blunt matter-of-fact way, +"You're one of the most beautiful women in Chicago. Did you know that? +Dressed right and with your hair done right, you could make them stare. +Have you finished your coffee? Then come along. Here! Give me your part. +You don't want to lose it." + +For the girl, pitiably, almost ludicrously, was staring at Rose in a +sort of somnambulistic daze. She hadn't been hypnotized, but she might +about as well have been, for any real resistance her mind, or her will, +could offer to her new friend's vibrant confidence. + +She went with Rose up to the little three-dollar room. Rose put her into +a chair, sat down opposite her, took the first phrase of her first +speech, and said it very slowly, very quietly, half a dozen times. That +was at half past eleven o'clock at night. By midnight, Olga could say +those first three words, if not to Rose's complete satisfaction, at +least a lot better. She went on and finished the sentence. They worked +straight through the night, except that two or three times the girl +broke down; said it was hopeless. She got up once and said that she was +going home, whereupon Rose locked the door and put the key in her +stocking. She sulked once, and for fifteen minutes wouldn't say a word. +But by seven o'clock in the morning, when they went back to the +lunch-room and ate an enormous breakfast, Olga's sluggish blood was +fired at last. It was a profane thought, but you _could_ take the Fatal +Sisters by the hair and coerce a change in the pattern they were +weaving. + +And Rose, by that time, by the plain brute force of necessity, was a +teacher of phonetics. She'd discovered how she made sounds herself and +had, with the aid of a hand mirror, developed a rough-and-ready +technique for demonstrating how it was done. She remembered, with bitter +regret, a course she had dozed through at the university, dreaming about +the half-back, which, had she only listened to the professor instead, +would be doing her solid service now. Had there been other courses like +that, she wondered vaguely? Had the education she had spent fifteen +years or so on an actual relation to life after all? It was a startling +idea. + +She walked Olga out to the park and back at seven-thirty, and at eight +they were up in her room again. They raided the delicatessen at eleven +o'clock, and made an exiguous meal on the plunder. And at twelve, husky +of voice, but indomitable of mind, they, with the others, confronted +Galbraith upon the stage in North End Hall. + +"Do you suppose," Olga said during the preliminary bustle of getting +started, "that he's put any one else in my part already?" + +It was a fear Rose had entertained, but had avoided suggesting to her +pupil. + +"I don't believe so," she said. "If he has, I'll talk to him." + +"No, you won't!" said Olga. "I'll talk to him myself." + +There was a ring to that decision that did Rose's heart good. It took a +long time to get that northern blood on fire, but when you did, you +could count on its not going cold again overnight. + +It got pretty exciting of course, as the scene between Sylvia and the +sextette drew near, and when it came, Rose could hardly manage her own +first line--hung over it a second, indeed, before she could make her +voice work at all, and drew a sharp look of inquiry from Galbraith. But +on Olga's first cue, her line was spoken with no hesitation at all, and +in tone, pitch and inflection, it was almost a phonographic copy of the +voice that had served it for a model. + +There was a solid two seconds of silence. For once in her life Patricia +Devereux had missed a cue! + +John Galbraith had been an acrobat as well as a dancer, and he was +quick on his feet. He had just turned, unexpectedly, an intellectual +somersault, but he landed cleanly and without a stagger. "Come, Miss +Devereux," he said, "that's your line." And the scene went on. + +But when, about four o'clock that afternoon, the rehearsal was over, +Galbraith called Olga out to him and allowed himself a long incredulous +stare at her. "Will you tell me, Larson," he asked, "why in the name of +Heaven, if you could do that, you didn't do it yesterday?" + +"I couldn't do it yesterday," she said. "Dana taught me." + +"Taught you!" he echoed. "Beginning after last night's rehearsal?... +Dane!" he called to Rose, who had been watching a little anxiously to +see what would happen. + +"You've learned it very well indeed," he said with a nod of dismissal to +Olga, as Rose came up. "Don't try to change it. Stick to what you've +got." + +Then, to Rosa, "Larson tells me you taught her. How did you do it?" + +"Why, I just--taught her," said Rosa. "I showed her how I said each +line, and I kept on showing her until she could do it." + +"How long did it take you--all night?" + +"All the time there's been since last rehearsal," said Rosa, "except for +three meals." + +"Good God!" said Galbraith. "Devereux said it couldn't be done, and I +agreed with her. Well, live and learn. Look here! Will you teach the +others--the other four in the sextette? I'll see you're paid for it." + +"Why, yes,--of course," said Rose, hesitating a little. + +"Oh, I don't mean overnight," he said, "but mornings--between +rehearsals--whenever you can." + +"I wasn't thinking of that," said Rose. "I was just wondering if they'd +want to be taught--I mean, by another chorus-girl, you know." + +"They'll want to be taught if they want to keep their jobs," said +Galbraith. And then, to her astonishment, and also perhaps to his, for +the thing was radically out of the etiquette of the occasion, he reached +out and shook hands with her. "I'm very much obliged to you," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MRS. GOLDSMITH'S TASTE + + +If there was a profession in the world which Rose had never either idly +or seriously considered as a possible one for herself, that of a teacher +was it. And yet, the first money she ever earned in her life was the +twenty dollars the management paid her for teaching the other four girls +in the sextette to say their lines. She was a born teacher, too. And the +born teacher is a rare bird. + +One must know something in the first place, of course, before one can +teach it--a fact that has resulted in the fitting of an enormous number +of square pegs into round holes. Most of the people in the world who are +trying to teach, are those whose aptitude is for learning. But the +scholar's temper and the teacher's are antipodal; a salient, vivid +personality that can command attention, the unconscious will to +conquer--to enforce (a very different thing from the wish to do these +things) that is the _sine qua non_ for a real teacher. And that, of +course, was Rose all over. + +Those four sulky, rather supercilious chorus-girls, coming to Rose under +a threat of dismissal, for lessons in the one last thing that a +free-born American will submit to dictation about, might not want to +learn, nor mean to learn, but they couldn't help learning. You couldn't +be unaware of Rose and, being aware of her, you couldn't resist doing +things as she wanted you to. + +Informally, too, she taught them other things than speech. "Here, +Waldron!" Galbraith would say. "This is no cake-walk. All you've got to +do is to cross to that chair and sit down in it like a lady. Show her +how to do it, Dane." And Rose, with her good-humored disarming smile at +the infuriated Waldron, would go ahead and do it. + +I won't pretend that she was a favorite with the other members of the +sextette, barring Olga. But she managed to avoid being cordially hated, +which was a very solid personal triumph. + +I have said that there were two small incidents destined to have a +powerful influence at this time, in Rose's life. One of them I have told +you about--the chance that led her to teach Olga Larson to talk. The +other concerned itself with a certain afternoon frock in a Michigan +Avenue shop. + +The owners of _The Girl Up-stairs_ were very inadequately experienced in +the business of putting on musical comedies. Galbraith spoke of them as +amateurs, and couldn't, really, have described them better. Your +professional gambler--for musical-comedy producing is an especially +sporting form of gambling and nothing else--assesses his chances in +advance, decides coolly whether they are worth taking or not, and then, +with a steely indifference awaits the event. The amateur, on the +contrary, is always fluttering between an insane confidence and a +shuddering despair; between a reckless disregard of money and a foolish +attempt to save it. It had been in one of their hot fits that the owners +of _The Girl Up-stairs_ had retained Galbraith. The news item Rose had +read had not exceeded truth in saying that he was one of the three +greatest directors in the country. They couldn't have got him out to +Chicago at all but for the chance that he was, just then, at the end of +a long-time contract with the Shumans and holding off for better terms +before he signed a new one. The owners were staggered at the prices they +had to pay him, at that, but they recovered and were still blowing warm +when they authorized him to engage Devereux, Stewart, Astor and McGill +(McGill was the chief comedian, the Cosmetic King) for all of these were +high-priced people. + +But by the time the question of costumes came up, they were shivering in +a perfect ague of apprehension. Was there no limit to the amount they +were to be asked to spend? This figure that Galbraith indicated as the +probable cost of having a first-class brigand in New York design the +costumes and a firm of pirates in the same neighborhood execute them, +was simply insane. New York managers might be boobs enough to submit to +such an extortion, but they, believe them, were not. Many of the +costumes could be bought, ready made, on State Street or Michigan +Avenue. Some of the fancy things could be executed by a competent +wardrobe mistress, if some one would give her the ideas. And ideas--one +could pick them up anywhere. Mrs. Goldsmith, now,--she was the wife of +the senior of the two owners--had splendid taste and would be glad to +put it at their service. There was no reason why she should not at once +take the sextette down-town and fit them out with their dresses. + +Galbraith shrugged his shoulders, but made no further complaint. It was, +he admitted, as they had repeatedly pointed out, their own money. So a +rendezvous was made between Mrs. Goldsmith and the sextette for +Lessing's store on Michigan Avenue at three o'clock on an afternoon when +Galbraith was to be busy with the principals. He might manage to drop in +before they left to cast his eye over and approve the selection. + +It was with some rather uncomfortable misgivings that Rose set out to +revisit a part of town so closely associated with the first year of her +married life. The particular shop wasn't, luckily, one that she had +patronized in that former incarnation. But it was in the same block with +a half dozen that were, and she hadn't been east of Clark Street since +the day Otto had driven her to the Polk Street Station. + +The day was cold and blustery--a fact that she was grateful for, as it +gave her an excuse for wearing a thick white veil, which was almost as +good as a mask. It was with a rather breathless excitement that +persisted in feeling like guilt--her heart wouldn't have beaten any +faster, she believed, if she had just robbed a jewelry store and were +walking away with the swag in her pocket--that she debouched out of Van +Buren Street, around the corner of the Chicago Club, and into the +avenue. Unconsciously, she had been expecting to meet every one she +knew, beginning with Frederica, in the course of the two blocks or so +she had to walk. Very naturally, she didn't catch even a glimpse of any +one she even remotely knew. Suppose there should be any one in the +store! But this, she realized, wasn't likely. + +It wasn't a really smart shop. It paid an enormous rent there in that +neighborhood in order to pretend to be, and the gowns on the wax figures +in its windows, were taken on faith by pleasurably scandalized +pedestrians as the very latest scream of fashion. The prices on these +confections were always in the process of a violent reduction, as large +exclamatory placards grievously testified. The legend eighty-eight +dollars crossed out in red lines, with thirty-nine seventy-five written +below, for a sample. The most exclusive smartness for the economy-loving +multitude. This was the slogan. + +Rose, arriving promptly at the hour agreed on, had a wait of fifteen +minutes before any of her sisters of the sextette, or Mrs. Goldsmith +arrived. She told the suave manager that she was waiting for friends, +but this didn't deter him from employing a magnificent wave of the hand +to summon one of the saleswomen and consigning Rose almost tenderly, to +her care. He didn't know her, but he knew that that ulster of hers had +come straight over from Paris, had cost not less than two hundred +dollars, and had been selected by an excellently discriminating eye; and +that was enough for him. + +"I don't want anything just now," Rose told the saleswoman. But she +hadn't, in these few weeks of Clark Street, lost the air of one who will +buy if she sees anything worth buying. In fact, the saleswoman thought, +correctly, that she knew her and was in for a shock a little later when +Mrs. Goldsmith and the other five members of the sextette arrived. + +Meanwhile, she showed Rose the few really smart things they had in the +store--a Poiret evening gown, a couple of afternoon frocks from Jennie, +and so on. There wasn't much, she admitted, it being just between +seasons. Their Palm Beach things weren't in yet. + +Rose made a few appreciative, but decidedly respect-compelling comments, +and faithfully kept one eye on the door. + +The rest of the sextette arrived in a pair and a trio. One of them +squealed, "Hello, Dane!" The saleswoman got her shock on seeing Rose nod +an acknowledgment of this greeting and just about that time, they heard +Mrs. Goldsmith explaining who she was and the nature of her errand, to +the manager. The necessary identifications got themselves made somehow. +They weren't in any sense introductions, everybody in the store felt +that plainly. Mrs. Goldsmith was touching the skirts of musical comedy +with a very long pair of tongs. There was absolutely no connection, +social or personal, between herself and the young persons who were to +wear the frocks she was going to buy. + +She stood them up and stared at them through her eye-glasses, discussed +their various physical idiosyncrasies with candor, and, one by one, +packed them off to try on haphazard selections from the mounds which +three industrious saleswomen piled up before her. You couldn't deny her +the possession of a certain force of character, for not one of the six +girls uttered a word of suggestion or of protest. + +And the sort of gowns she was exclaiming over with delight and ordering +put into the heap of possibilities, were horrible enough to have drawn a +protest from the wax figures in the windows. The more completely the +fundamental lines of a frock were disguised with sartorial scroll-saw +work, the more successful this lady felt it to be. An ornament, to Mrs. +Goldsmith, did not live up to its possibilities, unless it in turn were +decorated with ornaments of its own; like the fleas on the fleas on the +dog. + +It is a tribute to one of the qualities that made John Galbraith a +successful director, that Rose spent a miserable half-hour worrying over +these selections of the wife of the principal owner of the show, feeling +she ought to put up some sort of fight and hardly deterred by the patent +futility of such a course. To rest her esthetic senses from the delirium +of fussiness that was giving Mrs. Goldsmith so much pleasure, she began +thinking about that Poiret frock--the superb simple audacity of it! It +had been made by an artist who knew where to stop. And he had stopped +rather incredibly soon. Just suppose ... And then her eyes lighted up, +gazed thoughtfully out the window across the wind-swept desert of the +avenue, and, presently she grinned--widely, contentedly. + +For the next hour and a half, during the intervals of her own trying on, +she entertained herself very happily with the day-dream that she herself +had a commission to design the costumes for _The Girl Up-stairs_. She +had always done that more or less, she realized, when she went to +musical-comedy shows with Rodney, especially when they were badly +costumed. But this time she did it a good deal more vividly, partly +because her interest in the piece was more intense, partly because her +imagination had a blank canvas to work on. + +All the while, like Sister Anne in the tower, she kept one eye on the +door and prayed for the arrival of John Galbraith. + +He came in just as Mrs. Goldsmith finished her task--just when, by a +process of studious elimination, every passable thing in the store had +been discarded and the twelve most utterly hopeless ones--two for each +girl--laid aside for purchase. The girls were despatched to put on the +evening frocks first, and were then paraded before the director. + +He was a diplomat as I have said (possibly I spoke of him before as an +acrobat. It comes to the same thing), and he was quick on his feet. +Rose, watching his face very closely, thought that for just a split +second, she caught a gleam of ineffable horror. But it was gone so +quickly she could almost have believed that she had been mistaken. He +didn't say much about the costumes, but he said it so promptly and +adequately that Mrs. Goldsmith beamed with pride. She sent the girls +away to put on the other set--the afternoon frocks, and once more the +director's approbation, though laconic, was one hundred per cent. pure. + +"That's all," he said in sudden dismissal of the sextette. "Rehearsal at +eight-thirty." + +Five of them scurried like children let out of school, around behind the +set of screens that made an extemporaneous dressing-room, and began +changing in a mad scramble, hoping to get away and to get their dinners +eaten soon enough to enable them to see the whole bill at a movie show +before the evening's rehearsal. + +But Rose didn't avail herself of her dismissal--remained hanging about, +a couple of paces away from where Galbraith was talking to Mrs. +Goldsmith. The only question that remained, he was telling her, was +whether her selections were not too--well, too refined, genteel, one +might say, for the stage. Regretfully he confessed he was a little +afraid they were. It needed a certain crudity to withstand the glare of +the footlights and until these gowns had been submitted to that glare, +one couldn't be sure. + +He wasn't looking at her as he talked, and presently, as his gaze +wandered about the store, it encountered Rose's face. She hadn't +prepared it for the encounter, and it wore, hardly veiled, a look of +humorous appreciation. His sentence broke, then completed itself. She +turned away, but the next moment he called out to her, "Were you waiting +for me, Dane?" + +"I'd like to speak to you a minute," she said, "when you have time." + +"All right. Go and change your clothes first," he said. + +Out of the tail of her eye as she departed, she saw him shaking hands +with the owner's wife and thanking her effusively for her help. +Incidentally, he was leading her toward the door as he did it. And at +the door, he declined an offer to be taken anywhere he might want to go +in her electric. + +She found the other girls on the point of departure. But Olga offered to +wait for her. + +"No, you run along," Rose said. "I've some errands and I don't feel like +seeing a movie to-night, anyway." + +Olga looked a little odd about it, but hurried along after the others. + +A saleswoman--the same one the manager assigned to Rose under the +misconception which that smart French ulster of hers had created when +she came into the store--now came around behind the screen to gather up +the frocks the girls had shed. + +"Will you please bring me," said Rose, "that Poiret model you showed me +before the others came in? I'll try it on." + +The saleswoman's manner was different now and she grumbled something +about its being closing time. + +"Then, if you'll bring it at once ..." said Rose. And the saleswoman +went on the errand. + +Five minutes later, Galbraith from staring gloomily at the mournful heap +of trouble Mrs. Goldsmith had left on his hands, looked up to confront a +vision that made him gasp. + +[Illustration: "It isn't quite so much your style, is it?"] + +"I wanted you to see if you liked this," said Rose. + +"If I liked it!" he echoed. "Look here! If you know enough to pick out +things like that, why did you let that woman waste everybody's time with +junk like this? Why didn't you help her out?" + +"I couldn't have done much," Rose said, "even if my offering to do +anything hadn't made her angry--and I think it would have. You see, +she's got lots of taste, only it's bad. She wasn't bewildered a bit. She +knew just what she wanted and she got it. It's the badness of these +things she likes. And I thought ..." She hesitated a little over this. +"I thought as long as they couldn't be good, perhaps the next best thing +would be to have them as bad as possible. I mean that it would be easier +to throw them all out and get a fresh start." + +He stared at her with a frown of curiosity. "That's good sense," he +said. "But how did you come to think of it?--Oh, I don't mean that!" he +went on impatiently. "Why should you bother to think of it?" + +Her color came up perceptibly as she answered. "Why--I want the piece to +succeed, of course. I was awfully miserable when I saw the sort of +things she was picking out and I spent half an hour trying to think what +I could do about it. And then I saw that the best thing I could do, was +nothing." + +"You didn't do nothing though," he said. "That thing you've got on is a +start." + +Rose turned rather suddenly to the saleswoman. "I wish you'd get that +little Empire frock in maize and corn-flower," she said. "I'd like Mr. +Galbraith to see that, too." And the saleswoman, now placated, bustled +away. + +"This thing that I've got on," said Rose swiftly, "costs a hundred and +fifty dollars, but I know I can copy it for twenty. I can't get the +materials exactly of course, but I can come near enough." + +"Will you try this one on, miss?" asked the saleswoman, coming on the +scene again with the frock she had been sent for. + +"No," said Rose. "Just hold it up." + +Galbraith admitted it was beautiful, but wasn't overwhelmed at all as +he had been by the other. + +"It's not quite so much your style, is it? Not drive enough?" + +"It isn't for me," said Rose. "It's for Olga Larson to wear in that _All +Alone_ number for the sextette." + +"Why Larson especially?" he asked. "Except that she's a friend of +yours." + +"She isn't," said Rose, "particularly. And anyway, that wouldn't be a +reason. But--did you ever really look at her? She's the one really +beautiful woman in the company." + +"Larson?" said John Galbraith incredulously. + +And Rose, with a flush and a smile partly deprecatory over her +presumption in venturing to say such things to a formidable authority +like the director, and partly the result of an exciting conviction that +she was right, told him her mind on the subject, while Galbraith, half +fascinated, half amused, listened. + +"I don't happen to remember the portrait of the Honorable Mrs. Graham +that you speak about," he said, "but I won't deny that you may be right +about it." + +It was well after closing time by now--a fact that the manager, coming +to reinforce the saleswoman, contrived, without saying so, to indicate. + +"Put on your street things," said Galbraith bruskly. "I'll wait." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A BUSINESS PROPOSITION + + +"Why, this was what I wanted to say," said Rose, taking up the broken +conversation as he pulled the shop door to behind him. She didn't go out +on to the sidewalk, but lingered in the recessed doorway. "I thought if +you'd let me fake that evening frock for twenty dollars, and then buy +the little Empire one for Olga Larson--it's only eighty--that the two +would average just about what Mrs. Goldsmith was paying for the others." + +"Why not fake the other one too?" he asked. + +"It couldn't be done," said Rose decisively. "There's no idea in it, you +see, that just jumps out and catches you. It gets its style from being +so--reserved and so just exactly right. And of course that's true of the +girl herself. She's perfect, just about. But it's a perfection that it's +awfully easy to kill. She kills it herself by the way she does her +hair." + +Buzzing around in the back of John Galbraith's mind was an unworded +protest against the way Rose had just killed her own beauty with a thick +white veil so nearly opaque that all it let him see of her face was an +intermittent gleam of her eyes. Keenly aware--a good deal more keenly +aware than he was willing to admit--of the sort of splendor which, but +for the veil, he'd be looking at now, a splendor which nothing short of +a complete mask could hide, he was not quite in the mood to wax +enthusiastic over a beauty so fragile as that of the girl they had been +talking about. There was a momentary silence, broken again, by Rose. + +"Of course, you'll want to take a look at her for yourself, before you +decide," she said; "but I'm pretty sure you'll see it." She put a +cadence of finality into her voice. The business between them was over, +it said, and all she was waiting for was a word of dismissal, to nod +him a farewell and go swinging away down the avenue. Still he didn't +speak, and she moved a little restlessly. At last:-- + +"Do you mind crossing the street?" he asked abruptly. "Then we can talk +as we walk along." She must have hesitated, because he added, "It's too +cold to stand here." + +"Of course," she said then. All that had made her hesitate was her +surprise over his having made a request instead of giving an order. + +Galbraith turned her north on the vast empty east sidewalk--a highway in +itself broader than many a famous European street, and they walked a +little way in silence. + +No observant Chicagoan, Rose reflected, need ever yearn for the wastes +of the Sahara when a desire for solitude or the need of privacy came +upon him. The east side of Michigan Avenue was just as solitary and +despite the difficulty of getting across to it, really a good deal more +accessible. The west side was one unbroken glow of light and though the +Christmas crowds had thinned somewhat with the closing of the shops, +they were still thick enough to have made it difficult for two people to +walk and talk together. A quadruple stream of motors, bellowing warnings +at one another, roaring with suddenly opened throttles, squealing under +sudden applications of the brake, occupied the roadway and served more +than the mere distance would have done, to isolate the pair that had the +east sidewalk all to themselves. + +He couldn't be looking for a better place to talk than this, Rose +thought. Why didn't he begin? Probably he'd got started thinking about +something else. A motor coming along near the curb emitted a +particularly wanton bellow, and she saw him jump like a nervous woman, +then stand still and glare after the offender. He must be feeling +specially irritable to-night, she thought. + +It was a good diagnosis. And his irritation had, for him, a most unusual +cause. Chorus-girls, principals, owners, authors, costumers, were +frequently the objects of his exasperated dissatisfaction. But to-night +the person he was out of all patience with was himself. He couldn't make +up his mind what he wanted to do. Or rather, knowing what he wanted to +do, he couldn't make up his mind to do it. It was this indecision of his +that had produced the silence while he and Rose had stood in the +entrance to Lessing's store. The only resolution he had come to there +had been not to allow her to say good night to him and walk away. But +now that she was striding along beside him, he couldn't make up his mind +what to say to her. + +A more self-conscious man would have forgiven himself his indecision +from recognizing the real complexities of the case. He was, to begin +with, an artist--almost a great artist. And a universal characteristic +of such is a complete detachment from the materials in which they +work--a sort of remorselessness in the use of anything that can +contribute to their complete expression. The raw materials of John +Galbraith's art were paint and canvas, fabrics, tunes, men and women. It +was an axiom in his experience, that any personal feeling--any sort of +human relation with one of the units in the mosaic he was building--was +to be avoided like the plague. His professional and personal contempt +for a colleague capable of a love-affair with a woman in a company he +was directing, would be inexpressible--unfathomable. Of course when a +man's job was finished--and this sort of job nearly always did finish on +the opening night--why, after that, his affairs were his own affair. + +In a word: he ordered his life on the perfectly sound masculine instinct +for keeping his work and his sex emotions in separate water-tight +compartments. Rose was a working member of his production, and it was +therefore flagrantly impossible that his relation with her should be +other than purely professional. + +And yet there had been something intangibly personal from the very +first, about every one of their broken momentary conversations--almost +about every meeting of their eyes. It had disturbed him the first time +he had ever seen her smile. He remembered the occasion well enough. She +had just finished executing the dance step--the almost inexcusably +vulgar little dance step he had ordered her to do as a condition of +getting the job she said she wanted--had turned on him blazing with +indignation; but right in the full blaze of it, at something she must +have seen, and understood, in his own face, in deprecation of her own +wrath, she had, slowly and widely, smiled. + +And then the way she worked for him in rehearsal! He'd seen girls work +hard before--desperately, frantically hard, under the fear that they +weren't good enough to hold their jobs. That wasn't the spirit in which +this girl worked. She seemed possessed by a blazing determination that +the results he wanted should he obtained. It seemed she couldn't devour +his intentions quickly enough, and her little unconscious nod of +satisfaction after he had corrected a mistake and she felt sure that now +she knew exactly what he wanted, was like nothing in his previous +experience. + +The wonderful thing about it was that she carried that eagerness beyond +the confines of her own job. And she put it to good effect too. She had +taken that Larson girl and, by the plain force of personal dominance, +made her talk right. Well, why? That was the question. Who was she +anyway? Where had she come from? Who was "the only person who really +mattered" to her--the person who wasn't a pussy-cat? + +He had tried hard to convince himself that these were all professional +questions. It was true they had a bearing on the more important and +perfectly legitimate question whether he had, in this altogether +extraordinary personality, discovered a new star. He had, during the +last quarter century, discovered a number--one or two of them +authentically of the first magnitude. + +It would have simplified matters immensely if he could have seen Rose in +this category. But the stubborn fact was, he couldn't. She couldn't sing +a bit, and marked as her natural talent was for dancing, she hadn't +begun young enough ever to master the technique of it. That left acting; +but he doubted if she could ever go very far at that. Salient as her +personality was, she hadn't the instinct for putting it over. Or, if she +had it, she distrusted it. She was handicapped, too, by her sense of +humor. A real star in the egg, wouldn't have stopped in the middle of +that first fine blaze of wrath he'd seen, to join him in smiling at it. +A real actress wouldn't have spent her energies teaching another woman +to talk, nor persuading him to buy another woman a beautiful frock. The +focus had to be sharper than that. The only way you got the drive it +took to spell your name in electric lights, was by subordinating +everything else to the projection of yourself, treating your +surroundings, with irresistible conviction, merely as a background. This +girl could never do that. + +Yet the notion wouldn't leave his mind that she could do something, and +do it more than commonly well. She must have an instinct of her own for +effects to enable her to understand so instantaneously what he was +trying to do. And once in a while, especially lately, he'd seen, over +some experiment of his, a flash of dissent across her eager face which +gave him the preposterous idea that by asking her--asking a +chorus-girl!--he might get a suggestion worth thinking about. + +Certainly she had helped him in another way, there was no doubt of that. +That sextette, thanks to her teaching, would be the smartest, best +mannered bunch of chorus-girls that had adorned a production of his in a +long, long time. + +And here, perhaps, he came closer than anywhere else to an understanding +of the source of the girl's attraction for him. John Galbraith could +remember the time when, a nameless little rat of a cockney, he had slept +under London bridges, opened cab doors for half-pence, carried links on +foggy nights. By the clear force of genius he had made his way up from +that;--from throwing cart-wheels for the amusement of the queues waiting +at the pit entrances of theaters, from the ribald knock-about of East +End halls, from the hilarity of Drury Lane pantomimes. Professionally +his success was a solid indubitable thing. If he weren't actually +preeminent in his special field, at least there was no one who was +accorded a preeminence over him. + +But another ambition, quite apart from the professional one, was hardly +so well satisfied. From the time of his very earliest memories he had +felt a passionate admiration for good breeding, and a consuming envy of +the lucky unconscious possessors of it. Since ten years old, he had +been possessed by the great desire to be acknowledged a gentleman. There +was nothing of vulgar veneer about this. It was the real interior thing +he wanted; that invisible yet perfectly palpable hall-mark which without +explanations or credentials, classified you. His profession had not +brought him in contact more than very infrequently with people of this +sort, and his personal interests never could be made to do so with +results perfectly satisfactory to himself. There it was,--the thing +those lucky elect possessed without a thought or an effort. It was an +indestructible possession, apparently, too. You couldn't throw it away. +Dissipation, dishonesty, even a total collapse that brought its victim +down to the sink that he himself had sprouted from, seemed powerless to +efface that hall-mark. + +He learned to suppose that if it were indestructible, it was also +unattainable, though perhaps he himself failed of attaining it only in +the consciousness of having failed--in the inability to stop trying for +it, straining all his actions through a sieve in the effort to conform +to a standard not his own. + +Well, this girl, whose own life must have collapsed under her in a +peculiarly cruel and dramatic fashion so that she had had to come to him +and ask him for a job in the chorus--she had the hall-mark. She had +besides a lot of the qualities that traditionally went with it, but +often didn't. She was game--game as a fighting-cock. What must it not +have meant to her to come down into that squalid dance-hall in the first +place and submit to the test he had subjected her to! How must the +dressing-room conversation of her colleagues in the chorus have revolted +and sickened her? What must it mean to her to take his orders--sharp +rasping orders, with the sting of ridicule in the tail of them when they +had to be repeated;--to be addressed by her last name like a servant? +Why, this very afternoon, how must she have felt, standing there like a +manikin, ordered to put on this dress and that, by a fussy fat woman who +wouldn't have touched her with tongs? But from not one of these +experiences had he ever seen her flinch or protest. Oh, yes, she was +game, and she was simple, as they always were; a fine type of the real +thing. + +And, somehow, he felt, she treated him as if he were hall-marked too. +He hadn't much to go by--absurdly little things really. But, after all, +it was the little things that counted;--a fine distinction in the +cadence of a voice, in the sort of nod of greeting or farewell one gave. +She never nodded at him in that curt telegraphic sort of way without +warming him up a bit inside. + +And all the while he was a director and she was a chorus-girl and an +unyielding etiquette of their respective professions forbade a word of +human intercourse between them! He had violated it, as both of them had +been aware, when he shook hands with her and thanked her for having +taught Olga Larson to talk. And just because he recognized quite well +how necessary the barrier was in all but one out of a thousand cases, +its existence in this one case baffled and irritated him. + +Up to the hour when he had turned into Lessing's store this afternoon, +for a look at the dresses Mrs. Goldsmith had been picking out for the +sextette, this feeling of baffled curiosity and of irritation over the +etiquette that forbade his satisfying it, would have summed up, +adequately enough, all the emotions he was conscious of toward the girl. +His professional admiration for her was another thing of course--a +perfectly legitimate thing. But with her appearance from behind the +screen, in that French evening gown--a gown she wore with the +indescribable air of belonging in it--with all her vibrant, irregular, +fascinating, eupeptic beauty fully revealed, his mood of impatient +acquiescence had fallen away. The basis of his feeling toward her +shifted in a manner that James Randolph wouldn't have had a moment's +difficulty in explaining, although Galbraith didn't understand it +himself. + +The thing he was conscious of was, when she made that offer to copy this +gown herself for twenty dollars and so leave him leeway for the purchase +of the Empire frock for Olga--offering to go to that trouble not for +herself or her friend, but to further the accomplishment of what he +wanted; namely, the success of his production--what he was conscious of +then, was an overpowering desire to make a confidante of her; to talk +matters out with her, show her some of the major strategy of the game +that he had to consider, and find out how the thing would look to her. + +It was all against the rules, of course. But to this case--the one in a +thousand certainly, in ten thousand maybe--the rules manifestly did not +apply. + +If it hadn't been for that opaque white veil, the glow of light and +eagerness in her face would probably have conquered his resistance +finally and for good, while they stood there in the entry to the store. +As it was, he was still hanging on a dead center as they walked down the +east side of the avenue together. + +Ahead of them, and to the right, over in Grant Park, was the colossal +municipal Christmas tree, already built, and getting decorated against +the celebration of Christmas Eve, now only two days away. + +"Shall we rehearse on Christmas Day?" Rose asked. + +He came out of his preoccupation a little vaguely. "Why, yes. Yes, of +course," he said absently. Then, coming a little further, and with a +different intonation, he went on: "We're really getting pressed for +time, you see. And the opening won't wait for anybody. It's hard luck +though, isn't it?" + +"I suppose it is, for the others;" Rose said, "but--I'm glad." + +It wouldn't have needed so sensitive an ear as his to catch the girl's +full meaning. Christmas--this Christmas, the first since that mysterious +collapse of her life, whose effect he had seen, but whose cause he +couldn't guess--was going to be a terrible day for her. She had dreaded +lest it should be empty. He wanted to say, "You poor child!" But--this +was the simple fact--he was afraid to. + +There was another momentary silence, and again Rose broke it. + +"Do you think you'll be able to convince Mrs. Goldsmith," she asked, +"that her gowns don't look well on the stage?" + +"Probably not," he said in quick relief. Rose had decided the issue for +herself; brought up the very topic he'd wanted to bring up; got him off +his dead center at last. Back of Rose, of course, was the municipal +Christmas tree with its power of suggesting a lot of ideas she must +fight out of her mind. + +"Certainly not," he went on, "if you're right about her, and I fancy you +are, that her taste isn't negative, but bad, and that it's the very +hideousness of the things she likes. No, she won't be convinced, and if +I know Goldsmith, he'll say his wife's taste is good enough for him. So +if we want a change, we've a fight on our hands." + +The way he had unconsciously phrased that sentence startled him a +little. + +"The question is," he went on, "whether they're worth making a fight +about. Are they so bad as I think they are?" + +"Oh, yes," said Rose. "They're dowdy and fourth-class and ridiculous. Of +course I don't know how many people in the audience would know that." + +"And I don't care." said John Galbraith with a flash of intensity that +made her look round at him. "That's not a consideration I'll give any +weight to. When I put out a production under my name, it means it's the +best production I can make with the means I've got. There may be men who +can work differently; but when I have to take a cynical view of it and +try to get by with bad work because most of the people out in front +won't know the difference, I'll retire. I'm only fifty and I've got ten +or fifteen good years in me yet. But before I'll do that, I'll go out to +my little farm on Long Island and raise garden truck." + +There was another momentary silence, for the girl made no comment at all +on this statement of his _credo_. But he felt sure, somehow, that she +understood it and there was nothing deprecatory about the tone in which, +presently, he went on speaking. + +"Of course a director's got only one weapon to use against the owners of +a show, when it comes down to an issue, and that's a threat to resign +unless they let him have his way. I've used that twice in this +production already, and I can see one or two places coming where I may +have to use it again. So, if there's any way of throwing out those +costumes without giving them their choice between getting new ones or +getting a new director, I'd like to find it. Would it be possible, do +you think, to get better ones that would also be cheaper? That argument +would bring Goldsmith around in a hurry. It's ridiculous, of course, but +that's the trouble with making a production for amateurs. You spend more +time fighting them, than you do producing the show." + +"I don't believe," said Rose, "that you could get better ready-made +costumes a lot cheaper; at least, not enough to go around, and in a +hurry. Of course every now and then, you can pick up a tremendous +bargain--some imported model that's a little extreme, or made in trying +colors, that they want to get rid of and will sell almost for whatever +you'll pay. But the two or three we might be able to find, wouldn't help +us much." + +"And I suppose," he said dubiously, "it's out of the question getting +them any other way than ready-made; that is, and cheaper too." + +The only sign of excitement there was in the girl's voice when she +answered, was a sort of exaggerated matter-of-factness. Oh, yes, there +was besides a wire edge on it, so that the words came to him through the +cold air with a kind of ringing distinctness. + +"I could design the costumes and pick out the materials," she said, "but +we'd have to get a good sewing woman--perhaps more than one, to get them +done." + +He wasn't greatly surprised. Perhaps the notion that she might suggest +something of the sort was responsible for the tentative dubious way in +which he had said he supposed it couldn't be done. + +But Rose, at the sound of her own voice and the extraordinary +proposition it was uttering, was astonished clear through. She hadn't +had the remotest idea of saying such a thing a moment or two before. +What had suggested it, she couldn't have told. That day-dream perhaps, +that she had amused herself with while Mrs. Goldsmith was making up the +tale of her atrocities. Perhaps it had been just the suggestions +speaking in the tone, not the words, of John Galbraith's voice--that he +hoped she'd offer something like that. + +Anyway, whatever it was that presented the idea to her, the thing that +seized on it and spoke it aloud was an instinct that didn't need to stop +and think--an instinct that realized indeed, if this isn't too +far-fetched a way of putting it, that its only chance lay in escaping +into the open ahead of the slower-footed processes of thought. If she +hadn't spoken instantly like that, it's perfectly clear she wouldn't +have spoken at all. But, having heard her own voice say the words, she +resolved, in spite of her fright--because she was frightened--to back +them up. + +"You've had--experience in designing gowns, have you?" Galbraith asked. + +"Only for myself," she admitted. "But I know I can do that part of it." + +And she wasn't telling more than the truth! The confident excitement +that possessed her, gave a stronger assurance than any amount of +experience could have done. + +"But,"--she reverted to the other part of the plan--"I'm not a good +sewer. I'd have to have somebody awfully good, who'd do exactly what I +told her." + +"Oh, that can be managed;" he said a little absently, and with what +struck Rose as a mere man's ignorance of the difficulties of the +situation. Expert sewing women didn't grow on every bush. But at the end +of a silence that lasted while they walked a whole block, he convinced +her that she had been mistaken. + +"I was just figuring out the way to work it," he said then, explaining +his silence. "I shall tell Goldsmith and Block (Block was the junior +partner in the enterprise) that I've got hold of a costumer who agrees +to deliver twelve costumes satisfactory to me, at an average of say, +twenty per cent less than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out. If they +aren't satisfactory, it's the costumer's loss and we can buy these that +Mrs. Goldsmith picked out, or others that will do as well, at Lessing's. +I think that saving will be decisive with them." + +"But do you know a costumer?" Rose asked. + +"You're the costumer;" said Galbraith. "You design the costumes, buy the +fabrics, superintend the making of them. As for the woman you speak of, +we'll get the wardrobe mistress at the Globe. I happen to know she's +competent, and she's at a loose end just now, because her show is +closing when ours opens. You'll buy the fabrics and you'll pay her. And +what profit you can make out of the deal, you're entitled to. I'll +finance you myself. If they won't take what we show them, why, you'll be +out your time and trouble, and I'll be out the price of materials and +the woman's labor." + +"I don't think it would be fair," she said, and she found difficulty in +speaking at all because of a sudden disposition of her teeth to +chatter--"I don't think it would be fair for me to take all the profit +and you take all the risk." + +"Well, I can't take any profit, that's clear enough," he said; and she +noticed now a tinge of amusement in his voice. "You see, I'm retained, +body and soul, to put this production over. I can't make money out of +those fellows on the side. But you're not retained. You're employed as a +member of the chorus. And so far, you're not even being paid for the +work you're doing. As long as you work to my satisfaction there on the +stage, nothing more can be asked of you. As for the risk, I don't +believe it's serious. I don't think you'll fall down on the job, and I +don't believe Goldsmith and Block will throw away a chance to save some +money." + +At the end of another silence, for Rose was speechless here, he went on +expanding the plan a little further. And if the assurances he gave her +were essentially mendacious, he himself wasn't exactly aware that they +were. It had often happened in productions of his, he said--and this +much was true--that to save time or to accomplish some result he wanted, +he put up a little of his own money for something and trusted to a +prosperous event for getting it back. It was clearly for the good of the +show that the costumes for the sextette should be better than the ones +Mrs. Goldsmith had picked out. The only alternative way of getting them, +to a knock-down and carry-away fight with Goldsmith and Block, which, +even if it were successful, would weaken the effect of his next +ultimatum, was the plan he now proposed to Rose. She needn't regard the +money he put up as in any sense a personal loan to her. They were simply +cooperating for the good of the enterprise. If her work turned out to be +valuable, it was only right she should be paid for it. + +And then he pressed her for an immediate decision. The job would be a +good deal of a scramble at best, as the time was short. If she agreed to +it, he'd get in touch with the wardrobe mistress at the Globe, to-night. +As for the money, he had a hundred dollars or so in his pocket, which +she could take to start out with. + +Of course the only lie involved in all this was the warp of the whole +fabric; that he was doing it, impersonally, for the success of the show. +And that might well enough have been true. Only in this case, it +definitely wasn't. He was doing it because it would establish a personal +connection, the want of which was becoming so tormenting a thing to his +soul, between himself and this girl whom he had to order about on the +stage and call by her last name, or rather by a last name that wasn't +hers--an imagination-stirring, question-compelling, warm human creature, +who, up to now, had been as completely shut away from him as if she had +been a wax figure in a show-window. + +They had reached the Randolph Street end of the avenue, and a policeman, +like Moses cleaving the Red Sea, had opened the way through the tide of +motors for a throng of pedestrians bound across the viaduct to the +Illinois Central suburban station. + +"Come across here," said Galbraith taking her by the arm and stemming +this current with her. "We've got to have a minute of shelter to finish +this up in," and he led her into the north lobby of the public library. +The stale baked air of the place almost made them gasp. But, anyway, it +was quiet and altogether deserted. They could hear themselves think in +here, he said, and led the way to a marble bench alongside the +staircase. + +Rose unpinned her veil and, to his surprise, because of course she was +going out in a minute, put it into her ulster pocket. But, curiously +enough, the sight of her face only intensified an impression that had +been strong on him during the last part of their walk--the impression +that she was a long way off. It wasn't the familiar contemplative brown +study, either. There was an active eager excitement about it that made +it more beautiful than ever he had seen it before. But it was as if she +were looking at something he couldn't see--listening to words he +couldn't hear. + +"Well," he said a little impatiently, "are you going to do it?" + +At that the glow of her was turned fairly on him. "Yes," she said, "I'm +going to do it. I suppose I mustn't thank you," she went on, "because +you say it isn't anything you're doing for me. But it is--a great thing +for me--greater than I could tell you. And I won't fail. You needn't be +afraid." + +Inexplicably to him (the problem wouldn't have troubled James Randolph) +the very completeness with which she made this acknowledgment--the very +warmth of the hand-clasp with which she bound the bargain, vaguely +disappointed him--left him feeling a little flat and empty over his +victory. + +He found his pocketbook and counted out a hundred and twenty dollars, +which he handed over to her. She folded it and put it away in her +wrist-bag. The glow of her hadn't faded, but once more it was turned on +something--or some one--else. It wasn't until he rose a little abruptly +from the marble bench, that she roused herself with a shake of the head, +arose too, and once more faced him. + +"You're right about our having to hurry," she said. "Don't you suppose +that some of the department stores on the west side of State Street +would still be open--on account of Christmas, you know?" + +"I don't know," he said. "Very likely. But look here!" He pulled out his +watch. "It's after seven already. And rehearsal's at eight-thirty. +You've got to get some dinner, you know." + +"Dinner doesn't take long at the place where I go," she reminded him. +"But if I can get one or two things now--I don't mean the +materials--why, I can get a start to-night after the rehearsal's over." + +"I don't like it," he said glumly. "Oh, I know, it's a rush job and +you'll have to work at it at all sorts of hours. If only you ... If I +could just ease up a bit on your rehearsals! Only, you see, the sextette +would he lost without you. Look here! There's nothing life or death +about this, you know. You don't want to forget that you've got a limit, +and crowd the late-at-night and early-in-the-morning business too hard. +Think where we'd be if you turned up missing on the opening night!" + +"I shan't do that," she said absently almost, and not in his direction. +Then, with another little shake, bringing herself back to him with a +visible effort: "If you only knew what a wonderful thing it's going to +be, to have something for late at night and early in the morning ..." + +Before he could find the first one of the words he wanted, she had given +him that curt farewell nod which, so inexplicably, from the first had +stirred and warmed him, and turned away toward the door. + +And she had never seen what was fairly shining in his face; no more than +she had heard the thing that rang so eagerly in his voice through the +thin disguise of an impersonal, director-like concern that she shouldn't +impair her health so far as to spoil her for the sextette! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE END OF A FIXED IDEA + + +She couldn't of course have missed a thing as plain as that but for a +complete preoccupation of thought and feeling that would have left her +oblivious to almost anything that could happen to her. Galbraith himself +had detected this preoccupation, but he would have been staggered had he +known its intensity. He had likened it in his own thoughts, to an effect +that might have been caused by the presence with her of another person +whom he could neither see nor hear. And that, had he believed it +seriously, would have been an almost uncannily correct guess. + +The flaming vortex of thoughts, hopes, desires which enveloped her, was +so intense as almost to evoke a sense of the physical presence of the +subject of them--of that big, powerful-minded, clean-souled husband of +hers, who loved her so rapturously, and who had driven her away from him +because that rapture was the only thing he would share with her. + +She had been living, since that day of his departure for New York, when +she had felt the last of his strong embraces, a life that fell into two +hemispheres as distinct from each other as tropic night from day. One +half of it had been lighted and made tolerable by the exactions of her +new job. "What you feel like doing isn't important, and what I tell you +to do is," John Galbraith had said to her on the day this strange +divided life of hers had begun. And this lesson, taken to heart, had +spelt salvation to her--for half of the time; for as many hours of the +day as he went on telling her to do something. Those hours, in a way +almost incredible to herself when they were over, had been almost +happy--would have been altogether happy, but for the stain that soaked +through in memory and in anticipation, from the other half of her days. + +But when evening rehearsal was over and she came back to her room and +had to undress and put out her light and relax her mind for sleep, +letting the terrors that came to tear at her do their unopposed worst, +then the girl who sang and danced and was so nearly happy snatching John +Galbraith's intentions half formed, and executing them in the thrill of +satisfaction over work well done, became an utterly unreal, incredible +person--the mere figment of a dream that couldn't--couldn't possibly +recur again even as a dream; the only self in her that had any actual +existence was Rodney Aldrich's wife and the mother of his children, +lying here in a mean bed, or looking with feverish eyes out of the +window in a North Clark Street rooming house, in a torment of thwarted +desire for him that was by no means wholly mental or psychical. + +And what was he doing now in her absence? Was he in torment, too; shaken +by gusts of uncontrollable longing for her; fighting off nightmare +imaginings of disasters that might be befalling her? Or was he happy, +drinking down in great thirsty drafts the nectar of liberty which her +incursion into his life had deprived him of? She didn't know which of +these alternatives was the more intolerable to her. + +And the twins! Were they, the fine lusty little cherubs she had parted +from that day, smiling up with growing recognition into other +faces--Mrs. Ruston's and the maid Doris'? Or might there have been, +since the last information relayed by Portia, a sudden illness? Might it +be that there was going on now, in that house not a thousand yards away, +another life-and-death struggle like the one which had made an end of +all her hopes for the efficacy of her miracle? + +The only treatment for hobgoblins like that was plain endurance. This +was a part of a somber sobering discovery that Rose had made during the +first few days of her new life. Courage of the active sort she'd always +had. The way she went up to North End Hall and wrested a job that didn't +strictly exist, from John Galbraith, was an example of it. When it was a +question of blazing up and doing something, she had rightly counted on +herself not to fail. This was what she'd foreseen when she promised +Portia that she would fight for the big thing. + +But that part of the battle of life had to consist just in doing +nothing, enduring with a stiff mouth and clenched hands assaults that +couldn't be replied to, was a fact she hadn't foreseen. What a child she +had always been! Rodney, Portia, everybody who amounted to anything, +must have learned that lesson of sheer endurance long ago. + +The queerly incredible quality of the lighted half of her life--the half +that John Galbraith's will galvanized into motion--prevented any +afterglow from illuminating and making tolerable the dark half. No +achievement of her days--not even teaching the sextette to talk--had the +power to give her, in her nights, a sense of progress, or to lessen the +necessity for that sheer dumb endurance which was the only weapon she +had. Because she was in the fetters of a fixed idea. + +Of course it was only by virtue of the possession of a fixed idea--a +purpose as rigid in its outlines as the steel frame of a +sky-scraper--that she had been able to force herself to leave Rodney and +set out in pursuit of a job that would make a life of her own a possible +thing. You are already acquainted with the outlines of that purpose. She +lacked the special training which alone could make any sort of +self-respecting life possible. The only thing she had to capitalize when +she left her husband's house, was the thing which had got her into +it--her sex charm. The only excuse for capitalizing that again was that +it would make it possible for her to acquire a special training in some +other field. Stenography, she had thought vaguely, would be the first +round of the ladder. Until this production opened and she began drawing +a salary, she couldn't really begin doing the thing she had set out to +do. + +Consequently, anything that seemed like progress during her day's work +for Galbraith--any glow of triumph she came away with after meeting and +conquering some difficulty--must be pure illusion. + +It was all perfectly logical and it was all perfectly false. She had +been growing really, in strides, from day to day, since that first day +of all when, after hearing the director tell another woman that there +were no vacancies in the chorus, she had forced herself to go up and ask +him for a job. She had been disciplining herself under Rodney's own +definition of the term. Discipline, he had said, was standing the +gaff--standing it, not submitting to it; accepting the facts of your own +life as they happened to be! Not making masters of them, but servants to +the underlying thing you wanted. + +And if only she could have believed her own vision, the outlines of the +underlying thing she wanted were beginning to appear, as in a half +developed negative. It hadn't been from a cold sense of duty, or from a +cold fear of losing her job, that she had thrown herself into the +accomplishment of John Galbraith's wishes, or had felt that almost +fierce desire that some effect he was trying for and that she +understood, should get an objective validity. It hadn't been out of pure +altruism that she'd spent those twelve solid hours compelling Olga +Larson to talk better. She might have felt sorry for the girl--might +have loaned her money, comforted her; but she wouldn't have locked her +in her room and beaten down her sullen opposition, set her afire with +her own vitality, except that it was a thing that had to be done for the +good of the show. + +In short, she was, to fall back on Rodney's phrase again, for the first +time driving herself with the motive power of her own desires--riding +the back of a hitherto unsuspected passion. But the binding force of +that fixed idea of hers had been sufficient all along to keep up the +delusion of unreality about the real half of her life and to make the +nightmare half of it seem true. + +It wasn't until she heard herself telling John Galbraith that she could +design those costumes for him, and in a flame of suddenly kindled +excitement, resolved to make that unexpected promise good, that the +fetters of her false logic fell away from her. + +The truth of the matter, the wonderful, almost incredible truth, kept +coming up brighter and clearer as she walked silently along beside him +down the avenue. The real beginning of the pilgrimage that was to carry +her back into her husband's life, wasn't a thing that had to be waited +for. It could begin now! No, the truth was better than that; it had +begun already! Because if John Galbraith had come to her house a month +ago, when she was casting about so desperately for a way of earning a +living, and had offered her the chance just as he had offered it +to-night, she'd have declined it. She wouldn't have known what he +wanted. She'd rightly have said that the thing was utterly beyond her +powers. To-night she knew what he wanted and she was utterly confident +of her ability to give it to him. + +And the one word that blaze of confidence spelled for her in letters of +fire, was her husband's name. This chance that had been offered her was +a ladder that would enable her to climb part of the way back to him. Her +accomplishment of this first breathlessly exciting task would be a +thing, when it was achieved, that she could recount to him--well, as man +to man. Her success, if she succeeded--and the alternative was something +she wouldn't contemplate--would compel the same sort of respect from him +that he accorded to a diagnosis of James Randolph's, or an article of +Barry Lake's. + +Since she had left his house and begun this new life of hers, she had, +as best she could, been fighting him out of her thoughts altogether. She +had shrunk from anything that carried associations of him with it. +Outside the hours of rehearsal (and how grateful she always was when +they protracted themselves unduly) she had walked timidly, like a child +down a dim hallway with black yawning doorways opening out of it, in a +dread which sometimes reached the intensity of terror, lest reminders of +the man she loved should spring out upon her. That all thoughts and +memories of him must necessarily be painful, she had taken for granted. + +But with this sudden lighting up of hope, which took place within her +when she made John Galbraith that astonishing offer and he accepted it, +she flung the closed door wide and called her husband back into her +thoughts--greeted the image of him passionately, in an almost palpable +embrace. This hard thing that she was going to do, which had, to +common-sense calculation, so many chances of disaster in it--this thing +that meant sleepless nights, and feverishly active days, was an +expression simply of her love for him; a sacrificial offering to be laid +before the shrine of him in her heart. Well, it was no wonder then that +to John Galbraith she had seemed preoccupied and far away, nor that amid +the surging thoughts and memories of her lover, coming in like a +returning tide, she should have been deaf to a meaning in the director's +tones that any one of the stupid little flutterers in the chorus would +instantly have understood. + +A man with a volcanic incandescence within him such as was now afire in +Rose, is utterly useless until it subsides--totally incapable, at least, +of any sort of creative or imaginative work. Until the fire can be, by +one means or another and for the time being, put out, he has no energies +worth mentioning, to devote to anything else. And, just as no woman can +understand the cold austerities of the cell into which a man must retire +in order to give his finer faculties free play, so no man can possibly +understand, although objective evidence may compel him to admit and +chronicle it as a fact, that a woman borne along as Rose was, upon an +irresistible tide of passions, memories and hopes, which all but made +her absent husband actually visible to her, could at the same time, be +seeing visions of her accomplished work and laying plans--limpid +practicable plans, for their realization. + +This is, perhaps, one of the few, and certainly one of the most +fundamental chasms of cleavage between the two sexes; a chasm bridged by +habit invariably, because some sort of thoroughfare has to exist, +bridged, too, more rarely, by intellectual understanding. But never +bridged, I think, between two persons strongly masculine and feminine +respectively, by an instinctive sympathy. To each, the other's way of +life must always be mysterious, and at times exasperating or a little +contemptible. + +To the woman, with the finely constant impenetration of love through all +her spiritual life, the man's uncontrollable blaze and his alternate +coldness, seem fitful--weak--brutish, almost unworthy of a creature with +a soul. + +To the man who knows the value of his phases of high austerity and +understands quite well the price at which he obtains them, the woman who +fails to understand the necessity or to appreciate the mood seems +sentimental and a little unworthy. + +Well, the fact that Rose's heart was racing and her nerves were tingling +with a newly welcomed sense of her lover's spiritual presence, did not +prevent her flying along west on Randolph Street and south again on the +west side of State, with a very clearly visualized purpose. She had +forgotten to replace her veil, but at that hour it didn't matter. The +west side of State Street, anyway, is almost as far from the east as +North Clark Street is from the Drive. + +As she came abreast of the first of the big department stores which line +the west side of this thoroughfare, she saw that her surmise had been +correct. It was open. Throngs of weary shoppers were crowding out, and a +very respectable stream of them were forcing their way in. She told an +exhausted floor-walker that she wanted to buy a dressmaking form. And, +spent as he was, he reflected a little of her own animation in his +unusually precise reply; had, indeed, a little of it left over for his +next inquirer. + +Something automatic in her mind took charge of Rose and delivered her, +presently, unconscious of intervening processes, at the counter where +the forms were sold. She selected what she wanted instantly, and counted +out the money from her own purse. She didn't have to dip into John +Galbraith's hundred and twenty dollars for this. + +"Address?" inquired the saleswoman preparing to make out her sales-slip. +Then, as Rose didn't answer instantly, she looked up frowning into her +face. "You want it sent, don't you?" she added. + +The question was rhetorical, because with its standard, the thing stood +five feet high and weighed twenty-five pounds. + +A frown of perplexity in Rose's face gave way to her own wide smile. "I +guess I'll have to take it with me," she said. Because as near +Christmas as this, the thing mightn't be delivered for two days. + +"Take it with you?" the woman echoed, aghast. + +"Have it wrapped up," said Rose decisively, "and put my name on +it--Mrs. ..." She checked herself with another smile. She had nearly +said, "Mrs. Rodney Aldrich." But the mistake didn't hurt as it would +have hurt yesterday. "Doris Dane," she went on. "And have it sent down +to the main entrance. I'll be there as soon as it is. Do you know where +I can buy paper cambric?" But she had to get that information from +another floor-walker. + +Paper cambric seemed to have more of a bearing upon the approach of +Christmas Day than dressmaking forms, though just what the connection +was, Rose couldn't make out. There was a crowd at the counter, anyhow. +It was five minutes before she could get waited on. But once she caught +a saleswoman's eye, her purchase was quickly made. She bought three +bolts: one of black, one of white, and one of a washed-out blue. Once +more she counted out the money, and this time, "I'll take it with me," +she said. + +Strong as she was, the immense bundle was almost more than she could +carry. But she managed to make her way at last to the main entrance, +where, under the incredulous eye of the doorman, she found a porter +waiting with her dressmaking form. + +"That's mine," she said. "Doris Dane is the name on it." Then, to the +doorman as the porter made off, "Will you get me a cab?" + +But this particular store had, quite naturally, no facilities for doing +a carriage business, a fact which the doorman laconically explained. + +"All right," said Rose dumping her heavy bundle beside the dressmaking +form. "You won't mind keeping an eye on this for a minute, will you?" +She didn't actually smile, but there was in her face a humorous +appreciation of the fact that a mountain like this wouldn't be hard to +watch. + +The doorman grinned back at her. "Sure I will," he said. "I'm sorry I +can't leave the door to get you a cab." + +Rose hailed one that happened to be passing, a creaking, +mud-bespattered disreputable affair with a driver to match, and briskly +drove a bargain with him. He announced when she told him the address +that the fare would be a dollar and a half. She offered him seventy-five +cents, which he, with the air of a disillusioned optimist in a bitter +world, accepted. "Christmas, too!" he muttered ironically. + +"Oh, come," said Rose, grinning up at him. "How many tired people have +you given free rides to to-day, on the strength of that?" + +"All right, miss; I don't complain," he said. He did, though, but +humorously, when Rose, assisted by a page boy the doorman had impressed +for her, carried the dressmaker's form and the other heavy bundle out to +the curb. He declared the form should go as another passenger (its +semi-human shape was clearly visible through the wrappings) and that the +other bundle ought to have a van. All the same, when at her destination +Rose had paid him, he came down, voluntarily from the box--voluntarily +but with a sort of reluctance--and carried the form up to her room for +her. + +Also, rather incredibly, he refused an extra quarter she had ready for +him when he had completed this service. "Just to show no ill feelings," +he said, and he told her where his stand was and gave himself a little +recommendation: "Honest and reliable." + +Here in her close little room, the suggestion of an alcoholic basis for +this generosity obtruded itself, but Rose didn't care. She wished him a +merry Christmas and waved him off with a smile. + +It was now after eight o'clock. Rehearsal was at eight-thirty and she +had had nothing to eat since noon. But she stole the time, nevertheless, +to tear the wrappings off her "form" and gaze on its respectable +nakedness for two or three minutes with a contemplative eye. Then, +reluctantly--it was the first time she had left that room with +reluctance--she turned out the light and hurried off to the little +lunch-room that lay on the way to the dance-hall. + +She never again, in the active practise of her profession, knew +anything quite like the ensuing seventy-two hours. Every stimulus was, +of course, abnormally heightened. There was the novelty, the thrilling +sense of adventure that missed being fear only through an inexplicable +confidence of success. And then, anyway, her imagination was a virgin +field that had never been cropped, and the luxurious fertility of it was +amazing. + +It was during that first rehearsal, which she so narrowly missed being +late for, that she got the general schemes for both sets of costumes. +That there must be a general scheme she had decided at once. The +sextette was a unit; none of the members of it ever appeared without the +others, and it would be immensely more effective, she perceived, if this +fact were expressed somehow in the costumes. Not by means of a stupid +uniformity, of course. The effect she wanted was subtler than that. But +if each one of the six costumes that these girls first appeared in could +be made somehow to express the same thing in a different way--not only +in different, though harmonious, colors, but in different, though +related, forms--the effect produced by the six of them together would be +immensely greater than the sum of their individual effects. + +This, of course, wasn't what Rose said to herself. She just wanted a +scheme, and with ridiculous ease, she got it. She didn't even get it. +There it was staring at her. And the other scheme for the evening frocks +was knocking at the door, too, eager to get in the moment she could give +it a chance. She began studying the girls for their individual +peculiarities of style. Each one of the costumes she made was going to +be for a particular girl, suited, without losing its place in the +general plan, to the enhancement of her special approximation to beauty. + +At last, when a shout from Galbraith aroused her to the fact that she +had missed an entrance cue altogether, in her entranced absorption in +these visions of hers, and had caused that unpardonable thing, a stage +wait, she resolutely clamped down the lid upon her imagination and, +until they were dismissed, devoted herself to the rehearsal. + +But the pressure kept mounting higher and higher and she found herself +furiously impatient to get away, back to her own private wonderland, the +squalid little room down the street, that had three bolts of cambric in +it and a dressmaker's manikin--the raw materials for her magic! + +Rose couldn't draw a bit. Her mother's fine contempt for ladylike +accomplishments had even intervened in the high-school days to prevent +her taking a free-hand course required in the curriculum, during which +you spent weeks making a charcoal study of a bust of Demosthenes. But +this lack never even occurred to Rose as a handicap. She hadn't the +faintest impulse to make a beginning by putting a picture down on paper +and making a dress of it afterward. She went straight at her materials, +or the equivalent of her materials, as a sculptor goes at his clay. She +couldn't have told just why she had bought those three shades of paper +cambric. + +"I'm really awfully obliged to you for having explained it to me," she +told Burton, the portrait painter long afterward. + +"I see!" he had exclaimed, on the occasion of an initiatory visit to her +workroom. "You design these things in their values first, just the way +the old masters used to paint. Once you get the values in, you can +project them in any colors that will leave your value scale true." + +And Rose, as she said, was really grateful to him for telling her what +it was she had been doing all the while, just as Monsieur Jourdain was +grateful for the information that he had been talking prose all his life +and never known it. + +What she had felt, of course, at the very outset, was the need of +something to indicate roughly the darks and lights in her design. And, +short of the wild extravagance of slashing into the fabrics themselves +and making her mistakes at their expense, she could think of nothing +better than the scheme she chose. + +She came to the conclusion afterward that even apart from the +consideration of expense, her own plan was better. You got more vigor +somehow, into the actual construction of the thing, if you could make it +express something quite independently of color and texture. + +Rehearsal was dismissed a little early that first night, and she was +back in her room by eleven. Arrived there, she took off her outer +clothes, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and went to work. When at +last, with a little sigh, and a tremulously smiling acknowledgment of +fatigue, she got up and looked at her watch, it was four o'clock in the +morning. She'd had one of those experiences that every artist can +remember a few of in his life, when it is impossible for anything to go +wrong; when each tentative experiment accomplishes not only its purpose, +but another unsuspected purpose as well; when the vision miraculously +betters itself in the execution; when the only difficulty is that which +the hands have in the purely mechanical operation of keeping up. + +She was destined later, of course, even during the achievement of this +first success, to learn the comparative rarity of those hours. Though, +as she looked back on it afterward, the whole of this first job seemed +to have been done with a kind of miraculous facility she couldn't +account for. + +And all through those five hours, fast as her mind flew, utterly +absorbed as it seemed to be, she never once lost the consciousness of +the almost palpable presence of Rodney Aldrich there in the room with +her. Once she laughed outright over the memory of a girl who had tried +to win her husband's friendship by studying law. Fancy Rodney trying to +study costumes! But he would understand what it meant to conceive them +and the sort of work it took, once they were conceived, to project them +as something objective to herself--something that had to challenge +expert opinion; meet the exactions of criticism. He'd understand the +thrill, too, of seeing them come up for judgment--the triumph of getting +them accepted and paid for. + +And, in the confidence born of that understanding, he'd be able to offer +for her to understand, the fundamentals of his own work. Not the dry +husks of technical considerations. What did they amount to anyway, +except as they formed the boundaries of the live thing he meant? But the +live thing itself--the thing that spelled challenge and work and victory +for him,--that thing, since at last she'd grown to deserve it, he'd +give her. Freely, fully,--just because he couldn't help giving it. + +Tired as she was, she could hardly bear to stop work. The half finished +thing on the manikin lured her on from one moment to another. It was +really insane not to stop. She must get up at seven-thirty, three hours +or so from now, in order to get to the shops ahead of the crowds and +begin the selection of her fabrics. At last, with a single movement of +resolution she turned out the gas and undressed, or rather, finished +undressing, in the dark, amid a litter of pins and paper cambric. + +And now, for the first time in this squalid, mean little room, the dark +had balm in it, became a fragrant miracle, obliterating the harsh +actualities of her immediate yesterdays and to-morrows, winging her +spirit for a breathless flight straight to the end she sought,--to the +time when the long pilgrimage before her should be accomplished. + +What a wonderful thing Rodney's cool firm friendship would be! Worth +anything, anything in the world it might cost to win it. But ... But.... + +She drew in a long unsteady breath and pressed her cooling hands down +upon her face. + +What a thing his love would be, when it should come, free of its tasks +and obligations; no longer in the treadmill making her world go round, +but given its wings again! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +SUCCESS--AND A RECOGNITION + + +There is a kaleidoscopic character about the events of the ten days or +so preceding the opening performance of most musical comedies which +would make a sober chronicle of them seem fantastically incredible; and +this law of Nature made no exception in the case of _The Girl +Up-stairs_. There were rehearsals which ran so smoothly and swiftly that +they'd have done for performances; there were others so abominably bad +that the bare idea of presenting the mess resulting from six weeks' +toil, before people who had paid money to see it, was a nightmare. + +As the nervous pressure mounted, people took to exploding all over the +place in the most grotesquely inconceivable ways and from totally +unpredictable causes. Freddy France, who played the comic detective +(like most comedians he had no sense of humor whatever and treated his +"art" with a sort of sacrificial solemnity), developed delusions of +persecution, proclaimed himself the victim of a conspiracy to which the +owners, the author, Galbraith and most of the principals were parties, +and finally, when the director cut out a little scene that he had two +feeble jokes in, reached up unexpectedly and hit McGill on the nose, +flung his part on the stage, stamped on it and left the theater. Quan +read his lines in a painstaking manner for two days and then, after a +three-hour session in the Sherman House bar, Freddy was induced to come +back. + +Stewart Lester, one day, at the end of a long patient effort of +Galbraith's to improve his acting (he acted like a tenor; one needn't +say more than that), licked his thin red lips, and in a feline fury, +announced his indifference as to whether the management accepted his +resignation or that of Miss Devereux. As long as she insisted on +treating her vis-à-vis like a chorus-man, she'd perhaps be happier if a +chorus-man were given the part; and he would he only too happy, in case +the management agreed with her, to make the substitution possible. +Whereupon Miss Devereux remarked that even having been a failure in +grand opera didn't necessarily assure a man success in musical comedy, +and that possibly a chorus-man would be an improvement. Galbraith had a +long private conference with each of them--the fact that they would not +speak at all off stage guaranteed him against their comparing notes as +to what he'd said--and while the thing he effected could not be called a +reconciliation, it amounted to a sort of armed truce. They went through +their love scenes without actually scratching and biting. + +Even little Anabel Astor, whose good humor for a long time had seemed +invincible, tempestuously left the stage one day in the middle of one of +her scenes with her dancing partner, and could be heard sobbing loudly +in the wings through all that remained of that rehearsal. + +Queer things began happening to the plot, resulting sometimes from the +violent transposition of song numbers from one act to another, sometimes +from the interpolation of songs or specialties. Two or three scenes, +which the author regarded with special pride and was prepared to die in +the defense of, were pronounced by Galbraith to be junk. He had made +superhuman efforts, he told Goldsmith and Block, to put a little life +into them, and had demonstrated that this miracle was impossible of +performance. They were dead and they'd got to be buried before they +became, to the olfactory sense, any more unpleasant. + +There was an ominous breathlessness in the air after this ultimatum had +been delivered, and at the next rehearsal, when the director announced +the cut of six solid pages of manuscript, the voice of the author was +heard from back of the hall proclaiming in a hollow Euripidean bellow +that it was all over. He was going to his lawyer to get an injunction +against the production of the piece. + +Of all the persons directly, or even remotely, affected by this +nerve-shattering confusion, Rose was perhaps the least perturbed. The +only thing that really mattered to her, was the successful execution of +those twelve costumes. The phantasmagoria at North End Hall was a +regrettable, but necessary, interruption of her more important +activities. The interruption didn't interfere so seriously as at first +she thought it would. The routine of rehearsal as Galbraith developed +it, began with special scenes--isolated bits that needed modification or +polishing. The general rehearsals, taking this act or that and going +through with it from beginning to end, and involving, of course, the +presence of everybody in the company, didn't, as a rule, begin till +three in the afternoon; sometimes till as late as five. Of course when +they did begin, they lasted until all hours. + +But the labors of the chorus, and even of the sextette, shrank very much +in proportion to the work of the principals. Nearly all the changes that +were made were in the direction of compressing the chorus and giving the +principals more room. So that for long stretches of time, during which, +dressed in her working clothes and curled up in one of the remoter of +the cushioned window-seats, but ready to answer a summons to the stage +as promptly as a fireman, she could let her mind run without +interruption on the solution of some of her own problems, and then be +ready when she went back to her room, to fall into bed and asleep (the +two acts had become practically simultaneous) secure in the possession +of a clearly thought out program for the morrow. + +She wakened automatically at half past seven and was down-town by half +past eight, to do whatever shopping the work of the previous day +revealed the need of. The fact that it was, for the greater part, John +Galbraith's money she was spending (she had managed to put in a little +herself by calculating down to a fine point the necessary margin for +existence) worked to her advantage in these operations. She could not, +but for that fact, have forced herself to hunt down bargains so +persistently nor to keep the incidental expense for findings and such, +so low. + +At nine-thirty in the morning--an unheard of hour in the theater--the +watchman at the Globe let her in the stage door, and Rose had half an +hour before the arrival of the wardrobe mistress and her assistant, for +looking over the work done since she had left for rehearsal the day +before. + +She liked this quiet, cavernous old barn of a place down under the Globe +stage; liked it when she had it to herself before the two sewing women +came and later, when, with a couple of sheets spread down on the floor +she cut and basted according to her cambric patterns, keeping ahead of +the flying needles of the other two. After her own little room, the mere +spaciousness of it seemed almost noble. She even liked it, when, about +half past one in the afternoon, on matinée days, the chorus-girls of the +show now drawing to the end of its run, began dawdling in, passing +shrill jokes with Bill Flynn, the fireman, rummaging through the mail in +the letter-box, casually unfastening their clothes all the while, +preliminary to kimonos and make-up, gathering in little knots about the +sewing-machines and exclaiming in profane delight over the costumes. She +wondered at herself, sometimes, for having ceased to mind their +language, their shameless way of going half-clad, their general +atmosphere of moth-like worthlessness--and then laughed at herself for +wondering! + +How would her own quality be finer, her soul a more ample thing, for the +keeping, on one of the shelves of it, of a pot of carefully preserved +horror? If she could succeed with these costumes, her success, she +hoped, would lead her directly into the business of designing other +costumes for the stage. And if she became a professional stage costumer, +this rather loose, ramshackle, down-at-the-heel morality of back-stage +musical comedy would be a permanent fact in her life, just as the +dustiness of law-books and the stuffiness of court rooms were permanent +facts in Rodney's. + +As the work went on, her confidence in the success of this initiatory +venture became less ecstatic and more reasonable. A few of the costumes +were finished and, seen on live models (a couple of girls in the chorus +in the Globe show had volunteered to try on) were, if Rose knew anything +at all about clothes, without doubt or qualification, good. + +She had had just one really bad quarter of an hour over them, and that, +back on Christmas Day as it happened, was when Galbraith, having +detained her after he had dismissed the rehearsal, asked to see her +sketches. + +"Sketches!" she echoed, perplexed. + +"Oh, I don't mean regular water-colored plates," he said. "Just whatever +rough drafts of the things you will have put down on paper to start +yourself off with. It's simple curiosity, you understand." + +"But," she gasped, "I haven't put anything down on paper--not anything +at all! I don't know how to draw." + +And now he was perplexed in turn. How could one design a costume without +drawing a picture of it? + +She explained her working method to him; though not, she felt, very +successfully. She was perhaps a bit flustered, and he didn't seem to be +giving her his complete attention--seemed to be covering up, with the +pretense of listening, a strong interior abstraction. + +This was again a good diagnosis as far as it went. Only it didn't dig in +far enough for even the faintest surmise as to what the nature of his +abstraction was. + +"I could bring the patterns down here. Or, if you had time, you could +come up to my room and see them. But I'm afraid you couldn't tell much +from that, because they're all taken apart, you see, and they're just in +paper cambric and not the right colors." + +What the man was struggling for--it had been his sole reason for +detaining her in the first place--was some sort of opening that would +make it seem natural to tell her he hoped her Christmas Day had not been +too intolerably unhappy; to shake hands with her and wish her +luck--assure her in one way or another, that she had in him a friend she +could bring her troubles to--any sort of troubles. He'd made up his mind +to do this when the Christmas rehearsal should he over, as long ago as +the night of their walk down the avenue. This resolution had been +reinforced by the look he had caught in her face when she came up to +rehearsal this afternoon--a rather misty, luminous, exalted look,--a +little lack of definition about her eyelids suggesting there had been +tears there. + +This was good observation like her own of him. But, again like hers, in +its failure to get the central clue, it only mislead him, the worse. If +he could have guessed that she had been having a Christmas celebration +of her own that day; that there had been unwrapped and displayed, three +little presents she had bought the day before; one for her husband, and +one for each of her two babies, and that, just before starting for +rehearsal, she had wrapped them up and put them into her trunk to await +the day when they could be given, it might have altered matters +somewhat. + +The thing that finally made it clearly impossible for Galbraith to +express anything at all of this feeling which he, in good faith, called +friendship for her, was her alternative offer--if he had time, to take +him up to her room for a look at the patterns. + +If she's seen him as anything at all but starkly her employer and her +financier; if she's had the faintest glimmer of him as one who held for +her any personal feelings whatever, she never would have suggested as an +alternative to her bringing the patterns here to rehearsal, his coming +up to her room for a look at them. + +The thing of all others that irritated Galbraith was the possession of a +divided mind. Just now, disappointed as he was, almost to the point of +pain, though he wouldn't acknowledge to himself that it went as far as +that, over the evident fact that his relation to the girl, in spite of +their partnership, was exactly what it had been from the beginning, he +was still aware that if he'd got the opening he wanted, had managed +another of those warm lithe hand-clasps with her, and had got the notion +across to her that he wanted her to make a friend of him and a +confidant, he'd be going away now, afterward, under the painful +misgiving that he was a bit of an old fool. The product of all this +irritation was, however, that he declined Rose's offer of a view of her +patterns rather bruskly. + +"It was just curiosity, as I said. Go along your own way and don't worry +about me. You will be all right." + +Rose couldn't feel much conviction behind this expression of +confidence, and she went away, as I have said, in a sort of panic. Was +she all wrong, after all? Couldn't you design stage costumes except by +making pictures of them? She knew what he meant by water-colored plates. +She'd seen them framed in the lobbies at musical shows she'd been to +with Rodney. That was how costume designers worked, was it? Well she +knew she never could do anything like that. + +But her fears only lasted until she got back to her room and caught a +reassuring look at the pattern that was assembled on the form. After +all, the pictures in the lobby weren't so important as the costumes on +the stage. And as for Galbraith--well, if he didn't expect too much of +her, that was all the better. + +In keeping with the good luck which had attended everything that +happened in connection with this first venture of hers, she was able to +tell Galbraith that both sets of costumes were done and ready to try on, +on the very day he announced that the next rehearsal would be held at +ten to-morrow morning at the Globe. It might very easily have happened, +of course, that Rose's enterprise, together with Galbraith's partnership +in it, had become known here or there, got passed on from one to +another, with modifications and embellishments according to fancy, and +grown to be a monument of scandal and conjecture. But nothing is more +capricious than the heat-lightning of gossip, and it just chanced that, +up to the morning of Rose's little triumph, no one beyond Galbraith and +Rose herself even suspected the identity with Dane of the chorus, of the +costumer who was to submit, on approval, gowns for the sextette. The +fact, of course, was bound to come out on the day the company moved over +for rehearsals to the Globe, and the event was very happily dramatized +for Rose, by her ability to let the costumes appear first and her +authorship of them only after their success was beyond dispute. + +She persuaded the girls to wait until all six were dressed in the +afternoon frocks and until she herself had had a chance to give each of +them a final inspection and to make a few last touches and +readjustments. Then they all trooped out on the stage and stood in a +row, turned about, walked here and there, in obedience to Galbraith's +instructions shouted from the back of the theater. + +It was dark out there and disconcertingly silent. The glow of two cigars +indicated the presence of Goldsmith and Block in the middle of a little +knot of other spectators. + +The only response Rose got--the only index to the effect her labors had +produced--was the tone of Galbraith's voice. It rang on her ear a little +sharper, louder, and with more of a staccato bruskness than the +directions he was giving called for. And it was not his practise to put +more cutting edge into his blade, or more power behind his stroke, than +was necessary to accomplish what he wanted. He was excited, therefore. +But was it by the completeness of her success or the calamitousness of +her failure? + +"All right," he shouted. "Go and put on the others." + +There was another silence after they had fled out on the stage again, +clad tins time in the evening gowns--a hollow heart-constricting +silence, almost literally sickening. But it lasted only a moment. Then, +"Will you come down here, Miss Dane?" called Galbraith. + +There was a slight, momentary, but perfectly palpable shock accompanying +these words--a shock felt by everybody within the sound of his voice. +Because the director had not said, "Dane, come down here." He had said, +"Will you come here, Miss Dane?" And the thing amounted, so rigid is the +etiquette of musical comedy, to an accolade. The people on the stage and +in the wings didn't know what she'd done, nor in what character she was +about to appear, but they did know she was, from now on, something +besides a chorus-girl. + +Rose obediently crossed the runway and walked up the aisle to where +Galbraith stood with Goldsmith and Block, waiting for her. She was still +feeling a little numb and empty. + +Galbraith, as she came up, held out a hand to her. "I congratulate you, +Miss Dane," he said. "They're admirable. With all the money in the +world, I wouldn't ask for anything handsomer." + +Before she could say anything in reply, he directed her attention, with +a nod of the head, to the partners, and walked away. Rose gasped at +that. She'd never thought beyond him--beyond the necessity of pleasing +him; and that he'd carry the details of the business through with +Goldsmith and Block, she'd taken for granted. Now, here she was chucked +into the water and told to swim. She'd never in her life, of course, +tried to sell anything. What her mind first awoke to was that the +partners were looking rather blank. Block, indeed, let his eyes follow +the retreating Galbraith with a momentary look of outraged astonishment. +Her wits, quickened by the emergency, interpreted the look. Galbraith, +chucking her into the water indeed, had thrown her a life-preserver--the +tip that her wares were good. + +Goldsmith, quicker and shrewder than his junior, was already smiling +politely. "They really are very good," he said. "If they are not too +expensive for us, we'll consider buying them." + +"They'll be," said Rose, "the twelve of them, four hundred and +sixty-five dollars." She had something the same feeling of astonishment +on hearing herself say this, that she'd had when she heard herself +telling Galbraith that she'd design the costumes. Something or other had +spoken without her will--almost without her knowledge. She had one +figure clearly etched in her brain; that was the one hundred and ninety +dollars she must pay back to Galbraith; and she'd put in fifty of her +own. There was also a matter of twenty dollars or so still to be paid to +the wardrobe mistress and her assistant. But this four hundred and +sixty-five dollars had simply come out of the air. + +Block pursed his lips and emitted a fine thin whistle of astonishment. + +Goldsmith heaved a sigh. "My dear young lady," he protested. "The +inducement held out to us to wait for these costumes of yours, was that +they were to be cheap. But four hundred and sixty-five dollars is +ridiculous! That's a lot of money." + +"Quite a lot less," said Rose, "than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out +came to. They were just over six hundred." Goldsmith smiled +indulgently. "By the figures on the tags, yes," he said. "But would we +have paid that, do you think? Those figures represent what they'd like +to get from people who buy one apiece. But from us, buying twelve ..." +He shrugged his shoulders expressively. + +Well, this was reasonable and no doubt true and it left Rose rather +aghast. She turned away toward the stage with the best appearance of +indifference she could muster. Her mind was making an agonized effort to +add up one hundred and ninety, fifty and twenty. But in the excitement +of the moment it simply balked--rejected the problem altogether. She +didn't think that the total came to much over three hundred dollars, but +she couldn't be sure. And then there was, sticking burr-like, somewhere, +the consciousness of another hundred unaccounted for in this total. +Until she could discover what the gowns had actually cost her, she +couldn't say anything. Therefore, she just stood where she was and said +nothing whatever. + +Goldsmith cleared his throat. "Really," he said in an intensely +aggrieved tone, "you must try to see it from our point of view. This +production's cost us thousands of dollars. If we bankrupt ourselves +before the opening night it will be a bad business for everybody. You +ought to see that. The costumes are very nice, I admit that. But +remember we took a chance on it. We waited for them with the idea that +you'd cooperate with us in saving money." + +Rose made a last frantic struggle to induce her figures to add up, but +they were getting more meaningless every minute. + +There was another moment of silence. Then Block took up the refrain with +variations. But just as he began to speak, a brilliantly luminous ray of +light struck Rose. She could have answered Goldsmith's arguments--would +have done so, but for her preoccupation with that trifling sum in +arithmetic. But it was incomparably better tactics not to answer at all. +Because if she could answer their arguments, they in turn could answer +hers. She'd be a child in their hands once she began to talk. But her +silence disconcerted them--gave them nothing to go on. Well, then, +she'd let them do the work and see what happened. + +But suppose, through her stubborn insistence, they should refuse the +costumes at any price! Well, the world wouldn't come to an end. She'd +live through it somehow, and somehow she'd manage to repay Galbraith. + +The partners went on talking alternately with symptoms of rising +impatience. + +"Oh, come," said Block at last, "we can't be all day about this! Your +figure is out of all reason. If you'd said even four hundred now ..." + +"Oh, yes," said Goldsmith. "We want to be liberal. We appreciate you've +done a good job. Say four hundred and I'll write you a check for it +now." He took a small check-book and a fountain pen out of his pocket. +"That's all right, eh?" + +Rose made another effort at addition. A hundred and ninety, and fifty, +and twenty, and the other ghostly hundred that wouldn't account for +itself and yet insisted on coming in and mixing everything up. She +turned on the two partners a look of perfectly genuine distress. + +"If you'll let me go away and add it up ..." she began. + +Goldsmith's heart was touched. The costumes were a bargain at four +hundred and sixty-five, and he knew it. There was an indescribable sort +of dash to them that would lend tone to the whole production. And then +the face of that pretty young girl who must have worked so desperately +hard to make them and who was so obviously helpless at this bargaining +game, would have moved a harder heart than his. + +"Oh, all right!" he said. "We'll give in. Four hundred"--he began making +out the check, but his hand hung over it a moment--"and fifty. How's +that?" + +Rose drew in a long breath. "That's all right," she said. + +It was just as she turned away with the check made out to Doris Dane in +her wrist-bag, that the mystery of that phantom hundred dollars solved +itself. It was the hundred dollars she'd borrowed from Rodney and could +now return to him! + +Galbraith took the first chance he could make to shoot her a low-voiced +question. "How much did you get?" he asked, and his face showed +downright surprise when she told him. "That's a pretty fair price," he +commented. "I was afraid they'd screw you way down on it, and I wanted +to help you out, but ..." + +"Oh, you did," said Rose. "Telling me they were good. Of course you +couldn't have done anything more. The first thing I want to do," she +went on, "is to pay you back. But I don't know just how to do it. I +can't go to the bank where they know me and--anyway, the name on the +check isn't right." + +He told her how easily that could be fixed. He'd take her to the bank he +used here in town and identify her. Then she could pay him and deposit +the balance to her own account. It was a bank where they didn't mind +small accounts. That would be much better than carrying her money around +with her where it could too easily be stolen. + +He was very kind about it all and they put the program through that day. +Yet she was vaguely conscious of a sense that he seemed a little +chilled, as if something about the transaction unaccountably depressed +him. + +And indeed it was true that he'd have found his tendency to fall in love +with her a good deal harder to resist if she'd shown herself more +helpless in the hands of Goldsmith and Block. She'd actually driven a +good bargain--an unaccountably good bargain! He wished he'd been on hand +to see how she did it. Well, women were queer, there was no getting away +from that. + +But Goldsmith and Block came back the next day and drove, in turn, a +good bargain of their own. + +"You've certainly got a good eye for costumes, Miss Dane," Goldsmith +said, "and here's a proposition we'd like to make. A lot of these other +things we've got for the regular chorus don't look so good as they +might. You'll be able to see changes in them that'll improve them maybe +fifty per cent. Well, you take it on, and we'll begin paying you your +regular salary now; you understand, twenty-five dollars a week, +beginning to-day." + +Rose accepted this proposition with a warm flush of gratitude. It +indicated, she felt, that they were still friendly toward her, disposed +of certain misgivings she'd experienced the night before, lest in +driving, unwittingly, so good a bargain with them, she had incurred +their enmity. + +But, from the moment her little salary began, she found herself +retained, body and soul, exactly as Galbraith himself was. They'd bought +all her ideas, all her energy, all her time, except a few scant hours +for sleep and a few snatched minutes for meals. She gave her employers, +up to the time when the piece opened at the Globe, at a conservative +calculation, about five times their money's worth. Even if she hadn't +been in the company she'd have found something like two days' work in +every twenty-four hours, just in the wardrobe room. Because the costumes +were cheap and the frank blaze of borders, footlights and spots, +pitilessly betrayed the fact. One set for the ponies was so hopelessly +bad that the owners refused to accept them, and Rose, on the spur of the +moment, made up a costume--they were uniform, fortunately--to replace +them. The wardrobe mistress, with two assistants, and under Rose's +intermittent supervision, managed somehow to get them made. And there +wasn't a single costume, outside Rose's own twelve, that hadn't to be +remodeled more or less. + +On top of all that, the really terrible grind of rehearsals began; +property rehearsals, curiously disconcerting at first, where instead of +indicating the business with empty hands, you actually lighted the +cigarette, picked up the paper knife, pulled the locket out from under +your dress and opened it--and, in the process of doing these things, +forgot everything else you knew; scenery rehearsals that caused the +stage to seem small and cluttered up and actually made some of the +evolutions you'd been routined in, impossible. At last and ghastliest, a +dress rehearsal, which began at seven o'clock one night and lasted till +four the next morning. + +It would all have been so ludicrously easy, Rose used to reflect in +despair, if, like the other girls in the sextette, she'd had only her +own part in the performance to attend to--only to get into her costumes +at the right time, be waiting in the wings for the cue, and then come on +and do the things they'd taught her to do. But, between Goldsmith and +Block, who were now in a state of frantic activity and full of insane +suggestions, and the wardrobe mistress who was always having to be told +how to do something, every minute was occupied. She would try +desperately to keep an ear alert for what was happening on the stage, in +order to be on hand for her entrances. But, in spite of her, it +sometimes happened that she'd be snatched from something by a furious +roar from Galbraith. + +"Miss Dane!" And then, when she appeared, bewildered, contrite. "You +_must_ attend to the rehearsal. Those other matters can be attended to +at some other time. If necessary, I can stop the rehearsal and wait till +you're at liberty. But I can't pretend to rehearse and be kept waiting." + +She never made any excuses; just took her place with a nod of +acquiescence. But she often felt like doing as some of the rest of them +did; felt it would be a perfectly enormous relief to shriek out +incoherent words of abuse, burst into tears and sobs, and rush from the +stage. Her position--her new position, she fancied, would entitle her to +do that--once. And then the notion that she was saving up that luxurious +possibility for some time when it would do the most good, would bring +back her old smile. And Galbraith, lost in wonder at her already, would +wonder anew. + +They followed the traditions of the Globe in giving _The Girl Up-stairs_ +its try-out in Milwaukee--four performances; from a Thursday to a +Saturday night, with rehearsals pretty much all the time in between. + +About all that this hegira meant to Rose was that she got two solid +hours' sleep on the train going up on Thursday afternoon and another two +hours on the train coming back on Sunday morning. She had domesticated +herself automatically, in the little hotel across from the theater, and +she had gone right on working just as she did at the Globe. Oddly +enough, she didn't differentiate much between rehearsals and the +performances. Perhaps because she was so absorbed with her labors off +the stage; perhaps because the thoroughly tentative nature of everything +they did was so strongly impressed on her. + +The piece was rewritten more or less after every performance. They +didn't get the curtain down on the first one until five minutes after +twelve--for even an experienced director like Galbraith can make a +mistake in timing--and the mathematically demonstrated necessity for +cutting, or speeding, a whole hour out of the piece, tamed even the +wild-eyed Mr. Mills. The principals, after having for weeks been +routined in the reading of their lines and the execution of their +business, were given new speeches to say and new things to do at a +moment's notice--literally, sometimes, while the performance was going +on. Ghastly things happened, of course. A tricky similarity of cues +would betray somebody into a speech three scenes ahead; a cut would have +the unforeseen effect of leaving somebody stranded, half-changed, in his +dressing-room when his entrance cue came round; an actor would dry up, +utterly forget his lines in the middle of a scene he could have repeated +in his sleep--and the amazing way in which these disasters were +retrieved, the way these people who hadn't, so far, impressed Rose very +strongly with their collective intelligence, extemporized, righted the +capsizing boat, kept the scene going--somehow--no matter what happened, +gave her a new respect for their claims to a real profession. + +This was the great thing they had, she concluded; the quality of coming +up to the scratch, of giving whatever it took out of themselves to meet +the need of the moment. They weren't--her use of this phrase harked back +to the days of the half-back--yellow. If you'd walked through the train +that took them back to Chicago Sunday morning, had seen them, glum, +dispirited, utterly fagged out, unsustained by a single gleam of hope, +you'd have said it was impossible that they should give any sort of +performance that night--let alone a good one. But by eight o'clock that +night, when the overture was called, you wouldn't have known them for +the same people. + +There is, to begin with, a certain magic about make-up which lends a +color of plausibility to the paradoxical theory that our emotions spring +from our facial expressions rather than the other way about. Certainly +to an experienced actor, his paint--the mere act of putting it on and +looking at himself in the glass as it is applied--effects for him a +solution of continuity between his real self, if you can call it that, +and his part; so that fatigues, discouragements, quarrels, ailments--I +don't mean to say are forgotten; they are remembered well enough, but +are given the quality of belonging to some one else. But beyond all that +was the feeling, on the edge of this first performance, that they were +now on their own. Harold Mills and the composer, Goldsmith and Block, +John Galbraith, had done their best, or their worst, as the case might +be. But their labors to-night would mean nothing to that rustling +audience out in front. From now on it was up to the company! + +The appearance, back on the stage, of John Galbraith in evening dress, +just as the call of the first act brought them trooping from their +dressing-rooms, intensified this sensation. He was going to be, +to-night, simply one of the audience. + +As a sample of the new spirit, Rose noted with hardly a sensation of +surprise, that Patricia Devereux nodded amiably enough to Stewart Lester +and observed that she believed the thing was going to go; and that +Lester in reply said, yes, he believed it was. + +Rose herself was completely dominated by it. Her nerves--slack, frayed, +numb, an hour ago--had sprung miraculously into tune. She not only +didn't feel tired. It seemed she never could feel tired again. Not even, +going back to her university days, on the eve of a class basket-ball +game, or a tennis match, had she felt that fine thrill of buoyant +confidence and adequacy quite so strongly! + +It wasn't until along in the third act that the audience became, for +her, anything but a colloid mass--something that you squeezed and +thumped and worked as you did clay, to get into a properly plastic +condition of receptivity, so that the jokes, the songs, the dances, +even the spindling little shafts of romance that you shot out into it, +could be felt to dig in and take hold. It never occurred to her to think +of it with a plural pronoun; it was "it" simply, an inchoate monster, +which was, as the show progressed, delightfully loosening up, becoming +good-humored, undiscriminating, stupidly infatuate; laughing at things +no human being would consider funny, approving with a percussive roar +things not in the least good; a monster, all the same, whose approbation +gave you an intense, if quite unreasoning, pleasure. + +But, along in the third act, as I said, as she came down to the +footlights with the rest of the sextette in their _All Alone_ number, +one face detached itself suddenly from the pasty gray surface of them +that spread over the auditorium; became human--individual--and intensely +familiar. Became the face, unmistakably, of Jimmy Wallace! + +It is probable that of all the audience, only two men saw that anything +had happened, so brief was the frozen instant while she stood +transfixed. One of them was John Galbraith, in the back row, and he let +his breath go out again in relief almost in the act of catching it. He +guessed what had happened well enough--that she'd recognized one of +those friends whose potential horror had made her willing to give up her +promotion and her little part--the one she'd spoken of, perhaps, as the +"only one that really mattered." But it was all right. She was going on +as if nothing had happened. + +The other man was Jimmy Wallace himself. He released, too, a little sigh +of relief when he saw her off in her stride again after that momentary +falter. But he hardly looked at the stage after that; stared absently at +his program instead, and, presently, availed himself of the dramatic +critic's license and left the theater. + +But it wasn't to go to his desk and write his story (he was on an +evening paper and so had no deadline staring him in the face) but to a +quiet corner in his club, where he could, undistractedly, think. + +From the moment of Rose's first appearance on the stage he had been +tormented by a curiosity as to whether she was indeed Rose, or merely +some one unbelievably like her. Because the fantastic impossibility that +Rose Aldrich should be a member of the Globe chorus was reinforced by +the fact that her gaze had traveled unconcernedly across his face a +dozen times--his seat was in the fourth row, too--without the slightest +flicker of recognition. Of course the way she stood there frozen for a +second, when at last she did see him, settled that question. She was +Rose Aldrich and she was in the Globe chorus! + +But this certainty merely left him with a more insoluble perplexity on +his hands; two, in fact--oh, half a dozen! What was she doing there? Did +Rodney know? Well, those questions, and others in their train, could +wait. But--what was he going to do about it? + +As for Rose herself, it was a mere automaton that moved off in the dance +and said the two or three lines that remained to her in the act as if +nothing had happened, because all her mind and all her capacity for +feeling were occupied and tested by something else. + +Incredible as it seems, she had utterly overlooked Jimmy--overlooked the +fact that, as a dramatic critic, he'd be certain to be present at the +opening performance of _The Girl Up-stairs_--certain to be sitting close +to the front, and certain, of course, to recognize her the moment she +came on the stage. She hadn't even had him in mind when the fear lest +some one of Rodney's friends might, for a lark, drop in at the Globe and +recognize her, had led her to tell John Galbraith that she couldn't be +in the sextette. Since that question had been settled, she'd hardly +considered the possibility at all. And, during the three weeks before +the opening, since she'd embarked on her career as a costumer, she +literally hadn't given it a thought. + +She had dreaded various things as the hour of the opening performance +drew near--reasonable things like the failure of the piece to please, +the reception of their offerings in a chilly silence intensified by +contemptuous little riffles of applause. (She had been in audiences +which had treated plays like that--taken her own part in the expression +of chill disfavor, and she knew now she could never do it again.) She +had dreaded unreasonable things, like the total failure of any audience +to appear and the necessity of playing to empty rows as they had done in +rehearsal; nightmare things, like a total loss of memory, which should +leave her stranded in the middle of a silent stage before a jeering +audience. But it hadn't occurred to her to dread that the rise of the +curtain would reveal to her any of the faces that belonged to a world +which the last six weeks had already made to seem unreal. + +So the sight of Jimmy Wallace had something the effect that a sudden +awakening has on a somnambulist--bewilderment at first, and after that a +sort of panic. Her first thought was that she must get word to him, +somehow, before he left the theater. Unless she could do that, what was +to prevent his going straight to Rodney, to-night, and telling him all +about it? He was under no obligation not to do it. He was Rodney's +friend quite as much as he was hers. + +It didn't take her long to make up her mind though that he wouldn't do +that. Jimmy was never precipitate. He'd give her a chance. To-morrow +morning would do. She could call him up at his office. + +But as she began formulating her request and phrasing the preface of +explanations she'd have to make before she'd be--well, entitled to ask a +favor of him, she found herself in a difficulty. She didn't want to +enter into a secret with him--with any man, this meant, of +course--against Rodney. She couldn't think of any way of stating her +reason for wanting her husband kept in the dark that didn't seem to +slight him, belittle him, make him faintly ridiculous--like the +pussy-cat John Galbraith had snapped his fingers at. + +So she came, rather swiftly indeed, to the decision (she had arrived at +it before Jimmy left the theater) that she wouldn't make any appeal to +him at all. She'd do nothing that could lead him to think, either that +she was ashamed of herself, or that she was afraid Rodney would be +ashamed of her. In the absence of any appeal from her, mightn't he +perhaps decide that Rodney was in her confidence and so say nothing +about it? But even if he should tell Rodney ... + +In her conscious thoughts she went no further than that; didn't +recognize the hope already beating tumultuously in her veins, that he +would tell Rodney--that perhaps even before she got back to her dismal +little room, Rodney, pacing his, would know. + +It was so irrational a hope--so unexpected and so well disguised--that +she mistook it for a fear. But fear never made one's heart glow like +that. + +That's where all her thoughts were when John Galbraith halted her on the +way to the dressing-room after the performance was over. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE MAN AND THE DIRECTOR + + +He said, "I want a talk with you," and she, thinking he meant then and +there, glanced about for a corner where they'd be tolerably secure +against the charging rushes of grips, property men and electricians, all +racing against time to get the third act struck and the first one set +and make their escape from the theater. + +"Oh, I don't mean here in this bedlam," he explained with a tinge of +impatience. And then his manner changed. "I'd like, for once, a chance +to sit down with you where it's--quiet and we don't have to feel in a +hurry." He added, a second later, answering a shade of what he took to +be doubt or hesitation in her face, "You're frightfully tired I know. If +you'd rather wait till to-morrow ..." + +"Oh, it wasn't that," said Rose. "I was just trying to think where a +place was where one could be quiet and needn't hurry and where two +people could talk." + +He smiled. "You can leave that to me," he said. "That is, if you don't +mind a restaurant and a little supper." + +"Of course I don't mind," she said. "I'd like it very much." + +He nodded. "Don't rush your dressing," he suggested, as he moved away. +"I've got plenty to do." + +The sextette dressed together in a sort of pen--big enough, because they +had all sorts of room down under the old Globe stage, but so far as +appointments went, decidedly primitive. The walls were of matched +boards; there was a shelf two feet wide or so around three sides of it, +to make a sort of continuous dressing-table; there were six mirrors, six +deal chairs and a few hooks. These were for your street clothes. The +stage costumes hung in neat ranks outside under the eye of the wardrobe +mistress. When you wanted to put one on you went out and got it, and if +the time allowed for the change were sufficient you took it back into +your dressing-room. Otherwise you plunged into it just where you were. +When you wanted to wash before putting on or after taking off your +make-up you went to a row of stationary wash-bowls down the corridor. + +All told it wasn't a place to linger in over the indulgence of +day-dreams. But the first glimpse Rose caught, as she opened the door, +in the mirror next her own, was the entranced face of Olga Larson. The +other girls were in an advanced state of undress, intent on getting out +as quickly as they could. They were all talking straight along, of +course, but that didn't delay their operations a bit. They talked +through the towels they were wiping off the make-up with, talked bent +double over shoe-buckles, talked in little gasps as they tugged at tight +sweaty things that didn't want to come off. And they made a striking +contrast to Olga, who sat there just as she'd left the stage, without a +hook unfastened, in a rapturous reverie, waiting for Rose. + +In the instant before her entrance was noticed, Rose made an effort to +shake herself together so that she should be not too inadequate to the +situation that awaited her. + +She was, of course, immensely pleased over Olga's little triumph. + +(For it had been a triumph. Galbraith had persuaded Goldsmith and Block +to buy the little Empire dress in maize and corn-flower; Rose had done +her hair, and Olga had been allowed to sing, on the first _encore_, the +refrain to _All Alone_, quite by herself. She'd gone up an octave on the +end of it to a high A, which in its perfect clarity had sounded about a +third higher and had brought down the house. Patricia had been furious, +of course, but was at bottom too decent to show it much and had actually +congratulated Olga when she came off. It looked as if she'd really got +her foot on the ladder.) + +Well, as I said, Rose was immensely pleased about it--for the girl, who +certainly deserved a little good luck at last; for herself, whose +judgment had been vindicated, and for the show, to the success of which +the experiment had contributed. But she'd have been a good deal better +pleased if Olga could have taken her success as simply her own, instead +of being so adoringly grateful to Rose about it. Olga had been adoring +her with a somewhat embarrassing intensity ever since the night she had +locked her in her room and taught her to talk. + +Rose had convicted herself here of a failure in human sympathy, and had +done her best to correct it, without much avail. The stubborn fact was +that, wishing Olga all the good fortune in the world, and being willing +to take any amount of trouble to bring it about, she didn't particularly +like her. And she flinched involuntarily, from the girl's more romantic +and sentimental manifestations. This distaste had been heightened by the +fact that along with Olga's adoration had gone a sense of +proprietorship, with its inevitable accompaniment of jealousy. + +Olga bridled every time she found Rose chatting with another member of +the chorus, and when, up in Milwaukee, Patricia had invited her, along +with Anabel, to come up to her room for a little supper after rehearsal, +Olga had been sulky and injured for the whole of the next day. + +It was something deeper in Rose than a mere surface distaste that made +all this--the caresses, as well as the sulky exactions--repellent to +her. And to-night, with her mind full of Rodney--full of that strange +hope that disguised itself as fear, the repulsion was stronger than +ever. She made an effort to conquer it. It would be a shame to throw a +wet blanket on the girl's attempt to enjoy her triumph in her own way. + +So Rose kissed her and told her how pleased she was, and good-humoredly +forbore to disclaim, except as her wide smile did it for her, Olga's +extravagant protestations of undying love and gratitude. Rose injected +common-sense considerations where she could. Olga had better get out of +that frock before she ruined it with grease paint, and unless she at +least began to dress pretty soon she'd find herself locked up for the +night in the theater. + +"I wouldn't care," Olga said. "You'd be locked up, too. Because you +aren't any further along than I am." + +"I'm going to be, though," said Rose, "in about two minutes." The +thought of what John Galbraith's disgust would be, in spite of his +good-natured assurance she needn't hurry, if she really kept him +waiting, set her at her task with flying fingers. + +"There's no use hurrying," Olga commented on this burst of speed, +"because you're going to wait for me. This is my night. We'll have a +little table all by ourselves at Max's and then you'll come up and sleep +with me to-night." + +An instinct prompted Rose to defer the necessary negative to this +suggestion until the last of the other girls, who was just then pinning +on her hat, should have gone. When the door clicked, she said she was +sorry but the plan couldn't be carried out. + +Olga looked at her intensely. "I need you to-night," she said, "and if +you care anything about me at all you'll come." + +"I'd come if I could," said Rose, "but it can't be managed. I've +promised to do something else." + +Olga's face paled a little and her eyes burned. "So that's it, is it?" +she said furiously. "You're going out with Galbraith." She went on to +say more than that, but her meaning was plain at the first words. + +Rose looked at her a little incredulous, quite cool, so far as her mind +went (because, of course, Olga's accusation was merely grotesque) but +curiously and most unpleasantly stirred, disgusted almost to the point +of nausea. She stopped the tirade, not because she cared what the girl +was saying, but because she couldn't stay in the room with a person +making that sort of an exhibition of herself. It took no more than half +a dozen words to accomplish this result. The mere fact that she spoke, +after that rather long blank period of speechlessness, and the cold +blaze of her blue eyes that accompanied her words, effected more than +the words themselves. And then, in a tempest of tears and +self-reproaches, Olga repented--a phase of the situation which was +worse, almost, than the former one, because it couldn't be dealt with +quite so summarily. + +But Rose went on dressing as fast as she could all the while, and at +last, long before Olga had begun putting on her street clothes, she was +ready to go. With her hand on the door-latch she paused. + +"I am going to have supper with Mr. Galbraith," she said. "He told me +there was something he wanted to talk to me about." And with that she +let herself out of the room, indifferent to the effect these last words +of hers might produce. + +She caught sight of Galbraith down at the end of the corridor waiting +for her, but she paused a moment, pulled in a long breath and grinned at +herself. In the state of mind she was in just then, divided between her +impatience to get back to her own room where her thoughts could be free +to run upon the one theme they welcomed, and her wrath and disgust over +the scene Olga had just subjected her to, the poor man was in danger of +having a pretty unsatisfactory sort of hour with her. She must brace up +and really try to be nice to him. + +So through all the preliminaries to the real talk which he'd said he +wanted with her, she was consciously as cordial and friendly as she knew +how to be. She said she hoped she hadn't kept him waiting too long, and +when he apologized for taking her out through the stage door and the +alley, with the explanation that the front of the house was by this time +locked, she made a good-humored reference to the fact that the alley and +the stage door were now her natural walk in life, and that it was just +as well she shouldn't be spoiled with liberties. + +He asked her if she had any preference as to where they went for supper, +and the way she acknowledged, again with a smile, that she'd rather not +go to Rector's, nor to any of the places over on Michigan Avenue, was an +admission, in candid confidence, of the existence of another half of her +life which she wished to keep, if possible, unentangled with this. She +showed herself frankly pleased with the taxi he provided, sank back +into her place in it with a sigh of clear satisfaction, and was, as far +as he could see, completely incurious about the address he gave the +chauffeur. The place he picked out was an excellent little chop-house in +one of the courts south of Van Buren Street, a place little frequented +at night--manned, indeed, after dinner, merely by the proprietor, one +waiter and a man cook in the grille, and kept open to avoid the chance +of disappointing any of the few epicurean clients who wouldn't eat +anywhere else. + +But neither the neighborhood nor the loneliness of the place got even so +much as a questioning glance from Rose. She left the ordering of the +supper to him, and assented with a nod to his including with it a bottle +of sparkling Burgundy. + +There is nothing quite so disconcerting as to be prepared to overcome a +resistance and then to find no resistance there; to be ready with +convincing arguments, and then not have them called for. This, very +naturally, was the plight of John Galbraith. + +Rose wasn't a child even on the day when she came and asked him for a +job, and in the six weeks that had intervened since then she'd been +dressing in the same room with chorus-girls--hearing the sort of things +they talked about in the wings. Indeed, unless he was mistaken, she must +have heard them linking her own name with his. His very special interest +in her, and the way he'd shown it, promoting her to the sextette, and +giving her a chance to design the costumes, was a thing they wouldn't +have missed nor failed to put their own construction on. She must know +then what their inferences would be from the fact of his asking her out +to supper on the opening night. + +What he'd been prepared to urge was that now that his connection with +the enterprise had terminated, now that he was no longer a director and +the representative of her employers, she should take him on trust simply +as a friend. He was prepared to answer protests, to offer +compromises--concessions to appearances. He'd expected her to exhibit +some shyness of the taxi. According to his unconscious ideal of the +situation she should have looked questioningly at him--hesitated, and +then let him assure her that it was all right. She should have gasped a +little when the car turned south in the dark little court below Van +Buren Street, have shrunk a little at the isolation the emptiness of the +restaurant enforced upon them, and declined, with something not far +short of panic, her share of that bottle of Burgundy. Because all these +flutters and questionings would just have opened the way for his +assurances--perfectly honest assurances, too, as far as he knew--of the +candor of his feelings and intentions toward her. + +She needed a friend, that was plain enough, some one who had her best +interests honestly at heart; some one who knew the pitfalls and the +difficulties of this pilgrimage she'd so strangely set out on, and could +advise her how to avoid them. That he was, potentially, that friend, he +truly believed. And what better way could there be of convincing her of +it than by persuading her to trust him, and then proving that her trust +had not been misplaced? + +But what was one to do--how was one to make a beginning when she trusted +him without any persuasion? Trusted him as a matter of course, without +the glimmer of any sort of emotion whatever; about as if he'd +been--well, say, her brother-in-law! + +He was at a loss for a peg to hang his definite sense of injury upon. He +couldn't blame the girl for having trusted him, nor for proving so +perfectly adequate to the unconventional situation he'd created. He +couldn't reproach her, even in his thoughts, for the frankly expressed +pleasure she took in the leisured dignity of the little restaurant, with +its modestly sumptuous appointments (she even let him see that she +appreciated the fineness of the napery and the handsomeness of the +tableware; admitted, indeed, how sharply it contrasted with what she'd +been used to lately), nor for the real appreciation she showed of the +supper he selected. + +But the moment he had been planning, counting on for days--weeks, if it +came to that--with an excitement he couldn't deny, a tensity that had +increased as the prospect of it drew nearer, was not exciting nor tense +for her. If anything, she'd relaxed a little, as if the big moment of +her day had passed--or, postponed by this affair of his, were still to +come. Once or twice when her gaze detached itself from him and rested +unfocused on the other side of the room, he saw little changes of +expression go over her face that didn't relate to him at all. He simply +wasn't in focus, that was the size of it. He had never seen her look +lovelier, more completely desirable than she did right now, dressed as +she was in her very simple street clothes and relaxed by the surrounding +quiet and comfort and her own fatigue. And yet, all alone with him as +she had so confidingly permitted herself to be, and near enough to reach +with the bare stretching out of a hand, she'd never been further away +nor seemed more unattainable. + +As she came back from one of these momentary excursions she found him +staring at her, and with a faint flush and a smile of contrition she +pulled herself back, as it were, into his presence. + +"I know you're tired," he said bruskly. "But I fancied you'd be tireder +in the morning and I have to leave for New York on the fast train. So, +you see, it was now or never." Strangely enough, that got her. She +stared at him a little incredulous, almost in consternation. + +"Do you mean you're going away?" she asked. "To-morrow?" + +"Of course," he said rather sharply. "I've nothing more to stay around +here for." He added, as she still seemed not to have got it through her +head. "My contract with Goldsmith and Block ended to-night, with the +opening performance." + +"Of course," she said in deprecation of her stupidity, "I didn't think +you were going to stay indefinitely--as long as the show ran. And yet I +never thought of your going away. It's always seemed that you were the +show--or, rather, that the show was you; just something that you made +go. It doesn't seem possible that it can keep on going with you not +there." + +The sincerity of that made it a really fine compliment--just the sort +of compliment he'd appreciate. But--the old perversity again--the very +freedom with which she said it spoiled it for him. + +"I may be missed," he said--it was more of a growl really--"but I shan't +be regretted. There's always a sort of Hallelujah chorus set up by the +company when they realize I'm gone." + +"I shall regret it very much," said Rose. The words would have set his +blood on fire if she'd just faltered over them. But she didn't. She was +hopelessly serene about it. "You're the person who's made this six weeks +bearable and, in a way, wonderful. I never could thank you enough for +the things you've done for me, though I hope I may try to some time." + +"I don't want any thanks," he said. And this was completely true. It was +something very different from gratitude that he wanted. But he realized +how abominably ungracious his words sounded, and hastened to amend them. +"What I mean is that you don't owe me any. Anything I've done that's +worked out to your advantage was done because I believed it was to the +advantage of the men who hired me--beginning with the afternoon when I +first took you on in the chorus." + +This didn't satisfy him either. Rose said nothing. He had indeed left +her nothing to say. But there was a look of perplexity in her eyes--as +if she were casting about for some stupidly tactless act or omission of +her own to account for his surliness--that made him recant altogether. + +"I don't know why in the world I should have said a thing like that!" he +burst out. "It wasn't true. I've wanted to do things for you--wanted to +do more than I could, and I want to still. You've done a lot to make +this show go, as well as it did, in more ways than you know about. It +wasn't for me, personally, that you did it. But all the same, I'm +grateful. And it's to convince you of that that I asked you to come +around here to-night." + +She really lighted up over his praise, thanked him for it very +prettily. But then, after a little silence, she went on reflectively, +"It was, in a way, for you, personally, that I was working all the time. +I don't know if I can explain that, though I think I understand it +myself. But just because you wanted things so hard--you were so +perfectly determined that something should happen in a certain way--I +just _had_ to help bring it about, or try to. It would have been +exciting enough just to see that things were wrong and to watch them +coming right. But taking hold one's self and helping a little to make +them come right was--well, as I said, wonderful." + +"Well," he said--and now he was brusk again--"I hope Goldsmith and Block +are satisfied. They won't be; of course, unless the thing runs forty +weeks. But that isn't what I want to talk about. I want to talk about +you. I want to know what you're aiming at. I don't mean to-morrow or +next week. You'll stay with this piece, I suppose, as long as the run +lasts. But in the end, what's the idea? Do you want to be an actress?" + +He had kept on going after that first question of his, because it was +obvious the girl wasn't ready to answer. She seemed to be struggling to +get the bearings of a perfectly new idea. At length she gave him the +clue. + +"It's that forty weeks," she said. "The notion of just going on--not +changing anything or improving anything; doing the same thing over and +over again for forty weeks, or even four, seems perfectly ghastly. And +yet I suppose that's what everybody in the company is hoping for--just +to keep going round and round like a horse at the end of a pole. What +I'd like to do, now that this is finished, is--well, to start another." + +His eyes kindled. "That's it," he said. "That's what I've felt about you +all along. I suppose it's the reason I felt you never could be an +actress. You see the thing the way I do--the whole fun of the game is +getting the timing. Once it's got ..." He snapped his fingers; and with +an eager nod she agreed. + +He was in focus now, there could he no doubt of that. But it didn't +occur to him that it was the director who was in focus, not the man. +The fact was that in evoking the director she'd banished the man--a +triumph she wasn't to realize the importance of until a good deal later. + +"Well, then, look here," he said. "I've an idea that I could use you to +good advantage as a sort of personal assistant. There'll be a good deal +of work just of the sort you did with the sextette, teaching people to +talk and move about like the sort of folk they're supposed to represent. +That's coming in more and more in musical comedies, the use of the +chorus as real people in the story--accounting for their exits and +entrances. It would be done more if we could teach chorus people to act +human. Well, you can do that better than I; that's the plain truth. And +then I think after you'd got my idea of a dance number you could +probably rehearse it yourself, take some of that routine off my hands. +Under this new contract of mine, that I expect to sign in a day or two, +I'll simply have to have somebody. And then, of course, there's the +costuming. That's a great game, and I've a notion, though of course I +haven't a great deal to go by, that you could swing it. I think you've a +talent for it. + +"There you are! The job will be paid from the first a great deal better +than what you've got here. And the costuming end of it, if you succeed, +would run to real money. Well, how about it?" + +"But," said Rose a little breathlessly--"but don't I have to stay here +with _The Girl Up-stairs_? I couldn't just leave, could I?" + +"Oh, I shan't be ready for you just yet anyway," he said. "I'll write +when I am and by that time you'll be perfectly free to give them your +two weeks' notice. By the way, haven't you some other address than care +of the theater--a permanent address somewhere?" + +"Care of Miss Portia Stanton," she told him, and as he got out his card +and wrote it down, she added the California address. It recalled to his +mind that she had told him her name was Rose Stanton on the day he had +given her a job, and the memory diverted him for a moment. Then he +pulled himself back. + +"They'll be annoyed, of course--Goldsmith and Block. But, after all, +you've given them more than their money's worth already. Well--will you +come if I write?" + +"It seems to be too wonderful to be true," she said. "Yes, I'll come, of +course." + +He sat there gazing at her in a sort of fascination. Because she was +fairly lambent with the wonder of it. Her eyes were starry, her lips a +little parted, and she was so still she seemed not even to be breathing. +But the eyes weren't looking at him. Another vision filled them. The +vision--oh, he was sure of it now!--of that "only one," whoever he was, +that mattered. + +He thrust back his chair with an abruptness that startled her out of her +reverie, and the action, rough as it was, wasn't violent enough to +satisfy the sudden exasperation that seized him. If he could have +smashed the caraffe or something ... + +"I won't keep you any longer," he said. "I'll have them get a taxi and +send you home." + +She said she didn't want a taxi. If he'd just walk over with her to a +Clark Street car ... And she thanked him for everything, including the +supper. But all the time he could see her trying, with a perplexity +almost pathetic, to discover what she had done to change his manner +again like that. + +He was thoroughly contrite about it, and he did his best to recover an +appearance of friendly good will. He didn't demur to her wish to be put +on a car, and at the crossing where they waited for it, after an almost +silent walk, he did manage to shake hands and wish her luck and tell her +she'd hear from him soon, in a way that he felt reassured her. + +But he kicked his way to the curb after the car had carried her off, and +marched to his hotel in a sort of baffled fury. He didn't know exactly +what had gone wrong about the evening. He couldn't, in phrases, tell +himself just what it was he'd wanted. But he did know, with a perfectly +abysmal conviction, that he was a fool! + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE VOICE OF THE WORLD + + +If you were to accost the average layman, especially the layman who has, +at one time or another, found his personal affairs, or those of his +friends, casually illuminated by the straying search-light of newspaper +notoriety, and put this hypothetical question to him: What chance would +there be that a young married woman, who, in a social sense, really +"belonged," could leave her husband for a musical-comedy chorus in the +city he lived in, and escape having the fact chronicled in the daily +press?--that layman would tell you that there was simply no chance at +all. But if you were to put the same question to a person expert in the +science of publicity--to an alumnus of the local room of any big city +daily, you'd get a very different answer. Because your expert knows how +many good stories there are that never get into the papers. He allows +for the element of luck; he knows how vitally important it is that the +right person should become aware of the fact at exactly the right time, +in order that a simple happening may be converted into news. + +Rose's "escapade"--that's how it would have been described--didn't get +into the papers. Jimmy Wallace, of course, before the bar of his own +conscience, stood convicted of high treason. There was no use arguing +with himself that he was hired as a critic and not as a reporter. For, +just as it is the doctor's duty to prolong, if possible, the life of his +patient, or the lawyer's duty to defend his client, so it is the duty of +every man who writes for a newspaper, to turn himself into a reporter +when a story breaks under his eye. Jimmy ought that very night as soon +as he had made sure of his facts, to have left a note on his city +editor's desk informing him that Mrs. Rodney Aldrich was a member of the +chorus in the new Globe show. + +He didn't do it, even though he knew that a more troublesome accuser +than his own conscience--namely, the city editor himself--would confront +him, in case any of his colleagues on the other papers had happened to +recognize her and, dutifully, had turned the story in. He read the other +papers for the next twenty-four hours, rather more carefully than usual, +and then with a sigh of relief, told his conscience to go to the devil. +It was a well trained, obedient conscience, and it subsided meekly. + +But his curiosity was neither meek nor accustomed to having its +liberties interfered with, and it declined to leave the problem alone. +Problem! It was a whole nest of problems. If you isolated one and worked +out a tolerably satisfactory answer to it, you discovered that this +answer made all the rest more fantastically impossible of solution than +before. It actually began to cost him sleep! What made it harder to +bear, of course, was the tantalizing possibility of finding out +something by dropping in at the Globe during a performance, wandering +back on the stage, where he was always perfectly welcome, going up and +speaking to her and--seeing what happened. Something more or less +illuminating would have to happen. Because, even in the extremely +improbable case of her pretending she didn't know him, he'd then have +something to go on. He dismissed this temptation as often as it showed +its face around the corner of the door of his mind--dismissed it with +objurgations. But it was a persistent temptation and it wouldn't stay +away. + +It was a real relief to him when Violet Williamson telephoned to him one +day and asked him to come out to dinner. There'd be no one but herself +and John, she said, and he needn't dress unless he liked. She'd been in +New York for a fortnight and had only been back two days. He mustn't +fail to come. There was a sort of suppressed excitement about Violet's +voice over the telephone, which led him to suspect she might be able to +throw some light on the enigma. + +But light, it appeared, was what John and Violet wanted from him. + +They were both in the library when he came in, and after the barest +preliminaries in the way of greetings and cigarettes, and the swiftest +summary of her visit to New York ("I stayed just long enough to begin +being not quite so furious with John for not taking me there to live,") +Violet made a little silence, visibly lighted her bomb, and threw it. +"John and I went to the Globe last night to see _The Girl Up-stairs_," +she said. + +Jimmy carried his cocktail over to the fire, drew sharply on his +cigarette to get it evenly lighted, and by that time had decided on his +line. + +"That's an amazing resemblance, isn't it?" he said. + +"Resemblance fiddle-dee-dee!" said Violet. + +John Williamson hunched himself around in his chair. "Well, you know," +he protested to his wife, "that's the way I dope it out myself." + +"Oh, _you!_" she said, with good-natured contempt. "You think you think +so. Because you've always been wild about Rose ever since Rodney married +her, you just won't let yourself think anything else. But Jimmy here, +doesn't even think he thinks so. He knows better." + +"They're the limit, aren't they?" said John in rueful appeal to his +guest. "They not only know what you think, but what you think you think! +It's a marvelous thing--feminine intuition." + +"'Intuition,' nothing!" said Violet. Then she rounded on Jimmy. + +"How much have you found out about her--this girl with the 'astonishing +resemblance'?" + +"Not very much," Jimmy confessed. "According to the program, her name is +Doris Dane. I did ask Block about her. He's one of the owners of the +piece. But he couldn't tell me very much. She's from out of town, he +thinks, and he said something about her being a dressmaker. She did some +work for them on the costumes. And she started in with this show as a +chorus-girl. But Galbraith, the director, got interested in her, and put +her into the sextette." + +"Well, there we are," said John Williamson. "That settles it. Rose never +was a dressmaker, that's a cinch." + +Even Violet seemed a little shaken, and Jimmy was just beginning to +congratulate himself on the skill with which he had modified what Block +had told him about the costumes, when Violet began on him again. + +"All right!" she said. "Where are we? You know quite a lot of people in +that show, don't you?" This was a rhetorical question. It was notorious +that Jimmy knew more or less everybody. So, without waiting for an +answer, she went on, "Well, have you been behind the scenes there since +the thing began?" + +"No, I've not gone back," said Jimmy. "Why should I?" + +"You haven't even been curious," she questioned, "to find out what a +girl who looked and talked as much like Rose as that, was like?" She +concluded, for good measure, with one more question voiced a little +differently--more casually. "Have you happened to see Rodney lately?" + +"Why, yes," Jimmy said unwarily. "I met him at the club the other day; +only saw him for a minute or two. We had one drink." + +"And did you happen to tell him," she asked, "about this dressmaker in +_The Girl Up-stairs_ who looked so wonderfully like Rose? Did you offer +to take him round to see for himself?" + +"I tell you there's nothing to that!" said John. He'd been caught in the +same trap, it seemed. "What's the use of butting in? If anything has +gone wrong with those two ..." + +"You've always said there hasn't," Violet interrupted. + +"And you've said," he countered, "that you were sure there had. Well, +then, if there's a chance of it, why run the risk, just for nothing?" + +Jimmy, as it happened, had never heard even a suggestion that Rose and +Rodney were on any other terms than those of perfect amity. He hoped +they'd go on and tell him more. So to prevent their becoming suddenly +discreet, he promptly changed the subject. + +"I thought you had a taboo against the Globe," he said to Violet. "How +did you happen to go there?" + +"John went while I was in New York," she explained. + +[Illustration: "Don't you know that that was Rose Aldrich?"] + +"He's--well, a regular fan, you know. He hasn't missed a show there in +years. And he was _too_ queer and absent-minded and fidgety for words, +when I came back. I thought a bank must be going to fail, or something. +And when he said, after dinner last night, that he felt like going to a +musical show, of course I said I'd go with him. And when I found it was +the Globe--he already had tickets--I was too--kind and sorry for him to +make a fuss. Well, and then she came out on the stage, and I knew what +it was all about." + +"Where did you sit?" Jimmy asked. + +"Fifth row," said John. + +Violet hadn't got the bearing of Jimmy's question. "Oh, you couldn't +mistake her," she said, "any more than you could in this room, now." + +"Do you mean," John asked, "that she might have recognized us?" + +"They can't," said Violet, "across the footlights,--can they?" + +Jimmy nodded. "In a little theater like that," he said, "anywhere in the +house. But it seems she didn't recognize you." + +"Look here!" said Violet. "Don't you know, in your own mind, just as +well as that you're standing there, that that was Rose Aldrich?" + +Jimmy dropped down into a big chair. "Well," he said, "I'm willing to +accept it as a working hypothesis." + +"You men!" said Violet. + +Dinner was announced just then, and the theme had to be dismissed until +at last they were left alone with the dessert. + +"What breaks me all up," Violet burst out, abandoning the pretense of +picking over her walnuts, and showing, with a little outflung gesture, +how impatient she had been to take it up, "what breaks me all up is how +this'll hit Frederica. She just adores Rodney and she's been simply +wonderful to Rose--for him, of course." + +Neither of the men said anything, but she felt a little stir of protest +from both of them and qualified the last phrase. + +"Oh, she liked her for herself, too. We all did. We couldn't help it. +But you haven't any idea, either of you, of even the beginning of what +Frederica did for her--steered her just right, and pushed her just +enough, and all the while seeming not to be doing a thing. Freddy's such +a peach at that! And she's been so big-hearted about it; never even +_felt_ jealous. If it had been me, and I'd adored a brother like that, +and he'd gone off and fallen in love with a girl nobody knew, just +because he saw her in a wrestling-match with a street-car conductor, I'd +have wanted, whatever I might have done, to--well, show her up. And yet, +even after Rose had left him, for no reason at all, Freddy ..." + +"You're just guessing at all that, you know," her husband interrupted +quietly. "You don't _know_ a single thing about it." + +"Well, what reason _could_ Rose have for leaving him?" she flashed back. +"Hasn't Rodney been perfectly crazy about her ever since he married her? +Has he ever _seen_ another woman the last two years? Or maybe you think +he's been coming home drunk and beating her with a trunk-strap." + +But John stuck to his guns. "You don't even know she's left him. The +only thing you do know is that Bella Forrester met Frederica one day, +about a week before Christmas, in the railway station at Los Angeles." + +"Well, can you tell me any other reason," Violet demanded, "why Freddy +should dash off alone to California, right in the middle of the holiday +rush, without saying a word to anybody, and be back here in just a week; +and not tell even _me_ what she'd been doing, or where she'd been, so +that if Bella hadn't written to me, I'd never have known about it at +all? Is there any way of explaining that, except by supposing that Rose +had quarreled with Rodney and left him and that Freddy was trying to get +her to come back?" + +Neither of the men could offer, on the spur of the moment, the +alternative explanation she demanded. Indeed it would have taken a good +deal of ingenuity to construct one. It was safer, anyway, just to go on +looking incredulous. + +There was silence for a minute or two, then Violet burst out again. "And +then, after all Freddy had done, for Rose to come back here to Chicago, +with all the other cities in the country where it wouldn't matter what +she did, and start to be, of all things, a chorus-girl! It's just +a"--she hesitated over the word, and then used it with an inflection +that gave it its full literal meaning--"just a _dirty_ trick. And poor +Freddy, when she knows ...!" + +"I don't believe a word of it," said John Williamson. "I don't believe +Doris Dane--if that's her name--is Rose, in the first place. And I don't +believe Rose has had a quarrel with Rodney. But if she has, and if she's +really there in that show ... Well, I know Rose--not so well as I'd have +liked to, but pretty well--and I know she's a fine girl and I know she's +square. And if I ever saw a girl in love with her husband, she was. +Well, and if she has done it, she's got a reason for it. Oh, I don't +mean another woman or a trunk-strap, or any of the regular divorce court +stuff. That's absurd, of course. And it may be, really, a fool reason. +But you can bet it didn't look like that to her. She wouldn't have done +it, admitting it's what she's done, unless she felt she had to." + +"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I expect she's feeling awfully noble about it, +and I'll admit she was in love with Rodney. And that makes it all the +worse! If she'd fallen in love with some other man and run off with +him--well, that isn't pretty, but it's happened before and people have +got away with it. But this running away on account of some silly idea +that she's picked up from that votes-for-women mother of hers, running +away from a man like Rodney, too, just makes you sick." + +Her husband didn't try to answer her, except with a regretful sigh. He +recognized in the stinging contempt of his wife's words, the voice of +their world. If Doris Dane of the sextette were really Rose--and in the +bottom of his heart, despite his valiant pretense, he couldn't manage +more than a feeble doubt of it--she had committed the unforgivable sin. +Or so he thought, leaving out of his calculations one ingredient in the +situation. She had done an unconventional thing for the sake of a +principle! + +"Well," said Jimmy Wallace after a while, heading the conversation away, +as he was wont to do, from what might be an endless discussion of moral +principles, "the purpose of this council of war is to decide what we are +going to do about it. Are we going to tell Aldrich or his sister about +the dressmaker who looks so much like his wife, and let them find out +for themselves whether she is or not? Or are we going to make sure first +by going back on the stage there and having a talk with her? Or are we +just going to shut up about it--never have been to the Globe at all; or, +in my case, never to have noticed the resemblance?" + +"On the chance, you mean," John inquired, "that Rodney and Frederica +never find out at all? How much does that chance amount to?" + +"Well," said Jimmy, "the show's in its fourth week, and the story hasn't +got into the papers yet. So the chances are now it won't. And you're +about the only person in your crowd that makes a practise of going to +the Globe. If you haven't heard any rumors it probably means that you +two are the only ones who know, so far. People who knew her before she +was married may have recognized her, to be sure, but they aren't likely +to go around either to Aldrich or to Mrs. Whitney with the story. Of +course there's always a big margin for the unforeseeable. But even at +that, I think you might call it an even chance." + +"That's what I vote for then," said John, "shut up." + +"I certainly don't want to go back on the stage and talk to Rose," said +Violet, "and I simply couldn't make myself tell either Rodney or +Frederica. It would be just too ghastly! But there's another thing you +haven't thought of. Suppose they both know already. I've got an idea +they do." + +This was a possibility they hadn't thought of, but the more they +canvassed it, the likelier it grew. + +"He acts as if he knew," Violet said, "now I come to think of it. Oh, I +can't tell exactly why! Just the way he talks about her and--doesn't +talk about her. And then there's Harriet. She came home from Washington +and stayed three days with Frederica and then went away again. She kept +house for him while Rose was laid up, and why shouldn't she be doing it +now, except that she's perhaps spoken her mind a little too freely and +Rodney doesn't want her around? There'd be no nonsense about Harriet, +you could count on that." + +"It would be like Rose," said John, "to tell him herself. It wouldn't be +like her, when you come to think of it, to do anything else." + +"Oh, yes, she'd tell him," said Violet. "If she had some virtuous +woman-suffrage reason, she'd do more than tell him. She'd rub it in. Of +course he knows. Well, what shall we do about that?" + +"Same vote," said John Williamson; "shut up. Certainly if he knows, that +lets us out." + +But Violet wasn't satisfied. "That's the easiest thing, certainly," she +said, "but I don't believe it's right. I think the people who know him +best, ought to know--just a few, the people he still drops in on, like +the Crawfords, and the Wests, and Eleanor and James Randolph; just so +that they could--well, _not_ know completely enough; so that they +wouldn't, innocently, you know, say ghastly things to him. Or even, +perhaps, do them, like making him go to musical shows, or talking about +people who run away to go on the stage. There are millions of things +like that that could happen, and if they know, they'll be careful." + +Her husband wasn't very completely convinced, though she expounded her +reasons at length, and urged them with growing intensity. But he'd never +put a categorical veto upon her yet, and it wasn't likely he'd begin by +trying to, now. + +As for Jimmy Wallace, he was really out of it. But he went home feeling +rather blue. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SHORT CIRCUIT AGAIN + + +It was, after all, out of that limbo that Jimmy had spoken of as the +margin of the unforeseeable, that the blind instrument of Fate appeared. +He was a country lawyer from down-state, who, for a client of his own, +had retained Rodney to defend a will that presented complexities in the +matter of perpetuities and contingent remainders utterly beyond his own +powers. He'd been in Chicago three or four days, spending an hour or two +of every day in Rodney's office in consultation with him, and, for the +rest of the time, dangling about, more or less at a loose end. A belated +sense of this struck Rodney when, at the end of their last consultation, +the country lawyer shook hands with him and announced his departure for +home on the five o'clock train. + +"I'm sorry I haven't been able to do more," Rodney said,--"do anything +really, in the way of showing you a good time. As a matter of fact, I've +spent every evening this week here in the office." + +"Oh, I haven't lacked for entertainment," the man said. "We hayseeds +find the city a pretty lively place. I went to see a show just last +night called _The Girl Up-stairs_. I suppose you've seen it." + +"No," said Rodney, "I haven't." + +"Well, the title's pretty raw, of course, but the show's all right. +Nothing objectionable about it, and it was downright funny. I haven't +laughed so hard in a year. Pretty tunes, too. I tried to-day to get some +records of it but they didn't have any yet. If you want a real good +time, you go to see it." + +The client was working his way to the door all the while and Rodney +followed him, so that the last part of this conversation took place in +the outer office. Rodney saw the man off with a final hand-shake, closed +the door after him and strolled irresolutely back toward Miss Beach's +desk. + +It was true, as he had told his client, that he had been spending most +of his evenings lately in his office, and it was also true that he had +an immense amount of work to do; he'd been taking it on rather +recklessly during the last two months. But they'd been pretty sterile, +those long solitary evening hours. He'd worked fitfully, grinding away +by brute strength for a while, without interest, without imagination, +and then, in a frenzy of impatience, thrusting the legal rubbish out of +the way and letting the enigma of his great failure usurp, once more, +his mind and his memories. + +It had occurred to him to wonder, as he stood listening to his client's +enthusiastic description of the show at the Globe, whether it would be +possible, in any surroundings, for him, for an hour or two, to laugh and +be jolly--and forget. It might be an experiment worth trying! + +"Telephone over to the University Club," he said suddenly to Miss Beach, +"and see if you can get me a seat for _The Girl Up-stairs_." + +The office boy was out on an errand and in his absence the switchboard +was Miss Beach's care. + +"The--_The Girl Up-stairs_?" she repeated. + +"That's what he said, isn't it?" + +"Yes," she assented. "That's--the name of it." + +He might have been expected, after giving an order like that, to go +striding back into his private office and slam the door after him. It +wasn't at all his way to keep a lingering hand on a task after he'd +delegated it to some one else. But he didn't on this occasion act as +she'd expected him to; remained abstractedly where he was while +something turned itself over in his mind. + +There was nothing urgent about his order of course, and it was natural +enough that she should go on with her typing to the end of a sentence, +or even of a paragraph. But he stayed on and on, and Miss Beach went +steadily on with her typing. Finally he roused himself enough to look +around at her. + +"Go ahead and telephone," he said. "I want to find out if I can get a +seat." + +She arose obediently and moved over to the switchboard, then began +fumbling with the directory. + +"Good lord!" said Rodney. "You know the number of the University Club!" + +Of course it was true she did. She called it up for him on an average of +a dozen times a week. He was looking at her now with undisguised +curiosity. She was acting, for a perfectly infallible machine like Miss +Beach, almost queer. But she acted queerer the next moment. She laid +down the directory, clasped her hands tight and pressed her lips +together. Then, without looking around at him, she said: + +"You don't want to go to see that show, Mr. Aldrich. It--it isn't good +at all." + +Rodney was more nearly amused than he had been in a month. + +"You've been to see it?" he asked. + +"Yes," she said, and managed to go on a little more naturally, "Mr. +Craig took me. We had a bet on what the Supreme Court's decision would +be in the Roderick case--theater tickets against two pounds of home-made +fudge, and I won. And--that's where we went." + +"And you didn't like it, eh?" + +"No," she said. + +By now he was grinning at her outright. "Vulgar?" he asked. + +Her color had mounted again. "Yes," she said. + +The notion of having his dramatic entertainment censored by a frail, +prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It +would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar, +wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. You go ahead +and telephone." + +At that she rose and, for the first time, faced him. To his amazement, +he saw that she was in a perfect panic of embarrassment and fright. But, +for some grotesque reason, she was determined, too. She was blushing up +to the hair and her lips were trembling. + +"Mr. Aldrich," she said, "you won't like that show. If--if you go, +you'll be sorry." + +While he was still staring at her, young Craig came bursting blithely +out of his office, a bundle of papers in his hand and the pucker of a +silent whistle still on his lips. "Oh, Miss Beach!" he said, and then +stopped short, seeing that something had happened. + +Rodney tried an experiment. "Craig," he said, "Miss Beach doesn't want +me to buy a ticket for _The Girl Up-stairs_. She says I won't like it. +Do you agree with her?" + +A flare of red came up into the boy's face, and his jaw dropped. Then, +as well as he could, he pulled himself together. "Yes, sir," he said, +swung around and marched back into his own cubby-hole. + +"You needn't telephone, Miss Beach," said Rodney curtly. And without +another word he put on his hat and overcoat and left the office. + +It was not a very profound emotion that drove him along; a violent +superficial one, rather, like the gusty wrath which had precipitated the +last phase of his great struggle with Rose--the time he told her he +wouldn't jeopardize the children's lives to satisfy her whims. He was +furiously impatient with the good intentions of his friends. He had been +aware of a sort of unnatural gentleness about them ever since Christmas; +but either it had intensified during the last ten days, or else he had +suddenly got more sensitive to it. The latter, most likely. And yet +Violet Williamson's manner the last Sunday evening he had spent at her +house, had stopped just short of a hushed voice and tiptoes. He'd been +momentarily expecting her to offer him an egg-nog. + +But this paroxysm of tact that had just broken out in his office was +really too much. Of course they'd been talking him over, those two. It +must have been amply obvious to them for a good while that there was +something more than met the eye, about that long visit of his wife's to +California. And it was nice and human of them to feel sorry for him. But +that they should decide, because _The Girl Up-stairs_ contained some +rather coarsely derisive song, perhaps, about men whose wives run away +from them, or something in the plot about a trip to California with a +less honorable purpose than its ostensible one, that he should on no +account be permitted to see the show, was ridiculous. He walked straight +over to the club and told the man at the cigar counter to get him a +ticket for to-night's performance. + +It was then after five and he decided not to go back to the office +before dinner. In fact, he might as well dine down here. So he went up +to the lounge, armed himself with an evening paper against casual +acquaintances, ordered a drink and dropped into a big leather chair. + +But all his carefully contrived environment hadn't the power, it seemed, +to shift the current of his thoughts. They went on dwelling on the +behavior of Miss Beach and young Craig, which really got queerer the +more one thought about it. It was hard to conceive of any allusion in +the plot or the songs of a silly little musical comedy, pointed enough +to account for Miss Beach's frantically determined effort to keep him +away, or for the instantaneous flush that had leaped into young Craig's +face. Because, after all, they didn't actually know that his great +adventure had come to grief, and whatever either of them might have +thought of the applicability of something that was said on the stage, to +their employer's ease, it wouldn't have been a bit like either of them +to discuss it with the other. In the absence of such a discussion, and +the prevision of his going to the show, you couldn't account for young +Craig's having caught the point instantly like that. And yet, what other +explanation could there be? There was none, and there was an end of it! + +Only it wasn't the end of it. The straying search-light of his memory +picked up a moment during that last evening at the Williamsons'. The +Crawfords had been there, and somebody else--a man he didn't know; and +the stranger had said something, a harmless stupid remark enough, about +the tired business man and the sort of musical-comedy he liked; +whereupon both Constance and Violet had made a sort of concerted swoop +and changed the subject almost violently. John Williamson made a +practise of going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never +spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the +word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore +be taboo on Rodney's account, was simply fantastic. + +But the fantasticality of an idea seemed, in his mood to-night, merely +to give it the burr-like quality of sticking in his mind, holding on +there with a hundred tiny barbs, despite his endeavors to pluck it out. +It even occurred to him that the manner of the man at the cigar +counter--the man he had just told to get him a ticket, had not been +quite natural; had been a little exaggeratedly matter-of-fact. He always +got his seats of that man, and the man always made some little +encouraging remark, as, for example, that he'd heard it was a good show; +or, more non-committally, that he hoped Mr. Aldrich would enjoy it. +To-night, certainly, he'd said nothing of the sort. + +The absurdity of this consideration was simply intolerable. He flung +down his paper and went into the adjoining room--a room full of tables +of various sizes, and thronged, at this hour, with members getting up an +appetite for dinner by the shortest route. The large round table nearest +the door was preempted by a group of men he knew; some of them well, +some only casually, and he came up with the intention of dropping into +the one vacant chair. But just before the first of them caught a glimpse +of him, his ear picked up the phrase, "_The Girl Up-stairs_." And then a +lawyer named Gaylord looked up and recognized him. "Hello, Aldrich," he +said, and Rodney would have sworn that the flash of silence that +followed had a galvanic quality that wasn't given it merely by his own +imagination. The others began greeting him, urging him to sit down and +have a drink. + +Rodney pulled in a long breath: "Didn't I hear some one talking about +_The Girl Up-stairs_?" he asked. "Is it a good show? Shall I go to see +it?" + +The silence was even briefer this time. + +Gaylord spoke through what would pass for a yawn. "I don't know," he +said. "I haven't seen it." + +One or two of the others shook their heads blankly. Finally somebody +else said: "Just a regular Globe show, I guess. All right; but hardly +worth bothering about." + +Once more they urged him to sit down and have a drink, but he said he +was looking for somebody and walked away down the room and out the +farther door. + +He knew now that he was afraid. Yet the thing he was afraid of refused +to come out into the open, where he could see it and know what it was. +He still believed that he didn't know what it was, when he walked past +the framed photographs in the lobby of the theater without looking at +them and stopped at the box-office to exchange his seat, well down in +front, for one near the back of the theater. + +But when the sextette made their first entrance upon the stage, he knew +that he had known for a good many hours. + +He never stirred from his seat during either of the intermissions. But +along in the third act, he got up and went out. + +I doubt if ever a troglodytic ancestor of his had been as angry as +Rodney was at that moment. Because, long before the pressure of the +troglodyte's anger had mounted to the pressure of Rodney's, it would +have relieved itself in action. He'd have descended on the scene, +beating down any of the onlookers who might be fools enough to try to +oppose his purpose, seized his woman and carried her off to his cave. +Which is precisely and literally what Rodney, with every aching filament +of nerve tissue in his body, most passionately wanted to do. + +The knout that flogged his soul had a score of lashes, each with the +sting of its own peculiar venom. Everybody who knew him, his closer +friends, and his casual acquaintances as well, must have known, for +weeks, of this disgrace. His friends had been sorry for him, with just a +grain of contempt; his acquaintances had grinned over it with just a +pleasurable salt of pity. "Do you know Aldrich? Well, his wife's in the +chorus at the Globe Theater. And he doesn't know it, poor devil." That +group at the round table at the club to-night. He could fancy their +faces after he'd turned away. + +Oh, but what did they matter after all? What did any of them matter? +What did anything matter in the world, except that the woman he'd so +whole-heartedly and utterly loved and lived for--the woman who'd left +him with those protestations of the need of his friendship and respect, +was there on that stage disporting herself for hire--and cheap hire at +that, before this fatuous mass of humanity packed in all about him. They +were staring at her, as the money they'd paid for admission entitled +them to stare, licking their lips over her. + +He hadn't had a moment's uncertainty that it was indeed she. Couldn't +shelter himself, even for an instant, behind Jimmy Wallace's theory of +an "amazing resemblance." + +The others of their world had always known Rose as a person with a good +deal of natural and quite unconscious dignity. She had never romped nor +larked before any of them, and she conveyed the impression, not of +refraining as a concession to good manners, but simply of being the sort +of person who didn't, naturally, express herself in those ways. But in +the interior privacies of their life together, she'd often shown +herself, for him, a different Rose. She'd played with him with the +abandon of a young kitten--romped and wrestled with him. And there'd +been a deliciousness about this phase of her, which resided, for him, in +the fact that it was kept for him alone. + +But now, here on the stage of a cheap theater, she was parading that +exquisite thing before the world! Along in the second act, where +Sylvia's six friends come to spend the night with her and sleep out on +the roof, there was a mad lark which brought up maddening memories. He +felt that he must get his hands on her--shake her--beat her! + +Yet, all the while, if any of his neighbors thought of him at +all--became aware of him and wondered at him, it was only because he sat +so still. And when the thing had become, at last, utterly unbearable, +and he got up to go out, he managed to look at his watch first, quite in +the manner of a "commuter" with anxieties about the ten-fifty-five +train. + +The northwest wind, which had been blowing icily since sundown, had +increased in violence to a gale. But he strode out of the lobby and +into the street, unaware of it. There must be a stage door somewhere, he +knew, and he meant to find it. It didn't occur to him to inquire. He'd +quite lost his sense of social being; of membership in a civilized +society. He was another Ishmael. + +It took him a long time to find that door, for, as it happened, he +started around the block in the wrong direction and fruitlessly explored +two alleys before he came on the right one. But he found it at last and +pulled the door open. An intermittent roar of hand-clapping, increasing +and diminishing with the rapid rise and fall of the curtain, told him +that the performance was just over. + +A doorman stopped him and asked him what he wanted. + +"I want to see Mrs. Aldrich," he said, "Mrs. Rodney Aldrich." + +"No such person here," said the man, and Rodney, in his rage, simply +assumed that he was lying. It didn't occur to him that Rose would have +taken another name. + +He stood there a moment debating whether to attempt to force an entrance +against the doorman's unmistakable intention to stop him, and decided to +wait instead. + +The decision wasn't due to common sense, but to a wish not to dissipate +his rage on people that didn't matter. He wanted it intact for Rose. + +He went back into the alley, braced himself in the angle of a brick pier +and waited. He neither stamped his feet nor flailed his arms about to +drive off the cold. He just stood still with the patience of his +immemorial ancestor, waiting. Unconscious of the lapse of time, +unconscious of the figures that presently began straggling out of the +narrow door, that were not she. + +Presently she came. A buffet of wind struck her as she closed the door +behind her, and whipped her unbuttoned ulster about, but she did not +cower under it, nor turn away--stood there finely erect, confronting it. +There was something alert about her pose--he couldn't clearly see her +face--that suggested she was expecting somebody. And then, not loud, but +very distinctly: + +"Roddy," she said. + +He tried to speak her name, but his dry throat denied it utterance. He +began suddenly to tremble. He came forward out of the shadow and she saw +him and came to meet him, and spoke his name again. + +"I saw you when you went out," she said. "I was afraid you mightn't +wait. I hurried as fast as I could. I've--w-waited so long. Longer than +you." + +They were so near together now, that she became aware how he was +trembling--shuddering fairly. + +"You're c-cold," she said. + +He managed at last to speak, and as he did so, reached out and took her +by the shoulders. "Come home," he said. "You must come home." + +At that she stepped back and shook her head. But he had discovered while +his hands held her, that she was trembling, too. + +The stage door opened again to emit a group of three of the ponies. + +"My Gawd," one of them shrilled, "what a hell of a night!" + +They stared curiously at Dane and the big man who stood there with her, +then scurried away down the alley. + +"We can't talk here," he said. "We must go somewhere." + +She nodded assent and they moved off side by side after the three little +girls, but slower. In an accumulation of shadows, half-way down the +alley, he reached out for her arm. It might have begun as an automatic +act--just an unconscious instinct to prevent her stumbling, there in the +dark. But the moment he touched her, the quality of it changed. He +gripped her arm tight and they both stood still. The next moment, and +without a word, they moved on again. At the corner of the alley, they +turned north. This was on Clark Street. Finally: + +"Are you all right, Roddy? And the babies?" she managed to say. "It's a +good many days since I've heard from Portia." And then, suddenly, "Was +it because anything had gone wrong that you came?" + +"I didn't know you were here until I saw you on the stage." + +This was all, in words, that passed until they reached the bridge. But +there needed no words to draw up, tighter and tighter between them, a +singing wire of memories and associations; there was no need, even, of a +prolonged contact between their bodies. He had let go her arm when they +came out of the alley, and they walked the half-mile to the bridge side +by side and in step, and except for an occasional brush of her shoulder +against his arm, without touching. + +But the Clark Street bridge, with a February gale blowing from the west +down the straight reach of the river, is not to be negotiated lightly. +Strong as they were, the force of the wind actually stopped them at the +edge of the draw, caught Rose a little off her balance, turned her half +around and pressed her up against him. + +She made an odd noise in her throat, a gasp that had something of a sob +in it, and something of a laugh. + +For a moment--so vivid was the blaze of memory--he seemed veritably to +be standing on another bridge (over the north branch of the Drainage +Canal, of all places) with the last, leonine blizzard of a March, which +had been treacherously lamblike before, swirling drunkenly about. He had +been tramping for hours over the clay-rutted roads with a girl he had +known a fortnight and had asked, the day before, to marry him. They had +been discussing this project very sensibly, they'd have said, in the +light of pure reason; and they were both unconscionably proud of the +fact that since the walk began there had been nothing a bystander could +have called a caress or an endearment between them. But there on the +bridge, a buffet of the gale had unbalanced her, and she--with just that +little gasping laugh--had clutched at his shoulder. He had flung one arm +around her and then the other. Without struggling at all she had held +herself away for a moment, taut as a strung bow, her hands clutching his +shoulders, her forearms braced against his chest; then, with the +rapturous relaxation of surrender, her body went soft in his embrace and +her arms slid round his neck; their faces, cool with the fine sleety +sting of the snow, came together. + +The vision passed. The wind was colder to-night than that March +blizzard had been, and the dry groan of a passing electric car came +mingled with the whine of it. Muffled pedestrians, bent doggedly down +against it, jostled them as they went by. + +He steadied her with a hand upon her shoulder, slipped round to the +windward side, and linked his arm within hers. But it was a moment +before they started on again. Their hands touched and, electrically, +clasped. Like his, hers were ungloved. She'd had them in her ulster +pockets. + +"Do you remember the other bridge?" he asked. + +Her answer was to press, suddenly--fiercely--the hand she held up +against her breast. Even through the thickness of the ulster, he could +feel her heart beat. They crossed the bridge, but the hand-clasp did not +slacken when they reached the other side. Their pace quickened, but +neither of them was conscious of it. + +As for Rodney, he was not even conscious what street they were walking +on, nor how far they went. He had no destination consciously in mind or +any avowed plan or hope for what should happen when they reached it. Yet +he walked purposefully and, little by little, faster. He looked about +him in a sort of dazed bewilderment when she disengaged her hand and +stopped, at last, at the corner of the delicatessen shop, beside the +entrance to her little tunnel. + +"Here's where I live," she said. + +"Where you _live!_" he echoed blankly. + +"Ever since I went away--to California. I've been right here--where I +could almost see the smoke of your chimneys. I've a queer little room--I +only pay three dollars a week for it--but--it's big enough to be alone +in." + +"Rose ..." he said hoarsely. + +A drunken man came lurching pitiably down the street. She shrank into +the dark mouth of the passage and Rodney followed her, found her with +his hands, and heard her voice, speaking breathlessly, in gasps. He +hardly knew what she was saying. + +"It's been wonderful.... I know we haven't talked; we'll do that some +other time, somewhere where we can.... But to-night, walking along like +that, just as ... To-morrow, I shall think it was all a dream." + +"Rose ..." + +"Wh-what is it?" she prompted, at last. + +"Let me in," he said. "Don't turn me away to-night! I--I can't ..." + +The only sound that came in answer was a long tremulously indrawn +breath. But presently her hand took the one of his that had been +clutching her shoulder and led him toward the end of the passage, where +a faint light through a transom showed a door. She opened the door with +a latch-key, and then, behind her, he made his way up two flights of +narrow stairs, whose faint creak made all the sound there was. In the +black little corridor at the top she unlocked another door. + +"Wait till I light the gas," she breathed. + +There was nothing furtive about their silence; it was the wonder, the +magic of being together again, that made them steal forward like awed +children. + +Into an ugly, dingy, cramped, cold little room, with a rickety dresser +and a lumpy bed and a grimy window, rattling fiercely in the gusts of +wind that went whipping down the street.... Into a palace of +enchantment. + +She left the gas turned low, took off her hat and ulster, pulled down +the blind over the window and shut the door, hung up a garment that had +been left flung over her trunk and dumped a bundle of laundry that had +not been put away, into a bureau drawer. All the time he'd been watching +her hungrily, without a word. + +She turned and looked into his face, her eyes searching it as his were +searching hers, luminously and with a swiftly kindling fire. Her lips +parted a little, trembling. There was a sort of bloom on her skin that +became more visible as the blood, wave on wave, came flushing in behind +it. His vision of her swam suddenly away in a blur as his own eyes +filled up with tears. + +And then, with that little sob in her throat, she came to him. "Oh, +Roddy ... Roddy!" was all she said. With her own lithe arms she strained +his embrace the tighter. + +So far as the superstructures of their two lives were concerned,--the +part of them that floated above the level of consciousness, the whole +fabric of their thoughts and theories and ideals, that made them to +their friends and to each other, and very largely to themselves, Rose +and Rodney,--they were as far apart as on the day she had left his +house. There hadn't been, since then, a word between them of argument or +compromise. The great _impasse_ was still unforced. He hadn't, as yet, +shown that he could give her the friendship she demanded. She'd had no +chance to tell him of any of the small triumphs and disciplines of her +new life that she hoped would win it from him. + +And as for Rodney, he was the same man who, an hour ago, in the theater, +had raged and writhed under what he felt to be an invasion of his +proprietary rights in her. + +He wouldn't have defined it that way, to be sure, in a talk with Barry +Lake. Would have denied, indeed, with the best of them, that a husband +had any proprietary rights in his wife. But the intolerable sense of +having become an object of derision, or contemptuous pity, of being +disgraced and of her being degraded, through the appearance on the stage +of a public theater, of a woman who was his wife; and through her +exhibition, for pay, of charms he had always supposed would be kept for +him, couldn't derive from anything else but just that. He'd waited there +in the alley, full of bitter thoughts that were ready to leap forth in +denunciations. He'd waited there, ready, he thought, to use actual +physical force on her, in the unthinkable event of its becoming +necessary, to drag her out of this pit where he had found her, back to +his side again. + +But somehow, when he had heard her speak his name, he'd begun to +tremble. And when he had felt her trembling, too, the bitter phrases had +died on his tongue and the thoughts that propelled them were smothered +like fire under sand. And as he'd stood confronting her in her mean +little room, his eyes searching her face, all he had been looking for +was a sign of the hunger--the ages-old hunger--that was devouring him. +And when he'd found it, that was enough for him. The great issue that +was to be fought out between them remained intact, but the hunger had to +be satisfied first. + +It was hours later, in the very dead of the night, as he sat on the edge +of the bed, with his back to her, that the old sense of outrage and +degradation, almost as suddenly as it had left him, came back. And came +back in a way that made it more intolerable than ever. For the clear +flame of it had lost its clarity; the confidence that had fanned it was +gone--the sense of his own rightness. The irresistible surge of passion +that had carried him off, had destroyed that. The flame smoked and +smoldered. + +"Have you anything here," he asked her dully, "besides what will go in +your trunk?" + +It was the surliness of his tone, rather than the words themselves, that +startled her. + +"No," she said puzzled. "Of course not." + +"Then let's throw them into it quickly," he said, "and we'll lock the +thing up. Do you owe any rent?" + +"Roddy!" she said. He heard her moving behind him. She struck a match +and lighted the gas. Then came around in front of him and stared at him +in frowning incredulity. "What do you mean?" + +"I mean we're going to get out of this abominable place now--to-night. +We're going home. We can leave an address for the trunk. If it never +comes, so much the better." + +Again all she could do was to ask him, with a bewildered stammer, what +he meant. "Because," she added, "I can't go home yet. I've--only +started." + +"Started!" he echoed. "Do you think I'm going to let this beastly farce +go any further?" + +And with that the smoldering fire licked up into flame again. He told +her what had happened in his office this afternoon; told her of the +attitude of his friends, how they'd all known about it--undoubtedly had +come to see for themselves, and, out of pity or contempt, hadn't told +him. He told her how he'd felt, sitting there in the theater; why he'd +waited at the stage door for her. He accused her, as with its +self-engendered heat his wrath burned brighter, of having selected the +thing to do that would hurt him worst, of having borne a grudge against +him and avenged it. + +It was the ignoblest moment of his life, and he knew it. The accusations +he was making against her were nothing to those that were storing up in +his mind against himself. The sense of rightness that would have made +him gentle, had been carried away by the passion he'd shared with her, +and he couldn't get it back. + +He didn't look at her as he talked, and she didn't interrupt; said no +word of denial or defense. The big outburst spent itself. He lapsed into +an uneasy silence, got himself together again, and went on trying to +restate his grievance--this time more reasonably, retracting a little. +But under her continued silence, he grew weakly irritated again. + +When at last she spoke, he turned his eyes toward her and saw a sort of +frozen look in her dull white face that he had never seen in it before. +Her intonation was monotonous, her voice scarcely audible. + +"I guess I understand," she said. "I don't know whether I wish I was +dead or not. If I'd died when the babies were born ... But I'm glad I +came away when I did. And I'm glad,"--she gave a faint shudder there at +the alternative--"I'm glad I've got a job and that I can pay back that +hundred dollars I owe you. I've had it quite a while. But I've kept it, +hoping you might find out where I was and come to me, as you did, and +that we might have a chance to talk. I thought I'd tell you how I'd +earned it, and that you'd be a little--proud with me about it, proud +that I could pay it back so soon." + +She smiled a little over that, a smile he had to turn away from. But +this tortured smile shriveled in the flame of passion with which she +went on. "If I couldn't pay it back to-night, after this, I'd feel like +killing myself, or like--going out and earning it in the streets. +Because that's what you've made me to-night!" + +He cried out her name at that, but she went on as if she hadn't heard; +only calm again--or so one might have thought from the sound of her +voice. + +"I went away, you see, because I couldn't bear to have the love part of +your life without a sort of friendly partnership in the rest of it. But +I didn't know then that you could love me while you hated me, while you +felt that I'd unspeakably degraded myself and disgraced you. So that +while you loved me and had me in your arms, you felt degraded for doing +it. I didn't know that till now. + +"I suppose I'll be glad some day that it all happened; that I met you +and loved you and had the babies, even though it's all had to end," she +shuddered again, "like this." + +It wasn't till he tried to speak that her apparent calm was broken. +Then, with a sudden frantic terror in her eyes, she begged him, not +to--begged him to go away, if he had any mercy for her at all, quickly +and without a word. In a sort of daze he obeyed her. + +The tardy winter morning, looking through her grimy window, found her +sitting there, huddled in a big bath-robe, just as she'd been when he +closed the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"I'M ALL ALONE" + + +The same grizzly dawn that looked in on Rose through the dim window of +her room on Clark Street, saw Rodney letting himself in his own front +door with a latch-key after hours of aimless tramping through deserted, +unrecognized streets. He was in a welter of emotions he could no more +have given names to than to the streets whose dreary lengths he had +plodded. + +The one thing that isolated itself from the rest, climbed up into his +mind and there kept goading him into a weak helpless fury, was a +jingling tune and a set of silly words that Rose and her sisters in the +sextette had sung the night before: "You're all alone, I'm all alone; +come on, let's be lonesome together." And then a line he couldn't +remember exactly, containing, for the sake of the rhyme, some total +irrelevancy about the weather, and a sickening bit of false rhyming to +end up with, about loving forever and ever. The jingle of that tune had +kept time to his steps, and the silly words had sung themselves over and +over endlessly in his brain until the mockery of it had become +absolutely excruciating. Except for that damnable tune, there was +nothing in his mind at all. Everything else was synthesized into a dull +ache, a hollow, gnawing, physical ache. But he'd endure that, he +thought, if he could get rid of the diabolical malice of that tune. +Perhaps if he stopped walking and just sat still it would go away. + +That's why he went home, let himself in with his latch-key and made his +way furtively to the library, where the embers of last night's fire were +still warm. He had an hour at least before the servants would be +stirring. He was terribly cold and pretty well exhausted, and the +comfort of his big chair and the glow of the fire carried him off +irresistibly into a doze--a doze that was troubled by fantastic dreams. + +With the first early morning stirrings in the house, the sounds of +opening doors here and there, the penetrating cry of one of the +babies--muffled, to be sure, and a long way off, but still audible--he +came broad awake again, but sat for a while staring about the room; at +the wonderful ornate perfection of the Italian marble chimney-piece that +framed the dying fire; at the tall carved chairs, the simple grandeur of +the three-hundred-year-old table and the subdued richness, in the half +light, of the tapestries that hung on the walls. + +It was Florence McCrea's masterpiece, this room. But this morning its +perfections mocked him with the ferocious irony of the contrast they +presented to that other room--that unspeakably horrible room where he +had left Rose. Details of its hideousness, that he hadn't been conscious +of observing during the hours he had spent in it, came back to him, +bitten out with acid clearness;--the varnished top of the bureau mottled +with water stains, the worn splintered floor, the horrible hard blue of +the iron bed, the florid pattern on the hand-painted slop-jar. + +And that abominable room was where Rose was now! She was sitting, +perhaps, just as he'd left her, with that look of frozen, dumb agony +still in her face, while he sat here ... + +He sprang up in a sort of frenzy. The parlor maid would be in here any +minute now, on her morning rounds, and would wish him a respectful good +morning, and ask him what he wanted for breakfast. And then, with +automatic perfection, would appear his coffee, his grapefruit, and the +rest of it--all exactly right, the result of a perfect precalculation of +his wishes. While Rose ... + +He put on his outdoor things and left the house, motivated now, for the +first time in many hours, with a clear purpose. He'd go back to that +room and get Rose out of it. He was incapable of planning how it should +be done, but somehow--anyhow, it should be; that was all he knew! + +But this purpose was frustrated the moment he reached Clark Street, by +the realization that he hadn't an idea within half a mile at least, +where the room was. Neither when he went into it with Rose, nor when he +left it, had he picked up any sort of landmark. There was a passage, he +remembered, leading back between two buildings, which projected to the +sidewalk. But there were a dozen of these in every block. + +A miserable little lunch-room caught his eye, displaying in its dingy +windows, pies, oranges, big shallow pans of pork and beans. This was the +sort of place Rose would have to come to, he reflected, for her +breakfast. And with that thought--hardly the conscious hope that she +would actually come to this place this morning--he turned in, sat down +at a cloth spotted with coffee and catsup stains, and ordered his +breakfast of a yawning waiter. He even forced himself, when it was +brought in, to eat it. If it was good enough for Rose, wasn't it good +enough for him? + +And all the while he kept his eye on the street door, in the +irrepressible, unacknowledged hope that the gods would be kind enough to +bring her there. + +But it was a mocking hope, he knew, and he didn't linger after he'd +finished. He walked down-town to his office. It was still pretty +early--not yet eight o'clock. Even his office boy wouldn't be down for +three-quarters of an hour. He was safe, he found himself saying, for so +long, anyway. + +He sat down at his desk and stared bewildered at the stack of letters +that lay there awaiting his signature. They were the very letters Miss +Beach had been typing when he had told her to telephone to the club and +get him a seat for _The Girl Up-stairs_, by way of passing a pleasant +evening;--and had laughed at her when she protested. Oh, God! + +He felt like a sort of inverted Rip Van Winkle--like a man who had been +away twenty years--in hell twenty years!--and coming back found +everything exactly as he had left it. As if, in reality, his absence had +lasted only overnight. + +He pulled himself together and began to read the letters, but +interrupted himself before he'd gone far, to laugh aloud. The laugh +startled him a little. He hadn't expected to do more than smile. But +certainly it was worth a laugh, the solemn importance with which he'd +dictated those letters; the notion that it mattered what he said, how he +advised his clients in their bloodless, parchment-like affairs; that +anything in all the files behind the black door of that vault +represented more than the empty victories and defeats of a childish +game. The dead smug orderliness of the place, with the infallible Miss +Beach as its presiding genius, infuriated him. Clearly he couldn't stay +here till he was better in hand than this. + +He signed his letters without reading them, and scribbled a note to +Craig that he'd been called out of town for a day or two on a matter of +urgent personal business. He hadn't thought of actually going out of +town until the note was written. But once he saw the statement in black +and white, the notion of making it true, invited him. He'd run off to +some small city where no curious eyes, animated by the knowledge that he +was Rodney Aldrich whose wife had left him to become a chorus-girl, +could steal glances at him. Where he needn't speak to any one from +morning till night. Where he could really get himself together and +think. + +He added in a postscript to the note to Craig, instructions to call up +his house and tell them he was out of town. + +The thought cropped up in one of the more automatic sections of his +brain, that for traveling he ought to have a bag, night things, fresh +underclothes, and so on, and the routine method of supplying that need +suggested itself to him; namely, to telephone to the house, have one of +the maids pack his bag for him and send it down-town in the car. But +just as he had rejected the notion of breakfasting at home, and had gone +out to that miserable Clark Street lunch-room instead, so he rejected +this. All the small civilized refinements of his way of life went +utterly against his grain. They'd continue to be intolerable to him, he +thought, as long as he had to go on envisaging Rose in that ghastly +environment of hers. + +He left his office and turned into one of the big department stores that +backs up on Dearborn Street, where he bought himself a cheap bag and +furnished it with a few necessaries. Then, leaving the store, simply +kept on going to the first railway station that lay in his way. He chose +a destination quite at random. The train announcer, with a megaphone, +was calling off a list of towns which a train, on the point of +departure, would stop at. Rodney picked one that he had never visited, +bought a ticket, walked down the platform past the Pullmans, and found +himself a seat in a coach. + +He found a measure of relief in all this. It gave him the illusion, at +least, of doing something. Or, more accurately, of getting ready to do +something, while it liberated him from the immediate necessity of doing +it. He'd go to a hotel in that town whose name was printed on his +ticket, and hire a room; lock himself up in it, and then begin to think. +Once he could get the engine of his mind to going, he'd be all right. +There must be some right thing to do. Or if not that, at least something +that was better to do than anything else. And when his mind should have +discovered what that thing was, he'd have, he felt, resolution enough to +go on and do it. Until he should find it, he was like a man +shamed--naked, unable to encounter the most casual glance of any of the +persons in his world who knew his shame. Once he was safe in that hotel +room, the process of thinking could begin. He wouldn't have to hurry +about it. He could take all the time he liked. + +For the present, he was getting a queer sort of comfort out of what +would ordinarily be labeled the discomforts of his surroundings: the +fierce dry heat of the car, the smells--that of oranges was perhaps the +strongest of these--the raucous persistence of the train butcher hawking +his wares; and, most of all, in the very density of the crowd. + +This is one of the comforts that many a member of the favored, +chauffeur-driven, servant-attended class lives his life in ignorance of, +the nervous relief that comes from ceasing, for a while, to be an +isolated, sharply bounded, perfectly visible entity, and subsiding, +indistinguishably, into a mere mass of humanity; in being nobody for a +while. It was a want which, in the old days before his marriage, Rodney +had often, unconsciously, felt and gratified. He had enjoyed being +herded about, riding in crowded street-cars, working his way through the +press in the down-town streets during the noon hour. + +He was no more conscious of it now, but it was distinctly pleasant to +him to be identified for the conductor merely by a bit of blue +pasteboard with punch marks in it, stuck in his hat-band. + +The pleasant torpor didn't last long, because presently, the rhythmic +thud of the wheels began singing to him the same damned tune that had +dogged his footsteps earlier that morning: "I'm all alone, you're all +alone; come on, let's be lonesome together." + +This was intolerable! To break it up, he bought a magazine from the +train-boy and tried to read. But the story he lighted on concerned +itself with a ravishingly beautiful young woman and an incredibly +meritorious young man, and worked itself out, cleverly enough to be +sure--which made it worse--upon the assumption that all that was needed +for their supreme and permanent happiness was to get into each other's +arms, which eventually they did. + +Rose had been in his arms last night! + +So the scorching treadmill round began again. But at last sheer physical +exhaustion intervened and he fell heavily asleep. He didn't waken until +the conductor took up his bit of pasteboard again, shook him by the +shoulder, and told him that he'd be at his destination in five minutes. + +Presently, in the hotel, he locked his door, opened the window and sat +down to think. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +FREDERICA'S PARADOX + + +Two days later, at half past eight in the morning, he walked in on +Frederica at breakfast with her two eldest children. He had been able to +count on this because the Whitneys had a certain pride in preserving +some of the customs of the generation before them; at least Martin had, +and Frederica's good-natured, rueful acquiescence gave her at once +something to laugh at him a little about and a handy leverage for the +extraction of miscellaneous concessions. It wasn't exactly a misdemeanor +to be late to breakfast--it began promptly at eight o'clock--but it was +distinctly meritorious not to be. Martin never was and he always left +the house for his office at exactly eight-twenty. His chauffeur was +trained to take just ten minutes trundling the big car down-town, and +eight-thirty found him at his desk as invariably as it had found his +father before him. It was all perfectly ritualistic, of course. There +wasn't the slightest need for any of it. + +A knowledge of the ritual, though, stood Rodney in good stead this +morning. He liked Martin well enough--had really a traditional and +vicarious affection for him. But he was about the last man he wanted to +see to-day. + +The children were a boy of ten, Martin, junior, and a girl, Ellen, of +eight. There was a three-year-old baby, too, but his nurse looked after +him. They had finished breakfast, but Frederica had a way of keeping +them at the table for a little while every morning, chatting with +her--oh, about anything they pleased. If it was a design for their +improvement, they didn't suspect it. The talk broke off short when the +three of them, almost simultaneously, looked up and saw Rodney in the +doorway. + +"Hello!" Frederica said, holding out a hand to him, but not rising. +"Just in time for breakfast." + +"Don't ring," he said quickly. "I've had all I want. My train got in an +hour ago and I had a try at the station restaurant." + +"Well, sit down anyway," said Frederica. + +"Take this chair, Uncle Rod," said the boy in a voice of brusk +indifference. "Excuse me, mother?" He barely waited for her nod and +blundered out of the room. + +The girl came round to Rodney's chair to offer him her hand and drop her +curtsy; took a carnation from a bowl on the table and tucked it into his +button-hole, slid her arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. + +Both the children, Frederica was aware, had remarked something troubled +and serious about their uncle's manner and each had acted on this +observation in his own way. The boy, distressed and only afraid of +showing it, had bolted from the room with a panicky assumption of +indifference. The girl, though two years younger, was quite at ease in +expressing her sympathy, and conscious of how decoratively she did it. +(This was Frederica's analysis, anyhow. As is the wont of mothers, she +liked the boy better.) + +"I think Miss Norris is waiting for you, my dear." + +"_Oui, maman_," said Ellen dutifully. + +She was supposed to talk French all the morning, but somehow this +particular observance of the régime irritated her mother a little and +she rather visibly waited while Ellen quite adequately made her +farewells to her uncle and gracefully left the room. + +The tenseness of her attitude relaxed suddenly when the child was gone. +She reached out a cool soft hand and laid it on one of Rodney's that +rested limply on the table. There was rather a long silence--ten seconds +perhaps. Then: + +"How did you find out about it?" Rodney asked. + +They were both too well accustomed to these telepathic short-cuts to +take any note of this one. She'd seen that he knew, just with her first +glance at him there in the doorway; and something a little tenderer and +gentler than most of her caresses about this one, told him that she did. +What it was they knew, went of course without saying. + +"Harriet's back," she said. "She got in day before yesterday. Constance +said something to her about it, thinking she knew. They've thought all +along that you and I knew, too. Harriet was quick enough and clever +enough to pretend she did and yet find out about it, all at the same +time. So that's so much to the good. That's better than having them find +out we didn't know. Of course Harriet came straight to me. I'm glad it +was Harriet Constance spoke to about it and not me. I'd probably have +given it away. But Harriet never batted an eye." + +"No," said Rodney, "Harriet wouldn't." + +It was a certain dryness in his intonation rather than the words +themselves Frederica answered. + +"She'd do anything in the world for you, Roddy," she said, with a +vaguely troubled intensity. + +This time his mind didn't follow hers. For an instant he misunderstood +her pronoun, then he saw what she meant. + +"Harriet?--Oh, yes, Harriet's all right," he said absently. + +She left his preoccupation alone for a minute or two, but at last broke +in on it with a question. "How did you find out about it, Roddy? Who +told you?" + +"No one," he said in a voice unnaturally level and dry. "I went to see +the show on the recommendation of a country client, and there she was on +the stage." + +"Oh!" cried Frederica--a muffled, barely audible cry of passionate +sympathy. Then: + +"Roddy," she demanded, "are you sure it's true? Are you absolutely sure +that it's really Rose? Or if it is, that she's in her right mind--that +she hasn't just wandered off as people do sometimes without knowing who +they are?" + +"There's nothing in that notion," he said. "It's Rose all right, and she +knows what she's doing." + +"You mean you've seen her off the stage--talked with her?" + +He nodded. + +She pulled in a long sigh of anticipatory relief. + +"Well, then," she demanded, "what did she say? How did she explain how +she _could_ have done such a thing as that?" + +"I didn't ask her to explain," said Rodney. "I asked her to come home, +and she wouldn't." + +"Oh, it's wicked!" she cried. "It's the most abominably selfish thing I +ever heard of!" + +He made a gesture of protest, but it didn't stop her. + +"Oh, I suppose," she flashed, "she didn't _mean_ any harm--wasn't just +trying to do the cruelest thing she could to you. But it would be a +little less infuriating if she had." + +"Pull up, Freddy!" he said. Rather gently though, for him. "There's no +good going on like that. And besides ... You were saying Harriet would +do anything in the world for me. Well, there's something _you_ can do. +You're the only person I know who can." + +Her answer was to come around behind his chair, put her cheek down +beside his, and reach for his hands. + +"Let's get away from this miserable breakfast table," she said. "Come up +to where I live, where we can be safely by ourselves; then tell me about +it." + +In front of her boudoir fire, looking down on her as she sat in her +flowered wing chair, an enormously distended rug-covered pillow beside +her knees waiting for him to drop down on when he felt like it, he began +rather cautiously to tell her what he wanted. + +"I'll tell you the reason why I've come to you," he began, "and then +you'll see. Do you remember nearly two years ago, the night I got wet +coming down here to dinner--the night you were going to marry me off to +Hermione Woodruff? We had a long talk afterward, and you said, speaking +of the chances people took getting married, that it wasn't me you +worried about, but the girl, whoever she might be, who married me." + +The little gesture she made admitted the recollection, but denied its +relevancy. She'd have said something to that effect, but he prevented +her. + +"No," he insisted, "it wasn't just talk. There was something to it. +Afterward, when we were engaged, two or three times, you gave me tips +about things. And since we've been married ... Well, somehow, I've had +the feeling that you were on her side; that you saw things her +way--things that I didn't see." + +"Little things," she protested; "little tiny things that couldn't +possibly matter--things that any woman would be on another +woman's--side, as you say, about." + +But she contradicted this statement at once. "Oh, I _did_ love her!" she +said fiercely. "Not just because she loved you, but because I thought +she was altogether adorable. I couldn't help it. And of course that's +what makes me so perfectly furious now--that she should have done a +thing like this to you." + +"All right," he said. "Never mind about that. This is what I want you to +do. I want you to go to see her, and I want you to ask her, in the first +place, to try to forgive me." + +"What for?" Frederica demanded. + +"I want you to tell her," he went on, "that it's impossible that she +should be more horrified at the thing I did than I am myself. I want you +to ask her, whatever she thinks my deserts are, to do just one thing for +me, and that is to let me take her out of that perfectly hideous place. +I don't ask anything else but that. She can make any terms she likes. +She can live where or how she likes. Only--not like that. Maybe it's a +deserved punishment, but I can't stand it!" + +There was the crystallization of what little thinking he had managed to +do in the two purgatorial days he'd spent in that down-state hotel--in +the intervals of fighting off the torturing jingle of that tune, and the +memory of the dull frozen agony he'd seen in Rose's face as he left her. +No great result, truly. The mountain had labored and brought forth a +mouse. + +But reflect for a moment what Rodney's life had been; how gently, for +all his buoyant theories about the acceptance of discipline, the world, +in its material aspect at any rate, had dealt with him. How completely +that boyish arrogance of his had been allowed to grow unbruised by +circumstance. He'd always been rich, in the sense that his means had +always been sufficient to his wants. He'd never in his life had an +experience that even resembled Portia's with that old unpaid grocery +bill. He'd enjoyed wearing shabby clothes, but he'd never worn them +because he could afford no better. He'd always been democratic in the +narrower social sense, but he'd never realized how easy that sort of +democracy is and how little it means to a man never associated with +persons who assert a social superiority over him. He'd always made a +point of despising luxuries, to be sure. But it hadn't been brought to +his attention at how high a level he drew the line between luxuries and +mere decent necessities. + +He wasn't then, near so much of a Spartan as he thought. His long +association with the Lakes and their friends might, you'd think, have +brought him the consolatory reflection that a woman who earned even a +successful chorus-girl's wages, needn't be pitied too lamentably on the +score of poverty; that Rose could, no doubt, have afforded a better room +than that, if she'd wanted to. And that even a three-dollar room, a +whole room that you hadn't to share with anybody, would--if the rent of +it left you money enough to send out your clothes to the laundry and to +buy adequate meals in restaurants--represent luxury--well, to more +people than one likes to think about. + +Rodney knew that well enough, of course. He'd read the Sage Foundation +reports on housing; he was familiar with the results of the Pittsburgh +Survey. But the person in question now, wasn't the Working Girl. It was +his Rose! + +Out of all the chaos of thought and feeling that had been boiling within +him since the night he had gone with Rose to her room, there emerged, +then, two outstanding ideas. One was that he had outraged her; the other +that she simply couldn't be allowed to go on living as he had found her. + +Frederica, naturally, was mystified. "That's absurd, of course, Roddy," +she said gently. "You haven't done anything to Rose to be forgiven for." + +"You'll just have to take my word for it," he said shortly. "I'm not +exaggerating." + +"But, Roddy!" she persisted. "You must be sensible. Oh, it's no wonder! +You're all worn out. You look as if you hadn't slept for nights. I wish +you'd sit down and be a little bit comfortable. But I _know_ you're +wrong about that! + +"I went out to California with the idea that you might have been--well, +awfully stupid about something and hurt Rose dreadfully without knowing +it. I was perfectly ready to be--on her side, as you say. I thought we'd +have a good talk and I'd find out what it was all about, and then come +home and pack you out there yourself. + +"Well, of course I didn't see Rose, and Portia wasn't very +communicative. She'd always been a little stiff with me. I never managed +to get her altogether. But she was clear enough about it at any rate, +that Rose was more in love with you than ever and she didn't blame you +for a thing. The thing that she seemed most anxious about was that her +mother shouldn't blame you. Of course that took the wind out of my sails +and I had to come back. So it's absurd for you to be talking as if she +had a real reason for--detesting you." + +"She hadn't, then," said Rodney, and he walked uneasily away to the +window. + +"Well, if you mean the other night, the only time you've seen her since, +then it's all the more ridiculous. What if you were angry and lost your +temper and hurt her feelings? Heavens! Weren't you entitled to, after +what she'd done? And when she'd left you to find it out like that?" + +"I tell you you don't know the first thing about it." + +"I don't suppose you--beat her, did you?" It was too infuriating, having +him meek like this! + +His reply was barely audible. "I might better have done it." + +Frederica sprang to her feet. "Well, then, I'll tell you!" she said. "I +won't go to her. I'll go if you'll give me a free hand. If you'll let me +tell her what I think of what she's done and the way she's done it--not +letting you know--not giving you a chance. But go and beg her to forgive +_you_, I won't. + +"All right," he said dully. "You're within your rights, of course." + +The miserable scene dragged on a little longer. Frederica cried and +pleaded and stormed, without moving him at all. He seemed distressed at +her grief, urged her to treat his request as if he hadn't made it; but +he explained nothing, answered none of her questions. + +It was an enormous relief to her, and, she fancied, to him, for that +matter, when, after a premonitory knock at the door, Harriet walked in +on them. + +The situation didn't need much explaining, but Frederica summed it up +while the others exchanged their coolly friendly greetings, with the +statement: + +"Rod's been trying to get me to go to Rose and say that it was all his +fault, and I won't." + +"Why not?" said Harriet. "What earthly thing does it matter whose fault +it is? He can have it his fault if he likes." + +"You know it isn't," Frederica muttered rebelliously. + +Harriet seated herself delicately and deliberately in one of the curving +ends of a little Victorian sofa, and stretched her slim legs out in +front of her. + +"Certainly I don't care whose fault it is," she said. "You never get +anywhere by trying to decide a question like that. What I'm interested +in is what can be done about it. It's not a very nice situation. Nobody +likes it--at least I should _think_ Rose would be pretty sick of it by +now. She may have been crazy for a stage career, but she's probably seen +that the chorus of a third-rate musical comedy won't take her anywhere. + +"The thing's simply a mess, and the only thing to do, is to clear it up +as quickly and as decently as we can--and it can be cleared up, if we go +at it right. Only, for the love of Heaven, Freddy, before you let Rod go +out of the house, give him a dose of veronal and pack him off to a quiet +room up-stairs to sleep around the clock! The way he looks now, he's a +proclamation of calamity across the street!" + +She wasn't at all disturbed by the outburst this provoked from Rodney. +Indeed, Frederica, from a glimpse she got of her face as she sat +listening to his blistering denunciation of this apparently +whole-hearted concern for appearances, and his passionate denial that +they meant anything at all to him, suspected that her sister's words +had been calculated to produce just this result. When it had subsided, +Harriet's first words proved it. + +[Illustration: "What earthly thing does it matter whose fault it is?"] + +"All right," she observed. "I knew you'd want to say that. Now, it's off +your mind. Appearances do matter to Freddy and me, and of course they +matter to you too, though you don't like to think so. They matter to all +our kind of people. We're supposed to have been trained to take our +medicine without making faces. If we've got cuts and sores and bruises, +we cover them. We don't parade them as a bid for sympathy. We leave +howling about rights and wrongs and soul-mates and affinities and +'ideals,' to the shabby sort of people who like to do that shabby sort +of thing. According to our traditions, the decent thing to do is to shut +up and keep your face and make it possible for other people to keep +theirs. You're as strong for that as I am, really, Rod, and that's why I +want you to back me up in the line I took with Constance. Pretend you've +known all about what Rose was doing, and that you aren't ashamed of it. +It would have been easier, of course, if she'd played fair with us at +the start ..." + +"She did play fair," he interrupted. "She offered to tell me what she +was going to do. I wouldn't let her." + +Harriet's only commentary on this was a faint shrug. + +"Anyhow," she went on, "the point is that once we begin pretending, +everybody else will have to pretend to believe us. Of course the thing +to do is to get her out of that horrible place as soon as we can. And I +suppose the best way of doing it, will be to get her into something +else--take her down to New York and work her into a small part in some +good company. Almost anything, if it came to that, as long as it wasn't +music. Oh, and have her use her own name, and let us make as much of it +as we can. Face it out. Pretend we like it. I don't say it's ideal, but +it's better than this." + +"Her own name!" he echoed blankly. "Do you mean she made one up?" + +Harriet nodded. "Constance mentioned it," she said, "but that was before +I knew what she was talking about. And of course I couldn't go back and +ask. Daphne something, I think. It sounded exactly like a chorus name, +anyhow." And then: "Well, how about it? Will you play the game?" + +"Oh, yes," he said with a docility that surprised Frederica. "I'll play +it. It comes to exactly the same thing, what we both want done, and our +reasons for doing it are important to nobody but ourselves." + +She turned to Frederica. + +"You too, Freddy?" she asked. "Will you give your moral principles a +vacation and take Rod's message to Rose, even though you may think it's +Quixotic nonsense?" + +"I'll see Rose myself," said Rodney quietly. + +It struck Frederica that if not his natural self, he had gone a long way +at least, to recovering his natural manner. Telling Martin all about it +that night, as she always told him about everything (because Martin was +Frederica's discovery and her secret. No one else suspected, not even +Martin himself, how intelligent and understanding he was, nor how +luminous his simple remarks about complex situations could sometimes +be), she adverted to a paradox which had often puzzled her in the past. +Rodney was twice as fond of her as he was of Harriet, just as she was +twice as fond of him as Harriet was. And yet, again and again, where her +own love and sympathy had failed dismally to effect anything, Harriet's +dry astringent cynicism would come along and produce highly desirable +results. + +"It seems as if it oughtn't to work out that way," she concluded. "You'd +think that loving a person and feeling his troubles the way he feels +them himself, ought to enable you to help him rather than just irritate. +However, as long as it doesn't work that way with you ..." + +He reached out, took her by the chin, tilted her face back and kissed +her expertly on the mouth. A rather horrifyingly familiar thing to do, +one might think, to the Venus of Milo, or Frederica, or any one as +simply and grandly beautiful as that. But she seemed to like it. + +"No chance for the experiment," said Martin. "I shall never have any +troubles while you're around." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE MIRY WAY + + +Rodney's docility didn't go to the length of the dose of veronal Harriet +had recommended, but it did assent to a program that occupied the +greater part of the day, including a Turkish bath, a good sleep, fresh +clothes and the first decently cooked meal he had had since he'd dined +at the club three days ago. When he turned into his office, about five +o'clock, he was his own man again, perfectly capable of a greeting to +Craig and Miss Beach which consigned the last scene between them here in +the office to oblivion. + +His fortitude was put to the test, too, during the first five minutes. +In the stack of correspondence on his desk, to which Miss Beach directed +his attention, was an unopened envelope addressed to him in Rose's +handwriting. He couldn't restrain, of course, a momentary wild hope that +she had written to tell him he was forgiven, or at least to offer him +the chance of asking her forgiveness. But he paused to steel himself +against this hope before looking to see what the thing contained. + +It was well he did so, because there was nothing in it but a postal +money-order for a hundred dollars; not an explanatory line of any sort. +Of course the message it carried didn't need writing. It smarted like a +slap across the face. Yet, down underneath the smart, he felt something +that glowed more deeply, a feeling he couldn't have named or recognized, +of pride in her courage. + +He was badly in need of something to be proud of, too, for the next two +days were full of humiliations. When he told Harriet and Frederica that +he would see Rose himself, he hadn't any program for carrying out this +intention. He didn't want to wait for her again at the stage door. +There mustn't be anything about their next talk together to remind her +of their last one, and it would be better if she could be assured in +advance that she had nothing to fear from him. So the first thing to do +was to write her a letter that would show her how he felt and how little +he meant to ask. But before he could write the letter, he must learn her +name. + +He thought of Jimmy Wallace as a person who'd be able to help him out, +here, but in the circumstances Jimmy was the last person he wanted to go +to. There was no telling how much Jimmy might know about the situation +already. The intolerable thought occurred to him that Rose might even +have talked with Jimmy about going on the stage before she left his +house. No, the person to see was the manager of the theater. He'd +describe Rose to him and ask him who she was. + +His attempt to carry out this part of his plan was disastrously +unsuccessful. Theatrical managers no doubt cherish an ideal of courteous +behavior. But, since ninety-nine out of a hundred of the strangers who +ask for them at the box-office window, are actuated by a desire to get +into their theaters without paying for their seats, they develop, +protectively, a manner of undisguised suspicion toward all people who +don't know them, and toward about three-quarters of those who pretend +they do. It wasn't a manner Rodney was accustomed to, and it irritated +him. Then, until he had got his request half stated, it didn't occur to +him in what light the manager would be amply justified in regarding it. +That notion, which he interpreted from a look in the manager's face, +confused and angered him, and he stumbled and stammered, which angered +him still more. + +"We don't do that sort of thing in this theater," the manager said +loudly (the conversation had taken place in the lobby of the theater, +too) and turned away. + +The grotesque improbability of the true explanation that the woman whose +name he was inquiring about was his wife, silenced him and turned him +away. It was fortunate for Rodney it did so. The thing would have made a +wonderful story for the press agent, if he hadn't stopped just where he +did. + +He spent the rest of that evening, and a good part of the next day, +trying to think of some alternative to waiting again at the stage door. +But, except for the still inadmissible one of going to Jimmy Wallace, he +couldn't think of one. So, at a quarter past seven that night, he +stationed himself once more in the miserable alley, to wait for Rose. +Seeing her before the show would, he thought, be an improvement on +waiting till after it. The mere fact that they wouldn't have very long +to talk, ought to reassure her that he didn't mean to take any +advantages. He could show her how contrite he was, how little he meant +to ask, and then leave it to her to select a place, at her own leisure +and convenience, to talk over the terms of their treaty. + +He waited from a quarter after seven to half past eight, but Rose didn't +come. The thought that perhaps he hadn't taken his station early enough +sent him back to another vigil at half past ten. At a quarter to twelve, +his patience exhausted, he opened the stage door and told the doorman he +was waiting for one of the girls in the sextette. The doorman informed +him they had all gone home. + +There was, unfortunately, no matinée the next day, and it was only by +the exercise of all the will power he had, that he stayed in his office +and did his work and waited for the hour of the evening performance. +Then he went to the theater and bought a ticket. When the sextette made +its first appearance on the stage, he saw that another girl than Rose +was taking her part. He went out into the lobby, and once more sought +the manager. But this time with a different air. + +"Haven't you an office somewhere where we can talk?" he demanded. "This +is important." + +Evidently the manager saw it was, because he conducted him to a small +room with a desk in it, half-way up the balcony stairs, and nodded him +to a chair. + +"There was a young woman in your company," Rodney said, "in the +sextette. She isn't playing to-night. I want to know what her stage name +is, and where she can be found. I assure you that it's of the first +importance to her that I should find her." + +The manager's manner was different, too. He looked perplexed and rather +unhappy. But he didn't tell Rodney what he wanted to know. + +"She's left the company," he said, "permanently. That's all I can tell +you." + +"Is she ill?" Rodney demanded. + +The manager said not that he knew of, but this was all that was to be +got out of him. + +The thing that finally silenced Rodney and sent him away, was the +reflection that the man might be withholding information about her, on +Rose's own request. + +He went away, sore, angry, discouraged. Jimmy Wallace seemed about the +only hope there was. But he'd be damned if he'd go to Jimmy. Not yet, +anyway. And then he thought of Portia! + +She'd tell him. She'd have to tell him. Why hadn't he thought of her +before? He'd write to her the message to Rose he'd tried to get +Frederica to carry. No, he wouldn't do that! He'd go to her. And there +was a chance ... Why, there was the best kind of chance! Why hadn't he +thought of it before? Why had he been such an idiot as to waste all +these days! + +It seemed almost certain he'd find Rose there with her. She'd felt--she +couldn't have helped feeling after the things he'd said to her that +ghastly night in the little North Clark Street room--that she couldn't +go on. And stripped of her job like that, with nothing else to turn to, +where should she go but home to her mother and sister? To the only +friends and comforters she had in the world. + +He'd send no word in advance of his coming. He'd just come up to the +door of the little bungalow and ring the bell. And there was a chance +that the person who'd come to answer it would be Rose herself. + +The idea came to him all in a flash as he walked away from the theater, +and his impulse from it was to jump into a taxicab and catch a +ten-thirty train to the coast, that he had just time for. He denied the +impulse as part of the discipline he'd been imposing on himself since +his talk with Harriet, and went home instead. From now on he was going +to act like a reasonable man, not like a distracted one. + +He had his bag packed and his tickets bought the next morning, went to +the office and put things in train to accommodate a week's absence, +wrote a note to Frederica telling her of his discovery that Rose had +left the company of _The Girl Up-stairs_, and of his hope of finding her +in California with her mother and Portia; and when he settled himself in +his compartment for the three-day ride he even had two or three books in +his bag to pass the time with, as if it had been an ordinary journey. He +didn't make much of them, it's true, but his honest attempt to, gave him +the glimmering dawn of a discovery. + +The cardinal principle of his life, if such a thing could be stated in a +phrase, was self-expression through self-discipline. Well, his discovery +was (it didn't come to much more than a surmise, it is true, but it was +a beginning) that in his relations to Rose he'd never disciplined +himself at all. The network of his instincts, passions, desires, that +had involved her, had been allowed to grow unchecked, unscrutinized. He +didn't begin to scrutinize them now. He was in no mind for the task. How +could he undertake it until the fearful hope that he was actually on the +way to her now should have been answered one way or the other! + +It proved a vain hope. The person who answered his ring at the door of +the little bungalow, on that wonderful sun-bathed, rose-scented morning +(false auguries that mocked his disappointment and made it almost +intolerable) was Portia. + +She flushed at sight of him, then almost as quickly went pale. She +stepped outside the door and closed it behind her before she spoke. + +"I'm afraid I mustn't let mother know you're here," she said. "She's not +been well these last days and she mustn't be excited. I don't want to +let her suspect that things have changed or in any way gone wrong with +Rose. I told her I was going out for a walk. Will you come with me?" + +He nodded and did not even speak until they'd got safely away from the +house. Then: + +"I came out here," he said, "almost sure that I should find her. Isn't +she here?" + +"No," said Portia. Then she added with a sort of gasp, as if she'd tried +to check her words in their very utterance, "Don't you know her better +than that?" + +"Do you know where she is?" + +This question she didn't answer at all. They walked on a dozen paces in +silence. + +"Portia," he demanded, "is she ill? You'll have to tell me that." + +Even this question she didn't answer immediately. "No," she said at +last. "She's not ill. I'll take the responsibility of telling you that." + +"You mean that's all you will tell me?" he persisted. "Why? On her +instructions?" + +"I think we'll have to sit down somewhere," said Portia. "Beside the +road over there where it's shady." + +"I got a letter from Rose yesterday," she said, after they'd been seated +for a while. "She asked me in it not to go on writing you the +little--bulletins that I'd been sending every week; not to tell you +anything at all. So you see I've gone rather beyond her instructions in +saying even as much as I have." + +"And you," he asked quickly; "you mean to comply with a request like +that?" + +"I must," said Portia. "I can't do anything else." + +He made no comment in words, but she interpreted his uncontrollable +gesture of angry protest, and answered it. + +"It's not a question of conscientious scruples; keeping my word, not +betraying a confidence; anything like that. A year ago if she'd made +such a request I'd have paid no attention to it. I'd have taken the +responsibility of acting against her wishes, for her own good, if I +happened to see it that way, without any hesitation at all. But Rose has +shown herself so much bigger and stronger a person than I, and she's +done a thing that would have been so splendidly beyond my courage to do +that there's no question of my interfering. She's entitled to make her +own decisions. So," she went on with a little difficulty, "I shan't +betray her confidence nor disregard her instructions. But there's one +thing I can do, one thing I can tell you, because it's my confidence, +not hers." + +The very obvious fact that her confidences were not of great moment to +him, the way he sat there beside her in a glum abstraction through the +rather long silence that followed her preface, made it easier for her to +go on. + +"You see," she said at last, "I'd always regarded Rose as a spoiled +child. I'd loved her a lot, of course; but I'd despised her a little. At +least I'd tried to, because I was jealous of her; of the big simple easy +way she had--of making people love her. All the hard things came to me, +I felt, and all the easy ones to her. And on the day I came to tell her +about mother, and how we had to move out here--well, I was feeling +sorrier for myself than usual. If you'll remember when that was and what +her condition was (I didn't know about it then and neither did she) +you'll understand my having found her terribly blue and unhappy. She +talked discontentedly about her--failure with you and how she seemed to +be nothing to you except ... Well, she said she envied me. And that, as +I was feeling just then, was too much for me. I lashed out at her; told +her a lot of things she'd never known--about how we'd lived, and so on; +things I'd done for her. I said she'd got my life to live as well as her +own, and that if she failed with it I'd never forgive her. She made me a +promise that she wouldn't, no matter how hard she had to fight for it." + +"She spoke to me once of a promise," Rodney said dully, "but of course I +didn't know what she meant." + +Portia got to her feet. "I can't leave mother for very long," she said, +"and I've some little errands at the shops before I can go back. So ..." + +"I see," he said. "I mustn't detain you any longer. I don't know, +anyhow, that there's anything more to say." + +"I'm sorry I can't--help you. You're entitled to--hate me, I think. +Because it all goes back to that. I've been glad of a chance to tell +you. And that makes me all the sorrier that I can't in any way make it +up to you. But you see--don't you--how it is?" + +"Yes," he said. "I see. I suppose, if it came to hating, that you're +entitled to hate me. But there'll be no great satisfaction in that, I +guess, for either of us." He held out his hand to her and with a painful +sort of shy stiffness, she grasped it. "If Rose changes her +instructions, or if you change your mind as to your duty under them, +you'll let me know?" + +She nodded. "Good-by," she said. + +Rodney walked back to the railway station where he had checked his bag. +In two hours he was on a train bound back to Chicago. + +Various things occurred to him during the journey eastward that he might +have said to Portia. He hadn't asked, for instance, whether Rose's +embargo on news of herself to him had been made effective also in the +other direction. Had she cut herself off from Portia's bulletins about +himself and the babies? Could Portia have transmitted a message from him +to Rose--the one Frederica had declined to take? But he felt in a way +rather glad that he hadn't asked any more questions, nor offered any +messages. He wasn't looking now for an intermediary between Rose and +himself. He wanted Rose, and he meant to find her. His whole mind, by +now, had crystallized into that hard-faceted, sharp-edged determination. +The sore masculine vanity that had kept him from appealing to the man +most likely to be able to help him was almost incredible now. + +From the railway station in Chicago, the moment he got in, he telephoned +Jimmy Wallace at his newspaper office. It was then about half past four +in the afternoon. Jimmy couldn't leave for another hour, it seemed. It +was his afternoon at home to press agents, and he always gave them till +five-thirty to drop in. But he didn't think there were likely to be any +more to-day, and if Rodney would come over ... + +Rodney got into a taxi and came, and found the critic at his shabby old +desk under a green-shaded electric light, in the midst of a vast +solitude, the editorial offices of an evening newspaper at that hour +being about the loneliest place in the world. There was a rusty look +about this particular local room, too, that made you wonder that any +real news ever could emanate from it. Yet only this afternoon they had +beaten the city in the announcement of the failure of the +Mortimore-Milligan string of banks. + +"I've come," said Rodney, finding a sort of fierce satisfaction in +grasping the nettle as tightly as possible, "to see if you can tell me +anything about my wife." + +Jimmy may have felt a bit flushed and flustered, but the fact didn't +show, and an imaginative insight he was in the habit of denying the +possession of led him to draw most of the sting out of the situation +with the first words he said. + +"I'll tell you all I know, of course, but it isn't much. Because I +haven't had a word with her since the last time I dined at your house, +way back last September, I think it was. I saw her on the stage at the +Globe, the opening night of _The Girl Up-stairs_, and I saw that she +recognized me. That's how I knew it was really she. And--well, I want +you to know this! I haven't told anybody that she was there." + +"You needn't tell me that," said Rodney. "I'm sure of it. But I'm glad +you did tell me the other thing. But here's the situation: she's left +that company; left it, I believe, as a result of a talk I had with her +after I found her there, and I don't know where she is. The one thing I +have got to do just now is to find her. I've asked at the theater, and +they won't tell me. I imagine they're acting on her instructions. And as +I don't even know the name she goes by I've found it pretty hard to get +anywhere. I want you to help me." + +"Her name there at the Globe was Doris Dane," said Jimmy, "and I imagine +that unless she's left the show business altogether she'll have kept it; +because it would be, in a small way, an asset. And, as she'll be easier +to find if she has stayed in the business than if she hasn't, why, +that's the presumption to begin on." + +He lighted his pipe and lapsed into a thoughtful silence. "There are two +things she may have done," he went on after a while. "She may have gone +to New York, and in that case she's likely to have applied to the man +who put on _The Girl_ out here; that's John Galbraith. He took quite an +interest in her, I understand; believed she had a future. But the other +thing she may have done strikes me as a little more likely. How long ago +was it you talked to her?" + +"It's the better part of two weeks," said Rodney. + +"Well," said Jimmy, "they sent out a Number Two company of _The Girl +Up-Stairs_ a week ago last Sunday night. If she had any reason for +wanting to leave Chicago she might, I should think, have gone to them +and asked them to let her go out on the road with that. They wouldn't +have done it, of course, unless she'd convinced them that she was going +to quit the Chicago company anyway. But if she had convinced them of +that they'd have done it right enough. On the whole, that seems to me +the likeliest place to look." + +"Yes," said Rodney, "I think it is. Well, have you any way of finding +out where the Number Two company is playing?" + +Jimmy was rummaging in the litter of magazines on the top of his desk. +He pulled one out and searched among the back pages of it for a moment. + +"Here we are!" he said. "_The Girl Up-stairs,_" and he began reading off +the route. "They're playing to-night," he said, "at Cedar Rapids; +to-morrow night in Dubuque." + +"All right," said Rodney. "The next thing to find out is whether she's +with the company. Who is there we can telephone to out there?" + +"Why," said Jimmy, "I suppose we might raise the manager of the +opera-house. They're at Cedar Rapids to-night, and we might get a good +enough wire so that a proper name would be understood." He glanced at +his watch. "But there's a quicker and surer and cheaper way, and that's +to ask Alec McEwen. He's the press agent of the company here, and he'd +be sure to know." + +"He'd know," Rodney demurred, "but would he tell?" + +"He'd tell me," said Jimmy. + +"Can you find him?" Rodney wanted to know. "Where would he be at this +time of day--at his office or his house?" + +He hadn't any office nor any house, Jimmy said. "But since he's +undoubtedly cleaned up the newspaper offices by now, on his weekly +round," he concluded, "we can find him easily enough. I'll guarantee to +locate him--within three bars. There'll be no one in to see me after +this," he went on, slamming down the roll-top to his desk, getting up +and reaching for his overcoat, "so we may as well go straight at it." + +They walked down to the street entrance in silence. There Jimmy, with a +nonchalance that rang a little flat on his own ear, pulled up and said: + +"Look here! There's no need your trailing around on this job. Tell me +where you will be in an hour and I'll call you up." + +"Oh, I've nothing else to do," said Rodney, "and I'll be glad to go +along." + +They were at cross-purposes here. Jimmy didn't want him along. He had a +hunch that Rodney wouldn't find little Alec very satisfactory, but he +didn't know just how to say so. Rodney, on his part, strongly +disrelished the notion of trailing the press agent from bar to bar. But +he attributed the same distaste to Jimmy and felt it wouldn't be fair +not to share it with him. There was, besides, a certain satisfaction in +making his pride do penance. + +Jimmy hadn't overestimated his knowledge of little Alec McEwen's orbit. +They walked together to the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets and, +working radially from there, in the third bar they found him. + +Even before this, however, Rodney regretted that he hadn't let Jimmy do +the job alone. He was not an habitué of the sumptuous bars of the Loop, +and the voices of the men he found in them, the sort of men they were, +and the sort of things they talked about found raw nerves all over him. +On another errand, he realized, he wouldn't have minded. But it seemed +as if Rose herself were somehow soiled by the necessity of visiting +places like this in search of information about her. + +The feeling he had come back with from that down-state town to which he +had fled, that she was in a miry pit from which, at any cost, she must +be saved, had been a good deal weakened during the ten days that had +intervened since then. Her having sent back that hundred dollars; what +Portia had said about her courage; Harriet's notion that a stage career, +if properly managed, was something one could at least pretend not to be +ashamed of; and, most lately, what Jimmy Wallace had said about the New +York director who thought she had a future--all these things had +contributed to the result. + +But this pursuit, from one drinking bar to another, of the only man who +could tell him where she was, was bringing the old feeling back in +waves. + +"Here we are," said Jimmy, as they entered the third place. It was a +cramped cluttered room, thick with highly varnished, carved woodwork and +upholstered leather. Its principal ornament was a nude Bouguereau in a +red-draped alcove, heavily overlighted and fearfully framed; the sort of +picture any one would have yawned at in a gallery, it acquired here, +from the hard-working indecency of its intent, a weak salaciousness. + +Rodney found himself being led up to a group in the far corner of the +bar, and guessed rightly that the young man with the high voice and the +seemingly permanent smile, who greeted Jimmy with a determined +facetiousness, "Hello, old Top! Drunk again?" was the man they sought. + +"Not yet," said Jimmy, "but I'm willing to help you along. What'll it +be?" Then to Rodney: "This is Mr. Alexander McEwen, the leading liar +among our local press agents." He added quickly: "You didn't come around +this afternoon, so I suppose there's nothing stirring. How's business +over at the Globe?" + +"Immense," said Alec. "Sold out three times last week." + +"Do you hear anything," Jimmy asked, "about the road company, what +they're doing?" + +"Rotten," said Alec. "But that don't worry Goldsmith and Block. They +sold out their road rights to Block's brother-in-law." + +"By the way," said Jimmy, "who's the girl in the sextette that's quit?" + +"Doris Dane?" said little Alec. "Say no more. So you were on that lay, +too, you old fox!" his smile widened as he looked round at Rodney, and +his voice turned to a crow. "Trust this solemn old bird not to miss a +bet. She was some lady, all right! Why," he went on to Jimmy, "she has +some sort of a row with her lover; big brute that used to lie in wait +for her in the alley. You ought to hear the ponies go on about it. So +she gets scared and goes to Goldsmith and gets herself sent out with the +Number Two. And Goldsmith--believe me--crazy! He had his eye on it, +too." + +Jimmy finished his drink with a jerk. "Come along," he said to Rodney. +"I don't like this place. Let's get out." + +Rodney has never managed to forget little Alec McEwen. For weeks after +that bar-room encounter he was haunted by the vision of the small bright +prying eyes, the fatuously cynical smile, and by the sound of the high +crowing voice. Little Alec became monstrous to him; impersonal, a symbol +of the way the world looked at Rose, and he dreamed sometimes, +half-waking dreams, of choking the life out of him. Not out of little +Alec personally. He, obviously, wasn't worth it; but out of all the +weakly venomous slander that he typified. + +He managed a nod that seemed unconcerned enough, in response to Jimmy's +suggestion, and followed him out to the sidewalk. The sort of florid +rococo chivalry that would have "vindicated his wife's honor" by +knocking little Alec down was an inconceivable thing to him. But the +thing cut deep. He felt bemired. He wouldn't have minded that, of +course, except that the miry way he'd trodden since he'd first gone to +the stage door for Rose was the way she's taken ahead of him. He must +overtake her and bring her back! + +"I'm a thousand times obliged," he said in an even enough tone to Jimmy. +"I'll find her at Dubuque, then, to-morrow." + +"That's Wednesday," said Jimmy. "They may be playing a matinée, you +know. She'll be there, right enough." + +Then, to make the separation they both wanted come a little easier, he +invented an errand over on State Street and nodded Rodney farewell. For +the next half-hour he cursed himself with vicious heartfelt fluency for +a fool. Mightn't he have known what little Alec McEwen would say? + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +IN FLIGHT + + +Analyzing what little Alec McEwen actually said, disregarding the tone +of his voice and the look in his eye; disregarding, indeed, the meaning +he attached to his own words, and sticking simply to the words +themselves, it would be difficult to bring home against him the charge +of untruthfulness, or even of exaggeration. + +Because it was in a simple panic that Rose, on the morning after +Rodney's visit, had gone to Goldsmith and demanded to be transferred to +the second company, which had started rehearsing as soon as a month of +capacity business had demonstrated that the piece was a success. + +Goldsmith was disgusted. Little Alec had been right about that, too. The +unnaturalness of the request--for indeed it flew straight in the face of +all traditions that a girl who might stay in Chicago if she liked, +taking it easy and having a lot of fun, and rejoicing in the possession +of a job that was going to last for months, should deliberately swap +this highly desirable position for the hazards and discomforts of a +second-rate road company, playing one-night stands over the kerosene +circuit--was one too many for him. He demanded explanations without +getting any. And as Jimmy Wallace had guessed, it was not until she'd +convinced him that in no circumstances would she stay on in the Chicago +company that he assented to the transfer. He didn't abandon his attempts +to dissuade her until the very last moment. But neither his pictures of +the discomforts of the road, nor his carefully veiled promises of +further advancement if she stayed in Chicago, had the slightest effect +on her. All that she wanted was to get away, and as quickly as she +could! + +The collapse of her courage was not quite the sudden thing it seemed. +Forces she was vaguely aware had been at work, but didn't realize the +seriousness of, had been undermining it steadily since the opening night +when she recognized Jimmy Wallace in the audience, and when later she +parted from Galbraith with his promise of a New York job as soon as he +could get his own affairs ready for her. + +Chief of these forces was the simple reaction of fatigue. Strong as she +was, she had abused her strength somewhat during the last weeks of +rehearsal; had taken on and triumphantly accomplished more than any one +has a right to accomplish without calculating on replacing his depleted +capital of energy afterward. It was her first experience with this sort +of exhaustion, and she hadn't learned (indeed it is a lesson she never +did fully learn) to accept the phase with philosophic calm as the +inevitable alternate to the high-tension effective one. + +She missed Galbraith horribly. She had, as she'd told him, personified +the show as a mere projection of himself; he was it and it was he. +Everything she said and did on the stage had continued, as it had begun +in her very first rehearsal by being, just the expression of his will +through her instrumentality. It was amazing to her that, with the core +of it drawn out, the fabric should still stand; that the piece should go +on repeating itself night after night, automatically, awakening the +delighted applause of that queer foolish monster, the audience, just +with its galvanic simulation of the life he had once imparted to it. + +She was doing her own part, she felt at all events, in a manner utterly +lifeless and mechanical. It was a stifling existence! + +The most discouraging thing about it was that the others in the company +seemed not to feel it in the same way. Anabel Astor for example: night +after night she seemed to be born anew into her part with the rise of +the first curtain; she fought and conquered and cajoled, and luxuriated +in the approbation of every new audience, just as she had in the case of +the first, and came off all aglow with her triumph, as if the thing had +never happened to her before. And with the others, in varying degrees, +even with the chorus people, the effect seemed to be the same. + +But it was actually in the air, Rose believed, not merely in her own +fancy, that she was failing to justify the promise she had given at +rehearsal. Not alarmingly, to be sure. She was still plenty good enough +to hold down her job. But the notion, prevalent, it appeared, before the +opening, that she was one of those persons who can't be kept down in the +chorus, but project themselves irresistibly into the ranks of the +principals, was coming to be considered a mistake. + +Galbraith, as was evident from his last talk with her, hadn't made that +mistake. She remembered his having said she never could be an actress. +That was all right of course. She didn't want to be. In a way, it was +just because she didn't want to be that she couldn't be. But having it +come home to her as it was doing now, in her own experience, made her +all the more impatient to get out of the profession that wasn't hers and +into the one that had beckoned her so alluringly. + +It was just here that her disappointment was sharpest. The light that +for a few weeks had flared up so brightly, showing a clear path of +success that would lead her back to Rodney, had, suddenly, just when she +needed it most, gone out and left her wondering whether, after all, it +had been a true beacon or only fool's fire. + +A resolution she came to within twenty-four hours after Galbraith left +was that she would not wait passively for his letter summoning her to +New York. She'd go straight to work (and fill in the disconcerting +emptiness of her days at the same time) preparing herself for the +profession of stage costume designing. She wasn't entirely clear in her +mind as to just what steps this preparation should consist in, but the +fact that Galbraith had once asked to see her sketches and had seemed +amazed to learn that she hadn't any, gave her the hint that she might do +well to learn to draw. She knew, of course, that she couldn't learn very +much in the fortnight or so she supposed would elapse before Galbraith's +letter came in, but she could learn a little. And anything to do that +went in the right direction was better than blankly doing nothing. + +Her first adventure in this direction was downright ludicrous, as she +was aware without being able to summon the mood to appreciate it. The +girls she'd known, back in the Edgewater days, who had ambitions to +learn to draw went to the Art Institute. So Rose, summoning her courage +for a sortie across the avenue, want there too, and felt, as she climbed +the steps between the lions, a little the way Christian did in similar +circumstances. After waiting a while she was shown into the office of an +affable young man, with efficient looking eye-glasses and a keen sort of +voice, and told him with admirable brevity that she wanted to learn to +draw, as a preliminary to designing costumes. + +He approved this ambition cordially enough and made it evident that the +resources of the institute were entirely adequate to her needs. But +then, just about simultaneously, she made the discovery that the course +he was talking about was one of from three to five years' duration, and +he, that the time immediately at her disposal amounted to something like +a fortnight. They were mutually too completely disconcerted to do +anything, for a moment, but stare at each other. When he found his +breath he told her that he was afraid they couldn't do anything for her. + +"There are places, of course, here in town (there's one right down the +street) where they'll take you on for a month, or a week, or a day, if +you like; let you begin working in oil in the life class the vary first +morning, if you've a notion to. But we don't believe in that +get-rich-quick sort of business. We believe in laying the foundation +first." + +His manner in describing the other sort of place had been so +annihilating, his purpose in citing this horrible example was so plain, +that he was justifiably taken aback when she asked him, very politely, +to be sure, "Would you mind telling me where that other place is; the +one down the street?" + +He did mind exceedingly, and it is likely he wouldn't have done it if +she'd been less extraordinarily good to look at and if there hadn't +been, in her very expressive blue eyes, a gleam that suggested she was +capable of laughing at him for having trapped himself like that. She +wasn't laughing at him now, be it understood; had made her request with +a quite adorable seriousness. Only ... + +He gave her the address of an art academy on Madison Street and thither +at once she made her way, faintly cheered by the note on which her +encounter with the young man had ended, but on the whole rather +depressed by the thought of the five years he'd talked about. + +They were more tactful at the new place. _Ars Longa est_ was not a motto +they paraded. They were not shocked at all at the notion of a young +woman's learning as much as she could about drawing in two weeks. There +was a portrait sketch class every morning; twenty minute poses. You put +down as much as you could of how the model looked to you in that space +of time, and then began again on something else. All the equipment Rose +would need was a big apron, a stick of charcoal and a block of drawing +paper; all of which were obtainable on the premises. She could begin +this minute if she liked. It was almost as simple as getting on a +pay-as-you-enter street-car. + +This jumped with Rose's mood exactly, and she promptly fell to, with a +momentary flare-up of the zest with which she had gone to work for +Galbraith. But it was only momentary. She hadn't a natural aptitude for +drawing, and her attempts to make the black lines she desperately dug +and smudged into the white paper represent, recognizably, the object she +was looking at failed so lamentably as to discourage her almost from the +start. + +She kept at it for the two weeks she'd contracted for, but at the end of +that time she gave it up. She hadn't made any visible progress, and +besides, she might be hearing from Galbraith almost any day now. + +And when, four or five days later, her intolerable restlessness over +waiting for a letter that didn't come, making up reasons why it hadn't +come, one minute, and deciding that it never would, the next, drove her +to do something once more, she set out on a new tack. If the ability to +make fancy little water-colors of impossible-looking girls in only less +impossible costumes were really an essential part of the business of +designing the latter, then she'd have to set about learning, in a +systematic way, to paint them; find out the proper way to begin, and +take her time about it. Her two weeks at the academy had proved that it +wasn't a knack that she could pick up casually. But there were books on +costumes, she knew; histories of clothes, that went as far back as any +sort of histories, with marvelous colored plates which gave you all the +details. Bertie Willis had told her all about that when they were +getting up their group for the Charity Ball. There were shelves of them, +she knew, over at the Newberry Library. A knowledge of their contents +would be sure to be valuable to her when Galbraith should set her to +designing more costumes for him--if ever he did. + +This misgiving, that she might never hear from him, that his plans had +changed since their talk, so that he wasn't going to need any assistant, +or that he had found some one in New York better qualified for the work, +was, really, a little artificial. She encouraged it as a defense against +another which was, in its insidious way, much more terrifying. + +Would she ever be capable, again, of producing another idea in case it +should be wanted? That one little flash of inspiration she'd had, that +had resulted in the twelve costumes for the sextette--where had it come +from? How had she happened on it? Wasn't it, perhaps, just a fluke that +never could be repeated? During those wonderful days she had had antennæ +out everywhere, bringing her impressions, suggestions from the +unlikeliest objects. Now they were all drawn in and the part of her mind +that had responded to them felt numb. + +She ignored this sensation, or rather this absence of sensation, as well +as she could; just as one might ignore the creeping approach of +paralysis. She had an unacknowledged reason for going to the library and +beginning that historic study of costumes. Certainly the sight of those +quaint old plates ought to set her imagination racing again. + +But it didn't work that way. She found herself poring over them, +yawning herself blind over the French legends that accompanied them. +(They were nearly all in French, these books, and though Rose had done +two years' work in this language at the university and passed all her +examinations, she found these technical descriptions of costumes +frightfully hard to understand.) She stuck at it, though, for a long +while, until one morning a comparison occurred to her that made her shut +the folio with a slam. It had been in just this way, with just this +dogged, blind, hopeless persistence, that, ages ago, in that former +incarnation, she'd tried to study law! + +This was too much for her. She walked out of the library with the best +appearance of unconcern that she could muster,--it had been a near thing +that she didn't break down and cry--and she did not go back. Probably it +was just as well that Galbraith hadn't sent for her. She'd only have +made a ghastly failure of it, if he had. + +The background, of course, to all these endeavors and discouragements, +or, to describe it more justly, the indivisible, all-permeating ether +they floated about in, was, just as it had been in the time of her +success--Rodney. The occupations, routine and otherwise, that she gave +her mind to, might seem, in a way, to crowd him out of it, although not +one of them was undertaken without some reference to him; the success of +this, the failure of that, brought him nearer, put him farther away, +like the children's game of _Warm and Cold_. + +When she ran out of occupations that could absorb the conscious part of +her mind, she did not even try to resist direct thoughts about him. +She'd spent uncounted hours since that opening night, wondering if he +knew where she was, inventing reasons why, knowing, he didn't come to +her; explanations of the possibility of his still remaining in +ignorance. She'd gone over and over again, the probable things that he +would say, the things that she would say in reply, when he did come. + +She was prepared for his anger. He was, she felt, entitled to be angry. +But she felt sure she could get him to listen while she told him just +why and how she had done it, and what she had done, and she had a sort +of tremulous confidence that when the story was told, entire, his anger +would be found to have abated, if not altogether to have disappeared. +And afterward, when the shock had worn off, and he had had time to +adjust himself to things, he'd begin to feel a little proud of her. They +could commence--being friends. She'd constructed and let her mind dwell +on almost every conceivable combination of circumstances, except the one +thing that happened. + +Only, as the active actual half of her life grew more discouraging, +harder to steer toward any object that seemed worth attaining, her +imaginary life with Rodney lost its grip on fact and reason; became +roseate, romantic, a thinner and more iridescent bubble, readier to +burst and disappear altogether at an ungentle touch. + +So you will understand, I think, that the Rose, who incredulously heard +him ask in that dull sullen tone, if she had anything besides what would +go into her trunk; the Rose who got up and turned on the light for a +look at him in the hope that the evidence of her eyes would belie that +of her ears; the Rose he left shuddering at the window in that quilted +dressing-gown, was not the Rose who had left him three months before and +rented that three-dollar room and wrung a job out of Galbraith! + +Dimly she was aware of this herself. At her best she wouldn't have lost +her head, wouldn't have flown to pieces like that. If she'd kept any +sort of grip on the situation, she might at least have averted a total +shipwreck. She understood even on that gray morning, that the terrible +things he'd said to her had been a mere outcry; the expression of a mood +she had encountered before, though this was an extreme example of it. + +But it was a long time before she went any further than that. The memory +of the whole episode from the moment when he came up to her there in the +alley and took her by the shoulders, until he closed her door upon +himself four hours or so later, was so exquisitely painful that any +reasoned analysis of it, any construction of potential alternatives to +the thing that had happened, was simply impossible. The misgiving that +with a little more courage and patience on her part, it might have +terminated differently, only added to her misery. + +She felt like a coward when she went to Goldsmith and demanded to be +sent out on the road, and she experienced for a while, the utter +demoralization of cowardice. The logic of the situation told her to stay +where she was. If it were true, as she had fiercely told him that night, +that their life together was ended, the whole fabric that they had woven +for themselves rent clean across, then the only thing for her to do was +to begin living now, as she had made an effort to do before, quite +without reference to him, ordering her own existence as if he had ceased +to exist; stick to whatever offered herself, Doris Dane, the best chance +for success and advancement. She was, of course, seriously injuring +Doris Dane's chances by going out on the road. + +And, even with reference to Rodney, it was hard to see how her flight +could help the situation. If what she'd done had really disgraced him in +his own eyes and in those of his world, the disgrace was already +complete. Acquiescing in that point of view, as by her flight she did, +couldn't lighten it. + +But all the power these considerations had, was to make her flight seem +more ignominious. They were utterly incapable of preventing it. + +A disinterested friend, had she boasted such a possession just then, +might have pointed out for her comfort, that her rout was not complete. +It was a retreat, but not a surrender. She hadn't become Rose Stanton +again and gone back to Portia and her mother. Doris Dane, though badly +battered, was still intact! + +The first ten days of her life on the road had, on the whole, a +distinctly restorative effect. I have never heard of a physician's +recommending a course of one-night stands as a rest cure to nervously +exhausted patients, but I am inclined to think the idea has its merits, +for all that. Certainly the régime was, for a while, beneficial to Rose. +The merit of it was that it offered some sort of occupation for +practically all her time. + +A typical day consisted in getting up in the morning at an hour +determined for you either by the call posted on the bulletin board in +the theater the night before, telling you what time you were to be at +the railway station, or by the last moment at which you could get into +the dining-room in the hotel. You ate all you could manage at breakfast, +because lunch was likely to consist of a sandwich and an orange bought +from the train butcher; with perhaps the lucky addition of a cup of +coffee at some junction point where you changed trains. You lugged your +suit-case down to the station, and had your arrival there noted by the +manager, who, of course, bought all the tickets for the company. You +needn't even bother to know where you were going, except out of idle +curiosity. The train came along and you got a seat by yourself on the +shady side, if you could; though the men being more agile, generally got +there first. + +The convention of giving precedence to the ladies, Rose promptly +discovered, and with a sort of satisfaction, did not apply. Indeed, all +the automatic small courtesies and services which, in any life she'd +known, men had been expected to show to women, were here completely +barred. A girl could let a man come up to her on a platform where they +were all gathered waiting for the train, and casually slide an arm +around her, without any one's paying the slightest attention to the act. +But if, when the train came along, she permitted him to pick up her +suit-case, carry it into the train and find a seat for her, there would +be nods and glances. + +Well, you got into the train and dozed and read a magazine (or both) and +by and by, when everybody else did, you got up and got out. Perhaps you +waited on a triangular railway platform for another train, or perhaps +you trailed along in a procession, to a hotel. In the latter case, you +got a meal and found out where the opera-house was. + +There were various minor occupations that you slipped into the +interstices of a day like this whenever they happened to come. You +combed out and brushed your hair (a hundred strokes) which you were too +tired to do at night after the performance and seldom waked up in time +for in the morning. And, if you were wise, as Rose was, thanks to a tip +from Anabel, and had emancipated yourself from the horror of overnight +laundries by providing yourself with crêpe underclothes and dark little +silk blouses, you got all the hot water you could beg of the +chambermaid, and did the family wash in the bowl in your room, on an +afternoon when you had a short jump and there was no matinée. + +It was a life, of course, that abounded in what pass for hardships. +There is no desolation to surpass that of the second-best hotel (rates +two dollars a day), in a small middle western city, except the same kind +of hotel in the same sort of city in the South. Bad air, bad beds and +bad food are their staples and what passes for service seems especially +calculated to encourage the victim to dispense with it as far as +possible. The stages and dressing-rooms in the theaters were almost +always dirty and were frequently overrun with rats. It was always cold +and drafty back there, except when it happened to be suffocating. Also, +the day's work by no means invariably concluded with even a half a bed +in a two-dollar-a-day hotel. If there happened to be a train coming +along at two o'clock in the morning, and also happened to be a chance to +play a matinée in the town you were jumping to, you took your suit-case +to the theater, lugged it from there after the performance, to the +station, and spent an indefinite number of hours thereafter, in an +air-tight waiting-room. Waiting, be it observed, for a chance to curl up +in a seat in the day-coach, when the train came along. + +But Rose didn't mind this very much. The rooms assigned to her and her +roommate were fully as comfortable as the one she had lived in on Clark +Street, and the meals, as a whole, were rather better than those her +habitual lunch-room had provided. As for riding on the train: it gave +you the sense of doing something and getting somewhere, without imposing +the necessity either for judgment or for resolution. The real +discomforts to Rose were not the material ones. + +The piece had been, as she discovered during the one rehearsal she had +attended in Chicago, deliberately cheapened and vulgarized for the road. +The only one of the principals who had a shred of professional +reputation, was a comedian named Max Webber, who played the part of the +cosmetic king. He'd come up in vaudeville and his methods reeked of it. +He was featured in the billing and he arrogated all the privileges of a +real star. He was intensely and destructively jealous of any approbation +he didn't himself arouse, even if it was manifested when he was not on +the stage. He distended his part out of all reasonable semblance, and to +the practical annihilation of the plot, by the injection into it of +musty vaudeville specialties of his, which he assured the weak-kneed +management were knock-outs. And his clowning and mugging made it +impossible to play a legitimate scene with him, with any shadow of +professional self-respect. + +The result of this was that the girl who had rehearsed Patricia +Devereux's part, an ambitious, well-equipped young woman who would have +added much-needed strength to the cast, delivered an ultimatum during +the last rehearsal but one, and on having her very reasonable demands +rejected, walked out. Olga Larson, who had understudied Patricia ever +since the Chicago opening, was given the part. The rest of the +principals were either pathetic failures with lamentable stories of +better days, or promising youngsters, like Olga herself, with no +adequate training. + +The chorus was similarly constituted. There were fifteen girls in it, +including the sextette, now a trio, part of them worn-out veterans (one +of these was the duchess--do you remember her?--who had applied to +Galbraith for a job the day that Rose got hers) and the others green +young girls, not more than sixteen or seventeen, some of them, who had +never been on the stage before. It was one of these, a tiny, slim, +black-haired little thing, who gave her name as Dolly Darling, but +hadn't memorized it yet herself, obviously a runaway in quest of +romantic adventure, whom Rose adopted as a permanent roommate. + +Her doing so opened up the breach between herself and Olga Larson. It +had existed, beneath the surface, ever since the night she had gone to +supper with Galbraith. It wasn't that Olga believed Rose had taken +Galbraith as a lover. She hadn't believed that even when she hurled the +accusation against her. The wounding thing was that Rose seemed not to +care whether she believed it or not; had met her tempestuous pleas for +forgiveness and her offers of unlimited love and faith "whatever Rose +might do and however things might look," with a cold distaste that +hardly differed from the feeling she had shown in response to the +tempest of angry accusation. She told Olga, to be sure, that everything +was all right; that the thing for both of them to do, was to treat the +quarrel as if it hadn't occurred. + +This wasn't what Olga wanted at all. She wanted Rose as an emotional +objective, to love passionately and be jealous of, and, for a moment now +and then, hate, as a preliminary to another passionate reconciliation. + +Rose had divined that this was so. Indeed, she understood it far better +than Olga did, having had to evade one or two "crushes" of a similar +sort while she was at the university. It was a sort of thing that went +utterly against her instincts, and she was secretly glad that the +quarrel on the opening night had given her a method of resisting this +one that need not seem too utterly heartless. + +Since the quarrel, Olga had been distant and dignified. She had a +grievance (that Rose, pretending to forgive her confessed mistake, had +really not done so) but she was bearing it bravely. Rose, when she could +manage the manner, was good-humored and casual, and completely blind to +the existence of the grievance Olga so nobly concealed. But Olga's +wonderful good fortune, coming quite unheralded as it did, an +advancement she had played with in her day-dreams, and never thought of +as a realizable possibility, swept her out of her pose and carried her +with a rush into Rose's arms. + +This happened not a quarter of an hour after Rose had secured +Goldsmith's consent to her own transfer to the Number Two company, and +the first thing that registered on her mind was that she, who had taught +Olga to talk, saved her her job, prevailed on Galbraith to dress her +properly, and won her a chance for the space of that one song refrain, +to make her individual appeal to the audience--Rose, who had done all +this, was now going out as a chorus-girl in the company of which Olga +was the leading woman. She didn't regret Olga's promotion, but she did +wish, for herself, that she might have been spared just now, this ironic +little cackle of laughter on the part of the malicious Goddess of +Chance. + +She was ashamed of the feeling--was she getting as small as that?--and, +in consequence, she congratulated Olga a good deal more warmly than +otherwise she would have done. But this warmer manner of hers opened +Olga's flood-gates so wide, swamped her in such a torrent of sentiment, +that Rose simply took to flight. + +There was an element of real maternal pity in Rose's adoption of little +Dolly Darling as her chum. Dolly was obviously as fragile and ephemeral +as a transparent sand-fly. She had nothing that you could call a mind or +a character, even of the most rudimentary sort. She knew nothing, except +how to dance, and she knew that exactly as a kitten knows how to play +with a ball of string; she dreamed of diamonds and wonderful restaurants +and a sardonic hero nine feet tall with a straight nose and a long chin, +who would clutch her passionately in his arms (there was no more real +passion in her than there is in a soap-bubble) and murmur vows of +eternal adoration in her ears. + +She was a soap-bubble; that's the figure for her; just an iridescent +reflection, wondrously distorted, of the tawdry life about her--a +reflection, and then nothing! + +But just the thin empty frailness of her, her gaiety in the face of +perfectly inevitable destruction, appealed to Rose. She had Dolly in her +pocket in five minutes, and before the end of the rehearsal, their +treaty was signed and sealed. They were to be chums, bosom friends! The +notion of it gave Rose the most spontaneous smile she'd had in days; the +first one that hadn't had a bitter quirk in it. + +When, down at the union station on Sunday morning, as they were leaving, +Olga unfolded her plan that she and Rose should room together, Rose +owned up to herself that there had been another element than maternal +pity in her adoption of Dolly. She'd suspected that Olga would propose +something of this sort, and she had fortified herself against it. + +Olga was furious, of course, when she learned what Rose had done, and +accused her, with a measure of justice, of having done it to be rid of +her. If Rose didn't want to remain under this imputation, she could +break with Dolly. When Rose refused to do this, Olga cut her off +utterly; damned her, disowned her. They were the first pair in the +company to begin not to speak. + +As I said, the chief discomforts for Rose in those first ten days on the +road, were not the material ones. Olga's absurd way of ignoring her, the +fact that she attributed their quarrel, for the benefit of the company, +to Rose's jealousy of her success; worst of all, the fact that Rose +couldn't be sure she wasn't jealous of Olga's success, didn't feel at +least, contemplating their reversed positions, more like a failure than +she would have felt had the original girl kept the leading part,--all +this contributed to a discomfort that did matter, that tormented, +abraded, rankled. + +It became the core of a sensation that she had turned cheap and shabby; +that the distinction, which with her first entrance into this life, she +had built up between herself and most of her colleagues, was breaking +down; that her fiber was coarsening, her fine sensitiveness becoming +calloused. It troubled her that she should feel so languid an +indifference over the vulgarity of the piece, a vulgarity which, under +Webber's infection, grew more blatant every day. + +It was obvious to her that this quality was destroying whatever slim +chance for success they had. The lines, with the new ugly twist that had +been imparted to them, might draw a half dozen rude guffaws from +different parts of the audience, but the chill disfavor with which they +were received by the rest of the house, must, she felt, have been +apparent to everybody. There seemed, though, to be a superstition that a +laugh was a sacred thing; something to be fed carefully with more of the +same thing that had originally produced it. This treatment was persisted +in, despite the fact that the audiences shrank and shriveled and the +box-office receipts, she gathered from the gossip of the company, hung +just about at the minimum required to keep them going. + +What troubled her was her own apathetic acceptance of it all. Just as +her ear seemed to have grown dull to the offenses that nightly were +committed against it on the stage, and to the leering response, which +was all they ever got from across the footlights, so her spirit +submitted tamely to the prospect of failure. She hardly seemed to +herself the same person who had set to work in a blaze of eager +enthusiasm, on the part she played so mechanically now. + +She tried to reassure herself with the reflection that the tour meant +nothing to her, except as it fell in with an ulterior purpose, and that +it was actually serving that purpose well enough. She'd deliberately +turned aside from the main channel of her new life to give mind and soul +a rest they needed. When she'd got that rest and rallied her courage, +she'd take a fresh start. She had, lying safely in the bank in Chicago, +where Galbraith had taken her, something over two hundred dollars; for +she'd lived thriftily during the Chicago engagement and had added a +little every week to her nest-egg of profit from the costuming business. +So she had enough to get her to New York and see her through the process +of finding a new job. What sort of job it would be, she was still too +tired to think, but she was sure she could find something. + +Meantime, out there on the road, she was making no effort to save. She +indulged in whatever small ameliorations to their daily discomforts her +weekly wage would run to. + +It was thus that matters stood with her, when, with the rest of the +company, she arrived in Dubuque on a Wednesday morning, with an hour or +so to spare before the matinée. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ANTI-CLIMAX + + +It was a beastly day. A gusty rain, whipping up from the south, by way +of answer to the challenge of a heavy snowfall the day before, inflicted +a combination of the rigors of winter, with a debilitating, disquieting +hint of spring. The train, for which they had been routed out that +morning at seven o'clock, had been blistering hot and the necessarily +open windows had let in choking clouds of smoke. + +The hotel was hot, too. Rose and Dolly, as soon as they had registered, +went up to their room and washed off the stains of travel, as well as +they could in translucent water that was the color of weak coffee. Then +Rose, in a kimono, stretched out on the bed to make up some of the rest +their early departure from Cedar Rapids had deprived her of. She did +this methodically whenever opportunity offered, but without any great +conviction. + +Dolly, though she looked a bit hollow-eyed and much more in need of rest +than Rose (for she hadn't any stamina at all. She was an +under-nourished, and probably anemic little thing, and was always +train-sick when their jumps began too early in the morning), went +straight ahead with her toilet, tried to correct her pallor with a +little too much rouge, and with the glaring falsehood that it was +clearing up, put on the pathetic little fifteen-dollar suit that she +religiously guarded for occasions. + +She was very fidgety, a little bit furtive, and elaborately over-casual +about all this; a fact to which Rose was, also a little artificially, +oblivious. + +Their partnership had not proved, from Dolly's point of view, at any +rate, an unqualified success. They'd not been on the road three days +before she'd begun to wonder whether she hadn't been hasty in the +selection of her chum. Doris Dane was a very magnificent person, of +course. She made the rest of the company, including the principals, look +(this was a phrase Dolly had unguardedly used the day Rose first +appeared at rehearsal) like a bunch of rummies. And of course it was an +immense compliment to be singled out by an awe-inspiring person like +that, for her particular chum. Only, once the compliment had been paid, +its value as an abiding possession became a little doubtful. Awe is not +a very comfortable sort of emotion to eat breakfast with. + +Evidently the rest of the company felt that way about it, for Dane was +not popular. She gave no handle for an active grievance, to be sure. She +wasn't superior in the sense in which Dolly used the word. She didn't +look haughty nor say withering things to people, nor tell +passionately-believed stories designed to convince her hearers that her +rightful place in the world was immensely higher than the one she now +occupied. One didn't hear her exclaiming under some bit of managerial +tyranny, that never, in the course of her whole life, had she been +subjected to such an affront. But she had a blank, rather tired way of +keeping silence when other people told stories like that, or made +protests like that, which was subtly infuriating. The very fact that she +never tried to impress the company, was presumptive evidence that the +company didn't very greatly impress her. If their common feeling about +her had ever crystallized into a phrase, its effect would have been, +that all their affairs, personal and professional, past, present and to +come, even those she shared with them, were not of sufficient importance +to her ever to get quite the whole of her attention. It was a notion +that irritated the women and frightened off the men. Probably nothing +else could have kept a young woman of Rose's physical attractions from +being, on a tour like that, with that sort of company, the object of, at +least, experiments. + +Men may consider these experiments worth trying in the face of a +determined hostility on the part of the subject of them. The most +rigorous primness of behavior does not daunt them, nor the assertion of +an icily virtuous intangibility. But the sort of good-humored +preoccupation that doesn't see them at all, that sees the pattern in the +wall-paper behind their backs, that tries, half-heartedly, to be +adequately courteous, is too much for them. And the more experienced +they are in conquests, and the higher, on the basis of their own +experience, they rate the irresistibility of their powers, the less of +his particular sort of treatment they can stand. The mere sight of her, +after the first day or two, was enough to give a professional "killer" +like Max Webber, the creeps. + +But Rose's manner not only kept the men away from herself. It kept them +away from Dolly. Poor Dolly didn't know what the matter was, at first. + +She had been told terrible stories by her mother and her elder brother, +about the perils that beset young girls who ran away from good +respectable homes. She had been told them with the misguided purpose of +keeping her from running away from her own home, which was no doubt +respectable, but was also deadly dull. She had run away and it was +perils she was looking for. She didn't mean to succumb to them. None of +the heroines of the only literature she knew--of the movies, that is to +say--succumbed to perils. They were beset by the most terrific perils. +It was over perils that they climbed to soul-entrancing heights of +romance. It was because they were the almost certain victims of +diabolical machinations, that wonderful heroes, with long eyelashes and +curly hair, came to their rescue and clasped them in their arms and +looked unutterable things into their eyes, just as the picture faded +out. + +Dolly had joined the chorus of a musical comedy, because that profession +offered more alluring wares in the way of perils than any other that was +open to her. And then she discovered that her calculations had gone +awry. The impalpable shield her formidable friend carried with her, +turned the perils aside. The little group of half-grown boys one +sometimes found waiting at the stage door, never even spoke to Rose, and +Dolly, in her company, partook of this unwelcomed immunity. As for the +men in the company, Dolly found them letting her entirely alone. + +She was bitterly unhappy at first about this, taking it as an +indication of the insufficiency of her charms. But once she got the +clue, she set about righting matters. She began taking tentative little +strolls about the hotel lobbies by herself, and on her train journeys, +when the motion and the odor of the men's pipes didn't make her too +sick, she'd kneel upon a seat and look over the back of it into one of +the perpetual poker-games they used to pass the time. It was astonishing +how quickly she got results. + +She wandered over to the cigar-stand at one of their hotels, one +afternoon, a week before the arrival in Dubuque, to look at a rack of +picture postcards. One of the chorus-men came over to buy some +cigarettes. She felt him look at her, and she felt herself flush a +little. And then he came a step closer to look at the postcards for +himself, and sighed and said he wished he had somebody to send postcards +to. He supposed she sent _him_ one every day. Whereupon Dolly said she +wasn't going to send him one to-day, anyway. They strolled across the +lobby together and sat down in two of the wide-armed unsatisfactory +chairs they have at such places; chairs that kept them so far apart they +had to shout at each other. So, after a few minutes, it being a fine +day, he suggested they go out for a walk. She had on her outdoor wraps +and his overcoat lay across a chair. + +She had already nodded acquiescence to his proposal, when she saw Rose +coming in through the door. + +"Wait," she whispered to him. "Don't come out with me. I'll wait +outside." And with that she walked up to Rose and told her she was going +out to get some cold cream. + +Five per cent., perhaps, of the motive that prompted this maneuver, was +what it pretended to be, a fear of Rose's disapprobation and a wish to +avoid it. The other ninety-five per cent. of it was just instinctive +love of intrigue. + +The chorus-boy waited, blankly wooden enough to have attracted the +suspicion of any eye less preoccupied than Rose's, until she had got +around the curve of the stair. Then, joining Dolly on the pavement, he +demanded to be told what it was all about. + +Dolly, making up her little mystery as she went along, and making +herself more interesting at every step, told him. They took a long walk, +and by the time they got back to the hotel, they were in love. But they +were separated by the malign influence of Dolly's friend. They developed +a code of signals for circumventing her watchful eye. They slipped +unsigned notes to each other. + +So Dolly, on this blustering morning in Dubuque, fidgeting about the +room, thinking up a perfectly unnecessary excuse for going out, to give +to Rose, answered a knock at the door very promptly and took the folded +bit of paper the bell-boy handed her, without listening to what he said, +if indeed he said anything at all to her. + +She carried it over to the window, turned her back to Rose, unfolded the +bit of paper and read it; read it again, frowned in a puzzled way, and +said: + +"I didn't know there was anybody in the company named Rodney." + +"What's his last name?" asked Rose. There was nothing in her tone that +challenged Dolly's attention, though the quality of it would have caught +a finer ear. And even if Dolly had looked up, she'd have seen nothing. +Rose lay there just as she had been lying a moment ago. It would have +needed a better observer than Dolly to see that she had stopped +breathing. + +"There ain't any last name," said Dolly. "He seems to think I'll know +him by the first one." It pleased Dolly to make a parade of frankness +about this note. She couldn't be sure Rose had been as oblivious as she +seemed, to those the chorus-man had been sending her. This, to her +rudimentary mind, seemed a good opportunity to allay Dane's suspicions. +"See if you can make anything out of it," she said, and handed it over +to Rose. + +Rose got up off the bed and carried the note to the window. She stood +there with it a long time. + +"What's the matter?" said Dolly. "Can't you read his writing?" + +"Yes," said Rose. "I know who he is. It's meant for me." + +The tone, though barely audible, was automatic. It brushed Dolly away +as if she had been a buzzing fly, and she felt distinctly aggrieved by +it. That Dane, with all her loftily assumed indifference to men, even to +a star like Max Webber, should get a note like that, and should have the +nerve to betray no confusion over having her pretense thus confounded! +Dolly had read the note thoroughly, and it had struck her as cryptic and +suggestive in the extreme. + +"I want to sec you very much," it said, "and shall wait in the lobby +unless you say impossible. I'll submit to any conditions you wish to +make. No bad news." + +It sounded like a code to Dolly. + +Rose stood there a long time. When she turned around, Dolly saw she was +pale. She'd crumpled the note tight in one palm, and her hands were +trembling. Then, with great swiftness, she began to dress. But though +her haste was evident, she didn't ask Dolly to help her; didn't seem to +know, indeed, that she was in the room. It was no way for a friend to +act! + +The thing that had moved Rose to an extent that terrified her was that +last phrase. The desire it showed to play fair with her; the +unwillingness to take advantage of a fear his coming like that might +have inspired her with. And then the way he had made it possible for +her, with a single word, to send him away! And the restraint of that "I +want to see you very much!" It wasn't like any Rodney she knew, to be +humble like that. His humility stripped her of her armor. If he'd been +imperious, exigeant, she could have gone down to meet him with her head +up. Suppose she found him broken, aged, with a dumb need for her crying +out in his eyes, what would she do? What could she trust herself not to +do? But just in human mercy to him she mustn't let him see she was +wavering. + +The Rose he was waiting for, there in the lobby, the only Rose he had +been able to picture to himself for more than a fortnight of distressful +days, was the Rose he'd last seen in that North Clark Street room; the +Rose with a look of dumb frozen agony in her face. The one idea he'd +clung to since starting for Dubuque, had been that he mustn't frighten +her. She must see, with her first glance at him, that she had nothing +to fear from a repetition of his former behavior. She must see that the +brute in him--that was the way he put it to himself--was completely +tamed. + +Their meeting was a shock to both of them; an incredible mocking sort of +anti-climax. + +He was standing near the foot of the stairs when she came down, with a +raincoat on, and a newspaper twisted up in his hands, and at sight of +her, he took off his soft wet hat, and crunched it up along with the +newspaper. He moved over toward her, but stopped two or three feet away. +"It's very good of you to come," he said, his voice lacking a little of +the ridiculous stiffness of his words, not much. "Is there some place +where we can talk a little more--privately than here? I shan't keep you +long." + +"There's a room here somewhere," she said. "I noticed it this morning +when we came in. Oh, yes! It's over there." + +The room she led him to, was an appropriately preposterous setting for +the altogether preposterous talk that ensued between them. It had a +mosaic floor with a red plush carpet on it, two stained glass windows in +yellow and green, flanking an oak mantel, which framed an enormous +expanse of mottled purple tile, with a diminutive gas log in the middle. +A glassy looking oak table occupied most of the room, and the chairs +that were crowded in around it were upholstered in highly polished +coffee-colored horse-hide, with very ornate nails. A Moorish archway +with a spindling grill across the top, gave access to it. The room +served, doubtless, to gratify the proprietor's passion for beauty. The +flagrant impossibility of its serving any other purpose, had preserved +it in its pristine splendor. One might imagine that no one had ever been +in there, barring an occasional awed maid with a dust cloth, until +Rodney and Rose descended on it. + +"It's dreadfully hot in here," Rose said. "You'd better take off your +coat." She squeezed in between the table and one of the chairs, and +seated herself. + +Rodney threw down his wet hat, his newspaper, and then his raincoat, on +the table, and slid into a chair opposite her. + +If only one of them could have laughed! But the situation was much too +tragic for that. + +"I want to tell you first," Rodney said, and his manner was that of a +schoolboy reciting to his teacher an apology that has been rehearsed at +home under the sanction of paternal authority, "I want to tell you how +deeply sorry I am for ... I want to say that you can't be any more +horrified over what I did--that night than I am." + +He had his newspaper in his hands again and was twisting it up. His eyes +didn't once seek her face. But they might have done so in perfect +safety, because her own were fixed on his hands and the newspaper they +crumpled. + +He didn't presume to ask her forgiveness, he told her. He couldn't +expect that; at least not at present. He went on lamely, in broken +sentences, repeating what he'd said, in still more inadequate words. He +was unable to stop talking until she should say something, it hardly +mattered what. And she was unable to say anything. There was a reason +for this: + +The thing that had amazed her by crowding up into her mind, demanding to +be said, was that she forgave him utterly--if indeed she had anything +more to forgive than he. She'd never thought it before. Now she realized +that it was true. He was as guiltless of premeditation on that night as +she. If he had yielded to a rush of passion, even while his other +instincts felt outraged by the things she had done, hadn't she yielded +too, without ever having tried to tell him certain material facts that +might change his feeling? They'd both been victims, if one cared to put +it like that, of an accident; had ventured, incautiously, into the rim +of a whirlpool whose irresistible force they both knew. + +She fought the realization down with a frantic repression. It wasn't--it +couldn't be true! Why hadn't she seen it was true before? Why must the +reflection have come at a moment like this, while he sat there, across +the table from her in a public room, laboriously apologizing? + +The formality of his phrases got stiffer and finally congealed into a +blank silence. + +Finally she said, with a gasp: "I have something to ask you to--forgive +me for. That's for leaving you to find out--where I was, the way you +did. You see, I thought at first that no one would know me, made up and +all. And when I found out I would be recognizable, it was too late to +stop--or at least it seemed so. Besides, I thought you knew. I saw Jimmy +Wallace out there the opening night, and saw he recognized me, and--I +thought he'd tell you. And then I kept seeing other people out in front +after that, people we knew, who'd come to see for themselves, and I +thought, of course, you knew. And--I suppose I was a coward--I waited +for you to come. I wasn't, as you thought, trying to hurt you. But I can +see how it must have looked like that." + +He said quickly: "You're not to blame at all. I remember how you offered +to tell me what you intended to do before you went away, and that I +wouldn't let you." + +Silence froze down on them again. + +"I can't forgive myself," he said at last, "for having driven you +out--as I'm sure I did--from your position in the Chicago company. I +went back to the theater to try and find you, three days after--after +that night, but you were gone. I've been trying to find you ever since. +I've wanted to take back the things I said that night--about being +disgraced and all. I was angry over not having known when the other +people did. It wasn't your being on the stage. We're not so bigoted as +that. + +"I've come to ask a favor of you, though, and that is that you'll let +me--let us all, help you. I can't--bear having you live like this, +knocking about like this, where all sorts of things can happen to you. +And going under an assumed name. I've no right to ask a favor, I know, +but I do. I ask you to take your own name again, Rose Aldrich. And I +want you to let us help you to get a better position than this; that is, +if you haven't changed your mind about being on the stage; a position +that will have more hope and promise in it. I want you to feel that +we're--with you." + +"Who are 'we'?" She accompanied that question with a straight look into +his eyes; the first since they had sat down across this table. + +"Why," he said, "the only two people I've talked with about +it--Frederica and Harriet. I thought you'd be glad to know that they +felt as I did." + +The first flash of genuine feeling she had shown, was the one that broke +through on her repetition of the name "Harriet!" + +"Yes," he said, and he had, for about ten seconds, the misguided sense +of dialectical triumph. "I know a little how you feel toward her, and +maybe she's justified it. But not in this case. Because it was Harriet +who made me see that there wasn't anything--disgraceful about your going +on the stage. It was her own idea that you ought to use your own name +and give us a chance to help you. She'll be only too glad to help. And +she knows some people in New York who have influence in such matters." + +During the short while she let elapse before she spoke, his confidence +in the conviction-carrying power of this statement ebbed somewhat, +though he hadn't seen yet what was wrong with it. + +"Yes," she said at last, "I think I can see Harriet's view of it. As +long as Rose had run away and joined a fifth-rate musical comedy in +order to be on the stage, and as long as everybody knew it, the only +thing to do was to get her into something respectable so that you could +all pretend you liked it. It was all pretty shabby, of course, for the +Aldriches, and in a way, what you deserved for marrying a person like +that. Still, that was no reason for not putting the best face on it you +could.--And that's why you came to find me!" + +"No, it isn't," he said furiously. His elaborately assumed manner had +broken down, anyway. "I came because I couldn't help coming. I've been +sick--sick ever since that night over the way you were living, over the +sort of life I'd--driven you to. I've felt I couldn't stand it. I wanted +you to know that I'd assent to anything, any sort of terms that you +wanted to make that didn't involve--this. If it's the stage, all +right.--Or if you'd come home--to the babies. I wouldn't ask anything +for myself. You could be as independent of me as you are here...." + +He'd have gone on elaborating this program rather further but the look +of blank incredulity in her face stopped him. + +"I say things wrong," he concluded with a sudden humility that quenched +the spark of anger in her eyes. "I was a fool to quote Harriet, and I +haven't done much better in speaking for myself. I can't make you see." + +"Oh, I can see plainly enough, Roddy," she said, with a tired little +grimace that was a sorry reminder of her old smile. "I guess I see too +well. I'm sorry to have hurt you and made you miserable. I knew I was +going to do that, of course, when I went away, but I hoped that after a +while, you'd come to see my side of it. You can't at all. You couldn't +believe that I was happy in that little room up on Clark Street; that I +thought I was doing something worth doing; something that was making me +more nearly a person you could respect and be friends with. And, from +what you've said just now, it seems as if you couldn't believe even that +I was a person with any decent _self_-respect. The notion that I could +blackmail your family into lending me their name and social position to +get me a better job on the stage than I could earn! Or the notion that +I could come back to your house and pretend to be your wife without +even ...!" + +The old possibility of frank talk between them was gone. She couldn't +complete the sentence. + +"So I guess," she concluded after a silence, "that the only thing for +you to do is to go home and forget about me as well as you can and be as +little miserable about me as possible. I'll tell you this, that may make +it a little easier: you're not to think of me as starving or miserable, +or even uncomfortable for want of money. I'm earning plenty to live on, +and I've got over two hundred dollars in the bank. So, on that score at +least, you needn't worry." + +There was a long silence while he sat there twisting the newspaper in +his hands, his eyes downcast, his face dull with the look of defeat that +had settled over it. + +In the security of his averted gaze, she took a long look at him. Then, +with a wrench, she looked away. + +"You will let me go now, won't you?" she asked. "This is--hard for us +both, and it isn't getting us anywhere. And--and I've got to ask you not +to come back. Because it's impossible, I guess, for you to see the thing +my way. You've done your best to, I can see that." + +He got up out of his chair, heavily, tiredly; put on his raincoat and +stood, for a moment, crumpling his soft hat in his hands, looking down +at her. She hadn't risen. She'd gone limp all at once, and was leaning +over the table. + +"Good-by," he said at last. + +She said, "Good-by, Roddy," and watched him walking across the lobby and +out into the rain. He'd left his newspaper. She took it, gripped it in +both hands, just as he'd done, then, with an effort, got up and mounted +the stairs to her room. Dolly, fortunately, had gone out. + +The violent struggle she had had to make during the last few moments in +her effort to retain her self-control, had pretty well exhausted her. +Only, had it been self-control, after all? That question shook her. Had +she meant to be merciless to him like that; to send him away utterly +discouraged in his sad humility, when the touch of an outreached hand +would have changed the whole face of the world for him? Had she really +been as noble as she felt while she was defending the impregnable +righteousness of her position and so completely demolishing his? + +She remembered a day when he had been beaten in a law-suit, and she had +waited for him to come to her in his discouragement for help and +comfort. It was thus he had come to her to-day. How helpless he was! +What a boy he was! + +Her memory flashed back over their not quite two years of life together +and she realized that he had always been like that whenever his emotions +toward her came into play. All his finely trained, formidable +intelligence had always deserted him here. She remembered his having +told her, the night he'd turned her out of his office, that his mind had +to run cold. She hadn't really known what he meant. She saw now that her +own mind didn't run cold, that it never really aroused itself except +under the spur of strong emotion. So that just where he was most +helpless, she was at her strongest. A victory over him in those +circumstances, was about as much to feel triumphant over as one over a +small child would be. + +She realized now, more fully than before, what a crucifixion of his +boyish pride it must have been to see her on the stage. It was no answer +to say that with his intellectual concept of the ideal relations between +men and women, he shouldn't have felt like that. Shouldn't have felt! +The phrase was self-contradictory. Feelings weren't decorative +abstractions which you selected according to your best moral and +esthetic judgment out of an unlimited stock, and ordered wrapped and +sent home. They were things that happened to you. In this case, two +violently opposed feelings of terrible intensity had happened to him at +once; had torn each other, and, in their struggle, had torn him. +Justified or not, it was her act in leaving him, that had turned those +feelings loose upon him. It was through her that he had suffered; that +was plain enough. It must have been terribly plain to him. + +And yet, despite the suffering she had caused him, he had crucified his +pride again and come to find her; not with reproaches, with utter +contrition and humility. The measures he'd suggested for easing their +strained situation were, to be sure, maddeningly beside the mark. The +fact that he'd offered them betrayed his complete failure to understand +the situation. But it had cost him, evidently, as much pain to work them +out and bring them to her, as if they had been the real solvents he took +them for. And she had contemptuously torn them to shreds, and sent him +away feeling like an unpardoned criminal. She hadn't drawn the sting +from one of the barbs she'd planted in him, in her anger, before he'd +left her in that North Clark Street room. + +She didn't blame herself for the anger, nor for the panic of revulsion +that had excited it. That was a feeling that had happened to her. What +she did blame herself for was that, seeing them both now, as the victims +of a regrettable accident (did she really regret it? Were it in her +power to obliterate the memory of it altogether, as a child with a wet +sponge can obliterate a misspelled word from a slate, would she do it? +She dismissed that question unanswered.), she had allowed him to go away +with his burden of guilt unlightened. She had done that, she told +herself, out of sheer cowardice. She had been afraid of impairing the +luster of her virtuously superior position. + +Yet now, she protested, she was being as unfair to herself as she had +been to him. What sort of situation would they have found themselves in, +had she confessed her true new feelings about the love-storm that had +swept over them, that night of the February gale? What good would +protestations of love and sympathy for him do, if she had to go on +denying him the tangible evidence and guarantee of these feelings? + +She must deny them. Could she go home to him now, a repentant prodigal? +Or even if, after hearing her story, he denied she was a prodigal; +professed to see in it a reason for taking her fully into his life as +his friend and partner? They might have a wonderful week together, +living up to their new standard, professing all sorts of new +understandings. But the thing wasn't to be for a week. It was for the +rest of their lives. She'd never be able to feel that, in the bottom of +his heart, he wasn't ashamed of her, as his world would say he ought to +be. What satisfying guarantee could he ever give her that he wasn't +ashamed? She couldn't think of any. + +Oh, it was all hopeless! It didn't matter what you did. You didn't do +things, anyway. They got done for you--and to you, by a blind force that +masqueraded as your own will. The things she and Rodney had been saying +to each other hadn't been the things they'd wanted to say. They'd been +things wrung out between the rollers of a situation they hadn't produced +and couldn't control. + +What were they, the pair of them, but chips floating down the current; +thrown together by one casual eddy, and parted by another! Half an hour +ago, longing for each other unspeakably, they had been within hand's +reach. Now, thanks to a few meaningless words, arguments, ideas--what +was the good of ideas and words? Why couldn't they be like +animals?--they were parted and she was clutching as a sole tangible +memento of him, a rolled-up newspaper that she loved because she'd seen +his strong lean hands gripping it. + +She unrolled it and pressed it against her face, then laid it on her +knee and smoothed out its rumpled folds and stroked it. + +When Dolly came in a half-hour later, or so, to put on her other suit +preparatory to the matinée, Rose opened up the paper and pretended to +read. She was glad of the protection of it. As she felt just now, she +didn't think she could stand Dolly's chatter without the intervention of +some excuse for monosyllabic replies. She didn't notice that Dolly +wasn't chattering. Mechanically she read the head-lines: _Mortimore +Banks Crash_! She knew who Mortimore was. Once a powerful boss, now a +discredited politician. He'd owned a whole string of banks, it +appeared--along with the hitherto unheard of Milligan--whose solvency +seemed to have evaporated along with the decay of his prestige. + +She read without interest, but just because it was printed in +black-faced type, a list of the banks in Chicago that the examiner had +closed. But presently she turned back with a look a little more +thoughtful, and read it again. The names of banks were so absurdly alike +one never could tell. Presently she went over to her suit-case, rummaged +in it, and produced a little bank-book. Then she dropped the book and +the newspaper together into her bag and shut it. + +She smiled a little cynically. Would she have refused Rodney's offer of +help, she wondered, if she had known an hour ago, that the two hundred +dollars she'd relied on so confidently to pull her out of this rut and +give her a fresh start whenever she was ready to attempt it, were gone +into the pockets of that fat-faced politician? + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE END OF THE TOUR + + +From Dubuque the company made a circuit northward into Wisconsin and +Minnesota, swung around a loop and worked their way south again. +Disaster stalked behind them all the way, casting its lengthening shadow +before for them to walk in. On the very first salary day after Rodney's +newspaper had informed Rose of her true financial situation, the manager +doled out a little money on account to the more exigent members of the +company, and remunerated the others with thanks, a nervous smile, and +the rock-ribbed assurance that they'd get it all next week. The long +jump they'd just taken, and a couple of bad houses (they were all bad, +but the two he spoke of couldn't be called audiences at all, except by +courtesy) had caused a temporary stringency. + +Rose saw what the more experienced members of the company were doing, +and knew that she ought to follow their example; keep after the manager +for her money, hound him, appeal to him, invent fictitious needs, and +then not spend a cent except what was absolutely wrung out of her by +necessity, so that when the crash came, she wouldn't be left penniless. +But she lacked the energy to do it. She was going through a passing +phase of that same melancholy acquiescence in the decrees of Fate, which +had been Olga Larson's permanent characteristic until Rose's own fire +and a turn in the tide of fortune had roused her. + +One little sequence of events springing directly from Rodney's visit to +Dubuque, contributed largely to this result. The principal actor in it +was Dolly. + +Dolly's manner toward her had altered that very morning in Dubuque, +though Rose, in her preoccupation, didn't mark the change for a day or +two afterward. Then she saw that her frail little roommate had stopped +chattering; that she no longer made nervous little excuses for leaving +her, nor invented transparent little fibs to account for absences. She +became, in her absurdly ineffectual little way, surly and defiant. She +took to going about openly with her chorus-man, sharing his seat with +him on the train, letting him carry her bag for her on the way to the +hotel; and her manner toward Rose, when any of these manifestations fell +beneath her eye, was one of uneasy challenge. Let Rose just try to +remonstrate with her if she dared! She no longer came back to the hotel +with Rose after the performances, took to turning up at their room at +hours that grew steadily later and more outrageous, and while at first +she stole in very quietly, undressed in the dark and tried to creep into +bed without awakening her, she grew rapidly more brazen about it; turned +on the light and undressed before the mirror, talked elaborately about +nothing and laughed her high nervous little laugh without occasion. + +It was not a lack of daring that kept Rose from asking the questions +that were so patently waiting to be answered, or from making the +remonstrances that Dolly's behavior so definitely invited. She knew she +ought to stir herself up and do something. She had assumed, she knew, a +measure of moral responsibility for the fluffy helpless little thing she +had conquered so easily at first and taken for her chum. Of course +remonstrances, moral lectures, scoldings, wouldn't accomplish anything. +What the situation called for was a second conquest; a reassertion of +her moral dominance over the girl. She would have to reconstruct the +relation which, since the first week of their tour, she had, in her +apathy, allowed to lapse. But that apathy had become too strong to +break. She couldn't rouse herself from it. And, failing that, she kept +silent; let Dolly go her ways. + +But a fortnight after Dubuque, an incident occurred that even her +acquiescent passivity couldn't ignore. There came a fine bright +afternoon with no matinée and no washing or mending that needed to be +done, when she suggested to Dolly that they go out for a good walk. +Dolly didn't assent to the proposal, though the suggestion seemed to +interest her. + +"Where is there to walk to?" she asked. "These towns are all alike." + +"I don't mean just a stroll around the town," Rose said. "Look here! +I'll show you." She pointed from the window. "Across that bridge (they +were playing one of the Mississippi River towns) and up to the top of +that hill on the other side." + +"Gee!" said Dolly. "That's miles." + +"Do you good," said Rose. + +"Are you going there anyway?" asked Dolly. + +Rose nodded. "You'd better come along," she said. By turning on her full +powers of persuasion, she might, she felt, have pulled Dolly along with +her; swept her off and begun the reconquest she knew she ought to make. +But somehow her will failed her. Dolly could come if she liked. + +Dolly didn't refuse very decisively, but she watched Rose's preparations +for departure without making any of her own. It wasn't until Rose, at +the door, turned back to renew the invitation for the last time, that +she said impatiently: "Oh, go along! I'll take a nap, I guess." + +So Rose set out by herself. + +The day proved colder than it looked; a fact that Rose tried to correct +by walking more briskly. But when she got out on the bridge where the +sharp wind got a full sweep at her, she saw it wasn't going to do. She'd +be chilled to the bones long before she reached that hill and it would +be colder coming back. She must go back for her ulster. + +Fifteen minutes later, she tried the door of her room and found it +locked. There was a moment of dead silence. But the realization that it +hadn't been quite so silent the moment before, caused her to knock +again. Then she heard the creak of the bed and the thud of Dolly's +unshod feet on the floor, and then her steps coming toward the door. + +"W--what--what is it?" Rose heard her ask. + +"Let me in," said Rose. "Sorry I disturbed your nap, but I had to come +back for my ulster." + +Dolly was standing just at the other side of the door, she knew, but +there was no sound of drawing the bolt. Only a long silence and then a +sob. + +"What's the matter?" Rose demanded. "Let me in." + +"You _can't_ come in!" said Dolly, and panic couldn't have spoken +plainer than in her voice. "Oh, go away! What did you come back for? You +said you were going to be gone hours. Go away!" + +Out of a frozen throat Rose answered: + +"All right. I'll go away." The situation was too miserably clear. + +She went down to the lobby and a sudden giddiness caused her to drop +down into the first chair she saw. She sat there for an hour, then went +to the desk and told the clerk she wanted a room for that night by +herself. She'd pay the extra price of it now. + +The clerk took the money and selected a key from the rack. The look he +saw in Rose's face silenced any comment, jocular or otherwise, that he +might have made. + +Rose went to her new room, took off her hat and jacket, and washed her +face. When she heard the supper bell ringing down-stairs, she went back +to her old room and knocked. + +"Come in," said Dolly, and Rose entering, found her standing at the +window looking out. + +She had tried, while she sat down there in the lobby, and later in her +own room, to think out what she'd say to Dolly when they next met. She +hadn't been able to think of anything to say. She could think of nothing +now. So, in silence, she began putting her smaller belongings into her +half unpacked suit-case and laying the clothes that hung in the closet +across a chair. + +"So you're going to walk out on me are you?" said Dolly. Rose was aware +that she'd been watching these proceedings. + +"I'm going to have a room by myself for to-night," said Rose. + +Dolly amazed her by flying into a sudden rage. + +"Oh, you!" she said. "You make me sick. You're a hypocrite, that's what +you are. Pretending to be so haughty and innocent, and then come spying +back here, on purpose, and acting so shocked! You don't think I'm fit to +live with, do you. Just because I've got a friend. You thought you was +fit to live with me, all right, when you had two of them and wasn't +straight with either." + +Rose straightened up and looked at her. "What do you mean?" she +demanded. + +"That's right, go on with the bluff," said Dolly furiously. "But you +can't bluff me. Larson put me wise to you that day in Dubuque, when that +big guy--'Rodney'--came up to see you. He was one of them, and the +fellow who put on the show in Chicago--what's his name?--Galbraith, was +the other. You tried to play them both and got left." + +"That's what Olga Larson told you?" asked Rose. + +"You bet it's what she told me," said Dolly. "It's about half what she +told me. And now you try to pull your high-and-mighty airs on me, just +because Charlie and I are in love and ain't married yet. We're going to +be. We're going into vaudeville as soon as this tour ends. He says the +managers don't object to vaudeville teams being married. But we've got +to wait till then, because theatrical managers won't have it. And yet +you're walking out on me because you're too superior...." + +"I don't feel superior," said Rose. "I'm sorry, that's all." + +"Yes, you hypocrite!" said Dolly. "Go on and walk out on me. I'm glad of +it." + +Rose picked up her suit-case and the heap of clothes and left the room +without another word. + +She tried to be more astonished and indignant over Olga Larson's part in +this affair than she really felt. It seemed so horribly cynical not to +be surprised. But it was not cynicism; just an unconscious understanding +of the fundamental processes of Olga's mind. + +There was no malice in the story she had told Dolly, just after the two +of them, looking through the Moorish archway in the hotel there in +Dubuque, had seen Rose and Rodney deep in confidential talk. Olga had +shown surprise and then, elaborately, tried to conceal it. She knew the +man, all right, but hadn't expected him to follow Dane out here. Dolly +told her about the note, and Olga's jealousy, which had been smoldering +ever since the tour began, flared up again. Even in the days of their +closest friendship--this was the way it looked to her distorted +vision--Rose had never been frank with her. She had never mentioned a +man named Rodney, nor even shown her a photograph. The only person Olga +had known to be jealous of, was Galbraith. Her unacknowledged reason for +inventing the calumny she recited so glibly for Dolly, was the hope that +Dolly would go straight to Rose with it. + +That couldn't fail, she thought, to break down Rose's attitude of icy +indifference and precipitate a quarrel; and a quarrel was what she +wanted. Because quarrels led to reconciliations. She wanted Rose to be +angry with her and then forgive her, although the latter part of her +hope was quite unconscious. + +As I say, Rose understood. She didn't work the thing out in detail; +didn't want to. But she knew that if she sought Olga out and demanded an +explanation of the detestable things she'd said about her, the scene +would terminate in a torrent of self-reproach from Olga, protestations +of undying love, fondlings ... + +So Rose shuddered and said nothing. The only thing to do about the whole +unspeakable business was, as far as possible, to disregard it. + +It wasn't possible to disregard it utterly, because the story was +evidently spread. She became conscious of a touch of contemptuous +hostility on the part of everybody. Not on account of her moral +derelictions, but because of her hypocrisy in pretending to a set of +standards of breeding and behavior superior to those held by the rest of +them. + +Altogether it made complete and irresistible, a whole-souled loathing of +the life. Her attempt to find a way to a career along this filthy +stage-door alley must be confessed a total failure. She could never, she +knew, nerve herself to look for another job in a musical-comedy chorus. + +At the next overnight stop they made, Dolly went in to room with the +duchess, and the duchess' former roommate, a fattish blonde girl with a +permanent cold in the head, came in with her. + +Somehow the days dragged along until the pursuing and long visible +disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is +not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer +than the one it boasts). They played a matinée here and an evening +performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them the _coup de +grace_. + +There was no call posted on the bulletin board that night, and the next +day, after a brisk exchange of telegrams with Chicago, the manager +called the company together in one of the sample-rooms of the hotel and +announced that the tour was off. He also announced, with a magnanimity +that put far into the background the fact that he owed them all at least +two weeks' salary, that everybody in the company would be provided with +a first-class ticket for Chicago. There was nothing, except his +scrupulous sense of honor, he managed to imply without saying it in so +many words, to prevent his going off to Chicago all by himself and +leaving them stranded here. But, though this might be good business, he +was incapable of it. If they would all come down to the station at +eleven o'clock, and sign a receipt discharging him from further +obligations, he would see that their transportation was arranged for. + +It was just after this that Rose caught a glimpse of Dolly shivering in +a corner, weeping into a soiled pocket-handkerchief. The fat girl with a +cold supplied her with the explanation. + +Dolly's chorus-man, it seemed, had already departed on an earlier train +to St. Louis, where he lived, without taking any leave of her at all. + +Rose wanted to go over and try to comfort the child, but somehow she +couldn't manage to. Sentimentalizing over her grief and disillusionment +wouldn't do any good. The grief probably wasn't more than an inch deep +anyway, and the illusions had been too tawdry to regret. As for doing +anything, what was there one could do? + +There wasn't much that Rose could do at any rate. Because after weeks of +drifting, she'd come to a resolution. + +She didn't go to the railway station to sign her receipt and get her +ticket to Chicago. What was there in Chicago for her? She meant to stay, +for the present, at any rate, in Centropolis. She checked her suit-case +in the coat-room and, with a sensation of relief, watched the mournful +company file away. + +She had three dollars and some small change, and the day before her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE CONQUEST OF CENTROPOLIS + + +Centropolis wasn't a very big town, but it had a wide, well paved street +lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round +hills that had neat and fairly prosperous-looking houses scattered over +them. A rather dignified old court-house among the big trees of the +Square proclaimed the place a county seat. It was a warm April day; the +grass was green and the little leaves already were bursting out on the +shrubbery. + +Rose's idea was to stroll about a little and get her bearings first, and +then go into one store after another on Main Street until she should +find a job. She had no serious misgiving that she wouldn't get one +eventually; before night, this was to say. + +Her confidence sprang from two sources: one, that though inexperienced +she knew she was intelligent, willing and attractive. People, she found, +were apt to be disposed in her favor. The other source of her confidence +was that she wasn't looking for much. She would take, for the present, +anything that offered. Because any sort of work, even menial work, would +be a relief after that nightmare tour. The weeks since she had left +Chicago, especially the last two or three of them, seemed unreal, and +the incidents of them as if they couldn't have happened. Anything that +didn't involve associations with that detestable company, and the +unspeakable piece they had played, would seem--well, almost heavenly. If +she couldn't get a job in a store, she'd go and be a waitress at the +hotel. She could make a pretty good waitress, she thought. + +But her confidence was short-lived. She cut short her ramble about the +streets because of the stares she attracted, and the remarks about +herself that she couldn't ignore. Young men shouted at each other +directing attention to her with a brutality of epithet that brought the +blood to her cheeks. During all the time she had had that room on Clark +Street in Chicago, through their rehearsals and that month of +performances, she'd gone alone about the streets at all sort of hours, +both in the theatrical part of the loop and in the district where she +lived, without any molestation whatever. The small towns that she had +visited with the company had been different of course. She'd been stared +at in the streets and not infrequently addressed. She'd forgiven that +because she was a member of the company. It was natural enough for +people to stare at a girl they'd paid to see on the stage the night +before, or were going to see to-night. + +Now she discovered that the company had been an immense protection to +her; had accounted for her, caused her to be taken, to a certain extent, +for granted. The wild beast that comes to town with the circus, though +an object of legitimate curiosity, does not excite the hostile and +fearful speculation that he would if he were left behind after the +circus had gone. + +People got together in groups and nodded at her, pointed at her. A few +of them leered, but more of them scowled. There seemed to be a sense of +outrage that she hadn't left the town when the rest did. + +There was a dry-goods store on the principal corner of the street, which +she'd selected as she walked along as the place to begin her quest. She +made a detour around two or three blocks in order to avoid retracing her +steps down Main Street and slipped into the door of this establishment +as unostentatiously as she could. + +She was saved inquiring for the proprietor by the conviction that the +rather dapper-looking gray-haired man who came blinking toward her in a +near-sighted way as she paused in the main aisle, was he. He had a good +deal of manner and was evidently proud of it. But he looked neither weak +nor foolish. + +"My name's Rose Stanton," she said as he came up. "I've come to see if I +can get employment in your store." + +His manner changed instantly. He came a step closer and stared at her +with a surprise he didn't try to conceal. + +"I haven't had any experience as a saleswoman," she went on, "and I know +there's a lot to learn. But I'd work hard and learn as fast as ..." + +"Excuse me," he said, "but aren't you a member of that theatrical +company that was here last night?" + +The intensity with which he was staring at her made her look away and +her eyes rested on a young man whose strong family likeness to the +proprietor identified him for her as his son; he had come up and was +waiting for a word with his father. At this question he stared at her +too. + +The older man whipped around on his son. "Clear out, Jim," he said +sharply. And then to Rose: "You haven't answered my question." + +"I was a member of that company," she said. "But ..." + +"We have no vacancy at present," he said sharply. "Good day." + +She flinched a little but stood her ground. "I said I wasn't experienced +as a saleswoman," she said, "but there are some things I know a good +deal about--clothes and hats...." + +He hadn't stayed to listen; had walked straight to the door and opened +it. Reluctantly she followed him. + +"There's no place," he said, "in this store, or I trust in the town +either, for young women of your sort. Good day!" + +Rose made five more applications for work on Main Street, all with the +same result. Some of those who refused her were panicky about it; one +threatened to have her put in jail. One looked knowing and after he had +expressed in jocular though emphatic terms, his sense of her +impossibility as a publicly acknowledged employee, intimated a desire to +prosecute a personal acquaintance with her further. + +She had left the first store incredulous rather than angry, under the +impression that she had encountered a chance fanatic. It seemed +impossible that anybody with a well-balanced mind, could treat her as if +she carried contamination, merely because she had earned a living for a +while in the chorus of a musical comedy. It was fortunate for her that +her first applications were met by anger, rude discourtesy, and openly +avowed suspicion, because this treatment roused in her, for the first +time in months, a strong surge of indignation. Her blood came up after +these encounters, nearer and nearer the boiling point. The man who +smiled at her like a satyr, was shriveled by the blaze of her blue eyes, +and was left, red-faced, blustering weakly after her. + +When she walked back to the hotel along Main Street the lassitude that +had so long held her half-paralyzed was gone. She was the old Rose +again; the Rose whom Galbraith would have recognized. + +She didn't know it. She was conscious of nothing but a hot determination +that had not, as yet, even expressed itself in terms. It was just a +newly kindled fire that warmed her shivering spirit; that made her +fearless; in a quite unreasoning way, confident. + +The only touch of self-conscious thought about her was a vague wonder at +her long submission. What had she been doing all that while, drifting +like that, letting herself be beaten like that, consenting to live amid +the shabby degradations of the life that had surrounded her ever since +the company had gone on the road? The sense of the unreality of those +past weeks grew stronger. She felt like a person just waking out of a +long troubled dream. + +She mode her way among the loungers in the lobby of the hotel, not +unmindful of their stares, but magnificently impervious to them; came up +to the desk and told the clerk she wanted to see the proprietor. + +"Nothing doing," said the clerk. + +Then as he got the straight look of her eyes, he amended his speech a +little. + +"It won't do you any good to see him," he said sulkily. + +"I'll see him, if you please," said Rose. "Will you have him called?" + +The clerk hesitated. Stranded "actresses" weren't in the habit of +talking like that. They always wanted to see the proprietor, they were +always on the point of receiving an ample remittance from some generally +distant place. They were often very queenly, incredibly outraged that +their solvency should be questioned. But their voices never had the cool +confident ring that this girl's voice had, nor the look in their eyes, +the purposeful thrust. + +He hesitated uncomfortably. Then his difficulty was solved for him. + +"There he goes now," he said. "You can talk to him if you like." + +The proprietor was sixty years old, perhaps; gray, stooped, stringy of +neck. He had a short-cropped mustache, one corner of which he was always +caressing with a protruding under-lip. He had a good shrewd pair of +eyes, not altogether unkindly. Rose had seen him before, but hadn't +known who he was. + +He was making, just now, for a little office he had, that opened into +the railed-off space behind the desk, and, by another door, into the +corridor. He had another man with him, but it was evident that their +business wasn't going to take long. The door into the corridor was left +open behind them, and there Rose waited. When the other man came out, +she stepped inside. + +There was nothing kindly about the look the proprietor's eyes directed +at her when he saw who she was. He looked up at her with a frown of +resignation. + +"So you didn't go to Chicago with the rest of the troupe?" he said. +"That's where you made a mistake, I guess." + +"I didn't want to go to Chicago," she said. + +"I suppose," he drawled ironically, "you've written or telegraphed to +some friends for money, and that it's surely coming, and that you want +to stay here in my hotel on credit till it does. Well, there's not a +chance in the world. The clerk could have told you that. I suppose he +did." + +"I haven't sent for money," said Rose. "There's no one I could send to. +I've got to earn it for myself and I thought there was as good a chance +to earn it here as in Chicago." + +"Well, by God!" said the proprietor. "You've got your nerve with you at +any rate. But I'll tell you, young woman, the town of Centropolis don't +take kindly to the efforts of young women of your sort to make a living +nor to the way they make it." + +"You're wrong," said Rose, dangerously quiet, "if you think I mean to +make a living in any other than a decent honest way. I have already +asked for work in five places on Main Street and I have been refused as +if I were the--sort of person you've just called me. I'm going to keep +on until I find somebody in this town who's clean enough minded to +recognize decency when he sees it. There are people like that, of +course, even in Centropolis. I didn't come in here to borrow money of +you, nor to ask for credit. I came to ask for a job as a waitress." + +The proprietor stared at her. "Well," he said, "you are a new one on +John Culver. I never got up against _your_ game before." + +"I haven't any game," said Rose. "I've told you the exact truth." + +Culver twisted around uneasily in his chair and began biting +thoughtfully on the end of a lead-pencil. + +"Well," he said at last, "I'll take a chance. I'll tell you about a job +I think you can get. Only it won't do you any good to use my name. If +the man you go to comes to me, I can't tell him anything about you but +what I know. His name's Albert Zeider and he's got a picture house three +doors down the street. He's just put in a glass cage out in front, and +he wants a pretty girl to sit in it and sell tickets. He hasn't been +able to get anybody yet that filled the bill. So maybe he'd take a +chance on you. Only, mind, don't tell him I recommended you." + +"I won't," said Rose. "I won't go to him at all. I've walked the length +of Main Street and back this morning, and I won't sit in Mr. Zeider's +glass cage. I'll wash dishes or scrub floors, but I won't do that." + +The proprietor flung out his hands with the air of a man of whom nothing +more could be expected. + +"Well, then," he said, "if you won't take a decent job that's offered to +you ..." + +"It's not a decent job," said Rose. "Not for me; not for a girl who's +looked on in this town as I am. I want work! Don't you understand?" +Then, after a pause, "Won't you give it to me?" + +"Well, I should say not," said John Culver. "Look here! What's the use? +Suppose you are what you say ..." + +"You know I am," interrupted Rose. + +"Well, I say, suppose it's true. What's the use? Do you think any decent +store-keeper on Main Street would risk his reputation by giving a job to +a stranded actress that had come here with a rotten show like the one +you was with; or that I could have you in my dining-room? This is a +respectable hotel, I tell you." + +He broke off to wave his hand genially to a man who was walking slowly +by the door on his way down to the dining-room. + +"There!" he went on to Rose. "That's what I mean! That's Judge Granger +of the Supreme Court of this state. He's come here regularly for meals, +when he ain't in Springfield, for the last fifteen years. He's the +biggest man in this county. Do you suppose he'd stand for it, if I asked +him to give his order to a busted actress?" + +"Would you stand for it if he did?" demanded Rose. "If he told you that +I was all right and asked you to give me a job, would you do it?" + +The proprietor laughed impatiently. "What's the good of talking +nonsense?" he demanded. "Yes, I would, if that'll satisfy you. But you'd +better take the next train for Chicago. And if ..." He hesitated, +stroked his mustache again with his under-lip, and went on,--"Oh, I +suppose I'm a damned fool, but if a couple of dollars will help you +out ..." + +"No, thank you," said Rose. "I'm going to see the judge." And she cut +off John Culver's exclamation of protest by walking out of the office. + +Rose went back to the desk, told the clerk she wanted dinner, and +forestalled the objection she saw him preparing to make, by laying a +dollar bill on the counter. He even hesitated a little over that, but +he took it and gave her a quarter in change. + +"That'll be all right," he said, and she went the way the judge had +gone, down the corridor to the dining-room. A glance showed her where he +sat, and without waiting for the assistance of the head waitress, she +chose a chair near the door, facing it, and with her back to the judge. + +Those were rather audacious tactics. Seventy-five cents, in the present +state of her finances, was a good deal to squander on a meal. And the +fact that she was openly stalking the judge might lead John Culver to +give his honored patron a word of warning. But Rose didn't care. No +tactics but the simplest and most direct appealed to her. When the judge +finished his dinner, she would follow him to his office, wherever it +might be, walk in with him, and demand a hearing. If he were forewarned, +she would find some other way of getting access to him. + +But, whether the proprietor was really ignorant of her plan, or whether +the little scene with her in his office had shaken him so that he didn't +care to try conclusions with her again, the judge was left to his fate. +Rose followed him, unmolested, down the corridor and out into the +street, across the road and up a flight of outside steps, to the second +story of a brick building opposite. + +He was fitting his key into the lock when she came up. And though he +drew his eyebrows down into a frown as he looked at her, it seemed to be +rather in the effort to make out who she was, than from any feeling of +hostility. He asked her with a dry and rather affected judicial +courtesy, what he could do for her. + +"You can do me a service," said Rose, "that I don't think you will mind. +Will you let me come in for about a minute and tell you what it is?" + +His manner chilled a little, but his curt nod gave her permission to +precede him into his office. + +The outer room was bleak enough, furnished with three or four hard +chairs, a table and an old black walnut desk with a typewriter on it. +His secretary or stenographer was evidently still at dinner, because the +room was empty. + +The judge walked straight into an inner room and Rose followed him. + +It was a big, rather fine-looking room, or so it looked to Rose after +the places she had been seeing lately; evidently, from a beam across the +middle of the ceiling, cut out of two. There was a fireplace with a fire +in it, a big oak table and a number of easy chairs. There were two or +three good rugs on the floor, and the walls were completely lined with +books; the familiar buckram and leather-bound, red-labeled law-books +that gave her memory a pang. + +In these surroundings, the judge took on an added impressiveness, and he +was not an unimpressive-looking man. He was not large. Nose, mouth and +chin were small and rather fine, and he had the shape of head that is +described as a scholar's. One might not have remarked it in the hotel +dining-room, but in these surroundings, he looked altogether a judge. + +But the effect of this on Rose was only to heighten her confidence. She +hadn't used the dinner hour to think out what she'd say to him. She'd +been thinking of Rodney again. Somehow, just the rebirth of a sense of +power in her, had brought the image of him back. She was throbbing with +that sense now, and her thoughts of Rodney had given her an exhilarating +idea. This man that she was about to confront was one whom Rodney had +often confronted. It was before this man, on the bench of the Supreme +Court, up at Springfield, that Rodney had made uncounted arguments. She +would try to do as well as he did. + +The judge was staring at her in growing perplexity. Who in the world +could she be. What did she want? His very greatness in this little town +made him accessible. It was so unthinkable a thing that any one should +intrude upon his time frivolously. But this girl! She didn't belong in +the town. Hadn't he seen her about the hotel yesterday, with that shabby +theatrical troupe? + +"You will please be brief," he said. "My time is limited." + +"I'll be as brief as I can," said Rose. + +He sat down in his desk chair, but she did not avail herself of the +permission his half-hearted nod toward another chair accorded her; +remained standing across the table from him. + +"I came to Centropolis day before yesterday," said Rose, "with a +theatrical company that failed. They went away this morning unpaid, with +nothing but tickets to Chicago. I decided to stay here and try to get +work. I applied for it at five places on Main Street this morning, and +then went to Mr. Culver at the hotel. I asked him for a position as a +waitress." + +Already the judge was tapping his pencil. + +"This doesn't concern me in the least," he said. "I have no possible +employment for you. I can do nothing for you. Good day!" + +"Employment isn't what I want from you," said Rose. "I'll come to what I +do want in a minute." + +It is safe to say that the judge hadn't been caught up with a round turn +like that in years. He stared at her now in perfectly blank amazement. + +"Mr. Culver," she went on, "told me why I hadn't been successful. He +accused me of being the sort of person no decent employer would give +work to, of being a person of bad character. I convinced him, I think, +that I was not. Then he said that even though I were a perfectly honest, +decent woman, he wouldn't dare put me in his dining-room. He cited you +as the reason." + +At that the judge suddenly went purple. + +"Me!" he shouted. + +The tension of Rose's body relaxed a little. A smile flickered just +instantaneously over her mouth. + +"He used you as an example," she explained. "He said that you were the +most important person in the county; that your opinion counted for the +most. He said that you were a regular patron of his hotel, and that +you'd object seriously to giving your order, as he said, to a 'busted +actress.'" + +"That's perfectly unwarranted," fumed the judge. "Culver had no right to +use my name like that. It's outrageous!" + +"I hoped you'd feel that way," said Rose. + +The judge pounded on the desk. "That's not what I mean. He had no right +to drag me into it at all; into a miserable business like that." + +"It is a miserable business," Rose assented. "It's a thoroughly +contemptible business. But Mr. Culver didn't drag you into it +deliberately. You were passing the door as we stood talking, and he used +you for an illustration. But afterward he said that if you told him it +was all right to give me a job, he would do it. That's what I have come +up to ask you to do." + +"That," said the judge, setting his teeth and breathing hard, "is the +most monstrous piece of impudence I have ever heard of. On his part as +well as yours. What have I to do with John Culver's waitresses?" + +He wasn't expecting an answer to this question, but Rose had one ready +for him. + +"You've given him the idea, without meaning to most likely, that you +wouldn't tolerate a girl among them who'd been earning her living on the +stage. If that's just a stupid mistake of his, I'm asking you to tell +him so." + +"Well, I won't," said the judge. "The thing's preposterous. You're +asking me for what amounts to a guarantee. In the first place, I don't +know that you're not--after all--what you say you convinced Culver that +you were not." + +"I think you do," said Rose thoughtfully, with a steady look he angrily +turned away from. "I think you knew, without any reason at all, just +from your instinct and your experience in judging people. And if you +don't know it that way, I think you can prove it to yourself by common +sense. Do you think it likely that if a girl of my--appearance +and--manners, had a mind to practise the--profession you've talked +about, she would be here in Centropolis, fighting desperately like this, +going through humiliations like this, for a chance to be a waitress in +Mr. Culver's dining-room?" + +She stopped there and took a good deep breath and waited. There was a +solid minute of silence. The judge got up out of his chair and began +pacing the room with short impatient steps. He stopped with a jerk two +or three times, as if he were about to demolish her with speech, but +always gave up the attempt before a word was spoken. + +"Oh, I admit it's a hard case," he said at last. "You've apparently been +a victim of circumstance. The people down in this part of the country +are perhaps narrow. In the main it's a good sort of narrowness. It's +better than the broadness of your cities. But in an isolated case it may +work an injustice." Then he wheeled on her. "But I can't do anything for +you. Can't you see that I can't do anything for you?" + +"I don't see," said Rose, "why you can't do what I ask." + +"Have it known," shouted the judge, "in this town and all over the +county, and all over the Supreme Court district, as it would be in +another week, that I had gone to John Culver and got a job in his +hotel--the hotel where I go myself, three times a day--for a girl who +got left behind by a stranded comic-opera company? Now can't you see? +I'm coming up for re-election in two years." + +Rose drew in a long sigh and for a moment drooped a little. + +"Yes, I see," she said with a rueful little smile. They were afraid of +him, and he was afraid of them. + +"I'm sorry about it," said the judge. "If there's anything else I can +do ..." He put his hand tentatively in his pocket. + +"No," Rose said, "that isn't what I want. Mr. Culver offered me two +dollars to go away. I suppose you might offer me ten. But I'm not going. +There is somebody in this town who isn't afraid of anybody, if I can +only find out who that somebody is." + +For a moment the judge looked annoyed; tried to collect his scattered +dignity. But presently a twinkle lighted up in his eye. Then he smiled. +"You might try Miss Gibbons," he said. + +"Who is she?" Rose asked. + +By now the judge was smiling broadly. Apparently there was something +exquisitely humorous in the notion of an encounter between Rose and this +lady he'd mentioned. + +"She's lived," he said, "and practised gossip and millinery, for the +last thirty years, up over the drug-store on the next corner. It's quite +true that there's nobody in this tier of counties that she's afraid of. +But I don't recommend her seriously. You will get small comfort out of +her." + +"All right," said Rose, "we'll see." + +She walked straight from the judge's office to the stairs beside the +drug-store on the next corner, which led up to Miss Gibbons' atelier. +She walked fast, conserving as a precious thing that might ebb away from +her, the warm feeling of indignant contempt her talk with the judge had +inspired her with. He was the biggest man in this part of the state, was +he! Why, he was a hollow man! A fabric of lath and plaster with no +structural pillars inside! Well, if the rest of the town was afraid of +him, she certainly wasn't afraid of the rest of the town. + +She hadn't any thought of conciliating Miss Gibbons, of asking Miss +Gibbons to give her a chance. She was going to give Miss Gibbons a +chance to prove whether she was lath and plaster like the judge, or a +real person with something besides her façade to hold her up. + +So it wasn't at all in the manner of a disheartened applicant for work +that she pushed open the glass door with _"Gibbons. Modes_." painted on +it, and stepped inside. + +A bell had rung somewhere in the distance as she opened the door, and +there was no one in the room as she entered it. But she hadn't much time +to look around--only long enough to get the impression that the place +was somehow overflowing with hats--when another door opened, and a thin, +gray-haired, tight little woman (she had a tight dress and tight hair, +and her joints, when she moved, seemed to be tight, too) confronted her. +She was unmistakably Miss Gibbons and in that first glance, Rose liked +her. Her features were rather too big for her small face--a big nose not +finely made, a wide thin-lipped mouth, and a long chin--and her eyes, +looking very straight out through gold-rimmed spectacles, had a +penetrating brightness about them that was a little formidable. It was +not what one would call a good-natured face. But good-natured +sentimentality was the last thing Rose was looking for. + +"What can I do for you?" she asked. Her voice was as tight and brisk as +the rest of her. + +"I'm looking for a job," said Rose. + +Miss Gibbons came a step closer and her bright look pierced a little +more deeply. + +"So!" she said. "You're the actress, are you?" + +Rose smiled at that. "I'm not a real actress," she said, "but I'm who +you mean. I was a chorus-girl with that company that broke down here." + +"Why didn't you go away when the rest of them did?" the milliner +demanded. + +"I decided I didn't want to go on being a chorus-girl," said Rose, "and +I thought there was as good a chance of getting other work here as in +Chicago." + +"That was a sort of fool idea, I guess, wasn't it?" Miss Gibbons +suggested. + +"It seems so, up to now," said Rose. "I spent the morning on Main Street +without having any luck. I went to five places ..." + +"Five?" questioned Miss Gibbons. "I knew about Arthur Perkins and Sim +Laidlaw and Tabby Parkes. Who were the other two?" + +Rose couldn't enlighten her. She'd forgotten their names. + +"I've had work offered to me," she went on, "or at least suggested. Mr. +Culver at the hotel told me of a moving-picture place ..." + +"Where you could sit in that glass cage of Al Zeider's and sell +tickets?" Miss Gibbons broke in. "Why didn't you take it?" + +"I told Mr. Culver," said Rose, "that I'd already walked the length of +Main Street and back, and that was enough for me." + +"How did John Culver happen to say anything about that? How come it you +were talking to him?" + +"I'd asked him to hire me as a waitress," said Rose. + +"And I reckon," said Miss Gibbons, "that he told you he kept a +respectable hotel. He may have put some frills on it, but that's close +enough to go on, isn't it?" + +Rose nodded. In her relief at finding her situation so well understood, +she was turning a little limp. + +"Why did you come to me?" Miss Gibbons demanded. "He never would have +thought of sending you here." + +Rose braced up once more and told about her conversation with Judge +Granger. + +This time the milliner heard her through. + +"And so the judge sent you to me," she said, when Rose had finished. "I +suppose that was his fool idea of being funny. He thought it was a +chance to get me poison mad." + +Rose nodded a little wearily. + +"Yes," she said, "I suppose that was it." + +The milliner shot out a sharp glance at her. "Sit down," she said +bruskly, and nodded to a chair. + +Rose didn't much want to. Her instinct was to stay on her feet until +she'd won her battle, and her fatigue only heightened it. But Miss +Gibbons had given her an order rather than an invitation, and she obeyed +it. + +The older woman didn't sit down. + +"Harvey Granger," she said thoughtfully, "will never forgive me as long +as he lives, for not thinking he's a great man. That's just ridiculous, +of course, because I know Harve. Years ago, you see,--so long ago that +everybody's forgotten it--my father was the big man down in this part of +the state. He was a circuit judge, when circuit judges amounted to +something, and he was one of the best of them. But he was a fool about +money and he got mixed up in things--and died. I was twenty-five years +old then, and I took to hats. + +"Well, Harve Granger was my father's law-clerk before father was elected +judge. I used to see him night and morning. And, as I say, I know him +all the way through. He knows I know him, and that's what he can't get +over." + +There was a little silence when she finished; a silence Rose's instinct +told her not to break. Presently the little woman wheeled around on her. + +"Well," she said, "you came to me anyway, though you saw the judge +meant it for a joke. Why did you do that?" + +"I don't know," said Rose. "I thought I would." + +"And you haven't told me yet," said Miss Gibbons, "that you're really +straight and respectable. What have you got to say about that?" + +"Nothing much," said Rose. "I am straight and respectable. But I suppose +a woman who wasn't would pretend to be. So you will have to decide about +that for yourself." + +"Hmph!" grunted Miss Gibbons. "I don't know why I asked a fool question +like that, unless it's because, like the rest of them, I live in +Centropolis. I know what you are, as well as you do yourself." + +The words were brusk, and the inflection of them not much gentler, but +they fell on Rose's heart like rain; like an unexpected warm little +shower out of a brazen sky. She caught her breath, and, to her +consternation, felt her eyes flushing up with tears. She hadn't realized +the tension she had been under, until it was relaxed. She gave a shaky +half-suppressed sob and then made a desperate effort to pull herself +together. + +"Now, look here!" said Miss Gibbons, in a tone harder and dryer than +ever. "I'm not going to take you in and pay you wages just because +you're a cat in a strange garret and don't know where to turn. I'm not +even going to do it to spite Harve Granger. But, if you've got any sort +of gumption about hats, I am going to do it, and the rest of this fool +town can say what it likes and do what it pleases. So the thing for you +to do is to quiet down sensibly and show me whether you can trim a hat." + +It took Rose a few minutes to carry out the first part of this +injunction. The rush of relief and gratitude and happiness shook her. +Given _carte blanche_ to design a special angel from Heaven to come down +and give her just the comfort and encouragement she wanted, she couldn't +have imagined one so good as Miss Gibbons,--with those keen +straight-looking eyes that had observed her fellow citizens of +Centropolis for the last half-century or so, not in vain; with her +courageous common sense, and with that dry, cool, astringent manner, +which lay with a pleasant healing sting on the lacerations of Rose's +soul. + +For a while she just sat still and tried to get the catch out of her +breathing. At last, when she thought she could trust her voice not to +break absurdly, she smiled and said: + +"What sort of hat do you want me to trim? I mean, for what sort of +person?" + +"What sort of person!" echoed Miss Gibbons and gave Rose a rather keen +look. "Why," she said, after hesitating a moment, "there's a silly old +maid in this town. She ain't more than ten years younger than I am, but +her hair's stayed sort of fluffy and yellow, and she's kept part of her +looks, though not near as much of them as she thinks. She was a +beautiful girl at twenty, I'll say that for her. None of these girls now +compares with her. But she was a little too sure of herself and took too +long deciding among the young men of this town, until all at once, she +found that nobody wanted her. She's been trying ever since to show she +doesn't care; and she pesters the life out of me twice a year trying to +fit her out with a hat. I won't let her go around the streets looking +like a giddy young fool, and that's what she's determined to do. So, if +you can suit her _and_ me, you will be doing pretty well." + +The description made a picture for Rose. She saw the faded pathetic +prettiness of the woman who'd looked too long and had been trying to +pretend for the last fifteen years or so that she didn't care. And the +picture in her mind's eye was surmounted by a hat; a hat that conceded +some of the years Miss Gibbons had insisted on, and that her client was +unwilling to acknowledge, and yet retained a sort of jauntiness. + +She didn't know whether she could execute the thing she saw or not, out +of the stock of materials at her disposal. But it hadn't cost her a +thought or an effort to see the hat. + +"All right," she said after a bit. "I'll see what I can do. If you'll +show me where the things are ..." + +It was a much humbler sort of job, of course, designing a hat for a +middle-aged village spinster, than making those dozen gowns for +Goldsmith and Block had been. But this consideration never occurred to +her. She found, and was not even amazed to find, the same thrill of +exhilaration in conquering the small problem, that she had found in the +larger one. She worked with the same swift unconscious economy of labor +and materials. + +At the end of two hours, she presented the result of her labors for the +milliner's approval. + +Miss Gibbons surveyed it with a smile of ironic appreciation. + +"It isn't what I'd call a real finished job," she commented after a +minute inspection of some of the details of Rose's sewing. "I wouldn't +trust it in a high wind not to scatter all the way from here to the +Presbyterian church. But it will certainly suit Agatha Stebbins." + +She looked at it a while longer. "And I don't know," she concluded a +little reluctantly, "as it'll look so all-mighty foolish on her, either. +Will ten dollars a week suit you to begin on?" + +"Yes," said Rose, "that will suit me very well indeed." + +"All right," said Miss Gibbons. "That's settled. There's one more thing +to settle now, and that's where you're going to live." + +Rose contemplated this question a little blankly for a moment. + +"Do you suppose," she said, "there's any place in this town where I +_can_ live; where they'd take a person like me? Or would it be all +right, if you asked them?" + +"Oh, I guess," said Miss Gibbons, "we could most likely find somebody. +I'll think about it." + +She gave Rose some work to do and didn't refer to the matter again till +nearly six o'clock. + +"I've been thinking," she said then, "that I've got room for a boarder +myself. There's a little room back here that I don't use; there's a +black girl does me out and cooks my dinner and supper, and I get my own +breakfast. The girl could cook for two as well as one, and I guess I +could feed you for two dollars a week. If that ain't satisfactory, you +can just say so." + +"Satisfactory!" said Rose, and once more her voice broke. + +"All right," said Miss Gibbons hastily, "we'll say no more about it. +That's settled. I'll send the girl to the hotel to get your bags." + + +John Galbraith's letter asking Rose to report to him July first in New +York, reached her via Portia, during the last week in June, and made an +abrupt conclusion to her life at Centropolis. + +Those weeks with Miss Gibbons in the millinery parlor, when she looked +back on them afterward, set in as they were between that purgatorial +winter and the first breathless months while she was establishing +herself in New York, had a quality of happiness and peace, which she was +wont to describe as heavenly. + +She'd probably have taken to Miss Gibbons in any circumstance. But, +coming into her life just when she did, the little woman was the shadow +of a great rock to her. She was in a state, when she settled down in the +milliner's spare back room over the drug-store, where all the warmer +emotions seemed terrible to her. It was Rodney's love for her and hers +for him, that had bruised and lacerated her; that had made the winter +months a long torment, unmitigated during the last of them, by any form +of adequate self-expression. The two parodies on love which had been +thrust into her face just at the end, Olga Larson's inverted form of it +toward herself, and Dolly's shabby little romance, had given her an +absolute loathing for it. To her, in that condition, any expression of +friendship that was warm and soft, and in the least sentimental, would +have been almost unendurable to her. Miss Gibbons, in that acrid +antiseptic way of hers, simply washed her soul in cold water and clothed +it again in the garments of self-respect. + +Her manner to Rose, even as their friendship ripened and grew more +confident, never changed. Nor did the manner Rose adopted toward her. +Their endless talks resulted in a good deal of self-revelation, but this +was never direct. Miss Gibbons never again came as near to a +confidential account of her life, as she did on that first afternoon, +when she explained the thoroughness of her acquaintance with Judge +Granger. And Rose never explained how it had happened that she was left +at the mercy of the town of Centropolis by the failure of _The Girl +Up-stairs_ company. But she poured out for her friend a wealth of +illustrative reminiscences, drawn from her childhood, her days at the +university, her life on the stage; and though she was a good deal more +reticent about it, she even touched on her married life with Rodney; at +least, on the collateral incidents of it. + +Miss Gibbons listened to all this with a hunger she didn't conceal, and +this eagerness gave Rose a pretty vivid picture of the inner life the +little woman had lived here in Centropolis. + +If she'd been born a boy instead of a girl, she'd probably have equaled, +or outstripped, Rose thought, her father's eminence. With her courage, +her vitality, her fine penetrating intelligence, she'd have managed to +win her way out of this stagnant little back-water of life. But, having +been born a girl, brought up helpless, as became the daughter of the +circuit judge, and then having had this support wrenched from under her +at the critical moment, there had been nothing for her but--hats. + +She'd never gone sour, at that; never, apparently, wasted any hours in +repining. She'd made, after a fashion, a career of hats; had risen on +them, to a position of acknowledged social consequence. There must have +been disquieting echoes in her, rhythms that answered to the pulsation +of an ampler life. She never could hope to get out into it, she +undoubtedly knew, but she took every opportunity she could get for a +glimpse at it. Rose's incursion into her life must have been a godsend +to her. + +She probably pieced together a pretty good picture of Rose, too. But she +did this piecing in silence and kept her surmises to herself. + +In a material way, her adoption of Rose was an immense success. +Centropolis, when it learned the news, was thunder-struck. For a matter +of hours, one might say, the town held its breath. Then it began to +talk. The women began asking questions: What did the actress look like? +The men offered lame descriptions. Rose had been seen, apparently, that +morning on Main Street, by the entire male population, but their +descriptions weren't satisfactory. Curiosity must be assuaged! But Rose +never went into the stores on Main Street; never patronized the +picture-show, and even had these glimpses been afforded, they'd have +been pretty unsatisfactory. There was only one real way of discovering +what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is--and +hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy a hat of +Lizzie Gibbons. + +The first daring adventurer was Agatha Stebbins. Agatha found, you will +remember, the hat Rose had already designed for her. And, as Miss +Gibbons caustically disclaimed the authorship of it ("I'd never have +made you up a thing like that, you can believe!") and as Miss Stebbins, +after a moment's hesitation, decided she adored it, another inducement, +though perhaps a superfluous one, was offered for visits to the atelier. + +"Of course she isn't what you could call genteel," Miss Stebbins +explained, parading her acquisition, "and she's never had any +advantages. And as to her moral character, I suppose the less said the +better. Lizzie Gibbons can settle that question with her own conscience. +But when it comes to hats she's got more gimp in her little finger than +Lizzie's got in both hands. Dear, no! She's not what I call pretty. Not +with a mouth like that. Of course the men ..." + +So Miss Gibbons' spring business was distended to unrecognizable +proportions. Rose fitted on hats in the show-room during business hours +and took a mischievous delight in the assumption of the intangible +manner of a perfect shop-assistant; in saying "Yes, madam," and "No, +madam," and "Will you try this, madam?" with a perfection of politeness +that baffled the most determined curiosity. Miss Gibbons got as much fun +out of it as she did. + +The hours in the workroom were pleasant ones, too, with their perpetual +reminder that the creative power that had deserted her last January, had +come back. The little problems were ludicrously easy, of course but they +stimulated a pleasant sense of reserve power. + +She couldn't, of course, have stayed in Centropolis indefinitely. In +time, that feeling of mounting energy would have driven her out in +search of something that would test it. + +But, when Galbraith's letter came, it took her a little aback. Miss +Gibbons had brought it in; because Rose, even then, didn't go to the +post-office. Miss Gibbons watched her tear open the big envelope +addressed to Rose in the handwriting that always went with the +California post-mark, and saw her take another unopened letter out of +it. She saw the girl's face set itself in a sudden gravity; watched her +with a hungry misgiving, while she read the enclosure, and felt the +misgiving mount to an unhappy certainty, when Rose put it away without +comment. + +But Rose wasn't certain, or she felt that night when she went to bed +that she was not. Galbraith's letter frightened her a little. It was a +dictated letter, very stiff, wholly businesslike. It offered to make her +his personal assistant at a salary of fifty dollars a week. He +summarized in rather formidable terms, what her duties would be. He +wished her to report to him promptly, July first, and to telegraph him +at her earliest convenience, whether she accepted his offer. There was +no explanation of his long delay in sending for her. + +Rose had no illusions as to what its acceptance would mean. It would +mean gripping life again with the full strength of both hands. It would +mean many anxious days and sleepless nights. It would mean spurring +herself to a high degree of competency. You didn't get fifty dollars a +week for anything that was easy to do. She knew that now, by hard +experience. And then the transplantation to New York would mean an end +of the cool healing peace of her present life. Things would begin +happening to her that she couldn't foresee nor control. Feelings would +begin happening to her; the kind of feelings that scorched and terrified +you. They wouldn't happen to her here in Centropolis. + +She fell asleep that night under the persuasion that the thing wasn't +decided; that the safe, quiet, peaceful way was still open to her. But +when she awakened in the morning, she knew it was not. + +"I surmise," said Miss Gibbons that morning at breakfast, "that you're +figuring to go away." + +Rose smiled and sighed. "I don't know how you guess things like that," +she said, "but it's true. I must be in New York on the first of July." + +"Well, the sooner the quicker," said Miss Gibbons dryly. "You came all +at once and I guess it's just as well you should go the same way. I +guess neither of us is sorry you came, and I hope you'll never be sorry +you went." + +That was her nearest approach to an affectionate farewell. Rose managed +to express her affection and gratitude a little more adequately, but not +much. "It isn't the end of us, you know," she concluded. "You're coming +to see me in New York." + +Miss Gibbons smiled with good-humored skepticism at that. + +Rose telegraphed Galbraith that morning, and she took the noon train for +St. Louis. She needed a day or two there to make the modest supplements +to her wardrobe that her savings permitted. + + + + +BOOK FOUR + +The Real Adventure + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE TUNE CHANGES + + +John Williamson's doctor packed him off to Carlsbad just about the time +that Rose achieved the conquest of Centropolis (along in April, 1914, +that was). Violet and their one child, a girl of twelve, went along with +him to keep him company; at rather long range, it seemed, because they +were both in Paris on the first of August, when the war broke out, and +John spent six frantic days getting into Switzerland and out again into +France, before his attempt to join them was successful. They had run the +full gamut of refugees' experiences, by the time they got to England and +secured accommodations on a liner to New York, and the tale got an added +touch from the stratagem Violet employed in successfully bringing off +all her new French frocks. + +It took just two hours' steady talking to tell the story, and Violet +figured that during the first week after her return to Chicago, she told +it on an average of three times a day. So that by the time she could +manage a day for motoring out to Lake Forest to see Constance Crawford, +she was ready to talk about something else. + +Constance had lately had her fourth--and she asserted, last--baby, and +wasn't seeing anybody yet, except intimates, one at a time; and she +relaxed a little deeper, with a sigh of relief, into her cushioned +chair, when Violet said: + +"The same things happened to us that happened to everybody else, so you +don't have to hear them. Oh, it was nice, in a way, being separated from +poor John when the thing happened, because--well, he hasn't got over it +yet. He's still more as he was when we were first engaged, than he's +ever been since. And at thirty-seven that's something! And then it's a +satisfaction about the clothes. It seems as if I must have had a +premonition that something was going to happen, because I bought +absolutely everything I wanted. + +"Of course it was an awful moment when John said we couldn't take +anything but hand-luggage. But I got three perfectly enormous +straw-telescopes--you know the kind--about four feet long, and then we +left everything else behind, except a tooth-brush and a comb apiece. And +what with that and the biggest hat box in the world--my, but it's lucky +hats are small!--we managed it. + +"But all the stuff about having your automobile taken away and riding in +a cart, and thinking you're going to be arrested as a spy, and living +for days on milk-chocolate and _vin ordinaire_, you've heard it all a +hundred times already, so we'll talk about something else." + +"I never heard anything so heroic in my life," Constance said. "But you +don't need to be, because I'm perishing for details.--Unless," she went +on, "it isn't heroism at all, but something else you want to talk +about." + +"Just my luck!" said Violet. "I thought I was going to get away with +that. There _is_ something I'm frantic with curiosity about, and you're +the first person I've seen I could ask. I spent two hours trying to get +up my courage with Frederica, but I couldn't. Do you know anything about +them--Rose and Rodney? Does any one know anything about her since she +disappeared from the Globe?" + +"Why, I fancy _they_ do," said Constance, "Rodney and Frederica. I don't +know just why I think so. Frank sees Rodney every day or two at lunch +time at the club; says he seems all right. He's working terribly hard. +And the money he's making! Frank says he's a regular robber in the fees +he asks--and gets. He says he speaks of Rose once in a while, and +not--at least not exactly, as if she were dead. You know what I mean! +Just in that maddening, matter-of-course way, as if everybody knew all +about her. + +"Frederica won't talk about her at all. I mean, she won't start the +subject, and nobody has the nerve to start it with her. Freddy can be +like that, you know. She'd make a perfectly wonderful queen--did you +ever think of that? Of England. Harriet's the only one who'd talk, and +of course she's gone back. You knew that, didn't you? Oh, but naturally, +since you've talked to Freddy." + +Violet nodded. "It all sounded so exactly like Harriet," she said, "as +Freddy told about it. No confidences, no flutters. She didn't even seem +interested until the day England went in. And then at lunch that day, +she said to Frederica, 'I've just cabled Tony that I'm coming back on +the next boat. And I telephoned Rodney just now, to find out what the +next boat for Genoa was, or Naples, and get me a stateroom. Lend me +Marie, will you, to help pack? Because I'll probably have to take the +five-thirty.' Harriet all over. Well, on the whole, I'm glad." + +"Oh, yes," said Constance. "She'd always be at a loose end in this +country. She doesn't believe in divorce. She might, of course, if she +fell in love with another man over here. But that's not likely to +happen. And she can't stand America any more. So even an unsuccessful +marriage over there, especially if Italy gets drawn into the war, and +her man gets ..." + +"Constance!" cried Violet, horrified. + +"Oh, not necessarily killed," Constance went on. "Crippled or something, +or even if he really got interested in the profession of being a +soldier. She's done well to go back to him." + +"Anyway, that wasn't what I meant," said Violet. "I meant I was glad for +Rodney and--Rose. Mind you, I don't _know_ a single thing. But I've just +got a hunch that with Harriet off the board, it will be a little more +possible for those two to get together." + +Constance looked at her intently. "You've changed your tune," she said. +"I thought you were through with Rose for good and all. I thought what +you were rooting for was a divorce and a fresh start for Rodney." + +"I thought so, too," said Violet, "until I saw her." + +"Saw her!" Constance cried. "Where? When?" + +"In New York on the way home," said Violet. + +"Well--tell me all about it," said Constance, when she saw Violet wasn't +going on of her own accord. "You, pretending you wanted to know about +everything, and pretending to be a heroine for not telling me all about +being a refugee! What is she doing? What did she look like? What did she +say?" + +"You've changed your tune, too," said Violet. "Because you were through +with her just as much as I was. You didn't want to hear anything more +about her. Of course she could ran away and go on the stage if she +liked, you said, but she'd better not try to come back." + +Constance pointed out that she hadn't, as yet, expressed the hope that +Rodney would make it up with her. But she pleaded guilty to a strong +curiosity. + +"Well, I can't tell you much," said Violet. "John and I were coming down +Fifth Avenue in a taxi one afternoon, and were stopped by the traffic at +Forty-fourth Street. And right there, in another taxi, was Rose. I +didn't see her till just as we got the whistle to go ahead. I was so +surprised I could only grab John and tell him to look. I did shriek at +her at last, and she saw us and lighted up and smiled. Just that old +smile of hers, you know. But her car was turning west, down past +Sherry's, and we were going straight ahead and we weren't quick enough +to tell the chauffeur to turn, too. We did turn on Forty-third and came +around the block, and of course we missed her. + +"We went to three musical shows in the next two days, in the hope of +spotting her in the chorus. But she wasn't in any of them, and then I +simply dragged John home. There was no way of finding her of course, nor +of her finding us, because John's given up the Holland House at last and +taken to the Vanderbilt. But it was rather maddening." + +"Well, I don't know," said Constance. "Oh, yes, maddening of course, +because one would be curious. But that sort of curiosity might prove +pretty expensive if you gratified it. Talk about the clutch of a +drowning person! It's nothing to the clutch of a _déclassée_ woman. And +if she's been somebody once who really mattered, and somebody you were +really fond of ... Because it _is_ no use. They can't ever come back." + +Violet stirred in her chair. "Of course we're all perfectly good +Christians," she observed ironically. "And once a week we say 'Forgive +us our debts,' besides teaching it to the kids." + +Constance broke in on her hotly. "Oh, come, Violet! You know it's not a +question of forgiveness. I don't claim any moral superiority over Rose. +I'm just talking about her social possibility. A person who does an +outrageous thing, knowing it's outrageous, just because he--or +she--wants to do it, can be downright immoral without being impossible. +But a person who's done the other sort of thing, a shabby thing--and +what Rose did was shabby--will always be on the defensive about it. They +can't let it alone. They're always making references you can't ignore; +always seeing references in perfectly harmless things that other people +say. And the only society where they're ever happy, is that of a lot of +other people with shady, shabby things that _they're_ on the defensive +about. And they all get together and call it Bohemia. And they sprawl +around in studios and talk about sex and try to feel superior and +emancipated. Well, maybe they are. All I say is they don't belong with +us. Oh, you know it's true! You hate that as much as I do." + +"Oh, yes," said Violet. "Only, since I've seen Rose--even for that +minute--it doesn't seem possible to apply it to her. You know, I don't +believe she's on the stage any more." + +Constance asked with good-humored satire, "Why? From the way she looked +in the taxi-cab?" + +"Yes," said Violet. "Just from that. There she was in an open taxi, on +Fifth Avenue, at half past four in the afternoon, and she didn't look +somehow, as if how she looked mattered. She wasn't on parade a bit. She +looked smart and successful, but busy. Not exactly irritated at being +held up in the block, but keen to get out of it. The way Frank or John +would look on the way to a directors' meeting. And the way she smiled +when she saw us ... It's not quite exactly her old smile, either, but +it's just as fascinating. It pleased her to see us all right. But as for +her caring a rap what we thought--well, you couldn't imagine it. +Defensive indeed! And poor old John just about went out of his head with +disappointment when we lost her." + +"Oh, I'll never deny she's a charmer," said Constance. "All the same ..." + +"You wait till you see her!" said Violet. + +Violet's report of the glimpse she had had of Rose, together with what +were felt to be the rather amusingly extravagant set of deductions she +had made from it, spread in diminishing ripples of discussion through +all their circle. And then, concentrically, into wider circles. Most of +their own intimate group took Constance's attitude. Forced to concede a +lively curiosity as to what had become of Rose, they still professed +that the way of discretion lay not in gratifying it; at least not at +first-hand. When they were in New York, they kept an eye open for a +sight of her, on the stage and elsewhere, and an alert ear for news, +finding a sort of fearful joy in wondering what they would do if an +encounter took place. They were mildly derisive with Violet over her +_volte-face_. + +Secretly, Violet was a good deal closer to agreeing with them than she'd +admit. For, as the effect of her encounter lost its vividness, with the +recession of the encounter itself, she began to suspect that she had +gone unwarranted lengths in her interpretations from it. But under fire, +she stuck to her guns. Her husband, who delighted in her public +attitude, was amazed when she rounded upon him in their domestic +sanctuary, and emphatically took the other side. In his disgust, he made +a very penetrating observation, whose cogency Violet realized, though +she loftily ignored it at the time it was uttered. But three or four +nights later, at an opera dinner at the Heaton-Duncans, she fired it off +shamelessly, as a shot out of her own locker. + +"It's all very well," she exploded, "to say that Rose can't come back. +But as a matter of fact she's never been out of it. At least the hole +she left has never closed up. You all agree that she's to be forgotten +and treated as a regrettable incident, but you keep on talking about +her. It's like Roosevelt. There she is all the time." + +She didn't dare catch John's eye for the next twenty minutes, but she +knew precisely, without looking, the exasperated quality of his stare. + +It was true. They couldn't let her alone. Speculation flared up again, +and this time with a justifiable basis, when it became known that +Rodney had bought the McCrea house; bought it outright, for cash, with +its complete contents. + +Of course everybody knew that Rodney was getting rich. And he was doing +it, as Frank Crawford pointed out to Constance, with precisely the same +contemptuous disregard of money that he had shown before his marriage. + +"He doesn't care what he charges, and he didn't care then. Only then it +was out of the little end of the horn, and now it's out of the big. And +the thing that seems to make him particularly wild is that the higher +the price he puts on his opinions, the more people there are who think +that nobody's opinion but his is any good. So he just grins at them and +goes up another notch. He's no better a lawyer, he says, than he was +when his practise brought him in ten thousand a year. Of course he is a +better lawyer. He's getting better all the time. He does deliver the +goods. And fighting out these great big cases really educates a man. You +can't be really first-class unless you've got first-class things to do. +And down inside Rodney knows that as well as anybody. + +"Only, with all his money, after the way he's talked about that +house--the way he's damned it and made fun of it, what did he want to go +and buy it for?" + +Constance had an idea he'd got it at a bargain. The McCreas had made a +flying trip home just to sell it. Their investments had gone off, it +seemed, still further, and besides, Florence had at last found something +in the world to be in earnest about, and that was in France; the +American hospital. Florence had already taken an emergency training +course in nursing. Her husband, whose one marked talent was that of a +chauffeur, was going to drive a motor ambulance, and they were both on +fire to get back to Paris into the thick of things. Almost any round +sum, in absolutely spot cash, would satisfy them. So Rodney, too busy +with other things to take the trouble to invest his money, would have +been in a position to get the house cheap. It was Constance's opinion +that he had. + +"Do you know anybody in the world," her husband demanded, "less likely +to be interested in a bargain than Rodney? Or to pick a thing up because +it is cheap?" + +"Well, then," Constance said, "you must think he's expecting Rose, +sometime or other, to come back to him. Because if he meant to get a +divorce and marry some one else, he certainly wouldn't want to live in +that house with her. He'd want as few reminders as possible, not as +many. And yet, it was Rose herself, according to Harriet, who was so +anxious, toward the last, to get rid of the place. So there you are! +It's a mystery any way you take it." + +John Williamson said he understood, though when Violet pressed him for +an explanation he was a little vague. + +"Why," he said, "it's just a polite way of telling us all to go to the +devil. He knows we're all talking our heads off about him, and +sympathizing with him, and wondering what he's going to do, and he buys +that house to serve notice that he's going to stay put. Business as +usual at the old stand. I shouldn't be surprised if he meant the same +message for Rose. That is to say, that the place will always be there +for her to come back to." + +Outside their immediate circle, no such imaginative explanations were +resorted to. Rose was coming back of course. And the interesting theme +for speculation was what would happen to her when she did. Would she try +to take her old place; ignore the past; treat that outrageous escapade +with the Globe chorus as if it had never happened? And if she did try to +do that, could she succeed? It all depended on what a few people did. If +they, the three or four supremely right ones, were to acquiesce in this +treatment of the situation, Rose could, more or less, get away with it. +Although even then, things could never be quite the same. + +But the sterility of these speculations gradually became apparent as the +winter months slipped away and Rose did not come back. It was felt, +though such a feeling would have looked absurd if put into words, that +by failing to come when the stage was set for her, as by Rodney's act in +purchasing the McCrea house it was, missing her cue like that, letting +them, with such a lot of solemn thought, discuss and prepare their +attitudes toward her, all in vain, she had, somehow, aggravated her +original offense in running away. + +And, just as suddenly as they had begun talking about her, they +stopped. Rodney and the twins, living alone in the perfect house, under +the ministrations of a housekeeper, a head nurse and an undiminished +corps of servants, came to be accepted as a fact that could be mentioned +without any string of commiserations tied to it. Their world wagged on +as usual. If, as John Williamson said, the hole where Rose had been torn +out of it had never been closed up, people managed to walk around the +edge of it with an apparently complete unawareness that it was there. +There were fresher themes for gossip: + +Hermione Woodruff's amazing marriage, for example, to a dapper little +futurist painter named Bunting, ten years, the uncharitable said, +younger than she was. And then the Randolphs! After all the thrilling +events of their romance, were they drifting on the reefs? There were +straws that indicated the wind was blowing that way. + +This was the state of things when Jimmy Wallace threw his bomb. + +There was always a warm, corner in Jimmy Wallace's bachelor heart for +youth, and innocence, and enthusiasm. Especially for young girls who +were innocent and enthusiastic. But since he suspected himself of a +tendency to idealize these qualities, even to sentimentalize upon them, +he generally kept a cautious distance off. Rose, with the bloom that was +on her, and the glow that radiated from her the night he was introduced +to her at a dinner party at the Williamsons', had struck him--he was +unconscious of this mental process no doubt--as a person whom it would +be difficult, at close range, to remain quite level-headed about. + +Consequently, though his and Rodney's common friendship for the Lakes +had drawn him rather intimately into their circle, his attitude toward +Rose herself throughout had remained deliberately detached and +impersonal. He was not in the least priggish about it. He was quite +willing to let it appear that he liked her and to admit that she liked +him. But their talk had always been not only objective, but about +objects comparatively remote; chorus-girls, for example, and Norse +sagas, to take at random two of his wide assortment of hobbies. + +He never felt himself in any danger of idealizing Violet Williamson or +Bella Forrester, and they, along with their respective husbands, were +the nearest approach to intimates he had in that segment of society +which gets itself spelled with a capital S. + +Violet's attitude toward Rose, as revealed to him at the little dinner +following the Williamsons' discovery of Rose in the Globe chorus, had +not in the least surprised him. For, with her husband he had recognized +in her biting contempt of the thing the girl had done, the typical +attitude of her class. He didn't do Society very much, but he dipped +expertly now and then. He understood the class--loyalty that is woven +into all their traditions, and knew how violently it was outraged by +Rose's inexplicable bolt. + +But, as I said, he went home after that dinner, rather mournful over +Violet's failure to see an aspect of the thing which, it seemed to him, +should have been apparent to anybody: this was Rose's courage in +actually doing the thing. The idea that had evidently prompted the act +was a perfectly familiar guest at their tea-tables. Rose wouldn't have +had to go to "that votes-for-women mother of hers" to pick up the notion +of the desirability of economic independence for women. But, instead of +playing with the idea, Rose had gripped it in both hands and gone +through with it; and at what cost of resolution and courage Jimmy was +perhaps the only one of her friends capable of forming an adequate +conception. But he'd have thought that even Violet might be expected to +see that a mere petulant restlessness wouldn't have carried her through; +might have admitted, if only in parenthesis, the gameness the girl had +shown. + +She'd made no attempt to get the cards stacked in her favor, as she +might so easily have done. She must have thought of coming to him for +advice and help; must have known how gladly he'd give it. A note from +him to Goldsmith would have spared her untold terrors and +uncertainties. Yet she had denied herself that help; gone ahead and +done the thing on her own. + +He could imagine the sort of test Galbraith had put her to before giving +her a job at all. He'd seen inexperienced girls applying for positions +in the chorus. He knew the sort of work that lay behind her advancement +to the sextette. He knew that her presence there on the stage of the +Globe the opening night, unrecognized by any one in the company as +anybody except Doris Dane of nowhere, represented a solid achievement +that a girl with Rose's background and training might be proud of. + +For Jimmy it had stamped her, once and for all, as sterling metal; as +one who, however mistaken her judgments, or misguided her +actions--admitting for the sake of argument that they were +misguided--must be taken seriously; admitted to be the real thing. She'd +given indisputable guarantees of good faith. + +There was no good, of course, getting warm over the flippant cynicisms +of her former friends. There was no use even in trying to make them +understand how the thing looked to him. But there crystallized in him a +wish that he might some day see Rose's critics fluttering about her and, +as it were, eating out of her hand. He used to amuse himself by +arranging all sorts of extravagant settings for this picture. He never +included Rodney in this vengeance, although he felt sure--indeed Rodney +had practically admitted as much to him--that it had been her husband's +disapproval, rather than the miscellaneous gossip of society at large, +which had driven her from the security and promise of the Globe to the +exiguities of a fly-by-night road company. Rodney never brought up the +subject again after his return from Dubuque, though it soon became plain +enough without that, that his journey had accomplished nothing. + +Jimmy kept track of the company's route after that, through the list of +bookings printed in his theater weekly, and when he learned that the +tour had been abandoned, he dropped in one night at the Globe on the +off-chance that she might have come back and got herself reinstated in +the Number One company, which was still doing a prosperous business. + +He didn't expect to find her there; hardly hoped to. A somewhat better +chance was that he might find Alec McEwen in the lobby, and that if +little Alec were properly primed with alcohol and led to a discussion of +the collapse of the road company, he might volunteer some scrap of +information about her. + +Little Alec was found in the lobby, right enough, and properly primed in +the bar next door, and he described very vigorously, the disgust of +Block's brother-in-law over the lemon the astute partners had sold him; +for real money, too. But not a word did little Alec offer about Rose. + +It was Jimmy's practise to make two professional visits to New York +every year; one in the autumn, one in the spring, in order that he might +have interesting matters to write about when the local theatrical doings +had been exhausted. + +On his first trip after Rose's disappearance, he went faithfully to +every musical show in New York, and, as far as Rose was concerned, drew +blank. He'd have taken more active measures for finding her; would have +made inquiries of people he knew, had it not been for a sort of morbid +delicacy about interfering in a concern that not only was none of his, +but that was supremely the concern of Rodney Aldrich, his friend. + +But from his spring pilgrimage, he came back wearing a deep-lying and +contented smile, and a few days later, after a talk over the telephone +with Rodney, he headed a column of gossip about the theater, with the +following paragraph: + +"_Come On In_, as the latest of the New York revues is called, is much +like all the others. It contains the same procession of +specialty-mongers, the same cacophony of rag-time, the same gangway out +into the audience which refreshes tired business men with a thrilling, +worm's-eye view of dancing girls' knees _au naturel_. And up and down +this straight and narrow pathway of the chorus there is the customary +parade of the same haughty beauties of Broadway. Only in one item is +there a deviation from the usual formula: the costumes. For several +years past, the revues at this theater (the Columbian) have been +caparisoned with the decadent colors and bizarre designs of the exotic +Mr. Grenville Melton. I knew there had been a change for the better as +soon as I saw the first number, for these dresses have the stimulating +quality of a healthy and vigorous imagination, as well as a vivid +decorative value. They are exceedingly smart, of course, or else they +would never do for a Broadway revue, but they are also alive, while +those of Mr. Melton were invariably sickly. Curiously enough, the name +of the new costume designer has a special interest for Chicago. She is +Doris Dane, who participated in _The Girl Up-stairs_ at the Globe. Miss +Dane's stage experience here was brief, but nevertheless her striking +success in her new profession will probably cause the formation of a +large and enthusiastic 'I-knew-her-when' club." + +Jimmy expected to produce an effect with it. But what he did produce +exceeded his wildest anticipations. The thing came out in the three +o'clock edition, and before he left the office that afternoon (he stayed +a little late, it is true, and it wasn't his "At home" to press agents +either) he had received, over the telephone, six invitations to dinner; +three of them for that night. + +He declined the first two on the ground of an enormous press of work +incident to his fresh return from a fortnight in New York. But when +Violet called up and said, with a reference to a previous engagement +that was shamelessly fictitious: + +"Jimmy, you haven't forgotten you're dining with us to-night, have you? +It's just us, so you needn't dress," he answered: + +"Oh, no, I've got it down on my calendar all right. Seven-thirty?" + +Violet snickered and said: "You wait!--Or rather, don't wait. Make it +seven." + +Jimmy was glad to be let off that extra half-hour of waiting. He was +impatient for the encounter with Violet--a state of mind most rare with +him. He meant to wring all the pleasure out of it he could by way of +compensating himself for that other dinner when Violet had decided that +all Rodney's most intimate friends ought really to be told what Rose had +done, in order that they might be scrupulous enough in avoiding subjects +which he might take as a reference to his disgrace. + +Violet said, the moment he appeared in the drawing-room doorway, "John +made me swear not to let you tell me a word until he came in. He's +simply burbling. He's out in the pantry now mixing some extra-special +cocktails--with his own hands, you know--to celebrate the event. But +there's one thing he won't mind your telling me, and that's her address. +I'm simply perishing to write her a note and tell her how glad we are." + +Jimmy made a little gesture of regret. He'd have spoken too, but she +didn't give him time. + +"You don't mean to tell me," she cried, "that you didn't find out where +she lived while you were right there in New York!" + +John came in just then with the cocktails and Violet, turning to him +tragically, repeated, "He doesn't even know where she lives!" + +"Oh, I'm a boob, I know," said Jimmy. "Give me a cocktail. A telephone's +the driest thing in the world to talk into. But, as I told the other +five ..." + +Violet frowned as she echoed, "The other five--what?" + +Jimmy turned to John Williamson with a perfectly electric grin. + +"The other five of Rose Aldrich's friends--and yours," he said, "who +called me up this afternoon and invited me to dinner, and asked for her +address so that they could write her notes and tell her how glad they +were." + +John said, "Whoosh!" all but upset his tray and slammed it down on the +piano, in order to leave himself free to jubilate properly. With solemn +joy he ceremoniously shook hands with Jimmy. + +Violet stood looking at them thoughtfully. A little flush of color was +coming up into her face. + +"You two men," she said, "are trying to act as if I weren't in this; as +if I weren't just as glad as you are, and hadn't as good a right to be. +John here," this was to Jimmy, "has been gloating ever since he came +home with the paper. And you ... Did you mean me by that snippy little +thing you said about the 'I-knew-her-when' club? Oh, it was fair enough. +I'm glad you said it. Because some people we know have been downright +catty about her. But you both know perfectly well that I've stood up for +her ever since last fall when we came through New York." + +John grinned. "When you saw her," he pointed out, "riding down Fifth +Avenue in a taxi, in an expensive dress...." + +"It wasn't. I didn't see what she had on. I just saw that she +looked ..." + +"Successful," John interrupted. But, meeting her eye, he apologized +hastily and withdrew the word. His gale of spirits had blown him a +little too far. + +"I saw," said Violet with dignity, "that she looked busy and cheerful, +as if she knew, in her own mind, that she was all right. And I was glad +for her, and for us. Because you can say what you like, you can't do +anything with the people who have made mistakes and know it, and are +always on the defensive about them. When I saw she didn't feel like +that, that was enough for me. And," she fairly impaled John Williamson +now with her eye, "and you know it." + +It was an able summary of her public attitude since the encounter on +Fifth Avenue, and her look at her husband relegated any private +observations of hers at variance with it into the limbo, not of things +forgotten, but of things undone, unsaid, dissolved by the sheer force of +their unfitness to exist, into the breath that begot them. + +"You're quite right about it," said Jimmy. "We men are sentimentalists, +as long as things don't come home. But when they do, we're as +uncomfortable about penitents as anybody, and we give them as wide a +berth." + +"You're my friend, Jimmy," she said. "There's dinner! But you won't be +allowed to eat. You'll have to begin at the beginning and tell us all +about her! Though I don't see," she went on, "how you can know very +much more than you put in the paper, if you didn't even find out where +she lived." + +Jimmy, his effect produced, his long meditated vengeance completed by +the flare of color he'd seen come up in Violet's cheeks, settled down +seriously to the telling of his tale, stopping occasionally to bolt a +little food just before his plate was snatched away from him, but +otherwise without intermission. + +He'd suspected nothing about the costumes on that opening night of _Come +On In_, until a realization of how amazingly good they were, made him +search his program. The line "Costumes by Dane," had lighted up in his +mind a wild surmise of the truth, though he admitted it had seemed +almost too good to be true. Because the costumes were really wonderful. +He tried to tell them how wonderful they were, but Violet seemed to +regard this as a digression. She wanted facts. + +"Anyhow," he put in in confirmation, "there wasn't a single paper the +next day that didn't feature the costumes in speaking of the +performance. They were the one unqualified hit of the show." + +He cast about in his mind, he said, for some way of finding out who Dane +really was. And having learned that Galbraith was putting on the show at +the Casino, and having reflected that he was as likely to know about +Rose as anybody, he looked him up. + +"Galbraith, you know," he explained, "is the man who put on _The Girl +Up-stairs_ here at the Globe, winter before last." + +Galbraith proved a mine of information--no, not a mine, because you had +to dig to get things out of a mine. Galbraith was more like one of those +oil-wells that is technically known as a gusher. He simply spouted facts +about Rose and couldn't be stopped. She was his own discovery. He'd seen +her possibilities when she designed and executed those twelve costumes +for the sextette in _The Girl Up-stairs_. He'd brought her down to New +York to act as his assistant. She worked for Galbraith the greater part +of last season. Jimmy had never known of anybody having just that sort +of job before. Galbraith, busy with two or three productions at once, +had put over a lot of the work of conducting rehearsals on her +shoulders. He'd get a number started, having figured out the maneuvers +the chorus were to go through, the steps they'd use and so on, and then +Rose would actually take his place; would be in complete charge of the +rehearsal as the director's representative, while he was off doing +something else. + +It must have been an extraordinarily interesting job, Jimmy thought, and +evidently she'd got away with it, since Galbraith spoke of the loss of +her with unqualified regret. + +The costuming, last season, had been a side issue, at the beginning at +least, but she'd done part of the costumes for one of his productions, +and they were so strikingly successful that Abe Shuman had simply +snatched her away from him. + +"The funny thing is the way she does them," Jimmy said. "Everybody else +who designs costumes, just draws them; dinky little water-colored +plates, and the plates are sent out to a company like The Star Costume +Company, and they execute them. But Rose can't draw a bit. She got a +manikin--not an ordinary dressmaker's form, but a regular painter's +manikin with legs, and made her costumes on the thing; or at least cut +out a sort of pattern of them in cloth. But somehow or other, the +designing of them and the execution are more mixed up together by Rose's +method than by the orthodox one. She wanted to get some women in to sew +for her, and see the whole job through herself; deliver the costumes +complete, and get paid for them. But it seems that the Shumans, on the +side, owned The Star Company and raked off a big profit on the costumes +that way. I don't know all the details. I don't know that Galbraith did. +But, anyhow, the first thing anybody knew, Rose had financed herself. +She got one of those rich young bachelor women in New York to go into +the thing with her, and organized a company, and made Abe Shuman an +offer on all the costumes for _Come On In_. Galbraith thinks that Abe +Shuman thought she was sure to lose a lot of money on it and go broke +and that then he could put her to work at a salary, so he gave her the +job. + +"But she didn't lose. She evidently made a chunk out of it, and her +reputation at the same time." + +Violet was immensely thrilled by this recital. "Won't she be perfectly +wonderful," she exclaimed, "for the Junior League show, when she comes +back!" + +Jimmy found an enormous satisfaction in saying, "Oh, she'll be too +expensive for you. She's a regular robber, she says." + +"She _says_!" cried Violet. "Do you mean you've talked with her?" + +"Do you think I'd have come hack from New York without?" said Jimmy. +"Galbraith told me to drop in at the Casino that same afternoon. Some of +the costumes were to be tried on, and either 'Miss Dane' or some one of +her assistants would be there. Probably she herself, though he knew she +was dreadfully busy. + +"Well, and she came. I almost fell over her out there in the dark, +because of course the auditorium wasn't lighted at all. I'll admit she +rather took my breath, just glancing up at me, and peering to make out +who I was, and then her face going all alight with that smile of hers. I +didn't know what to call her, and was stammering over a mixture of Miss +Dane and Mrs. Aldrich, when she laughed and held out a hand to me and +said she didn't remember whether I'd ever called her Rose or not, but +she'd like to hear some one call her that, and wouldn't I begin." + +"And of course," said Violet, "you fell in love with her on the spot." + +"No, that wasn't the spot," said Jimmy. "It was where she stood on the +Globe stage, the opening night of _The Girl Up-stairs_, when she caught +my eye and gave a sort of little gasp, and then went on with her dance +as if nothing had happened that mattered to her. I saw then that she had +more sand than I knew was in the world." + +"And all your pretending that night you were here, then," said Violet, +"all that stuff about an amazing resemblance and a working +hypothesis ..." + +"All bunk," said Jimmy. "I'd have gone a lot further if there'd been any +use." + +"All right," said Violet. "I'll forgive you, if you'll tell me every +word she said." + +Jimmy explained that there hadn't been any chance to talk much. The +costumes began coming up on the stage just then (on chorus-girls, of +course) and she was up over the runway in a minute, talking them over +with Galbraith. "When she'd finished, she came down to me again for a +minute, but it was hardly longer than that really. She said she wished +she might see me again, but that she couldn't ask me to come to the +studio, because it was a perfect bedlam, and that there was no use +asking me to come to her apartment, because she was never there herself +these days, except for about seven hours a night of the hardest kind of +sleep. If I could stay around till her rush was over ... But then, of +course, she knew I couldn't." + +"And you never thought of asking her," Violet wailed, "where the +apartment was, so that the rest of us, if we were in New York, could +look her up, or write to her from here?" + +"No," said Jimmy. "I never thought of asking for her address. But it's +the easiest thing in the world to get it. Call up Rodney. He knows. +That's what I told the other five." + +"What makes you think he knows?" Violet demanded. "We thought he knew +about that other thing, but I don't believe he did." + +"Well, for one thing," said Jimmy, "when Rose was asking for news of all +of you, she said 'I hear from Rodney regularly. Only he doesn't tell me +much gossip.'" + +"_Hears_ from him!" gasped Violet. "_Regularly!_" She was staring at +Jimmy in a dazed sort of way. "Well, does she write to him? Has she made +it up with him? Is she coming back?" + +"I suppose you can just hear me asking her all those questions? +Casually, in the aisle of a theater, while she was getting ready for a +running jump into a taxi?" + +The color came up into Violet's face again. There was a maddening sort +of jubilant jocularity about these men, the looks and almost winks they +exchanged, the distinctly saucy quality of the things they said to her. + +"Of course," she said coolly, "if Rose had told me that she heard from +Rodney regularly, although he didn't send her much of the gossip, I +shouldn't have had to ask her those questions I'd have known from the +way she looked and the way her voice sounded, whether she was writing to +Rodney or not and whether she meant to come back to him or not; whether +she was ready to make it up if he was--all that. Any woman who knew her +at all would. Only a man, perfectly infatuated, grinning ... See if you +can't tell what she looked like and how she said it." + +Jimmy, meek again, attempted the task. + +"Well," he said, "she didn't look me in the eye and register deep +meanings or anything like that. I don't know where she looked. As far as +the inflection of her voice went, it was just as casual as if she'd been +telling me what she'd had for lunch. But the quality of her voice +just--richened up a bit, as if the words tasted good to her. And she +smiled just barely as if she knew I'd be staggered and didn't care a +damn. There you are! Now interpret unto me this dream, oh, Joseph." + +Violet's eyes were shining. "Why, it's as plain!" she said. "Can't you +see that she's just waiting for him; that she'll come like a shot the +minute he says the word? And there he is, eating his heart out for her, +and in his rage charging poor John perfectly terrific prices for his +legal services, when all he's got to do is to say 'please,' in order to +be happy." + +There was a little silence after that. Then: + +"Don't you suppose," she went on, "there's something we can do?" + +A supreme contentment always made John Williamson silent. He'd been +beaming at Jimmy all through the dinner, guarding him tenderly against +interruptions, with pantomimic instructions to the servants. If the +vague look in Jimmy's eyes suggested the want of a cigarette, John +nodded one up for him. He didn't ask a question. Evidently, between +Jimmy and Violet, the story was being elicited to his satisfaction. But +it was amazing how quickly that last words of his wife's snatched him +out of that beatific abstraction. + +"No, there is not," he said. + +The tone of his voice was a good deal more familiar to his fellow +directors in some of his enterprises, than it was to his wife. She +looked at him as if she couldn't quite believe she'd understood. + +"There is not what?" she asked. + +"There is not a thing that we can do or are going to do about Rose and +Rodney. We did something once before and made a mess of it. This time +we're going to let them alone. They're both of age and of sound mind, +and they've got each other's addresses. If they want to get together +again, they will." + + * * * * * + +"I've had a perfectly bang-up evening," said Jimmy to Violet a little +later when he took his leave. + +"I know you have," she said dryly. Then, with a change of manner, "But I +have, too, Jimmy. You believe that, don't you?" + +"Sure I do," he said, and shook hands with her all over again. Violet +was a good sort. + +Riding home in the elevated train, Jimmy Wallace hummed what he +conceived to be a tune. And when he did that ...! + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A BROKEN PARALLEL + + +None of the speculative explanations Rodney's friends advanced for his +having bought that precious solemn house of the McCreas, together with +all its rarified esthetic furniture, exactly covered the ground. He +didn't buy it in the expectation that Rose was coming back to live in +it, and still less with the even remote notion of finding a successor to +her. He hadn't bought it because it was a bargain. He had very little +idea whether it was a bargain or not. And if there was a grain of truth +in John Williamson's explanation, Rodney was only vaguely aware of it. + +He'd have said, if he'd set about formulating an explanation, that he +bought the house as a result of eliminating the alternatives to buying +it. Florence meant to sell it to somebody, and if he didn't buy it, he'd +have to move out. Rather disingenuously, he represented to himself that +his dislike of moving out sprang from the trouble that would be involved +in finding some other place to live in, furnishing it, reorganizing his +establishment. Really, he hadn't time for that. Frederica would have +done it for him in a minute, but he ignored that possibility. + +Down underneath these shallow practical considerations, lay the fact +that such a reorganization would have been a tacit acknowledgment of +defeat; not only an acknowledgment to the world, which he'd have liked +to pretend didn't matter much, but an acknowledgment of defeat to +himself. What he had been trying to do ever since his return from that +maddening talk with Rose in Dubuque, had been just to sit tight; to go +on living a day at a time; to take the future in as small doses as he +could manage. + +Had he been the sort of person who finds comfort in mottoes, he'd have +laid in a stock, such as, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"; +"Holdfast is the only dog"; "Don't cross your bridges until you come to +them." As the period between the night of his discovery of Rose on the +Globe stage and the day of his return from Dubuque receded, and as the +fierceness of the pain of it died away again (because such pains do die +away. They can't keep screwed up into an ecstasy of torment forever) the +part he'd played in the events of it, seemed to him less and less worthy +of the sort of man he'd always considered himself to be; a +self-controlled, self-disciplined adult. He'd acted for a while there, +with the savage egotism of a distracted boy; thrown his dignity to the +winds; made a holy show of himself. Well, that period was over at all +events. Whatever the future might confront him with, he could promise +himself, he thought, to keep his head. + +But for a while, he didn't want to be confronted with anything, let +alone to start anything; not until he could get his breath; not until he +had time to think everything out; discover, if possible, where the whole +miserable trouble had begun. He'd go back to the beginning, sometime, +and try to work it all out. It went, probably, a long way back of the +night when that hasty speech of his about not jeopardizing the +children's lives to gratify his wife's whims had set the match to her +resolution to leave him and the babies and live a life for herself. + +But, though he told himself every day that he must begin ordering his +old memories, analyzing them, in search of the clue, he didn't begin the +process. Spiritually, he just held himself rigidly still. He might have +compared himself to a man standing off a pack of wolves, knowing that +his slightest move would precipitate a rush upon him. Or, perhaps more +nearly, to a man just recovering consciousness after an accident, afraid +to stir lest the smallest movement might reveal more serious injuries +than he suspected. + +His mind had never worked so brilliantly as it was working now. The +problems involved in his clients' affairs were child's play to him. He +took them apart and put them together again with a careless, confident, +infallible perspicacity that amazed his colleagues and his opponents. +And, as Frank Crawford had pointed out, he took a savagely contemptuous +pleasure in making those clients pay through the nose. + +But he could look neither back at Rose, nor forward to her. He could +not, by any stretch of resolution, have nerved himself to the point of +giving up that house that had nearly all his memories of her associated +with it. There hadn't been a change of a single piece of furniture in it +since she went away. Her bedroom and her dressing-room were just as she +had left them. Her clothes were just as they had been left after the +packing of that small trunk. She might have been off spending a week-end +somewhere. + +The attitude couldn't be kept up forever, he knew. Some time or other +he'd have to cross the next bridge; come to some more definite +understanding with Rose than that inconclusive ridiculous scene there in +Dubuque had left him with. (_What_ a fool he had been that day!) There +were the twins coming along. For the present, their nurse (It wasn't +Mrs. Ruston. He'd taken the first reasonable excuse for supplanting +her.) and the pretty little snub-nosed nurse-maid Rose had liked, could +supply their wants well enough. But the time wasn't so far ahead when +they'd need a mother. What would he do then; let Rose have them half the +time and keep them half the time himself? He'd read a perfectly beastly +book once,--he couldn't remember the title of it--about a child who had +been brought up that way. But, at all events, he needn't do anything +yet. + +Meanwhile, it healed his lacerated pride to march along and keep the +routine going. It was with a perfectly immense relief that he snatched +at the chance to buy the McCrea house, and by so doing make the +permanency of his way of life a little more secure. He could keep what +he had, anyway. And he could show the world, and Rose, that he wasn't +the broken frantic creature he knew she'd seen, and suspected it had +glimpsed. John Williamson's explanation wasn't altogether wrong. + +Perhaps, had it been possible for Jimmy Wallace to tell him, just as he +told Violet and John Williamson, how Rose's voice "richened up as if +the words tasted good to her," when she mentioned the fact that she +heard from her husband "regularly but not much," he might have drawn the +same favorable augury from it that Violet did. But from her answering +communications, though he drew comfort, he got no hope. + +It was Rose herself who began this correspondence, within a month of her +arrival in New York. And Rodney, when he finished reading her letter, +tore it to pieces and flung it into the fire, in a transport of +disappointment and anger. The sight of her writing on the envelope had +brought his heart into his mouth, of course. And when his shaking +fingers had got it open and he saw that it indeed contained a letter +from her, beginning "Dear Rodney," and signed "Rose," the wild surge of +hope that swept over him actually turned him giddy, so that it was two +or three minutes before he could read it. + +But the thing ran like another instalment of the talk they had had in +Dubuque. She knew he had been distressed over the shabbiness of her +surroundings, knocking about with that road company, and she was afraid +that in spite of the assurance she had then given him, he was still +worried about her. She was sure he'd be glad to know that she'd quit the +stage for good, as an active performer on it, at least; that she was +earning an excellent salary, fifty dollars a week, doing a highly +congenial kind of work that had good prospects of advancement in it. She +had a very comfortable little apartment (she gave him the address of it) +and was living in a way that--she had written "even Harriet," but +scratched this out--Frederica, for example, would consider entirely +respectable. So he needn't feel another moment's anxiety about her. +She'd have written sooner, but had wanted to get fully settled in her +new job and be sure she was going to be able to keep it, in order that +she might have something definitely reassuring to tell him. And she +hoped he and the babies were well. + +It was not until hours afterward, when the letter was an +indistinguishable fluff of white ash in the fireplace, that it occurred +to him that it had no satirical intent whatever and that the purpose of +it had been, quite simply, what it had pretended to be; namely, to +reassure him and put an end to his anxieties. + +As he had read it in the revulsion from that literally sickening hope of +his, it had seemed about the most mordant piece of irony that had ever +been launched against him. The assumption of it had seemed to be that he +was the most pitiable snob in the world; that all he'd cared for had +been that she'd disgraced him by going on the stage. He'd be glad to +know that she was once more "respectable." + +Well--this was the question which, as I said, he did not ask himself +until hours later--wasn't she justified in believing that? Certainly +that night, in her little room on North Clark Street, he'd given her +reason enough for thinking so. But later, in Dubuque--well, hadn't he +quoted Harriet to her? Hadn't he offered to help her as a favor to +himself, because he couldn't endure it that she should live like this? +Had he exhibited anything to her at all in their two encounters, but an +uncontrolled animal lust and a perfectly contemptible vanity? + +He bitterly regretted having destroyed the letter. But the tone of it, +he was sure, except for that well merited jibe about Harriet, which had +been erased, was kindly. Yet he had acted once more, like a spoiled +child about it. + +Could he write and thank her? In Dubuque she had asked him not to come +back. Did that prohibition cover writing? Her letter did not explicitly +revoke it. She asked him no questions. But he remembered now a +post-script, which, at the time of reading, he'd taken merely as a final +barb of satire. "I am still Doris Dane down here, of course," it had +read. If she hadn't meant that for a sneering assurance that his +precious name wasn't being taken in vain--and had he ever heard Rose +sneer at anybody?--what could have been the purpose of it except to make +sure that a letter from him wouldn't come addressed "Rose Aldrich," and +so fail to be delivered to her. + +It was due only to luck that, in his first disappointment, he hadn't +destroyed her address with the letter. But she had duplicated it on the +flap of the envelope, and the envelope was not thrown in the fire. + +He spent hours composing a reply. And the thing he finally sent off, +once it was committed to the post, seemed quite the worst of all his +efforts. His impulse was to send another on the heels of it. But he +waited a week, then wrote again. And this time, the stiffness of +self-consciousness was not quite so paralyzing. He managed to give her a +little real information about the condition of the twins and the +household. About himself, he stated that he was well, though busier than +he liked to be. + +He experienced a very vague, faint satisfaction, two days later, over +the reflection that this letter was in her hands, and he came presently +to the audacious resolution that until she forbade him, he would go on +writing to her every week. She'd see that she needn't answer and it +would no doubt add something--how much he didn't dare to try to +estimate--to her happiness, to know that all was going well in the home +that she had left. + +She began pretty soon to answer these letters with stiff little notes, +strictly limited to a bulletin of her own activities and a grateful +acknowledgment of the latest one he had sent her. Invariably, every +Tuesday morning, one of these notes arrived. And this state of things +continued, unchanged, for months. + +He experienced a bewildering mixture of emotions over these letters of +hers. They drove him, sometimes, into outbursts of petulant rage. Often +the knowledge that one of them was to be expected in the morning, +delivered him up, against all the resistance he could make, to a flood +of tormenting memories of her. And across the mood the letter would find +him in, its cool little commonplaces would sting like the cut of a whip. + +The mere facts her letters recounted aroused contradictory emotions in +him, too. They all spelled success and assurance, and almost from week +to week they marked advancement. The first effect of this was always to +make his heart sink; to make her seem farther away from him; to make the +possibility of any future need of him that would give him his +opportunity, seem more and more remote. The other feeling, whose glow he +was never conscious of till later--a feeling so surprising and +irrational that he could hardly call it by name, was pride. What in +God's name had he to be proud of? Was she a possession of his? Could he +claim any credit for her success? But the glow persisted in spite of +these questions. + +His satisfaction in his own letters to her was less mixed. They must, he +thought, gradually be restoring in her mind, the image of himself as a +man who, as Harriet said, could take his medicine without making faces; +who could endure pain and punishment without howling about it. Perhaps, +in time, those letters would obliterate the memory of the vain beast +he'd been that night.... + +If Rodney had done an unthinkable thing; if he had kept copies of his +letters to Rose, along with her answers, in a chronological file the way +Miss Beach kept his business correspondence, he would have made the +discovery that the stiffness of them had gradually worn away and that +they were now a good deal more than mere _pro forma_ bulletins. There +had crept into them, so subtly and so gently that between one of them +and the next no striking difference was to be observed, a friendliness, +quite cool, but wonderfully firm. She was frankly jubilant over the +success of her costumes in _Come On In_ and she enclosed with her letter +a complete set of newspaper reviews of the piece. They reached him a day +or two before Jimmy Wallace telephoned, and this fact perhaps had +something to do with the gruff good humor with which he told Jimmy to go +as far as he liked in his newspaper paragraph. + +It was a week later that she wrote: + +"I met James Randolph coming up Broadway yesterday afternoon, about five +o'clock. I had a spare half-hour and he said he had nothing else but +spare half-hours; that was what he'd come to New York for. So we turned +into the Knickerbocker and had tea. He's changed, somehow, since I saw +him last; as brilliant as ever, but rather--lurid. Do you suppose things +are going badly between him and Eleanor? I'd hate to think that, but I +shouldn't be surprised. He spoke of calling me up again, but this +morning, instead, I got a note from him saying he was going back to +Chicago. He told me he hadn't seen you forever. Why don't you drop in on +him?" + + * * * * * + +It was quite true that Rodney had seen very little of the Randolphs +since Rose went away. His liking for James had always been an affair of +the intelligence. The doctor's mind, with its powers of dissecting and +coordinating the phenomena of every-day life, its luminous flashes, its +readiness to go all the way through to the most startling conclusions, +had always so stimulated and attracted his own, that he'd never stopped +to ask whether or not he liked the rest of the man that lay below the +intelligence. + +When it came to confronting his friends, in the knowledge that they knew +that Rose had left him for the Globe chorus, he found that James +Randolph was one he didn't care to face. He knew too damned much. He'd +be too infernally curious; too full of surmises, eager for experiments. + +The Rodney of a year before, intact, unscarred, without, he'd have said, +a joint in his harness, could afford to enjoy with no more than a +deprecatory grin, the doctor's outrageous and remorseless way of pinning +out on his mental dissecting board, anything that came his way. The +Rodney who came back from Dubuque couldn't grin. He knew too much of the +intimate agony that produced those interesting lesions and +abnormalities. Even in the security, if it could have been had, that his +own situation wouldn't be scientifically dissected and discussed, he'd +still have wanted to keep away from James Randolph. + +But Rose's letter put a different face on the matter. He felt perfectly +sure that Randolph hadn't been analyzing her during that spare half-hour +at the Knickerbocker. The shoe, it appeared, had been on the other foot. +The fact that she'd put him, partly at least, in possession of what she +had observed and what she guessed, gave him a sort of shield against the +doctor. He told himself that his principal reason for going was to get a +little bit more information about Rose than her letters provided him +with. But the anticipation he dwelt on with the greatest pleasure, +really, was of saying, "Oh, yes. Rose wrote that she'd seen you." + +So one evening, after keeping up the pretense through his solitary +dinner and the cigar that followed it, that he meant presently to go up +to his study and correct galley proofs on an enormous brief, he slipped +out about nine o'clock, and walked around to the Randolphs' new house. + +This latest venture of Eleanor's had attracted a good deal of comment +among her friends. Somebody called it, with a rather cruel _double +entendre_, Bertie Willis' last word. In the obvious sense of the phrase, +this was true. Eleanor had given him a free hand, and he had gone his +limit. He'd been working slowly backward from Jacobean, through Tudor. +But this thing was perfect Perpendicular. You could, as John Williamson +said, kid yourself into the notion, when you walked under the +keel-shaped arch to their main doorway, that you were going to church. +And the style was carried out with inexorable rigor, down to the most +minute details. But since everybody knew that the latest thing, the +inevitably coming thing, was the pure unadulterated ugliness of +Georgian, a style that Bertie had opposed venomously (because he +couldn't build it, the uncharitable said); and because even Bertie's +carefully preserved youth was felt to have gone a little stale and it +was no longer fashionable to consider his charms irresistible, the +phrase, "his last word," was instantly understood, as I said, to have a +secondary sense. + +No one, of course, could tell Eleanor anything about what the coming +styles were going to be, in architecture or anything else. She was one +of these persons with simply a sixth sense for fashions, and her having +gone to Bertie Willis, instead of to young Mellish of the historic New +York firm, McCleod, Hill, Stone & Black, who was doing such delightfully +hideous things in Georgian, caused, among her friends, a good deal of +comment. Her explanation that medicine was a medieval profession and +that she had to have a medieval house to go with James, was felt to be a +mere evasion. + +It was recognized that one had to flirt with Bertie while he was +building her house. And in the days when everybody else had been doing +it, too, it didn't matter. But now that the celebrated _hareem_ had +ceased to exist, it was felt that one would do well to be a little +careful; at least, to put a more or less summary end to the flirtation +when the house was finished. But Eleanor hadn't done that. She was +playing with him more exclusively than ever. + +Rodney hadn't been in the house before, and he reflected, as he stood at +the door, after ringing the bell, that his own house was quite meek and +conventional alongside this. The grin that this consideration afforded +him, was still on his lips when, a servant having opened the door, he +found himself face to face with the architect. + +Bertie, top-coated and hat in hand, was waiting for Eleanor, who was +coming down the stairs followed by a maid with her carriage coat. He +returned Rodney's nod pretty stiffly, as was natural enough, since +Rodney's grin had distinctly brightened up at sight of him. + +Eleanor said, rather negligently, "Hello, Rod. We're just dashing off to +the Palace to see a perfectly exquisite little dancer Bertie's +discovered down there. She comes on at half past nine, so we've got to +fly. Want to come?" + +"No," Rodney said. "I came over to see Jim. Is he at home?" + +The maid was holding out the coat for Eleanor's arms, Bertie was fussing +around ineffectually, hooking his stick over his left arm to give him a +free right hand to do something with, he didn't quite know what. But +Eleanor, at Rodney's question, just stood for a second quite still. She +wasn't looking at anybody, but the expression in her eyes was sullen. + +"Yes, he's at home," she said at last. + +"Busy, I suppose;" said Rodney. Her inflection had dictated this reply. + +"Yes, he's busy," she repeated absently and in a tone still more coldly +hostile, though Rodney perceived that the hostility was not meant for +him. And so plainly did the tone and the look and the arrested attitude +proclaim that she was following out a train of thought and hadn't as yet +got to the end of it, that he stood as still as she was. + +Bertie, irreproachably correct as always, settled his shoulders inside +his coat, and took his stick in his right hand again. Eleanor now looked +around at him. + +"Wait two minutes," she said, "if you don't mind." Then, to Rodney, +"Come along." And she led the way up the lustrous, velvety teakwood +stair. + +He followed her. But arrived at the drawing-room floor, he protested. + +"Look here!" he said. "If Jim's busy ..." + +"You've never been in here before, have you?" she asked. "How's Rose? +Jim saw her, you know, in New York." + +"Yes," he said. "Rose wrote to me she'd seen him, and I thought I'd drop +around for a chat. But if he's busy ..." + +"Oh, don't be _too_ dense, Rodney!" she said. "A man has to be busy when +he's known to be in the house and won't entertain his wife's guests. Go +up one flight more and to the door that corresponds to that one. It +won't do you any good to knock. He'll either not answer or else tell you +to go to hell. Just sing out who you are and go right in." + +She gave him a nod and a hard little smile, and went down-stairs again +to Bertie. + +Rodney stood where she had left him, in two minds whether to carry out +her instructions or to wait until he heard her and Bertie go out and +then quietly follow them. It was a beastly situation, dragged into a +family quarrel like that; forced to commit an intrusion that was so +plainly labeled in advance. And on the other hand, it was a decidedly +interesting situation. If Eleanor was as reckless as that with facts +most women keep to themselves as long as possible, what would her +outspoken husband be. But if he were full of his grievances, he probably +wouldn't talk about Rose. + +What really determined his action was Eleanor's discovery, or pretended +discovery down in the hall below, that her gloves weren't what she +wanted and her instructions to the maid to go up and get her a fresh +pair. It would be too ridiculous to be caught there--lurking. + +So he mounted the next flight, found the door Eleanor had indicated, +knocked smartly on it, and to forestall his getting told to go to hell, +sang out at the same time, "This is Rodney Aldrich. May I come in?" + +"Come in, of course," Randolph called. "I'm glad to see you," he added, +coming to meet his guest. "But do you mind telling me how the devil you +got in here? Some poor wretch will lose his job, you know, if Eleanor +finds out about this. When I'm in this room, sacred to reflection and +research, it's a first-class crime to let me be disturbed." + +It didn't need his sardonic grin to point the satire of his words. The +way he had uttered "sacred to reflection and research," was positively +savage. + +Rodney said curtly, "Eleanor sent me up herself. I didn't much want to +come, to tell the truth, when I heard you were busy." + +"Eleanor!" her husband repeated. "I thought she'd gone out--with her +poodle." + +Rodney said, with unconcealed distaste, "They were on the point of going +out when I came in. That's how Eleanor happened to see me." + +With a visible effort, Randolph recovered a more normal manner. "I'm +glad it happened that way," he said. "Get yourself a drink. You'll find +anything you want over there, I guess, and something to smoke; then +we'll sit down and have an old-fashioned talk." + +The source of drinks he indicated was a well-stocked cellarette at the +other side of the room. But Rodney's eye fell first on a decanter and +siphon on the table, within reach of the chair Randolph had been sitting +in. His host's glance followed his. + +"This is Bourbon I've got over here," he added. "I suppose you prefer +Scotch." + +"I don't believe I want anything more to drink just now," Rodney said. +And as he turned to the smoking table to get a cigar, Randolph allowed +himself another sardonic grin. + +The preliminaries were gone through rather elaborately; chairs drawn up +and adjusted, ash-trays put within reach; cigars got going +satisfactorily. But the talk they were supposed to prepare the way for +didn't at once begin. + +Randolph took another stiffish drink and settled back into a dull +sullen abstraction. + +Rodney wanted to say, "I hear from Rose you had a little visit with her +in New York." But, with his host's mood what it was, he shrank from +introducing that topic. Finally, for the sake of saying something, he +remarked: + +"This is a wonderful room, isn't it?" + +Randolph roused himself. "Never been in here before?" he asked. + +"I've never been in the house before, I'm ashamed to say." + +"What!" Randolph cried. "My God! Well, then, come along." + +Rodney resisted a little. He was comfortable. They could look over the +house later. But Randolph wouldn't listen. + +"That's the first thing to do," he insisted. "Indispensable preliminary. +You can't enjoy the opera without a libretto. Come along." + +It was a remarkable house. Before the first fifteen minutes of their +inspection were over, Rodney had come to the conclusion that though +Bertie Willis might be an ass, was indeed an indisputable ass, he was no +fool. It was almost uncannily clever, the way all the latest devices for +modern comfort wore, so demurely, the mask of a perfectly consistent +medievalism. And there were some effects that were really magnificent. +The view of the drawing-room, for instance, from the recessed dais at +the far end of it, where the grand piano stood--a piano that contrived +to look as if it might have been played upon by the second wife of Henry +VIII,--down toward the magnificent stone chimney at the other; the +octagonal dining-room with the mysterious audacity of its lighting; the +kitchen with its flag floor (only they were not flags, but an artful +linoleum), its great wrought-iron chains and hoods beneath which all the +cooking was done--by electricity. + +Randolph took him over the whole thing from bottom to top. Through it +all, he kept up the glib patter of a showman; the ironic intent of it +becoming more and more marked all the while. + +They brought up at last in the study they had started from. + +"Oh, but wait a moment!" Randolph said. "Here's two more rooms for you +to see." + +The first one explained its purpose at a glance, with a desk and +typewriter, and filing cabinets around the walls. + +"Rubber floor," Randolph pointed out, "felt ceiling; absolutely +sound-proof. Here's where my stenographer sits all day, ready,--like a +fireman. And this," he concluded, leading the way to the other room, "is +the holy of holies." + +It had a rubber floor, too, and Rodney supposed, a felt ceiling. But its +only furniture was one straight-back chair and a canvas cot. + +"Sound-proof too," said Randolph. "But sounding-boards or something in +all the walls. I press this button, start a dictaphone, and talk in any +direction, anywhere. It's all taken down. Here's where I'm supposed to +think, make discoveries, and things. No distractions. One hundred per +cent. efficient. My God! I tried it for a while. Felt like a fool actor +in a Belasco play. Do you remember? The one with the laboratory and the +doctor?" + +They went back into the study. + +"Clever beasts, though--poodles," he remarked, as he nodded Rodney to +his chair and poured himself another drink. "Learn their tricks very +nicely. But good Heavens, Aldrich, think of him as a man! Think what our +American married women are up against, when they want somebody to play +off against their husbands and have to fall back on tired little beasts +like that. In all the older countries there are plenty of men, real men +who've got something, that a married woman can fall back on. But think +of a woman of Eleanor's attractions having to take up a thing like that. +There's nothing else for her. Would _you_ come around and hold her hand +and make love to her, or any other man like you? Not once in a thousand +times. Eleanor doesn't mean anything. She's trying to make me jealous. +That's her newest experiment. But it's downright pitiful, I say." + +Rodney got up out of his chair. It wasn't a possible conversation. + +"I'll be running along, I think," he said. "I've a lot of proof to +correct to-night, and you've got work of your own, I expect." + +"Sit down again," said Randolph sharply. "I'm just getting drunk. But +that can wait. I'm going to talk. I've got to talk. And if you go, I +swear I'll call up Eleanor's butler and talk to him. You'll keep it to +yourself, anyway." + +He added, as Rodney hesitated, "I want to tell you about Rose. I saw her +in New York, you know." + +Rodney sat down again. "Yes," he said, "so she wrote. Tell me how she +looked. She's been working tremendously hard, and I'm a little afraid +she's overdoing it." + +"She looks," Randolph said very deliberately, "a thousand years old." He +laughed at the sharp contraction of Rodney's brows. "Oh, not like that! +She's as beautiful as ever. More. Facial planes just a hair's breadth +more defined perhaps--a bit more of what that painter Burton calls edge. +But not a line, not a mark. Her skin's still got that bloom on it, and +she still flushes up when she smiles. She's lost five pounds, perhaps, +but that's just condition. And vitality! My God!--But a thousand years +old just the same." + +"I'd like to know what you mean by that," said Rodney. He added, "if you +mean anything," but the words were unspoken. + +Randolph did mean something. + +"Why, look here," he said. "You know what a kid she was when you married +her. Schoolgirl! I used to tell her things and she'd listen, all +eyes--holding her breath! Until I felt almost as wise as she thought I +was. She was always game, even then. If she started a thing, she saw it +through. If she said, 'Tell it to me straight,' why she took it, +whatever it might be, standing up. She wasn't afraid of anything. +Courage of innocence. Because she didn't know. + +"Well, she's courageous now, because she knows. She's been through it +all and beaten it all, and she knows she can beat it again. She +understands--I tell you--everything. + +"Why, look here! We all but ran into each other on the corner, there, of +Broadway and Forty-second Street; shook hands, said howdy-do. How long +was I here for? Was Eleanor with me? And so on. If I had a spare +half-hour, would I come in and have tea with her at the Knickerbocker? +She'd nodded at two or three passing people while we stood there. And +then somebody said, 'Hello, Dane,' and stopped. A miserable, shabby, +shivering little painted thing. Rose said, 'Hello,' and asked how she +was getting along. Was she working now? She said no; did Rose know of +anything? Rose said, 'Give me your address and if I can find anything, +I'll let you know.' The horrible little beast told where she lived and +went away. Rose didn't say anything to me, except that she was somebody +who'd been out in a road company with her. But there was a look in her +eyes ...! Oh, she knew--everything. Knew what that kid was headed for. +Knew there was nothing to be done about it. She had no flutters about +it, didn't pull a long face, didn't, as I told you, say a word. But +there was a look in her eyes, behind her eyes, somehow, that understood +and _faced_--God!--everything. And then we went in and had our tea. + +"I had a thousand curiosities about her. I'd have found out anything I +could. But it was she who did the finding out. Beyond inquiring about +you, how lately I'd seen you, and so on, she hardly asked a question; +talked about indifferent things: New York, the theaters, how we passed +the time out here, I don't know what. But pretty soon I saw that she +understood me, saw right into me like through an open window into a +lighted room. As easily as that. She knew what was the matter with me; +knew what I'd made of myself. And by God, Aldrich, she didn't even +despise me! + +"I came back here to kick this damned thing to pieces, give myself a +fresh start. And when I got here, I hadn't the sand. I get drunk +instead." + +He poured himself another long drink and sipped it slowly. "Everybody +knows," he said at last, "that prostitutes almost invariably take to +drugs or drink. But I know why they do." + +That remark stung Rodney out of his long silence. During the whole of +Randolph's recital of his encounter with Rose, he'd never once lifted +his eyes from the gray ash of his cigar, and the violet filament of +smoke that arose from it. He didn't want to look at Randolph, nor think +about him. Just wanted to remember every word he said, so that he could +carry the picture away intact. Now that the picture was finished, he +wanted to get out of that room, with it; out into the dark and +loneliness of the streets, where he could walk and think. + +There was something peculiarly horrifying to him in the exhibition +Randolph was making of himself. He'd never in his life taken a drink, +except convivially, and then he took as little as would pass muster. +He'd always found it hard to be sensibly tolerant of the things men said +and did in liquor, even when their condition had overtaken them +unawares. Going off alone and deliberately fuddling one's self as a +means of escaping unpleasant realities, struck him as an act of the +basest cowardice. Whether Randolph's revelation of himself were true or +distorted by alcohol, didn't seem much to matter. But for that picture +of Rose, he'd have gone long ago and left the man to his bemused +reflections. Only ... + +He'd said that Rose understood everything and didn't despise him. A +drunken fancy likely enough. She had seen something though. Her letter +proved that. And having seen it, she'd asked him to drop in on the +doctor for a visit. Did she mean she wanted him to try to help? + +He tried, though not very successfully, to conceal his violent disrelish +of the task, when he said: + +"Look here, Jim! What the devil is the matter with you? Are you sober +enough to tell me?" + +Randolph put down his glass. "I have told you," he said. "It's a thing +that can be told in one word. I'm a prostitute. I'm Eleanor's kept man. +Well kept, oh, yes. Beautifully kept. I'm nothing in God's world but a +possession of hers! A trophy of sorts, an ornament. I'm something she's +made. I have a hell of a big practise. I'm the most fashionable doctor +in Chicago. They come here, the women, damn them, in shoals. That's +Eleanor's doing. I'm a faker, a fraud, a damned actor. I pose for them. +I play up. I give them what they want. And that's her doing. They go +silly about me; fancy they're in love with me. That's what she wants +them to do. It increases my value for her as a possession. + +"I haven't done a lick of honest work in the last year. I can't work. +She won't let me work. She--smothers me. Wherever I turn, there she is, +smoothing things out, trying to making it easy, trying to anticipate my +wants. I've only one want. That's to be let alone. She can't do that. +She's insatiable. She can't help it. There's something drives her on so +that she never can feel sure that she possesses me completely enough. +There's always something more she's trying to get, and I'm always trying +to keep something away from her, and failing. + +"And why? Do you want to know why, Aldrich? That's the cream of the +thing. Because we're so damnably in love with each other. She wants me +to live on her love. To have nothing else to live on. Do you know why +she won't have any children? Because she's jealous of them. Afraid +they'd get between us. She tries to make me jealous with that poodle of +hers--and she succeeds. With that! I'd like to wring his neck. + +"Do you want to know what my notion of Heaven is? It would be to go off +alone, with one suit of clothes in a handbag, oh, and fifty or a hundred +dollars in my pocket--I wouldn't mind that; I don't want to be a +tramp--to some mining town, or mill town, or slum, where I could start a +general practise; where the things I'd get would be accident cases, +confinement cases; real things, urgent things, that night and day are +all alike to. I'd like to start again and be poor; get this stink of +easy money out of my nostrils. I'd like to see if I could make good on +my own; have something I could look at and say, 'That's mine. I did +that. I had to sweat for it.' + +"I've been thinking about that for two years. It makes quite a +fancy-picture. There are a million details I can fill into it. A rotten +little office over a drug-store somewhere; people coming in with real +ills, and I curing them up and charging them a dollar, and sending them +away happy. I smoke a pipe because I can't afford cigars; get my meals +at lunch-counters. I sit up here--in this room--and think about it. + +"I came back from New York, after that look at Rose, meaning to do it; +meaning to talk it out with Eleanor and tell her why, and then go. +Well, I talked. Talk's cheap. But I didn't go. I'll never go. I'll go on +getting softer and more of a fake; more dependent. And Eleanor will go +on eating me up, until the last thing in me that's me myself, is gone. +And then, some day, she'll look at me and see that I'm nothing. That I +have nothing left to love her with." + +Then, with suddenly thickened speech (an affectation, perhaps) he looked +up at Rodney and demanded: + +"What the hell are you looking so s-solemn about? Can't you take a joke? +Come along and have another drink. The night's young." + +"No," Rodney said, "I'm going. And you'd better get to bed." + +"A couple more drinks," Randolph said, "to put the cap on a jolly +evening. Always get drunk th-thoroughly. Then in the morning, you wake +up a wiser man. Wise enough to forget what a damned fool you've been. +You don't want to forget that, Aldrich. You've been drunk and you've +talked like a damned fool. And I've been drunk and I've talked like a +damned fool. But we'll both be wiser in the morning." + +Rodney walked home that night like a man dazed. The vividness of one +blazing idea blinded him. The thing that Randolph had seen and lacked +the courage to do; the thing Rodney despised him for a coward for having +failed to do, that thing Rose had done. Line by line, the parallel +presented itself to him, as the design comes through in a half-developed +photographic plate. + +Without knowing it, yielding to a blind, unscrutinized instinct, he'd +wanted Rose to live on his love. He'd tried to smooth things out for +her, anticipate her wants. He'd wanted her soft, helpless, dependent. As +a trophy? That was what Randolph had said. Had he been as bad as that? +From what other desire of his than that could have come the sting of +exasperation he'd always felt when she'd urged him to let her work for +him; help him to economize, dust and make beds, so that he could go on +writing his book? She'd seen, even then, something he'd been blind +to--something he'd blinded himself to; that love, by itself, was not +enough. That it could poison, as well as feed. + +And, seeing, she had the courage ... He pressed his hands against his +eyes. + +When there could be friendship as well as love between them, she said, +she'd come back. Would she come back now, even for his friendship? He +doubted it. Dared not hope. There came up before him that face of frozen +agony that had confronted him in the room on Clark Street, and he +remembered what she'd said then--with a shudder--about it all ending +"like this." Ending! + +His love had played her false; had tried, instinctively, to smother her, +and defeated at that, had outraged and tortured her. She couldn't +possibly look at it any way but that. And now that she was free, +self-discovered, victorious, was it likely she would submit to its blind +caprices again? The thing Randolph had said was his notion of Heaven, +she'd triumphantly attained. Wouldn't it be her notion of Heaven too? + +But she had won, among the rest of her spoils of victory, the thing she +had originally set out to get. His friendship and respect. Friendship, +he remembered her saying, was a thing you had to earn. When you'd earned +it, it couldn't be withheld from you. Well, it was right she should be +told that; made to understand it to the full. He couldn't ask her to +come back to him. But she must know that her respect was as necessary +now to him, as she'd once said his was to her. He must tell her that. He +must see her and tell her that. + +He stopped abruptly in his walk. His bones, as the Psalmist said, turned +to water. How should he confront that gaze of hers, which knew so much +and understood so deeply--he with the memory of his two last ignominious +encounters with her, behind him? + + + + +CHAPTER III + +FRIENDS + + +Except for the vacuum where the core and heart of it all ought to have +been, Rose's life in New York during the year that put her on the high +road to success as a designer of costumes for the theater, was a good +life, broadening, stimulating, seasoning. It rested, to begin with, on a +foundation of adequate material comfort which the unwonted physical +privations of the six months that preceded it--the room on Clark Street, +the nightmare tour on the road, and even the little back room in Miss +Gibbons' apartment over the drug-store in Centropolis--made seem like +positive luxury. + +After a preliminary fortnight in a little hotel off Washington Square, +which she had heard Jane Lake speak of once as a possible place for a +respectable young woman of modest means to live in, she found an +apartment in Thirteenth Street, not far west of Sixth Avenue. It was in +a quiet block of old private residences. But this building was clean and +new, with plenty of white tile and modern plumbing, and an elevator. Her +apartment had two rooms in it, one of them really spacious to poor Rose +after what she'd been taking for granted lately, besides a nice white +bathroom and a kitchenette. She paid thirty-seven dollars a month for +it, and five dollars a month for a share in a charwoman who came in +every day and made her bed and washed up dishes. + +The extensiveness of this domestic establishment frightened her a little +at first. But she reassured herself with the reflection that under the +rule Gertrude Morse had quoted to her, one week's pay for one month's +rent, she still had a comfortable margin. She furnished it a bit at a +time, with articles chosen in the order of their indispensability, and +she went on, during the summer, to buy some things which were not +indispensable at all. But not very many. Like most persons with a highly +specialized creative talent for one form of beauty (in her case this was +clothes) she was more or less indifferent about others. Witness how +little interest she had taken in the labored beauties of Florence +McCrea's house, even in the unthinking days before she had begun +worrying about the expense of that establishment. Her indifference had +always made Portia boil. Also it may be noted, that Florence McCrea +herself, always went about looking a perfect frump. + +So that, by the time Rose's apartment was furnished to the point of +adequate comfort and decency, she took it for granted and stopped there. +For her, the temptations of old brass, mezzo-tints, and Italian +majolica--Fourth Avenue generally--simply did not exist. + +She bought real china to eat her breakfasts out of, and the occasional +suppers she had at home. She had had enough of thick cups and plates in +the last six months to last her the rest of her life. And it is probable +that she ate up, literally, the margin she had under Gertrude Morse's +rule, in somewhat better restaurants than she need have patronized. + +She did save money though, and put it away in a safe bank. But she never +saved quite so much as she was always meaning to, and she carried along, +for months after she went to work for Galbraith, an almost guilty sense +of luxury. In spite of the fact that she was working very hard and of +the further fact that her hours of labor were largely coincident with +the leisure hours of other people, she made a good many friends. The +first of these was Gertrude Morse, and it was through her, directly or +indirectly, that she acquired the others. + +Gertrude was Abe Shuman's confidential secretary and you can get a +fairly good working notion of her by conceiving the type of person +likely to be found in the borderland of theatrical enterprises, and +then, in all respects, taking the exact antithesis of it. She was a +brisk, prim-mannered, snub-nosed little thing, who wore her hair brushed +down as flat as possible and showed an affection for mannish clothes. +She had a level head, a keen and rather biting wit, which had the +effect of making her constant acts of kindness always unexpected; and +an education which, in her surroundings, seemed almost fantastic. She +was a Radcliff Master of Arts. + +Every one who had any dealings with Abe Shuman perforce knew Gertrude, +and Rose got acquainted with her the first day. Galbraith introduced +them in Shuman's office, and Rose found herself being investigated by a +bright, penetrating and decidedly complex look which she +interpreted--pretty accurately as she found out later--as saying, "Well, +you're about what I expected; ornamental and enthusiastic; just what an +otherwise sane and successful man of fifty would pick out for an +'assistant.' Aren't they just children at that age! But you're welcome. +They deserve it. Good luck to you!" + +But when Rose returned the look with a comprehending smile which said +good-naturedly, "All right! You wait and see," Gertrude's expression +altered into a frankly questioning frown. Two or three days later she +dropped in at a rehearsal, ostensibly with a message from Shuman to +Galbraith. He was on the point of leaving and had turned over the +rehearsal to Rose. Gertrude, when he had gone, settled down comfortably +in the back of the auditorium and watched through a solid hour, +obviously under instructions from Abe to bring back a report as to +whether Galbraith's infatuation should be tolerated or suppressed. At +the end of the hour, during a brief lull in the rehearsal, she came down +the aisle and stopped beside Rose who still had her eye on the stage. + +"I apologize," she said. + +Rose grinned around at her. It was not necessary to ask what for. "Much +obliged," she said. + +"I didn't know that a woman could do that," Gertrude went on. "Didn't +think she'd have the--drive. But you've got it, all right. I don't +suppose you've got an idea when you'll be free for lunch?" + +Rose hadn't, but it was not many days before they got together for that +meal at a business woman's club down on Fortieth Street, and from then +on their acquaintance progressed rapidly. She helped Rose find the +little apartment on Thirteenth Street, entertaining her during the +search with a highly instructive disquisition on the social topography +of New York, and on the following Sunday she ran in, she said, to see if +she could help her get settled. There was no settling to do, but she sat +down and talked--most of the time--for an hour or so. It was a theory of +Gertrude's that the way to find out about people was to talk to them. + +"You can't tell much," she used to say, "by the things people say to +you. Perhaps they've just heard somebody else say them. Maybe they've +got a repertory that it will take you weeks to get to the end of. Or +they may not be able to show you at all what's really inside them. But +from how they take the things you say to them--the things they light up +at and the things they look blank about, the things they're too anxious +to show you they understand, and the things they dare admit they never +heard of--you can tell every time. Find out all you want to know about +anybody in an hour!" + +Rose, it seemed, reacted satisfactorily to her tests, since she was +introduced as rapidly thereafter as their scanty leisure made possible, +to Gertrude's more immediate circle of friends. + +During that first winter, she enjoyed them immensely. They were all +interesting; all "did things"; widely various things, yet, somehow, +related. There was a red-haired fire-brand whose specialty seemed to be +bailing out girls arrested for picketing and whose Sunday diversion +consisted in going down to Paterson, New Jersey, making the police +ridiculous and unhappy for an hour or so, delivering herself of a speech +in defiance of their preventive efforts and finally escaping arrest by a +hair's breadth. They got her finally but since she enjoyed the privilege +of addressing as Uncle a man whose name was uttered with awe about the +corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place, they had to let her go. + +There was a young woman lawyer, associated with Gertrude in an +organization for getting jobs for girls who had just been let out of +jail, a level-headed enterprise, which by conserving its efforts for +those who really wished to benefit by them, managed to accomplish a good +deal. One of their circle was associate editor of a popular magazine and +another wrote short stories, mostly about shop-girls. The last one of +them for Rose to meet, she having been out of town all summer, was +Alice Perosini. She was the daughter of a rich Italian Jew, a +beautiful--really a wonderful person to look at--but a little +unaccountable, especially with the gorgeous clothes she wore, in their +circle. Rose took her time about deciding that she liked her but ended +by preferring her to all the rest. She never talked much; would smoke +and listen, making most of her comments in pantomime, but she had a +trick of capping a voluble discussion with a hard-chiseled phrase which, +whether you felt it precisely fitted or not, you found it difficult to +escape from. + +What forced Rose to a realization of her preference for Alice was the +impulse to tell her who she really was and the suddenly following +reflection that she never had wanted to tell any of the others; that she +had taken care to avoid all reference to the husband and the babies she +had fled from in search of a life of her own. + +She never tried to explain to herself the feeling that imposed this +reticence on her, until the discovery that it didn't exist toward Alice. +She couldn't have feared that they would not approve of what she had +done; it squared so exactly with all their ideas. Indeed the one real +bond between them was a common revolt against the traditional notion +that the way for a woman to effect her will in the world was by +"influencing" a man. They wanted to hold the world in their own hands. +They contemned the "feminine" arts of cajolery. They wanted no odds from +anybody. There wasn't a real man-hater in the crowd, they were too +normal and healthy for that. But they didn't talk much about men; never, +as far as Rose knew, about men--as such. Was the topic suppressed, she +wondered, or was it just that they didn't think about them? + +That question made her realize how little she knew of any of them; how +limited was the range of their intercourse. It was as if they met in a +sort of mental gymnasium, fenced with one another, did callisthenics. +Oh, that was going too far, of course; it was more real than that. But +it was true that it was only their minds that met. And it seemed to be +true that in the realm of mind they were content to live. Had they, +like herself, deep labyrinthine, half-lit caverns down underneath those +north-lighted, logically ordered apartments where Rose always found +them? If they had they never let her or one another suspect it. + +They'd be capable of deciding the great issue between herself and +Rodney, if ever they were told the story, in a half dozen brisk +sentences. Rose would be held to have been right and Rodney wrong, +demonstrably. Rose, illogically, perhaps, shrank from that conclusion or +at least from having it reached that way. There was more to it than +that. There were elements in the situation they wouldn't know how to +allow for. + +But Alice Perosini, she thought, was different. She'd be able to make +some of those allowances. Rose didn't tell her the story but she felt +that at a pinch she could and this feeling was enough to establish Alice +on a different basis from the others. It was with Alice that she +discussed the more personal sort of problems that arose in connection +with her new job. (One of these, as you are to be told, was highly +personal.) And when the question came up of finding the capital that +would enable her to make the Shumans a bid on all the costumes for _Come +On In_ it was Alice, who, with all the sang-froid in the world, sketched +out the articles of partnership and brought her in a certified check for +three thousand dollars. + +The fact that they had become partners served, somehow, to divert a +relation between them which might otherwise have developed into a +first-class friendship. Not that they quarreled or even disappointed +each other in the close contacts of the day's work. They were admirably +complementary. Alice had the business acumen, the executive grasp, the +patient willingness to master details, which were needed to set Rose +free for the more imaginative part of the enterprise. Both were +immensely determined on success. Alice couldn't have been keener about +it if every cent she had in the world had been embarked in the business. + +But at the end of the day's work they tended to fly apart rather than to +stick together. Both were charged with the same kind of static +electricity. It was an instinct they were sensible enough to follow. +Both realized that they were more efficient as partners from not going +too intimately into each other's outside affairs. + +But when the winter had passed and the early spring had brought its +triumph, with the success of her costumes in _Come On In_, and when the +inevitable reaction from the burst of energy that had won that triumph +had taken possession of her, Rose found herself in need of a friendship +that would grip deeper, understand more. And with the realization of the +need of it she found she had it. It was a friendship that had grown in +the unlikeliest soil in the world, the friendship of a man who had +wanted to be her lover. The man was John Galbraith. + +For the first month after she came to New York to work for him she had +found Galbraith a martinet. She never once caught that twinkling gleam +of understanding in his eye that had meant so much to her during the +rehearsals of _The Girl Up-stairs_. His manner toward her carried out +the tone of the letter she'd got from him in Centropolis. It was stiff, +formal, severe. He seldom praised her work and never ungrudgingly. His +censure was rare too, to be sure, but this obviously was because Rose +almost never gave him an excuse for it. Of course she was up to her +work, but, well, she had better be. This, in a nutshell, was his +attitude toward her. Nothing but the undisputable fact that she was up +to her work (Gertrude was comforting here, with her reticent but +convincing reports of Abe Shuman's satisfaction with her) kept Rose from +losing confidence. Even as it was, working for Galbraith in this mood +gave her the uneasy sensation one experiences when walking abroad under +a sultry overcast sky with mutterings and flashes in it. And then one +night the storm broke. + +They had lingered in the theater after the dismissal of a rehearsal, to +talk over a change in one of the numbers Rose had been working on. It +refused to come out satisfactorily. Rose thought she saw a way of doing +it that would work better and she had been telling him about it. +Eagerly, at first, and with a limpid directness which, however, became +clouded and troubled when she felt he wasn't paying attention. It was a +difficulty with him she had encountered before. Some strong +preoccupation she could neither guess the nature of nor lure him away +from. + +But to-night after an angry turn down the aisle and back he suddenly +cried out, "I don't know. I don't know what you've been talking about. I +don't know and I don't care." And then confronting her, their faces not +a foot apart, for by now she had got to her feet, his hands gripped +together and shaking, his teeth clenched, his eyes glowing there in the +half-light of the auditorium, almost like an animal's, he demanded, +"Can't you see what's the matter with me? Haven't you seen it yet? My +God!" + +Of course she saw it now, plainly enough. She sat down again, managing +an air of deliberation about it, and gripped the back of the orchestra +chair in front of her. He remained standing over her there in the aisle. + +When the heightening tension of the silence that followed this outburst +had grown absolutely unendurable she spoke. But the only thing she could +find to say was almost ludicrously inadequate. + +"No, I didn't see it until now. I'm sorry." + +"You didn't see it," he echoed. "I know you didn't. You've never seen me +at all, from the beginning, as anything but a machine. But why haven't +you? You're a woman. If I ever saw a woman in my life you're one all the +way through. Why couldn't you see that I was a man? It isn't because +I've got gray hair, nor because I'm fifty years old. You aren't like +that. I don't believe you're like that. But even back there in Chicago, +the night we walked down the avenue from Lessing's store--or the night +we had supper together after the show...." + +"I suppose I ought to have seen," she said dully. "Ought to have known +that that was all there was to it. That there couldn't be anything else +in the world. But I didn't." + +"Well, you see it now," he said savagely fairly, and strode away up the +aisle and then back to her. He sat down in the seat in front of her and +turned around. "I want to see your face," he said. "There's something +I've got to know. Something you've got to tell me. You said once, back +there in Chicago, that there was only one person who really mattered to +you. I want to know who that one person is. What he is. Whether he's +still the one person who really matters. If he isn't I'll take my +chance. I'll make you love me if it's the last thing I ever do in the +world." + +Remembering the scene afterward Rose was a little surprised that she'd +been able to answer him as she did, without a hesitation or a stammer, +and with a straight gaze that held his until she had finished. + +"The only person in the world," she said, "who ever has mattered to me, +or ever will matter, is my husband. I fell in love with him the day I +met him. I was in love with him when I left him. I'm in love with him +now. Everything I do that's any good is just something he might be proud +of if he knew it. And every failure is just something I hope I could +make him understand and not despise me for. It's months since I've seen +him but there isn't a day, there isn't an hour in a day, when I don't +think about him and--want him. I don't know whether I'll ever see him +again but if I don't it won't make any difference with that. That's why +I didn't see what I might have seen about you. It wasn't possible for me +to see. I'd never have seen it if you hadn't told me in so many words, +like this. Do you see now?" + +He turned away from her with a nod and put his hands to his face. She +waited a moment to see whether he had anything else to say, for the +habit of waiting for his dismissal was too strong to be broken even in a +situation like this. But finding that he hadn't she rose and walked out +of the theater. + +There was an hour after she had gained the haven of her own apartment, +when she pretty well went to pieces. So this was all, was it, that she +owed her illusory appearance of success to? The amorous desires of a man +old enough to be her father! Once more, she blissfully and ignorantly +unsuspecting all the while, it was love that had made her world go +round. The same long-circuited sex attraction that James Randolph long +ago had told her about. But for that attraction she'd never have got +this job in New York, never have had the chance to design those costumes +for Goldsmith and Block. Never, in all probability, have got even that +job in the chorus of _The Girl Up-stairs_. All she'd accomplished in +that bitter year since she left Rodney had been to make another man fall +in love with her! + +But she didn't let herself go like that for long. The situation was too +serious for the indulgence of an emotional sprawl. Here she was in an +apartment that cost her thirty-seven dollars a month. She'd got to earn +a minimum of thirty dollars a week to keep on with it. Of course she +couldn't go on working for Galbraith. The question was, what could she +do? Well, she could do a good many things. Whatever Galbraith's motives +had been in giving her her chance, she had taken that chance and made +the most of it. Gertrude Morse knew what she could do. For that matter, +so did Abe Shuman himself. The thing to do now was to go to bed and get +a night's sleep and confront the situation with a clear mind in the +morning. + +It was a pretty good indication of the way she had grown during the last +year that she was able to conquer the shuddering revulsion that had at +first swept over her, get herself in hand again, eat a sandwich and +drink a glass of milk, re-read a half dozen chapters of Albert Edwards' +_A Man's World_, and then put out her light and sleep till morning. + +It was barely nine o'clock when Galbraith called her up on the +telephone. She hadn't had her breakfast yet and had not even begun to +think out what the day's program must be. + +He apologized for calling her so early. "I wanted to be sure of catching +you," he said, "before you did anything. You haven't yet, have you? Not +written to Shuman throwing up your job, or anything like that?" + +Even over the telephone his manner was eloquent with relief when she +told him she had not. "I want to talk with you," he said. "It's got to +be somewhere where we won't be interrupted." He added, "I shan't say +again what I said last night. You'll find me perfectly reasonable." + +Somehow his voice carried entire conviction. The man she visualized at +the other telephone was neither the distracted pleader she had left last +night, nor the martinet she had been working for during the last month +here in New York, but the John Galbraith she had known in Chicago. + +"All right," she said, "I don't know any better place than here in my +apartment, if that's convenient for you." + +"Yes," he said, "that's all right. When may I come? The sooner the +better of course." + +"Can you give me an hour?" she asked, and he said he could. + +It occurred to her, as the moment of his arrival drew near, that she +might better have thought twice before appointing their meeting here in +her apartment. Discretion perhaps would have suggested a more neutral +rendezvous. But she didn't take this consideration very seriously and +with the first real look she got into his face after she had let him in, +she dismissed it utterly. They shook hands and said, "Good morning," and +she asked him to sit down, all as if nothing had happened the night +before. But he wasted no time in getting to the point. + +"There's one idea you'll have got, from what I said last night, that's a +mistake and that's got to be set right before we go any further. That +is, that you owe your position here, as my assistant, to the fact that +I'd fallen in love with you. That's not true. In fact, it's the opposite +of the truth. That feeling of mine has worked against you instead of for +you. I'll have to explain that a little to make you understand it. And +if you won't mind I'll have to talk pretty straight." She gave him a nod +of assent, but he did not immediately go on. It was a reflective pause, +not an embarrassed one. + +"I've always despised;" he said, "a man who mixed up his love-affairs +with his business. In my business, perhaps, there's a certain temptation +to do that and I've always been on guard against it. I've had +love-affairs, more or less, all along. But in my vacations. You can't do +decent honest work when your mind's on that sort of thing, and I care +more about my work than anything else. + +"Well, that night in Chicago, after the opening of _The Girl +Up-stairs_, when I took you out to supper, I didn't know what I wanted. +That's the truth. I'd been fighting my interest in you, my personal +interest that is, calling myself all kinds of an old fool. I'd never had +a thing get me like that before and I didn't know what to make of it. +Well, the business was over, of course. I was entitled to a little +vacation. I suppose, that night, if you'd shown the least sense of how I +felt, even if it was just by seeming frightened, I might have flared up +and made love to you. But you didn't see it at all. You had some sort +of--fence around you that held me off. And for a while you even made me +forget that I was in love with you. Forget that you were anything but +the cleverest person I had known at catching my ideas and putting them +over. I saw how enormously valuable you'd be to me, in this job you've +got now, and I offered it to you. + +"And then, all in a wave the other feeling came back. On my way to New +York I decided that as long as I felt like that I'd have nothing more to +do with you. A man couldn't possibly do any decent work with a woman he +was in love with, either after he'd got her or while he was trying to +get her. That's why you didn't hear from me within a month after I'd got +back to New York. But as time went on I forgot how strong my feeling had +been. I decided. I'd got over it. I'd been looking for some one else to +take the place I'd designed for you and I couldn't find anybody. + +"I might have got a man, but I didn't want a man, because if he were +clever enough to be any good he'd be out after my job from the very +first day. It would suit Abe Shuman down to the ground to have me teach +a man all I know in two years and then put him in my place at half my +pay. As for women, well, I've never seen a woman yet with just your +combination of qualities, your drive and your knack. So I persuaded +myself that it would be all right. That I could get along without +thinking about you the other way. And I sent for you. + +"But the minute I saw you I knew I'd have to look out. I've tried to; +you know that. I've been treating you like a sweep since you've been +down here. I didn't mean to but I couldn't help it. I was in such a +rage with myself for going on like a sentimental fool about you. And the +way you took it, always good-humored and never afraid, made me all the +more ashamed of myself and all the more in love with you. And so last +night I burst. In a way I'm glad I did. I think perhaps it will clear +the air. But I'll come to that later. I want to know now whether you're +convinced that what I said is true. That the fact that I fell in love +with you has been against you and not in your favor." + +"Yes," Rose said, "I'm convinced of that and I want to thank you for +telling me. Because the other feeling was pretty--discouraging." + +"All right," he said with a nod, "that's understood. Now, here's my +proposition. That you go on working for me exactly as if nothing had +happened." + +"Oh, but that's impossible!" she said, and when he put in "Why is it?" +she told him he had just said so himself. That it was impossible for a +man to do decent work with a woman he was in love with. + +"That's what I thought last night when I blew up," he admitted, "but +I've got things a bit straighter since. In the first place, we have been +doing decent work all this last month. We've been doing, between us, the +work of two high-priced directors." + +She said, "Yes, but I didn't know ..." + +"Understanding's better than ignorance," he interrupted, "any time. +Between people of sense, that is. We'd get on better together, not +worse. Look at us now. We're talking together sensibly enough, aren't +we? And we're here in your sitting-room, talking about the fact that I +fell in love with you. Couldn't we talk just as sensibly in the theater, +about whether a song or number was in the right place or not? Of course +we could." + +The truth of this argument rather stumped Rose. It didn't seem +reasonable, but it was true. Instead of embarrassing and distressing +her, this talk with Galbraith was doing her good, restoring her +confidence. The air between them was easier to breathe than it had been +for weeks. + +"You seem different this morning, somehow," she said. + +"Why," he told her, "I am different. Permanently different toward you. I +am convinced of it. I don't pretend to understand it myself, but +somehow--I'm relieved. For one thing, I never wanted to fall in love +with you. It was quite against my will that I did it. And then I've +always been tortured with curiosity about you. I've wondered. Were you +as unconscious of me as you seemed? Was it possible that you didn't +know. And if you did know, was it possible that you were--waiting? That +it only needed a word of mine to put everything between us on a +different basis? I couldn't get rid of that idea. It kept nagging at me. +But after what you told me last night--and you certainly told it +straight--that idea's exploded. What you said explains everything about +you. I know now that I haven't a chance in the world. From now on, I +imagine, I'll be able to treat you like a human being. Well, are you +willing to try it?" + +Up to now they'd been sitting quietly in their two chairs with most of +the width of the room between them. But at this last question of his she +got up and walked over to the window. + +"I don't know," she said at last. "It seems dangerous, somehow; like +courting trouble. I know ..." She hesitated, but then decided to say +what was in her mind. "I know how terribly strong those feelings are and +I've found out how little they've got to do with what it's so easy to +decide is reasonable." Now she turned and faced him. + +"Don't you think it would be more sensible for me to find another job? +So that we could--well, take a fresh start?" + +"Child," he said, "don't you know there's no such thing in the world as +a fresh start? Or a new leaf? That's a comfortable delusion for cowards. +The situation's in a mess, is it? All right, run away. Begin again with +a clean slate. But the first thing written down on that slate is that +you've just run away. Besides, suppose you do get another job, working, +say, for another director. How do you know that he won't fall in love +with you?" + +That last sentence went by unheard. She was staring at him, almost in +consternation. "That's true," she said. "That's perfectly true. That +about running away. I--I never thought of it before." She went back to +her chair and dropped into it rather limply. She sat there through a +long silence, still thinking over his words and apparently almost +frightened over her own implications from them. + +At last he said, "You've no cause for worry over that, I should think. I +don't believe you've ever run away from anything yet." + +"I don't know," she answered thoughtfully. "I don't know whether I did +or not." + +"Well," he came out at last, getting to his feet, "how about it? What +shall we do this time? Shall we tackle the situation and try to make the +best of it, or ..." + +"Yes, that's what we'll do," she said. "And, well, I'm much obliged to +you for putting me right." + +"I made all the trouble in the first place," said Galbraith, with a +rueful sort of grin. "It was up to me to think of something." + +And after the elevator she'd escorted him to had carried him down, she +stood there in the hallway smiling, with the glow of a quite new +friendliness for him warming her heart. + +It was natural, of course, that the relation between them after that day +should not prove quite so simple and manageable a thing as it had looked +that morning. There were breathless days when the storm visibly hung in +the sky; there were strained, stiff, self-conscious moments of rigidly +enforced politeness. Things got said despite his resolute repression +that had, as resolutely, to be ignored. + +But in the intervals of these failures there emerged, and endured +unbroken for longer periods, the new thing they sought--genuine +friendliness, partnership. + +It was just after Christmas that Abe Shuman took her away from him and +put her to work exclusively on costumes. And the swift sequence of +events within a month thereafter launched her in an independent +business; the new partnership with Alice Perosini, with the details of +which, through Jimmy Wallace, you are already sufficiently acquainted. +By the time that happened the friendship had gone so far that Rose's +chief reluctance in making the change sprang from a fear that the change +would interrupt it. + +But the thing worked the other way. Released from the compulsory +relation of employer and employee, they frankly sought each other as +friends, and found that they got more out of a half-hour together over a +hasty lunch than a whole day's struggle over a common task had given +them. + +There were long stretches of days, of course, when they saw nothing of +each other, and Rose, so long as she had plenty to do, was never +conscious of missing him. She never, in the course of her own day's +work, made an unconscious reference to him, as she was always making +them to Rodney. But the prospect of an empty Sunday morning, for +instance, was always enormously brightened if he called up to say that +it was empty for him, too, and shouldn't they go for a walk or a ferry +ride somewhere. + +He did the greater part of the talking. Told her, a good deal to his own +surprise, stories of his early life in London--a chapter he'd never +been willing to refer to, except in the vaguest terms, to anybody else. +He told her, too, with more and more freedom and explicitness, as he +discovered how straight and honest her mind was, how eager it was for +facts instead of for sentimental refractions of them, about certain +emotional adventures of his as he was emerging into manhood, and of the +marks they had left on him. + +All told, she learned more about men, as such, from him than ever she +had learned, consciously at least, from Rodney. She'd never been able to +regard her husband as a specimen. He was Rodney, _sui generis_, and it +had never occurred to her either to generalize from him to other men, or +to explain any of the facts she had noted about him, on the mere ground +of his masculinity. She began doing that now a little, and the exercise +opened her eyes. + +In many ways Galbraith and her husband were a good deal alike. Both were +rough, direct, a little remorseless, and there was in both of them, +right alongside the best and finest and clearest things they had, an +unaccountable vein of childishness. She'd never been willing to call it +by that name in Rodney. But when she saw it in Galbraith, too, she +wondered. Was that just the man of it? Were they all like that; at least +all the best of them? Did a man, as long as he lived, need somebody in +the rôle of--mother? The thought all but suffocated her. + +She did not return Galbraith's confidences with any detailed account of +her own life, and the one great emotional experience of it that seemed +to have absorbed all the rest and drawn it up into itself. But she had a +comforting sense that, scanty as was the framework of facts he had to go +on, he knew, somehow, all about it; all the essentials of it; knew +infinitely more about her than Alice Perosini did, although from time to +time she had told Alice a good deal. + +Spring came on them with a rush that year; swept a vivid flush of green +over the parks and squares, all in a day; pumped the sap up madly into +the little buds, so that they could hardly swell fast enough, and burst +at last into a perfectly riotous fanfare through the shrubberies. It +pumped blood, too, as well as sap, and made hearts flutter to strange +irregular rhythms with the languorous insolence of its perfumes, and the +soft caressing pressures of its south wind. + +It worried Rose nearly mad. She was bound to have gone slack anyway; to +have experienced the well-earned, honest lassitude of a finished +struggle and an achieved victory. Dane & Company had any amount of work +in sight, to be sure--a success of such triumphant proportions as they +had had with _Come On In_, made that inevitable--but it would be months +before any of the new work was wanted. + +Alice, who could see plainly enough that something was the matter, kept +urging Rose to run away somewhere for a long vacation. Why not, if it +came to that, put in a few weeks in London and Paris? She was almost +sure to pick up some valuable ideas over there. Rose declined that +suggestion almost sharply. If she'd had any practical training as a +nurse, she'd go over to Paris and stay, but to use that magnificently +courageous tragic city as a source of ideas for a Shuman _revue_ was out +of the question. As for the quiet place in the Virginia mountains, +which Alice had suggested as an alternative, Rose would die of ennui +there within three days. The only thing to do was to stick to her +routine as well as she could, and worry along. + +These weren't reasons that she gave Alice, they were excuses. The +reason, which she tried to avoid stating, even to herself, was that she +couldn't bear the thought of going one step farther away from Rodney +than she was already. + +A letter from him was always in the first Saturday morning delivery and +she never left for her atelier till she got it. She had perceived, what +he had not, the steadily growing friendliness of these letters. It +wasn't a made-up thing, either. He was not telling her things because he +thought she'd like to be told, but because it had insensibly become a +need of his to tell her. + +A year ago those letters would have made her wildly happy; would have +filled her with the confidence that the end she sought was in sight at +last. Now they drove her half mad with disappointment. She never opened +one of those dearly familiar envelopes without the irrepressible hope +that it contained a love-letter; a passionate demand that she come back +to him; leave all she had and come back to him; his woman to her man. +And her disappointment and inconsistency bewildered her. + +Her two chance encounters, first with Jimmy Wallace in the theater, and +later with James Randolph, made her restlessness more nearly +unendurable. The thought that they were going back to Chicago and would, +no doubt, within a few days after their talks with her, see and talk +with him, was like the cup of Tantalus. And if she could encounter them +by chance, like that, why mightn't she encounter him? Why mightn't he +come to New York on business? She never walked anywhere, nowadays, +without watching for him. + +She didn't yield, passively, to these thoughts and feelings. She fought +them relentlessly, methodically. She went to a women's gymnasium every +evening, threw a medicine ball around for a while, and then played a +hard game of squash, in the sometimes successful attempt to get tired +enough so that she'd have to sleep. Also she tried riding in the park, +mornings, but that didn't work so well, and she gave it up. + +There came a Saturday morning, toward the end of May, which brought no +letter from Rodney, and she stayed in all day, from one delivery to the +next, waiting for it. She tried to disguise her excitement over its +failure to arrive, as a fear lest something might have gone wrong with +him or with the twins, but did not succeed. If anything had gone wrong +she knew she'd have heard. The thing that kept clutching at her heart +was hope. The hope that the letter wouldn't come at all; that there'd be +a telephone call instead--and Rodney's voice. + +The telephone did ring just before noon, but the voice was Galbraith's. +He wanted to know if she wouldn't come over to his Long Island farm the +following morning and spend the day. + +She had visited the place two or three times and had always enjoyed it +immensely there. It wasn't much of a farm, but there was a delightful +old Revolutionary farmhouse on it, with ceilings seven feet high and +casement windows, and the floors of all the rooms on different levels; +and Galbraith, there, was always quite at his best. His sister and her +husband, whom he had brought over from England when he bought the place, +ran it for him. They were the simplest sort of peasant people who had +hardly stirred from their little Surrey hamlet until that meteoric +brother of theirs had summoned them on their breath-taking voyage to +America, and for whom now, on this little Long Island farm, New York +might have been almost as far away as London. Mrs. Flaxman did all the +work of the house and farmyard without the aid of a servant, and her +husband raised vegetables for the New York market. + +What the pair really thought of the life John Galbraith led, or of the +guests he sometimes brought out for week-end visits, no one knew. But +the pleasant sort of homely hospitality one always found there was +extremely attractive to Rose, and with Rodney's regular Saturday letter +at hand she'd have accepted the invitation eagerly. As it was, she +answered almost shortly that she couldn't come. Then, contrite, she +hastened to dilute her refusal with an elaboration of regrets and +hastily contrived reasons. + +"All right," he said good-humoredly, "I shan't ask any one else, but if +you happen to change your mind call me on the phone in the morning. Tell +me what train you're coming down on and I'll meet you." + +She didn't expect to change her mind, but a phonograph did it for her. +This instrument was domesticated across the court somewhere--she had +never bothered to discover just which pair of windows the sound of it +issued from--and it was addicted to fox-trots, comic recitations in +negro dialect, and the melodies of Mr. Irving Berlin. It was jolly and +companionable and Rose regarded it as a friend. But on this Saturday +night, perversely enough, perhaps because its master was in Pittsburgh +on a business trip and hadn't come home as expected, the thing turned +sentimental. It sang _I'm on My Way to Mandalay_, under the impression +that Mandalay was an island somewhere. It played _The Rosary_, done as a +solo on the cornet; and over and over again it sang, with the thickest, +sirupiest sentiment that John McCormack at his best is capable of, + + "Just a little love, a li--ttle kiss, + Just an hour that holds a world of bliss, + Eyes that tremble like the stars above me, + And the little word that says you love me." + +It was a song that had tormented Rose before with the abysmal fatuity of +its phrases, its silly sloppy melody, and yet--this was the infuriating +thing--the way it had of getting into her, somehow, reaching bare nerves +and setting them all aquiver. + +To-night it broke her down. She closed the windows, despite the +sultriness of the night, but the tune, having once got in, couldn't be +shut out. Whether she heard it or only fancied she did, didn't matter. +The words bored their way into her brain. + + "Just a little love, a little kiss, + I would give you all my life for this, + As I hold you fast and bend above you ..." + +It was a white night for Rose. The morning sun had been streaming into +her bedroom for an hour before she finally fell asleep. And at nine +o'clock, when she wakened, she heard the phonograph going again. It was +now on its way to Mandalay, but John McCormack was no doubt waiting in +the background. She went to the telephone and called up Galbraith, +telling him she'd come by the first train she could get. + +He met her with a dog-cart and a fat pony, and when they had jogged +their way to their destination they spent what was left of the morning +looking over the farm. Then there was a midday farm dinner that Rose +astonished herself by dealing with as it deserved and by feeling sleepy +at the conclusion of. Galbraith caught her biting down a yawn and packed +her off to the big Gloucester swing in the veranda, the one addition +he'd built on the place, for a nap; and obediently she did as he bade +her. + +Coming into the veranda about four o'clock, and finding her awake, he +suggested that they go for a walk. She had dressed, in anticipation of +this, in a short skirt and heavy walking boots, so they set out across +the fields. Two hours later, having swung her legs over a stone wall +that had a comfortably inviting flat top, she remained sitting there and +let her gaze rest, unfocused, on the pleasant farm land that lay below +them. + +After a glance at her he leaned back against the wall at her side and +began filling his pipe. She dropped her hand on his nearer shoulder. +After all these months of friendship it was the first approach to a +caress that had passed between them. + +"You're a good friend," she said, and then the hand that had rested on +him so lightly suddenly gripped hard. "And I guess I need one," she +ended. + +He went on filling his pipe. "Anything special you need one for?" he +asked quietly. + +[Illustration: "You're a good friend," she said.] + +She gave a ragged little laugh. "I guess not. Just somebody strong and +steady to hold on to like this." + +"Well," he said very deliberately, "you want to realize this: You say +I'm a friend and I am, but if there is anything in this friendship which +can be of use to you you're entitled to it; to everything there is in +it. Because you made it." + +"One person can't make a friendship," she said. "Even two people can't. +It's got to--grow out of them somehow." + +He assented with a nod. "But in this case who gave it a chance to grow? +Where would it have been if I'd had my way? If you hadn't pulled me up +and set me straight?" + +"For that matter," she said, "where would it have been if I had had +mine? If I'd run away and tried for a fresh start, as I'd have done if +you hadn't set me right?" + +"Make it so," he said. "Say we've equal rights in it. Still you needn't +worry about my not getting my share of the benefits." + +"You _are_ content with it, aren't you? Like this? I haven't--cheated? +Used you? It's easy for a woman to do that, I think. It isn't ...?" She +asked that last question by taking her hand off his shoulder. + +"No, put it back," he said. "It's all right." He smoked in silence for a +minute; then went on. "Why, 'content' is hardly the word for it. When I +think what it was I wanted and what you've given me instead ...! It +wasn't self-denial or any other high moral principle that kept me from +flaring up when you took hold of me just now. It's because I've got a +better thing. Something I wouldn't trade for all the love in the world. +'Content'!" + +"I'd like to believe it was a better thing," she said; "but I'm afraid I +can't." + +"Neither could I when I was--how old are you?--twenty-four. Perhaps when +you're fifty-one you can." + +"I suppose so," she said absently. "Perhaps if it were a question of +choosing between a love that hadn't any friendship in it and a +friendship ... But it _can't_ be like that!--Can it? Can't one have +both? Can't a man--love a woman and be her friend and partner all at the +same time?" + +"I can't answer for every man," he said reflectively. "There are all +kinds of men. And that's not mentioning the queers, who aren't real men +at all. Take a dozen sound, normal, healthy men and if you could find +out the truth about them, which it would be pretty hard to do, you'd +find immense differences in their wants, habits, feelings; in the way +things _took_ them. But I've a notion that nine out of the dozen, if you +could get down to the actual bedrock facts about them, would own up that +if they were in love with a woman--really, you know, all the way--they +wouldn't want her for a partner, and wouldn't be able to see her as a +friend. That's just a guess, of course. But there's one thing I know, +and that is that I couldn't." + +She gave a little shiver. "_Oh_, what a mess it is!" she said. "What a +perfectly hopeless blunder it is!" She slid down from the wall. "Come; +let's walk." + +He fell in beside her and they tramped sturdily along for a while in +silence. At last she said, "Can you tell me why? Suppose there hadn't +been any one else with me; suppose I'd felt toward you the way you did +toward me, then; why couldn't you have gone on being my friend and +partner as well as my lover? You'd have known I was worth it; have known +I understood the things you were interested in and--yes, and was able to +help you to work them out. Why would all that have had to go?" + +"Oh, I don't know that I can explain it," he said. "But I don't think +I'd call it a blunder that a strip of spring steel can't bend in your +fingers like copper and still go on being a spring. You see, a man +wants his work and then he wants something that isn't his work; that's +altogether apart from his work; doesn't remind him of it. Love's about +as far away as anything he can get. So that the notion of our working +ourselves half to death over the same job, and then going home +together ..." + +"Yes," she admitted. "I can see that. But that doesn't cover +friendship." + +He owned that it didn't. "But when I'm in love with a woman--this isn't +a fact I'm proud of, but it's true--I'm jealous of her. Not of other +men alone, though I'm that, too, but jealous of everything. I want to be +all around her. I want to be everything to her. I want her to think +there's nobody like me; that nobody else could be right and I be wrong. +And I want to be able to think the same of her. I want her to hide, from +me, the things about herself that I wouldn't like. When I ask her what +she thinks about something, I want her to say--what I want her to think. +I know what I want her to think, and if she doesn't say it she hurts my +feelings." + +He thought it over a bit longer and then went on. "No, I've been in love +with women I could suspect of anything. Women I thought were lying to +me, cheating me; women I've hated; women I've known hated me. But I've +never been in love with a woman who was my friend. I'd never figured it +out before, but it's so." + +In the process of figuring it out he'd more or less forgotten Rose. He +had been tramping along communing with his pipe; thinking aloud. If he'd +been watching her face he wouldn't have gone so far. + +"Well, if it's like that," she said, and the quality of her voice drew +his full attention instantly--"if love has to be like that, then the +game doesn't seem worth going on with. You can't live with it, and you +can't live--without it." Her voice dropped a little, but gained in +intensity. "At least I can't. I don't believe I can." She stopped and +faced him. "What can one _do_?" she demanded. "Wait, I suppose you'll +say, till you're fifty. Well, you're fifty, and the thing can still +torment you; spring on you when you aren't looking; twist you about." +She turned away with a despairing gesture and stood gazing out, +tear-blinded, over the little valley the hilltop they had reached +commanded. + +"You want to remember this," he said at last. "I've been talking about +myself. I haven't even pretended to guess for more than nine of those +twelve men. That leaves three who are, I am pretty sure, different. I +might have been different myself, a little anyway, if I'd got a +different sort of start. If my first love-affair had been an altogether +different thing. If it had been the kind that gave me a home and kids. +So you don't want to take what I've said for anything more than just the +truth about me. And I'm not, thank God, a fair sample." + +He stood behind her, miserably helpless to say or do anything to comfort +her. An instinct told him she didn't want his hands on her just then, +and he couldn't unsay the things he had told her any further than he had +already. + +Presently she turned back to him, slid her hand inside his arm, and +started down the road with him. "My love-affair brought me a home +and--kids," she said. "There are two of them--twins--a year and a half +old now; and I went off and left them; left him. And all I did it for +was to make myself over, into somebody he could be friends with, instead +of just--as I said then--his mistress. I'd never known a woman then who +was a man's mistress, really, and I didn't see why he should be so angry +over my using the word. I thought it was fair enough. And the day I left +his house I came to you and got a job in the chorus in _The Girl +Up-stairs_. I thought that by earning my own way, building a life that +he didn't--surround, as you say--I could win his friendship. And have +his love besides. I don't suppose you would have believed there could be +such a fool in the world as I was to do that." + +He took a while digesting this truly amazing statement of hers, a +half-mile perhaps of steady silent tramping. But at last he said, "No, I +wouldn't call you a fool. I call a fool a person who thinks he can get +something for nothing. You didn't think that. You were willing to pay--a +heavy price it must have been, too--for what you wanted. And I've an +idea, you know, that you never really pay without getting something; +though you don't always get what you expect. You've got something now. A +knowledge of what you can do; of what you are worth; and I don't believe +you'd trade it for what you had the day before you came to me for a +job." + +"I don't know," she said raggedly. "Perhaps ..." A sob clutched at her +throat and she did not try to conclude the sentence. + +"As to whether you did right or wrong in leaving him," he went on, +"you've got to figure it this way. It isn't fair to say, 'Knowing what I +know now and being what I am now, but in the situation I was in then, +I'd have done differently.' The thing you've got to take into account +is, being what you were then, suppose you hadn't gone? You thought then +that you were just his mistress, not knowing what a real mistress was +like; and you thought that by going away you could make yourself his +friend. You thought that was your great chance. Well, you couldn't have +stayed without feeling that you had thrown away your chance; without +knowing that you'd had your big thing to do and had been afraid to do +it. And that knowledge would have gone a long way toward making you the +thing you thought you were. + +"Well, you did your big thing. And a person who's done that has stayed +alive anyway; and he knows that when his next big thing comes along +he'll do that too. I don't pretend that you'll always come out right in +the end if you do the big thing, but I'm pretty sure of this; that you +never come out at all if you refuse it." + +His amazement over what she had done increased as he thought about it +and was testified to every now and then by grunts and snorts and little +exclamations, but he made no more articulate comment. + +There was a seven-thirty train she thought she ought to take back to +town and as their walk had led in that direction they finished it at the +station, where he waited with her for the train to come in. + +"It's been a good day," she said. "I feel as if you'd somehow pulled me +through." + +"And I," he said, "feel like a wind-bag. I've talked and talked; smug +comfortable preaching." + +"No, it's helped," she insisted. "Or something has. Just having you +there, perhaps. I feel better, anyway." + +But after she'd got her last look at him on the platform, when the train +had carried her off, an observer, seeing the way the color faded out of +her face, and the look in the eyes, which, so wide open and so unseeing, +stared straight ahead, would have said that the benefit hadn't lasted +long. There was about her the look of somber terror, just verging on +panic, which you have seen in a child's face when he has been sent +up-stairs to bed alone in the dark. + +Fragments of Galbraith's talk came back to her. It was by ceasing to be +her lover and her partner that he had become her friend. Rodney, it +seemed from his letters, was becoming her friend too. Was it because he, +too, had ceased to be her lover? if ever she stood face to face with him +again would she search in vain for that look of hunger--of ages-old +hunger and need--that she'd last seen when they stood face to face in +her little room on Clark Street? + +She walked down-town to her apartment from the Pennsylvania station end, +though the natural effect of fatigue was to quicken her pace, and though +she was indubitably tired, she walked slowly; slowly, and still more +slowly. She found she dreaded going back to that apartment of hers and +shutting herself in for the night, alone. + +She found two corners of white projecting from under her door. And when +she'd unlocked and opened it she stooped and picked them up, a visiting +card and a folded bit of paper. She turned the card over and gave a +little half-suffocated cry. + +It was Rodney's card and on it he'd written, "Sorry to have missed you. +I'll come back at eight." + +Her shaking fingers fumbled pitifully over the folds of the note, but +she got it open at last. It was from him too. It read: + + "DEAR ROSE: + + "This is hard luck. I suppose you're off for a week-end somewhere. I + want very much to see you. When you come back and have leisure for + me, will you call me up? I know how busy you are so I'll wait until + I hear from you. + + "RODNEY." + +Her heart felt like lead when she'd read it. Dazedly, a little giddily, +she pulled her door shut, went into her room and sat down. + +He was in New York! He'd been to see her this afternoon--and left a +card! And the note he'd written after his second visit was what Howard +West might have written, or any other quite casual, slightly over-polite +acquaintance. And it was from Rodney to her! + +She couldn't see him if he felt like that; couldn't stand it to see him +if he felt like that! Bitterness, contempt, hatred, anything would be +easier to bear than that. She was to call up his hotel, was she? Well, +she wouldn't! + +And then suddenly she spread the note open again and read it once more. +Turned it over and scrutinized the reverse side of the paper, and +uttered a little sobbing laugh. If he'd been as cool, unmoved, +self-possessed, as that note had tried to sound, would he have forgotten +to tell her at what hotel she was to call him up? + +Then, with a gasp, she wondered how she _could_ call him up. He'd think +she knew where he was; he'd wait; and after he'd waited a while, in +default of word from her, wouldn't he take her silence for an answer and +go back to Chicago? + +She clenched her hands at that and tried to think. Well, the obvious +thing to do seemed to be the only one. She must try one hotel after +another until she found him. After all, there probably weren't more than +a dozen to choose among. It wouldn't be easy looking up numbers with +everything dancing before her eyes like this, but if she took the +likeliest ones first she mightn't have to go very far. And, indeed, at a +third attempt she found him. + +When the telephone girl switched her to the information desk, and the +information clerk said, "Mr. Rodney Aldrich? Just a moment," and then; +"Mr. Aldrich is in fifteen naught five," the dry contraction in her +throat made it impossible for her to speak. + +But the switchboard girl had evidently been listening in and plugged her +through, because she heard the throb of another ring, a click of a +receiver and then--then Rodney's voice. + +She couldn't answer his first "Hello," and he said it again, sharply, +"Hello, what is it?" + +And then suddenly her voice came back. A voice that startled her with +its distinctness. "Hello, Rodney," she said; "this is Rose." + +There was a perfectly blank silence after that and, then the crisp voice +of an operator somewhere--"Waiting?" + +"Yes," she heard Rodney say, "get off the line." And then to her. "I +came to see you this afternoon and again to-night." + +"Yes, I know," she said. "I just this minute got in. Can't you come back +again now?" + +How in the world, she had wondered, could she manage her voice like +that! From the way it sounded she might have been speaking to Alice +Perosini; and yet her shaking hand could hardly hold the receiver. She +heard him say: + +"It's pretty late, isn't it? I don't want to ... You'll be tired +and ..." + +"It's not too late for me," she said, "only you might come straight +along before it gets any later." + +She managed to wait until she heard him say, "All right," before she +hung up the receiver. Then a big racking sob, not to be denied any +longer, pounced on her and shook her. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +COULEUR-DE-ROSE + + +The fact that the length of time it would take a taxi to bring him down +from his hotel to her apartment was not enough to decide anything in, +plan anything in, was no more than enough, indeed, to give her a chance +to stop crying and wash her face, was a saving factor in the situation. + +In the back of her mind, as with a hairpin or two she righted her hair +and decided, glancing down over herself, against attempting to change +even her tumbled blouse or her dusty boots, was an echoing consciousness +of something Galbraith had said that afternoon--"And you know when your +next big thing comes along you will do that too." + +Without actually quoting those words to herself, she experienced a +sudden confidence that was almost serene. In a few minutes now, not more +than five, probably--she hoped not more than that--something +incalculable, tremendous, was going to begin happening to her. A thing +whose issue would in all likelihood determine the course of her whole +life. There might be a struggle, a tempest, but she made no effort to +foresee the nature of it. She just relaxed physical and spiritual +muscles and waited. Only she hoped she wouldn't have to wait long. + +No--there was the bell. + +It was altogether fortunate for Rose that she had attempted no +preparation, because the situation she found herself in when she'd +opened the door for her husband, shaken hands with him, led him into her +sitting-room and asked him to sit down, was one that the wildest cast of +her imagination would never have suggested as a possible one for her and +Rodney. And it lasted--recurred, at least, whenever they were +together--almost unaltered, for two whole days. + +It was his manner, she felt sure, that had created it; and yet, so +prompt and automatic had been her response that she couldn't be sure, +not for the first half-hour or so, anyway, that he wasn't attributing it +to her. It wasn't so much the first words he said, when, opening her +door, she saw him standing in the hallway, as it was his attitude; his +rather formal attitude; the way he held his hat; the fact--this was +absurd, of course, but she reconstructed the memory very clearly +afterward--that his clothes were freshly pressed. It was the slightly +anxious, very determined attitude of an estimable and rather shy young +man making his first call on a young lady, on whom he is desperately +desirous of making a favorable impression. + +What he said was something not very coherent about being very glad and +its being very good of her, and almost simultaneously she gasped out +that she was glad, and wouldn't he come in. She held out her hand to +him, politely, and he, compensating for an imperceptible hesitation with +a kind of clumsy haste, took it and released it almost as hastily. She +showed him where to hang his coat and hat, conducted him into her +sitting-room and invited him to sit down. And there they were. + +And he was Rodney, and she was Rose! It was like an absurd dream. + +For a while she talked desperately, under the same sort of delirious +conviction one has in dreams that if he desists one moment from some +grotesquely futile form of activity a cosmic disaster will instantly +take place. A moment of silence between them would be, she felt, +something unthinkably terrible. It was not a fear of what might emerge +from such a silence, the sudden rending of veils and the confrontation +of two realities; it was a dread, purely, of the silence itself. But the +feeling did not last very long. + +"Won't you smoke?" she asked suddenly; and hurried on when he hesitated, +"I don't do it myself, but most of my friends do, and I keep the +things." From a drawer in her writing-desk she produced a tin box of +cigarettes. "They're your kind--unless you've changed," she commented, +and went over to the mantel shelf for an ash-tray and a match-safe. The +match-safe was empty and she left the room to get a fresh supply from +her kitchenette. + +On the inner face of her front door was a big mirror, and in it, as she +came back through the unlighted passage, she saw her husband. He was +sitting just as she'd left him, and as his face was partly turned away +from her, it could not have been from the expression of it that she got +her revelation. But she stopped there in the dark and caught her breath +and leaned back against the wall and squeezed the tears out of her eyes. + +Perhaps it was just because he was sitting so still, a thing it was +utterly unlike him to do. The Rodney of her memories was always ranging +about the rooms that confined him. Or the grip of the one hand she could +see upon the chair-arm it rested on may have had something to do with +it. But it was not, really, a consciously deductive process at all; just +a clairvoyant look--_into_ him, and a sudden, complete, utterly +confident understanding. + +He had come down here to New York to make another beginning. He meant to +assert no rights, not even in their common memories, he would make no +appeal. But something that he felt he had forfeited he was going to try +to earn back. What was the thing he sought--her friendship, or her love? +She knew! No plea that the inspired rhetoric of passion could be capable +of could have convinced her of his love for her and of his need for her +love as did the divine absurdity of this attempt of his to show her that +she need give him--nothing. She knew. Oh, how she knew! + +She stole back into her little kitchen and shut the door and leaned +giddily against it, trying to get her breath to coming steadily again. +At last she straightened up and wiped her eyes. A smile played across +her lips; the smile of deep maternal tenderness. Then she picked up her +box of matches and carried them to him in the sitting-room. + +He stayed that first evening a little less than an hour, and when he got +up to go, she made no effort to detain him. The thing had been, as its +unbroken surface could testify, a highly successful first call. Before +she let him go, though, she asked him how long he was going to be in New +York, and on getting a very indeterminate answer that offered a minimum +of "two or three days" and a maximum that could not even be guessed at, +she said: + +"I hope you're not going to be too dreadfully busy for us to see a lot +of each other. I wish we might manage it once every day." + +That shook him; for a moment, she thought the lightning was going to +strike and stood very still holding her breath, waiting for it. + +But he steadied himself, said he could certainly manage that if she +could, and as the elevator came up in response to her ring, said that he +would call her up in the morning at her office. + +She puzzled a little during the intermittent processes of undressing, +over why she had let him go like that. She found it easy to name some of +the things that were _not_ the reason. It was not--oh, a thousand times +it was not!--that she wasn't quite sure of him. There was no expressing +the completeness of her certainty that, with a look, a sudden holding +out of the hands to him, the release of one little love-cry from her +lips, a half-articulate, "Come and take me, Roddy! That's all I want!" +she could have shattered, annihilated, that brittle restraint of his; +released the full tempest of his passion; found herself--lost +herself--in his embrace. + +Certainly it was no doubt of that that had held her back. And, no more +than doubt, was it pride or modesty. The one thing her whole being was +crying out for was a complete surrender to him. + +But the real reason seemed rather absurd, when she tried to state it to +herself. She had felt that it would be a _brutal_ thing to do. Really, +her feeling toward him was that of a mother toward a child who, having, +he thinks, merited her displeasure, offers her, by way of atonement, +some dearly prized possession; an iron fire-engine, a woolly sheep. What +mother wouldn't accept an offering like that gravely! + +This thing that Rodney had offered her, the valiant, heart breaking +pretense that she needn't give him anything--to her, whose aching need +was to give him everything she had!--was just as absurd as the child's +toy could have been. But it had cost him.... Oh, what must it not have +cost him in struggle and sacrifice, to construct that pitiful, +transparent pretense!--to maintain that manner! And the struggle and the +sacrifice must not be cheapened, made absurd by a sudden shattering +demonstration that they'd been unnecessary. His pretense must be melted, +not shattered. And until it could be melted, that aching need of hers +must wait. + +And then she realized that the ache was gone--the tormenting restless +hunger for him that had been nagging at her ever since the first rush of +spring was somehow appeased. She'd have said, twenty-four hours ago, +that to be with him, have him near her, in any other relation than that +of her lover, would be unendurable. Twenty-four hours ago! She thought +of that as she was winding her watch. It seemed incredible that it was +no longer than that since the saccharine little sob in John McCormack's +voice as he had sung "Just a little love, a li-ttle ki-iss," had driven +her frantic. + +She turned out her light and opened her bedroom window. The phonograph +across the court was going again. But now, evidently, its master had +come back from Pittsburgh, for it was singing lustily, "That's why I +wish again that I was in Michigan, back on the farm." + +Rose smiled her old wide smile, and cuddled her cheek into the pillow. +She was the happiest person in the world. + +When he called her up the next morning, she asked him to come down to +the premises of Dane & Company (it was a loft on lower Fifth Avenue) +about noon and go out to lunch with her, and she made no secret of her +motive in selecting their rendezvous. "I'd like to have you see what our +place is like;" she said, "though it isn't like anything much just now, +between seasons this way. Still you can get an idea." + +He said he would be immensely interested to see the place, and from the +cadence of his voice was apparently prepared to let the conversation end +there. But she prolonged it a little. + +"Do you hear from--Chicago while you're down here, Roddy?" she asked. +"Whether everything's all right--at home, I mean?" + +It was a second or two before he answered, but when he did, his voice +was perfectly steady. + +"Yes," he said. "I get a night-letter every morning from Miss French. +(This was Mrs. Ruston's successor.) It's--everything's all right." + +"Good-by, then, till noon," she said. And if he could have seen the +smile that was on her lips, and the brightness that was in her eyes as +she said it ...! + +It was a part, you see, of his Quixotic determination to make no claims, +that he had not said a word, during his evening call, about the +twins--her babies! + +On the stroke of twelve his card was brought to her, and she went out +into their bare little waiting-room to meet him. + +"We aren't a regular dressmaking establishment, you see," she said. "The +people we have to impress aren't the ones we make the clothes for. So we +can be as shabby down here as we please, and Alice says--Alice Perosini, +you know--that our shabbiness really does impress them. Shows we don't +care what they think. + +"You're sure you've plenty of time to see around in?" she went on. "That +it won't cut into your time for lunch?" + +He made it plain that he had plenty of time, and she took him into her +own studio, a big north-lighted room at the back of the building, with +the painter's manikins that Jimmy Wallace had told about, standing about +in it, and some queer-looking electric-light fixtures suggestive of the +stage; a big tin-lined box with half a dozen powerful tungsten lamps in +it, and grooves in the mouth of it for the reception of colored slides. +And a sort of search-light that swung on a pivot. There was a high +cutting-table with a deep indentation in it, in which Rose could stand +with her work all around her. On a shelf in a corner he noticed two or +three little figures twelve inches high or so that he'd have thought of +as dolls had it not been that their small heads gave them the scale of +adults. Rose followed his glance. + +"I play with those," she said. "Dress them in all sorts of +things--tissue-paper mostly. It seems easier to catch an idea small in +the tips of my fingers, and then let it grow up. You have to find out +for yourself how you can do things, don't you?" + +Then she took him out into the workroom, where there were more +cutting-tables and power-driven sewing-machines. + +"'It never rains but it pours,' is the motto of this business," she told +him. "Nobody ever knows what he wants until the very last minute, and +then he wants it the next, and everybody wants it at once. And then this +place is like a madhouse. We simply go out of our heads. It was like +that when Jimmy Wallace was down here. I hadn't a minute for him." + +She added deliberately, "I'm glad you didn't come down then," and went +swiftly on to explain to him a sort of pantograph arrangement which +could be set with reference to the measurements of the manikin Rose had +designed the costume upon, and those of the girl who was going to wear +it, so that the pattern for the costume itself, as distinct from Rose's +master-pattern, was cut almost automatically to fit. + +"It's not really automatic, of course," she said. "No costume's done +until I have seen it on the girl who's going to wear it. But it does +save time." + +Alice Perosini came in just then, and a breath-taking spectacle she'd +have been to most men in the frock she had on. But it was not Rodney who +gasped. It was Alice herself who almost did, when Rose introduced him to +her, without explanations, as Mr. Aldrich and said she was going out to +lunch with him. + +"And there's no telling when I'll be back," she added, "so if there's +anything to talk about, you'd better seize the chance and tell me now." + +Alice couldn't be blamed if her face was a study. She knew that Aldrich +was the name of Rose's abandoned husband, and it would have been natural +to believe that this highly impressive-looking person, whom Rose so +casually introduced, was he. But the matter-of-fact way in which Rose +was trotting him about the shop, and spoke of carrying him off to lunch, +seemed to make such a conclusion fantastic. + +There was nothing casual about the man, though, she reflected +afterward. He'd taken his part, adequately and politely, of course, in +the introduction and the fragmentary word or two of small-talk that had +followed it, but Alice doubted if he'd really seen her at all. And when +a man didn't see Alice--this was a line of reasoning she was quite +candidly capable of--it meant an intensity of preoccupation that one +might call monstrous--portentous, anyway. + +Rose asked him if he minded the Brevoort, which was near by and airy, on +a warm spring day like this, and he assented to it with enthusiasm. He +hadn't been there in years, he said. She wished, a little later, that +she had thought twice and had taken him somewhere else, where she wasn't +quite so obviously well acquainted. The cordial salutation of the head +waiter, the number of people who nodded at her from this table or that, +might well have been dispensed with on an occasion like this. And the +climax was when the table waiter, well accustomed to having her bring +guests of either sex to lunch with her, and on confidential terms with +her gustatory preferences, handed her a menu--as a matter of form--told +her what he thought she'd like to-day, and, getting out his pencil and +his card, prepared to write it down. She saw Rodney looking pretty +blank, so she checked the waiter and said: + +"I think I _did_ ask you to lunch with me, but if you'd rather I lunched +with you ... You can have it whichever way you like." + +He hesitated just an instant; then said he'd like to lunch with her. And +somehow their eyes met over that in a way that, once more, made Rose +hold her breath. But the lightning didn't strike that time. + +Even so, their hour wasn't wasted on the polite topics of custom-made +conversation, as, for a while, she had feared it would be; because he +asked her, presently--and she could see he really wanted to know--how +she had got started in this costuming business. It was evidently a thing +she had a genius for, but how had she found it out, and how had she +worked out that technique which, even to the eyes of his ignorance, was +clearly extraordinary? + +And Rose, beginning a little timidly, because she knew there were rocks +ahead for him, told him the tale that had its beginning in Lessing's +store; the story of Mrs. Goldsmith and her bad taste, of the Poiret +model that had suggested her great idea, of the offer she had made +Galbraith, the way she had bought her dressmaker's form and her bolts of +paper-cambric out of the Christmas rush, and had cut out her patterns in +the dead of nights after rehearsals, up in her little room on Clark +Street. She told him of the wild rush with which the costumes themselves +got made down under the stage at the Globe; of Galbraith's enthusiasm, +of the bargain she'd driven with Goldsmith and Block--the unwittingly +good bargain that had left her a profit of over two hundred dollars. She +told him how Goldsmith and Block had driven a good bargain of their own, +hiring her at her chorus-girl's salary for the last two delirious weeks; +how insanely hard she'd worked, and how, at last, after the opening +performance, Galbraith had offered her a job in New York when he should +be ready for her. + +Somehow, while she told it, though it was only occasionally that she +glanced up at him--somehow, as she told it, she seemed to be hearing it +with his ears--to be thinking, actually, the very thoughts that were +going through his mind. + +The central cord of it all, that everything else depended from, was, she +knew, the reflection that this triumphant narrative he was listening to +now, had been waiting on her lips to be told to him that night in the +room on Clark Street, and that the smoking smoldering fires of his +outraged pride and masculine sense of possession, had made the telling +impossible--had made everything impossible but that dull outcry of hers +that it had ended--like this. + +But he never winced. Indeed, now and then when she tried to run ahead in +a way to elide this incident or that, he asked questions that brought +out all the details, and at the end he said with undisguised gravity, +but quite steadily: + +"So after the play opened you were just waiting for Galbraith to send +for you. Why--why did you go on the road, instead of to New York?" + +"He hadn't sent for me yet, and I'd made up my mind, by that time, that +he meant not to. And I was too tired just then to come down here and try +for anything else. I went on the road for a sort of rest-cure." + +He sat for a good while after that in a reflective silence. And, at the +end of it, deliberately introduced a new and entirely harmless topic of +conversation. She knew why he did that. She understood now that there +was more on his program than his manner last night had indicated. That +had been a preliminary, but the past wasn't to be ignored forever. A +time was coming when the issue between them should be brought up and +settled. But the time was not now, nor the place this crowded +restaurant. + +She was perfectly docile to his new conversational lead, but the fact +that she yielded, that she knew it would be beyond her powers to force +that issue until he was ready for it, thrilled her--brought the blood +into her cheeks. The thing he was doing might be absurd, but his way of +doing it was not absurd. He had changed, somehow, or something had +changed between them. She engaged all his powers. If there should be a +struggle now, his mind would not betray him. + +Just before they left the restaurant he asked her if she would dine with +him some night and go to a show afterward, and when she said she would +he asked what night would be convenient to her. + +Her inflection was perfectly demure and even casual, but nothing could +keep the sudden "richening" that Jimmy Wallace had tried to describe out +of her voice, and the light of mischief danced openly in her eyes when +she said: + +"Why, to-night's all right for me." She added, "If that's not too soon +for you." + +He flushed and dropped his hands from the edge of the table where they'd +been resting, but he answered evenly enough: + +"No, it's not too soon for me." + +And then force of habit betrayed Rose into a stupid blunder that almost +precipitated a small quarrel. + +"Tell me what you'd like to see," she said, "and I'll telephone for the +seats." + +Then, at his horrified stare, she gasped out an explanation. "Roddy, I +didn't mean _buy_ the seats! I don't have to buy seats at any theater. +And at this time of year they're so glad to have somebody to give them +to that it seems sort of--wicked to pay real money." + +"It's my mistake," he said. "Naturally, going to the theater wouldn't be +much of a--treat to you. I'd forgotten that." + +"Going with _you_ would be a treat to me," she said earnestly. "That's +why I didn't think about the other part of it. But I needn't have been +so stupid as that. Will you forget I said it, please?" + +He smiled now at himself, the first smile of genuine amusement she had +seen on his lips for--how long? + +"And I needn't have been quite so horrified," he admitted. "All the +same, I hope I may manage to hit on a restaurant up-town somewhere, +where the waiter won't hand you the check." + +It was on this note that he parted from her at Dane & Company's doorway. + +But the ice didn't melt so fast as she had expected it would, and she +went to bed that night, after he'd brought her home in a taxi and, +having told the chauffeur to wait, formally escorted her to her +elevator, in a state of mind not quite so serenely happy as that of the +night before. She had held her breath a good many times during the +dinner, and even in the theater, where certain old memories and +associations sprang at them both, as it were, from ambush. But always, +at the breaking point, he managed to summon up unexpected reserves for +resistance, intrenched himself in the manner of his first call. + +Rose both smiled and wept over her review of this evening, and was a +long while getting off to sleep. She felt she couldn't stand this state +of things much longer. + +But it was not required of her. With the last of the next day's light, +the ice broke up and the floods came. + +She had taken him to a studio tea in the upper sixties just off West End +Avenue, the proprietors of the studio being a tousled, bearded, blond +anarchist of a painter and his exceedingly pretty, smart, +frivolous-looking wife--who had more sense than she was willing to let +appear. They had lived in Paris for years, but the fact that he had a +German-sounding name had driven them back to New York. It was through +Gertrude that Rose had got acquainted with them--she having wrung from +Abe Shuman permission for the painter to prowl around back-stage and +make notes for a series of queerly lighted pictures of chorus-girls and +dancers--"Degas--and then some," as his admirers said. Gertrude was at +the tea and two or three others. It wasn't a party. + +The two men had instinctively drawn controversial swords almost at sight +of each other and for the hour and a half that they were together the +combat raged mightily, to the unmixed satisfaction of both participants. +The feelings of the bystanders were perhaps more diverse, but Rose, at +least, enjoyed herself thoroughly, not only over seeing her husband's +big, formidable, finely poised mind in action again, but over a change +that had taken place in the nature of some of his ideas. The talk, of +course, ranged everywhere: Socialism, feminism, law and its crimes, art +and the social mind. Gertrude took a hand in it now and then, and it was +something Rodney said to her, in answer to a remark about dependent +wives, that really made Rose sit up. + +"Wives aren't dependents," he said, "except as they let their husbands +make them think they are. Or only in very rare cases. Certainly I don't +know of a wife who doesn't render her husband valuable economic services +in exchange for her support. I can hardly imagine one. Of course if they +don't recognize that these services are valuable, they can be made to +feel dependent all right." + +Gertrude demurred. She was willing to admit that a wife who took care of +a husband's house, cooked his meals, brought up his children, did him an +economic service and that if she didn't feel that she was earning her +way in the world it was because she had been imposed on. But here in New +York, anyway--she didn't know how it might be out in Chicago--one didn't +have to resort to his imagination to conjure up a wife who rendered none +of these services whatever. "They live, thousands of them, in smart +up-town apartments, don't do a lick of work, choke up Fifth Avenue with +their limousines in the afternoon, dress like birds of paradise, or as +near to it as they can come, dine with their husbands in the +restaurants, go to the first nights, eat lobster Newburg afterward, and +spend the next morning in bed getting over it. Those that can't afford +that kind of life scrape along giving the best imitation of it they know +how. Thousands of them--thousands and thousands. If they aren't +dependents ..." + +"They're not, though," said Rodney. "Not a bit of it. They're giving +their husbands an economic service of a peculiarly indispensable sort. +The first requisite for success to the husbands of women who live like +that is the appearance of success. Their status, their front, is the one +thing they can't do without. Well, and it's a curious fact that a man +can't keep up his own front. If he tries to dress extravagantly, wear +diamonds, spend his money on himself, he doesn't look prosperous. He +looks a fool. People won't take him seriously. If he can get a wife +who's ornamental, who has attractive manners, who can convey the +appearance of being expensive without being vulgar, she's of a perfectly +enormous economic advantage to him. She'd only have to quit buying the +sort of clothes he could parade her in, and begin spoiling her looks +with a menial domestic routine, to draw howls of protest from him. +Only, so long as she doesn't call his bluff, she leaves him free +to think that he's doing it all for her and that except for her +extravagance--extravagance, mind you, that nine times out of ten he's +absolutely rammed down her throat--he'd be as rich, really, as he has to +try to pretend he is. He tells her so, with perfect sincerity--and she +believes it." Rose enjoyed the look in Gertrude's face as she listened +to that. + +It was half past six or thereabout when they left the studio, and the +late May afternoon was at its loveliest. It was the sort of day, as +Rodney said, that convicted you, the minute you came out of it, of +abysmal folly in having wasted any of it indoors. + +"I want to walk," said Rose, "after that tea, if I'm ever to want any +dinner." + +He nodded a little absently, she thought, and fell in step beside her. +There was no mention at any time, of their destination. + +It was a good while before Rose got the key to his preoccupation. They +had turned into the park at Sixty-sixth Street, and were half-way over +to the Fifth Avenue corner at Fifty-ninth, before he spoke out. + +"On a day like this," he said, "to have sat there for two or three +mortal hours arguing about stale ideas! Threshing over the straw--almost +as silly an occupation as chess--when we might have been out here, being +alive! But it must have seemed natural to you to hear me going on like +that." And then with a burst, before she could speak: + +"You must remember me as the most blindly opinionated fool in the +world!" + +She caught her breath, then said very quietly, with a warm little laugh +in her voice, "That's not how I remember you, Rodney." + +She declined to help him when he tried to scramble back to the safe +shores of conventional conversation. That sort of thing had lasted long +enough. She just walked along in step with him and, for her part, in +silence. It wasn't long before he fell silent too. + +A thing that Rose hadn't counted on was the effect produced on both of +them just by walking along like this together, side by side, in step. +Just the rhythm of it established a sort of communion--and it was a +communion fortified by many associations. Practically the whole of their +courtship, from the day when he dropped off the street-car with her in +the rain and walked her over to the elevated and kept her note-books, +down to the day on the bridge over the Drainage Canal in the swirl of +that March blizzard, when she'd felt his first embrace, had been on foot +like this, tramping along side by side; miles and miles and miles, as +she'd told her mother. And there had been other walks since. Do you +remember the last time they had walked together? It was from the stage +door of the Globe theater to her little room on North Clark Street. Rose +remembered it and she felt sure that he did. The same singing wire of +memories and associations that had vibrated between them then was +vibrating between them now and drawing up palpably tighter with every +half-mile they walked. Their pace quickened a little. + +Straight down Fifth Avenue they walked to the corner of Thirteenth +Street, and then west. And when they stopped and faced each other in the +entrance to the gray brick building where Rose's apartment was, it was +at the end of a mile or more of absolutely unbroken silence. And facing +each other there, all that was said between them was her: + +"You'll come in, won't you?" and his, "Yes." + +But the gravity with which she'd uttered the invitation and the +tenseness of his acceptance of it, the square look that passed between +them, marked an end of something and the beginning of something new. + +She left him in her sitting-room while she went through into her bedroom +to take off her hat and jacket and take a glance into her mirror. When +she came back, she found him standing at her window looking out. He +didn't turn when she came in, but almost immediately he began speaking. +She went rather limp at the sound of his voice and dropped down on a +cushioned ottoman in front of the fireplace, and squeezed her hands +together between her knees. + +"I don't know how much you will have understood," he began, "probably a +good deal. You told me in Dubuque--as you were quite right to tell +me--that I mustn't come back to you. And now I've disobeyed you and +come. What I hope you will have guessed is that I wouldn't have come +except that I'd something to tell you--something different from +the--idiocies I tormented you with in Dubuque;--something I felt you +were entitled to be told. But I felt--this is what you won't have +understood--I felt that I hadn't any right to speak to you at all, about +anything vital, about anything that concerned us, until I'd given you +some sort of guarantee--until I'd shown you that I was a person it was +possible to deal reasonably with." + +She smiled, then pressed her hands suddenly to her eyes. + +"I understood," she said. + +"Well, then ..." But he didn't at once go on. Stood there a while longer +at the window, then crossed the room and brought up before her +book-shelves, staring blindly at the titles. He hadn't looked at her +even as he crossed the room. + +"Oh, it's a presumptuous thing to try to say," he broke out at last, "a +pitifully unnecessary thing to say, because you must know it without my +telling you. But when you went away you said--you said it was because +you hadn't--my--friendship! You said that was the thing you wanted and +that you were going to try to earn it. And in Dubuque you told me that +I'd evidently never be able to understand that you could have been happy +in that room on Clark Street, that I'd wanted to 'rescue' you from; that +I'd never be able to see that the thing you were doing there was a fine +thing, worth doing, entitled to my respect. Well, the things I'd been +saying to you and the things I'd been doing, justified you in thinking +that. But what I've come down here to say is--is that now--at last--I do +see it." + +She would have spoken then if she could have commanded her voice, and as +it was, the sound she made conveyed her intention to him, for he turned +on her quickly as if to interrupt the unspoken words, and went on with +an almost savage bitterness. + +"Oh, I'm under no illusions about it. I had my chance to see, when +seeing would have meant something to you--helped you. When any one but +the blindest sort of fool would have seen. I didn't. Now, when the thing +is patent for the world to see--now that Violet Williamson has seen it +and Constance, and God knows who of the rest of them, who were so +tactful and sympathetic about my 'disgrace'--now that you've won your +fight without any help from me ... Without any help! In spite of every +hindrance that my idiocy could put in your way! Now, after all--I come +and tell you that you've earned the thing you've set out to get." + +There was a little silence after that. She got up and took the post he +had abandoned at the window. + +"Why did you do it, Roddy?" she asked. "I mean, why did you want to come +and tell me?" + +"Why, in the first place," he said, "I wanted to get back a little of my +self-respect. I couldn't get that until I'd told you." + +This time the silence was longer. + +"What else did you want?" she asked. "What--in the second place?" + +"I don't know why I put it like that," he said. "Please don't think ... +I can't bear to have you think that I came down here to--ask anything of +you--anything in the way of a reward for having seen what is so plain to +every one. I haven't any--claim at all. I want to earn your friendship. +It's the biggest thing I've got to hope for. But I've no idea that you +can hand it out to me ready-made. I believe you'd do it if you could. +But you said once, yourself, that it wasn't a thing that could be given. +It was a thing that had to be earned. And you were right about that, as +you were about so many other things. Well, I'm going to try to earn it." +"Is that--all you want?" she asked, and then hearing the little gasp he +gave, she swung round quickly and looked at him. It was pretty dark in +the room, but his face in the dusk seemed to have whitened. + +"Is friendship all you want of me, Roddy?" she asked again. + +She stood there waiting, a full minute, in silence. Then she said, "You +don't have to tell me that. Because I know. Oh--oh, my dear, how well I +know!" + +He didn't come to her; just stood there, gripping the corner of her +bookcase and staring at her silhouette, which was about all he could see +of her against the window. At last he said, in a strained dry voice +she'd hardly have known for his: + +"If you know that--if I've let you see that, then I've done just +about the last despicable thing there was left for me to do. I've +come down here and--made you feel sorry for me. So that with +that--divine--kindliness of yours, you're willing to give +me--everything." + +He straightened up and came a step nearer. "Well, I won't have it, I +tell you! I don't know how you guessed. If I'd dreamed I was betraying +that to you ...! Don't I know--it's burnt into me so that I'll never +forget--what the memory of my love must be to you--the memory of the +hideous things it's done to you. And now, after all that--after you've +won your fight--alone--and stand where you stand now--for me to come +begging! And take a gift like that! I tell you it _is_ pity. It can't be +anything else." + +There was another minute of silence, and then he heard her make a little +noise in her throat, a noise that would have been a sob had there not +been something like a laugh in it. The next moment she said, "Come over +here, Roddy," and as he hesitated, as if he hadn't understood, she +added, "I want you to look at me. Over here by the window, where there's +light enough to see me by." + +He came wonderingly, very slowly, but at last, with her outstretched +hand she reached him and drew him around between her and the window. + +"Look into my face," she commanded. "Look into my eyes; as far in as you +can. Is it--oh, my dearest"--the sob of pure joy came again--"is it pity +that you see?" + +She'd had her hands upon his shoulders, but now they clasped themselves +behind his head. Her vision of him had swum away in a blur, and without +the support she got from him she'd have been swaying giddily. + +"Roddy, old man," she said, "if I hadn't seen--in the first--ten +minutes, the thing you--meant so hard I shouldn't see--I think it would +have--killed me. If I hadn't seen that you loved me--after all; after +everything. After all the tortures you'd suffered, through me. Because +that's all I want--in the world." + +At that he put his arms around her and pulled her up to him. But the +manner of it was so different from his old embraces that presently she +drew him around so that what little light there was fell on his face, +and searched it thoughtfully. + +"You _do_ believe me, Roddy, don't you--that there isn't any pity about +it? There isn't any room for pity. There's nothing in me at all but just +a great big--want of you. Don't you understand that?" + +He did understand it with his mind, but he was a little dazed, like +one who has stood too near where the lightning struck. The hope +he had kept buried alive so long--buried alive because it wouldn't +die--could not be brought out into a blinding glory like this without +shrinking--pain--exquisite terrifying pain. + +The knowledge she had acquired by her own suffering stood her in good +stead now. She did not mistake, as the Rose he had married might have +done, the weakness of his response for coldness--indifference. + +She went back and began making love to him more gently; released herself +from his arms, led him over to her one big chair, and made him sit down +in it, settled herself upon the arm of it and contented herself with one +of his hands. Presently he took one of hers, bent his face down over it +and brushed the back of it with his lips. + +The timidity of that caress, with all it revealed to her, was too much +for her. She swallowed one sob, and another, but the next one got away +from her and she broke out in a passionate fit of weeping. + +That roused him from his daze a little, and he pulled her down in his +arms--held her tight--comforted her. + +When she got herself in hand again, she got up, went away to wash her +face, and coming back in the room again, lighted a reading-lamp and drew +down the blinds. + +"Rose," he said presently, "what are we going to do?" + +She knew she was not answering the true intent of his question when she +said: + +"Well, for one thing we can get a little supper. I don't know what we've +got to eat, but we won't care--to-night." + +There was a ring of decision in his voice that startled her a little +when he said: + +"No, we won't do that to-night. We'll go out somewhere to a +restaurant." + +Their eyes met--unwavering. + +"Yes," she said, "that's what we'll do." + +They didn't talk much across the table in the deserted little Italian +restaurant they went to. Neither of them afterward could remember +anything they'd said. They ate their meal in a sort of grave contented +happiness that was reaching down deeper and deeper into them every +minute, and they walked back to the gray brick building in Thirteenth +Street, arm in arm, hand in hand, in silence. But when she stopped +there, he said: + +"Let's walk a little farther, Rose. There are things we've got to +decide, and--and I'm not going in with you again to-night." + +She caught her breath at that, and her hand tightened its hold on his. +But she walked on with him. + +He said, presently, "You understand, don't you?" + +She answered, "Oh, my dear!--yes." But she added, a little shakily, "I +wish we had a magic-carpet right here, that we could fly home on." + +Then they walked a while in silence. + +At last he said: "There's this we can do. I can go back to my hotel +to-night, and tell them that I'm expecting you--that I'm expecting my +wife to join me there. To-morrow? And then I can come and get you and +bring you there. It's not home, and it's not the place I'd choose +for--for a honeymoon, but ..." + +The way she echoed the word set him thinking. But before his thoughts +had got to their destination she said: + +"Shall we make it a real honeymoon, Roddy--make it as complete as we +can? Forget everything and let all the world be ..." + +He supplied a word for her, "Rose-color?" + +She accepted it with a caressing little laugh, "... for a while?" + +"That's what I was fumbling for," he said, "but I can't think very +straight to-night. I've got it now, though. That cottage we had--before +the twins were born--down on the Cape. There won't be a soul there this +time of the year. We'd have the world to ourselves." + +"Yes," she said, "for a little while, we'd want it like that. But after +a while--after a day or two, could we have the babies? Could the nurse +bring them on to me and then go straight back, so that I could have +them--and you, altogether?" + +He said, "You darling!" But he couldn't manage more than that. + +A little later he suggested that they could get the place by telegraph +and could set out for it to-morrow. + +She laughed and asked, "Will you let me be as silly as I like for once? +Will you give me a week--well, till Saturday; that would do--to get +ready in?" + +"Get ready?" he echoed. + +"Clothes and thinks," she said. "A--trousseau, don't you see? I've been +so busy making clothes for other people that I've got just about nothing +myself. And I'd like ... But I don't really care, Roddy. I'll go with +you to-morrow, 'as is,' if you want me to." + +"No," he said. "We'll do it the other way." + +And then he took her back to the gray brick entrance and, just out of +range of the elevator man, kissed her good night. + +"But will you telephone to me as soon as you wake up in the morning, so +that I'll know it's true?" + +She nodded. Then her eyes went wide and she clung to him. + +"_Is_ it true, Roddy? Is it possible for a thing to come back like that? +Are we really the old Rodney and Rose, planning our honeymoon again? It +wasn't quite three years ago. Three years next month. Will it be like +that?" + +"Not like that, perhaps," he said, "exactly. It will be better by all +we've learned and suffered since." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE BEGINNING + + +There was a sense in which this prediction of Rodney's about their +honeymoon was altogether true, They had great hours--hours of an +emotional intensity greater than any they had known during that former +honeymoon, greater by all they had learned and suffered since--hours +that repaid all that suffering, and could not have been captured at any +smaller price. There were hours when the whole of their two selves +literally seemed transfused into one essence; when there was nothing of +either of them that was not the other; when all their thoughts, +impulses, desires, flowered spontaneously out of a common mind. There +was no precalculating these experiences. They came upon them, seized +them, carried them off. + +One of these, that neither of them will ever forget, came at the end of +a long tramp through the dawn of their second day. They had been +swinging along in almost unbroken silence through the gray mist, had +mounted a little hillock and halted, hand in hand, as the first lance of +sunlight transfixed and flushed the still vaporous air, and it had +seemed to them, as they watched, breathless, while the sun mounted, that +the whole of the life that lay before them was a track of gold like that +which blazed across the sea, leading to an intolerable glory. + +And there were other hours of equally memorable transfiguration, which +their surroundings had nothing whatever to do with--hours lighted only +by the flame that flared up from their two selves. + +But life, of course, can not be made up of hours like that. No sane +person can even want to live in a perpetual ecstasy. What makes a +mountain peak is the fall away into the surrounding valleys. + +In their valleys of commonplace, every-day existence--and these +occurred even in their first days together--they were stiff, shy, +self-conscious with each other. And their attempt to ignore this fact +only made the self-consciousness the worse. It troubled and bewildered +both of them. + +Rose's misgiving had been justified. They weren't the old Rodney and +Rose. Those two splendid careless savages, who had lived for a fortnight +on an island in the midst of Martin Whitney's carefully preserved +solitude in Northern Wisconsin, accepting the gifts of the gods with +such joyous confidence that none of them could ever turn bitter, those +two zestful children, had ceased to exist. + +John Galbraith had spoken truth when he said there was no such thing as +a fresh start. For good or evil, you were the product of your +yesterdays. The nightmare tour on the road with _The Girl Up-stairs_ +company was a part of Rose; the day in Centropolis, the night when +Galbraith had made love to her. The hour in the University Club, when +Rodney's heart had first shrunk from an unacknowledged fear; the days +and weeks of humiliation and distress that had succeeded it, were a part +of him--an ineffaceable part. + +So it was natural enough--though not, therefore, the less +distressing--that Rose should note, with wonder, a tendency in him to +revert to the manner which had characterized his first call on her in +New York; a tendency to be--of all things--polite. He didn't swear any +more, nor contradict. He chose his words, got up when she did, picked up +things she dropped. And when she was quite sure she was safe from +discovery, she sometimes wept forlornly, for the rough, outrageous, +absent-minded, imperious lover of the old days. + +She did not know that she was different too--as remote from the girl she +had been during the first six months of their marriage--the girl who, +"all eyes," had held her breath while Doctor Randolph told her things; +the girl who had smiled over Bertie Willis' love-making, because she +didn't know that such things happened except in books--as he was from +the old Rodney. Even Violet had seen, in the glimpse she'd caught across +two taxicabs, that her smile was somehow different, and James Randolph +had come back from his tea with her in the Knickerbocker, saying that +she was a thousand years old. + +So it was not wonderful that Rodney should have found a new mystery in +her; nor that, seeing in her look, sometimes--especially when it was not +meeting his own--the reflections of a thousand experiences he had not +shared with her, he should have felt that she was a long way off. And +his heart ached for the old Rose, whom he had so completely +"surrounded"--the Rose who had consulted him about the menus for her +dinners, who had brought him all her little troubles; who had +tried--bless her!--to study law, and had stolen into court to hear his +argument, so that she could talk with him. Whatever the future might +have for him, it would never bring that Rose back. + +The arrival of the twins, in the convoy of a badly flustered--and, to +tell the truth, a somewhat scandalized--Miss French, simplified the +situation a little--by complicating it! They absolutely enforced a +routine. They had needs that must be met on the minute. And they gave +Rose and Rodney so many occupations that the contemplation of their +complicated states of mind was much abridged. + +But even her babies brought Rose a disappointment along with them. From +the time of the receipt of Miss French's telegram acknowledging Rodney's +and telling them what train she and the twins would take, Rose had been +telling off the hours in mounting excitement. The two utterly adorable +little creatures, as the pictures of them in Rodney's pocketbook showed +them to be, who were, miraculously--incredibly--hers, were coming to +bring motherhood to her; a long-deferred payment for the labor and the +agony with which she had borne them; the realization of half-forgotten +hopes that had, during the period of her pregnancy, been the mainstay of +her life. There was now no Mrs. Ruston, no Harriet, no plausible +physician to keep them away from her. Rose had a smile of tender pity +for the memory of the girl who had struggled so ineffectually and yet +with such heart-breaking earnestness to break the filaments of the web +they'd spun around her. + +No, it wouldn't be like that now. Rodney had agreed explicitly that +Miss French was to be allowed to stay only as long as Rose wanted her; +only for the few days--or hours--she would need for making herself +mistress of their régime. Then the nurse was to be sent away on a +vacation and Rose should have her children to herself. + +She didn't go to Boston with Rodney to meet them; nor even to the +station; stayed in the cottage, ostensibly to see to it, up to the very +last minute, that the fires were right (June had come in cold and rainy) +and in general to be ready on the moment to produce anything that their +rather unforeseeable needs might call for. Her real reason was a +shrinking from having her first meeting with them in the confusion of +arrival on a station platform, under the eyes of the world, amid the +distractions of things like luggage. + +Rodney understood this well enough, and arriving at the cottage, he +clambered out of the wagon with them and carried them both straight in +to Rose, leaving the nurse and the bewildering paraphernalia of travel +for a second trip. + +Rose, in the passionate surge of gratified desire that came with the +sight of them, caught them from him, crushed them up tight against her +breast--and frightened them half to death. So that without +dissimulation, they howled and brought Miss French flying to the rescue. + +Rose didn't make a tragedy of it; managed a smile at herself, though she +suspected she'd cry when she got the chance, and subjected her ideas to +an instantaneous revision. They were--_persons_, those two funnily +indignant little mites, with their own ideas, their own preferences, and +the perfectly adequate conviction of being entitled to them. How would +she herself have liked it, to have a total stranger, fifteen feet high +or so, snatch at her like that? + +She was rather apologetic all day, and got her reward; especially from +the boy, who was an adventurous and rather truculent baby, much she +fancied, as his father must once have been, and who took to her more +quickly than the girl did. Indeed, the second Rodney fell in love with +her almost as promptly as his father had done before him. But little +Portia wasn't very far behind. Two days sufficed for the conquest of +the pair of them. + +The really disquieting discovery awaited the time when the wire-edge of +novelty about this adventure in motherhood had worn off; when she could +bathe them, dress them, feed them their very strictly regimented meals, +without being spurred to the highest pitch of alertness by the fear of +making a mistake--forgetting something, like the juice of a half orange +at ten o'clock in the morning, the omission of which might have--who +knew what disastrous consequences! + +That attitude can't last any woman long, and Rose, with her wonderfully +clever hands, her wits trained--as the wits of persons who had worked +for John Galbraith were always trained--not to be told the same thing +twice, her pride keeping in sharp focus the determination that Rodney +should see that she could be as good a nurse as Miss French--Rose wore +off that nervous tenseness over her new job very quickly. Within a week +she had a routine established that was noiseless--frictionless. + +But do you remember how aghast she was over the forty weeks John +Galbraith had talked about as the probable run of _The Girl Up-stairs_; +her consternation over the idea of just going on doing the same thing +over and over again, "around and round, like a horse at the end of a +pole"? What she would like to do, she had told him, now that this was +done, was to begin on something else. + +Well, it was with something the same feeling of consternation that, +having thrown herself heart and soul into the task of planning and +setting in motion a routine for two year-and-a-half-old babies, she +found herself straightening up and saying "What next?" And realizing, +that as far as this job was concerned, there was no "next." The supreme +merit of her care, from now on, would be--barring emergencies--the +placid continuation of that routine. There were no heroics about +motherhood--save in emergency, once more. It was a question of +remembering a hundred trivial details, and executing them in the same +way every day. It was a question of doing a thousand little services, +not one of which was serious enough to occupy her mind, every one of +which was capable of being done almost automatically--but not quite! The +whole of the attention was never quite taken, and yet it was never, all +the way around the clock, entirely left free. And her love for them, +which had become almost as intense and overmastering a thing as her love +for her husband, could never be expressed fully, as was her love for +him. It would be cruelly unfair, she recognized that, to emotionalize +over them--force them. + +It was a fine relation. It was, perhaps, the very finest in the world. +But as a job, it wasn't so satisfactory. Four-fifths of it, anyway, +could be done with better results for the children by a placid, +unimaginative, tolerably stupid person, who had no stronger feeling for +them than the mild temporary affection they could excite in any one not +a monster. And the other fifth of it wasn't strictly a job at all. + +On the whole, then, leaving their miraculous hours out of the +account--and, being incommensurable, imponderable, they couldn't be +included in an inventory--their honeymoon, considered as an attempt to +revisit Arcady, to seize a golden day that looked neither toward the +past nor toward the future, complete in itself, perfect--was a failure. + +It was not until, pretty ruefully, they acknowledged this, tore up their +artificial resolution not to look at the future, and deliberately set +themselves to the contemplation of a life that would have to take into +account complex and baffling considerations, that their honeymoon became +a success. It was well along in their month that this happened. + +Rose had spent a maddening sort of day, a day that had been all edges, +trying not to let herself feel hurt over fantastic secondary meanings +which it was possible to attach to some of the things Rodney had said, +frying to be cheerful and sensible, and to ignore the patent fact that +his cheerfulness was as forced and unnatural a thing as hers. The +children--as a rule the best-behaved little things in the world--had +been refractory. They'd refused to take their morning nap for some +reason or other, and had been fractious ever since. So, after their +supper, when they'd finally gone off to sleep, and Rose had rejoined +Rodney in the sitting-room, she was in a state where it did not take +much to set her off. + +It was not much that did; nothing more, indeed, than the fact that she +found her husband brooding in front of the fire, and that the smile with +which he greeted her was a little too quick and bright and mechanical, +and that it soon faded out. The Rodney of her memories had never done +things like that. If you found him sitting in a chair, you found him +reading a book. When he was thinking something out he tramped back and +forth, twisted his face up, made gestures! That habit couldn't have +changed. It was just that he wasn't being natural with her! Couldn't +feel at home with her! Before she knew it, she was crying. + +He asked, in consternation, what the matter was. What had happened? + +"Nothing," she said. "Absolutely nothing. Really." + +"Then it's just--that you're not happy. With me, like this." He brought +that out gravely, a word at a time; as though they hurt. + +"Are you happy? With me--like this?" she countered. + +It was a question he could not answer categorically and she did not give +him time for anything else. "What's the matter with us, Roddy?" she +demanded. "We ought to be happy. We meant to be. We said that we'd been +through a lot, and that probably there was a lot mere to go through--in +the way of working things out, at least--and that we'd take a month just +for nothing but to be happy in--just for pure joy." Her voice broke in a +sob over that. "And here we are--like this!" + +"It hasn't all been like this," he said. "There have been hours, a day +or two, that I'd go through the whole thing for, again, if necessary." + +She nodded assent to that. "But the rest of the time!" she cried. "Why +can't we be--comfortable together? Why ... Roddy, why can't you be +natural with me? Like your old self. Why don't you roar at me any more? +And swear when you run into things? I've never seen you formal before +--not with anybody. Not even with strangers. And now you're formal with +me." + +The rueful grin with which he acknowledged the truth of this indictment +was more like him, and it cheered her immensely. She answered it with +one of her own, dried her eyes and asked again, more collectedly: + +"Well, can you tell me why?" + +"Why, it seemed to me," he said, "that it was you who were different. +And you have changed, of course, down inside, more than I have. You've +been through things in the last year and a half; found out things that I +know nothing about, except as I have read about them in books. I've +never had to ask a stranger for a job. I've never been--brought to bay, +the way you were in that damned town of Centropolis (I'd like to burn +it). And other things--horrible things, have--have come so near you, +that if it hadn't been for that--white flame of yours, they'd have +marked you. When I think of those things I feel like a schoolboy beside +you. You've no idea how--how innocent a man can be, Rose. That's not the +tradition, but it's true. So, when I remember how things used to be +between us, how I used to be the one who knew things, and how I preached +and spouted, I get to feeling that the man you remember must look to you +now, like--well, like a schoolboy. Showing off." + +She stared at him incredulously. "But that's downright morbid," she +said. "You don't have to go--into the gutter to learn things. And what +you say about innocence ... A man can't keep his innocence by being +ignorant, Roddy. If he's kept it, he must have--fought for it. I know +that." + +She was still deeply disturbed. "It's horrible that I should make you +feel like that," she concluded. + +"It isn't you," he told her. "It's just--the situation. I can't help +feeling that I'm taken--on approval. Oh, it's _got_ to be like that! +There are things that, with all the forgiveness in the world, you can't +forget. And until you have seen that I am different, that I have made +myself different...." + +"What things?" she demanded. + +"Well--a thing," he amended. "You know what I mean. The night I came to +the stage door of the Globe for you." + +She colored at that, and then, to his amazement, she smiled. + +"I've been such a coward about that," she said. "I've tried to tell you +a dozen times up here, and I've been afraid you'd be--shocked. I expect +you will be, now. But I've got to tell you just the same. + +"Roddy, when you were talking to me, there in the hotel at Dubuque, +telling me how horrified you were over that, it came over me all at once +that I had nothing to forgive; that if the thing was a fault at all, it +was mine as much as yours, and that it wasn't so much of a fault as +an--accident. You couldn't help hating me, and you couldn't help loving +me. And you did both at once. And I, when I could have told you +something that would have made you--well, hate me less, anyhow--didn't +take the trouble. I said to myself then that it was too bad it happened, +but that it wasn't, at least, your fault. And I was afraid to tell you +so. + +"But, Roddy, during these last months, down here in New York, I've +been--glad it happened. It's been something to hold on to, that your +love of me was strong enough, so that the hate couldn't kill it. It +helped me to hope that it would be strong enough, some day or other, to +bring you back to me. And without that hope, I couldn't have gone on. +It's what I have lived on. The only thing that any of my--successes has +meant has been that perhaps it brought that nearer." + +She gave a shaky laugh. "On approval!" Her eyes filled again. "Roddy, +you can't mean that." + +She came over and sat down in his lap, and slid her arm around his neck. + +"This is where we'll begin!" she said. "That I'll never--whatever +happens--walk out on you again. Whether things go well or badly with us, +we'll work it out, somehow, together." + +It was not until she heard the long shuddering sigh he drew at that, and +felt him go limp under her, that she realized how genuine his fear had +been--the perfectly preposterous fear that if their new experiment +didn't come up to her anticipation she'd tell him so, and leave him +once more. This time for good. + +It was a good while before they took up a rational discussion again, but +at last she said: + +"It will take working out, though. We've been shirking that. Hadn't we +better begin?" + +He assented. "Only, you'll have to get up," he said, "and sit down +somewhere else. Out of reach." + +She smiled as she obeyed him. "It's hard for a woman to remember," she +said, "that a man can't think about other things when he's making love, +and can't think about the person he's in love with when he's doing other +things. Because, that's about the easiest thing a woman does." + +She saw by the expression that went over his face that her remark had +chilled him a little. He didn't like to think of her as "a woman," nor +as of his relation to her as accounted for by the fact that he was "a +man." He'd generalize fast enough about the world at large, but it would +always be hard for him to include her and himself in his +generalizations. + +"Well," he said when he'd got his pipe alight, "it's the first question +I asked you after--after I got my eyes open: What are we going to do?" + +"I told Alice Perosini," she said, "the day before we left to come up +here, that I'd come back in a month, and that I'd stay until I'd +finished all the work that we were contracted for. I felt I had to do +that. It would have been so beastly unfair not to. You understand, don't +you?" + +"Of course," he said. "You couldn't consider anything else. But then +what?" + +"Then," she said after a silence, "then, if it's what you want me to do, +Roddy, I'll come back to Chicago--for good." + +"Give up your business, you mean?" he asked quickly. + +She nodded. "It can't be done out there," she said. "All the big +productions that there's any money in are made in New York. I'll come +back and just be your wife. I'll keep your house and mother the +children, and--what was it you said to Gertrude?--maintain your status, +if you don't think I'm spoiled for that." + +That last phrase, though, was said with a smile, which he answered with +one of his own and threw in in parenthesis, "You ought to hear Violet go +on, and Constance." But with an instant return to seriousness, he said: + +"I've not asked that, Rose. I wouldn't dream of asking it!" + +"I know," she said. "It's a thing I'm glad you let me give--unasked. But +I mean it, Roddy. I've meant it from the first, when I told you you were +all I wanted. There wasn't any string tied to that." + +"I know," he said. "But all the same, it wouldn't work, Rose." + +"There's a real job there," she persisted, "just in being successfully +the wife of a successful man. I can see that now. I never saw it when it +was my job. Hardly caught a glimpse of it. I didn't even see my bills; +let you pay them down at the office, with all your own work that you had +to do." + +"It wasn't me," he said. "It was Miss Beach." + +She stared at that and gave a short laugh. "If I'd known that ...!" she +said. + +Then she came back to the point. + +"It is a real job, and I think I could learn to do it pretty well. And +of course a wife's the only person who can do it properly." + +Still he shook his head. But he hadn't, as yet, any reasoned answer to +make, except as before, that it wouldn't work. + +"I shouldn't mind the money end of it," she said. "I mean living on +yours. I know I can earn my way, and I know you know it. So that +wouldn't matter. I'd never feel like a beggar again, Roddy." + +"I know," he agreed. "But that isn't it. It isn't a question of what +you'd like to be, or are willing to be. It's a question of what you are. +You're something more than just my wife. You've got certain +talents--certain proved capacities. That's as true as that I am +something besides--just your husband. There you are! Try it on the other +way around. Suppose I should offer to give up my practise and come down +here to live with you--be just your husband and, say, your business +manager. You can see that that's preposterous. Or, for that matter, we +could both quit. I've made a devil of a lot of money lately. I've an +income from my investments of from twenty-five to thirty thousand a year +that we could live on, and not do a blessed thing but be husband and +wife to each other. Like the McCreas. But it wouldn't work. You've got +to be what you are, that's the point, and somehow or other, cut your +life to fit. I expect that's one of the things that's been the trouble +with us down here. We've both been trying so damned hard to _be_ +something. And that won't work." + +"What will work then?" she asked. And this was a question he couldn't +answer. + +"We've just got to go ahead," he said at last, "and see what happens. +Perhaps you can work it out so that you can do part of your work at +home. We could move the nursery and give you Florence's old studio. And +then it would do if you only came down here for your two big +seasons--fall and spring." + +"That doesn't seem fair to you," she protested. "You deserve a real +wife, Roddy; not somebody dashing in and dashing out." + +"I don't deserve anything I can't get," he said. "I'd rather have a part +interest in you than to possess, lock, stock and barrel, any other woman +I can think of." + +She came back to him again and settled down in his arms. + +"You used to possess me, lock, stock and barrel," she said. "You can do +it again, if you'll say the word, Rodney." + +He shook his head. "That's just what I can't do," he told her. "That's +gone and we'll never get it back. And I don't believe I'd have it back +if I could. For one thing, you can't possess without being possessed. I +know that back in those days you're talking about I used to try to fight +you out of my thoughts. Used to stay down late at the office, not +working, just--trying not to think about you. Trying to save out part of +myself from being--saturated with you. It was the fact that I was so +terribly important to you that used to make me feel like that; the fact +of your--dependence--I don't mean for money--on me. I used to think--it +wasn't your lover that thought that; it was the other man--that it +would be a perfectly wonderful relief to me if you could just get some +interest that left me out. And all the while the lover in me was trying +to have all of you there was. It's a hard thing to talk sense about." + +"A man told me," Rose said, "--John Galbraith told me, that he couldn't +be a woman's friend and her lover at the same time, any more than a +steel spring could be made soft so that it would bend in your fingers +like copper, and still be a spring. He said that was true of him, +anyway, and he felt sure it was true of nine men out of a dozen. Do you +think it's true? Have we got to decide which we'll be?" + +"We can't decide," he said with an impatient laugh. "That's just what +I've been telling you. We've got to take what we can get. We've got to +work out the relation between ourselves that is _our_ relation--the Rose +and Rodney relation. It'll probably be a little different from any +other. There'll be friendship in it, and there'll be love in it. Imagine +our 'deciding' that we wouldn't be lovers! But I guess that what +Galbraith said was true to this extent: that each of those will be more +or less at the expense of the other. It won't spring quite so well, and +it will bend a little." + +She was still disposed to rebel at this conclusion. "I don't see why it +has to be that way," she insisted. "Why it can't be a perfect thing +instead of just a compromise. Why being friends and partners shouldn't +make us better lovers, and why being lovers shouldn't make us better +friends." + +"Like the doctrine of the Trinity," he murmured. "'Three in one; one in +three. Without confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.' It's +a wonderful idea, certainly." + +"Well, then," she demanded, "isn't it what we ought to try for? The very +best there is?" + +"That's what they tell us," he admitted. "'Aim high,' they say. I'm not +sure it isn't better sense to aim at something you can hit. Why, look at +us, these last three weeks! We said we were going to have a month of +pure happiness. One hundred per cent. pure. We waked up every morning +telling ourselves we'd got to be happy, and we made ourselves miserable +every night wondering if we'd been happy enough." + +"I'm glad you were miserable, too," she said. "I was _so_ ashamed of +myself for being." + +After a while he said, "Here's what we've got to build on: Whatever else +it may or may not be, this relation between us is a permanent thing. +We've lived with each other and without each other, and we know which we +want. If we find it has its limitations and drawbacks we needn't worry. +Just go ahead and make the best of it we can. There's no law that +decrees we've got to be happy. When we _are_ happy it'll be so much to +the good. And when we aren't ..." + +She gave a contented little laugh and cuddled closer down against him. +"You talk like Solomon in all his solemnity," she said. "But you can't +imagine that we're going to be unhappy. Really." + +His answer was that perhaps he couldn't imagine it, but that he knew it, +just the same. "Even an ordinary marriage isn't any too easy; a +marriage, I mean, where it's quite well understood which of the parties +to it shall always submit to the other; and which of them is the +important one who's always to have the right of way. There's generally +something perfectly unescapable that decides that question. But with us +there isn't. So the question who's got to give in will have to be +decided on its merits every time a difference arises." + +She burlesqued a look of extreme apprehension. She was deeply and +utterly content with life just then. But he wouldn't be diverted. + +"There's another reason," he went on. "I've a notion that the thing +we're after is about the finest thing there is. If that's so, we'll have +to pay for it, in one way or another. But we aren't going to worry about +it. We'll just go ahead--and see what happens." + +"Do you remember when you said that before?" asked Rose. "You told me +that marriage was an adventure anyway, and that the only thing to do was +to try it--and see what happened." + +He grunted. "The real adventure's just begun," he said. + +"Anyhow," she murmured drowsily, "you can talk to me again. Just as if +we weren't married." + + * * * * * + +And there is just about where they stand to-day--at the beginning, or +hardly past the beginning, of what he spoke of as their real adventure; +they are going forward prepared to make the best of it and see what +happens. + +What did happen within two or three days after this last conversation of +theirs that I have chronicled was that Rose went back with Rodney and +the twins to Chicago, stayed there only until Miss French could be +summoned back from her vacation, and then went on to New York to a badly +worried Alice and the now extremely urgent affairs of Dane & Company. + +Summer is a slack time for a lawyer, of course, since judges are +gentlemen who like long vacations. So Rodney persuaded Rose to take a +bigger apartment in the same building and to put a card in the mail-box +that would account for him as well as for herself. He came down pretty +often, and always had, it must be owned, a rather hard time of it. The +spectacle of Rose driving along an ungodly number of hours a day while +he idled about doing nothing was one he found it hard to get used to. It +didn't altogether reconcile him to it to have her point out that there +were times when he drove like that. They had two or three good Sundays, +though; one of them out on Long Island with John Galbraith--a meeting +and the beginning of a friendship that Rose had been very keen to bring +about. + +Her work ended with a terrific climax in September, just about as his +began, and Rose came back to Chicago, spent a joyous month with the +twins and with the little of Rodney his office could spare of him. Then, +taking the babies and their nurse with her, she went out to California +to see her mother and Portia. + +Without any special incentive, just the natural desire of a daughter and +a sister for reunion after so long a parting would have taken her there. + +But Rose had a special incentive. She wanted to talk to Portia. They +hadn't had a real talk since that devastating day--ages ago--when, +yielding to an impulse of passionate self-revelation, Portia had +exhibited her great sacrifice and her equally great, though thwarted +desire; had said to Rose, "I am the branch they cut off so that you +could grow. You're living my life as well as yours. The only thing I +ever could hate you for would be for failing." She wanted to tell Portia +how the life she had given up the chance of living had grown in her +sister's trust. She wanted Portia's, "Well done." + +Also, as a practical matter of justice, she wanted to repay, as far as +money could repay--what Portia, at such a cost, had given her. It was a +project that had often been in her thoughts; at first, just as a dream, +latterly, as a realizable hope. + +Considered just as a visit to her mother and sister, the journey to +California was a success. Her mother, especially, got a vast +satisfaction out of the twins, and Rose herself an equal satisfaction +out of seeing how happy and content she was. + +She was writing a book--a sort of autobiography. Not that her life, as +she modestly said, was worth writing about, but that the progress of the +Cause she had devoted her life to could hardly be illustrated in a +better way than with an account of that life; of the ideas she had found +current in her girlhood; of the long struggle by means of which those +ideas had become modified; and, last and most important, of the danger +lest, now that the old fixed ideas had become fluid, they should flow in +the wrong direction. Portia was acting as her amanuensis--faithful, +competent, devoted, and just as of old--or perhaps more so, Rose +couldn't be sure--ironic; a little acrid. + +Mrs. Stanton's attitude toward Rose's own adventure perplexed and amused +her a little. She'd half expected to be embarrassed with approbation. +She was prepared to deprecate a little the idea that by the example of +her revolt and her attained independence she had done a service to the +great Cause. She didn't feel at all sure that she had; couldn't believe +that she and Rodney, with all their struggles, had settled anything; +and she had hesitated as to how far she could convey that doubt to her +mother. + +But she might have spared her pains. Mrs. Stanton's attitude, while it +fell short of "the less said the better," was one, at least, of +suspended judgment. She couldn't, conceivably, ever have left Henry +Stanton. She couldn't, evidently, understand why Rose mightn't have done +her wifely duty and been content with that. She felt it incumbent on +women to demonstrate to men that the new liberties they sought would +not, when granted, lead them to disregard the ties that were the +essential foundations of Christian society. But Rose belonged to the new +generation--a generation that confronted, no doubt, new problems, and +would have to solve them for itself. + +This suited Rose well enough. What she wanted from her mother, anyway, +was just the old look of love and trust and confidence. And she got that +abundantly. + +The thing she wanted from Portia she didn't get. As long as any one else +was by--her mother, or Miss French in charge of the twins--she and +Portia chatted easily, on the best of terms. But, left alone with +her--as it seemed to Rose she actually took pains not to be--Portia's +manner took on that old ironic aloofness that had always silenced her +when she was a girl. She made at last a resolute effort to break +through. + +"One of the things I came out for," she said, "was to talk to you--talk +it all out with you. I want to know what sort of job you think I've made +of it." + +"You've evidently made a good job of the costume business," said Portia. +"I read that little article about you in _Vanity_ about a month ago. +That didn't seem to leave much doubt as to who's who." + +"I don't mean that," said Rose. "I mean what sort of job of it +altogether; of the--of the life that's yours as well as mine." + +She stopped there and waited, but all the assent she got from Portia was +that she forbore to change the subject. They were sitting in the study +which her mother had just abandoned for her afternoon nap, and Portia +had busied herself sorting over the litter of papers her mother's +activities always left. + +"I want to tell you all about it," Rose said. "I'd like to tell you +every smallest thing about it, if it were possible, so that you +could--remember it as I do." + +She tried to do this; to give her sister--not a narrative (her letters, +after all, had put Portia in possession of the outlines of the +story)--but at least an interpretation of it that would go to the +bottom; things she couldn't write in her letters, the actuating desires +and hopes that lay behind the things she'd done. But the attempt +collapsed. She was talking in a vacuum. Her phrases grew more disjointed +until she felt that they were meaningless. At least, scrambling back to +solid ground again, she told Portia that she wanted to pay back to her +the cost of her education, as well as that could be calculated, and of +her trousseau. + +Portia's negative of this proposition was as keen and straight as a +knife-edge. The thing wasn't to be discussed; not to be considered for +an instant. "We're perfectly well off, mother and I. We're living easily +within our income out here, and--we're as contented as possible." The +cadence of those last three words had a finality about it that closed +the subject. + +Portia didn't want to share, vicariously, in the life she'd made +possible for Rose. The branch had withered indeed and didn't want the +pain of feeling the sap struggling up under its bark again. The ashes +had better be left banked up about the fading coal. The silence was like +the click of a closing door. Then Portia said: + +"What does the North Side bunch think of you now you've come back? And +those Lake Forest friends of yours? They must have been hideously +scandalized. Are they going to forgive you?" + +"Oh, they're lovely to me," said Rose. "The only one I've lost out with +is Frederica. She'll be a long time making it up with me, if she ever +does." + +"She saw what Rodney went through while you were away, I expect," +Portia suggested. + +"That, of course," said Rose. "And then--well, my going away like that, +especially as she began to see what the idea was, must have seemed a +sort of criticism on her own way of life, which she's every reason to +feel perfectly satisfied with. And that, after she'd let herself get +really fond of me, and had brought me up by hand--which is what she did +that first season, must be pretty hard to forgive. She has forgiven me, +of course. She's a dear. But we've--sort of got to begin again." + +Portia wanted to know about all the others: that pretty Williamson +woman, and a few more whose names she remembered. + +Rose told her; showed a feverish interest in the rather indifferent +topic just to bury the memory of the one that had failed so dismally. +She described a dinner or two she had been to since her return, and told +of the little triumph that had been made for her on the occasion of the +Chicago opening of _Come On In_. Everybody had been there and the +Crawfords had given a supper dance for her at the Blackstone afterward. +And driving in the last nail, she told of the feeble little witticism +old Mrs. Crawford had made apropos of her return--a remark whose tinge +of malice was so mild that it was felt by all to constitute an official +sanction of her social rehabilitation. + +Portia honestly enjoyed all that, but Rose went back to the hotel +feeling pretty blue. (They were stopping at the hotel. The twins alone, +to say nothing of Miss French and herself, would have been too much for +the modest confines of the bungalow.) She wished she could have a good +long talk, to-night, with Rodney. + +She had a sense of somebody, away up above all mundane affairs--not +responsible for them, perhaps, but capable, at all events, of thoroughly +taking them in--smiling at them all with a sort of ferocious cynicism. +In the foreground of this impression were the good friends--the really +good friends she had just been telling Portia about, who had taken her +back with so warm a welcome--because she'd succeeded; got away with it! + +It was with a deeper feeling of melancholy that she thought of Portia +and her mother. Portia, who had fought so gallantly and deserved so +much, thwarted, withered, huddling her ashes around her so that her coal +of fire might never be fanned into flame again. Her mother, living +gently in the afterglow of an outworn gospel. Must every one come to an +end like that when some initial store of energy was spent? Begin walling +himself in against life? Stuffing new experiences into pigeonholes, +unscrutinized? Would the time come when little Portia would have to +begin treating _her_ with the same tender-patronage that Rose felt now +for her mother? Would little Portia, some day, smile over her like that, +and wonder whether she'd ever--really lived? + +She did wish she could have a talk with Rodney. + +The telephone switchboard in the lobby gave her an idea. It was five +o'clock, now; seven in Chicago. He'd just be sitting down to dinner, all +by himself, poor dear, most likely, and wishing for a talk with her. +Well, why not? + +She rather electrified the hotel office when she put in that call. The +whole place wore an important air for the next half-hour. She went up to +her room to wait for it, and before the line was put through she thought +of something that would have prevented her doing it if she'd thought in +time. He'd probably think something horrible had happened to one of +them. So the moment she heard his voice--it was faint and far-away but +clear enough that she could detect the straining urgency of it--she +said: + +"It's all right, Roddy. There isn't a thing the matter. Did I frighten +you half to death?" + +He said, "Thank God!" And then, "I don't suppose it was two minutes I +waited for your voice, but it seemed a year. What is it?" + +"I'm ashamed to tell you, after a scare like that. It's nothing, Roddy. +Just to hear you say hello. It seems a pretty unjust sort of world, +to-night, and I wanted to be reminded that you were in it. That's all." + +She had to say it all over again before she could make him believe he'd +heard her straight, and by that time she was feeling pretty foolish over +the impulse she had yielded to. But just the sound of his good big +laugh, when he understood, was worth it. + +"You aren't running it, you know," he told her. "Leave the worry to the +Authorities. I can't philosophize any better than that at twenty dollars +a minute. I wish you were here." + +"I wish so too," she said. "I will be next week." + +When she had hung up the receiver, she had to squeeze the tears out of +her eyes before she could see to do anything else. But it was with her +own smile that she contemplated what she meant to do next. She went into +the adjoining room, relegated Miss French to the side lines and +undressed the twins herself. + +The twins adored her and had the most ineffably delicious ways of +showing it. But an added attraction for Rose resided in the fact that +this incursion of hers always--just a little--annoyed Miss French. +Clever as the nurse was about handling the twins, she could not manage +even the pretense to that professional superiority which is the +prerogative of nurses toward mothers. Rose, with those highly trained +hands of hers, a twin in each of them, could exhibit a dazzling +virtuosity that left Miss French nowhere. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL ADVENTURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 15384-8.txt or 15384-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15384 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: +https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/15384-8.zip b/15384-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..74b4d75 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-8.zip diff --git a/15384-h.zip b/15384-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..74c0f65 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h.zip diff --git a/15384-h/15384-h.htm b/15384-h/15384-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..86fa31a --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/15384-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,22460 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Real Adventure, by Henry Kitchell Webster</title> + <style type="text/css"> + +<!-- + + P { text-indent: 3%; + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; } + HR { width: 33%; + height: 2px; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + color: #000000; + background-color: #000000; + border: none; + text-align: center; } + BODY { background:#ffffff; + color:black; + font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; + font-size:1.1em; + margin-top:100px; + margin-left:10%; + margin-right:10%; + text-align:justify} + + TABLE {font-size: 1.1em;} + + BLOCKQUOTE { font-size: 1.0em; + text-align: left; + margin-left: 4em; + margin-right: 4em;} + + .smallcaps { font-variant: small-caps } + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + a:link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + hr.full { width: 100%; + height: 5px; } + pre {font-size: 8pt;} + // --> + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Real Adventure, by Henry Kitchell +Webster, Illustrated by R. M. Crosby</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Real Adventure</p> +<p>Author: Henry Kitchell Webster</p> +<p>Release Date: March 16, 2005 [eBook #15384]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL ADVENTURE***</p> +<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Gene Smethers,<br> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3><br><br> +<hr class="full" noshade> + +<a name="Illus_1"></a> +<br> +<br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_1.png"><img src="images/Illus_1.png" + alt=""We can't talk here," he said. "We must go elsewhere."" + width="50%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>"We can't talk here," he said.<br> + "We must go elsewhere."</h4> +<br><br><br> + + +<h1>THE REAL ADVENTURE</h1> +<h3><i>A Novel</i></h3> +<br> +<br> +<h3>By</h3> +<h2>HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER</h2> +<br> +<h3>ILLUSTRATED BY</h3> +<h2>R. M. CROSBY</h2> +<br> +<h3>INDIANAPOLIS</h3> +<h3>THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY</h3> +<h3>PUBLISHERS</h3> +<br> +<br> +<h4><i>Serial Version</i></h4> +<h4>1915</h4> +<h4>THE RIDGWAY COMPANY</h4> +<br> +<h4><i>Complete Version</i></h4> +<h4>1916</h4> +<h4>THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY</h4> +<br> +<br> +<h5>PRESS OF</h5> +<h5>BRAUNWORTH & CO.</h5> +<h5>BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS</h5> +<h5>BROOKLYN, N.Y.</h5> + + + +<br><hr style="width: 65%;"> +<a name="CONTENTS"></a><h2>CONTENTS</h2> +<br><br> + +<center> + +<h4>BOOK I</h4> +<h4>THE GREAT ILLUSION</h4> +<br> + +<table> +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I_1">CHAPTER I</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A Point of Departure</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II_1">CHAPTER II</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Beginning an Adventure</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III_1">CHAPTER III</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Frederica's Plan and What Happened to It</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_1">CHAPTER IV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Rosalind Stanton Doesn't Disappear</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V_1">CHAPTER V</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Second Encounter</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI_1">CHAPTER VI</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Big Horse</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII_1">CHAPTER VII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">How It Struck Portia</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII_1">CHAPTER VIII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Rodney's Experiment</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX_1">CHAPTER IX</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">After Breakfast</span></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<br> +<h4>BOOK II</h4> +<h4>LOVE AND THE WORLD</h4> +<br> + +<table> +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I_2">CHAPTER I</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Princess Cinderella</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II_2">CHAPTER II</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The First Question and an Answer to It</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III_2">CHAPTER III</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Where Did Rose Come In</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_2">CHAPTER IV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Long Circuits and Short</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V_2">CHAPTER V</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;"> Rodney Smiled</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI_2">CHAPTER VI</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Damascus Road</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII_2">CHAPTER VII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">How the Pattern Was Cut</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII_2">CHAPTER VIII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A Birthday</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX_2">CHAPTER IX</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A Defeat</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_X_2">CHAPTER X</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Door That Was to Open</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI_2">CHAPTER XI</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">An Illustration</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII_2">CHAPTER XII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">What Harriet Did</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII_2">CHAPTER XIII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Fate Plays a Joke</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV_2">CHAPTER XIV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Dam Gives Way</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV_2">CHAPTER XV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Only Remedy</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI_2">CHAPTER XVI</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Rose Opens the Door</span></td> +</tr> +</table> + + +<br> +<h4>BOOK III</h4> +<h4>THE WORLD ALONE</h4> +<br> + +<table> +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I_3">CHAPTER I</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Length of a Thousand Yards</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td valign="top"><a href="#CHAPTER_II_3">CHAPTER II</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Evening and the Morning</span><br> +<span style="margin-left: 2.5em;"> Were the First Day</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III_3">CHAPTER III</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Rose Keeps the Path</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_3">CHAPTER IV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Girl With the Bad Voice</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V_3">CHAPTER V</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Mrs. Goldsmith's Taste</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VI_3">CHAPTER VI</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A Business Proposition</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VII_3">CHAPTER VII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The End of a Fixed Idea</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII_3">CHAPTER VIII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Success—and a Recognition</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IX_3">CHAPTER IX</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Man and the Director</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_X_3">CHAPTER X</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Voice of the World</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XI_3">CHAPTER XI</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Short Circuit Again</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XII_3">CHAPTER XII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"I'm All Alone"</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII_3">CHAPTER XIII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Frederica's Paradox</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV_3">CHAPTER XIV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Miry Way</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XV_3">CHAPTER XV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">In Flight</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI_3">CHAPTER XVI</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Anti-Climax</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII_3">CHAPTER XVII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The End of the Tour</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII_3">CHAPTER XVIII</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Conquest of Centropolis</span></td> +</tr> +</table> + +<br> +<h4>BOOK IV</h4> +<h4>THE REAL ADVENTURE</h4> +<br> + +<table> +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_I_4">CHAPTER I</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Tune Changes</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_II_4">CHAPTER II</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">A Broken Parallel</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_III_4">CHAPTER III</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Friends</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_IV_4">CHAPTER IV</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Couleur-de-rose</span></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td><a href="#CHAPTER_V_4">CHAPTER V</a></td> +<td><span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">The Beginning</span></td> +</tr> +</table> +</center> +<br><br><br> +<br><hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br><br> +<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> +<br> +<center> +<table border=0 cellpadding=4> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_1">"We can't talk here," he said. "We must go elsewhere."</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_2">At sight of him she flashed to her feet.</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_3">"Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_4">Barry and Jane gazed at her wide-eyed.</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_5">"I want a job in the chorus."</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_6">"It isn't quite so much your style, is it?"</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_7">"Don't you know that that was Rose Aldrich?"</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_8">"What earthly thing does it matter whose fault it is?"</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#Illus_9">"You're a good friend," she said.</a></td></tr> +</table> +</center> +<br> +<br> + +<br><hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<h3>BOOK ONE</h3> + +<h3>The Great Illusion </h3> +<br> + +<br><hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_I_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<h3>A POINT OF DEPARTURE</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>"Indeed," continued the professor, glancing demurely down at his notes, +"if one were the editor of a column of—er advice to young girls, such +as I believe is to be found, along with the household hints and the +dress patterns, on the ladies' page of most of our newspapers—if one +were the editor of such a column, he might crystallize the remarks I +have been making this morning into a warning—never marry a man with a +passion for principles."</p> + +<p>It drew a laugh, of course. Professorial jokes never miss fire. But +<i>the</i> girl didn't laugh. She came to with a start—she had been staring +out the window—and wrote, apparently, the fool thing down in her +note-book. It was the only note she had made in thirty-five minutes.</p> + +<p>All of his brilliant exposition of the paradox of Rousseau and +Robespierre (he was giving a course on the French Revolution), the +strange and yet inevitable fact that the softest, most sentimental, +rose-scented religion ever invented, should have produced, through its +most thoroughly infatuated disciple, the ghastliest reign of terror that +ever shocked the world; his masterly character study of the "sea-green +incorruptible," too humane to swat a fly, yet capable of sending half of +France to the guillotine in order that the half that was left might +believe unanimously in the rights of man; all this the girl had let go +by unheard, in favor, apparently, of the drone of a street piano, which +came in through the open window on the prematurely warm March wind. Of +all his philosophizing, there was not a pen-track to mar the virginity +of the page she had opened her note-book to when the lecture began.</p> + +<p>And then, with a perfectly serious face, she had written down his silly +little joke about advice to young girls.</p> + +<p>There was no reason in the world why she should be The Girl. There were +fifteen or twenty of them in the class along with about as many men. +And, partly because there was no reason for his paying any special +attention to her, it annoyed him frightfully that he did.</p> + +<p>She was good-looking, of course—a rather boyishly splendid young +creature of somewhere about twenty, with a heap of hair that had, in +spite of its rather commonplace chestnut color, a sort of electric +vitality about it. She was slightly prognathous, which gave a humorous +lift to her otherwise sensible nose. She had good straight-looking, +expressive eyes, too, and a big, wide, really beautiful mouth, with +square white teeth in it, which, when she smiled or yawned—and she +yawned more luxuriously than any girl who had ever sat in his +classes—exerted a sort of hypnotic effect on him. All that, however, +left unexplained the quality she had of making you, whatever she did, +irresistibly aware of her. And, conversely, unaware of every one else +about her. A bit of campus slang occurred to him as quite literally +applicable to her. She had all the rest of them faded.</p> + +<p>It wasn't, apparently, an effect she tried for. He had to acquit her of +that. Not even, perhaps, one that she was conscious of. When she came +early to one of his lectures—it didn't happen often—the men, showed a +practical unanimity in trying to choose seats near by, or at least where +they could see her. But while this didn't distress her at all—they were +welcome to look if they liked—she struck no attitudes for their +benefit. A sort of breezy indifference—he selected that phrase finally +as the best description of her attitude toward all of them, including +himself. When she was late, as she usually was, she slid +unostentatiously into the back row—if possible at the end where she +could look out the window. But for three minutes after she had come in, +he knew he might as well have stopped his lecture and begun reciting the +Greek alphabet. She was, in the professor's mind, the final argument +against coeducation. Her name was Rosalind Stanton, but his impression +was that they called her Rose.</p> + +<p>The bell rang out in the corridor. He dismissed the class and began +stacking up his notes. Then:</p> + +<p>"Miss Stanton," he said.</p> + +<p>She detached herself from the stream that was moving toward the door, +and with a good-humored look of inquiry about her very expressive +eyebrows, came toward him. And then he wished he hadn't called her. She +had spoiled his lecture—a perfectly good lecture—and his impulse had +been to remonstrate with her. But the moment he saw her coming, he knew +he wasn't going to be able to do it. It wasn't her fault that her teeth +had hypnotized him, and her hair tangled his ideas.</p> + +<p>"This is an idiotic question," he said, as she paused before his desk, +"but did you get anything at all out of my lecture except my bit of +facetious advice to young girls about to marry?"</p> + +<p>She flushed a little (a girl like that hadn't any right to flush; it +ought to be against the college regulations), drew her brows together in +a puzzled sort of way, and then, with her wide, boyish, good-humored +mouth, she smiled.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know it was facetious," she said. "It struck me as pretty +good. But—I'm awfully sorry if you thought me inattentive. You see, +mother brought us all up on the Social Contract and The Age of Reason, +things like that, and I didn't put it down because ..."</p> + +<p>"I see," he said. "I beg your pardon."</p> + +<p>She smiled, cheerfully begged his and assured him she'd try to do +better.</p> + +<p>Another girl who'd been waiting to speak to the professor, perceiving +that their conversation was at an end, came and stood beside her at the +desk—a scrawny girl with an eager voice, and a question she wanted to +ask about Robespierre; and for some reason or other, Rosalind Stanton's +valedictory smile seemed to include a consciousness of this other +girl—a consciousness of a contrast. It might not have been any more +than that, but somehow, it left the professor feeling that he had given +himself away.</p> + +<p>He was particularly polite to the other girl, because his impulse was to +act so very differently.</p> + +<p>There is nothing cloistral about the University of Chicago except its +architecture. The presence of a fat abbot, or a lady prioress in the +corridor outside the recitation room would have fitted in admirably with +the look of the warm gray walls and the carven pointed arches of the +window and door casements, the blackened oak of the doors themselves.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, the appearance of the person whom Rose found waiting +for her out there, afforded the piquant effect of contrast. Or would +have done so, had the spectacle of him in that very occupation not been +so familiar.</p> + +<p>He was a varsity half-back, a gigantic blond young man in a blue serge +suit. He said, "Hello, Rose," and she said, "Hello, Harry." And he +heaved himself erect from the wall he had been leaning against and +reached out an immense hand to absorb the little stack of note-books she +carried. She ignored the gesture, and when he asked for them said she'd +carry them herself. There was a sort of strategic advantage in having +your own note-books under your own arm—a fact which no one appreciated +better than the half-back himself.</p> + +<p>He looked a little hurt. "Sore about something?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She smiled widely and said, "Not a bit."</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean at me necessarily," he explained, and referred to the +fact that the professor had detained her after he had dismissed the +class. "What'd he try to do—call you down?"</p> + +<p>There was indignation in the young man's voice—a hint of the protector +aroused—of possible retribution.</p> + +<p>She grinned again. "Oh, you needn't go back and kill him," she said.</p> + +<p>He blushed to the ears. "I'm sorry," he observed stiltedly, "if I appear +ridiculous." But she went on smiling.</p> + +<p>"Don't you care," she said. "Everybody's ridiculous in March. You're +ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he"—she nodded along the corridor—"he's +plumb ridiculous."</p> + +<p>He wasn't wholly appeased. It was rather with an air of resignation that +he held the door for her to go out by. They strolled along in silence +until they rounded the corner of the building. Here, ceremoniously, he +fell back, walked around behind her and came up on the outside. She +glanced up and asked him, incomprehensibly, to walk on the other side, +the way they had been. He wanted to know why. This was where he +belonged.</p> + +<p>"You don't belong there," she told him, "if I want you the other way. +And I do."</p> + +<p>He heaved a sigh, and said "Women!" under his breath. <i>Mutabile semper</i>! +No matter how much you knew about them, they remained incomprehensible. +Their whims passed explanation. He was getting downright sulky.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, he did her an injustice. There was a valid reason +for her wanting him to walk on the other side. What gave the appearance +of pure caprice to her request was just her womanly dislike of hurting +his feelings. There was a small boil on the left side of his neck and +when he walked at her left hand, it didn't show.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't be fussy," she said. "It's such a dandy day."</p> + +<p>But the half-back refused to be comforted. And he was right about that. +A woman never tells you to cheer up in that brisk unfeeling way if she +really cares a cotton hat about your troubles. And a candid deliberate +self-examination would have convinced Rose that she didn't, in spite of +the sentimentally warm March wind that was blowing her hair about. She +was less moved by the half-back's sorrows this morning than at any time +during the last six months. She'd hardly have minded the boil before +to-day.</p> + +<p>Six months ago, he had been a very wonderful person to her. There had +been a succession of pleasant—of really thrilling discoveries. First, +that he'd rather dance with her than with any other girl in the +university. (You're not to forget that he was a celebrity. During the +football season, his name was on the sporting page of the Chicago papers +every day—generally in the head-lines when there was a game to write +about, and Walter Camp had devoted a whole paragraph to explaining why +he didn't put him on the first all-American eleven but on the second +instead—a gross injustice which she had bitterly resented.)</p> + +<p>There was a thrill, then, in the discovery that he liked her better than +other girls, and a greater thrill in the subsequent discovery that she +had become the basis of his whole orientation. It was her occupations +that left him leisure for his own; his leisure was hers to dispose of as +she liked; his energy, including his really prodigious physical prowess, +to be directed toward any object she thought laudable. Six months ago +she would not have laughed—not in that derisive way at least—at the +notion of his going back and beating up the professor.</p> + +<p>There had been a thrill, too, in their more sentimental passages. But at +this point, there developed a most perplexing phenomenon. The idea that +he wanted to make love to her, really moved and excited her; set her +imagination to exploring all sorts of roseate mysteries. The first time +he had ever held her hand—it was inside her muff, one icy December day +when he hadn't any gloves on—the memory of the feel of that big hand, +and of the timbre of his voice, left her starry-eyed with a new wonder. +She dreamed of other caresses; of wonderful things that he should say to +her and she should say to him.</p> + +<p>But here arose the perplexity. It was her imagination of the thing that +she enjoyed rather than the thing itself. The wonderful scenes that her +own mind projected never came true. The ones that happened were +disappointing—irritating, and eventually and unescapably, downright +disagreeable to her. There was no getting away from it, the ideal lover +of her dreams, whose tenderness and chivalry and devotion were so highly +desirable, although he might wear the half-back's clothes and bear his +face and name, was not the half-back. She might dote on his absence, but +his presence was another matter.</p> + +<p>The realization of this fact had been gradual. She wasn't fully +conscious of it, even on this March morning. But something had happened +this morning that made a difference. If she'd been ascending an +imperceptible gradient for the last three months, to-day she had come to +a recognizable step up and taken it. Oddly enough, the thing had +happened back there in the class-room as she stood before the +professor's desk and caught his eye wavering between herself and the +scrawny girl who wanted to ask a question about Robespierre. There had +been more than blank helpless exasperation in that look of his, and it +had taught her something. She couldn't have explained what.</p> + +<p>To the half-back she attributed it to the month of March. "You're +ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he's ridiculous." That was about as well as +she could put it.</p> + +<p>She and the half-back had walked about a hundred yards in silence. Now +they were arriving at a point where the path forked.</p> + +<p>"You're elegant company this morning, I must say," he commented +resentfully.</p> + +<p>Again she smiled. "I'm elegant company for myself," she said, and held +out her hand. "Which way do <i>you</i> go?" she asked.</p> + +<p>A minute later she was swinging along alone, her shoulders back, +confronting the warm March wind, drawing into her good deep chest, long +breaths. She had just had, psychically speaking, a birthday.</p> + +<p>She played a wonderful game of basket-ball that afternoon.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_II_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<h3>BEGINNING AN ADVENTURE</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>It was after five o'clock when, at the conclusion of the game and a cold +shower, a rub and a somewhat casual resumption of her clothes, she +emerged from the gymnasium. High time that she took the quickest way of +getting home, unless she wanted to be late for dinner.</p> + +<p>But the exhilaration of the day persisted. She felt like doing something +out of the regular routine. Even a preliminary walk of a mile or so +before she should cross over and take the elevated, would serve to +satisfy her mild hunger for adventure. And, really, she liked to be a +little late for dinner. It was always pleasanter to come breezing in +after things had come to a focus, than to idle about for half an hour in +that no-man's-land of the day, when the imminence of dinner made it +impossible to do anything but wait for it.</p> + +<p>So, with her note-books under her arm and her sweater-jacket unfastened, +at a good four-mile swing, she started north. In the purlieus of the +university she was frequently hailed by friends of her own sex or the +other. But though she waved cheerful responses to their greetings, she +made her stride purposeful enough to discourage offers of company. They +all seemed young to her to-day. All her student activities seemed young. +As if, somehow, she had outgrown them. The feeling was none the less +real after she had laughed at herself for entertaining it.</p> + +<p>She noticed presently that it was a good deal darker than it had any +right to be at this hour, and the sudden fall of the breeze and a +persistent shimmer of lightning supplied her with the explanation. When +she reached Forty-seventh Street, the break of the storm was obviously a +matter of minutes, so she decided to ride across to the elevated—it was +another mile, perhaps—rather than walk across as she had meant to do. +She didn't in the least mind getting wet, providing she could keep on +moving until she could change her clothes. But a ten-mile ride in the +elevated, with water squashing around in her boots and dripping out of +her hair, wasn't an alluring prospect.</p> + +<p>She found quite a group of people waiting on the corner for a car, and +the car itself, when it came along, was crowded. So she handed her +nickel to the conductor over somebody's shoulder, and moved back to the +corner of the vestibule. It was frightfully stuffy inside and most of +the newly received passengers seemed to agree with her that the platform +was a pleasanter place to stay; which did very well until the next stop, +where half a dozen more prospective passengers were waiting. They were +in a hurry, too, since it had begun in very downright fashion to rain.</p> + +<p>The conductor had been chanting, "Up in the car, please," in a +perfunctory cry all along. But at this crisis, his voice got a new +urgency. "Come on, now," he proclaimed, "you'll have to get inside!"</p> + +<p>From the step the new arrivals pushed, the conductor pushed, and finally +he was able to give the signal for starting the car. The obvious +necessity of making room for those who'd be waiting at the next corner, +kept him at the task of herding them inside and the sheep-like docility +of an American crowd helped him.</p> + +<p>Regretfully, with the rest, Rose made her way to the door.</p> + +<p>"Fare, please," he said sharply as she came along.</p> + +<p>She told him she had paid her fare, but for some reason, perhaps because +he was tired at the end of a long run, perhaps because he saw some one +else he suspected of being a spotter, he elected not to believe her.</p> + +<p>"When did you pay it?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"A block back," she said, "when all those other people got on."</p> + +<p>"You didn't pay it to me," he said truculently. "Come along! Pay your +fare or get off the car."</p> + +<p>"I paid it once," she said quietly, "and I'm not going to pay it again." +With that she started forward toward the door.</p> + +<p>He reached out across his little rail and caught her by the arm. It was +a natural act enough—not polite, to be sure, by no means chivalrous. +Still, he probably put into his grip no more strength than he thought +necessary to prevent her walking by into the car.</p> + +<p>But it had a surprising result—a result that normally would not have +happened. Yet, on this particular day, it could not have happened +differently. It had been a red-letter day from the beginning, from no +assignable cause an exciting joyous day, and the thrill of the hard fast +game, the shower, the rub, the walk, had brought her up to what +engineers speak of as a "peak."</p> + +<p>Well, the conductor didn't know that. If he had, he would either have +let the girl go by, or have put a good deal more force into his attempt +to stop her. And the first thing he knew, he found both his wrists +pinned in the grip of her two hands; found himself staring stupidly into +a pair of great blazing blue eyes—it's a wrathful color, blue, when you +light it up—and listening uncomprehendingly to a voice that said, +"Don't dare touch me like that!"</p> + +<p>The episode might have ended right there, for the conductor's +consternation was complete. If she could have walked straight into the +car, he would not have pursued her. But her note-books were scattered +everywhere and had to be gathered up, and there were two or three of the +passengers who thought the situation was funny, and laughed, which did +not improve the conductor's temper.</p> + +<p>Rose was aware, as she gathered up her note-books, of another hand that +was helping her—a gloved masculine hand. She took the books it held out +to her as she straightened up, and said, "Thank you," but without +looking around for the face that went with it. The conductor's +intentions were still at the focal point of her mind. They were, +apparently, unaltered. He had jerked the bell while she was collecting +her note-books and the car was grinding down to a stop.</p> + +<p>"You pay your fare," he repeated, "or you get off the car right here."</p> + +<p>"Right here" was in the middle of what looked like a lake, and the rain +was pouring down with a roar.</p> + +<p>She didn't hesitate long, but before she could answer a voice spoke—a +voice which, with intuitive certainty, she associated with the gloved +hand that had helped gather up her note-books—a very crisp, finely +modulated voice.</p> + +<p>"That's perfectly outrageous," it said. "The young lady has paid her +fare."</p> + +<p>"Did you see her pay it?" demanded the conductor.</p> + +<p>"Naturally not," said the voice. "I got on at the last corner. She was +here then. But if she said she did, she did."</p> + +<p>It seemed to relieve the conductor to have some one of his own sex to +quarrel with. He delivered a stream of admonition somewhat sulphurously +phrased, to the general effect that any one whose concern the present +affair was not, could, at his option, close his jaw or have his block +knocked off.</p> + +<p>Rose hadn't, as yet, looked round at her champion. But she now became +aware that inside a shaggy gray sleeve which hung beside her, there was +a sudden tension of big muscles; the gloved hand that had helped gather +up her note-books, clenched itself into a formidable fist. The thought +of the sort of thud that fist might make against the over-active jaw of +the conductor was pleasant. Still, the thing mustn't be allowed to +happen.</p> + +<p>She spoke quickly and decisively. "I won't pay another fare, but of +course you may put me off the car."</p> + +<p>"All right," said the conductor.</p> + +<p>The girl smiled over the very gingerly way in which he reached out for +her elbow to guide her around the rail and toward the step. Technically, +the action constituted putting her off the car. She heard the crisp +voice once more, this time repeating a number, "twenty-two-naught-five," +or something like that, just as she splashed down into the two-inch lake +that covered the hollow in the pavement. The bell rang twice, the car +started with a jerk, there was another splash, and a big gray-clad +figure alighted in the lake beside her.</p> + +<p>"I've got his number," the crisp voice said triumphantly.</p> + +<p>"But," gasped the girl, "but what in the world did you get off the car +for?"</p> + +<p>It wasn't raining. It was doing an imitation of Niagara Falls, and the +roar of it almost drowned their voices.</p> + +<p>"What did I get off the car for!" he shouted. "Why, I wouldn't have +missed it for anything. It was immense! It's so confounded seldom," he +went on, "that you find anybody with backbone enough to stick up for a +principle ..."</p> + +<p>He heard a brief, deep-throated little laugh and pulled up short with a, +"What's the joke?"</p> + +<p>"I laughed," she said, "because you have been deceived." And she added +quickly, "I don't believe it's quite so deep on the sidewalk, is it?" +With that she waded away toward the curb.</p> + +<p>He followed, then led the way to a lee-wall that offered, comparatively +speaking, shelter.</p> + +<p>Then, "Where's the deception?" he asked.</p> + +<p>On any other day, it's probable she'd have acted differently; would have +paid some heed, though a bit contemptuously, perhaps, to the precepts of +ladylike behavior, in which she'd been admirably grounded. The case for +reticence and discretion was a strong one. The night was dark; the +rain-lashed street deserted; the man an utterly casual stranger—why, +she hadn't even had a straight look into his face. His motive in getting +off the car was at least dubitable. Even if not sinister, it could +easily be unpleasantly gallant. A man might not contemplate doing her +bodily harm, and still be capable of trying to collect some sort of +sentimental reward for the ducking he had submitted himself to.</p> + +<p>Her instinct rejected all that. The sound of his voice, the +general—atmosphere of him had been exactly right. And then, he'd left +undone the things he ought not to have done. He hadn't tried to take +hold of her arm as they had splashed along through the lake to the curb. +He hadn't exhibited any tenderly chivalrous concern over how wet she +was. And, to-day being to-day, she consigned ladylike considerations to +the inventor of them, and gave instinct its head.</p> + +<p>She laughed again as she answered his question. "The deception was that +I pretended to do it from principle. The real reason why I wouldn't pay +another fare, is because I had only one more nickel."</p> + +<p>"Good lord!" said the man.</p> + +<p>"And," she went on, "that nickel will pay my fare home on the elevated. +It's only about half a mile to the station, but from there home it's +ten. So you see I'd rather walk this than that."</p> + +<p>"But that's dreadful," he cried. "Isn't there ... Couldn't you let me +..."</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "it isn't so bad as that. It's just one of the silly +things that happen to you sometimes, you know. I didn't have very much +money when I started, it being Friday. And then I paid my subscription +to <i>The Maroon</i>...." She didn't laugh audibly, but without seeing her +face, he knew she smiled, the quality of her voice enriching itself +somehow.... "And I ate a bigger lunch than usual, and that brought me +down to ten cents. I could have got more of course from anybody, but ten +cents, except for that conductor, would have been enough."</p> + +<p>"You will make a complaint about that, won't you?" he urged. "Even if it +wasn't on principle that you refused to pay another fare? And let me +back you up in it. I've his number, you know."</p> + +<p>"You deserve that, I suppose," she said, "because you did get off the +car on principle. But—well, really, unless we could prove that I did +pay my fare, by some other passenger, you know, they'd probably think +the conductor did exactly right. Of course he took hold of me, but that +was because I was going right by him. And then, think what I did to +him!"</p> + +<p>He grumbled that this was nonsense—the man had been guilty at least of +excessive zeal—but he didn't urge her, any further, to complain.</p> + +<p>"There's another car coming," he now announced, peering around the end +of the wall. "You will let me pay your fare on it, won't you?"</p> + +<p>She hesitated. The rain was thinning. "I would," she said, "if I +honestly wouldn't rather walk. I'm wet through now, and it'll be +pleasanter to—walk a little of it off than to squeeze into that car. +Thanks, really very, very much, though. Don't <i>you</i> miss it." She thrust +out her hand. "Good-by!"</p> + +<p>"I can't pretend to think you need an escort to the elevated," he said. +"I saw what you did to the conductor. I haven't the least doubt you +could have thrown him off the car. But I'd—really like it very much if +you would let me walk along with you."</p> + +<p>"Why," she said, "of course! I'd like it too. Come along."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_III_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<h3>FREDERICA'S PLAN AND WHAT HAPPENED TO IT</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>At twenty minutes after seven that evening, Frederica Whitney was about +as nearly dressed as she usually was ten minutes before the hour at +which she had invited guests to dinner—not quite near enough dressed to +prevent a feeling that she had to hurry.</p> + +<p>Ordinarily, though, she didn't mind. She'd been an acknowledged beauty +for ten years and the fact had ceased to be exciting. She took it rather +easily for granted, and knowing what she could do if she chose, didn't +distress herself over being lighted up, on occasions, to something a +good deal less than her full candle-power. To Frederica at thirty—or +thereabout—the job of being a radiantly delightful object of regard +lacked the sporting interest of uncertainty; was almost too simple a +matter to bother about.</p> + +<p>But to-night the tenseness of her movements and the faint trace of a +wire edge in the tone in which she addressed the maid, revealed the fact +that she wished she'd started half an hour earlier. Even her husband +discovered it. He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him +and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that +characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed +beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ten +minutes before his wife.</p> + +<p>She shot a glance of rueful inquiry at him—"Now what have <i>you</i> come +fussing around for?" would be perhaps a fair interpretation of it—and +asked him what time it was, in the evident hope that the boudoir clock +on her dressing-table had deceived her. It had, but in the wrong +direction.</p> + +<p>"Seven twenty-two, thirty-six," he told her. It was a perfectly harmless +passion he had for minute divisions of time, but to-night it irritated +her. He might have spared her that thirty-six seconds.</p> + +<p>She made no comment except with her eyebrows, but he must have been +looking at her, for he wanted to know, good-humoredly, what all the +excitement was about.</p> + +<p>"You could go down as you are and not a man here to-night would know the +difference. And as for the women—well, if they have something on you +for once, they'll be all the better pleased."</p> + +<p>"Don't try to be knowing and philosophical, and—Havelock Ellish, +Martin, dear," she admonished him, pending a minute operation with an +infinitesimal hairpin. "It isn't your lay a bit. Just concentrate your +mind on one thing, and that's being nice to Hermione Woodruff...."</p> + +<p>She broke off for a long stare into her hand-glass; then finished, +casually, "... and on seeing that Roddy is."</p> + +<p>He asked, "Why Rodney?" in a tone that matched hers; looked at her, +widened his eyes, said "Huh!" to himself and, finally, shook his head. +"Nothing to it," he pronounced.</p> + +<p>She said, "Nothing to what?" but abandoned this position as untenable. +She despatched the maid with the key to the wall safe in her husband's +room. "Why isn't there?" she demanded. "Rodney won't look at young +girls. They bore him to death—and no wonder, because he freezes them +perfectly brittle with fright. But Hermione's really pretty intelligent. +She can understand fully half the things he talks about and she's clever +enough to pretend about the rest. She's got lots of tact and skill, +she's good-looking and young enough—no older than I and I'm two years +younger than Roddy. She'll appreciate a real husband, after having been +married five years to John Woodruff. And she's rich enough, now, so that +his wild-eyed way of practising law won't matter."</p> + +<p>"All very nice and reasonable," he conceded, "but somehow the notion of +Rodney Aldrich trying to marry a rich widow is one I'm not equal to +without a handicap of at least two cocktails." He looked at his watch +again. "By the way, didn't you say he was coming early?"</p> + +<p>She nodded. "That's what he told me this morning when I telephoned him +to remind him that it was to-night. He said he had something he wanted +to talk to me about. I knew I shouldn't have a minute, but I didn't say +so because I thought if he tried to get here early, he might miss being +late."</p> + +<p>They heard, just then, faint and far-away, the ring of the door-bell, at +which she cried, "Oh, dear! There's some one already."</p> + +<p>"Wait a second," he said. "Let's see if it's him."</p> + +<p>The paneled walls and ceiling of their hall were very efficient +sounding-boards and there was no mistaking the voice they heard speaking +the moment the door opened—a voice with a crisp ring to it that sounded +always younger than his years. What he said didn't matter, just a +cheerful greeting to the butler. But what they heard the butler say to +him was disconcerting.</p> + +<p>"You're terribly wet, sir."</p> + +<p>Frederica turned on her husband a look of despair.</p> + +<p>"He didn't come in a taxi! He's walked or something, through that rain! +Do run down and see what he's like. And if he's very bad, send him up to +me. I can imagine how he'll look."</p> + +<p>She was mistaken about that though. For once Frederica had overestimated +her powers, stimulated though they were by the way she heard her husband +say, "Good lord!" when the sight of his brother-in-law burst on him.</p> + +<p>"Praise heaven you can wear my clothes," she heard him add. "Run along +up-stairs and break yourself gently to Freddy."</p> + +<p>She heard him come squudging up the stairs and along the hall, and then +in her doorway she saw him. His baggy gray tweed suit was dark with the +water that saturated it. The lower part of his trousers-legs, in +irregular vertical creases, clung dismally to his ankles and toned down +almost indistinguishably into his once tan boots by the medium of a +liberal stipple of mud spatters. Evidently, he had worn no overcoat. +Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained to the utmost to +accommodate what looked like a bunch of pasteboard-bound note-books, +now far on the way to their original pulp, and lopped despondently +outward. A melancholy pool had already begun forming about his feet.</p> + +<p>The maddening, but yet—though she hadn't much room for any other +emotion—touching thing about the look of him, was the way his face, +above the dismal wreck, beamed good-humored innocent affection at her. +It was a big featured, strong, rosy face, and the unmistakable +intellectual power of it, which became apparent the moment he got his +faculties into action, had a trick of hiding, at other times, behind a +mere robust simplicity.</p> + +<p>"Good gracious!" he said. "I didn't know you were going to have a +party."</p> + +<p>It seemed though, he didn't want to make an issue of that. He hedged. "I +know you said something about a birthday cake, but I thought it would +just be the family. So instead of dressing, I thought I'd walk down from +home. It takes about the same time. And then it came on to rain, so I +took a street-car—and got put off."</p> + +<p>It appeared from the way she echoed his last two words that she wanted +an explanation. He was painting with a large brush and a few details got +obliterated.</p> + +<p>"Got into a row with the conductor, who wanted to collect two fares for +one ride, so I walked over to the elevated—and back, and here I am."</p> + +<p>"Yes, here you are," said Frederica.</p> + +<p>She didn't mean anything by that. Already she was making up her mind +what she would do with him. His own suggestion was that he should decamp +furtively by the back stairs, the sound of new arrivals to the dinner +party warning him that the other way of escape was barred. Waiters could +be instructed to rescue his hat for him, and he could toddle along +down-town again.</p> + +<p>She didn't give him time to complete the outline of this masterly +stratagem. "Don't be impossible, Rod," she said. "Don't you even know +whose birthday party this is?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her, frowned, then laughed. He had a great big laugh.</p> + +<p>"I thought it was one of the kid's," he said.</p> + +<p>"Well, it isn't," she told him. "It's yours. And those people down there +were asked to meet you. And you've got just about seven minutes to get +presentable in. Go into Martin's bathroom and take off those horrible +clothes. I'll send Walters in to lay out some things of Martin's."</p> + +<p>She came up to him and, at arm's length, touched him with cautious +finger-tips. "And do, please, there's a dear boy," she pleaded, "hurry +as fast as you can, and then come down and be as nice as you can"—she +hesitated—"especially to Hermione Woodruff. She thinks you're a wonder +and I don't want her to be disappointed."</p> + +<p>"The widdy?" he asked. "Sure I'll be nice to her."</p> + +<p>She looked after him rather dubiously as he disappeared in the direction +of her husband's room.</p> + +<p>She'd have felt safer about him if he had seemed more subdued as a +result of his escapade. There was a sort of hilarious contentment about +him that filled her with misgivings.</p> + +<p>Well, they were justified!</p> + +<p>But the maddening thing was, she had afterward to admit, that the +disaster had been largely of her own contriving. She had been caught in +the net of her own stratagem—hoist by her own petard.</p> + +<p>She had made it a six-couple dinner in order to insure that the talk +should be by twos rather than general, and she had spent a good +half-hour over the place-cards, getting them to suit her.</p> + +<p>Hermione had to be on Martin's right hand, of course. She was just back +in the city after an absence of years, and everybody was rushing her. +She put Violet Williamson, whom Martin was always flirting with in a +harmless way, on his left, and Rod to the right of Hermione. At Rodney's +right, she put a girl he had known for years and cared nothing whatever +about, and then Howard West—who probably wasn't interested in her +either, but would be polite because he was to everybody. Frederica +herself sat between Carl Leaventritt of the university—a great +acquisition, since whatever you might think of him as an empirical +psychologist, there was no doubt of his being an accomplished +diner-out—and Violet's husband, as he vociferously proclaimed himself, +John Williamson, an untired business man who, had their seasons +coincided, could have enjoyed a ball game in the afternoon and stayed +awake at the opera in the evening. Doctor Randolph's pretty wife she +slid in between Leaventritt and Howard West, and, in happy ignorance of +what the result was going to be, she put Randolph himself between Violet +and Alice West. He was a young, up-to-the-minute mind and nerve doctor.</p> + +<p>It was an admirable plan all right, the key-note of it being, as you no +doubt will have observed, the easy unforced isolation of Rodney and the +rich widow. Before that dinner was over, they ought to be old friends.</p> + +<p>And, for a little while, all went well. Rodney came down almost within +the seven minutes she had allowed him, looking much less dreadful than +she had expected, in her husband's other dress suit, and not forgetful, +it appeared, of the line of behavior she had enjoined on him; namely, +that he was to be nice to Hermione Woodruff.</p> + +<p>From her end of the table, she saw them apparently safely launched in +conversation over the hors-d'oeuvre, took a look at them during the soup +to see that all was still well, then let herself be beguiled into a +conversation with John Williamson, whom she liked as well as Martin did +Violet. She never thought of the objects of her matrimonial design again +until her ear was caught by a huge seven-cornered word in her brother's +voice. He couldn't be saying it to Hermione; no, he was leaning forward, +shouting at Doctor Randolph, who apparently knew what he meant and was +getting visibly ready to reply in kind.</p> + +<p>According to Violet Williamson's account, given confidentially in the +drawing-room afterward, it was really Hermione's fault. "She just +wouldn't let Rodney alone—would keep talking about crime and Lombroso +and psychiatric laboratories—I'll bet she'd got hold of a paper of his +somewhere and read it. Anyway, at last she said, 'I believe Doctor +Randolph would agree with me.' He was talking to me then, but maybe that +isn't why she did it. Well, and Rodney straightened up and said, 'Is +that Randolph, the alienist!' You see he hadn't caught his name when +they were introduced. And that's how it started. Hermione was game—I'll +admit that. She listened and kept looking interested, and every now and +then said something. Sometimes they'd take the trouble to smile and say +'Yes, indeed!'—politely, you know, but other times they wouldn't pay +any attention at all, just roll along over her and smash her flat—like +what's his name—Juggernaut."</p> + +<p>"You don't need to tell me that," said Frederica. "All I didn't know was +how it started. Didn't I sit there and watch for a mortal hour, not able +to do a thing? I tried to signal to Martin, but of course he wasn't +opposite to me and ..."</p> + +<p>"He did all he could, really," Violet answered her. "I told him to go to +the rescue, and he did, bravely. But what with Hermione being so miffy +about getting frozen out, and Martin himself being so interested in what +they were shouting at each other—because it was frightfully +interesting, you know, if you didn't have to pretend you understood +it—why, there wasn't much he could do."</p> + +<p>In the light of this disaster, she was rather glad the men lingered in +the dining-room as long as they did—glad that Hermione had ordered her +car for ten and took the odd girl with her. She made no effort to resist +the departure of the others, with reasonable promptitude, in their +train. When, after the front door had closed for the last time, Martin +released a long yawn, she told him to run along to bed; she wanted to +talk with Rodney, who was to spend the night while his own clothes were +drying out in the laundry.</p> + +<p>"Good night, old chap," said Martin in accents of lively commiseration, +"I'm glad I'm not in for what you are."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_IV_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<h3>ROSALIND STANTON DOESN'T DISAPPEAR</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Rodney found a pipe of his that he kept concealed on the premises, +loaded and lighted it, sat down astride a spindling little chair that +looked hardly up to his weight, settled his elbows comfortably on the +back of it, and then asked his sister what Martin had meant—what was he +in for?</p> + +<p>Frederica, curled up in a corner of the sofa, finished her own train of +thought aloud, first.</p> + +<p>"She's awfully attractive, don't you think? His wife, I mean. Oh, James +Randolph's, of course." She turned to Rodney, looked at him at first +with a wry pucker between her eyebrows, then with a smile, and finally +answered his question. "Nothing," she said. "I mean, I was going to +scold you, but I'm not."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," he admitted through his smoke. "Randolph's wife's a mighty +pretty woman. But I expect that lets her out, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>Frederica shook her head. "She's a good deal of a person, I should say, +on the strength of to-night's showing. She kept her face perfectly +through the whole thing—didn't try to nag at him or apologize to the +rest of us. I'd like to know what she's saying to him now."</p> + +<p>Then, "Oh, I was furious with you an hour ago," she went on. "I'd made +such a nice, reasonable, really beautiful plan for you, and given you a +tip about it, and then I sat and watched you in that thoroughgoing way +of yours, kicking it all to bits. But somehow, when I see you all by +yourself, this way, it changes things. I get to thinking that perhaps my +plan was silly after all—anyhow, it was silly to make it. The plan was, +of course, to marry you off to Hermione Woodruff."</p> + +<p>He turned this over in his deliberate way, during the process of +blowing two or three smoke rings, began gradually to grin, and said at +last, "That was some plan, little sister. How do you think of things +like that? You ought to write romances for the magazines, that's what +you ought to do."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she objected. "If reasonableness counted for anything in +things like that, it was a pretty good plan. It would have to be +somebody like Hermione. You can't get on at all with young girls. As +long as you remember they're around, you're afraid to say anything +except milk and water out of a bottle that makes them furious, and then +if you forget whom you're talking to and begin thinking out loud, +developing some idea or other, you—simply paralyze them.</p> + +<p>"Well, Hermione's sophisticated and clever, she's lived all over the +place; she isn't old yet, and she was a brick about that awful husband +of hers—never made any fuss—bluffed it out until he, luckily, died. Of +course she'll marry again, and I just thought, if you liked the idea, it +might as well be you."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Rodney, "whether Mrs. Woodruff knows what she wants +or not, but I do. She wants a run for her money—a big house to live in +three months in the year, with a flock of servants and a fleet of +motor-cars, and a string of what she'll call cottages to float around +among, the rest of the time. And she'll want a nice, tame, trick husband +to manage things for her and be considerate and affectionate and +amusing, and, generally speaking, Johnny-on-the-spot whenever she wants +him. If she has sense enough to know what she wants in advance, it will +be all right. She can take her pick of dozens. But if she gets a +sentimental notion in her head—and I've a hunch that she's subject to +them—that she wants a real man, with something of his own to do, +there'll be, saving your presence, hell to pay. And if the man happened +to be me ...!"</p> + +<p>Frederica stretched her slim arms outward. Thoughtful-faced, she made no +comment on his analysis of the situation, unless a much more observant +person than Rodney might have imagined there was one in the deliberate +way in which she turned her rings, one at a time, so that the brilliant +masses of gems were inside, and then clenched her hands over them.</p> + +<p>He had got up and was ranging comfortably up and down the room.</p> + +<p>"I know I look more or less like a nut to the people who've always known +us—father's and mother's friends, and most of their children. But I +give you my word, Freddy, that most of them look like nuts to me. Why, +they live in curiosity shops—so many things around, things they have +and things they've got to do, that they can't act or think for fear of +breaking something.</p> + +<p>"Why a man should load himself up with three houses and a yacht, a +stable of motor-cars, and God knows what besides, when he's rich enough +to buy himself real space and leisure to live in, is a thing I can't +figure out on any basis except of defective intelligence. I suppose +they're equally puzzled about me when I refuse a profitable piece of law +work they've offered me, because I don't consider it interesting. All +the same, I get what I want, and I'm pretty dubious sometimes whether +they do. I want space—comfortable elbow room, so that if I happen to +get an idea by the tail, I can swing it around my head without knocking +over the lamp."</p> + +<p>"It's a luxury though, Rod, that kind of spaciousness, and you aren't +very rich. If you married a girl without anything ..."</p> + +<p>He broke in on her with that big laugh of his. "You've kept your sense +of humor pretty well, sis, considering you've been married all these +years to a man as rich as Martin, but don't spring remarks like that, or +I'll think you've lost it. If a man can't keep an open space around him, +even after he's married, on an income, outside of what he can earn, of +ten or twelve thousand dollars a year, the trouble isn't with his +income. It's with the content of his own skull."</p> + +<p>She gave a little shiver and snuggled closer into a big down pillow.</p> + +<p>"You will marry somebody, though, won't you, Roddy? I'll try not to nag +at you and I won't make any more silly plans, but I can't help worrying +about you, living alone in that awful big old house. Anybody but you +would die of despondency."</p> + +<p>"Oh," he said, "that's what I meant to talk to you about! I sold it +to-day—fifty thousand dollars—immediate possession. Man wants to build +a printing establishment there. You come down sometime next week and +pick out all the things you think you and Harriet would like to keep, +and I'll auction off the rest."</p> + +<p>She shivered again and, to her disgust, found that her eyes were +blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack and edgy to-day, +anyhow.</p> + +<p>But really there was something rather remorseless about Rodney. It +occurred to her that the woman he finally did marry would need to be +strong and courageous and rather insensitive to sentimental fancies, to +avoid a certain amount of unhappiness.</p> + +<p>What he had just referred to in a dozen brisk words, was the final +disappearance of the home they had all grown up in. Their father, one of +Chicago's great men during the twenty great years between the Fire and +the Fair, had built it when the neighborhood included nearly all the +other big men of that robust period, and had always been proud of it. +There was hardly a stone or stick about it that hadn't some tender happy +association for her. Of course for years the neighborhood had been +impossible. Her mother had clung to it after her husband's death, as was +of course natural.</p> + +<p>But when she had followed him, a year ago now, it was evident that the +old place would have to go. Rodney, who had lived alone with her there, +had simply stayed on, since her death, waiting for an offer for it that +suited him. Frederica had known that, of course—had worried about him, +as she said, and in her imagination, had colored his loneliness to the +same dismal hue her own would have taken on in similar circumstances.</p> + +<p>All the same, his curt announcement that the long-looked-for change had +come, brought up quick unwelcomed tears. She squeezed them away with her +palms.</p> + +<p>"You'll come to us then, won't you?" she asked, but quite without +conviction. She knew what he'd say.</p> + +<p>"Heavens, no! Oh, I'll go to a hotel for a while—maybe look up a +little down-town apartment, with a Jap. It doesn't matter much about +that. It's a load off, all right."</p> + +<p>"Is that," she asked, "why you've been looking so sort of—gay, all the +evening—as if you were licking the last of the canary's feathers off +your whiskers?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps so," he said. "It's been a pretty good day, take it all round."</p> + +<p>She got up from the couch, shook herself down into her clothes a little, +and came over to him.</p> + +<p>"All right, since it's been a good day, let's go to bed." She put her +hands upon his shoulders. "You're rather dreadful," she said, "but +you're a dear. You don't bite my head off when I urge you to get +married, though I know you want to. But you will some day—I don't mean +bite my head off—won't you, Rod?"</p> + +<p>"When I see any prospect of being as lucky as Martin—find a girl who +won't mind when I turn up for dinner looking like a drowned tramp, or +kick her plans to bits, after she's tipped me off as to what she wants +me to do ..."</p> + +<p>Frederica took her hands off, stepped back and looked at him. There was +an ironical sort of smile on her lips.</p> + +<p>"You're such an innocent," she said. "You've got an idea you know +me—know how I treat Martin. Roddy, dear, a girl's brother doesn't +matter. She isn't dependent on him, nor responsible for him. And if +she's rather sillily fond of him, she's likely to spoil him frightfully. +Don't think the girl you marry will ever treat you like that."</p> + +<p>"But look here!" he exclaimed. "You say I don't know you, whom I've +lived with off and on for thirty years—don't know how you'd treat me if +you were married to me. How in thunder am I going to know about the girl +I get engaged to, before it's too late?"</p> + +<p>"You won't," she said. "You haven't a chance in the world."</p> + +<p>"Hm!" he grunted, obviously struck with this idea. "You're giving the +prospect of marriage new attractions. You're making the thing out—an +adventure."</p> + +<p>She nodded rather soberly. "Oh, I'm not afraid for you," she said. "Men +like adventures—you more than most. But women don't. They like to dream +about them, but they want to turn over to the last chapter and see how +it's going to end. It's the girl I'm worried about.... Oh, come along! +We're talking nonsense. I'll go up with you and see that they've given +you pajamas and a tooth-brush."</p> + +<p>She had accomplished this purpose, kissed him good night, and under the +hint of his unbuttoned waistcoat and his winding watch, turned to leave +the room, when her eye fell on a heap of damp, warped, pasteboard-bound +note-books, which she remembered having observed in his side pockets +when he first came in. The color on the pasteboard binding had run, and +as they lay on the drawn linen cover to the chiffonier, she went over +and picked them up to see how much damage they'd done. Then she frowned, +peered at the paper label that had half peeled off of the topmost cover, +and read what was written on it.</p> + +<p>"Who," she asked with considerable emphasis, "is Rosalind Stanton?"</p> + +<p>"Oh," said Rodney very casually, behind the worst imitation of a yawn +she had ever seen, "oh, she got put off the car when I did."</p> + +<p>"That sounds rather exciting," said Frederica behind an imitation yawn +of her own—but a better one. "Going to tell me about it?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing much to tell," said Rodney. "There was a row about a fare, as I +said. The conductor was evidently solid concrete above the collar-bone, +and didn't think she'd paid. And she grabbed him and very nearly threw +him out into the street—could have done it, I believe, as easily as +not. And he began to talk about punching somebody's head. And then, we +both got put off. So, naturally, I walked with her over to the elevated. +And then I forgot to give her her note-books and came away with them."</p> + +<p>"What sort of looking girl?" asked Frederica. "Is she pretty?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I don't know," said Rodney judicially. "Really, you know, I hardly +got a fair look at her."</p> + +<p>Frederica made a funny sounding laugh and wished him an abrupt "good +night."</p> + +<p>She was a great old girl, Frederica—pretty wise about lots of things, +but Rodney was inclined to think she was mistaken in saying women didn't +like adventures. Take that girl this afternoon, for example. Evidently +she was willing to meet one half-way. And how she'd blazed up when that +conductor touched her! Just the memory of it brought back something of +the thrill he had felt when he saw it happen.</p> + +<p>"You're a liar, you know," remarked his conscience, "telling Frederica +you hadn't had a good look at her."</p> + +<p>On the contrary, he argued, it was perfectly justifiable to deny that a +look as brief as that, was good. He wouldn't deny, however, that the +thing had been a wholly delightful and exhilarating little episode. That +was the way to have things happen! Have them pop out of nowhere at you +and disappear presently, into the same place.</p> + +<p>"Disappear indeed!" sneered his conscience. "How about those note-books, +with her name and address on every one. And there's another lie you +told—about forgetting to give them to her!"</p> + +<p>He protested that it was entirely true. He had gone into the station +with the girl, shaken hands with her, said good night, and turned away +to leave the station, unaware—as evidently she was—that he still had +her note-books under his arm. But it was equally true that he had +discovered them there, a good full second before the girl had turned the +corner of the stairs—in plenty of time to have called her back to the +barrier, and handed them over to her.</p> + +<p>"All right, have it your own way," said Rodney cheerfully, as he turned +out the light.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_V_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<h3>THE SECOND ENCOUNTER</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Portia Stanton was late for lunch; so, after stripping off her jacket +and gloves, rolling up her veil and scowling at herself in an oblong +mahogany-framed mirror in the hall, she walked into the dining-room with +her hat on. Seeing her mother sitting alone at the lunch table, she +asked, "Where is Rose?"</p> + +<p>"She'll be down presently, I think," her mother said. "She called out to +me that she'd only be a minute, when I passed her door. Does your hat +mean you're going back to the shop this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>Portia nodded, pulled back her chair abruptly and sat down. "Oh, don't +ring for Inga," she said. "What's here's all right, and she takes +forever."</p> + +<p>"I thought that on Saturday ..." her mother began.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know," said Portia, "but Anne Loomis telephoned she's going to +bring Dora Wild around to pick out which of my three kidney sofas she +wants for a wedding present. That girl I've got isn't much good, and +besides, I think there's a chance that Dora may give me her house to do. +Her man's stupidly rich, they say, and richly stupid, so the job ought +to be worth eating a cold egg for."</p> + +<p>You'd have known them for mother and daughter anywhere, and you'd have +had trouble finding any point of resemblance in either of them to the +Amazonian young thing who had so nearly thrown a street-car conductor +into the street the night before. Their foreheads were both narrow and +rather high, their noses small and slightly aquiline, and both of them +had slender fastidious hands.</p> + +<p>The mother's hair was very soft and white, and the care with which it +was arranged indicated a certain harmless vanity in it. There was +something a little conscious, too, about her dress—an effect difficult +to describe without exaggeration. It was not bizarre nor "artistic," but +you would have understood at once that its departures from the +prevailing mode were made on principle. If you took it in connection +with a certain resolute amiability about her smile, you would be +entirely prepared to hear her tell Portia that she was reading a paper +on Modern Tendencies before the Pierian Club this afternoon.</p> + +<p>A very real person, nevertheless, you couldn't doubt that. The marks of +passionately held beliefs and eagerly given sacrifices were etched with +undeniable authenticity in her face.</p> + +<p>Once you got beyond a catalogue of features, Portia presented rather a +striking contrast to this. Her hair was done—you could hardly say +arranged—with a severity that was fairly hostile. Her clothes were +bruskly cut and bruskly worn, their very smartness seeming an impatient +concession to necessity. Her smile, if not ill-natured—it wasn't +that—was distinctly ironic. A very competent, good-looking young woman, +you'd have said, if you'd seen her with her shoulder-blades flattened +down and her chest up. Seeing her to-day, drooping a little over the +cold lunch, you'd have left out the adjective young.</p> + +<p>"So Rose didn't come down this morning at all," Portia observed, when +she had done her duty by the egg. "You took her breakfast up to her, I +suppose."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton flushed a little. "She didn't want me to; but I thought +she'd better keep quiet."</p> + +<p>"Nothing particular the matter with her, is there?" asked Portia.</p> + +<p>There was enough real concern in her voice to save the question from +sounding satirical, but her mother's manner was still a little +apologetic when she answered it.</p> + +<p>"No, I think not," she said. "I think the mustard foot-bath and the +quinine probably averted serious consequences. But she was in such a +state when she came home last night—literally wet through to the skin, +and blue with cold. So I thought it wouldn't do any harm ..."</p> + +<p>"Of course not," said Portia. "You're entitled to one baby anyway, +mother, dear. Life was such a strenuous thing for you when the rest of +us were little, that you hadn't a chance to have any fun with us. And +Rose is all right. She won't spoil badly."</p> + +<p>"I'm a little bit worried about the loss of the poor child's +note-books," said her mother. "I rather hoped they'd come in by the noon +mail. But they didn't."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe Rose is worrying her head off about them." said Portia.</p> + +<p>The flush in her mother's cheeks deepened a little, but it was no longer +apologetic.</p> + +<p>"I don't think you're quite fair to Rose, about her studies," she said. +"The child may not be making a brilliant record, but really, considering +the number of her occupations, it seems to me she does very well. And if +she doesn't seem always to appreciate her privilege in getting a college +education, as seriously as she should, you should remember her youth."</p> + +<p>"She's twenty," said Portia bluntly. "You graduated at that age, and you +took it seriously enough."</p> + +<p>"It's very different," her mother insisted. "And I'm sure you understand +the difference quite well. Higher education was still an experiment for +women then—one of the things they were fighting for. And those of us by +whom the success of the experiment was to be judged ..."</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry, mother," Portia interrupted contritely. "I'm tired and ugly +to-day, and I didn't mean any harm, anyway. Of course Rose is all right, +just as I said. And she'll probably get her note-books back Monday." +Then, "Didn't she say the man's name was Rodney Aldrich?"</p> + +<p>"I think so," her mother agreed. "Something like that."</p> + +<p>"It's rather funny," said Portia. "It's hardly likely to have been the +real Rodney Aldrich. Yet, it's not a common name."</p> + +<p>"The <i>real</i> Rodney Aldrich?" questioned her mother. But, without waiting +for her daughter's elucidation of the phrase, she added, "Oh, there's +Rose!"</p> + +<p>The girl came shuffling into the room in a pair of old bedroom slippers. +She had on a skirt that she used to go skating in, and a somewhat +tumbled middy-blouse. Her hair was wopsed around her head anyhow—it +really takes one of Rose's own words to describe it. As a toilet +representing the total accomplishment of a morning, it was nothing to +boast of. But, if you'd been sitting there, invisibly, where you could +see her, you'd have straightened up and drawn a deeper breath than you'd +indulged in lately, and felt that the world was distinctly a brighter +place to live in than it had been a moment before.</p> + +<p>She came up behind Portia, whom she had not seen before that day, and +enveloped her in a big lazy hug.</p> + +<p>"Back to work another Saturday afternoon, Angel?" she asked +commiseratingly. "Aren't you ever going to stop and have any fun?" Then +she slumped into a chair, heaved a yawning sigh and rubbed her eyes.</p> + +<p>"Tired, dear?" asked her mother. She said it under her breath in the +hope that Portia wouldn't hear.</p> + +<p>"No," said Rose. "Just sleepy." She yawned again, turned to Portia, and, +somewhat to their surprise, said: "Yes, what do you mean—the <i>real</i> +Rodney Aldrich? He looked real enough to me. And his arm felt real—the +one he was going to punch the conductor with."</p> + +<p>"I didn't mean he was imaginary," Portia explained. "I only meant I +didn't believe it was the Rodney Aldrich—who's so awfully prominent; +either somebody else who happened to have the same name, or somebody who +just—said that was his name."</p> + +<p>"What's the matter with the prominent one?" Rose wanted to know. "Why +couldn't it have been him?"</p> + +<p>Portia admitted that it could, so far as that went, but insisted on an +inherent improbability. A millionaire, a member of one of the oldest +families in the city—a social swell, the brother of that Mrs. Martin +Whitney whose pictures the papers were always publishing on the +slightest excuse—wasn't likely to be found riding in street-cars, in +the first place, and the improbability reached a climax during a furious +storm like that of last night, when, if ever during the year, the real +Rodney Aldrich would be saying, "Home, James," to a liveried chauffeur, +and sinking back luxuriously among the whip-cord cushions of a palatial +limousine.</p> + +<p>I hasten to say that these were not Portia's words; all the same, what +Portia did say, formed a basis for Rose's unspoken caricature.</p> + +<p>"Millionaires have legs," she said aloud. "I bet they can walk around +like anybody else. However, I don't care who he is, if he'll send back +my books."</p> + +<p>Portia went back presently to the shop, and it wasn't long after that +that her mother came down-stairs clad for the street, with her <i>Modern +Tendencies</i> under her arm in a leather portfolio.</p> + +<p>It had turned cold overnight, and there was a buffeting gusty wind which +shook the windows and rattled the stiff branches of the trees. Her +mother's valedictory, given with more confidence now that Portia was out +of the house, was a strong recommendation that Rose stay quietly within +doors and keep warm.</p> + +<p>The girl might have palmed off her own inclination as an example of +filial obedience, but she didn't.</p> + +<p>"I was going to, anyway," she said. "Home and fireside for mine to-day."</p> + +<p>Ordinarily, the gale would have tempted her. It was such good fun to +lean up against it and force your way through, while it tugged at your +skirts and hair and slapped your face.</p> + +<p>But to-day, the warmest corner of the sitting-room lounge, the quiet of +the house, deserted except for Inga in the kitchen, engaged in the +principal sporting event of her domestic routine—the weekly baking; the +fact that she needn't speak to a soul for three hours, a detective story +just wild enough to make little intervals in the occupation of doing +nothing at all—presented an ideal a hundred per cent. perfect.</p> + +<p>She hadn't meant to go to sleep, having already slept away half the +morning, but the author's tactics in the detective story were so +flagrantly unfair, he was so manifestly engaged trying to make trouble +for his poor anemic characters instead of trying to solve their +perplexities, that presently she tossed the book aside and began +dreaming one of her own in which the heroine got put off a street-car in +the opening chapter.</p> + +<p>The telephone bell roused her once or twice, far enough to observe that +Inga was attending to it, so when the front door-bell rang, she left +that to Inga, too—didn't even sit up and swing her legs off the couch +and try, with a prodigious stretch, to get herself awake, until she +heard the girl say casually:</p> + +<p>"Her ban right in the sitting-room."</p> + +<p>So it fell out that Rodney Aldrich had, for his second vivid picture of +her,—the first had been, you will remember, when she had seized the +conductor by both wrists, and had said in a blaze of beautiful wrath, +"Don't dare to touch me like that!"—a splendid, lazy, tousled creature, +in a chaotic glory of chestnut hair, an unlaced middy-blouse, a plaid +skirt twisted round her knees, and a pair of ridiculous red bedroom +slippers, with red pompons on the toes. The creature was stretching +herself with the grace of a big cat that has just been roused from a nap +on the hearth-rug.</p> + +<p>If his first picture of her had been brief, his second one was +practically a snap-shot, because at sight of him, she flashed to her +feet.</p> + +<p>So, for a moment, they confronted each other about equally aghast, +flushed up to the hair, and simultaneously and incoherently, begging +each other's pardon—neither could have said for what, the goddess out +of the machine being Inga, the maid-of-all-work. But suddenly, at a +twinkle she caught in his eye, her own big eyes narrowed and her big +mouth widened into a smile, which broke presently into her deep-throated +laugh, whereupon he laughed too, and they shook hands, and she asked him +to sit down.</p> + + + +<a name="Illus_2"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_2.png"><img src="images/Illus_2.png" + alt="At sight of him she flashed to her feet." + width="45%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>At sight of him she flashed to her feet.</h4> + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VI_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<h3>THE BIG HORSE</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>"It's too ridiculous," she said. "Since last night, when I got to +thinking how I must have looked, wrestling with that conductor, I've +been telling myself that if I ever saw you again, I'd try to act like a +lady. But it's no use, is it?"</p> + +<p>He said that he, too, had hoped to make a better impression the second +time than the first. That was what he brought the books back for. He had +hoped to convince her that a man capable of consigning a half-drowned +girl to a ten-mile ride on the elevated, instead of walking her over to +his sister's, having her dried out properly, and sent home in a motor, +wasn't permanently and chronically as blithering an idiot as he may have +seemed. It was a great load off of his mind to find her alive at all.</p> + +<p>She gave him a humorously exaggerated account of the prophylactic +measures her mother had submitted her to the night before, and she +concluded:</p> + +<p>"I'm awfully sorry mother's not at home—mother and my sister Portia. +They'd both like to thank you for—looking after me last night. Because +really, you did, you know."</p> + +<p>"There never was anything less altruistic in the world," he assured her. +"I dropped off of that car solely in pursuit of a selfish aim. And I +didn't come out here to-day to be thanked, either. I mean, of course, +I'd enjoy meeting your mother and sister very much, but what I came for +was to get acquainted with you."</p> + +<p>He saw her glance wander a little dubiously to the door. "That is," he +concluded, "if you haven't something else to do."</p> + +<p>She flushed and smiled. "No, it wasn't that," she said, "I was trying to +make up my mind whether it would be better to ask you to wait here ten +minutes while I went up and made myself a little more presentable.... I +mean, whether you'd rather have me fit to look at, or have me like this +and not be bored by waiting. It's all one to me, you see, because even +if I did come down again presentable, you'd know—well, that I wasn't +that way naturally."</p> + +<p>Whereupon he laughed out again, told her that a ten-minute wait would +bore him horribly, and that if she didn't mind, he much preferred her +natural.</p> + +<p>"All right," she said, and went on with the conversation where she had +interrupted it.</p> + +<p>"Why, I'm nobody much to get acquainted with," she said. "Mother's the +interesting one—mother and Portia. Mother's quite a person. She's Naomi +Rutledge Stanton, you know."</p> + +<p>"I know I ought to know," Rodney said, and her quick appreciative smile +over his candor rewarded him for not having pretended.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "mother's written two or three books, and lots of +magazine articles, about women—women's rights and suffrage, and all +that. She's been—well, sort of a leader ever since she graduated from +college, back in—just think!—1870, when most girls used to +have—accomplishments—'French, music, and washing extra,' you know."</p> + +<p>She said it all with a quite adorable seriousness and his gravity +matched hers when he replied:</p> + +<p>"I would like to meet her very much. Feminism's a subject I'm blankly +ignorant about."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe," she said thoughtfully, "that I'd call it feminism in +talking to mother about it, if I were you. Mother's a suffragist, +but"—there came another wave of faint color along with her +smile—"but—well, she's awfully respectable, you know."</p> + +<p>She didn't seem to mind his laughing out at that, though she didn't join +him.</p> + +<p>"What about the other interesting member of the family," he asked +presently, "your sister? Which is she, a suffragist or a feminist?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she said, "you'll call Portia a feminist. Anyway, she +smokes cigarettes. Oh, can't I get you some? I forgot!"</p> + +<p>He had a case of his own in his pocket, he said, and got one out now +and lighted it.</p> + +<p>"Why," she went on, "Portia hasn't time to talk about it much. You see, +she's a business woman. She's a house decorator. I don't mean painting +and paper-hanging. She tells you what kind of furniture to buy, and then +sells it to you. Portia's terribly clever and awfully independent."</p> + +<p>"All right," he said. "That brings us down to you. What are you?"</p> + +<p>She sighed. "I'm sort of a black sheep, I guess. I'm just in the +university. But I'm to be a lawyer."</p> + +<p>Whereupon he cried out "Good lord!" so explosively that she fairly +jumped.</p> + +<p>Then he apologized, said he didn't know why her announcement should have +taken him like that, except that the notion of her in court trying a +case—he was a lawyer himself—seemed rather startling.</p> + +<p>She sighed. "And now I suppose," she said, "you'll advise me not to be. +Portia won't hear of my being a decorator. She says there's nothing in +it any more; and my two brothers—one's a professor of history and the +other's a high-school principal—say, 'Let her do anything but teach.' +One of mother's great friends is a doctor, and she says, 'Anything but +medicine,' so I suppose you'll say, 'Anything but law.'"</p> + +<p>"Not a bit," he said. "It's the finest profession in the world."</p> + +<p>But he said it off the top of his mind. Down below, it was still engaged +with the picture of her in a dismal court room, blazing up at a jury the +way she had blazed up at that street-car conductor. It was a queer +notion. He didn't know whether he liked it or not.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she hazarded, "that it's awfully dull and tiresome, though, +until you get way up to the top."</p> + +<p>That roused him. "It's awfully dull when you do get to the top, or +what's called the top—being a client caretaker with the routine law +business of a few big corporations and rich estates going through your +office like grist through a mill. I can't imagine anything duller than +that. That's supposed to be the big reward, of course. That's the +bundle of hay they dangle in front of your nose to keep you trotting +straight along without trying to see around your blinders."</p> + +<p>He was out of his chair now, tramping up and down the room. "You're not +supposed to discover that it's interesting. You're pretty well spoiled +for their purposes if you do. The thing to bear in mind, if you're going +to travel their road, is that a case is worth while in a precise and +unalterable ratio to the amount of money involved in it. If you question +that axiom at all seriously, you're lost. That's what happened to me."</p> + +<p>He pulled up with a jerk, looked at her and laughed. "If my sister +Frederica were here," he explained, "she would warn you, out of a long +knowledge of my conversational habits, that now was the time for you to +ask me,—firmly, you know,—if I'd been to see Maude Adams in this new +thing of hers, or something like that. In Frederica's absence, I suppose +it's only fair to warn you myself. Have you been to see it? I haven't."</p> + +<p>She smiled in a sort of contented amusement and let that do for an +answer to his question about Maude Adams. Then the smile transmuted +itself into a look of thoughtful gravity and there was a long silence +which, though it puzzled him, he made no move to break.</p> + +<p>At last she pulled in a long breath, turned straight to him and said, "I +wish you'd tell me what <i>did</i> happen to you."</p> + +<p>And under the compelling sincerity of her, for the next two hours and a +half, or thereabouts, he did—told it as he had never told it +before—talked as Frederica, who thought she knew him, had never heard +him talk.</p> + +<p>He told her how he had started at the foot of the ladder in one of the +big successful firms of what he called "client caretakers," drawing up +bills and writs, rounding up witnesses in personal injury suits, trying +little justice-shop cases—the worst of them, of course, because there +was a youngster just ahead of him who got the better ones. And then, +dramatically, he told of his discovery amid this chaff, of a real legal +problem—a problem that for its nice intricacies and intellectual +suggestiveness, would have brought an appreciative gleam to the eye of +Mr. Justice Holmes, or Lord Mansfield, or the great Coke himself. He +told of the passionate enthusiasm with which he had attacked it, the +thrilling weeks of labor he had put on it. And then he told her the +outcome of it all; how the head of the firm, an old friend of his +father, had called him in and complimented him on the work that he had +done; said it was very remarkable, but, unfortunately, not profitable to +the firm, the whole amount involved in the case having been some twenty +dollars. They were only paying him forty dollars a month, to be sure, +but they figured that forty dollars practically a total loss and they +thought he might better go to practising law for himself. In other +words, he was fired.</p> + +<p>But the thing that rang through the girl's mind like the clang of a +bell—the thing that made her catch her breath, was the quality of the +big laugh with which he concluded it. He didn't ask her to be sorry for +him. He wasn't sorry for himself one bit,—nor bitter—nor cynical. He +didn't even seem trying to make a merit of his refusal to acquiesce in +that sordid point of view. He just dismissed the thing with a +cymbal-like clash of laughter and plunged ahead with his story.</p> + +<p>He told her how he'd got in with an altruistic bunch—the City Homes +Association; how, finding him keen for work that they had little time +for, the senior legal counselors had drawn out and let him do it. And +from the way he told of his labors in drafting a new city building +ordinance, she felt that it must have been one of the most fascinating +occupations in the world, until he told her how it had drawn him into +politics—municipal, city council politics, which was even more +thrilling, and then how, after an election, a new state's attorney had +offered him a position on his staff of assistants.</p> + +<p>In a sense, of course, it was true that he had, as Frederica would have +put it, forgotten she was there—had forgotten, at least, who she was. +Because, if he had remembered that she was just a young girl in the +university, he would hardly, as he tramped about the room expounding the +practise of criminal law in the state's attorney's office, have +characterized the state's attorney himself as a "damned gallery-playing +mountebank," nor have described the professions and the misdeeds of +some of the persons he prosecuted in blunt Anglo-Saxon terms she had +never heard used except in the Bible.</p> + +<p>The girl knew he had forgotten, and her only discomfort came from the +fear that the spell might be broken and he remember suddenly and be +embarrassed and stop.</p> + +<p>In the deeper sense—and she was breathlessly conscious of this too—he +hadn't forgotten she was there. He was telling it all because she was +there—because she was herself and nobody else. She knew, though how she +couldn't have explained,—with that intuitive certainty that is the only +real certainty there is,—that the story couldn't have been evoked from +him in just that way, by any one else in the world.</p> + +<p>At the end of two years in the state's attorney's office, he told her, +he figured he had had his training and was ready to begin.</p> + +<p>"I made just one resolution when I hung out my shingle," he said, "and +that was that no matter how few cases I got, I wouldn't take any that +weren't interesting—that didn't give me something to bite on. A lot of +my friends thought I was crazy, of course—the ones who came around +because they liked me, or had liked my father, to offer me nice plummy +little sinecures, and got told I didn't want them. Just for the sake of +looking successful and accumulating a lot of junk I didn't want, I +wasn't going to asphyxiate myself, have strings tied to my arms and legs +like a damned marionette. I wasn't willing to be bored for any reward +they had to offer me. It's cynical to be bored. It's the worst +immorality there is. Well, and I never have been."</p> + +<p>It wasn't all autobiographical and narrative. There was a lot of his +deep-breathing, spacious philosophy of life mixed up in it. And this the +girl, consciously, and deliberately, provoked. It didn't need much. She +said something about discipline and he snatched the word away from her.</p> + +<p>"What is discipline? Why, it's standing the gaff—<i>standing</i> it, not +submitting to it. It's accepting the facts of life—of your own life, as +they happen to be. It isn't being conquered by them. It's not making +masters of them, but servants to the underlying things you want."</p> + +<p>She tried to make a reservation there—suppose the things you wanted +weren't good things.</p> + +<p>But he wouldn't allow it.</p> + +<p>"Whatever they are," he insisted, "your desires are the only motive +forces you've got. No matter how fine your intelligence is, it can't +ride anywhere except on the backs of your own passions. There's no good +lamenting that they're not different, and it's silly to beat them to +death and make a merit of not having ridden anywhere because they might +have carried you into trouble. Learn to ride them—control them—spur +them. But don't forget that they're <i>you</i> just as essentially as the +rider is."</p> + +<p>It was with a curiously relaxed body, her chin cradled in the crook of +her arm that lay along the back of the couch, her eyes unfocused on the +window, that the girl listened to it.</p> + +<p>Primarily, indeed, she wasn't exactly listening. Much of the narrative +went by almost unheard. Much of the philosophy she hardly tried to +understand. What was constantly present and more and more poignantly +vivid with every five minutes that ticked away on the banjo clock, was a +consciousness of the man himself, the driving power of him, the +boisterous health and freshness and confidence. She was conscious, too, +of something formidable—carelessly exultant in his own strength. She +got to thinking of the flight of a great bird wheeling up higher and +higher on his powerful wings.</p> + +<p>He had caught her up, too, and was carrying her to altitudes far beyond +her own powers. He might drop her, but if he did, it wouldn't be through +weakness. At what he said about riding on the backs of one's own +passions, her imagination varied the picture so that she saw him +galloping splendidly by.</p> + +<p>At that, suddenly and to her consternation, she felt her eyes flushing +up with tears. She tried to blink them away, but they came too fast.</p> + +<p>Presently he stopped short in his walk—stopped talking, with a gasp, +in the middle of a sentence, and looked into her face. She couldn't see +his clearly, but she saw his hands clench and heard him draw a long +breath. Then he turned abruptly and walked to the window and for a +mortal endless minute, there was a silence.</p> + +<p>At last she found something—it didn't matter much what—to say, and the +conversation between them, on the surface of it, was just what it had +been for the first ten minutes after he had come in. But, paradoxically, +this superficial commonplaceness only heightened the tensity of the +thing that underlay it. Something had happened during that moment while +he stood looking into her tear-flushed eyes; something momentous, +critical, which no previous experience in her life had prepared her for.</p> + +<p>And it had happened to him, too. The memory of his silhouette as he +stood there with his hands clenched, between her and the window, would +have convinced her, had she needed convincing.</p> + +<p>The commonplace thing she had found to say met, she knew, a need that +was his as well as hers, for breathing-space—for time for the recovery +of lost bearings. Had he not felt it as well as she—she smiled a little +over this—he wouldn't have yielded. The man on horseback would have +taken an obstacle like that without breaking the stride of his gallop.</p> + +<p>What underlay her quiet meaningless chat, was wonder and fear, and more +deeply still, a sort of cosmic contentment—the acquiescence of a +swimmer in the still irresistible current of a mighty river.</p> + +<p>It was distinctly a relief to her when her mother came in and, +presently, Portia. She introduced him to them, and then dropped out of +the conversation altogether. As if it were a long way off, she heard him +retailing last night's adventure and expressing his regret that he +hadn't taken her to Frederica (that was his sister, Mrs. Whitney) to be +dried out, before he sent her home.</p> + +<p>She was aware that Portia stole a look at her in a puzzled penetrating +sort of way every now and then, but didn't concern herself as to the +basis of her curiosity. She knew that it was getting on toward their +dinner-time, but didn't disturb herself as to the effect Inga's +premonitory rattlings out in the dining-room might have on her guest. As +a matter of fact, they had none whatever.</p> + +<p>She smiled once widely to herself, over a thought of the half-back. The +man here in the room with her now, chatting so pleasantly with her +mother, wouldn't ask for favors—would accept nothing that wasn't +offered as eagerly as it was sought.</p> + +<p>It wasn't until he rose to go that she aroused herself and went with him +into the hall. There, after he'd got into his overcoat and hooked his +stick over his arm, he held out his hand to her in formal leave-taking. +Only it didn't turn out that way. For the effect of that warm lithe grip +flew its flag in both their faces.</p> + +<p>"You're such a wonder!" he said.</p> + +<p>She smiled. "So are y-you." It was the first time she had ever stammered +in her life.</p> + +<p>When she came back into the sitting-room, she found Portia inclined to +be severe.</p> + +<p>"Did you ask him to come again?" she wanted to know.</p> + +<p>Rose smiled. "I never thought of it," she said.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps it's just as well," said Portia. "Did you have anything at all +to say to him before we came home, or were you like that all the while? +How long ago did he come?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Rose behind a very real yawn. "I was asleep on the +couch when he came in. That's why I was dressed like this." And then she +said she was hungry.</p> + +<p>There wasn't, on the whole, a happier person in the world at that +moment.</p> + +<p>Because Rodney Aldrich, pounding along at five miles an hour, in a +direction left to chance, was not happy. Or, if he was, he didn't know +it. He couldn't yield instantly, and easily, to his intuitions, as Rose +had done. He felt that he must think—felt that he had never stood in +such dire need of cool level consideration as at this moment:</p> + +<p>But the process was impossible. That fine instrument of precision, his +mind, that had, for many years, done without complaint the work he gave +it to do, had simply gone on a strike. Instead of ratiocinating +properly, it presented pictures. Mainly four: a girl, flaming with +indignation, holding a street-car conductor pinned by the wrists; a girl +in absurd bedroom slippers, her skirt twisted around her knees, her hair +a chaos, stretching herself awake like a big cat; a girl with wonderful, +blue, tear-brimming eyes, from whose glory he had had to turn away. Last +of all, the girl who had said with that adorable stammer, "So are +y-you," and smiled a smile that had summed up everything that was +desirable in the world.</p> + +<p>It was late that night when his mind, in a dazed sort of way, came back +on the job. And the first thing it pointed out to him was that Frederica +had undoubtedly been right in telling him that, though they had lived +together off and on for thirty years, they didn't know each other. The +pictures his memory held of his sister, covered no such emotional range +as these four. Did Martin's? It seemed absurd, yet there was a strong +intrinsic probability of it.</p> + +<p>Anyway, it was a remark Frederica had made last night that gave him +something to hold on by. Marriage, she had said, was an adventure, the +essential adventurousness of which no amount of cautious thought taken +in advance could modify. There was no doubt in his mind that marriage +with that girl would be a more wonderful adventure than any one had ever +had in the world.</p> + +<p>All right then, perhaps his mind had been right in refusing to take up +the case. The one tremendous question,—would the adventure look +promising enough to her to induce her to embark on it?—was one which +his own reasoning powers could not be expected to answer. It called +simply for experiment.</p> + +<p>So, turning off his mind again, with the electric light, he went to bed.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VII_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<h3>HOW IT STRUCK PORTIA</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to +marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of +surprise than, hitherto, she had experienced in the sixty years of a +tolerably eventful life.</p> + +<p>Rose found her neatly writing a paper at the boudoir desk in the little +room she called her den. And standing dutifully at her mother's side +until she saw the pen make a period, made then her momentous +announcement, much in the tone she would have used had it been to the +effect that she was going to the matinée with him that afternoon.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton said, "What, dear?" indifferently enough, just in +mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's +voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her +daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick. +What did you say?"</p> + +<p>Rose repeated: "Rodney Aldrich and I are going to be married."</p> + +<p>But when she saw a look of painful incomprehension in her mother's face, +she sat down on the arm of the chair, slid a strong arm around the +fragile figure and hugged it up against herself.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," she observed contritely, "that I ought to have broken it +more gradually. But I never think of things like that."</p> + +<p>As well as she could, her mother resisted the embrace.</p> + +<p>"I can't believe," she said, gripping the edge of her desk with both +hands, "that you would jest about a solemn subject like that, Rose, and +yet it's incredible!... How many times have you seen him?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, lots of times," Rose assured her, and began checking them off on +her fingers. "There was the first time, in the street-car, and the time +he brought the books back, and that other awful call he made one +evening, when we were all so suffocatingly polite. You know about those +times. But three or four times more, he's come down to the +university—he's great friends with several men in the law faculty, so +he's there quite a lot, anyway—but several times he's picked me up, and +we've gone for walks, miles and miles and miles, and we've talked and +talked and talked. So really, we know each other awfully well."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know," said her mother in a voice still dull with +astonishment, "that you even liked him. You've been so +silent—indifferent—both times he was here to call...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I haven't learned yet to talk to him when any one else is around," +Rose admitted. "There's so little to say, and it doesn't seem worth the +bother. But, truly, I do like him, mother. I like everything about him. +I love his looks—I don't mean just his eyes and nose and mouth. I like +the shape of his ears, and his hands. I like his big loud voice"—her +own broadened a little as she added, "and the way he swears. Oh, not at +me, mother! Just when he gets so interested in what he's saying that he +forgets I'm a lady.</p> + +<p>"And I like the way he likes to fight—not with his fists, I mean, +necessarily. He's got the most wonderful mind to—wrestle with, you +know. I love to start an argument with him, just to see how easy it is +for him to—roll me in the dirt and walk all over me."</p> + +<p>The mother freed herself from the girl's embrace, rose and walked away +to another chair. "If you'll talk rationally and seriously, my dear," +she said, "we can continue the conversation. But this flippant, +rather—vulgar tone you're taking, pains me very much."</p> + +<p>The girl flushed to the hair. "I didn't know I was being flippant and +vulgar," she said. "I didn't mean to be. I was just trying to tell +you—all about it."</p> + +<p>"You've told me," said her mother, "that Mr. Aldrich has asked you to +marry him and that you've consented. It seems to me you have done so +hastily and thoughtlessly. He's told you he loves you, I've no doubt, +but I don't see how it's possible for you to feel sure on such short +acquaintance."</p> + +<p>"Why, of course he's told me," Rose said, a little bewildered. "He can't +help telling me all the time, any more than I can help telling him. +We're—rather mad about each other, really. I think he's the most +wonderful person in the world, and"—she smiled a little +uncertainly—"he thinks I am. But we've tried to be sensible about it, +and think it out reasonably. We're both strong and healthy, and we like +each other.... I mean—things about each other, like I've said. So, as +far as we can tell, we—fit. He said he couldn't guarantee that we'd be +happy; that no pair of people could be sure of that till they'd tried. +But he said it looked to him like the most wonderful, magnificent +adventure in the world, and asked if it looked to me like that, and I +said it did. Because it's true. It's the only thing in the world that +seems worth—bothering about. And we both think—though, of course, we +can't be sure we're thinking straight—that we've got a good chance to +make it go."</p> + +<p>Even her mother's bewildered ears couldn't distrust the sincerity with +which the girl had spoken. But this only increased the bewilderment. She +had listened with a sort of incredulous distaste she couldn't keep her +face from showing, and at last she had to wipe away her tears.</p> + +<p>At that Rose came over to her, dropped on the floor at her knees and +embraced her.</p> + +<p>"I guess perhaps I understand, mother," she said. "I didn't +realize—you've always been so intellectual and advanced—that you'd +feel that way about it—be shocked because I hadn't pretended not to +care for him and been shy and coy"—in spite of herself, her voice got +an edge of humor in it—"and a startled fawn, you know, running away, +but just not fast enough so that he wouldn't come running after and +think he'd made a wonderful conquest by catching me at last. But a man +like Rodney Aldrich wouldn't plead and protest, mother. He wouldn't +<i>want</i> me unless I wanted him just as much."</p> + +<p>It was a long time before her mother spoke and when she did, she spoke +humbly—resignedly, as if admitting that the situation she was +confronted with was beyond her powers.</p> + +<p>"It's the one need of a woman's life, Rose, dear," she said, "—the +corner-stone of all her happiness, that her husband, as you say, 'wants' +her. It's something that—not in words, of course, but in all the little +facts of married life—she'll need to be reassured about every day. +Doubt of it is the one thing that will have the power to make her +bitterly unhappy. That's why it seems to me so terribly necessary that +she be sure about it before it's too late."</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course," said Rose. "But that's true of the man, too, isn't it? +Otherwise, where's the equality?"</p> + +<p>Her mother couldn't answer that except with a long sigh.</p> + +<p>Strangely enough, it wasn't until after Rose had gone away, and she had +shut herself up in her room to think, that any other aspect of the +situation occurred to her—even that there was another aspect of it +which she'd naturally have expected to be the first and only critical +one.</p> + +<p>Ever since babyhood Rose had been devoted, by all her mother's plans and +hopes, to the furtherance of the cause of Woman, whose ardent champion +she herself had always been. For Rose—not Portia—was the devoted one.</p> + +<p>The elder daughter had been born at a time when her own activities were +at their height. As Portia herself had said, when she and her two +brothers were little, their mother had been too busy to—luxuriate in +them very much and during those early and possibly suggestible years, +Portia had been suffered to grow up, as it were, by herself. She was not +neglected, of course, and she was dearly loved. But when, for the first +time since actual babyhood, she got into the focal-plane of her mother's +mind again, there was a subtle, but, it seemed, ineradicable antagonism +between them, though that perhaps is too strong a word for it. A +difference there was, anyway, in the grain of their two minds, that +hindered unreserved confidences, no matter how hard they might try for +them. Portia's brusk disdain of rhetoric, her habit of reducing +questions to their least denominator of common sense, carried a constant +and perfectly involuntary criticism of her mother's ampler and more +emotional style—made her suspect that Portia regarded her as a +sentimentalist.</p> + +<p>But Rose, with her first adorable smile, had captured her mother's heart +beyond the possibility of reservation or restraint. And, as the child +grew and her splendid, exuberant vitality and courage and wide-reaching, +though not facile, affection became marked characteristics, the hope +grew in her mother that here was a new leader born to the great Cause. +It would need new leaders. She herself was conscious of a side drift to +the great current, that threatened to leave her in a backwater. Or, as +she put it to herself, that threatened to sweep over the banks of +righteousness and decorum, and inundate, disastrously, the peaceful +fields.</p> + +<p>She couldn't expect to have the strength to resist this drift herself, +but she had a vision of her daughter rising splendidly to the task. And +for that task she trained her—or thought she did; saw to it that the +girl understood the Eighteenth Century Liberalism, which, limited to the +fields of politics and education, and extended to include women equally +with men, was the gospel of the movement she had grown up in. With it +for a background, with a university education and a legal training, the +girl would have everything she needed.</p> + +<p>She expected her to marry, of course. But in her day-dreams, it was to +be one of Rose's converts to the cause—won perhaps by her advocacy at +the bar, of some legal case involving the rights of woman—who was to +lay his new-born conviction, along with his personal adoration, at the +girl's feet.</p> + +<p>Certainly Rodney Aldrich, who, as Rose outrageously had boasted, rolled +her in the dust and tramped all over her in the course of their +arguments, presented a violent contrast to the ideal husband she had +selected. Indeed, it should be hard to think of him as anything but the +rock on which her whole ambition for the girl would be shattered.</p> + +<p>It was strange she hadn't thought of that during her talk with Rose!</p> + +<p>Now that the idea had occurred to her she tried hard to look at the +event that way and to nurse into energetic life a tragic regret over the +miscarriage of a lifetime's hope. It was all so obviously what she +ought to feel. Yet the moment she relaxed the effort, her mind flew back +to a vibration between a hope and a fear: the hope, that the man Rose +was about to marry would shelter and protect her always, as tenderly as +she herself had sheltered her; the terror—and this was stronger—that +he might not.</p> + +<p>That night, during the process of getting ready for bed, Rose put on a +bath-robe, picked up her hair brush and went into Portia's room. Portia, +much quicker always about such matters, was already on the point of +turning out the light, but guessing what her sister wanted, she stacked +her pillows, lighted a cigarette, climbed into bed and settled back +comfortably for a chat.</p> + +<p>"I hope," Rose began, "that you're really pleased about it. Because +mother isn't. She's terribly unhappy. Do you suppose it's because she +thinks I've—well, sort of deserted her, in not going on and being a +lawyer—and all that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, perhaps," said Portia indifferently. "I wouldn't worry about that, +though. Because really, child, you had no more chance of growing up to +be a lawyer and a leader of the 'Cause' than I have of getting to be a +brigadier-general."</p> + +<p>Rose stopped brushing her hair and demanded to be told why not. She had +been getting on all right up to now, hadn't she?</p> + +<p>"Why, just think," said Portia, "what mother herself had gone through +when she was your age; put herself through college because her father +didn't believe in 'higher education'—practically disowned her. She'd +taught six months in that awful school—remember?—she was used to being +abused and ridiculed. And she was working hard enough to have killed a +camel. But you!... Why, Lamb, you've never really <i>had</i> to do anything +in your life. If you felt like it, all right—and equally all right if +you didn't. You've never been hurt—never even been frightened. You +wouldn't know what they felt like. And the result is ..."</p> + +<p>Portia drew in a long puff, then eyed her cigarette thoughtfully through +the slowly expelled smoke. "The result is," she concluded, "that you +have grown up into a big, splendid, fearless, confiding creature that +it's perfectly inevitable some man like Rodney Aldrich would go straight +out of his head about. And there you are."</p> + +<p>A troubled questioning look came into the younger sister's eyes. "I've +been lazy and selfish, I know," she said. "Perhaps more than I thought. +I haven't meant to be. But ... Do you think I'm any good at all?"</p> + +<p>"That's the real injustice of it," said Portia; "that you are. You've +stayed big and simple. It couldn't possibly occur to you now to say to +yourself, 'Poor old Portia! She's always been jealous because mother +liked me best, and now she's just green with envy because I'm going to +marry Rodney Aldrich.'"</p> + +<p>She wouldn't stop to hear Rose's protest. "I know it couldn't," she went +on. "That's what I say. And yet there's more than a little truth in it, +I suppose. Oh, I don't mean I'm sorry you're going to be happy—I +believe you are, you know. I'm just a little sorry for myself. Curious, +anyway, to see where I've missed all the big important things you've +kept. I've been afraid of my instincts, I suppose. Never able to take a +leap because I've always stopped to look, first. I'm too narrow between +the cheek-bones, perhaps. Anyhow, here I stay, grinding along, wondering +what it's all about and what after all's the use.... While you, you +baby! are going to find out."</p> + +<p>What Rose wanted to do was to gather her sister up in her arms and kiss +her. But the faint ironic smile on Portia's fine lips, the twist of her +eyebrows, the poise of her body as she sat up in bed watching the +blue-brown smoke rising in a straight thin line from her diminishing +cigarette, combined to make such a demonstration altogether impossible.</p> + +<p>"Mother thinks, I guess," she said, to break the silence, "that I ought +to have looked a little longer. She thinks Rodney would have 'wanted' me +more, if I hadn't thrown myself at him like that."</p> + +<p>Portia extinguished her cigarette in a little ash-tray, and began +unpacking her pillows before she spoke. "I don't know," she said at +last. "It's been said for a long time that the only way to make a man +want anything very wildly, is to make him think it's desperately hard to +get. But I suspect there are other ways. I don't believe you'll ever +have any trouble making him 'want' you as much as you like."</p> + +<p>The color kept mounting higher and higher in the girl's face during the +moment of silence while she pondered this remark. "Why should I—make +him want me?—Any more than ... I think that's rather—horrid, Portia."</p> + +<p>Portia gave a little shiver and huddled down into her blankets. "You +don't put things out of existence by deciding they're horrid, child," +she said. "Open my window, will you? And throw out that cigarette. +There. Now, kiss me and run along to bye-bye. And forget my nonsense."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VIII_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<h3>RODNEY'S EXPERIMENT</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>The wedding was set for the first week in June. And the decision, +instantly acquiesced in by everybody, was that it was to be as quiet—as +strictly a family affair—as possible. The recentness of the death of +Rodney's mother gave an adequate excuse for such an arrangement, but the +comparative narrowness of the Stantons' domestic resources enforced it. +Indeed, the notion of even a simple wedding into the Aldrich family left +Portia rather aghast.</p> + +<p>But this feeling was largely allayed by Frederica's first call. Being a +celebrated beauty and a person of great social consequence didn't, it +appeared, prevent one from being human and simple mannered and +altogether delightful to have about. She was so competent, too, and +intelligent (Rose didn't see why Portia should find anything +extraordinary in all this. Wasn't she Rodney's sister?) that her +conquest of the Stanton family was instantaneous. They didn't suspect +that it was deliberate.</p> + +<p>Rodney had made his great announcement to her, characteristically, over +the telephone, from his office. "Do you remember asking me, Freddy, two +or three weeks ago, who Rosalind Stanton was? Well, she's the girl I'm +going to marry."</p> + +<p>She refused to hear a word more in those circumstances. "I'm coming +straight down," she said, "and we'll go somewhere for lunch. Don't you +realize that we can't talk about it like this? Of course you wouldn't, +but it's so."</p> + +<p>Over the lunch table she got as detailed an account of the affair as +Rodney, in his somnambulistic condition, was able to give her, and she +passed it on to Martin that evening as they drove across to the north +side for dinner.</p> + +<p>"Well, that all sounds exactly like Rodney," he commented. "I hope +you'll like the girl."</p> + +<p>"That isn't what I hope," said Frederica. "At least it isn't what I'm +most concerned about. I hope I can make her like me. Roddy's the only +brother I've got in the world, and I'm not going to lose him if I can +help it. That's what will happen if she doesn't like me."</p> + +<p>Frederica was perfectly clear about this, though she admitted it had +taken her fifteen minutes or so to see it.</p> + +<p>"All the way down-town to talk to Rodney," she said, "I sat there +deciding what she ought to be like—as if she were going to be brought +up to me to see if she'd do. And then all at once I thought, what good +would it do me to decide that she wouldn't? I couldn't change his +relation to her one bit. But, if she decides I won't do, she can change +his relation to me pretty completely. It's about the easiest thing a +wife can do.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm going to see her, and her mother and sister—that's the +family—to-morrow. And if they don't like me before I come away and +think of me as a nice sort of person to be related by marriage to, it +won't be because I haven't tried. It will be because I'm just a +naturally repulsive person and can't help it."</p> + +<p>As it happened though, she forgot all about her resolution almost with +her first look at Rose. Rodney's attempts at description of her had been +well meaning; but what he had prepared his sister for, unconsciously of +course, in his emphasis on one or two phases of their first +acquaintance, had been a sort of slatternly Amazon. But the effect of +this was, really, very happy; because when a perfectly presentably clad, +well-bred, admirably poised young girl came into the room and greeted +her neither shyly nor eagerly, nor with any affectation of ease, a girl +who didn't try to pretend it wasn't a critical moment for her but was +game enough to meet it without any evidences of panic—when Frederica +realized that this was the Rose whom Rodney had been telling her about, +she fell in love with her on the spot.</p> + +<p>Amazingly, as she watched the girl and heard her talk, she found she was +considering, not Rose's availability as a wife for Rodney, but Rodney's +as a husband for her. It was this, perhaps, that led her to say, at the +end of her leave-taking, just as Rose, who had come out into the hall +with her, was opening the door:</p> + +<p>"Roddy has been such a wonderful brother, always, to me, that I suspect +you'll find him, sometimes, being a brother to you. Don't let it hurt +you if that happens."</p> + +<p>The most vivid of all the memories that Frederica took away with her +from that memorable visit was the smile with which Rose had answered +that remark. She had her chauffeur stop at the first drug store they +came to and called up Rodney on the telephone, just because she was too +impatient to wait any longer for a talk with him.</p> + +<p>"I'm simply idiotic about her," she told him. "I know, now, what you +meant when you were trying to tell me about her smile. She looked at me +like that just as I was leaving, and my throat's tight with it yet. +She's such a darling! Don't be too much annoyed if I put my oar in once +in a while, just to see that you're treating her properly."</p> + +<p>She walked into his office one morning a few days later, dismissed his +stenographer with a nod, and sat down in the just vacated chair. She was +sorry, she said, but it was the only way she had left, nowadays, of +getting hold of him. Then she introduced a trivial, transparent little +errand for an excuse, and, having got it out of the way, inquired after +Rose. What had the two of them been doing lately?</p> + +<p>"Getting acquainted," he said. "It's going to be an endless process, +apparently. Heavens, what a lot there is to talk about!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," Frederica persisted, "but what do you do by way of being—nice to +her?" And as he only looked puzzled and rather unhappy, she elucidated +further. "What's your concession, dear old stupid, to the fact that +you're her lover—in the way of presents and flowers and theaters and +things?"</p> + +<p>"But Rose isn't like the rest of them," he objected. "She doesn't care +anything about that sort of thing."</p> + +<p>Whereat Frederica laughed. "Try it," she said, "just for an experiment, +Roddy. Don't ask her if she wants to go, ask her to go. Get tickets for +one of the musical things, engage a table for dinner and for supper, at +two of the restaurants, and send her flowers. Do it handsomely, you +know, as if ordinary things weren't good enough for her. Oh, and take +our big car. Taxis wouldn't quite be in the picture. Try it, Roddy, just +to see what happens."</p> + +<p>He looked thoughtful at first, then interested, and at last he smiled, +reached over and patted her hand. "All right, Freddy," he said. "The +handsome thing shall be done."</p> + +<p>The result was that at a quarter past one A.M., a night or two later, he +tipped the carriageman at the entrance to the smartest of Chicago's +supper restaurants, stepped into Martin's biggest limousine, and dropped +back on the cushions beside a girl he hardly knew.</p> + +<p>"You wonder!" he said, as her hand slid into his. "I didn't know you +could shine like that. All the evening you've kept my heart in my +throat. I don't know a thing we've seen or eaten—hardly where we've +been."</p> + +<p>"I do," she declared, "and I shall never forget it. Not one smallest +thing about it. You see, it's the first time anything like it ever +happened to me."</p> + +<p>He exclaimed incredulously at that—wanted to know what she meant.</p> + +<p>He felt the weight of her relaxed contented body, as she leaned closer +to him—felt her draw in a long slow sigh. "I don't know whether I can +talk sense to-night or not," she said, "but I'll try. Why, I've been +quite a lot at the theater, of course, and two or three times to the +restaurants. But never—oh, as if I belonged like that. It always seemed +a little wrong, and extravagant. And then, it's never lasted. After the +theater, or the dinner, I've walked over to the elevated, you know. So +this has been like—well, like flying in a dream, without any bumps to +wake me up. It sort of goes to my head just to be sitting here like +this, floating along home. Only—only, I wish it was to our home, +Rodney, instead of just mine."</p> + +<p>"You darling!" he said. And, presently: "I'll tell you what we'll do +to-morrow, if you'll run away from your dressmaker. We'll go and buy a +car for ourselves. It's ridiculous I didn't get one long ago. +Frederica's always been at me to. You see, mother wouldn't have anything +but horses, and I sold those, of course, when she died. I've meant to +get a car, but I just never got round to it."</p> + +<p>A small disagreeable voice, hermetically sealed in one of the remoter +caverns of him, remarked at this point that he was a liar. A motor-car, +it pointed out, was one of the things he had always denounced as a part +of the useless clutter of existence that he refused to be embarrassed +with. But it didn't speak with much conviction.</p> + +<p>She picked up his hand and brushed her lips softly against the palm of +it. "You're so wonderful to me," she said. "You give me so much. And +I—I have so little to give back. And I want to—I want to give you all +the world." And then, suddenly, she put her bare arm around his neck, +drew his face to hers and kissed him.</p> + +<p>It was the first time she had ever begun a caress like that.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_IX_1"></a><h3>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<h3>AFTER BREAKFAST</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>For their honeymoon, Martin had loaned them his camp up in northern +Wisconsin—uncut forest mostly, with a river and a lot of little lakes +in it. There were still deer and bear to be shot there, there was +wonderful fishing, and, more to the point in the present instance, as +fine a brand of solitude as civilization can ask to lay its hands on. It +was modified, and mitigated too, by a backwoods family—a man and his +wife, a daughter or two, and half a dozen sons, who lived there the year +round, of course; so that by telegraphing two or three days in advance, +you could be met by a buckboard at the nearest railroad station for the +twenty-five-mile drive over to the camp. You could find the house itself +(a huge affair, decorously built of logs, as far as its exterior +manifestations went, but amply supplied on the interior with bathrooms, +real beds and so forth) opened and warmed and flavored with the odor of +fried venison steak. Also, there was always a boy to paddle a canoe for +you, or saddle a horse, if you didn't feel like doing it for yourself.</p> + +<p>Rodney and Rose spent a night in this establishment, then rigged up an +outfit for camping of a less symbolistic sort, and repaired to an island +out in the lake, where for two weeks they lived gorgeously, like the +savages they both, to a very considerable extent, really were.</p> + +<p>But, at the end of this fortnight, a whipping north wind, with a fine +penetrating rain in its teeth, settled down for a three-days' visit, and +drove them back to adequate shelter. One rainy day in an outdoor camp is +a good thing; a second requires fortitude; a third carries the +conviction that it has been raining from the first day of Creation and +will keep on till the Last Judgment, and if you have anywhere to go to +get dry, you do.</p> + +<p>Of course the storm blew itself away when it had accomplished its +purpose of driving them from their island paradise, but they didn't go +back to it. Two weeks of camp-fires, hemlock boughs and blankets, had +given them an appreciation for sleeping between smooth sheets, and +coming down to a breakfast that was prepared for them. And one morning +Rose came into the big living-room to find Rodney lounging there, in +front of the fire, with a book.</p> + +<p>It wasn't the first time he had done that. But always before, on seeing +her come in, he had chucked the book away and come to meet her. This +time, he went on reading.</p> + +<p>She moved over toward him, meaning to sit down on the arm of his chair, +cuddle her arm around his neck, and at the same time, discover what it +was that so absorbed him. But half-way across the room, she changed her +mind. He hadn't even reached out an unconscious hand toward her. He went +on reading as if, actually, he were alone in the room. Evidently, too, +it was a book he'd brought with him—a formidable-looking volume printed +in German—she got near enough to see that. So she picked up an old +magazine from the table, and found a chair of her own, smiling a little +in anticipation of the effect this maneuver would have.</p> + +<p>She opened the magazine at random, and, presently, for the sake of +verisimilitude, turned a page. Rodney was turning pages as regularly as +clockwork. It was a silly magazine! She wished she'd found something +that really could interest her. It was getting harder and harder to sit +still. He couldn't be angry about anything, could he? No, that was +absurd. There hadn't been the slightest trace of a disagreement between +them. She wouldn't go on pretending to read, anyhow, and she tossed the +magazine away.</p> + +<p>She had meant it to fall back on the table. But she put more nervous +force than she realized into the toss, so that it skittered across the +table and fell on the floor with a slap.</p> + +<p>That roused him. He closed his book—on his finger, though—looked +around at her, stretched his arms and smiled. "Isn't this great?" he +said.</p> + +<p>It wasn't a sentiment she could echo quite whole-heartedly just then, +so she asked him what he meant—wasn't what great.</p> + +<p>"Oh, this," he told her. "Being like this."</p> + +<p>"Sitting half a mile apart this way," she asked, "each of us reading our +own book?"</p> + +<p>She didn't realize how completely provocative her meaning was, until, to +her incredulous bewilderment, he said enthusiastically, "Yes! exactly!"</p> + +<p>He wasn't looking at her now, but into the fire, and he rummaged for a +match and relighted his pipe before he said anything more. "Being +permanent, you know," he explained, "and—well, our real selves again."</p> + +<p>She tried hard to keep her voice even when she asked, "But—but what +have we been?"</p> + +<p>And at that he laughed out. "Good heavens, what haven't we been! A +couple of transfigured lunatics. Why, Rose, I haven't been able to see +straight, or think straight, for the last six weeks. And I don't believe +you have either. My ideas have just been running in circles around you. +How I ever got through those last two cases in the Appellate Court, I +don't see. When I made an argument before the bench, I was—talking to +you. When I wrote my briefs, I was writing you love-letters. And if I'd +had sense enough to realize my condition, I'd have been frightened to +death. But now—well, we've been sitting here reading away for an hour, +without having an idea of each other in our heads."</p> + +<p>By a miracle of self-command, she managed to keep control of her voice. +"Yes," she said. "That—that other's all over, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," he demurred around a comfortable +yawn. "I expect it will catch us again every now and then. But, in the +main, we're sane people, ready to go on with our own business. What was +it you were reading?"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe I'll read any more just now," she said. "I think I'll +go out for a walk." And she managed to get outside the room without his +discovering that anything was wrong.</p> + +<p>It was, indeed, her first preoccupation, to make sure he shouldn't +discover the effect his words had had on her—to get far enough away +before the storm broke so that she could have it out by herself. The +crowning humiliation would be if he came blundering in on her and asked +her what was the matter.</p> + +<p>She fled down the trail to the little lake, ran out a canoe, caught up a +paddle and bent a feverish energy to the task of getting safely around +into the shelter of a fir-grown point before she let herself stop, as +she would have said, to think. It wasn't really to think, of course. +Not, that is, to interpret out to the end of all its logical +implications, the admission he had so unconsciously made to her that +morning.</p> + +<p>She had never seriously been hurt or frightened, Portia had said weeks +ago. And when she said it, it was true. She was both hurt and frightened +now, and the instinct that had urged her to fly was as simple and +primitive as that which urges a wounded animal to hide.</p> + +<p>Indeed, if you could have seen her after she had swung her paddle +inboard, sitting there, gripping the gunwales with both hands, panting, +her wide eyes dry, you might easily have thought of some defenseless +wild thing cowering in a momentary shelter, listening for the baying of +pursuing hounds.</p> + +<p>He didn't love her any more, that was what he had said. For what was the +thing he had so cheerfully described himself as cured of, what were the +symptoms he had enumerated as if he had been talking about a +disease—the obsession with her, the inability to get her further away +than the middle ground of his thoughts, and then only temporarily; the +necessity of saying everything he said and doing everything he did, with +reference to her; the fact that his mind could focus itself sharply on +nothing in the world but just herself?—What was all that but the +veritable description, though in hostile terms, of the love he had +promised to feel for her till death should—part them; of the very love +she felt for him, this moment stronger than ever?</p> + +<p>Recurrent waves of the panic broke over her, during which she would +catch up her paddle again and drive ahead, blindly, without any +conscious knowledge of where she was going. And in the intervals, she +drifted.</p> + +<p>The relief of tears didn't come to her until she saw, just ahead, the +island where, for two paradisiacal weeks, she and Rodney had made their +camp. Here she beached her canoe and went ashore; crept into a little +natural shelter under a jutting rock, where they had lain one day while, +for three hours, a violent unheralded storm had whipped the lake to +lather. The heap of hemlock branches he had cut for a couch for them was +still there.</p> + +<p>At the end of half an hour, she observed with a sort of apathetic +satisfaction, that the weather conditions of their former visit were +going to be repeated now—a sudden darkness, a shriek of wind, a wild +squall flashing across the surface of the little lake, and a driving +rain so thick that small as the lake was, it veiled the shore of it.</p> + +<p>She watched it for an hour before it occurred to her to wonder what +Rodney would be doing—whether he'd have discovered her absence from the +house and begun to worry about her. She told herself that he +wouldn't—that he'd sit there until he finished his book, or until they +called him for lunch, without, as he himself had boasted that morning, a +thought of her entering his mind.</p> + +<p>She wept again over this notion, luxuriating rather, it must be +confessed, in the pathos of it, until she caught herself in the act and, +disgustedly, dried her eyes. Of course he'd worry about her. Only there +was nothing either of them could do about it until the storm should be +over; then she'd paddle back to the house as fast as she could and set +his mind at rest.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she sat erect, looked, rubbed her eyes, looked again, then +sprang to her feet and went out into the driving rain. A spot of white, +a larger one of black, two moving pin-points of light, was what she saw. +The white was Rodney's shirt, the black the canoe, the pin-points the +reflection from the two-bladed paddle as, recklessly, he forced his way +with it into the teeth of the storm. He wanted her, after all.</p> + +<p>So, with a racing heart and flushed cheeks, she watched him. It was not +until he had come much nearer that she went white with the realization +of his danger—not until she could see how desperately it needed all his +strength and skill to keep his little cockle-shell from broaching to +and being swamped.</p> + + +<a name="Illus_3"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_3.png"><img src="images/Illus_3.png" + alt=""Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"" + width="45%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>"Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"</h4> +<br> + +<p>She went as far to meet him as she could—out to the end of the point, +and then actually into the water to help him with the half-filled boat.</p> + +<p>They emptied it and hauled it up on the beach. Then, looking up at him a +little tremulously, between a smile and tears, she saw how white he was, +caught him in her arms and felt how he was trembling.</p> + +<p>"I thought you were gone," he said, but couldn't manage any more than +that because of a great shuddering sob that stopped him.</p> + +<p>"Don't!" she cried. "Don't.—Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"</p> + +<p>Presently, back in the shelter again, she drew his head down on her +breast and held him tight.</p> + +<p>Logically, of course, the situation wasn't essentially changed. It +couldn't be a part of their daily married routine that he should think +he'd lost her and come through perils to the rescue. When the storm had +blown over and they'd come back to the house—still more, when after +another few weeks they'd gone back to town, he'd still have a world of +his own to withdraw into, a business of his own to absorb him, and she, +with no world at all except the one he was the principal inhabitant of, +would be left outside. But you couldn't have expected her to think of +that while she held him, quivering, in her arms.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="BOOK_TWO"></a><h3>BOOK TWO</h3> + +<h3>Love and the World</h3> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_I_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<h3>THE PRINCESS CINDERELLA</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>When the society editor of "America's foremost newspaper," as in its +trademark it proclaims itself to be, announced that the Rodney Aldriches +had taken the Allison McCreas' house, furnished, for a year, beginning +in October, she spoke of it as an ideal arrangement. As everybody knew, +it was an ideal house for a young married couple, and it was equally +evident that the Rodney Aldriches were an ideal couple for it.</p> + +<p>In the sense that it left nothing to further realization, it was an +ideal house; an old house in the Chicago sense, built over into +something very much older still—Tudor, perhaps—Jacobean, anyway—by a +smart young society architect who wore soft collars and an uptwisted +mustache, and who, by a perfectly reciprocal arrangement which almost +deserves to be called a form of perpetual motion, owed the fact that he +was an architect to his social position, and maintained his social +position by being an architect.</p> + +<p>He had cooperated enthusiastically with Florence McCrea, not only in the +design of the house, but in the supplementary matters of furniture, +hangings, rugs and pictures, with the effect that the establishment +presented the last politely spoken word in things as they ought to be. +The period furniture was accurate almost to the minute, and the +arrangement of it, the color schemes and the lighting, had at once the +finality of perfection and the perfection of finality. If you happened +to like that sort of thing, it was precisely the sort of thing you'd +like.</p> + +<p>The same sort of neat, fully acquired perfection characterized the +McCreas' domestic arrangements. Allison McCrea's income, combined with +his wife's, was exactly enough to enable them to live in this house and +entertain on the scale it very definitely prescribed, just half the +time. Every other year they went off around the world in one direction +or another, and rented their house furnished for exactly enough to pay +all their expenses. They had no children, and his business, which +consisted in allowing his bank to collect his invariable quarterly +dividends for him and credit them to his account, offered no obstacle to +this arrangement. On the alternate years, they came back and spent two +years' income living in their house.</p> + +<p>Florence was an old friend of Rodney's and it was her notion that it +would be just the thing he'd want. She made no professions of +altruism—admitted she was fussy about whom she rented her darling house +to, and that Rodney and his wife would be exactly right. Still, she +didn't believe he could do better. They'd have to have some sort of +place to live in, in the autumn. It would be such a mistake to buy a lot +of stuff in a hurry and find out later that they didn't want it! The +arrangement she proposed would leave him an idyllically untroubled +summer—nothing to fuss about, and provide ... Well, Rodney knew for +himself what the house was—complete down to the cork-screws.</p> + +<p>Even the servant question was eliminated. "Ours are so good," Florence +said, "that the last time we rented the house, we put them in the lease. +I wouldn't do that with you, of course, but I know they'll be just what +you want." And six thousand dollars a year was simply dirt cheap.</p> + +<p>To clinch the thing, Florence went around and saw Frederica about it. +And Frederica, after listening, non-committally, dashed off to the last +meeting of the Thursday Club (all this happened in June, just before the +wedding) and talked the matter over with Violet Williamson on the way +home, afterward.</p> + +<p>"John said once," observed Violet, "that if he had to live in that +house, he'd either go out and buy a plush Morris chair from +feather-your-nest Saltzman's, and a golden oak sideboard, or else run +amuck."</p> + +<p>Frederica grinned, but was sure it wouldn't affect Rodney that way. +He'd never notice that there <i>wasn't</i> a golden oak sideboard with a +beveled mirror in it. As for Rose, she thought Rose would like it—for a +while, anyway. Of course it wasn't forever. But this wasn't the point. +It was something else she had to get an unprejudiced opinion on, "simply +because in this case my own isn't trustworthy. I'm so foolish about old +Roddy, that I can't be sure I haven't—well, caught being mad about Rose +from him. It all depends, you see, on whether Rose is going to be a hit +this winter or not. If she is, they'll want a place just like that and +it would be a shame for her to be bothered and unsettled when she might +have everything all oiled for her. But of course if she doesn't—go (and +it all depends on her; Rodney won't be much help)—why, having a house +like that might be pretty sad. So, if you're a true friend, you'll tell +me what you think."</p> + +<p>"What I really think," said Violet, "—of course I suppose I'd say this +anyway, but I do honestly mean it—is that she'll be what John calls a +'knock-out.' To be sure, I've only met her twice, but I think she's +absolutely thrilling. She's so perfectly simple. She's never—don't you +know—<i>being</i> anything. She just is. And she thinks we're all so +wonderful—clever and witty and beautiful and all that—just honestly +thinks so, that she'll make everybody feel warm and nice inside, and +they'll be sure to like her. Of course, when she gets over feeling that +way about us...."</p> + +<p>"She's got a real eye for clothes, too," said Frederica. "We've been +shopping. Well then, I'm going to tell Rodney to go ahead and take the +house."</p> + +<p>Rose was consulted about it of course, though consulted is perhaps not +the right word to use. She was taken to see it, anyway, and asked if she +liked it, a question in the nature of the case superfluous. One might as +well have asked Cinderella if she liked the gown the fairy godmother had +provided her with for the prince's ball.</p> + +<p>It didn't occur to her to ask how much the rent would be, nor would the +fact have had any value for her as an illuminant, because she would have +had no idea whether six thousand dollars was a half or a hundredth of +her future husband's income. The new house was just a part—as so many +of the other things that had happened to her since that night when +Rodney had sent her flowers and taken her to the theater and two +restaurants in Martin's biggest limousine had been parts—of a +breath-arresting fairy story.</p> + +<p>It takes a consciousness of resistance overcome to make anything feel +quite real, and Rose, during the first three months after their return +to town in the autumn, encountered no resistance whatever. It was all, +as Frederica had said, oiled. She was asked to make no effort. The whole +thing just happened, exactly as it had happened to Cinderella. All she +had to do was to watch with wonder-wide eyes, and feel that she was, +deliciously, being floated along.</p> + +<p>The conclusion Frederica and Violet had come to about her chance for +social success was amply justified by the event, and it is probable that +Violet had put her finger on the mainspring of it. One needn't assume +that there were not other young women at the prince's ball as beautiful +as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one +provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should +say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for +unalloyed delight. No other young girl, beautiful as she may have been, +if she were accustomed to driving to balls in coaches and having princes +ask her to dance with them, could possibly have looked at that prince +the way Cinderella must have looked at him.</p> + +<p>While a sophisticated woman can affect this sort of simplicity well +enough to take in the men, the affectation is always transparently clear +to other women and they detest her for it. But it was altogether the +real thing with Rose, and they knew it and took to her as naturally as +the men did.</p> + +<p>So it fell out that what with the Junior League, the woman's auxiliary +boards of one or two of the more respectably elect charities, the +Thursday Club and The Whifflers (this was the smallest and smartest +organization of the lot—fifteen or twenty young women supposed to +combine and reconcile social and intellectual brilliancy on even terms. +They met at one another's houses and read scintillating papers about +nothing whatever under titles selected generally from <i>Through the +Looking-glass</i> or <i>The Hunting of the Snark</i>)—what with all this, her +days were quite as full as the evenings were, when she and Rodney dined +and went to the opera and paid fabulous prices to queer professionals, +to keep themselves abreast of the minute in all the new dances.</p> + +<p>But it wasn't merely the events of this sort, sitting in boxes at the +opera and going to marvelous supper dances afterward, that had this +thrilling quality of incredibility to Rose. The connective tissue of her +life gave her the same sensation, perhaps even more strongly.</p> + +<p>Portia had been quite right in saying that she had never <i>had</i> to do +anything; the rallying of all her forces under the spur of necessity was +an experience she had never undergone. And it was also true that her +mother, and for that matter, Portia herself had spoiled her a lot—had +run about doing little things for her, come in and shut down her windows +in the morning, and opened the register, and on any sort of excuse, on a +Saturday morning, for example, had brought her her breakfast on a tray.</p> + +<p>But these things had been favors, not services—never to be asked for, +of course, and always to be accepted a little apologetically. She never +knew what it was really to be served, until she and Rodney came back +from their camp in the woods. The whole mechanism of ringing bells for +people, telling them, quite courteously of course, but with no spare +words, precisely what she wanted them to do and seeing them, with no +words at all of their own, except the barest minimum required to +indicate respectful acquiescence—carrying out these instructions, was +in its novelty, as sensuously delightful a thing to her feelings as the +contact with a fine fabric was to her finger-tips.</p> + +<p>"I haven't," Rose, in bed, told Rodney one morning, "a single, blessed, +mortal thing to do all day." Some fixture scheduled for that morning had +been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling +seedy and had called off a little luncheon and matinée party. So, she +concluded with a deep-drawn sigh, the day was empty.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that's too bad," he said with concern. "Can't you manage something +...?"</p> + +<p>"Too bad!" said Rose in lively dissent. "It's too heavenly! I've got a +whole day just to enjoy being myself;—being"—she reached across to the +other bed for his hand, and getting it, stroked her cheek with +it—"being my new self. You've no idea how new it is, or how exciting +all the little things about it are. State Street's so different +now—going and getting the exact thing I want, instead of finding +something I can make do, and then faking it up to look as much like the +real thing as I could. Portia used to think I faked pretty well. It was +the one thing she really admired about me, because she couldn't do it +herself at all. But I never was—don't you know?—right.</p> + +<p>"And then when I was going anywhere, I'd figure out the through routes +and where I'd take transfers, and how many blocks I'd have to walk, and +what kind of shoes I'd have to wear. And coming home in time for dinner +always meant the rush hour, and I'd have to stand. And it simply never +occurred to me that everybody else didn't do it that way. Except"—she +smiled—"except in Robert Chambers' novels and such."</p> + +<p>It wasn't necessary to see Rose smile to know she did it. Her voice, +broadening out and—dimpling, betrayed the fact. This smile, plainly +enough, went rather below the surface, carried a reference to something. +But Rodney didn't interrupt. He let her go on and waited to inquire +about it later.</p> + +<p>"So you see," she concluded, "it's quite an adventure just to say—well, +that I want the car at a quarter to eleven and to tell Otto exactly +where I want him to drive me to. I always feel as if I ought to say that +if he'll just stop the car at the corner of Diversey Street, I can +walk."</p> + +<p>He laughed out at that and asked her how long she thought this blissful +state of things would last.</p> + +<p>"Forever," she said.</p> + +<p>But presently she propped herself up on one elbow and looked over at him +rather thoughtfully. "Of course it's none of it new to you," she +said—"not the silly little things I've been talking about, nor the +things we do together—oh, the dinners, and the dances, and the operas. +Do you sort of—wish I'd get tired of it? Is it a dreadful bore to you?"</p> + +<p>"So long as it doesn't bore you," he said; "so long as you go +on—shining the way you do over it, and I am where I can see you +shine"—he got out of his bed, sat down on the edge of hers, and took +both her hands—"so long as it's like that, you wonder," he said, "well, +the dinners and the operas and all that may be piffle, but I shall be +blind to the fact."</p> + +<p>She kissed his hands and told him contentedly that he was a darling. +But, after a moment's silence, a little frown puckered her eyebrows and +she asked him what he was so solemn about.</p> + +<p>Well, he had told her the truth. The edge of excitement in his voice +would have carried the irresistible conviction to anybody, that the +thing he had said was, without reserve, the very thing he meant. But +precisely as he said it, as if, indeed, the thing that he had said were +the detonating charge that fires the shell, he felt the impact, away +down in the inner depths of him, of a realization that he was not the +same man he had been six months ago. Not the man who had tramped +impatiently back and forth across Frederica's drawing-room, expounding +his ideals of space and leisure—open, wind-swept space, for the free +range of a hard, clean, athletic mind. Not the man who despised the +clutter of expensive junk—"so many things to have and to do, that one +couldn't turn around for fear of breaking something." That man would +have derided the possibility that he could ever say this thing that he, +still Rodney Aldrich, had just said to Rose—and meant.</p> + +<p>To that man, the priceless hour of the day had always been precisely +this one, the first waking hour, when his mind, in the enjoyment of a +sort of clairvoyant limpidity, had been wont to challenge its stiffest +problems, wrestle with them, and whether triumphant or not, despatch him +to his office avid for the day's work and strides ahead of where he had +left it the night before.</p> + +<p>He spent that hour very differently now. He spent all his hours, even +the formal working ones, differently. And the terrifying thing was that +he hadn't resisted the change, hadn't wanted to resist, didn't want to +now, as he sat there looking down at her—at the wonderful hair which +framed her face and, in its two thick braids, the incomparable whiteness +of her throat and bosom—at the slumberous glory of her eyes.</p> + +<p>So, when she asked him what he was looking so solemn about, he said with +more truth than he pretended to himself, that it was enough to make +anybody solemn to look at her. And then, to break the spell, he asked +her why she had laughed a little while back, over something she had said +about Robert W. Chambers' novels.</p> + +<p>"I was thinking," she said, "of the awful disgrace I got into yesterday, +with somebody—well, with Bertram Willis, by saying something like that. +I'll have to tell you about it."</p> + +<p>Bertram Willis, it should be said, was the young architect with the +upturned mustaches and the soft Byronic collars, who had done the house +for the McCreas. And I must warn you to take the adjective young, with a +grain of salt. Youth was no mere accident with him. He made an art of +it, just as he did of eating and drinking and love-making and, +incidentally, architecture. He was enormously in demand, chiefly +perhaps, among young married women whose respectability and social +position were alike beyond cavil. He never carried anything too far, you +see. He was no pirate—a sort, rather, of licensed privateer. And what +made him so invincibly attractive—after you had granted his other +qualities, that is—was that he professed himself, among women, +exceedingly difficult to please, so that attentions from him, even of a +casual sort, became <i>ex hypothesi</i> compliments of the first order. If he +asked you, in his innocently shameless way, to belong to his <i>hareem</i>, +you boasted of it afterward;—jocularly, to be sure, but you felt +pleased just the same. The thing that had given the final cachet of +distinction to Rose's social success that season, had been the fact that +he had shown a disposition to flirt with her quite furiously.</p> + +<p>Rose didn't need to tell her husband that, of course, because he knew it +already, as he also knew that Willis had asked her to be one of the +Watteau group he was getting up for the charity ball (the ball was to +be a sumptuously picturesque affair that year), nor that he had been +spending hours with her over the question of costumes—getting as good +as he gave, too, because her eye for clothes amounted to a really +special talent.</p> + +<p>All that Rodney didn't know, was about the conversation the two of them +had had yesterday afternoon at tea-time.</p> + +<p>Rose, intent on telling him all about it, had postponed the recital +while she made up her own mind as to how she should regard the thing +herself; whether she ought to have been annoyed, or seriously +remonstrant, or whether the smile of pure amusement which had come so +spontaneously to her lips, had expressed, after all, an adequate +emotion.</p> + +<p>The look in her husband's face made an end of all doubts, reduced the +episode of yesterday to its proper scale. Married to a man who could +look at her like that, she needn't take any one else's looks or speeches +very seriously. It was at this angle that she told about it.</p> + +<p>"Why," she said, "of course he's always talked to me as if I were about +six—sixteen, anyway, no older than that, and the names he makes up to +call me are simply too silly to repeat. But I never paid any attention, +because—well, everybody knows he's that way to everybody. 'Flower face' +was one of his favorites, but there were others that were worse. Well, +yesterday he brought around some old costume plates, but he wouldn't let +me look at them without coming round beside me and—holding my hand, so +that didn't work very well. And then he got quite solemn and said +I'd—given him the only real regret of his life, because he hadn't seen +me until it was too late."</p> + +<p>"I didn't know," said Rodney, "that he ever let obstacles like husbands +bother him."</p> + +<p>"That's what I thought he meant at first," said Rose, "but it wasn't. He +didn't mean it was too late because of my being married to you. He meant +too late because of him. He couldn't love me, he said, as I deserved, +because he'd been in love so many times before, himself.</p> + +<p>"And then, of course, just when I should have been looking awfully sad +and sympathetic, I had to go and grin, and he wanted to know why, and I +said, 'Nothing,' but he insisted, you know, so then I told him.</p> + +<p>"Well, it was just what I said to you a while ago—that I didn't know +any men ever talked like that except in books by Hichens or +Chambers—why do you suppose they're both named Robert?—and he went +perfectly purple with rage and said I was a savage. And then he got +madder still and said he'd like to be a savage himself for about five +minutes; and I wanted to tell him to go ahead and try, and see what +happened, but I didn't. I asked him how he wanted his tea, and he didn't +want it at all, and went away."</p> + +<p>As she finished, she glanced up into his face for a hardly-needed +reassurance that the episode looked to him, as it had looked to her, +trivial. Then, with a contented little sigh, for his look gave her just +what she wanted, she sat up and slid her arms around his neck.</p> + +<p>"How plumb ridiculous it would have been," she said, "if either of us +had married anybody else."</p> + +<p>If Rodney, that is, had married a girl who'd have taken Bertram Willis +seriously; or if she had married a man capable of thinking the +architect's attentions important.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_II_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<h3>THE FIRST QUESTION AND AN ANSWER TO IT</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>But within a day or two, when a conversation overheard at a luncheon +table recalled the architect to her mind, a rather perplexing question +propounded itself to her. Why had it infuriated him so—why had he +glared at her with that air of astounded incredulity, on discovering +that she wasn't prepared to take him seriously? There could be only one +answer to that question. He could not have expected Rose to be properly +impressed and fluttered, unless that were the effect he was in the habit +of producing on other women. These others, much older that Rose all of +them (because no débutantes were ever invited to belong to the +<i>hareem</i>), these new, brilliant, sophisticated friends her marriage with +Rodney had brought her, did not, evidently, regard the dapper little +architect with feelings anything like the mild, faintly contemptuous +mirth that he had roused so spontaneously and irresistibly in Rose. +Every one of them had a husband of her own, hadn't she? And they were +happily married, too. Well, then ...!</p> + +<p>She found Violet Williamson in Frederica's box at the Symphony concert +one Friday afternoon, and took them both home to tea with her afterward. +And when the talk fairly got going, she tossed her problem about Bertie +Willis and his <i>hareem</i> into the vortex to see what would come of it.</p> + +<p>It was always easy to talk with Frederica and Violet, there was so much +real affection under the amusement they freely expressed over her youth +and inexperience and simplicity. They always laughed at her, but they +came over and hugged her afterward.</p> + +<p>"I'm turned out of the <i>hareem</i>," she said, apropos of the mention of +him, "in disgrace."</p> + +<p>Violet wanted to know whatever in the world she had done to him. +"Because, he's been positively—what do you call it?—dithyrambic about +you for the last three months."</p> + +<p>"I laughed," Rose acknowledged; "in the wrong place of course."</p> + +<p>The two older women exchanged glances.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose it's ever been done to him before," asked Frederica, "in +the last fifteen years, anyway?" And Violet solemnly shook her head.</p> + +<p>"But why?" demanded Rose. "That's what I want to know. How can any one +help thinking he's ridiculous. Of course if you were alone on a desert +island with him like the Bab Ballad, I suppose you'd make the best of +him. But with any one else that was—real, you know, around ..."</p> + +<p>Only a very high vacuum—this was the idea Rose seemed to be getting +at—might be expected, <i>faute de mieux</i>, to tolerate Bertie. So if you +found him tolerated seriously in a woman's life, you couldn't resist the +presumption that there was a vacuum there.</p> + +<p>"Don't ask me about him," said Frederica. "He never would have anything +to do with me; said I was a classic type and they always bored him +stiff. But Violet, here ..."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I lasted one season, and then he dropped me. He +beat me to it by about a minute. All the same—oh, I can understand it +well enough. You see, what he builds on is that a woman's husband is +always the least interesting man in the world. Oh, I don't mean we don't +love them, or that we want to change them—permanently, you know. Take +Frederica and me. We wouldn't exchange for anything. Yet, we used to +have long arguments. I've said that Martin was more—interesting, witty, +you know, and all that, than John. And Frederica says John is more +interesting than Martin. Oh, just to talk to, I mean. Not about anything +in particular, but when you haven't anything else to do."</p> + +<p>She paused long enough to take a tentative sip or two of boiling hot +tea. But the way she had hung up the ending to her sentence, told them +she wasn't through with the topic yet.</p> + +<p>"It's funny about that, too," she went on, "because really, we see each +other so much and have known each other so long, that I know +Martin's—repertory, about as well as Frederica. I mean, it isn't like +Walter Mill, when he was just back from the Legation at Pekin, or even +like Jimmy Wallace, who spends half his time playing around with all +sorts of impossible people—chorus-girls and such, and tells you queer +stories about them. There's something besides the—familiarness that +makes husbands dull. And that's what makes Bertie amusing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course," said Frederica, "everybody likes to flirt—whether they +have to or not."</p> + +<p>"Have to?" Rose echoed. She didn't want to miss anything.</p> + +<p>Frederica hesitated. Then, rather tentatively, began her exegesis.</p> + +<p>"Why, there are a lot of women—especially of our sort, I suppose, who +are always ... well, it's like taking your own temperature—sticking a +thermometer into their mouths and looking at it. They think they know +how they ought to feel about certain things, and they're always looking +to see if they do. And when they don't, they think their emotional +natures are being starved, or some silly thing like that. And of course, +if you're that way, you're always trying experiments, just the way +people do with health foods. In the end, they generally settle on +Bertie. He's perfectly safe, you know—just as anxious as they are not +to do anything really outrageous. Bertie keeps them in a pleasant sort +of flutter, and maybe he does them good. I don't know.—Drink your tea, +Violet. We've got to run."</p> + +<p>That was explicit enough anyway. But it didn't solve Rose's +problem—broadened and deepened it rather, and gave it a greater basis +of reality. It was silly, of course, always to be asking yourself +questions. But after all, you didn't question a thing that wasn't +questionable. There had been no necessity for a compromise between +romance and reality in her own case. She hadn't any need of a +thermometer. Why had they?</p> + +<p>Of course she knew well enough that marriage was not always the blissful +transformation it had been for her. There were unhappy marriages. There +were such things in the world as unfaithful husbands and brutal drunken +husbands, who had to be divorced. And equally, too, there were +cold-blooded, designing, mercenary wives. (In the back of her mind was +the unacknowledged notion that these people existed generally in novels. +She knew, of course, that those characters must have real prototypes +somewhere. Only, it hadn't occurred to her to identify them with people +of her own acquaintance.) But the idea had been that, barring these +tragic and disastrous types, marriage was a state whose happy +satisfactoriness could, more or less, be taken for granted.</p> + +<p>Oh, there were bumps and bruises, of course. She hadn't forgotten that +tragic hour in the canoe last summer. There had, indeed, been two or +three minor variants on the same theme since. She had seen Rodney drop +off now and again into a scowling abstraction, during which it was so +evident he didn't want to talk to her, or even be reminded that she was +about, that she had gone away flushed and wondering, and needing an +effort to hold back the tears.</p> + +<p>These weren't frequent occurrences, though. Once settled into what +apparently was going to be their winter's routine, they had so little +time alone together that these moments, when they came, had almost the +tension of those that unmarried lovers enjoy. They were something to +look forward to and make the delicious utmost of.</p> + +<p>So, until she got to wondering about Bertie, Rose's instinctive attitude +toward the group of young to middle-aged married people into which her +own marriage had introduced her, was founded on the assumption that, +allowing for occasional exceptions, the husbands and wives felt toward +each other as she and Rodney did—were held together by the same +irresistible, unanalyzable attraction, could remember severally, their +vivid intoxicating hours, just as she remembered the hour when Rodney +had told her the story and the philosophy of his life.</p> + +<p>Bertie, or rather the demand for what Bertie supplied, together with +Frederica's explanation of it, brought her the misgiving that marriage +was not, perhaps, even between people who loved each other,—between +husbands who were not "unfaithful" and wives who were not +"mercenary"—quite so simple as it seemed.</p> + +<p>The misgiving was not very serious at first—half amused, and wholly +academic, because she hadn't, as yet, the remotest notion that the thing +concerned, or ever could concern, herself; but the point was, it formed +a nucleus, and the property of a nucleus is that it has the power of +attracting to itself particles out of the surrounding nebulous vapor. It +grows as it attracts, and it attracts more strongly as it grows.</p> + +<p>An illustration of this principle is in the fact that, but for the +misgiving, she would hardly have asked Simone Gréville what she meant by +saying that though she had always supposed the fundamental sex +attraction between men and women to be the same in its essentials, in +all epochs and in all civilizations, her acquaintance with upper-class +American women was leading her to admit a possible exception.</p> + +<p>Since that amiable celestial, Wu Ting Fang, made his survey of our +western civilization and left us wondering whether after all we had the +right name for it, no one has studied our leisured and cultivated +classes with more candor and penetration than this great Franco-Austrian +actress. She had ample opportunities for observation, because during the +first week of her tour the precise people who count the most in our +informal social hierarchy took her up and, upon examination, took her +in. Playing in English as she did, and with an American supporting +company, she did not make a great financial success (the Continental +technique, especially when contrasted so intimately with the one we are +familiar with does not attract us), but socially she was a sensation. So +during her four weeks in Chicago, while she played to houses that +couldn't be dressed to look more than a third full, she was enormously +in demand for luncheons, teas, dinners, suppers, Christmas bazaars, +charity dances and so on. (If it had only been possible to establish a +scale of fees for these functions, her manager used to reflect +despairingly, he might have come out even after all.) Any other sort of +engagement melted away like snow in the face of an opportunity of +meeting Simone Gréville.</p> + +<p>Rose had met her a number of times before the incident referred to +happened, but had always surveyed the lioness from afar. What could she, +whose acquaintance with Europe was limited to one three-months trip, +undertaken by the family during the summer after she graduated from high +school, have to say to an omniscient cosmopolite like that?</p> + +<p>So she hung about, within ear-shot when it was possible, and watched, +leaving the active duties of entertainment to heavily cultured +illuminati like the Howard Wests, or to clever creatures like Hermione +Woodruff and Frederica, and Constance Crawford, whose French was good +enough to fill in the interstices in Madame Gréville's English.</p> + +<p>She was standing about like that at a tea one afternoon, when she heard +the actress make the remark already quoted, to the effect that American +women seemed to her to be an exception to what she always supposed to be +the general law of sex attraction.</p> + +<p>It was taken, by the rather tense little circle gathered around her, as +a compliment; exactly as, no doubt, Gréville intended it to be taken. +But her look flashed out beyond the confines of the circle and +encountered a pair of big luminous eyes, under brows that had a +perplexed pucker in them. Whereupon she laughed straight into Rose's +face and said, lifting her head a little, but not her voice:</p> + +<p>"Come here, my child, and tell me who you are and why you were looking +at me like that."</p> + +<p>Rose flushed, smiled that irresistible wide smile of hers, and came, not +frightened a bit, nor, exactly, embarrassed; certainly not into +pretending she was not surprised, and a little breathlessly at a loss +what to say.</p> + +<p>"I'm Rose Aldrich." She didn't, in words, say, "I'm just Rose Aldrich." +It was the little bend in her voice that carried that impression. "And I +suppose I was—looking that way, because I was wishing I knew exactly +what you meant by what you said."</p> + +<p>Gréville's eyes, somehow, concentrated and intensified their gaze upon +the flushed young face; took a sort of plunge, so it seemed to Rose, to +the very depths of her own. It was an electrifying thing to have happen +to you.</p> + +<p>"<i>Mon dieu</i>," she said, "<i>j'ai grande envie de vous le dire</i>." She +hesitated the fraction of a moment, glanced at a tiny watch set in a +ring upon the middle finger of her right hand, took Rose by the arm as +if to keep her from getting away, and turned to her hostess.</p> + +<p>"You must forgive me," she said, "if I make my farewells a little soon. +I am under orders to have some air each day before I go to the theater, +and if it is to be done to-day, it must be now. I am sorry. I have had a +very pleasant afternoon.—Make your farewells, also, my child," she +concluded, turning to her prisoner, "because you are going with me."</p> + +<p>There was something Olympian about the way she did it. The excuse was +made, and the regret expressed in the interest of courtesy, but neither +was insisted on as a fact, nor was seriously intended, it appeared, even +to disguise the fact, which was simply that she had found something +better worth her while, for the moment, than that tea. It occurred to +Rose that there wasn't a woman in town—not even terrible old Mrs. +Crawford, Constance's mother-in-law, who could have done that thing in +just that way; no one who felt herself detached, or, in a sense, +superior enough, to have done it without a trace of self-consciousness, +and consequently without offense. An empress must do things a good deal +like that.</p> + +<p>The effect on Rose was to make complete frankness seem the easiest thing +in the world. And frankness seemed to be the thing called for. Because +no sooner were they seated in the actress' car and headed north along +the drive, than she, instead of answering Rose's question, repeated one +of her own.</p> + +<p>"I ask who you are, and you say your name—Rose something. But that +tells me nothing. Who are you—one of them?"</p> + +<p>"No, not exactly," said Rose. "Only by accident. The man I married +is—one of them, in a way. I mean, because of his family and all that. +And so they take me in."</p> + +<p>"So you are married," said the French woman. "But not since long?"</p> + +<p>"Six months," said Rose.</p> + +<p>She said it so with the air of regarding it as a very considerable +period of time that Gréville laughed.</p> + +<p>"But tell me about him then, this husband of yours. I saw him perhaps at +the tea this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>Rose laughed. "No, he draws the line at teas," she said. "He says that +from seven o'clock on, until as late as I like, he's—game, you +know—willing to do whatever I like. But until seven, there are +no—well, he says, siren songs for him."</p> + +<p>"Tell me—you will forgive the indiscretions of a stranger?—how has it +arrived that you married him? Was it one of your American romances?"</p> + +<p>"It didn't seem very romantic," said Rose. "I mean not much like the +romantic stories you read, and of course one couldn't make a story about +it, because there was nothing to tell. We just happened to get +acquainted, and we knew almost straight off that we wanted to marry each +other, so we did. Some people thought it was a little—headlong, I +suppose, but he said it was an adventure anyway, and that people could +never tell how it was going to come out until they tried. So we tried, +and—it came out very well."</p> + +<p>"It 'came out'?" questioned the actress.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose. "Ended happily, you know."</p> + +<p>"Ended!" Madame Gréville echoed. Then she laughed.</p> + +<p>Rose flushed and smiled at herself. "Of course I don't mean that," she +admitted, "and I suppose six months isn't so very long. Still you could +find out quite a good deal ..."</p> + +<p>"What is his affair?" The actress preferred asking another question, it +seemed, to committing herself to an answer to Rose's unspoken one. "Is +he one of your—what you call tired business men?"</p> + +<p>"He's never tired," said Rose, "and he isn't a business man. He's a +lawyer—a rather special kind of lawyer. He has other lawyers, mostly, +for his clients, he's awfully enthusiastic about it. He says it's the +finest profession in the world, if you don't let yourself get dragged +down into the stupid routine of it. It certainly sounds thrilling when +he tells about it."</p> + +<p>The actress looked round at her. "So," she said, "you follow his work as +he follows your play? He talks seriously to you about his affairs?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," said Rose, "we have wonderful talks." Then she hesitated. +"At least we used to have. There hasn't seemed to be much—time, lately. +I suppose that's it."</p> + +<p>"One question more," said the French woman, "and not an idle one—you +will believe that? <i>Alors!</i> You love your husband. No need to ask that. +But how do you love him? Are you a little indulgent, a little cool, a +little contemptuous of the grossness of masculine clay, and still +willing to tolerate it as part of your bargain? Is that what you mean by +love? Or do you mean something different altogether—something vital and +strong and essential—the meeting of thought with thought, need with +need, desire with desire?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose after a little silence, "that's what I mean."</p> + +<p>She said it quietly, but without embarrassment and with full meaning; +and as if conscious of the adequacy of her answer, she forbore to +embroider on the theme. There was a momentary silence, while the French +woman gazed contemplatively out of the open window of the limousine, at +a skyscraping apartment building which jutted boldly into a curve of the +parkway they were flying along.</p> + +<p>"That's a beauty, isn't it?" said Rose, following her gaze. "Every +apartment in that building has its own garage that you get to with an +elevator."</p> + +<p>The actress nodded. "You Americans do that;" she said, "better than any +one else in the world. The—surfaces of your lives are to marvel at."</p> + +<p>"But with nothing inside?" asked Rose. "Is that what you mean? Is—that +what you mean about—American women, that you said you'd tell me?"</p> + +<p>Madame Gréville took her time about answering. "They are an enigma to +me," she said, "I confess it. I have never seen such women anywhere, as +these upper-class Americans. They are beautiful, clever, they know how +to dress. For the first hour, or day, or week, of an acquaintance, they +have a charm quite incomparable. And, up to a certain point, they +exercise it. Your <i>jeunes filles</i> are amazing. All over the world, men +go mad about them. But when they marry ..." She finished the sentence +with the ghost of a shrug, and turned to Rose. "Can you account for +them? Were you wondering at them, too, with those great eyes of yours? +<i>Alors</i>! Are we puzzled by the same thing? What is it, to you, they +lack?"</p> + +<p>Rose stirred a little uneasily. "I don't know very much," she said. "I +don't know them well at all, and of course I shouldn't criticize ..."</p> + +<p>"Ah, child," broke in the actress, "there you mistake yourself. One must +always criticize. It is by the power of criticism and the courage of +criticism, that we have become different from the beasts."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Rose, "except that some of them seem a little +dissatisfied and restless, as if—well, as if they wanted something they +haven't got."</p> + +<p>"But do they truly want it?" Madame Gréville demanded. "I am willing to +be convinced, but myself, I find of your women of the aristocrat class, +the type most characteristic is"—she paused and said the thing first +to herself in French, then translated—"is a passive epicure in +sensations; sensations mostly mental, irritating or soothing—a pleasant +variety. She waits to be made to feel; she perpetually—tastes. One may +demand whether it is that their precocity has exhausted them before they +are ripe, or whether your Puritan strain survives to make all passion +reprehensible, or whether simply they have too many ideas to leave room +for anything else. But, from whatever cause, they give to a stranger +like me, the impression of being perfectly frigid, perfectly +passionless. And so, as you say, of missing the great thing altogether.</p> + +<p>"A few of your women are great, but not as women, and of second-rate men +in petticoats, you have a vast number. But a woman, great by the +qualities of her sex, an artist in womanhood, I have not seen."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wish," cried Rose, "that I knew what you meant by that!"</p> + +<p>"Why, regard now," said the actress. "In every capital of Europe—and I +know them all—wherever you find great affairs—matters of state, +diplomacy, politics—you find the influence of women in them; women of +the great world, sometimes, sometimes of the half-world; great women, at +all events, with the power to make or ruin great careers; women at whose +feet men of the first class lay all they have; women the tact of whose +hands is trusted to determine great matters. They may not be beautiful +(I have seen a faded little woman of fifty, of no family or wealth, +whose salon attracted ministers of state), they haven't the education, +nor the liberties that your women enjoy, and, in the mass, they are not +regarded—how do you say?—chivalrously. Yet there they are!</p> + +<p>"And why? Because they are capable of great passions, great desires. +They are willing to take the art of womanhood seriously, make sacrifices +for it, as one must for any art, in order to triumph in it."</p> + +<p>Rose thought this over rather dubiously. It was a new notion to her—or +almost new. Portia had told her once she never would have any trouble +making her husband "want" her as much as she liked. This idea of making +a serious art of your power to attract and influence men, seemed to +range itself in the same category.</p> + +<p>"But suppose," she objected, "one doesn't want to triumph at it? Suppose +one wants to be a—person, rather than just a woman?"</p> + +<p>"There are other careers indeed," Madame Gréville admitted, "and one can +follow them in the same spirit, make the sacrifices—pay the price they +demand. <i>Mon dieu!</i> How I have preached. Now you shall talk to me. It +was for that I took you captive and ran away with you."</p> + +<p>For the next half-hour, until the car stopped in front of her house, +Rose acted on this request; told about her life before and since her +marriage to Rodney, about her friends, her amusements—anything that +came into her mind. But she lingered before getting out of the car, to +say:</p> + +<p>"I hope I haven't forgotten a single word of your—preaching. You said +so many things I want to think about."</p> + +<p>"Don't trouble your soul with that, child," said the actress. "All the +sermon you need can be boiled down into a sentence, and until you have +found it out for yourself, you won't believe it."</p> + +<p>"Try me," said Rose.</p> + +<p>"Then attend.—How shall I say it?—Nothing worth having comes as a +gift, nor even can be bought—cheap. Everything of value in your life +will cost you dear; and some time or other you'll have to pay the price +of it."</p> + +<p>It was with a very thoughtful, perplexed face that Rose watched the car +drive away, and then walked slowly into her house—the ideal house that +had cost Florence McCrea and Bertie Willis so many hours and so many +hair-line decisions—and allowed herself to be relieved of her wraps by +the perfect maid, who had all but been put in the lease.</p> + +<p>The actress had said many strange and puzzling things during their ride; +things to be accepted only cautiously, after a careful thinking out. But +strangest of all was this last observation of hers; that there was +nothing of worth in your life that you hadn't to pay a heavy price for.</p> + +<p>Certainly it contradicted violently everything in Rose's experience, for +everything she valued had come to her precisely as a gift. Her mother's +and Portia's love of her, the life that had surrounded her in school and +at the university, the friends; and then, with her marriage, the sudden +change in her estate, the thrills, the excitement, the comparative +luxuries of the new life. Why,—even Rodney himself, about whom +everything else swung in an orbit! What price had she paid for him, or +for any of the rest of it? It was all as free as the air she breathed. +It had come to her without having cost even a wish. Was Rodney's love +for her, therefore, valueless? No, the French woman was certainly wrong +about that.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_III_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<h3>WHERE DID ROSE COME IN</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>However, it was one thing to decide that this was so, and quite another +thing to dismiss the preposterous idea from her mind. There was still an +hour before she need begin dressing for the Randolph dinner, but as she +had already had her tea and there was nothing else to do, she thought +she might as well go about it. It might help her resist a certain +perfectly irrational depression which the talk with the actress, +somewhat surprisingly, had produced. And besides, if she were all +dressed when Rodney came home, she'd be free to visit with him while he +dressed—to sit and watch him swearing at his studs, and tell him about +the events of her day, including their climax in the ride with the +famous Simone Gréville. And he'd come over every now and then and +interrupt himself and her with some sort of unexpected caress—a kiss on +the back of her neck, or an embrace that would threaten her +coiffure—and this vague, scary, nightmarish sort of feeling, which for +no reasonable reason at all seemed to be clutching at her, would be +forgotten.</p> + +<p>It was a queer sort of feeling—a kind of misgiving, in one form or +another, as to her own identity—as if all the events since her marriage +were nothing but a dream of Rose Stanton's, from which, with vague +painful stirrings, she was just beginning to wake. Or, again, as if for +all these months, she had been playing a part in a preposterously long +play, on which the curtain was, presently, going to be rung down. She +wished Rodney would come—hoped he wouldn't be late, and finally sat +down before the telephone with a half-formed idea of calling him up and +reminding him that they were dining with the Randolphs.</p> + +<p>Just as she laid her hand upon the receiver, the telephone bell rang. It +was Rodney calling her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, that you, Rose?" he said. "I shan't be out till late to-night. +I've got to work."</p> + +<p>She wanted to know what he meant by late.</p> + +<p>"I've no idea," he said. "Ten—twelve—two. I've got to get hold of +something, but I've no idea how long it will take."</p> + +<p>"But, Roddy, dearest," she protested. "You have to come home. You've got +the Randolphs' dinner."</p> + +<p>"Oh, the devil!" he said. "I forgot all about it. But it doesn't make a +bit of difference, anyway. I wouldn't leave the office before I finished +this job, for anybody short of the Angel Gabriel."</p> + +<p>"But what shall we do?" she asked despairingly.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Rodney. "Call them up and tell them. Randolph will +understand."</p> + +<p>"But,"—it was absurd that her eyes should be filling up and her throat +getting lumpy over a thing like this,—"but what shall I do? Shall I +tell Eleanor <i>we</i> can't come, or shall I offer to come without you?"</p> + +<p>"Lord!" he said, "I don't care. Do whichever you like. I've got enough +to think about without deciding that. Now do hang up and run along."</p> + +<p>"But, Rodney, what's happened? Has something gone wrong?"</p> + +<p>"Heavens, no!" he said. "What is there to go wrong? I've got a big day +in court to-morrow and I've struck a snag, and I've got to wriggle out +of it somehow, before I quit. It's nothing for you to worry about. Go to +your dinner and have a good time. Good-by."</p> + +<p>The click in the receiver told her he had hung up. The difficulty about +the Randolphs was managed easily enough. Eleanor was perfectly gracious +about it and insisted that Rose should come by herself.</p> + +<p>She was completely dressed a good three-quarters of an hour before it +was time to start, and after pretending for fifteen interminable minutes +to read a magazine, she chucked it away and told her maid to order the +car at once. If she drove straight down-town, she could have a +ten-minute visit with Rodney and still not be late for the dinner. She +was a little vague as to why she wanted it so much, but the prospect +was irresistible.</p> + +<p>If any one had accused her of feeling very meritorious over not having +allowed herself to be hurt at his rudeness to her or annoyed at the way +he had demolished their evening's plans, and of hoping to make him feel +a little contrite by showing him how sweet she was about it, she might, +with a rueful grin, have acknowledged a tincture of truth about the +charge; but she didn't discover it by herself. As she dreamed out the +little scene, riding down-town in the car, she'd come stealing up behind +him as he sat, bent wearily over his book, and clasp her hands over his +eyes and stroke the wrinkles out of his forehead. He'd give a long sigh +of relaxation, and pull her down on the chair-arm and tell her what it +was that troubled him, and she'd tell him not to worry—it was surely +coming out all right. And she'd stroke his head a little longer and +offer not to go to the dinner if he wanted her to stay, and he'd say, +no, he was better already, and then she'd give him a good-by kiss and +steal away, and be the life of the party at the Randolphs' dinner, but +her thoughts would never leave him....</p> + +<p>She knew she was being silly of course, and her beautiful wide mouth +smiled an acknowledgment of the fact, even while her checks flushed and +her eyes brightened over the picture. Of course it wouldn't come out +exactly like that.</p> + +<p>Well, it didn't!</p> + +<p>She found a single elevator in commission in the great gloomy rotunda of +the office building, and the watchman who ran her up made a terrible +noise shutting the gate after he had let her out on the fifteenth floor. +The dim marble corridor echoed her footfalls ominously, and when she +reached the door to his outer office and tried it, she found it locked. +The next door down the corridor was the one that led directly into his +private office, and here the light shone through the ground-glass.</p> + +<p>She stole up to it as softly as she could, tried it and found it locked, +too, so she knocked. Through the open transom above it, she heard him +say "Hell!" in a heartfelt sort of way, and heard his chair thrust +back. The next moment he opened the door with a jerk.</p> + +<p>His glare of annoyance changed to bewilderment at the sight of her, and +he said:</p> + +<p>"Rose! Has anything happened? What's the matter?" And catching her by +the arm, he led her into the office. "Here, sit down and get your breath +and tell me about it!"</p> + +<p>She smiled and took his face in both her hands. "But it's the other +way," she said. "There's nothing the matter with me. I came down, you +poor old boy, to see what was the matter with you."</p> + +<p>He frowned and took her hands away and stepped back out of her reach. +Had it not been for the sheer incredibility of it, she'd have thought +that her touch was actually distasteful to him.</p> + +<p>"Oh," he said. "I thought I told you over the phone there was nothing +the matter!—Won't you be awfully late to the Randolphs'?"</p> + +<p>"I had ten minutes," she said, "and I thought ..."</p> + +<p>She broke off the sentence when she saw him snap out his watch and look +at it.</p> + +<p>"I know there's something," she said. "I can tell just by the way your +eyes look and the way you're so tight and—strained. If you'd just tell +me about it, and then sit down and let me—try to take the strain +away...."</p> + +<p>Beyond a doubt the strain was there. The laugh he meant for a +good-humored dismissal of her fears, didn't sound at all as it was +intended to.</p> + +<p>"Can't you tell me?" she repeated.</p> + +<p>"Good heavens!" he said. "There's nothing to tell! I've got an argument +before the Court of Appeals to-morrow and there's a ruling decision +against me. It is against me, and it's bad law. But that isn't what I +want to tell them. I want some way of making a distinction so that I can +hold that the decision doesn't rule."</p> + +<p>"And it wouldn't help," she ventured, "if you told me all about it? I +don't care about the dinner."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't explain in a month," he said.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I wish I were some good," she said forlornly.</p> + +<p>He pulled out his watch again and began pacing up and down the room.</p> + +<p>"I just can't stand it to see you like that," she broke out again. "If +you'll only sit down for five minutes and let me try to get that +strained look out of your eyes...."</p> + +<p>"Good God, Rose!" he shouted. "Can't you take my word for it and let it +alone? I'm not ill, nor frightened, nor broken-hearted. I don't need to +be comforted nor encouraged. I'm in an intellectual quandary. For the +next three hours, or six, or however long it takes, I want my mind to +run cold and smooth. I've got to be tight and strained. That's the way +the job's done. You can't solve an intellectual problem by having your +hand held, or your eyes kissed, or anything like that. Now, for God's +sake, child, run along and let me forget you ever existed, for a while!"</p> + +<p>And he ground his teeth over an impulse that all but got the better of +him, after she'd shut the door, to follow her out into the corridor and +pull her up in his arms and kiss her face all over, and to consign the +Law and the Prophets both, to the devil.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_IV_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<h3>LONG CIRCUITS AND SHORT</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>James Randolph was a native Chicagoan, but his father, an intelligent +and prosperous physician, with a general practise in one of the northern +suburbs, afterward annexed to the city, did not belong to the old +before-the-fire aristocracy that Rodney and Frederica, and Martin +Whitney, the Crawfords and Violet Williamson were born into. The medical +tradition carried itself along to the third generation, when James made +a profession of it, and in him, it flowered really into genius. From the +beginning his bent toward the psychological aspect of it was marked and +his father was sympathetic enough to give it free sway. After graduating +from one of the Chicago medical colleges he went to Johns Hopkins, and +after that to Vienna, where he worked mostly under Professor Freud.</p> + +<p>It was in Vienna that he met Eleanor Blair. She, too, was a native of +Illinois, but this fact cut a very different figure in her life from +that which it cut in his. Her grandfather, a pioneer, forceful, thrifty +and probably rather unscrupulous, had settled on the wonderfully fertile +land at a time when one had almost to drive the Indians off it. He had +accumulated it steadily to the day of his death and died in possession +of about thirty thousand acres of it. It was in much this fashion that a +feudal adventurer became the founder of a line of landed nobility, but +the centrifugal force of American life caused the thing to work out +differently. His son had an eastern college education, got elected to +Congress, as a preliminary step in a political career, went to +Washington, fell in love with and married the beautiful daughter of an +unreconstructed and impoverished southern gentleman. She detested the +North, and as her love for the South found its expression in passionate +laments over its ruin, uncomplicated by any desire to live there, she +spent more and more of her time—her husband's faint wishes becoming +less and less operative with her until they ceased altogether—in one +after another of the European capitals.</p> + +<p>So Eleanor, two generations away from the fertile soil of central +Illinois, was as exotic to it as an orchid would be in a New England +garden. Two or three brief perfunctory visits to the land her income +came from, and to the relatives who still lived upon it, became the +substitute for what, in an older and stabler civilization, would have +been the dominant tradition in her life.</p> + +<p>She must have been a source of profound satisfaction to large numbers of +French, Italian, Austrian and English persons, to whose eminent social +circles her mother's wealth and breeding gained admittance, by embodying +for them, with perfect authenticity, their notion of the American girl. +She was rich, beautiful, clever in a rather shallow, "American" way, she +had a will of her own, and was indulged by her mother with an astounding +amount of liberty; she was audacious, yet with a tempering admixture of +cool shrewdness, which kept her out of the difficulties she was always +on the brink of.</p> + +<p>Kept her out of them, that is, until, in Vienna, as I have said, she met +James Randolph. That she fell in love with him is one of those facts +which seem astonishing the first time you look at them, and inevitable +when you look again. Physically, a sanguine blond, with a narrow head, a +forward thrusting nose, and really blue eyes, his dominating spiritual +quality was the sort of asceticism which proclaims not weak anemic +desires, but strong unruly ones, curbed in by the hand of a still +stronger will. He was highly imaginative, as a successful follower of +the Freudian method must be. He was capable of the gentlest sympathy, +and of the most relentless insistence. And he thought, until he met +Eleanor Blair, that he was, indisputably, his own master.</p> + +<p>The wide social gulf between them—between a beautiful American heiress +with the entry into all circles of aristocratic society, except the +highest, and an only decently pecunious medical student, caught both of +them off their guard. The utter unlikelihood of anything coming of such +an acquaintance as theirs, was just the ambush needed to make it +possible for them to fall in love. They would, probably, have attracted +each other anywhere. But, in a city like Vienna, where all the sensuous +appurtenances of life are raised to their highest power, the attraction +became irresistible.</p> + +<p>He did resist as long as he could—successfully, indeed, to the point of +holding himself back from asking her to marry him, or even explicitly +from making love to her. But the thing shone through his deeply-colored +emotions, like light through a stained-glass window. And when she asked +him to marry her, as she did in so many words—pleaded her homesickness +for a home she had never known, and a loneliness she had suddenly become +aware of, amid would-be friends and lovers, who could not, not one of +them, be called disinterested, his resistance melted like a powder of +April snow.</p> + +<p>It was the only serious obstacle she had to overcome. The terms of her +father's will left her share of the income of the estate wholly at her +disposal. And so, in spite of her mother's horrified protest, they were +married, and not long afterward, her mother, who was still a year or two +on the sunny side of fifty, gratified her aristocratic yearnings by +marrying a count herself.</p> + +<p>The Randolphs came back to America and, somewhat against Eleanor's +wishes, settled in Chicago. With her really very large income, her +exotic type of beauty and her social skill, she was probably right in +thinking she could have made a success anywhere. One of the larger +eastern cities—preferably New York or Washington, would have suited her +better. But Chicago, he said, was where he belonged and where his best +chance for professional success lay, and she yielded, though without +waiving her privilege of making a more or less good-humored grievance of +it. However, she found the place much more tolerable than riding into +and out of it on the train a few times had led her to expect.</p> + +<p>She knew a few people of exactly the right sort and she neatly and +almost painlessly detached her husband from his old Lake View +associations. She looked out a house in precisely the right +neighborhood, and furnished it to combine the splendor of her income +with the simple austerity of his profession in just the right +proportions. She trailed her game with unfailing precision, never barked +up the wrong tree, could distinguish a goat from a sheep as far as she +could see one, and in no time at all had won the exact position she +wanted.</p> + +<p>Her attitude toward her husband (you have already had a sample of it at +Frederica's famous dinner, where Rodney was supposed to take the +preliminary steps toward marrying Hermione Woodruff) attracted general +admiration, and it was fortified, of course, by the story of their +romantic marriage. It was conceded she had done a very fine and splendid +thing in marrying the man she loved, settling down to live with him on +so comparatively simple and modest a scale, and devoting herself so +whole-heartedly to his career. She had an air—and it wasn't consciously +assumed, either—of living wholly with reference to him, which people +found exceedingly engaging. (A cynic might observe at this point that +the same quality in a homely unattractive woman would fail of producing +this effect.)</p> + +<p>Indeed, he had much to be grateful for. But for the fact that his wife +was accepted without reserve, a man whose principal preoccupation was +with matters of sex psychology, who was said to cure hysterical and +neurasthenic patients by the interpretation of their dreams, would have +been regarded askance by the average run of common-sense, golf-playing +men of affairs. Even his most miraculous cures would be attributed to +the imaginary nature of the disease, rather than to the skill of the +physician.</p> + +<p>Not even his wife's undeniable charm could altogether efface this +impression from the mind of this sort of man. But though his way of +turning the theme of a smoking-room story into a subject for serious +scientific discussion might make you uncomfortable, you couldn't meet +James Randolph and hear him talk, without respecting him. He was +attractive to women (it amounted almost to fascination with the neurotic +type), and to men of high intelligence, like Rodney, he was a boon and +a delight. And the people who liked him least were precisely those most +attracted by his wife. Anyhow, no one refused an invitation to their +dinners.</p> + +<p>Rose's arrival at this one—a little late, to be sure, but not +scandalously—created a mild sensation. None of the other guests were +strangers, either, on whom she could have the effect of novelty. They +were the same crowd, pretty much, who had been encountering one another +all winter—dancing, dining and talking themselves into a state of +complete satiety with one another. They'd split up pretty soon and +branch out in different directions—the Florida east coast, California, +Virginia Hot Springs and so on, and so galvanize their interest in life +and in one another. At present they were approaching the lowest ebb.</p> + +<p>But when Rose came into the drawing-room—in a wonderful gown that dared +much, and won the reward of daring—a gown she'd meant to hold in +reserve for a greater occasion, but had put on to-night because she had +felt somehow like especially pleasing Rodney—when she came in, she +reoxygenated the social atmosphere. She won a moment of complete +silence, and when the buzz of talk arose again, it was jerky—the +product of divided minds and unstable attentions.</p> + +<p>She was, in fact, a stranger. Her voice had a bead on it which roused a +perfectly unreasoning physical excitement—the kind of bead which, in +singing, makes all the difference between a church choir and grand +opera. The glow they were accustomed to in her eyes, concentrated itself +into flashes, and the flush that so often, and so adorably, suffused her +face, burnt brighter now in her cheeks and left the rest pale.</p> + +<p>And these were true indices of the change that had taken place within +her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd +walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an +intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had +found herself suddenly feeling lighter, older, indescribably more +confident. That dinner was to be gone through with, was it? Well, it +should be! They shouldn't suspect her humiliation or her hurt. She was +conscious suddenly of enormous reserves of power hitherto unsuspected—a +power that could be exercised to any extent she chose, according to her +will.</p> + +<p>Her husband, James Randolph reflected, had evidently either been making +love to her, or indulging in the civilized equivalent of beating her; he +was curious to find out which. And having learned from his wife that +Rose was to sit beside him at the table, he made up his mind that he +would make her tell him.</p> + +<p>He didn't attempt it, though, during his first talk with her—confined +himself rigorously to the carefully sifted chaff which does duty for +polite conversation over the same hors-d'oeuvres and entrées, from one +dinner to the next, the season round. It wasn't until Eleanor had turned +the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in the game.</p> + +<p>"No need asking you if you like this sort of thing," he said. "I would +like to know how you keep it up. You have the same things said to you +seven nights a week and you make the same answers—thrust and parry, +carte and tierce, buttons on the foils. It can't any of it get anywhere. +What's the attraction?"</p> + +<p>"You can't get a rise out of me to-night," said Rose. "Not after what +I've been through to-day. Madame Gréville's been talking to me. She +thinks American women are dreadful dubs,—or she would if she knew the +word—thinks we don't know our own game. Do you agree with her?"</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you that," he said, "after you answer my question. What's the +attraction?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you think it would be a mistake," said Rose, "for me to try to +analyze it? Suppose I did and found there wasn't any! You aren't +supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, you know."</p> + +<p>"Is that what's the matter with Rodney?" he asked. "Is this sort of"—a +gesture with his head took in the table—"caramel diet, beginning to go +against his teeth?"</p> + +<p>"He had to work to-night," Rose said. "He was awfully sorry he couldn't +come."</p> + +<p>She smiled just a little ironically as she said it, and exaggerated by +a hair's breadth, perhaps, the purely conventional nature of the reply.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he observed, "that's what we say. Sometimes it gets us off and +sometimes it doesn't."</p> + +<p>"Well, it got him off to-night," she said. "He was pretty impressive. He +said there was a ruling decision against him and he had to make some +sort of distinction so that the decision wouldn't rule. Do you know what +that means? I don't."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you ask him?" Randolph wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"I did and he said he could explain it, but that it would take a month. +So of course there wasn't time."</p> + +<p>"I thought," said Randolph, "that he used to talk law to you by the +hour."</p> + +<p>The button wasn't on the foil that time, because the thrust brought +blood—a bright flush into her cheeks and a sudden brightness into her +eyes that would have induced him to relent if she hadn't followed the +thing up of her own accord.</p> + +<p>"I wish you'd tell me something," she said. "I expect you know better +than any one else I could ask. Why is it that husbands and wives can't +talk to each other? With people who live the way we do, it isn't that +they've worn each other out, because they see no more of each other, +hardly, than they do of the others. And it isn't that they're naturally +more uninteresting to each other than the rest of the people they know. +Because then, why did they marry each other in the first place, instead +of any one of the others who are so easy to talk to afterward? Imagine +what this table would be if the husbands and wives sat side by side! +Would Eleanor ever be able to turn it so that they talked that way?"</p> + +<p>"That's a fascinating speculation," he said. "I wish I could persuade +her some time to indulge the wild eccentricity of trying it out."</p> + +<p>"Well, why?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"Shall I try to say something witty," he asked, "or do you want it, as +near as may be, absolutely straight?"</p> + +<p>"Let's indulge," she said, "in the wild, eccentricity of talking +straight."</p> + +<p>The cigarettes came around just then, and he lighted one rather +deliberately, at one of the candles, before he answered.</p> + +<p>"I am under the impression," he said, "that husbands and wives can talk +exactly as well as any other two people. Exactly as well, and no better. +The necessary conditions for real conversation are a real interest in +and knowledge of a common subject; ability on the part of both to +contribute something to that subject. Well, if a husband and wife can +meet those terms, they can talk. But the joker is, as our legislative +friend over there would say," (he nodded down the table toward a young +millionaire of altruistic principles, who had got elected to the state +assembly) "the joker is that a man and a woman who aren't married, and +who are moderately attracted to each other, can talk, or seem to talk, +without meeting those conditions."</p> + +<p>"Seem to talk?" she questioned.</p> + +<p>"Seem to exchange ideas mutually. They think they do, but they don't. +It's pure illusion, that's the answer."</p> + +<p>"I'm not clever, really," said Rose, "and I don't know much, and I +simply don't understand. Will you explain it, in short words,"—she +smiled—"since we're not married, you know?"</p> + +<p>He grinned back at her. "All right," he said, "since we're not married, +I will. We'll take a case ..." He looked around the table. "We'll be +discreet," he amended, "and take a hypothetical case. We'll take Darby +and Joan. They encounter each other somewhere, and something about them +that men have written volumes about and never explained yet, sets +up—you might almost call it a chemical reaction between them—a +physical reaction, certainly. They arrest each other's attention—get to +thinking about each other, are strongly drawn together.</p> + +<p>"It's a sex attraction—not quite the oldest and most primitive thing in +the world, but nearly. Only, Darby and Joan aren't primitive people. If +they were, the attraction would satisfy itself in a direct primitive +way. But each of them is carrying a perfectly enormous superstructure of +ideas and inhibitions, emotional refinements and capacities, and the sex +attraction is so disguised that they don't recognize it. Do you know +what a short circuit is in electricity?"</p> + +<p>"I think so," said Rose, "but you'd better not take a chance. Tell me +that, too."</p> + +<p>"Why," he said, "the juice that comes into your house to light it and +heat the flat-irons and the toaster, and so on, comes in by one wire and +goes out by another. Before it can get out, it's got to do all the work +you want it to do—push its way through the resistance of fine tungsten +filaments in your lamps and the iron wires in your heaters that get +white hot resisting it. When it's pushed its way through all of them and +done the work you want it to do, it's tired out and goes away by the +other wire. But if you cut off the insulation down in the basement, +where those two wires are close together, and make it possible for the +current to jump straight across without doing any work, it will take the +short circuit instead of the long one and you won't have any lights in +your house. Now do you see what I mean?</p> + +<p>"Darby and Joan are civilized. That is to say, they're insulated. The +current's there, but it's long-circuited. The only expression it's got +is through the intelligence,—so it lights the house. Absence of common +knowledge and common interests only adds to the resistance and makes it +burn all the brighter. Naturally Darby and Joan fall victims to the very +dangerous illusion that they're intellectual companions. They think +they're having wonderful talks. All they are doing, is long-circuiting +their sex attraction. Well, marriage gives it a short circuit. Why +should the current light the lamps when it can strike straight across? +There you are!"</p> + +<p>"And poor Joan," said Rose, after a palpable silence, but evenly enough, +"who has thought all along that she was attracting a man by her +intelligence and her understanding, and all that, wakes up to find that +she's been married for her long eyelashes, and her nice voice—and her +pretty ankles. That's a little hard on her, don't you think, if she's +been taking herself seriously?"</p> + +<p>"Nine times in ten," he said, "she's fooling herself. She's taken her +own ankles much more seriously than she has her mind. She's capable of +real sacrifices for them—for her sex charm, that is. She'll undergo a +real discipline for it. Intelligence she regards as a gift. She thinks +the witty conversation she's capable of after dinner, on a cocktail and +two glasses of champagne, or the bright letters she can write to a +friend, are real exercises of her mind—real work. But work isn't done +like that. Work's overcoming something that resists; and there's strain +in it, and pain and discouragement."</p> + +<p>In her cheeks the red flared up brighter. She smiled again—not her own +smile—one at any rate that was new to her.</p> + +<p>"You don't 'solve an intellectual problem' then;" she quoted, "'by +having your hand held, or your eyes kissed?'"</p> + +<p>Whereupon he shot a look at her and observed that evidently he wasn't as +much of a pioneer as he thought.</p> + +<p>She did not rise to this cast, however. "All right;" she said, +"admitting that her ankles are serious and her mind isn't, what is Joan +going to do about it?"</p> + +<p>"It's easier to say what she's not to do," he decided, after hesitating +a moment. "Her fatal mistake will be to despise her ankles without +disciplining her mind. If she will take either one of them seriously, or +both for that matter—it's possible—she'll do very well."</p> + +<p>He could, no doubt, have continued on the theme indefinitely, but the +table turned the other way just then and Rose took up an alleged +conversation with the man at her right which lasted until they left the +table and included such topics as indoor golf, woman's suffrage, the new +dances, Bernard Shaw, Campanini and the Progressive party; with a +perfectly appropriate and final comment on each.</p> + +<p>Rose didn't care. She was having a wonderful time—a new kind of +wonderful time. No longer gazing, big-eyed like little Cinderella at a +pageant some fairy godmother's whim had admitted her to, but consciously +gazed upon; she was the show to-night, and she knew it. Her low, finely +modulated voice so rich in humor, so varied in color, had to-night an +edge on it that carried it beyond those she was immediately speaking to +and drew looks that found it hard to get away again. For the first time +in her life, with full self-consciousness, she was producing effects, +thrilling with the exercise of a power as obedient to her will as +electricity to the manipulator of a switchboard.</p> + +<p>She was like a person driving an aeroplane, able to move in all three +dimensions. Pretty soon, of course, she'd have to come hack to earth, +where certain monstrously terrifying questions were waiting for her.</p> + +<p>Madame Gréville's final apothegm had suggested one of them. Was all she +valued in the world just so much fairy gold that would change over night +into dry leaves in her treasure chest because she had never earned +it—paid the price for it that life relentlessly exacts for all we may +be allowed to call ours?</p> + +<p>Her tragi-comic scene with Rodney suggested another. What was her value +to him? Was she something enormously desirable when he wanted his hand +held and his eyes kissed, but an infernal nuisance when serious matters +were concerned? A fine and luxurious dissipation, not dangerous unless +recklessly indulged in, but to be kept strictly in her place? Before her +talk with Randolph she'd have laughed at that.</p> + +<p>But did the horrible plausibility of what he had said actually cover the +truth? Did she owe that first golden hour with Rodney, his passionate +thrilling avowal of his life's philosophy, to nothing deeper in herself +than her unconscious power of rousing in him an equally unconscious, +primitive sex desire? Was the fine mutuality of understanding she had so +proudly boasted to her mother clear illusion? Now that the short circuit +had been established, would the lights never burn in the upper stories +of their house again? Turned about conversely the question read like +this: Was the thing that had, in Randolph himself, aroused his vivid +interest in the subject—well, nothing more than the daring cut of her +gown, the gleam of her jewels, the whiteness of her skin ...?</p> + +<p>Those questions were waiting for her to come back to earth; and they +wouldn't get tired and go away. But for the present the knowledge that +they were there only made the aeroplane ride the more exhilarating.</p> + +<p>She was called to the telephone just as she was on the point of +starting reluctantly for home, and found Rodney on the wire. He told her +that he had got hold of the thing he was looking for, but that there +were still hours of work ahead of him while he was fortifying himself +with necessary authorities. He wouldn't come home to-night at all, he +said. When his work was finished, he'd go to the club and have a Turkish +bath and all the sleep he had time for. When he got through in court +to-morrow afternoon, he'd come home.</p> + +<p>It was all perfectly reasonable—it was to her finely tuned ear just a +shade too reasonable. It had been thought out as an excuse. Because it +wasn't for the Turkish bath nor the extra hour's sleep that he was +staying away from home. It was herself he was staying away from. He +wanted his mind to stay cold and taut, and he was afraid to face the +temptation of her eyes and her soft white arms. And in the mood of that +hour, it pleased her that this should be so—that the ascetic in him +should pay her the tribute of fear.</p> + +<p>Afterward, of course, she felt like lashing herself for having felt like +that and for having replied, in a spirit of pure coquetry, in a voice of +studied, cool, indifferent good humor:</p> + +<p>"That's a good idea, Roddy. I'm glad you're not coming back. Good +night."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_V_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<h3>RODNEY SMILED</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>It was with a reminiscent smile that Rose sat down before her telephone +the next morning and called a number from memory. Less than a year ago, +it had been such a thrilling adventure to call the number of that +fraternity house down at the university and ask, in what she conceived +to be a businesslike way, for Mr. Haines. And then, presently, to hear +the voice of the greatest half-back the varsity had boasted of in years, +saying in answer to her "Hello, Harry," "Hello, Rose."</p> + +<p>It was really less than a year, and yet it was so immensely long ago, +judged by anything but the calendar, that the natural way to think of +him was as a married man with a family somewhere and faint memories of +the days when he was a student and used to flirt with a girl called Rose +something—Rose Stanton, that was it!</p> + +<p>It was during one of the interminable waking hours of last night that +she had thought of the half-back as a person who might be able, and +willing, to do her the service she wanted, and she had spent a long +while wondering how she could get track of him. Then the logic of the +calendar had forced the conviction on her, that he was, in all +probability still at the university, dozing through recitations, or +lounging about the corridors, in a blue serge suit and a sweater with a +C on it, waiting for some other girl to come out of her class-room; and +that between the hours of ten-fifteen and eleven, it was altogether +likely that she'd find him again, as she had so many times in the past, +at his fraternity house, going through the motions of getting up an +eleven o'clock recitation. It was absurd enough now to find herself +calling the old number and asking again for Mr. Haines. The dreamlike +unreality of it grew stronger, when the voice that answered said, "Just +a minute," and then bellowed out his old nickname—"Hello, Tiny! Phone!" +and, after a wait, she heard his own very deep bass.</p> + +<p>"Hello. What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Hello, Harry," she said. "This is Rose Aldrich. Do you remember +me?—Rose Stanton, you know."</p> + +<p>The ensuing silence was so long, that she said "Hello" again to make +sure that he was still there.</p> + +<p>"Y—yes," he said. "Of—of course I haven't forgotten. I—I only ... I +..."</p> + +<p>She wondered what he was so embarrassed about, but to save the +situation, she interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to be awfully busy this afternoon? Because, if you +aren't, there's something you can do for me. You're in the law school +this year, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "Of course I'm not busy at all."</p> + +<p>"It'll take quite a little while," she warned him, "an hour or so, and I +don't want to interfere with anything you've got to do."</p> + +<p>Again he assured her that he hadn't anything.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," she said rather dubiously, because his voice sounded still +so constrained and unnatural, "I'll come down in the car and pick you up +about half past one. Is that all right?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "Yes, of course. Thank you very much."</p> + +<p>Had inclination led Rose to do a little imaginative thinking about the +half-back, from his own point of view, she might, without much trouble, +have approximated the cause of his embarrassment.</p> + +<p>Here is a poor but honest young man, who has devoted himself, heart, +brain and good right arm, to the service of a beautiful young fellow +student at the university. They must wait for each other, of course, +until he can graduate and get admitted to the bar and make a success +that will enable him to support her as she deserves to be supported. The +girl declines to wait. A much older man—a great, trampling brute of a +man, possessed of wealth and fame, and a social altitude positively +vertiginous—asks her to marry him. She, woman-weak, yields to the +temptation of all the gauds and baubles that go with his name, and +marries him. Indeed, few young men at the university ever have as valid +an excuse for becoming broken-hearted misogynists as the half-back. He +would he faithful, of course, though she was not. And some day, years +later, it might he, she would come hack broken-hearted to him, confess +the fatal mistake that she had made; seek his protection, perhaps, +against the cruelties of the monster she had come to hate. He would +forgive her, console her—in a perfectly moral way, of course—and for a +while, they would just be friends. Then the wicked husband would +conveniently die, and after long years, they could find happiness.</p> + +<p>It made a very pretty idea to entertain during the semi-somnolent hours +of dull lectures and while he was waiting for the last possible moment +to leap out of bed in the morning and make a dash for his first +recitation. Written down on paper, the imaginary conversation between +them would have filled volumes.</p> + +<p>But to be called actually to the telephone—she had telephoned to him a +thousand times in the dream—and hear her say, just as in the dream she +had said—"This is Rose; do you remember me?" was enough to make even +his herculean knees knock together. To be sure her voice wasn't choked +with sobs, but you never could tell over the telephone.</p> + +<p>What did she want to do? Confront her husband with him, perhaps, this +very afternoon, and say, "Here is the man I love?" And what would he do +then? He'd have to back her up, of course—and until his next mouth's +allowance came in, he had only a dollar and eighty-five cents in the +world!</p> + +<p>Rose couldn't have filled in all the details, of course, but she might +have approximated the final result. Indeed, I think she had done so, +unconsciously, by half past one, when her car stopped in front of the +fraternity house and, instantaneously, like a cuckoo out of a clock, the +half-back appeared. He was portentously solemn, and Rose thought he +looked a little pale.</p> + +<p>"Get in," she said holding out a hand to him. "I'm going to take you +down-town to do an errand for me—well, two errands, really. My, but +it's a long time since I've seen you!"</p> + +<p>She didn't look tragic, to be sure—not as if there were livid bruises +underneath her furs. And nothing about the manner of her greeting +suggested that she was on the point of sobbing out a plea to be +forgiven. Still, what did she mean by an errand? It might be anything.</p> + +<p>"You see," she explained, "I happened to remember that you were going to +begin studying law this year, and that you were just the person who +wouldn't mind doing what I want."</p> + +<p>"Divorce!" thought the half-back with a shudder.</p> + +<p>"I want you," she went on, "to tell me just how you begin studying +law—what text-books you get, and where you get them. I want you to come +along and pick them out for me. You see, I've decided to study it +myself."</p> + +<p>It was a fact that the half-back was enormously relieved. But it was a +brutal derisive fact—an unescapable one. He wasn't heart-broken over +the dashing of a suddenly raised hope. He was, in his heart of hearts, +saying, "Thank the Lord!"</p> + +<p>If he had been pale before, he was red enough now. He felt ridiculous +and irritable.</p> + +<p>"Your husband knows all that a great deal better than I, of course," he +said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course," Rose was thoughtless enough to admit, "but you see, I +don't want him to know." She flushed a little herself. "It's going to be +a—surprise for him," she said.</p> + +<p>"And, after we've got the books," she went on, "I want you to do +something else. He's making an argument in court to-day, and I want to +go and hear him. Only—I'm so ignorant, you see, I don't know how to do +it and I didn't want to tell him I was going. So you're to find out +where the court room is and how to get me in. Now, tell me all about +everything and what's been happening since I went away. I saw you made +the all-American last fall, and meant to write you a note about it, but +I didn't get a chance. That was great!"</p> + +<p>But even at this new angle, the talk didn't run smoothly. Because, +precisely as the half-back forgot his terrors and the hopes that had +prompted them, and the absurdity of both—precisely as he began to feel, +after all, that it was a very superb and grown-up thing to be a familiar +friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur, +and wonderful clothes and an air of taking them all for +granted—precisely as he made up his mind to this, he became so very +mature, and wise and blasé, modeled his manners and his conversation so +strictly on John Drew in his attempt to rise to the situation, that the +schoolboy topics she suggested froze on his tongue. So that, by the time +he had picked out the books for her and seen them stowed away in the +car, and then had telephoned Rodney's office to find what court he was +appearing before, and finally taken her up to the eighth floor in the +Federal Building and left her there, she was, though grateful, +distinctly glad to be rid of him.</p> + +<p>What heightened this feeling was that just as she caught herself smiling +a little, down inside, over his callow absurdity, she reflected that a +year ago they had been equals; that, as far as actual intelligence went, +he was no doubt her equal to-day—her superior, perhaps. He'd gone on +studying and she hadn't. Except for the long-circuited sex attraction +that Doctor Randolph had been talking about last night, he was as +capable of being an intellectual companion to her husband as she was. +That idea stung the red of resolution into her cheeks. She would study +law. She'd study it with all her might!</p> + +<p>She was successful in her project of slipping into the rear of the court +room without attracting her husband's attention, and for two hours and a +half, she listened with mingled feelings, to his argument. A good part +of the time she was occupied in fighting off, fiercely, an almost +overwhelming drowsiness. The court room was hot of course, the glare +from the skylight pressed down her eyelids; she hadn't slept much the +night before. And then, there was no use pretending that she could +follow her husband's reasoning. Listening to it had something the same +effect on her as watching some enormous, complicated, smooth-running +mass of machinery. She was conscious of the power of it, though +ignorant of what made it go, and of what it was accomplishing.</p> + +<p>The three stolid figures behind the high mahogany bench seemed to be +following it attentively, though they irritated her bitterly, sometimes, +by indulging in whispered conversations. Toward the end, though, as +Rodney opened the last phase of his argument, one of them, the +youngest—a man with a thick neck and a square head—hunched forward and +interrupted him with a question; evidently a penetrating one, for the +man sitting across the table from Rodney looked up and grinned, and +interjected a remark of his own.</p> + +<p>"I simply followed the cases cited in <i>Aldrich on Quasi Contracts</i>," he +said. "I have a copy of the work here, in case Mr. Aldrich didn't bring +one along himself, which I'd be glad to submit to the Court."</p> + +<p>Rose gasped. It was his own book they were quoting against him.</p> + +<p>"I propose to show," said Rodney, "if the Court please, that an +absolutely vital distinction is to be made between the cases cited in +the section of <i>Aldrich on Quasi Contracts</i>, which my honorable opponent +refers to, and the case before the Court."</p> + +<p>Then the other judges spoke up. They knew the cases, it appeared, and +didn't want to look at the book, but it was clear that they were +skeptical about the distinction. For five minutes the formal argument +was lost in swift flashing phrases in which everybody took a part. +Rodney was defending himself against them all. And Rose, in an agony +because she couldn't understand it, was reminded, grotesquely enough, of +the Gentleman of France, or some other of the sword-and-cloak heroes of +her girlhood, defending the head of the stairway against the +simultaneous assault of half a dozen enemies. And then suddenly it was +over. The judges settled back again, the argument went on.</p> + +<p>At half past four, the oldest judge, who sat in the middle, interrupted +again to tell Rodney, with what seemed to Rose brutally bad manners, +what time it was.</p> + +<p>"If you can finish your argument in fifteen minutes, Mr. Aldrich, we'll +hear you out. If it's going to take longer than that, the Court will +adjourn till to-morrow morning."</p> + +<p>"I don't think I shall want more than fifteen minutes," said Rodney, and +he went on again.</p> + +<p>And, presently, he just stopped talking and began stacking up his notes. +The oldest judge mumbled something, everybody stood up and the three +stiff formidable figures filed out by a side door. It was all over.</p> + +<p>But nothing had happened!</p> + +<p>Rose had been looking forward, you see, to a driving finish; to a +dramatic summoning of reserves, a mighty onslaught. And at the end of +it, as from the umpire at a ball game, to a decision. She had expected +to leave the court room in the blissful knowledge of Rodney's victory or +the tragic acceptance of his defeat. In her surprise over the failure of +this climax to materialize, she almost neglected to make her escape +before he discovered her there.</p> + +<p>One practical advantage she had gained out of what was, on the whole, a +rather unsatisfactory afternoon. When she had gone home and changed into +the sort of frock she thought he'd like and come down-stairs in it in +answer to his shouted greeting from the lower hall, she didn't say, as +otherwise she would have done, "How did it come out, Roddy? Did you +win?"</p> + +<p>In the light of her newly-acquired knowledge, she could see how a +question of that sort would irritate him. Instead of that, she said: +"You dear old boy, how dog tired you must be! How do you think it went? +Do you think you impressed them? I bet you did."</p> + +<p>And not having been rubbed the wrong way by a foolish question, he held +her off with both hands for a moment, then hugged her up and told her +she was a trump.</p> + +<p>"I had a sort of uneasy feeling," he confessed, "that after last +night—the way I threw you out of my office, fairly, I'd find +you—tragic. I might have known I could count on you. Lord, but it's +good to have you like this! Is there anywhere we have got to go? Or can +we just stay home?"</p> + +<p>He didn't want to flounder through an emotional morass, you see. A firm +smooth-bearing surface, that was what, for every-day use, he wanted her +to provide him with; lightly given, casual caresses that could be +accepted with a smile, pleasantness, a confident security that she +wouldn't be "tragic." And on the assumption that she couldn't walk +beside him on the main path of his life, it was just and sensible. But +it wasn't good enough for Rose.</p> + +<p>So the very next morning, she stripped the cover off the first of the +books the half-back had picked out for her, and really went to work. She +bit down, angrily, the yawns that blinded her eyes with tears; she made +desperate efforts to flog her mind into grappling with the endless +succession of meaningless pages spread out before her, to find a germ of +meaning somewhere in it that would bring the dead verbiage to life. She +tried to recall the thrill in Rodney's voice when he had told her, on +that wonderful wind-swept afternoon, that the law was the finest +profession in the world. Also, he had told her, he'd never been bored +with it—it was immoral to be bored. It was a confession of defeat, +anyway, she could see that. And she wouldn't—she absolutely would not +be defeated.</p> + +<p>In a variety of moods which included everything except real hope and +confidence, she kept the thing up for weeks—didn't give up indeed, +until Fate stepped in, in her ironic way, and took the decision out of +her hands. She was very secretive about it; developed an almost morbid +fear that Rodney would discover what she was doing and laugh his big +laugh at her. She resisted innumerable questions she wanted to propound +to him, from a fear that they'd betray her secret.</p> + +<p>She even forbore to ask him about the case—it was The Case in her +mind—the one she knew about, and as she struggled along with her heavy +text-books, and a realization grew in her mind of the countless hours of +such struggling on his part which must have lain behind his ability to +make that argument that day, the thing accumulated importance to her. +How could he, under the suspense of waiting for that decision, +concentrate his mind on anything else?</p> + +<p>She discovered in the newspaper one day, a column summary of court +decisions that had been handed down, and though The Case wasn't in it, +she kept, from that day forward, a careful watch—discovered where the +legal news was printed, and never overlooked a paragraph. And at last +she found it—just the bare statement "Judgment affirmed." Rodney, she +knew, had represented the appellant. He was beaten.</p> + +<p>For a moment the thing bruised her like a blow. She had never succeeded +in entertaining, seriously, the possibility that it could end otherwise +than in victory for him. She read it again and made sure. She remembered +the names of both parties to the suit, and she knew which side Rodney +was on. There couldn't be any mistake about it. And the certainty +weighed down her spirits with a leaden depression.</p> + +<p>And then, all at once, in the indrawing of a single breath, she saw it +differently. Now that it had happened—and she couldn't help its +happening—didn't it give her, after all, the very opportunity she +wanted? She remembered what he had said the night he had turned her out +of his office. He wasn't sick or discouraged. He was in an intellectual +quandary that couldn't be solved by having his hand held or his eyes +kissed.</p> + +<p>She saw now, that that had been just enough. She couldn't help him out +of his intellectual quandaries—yet. But under the discouragement and +lassitude of defeat, couldn't she help him? She remembered how many +times she had gone to him for help like that. In panicky moments when +the new world she had been transplanted into seemed terrible to her; in +moments when she feared she had made hideous mistakes; and, most +notably, during the three or four days of an acute illness of her +mother's, when she had been brought face to face with the monstrous, +incredible possibility of losing her, how she had clung to him, how his +tenderness had soothed and quieted her—how his strength and steady +confidence had run through her veins like wine!</p> + +<p>He had never come to her like that. She knew now it was a thing she had +unconsciously longed for. And to-night she'd have a chance! Oddly +enough, it turned out to be the happiest day she'd known in a long +while. There was a mounting excitement in her, as the hours passed—a +thrilling suspense. Perhaps, after all, it wasn't going to be necessary +to grind through all those law-books in order to win the place beside +him that she wanted. If she could comfort him—mother him in his defeat +and discouragement—hold him fast when his world reeled around him, that +would be the basis of a better companionship than mere ability to chop +legal logic with him. She could he content with the shallow sparkle of +the stream of their life together, if it deepened, now and then, into +still pools like this.</p> + +<p>She resisted the impulse to call him up on the telephone, and a stronger +one to go straight to him at his office. She'd wait until he came home +to her. She had been feeling wretched lately—headachy, nervous, +sickish;—probably, she thought, from staying in the house too much and +bending over her heavy law-books. Perhaps she had strained her eyes. But +to-day these discomforts were forgotten. Every little while she +straightened up and stood at an open window drawing in long breaths. He +should see her at her best to-night—serene—triumphant. The pallor of +her cheeks he had commented on lately, shouldn't be there to trouble +him.</p> + +<p>For two hours that afternoon, she listened for his latch-key, and when +at last she heard it she stole down the stairs. He didn't shout her name +from the hall, as he often did. He didn't hear her coming, and she got a +look at his face as he stood at the table absently turning over some +mail that lay there. He looked tired, she thought.</p> + +<p>He saw her when she reached the lower landing, but for just a fraction +of a second his gaze left her and went back to the letter he held in his +hand, as if to satisfy himself it was of no importance before he tossed +it away. Then he came to meet her.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" he said. "I thought you were going to be off somewhere with +Frederica this afternoon. It's been a great day. I hope you haven't +spent the whole of it indoors. You're looking great, anyway. Come here +and give me a kiss."</p> + +<p>Because she had hesitated, a little perplexed. Did he mean not to tell +her—to "spare" her, as he'd have said? The kiss she gave had a +different quality from those that ordinarily constituted her greetings, +and the arms that went round his neck, didn't give him their customary +hug. But they stayed there.</p> + +<p>"You poor dear old boy!" she said. And then, "Don't you care, Roddy!"</p> + +<p>He returned the caress with interest, before he seemed to realize the +different significance of it. Then he pushed her away by the shoulders +and held her where he could look into her face.</p> + +<p>"What do you mean?" he asked. "Don't care about what?"</p> + +<p>It didn't seem like bravado—like an acted out pretense, and yet of +course it must be.</p> + +<p>"Don't," she said. "Because I know. I've known all day. I read it in the +paper this morning."</p> + +<p>From puzzled concern, the look in his face took on a deeper intensity. +"Tell me what it is," he said very quietly. "I don't know. I didn't read +the paper this morning. Is it Harriet?" Harriet was his other +sister—married, and not very happily, it was beginning to appear, to an +Italian count.</p> + +<p>A revulsion—a sort of sick misgiving took the color out of Rose's +cheeks.</p> + +<p>"It isn't any one," she said. "It's nothing like that. It's—it's that +case." Her lips stumbled over the title of it. "It's been decided +against you. Didn't you know?"</p> + +<p>For a moment his expression was simply the absence of all expression +whatever. "Good lord!" he murmured. Then, "But how the dickens did you +know anything about it? How did you happen to see it in the paper? How +did you know the title of it?"</p> + +<p>"I was in the court the day you argued it," she said unevenly. "And when +I found they printed those things in the paper, I kept watch. And to-day +..."</p> + +<p>"Why, you dear child!" he said. And the queer ragged quality of his +voice drew her eyes back to his, so that she saw, wonderingly, that they +were bright with tears. "And you never said a word, and you've been +bothering your dear little head about it all the time. Why, you +darling!"</p> + +<p>He sat down on the edge of the table, and pulled her up tight into his +arms again. She was glad to put her head down—didn't want to look at +his face; she knew that there was a smile there along with the tears.</p> + +<p>"And you thought I was worrying about it," he persisted, "and that I'd +be unhappy because I was beaten?" He patted her shoulder consolingly +with a big hand. "But that's all in the day's work, child. I'm beaten +somewhere nearly as often as I win. And really, down inside, leaving out +a little superficial pleasure, I don't care a damn whether I win or +lose. A man couldn't be any good as a lawyer, if he did care, any more +than a surgeon could be any good if he did. You've got to keep a cold +mind or you can't do your best work. And if you've done your best work, +there's nothing to care about. I honestly haven't thought about the +thing once from that day to this. Don't you see how it is?"</p> + +<p>He couldn't see how it was, that was plain enough. What he very +reasonably expected was that after so lucid an explanation, she would +turn her wet face up to his, with her old wide smile on it. But that was +not what happened at all. Instead, she just went limp in his arms, and +the sobs that shook her seemed to be meeting no resistance whatever. It +wasn't like her to work herself up in that way over trifles, either; +yet, surely a trifle was all this could be called—a laughable mistake +he couldn't help loving her for, or a touching demonstration of +affection that he couldn't help smiling at. Either way you took it, it +was nothing to make a scene about. Where was her sense of humor? That +was the thing to do—get her quiet first, and then persuade her to laugh +at the whole affair with him.</p> + +<p>He was saved from carrying out this program by the fact that Rose, of +her own accord, anticipated him. At least she controlled, rather +suddenly, her sobs, sat up, wiped her eyes and, after a fashion, smiled. +Not at him, though; resolutely away from him, he might almost have +thought—as if she didn't want him to see.</p> + +<p>"That's right," he said, craning round to make sure that the smile was +there. "Have a look at the funny side of it."</p> + +<p>She winced at that as from a blow and pulled herself away from him. +Then she controlled herself and, in answer to his look of troubled +amazement, said:</p> + +<p>"It's all right. Only it happens that you're the one who d-doesn't know +how awfully funny it really is." Her voice shook, but she got it in hand +again. "No, I don't mean anything by that. Here! Give me a kiss and then +let me wash my face."</p> + +<p>And for the whole evening, and again next morning until he left the +house, she managed to keep him in the only half-questioning belief that +nothing was the matter.</p> + +<p>It was about an hour after that, that her maid came into her bedroom, +where she had had her breakfast, and said that Miss Stanton wanted to +see her.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VI_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<h3>THE DAMASCUS ROAD</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>It argued no real lack of sisterly affection that Rose didn't want to +see Portia that morning. Even if there had been no other reason, being +found in bed at half past ten in the morning by a sister who inflexibly +opened her little shop at half past eight, regardless of bad weather, +backaches and other potentially valid excuses, was enough to make one +feel apologetic and worthless. Rose could truthfully say that she was +feeling wretched. But Portia would sit there, slim and erect, in a +little straight-backed chair, and whatever perfunctory commiseration she +might manage to express, the look of her fine eyebrows would be +skeptical. Justly, too. Rose could never deny that. Not so long as she +could remember the innumerable times when she had yielded to her +mother's persuasions that she was over-tired and that a morning in bed +was just what she needed. Portia, so far as she could remember, had +never been the subject of these persuasions.</p> + +<p>But this was only the beginning of Rose's troubles to-day. She was +paying the price of yesterday's exaltation and her spirits had sunk down +to nowhere. What a fool's paradise yesterday had been with its vision of +her big self-sufficient husband coming to her for mothering because he +had lost a law-suit! What a piece of mordant irony it was, that she +should have found herself, after all her silly hopes, sobbing in his +arms, while he comforted her for her bitter disappointment over not +being able to comfort him! She had told the truth when she said he was +the one, really, who didn't know how funny it was.</p> + +<p>Well, and wasn't her other effort just as ridiculous? If ever he found +her heap of law-books and learned of the wretched hours she had spent +trying to discover what they were all about in the hope of promoting +herself to a true intellectual companionship with him, wouldn't he take +the discovery in exactly the same way—be touched by the childish +futility of it and yet amused at the same time—cuddle her indulgently +in his arms and soothe her disappointment;—and then urge her to look at +the funny side of it? He must know hundreds of practising lawyers. Were +there a dozen out of them all whose minds had the power to stimulate and +bring into action the full powers of his own?</p> + +<p>Well then, what was the use of trying? If James Randolph was right—and +it seemed absurd to question it—she had just one charm for her +husband—the charm of sex. To that she owed her hours of simulated +companionship with him, his tenderness for her, his willingness to make +her pleasures his own. To that she owed the extravagantly pretty clothes +he was always urging her to buy—the house he kept her in—the servants +he paid to wait on her. Well then, why not make the best of it?</p> + +<p>Only, if she went on much longer, feeling sick and faded like this, +she'd have nothing left to make the most of, and then where would she +be?</p> + +<p>Oh, she was getting maudlin, and she knew it! And when she got over +feeling so weak and giddy, she'd brace up and be herself again. But for +the present, she didn't feel like seeing Portia.</p> + +<p>But Rose's shrinking from a talk with Portia that morning was a mild +feeling compared with Portia's dread of the impending talk with Rose. +Twice she had walked by the perfect doorway of the McCrea house before +she entered it; ostensibly to give herself a little more time to +think—really, because she shrank from the ordeal that awaited her in +there.</p> + +<p>Her sister's ménage had been a source of irritation to Portia ever since +it was established, though a deeper irritation was her own with herself +for allowing it to affect her thus. Rose's whole-hearted plunge into the +frivolities of a social season, her outspoken delight in it, her finding +in it, apparently, a completely satisfactory solution to the problem of +existence, couldn't fail to arouse Portia's ironic smile. This was the +sort of vessel her mother had freighted with her hopes! This was the +course she steered.</p> + +<p>She had fought this feeling with a bitter self-contempt. The trouble +with her was, she told herself in icy self-communings, that she envied +Rose her happiness, her opportunities, her husband—even her house. Why +should all that wonderful furniture have been wasted on Rose, to whom a +perfect old Jacobean gate-legged table was nothing but a surface to drop +anything on that she wanted out of her hands? Why should a man of +Rodney's powerful intelligence waste his time on her frivolous +amusements, content, apparently, just to sit and gaze at her, oblivious +of any one else who might happen to be about? She knew that she, Portia, +out of her disciplined experience of life, and her real eagerness for +knowledge of it, was better able to challenge the attention of his mind +than Rose. And yet she had never really got it. She remained half +invisible to him—some one to be remembered with a start, after an +interval of oblivion, and treated considerately—even affectionately, +for that matter—as Rose's sister!</p> + +<p>They had been seeing each other with reasonable frequency all winter. +The Aldriches had Portia and her mother in to a family dinner pretty +often, and always came out to Edgewater for a one-o'clock dinner with +the Stantons on Sunday. The habit was for Rose to come out early in the +car and take them to church, while Rodney walked out later, and turned +up in time for dinner.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton had taken a great liking to Rodney. His manner toward her +had just the blend of deference and breezy unconventionality that +pleased her. So, while Portia would worry through the dinner, for fear +it wouldn't be cooked well enough, or served well enough, not to present +a sorry contrast to the meals her guests were accustomed to, her mother +would sit beaming upon the pair with a contentment as unalloyed as if +Rose were the acknowledged new leader of the great Cause and her husband +her adoring convert, as they had been in her old day-dream.</p> + +<p>As far as Rodney went, the dream might have been true, for he showed an +unending interest in the Woman Movement—never tired of drawing from his +mother-in-law the story of her labors and the exposition of her beliefs. +Sometimes he argued with her playfully in order to get her started. More +often, and as far as Portia could see, quite seriously, he professed +himself in full accord with her views.</p> + +<p>After this had been going on for about so long, Rose would yawn and +stretch and sit down on the arm of her mother's chair, begin stroking +her hair and offering her all manner of quaint unexpected caresses. And +then, pretty soon, Rodney's attention to the subject would begin to +wander and at last flag altogether and leave him stranded, gazing and +unable to do anything but gaze, at the lovely creature—the still +miraculous creature, who, when he got her home again, would come and sit +on the arm of his chair like that! When this happened, Portia found it +hard to stay in the room.</p> + +<p>Until Mrs. Stanton's terrifying illness along in January, these meetings +constituted the whole of the intercourse between the families. Rose had +done her best to carry Portia with her, to some extent at least, into +her new life—to introduce her to her new friends and make her, as far +as might be, one of them. And in this she was seconded very amiably, by +Frederica. But Portia had put down a categorical veto on all these +attempts. She hadn't the inclination nor the energy, she said, and her +mother needed all the time she could spare away from her business. Once, +when Rose pressed the matter, she gave a more genuine reason. Rose's new +friends, she said, would regard her introduction to them solely as a bid +for business. She didn't want them coming around to her place to buy +their wedding presents "in order to help out that poor old maid sister +of Rose Aldrich's." She was getting business enough in legitimate ways.</p> + +<p>Sometimes she told herself that if Rose had really wanted her, she'd +have pressed the matter harder—wouldn't have given up unless she was +clutching with real relief at an excuse that let her out of an +embarrassment. But at other times she accused herself of having acted in +a petty snobbish spirit in declining the chance not only for pleasant +new friendships, especially Frederica's, but for a closer association +with her sister. Well, the thing was done now, and the question +certainly never would rise again.</p> + +<p>The reason why it couldn't arise again was what Portia came to tell Rose +this morning. She hoped she'd be able to tell it gently—provide Rose +with just the facts she'd have to know, and get away without letting any +other facts escape, so that afterward she'd have the consolation of +being able to say to herself, "That was finely done." All her life, she +told herself, she had been doing fine things grudgingly, mutilating them +in the doing. If she weren't very careful, that would happen this +morning. If she could have known the truth and made her resolution, and +confided it to Rose during the first hours of her mother's illness, when +the fight for life had drawn them together, it would not have been hard. +But with the beginning of convalescence, when Rose, with an easy visit +and a few facile caresses, could outweigh in one hour, all of Portia's +unremitting tireless service during the other twenty-three, and carry +off as a prize the whole of her mother's gratitude and affection, the +old envy and irritation had come back threefold.</p> + +<p>Rose greeted her with a "Hello, Angel! Why didn't you come right up? +Isn't it disgraceful to be lying around in bed like this in the middle +of the morning?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Portia. "Might as well stay in bed, if you've +nothing to do when you get up." She meant it to sound good-humored, but +was afraid it didn't. "Anyhow," she added after a straight look into +Rose's face, "you look, this morning, as if bed was just where you ought +to be. What's the matter with you, child?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," said Rose, "—nothing that you'd call anything at any rate."</p> + +<p>Portia smiled ironically. "I'm still the same old dragon, then," she +said. And then, with a gesture of impatience, turned away. She hadn't +meant to begin like that. Why couldn't she keep her tongue in control!</p> + +<p>"I only meant," said Rose very simply, "that you'd say it was nothing, +if it was the matter with you. I've seen you, so many times, get up +looking perfectly sick and, without any breakfast but a cup of black +coffee, put on your old mackintosh and rubbers and start off for the +shop, saying you were all right and not to bother, that I knew that was +what you'd say now, if you felt the way I do."</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry," said Portia. "I might have known that was what you meant. I +wonder if you ever want to say ugly things and don't, or if it's just +that it never occurs to you to try to hurt anybody. I didn't mean to say +that either. I've had a rather worrying sort of week."</p> + +<p>"What is it?" said Rose. "Tell me about it. Can I help?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Portia. "I've thought it over and it isn't your job." She got +up and went to the window where Rose couldn't see her face, and stood +looking out. "It's about mother," she concluded.</p> + +<p>Rose sat up with a jerk. "About mother!" she echoed. "Has she been ill +again this week? And you haven't let me know! It's a shame I haven't +been around, but I've been busy"—her smile reflected some of the irony +of Portia's—"and rather miserable. Of course I was going this +afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Portia, "I fancied you'd come this afternoon. That's why I +wanted to see you alone first."</p> + +<p>"Alone!" Rose leaned sharply forward. "Oh, don't stand there where I +can't see you! Tell me what it is."</p> + +<p>"I'm going to," said Portia. "You see, I wasn't satisfied with old +Murray. That soothing bedside manner of his, and his way of encouraging +you as if you were a child going to have a tooth pulled, drove me nearly +wild. I thought it was possible, either that he didn't understand +mother's case, or else that he wouldn't tell me what he suspected. So a +week ago to-day, I got her to go with me to a specialist. He made a very +thorough examination, and the next day I went around to see him." Her +voice got a little harder and cooler. "Mother'll never be well, Rose. +She's got an incurable disease. There's a long name for it that I can't +remember. What it means is that her heart is getting +flabby—degenerating, he called it. He says we can't do anything except +to retard the progress of the disease. It may go fast, or it may go +slowly. That attack she had was just a symptom, he said. She'll have +others. And by and by, of course, a fatal one."</p> + +<p>Still she didn't look around from the window. She knew Rose was crying. +She had heard the gasp and choke that followed her first announcement of +the news, and since then, irregularly, a muffled sound of sobbing. She +wanted to go over and comfort the young stricken thing there on the bed, +but she couldn't. She could feel nothing but a dull irresistible anger +that Rose should have the easy relief of tears, which had been denied +her. Because Portia couldn't cry.</p> + +<p>"He said," she went on, "that the first thing to do was to get her away +from here. He said that in this climate, living as she has been doing, +she'd hardly last six months. But he said that in a bland climate like +Southern California, in a bungalow without any stairs in it, if she's +carefully watched all the time to prevent excitement or over-exertion, +she might live a good many years.</p> + +<p>"So that's what we're going to do. I've written the Fletchers to look +out a place for us—some quiet little place that won't cost too much, +and I've sold out my business. I thought I'd get that done before I +talked to you about it. I'll give the house here to the agent to sell or +rent, and as soon as we hear from the Fletchers, we'll begin to pack. +Within a week, I hope."</p> + +<p>Rose said a queer thing then. She cried out incredulously, "And you and +mother are going away to California to live! And leave me here all +alone!"</p> + +<p>"All alone with the whole of your own life," thought Portia, but didn't +say it.</p> + +<p>"I can't realize it at all," Rose went on after a little silence. "It +doesn't seem—possible. Do you believe the specialist is right? They're +always making mistakes, aren't they—condemning people like that, when +the trouble isn't what they say? Can't we go to some one else and make +sure?"</p> + +<p>"What's the use?" said Portia. "Suppose we did find a man who said it +probably wasn't so serious as that, and that she could probably live +all right here? We shouldn't know that he was right—wouldn't dare trust +to that. Besides, if I drag mother around to any more of them, she'll +know."</p> + +<p>Rose looked up sharply. "Doesn't she know?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Portia in that hard even voice of hers. "I lied to her of +course. I told her the doctor said her condition was very serious, and +that the only way to keep from being a hopeless invalid would be to do +what he said—go out to California—take an absolute rest for two or +three years—no lectures, no writing, no going about.</p> + +<p>"You know mother well enough to know what she'd do if she knew the truth +about it. She'd say, 'If I can never be well, what's the use of +prolonging my life a year, or two, or five; not really living, just +crawling around half alive and soaking up somebody else's life at the +same time?' She'd say she didn't believe it was so bad as that anyway, +but that whether it was or not, she'd go straight along and live as +she's always done, and when she died, she'd be dead. Don't you know how +it's always pleased her when old people could die—'in harness,' as she +says?"</p> + +<p>Her voice softened a little as she concluded and the tenseness of her +attitude, there at the window, relaxed. The ordeal, or the worst of it, +was over; what she had meant to say was said, and what she had meant not +to say, if hinted at once or twice, had not caught Rose's ear. She +turned for the first time to look at her. Rose was drooping forlornly +forward, one arm clasped around her knees, and she was trying to dry her +tears on the sleeve of her nightgown. The childlike pathos of the +attitude caught Portia like the surge of a wave. She crossed the room +and sat down on the edge of the bed. She'd have come still closer and +taken the girl in her arms but for the fear of starting her crying +again.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Rose said. "That's mother. And I guess she's right about it. It +must be horrible to be half alive;—to know you're no use and never will +be. Only I don't believe it will be that way with her. I believe you +told her the truth without knowing it. It's just a feeling, but I'm sure +of it. She'll get strong and well again out there. You'll think so, too, +when you get rested up a little.—You're so frightfully tired, poor +dear. It makes me sick to think what a week you've had. And that you've +gone through it all alone;—without ever giving Rodney and me a chance +to help. I don't see why you did that, Portia."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I saw it was my job," Portia said, in that cool dry way of hers. +"It couldn't work out any other way. It had to be done and there was no +one else to do it. So what was the use of making a fuss? It was easier, +really, without, and—I didn't want any extra difficulties."</p> + +<p>"But all the work there must have been!" Rose protested. "Selling your +shop, and all. How did you ever manage to do it?"</p> + +<p>"That was luck, of course," Portia admitted. "Do you know that Craig +woman? You may have met her. She's rather on the fringe of your set, I +believe. She's got a good deal of money and nothing to do, and I think +she's got a fool notion that it'll be <i>chic</i> to go 'into trade.' She +came and offered to buy me out a month ago, and of course I wouldn't +listen. But just by luck she called me up again the very day I went to +talk to the specialist. I asked for twenty-four hours to think it over, +and by that time I'd made up my mind. I got a very good price from her, +really. She bought the whole thing; lease, stock and good-will."</p> + +<p>It wasn't more than a very subconscious impression in the back of Rose's +mind, that Portia must be pretty callous and cold to have been able on +the very day of the doctor's sentence to look as far ahead as that, and +to drive a good bargain on the next—awfully efficient, anyway. "I wish +I was more like you," she said.</p> + +<p>But she didn't want to be questioned as to just what she meant by it +and, aware that Portia had just shot a queer searching look at her, she +changed the subject, or thought she did.</p> + +<p>"Anyway, I'm glad it worked out so well for you," she went on; "selling +the shop so easily, and all. And I believe it'll do you as much good as +mother. Getting a rest.... You do need it. You're worked right down to +the bones. And out there where it's warm and bright all the time, and +you don't have to get up in the dark any more winter mornings and wade +off through the slush to the street-car.... And a nice little bungalow +to live in—just you and mother.... I—I sort of wish I was going too."</p> + +<p>Portia laughed—a ragged, unnatural sounding laugh that brought a look +of puzzled inquiry from Rose.</p> + +<p>"Why, nothing," Portia explained. "It was just the notion of your +leaving Rodney and all you've got here—all the wonderful things you +have to do—for what we'll have out there. The idea of your envying me +is something worth a small laugh, don't you think?"</p> + +<p>Rose's head drooped lower. She buried her face in her hands. "I do envy +you," she said. There was a dull muffled passion in her voice. "Why +shouldn't I envy you? You're so cold and certain all the time. You make +up your mind what you'll do, and you do it. I try to do things and just +make myself ridiculous. Oh, I know I've got a motor and a lot of French +dresses, and a maid, and I don't have to get up in the morning, because, +as you say, I have nothing else to do—and I suppose that might make +some people happy."</p> + +<p>"You've got a husband," said Portia in a thin brittle voice. "That might +count for something, I should think."</p> + +<p>"Yes, and what good am I to him?" Rose demanded. "He can't talk to +me—not about his work or anything like that. And I can't help him any +way. I'm something nice for him to make love to, when he feels like +doing it, and I'm a nuisance when I make scenes and get tragic. And +that's all. That's—marriage, I guess. You're the lucky one, Portia."</p> + +<p>The silence had lasted a good while before Rose noticed that there was +any special quality about it—became aware that since the end of her +outburst—of which she was ashamed even while she yielded to it, because +it represented not what she meant, but what, at the moment, she +felt—Portia had not stirred; had sat there as rigidly still as a figure +carved in ivory.</p> + +<p>Becoming aware of that, she raised her head. Portia wasn't looking at +her, but down at her own clenched hands.</p> + +<p>"It needed just that, I suppose," she heard her older sister say between +almost motionless lips. "I thought it was pretty complete before, but +it took that to make it perfect—that you think I'm the lucky one—lucky +never to have had a husband, or any one else for that matter, to love +me. And lucky now, to have to give up the only substitute I had for +that."</p> + +<p>"Portia!" Rose cried out, for the mordant alkaline bitterness in her +sister's voice and the tragic irony in her face, were almost terrifying. +But the outcry might never have been uttered for any effect it had.</p> + +<p>"I hoped this wouldn't happen," the words came steadily on, one at a +time. "I hoped I could get this over and get away out of your life +altogether without letting it happen. But I can't. Perhaps it's just as +well—perhaps it may do you some good. But that's not why I'm doing it. +I'm doing it for myself. Just for once, I'm going to let go! You won't +like it. You're going to get hurt."</p> + +<p>Rose drew herself erect and a curious change went over her face, so that +you wouldn't have known she'd been crying. She drew in a long breath and +said, very steadily, "Tell me. I shan't try to get away."</p> + +<p>"A man came to our house one day to collect a bill," Portia went on, +quite as if Rose hadn't spoken. "Mother was out, and I was at home. I +was seventeen then, getting ready to go to Vassar. Fred was a sophomore +at Ann Arbor, and Harvey was going to graduate in June. You were only +seven—I suppose you were at school. Anyhow, I was at home, and I let +him in, and he made a fuss. Said he'd have us black-listed by other +grocers, if it wasn't paid.</p> + +<p>"It was the first I ever knew about anything like that. I knew we +weren't rich, of course—I never had quite enough pocket money. But the +idea of an old unpaid grocery bill made me sick. I talked things over +with mother the next day—told her I wasn't going to college—said I was +going to get a job. I got her to tell me how things stood, and she did, +as well as she could. The boys were getting their college education out +of the capital of father's estate, so that the income of it was getting +smaller. She had meant that I should do the same. But the income wasn't +really big enough to live on as it was.</p> + +<p>"Mother could earn money of course, lecturing and writing, but money +wasn't one of the things she naturally thought about, and when there was +something big and worth while to do, she plunged in and did it whether +it was going to pay her anything or not. And there were you coming +along, and mother wasn't so very strong even then, and I—well, I saw +where I came in.</p> + +<p>"I got mother to let me run all the accounts after that, and attend to +everything. And I got a job and began paying my way within a week."</p> + +<p>"If I had a thing like that to remember," said Rose unsteadily, "I'd +never forget to be proud of it so long as I lived!"</p> + +<p>"I wish I could be proud of it," said Portia. "But, like everything else +I do, I spoiled it. I knew that mother was doing a big fine work worth +doing—worth my making a sacrifice for, and I wanted to make the +sacrifice. But I couldn't help making a sort of grievance of it, too. In +all these years I've always made mother afraid of me—always made her +feel that I was, somehow, contemptuous of her work and ideas. That's +rather a strong way of putting it, perhaps. But I've seen her trying to +hide her enthusiasms from me a little, because of my nasty way of +sticking pins in them.</p> + +<p>"Oh, of course in a way I was making the enthusiasms possible—I knew +that. She never could have gone on as she did if she'd been nagged at +all the time for money. Big ideas are always more important to her than +small facts, but without some narrow-minded, literal person to look +after the facts her ideas wouldn't have had much chance. I grubbed away +until I got things straightened out, so that her income was enough to +live on—enough for her to live on. I'd pulled her through. But then +..."</p> + +<p>"But then there was me," said Rose.</p> + +<p>"I thought I was going to let you go," Portia went on inflexibly. "You'd +got to be just the age I was when I went to work, and I said there was +no reason why you shouldn't come in for your share. If things had +happened a little differently, I'd have told mother how matters stood +and you'd have got a job somewhere and gone to work. But things didn't +come out that way—at least I couldn't make up my mind to make them—so +you went to the university. I paid for that, and I paid for your +trousseau, and then I was through."</p> + +<p>Rose was trembling, but she didn't flinch. "Wh—what was it," she asked +quietly, "what was it that might have been different and wasn't? Was +it—was it somebody you wanted to marry—that you gave up so I could +have my chance?"</p> + +<p>Portia's hard little laugh cut like a knife. "I ought to believe that," +she said. "I've told myself so enough times. But it's not true. I wonder +why you should have thought of that—why it occurred to you that a +cold-blooded fish like me should want to marry?"</p> + +<p>Rose didn't try to answer. She waited.</p> + +<p>"You have always thought me cold," Portia said. "So has mother. I'm not, +really. I'm—the other way. I don't believe there ever was a girl that +wanted love and marriage more than I. But I didn't attract anybody. I +was working pretty hard, of course, and that left me too tired to go out +and play—left me a little cross and acid most of the time. But I don't +believe that was the whole reason. It wouldn't have worked out that way +with you. But nobody ever saw me at all. The men I was introduced to +forgot me—were polite to me—got away as soon as they could. They were +always craning around for a look at somebody else. The few men—the two +or three who weren't like that, weren't good enough. But a man did want +me to marry him at last, and for a while I thought I would. Just—just +for the sake of marrying somebody. He wasn't much, but he was some one. +But I knew I'd come to hate him for not being some one else and I +couldn't make up my mind to it. So I took you on instead.</p> + +<p>"I stopped hoping, you see, and tried to forget all about it—tried to +crowd it out of my life. I said I'd make my work a substitute for it. +And, in a way, I succeeded. The work opened up and got more interesting +as it got bigger. It wasn't just selling four-dollar candlesticks and +crickets and blue glass flower-holders. I was beginning to get real jobs +to do—big jobs for big people, and it was exciting. That made it easier +to forget. I was beginning to think that some day I'd earn my way into +the open big sort of life that your new friends have had for nothing.</p> + +<p>"And then, a week ago, there came the doctor and cut off that chance. +Oh, there's no way out, I know that! That's the way the pattern was cut, +I suppose, in the beginning. I've always suspected the cosmic Dressmaker +of having a sense of humor. Now I know it. I'm the lucky one who isn't +going to have to wade through the slush any more. I'm to go out to +southern California and live in a nice little bungalow and be a nurse +for five or ten years, and then I'm going to be left alone in genteel +poverty, without an interest in the world, and too tired to make any. +And I'll probably live to eighty.</p> + +<p>"And yet,"—she leaned suddenly forward, and the passion that had been +suppressed in her voice till now, leaped up into flame—"and yet, can +you tell me what I could have done differently? I've lived the kind of +life they preach about—a life of noble sacrifice. It hasn't ennobled +me. It's made me petty—mean—sour. It's withered me up. Look at the +difference between us! Look at you with your big free spaciousness—your +power of loving and attracting love! Why, you even love me, now, in +spite of all I've said this morning. I've envied you that—I've almost +hated you for it.</p> + +<p>"No, that's a lie. I've wanted to. The only thing I could ever hate you +for, would be for failing. You've got to make good! You've had my share +as well as yours—you're living my life as well as yours. I'm the branch +they cut off so that you could grow. If you give up and let the big +thing slip out of your hands the way you were talking this morning, +because you're too weak to hold it and haven't pluck enough to fight for +it...."</p> + +<p>"Look at me!" said Rose. The words rang like a command on a +battle-field.</p> + +<p>Portia looked. Rose's blue eyes were blazing. "I won't do that," she +said very quietly. "I promise you that." Then the hard determination in +her face changed to something softer, and as if Portia's resistance +counted no more than that of a child, she pulled her sister up in her +arms and held her tight. And so at last Portia got the relief of tears.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VII_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<h3>HOW THE PATTERN WAS CUT</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Through the two weeks that intervened before Portia and her mother left +for the West, Rose disregarded the physical wretchedness—which went on +getting worse instead of better—and dismissed her psychical worries +until she should have time to attend to them. She helped Portia pack, +she presented a steady cheerful radiance of optimism to her mother, that +never faltered until the last farewells were said.</p> + +<p>Just how she'd take up the fight again for the great thing Portia had +adjured her not to miss, she didn't know. She supposed she'd go back to +her law-books—at any rate until she could work out something better.</p> + +<p>But the pattern, it seemed, was cut differently. She went to the +doctor's office the day after Portia took her mother away, and +discovered the cause of her physical wretchedness. She was pregnant.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VIII_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<h3>A BIRTHDAY</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Rodney heard young Craig, who deviled up law for him, saying good night +to the stenographer; glanced at his watch and opened the door to his +outer office.</p> + +<p>"You may go home, Miss Beach," he said. "I'm staying on for a while but +I shan't want you." Then, to the office boy: "You, too, Albert."</p> + +<p>He waited till he heard them go, then went out and disconnected his own +desk telephone, which the office boy, on going home, always left plugged +through; went back into his inner office again and shut the door after +him.</p> + +<p>There was more than enough pressing work on his desk to fill the clear +hour that remained to him before he had to start for home. But he didn't +mean to do it. He didn't mean to do anything except drink down thirstily +the sixty minutes of pure solitude that were before him; to let his mind +run free from the clutch of circumstance. That hour had become a habit +with him lately, like—he smiled at the comparison—like taking a drug. +When something happened that forced him to forego it, he felt +cheated—irrationally irritable. He was furtive about it, too. He never +corrected Rose's assumption that the thing which kept him late at the +office so much of the time nowadays was a press of work. He even +concealed the fact that he pulled his telephone plug, by sticking it +back again every night just before he left.</p> + +<p>He tried to laugh that guilty feeling out of existence. But he couldn't. +He knew too well whence it sprang. He knew whom he was stealing that +hour from. It wasn't the world in general he intrenched himself against. +It was his wife. The real purpose of that sixty minutes was to enable +him to stop thinking and feeling about her.</p> + +<p>It was not that she had faded for him—become less the poignant, vivid, +irresistible thing he had first fallen in love with. Rather the +contrary. The simple rapture of desire that had characterized the period +of their engagement and the first months of their marriage, had lost +something—not so much, either—of its tension. But it had +broadened—deepened into something more compelling, more +pervasive—more, in his present mood, formidable.</p> + +<p>She hadn't seemed quite well, lately, nor altogether happy, and he had +not been able to find out why. He had attributed it at first to the +shock occasioned by her mother's illness and her departure with Portia +to California, but this explanation seemed not to cover the ground. Why +couldn't she have talked freely with him about that? Inquiries about her +health, attempts—clumsily executed, no doubt—to treat her with special +tenderness and guard her against overexertion, only irritated her, drove +her to the very edge of her self-control—or over it. She was all right, +she always said. He couldn't force confidences from her of course. But +her pale face and eyes wide with a trouble in them he could not fathom +stirred something deeper in him than the former glow and glory had ever +reached.</p> + +<p>And there was a new thing that gripped him in a positively terrifying +way—a realization of his importance to her. The after-effect of her +invasion of his office the night of the Randolphs' dinner and of his +learning of the tremulous interest with which she had afterward followed +the case he was then working on, had been very different from his first +irritation and his first amusement.</p> + +<p>He had discovered, too, one day—a fortnight or so ago, in the course of +a rummage after some article he had mislaid, a heap of law-books that +weren't his. He had guessed the explanation of them, but had said +nothing to Rose about it—had found it curiously impossible to say +anything. If only she had taken up something of her own! It seemed as +essentially a law of her being to attempt to absorb herself in him, as +it was a law of his to resist that absorption of himself in her.</p> + +<p>But resistance was difficult. The tendency was, after his perfectly +solid, recognizable duties had been given their places in the cubic +content of his day, that Rose should fill up the rest. It was as if you +had a bucket half full of irregularly shaped stones and filled it up +with water. And yet there was a man in him who was neither the +hard-working, successful advocate, nor Rose's husband—a man whose +existence Rose didn't seem to suspect. (Was there then in her no woman +that corresponded to him?) That man had to fight now for a chance to +breathe.</p> + +<p>He got a pipe out of a drawer in his desk, loaded and lighted it, +stretched his arms, and sat down in his desk chair. In the middle of his +blotter was a stack of papers his stenographer had laid there just +before she went out. On top of the heap was a memorandum in her +handwriting, and mechanically he read it.</p> + +<p>"Please ask Mrs. Aldrich about this bill," it read. "The work done seems +to be the same that was paid for last month."</p> + +<p>The rest of the month's bills lay beneath, all neatly scheduled and +totaled; and the total came to more than three thousand dollars. He +damned them cordially and moved them over to one side.</p> + +<p>But the mood of quiet contentment he had, for just a moment, captured, +had given place to angry exasperation. He felt like a bull out in a ring +tormented by the glare and the clamor and the flutter of little red +flags.</p> + +<p>There was nothing ruinous about his way of living. Including his +inherited income with what he could earn, working the way he had been +working lately, he could meet an expenditure of thirty-six thousand +dollars a year well enough. It meant thinking about his fees of course, +seeing to it that the work he undertook was profitable as well as +interesting. Only, declared the man who was not Rose's husband, it was +senseless—suffocating! Rodney tried, with an athletic sweep of his +will, to crowd that train of thought out of his mind as, with his hand, +he had swept the papers that gave rise to it.</p> + +<p>He leaned his elbows on the cleared blotter and propped up his chin on +his fists. The thing exactly in front of his eyes was his desk calendar. +There was something familiar about the date—some subconscious +association that couldn't quite rise to the surface. Was there something +he had to do to-day, that he'd forgotten? No, Miss Beach would have +reminded him of anything except a social engagement. And he distinctly +remembered that Rose had said this morning that the evening was clear. +And yet, surely ... Then, with a grunt of relief and amusement, he got +it. It was his birthday! Another mile-stone.</p> + +<p>Where had he been, what had he been doing a year ago to-day? It would be +interesting if he could manage to remember.</p> + +<p>A year ago—why, good lord! That was the day it had all begun. He'd sold +the old house that day and then had started to walk over to Frederica's +for dinner, and got caught in the rain and taken a street-car. He had +heard a vibrant young voice say, "Don't dare touch me like that," and, +turning, had seen the blazing glorious creature who held the conductor +pinned by both wrists. That had been Rose—his Rose; whom he was +spending these sixty minutes out of the twenty-four hours trying to +forget about!</p> + +<p>And that was only a year ago. It was curiously hard to realize. Their +identities had shifted so strangely—his own as well as hers. Well, and +in what direction had, he changed? How did he compare—the man who sat +here now, with the man who had unhesitatingly jumped off the car to +follow a new adventure—the man who had turned up water-logged at +Frederica's dinner and made hay of her plan to marry him off to Hermione +Woodruff?</p> + +<p>They had had a great old talk that night, Frederica and he, he +remembered. He remembered what he had talked about, and he smiled grimly +over the recollection—space and leisure; the defective intelligence +that trapped men into cluttering their lives with useless junk; so many +things to have and to do that they couldn't turn around without breaking +something. Had he been a fool then, or was he a fool now? Both, +perhaps. But how old Frederica must have grinned over the naiveté of +him. Which of the two of him in her candid opinion would be the better +man?</p> + +<p>He believed he could answer that question. Oh, he was succeeding all +right—increasing his practise, making money, getting cautious—prudent; +he didn't bolt the track any more. And the quality of his work was good, +he couldn't quarrel with that. Only, the old big free dreams that had +glorified it, were gone. He was in harness, drawing a cart; following a +bundle of hay.</p> + +<p>He sprang impatiently to his feet, thrust back his chair so violently as +he did so that it tipped over with a crash. The one really footling, +futile, fool thing to do, was what he was doing now—lamenting his old +way of life and making no effort to recapture it! Let him either accept +the situation, make up his mind to it and stop complaining, or else +offer it some effective resistance—sweep the flummery out of his +life—clear decks for action.</p> + +<p>Well, and that was the most asinine consideration of all. Because of +course he couldn't do one thing or the other. As long as the man who +wasn't Rose's husband remained alive in him, he'd +protest—struggle—clamor for his old freedom. And yet, as long as the +million tiny cords that bound hum, Gulliver-like, went back to Rose, +talk of breaking them was sophomoric foolishness. He'd better go home!</p> + +<p>The building was pretty well deserted by now, and against the silence he +heard the buzzer in his telephone switchboard proclaiming insistently +that some one was trying to get him on the telephone. His hour of +recollection hadn't been a success, but the invasion of it irritated him +none the less. He thought at first he wouldn't answer. He didn't care +who was on the wire. He didn't want to talk to anybody. But no one can +resist the mechanical bell-ringers they use in exchanges nowadays—the +even-spaced ring and wait, ring and wait, so manifestly incapable of +discouragement. At the end of forty-five seconds, he snatched open his +door, punched the jack into its socket, caught up the head-piece, and +bellowed, "Hello!" into the dangling transmitter.</p> + +<p>And then the look of annoyance in his face changed to one of +incredulous pleasure. "Good God!" he said. "Is that you, Barry Lake? Are +you here in Chicago? And Jane, too? How long you going to be here?... +Lord, but that's immense!"</p> + +<p>And five minutes later he was calling Rose on the wire. "Rose, listen to +this! Barry Lake and his wife are here. He just called up. They got in +from New York at five o'clock, and I've asked them out to dinner. Barry +Lake and Jane! What's the matter? Can't you hear me?... Why, they're +about the best friends I've got. The magazine writer, you know, and his +wife. And they're coming out to dinner—coming right out. I told them +not to dress. I'll come straight home myself—get there before they do, +I guess.... Why, Rose, what's the matter? Aren't you well? Look here! If +you're below par, and don't feel like having them come, I can call it +off and go over to the hotel and dine with them.... You'd rather we came +out to the house? You're sure? Because they won't mind a bit. I can take +them to a restaurant or anywhere.... All right, if you're sure it won't +be too much for you. I'll be home in fifteen minutes. Lord, but it was +good to hear old Barry's voice again! I haven't seen him for over a +year. You're sure you'd rather?... All right. Good-by."</p> + +<p>But he sat there frowning in a puzzled sort of way for half a minute +after he'd pulled the plug. Rose's voice had certainly sounded queer. He +was sure she hadn't planned anything else for to-night. He distinctly +remembered her saying just before he left for the office that they'd +have the evening to themselves. And it was incredible that she minded +his bringing home two old friends like the Lakes on the spur of the +moment, to take pot-luck. Oh, well, you couldn't tell about people's +voices over the telephone. There must have been something funny about +the connection.</p> + +<p>An opportune taxi just passing the entrance to his office building as he +came out, enabled him to better the fifteen minutes he'd allowed for +getting home. But in spite of this he found Rose rather splendidly +gowned for her expected guests.</p> + +<p>"Good gracious!" he cried excitedly. "What did you do that for? I +thought I told you over the phone the Lakes weren't going to dress."</p> + +<p>"I was—dressed like this when you telephoned," Rose said. "And I was +afraid there wouldn't be time to change into anything else."</p> + +<p>"We weren't going anywhere, were we?" he asked. "There's nothing I've +forgotten?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said, "we weren't going anywhere."</p> + +<p>"And you dressed like that just for a—treat for me?"</p> + +<p>She nodded. "Just for you," she said. "Roddy, who are the Lakes? Oh, I +know his articles, I think! But where were they friends of yours, and +when?"</p> + +<p>"Why, for years, until they moved to New York. They used to live here. I +know I must have told you about them. I was always having dinner with +them—either out in Rogers Park, where they lived, or at queer, terrible +little restaurants down-town. They were always game to try anything, +once. He's the longest, leanest, angularest, absent-mindedest chap in +the world. And just about the best. And his wife fits all his angles. +She's a good chap, too. That's the way you have to think of her. They're +a great pair. She writes, too. Oh, you're sure to like them! They're +going to be out here for months, he says. He's going to specialize in +women, and he's come back here where they've got the vote and all, to +make headquarters. Lord, but it's great! I haven't had a real talk with +anybody since he went away, over a year ago!"</p> + +<p>Then, at the sound of the bell, he cried out, "There they are!" and +dashed down into the hall ahead of the parlor maid, as eagerly as a +schoolboy anticipating a birthday present.</p> + +<p>Rose followed more slowly, and by the time she had reached the landing +she found him slapping Barry on the back and shaking both hands with +Jane, and trying to help both of them out of their wraps at once.</p> + +<p>The last thing she could have thought of just then, was of making, for +herself, an effective entrance on the scene. But it worked out rather +that way. The three of them, Rodney and the Lakes, at the foot of the +stairs, in the clothes they had been working and traveling in all day, +looked up simultaneously and saw Rose, gowned for a treat for Rodney, on +the first landing; a wonderful rose-colored Boucher tapestry (guaranteed +authentic by Bertie Willis) on the wall behind her for a background, and +the carved Gothic newel-post bringing out the whiteness of the hand that +rested upon it. The picture would have won a moment's silence from +anybody. And Barry and Jane simply gazed at her wide-eyed.</p> + +<a name="Illus_4"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_4.png"><img src="images/Illus_4.png" + alt="Barry and Jane gazed at her wide-eyed." + width="45%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>Barry and Jane gazed at her wide-eyed.</h4> +<br> + +<p>Rodney was the first to speak. "It's really the Lakes, Rose. I couldn't +quite believe it till I saw them. And the lady on the landing," he went +on, turning to his guests, "is really my wife. It's all a little +incredible, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>When the greetings were over and they were on the way up-stairs again, +he said: "I told Rose we weren't going to dress, but she explained she +didn't put on this coronation robe for you, but for a treat for me +before I telephoned, and hadn't time to change back."</p> + +<p>And when Jane cried out, as they entered the drawing room, "Good +heavens, Rodney, what a house!" he answered: "It isn't ours, thank God! +We rented it for a year in a sort of honeymoon delirium, I guess. We +don't live up to it, of course. Nobody could, but the woman who built +it. But we do our damnedest."</p> + +<p>The gaiety in his voice clouded a little as he said it, and his grin, +for a moment, had a rueful twist. But for a moment only. Then his +untempered delight in the possession of his old friends took him again +and, with the exception of one or two equally momentary cloud-shadows, +lasted all evening.</p> + +<p>They talked—heavens how they talked! It was like the breaking up of a +log-jam. The two men would rush along, side by side, in perfect +agreement for a while, catching each other's half expressed ideas, and +hurling them forward, and then suddenly they'd meet, head on, in +collision over some fundamental difference of opinion, amid a prismatic +spray of epigram. Jane kept up a sort of obbligato to the show, +inserting provocative little witticisms here and there, sometimes as +Rodney's ally, sometimes as her husband's, and luring them, when she +could, into the quiet backwaters of metaphysics, where she was more than +a match for the two of them. Jane could juggle Plato, Bergson and +William James, with one hand tied behind her. But when she incautiously +ventured out of this domain, as occasionally she did—when, for example, +she confessed herself in favor of a censorship of the drama, she was +instantly demolished.</p> + +<p>"The state's got no business with morals," said Barry.</p> + +<p>"That's the real cause of most of our municipal corruption," said +Rodney. "A city administration, for instance, is corrupt exactly in +ratio to its attempt to be moral. The more moral issues you import into +politics—gambling, prostitution, Sunday closing, censored movies, and +the rest—the more corrupt and helpless and inefficient your government +will be." And, between them, for the next half-hour, they kept on +demonstrating it until the roar of their heavy artillery fairly drove +Jane from her trenches.</p> + +<p>But all this was preliminary to the main topic of the evening, which got +launched when Rodney seized the advantage of a pause to say:</p> + +<p>"A series of articles on women, eh! What are you going to do to them?"</p> + +<p>With that the topic of feminism was on the carpet and it was never +thereafter abandoned. "Utopia to Brass Tacks," was the slogan Barry's +chief had provided him with, he said. We were about the end of the +heroic age of the movement, the age of myths and saints and prophecies. +A transition was about due to smaller, more immediate things. The +quality of the leaders would probably change. The heroines of the last +three or four decades, women like Naomi Rutledge Stanton, to take a fine +type of them.</p> + +<p>"She's my mother," said Rose.</p> + +<p>Barry Lake's aplomb was equal to most situations, but it failed him +here; for a moment he could only stare. The contrast between the picture +in his mind's eye, of the plain, square-toed, high-principled and rather +pathetic champion of the Cause—pathetic in the light of what she hoped +from it—facing indifference and ridicule with the calm smile of one +who has climbed her mountain and looked into the promised +land,—between that and the lovely, sensitive, sensuous creature he was +staring at, was enough to stagger anybody. He got himself together in a +moment, said very simply and gravely how much he admired her and how +high a value, he believed, the future would put on her work; then he +picked up his sentence where Rose had broken it.</p> + +<p>The heroines and the prophets were going to be replaced, he believed, by +leaders much more practical and less scrupulous, and the movement would +follow the leaders. As far as polities went, he not only looked for no +millennium, but for a reaction in the other direction. There'd be more +open graft, he thought.</p> + +<p>Rose asked him if he meant that he thought women were less honest than +men.</p> + +<p>"It isn't a lack of old-fashioned honesty that makes a man a grafter," +he said. "It's seeing the duties and privileges of a public office in a +private and personal way, instead of in a public, impersonal one; being +kind to old friends who need a helping hand, and grateful to people +who've held out helping hands to you. Well, and women have been trained +for hundreds of years to see things in that private and personal way, +and to exalt the private and personal virtues. Just as they've been +trained to stick to rule of thumb methods that more or less work, rather +than to try experiments. So, on the whole, I think their getting the +vote will mean that politics will be crookeder and more reactionary than +they've been in a good many years. All the same I'm for it, because it's +a part of democracy, and I'm for democracy all the way. Not because you +get good government out of it; you don't. You get as good as you +deserve, and in the long run I think a society that has to deserve as +good a government as it gets, grows stronger and healthier than one that +gets a better government than it deserves."</p> + +<p>"That old tory radical over there," said Jane, with a nod at Rodney, +"has been grinning away for half an hour without saying a word. I'd like +to know what you think about it."</p> + +<p>"'Tory radical'?" questioned Rose.</p> + +<p>"That's what Barry calls him," Jane explained. "He's so conservative +about the law that he calls Blackstone an upstart and a faker, but the +things he'd do, when it comes, down to cases—on good old common law +principles, of course, would make the average Progressive's hair curl. +Why, when people were getting excited over Roosevelt's recall of +judicial decisions—remember?—Rodney was for abolishing the Bill of +Rights altogether."</p> + +<p>"What's the Bill of Rights?" asked Rose.</p> + +<p>Jane headed Rodney off. "Oh, life, liberty and property without due +process of law," she said. "Neither of these men has any opinion of +rights. The only natural inalienable right you've got, they say, is to +take what you can get and keep it until somebody stronger than you, that +you can't run away from, catches you. What you call your individual +rights are just what society has made and doesn't for the moment need, +to keep itself going. If it does need them, it takes them back. Only, of +course, it has got to keep itself going. If it doesn't, people get up +and kick it to bits and start again." She turned to Rodney. "But what do +you think about it, really? What Barry's been talking about, I mean. Are +you for it?"</p> + +<p>"For what?" Rodney wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"For what women want," said Jane. "Economic independence, equality, easy +divorce—all the new stuff."</p> + +<p>"I'm not against it," Rodney said, "any more than I'm against to-morrow +being Tuesday. It's going to be Tuesday whether I like it or not. But +that conviction keeps me from crusading for it very hard. What I'm +curious about is how it's going to work. When they get what they want, +do you suppose they're going to want what they get?"</p> + +<p>"I knew there was something deadly about your grin," said Jane. "What +are you so cantankerous about?"</p> + +<p>"Why, the thing," said Rodney, "that sours my naturally sweet +disposition is this economic independence. I've been hearing it at +dinner tables all winter. When I hear a woman with five hundred dollars' +worth of clothes on—well, no, not on her back—and anything you like in +jewelry, talking about economic independence as if it were something +nice—jam on the pantry shelf that we men were too greedy to let them +have a share of—I have to put on the brakes in order to stay on the +rails.</p> + +<p>"We men have to fight for economic independence from the time we're +twenty, more or less, till the time we die. It's a sentence to hard +labor for life; that's what economic independence is. How does that +woman think she'd set about it, to make her professional services worth +a hundred dollars a day—or fifty, or ten? What's she got that has a +market value? What is there that she can capitalize? She's got her +physical charm, of course, and there are various professions besides the +oldest one, where she can make it pay. Well, and what else?"</p> + +<p>"She can bear children," said Jane. "She ought to be paid well for +that."</p> + +<p>"You're only paid well," Rodney replied, "for something you can do +exceptionally well, or for something that few people can do at all. As +long as the vast majority of women can bear children, the only women who +could get well paid for it would be those exceptionally qualified, or +exceptionally proficient. This is economics, now we're talking. Other +considerations are left out. No, I tell you. Economic independence, if +she really got it—the kind of woman I've been talking about—would make +her very, very sick."</p> + +<p>"She'd get over being sick though, wouldn't she," said Rose, "after a +while? And then, don't you think she'd be glad?"</p> + +<p>Rodney laughed. "The sort of woman I've been talking about," he said, +"would feel, when all was said, that she'd got a gold brick."</p> + +<p>Rose poured his coffee with a steady hand. They were in the library by +now.</p> + +<p>"If that's so," she said, "then the kind of woman you've been talking +about has already got a profession—the one you were just speaking of +as—as the oldest. As Doctor Randolph says, she's cashed in on her +ankles. But maybe you're mistaken in thinking she wouldn't choose +something else if she had a chance. Maybe she wouldn't have done it, +except because her husband wanted her to and she was in love with him +and tried to please. You can't always tell."</p> + +<p>It was almost her first contribution to the talk that evening. She had +asked a few questions and said the things a hostess has to say. The +other three were manifestly taken by surprise—Rodney as well as his +guests.</p> + +<p>But surprise was not the only effect she produced. Her husband had never +seen her look just like that before (remember, he had not been a guest +at the Randolphs' dinner on the night he had turned her out of his +office), the flash in her eyes, the splash of bright color in her +cheeks.</p> + +<p>Barry saved him the necessity of trying to answer, by taking up the +cudgels himself. Rodney didn't feel like answering, nor, for the moment, +like listening to Barry. His interest in the discussion was eclipsed for +the moment, by the thrill and wonder of his wife's beauty.</p> + +<p>He walked round behind her chair, on the pretext of getting his coffee +cup, and rested his hand, for an instant, on her bare shoulder. He was +puzzled at the absence of response to the caress. For there was none, +unless you could call it a response that she sat as still as ivory until +he took his hand away. And looking into her face, he thought she had +gone pale. Evidently though, it was nothing. Her color came back in a +moment, and for the next half-hour she matched wits with Barry Lake very +prettily.</p> + +<p>When Jane declared that they must go, her husband protested.</p> + +<p>"I haven't managed yet to get a word out of Rodney about any of his +things. He dodged when I asked him how his Criminal Procedure Reform +Society was getting on, and he changed the subject when I wanted to know +about his model Expert Testimony Act." He turned on Rodney. "But there's +one thing you're not going to get out of. I want to know how far you've +come along with your book on Actual Government. It was a great start you +had on that, and a bully plan. I shan't let you off any details. I want +the whole thing. Now."</p> + +<p>"I've had my fling," said Rodney, with a sort of embarrassed good humor. +"And I don't say I shall never have another. But just now, there are no +more intellectual wild-oats for me. What I sow, I sow in a field and in +a furrow. And I take good care to be on hand to gather the crop. Model +Acts and Reform of Procedure! Have you forgotten you're talking to a +married man?"</p> + +<p>On learning their determination to walk down-town, he said he'd go with +them part of the way. Would Rose go, too? But she thought not.</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't pretend to think you need it," he admitted. Then, turning +to the Lakes: "You people must spend a lot of evenings with us like +this. You've done Rose a world of good. I haven't seen her look so well +in a month of Sundays."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_IX_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<h3>A DEFEAT</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>The gown that Rodney had spoken of apologetically to the Lakes as a +coronation robe, was put away; the maid was sent to bed. Rose, huddled +into a big quilted bath-robe, and in spite of the comfortable warmth of +the room, feeling cold clear in to the bones—cold and tremulous, and +sure that when she tried to talk her teeth would chatter—sat waiting +for Rodney to come back from seeing the Lakes part way home.</p> + +<p>It was over an hour since they had gone, but she was in no hurry for his +return. She wanted time for getting things straight before he came—for +letting the welter subside and getting the two or three essentials clear +in her mind. She hadn't cried a tear.</p> + +<p>The old Rose would have cried—the Rose of a month ago, before that +devastating, blinding scene with Portia, and what had happened since. +She even managed to smile a little satirically, now, over the way that +child would have taken it. Here it was their first anniversary of the +day—the great day in their two lives—their birthday, as well as his! +And he'd forgotten it! He had remained oblivious that morning, in spite +of all the little evocative references she had made. She hadn't let +herself be hurt about that—not much, anyway; had managed to smile +affectionately over his masculine obtuseness, as if it had meant no more +to her than it would have, say, to Frederica. She had impressed him +strongly, though—or tried to—with the idea that the evening was to be +kept clear just for their two selves. And then she had arranged a +feast—a homely little feast that was to culminate in a cake with a +hedge of little candles around the edge for his birthday, and a single +red one in the center, for theirs.</p> + +<p>Well, and that was only part of it. She had planned, when the cake +should have come in, all lighted up, and the servants had gone away and +the other lights had been put out,—she had planned to tell him her +great news. She hadn't told him yet, though it was over a fortnight +since her visit to the doctor.</p> + +<p>She had no reasoned explanation of her postponement of it. The instinct +that led her to keep it wholly to herself, was probably one of the +reflections of that morning with Portia. She was still in a penitential +mood when she went to the doctor—a mood which the contemplation of +Portia's frustrated life and her own undeservedly happy one, had bitten +deep into her soul. It was a mood that nothing but pain could satisfy. +The only relief she could get during that fortnight of packing and +leave-taking, came in flogging herself to do hard things—things that +hurt, physically and literally, I mean; that made her back ache and +cramped the muscles of her arms. Her spiritual aches were too +contemptible to pay any attention to.</p> + +<p>Conversely, in that mood, the thing she couldn't endure, that made her +want to scream, was precisely what, all her life, she had taken for +granted; tenderness, concern, the smoothing away of little difficulties +for which the people about her had always sacrificed themselves. That +mood made it hard to go to the doctor. But, after she had fainted dead +away twice in one morning, a saving remnant of common sense—the +reflection that if there were anything organically wrong with her, it +would be a poor trick to play on Rodney, not to take remedial measures +as soon as possible—dictated the action.</p> + +<p>When the doctor told her what had happened, she was a little bewildered. +She hadn't, in her mind, any prepared background for the news. She and +Rodney had decided at the beginning not to have any children for the +first year or two—in view of Rose's extreme youth, the postponement +seemed sensible—and the decision once made, neither of them had thought +much more about it.</p> + +<p>Rodney's vigorously objective mind had always been so fully occupied +with things as they were that it found little leisure for speculation +on things as they might be. The day's work was always so vividly +absorbing to him that day-dreams never got a chance. His sex impulses +had always been crowded down to the smallest possible compass, not +because he was a Puritan, but because he was, spiritually and mentally, +an athlete. He had never thought of marriage as a serious possibility, +Frederica's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding, until, in a moment +of bewilderment, he found himself head over ears in love with Rose +Stanton. That this emotion had been able to fight its way into the +fortress of his life spoke volumes for the power and the vitality of it. +Once it got inside, it formed a part of the garrison of the fort. And, +just as the contemplation of marriage had had to wait until there was a +Rose Stanton to make it concrete and irresistible, so the contemplation +of fatherhood would have to wait for a concrete fact to drive it home.</p> + +<p>With certain important differences, Rose was a good deal like him. She +had never had time to dream much. The pretending games of +childhood—playing with dolls, playing house—had never attracted her +away from more vigorous and athletic enterprises. A superb physique gave +her an outlet for her emotional energy, so that she satisfied her wants +pretty much as she became aware of them. And, conversely, she remained +unaware of possibilities she had not, as yet, the means to realize.</p> + +<p>They were both rather abnormally normal about this. Persons of robust +emotions seldom think very much about them. The temperament that +cultivates its emotional soil assiduously, warms it, waters it and +watches anxiously for the first sprouts, gets a rather anemic growth for +its pains. Which of these facts is cause and which effect, one need not +pretend to say: whether it is a lack of vitality in the seed that +prompts the instinct of cultivation, or whether it is the cultivation +that prevents a sturdy growth. But, feeble as the results of cultivation +may be, they produce at least the apparent advantage of running true to +form. The thing that sprouts in cultivated soil will be what was planted +there—will be, at all events, appropriate.</p> + +<p>But in Rose's penitential mood, and in the absence of a prepared +background, it was the processes of her pregnancy rather than the issue +of it, that got into the foreground of her mind. She was in for an +experience now that no one could call trivial. She had months of misery +ahead of her, she assumed, reasoning from the one she had just gone +through with, surmounted by hours of agony and peril that even Portia +wouldn't deny the authenticity of.</p> + +<p>Well, she was glad of it; glad she was going to be hurt. She could get +back some of her self-respect, she thought, by enduring it all, first +the wretchedness, then the pain, with a Spartan fortitude. There would +he a sort of savage satisfaction in marching through all her miseries +with her head up.</p> + +<p>She couldn't do that if Rodney knew. He wouldn't let her. He'd want to +care for her, comfort her, pack her in cotton-wool. And there was a +terrible yearning down in her heart, to let him. For just that reason, +he mustn't be told.</p> + +<p>But, as the sharp edges of this mood wore off, she saw a little more +justly. Already he suspected something. She caught, now and again, a +puzzled, worried, almost frightened look in his face. It was a poor +penance that others had to share. So, at the end of her feast to-night, +when the candles were lighted and the servants gone away, she'd tell +him. And, oh, what a comfort it would be to have him know!</p> + +<p>That was the moment she was waiting for when he telephoned that he was +bringing the Lakes out for dinner. The old Rose might well have cried.</p> + +<p>But now, as she sat trembling in front of her little boudoir fire, the +door open behind her so that she'd surely hear him when he came in, the +disappointment and the hurt that had clutched at her throat when she +turned from the telephone, were wholly forgotten. As I said, she hadn't +shed a tear.</p> + +<p>The situation she was confronted with now was beyond tears. Portia's +stinging words went over and over through her mind. "If you let the big +thing slip out of your hands because you haven't the pluck to fight ..." +and her own, "I promise I won't do that." It would mean a fight. She +must keep her head.</p> + +<p>She gave a last panicky shiver when she heard his latch-key, then +pulled herself together.</p> + +<p>"Come in here, Roddy," she called, as he reached the head of the stairs. +"I want to talk about something."</p> + +<p>He had hoped, evidently, to find her abed and fast asleep. His cautious +footfalls on the stairs made clear his intention not to waken her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, pausing in the doorway to her dressing-room, +but not coming in. "I didn't know you meant to sit up for me. If I'd +known you were waiting, I'd have come back sooner. But we got to talking +and we were at the hotel before we knew it, and it was so long since I'd +seen them ..."</p> + +<p>"I haven't minded," she told him. "I've been glad of a chance to think. +But now ... Oh, please come in and shut the door!"</p> + +<p>He did come in, but with manifest reluctance, and he stayed near the +door in an attitude of arrested departure.</p> + +<p>"It's pretty late," he protested with a nonchalance that rang a little +flat. "You must be awfully tired. Hadn't we better put off our pow-wow?"</p> + +<p>She understood well enough. The look in her face, some uncontrolled +inflection in the voice she had meant to keep so even, had given her +away. He suspected she was going to be "tragic." If he didn't look out, +there'd be a "scene."</p> + +<p>"We can't put it off," she said. "I let you have your talk out with the +Lakes, but you'll have to talk with me now."</p> + +<p>"We spent most of the time talking about you, anyway," he said +pleasantly. "They're both mad about you. Barry says you've got a fine +mind."</p> + +<p>She laughed at that, a little raggedly. Whereupon Rodney looked hurt and +protested against this imputation of insincerity against his friend.</p> + +<p>"When you know him better," he said, "you will see he couldn't say a +thing like that unless he meant it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, he meant it, all right," said Rose. And she added incomprehensibly, +"It isn't his fault, of course. It's just the way the world's made."</p> + +<p>She had been in good looks to-night, she knew; hurt, humiliated, +confronted with a crisis, she had rallied her powers just as she had +done at the Randolphs' dinner. She had been aware of the color in her +cheeks, the brightness in her eyes, the edge to her voice. Each of the +two men had responded to the effect she produced. Barry had talked with +her all the last part of the evening—brilliantly, eagerly, and had come +away saying she had a fine mind. Her husband had come across to her and +put his hand on her bare shoulder. And the two of them had responded to +an identical impulse, although they translated it so differently—one +over the long circuit, the other over the short.</p> + +<p>Lacking the clue, Rodney, of course, didn't understand. The look in +Rose's eyes softened suddenly.</p> + +<p>"Don't mind, dear;" she said. "I'm truly glad if they liked me. It will +make things a lot easier."</p> + +<p>At that his eyes lighted up. "Do you seriously think any one could +resist you, you darling?" he said. "You were a perfect miracle to-night, +when they were here. But now, like this ..." He came over to her with +his arms out.</p> + +<p>But she cried out "Don't!" and sprang away from him. "Please don't, +Roddy—not to-night! I can't stand it to have you touch me to-night!"</p> + +<p>He stared at her, gave a shrug of exasperation, and then turned away. +"You <i>are</i> angry about something then," he said. "I thought so when I +first came in. But I honestly don't know what it's about."</p> + +<p>"I'm <i>not</i> angry," she said as steadily as she could. She mustn't let it +go on like this. They were getting started all wrong somehow. "You +didn't want me to touch you, the night when I came to your office, when +you were working on that case. But it wasn't because you were angry with +me. Well, I'm like that to-night. There's something that's got to be +thought out. Only, I'm not like you. I can't do it alone. I've got to +have help. I don't want to be soothed and comforted like a child, and I +don't want to be made love to. I just want to be treated like a human +being."</p> + +<p>"I see," he said. Very deliberately he lighted a cigarette, found +himself an ash-tray and settled down astride a spindling little chair. +(It was lucky for Florence McCrea's peace of mind that she didn't see +him do it.) "All right," he said. "Now, come on with your troubles." He +didn't say "little troubles," but his voice did and his smile. The whole +thing would probably turn out to be a question about a housemaid, or a +hat.</p> + +<p>Rose steadied herself as well as she could. She simply mustn't let +herself think of things like that. If she lost her temper she'd have no +chance.</p> + +<p>"We've made a horrible mistake," she began. "I don't suppose it's either +of our faults exactly. It's been mine in a way of course, because it +wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been—thoughtless and ignorant. I +might have seen it if I'd thought to look. But I didn't—not really, +until to-night."</p> + +<p>He wanted to know what the mistake was. He was still smiling in +good-humored amusement over her seriousness.</p> + +<p>"It's pretty near everything," she said, "about the way we've +lived—renting this house in the first place."</p> + +<p>He frowned and flushed. "Good heavens, child!" he said. "Can't you take +a joke? I didn't mean anything by what I said about the house—except +that—well, it is a precious, soulful, sacred—High Church sort of +house, and we're not the sort of people, thank God—I'll say it +again—who'd have built it and furnished it for ourselves. You <i>aren't</i> +right, Rose. You're run down and very tired and hypersensitive, or you +wouldn't have spent an evening worrying over a thing like that."</p> + +<p>"You can make jokes about a thing that's true," she persisted. "And it's +true that you've hated the way we've lived—the way this house has made +us live.—No, please listen and let me talk. I can't help it if my voice +chokes up. My mind's just as cool as yours and you've got to listen. It +isn't the first time I've thought of it. It's always made me feel a +little unhappy when people have laughed about the 'new leaf' you've +turned over; how 'civilized' you've got, learning all the new dances and +going out all the time and not doing any of the—wild things you used to +do. In a joking sort of way, people have congratulated me about it, as +if it were some sort of triumph of mine. I haven't liked it, really. +But I never stopped to think out what it meant."</p> + +<p>"What it does mean," he said, with a good deal of attention to his +cigarette, "is that I've fallen in love with you and married you and +that things are desirable to me now, because I am in love with you, that +weren't desirable before. And things that were desirable before, are +less so. I don't see anything terrible about that."</p> + +<p>"There isn't," she said, "when—when you're in love with me."</p> + +<p>He shot a frowning look at her and echoed her phrase interrogatively. +She nodded.</p> + +<p>"Because you aren't in love with me all the time. And when you aren't, +you must see what I've done to you. You must—hate me for what I've done +to you. I remember the first day we ever talked—when you laughed at my +note-books. You talked about people who wore blinders and drew a cart +and followed a bundle of hay. That's what I've made you do."</p> + +<p>His face flushed deep. He sprang to his feet and threw his cigarette +into the fire. "That's perfectly outrageous nonsense," he said. "I won't +listen to it."</p> + +<p>"If it weren't true," she persisted, "you wouldn't be excited like that. +If I hadn't known it before, I'd have known it when I saw you with the +Lakes. You can give them something you can't give me, not with all the +love in the world. I never heard about them till to-night—not in a way +I'd remember. And there are other people—you spoke of some of them at +dinner—who are living here, that you've never mentioned to me before. +You've tried to sweep them all out of your life; to go to dances and the +opera and things with me. You did it because you loved me, but it wasn't +fair to either of us, Roddy. Because you can't love me all the time. I +don't believe a man—a real man—<i>can</i> love a woman all the time. And if +she makes him hate her when he doesn't love her, he'll get so he hates +loving her."</p> + +<p>"You're talking nonsense!" he said again roughly. He was pacing the room +by now. "Stark staring nonsense!"</p> + +<p>Of course the reason it caught him like that was simply that it echoed +so uncannily the things that went through his own head sometimes in his +stolen hours of solitude—thoughts he had often tried, unavailingly, to +stamp out of existence.</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know where you get that stuff. Is it from James Randolph? +He's dangerous, that fellow. Oh, he's interesting, and I like him, but +he's a cynic. He doesn't want anybody to be happier than he is. But what +may be true of him, isn't true of me. I've never stopped loving you +since the first day we talked together. And I should think I'd done +enough to prove it."</p> + +<p>"That's it," she said. "You've done too much. And you're so sorry for me +when you don't love me, that it makes you do all the more."</p> + +<p>She had found another joint in his armor. She was absolutely clairvoyant +to-night, and this time he fairly cried out, "Stop it!"</p> + +<p>Then he got himself together and begged her pardon. "After all, I don't +see what it comes to," he said. "I don't know what we're fighting about +to-night. You're saying you think we ought to do more playing around +with the Lakes and people like that; not spend all our time with the +Casino set, as we have done this winter. Well, that may be good sense. +I've no objection certainly."</p> + +<p>"Well, then," she said, "that's settled—that's one thing settled. But +there's something else. Oh, it all comes to the same thing, really. +Roddy,"—she had to gulp and draw a long breath and steady herself +before this—"Roddy, how much money have you got, and how much are we +spending?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, good lord!" he cried. "<i>Please</i> don't go into that now, Rose. It's +after one o'clock, and you're worn to a frazzle. If we've got to go into +it, let's do it some other time, when we can be sensible about it."</p> + +<p>"When I am, you mean?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said.</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm sensible now. I can't help it if my—voice chokes and my eyes +fill up. That's silly, of course, but down in my mind, I don't believe +I've ever been as sensible as I am right now. And I've had the nerve to +ask—I don't know when I will again—and I know you won't bring the +subject up by yourself. I've been trying to for ever so long. But +money's always seemed the one thing I couldn't b-bear to talk about with +you.</p> + +<p>"You see, when I first told mother and Portia about you—about how you +helped me with the conductor that night, I told them your name, and +Portia said she didn't think it could be you, because you were a +millionaire. I supposed she knew. Anyway, I didn't think very much about +it. You yourself,—just being with you and hearing you talk, were so +much more important. After we got engaged, and you began doing all sorts +of lovely things for me, I enjoyed it of course. But it was just +something that went with you. After we were married and took this house +... Well, I knew, of course, I hadn't married you for money, but I +thought it would sound sort of queer and prying to ask questions about +it; because I hadn't anything."</p> + +<p>He had looked up two or three times and drawn in his breath for a +protest, but apparently he couldn't think of anything effective to say. +Now though, he cried out, "Rose! Please!"</p> + +<p>But she went steadily on. "You were always so dear about it. You never +let me feel like a beggar, and—well, it was the easy way, and I took +it. I got worried once during the winter when I heard the Crawfords +talking. All those people were millionaires, I'd supposed. They were +going on at a dinner here, one night, about being awfully hard up, and I +began to wonder if we were. I spent a week trying to—get up my courage +to ask you about it. But then Constance got a new necklace on her +birthday, and they went off to Palm Beach the next week, so I persuaded +myself it was all a joke. The thing's come up again several times since, +but never so that I couldn't side-step it some way, until to-night. But +to-night—oh, Roddy ...!" Her silly ragged voice choked there and +stopped and the tears brimmed up and spilled down her cheeks. But she +kept her face steadfastly turned to his.</p> + +<p>"That's what I said about being married and not sowing wild oats, I +suppose," he said glumly. "It was a joke. Do you suppose I'd have said +it if I meant it?"</p> + +<p>"It wasn't only that," she managed to go on. "It was the way they looked +at the house; the way you apologized for my dress; the way you looked +when you tried to get out of answering Barry Lake's questions about what +you were doing. Oh, how I despised myself! And how I knew you and they +must be despising me!"</p> + +<p>"The one thing I felt about you all evening," he said, with the patience +that marks the last stage of exasperation, "was pride. I was rather +crazily proud of you."</p> + +<p>"As my lover you were proud of me," she said. "But the other man—the +man that's more truly you—was ashamed, as I was ashamed. Oh, it doesn't +matter! Being ashamed won't accomplish anything. But what we'll <i>do</i> is +going to accomplish something."</p> + +<p>"What do you mean to do?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I want you to tell me first," she said, "how much money we have, and +how much we've been spending."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he said stubbornly. "I don't know exactly."</p> + +<p>"You've got enough, haven't you, of your own ... I mean, there's enough +that comes in every year, to live on, if you didn't earn a cent by +practising law? Well, what I want to do, is to live on that. I want to +live however and wherever we have to to live on that—out in the suburbs +somewhere, or in a flat, so that you will be free; and I can work—be +some sort of help. Barry and the others—your real friends, that you +really care about, won't mind. And as long as we want to get rid of the +other people anyway, that's the way to do it."</p> + +<p>"You can wash the dishes and scrub the floors," he supplemented, "and I +can carry my lunch to the office with me in a little tin box." He looked +at his watch. "And now that the thing's reduced to an absurdity, let's +go to bed. It's getting along toward two o'clock."</p> + +<p>"You don't have to get to the office till nine to-morrow morning," said +Rose. "And I want to talk it out now. And I don't think I said anything +that was absurd."</p> + +<p>The devil of it was she hadn't. The precise quality about her +suggestions that pointed and barbed them, was their fantastic logic. It +would be ridiculous—impossible—to uproot their life as she wanted it +done. One simply couldn't do such a thing. Serious discussion of it was +preposterous. But to explain why ...! He was apt enough at explanations +generally. This one seemed to present difficulties.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't have called it absurd," he admitted after a rather long +silence. "But it's exaggerated and unnecessary. I don't care to make a +public proclamation that I'm not able to support you and run our +domestic establishment in a way that we find natural and agreeable;—and +that I've been a fool to try. The situation doesn't call for it. You've +made a mountain out of an ant-hill. When our lease is up, if we think +this house is more than we want, we can find something simpler."</p> + +<p>"But we'll begin economizing now," she pleaded; "change things as much +as we can, even if we do have to go on living in this house. It won't +hurt me a bit to work, and you could go back to your book. We'd both be +happier, if I were something besides just a drag on you."</p> + +<p>"Discharge a couple of maids, you mean," he asked, "and sweep and make +beds and that sort of thing yourself?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know exactly how we'd do it," she said. "That's why I said I +needed your help in figuring it out. Something like that, I suppose. +Sweeping and making beds isn't very much, but it's something."</p> + +<p>"The most we could save that way," he said, "would be a few hundred +dollars a year. It wouldn't be a drop in the bucket. But everything +would run at cross-purposes. You'd be tired out all the time—you're +that pretty much as it is lately, we'd have to stop having people in; +you'd be bored and I'd be worried. When you start living on a certain +scale, everything about your life has to be done on that scale. Next +October, as I said, when the lease on this house runs out, we can +manage, perhaps, to change the scale a little. There you are! Now do +stop worrying about it and let's go to bed."</p> + +<p>But she sat there just as she was, staring at the dying fire, her hands +lying slack in her lap, all as if she hadn't heard. The long silence +irked him. He pulled out his watch, looked at it and began winding it. +He mended the fire so that it would be safe for the night; bolted a +window. Every minute or two, he stole a look at her, but she was always +just the same. Except for the faint rise and fall of her bosom, she +might have been a picture, not a woman.</p> + +<p>At last he said again, "Come along, Rose, dear."</p> + +<p>"It'll be too late in October," she said. "That's why I wanted to decide +things to-night. Because we must begin right away." Then she looked up +into his face. "It will be too late in October," she repeated, "unless +we begin now."</p> + +<p>The deep tense seriousness of her voice and her look arrested his full +attention.</p> + +<p>"Why?" he asked. And then, "Rose, what do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"We're going to have a baby in October," she said.</p> + +<p>He stared at her for a minute without a word, then drew in a deep breath +and pressed his hands against his eyes. All he could say at first was +just her name. But he dropped down beside her and got her in his arms.</p> + +<p>"So that's it," he said raggedly at last. "Oh, Rose, darling, it's such +a relief! I've been so terrified about you—so afraid something had gone +wrong. And you wouldn't let me ask, and you seemed so unhappy. I'd even +thought of talking to Randolph. I might have guessed, I suppose. I've +been stupid about it. But, you darling, I understand it all now."</p> + +<p>She didn't see just what he meant by that, but she didn't care. It was +such a wonderful thing to stop fighting and let the tension relax, +cuddle close into his embrace, and know nothing in the world but the one +fact that he loved her; that their tale of golden hours wasn't +spent—was, perhaps, illimitable. She was even too drowsily happy to +think what he meant when he said a little later:</p> + +<p>"So now you won't let anything trouble you, will you, child? And if +queer worrying ideas get into your head about the way we live, and about +being a drag on me and making me hate you, you'll laugh at them? You'll +be able to laugh, because you'll know why they're there."</p> + +<p>It wasn't until the next day that she recalled that remark of his and +analyzed it. It meant, of course, that she was beaten; that her first +fight for the big thing had been in vain. There would be no use, for the +present, in renewing the struggle. He'd taken the one ground that was +impregnable. So long as he could go on honestly interpreting every plea +of hers for a share in the hard part of his life as well as in the soft +part of it, for a way of life that would make them something more than +lovers—as wholly subjective to herself, the inevitable accompaniment of +her physical condition—the pleas and the struggles would indeed be +wasted. She'd have to wait.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_X_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<h3>THE DOOR THAT WAS TO OPEN</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch, as Rose was forced by +her husband's attitude to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a +wonderful anodyne. And so it proved in her ease. Indeed, within a day +after her talk with Rodney, though it had ended in total defeat, she +felt like a person awakened out of a nightmare. There had taken place, +somehow, an enormous letting-off of strain—a heavenly relaxation of +spiritual muscles. It was so good just to have him know; to have others +know, as all her world did within the next week!</p> + +<p>Ultimately nothing was changed, of course. The great thing that she had +promised Portia she wouldn't fail in getting—the real thing that should +solve the problem, equalize the disparity between her husband and +herself and give them a life together in satisfying completeness beyond +the joys of a pair of lovers;—that was still to be fought for.</p> + +<p>She'd have to make that fight alone. Rodney wouldn't help her. He +wouldn't know how to help her. Indeed, interpreting from the way he +winced under her questions and suggestions, as if they wounded some +essentially masculine, primitive element of pride in him, it seemed +rather more likely that he'd resist her efforts—fight blindly against +her. She must be more careful about that when she took up the fight +again; must avoid hurting him if she could.</p> + +<p>She hadn't an idea on what lines the fight was to be made. Perhaps +before the time for its beginning, a way would appear. The point was +that for the present, she'd have to wait—coolly and thoughtfully, not +fritter her strength away on futile struggles or harassments.</p> + +<p>The tonic effect of that resolution was really wonderful. She got her +color back—I mean more than just the pink bloom in her cheeks—and her +old, irresistible, wide slow smile. She'd never been so beautiful as she +was during the next six months.</p> + +<p>People who thought they loved her before—Frederica for example, found +they hadn't really, until now. She dropped in on Eleanor Randolph one +day, after a morning spent with Rose, simply because she was bursting +with this idea and had to talk to somebody. That was very like +Frederica.</p> + +<p>She found Eleanor doing her month's bills, but glad to shovel them into +her desk, light up a cigarette, and have a chat; a little rueful though, +when she found that Rose was to be the subject of it.</p> + +<p>"She's perfectly wonderful," Frederica said. "There's a sort of look +about her ..."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know," Eleanor said. "We dined there last night."</p> + +<p>"Well, didn't it just—get you?" insisted Frederica.</p> + +<p>"It did," said Eleanor. "It also got Jim. He was still talking about her +when I went to sleep, about one o'clock. I don't a bit blame him for +being perfectly maudlin about her. As I say, I was a good deal that way +myself, though a half-hour's steady raving was enough for me. But poor +old Jim! She isn't one little bit crazy about him, +either—unfortunately."</p> + +<p>"<i>Un</i>fortunately!" thought Frederica. This was rather illuminating. The +Randolphs' love-match had been regarded as establishing a sort of +standard of excellence. But when you heard a woman trying to arrange +subsidiary romances for her husband, or lamenting the failure of them, +it meant, as a rule, that things were wearing rather thin. However, she +dismissed this speculation for a later time, and went back to Rose.</p> + +<p>"I had been worrying about her, too;" she said. "Rodney was so funny +about her. <i>He</i> was worried, I could see that. And he means the best in +the world, the dear. But he could be a dreadful brute, just in his +simplicity. Oh, I know! He and I were always rather special pals—more +than Harriet. But no man ever learned less from his sisters,—about +women, I mean. He's always been so big and healthy and even-minded, you +couldn't tell him anything, except what you could print right out in +black and white. So when you were feeling edgy and blue and miserable +you either kept out of his way or kept your troubles to yourself. He was +always easy to fool—there was that about it. If you wiped your eyes and +blew your nose, he always thought you had a cold. Which is all very nice +about a brother; but in a husband ..."</p> + +<p>Something that Eleanor did with her shoulders, the way she blew out her +smoke and twisted her mouth around, caught Frederica's eye. "What did +you mean by that?" she asked. "Oh, I know you didn't say anything."</p> + +<p>Eleanor got up restlessly, squared the cushions on her <i>chaise longue</i>, +tapped her cigarette ash into a receiver and said that Rose was happy +enough now, anyway, if looks were anything to go by; hesitated again, +and finally answered Frederica's question.</p> + +<p>"Why," she said, "whenever I hear a woman miaouling about being +misunderstood, I always want to tell her she doesn't know her luck. Wait +till she marries a man who really does understand—too well. Let her see +how she likes it, whenever she turns loose and gets—going a little, to +have him look interested, as if he were taking notes, and begin asking +questions that are—a little too intelligent. How does she think it'll +feel never to know, <i>never</i>—I mean that, that she isn't +being—experimented on!"</p> + +<p>It was a rather horrible idea, Frederica didn't try to deny it. But not +being understood wasn't very agreeable either. What did they want then?</p> + +<p>Eleanor laughed. "Did you ever think," she asked, "that one of these +regular stage husbands would be rather satisfactory? Terribly +particular, you know, and bossy and domineering. The kind that discovers +a letter or a handkerchief or sees you going into some other man's +'rooms' and gets frightfully jealous, and denounces you without giving +you a chance to explain, and drags you round by the hair and threatens +to kill you? And then discovers—in the last act, you know,—that you +were perfectly innocent all the while, and repents all over the place +and begs you to forgive him and take him back; and you do? Do you +suppose any of the men we know would be capable of acting like that? +Don't you think we'd like it if they were? Not if they really did those +things, perhaps, but if we thought they might?"</p> + +<p>Frederica was amused, but didn't think there was much to that. Of +course, if the play was very thrilling, and you liked the leading man, +you might build yourself into the romance somehow. But when it came to +the real thing ...</p> + +<p>"No, there is something in it," Eleanor insisted. "There's something you +can't get in any other way. Whom do you think I'd pick," she asked +suddenly, "for the happiest wife I know? Edith Welles. Yes, really. Oh, +I know, her husband's a slacker and no real good to anybody. And he goes +out every now and then and drinks too much and doesn't know just what +happens afterward. But he always comes back and wants to be forgiven. +And he thinks she's an angel,—which she is—and he thinks he isn't +worthy to put on her rubbers—which he isn't, and—well, there you are! +She knows she's <i>got</i> him, somehow.</p> + +<p>"But you take Jim. I can get my way with him always. I can outmaneuver +him every time. He's positively simple about things, unless they happen +to strike him—professionally. But there's always something that gets +away. Something I'm no nearer now than I was the day I first saw him. +And I sometimes think that if there were—something horrible I had to +forgive him for—if I could get something on him as they say.... It's +rather fun, isn't it, sometimes, just to let your mind go wild and see +where you bring up. Awful rot, of course. Can you stop for lunch?"</p> + +<p>Frederica thought she couldn't; must run straight along. But the talk +had been amusing. "Only—you won't mind?—don't spring any of that stuff +on Rose. She's just a child, really you know, and entitled to any +illusions that Rodney leaves; especially these days."</p> + +<p>"You, as an old hen fussing about your new chicken!" Eleanor mocked. +"Wait till you can look the part a little better, Frederica, dear. But +really, I'm harmless. Talk to Jim and Rodney and those fearful and +wonderful Lakes of his. They were there, and—well, you ought to have +heard the talk. I thought I was pretty well hardened, but once or twice +I gasped. Jim's pretty weird when he gets going, but that Barry Lake has +a sort of—surgical way of discussing just <i>anything</i>, and his wife's as +bad. Oh, she's awfully interesting, I'll admit that, and she's as crazy +about Rose as any of the rest of us, which is to her credit.</p> + +<p>"We never got off women all the evening. Barry Lake had their history +down from the early Egyptians, and Jim had an endless string of +pathological freaks to tell about. And then Rodney came out strong for +economic independence, only with his own queer angle on it of course. He +thought it would be a fine thing, but it wouldn't happen until the men +insisted on it. When a girl wasn't regarded as marriageable unless she +had been trained to a trade or a profession, then things would begin to +happen. I think he meant it, too, though he was more than usually +outrageous in his way of putting things.</p> + +<p>"Well, and all the while there sat Rose, taking it all in with those big +eyes of hers, smiling to herself now and then; saying things, too, +sometimes, that were pretty good, though nobody but Jim seemed to +understand, always, just what she meant. They've talked before, those +two. But she didn't mind—anything; no more embarrassed than as if we'd +been talking embroidery stitches. You don't need to worry about her. And +she absolutely seemed to like Jane Lake."</p> + +<p>Frederica did worry. Seriously meditated running in on Rodney before she +went home to lunch and giving him a tip that a young wife in Rose's +condition wanted treating a little more carefully. It was not for +prudential reasons that she decided against doing it. She was perfectly +willing to have her head bitten off in a good cause. But she knew Rodney +down to the ground; knew that it was utterly impossible for him, +whatever his previous resolutions might be, to pull up on the brink of +anything. Once you launched a topic that interested him, he'd go through +with it. So the only thing that would do any good would be to ban the +Lakes and James Randolph completely. And Rodney, if persuaded to do +that—he would in a minute, of course, if he thought it would be good +for Rose—would be incapable of concealing from her why he had done it; +which would leave matters worse than ever.</p> + +<p>The only outcome, then, of her visit to Eleanor and her subsequent +cogitations, was that Martin, when he came home that night, found her +unusually affectionate and inclined to be misty about the eyes. "I'm +a—lucky guy, all right"—this was her explanation,—"being married to +you. Instead of any of the others."</p> + +<p>He was a satisfactory old dear. He took her surplus tenderness as so +much to the good, and didn't bother over not knowing what it was all +about.</p> + +<p>Eleanor was right in her surmise that Rose had really taken a fancy to +Jane Lake. She was truly—and really humbly—grateful to Jane, in the +first place, for liking her, finding her, in Jane's own phrase, "worth +while," and her ideas worth listening to. Because here was something, +you see, that she could take at its face value. There was no +long-circuited sex attraction to discount everything, in Jane's case. +But she had another reason.</p> + +<p>Rodney, it seemed, had told the Lakes about the prospective baby the +very morning after he'd learned the news himself, and Jane—this was +perfectly characteristic of her—had come straight up to see Rose about +it; even before Frederica. And about the first thing she said was:</p> + +<p>"Which do you want—a boy or a girl?"</p> + +<p>Rose looked puzzled, then surprised. "Why," she said at last, "I don't +believe I know."</p> + +<p>"It's funny about that," said Jane. "The one thing I was frightened +about—the first time, you know—was that it might be a girl. I think +Barry really wanted a girl, too. He does now, and we're going to try to +have one, though we can't rightly afford it. But I'm just primitive +enough—I'm a cave person, really—to have felt that having a girl, at +least before you had a boy, would be a sort of disgrace. Like the Hindoo +women in Kipling. But don't you really care?"</p> + +<p>"Why, the queer thing is," said Rose, who had been in a daze ever since +Jane's first question, "that I hadn't thought of it as anything at all +but—It. Hardly that, really. I've known how miserable I've been, and +that there were things I must be careful not to do,—and, of course, +what was going to happen. But that when it was all over there'd be a +baby left,—a—a son or a daughter, why, that's ..."</p> + +<p>Her surprise had carried her into a confidence that her budding +friendship for Jane was hardly ripe for, and she pulled up rather +suddenly. "I didn't know you had any children," she concluded, by way of +avoiding a further discussion of the marvel just then. "Are they here +with you now?"</p> + +<p>Jane explained why they were not. They weren't babies any more, two +husky little boys of five and three, and they were rejoicing in the care +of a grandmother and a highly competent nurse. "One of those terribly +infallible people, you know. Oh, I don't like it. I get a night letter +every morning, and, of course, if one of them got the sniffles I'd be +off home like a shot. I'd like to be a regular domestic mother; not let +another soul but me touch them (Jane really believed this) but you see +we can't well afford it. Barry pays me five dollars a day for working +for him. I scout around and dig up material and interview people for +him—I used to be a reporter, you know. He'd have to hire somebody, and +it might better be me and keep the money in the family. Because the +nurse who takes my place doesn't cost near so much as that. All the +same, as I say, I don't half like it. You can preach the new stuff till +you're black in the face, but there's no job for a woman like taking +care of her own children."</p> + +<p>Rose listened to all this, as well as to Jane's subsequent remarks, with +only so much attention as was required to keep her guest from suspecting +that she wasn't really listening at all. Jane didn't stay long. She had +to go out and earn Barry's five dollars—she'd lose her job if she +didn't, so she said, and Rose was presently left alone to dream, +actually for the first time, of the wonders that were before her.</p> + +<p>What a silly little idiot she'd been not to have seen the thing for +herself! She'd been, all the while, beating her head against blind +walls when there was a door there waiting to open of itself when the +time came. Motherhood! There'd be a doctor and a nurse at first, of +course, but presently they'd go away and she'd be left with a baby. Her +own baby! She could care for him with her own hands, feed him—her joy +reached an ecstasy at this—feed him from her own breast.</p> + +<p>That life which Rodney led apart from her, the life into which she had +tried with such ludicrous unsuccess to effect an entrance, was nothing +to this new life which was to open before her in a few short months now. +Meanwhile, she not only must wait; she could well afford to.</p> + +<p>That was why she could listen with that untroubled smile of hers to the +terrible things that Rodney and James Randolph and Barry Lake and Jane +got into the way of hurling across her dinner table, and to the more +mildly expressed but equally alkaline cynicisms of Jimmy Wallace.</p> + +<p>(Jimmy was dramatic critic on one of the evening papers, as well as a +bit of a playwright. He was a slim, cool, smiling, highly sophisticated +young man, who renounced all privileges as an interpreter of life in +favor of remaining an unbiased observer of it. He never bothered to +speculate about what you ought to do;—he waited to see what you did. He +knew, more or less, everybody in the world,—in all sorts of worlds. He +was, for instance, a great friend of Violet Williamson's and Bella +Forrester's and was, at the same time, on terms of avuncular confidence +with Dotty Blott of the Globe chorus. And he was exactly the same man to +the three of them. He fitted admirably in with their new circle.)</p> + +<p>Well, in the light of the miraculous transformation that lay before her +Rose could listen undaunted to the tough philosophizings her husband and +Barry Lake delighted in as well as to the mordant merciless realities +with which Doctor Randolph and Jimmy Wallace confirmed them. She wasn't +indifferent to it all. She listened with all her might.</p> + +<p>If there was anything in prenatal influence, that baby of hers was going +to be intelligent!</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XI_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<h3>AN ILLUSTRATION</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>So far as externals went, her life, that spring, was immensely +simplified. The social demands on her, which had been so insistent all +winter, stopped almost automatically. The only exception was the Junior +League show in Easter week, for which she put in quite a lot of work. +She was to have danced in it.</p> + +<p>This is an annual entertainment by which Chicago sets great store. All +the smartest and best-looking of the younger set take part in it, in +costumes that would do credit to Mr. Ziegfeld, and as much of Chicago as +is willing and able to pay five dollars a seat for the privilege is +welcome to come and look. Delirious weeks are spent in rehearsal, under +a first-class professional director, audience and performers have an +equally good time, and Charity, as residuary legatee, profits by +thousands.</p> + +<p>Rose dropped in at a rehearsal one day at the end of a solid two hours +of committee work, found it unexpectedly amusing, and made a point +thereafter of attending when she could. Her interest was heightened if +not wholly actuated by some things Jimmy Wallace had been telling her +lately about how such things were done on the real stage.</p> + +<p>He had written a musical comedy once, lived through the production of +it, and had spent a hard-earned two-weeks vacation trouping with it on +the road, so he could speak with authority. It was a wonderful Odyssey +when you could get him to tell it, and as she made a good audience she +got the whole thing—what everybody was like, from the director down, +how the principals dug themselves in and fought to the last trench for +every line and bit of business in their parts, and sapped and mined +ahead to get, here or there, a bit more;—how insanely hard the chorus +worked....</p> + +<p>The thing got a sociological twist eventually, of course, when Jane +wanted to know if it were true, as alleged by a prominent woman writer +on feminism, that the chorus-girls were driven to prostitution by +inadequate pay. Jimmy demolished this assertion with more warmth than he +often showed. He didn't know any other sort of job that paid a totally +untrained girl so well. There were initial requirements, of course. She +had to have reasonably presentable arms and legs and a rudimentary sense +of rhythm. But it took a really accomplished stenographer, for instance, +to earn as much a week as was paid the average chorus-girl. The trouble +was that the indispensable assets in the business were not character and +intelligence and ambition, but just personal charms.</p> + +<p>Rose grinned across at Rodney. "That's like wives, isn't it?" she +observed.</p> + +<p>"And then," Jimmy went on, "the work isn't really hard enough, except +during rehearsals, to keep them out of mischief." Rose smiled again, but +didn't press her analogy any further. "But a girl who's serious about +it, who doesn't have to be told the same thing more than once, and +catches on, sometimes, without being told at all,—why, she can always +have a job and she can be as independent as anybody. She can get +twenty-five dollars a week or even as high as thirty. It's surprising +though," he concluded, "considering what a bunch of morons most of them +are, that they work as well as they do; turn up on time for rehearsals +and performances, even when they're feeling really seedy, stand the +awful bawling out they get every few minutes—because some directors are +downright savages—and keep on going over and over a thing till they're +simply reeling on their pins, without any fuss at all."</p> + +<p>"They can always lose their job," said Barry. "There's great merit in +that."</p> + +<p>The latter part of this conversation was what she was to remember +afterward, but the thing which impressed Rose at the time, and that held +her for hours looking on at the League show rehearsals, was what Jimmy +had told her about the technical side of the work of production, the +labors of the director, and so on.</p> + +<p>The League was paying their director three hundred dollars a week, and +by the end of the third rehearsal Rose decided that he earned it. The +change he could make, even with one afternoon's work, in the +effectiveness, the carrying power, of a dance number was astonishing. It +wasn't at all a question of good taste. There stood Bertie Willis simply +awash with good taste and oozing suggestions whose hopeless futility was +demonstrated, even to him, the moment an attempt was made to put them +into effect. The director was concerned with matters of fact. There were +ascertained methods of getting a certain range of effects and he knew +what they were and applied them—as well as the circumstances admitted. +He was working under difficulties, poor chap! Rose, enlightened by Jimmy +Wallace, could see that. A man habituated to bawling at a girl, when the +spirit so moved him, "Here, you Belmont! What do you think you're trying +to do? You try sleeping at night and staying awake at rehearsal. See how +it works!"—accustomed to the liberty of saying things like that, and +then finding himself under the necessity of swallowing hard and counting +ten, and beginning with an—"I think, if you don't mind ...!" was in a +hard case.</p> + +<p>Bertie Willis had his usefulness here. Sometimes Rose heard the director +whisper hoarsely, "For God's sake, don't let her do that! She <i>can't</i> do +that!" and then Bertie would intervene and accomplish wonders by +diplomacy.</p> + +<p>But it must be wonderfully exhilarating, Rose thought, to know exactly +why that girl was ridiculous and what to do to make her look right. And +to be able to sell your knowledge for three hundred dollars a week. This +was the sort of thing Rodney did, when one came to think of it. She +wondered whether he could sell his special sort of knowledge for as +much. That must be: the sort of possession Simone Gréville had had in +mind when she said that nothing worth having could be bought cheap. +Neither Rodney nor the director had found his specialty growing on a +bush!</p> + +<p>But her specialty, which in her life was to fill the place a knowledge +of stage dancing filled in the director's, was to come in a different +way. You paid a price, of course, for motherhood, in pain and peril, but +it remained a miraculous gift, for all that.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XII_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER XII</h3> + +<h3>WHAT HARRIET DID</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>She must wait for her miracle. As the weeks and months wore away, and as +the season of violent and high-frequency alternations between summer and +winter, which the Chicagoan calls spring, gave place to summer itself, +Rose was driven to intrench herself more and more deeply behind this +great expectation. It was like a dam holding back waters that otherwise +would have rushed down upon her and swept her away.</p> + +<p>The problems went on mounting up behind the dam, of course. All the +minor luxuries of their way of living, which had been so keen a delight +to her during the first unthinking months of their married life; all the +sumptuous little elaborations of existence which she had explored with +such adventurous delight, had changed—now that she knew they had been +bought by the abridgment of her husband's freedom, by the invasion of +the clear space about himself which he had always so jealously +guarded—into a cloud of buzzing stinging distractions.</p> + +<p>And they were the harder to bear now that she recognized how hard they +were going to be to drive away. It would have to be effected without +wounding Rodney's primitive masculine pride—without convicting him of +being an inadequate provider.</p> + +<p>The baffling thing about him was that he had, quite unconsciously and +sincerely, two points of view. His affection for her, his wife, lover, +mistress, was a lens through which he sometimes looked out on the world. +As she refracted the facts of life for him they presented themselves in +the primitive old-fashioned way.</p> + +<p>But there was another window in his soul through which he saw life with +no refractions whatever; remorselessly, logically. Looking through the +window, as he did when he talked to Barry Lake, or James Randolph, he +saw life as a mass of unyielding reciprocities. You got what you paid +for. You paid for what you got. And he saw both men and women—though +chiefly women—tangling and nullifying their lives in futile efforts to +evade this principle; looking for an Eldorado where something was to be +had for nothing; for panaceas; for the soft without the hard.</p> + +<p>He was perfectly capable of seeing and describing an abstract wife like +that in blistering terms that would make an industrious street-walker +look almost respectable by comparison. But when he looked at Rose, he +saw her through the lens, as some one to be loved and desired,—and +prevented, if possible, from paying anything.</p> + +<p>Somehow or other those two views must be reconciled before a life of +real comradeship between them was possible; before the really big thing +she had promised Portia to fight for could be anything more than a +tormenting dream.</p> + +<p>Would the miracle solve this? It must. It was the only thing left to +hope for. In the shelter of the great dam she could wait serene.</p> + +<p>And then came Harriet, and the pressure behind the dam rose higher.</p> + +<p>Rose had tried, rather unsuccessfully, to realize, when during the +earlier days of her marriage she had heard Harriet talked about, that +there was actually in existence another woman who occupied, by blood +anyway, the same position toward Rodney and herself that Frederica did. +She felt almost like a real sister toward Frederica. But without quite +putting the notion into words, she had always felt it was just as well +that Harriet was an Italian <i>contessa</i> four thousand miles away. Rodney +and Frederica spoke of her affectionately, to be sure, but their +references made a picture of a rather formidably correct, seriously +aristocratic sort of person. Harriet had always had, Rose could see, a +very effective voice in the family councils. She hadn't much of a mind, +perhaps; Rodney described it once as a small, well oiled, easy running +sort of mind that stitched away without misgivings, to its conclusions. +Rodney never could have been very fond of her. But she had something he +knew he lacked, and in matters which he regarded as of minor +importance—things that he didn't consider worth bothering much about +one way or the other—he'd submit to her guidance, it appeared, without +much question.</p> + +<p>She had written, on the occasion of Rodney's marriage, a letter to Rose, +professing with perfect adequacy, to give her a sisterly welcome into +the family. But Rose felt pretty sure (a fragment of talk she overheard, +an impatient laugh of Rodney's, and Frederica's "Oh, that's Harriet of +course," had perhaps suggested it) that the <i>contessa</i> regarded Rodney's +marriage as a <i>mésalliance</i>. She had entertained this notion the more +easily because at that time what Harriet thought—whatever Harriet might +think—seemed a matter of infinitesimal importance.</p> + +<p>She'd discovered, along in the winter sometime, that Harriet's affairs +were going rather badly. Neither Rodney nor Frederica had gone into +details. But it was plain enough that both of them were looking for a +smash of some sort. It was in May that the cable came to Frederica +announcing that Harriet was coming back for a long visit. "That's all +she said," Rodney explained to Rose. "But I suppose it means the finish. +She said she didn't want any fuss made, but she hinted she'd like to +have Freddy meet her in New York, and Freddy's going. Poor old Harriet! +That's rather a pill for her to swallow, if it's so. We must try to +cheer her up."</p> + +<p>She didn't seem much in need of cheering up, Rose thought, when they +first met. All that showed on the <i>contessa's</i> highly polished surface +was a disposition to talk humorously over old times with her old +friends, including her brother and sister, and a sort of dismayed +acquiescence in the smoky seriousness, the inadequate civilization, the +sprawling formlessness of the city of her birth, not excluding that part +of it which called itself society.</p> + +<p>In broad strokes, you could describe Harriet by saying she was as +different as a beautiful woman could be from Frederica. She wasn't so +beautiful as Frederica, to be sure, but together they made a +wonderfully contrasted pair—Harriet almost as perfect a brunette type +as Frederica was a blonde, and got up with her ear-rings and her hair +and all to look rather exotic. Her speech, too, and the cultivated +things she could do with her shoulders, carried out the impression. She +had a trick—when she wanted to be disagreeable an ill-natured observer +would have said—of making remarks in Italian and then translating them.</p> + +<p>She wasn't disagreeable though—not malicious anyway, and the very hard +finish she carried, had been developed probably as a matter of +protection. She must have been through a good deal in the last few +years. She'd had two children stillborn, for one thing, and she was +frankly afraid to try it again. She never wanted any sympathy from +anybody. If it came down to that, she'd prefer arsenic. She resisted +Rose's rather poignant charm, as she resisted any other appeal to her +emotions. With the charm left out, Rose was simply a well meaning, +somewhat insufficiently civilized young person, the beneficiary, through +her marriage with Rodney, of a piece of unmerited good fortune. She +didn't in the least mean to be unkind to her, however, and didn't dream +that she was giving Rose an inkling how she thought of her.</p> + +<p>Her manner toward this new member of the family was studiously +affectionate. She avoided being either disagreeable or patronizing. Rose +could see, indeed, how carefully she avoided it. She knew, too, that +Frederica saw the same thing and tried to compensate for it by a little +extra affectionateness. She even thought—though perhaps this was mere +self-consciousness—that she detected a trace of the same thing in +Rodney.</p> + +<p>The tie of blood is a powerful thing. Rose had never realized before how +powerful. With Harriet's arrival, she became aware of the Aldrich family +as a sodality—something she didn't belong to and never could. It was +quite true, as Frederica had said, that she and Rodney had always been +special pals. Harriet fitted into the family on the other side of +Frederica from her brother. She was a person with a good deal of what +one calls magnetism, and she attracted Frederica toward herself—made +her, when she was about, a somewhat different Frederica. She even +attracted Rodney a little in the same way.</p> + +<p>The time of the year (it was after the end of the social season) made it +natural for them to be together a good deal. And of course Harriet's +return, after an absence of years, made them seek such meetings. The +result was that Rose, at the end of almost a year of marriage, got her +first real taste of lonesomeness. When the four of them were together, +Rose felt like an outsider intruding on intimates. They didn't mean her +to feel that way—made a distinct effort, Rodney and Frederica, anyway, +to prevent her feeling that way; which of course only pointed it. They +had old memories to talk about; old friendships. They had, like all +close knit families, a sort of shorthand language to talk in. If Rose +came into the room where they were, she'd often be made aware that the +current subject of the conversation had been dropped and a new one was +getting started; or else there'd be laborious explanations.</p> + +<p>It wouldn't have mattered—not so much anyway, if Rose had had a similar +sodality of her own to fall back on—a mass of roots extending out into +indigenous soil. But Rose, you see, had been transplanted. Her two +brothers were hardly more than faint memories of her childhood. One was +a high-school principal down in Pennsylvania; the other a professor of +history at one of the western state universities. Both of them had +married young and had been very much married—on small incomes—ever +since. The only family she had that counted, was her mother and Portia. +And they were gone now to California.</p> + +<p>She had had a world of what she called friends, of course, of her own +age, at the high school and at the university. But her popularity in +those circles, her easy way of liking everybody, and her energetic +preoccupation with things to do, had prevented any of these friendships +from biting in very deep. None of them had been solidly founded enough +to withstand the wavelike rush of Rodney Aldrich into her life. She had +gone over altogether into her husband's world. The world that had been +her own, hadn't much more existence, except for her mother and sister +out in California, than the memory of a dream.</p> + +<p>But it took Harriet's arrival to make her realize this. And the +realization, when it was pressed home particularly hard, brought with it +moments of downright panic. Everything—everything she had in the world, +went back to Rodney. Except for him, she was living in an absolute +vacuum. What would happen if the stoutly twisted cable that bound her to +him should be broken, as the cable that bound Harriet to her husband +was, apparently, broken? What would she have then of which she could +say, "This much is mine"? Well, she'd have the child. That would be, +partly at least, hers.</p> + +<p>But Harriet's contribution to Rose's difficulties, to the mounting +pressure behind the dam, was destined to be more serious—more actual, +anyway—before very long.</p> + +<p>The question where Rose and Rodney were going to live after their lease +on the McCrea house ended, had begun to press for an answer. October +first was when the lease expired and it wasn't far from the date at +which they expected the baby. Rose wouldn't be in any condition for +house hunting during the hot summer months. Things would have to be +settled somehow before then. A heavy calendar of important cases had +kept Rodney from giving as much attention to the problem as he himself +felt it needed. He had delighted Rose with the suggestion that they go +out into the country somewhere. Not the real country of course, but up +along the shore, where the train service was good and the motor a +possible alternative.</p> + +<p>They spent some very lovely afternoons during the early days of the +emerging spring, cruising about looking at possible places. They talked +of building at first, but long before they could make up their minds +what they wanted it had become too late for that, and they shifted to +the notion of buying an old place somewhere and remodeling it. One +reason why they made no more progress was because they were looking for +such different things. Rodney wanted acres. He'd never gardened a bit, +and never would; was an altogether urban person, despite the physical +energy which took him pounding off on long country walks. But when he +heard there was a tract just west of Martin Whitney's, up at Lake +Forest, that could be had at a bargain—thirty-five thousand dollars—he +let his eye rove over it appreciatively. And Frank Crawford and Howard +West knew of advantageous sites, also, on which to expatiate with +convincing enthusiasm. The kind of house you'd have to build on that +sort of place would cost you an easy thirty thousand more.</p> + +<p>Rose didn't even yet know much about money, to be sure, but she knew +enough to be aghast at all that. What she tried to make Rodney look for +was a much more modest establishment—a yard big enough to hold a tennis +court, perhaps, and a house, well, that could be added to as they needed +room.</p> + +<p>Neither of them stuck very close to the main point on these expeditions. +They always had too good a time together—more like a pair of children +on a picnic than serious home-hunters, and they frittered a good deal of +time away that they couldn't well afford.</p> + +<p>This was the situation when Harriet took a hand in it. It was a +situation made to order for Harriet to take a hand in. She'd sized it up +at a glance, made up her mind in three minutes what was the sensible +thing for them to do, written a note to Florence McCrea in Paris, and +then bided her opportunity to put her idea into effect. She went out +cruising with Rose in the car two or three times, looking at places, but +gave her no indications that she felt more than the most languid +interest in the problem. She could seem less interested in a thing +without being quite impolite, than any one Rose knew.</p> + +<p>When she got Florence McCrea's answer to her letter, she took the first +occasion to get Rodney off by himself and talk a little common sense +into him.</p> + +<p>"What about where to live, Rodney?" she asked. "Made up your mind about +it yet? I suppose you know how many months there are between the first +of June and the first of October."</p> + +<p>"We haven't got much of anywhere," he admitted. "We know we want to live +in the country, that's about all."</p> + +<p>"Out in the country just as winter's getting started?" she asked. +"Settling into a new place—Rose with a new baby—everybody else back in +town;—simply no <i>chance</i> of keeping servants? Roddy, old man, you're +entitled to be a babe in the woods, of course. Any man is who does the +kind of work you do. But it is time some one with a little common sense +straightened you out about this."</p> + +<p>Harriet couldn't be sure from the length of time he took seeing that his +pipe was properly alight, whether he altogether liked this method of +approach or not.</p> + +<p>"Common sense always was a sort of specialty of yours, sis," he said at +last, "and straightening out. You were always pretty good at it." Then, +out of a cloud of his own smoke, "Fire away."</p> + +<p>"Well, in the first place;" she said, "remodeling is the slowest work in +the world, and the fussiest. And you can't just tell an architect, with +a wave of the hand, to go ahead. You have to do your own fussing, which +would drive you crazy. If you had your house to-day, you'd be lucky if +the paint was dry and the thing was fit to move into by the first of +September. And next September, if it's blazing hot, won't be exactly the +time for Rose to go ramping around trying to buy furniture for a whole +establishment—because you haven't a stick yourselves, of course—and +getting settled in, hiring servants, getting the thing going. You can't +be sure you'll have till the first of October. Things like that don't +always happen exactly as they are expected to. But suppose you have good +luck and manage it. Then where are you? Out in the woods somewhere at +the beginning of winter, just when you ought to be settled comfortably +somewhere in town.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know it's all very poetic, sitting in front of a roaring fire of +logs, while the wind bangs the shutters, and that sort of thing, Rose +singing to the baby and all. But you're not an Arcadian one bit. Neither +is she, really, and you'll simply perish out there, both of you, and be +back in town before the holidays.</p> + +<p>"Rose oughtn't to be in town this summer. But she'll have to be to put +this through. She ought to be down at York Harbor, or one of those Cape +Cod places, instead of in this horrible smoky hole. Because she's not so +very fit, really do you think? Bit moody, I'd say."</p> + +<p>"But good lord, Harriet, we've got to get out of here anyway, in +October. And that means we've got to have some sort of place to get +into. It is an awkward time, I'll admit."</p> + +<p>"No, you haven't," she said. "You can stay right here another six +months, if you like. I've heard from Florence. I met her in Paris in +April, and found she wasn't a bit keen to come back and take this house +on. Their securities have gone down again, and they're feeling hard-up. +Florence has got an old barn of an <i>atelier</i>, and she's puttering around +in the mud thinking she's making statuary. Well, when I found how things +stood here, I wrote and asked her if she'd lease for six months more if +she got the chance, and she wrote back and simply grabbed at it. All +you've got to do is to send her a five-word cable and you're fixed. +Then, next spring, when your troubles are over, and you know what you +want, you can look out a place up the shore and have the summer there."</p> + +<p>Rodney smoked half-way through his pipe before he made any comment on +this suggestion.</p> + +<p>"This house isn't just what we want," he said. "In the first place, it's +damned expensive."</p> + +<p>Harriet shrugged her shoulders, found herself a cigarette and lighted +it; picked up one of Florence's poetry books and eyed the heavily tooled +binding with a satirical smile before she replied. She could feel him +looking at her, and she knew he'd wait till she got ready to go on.</p> + +<p>"I'd an idea there was that in it," she said at last. "Freddy said +something ... Rose had been talking to her." Then after another little +silence, and with a sudden access of vehemence, "You don't want to go +and do a regular <i>fool</i> thing, Roddy. You're getting on perfectly +splendidly. You'll be at the head of the bar out here in ten years, if +you keep on. Frank Crawford was telling me about you the other day. +You've settled down, and we thought you never would. It was a corking +move, your taking this house, just because it made you settle down. You +can earn forty thousand dollars next year, just with your practise, if +you want to. But if you pull up and go to live in a barn somewhere, and +stop seeing anybody—people that count, I mean ..."</p> + +<p>Rodney grunted. "You're beyond your depth, sis," he said. "Come back +where you don't have to swim. The expense isn't a capital consideration, +I'll admit that. Now go on from there."</p> + +<p>"That's like old times," she observed with a not ill-humored grimace. "I +wonder if you talk to Rose like that. Oh, I know the house is rather +solemn and absurd. It's Florence herself all over, that's the size of +it, and I suppose you are getting pretty well fed up with it. But what +does that matter for six months more? Heavens! You won't know where +you're living. But the place is comfortable, and there's room in it for +nurses and all and the best doctor in town in the line you'll want, is +right around the corner. And, as I say, when your troubles are over and +you know what you want ..."</p> + +<p>He pocketed his pipe and got up out of this chair.</p> + +<p>"There's something in it," he admitted. "I'll think it over."</p> + +<p>"Better cable Florence as soon as you can," she advised. "She'll want to +know ..."</p> + +<p>Rose protested when the plan for living six months more in Florence +McCrea's house was broached to her. She made the best fight she could. +But Harriet's arguments, re-stated now by Rodney with full conviction, +were too much for her. When she broke down and cried, as she couldn't +help doing, Rodney soothed and comforted her, assured her that this +notion of hers about the expensiveness of it all, was just a +notion—obsession was the word he finally came to—which she must +struggle against as best she could. She'd see things in a truer +proportion afterward.</p> + +<p>Then it came out that he had made all his plans for a long summer +vacation. There was no court work in July and August anyway. He was +going to carry her off to a quiet little place out on Cape Cod that he +knew about, and just luxuriate in her; have her all to himself—not a +soul they knew about them. They would lie about in the sands all day, +building air castles. If she got tired of him, any person she wanted to +see should be telegraphed for forthwith. The one thing she had to bear +in mind was that she was to be happy and not bother about things; leave +everything to him.</p> + +<p>This plan was carried out, and in a paradise, made up of blue sea, white +sands, warm sun and Rodney—Rodney always there, and queerly content to +drowse away the time with her, she almost forgot the great dam and the +pressure of the waters that had mounted up behind it. Was it an +obsession just as Rodney said? Would she find when it was all over and +she rallied herself for the great endeavor, that there was, after all, +no battle to be fought—nothing but a baby at her breast?</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XIII_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER XIII</h3> + +<h3>FATE PLAYS A JOKE</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Traveling bars flowing along parallel, black and white; the white ones +incandescent;—and a small helpless harried thing struggling to keep in +the shadow of the black ones, or to regain it again across the pitiless +zone of white that the little helpless thing called pain.—Traveling +bars flowing along endlessly.</p> + +<p>And then a great ball whirling in planetary space, half dark, half +incandescent white, having for its sole inhabitant, the small harried +thing that struggled to keep in the dark out of the glare of that +pitiless white pain.—One watched its struggles from a long way +off—like God.—But the ball whirled drunkenly and it made one sick to +look.—And then a supervening chaos—no longer a ball but still +whirling, reeling, tottering. Rectangles of light, which, had they kept +still, would have been windows—a mirror.</p> + +<p>And then, very fine and small and weak, something that knew it was Rose +Stanton—Rose Stanton lying in a bed with people about her. She let her +eyes fall heavily shut again lest they should discover she was there and +want her to speak or think.</p> + +<p>The bars came back, but the whiteness of them was no longer so white, +and slowly they faded out. Then, for a long time, nothing. Then sounds, +movements—soft, skilful, disciplined sounds and movements. And, +presently, a hand—a firm powerful hand, that picked up and supported a +heavy limp wrist—Rose Stanton's wrist—and two sensitive finger-tips +that rested lightly on the upper surface of it. After that, an even +measured voice—a voice of authority, whose words no doubt made sense, +only Rose was too tired to think what the sense was:</p> + +<p>"She's out of the ether now, practically. That's a splendid pulse. +She's doing the best thing she can, sleeping like that. It's been a +thoroughly normal delivery from the beginning. Oh, a long difficult one, +I'll admit. But there's nothing now, that you could want better than +what you've got."</p> + +<p>And then another voice, utterly unlike Rodney's and yet unmistakably +his—a ragged voice that tried to talk in a whisper but couldn't manage +it; broke queerly.</p> + +<p>"That's all right," it said. "But I'll find it easier to believe when +..."</p> + +<p>She must see him—must know what it meant that he should talk like that. +With a strong physical effort, she opened her eyes and tried to speak +his name.</p> + +<p>She couldn't; but some one must have been watching and seen, because a +woman's voice said quickly and quietly, "Mr. Aldrich."</p> + +<p>And the next moment, vast and towering, and very blurred in outline, +but, like his voice, unmistakable, was Rodney—her own big strong +Rodney. She tried to hold her arms up to him, but of course she +couldn't.</p> + +<p>And then he shortened suddenly. He had knelt down beside her bed, that +was it. And she felt upon her palm, the pressure of his lips, and his +unshaven cheek, and on her wrist, a warm wetness that must be—tears.</p> + +<p>Why was he crying? What had happened? She must try to think.</p> + +<p>It was very hard. She didn't want to think, but she must. She must begin +with something she knew. She knew who she was. She was Rose—Rodney's +Rose. Here was his mouth down close to the pillow saying her name over +and over and over again. And she was in her own bed. But what had +happened? She must try to remember. She remembered something she had +said—said to herself over and over again an illimitable while ago. +"It's coming. The miracle's beginning." What had she meant by that?</p> + +<p>And then she knew. The urgency of a sudden terror gave her her voice.</p> + +<p>"Roddy," she said. "There was going to be a—baby. Isn't there?"</p> + +<p>Something queerly like a laugh broke his voice when he answered. "Oh, +you darling! Yes. It's all right. That isn't why I'm crying. It's just +because I'm so happy."</p> + +<p>"But the baby!" she persisted. "Why isn't it here?"</p> + +<p>Rodney turned and spoke to some one else. "She wants to see," he said. +"May she?"</p> + +<p>And then a woman's voice (why, it was the nurse, of course! Miss Harris, +who had come last night) said in an indulgent soothing tone, "Why, +surely she may. Wait just a minute."</p> + +<p>But the wait seemed hours. Why didn't they bring the baby—her baby? +There! Miss Harris was coming at last, with a queerly bulky, shapeless +bundle. Rodney stepped in between and cut off the view, but only to +slide an arm under mattress and pillow and raise her a little so that +she could see. And then, under her eyes, dark red and hairy against the +whiteness of the pillow, were two small heads—two small shapeless +masses leading away from them, twitching, squirming. She stared, +bewildered.</p> + +<p>"There were twins, Rose," she heard Rodney explaining triumphantly, but +still with something that wasn't quite a laugh, "a boy and a girl. +They're perfectly splendid. One weighs seven pounds and the other six."</p> + +<p>Her eyes widened and she looked up into his face so that the pitiful +bewilderment in hers was revealed to him.</p> + +<p>"But the <i>baby!</i>" she said. Her wide eyes filled with tears and her +voice broke weakly. "I wanted a baby."</p> + +<p>"You've got a baby," he insisted, and now laughed outright. "There are +two of them. Don't you understand, dear?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes drooped shut, but the tears came welling out along her lashes. +"Please take them away," she begged. And then, with a little sob she +whispered, "I wanted a baby, not those."</p> + +<p>Rodney started to speak, but some sort of admonitory signal from the +nurse silenced him.</p> + +<p>The nurse went away with her bundle, and Rodney stayed stroking her limp +hand.</p> + +<p>In the dark, ever so much later, she awoke, stirred a little restlessly, +and the nurse, from her cot, came quickly and stood beside her bed. She +had something in her hands for Rose to drink, and Rose drank it +dutifully.</p> + +<p>"Is there anything else?" the nurse asked.</p> + +<p>"I just want to know," Rose said; "have I been dreaming, or is it true? +Is there a baby, or are there twins?"</p> + +<p>"Twins, to be sure," said the nurse cheerfully. "The loveliest, +liveliest little pair you ever saw."</p> + +<p>"Thank you," said Rose. "I just wanted to know."</p> + +<p>She shut her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. But she didn't. It was +true then. Her miracle, it seemed somehow, had gone ludicrously awry.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XIV_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER XIV</h3> + +<h3>THE DAM GIVES WAY</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>She began getting her strength back very fast after the next two or +three days, but this queer kink in her emotions didn't straighten out. +She came to see that it was absurd—monstrous almost, but that didn't +help. Instead of a baby, she had given birth to two. They were hers of +course, as much as one would have been. Only, her soul, which had been +waiting so ecstatically for its miracle—for the child which, by making +her a mother, should supply what her life needed—her soul +wouldn't—couldn't accept the substitution. Those two droll, thin +voiced, squirming little mites that were exhibited to her every morning, +were as foreign to her, as detached from her, as if they had been +brought into the house in a basket.</p> + +<p>There was a certain basis of reason back of this. At some time, during +those early hours of misty half-consciousness, it had been decided that +two children would be too much for her to attempt to nurse.</p> + +<p>She had a notion that this idea hadn't originated with the doctor, +though it was he who had stated it to her with the most plausible +firmness. Rodney had backed the doctor up, firmly, too. Rose was only a +girl in years—why, just a child herself; hadn't had her twenty-second +birthday yet; the labor had been long, she was very weak, the children +were big and vigorous, and she couldn't hope to supply them both for +more than a very few weeks, anyway. And, at this time of year, as the +doctor said, there was no difficulty to be apprehended from bottle +feeding. It would be better on all accounts.</p> + +<p>Still, it didn't sound exactly like Roddy's idea either.</p> + +<p>When Harriet came in for the first time to see her, Rose knew. Harriet +was living here now, running the house for Rodney, while Rose was laid +up. Doing it beautifully well, too, through all the confusion of nurses +and all. Not the slightest jar or creak of their complex domestic +machinery ever reached Rose in the big chamber where she lay. Harriet +said:</p> + +<p>"I think you're in great luck to have had two at once; get your duty to +posterity done that much sooner. And, of course, you couldn't possibly +be expected to nurse two great creatures like that."</p> + +<p>Rose acquiesced. What was the use of struggling against so formidable a +unanimity? She would have struggled though, she knew, but for that queer +trick Fate had played her. Her heart ached, as did her breasts. But that +was for the lips of the baby—the baby she hadn't had!</p> + +<p>When she found that struggling with herself, denouncing herself for a +brute, didn't serve to bring up the feelings toward the twins that she +knew any proper mother ought to have, she buried the dark fact as deep +as she could, and pretended. It was only before Rodney that the pretense +was necessary. And with him, really, it was hardly a pretense at all. He +was such a child himself, in his gleeful delight over the possession of +a son and a daughter, that she felt for him, tenderly, mistily, +luminously, the very emotion she was trying to capture for them—felt +like cradling his head in her weak arms, kissing him, crying over him a +little.</p> + +<p>She wouldn't have been allowed to do that to the babies anyway. They +were going to be terribly well brought up, those twins; that was +apparent from the beginning. They had two nurses all to themselves, +quite apart from Miss Harris, who looked after Rose: one uncannily +infallible person, omniscient in baby lore—thoroughgoing, logical, +efficient, remorseless as a German staff officer; and a bright-eyed, +snub-nosed, smart little maid, for an assistant, who boiled bottles, +washed clothes, and, at certain stated hours, over a previously +determined route, at a given number of miles per hour, wheeled the twins +out, in a duplex perambulator, which Harriet had acquired as soon as the +need for it had become evident.</p> + +<p>Miss Harris was to go away to another case at the end of the month. But +Mrs. Ruston (she was the staff officer) and Doris, the maid, were +destined, it appeared, to be as permanent as the babies. But Rose had +the germ of an idea of her own about that.</p> + +<p>They got them named with very little difficulty. The boy was Rodney, of +course, after his father and grandfather before him. Rose was a little +afraid Rodney would want the girl named after her, and was relieved to +find he didn't. There'd never in the world be but one Rose for him, he +said. So Rose named the girl Portia.</p> + +<p>They kept Rose in bed for three weeks; flat on her back as much as +possible, which was terribly irksome to her, since her strength and +vitality were coming back so fast. The irksomeness was added to by a +horrible harness largely of whalebone. Rose got the notion, too, that +the purpose of all this was not quite wholly hygienic. Harriet had said +once: "You know the most distinguished thing about you, Rose, +dear—about your looks, I mean—is that lovely boyish line of yours. It +will be a perfect crime if you let yourself spread out."</p> + +<p>This wasn't the sort of consideration to make the inactivity any easier +to endure. She might have rebelled, had it not been for that germinant +idea of hers. It wouldn't do, she saw, in the light of that, to give +them any excuse for calling her unreasonable.</p> + +<p>At the end of this purgatorial three weeks, she was carried to a chair +and allowed to sit up a little, and by the end of another, to walk +about—just a few steps at a time of course. One Sunday morning, Rodney +carried her up-stairs to the nursery to see her babies bathed. This was +a big room at the top of the house which Florence McCrea had always +vaguely intended to make into a studio. But, in a paralysis of +indecision as to what sort of studio to make it (book-binding, pottery +and art weaving called her about equally) she had left the thing bare.</p> + +<p>Rodney had given Harriet <i>carte blanche</i> to go ahead and fit it up +before he and Rose came back from the seashore, and the layette was a +monument to Harriet's thoroughgoing practicality. There had been a wild +day of supplementing of course, when it was discovered that there were +two babies instead of one.</p> + +<p>The room, when they escorted Rose into it, was a terribly impressive +place. The spirit of a barren sterile efficiency brooded everywhere. And +this appearance of barrenness obtained despite the presence of an +enormous number of articles; a pair of scales, a perfect battery of +electric heaters of various sorts; rows of vacuum jars for keeping +things cold or hot; a small sterilizing oven; instruments and appliances +that Rose couldn't guess the uses or the names of. Mrs. Ruston, of +course, was master of them all, and Doris flew about to do her bidding, +under a watchful and slightly suspicious eye. (Doris was the sort of +looking girl who might be suspected of kissing a tiny pink hand when no +one was looking.)</p> + +<p>Rose surveyed this scene, just as she would have surveyed a laboratory, +or a factory where they make something complicated, like watches. That's +what it was, really. Those two pink little objects, in their two +severely sanitary baskets, were factory products. At precise and +unalterable intervals, a highly scientific compound of fats and proteids +was put into them. They were inspected, weighed, submitted to a routine +of other processes. And in all the routine, there was nothing that their +mother, now they were fairly born, was wanted for. Indispensable to a +certain point, no doubt. But after that rather the other way about—an +obstacle to the routine instead of a part of it.</p> + +<p>Rose kept these ideas to herself and kept her eye on young Doris; +listened to the orders she got; and studied alertly what she did in the +execution of them.</p> + +<p>Rodney had a lovely time watching the twins bathed. He stood about in +everybody's way, made what he conceived to be alluring noises, in the +perfectly unsuccessful attempt to attract the infants' attention, and +finally, when the various processes were complete, on schedule, like a +limited train, and the thermometrically correct bottles of food were +ready, one for each baby, he turned suddenly to his wife and said: +"Don't you want to—hold them, Rose?" She'd have held a couple of +glowing brands in her arms for him, the way he had looked and the way +he had said it.</p> + +<p>A stab of pain went through her and tears came up into her eyes. "Yes, +give them to me," she started to say.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Ruston spoke before she could frame the words. It was their +feeding hour, she pointed out; a bad time for them to be excited, and +the bottles were heated exactly right.</p> + +<p>By that time Rose's idea had flowered into resolution. She knew exactly +what she was going to do. But she mustn't jeopardize the success of her +plan by trying to put it into effect too soon.</p> + +<p>She waited patiently, reasonably, for another fortnight. Harriet by that +time had gone off to Washington on a visit, taking Rodney's heartfelt +thanks with her. Rose expressed hers just as warmly, and felt ashamed +that they were so unreal. She simply mustn't let herself get to +resenting Harriet! At the end of the fortnight, the doctor made his +final visit. Rose had especially asked Rodney to be on hand to hear his +report when the examination was over. Rose and the doctor found him +waiting in the library.</p> + +<p>"He says," Rose told her husband, "that I'm perfectly well." She turned +to the doctor for confirmation, "Don't you?"</p> + +<p>The doctor smiled. "As far as my diagnostic resources go, Mrs. Aldrich, +you are perfectly well."</p> + +<p>Rodney was pleased of course, and expressed this feeling fervently. But +he looked across at his glowing radiant wife, with a touch of misgiving.</p> + +<p>"What are you trying to put over on me?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Not a thing," said Rose demurely. "I thought you'd be glad to know that +I needn't be kept in cotton-wool any more, and that you'd feel surer of +it if he told you."</p> + +<p>"I feel surer that you've got something up your sleeve," he said. And, +to the doctor: "I don't imagine that in saying my wife is perfectly +well, you mean to suggest an absence of all reasonable caution."</p> + +<p>The doctor took the hint, expatiated largely; it was always well to be +careful—one couldn't, in fact, be too careful. The human body at best, +more especially the—ah—feminine human body, was a delicate machine, +not to be abused without inviting serious consequences. He was even a +little reproachful about it.</p> + +<p>"But there's no more reason, is there," Rose persisted, "why I should be +careful than why any other woman should—my nurse-maid for example? Is +she any healthier than I am?"</p> + +<p>It was indiscreet of the doctor to look at her before he answered. Her +eyes were sparkling, the color bright in her cheeks; unconsciously, she +had flattened her shoulders back and drawn a good deep breath down into +her lungs. The doctor smiled a smile of surrender and turned back to +Rodney. "I'll confess," he said, "that in my experience, Mrs. Aldrich is +almost a <i>lusus naturae</i>—a perfectly sound, healthy woman."</p> + +<p>Rose smiled widely and contentedly on the pair of them. "That's more +like it," she said to the doctor. "Thanks very much."</p> + +<p>But after he had gone, she did not spring anything on Rodney, as he +fully expected she would. She took him out for a tramp through the park +in the dusk of a perfect autumn afternoon, and went to a musical show +with him in the evening. She might have been, as far as he could see, +the Rose of a year ago. She had the same lithe boyish swing. She even +wore, though he didn't know it, the same skirt for their walk in the +park that she had worn on some of their tramps before they were married. +And when they had had their evening at the theater, and a bite of supper +somewhere, and come home, she let him drop off to sleep without a word +that would explain her insistence on getting a clean bill of health from +the doctor.</p> + +<p>But the next morning, while Doris was busy in the laundry, she found +Mrs. Ruston in the nursery and had a talk with that lady, which was +destined to produce seismic upheavals.</p> + +<p>"I've decided to make a little change in our arrangements, Mrs. Ruston," +she said. "But I don't think it's one that will disturb you very much. +I'm going to let Doris go—I'll get her another place, of course—and do +her work myself."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ruston compressed her lips, and went on for a minute with what she +was doing to one of the twins, as if she hadn't heard.</p> + +<p>"Doris is quite satisfactory, madam," she said at last. "I'd not advise +making a change. She's a dependable young woman, as such go. Of course I +watch her very close."</p> + +<p>"I think I can promise to be dependable," Rose said. "I don't know much +about babies, of course, but I think I can learn as well as Doris. +Anyhow, I can wheel them about and wash their clothes and boil bottles +and things as well as she does. For the rest, you can tell me what to do +just as you tell her."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Ruston took a considerably longer interval to digest this reply. +"Then you're meaning to give the girl her notice at once, madam?" she +asked.</p> + +<p>"I'm not going to give her notice at all," said Rose. "I'm going to find +her another place. I shan't have any trouble about it though. As you +say, she's a very good nurse-maid, and she's a pleasant sort of a human +being besides. But as soon as I can find her another place, I'm going to +take over her work."</p> + +<p>To this last observation it became evident that Mrs. Ruston meant to +make no reply at all. She gave Rose some statistical information about +the twins instead, in which Rose showed herself politely interested and +presently withdrew.</p> + +<p>It soon appeared, however, that though Mrs. Ruston might be slow and +sparing of speech, she was capable of acting with a positively +Napoleonic dash. Rodney wore a queer expression all through dinner, and +when he got Rose alone in the library afterward, he explained it. Mrs. +Ruston had made her two-hour constitutional that afternoon into an +opportunity for calling on him at his office. She had given him notice, +contingently. She made it an inviolable rule of conduct, it appeared, +never to undertake the care of two infants without the assistance of a +nurse-maid. She was a conscientious person and she felt she couldn't do +justice to her work on any other basis. Rose had informed her of her +intention to dispense with the services of the nurse-maid, without +engaging any one else to take her place. If Rose adhered to this +intention, Mrs. Ruston must leave.</p> + +<p>It was some sort of absurd misunderstanding, of course, Rodney concluded +and wanted to know what it was all about.</p> + +<p>"I did say I meant to let Doris go," Rose explained, "but I told her I +meant to take Doris' job myself. I said I thought I could be just as +good a nurse-maid as she was. I said I'd boil bottles and wash clothes +and take Mrs. Ruston's orders exactly as if I were being paid six +dollars a week and board for doing it. And I meant it just as literally +as I said it."</p> + +<p>He was prowling about the room in a worried sort of way, before she got +as far as that.</p> + +<p>"I don't see, child," he exclaimed, "why you couldn't leave well enough +alone! If it's that old economy bug of yours again, it's nonsense. You'd +save, including board, about ten dollars a week. And it would work out +one of two ways: If you didn't do all the maid's work. Mrs. Ruston would +have a real grievance. She's right about needing all the help she gets. +If you did do it, it would mean that you'd work yourself sick.—Oh, I +know what the doctor said, but that's all rot, and he knew it. You had +him hypnotized. You'd have to give up everything for it—all your social +duties, all our larks together. Oh, it's absurd! You, to spend all your +time doing menial work—scrubbing and washing bottles, to save me ten +dollars a week!"</p> + +<p>"It isn't menial work," Rose insisted. "It's—apprentice work. After +I've been at it six months, learning as fast as I can, I'll be able to +let Mrs. Ruston go and take <i>her</i> job. I'll be really competent to take +care of my own children. I don't pretend I am now."</p> + +<p>"I don't see why you can't do that as things are now. She'll let you +practise bathing them and things like that, and certainly no one would +object to your wheeling them out in the pram. But the nurse-maid would +be on hand in case ..."</p> + +<p>"I'm to take it on then," said Rose, and her voice had a new ring in +it—the ring of scornful anger—"I'm to take it on as a sort of polite +sentimental amusement. I'm not to do any real work for them that depends +on me to get done. I'm not to be able to feel that, even in a +bottle-washing sort of way, I'm doing an indispensable service for them. +They're not to need me for anything, the poor little mites! They're to +be something for me to have a sort of emotional splurge with, just +as"—she laughed raggedly—"just as some of the wives you're so fond of +talking about, are to their husbands."</p> + +<p>He stared at her in perfectly honest bewilderment. He'd never seen her +like this before.</p> + +<p>"You're talking rather wild I think, Rose," he said very quietly.</p> + +<p>"I'm talking what I've learned from you," she said, but she did get her +voice in control again. "You've taught me the difference between real +work, and the painless imitation of it that a lot of us women spend our +lives on—between doing something because it's got to be done and is up +to you, and—finding something to do to spend the time.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Rodney, <i>please</i> try to forget that I'm your wife and that you're +in love with me. Can't you just say: `Here's A, or B, or X, a perfectly +healthy woman, twenty-two years old, and a little real work would be +good for her'?"</p> + +<p>She won, with much pleading, a sort of troubled half-assent from him. +The matter might be borne in mind. It could be taken up again with Mrs. +Ruston.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Ruston was adamant. Under no conceivable circumstances could +she consent to regard her employer's wife as a substitute for her own +hired assistant. There were other nurses though, to be got. Somewhere +one could be found, no doubt, who'd take a broader view.</p> + +<p>Given a fair field, Rose might have won a victory here. But, as Portia +had said once, the pattern was cut differently. There was a sudden alarm +one night, when her little namesake was found strangling with the croup. +There were seven terrifying hours—almost unendurable hours, while the +young life swung and balanced over the ultimate abyss. The heroine of +those hours was Mrs. Ruston. It was her watchfulness that had been +accessible to the first alarm—her instant doing of the one right thing +that stemmed the first onrush. That the child lived was clearly +creditable to her.</p> + +<p>Rose made another effort even after that, though she knew she was beaten +in advance. She waited until the storm had subsided, until the old calm +routine was reestablished. Then, once more, she asked for her chance.</p> + +<p>But Rodney exploded before she got the words fairly out of her mouth.</p> + +<p>"No," he shouted, "I won't consider it! She's saved that baby's life. +Another woman might have, but it's more likely not. You'll have to find +some way of satisfying your whims that won't jeopardize those babies' +lives. After that night—good God, Rose, have you forgotten that +night?—I'm going to play it safe."</p> + +<p>Rose paled a little and sat ivory still in her chair. There were no +miracles any more. The great dam was swept away.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XV_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER XV</h3> + +<h3>THE ONLY REMEDY</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's +soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to +become at last rather apologetic. He said he didn't know why her request +had got him like that. It had seemed to him for a moment as if she +didn't realize what the children's lives meant to them—almost as if she +didn't love them. He knew that was absurd, of course.</p> + +<p>Her own rather monstrous comments on these observations had luckily +remained unspoken. What if she did lose a child as a result of her +effort to care for it herself? She could bear more children. And what +chance had she to love them? Where was the soil for love to take root +in, unless she took care of them herself? These weren't really thoughts +of hers—just a sort of crooked reflection of what he was saying off the +surface of a mind terribly preoccupied with something else.</p> + +<p>She was in the grip of an appalling realization. This moment—this +actually present moment that was going to last only until she should +speak for the next time, or move her eyes around to his face—was the +critical moment of her life. She had, for just this moment, a choice of +two things to say when next she should speak—a choice of two ways of +looking into his face. A mountaineer, standing on the edge of a +crevasse, deciding whether to try to leap across and win a precarious +way to the summit, or to turn back and confess the climb has been in +vain, is confronted by a choice like that. If ever the leap was to be +made, it must be made now. The rainbow bridge across the crevasse, the +miracle of motherhood, had faded like the mist it was composed of.</p> + +<p>She was a mother now. Yet her relation to her husband's life was the +same as that of the girl who had gone to his office the night of the +Randolphs' dinner. And no external event—nothing that could <i>happen</i> to +her (remember that even motherhood had "happened" in her case) could +ever transmute that relation into the thing she wanted. If the alchemy +were to be wrought at all, it would be by the act of her own will—at +the cost of a deliberately assumed struggle. There was nothing, any +more, to hope from waiting. The thing that whispered, "Wait! +To-morrow—some to-morrow or other, it may be easier! Wait until, for +yourself, you've thought out the consequences,"—that was the voice of +cowardice. If she turned back, down the easier path, to-night, it must +be under no delusion that she'd ever try to climb again, or find a pair +of magic wings that would carry her, effortless, to what she wanted.</p> + +<p>Well, then, she had her choice. One of two things she might do now. It +was in her power to look up at him and smile, and say: "All right, +Roddy, old man, I'll stop being disagreeable. I won't have any more +whims." And she could go to him and clasp her hands behind his head and +feel the rough pressure of his cheeks against the velvety surfaces of +her forearms, and kiss his eyes and mouth; surrender to the embrace she +knew so well would follow.</p> + +<p>She could make, after a fashion, a life of that. She had no fear but it +would last. Barring incalculable misfortunes, she ought to be able to +keep her looks and her charm for him, unimpaired, or but little +impaired, for twenty years—twenty-five, with care. For the rich, the +resources of modern civilization would almost guarantee that. Well, +twenty-five years would see Rodney through his fifties. She needn't, +barring accident, have any more children. He'd probably be content with +two; especially as they were boy and girl.</p> + +<p>The other man in him—the man who wasn't her lover—would struggle of +course. Except when she was by, the lover would probably have a bad time +of it. She'd have to find some amusing sort of occupation to enable her +to forget that. But when she was there, it would be strange if she and +her lover together couldn't, most of the time, keep the other man locked +up where he wouldn't disturb them much.</p> + +<p>Lived without remorse or misgivings, played magnificently for all it +was worth, as she could play it—she knew that now—it would be a rather +wonderful life. They must be decidedly an exceptional pair of lovers, +she thought. Certainly Madame Gréville's generalization about Americans +did not apply to them, and she was coming to suspect it did apply to the +majority of her friends. She could have that life—safely, surely, as +far as our poor mortality can be sure of anything. She had only to reach +out her hands.</p> + +<p>But if, instead, she took the leap ...!</p> + +<p>"Roddy ..." she said.</p> + +<p>He was slumped down in a big easy chair at the other side of the table, +swinging a restless foot; drumming now and then with his fingers. It was +many silent minutes since the storm of reproach with which he had +repelled her plea for a part in the actual responsible care of her +children had died away. He had spoken with unnecessary vehemence, he +knew. He had admitted that—said he was sorry, as well as he could +without withdrawing from his position. But he had been met by that most +formidable of all weapons—a blank silence—an inscrutable face. Some +sort of scene was inevitable, he knew. And he sat there waiting for it. +She had been hurt. She was undoubtedly very angry.</p> + +<p>He thought he was ready for anything. But just the way she spoke his +name, startled—almost frightened—him, she said it so quietly, +so—tenderly.</p> + +<p>"Roddy," she said, "I want you to come over here and kiss me, and then +go back and sit down in that chair again."</p> + +<p>He went a little pale at that. The swing of his foot was arrested +suddenly. But, for a moment, he made no move—just looked wonderingly +into her great grave eyes.</p> + +<p>"Something's going to happen," she went on, "and before it's over, I'm +afraid it's going to hurt you terribly—and me. And I want the kiss for +us to remember. So that we'll always know, whatever happens afterward, +that we loved each other." She held out her arms to him. "Won't you +come?"</p> + +<p>He came—a man bewildered—bent down over her and found her lips; but +almost absently, out of a daze.</p> + +<p>"No, not like that," she murmured. "In the old way."</p> + +<p>There was a long embrace.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't do it," she said, "I don't believe I'd have the courage to +do it, if it were just me. But there's some one else—I've made some one +a promise. I can't tell you about that. Now please go back and sit over +there where you were, where we can talk quietly.—Oh, Roddy, I love you +so!—No, please go back, old man! And—and light your pipe. Oh, don't +tremble like that! It—it isn't a tragedy. It's—for us, it's the +greatest hope in the world."</p> + +<p>He went back to his chair. He even lighted his pipe as she asked him to, +and waited as steadily as he could for her to begin.</p> + +<p>But she couldn't begin while she looked at him. She moved a little +closer to the table and leaned her elbow on it, shaded her eyes with one +hand, while the other played with the stump of a pencil that happened to +be lying there.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember ..." she began, and it was wonderful how quiet and +steady her voice was. There was even the trace of a smile about her +wonderful mouth. "Do you remember that afternoon of ours, the very first +of them, when you brought home my note-books and found me asleep on the +couch in our old back parlor? Do you remember how you told me that one's +desires were the only motive power he had? One couldn't ride anywhere, +you said, except on the backs of his own passions? Well, it was a funny +thing—I got to wondering afterward what my desires were, and it seemed +I hadn't any. Everything had, somehow, come to me before I knew I wanted +it. Everything in the world, even your love for me, came like that.</p> + +<p>"But I've got a passion now, Rodney. I've had it for a long while. It's +a desire I can't satisfy. The thing I want, and there's nothing in the +world that I wouldn't give to get it, is—well, your friendship; that's +a way of saying it."</p> + +<p>What he had been waiting to hear, of course, she didn't know. But she +knew by the way he started and stared at her, that it hadn't been for +that. The thing struck him, it seemed, as a sort of grotesquely +irritating anti-climax.</p> + +<p>"Gracious Heaven!" he said. "My friendship! Why, I'm in love with you! +That's certainly a bigger thing. Go back to your geometry, child. The +greater includes the less, doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know whether it's a bigger thing or not," she said. "But it +doesn't include the other. Love's just a sort of miracle thing that +happens to you. You don't have it because you deserve it. The person I +made that promise to would have earned it, if any one could. But it +doesn't come that way. It's like lightning. It strikes or else it +doesn't. Well, it struck us. But friendship—there's this about it. You +can't get it any way in the world, except just by earning it. Nobody can +give it to you, no matter how hard he tries. So when you've got it, you +can always say, 'There's something that I'm entitled to—something +that's mine.' Your love isn't mine any more than the air is. I never did +anything to earn it.</p> + +<p>"And that's why it can't satisfy me.—Because it doesn't, Roddy. It +hasn't for ever so long. It's something wonderful that's—<i>happened</i> to +me. It's the loveliest thing that ever happened to anybody. And just +because it's so wonderful and beautiful, I can't bear to—well, this is +hard to say—I can't bear to use it to live on. I can't bear to have it +mixed up in things like millinery bills and housekeeping expense. I +can't bear to see it become a thing that piles a load of hateful +obligations on your back. I could live on your friendship, Roddy; +because your friendship would mean that somehow I was earning my way, +but I can't live on your love; any more than you could on mine. Won't +you—won't you just try to think for a moment what that would mean to +you?"</p> + +<p>Now that he had sensed the direction her talk was headed in, even though +he hadn't even vaguely glimpsed the point at which she was going to +bring up, he made it much harder for her to talk to him. He was tramping +up and down the room, stopping and turning short every now and then with +a gesture of exasperation, or an interruption that never got beyond two +or three words and broke off always in a sort of frantic speechlessness.</p> + +<p>She knew he couldn't help it. Down underneath his mind, controlling +utterly its processes, was a ganglion of instincts that were utterly +outraged by the things she was saying to him. It was they and not his +intelligence she had to fight. She must be patient, as gentle as she +could, but she must make him listen.</p> + +<p>"You've got my friendship!" he cried out now. "It's a grotesque +perversion of the facts to say you haven't."</p> + +<p>She smiled at him as she shook her head. "I've spent too many months +trying to get it and seeing myself fail—oh, so ridiculously!—not to +know what I am talking about, Roddy."</p> + +<p>And then, still smiling, rather sadly, she told what some of the +experiments had been—some of her attempts to break into the life he +kept locked away from her and carry off a share of it for herself.</p> + +<p>"I was angry at first when I found you keeping me out," she said, "angry +and hurt. I used to cry about it. And then I saw it wasn't your fault. +That's how I discovered friendship had to be earned."</p> + +<p>But her power to maintain that attitude of grave detachment was about +spent. The passion mounted in her voice and in her eyes as she went on.</p> + +<p>"You thought it was because of my condition, as you called it, that my +mind had got full of wild ideas;—the wild idea that I wasn't really and +truly your wife at all, but only your mistress, and that I was pulling +you down from something free and fine that you had been, to something +that you despised yourself for being and had to try to deny you were. +Those were the obsessions of a pregnant woman, you thought—something +she was to be soothed and coddled into forgetting. You were wrong about +that, Roddy.</p> + +<p>"I did have an obsession, but it wasn't the thing you thought. It was an +obsession that kept me quiet, and contented and happy, and willing to +wait in spite of everything. The obsession was that none of those things +mattered because a big miracle was coming that was going to change it +all. I was going to have a job at last—a job that was just as real as +yours—the job of being a mother."</p> + +<p>Her voice broke in a fierce sharp little laugh over the word, but she +got it back in control again.</p> + +<p>"I was going to have a baby to feed out of my own body, to keep alive +with my own care. There was going to be responsibility and hard work, +things that demanded courage and endurance and sacrifice. I could earn +your friendship with that, I said. That was the real obsession, Roddy, +and it never really died until to-night. Because of course I have kept +on hoping, even after I might have seen how it was. But the babies' +lives aren't to be jeopardized to gratify my whims. Well, I suppose I +can't complain. It's over, that's the main thing.</p> + +<p>"And now, here I am perfectly normal and well again—as good as ever. +I've kept my looks—oh, my hair and my complexion and my figure. I could +wear pretty clothes again and start going out to things now that the +season's begun, just as I did a year ago. People would admire me, and +you'd be pleased, and you'd love me as much as ever, and it would all be +like the paradise it was last year, except for one thing. The one thing +is that if I do that, I'll know this time what I really am. Your +mistress, Roddy; your legal, perfectly respectable mistress,—and a +little more despicable rather than less, I think, because of the +adjectives."</p> + +<p>"I've let that word go by once," he said quietly, but with a dangerous +light of anger in his eyes. "I won't again. It's perfectly outrageous +and inexcusable that you should talk like that, and I'll ask you never +to do it again."</p> + +<p>"I won't," she flashed back at him, "if you'll explain why I'm not +exactly what I say." And after ten seconds of silence, she went on.</p> + +<p>"Why, Roddy, I've heard you describe me a hundred times. Not the you +that's my lover. The other you; talking all over the universe to Barry +Lake. You've described the woman who's never been trained nor taught nor +disciplined; who's been brought up soft, with the bloom on, for the +purpose of making her marriageable; who's never found her job in +marriage, who doesn't cook, nor sew, nor spin, nor even take care of her +own children; the woman who uses her sex charm to save her from having +to do hard ugly things, and keep her in luxury. Do you remember what +you've called her, Roddy? Do you remember the word you've used? I've +used a gentler word than that.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you didn't know, you poor blind boy, that I was the woman you were +talking about. You never saw it at all. But I am. I was brought up like +that.—Oh, not on purpose. Dear old mother! She wasn't trying to make me +into a prostitute any more then you are trying to make me into your +mistress. You both love me, that's all. It's just an instinct not to let +anything hurt me, nor frighten me, nor tire me, nor teach me what work +is. She thought she was educating me to be a lawyer so that when the +time came, I could be one of the leaders of the woman movement just as +she'd been. And all the while, without knowing it, she was educating me +to be the sort of person you'd fall in love with—something precious and +expensive—something to be taken care of.</p> + +<p>"I didn't understand any of that when you married me, Roddy; it was just +like a dream to me—like a fairy story come true. If any one had told me +a year ago, that I should ever be anything but perfectly happy in your +love for me, I'd have laughed at him. I remember telling Madame Gréville +that our marriage had turned out well—ended happily. And she did laugh. +That was before I'd begun to understand. But I do understand now. I know +why it was you could talk to me, back in those days before we were +married, about anything under the sun—things ten thousand miles above +my head; what it was that fooled me into thinking we were friends as +well as lovers. I know why you've never been able to talk to me like +that since. And I know—this is the worst of all, Roddy,—this is the +piece of knowledge that makes it impossible—I know what a good mistress +I could make. I know I could make you love me whether you wanted to or +not; whether I loved you or not. I could make other men love me, if I +could make up my mind to do it—make them tell me all their hopes and +dreams, and think I had a fine mind and a wonderful understanding. Oh, +it's too easy—it's too hatefully easy!</p> + +<p>"Do you know why I told you that? Because if you believe it and +understand it, you will see why I can't go on living on your love. +Because how can you be sure, knowing that my position in the world, my +friends—oh, the very clothes on my back, and the roof over my head, are +dependent on your love,—how are you going to be sure that my love for +you is honest and disinterested? What's to keep you from +wondering—asking questions? Love's got to be free, Roddy. The only way +to make it free is to have friendship growing alongside it. So, when I +can be your partner and your friend, I'll be your mistress, too. But +not—not again, Roddy, till I can find a way. I'll have to find it for +myself. I'll have to go...."</p> + +<p>She broke down there over a word she couldn't at first say, buried her +face in her arms and let a deep racking sob or two have their own way +with her. But presently she sat erect again and, with a supreme effort +of will, forced her voice to utter the word.</p> + +<p>"I've got to go somewhere alone—away from you, and stay until I find +it. If I ever do, and you want me, I'll come back."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XVI_2"></a><h3>CHAPTER XVI</h3> + +<h3>ROSE OPENS THE DOOR</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>The struggle between them lasted a week—a ghastly week, during which, +as far as the surface of things showed, their life flowed along in its +accustomed channels. It was a little worse than that, really, because +the week included, so an ironic Fate had decreed, Thanksgiving Day and a +jolly family party at Frederica's, with congratulations on the past, +plans for the future. And Rose and Rodney, as civilized persons will do, +kept their faces, accepted congratulations, made gay plans for the +twins; smiled or laughed when necessary—somehow or other, got through +with it.</p> + +<p>But at all sorts of times, and in all sorts of places when they were +alone together, the great battle was renewed; mostly through the dead +hours of the night, in Rose's bedroom, she sitting up in bed, he +tramping up and down, shivering and shuddering in a big bath-robe. It +had a horrible way of interrupting itself for small domestic +commonplaces, which in their assumption of the permanency of their old +life, their blind disregard of the impending disaster, had an almost +unendurable poignancy. A breakfast on the morning of an execution is +something like that.</p> + +<p>The hardest thing about it all for Rose—the thing that came nearest to +breaking down her courage—was to see how slowly Rodney came to realize +it at all. He was like a trapped animal pacing the four sides of his +cage confident that in a moment or two he would find the way out, and +then, incredulously, dazedly, coming to the surmise that there was no +way out. She really meant to go away and leave him—leave the babies; go +somewhere where his care and protection could not reach her! She was +actually planning to do it—planning the details of doing it! By the end +of one of their long talks, it would seem to her he had grasped this +monstrous intention and accepted it. But before the beginning of the +next one, he seemed to manage somehow to dismiss the thing as an +impossible nightmare.</p> + +<p>An invitation came in from the Crawfords for a dance at the Blackstone, +the fifth of December, and he said something about accepting it.</p> + +<p>"I shan't be here then, Roddy, you know," she said.</p> + +<p>He went completely to pieces at that, as if the notion of her going away +had never really reached his mind before.</p> + +<p>The struggle ranged through the widest possible gamut of moods. They had +their moments of rapturous love—passionate attempts at self-surrender. +They had long hours of cool discussion, as impersonal as if they had +been talking about the characters out of a hook instead of about +themselves. They had stormy nerve-tearing hours of blind agonizing, +around and around in circles, lacerating each other, lashing out at each +other, getting nowhere. They had moments of incandescent anger.</p> + +<p>He tried, just once, early in the fight, to take the ground he had taken +once before; that she was irresponsible, obsessed. There was a fracture +somewhere, as James Randolph's jargon had it, in her unconscious mind. +She didn't let him go far with that. He saw her blaze up in a splendid +burst of wrath, as she had blazed once—oh, an eternity ago, at a +street-car conductor. Her challenge rang like a sword out of a scabbard.</p> + +<p>"We'll settle that before we go any further," she said. "Telephone for +James Randolph, or any other alienist you like. Let him take me and put +me in a sanatorium somewhere and keep me under observation as long as he +pleases, until he's satisfied whether I'm out of my mind or not. But +unless you're willing to do that, don't call me irresponsible."</p> + +<p>He grew more reasonable as a belief in her complete seriousness and +determination sobered him. He made desperate efforts to recover his +self-control—to get his big, cool, fine mechanism of a mind into +action. But his mind, to his complete bewilderment, betrayed him. He'd +always looked at Rose before, through the lens of his emotions. But now +that he forced himself to look at her through the non-refracting window +from which he looked at the rest of the world, she compelled him again +and again to admit that she was right.</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't I be right?" she said with a woebegone smile. "These are +all just things I've learned from you."</p> + +<p>After a long and rather angry struggle with himself, he made up his mind +to a compromise, and in one of their cooler talks together, he offered +it.</p> + +<p>"We've both of us pretty well lost our sense of proportion, it seems to +me," he said. "This whole ghastly business started from my refusing to +let Mrs. Ruston go and get a nurse who'd allow you to be your own +nurse-maid. Well, I'm willing to give up completely on that point. You +can let Mrs. Ruston go as soon as you like and get a nurse who'll meet +with your ideas."</p> + +<p>"You're doing that," said Rose thoughtfully, "rather than let me go +away. That's the way it is, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, of course," he admitted. "I was looking at things from the +children's point of view, and I thought I was right. From their point of +view, I still think so."</p> + +<p>She drew in a long sigh and shook her head. "It won't do, Roddy. Can't +you see you're giving way practically under a threat—because I'll go +away if you don't? But think what it would mean if I did stay, on those +terms. The thing would rankle always. And if anything did happen to one +of the babies because the new nurse wasn't quite so good, you'd never +forgive me—not in all the world.</p> + +<p>"And," she added a little later, "that would be just as true of any +other compromise. I mean like going and living in a flat and letting me +do the housework—any of the things we've talked about. I can say I am +going away, don't you see, but I couldn't say I'd go away—<i>unless</i> ... +I couldn't use that threat to extort things from you without killing our +whole life dead. Can't you see that?"</p> + +<p>His mind infuriated him by agreeing with her—goaded him into another +passionate outburst during which he accused her of bad faith, of being +tired of him, anxious to get away from him—seizing pretexts. But he +offered no more compromises. The thing he fell back on after that was a +plea for delay. The question must be decided coolly; not like this. Let +them just put it out of their minds for a while, go on with the old +routine as if nothing threatened it and see if things didn't work +somewhat better—see if they weren't, after all, better friends than she +thought.</p> + +<p>"If I were ill, Roddy," she said, "and there was an operation talked +about; if they said to you that there was something I might drag along +for years, half alive, without, but that if I had it, it would either +kill or cure, you wouldn't urge delay. We'd decide for or against it and +be done. It's—it's taking just all the courage I've got to face this +thing now that I am excited—now that I've thought it out and talked it +out with you—now that I've got the big hope before my eyes. But to wait +until I was tangled in the old routine and the babies began to get a +little older and more—human, so that they knew me, and then do it in +cold blood! I couldn't do that. We'd patch up some sort of a life, +pretending a little, quarreling a little, and when my feelings got +especially hurt about something, I'd try to make myself think, and you, +that I was going away. And we'd both know down inside that we were +cowards."</p> + +<p>He protested against the word, but she stuck to it.</p> + +<p>"We're both afraid now," she insisted. "That's one of the things that +makes us so cruel to each other when we talk—fear. The world's a +terrible place to me, Roddy. I've never ventured out alone in it; not a +step. A year ago, I don't think I'd have been so frightened. I didn't +know then—I'd never really thought about it—what a hard dangerous +thing it is, just to earn enough to keep yourself alive. I haven't any +illusions now that it's easy—not after the things I've heard Barry Lake +tell about. But sometimes I think you're more afraid than I; and that +you've got a more intolerable thing to fear—ridicule—an intangible +sort of pitying ridicule that you can't get hold of; guessing at the +sort of things people will say and never really quite knowing. And we +have each got the other's fear to suffer under, too.—Oh, Roddy, Roddy, +don't hate me too bitterly ...! But I think if we can both endure it, +stand the gaff, as you said once, and know that the other's standing it, +too, perhaps that'll be the real beginning of the new life."</p> + +<p>Somehow or other, during their calmer moments toward the end, practical +details managed to get talked about—settled after a fashion, without +the admission really being made on his part that the thing was going to +happen at all.</p> + +<p>"I'd do everything I could of course, to make it easier," she said. "We +could have a story for people that I'd gone to California to make mother +a long visit. You could bring Harriet home from Washington to keep house +while I was gone. I'd take my trunks, you see, and really go. People +would suspect of course, after a while, but they'll always pretend to +believe anything that's comfortable—anything that saves scenes and +shocks and explanations."</p> + +<p>"Where would you go, really?" he demanded. "Have you any plan at all?"</p> + +<p>"I have a sort of plan," she said. "I think I know of a way of earning a +living."</p> + +<p>But she didn't offer to go on and tell him what it was, and after a +little silence, he commented bitterly on this omission.</p> + +<p>"You won't even give me the poor satisfaction of knowing what you're +doing," he said.</p> + +<p>"I'd love to," she said, "—to be able to write to you, hear from you +every day. But I don't believe you want to know. I think it would be too +hard for you. Because you'd have to promise not to try to get me +back—not to come and rescue me if I got into trouble and things went +badly and I didn't know where to turn. Could you promise that, Roddy?"</p> + +<p>He gave a groan and buried his face in his hands. Then:</p> + +<p>"No," he said furiously. "Of course I couldn't. See you suffering and +stand by with my hands in my pockets and watch!" He sprang up and seized +her by the arms in a grip that actually left bruises, and fairly shook +her in the agony of his entreaty. "Tell me it's a nightmare, Rose," he +said. "Tell me it isn't true. Wake me up out of it!"</p> + +<p>But under the indomitable resolution of her blue eyes, he turned away. +This was the last appeal of that sort that he made.</p> + +<p>"I'll promise," she said presently, "to be sensible—not to take any +risks I don't have to take. I'll regard my life and my health and all, +as something I'm keeping in trust for you. I'll take plenty of warm +sensible clothes when I go; lots of shoes and stockings—things like +that, and if you'll let me, I'll—I'll borrow a hundred dollars to start +myself off with. It isn't a tragedy, Roddy,—not that part of it. You +wouldn't be afraid for any one else as big and strong and healthy as I."</p> + +<p>Gradually, out of the welter of scenes like that, the thing got itself +recognized as something that was to happen. But the parting came at last +in a little different way from any they had foreseen.</p> + +<p>Rodney came home from his office early one afternoon, with a telegram +that summoned him to New York to a conference of counsel in a big public +utility case he had been working on for months. He must leave, if he +were going at all, at five o'clock. He ransacked the house, vainly at +first, for Rose, and found her at last in the trunk-room—dusty, +disheveled, sobbing quietly over something she held hugged in her arms. +But she dried her eyes and came over to him and asked what it was that +had brought him home so early.</p> + +<p>He showed her the telegram. "I'll have to leave in an hour," he said, +"if I'm to go."</p> + +<p>She paled at that, and sat down rather giddily on a trunk. "You must +go," she said, "of course. And—Roddy, I guess that'll be the easiest +way. I'll get my telegram to-night—pretend to get it—from Portia. And +you can give me the hundred dollars, and then, when you come back, I'll +be gone."</p> + +<p>The thing she had been holding in her hands slipped to the floor. He +stooped and picked it up—stared at it with a sort of half awakened +recognition.</p> + +<p>"I f—found it," she explained, "among some old things Portia sent over +when she moved. Do you know what it is? It's one of the note-books that +got wet—that first night when we were put off the street-car. And—and, +Roddy, look!"</p> + +<p>She opened it to an almost blank page, and with a weak little laugh, +pointed to the thing that was written there:</p> + +<p>"'March fifteenth, nineteen twelve!' Your birthday, you see, and the day +we met each other."</p> + +<p>And then, down below, the only note she had made during the whole of +that lecture, he read: "Never marry a man with a passion for +principles."</p> + +<p>"That's the trouble with us, you see," she said. "If you were just an +ordinary man without any big passions or anything, it wouldn't matter +much if your life got spoiled. But with us, we've got to try for the +biggest thing there is. Oh, Roddy, Roddy, darling! Hold me tight for +just a minute, and then I'll come and help you pack."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="BOOK_THREE"></a><h3>BOOK THREE</h3> + +<h3>The World Alone</h3> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_I_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<h3>THE LENGTH OF A THOUSAND YARDS</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>"Here's the first week's rent then," said Rose, handing the landlady +three dollars, "and I think you'd better give me a receipt showing till +when it's paid for. Do you know where there's an expressman who would go +for a trunk?"</p> + +<p>The landlady had tight gray hair, a hard bitten hatchet face, and a back +that curved through a forty-degree arc between the lumbar and the +cervical vertebræ, a curve which was accentuated by the faded +longitudinal blue and white stripes—like ticking—of the dress she +wore. She had no charms, one would have said, of person, mind or manner. +But it was nevertheless true that Rose was renting this room largely on +the strength of the landlady. She was so much more humanly possible than +any of the others at whose placarded doors Rose had knocked or rung ...!</p> + +<p>For the last year and a half, anyway since she had married Rodney +Aldrich, the surface that life had presented to her had been as bland as +velvet. She'd never been spoken to by anybody except in terms of +politeness. All the people she encountered could be included under two +categories: her friends, if one stretches the word to include all her +social acquaintances, and, in an equally broad sense, her servants; that +is to say, people who earned their living by doing things she wanted +done. Her friends' and her servants' manners were not alike, to be sure, +but as far as intent went, they came to the same thing. They presented, +whatever passions, misfortunes, dislikes, uncomfortable facts of any +sort might lie in the background, a smooth and practically frictionless, +bearing surface. A person accustomed to that surface develops a soft +skin. This was about the first of Rose's discoveries.</p> + +<p>To be looked at with undisguised suspicion—to have a door slammed in +her face as the negative answer to a civil question, left her at first +bewildered, and then enveloped in a blaze of indignation. It was perhaps +lucky for her that this happened at the very beginning of her +pilgrimage. Because, with that fire once alight within her, Rose could +go through anything. The horrible fawning, leering landlady whom she had +encountered later, might have turned her sick, but for that fine steady +glow. The hatchet-faced one she had finally arrived at, made no +protestations of her own respectability, and she seemed, though rather +reluctantly, willing to assume that of her prospective lodger. She was +puzzled about something, Rose could see; disposed to be very watchful +and at no pains to conceal this attitude.</p> + +<p>Well, she'd probably learned that she had to watch, poor thing! And, for +that matter, Rose would probably have to do some watching on her own +account. And, if the fact was there, why bother to keep up a +contradictory fiction. So Rose asked for a receipt.</p> + +<p>The matter of the trunk was easily disposed of. Rose had a check for it. +It was at the Polk Street Station. There was a cigar and news stand two +blocks down, the landlady said, where an expressman had his +headquarters. There was a blue sign out in front: "Schulz Express"; Rose +couldn't miss it.</p> + +<p>The landlady went away to write out a receipt. Rose closed the door +after her and locked it.</p> + +<p>It was a purely symbolistic act. She wasn't going to change her clothes +or anything, and she didn't particularly want to keep anybody out. But, +in a sense in which it had never quite been true before, this was her +room, a room where any one lacking her specific invitation to enter, +would be an intruder—a condition that had not obtained either in her +mother's house or in Rodney's.</p> + +<p>She smiled widely over the absurdity of indulging in a pleasurable +feeling of possession in a squalid little cubby-hole like this. The +wall-paper was stained and faded, the paint on the soft-wood floor worn +through in streaks; there was an iron bed—a double bed, painted light +blue and lashed with string where one of its joints showed a disposition +to pull out. The mattress on the bed was lumpy. There was a +dingy-looking oak bureau with a rather small but pretty good plate-glass +mirror on it; a marble topped, black walnut wash-stand; a pitcher of the +plainest and cheapest white ware standing in a bowl on top of it, and a +highly ornate, hand-painted slop-jar—the sole survivor, evidently, of a +much prized set—under the lee of it. The steep gable of the roof cut +away most of one side of the room, though there would be space for +Rose's trunk to stand under it, and across the corner, at a curiously +distressing angle, hung an inadequate curtain that had five or six +clothes hooks behind it.</p> + +<p>In the foreground of the view out of the window, was a large oblong +plateau—the flat roof of an extension which had casually been attached +to the front of the building and carried it forward to the sidewalk over +what had once been a small front yard. The extension had a plate-glass +front and was occupied, Rose had noticed before she plunged into the +little tunnel that ran alongside it and led to the main building, by a +dealer in delicatessen. Over the edge of the flat roof, she could see +the top third of two endless streams of trolley-cars, for the traffic in +this street was heavy, by night, she imagined, as well as by day.</p> + +<p>The opposite façade of the street, like the one of which her own wall +and window formed a part, was highly irregular and utterly casual. There +were cheap two-story brick stores with false fronts that carried them up +a half story higher. There were little gable-ended cottages with their +fronts hacked out into show-windows. There were double houses of brick +with stone trimmings that once had had some residential pretensions. The +one characteristic that they possessed in common, was that of having +been designed, patently, for some purpose totally different from the one +they now served.</p> + +<p>The shops on the street level had, for the most part, an air of shabby +prosperity. There was, within the space Rose's window commanded, a cheap +little tailor shop, the important part of whose business was advertised +by the sign "pressing done." There was a tobacconist's shop whose +unwashed windows revealed an array of large wooden buckets and dusty +lithographs; a shoe shop that did repairing neatly while you waited; a +rather fly-specked looking bakery. There was a saloon on the corner, and +beside it, a four-foot doorway with a painted transom over it that +announced it as the entrance of the Bellevue Hotel.</p> + +<p>The signs on the second-story windows indicated dentist parlors, the +homes of mid-wives, ladies' tailors and dressmakers, and everywhere +furnished rooms for light housekeeping to let.</p> + +<p>The people who patronized those shops, who drank their beer at the +corner saloon, who'd be coming hurriedly in the night to ring up the +mid-wife, who smoked the sort of tobacco that was sold from those big +wooden buckets; the people who lounged along the wide sidewalks, or came +riding down-town at seven in the morning, and back at six at night, +packed so tight that they couldn't get their arms up to hold by the +straps in the big roaring cars that kept that incessant procession going +in the middle of the street—they all inhabited, Rose realized, a world +utterly different from the one she had left. The distance between the +hurrying life she looked out on through her grimy window, and that which +she had been wont to contemplate through Florence McCrea's exquisitely +leaded casements, was simply planetary.</p> + +<p>And yet, queerly enough, in terms of literal lineal measurement, the +distance between the windows themselves, was less than a thousand yards. +Less than ten minutes' walking from the mouth of the little tunnel +alongside the delicatessen shop, would take her back to her husband's +door. She had, in her flight out into the new world, doubled back on her +trail. And, such is the enormous social and spiritual distance between +North Clark Street and The Drive, she was as safely hidden here, as +completely out of the orbit of any of her friends, or even of her +friends' servants, as she could have been in New York or in San +Francisco.</p> + +<p>Having to come away furtively like this was a terrible countermine +beneath her courage. If only she could have had a flourish of defiant +trumpets to speed her on her way! But, done like that, the thing would +have hurt Rodney too intolerably. His intelligence might be twentieth +century or beyond. It might acquiesce in, or even enthusiastically +advocate, a relation between men and women that hadn't existed, anyway +since the beginning of the Christian Era; it might accept without +faltering, all the corollaries pendent to that relation. But his +actuating instincts, his psychical reflexes, stretched their roots away +back to the Middle Ages. Under the dominance of those instincts, a man +lost caste—became an object of contemptuous derision, if he couldn't +keep his wife. It was bad enough to have another man take her away from +him, but it was worse to have her go away in the absence of such an +excuse; worst of all, to have her go away to seek a job and earn her own +living.</p> + +<p>Rose didn't know how long the secret could be kept. Wherever she went, +whatever she did, there'd always be the risk that some one who could +carry back the news to Rodney's friends, would recognize her. It was a +risk that had to be taken, and she didn't intend to allow herself to be +paralyzed by a perpetual dread of what might at any time happen. At the +same time, she'd protect the secret as well as she could.</p> + +<p>But there were two people it couldn't be kept from—Portia and her +mother. Rose had at first entertained the notion of keeping her mother +in the dark. It wasn't until she had spent a good many hours figuring +out expedients for keeping the deception going, that she realized it +couldn't be done. She had been writing her mother a letter a week ever +since the departure to California—letters naturally full of domestic +details that simply couldn't be kept up. The only possible deception +would be a compromise with the truth and compromises of that sort are +apt to be pretty unsatisfactory. They suggest concealments in every +phase, and to an imaginative mind, are more terrifying, nine times in +ten, than the truth you're trying to soften. Then, too, the story given +out to Rodney's friends being that Rose was in California with her +mother and Portia, left the chance always open for some contretemps +which would lead to her mother's discovering the truth in a surprising +and shocking way.</p> + +<p>But the truth itself, confidently stated, not as a tragic ending, but +as the splendid hopeful beginning of a life of truer happiness for Rose +and her husband, needn't be a shock. So this was what Rose had borne +down on in her letter to Portia. It wasn't a very long letter, +considering how much it had to tell.</p> + +<blockquote> + +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span>... I have found the big thing couldn't be had without a +fight," she wrote. "You shouldn't be surprised, because you've +probably found out for yourself that nothing worth having comes very +easily. But you're not to worry about me, nor be afraid for me, because +I'm going to win. I'm making the fight, somehow, for you as well as for +myself. I want you to know that. I think that realizing I was living +your life as well as mine, is what has given me the courage to +start....<br><br> + +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span>I've got some plans, but I'm not going to tell you what they are. +But I'll write to you every week and tell you what I've done and I want +you to write to Rodney. I want to be sure that you understand this: +Rodney isn't to blame for what's happened. I don't feel that I am, +either, exactly. We're just in a situation that there's only one real +way out of. I don't know whether he sees that yet or not. He's too +terribly hurt and bewildered. But we haven't quarreled, and I believe +we're further in love with each other than we've ever been before. I +know I am with him....<br><br> + +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"</span>Break this thing to mother as gently as you like, but tell her +everything before you stop...."<br> + +</blockquote> + +<p>This letter written and despatched, she had worked out the details of +her departure with a good deal of care. In her own house, before her +servants, she had tried to act—and she felt satisfied that her attempt +was successful—just as she would have done had her pretended telegram +really come from Portia. She had packed, looked up trains, made a +reservation. She had called up Frederica and told her the news. The +train she had selected left at an hour and on a day when she knew +Frederica wouldn't be able to come and see her off. Frederica had come +down to the house of course to say good-by to her, and carrying her +pretense through that scene, that had for her so much deeper and more +poignant a regret than she dared show—because she really loved +Frederica—was, next to bidding the twins good-by, the hardest thing she +had to go through with. Lying and pretending were always terribly hard +for Rose, and a lie to any one she was fond of, almost impossible. The +only thing that enabled her to see it through, was the consideration +that she was doing it for Rodney. He'd probably tell Frederica what had +happened in time, but Rose was determined that he should have the +privilege of choosing his own time for doing it.</p> + +<p>Her bag was packed, her trunk was gone, her motor waiting at the door to +take her to the station, when the maid Doris brought the twins home from +their airing. This wasn't chance, but prearrangement.</p> + +<p>"Give them to me;" Rose said, "and then you may go up and tell Mrs. +Ruston she may have them in a few minutes."</p> + +<p>She took them into her bedroom and laid them side by side on her bed. +They had thriven finely—justified, as far as that went, Harriet's +decision in favor of bottle feeding. Had she died back there in that bed +of pain, never come out of the ether at all, they'd still be just like +this—plump, placid, methodical. Rose had thought of that a hundred +times, but it wasn't what she was thinking of now.</p> + +<p>The thing that caught her as she stood looking down on them, was the +wave of sudden pity. She saw them suddenly as persons with the long road +all ahead of them, as a boy and a girl, a youth and a maid, a man and a +woman. They were destined to have their hopes and loves, fears, +triumphs, tragedies perhaps. The boy there, Rodney, might have to face, +some day, the situation his father confronted now; might have to come +back into an empty home, and turn a stiff inexpressive face on a coolly +curious world. Little Portia there might find herself, some day, gazing +with wide seared eyes, at a life some unexpected turn of the wheel of +Fate had thrust her, all unprepared, into the midst of. Or it might be +her fate to love without attracting love—to drain all the blood out of +her life in necessary sacrifices; to wither that some one else might +have a chance to grow. Those possibilities were all there before these +two solemn, staring, little helpless things on the bed. What toys of +Chance they were!</p> + +<p>She'd never thought of them like that before. The baby she had looked +forward to—the baby she hadn't had—had never been thought of that way +either. It was to be something to provide her, Rose, with an occupation; +to enable her to interpret her life in new terms; to make an alchemic +change in the very substance of it. The transmutation hadn't taken +place. She surmised now, dimly, that she hadn't deserved it should.</p> + +<p>"You've never had a mother at all, you poor little mites," she said. +"But you're going to have one some day. You're going to be able to come +to her with your troubles, because she'll have had troubles herself. +She'll help you bear your hurts, because she's had hurts of her own. And +she'll be able to teach you to stand the gaff, because she's stood it +herself."</p> + +<p>For the first time since they were born, she was thinking of their need +of her rather than of her need of them and with that thought, came for +the first time, the surge of passionate maternal love that she had +waited for, so long in vain. There was, suddenly, an intolerable ache in +her heart that could only have been satisfied by crushing them up +against her breast; kissing their hands—their feet.</p> + +<p>Rose stood there quivering, giddy with the force of it. "Oh, you +darlings!" she said. "But wait—wait until I deserve it!" And without +touching them at all, she went to the door and opened it. Mrs. Ruston +and Doris were both waiting in the hall.</p> + +<p>"I must go now," she said. "Good-by. Keep them carefully for me." Her +voice was steady, and though her eyes were bright, there was no trace of +tears upon her cheeks. But there was a kind of glory shining in her face +that was too much for Doris, who turned away and sobbed loudly. Even +Mrs. Ruston's eyes were wet.</p> + +<p>"Good-by," said Rose again, and went down composedly enough to her car.</p> + +<p>She rode down to the station, shook hands with and said good-by to +Otto, the chauffeur, allowed the porter to carry her bag into the +waiting-room. There she tipped the porter, picked up the bag herself, +and walked out the other door; crossed over to Clark Street and took a +street-car. At Chicago Avenue she got off and walked north, keeping her +eye open for placards advertising rooms to let. It was at the end of +about a half mile that she found the hatchet-faced landlady, paid her +three dollars, and locked her door, as a symbol, perhaps, of the bigger +heavier door that she had swung to and locked on the whole of her past +life.</p> + +<p>Amid all the welter of emotions boiling up within her, grief was not +present. There was a very deep-reaching excitement that sharpened all +her faculties; that even made her see colors more brightly and hear +fainter sounds. There was an intent eagerness to get the new life fairly +begun. But, strangest of all, and yet so vivid that even its strangeness +couldn't prevent her being aware of it, was a perfectly enormous relief. +The thing which, when she had first faced it as the only thoroughfare to +the real life she so passionately wanted, had seemed such a veritable +nightmare, was an accomplished fact. The week of acute agony she had +lived through while she was forcing her sudden resolution on Rodney had +been all but unendurable with the enforced contemplation of the moment +of parting which it brought so relentlessly nearer. There had been a +terror, too, lest when the moment actually came, she couldn't do it. +Well, and now it had come and gone! The surgery of the thing was over. +The nerves and sinews were cut. The thing was done. The girl who stood +there now in her three-dollar room was free; had won a fresh blank page +to write the characters of her life upon.</p> + +<p>She felt a little guilty about this. What heartless sort of a monster +must she be to feel—why, actually happy, at a moment like this? She +ought to be prone on the bed, her face buried in the musty pillow, +sobbing her heart out.</p> + +<p>But presently, standing there, looking down on the lumpy bed, she smiled +widely instead, over the notion of doing it as a sort of concession to +respectability. She had got her absolution from Rodney himself out of +the memory of their first real talk together. Discipline, he'd said, was +accepting the facts of life as they were. Not raising a lamentation +because they weren't different. The only way you had of getting anywhere +was by riding on the backs of your own passions. Well, her great ride +was just beginning!</p> + +<p>Rose dusted the mirror with a towel—a reckless act, as she saw for +herself, when she discovered she was going to have to use that towel for +a week—and took an appraising look at herself. Then she nodded +confidently—there was nothing the matter with her looks—and resumed +her ulster, her rubbers and her umbrella, for it was the kind of +December day that called for all three. Her landlady could stick the +receipt under the door, she reflected, as she locked it.</p> + +<p>Two blocks down the street, she found, as predicted, the cigar store +with the blue sign, "Schulz Express," and left her trunk check there +with her address and fifty cents. Then, putting up her umbrella, and +glowingly conscious that she was saving a nickel by so doing, she set +off down-town afoot to get a job. She meant to get it that very +afternoon. And, partly because she meant to so very definitely, she did.</p> + +<p>I don't mean to say that getting a job is a purely volitional matter. +There is the factor of luck, always large of course, though not quite so +large as a great many people suppose, and the factor of intelligence. +Rose's intelligence had been in pretty active training for the last +year. Ever since her talk with Simone Gréville had set her thinking, she +had been learning how to weigh and assess facts apart from their +emotional nebulæ. She'd taught herself how to look a disagreeable or +humiliating fact in the face as steadily and as coolly as she looked at +any other fact.</p> + +<p>She had accumulated a whole lot of facts about women in industry from +Barry Lake and Jane. She knew the sort of job and the sort of pay that +the average untrained woman gets. She knew some of the reasons why the +pay was so miserably, intolerably small. She knew about the vast army of +young women who weren't expected to be fully self-supporting, who +counted on marrying comfortably enough some day, and accepted board and +lodging at home as one of the natural laws of existence. But who, if +they wanted pocket money, pretty enough clothes to make them attractive +enough for men to want to marry; who, if they wanted to escape the +stupid drudgery of housework at home, had to go to work. They'd rather +get eight dollars a week than six, of course, or ten than eight. But as +long as even six was velvet (cotton-backed velvet, one might say) they'd +take that, cheerfully oblivious to the fact, as naturally one might +expect them to be, that by taking six, they established a standard at +which a girl who had to earn her own living simply couldn't live.</p> + +<p>Rose knew exactly what would happen to her if she went to one of the big +State Street department stores and asked for a job. Jane had been trying +some experiments lately, and stating her results with convincing +vivacity at their little dinners afterward. There was no thoroughfare +there.</p> + +<p>She knew too, what sort of life she'd have to face if she offered +herself out in the West Side factory district as a cracker packer, a +chocolate dipper, a glove stitcher; any of those things. You got a sort +of training, of course, at any one of these trades. You learned to +develop a certain uncanny miraculous speed and skill in some one small +operation, as remorseless and unvaried as the coming into mesh and out +again of two cogs in a pair of gears. But the very highest skill could +just about be made to keep you alive, and it led to nothing else. You +wore out your body and asphyxiated your soul.</p> + +<p>Rose didn't mean to do that. She was holding both body and soul in +trust. The penitential mood that had resulted from her talk with Portia +was utterly gone. She wasn't looking for hurts. Deliberately to impose +tortures on herself was as far from her intent as shirking any of the +inevitable trials that should come to her in the course of the day's +work. The only way she could see to a life of decent self-respecting +independence lay through some sort of special training—business +training, she thought. She'd begin by learning to be a stenographer—a +cracking good stenographer. Miss Beach had begun that way. She had a +real job.</p> + +<p>Only, Rose had first to get a job that would pay for her training; and +not only pay for it, but leave time for it; a problem which might have +seemed like the problem of lifting yourself by your boot straps, if it +hadn't been for Jimmy Wallace—Jimmy with his talk about chorus-girls.</p> + +<p>The trouble with that profession, Jimmy had said, was that the +indispensable assets in it were not industry, intelligence, ambitions, +but a reasonably presentable pair of arms and legs (a good-looking face +would surely come in handy too) and a rudimentary sense of rhythm. +Another demoralizing thing about it, he had said, was the fact that the +work wasn't hard enough, except during rehearsal, to keep its votaries +out of mischief.</p> + +<p>When the notion first occurred to her that these statements of Jimmy's +might some day have an interest for her that was personal rather than +academic, she had dismissed it with a shrug of good-humored amusement. +It wasn't until her idea of leaving Rodney and going out and making a +living and a life for herself had hardened into a fixed resolution, and +she had begun serious consideration of ways and means, that she called +it back into her mind. There was no use blinking the facts. The one +marketable asset she would possess when she walked out of her husband's +house, was simply—how she looked.</p> + +<p>Well then, if that was all you had, there was no degradation in using it +until you could make yourself the possessor of something else. And the +merit of this particular sort of job, for her, lay precisely in the +thing that Jimmy had cited as its chief disadvantage—it left you +abundant leisure. You might occupy that leisure getting into +mischief—no doubt most chorus-girls did. But there was nothing to +prevent your using it to better advantage.</p> + +<p>With this in mind, on the Sunday before Rose went away, she had studied +the dramatic section of the morning paper with a good deal of care and +was rewarded by finding among the news notes, an item referring to a +new musical comedy that was to be produced at the Globe Theater +immediately after the Christmas holidays. <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> was the +title of it. It was spoken of as one of the regular Globe productions, +so it was probable that Jimmy Wallace's experience with the production +of an earlier number in the series would at least give her something to +go by. The thing must be in rehearsal now.</p> + +<p>Granted that she was going to be a chorus-girl for a while, she could +hardly find a better place than one of the Globe productions to be one +in. According to Jimmy Wallace, it was a decent enough little place, and +yet it possessed the advantage of being spiritually as well as actually, +west of Clark Street. Rodney's friends were less likely to go there, and +so have a chance of recognizing her, than to any other theater in the +city, barring of course the flagrantly and shamelessly vulgar ones of +the purlieus.</p> + +<p>Among her older friends of school and college days, the chances were of +course worse. But even if she were seen on the stage by people who knew +her, even though they were to say to each other that that girl looked +surprisingly like Rose Aldrich, this would be a very different thing +from full recognition. She would be well protected by the utter +unlikelihood of her being in such a place; by the absence of anybody's +knowledge that she had flown off at a tangent from the orbit of Rodney's +world. Then, too, she'd be somewhat disguised no doubt, by make-up. Of +course with all those considerations weighed at their full value, there +remained a risk that she would be fully discovered and recognized. But +it was a risk that couldn't be avoided, whatever she did.</p> + +<p>She entertained for a while, the notion of taking Jimmy Wallace into her +confidence—he had as many depositors of confidences on his books, as a +savings bank, and he was just as safe. It was altogether likely that he +could get her a job out of hand. He was still on the best of terms with +the Globe people, and he was a really influential critic. But even if he +didn't get her a job outright, he could at least tell her how to set +about getting one for herself—where to go, whom to ask for, the right +way to phrase her request, which makes such an enormous difference in +things of that kind.</p> + +<p>But she wasn't long in abandoning the notion of appealing to Jimmy at +all. The corner-stone of her new adventure must be that she was doing +things for herself; that she was through being helped, having ways +smoothed for her, things done for her. If she owed her first job even +indirectly to Jimmy, all the rest of her structure would be out of +plumb. Whatever success she might have would be tainted by the misgiving +that but for somebody else's help, she might have failed. Rose Stanton +who had rented that three-dollar room was going to be beholden to +nobody!</p> + +<p>The news item in the paper gave her really all she needed. It told her +that a production was in rehearsal and it mentioned the name of the +director, John Galbraith, referring to him as one of the three most +prominent musical-comedy directors in the country; imported from New +York at vast expense, to make this production unique in the annals of +the Globe, and so forth.</p> + +<p>They hadn't rehearsed Jimmy's piece, she knew, in the theater itself, +but in all sorts of queer out-of-the-way places—in theaters that +happened for the moment to be "dark," in dance-halls; pretty much +anywhere. This was because there was another show running at the time at +the Globe. She had looked in the theater advertisements to see whether a +show was running there now. Yes, there was. Well, that gave her her +formula.</p> + +<p>When she asked at the box office at the Globe Theater, where they were +rehearsing <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> to-day, the nicely manicured young man +inside, answered automatically, "North End Hall."</p> + +<p>Evidently Jimmy Wallace couldn't have phrased the question better +himself. But the quality of the voice that asked it had, even to his not +very sensitive ear, an unaccustomed flavor. So, almost simultaneously +with his answer, he looked up from his finger-nails and shot an +inquiring glance through the grille.</p> + +<p>What he saw betrayed him into an involuntary stare. He didn't mean to +stare; he meant to be respectful. But he was surprised. Rose, in the +plainest suit that she could hope would seem plausible to her servants +for a traveling costume to California, an ulster and a little beaver hat +with a quill in it, had no misgivings about looking the part of a +potentially hard-working young woman renting a three-dollar room on +North Clark Street and seeking employment in a musical-comedy chorus. A +realization that her neat black seal dressing-case wasn't quite in the +picture, helped to account for the landlady's puzzlement about her. But +it hadn't been introduced in evidence here. And yet the young man behind +the grille seemed as surprised as the landlady.</p> + +<p>He repeated his answer to her question with the lubricant of a few more +words and a fatuous sort of smile. "I believe they rehearse in the North +End Hall this afternoon."</p> + +<p>Rose couldn't help smiling a little herself. "I'm afraid," she said, +"I'll have to ask where that is."</p> + +<p>"Not at all," said the young man idiotically, and he told her the +address; then cast about for a slip of paper to write it down on, +racking his thimbleful of brains all the while to make out who she could +be. She wasn't one of the principals in the company. They'd all reported +and he hadn't heard that any of them was to be replaced.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you needn't write it," said Rose. "I can remember, thank you." She +gave him a pleasant sort of boyish nod that didn't classify at all with +anything in his experience, and walked out of the lobby.</p> + +<p>He stared after her almost resentfully, feeling all mussed up, somehow, +and inadequate; as if here had been a situation that he had failed +signally to make the most of. He sat there for the next half-hour +gloomily thinking up things he might have said to her.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_II_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<h3>THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>With her umbrella over her shoulder, Rose set sail northward again +through the rain, absurdly cheered; first by the fact that the opening +skirmish had distinctly, though intangibly, gone her way; secondly by +the small bit of luck that North End Hall would be, judging by its +number on North Clark Street, not more than a block or two from her +three-dollar room.</p> + +<p>The sight of the entrance to it gave her a pang of misgiving. A pair of +white painted doors opened from the street level upon the foot of a +broadish stair which took you up rather suddenly; there was space enough +between the foot of the stair and the doors for a ticket-window, but it +was too small to be called a lobby; an arc lamp hung there though, and +two more—all three were extinct—hung just outside. What gave the place +its air of vulgarity, a suggestion of being the starting and finishing +point for lewd, drink sodden revels, she couldn't determine. It did +suggest this plainly. But, in the light of what Jimmy Wallace had told +her, she didn't think it likely there'd be any reveling to speak of at +rehearsal.</p> + +<p>At the head of the stairway, tilted back in a kitchen chair beneath a +single gas-jet whose light he was trying to make suffice for the perusal +of a green newspaper, sat a man, under orders no doubt, to keep +intruders away.</p> + +<p>Rose cast about as she climbed for the sort of phrase that would +convince him she wasn't an intruder. She would ask him, but in the +manner of one who seeks a formal assurance merely, if this was where +they were rehearsing <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>. Three steps from the top, she +changed her tactics, as a result of a glance at his unshaven face. The +thing to do was to go by as if he weren't there at all—as if, for such +as she, watchmen didn't exist. The rhythmic pounding of feet and the +frayed chords from a worn-out piano, convinced her she was in the right +place.</p> +<br> + +<p>Her stratagem succeeded, but not without giving her a bad moment. The +man glanced up and, though she felt he didn't return to his paper again, +he made no attempt to stop her. But right before her was another pair of +big white doors, closed with an effect of permanence—locked, she +suspected. A narrower door to the left stood open, but over it was +painted the disconcerting legend "Bar," flanked on either side, to make +the matter explicit even to the unlearned, by pictorial representations +of glasses of foaming beer. She hadn't time to deliberate over her +choice. The watchman's eyes were boring into her back. If she chose +wrong, or if she visibly hesitated, she knew she'd hear a voice say, +"Here! Where you going!"</p> + +<p>She caught a quick breath, turned to the left and walked steadily +through the narrower door into the bar. It proved to be a deserted, +shrouded, sinister-looking place, with an interminable high mahogany +counter at one side, and with a lot of little iron tables placed by +pairs, their tops together, so that half of them had their legs in the +air. Its lights were fled, its garlands dead all right, but there wasn't +anything poetic about it. However, there was another open door at the +far end of the room, through which sounds and light came in. And the +watchman hadn't interfered with her. Evidently she had chosen right.</p> + +<p>She paused for a second steadying breath before she went through that +farther door, her eyes starry with resolution, her cheeks, just for the +moment, a little pale. If the comparison suggests itself to you of an +early Christian maiden about to step out into an arena full of wild +beasts, then you will have mistaken Rose. The arena was there, true +enough. But she was stepping out into it with the intention of, like +Androcles, taming the lion.</p> + +<p>The room was hot and not well lighted—a huge square room with a very +high ceiling. In the farther wall of it was a proscenium arch and a +raised stage somewhat brighter than the room itself, though the stained +brick wall at the back, in the absence of any scenery, absorbed a good +deal of the light. On the stage, right and left, were two irregular +groups of girls, with a few men, awkwardly, Rose thought, disposed among +them. All were swaying a little to mark the rhythm of the music +industriously pounded out by a sweaty young man at the piano—a swarthy, +thick young man in his undershirt. There were a few more people, Rose +was aware without exactly looking at any of them, sprawled in different +parts of the hall, on sofas or cushioned window-seats.</p> + +<p>It was all a little vague to her at first, because her attention was +focused on a single figure—a compact, rather slender figure, and tall, +Rose thought—of a man in a blue serge suit, who stood at the exact +center of the stage and the extreme edge of the footlights. He was +counting aloud the bars of the music—not beating time at all, nor +yielding to the rhythm in any way; standing, on the contrary, rather +tensely still. That was the quality about him, indeed, that riveted +Rose's attention and held her as still as he was, in the doorway—an +exhilarating sort of intensity that had communicated itself to the +swaying groups on the stage. You could tell from the way he counted that +something was gathering itself up, getting ready to happen. "Three ... +Four ... Five ... Six ... Seven ... <i>Now!</i>" he shouted on the eighth +bar, and with the word, one of the groups transformed itself. One of the +men bowed to one of the girls and began waltzing with her; another +couple formed, then another.</p> + +<p>Rose watched breathlessly, hoping the maneuver wouldn't go wrong;—for +no reason in the world but that the man, there at the footlights, was so +tautly determined that it shouldn't.</p> + +<p>Determination triumphed. The number was concluded to John Galbraith's +evident satisfaction. "Very good," he said. "If you'll all do exactly +what you did that time from now on, I'll not complain." Without a pause +he went on, "Everybody on the stage—big girls—all the big girls!" And, +to the young man at the piano, "We'll do <i>Afternoon Tea</i>." There was a +momentary pause then, filled with subdued chatter, while the girls and +men re-alined themselves for the new number—a pause taken advantage of +by an exceedingly blond young man to scramble up on the stage and make a +few remarks to the director. He was the musical director, Rose found out +afterward. Galbraith, to judge from his attitude, gave his colleague's +remarks about twenty-five per cent. of his attention, keeping his eye +all the while on the chorus, to see that they got their initial +formation correctly. Rose looked them over, too. The girls weren't, on +an average, extravagantly beautiful, though, with the added charm of +make-up allowed for, there were no doubt many the audiences would +consider so. What struck Rose most emphatically about them, was their +youth and spirit. How long they had been rehearsing this afternoon she +didn't know. But now, when they might have gone slack and silent, they +pranced and giggled instead and showed a disposition to lark about, +which evidently would have carried them a good deal further but for the +restraining presence of the director. They were dressed in pretty much +anything that would allow perfect freedom to their bodies; especially +their arms and legs; bathing suits mostly, or middy-blouses and +bloomers. Rose noted this with satisfaction. Her old university +gymnasium costume would do perfectly. Anything, apparently, would do, +because as her eye adjusted itself to details, she discovered romper +suits, pinafores, chemises, overalls—all equally taken for granted. +There weren't nearly so many chorus men as girls. She couldn't be sure +just how many there were, because they couldn't be singled out. As they +wore no distinctly working costume, merely took off their coats, +waistcoats and collars, they weren't distinguishable from most of the +staff, who, with the exception of the director, garbed themselves +likewise.</p> + +<p>Galbraith dismissed the musical director with a nod, struck his hands +together for silence, and scrutinized the now motionless group on the +stage.</p> + +<p>"We're one shy," he said. "Who's missing?" And then answered his own +question: "Grant!" He wheeled around and his eyes searched the hall.</p> + +<p>Rose became aware for the first time, that a mutter of conversation had +been going on incessantly since she had come in, in one of the recessed +window-seats behind her. Now, when Galbraith's gaze plunged in that +direction, she turned and looked too. A big blonde chorus-girl was in +there with a man, a girl, who, with twenty pounds trained off her, and +that sulky look out of her face, would have been a beauty. She had +roused herself with a sort of defiant deliberation at the sound of the +director's voice, but she still had her back to him and went on talking +to the man.</p> + +<p>"Grant!" said John Galbraith again, and this time his voice had a +cutting edge. "Will you take your place on the stage, or shall I suspend +rehearsal until you're ready?"</p> + +<p>For answer she turned and began walking slowly across the room toward +the door in the proscenium that led to the stage. She started walking +slowly, but under Galbraith's eye, she quickened her pace, +involuntarily, it seemed, until it was a ludicrous sort of run. +Presently she emerged on the stage, looking rather artificially +unconcerned, and the rehearsal went on again.</p> + +<p>But just before he gave the signal to the pianist to go ahead, Galbraith +with a nod summoned a young man from the wings and said something to +him, whereupon, clearly carrying out his orders, he vaulted down from +the stage and came walking toward the doorway where Rose was still +standing. The director's gaze as it flashed about the hall, had +evidently discovered more than the sulky chorus-girl.</p> + +<p>The young man wasn't intrinsically formidable—a rather limp, +deprecatory sort, he looked. But, as an emissary from Galbraith, he +quickened Rose's heart-beat a trifle. She smiled though as she made a +small bet with herself that he wouldn't be able to turn her out, even in +his capacity of envoy.</p> + +<p>But he didn't come straight to Rose; deflected his course a little +uncertainly, and brought up before a woman who sat in a folding chair a +little farther along the wall.</p> + +<p>Rose hadn't observed her particularly before, though she was aware that +one of the "big girls" who had responded promptly to Galbraith's first +call for them, had been talking to her when Rose came in, and she had +assumed her to be somebody connected with the show; at least with an +unchallengeable right to watch its rehearsals. But she had corrected +this impression even before she had heard what John Galbraith's +assistant said to the woman and what she said to him; for she drew +herself defensively erect when she saw him turn toward her, assumed a +look of calculated disdain; tapped a foot inadequately shod for +Chicago's pavements in December, although evidently it had experienced +them—gave, on the whole, as well as she could, an imitation of a +duchess being kept waiting.</p> + +<p>But the limp young man didn't seem disconcerted, and inquired in so many +words, what her business was. The duchess said in a harsh high voice +with a good deal of inflection to it, that she wanted to see the +director; a very partic'lar friend of his, she assured the young man, +had begged her to do so. "You'll have to wait till he's through +rehearsing," said the young man, and then he came over to Rose.</p> + +<p>The vestiges of the smile the duchess had provoked were still visible +about her mouth when he came up. "May I wait and see Mr. Galbraith after +the rehearsal?" she asked. "If I won't be in the way?"</p> + +<p>"Sure," said the young man. "He won't be long now. He's been rehearsing +since two." Then, rather explosively, "Have a chair."</p> + +<p>He struck Rose as being a little flustered and uncertain, somehow, and +he now made a tentative beginning of actually bringing a chair for her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't bother," said Rose, and now she couldn't help smiling +outright. "I'll find one for myself."</p> + +<p>But, whenever he had begun rehearsing, it was evident that John +Galbraith didn't mean to stop until he got through, and it was a long +hour that Rose sat there in a little folding chair similar to the one +occupied by the duchess; an hour which, in spite of all her will could +do, took some of the crispness out of her courage. It was all very well +to reflect with pitying amusement on the absurdities of the duchess. But +it was evident the duchess was waiting with a purpose like her own. She +meant to get a job in the chorus. Her rather touching ridiculousness as +a human being wouldn't stand in her way. It was likely that she had had +dozens of jobs in choruses before, knew exactly what would be wanted of +her, and was confident of her ability to deliver it.</p> + +<p>As Rose's heart sank lower with the dragging minutes she even took into +account the possibility that the duchess had spoken the truth about John +Galbraith's "partic'lar friend." Just the mention of a name might settle +the whole business. Then her spirits went down another five degrees. +Here she had been assuming all along that there was a job for either of +them to get! But it was quite likely there was not. The chorus looked +complete enough; there was no visible gap in the ranks crying aloud for +a recruit.</p> + +<p>When at last, a little after six o'clock, Galbraith said, "Quarter to +eight, everybody," and dismissed them with a nod for a scurry to what +were evidently dressing-rooms at the other side of the ball, the ship of +Rose's hopes had utterly gone to pieces. She had a plank to keep herself +afloat on. It was the determination to stay there until he should tell +her in so many words that he hadn't any use for her and under no +conceivable circumstances ever would have.</p> + +<p>The deprecatory young man was talking to him now, about her and the +duchess evidently, for he peered out into the hall to see if they were +still there; then vaulted down from the stage and came toward them.</p> + +<p>The duchess got up, and with a good deal of manner, went over to meet +him. Rose felt outmaneuvered here. She should have gone to meet him +herself, but a momentary paralysis kept her in her chair. She didn't +hear what the duchess said. The manner of it was confidential, in marked +protest against the proximity of a handful of other people—the blond +musical director, the thick pianist in his undershirt, a baby-faced man +in round tortoise-shell spectacles, three or four of the chorus people, +each of whom had serious matters to bring before the director's +attention.</p> + +<p>But all the confidences, it seemed, were on the side of the duchess. +Because, when John Galbraith answered her, his voice easily filled +the room. "You tell Mr. Pike, if that's his name, that I'm very much +obliged to him, but we haven't any vacancies in the chorus at present. +If you care to, leave your name and address with Mr. Quan, the assistant +stage manager; then if we find we need you, we can let you know."</p> + +<a name="Illus_5"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_5.png"><img src="images/Illus_5.png" + alt=""I want a job in the chorus."" + width="45%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>"I want a job in the chorus."</h4> +<br> + +<p>He said it not unkindly, but he exercised some power of making it +evident that as he finished speaking, the duchess, for him, simply +ceased to exist. Anything she might say or do thereafter, would be so +much effort utterly wasted.</p> + +<p>The duchess drew herself up and walked away.</p> + +<p>And Rose? Well, the one thing she wanted passionately to do just then, +was to walk away herself out of that squalid horrible room; to soften +her own defeat by evading the final sledge-hammer blow. What he had said +to the duchess licensed her to do so. If there were no vacancies ... But +she clenched her hands, set her teeth, pulled in a long breath, and +somehow, set herself in motion. Not toward the door, but toward where +John Galbraith was standing.</p> + +<p>But before she could get over to him, the pianist and the musical +director had got his attention. So she waited quietly beside him for two +of the longest minutes that ever were ticked off by a clock. Then, with +disconcerting suddenness, right in the middle of one of the musical +director's sentences, he looked straight into her face and said: "What +do you want?"</p> + +<p>She'd thought him tall, but he wasn't. He was looking on a perfect level +into her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I want a job in the chorus," said Rose.</p> + +<p>"You heard what I said to that other woman, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose, "but ..."</p> + +<p>"But you thought you'd let me say it to you again."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said. And, queerly enough, she felt her courage coming back. +She managed the last "yes" very steadily. It had occurred to her that if +he'd wanted merely to get rid of her, he could have done it quicker than +this. He was looking her over now with a coolly appraising eye.</p> + +<p>"What professional experience have you had?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I haven't had any."</p> + +<p>He almost smiled when she stopped there.</p> + +<p>"Any amateur experience?" he inquired.</p> + +<p>"Quite a lot," said Rose; "pageants and things, and two or three little +plays."</p> + +<p>"Can you dance?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose.</p> + +<p>He said he supposed ballroom dancing was what she meant, whereupon she +told him she was a pretty good ballroom dancer, but that it was +gymnastic dancing she had had in mind.</p> + +<p>"All right," he said. "See if you can do this. Watch me, and then +imitate me exactly."</p> + +<p>In the intensity of her absorption in his questions and her own answers +to them, she had never given a thought to the bystanders. But now as +they fell back to give him room, she swept a glance across their faces. +They all wore smiles of sorts. There was something amusing about +this—something out of the regular routine. A little knot of +chorus-girls halted in the act of going out the wide doors and stood +watching. Was it just a hoax? The suppressed unnatural silence sounded +like it. But at what John Galbraith did, one of the bystanders guffawed +outright.</p> + +<p>It wasn't pretty, the dance step he executed—a sort of stiff-legged +skip accompanied by a vulgar hip wriggle and concluding with a +straight-out sidewise kick.</p> + +<p>A sick disgust clutched at Rose as she watched—an utter revulsion from +the whole loathly business. She could scrub floors—starve if she had +to. She couldn't do the thing he demanded of her here out in the middle +of the floor, in her street clothes, without the excuse of music to make +it tolerable—and before that row of leering faces.</p> + +<p>"Well?" he asked, turning to her as he finished. He wasn't smiling at +all.</p> + +<p>"I'm not dressed to do that," she said.</p> + +<p>"I know you're not," he admitted coolly, "but it can be done. Pick up +your skirts and do it as you are,—if you really want a job."</p> + +<p>There was just a faint edge of contempt in that last phrase and, +mercifully, it roused her anger. A blaze kindled in her blue eyes, and +two spots of vivid color defined themselves in her cheeks.</p> + +<p>She caught up her skirts as he had told her to do, executed without +compromise the stiff-legged skip and the wriggle, and finished with a +horizontal sidewise kick that matched his own. Then, panting, trembling +a little, she stood looking straight into his face.</p> + +<p>The first thing she realized when the processes of thought began again +was that even if there had been a hoax, she was not, in the event, the +victim of it. The attitude of her audience told her that. Galbraith was +staring at her with a look that expressed at first, clear astonishment, +but gradually complicated itself with other emotions—confusion, a glint +of whimsical amusement. That gleam, a perfectly honest, kindly one, +decided Rose to take him on trust. He wasn't a brute, however it might +suit his purposes to act like one. And with an inkling of how her blaze +of wrath must be amusing him, she smiled slowly and a little +uncertainly, herself.</p> + +<p>"We've been rehearsing this piece two weeks," he said presently, looking +away from her when he began to talk, "and I couldn't take any one into +the chorus now whom I'd have to teach the rudiments of dancing to. I +must have people who can do what I tell them. That's why a test was +necessary. Also, from now on, it would be a serious thing to lose +anybody out of the chorus. I couldn't take anybody who had come down +here—for a lark."</p> + +<p>"It's not a lark to me," said Rose.</p> + +<p>Now he looked around at her again. "I know it isn't," he said. "But I +thought when you first came in here, that it was."</p> + +<p>With that, Rose understood the whole thing. It was evidently a fact that +despite the plain little suit, the beaver hat, the rough ulster she was +wearing, she didn't look like the sort of girl who had to rely on +getting a job in the chorus for keeping a roof over her head. Looks, +speech, manner—everything segregated her from the type. It was all +obvious enough, only Rose hadn't happened to think of it. It accounted, +of course, for the rather odd way in which the landlady, the +ticket-seller at the Globe, and meek little Mr. Quan, the assistant +stage manager, all had looked at her, as at some one they couldn't +classify. John Galbraith, out of a wider experience of life, had +classified her, or thought he had, as a well-bred young girl who, in a +moment of pique, or mischief, had decided it would be fun to go on the +stage. The test he had applied wasn't, from that point of view, +unnecessarily cruel. The girl he had taken her for, would, on being +ordered to repeat that grotesque bit of vulgarity of his, have drawn her +dignity about her like a cloak, and gone back in a chastened spirit to +the world where she belonged.</p> + +<p>A gorgeous apparition came sweeping by them just now, on a line from the +dressing-room to the door—a figure that, with regal deliberation, was +closing a blue broadcloth coat, trimmed with sable, over an authentic +Callot frock. The Georgette hat on top of it was one that Rose had last +seen in a Michigan Avenue shop. She had amused herself by trying to +vizualize the sort of person who ought to buy it. It had found its +proper buyer at last—fulfilled its destiny.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Grant!" said John Galbraith.</p> + +<p>The queenly creature stopped short and Rose recognized her with a jump, +as the sulky chorus-girl. Dressed like this, her twenty pounds of +surplus fat didn't show.</p> + +<p>Galbraith walked over to her. "I shan't need you any more, Grant." He +spoke in a quiet impersonal sort of way, but his voice had, as always, a +good deal of carrying power. "It's hardly worth your while trying to +work, I suppose, when you're so prosperous as this. And it isn't worth +my while to have you soldiering. You needn't report again."</p> + +<p>He nodded not unamiably, and turned away. Evidently she had ceased to +exist for him as completely as the duchess. She glared after him and +called out in a hoarse throaty voice, "Thank Gawd I don't <i>have</i> to work +for you."</p> + +<p>He'd come back to Rose again by this time, and she saw him smile. "When +you do it," he said over his shoulder, "thank Him for me too." Then to +Rose: "She's a valuable girl; had lots of experience; good-looking; +audiences like her. I'm giving you her place because as long as she's +got those clothes and the use of a limousine, she won't get down to +business. I'd rather have a green recruit who will. I'm hiring you +because I think you will be able to understand that what you feel like +doing isn't important and that what I tell you to do is. The next +rehearsal is at a quarter to eight to-night. Give your name and address +to Mr. Quan before you go. By the way, what is your name?"</p> + +<p>"Rose Stanton," she said. "But ..." She had to follow him a step or two +because he had already turned away. "But, may I give some other name +than that to Mr. Quan?" He frowned a little dubiously and asked her how +old she was. And even when she told him twenty-two, he didn't look +altogether reassured.</p> + +<p>"That's the truth, is it? I mean, there's nobody who can come down here +about three days before we open and call me a kidnaper, and lead you +away by the ear?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Rose gravely, "there's no one who'll do that."</p> + +<p>"Very good," he said. "Tell Quan any name you like."</p> + +<p>The name she did tell him was Doris Dane.</p> + +<p>It was a quarter to seven when she came out through the white doors into +North Clark Street. The thing that woke her out of a sort of daze as she +trudged along toward her room in the unrelenting rain was a pleasurable +smell of fried onions; whereupon she realized that she was legitimately +and magnificently hungry. In any other condition, the dingy little +lunch-room she presently turned into, would hardly have invited her. But +the spots on the frayed starchy table-cloth, the streakiness of the +glasses, the necessity of polishing knife and fork upon her damp napkin, +couldn't prevent her doing ample justice to a small thick platter of ham +and eggs, and a plate of thicker wheat-cakes.</p> + +<p>It occurred to her as she finished, that a quarter to eight probably +meant the hour at which the rehearsal was to begin. She'd have to be +back at the hail at least fifteen minutes earlier, in order to be +dressed and ready. She had no time to waste; would even have to hurry a +little.</p> + +<p>She didn't try to explore for the reason why this discovery pleased her +so much. It was enough that it did. She flew along through the rain to +her tunnel, charged up the narrow stair, and in the unlighted corridor +outside her room, collided with her trunk. Well, it was lucky it had +come anyway. She tugged it into her room after she had lighted the gas.</p> + +<p>You might have seen, if you had been there to see, just a momentary +hesitation after she'd got her trunk key out of her purse before she +unlocked it. It was a sort of Jack-in-the-box, that trunk. Would the +emotions with which she'd packed it, spring out and clutch her as she +released the hasp? The saving factor in the situation was that it was a +quarter past seven. In fifteen minutes she must be back at North End +Hall, getting ready to go to work at her job. Suppose she hadn't found a +job this afternoon? The thought turned her giddy.</p> + +<p>She plunged into her trunk, rummaged out a middy-blouse, a pair of black +silk bloomers, and her gymnasium sneakers, rolled them all together in a +bundle, got into her rubbers and her ulster again, and—I'm afraid there +is no other word for it—fled.</p> + +<p>She was one of the first of the chorus to reach the hail and she had +nearly finished putting on her working clothes before the rest of them +came pelting in. But she didn't get out quickly enough to miss the +sensation that was exciting them all—the news that Grant had been +dropped. A few of them were indignant; the rest merely curious. The +indignant ones allowed themselves a license in the expression of this +feeling that positively staggered Rose; made use in a quite +matter-of-fact way of words she had supposed even a drunken truck-man +would have attempted to refrain from in the presence of a woman. She +made a discovery afterward, that there were many girls in the chorus who +never talked like that; and among those who did, the further distinction +between those who used vile language casually, or even jocularly, and +those who were driven to it only by anger. But for these first few +minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some +foul pit abysmally below the lowest level of decency.</p> + +<p>One of the girls advanced the theory that Grant hadn't finally been +dropped; it was absurd that she should be. She was one of the most +popular chorus-girls in Chicago. The director was merely trying to scare +her into doing better work for him. She'd come back, all right. She had +reasons of her own, this girl intimated, for wanting to work, despite +the possession of French clothes and the use of a limousine. Her +"friend," it seemed, needed to be taught some sort of lesson. Grant +would come around before to-morrow night, and eat enough humble pie to +induce Galbraith to take her back.</p> + +<p>If this theory were sound, and it had a dreadful plausibility to Rose, +her only chance for keeping her job would be to do as well as Grant +could do, to-night, in this very first rehearsal; and she went out on +the stage in a perfect agony of determination. She must see everything, +hear everything; put all she knew and every ounce of energy she had, +into the endeavor to make John Galbraith forget that she was a recruit +at all.</p> + +<p>The intensity of this preoccupation was a wonderful protection to her. +It kept away the sick disgust that had threatened her in the +dressing-room; prevented her even glancing ahead to a future that would, +had she taken to guessing about it, utterly have overwhelmed her. The +intensely illuminated present instant kept her mind focused to its +sharpest edge.</p> + +<p>It is true that before she had been working fifteen minutes, she had +forgotten all about Grant and the possibility of her return. She'd even +forgotten her resolution not to let John Galbraith remember she was a +recruit. Indeed, she had forgotten she was a recruit. She was nothing at +all but just a reflection of his will. She'd felt that quality strongly +in him even behind his back during the afternoon rehearsal. Now, on the +stage in front of him, she was completely possessed by it.</p> + +<p>She didn't know she was tired, panting, wet all over with sweat. Really, +of course, she was pretty soft, judged by her own athletic standards. +She hadn't done anything so physically exacting as this for over a year. +But she had the illusion that she wasn't <i>doing</i> anything now; that she +was just a passive plastic thing, tossed, flung, swirled about by the +driving power of the director's will. It wouldn't have surprised her if +the chairs had danced for him.</p> + +<p>It couldn't of course have occurred to her that she was producing her +own effect on the director; she couldn't have surmised that he was +driving his rehearsal at a faster pace and with a renewed energy and +fire because of the presence, there in the ranks of his chorus, of a +glowing, thrilling creature who devoured his intentions half formed, met +them with a blue spark across the poles of their two minds.</p> + +<p>She realized, when the rehearsal was over, that it had gone well and +that it couldn't have gone so if her own part had been done badly. She +hesitated a moment after he'd finally dismissed them with a nod, and an, +"Eleven o'clock to-morrow morning, everybody," from a previously formed +intention of asking him if she'd do. But she felt, somehow, that such a +question would be foolish and unnecessary.</p> + +<p>He had marked her hesitation and shot her a look that she felt followed +her as she walked off, and she heard him say to the world in general and +in a heartfelt sort of way, "Good God!" But she didn't know that it was +the highest encomium he was capable of, nor that it was addressed to +her.</p> + +<p>She carried away, however, a glow that saw her back to her room, and +through the processes of unpacking and getting ready for bed, though it +faded swiftly during the last of these. But when the last thing that she +could think of to do had been done, when there was no other pretext, +even after a desperate search for one, that could be used to postpone +turning out her light and getting into bed, she had to confess to +herself that she was afraid to do it. And with that confession, the +whole pack of hobgoblin terrors she had kept at bay so valiantly since +shutting her husband's door behind her, were upon her back.</p> + +<p>Here she was, Rose Aldrich, in a three-dollar-a-week room on North Clark +Street, having deserted her husband and her babies—a loving honest +husband, and a pair of helpless babies not yet three months old—to +become a member of the chorus in a show called <i>The Girl Up-stairs!</i> Was +there a human being in the world, except herself, who would not, as the +most charitable of possible explanations, assume her to be mad? Could +she herself, seeing her act cut out in silhouette like that, be sure she +wasn't mad? Hysterical anyway, the victim of her own rashly encouraged +fancies, just as Rodney had so often declared she was? Oughtn't she to +have let James Randolph explore the subconscious part of her mind and +find the crack there must be in it, that could have driven her to a +crazy act like this?</p> + +<p>It didn't matter now. She couldn't go back. She never could go back +after the things she had said to Rodney, until she had made good those +fantastic theories of hers. Probably he wouldn't want her to come back +even then. He'd find out where she was of course—what she was doing. +Why had she been such a fool, going away, as not to have gone far enough +to be safe? He'd feel that she'd disgraced him. Any man would. And he'd +never forgive her. He'd divorce her, perhaps. He'd have a right to, if +she stayed away long enough. And, without her there, with nothing of her +but memories—tormenting memories, he'd perhaps fall in love with some +one else—marry some one else. And her two babies would call that +unknown some one "mother." She must have been crazy! She'd thought she +didn't love them. That had been a delusion anyway. Her heart ached for +them now—an actual physical ache that almost made her cry out. And for +Rodney himself, for his big strong arms around her! Would she ever feel +them again?</p> + +<p>She told herself this was a nightmare—something to be fought off, kept +at bay. But how did that help her now, when the armor must be laid +aside? Sometime or other she must turn out that light and lie down in +that bed, defenseless. She had never in her life asked more of her +courage than when, at last, she did that thing. There were nine hours +then ahead of her before eleven o'clock and the next rehearsal.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_III_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<h3>ROSE KEEPS THE PATH</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Rose rehearsed twice a day for a solid week without forming the faintest +conception of who "the girl" was or why she was "the girl up-stairs." +She didn't know what sort of scene it was for instance that they burst +in on through the space marked by two of the little folding chairs +brought up from the floor of the dance-hall for the purpose. The group +of iron tables borrowed from the bar and set solidly together in the +upper right-hand corner of the stage whenever they rehearsed a certain +one of their song numbers, might with equal plausibility represent a +mountain in Arizona, the front veranda of a house or a banquet table in +the gilded dining-hall of some licentious multi-millionaire. They got up +on the insecure thing and tried to dance; that was all she knew.</p> + +<p>During the entire period, and for that matter, right up to the opening +night she never saw a bar of music except what stood on the piano rack, +nor a written word of the lyrics she was supposed to sing. Rose couldn't +sing very much. She had a rather timorous, throaty little contralto that +contrasted oddly with the fine free thrill of her speaking voice. But +nobody had asked her what her voice was, nor indeed, whether she could +sing at all. She picked up the tunes quickly enough, by ear, but the +words she was always a little uncertain about.</p> + +<p>It all seemed too utterly haphazard to be possible, but Rose decided not +to ask any of the authorities about this, because, while the possibility +of Grant's return dangled over her head, she didn't want to remind +anybody how green she was. But she finally questioned one of her +colleagues in the chorus about it, and was told that back at the +beginning of things, they had had their voices tried by the musical +director, who had conducted three or four music rehearsals before John +Galbraith arrived. They had never had any music to sing from but there +had been half a dozen mimeograph copies of the words to the songs, which +the girls had put their heads together over in groups of three or four, +and more or less learned. What had become of this dope, and whether it +was still available for Rose in case she were animated by a purely +supererogatory desire to study it, the girl didn't know.</p> + +<p>She was a pale-haired girl, whom Rose thought she had heard addressed as +Larson, and she had emerged rather slowly as an individual personality, +out of the ruck of the chorus; a fact in her favor, really, because the +girls who had first driven themselves home to Rose through the shell of +her intense preoccupation with doing what John Galbraith wanted, had +been the vividly and viciously objectionable ones. The thing that had +prompted her to sit down beside Larson and, with this question about how +one learned the words to the songs, take her first real step toward an +acquaintance, was an absence of any strong dislike, rather than the +presence of a real attraction.</p> + +<p>She made a surprising discovery when the girl, with a friendly pat on +the sofa beside her, for an invitation to her to sit down, began +answering her question. She was a real beauty. Or, more accurately, she +possessed the constituent qualities of beauty. She was pure English +eighteenth century; might have stepped down out of a Gainsborough +portrait. Dressed right, and made up a little, with her effects +legitimately heightened (and warned not to speak), she could have gone +to the Charity Ball as the Honorable Mrs. Graham, and Bertie Willis +would have gone mad about her. Only you had to look twice at her to +perceive that this was so; and what she lacked was just the unanalyzable +quality that makes one look twice.</p> + +<p>Her speaking voice would have driven Bertie mad, too—foaming, biting +mad. It was disconcertingly loud, in the first place, and it came out +upon the promontories of speech with a flat whang that fairly made you +jump. Its undulations of pitch gave you something the same sensation as +riding rapidly over a worn-out asphalt pavement in a +five-hundred-dollar automobile; unforeseen springs into the air, +descents into unexpected pits. Her grammar wasn't flagrantly bad, though +it had, rather pitiably, a touch of the genteel about it. But now, when +she spoke to Rose, and with the lassitude of fatigue in her voice +besides, Rose heard something friendly about it.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you should worry about any of that stuff for," she +said. "How you sing or what you sing don't make much difference."</p> + +<p>Rose admitted that it didn't seem to. "But you see," she said (she +hadn't had a human soul to talk to for more than a week and she had to +make a friend of somebody); "you see, I've just got to keep this job. +And if every little helps, as they say, perhaps that would."</p> + +<p>The girl looked at her oddly, almost suspiciously, as if for a moment +she had doubted whether Rose had spoken in good faith. "You've got as +good a chance of losing your job," she said, "as Galbraith has of losing +his."</p> + +<p>"I don't worry about it," said Rose, "when I'm up there on the stage at +work. It's too exciting. And then, I feel somehow that it's going all +right. But early in the morning, I get to imagining all sorts of things. +He's so terribly sudden. The girl whose place I got,—she hadn't any +warning, you know. It just happened."</p> + +<p>The Larson girl gave a decisive little nod. Not so much, it seemed, in +assent to what Rose had just said, but as if some question in her own +mind had been answered.</p> + +<p>"You'll get used to that feeling," she said. "You've got to take a +chance anyway, so why worry? We can work our heads off, but if the piece +is a fliv the opening night, they'll tack up the notice, and there we'll +be with two weeks' pay for eight weeks' work, and another six weeks' +work for nothing in something else if we're lucky enough to get it."</p> + +<p>This was a possibility Rose hadn't thought of. "But—that isn't fair!" +she said.</p> + +<p>The other girl laughed grimly. "Fair!" she echoed. "What they want to +print that word in the dictionary for, I don't see. Because what it +means don't exist. Not where I live, anyway. But what's the good of +making a fuss about it? We've got to take our chance like everybody +else."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe this piece will fall, though," said Rose. "I don't +think Mr. Galbraith would let it. I think he's a perfect wonder, don't +you?"</p> + +<p>The Larson girl looked at her again. "He's supposed to be about the best +in the business," she said, "and I guess he is." She added, "Dave tells +me he's going to put you with us in the sextette."</p> + +<p>Dave was the thick pianist, and Rose had found him in the highest degree +obnoxious. He seemed to occupy an indeterminate social position in their +ship's company, between the forecastle, which was the chorus, and the +quarter-deck, which comprised Galbraith (you might call him the pilot), +the baby-faced man with the tortoise-shell spectacles, reputed to be the +author, two awesome intermittent gentlemen identified in the +dressing-room as the owners of the piece, and the musical director, +together with one or two more as yet unclassified. The principals, when +they should appear, would, Rose assumed, belong on the quarter-deck too. +The social gap between this afterguard and Rose and her colleagues in +the chorus, was not so very wide, but it was abysmally deep. +Nevertheless, the pianist, buoyed up on the wings of a boundless +effrontery, seemed to manage to remain unaware of it.</p> + +<p>He had started rehearsals with this piece, it appeared, as a chorus-man, +and had become a pianist, thanks to the interposition of Fate (the real +pianist had fallen suddenly and desperately ill), and to his own +irresistible assurance that he could do anything. He could keep time and +he hit perhaps a third of the notes right.</p> + +<p>The chorus liked him. The girls all called him Dave, seemed to +appreciate his notion of humor, and accepted his hugs and pawings as a +matter of course. But he took his jokes, his familiarities, and his +apparently impregnable self-esteem, upon the quarter-deck—slapped the +author on the back now and then, and had even been known to address John +Galbraith as "Old man." Incidentally, he hung about within ear-shot +during conferences of the powers, freely offered his advice, and +brought all sorts of interesting tidbits of gossip and prophecy back to +the chorus.</p> + +<p>His announcement that Rose was going to be put into the sextette was +entitled to consideration, even though it couldn't be banked on. There +were three mediums and three big girls in the sextette. (Olga Larson was +one of the mediums and so needn't fear replacement by Rose, who was a +big girl.) Besides appearing in two numbers as a background to one of +the principals, they had one all to themselves, a fact which constituted +them a sort of super-chorus. Galbraith used to keep them for endless +drills after the general rehearsal was dismissed.</p> + +<p>But the intimation that Rose was to be promoted to this select inner +circle, didn't, as it first came to her, give her any pleasure. Somehow, +as Larson told her about it, she could fairly see the knowing greasy +grin that would have been Dave's comment on this prophecy. And in the +same flash, she interpreted the Larson girl's look, half incredulous, +half satirical, and her, "You've got as good a chance of losing your job +as Galbraith has of losing his."</p> + +<p>"I haven't heard anything about being put in the sextette," she said +quietly, "and I don't believe I will be."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know why not." There was a new warmth in the medium's +voice. Rose had won a victory here, and she knew it. "You've got the +looks and the shape, and you can dance better than any of the big girls, +or us mediums, either. And if he doesn't put that big Benedict lemon +into the back line where she belongs, and give you her place in the +sextette, it will be because he's afraid of her drag."</p> + +<p>Rose forbore to inquire into the nature of the Benedict girl's drag. +Whatever it may have been, John Galbraith was evidently not afraid of +it, because as he dismissed that very rehearsal, calling the rest of the +chorus for twelve the following morning, and the sextette for eleven, he +told Rose to report at the earlier hour. And a moment later, she heard +Dave say to the big show girl named Vesta Folsom (some one with a vein +of playful irony must have been responsible for this christening), +"Well, maybe I didn't call that turn."</p> + +<p>"You're the original wise guy, all right," Vesta admitted. "You're +Joseph to all the sure things."</p> + +<p>Barring Olga Larson, the chorus was probably unanimous, Rose reflected, +in looking at it like that. They accounted for her having got a job in +the first place at Grant's expense, and a promotion so soon thereafter +to the sextette, by assuming that John Galbraith had a sentimental +interest in her. Whether his reward had been collected in advance, or +was still unpaid, was an interesting theme for debate. But that, past or +present, the reward was his actuating motive, it wouldn't occur to +anybody to question.</p> + +<p>There was no malice in this. Rose didn't lose caste with any of them on +account of it. But a chorus-girl is the most sentimental person in the +world. If there's anybody who really believes that love makes the world +go round, she is that one. It's love that actuates men to deeds of +heroism or of crime; it's love that makes men invest good money in +musical comedies; love that makes stars out of her undeserving sisters +in the chorus; love that is always waiting round the corner to open the +door to wealth and fame for her.</p> + +<p>So when Grant came back and ate her humble pie in vain, and later, when +Benedict was relegated to a place in the back line, the natural +explanation was that Galbraith was crazy about the new girl.</p> + +<p>Of course it set Rose all ablaze with wrath when she became aware of +this. It was precisely because she had rebelled against the theory that +love was what made the world go round, that she was here in the chorus. +Had she been content to let it make her world go round, she never would +have left Rodney. The only way she had of refuting the assumption in +this case would be by making good so demonstrably and instantaneously, +that they'd be compelled to see that her promotion had been inevitable.</p> + +<p>It was in this spirit, with blazing cheeks and eyes, that she attacked +the next morning's rehearsal. She was only dimly aware of Benedict out +in the hall in front, viperishly waiting for the arrival of one of the +owners to make an impassioned plea for reinstatement. Her tears or her +tantrums were matters of supremely little importance. But that John +Galbraith should see that he had promoted her on merit and on nothing +but merit, mattered enormously.</p> + +<p>Lacking the clue, he watched her in a sort of amused perplexity. Her way +of snatching his instructions, her almost viciously determined manner of +carrying them out, would have been natural had she been working under +the spur of some stinging rebuke, instead of under the impetus of an +unexpected promotion.</p> + +<p>"Don't make such hard work of it, Dane," he said at last. "You're all +right, but have a little fun out of it. There are eight hundred people +out there," he waved his arm out toward the empty hall, "who have paid +their hard-earned money to feel jolly and have a good time. If you go on +looking like that, they'll think this piece was produced by Simon +Legree."</p> + +<p>There came the same gleaming twinkle in his eye that had disarmed her +resentment once before, and as before, she found herself feeling rather +absurd. What mattered the microcephalic imaginings of greasy Dave and +his friends among the chorus? John Galbraith wasn't the sort of man to +get infatuated with a chorus-girl. The gleam in his eye was enough, all +by itself, to make that plain.</p> + +<p>So, flushing up a little, she grinned back at him, gave him a nod of +acquiescence, and fell back to her place for the beginning of the next +evolution.</p> + +<p>"If she smiles like that," thought John Galbraith, "she'll break up the +show." At the end of the rehearsal, he said to her, "You're doing very +well indeed, Dane. If I could have caught you ten years ago, I could +have made a dancer out of you."</p> + +<p>It was a very real, unqualified compliment, and as such Rose understood +it. Because, by a dancer, he meant something very different from a +prancing chorus-girl. The others giggled and exchanged glances with Dave +at the piano. They didn't understand. To them, the compliment seemed to +have been delivered with the left hand. And somehow, an amused +recognition of the fact that they didn't understand, as well as of the +fact that she did, flashed across from John Galbraith's eyes to hers.</p> + +<p>"Just a minute," he said as they all started to leave the stage, and +they came back and gathered in a half-circle around him. "We'll rehearse +the first act to-night with the principals. You six girls are supposed +to be young millionairesses, very up-to-date-bachelor-girl type, +intimate friends of the leading lady, who is a multi-millionairess +that's run away from home. You've all got a few lines to say. Go to Mr. +Quan and get your parts and have them up by to-night."</p> + +<p>At half past four that afternoon, when the regular chorus rehearsal was +over, Rose asked John Galbraith if she might speak to him for a minute. +He had one foot on a chair and was in the act of unlacing his dancing +shoes, so he seemed to be, for him, comparatively permanent. He had a +disconcerting way, she had noticed, of walking away on some business of +his own in the middle of other people's sentences, intending to come +back, no doubt, in time to hear the end of them, but forgetting to.</p> + +<p>"Fire away," he said, looking around at her over his shoulder. Then, +with reference to the blue-bound pair of sides she held in her hand, +"What's the matter? Isn't the part fat enough for you?"</p> + +<p>"Fat enough?" Rose echoed inquiringly. "Oh, you mean long enough." She +smiled in good-humored acknowledgment of his joke, and let that do for +an answer.</p> + +<p>John Galbraith hadn't been sure that it would be a joke to Rose. He'd +been a musical-comedy producer so long that no megalomaniacal absurdity +could take him by surprise. There were chorus-girls no doubt in this +very company, who, on being promoted to microscopic parts, would be +capable of complaining because they weren't bigger.</p> + +<p>"All the same," said Rose, "I'm afraid I've got to tell you that I can't +take this, and to ask you to put me back into the regular chorus."</p> + +<p>He wasn't immune to surprise after all, it seemed. He straightened up in +a flash and stared at her. "What on earth are you talking about?" he +asked.</p> + +<p>"If I have words to say, even only a few, wouldn't anybody who happened +to be in the audience, know who I was?—I mean if they knew me already."</p> + +<p>"Of course they would. What of it?"</p> + +<p>"I told you," said Rose, "the day you gave me a job, that it wasn't a +lark. I had to begin earning my own living suddenly, and without any +training for it at all, and this seemed to be the best way. That's—all +true, and it's true that no one could come and, as you say, lead me away +by the ear. Nobody's responsible for me but myself. But there are people +who'd be terribly shocked and hurt if they found out I'd gone on the +stage. They know I'm earning my own living, but they don't know how I'm +doing it. I thought that as just one of the chorus, made up and all, I'd +be safe. But with these lines to say ..."</p> + +<p>"Now listen to me," said John Galbraith; "listen as hard as you can. +Because when I've done talking, you will have to make up your mind. In +the first place you wouldn't be 'safe,' as you said, even in the chorus. +A make-up isn't a disguise. You will be rouged and powdered, your +eyelashes blackened, your lips reddened and so on, not to make you look +different, but to keep you looking the same under the strong lights. +You're not the sort of person to escape notice. That's the reason I made +up my mind to hire you before I knew you could dance. I saw you standing +back there in the doorway. You've got the quality about you that makes +people see you. That's one of your assets.</p> + +<p>"So, if you're ashamed of being recognized in this business, you'd +better get out of it altogether. On the other hand, it seems to me that +if you've got to earn your living, it's nobody's business but your own +how you do it. You're the one who'll go hungry if you don't earn it, not +these friends of yours. So, if it seems a legitimate way of earning a +living to you, if you don't feel disgraced or degraded by being in it, +you'd better forget your friends and go ahead. You've made an excellent +start; you've earned a legitimate promotion. It will mean that instead +of getting twenty dollars a week when the show opens, you will get +twenty-five. It's a long time since I've given a person without +experience a chance like that. I gave it to you because you seemed +ambitious and intelligent—the sort who'd see me through. But if you +aren't ambitious, if the game doesn't look worth playing to you, and you +aren't willing to play it for all it's worth—why, good as you are, I +don't want you at all. So that's your choice!"</p> + +<p>His manner wasn't quite so harsh as his words, but it convinced her that +he meant every one of them right to the foot of the letter.</p> + +<p>She couldn't answer for a moment. She hadn't guessed that the choice he +was going to offer her would be between taking the little part he had +given her and playing it for all it was worth, defiant of Rodney's +feelings and of the scandal of the Lake Shore Drive—and going back to +her three-dollar room this afternoon, out of a job and without even a +glimmering chance of finding another.</p> + +<p>"Take your time," he said. "I don't want to be a brute about it, but +look here! Try to see it my way for a minute. Here are my employers, the +owners of this piece. They're putting thousands of dollars into the +production of it. They've hired me to make that production a success. +Well, I don't know about other games, but this game's a battle. If we +win, it will be because we put every bit of steam and every bit of +confidence we've got into it and <i>make</i> it win. That goes for me, and +for the principals, and right down through to the last girl in the +chorus. Every night there'll be a new audience out there that you will +have to fight—shake up out of the grouch they get when they pay for +their tickets; persuade to laugh and loosen up and come and play with +you.</p> + +<p>"Will you be able to do your share, do you suppose, if you're slinking +around, afraid of being recognized? We don't care whether your pussy-cat +friends get their fur rubbed the wrong way or not. The only thing we +care about is putting this show across. Well, if you feel the way we do +about it, if you can make it the one thing you do care about, too—why, +come along. Let the pussy-cats go ..." He finished with a snap of his +fingers.</p> + +<p>"The only one that really matters isn't a pussy-cat," said Rose, with a +reluctant wide smile, "and—he'd agree with you altogether, if he didn't +know you were talking to me. And I'm really very much obliged to you."</p> + +<p>"You will come along then?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose, "I'll come."</p> + +<p>"No flutters?" questioned Galbraith. "No eleventh-hour repentance?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Rose, "I'll see it through."</p> + +<p>John Galbraith went away satisfied. Rose had the same power that he had, +of making a simple unemphatic statement irresistibly convincing. When +she said that she would go through, he knew that unless struck by +lightning, she would. But there had been something at once ironic and +tender about the girl's smile, when she had spoken of the only one who +really mattered, that he couldn't account for. Who was the only one that +really mattered, anyway? Her husband? He didn't think it likely. Young +women who quarreled with their husbands and ran away from them to go on +the stage, wouldn't, as far as his experience went, be likely to smile +over them like that. More probably a brother—a younger brother, +perhaps, fiercely proud as such a boy would be of such a sister.</p> + +<p>She certainly had sand, that girl. He was mighty glad his bluff that he +would put her out of the chorus altogether, unless she took the little +part in the sextette, had worked. He'd have felt rather a fool if she +had called it.</p> + +<p>Of course the thing that had got Rose was the echo, through everything +John Galbraith had said, of Rodney's own philosophy; his dear, big, +lusty, rather remorseless way. And now again, as before when she had +left him, it was his view of life that was recoiling upon his own head.</p> + +<p>She was really grateful to Galbraith. What had she left Rodney for, +except to build a self for herself; to acquire, through whatever pains +might be the price of it, a life that didn't derive from him; that was, +at the core of it, her own? Yet here, right at the beginning of her +pilgrimage, she'd have turned down the by-path of self-sacrifice; have +begun ordering her life with reference to Rodney, rather than herself, +if John Galbraith hadn't headed her back.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_IV_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<h3>THE GIRL WITH THE BAD VOICE</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>The Girl Up-stairs had quite a miscellaneous lot of plot; indeed a plot +fancier might have detected nearly all the famous strains in its +lineage. Its foci were Sylvia Huntington, the beautiful +multi-millionairess, and Richard Benham, nephew of Minim, the Cosmetic +King and head of the Talcum Trust. Sylvia, tired of being sought for her +wealth, and yearning to be loved for herself alone, has run away to +Bohemia and installed herself in an attic over a studio occupied by two +penniless artists, one a poet, the other a musician. Only they aren't +penniless any more, having leaped to wealth and fame with an immensely +successful musical comedy they have just written. And, like Nanki Poo, +the musician isn't really a musician, but is the talented, rebellious +nephew of the Cosmetic King, none other than Dick Benham himself, a +truant from his tyrannical uncle's determination to make him into a +rouge and talcum salesman. He falls in love with Sylvia, not knowing her +as Sylvia, of course, but only as the girl up-stairs, a poor little +wretch to whom in the goodness of his heart, he is giving singing +lessons. And she falls in love with him, knowing him neither as Dick +Benham, nor as the successful composer (because his authorship of the +musical comedy has been kept a secret from her), but only as a poor +struggling musician. Poor Dick's affections are temporarily led astray +by the mercenary seductions of the leading lady in his opera, who has +learned the secret of his true identity and vast wealth, and means to +marry him under the cloak of disinterested affection. He gets bad advice +from his poet friend, too, who has dishonorable designs on the girl +up-stairs and so warns Dick against throwing himself away on a nobody, +of, possibly, doubtful virtue. It is, of course, essential to Sylvia +that Dick should ask her to marry him before he learns who she really +is, in order that she may be sure it isn't for her wealth that he is +seeking her.</p> + +<p>This was the general lie of the land, though the thing was complicated, +of course, by minor intrigues, as for instance in the first act, when +Minim, the uncle, came to inquire of the successful composer what his +terms would be for introducing a song into his opera, extolling the +merits of Minim's newest brand of liquid face-powder. Then there was the +comic detective, whom Sylvia's frantic father had given the job of +finding her, and who, considering that he was the typical idiot +detective of musical comedy, came unaccountably close to doing it.</p> + +<p>Then in the second act, there was the confusion produced by the fact +that Dick and his poet friend gave a midnight party on the roof, unaware +of the fact that Sylvia made it a practise, during these hot nights, to +crawl out from her attic, on to this same roof and sleep there. And on +this particular night, she had invited her six bachelor-girl friends, +who were in her confidence, to come and share its hospitalities with +her. The mutual misunderstandings, by this time piled mountain high, +were projected into the third act by the not entirely unprecedented +device of a mask ball in the palatial Fifth Avenue mansion of Sylvia's +father, in celebration of her return home—a ball whose invitation list +was precisely coincident, even down to the detective, with the persons +who had appeared in the first two acts. One minute before the last +curtain, Dick and Sylvia manage to thread their way out of the tangle of +scandal and misconception, and satisfy each other as to the +disinterested quality of their mutual adoration, falling into each +other's arms just as the curtain starts down.</p> + +<p>It was not, of course, until after a good many rehearsals that Rose +could have given a connected account of it like that. They worked for +three hours on this first occasion, merely getting through the first +act—a miserable three hours, too, for Rose, owing to a little +misfortune that befell her right at the beginning.</p> + +<p>The glow of determination Galbraith had inspired her with, to put her +own shoulder to the wheel and do her very topmost best, for the one +great desideratum, the success of the show, had kept her studying her +little handful of lines long after she supposed she knew them perfectly. +They weren't very satisfactory lines to study—just the smallest of +conversational small change, little ejaculations of delight or dismay, +acquiescence or dissent. But the trouble with them was, they were, for +the most part, exactly the last expressions that a smart young woman of +the type she was supposed to represent would use.</p> + +<p>So, remembering what Galbraith had said about everybody down to the last +chorus-man doing the best he knew for the success of the show, Rose +sought him out, for a minute, just before the rehearsal began, and asked +if she might change two of her lines a little.</p> + +<p>Galbraith grinned at her, turned and beckoned to the baby-faced man in +spectacles who stood a dozen paces away. "Oh, Mr. Mills!" he called. +"Can you come over here a minute?"</p> + +<p>"He's the author," Galbraith then explained to Rose, "and we can't +change this book of his without his permission."</p> + +<p>Then, "This is Miss Dane of the sextette," he said to Mills, "and she +tells me she'd like to make one or two changes in her lines."</p> + +<p>It didn't need a sensitive ear to detect a note of mockery in this +speech, though Galbraith's face was perfectly solemn. But the face of +the author went a delicate pink all over, and his round eyes stared. "My +God!" he said.</p> + +<p>The exclamation was explosive enough to catch the ear of an extremely +pretty young woman who stood near by with her hands in her pockets. She +wore a Burberry raglan and an entirely untrimmed soft felt hat, and she +came over unceremoniously and joined the group.</p> + +<p>"Miss Devereux," said the author, with hard-fetched irony, "here's a +chorus-girl in perfect agreement with you. She's got about six lines to +say, and she wants to change two of them."</p> + +<p>"What are your changes, Dane?" Galbraith asked.</p> + +<p>Queerly enough, the curt seriousness of his speech was immensely +grateful to her—suggested that she perhaps hadn't been, wholly anyhow, +the object of his derision before.</p> + +<p>"I only thought," said Rose, "that if instead of saying, 'My gracious, +Sylvia!' I said, 'Sylvia, <i>dear</i>!' or something like that, it would +sound a little more natural. And if I said, 'I <i>do</i> wish, Sylvia' +instead of, 'I wish to goodness, Sylvia ...'"</p> + +<p>She had said it all straight to the author.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," he said, sneering very hard, "that your own personal +knowledge of the way society women talk is what leads you to believe +that your phrases are better than mine?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose, serenely matter-of-fact, "it is."</p> + +<p>Sarcasm is an uncertain sort of pop-gun. You never can tell from which +end it's going to go off.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Miss Devereux, turning now a deadly smile on him, +"whether Miss—what's-her-name—agrees with me or not. But, do you know, +I agree with her."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't care a <i>damn</i>!" said Mr. Harold Mills. "Go as far as you +like. I don't recognize the piece now. What it'll be when you—butchers +get through with it ...!" He flung out his hands and stalked away.</p> + +<p>"Go find Mr. Quan," said Galbraith to Rose, "and tell him to mark those +changes of yours in the book. Tell him I said so."</p> + +<p>It was, though, a pretty unsatisfactory victory. Everybody was grinning; +for the tale spread fast, and while Rose knew it wasn't primarily at +her, her sensations were those of a perfectly serious, well-meaning +child, in adult company, who, in all innocence has just made a remark +which, for some reason incomprehensible to him, has convulsed one member +of it with fury, and the others with laughter. More or less she could +imagine where the joke lay. Harold had evidently been quarreling with +pretty much all of the principals, over more or less necessary changes +in his precious text, until everybody was rather on edge about it, +loaded and primed for all sorts of explosions; when, cheerfully along +came Rose, a perfectly green young chorus-girl, unsuspectingly carrying +the match for the mine, or the straw for the camel, whichever way you +wanted to put it.</p> + +<p>She wouldn't have minded the way she had blundered into the focus of +public attention, if, in other particulars, the rehearsal had been +going well with her. Unluckily, though, she started off wrong foot +foremost in the very first of their numbers, with a mistake that snarled +up everything and brought down an explosion of wrath from Galbraith. +Even if she'd been trying, he groaned, to make mistakes, he didn't see +how she'd managed that one. But the real nightmare didn't begin till the +first of her scenes with Sylvia, where she had to talk.</p> + +<p>She'd said her lines over about a thousand times apiece, and practised +their inflection and phrasing in as many ways as she could think of, but +she had neglected to memorize her cues. Not altogether, of course; she +thought she'd learned them, but they were terribly scanty little cues +anyway, just a single word, usually, and never more than two, and +nothing short of absolutely automatic memorization was any good. So she +sat serene through a five-second stage wait while Quan frantically spun +the pages of his book to find the place—he ought to have been following +of course, but he'd yielded to the temptation of trying to do something +else at the same time and had got lost—and then dry-throated, incapable +of a sound for a couple of seconds more—hours they seemed—after she +had been identified as the culprit who had failed to come in on a cue.</p> + +<p>The sight of the author out in the hall invoking his gods to witness +that this girl who had presumed to change his lines, was an idiot +incapable of articulate speech, brought her out of her daze. But even +then she couldn't get anything quite right. There seemed to be no golden +mean between the bellow of a fireman and a tone which Galbraith assured +her wouldn't be audible three rows back. And when they came to one of +the lines she'd been allowed to change, in her panic over the thing, she +mixed the two versions impartially together into a sputter of words that +meant nothing at all, whereupon the author, out at the back of the hall, +laughed maniacally.</p> + +<p>She would have gone on stuttering at it until she got it straight, if +Galbraith hadn't put her out of her misery by striding over, snatching +the book from Quan, and reading the line himself. She hadn't anything +more to say in the first act, and she managed to get through the rest of +the song numbers without disaster, if equally without confidence or +dash. She felt as limp as if she had been boiled and put through the +clothes-wringer. And when, as he dismissed the rehearsal Galbraith told +her to wait a minute, she expected nothing less than ignominious +reduction to the ranks.</p> + +<p>"That matter of putting your voice over, Dane," he said, to her +amazement quite casually, "is just a question of thinking where you want +it to go. If you'll imagine a target against the back wall over there, +and will your voice to hit it, whatever direction you're speaking in, +and however softly you speak, you will be heard. If you forget the +target and think you're talking to the person on the stage you're +supposed to be talking to, you won't be heard. Say your lines over to me +now, without raising your voice or looking out there. But keep the +target in mind."</p> + +<p>Rose said all the lines she had in the whole three acts. It didn't take +a minute. He nodded curtly. "You've got the idea." He added, just as she +turned away, "You were quite right to suggest those changes. They're an +improvement."</p> + +<p>That rehearsal marked the nadir of Rose's career at the Globe. From then +on, she was steadily in the ascendent, not only in John Galbraith's good +graces, which was all of course that mattered. She won, it appeared, a +sort of tolerant esteem from some of the principals, and even the owners +themselves spoke to her pleasantly.</p> + +<p>They entertained her vastly, now that a confidence in her ability to do +her own part left her leisure to look around a bit. The contrast between +the two leading women, Patricia Devereux, who played the title part, and +little Anabel Astor, who played the mercenary seductress, was a piquant +source of speculation. As far as speech and manners went, Miss Devereux +might have been a born citizen of the world Rose had been naturalized +into by her marriage with Rodney; in fact, she reminded her rather +strikingly of Harriet. She was cool, brusk, hard finished, and, as was +evident from Galbraith's manifest satisfaction with her, thoroughly +workmanly and competent. Yet she never seemed really to work in +rehearsal. She gave no more than a bare outline of what she was going to +do. But the outline, in all its salient angles, was perfectly +indicated. She rehearsed in her ordinary street clothes, with her hat +on, and as often as not, with a wrist-bag in one hand. She neither +danced, sang, nor acted. But she had her part letter perfect before any +of the other principals. She never missed a cue, and though she sang off +the top of her voice, and let the confines of a very scant little tailor +skirt mark the limits of her dancing, she sang her songs in perfect +tempo and always made it completely clear to Galbraith and the musical +director, just how much of the stage in every direction, her dances were +going to occupy and precisely the <i>tempi</i> at which they were to be +executed. In a word, if her work had no more emotional value than a +mechanical drawing, it did have the precision of one.</p> + +<p>Rose mightn't have appreciated tins, had she not seen and admired Miss +Devereux from the front in a production she and Rodney had been two or +three times to see the season before.</p> + +<p>Little Anabel Astor presented as striking a contrast to all this as it +would be possible to imagine. She, too, had attained a good deal of +celebrity in the musical-comedy world—was to be one of the features of +the cast. She'd come up from the ranks of the chorus. She'd been one of +the ponies, years ago, in some of George M. Cohan's productions, and she +was still just a chorus-girl. But a chorus-girl raised to the third, or +fourth, or, if you like, the <i>n</i>th power. She had an electric grin, and +a perfectly boundless vitality, which she spent as freely on rehearsals +as on performances. She always dressed for rehearsals just as the chorus +did, in a middy-blouse and bloomers, and she worked as hard as they did, +and even more ungrudgingly.</p> + +<p>She was a pretty little thing, with nothing very feminine about +her—even her voice had a harsh boyish quality—and she never looked +prettier to Rose than when, her face flushed with an hour's honest toil, +she would wipe the copious sweat of it off with her sleeve, and panting, +look up with a smile at John Galbraith and an expectant expression, +waiting for his next command, which reminded Rose of the look of a +terrier alert for the stick his master means to throw for him. Her +speech was unaffectedly that of a Milwaukee Avenue gamin, and it served +adequately and admirably as a vehicle for the expression of her emotions +and ideas.</p> + +<p>She formed her likes and dislikes with a complete disregard of the +social or professional importance of the objects of them. She took an +immediate liking to Rose; gave her some valuable hints on dancing, took +to calling her "dearie" before the end of the second rehearsal and, with +her arm around her, confided to her in terms of blood-curdling +profanity, her opinion of Stewart Lester, the tenor, who played the part +of Dick Benham in the piece.</p> + +<p>The queer thing was that she and Patricia were on the best of terms. +They didn't compete, that was it, Rose supposed, and they were both good +enough cosmopolites to bridge across the antipodal distances between +their respective traditions and environments. Patricia hated the tenor +as bitterly as Anabel. And, in her own way, she was as pleasantly +friendly to Rose. There were no endearments or caresses, naturally, but +her brusk nods of greeting and farewell seemed to have real good feeling +behind them.</p> + +<p>The men principals—this was rather a surprise to Rose—weren't nearly +so pleasant nor so friendly. Most of them professed to be totally +unaware of her existence and the one or two who showed an +awareness—Freddy France, who played the comic detective, was chief of +these offenders—did it in a way that brought the fighting blood into +her cheeks.</p> + +<p>My astronomical figure for the expression of Rose's rise in her +profession is, in one important particular, misleading. There was +nothing precalculable about it, as there is about the solemn swing of +the stars. The impetus and direction of Rose's career derived from two +incidents that might just as well not have happened—two of the flukiest +of small chances.</p> + +<p>The first of these chances concerned itself with Olga Larson and her bad +voice. Olga, as I think I have told you, was one of the sextette. And, +oddly enough, she owed her membership in this little group of quasi +principals, to her voice and nothing else. Because it was a bad voice +only when she talked. When she sang, it had a gorgeous thrilling ring to +it that made Patricia Devereux, when she heard it, clench her hands and +narrow her eyes. She'd never been taught what to do with it, but then, +for what Galbraith wanted of her she needed no teaching. Her ear was +infallible; let her hear a tune once and she could reproduce it +accurately, squarely up to time, squarely, always, in the middle of the +pitch. When she opened her rather dainty-looking mouth and sang, she +could give you across the footlights the impression that at least four +first-class sopranos were going uncommon strong. She hadn't a salient or +commonplace enough sort of beauty to have singled her out from the +chorus and she was no better a dancer than passable. But none of the +girls who would be picked out by a committee of automobile salesmen as +the prettiest and the best dancers in the chorus could sing a note, and +the sextette would have been dumb without her voice.</p> + +<p>It was natural enough that Patricia didn't like it. She owed her own +position as a leading light-opera soprano to the cultivation to its +highest possible perfection of a distinctly second-rate voice, to a +precise knowledge of its limitations and to a most scrupulous economy in +its effects. Inevitably, then, the raw splendors that Olga Larson +dispensed so prodigally gave Patricia the creeps.</p> + +<p>Inevitably, too, without any conscious malice about it, she made up her +clear, hard little mind the moment she heard Olga talk, that she was +utterly impossible for the sextette. "Really, my dear man," she told +Galbraith after the first rehearsal, "you'll have to find some one else. +American audiences will stand a good deal, I know, in the way of +atrocious speech, but positively she'll be hooted. They'll all sound +frightful enough, especially because that Dane girl, if that's her name, +talks like a lady, but this one ...!" She gave a cruelly adequate little +imitation of Olga's delivery of one of her lines. "Like some one who +doesn't know how, trying to play the slide trombone," she commented.</p> + +<p>Galbraith couldn't pretend that she exaggerated the horrors of it, but +explained why the girl was indispensable. The explanation didn't please +Patricia any too well, either.</p> + +<p>"Sing!" she cried hotly. "But she sings detestably!"</p> + +<p>"No doubt," Galbraith admitted, "but she makes a great big noise always +on the right note, and that's what that bunch of penny whistlers can't +do without. Give her a little time," he concluded diplomatically, "and +I'll try to teach her."</p> + +<p>"It can't be taught," said Patricia. "That's too much even for you."</p> + +<p>So it happened that when Rose came out of her own nightmare, got her +breath and found leisure to look around, she found some one else whose +troubles weren't so transitory. The little scene in the first act, +between Sylvia and the sextette, was held up again and again, endlessly, +it seemed to Rose,—and what must it have seemed to the poor +victim?—while Galbraith bellowed Larson's lines after her, sometimes in +grotesque imitation of her own inflections, sometimes in what was meant +as a pattern for her to follow. The girl whose ear was so wonderfully +sensitive to pitch and rhythm, was simply deaf, it seemed, to the +subtleties of inflection. She reduced Galbraith to helpless wrath, in +her panic, by mistaking now and again, his imitations for his models. +The chorus tittered; the spectators suffocated their guffaws as well as +they could. Patricia grew more and more acutely and infuriatingly ironic +all the while.</p> + +<p>Evidently Galbraith didn't mean to be a brute about it. He began every +one of these tussles to improve her reading of a line, with a gentleness +that would have done credit to a kinder-gartener. But, after three +attempts, each more ominously gentle and deliberate than the last, his +temper would suddenly fly all to pieces. "—No—no—no!" he would roar +at her, and the similes his exasperation would supply him with, for a +description of what her speech was like, were as numerous as the acids +in a chemical laboratory; and they all bit and burned just as hard.</p> + +<p>Rose looked on with rather tepid feelings. She sympathized with +Galbraith on the whole. The poor man was doing his best; and the girl, +queerly, didn't seem to care. She confronted him in a sort of stockish +stupidity, saying her lines, when he told her to try again, with the +same frightful whang he was doing his best to correct, so that he was +justified, Rose felt, in accusing her of not trying, or even listening +to him.</p> + +<p>It was in the dressing-room one night, after one of these rehearsals, +that she caught a different view of the situation. She sat down on a +bench to unlace her shoes and looked straight into Olga Larson's face—a +face sunken with a despair that turned Rose cold all over. The tearless +tragic eyes were staring, without recognition, straight into Rose's own. +It must be with faces like this that people mounted the rails on the +high bridge in Lincoln Park, intent on leaving a world that had become +intolerable. Packed in all around her in the inadequate dressing-room, +the other girls were chattering, squealing, scrambling into their +clothes, as unaware of her tense motionless figure, as if it had been a +mere inanimate lump. She couldn't have been more alone if she had been +sitting out on the rock of Juan Fernandez.</p> + +<p>Rose invented various pretexts to delay her own dressing until the other +girls were gone. She could no more have abandoned that hopeless creature +there, than she could have left a person drowning. When they had the +room to themselves, she sat down on the bench beside her.</p> + +<p>"You're all right," she said, feeling rather embarrassed and inadequate +and not knowing just how to begin. "I'm going to help you."</p> + +<p>"It's always like this," the girl said. "It's no use. He'll put me back +in the chorus again."</p> + +<p>"Not if I can help it," Rose said. "But the first thing to do is to put +on your clothes. Then we'll go out and get something to eat."</p> + +<p>Even that little beginning involved a struggle—a conscious exertion of +all the power Rose possessed. She learned, for the first time, what the +weight of an immense melancholy inertia like that can be. The girl was +like one paralyzed. She was willing enough to talk. She told Rose the +whole story of her life; not as one making confidences to a friend; +rather with the curious detachment of a melancholy spectator discussing +an unfortunate life she had no concern with.</p> + +<p>She knew how good her voice was, and, equally, how badly it needed +training. She'd had, always, a passionate desire to sing and a belief in +her possibilities. If she could get a chance, she could succeed. She'd +undergone heartbreaking privations, trying to save money enough out of +her earnings at one form of toil after another, to take lessons. But, +repeatedly, these small savings had, by some disaster, been swept away: +stolen once, by a worthless older brother; absorbed on another occasion +by her mother's fatal illness. Two years ago she had drifted into the +chorus, but had been altogether unlucky in her various ventures. She +wasn't naturally graceful—had been slow learning to dance. Again and +again, she'd been dropped at the end of three or four weeks of rehearsal +(gratuitous of course) and seen another girl put in her place. When this +hadn't happened, the shows she had been in had failed after a few weeks' +life.</p> + +<p>When Galbraith had put her into the sextette in <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>, a +hope, just about dead, had been awakened. She'd at last learned to dance +well enough to escape censure and she had seen for herself how +indispensable her singing voice was to the group. And then it had +appeared she'd have to talk! And, inexplicably to herself, her talking +wasn't right. The thing had just been another mirage. It was hopeless. +Galbraith would put her back into the chorus—drop her, likely enough, +altogether.</p> + +<p>The thing that at first exasperated Rose and later, as she came vaguely +to understand it, aroused both her pity and her determination, was the +girl's strange, dully fatalistic acquiescence in it all. The sort of +circumstances that in Rose herself set the blood drumming through her +arteries, keyed her will to the very highest pitch, quickened her brain, +made her feel in some inexplicable way, confident and irresistible, laid +on this girl a paralyzing hand. It wasn't her fault that she didn't meet +her difficulties half-way with a vicious, driving offensive—rout them, +demoralize them. It was her tragedy.</p> + +<p>"All right," Rose apostrophized them grimly. "This time you're up +against me."</p> + +<p>"Look here!" she said to Olga, when the story was told (this was across +the table in the dingy lunch-room where, as Doris Dane, she had had her +first meal, and most of her subsequent ones), "look here, and listen to +what I'm going to tell you. I know what I'm talking about. You're going +to learn to say your lines before to-morrow's rehearsal, so that Mr. ... +So that Galbraith won't stop you once." (This was a trick of speech that +came hard to Rose, but she was gradually learning it.) "We're going up +to my room now, and I'm going to teach you. We've got lots of time. +Rehearsal to-morrow isn't till twelve o'clock. You're going to stay in +the sextette, and when the piece opens, you're going to make a hit."</p> + +<p>She hesitated a moment, then added in the same blunt matter-of-fact way, +"You're one of the most beautiful women in Chicago. Did you know that? +Dressed right and with your hair done right, you could make them stare. +Have you finished your coffee? Then come along. Here! Give me your part. +You don't want to lose it."</p> + +<p>For the girl, pitiably, almost ludicrously, was staring at Rose in a +sort of somnambulistic daze. She hadn't been hypnotized, but she might +about as well have been, for any real resistance her mind, or her will, +could offer to her new friend's vibrant confidence.</p> + +<p>She went with Rose up to the little three-dollar room. Rose put her into +a chair, sat down opposite her, took the first phrase of her first +speech, and said it very slowly, very quietly, half a dozen times. That +was at half past eleven o'clock at night. By midnight, Olga could say +those first three words, if not to Rose's complete satisfaction, at +least a lot better. She went on and finished the sentence. They worked +straight through the night, except that two or three times the girl +broke down; said it was hopeless. She got up once and said that she was +going home, whereupon Rose locked the door and put the key in her +stocking. She sulked once, and for fifteen minutes wouldn't say a word. +But by seven o'clock in the morning, when they went back to the +lunch-room and ate an enormous breakfast, Olga's sluggish blood was +fired at last. It was a profane thought, but you <i>could</i> take the Fatal +Sisters by the hair and coerce a change in the pattern they were +weaving.</p> + +<p>And Rose, by that time, by the plain brute force of necessity, was a +teacher of phonetics. She'd discovered how she made sounds herself and +had, with the aid of a hand mirror, developed a rough-and-ready +technique for demonstrating how it was done. She remembered, with bitter +regret, a course she had dozed through at the university, dreaming about +the half-back, which, had she only listened to the professor instead, +would be doing her solid service now. Had there been other courses like +that, she wondered vaguely? Had the education she had spent fifteen +years or so on an actual relation to life after all? It was a startling +idea.</p> + +<p>She walked Olga out to the park and back at seven-thirty, and at eight +they were up in her room again. They raided the delicatessen at eleven +o'clock, and made an exiguous meal on the plunder. And at twelve, husky +of voice, but indomitable of mind, they, with the others, confronted +Galbraith upon the stage in North End Hall.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose," Olga said during the preliminary bustle of getting +started, "that he's put any one else in my part already?"</p> + +<p>It was a fear Rose had entertained, but had avoided suggesting to her +pupil.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe so," she said. "If he has, I'll talk to him."</p> + +<p>"No, you won't!" said Olga. "I'll talk to him myself."</p> + +<p>There was a ring to that decision that did Rose's heart good. It took a +long time to get that northern blood on fire, but when you did, you +could count on its not going cold again overnight.</p> + +<p>It got pretty exciting of course, as the scene between Sylvia and the +sextette drew near, and when it came, Rose could hardly manage her own +first line—hung over it a second, indeed, before she could make her +voice work at all, and drew a sharp look of inquiry from Galbraith. But +on Olga's first cue, her line was spoken with no hesitation at all, and +in tone, pitch and inflection, it was almost a phonographic copy of the +voice that had served it for a model.</p> + +<p>There was a solid two seconds of silence. For once in her life Patricia +Devereux had missed a cue!</p> + +<p>John Galbraith had been an acrobat as well as a dancer, and he was +quick on his feet. He had just turned, unexpectedly, an intellectual +somersault, but he landed cleanly and without a stagger. "Come, Miss +Devereux," he said, "that's your line." And the scene went on.</p> + +<p>But when, about four o'clock that afternoon, the rehearsal was over, +Galbraith called Olga out to him and allowed himself a long incredulous +stare at her. "Will you tell me, Larson," he asked, "why in the name of +Heaven, if you could do that, you didn't do it yesterday?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't do it yesterday," she said. "Dana taught me."</p> + +<p>"Taught you!" he echoed. "Beginning after last night's rehearsal?... +Dane!" he called to Rose, who had been watching a little anxiously to +see what would happen.</p> + +<p>"You've learned it very well indeed," he said with a nod of dismissal to +Olga, as Rose came up. "Don't try to change it. Stick to what you've +got."</p> + +<p>Then, to Rosa, "Larson tells me you taught her. How did you do it?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I just—taught her," said Rosa. "I showed her how I said each +line, and I kept on showing her until she could do it."</p> + +<p>"How long did it take you—all night?"</p> + +<p>"All the time there's been since last rehearsal," said Rosa, "except for +three meals."</p> + +<p>"Good God!" said Galbraith. "Devereux said it couldn't be done, and I +agreed with her. Well, live and learn. Look here! Will you teach the +others—the other four in the sextette? I'll see you're paid for it."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes,—of course," said Rose, hesitating a little.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean overnight," he said, "but mornings—between +rehearsals—whenever you can."</p> + +<p>"I wasn't thinking of that," said Rose. "I was just wondering if they'd +want to be taught—I mean, by another chorus-girl, you know."</p> + +<p>"They'll want to be taught if they want to keep their jobs," said +Galbraith. And then, to her astonishment, and also perhaps to his, for +the thing was radically out of the etiquette of the occasion, he reached +out and shook hands with her. "I'm very much obliged to you," he said.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_V_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<h3>MRS. GOLDSMITH'S TASTE</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>If there was a profession in the world which Rose had never either idly +or seriously considered as a possible one for herself, that of a teacher +was it. And yet, the first money she ever earned in her life was the +twenty dollars the management paid her for teaching the other four girls +in the sextette to say their lines. She was a born teacher, too. And the +born teacher is a rare bird.</p> + +<p>One must know something in the first place, of course, before one can +teach it—a fact that has resulted in the fitting of an enormous number +of square pegs into round holes. Most of the people in the world who are +trying to teach, are those whose aptitude is for learning. But the +scholar's temper and the teacher's are antipodal; a salient, vivid +personality that can command attention, the unconscious will to +conquer—to enforce (a very different thing from the wish to do these +things) that is the <i>sine qua non</i> for a real teacher. And that, of +course, was Rose all over.</p> + +<p>Those four sulky, rather supercilious chorus-girls, coming to Rose under +a threat of dismissal, for lessons in the one last thing that a +free-born American will submit to dictation about, might not want to +learn, nor mean to learn, but they couldn't help learning. You couldn't +be unaware of Rose and, being aware of her, you couldn't resist doing +things as she wanted you to.</p> + +<p>Informally, too, she taught them other things than speech. "Here, +Waldron!" Galbraith would say. "This is no cake-walk. All you've got to +do is to cross to that chair and sit down in it like a lady. Show her +how to do it, Dane." And Rose, with her good-humored disarming smile at +the infuriated Waldron, would go ahead and do it.</p> + +<p>I won't pretend that she was a favorite with the other members of the +sextette, barring Olga. But she managed to avoid being cordially hated, +which was a very solid personal triumph.</p> + +<p>I have said that there were two small incidents destined to have a +powerful influence at this time, in Rose's life. One of them I have told +you about—the chance that led her to teach Olga Larson to talk. The +other concerned itself with a certain afternoon frock in a Michigan +Avenue shop.</p> + +<p>The owners of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> were very inadequately experienced in +the business of putting on musical comedies. Galbraith spoke of them as +amateurs, and couldn't, really, have described them better. Your +professional gambler—for musical-comedy producing is an especially +sporting form of gambling and nothing else—assesses his chances in +advance, decides coolly whether they are worth taking or not, and then, +with a steely indifference awaits the event. The amateur, on the +contrary, is always fluttering between an insane confidence and a +shuddering despair; between a reckless disregard of money and a foolish +attempt to save it. It had been in one of their hot fits that the owners +of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> had retained Galbraith. The news item Rose had +read had not exceeded truth in saying that he was one of the three +greatest directors in the country. They couldn't have got him out to +Chicago at all but for the chance that he was, just then, at the end of +a long-time contract with the Shumans and holding off for better terms +before he signed a new one. The owners were staggered at the prices they +had to pay him, at that, but they recovered and were still blowing warm +when they authorized him to engage Devereux, Stewart, Astor and McGill +(McGill was the chief comedian, the Cosmetic King) for all of these were +high-priced people.</p> + +<p>But by the time the question of costumes came up, they were shivering in +a perfect ague of apprehension. Was there no limit to the amount they +were to be asked to spend? This figure that Galbraith indicated as the +probable cost of having a first-class brigand in New York design the +costumes and a firm of pirates in the same neighborhood execute them, +was simply insane. New York managers might be boobs enough to submit to +such an extortion, but they, believe them, were not. Many of the +costumes could be bought, ready made, on State Street or Michigan +Avenue. Some of the fancy things could be executed by a competent +wardrobe mistress, if some one would give her the ideas. And ideas—one +could pick them up anywhere. Mrs. Goldsmith, now,—she was the wife of +the senior of the two owners—had splendid taste and would be glad to +put it at their service. There was no reason why she should not at once +take the sextette down-town and fit them out with their dresses.</p> + +<p>Galbraith shrugged his shoulders, but made no further complaint. It was, +he admitted, as they had repeatedly pointed out, their own money. So a +rendezvous was made between Mrs. Goldsmith and the sextette for +Lessing's store on Michigan Avenue at three o'clock on an afternoon when +Galbraith was to be busy with the principals. He might manage to drop in +before they left to cast his eye over and approve the selection.</p> + +<p>It was with some rather uncomfortable misgivings that Rose set out to +revisit a part of town so closely associated with the first year of her +married life. The particular shop wasn't, luckily, one that she had +patronized in that former incarnation. But it was in the same block with +a half dozen that were, and she hadn't been east of Clark Street since +the day Otto had driven her to the Polk Street Station.</p> + +<p>The day was cold and blustery—a fact that she was grateful for, as it +gave her an excuse for wearing a thick white veil, which was almost as +good as a mask. It was with a rather breathless excitement that +persisted in feeling like guilt—her heart wouldn't have beaten any +faster, she believed, if she had just robbed a jewelry store and were +walking away with the swag in her pocket—that she debouched out of Van +Buren Street, around the corner of the Chicago Club, and into the +avenue. Unconsciously, she had been expecting to meet every one she +knew, beginning with Frederica, in the course of the two blocks or so +she had to walk. Very naturally, she didn't catch even a glimpse of any +one she even remotely knew. Suppose there should be any one in the +store! But this, she realized, wasn't likely.</p> + +<p>It wasn't a really smart shop. It paid an enormous rent there in that +neighborhood in order to pretend to be, and the gowns on the wax figures +in its windows, were taken on faith by pleasurably scandalized +pedestrians as the very latest scream of fashion. The prices on these +confections were always in the process of a violent reduction, as large +exclamatory placards grievously testified. The legend eighty-eight +dollars crossed out in red lines, with thirty-nine seventy-five written +below, for a sample. The most exclusive smartness for the economy-loving +multitude. This was the slogan.</p> + +<p>Rose, arriving promptly at the hour agreed on, had a wait of fifteen +minutes before any of her sisters of the sextette, or Mrs. Goldsmith +arrived. She told the suave manager that she was waiting for friends, +but this didn't deter him from employing a magnificent wave of the hand +to summon one of the saleswomen and consigning Rose almost tenderly, to +her care. He didn't know her, but he knew that that ulster of hers had +come straight over from Paris, had cost not less than two hundred +dollars, and had been selected by an excellently discriminating eye; and +that was enough for him.</p> + +<p>"I don't want anything just now," Rose told the saleswoman. But she +hadn't, in these few weeks of Clark Street, lost the air of one who will +buy if she sees anything worth buying. In fact, the saleswoman thought, +correctly, that she knew her and was in for a shock a little later when +Mrs. Goldsmith and the other five members of the sextette arrived.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, she showed Rose the few really smart things they had in the +store—a Poiret evening gown, a couple of afternoon frocks from Jennie, +and so on. There wasn't much, she admitted, it being just between +seasons. Their Palm Beach things weren't in yet.</p> + +<p>Rose made a few appreciative, but decidedly respect-compelling comments, +and faithfully kept one eye on the door.</p> + +<p>The rest of the sextette arrived in a pair and a trio. One of them +squealed, "Hello, Dane!" The saleswoman got her shock on seeing Rose nod +an acknowledgment of this greeting and just about that time, they heard +Mrs. Goldsmith explaining who she was and the nature of her errand, to +the manager. The necessary identifications got themselves made somehow. +They weren't in any sense introductions, everybody in the store felt +that plainly. Mrs. Goldsmith was touching the skirts of musical comedy +with a very long pair of tongs. There was absolutely no connection, +social or personal, between herself and the young persons who were to +wear the frocks she was going to buy.</p> + +<p>She stood them up and stared at them through her eye-glasses, discussed +their various physical idiosyncrasies with candor, and, one by one, +packed them off to try on haphazard selections from the mounds which +three industrious saleswomen piled up before her. You couldn't deny her +the possession of a certain force of character, for not one of the six +girls uttered a word of suggestion or of protest.</p> + +<p>And the sort of gowns she was exclaiming over with delight and ordering +put into the heap of possibilities, were horrible enough to have drawn a +protest from the wax figures in the windows. The more completely the +fundamental lines of a frock were disguised with sartorial scroll-saw +work, the more successful this lady felt it to be. An ornament, to Mrs. +Goldsmith, did not live up to its possibilities, unless it in turn were +decorated with ornaments of its own; like the fleas on the fleas on the +dog.</p> + +<p>It is a tribute to one of the qualities that made John Galbraith a +successful director, that Rose spent a miserable half-hour worrying over +these selections of the wife of the principal owner of the show, feeling +she ought to put up some sort of fight and hardly deterred by the patent +futility of such a course. To rest her esthetic senses from the delirium +of fussiness that was giving Mrs. Goldsmith so much pleasure, she began +thinking about that Poiret frock—the superb simple audacity of it! It +had been made by an artist who knew where to stop. And he had stopped +rather incredibly soon. Just suppose ... And then her eyes lighted up, +gazed thoughtfully out the window across the wind-swept desert of the +avenue, and, presently she grinned—widely, contentedly.</p> + +<p>For the next hour and a half, during the intervals of her own trying on, +she entertained herself very happily with the day-dream that she herself +had a commission to design the costumes for <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>. She +had always done that more or less, she realized, when she went to +musical-comedy shows with Rodney, especially when they were badly +costumed. But this time she did it a good deal more vividly, partly +because her interest in the piece was more intense, partly because her +imagination had a blank canvas to work on.</p> + +<p>All the while, like Sister Anne in the tower, she kept one eye on the +door and prayed for the arrival of John Galbraith.</p> + +<p>He came in just as Mrs. Goldsmith finished her task—just when, by a +process of studious elimination, every passable thing in the store had +been discarded and the twelve most utterly hopeless ones—two for each +girl—laid aside for purchase. The girls were despatched to put on the +evening frocks first, and were then paraded before the director.</p> + +<p>He was a diplomat as I have said (possibly I spoke of him before as an +acrobat. It comes to the same thing), and he was quick on his feet. +Rose, watching his face very closely, thought that for just a split +second, she caught a gleam of ineffable horror. But it was gone so +quickly she could almost have believed that she had been mistaken. He +didn't say much about the costumes, but he said it so promptly and +adequately that Mrs. Goldsmith beamed with pride. She sent the girls +away to put on the other set—the afternoon frocks, and once more the +director's approbation, though laconic, was one hundred per cent. pure.</p> + +<p>"That's all," he said in sudden dismissal of the sextette. "Rehearsal at +eight-thirty."</p> + +<p>Five of them scurried like children let out of school, around behind the +set of screens that made an extemporaneous dressing-room, and began +changing in a mad scramble, hoping to get away and to get their dinners +eaten soon enough to enable them to see the whole bill at a movie show +before the evening's rehearsal.</p> + +<p>But Rose didn't avail herself of her dismissal—remained hanging about, +a couple of paces away from where Galbraith was talking to Mrs. +Goldsmith. The only question that remained, he was telling her, was +whether her selections were not too—well, too refined, genteel, one +might say, for the stage. Regretfully he confessed he was a little +afraid they were. It needed a certain crudity to withstand the glare of +the footlights and until these gowns had been submitted to that glare, +one couldn't be sure.</p> + +<p>He wasn't looking at her as he talked, and presently, as his gaze +wandered about the store, it encountered Rose's face. She hadn't +prepared it for the encounter, and it wore, hardly veiled, a look of +humorous appreciation. His sentence broke, then completed itself. She +turned away, but the next moment he called out to her, "Were you waiting +for me, Dane?"</p> + +<p>"I'd like to speak to you a minute," she said, "when you have time."</p> + +<p>"All right. Go and change your clothes first," he said.</p> + +<p>Out of the tail of her eye as she departed, she saw him shaking hands +with the owner's wife and thanking her effusively for her help. +Incidentally, he was leading her toward the door as he did it. And at +the door, he declined an offer to be taken anywhere he might want to go +in her electric.</p> + +<p>She found the other girls on the point of departure. But Olga offered to +wait for her.</p> + +<p>"No, you run along," Rose said. "I've some errands and I don't feel like +seeing a movie to-night, anyway."</p> + +<p>Olga looked a little odd about it, but hurried along after the others.</p> + +<p>A saleswoman—the same one the manager assigned to Rose under the +misconception which that smart French ulster of hers had created when +she came into the store—now came around behind the screen to gather up +the frocks the girls had shed.</p> + +<p>"Will you please bring me," said Rose, "that Poiret model you showed me +before the others came in? I'll try it on."</p> + +<p>The saleswoman's manner was different now and she grumbled something +about its being closing time.</p> + +<p>"Then, if you'll bring it at once ..." said Rose. And the saleswoman +went on the errand.</p> + +<p>Five minutes later, Galbraith from staring gloomily at the mournful heap +of trouble Mrs. Goldsmith had left on his hands, looked up to confront a +vision that made him gasp.</p> + +<a name="Illus_6"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_6.png"><img src="images/Illus_6.png" + alt=""It isn't quite so much your style, is it?"" + width="50%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>"It isn't quite so much your style, is it?"</h4> +<br> + +<p>"I wanted you to see if you liked this," said Rose.</p> + +<p>"If I liked it!" he echoed. "Look here! If you know enough to pick out +things like that, why did you let that woman waste everybody's time with +junk like this? Why didn't you help her out?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't have done much," Rose said, "even if my offering to do +anything hadn't made her angry—and I think it would have. You see, +she's got lots of taste, only it's bad. She wasn't bewildered a bit. She +knew just what she wanted and she got it. It's the badness of these +things she likes. And I thought ..." She hesitated a little over this. +"I thought as long as they couldn't be good, perhaps the next best thing +would be to have them as bad as possible. I mean that it would be easier +to throw them all out and get a fresh start."</p> + +<p>He stared at her with a frown of curiosity. "That's good sense," he +said. "But how did you come to think of it?—Oh, I don't mean that!" he +went on impatiently. "Why should you bother to think of it?"</p> + +<p>Her color came up perceptibly as she answered. "Why—I want the piece to +succeed, of course. I was awfully miserable when I saw the sort of +things she was picking out and I spent half an hour trying to think what +I could do about it. And then I saw that the best thing I could do, was +nothing."</p> + +<p>"You didn't do nothing though," he said. "That thing you've got on is a +start."</p> + +<p>Rose turned rather suddenly to the saleswoman. "I wish you'd get that +little Empire frock in maize and corn-flower," she said. "I'd like Mr. +Galbraith to see that, too." And the saleswoman, now placated, bustled +away.</p> + +<p>"This thing that I've got on," said Rose swiftly, "costs a hundred and +fifty dollars, but I know I can copy it for twenty. I can't get the +materials exactly of course, but I can come near enough."</p> + +<p>"Will you try this one on, miss?" asked the saleswoman, coming on the +scene again with the frock she had been sent for.</p> + +<p>"No," said Rose. "Just hold it up."</p> + +<p>Galbraith admitted it was beautiful, but wasn't overwhelmed at all as +he had been by the other.</p> + +<p>"It's not quite so much your style, is it? Not drive enough?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't for me," said Rose. "It's for Olga Larson to wear in that <i>All +Alone</i> number for the sextette."</p> + +<p>"Why Larson especially?" he asked. "Except that she's a friend of +yours."</p> + +<p>"She isn't," said Rose, "particularly. And anyway, that wouldn't be a +reason. But—did you ever really look at her? She's the one really +beautiful woman in the company."</p> + +<p>"Larson?" said John Galbraith incredulously.</p> + +<p>And Rose, with a flush and a smile partly deprecatory over her +presumption in venturing to say such things to a formidable authority +like the director, and partly the result of an exciting conviction that +she was right, told him her mind on the subject, while Galbraith, half +fascinated, half amused, listened.</p> + +<p>"I don't happen to remember the portrait of the Honorable Mrs. Graham +that you speak about," he said, "but I won't deny that you may be right +about it."</p> + +<p>It was well after closing time by now—a fact that the manager, coming +to reinforce the saleswoman, contrived, without saying so, to indicate.</p> + +<p>"Put on your street things," said Galbraith bruskly. "I'll wait."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VI_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER VI</h3> + +<h3>A BUSINESS PROPOSITION</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>"Why, this was what I wanted to say," said Rose, taking up the broken +conversation as he pulled the shop door to behind him. She didn't go out +on to the sidewalk, but lingered in the recessed doorway. "I thought if +you'd let me fake that evening frock for twenty dollars, and then buy +the little Empire one for Olga Larson—it's only eighty—that the two +would average just about what Mrs. Goldsmith was paying for the others."</p> + +<p>"Why not fake the other one too?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"It couldn't be done," said Rose decisively. "There's no idea in it, you +see, that just jumps out and catches you. It gets its style from being +so—reserved and so just exactly right. And of course that's true of the +girl herself. She's perfect, just about. But it's a perfection that it's +awfully easy to kill. She kills it herself by the way she does her +hair."</p> + +<p>Buzzing around in the back of John Galbraith's mind was an unworded +protest against the way Rose had just killed her own beauty with a thick +white veil so nearly opaque that all it let him see of her face was an +intermittent gleam of her eyes. Keenly aware—a good deal more keenly +aware than he was willing to admit—of the sort of splendor which, but +for the veil, he'd be looking at now, a splendor which nothing short of +a complete mask could hide, he was not quite in the mood to wax +enthusiastic over a beauty so fragile as that of the girl they had been +talking about. There was a momentary silence, broken again, by Rose.</p> + +<p>"Of course, you'll want to take a look at her for yourself, before you +decide," she said; "but I'm pretty sure you'll see it." She put a +cadence of finality into her voice. The business between them was over, +it said, and all she was waiting for was a word of dismissal, to nod +him a farewell and go swinging away down the avenue. Still he didn't +speak, and she moved a little restlessly. At last:—</p> + +<p>"Do you mind crossing the street?" he asked abruptly. "Then we can talk +as we walk along." She must have hesitated, because he added, "It's too +cold to stand here."</p> + +<p>"Of course," she said then. All that had made her hesitate was her +surprise over his having made a request instead of giving an order.</p> + +<p>Galbraith turned her north on the vast empty east sidewalk—a highway in +itself broader than many a famous European street, and they walked a +little way in silence.</p> + +<p>No observant Chicagoan, Rose reflected, need ever yearn for the wastes +of the Sahara when a desire for solitude or the need of privacy came +upon him. The east side of Michigan Avenue was just as solitary and +despite the difficulty of getting across to it, really a good deal more +accessible. The west side was one unbroken glow of light and though the +Christmas crowds had thinned somewhat with the closing of the shops, +they were still thick enough to have made it difficult for two people to +walk and talk together. A quadruple stream of motors, bellowing warnings +at one another, roaring with suddenly opened throttles, squealing under +sudden applications of the brake, occupied the roadway and served more +than the mere distance would have done, to isolate the pair that had the +east sidewalk all to themselves.</p> + +<p>He couldn't be looking for a better place to talk than this, Rose +thought. Why didn't he begin? Probably he'd got started thinking about +something else. A motor coming along near the curb emitted a +particularly wanton bellow, and she saw him jump like a nervous woman, +then stand still and glare after the offender. He must be feeling +specially irritable to-night, she thought.</p> + +<p>It was a good diagnosis. And his irritation had, for him, a most unusual +cause. Chorus-girls, principals, owners, authors, costumers, were +frequently the objects of his exasperated dissatisfaction. But to-night +the person he was out of all patience with was himself. He couldn't make +up his mind what he wanted to do. Or rather, knowing what he wanted to +do, he couldn't make up his mind to do it. It was this indecision of his +that had produced the silence while he and Rose had stood in the +entrance to Lessing's store. The only resolution he had come to there +had been not to allow her to say good night to him and walk away. But +now that she was striding along beside him, he couldn't make up his mind +what to say to her.</p> + +<p>A more self-conscious man would have forgiven himself his indecision +from recognizing the real complexities of the case. He was, to begin +with, an artist—almost a great artist. And a universal characteristic +of such is a complete detachment from the materials in which they +work—a sort of remorselessness in the use of anything that can +contribute to their complete expression. The raw materials of John +Galbraith's art were paint and canvas, fabrics, tunes, men and women. It +was an axiom in his experience, that any personal feeling—any sort of +human relation with one of the units in the mosaic he was building—was +to be avoided like the plague. His professional and personal contempt +for a colleague capable of a love-affair with a woman in a company he +was directing, would be inexpressible—unfathomable. Of course when a +man's job was finished—and this sort of job nearly always did finish on +the opening night—why, after that, his affairs were his own affair.</p> + +<p>In a word: he ordered his life on the perfectly sound masculine instinct +for keeping his work and his sex emotions in separate water-tight +compartments. Rose was a working member of his production, and it was +therefore flagrantly impossible that his relation with her should be +other than purely professional.</p> + +<p>And yet there had been something intangibly personal from the very +first, about every one of their broken momentary conversations—almost +about every meeting of their eyes. It had disturbed him the first time +he had ever seen her smile. He remembered the occasion well enough. She +had just finished executing the dance step—the almost inexcusably +vulgar little dance step he had ordered her to do as a condition of +getting the job she said she wanted—had turned on him blazing with +indignation; but right in the full blaze of it, at something she must +have seen, and understood, in his own face, in deprecation of her own +wrath, she had, slowly and widely, smiled.</p> + +<p>And then the way she worked for him in rehearsal! He'd seen girls work +hard before—desperately, frantically hard, under the fear that they +weren't good enough to hold their jobs. That wasn't the spirit in which +this girl worked. She seemed possessed by a blazing determination that +the results he wanted should he obtained. It seemed she couldn't devour +his intentions quickly enough, and her little unconscious nod of +satisfaction after he had corrected a mistake and she felt sure that now +she knew exactly what he wanted, was like nothing in his previous +experience.</p> + +<p>The wonderful thing about it was that she carried that eagerness beyond +the confines of her own job. And she put it to good effect too. She had +taken that Larson girl and, by the plain force of personal dominance, +made her talk right. Well, why? That was the question. Who was she +anyway? Where had she come from? Who was "the only person who really +mattered" to her—the person who wasn't a pussy-cat?</p> + +<p>He had tried hard to convince himself that these were all professional +questions. It was true they had a bearing on the more important and +perfectly legitimate question whether he had, in this altogether +extraordinary personality, discovered a new star. He had, during the +last quarter century, discovered a number—one or two of them +authentically of the first magnitude.</p> + +<p>It would have simplified matters immensely if he could have seen Rose in +this category. But the stubborn fact was, he couldn't. She couldn't sing +a bit, and marked as her natural talent was for dancing, she hadn't +begun young enough ever to master the technique of it. That left acting; +but he doubted if she could ever go very far at that. Salient as her +personality was, she hadn't the instinct for putting it over. Or, if she +had it, she distrusted it. She was handicapped, too, by her sense of +humor. A real star in the egg, wouldn't have stopped in the middle of +that first fine blaze of wrath he'd seen, to join him in smiling at it. +A real actress wouldn't have spent her energies teaching another woman +to talk, nor persuading him to buy another woman a beautiful frock. The +focus had to be sharper than that. The only way you got the drive it +took to spell your name in electric lights, was by subordinating +everything else to the projection of yourself, treating your +surroundings, with irresistible conviction, merely as a background. This +girl could never do that.</p> + +<p>Yet the notion wouldn't leave his mind that she could do something, and +do it more than commonly well. She must have an instinct of her own for +effects to enable her to understand so instantaneously what he was +trying to do. And once in a while, especially lately, he'd seen, over +some experiment of his, a flash of dissent across her eager face which +gave him the preposterous idea that by asking her—asking a +chorus-girl!—he might get a suggestion worth thinking about.</p> + +<p>Certainly she had helped him in another way, there was no doubt of that. +That sextette, thanks to her teaching, would be the smartest, best +mannered bunch of chorus-girls that had adorned a production of his in a +long, long time.</p> + +<p>And here, perhaps, he came closer than anywhere else to an understanding +of the source of the girl's attraction for him. John Galbraith could +remember the time when, a nameless little rat of a cockney, he had slept +under London bridges, opened cab doors for half-pence, carried links on +foggy nights. By the clear force of genius he had made his way up from +that;—from throwing cart-wheels for the amusement of the queues waiting +at the pit entrances of theaters, from the ribald knock-about of East +End halls, from the hilarity of Drury Lane pantomimes. Professionally +his success was a solid indubitable thing. If he weren't actually +preeminent in his special field, at least there was no one who was +accorded a preeminence over him.</p> + +<p>But another ambition, quite apart from the professional one, was hardly +so well satisfied. From the time of his very earliest memories he had +felt a passionate admiration for good breeding, and a consuming envy of +the lucky unconscious possessors of it. Since ten years old, he had +been possessed by the great desire to be acknowledged a gentleman. There +was nothing of vulgar veneer about this. It was the real interior thing +he wanted; that invisible yet perfectly palpable hall-mark which without +explanations or credentials, classified you. His profession had not +brought him in contact more than very infrequently with people of this +sort, and his personal interests never could be made to do so with +results perfectly satisfactory to himself. There it was,—the thing +those lucky elect possessed without a thought or an effort. It was an +indestructible possession, apparently, too. You couldn't throw it away. +Dissipation, dishonesty, even a total collapse that brought its victim +down to the sink that he himself had sprouted from, seemed powerless to +efface that hall-mark.</p> + +<p>He learned to suppose that if it were indestructible, it was also +unattainable, though perhaps he himself failed of attaining it only in +the consciousness of having failed—in the inability to stop trying for +it, straining all his actions through a sieve in the effort to conform +to a standard not his own.</p> + +<p>Well, this girl, whose own life must have collapsed under her in a +peculiarly cruel and dramatic fashion so that she had had to come to him +and ask him for a job in the chorus—she had the hall-mark. She had +besides a lot of the qualities that traditionally went with it, but +often didn't. She was game—game as a fighting-cock. What must it not +have meant to her to come down into that squalid dance-hall in the first +place and submit to the test he had subjected her to! How must the +dressing-room conversation of her colleagues in the chorus have revolted +and sickened her? What must it mean to her to take his orders—sharp +rasping orders, with the sting of ridicule in the tail of them when they +had to be repeated;—to be addressed by her last name like a servant? +Why, this very afternoon, how must she have felt, standing there like a +manikin, ordered to put on this dress and that, by a fussy fat woman who +wouldn't have touched her with tongs? But from not one of these +experiences had he ever seen her flinch or protest. Oh, yes, she was +game, and she was simple, as they always were; a fine type of the real +thing.</p> + +<p>And, somehow, he felt, she treated him as if he were hall-marked too. +He hadn't much to go by—absurdly little things really. But, after all, +it was the little things that counted;—a fine distinction in the +cadence of a voice, in the sort of nod of greeting or farewell one gave. +She never nodded at him in that curt telegraphic sort of way without +warming him up a bit inside.</p> + +<p>And all the while he was a director and she was a chorus-girl and an +unyielding etiquette of their respective professions forbade a word of +human intercourse between them! He had violated it, as both of them had +been aware, when he shook hands with her and thanked her for having +taught Olga Larson to talk. And just because he recognized quite well +how necessary the barrier was in all but one out of a thousand cases, +its existence in this one case baffled and irritated him.</p> + +<p>Up to the hour when he had turned into Lessing's store this afternoon, +for a look at the dresses Mrs. Goldsmith had been picking out for the +sextette, this feeling of baffled curiosity and of irritation over the +etiquette that forbade his satisfying it, would have summed up, +adequately enough, all the emotions he was conscious of toward the girl. +His professional admiration for her was another thing of course—a +perfectly legitimate thing. But with her appearance from behind the +screen, in that French evening gown—a gown she wore with the +indescribable air of belonging in it—with all her vibrant, irregular, +fascinating, eupeptic beauty fully revealed, his mood of impatient +acquiescence had fallen away. The basis of his feeling toward her +shifted in a manner that James Randolph wouldn't have had a moment's +difficulty in explaining, although Galbraith didn't understand it +himself.</p> + +<p>The thing he was conscious of was, when she made that offer to copy this +gown herself for twenty dollars and so leave him leeway for the purchase +of the Empire frock for Olga—offering to go to that trouble not for +herself or her friend, but to further the accomplishment of what he +wanted; namely, the success of his production—what he was conscious of +then, was an overpowering desire to make a confidante of her; to talk +matters out with her, show her some of the major strategy of the game +that he had to consider, and find out how the thing would look to her.</p> + +<p>It was all against the rules, of course. But to this case—the one in a +thousand certainly, in ten thousand maybe—the rules manifestly did not +apply.</p> + +<p>If it hadn't been for that opaque white veil, the glow of light and +eagerness in her face would probably have conquered his resistance +finally and for good, while they stood there in the entry to the store. +As it was, he was still hanging on a dead center as they walked down the +east side of the avenue together.</p> + +<p>Ahead of them, and to the right, over in Grant Park, was the colossal +municipal Christmas tree, already built, and getting decorated against +the celebration of Christmas Eve, now only two days away.</p> + +<p>"Shall we rehearse on Christmas Day?" Rose asked.</p> + +<p>He came out of his preoccupation a little vaguely. "Why, yes. Yes, of +course," he said absently. Then, coming a little further, and with a +different intonation, he went on: "We're really getting pressed for +time, you see. And the opening won't wait for anybody. It's hard luck +though, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose it is, for the others;" Rose said, "but—I'm glad."</p> + +<p>It wouldn't have needed so sensitive an ear as his to catch the girl's +full meaning. Christmas—this Christmas, the first since that mysterious +collapse of her life, whose effect he had seen, but whose cause he +couldn't guess—was going to be a terrible day for her. She had dreaded +lest it should be empty. He wanted to say, "You poor child!" But—this +was the simple fact—he was afraid to.</p> + +<p>There was another momentary silence, and again Rose broke it.</p> + +<p>"Do you think you'll be able to convince Mrs. Goldsmith," she asked, +"that her gowns don't look well on the stage?"</p> + +<p>"Probably not," he said in quick relief. Rose had decided the issue for +herself; brought up the very topic he'd wanted to bring up; got him off +his dead center at last. Back of Rose, of course, was the municipal +Christmas tree with its power of suggesting a lot of ideas she must +fight out of her mind.</p> + +<p>"Certainly not," he went on, "if you're right about her, and I fancy you +are, that her taste isn't negative, but bad, and that it's the very +hideousness of the things she likes. No, she won't be convinced, and if +I know Goldsmith, he'll say his wife's taste is good enough for him. So +if we want a change, we've a fight on our hands."</p> + +<p>The way he had unconsciously phrased that sentence startled him a +little.</p> + +<p>"The question is," he went on, "whether they're worth making a fight +about. Are they so bad as I think they are?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Rose. "They're dowdy and fourth-class and ridiculous. Of +course I don't know how many people in the audience would know that."</p> + +<p>"And I don't care." said John Galbraith with a flash of intensity that +made her look round at him. "That's not a consideration I'll give any +weight to. When I put out a production under my name, it means it's the +best production I can make with the means I've got. There may be men who +can work differently; but when I have to take a cynical view of it and +try to get by with bad work because most of the people out in front +won't know the difference, I'll retire. I'm only fifty and I've got ten +or fifteen good years in me yet. But before I'll do that, I'll go out to +my little farm on Long Island and raise garden truck."</p> + +<p>There was another momentary silence, for the girl made no comment at all +on this statement of his <i>credo</i>. But he felt sure, somehow, that she +understood it and there was nothing deprecatory about the tone in which, +presently, he went on speaking.</p> + +<p>"Of course a director's got only one weapon to use against the owners of +a show, when it comes down to an issue, and that's a threat to resign +unless they let him have his way. I've used that twice in this +production already, and I can see one or two places coming where I may +have to use it again. So, if there's any way of throwing out those +costumes without giving them their choice between getting new ones or +getting a new director, I'd like to find it. Would it be possible, do +you think, to get better ones that would also be cheaper? That argument +would bring Goldsmith around in a hurry. It's ridiculous, of course, but +that's the trouble with making a production for amateurs. You spend more +time fighting them, than you do producing the show."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe," said Rose, "that you could get better ready-made +costumes a lot cheaper; at least, not enough to go around, and in a +hurry. Of course every now and then, you can pick up a tremendous +bargain—some imported model that's a little extreme, or made in trying +colors, that they want to get rid of and will sell almost for whatever +you'll pay. But the two or three we might be able to find, wouldn't help +us much."</p> + +<p>"And I suppose," he said dubiously, "it's out of the question getting +them any other way than ready-made; that is, and cheaper too."</p> + +<p>The only sign of excitement there was in the girl's voice when she +answered, was a sort of exaggerated matter-of-factness. Oh, yes, there +was besides a wire edge on it, so that the words came to him through the +cold air with a kind of ringing distinctness.</p> + +<p>"I could design the costumes and pick out the materials," she said, "but +we'd have to get a good sewing woman—perhaps more than one, to get them +done."</p> + +<p>He wasn't greatly surprised. Perhaps the notion that she might suggest +something of the sort was responsible for the tentative dubious way in +which he had said he supposed it couldn't be done.</p> + +<p>But Rose, at the sound of her own voice and the extraordinary +proposition it was uttering, was astonished clear through. She hadn't +had the remotest idea of saying such a thing a moment or two before. +What had suggested it, she couldn't have told. That day-dream perhaps, +that she had amused herself with while Mrs. Goldsmith was making up the +tale of her atrocities. Perhaps it had been just the suggestions +speaking in the tone, not the words, of John Galbraith's voice—that he +hoped she'd offer something like that.</p> + +<p>Anyway, whatever it was that presented the idea to her, the thing that +seized on it and spoke it aloud was an instinct that didn't need to stop +and think—an instinct that realized indeed, if this isn't too +far-fetched a way of putting it, that its only chance lay in escaping +into the open ahead of the slower-footed processes of thought. If she +hadn't spoken instantly like that, it's perfectly clear she wouldn't +have spoken at all. But, having heard her own voice say the words, she +resolved, in spite of her fright—because she was frightened—to back +them up.</p> + +<p>"You've had—experience in designing gowns, have you?" Galbraith asked.</p> + +<p>"Only for myself," she admitted. "But I know I can do that part of it."</p> + +<p>And she wasn't telling more than the truth! The confident excitement +that possessed her, gave a stronger assurance than any amount of +experience could have done.</p> + +<p>"But,"—she reverted to the other part of the plan—"I'm not a good +sewer. I'd have to have somebody awfully good, who'd do exactly what I +told her."</p> + +<p>"Oh, that can be managed;" he said a little absently, and with what +struck Rose as a mere man's ignorance of the difficulties of the +situation. Expert sewing women didn't grow on every bush. But at the end +of a silence that lasted while they walked a whole block, he convinced +her that she had been mistaken.</p> + +<p>"I was just figuring out the way to work it," he said then, explaining +his silence. "I shall tell Goldsmith and Block (Block was the junior +partner in the enterprise) that I've got hold of a costumer who agrees +to deliver twelve costumes satisfactory to me, at an average of say, +twenty per cent less than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out. If they +aren't satisfactory, it's the costumer's loss and we can buy these that +Mrs. Goldsmith picked out, or others that will do as well, at Lessing's. +I think that saving will be decisive with them."</p> + +<p>"But do you know a costumer?" Rose asked.</p> + +<p>"You're the costumer;" said Galbraith. "You design the costumes, buy the +fabrics, superintend the making of them. As for the woman you speak of, +we'll get the wardrobe mistress at the Globe. I happen to know she's +competent, and she's at a loose end just now, because her show is +closing when ours opens. You'll buy the fabrics and you'll pay her. And +what profit you can make out of the deal, you're entitled to. I'll +finance you myself. If they won't take what we show them, why, you'll be +out your time and trouble, and I'll be out the price of materials and +the woman's labor."</p> + +<p>"I don't think it would be fair," she said, and she found difficulty in +speaking at all because of a sudden disposition of her teeth to +chatter—"I don't think it would be fair for me to take all the profit +and you take all the risk."</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't take any profit, that's clear enough," he said; and she +noticed now a tinge of amusement in his voice. "You see, I'm retained, +body and soul, to put this production over. I can't make money out of +those fellows on the side. But you're not retained. You're employed as a +member of the chorus. And so far, you're not even being paid for the +work you're doing. As long as you work to my satisfaction there on the +stage, nothing more can be asked of you. As for the risk, I don't +believe it's serious. I don't think you'll fall down on the job, and I +don't believe Goldsmith and Block will throw away a chance to save some +money."</p> + +<p>At the end of another silence, for Rose was speechless here, he went on +expanding the plan a little further. And if the assurances he gave her +were essentially mendacious, he himself wasn't exactly aware that they +were. It had often happened in productions of his, he said—and this +much was true—that to save time or to accomplish some result he wanted, +he put up a little of his own money for something and trusted to a +prosperous event for getting it back. It was clearly for the good of the +show that the costumes for the sextette should be better than the ones +Mrs. Goldsmith had picked out. The only alternative way of getting them, +to a knock-down and carry-away fight with Goldsmith and Block, which, +even if it were successful, would weaken the effect of his next +ultimatum, was the plan he now proposed to Rose. She needn't regard the +money he put up as in any sense a personal loan to her. They were simply +cooperating for the good of the enterprise. If her work turned out to be +valuable, it was only right she should be paid for it.</p> + +<p>And then he pressed her for an immediate decision. The job would be a +good deal of a scramble at best, as the time was short. If she agreed to +it, he'd get in touch with the wardrobe mistress at the Globe, to-night. +As for the money, he had a hundred dollars or so in his pocket, which +she could take to start out with.</p> + +<p>Of course the only lie involved in all this was the warp of the whole +fabric; that he was doing it, impersonally, for the success of the show. +And that might well enough have been true. Only in this case, it +definitely wasn't. He was doing it because it would establish a personal +connection, the want of which was becoming so tormenting a thing to his +soul, between himself and this girl whom he had to order about on the +stage and call by her last name, or rather by a last name that wasn't +hers—an imagination-stirring, question-compelling, warm human creature, +who, up to now, had been as completely shut away from him as if she had +been a wax figure in a show-window.</p> + +<p>They had reached the Randolph Street end of the avenue, and a policeman, +like Moses cleaving the Red Sea, had opened the way through the tide of +motors for a throng of pedestrians bound across the viaduct to the +Illinois Central suburban station.</p> + +<p>"Come across here," said Galbraith taking her by the arm and stemming +this current with her. "We've got to have a minute of shelter to finish +this up in," and he led her into the north lobby of the public library. +The stale baked air of the place almost made them gasp. But, anyway, it +was quiet and altogether deserted. They could hear themselves think in +here, he said, and led the way to a marble bench alongside the +staircase.</p> + +<p>Rose unpinned her veil and, to his surprise, because of course she was +going out in a minute, put it into her ulster pocket. But, curiously +enough, the sight of her face only intensified an impression that had +been strong on him during the last part of their walk—the impression +that she was a long way off. It wasn't the familiar contemplative brown +study, either. There was an active eager excitement about it that made +it more beautiful than ever he had seen it before. But it was as if she +were looking at something he couldn't see—listening to words he +couldn't hear.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said a little impatiently, "are you going to do it?"</p> + +<p>At that the glow of her was turned fairly on him. "Yes," she said, "I'm +going to do it. I suppose I mustn't thank you," she went on, "because +you say it isn't anything you're doing for me. But it is—a great thing +for me—greater than I could tell you. And I won't fail. You needn't be +afraid."</p> + +<p>Inexplicably to him (the problem wouldn't have troubled James Randolph) +the very completeness with which she made this acknowledgment—the very +warmth of the hand-clasp with which she bound the bargain, vaguely +disappointed him—left him feeling a little flat and empty over his +victory.</p> + +<p>He found his pocketbook and counted out a hundred and twenty dollars, +which he handed over to her. She folded it and put it away in her +wrist-bag. The glow of her hadn't faded, but once more it was turned on +something—or some one—else. It wasn't until he rose a little abruptly +from the marble bench, that she roused herself with a shake of the head, +arose too, and once more faced him.</p> + +<p>"You're right about our having to hurry," she said. "Don't you suppose +that some of the department stores on the west side of State Street +would still be open—on account of Christmas, you know?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," he said. "Very likely. But look here!" He pulled out his +watch. "It's after seven already. And rehearsal's at eight-thirty. +You've got to get some dinner, you know."</p> + +<p>"Dinner doesn't take long at the place where I go," she reminded him. +"But if I can get one or two things now—I don't mean the +materials—why, I can get a start to-night after the rehearsal's over."</p> + +<p>"I don't like it," he said glumly. "Oh, I know, it's a rush job and +you'll have to work at it at all sorts of hours. If only you ... If I +could just ease up a bit on your rehearsals! Only, you see, the sextette +would he lost without you. Look here! There's nothing life or death +about this, you know. You don't want to forget that you've got a limit, +and crowd the late-at-night and early-in-the-morning business too hard. +Think where we'd be if you turned up missing on the opening night!"</p> + +<p>"I shan't do that," she said absently almost, and not in his direction. +Then, with another little shake, bringing herself back to him with a +visible effort: "If you only knew what a wonderful thing it's going to +be, to have something for late at night and early in the morning ..."</p> + +<p>Before he could find the first one of the words he wanted, she had given +him that curt farewell nod which, so inexplicably, from the first had +stirred and warmed him, and turned away toward the door.</p> + +<p>And she had never seen what was fairly shining in his face; no more than +she had heard the thing that rang so eagerly in his voice through the +thin disguise of an impersonal, director-like concern that she shouldn't +impair her health so far as to spoil her for the sextette!</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VII_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER VII</h3> + +<h3>THE END OF A FIXED IDEA</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>She couldn't of course have missed a thing as plain as that but for a +complete preoccupation of thought and feeling that would have left her +oblivious to almost anything that could happen to her. Galbraith himself +had detected this preoccupation, but he would have been staggered had he +known its intensity. He had likened it in his own thoughts, to an effect +that might have been caused by the presence with her of another person +whom he could neither see nor hear. And that, had he believed it +seriously, would have been an almost uncannily correct guess.</p> + +<p>The flaming vortex of thoughts, hopes, desires which enveloped her, was +so intense as almost to evoke a sense of the physical presence of the +subject of them—of that big, powerful-minded, clean-souled husband of +hers, who loved her so rapturously, and who had driven her away from him +because that rapture was the only thing he would share with her.</p> + +<p>She had been living, since that day of his departure for New York, when +she had felt the last of his strong embraces, a life that fell into two +hemispheres as distinct from each other as tropic night from day. One +half of it had been lighted and made tolerable by the exactions of her +new job. "What you feel like doing isn't important, and what I tell you +to do is," John Galbraith had said to her on the day this strange +divided life of hers had begun. And this lesson, taken to heart, had +spelt salvation to her—for half of the time; for as many hours of the +day as he went on telling her to do something. Those hours, in a way +almost incredible to herself when they were over, had been almost +happy—would have been altogether happy, but for the stain that soaked +through in memory and in anticipation, from the other half of her days.</p> + +<p>But when evening rehearsal was over and she came back to her room and +had to undress and put out her light and relax her mind for sleep, +letting the terrors that came to tear at her do their unopposed worst, +then the girl who sang and danced and was so nearly happy snatching John +Galbraith's intentions half formed, and executing them in the thrill of +satisfaction over work well done, became an utterly unreal, incredible +person—the mere figment of a dream that couldn't—couldn't possibly +recur again even as a dream; the only self in her that had any actual +existence was Rodney Aldrich's wife and the mother of his children, +lying here in a mean bed, or looking with feverish eyes out of the +window in a North Clark Street rooming house, in a torment of thwarted +desire for him that was by no means wholly mental or psychical.</p> + +<p>And what was he doing now in her absence? Was he in torment, too; shaken +by gusts of uncontrollable longing for her; fighting off nightmare +imaginings of disasters that might be befalling her? Or was he happy, +drinking down in great thirsty drafts the nectar of liberty which her +incursion into his life had deprived him of? She didn't know which of +these alternatives was the more intolerable to her.</p> + +<p>And the twins! Were they, the fine lusty little cherubs she had parted +from that day, smiling up with growing recognition into other +faces—Mrs. Ruston's and the maid Doris'? Or might there have been, +since the last information relayed by Portia, a sudden illness? Might it +be that there was going on now, in that house not a thousand yards away, +another life-and-death struggle like the one which had made an end of +all her hopes for the efficacy of her miracle?</p> + +<p>The only treatment for hobgoblins like that was plain endurance. This +was a part of a somber sobering discovery that Rose had made during the +first few days of her new life. Courage of the active sort she'd always +had. The way she went up to North End Hall and wrested a job that didn't +strictly exist, from John Galbraith, was an example of it. When it was a +question of blazing up and doing something, she had rightly counted on +herself not to fail. This was what she'd foreseen when she promised +Portia that she would fight for the big thing.</p> + +<p>But that part of the battle of life had to consist just in doing +nothing, enduring with a stiff mouth and clenched hands assaults that +couldn't be replied to, was a fact she hadn't foreseen. What a child she +had always been! Rodney, Portia, everybody who amounted to anything, +must have learned that lesson of sheer endurance long ago.</p> + +<p>The queerly incredible quality of the lighted half of her life—the half +that John Galbraith's will galvanized into motion—prevented any +afterglow from illuminating and making tolerable the dark half. No +achievement of her days—not even teaching the sextette to talk—had the +power to give her, in her nights, a sense of progress, or to lessen the +necessity for that sheer dumb endurance which was the only weapon she +had. Because she was in the fetters of a fixed idea.</p> + +<p>Of course it was only by virtue of the possession of a fixed idea—a +purpose as rigid in its outlines as the steel frame of a +sky-scraper—that she had been able to force herself to leave Rodney and +set out in pursuit of a job that would make a life of her own a possible +thing. You are already acquainted with the outlines of that purpose. She +lacked the special training which alone could make any sort of +self-respecting life possible. The only thing she had to capitalize when +she left her husband's house, was the thing which had got her into +it—her sex charm. The only excuse for capitalizing that again was that +it would make it possible for her to acquire a special training in some +other field. Stenography, she had thought vaguely, would be the first +round of the ladder. Until this production opened and she began drawing +a salary, she couldn't really begin doing the thing she had set out to +do.</p> + +<p>Consequently, anything that seemed like progress during her day's work +for Galbraith—any glow of triumph she came away with after meeting and +conquering some difficulty—must be pure illusion.</p> + +<p>It was all perfectly logical and it was all perfectly false. She had +been growing really, in strides, from day to day, since that first day +of all when, after hearing the director tell another woman that there +were no vacancies in the chorus, she had forced herself to go up and ask +him for a job. She had been disciplining herself under Rodney's own +definition of the term. Discipline, he had said, was standing the +gaff—standing it, not submitting to it; accepting the facts of your own +life as they happened to be! Not making masters of them, but servants to +the underlying thing you wanted.</p> + +<p>And if only she could have believed her own vision, the outlines of the +underlying thing she wanted were beginning to appear, as in a half +developed negative. It hadn't been from a cold sense of duty, or from a +cold fear of losing her job, that she had thrown herself into the +accomplishment of John Galbraith's wishes, or had felt that almost +fierce desire that some effect he was trying for and that she +understood, should get an objective validity. It hadn't been out of pure +altruism that she'd spent those twelve solid hours compelling Olga +Larson to talk better. She might have felt sorry for the girl—might +have loaned her money, comforted her; but she wouldn't have locked her +in her room and beaten down her sullen opposition, set her afire with +her own vitality, except that it was a thing that had to be done for the +good of the show.</p> + +<p>In short, she was, to fall back on Rodney's phrase again, for the first +time driving herself with the motive power of her own desires—riding +the back of a hitherto unsuspected passion. But the binding force of +that fixed idea of hers had been sufficient all along to keep up the +delusion of unreality about the real half of her life and to make the +nightmare half of it seem true.</p> + +<p>It wasn't until she heard herself telling John Galbraith that she could +design those costumes for him, and in a flame of suddenly kindled +excitement, resolved to make that unexpected promise good, that the +fetters of her false logic fell away from her.</p> + +<p>The truth of the matter, the wonderful, almost incredible truth, kept +coming up brighter and clearer as she walked silently along beside him +down the avenue. The real beginning of the pilgrimage that was to carry +her back into her husband's life, wasn't a thing that had to be waited +for. It could begin now! No, the truth was better than that; it had +begun already! Because if John Galbraith had come to her house a month +ago, when she was casting about so desperately for a way of earning a +living, and had offered her the chance just as he had offered it +to-night, she'd have declined it. She wouldn't have known what he +wanted. She'd rightly have said that the thing was utterly beyond her +powers. To-night she knew what he wanted and she was utterly confident +of her ability to give it to him.</p> + +<p>And the one word that blaze of confidence spelled for her in letters of +fire, was her husband's name. This chance that had been offered her was +a ladder that would enable her to climb part of the way back to him. Her +accomplishment of this first breathlessly exciting task would be a +thing, when it was achieved, that she could recount to him—well, as man +to man. Her success, if she succeeded—and the alternative was something +she wouldn't contemplate—would compel the same sort of respect from him +that he accorded to a diagnosis of James Randolph's, or an article of +Barry Lake's.</p> + +<p>Since she had left his house and begun this new life of hers, she had, +as best she could, been fighting him out of her thoughts altogether. She +had shrunk from anything that carried associations of him with it. +Outside the hours of rehearsal (and how grateful she always was when +they protracted themselves unduly) she had walked timidly, like a child +down a dim hallway with black yawning doorways opening out of it, in a +dread which sometimes reached the intensity of terror, lest reminders of +the man she loved should spring out upon her. That all thoughts and +memories of him must necessarily be painful, she had taken for granted.</p> + +<p>But with this sudden lighting up of hope, which took place within her +when she made John Galbraith that astonishing offer and he accepted it, +she flung the closed door wide and called her husband back into her +thoughts—greeted the image of him passionately, in an almost palpable +embrace. This hard thing that she was going to do, which had, to +common-sense calculation, so many chances of disaster in it—this thing +that meant sleepless nights, and feverishly active days, was an +expression simply of her love for him; a sacrificial offering to be laid +before the shrine of him in her heart. Well, it was no wonder then that +to John Galbraith she had seemed preoccupied and far away, nor that amid +the surging thoughts and memories of her lover, coming in like a +returning tide, she should have been deaf to a meaning in the director's +tones that any one of the stupid little flutterers in the chorus would +instantly have understood.</p> + +<p>A man with a volcanic incandescence within him such as was now afire in +Rose, is utterly useless until it subsides—totally incapable, at least, +of any sort of creative or imaginative work. Until the fire can be, by +one means or another and for the time being, put out, he has no energies +worth mentioning, to devote to anything else. And, just as no woman can +understand the cold austerities of the cell into which a man must retire +in order to give his finer faculties free play, so no man can possibly +understand, although objective evidence may compel him to admit and +chronicle it as a fact, that a woman borne along as Rose was, upon an +irresistible tide of passions, memories and hopes, which all but made +her absent husband actually visible to her, could at the same time, be +seeing visions of her accomplished work and laying plans—limpid +practicable plans, for their realization.</p> + +<p>This is, perhaps, one of the few, and certainly one of the most +fundamental chasms of cleavage between the two sexes; a chasm bridged by +habit invariably, because some sort of thoroughfare has to exist, +bridged, too, more rarely, by intellectual understanding. But never +bridged, I think, between two persons strongly masculine and feminine +respectively, by an instinctive sympathy. To each, the other's way of +life must always be mysterious, and at times exasperating or a little +contemptible.</p> + +<p>To the woman, with the finely constant impenetration of love through all +her spiritual life, the man's uncontrollable blaze and his alternate +coldness, seem fitful—weak—brutish, almost unworthy of a creature with +a soul.</p> + +<p>To the man who knows the value of his phases of high austerity and +understands quite well the price at which he obtains them, the woman who +fails to understand the necessity or to appreciate the mood seems +sentimental and a little unworthy.</p> + +<p>Well, the fact that Rose's heart was racing and her nerves were tingling +with a newly welcomed sense of her lover's spiritual presence, did not +prevent her flying along west on Randolph Street and south again on the +west side of State, with a very clearly visualized purpose. She had +forgotten to replace her veil, but at that hour it didn't matter. The +west side of State Street, anyway, is almost as far from the east as +North Clark Street is from the Drive.</p> + +<p>As she came abreast of the first of the big department stores which line +the west side of this thoroughfare, she saw that her surmise had been +correct. It was open. Throngs of weary shoppers were crowding out, and a +very respectable stream of them were forcing their way in. She told an +exhausted floor-walker that she wanted to buy a dressmaking form. And, +spent as he was, he reflected a little of her own animation in his +unusually precise reply; had, indeed, a little of it left over for his +next inquirer.</p> + +<p>Something automatic in her mind took charge of Rose and delivered her, +presently, unconscious of intervening processes, at the counter where +the forms were sold. She selected what she wanted instantly, and counted +out the money from her own purse. She didn't have to dip into John +Galbraith's hundred and twenty dollars for this.</p> + +<p>"Address?" inquired the saleswoman preparing to make out her sales-slip. +Then, as Rose didn't answer instantly, she looked up frowning into her +face. "You want it sent, don't you?" she added.</p> + +<p>The question was rhetorical, because with its standard, the thing stood +five feet high and weighed twenty-five pounds.</p> + +<p>A frown of perplexity in Rose's face gave way to her own wide smile. "I +guess I'll have to take it with me," she said. Because as near +Christmas as this, the thing mightn't be delivered for two days.</p> + +<p>"Take it with you?" the woman echoed, aghast.</p> + +<p>"Have it wrapped up," said Rose decisively, "and put my name on it—Mrs. +..." She checked herself with another smile. She had nearly said, "Mrs. +Rodney Aldrich." But the mistake didn't hurt as it would have hurt +yesterday. "Doris Dane," she went on. "And have it sent down to the main +entrance. I'll be there as soon as it is. Do you know where I can buy +paper cambric?" But she had to get that information from another +floor-walker.</p> + +<p>Paper cambric seemed to have more of a bearing upon the approach of +Christmas Day than dressmaking forms, though just what the connection +was, Rose couldn't make out. There was a crowd at the counter, anyhow. +It was five minutes before she could get waited on. But once she caught +a saleswoman's eye, her purchase was quickly made. She bought three +bolts: one of black, one of white, and one of a washed-out blue. Once +more she counted out the money, and this time, "I'll take it with me," +she said.</p> + +<p>Strong as she was, the immense bundle was almost more than she could +carry. But she managed to make her way at last to the main entrance, +where, under the incredulous eye of the doorman, she found a porter +waiting with her dressmaking form.</p> + +<p>"That's mine," she said. "Doris Dane is the name on it." Then, to the +doorman as the porter made off, "Will you get me a cab?"</p> + +<p>But this particular store had, quite naturally, no facilities for doing +a carriage business, a fact which the doorman laconically explained.</p> + +<p>"All right," said Rose dumping her heavy bundle beside the dressmaking +form. "You won't mind keeping an eye on this for a minute, will you?" +She didn't actually smile, but there was in her face a humorous +appreciation of the fact that a mountain like this wouldn't be hard to +watch.</p> + +<p>The doorman grinned back at her. "Sure I will," he said. "I'm sorry I +can't leave the door to get you a cab."</p> + +<p>Rose hailed one that happened to be passing, a creaking, +mud-bespattered disreputable affair with a driver to match, and briskly +drove a bargain with him. He announced when she told him the address +that the fare would be a dollar and a half. She offered him seventy-five +cents, which he, with the air of a disillusioned optimist in a bitter +world, accepted. "Christmas, too!" he muttered ironically.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come," said Rose, grinning up at him. "How many tired people have +you given free rides to to-day, on the strength of that?"</p> + +<p>"All right, miss; I don't complain," he said. He did, though, but +humorously, when Rose, assisted by a page boy the doorman had impressed +for her, carried the dressmaker's form and the other heavy bundle out to +the curb. He declared the form should go as another passenger (its +semi-human shape was clearly visible through the wrappings) and that the +other bundle ought to have a van. All the same, when at her destination +Rose had paid him, he came down, voluntarily from the box—voluntarily +but with a sort of reluctance—and carried the form up to her room for +her.</p> + +<p>Also, rather incredibly, he refused an extra quarter she had ready for +him when he had completed this service. "Just to show no ill feelings," +he said, and he told her where his stand was and gave himself a little +recommendation: "Honest and reliable."</p> + +<p>Here in her close little room, the suggestion of an alcoholic basis for +this generosity obtruded itself, but Rose didn't care. She wished him a +merry Christmas and waved him off with a smile.</p> + +<p>It was now after eight o'clock. Rehearsal was at eight-thirty and she +had had nothing to eat since noon. But she stole the time, nevertheless, +to tear the wrappings off her "form" and gaze on its respectable +nakedness for two or three minutes with a contemplative eye. Then, +reluctantly—it was the first time she had left that room with +reluctance—she turned out the light and hurried off to the little +lunch-room that lay on the way to the dance-hall.</p> + +<p>She never again, in the active practise of her profession, knew +anything quite like the ensuing seventy-two hours. Every stimulus was, +of course, abnormally heightened. There was the novelty, the thrilling +sense of adventure that missed being fear only through an inexplicable +confidence of success. And then, anyway, her imagination was a virgin +field that had never been cropped, and the luxurious fertility of it was +amazing.</p> + +<p>It was during that first rehearsal, which she so narrowly missed being +late for, that she got the general schemes for both sets of costumes. +That there must be a general scheme she had decided at once. The +sextette was a unit; none of the members of it ever appeared without the +others, and it would be immensely more effective, she perceived, if this +fact were expressed somehow in the costumes. Not by means of a stupid +uniformity, of course. The effect she wanted was subtler than that. But +if each one of the six costumes that these girls first appeared in could +be made somehow to express the same thing in a different way—not only +in different, though harmonious, colors, but in different, though +related, forms—the effect produced by the six of them together would be +immensely greater than the sum of their individual effects.</p> + +<p>This, of course, wasn't what Rose said to herself. She just wanted a +scheme, and with ridiculous ease, she got it. She didn't even get it. +There it was staring at her. And the other scheme for the evening frocks +was knocking at the door, too, eager to get in the moment she could give +it a chance. She began studying the girls for their individual +peculiarities of style. Each one of the costumes she made was going to +be for a particular girl, suited, without losing its place in the +general plan, to the enhancement of her special approximation to beauty.</p> + +<p>At last, when a shout from Galbraith aroused her to the fact that she +had missed an entrance cue altogether, in her entranced absorption in +these visions of hers, and had caused that unpardonable thing, a stage +wait, she resolutely clamped down the lid upon her imagination and, +until they were dismissed, devoted herself to the rehearsal.</p> + +<p>But the pressure kept mounting higher and higher and she found herself +furiously impatient to get away, back to her own private wonderland, the +squalid little room down the street, that had three bolts of cambric in +it and a dressmaker's manikin—the raw materials for her magic!</p> + +<p>Rose couldn't draw a bit. Her mother's fine contempt for ladylike +accomplishments had even intervened in the high-school days to prevent +her taking a free-hand course required in the curriculum, during which +you spent weeks making a charcoal study of a bust of Demosthenes. But +this lack never even occurred to Rose as a handicap. She hadn't the +faintest impulse to make a beginning by putting a picture down on paper +and making a dress of it afterward. She went straight at her materials, +or the equivalent of her materials, as a sculptor goes at his clay. She +couldn't have told just why she had bought those three shades of paper +cambric.</p> + +<p>"I'm really awfully obliged to you for having explained it to me," she +told Burton, the portrait painter long afterward.</p> + +<p>"I see!" he had exclaimed, on the occasion of an initiatory visit to her +workroom. "You design these things in their values first, just the way +the old masters used to paint. Once you get the values in, you can +project them in any colors that will leave your value scale true."</p> + +<p>And Rose, as she said, was really grateful to him for telling her what +it was she had been doing all the while, just as Monsieur Jourdain was +grateful for the information that he had been talking prose all his life +and never known it.</p> + +<p>What she had felt, of course, at the very outset, was the need of +something to indicate roughly the darks and lights in her design. And, +short of the wild extravagance of slashing into the fabrics themselves +and making her mistakes at their expense, she could think of nothing +better than the scheme she chose.</p> + +<p>She came to the conclusion afterward that even apart from the +consideration of expense, her own plan was better. You got more vigor +somehow, into the actual construction of the thing, if you could make it +express something quite independently of color and texture.</p> + +<p>Rehearsal was dismissed a little early that first night, and she was +back in her room by eleven. Arrived there, she took off her outer +clothes, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and went to work. When at +last, with a little sigh, and a tremulously smiling acknowledgment of +fatigue, she got up and looked at her watch, it was four o'clock in the +morning. She'd had one of those experiences that every artist can +remember a few of in his life, when it is impossible for anything to go +wrong; when each tentative experiment accomplishes not only its purpose, +but another unsuspected purpose as well; when the vision miraculously +betters itself in the execution; when the only difficulty is that which +the hands have in the purely mechanical operation of keeping up.</p> + +<p>She was destined later, of course, even during the achievement of this +first success, to learn the comparative rarity of those hours. Though, +as she looked back on it afterward, the whole of this first job seemed +to have been done with a kind of miraculous facility she couldn't +account for.</p> + +<p>And all through those five hours, fast as her mind flew, utterly +absorbed as it seemed to be, she never once lost the consciousness of +the almost palpable presence of Rodney Aldrich there in the room with +her. Once she laughed outright over the memory of a girl who had tried +to win her husband's friendship by studying law. Fancy Rodney trying to +study costumes! But he would understand what it meant to conceive them +and the sort of work it took, once they were conceived, to project them +as something objective to herself—something that had to challenge +expert opinion; meet the exactions of criticism. He'd understand the +thrill, too, of seeing them come up for judgment—the triumph of getting +them accepted and paid for.</p> + +<p>And, in the confidence born of that understanding, he'd be able to offer +for her to understand, the fundamentals of his own work. Not the dry +husks of technical considerations. What did they amount to anyway, +except as they formed the boundaries of the live thing he meant? But the +live thing itself—the thing that spelled challenge and work and victory +for him,—that thing, since at last she'd grown to deserve it, he'd +give her. Freely, fully,—just because he couldn't help giving it.</p> + +<p>Tired as she was, she could hardly bear to stop work. The half finished +thing on the manikin lured her on from one moment to another. It was +really insane not to stop. She must get up at seven-thirty, three hours +or so from now, in order to get to the shops ahead of the crowds and +begin the selection of her fabrics. At last, with a single movement of +resolution she turned out the gas and undressed, or rather, finished +undressing, in the dark, amid a litter of pins and paper cambric.</p> + +<p>And now, for the first time in this squalid, mean little room, the dark +had balm in it, became a fragrant miracle, obliterating the harsh +actualities of her immediate yesterdays and to-morrows, winging her +spirit for a breathless flight straight to the end she sought,—to the +time when the long pilgrimage before her should be accomplished.</p> + +<p>What a wonderful thing Rodney's cool firm friendship would be! Worth +anything, anything in the world it might cost to win it. But ... But....</p> + +<p>She drew in a long unsteady breath and pressed her cooling hands down +upon her face.</p> + +<p>What a thing his love would be, when it should come, free of its tasks +and obligations; no longer in the treadmill making her world go round, +but given its wings again!</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_VIII_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER VIII</h3> + +<h3>SUCCESS—AND A RECOGNITION</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>There is a kaleidoscopic character about the events of the ten days or +so preceding the opening performance of most musical comedies which +would make a sober chronicle of them seem fantastically incredible; and +this law of Nature made no exception in the case of <i>The Girl +Up-stairs</i>. There were rehearsals which ran so smoothly and swiftly that +they'd have done for performances; there were others so abominably bad +that the bare idea of presenting the mess resulting from six weeks' +toil, before people who had paid money to see it, was a nightmare.</p> + +<p>As the nervous pressure mounted, people took to exploding all over the +place in the most grotesquely inconceivable ways and from totally +unpredictable causes. Freddy France, who played the comic detective +(like most comedians he had no sense of humor whatever and treated his +"art" with a sort of sacrificial solemnity), developed delusions of +persecution, proclaimed himself the victim of a conspiracy to which the +owners, the author, Galbraith and most of the principals were parties, +and finally, when the director cut out a little scene that he had two +feeble jokes in, reached up unexpectedly and hit McGill on the nose, +flung his part on the stage, stamped on it and left the theater. Quan +read his lines in a painstaking manner for two days and then, after a +three-hour session in the Sherman House bar, Freddy was induced to come +back.</p> + +<p>Stewart Lester, one day, at the end of a long patient effort of +Galbraith's to improve his acting (he acted like a tenor; one needn't +say more than that), licked his thin red lips, and in a feline fury, +announced his indifference as to whether the management accepted his +resignation or that of Miss Devereux. As long as she insisted on +treating her vis-à-vis like a chorus-man, she'd perhaps be happier if a +chorus-man were given the part; and he would he only too happy, in case +the management agreed with her, to make the substitution possible. +Whereupon Miss Devereux remarked that even having been a failure in +grand opera didn't necessarily assure a man success in musical comedy, +and that possibly a chorus-man would be an improvement. Galbraith had a +long private conference with each of them—the fact that they would not +speak at all off stage guaranteed him against their comparing notes as +to what he'd said—and while the thing he effected could not be called a +reconciliation, it amounted to a sort of armed truce. They went through +their love scenes without actually scratching and biting.</p> + +<p>Even little Anabel Astor, whose good humor for a long time had seemed +invincible, tempestuously left the stage one day in the middle of one of +her scenes with her dancing partner, and could be heard sobbing loudly +in the wings through all that remained of that rehearsal.</p> + +<p>Queer things began happening to the plot, resulting sometimes from the +violent transposition of song numbers from one act to another, sometimes +from the interpolation of songs or specialties. Two or three scenes, +which the author regarded with special pride and was prepared to die in +the defense of, were pronounced by Galbraith to be junk. He had made +superhuman efforts, he told Goldsmith and Block, to put a little life +into them, and had demonstrated that this miracle was impossible of +performance. They were dead and they'd got to be buried before they +became, to the olfactory sense, any more unpleasant.</p> + +<p>There was an ominous breathlessness in the air after this ultimatum had +been delivered, and at the next rehearsal, when the director announced +the cut of six solid pages of manuscript, the voice of the author was +heard from back of the hall proclaiming in a hollow Euripidean bellow +that it was all over. He was going to his lawyer to get an injunction +against the production of the piece.</p> + +<p>Of all the persons directly, or even remotely, affected by this +nerve-shattering confusion, Rose was perhaps the least perturbed. The +only thing that really mattered to her, was the successful execution of +those twelve costumes. The phantasmagoria at North End Hall was a +regrettable, but necessary, interruption of her more important +activities. The interruption didn't interfere so seriously as at first +she thought it would. The routine of rehearsal as Galbraith developed +it, began with special scenes—isolated bits that needed modification or +polishing. The general rehearsals, taking this act or that and going +through with it from beginning to end, and involving, of course, the +presence of everybody in the company, didn't, as a rule, begin till +three in the afternoon; sometimes till as late as five. Of course when +they did begin, they lasted until all hours.</p> + +<p>But the labors of the chorus, and even of the sextette, shrank very much +in proportion to the work of the principals. Nearly all the changes that +were made were in the direction of compressing the chorus and giving the +principals more room. So that for long stretches of time, during which, +dressed in her working clothes and curled up in one of the remoter of +the cushioned window-seats, but ready to answer a summons to the stage +as promptly as a fireman, she could let her mind run without +interruption on the solution of some of her own problems, and then be +ready when she went back to her room, to fall into bed and asleep (the +two acts had become practically simultaneous) secure in the possession +of a clearly thought out program for the morrow.</p> + +<p>She wakened automatically at half past seven and was down-town by half +past eight, to do whatever shopping the work of the previous day +revealed the need of. The fact that it was, for the greater part, John +Galbraith's money she was spending (she had managed to put in a little +herself by calculating down to a fine point the necessary margin for +existence) worked to her advantage in these operations. She could not, +but for that fact, have forced herself to hunt down bargains so +persistently nor to keep the incidental expense for findings and such, +so low.</p> + +<p>At nine-thirty in the morning—an unheard of hour in the theater—the +watchman at the Globe let her in the stage door, and Rose had half an +hour before the arrival of the wardrobe mistress and her assistant, for +looking over the work done since she had left for rehearsal the day +before.</p> + +<p>She liked this quiet, cavernous old barn of a place down under the Globe +stage; liked it when she had it to herself before the two sewing women +came and later, when, with a couple of sheets spread down on the floor +she cut and basted according to her cambric patterns, keeping ahead of +the flying needles of the other two. After her own little room, the mere +spaciousness of it seemed almost noble. She even liked it, when, about +half past one in the afternoon, on matinée days, the chorus-girls of the +show now drawing to the end of its run, began dawdling in, passing +shrill jokes with Bill Flynn, the fireman, rummaging through the mail in +the letter-box, casually unfastening their clothes all the while, +preliminary to kimonos and make-up, gathering in little knots about the +sewing-machines and exclaiming in profane delight over the costumes. She +wondered at herself, sometimes, for having ceased to mind their +language, their shameless way of going half-clad, their general +atmosphere of moth-like worthlessness—and then laughed at herself for +wondering!</p> + +<p>How would her own quality be finer, her soul a more ample thing, for the +keeping, on one of the shelves of it, of a pot of carefully preserved +horror? If she could succeed with these costumes, her success, she +hoped, would lead her directly into the business of designing other +costumes for the stage. And if she became a professional stage costumer, +this rather loose, ramshackle, down-at-the-heel morality of back-stage +musical comedy would be a permanent fact in her life, just as the +dustiness of law-books and the stuffiness of court rooms were permanent +facts in Rodney's.</p> + +<p>As the work went on, her confidence in the success of this initiatory +venture became less ecstatic and more reasonable. A few of the costumes +were finished and, seen on live models (a couple of girls in the chorus +in the Globe show had volunteered to try on) were, if Rose knew anything +at all about clothes, without doubt or qualification, good.</p> + +<p>She had had just one really bad quarter of an hour over them, and that, +back on Christmas Day as it happened, was when Galbraith, having +detained her after he had dismissed the rehearsal, asked to see her +sketches.</p> + +<p>"Sketches!" she echoed, perplexed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean regular water-colored plates," he said. "Just whatever +rough drafts of the things you will have put down on paper to start +yourself off with. It's simple curiosity, you understand."</p> + +<p>"But," she gasped, "I haven't put anything down on paper—not anything +at all! I don't know how to draw."</p> + +<p>And now he was perplexed in turn. How could one design a costume without +drawing a picture of it?</p> + +<p>She explained her working method to him; though not, she felt, very +successfully. She was perhaps a bit flustered, and he didn't seem to be +giving her his complete attention—seemed to be covering up, with the +pretense of listening, a strong interior abstraction.</p> + +<p>This was again a good diagnosis as far as it went. Only it didn't dig in +far enough for even the faintest surmise as to what the nature of his +abstraction was.</p> + +<p>"I could bring the patterns down here. Or, if you had time, you could +come up to my room and see them. But I'm afraid you couldn't tell much +from that, because they're all taken apart, you see, and they're just in +paper cambric and not the right colors."</p> + +<p>What the man was struggling for—it had been his sole reason for +detaining her in the first place—was some sort of opening that would +make it seem natural to tell her he hoped her Christmas Day had not been +too intolerably unhappy; to shake hands with her and wish her +luck—assure her in one way or another, that she had in him a friend she +could bring her troubles to—any sort of troubles. He'd made up his mind +to do this when the Christmas rehearsal should he over, as long ago as +the night of their walk down the avenue. This resolution had been +reinforced by the look he had caught in her face when she came up to +rehearsal this afternoon—a rather misty, luminous, exalted look,—a +little lack of definition about her eyelids suggesting there had been +tears there.</p> + +<p>This was good observation like her own of him. But, again like hers, in +its failure to get the central clue, it only mislead him, the worse. If +he could have guessed that she had been having a Christmas celebration +of her own that day; that there had been unwrapped and displayed, three +little presents she had bought the day before; one for her husband, and +one for each of her two babies, and that, just before starting for +rehearsal, she had wrapped them up and put them into her trunk to await +the day when they could be given, it might have altered matters +somewhat.</p> + +<p>The thing that finally made it clearly impossible for Galbraith to +express anything at all of this feeling which he, in good faith, called +friendship for her, was her alternative offer—if he had time, to take +him up to her room for a look at the patterns.</p> + +<p>If she's seen him as anything at all but starkly her employer and her +financier; if she's had the faintest glimmer of him as one who held for +her any personal feelings whatever, she never would have suggested as an +alternative to her bringing the patterns here to rehearsal, his coming +up to her room for a look at them.</p> + +<p>The thing of all others that irritated Galbraith was the possession of a +divided mind. Just now, disappointed as he was, almost to the point of +pain, though he wouldn't acknowledge to himself that it went as far as +that, over the evident fact that his relation to the girl, in spite of +their partnership, was exactly what it had been from the beginning, he +was still aware that if he'd got the opening he wanted, had managed +another of those warm lithe hand-clasps with her, and had got the notion +across to her that he wanted her to make a friend of him and a +confidant, he'd be going away now, afterward, under the painful +misgiving that he was a bit of an old fool. The product of all this +irritation was, however, that he declined Rose's offer of a view of her +patterns rather bruskly.</p> + +<p>"It was just curiosity, as I said. Go along your own way and don't worry +about me. You will be all right."</p> + +<p>Rose couldn't feel much conviction behind this expression of +confidence, and she went away, as I have said, in a sort of panic. Was +she all wrong, after all? Couldn't you design stage costumes except by +making pictures of them? She knew what he meant by water-colored plates. +She'd seen them framed in the lobbies at musical shows she'd been to +with Rodney. That was how costume designers worked, was it? Well she +knew she never could do anything like that.</p> + +<p>But her fears only lasted until she got back to her room and caught a +reassuring look at the pattern that was assembled on the form. After +all, the pictures in the lobby weren't so important as the costumes on +the stage. And as for Galbraith—well, if he didn't expect too much of +her, that was all the better.</p> + +<p>In keeping with the good luck which had attended everything that +happened in connection with this first venture of hers, she was able to +tell Galbraith that both sets of costumes were done and ready to try on, +on the very day he announced that the next rehearsal would be held at +ten to-morrow morning at the Globe. It might very easily have happened, +of course, that Rose's enterprise, together with Galbraith's partnership +in it, had become known here or there, got passed on from one to +another, with modifications and embellishments according to fancy, and +grown to be a monument of scandal and conjecture. But nothing is more +capricious than the heat-lightning of gossip, and it just chanced that, +up to the morning of Rose's little triumph, no one beyond Galbraith and +Rose herself even suspected the identity with Dane of the chorus, of the +costumer who was to submit, on approval, gowns for the sextette. The +fact, of course, was bound to come out on the day the company moved over +for rehearsals to the Globe, and the event was very happily dramatized +for Rose, by her ability to let the costumes appear first and her +authorship of them only after their success was beyond dispute.</p> + +<p>She persuaded the girls to wait until all six were dressed in the +afternoon frocks and until she herself had had a chance to give each of +them a final inspection and to make a few last touches and +readjustments. Then they all trooped out on the stage and stood in a +row, turned about, walked here and there, in obedience to Galbraith's +instructions shouted from the back of the theater.</p> + +<p>It was dark out there and disconcertingly silent. The glow of two cigars +indicated the presence of Goldsmith and Block in the middle of a little +knot of other spectators.</p> + +<p>The only response Rose got—the only index to the effect her labors had +produced—was the tone of Galbraith's voice. It rang on her ear a little +sharper, louder, and with more of a staccato bruskness than the +directions he was giving called for. And it was not his practise to put +more cutting edge into his blade, or more power behind his stroke, than +was necessary to accomplish what he wanted. He was excited, therefore. +But was it by the completeness of her success or the calamitousness of +her failure?</p> + +<p>"All right," he shouted. "Go and put on the others."</p> + +<p>There was another silence after they had fled out on the stage again, +clad tins time in the evening gowns—a hollow heart-constricting +silence, almost literally sickening. But it lasted only a moment. Then, +"Will you come down here, Miss Dane?" called Galbraith.</p> + +<p>There was a slight, momentary, but perfectly palpable shock accompanying +these words—a shock felt by everybody within the sound of his voice. +Because the director had not said, "Dane, come down here." He had said, +"Will you come here, Miss Dane?" And the thing amounted, so rigid is the +etiquette of musical comedy, to an accolade. The people on the stage and +in the wings didn't know what she'd done, nor in what character she was +about to appear, but they did know she was, from now on, something +besides a chorus-girl.</p> + +<p>Rose obediently crossed the runway and walked up the aisle to where +Galbraith stood with Goldsmith and Block, waiting for her. She was still +feeling a little numb and empty.</p> + +<p>Galbraith, as she came up, held out a hand to her. "I congratulate you, +Miss Dane," he said. "They're admirable. With all the money in the +world, I wouldn't ask for anything handsomer."</p> + +<p>Before she could say anything in reply, he directed her attention, with +a nod of the head, to the partners, and walked away. Rose gasped at +that. She'd never thought beyond him—beyond the necessity of pleasing +him; and that he'd carry the details of the business through with +Goldsmith and Block, she'd taken for granted. Now, here she was chucked +into the water and told to swim. She'd never in her life, of course, +tried to sell anything. What her mind first awoke to was that the +partners were looking rather blank. Block, indeed, let his eyes follow +the retreating Galbraith with a momentary look of outraged astonishment. +Her wits, quickened by the emergency, interpreted the look. Galbraith, +chucking her into the water indeed, had thrown her a life-preserver—the +tip that her wares were good.</p> + +<p>Goldsmith, quicker and shrewder than his junior, was already smiling +politely. "They really are very good," he said. "If they are not too +expensive for us, we'll consider buying them."</p> + +<p>"They'll be," said Rose, "the twelve of them, four hundred and +sixty-five dollars." She had something the same feeling of astonishment +on hearing herself say this, that she'd had when she heard herself +telling Galbraith that she'd design the costumes. Something or other had +spoken without her will—almost without her knowledge. She had one +figure clearly etched in her brain; that was the one hundred and ninety +dollars she must pay back to Galbraith; and she'd put in fifty of her +own. There was also a matter of twenty dollars or so still to be paid to +the wardrobe mistress and her assistant. But this four hundred and +sixty-five dollars had simply come out of the air.</p> + +<p>Block pursed his lips and emitted a fine thin whistle of astonishment.</p> + +<p>Goldsmith heaved a sigh. "My dear young lady," he protested. "The +inducement held out to us to wait for these costumes of yours, was that +they were to be cheap. But four hundred and sixty-five dollars is +ridiculous! That's a lot of money."</p> + +<p>"Quite a lot less," said Rose, "than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out +came to. They were just over six hundred." Goldsmith smiled +indulgently. "By the figures on the tags, yes," he said. "But would we +have paid that, do you think? Those figures represent what they'd like +to get from people who buy one apiece. But from us, buying twelve ..." +He shrugged his shoulders expressively.</p> + +<p>Well, this was reasonable and no doubt true and it left Rose rather +aghast. She turned away toward the stage with the best appearance of +indifference she could muster. Her mind was making an agonized effort to +add up one hundred and ninety, fifty and twenty. But in the excitement +of the moment it simply balked—rejected the problem altogether. She +didn't think that the total came to much over three hundred dollars, but +she couldn't be sure. And then there was, sticking burr-like, somewhere, +the consciousness of another hundred unaccounted for in this total. +Until she could discover what the gowns had actually cost her, she +couldn't say anything. Therefore, she just stood where she was and said +nothing whatever.</p> + +<p>Goldsmith cleared his throat. "Really," he said in an intensely +aggrieved tone, "you must try to see it from our point of view. This +production's cost us thousands of dollars. If we bankrupt ourselves +before the opening night it will be a bad business for everybody. You +ought to see that. The costumes are very nice, I admit that. But +remember we took a chance on it. We waited for them with the idea that +you'd cooperate with us in saving money."</p> + +<p>Rose made a last frantic struggle to induce her figures to add up, but +they were getting more meaningless every minute.</p> + +<p>There was another moment of silence. Then Block took up the refrain with +variations. But just as he began to speak, a brilliantly luminous ray of +light struck Rose. She could have answered Goldsmith's arguments—would +have done so, but for her preoccupation with that trifling sum in +arithmetic. But it was incomparably better tactics not to answer at all. +Because if she could answer their arguments, they in turn could answer +hers. She'd be a child in their hands once she began to talk. But her +silence disconcerted them—gave them nothing to go on. Well, then, +she'd let them do the work and see what happened.</p> + +<p>But suppose, through her stubborn insistence, they should refuse the +costumes at any price! Well, the world wouldn't come to an end. She'd +live through it somehow, and somehow she'd manage to repay Galbraith.</p> + +<p>The partners went on talking alternately with symptoms of rising +impatience.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come," said Block at last, "we can't be all day about this! Your +figure is out of all reason. If you'd said even four hundred now ..."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Goldsmith. "We want to be liberal. We appreciate you've +done a good job. Say four hundred and I'll write you a check for it +now." He took a small check-book and a fountain pen out of his pocket. +"That's all right, eh?"</p> + +<p>Rose made another effort at addition. A hundred and ninety, and fifty, +and twenty, and the other ghostly hundred that wouldn't account for +itself and yet insisted on coming in and mixing everything up. She +turned on the two partners a look of perfectly genuine distress.</p> + +<p>"If you'll let me go away and add it up ..." she began.</p> + +<p>Goldsmith's heart was touched. The costumes were a bargain at four +hundred and sixty-five, and he knew it. There was an indescribable sort +of dash to them that would lend tone to the whole production. And then +the face of that pretty young girl who must have worked so desperately +hard to make them and who was so obviously helpless at this bargaining +game, would have moved a harder heart than his.</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right!" he said. "We'll give in. Four hundred"—he began making +out the check, but his hand hung over it a moment—"and fifty. How's +that?"</p> + +<p>Rose drew in a long breath. "That's all right," she said.</p> + +<p>It was just as she turned away with the check made out to Doris Dane in +her wrist-bag, that the mystery of that phantom hundred dollars solved +itself. It was the hundred dollars she'd borrowed from Rodney and could +now return to him!</p> + +<p>Galbraith took the first chance he could make to shoot her a low-voiced +question. "How much did you get?" he asked, and his face showed +downright surprise when she told him. "That's a pretty fair price," he +commented. "I was afraid they'd screw you way down on it, and I wanted +to help you out, but ..."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you did," said Rose. "Telling me they were good. Of course you +couldn't have done anything more. The first thing I want to do," she +went on, "is to pay you back. But I don't know just how to do it. I +can't go to the bank where they know me and—anyway, the name on the +check isn't right."</p> + +<p>He told her how easily that could be fixed. He'd take her to the bank he +used here in town and identify her. Then she could pay him and deposit +the balance to her own account. It was a bank where they didn't mind +small accounts. That would be much better than carrying her money around +with her where it could too easily be stolen.</p> + +<p>He was very kind about it all and they put the program through that day. +Yet she was vaguely conscious of a sense that he seemed a little +chilled, as if something about the transaction unaccountably depressed +him.</p> + +<p>And indeed it was true that he'd have found his tendency to fall in love +with her a good deal harder to resist if she'd shown herself more +helpless in the hands of Goldsmith and Block. She'd actually driven a +good bargain—an unaccountably good bargain! He wished he'd been on hand +to see how she did it. Well, women were queer, there was no getting away +from that.</p> + +<p>But Goldsmith and Block came back the next day and drove, in turn, a +good bargain of their own.</p> + +<p>"You've certainly got a good eye for costumes, Miss Dane," Goldsmith +said, "and here's a proposition we'd like to make. A lot of these other +things we've got for the regular chorus don't look so good as they +might. You'll be able to see changes in them that'll improve them maybe +fifty per cent. Well, you take it on, and we'll begin paying you your +regular salary now; you understand, twenty-five dollars a week, +beginning to-day."</p> + +<p>Rose accepted this proposition with a warm flush of gratitude. It +indicated, she felt, that they were still friendly toward her, disposed +of certain misgivings she'd experienced the night before, lest in +driving, unwittingly, so good a bargain with them, she had incurred +their enmity.</p> + +<p>But, from the moment her little salary began, she found herself +retained, body and soul, exactly as Galbraith himself was. They'd bought +all her ideas, all her energy, all her time, except a few scant hours +for sleep and a few snatched minutes for meals. She gave her employers, +up to the time when the piece opened at the Globe, at a conservative +calculation, about five times their money's worth. Even if she hadn't +been in the company she'd have found something like two days' work in +every twenty-four hours, just in the wardrobe room. Because the costumes +were cheap and the frank blaze of borders, footlights and spots, +pitilessly betrayed the fact. One set for the ponies was so hopelessly +bad that the owners refused to accept them, and Rose, on the spur of the +moment, made up a costume—they were uniform, fortunately—to replace +them. The wardrobe mistress, with two assistants, and under Rose's +intermittent supervision, managed somehow to get them made. And there +wasn't a single costume, outside Rose's own twelve, that hadn't to be +remodeled more or less.</p> + +<p>On top of all that, the really terrible grind of rehearsals began; +property rehearsals, curiously disconcerting at first, where instead of +indicating the business with empty hands, you actually lighted the +cigarette, picked up the paper knife, pulled the locket out from under +your dress and opened it—and, in the process of doing these things, +forgot everything else you knew; scenery rehearsals that caused the +stage to seem small and cluttered up and actually made some of the +evolutions you'd been routined in, impossible. At last and ghastliest, a +dress rehearsal, which began at seven o'clock one night and lasted till +four the next morning.</p> + +<p>It would all have been so ludicrously easy, Rose used to reflect in +despair, if, like the other girls in the sextette, she'd had only her +own part in the performance to attend to—only to get into her costumes +at the right time, be waiting in the wings for the cue, and then come on +and do the things they'd taught her to do. But, between Goldsmith and +Block, who were now in a state of frantic activity and full of insane +suggestions, and the wardrobe mistress who was always having to be told +how to do something, every minute was occupied. She would try +desperately to keep an ear alert for what was happening on the stage, in +order to be on hand for her entrances. But, in spite of her, it +sometimes happened that she'd be snatched from something by a furious +roar from Galbraith.</p> + +<p>"Miss Dane!" And then, when she appeared, bewildered, contrite. "You +<i>must</i> attend to the rehearsal. Those other matters can be attended to +at some other time. If necessary, I can stop the rehearsal and wait till +you're at liberty. But I can't pretend to rehearse and be kept waiting."</p> + +<p>She never made any excuses; just took her place with a nod of +acquiescence. But she often felt like doing as some of the rest of them +did; felt it would be a perfectly enormous relief to shriek out +incoherent words of abuse, burst into tears and sobs, and rush from the +stage. Her position—her new position, she fancied, would entitle her to +do that—once. And then the notion that she was saving up that luxurious +possibility for some time when it would do the most good, would bring +back her old smile. And Galbraith, lost in wonder at her already, would +wonder anew.</p> + +<p>They followed the traditions of the Globe in giving <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> +its try-out in Milwaukee—four performances; from a Thursday to a +Saturday night, with rehearsals pretty much all the time in between.</p> + +<p>About all that this hegira meant to Rose was that she got two solid +hours' sleep on the train going up on Thursday afternoon and another two +hours on the train coming back on Sunday morning. She had domesticated +herself automatically, in the little hotel across from the theater, and +she had gone right on working just as she did at the Globe. Oddly +enough, she didn't differentiate much between rehearsals and the +performances. Perhaps because she was so absorbed with her labors off +the stage; perhaps because the thoroughly tentative nature of everything +they did was so strongly impressed on her.</p> + +<p>The piece was rewritten more or less after every performance. They +didn't get the curtain down on the first one until five minutes after +twelve—for even an experienced director like Galbraith can make a +mistake in timing—and the mathematically demonstrated necessity for +cutting, or speeding, a whole hour out of the piece, tamed even the +wild-eyed Mr. Mills. The principals, after having for weeks been +routined in the reading of their lines and the execution of their +business, were given new speeches to say and new things to do at a +moment's notice—literally, sometimes, while the performance was going +on. Ghastly things happened, of course. A tricky similarity of cues +would betray somebody into a speech three scenes ahead; a cut would have +the unforeseen effect of leaving somebody stranded, half-changed, in his +dressing-room when his entrance cue came round; an actor would dry up, +utterly forget his lines in the middle of a scene he could have repeated +in his sleep—and the amazing way in which these disasters were +retrieved, the way these people who hadn't, so far, impressed Rose very +strongly with their collective intelligence, extemporized, righted the +capsizing boat, kept the scene going—somehow—no matter what happened, +gave her a new respect for their claims to a real profession.</p> + +<p>This was the great thing they had, she concluded; the quality of coming +up to the scratch, of giving whatever it took out of themselves to meet +the need of the moment. They weren't—her use of this phrase harked back +to the days of the half-back—yellow. If you'd walked through the train +that took them back to Chicago Sunday morning, had seen them, glum, +dispirited, utterly fagged out, unsustained by a single gleam of hope, +you'd have said it was impossible that they should give any sort of +performance that night—let alone a good one. But by eight o'clock that +night, when the overture was called, you wouldn't have known them for +the same people.</p> + +<p>There is, to begin with, a certain magic about make-up which lends a +color of plausibility to the paradoxical theory that our emotions spring +from our facial expressions rather than the other way about. Certainly +to an experienced actor, his paint—the mere act of putting it on and +looking at himself in the glass as it is applied—effects for him a +solution of continuity between his real self, if you can call it that, +and his part; so that fatigues, discouragements, quarrels, ailments—I +don't mean to say are forgotten; they are remembered well enough, but +are given the quality of belonging to some one else. But beyond all that +was the feeling, on the edge of this first performance, that they were +now on their own. Harold Mills and the composer, Goldsmith and Block, +John Galbraith, had done their best, or their worst, as the case might +be. But their labors to-night would mean nothing to that rustling +audience out in front. From now on it was up to the company!</p> + +<p>The appearance, back on the stage, of John Galbraith in evening dress, +just as the call of the first act brought them trooping from their +dressing-rooms, intensified this sensation. He was going to be, +to-night, simply one of the audience.</p> + +<p>As a sample of the new spirit, Rose noted with hardly a sensation of +surprise, that Patricia Devereux nodded amiably enough to Stewart Lester +and observed that she believed the thing was going to go; and that +Lester in reply said, yes, he believed it was.</p> + +<p>Rose herself was completely dominated by it. Her nerves—slack, frayed, +numb, an hour ago—had sprung miraculously into tune. She not only +didn't feel tired. It seemed she never could feel tired again. Not even, +going back to her university days, on the eve of a class basket-ball +game, or a tennis match, had she felt that fine thrill of buoyant +confidence and adequacy quite so strongly!</p> + +<p>It wasn't until along in the third act that the audience became, for +her, anything but a colloid mass—something that you squeezed and +thumped and worked as you did clay, to get into a properly plastic +condition of receptivity, so that the jokes, the songs, the dances, +even the spindling little shafts of romance that you shot out into it, +could be felt to dig in and take hold. It never occurred to her to think +of it with a plural pronoun; it was "it" simply, an inchoate monster, +which was, as the show progressed, delightfully loosening up, becoming +good-humored, undiscriminating, stupidly infatuate; laughing at things +no human being would consider funny, approving with a percussive roar +things not in the least good; a monster, all the same, whose approbation +gave you an intense, if quite unreasoning, pleasure.</p> + +<p>But, along in the third act, as I said, as she came down to the +footlights with the rest of the sextette in their <i>All Alone</i> number, +one face detached itself suddenly from the pasty gray surface of them +that spread over the auditorium; became human—individual—and intensely +familiar. Became the face, unmistakably, of Jimmy Wallace!</p> + +<p>It is probable that of all the audience, only two men saw that anything +had happened, so brief was the frozen instant while she stood +transfixed. One of them was John Galbraith, in the back row, and he let +his breath go out again in relief almost in the act of catching it. He +guessed what had happened well enough—that she'd recognized one of +those friends whose potential horror had made her willing to give up her +promotion and her little part—the one she'd spoken of, perhaps, as the +"only one that really mattered." But it was all right. She was going on +as if nothing had happened.</p> + +<p>The other man was Jimmy Wallace himself. He released, too, a little sigh +of relief when he saw her off in her stride again after that momentary +falter. But he hardly looked at the stage after that; stared absently at +his program instead, and, presently, availed himself of the dramatic +critic's license and left the theater.</p> + +<p>But it wasn't to go to his desk and write his story (he was on an +evening paper and so had no deadline staring him in the face) but to a +quiet corner in his club, where he could, undistractedly, think.</p> + +<p>From the moment of Rose's first appearance on the stage he had been +tormented by a curiosity as to whether she was indeed Rose, or merely +some one unbelievably like her. Because the fantastic impossibility that +Rose Aldrich should be a member of the Globe chorus was reinforced by +the fact that her gaze had traveled unconcernedly across his face a +dozen times—his seat was in the fourth row, too—without the slightest +flicker of recognition. Of course the way she stood there frozen for a +second, when at last she did see him, settled that question. She was +Rose Aldrich and she was in the Globe chorus!</p> + +<p>But this certainty merely left him with a more insoluble perplexity on +his hands; two, in fact—oh, half a dozen! What was she doing there? Did +Rodney know? Well, those questions, and others in their train, could +wait. But—what was he going to do about it?</p> + +<p>As for Rose herself, it was a mere automaton that moved off in the dance +and said the two or three lines that remained to her in the act as if +nothing had happened, because all her mind and all her capacity for +feeling were occupied and tested by something else.</p> + +<p>Incredible as it seems, she had utterly overlooked Jimmy—overlooked the +fact that, as a dramatic critic, he'd be certain to be present at the +opening performance of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>—certain to be sitting close +to the front, and certain, of course, to recognize her the moment she +came on the stage. She hadn't even had him in mind when the fear lest +some one of Rodney's friends might, for a lark, drop in at the Globe and +recognize her, had led her to tell John Galbraith that she couldn't be +in the sextette. Since that question had been settled, she'd hardly +considered the possibility at all. And, during the three weeks before +the opening, since she'd embarked on her career as a costumer, she +literally hadn't given it a thought.</p> + +<p>She had dreaded various things as the hour of the opening performance +drew near—reasonable things like the failure of the piece to please, +the reception of their offerings in a chilly silence intensified by +contemptuous little riffles of applause. (She had been in audiences +which had treated plays like that—taken her own part in the expression +of chill disfavor, and she knew now she could never do it again.) She +had dreaded unreasonable things, like the total failure of any audience +to appear and the necessity of playing to empty rows as they had done in +rehearsal; nightmare things, like a total loss of memory, which should +leave her stranded in the middle of a silent stage before a jeering +audience. But it hadn't occurred to her to dread that the rise of the +curtain would reveal to her any of the faces that belonged to a world +which the last six weeks had already made to seem unreal.</p> + +<p>So the sight of Jimmy Wallace had something the effect that a sudden +awakening has on a somnambulist—bewilderment at first, and after that a +sort of panic. Her first thought was that she must get word to him, +somehow, before he left the theater. Unless she could do that, what was +to prevent his going straight to Rodney, to-night, and telling him all +about it? He was under no obligation not to do it. He was Rodney's +friend quite as much as he was hers.</p> + +<p>It didn't take her long to make up her mind though that he wouldn't do +that. Jimmy was never precipitate. He'd give her a chance. To-morrow +morning would do. She could call him up at his office.</p> + +<p>But as she began formulating her request and phrasing the preface of +explanations she'd have to make before she'd be—well, entitled to ask a +favor of him, she found herself in a difficulty. She didn't want to +enter into a secret with him—with any man, this meant, of +course—against Rodney. She couldn't think of any way of stating her +reason for wanting her husband kept in the dark that didn't seem to +slight him, belittle him, make him faintly ridiculous—like the +pussy-cat John Galbraith had snapped his fingers at.</p> + +<p>So she came, rather swiftly indeed, to the decision (she had arrived at +it before Jimmy left the theater) that she wouldn't make any appeal to +him at all. She'd do nothing that could lead him to think, either that +she was ashamed of herself, or that she was afraid Rodney would be +ashamed of her. In the absence of any appeal from her, mightn't he +perhaps decide that Rodney was in her confidence and so say nothing +about it? But even if he should tell Rodney ...</p> + +<p>In her conscious thoughts she went no further than that; didn't +recognize the hope already beating tumultuously in her veins, that he +would tell Rodney—that perhaps even before she got back to her dismal +little room, Rodney, pacing his, would know.</p> + +<p>It was so irrational a hope—so unexpected and so well disguised—that +she mistook it for a fear. But fear never made one's heart glow like +that.</p> + +<p>That's where all her thoughts were when John Galbraith halted her on the +way to the dressing-room after the performance was over.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_IX_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER IX</h3> + +<h3>THE MAN AND THE DIRECTOR</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>He said, "I want a talk with you," and she, thinking he meant then and +there, glanced about for a corner where they'd be tolerably secure +against the charging rushes of grips, property men and electricians, all +racing against time to get the third act struck and the first one set +and make their escape from the theater.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't mean here in this bedlam," he explained with a tinge of +impatience. And then his manner changed. "I'd like, for once, a chance +to sit down with you where it's—quiet and we don't have to feel in a +hurry." He added, a second later, answering a shade of what he took to +be doubt or hesitation in her face, "You're frightfully tired I know. If +you'd rather wait till to-morrow ..."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it wasn't that," said Rose. "I was just trying to think where a +place was where one could be quiet and needn't hurry and where two +people could talk."</p> + +<p>He smiled. "You can leave that to me," he said. "That is, if you don't +mind a restaurant and a little supper."</p> + +<p>"Of course I don't mind," she said. "I'd like it very much."</p> + +<p>He nodded. "Don't rush your dressing," he suggested, as he moved away. +"I've got plenty to do."</p> + +<p>The sextette dressed together in a sort of pen—big enough, because they +had all sorts of room down under the old Globe stage, but so far as +appointments went, decidedly primitive. The walls were of matched +boards; there was a shelf two feet wide or so around three sides of it, +to make a sort of continuous dressing-table; there were six mirrors, six +deal chairs and a few hooks. These were for your street clothes. The +stage costumes hung in neat ranks outside under the eye of the wardrobe +mistress. When you wanted to put one on you went out and got it, and if +the time allowed for the change were sufficient you took it back into +your dressing-room. Otherwise you plunged into it just where you were. +When you wanted to wash before putting on or after taking off your +make-up you went to a row of stationary wash-bowls down the corridor.</p> + +<p>All told it wasn't a place to linger in over the indulgence of +day-dreams. But the first glimpse Rose caught, as she opened the door, +in the mirror next her own, was the entranced face of Olga Larson. The +other girls were in an advanced state of undress, intent on getting out +as quickly as they could. They were all talking straight along, of +course, but that didn't delay their operations a bit. They talked +through the towels they were wiping off the make-up with, talked bent +double over shoe-buckles, talked in little gasps as they tugged at tight +sweaty things that didn't want to come off. And they made a striking +contrast to Olga, who sat there just as she'd left the stage, without a +hook unfastened, in a rapturous reverie, waiting for Rose.</p> + +<p>In the instant before her entrance was noticed, Rose made an effort to +shake herself together so that she should be not too inadequate to the +situation that awaited her.</p> + +<p>She was, of course, immensely pleased over Olga's little triumph.</p> + +<p>(For it had been a triumph. Galbraith had persuaded Goldsmith and Block +to buy the little Empire dress in maize and corn-flower; Rose had done +her hair, and Olga had been allowed to sing, on the first <i>encore</i>, the +refrain to <i>All Alone</i>, quite by herself. She'd gone up an octave on the +end of it to a high A, which in its perfect clarity had sounded about a +third higher and had brought down the house. Patricia had been furious, +of course, but was at bottom too decent to show it much and had actually +congratulated Olga when she came off. It looked as if she'd really got +her foot on the ladder.)</p> + +<p>Well, as I said, Rose was immensely pleased about it—for the girl, who +certainly deserved a little good luck at last; for herself, whose +judgment had been vindicated, and for the show, to the success of which +the experiment had contributed. But she'd have been a good deal better +pleased if Olga could have taken her success as simply her own, instead +of being so adoringly grateful to Rose about it. Olga had been adoring +her with a somewhat embarrassing intensity ever since the night she had +locked her in her room and taught her to talk.</p> + +<p>Rose had convicted herself here of a failure in human sympathy, and had +done her best to correct it, without much avail. The stubborn fact was +that, wishing Olga all the good fortune in the world, and being willing +to take any amount of trouble to bring it about, she didn't particularly +like her. And she flinched involuntarily, from the girl's more romantic +and sentimental manifestations. This distaste had been heightened by the +fact that along with Olga's adoration had gone a sense of +proprietorship, with its inevitable accompaniment of jealousy.</p> + +<p>Olga bridled every time she found Rose chatting with another member of +the chorus, and when, up in Milwaukee, Patricia had invited her, along +with Anabel, to come up to her room for a little supper after rehearsal, +Olga had been sulky and injured for the whole of the next day.</p> + +<p>It was something deeper in Rose than a mere surface distaste that made +all this—the caresses, as well as the sulky exactions—repellent to +her. And to-night, with her mind full of Rodney—full of that strange +hope that disguised itself as fear, the repulsion was stronger than +ever. She made an effort to conquer it. It would be a shame to throw a +wet blanket on the girl's attempt to enjoy her triumph in her own way.</p> + +<p>So Rose kissed her and told her how pleased she was, and good-humoredly +forbore to disclaim, except as her wide smile did it for her, Olga's +extravagant protestations of undying love and gratitude. Rose injected +common-sense considerations where she could. Olga had better get out of +that frock before she ruined it with grease paint, and unless she at +least began to dress pretty soon she'd find herself locked up for the +night in the theater.</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't care," Olga said. "You'd be locked up, too. Because you +aren't any further along than I am."</p> + +<p>"I'm going to be, though," said Rose, "in about two minutes." The +thought of what John Galbraith's disgust would be, in spite of his +good-natured assurance she needn't hurry, if she really kept him +waiting, set her at her task with flying fingers.</p> + +<p>"There's no use hurrying," Olga commented on this burst of speed, +"because you're going to wait for me. This is my night. We'll have a +little table all by ourselves at Max's and then you'll come up and sleep +with me to-night."</p> + +<p>An instinct prompted Rose to defer the necessary negative to this +suggestion until the last of the other girls, who was just then pinning +on her hat, should have gone. When the door clicked, she said she was +sorry but the plan couldn't be carried out.</p> + +<p>Olga looked at her intensely. "I need you to-night," she said, "and if +you care anything about me at all you'll come."</p> + +<p>"I'd come if I could," said Rose, "but it can't be managed. I've +promised to do something else."</p> + +<p>Olga's face paled a little and her eyes burned. "So that's it, is it?" +she said furiously. "You're going out with Galbraith." She went on to +say more than that, but her meaning was plain at the first words.</p> + +<p>Rose looked at her a little incredulous, quite cool, so far as her mind +went (because, of course, Olga's accusation was merely grotesque) but +curiously and most unpleasantly stirred, disgusted almost to the point +of nausea. She stopped the tirade, not because she cared what the girl +was saying, but because she couldn't stay in the room with a person +making that sort of an exhibition of herself. It took no more than half +a dozen words to accomplish this result. The mere fact that she spoke, +after that rather long blank period of speechlessness, and the cold +blaze of her blue eyes that accompanied her words, effected more than +the words themselves. And then, in a tempest of tears and +self-reproaches, Olga repented—a phase of the situation which was +worse, almost, than the former one, because it couldn't be dealt with +quite so summarily.</p> + +<p>But Rose went on dressing as fast as she could all the while, and at +last, long before Olga had begun putting on her street clothes, she was +ready to go. With her hand on the door-latch she paused.</p> + +<p>"I am going to have supper with Mr. Galbraith," she said. "He told me +there was something he wanted to talk to me about." And with that she +let herself out of the room, indifferent to the effect these last words +of hers might produce.</p> + +<p>She caught sight of Galbraith down at the end of the corridor waiting +for her, but she paused a moment, pulled in a long breath and grinned at +herself. In the state of mind she was in just then, divided between her +impatience to get back to her own room where her thoughts could be free +to run upon the one theme they welcomed, and her wrath and disgust over +the scene Olga had just subjected her to, the poor man was in danger of +having a pretty unsatisfactory sort of hour with her. She must brace up +and really try to be nice to him.</p> + +<p>So through all the preliminaries to the real talk which he'd said he +wanted with her, she was consciously as cordial and friendly as she knew +how to be. She said she hoped she hadn't kept him waiting too long, and +when he apologized for taking her out through the stage door and the +alley, with the explanation that the front of the house was by this time +locked, she made a good-humored reference to the fact that the alley and +the stage door were now her natural walk in life, and that it was just +as well she shouldn't be spoiled with liberties.</p> + +<p>He asked her if she had any preference as to where they went for supper, +and the way she acknowledged, again with a smile, that she'd rather not +go to Rector's, nor to any of the places over on Michigan Avenue, was an +admission, in candid confidence, of the existence of another half of her +life which she wished to keep, if possible, unentangled with this. She +showed herself frankly pleased with the taxi he provided, sank back +into her place in it with a sigh of clear satisfaction, and was, as far +as he could see, completely incurious about the address he gave the +chauffeur. The place he picked out was an excellent little chop-house in +one of the courts south of Van Buren Street, a place little frequented +at night—manned, indeed, after dinner, merely by the proprietor, one +waiter and a man cook in the grille, and kept open to avoid the chance +of disappointing any of the few epicurean clients who wouldn't eat +anywhere else.</p> + +<p>But neither the neighborhood nor the loneliness of the place got even so +much as a questioning glance from Rose. She left the ordering of the +supper to him, and assented with a nod to his including with it a bottle +of sparkling Burgundy.</p> + +<p>There is nothing quite so disconcerting as to be prepared to overcome a +resistance and then to find no resistance there; to be ready with +convincing arguments, and then not have them called for. This, very +naturally, was the plight of John Galbraith.</p> + +<p>Rose wasn't a child even on the day when she came and asked him for a +job, and in the six weeks that had intervened since then she'd been +dressing in the same room with chorus-girls—hearing the sort of things +they talked about in the wings. Indeed, unless he was mistaken, she must +have heard them linking her own name with his. His very special interest +in her, and the way he'd shown it, promoting her to the sextette, and +giving her a chance to design the costumes, was a thing they wouldn't +have missed nor failed to put their own construction on. She must know +then what their inferences would be from the fact of his asking her out +to supper on the opening night.</p> + +<p>What he'd been prepared to urge was that now that his connection with +the enterprise had terminated, now that he was no longer a director and +the representative of her employers, she should take him on trust simply +as a friend. He was prepared to answer protests, to offer +compromises—concessions to appearances. He'd expected her to exhibit +some shyness of the taxi. According to his unconscious ideal of the +situation she should have looked questioningly at him—hesitated, and +then let him assure her that it was all right. She should have gasped a +little when the car turned south in the dark little court below Van +Buren Street, have shrunk a little at the isolation the emptiness of the +restaurant enforced upon them, and declined, with something not far +short of panic, her share of that bottle of Burgundy. Because all these +flutters and questionings would just have opened the way for his +assurances—perfectly honest assurances, too, as far as he knew—of the +candor of his feelings and intentions toward her.</p> + +<p>She needed a friend, that was plain enough, some one who had her best +interests honestly at heart; some one who knew the pitfalls and the +difficulties of this pilgrimage she'd so strangely set out on, and could +advise her how to avoid them. That he was, potentially, that friend, he +truly believed. And what better way could there be of convincing her of +it than by persuading her to trust him, and then proving that her trust +had not been misplaced?</p> + +<p>But what was one to do—how was one to make a beginning when she trusted +him without any persuasion? Trusted him as a matter of course, without +the glimmer of any sort of emotion whatever; about as if he'd +been—well, say, her brother-in-law!</p> + +<p>He was at a loss for a peg to hang his definite sense of injury upon. He +couldn't blame the girl for having trusted him, nor for proving so +perfectly adequate to the unconventional situation he'd created. He +couldn't reproach her, even in his thoughts, for the frankly expressed +pleasure she took in the leisured dignity of the little restaurant, with +its modestly sumptuous appointments (she even let him see that she +appreciated the fineness of the napery and the handsomeness of the +tableware; admitted, indeed, how sharply it contrasted with what she'd +been used to lately), nor for the real appreciation she showed of the +supper he selected.</p> + +<p>But the moment he had been planning, counting on for days—weeks, if it +came to that—with an excitement he couldn't deny, a tensity that had +increased as the prospect of it drew nearer, was not exciting nor tense +for her. If anything, she'd relaxed a little, as if the big moment of +her day had passed—or, postponed by this affair of his, were still to +come. Once or twice when her gaze detached itself from him and rested +unfocused on the other side of the room, he saw little changes of +expression go over her face that didn't relate to him at all. He simply +wasn't in focus, that was the size of it. He had never seen her look +lovelier, more completely desirable than she did right now, dressed as +she was in her very simple street clothes and relaxed by the surrounding +quiet and comfort and her own fatigue. And yet, all alone with him as +she had so confidingly permitted herself to be, and near enough to reach +with the bare stretching out of a hand, she'd never been further away +nor seemed more unattainable.</p> + +<p>As she came back from one of these momentary excursions she found him +staring at her, and with a faint flush and a smile of contrition she +pulled herself back, as it were, into his presence.</p> + +<p>"I know you're tired," he said bruskly. "But I fancied you'd be tireder +in the morning and I have to leave for New York on the fast train. So, +you see, it was now or never." Strangely enough, that got her. She +stared at him a little incredulous, almost in consternation.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean you're going away?" she asked. "To-morrow?"</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said rather sharply. "I've nothing more to stay around +here for." He added, as she still seemed not to have got it through her +head. "My contract with Goldsmith and Block ended to-night, with the +opening performance."</p> + +<p>"Of course," she said in deprecation of her stupidity, "I didn't think +you were going to stay indefinitely—as long as the show ran. And yet I +never thought of your going away. It's always seemed that you were the +show—or, rather, that the show was you; just something that you made +go. It doesn't seem possible that it can keep on going with you not +there."</p> + +<p>The sincerity of that made it a really fine compliment—just the sort +of compliment he'd appreciate. But—the old perversity again—the very +freedom with which she said it spoiled it for him.</p> + +<p>"I may be missed," he said—it was more of a growl really—"but I shan't +be regretted. There's always a sort of Hallelujah chorus set up by the +company when they realize I'm gone."</p> + +<p>"I shall regret it very much," said Rose. The words would have set his +blood on fire if she'd just faltered over them. But she didn't. She was +hopelessly serene about it. "You're the person who's made this six weeks +bearable and, in a way, wonderful. I never could thank you enough for +the things you've done for me, though I hope I may try to some time."</p> + +<p>"I don't want any thanks," he said. And this was completely true. It was +something very different from gratitude that he wanted. But he realized +how abominably ungracious his words sounded, and hastened to amend them. +"What I mean is that you don't owe me any. Anything I've done that's +worked out to your advantage was done because I believed it was to the +advantage of the men who hired me—beginning with the afternoon when I +first took you on in the chorus."</p> + +<p>This didn't satisfy him either. Rose said nothing. He had indeed left +her nothing to say. But there was a look of perplexity in her eyes—as +if she were casting about for some stupidly tactless act or omission of +her own to account for his surliness—that made him recant altogether.</p> + +<p>"I don't know why in the world I should have said a thing like that!" he +burst out. "It wasn't true. I've wanted to do things for you—wanted to +do more than I could, and I want to still. You've done a lot to make +this show go, as well as it did, in more ways than you know about. It +wasn't for me, personally, that you did it. But all the same, I'm +grateful. And it's to convince you of that that I asked you to come +around here to-night."</p> + +<p>She really lighted up over his praise, thanked him for it very +prettily. But then, after a little silence, she went on reflectively, +"It was, in a way, for you, personally, that I was working all the time. +I don't know if I can explain that, though I think I understand it +myself. But just because you wanted things so hard—you were so +perfectly determined that something should happen in a certain way—I +just <i>had</i> to help bring it about, or try to. It would have been +exciting enough just to see that things were wrong and to watch them +coming right. But taking hold one's self and helping a little to make +them come right was—well, as I said, wonderful."</p> + +<p>"Well," he said—and now he was brusk again—"I hope Goldsmith and Block +are satisfied. They won't be; of course, unless the thing runs forty +weeks. But that isn't what I want to talk about. I want to talk about +you. I want to know what you're aiming at. I don't mean to-morrow or +next week. You'll stay with this piece, I suppose, as long as the run +lasts. But in the end, what's the idea? Do you want to be an actress?"</p> + +<p>He had kept on going after that first question of his, because it was +obvious the girl wasn't ready to answer. She seemed to be struggling to +get the bearings of a perfectly new idea. At length she gave him the +clue.</p> + +<p>"It's that forty weeks," she said. "The notion of just going on—not +changing anything or improving anything; doing the same thing over and +over again for forty weeks, or even four, seems perfectly ghastly. And +yet I suppose that's what everybody in the company is hoping for—just +to keep going round and round like a horse at the end of a pole. What +I'd like to do, now that this is finished, is—well, to start another."</p> + +<p>His eyes kindled. "That's it," he said. "That's what I've felt about you +all along. I suppose it's the reason I felt you never could be an +actress. You see the thing the way I do—the whole fun of the game is +getting the timing. Once it's got ..." He snapped his fingers; and with +an eager nod she agreed.</p> + +<p>He was in focus now, there could he no doubt of that. But it didn't +occur to him that it was the director who was in focus, not the man. +The fact was that in evoking the director she'd banished the man—a +triumph she wasn't to realize the importance of until a good deal later.</p> + +<p>"Well, then, look here," he said. "I've an idea that I could use you to +good advantage as a sort of personal assistant. There'll be a good deal +of work just of the sort you did with the sextette, teaching people to +talk and move about like the sort of folk they're supposed to represent. +That's coming in more and more in musical comedies, the use of the +chorus as real people in the story—accounting for their exits and +entrances. It would be done more if we could teach chorus people to act +human. Well, you can do that better than I; that's the plain truth. And +then I think after you'd got my idea of a dance number you could +probably rehearse it yourself, take some of that routine off my hands. +Under this new contract of mine, that I expect to sign in a day or two, +I'll simply have to have somebody. And then, of course, there's the +costuming. That's a great game, and I've a notion, though of course I +haven't a great deal to go by, that you could swing it. I think you've a +talent for it.</p> + +<p>"There you are! The job will be paid from the first a great deal better +than what you've got here. And the costuming end of it, if you succeed, +would run to real money. Well, how about it?"</p> + +<p>"But," said Rose a little breathlessly—"but don't I have to stay here +with <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>? I couldn't just leave, could I?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I shan't be ready for you just yet anyway," he said. "I'll write +when I am and by that time you'll be perfectly free to give them your +two weeks' notice. By the way, haven't you some other address than care +of the theater—a permanent address somewhere?"</p> + +<p>"Care of Miss Portia Stanton," she told him, and as he got out his card +and wrote it down, she added the California address. It recalled to his +mind that she had told him her name was Rose Stanton on the day he had +given her a job, and the memory diverted him for a moment. Then he +pulled himself back.</p> + +<p>"They'll be annoyed, of course—Goldsmith and Block. But, after all, +you've given them more than their money's worth already. Well—will you +come if I write?"</p> + +<p>"It seems to be too wonderful to be true," she said. "Yes, I'll come, of +course."</p> + +<p>He sat there gazing at her in a sort of fascination. Because she was +fairly lambent with the wonder of it. Her eyes were starry, her lips a +little parted, and she was so still she seemed not even to be breathing. +But the eyes weren't looking at him. Another vision filled them. The +vision—oh, he was sure of it now!—of that "only one," whoever he was, +that mattered.</p> + +<p>He thrust back his chair with an abruptness that startled her out of her +reverie, and the action, rough as it was, wasn't violent enough to +satisfy the sudden exasperation that seized him. If he could have +smashed the caraffe or something ...</p> + +<p>"I won't keep you any longer," he said. "I'll have them get a taxi and +send you home."</p> + +<p>She said she didn't want a taxi. If he'd just walk over with her to a +Clark Street car ... And she thanked him for everything, including the +supper. But all the time he could see her trying, with a perplexity +almost pathetic, to discover what she had done to change his manner +again like that.</p> + +<p>He was thoroughly contrite about it, and he did his best to recover an +appearance of friendly good will. He didn't demur to her wish to be put +on a car, and at the crossing where they waited for it, after an almost +silent walk, he did manage to shake hands and wish her luck and tell her +she'd hear from him soon, in a way that he felt reassured her.</p> + +<p>But he kicked his way to the curb after the car had carried her off, and +marched to his hotel in a sort of baffled fury. He didn't know exactly +what had gone wrong about the evening. He couldn't, in phrases, tell +himself just what it was he'd wanted. But he did know, with a perfectly +abysmal conviction, that he was a fool!</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_X_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER X</h3> + +<h3>THE VOICE OF THE WORLD</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>If you were to accost the average layman, especially the layman who has, +at one time or another, found his personal affairs, or those of his +friends, casually illuminated by the straying search-light of newspaper +notoriety, and put this hypothetical question to him: What chance would +there be that a young married woman, who, in a social sense, really +"belonged," could leave her husband for a musical-comedy chorus in the +city he lived in, and escape having the fact chronicled in the daily +press?—that layman would tell you that there was simply no chance at +all. But if you were to put the same question to a person expert in the +science of publicity—to an alumnus of the local room of any big city +daily, you'd get a very different answer. Because your expert knows how +many good stories there are that never get into the papers. He allows +for the element of luck; he knows how vitally important it is that the +right person should become aware of the fact at exactly the right time, +in order that a simple happening may be converted into news.</p> + +<p>Rose's "escapade"—that's how it would have been described—didn't get +into the papers. Jimmy Wallace, of course, before the bar of his own +conscience, stood convicted of high treason. There was no use arguing +with himself that he was hired as a critic and not as a reporter. For, +just as it is the doctor's duty to prolong, if possible, the life of his +patient, or the lawyer's duty to defend his client, so it is the duty of +every man who writes for a newspaper, to turn himself into a reporter +when a story breaks under his eye. Jimmy ought that very night as soon +as he had made sure of his facts, to have left a note on his city +editor's desk informing him that Mrs. Rodney Aldrich was a member of the +chorus in the new Globe show.</p> + +<p>He didn't do it, even though he knew that a more troublesome accuser +than his own conscience—namely, the city editor himself—would confront +him, in case any of his colleagues on the other papers had happened to +recognize her and, dutifully, had turned the story in. He read the other +papers for the next twenty-four hours, rather more carefully than usual, +and then with a sigh of relief, told his conscience to go to the devil. +It was a well trained, obedient conscience, and it subsided meekly.</p> + +<p>But his curiosity was neither meek nor accustomed to having its +liberties interfered with, and it declined to leave the problem alone. +Problem! It was a whole nest of problems. If you isolated one and worked +out a tolerably satisfactory answer to it, you discovered that this +answer made all the rest more fantastically impossible of solution than +before. It actually began to cost him sleep! What made it harder to +bear, of course, was the tantalizing possibility of finding out +something by dropping in at the Globe during a performance, wandering +back on the stage, where he was always perfectly welcome, going up and +speaking to her and—seeing what happened. Something more or less +illuminating would have to happen. Because, even in the extremely +improbable case of her pretending she didn't know him, he'd then have +something to go on. He dismissed this temptation as often as it showed +its face around the corner of the door of his mind—dismissed it with +objurgations. But it was a persistent temptation and it wouldn't stay +away.</p> + +<p>It was a real relief to him when Violet Williamson telephoned to him one +day and asked him to come out to dinner. There'd be no one but herself +and John, she said, and he needn't dress unless he liked. She'd been in +New York for a fortnight and had only been back two days. He mustn't +fail to come. There was a sort of suppressed excitement about Violet's +voice over the telephone, which led him to suspect she might be able to +throw some light on the enigma.</p> + +<p>But light, it appeared, was what John and Violet wanted from him.</p> + +<p>They were both in the library when he came in, and after the barest +preliminaries in the way of greetings and cigarettes, and the swiftest +summary of her visit to New York ("I stayed just long enough to begin +being not quite so furious with John for not taking me there to live,") +Violet made a little silence, visibly lighted her bomb, and threw it. +"John and I went to the Globe last night to see <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>," +she said.</p> + +<p>Jimmy carried his cocktail over to the fire, drew sharply on his +cigarette to get it evenly lighted, and by that time had decided on his +line.</p> + +<p>"That's an amazing resemblance, isn't it?" he said.</p> + +<p>"Resemblance fiddle-dee-dee!" said Violet.</p> + +<p>John Williamson hunched himself around in his chair. "Well, you know," +he protested to his wife, "that's the way I dope it out myself."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>you!</i>" she said, with good-natured contempt. "You think you think +so. Because you've always been wild about Rose ever since Rodney married +her, you just won't let yourself think anything else. But Jimmy here, +doesn't even think he thinks so. He knows better."</p> + +<p>"They're the limit, aren't they?" said John in rueful appeal to his +guest. "They not only know what you think, but what you think you think! +It's a marvelous thing—feminine intuition."</p> + +<p>"'Intuition,' nothing!" said Violet. Then she rounded on Jimmy.</p> + +<p>"How much have you found out about her—this girl with the 'astonishing +resemblance'?"</p> + +<p>"Not very much," Jimmy confessed. "According to the program, her name is +Doris Dane. I did ask Block about her. He's one of the owners of the +piece. But he couldn't tell me very much. She's from out of town, he +thinks, and he said something about her being a dressmaker. She did some +work for them on the costumes. And she started in with this show as a +chorus-girl. But Galbraith, the director, got interested in her, and put +her into the sextette."</p> + +<p>"Well, there we are," said John Williamson. "That settles it. Rose never +was a dressmaker, that's a cinch."</p> + +<p>Even Violet seemed a little shaken, and Jimmy was just beginning to +congratulate himself on the skill with which he had modified what Block +had told him about the costumes, when Violet began on him again.</p> + +<p>"All right!" she said. "Where are we? You know quite a lot of people in +that show, don't you?" This was a rhetorical question. It was notorious +that Jimmy knew more or less everybody. So, without waiting for an +answer, she went on, "Well, have you been behind the scenes there since +the thing began?"</p> + +<p>"No, I've not gone back," said Jimmy. "Why should I?"</p> + +<p>"You haven't even been curious," she questioned, "to find out what a +girl who looked and talked as much like Rose as that, was like?" She +concluded, for good measure, with one more question voiced a little +differently—more casually. "Have you happened to see Rodney lately?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," Jimmy said unwarily. "I met him at the club the other day; +only saw him for a minute or two. We had one drink."</p> + +<p>"And did you happen to tell him," she asked, "about this dressmaker in +<i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> who looked so wonderfully like Rose? Did you offer +to take him round to see for himself?"</p> + +<p>"I tell you there's nothing to that!" said John. He'd been caught in the +same trap, it seemed. "What's the use of butting in? If anything has +gone wrong with those two ..."</p> + +<p>"You've always said there hasn't," Violet interrupted.</p> + +<p>"And you've said," he countered, "that you were sure there had. Well, +then, if there's a chance of it, why run the risk, just for nothing?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy, as it happened, had never heard even a suggestion that Rose and +Rodney were on any other terms than those of perfect amity. He hoped +they'd go on and tell him more. So to prevent their becoming suddenly +discreet, he promptly changed the subject.</p> + +<p>"I thought you had a taboo against the Globe," he said to Violet. "How +did you happen to go there?"</p> + +<p>"John went while I was in New York," she explained.</p> + +<a name="Illus_7"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_7.png"><img src="images/Illus_7.png" + alt=""Don't you know that that was Rose Aldrich?"" + width="50%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>"Don't you know that that was Rose Aldrich?"</h4> +<br> + +<p>"He's—well, a regular fan, you know. He hasn't missed a show there in +years. And he was <i>too</i> queer and absent-minded and fidgety for words, +when I came back. I thought a bank must be going to fail, or something. +And when he said, after dinner last night, that he felt like going to a +musical show, of course I said I'd go with him. And when I found it was +the Globe—he already had tickets—I was too—kind and sorry for him to +make a fuss. Well, and then she came out on the stage, and I knew what +it was all about."</p> + +<p>"Where did you sit?" Jimmy asked.</p> + +<p>"Fifth row," said John.</p> + +<p>Violet hadn't got the bearing of Jimmy's question. "Oh, you couldn't +mistake her," she said, "any more than you could in this room, now."</p> + +<p>"Do you mean," John asked, "that she might have recognized us?"</p> + +<p>"They can't," said Violet, "across the footlights,—can they?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy nodded. "In a little theater like that," he said, "anywhere in the +house. But it seems she didn't recognize you."</p> + +<p>"Look here!" said Violet. "Don't you know, in your own mind, just as +well as that you're standing there, that that was Rose Aldrich?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy dropped down into a big chair. "Well," he said, "I'm willing to +accept it as a working hypothesis."</p> + +<p>"You men!" said Violet.</p> + +<p>Dinner was announced just then, and the theme had to be dismissed until +at last they were left alone with the dessert.</p> + +<p>"What breaks me all up," Violet burst out, abandoning the pretense of +picking over her walnuts, and showing, with a little outflung gesture, +how impatient she had been to take it up, "what breaks me all up is how +this'll hit Frederica. She just adores Rodney and she's been simply +wonderful to Rose—for him, of course."</p> + +<p>Neither of the men said anything, but she felt a little stir of protest +from both of them and qualified the last phrase.</p> + +<p>"Oh, she liked her for herself, too. We all did. We couldn't help it. +But you haven't any idea, either of you, of even the beginning of what +Frederica did for her—steered her just right, and pushed her just +enough, and all the while seeming not to be doing a thing. Freddy's such +a peach at that! And she's been so big-hearted about it; never even +<i>felt</i> jealous. If it had been me, and I'd adored a brother like that, +and he'd gone off and fallen in love with a girl nobody knew, just +because he saw her in a wrestling-match with a street-car conductor, I'd +have wanted, whatever I might have done, to—well, show her up. And yet, +even after Rose had left him, for no reason at all, Freddy ..."</p> + +<p>"You're just guessing at all that, you know," her husband interrupted +quietly. "You don't <i>know</i> a single thing about it."</p> + +<p>"Well, what reason <i>could</i> Rose have for leaving him?" she flashed back. +"Hasn't Rodney been perfectly crazy about her ever since he married her? +Has he ever <i>seen</i> another woman the last two years? Or maybe you think +he's been coming home drunk and beating her with a trunk-strap."</p> + +<p>But John stuck to his guns. "You don't even know she's left him. The +only thing you do know is that Bella Forrester met Frederica one day, +about a week before Christmas, in the railway station at Los Angeles."</p> + +<p>"Well, can you tell me any other reason," Violet demanded, "why Freddy +should dash off alone to California, right in the middle of the holiday +rush, without saying a word to anybody, and be back here in just a week; +and not tell even <i>me</i> what she'd been doing, or where she'd been, so +that if Bella hadn't written to me, I'd never have known about it at +all? Is there any way of explaining that, except by supposing that Rose +had quarreled with Rodney and left him and that Freddy was trying to get +her to come back?"</p> + +<p>Neither of the men could offer, on the spur of the moment, the +alternative explanation she demanded. Indeed it would have taken a good +deal of ingenuity to construct one. It was safer, anyway, just to go on +looking incredulous.</p> + +<p>There was silence for a minute or two, then Violet burst out again. "And +then, after all Freddy had done, for Rose to come back here to Chicago, +with all the other cities in the country where it wouldn't matter what +she did, and start to be, of all things, a chorus-girl! It's just +a"—she hesitated over the word, and then used it with an inflection +that gave it its full literal meaning—"just a <i>dirty</i> trick. And poor +Freddy, when she knows ...!"</p> + +<p>"I don't believe a word of it," said John Williamson. "I don't believe +Doris Dane—if that's her name—is Rose, in the first place. And I don't +believe Rose has had a quarrel with Rodney. But if she has, and if she's +really there in that show ... Well, I know Rose—not so well as I'd have +liked to, but pretty well—and I know she's a fine girl and I know she's +square. And if I ever saw a girl in love with her husband, she was. +Well, and if she has done it, she's got a reason for it. Oh, I don't +mean another woman or a trunk-strap, or any of the regular divorce court +stuff. That's absurd, of course. And it may be, really, a fool reason. +But you can bet it didn't look like that to her. She wouldn't have done +it, admitting it's what she's done, unless she felt she had to."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I expect she's feeling awfully noble about it, +and I'll admit she was in love with Rodney. And that makes it all the +worse! If she'd fallen in love with some other man and run off with +him—well, that isn't pretty, but it's happened before and people have +got away with it. But this running away on account of some silly idea +that she's picked up from that votes-for-women mother of hers, running +away from a man like Rodney, too, just makes you sick."</p> + +<p>Her husband didn't try to answer her, except with a regretful sigh. He +recognized in the stinging contempt of his wife's words, the voice of +their world. If Doris Dane of the sextette were really Rose—and in the +bottom of his heart, despite his valiant pretense, he couldn't manage +more than a feeble doubt of it—she had committed the unforgivable sin. +Or so he thought, leaving out of his calculations one ingredient in the +situation. She had done an unconventional thing for the sake of a +principle!</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jimmy Wallace after a while, heading the conversation away, +as he was wont to do, from what might be an endless discussion of moral +principles, "the purpose of this council of war is to decide what we are +going to do about it. Are we going to tell Aldrich or his sister about +the dressmaker who looks so much like his wife, and let them find out +for themselves whether she is or not? Or are we going to make sure first +by going back on the stage there and having a talk with her? Or are we +just going to shut up about it—never have been to the Globe at all; or, +in my case, never to have noticed the resemblance?"</p> + +<p>"On the chance, you mean," John inquired, "that Rodney and Frederica +never find out at all? How much does that chance amount to?"</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jimmy, "the show's in its fourth week, and the story hasn't +got into the papers yet. So the chances are now it won't. And you're +about the only person in your crowd that makes a practise of going to +the Globe. If you haven't heard any rumors it probably means that you +two are the only ones who know, so far. People who knew her before she +was married may have recognized her, to be sure, but they aren't likely +to go around either to Aldrich or to Mrs. Whitney with the story. Of +course there's always a big margin for the unforeseeable. But even at +that, I think you might call it an even chance."</p> + +<p>"That's what I vote for then," said John, "shut up."</p> + +<p>"I certainly don't want to go back on the stage and talk to Rose," said +Violet, "and I simply couldn't make myself tell either Rodney or +Frederica. It would be just too ghastly! But there's another thing you +haven't thought of. Suppose they both know already. I've got an idea +they do."</p> + +<p>This was a possibility they hadn't thought of, but the more they +canvassed it, the likelier it grew.</p> + +<p>"He acts as if he knew," Violet said, "now I come to think of it. Oh, I +can't tell exactly why! Just the way he talks about her and—doesn't +talk about her. And then there's Harriet. She came home from Washington +and stayed three days with Frederica and then went away again. She kept +house for him while Rose was laid up, and why shouldn't she be doing it +now, except that she's perhaps spoken her mind a little too freely and +Rodney doesn't want her around? There'd be no nonsense about Harriet, +you could count on that."</p> + +<p>"It would be like Rose," said John, "to tell him herself. It wouldn't be +like her, when you come to think of it, to do anything else."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, she'd tell him," said Violet. "If she had some virtuous +woman-suffrage reason, she'd do more than tell him. She'd rub it in. Of +course he knows. Well, what shall we do about that?"</p> + +<p>"Same vote," said John Williamson; "shut up. Certainly if he knows, that +lets us out."</p> + +<p>But Violet wasn't satisfied. "That's the easiest thing, certainly," she +said, "but I don't believe it's right. I think the people who know him +best, ought to know—just a few, the people he still drops in on, like +the Crawfords, and the Wests, and Eleanor and James Randolph; just so +that they could—well, <i>not</i> know completely enough; so that they +wouldn't, innocently, you know, say ghastly things to him. Or even, +perhaps, do them, like making him go to musical shows, or talking about +people who run away to go on the stage. There are millions of things +like that that could happen, and if they know, they'll be careful."</p> + +<p>Her husband wasn't very completely convinced, though she expounded her +reasons at length, and urged them with growing intensity. But he'd never +put a categorical veto upon her yet, and it wasn't likely he'd begin by +trying to, now.</p> + +<p>As for Jimmy Wallace, he was really out of it. But he went home feeling +rather blue.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XI_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XI</h3> + +<h3>THE SHORT CIRCUIT AGAIN</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>It was, after all, out of that limbo that Jimmy had spoken of as the +margin of the unforeseeable, that the blind instrument of Fate appeared. +He was a country lawyer from down-state, who, for a client of his own, +had retained Rodney to defend a will that presented complexities in the +matter of perpetuities and contingent remainders utterly beyond his own +powers. He'd been in Chicago three or four days, spending an hour or two +of every day in Rodney's office in consultation with him, and, for the +rest of the time, dangling about, more or less at a loose end. A belated +sense of this struck Rodney when, at the end of their last consultation, +the country lawyer shook hands with him and announced his departure for +home on the five o'clock train.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry I haven't been able to do more," Rodney said,—"do anything +really, in the way of showing you a good time. As a matter of fact, I've +spent every evening this week here in the office."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I haven't lacked for entertainment," the man said. "We hayseeds +find the city a pretty lively place. I went to see a show just last +night called <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>. I suppose you've seen it."</p> + +<p>"No," said Rodney, "I haven't."</p> + +<p>"Well, the title's pretty raw, of course, but the show's all right. +Nothing objectionable about it, and it was downright funny. I haven't +laughed so hard in a year. Pretty tunes, too. I tried to-day to get some +records of it but they didn't have any yet. If you want a real good +time, you go to see it."</p> + +<p>The client was working his way to the door all the while and Rodney +followed him, so that the last part of this conversation took place in +the outer office. Rodney saw the man off with a final hand-shake, closed +the door after him and strolled irresolutely back toward Miss Beach's +desk.</p> + +<p>It was true, as he had told his client, that he had been spending most +of his evenings lately in his office, and it was also true that he had +an immense amount of work to do; he'd been taking it on rather +recklessly during the last two months. But they'd been pretty sterile, +those long solitary evening hours. He'd worked fitfully, grinding away +by brute strength for a while, without interest, without imagination, +and then, in a frenzy of impatience, thrusting the legal rubbish out of +the way and letting the enigma of his great failure usurp, once more, +his mind and his memories.</p> + +<p>It had occurred to him to wonder, as he stood listening to his client's +enthusiastic description of the show at the Globe, whether it would be +possible, in any surroundings, for him, for an hour or two, to laugh and +be jolly—and forget. It might be an experiment worth trying!</p> + +<p>"Telephone over to the University Club," he said suddenly to Miss Beach, +"and see if you can get me a seat for <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>."</p> + +<p>The office boy was out on an errand and in his absence the switchboard +was Miss Beach's care.</p> + +<p>"The—<i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>?" she repeated.</p> + +<p>"That's what he said, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she assented. "That's—the name of it."</p> + +<p>He might have been expected, after giving an order like that, to go +striding back into his private office and slam the door after him. It +wasn't at all his way to keep a lingering hand on a task after he'd +delegated it to some one else. But he didn't on this occasion act as +she'd expected him to; remained abstractedly where he was while +something turned itself over in his mind.</p> + +<p>There was nothing urgent about his order of course, and it was natural +enough that she should go on with her typing to the end of a sentence, +or even of a paragraph. But he stayed on and on, and Miss Beach went +steadily on with her typing. Finally he roused himself enough to look +around at her.</p> + +<p>"Go ahead and telephone," he said. "I want to find out if I can get a +seat."</p> + +<p>She arose obediently and moved over to the switchboard, then began +fumbling with the directory.</p> + +<p>"Good lord!" said Rodney. "You know the number of the University Club!"</p> + +<p>Of course it was true she did. She called it up for him on an average of +a dozen times a week. He was looking at her now with undisguised +curiosity. She was acting, for a perfectly infallible machine like Miss +Beach, almost queer. But she acted queerer the next moment. She laid +down the directory, clasped her hands tight and pressed her lips +together. Then, without looking around at him, she said:</p> + +<p>"You don't want to go to see that show, Mr. Aldrich. It—it isn't good +at all."</p> + +<p>Rodney was more nearly amused than he had been in a month.</p> + +<p>"You've been to see it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, and managed to go on a little more naturally, "Mr. +Craig took me. We had a bet on what the Supreme Court's decision would +be in the Roderick case—theater tickets against two pounds of home-made +fudge, and I won. And—that's where we went."</p> + +<p>"And you didn't like it, eh?"</p> + +<p>"No," she said.</p> + +<p>By now he was grinning at her outright. "Vulgar?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Her color had mounted again. "Yes," she said.</p> + +<p>The notion of having his dramatic entertainment censored by a frail, +prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It +would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar, +wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. You go ahead +and telephone."</p> + +<p>At that she rose and, for the first time, faced him. To his amazement, +he saw that she was in a perfect panic of embarrassment and fright. But, +for some grotesque reason, she was determined, too. She was blushing up +to the hair and her lips were trembling.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Aldrich," she said, "you won't like that show. If—if you go, +you'll be sorry."</p> + +<p>While he was still staring at her, young Craig came bursting blithely +out of his office, a bundle of papers in his hand and the pucker of a +silent whistle still on his lips. "Oh, Miss Beach!" he said, and then +stopped short, seeing that something had happened.</p> + +<p>Rodney tried an experiment. "Craig," he said, "Miss Beach doesn't want +me to buy a ticket for <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>. She says I won't like it. +Do you agree with her?"</p> + +<p>A flare of red came up into the boy's face, and his jaw dropped. Then, +as well as he could, he pulled himself together. "Yes, sir," he said, +swung around and marched back into his own cubby-hole.</p> + +<p>"You needn't telephone, Miss Beach," said Rodney curtly. And without +another word he put on his hat and overcoat and left the office.</p> + +<p>It was not a very profound emotion that drove him along; a violent +superficial one, rather, like the gusty wrath which had precipitated the +last phase of his great struggle with Rose—the time he told her he +wouldn't jeopardize the children's lives to satisfy her whims. He was +furiously impatient with the good intentions of his friends. He had been +aware of a sort of unnatural gentleness about them ever since Christmas; +but either it had intensified during the last ten days, or else he had +suddenly got more sensitive to it. The latter, most likely. And yet +Violet Williamson's manner the last Sunday evening he had spent at her +house, had stopped just short of a hushed voice and tiptoes. He'd been +momentarily expecting her to offer him an egg-nog.</p> + +<p>But this paroxysm of tact that had just broken out in his office was +really too much. Of course they'd been talking him over, those two. It +must have been amply obvious to them for a good while that there was +something more than met the eye, about that long visit of his wife's to +California. And it was nice and human of them to feel sorry for him. But +that they should decide, because <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> contained some +rather coarsely derisive song, perhaps, about men whose wives run away +from them, or something in the plot about a trip to California with a +less honorable purpose than its ostensible one, that he should on no +account be permitted to see the show, was ridiculous. He walked straight +over to the club and told the man at the cigar counter to get him a +ticket for to-night's performance.</p> + +<p>It was then after five and he decided not to go back to the office +before dinner. In fact, he might as well dine down here. So he went up +to the lounge, armed himself with an evening paper against casual +acquaintances, ordered a drink and dropped into a big leather chair.</p> + +<p>But all his carefully contrived environment hadn't the power, it seemed, +to shift the current of his thoughts. They went on dwelling on the +behavior of Miss Beach and young Craig, which really got queerer the +more one thought about it. It was hard to conceive of any allusion in +the plot or the songs of a silly little musical comedy, pointed enough +to account for Miss Beach's frantically determined effort to keep him +away, or for the instantaneous flush that had leaped into young Craig's +face. Because, after all, they didn't actually know that his great +adventure had come to grief, and whatever either of them might have +thought of the applicability of something that was said on the stage, to +their employer's ease, it wouldn't have been a bit like either of them +to discuss it with the other. In the absence of such a discussion, and +the prevision of his going to the show, you couldn't account for young +Craig's having caught the point instantly like that. And yet, what other +explanation could there be? There was none, and there was an end of it!</p> + +<p>Only it wasn't the end of it. The straying search-light of his memory +picked up a moment during that last evening at the Williamsons'. The +Crawfords had been there, and somebody else—a man he didn't know; and +the stranger had said something, a harmless stupid remark enough, about +the tired business man and the sort of musical-comedy he liked; +whereupon both Constance and Violet had made a sort of concerted swoop +and changed the subject almost violently. John Williamson made a +practise of going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never +spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the +word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore +be taboo on Rodney's account, was simply fantastic.</p> + +<p>But the fantasticality of an idea seemed, in his mood to-night, merely +to give it the burr-like quality of sticking in his mind, holding on +there with a hundred tiny barbs, despite his endeavors to pluck it out. +It even occurred to him that the manner of the man at the cigar +counter—the man he had just told to get him a ticket, had not been +quite natural; had been a little exaggeratedly matter-of-fact. He always +got his seats of that man, and the man always made some little +encouraging remark, as, for example, that he'd heard it was a good show; +or, more non-committally, that he hoped Mr. Aldrich would enjoy it. +To-night, certainly, he'd said nothing of the sort.</p> + +<p>The absurdity of this consideration was simply intolerable. He flung +down his paper and went into the adjoining room—a room full of tables +of various sizes, and thronged, at this hour, with members getting up an +appetite for dinner by the shortest route. The large round table nearest +the door was preempted by a group of men he knew; some of them well, +some only casually, and he came up with the intention of dropping into +the one vacant chair. But just before the first of them caught a glimpse +of him, his ear picked up the phrase, "<i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>." And then a +lawyer named Gaylord looked up and recognized him. "Hello, Aldrich," he +said, and Rodney would have sworn that the flash of silence that +followed had a galvanic quality that wasn't given it merely by his own +imagination. The others began greeting him, urging him to sit down and +have a drink.</p> + +<p>Rodney pulled in a long breath: "Didn't I hear some one talking about +<i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>?" he asked. "Is it a good show? Shall I go to see +it?"</p> + +<p>The silence was even briefer this time.</p> + +<p>Gaylord spoke through what would pass for a yawn. "I don't know," he +said. "I haven't seen it."</p> + +<p>One or two of the others shook their heads blankly. Finally somebody +else said: "Just a regular Globe show, I guess. All right; but hardly +worth bothering about."</p> + +<p>Once more they urged him to sit down and have a drink, but he said he +was looking for somebody and walked away down the room and out the +farther door.</p> + +<p>He knew now that he was afraid. Yet the thing he was afraid of refused +to come out into the open, where he could see it and know what it was. +He still believed that he didn't know what it was, when he walked past +the framed photographs in the lobby of the theater without looking at +them and stopped at the box-office to exchange his seat, well down in +front, for one near the back of the theater.</p> + +<p>But when the sextette made their first entrance upon the stage, he knew +that he had known for a good many hours.</p> + +<p>He never stirred from his seat during either of the intermissions. But +along in the third act, he got up and went out.</p> + +<p>I doubt if ever a troglodytic ancestor of his had been as angry as +Rodney was at that moment. Because, long before the pressure of the +troglodyte's anger had mounted to the pressure of Rodney's, it would +have relieved itself in action. He'd have descended on the scene, +beating down any of the onlookers who might be fools enough to try to +oppose his purpose, seized his woman and carried her off to his cave. +Which is precisely and literally what Rodney, with every aching filament +of nerve tissue in his body, most passionately wanted to do.</p> + +<p>The knout that flogged his soul had a score of lashes, each with the +sting of its own peculiar venom. Everybody who knew him, his closer +friends, and his casual acquaintances as well, must have known, for +weeks, of this disgrace. His friends had been sorry for him, with just a +grain of contempt; his acquaintances had grinned over it with just a +pleasurable salt of pity. "Do you know Aldrich? Well, his wife's in the +chorus at the Globe Theater. And he doesn't know it, poor devil." That +group at the round table at the club to-night. He could fancy their +faces after he'd turned away.</p> + +<p>Oh, but what did they matter after all? What did any of them matter? +What did anything matter in the world, except that the woman he'd so +whole-heartedly and utterly loved and lived for—the woman who'd left +him with those protestations of the need of his friendship and respect, +was there on that stage disporting herself for hire—and cheap hire at +that, before this fatuous mass of humanity packed in all about him. They +were staring at her, as the money they'd paid for admission entitled +them to stare, licking their lips over her.</p> + +<p>He hadn't had a moment's uncertainty that it was indeed she. Couldn't +shelter himself, even for an instant, behind Jimmy Wallace's theory of +an "amazing resemblance."</p> + +<p>The others of their world had always known Rose as a person with a good +deal of natural and quite unconscious dignity. She had never romped nor +larked before any of them, and she conveyed the impression, not of +refraining as a concession to good manners, but simply of being the sort +of person who didn't, naturally, express herself in those ways. But in +the interior privacies of their life together, she'd often shown +herself, for him, a different Rose. She'd played with him with the +abandon of a young kitten—romped and wrestled with him. And there'd +been a deliciousness about this phase of her, which resided, for him, in +the fact that it was kept for him alone.</p> + +<p>But now, here on the stage of a cheap theater, she was parading that +exquisite thing before the world! Along in the second act, where +Sylvia's six friends come to spend the night with her and sleep out on +the roof, there was a mad lark which brought up maddening memories. He +felt that he must get his hands on her—shake her—beat her!</p> + +<p>Yet, all the while, if any of his neighbors thought of him at +all—became aware of him and wondered at him, it was only because he sat +so still. And when the thing had become, at last, utterly unbearable, +and he got up to go out, he managed to look at his watch first, quite in +the manner of a "commuter" with anxieties about the ten-fifty-five +train.</p> + +<p>The northwest wind, which had been blowing icily since sundown, had +increased in violence to a gale. But he strode out of the lobby and +into the street, unaware of it. There must be a stage door somewhere, he +knew, and he meant to find it. It didn't occur to him to inquire. He'd +quite lost his sense of social being; of membership in a civilized +society. He was another Ishmael.</p> + +<p>It took him a long time to find that door, for, as it happened, he +started around the block in the wrong direction and fruitlessly explored +two alleys before he came on the right one. But he found it at last and +pulled the door open. An intermittent roar of hand-clapping, increasing +and diminishing with the rapid rise and fall of the curtain, told him +that the performance was just over.</p> + +<p>A doorman stopped him and asked him what he wanted.</p> + +<p>"I want to see Mrs. Aldrich," he said, "Mrs. Rodney Aldrich."</p> + +<p>"No such person here," said the man, and Rodney, in his rage, simply +assumed that he was lying. It didn't occur to him that Rose would have +taken another name.</p> + +<p>He stood there a moment debating whether to attempt to force an entrance +against the doorman's unmistakable intention to stop him, and decided to +wait instead.</p> + +<p>The decision wasn't due to common sense, but to a wish not to dissipate +his rage on people that didn't matter. He wanted it intact for Rose.</p> + +<p>He went back into the alley, braced himself in the angle of a brick pier +and waited. He neither stamped his feet nor flailed his arms about to +drive off the cold. He just stood still with the patience of his +immemorial ancestor, waiting. Unconscious of the lapse of time, +unconscious of the figures that presently began straggling out of the +narrow door, that were not she.</p> + +<p>Presently she came. A buffet of wind struck her as she closed the door +behind her, and whipped her unbuttoned ulster about, but she did not +cower under it, nor turn away—stood there finely erect, confronting it. +There was something alert about her pose—he couldn't clearly see her +face—that suggested she was expecting somebody. And then, not loud, but +very distinctly:</p> + +<p>"Roddy," she said.</p> + +<p>He tried to speak her name, but his dry throat denied it utterance. He +began suddenly to tremble. He came forward out of the shadow and she saw +him and came to meet him, and spoke his name again.</p> + +<p>"I saw you when you went out," she said. "I was afraid you mightn't +wait. I hurried as fast as I could. I've—w-waited so long. Longer than +you."</p> + +<p>They were so near together now, that she became aware how he was +trembling—shuddering fairly.</p> + +<p>"You're c-cold," she said.</p> + +<p>He managed at last to speak, and as he did so, reached out and took her +by the shoulders. "Come home," he said. "You must come home."</p> + +<p>At that she stepped back and shook her head. But he had discovered while +his hands held her, that she was trembling, too.</p> + +<p>The stage door opened again to emit a group of three of the ponies.</p> + +<p>"My Gawd," one of them shrilled, "what a hell of a night!"</p> + +<p>They stared curiously at Dane and the big man who stood there with her, +then scurried away down the alley.</p> + +<p>"We can't talk here," he said. "We must go somewhere."</p> + +<p>She nodded assent and they moved off side by side after the three little +girls, but slower. In an accumulation of shadows, half-way down the +alley, he reached out for her arm. It might have begun as an automatic +act—just an unconscious instinct to prevent her stumbling, there in the +dark. But the moment he touched her, the quality of it changed. He +gripped her arm tight and they both stood still. The next moment, and +without a word, they moved on again. At the corner of the alley, they +turned north. This was on Clark Street. Finally:</p> + +<p>"Are you all right, Roddy? And the babies?" she managed to say. "It's a +good many days since I've heard from Portia." And then, suddenly, "Was +it because anything had gone wrong that you came?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't know you were here until I saw you on the stage."</p> + +<p>This was all, in words, that passed until they reached the bridge. But +there needed no words to draw up, tighter and tighter between them, a +singing wire of memories and associations; there was no need, even, of a +prolonged contact between their bodies. He had let go her arm when they +came out of the alley, and they walked the half-mile to the bridge side +by side and in step, and except for an occasional brush of her shoulder +against his arm, without touching.</p> + +<p>But the Clark Street bridge, with a February gale blowing from the west +down the straight reach of the river, is not to be negotiated lightly. +Strong as they were, the force of the wind actually stopped them at the +edge of the draw, caught Rose a little off her balance, turned her half +around and pressed her up against him.</p> + +<p>She made an odd noise in her throat, a gasp that had something of a sob +in it, and something of a laugh.</p> + +<p>For a moment—so vivid was the blaze of memory—he seemed veritably to +be standing on another bridge (over the north branch of the Drainage +Canal, of all places) with the last, leonine blizzard of a March, which +had been treacherously lamblike before, swirling drunkenly about. He had +been tramping for hours over the clay-rutted roads with a girl he had +known a fortnight and had asked, the day before, to marry him. They had +been discussing this project very sensibly, they'd have said, in the +light of pure reason; and they were both unconscionably proud of the +fact that since the walk began there had been nothing a bystander could +have called a caress or an endearment between them. But there on the +bridge, a buffet of the gale had unbalanced her, and she—with just that +little gasping laugh—had clutched at his shoulder. He had flung one arm +around her and then the other. Without struggling at all she had held +herself away for a moment, taut as a strung bow, her hands clutching his +shoulders, her forearms braced against his chest; then, with the +rapturous relaxation of surrender, her body went soft in his embrace and +her arms slid round his neck; their faces, cool with the fine sleety +sting of the snow, came together.</p> + +<p>The vision passed. The wind was colder to-night than that March +blizzard had been, and the dry groan of a passing electric car came +mingled with the whine of it. Muffled pedestrians, bent doggedly down +against it, jostled them as they went by.</p> + +<p>He steadied her with a hand upon her shoulder, slipped round to the +windward side, and linked his arm within hers. But it was a moment +before they started on again. Their hands touched and, electrically, +clasped. Like his, hers were ungloved. She'd had them in her ulster +pockets.</p> + +<p>"Do you remember the other bridge?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Her answer was to press, suddenly—fiercely—the hand she held up +against her breast. Even through the thickness of the ulster, he could +feel her heart beat. They crossed the bridge, but the hand-clasp did not +slacken when they reached the other side. Their pace quickened, but +neither of them was conscious of it.</p> + +<p>As for Rodney, he was not even conscious what street they were walking +on, nor how far they went. He had no destination consciously in mind or +any avowed plan or hope for what should happen when they reached it. Yet +he walked purposefully and, little by little, faster. He looked about +him in a sort of dazed bewilderment when she disengaged her hand and +stopped, at last, at the corner of the delicatessen shop, beside the +entrance to her little tunnel.</p> + +<p>"Here's where I live," she said.</p> + +<p>"Where you <i>live!</i>" he echoed blankly.</p> + +<p>"Ever since I went away—to California. I've been right here—where I +could almost see the smoke of your chimneys. I've a queer little room—I +only pay three dollars a week for it—but—it's big enough to be alone +in."</p> + +<p>"Rose ..." he said hoarsely.</p> + +<p>A drunken man came lurching pitiably down the street. She shrank into +the dark mouth of the passage and Rodney followed her, found her with +his hands, and heard her voice, speaking breathlessly, in gasps. He +hardly knew what she was saying.</p> + +<p>"It's been wonderful.... I know we haven't talked; we'll do that some +other time, somewhere where we can.... But to-night, walking along like +that, just as ... To-morrow, I shall think it was all a dream."</p> + +<p>"Rose ..."</p> + +<p>"Wh-what is it?" she prompted, at last.</p> + +<p>"Let me in," he said. "Don't turn me away to-night! I—I can't ..."</p> + +<p>The only sound that came in answer was a long tremulously indrawn +breath. But presently her hand took the one of his that had been +clutching her shoulder and led him toward the end of the passage, where +a faint light through a transom showed a door. She opened the door with +a latch-key, and then, behind her, he made his way up two flights of +narrow stairs, whose faint creak made all the sound there was. In the +black little corridor at the top she unlocked another door.</p> + +<p>"Wait till I light the gas," she breathed.</p> + +<p>There was nothing furtive about their silence; it was the wonder, the +magic of being together again, that made them steal forward like awed +children.</p> + +<p>Into an ugly, dingy, cramped, cold little room, with a rickety dresser +and a lumpy bed and a grimy window, rattling fiercely in the gusts of +wind that went whipping down the street.... Into a palace of +enchantment.</p> + +<p>She left the gas turned low, took off her hat and ulster, pulled down +the blind over the window and shut the door, hung up a garment that had +been left flung over her trunk and dumped a bundle of laundry that had +not been put away, into a bureau drawer. All the time he'd been watching +her hungrily, without a word.</p> + +<p>She turned and looked into his face, her eyes searching it as his were +searching hers, luminously and with a swiftly kindling fire. Her lips +parted a little, trembling. There was a sort of bloom on her skin that +became more visible as the blood, wave on wave, came flushing in behind +it. His vision of her swam suddenly away in a blur as his own eyes +filled up with tears.</p> + +<p>And then, with that little sob in her throat, she came to him. "Oh, +Roddy ... Roddy!" was all she said. With her own lithe arms she strained +his embrace the tighter.</p> + +<p>So far as the superstructures of their two lives were concerned,—the +part of them that floated above the level of consciousness, the whole +fabric of their thoughts and theories and ideals, that made them to +their friends and to each other, and very largely to themselves, Rose +and Rodney,—they were as far apart as on the day she had left his +house. There hadn't been, since then, a word between them of argument or +compromise. The great <i>impasse</i> was still unforced. He hadn't, as yet, +shown that he could give her the friendship she demanded. She'd had no +chance to tell him of any of the small triumphs and disciplines of her +new life that she hoped would win it from him.</p> + +<p>And as for Rodney, he was the same man who, an hour ago, in the theater, +had raged and writhed under what he felt to be an invasion of his +proprietary rights in her.</p> + +<p>He wouldn't have defined it that way, to be sure, in a talk with Barry +Lake. Would have denied, indeed, with the best of them, that a husband +had any proprietary rights in his wife. But the intolerable sense of +having become an object of derision, or contemptuous pity, of being +disgraced and of her being degraded, through the appearance on the stage +of a public theater, of a woman who was his wife; and through her +exhibition, for pay, of charms he had always supposed would be kept for +him, couldn't derive from anything else but just that. He'd waited there +in the alley, full of bitter thoughts that were ready to leap forth in +denunciations. He'd waited there, ready, he thought, to use actual +physical force on her, in the unthinkable event of its becoming +necessary, to drag her out of this pit where he had found her, back to +his side again.</p> + +<p>But somehow, when he had heard her speak his name, he'd begun to +tremble. And when he had felt her trembling, too, the bitter phrases had +died on his tongue and the thoughts that propelled them were smothered +like fire under sand. And as he'd stood confronting her in her mean +little room, his eyes searching her face, all he had been looking for +was a sign of the hunger—the ages-old hunger—that was devouring him. +And when he'd found it, that was enough for him. The great issue that +was to be fought out between them remained intact, but the hunger had to +be satisfied first.</p> + +<p>It was hours later, in the very dead of the night, as he sat on the edge +of the bed, with his back to her, that the old sense of outrage and +degradation, almost as suddenly as it had left him, came back. And came +back in a way that made it more intolerable than ever. For the clear +flame of it had lost its clarity; the confidence that had fanned it was +gone—the sense of his own rightness. The irresistible surge of passion +that had carried him off, had destroyed that. The flame smoked and +smoldered.</p> + +<p>"Have you anything here," he asked her dully, "besides what will go in +your trunk?"</p> + +<p>It was the surliness of his tone, rather than the words themselves, that +startled her.</p> + +<p>"No," she said puzzled. "Of course not."</p> + +<p>"Then let's throw them into it quickly," he said, "and we'll lock the +thing up. Do you owe any rent?"</p> + +<p>"Roddy!" she said. He heard her moving behind him. She struck a match +and lighted the gas. Then came around in front of him and stared at him +in frowning incredulity. "What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean we're going to get out of this abominable place now—to-night. +We're going home. We can leave an address for the trunk. If it never +comes, so much the better."</p> + +<p>Again all she could do was to ask him, with a bewildered stammer, what +he meant. "Because," she added, "I can't go home yet. I've—only +started."</p> + +<p>"Started!" he echoed. "Do you think I'm going to let this beastly farce +go any further?"</p> + +<p>And with that the smoldering fire licked up into flame again. He told +her what had happened in his office this afternoon; told her of the +attitude of his friends, how they'd all known about it—undoubtedly had +come to see for themselves, and, out of pity or contempt, hadn't told +him. He told her how he'd felt, sitting there in the theater; why he'd +waited at the stage door for her. He accused her, as with its +self-engendered heat his wrath burned brighter, of having selected the +thing to do that would hurt him worst, of having borne a grudge against +him and avenged it.</p> + +<p>It was the ignoblest moment of his life, and he knew it. The accusations +he was making against her were nothing to those that were storing up in +his mind against himself. The sense of rightness that would have made +him gentle, had been carried away by the passion he'd shared with her, +and he couldn't get it back.</p> + +<p>He didn't look at her as he talked, and she didn't interrupt; said no +word of denial or defense. The big outburst spent itself. He lapsed into +an uneasy silence, got himself together again, and went on trying to +restate his grievance—this time more reasonably, retracting a little. +But under her continued silence, he grew weakly irritated again.</p> + +<p>When at last she spoke, he turned his eyes toward her and saw a sort of +frozen look in her dull white face that he had never seen in it before. +Her intonation was monotonous, her voice scarcely audible.</p> + +<p>"I guess I understand," she said. "I don't know whether I wish I was +dead or not. If I'd died when the babies were born ... But I'm glad I +came away when I did. And I'm glad,"—she gave a faint shudder there at +the alternative—"I'm glad I've got a job and that I can pay back that +hundred dollars I owe you. I've had it quite a while. But I've kept it, +hoping you might find out where I was and come to me, as you did, and +that we might have a chance to talk. I thought I'd tell you how I'd +earned it, and that you'd be a little—proud with me about it, proud +that I could pay it back so soon."</p> + +<p>She smiled a little over that, a smile he had to turn away from. But +this tortured smile shriveled in the flame of passion with which she +went on. "If I couldn't pay it back to-night, after this, I'd feel like +killing myself, or like—going out and earning it in the streets. +Because that's what you've made me to-night!"</p> + +<p>He cried out her name at that, but she went on as if she hadn't heard; +only calm again—or so one might have thought from the sound of her +voice.</p> + +<p>"I went away, you see, because I couldn't bear to have the love part of +your life without a sort of friendly partnership in the rest of it. But +I didn't know then that you could love me while you hated me, while you +felt that I'd unspeakably degraded myself and disgraced you. So that +while you loved me and had me in your arms, you felt degraded for doing +it. I didn't know that till now.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I'll be glad some day that it all happened; that I met you +and loved you and had the babies, even though it's all had to end," she +shuddered again, "like this."</p> + +<p>It wasn't till he tried to speak that her apparent calm was broken. +Then, with a sudden frantic terror in her eyes, she begged him, not +to—begged him to go away, if he had any mercy for her at all, quickly +and without a word. In a sort of daze he obeyed her.</p> + +<p>The tardy winter morning, looking through her grimy window, found her +sitting there, huddled in a big bath-robe, just as she'd been when he +closed the door.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XII_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XII</h3> + +<h3>"I'M ALL ALONE"</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>The same grizzly dawn that looked in on Rose through the dim window of +her room on Clark Street, saw Rodney letting himself in his own front +door with a latch-key after hours of aimless tramping through deserted, +unrecognized streets. He was in a welter of emotions he could no more +have given names to than to the streets whose dreary lengths he had +plodded.</p> + +<p>The one thing that isolated itself from the rest, climbed up into his +mind and there kept goading him into a weak helpless fury, was a +jingling tune and a set of silly words that Rose and her sisters in the +sextette had sung the night before: "You're all alone, I'm all alone; +come on, let's be lonesome together." And then a line he couldn't +remember exactly, containing, for the sake of the rhyme, some total +irrelevancy about the weather, and a sickening bit of false rhyming to +end up with, about loving forever and ever. The jingle of that tune had +kept time to his steps, and the silly words had sung themselves over and +over endlessly in his brain until the mockery of it had become +absolutely excruciating. Except for that damnable tune, there was +nothing in his mind at all. Everything else was synthesized into a dull +ache, a hollow, gnawing, physical ache. But he'd endure that, he +thought, if he could get rid of the diabolical malice of that tune. +Perhaps if he stopped walking and just sat still it would go away.</p> + +<p>That's why he went home, let himself in with his latch-key and made his +way furtively to the library, where the embers of last night's fire were +still warm. He had an hour at least before the servants would be +stirring. He was terribly cold and pretty well exhausted, and the +comfort of his big chair and the glow of the fire carried him off +irresistibly into a doze—a doze that was troubled by fantastic dreams.</p> + +<p>With the first early morning stirrings in the house, the sounds of +opening doors here and there, the penetrating cry of one of the +babies—muffled, to be sure, and a long way off, but still audible—he +came broad awake again, but sat for a while staring about the room; at +the wonderful ornate perfection of the Italian marble chimney-piece that +framed the dying fire; at the tall carved chairs, the simple grandeur of +the three-hundred-year-old table and the subdued richness, in the half +light, of the tapestries that hung on the walls.</p> + +<p>It was Florence McCrea's masterpiece, this room. But this morning its +perfections mocked him with the ferocious irony of the contrast they +presented to that other room—that unspeakably horrible room where he +had left Rose. Details of its hideousness, that he hadn't been conscious +of observing during the hours he had spent in it, came back to him, +bitten out with acid clearness;—the varnished top of the bureau mottled +with water stains, the worn splintered floor, the horrible hard blue of +the iron bed, the florid pattern on the hand-painted slop-jar.</p> + +<p>And that abominable room was where Rose was now! She was sitting, +perhaps, just as he'd left her, with that look of frozen, dumb agony +still in her face, while he sat here ...</p> + +<p>He sprang up in a sort of frenzy. The parlor maid would be in here any +minute now, on her morning rounds, and would wish him a respectful good +morning, and ask him what he wanted for breakfast. And then, with +automatic perfection, would appear his coffee, his grapefruit, and the +rest of it—all exactly right, the result of a perfect precalculation of +his wishes. While Rose ...</p> + +<p>He put on his outdoor things and left the house, motivated now, for the +first time in many hours, with a clear purpose. He'd go back to that +room and get Rose out of it. He was incapable of planning how it should +be done, but somehow—anyhow, it should be; that was all he knew!</p> + +<p>But this purpose was frustrated the moment he reached Clark Street, by +the realization that he hadn't an idea within half a mile at least, +where the room was. Neither when he went into it with Rose, nor when he +left it, had he picked up any sort of landmark. There was a passage, he +remembered, leading back between two buildings, which projected to the +sidewalk. But there were a dozen of these in every block.</p> + +<p>A miserable little lunch-room caught his eye, displaying in its dingy +windows, pies, oranges, big shallow pans of pork and beans. This was the +sort of place Rose would have to come to, he reflected, for her +breakfast. And with that thought—hardly the conscious hope that she +would actually come to this place this morning—he turned in, sat down +at a cloth spotted with coffee and catsup stains, and ordered his +breakfast of a yawning waiter. He even forced himself, when it was +brought in, to eat it. If it was good enough for Rose, wasn't it good +enough for him?</p> + +<p>And all the while he kept his eye on the street door, in the +irrepressible, unacknowledged hope that the gods would be kind enough to +bring her there.</p> + +<p>But it was a mocking hope, he knew, and he didn't linger after he'd +finished. He walked down-town to his office. It was still pretty +early—not yet eight o'clock. Even his office boy wouldn't be down for +three-quarters of an hour. He was safe, he found himself saying, for so +long, anyway.</p> + +<p>He sat down at his desk and stared bewildered at the stack of letters +that lay there awaiting his signature. They were the very letters Miss +Beach had been typing when he had told her to telephone to the club and +get him a seat for <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>, by way of passing a pleasant +evening;—and had laughed at her when she protested. Oh, God!</p> + +<p>He felt like a sort of inverted Rip Van Winkle—like a man who had been +away twenty years—in hell twenty years!—and coming back found +everything exactly as he had left it. As if, in reality, his absence had +lasted only overnight.</p> + +<p>He pulled himself together and began to read the letters, but +interrupted himself before he'd gone far, to laugh aloud. The laugh +startled him a little. He hadn't expected to do more than smile. But +certainly it was worth a laugh, the solemn importance with which he'd +dictated those letters; the notion that it mattered what he said, how he +advised his clients in their bloodless, parchment-like affairs; that +anything in all the files behind the black door of that vault +represented more than the empty victories and defeats of a childish +game. The dead smug orderliness of the place, with the infallible Miss +Beach as its presiding genius, infuriated him. Clearly he couldn't stay +here till he was better in hand than this.</p> + +<p>He signed his letters without reading them, and scribbled a note to +Craig that he'd been called out of town for a day or two on a matter of +urgent personal business. He hadn't thought of actually going out of +town until the note was written. But once he saw the statement in black +and white, the notion of making it true, invited him. He'd run off to +some small city where no curious eyes, animated by the knowledge that he +was Rodney Aldrich whose wife had left him to become a chorus-girl, +could steal glances at him. Where he needn't speak to any one from +morning till night. Where he could really get himself together and +think.</p> + +<p>He added in a postscript to the note to Craig, instructions to call up +his house and tell them he was out of town.</p> + +<p>The thought cropped up in one of the more automatic sections of his +brain, that for traveling he ought to have a bag, night things, fresh +underclothes, and so on, and the routine method of supplying that need +suggested itself to him; namely, to telephone to the house, have one of +the maids pack his bag for him and send it down-town in the car. But +just as he had rejected the notion of breakfasting at home, and had gone +out to that miserable Clark Street lunch-room instead, so he rejected +this. All the small civilized refinements of his way of life went +utterly against his grain. They'd continue to be intolerable to him, he +thought, as long as he had to go on envisaging Rose in that ghastly +environment of hers.</p> + +<p>He left his office and turned into one of the big department stores that +backs up on Dearborn Street, where he bought himself a cheap bag and +furnished it with a few necessaries. Then, leaving the store, simply +kept on going to the first railway station that lay in his way. He chose +a destination quite at random. The train announcer, with a megaphone, +was calling off a list of towns which a train, on the point of +departure, would stop at. Rodney picked one that he had never visited, +bought a ticket, walked down the platform past the Pullmans, and found +himself a seat in a coach.</p> + +<p>He found a measure of relief in all this. It gave him the illusion, at +least, of doing something. Or, more accurately, of getting ready to do +something, while it liberated him from the immediate necessity of doing +it. He'd go to a hotel in that town whose name was printed on his +ticket, and hire a room; lock himself up in it, and then begin to think. +Once he could get the engine of his mind to going, he'd be all right. +There must be some right thing to do. Or if not that, at least something +that was better to do than anything else. And when his mind should have +discovered what that thing was, he'd have, he felt, resolution enough to +go on and do it. Until he should find it, he was like a man +shamed—naked, unable to encounter the most casual glance of any of the +persons in his world who knew his shame. Once he was safe in that hotel +room, the process of thinking could begin. He wouldn't have to hurry +about it. He could take all the time he liked.</p> + +<p>For the present, he was getting a queer sort of comfort out of what +would ordinarily be labeled the discomforts of his surroundings: the +fierce dry heat of the car, the smells—that of oranges was perhaps the +strongest of these—the raucous persistence of the train butcher hawking +his wares; and, most of all, in the very density of the crowd.</p> + +<p>This is one of the comforts that many a member of the favored, +chauffeur-driven, servant-attended class lives his life in ignorance of, +the nervous relief that comes from ceasing, for a while, to be an +isolated, sharply bounded, perfectly visible entity, and subsiding, +indistinguishably, into a mere mass of humanity; in being nobody for a +while. It was a want which, in the old days before his marriage, Rodney +had often, unconsciously, felt and gratified. He had enjoyed being +herded about, riding in crowded street-cars, working his way through the +press in the down-town streets during the noon hour.</p> + +<p>He was no more conscious of it now, but it was distinctly pleasant to +him to be identified for the conductor merely by a bit of blue +pasteboard with punch marks in it, stuck in his hat-band.</p> + +<p>The pleasant torpor didn't last long, because presently, the rhythmic +thud of the wheels began singing to him the same damned tune that had +dogged his footsteps earlier that morning: "I'm all alone, you're all +alone; come on, let's be lonesome together."</p> + +<p>This was intolerable! To break it up, he bought a magazine from the +train-boy and tried to read. But the story he lighted on concerned +itself with a ravishingly beautiful young woman and an incredibly +meritorious young man, and worked itself out, cleverly enough to be +sure—which made it worse—upon the assumption that all that was needed +for their supreme and permanent happiness was to get into each other's +arms, which eventually they did.</p> + +<p>Rose had been in his arms last night!</p> + +<p>So the scorching treadmill round began again. But at last sheer physical +exhaustion intervened and he fell heavily asleep. He didn't waken until +the conductor took up his bit of pasteboard again, shook him by the +shoulder, and told him that he'd be at his destination in five minutes.</p> + +<p>Presently, in the hotel, he locked his door, opened the window and sat +down to think.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XIII_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XIII</h3> + +<h3>FREDERICA'S PARADOX</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Two days later, at half past eight in the morning, he walked in on +Frederica at breakfast with her two eldest children. He had been able to +count on this because the Whitneys had a certain pride in preserving +some of the customs of the generation before them; at least Martin had, +and Frederica's good-natured, rueful acquiescence gave her at once +something to laugh at him a little about and a handy leverage for the +extraction of miscellaneous concessions. It wasn't exactly a misdemeanor +to be late to breakfast—it began promptly at eight o'clock—but it was +distinctly meritorious not to be. Martin never was and he always left +the house for his office at exactly eight-twenty. His chauffeur was +trained to take just ten minutes trundling the big car down-town, and +eight-thirty found him at his desk as invariably as it had found his +father before him. It was all perfectly ritualistic, of course. There +wasn't the slightest need for any of it.</p> + +<p>A knowledge of the ritual, though, stood Rodney in good stead this +morning. He liked Martin well enough—had really a traditional and +vicarious affection for him. But he was about the last man he wanted to +see to-day.</p> + +<p>The children were a boy of ten, Martin, junior, and a girl, Ellen, of +eight. There was a three-year-old baby, too, but his nurse looked after +him. They had finished breakfast, but Frederica had a way of keeping +them at the table for a little while every morning, chatting with +her—oh, about anything they pleased. If it was a design for their +improvement, they didn't suspect it. The talk broke off short when the +three of them, almost simultaneously, looked up and saw Rodney in the +doorway.</p> + +<p>"Hello!" Frederica said, holding out a hand to him, but not rising. +"Just in time for breakfast."</p> + +<p>"Don't ring," he said quickly. "I've had all I want. My train got in an +hour ago and I had a try at the station restaurant."</p> + +<p>"Well, sit down anyway," said Frederica.</p> + +<p>"Take this chair, Uncle Rod," said the boy in a voice of brusk +indifference. "Excuse me, mother?" He barely waited for her nod and +blundered out of the room.</p> + +<p>The girl came round to Rodney's chair to offer him her hand and drop her +curtsy; took a carnation from a bowl on the table and tucked it into his +button-hole, slid her arm around his neck and kissed his cheek.</p> + +<p>Both the children, Frederica was aware, had remarked something troubled +and serious about their uncle's manner and each had acted on this +observation in his own way. The boy, distressed and only afraid of +showing it, had bolted from the room with a panicky assumption of +indifference. The girl, though two years younger, was quite at ease in +expressing her sympathy, and conscious of how decoratively she did it. +(This was Frederica's analysis, anyhow. As is the wont of mothers, she +liked the boy better.)</p> + +<p>"I think Miss Norris is waiting for you, my dear."</p> + +<p>"<i>Oui, maman</i>," said Ellen dutifully.</p> + +<p>She was supposed to talk French all the morning, but somehow this +particular observance of the régime irritated her mother a little and +she rather visibly waited while Ellen quite adequately made her +farewells to her uncle and gracefully left the room.</p> + +<p>The tenseness of her attitude relaxed suddenly when the child was gone. +She reached out a cool soft hand and laid it on one of Rodney's that +rested limply on the table. There was rather a long silence—ten seconds +perhaps. Then:</p> + +<p>"How did you find out about it?" Rodney asked.</p> + +<p>They were both too well accustomed to these telepathic short-cuts to +take any note of this one. She'd seen that he knew, just with her first +glance at him there in the doorway; and something a little tenderer and +gentler than most of her caresses about this one, told him that she did. +What it was they knew, went of course without saying.</p> + +<p>"Harriet's back," she said. "She got in day before yesterday. Constance +said something to her about it, thinking she knew. They've thought all +along that you and I knew, too. Harriet was quick enough and clever +enough to pretend she did and yet find out about it, all at the same +time. So that's so much to the good. That's better than having them find +out we didn't know. Of course Harriet came straight to me. I'm glad it +was Harriet Constance spoke to about it and not me. I'd probably have +given it away. But Harriet never batted an eye."</p> + +<p>"No," said Rodney, "Harriet wouldn't."</p> + +<p>It was a certain dryness in his intonation rather than the words +themselves Frederica answered.</p> + +<p>"She'd do anything in the world for you, Roddy," she said, with a +vaguely troubled intensity.</p> + +<p>This time his mind didn't follow hers. For an instant he misunderstood +her pronoun, then he saw what she meant.</p> + +<p>"Harriet?—Oh, yes, Harriet's all right," he said absently.</p> + +<p>She left his preoccupation alone for a minute or two, but at last broke +in on it with a question. "How did you find out about it, Roddy? Who +told you?"</p> + +<p>"No one," he said in a voice unnaturally level and dry. "I went to see +the show on the recommendation of a country client, and there she was on +the stage."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" cried Frederica—a muffled, barely audible cry of passionate +sympathy. Then:</p> + +<p>"Roddy," she demanded, "are you sure it's true? Are you absolutely sure +that it's really Rose? Or if it is, that she's in her right mind—that +she hasn't just wandered off as people do sometimes without knowing who +they are?"</p> + +<p>"There's nothing in that notion," he said. "It's Rose all right, and she +knows what she's doing."</p> + +<p>"You mean you've seen her off the stage—talked with her?"</p> + +<p>He nodded.</p> + +<p>She pulled in a long sigh of anticipatory relief.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," she demanded, "what did she say? How did she explain how +she <i>could</i> have done such a thing as that?"</p> + +<p>"I didn't ask her to explain," said Rodney. "I asked her to come home, +and she wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's wicked!" she cried. "It's the most abominably selfish thing I +ever heard of!"</p> + +<p>He made a gesture of protest, but it didn't stop her.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I suppose," she flashed, "she didn't <i>mean</i> any harm—wasn't just +trying to do the cruelest thing she could to you. But it would be a +little less infuriating if she had."</p> + +<p>"Pull up, Freddy!" he said. Rather gently though, for him. "There's no +good going on like that. And besides ... You were saying Harriet would +do anything in the world for me. Well, there's something <i>you</i> can do. +You're the only person I know who can."</p> + +<p>Her answer was to come around behind his chair, put her cheek down +beside his, and reach for his hands.</p> + +<p>"Let's get away from this miserable breakfast table," she said. "Come up +to where I live, where we can be safely by ourselves; then tell me about +it."</p> + +<p>In front of her boudoir fire, looking down on her as she sat in her +flowered wing chair, an enormously distended rug-covered pillow beside +her knees waiting for him to drop down on when he felt like it, he began +rather cautiously to tell her what he wanted.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you the reason why I've come to you," he began, "and then +you'll see. Do you remember nearly two years ago, the night I got wet +coming down here to dinner—the night you were going to marry me off to +Hermione Woodruff? We had a long talk afterward, and you said, speaking +of the chances people took getting married, that it wasn't me you +worried about, but the girl, whoever she might be, who married me."</p> + +<p>The little gesture she made admitted the recollection, but denied its +relevancy. She'd have said something to that effect, but he prevented +her.</p> + +<p>"No," he insisted, "it wasn't just talk. There was something to it. +Afterward, when we were engaged, two or three times, you gave me tips +about things. And since we've been married ... Well, somehow, I've had +the feeling that you were on her side; that you saw things her +way—things that I didn't see."</p> + +<p>"Little things," she protested; "little tiny things that couldn't +possibly matter—things that any woman would be on another +woman's—side, as you say, about."</p> + +<p>But she contradicted this statement at once. "Oh, I <i>did</i> love her!" she +said fiercely. "Not just because she loved you, but because I thought +she was altogether adorable. I couldn't help it. And of course that's +what makes me so perfectly furious now—that she should have done a +thing like this to you."</p> + +<p>"All right," he said. "Never mind about that. This is what I want you to +do. I want you to go to see her, and I want you to ask her, in the first +place, to try to forgive me."</p> + +<p>"What for?" Frederica demanded.</p> + +<p>"I want you to tell her," he went on, "that it's impossible that she +should be more horrified at the thing I did than I am myself. I want you +to ask her, whatever she thinks my deserts are, to do just one thing for +me, and that is to let me take her out of that perfectly hideous place. +I don't ask anything else but that. She can make any terms she likes. +She can live where or how she likes. Only—not like that. Maybe it's a +deserved punishment, but I can't stand it!"</p> + +<p>There was the crystallization of what little thinking he had managed to +do in the two purgatorial days he'd spent in that down-state hotel—in +the intervals of fighting off the torturing jingle of that tune, and the +memory of the dull frozen agony he'd seen in Rose's face as he left her. +No great result, truly. The mountain had labored and brought forth a +mouse.</p> + +<p>But reflect for a moment what Rodney's life had been; how gently, for +all his buoyant theories about the acceptance of discipline, the world, +in its material aspect at any rate, had dealt with him. How completely +that boyish arrogance of his had been allowed to grow unbruised by +circumstance. He'd always been rich, in the sense that his means had +always been sufficient to his wants. He'd never in his life had an +experience that even resembled Portia's with that old unpaid grocery +bill. He'd enjoyed wearing shabby clothes, but he'd never worn them +because he could afford no better. He'd always been democratic in the +narrower social sense, but he'd never realized how easy that sort of +democracy is and how little it means to a man never associated with +persons who assert a social superiority over him. He'd always made a +point of despising luxuries, to be sure. But it hadn't been brought to +his attention at how high a level he drew the line between luxuries and +mere decent necessities.</p> + +<p>He wasn't then, near so much of a Spartan as he thought. His long +association with the Lakes and their friends might, you'd think, have +brought him the consolatory reflection that a woman who earned even a +successful chorus-girl's wages, needn't be pitied too lamentably on the +score of poverty; that Rose could, no doubt, have afforded a better room +than that, if she'd wanted to. And that even a three-dollar room, a +whole room that you hadn't to share with anybody, would—if the rent of +it left you money enough to send out your clothes to the laundry and to +buy adequate meals in restaurants—represent luxury—well, to more +people than one likes to think about.</p> + +<p>Rodney knew that well enough, of course. He'd read the Sage Foundation +reports on housing; he was familiar with the results of the Pittsburgh +Survey. But the person in question now, wasn't the Working Girl. It was +his Rose!</p> + +<p>Out of all the chaos of thought and feeling that had been boiling within +him since the night he had gone with Rose to her room, there emerged, +then, two outstanding ideas. One was that he had outraged her; the other +that she simply couldn't be allowed to go on living as he had found her.</p> + +<p>Frederica, naturally, was mystified. "That's absurd, of course, Roddy," +she said gently. "You haven't done anything to Rose to be forgiven for."</p> + +<p>"You'll just have to take my word for it," he said shortly. "I'm not +exaggerating."</p> + +<p>"But, Roddy!" she persisted. "You must be sensible. Oh, it's no wonder! +You're all worn out. You look as if you hadn't slept for nights. I wish +you'd sit down and be a little bit comfortable. But I <i>know</i> you're +wrong about that!</p> + +<p>"I went out to California with the idea that you might have been—well, +awfully stupid about something and hurt Rose dreadfully without knowing +it. I was perfectly ready to be—on her side, as you say. I thought we'd +have a good talk and I'd find out what it was all about, and then come +home and pack you out there yourself.</p> + +<p>"Well, of course I didn't see Rose, and Portia wasn't very +communicative. She'd always been a little stiff with me. I never managed +to get her altogether. But she was clear enough about it at any rate, +that Rose was more in love with you than ever and she didn't blame you +for a thing. The thing that she seemed most anxious about was that her +mother shouldn't blame you. Of course that took the wind out of my sails +and I had to come back. So it's absurd for you to be talking as if she +had a real reason for—detesting you."</p> + +<p>"She hadn't, then," said Rodney, and he walked uneasily away to the +window.</p> + +<p>"Well, if you mean the other night, the only time you've seen her since, +then it's all the more ridiculous. What if you were angry and lost your +temper and hurt her feelings? Heavens! Weren't you entitled to, after +what she'd done? And when she'd left you to find it out like that?"</p> + +<p>"I tell you you don't know the first thing about it."</p> + +<p>"I don't suppose you—beat her, did you?" It was too infuriating, having +him meek like this!</p> + +<p>His reply was barely audible. "I might better have done it."</p> + +<p>Frederica sprang to her feet. "Well, then, I'll tell you!" she said. "I +won't go to her. I'll go if you'll give me a free hand. If you'll let me +tell her what I think of what she's done and the way she's done it—not +letting you know—not giving you a chance. But go and beg her to forgive +<i>you</i>, I won't.</p> + +<p>"All right," he said dully. "You're within your rights, of course."</p> + +<p>The miserable scene dragged on a little longer. Frederica cried and +pleaded and stormed, without moving him at all. He seemed distressed at +her grief, urged her to treat his request as if he hadn't made it; but +he explained nothing, answered none of her questions.</p> + +<p>It was an enormous relief to her, and, she fancied, to him, for that +matter, when, after a premonitory knock at the door, Harriet walked in +on them.</p> + +<p>The situation didn't need much explaining, but Frederica summed it up +while the others exchanged their coolly friendly greetings, with the +statement:</p> + +<p>"Rod's been trying to get me to go to Rose and say that it was all his +fault, and I won't."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" said Harriet. "What earthly thing does it matter whose fault +it is? He can have it his fault if he likes."</p> + +<p>"You know it isn't," Frederica muttered rebelliously.</p> + +<p>Harriet seated herself delicately and deliberately in one of the curving +ends of a little Victorian sofa, and stretched her slim legs out in +front of her.</p> + +<p>"Certainly I don't care whose fault it is," she said. "You never get +anywhere by trying to decide a question like that. What I'm interested +in is what can be done about it. It's not a very nice situation. Nobody +likes it—at least I should <i>think</i> Rose would be pretty sick of it by +now. She may have been crazy for a stage career, but she's probably seen +that the chorus of a third-rate musical comedy won't take her anywhere.</p> + +<p>"The thing's simply a mess, and the only thing to do, is to clear it up +as quickly and as decently as we can—and it can be cleared up, if we go +at it right. Only, for the love of Heaven, Freddy, before you let Rod go +out of the house, give him a dose of veronal and pack him off to a quiet +room up-stairs to sleep around the clock! The way he looks now, he's a +proclamation of calamity across the street!"</p> + +<p>She wasn't at all disturbed by the outburst this provoked from Rodney. +Indeed, Frederica, from a glimpse she got of her face as she sat +listening to his blistering denunciation of this apparently +whole-hearted concern for appearances, and his passionate denial that +they meant anything at all to him, suspected that her sister's words +had been calculated to produce just this result. When it had subsided, +Harriet's first words proved it.</p> + +<a name="Illus_8"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_8.png"><img src="images/Illus_8.png" + alt=""What earthly thing does it matter whose fault it is?"" + width="50%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>"What earthly thing does it matter whose fault it is?"</h4> +<br> + + +<p>"All right," she observed. "I knew you'd want to say that. Now, it's off +your mind. Appearances do matter to Freddy and me, and of course they +matter to you too, though you don't like to think so. They matter to all +our kind of people. We're supposed to have been trained to take our +medicine without making faces. If we've got cuts and sores and bruises, +we cover them. We don't parade them as a bid for sympathy. We leave +howling about rights and wrongs and soul-mates and affinities and +'ideals,' to the shabby sort of people who like to do that shabby sort +of thing. According to our traditions, the decent thing to do is to shut +up and keep your face and make it possible for other people to keep +theirs. You're as strong for that as I am, really, Rod, and that's why I +want you to back me up in the line I took with Constance. Pretend you've +known all about what Rose was doing, and that you aren't ashamed of it. +It would have been easier, of course, if she'd played fair with us at +the start ..."</p> + +<p>"She did play fair," he interrupted. "She offered to tell me what she +was going to do. I wouldn't let her."</p> + +<p>Harriet's only commentary on this was a faint shrug.</p> + +<p>"Anyhow," she went on, "the point is that once we begin pretending, +everybody else will have to pretend to believe us. Of course the thing +to do is to get her out of that horrible place as soon as we can. And I +suppose the best way of doing it, will be to get her into something +else—take her down to New York and work her into a small part in some +good company. Almost anything, if it came to that, as long as it wasn't +music. Oh, and have her use her own name, and let us make as much of it +as we can. Face it out. Pretend we like it. I don't say it's ideal, but +it's better than this."</p> + +<p>"Her own name!" he echoed blankly. "Do you mean she made one up?"</p> + +<p>Harriet nodded. "Constance mentioned it," she said, "but that was before +I knew what she was talking about. And of course I couldn't go back and +ask. Daphne something, I think. It sounded exactly like a chorus name, +anyhow." And then: "Well, how about it? Will you play the game?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," he said with a docility that surprised Frederica. "I'll play +it. It comes to exactly the same thing, what we both want done, and our +reasons for doing it are important to nobody but ourselves."</p> + +<p>She turned to Frederica.</p> + +<p>"You too, Freddy?" she asked. "Will you give your moral principles a +vacation and take Rod's message to Rose, even though you may think it's +Quixotic nonsense?"</p> + +<p>"I'll see Rose myself," said Rodney quietly.</p> + +<p>It struck Frederica that if not his natural self, he had gone a long way +at least, to recovering his natural manner. Telling Martin all about it +that night, as she always told him about everything (because Martin was +Frederica's discovery and her secret. No one else suspected, not even +Martin himself, how intelligent and understanding he was, nor how +luminous his simple remarks about complex situations could sometimes +be), she adverted to a paradox which had often puzzled her in the past. +Rodney was twice as fond of her as he was of Harriet, just as she was +twice as fond of him as Harriet was. And yet, again and again, where her +own love and sympathy had failed dismally to effect anything, Harriet's +dry astringent cynicism would come along and produce highly desirable +results.</p> + +<p>"It seems as if it oughtn't to work out that way," she concluded. "You'd +think that loving a person and feeling his troubles the way he feels +them himself, ought to enable you to help him rather than just irritate. +However, as long as it doesn't work that way with you ..."</p> + +<p>He reached out, took her by the chin, tilted her face back and kissed +her expertly on the mouth. A rather horrifyingly familiar thing to do, +one might think, to the Venus of Milo, or Frederica, or any one as +simply and grandly beautiful as that. But she seemed to like it.</p> + +<p>"No chance for the experiment," said Martin. "I shall never have any +troubles while you're around."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XIV_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XIV</h3> + +<h3>THE MIRY WAY</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Rodney's docility didn't go to the length of the dose of veronal Harriet +had recommended, but it did assent to a program that occupied the +greater part of the day, including a Turkish bath, a good sleep, fresh +clothes and the first decently cooked meal he had had since he'd dined +at the club three days ago. When he turned into his office, about five +o'clock, he was his own man again, perfectly capable of a greeting to +Craig and Miss Beach which consigned the last scene between them here in +the office to oblivion.</p> + +<p>His fortitude was put to the test, too, during the first five minutes. +In the stack of correspondence on his desk, to which Miss Beach directed +his attention, was an unopened envelope addressed to him in Rose's +handwriting. He couldn't restrain, of course, a momentary wild hope that +she had written to tell him he was forgiven, or at least to offer him +the chance of asking her forgiveness. But he paused to steel himself +against this hope before looking to see what the thing contained.</p> + +<p>It was well he did so, because there was nothing in it but a postal +money-order for a hundred dollars; not an explanatory line of any sort. +Of course the message it carried didn't need writing. It smarted like a +slap across the face. Yet, down underneath the smart, he felt something +that glowed more deeply, a feeling he couldn't have named or recognized, +of pride in her courage.</p> + +<p>He was badly in need of something to be proud of, too, for the next two +days were full of humiliations. When he told Harriet and Frederica that +he would see Rose himself, he hadn't any program for carrying out this +intention. He didn't want to wait for her again at the stage door. +There mustn't be anything about their next talk together to remind her +of their last one, and it would be better if she could be assured in +advance that she had nothing to fear from him. So the first thing to do +was to write her a letter that would show her how he felt and how little +he meant to ask. But before he could write the letter, he must learn her +name.</p> + +<p>He thought of Jimmy Wallace as a person who'd be able to help him out, +here, but in the circumstances Jimmy was the last person he wanted to go +to. There was no telling how much Jimmy might know about the situation +already. The intolerable thought occurred to him that Rose might even +have talked with Jimmy about going on the stage before she left his +house. No, the person to see was the manager of the theater. He'd +describe Rose to him and ask him who she was.</p> + +<p>His attempt to carry out this part of his plan was disastrously +unsuccessful. Theatrical managers no doubt cherish an ideal of courteous +behavior. But, since ninety-nine out of a hundred of the strangers who +ask for them at the box-office window, are actuated by a desire to get +into their theaters without paying for their seats, they develop, +protectively, a manner of undisguised suspicion toward all people who +don't know them, and toward about three-quarters of those who pretend +they do. It wasn't a manner Rodney was accustomed to, and it irritated +him. Then, until he had got his request half stated, it didn't occur to +him in what light the manager would be amply justified in regarding it. +That notion, which he interpreted from a look in the manager's face, +confused and angered him, and he stumbled and stammered, which angered +him still more.</p> + +<p>"We don't do that sort of thing in this theater," the manager said +loudly (the conversation had taken place in the lobby of the theater, +too) and turned away.</p> + +<p>The grotesque improbability of the true explanation that the woman whose +name he was inquiring about was his wife, silenced him and turned him +away. It was fortunate for Rodney it did so. The thing would have made a +wonderful story for the press agent, if he hadn't stopped just where he +did.</p> + +<p>He spent the rest of that evening, and a good part of the next day, +trying to think of some alternative to waiting again at the stage door. +But, except for the still inadmissible one of going to Jimmy Wallace, he +couldn't think of one. So, at a quarter past seven that night, he +stationed himself once more in the miserable alley, to wait for Rose. +Seeing her before the show would, he thought, be an improvement on +waiting till after it. The mere fact that they wouldn't have very long +to talk, ought to reassure her that he didn't mean to take any +advantages. He could show her how contrite he was, how little he meant +to ask, and then leave it to her to select a place, at her own leisure +and convenience, to talk over the terms of their treaty.</p> + +<p>He waited from a quarter after seven to half past eight, but Rose didn't +come. The thought that perhaps he hadn't taken his station early enough +sent him back to another vigil at half past ten. At a quarter to twelve, +his patience exhausted, he opened the stage door and told the doorman he +was waiting for one of the girls in the sextette. The doorman informed +him they had all gone home.</p> + +<p>There was, unfortunately, no matinée the next day, and it was only by +the exercise of all the will power he had, that he stayed in his office +and did his work and waited for the hour of the evening performance. +Then he went to the theater and bought a ticket. When the sextette made +its first appearance on the stage, he saw that another girl than Rose +was taking her part. He went out into the lobby, and once more sought +the manager. But this time with a different air.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you an office somewhere where we can talk?" he demanded. "This +is important."</p> + +<p>Evidently the manager saw it was, because he conducted him to a small +room with a desk in it, half-way up the balcony stairs, and nodded him +to a chair.</p> + +<p>"There was a young woman in your company," Rodney said, "in the +sextette. She isn't playing to-night. I want to know what her stage name +is, and where she can be found. I assure you that it's of the first +importance to her that I should find her."</p> + +<p>The manager's manner was different, too. He looked perplexed and rather +unhappy. But he didn't tell Rodney what he wanted to know.</p> + +<p>"She's left the company," he said, "permanently. That's all I can tell +you."</p> + +<p>"Is she ill?" Rodney demanded.</p> + +<p>The manager said not that he knew of, but this was all that was to be +got out of him.</p> + +<p>The thing that finally silenced Rodney and sent him away, was the +reflection that the man might be withholding information about her, on +Rose's own request.</p> + +<p>He went away, sore, angry, discouraged. Jimmy Wallace seemed about the +only hope there was. But he'd be damned if he'd go to Jimmy. Not yet, +anyway. And then he thought of Portia!</p> + +<p>She'd tell him. She'd have to tell him. Why hadn't he thought of her +before? He'd write to her the message to Rose he'd tried to get +Frederica to carry. No, he wouldn't do that! He'd go to her. And there +was a chance ... Why, there was the best kind of chance! Why hadn't he +thought of it before? Why had he been such an idiot as to waste all +these days!</p> + +<p>It seemed almost certain he'd find Rose there with her. She'd felt—she +couldn't have helped feeling after the things he'd said to her that +ghastly night in the little North Clark Street room—that she couldn't +go on. And stripped of her job like that, with nothing else to turn to, +where should she go but home to her mother and sister? To the only +friends and comforters she had in the world.</p> + +<p>He'd send no word in advance of his coming. He'd just come up to the +door of the little bungalow and ring the bell. And there was a chance +that the person who'd come to answer it would be Rose herself.</p> + +<p>The idea came to him all in a flash as he walked away from the theater, +and his impulse from it was to jump into a taxicab and catch a +ten-thirty train to the coast, that he had just time for. He denied the +impulse as part of the discipline he'd been imposing on himself since +his talk with Harriet, and went home instead. From now on he was going +to act like a reasonable man, not like a distracted one.</p> + +<p>He had his bag packed and his tickets bought the next morning, went to +the office and put things in train to accommodate a week's absence, +wrote a note to Frederica telling her of his discovery that Rose had +left the company of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>, and of his hope of finding her +in California with her mother and Portia; and when he settled himself in +his compartment for the three-day ride he even had two or three books in +his bag to pass the time with, as if it had been an ordinary journey. He +didn't make much of them, it's true, but his honest attempt to, gave him +the glimmering dawn of a discovery.</p> + +<p>The cardinal principle of his life, if such a thing could be stated in a +phrase, was self-expression through self-discipline. Well, his discovery +was (it didn't come to much more than a surmise, it is true, but it was +a beginning) that in his relations to Rose he'd never disciplined +himself at all. The network of his instincts, passions, desires, that +had involved her, had been allowed to grow unchecked, unscrutinized. He +didn't begin to scrutinize them now. He was in no mind for the task. How +could he undertake it until the fearful hope that he was actually on the +way to her now should have been answered one way or the other!</p> + +<p>It proved a vain hope. The person who answered his ring at the door of +the little bungalow, on that wonderful sun-bathed, rose-scented morning +(false auguries that mocked his disappointment and made it almost +intolerable) was Portia.</p> + +<p>She flushed at sight of him, then almost as quickly went pale. She +stepped outside the door and closed it behind her before she spoke.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I mustn't let mother know you're here," she said. "She's not +been well these last days and she mustn't be excited. I don't want to +let her suspect that things have changed or in any way gone wrong with +Rose. I told her I was going out for a walk. Will you come with me?"</p> + +<p>He nodded and did not even speak until they'd got safely away from the +house. Then:</p> + +<p>"I came out here," he said, "almost sure that I should find her. Isn't +she here?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Portia. Then she added with a sort of gasp, as if she'd tried +to check her words in their very utterance, "Don't you know her better +than that?"</p> + +<p>"Do you know where she is?"</p> + +<p>This question she didn't answer at all. They walked on a dozen paces in +silence.</p> + +<p>"Portia," he demanded, "is she ill? You'll have to tell me that."</p> + +<p>Even this question she didn't answer immediately. "No," she said at +last. "She's not ill. I'll take the responsibility of telling you that."</p> + +<p>"You mean that's all you will tell me?" he persisted. "Why? On her +instructions?"</p> + +<p>"I think we'll have to sit down somewhere," said Portia. "Beside the +road over there where it's shady."</p> + +<p>"I got a letter from Rose yesterday," she said, after they'd been seated +for a while. "She asked me in it not to go on writing you the +little—bulletins that I'd been sending every week; not to tell you +anything at all. So you see I've gone rather beyond her instructions in +saying even as much as I have."</p> + +<p>"And you," he asked quickly; "you mean to comply with a request like +that?"</p> + +<p>"I must," said Portia. "I can't do anything else."</p> + +<p>He made no comment in words, but she interpreted his uncontrollable +gesture of angry protest, and answered it.</p> + +<p>"It's not a question of conscientious scruples; keeping my word, not +betraying a confidence; anything like that. A year ago if she'd made +such a request I'd have paid no attention to it. I'd have taken the +responsibility of acting against her wishes, for her own good, if I +happened to see it that way, without any hesitation at all. But Rose has +shown herself so much bigger and stronger a person than I, and she's +done a thing that would have been so splendidly beyond my courage to do +that there's no question of my interfering. She's entitled to make her +own decisions. So," she went on with a little difficulty, "I shan't +betray her confidence nor disregard her instructions. But there's one +thing I can do, one thing I can tell you, because it's my confidence, +not hers."</p> + +<p>The very obvious fact that her confidences were not of great moment to +him, the way he sat there beside her in a glum abstraction through the +rather long silence that followed her preface, made it easier for her to +go on.</p> + +<p>"You see," she said at last, "I'd always regarded Rose as a spoiled +child. I'd loved her a lot, of course; but I'd despised her a little. At +least I'd tried to, because I was jealous of her; of the big simple easy +way she had—of making people love her. All the hard things came to me, +I felt, and all the easy ones to her. And on the day I came to tell her +about mother, and how we had to move out here—well, I was feeling +sorrier for myself than usual. If you'll remember when that was and what +her condition was (I didn't know about it then and neither did she) +you'll understand my having found her terribly blue and unhappy. She +talked discontentedly about her—failure with you and how she seemed to +be nothing to you except ... Well, she said she envied me. And that, as +I was feeling just then, was too much for me. I lashed out at her; told +her a lot of things she'd never known—about how we'd lived, and so on; +things I'd done for her. I said she'd got my life to live as well as her +own, and that if she failed with it I'd never forgive her. She made me a +promise that she wouldn't, no matter how hard she had to fight for it."</p> + +<p>"She spoke to me once of a promise," Rodney said dully, "but of course I +didn't know what she meant."</p> + +<p>Portia got to her feet. "I can't leave mother for very long," she said, +"and I've some little errands at the shops before I can go back. So ..."</p> + +<p>"I see," he said. "I mustn't detain you any longer. I don't know, +anyhow, that there's anything more to say."</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry I can't—help you. You're entitled to—hate me, I think. +Because it all goes back to that. I've been glad of a chance to tell +you. And that makes me all the sorrier that I can't in any way make it +up to you. But you see—don't you—how it is?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "I see. I suppose, if it came to hating, that you're +entitled to hate me. But there'll be no great satisfaction in that, I +guess, for either of us." He held out his hand to her and with a painful +sort of shy stiffness, she grasped it. "If Rose changes her +instructions, or if you change your mind as to your duty under them, +you'll let me know?"</p> + +<p>She nodded. "Good-by," she said.</p> + +<p>Rodney walked back to the railway station where he had checked his bag. +In two hours he was on a train bound back to Chicago.</p> + +<p>Various things occurred to him during the journey eastward that he might +have said to Portia. He hadn't asked, for instance, whether Rose's +embargo on news of herself to him had been made effective also in the +other direction. Had she cut herself off from Portia's bulletins about +himself and the babies? Could Portia have transmitted a message from him +to Rose—the one Frederica had declined to take? But he felt in a way +rather glad that he hadn't asked any more questions, nor offered any +messages. He wasn't looking now for an intermediary between Rose and +himself. He wanted Rose, and he meant to find her. His whole mind, by +now, had crystallized into that hard-faceted, sharp-edged determination. +The sore masculine vanity that had kept him from appealing to the man +most likely to be able to help him was almost incredible now.</p> + +<p>From the railway station in Chicago, the moment he got in, he telephoned +Jimmy Wallace at his newspaper office. It was then about half past four +in the afternoon. Jimmy couldn't leave for another hour, it seemed. It +was his afternoon at home to press agents, and he always gave them till +five-thirty to drop in. But he didn't think there were likely to be any +more to-day, and if Rodney would come over ...</p> + +<p>Rodney got into a taxi and came, and found the critic at his shabby old +desk under a green-shaded electric light, in the midst of a vast +solitude, the editorial offices of an evening newspaper at that hour +being about the loneliest place in the world. There was a rusty look +about this particular local room, too, that made you wonder that any +real news ever could emanate from it. Yet only this afternoon they had +beaten the city in the announcement of the failure of the +Mortimore-Milligan string of banks.</p> + +<p>"I've come," said Rodney, finding a sort of fierce satisfaction in +grasping the nettle as tightly as possible, "to see if you can tell me +anything about my wife."</p> + +<p>Jimmy may have felt a bit flushed and flustered, but the fact didn't +show, and an imaginative insight he was in the habit of denying the +possession of led him to draw most of the sting out of the situation +with the first words he said.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you all I know, of course, but it isn't much. Because I +haven't had a word with her since the last time I dined at your house, +way back last September, I think it was. I saw her on the stage at the +Globe, the opening night of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>, and I saw that she +recognized me. That's how I knew it was really she. And—well, I want +you to know this! I haven't told anybody that she was there."</p> + +<p>"You needn't tell me that," said Rodney. "I'm sure of it. But I'm glad +you did tell me the other thing. But here's the situation: she's left +that company; left it, I believe, as a result of a talk I had with her +after I found her there, and I don't know where she is. The one thing I +have got to do just now is to find her. I've asked at the theater, and +they won't tell me. I imagine they're acting on her instructions. And as +I don't even know the name she goes by I've found it pretty hard to get +anywhere. I want you to help me."</p> + +<p>"Her name there at the Globe was Doris Dane," said Jimmy, "and I imagine +that unless she's left the show business altogether she'll have kept it; +because it would be, in a small way, an asset. And, as she'll be easier +to find if she has stayed in the business than if she hasn't, why, +that's the presumption to begin on."</p> + +<p>He lighted his pipe and lapsed into a thoughtful silence. "There are two +things she may have done," he went on after a while. "She may have gone +to New York, and in that case she's likely to have applied to the man +who put on <i>The Girl</i> out here; that's John Galbraith. He took quite an +interest in her, I understand; believed she had a future. But the other +thing she may have done strikes me as a little more likely. How long ago +was it you talked to her?"</p> + +<p>"It's the better part of two weeks," said Rodney.</p> + +<p>"Well," said Jimmy, "they sent out a Number Two company of <i>The Girl +Up-Stairs</i> a week ago last Sunday night. If she had any reason for +wanting to leave Chicago she might, I should think, have gone to them +and asked them to let her go out on the road with that. They wouldn't +have done it, of course, unless she'd convinced them that she was going +to quit the Chicago company anyway. But if she had convinced them of +that they'd have done it right enough. On the whole, that seems to me +the likeliest place to look."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rodney, "I think it is. Well, have you any way of finding +out where the Number Two company is playing?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy was rummaging in the litter of magazines on the top of his desk. +He pulled one out and searched among the back pages of it for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Here we are!" he said. "<i>The Girl Up-stairs,</i>" and he began reading off +the route. "They're playing to-night," he said, "at Cedar Rapids; +to-morrow night in Dubuque."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Rodney. "The next thing to find out is whether she's +with the company. Who is there we can telephone to out there?"</p> + +<p>"Why," said Jimmy, "I suppose we might raise the manager of the +opera-house. They're at Cedar Rapids to-night, and we might get a good +enough wire so that a proper name would be understood." He glanced at +his watch. "But there's a quicker and surer and cheaper way, and that's +to ask Alec McEwen. He's the press agent of the company here, and he'd +be sure to know."</p> + +<p>"He'd know," Rodney demurred, "but would he tell?"</p> + +<p>"He'd tell me," said Jimmy.</p> + +<p>"Can you find him?" Rodney wanted to know. "Where would he be at this +time of day—at his office or his house?"</p> + +<p>He hadn't any office nor any house, Jimmy said. "But since he's +undoubtedly cleaned up the newspaper offices by now, on his weekly +round," he concluded, "we can find him easily enough. I'll guarantee to +locate him—within three bars. There'll be no one in to see me after +this," he went on, slamming down the roll-top to his desk, getting up +and reaching for his overcoat, "so we may as well go straight at it."</p> + +<p>They walked down to the street entrance in silence. There Jimmy, with a +nonchalance that rang a little flat on his own ear, pulled up and said:</p> + +<p>"Look here! There's no need your trailing around on this job. Tell me +where you will be in an hour and I'll call you up."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I've nothing else to do," said Rodney, "and I'll be glad to go +along."</p> + +<p>They were at cross-purposes here. Jimmy didn't want him along. He had a +hunch that Rodney wouldn't find little Alec very satisfactory, but he +didn't know just how to say so. Rodney, on his part, strongly +disrelished the notion of trailing the press agent from bar to bar. But +he attributed the same distaste to Jimmy and felt it wouldn't be fair +not to share it with him. There was, besides, a certain satisfaction in +making his pride do penance.</p> + +<p>Jimmy hadn't overestimated his knowledge of little Alec McEwen's orbit. +They walked together to the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets and, +working radially from there, in the third bar they found him.</p> + +<p>Even before this, however, Rodney regretted that he hadn't let Jimmy do +the job alone. He was not an habitué of the sumptuous bars of the Loop, +and the voices of the men he found in them, the sort of men they were, +and the sort of things they talked about found raw nerves all over him. +On another errand, he realized, he wouldn't have minded. But it seemed +as if Rose herself were somehow soiled by the necessity of visiting +places like this in search of information about her.</p> + +<p>The feeling he had come back with from that down-state town to which he +had fled, that she was in a miry pit from which, at any cost, she must +be saved, had been a good deal weakened during the ten days that had +intervened since then. Her having sent back that hundred dollars; what +Portia had said about her courage; Harriet's notion that a stage career, +if properly managed, was something one could at least pretend not to be +ashamed of; and, most lately, what Jimmy Wallace had said about the New +York director who thought she had a future—all these things had +contributed to the result.</p> + +<p>But this pursuit, from one drinking bar to another, of the only man who +could tell him where she was, was bringing the old feeling back in +waves.</p> + +<p>"Here we are," said Jimmy, as they entered the third place. It was a +cramped cluttered room, thick with highly varnished, carved woodwork and +upholstered leather. Its principal ornament was a nude Bouguereau in a +red-draped alcove, heavily overlighted and fearfully framed; the sort of +picture any one would have yawned at in a gallery, it acquired here, +from the hard-working indecency of its intent, a weak salaciousness.</p> + +<p>Rodney found himself being led up to a group in the far corner of the +bar, and guessed rightly that the young man with the high voice and the +seemingly permanent smile, who greeted Jimmy with a determined +facetiousness, "Hello, old Top! Drunk again?" was the man they sought.</p> + +<p>"Not yet," said Jimmy, "but I'm willing to help you along. What'll it +be?" Then to Rodney: "This is Mr. Alexander McEwen, the leading liar +among our local press agents." He added quickly: "You didn't come around +this afternoon, so I suppose there's nothing stirring. How's business +over at the Globe?"</p> + +<p>"Immense," said Alec. "Sold out three times last week."</p> + +<p>"Do you hear anything," Jimmy asked, "about the road company, what +they're doing?"</p> + +<p>"Rotten," said Alec. "But that don't worry Goldsmith and Block. They +sold out their road rights to Block's brother-in-law."</p> + +<p>"By the way," said Jimmy, "who's the girl in the sextette that's quit?"</p> + +<p>"Doris Dane?" said little Alec. "Say no more. So you were on that lay, +too, you old fox!" his smile widened as he looked round at Rodney, and +his voice turned to a crow. "Trust this solemn old bird not to miss a +bet. She was some lady, all right! Why," he went on to Jimmy, "she has +some sort of a row with her lover; big brute that used to lie in wait +for her in the alley. You ought to hear the ponies go on about it. So +she gets scared and goes to Goldsmith and gets herself sent out with the +Number Two. And Goldsmith—believe me—crazy! He had his eye on it, +too."</p> + +<p>Jimmy finished his drink with a jerk. "Come along," he said to Rodney. +"I don't like this place. Let's get out."</p> + +<p>Rodney has never managed to forget little Alec McEwen. For weeks after +that bar-room encounter he was haunted by the vision of the small bright +prying eyes, the fatuously cynical smile, and by the sound of the high +crowing voice. Little Alec became monstrous to him; impersonal, a symbol +of the way the world looked at Rose, and he dreamed sometimes, +half-waking dreams, of choking the life out of him. Not out of little +Alec personally. He, obviously, wasn't worth it; but out of all the +weakly venomous slander that he typified.</p> + +<p>He managed a nod that seemed unconcerned enough, in response to Jimmy's +suggestion, and followed him out to the sidewalk. The sort of florid +rococo chivalry that would have "vindicated his wife's honor" by +knocking little Alec down was an inconceivable thing to him. But the +thing cut deep. He felt bemired. He wouldn't have minded that, of +course, except that the miry way he'd trodden since he'd first gone to +the stage door for Rose was the way she's taken ahead of him. He must +overtake her and bring her back!</p> + +<p>"I'm a thousand times obliged," he said in an even enough tone to Jimmy. +"I'll find her at Dubuque, then, to-morrow."</p> + +<p>"That's Wednesday," said Jimmy. "They may be playing a matinée, you +know. She'll be there, right enough."</p> + +<p>Then, to make the separation they both wanted come a little easier, he +invented an errand over on State Street and nodded Rodney farewell. For +the next half-hour he cursed himself with vicious heartfelt fluency for +a fool. Mightn't he have known what little Alec McEwen would say?</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XV_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XV</h3> + +<h3>IN FLIGHT</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Analyzing what little Alec McEwen actually said, disregarding the tone +of his voice and the look in his eye; disregarding, indeed, the meaning +he attached to his own words, and sticking simply to the words +themselves, it would be difficult to bring home against him the charge +of untruthfulness, or even of exaggeration.</p> + +<p>Because it was in a simple panic that Rose, on the morning after +Rodney's visit, had gone to Goldsmith and demanded to be transferred to +the second company, which had started rehearsing as soon as a month of +capacity business had demonstrated that the piece was a success.</p> + +<p>Goldsmith was disgusted. Little Alec had been right about that, too. The +unnaturalness of the request—for indeed it flew straight in the face of +all traditions that a girl who might stay in Chicago if she liked, +taking it easy and having a lot of fun, and rejoicing in the possession +of a job that was going to last for months, should deliberately swap +this highly desirable position for the hazards and discomforts of a +second-rate road company, playing one-night stands over the kerosene +circuit—was one too many for him. He demanded explanations without +getting any. And as Jimmy Wallace had guessed, it was not until she'd +convinced him that in no circumstances would she stay on in the Chicago +company that he assented to the transfer. He didn't abandon his attempts +to dissuade her until the very last moment. But neither his pictures of +the discomforts of the road, nor his carefully veiled promises of +further advancement if she stayed in Chicago, had the slightest effect +on her. All that she wanted was to get away, and as quickly as she +could!</p> + +<p>The collapse of her courage was not quite the sudden thing it seemed. +Forces she was vaguely aware had been at work, but didn't realize the +seriousness of, had been undermining it steadily since the opening night +when she recognized Jimmy Wallace in the audience, and when later she +parted from Galbraith with his promise of a New York job as soon as he +could get his own affairs ready for her.</p> + +<p>Chief of these forces was the simple reaction of fatigue. Strong as she +was, she had abused her strength somewhat during the last weeks of +rehearsal; had taken on and triumphantly accomplished more than any one +has a right to accomplish without calculating on replacing his depleted +capital of energy afterward. It was her first experience with this sort +of exhaustion, and she hadn't learned (indeed it is a lesson she never +did fully learn) to accept the phase with philosophic calm as the +inevitable alternate to the high-tension effective one.</p> + +<p>She missed Galbraith horribly. She had, as she'd told him, personified +the show as a mere projection of himself; he was it and it was he. +Everything she said and did on the stage had continued, as it had begun +in her very first rehearsal by being, just the expression of his will +through her instrumentality. It was amazing to her that, with the core +of it drawn out, the fabric should still stand; that the piece should go +on repeating itself night after night, automatically, awakening the +delighted applause of that queer foolish monster, the audience, just +with its galvanic simulation of the life he had once imparted to it.</p> + +<p>She was doing her own part, she felt at all events, in a manner utterly +lifeless and mechanical. It was a stifling existence!</p> + +<p>The most discouraging thing about it was that the others in the company +seemed not to feel it in the same way. Anabel Astor for example: night +after night she seemed to be born anew into her part with the rise of +the first curtain; she fought and conquered and cajoled, and luxuriated +in the approbation of every new audience, just as she had in the case of +the first, and came off all aglow with her triumph, as if the thing had +never happened to her before. And with the others, in varying degrees, +even with the chorus people, the effect seemed to be the same.</p> + +<p>But it was actually in the air, Rose believed, not merely in her own +fancy, that she was failing to justify the promise she had given at +rehearsal. Not alarmingly, to be sure. She was still plenty good enough +to hold down her job. But the notion, prevalent, it appeared, before the +opening, that she was one of those persons who can't be kept down in the +chorus, but project themselves irresistibly into the ranks of the +principals, was coming to be considered a mistake.</p> + +<p>Galbraith, as was evident from his last talk with her, hadn't made that +mistake. She remembered his having said she never could be an actress. +That was all right of course. She didn't want to be. In a way, it was +just because she didn't want to be that she couldn't be. But having it +come home to her as it was doing now, in her own experience, made her +all the more impatient to get out of the profession that wasn't hers and +into the one that had beckoned her so alluringly.</p> + +<p>It was just here that her disappointment was sharpest. The light that +for a few weeks had flared up so brightly, showing a clear path of +success that would lead her back to Rodney, had, suddenly, just when she +needed it most, gone out and left her wondering whether, after all, it +had been a true beacon or only fool's fire.</p> + +<p>A resolution she came to within twenty-four hours after Galbraith left +was that she would not wait passively for his letter summoning her to +New York. She'd go straight to work (and fill in the disconcerting +emptiness of her days at the same time) preparing herself for the +profession of stage costume designing. She wasn't entirely clear in her +mind as to just what steps this preparation should consist in, but the +fact that Galbraith had once asked to see her sketches and had seemed +amazed to learn that she hadn't any, gave her the hint that she might do +well to learn to draw. She knew, of course, that she couldn't learn very +much in the fortnight or so she supposed would elapse before Galbraith's +letter came in, but she could learn a little. And anything to do that +went in the right direction was better than blankly doing nothing.</p> + +<p>Her first adventure in this direction was downright ludicrous, as she +was aware without being able to summon the mood to appreciate it. The +girls she'd known, back in the Edgewater days, who had ambitions to +learn to draw went to the Art Institute. So Rose, summoning her courage +for a sortie across the avenue, want there too, and felt, as she climbed +the steps between the lions, a little the way Christian did in similar +circumstances. After waiting a while she was shown into the office of an +affable young man, with efficient looking eye-glasses and a keen sort of +voice, and told him with admirable brevity that she wanted to learn to +draw, as a preliminary to designing costumes.</p> + +<p>He approved this ambition cordially enough and made it evident that the +resources of the institute were entirely adequate to her needs. But +then, just about simultaneously, she made the discovery that the course +he was talking about was one of from three to five years' duration, and +he, that the time immediately at her disposal amounted to something like +a fortnight. They were mutually too completely disconcerted to do +anything, for a moment, but stare at each other. When he found his +breath he told her that he was afraid they couldn't do anything for her.</p> + +<p>"There are places, of course, here in town (there's one right down the +street) where they'll take you on for a month, or a week, or a day, if +you like; let you begin working in oil in the life class the vary first +morning, if you've a notion to. But we don't believe in that +get-rich-quick sort of business. We believe in laying the foundation +first."</p> + +<p>His manner in describing the other sort of place had been so +annihilating, his purpose in citing this horrible example was so plain, +that he was justifiably taken aback when she asked him, very politely, +to be sure, "Would you mind telling me where that other place is; the +one down the street?"</p> + +<p>He did mind exceedingly, and it is likely he wouldn't have done it if +she'd been less extraordinarily good to look at and if there hadn't +been, in her very expressive blue eyes, a gleam that suggested she was +capable of laughing at him for having trapped himself like that. She +wasn't laughing at him now, be it understood; had made her request with +a quite adorable seriousness. Only ...</p> + +<p>He gave her the address of an art academy on Madison Street and thither +at once she made her way, faintly cheered by the note on which her +encounter with the young man had ended, but on the whole rather +depressed by the thought of the five years he'd talked about.</p> + +<p>They were more tactful at the new place. <i>Ars Longa est</i> was not a motto +they paraded. They were not shocked at all at the notion of a young +woman's learning as much as she could about drawing in two weeks. There +was a portrait sketch class every morning; twenty minute poses. You put +down as much as you could of how the model looked to you in that space +of time, and then began again on something else. All the equipment Rose +would need was a big apron, a stick of charcoal and a block of drawing +paper; all of which were obtainable on the premises. She could begin +this minute if she liked. It was almost as simple as getting on a +pay-as-you-enter street-car.</p> + +<p>This jumped with Rose's mood exactly, and she promptly fell to, with a +momentary flare-up of the zest with which she had gone to work for +Galbraith. But it was only momentary. She hadn't a natural aptitude for +drawing, and her attempts to make the black lines she desperately dug +and smudged into the white paper represent, recognizably, the object she +was looking at failed so lamentably as to discourage her almost from the +start.</p> + +<p>She kept at it for the two weeks she'd contracted for, but at the end of +that time she gave it up. She hadn't made any visible progress, and +besides, she might be hearing from Galbraith almost any day now.</p> + +<p>And when, four or five days later, her intolerable restlessness over +waiting for a letter that didn't come, making up reasons why it hadn't +come, one minute, and deciding that it never would, the next, drove her +to do something once more, she set out on a new tack. If the ability to +make fancy little water-colors of impossible-looking girls in only less +impossible costumes were really an essential part of the business of +designing the latter, then she'd have to set about learning, in a +systematic way, to paint them; find out the proper way to begin, and +take her time about it. Her two weeks at the academy had proved that it +wasn't a knack that she could pick up casually. But there were books on +costumes, she knew; histories of clothes, that went as far back as any +sort of histories, with marvelous colored plates which gave you all the +details. Bertie Willis had told her all about that when they were +getting up their group for the Charity Ball. There were shelves of them, +she knew, over at the Newberry Library. A knowledge of their contents +would be sure to be valuable to her when Galbraith should set her to +designing more costumes for him—if ever he did.</p> + +<p>This misgiving, that she might never hear from him, that his plans had +changed since their talk, so that he wasn't going to need any assistant, +or that he had found some one in New York better qualified for the work, +was, really, a little artificial. She encouraged it as a defense against +another which was, in its insidious way, much more terrifying.</p> + +<p>Would she ever be capable, again, of producing another idea in case it +should be wanted? That one little flash of inspiration she'd had, that +had resulted in the twelve costumes for the sextette—where had it come +from? How had she happened on it? Wasn't it, perhaps, just a fluke that +never could be repeated? During those wonderful days she had had antennæ +out everywhere, bringing her impressions, suggestions from the +unlikeliest objects. Now they were all drawn in and the part of her mind +that had responded to them felt numb.</p> + +<p>She ignored this sensation, or rather this absence of sensation, as well +as she could; just as one might ignore the creeping approach of +paralysis. She had an unacknowledged reason for going to the library and +beginning that historic study of costumes. Certainly the sight of those +quaint old plates ought to set her imagination racing again.</p> + +<p>But it didn't work that way. She found herself poring over them, +yawning herself blind over the French legends that accompanied them. +(They were nearly all in French, these books, and though Rose had done +two years' work in this language at the university and passed all her +examinations, she found these technical descriptions of costumes +frightfully hard to understand.) She stuck at it, though, for a long +while, until one morning a comparison occurred to her that made her shut +the folio with a slam. It had been in just this way, with just this +dogged, blind, hopeless persistence, that, ages ago, in that former +incarnation, she'd tried to study law!</p> + +<p>This was too much for her. She walked out of the library with the best +appearance of unconcern that she could muster,—it had been a near thing +that she didn't break down and cry—and she did not go back. Probably it +was just as well that Galbraith hadn't sent for her. She'd only have +made a ghastly failure of it, if he had.</p> + +<p>The background, of course, to all these endeavors and discouragements, +or, to describe it more justly, the indivisible, all-permeating ether +they floated about in, was, just as it had been in the time of her +success—Rodney. The occupations, routine and otherwise, that she gave +her mind to, might seem, in a way, to crowd him out of it, although not +one of them was undertaken without some reference to him; the success of +this, the failure of that, brought him nearer, put him farther away, +like the children's game of <i>Warm and Cold</i>.</p> + +<p>When she ran out of occupations that could absorb the conscious part of +her mind, she did not even try to resist direct thoughts about him. +She'd spent uncounted hours since that opening night, wondering if he +knew where she was, inventing reasons why, knowing, he didn't come to +her; explanations of the possibility of his still remaining in +ignorance. She'd gone over and over again, the probable things that he +would say, the things that she would say in reply, when he did come.</p> + +<p>She was prepared for his anger. He was, she felt, entitled to be angry. +But she felt sure she could get him to listen while she told him just +why and how she had done it, and what she had done, and she had a sort +of tremulous confidence that when the story was told, entire, his anger +would be found to have abated, if not altogether to have disappeared. +And afterward, when the shock had worn off, and he had had time to +adjust himself to things, he'd begin to feel a little proud of her. They +could commence—being friends. She'd constructed and let her mind dwell +on almost every conceivable combination of circumstances, except the one +thing that happened.</p> + +<p>Only, as the active actual half of her life grew more discouraging, +harder to steer toward any object that seemed worth attaining, her +imaginary life with Rodney lost its grip on fact and reason; became +roseate, romantic, a thinner and more iridescent bubble, readier to +burst and disappear altogether at an ungentle touch.</p> + +<p>So you will understand, I think, that the Rose, who incredulously heard +him ask in that dull sullen tone, if she had anything besides what would +go into her trunk; the Rose who got up and turned on the light for a +look at him in the hope that the evidence of her eyes would belie that +of her ears; the Rose he left shuddering at the window in that quilted +dressing-gown, was not the Rose who had left him three months before and +rented that three-dollar room and wrung a job out of Galbraith!</p> + +<p>Dimly she was aware of this herself. At her best she wouldn't have lost +her head, wouldn't have flown to pieces like that. If she'd kept any +sort of grip on the situation, she might at least have averted a total +shipwreck. She understood even on that gray morning, that the terrible +things he'd said to her had been a mere outcry; the expression of a mood +she had encountered before, though this was an extreme example of it.</p> + +<p>But it was a long time before she went any further than that. The memory +of the whole episode from the moment when he came up to her there in the +alley and took her by the shoulders, until he closed her door upon +himself four hours or so later, was so exquisitely painful that any +reasoned analysis of it, any construction of potential alternatives to +the thing that had happened, was simply impossible. The misgiving that +with a little more courage and patience on her part, it might have +terminated differently, only added to her misery.</p> + +<p>She felt like a coward when she went to Goldsmith and demanded to be +sent out on the road, and she experienced for a while, the utter +demoralization of cowardice. The logic of the situation told her to stay +where she was. If it were true, as she had fiercely told him that night, +that their life together was ended, the whole fabric that they had woven +for themselves rent clean across, then the only thing for her to do was +to begin living now, as she had made an effort to do before, quite +without reference to him, ordering her own existence as if he had ceased +to exist; stick to whatever offered herself, Doris Dane, the best chance +for success and advancement. She was, of course, seriously injuring +Doris Dane's chances by going out on the road.</p> + +<p>And, even with reference to Rodney, it was hard to see how her flight +could help the situation. If what she'd done had really disgraced him in +his own eyes and in those of his world, the disgrace was already +complete. Acquiescing in that point of view, as by her flight she did, +couldn't lighten it.</p> + +<p>But all the power these considerations had, was to make her flight seem +more ignominious. They were utterly incapable of preventing it.</p> + +<p>A disinterested friend, had she boasted such a possession just then, +might have pointed out for her comfort, that her rout was not complete. +It was a retreat, but not a surrender. She hadn't become Rose Stanton +again and gone back to Portia and her mother. Doris Dane, though badly +battered, was still intact!</p> + +<p>The first ten days of her life on the road had, on the whole, a +distinctly restorative effect. I have never heard of a physician's +recommending a course of one-night stands as a rest cure to nervously +exhausted patients, but I am inclined to think the idea has its merits, +for all that. Certainly the régime was, for a while, beneficial to Rose. +The merit of it was that it offered some sort of occupation for +practically all her time.</p> + +<p>A typical day consisted in getting up in the morning at an hour +determined for you either by the call posted on the bulletin board in +the theater the night before, telling you what time you were to be at +the railway station, or by the last moment at which you could get into +the dining-room in the hotel. You ate all you could manage at breakfast, +because lunch was likely to consist of a sandwich and an orange bought +from the train butcher; with perhaps the lucky addition of a cup of +coffee at some junction point where you changed trains. You lugged your +suit-case down to the station, and had your arrival there noted by the +manager, who, of course, bought all the tickets for the company. You +needn't even bother to know where you were going, except out of idle +curiosity. The train came along and you got a seat by yourself on the +shady side, if you could; though the men being more agile, generally got +there first.</p> + +<p>The convention of giving precedence to the ladies, Rose promptly +discovered, and with a sort of satisfaction, did not apply. Indeed, all +the automatic small courtesies and services which, in any life she'd +known, men had been expected to show to women, were here completely +barred. A girl could let a man come up to her on a platform where they +were all gathered waiting for the train, and casually slide an arm +around her, without any one's paying the slightest attention to the act. +But if, when the train came along, she permitted him to pick up her +suit-case, carry it into the train and find a seat for her, there would +be nods and glances.</p> + +<p>Well, you got into the train and dozed and read a magazine (or both) and +by and by, when everybody else did, you got up and got out. Perhaps you +waited on a triangular railway platform for another train, or perhaps +you trailed along in a procession, to a hotel. In the latter case, you +got a meal and found out where the opera-house was.</p> + +<p>There were various minor occupations that you slipped into the +interstices of a day like this whenever they happened to come. You +combed out and brushed your hair (a hundred strokes) which you were too +tired to do at night after the performance and seldom waked up in time +for in the morning. And, if you were wise, as Rose was, thanks to a tip +from Anabel, and had emancipated yourself from the horror of overnight +laundries by providing yourself with crêpe underclothes and dark little +silk blouses, you got all the hot water you could beg of the +chambermaid, and did the family wash in the bowl in your room, on an +afternoon when you had a short jump and there was no matinée.</p> + +<p>It was a life, of course, that abounded in what pass for hardships. +There is no desolation to surpass that of the second-best hotel (rates +two dollars a day), in a small middle western city, except the same kind +of hotel in the same sort of city in the South. Bad air, bad beds and +bad food are their staples and what passes for service seems especially +calculated to encourage the victim to dispense with it as far as +possible. The stages and dressing-rooms in the theaters were almost +always dirty and were frequently overrun with rats. It was always cold +and drafty back there, except when it happened to be suffocating. Also, +the day's work by no means invariably concluded with even a half a bed +in a two-dollar-a-day hotel. If there happened to be a train coming +along at two o'clock in the morning, and also happened to be a chance to +play a matinée in the town you were jumping to, you took your suit-case +to the theater, lugged it from there after the performance, to the +station, and spent an indefinite number of hours thereafter, in an +air-tight waiting-room. Waiting, be it observed, for a chance to curl up +in a seat in the day-coach, when the train came along.</p> + +<p>But Rose didn't mind this very much. The rooms assigned to her and her +roommate were fully as comfortable as the one she had lived in on Clark +Street, and the meals, as a whole, were rather better than those her +habitual lunch-room had provided. As for riding on the train: it gave +you the sense of doing something and getting somewhere, without imposing +the necessity either for judgment or for resolution. The real +discomforts to Rose were not the material ones.</p> + +<p>The piece had been, as she discovered during the one rehearsal she had +attended in Chicago, deliberately cheapened and vulgarized for the road. +The only one of the principals who had a shred of professional +reputation, was a comedian named Max Webber, who played the part of the +cosmetic king. He'd come up in vaudeville and his methods reeked of it. +He was featured in the billing and he arrogated all the privileges of a +real star. He was intensely and destructively jealous of any approbation +he didn't himself arouse, even if it was manifested when he was not on +the stage. He distended his part out of all reasonable semblance, and to +the practical annihilation of the plot, by the injection into it of +musty vaudeville specialties of his, which he assured the weak-kneed +management were knock-outs. And his clowning and mugging made it +impossible to play a legitimate scene with him, with any shadow of +professional self-respect.</p> + +<p>The result of this was that the girl who had rehearsed Patricia +Devereux's part, an ambitious, well-equipped young woman who would have +added much-needed strength to the cast, delivered an ultimatum during +the last rehearsal but one, and on having her very reasonable demands +rejected, walked out. Olga Larson, who had understudied Patricia ever +since the Chicago opening, was given the part. The rest of the +principals were either pathetic failures with lamentable stories of +better days, or promising youngsters, like Olga herself, with no +adequate training.</p> + +<p>The chorus was similarly constituted. There were fifteen girls in it, +including the sextette, now a trio, part of them worn-out veterans (one +of these was the duchess—do you remember her?—who had applied to +Galbraith for a job the day that Rose got hers) and the others green +young girls, not more than sixteen or seventeen, some of them, who had +never been on the stage before. It was one of these, a tiny, slim, +black-haired little thing, who gave her name as Dolly Darling, but +hadn't memorized it yet herself, obviously a runaway in quest of +romantic adventure, whom Rose adopted as a permanent roommate.</p> + +<p>Her doing so opened up the breach between herself and Olga Larson. It +had existed, beneath the surface, ever since the night she had gone to +supper with Galbraith. It wasn't that Olga believed Rose had taken +Galbraith as a lover. She hadn't believed that even when she hurled the +accusation against her. The wounding thing was that Rose seemed not to +care whether she believed it or not; had met her tempestuous pleas for +forgiveness and her offers of unlimited love and faith "whatever Rose +might do and however things might look," with a cold distaste that +hardly differed from the feeling she had shown in response to the +tempest of angry accusation. She told Olga, to be sure, that everything +was all right; that the thing for both of them to do, was to treat the +quarrel as if it hadn't occurred.</p> + +<p>This wasn't what Olga wanted at all. She wanted Rose as an emotional +objective, to love passionately and be jealous of, and, for a moment now +and then, hate, as a preliminary to another passionate reconciliation.</p> + +<p>Rose had divined that this was so. Indeed, she understood it far better +than Olga did, having had to evade one or two "crushes" of a similar +sort while she was at the university. It was a sort of thing that went +utterly against her instincts, and she was secretly glad that the +quarrel on the opening night had given her a method of resisting this +one that need not seem too utterly heartless.</p> + +<p>Since the quarrel, Olga had been distant and dignified. She had a +grievance (that Rose, pretending to forgive her confessed mistake, had +really not done so) but she was bearing it bravely. Rose, when she could +manage the manner, was good-humored and casual, and completely blind to +the existence of the grievance Olga so nobly concealed. But Olga's +wonderful good fortune, coming quite unheralded as it did, an +advancement she had played with in her day-dreams, and never thought of +as a realizable possibility, swept her out of her pose and carried her +with a rush into Rose's arms.</p> + +<p>This happened not a quarter of an hour after Rose had secured +Goldsmith's consent to her own transfer to the Number Two company, and +the first thing that registered on her mind was that she, who had taught +Olga to talk, saved her her job, prevailed on Galbraith to dress her +properly, and won her a chance for the space of that one song refrain, +to make her individual appeal to the audience—Rose, who had done all +this, was now going out as a chorus-girl in the company of which Olga +was the leading woman. She didn't regret Olga's promotion, but she did +wish, for herself, that she might have been spared just now, this ironic +little cackle of laughter on the part of the malicious Goddess of +Chance.</p> + +<p>She was ashamed of the feeling—was she getting as small as that?—and, +in consequence, she congratulated Olga a good deal more warmly than +otherwise she would have done. But this warmer manner of hers opened +Olga's flood-gates so wide, swamped her in such a torrent of sentiment, +that Rose simply took to flight.</p> + +<p>There was an element of real maternal pity in Rose's adoption of little +Dolly Darling as her chum. Dolly was obviously as fragile and ephemeral +as a transparent sand-fly. She had nothing that you could call a mind or +a character, even of the most rudimentary sort. She knew nothing, except +how to dance, and she knew that exactly as a kitten knows how to play +with a ball of string; she dreamed of diamonds and wonderful restaurants +and a sardonic hero nine feet tall with a straight nose and a long chin, +who would clutch her passionately in his arms (there was no more real +passion in her than there is in a soap-bubble) and murmur vows of +eternal adoration in her ears.</p> + +<p>She was a soap-bubble; that's the figure for her; just an iridescent +reflection, wondrously distorted, of the tawdry life about her—a +reflection, and then nothing!</p> + +<p>But just the thin empty frailness of her, her gaiety in the face of +perfectly inevitable destruction, appealed to Rose. She had Dolly in her +pocket in five minutes, and before the end of the rehearsal, their +treaty was signed and sealed. They were to be chums, bosom friends! The +notion of it gave Rose the most spontaneous smile she'd had in days; the +first one that hadn't had a bitter quirk in it.</p> + +<p>When, down at the union station on Sunday morning, as they were leaving, +Olga unfolded her plan that she and Rose should room together, Rose +owned up to herself that there had been another element than maternal +pity in her adoption of Dolly. She'd suspected that Olga would propose +something of this sort, and she had fortified herself against it.</p> + +<p>Olga was furious, of course, when she learned what Rose had done, and +accused her, with a measure of justice, of having done it to be rid of +her. If Rose didn't want to remain under this imputation, she could +break with Dolly. When Rose refused to do this, Olga cut her off +utterly; damned her, disowned her. They were the first pair in the +company to begin not to speak.</p> + +<p>As I said, the chief discomforts for Rose in those first ten days on the +road, were not the material ones. Olga's absurd way of ignoring her, the +fact that she attributed their quarrel, for the benefit of the company, +to Rose's jealousy of her success; worst of all, the fact that Rose +couldn't be sure she wasn't jealous of Olga's success, didn't feel at +least, contemplating their reversed positions, more like a failure than +she would have felt had the original girl kept the leading part,—all +this contributed to a discomfort that did matter, that tormented, +abraded, rankled.</p> + +<p>It became the core of a sensation that she had turned cheap and shabby; +that the distinction, which with her first entrance into this life, she +had built up between herself and most of her colleagues, was breaking +down; that her fiber was coarsening, her fine sensitiveness becoming +calloused. It troubled her that she should feel so languid an +indifference over the vulgarity of the piece, a vulgarity which, under +Webber's infection, grew more blatant every day.</p> + +<p>It was obvious to her that this quality was destroying whatever slim +chance for success they had. The lines, with the new ugly twist that had +been imparted to them, might draw a half dozen rude guffaws from +different parts of the audience, but the chill disfavor with which they +were received by the rest of the house, must, she felt, have been +apparent to everybody. There seemed, though, to be a superstition that a +laugh was a sacred thing; something to be fed carefully with more of the +same thing that had originally produced it. This treatment was persisted +in, despite the fact that the audiences shrank and shriveled and the +box-office receipts, she gathered from the gossip of the company, hung +just about at the minimum required to keep them going.</p> + +<p>What troubled her was her own apathetic acceptance of it all. Just as +her ear seemed to have grown dull to the offenses that nightly were +committed against it on the stage, and to the leering response, which +was all they ever got from across the footlights, so her spirit +submitted tamely to the prospect of failure. She hardly seemed to +herself the same person who had set to work in a blaze of eager +enthusiasm, on the part she played so mechanically now.</p> + +<p>She tried to reassure herself with the reflection that the tour meant +nothing to her, except as it fell in with an ulterior purpose, and that +it was actually serving that purpose well enough. She'd deliberately +turned aside from the main channel of her new life to give mind and soul +a rest they needed. When she'd got that rest and rallied her courage, +she'd take a fresh start. She had, lying safely in the bank in Chicago, +where Galbraith had taken her, something over two hundred dollars; for +she'd lived thriftily during the Chicago engagement and had added a +little every week to her nest-egg of profit from the costuming business. +So she had enough to get her to New York and see her through the process +of finding a new job. What sort of job it would be, she was still too +tired to think, but she was sure she could find something.</p> + +<p>Meantime, out there on the road, she was making no effort to save. She +indulged in whatever small ameliorations to their daily discomforts her +weekly wage would run to.</p> + +<p>It was thus that matters stood with her, when, with the rest of the +company, she arrived in Dubuque on a Wednesday morning, with an hour or +so to spare before the matinée.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XVI_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XVI</h3> + +<h3>ANTI-CLIMAX</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>It was a beastly day. A gusty rain, whipping up from the south, by way +of answer to the challenge of a heavy snowfall the day before, inflicted +a combination of the rigors of winter, with a debilitating, disquieting +hint of spring. The train, for which they had been routed out that +morning at seven o'clock, had been blistering hot and the necessarily +open windows had let in choking clouds of smoke.</p> + +<p>The hotel was hot, too. Rose and Dolly, as soon as they had registered, +went up to their room and washed off the stains of travel, as well as +they could in translucent water that was the color of weak coffee. Then +Rose, in a kimono, stretched out on the bed to make up some of the rest +their early departure from Cedar Rapids had deprived her of. She did +this methodically whenever opportunity offered, but without any great +conviction.</p> + +<p>Dolly, though she looked a bit hollow-eyed and much more in need of rest +than Rose (for she hadn't any stamina at all. She was an +under-nourished, and probably anemic little thing, and was always +train-sick when their jumps began too early in the morning), went +straight ahead with her toilet, tried to correct her pallor with a +little too much rouge, and with the glaring falsehood that it was +clearing up, put on the pathetic little fifteen-dollar suit that she +religiously guarded for occasions.</p> + +<p>She was very fidgety, a little bit furtive, and elaborately over-casual +about all this; a fact to which Rose was, also a little artificially, +oblivious.</p> + +<p>Their partnership had not proved, from Dolly's point of view, at any +rate, an unqualified success. They'd not been on the road three days +before she'd begun to wonder whether she hadn't been hasty in the +selection of her chum. Doris Dane was a very magnificent person, of +course. She made the rest of the company, including the principals, look +(this was a phrase Dolly had unguardedly used the day Rose first +appeared at rehearsal) like a bunch of rummies. And of course it was an +immense compliment to be singled out by an awe-inspiring person like +that, for her particular chum. Only, once the compliment had been paid, +its value as an abiding possession became a little doubtful. Awe is not +a very comfortable sort of emotion to eat breakfast with.</p> + +<p>Evidently the rest of the company felt that way about it, for Dane was +not popular. She gave no handle for an active grievance, to be sure. She +wasn't superior in the sense in which Dolly used the word. She didn't +look haughty nor say withering things to people, nor tell +passionately-believed stories designed to convince her hearers that her +rightful place in the world was immensely higher than the one she now +occupied. One didn't hear her exclaiming under some bit of managerial +tyranny, that never, in the course of her whole life, had she been +subjected to such an affront. But she had a blank, rather tired way of +keeping silence when other people told stories like that, or made +protests like that, which was subtly infuriating. The very fact that she +never tried to impress the company, was presumptive evidence that the +company didn't very greatly impress her. If their common feeling about +her had ever crystallized into a phrase, its effect would have been, +that all their affairs, personal and professional, past, present and to +come, even those she shared with them, were not of sufficient importance +to her ever to get quite the whole of her attention. It was a notion +that irritated the women and frightened off the men. Probably nothing +else could have kept a young woman of Rose's physical attractions from +being, on a tour like that, with that sort of company, the object of, at +least, experiments.</p> + +<p>Men may consider these experiments worth trying in the face of a +determined hostility on the part of the subject of them. The most +rigorous primness of behavior does not daunt them, nor the assertion of +an icily virtuous intangibility. But the sort of good-humored +preoccupation that doesn't see them at all, that sees the pattern in the +wall-paper behind their backs, that tries, half-heartedly, to be +adequately courteous, is too much for them. And the more experienced +they are in conquests, and the higher, on the basis of their own +experience, they rate the irresistibility of their powers, the less of +his particular sort of treatment they can stand. The mere sight of her, +after the first day or two, was enough to give a professional "killer" +like Max Webber, the creeps.</p> + +<p>But Rose's manner not only kept the men away from herself. It kept them +away from Dolly. Poor Dolly didn't know what the matter was, at first.</p> + +<p>She had been told terrible stories by her mother and her elder brother, +about the perils that beset young girls who ran away from good +respectable homes. She had been told them with the misguided purpose of +keeping her from running away from her own home, which was no doubt +respectable, but was also deadly dull. She had run away and it was +perils she was looking for. She didn't mean to succumb to them. None of +the heroines of the only literature she knew—of the movies, that is to +say—succumbed to perils. They were beset by the most terrific perils. +It was over perils that they climbed to soul-entrancing heights of +romance. It was because they were the almost certain victims of +diabolical machinations, that wonderful heroes, with long eyelashes and +curly hair, came to their rescue and clasped them in their arms and +looked unutterable things into their eyes, just as the picture faded +out.</p> + +<p>Dolly had joined the chorus of a musical comedy, because that profession +offered more alluring wares in the way of perils than any other that was +open to her. And then she discovered that her calculations had gone +awry. The impalpable shield her formidable friend carried with her, +turned the perils aside. The little group of half-grown boys one +sometimes found waiting at the stage door, never even spoke to Rose, and +Dolly, in her company, partook of this unwelcomed immunity. As for the +men in the company, Dolly found them letting her entirely alone.</p> + +<p>She was bitterly unhappy at first about this, taking it as an +indication of the insufficiency of her charms. But once she got the +clue, she set about righting matters. She began taking tentative little +strolls about the hotel lobbies by herself, and on her train journeys, +when the motion and the odor of the men's pipes didn't make her too +sick, she'd kneel upon a seat and look over the back of it into one of +the perpetual poker-games they used to pass the time. It was astonishing +how quickly she got results.</p> + +<p>She wandered over to the cigar-stand at one of their hotels, one +afternoon, a week before the arrival in Dubuque, to look at a rack of +picture postcards. One of the chorus-men came over to buy some +cigarettes. She felt him look at her, and she felt herself flush a +little. And then he came a step closer to look at the postcards for +himself, and sighed and said he wished he had somebody to send postcards +to. He supposed she sent <i>him</i> one every day. Whereupon Dolly said she +wasn't going to send him one to-day, anyway. They strolled across the +lobby together and sat down in two of the wide-armed unsatisfactory +chairs they have at such places; chairs that kept them so far apart they +had to shout at each other. So, after a few minutes, it being a fine +day, he suggested they go out for a walk. She had on her outdoor wraps +and his overcoat lay across a chair.</p> + +<p>She had already nodded acquiescence to his proposal, when she saw Rose +coming in through the door.</p> + +<p>"Wait," she whispered to him. "Don't come out with me. I'll wait +outside." And with that she walked up to Rose and told her she was going +out to get some cold cream.</p> + +<p>Five per cent., perhaps, of the motive that prompted this maneuver, was +what it pretended to be, a fear of Rose's disapprobation and a wish to +avoid it. The other ninety-five per cent. of it was just instinctive +love of intrigue.</p> + +<p>The chorus-boy waited, blankly wooden enough to have attracted the +suspicion of any eye less preoccupied than Rose's, until she had got +around the curve of the stair. Then, joining Dolly on the pavement, he +demanded to be told what it was all about.</p> + +<p>Dolly, making up her little mystery as she went along, and making +herself more interesting at every step, told him. They took a long walk, +and by the time they got back to the hotel, they were in love. But they +were separated by the malign influence of Dolly's friend. They developed +a code of signals for circumventing her watchful eye. They slipped +unsigned notes to each other.</p> + +<p>So Dolly, on this blustering morning in Dubuque, fidgeting about the +room, thinking up a perfectly unnecessary excuse for going out, to give +to Rose, answered a knock at the door very promptly and took the folded +bit of paper the bell-boy handed her, without listening to what he said, +if indeed he said anything at all to her.</p> + +<p>She carried it over to the window, turned her back to Rose, unfolded the +bit of paper and read it; read it again, frowned in a puzzled way, and +said:</p> + +<p>"I didn't know there was anybody in the company named Rodney."</p> + +<p>"What's his last name?" asked Rose. There was nothing in her tone that +challenged Dolly's attention, though the quality of it would have caught +a finer ear. And even if Dolly had looked up, she'd have seen nothing. +Rose lay there just as she had been lying a moment ago. It would have +needed a better observer than Dolly to see that she had stopped +breathing.</p> + +<p>"There ain't any last name," said Dolly. "He seems to think I'll know +him by the first one." It pleased Dolly to make a parade of frankness +about this note. She couldn't be sure Rose had been as oblivious as she +seemed, to those the chorus-man had been sending her. This, to her +rudimentary mind, seemed a good opportunity to allay Dane's suspicions. +"See if you can make anything out of it," she said, and handed it over +to Rose.</p> + +<p>Rose got up off the bed and carried the note to the window. She stood +there with it a long time.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" said Dolly. "Can't you read his writing?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose. "I know who he is. It's meant for me."</p> + +<p>The tone, though barely audible, was automatic. It brushed Dolly away +as if she had been a buzzing fly, and she felt distinctly aggrieved by +it. That Dane, with all her loftily assumed indifference to men, even to +a star like Max Webber, should get a note like that, and should have the +nerve to betray no confusion over having her pretense thus confounded! +Dolly had read the note thoroughly, and it had struck her as cryptic and +suggestive in the extreme.</p> + +<p>"I want to sec you very much," it said, "and shall wait in the lobby +unless you say impossible. I'll submit to any conditions you wish to +make. No bad news."</p> + +<p>It sounded like a code to Dolly.</p> + +<p>Rose stood there a long time. When she turned around, Dolly saw she was +pale. She'd crumpled the note tight in one palm, and her hands were +trembling. Then, with great swiftness, she began to dress. But though +her haste was evident, she didn't ask Dolly to help her; didn't seem to +know, indeed, that she was in the room. It was no way for a friend to +act!</p> + +<p>The thing that had moved Rose to an extent that terrified her was that +last phrase. The desire it showed to play fair with her; the +unwillingness to take advantage of a fear his coming like that might +have inspired her with. And then the way he had made it possible for +her, with a single word, to send him away! And the restraint of that "I +want to see you very much!" It wasn't like any Rodney she knew, to be +humble like that. His humility stripped her of her armor. If he'd been +imperious, exigeant, she could have gone down to meet him with her head +up. Suppose she found him broken, aged, with a dumb need for her crying +out in his eyes, what would she do? What could she trust herself not to +do? But just in human mercy to him she mustn't let him see she was +wavering.</p> + +<p>The Rose he was waiting for, there in the lobby, the only Rose he had +been able to picture to himself for more than a fortnight of distressful +days, was the Rose he'd last seen in that North Clark Street room; the +Rose with a look of dumb frozen agony in her face. The one idea he'd +clung to since starting for Dubuque, had been that he mustn't frighten +her. She must see, with her first glance at him, that she had nothing +to fear from a repetition of his former behavior. She must see that the +brute in him—that was the way he put it to himself—was completely +tamed.</p> + +<p>Their meeting was a shock to both of them; an incredible mocking sort of +anti-climax.</p> + +<p>He was standing near the foot of the stairs when she came down, with a +raincoat on, and a newspaper twisted up in his hands, and at sight of +her, he took off his soft wet hat, and crunched it up along with the +newspaper. He moved over toward her, but stopped two or three feet away. +"It's very good of you to come," he said, his voice lacking a little of +the ridiculous stiffness of his words, not much. "Is there some place +where we can talk a little more—privately than here? I shan't keep you +long."</p> + +<p>"There's a room here somewhere," she said. "I noticed it this morning +when we came in. Oh, yes! It's over there."</p> + +<p>The room she led him to, was an appropriately preposterous setting for +the altogether preposterous talk that ensued between them. It had a +mosaic floor with a red plush carpet on it, two stained glass windows in +yellow and green, flanking an oak mantel, which framed an enormous +expanse of mottled purple tile, with a diminutive gas log in the middle. +A glassy looking oak table occupied most of the room, and the chairs +that were crowded in around it were upholstered in highly polished +coffee-colored horse-hide, with very ornate nails. A Moorish archway +with a spindling grill across the top, gave access to it. The room +served, doubtless, to gratify the proprietor's passion for beauty. The +flagrant impossibility of its serving any other purpose, had preserved +it in its pristine splendor. One might imagine that no one had ever been +in there, barring an occasional awed maid with a dust cloth, until +Rodney and Rose descended on it.</p> + +<p>"It's dreadfully hot in here," Rose said. "You'd better take off your +coat." She squeezed in between the table and one of the chairs, and +seated herself.</p> + +<p>Rodney threw down his wet hat, his newspaper, and then his raincoat, on +the table, and slid into a chair opposite her.</p> + +<p>If only one of them could have laughed! But the situation was much too +tragic for that.</p> + +<p>"I want to tell you first," Rodney said, and his manner was that of a +schoolboy reciting to his teacher an apology that has been rehearsed at +home under the sanction of paternal authority, "I want to tell you how +deeply sorry I am for ... I want to say that you can't be any more +horrified over what I did—that night than I am."</p> + +<p>He had his newspaper in his hands again and was twisting it up. His eyes +didn't once seek her face. But they might have done so in perfect +safety, because her own were fixed on his hands and the newspaper they +crumpled.</p> + +<p>He didn't presume to ask her forgiveness, he told her. He couldn't +expect that; at least not at present. He went on lamely, in broken +sentences, repeating what he'd said, in still more inadequate words. He +was unable to stop talking until she should say something, it hardly +mattered what. And she was unable to say anything. There was a reason +for this:</p> + +<p>The thing that had amazed her by crowding up into her mind, demanding to +be said, was that she forgave him utterly—if indeed she had anything +more to forgive than he. She'd never thought it before. Now she realized +that it was true. He was as guiltless of premeditation on that night as +she. If he had yielded to a rush of passion, even while his other +instincts felt outraged by the things she had done, hadn't she yielded +too, without ever having tried to tell him certain material facts that +might change his feeling? They'd both been victims, if one cared to put +it like that, of an accident; had ventured, incautiously, into the rim +of a whirlpool whose irresistible force they both knew.</p> + +<p>She fought the realization down with a frantic repression. It wasn't—it +couldn't be true! Why hadn't she seen it was true before? Why must the +reflection have come at a moment like this, while he sat there, across +the table from her in a public room, laboriously apologizing?</p> + +<p>The formality of his phrases got stiffer and finally congealed into a +blank silence.</p> + +<p>Finally she said, with a gasp: "I have something to ask you to—forgive +me for. That's for leaving you to find out—where I was, the way you +did. You see, I thought at first that no one would know me, made up and +all. And when I found out I would be recognizable, it was too late to +stop—or at least it seemed so. Besides, I thought you knew. I saw Jimmy +Wallace out there the opening night, and saw he recognized me, and—I +thought he'd tell you. And then I kept seeing other people out in front +after that, people we knew, who'd come to see for themselves, and I +thought, of course, you knew. And—I suppose I was a coward—I waited +for you to come. I wasn't, as you thought, trying to hurt you. But I can +see how it must have looked like that."</p> + +<p>He said quickly: "You're not to blame at all. I remember how you offered +to tell me what you intended to do before you went away, and that I +wouldn't let you."</p> + +<p>Silence froze down on them again.</p> + +<p>"I can't forgive myself," he said at last, "for having driven you +out—as I'm sure I did—from your position in the Chicago company. I +went back to the theater to try and find you, three days after—after +that night, but you were gone. I've been trying to find you ever since. +I've wanted to take back the things I said that night—about being +disgraced and all. I was angry over not having known when the other +people did. It wasn't your being on the stage. We're not so bigoted as +that.</p> + +<p>"I've come to ask a favor of you, though, and that is that you'll let +me—let us all, help you. I can't—bear having you live like this, +knocking about like this, where all sorts of things can happen to you. +And going under an assumed name. I've no right to ask a favor, I know, +but I do. I ask you to take your own name again, Rose Aldrich. And I +want you to let us help you to get a better position than this; that is, +if you haven't changed your mind about being on the stage; a position +that will have more hope and promise in it. I want you to feel that +we're—with you."</p> + +<p>"Who are 'we'?" She accompanied that question with a straight look into +his eyes; the first since they had sat down across this table.</p> + +<p>"Why," he said, "the only two people I've talked with about +it—Frederica and Harriet. I thought you'd be glad to know that they +felt as I did."</p> + +<p>The first flash of genuine feeling she had shown, was the one that broke +through on her repetition of the name "Harriet!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, and he had, for about ten seconds, the misguided sense +of dialectical triumph. "I know a little how you feel toward her, and +maybe she's justified it. But not in this case. Because it was Harriet +who made me see that there wasn't anything—disgraceful about your going +on the stage. It was her own idea that you ought to use your own name +and give us a chance to help you. She'll be only too glad to help. And +she knows some people in New York who have influence in such matters."</p> + +<p>During the short while she let elapse before she spoke, his confidence +in the conviction-carrying power of this statement ebbed somewhat, +though he hadn't seen yet what was wrong with it.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said at last, "I think I can see Harriet's view of it. As +long as Rose had run away and joined a fifth-rate musical comedy in +order to be on the stage, and as long as everybody knew it, the only +thing to do was to get her into something respectable so that you could +all pretend you liked it. It was all pretty shabby, of course, for the +Aldriches, and in a way, what you deserved for marrying a person like +that. Still, that was no reason for not putting the best face on it you +could.—And that's why you came to find me!"</p> + +<p>"No, it isn't," he said furiously. His elaborately assumed manner had +broken down, anyway. "I came because I couldn't help coming. I've been +sick—sick ever since that night over the way you were living, over the +sort of life I'd—driven you to. I've felt I couldn't stand it. I wanted +you to know that I'd assent to anything, any sort of terms that you +wanted to make that didn't involve—this. If it's the stage, all +right.—Or if you'd come home—to the babies. I wouldn't ask anything +for myself. You could be as independent of me as you are here...."</p> + +<p>He'd have gone on elaborating this program rather further but the look +of blank incredulity in her face stopped him.</p> + +<p>"I say things wrong," he concluded with a sudden humility that quenched +the spark of anger in her eyes. "I was a fool to quote Harriet, and I +haven't done much better in speaking for myself. I can't make you see."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I can see plainly enough, Roddy," she said, with a tired little +grimace that was a sorry reminder of her old smile. "I guess I see too +well. I'm sorry to have hurt you and made you miserable. I knew I was +going to do that, of course, when I went away, but I hoped that after a +while, you'd come to see my side of it. You can't at all. You couldn't +believe that I was happy in that little room up on Clark Street; that I +thought I was doing something worth doing; something that was making me +more nearly a person you could respect and be friends with. And, from +what you've said just now, it seems as if you couldn't believe even that +I was a person with any decent <i>self</i>-respect. The notion that I could +blackmail your family into lending me their name and social position to +get me a better job on the stage than I could earn! Or the notion that I +could come back to your house and pretend to be your wife without even +...!"</p> + +<p>The old possibility of frank talk between them was gone. She couldn't +complete the sentence.</p> + +<p>"So I guess," she concluded after a silence, "that the only thing for +you to do is to go home and forget about me as well as you can and be as +little miserable about me as possible. I'll tell you this, that may make +it a little easier: you're not to think of me as starving or miserable, +or even uncomfortable for want of money. I'm earning plenty to live on, +and I've got over two hundred dollars in the bank. So, on that score at +least, you needn't worry."</p> + +<p>There was a long silence while he sat there twisting the newspaper in +his hands, his eyes downcast, his face dull with the look of defeat that +had settled over it.</p> + +<p>In the security of his averted gaze, she took a long look at him. Then, +with a wrench, she looked away.</p> + +<p>"You will let me go now, won't you?" she asked. "This is—hard for us +both, and it isn't getting us anywhere. And—and I've got to ask you not +to come back. Because it's impossible, I guess, for you to see the thing +my way. You've done your best to, I can see that."</p> + +<p>He got up out of his chair, heavily, tiredly; put on his raincoat and +stood, for a moment, crumpling his soft hat in his hands, looking down +at her. She hadn't risen. She'd gone limp all at once, and was leaning +over the table.</p> + +<p>"Good-by," he said at last.</p> + +<p>She said, "Good-by, Roddy," and watched him walking across the lobby and +out into the rain. He'd left his newspaper. She took it, gripped it in +both hands, just as he'd done, then, with an effort, got up and mounted +the stairs to her room. Dolly, fortunately, had gone out.</p> + +<p>The violent struggle she had had to make during the last few moments in +her effort to retain her self-control, had pretty well exhausted her. +Only, had it been self-control, after all? That question shook her. Had +she meant to be merciless to him like that; to send him away utterly +discouraged in his sad humility, when the touch of an outreached hand +would have changed the whole face of the world for him? Had she really +been as noble as she felt while she was defending the impregnable +righteousness of her position and so completely demolishing his?</p> + +<p>She remembered a day when he had been beaten in a law-suit, and she had +waited for him to come to her in his discouragement for help and +comfort. It was thus he had come to her to-day. How helpless he was! +What a boy he was!</p> + +<p>Her memory flashed back over their not quite two years of life together +and she realized that he had always been like that whenever his emotions +toward her came into play. All his finely trained, formidable +intelligence had always deserted him here. She remembered his having +told her, the night he'd turned her out of his office, that his mind had +to run cold. She hadn't really known what he meant. She saw now that her +own mind didn't run cold, that it never really aroused itself except +under the spur of strong emotion. So that just where he was most +helpless, she was at her strongest. A victory over him in those +circumstances, was about as much to feel triumphant over as one over a +small child would be.</p> + +<p>She realized now, more fully than before, what a crucifixion of his +boyish pride it must have been to see her on the stage. It was no answer +to say that with his intellectual concept of the ideal relations between +men and women, he shouldn't have felt like that. Shouldn't have felt! +The phrase was self-contradictory. Feelings weren't decorative +abstractions which you selected according to your best moral and +esthetic judgment out of an unlimited stock, and ordered wrapped and +sent home. They were things that happened to you. In this case, two +violently opposed feelings of terrible intensity had happened to him at +once; had torn each other, and, in their struggle, had torn him. +Justified or not, it was her act in leaving him, that had turned those +feelings loose upon him. It was through her that he had suffered; that +was plain enough. It must have been terribly plain to him.</p> + +<p>And yet, despite the suffering she had caused him, he had crucified his +pride again and come to find her; not with reproaches, with utter +contrition and humility. The measures he'd suggested for easing their +strained situation were, to be sure, maddeningly beside the mark. The +fact that he'd offered them betrayed his complete failure to understand +the situation. But it had cost him, evidently, as much pain to work them +out and bring them to her, as if they had been the real solvents he took +them for. And she had contemptuously torn them to shreds, and sent him +away feeling like an unpardoned criminal. She hadn't drawn the sting +from one of the barbs she'd planted in him, in her anger, before he'd +left her in that North Clark Street room.</p> + +<p>She didn't blame herself for the anger, nor for the panic of revulsion +that had excited it. That was a feeling that had happened to her. What +she did blame herself for was that, seeing them both now, as the victims +of a regrettable accident (did she really regret it? Were it in her +power to obliterate the memory of it altogether, as a child with a wet +sponge can obliterate a misspelled word from a slate, would she do it? +She dismissed that question unanswered.), she had allowed him to go away +with his burden of guilt unlightened. She had done that, she told +herself, out of sheer cowardice. She had been afraid of impairing the +luster of her virtuously superior position.</p> + +<p>Yet now, she protested, she was being as unfair to herself as she had +been to him. What sort of situation would they have found themselves in, +had she confessed her true new feelings about the love-storm that had +swept over them, that night of the February gale? What good would +protestations of love and sympathy for him do, if she had to go on +denying him the tangible evidence and guarantee of these feelings?</p> + +<p>She must deny them. Could she go home to him now, a repentant prodigal? +Or even if, after hearing her story, he denied she was a prodigal; +professed to see in it a reason for taking her fully into his life as +his friend and partner? They might have a wonderful week together, +living up to their new standard, professing all sorts of new +understandings. But the thing wasn't to be for a week. It was for the +rest of their lives. She'd never be able to feel that, in the bottom of +his heart, he wasn't ashamed of her, as his world would say he ought to +be. What satisfying guarantee could he ever give her that he wasn't +ashamed? She couldn't think of any.</p> + +<p>Oh, it was all hopeless! It didn't matter what you did. You didn't do +things, anyway. They got done for you—and to you, by a blind force that +masqueraded as your own will. The things she and Rodney had been saying +to each other hadn't been the things they'd wanted to say. They'd been +things wrung out between the rollers of a situation they hadn't produced +and couldn't control.</p> + +<p>What were they, the pair of them, but chips floating down the current; +thrown together by one casual eddy, and parted by another! Half an hour +ago, longing for each other unspeakably, they had been within hand's +reach. Now, thanks to a few meaningless words, arguments, ideas—what +was the good of ideas and words? Why couldn't they be like +animals?—they were parted and she was clutching as a sole tangible +memento of him, a rolled-up newspaper that she loved because she'd seen +his strong lean hands gripping it.</p> + +<p>She unrolled it and pressed it against her face, then laid it on her +knee and smoothed out its rumpled folds and stroked it.</p> + +<p>When Dolly came in a half-hour later, or so, to put on her other suit +preparatory to the matinée, Rose opened up the paper and pretended to +read. She was glad of the protection of it. As she felt just now, she +didn't think she could stand Dolly's chatter without the intervention of +some excuse for monosyllabic replies. She didn't notice that Dolly +wasn't chattering. Mechanically she read the head-lines: <i>Mortimore +Banks Crash</i>! She knew who Mortimore was. Once a powerful boss, now a +discredited politician. He'd owned a whole string of banks, it +appeared—along with the hitherto unheard of Milligan—whose solvency +seemed to have evaporated along with the decay of his prestige.</p> + +<p>She read without interest, but just because it was printed in +black-faced type, a list of the banks in Chicago that the examiner had +closed. But presently she turned back with a look a little more +thoughtful, and read it again. The names of banks were so absurdly alike +one never could tell. Presently she went over to her suit-case, rummaged +in it, and produced a little bank-book. Then she dropped the book and +the newspaper together into her bag and shut it.</p> + +<p>She smiled a little cynically. Would she have refused Rodney's offer of +help, she wondered, if she had known an hour ago, that the two hundred +dollars she'd relied on so confidently to pull her out of this rut and +give her a fresh start whenever she was ready to attempt it, were gone +into the pockets of that fat-faced politician?</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XVII_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XVII</h3> + +<h3>THE END OF THE TOUR</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>From Dubuque the company made a circuit northward into Wisconsin and +Minnesota, swung around a loop and worked their way south again. +Disaster stalked behind them all the way, casting its lengthening shadow +before for them to walk in. On the very first salary day after Rodney's +newspaper had informed Rose of her true financial situation, the manager +doled out a little money on account to the more exigent members of the +company, and remunerated the others with thanks, a nervous smile, and +the rock-ribbed assurance that they'd get it all next week. The long +jump they'd just taken, and a couple of bad houses (they were all bad, +but the two he spoke of couldn't be called audiences at all, except by +courtesy) had caused a temporary stringency.</p> + +<p>Rose saw what the more experienced members of the company were doing, +and knew that she ought to follow their example; keep after the manager +for her money, hound him, appeal to him, invent fictitious needs, and +then not spend a cent except what was absolutely wrung out of her by +necessity, so that when the crash came, she wouldn't be left penniless. +But she lacked the energy to do it. She was going through a passing +phase of that same melancholy acquiescence in the decrees of Fate, which +had been Olga Larson's permanent characteristic until Rose's own fire +and a turn in the tide of fortune had roused her.</p> + +<p>One little sequence of events springing directly from Rodney's visit to +Dubuque, contributed largely to this result. The principal actor in it +was Dolly.</p> + +<p>Dolly's manner toward her had altered that very morning in Dubuque, +though Rose, in her preoccupation, didn't mark the change for a day or +two afterward. Then she saw that her frail little roommate had stopped +chattering; that she no longer made nervous little excuses for leaving +her, nor invented transparent little fibs to account for absences. She +became, in her absurdly ineffectual little way, surly and defiant. She +took to going about openly with her chorus-man, sharing his seat with +him on the train, letting him carry her bag for her on the way to the +hotel; and her manner toward Rose, when any of these manifestations fell +beneath her eye, was one of uneasy challenge. Let Rose just try to +remonstrate with her if she dared! She no longer came back to the hotel +with Rose after the performances, took to turning up at their room at +hours that grew steadily later and more outrageous, and while at first +she stole in very quietly, undressed in the dark and tried to creep into +bed without awakening her, she grew rapidly more brazen about it; turned +on the light and undressed before the mirror, talked elaborately about +nothing and laughed her high nervous little laugh without occasion.</p> + +<p>It was not a lack of daring that kept Rose from asking the questions +that were so patently waiting to be answered, or from making the +remonstrances that Dolly's behavior so definitely invited. She knew she +ought to stir herself up and do something. She had assumed, she knew, a +measure of moral responsibility for the fluffy helpless little thing she +had conquered so easily at first and taken for her chum. Of course +remonstrances, moral lectures, scoldings, wouldn't accomplish anything. +What the situation called for was a second conquest; a reassertion of +her moral dominance over the girl. She would have to reconstruct the +relation which, since the first week of their tour, she had, in her +apathy, allowed to lapse. But that apathy had become too strong to +break. She couldn't rouse herself from it. And, failing that, she kept +silent; let Dolly go her ways.</p> + +<p>But a fortnight after Dubuque, an incident occurred that even her +acquiescent passivity couldn't ignore. There came a fine bright +afternoon with no matinée and no washing or mending that needed to be +done, when she suggested to Dolly that they go out for a good walk. +Dolly didn't assent to the proposal, though the suggestion seemed to +interest her.</p> + +<p>"Where is there to walk to?" she asked. "These towns are all alike."</p> + +<p>"I don't mean just a stroll around the town," Rose said. "Look here! +I'll show you." She pointed from the window. "Across that bridge (they +were playing one of the Mississippi River towns) and up to the top of +that hill on the other side."</p> + +<p>"Gee!" said Dolly. "That's miles."</p> + +<p>"Do you good," said Rose.</p> + +<p>"Are you going there anyway?" asked Dolly.</p> + +<p>Rose nodded. "You'd better come along," she said. By turning on her full +powers of persuasion, she might, she felt, have pulled Dolly along with +her; swept her off and begun the reconquest she knew she ought to make. +But somehow her will failed her. Dolly could come if she liked.</p> + +<p>Dolly didn't refuse very decisively, but she watched Rose's preparations +for departure without making any of her own. It wasn't until Rose, at +the door, turned back to renew the invitation for the last time, that +she said impatiently: "Oh, go along! I'll take a nap, I guess."</p> + +<p>So Rose set out by herself.</p> + +<p>The day proved colder than it looked; a fact that Rose tried to correct +by walking more briskly. But when she got out on the bridge where the +sharp wind got a full sweep at her, she saw it wasn't going to do. She'd +be chilled to the bones long before she reached that hill and it would +be colder coming back. She must go back for her ulster.</p> + +<p>Fifteen minutes later, she tried the door of her room and found it +locked. There was a moment of dead silence. But the realization that it +hadn't been quite so silent the moment before, caused her to knock +again. Then she heard the creak of the bed and the thud of Dolly's +unshod feet on the floor, and then her steps coming toward the door.</p> + +<p>"W—what—what is it?" Rose heard her ask.</p> + +<p>"Let me in," said Rose. "Sorry I disturbed your nap, but I had to come +back for my ulster."</p> + +<p>Dolly was standing just at the other side of the door, she knew, but +there was no sound of drawing the bolt. Only a long silence and then a +sob.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter?" Rose demanded. "Let me in."</p> + +<p>"You <i>can't</i> come in!" said Dolly, and panic couldn't have spoken +plainer than in her voice. "Oh, go away! What did you come back for? You +said you were going to be gone hours. Go away!"</p> + +<p>Out of a frozen throat Rose answered:</p> + +<p>"All right. I'll go away." The situation was too miserably clear.</p> + +<p>She went down to the lobby and a sudden giddiness caused her to drop +down into the first chair she saw. She sat there for an hour, then went +to the desk and told the clerk she wanted a room for that night by +herself. She'd pay the extra price of it now.</p> + +<p>The clerk took the money and selected a key from the rack. The look he +saw in Rose's face silenced any comment, jocular or otherwise, that he +might have made.</p> + +<p>Rose went to her new room, took off her hat and jacket, and washed her +face. When she heard the supper bell ringing down-stairs, she went back +to her old room and knocked.</p> + +<p>"Come in," said Dolly, and Rose entering, found her standing at the +window looking out.</p> + +<p>She had tried, while she sat down there in the lobby, and later in her +own room, to think out what she'd say to Dolly when they next met. She +hadn't been able to think of anything to say. She could think of nothing +now. So, in silence, she began putting her smaller belongings into her +half unpacked suit-case and laying the clothes that hung in the closet +across a chair.</p> + +<p>"So you're going to walk out on me are you?" said Dolly. Rose was aware +that she'd been watching these proceedings.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to have a room by myself for to-night," said Rose.</p> + +<p>Dolly amazed her by flying into a sudden rage.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you!" she said. "You make me sick. You're a hypocrite, that's what +you are. Pretending to be so haughty and innocent, and then come spying +back here, on purpose, and acting so shocked! You don't think I'm fit to +live with, do you. Just because I've got a friend. You thought you was +fit to live with me, all right, when you had two of them and wasn't +straight with either."</p> + +<p>Rose straightened up and looked at her. "What do you mean?" she +demanded.</p> + +<p>"That's right, go on with the bluff," said Dolly furiously. "But you +can't bluff me. Larson put me wise to you that day in Dubuque, when that +big guy—'Rodney'—came up to see you. He was one of them, and the +fellow who put on the show in Chicago—what's his name?—Galbraith, was +the other. You tried to play them both and got left."</p> + +<p>"That's what Olga Larson told you?" asked Rose.</p> + +<p>"You bet it's what she told me," said Dolly. "It's about half what she +told me. And now you try to pull your high-and-mighty airs on me, just +because Charlie and I are in love and ain't married yet. We're going to +be. We're going into vaudeville as soon as this tour ends. He says the +managers don't object to vaudeville teams being married. But we've got +to wait till then, because theatrical managers won't have it. And yet +you're walking out on me because you're too superior...."</p> + +<p>"I don't feel superior," said Rose. "I'm sorry, that's all."</p> + +<p>"Yes, you hypocrite!" said Dolly. "Go on and walk out on me. I'm glad of +it."</p> + +<p>Rose picked up her suit-case and the heap of clothes and left the room +without another word.</p> + +<p>She tried to be more astonished and indignant over Olga Larson's part in +this affair than she really felt. It seemed so horribly cynical not to +be surprised. But it was not cynicism; just an unconscious understanding +of the fundamental processes of Olga's mind.</p> + +<p>There was no malice in the story she had told Dolly, just after the two +of them, looking through the Moorish archway in the hotel there in +Dubuque, had seen Rose and Rodney deep in confidential talk. Olga had +shown surprise and then, elaborately, tried to conceal it. She knew the +man, all right, but hadn't expected him to follow Dane out here. Dolly +told her about the note, and Olga's jealousy, which had been smoldering +ever since the tour began, flared up again. Even in the days of their +closest friendship—this was the way it looked to her distorted +vision—Rose had never been frank with her. She had never mentioned a +man named Rodney, nor even shown her a photograph. The only person Olga +had known to be jealous of, was Galbraith. Her unacknowledged reason for +inventing the calumny she recited so glibly for Dolly, was the hope that +Dolly would go straight to Rose with it.</p> + +<p>That couldn't fail, she thought, to break down Rose's attitude of icy +indifference and precipitate a quarrel; and a quarrel was what she +wanted. Because quarrels led to reconciliations. She wanted Rose to be +angry with her and then forgive her, although the latter part of her +hope was quite unconscious.</p> + +<p>As I say, Rose understood. She didn't work the thing out in detail; +didn't want to. But she knew that if she sought Olga out and demanded an +explanation of the detestable things she'd said about her, the scene +would terminate in a torrent of self-reproach from Olga, protestations +of undying love, fondlings ...</p> + +<p>So Rose shuddered and said nothing. The only thing to do about the whole +unspeakable business was, as far as possible, to disregard it.</p> + +<p>It wasn't possible to disregard it utterly, because the story was +evidently spread. She became conscious of a touch of contemptuous +hostility on the part of everybody. Not on account of her moral +derelictions, but because of her hypocrisy in pretending to a set of +standards of breeding and behavior superior to those held by the rest of +them.</p> + +<p>Altogether it made complete and irresistible, a whole-souled loathing of +the life. Her attempt to find a way to a career along this filthy +stage-door alley must be confessed a total failure. She could never, she +knew, nerve herself to look for another job in a musical-comedy chorus.</p> + +<p>At the next overnight stop they made, Dolly went in to room with the +duchess, and the duchess' former roommate, a fattish blonde girl with a +permanent cold in the head, came in with her.</p> + +<p>Somehow the days dragged along until the pursuing and long visible +disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is +not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer +than the one it boasts). They played a matinée here and an evening +performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them the <i>coup de +grace</i>.</p> + +<p>There was no call posted on the bulletin board that night, and the next +day, after a brisk exchange of telegrams with Chicago, the manager +called the company together in one of the sample-rooms of the hotel and +announced that the tour was off. He also announced, with a magnanimity +that put far into the background the fact that he owed them all at least +two weeks' salary, that everybody in the company would be provided with +a first-class ticket for Chicago. There was nothing, except his +scrupulous sense of honor, he managed to imply without saying it in so +many words, to prevent his going off to Chicago all by himself and +leaving them stranded here. But, though this might be good business, he +was incapable of it. If they would all come down to the station at +eleven o'clock, and sign a receipt discharging him from further +obligations, he would see that their transportation was arranged for.</p> + +<p>It was just after this that Rose caught a glimpse of Dolly shivering in +a corner, weeping into a soiled pocket-handkerchief. The fat girl with a +cold supplied her with the explanation.</p> + +<p>Dolly's chorus-man, it seemed, had already departed on an earlier train +to St. Louis, where he lived, without taking any leave of her at all.</p> + +<p>Rose wanted to go over and try to comfort the child, but somehow she +couldn't manage to. Sentimentalizing over her grief and disillusionment +wouldn't do any good. The grief probably wasn't more than an inch deep +anyway, and the illusions had been too tawdry to regret. As for doing +anything, what was there one could do?</p> + +<p>There wasn't much that Rose could do at any rate. Because after weeks of +drifting, she'd come to a resolution.</p> + +<p>She didn't go to the railway station to sign her receipt and get her +ticket to Chicago. What was there in Chicago for her? She meant to stay, +for the present, at any rate, in Centropolis. She checked her suit-case +in the coat-room and, with a sensation of relief, watched the mournful +company file away.</p> + +<p>She had three dollars and some small change, and the day before her.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII_3"></a><h3>CHAPTER XVIII</h3> + +<h3>THE CONQUEST OF CENTROPOLIS</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Centropolis wasn't a very big town, but it had a wide, well paved street +lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round +hills that had neat and fairly prosperous-looking houses scattered over +them. A rather dignified old court-house among the big trees of the +Square proclaimed the place a county seat. It was a warm April day; the +grass was green and the little leaves already were bursting out on the +shrubbery.</p> + +<p>Rose's idea was to stroll about a little and get her bearings first, and +then go into one store after another on Main Street until she should +find a job. She had no serious misgiving that she wouldn't get one +eventually; before night, this was to say.</p> + +<p>Her confidence sprang from two sources: one, that though inexperienced +she knew she was intelligent, willing and attractive. People, she found, +were apt to be disposed in her favor. The other source of her confidence +was that she wasn't looking for much. She would take, for the present, +anything that offered. Because any sort of work, even menial work, would +be a relief after that nightmare tour. The weeks since she had left +Chicago, especially the last two or three of them, seemed unreal, and +the incidents of them as if they couldn't have happened. Anything that +didn't involve associations with that detestable company, and the +unspeakable piece they had played, would seem—well, almost heavenly. If +she couldn't get a job in a store, she'd go and be a waitress at the +hotel. She could make a pretty good waitress, she thought.</p> + +<p>But her confidence was short-lived. She cut short her ramble about the +streets because of the stares she attracted, and the remarks about +herself that she couldn't ignore. Young men shouted at each other +directing attention to her with a brutality of epithet that brought the +blood to her cheeks. During all the time she had had that room on Clark +Street in Chicago, through their rehearsals and that month of +performances, she'd gone alone about the streets at all sort of hours, +both in the theatrical part of the loop and in the district where she +lived, without any molestation whatever. The small towns that she had +visited with the company had been different of course. She'd been stared +at in the streets and not infrequently addressed. She'd forgiven that +because she was a member of the company. It was natural enough for +people to stare at a girl they'd paid to see on the stage the night +before, or were going to see to-night.</p> + +<p>Now she discovered that the company had been an immense protection to +her; had accounted for her, caused her to be taken, to a certain extent, +for granted. The wild beast that comes to town with the circus, though +an object of legitimate curiosity, does not excite the hostile and +fearful speculation that he would if he were left behind after the +circus had gone.</p> + +<p>People got together in groups and nodded at her, pointed at her. A few +of them leered, but more of them scowled. There seemed to be a sense of +outrage that she hadn't left the town when the rest did.</p> + +<p>There was a dry-goods store on the principal corner of the street, which +she'd selected as she walked along as the place to begin her quest. She +made a detour around two or three blocks in order to avoid retracing her +steps down Main Street and slipped into the door of this establishment +as unostentatiously as she could.</p> + +<p>She was saved inquiring for the proprietor by the conviction that the +rather dapper-looking gray-haired man who came blinking toward her in a +near-sighted way as she paused in the main aisle, was he. He had a good +deal of manner and was evidently proud of it. But he looked neither weak +nor foolish.</p> + +<p>"My name's Rose Stanton," she said as he came up. "I've come to see if I +can get employment in your store."</p> + +<p>His manner changed instantly. He came a step closer and stared at her +with a surprise he didn't try to conceal.</p> + +<p>"I haven't had any experience as a saleswoman," she went on, "and I know +there's a lot to learn. But I'd work hard and learn as fast as ..."</p> + +<p>"Excuse me," he said, "but aren't you a member of that theatrical +company that was here last night?"</p> + +<p>The intensity with which he was staring at her made her look away and +her eyes rested on a young man whose strong family likeness to the +proprietor identified him for her as his son; he had come up and was +waiting for a word with his father. At this question he stared at her +too.</p> + +<p>The older man whipped around on his son. "Clear out, Jim," he said +sharply. And then to Rose: "You haven't answered my question."</p> + +<p>"I was a member of that company," she said. "But ..."</p> + +<p>"We have no vacancy at present," he said sharply. "Good day."</p> + +<p>She flinched a little but stood her ground. "I said I wasn't experienced +as a saleswoman," she said, "but there are some things I know a good +deal about—clothes and hats...."</p> + +<p>He hadn't stayed to listen; had walked straight to the door and opened +it. Reluctantly she followed him.</p> + +<p>"There's no place," he said, "in this store, or I trust in the town +either, for young women of your sort. Good day!"</p> + +<p>Rose made five more applications for work on Main Street, all with the +same result. Some of those who refused her were panicky about it; one +threatened to have her put in jail. One looked knowing and after he had +expressed in jocular though emphatic terms, his sense of her +impossibility as a publicly acknowledged employee, intimated a desire to +prosecute a personal acquaintance with her further.</p> + +<p>She had left the first store incredulous rather than angry, under the +impression that she had encountered a chance fanatic. It seemed +impossible that anybody with a well-balanced mind, could treat her as if +she carried contamination, merely because she had earned a living for a +while in the chorus of a musical comedy. It was fortunate for her that +her first applications were met by anger, rude discourtesy, and openly +avowed suspicion, because this treatment roused in her, for the first +time in months, a strong surge of indignation. Her blood came up after +these encounters, nearer and nearer the boiling point. The man who +smiled at her like a satyr, was shriveled by the blaze of her blue eyes, +and was left, red-faced, blustering weakly after her.</p> + +<p>When she walked back to the hotel along Main Street the lassitude that +had so long held her half-paralyzed was gone. She was the old Rose +again; the Rose whom Galbraith would have recognized.</p> + +<p>She didn't know it. She was conscious of nothing but a hot determination +that had not, as yet, even expressed itself in terms. It was just a +newly kindled fire that warmed her shivering spirit; that made her +fearless; in a quite unreasoning way, confident.</p> + +<p>The only touch of self-conscious thought about her was a vague wonder at +her long submission. What had she been doing all that while, drifting +like that, letting herself be beaten like that, consenting to live amid +the shabby degradations of the life that had surrounded her ever since +the company had gone on the road? The sense of the unreality of those +past weeks grew stronger. She felt like a person just waking out of a +long troubled dream.</p> + +<p>She mode her way among the loungers in the lobby of the hotel, not +unmindful of their stares, but magnificently impervious to them; came up +to the desk and told the clerk she wanted to see the proprietor.</p> + +<p>"Nothing doing," said the clerk.</p> + +<p>Then as he got the straight look of her eyes, he amended his speech a +little.</p> + +<p>"It won't do you any good to see him," he said sulkily.</p> + +<p>"I'll see him, if you please," said Rose. "Will you have him called?"</p> + +<p>The clerk hesitated. Stranded "actresses" weren't in the habit of +talking like that. They always wanted to see the proprietor, they were +always on the point of receiving an ample remittance from some generally +distant place. They were often very queenly, incredibly outraged that +their solvency should be questioned. But their voices never had the cool +confident ring that this girl's voice had, nor the look in their eyes, +the purposeful thrust.</p> + +<p>He hesitated uncomfortably. Then his difficulty was solved for him.</p> + +<p>"There he goes now," he said. "You can talk to him if you like."</p> + +<p>The proprietor was sixty years old, perhaps; gray, stooped, stringy of +neck. He had a short-cropped mustache, one corner of which he was always +caressing with a protruding under-lip. He had a good shrewd pair of +eyes, not altogether unkindly. Rose had seen him before, but hadn't +known who he was.</p> + +<p>He was making, just now, for a little office he had, that opened into +the railed-off space behind the desk, and, by another door, into the +corridor. He had another man with him, but it was evident that their +business wasn't going to take long. The door into the corridor was left +open behind them, and there Rose waited. When the other man came out, +she stepped inside.</p> + +<p>There was nothing kindly about the look the proprietor's eyes directed +at her when he saw who she was. He looked up at her with a frown of +resignation.</p> + +<p>"So you didn't go to Chicago with the rest of the troupe?" he said. +"That's where you made a mistake, I guess."</p> + +<p>"I didn't want to go to Chicago," she said.</p> + +<p>"I suppose," he drawled ironically, "you've written or telegraphed to +some friends for money, and that it's surely coming, and that you want +to stay here in my hotel on credit till it does. Well, there's not a +chance in the world. The clerk could have told you that. I suppose he +did."</p> + +<p>"I haven't sent for money," said Rose. "There's no one I could send to. +I've got to earn it for myself and I thought there was as good a chance +to earn it here as in Chicago."</p> + +<p>"Well, by God!" said the proprietor. "You've got your nerve with you at +any rate. But I'll tell you, young woman, the town of Centropolis don't +take kindly to the efforts of young women of your sort to make a living +nor to the way they make it."</p> + +<p>"You're wrong," said Rose, dangerously quiet, "if you think I mean to +make a living in any other than a decent honest way. I have already +asked for work in five places on Main Street and I have been refused as +if I were the—sort of person you've just called me. I'm going to keep +on until I find somebody in this town who's clean enough minded to +recognize decency when he sees it. There are people like that, of +course, even in Centropolis. I didn't come in here to borrow money of +you, nor to ask for credit. I came to ask for a job as a waitress."</p> + +<p>The proprietor stared at her. "Well," he said, "you are a new one on +John Culver. I never got up against <i>your</i> game before."</p> + +<p>"I haven't any game," said Rose. "I've told you the exact truth."</p> + +<p>Culver twisted around uneasily in his chair and began biting +thoughtfully on the end of a lead-pencil.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said at last, "I'll take a chance. I'll tell you about a job +I think you can get. Only it won't do you any good to use my name. If +the man you go to comes to me, I can't tell him anything about you but +what I know. His name's Albert Zeider and he's got a picture house three +doors down the street. He's just put in a glass cage out in front, and +he wants a pretty girl to sit in it and sell tickets. He hasn't been +able to get anybody yet that filled the bill. So maybe he'd take a +chance on you. Only, mind, don't tell him I recommended you."</p> + +<p>"I won't," said Rose. "I won't go to him at all. I've walked the length +of Main Street and back this morning, and I won't sit in Mr. Zeider's +glass cage. I'll wash dishes or scrub floors, but I won't do that."</p> + +<p>The proprietor flung out his hands with the air of a man of whom nothing +more could be expected.</p> + +<p>"Well, then," he said, "if you won't take a decent job that's offered to +you ..."</p> + +<p>"It's not a decent job," said Rose. "Not for me; not for a girl who's +looked on in this town as I am. I want work! Don't you understand?" +Then, after a pause, "Won't you give it to me?"</p> + +<p>"Well, I should say not," said John Culver. "Look here! What's the use? +Suppose you are what you say ..."</p> + +<p>"You know I am," interrupted Rose.</p> + +<p>"Well, I say, suppose it's true. What's the use? Do you think any decent +store-keeper on Main Street would risk his reputation by giving a job to +a stranded actress that had come here with a rotten show like the one +you was with; or that I could have you in my dining-room? This is a +respectable hotel, I tell you."</p> + +<p>He broke off to wave his hand genially to a man who was walking slowly +by the door on his way down to the dining-room.</p> + +<p>"There!" he went on to Rose. "That's what I mean! That's Judge Granger +of the Supreme Court of this state. He's come here regularly for meals, +when he ain't in Springfield, for the last fifteen years. He's the +biggest man in this county. Do you suppose he'd stand for it, if I asked +him to give his order to a busted actress?"</p> + +<p>"Would you stand for it if he did?" demanded Rose. "If he told you that +I was all right and asked you to give me a job, would you do it?"</p> + +<p>The proprietor laughed impatiently. "What's the good of talking +nonsense?" he demanded. "Yes, I would, if that'll satisfy you. But you'd +better take the next train for Chicago. And if ..." He hesitated, +stroked his mustache again with his under-lip, and went on,—"Oh, I +suppose I'm a damned fool, but if a couple of dollars will help you +out ..."</p> + +<p>"No, thank you," said Rose. "I'm going to see the judge." And she cut +off John Culver's exclamation of protest by walking out of the office.</p> + +<p>Rose went back to the desk, told the clerk she wanted dinner, and +forestalled the objection she saw him preparing to make, by laying a +dollar bill on the counter. He even hesitated a little over that, but +he took it and gave her a quarter in change.</p> + +<p>"That'll be all right," he said, and she went the way the judge had +gone, down the corridor to the dining-room. A glance showed her where he +sat, and without waiting for the assistance of the head waitress, she +chose a chair near the door, facing it, and with her back to the judge.</p> + +<p>Those were rather audacious tactics. Seventy-five cents, in the present +state of her finances, was a good deal to squander on a meal. And the +fact that she was openly stalking the judge might lead John Culver to +give his honored patron a word of warning. But Rose didn't care. No +tactics but the simplest and most direct appealed to her. When the judge +finished his dinner, she would follow him to his office, wherever it +might be, walk in with him, and demand a hearing. If he were forewarned, +she would find some other way of getting access to him.</p> + +<p>But, whether the proprietor was really ignorant of her plan, or whether +the little scene with her in his office had shaken him so that he didn't +care to try conclusions with her again, the judge was left to his fate. +Rose followed him, unmolested, down the corridor and out into the +street, across the road and up a flight of outside steps, to the second +story of a brick building opposite.</p> + +<p>He was fitting his key into the lock when she came up. And though he +drew his eyebrows down into a frown as he looked at her, it seemed to be +rather in the effort to make out who she was, than from any feeling of +hostility. He asked her with a dry and rather affected judicial +courtesy, what he could do for her.</p> + +<p>"You can do me a service," said Rose, "that I don't think you will mind. +Will you let me come in for about a minute and tell you what it is?"</p> + +<p>His manner chilled a little, but his curt nod gave her permission to +precede him into his office.</p> + +<p>The outer room was bleak enough, furnished with three or four hard +chairs, a table and an old black walnut desk with a typewriter on it. +His secretary or stenographer was evidently still at dinner, because the +room was empty.</p> + +<p>The judge walked straight into an inner room and Rose followed him.</p> + +<p>It was a big, rather fine-looking room, or so it looked to Rose after +the places she had been seeing lately; evidently, from a beam across the +middle of the ceiling, cut out of two. There was a fireplace with a fire +in it, a big oak table and a number of easy chairs. There were two or +three good rugs on the floor, and the walls were completely lined with +books; the familiar buckram and leather-bound, red-labeled law-books +that gave her memory a pang.</p> + +<p>In these surroundings, the judge took on an added impressiveness, and he +was not an unimpressive-looking man. He was not large. Nose, mouth and +chin were small and rather fine, and he had the shape of head that is +described as a scholar's. One might not have remarked it in the hotel +dining-room, but in these surroundings, he looked altogether a judge.</p> + +<p>But the effect of this on Rose was only to heighten her confidence. She +hadn't used the dinner hour to think out what she'd say to him. She'd +been thinking of Rodney again. Somehow, just the rebirth of a sense of +power in her, had brought the image of him back. She was throbbing with +that sense now, and her thoughts of Rodney had given her an exhilarating +idea. This man that she was about to confront was one whom Rodney had +often confronted. It was before this man, on the bench of the Supreme +Court, up at Springfield, that Rodney had made uncounted arguments. She +would try to do as well as he did.</p> + +<p>The judge was staring at her in growing perplexity. Who in the world +could she be. What did she want? His very greatness in this little town +made him accessible. It was so unthinkable a thing that any one should +intrude upon his time frivolously. But this girl! She didn't belong in +the town. Hadn't he seen her about the hotel yesterday, with that shabby +theatrical troupe?</p> + +<p>"You will please be brief," he said. "My time is limited."</p> + +<p>"I'll be as brief as I can," said Rose.</p> + +<p>He sat down in his desk chair, but she did not avail herself of the +permission his half-hearted nod toward another chair accorded her; +remained standing across the table from him.</p> + +<p>"I came to Centropolis day before yesterday," said Rose, "with a +theatrical company that failed. They went away this morning unpaid, with +nothing but tickets to Chicago. I decided to stay here and try to get +work. I applied for it at five places on Main Street this morning, and +then went to Mr. Culver at the hotel. I asked him for a position as a +waitress."</p> + +<p>Already the judge was tapping his pencil.</p> + +<p>"This doesn't concern me in the least," he said. "I have no possible +employment for you. I can do nothing for you. Good day!"</p> + +<p>"Employment isn't what I want from you," said Rose. "I'll come to what I +do want in a minute."</p> + +<p>It is safe to say that the judge hadn't been caught up with a round turn +like that in years. He stared at her now in perfectly blank amazement.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Culver," she went on, "told me why I hadn't been successful. He +accused me of being the sort of person no decent employer would give +work to, of being a person of bad character. I convinced him, I think, +that I was not. Then he said that even though I were a perfectly honest, +decent woman, he wouldn't dare put me in his dining-room. He cited you +as the reason."</p> + +<p>At that the judge suddenly went purple.</p> + +<p>"Me!" he shouted.</p> + +<p>The tension of Rose's body relaxed a little. A smile flickered just +instantaneously over her mouth.</p> + +<p>"He used you as an example," she explained. "He said that you were the +most important person in the county; that your opinion counted for the +most. He said that you were a regular patron of his hotel, and that +you'd object seriously to giving your order, as he said, to a 'busted +actress.'"</p> + +<p>"That's perfectly unwarranted," fumed the judge. "Culver had no right to +use my name like that. It's outrageous!"</p> + +<p>"I hoped you'd feel that way," said Rose.</p> + +<p>The judge pounded on the desk. "That's not what I mean. He had no right +to drag me into it at all; into a miserable business like that."</p> + +<p>"It is a miserable business," Rose assented. "It's a thoroughly +contemptible business. But Mr. Culver didn't drag you into it +deliberately. You were passing the door as we stood talking, and he used +you for an illustration. But afterward he said that if you told him it +was all right to give me a job, he would do it. That's what I have come +up to ask you to do."</p> + +<p>"That," said the judge, setting his teeth and breathing hard, "is the +most monstrous piece of impudence I have ever heard of. On his part as +well as yours. What have I to do with John Culver's waitresses?"</p> + +<p>He wasn't expecting an answer to this question, but Rose had one ready +for him.</p> + +<p>"You've given him the idea, without meaning to most likely, that you +wouldn't tolerate a girl among them who'd been earning her living on the +stage. If that's just a stupid mistake of his, I'm asking you to tell +him so."</p> + +<p>"Well, I won't," said the judge. "The thing's preposterous. You're +asking me for what amounts to a guarantee. In the first place, I don't +know that you're not—after all—what you say you convinced Culver that +you were not."</p> + +<p>"I think you do," said Rose thoughtfully, with a steady look he angrily +turned away from. "I think you knew, without any reason at all, just +from your instinct and your experience in judging people. And if you +don't know it that way, I think you can prove it to yourself by common +sense. Do you think it likely that if a girl of my—appearance +and—manners, had a mind to practise the—profession you've talked +about, she would be here in Centropolis, fighting desperately like this, +going through humiliations like this, for a chance to be a waitress in +Mr. Culver's dining-room?"</p> + +<p>She stopped there and took a good deep breath and waited. There was a +solid minute of silence. The judge got up out of his chair and began +pacing the room with short impatient steps. He stopped with a jerk two +or three times, as if he were about to demolish her with speech, but +always gave up the attempt before a word was spoken.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I admit it's a hard case," he said at last. "You've apparently been +a victim of circumstance. The people down in this part of the country +are perhaps narrow. In the main it's a good sort of narrowness. It's +better than the broadness of your cities. But in an isolated case it may +work an injustice." Then he wheeled on her. "But I can't do anything for +you. Can't you see that I can't do anything for you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't see," said Rose, "why you can't do what I ask."</p> + +<p>"Have it known," shouted the judge, "in this town and all over the +county, and all over the Supreme Court district, as it would be in +another week, that I had gone to John Culver and got a job in his +hotel—the hotel where I go myself, three times a day—for a girl who +got left behind by a stranded comic-opera company? Now can't you see? +I'm coming up for re-election in two years."</p> + +<p>Rose drew in a long sigh and for a moment drooped a little.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I see," she said with a rueful little smile. They were afraid of +him, and he was afraid of them.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry about it," said the judge. "If there's anything else I can +do ..." He put his hand tentatively in his pocket.</p> + +<p>"No," Rose said, "that isn't what I want. Mr. Culver offered me two +dollars to go away. I suppose you might offer me ten. But I'm not going. +There is somebody in this town who isn't afraid of anybody, if I can +only find out who that somebody is."</p> + +<p>For a moment the judge looked annoyed; tried to collect his scattered +dignity. But presently a twinkle lighted up in his eye. Then he smiled. +"You might try Miss Gibbons," he said.</p> + +<p>"Who is she?" Rose asked.</p> + +<p>By now the judge was smiling broadly. Apparently there was something +exquisitely humorous in the notion of an encounter between Rose and this +lady he'd mentioned.</p> + +<p>"She's lived," he said, "and practised gossip and millinery, for the +last thirty years, up over the drug-store on the next corner. It's quite +true that there's nobody in this tier of counties that she's afraid of. +But I don't recommend her seriously. You will get small comfort out of +her."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Rose, "we'll see."</p> + +<p>She walked straight from the judge's office to the stairs beside the +drug-store on the next corner, which led up to Miss Gibbons' atelier. +She walked fast, conserving as a precious thing that might ebb away from +her, the warm feeling of indignant contempt her talk with the judge had +inspired her with. He was the biggest man in this part of the state, was +he! Why, he was a hollow man! A fabric of lath and plaster with no +structural pillars inside! Well, if the rest of the town was afraid of +him, she certainly wasn't afraid of the rest of the town.</p> + +<p>She hadn't any thought of conciliating Miss Gibbons, of asking Miss +Gibbons to give her a chance. She was going to give Miss Gibbons a +chance to prove whether she was lath and plaster like the judge, or a +real person with something besides her façade to hold her up.</p> + +<p>So it wasn't at all in the manner of a disheartened applicant for work +that she pushed open the glass door with <i>"Gibbons. Modes</i>." painted on +it, and stepped inside.</p> + +<p>A bell had rung somewhere in the distance as she opened the door, and +there was no one in the room as she entered it. But she hadn't much time +to look around—only long enough to get the impression that the place +was somehow overflowing with hats—when another door opened, and a thin, +gray-haired, tight little woman (she had a tight dress and tight hair, +and her joints, when she moved, seemed to be tight, too) confronted her. +She was unmistakably Miss Gibbons and in that first glance, Rose liked +her. Her features were rather too big for her small face—a big nose not +finely made, a wide thin-lipped mouth, and a long chin—and her eyes, +looking very straight out through gold-rimmed spectacles, had a +penetrating brightness about them that was a little formidable. It was +not what one would call a good-natured face. But good-natured +sentimentality was the last thing Rose was looking for.</p> + +<p>"What can I do for you?" she asked. Her voice was as tight and brisk as +the rest of her.</p> + +<p>"I'm looking for a job," said Rose.</p> + +<p>Miss Gibbons came a step closer and her bright look pierced a little +more deeply.</p> + +<p>"So!" she said. "You're the actress, are you?"</p> + +<p>Rose smiled at that. "I'm not a real actress," she said, "but I'm who +you mean. I was a chorus-girl with that company that broke down here."</p> + +<p>"Why didn't you go away when the rest of them did?" the milliner +demanded.</p> + +<p>"I decided I didn't want to go on being a chorus-girl," said Rose, "and +I thought there was as good a chance of getting other work here as in +Chicago."</p> + +<p>"That was a sort of fool idea, I guess, wasn't it?" Miss Gibbons +suggested.</p> + +<p>"It seems so, up to now," said Rose. "I spent the morning on Main Street +without having any luck. I went to five places ..."</p> + +<p>"Five?" questioned Miss Gibbons. "I knew about Arthur Perkins and Sim +Laidlaw and Tabby Parkes. Who were the other two?"</p> + +<p>Rose couldn't enlighten her. She'd forgotten their names.</p> + +<p>"I've had work offered to me," she went on, "or at least suggested. Mr. +Culver at the hotel told me of a moving-picture place ..."</p> + +<p>"Where you could sit in that glass cage of Al Zeider's and sell +tickets?" Miss Gibbons broke in. "Why didn't you take it?"</p> + +<p>"I told Mr. Culver," said Rose, "that I'd already walked the length of +Main Street and back, and that was enough for me."</p> + +<p>"How did John Culver happen to say anything about that? How come it you +were talking to him?"</p> + +<p>"I'd asked him to hire me as a waitress," said Rose.</p> + +<p>"And I reckon," said Miss Gibbons, "that he told you he kept a +respectable hotel. He may have put some frills on it, but that's close +enough to go on, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Rose nodded. In her relief at finding her situation so well understood, +she was turning a little limp.</p> + +<p>"Why did you come to me?" Miss Gibbons demanded. "He never would have +thought of sending you here."</p> + +<p>Rose braced up once more and told about her conversation with Judge +Granger.</p> + +<p>This time the milliner heard her through.</p> + +<p>"And so the judge sent you to me," she said, when Rose had finished. "I +suppose that was his fool idea of being funny. He thought it was a +chance to get me poison mad."</p> + +<p>Rose nodded a little wearily.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "I suppose that was it."</p> + +<p>The milliner shot out a sharp glance at her. "Sit down," she said +bruskly, and nodded to a chair.</p> + +<p>Rose didn't much want to. Her instinct was to stay on her feet until +she'd won her battle, and her fatigue only heightened it. But Miss +Gibbons had given her an order rather than an invitation, and she obeyed +it.</p> + +<p>The older woman didn't sit down.</p> + +<p>"Harvey Granger," she said thoughtfully, "will never forgive me as long +as he lives, for not thinking he's a great man. That's just ridiculous, +of course, because I know Harve. Years ago, you see,—so long ago that +everybody's forgotten it—my father was the big man down in this part of +the state. He was a circuit judge, when circuit judges amounted to +something, and he was one of the best of them. But he was a fool about +money and he got mixed up in things—and died. I was twenty-five years +old then, and I took to hats.</p> + +<p>"Well, Harve Granger was my father's law-clerk before father was elected +judge. I used to see him night and morning. And, as I say, I know him +all the way through. He knows I know him, and that's what he can't get +over."</p> + +<p>There was a little silence when she finished; a silence Rose's instinct +told her not to break. Presently the little woman wheeled around on her.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said, "you came to me anyway, though you saw the judge +meant it for a joke. Why did you do that?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Rose. "I thought I would."</p> + +<p>"And you haven't told me yet," said Miss Gibbons, "that you're really +straight and respectable. What have you got to say about that?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing much," said Rose. "I am straight and respectable. But I suppose +a woman who wasn't would pretend to be. So you will have to decide about +that for yourself."</p> + +<p>"Hmph!" grunted Miss Gibbons. "I don't know why I asked a fool question +like that, unless it's because, like the rest of them, I live in +Centropolis. I know what you are, as well as you do yourself."</p> + +<p>The words were brusk, and the inflection of them not much gentler, but +they fell on Rose's heart like rain; like an unexpected warm little +shower out of a brazen sky. She caught her breath, and, to her +consternation, felt her eyes flushing up with tears. She hadn't realized +the tension she had been under, until it was relaxed. She gave a shaky +half-suppressed sob and then made a desperate effort to pull herself +together.</p> + +<p>"Now, look here!" said Miss Gibbons, in a tone harder and dryer than +ever. "I'm not going to take you in and pay you wages just because +you're a cat in a strange garret and don't know where to turn. I'm not +even going to do it to spite Harve Granger. But, if you've got any sort +of gumption about hats, I am going to do it, and the rest of this fool +town can say what it likes and do what it pleases. So the thing for you +to do is to quiet down sensibly and show me whether you can trim a hat."</p> + +<p>It took Rose a few minutes to carry out the first part of this +injunction. The rush of relief and gratitude and happiness shook her. +Given <i>carte blanche</i> to design a special angel from Heaven to come down +and give her just the comfort and encouragement she wanted, she couldn't +have imagined one so good as Miss Gibbons,—with those keen +straight-looking eyes that had observed her fellow citizens of +Centropolis for the last half-century or so, not in vain; with her +courageous common sense, and with that dry, cool, astringent manner, +which lay with a pleasant healing sting on the lacerations of Rose's +soul.</p> + +<p>For a while she just sat still and tried to get the catch out of her +breathing. At last, when she thought she could trust her voice not to +break absurdly, she smiled and said:</p> + +<p>"What sort of hat do you want me to trim? I mean, for what sort of +person?"</p> + +<p>"What sort of person!" echoed Miss Gibbons and gave Rose a rather keen +look. "Why," she said, after hesitating a moment, "there's a silly old +maid in this town. She ain't more than ten years younger than I am, but +her hair's stayed sort of fluffy and yellow, and she's kept part of her +looks, though not near as much of them as she thinks. She was a +beautiful girl at twenty, I'll say that for her. None of these girls now +compares with her. But she was a little too sure of herself and took too +long deciding among the young men of this town, until all at once, she +found that nobody wanted her. She's been trying ever since to show she +doesn't care; and she pesters the life out of me twice a year trying to +fit her out with a hat. I won't let her go around the streets looking +like a giddy young fool, and that's what she's determined to do. So, if +you can suit her <i>and</i> me, you will be doing pretty well."</p> + +<p>The description made a picture for Rose. She saw the faded pathetic +prettiness of the woman who'd looked too long and had been trying to +pretend for the last fifteen years or so that she didn't care. And the +picture in her mind's eye was surmounted by a hat; a hat that conceded +some of the years Miss Gibbons had insisted on, and that her client was +unwilling to acknowledge, and yet retained a sort of jauntiness.</p> + +<p>She didn't know whether she could execute the thing she saw or not, out +of the stock of materials at her disposal. But it hadn't cost her a +thought or an effort to see the hat.</p> + +<p>"All right," she said after a bit. "I'll see what I can do. If you'll +show me where the things are ..."</p> + +<p>It was a much humbler sort of job, of course, designing a hat for a +middle-aged village spinster, than making those dozen gowns for +Goldsmith and Block had been. But this consideration never occurred to +her. She found, and was not even amazed to find, the same thrill of +exhilaration in conquering the small problem, that she had found in the +larger one. She worked with the same swift unconscious economy of labor +and materials.</p> + +<p>At the end of two hours, she presented the result of her labors for the +milliner's approval.</p> + +<p>Miss Gibbons surveyed it with a smile of ironic appreciation.</p> + +<p>"It isn't what I'd call a real finished job," she commented after a +minute inspection of some of the details of Rose's sewing. "I wouldn't +trust it in a high wind not to scatter all the way from here to the +Presbyterian church. But it will certainly suit Agatha Stebbins."</p> + +<p>She looked at it a while longer. "And I don't know," she concluded a +little reluctantly, "as it'll look so all-mighty foolish on her, either. +Will ten dollars a week suit you to begin on?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Rose, "that will suit me very well indeed."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Miss Gibbons. "That's settled. There's one more thing +to settle now, and that's where you're going to live."</p> + +<p>Rose contemplated this question a little blankly for a moment.</p> + +<p>"Do you suppose," she said, "there's any place in this town where I +<i>can</i> live; where they'd take a person like me? Or would it be all +right, if you asked them?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I guess," said Miss Gibbons, "we could most likely find somebody. +I'll think about it."</p> + +<p>She gave Rose some work to do and didn't refer to the matter again till +nearly six o'clock.</p> + +<p>"I've been thinking," she said then, "that I've got room for a boarder +myself. There's a little room back here that I don't use; there's a +black girl does me out and cooks my dinner and supper, and I get my own +breakfast. The girl could cook for two as well as one, and I guess I +could feed you for two dollars a week. If that ain't satisfactory, you +can just say so."</p> + +<p>"Satisfactory!" said Rose, and once more her voice broke.</p> + +<p>"All right," said Miss Gibbons hastily, "we'll say no more about it. +That's settled. I'll send the girl to the hotel to get your bags."</p> + +<p>John Galbraith's letter asking Rose to report to him July first in New +York, reached her via Portia, during the last week in June, and made an +abrupt conclusion to her life at Centropolis.</p> + +<p>Those weeks with Miss Gibbons in the millinery parlor, when she looked +back on them afterward, set in as they were between that purgatorial +winter and the first breathless months while she was establishing +herself in New York, had a quality of happiness and peace, which she was +wont to describe as heavenly.</p> + +<p>She'd probably have taken to Miss Gibbons in any circumstance. But, +coming into her life just when she did, the little woman was the shadow +of a great rock to her. She was in a state, when she settled down in the +milliner's spare back room over the drug-store, where all the warmer +emotions seemed terrible to her. It was Rodney's love for her and hers +for him, that had bruised and lacerated her; that had made the winter +months a long torment, unmitigated during the last of them, by any form +of adequate self-expression. The two parodies on love which had been +thrust into her face just at the end, Olga Larson's inverted form of it +toward herself, and Dolly's shabby little romance, had given her an +absolute loathing for it. To her, in that condition, any expression of +friendship that was warm and soft, and in the least sentimental, would +have been almost unendurable to her. Miss Gibbons, in that acrid +antiseptic way of hers, simply washed her soul in cold water and clothed +it again in the garments of self-respect.</p> + +<p>Her manner to Rose, even as their friendship ripened and grew more +confident, never changed. Nor did the manner Rose adopted toward her. +Their endless talks resulted in a good deal of self-revelation, but this +was never direct. Miss Gibbons never again came as near to a +confidential account of her life, as she did on that first afternoon, +when she explained the thoroughness of her acquaintance with Judge +Granger. And Rose never explained how it had happened that she was left +at the mercy of the town of Centropolis by the failure of <i>The Girl +Up-stairs</i> company. But she poured out for her friend a wealth of +illustrative reminiscences, drawn from her childhood, her days at the +university, her life on the stage; and though she was a good deal more +reticent about it, she even touched on her married life with Rodney; at +least, on the collateral incidents of it.</p> + +<p>Miss Gibbons listened to all this with a hunger she didn't conceal, and +this eagerness gave Rose a pretty vivid picture of the inner life the +little woman had lived here in Centropolis.</p> + +<p>If she'd been born a boy instead of a girl, she'd probably have equaled, +or outstripped, Rose thought, her father's eminence. With her courage, +her vitality, her fine penetrating intelligence, she'd have managed to +win her way out of this stagnant little back-water of life. But, having +been born a girl, brought up helpless, as became the daughter of the +circuit judge, and then having had this support wrenched from under her +at the critical moment, there had been nothing for her but—hats.</p> + +<p>She'd never gone sour, at that; never, apparently, wasted any hours in +repining. She'd made, after a fashion, a career of hats; had risen on +them, to a position of acknowledged social consequence. There must have +been disquieting echoes in her, rhythms that answered to the pulsation +of an ampler life. She never could hope to get out into it, she +undoubtedly knew, but she took every opportunity she could get for a +glimpse at it. Rose's incursion into her life must have been a godsend +to her.</p> + +<p>She probably pieced together a pretty good picture of Rose, too. But she +did this piecing in silence and kept her surmises to herself.</p> + +<p>In a material way, her adoption of Rose was an immense success. +Centropolis, when it learned the news, was thunder-struck. For a matter +of hours, one might say, the town held its breath. Then it began to +talk. The women began asking questions: What did the actress look like? +The men offered lame descriptions. Rose had been seen, apparently, that +morning on Main Street, by the entire male population, but their +descriptions weren't satisfactory. Curiosity must be assuaged! But Rose +never went into the stores on Main Street; never patronized the +picture-show, and even had these glimpses been afforded, they'd have +been pretty unsatisfactory. There was only one real way of discovering +what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is—and +hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy a hat of +Lizzie Gibbons.</p> + +<p>The first daring adventurer was Agatha Stebbins. Agatha found, you will +remember, the hat Rose had already designed for her. And, as Miss +Gibbons caustically disclaimed the authorship of it ("I'd never have +made you up a thing like that, you can believe!") and as Miss Stebbins, +after a moment's hesitation, decided she adored it, another inducement, +though perhaps a superfluous one, was offered for visits to the atelier.</p> + +<p>"Of course she isn't what you could call genteel," Miss Stebbins +explained, parading her acquisition, "and she's never had any +advantages. And as to her moral character, I suppose the less said the +better. Lizzie Gibbons can settle that question with her own conscience. +But when it comes to hats she's got more gimp in her little finger than +Lizzie's got in both hands. Dear, no! She's not what I call pretty. Not +with a mouth like that. Of course the men ..."</p> + +<p>So Miss Gibbons' spring business was distended to unrecognizable +proportions. Rose fitted on hats in the show-room during business hours +and took a mischievous delight in the assumption of the intangible +manner of a perfect shop-assistant; in saying "Yes, madam," and "No, +madam," and "Will you try this, madam?" with a perfection of politeness +that baffled the most determined curiosity. Miss Gibbons got as much fun +out of it as she did.</p> + +<p>The hours in the workroom were pleasant ones, too, with their perpetual +reminder that the creative power that had deserted her last January, had +come back. The little problems were ludicrously easy, of course but they +stimulated a pleasant sense of reserve power.</p> + +<p>She couldn't, of course, have stayed in Centropolis indefinitely. In +time, that feeling of mounting energy would have driven her out in +search of something that would test it.</p> + +<p>But, when Galbraith's letter came, it took her a little aback. Miss +Gibbons had brought it in; because Rose, even then, didn't go to the +post-office. Miss Gibbons watched her tear open the big envelope +addressed to Rose in the handwriting that always went with the +California post-mark, and saw her take another unopened letter out of +it. She saw the girl's face set itself in a sudden gravity; watched her +with a hungry misgiving, while she read the enclosure, and felt the +misgiving mount to an unhappy certainty, when Rose put it away without +comment.</p> + +<p>But Rose wasn't certain, or she felt that night when she went to bed +that she was not. Galbraith's letter frightened her a little. It was a +dictated letter, very stiff, wholly businesslike. It offered to make her +his personal assistant at a salary of fifty dollars a week. He +summarized in rather formidable terms, what her duties would be. He +wished her to report to him promptly, July first, and to telegraph him +at her earliest convenience, whether she accepted his offer. There was +no explanation of his long delay in sending for her.</p> + +<p>Rose had no illusions as to what its acceptance would mean. It would +mean gripping life again with the full strength of both hands. It would +mean many anxious days and sleepless nights. It would mean spurring +herself to a high degree of competency. You didn't get fifty dollars a +week for anything that was easy to do. She knew that now, by hard +experience. And then the transplantation to New York would mean an end +of the cool healing peace of her present life. Things would begin +happening to her that she couldn't foresee nor control. Feelings would +begin happening to her; the kind of feelings that scorched and terrified +you. They wouldn't happen to her here in Centropolis.</p> + +<p>She fell asleep that night under the persuasion that the thing wasn't +decided; that the safe, quiet, peaceful way was still open to her. But +when she awakened in the morning, she knew it was not.</p> + +<p>"I surmise," said Miss Gibbons that morning at breakfast, "that you're +figuring to go away."</p> + +<p>Rose smiled and sighed. "I don't know how you guess things like that," +she said, "but it's true. I must be in New York on the first of July."</p> + +<p>"Well, the sooner the quicker," said Miss Gibbons dryly. "You came all +at once and I guess it's just as well you should go the same way. I +guess neither of us is sorry you came, and I hope you'll never be sorry +you went."</p> + +<p>That was her nearest approach to an affectionate farewell. Rose managed +to express her affection and gratitude a little more adequately, but not +much. "It isn't the end of us, you know," she concluded. "You're coming +to see me in New York."</p> + +<p>Miss Gibbons smiled with good-humored skepticism at that.</p> + +<p>Rose telegraphed Galbraith that morning, and she took the noon train for +St. Louis. She needed a day or two there to make the modest supplements +to her wardrobe that her savings permitted.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="BOOK_FOUR"></a><h3>BOOK FOUR</h3> + +<h3>The Real Adventure</h3> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_I_4"></a><h3>CHAPTER I</h3> + +<h3>THE TUNE CHANGES</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>John Williamson's doctor packed him off to Carlsbad just about the time +that Rose achieved the conquest of Centropolis (along in April, 1914, +that was). Violet and their one child, a girl of twelve, went along with +him to keep him company; at rather long range, it seemed, because they +were both in Paris on the first of August, when the war broke out, and +John spent six frantic days getting into Switzerland and out again into +France, before his attempt to join them was successful. They had run the +full gamut of refugees' experiences, by the time they got to England and +secured accommodations on a liner to New York, and the tale got an added +touch from the stratagem Violet employed in successfully bringing off +all her new French frocks.</p> + +<p>It took just two hours' steady talking to tell the story, and Violet +figured that during the first week after her return to Chicago, she told +it on an average of three times a day. So that by the time she could +manage a day for motoring out to Lake Forest to see Constance Crawford, +she was ready to talk about something else.</p> + +<p>Constance had lately had her fourth—and she asserted, last—baby, and +wasn't seeing anybody yet, except intimates, one at a time; and she +relaxed a little deeper, with a sigh of relief, into her cushioned +chair, when Violet said:</p> + +<p>"The same things happened to us that happened to everybody else, so you +don't have to hear them. Oh, it was nice, in a way, being separated from +poor John when the thing happened, because—well, he hasn't got over it +yet. He's still more as he was when we were first engaged, than he's +ever been since. And at thirty-seven that's something! And then it's a +satisfaction about the clothes. It seems as if I must have had a +premonition that something was going to happen, because I bought +absolutely everything I wanted.</p> + +<p>"Of course it was an awful moment when John said we couldn't take +anything but hand-luggage. But I got three perfectly enormous +straw-telescopes—you know the kind—about four feet long, and then we +left everything else behind, except a tooth-brush and a comb apiece. And +what with that and the biggest hat box in the world—my, but it's lucky +hats are small!—we managed it.</p> + +<p>"But all the stuff about having your automobile taken away and riding in +a cart, and thinking you're going to be arrested as a spy, and living +for days on milk-chocolate and <i>vin ordinaire</i>, you've heard it all a +hundred times already, so we'll talk about something else."</p> + +<p>"I never heard anything so heroic in my life," Constance said. "But you +don't need to be, because I'm perishing for details.—Unless," she went +on, "it isn't heroism at all, but something else you want to talk +about."</p> + +<p>"Just my luck!" said Violet. "I thought I was going to get away with +that. There <i>is</i> something I'm frantic with curiosity about, and you're +the first person I've seen I could ask. I spent two hours trying to get +up my courage with Frederica, but I couldn't. Do you know anything about +them—Rose and Rodney? Does any one know anything about her since she +disappeared from the Globe?"</p> + +<p>"Why, I fancy <i>they</i> do," said Constance, "Rodney and Frederica. I don't +know just why I think so. Frank sees Rodney every day or two at lunch +time at the club; says he seems all right. He's working terribly hard. +And the money he's making! Frank says he's a regular robber in the fees +he asks—and gets. He says he speaks of Rose once in a while, and +not—at least not exactly, as if she were dead. You know what I mean! +Just in that maddening, matter-of-course way, as if everybody knew all +about her.</p> + +<p>"Frederica won't talk about her at all. I mean, she won't start the +subject, and nobody has the nerve to start it with her. Freddy can be +like that, you know. She'd make a perfectly wonderful queen—did you +ever think of that? Of England. Harriet's the only one who'd talk, and +of course she's gone back. You knew that, didn't you? Oh, but naturally, +since you've talked to Freddy."</p> + +<p>Violet nodded. "It all sounded so exactly like Harriet," she said, "as +Freddy told about it. No confidences, no flutters. She didn't even seem +interested until the day England went in. And then at lunch that day, +she said to Frederica, 'I've just cabled Tony that I'm coming back on +the next boat. And I telephoned Rodney just now, to find out what the +next boat for Genoa was, or Naples, and get me a stateroom. Lend me +Marie, will you, to help pack? Because I'll probably have to take the +five-thirty.' Harriet all over. Well, on the whole, I'm glad."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Constance. "She'd always be at a loose end in this +country. She doesn't believe in divorce. She might, of course, if she +fell in love with another man over here. But that's not likely to +happen. And she can't stand America any more. So even an unsuccessful +marriage over there, especially if Italy gets drawn into the war, and +her man gets ..."</p> + +<p>"Constance!" cried Violet, horrified.</p> + +<p>"Oh, not necessarily killed," Constance went on. "Crippled or something, +or even if he really got interested in the profession of being a +soldier. She's done well to go back to him."</p> + +<p>"Anyway, that wasn't what I meant," said Violet. "I meant I was glad for +Rodney and—Rose. Mind you, I don't <i>know</i> a single thing. But I've just +got a hunch that with Harriet off the board, it will be a little more +possible for those two to get together."</p> + +<p>Constance looked at her intently. "You've changed your tune," she said. +"I thought you were through with Rose for good and all. I thought what +you were rooting for was a divorce and a fresh start for Rodney."</p> + +<p>"I thought so, too," said Violet, "until I saw her."</p> + +<p>"Saw her!" Constance cried. "Where? When?"</p> + +<p>"In New York on the way home," said Violet.</p> + +<p>"Well—tell me all about it," said Constance, when she saw Violet wasn't +going on of her own accord. "You, pretending you wanted to know about +everything, and pretending to be a heroine for not telling me all about +being a refugee! What is she doing? What did she look like? What did she +say?"</p> + +<p>"You've changed your tune, too," said Violet. "Because you were through +with her just as much as I was. You didn't want to hear anything more +about her. Of course she could ran away and go on the stage if she +liked, you said, but she'd better not try to come back."</p> + +<p>Constance pointed out that she hadn't, as yet, expressed the hope that +Rodney would make it up with her. But she pleaded guilty to a strong +curiosity.</p> + +<p>"Well, I can't tell you much," said Violet. "John and I were coming down +Fifth Avenue in a taxi one afternoon, and were stopped by the traffic at +Forty-fourth Street. And right there, in another taxi, was Rose. I +didn't see her till just as we got the whistle to go ahead. I was so +surprised I could only grab John and tell him to look. I did shriek at +her at last, and she saw us and lighted up and smiled. Just that old +smile of hers, you know. But her car was turning west, down past +Sherry's, and we were going straight ahead and we weren't quick enough +to tell the chauffeur to turn, too. We did turn on Forty-third and came +around the block, and of course we missed her.</p> + +<p>"We went to three musical shows in the next two days, in the hope of +spotting her in the chorus. But she wasn't in any of them, and then I +simply dragged John home. There was no way of finding her of course, nor +of her finding us, because John's given up the Holland House at last and +taken to the Vanderbilt. But it was rather maddening."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know," said Constance. "Oh, yes, maddening of course, +because one would be curious. But that sort of curiosity might prove +pretty expensive if you gratified it. Talk about the clutch of a +drowning person! It's nothing to the clutch of a <i>déclassée</i> woman. And +if she's been somebody once who really mattered, and somebody you were +really fond of ... Because it <i>is</i> no use. They can't ever come back."</p> + +<p>Violet stirred in her chair. "Of course we're all perfectly good +Christians," she observed ironically. "And once a week we say 'Forgive +us our debts,' besides teaching it to the kids."</p> + +<p>Constance broke in on her hotly. "Oh, come, Violet! You know it's not a +question of forgiveness. I don't claim any moral superiority over Rose. +I'm just talking about her social possibility. A person who does an +outrageous thing, knowing it's outrageous, just because he—or +she—wants to do it, can be downright immoral without being impossible. +But a person who's done the other sort of thing, a shabby thing—and +what Rose did was shabby—will always be on the defensive about it. They +can't let it alone. They're always making references you can't ignore; +always seeing references in perfectly harmless things that other people +say. And the only society where they're ever happy, is that of a lot of +other people with shady, shabby things that <i>they're</i> on the defensive +about. And they all get together and call it Bohemia. And they sprawl +around in studios and talk about sex and try to feel superior and +emancipated. Well, maybe they are. All I say is they don't belong with +us. Oh, you know it's true! You hate that as much as I do."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said Violet. "Only, since I've seen Rose—even for that +minute—it doesn't seem possible to apply it to her. You know, I don't +believe she's on the stage any more."</p> + +<p>Constance asked with good-humored satire, "Why? From the way she looked +in the taxi-cab?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Violet. "Just from that. There she was in an open taxi, on +Fifth Avenue, at half past four in the afternoon, and she didn't look +somehow, as if how she looked mattered. She wasn't on parade a bit. She +looked smart and successful, but busy. Not exactly irritated at being +held up in the block, but keen to get out of it. The way Frank or John +would look on the way to a directors' meeting. And the way she smiled +when she saw us ... It's not quite exactly her old smile, either, but +it's just as fascinating. It pleased her to see us all right. But as for +her caring a rap what we thought—well, you couldn't imagine it. +Defensive indeed! And poor old John just about went out of his head with +disappointment when we lost her."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'll never deny she's a charmer," said Constance. "All the same +..."</p> + +<p>"You wait till you see her!" said Violet.</p> + +<p>Violet's report of the glimpse she had had of Rose, together with what +were felt to be the rather amusingly extravagant set of deductions she +had made from it, spread in diminishing ripples of discussion through +all their circle. And then, concentrically, into wider circles. Most of +their own intimate group took Constance's attitude. Forced to concede a +lively curiosity as to what had become of Rose, they still professed +that the way of discretion lay not in gratifying it; at least not at +first-hand. When they were in New York, they kept an eye open for a +sight of her, on the stage and elsewhere, and an alert ear for news, +finding a sort of fearful joy in wondering what they would do if an +encounter took place. They were mildly derisive with Violet over her +<i>volte-face</i>.</p> + +<p>Secretly, Violet was a good deal closer to agreeing with them than she'd +admit. For, as the effect of her encounter lost its vividness, with the +recession of the encounter itself, she began to suspect that she had +gone unwarranted lengths in her interpretations from it. But under fire, +she stuck to her guns. Her husband, who delighted in her public +attitude, was amazed when she rounded upon him in their domestic +sanctuary, and emphatically took the other side. In his disgust, he made +a very penetrating observation, whose cogency Violet realized, though +she loftily ignored it at the time it was uttered. But three or four +nights later, at an opera dinner at the Heaton-Duncans, she fired it off +shamelessly, as a shot out of her own locker.</p> + +<p>"It's all very well," she exploded, "to say that Rose can't come back. +But as a matter of fact she's never been out of it. At least the hole +she left has never closed up. You all agree that she's to be forgotten +and treated as a regrettable incident, but you keep on talking about +her. It's like Roosevelt. There she is all the time."</p> + +<p>She didn't dare catch John's eye for the next twenty minutes, but she +knew precisely, without looking, the exasperated quality of his stare.</p> + +<p>It was true. They couldn't let her alone. Speculation flared up again, +and this time with a justifiable basis, when it became known that +Rodney had bought the McCrea house; bought it outright, for cash, with +its complete contents.</p> + +<p>Of course everybody knew that Rodney was getting rich. And he was doing +it, as Frank Crawford pointed out to Constance, with precisely the same +contemptuous disregard of money that he had shown before his marriage.</p> + +<p>"He doesn't care what he charges, and he didn't care then. Only then it +was out of the little end of the horn, and now it's out of the big. And +the thing that seems to make him particularly wild is that the higher +the price he puts on his opinions, the more people there are who think +that nobody's opinion but his is any good. So he just grins at them and +goes up another notch. He's no better a lawyer, he says, than he was +when his practise brought him in ten thousand a year. Of course he is a +better lawyer. He's getting better all the time. He does deliver the +goods. And fighting out these great big cases really educates a man. You +can't be really first-class unless you've got first-class things to do. +And down inside Rodney knows that as well as anybody.</p> + +<p>"Only, with all his money, after the way he's talked about that +house—the way he's damned it and made fun of it, what did he want to go +and buy it for?"</p> + +<p>Constance had an idea he'd got it at a bargain. The McCreas had made a +flying trip home just to sell it. Their investments had gone off, it +seemed, still further, and besides, Florence had at last found something +in the world to be in earnest about, and that was in France; the +American hospital. Florence had already taken an emergency training +course in nursing. Her husband, whose one marked talent was that of a +chauffeur, was going to drive a motor ambulance, and they were both on +fire to get back to Paris into the thick of things. Almost any round +sum, in absolutely spot cash, would satisfy them. So Rodney, too busy +with other things to take the trouble to invest his money, would have +been in a position to get the house cheap. It was Constance's opinion +that he had.</p> + +<p>"Do you know anybody in the world," her husband demanded, "less likely +to be interested in a bargain than Rodney? Or to pick a thing up because +it is cheap?"</p> + +<p>"Well, then," Constance said, "you must think he's expecting Rose, +sometime or other, to come back to him. Because if he meant to get a +divorce and marry some one else, he certainly wouldn't want to live in +that house with her. He'd want as few reminders as possible, not as +many. And yet, it was Rose herself, according to Harriet, who was so +anxious, toward the last, to get rid of the place. So there you are! +It's a mystery any way you take it."</p> + +<p>John Williamson said he understood, though when Violet pressed him for +an explanation he was a little vague.</p> + +<p>"Why," he said, "it's just a polite way of telling us all to go to the +devil. He knows we're all talking our heads off about him, and +sympathizing with him, and wondering what he's going to do, and he buys +that house to serve notice that he's going to stay put. Business as +usual at the old stand. I shouldn't be surprised if he meant the same +message for Rose. That is to say, that the place will always be there +for her to come back to."</p> + +<p>Outside their immediate circle, no such imaginative explanations were +resorted to. Rose was coming back of course. And the interesting theme +for speculation was what would happen to her when she did. Would she try +to take her old place; ignore the past; treat that outrageous escapade +with the Globe chorus as if it had never happened? And if she did try to +do that, could she succeed? It all depended on what a few people did. If +they, the three or four supremely right ones, were to acquiesce in this +treatment of the situation, Rose could, more or less, get away with it. +Although even then, things could never be quite the same.</p> + +<p>But the sterility of these speculations gradually became apparent as the +winter months slipped away and Rose did not come back. It was felt, +though such a feeling would have looked absurd if put into words, that +by failing to come when the stage was set for her, as by Rodney's act in +purchasing the McCrea house it was, missing her cue like that, letting +them, with such a lot of solemn thought, discuss and prepare their +attitudes toward her, all in vain, she had, somehow, aggravated her +original offense in running away.</p> + +<p>And, just as suddenly as they had begun talking about her, they +stopped. Rodney and the twins, living alone in the perfect house, under +the ministrations of a housekeeper, a head nurse and an undiminished +corps of servants, came to be accepted as a fact that could be mentioned +without any string of commiserations tied to it. Their world wagged on +as usual. If, as John Williamson said, the hole where Rose had been torn +out of it had never been closed up, people managed to walk around the +edge of it with an apparently complete unawareness that it was there. +There were fresher themes for gossip:</p> + +<p>Hermione Woodruff's amazing marriage, for example, to a dapper little +futurist painter named Bunting, ten years, the uncharitable said, +younger than she was. And then the Randolphs! After all the thrilling +events of their romance, were they drifting on the reefs? There were +straws that indicated the wind was blowing that way.</p> + +<p>This was the state of things when Jimmy Wallace threw his bomb.</p> + +<p>There was always a warm, corner in Jimmy Wallace's bachelor heart for +youth, and innocence, and enthusiasm. Especially for young girls who +were innocent and enthusiastic. But since he suspected himself of a +tendency to idealize these qualities, even to sentimentalize upon them, +he generally kept a cautious distance off. Rose, with the bloom that was +on her, and the glow that radiated from her the night he was introduced +to her at a dinner party at the Williamsons', had struck him—he was +unconscious of this mental process no doubt—as a person whom it would +be difficult, at close range, to remain quite level-headed about.</p> + +<p>Consequently, though his and Rodney's common friendship for the Lakes +had drawn him rather intimately into their circle, his attitude toward +Rose herself throughout had remained deliberately detached and +impersonal. He was not in the least priggish about it. He was quite +willing to let it appear that he liked her and to admit that she liked +him. But their talk had always been not only objective, but about +objects comparatively remote; chorus-girls, for example, and Norse +sagas, to take at random two of his wide assortment of hobbies.</p> + +<p>He never felt himself in any danger of idealizing Violet Williamson or +Bella Forrester, and they, along with their respective husbands, were +the nearest approach to intimates he had in that segment of society +which gets itself spelled with a capital S.</p> + +<p>Violet's attitude toward Rose, as revealed to him at the little dinner +following the Williamsons' discovery of Rose in the Globe chorus, had +not in the least surprised him. For, with her husband he had recognized +in her biting contempt of the thing the girl had done, the typical +attitude of her class. He didn't do Society very much, but he dipped +expertly now and then. He understood the class—loyalty that is woven +into all their traditions, and knew how violently it was outraged by +Rose's inexplicable bolt.</p> + +<p>But, as I said, he went home after that dinner, rather mournful over +Violet's failure to see an aspect of the thing which, it seemed to him, +should have been apparent to anybody: this was Rose's courage in +actually doing the thing. The idea that had evidently prompted the act +was a perfectly familiar guest at their tea-tables. Rose wouldn't have +had to go to "that votes-for-women mother of hers" to pick up the notion +of the desirability of economic independence for women. But, instead of +playing with the idea, Rose had gripped it in both hands and gone +through with it; and at what cost of resolution and courage Jimmy was +perhaps the only one of her friends capable of forming an adequate +conception. But he'd have thought that even Violet might be expected to +see that a mere petulant restlessness wouldn't have carried her through; +might have admitted, if only in parenthesis, the gameness the girl had +shown.</p> + +<p>She'd made no attempt to get the cards stacked in her favor, as she +might so easily have done. She must have thought of coming to him for +advice and help; must have known how gladly he'd give it. A note from +him to Goldsmith would have spared her untold terrors and +uncertainties. Yet she had denied herself that help; gone ahead and +done the thing on her own.</p> + +<p>He could imagine the sort of test Galbraith had put her to before giving +her a job at all. He'd seen inexperienced girls applying for positions +in the chorus. He knew the sort of work that lay behind her advancement +to the sextette. He knew that her presence there on the stage of the +Globe the opening night, unrecognized by any one in the company as +anybody except Doris Dane of nowhere, represented a solid achievement +that a girl with Rose's background and training might be proud of.</p> + +<p>For Jimmy it had stamped her, once and for all, as sterling metal; as +one who, however mistaken her judgments, or misguided her +actions—admitting for the sake of argument that they were +misguided—must be taken seriously; admitted to be the real thing. She'd +given indisputable guarantees of good faith.</p> + +<p>There was no good, of course, getting warm over the flippant cynicisms +of her former friends. There was no use even in trying to make them +understand how the thing looked to him. But there crystallized in him a +wish that he might some day see Rose's critics fluttering about her and, +as it were, eating out of her hand. He used to amuse himself by +arranging all sorts of extravagant settings for this picture. He never +included Rodney in this vengeance, although he felt sure—indeed Rodney +had practically admitted as much to him—that it had been her husband's +disapproval, rather than the miscellaneous gossip of society at large, +which had driven her from the security and promise of the Globe to the +exiguities of a fly-by-night road company. Rodney never brought up the +subject again after his return from Dubuque, though it soon became plain +enough without that, that his journey had accomplished nothing.</p> + +<p>Jimmy kept track of the company's route after that, through the list of +bookings printed in his theater weekly, and when he learned that the +tour had been abandoned, he dropped in one night at the Globe on the +off-chance that she might have come back and got herself reinstated in +the Number One company, which was still doing a prosperous business.</p> + +<p>He didn't expect to find her there; hardly hoped to. A somewhat better +chance was that he might find Alec McEwen in the lobby, and that if +little Alec were properly primed with alcohol and led to a discussion of +the collapse of the road company, he might volunteer some scrap of +information about her.</p> + +<p>Little Alec was found in the lobby, right enough, and properly primed in +the bar next door, and he described very vigorously, the disgust of +Block's brother-in-law over the lemon the astute partners had sold him; +for real money, too. But not a word did little Alec offer about Rose.</p> + +<p>It was Jimmy's practise to make two professional visits to New York +every year; one in the autumn, one in the spring, in order that he might +have interesting matters to write about when the local theatrical doings +had been exhausted.</p> + +<p>On his first trip after Rose's disappearance, he went faithfully to +every musical show in New York, and, as far as Rose was concerned, drew +blank. He'd have taken more active measures for finding her; would have +made inquiries of people he knew, had it not been for a sort of morbid +delicacy about interfering in a concern that not only was none of his, +but that was supremely the concern of Rodney Aldrich, his friend.</p> + +<p>But from his spring pilgrimage, he came back wearing a deep-lying and +contented smile, and a few days later, after a talk over the telephone +with Rodney, he headed a column of gossip about the theater, with the +following paragraph:</p> + +<p>"<i>Come On In</i>, as the latest of the New York revues is called, is much +like all the others. It contains the same procession of +specialty-mongers, the same cacophony of rag-time, the same gangway out +into the audience which refreshes tired business men with a thrilling, +worm's-eye view of dancing girls' knees <i>au naturel</i>. And up and down +this straight and narrow pathway of the chorus there is the customary +parade of the same haughty beauties of Broadway. Only in one item is +there a deviation from the usual formula: the costumes. For several +years past, the revues at this theater (the Columbian) have been +caparisoned with the decadent colors and bizarre designs of the exotic +Mr. Grenville Melton. I knew there had been a change for the better as +soon as I saw the first number, for these dresses have the stimulating +quality of a healthy and vigorous imagination, as well as a vivid +decorative value. They are exceedingly smart, of course, or else they +would never do for a Broadway revue, but they are also alive, while +those of Mr. Melton were invariably sickly. Curiously enough, the name +of the new costume designer has a special interest for Chicago. She is +Doris Dane, who participated in <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> at the Globe. Miss +Dane's stage experience here was brief, but nevertheless her striking +success in her new profession will probably cause the formation of a +large and enthusiastic 'I-knew-her-when' club."</p> + +<p>Jimmy expected to produce an effect with it. But what he did produce +exceeded his wildest anticipations. The thing came out in the three +o'clock edition, and before he left the office that afternoon (he stayed +a little late, it is true, and it wasn't his "At home" to press agents +either) he had received, over the telephone, six invitations to dinner; +three of them for that night.</p> + +<p>He declined the first two on the ground of an enormous press of work +incident to his fresh return from a fortnight in New York. But when +Violet called up and said, with a reference to a previous engagement +that was shamelessly fictitious:</p> + +<p>"Jimmy, you haven't forgotten you're dining with us to-night, have you? +It's just us, so you needn't dress," he answered:</p> + +<p>"Oh, no, I've got it down on my calendar all right. Seven-thirty?"</p> + +<p>Violet snickered and said: "You wait!—Or rather, don't wait. Make it +seven."</p> + +<p>Jimmy was glad to be let off that extra half-hour of waiting. He was +impatient for the encounter with Violet—a state of mind most rare with +him. He meant to wring all the pleasure out of it he could by way of +compensating himself for that other dinner when Violet had decided that +all Rodney's most intimate friends ought really to be told what Rose had +done, in order that they might be scrupulous enough in avoiding subjects +which he might take as a reference to his disgrace.</p> + +<p>Violet said, the moment he appeared in the drawing-room doorway, "John +made me swear not to let you tell me a word until he came in. He's +simply burbling. He's out in the pantry now mixing some extra-special +cocktails—with his own hands, you know—to celebrate the event. But +there's one thing he won't mind your telling me, and that's her address. +I'm simply perishing to write her a note and tell her how glad we are."</p> + +<p>Jimmy made a little gesture of regret. He'd have spoken too, but she +didn't give him time.</p> + +<p>"You don't mean to tell me," she cried, "that you didn't find out where +she lived while you were right there in New York!"</p> + +<p>John came in just then with the cocktails and Violet, turning to him +tragically, repeated, "He doesn't even know where she lives!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm a boob, I know," said Jimmy. "Give me a cocktail. A telephone's +the driest thing in the world to talk into. But, as I told the other +five ..."</p> + +<p>Violet frowned as she echoed, "The other five—what?"</p> + +<p>Jimmy turned to John Williamson with a perfectly electric grin.</p> + +<p>"The other five of Rose Aldrich's friends—and yours," he said, "who +called me up this afternoon and invited me to dinner, and asked for her +address so that they could write her notes and tell her how glad they +were."</p> + +<p>John said, "Whoosh!" all but upset his tray and slammed it down on the +piano, in order to leave himself free to jubilate properly. With solemn +joy he ceremoniously shook hands with Jimmy.</p> + +<p>Violet stood looking at them thoughtfully. A little flush of color was +coming up into her face.</p> + +<p>"You two men," she said, "are trying to act as if I weren't in this; as +if I weren't just as glad as you are, and hadn't as good a right to be. +John here," this was to Jimmy, "has been gloating ever since he came +home with the paper. And you ... Did you mean me by that snippy little +thing you said about the 'I-knew-her-when' club? Oh, it was fair enough. +I'm glad you said it. Because some people we know have been downright +catty about her. But you both know perfectly well that I've stood up for +her ever since last fall when we came through New York."</p> + +<p>John grinned. "When you saw her," he pointed out, "riding down Fifth +Avenue in a taxi, in an expensive dress...."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't. I didn't see what she had on. I just saw that she +looked ..."</p> + +<p>"Successful," John interrupted. But, meeting her eye, he apologized +hastily and withdrew the word. His gale of spirits had blown him a +little too far.</p> + +<p>"I saw," said Violet with dignity, "that she looked busy and cheerful, +as if she knew, in her own mind, that she was all right. And I was glad +for her, and for us. Because you can say what you like, you can't do +anything with the people who have made mistakes and know it, and are +always on the defensive about them. When I saw she didn't feel like +that, that was enough for me. And," she fairly impaled John Williamson +now with her eye, "and you know it."</p> + +<p>It was an able summary of her public attitude since the encounter on +Fifth Avenue, and her look at her husband relegated any private +observations of hers at variance with it into the limbo, not of things +forgotten, but of things undone, unsaid, dissolved by the sheer force of +their unfitness to exist, into the breath that begot them.</p> + +<p>"You're quite right about it," said Jimmy. "We men are sentimentalists, +as long as things don't come home. But when they do, we're as +uncomfortable about penitents as anybody, and we give them as wide a +berth."</p> + +<p>"You're my friend, Jimmy," she said. "There's dinner! But you won't be +allowed to eat. You'll have to begin at the beginning and tell us all +about her! Though I don't see," she went on, "how you can know very +much more than you put in the paper, if you didn't even find out where +she lived."</p> + +<p>Jimmy, his effect produced, his long meditated vengeance completed by +the flare of color he'd seen come up in Violet's cheeks, settled down +seriously to the telling of his tale, stopping occasionally to bolt a +little food just before his plate was snatched away from him, but +otherwise without intermission.</p> + +<p>He'd suspected nothing about the costumes on that opening night of <i>Come +On In</i>, until a realization of how amazingly good they were, made him +search his program. The line "Costumes by Dane," had lighted up in his +mind a wild surmise of the truth, though he admitted it had seemed +almost too good to be true. Because the costumes were really wonderful. +He tried to tell them how wonderful they were, but Violet seemed to +regard this as a digression. She wanted facts.</p> + +<p>"Anyhow," he put in in confirmation, "there wasn't a single paper the +next day that didn't feature the costumes in speaking of the +performance. They were the one unqualified hit of the show."</p> + +<p>He cast about in his mind, he said, for some way of finding out who Dane +really was. And having learned that Galbraith was putting on the show at +the Casino, and having reflected that he was as likely to know about +Rose as anybody, he looked him up.</p> + +<p>"Galbraith, you know," he explained, "is the man who put on <i>The Girl +Up-stairs</i> here at the Globe, winter before last."</p> + +<p>Galbraith proved a mine of information—no, not a mine, because you had +to dig to get things out of a mine. Galbraith was more like one of those +oil-wells that is technically known as a gusher. He simply spouted facts +about Rose and couldn't be stopped. She was his own discovery. He'd seen +her possibilities when she designed and executed those twelve costumes +for the sextette in <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>. He'd brought her down to New +York to act as his assistant. She worked for Galbraith the greater part +of last season. Jimmy had never known of anybody having just that sort +of job before. Galbraith, busy with two or three productions at once, +had put over a lot of the work of conducting rehearsals on her +shoulders. He'd get a number started, having figured out the maneuvers +the chorus were to go through, the steps they'd use and so on, and then +Rose would actually take his place; would be in complete charge of the +rehearsal as the director's representative, while he was off doing +something else.</p> + +<p>It must have been an extraordinarily interesting job, Jimmy thought, and +evidently she'd got away with it, since Galbraith spoke of the loss of +her with unqualified regret.</p> + +<p>The costuming, last season, had been a side issue, at the beginning at +least, but she'd done part of the costumes for one of his productions, +and they were so strikingly successful that Abe Shuman had simply +snatched her away from him.</p> + +<p>"The funny thing is the way she does them," Jimmy said. "Everybody else +who designs costumes, just draws them; dinky little water-colored +plates, and the plates are sent out to a company like The Star Costume +Company, and they execute them. But Rose can't draw a bit. She got a +manikin—not an ordinary dressmaker's form, but a regular painter's +manikin with legs, and made her costumes on the thing; or at least cut +out a sort of pattern of them in cloth. But somehow or other, the +designing of them and the execution are more mixed up together by Rose's +method than by the orthodox one. She wanted to get some women in to sew +for her, and see the whole job through herself; deliver the costumes +complete, and get paid for them. But it seems that the Shumans, on the +side, owned The Star Company and raked off a big profit on the costumes +that way. I don't know all the details. I don't know that Galbraith did. +But, anyhow, the first thing anybody knew, Rose had financed herself. +She got one of those rich young bachelor women in New York to go into +the thing with her, and organized a company, and made Abe Shuman an +offer on all the costumes for <i>Come On In</i>. Galbraith thinks that Abe +Shuman thought she was sure to lose a lot of money on it and go broke +and that then he could put her to work at a salary, so he gave her the +job.</p> + +<p>"But she didn't lose. She evidently made a chunk out of it, and her +reputation at the same time."</p> + +<p>Violet was immensely thrilled by this recital. "Won't she be perfectly +wonderful," she exclaimed, "for the Junior League show, when she comes +back!"</p> + +<p>Jimmy found an enormous satisfaction in saying, "Oh, she'll be too +expensive for you. She's a regular robber, she says."</p> + +<p>"She <i>says</i>!" cried Violet. "Do you mean you've talked with her?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think I'd have come hack from New York without?" said Jimmy. +"Galbraith told me to drop in at the Casino that same afternoon. Some of +the costumes were to be tried on, and either 'Miss Dane' or some one of +her assistants would be there. Probably she herself, though he knew she +was dreadfully busy.</p> + +<p>"Well, and she came. I almost fell over her out there in the dark, +because of course the auditorium wasn't lighted at all. I'll admit she +rather took my breath, just glancing up at me, and peering to make out +who I was, and then her face going all alight with that smile of hers. I +didn't know what to call her, and was stammering over a mixture of Miss +Dane and Mrs. Aldrich, when she laughed and held out a hand to me and +said she didn't remember whether I'd ever called her Rose or not, but +she'd like to hear some one call her that, and wouldn't I begin."</p> + +<p>"And of course," said Violet, "you fell in love with her on the spot."</p> + +<p>"No, that wasn't the spot," said Jimmy. "It was where she stood on the +Globe stage, the opening night of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>, when she caught +my eye and gave a sort of little gasp, and then went on with her dance +as if nothing had happened that mattered to her. I saw then that she had +more sand than I knew was in the world."</p> + +<p>"And all your pretending that night you were here, then," said Violet, +"all that stuff about an amazing resemblance and a working +hypothesis ..."</p> + +<p>"All bunk," said Jimmy. "I'd have gone a lot further if there'd been any +use."</p> + +<p>"All right," said Violet. "I'll forgive you, if you'll tell me every +word she said."</p> + +<p>Jimmy explained that there hadn't been any chance to talk much. The +costumes began coming up on the stage just then (on chorus-girls, of +course) and she was up over the runway in a minute, talking them over +with Galbraith. "When she'd finished, she came down to me again for a +minute, but it was hardly longer than that really. She said she wished +she might see me again, but that she couldn't ask me to come to the +studio, because it was a perfect bedlam, and that there was no use +asking me to come to her apartment, because she was never there herself +these days, except for about seven hours a night of the hardest kind of +sleep. If I could stay around till her rush was over ... But then, of +course, she knew I couldn't."</p> + +<p>"And you never thought of asking her," Violet wailed, "where the +apartment was, so that the rest of us, if we were in New York, could +look her up, or write to her from here?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Jimmy. "I never thought of asking for her address. But it's +the easiest thing in the world to get it. Call up Rodney. He knows. +That's what I told the other five."</p> + +<p>"What makes you think he knows?" Violet demanded. "We thought he knew +about that other thing, but I don't believe he did."</p> + +<p>"Well, for one thing," said Jimmy, "when Rose was asking for news of all +of you, she said 'I hear from Rodney regularly. Only he doesn't tell me +much gossip.'"</p> + +<p>"<i>Hears</i> from him!" gasped Violet. "<i>Regularly!</i>" She was staring at +Jimmy in a dazed sort of way. "Well, does she write to him? Has she made +it up with him? Is she coming back?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose you can just hear me asking her all those questions? +Casually, in the aisle of a theater, while she was getting ready for a +running jump into a taxi?"</p> + +<p>The color came up into Violet's face again. There was a maddening sort +of jubilant jocularity about these men, the looks and almost winks they +exchanged, the distinctly saucy quality of the things they said to her.</p> + +<p>"Of course," she said coolly, "if Rose had told me that she heard from +Rodney regularly, although he didn't send her much of the gossip, I +shouldn't have had to ask her those questions I'd have known from the +way she looked and the way her voice sounded, whether she was writing to +Rodney or not and whether she meant to come back to him or not; whether +she was ready to make it up if he was—all that. Any woman who knew her +at all would. Only a man, perfectly infatuated, grinning ... See if you +can't tell what she looked like and how she said it."</p> + +<p>Jimmy, meek again, attempted the task.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "she didn't look me in the eye and register deep +meanings or anything like that. I don't know where she looked. As far as +the inflection of her voice went, it was just as casual as if she'd been +telling me what she'd had for lunch. But the quality of her voice +just—richened up a bit, as if the words tasted good to her. And she +smiled just barely as if she knew I'd be staggered and didn't care a +damn. There you are! Now interpret unto me this dream, oh, Joseph."</p> + +<p>Violet's eyes were shining. "Why, it's as plain!" she said. "Can't you +see that she's just waiting for him; that she'll come like a shot the +minute he says the word? And there he is, eating his heart out for her, +and in his rage charging poor John perfectly terrific prices for his +legal services, when all he's got to do is to say 'please,' in order to +be happy."</p> + +<p>There was a little silence after that. Then:</p> + +<p>"Don't you suppose," she went on, "there's something we can do?"</p> + +<p>A supreme contentment always made John Williamson silent. He'd been +beaming at Jimmy all through the dinner, guarding him tenderly against +interruptions, with pantomimic instructions to the servants. If the +vague look in Jimmy's eyes suggested the want of a cigarette, John +nodded one up for him. He didn't ask a question. Evidently, between +Jimmy and Violet, the story was being elicited to his satisfaction. But +it was amazing how quickly that last words of his wife's snatched him +out of that beatific abstraction.</p> + +<p>"No, there is not," he said.</p> + +<p>The tone of his voice was a good deal more familiar to his fellow +directors in some of his enterprises, than it was to his wife. She +looked at him as if she couldn't quite believe she'd understood.</p> + +<p>"There is not what?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"There is not a thing that we can do or are going to do about Rose and +Rodney. We did something once before and made a mess of it. This time +we're going to let them alone. They're both of age and of sound mind, +and they've got each other's addresses. If they want to get together +again, they will."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;'> + +<p>"I've had a perfectly bang-up evening," said Jimmy to Violet a little +later when he took his leave.</p> + +<p>"I know you have," she said dryly. Then, with a change of manner, "But I +have, too, Jimmy. You believe that, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Sure I do," he said, and shook hands with her all over again. Violet +was a good sort.</p> + +<p>Riding home in the elevated train, Jimmy Wallace hummed what he +conceived to be a tune. And when he did that ...!</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_II_4"></a><h3>CHAPTER II</h3> + +<h3>A BROKEN PARALLEL</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>None of the speculative explanations Rodney's friends advanced for his +having bought that precious solemn house of the McCreas, together with +all its rarified esthetic furniture, exactly covered the ground. He +didn't buy it in the expectation that Rose was coming back to live in +it, and still less with the even remote notion of finding a successor to +her. He hadn't bought it because it was a bargain. He had very little +idea whether it was a bargain or not. And if there was a grain of truth +in John Williamson's explanation, Rodney was only vaguely aware of it.</p> + +<p>He'd have said, if he'd set about formulating an explanation, that he +bought the house as a result of eliminating the alternatives to buying +it. Florence meant to sell it to somebody, and if he didn't buy it, he'd +have to move out. Rather disingenuously, he represented to himself that +his dislike of moving out sprang from the trouble that would be involved +in finding some other place to live in, furnishing it, reorganizing his +establishment. Really, he hadn't time for that. Frederica would have +done it for him in a minute, but he ignored that possibility.</p> + +<p>Down underneath these shallow practical considerations, lay the fact +that such a reorganization would have been a tacit acknowledgment of +defeat; not only an acknowledgment to the world, which he'd have liked +to pretend didn't matter much, but an acknowledgment of defeat to +himself. What he had been trying to do ever since his return from that +maddening talk with Rose in Dubuque, had been just to sit tight; to go +on living a day at a time; to take the future in as small doses as he +could manage.</p> + +<p>Had he been the sort of person who finds comfort in mottoes, he'd have +laid in a stock, such as, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"; +"Holdfast is the only dog"; "Don't cross your bridges until you come to +them." As the period between the night of his discovery of Rose on the +Globe stage and the day of his return from Dubuque receded, and as the +fierceness of the pain of it died away again (because such pains do die +away. They can't keep screwed up into an ecstasy of torment forever) the +part he'd played in the events of it, seemed to him less and less worthy +of the sort of man he'd always considered himself to be; a +self-controlled, self-disciplined adult. He'd acted for a while there, +with the savage egotism of a distracted boy; thrown his dignity to the +winds; made a holy show of himself. Well, that period was over at all +events. Whatever the future might confront him with, he could promise +himself, he thought, to keep his head.</p> + +<p>But for a while, he didn't want to be confronted with anything, let +alone to start anything; not until he could get his breath; not until he +had time to think everything out; discover, if possible, where the whole +miserable trouble had begun. He'd go back to the beginning, sometime, +and try to work it all out. It went, probably, a long way back of the +night when that hasty speech of his about not jeopardizing the +children's lives to gratify his wife's whims had set the match to her +resolution to leave him and the babies and live a life for herself.</p> + +<p>But, though he told himself every day that he must begin ordering his +old memories, analyzing them, in search of the clue, he didn't begin the +process. Spiritually, he just held himself rigidly still. He might have +compared himself to a man standing off a pack of wolves, knowing that +his slightest move would precipitate a rush upon him. Or, perhaps more +nearly, to a man just recovering consciousness after an accident, afraid +to stir lest the smallest movement might reveal more serious injuries +than he suspected.</p> + +<p>His mind had never worked so brilliantly as it was working now. The +problems involved in his clients' affairs were child's play to him. He +took them apart and put them together again with a careless, confident, +infallible perspicacity that amazed his colleagues and his opponents. +And, as Frank Crawford had pointed out, he took a savagely contemptuous +pleasure in making those clients pay through the nose.</p> + +<p>But he could look neither back at Rose, nor forward to her. He could +not, by any stretch of resolution, have nerved himself to the point of +giving up that house that had nearly all his memories of her associated +with it. There hadn't been a change of a single piece of furniture in it +since she went away. Her bedroom and her dressing-room were just as she +had left them. Her clothes were just as they had been left after the +packing of that small trunk. She might have been off spending a week-end +somewhere.</p> + +<p>The attitude couldn't be kept up forever, he knew. Some time or other +he'd have to cross the next bridge; come to some more definite +understanding with Rose than that inconclusive ridiculous scene there in +Dubuque had left him with. (<i>What</i> a fool he had been that day!) There +were the twins coming along. For the present, their nurse (It wasn't +Mrs. Ruston. He'd taken the first reasonable excuse for supplanting +her.) and the pretty little snub-nosed nurse-maid Rose had liked, could +supply their wants well enough. But the time wasn't so far ahead when +they'd need a mother. What would he do then; let Rose have them half the +time and keep them half the time himself? He'd read a perfectly beastly +book once,—he couldn't remember the title of it—about a child who had +been brought up that way. But, at all events, he needn't do anything +yet.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, it healed his lacerated pride to march along and keep the +routine going. It was with a perfectly immense relief that he snatched +at the chance to buy the McCrea house, and by so doing make the +permanency of his way of life a little more secure. He could keep what +he had, anyway. And he could show the world, and Rose, that he wasn't +the broken frantic creature he knew she'd seen, and suspected it had +glimpsed. John Williamson's explanation wasn't altogether wrong.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, had it been possible for Jimmy Wallace to tell him, just as he +told Violet and John Williamson, how Rose's voice "richened up as if +the words tasted good to her," when she mentioned the fact that she +heard from her husband "regularly but not much," he might have drawn the +same favorable augury from it that Violet did. But from her answering +communications, though he drew comfort, he got no hope.</p> + +<p>It was Rose herself who began this correspondence, within a month of her +arrival in New York. And Rodney, when he finished reading her letter, +tore it to pieces and flung it into the fire, in a transport of +disappointment and anger. The sight of her writing on the envelope had +brought his heart into his mouth, of course. And when his shaking +fingers had got it open and he saw that it indeed contained a letter +from her, beginning "Dear Rodney," and signed "Rose," the wild surge of +hope that swept over him actually turned him giddy, so that it was two +or three minutes before he could read it.</p> + +<p>But the thing ran like another instalment of the talk they had had in +Dubuque. She knew he had been distressed over the shabbiness of her +surroundings, knocking about with that road company, and she was afraid +that in spite of the assurance she had then given him, he was still +worried about her. She was sure he'd be glad to know that she'd quit the +stage for good, as an active performer on it, at least; that she was +earning an excellent salary, fifty dollars a week, doing a highly +congenial kind of work that had good prospects of advancement in it. She +had a very comfortable little apartment (she gave him the address of it) +and was living in a way that—she had written "even Harriet," but +scratched this out—Frederica, for example, would consider entirely +respectable. So he needn't feel another moment's anxiety about her. +She'd have written sooner, but had wanted to get fully settled in her +new job and be sure she was going to be able to keep it, in order that +she might have something definitely reassuring to tell him. And she +hoped he and the babies were well.</p> + +<p>It was not until hours afterward, when the letter was an +indistinguishable fluff of white ash in the fireplace, that it occurred +to him that it had no satirical intent whatever and that the purpose of +it had been, quite simply, what it had pretended to be; namely, to +reassure him and put an end to his anxieties.</p> + +<p>As he had read it in the revulsion from that literally sickening hope of +his, it had seemed about the most mordant piece of irony that had ever +been launched against him. The assumption of it had seemed to be that he +was the most pitiable snob in the world; that all he'd cared for had +been that she'd disgraced him by going on the stage. He'd be glad to +know that she was once more "respectable."</p> + +<p>Well—this was the question which, as I said, he did not ask himself +until hours later—wasn't she justified in believing that? Certainly +that night, in her little room on North Clark Street, he'd given her +reason enough for thinking so. But later, in Dubuque—well, hadn't he +quoted Harriet to her? Hadn't he offered to help her as a favor to +himself, because he couldn't endure it that she should live like this? +Had he exhibited anything to her at all in their two encounters, but an +uncontrolled animal lust and a perfectly contemptible vanity?</p> + +<p>He bitterly regretted having destroyed the letter. But the tone of it, +he was sure, except for that well merited jibe about Harriet, which had +been erased, was kindly. Yet he had acted once more, like a spoiled +child about it.</p> + +<p>Could he write and thank her? In Dubuque she had asked him not to come +back. Did that prohibition cover writing? Her letter did not explicitly +revoke it. She asked him no questions. But he remembered now a +post-script, which, at the time of reading, he'd taken merely as a final +barb of satire. "I am still Doris Dane down here, of course," it had +read. If she hadn't meant that for a sneering assurance that his +precious name wasn't being taken in vain—and had he ever heard Rose +sneer at anybody?—what could have been the purpose of it except to make +sure that a letter from him wouldn't come addressed "Rose Aldrich," and +so fail to be delivered to her.</p> + +<p>It was due only to luck that, in his first disappointment, he hadn't +destroyed her address with the letter. But she had duplicated it on the +flap of the envelope, and the envelope was not thrown in the fire.</p> + +<p>He spent hours composing a reply. And the thing he finally sent off, +once it was committed to the post, seemed quite the worst of all his +efforts. His impulse was to send another on the heels of it. But he +waited a week, then wrote again. And this time, the stiffness of +self-consciousness was not quite so paralyzing. He managed to give her a +little real information about the condition of the twins and the +household. About himself, he stated that he was well, though busier than +he liked to be.</p> + +<p>He experienced a very vague, faint satisfaction, two days later, over +the reflection that this letter was in her hands, and he came presently +to the audacious resolution that until she forbade him, he would go on +writing to her every week. She'd see that she needn't answer and it +would no doubt add something—how much he didn't dare to try to +estimate—to her happiness, to know that all was going well in the home +that she had left.</p> + +<p>She began pretty soon to answer these letters with stiff little notes, +strictly limited to a bulletin of her own activities and a grateful +acknowledgment of the latest one he had sent her. Invariably, every +Tuesday morning, one of these notes arrived. And this state of things +continued, unchanged, for months.</p> + +<p>He experienced a bewildering mixture of emotions over these letters of +hers. They drove him, sometimes, into outbursts of petulant rage. Often +the knowledge that one of them was to be expected in the morning, +delivered him up, against all the resistance he could make, to a flood +of tormenting memories of her. And across the mood the letter would find +him in, its cool little commonplaces would sting like the cut of a whip.</p> + +<p>The mere facts her letters recounted aroused contradictory emotions in +him, too. They all spelled success and assurance, and almost from week +to week they marked advancement. The first effect of this was always to +make his heart sink; to make her seem farther away from him; to make the +possibility of any future need of him that would give him his +opportunity, seem more and more remote. The other feeling, whose glow he +was never conscious of till later—a feeling so surprising and +irrational that he could hardly call it by name, was pride. What in +God's name had he to be proud of? Was she a possession of his? Could he +claim any credit for her success? But the glow persisted in spite of +these questions.</p> + +<p>His satisfaction in his own letters to her was less mixed. They must, he +thought, gradually be restoring in her mind, the image of himself as a +man who, as Harriet said, could take his medicine without making faces; +who could endure pain and punishment without howling about it. Perhaps, +in time, those letters would obliterate the memory of the vain beast +he'd been that night....</p> + +<p>If Rodney had done an unthinkable thing; if he had kept copies of his +letters to Rose, along with her answers, in a chronological file the way +Miss Beach kept his business correspondence, he would have made the +discovery that the stiffness of them had gradually worn away and that +they were now a good deal more than mere <i>pro forma</i> bulletins. There +had crept into them, so subtly and so gently that between one of them +and the next no striking difference was to be observed, a friendliness, +quite cool, but wonderfully firm. She was frankly jubilant over the +success of her costumes in <i>Come On In</i> and she enclosed with her letter +a complete set of newspaper reviews of the piece. They reached him a day +or two before Jimmy Wallace telephoned, and this fact perhaps had +something to do with the gruff good humor with which he told Jimmy to go +as far as he liked in his newspaper paragraph.</p> + +<p>It was a week later that she wrote:</p> + +<p>"I met James Randolph coming up Broadway yesterday afternoon, about five +o'clock. I had a spare half-hour and he said he had nothing else but +spare half-hours; that was what he'd come to New York for. So we turned +into the Knickerbocker and had tea. He's changed, somehow, since I saw +him last; as brilliant as ever, but rather—lurid. Do you suppose things +are going badly between him and Eleanor? I'd hate to think that, but I +shouldn't be surprised. He spoke of calling me up again, but this +morning, instead, I got a note from him saying he was going back to +Chicago. He told me he hadn't seen you forever. Why don't you drop in on +him?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;'> + +<p>It was quite true that Rodney had seen very little of the Randolphs +since Rose went away. His liking for James had always been an affair of +the intelligence. The doctor's mind, with its powers of dissecting and +coordinating the phenomena of every-day life, its luminous flashes, its +readiness to go all the way through to the most startling conclusions, +had always so stimulated and attracted his own, that he'd never stopped +to ask whether or not he liked the rest of the man that lay below the +intelligence.</p> + +<p>When it came to confronting his friends, in the knowledge that they knew +that Rose had left him for the Globe chorus, he found that James +Randolph was one he didn't care to face. He knew too damned much. He'd +be too infernally curious; too full of surmises, eager for experiments.</p> + +<p>The Rodney of a year before, intact, unscarred, without, he'd have said, +a joint in his harness, could afford to enjoy with no more than a +deprecatory grin, the doctor's outrageous and remorseless way of pinning +out on his mental dissecting board, anything that came his way. The +Rodney who came back from Dubuque couldn't grin. He knew too much of the +intimate agony that produced those interesting lesions and +abnormalities. Even in the security, if it could have been had, that his +own situation wouldn't be scientifically dissected and discussed, he'd +still have wanted to keep away from James Randolph.</p> + +<p>But Rose's letter put a different face on the matter. He felt perfectly +sure that Randolph hadn't been analyzing her during that spare half-hour +at the Knickerbocker. The shoe, it appeared, had been on the other foot. +The fact that she'd put him, partly at least, in possession of what she +had observed and what she guessed, gave him a sort of shield against the +doctor. He told himself that his principal reason for going was to get a +little bit more information about Rose than her letters provided him +with. But the anticipation he dwelt on with the greatest pleasure, +really, was of saying, "Oh, yes. Rose wrote that she'd seen you."</p> + +<p>So one evening, after keeping up the pretense through his solitary +dinner and the cigar that followed it, that he meant presently to go up +to his study and correct galley proofs on an enormous brief, he slipped +out about nine o'clock, and walked around to the Randolphs' new house.</p> + +<p>This latest venture of Eleanor's had attracted a good deal of comment +among her friends. Somebody called it, with a rather cruel <i>double +entendre</i>, Bertie Willis' last word. In the obvious sense of the phrase, +this was true. Eleanor had given him a free hand, and he had gone his +limit. He'd been working slowly backward from Jacobean, through Tudor. +But this thing was perfect Perpendicular. You could, as John Williamson +said, kid yourself into the notion, when you walked under the +keel-shaped arch to their main doorway, that you were going to church. +And the style was carried out with inexorable rigor, down to the most +minute details. But since everybody knew that the latest thing, the +inevitably coming thing, was the pure unadulterated ugliness of +Georgian, a style that Bertie had opposed venomously (because he +couldn't build it, the uncharitable said); and because even Bertie's +carefully preserved youth was felt to have gone a little stale and it +was no longer fashionable to consider his charms irresistible, the +phrase, "his last word," was instantly understood, as I said, to have a +secondary sense.</p> + +<p>No one, of course, could tell Eleanor anything about what the coming +styles were going to be, in architecture or anything else. She was one +of these persons with simply a sixth sense for fashions, and her having +gone to Bertie Willis, instead of to young Mellish of the historic New +York firm, McCleod, Hill, Stone & Black, who was doing such delightfully +hideous things in Georgian, caused, among her friends, a good deal of +comment. Her explanation that medicine was a medieval profession and +that she had to have a medieval house to go with James, was felt to be a +mere evasion.</p> + +<p>It was recognized that one had to flirt with Bertie while he was +building her house. And in the days when everybody else had been doing +it, too, it didn't matter. But now that the celebrated <i>hareem</i> had +ceased to exist, it was felt that one would do well to be a little +careful; at least, to put a more or less summary end to the flirtation +when the house was finished. But Eleanor hadn't done that. She was +playing with him more exclusively than ever.</p> + +<p>Rodney hadn't been in the house before, and he reflected, as he stood at +the door, after ringing the bell, that his own house was quite meek and +conventional alongside this. The grin that this consideration afforded +him, was still on his lips when, a servant having opened the door, he +found himself face to face with the architect.</p> + +<p>Bertie, top-coated and hat in hand, was waiting for Eleanor, who was +coming down the stairs followed by a maid with her carriage coat. He +returned Rodney's nod pretty stiffly, as was natural enough, since +Rodney's grin had distinctly brightened up at sight of him.</p> + +<p>Eleanor said, rather negligently, "Hello, Rod. We're just dashing off to +the Palace to see a perfectly exquisite little dancer Bertie's +discovered down there. She comes on at half past nine, so we've got to +fly. Want to come?"</p> + +<p>"No," Rodney said. "I came over to see Jim. Is he at home?"</p> + +<p>The maid was holding out the coat for Eleanor's arms, Bertie was fussing +around ineffectually, hooking his stick over his left arm to give him a +free right hand to do something with, he didn't quite know what. But +Eleanor, at Rodney's question, just stood for a second quite still. She +wasn't looking at anybody, but the expression in her eyes was sullen.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he's at home," she said at last.</p> + +<p>"Busy, I suppose;" said Rodney. Her inflection had dictated this reply.</p> + +<p>"Yes, he's busy," she repeated absently and in a tone still more coldly +hostile, though Rodney perceived that the hostility was not meant for +him. And so plainly did the tone and the look and the arrested attitude +proclaim that she was following out a train of thought and hadn't as yet +got to the end of it, that he stood as still as she was.</p> + +<p>Bertie, irreproachably correct as always, settled his shoulders inside +his coat, and took his stick in his right hand again. Eleanor now looked +around at him.</p> + +<p>"Wait two minutes," she said, "if you don't mind." Then, to Rodney, +"Come along." And she led the way up the lustrous, velvety teakwood +stair.</p> + +<p>He followed her. But arrived at the drawing-room floor, he protested.</p> + +<p>"Look here!" he said. "If Jim's busy ..."</p> + +<p>"You've never been in here before, have you?" she asked. "How's Rose? +Jim saw her, you know, in New York."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "Rose wrote to me she'd seen him, and I thought I'd drop +around for a chat. But if he's busy ..."</p> + +<p>"Oh, don't be <i>too</i> dense, Rodney!" she said. "A man has to be busy when +he's known to be in the house and won't entertain his wife's guests. Go +up one flight more and to the door that corresponds to that one. It +won't do you any good to knock. He'll either not answer or else tell you +to go to hell. Just sing out who you are and go right in."</p> + +<p>She gave him a nod and a hard little smile, and went down-stairs again +to Bertie.</p> + +<p>Rodney stood where she had left him, in two minds whether to carry out +her instructions or to wait until he heard her and Bertie go out and +then quietly follow them. It was a beastly situation, dragged into a +family quarrel like that; forced to commit an intrusion that was so +plainly labeled in advance. And on the other hand, it was a decidedly +interesting situation. If Eleanor was as reckless as that with facts +most women keep to themselves as long as possible, what would her +outspoken husband be. But if he were full of his grievances, he probably +wouldn't talk about Rose.</p> + +<p>What really determined his action was Eleanor's discovery, or pretended +discovery down in the hall below, that her gloves weren't what she +wanted and her instructions to the maid to go up and get her a fresh +pair. It would be too ridiculous to be caught there—lurking.</p> + +<p>So he mounted the next flight, found the door Eleanor had indicated, +knocked smartly on it, and to forestall his getting told to go to hell, +sang out at the same time, "This is Rodney Aldrich. May I come in?"</p> + +<p>"Come in, of course," Randolph called. "I'm glad to see you," he added, +coming to meet his guest. "But do you mind telling me how the devil you +got in here? Some poor wretch will lose his job, you know, if Eleanor +finds out about this. When I'm in this room, sacred to reflection and +research, it's a first-class crime to let me be disturbed."</p> + +<p>It didn't need his sardonic grin to point the satire of his words. The +way he had uttered "sacred to reflection and research," was positively +savage.</p> + +<p>Rodney said curtly, "Eleanor sent me up herself. I didn't much want to +come, to tell the truth, when I heard you were busy."</p> + +<p>"Eleanor!" her husband repeated. "I thought she'd gone out—with her +poodle."</p> + +<p>Rodney said, with unconcealed distaste, "They were on the point of going +out when I came in. That's how Eleanor happened to see me."</p> + +<p>With a visible effort, Randolph recovered a more normal manner. "I'm +glad it happened that way," he said. "Get yourself a drink. You'll find +anything you want over there, I guess, and something to smoke; then +we'll sit down and have an old-fashioned talk."</p> + +<p>The source of drinks he indicated was a well-stocked cellarette at the +other side of the room. But Rodney's eye fell first on a decanter and +siphon on the table, within reach of the chair Randolph had been sitting +in. His host's glance followed his.</p> + +<p>"This is Bourbon I've got over here," he added. "I suppose you prefer +Scotch."</p> + +<p>"I don't believe I want anything more to drink just now," Rodney said. +And as he turned to the smoking table to get a cigar, Randolph allowed +himself another sardonic grin.</p> + +<p>The preliminaries were gone through rather elaborately; chairs drawn up +and adjusted, ash-trays put within reach; cigars got going +satisfactorily. But the talk they were supposed to prepare the way for +didn't at once begin.</p> + +<p>Randolph took another stiffish drink and settled back into a dull +sullen abstraction.</p> + +<p>Rodney wanted to say, "I hear from Rose you had a little visit with her +in New York." But, with his host's mood what it was, he shrank from +introducing that topic. Finally, for the sake of saying something, he +remarked:</p> + +<p>"This is a wonderful room, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>Randolph roused himself. "Never been in here before?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I've never been in the house before, I'm ashamed to say."</p> + +<p>"What!" Randolph cried. "My God! Well, then, come along."</p> + +<p>Rodney resisted a little. He was comfortable. They could look over the +house later. But Randolph wouldn't listen.</p> + +<p>"That's the first thing to do," he insisted. "Indispensable preliminary. +You can't enjoy the opera without a libretto. Come along."</p> + +<p>It was a remarkable house. Before the first fifteen minutes of their +inspection were over, Rodney had come to the conclusion that though +Bertie Willis might be an ass, was indeed an indisputable ass, he was no +fool. It was almost uncannily clever, the way all the latest devices for +modern comfort wore, so demurely, the mask of a perfectly consistent +medievalism. And there were some effects that were really magnificent. +The view of the drawing-room, for instance, from the recessed dais at +the far end of it, where the grand piano stood—a piano that contrived +to look as if it might have been played upon by the second wife of Henry +VIII,—down toward the magnificent stone chimney at the other; the +octagonal dining-room with the mysterious audacity of its lighting; the +kitchen with its flag floor (only they were not flags, but an artful +linoleum), its great wrought-iron chains and hoods beneath which all the +cooking was done—by electricity.</p> + +<p>Randolph took him over the whole thing from bottom to top. Through it +all, he kept up the glib patter of a showman; the ironic intent of it +becoming more and more marked all the while.</p> + +<p>They brought up at last in the study they had started from.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but wait a moment!" Randolph said. "Here's two more rooms for you +to see."</p> + +<p>The first one explained its purpose at a glance, with a desk and +typewriter, and filing cabinets around the walls.</p> + +<p>"Rubber floor," Randolph pointed out, "felt ceiling; absolutely +sound-proof. Here's where my stenographer sits all day, ready,—like a +fireman. And this," he concluded, leading the way to the other room, "is +the holy of holies."</p> + +<p>It had a rubber floor, too, and Rodney supposed, a felt ceiling. But its +only furniture was one straight-back chair and a canvas cot.</p> + +<p>"Sound-proof too," said Randolph. "But sounding-boards or something in +all the walls. I press this button, start a dictaphone, and talk in any +direction, anywhere. It's all taken down. Here's where I'm supposed to +think, make discoveries, and things. No distractions. One hundred per +cent. efficient. My God! I tried it for a while. Felt like a fool actor +in a Belasco play. Do you remember? The one with the laboratory and the +doctor?"</p> + +<p>They went back into the study.</p> + +<p>"Clever beasts, though—poodles," he remarked, as he nodded Rodney to +his chair and poured himself another drink. "Learn their tricks very +nicely. But good Heavens, Aldrich, think of him as a man! Think what our +American married women are up against, when they want somebody to play +off against their husbands and have to fall back on tired little beasts +like that. In all the older countries there are plenty of men, real men +who've got something, that a married woman can fall back on. But think +of a woman of Eleanor's attractions having to take up a thing like that. +There's nothing else for her. Would <i>you</i> come around and hold her hand +and make love to her, or any other man like you? Not once in a thousand +times. Eleanor doesn't mean anything. She's trying to make me jealous. +That's her newest experiment. But it's downright pitiful, I say."</p> + +<p>Rodney got up out of his chair. It wasn't a possible conversation.</p> + +<p>"I'll be running along, I think," he said. "I've a lot of proof to +correct to-night, and you've got work of your own, I expect."</p> + +<p>"Sit down again," said Randolph sharply. "I'm just getting drunk. But +that can wait. I'm going to talk. I've got to talk. And if you go, I +swear I'll call up Eleanor's butler and talk to him. You'll keep it to +yourself, anyway."</p> + +<p>He added, as Rodney hesitated, "I want to tell you about Rose. I saw her +in New York, you know."</p> + +<p>Rodney sat down again. "Yes," he said, "so she wrote. Tell me how she +looked. She's been working tremendously hard, and I'm a little afraid +she's overdoing it."</p> + +<p>"She looks," Randolph said very deliberately, "a thousand years old." He +laughed at the sharp contraction of Rodney's brows. "Oh, not like that! +She's as beautiful as ever. More. Facial planes just a hair's breadth +more defined perhaps—a bit more of what that painter Burton calls edge. +But not a line, not a mark. Her skin's still got that bloom on it, and +she still flushes up when she smiles. She's lost five pounds, perhaps, +but that's just condition. And vitality! My God!—But a thousand years +old just the same."</p> + +<p>"I'd like to know what you mean by that," said Rodney. He added, "if you +mean anything," but the words were unspoken.</p> + +<p>Randolph did mean something.</p> + +<p>"Why, look here," he said. "You know what a kid she was when you married +her. Schoolgirl! I used to tell her things and she'd listen, all +eyes—holding her breath! Until I felt almost as wise as she thought I +was. She was always game, even then. If she started a thing, she saw it +through. If she said, 'Tell it to me straight,' why she took it, +whatever it might be, standing up. She wasn't afraid of anything. +Courage of innocence. Because she didn't know.</p> + +<p>"Well, she's courageous now, because she knows. She's been through it +all and beaten it all, and she knows she can beat it again. She +understands—I tell you—everything.</p> + +<p>"Why, look here! We all but ran into each other on the corner, there, of +Broadway and Forty-second Street; shook hands, said howdy-do. How long +was I here for? Was Eleanor with me? And so on. If I had a spare +half-hour, would I come in and have tea with her at the Knickerbocker? +She'd nodded at two or three passing people while we stood there. And +then somebody said, 'Hello, Dane,' and stopped. A miserable, shabby, +shivering little painted thing. Rose said, 'Hello,' and asked how she +was getting along. Was she working now? She said no; did Rose know of +anything? Rose said, 'Give me your address and if I can find anything, +I'll let you know.' The horrible little beast told where she lived and +went away. Rose didn't say anything to me, except that she was somebody +who'd been out in a road company with her. But there was a look in her +eyes ...! Oh, she knew—everything. Knew what that kid was headed for. +Knew there was nothing to be done about it. She had no flutters about +it, didn't pull a long face, didn't, as I told you, say a word. But +there was a look in her eyes, behind her eyes, somehow, that understood +and <i>faced</i>—God!—everything. And then we went in and had our tea.</p> + +<p>"I had a thousand curiosities about her. I'd have found out anything I +could. But it was she who did the finding out. Beyond inquiring about +you, how lately I'd seen you, and so on, she hardly asked a question; +talked about indifferent things: New York, the theaters, how we passed +the time out here, I don't know what. But pretty soon I saw that she +understood me, saw right into me like through an open window into a +lighted room. As easily as that. She knew what was the matter with me; +knew what I'd made of myself. And by God, Aldrich, she didn't even +despise me!</p> + +<p>"I came back here to kick this damned thing to pieces, give myself a +fresh start. And when I got here, I hadn't the sand. I get drunk +instead."</p> + +<p>He poured himself another long drink and sipped it slowly. "Everybody +knows," he said at last, "that prostitutes almost invariably take to +drugs or drink. But I know why they do."</p> + +<p>That remark stung Rodney out of his long silence. During the whole of +Randolph's recital of his encounter with Rose, he'd never once lifted +his eyes from the gray ash of his cigar, and the violet filament of +smoke that arose from it. He didn't want to look at Randolph, nor think +about him. Just wanted to remember every word he said, so that he could +carry the picture away intact. Now that the picture was finished, he +wanted to get out of that room, with it; out into the dark and +loneliness of the streets, where he could walk and think.</p> + +<p>There was something peculiarly horrifying to him in the exhibition +Randolph was making of himself. He'd never in his life taken a drink, +except convivially, and then he took as little as would pass muster. +He'd always found it hard to be sensibly tolerant of the things men said +and did in liquor, even when their condition had overtaken them +unawares. Going off alone and deliberately fuddling one's self as a +means of escaping unpleasant realities, struck him as an act of the +basest cowardice. Whether Randolph's revelation of himself were true or +distorted by alcohol, didn't seem much to matter. But for that picture +of Rose, he'd have gone long ago and left the man to his bemused +reflections. Only ...</p> + +<p>He'd said that Rose understood everything and didn't despise him. A +drunken fancy likely enough. She had seen something though. Her letter +proved that. And having seen it, she'd asked him to drop in on the +doctor for a visit. Did she mean she wanted him to try to help?</p> + +<p>He tried, though not very successfully, to conceal his violent disrelish +of the task, when he said:</p> + +<p>"Look here, Jim! What the devil is the matter with you? Are you sober +enough to tell me?"</p> + +<p>Randolph put down his glass. "I have told you," he said. "It's a thing +that can be told in one word. I'm a prostitute. I'm Eleanor's kept man. +Well kept, oh, yes. Beautifully kept. I'm nothing in God's world but a +possession of hers! A trophy of sorts, an ornament. I'm something she's +made. I have a hell of a big practise. I'm the most fashionable doctor +in Chicago. They come here, the women, damn them, in shoals. That's +Eleanor's doing. I'm a faker, a fraud, a damned actor. I pose for them. +I play up. I give them what they want. And that's her doing. They go +silly about me; fancy they're in love with me. That's what she wants +them to do. It increases my value for her as a possession.</p> + +<p>"I haven't done a lick of honest work in the last year. I can't work. +She won't let me work. She—smothers me. Wherever I turn, there she is, +smoothing things out, trying to making it easy, trying to anticipate my +wants. I've only one want. That's to be let alone. She can't do that. +She's insatiable. She can't help it. There's something drives her on so +that she never can feel sure that she possesses me completely enough. +There's always something more she's trying to get, and I'm always trying +to keep something away from her, and failing.</p> + +<p>"And why? Do you want to know why, Aldrich? That's the cream of the +thing. Because we're so damnably in love with each other. She wants me +to live on her love. To have nothing else to live on. Do you know why +she won't have any children? Because she's jealous of them. Afraid +they'd get between us. She tries to make me jealous with that poodle of +hers—and she succeeds. With that! I'd like to wring his neck.</p> + +<p>"Do you want to know what my notion of Heaven is? It would be to go off +alone, with one suit of clothes in a handbag, oh, and fifty or a hundred +dollars in my pocket—I wouldn't mind that; I don't want to be a +tramp—to some mining town, or mill town, or slum, where I could start a +general practise; where the things I'd get would be accident cases, +confinement cases; real things, urgent things, that night and day are +all alike to. I'd like to start again and be poor; get this stink of +easy money out of my nostrils. I'd like to see if I could make good on +my own; have something I could look at and say, 'That's mine. I did +that. I had to sweat for it.'</p> + +<p>"I've been thinking about that for two years. It makes quite a +fancy-picture. There are a million details I can fill into it. A rotten +little office over a drug-store somewhere; people coming in with real +ills, and I curing them up and charging them a dollar, and sending them +away happy. I smoke a pipe because I can't afford cigars; get my meals +at lunch-counters. I sit up here—in this room—and think about it.</p> + +<p>"I came back from New York, after that look at Rose, meaning to do it; +meaning to talk it out with Eleanor and tell her why, and then go. +Well, I talked. Talk's cheap. But I didn't go. I'll never go. I'll go on +getting softer and more of a fake; more dependent. And Eleanor will go +on eating me up, until the last thing in me that's me myself, is gone. +And then, some day, she'll look at me and see that I'm nothing. That I +have nothing left to love her with."</p> + +<p>Then, with suddenly thickened speech (an affectation, perhaps) he looked +up at Rodney and demanded:</p> + +<p>"What the hell are you looking so s-solemn about? Can't you take a joke? +Come along and have another drink. The night's young."</p> + +<p>"No," Rodney said, "I'm going. And you'd better get to bed."</p> + +<p>"A couple more drinks," Randolph said, "to put the cap on a jolly +evening. Always get drunk th-thoroughly. Then in the morning, you wake +up a wiser man. Wise enough to forget what a damned fool you've been. +You don't want to forget that, Aldrich. You've been drunk and you've +talked like a damned fool. And I've been drunk and I've talked like a +damned fool. But we'll both be wiser in the morning."</p> + +<p>Rodney walked home that night like a man dazed. The vividness of one +blazing idea blinded him. The thing that Randolph had seen and lacked +the courage to do; the thing Rodney despised him for a coward for having +failed to do, that thing Rose had done. Line by line, the parallel +presented itself to him, as the design comes through in a half-developed +photographic plate.</p> + +<p>Without knowing it, yielding to a blind, unscrutinized instinct, he'd +wanted Rose to live on his love. He'd tried to smooth things out for +her, anticipate her wants. He'd wanted her soft, helpless, dependent. As +a trophy? That was what Randolph had said. Had he been as bad as that? +From what other desire of his than that could have come the sting of +exasperation he'd always felt when she'd urged him to let her work for +him; help him to economize, dust and make beds, so that he could go on +writing his book? She'd seen, even then, something he'd been blind +to—something he'd blinded himself to; that love, by itself, was not +enough. That it could poison, as well as feed.</p> + +<p>And, seeing, she had the courage ... He pressed his hands against his +eyes.</p> + +<p>When there could be friendship as well as love between them, she said, +she'd come back. Would she come back now, even for his friendship? He +doubted it. Dared not hope. There came up before him that face of frozen +agony that had confronted him in the room on Clark Street, and he +remembered what she'd said then—with a shudder—about it all ending +"like this." Ending!</p> + +<p>His love had played her false; had tried, instinctively, to smother her, +and defeated at that, had outraged and tortured her. She couldn't +possibly look at it any way but that. And now that she was free, +self-discovered, victorious, was it likely she would submit to its blind +caprices again? The thing Randolph had said was his notion of Heaven, +she'd triumphantly attained. Wouldn't it be her notion of Heaven too?</p> + +<p>But she had won, among the rest of her spoils of victory, the thing she +had originally set out to get. His friendship and respect. Friendship, +he remembered her saying, was a thing you had to earn. When you'd earned +it, it couldn't be withheld from you. Well, it was right she should be +told that; made to understand it to the full. He couldn't ask her to +come back to him. But she must know that her respect was as necessary +now to him, as she'd once said his was to her. He must tell her that. He +must see her and tell her that.</p> + +<p>He stopped abruptly in his walk. His bones, as the Psalmist said, turned +to water. How should he confront that gaze of hers, which knew so much +and understood so deeply—he with the memory of his two last ignominious +encounters with her, behind him?</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_III_4"></a><h3>CHAPTER III</h3> + +<h3>FRIENDS</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>Except for the vacuum where the core and heart of it all ought to have +been, Rose's life in New York during the year that put her on the high +road to success as a designer of costumes for the theater, was a good +life, broadening, stimulating, seasoning. It rested, to begin with, on a +foundation of adequate material comfort which the unwonted physical +privations of the six months that preceded it—the room on Clark Street, +the nightmare tour on the road, and even the little back room in Miss +Gibbons' apartment over the drug-store in Centropolis—made seem like +positive luxury.</p> + +<p>After a preliminary fortnight in a little hotel off Washington Square, +which she had heard Jane Lake speak of once as a possible place for a +respectable young woman of modest means to live in, she found an +apartment in Thirteenth Street, not far west of Sixth Avenue. It was in +a quiet block of old private residences. But this building was clean and +new, with plenty of white tile and modern plumbing, and an elevator. Her +apartment had two rooms in it, one of them really spacious to poor Rose +after what she'd been taking for granted lately, besides a nice white +bathroom and a kitchenette. She paid thirty-seven dollars a month for +it, and five dollars a month for a share in a charwoman who came in +every day and made her bed and washed up dishes.</p> + +<p>The extensiveness of this domestic establishment frightened her a little +at first. But she reassured herself with the reflection that under the +rule Gertrude Morse had quoted to her, one week's pay for one month's +rent, she still had a comfortable margin. She furnished it a bit at a +time, with articles chosen in the order of their indispensability, and +she went on, during the summer, to buy some things which were not +indispensable at all. But not very many. Like most persons with a highly +specialized creative talent for one form of beauty (in her case this was +clothes) she was more or less indifferent about others. Witness how +little interest she had taken in the labored beauties of Florence +McCrea's house, even in the unthinking days before she had begun +worrying about the expense of that establishment. Her indifference had +always made Portia boil. Also it may be noted, that Florence McCrea +herself, always went about looking a perfect frump.</p> + +<p>So that, by the time Rose's apartment was furnished to the point of +adequate comfort and decency, she took it for granted and stopped there. +For her, the temptations of old brass, mezzo-tints, and Italian +majolica—Fourth Avenue generally—simply did not exist.</p> + +<p>She bought real china to eat her breakfasts out of, and the occasional +suppers she had at home. She had had enough of thick cups and plates in +the last six months to last her the rest of her life. And it is probable +that she ate up, literally, the margin she had under Gertrude Morse's +rule, in somewhat better restaurants than she need have patronized.</p> + +<p>She did save money though, and put it away in a safe bank. But she never +saved quite so much as she was always meaning to, and she carried along, +for months after she went to work for Galbraith, an almost guilty sense +of luxury. In spite of the fact that she was working very hard and of +the further fact that her hours of labor were largely coincident with +the leisure hours of other people, she made a good many friends. The +first of these was Gertrude Morse, and it was through her, directly or +indirectly, that she acquired the others.</p> + +<p>Gertrude was Abe Shuman's confidential secretary and you can get a +fairly good working notion of her by conceiving the type of person +likely to be found in the borderland of theatrical enterprises, and +then, in all respects, taking the exact antithesis of it. She was a +brisk, prim-mannered, snub-nosed little thing, who wore her hair brushed +down as flat as possible and showed an affection for mannish clothes. +She had a level head, a keen and rather biting wit, which had the +effect of making her constant acts of kindness always unexpected; and +an education which, in her surroundings, seemed almost fantastic. She +was a Radcliff Master of Arts.</p> + +<p>Every one who had any dealings with Abe Shuman perforce knew Gertrude, +and Rose got acquainted with her the first day. Galbraith introduced +them in Shuman's office, and Rose found herself being investigated by a +bright, penetrating and decidedly complex look which she +interpreted—pretty accurately as she found out later—as saying, "Well, +you're about what I expected; ornamental and enthusiastic; just what an +otherwise sane and successful man of fifty would pick out for an +'assistant.' Aren't they just children at that age! But you're welcome. +They deserve it. Good luck to you!"</p> + +<p>But when Rose returned the look with a comprehending smile which said +good-naturedly, "All right! You wait and see," Gertrude's expression +altered into a frankly questioning frown. Two or three days later she +dropped in at a rehearsal, ostensibly with a message from Shuman to +Galbraith. He was on the point of leaving and had turned over the +rehearsal to Rose. Gertrude, when he had gone, settled down comfortably +in the back of the auditorium and watched through a solid hour, +obviously under instructions from Abe to bring back a report as to +whether Galbraith's infatuation should be tolerated or suppressed. At +the end of the hour, during a brief lull in the rehearsal, she came down +the aisle and stopped beside Rose who still had her eye on the stage.</p> + +<p>"I apologize," she said.</p> + +<p>Rose grinned around at her. It was not necessary to ask what for. "Much +obliged," she said.</p> + +<p>"I didn't know that a woman could do that," Gertrude went on. "Didn't +think she'd have the—drive. But you've got it, all right. I don't +suppose you've got an idea when you'll be free for lunch?"</p> + +<p>Rose hadn't, but it was not many days before they got together for that +meal at a business woman's club down on Fortieth Street, and from then +on their acquaintance progressed rapidly. She helped Rose find the +little apartment on Thirteenth Street, entertaining her during the +search with a highly instructive disquisition on the social topography +of New York, and on the following Sunday she ran in, she said, to see if +she could help her get settled. There was no settling to do, but she sat +down and talked—most of the time—for an hour or so. It was a theory of +Gertrude's that the way to find out about people was to talk to them.</p> + +<p>"You can't tell much," she used to say, "by the things people say to +you. Perhaps they've just heard somebody else say them. Maybe they've +got a repertory that it will take you weeks to get to the end of. Or +they may not be able to show you at all what's really inside them. But +from how they take the things you say to them—the things they light up +at and the things they look blank about, the things they're too anxious +to show you they understand, and the things they dare admit they never +heard of—you can tell every time. Find out all you want to know about +anybody in an hour!"</p> + +<p>Rose, it seemed, reacted satisfactorily to her tests, since she was +introduced as rapidly thereafter as their scanty leisure made possible, +to Gertrude's more immediate circle of friends.</p> + +<p>During that first winter, she enjoyed them immensely. They were all +interesting; all "did things"; widely various things, yet, somehow, +related. There was a red-haired fire-brand whose specialty seemed to be +bailing out girls arrested for picketing and whose Sunday diversion +consisted in going down to Paterson, New Jersey, making the police +ridiculous and unhappy for an hour or so, delivering herself of a speech +in defiance of their preventive efforts and finally escaping arrest by a +hair's breadth. They got her finally but since she enjoyed the privilege +of addressing as Uncle a man whose name was uttered with awe about the +corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place, they had to let her go.</p> + +<p>There was a young woman lawyer, associated with Gertrude in an +organization for getting jobs for girls who had just been let out of +jail, a level-headed enterprise, which by conserving its efforts for +those who really wished to benefit by them, managed to accomplish a good +deal. One of their circle was associate editor of a popular magazine and +another wrote short stories, mostly about shop-girls. The last one of +them for Rose to meet, she having been out of town all summer, was +Alice Perosini. She was the daughter of a rich Italian Jew, a +beautiful—really a wonderful person to look at—but a little +unaccountable, especially with the gorgeous clothes she wore, in their +circle. Rose took her time about deciding that she liked her but ended +by preferring her to all the rest. She never talked much; would smoke +and listen, making most of her comments in pantomime, but she had a +trick of capping a voluble discussion with a hard-chiseled phrase which, +whether you felt it precisely fitted or not, you found it difficult to +escape from.</p> + +<p>What forced Rose to a realization of her preference for Alice was the +impulse to tell her who she really was and the suddenly following +reflection that she never had wanted to tell any of the others; that she +had taken care to avoid all reference to the husband and the babies she +had fled from in search of a life of her own.</p> + +<p>She never tried to explain to herself the feeling that imposed this +reticence on her, until the discovery that it didn't exist toward Alice. +She couldn't have feared that they would not approve of what she had +done; it squared so exactly with all their ideas. Indeed the one real +bond between them was a common revolt against the traditional notion +that the way for a woman to effect her will in the world was by +"influencing" a man. They wanted to hold the world in their own hands. +They contemned the "feminine" arts of cajolery. They wanted no odds from +anybody. There wasn't a real man-hater in the crowd, they were too +normal and healthy for that. But they didn't talk much about men; never, +as far as Rose knew, about men—as such. Was the topic suppressed, she +wondered, or was it just that they didn't think about them?</p> + +<p>That question made her realize how little she knew of any of them; how +limited was the range of their intercourse. It was as if they met in a +sort of mental gymnasium, fenced with one another, did callisthenics. +Oh, that was going too far, of course; it was more real than that. But +it was true that it was only their minds that met. And it seemed to be +true that in the realm of mind they were content to live. Had they, +like herself, deep labyrinthine, half-lit caverns down underneath those +north-lighted, logically ordered apartments where Rose always found +them? If they had they never let her or one another suspect it.</p> + +<p>They'd be capable of deciding the great issue between herself and +Rodney, if ever they were told the story, in a half dozen brisk +sentences. Rose would be held to have been right and Rodney wrong, +demonstrably. Rose, illogically, perhaps, shrank from that conclusion or +at least from having it reached that way. There was more to it than +that. There were elements in the situation they wouldn't know how to +allow for.</p> + +<p>But Alice Perosini, she thought, was different. She'd be able to make +some of those allowances. Rose didn't tell her the story but she felt +that at a pinch she could and this feeling was enough to establish Alice +on a different basis from the others. It was with Alice that she +discussed the more personal sort of problems that arose in connection +with her new job. (One of these, as you are to be told, was highly +personal.) And when the question came up of finding the capital that +would enable her to make the Shumans a bid on all the costumes for <i>Come +On In</i> it was Alice, who, with all the sang-froid in the world, sketched +out the articles of partnership and brought her in a certified check for +three thousand dollars.</p> + +<p>The fact that they had become partners served, somehow, to divert a +relation between them which might otherwise have developed into a +first-class friendship. Not that they quarreled or even disappointed +each other in the close contacts of the day's work. They were admirably +complementary. Alice had the business acumen, the executive grasp, the +patient willingness to master details, which were needed to set Rose +free for the more imaginative part of the enterprise. Both were +immensely determined on success. Alice couldn't have been keener about +it if every cent she had in the world had been embarked in the business.</p> + +<p>But at the end of the day's work they tended to fly apart rather than to +stick together. Both were charged with the same kind of static +electricity. It was an instinct they were sensible enough to follow. +Both realized that they were more efficient as partners from not going +too intimately into each other's outside affairs.</p> + +<p>But when the winter had passed and the early spring had brought its +triumph, with the success of her costumes in <i>Come On In</i>, and when the +inevitable reaction from the burst of energy that had won that triumph +had taken possession of her, Rose found herself in need of a friendship +that would grip deeper, understand more. And with the realization of the +need of it she found she had it. It was a friendship that had grown in +the unlikeliest soil in the world, the friendship of a man who had +wanted to be her lover. The man was John Galbraith.</p> + +<p>For the first month after she came to New York to work for him she had +found Galbraith a martinet. She never once caught that twinkling gleam +of understanding in his eye that had meant so much to her during the +rehearsals of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>. His manner toward her carried out +the tone of the letter she'd got from him in Centropolis. It was stiff, +formal, severe. He seldom praised her work and never ungrudgingly. His +censure was rare too, to be sure, but this obviously was because Rose +almost never gave him an excuse for it. Of course she was up to her +work, but, well, she had better be. This, in a nutshell, was his +attitude toward her. Nothing but the undisputable fact that she was up +to her work (Gertrude was comforting here, with her reticent but +convincing reports of Abe Shuman's satisfaction with her) kept Rose from +losing confidence. Even as it was, working for Galbraith in this mood +gave her the uneasy sensation one experiences when walking abroad under +a sultry overcast sky with mutterings and flashes in it. And then one +night the storm broke.</p> + +<p>They had lingered in the theater after the dismissal of a rehearsal, to +talk over a change in one of the numbers Rose had been working on. It +refused to come out satisfactorily. Rose thought she saw a way of doing +it that would work better and she had been telling him about it. +Eagerly, at first, and with a limpid directness which, however, became +clouded and troubled when she felt he wasn't paying attention. It was a +difficulty with him she had encountered before. Some strong +preoccupation she could neither guess the nature of nor lure him away +from.</p> + +<p>But to-night after an angry turn down the aisle and back he suddenly +cried out, "I don't know. I don't know what you've been talking about. I +don't know and I don't care." And then confronting her, their faces not +a foot apart, for by now she had got to her feet, his hands gripped +together and shaking, his teeth clenched, his eyes glowing there in the +half-light of the auditorium, almost like an animal's, he demanded, +"Can't you see what's the matter with me? Haven't you seen it yet? My +God!"</p> + +<p>Of course she saw it now, plainly enough. She sat down again, managing +an air of deliberation about it, and gripped the back of the orchestra +chair in front of her. He remained standing over her there in the aisle.</p> + +<p>When the heightening tension of the silence that followed this outburst +had grown absolutely unendurable she spoke. But the only thing she could +find to say was almost ludicrously inadequate.</p> + +<p>"No, I didn't see it until now. I'm sorry."</p> + +<p>"You didn't see it," he echoed. "I know you didn't. You've never seen me +at all, from the beginning, as anything but a machine. But why haven't +you? You're a woman. If I ever saw a woman in my life you're one all the +way through. Why couldn't you see that I was a man? It isn't because +I've got gray hair, nor because I'm fifty years old. You aren't like +that. I don't believe you're like that. But even back there in Chicago, +the night we walked down the avenue from Lessing's store—or the night +we had supper together after the show...."</p> + +<p>"I suppose I ought to have seen," she said dully. "Ought to have known +that that was all there was to it. That there couldn't be anything else +in the world. But I didn't."</p> + +<p>"Well, you see it now," he said savagely fairly, and strode away up the +aisle and then back to her. He sat down in the seat in front of her and +turned around. "I want to see your face," he said. "There's something +I've got to know. Something you've got to tell me. You said once, back +there in Chicago, that there was only one person who really mattered to +you. I want to know who that one person is. What he is. Whether he's +still the one person who really matters. If he isn't I'll take my +chance. I'll make you love me if it's the last thing I ever do in the +world."</p> + +<p>Remembering the scene afterward Rose was a little surprised that she'd +been able to answer him as she did, without a hesitation or a stammer, +and with a straight gaze that held his until she had finished.</p> + +<p>"The only person in the world," she said, "who ever has mattered to me, +or ever will matter, is my husband. I fell in love with him the day I +met him. I was in love with him when I left him. I'm in love with him +now. Everything I do that's any good is just something he might be proud +of if he knew it. And every failure is just something I hope I could +make him understand and not despise me for. It's months since I've seen +him but there isn't a day, there isn't an hour in a day, when I don't +think about him and—want him. I don't know whether I'll ever see him +again but if I don't it won't make any difference with that. That's why +I didn't see what I might have seen about you. It wasn't possible for me +to see. I'd never have seen it if you hadn't told me in so many words, +like this. Do you see now?"</p> + +<p>He turned away from her with a nod and put his hands to his face. She +waited a moment to see whether he had anything else to say, for the +habit of waiting for his dismissal was too strong to be broken even in a +situation like this. But finding that he hadn't she rose and walked out +of the theater.</p> + +<p>There was an hour after she had gained the haven of her own apartment, +when she pretty well went to pieces. So this was all, was it, that she +owed her illusory appearance of success to? The amorous desires of a man +old enough to be her father! Once more, she blissfully and ignorantly +unsuspecting all the while, it was love that had made her world go +round. The same long-circuited sex attraction that James Randolph long +ago had told her about. But for that attraction she'd never have got +this job in New York, never have had the chance to design those costumes +for Goldsmith and Block. Never, in all probability, have got even that +job in the chorus of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>. All she'd accomplished in +that bitter year since she left Rodney had been to make another man fall +in love with her!</p> + +<p>But she didn't let herself go like that for long. The situation was too +serious for the indulgence of an emotional sprawl. Here she was in an +apartment that cost her thirty-seven dollars a month. She'd got to earn +a minimum of thirty dollars a week to keep on with it. Of course she +couldn't go on working for Galbraith. The question was, what could she +do? Well, she could do a good many things. Whatever Galbraith's motives +had been in giving her her chance, she had taken that chance and made +the most of it. Gertrude Morse knew what she could do. For that matter, +so did Abe Shuman himself. The thing to do now was to go to bed and get +a night's sleep and confront the situation with a clear mind in the +morning.</p> + +<p>It was a pretty good indication of the way she had grown during the last +year that she was able to conquer the shuddering revulsion that had at +first swept over her, get herself in hand again, eat a sandwich and +drink a glass of milk, re-read a half dozen chapters of Albert Edwards' +<i>A Man's World</i>, and then put out her light and sleep till morning.</p> + +<p>It was barely nine o'clock when Galbraith called her up on the +telephone. She hadn't had her breakfast yet and had not even begun to +think out what the day's program must be.</p> + +<p>He apologized for calling her so early. "I wanted to be sure of catching +you," he said, "before you did anything. You haven't yet, have you? Not +written to Shuman throwing up your job, or anything like that?"</p> + +<p>Even over the telephone his manner was eloquent with relief when she +told him she had not. "I want to talk with you," he said. "It's got to +be somewhere where we won't be interrupted." He added, "I shan't say +again what I said last night. You'll find me perfectly reasonable."</p> + +<p>Somehow his voice carried entire conviction. The man she visualized at +the other telephone was neither the distracted pleader she had left last +night, nor the martinet she had been working for during the last month +here in New York, but the John Galbraith she had known in Chicago.</p> + +<p>"All right," she said, "I don't know any better place than here in my +apartment, if that's convenient for you."</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said, "that's all right. When may I come? The sooner the +better of course."</p> + +<p>"Can you give me an hour?" she asked, and he said he could.</p> + +<p>It occurred to her, as the moment of his arrival drew near, that she +might better have thought twice before appointing their meeting here in +her apartment. Discretion perhaps would have suggested a more neutral +rendezvous. But she didn't take this consideration very seriously and +with the first real look she got into his face after she had let him in, +she dismissed it utterly. They shook hands and said, "Good morning," and +she asked him to sit down, all as if nothing had happened the night +before. But he wasted no time in getting to the point.</p> + +<p>"There's one idea you'll have got, from what I said last night, that's a +mistake and that's got to be set right before we go any further. That +is, that you owe your position here, as my assistant, to the fact that +I'd fallen in love with you. That's not true. In fact, it's the opposite +of the truth. That feeling of mine has worked against you instead of for +you. I'll have to explain that a little to make you understand it. And +if you won't mind I'll have to talk pretty straight." She gave him a nod +of assent, but he did not immediately go on. It was a reflective pause, +not an embarrassed one.</p> + +<p>"I've always despised;" he said, "a man who mixed up his love-affairs +with his business. In my business, perhaps, there's a certain temptation +to do that and I've always been on guard against it. I've had +love-affairs, more or less, all along. But in my vacations. You can't do +decent honest work when your mind's on that sort of thing, and I care +more about my work than anything else.</p> + +<p>"Well, that night in Chicago, after the opening of <i>The Girl +Up-stairs</i>, when I took you out to supper, I didn't know what I wanted. +That's the truth. I'd been fighting my interest in you, my personal +interest that is, calling myself all kinds of an old fool. I'd never had +a thing get me like that before and I didn't know what to make of it. +Well, the business was over, of course. I was entitled to a little +vacation. I suppose, that night, if you'd shown the least sense of how I +felt, even if it was just by seeming frightened, I might have flared up +and made love to you. But you didn't see it at all. You had some sort +of—fence around you that held me off. And for a while you even made me +forget that I was in love with you. Forget that you were anything but +the cleverest person I had known at catching my ideas and putting them +over. I saw how enormously valuable you'd be to me, in this job you've +got now, and I offered it to you.</p> + +<p>"And then, all in a wave the other feeling came back. On my way to New +York I decided that as long as I felt like that I'd have nothing more to +do with you. A man couldn't possibly do any decent work with a woman he +was in love with, either after he'd got her or while he was trying to +get her. That's why you didn't hear from me within a month after I'd got +back to New York. But as time went on I forgot how strong my feeling had +been. I decided. I'd got over it. I'd been looking for some one else to +take the place I'd designed for you and I couldn't find anybody.</p> + +<p>"I might have got a man, but I didn't want a man, because if he were +clever enough to be any good he'd be out after my job from the very +first day. It would suit Abe Shuman down to the ground to have me teach +a man all I know in two years and then put him in my place at half my +pay. As for women, well, I've never seen a woman yet with just your +combination of qualities, your drive and your knack. So I persuaded +myself that it would be all right. That I could get along without +thinking about you the other way. And I sent for you.</p> + +<p>"But the minute I saw you I knew I'd have to look out. I've tried to; +you know that. I've been treating you like a sweep since you've been +down here. I didn't mean to but I couldn't help it. I was in such a +rage with myself for going on like a sentimental fool about you. And the +way you took it, always good-humored and never afraid, made me all the +more ashamed of myself and all the more in love with you. And so last +night I burst. In a way I'm glad I did. I think perhaps it will clear +the air. But I'll come to that later. I want to know now whether you're +convinced that what I said is true. That the fact that I fell in love +with you has been against you and not in your favor."</p> + +<p>"Yes," Rose said, "I'm convinced of that and I want to thank you for +telling me. Because the other feeling was pretty—discouraging."</p> + +<p>"All right," he said with a nod, "that's understood. Now, here's my +proposition. That you go on working for me exactly as if nothing had +happened."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but that's impossible!" she said, and when he put in "Why is it?" +she told him he had just said so himself. That it was impossible for a +man to do decent work with a woman he was in love with.</p> + +<p>"That's what I thought last night when I blew up," he admitted, "but +I've got things a bit straighter since. In the first place, we have been +doing decent work all this last month. We've been doing, between us, the +work of two high-priced directors."</p> + +<p>She said, "Yes, but I didn't know ..."</p> + +<p>"Understanding's better than ignorance," he interrupted, "any time. +Between people of sense, that is. We'd get on better together, not +worse. Look at us now. We're talking together sensibly enough, aren't +we? And we're here in your sitting-room, talking about the fact that I +fell in love with you. Couldn't we talk just as sensibly in the theater, +about whether a song or number was in the right place or not? Of course +we could."</p> + +<p>The truth of this argument rather stumped Rose. It didn't seem +reasonable, but it was true. Instead of embarrassing and distressing +her, this talk with Galbraith was doing her good, restoring her +confidence. The air between them was easier to breathe than it had been +for weeks.</p> + +<p>"You seem different this morning, somehow," she said.</p> + +<p>"Why," he told her, "I am different. Permanently different toward you. I +am convinced of it. I don't pretend to understand it myself, but +somehow—I'm relieved. For one thing, I never wanted to fall in love +with you. It was quite against my will that I did it. And then I've +always been tortured with curiosity about you. I've wondered. Were you +as unconscious of me as you seemed? Was it possible that you didn't +know. And if you did know, was it possible that you were—waiting? That +it only needed a word of mine to put everything between us on a +different basis? I couldn't get rid of that idea. It kept nagging at me. +But after what you told me last night—and you certainly told it +straight—that idea's exploded. What you said explains everything about +you. I know now that I haven't a chance in the world. From now on, I +imagine, I'll be able to treat you like a human being. Well, are you +willing to try it?"</p> + +<p>Up to now they'd been sitting quietly in their two chairs with most of +the width of the room between them. But at this last question of his she +got up and walked over to the window.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said at last. "It seems dangerous, somehow; like +courting trouble. I know ..." She hesitated, but then decided to say +what was in her mind. "I know how terribly strong those feelings are and +I've found out how little they've got to do with what it's so easy to +decide is reasonable." Now she turned and faced him.</p> + +<p>"Don't you think it would be more sensible for me to find another job? +So that we could—well, take a fresh start?"</p> + +<p>"Child," he said, "don't you know there's no such thing in the world as +a fresh start? Or a new leaf? That's a comfortable delusion for cowards. +The situation's in a mess, is it? All right, run away. Begin again with +a clean slate. But the first thing written down on that slate is that +you've just run away. Besides, suppose you do get another job, working, +say, for another director. How do you know that he won't fall in love +with you?"</p> + +<p>That last sentence went by unheard. She was staring at him, almost in +consternation. "That's true," she said. "That's perfectly true. That +about running away. I—I never thought of it before." She went back to +her chair and dropped into it rather limply. She sat there through a +long silence, still thinking over his words and apparently almost +frightened over her own implications from them.</p> + +<p>At last he said, "You've no cause for worry over that, I should think. I +don't believe you've ever run away from anything yet."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she answered thoughtfully. "I don't know whether I did +or not."</p> + +<p>"Well," he came out at last, getting to his feet, "how about it? What +shall we do this time? Shall we tackle the situation and try to make the +best of it, or ..."</p> + +<p>"Yes, that's what we'll do," she said. "And, well, I'm much obliged to +you for putting me right."</p> + +<p>"I made all the trouble in the first place," said Galbraith, with a +rueful sort of grin. "It was up to me to think of something."</p> + +<p>And after the elevator she'd escorted him to had carried him down, she +stood there in the hallway smiling, with the glow of a quite new +friendliness for him warming her heart.</p> + +<p>It was natural, of course, that the relation between them after that day +should not prove quite so simple and manageable a thing as it had looked +that morning. There were breathless days when the storm visibly hung in +the sky; there were strained, stiff, self-conscious moments of rigidly +enforced politeness. Things got said despite his resolute repression +that had, as resolutely, to be ignored.</p> + +<p>But in the intervals of these failures there emerged, and endured +unbroken for longer periods, the new thing they sought—genuine +friendliness, partnership.</p> + +<p>It was just after Christmas that Abe Shuman took her away from him and +put her to work exclusively on costumes. And the swift sequence of +events within a month thereafter launched her in an independent +business; the new partnership with Alice Perosini, with the details of +which, through Jimmy Wallace, you are already sufficiently acquainted. +By the time that happened the friendship had gone so far that Rose's +chief reluctance in making the change sprang from a fear that the change +would interrupt it.</p> + +<p>But the thing worked the other way. Released from the compulsory +relation of employer and employee, they frankly sought each other as +friends, and found that they got more out of a half-hour together over a +hasty lunch than a whole day's struggle over a common task had given +them.</p> + +<p>There were long stretches of days, of course, when they saw nothing of +each other, and Rose, so long as she had plenty to do, was never +conscious of missing him. She never, in the course of her own day's +work, made an unconscious reference to him, as she was always making +them to Rodney. But the prospect of an empty Sunday morning, for +instance, was always enormously brightened if he called up to say that +it was empty for him, too, and shouldn't they go for a walk or a ferry +ride somewhere.</p> + +<p>He did the greater part of the talking. Told her, a good deal to his own +surprise, stories of his early life in London—a chapter he'd never +been willing to refer to, except in the vaguest terms, to anybody else. +He told her, too, with more and more freedom and explicitness, as he +discovered how straight and honest her mind was, how eager it was for +facts instead of for sentimental refractions of them, about certain +emotional adventures of his as he was emerging into manhood, and of the +marks they had left on him.</p> + +<p>All told, she learned more about men, as such, from him than ever she +had learned, consciously at least, from Rodney. She'd never been able to +regard her husband as a specimen. He was Rodney, <i>sui generis</i>, and it +had never occurred to her either to generalize from him to other men, or +to explain any of the facts she had noted about him, on the mere ground +of his masculinity. She began doing that now a little, and the exercise +opened her eyes.</p> + +<p>In many ways Galbraith and her husband were a good deal alike. Both were +rough, direct, a little remorseless, and there was in both of them, +right alongside the best and finest and clearest things they had, an +unaccountable vein of childishness. She'd never been willing to call it +by that name in Rodney. But when she saw it in Galbraith, too, she +wondered. Was that just the man of it? Were they all like that; at least +all the best of them? Did a man, as long as he lived, need somebody in +the rôle of—mother? The thought all but suffocated her.</p> + +<p>She did not return Galbraith's confidences with any detailed account of +her own life, and the one great emotional experience of it that seemed +to have absorbed all the rest and drawn it up into itself. But she had a +comforting sense that, scanty as was the framework of facts he had to go +on, he knew, somehow, all about it; all the essentials of it; knew +infinitely more about her than Alice Perosini did, although from time to +time she had told Alice a good deal.</p> + +<p>Spring came on them with a rush that year; swept a vivid flush of green +over the parks and squares, all in a day; pumped the sap up madly into +the little buds, so that they could hardly swell fast enough, and burst +at last into a perfectly riotous fanfare through the shrubberies. It +pumped blood, too, as well as sap, and made hearts flutter to strange +irregular rhythms with the languorous insolence of its perfumes, and the +soft caressing pressures of its south wind.</p> + +<p>It worried Rose nearly mad. She was bound to have gone slack anyway; to +have experienced the well-earned, honest lassitude of a finished +struggle and an achieved victory. Dane & Company had any amount of work +in sight, to be sure—a success of such triumphant proportions as they +had had with <i>Come On In</i>, made that inevitable—but it would be months +before any of the new work was wanted.</p> + +<p>Alice, who could see plainly enough that something was the matter, kept +urging Rose to run away somewhere for a long vacation. Why not, if it +came to that, put in a few weeks in London and Paris? She was almost +sure to pick up some valuable ideas over there. Rose declined that +suggestion almost sharply. If she'd had any practical training as a +nurse, she'd go over to Paris and stay, but to use that magnificently +courageous tragic city as a source of ideas for a Shuman <i>revue</i> was out +of the question. As for the quiet place in the Virginia mountains, +which Alice had suggested as an alternative, Rose would die of ennui +there within three days. The only thing to do was to stick to her +routine as well as she could, and worry along.</p> + +<p>These weren't reasons that she gave Alice, they were excuses. The +reason, which she tried to avoid stating, even to herself, was that she +couldn't bear the thought of going one step farther away from Rodney +than she was already.</p> + +<p>A letter from him was always in the first Saturday morning delivery and +she never left for her atelier till she got it. She had perceived, what +he had not, the steadily growing friendliness of these letters. It +wasn't a made-up thing, either. He was not telling her things because he +thought she'd like to be told, but because it had insensibly become a +need of his to tell her.</p> + +<p>A year ago those letters would have made her wildly happy; would have +filled her with the confidence that the end she sought was in sight at +last. Now they drove her half mad with disappointment. She never opened +one of those dearly familiar envelopes without the irrepressible hope +that it contained a love-letter; a passionate demand that she come back +to him; leave all she had and come back to him; his woman to her man. +And her disappointment and inconsistency bewildered her.</p> + +<p>Her two chance encounters, first with Jimmy Wallace in the theater, and +later with James Randolph, made her restlessness more nearly +unendurable. The thought that they were going back to Chicago and would, +no doubt, within a few days after their talks with her, see and talk +with him, was like the cup of Tantalus. And if she could encounter them +by chance, like that, why mightn't she encounter him? Why mightn't he +come to New York on business? She never walked anywhere, nowadays, +without watching for him.</p> + +<p>She didn't yield, passively, to these thoughts and feelings. She fought +them relentlessly, methodically. She went to a women's gymnasium every +evening, threw a medicine ball around for a while, and then played a +hard game of squash, in the sometimes successful attempt to get tired +enough so that she'd have to sleep. Also she tried riding in the park, +mornings, but that didn't work so well, and she gave it up.</p> + +<p>There came a Saturday morning, toward the end of May, which brought no +letter from Rodney, and she stayed in all day, from one delivery to the +next, waiting for it. She tried to disguise her excitement over its +failure to arrive, as a fear lest something might have gone wrong with +him or with the twins, but did not succeed. If anything had gone wrong +she knew she'd have heard. The thing that kept clutching at her heart +was hope. The hope that the letter wouldn't come at all; that there'd be +a telephone call instead—and Rodney's voice.</p> + +<p>The telephone did ring just before noon, but the voice was Galbraith's. +He wanted to know if she wouldn't come over to his Long Island farm the +following morning and spend the day.</p> + +<p>She had visited the place two or three times and had always enjoyed it +immensely there. It wasn't much of a farm, but there was a delightful +old Revolutionary farmhouse on it, with ceilings seven feet high and +casement windows, and the floors of all the rooms on different levels; +and Galbraith, there, was always quite at his best. His sister and her +husband, whom he had brought over from England when he bought the place, +ran it for him. They were the simplest sort of peasant people who had +hardly stirred from their little Surrey hamlet until that meteoric +brother of theirs had summoned them on their breath-taking voyage to +America, and for whom now, on this little Long Island farm, New York +might have been almost as far away as London. Mrs. Flaxman did all the +work of the house and farmyard without the aid of a servant, and her +husband raised vegetables for the New York market.</p> + +<p>What the pair really thought of the life John Galbraith led, or of the +guests he sometimes brought out for week-end visits, no one knew. But +the pleasant sort of homely hospitality one always found there was +extremely attractive to Rose, and with Rodney's regular Saturday letter +at hand she'd have accepted the invitation eagerly. As it was, she +answered almost shortly that she couldn't come. Then, contrite, she +hastened to dilute her refusal with an elaboration of regrets and +hastily contrived reasons.</p> + +<p>"All right," he said good-humoredly, "I shan't ask any one else, but if +you happen to change your mind call me on the phone in the morning. Tell +me what train you're coming down on and I'll meet you."</p> + +<p>She didn't expect to change her mind, but a phonograph did it for her. +This instrument was domesticated across the court somewhere—she had +never bothered to discover just which pair of windows the sound of it +issued from—and it was addicted to fox-trots, comic recitations in +negro dialect, and the melodies of Mr. Irving Berlin. It was jolly and +companionable and Rose regarded it as a friend. But on this Saturday +night, perversely enough, perhaps because its master was in Pittsburgh +on a business trip and hadn't come home as expected, the thing turned +sentimental. It sang <i>I'm on My Way to Mandalay</i>, under the impression +that Mandalay was an island somewhere. It played <i>The Rosary</i>, done as a +solo on the cornet; and over and over again it sang, with the thickest, +sirupiest sentiment that John McCormack at his best is capable of,</p> + +<span class="poem">"Just a little love, a li—ttle kiss,</span><br> +<span class="poem">Just an hour that holds a world of bliss,</span><br> +<span class="poem">Eyes that tremble like the stars above me,</span><br> +<span class="poem">And the little word that says you love me."</span><br> + +<p>It was a song that had tormented Rose before with the abysmal fatuity of +its phrases, its silly sloppy melody, and yet—this was the infuriating +thing—the way it had of getting into her, somehow, reaching bare nerves +and setting them all aquiver.</p> + +<p>To-night it broke her down. She closed the windows, despite the +sultriness of the night, but the tune, having once got in, couldn't be +shut out. Whether she heard it or only fancied she did, didn't matter. +The words bored their way into her brain.</p> + +<span class="poem">"Just a little love, a little kiss,</span><br> +<span class="poem">I would give you all my life for this,</span><br> +<span class="poem">As I hold you fast and bend above you ..."</span><br> + +<p>It was a white night for Rose. The morning sun had been streaming into +her bedroom for an hour before she finally fell asleep. And at nine +o'clock, when she wakened, she heard the phonograph going again. It was +now on its way to Mandalay, but John McCormack was no doubt waiting in +the background. She went to the telephone and called up Galbraith, +telling him she'd come by the first train she could get.</p> + +<p>He met her with a dog-cart and a fat pony, and when they had jogged +their way to their destination they spent what was left of the morning +looking over the farm. Then there was a midday farm dinner that Rose +astonished herself by dealing with as it deserved and by feeling sleepy +at the conclusion of. Galbraith caught her biting down a yawn and packed +her off to the big Gloucester swing in the veranda, the one addition +he'd built on the place, for a nap; and obediently she did as he bade +her.</p> + +<p>Coming into the veranda about four o'clock, and finding her awake, he +suggested that they go for a walk. She had dressed, in anticipation of +this, in a short skirt and heavy walking boots, so they set out across +the fields. Two hours later, having swung her legs over a stone wall +that had a comfortably inviting flat top, she remained sitting there and +let her gaze rest, unfocused, on the pleasant farm land that lay below +them.</p> + +<p>After a glance at her he leaned back against the wall at her side and +began filling his pipe. She dropped her hand on his nearer shoulder. +After all these months of friendship it was the first approach to a +caress that had passed between them.</p> + +<p>"You're a good friend," she said, and then the hand that had rested on +him so lightly suddenly gripped hard. "And I guess I need one," she +ended.</p> + +<p>He went on filling his pipe. "Anything special you need one for?" +he asked quietly.</p> + + +<a name="Illus_9"></a> +<br><br> + +<center> +<a href="images/Illus_9.png"><img src="images/Illus_9.png" + alt=""You're a good friend," she said." + width="45%"></a> +</center> + +<h4>"You're a good friend," she said.</h4> +<br> + + +<p>She gave a ragged little laugh. "I guess not. Just somebody strong and +steady to hold on to like this."</p> + +<p>"Well," he said very deliberately, "you want to realize this: You say +I'm a friend and I am, but if there is anything in this friendship which +can be of use to you you're entitled to it; to everything there is in +it. Because you made it."</p> + +<p>"One person can't make a friendship," she said. "Even two people can't. +It's got to—grow out of them somehow."</p> + +<p>He assented with a nod. "But in this case who gave it a chance to grow? +Where would it have been if I'd had my way? If you hadn't pulled me up +and set me straight?"</p> + +<p>"For that matter," she said, "where would it have been if I had had +mine? If I'd run away and tried for a fresh start, as I'd have done if +you hadn't set me right?"</p> + +<p>"Make it so," he said. "Say we've equal rights in it. Still you needn't +worry about my not getting my share of the benefits."</p> + +<p>"You <i>are</i> content with it, aren't you? Like this? I haven't—cheated? +Used you? It's easy for a woman to do that, I think. It isn't ...?" She +asked that last question by taking her hand off his shoulder.</p> + +<p>"No, put it back," he said. "It's all right." He smoked in silence for a +minute; then went on. "Why, 'content' is hardly the word for it. When I +think what it was I wanted and what you've given me instead ...! It +wasn't self-denial or any other high moral principle that kept me from +flaring up when you took hold of me just now. It's because I've got a +better thing. Something I wouldn't trade for all the love in the world. +'Content'!"</p> + +<p>"I'd like to believe it was a better thing," she said; "but I'm afraid I +can't."</p> + +<p>"Neither could I when I was—how old are you?—twenty-four. Perhaps when +you're fifty-one you can."</p> + +<p>"I suppose so," she said absently. "Perhaps if it were a question of +choosing between a love that hadn't any friendship in it and a +friendship ... But it <i>can't</i> be like that!—Can it? Can't one have +both? Can't a man—love a woman and be her friend and partner all at the +same time?"</p> + +<p>"I can't answer for every man," he said reflectively. "There are all +kinds of men. And that's not mentioning the queers, who aren't real men +at all. Take a dozen sound, normal, healthy men and if you could find +out the truth about them, which it would be pretty hard to do, you'd +find immense differences in their wants, habits, feelings; in the way +things <i>took</i> them. But I've a notion that nine out of the dozen, if you +could get down to the actual bedrock facts about them, would own up that +if they were in love with a woman—really, you know, all the way—they +wouldn't want her for a partner, and wouldn't be able to see her as a +friend. That's just a guess, of course. But there's one thing I know, +and that is that I couldn't."</p> + +<p>She gave a little shiver. "<i>Oh</i>, what a mess it is!" she said. "What a +perfectly hopeless blunder it is!" She slid down from the wall. "Come; +let's walk."</p> + +<p>He fell in beside her and they tramped sturdily along for a while in +silence. At last she said, "Can you tell me why? Suppose there hadn't +been any one else with me; suppose I'd felt toward you the way you did +toward me, then; why couldn't you have gone on being my friend and +partner as well as my lover? You'd have known I was worth it; have known +I understood the things you were interested in and—yes, and was able to +help you to work them out. Why would all that have had to go?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know that I can explain it," he said. "But I don't think +I'd call it a blunder that a strip of spring steel can't bend in your +fingers like copper and still go on being a spring. You see, a man wants +his work and then he wants something that isn't his work; that's +altogether apart from his work; doesn't remind him of it. Love's about +as far away as anything he can get. So that the notion of our working +ourselves half to death over the same job, and then going home together +..."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she admitted. "I can see that. But that doesn't cover +friendship."</p> + +<p>He owned that it didn't. "But when I'm in love with a woman—this isn't +a fact I'm proud of, but it's true—I'm jealous of her. Not of other +men alone, though I'm that, too, but jealous of everything. I want to be +all around her. I want to be everything to her. I want her to think +there's nobody like me; that nobody else could be right and I be wrong. +And I want to be able to think the same of her. I want her to hide, from +me, the things about herself that I wouldn't like. When I ask her what +she thinks about something, I want her to say—what I want her to think. +I know what I want her to think, and if she doesn't say it she hurts my +feelings."</p> + +<p>He thought it over a bit longer and then went on. "No, I've been in love +with women I could suspect of anything. Women I thought were lying to +me, cheating me; women I've hated; women I've known hated me. But I've +never been in love with a woman who was my friend. I'd never figured it +out before, but it's so."</p> + +<p>In the process of figuring it out he'd more or less forgotten Rose. He +had been tramping along communing with his pipe; thinking aloud. If he'd +been watching her face he wouldn't have gone so far.</p> + +<p>"Well, if it's like that," she said, and the quality of her voice drew +his full attention instantly—"if love has to be like that, then the +game doesn't seem worth going on with. You can't live with it, and you +can't live—without it." Her voice dropped a little, but gained in +intensity. "At least I can't. I don't believe I can." She stopped and +faced him. "What can one <i>do</i>?" she demanded. "Wait, I suppose you'll +say, till you're fifty. Well, you're fifty, and the thing can still +torment you; spring on you when you aren't looking; twist you about." +She turned away with a despairing gesture and stood gazing out, +tear-blinded, over the little valley the hilltop they had reached +commanded.</p> + +<p>"You want to remember this," he said at last. "I've been talking about +myself. I haven't even pretended to guess for more than nine of those +twelve men. That leaves three who are, I am pretty sure, different. I +might have been different myself, a little anyway, if I'd got a +different sort of start. If my first love-affair had been an altogether +different thing. If it had been the kind that gave me a home and kids. +So you don't want to take what I've said for anything more than just the +truth about me. And I'm not, thank God, a fair sample."</p> + +<p>He stood behind her, miserably helpless to say or do anything to comfort +her. An instinct told him she didn't want his hands on her just then, +and he couldn't unsay the things he had told her any further than he had +already.</p> + +<p>Presently she turned back to him, slid her hand inside his arm, and +started down the road with him. "My love-affair brought me a home +and—kids," she said. "There are two of them—twins—a year and a half +old now; and I went off and left them; left him. And all I did it for +was to make myself over, into somebody he could be friends with, instead +of just—as I said then—his mistress. I'd never known a woman then who +was a man's mistress, really, and I didn't see why he should be so angry +over my using the word. I thought it was fair enough. And the day I left +his house I came to you and got a job in the chorus in <i>The Girl +Up-stairs</i>. I thought that by earning my own way, building a life that +he didn't—surround, as you say—I could win his friendship. And have +his love besides. I don't suppose you would have believed there could be +such a fool in the world as I was to do that."</p> + +<p>He took a while digesting this truly amazing statement of hers, a +half-mile perhaps of steady silent tramping. But at last he said, "No, I +wouldn't call you a fool. I call a fool a person who thinks he can get +something for nothing. You didn't think that. You were willing to pay—a +heavy price it must have been, too—for what you wanted. And I've an +idea, you know, that you never really pay without getting something; +though you don't always get what you expect. You've got something now. A +knowledge of what you can do; of what you are worth; and I don't believe +you'd trade it for what you had the day before you came to me for a +job."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she said raggedly. "Perhaps ..." A sob clutched at her +throat and she did not try to conclude the sentence.</p> + +<p>"As to whether you did right or wrong in leaving him," he went on, +"you've got to figure it this way. It isn't fair to say, 'Knowing what I +know now and being what I am now, but in the situation I was in then, +I'd have done differently.' The thing you've got to take into account +is, being what you were then, suppose you hadn't gone? You thought then +that you were just his mistress, not knowing what a real mistress was +like; and you thought that by going away you could make yourself his +friend. You thought that was your great chance. Well, you couldn't have +stayed without feeling that you had thrown away your chance; without +knowing that you'd had your big thing to do and had been afraid to do +it. And that knowledge would have gone a long way toward making you the +thing you thought you were.</p> + +<p>"Well, you did your big thing. And a person who's done that has stayed +alive anyway; and he knows that when his next big thing comes along +he'll do that too. I don't pretend that you'll always come out right in +the end if you do the big thing, but I'm pretty sure of this; that you +never come out at all if you refuse it."</p> + +<p>His amazement over what she had done increased as he thought about it +and was testified to every now and then by grunts and snorts and little +exclamations, but he made no more articulate comment.</p> + +<p>There was a seven-thirty train she thought she ought to take back to +town and as their walk had led in that direction they finished it at the +station, where he waited with her for the train to come in.</p> + +<p>"It's been a good day," she said. "I feel as if you'd somehow pulled me +through."</p> + +<p>"And I," he said, "feel like a wind-bag. I've talked and talked; smug +comfortable preaching."</p> + +<p>"No, it's helped," she insisted. "Or something has. Just having you +there, perhaps. I feel better, anyway."</p> + +<p>But after she'd got her last look at him on the platform, when the train +had carried her off, an observer, seeing the way the color faded out of +her face, and the look in the eyes, which, so wide open and so unseeing, +stared straight ahead, would have said that the benefit hadn't lasted +long. There was about her the look of somber terror, just verging on +panic, which you have seen in a child's face when he has been sent +up-stairs to bed alone in the dark.</p> + +<p>Fragments of Galbraith's talk came back to her. It was by ceasing to be +her lover and her partner that he had become her friend. Rodney, it +seemed from his letters, was becoming her friend too. Was it because he, +too, had ceased to be her lover? if ever she stood face to face with him +again would she search in vain for that look of hunger—of ages-old +hunger and need—that she'd last seen when they stood face to face in +her little room on Clark Street?</p> + +<p>She walked down-town to her apartment from the Pennsylvania station end, +though the natural effect of fatigue was to quicken her pace, and though +she was indubitably tired, she walked slowly; slowly, and still more +slowly. She found she dreaded going back to that apartment of hers and +shutting herself in for the night, alone.</p> + +<p>She found two corners of white projecting from under her door. And when +she'd unlocked and opened it she stooped and picked them up, a visiting +card and a folded bit of paper. She turned the card over and gave a +little half-suffocated cry.</p> + +<p>It was Rodney's card and on it he'd written, "Sorry to have missed you. +I'll come back at eight."</p> + +<p>Her shaking fingers fumbled pitifully over the folds of the note, but +she got it open at last. It was from him too. It read:</p> + +<blockquote> +<span class="smallcaps">"Dear Rose:</span><br> +<br> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">"This</span> is hard luck. I suppose +you're off for a week-end somewhere. I want very much to see you. When +you come back and have leisure for me, will you call me up? I know how +busy you are so I'll wait until I hear from you.<br> +<br> +<span class="smallcaps">"Rodney."</span> +<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Her heart felt like lead when she'd read it. Dazedly, a little giddily, +she pulled her door shut, went into her room and sat down.</p> + +<p>He was in New York! He'd been to see her this afternoon—and left a +card! And the note he'd written after his second visit was what Howard +West might have written, or any other quite casual, slightly over-polite +acquaintance. And it was from Rodney to her!</p> + +<p>She couldn't see him if he felt like that; couldn't stand it to see him +if he felt like that! Bitterness, contempt, hatred, anything would be +easier to bear than that. She was to call up his hotel, was she? Well, +she wouldn't!</p> + +<p>And then suddenly she spread the note open again and read it once more. +Turned it over and scrutinized the reverse side of the paper, and +uttered a little sobbing laugh. If he'd been as cool, unmoved, +self-possessed, as that note had tried to sound, would he have forgotten +to tell her at what hotel she was to call him up?</p> + +<p>Then, with a gasp, she wondered how she <i>could</i> call him up. He'd think +she knew where he was; he'd wait; and after he'd waited a while, in +default of word from her, wouldn't he take her silence for an answer and +go back to Chicago?</p> + +<p>She clenched her hands at that and tried to think. Well, the obvious +thing to do seemed to be the only one. She must try one hotel after +another until she found him. After all, there probably weren't more than +a dozen to choose among. It wouldn't be easy looking up numbers with +everything dancing before her eyes like this, but if she took the +likeliest ones first she mightn't have to go very far. And, indeed, at a +third attempt she found him.</p> + +<p>When the telephone girl switched her to the information desk, and the +information clerk said, "Mr. Rodney Aldrich? Just a moment," and then; +"Mr. Aldrich is in fifteen naught five," the dry contraction in her +throat made it impossible for her to speak.</p> + +<p>But the switchboard girl had evidently been listening in and plugged her +through, because she heard the throb of another ring, a click of a +receiver and then—then Rodney's voice.</p> + +<p>She couldn't answer his first "Hello," and he said it again, sharply, +"Hello, what is it?"</p> + +<p>And then suddenly her voice came back. A voice that startled her with +its distinctness. "Hello, Rodney," she said; "this is Rose."</p> + +<p>There was a perfectly blank silence after that and, then the crisp voice +of an operator somewhere—"Waiting?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she heard Rodney say, "get off the line." And then to her. "I +came to see you this afternoon and again to-night."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know," she said. "I just this minute got in. Can't you come back +again now?"</p> + +<p>How in the world, she had wondered, could she manage her voice like +that! From the way it sounded she might have been speaking to Alice +Perosini; and yet her shaking hand could hardly hold the receiver. She +heard him say:</p> + +<p>"It's pretty late, isn't it? I don't want to ... You'll be tired and +..."</p> + +<p>"It's not too late for me," she said, "only you might come straight +along before it gets any later."</p> + +<p>She managed to wait until she heard him say, "All right," before she +hung up the receiver. Then a big racking sob, not to be denied any +longer, pounced on her and shook her.</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_IV_4"></a><h3>CHAPTER IV</h3> + +<h3>COULEUR-DE-ROSE</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>The fact that the length of time it would take a taxi to bring him down +from his hotel to her apartment was not enough to decide anything in, +plan anything in, was no more than enough, indeed, to give her a chance +to stop crying and wash her face, was a saving factor in the situation.</p> + +<p>In the back of her mind, as with a hairpin or two she righted her hair +and decided, glancing down over herself, against attempting to change +even her tumbled blouse or her dusty boots, was an echoing consciousness +of something Galbraith had said that afternoon—"And you know when your +next big thing comes along you will do that too."</p> + +<p>Without actually quoting those words to herself, she experienced a +sudden confidence that was almost serene. In a few minutes now, not more +than five, probably—she hoped not more than that—something +incalculable, tremendous, was going to begin happening to her. A thing +whose issue would in all likelihood determine the course of her whole +life. There might be a struggle, a tempest, but she made no effort to +foresee the nature of it. She just relaxed physical and spiritual +muscles and waited. Only she hoped she wouldn't have to wait long.</p> + +<p>No—there was the bell.</p> + +<p>It was altogether fortunate for Rose that she had attempted no +preparation, because the situation she found herself in when she'd +opened the door for her husband, shaken hands with him, led him into her +sitting-room and asked him to sit down, was one that the wildest cast of +her imagination would never have suggested as a possible one for her and +Rodney. And it lasted—recurred, at least, whenever they were +together—almost unaltered, for two whole days.</p> + +<p>It was his manner, she felt sure, that had created it; and yet, so +prompt and automatic had been her response that she couldn't be sure, +not for the first half-hour or so, anyway, that he wasn't attributing it +to her. It wasn't so much the first words he said, when, opening her +door, she saw him standing in the hallway, as it was his attitude; his +rather formal attitude; the way he held his hat; the fact—this was +absurd, of course, but she reconstructed the memory very clearly +afterward—that his clothes were freshly pressed. It was the slightly +anxious, very determined attitude of an estimable and rather shy young +man making his first call on a young lady, on whom he is desperately +desirous of making a favorable impression.</p> + +<p>What he said was something not very coherent about being very glad and +its being very good of her, and almost simultaneously she gasped out +that she was glad, and wouldn't he come in. She held out her hand to +him, politely, and he, compensating for an imperceptible hesitation with +a kind of clumsy haste, took it and released it almost as hastily. She +showed him where to hang his coat and hat, conducted him into her +sitting-room and invited him to sit down. And there they were.</p> + +<p>And he was Rodney, and she was Rose! It was like an absurd dream.</p> + +<p>For a while she talked desperately, under the same sort of delirious +conviction one has in dreams that if he desists one moment from some +grotesquely futile form of activity a cosmic disaster will instantly +take place. A moment of silence between them would be, she felt, +something unthinkably terrible. It was not a fear of what might emerge +from such a silence, the sudden rending of veils and the confrontation +of two realities; it was a dread, purely, of the silence itself. But the +feeling did not last very long.</p> + +<p>"Won't you smoke?" she asked suddenly; and hurried on when he hesitated, +"I don't do it myself, but most of my friends do, and I keep the +things." From a drawer in her writing-desk she produced a tin box of +cigarettes. "They're your kind—unless you've changed," she commented, +and went over to the mantel shelf for an ash-tray and a match-safe. The +match-safe was empty and she left the room to get a fresh supply from +her kitchenette.</p> + +<p>On the inner face of her front door was a big mirror, and in it, as she +came back through the unlighted passage, she saw her husband. He was +sitting just as she'd left him, and as his face was partly turned away +from her, it could not have been from the expression of it that she got +her revelation. But she stopped there in the dark and caught her breath +and leaned back against the wall and squeezed the tears out of her eyes.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was just because he was sitting so still, a thing it was +utterly unlike him to do. The Rodney of her memories was always ranging +about the rooms that confined him. Or the grip of the one hand she could +see upon the chair-arm it rested on may have had something to do with +it. But it was not, really, a consciously deductive process at all; just +a clairvoyant look—<i>into</i> him, and a sudden, complete, utterly +confident understanding.</p> + +<p>He had come down here to New York to make another beginning. He meant to +assert no rights, not even in their common memories, he would make no +appeal. But something that he felt he had forfeited he was going to try +to earn back. What was the thing he sought—her friendship, or her love? +She knew! No plea that the inspired rhetoric of passion could be capable +of could have convinced her of his love for her and of his need for her +love as did the divine absurdity of this attempt of his to show her that +she need give him—nothing. She knew. Oh, how she knew!</p> + +<p>She stole back into her little kitchen and shut the door and leaned +giddily against it, trying to get her breath to coming steadily again. +At last she straightened up and wiped her eyes. A smile played across +her lips; the smile of deep maternal tenderness. Then she picked up her +box of matches and carried them to him in the sitting-room.</p> + +<p>He stayed that first evening a little less than an hour, and when he got +up to go, she made no effort to detain him. The thing had been, as its +unbroken surface could testify, a highly successful first call. Before +she let him go, though, she asked him how long he was going to be in New +York, and on getting a very indeterminate answer that offered a minimum +of "two or three days" and a maximum that could not even be guessed at, +she said:</p> + +<p>"I hope you're not going to be too dreadfully busy for us to see a lot +of each other. I wish we might manage it once every day."</p> + +<p>That shook him; for a moment, she thought the lightning was going to +strike and stood very still holding her breath, waiting for it.</p> + +<p>But he steadied himself, said he could certainly manage that if she +could, and as the elevator came up in response to her ring, said that he +would call her up in the morning at her office.</p> + +<p>She puzzled a little during the intermittent processes of undressing, +over why she had let him go like that. She found it easy to name some of +the things that were <i>not</i> the reason. It was not—oh, a thousand times +it was not!—that she wasn't quite sure of him. There was no expressing +the completeness of her certainty that, with a look, a sudden holding +out of the hands to him, the release of one little love-cry from her +lips, a half-articulate, "Come and take me, Roddy! That's all I want!" +she could have shattered, annihilated, that brittle restraint of his; +released the full tempest of his passion; found herself—lost +herself—in his embrace.</p> + +<p>Certainly it was no doubt of that that had held her back. And, no more +than doubt, was it pride or modesty. The one thing her whole being was +crying out for was a complete surrender to him.</p> + +<p>But the real reason seemed rather absurd, when she tried to state it to +herself. She had felt that it would be a <i>brutal</i> thing to do. Really, +her feeling toward him was that of a mother toward a child who, having, +he thinks, merited her displeasure, offers her, by way of atonement, +some dearly prized possession; an iron fire-engine, a woolly sheep. What +mother wouldn't accept an offering like that gravely!</p> + +<p>This thing that Rodney had offered her, the valiant, heart breaking +pretense that she needn't give him anything—to her, whose aching need +was to give him everything she had!—was just as absurd as the child's +toy could have been. But it had cost him.... Oh, what must it not have +cost him in struggle and sacrifice, to construct that pitiful, +transparent pretense!—to maintain that manner! And the struggle and the +sacrifice must not be cheapened, made absurd by a sudden shattering +demonstration that they'd been unnecessary. His pretense must be melted, +not shattered. And until it could be melted, that aching need of hers +must wait.</p> + +<p>And then she realized that the ache was gone—the tormenting restless +hunger for him that had been nagging at her ever since the first rush of +spring was somehow appeased. She'd have said, twenty-four hours ago, +that to be with him, have him near her, in any other relation than that +of her lover, would be unendurable. Twenty-four hours ago! She thought +of that as she was winding her watch. It seemed incredible that it was +no longer than that since the saccharine little sob in John McCormack's +voice as he had sung "Just a little love, a li-ttle ki-iss," had driven +her frantic.</p> + +<p>She turned out her light and opened her bedroom window. The phonograph +across the court was going again. But now, evidently, its master had +come back from Pittsburgh, for it was singing lustily, "That's why I +wish again that I was in Michigan, back on the farm."</p> + +<p>Rose smiled her old wide smile, and cuddled her cheek into the pillow. +She was the happiest person in the world.</p> + +<p>When he called her up the next morning, she asked him to come down to +the premises of Dane & Company (it was a loft on lower Fifth Avenue) +about noon and go out to lunch with her, and she made no secret of her +motive in selecting their rendezvous. "I'd like to have you see what our +place is like;" she said, "though it isn't like anything much just now, +between seasons this way. Still you can get an idea."</p> + +<p>He said he would be immensely interested to see the place, and from the +cadence of his voice was apparently prepared to let the conversation end +there. But she prolonged it a little.</p> + +<p>"Do you hear from—Chicago while you're down here, Roddy?" she asked. +"Whether everything's all right—at home, I mean?"</p> + +<p>It was a second or two before he answered, but when he did, his voice +was perfectly steady.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he said. "I get a night-letter every morning from Miss French. +(This was Mrs. Ruston's successor.) It's—everything's all right."</p> + +<p>"Good-by, then, till noon," she said. And if he could have seen the +smile that was on her lips, and the brightness that was in her eyes as +she said it ...!</p> + +<p>It was a part, you see, of his Quixotic determination to make no claims, +that he had not said a word, during his evening call, about the +twins—her babies!</p> + +<p>On the stroke of twelve his card was brought to her, and she went out +into their bare little waiting-room to meet him.</p> + +<p>"We aren't a regular dressmaking establishment, you see," she said. "The +people we have to impress aren't the ones we make the clothes for. So we +can be as shabby down here as we please, and Alice says—Alice Perosini, +you know—that our shabbiness really does impress them. Shows we don't +care what they think.</p> + +<p>"You're sure you've plenty of time to see around in?" she went on. "That +it won't cut into your time for lunch?"</p> + +<p>He made it plain that he had plenty of time, and she took him into her +own studio, a big north-lighted room at the back of the building, with +the painter's manikins that Jimmy Wallace had told about, standing about +in it, and some queer-looking electric-light fixtures suggestive of the +stage; a big tin-lined box with half a dozen powerful tungsten lamps in +it, and grooves in the mouth of it for the reception of colored slides. +And a sort of search-light that swung on a pivot. There was a high +cutting-table with a deep indentation in it, in which Rose could stand +with her work all around her. On a shelf in a corner he noticed two or +three little figures twelve inches high or so that he'd have thought of +as dolls had it not been that their small heads gave them the scale of +adults. Rose followed his glance.</p> + +<p>"I play with those," she said. "Dress them in all sorts of +things—tissue-paper mostly. It seems easier to catch an idea small in +the tips of my fingers, and then let it grow up. You have to find out +for yourself how you can do things, don't you?"</p> + +<p>Then she took him out into the workroom, where there were more +cutting-tables and power-driven sewing-machines.</p> + +<p>"'It never rains but it pours,' is the motto of this business," she told +him. "Nobody ever knows what he wants until the very last minute, and +then he wants it the next, and everybody wants it at once. And then this +place is like a madhouse. We simply go out of our heads. It was like +that when Jimmy Wallace was down here. I hadn't a minute for him."</p> + +<p>She added deliberately, "I'm glad you didn't come down then," and went +swiftly on to explain to him a sort of pantograph arrangement which +could be set with reference to the measurements of the manikin Rose had +designed the costume upon, and those of the girl who was going to wear +it, so that the pattern for the costume itself, as distinct from Rose's +master-pattern, was cut almost automatically to fit.</p> + +<p>"It's not really automatic, of course," she said. "No costume's done +until I have seen it on the girl who's going to wear it. But it does +save time."</p> + +<p>Alice Perosini came in just then, and a breath-taking spectacle she'd +have been to most men in the frock she had on. But it was not Rodney who +gasped. It was Alice herself who almost did, when Rose introduced him to +her, without explanations, as Mr. Aldrich and said she was going out to +lunch with him.</p> + +<p>"And there's no telling when I'll be back," she added, "so if there's +anything to talk about, you'd better seize the chance and tell me now."</p> + +<p>Alice couldn't be blamed if her face was a study. She knew that Aldrich +was the name of Rose's abandoned husband, and it would have been natural +to believe that this highly impressive-looking person, whom Rose so +casually introduced, was he. But the matter-of-fact way in which Rose +was trotting him about the shop, and spoke of carrying him off to lunch, +seemed to make such a conclusion fantastic.</p> + +<p>There was nothing casual about the man, though, she reflected +afterward. He'd taken his part, adequately and politely, of course, in +the introduction and the fragmentary word or two of small-talk that had +followed it, but Alice doubted if he'd really seen her at all. And when +a man didn't see Alice—this was a line of reasoning she was quite +candidly capable of—it meant an intensity of preoccupation that one +might call monstrous—portentous, anyway.</p> + +<p>Rose asked him if he minded the Brevoort, which was near by and airy, on +a warm spring day like this, and he assented to it with enthusiasm. He +hadn't been there in years, he said. She wished, a little later, that +she had thought twice and had taken him somewhere else, where she wasn't +quite so obviously well acquainted. The cordial salutation of the head +waiter, the number of people who nodded at her from this table or that, +might well have been dispensed with on an occasion like this. And the +climax was when the table waiter, well accustomed to having her bring +guests of either sex to lunch with her, and on confidential terms with +her gustatory preferences, handed her a menu—as a matter of form—told +her what he thought she'd like to-day, and, getting out his pencil and +his card, prepared to write it down. She saw Rodney looking pretty +blank, so she checked the waiter and said:</p> + +<p>"I think I <i>did</i> ask you to lunch with me, but if you'd rather I lunched +with you ... You can have it whichever way you like."</p> + +<p>He hesitated just an instant; then said he'd like to lunch with her. And +somehow their eyes met over that in a way that, once more, made Rose +hold her breath. But the lightning didn't strike that time.</p> + +<p>Even so, their hour wasn't wasted on the polite topics of custom-made +conversation, as, for a while, she had feared it would be; because he +asked her, presently—and she could see he really wanted to know—how +she had got started in this costuming business. It was evidently a thing +she had a genius for, but how had she found it out, and how had she +worked out that technique which, even to the eyes of his ignorance, was +clearly extraordinary?</p> + +<p>And Rose, beginning a little timidly, because she knew there were rocks +ahead for him, told him the tale that had its beginning in Lessing's +store; the story of Mrs. Goldsmith and her bad taste, of the Poiret +model that had suggested her great idea, of the offer she had made +Galbraith, the way she had bought her dressmaker's form and her bolts of +paper-cambric out of the Christmas rush, and had cut out her patterns in +the dead of nights after rehearsals, up in her little room on Clark +Street. She told him of the wild rush with which the costumes themselves +got made down under the stage at the Globe; of Galbraith's enthusiasm, +of the bargain she'd driven with Goldsmith and Block—the unwittingly +good bargain that had left her a profit of over two hundred dollars. She +told him how Goldsmith and Block had driven a good bargain of their own, +hiring her at her chorus-girl's salary for the last two delirious weeks; +how insanely hard she'd worked, and how, at last, after the opening +performance, Galbraith had offered her a job in New York when he should +be ready for her.</p> + +<p>Somehow, while she told it, though it was only occasionally that she +glanced up at him—somehow, as she told it, she seemed to be hearing it +with his ears—to be thinking, actually, the very thoughts that were +going through his mind.</p> + +<p>The central cord of it all, that everything else depended from, was, she +knew, the reflection that this triumphant narrative he was listening to +now, had been waiting on her lips to be told to him that night in the +room on Clark Street, and that the smoking smoldering fires of his +outraged pride and masculine sense of possession, had made the telling +impossible—had made everything impossible but that dull outcry of hers +that it had ended—like this.</p> + +<p>But he never winced. Indeed, now and then when she tried to run ahead in +a way to elide this incident or that, he asked questions that brought +out all the details, and at the end he said with undisguised gravity, +but quite steadily:</p> + +<p>"So after the play opened you were just waiting for Galbraith to send +for you. Why—why did you go on the road, instead of to New York?"</p> + +<p>"He hadn't sent for me yet, and I'd made up my mind, by that time, that +he meant not to. And I was too tired just then to come down here and try +for anything else. I went on the road for a sort of rest-cure."</p> + +<p>He sat for a good while after that in a reflective silence. And, at the +end of it, deliberately introduced a new and entirely harmless topic of +conversation. She knew why he did that. She understood now that there +was more on his program than his manner last night had indicated. That +had been a preliminary, but the past wasn't to be ignored forever. A +time was coming when the issue between them should be brought up and +settled. But the time was not now, nor the place this crowded +restaurant.</p> + +<p>She was perfectly docile to his new conversational lead, but the fact +that she yielded, that she knew it would be beyond her powers to force +that issue until he was ready for it, thrilled her—brought the blood +into her cheeks. The thing he was doing might be absurd, but his way of +doing it was not absurd. He had changed, somehow, or something had +changed between them. She engaged all his powers. If there should be a +struggle now, his mind would not betray him.</p> + +<p>Just before they left the restaurant he asked her if she would dine with +him some night and go to a show afterward, and when she said she would +he asked what night would be convenient to her.</p> + +<p>Her inflection was perfectly demure and even casual, but nothing could +keep the sudden "richening" that Jimmy Wallace had tried to describe out +of her voice, and the light of mischief danced openly in her eyes when +she said:</p> + +<p>"Why, to-night's all right for me." She added, "If that's not too soon +for you."</p> + +<p>He flushed and dropped his hands from the edge of the table where they'd +been resting, but he answered evenly enough:</p> + +<p>"No, it's not too soon for me."</p> + +<p>And then force of habit betrayed Rose into a stupid blunder that almost +precipitated a small quarrel.</p> + +<p>"Tell me what you'd like to see," she said, "and I'll telephone for the +seats."</p> + +<p>Then, at his horrified stare, she gasped out an explanation. "Roddy, I +didn't mean <i>buy</i> the seats! I don't have to buy seats at any theater. +And at this time of year they're so glad to have somebody to give them +to that it seems sort of—wicked to pay real money."</p> + +<p>"It's my mistake," he said. "Naturally, going to the theater wouldn't be +much of a—treat to you. I'd forgotten that."</p> + +<p>"Going with <i>you</i> would be a treat to me," she said earnestly. "That's +why I didn't think about the other part of it. But I needn't have been +so stupid as that. Will you forget I said it, please?"</p> + +<p>He smiled now at himself, the first smile of genuine amusement she had +seen on his lips for—how long?</p> + +<p>"And I needn't have been quite so horrified," he admitted. "All the +same, I hope I may manage to hit on a restaurant up-town somewhere, +where the waiter won't hand you the check."</p> + +<p>It was on this note that he parted from her at Dane & Company's doorway.</p> + +<p>But the ice didn't melt so fast as she had expected it would, and she +went to bed that night, after he'd brought her home in a taxi and, +having told the chauffeur to wait, formally escorted her to her +elevator, in a state of mind not quite so serenely happy as that of the +night before. She had held her breath a good many times during the +dinner, and even in the theater, where certain old memories and +associations sprang at them both, as it were, from ambush. But always, +at the breaking point, he managed to summon up unexpected reserves for +resistance, intrenched himself in the manner of his first call.</p> + +<p>Rose both smiled and wept over her review of this evening, and was a +long while getting off to sleep. She felt she couldn't stand this state +of things much longer.</p> + +<p>But it was not required of her. With the last of the next day's light, +the ice broke up and the floods came.</p> + +<p>She had taken him to a studio tea in the upper sixties just off West End +Avenue, the proprietors of the studio being a tousled, bearded, blond +anarchist of a painter and his exceedingly pretty, smart, +frivolous-looking wife—who had more sense than she was willing to let +appear. They had lived in Paris for years, but the fact that he had a +German-sounding name had driven them back to New York. It was through +Gertrude that Rose had got acquainted with them—she having wrung from +Abe Shuman permission for the painter to prowl around back-stage and +make notes for a series of queerly lighted pictures of chorus-girls and +dancers—"Degas—and then some," as his admirers said. Gertrude was at +the tea and two or three others. It wasn't a party.</p> + +<p>The two men had instinctively drawn controversial swords almost at sight +of each other and for the hour and a half that they were together the +combat raged mightily, to the unmixed satisfaction of both participants. +The feelings of the bystanders were perhaps more diverse, but Rose, at +least, enjoyed herself thoroughly, not only over seeing her husband's +big, formidable, finely poised mind in action again, but over a change +that had taken place in the nature of some of his ideas. The talk, of +course, ranged everywhere: Socialism, feminism, law and its crimes, art +and the social mind. Gertrude took a hand in it now and then, and it was +something Rodney said to her, in answer to a remark about dependent +wives, that really made Rose sit up.</p> + +<p>"Wives aren't dependents," he said, "except as they let their husbands +make them think they are. Or only in very rare cases. Certainly I don't +know of a wife who doesn't render her husband valuable economic services +in exchange for her support. I can hardly imagine one. Of course if they +don't recognize that these services are valuable, they can be made to +feel dependent all right."</p> + +<p>Gertrude demurred. She was willing to admit that a wife who took care of +a husband's house, cooked his meals, brought up his children, did him an +economic service and that if she didn't feel that she was earning her +way in the world it was because she had been imposed on. But here in New +York, anyway—she didn't know how it might be out in Chicago—one didn't +have to resort to his imagination to conjure up a wife who rendered none +of these services whatever. "They live, thousands of them, in smart +up-town apartments, don't do a lick of work, choke up Fifth Avenue with +their limousines in the afternoon, dress like birds of paradise, or as +near to it as they can come, dine with their husbands in the +restaurants, go to the first nights, eat lobster Newburg afterward, and +spend the next morning in bed getting over it. Those that can't afford +that kind of life scrape along giving the best imitation of it they know +how. Thousands of them—thousands and thousands. If they aren't +dependents ..."</p> + +<p>"They're not, though," said Rodney. "Not a bit of it. They're giving +their husbands an economic service of a peculiarly indispensable sort. +The first requisite for success to the husbands of women who live like +that is the appearance of success. Their status, their front, is the one +thing they can't do without. Well, and it's a curious fact that a man +can't keep up his own front. If he tries to dress extravagantly, wear +diamonds, spend his money on himself, he doesn't look prosperous. He +looks a fool. People won't take him seriously. If he can get a wife +who's ornamental, who has attractive manners, who can convey the +appearance of being expensive without being vulgar, she's of a perfectly +enormous economic advantage to him. She'd only have to quit buying the +sort of clothes he could parade her in, and begin spoiling her looks +with a menial domestic routine, to draw howls of protest from him. Only, +so long as she doesn't call his bluff, she leaves him free to think that +he's doing it all for her and that except for her +extravagance—extravagance, mind you, that nine times out of ten he's +absolutely rammed down her throat—he'd be as rich, really, as he has to +try to pretend he is. He tells her so, with perfect sincerity—and she +believes it." Rose enjoyed the look in Gertrude's face as she listened +to that.</p> + +<p>It was half past six or thereabout when they left the studio, and the +late May afternoon was at its loveliest. It was the sort of day, as +Rodney said, that convicted you, the minute you came out of it, of +abysmal folly in having wasted any of it indoors.</p> + +<p>"I want to walk," said Rose, "after that tea, if I'm ever to want any +dinner."</p> + +<p>He nodded a little absently, she thought, and fell in step beside her. +There was no mention at any time, of their destination.</p> + +<p>It was a good while before Rose got the key to his preoccupation. They +had turned into the park at Sixty-sixth Street, and were half-way over +to the Fifth Avenue corner at Fifty-ninth, before he spoke out.</p> + +<p>"On a day like this," he said, "to have sat there for two or three +mortal hours arguing about stale ideas! Threshing over the straw—almost +as silly an occupation as chess—when we might have been out here, being +alive! But it must have seemed natural to you to hear me going on like +that." And then with a burst, before she could speak:</p> + +<p>"You must remember me as the most blindly opinionated fool in the +world!"</p> + +<p>She caught her breath, then said very quietly, with a warm little laugh +in her voice, "That's not how I remember you, Rodney."</p> + +<p>She declined to help him when he tried to scramble back to the safe +shores of conventional conversation. That sort of thing had lasted long +enough. She just walked along in step with him and, for her part, in +silence. It wasn't long before he fell silent too.</p> + +<p>A thing that Rose hadn't counted on was the effect produced on both of +them just by walking along like this together, side by side, in step. +Just the rhythm of it established a sort of communion—and it was a +communion fortified by many associations. Practically the whole of their +courtship, from the day when he dropped off the street-car with her in +the rain and walked her over to the elevated and kept her note-books, +down to the day on the bridge over the Drainage Canal in the swirl of +that March blizzard, when she'd felt his first embrace, had been on foot +like this, tramping along side by side; miles and miles and miles, as +she'd told her mother. And there had been other walks since. Do you +remember the last time they had walked together? It was from the stage +door of the Globe theater to her little room on North Clark Street. Rose +remembered it and she felt sure that he did. The same singing wire of +memories and associations that had vibrated between them then was +vibrating between them now and drawing up palpably tighter with every +half-mile they walked. Their pace quickened a little.</p> + +<p>Straight down Fifth Avenue they walked to the corner of Thirteenth +Street, and then west. And when they stopped and faced each other in the +entrance to the gray brick building where Rose's apartment was, it was +at the end of a mile or more of absolutely unbroken silence. And facing +each other there, all that was said between them was her:</p> + +<p>"You'll come in, won't you?" and his, "Yes."</p> + +<p>But the gravity with which she'd uttered the invitation and the +tenseness of his acceptance of it, the square look that passed between +them, marked an end of something and the beginning of something new.</p> + +<p>She left him in her sitting-room while she went through into her bedroom +to take off her hat and jacket and take a glance into her mirror. When +she came back, she found him standing at her window looking out. He +didn't turn when she came in, but almost immediately he began speaking. +She went rather limp at the sound of his voice and dropped down on a +cushioned ottoman in front of the fireplace, and squeezed her hands +together between her knees.</p> + +<p>"I don't know how much you will have understood," he began, "probably a +good deal. You told me in Dubuque—as you were quite right to tell +me—that I mustn't come back to you. And now I've disobeyed you and +come. What I hope you will have guessed is that I wouldn't have come +except that I'd something to tell you—something different from +the—idiocies I tormented you with in Dubuque;—something I felt you +were entitled to be told. But I felt—this is what you won't have +understood—I felt that I hadn't any right to speak to you at all, about +anything vital, about anything that concerned us, until I'd given you +some sort of guarantee—until I'd shown you that I was a person it was +possible to deal reasonably with."</p> + +<p>She smiled, then pressed her hands suddenly to her eyes.</p> + +<p>"I understood," she said.</p> + +<p>"Well, then ..." But he didn't at once go on. Stood there a while longer +at the window, then crossed the room and brought up before her +book-shelves, staring blindly at the titles. He hadn't looked at her +even as he crossed the room.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's a presumptuous thing to try to say," he broke out at last, "a +pitifully unnecessary thing to say, because you must know it without my +telling you. But when you went away you said—you said it was because +you hadn't—my—friendship! You said that was the thing you wanted and +that you were going to try to earn it. And in Dubuque you told me that +I'd evidently never be able to understand that you could have been happy +in that room on Clark Street, that I'd wanted to 'rescue' you from; that +I'd never be able to see that the thing you were doing there was a fine +thing, worth doing, entitled to my respect. Well, the things I'd been +saying to you and the things I'd been doing, justified you in thinking +that. But what I've come down here to say is—is that now—at last—I do +see it."</p> + +<p>She would have spoken then if she could have commanded her voice, and as +it was, the sound she made conveyed her intention to him, for he turned +on her quickly as if to interrupt the unspoken words, and went on with +an almost savage bitterness.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm under no illusions about it. I had my chance to see, when +seeing would have meant something to you—helped you. When any one but +the blindest sort of fool would have seen. I didn't. Now, when the thing +is patent for the world to see—now that Violet Williamson has seen it +and Constance, and God knows who of the rest of them, who were so +tactful and sympathetic about my 'disgrace'—now that you've won your +fight without any help from me ... Without any help! In spite of every +hindrance that my idiocy could put in your way! Now, after all—I come +and tell you that you've earned the thing you've set out to get."</p> + +<p>There was a little silence after that. She got up and took the post he +had abandoned at the window.</p> + +<p>"Why did you do it, Roddy?" she asked. "I mean, why did you want to come +and tell me?"</p> + +<p>"Why, in the first place," he said, "I wanted to get back a little of my +self-respect. I couldn't get that until I'd told you."</p> + +<p>This time the silence was longer.</p> + +<p>"What else did you want?" she asked. "What—in the second place?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know why I put it like that," he said. "Please don't think ... +I can't bear to have you think that I came down here to—ask anything of +you—anything in the way of a reward for having seen what is so plain to +every one. I haven't any—claim at all. I want to earn your friendship. +It's the biggest thing I've got to hope for. But I've no idea that you +can hand it out to me ready-made. I believe you'd do it if you could. +But you said once, yourself, that it wasn't a thing that could be given. +It was a thing that had to be earned. And you were right about that, as +you were about so many other things. Well, I'm going to try to earn it." +"Is that—all you want?" she asked, and then hearing the little gasp he +gave, she swung round quickly and looked at him. It was pretty dark in +the room, but his face in the dusk seemed to have whitened.</p> + +<p>"Is friendship all you want of me, Roddy?" she asked again.</p> + +<p>She stood there waiting, a full minute, in silence. Then she said, "You +don't have to tell me that. Because I know. Oh—oh, my dear, how well I +know!"</p> + +<p>He didn't come to her; just stood there, gripping the corner of her +bookcase and staring at her silhouette, which was about all he could see +of her against the window. At last he said, in a strained dry voice +she'd hardly have known for his:</p> + +<p>"If you know that—if I've let you see that, then I've done just about +the last despicable thing there was left for me to do. I've come down +here and—made you feel sorry for me. So that with +that—divine—kindliness of yours, you're willing to give +me—everything."</p> + +<p>He straightened up and came a step nearer. "Well, I won't have it, I +tell you! I don't know how you guessed. If I'd dreamed I was betraying +that to you ...! Don't I know—it's burnt into me so that I'll never +forget—what the memory of my love must be to you—the memory of the +hideous things it's done to you. And now, after all that—after you've +won your fight—alone—and stand where you stand now—for me to come +begging! And take a gift like that! I tell you it <i>is</i> pity. It can't be +anything else."</p> + +<p>There was another minute of silence, and then he heard her make a little +noise in her throat, a noise that would have been a sob had there not +been something like a laugh in it. The next moment she said, "Come over +here, Roddy," and as he hesitated, as if he hadn't understood, she +added, "I want you to look at me. Over here by the window, where there's +light enough to see me by."</p> + +<p>He came wonderingly, very slowly, but at last, with her outstretched +hand she reached him and drew him around between her and the window.</p> + +<p>"Look into my face," she commanded. "Look into my eyes; as far in as you +can. Is it—oh, my dearest"—the sob of pure joy came again—"is it pity +that you see?"</p> + +<p>She'd had her hands upon his shoulders, but now they clasped themselves +behind his head. Her vision of him had swum away in a blur, and without +the support she got from him she'd have been swaying giddily.</p> + +<p>"Roddy, old man," she said, "if I hadn't seen—in the first—ten +minutes, the thing you—meant so hard I shouldn't see—I think it would +have—killed me. If I hadn't seen that you loved me—after all; after +everything. After all the tortures you'd suffered, through me. Because +that's all I want—in the world."</p> + +<p>At that he put his arms around her and pulled her up to him. But the +manner of it was so different from his old embraces that presently she +drew him around so that what little light there was fell on his face, +and searched it thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"You <i>do</i> believe me, Roddy, don't you—that there isn't any pity about +it? There isn't any room for pity. There's nothing in me at all but just +a great big—want of you. Don't you understand that?"</p> + +<p>He did understand it with his mind, but he was a little dazed, like one +who has stood too near where the lightning struck. The hope he had kept +buried alive so long—buried alive because it wouldn't die—could not be +brought out into a blinding glory like this without +shrinking—pain—exquisite terrifying pain.</p> + +<p>The knowledge she had acquired by her own suffering stood her in good +stead now. She did not mistake, as the Rose he had married might have +done, the weakness of his response for coldness—indifference.</p> + +<p>She went back and began making love to him more gently; released herself +from his arms, led him over to her one big chair, and made him sit down +in it, settled herself upon the arm of it and contented herself with one +of his hands. Presently he took one of hers, bent his face down over it +and brushed the back of it with his lips.</p> + +<p>The timidity of that caress, with all it revealed to her, was too much +for her. She swallowed one sob, and another, but the next one got away +from her and she broke out in a passionate fit of weeping.</p> + +<p>That roused him from his daze a little, and he pulled her down in his +arms—held her tight—comforted her.</p> + +<p>When she got herself in hand again, she got up, went away to wash her +face, and coming back in the room again, lighted a reading-lamp and drew +down the blinds.</p> + +<p>"Rose," he said presently, "what are we going to do?"</p> + +<p>She knew she was not answering the true intent of his question when she +said:</p> + +<p>"Well, for one thing we can get a little supper. I don't know what we've +got to eat, but we won't care—to-night."</p> + +<p>There was a ring of decision in his voice that startled her a little +when he said:</p> + +<p>"No, we won't do that to-night. We'll go out somewhere to a +restaurant."</p> + +<p>Their eyes met—unwavering.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "that's what we'll do."</p> + +<p>They didn't talk much across the table in the deserted little Italian +restaurant they went to. Neither of them afterward could remember +anything they'd said. They ate their meal in a sort of grave contented +happiness that was reaching down deeper and deeper into them every +minute, and they walked back to the gray brick building in Thirteenth +Street, arm in arm, hand in hand, in silence. But when she stopped +there, he said:</p> + +<p>"Let's walk a little farther, Rose. There are things we've got to +decide, and—and I'm not going in with you again to-night."</p> + +<p>She caught her breath at that, and her hand tightened its hold on his. +But she walked on with him.</p> + +<p>He said, presently, "You understand, don't you?"</p> + +<p>She answered, "Oh, my dear!—yes." But she added, a little shakily, "I +wish we had a magic-carpet right here, that we could fly home on."</p> + +<p>Then they walked a while in silence.</p> + +<p>At last he said: "There's this we can do. I can go back to my hotel +to-night, and tell them that I'm expecting you—that I'm expecting my +wife to join me there. To-morrow? And then I can come and get you and +bring you there. It's not home, and it's not the place I'd choose +for—for a honeymoon, but ..."</p> + +<p>The way she echoed the word set him thinking. But before his thoughts +had got to their destination she said:</p> + +<p>"Shall we make it a real honeymoon, Roddy—make it as complete as we +can? Forget everything and let all the world be ..."</p> + +<p>He supplied a word for her, "Rose-color?"</p> + +<p>She accepted it with a caressing little laugh, "... for a while?"</p> + +<p>"That's what I was fumbling for," he said, "but I can't think very +straight to-night. I've got it now, though. That cottage we had—before +the twins were born—down on the Cape. There won't be a soul there this +time of the year. We'd have the world to ourselves."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said, "for a little while, we'd want it like that. But after +a while—after a day or two, could we have the babies? Could the nurse +bring them on to me and then go straight back, so that I could have +them—and you, altogether?"</p> + +<p>He said, "You darling!" But he couldn't manage more than that.</p> + +<p>A little later he suggested that they could get the place by telegraph +and could set out for it to-morrow.</p> + +<p>She laughed and asked, "Will you let me be as silly as I like for once? +Will you give me a week—well, till Saturday; that would do—to get +ready in?"</p> + +<p>"Get ready?" he echoed.</p> + +<p>"Clothes and thinks," she said. "A—trousseau, don't you see? I've been +so busy making clothes for other people that I've got just about nothing +myself. And I'd like ... But I don't really care, Roddy. I'll go with +you to-morrow, 'as is,' if you want me to."</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "We'll do it the other way."</p> + +<p>And then he took her back to the gray brick entrance and, just out of +range of the elevator man, kissed her good night.</p> + +<p>"But will you telephone to me as soon as you wake up in the morning, so +that I'll know it's true?"</p> + +<p>She nodded. Then her eyes went wide and she clung to him.</p> + +<p>"<i>Is</i> it true, Roddy? Is it possible for a thing to come back like that? +Are we really the old Rodney and Rose, planning our honeymoon again? It +wasn't quite three years ago. Three years next month. Will it be like +that?"</p> + +<p>"Not like that, perhaps," he said, "exactly. It will be better by all +we've learned and suffered since."</p> + + + +<br> +<hr style="width: 65%;"> +<br> + +<a name="CHAPTER_V_4"></a><h3>CHAPTER V</h3> + +<h3>THE BEGINNING</h3> +<br><br> + +<p>There was a sense in which this prediction of Rodney's about their +honeymoon was altogether true, They had great hours—hours of an +emotional intensity greater than any they had known during that former +honeymoon, greater by all they had learned and suffered since—hours +that repaid all that suffering, and could not have been captured at any +smaller price. There were hours when the whole of their two selves +literally seemed transfused into one essence; when there was nothing of +either of them that was not the other; when all their thoughts, +impulses, desires, flowered spontaneously out of a common mind. There +was no precalculating these experiences. They came upon them, seized +them, carried them off.</p> + +<p>One of these, that neither of them will ever forget, came at the end of +a long tramp through the dawn of their second day. They had been +swinging along in almost unbroken silence through the gray mist, had +mounted a little hillock and halted, hand in hand, as the first lance of +sunlight transfixed and flushed the still vaporous air, and it had +seemed to them, as they watched, breathless, while the sun mounted, that +the whole of the life that lay before them was a track of gold like that +which blazed across the sea, leading to an intolerable glory.</p> + +<p>And there were other hours of equally memorable transfiguration, which +their surroundings had nothing whatever to do with—hours lighted only +by the flame that flared up from their two selves.</p> + +<p>But life, of course, can not be made up of hours like that. No sane +person can even want to live in a perpetual ecstasy. What makes a +mountain peak is the fall away into the surrounding valleys.</p> + +<p>In their valleys of commonplace, every-day existence—and these +occurred even in their first days together—they were stiff, shy, +self-conscious with each other. And their attempt to ignore this fact +only made the self-consciousness the worse. It troubled and bewildered +both of them.</p> + +<p>Rose's misgiving had been justified. They weren't the old Rodney and +Rose. Those two splendid careless savages, who had lived for a fortnight +on an island in the midst of Martin Whitney's carefully preserved +solitude in Northern Wisconsin, accepting the gifts of the gods with +such joyous confidence that none of them could ever turn bitter, those +two zestful children, had ceased to exist.</p> + +<p>John Galbraith had spoken truth when he said there was no such thing as +a fresh start. For good or evil, you were the product of your +yesterdays. The nightmare tour on the road with <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i> +company was a part of Rose; the day in Centropolis, the night when +Galbraith had made love to her. The hour in the University Club, when +Rodney's heart had first shrunk from an unacknowledged fear; the days +and weeks of humiliation and distress that had succeeded it, were a part +of him—an ineffaceable part.</p> + +<p>So it was natural enough—though not, therefore, the less +distressing—that Rose should note, with wonder, a tendency in him to +revert to the manner which had characterized his first call on her in +New York; a tendency to be—of all things—polite. He didn't swear any +more, nor contradict. He chose his words, got up when she did, picked up +things she dropped. And when she was quite sure she was safe from +discovery, she sometimes wept forlornly, for the rough, outrageous, +absent-minded, imperious lover of the old days.</p> + +<p>She did not know that she was different too—as remote from the girl she +had been during the first six months of their marriage—the girl who, +"all eyes," had held her breath while Doctor Randolph told her things; +the girl who had smiled over Bertie Willis' love-making, because she +didn't know that such things happened except in books—as he was from +the old Rodney. Even Violet had seen, in the glimpse she'd caught across +two taxicabs, that her smile was somehow different, and James Randolph +had come back from his tea with her in the Knickerbocker, saying that +she was a thousand years old.</p> + +<p>So it was not wonderful that Rodney should have found a new mystery in +her; nor that, seeing in her look, sometimes—especially when it was not +meeting his own—the reflections of a thousand experiences he had not +shared with her, he should have felt that she was a long way off. And +his heart ached for the old Rose, whom he had so completely +"surrounded"—the Rose who had consulted him about the menus for her +dinners, who had brought him all her little troubles; who had +tried—bless her!—to study law, and had stolen into court to hear his +argument, so that she could talk with him. Whatever the future might +have for him, it would never bring that Rose back.</p> + +<p>The arrival of the twins, in the convoy of a badly flustered—and, to +tell the truth, a somewhat scandalized—Miss French, simplified the +situation a little—by complicating it! They absolutely enforced a +routine. They had needs that must be met on the minute. And they gave +Rose and Rodney so many occupations that the contemplation of their +complicated states of mind was much abridged.</p> + +<p>But even her babies brought Rose a disappointment along with them. From +the time of the receipt of Miss French's telegram acknowledging Rodney's +and telling them what train she and the twins would take, Rose had been +telling off the hours in mounting excitement. The two utterly adorable +little creatures, as the pictures of them in Rodney's pocketbook showed +them to be, who were, miraculously—incredibly—hers, were coming to +bring motherhood to her; a long-deferred payment for the labor and the +agony with which she had borne them; the realization of half-forgotten +hopes that had, during the period of her pregnancy, been the mainstay of +her life. There was now no Mrs. Ruston, no Harriet, no plausible +physician to keep them away from her. Rose had a smile of tender pity +for the memory of the girl who had struggled so ineffectually and yet +with such heart-breaking earnestness to break the filaments of the web +they'd spun around her.</p> + +<p>No, it wouldn't be like that now. Rodney had agreed explicitly that +Miss French was to be allowed to stay only as long as Rose wanted her; +only for the few days—or hours—she would need for making herself +mistress of their régime. Then the nurse was to be sent away on a +vacation and Rose should have her children to herself.</p> + +<p>She didn't go to Boston with Rodney to meet them; nor even to the +station; stayed in the cottage, ostensibly to see to it, up to the very +last minute, that the fires were right (June had come in cold and rainy) +and in general to be ready on the moment to produce anything that their +rather unforeseeable needs might call for. Her real reason was a +shrinking from having her first meeting with them in the confusion of +arrival on a station platform, under the eyes of the world, amid the +distractions of things like luggage.</p> + +<p>Rodney understood this well enough, and arriving at the cottage, he +clambered out of the wagon with them and carried them both straight in +to Rose, leaving the nurse and the bewildering paraphernalia of travel +for a second trip.</p> + +<p>Rose, in the passionate surge of gratified desire that came with the +sight of them, caught them from him, crushed them up tight against her +breast—and frightened them half to death. So that without +dissimulation, they howled and brought Miss French flying to the rescue.</p> + +<p>Rose didn't make a tragedy of it; managed a smile at herself, though she +suspected she'd cry when she got the chance, and subjected her ideas to +an instantaneous revision. They were—<i>persons</i>, those two funnily +indignant little mites, with their own ideas, their own preferences, and +the perfectly adequate conviction of being entitled to them. How would +she herself have liked it, to have a total stranger, fifteen feet high +or so, snatch at her like that?</p> + +<p>She was rather apologetic all day, and got her reward; especially from +the boy, who was an adventurous and rather truculent baby, much she +fancied, as his father must once have been, and who took to her more +quickly than the girl did. Indeed, the second Rodney fell in love with +her almost as promptly as his father had done before him. But little +Portia wasn't very far behind. Two days sufficed for the conquest of +the pair of them.</p> + +<p>The really disquieting discovery awaited the time when the wire-edge of +novelty about this adventure in motherhood had worn off; when she could +bathe them, dress them, feed them their very strictly regimented meals, +without being spurred to the highest pitch of alertness by the fear of +making a mistake—forgetting something, like the juice of a half orange +at ten o'clock in the morning, the omission of which might have—who +knew what disastrous consequences!</p> + +<p>That attitude can't last any woman long, and Rose, with her wonderfully +clever hands, her wits trained—as the wits of persons who had worked +for John Galbraith were always trained—not to be told the same thing +twice, her pride keeping in sharp focus the determination that Rodney +should see that she could be as good a nurse as Miss French—Rose wore +off that nervous tenseness over her new job very quickly. Within a week +she had a routine established that was noiseless—frictionless.</p> + +<p>But do you remember how aghast she was over the forty weeks John +Galbraith had talked about as the probable run of <i>The Girl Up-stairs</i>; +her consternation over the idea of just going on doing the same thing +over and over again, "around and round, like a horse at the end of a +pole"? What she would like to do, she had told him, now that this was +done, was to begin on something else.</p> + +<p>Well, it was with something the same feeling of consternation that, +having thrown herself heart and soul into the task of planning and +setting in motion a routine for two year-and-a-half-old babies, she +found herself straightening up and saying "What next?" And realizing, +that as far as this job was concerned, there was no "next." The supreme +merit of her care, from now on, would be—barring emergencies—the +placid continuation of that routine. There were no heroics about +motherhood—save in emergency, once more. It was a question of +remembering a hundred trivial details, and executing them in the same +way every day. It was a question of doing a thousand little services, +not one of which was serious enough to occupy her mind, every one of +which was capable of being done almost automatically—but not quite! The +whole of the attention was never quite taken, and yet it was never, all +the way around the clock, entirely left free. And her love for them, +which had become almost as intense and overmastering a thing as her love +for her husband, could never be expressed fully, as was her love for +him. It would be cruelly unfair, she recognized that, to emotionalize +over them—force them.</p> + +<p>It was a fine relation. It was, perhaps, the very finest in the world. +But as a job, it wasn't so satisfactory. Four-fifths of it, anyway, +could be done with better results for the children by a placid, +unimaginative, tolerably stupid person, who had no stronger feeling for +them than the mild temporary affection they could excite in any one not +a monster. And the other fifth of it wasn't strictly a job at all.</p> + +<p>On the whole, then, leaving their miraculous hours out of the +account—and, being incommensurable, imponderable, they couldn't be +included in an inventory—their honeymoon, considered as an attempt to +revisit Arcady, to seize a golden day that looked neither toward the +past nor toward the future, complete in itself, perfect—was a failure.</p> + +<p>It was not until, pretty ruefully, they acknowledged this, tore up their +artificial resolution not to look at the future, and deliberately set +themselves to the contemplation of a life that would have to take into +account complex and baffling considerations, that their honeymoon became +a success. It was well along in their month that this happened.</p> + +<p>Rose had spent a maddening sort of day, a day that had been all edges, +trying not to let herself feel hurt over fantastic secondary meanings +which it was possible to attach to some of the things Rodney had said, +frying to be cheerful and sensible, and to ignore the patent fact that +his cheerfulness was as forced and unnatural a thing as hers. The +children—as a rule the best-behaved little things in the world—had +been refractory. They'd refused to take their morning nap for some +reason or other, and had been fractious ever since. So, after their +supper, when they'd finally gone off to sleep, and Rose had rejoined +Rodney in the sitting-room, she was in a state where it did not take +much to set her off.</p> + +<p>It was not much that did; nothing more, indeed, than the fact that she +found her husband brooding in front of the fire, and that the smile with +which he greeted her was a little too quick and bright and mechanical, +and that it soon faded out. The Rodney of her memories had never done +things like that. If you found him sitting in a chair, you found him +reading a book. When he was thinking something out he tramped back and +forth, twisted his face up, made gestures! That habit couldn't have +changed. It was just that he wasn't being natural with her! Couldn't +feel at home with her! Before she knew it, she was crying.</p> + +<p>He asked, in consternation, what the matter was. What had happened?</p> + +<p>"Nothing," she said. "Absolutely nothing. Really."</p> + +<p>"Then it's just—that you're not happy. With me, like this." He brought +that out gravely, a word at a time; as though they hurt.</p> + +<p>"Are you happy? With me—like this?" she countered.</p> + +<p>It was a question he could not answer categorically and she did not give +him time for anything else. "What's the matter with us, Roddy?" she +demanded. "We ought to be happy. We meant to be. We said that we'd been +through a lot, and that probably there was a lot mere to go through—in +the way of working things out, at least—and that we'd take a month just +for nothing but to be happy in—just for pure joy." Her voice broke in a +sob over that. "And here we are—like this!"</p> + +<p>"It hasn't all been like this," he said. "There have been hours, a day +or two, that I'd go through the whole thing for, again, if necessary."</p> + +<p>She nodded assent to that. "But the rest of the time!" she cried. "Why +can't we be—comfortable together? Why ... Roddy, why can't you be +natural with me? Like your old self. Why don't you roar at me any more? +And swear when you run into things? I've never seen you formal before +—not with anybody. Not even with strangers. And now you're formal with +me."</p> + +<p>The rueful grin with which he acknowledged the truth of this indictment +was more like him, and it cheered her immensely. She answered it with +one of her own, dried her eyes and asked again, more collectedly:</p> + +<p>"Well, can you tell me why?"</p> + +<p>"Why, it seemed to me," he said, "that it was you who were different. +And you have changed, of course, down inside, more than I have. You've +been through things in the last year and a half; found out things that I +know nothing about, except as I have read about them in books. I've +never had to ask a stranger for a job. I've never been—brought to bay, +the way you were in that damned town of Centropolis (I'd like to burn +it). And other things—horrible things, have—have come so near you, +that if it hadn't been for that—white flame of yours, they'd have +marked you. When I think of those things I feel like a schoolboy beside +you. You've no idea how—how innocent a man can be, Rose. That's not the +tradition, but it's true. So, when I remember how things used to be +between us, how I used to be the one who knew things, and how I preached +and spouted, I get to feeling that the man you remember must look to you +now, like—well, like a schoolboy. Showing off."</p> + +<p>She stared at him incredulously. "But that's downright morbid," she +said. "You don't have to go—into the gutter to learn things. And what +you say about innocence ... A man can't keep his innocence by being +ignorant, Roddy. If he's kept it, he must have—fought for it. I know +that."</p> + +<p>She was still deeply disturbed. "It's horrible that I should make you +feel like that," she concluded.</p> + +<p>"It isn't you," he told her. "It's just—the situation. I can't help +feeling that I'm taken—on approval. Oh, it's <i>got</i> to be like that! +There are things that, with all the forgiveness in the world, you can't +forget. And until you have seen that I am different, that I have made +myself different...."</p> + +<p>"What things?" she demanded.</p> + +<p>"Well—a thing," he amended. "You know what I mean. The night I came to +the stage door of the Globe for you."</p> + +<p>She colored at that, and then, to his amazement, she smiled.</p> + +<p>"I've been such a coward about that," she said. "I've tried to tell you +a dozen times up here, and I've been afraid you'd be—shocked. I expect +you will be, now. But I've got to tell you just the same.</p> + +<p>"Roddy, when you were talking to me, there in the hotel at Dubuque, +telling me how horrified you were over that, it came over me all at once +that I had nothing to forgive; that if the thing was a fault at all, it +was mine as much as yours, and that it wasn't so much of a fault as +an—accident. You couldn't help hating me, and you couldn't help loving +me. And you did both at once. And I, when I could have told you +something that would have made you—well, hate me less, anyhow—didn't +take the trouble. I said to myself then that it was too bad it happened, +but that it wasn't, at least, your fault. And I was afraid to tell you +so.</p> + +<p>"But, Roddy, during these last months, down here in New York, I've +been—glad it happened. It's been something to hold on to, that your +love of me was strong enough, so that the hate couldn't kill it. It +helped me to hope that it would be strong enough, some day or other, to +bring you back to me. And without that hope, I couldn't have gone on. +It's what I have lived on. The only thing that any of my—successes has +meant has been that perhaps it brought that nearer."</p> + +<p>She gave a shaky laugh. "On approval!" Her eyes filled again. "Roddy, +you can't mean that."</p> + +<p>She came over and sat down in his lap, and slid her arm around his neck.</p> + +<p>"This is where we'll begin!" she said. "That I'll never—whatever +happens—walk out on you again. Whether things go well or badly with us, +we'll work it out, somehow, together."</p> + +<p>It was not until she heard the long shuddering sigh he drew at that, and +felt him go limp under her, that she realized how genuine his fear had +been—the perfectly preposterous fear that if their new experiment +didn't come up to her anticipation she'd tell him so, and leave him +once more. This time for good.</p> + +<p>It was a good while before they took up a rational discussion again, but +at last she said:</p> + +<p>"It will take working out, though. We've been shirking that. Hadn't we +better begin?"</p> + +<p>He assented. "Only, you'll have to get up," he said, "and sit down +somewhere else. Out of reach."</p> + +<p>She smiled as she obeyed him. "It's hard for a woman to remember," she +said, "that a man can't think about other things when he's making love, +and can't think about the person he's in love with when he's doing other +things. Because, that's about the easiest thing a woman does."</p> + +<p>She saw by the expression that went over his face that her remark had +chilled him a little. He didn't like to think of her as "a woman," nor +as of his relation to her as accounted for by the fact that he was "a +man." He'd generalize fast enough about the world at large, but it would +always be hard for him to include her and himself in his +generalizations.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said when he'd got his pipe alight, "it's the first question +I asked you after—after I got my eyes open: What are we going to do?"</p> + +<p>"I told Alice Perosini," she said, "the day before we left to come up +here, that I'd come back in a month, and that I'd stay until I'd +finished all the work that we were contracted for. I felt I had to do +that. It would have been so beastly unfair not to. You understand, don't +you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course," he said. "You couldn't consider anything else. But then +what?"</p> + +<p>"Then," she said after a silence, "then, if it's what you want me to do, +Roddy, I'll come back to Chicago—for good."</p> + +<p>"Give up your business, you mean?" he asked quickly.</p> + +<p>She nodded. "It can't be done out there," she said. "All the big +productions that there's any money in are made in New York. I'll come +back and just be your wife. I'll keep your house and mother the +children, and—what was it you said to Gertrude?—maintain your status, +if you don't think I'm spoiled for that."</p> + +<p>That last phrase, though, was said with a smile, which he answered with +one of his own and threw in in parenthesis, "You ought to hear Violet go +on, and Constance." But with an instant return to seriousness, he said:</p> + +<p>"I've not asked that, Rose. I wouldn't dream of asking it!"</p> + +<p>"I know," she said. "It's a thing I'm glad you let me give—unasked. But +I mean it, Roddy. I've meant it from the first, when I told you you were +all I wanted. There wasn't any string tied to that."</p> + +<p>"I know," he said. "But all the same, it wouldn't work, Rose."</p> + +<p>"There's a real job there," she persisted, "just in being successfully +the wife of a successful man. I can see that now. I never saw it when it +was my job. Hardly caught a glimpse of it. I didn't even see my bills; +let you pay them down at the office, with all your own work that you had +to do."</p> + +<p>"It wasn't me," he said. "It was Miss Beach."</p> + +<p>She stared at that and gave a short laugh. "If I'd known that ...!" she +said.</p> + +<p>Then she came back to the point.</p> + +<p>"It is a real job, and I think I could learn to do it pretty well. And +of course a wife's the only person who can do it properly."</p> + +<p>Still he shook his head. But he hadn't, as yet, any reasoned answer to +make, except as before, that it wouldn't work.</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't mind the money end of it," she said. "I mean living on +yours. I know I can earn my way, and I know you know it. So that +wouldn't matter. I'd never feel like a beggar again, Roddy."</p> + +<p>"I know," he agreed. "But that isn't it. It isn't a question of what +you'd like to be, or are willing to be. It's a question of what you are. +You're something more than just my wife. You've got certain +talents—certain proved capacities. That's as true as that I am +something besides—just your husband. There you are! Try it on the other +way around. Suppose I should offer to give up my practise and come down +here to live with you—be just your husband and, say, your business +manager. You can see that that's preposterous. Or, for that matter, we +could both quit. I've made a devil of a lot of money lately. I've an +income from my investments of from twenty-five to thirty thousand a year +that we could live on, and not do a blessed thing but be husband and +wife to each other. Like the McCreas. But it wouldn't work. You've got +to be what you are, that's the point, and somehow or other, cut your +life to fit. I expect that's one of the things that's been the trouble +with us down here. We've both been trying so damned hard to <i>be</i> +something. And that won't work."</p> + +<p>"What will work then?" she asked. And this was a question he couldn't +answer.</p> + +<p>"We've just got to go ahead," he said at last, "and see what happens. +Perhaps you can work it out so that you can do part of your work at +home. We could move the nursery and give you Florence's old studio. And +then it would do if you only came down here for your two big +seasons—fall and spring."</p> + +<p>"That doesn't seem fair to you," she protested. "You deserve a real +wife, Roddy; not somebody dashing in and dashing out."</p> + +<p>"I don't deserve anything I can't get," he said. "I'd rather have a part +interest in you than to possess, lock, stock and barrel, any other woman +I can think of."</p> + +<p>She came back to him again and settled down in his arms.</p> + +<p>"You used to possess me, lock, stock and barrel," she said. "You can do +it again, if you'll say the word, Rodney."</p> + +<p>He shook his head. "That's just what I can't do," he told her. "That's +gone and we'll never get it back. And I don't believe I'd have it back +if I could. For one thing, you can't possess without being possessed. I +know that back in those days you're talking about I used to try to fight +you out of my thoughts. Used to stay down late at the office, not +working, just—trying not to think about you. Trying to save out part of +myself from being—saturated with you. It was the fact that I was so +terribly important to you that used to make me feel like that; the fact +of your—dependence—I don't mean for money—on me. I used to think—it +wasn't your lover that thought that; it was the other man—that it +would be a perfectly wonderful relief to me if you could just get some +interest that left me out. And all the while the lover in me was trying +to have all of you there was. It's a hard thing to talk sense about."</p> + +<p>"A man told me," Rose said, "—John Galbraith told me, that he couldn't +be a woman's friend and her lover at the same time, any more than a +steel spring could be made soft so that it would bend in your fingers +like copper, and still be a spring. He said that was true of him, +anyway, and he felt sure it was true of nine men out of a dozen. Do you +think it's true? Have we got to decide which we'll be?"</p> + +<p>"We can't decide," he said with an impatient laugh. "That's just what +I've been telling you. We've got to take what we can get. We've got to +work out the relation between ourselves that is <i>our</i> relation—the Rose +and Rodney relation. It'll probably be a little different from any +other. There'll be friendship in it, and there'll be love in it. Imagine +our 'deciding' that we wouldn't be lovers! But I guess that what +Galbraith said was true to this extent: that each of those will be more +or less at the expense of the other. It won't spring quite so well, and +it will bend a little."</p> + +<p>She was still disposed to rebel at this conclusion. "I don't see why it +has to be that way," she insisted. "Why it can't be a perfect thing +instead of just a compromise. Why being friends and partners shouldn't +make us better lovers, and why being lovers shouldn't make us better +friends."</p> + +<p>"Like the doctrine of the Trinity," he murmured. "'Three in one; one in +three. Without confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.' It's +a wonderful idea, certainly."</p> + +<p>"Well, then," she demanded, "isn't it what we ought to try for? The very +best there is?"</p> + +<p>"That's what they tell us," he admitted. "'Aim high,' they say. I'm not +sure it isn't better sense to aim at something you can hit. Why, look at +us, these last three weeks! We said we were going to have a month of +pure happiness. One hundred per cent. pure. We waked up every morning +telling ourselves we'd got to be happy, and we made ourselves miserable +every night wondering if we'd been happy enough."</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you were miserable, too," she said. "I was <i>so</i> ashamed of +myself for being."</p> + +<p>After a while he said, "Here's what we've got to build on: Whatever else +it may or may not be, this relation between us is a permanent thing. +We've lived with each other and without each other, and we know which we +want. If we find it has its limitations and drawbacks we needn't worry. +Just go ahead and make the best of it we can. There's no law that +decrees we've got to be happy. When we <i>are</i> happy it'll be so much to +the good. And when we aren't ..."</p> + +<p>She gave a contented little laugh and cuddled closer down against him. +"You talk like Solomon in all his solemnity," she said. "But you can't +imagine that we're going to be unhappy. Really."</p> + +<p>His answer was that perhaps he couldn't imagine it, but that he knew it, +just the same. "Even an ordinary marriage isn't any too easy; a +marriage, I mean, where it's quite well understood which of the parties +to it shall always submit to the other; and which of them is the +important one who's always to have the right of way. There's generally +something perfectly unescapable that decides that question. But with us +there isn't. So the question who's got to give in will have to be +decided on its merits every time a difference arises."</p> + +<p>She burlesqued a look of extreme apprehension. She was deeply and +utterly content with life just then. But he wouldn't be diverted.</p> + +<p>"There's another reason," he went on. "I've a notion that the thing +we're after is about the finest thing there is. If that's so, we'll have +to pay for it, in one way or another. But we aren't going to worry about +it. We'll just go ahead—and see what happens."</p> + +<p>"Do you remember when you said that before?" asked Rose. "You told me +that marriage was an adventure anyway, and that the only thing to do was +to try it—and see what happened."</p> + +<p>He grunted. "The real adventure's just begun," he said.</p> + +<p>"Anyhow," she murmured drowsily, "you can talk to me again. Just as if +we weren't married."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;'> + +<p>And there is just about where they stand to-day—at the beginning, or +hardly past the beginning, of what he spoke of as their real adventure; +they are going forward prepared to make the best of it and see what +happens.</p> + +<p>What did happen within two or three days after this last conversation of +theirs that I have chronicled was that Rose went back with Rodney and +the twins to Chicago, stayed there only until Miss French could be +summoned back from her vacation, and then went on to New York to a badly +worried Alice and the now extremely urgent affairs of Dane & Company.</p> + +<p>Summer is a slack time for a lawyer, of course, since judges are +gentlemen who like long vacations. So Rodney persuaded Rose to take a +bigger apartment in the same building and to put a card in the mail-box +that would account for him as well as for herself. He came down pretty +often, and always had, it must be owned, a rather hard time of it. The +spectacle of Rose driving along an ungodly number of hours a day while +he idled about doing nothing was one he found it hard to get used to. It +didn't altogether reconcile him to it to have her point out that there +were times when he drove like that. They had two or three good Sundays, +though; one of them out on Long Island with John Galbraith—a meeting +and the beginning of a friendship that Rose had been very keen to bring +about.</p> + +<p>Her work ended with a terrific climax in September, just about as his +began, and Rose came back to Chicago, spent a joyous month with the +twins and with the little of Rodney his office could spare of him. Then, +taking the babies and their nurse with her, she went out to California +to see her mother and Portia.</p> + +<p>Without any special incentive, just the natural desire of a daughter and +a sister for reunion after so long a parting would have taken her there.</p> + +<p>But Rose had a special incentive. She wanted to talk to Portia. They +hadn't had a real talk since that devastating day—ages ago—when, +yielding to an impulse of passionate self-revelation, Portia had +exhibited her great sacrifice and her equally great, though thwarted +desire; had said to Rose, "I am the branch they cut off so that you +could grow. You're living my life as well as yours. The only thing I +ever could hate you for would be for failing." She wanted to tell Portia +how the life she had given up the chance of living had grown in her +sister's trust. She wanted Portia's, "Well done."</p> + +<p>Also, as a practical matter of justice, she wanted to repay, as far as +money could repay—what Portia, at such a cost, had given her. It was a +project that had often been in her thoughts; at first, just as a dream, +latterly, as a realizable hope.</p> + +<p>Considered just as a visit to her mother and sister, the journey to +California was a success. Her mother, especially, got a vast +satisfaction out of the twins, and Rose herself an equal satisfaction +out of seeing how happy and content she was.</p> + +<p>She was writing a book—a sort of autobiography. Not that her life, as +she modestly said, was worth writing about, but that the progress of the +Cause she had devoted her life to could hardly be illustrated in a +better way than with an account of that life; of the ideas she had found +current in her girlhood; of the long struggle by means of which those +ideas had become modified; and, last and most important, of the danger +lest, now that the old fixed ideas had become fluid, they should flow in +the wrong direction. Portia was acting as her amanuensis—faithful, +competent, devoted, and just as of old—or perhaps more so, Rose +couldn't be sure—ironic; a little acrid.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Stanton's attitude toward Rose's own adventure perplexed and amused +her a little. She'd half expected to be embarrassed with approbation. +She was prepared to deprecate a little the idea that by the example of +her revolt and her attained independence she had done a service to the +great Cause. She didn't feel at all sure that she had; couldn't believe +that she and Rodney, with all their struggles, had settled anything; +and she had hesitated as to how far she could convey that doubt to her +mother.</p> + +<p>But she might have spared her pains. Mrs. Stanton's attitude, while it +fell short of "the less said the better," was one, at least, of +suspended judgment. She couldn't, conceivably, ever have left Henry +Stanton. She couldn't, evidently, understand why Rose mightn't have done +her wifely duty and been content with that. She felt it incumbent on +women to demonstrate to men that the new liberties they sought would +not, when granted, lead them to disregard the ties that were the +essential foundations of Christian society. But Rose belonged to the new +generation—a generation that confronted, no doubt, new problems, and +would have to solve them for itself.</p> + +<p>This suited Rose well enough. What she wanted from her mother, anyway, +was just the old look of love and trust and confidence. And she got that +abundantly.</p> + +<p>The thing she wanted from Portia she didn't get. As long as any one else +was by—her mother, or Miss French in charge of the twins—she and +Portia chatted easily, on the best of terms. But, left alone with +her—as it seemed to Rose she actually took pains not to be—Portia's +manner took on that old ironic aloofness that had always silenced her +when she was a girl. She made at last a resolute effort to break +through.</p> + +<p>"One of the things I came out for," she said, "was to talk to you—talk +it all out with you. I want to know what sort of job you think I've made +of it."</p> + +<p>"You've evidently made a good job of the costume business," said Portia. +"I read that little article about you in <i>Vanity</i> about a month ago. +That didn't seem to leave much doubt as to who's who."</p> + +<p>"I don't mean that," said Rose. "I mean what sort of job of it +altogether; of the—of the life that's yours as well as mine."</p> + +<p>She stopped there and waited, but all the assent she got from Portia was +that she forbore to change the subject. They were sitting in the study +which her mother had just abandoned for her afternoon nap, and Portia +had busied herself sorting over the litter of papers her mother's +activities always left.</p> + +<p>"I want to tell you all about it," Rose said. "I'd like to tell you +every smallest thing about it, if it were possible, so that you +could—remember it as I do."</p> + +<p>She tried to do this; to give her sister—not a narrative (her letters, +after all, had put Portia in possession of the outlines of the +story)—but at least an interpretation of it that would go to the +bottom; things she couldn't write in her letters, the actuating desires +and hopes that lay behind the things she'd done. But the attempt +collapsed. She was talking in a vacuum. Her phrases grew more disjointed +until she felt that they were meaningless. At least, scrambling back to +solid ground again, she told Portia that she wanted to pay back to her +the cost of her education, as well as that could be calculated, and of +her trousseau.</p> + +<p>Portia's negative of this proposition was as keen and straight as a +knife-edge. The thing wasn't to be discussed; not to be considered for +an instant. "We're perfectly well off, mother and I. We're living easily +within our income out here, and—we're as contented as possible." The +cadence of those last three words had a finality about it that closed +the subject.</p> + +<p>Portia didn't want to share, vicariously, in the life she'd made +possible for Rose. The branch had withered indeed and didn't want the +pain of feeling the sap struggling up under its bark again. The ashes +had better be left banked up about the fading coal. The silence was like +the click of a closing door. Then Portia said:</p> + +<p>"What does the North Side bunch think of you now you've come back? And +those Lake Forest friends of yours? They must have been hideously +scandalized. Are they going to forgive you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, they're lovely to me," said Rose. "The only one I've lost out with +is Frederica. She'll be a long time making it up with me, if she ever +does."</p> + +<p>"She saw what Rodney went through while you were away, I expect," +Portia suggested.</p> + +<p>"That, of course," said Rose. "And then—well, my going away like that, +especially as she began to see what the idea was, must have seemed a +sort of criticism on her own way of life, which she's every reason to +feel perfectly satisfied with. And that, after she'd let herself get +really fond of me, and had brought me up by hand—which is what she did +that first season, must be pretty hard to forgive. She has forgiven me, +of course. She's a dear. But we've—sort of got to begin again."</p> + +<p>Portia wanted to know about all the others: that pretty Williamson +woman, and a few more whose names she remembered.</p> + +<p>Rose told her; showed a feverish interest in the rather indifferent +topic just to bury the memory of the one that had failed so dismally. +She described a dinner or two she had been to since her return, and told +of the little triumph that had been made for her on the occasion of the +Chicago opening of <i>Come On In</i>. Everybody had been there and the +Crawfords had given a supper dance for her at the Blackstone afterward. +And driving in the last nail, she told of the feeble little witticism +old Mrs. Crawford had made apropos of her return—a remark whose tinge +of malice was so mild that it was felt by all to constitute an official +sanction of her social rehabilitation.</p> + +<p>Portia honestly enjoyed all that, but Rose went back to the hotel +feeling pretty blue. (They were stopping at the hotel. The twins alone, +to say nothing of Miss French and herself, would have been too much for +the modest confines of the bungalow.) She wished she could have a good +long talk, to-night, with Rodney.</p> + +<p>She had a sense of somebody, away up above all mundane affairs—not +responsible for them, perhaps, but capable, at all events, of thoroughly +taking them in—smiling at them all with a sort of ferocious cynicism. +In the foreground of this impression were the good friends—the really +good friends she had just been telling Portia about, who had taken her +back with so warm a welcome—because she'd succeeded; got away with it!</p> + +<p>It was with a deeper feeling of melancholy that she thought of Portia +and her mother. Portia, who had fought so gallantly and deserved so +much, thwarted, withered, huddling her ashes around her so that her coal +of fire might never be fanned into flame again. Her mother, living +gently in the afterglow of an outworn gospel. Must every one come to an +end like that when some initial store of energy was spent? Begin walling +himself in against life? Stuffing new experiences into pigeonholes, +unscrutinized? Would the time come when little Portia would have to +begin treating <i>her</i> with the same tender-patronage that Rose felt now +for her mother? Would little Portia, some day, smile over her like that, +and wonder whether she'd ever—really lived?</p> + +<p>She did wish she could have a talk with Rodney.</p> + +<p>The telephone switchboard in the lobby gave her an idea. It was five +o'clock, now; seven in Chicago. He'd just be sitting down to dinner, all +by himself, poor dear, most likely, and wishing for a talk with her. +Well, why not?</p> + +<p>She rather electrified the hotel office when she put in that call. The +whole place wore an important air for the next half-hour. She went up to +her room to wait for it, and before the line was put through she thought +of something that would have prevented her doing it if she'd thought in +time. He'd probably think something horrible had happened to one of +them. So the moment she heard his voice—it was faint and far-away but +clear enough that she could detect the straining urgency of it—she +said:</p> + +<p>"It's all right, Roddy. There isn't a thing the matter. Did I frighten +you half to death?"</p> + +<p>He said, "Thank God!" And then, "I don't suppose it was two minutes I +waited for your voice, but it seemed a year. What is it?"</p> + +<p>"I'm ashamed to tell you, after a scare like that. It's nothing, Roddy. +Just to hear you say hello. It seems a pretty unjust sort of world, +to-night, and I wanted to be reminded that you were in it. That's all."</p> + +<p>She had to say it all over again before she could make him believe he'd +heard her straight, and by that time she was feeling pretty foolish over +the impulse she had yielded to. But just the sound of his good big +laugh, when he understood, was worth it.</p> + +<p>"You aren't running it, you know," he told her. "Leave the worry to the +Authorities. I can't philosophize any better than that at twenty dollars +a minute. I wish you were here."</p> + +<p>"I wish so too," she said. "I will be next week."</p> + +<p>When she had hung up the receiver, she had to squeeze the tears out of +her eyes before she could see to do anything else. But it was with her +own smile that she contemplated what she meant to do next. She went into +the adjoining room, relegated Miss French to the side lines and +undressed the twins herself.</p> + +<p>The twins adored her and had the most ineffably delicious ways of +showing it. But an added attraction for Rose resided in the fact that +this incursion of hers always—just a little—annoyed Miss French. +Clever as the nurse was about handling the twins, she could not manage +even the pretense to that professional superiority which is the +prerogative of nurses toward mothers. Rose, with those highly trained +hands of hers, a twin in each of them, could exhibit a dazzling +virtuosity that left Miss French nowhere.</p> + +<br> +<br> +<hr class="full" noshade> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL ADVENTURE***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 15384-h.txt or 15384-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15384">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/3/8/15384</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution.</p> + + + +<pre> +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +<a href="https://gutenberg.org/license">https://gutenberg.org/license)</a>. + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS,' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: +https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's +eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII, +compressed (zipped), HTML and others. + +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over +the old filename and etext number. The replaced older file is renamed. +VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving +new filenames and etext numbers. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">https://www.gutenberg.org</a> + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000, +are filed in directories based on their release date. If you want to +download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular +search system you may utilize the following addresses and just +download by the etext year. + +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/">https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/</a> + + (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, + 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90) + +EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are +filed in a different way. The year of a release date is no longer part +of the directory path. The path is based on the etext number (which is +identical to the filename). The path to the file is made up of single +digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename. For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL">https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/GUTINDEX.ALL</a> + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** +</pre> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_1.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_1.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3364335 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_1.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_2.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_2.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..077876d --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_2.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_3.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_3.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..e439ab3 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_3.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_4.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_4.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..5b7a4d2 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_4.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_5.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_5.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..0bd3f52 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_5.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_6.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_6.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..97ef655 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_6.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_7.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_7.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..214676c --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_7.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_8.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_8.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..774cfd7 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_8.png diff --git a/15384-h/images/Illus_9.png b/15384-h/images/Illus_9.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..29614ba --- /dev/null +++ b/15384-h/images/Illus_9.png diff --git a/15384.txt b/15384.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..51344a3 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384.txt @@ -0,0 +1,21901 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Real Adventure, by Henry Kitchell +Webster, Illustrated by R. M. Crosby + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Real Adventure + +Author: Henry Kitchell Webster + +Release Date: March 16, 2005 [eBook #15384] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL ADVENTURE*** + + +E-text prepared by Rick Niles, Gene Smethers, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 15384-h.htm or 15384-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15384/15384-h/15384-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15384/15384-h.zip) + + + + + +THE REAL ADVENTURE + +A Novel + +by + +HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER + +Illustrated by R.M. Crosby + +Indianapolis +The Bobbs-Merrill Company +Publishers +Serial Version 1915 +The Ridgway Company +Press of Braunworth & Co. +Bookbinders and Printers +Brooklyn, N.Y. + +1916 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: "We can't talk here," he said. "We must go elsewhere."] + + + + +CONTENTS + +BOOK I + +THE GREAT ILLUSION + +CHAPTER + + I A Point of Departure + II Beginning an Adventure + III Frederica's Plan and What Happened to It + IV Rosalind Stanton Doesn't Disappear + V The Second Encounter + VI The Big Horse + VII How It Struck Portia + VIII Rodney's Experiment + IX After Breakfast + + +BOOK II + +LOVE AND THE WORLD + + I The Princess Cinderella + II The First Question and an Answer to It + III Where Did Rose Come In + IV Long Circuits and Short + V Rodney Smiled + VI The Damascus Road + VII How the Pattern Was Cut + VIII A Birthday + IX A Defeat + X The Door That Was to Open + XI An Illustration + XII What Harriet Did + XIII Fate Plays a Joke + XIV The Dam Gives Way + XV The Only Remedy + XVI Rose Opens the Door + + +BOOK III + +THE WORLD ALONE + + I The Length of a Thousand Yards + II The Evening and the Morning Were the First Day + III Rose Keeps the Path + IV The Girl With the Bad Voice + V Mrs. Goldsmith's Taste + VI A Business Proposition + VII The End of a Fixed Idea + VIII Success--and a Recognition + IX The Man and the Director + X The Voice of the World + XI The Short Circuit Again + XII "I'm All Alone" + XIII Frederica's Paradox + XIV The Miry Way + XV In Flight + XVI Anti-Climax + XVII The End of the Tour +XVIII The Conquest of Centropolis + + +BOOK IV + +THE REAL ADVENTURE + + I The Tune Changes + II A Broken Parallel + III Friends + IV Couleur-de-rose + V The Beginning + + + + + +BOOK ONE + +The Great Illusion + + + +CHAPTER I + +A POINT OF DEPARTURE + + +"Indeed," continued the professor, glancing demurely down at his notes, +"if one were the editor of a column of--er advice to young girls, such +as I believe is to be found, along with the household hints and the +dress patterns, on the ladies' page of most of our newspapers--if one +were the editor of such a column, he might crystallize the remarks I +have been making this morning into a warning--never marry a man with a +passion for principles." + +It drew a laugh, of course. Professorial jokes never miss fire. But +_the_ girl didn't laugh. She came to with a start--she had been staring +out the window--and wrote, apparently, the fool thing down in her +note-book. It was the only note she had made in thirty-five minutes. + +All of his brilliant exposition of the paradox of Rousseau and +Robespierre (he was giving a course on the French Revolution), the +strange and yet inevitable fact that the softest, most sentimental, +rose-scented religion ever invented, should have produced, through its +most thoroughly infatuated disciple, the ghastliest reign of terror that +ever shocked the world; his masterly character study of the "sea-green +incorruptible," too humane to swat a fly, yet capable of sending half of +France to the guillotine in order that the half that was left might +believe unanimously in the rights of man; all this the girl had let go +by unheard, in favor, apparently, of the drone of a street piano, which +came in through the open window on the prematurely warm March wind. Of +all his philosophizing, there was not a pen-track to mar the virginity +of the page she had opened her note-book to when the lecture began. + +And then, with a perfectly serious face, she had written down his silly +little joke about advice to young girls. + +There was no reason in the world why she should be The Girl. There were +fifteen or twenty of them in the class along with about as many men. +And, partly because there was no reason for his paying any special +attention to her, it annoyed him frightfully that he did. + +She was good-looking, of course--a rather boyishly splendid young +creature of somewhere about twenty, with a heap of hair that had, in +spite of its rather commonplace chestnut color, a sort of electric +vitality about it. She was slightly prognathous, which gave a humorous +lift to her otherwise sensible nose. She had good straight-looking, +expressive eyes, too, and a big, wide, really beautiful mouth, with +square white teeth in it, which, when she smiled or yawned--and she +yawned more luxuriously than any girl who had ever sat in his +classes--exerted a sort of hypnotic effect on him. All that, however, +left unexplained the quality she had of making you, whatever she did, +irresistibly aware of her. And, conversely, unaware of every one else +about her. A bit of campus slang occurred to him as quite literally +applicable to her. She had all the rest of them faded. + +It wasn't, apparently, an effect she tried for. He had to acquit her of +that. Not even, perhaps, one that she was conscious of. When she came +early to one of his lectures--it didn't happen often--the men, showed a +practical unanimity in trying to choose seats near by, or at least where +they could see her. But while this didn't distress her at all--they were +welcome to look if they liked--she struck no attitudes for their +benefit. A sort of breezy indifference--he selected that phrase finally +as the best description of her attitude toward all of them, including +himself. When she was late, as she usually was, she slid +unostentatiously into the back row--if possible at the end where she +could look out the window. But for three minutes after she had come in, +he knew he might as well have stopped his lecture and begun reciting the +Greek alphabet. She was, in the professor's mind, the final argument +against coeducation. Her name was Rosalind Stanton, but his impression +was that they called her Rose. + +The bell rang out in the corridor. He dismissed the class and began +stacking up his notes. Then: + +"Miss Stanton," he said. + +She detached herself from the stream that was moving toward the door, +and with a good-humored look of inquiry about her very expressive +eyebrows, came toward him. And then he wished he hadn't called her. She +had spoiled his lecture--a perfectly good lecture--and his impulse had +been to remonstrate with her. But the moment he saw her coming, he knew +he wasn't going to be able to do it. It wasn't her fault that her teeth +had hypnotized him, and her hair tangled his ideas. + +"This is an idiotic question," he said, as she paused before his desk, +"but did you get anything at all out of my lecture except my bit of +facetious advice to young girls about to marry?" + +She flushed a little (a girl like that hadn't any right to flush; it +ought to be against the college regulations), drew her brows together in +a puzzled sort of way, and then, with her wide, boyish, good-humored +mouth, she smiled. + +"I didn't know it was facetious," she said. "It struck me as pretty +good. But--I'm awfully sorry if you thought me inattentive. You see, +mother brought us all up on the Social Contract and The Age of Reason, +things like that, and I didn't put it down because ..." + +"I see," he said. "I beg your pardon." + +She smiled, cheerfully begged his and assured him she'd try to do +better. + +Another girl who'd been waiting to speak to the professor, perceiving +that their conversation was at an end, came and stood beside her at the +desk--a scrawny girl with an eager voice, and a question she wanted to +ask about Robespierre; and for some reason or other, Rosalind Stanton's +valedictory smile seemed to include a consciousness of this other +girl--a consciousness of a contrast. It might not have been any more +than that, but somehow, it left the professor feeling that he had given +himself away. + +He was particularly polite to the other girl, because his impulse was to +act so very differently. + +There is nothing cloistral about the University of Chicago except its +architecture. The presence of a fat abbot, or a lady prioress in the +corridor outside the recitation room would have fitted in admirably with +the look of the warm gray walls and the carven pointed arches of the +window and door casements, the blackened oak of the doors themselves. + +On the other hand, the appearance of the person whom Rose found waiting +for her out there, afforded the piquant effect of contrast. Or would +have done so, had the spectacle of him in that very occupation not been +so familiar. + +He was a varsity half-back, a gigantic blond young man in a blue serge +suit. He said, "Hello, Rose," and she said, "Hello, Harry." And he +heaved himself erect from the wall he had been leaning against and +reached out an immense hand to absorb the little stack of note-books she +carried. She ignored the gesture, and when he asked for them said she'd +carry them herself. There was a sort of strategic advantage in having +your own note-books under your own arm--a fact which no one appreciated +better than the half-back himself. + +He looked a little hurt. "Sore about something?" he asked. + +She smiled widely and said, "Not a bit." + +"I didn't mean at me necessarily," he explained, and referred to the +fact that the professor had detained her after he had dismissed the +class. "What'd he try to do--call you down?" + +There was indignation in the young man's voice--a hint of the protector +aroused--of possible retribution. + +She grinned again. "Oh, you needn't go back and kill him," she said. + +He blushed to the ears. "I'm sorry," he observed stiltedly, "if I appear +ridiculous." But she went on smiling. + +"Don't you care," she said. "Everybody's ridiculous in March. You're +ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he"--she nodded along the corridor--"he's +plumb ridiculous." + +He wasn't wholly appeased. It was rather with an air of resignation that +he held the door for her to go out by. They strolled along in silence +until they rounded the corner of the building. Here, ceremoniously, he +fell back, walked around behind her and came up on the outside. She +glanced up and asked him, incomprehensibly, to walk on the other side, +the way they had been. He wanted to know why. This was where he +belonged. + +"You don't belong there," she told him, "if I want you the other way. +And I do." + +He heaved a sigh, and said "Women!" under his breath. _Mutabile semper_! +No matter how much you knew about them, they remained incomprehensible. +Their whims passed explanation. He was getting downright sulky. + +As a matter of fact, he did her an injustice. There was a valid reason +for her wanting him to walk on the other side. What gave the appearance +of pure caprice to her request was just her womanly dislike of hurting +his feelings. There was a small boil on the left side of his neck and +when he walked at her left hand, it didn't show. + +"Oh, don't be fussy," she said. "It's such a dandy day." + +But the half-back refused to be comforted. And he was right about that. +A woman never tells you to cheer up in that brisk unfeeling way if she +really cares a cotton hat about your troubles. And a candid deliberate +self-examination would have convinced Rose that she didn't, in spite of +the sentimentally warm March wind that was blowing her hair about. She +was less moved by the half-back's sorrows this morning than at any time +during the last six months. She'd hardly have minded the boil before +to-day. + +Six months ago, he had been a very wonderful person to her. There had +been a succession of pleasant--of really thrilling discoveries. First, +that he'd rather dance with her than with any other girl in the +university. (You're not to forget that he was a celebrity. During the +football season, his name was on the sporting page of the Chicago papers +every day--generally in the head-lines when there was a game to write +about, and Walter Camp had devoted a whole paragraph to explaining why +he didn't put him on the first all-American eleven but on the second +instead--a gross injustice which she had bitterly resented.) + +There was a thrill, then, in the discovery that he liked her better than +other girls, and a greater thrill in the subsequent discovery that she +had become the basis of his whole orientation. It was her occupations +that left him leisure for his own; his leisure was hers to dispose of as +she liked; his energy, including his really prodigious physical prowess, +to be directed toward any object she thought laudable. Six months ago +she would not have laughed--not in that derisive way at least--at the +notion of his going back and beating up the professor. + +There had been a thrill, too, in their more sentimental passages. But at +this point, there developed a most perplexing phenomenon. The idea that +he wanted to make love to her, really moved and excited her; set her +imagination to exploring all sorts of roseate mysteries. The first time +he had ever held her hand--it was inside her muff, one icy December day +when he hadn't any gloves on--the memory of the feel of that big hand, +and of the timbre of his voice, left her starry-eyed with a new wonder. +She dreamed of other caresses; of wonderful things that he should say to +her and she should say to him. + +But here arose the perplexity. It was her imagination of the thing that +she enjoyed rather than the thing itself. The wonderful scenes that her +own mind projected never came true. The ones that happened were +disappointing--irritating, and eventually and unescapably, downright +disagreeable to her. There was no getting away from it, the ideal lover +of her dreams, whose tenderness and chivalry and devotion were so highly +desirable, although he might wear the half-back's clothes and bear his +face and name, was not the half-back. She might dote on his absence, but +his presence was another matter. + +The realization of this fact had been gradual. She wasn't fully +conscious of it, even on this March morning. But something had happened +this morning that made a difference. If she'd been ascending an +imperceptible gradient for the last three months, to-day she had come to +a recognizable step up and taken it. Oddly enough, the thing had +happened back there in the class-room as she stood before the +professor's desk and caught his eye wavering between herself and the +scrawny girl who wanted to ask a question about Robespierre. There had +been more than blank helpless exasperation in that look of his, and it +had taught her something. She couldn't have explained what. + +To the half-back she attributed it to the month of March. "You're +ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he's ridiculous." That was about as well as +she could put it. + +She and the half-back had walked about a hundred yards in silence. Now +they were arriving at a point where the path forked. + +"You're elegant company this morning, I must say," he commented +resentfully. + +Again she smiled. "I'm elegant company for myself," she said, and held +out her hand. "Which way do _you_ go?" she asked. + +A minute later she was swinging along alone, her shoulders back, +confronting the warm March wind, drawing into her good deep chest, long +breaths. She had just had, psychically speaking, a birthday. + +She played a wonderful game of basket-ball that afternoon. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +BEGINNING AN ADVENTURE + + +It was after five o'clock when, at the conclusion of the game and a cold +shower, a rub and a somewhat casual resumption of her clothes, she +emerged from the gymnasium. High time that she took the quickest way of +getting home, unless she wanted to be late for dinner. + +But the exhilaration of the day persisted. She felt like doing something +out of the regular routine. Even a preliminary walk of a mile or so +before she should cross over and take the elevated, would serve to +satisfy her mild hunger for adventure. And, really, she liked to be a +little late for dinner. It was always pleasanter to come breezing in +after things had come to a focus, than to idle about for half an hour in +that no-man's-land of the day, when the imminence of dinner made it +impossible to do anything but wait for it. + +So, with her note-books under her arm and her sweater-jacket unfastened, +at a good four-mile swing, she started north. In the purlieus of the +university she was frequently hailed by friends of her own sex or the +other. But though she waved cheerful responses to their greetings, she +made her stride purposeful enough to discourage offers of company. They +all seemed young to her to-day. All her student activities seemed young. +As if, somehow, she had outgrown them. The feeling was none the less +real after she had laughed at herself for entertaining it. + +She noticed presently that it was a good deal darker than it had any +right to be at this hour, and the sudden fall of the breeze and a +persistent shimmer of lightning supplied her with the explanation. When +she reached Forty-seventh Street, the break of the storm was obviously a +matter of minutes, so she decided to ride across to the elevated--it was +another mile, perhaps--rather than walk across as she had meant to do. +She didn't in the least mind getting wet, providing she could keep on +moving until she could change her clothes. But a ten-mile ride in the +elevated, with water squashing around in her boots and dripping out of +her hair, wasn't an alluring prospect. + +She found quite a group of people waiting on the corner for a car, and +the car itself, when it came along, was crowded. So she handed her +nickel to the conductor over somebody's shoulder, and moved back to the +corner of the vestibule. It was frightfully stuffy inside and most of +the newly received passengers seemed to agree with her that the platform +was a pleasanter place to stay; which did very well until the next stop, +where half a dozen more prospective passengers were waiting. They were +in a hurry, too, since it had begun in very downright fashion to rain. + +The conductor had been chanting, "Up in the car, please," in a +perfunctory cry all along. But at this crisis, his voice got a new +urgency. "Come on, now," he proclaimed, "you'll have to get inside!" + +From the step the new arrivals pushed, the conductor pushed, and finally +he was able to give the signal for starting the car. The obvious +necessity of making room for those who'd be waiting at the next corner, +kept him at the task of herding them inside and the sheep-like docility +of an American crowd helped him. + +Regretfully, with the rest, Rose made her way to the door. + +"Fare, please," he said sharply as she came along. + +She told him she had paid her fare, but for some reason, perhaps because +he was tired at the end of a long run, perhaps because he saw some one +else he suspected of being a spotter, he elected not to believe her. + +"When did you pay it?" he demanded. + +"A block back," she said, "when all those other people got on." + +"You didn't pay it to me," he said truculently. "Come along! Pay your +fare or get off the car." + +"I paid it once," she said quietly, "and I'm not going to pay it again." +With that she started forward toward the door. + +He reached out across his little rail and caught her by the arm. It was +a natural act enough--not polite, to be sure, by no means chivalrous. +Still, he probably put into his grip no more strength than he thought +necessary to prevent her walking by into the car. + +But it had a surprising result--a result that normally would not have +happened. Yet, on this particular day, it could not have happened +differently. It had been a red-letter day from the beginning, from no +assignable cause an exciting joyous day, and the thrill of the hard fast +game, the shower, the rub, the walk, had brought her up to what +engineers speak of as a "peak." + +Well, the conductor didn't know that. If he had, he would either have +let the girl go by, or have put a good deal more force into his attempt +to stop her. And the first thing he knew, he found both his wrists +pinned in the grip of her two hands; found himself staring stupidly into +a pair of great blazing blue eyes--it's a wrathful color, blue, when you +light it up--and listening uncomprehendingly to a voice that said, +"Don't dare touch me like that!" + +The episode might have ended right there, for the conductor's +consternation was complete. If she could have walked straight into the +car, he would not have pursued her. But her note-books were scattered +everywhere and had to be gathered up, and there were two or three of the +passengers who thought the situation was funny, and laughed, which did +not improve the conductor's temper. + +Rose was aware, as she gathered up her note-books, of another hand that +was helping her--a gloved masculine hand. She took the books it held out +to her as she straightened up, and said, "Thank you," but without +looking around for the face that went with it. The conductor's +intentions were still at the focal point of her mind. They were, +apparently, unaltered. He had jerked the bell while she was collecting +her note-books and the car was grinding down to a stop. + +"You pay your fare," he repeated, "or you get off the car right here." + +"Right here" was in the middle of what looked like a lake, and the rain +was pouring down with a roar. + +She didn't hesitate long, but before she could answer a voice spoke--a +voice which, with intuitive certainty, she associated with the gloved +hand that had helped gather up her note-books--a very crisp, finely +modulated voice. + +"That's perfectly outrageous," it said. "The young lady has paid her +fare." + +"Did you see her pay it?" demanded the conductor. + +"Naturally not," said the voice. "I got on at the last corner. She was +here then. But if she said she did, she did." + +It seemed to relieve the conductor to have some one of his own sex to +quarrel with. He delivered a stream of admonition somewhat sulphurously +phrased, to the general effect that any one whose concern the present +affair was not, could, at his option, close his jaw or have his block +knocked off. + +Rose hadn't, as yet, looked round at her champion. But she now became +aware that inside a shaggy gray sleeve which hung beside her, there was +a sudden tension of big muscles; the gloved hand that had helped gather +up her note-books, clenched itself into a formidable fist. The thought +of the sort of thud that fist might make against the over-active jaw of +the conductor was pleasant. Still, the thing mustn't be allowed to +happen. + +She spoke quickly and decisively. "I won't pay another fare, but of +course you may put me off the car." + +"All right," said the conductor. + +The girl smiled over the very gingerly way in which he reached out for +her elbow to guide her around the rail and toward the step. Technically, +the action constituted putting her off the car. She heard the crisp +voice once more, this time repeating a number, "twenty-two-naught-five," +or something like that, just as she splashed down into the two-inch lake +that covered the hollow in the pavement. The bell rang twice, the car +started with a jerk, there was another splash, and a big gray-clad +figure alighted in the lake beside her. + +"I've got his number," the crisp voice said triumphantly. + +"But," gasped the girl, "but what in the world did you get off the car +for?" + +It wasn't raining. It was doing an imitation of Niagara Falls, and the +roar of it almost drowned their voices. + +"What did I get off the car for!" he shouted. "Why, I wouldn't have +missed it for anything. It was immense! It's so confounded seldom," he +went on, "that you find anybody with backbone enough to stick up for a +principle ..." + +He heard a brief, deep-throated little laugh and pulled up short with a, +"What's the joke?" + +"I laughed," she said, "because you have been deceived." And she added +quickly, "I don't believe it's quite so deep on the sidewalk, is it?" +With that she waded away toward the curb. + +He followed, then led the way to a lee-wall that offered, comparatively +speaking, shelter. + +Then, "Where's the deception?" he asked. + +On any other day, it's probable she'd have acted differently; would have +paid some heed, though a bit contemptuously, perhaps, to the precepts of +ladylike behavior, in which she'd been admirably grounded. The case for +reticence and discretion was a strong one. The night was dark; the +rain-lashed street deserted; the man an utterly casual stranger--why, +she hadn't even had a straight look into his face. His motive in getting +off the car was at least dubitable. Even if not sinister, it could +easily be unpleasantly gallant. A man might not contemplate doing her +bodily harm, and still be capable of trying to collect some sort of +sentimental reward for the ducking he had submitted himself to. + +Her instinct rejected all that. The sound of his voice, the +general--atmosphere of him had been exactly right. And then, he'd left +undone the things he ought not to have done. He hadn't tried to take +hold of her arm as they had splashed along through the lake to the curb. +He hadn't exhibited any tenderly chivalrous concern over how wet she +was. And, to-day being to-day, she consigned ladylike considerations to +the inventor of them, and gave instinct its head. + +She laughed again as she answered his question. "The deception was that +I pretended to do it from principle. The real reason why I wouldn't pay +another fare, is because I had only one more nickel." + +"Good lord!" said the man. + +"And," she went on, "that nickel will pay my fare home on the elevated. +It's only about half a mile to the station, but from there home it's +ten. So you see I'd rather walk this than that." + +"But that's dreadful," he cried. "Isn't there ... Couldn't you let +me ..." + +"Oh," she said, "it isn't so bad as that. It's just one of the silly +things that happen to you sometimes, you know. I didn't have very much +money when I started, it being Friday. And then I paid my subscription +to _The Maroon_...." She didn't laugh audibly, but without seeing her +face, he knew she smiled, the quality of her voice enriching itself +somehow.... "And I ate a bigger lunch than usual, and that brought me +down to ten cents. I could have got more of course from anybody, but ten +cents, except for that conductor, would have been enough." + +"You will make a complaint about that, won't you?" he urged. "Even if it +wasn't on principle that you refused to pay another fare? And let me +back you up in it. I've his number, you know." + +"You deserve that, I suppose," she said, "because you did get off the +car on principle. But--well, really, unless we could prove that I did +pay my fare, by some other passenger, you know, they'd probably think +the conductor did exactly right. Of course he took hold of me, but that +was because I was going right by him. And then, think what I did to +him!" + +He grumbled that this was nonsense--the man had been guilty at least of +excessive zeal--but he didn't urge her, any further, to complain. + +"There's another car coming," he now announced, peering around the end +of the wall. "You will let me pay your fare on it, won't you?" + +She hesitated. The rain was thinning. "I would," she said, "if I +honestly wouldn't rather walk. I'm wet through now, and it'll be +pleasanter to--walk a little of it off than to squeeze into that car. +Thanks, really very, very much, though. Don't _you_ miss it." She thrust +out her hand. "Good-by!" + +"I can't pretend to think you need an escort to the elevated," he said. +"I saw what you did to the conductor. I haven't the least doubt you +could have thrown him off the car. But I'd--really like it very much if +you would let me walk along with you." + +"Why," she said, "of course! I'd like it too. Come along." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +FREDERICA'S PLAN AND WHAT HAPPENED TO IT + + +At twenty minutes after seven that evening, Frederica Whitney was about +as nearly dressed as she usually was ten minutes before the hour at +which she had invited guests to dinner--not quite near enough dressed to +prevent a feeling that she had to hurry. + +Ordinarily, though, she didn't mind. She'd been an acknowledged beauty +for ten years and the fact had ceased to be exciting. She took it rather +easily for granted, and knowing what she could do if she chose, didn't +distress herself over being lighted up, on occasions, to something a +good deal less than her full candle-power. To Frederica at thirty--or +thereabout--the job of being a radiantly delightful object of regard +lacked the sporting interest of uncertainty; was almost too simple a +matter to bother about. + +But to-night the tenseness of her movements and the faint trace of a +wire edge in the tone in which she addressed the maid, revealed the fact +that she wished she'd started half an hour earlier. Even her husband +discovered it. He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him +and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that +characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed +beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ten +minutes before his wife. + +She shot a glance of rueful inquiry at him--"Now what have _you_ come +fussing around for?" would be perhaps a fair interpretation of it--and +asked him what time it was, in the evident hope that the boudoir clock +on her dressing-table had deceived her. It had, but in the wrong +direction. + +"Seven twenty-two, thirty-six," he told her. It was a perfectly harmless +passion he had for minute divisions of time, but to-night it irritated +her. He might have spared her that thirty-six seconds. + +She made no comment except with her eyebrows, but he must have been +looking at her, for he wanted to know, good-humoredly, what all the +excitement was about. + +"You could go down as you are and not a man here to-night would know the +difference. And as for the women--well, if they have something on you +for once, they'll be all the better pleased." + +"Don't try to be knowing and philosophical, and--Havelock Ellish, +Martin, dear," she admonished him, pending a minute operation with an +infinitesimal hairpin. "It isn't your lay a bit. Just concentrate your +mind on one thing, and that's being nice to Hermione Woodruff...." + +She broke off for a long stare into her hand-glass; then finished, +casually, "... and on seeing that Roddy is." + +He asked, "Why Rodney?" in a tone that matched hers; looked at her, +widened his eyes, said "Huh!" to himself and, finally, shook his head. +"Nothing to it," he pronounced. + +She said, "Nothing to what?" but abandoned this position as untenable. +She despatched the maid with the key to the wall safe in her husband's +room. "Why isn't there?" she demanded. "Rodney won't look at young +girls. They bore him to death--and no wonder, because he freezes them +perfectly brittle with fright. But Hermione's really pretty intelligent. +She can understand fully half the things he talks about and she's clever +enough to pretend about the rest. She's got lots of tact and skill, +she's good-looking and young enough--no older than I and I'm two years +younger than Roddy. She'll appreciate a real husband, after having been +married five years to John Woodruff. And she's rich enough, now, so that +his wild-eyed way of practising law won't matter." + +"All very nice and reasonable," he conceded, "but somehow the notion of +Rodney Aldrich trying to marry a rich widow is one I'm not equal to +without a handicap of at least two cocktails." He looked at his watch +again. "By the way, didn't you say he was coming early?" + +She nodded. "That's what he told me this morning when I telephoned him +to remind him that it was to-night. He said he had something he wanted +to talk to me about. I knew I shouldn't have a minute, but I didn't say +so because I thought if he tried to get here early, he might miss being +late." + +They heard, just then, faint and far-away, the ring of the door-bell, at +which she cried, "Oh, dear! There's some one already." + +"Wait a second," he said. "Let's see if it's him." + +The paneled walls and ceiling of their hall were very efficient +sounding-boards and there was no mistaking the voice they heard speaking +the moment the door opened--a voice with a crisp ring to it that sounded +always younger than his years. What he said didn't matter, just a +cheerful greeting to the butler. But what they heard the butler say to +him was disconcerting. + +"You're terribly wet, sir." + +Frederica turned on her husband a look of despair. + +"He didn't come in a taxi! He's walked or something, through that rain! +Do run down and see what he's like. And if he's very bad, send him up to +me. I can imagine how he'll look." + +She was mistaken about that though. For once Frederica had overestimated +her powers, stimulated though they were by the way she heard her husband +say, "Good lord!" when the sight of his brother-in-law burst on him. + +"Praise heaven you can wear my clothes," she heard him add. "Run along +up-stairs and break yourself gently to Freddy." + +She heard him come squudging up the stairs and along the hall, and then +in her doorway she saw him. His baggy gray tweed suit was dark with the +water that saturated it. The lower part of his trousers-legs, in +irregular vertical creases, clung dismally to his ankles and toned down +almost indistinguishably into his once tan boots by the medium of a +liberal stipple of mud spatters. Evidently, he had worn no overcoat. +Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained to the utmost to +accommodate what looked like a bunch of pasteboard-bound note-books, +now far on the way to their original pulp, and lopped despondently +outward. A melancholy pool had already begun forming about his feet. + +The maddening, but yet--though she hadn't much room for any other +emotion--touching thing about the look of him, was the way his face, +above the dismal wreck, beamed good-humored innocent affection at her. +It was a big featured, strong, rosy face, and the unmistakable +intellectual power of it, which became apparent the moment he got his +faculties into action, had a trick of hiding, at other times, behind a +mere robust simplicity. + +"Good gracious!" he said. "I didn't know you were going to have a +party." + +It seemed though, he didn't want to make an issue of that. He hedged. "I +know you said something about a birthday cake, but I thought it would +just be the family. So instead of dressing, I thought I'd walk down from +home. It takes about the same time. And then it came on to rain, so I +took a street-car--and got put off." + +It appeared from the way she echoed his last two words that she wanted +an explanation. He was painting with a large brush and a few details got +obliterated. + +"Got into a row with the conductor, who wanted to collect two fares for +one ride, so I walked over to the elevated--and back, and here I am." + +"Yes, here you are," said Frederica. + +She didn't mean anything by that. Already she was making up her mind +what she would do with him. His own suggestion was that he should decamp +furtively by the back stairs, the sound of new arrivals to the dinner +party warning him that the other way of escape was barred. Waiters could +be instructed to rescue his hat for him, and he could toddle along +down-town again. + +She didn't give him time to complete the outline of this masterly +stratagem. "Don't be impossible, Rod," she said. "Don't you even know +whose birthday party this is?" + +He looked at her, frowned, then laughed. He had a great big laugh. + +"I thought it was one of the kid's," he said. + +"Well, it isn't," she told him. "It's yours. And those people down there +were asked to meet you. And you've got just about seven minutes to get +presentable in. Go into Martin's bathroom and take off those horrible +clothes. I'll send Walters in to lay out some things of Martin's." + +She came up to him and, at arm's length, touched him with cautious +finger-tips. "And do, please, there's a dear boy," she pleaded, "hurry +as fast as you can, and then come down and be as nice as you can"--she +hesitated--"especially to Hermione Woodruff. She thinks you're a wonder +and I don't want her to be disappointed." + +"The widdy?" he asked. "Sure I'll be nice to her." + +She looked after him rather dubiously as he disappeared in the direction +of her husband's room. + +She'd have felt safer about him if he had seemed more subdued as a +result of his escapade. There was a sort of hilarious contentment about +him that filled her with misgivings. + +Well, they were justified! + +But the maddening thing was, she had afterward to admit, that the +disaster had been largely of her own contriving. She had been caught in +the net of her own stratagem--hoist by her own petard. + +She had made it a six-couple dinner in order to insure that the talk +should be by twos rather than general, and she had spent a good +half-hour over the place-cards, getting them to suit her. + +Hermione had to be on Martin's right hand, of course. She was just back +in the city after an absence of years, and everybody was rushing her. +She put Violet Williamson, whom Martin was always flirting with in a +harmless way, on his left, and Rod to the right of Hermione. At Rodney's +right, she put a girl he had known for years and cared nothing whatever +about, and then Howard West--who probably wasn't interested in her +either, but would be polite because he was to everybody. Frederica +herself sat between Carl Leaventritt of the university--a great +acquisition, since whatever you might think of him as an empirical +psychologist, there was no doubt of his being an accomplished +diner-out--and Violet's husband, as he vociferously proclaimed himself, +John Williamson, an untired business man who, had their seasons +coincided, could have enjoyed a ball game in the afternoon and stayed +awake at the opera in the evening. Doctor Randolph's pretty wife she +slid in between Leaventritt and Howard West, and, in happy ignorance of +what the result was going to be, she put Randolph himself between Violet +and Alice West. He was a young, up-to-the-minute mind and nerve doctor. + +It was an admirable plan all right, the key-note of it being, as you no +doubt will have observed, the easy unforced isolation of Rodney and the +rich widow. Before that dinner was over, they ought to be old friends. + +And, for a little while, all went well. Rodney came down almost within +the seven minutes she had allowed him, looking much less dreadful than +she had expected, in her husband's other dress suit, and not forgetful, +it appeared, of the line of behavior she had enjoined on him; namely, +that he was to be nice to Hermione Woodruff. + +From her end of the table, she saw them apparently safely launched in +conversation over the hors-d'oeuvre, took a look at them during the soup +to see that all was still well, then let herself be beguiled into a +conversation with John Williamson, whom she liked as well as Martin did +Violet. She never thought of the objects of her matrimonial design again +until her ear was caught by a huge seven-cornered word in her brother's +voice. He couldn't be saying it to Hermione; no, he was leaning forward, +shouting at Doctor Randolph, who apparently knew what he meant and was +getting visibly ready to reply in kind. + +According to Violet Williamson's account, given confidentially in the +drawing-room afterward, it was really Hermione's fault. "She just +wouldn't let Rodney alone--would keep talking about crime and Lombroso +and psychiatric laboratories--I'll bet she'd got hold of a paper of his +somewhere and read it. Anyway, at last she said, 'I believe Doctor +Randolph would agree with me.' He was talking to me then, but maybe that +isn't why she did it. Well, and Rodney straightened up and said, 'Is +that Randolph, the alienist!' You see he hadn't caught his name when +they were introduced. And that's how it started. Hermione was game--I'll +admit that. She listened and kept looking interested, and every now and +then said something. Sometimes they'd take the trouble to smile and say +'Yes, indeed!'--politely, you know, but other times they wouldn't pay +any attention at all, just roll along over her and smash her flat--like +what's his name--Juggernaut." + +"You don't need to tell me that," said Frederica. "All I didn't know was +how it started. Didn't I sit there and watch for a mortal hour, not able +to do a thing? I tried to signal to Martin, but of course he wasn't +opposite to me and ..." + +"He did all he could, really," Violet answered her. "I told him to go to +the rescue, and he did, bravely. But what with Hermione being so miffy +about getting frozen out, and Martin himself being so interested in what +they were shouting at each other--because it was frightfully +interesting, you know, if you didn't have to pretend you understood +it--why, there wasn't much he could do." + +In the light of this disaster, she was rather glad the men lingered in +the dining-room as long as they did--glad that Hermione had ordered her +car for ten and took the odd girl with her. She made no effort to resist +the departure of the others, with reasonable promptitude, in their +train. When, after the front door had closed for the last time, Martin +released a long yawn, she told him to run along to bed; she wanted to +talk with Rodney, who was to spend the night while his own clothes were +drying out in the laundry. + +"Good night, old chap," said Martin in accents of lively commiseration, +"I'm glad I'm not in for what you are." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +ROSALIND STANTON DOESN'T DISAPPEAR + + +Rodney found a pipe of his that he kept concealed on the premises, +loaded and lighted it, sat down astride a spindling little chair that +looked hardly up to his weight, settled his elbows comfortably on the +back of it, and then asked his sister what Martin had meant--what was he +in for? + +Frederica, curled up in a corner of the sofa, finished her own train of +thought aloud, first. + +"She's awfully attractive, don't you think? His wife, I mean. Oh, James +Randolph's, of course." She turned to Rodney, looked at him at first +with a wry pucker between her eyebrows, then with a smile, and finally +answered his question. "Nothing," she said. "I mean, I was going to +scold you, but I'm not." + +"Why, yes," he admitted through his smoke. "Randolph's wife's a mighty +pretty woman. But I expect that lets her out, doesn't it?" + +Frederica shook her head. "She's a good deal of a person, I should say, +on the strength of to-night's showing. She kept her face perfectly +through the whole thing--didn't try to nag at him or apologize to the +rest of us. I'd like to know what she's saying to him now." + +Then, "Oh, I was furious with you an hour ago," she went on. "I'd made +such a nice, reasonable, really beautiful plan for you, and given you a +tip about it, and then I sat and watched you in that thoroughgoing way +of yours, kicking it all to bits. But somehow, when I see you all by +yourself, this way, it changes things. I get to thinking that perhaps my +plan was silly after all--anyhow, it was silly to make it. The plan was, +of course, to marry you off to Hermione Woodruff." + +He turned this over in his deliberate way, during the process of +blowing two or three smoke rings, began gradually to grin, and said at +last, "That was some plan, little sister. How do you think of things +like that? You ought to write romances for the magazines, that's what +you ought to do." + +"I don't know," she objected. "If reasonableness counted for anything in +things like that, it was a pretty good plan. It would have to be +somebody like Hermione. You can't get on at all with young girls. As +long as you remember they're around, you're afraid to say anything +except milk and water out of a bottle that makes them furious, and then +if you forget whom you're talking to and begin thinking out loud, +developing some idea or other, you--simply paralyze them. + +"Well, Hermione's sophisticated and clever, she's lived all over the +place; she isn't old yet, and she was a brick about that awful husband +of hers--never made any fuss--bluffed it out until he, luckily, died. Of +course she'll marry again, and I just thought, if you liked the idea, it +might as well be you." + +"I don't know," said Rodney, "whether Mrs. Woodruff knows what she wants +or not, but I do. She wants a run for her money--a big house to live in +three months in the year, with a flock of servants and a fleet of +motor-cars, and a string of what she'll call cottages to float around +among, the rest of the time. And she'll want a nice, tame, trick husband +to manage things for her and be considerate and affectionate and +amusing, and, generally speaking, Johnny-on-the-spot whenever she wants +him. If she has sense enough to know what she wants in advance, it will +be all right. She can take her pick of dozens. But if she gets a +sentimental notion in her head--and I've a hunch that she's subject to +them--that she wants a real man, with something of his own to do, +there'll be, saving your presence, hell to pay. And if the man happened +to be me ...!" + +Frederica stretched her slim arms outward. Thoughtful-faced, she made no +comment on his analysis of the situation, unless a much more observant +person than Rodney might have imagined there was one in the deliberate +way in which she turned her rings, one at a time, so that the brilliant +masses of gems were inside, and then clenched her hands over them. + +He had got up and was ranging comfortably up and down the room. + +"I know I look more or less like a nut to the people who've always known +us--father's and mother's friends, and most of their children. But I +give you my word, Freddy, that most of them look like nuts to me. Why, +they live in curiosity shops--so many things around, things they have +and things they've got to do, that they can't act or think for fear of +breaking something. + +"Why a man should load himself up with three houses and a yacht, a +stable of motor-cars, and God knows what besides, when he's rich enough +to buy himself real space and leisure to live in, is a thing I can't +figure out on any basis except of defective intelligence. I suppose +they're equally puzzled about me when I refuse a profitable piece of law +work they've offered me, because I don't consider it interesting. All +the same, I get what I want, and I'm pretty dubious sometimes whether +they do. I want space--comfortable elbow room, so that if I happen to +get an idea by the tail, I can swing it around my head without knocking +over the lamp." + +"It's a luxury though, Rod, that kind of spaciousness, and you aren't +very rich. If you married a girl without anything ..." + +He broke in on her with that big laugh of his. "You've kept your sense +of humor pretty well, sis, considering you've been married all these +years to a man as rich as Martin, but don't spring remarks like that, or +I'll think you've lost it. If a man can't keep an open space around him, +even after he's married, on an income, outside of what he can earn, of +ten or twelve thousand dollars a year, the trouble isn't with his +income. It's with the content of his own skull." + +She gave a little shiver and snuggled closer into a big down pillow. + +"You will marry somebody, though, won't you, Roddy? I'll try not to nag +at you and I won't make any more silly plans, but I can't help worrying +about you, living alone in that awful big old house. Anybody but you +would die of despondency." + +"Oh," he said, "that's what I meant to talk to you about! I sold it +to-day--fifty thousand dollars--immediate possession. Man wants to build +a printing establishment there. You come down sometime next week and +pick out all the things you think you and Harriet would like to keep, +and I'll auction off the rest." + +She shivered again and, to her disgust, found that her eyes were +blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack and edgy to-day, +anyhow. + +But really there was something rather remorseless about Rodney. It +occurred to her that the woman he finally did marry would need to be +strong and courageous and rather insensitive to sentimental fancies, to +avoid a certain amount of unhappiness. + +What he had just referred to in a dozen brisk words, was the final +disappearance of the home they had all grown up in. Their father, one of +Chicago's great men during the twenty great years between the Fire and +the Fair, had built it when the neighborhood included nearly all the +other big men of that robust period, and had always been proud of it. +There was hardly a stone or stick about it that hadn't some tender happy +association for her. Of course for years the neighborhood had been +impossible. Her mother had clung to it after her husband's death, as was +of course natural. + +But when she had followed him, a year ago now, it was evident that the +old place would have to go. Rodney, who had lived alone with her there, +had simply stayed on, since her death, waiting for an offer for it that +suited him. Frederica had known that, of course--had worried about him, +as she said, and in her imagination, had colored his loneliness to the +same dismal hue her own would have taken on in similar circumstances. + +All the same, his curt announcement that the long-looked-for change had +come, brought up quick unwelcomed tears. She squeezed them away with her +palms. + +"You'll come to us then, won't you?" she asked, but quite without +conviction. She knew what he'd say. + +"Heavens, no! Oh, I'll go to a hotel for a while--maybe look up a +little down-town apartment, with a Jap. It doesn't matter much about +that. It's a load off, all right." + +"Is that," she asked, "why you've been looking so sort of--gay, all the +evening--as if you were licking the last of the canary's feathers off +your whiskers?" + +"Perhaps so," he said. "It's been a pretty good day, take it all round." + +She got up from the couch, shook herself down into her clothes a little, +and came over to him. + +"All right, since it's been a good day, let's go to bed." She put her +hands upon his shoulders. "You're rather dreadful," she said, "but +you're a dear. You don't bite my head off when I urge you to get +married, though I know you want to. But you will some day--I don't mean +bite my head off--won't you, Rod?" + +"When I see any prospect of being as lucky as Martin--find a girl who +won't mind when I turn up for dinner looking like a drowned tramp, or +kick her plans to bits, after she's tipped me off as to what she wants +me to do ..." + +Frederica took her hands off, stepped back and looked at him. There was +an ironical sort of smile on her lips. + +"You're such an innocent," she said. "You've got an idea you know +me--know how I treat Martin. Roddy, dear, a girl's brother doesn't +matter. She isn't dependent on him, nor responsible for him. And if +she's rather sillily fond of him, she's likely to spoil him frightfully. +Don't think the girl you marry will ever treat you like that." + +"But look here!" he exclaimed. "You say I don't know you, whom I've +lived with off and on for thirty years--don't know how you'd treat me if +you were married to me. How in thunder am I going to know about the girl +I get engaged to, before it's too late?" + +"You won't," she said. "You haven't a chance in the world." + +"Hm!" he grunted, obviously struck with this idea. "You're giving the +prospect of marriage new attractions. You're making the thing out--an +adventure." + +She nodded rather soberly. "Oh, I'm not afraid for you," she said. "Men +like adventures--you more than most. But women don't. They like to dream +about them, but they want to turn over to the last chapter and see how +it's going to end. It's the girl I'm worried about.... Oh, come along! +We're talking nonsense. I'll go up with you and see that they've given +you pajamas and a tooth-brush." + +She had accomplished this purpose, kissed him good night, and under the +hint of his unbuttoned waistcoat and his winding watch, turned to leave +the room, when her eye fell on a heap of damp, warped, pasteboard-bound +note-books, which she remembered having observed in his side pockets +when he first came in. The color on the pasteboard binding had run, and +as they lay on the drawn linen cover to the chiffonier, she went over +and picked them up to see how much damage they'd done. Then she frowned, +peered at the paper label that had half peeled off of the topmost cover, +and read what was written on it. + +"Who," she asked with considerable emphasis, "is Rosalind Stanton?" + +"Oh," said Rodney very casually, behind the worst imitation of a yawn +she had ever seen, "oh, she got put off the car when I did." + +"That sounds rather exciting," said Frederica behind an imitation yawn +of her own--but a better one. "Going to tell me about it?" + +"Nothing much to tell," said Rodney. "There was a row about a fare, as I +said. The conductor was evidently solid concrete above the collar-bone, +and didn't think she'd paid. And she grabbed him and very nearly threw +him out into the street--could have done it, I believe, as easily as +not. And he began to talk about punching somebody's head. And then, we +both got put off. So, naturally, I walked with her over to the elevated. +And then I forgot to give her her note-books and came away with them." + +"What sort of looking girl?" asked Frederica. "Is she pretty?" + +"Why, I don't know," said Rodney judicially. "Really, you know, I hardly +got a fair look at her." + +Frederica made a funny sounding laugh and wished him an abrupt "good +night." + +She was a great old girl, Frederica--pretty wise about lots of things, +but Rodney was inclined to think she was mistaken in saying women didn't +like adventures. Take that girl this afternoon, for example. Evidently +she was willing to meet one half-way. And how she'd blazed up when that +conductor touched her! Just the memory of it brought back something of +the thrill he had felt when he saw it happen. + +"You're a liar, you know," remarked his conscience, "telling Frederica +you hadn't had a good look at her." + +On the contrary, he argued, it was perfectly justifiable to deny that a +look as brief as that, was good. He wouldn't deny, however, that the +thing had been a wholly delightful and exhilarating little episode. That +was the way to have things happen! Have them pop out of nowhere at you +and disappear presently, into the same place. + +"Disappear indeed!" sneered his conscience. "How about those note-books, +with her name and address on every one. And there's another lie you +told--about forgetting to give them to her!" + +He protested that it was entirely true. He had gone into the station +with the girl, shaken hands with her, said good night, and turned away +to leave the station, unaware--as evidently she was--that he still had +her note-books under his arm. But it was equally true that he had +discovered them there, a good full second before the girl had turned the +corner of the stairs--in plenty of time to have called her back to the +barrier, and handed them over to her. + +"All right, have it your own way," said Rodney cheerfully, as he turned +out the light. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE SECOND ENCOUNTER + + +Portia Stanton was late for lunch; so, after stripping off her jacket +and gloves, rolling up her veil and scowling at herself in an oblong +mahogany-framed mirror in the hall, she walked into the dining-room with +her hat on. Seeing her mother sitting alone at the lunch table, she +asked, "Where is Rose?" + +"She'll be down presently, I think," her mother said. "She called out to +me that she'd only be a minute, when I passed her door. Does your hat +mean you're going back to the shop this afternoon?" + +Portia nodded, pulled back her chair abruptly and sat down. "Oh, don't +ring for Inga," she said. "What's here's all right, and she takes +forever." + +"I thought that on Saturday ..." her mother began. + +"Oh, I know," said Portia, "but Anne Loomis telephoned she's going to +bring Dora Wild around to pick out which of my three kidney sofas she +wants for a wedding present. That girl I've got isn't much good, and +besides, I think there's a chance that Dora may give me her house to do. +Her man's stupidly rich, they say, and richly stupid, so the job ought +to be worth eating a cold egg for." + +You'd have known them for mother and daughter anywhere, and you'd have +had trouble finding any point of resemblance in either of them to the +Amazonian young thing who had so nearly thrown a street-car conductor +into the street the night before. Their foreheads were both narrow and +rather high, their noses small and slightly aquiline, and both of them +had slender fastidious hands. + +The mother's hair was very soft and white, and the care with which it +was arranged indicated a certain harmless vanity in it. There was +something a little conscious, too, about her dress--an effect difficult +to describe without exaggeration. It was not bizarre nor "artistic," but +you would have understood at once that its departures from the +prevailing mode were made on principle. If you took it in connection +with a certain resolute amiability about her smile, you would be +entirely prepared to hear her tell Portia that she was reading a paper +on Modern Tendencies before the Pierian Club this afternoon. + +A very real person, nevertheless, you couldn't doubt that. The marks of +passionately held beliefs and eagerly given sacrifices were etched with +undeniable authenticity in her face. + +Once you got beyond a catalogue of features, Portia presented rather a +striking contrast to this. Her hair was done--you could hardly say +arranged--with a severity that was fairly hostile. Her clothes were +bruskly cut and bruskly worn, their very smartness seeming an impatient +concession to necessity. Her smile, if not ill-natured--it wasn't +that--was distinctly ironic. A very competent, good-looking young woman, +you'd have said, if you'd seen her with her shoulder-blades flattened +down and her chest up. Seeing her to-day, drooping a little over the +cold lunch, you'd have left out the adjective young. + +"So Rose didn't come down this morning at all," Portia observed, when +she had done her duty by the egg. "You took her breakfast up to her, I +suppose." + +Mrs. Stanton flushed a little. "She didn't want me to; but I thought +she'd better keep quiet." + +"Nothing particular the matter with her, is there?" asked Portia. + +There was enough real concern in her voice to save the question from +sounding satirical, but her mother's manner was still a little +apologetic when she answered it. + +"No, I think not," she said. "I think the mustard foot-bath and the +quinine probably averted serious consequences. But she was in such a +state when she came home last night--literally wet through to the skin, +and blue with cold. So I thought it wouldn't do any harm ..." + +"Of course not," said Portia. "You're entitled to one baby anyway, +mother, dear. Life was such a strenuous thing for you when the rest of +us were little, that you hadn't a chance to have any fun with us. And +Rose is all right. She won't spoil badly." + +"I'm a little bit worried about the loss of the poor child's +note-books," said her mother. "I rather hoped they'd come in by the noon +mail. But they didn't." + +"I don't believe Rose is worrying her head off about them." said Portia. + +The flush in her mother's cheeks deepened a little, but it was no longer +apologetic. + +"I don't think you're quite fair to Rose, about her studies," she said. +"The child may not be making a brilliant record, but really, considering +the number of her occupations, it seems to me she does very well. And if +she doesn't seem always to appreciate her privilege in getting a college +education, as seriously as she should, you should remember her youth." + +"She's twenty," said Portia bluntly. "You graduated at that age, and you +took it seriously enough." + +"It's very different," her mother insisted. "And I'm sure you understand +the difference quite well. Higher education was still an experiment for +women then--one of the things they were fighting for. And those of us by +whom the success of the experiment was to be judged ..." + +"I'm sorry, mother," Portia interrupted contritely. "I'm tired and ugly +to-day, and I didn't mean any harm, anyway. Of course Rose is all right, +just as I said. And she'll probably get her note-books back Monday." +Then, "Didn't she say the man's name was Rodney Aldrich?" + +"I think so," her mother agreed. "Something like that." + +"It's rather funny," said Portia. "It's hardly likely to have been the +real Rodney Aldrich. Yet, it's not a common name." + +"The _real_ Rodney Aldrich?" questioned her mother. But, without waiting +for her daughter's elucidation of the phrase, she added, "Oh, there's +Rose!" + +The girl came shuffling into the room in a pair of old bedroom slippers. +She had on a skirt that she used to go skating in, and a somewhat +tumbled middy-blouse. Her hair was wopsed around her head anyhow--it +really takes one of Rose's own words to describe it. As a toilet +representing the total accomplishment of a morning, it was nothing to +boast of. But, if you'd been sitting there, invisibly, where you could +see her, you'd have straightened up and drawn a deeper breath than you'd +indulged in lately, and felt that the world was distinctly a brighter +place to live in than it had been a moment before. + +She came up behind Portia, whom she had not seen before that day, and +enveloped her in a big lazy hug. + +"Back to work another Saturday afternoon, Angel?" she asked +commiseratingly. "Aren't you ever going to stop and have any fun?" Then +she slumped into a chair, heaved a yawning sigh and rubbed her eyes. + +"Tired, dear?" asked her mother. She said it under her breath in the +hope that Portia wouldn't hear. + +"No," said Rose. "Just sleepy." She yawned again, turned to Portia, and, +somewhat to their surprise, said: "Yes, what do you mean--the _real_ +Rodney Aldrich? He looked real enough to me. And his arm felt real--the +one he was going to punch the conductor with." + +"I didn't mean he was imaginary," Portia explained. "I only meant I +didn't believe it was the Rodney Aldrich--who's so awfully prominent; +either somebody else who happened to have the same name, or somebody who +just--said that was his name." + +"What's the matter with the prominent one?" Rose wanted to know. "Why +couldn't it have been him?" + +Portia admitted that it could, so far as that went, but insisted on an +inherent improbability. A millionaire, a member of one of the oldest +families in the city--a social swell, the brother of that Mrs. Martin +Whitney whose pictures the papers were always publishing on the +slightest excuse--wasn't likely to be found riding in street-cars, in +the first place, and the improbability reached a climax during a furious +storm like that of last night, when, if ever during the year, the real +Rodney Aldrich would be saying, "Home, James," to a liveried chauffeur, +and sinking back luxuriously among the whip-cord cushions of a palatial +limousine. + +I hasten to say that these were not Portia's words; all the same, what +Portia did say, formed a basis for Rose's unspoken caricature. + +"Millionaires have legs," she said aloud. "I bet they can walk around +like anybody else. However, I don't care who he is, if he'll send back +my books." + +Portia went back presently to the shop, and it wasn't long after that +that her mother came down-stairs clad for the street, with her _Modern +Tendencies_ under her arm in a leather portfolio. + +It had turned cold overnight, and there was a buffeting gusty wind which +shook the windows and rattled the stiff branches of the trees. Her +mother's valedictory, given with more confidence now that Portia was out +of the house, was a strong recommendation that Rose stay quietly within +doors and keep warm. + +The girl might have palmed off her own inclination as an example of +filial obedience, but she didn't. + +"I was going to, anyway," she said. "Home and fireside for mine to-day." + +Ordinarily, the gale would have tempted her. It was such good fun to +lean up against it and force your way through, while it tugged at your +skirts and hair and slapped your face. + +But to-day, the warmest corner of the sitting-room lounge, the quiet of +the house, deserted except for Inga in the kitchen, engaged in the +principal sporting event of her domestic routine--the weekly baking; the +fact that she needn't speak to a soul for three hours, a detective story +just wild enough to make little intervals in the occupation of doing +nothing at all--presented an ideal a hundred per cent. perfect. + +She hadn't meant to go to sleep, having already slept away half the +morning, but the author's tactics in the detective story were so +flagrantly unfair, he was so manifestly engaged trying to make trouble +for his poor anemic characters instead of trying to solve their +perplexities, that presently she tossed the book aside and began +dreaming one of her own in which the heroine got put off a street-car in +the opening chapter. + +The telephone bell roused her once or twice, far enough to observe that +Inga was attending to it, so when the front door-bell rang, she left +that to Inga, too--didn't even sit up and swing her legs off the couch +and try, with a prodigious stretch, to get herself awake, until she +heard the girl say casually: + +"Her ban right in the sitting-room." + +So it fell out that Rodney Aldrich had, for his second vivid picture of +her,--the first had been, you will remember, when she had seized the +conductor by both wrists, and had said in a blaze of beautiful wrath, +"Don't dare to touch me like that!"--a splendid, lazy, tousled creature, +in a chaotic glory of chestnut hair, an unlaced middy-blouse, a plaid +skirt twisted round her knees, and a pair of ridiculous red bedroom +slippers, with red pompons on the toes. The creature was stretching +herself with the grace of a big cat that has just been roused from a nap +on the hearth-rug. + +If his first picture of her had been brief, his second one was +practically a snap-shot, because at sight of him, she flashed to her +feet. + +So, for a moment, they confronted each other about equally aghast, +flushed up to the hair, and simultaneously and incoherently, begging +each other's pardon--neither could have said for what, the goddess out +of the machine being Inga, the maid-of-all-work. But suddenly, at a +twinkle she caught in his eye, her own big eyes narrowed and her big +mouth widened into a smile, which broke presently into her deep-throated +laugh, whereupon he laughed too, and they shook hands, and she asked him +to sit down. + +[Illustration: At sight of him she flashed to her feet.] + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE BIG HORSE + + +"It's too ridiculous," she said. "Since last night, when I got to +thinking how I must have looked, wrestling with that conductor, I've +been telling myself that if I ever saw you again, I'd try to act like a +lady. But it's no use, is it?" + +He said that he, too, had hoped to make a better impression the second +time than the first. That was what he brought the books back for. He had +hoped to convince her that a man capable of consigning a half-drowned +girl to a ten-mile ride on the elevated, instead of walking her over to +his sister's, having her dried out properly, and sent home in a motor, +wasn't permanently and chronically as blithering an idiot as he may have +seemed. It was a great load off of his mind to find her alive at all. + +She gave him a humorously exaggerated account of the prophylactic +measures her mother had submitted her to the night before, and she +concluded: + +"I'm awfully sorry mother's not at home--mother and my sister Portia. +They'd both like to thank you for--looking after me last night. Because +really, you did, you know." + +"There never was anything less altruistic in the world," he assured her. +"I dropped off of that car solely in pursuit of a selfish aim. And I +didn't come out here to-day to be thanked, either. I mean, of course, +I'd enjoy meeting your mother and sister very much, but what I came for +was to get acquainted with you." + +He saw her glance wander a little dubiously to the door. "That is," he +concluded, "if you haven't something else to do." + +She flushed and smiled. "No, it wasn't that," she said, "I was trying to +make up my mind whether it would be better to ask you to wait here ten +minutes while I went up and made myself a little more presentable.... I +mean, whether you'd rather have me fit to look at, or have me like this +and not be bored by waiting. It's all one to me, you see, because even +if I did come down again presentable, you'd know--well, that I wasn't +that way naturally." + +Whereupon he laughed out again, told her that a ten-minute wait would +bore him horribly, and that if she didn't mind, he much preferred her +natural. + +"All right," she said, and went on with the conversation where she had +interrupted it. + +"Why, I'm nobody much to get acquainted with," she said. "Mother's the +interesting one--mother and Portia. Mother's quite a person. She's Naomi +Rutledge Stanton, you know." + +"I know I ought to know," Rodney said, and her quick appreciative smile +over his candor rewarded him for not having pretended. + +"Oh," she said, "mother's written two or three books, and lots of +magazine articles, about women--women's rights and suffrage, and all +that. She's been--well, sort of a leader ever since she graduated from +college, back in--just think!--1870, when most girls used to +have--accomplishments--'French, music, and washing extra,' you know." + +She said it all with a quite adorable seriousness and his gravity +matched hers when he replied: + +"I would like to meet her very much. Feminism's a subject I'm blankly +ignorant about." + +"I don't believe," she said thoughtfully, "that I'd call it feminism in +talking to mother about it, if I were you. Mother's a suffragist, +but"--there came another wave of faint color along with her +smile--"but--well, she's awfully respectable, you know." + +She didn't seem to mind his laughing out at that, though she didn't join +him. + +"What about the other interesting member of the family," he asked +presently, "your sister? Which is she, a suffragist or a feminist?" + +"I suppose," she said, "you'll call Portia a feminist. Anyway, she +smokes cigarettes. Oh, can't I get you some? I forgot!" + +He had a case of his own in his pocket, he said, and got one out now +and lighted it. + +"Why," she went on, "Portia hasn't time to talk about it much. You see, +she's a business woman. She's a house decorator. I don't mean painting +and paper-hanging. She tells you what kind of furniture to buy, and then +sells it to you. Portia's terribly clever and awfully independent." + +"All right," he said. "That brings us down to you. What are you?" + +She sighed. "I'm sort of a black sheep, I guess. I'm just in the +university. But I'm to be a lawyer." + +Whereupon he cried out "Good lord!" so explosively that she fairly +jumped. + +Then he apologized, said he didn't know why her announcement should have +taken him like that, except that the notion of her in court trying a +case--he was a lawyer himself--seemed rather startling. + +She sighed. "And now I suppose," she said, "you'll advise me not to be. +Portia won't hear of my being a decorator. She says there's nothing in +it any more; and my two brothers--one's a professor of history and the +other's a high-school principal--say, 'Let her do anything but teach.' +One of mother's great friends is a doctor, and she says, 'Anything but +medicine,' so I suppose you'll say, 'Anything but law.'" + +"Not a bit," he said. "It's the finest profession in the world." + +But he said it off the top of his mind. Down below, it was still engaged +with the picture of her in a dismal court room, blazing up at a jury the +way she had blazed up at that street-car conductor. It was a queer +notion. He didn't know whether he liked it or not. + +"I suppose," she hazarded, "that it's awfully dull and tiresome, though, +until you get way up to the top." + +That roused him. "It's awfully dull when you do get to the top, or +what's called the top--being a client caretaker with the routine law +business of a few big corporations and rich estates going through your +office like grist through a mill. I can't imagine anything duller than +that. That's supposed to be the big reward, of course. That's the +bundle of hay they dangle in front of your nose to keep you trotting +straight along without trying to see around your blinders." + +He was out of his chair now, tramping up and down the room. "You're not +supposed to discover that it's interesting. You're pretty well spoiled +for their purposes if you do. The thing to bear in mind, if you're going +to travel their road, is that a case is worth while in a precise and +unalterable ratio to the amount of money involved in it. If you question +that axiom at all seriously, you're lost. That's what happened to me." + +He pulled up with a jerk, looked at her and laughed. "If my sister +Frederica were here," he explained, "she would warn you, out of a long +knowledge of my conversational habits, that now was the time for you to +ask me,--firmly, you know,--if I'd been to see Maude Adams in this new +thing of hers, or something like that. In Frederica's absence, I suppose +it's only fair to warn you myself. Have you been to see it? I haven't." + +She smiled in a sort of contented amusement and let that do for an +answer to his question about Maude Adams. Then the smile transmuted +itself into a look of thoughtful gravity and there was a long silence +which, though it puzzled him, he made no move to break. + +At last she pulled in a long breath, turned straight to him and said, "I +wish you'd tell me what _did_ happen to you." + +And under the compelling sincerity of her, for the next two hours and a +half, or thereabouts, he did--told it as he had never told it +before--talked as Frederica, who thought she knew him, had never heard +him talk. + +He told her how he had started at the foot of the ladder in one of the +big successful firms of what he called "client caretakers," drawing up +bills and writs, rounding up witnesses in personal injury suits, trying +little justice-shop cases--the worst of them, of course, because there +was a youngster just ahead of him who got the better ones. And then, +dramatically, he told of his discovery amid this chaff, of a real legal +problem--a problem that for its nice intricacies and intellectual +suggestiveness, would have brought an appreciative gleam to the eye of +Mr. Justice Holmes, or Lord Mansfield, or the great Coke himself. He +told of the passionate enthusiasm with which he had attacked it, the +thrilling weeks of labor he had put on it. And then he told her the +outcome of it all; how the head of the firm, an old friend of his +father, had called him in and complimented him on the work that he had +done; said it was very remarkable, but, unfortunately, not profitable to +the firm, the whole amount involved in the case having been some twenty +dollars. They were only paying him forty dollars a month, to be sure, +but they figured that forty dollars practically a total loss and they +thought he might better go to practising law for himself. In other +words, he was fired. + +But the thing that rang through the girl's mind like the clang of a +bell--the thing that made her catch her breath, was the quality of the +big laugh with which he concluded it. He didn't ask her to be sorry for +him. He wasn't sorry for himself one bit,--nor bitter--nor cynical. He +didn't even seem trying to make a merit of his refusal to acquiesce in +that sordid point of view. He just dismissed the thing with a +cymbal-like clash of laughter and plunged ahead with his story. + +He told her how he'd got in with an altruistic bunch--the City Homes +Association; how, finding him keen for work that they had little time +for, the senior legal counselors had drawn out and let him do it. And +from the way he told of his labors in drafting a new city building +ordinance, she felt that it must have been one of the most fascinating +occupations in the world, until he told her how it had drawn him into +politics--municipal, city council politics, which was even more +thrilling, and then how, after an election, a new state's attorney had +offered him a position on his staff of assistants. + +In a sense, of course, it was true that he had, as Frederica would have +put it, forgotten she was there--had forgotten, at least, who she was. +Because, if he had remembered that she was just a young girl in the +university, he would hardly, as he tramped about the room expounding the +practise of criminal law in the state's attorney's office, have +characterized the state's attorney himself as a "damned gallery-playing +mountebank," nor have described the professions and the misdeeds of +some of the persons he prosecuted in blunt Anglo-Saxon terms she had +never heard used except in the Bible. + +The girl knew he had forgotten, and her only discomfort came from the +fear that the spell might be broken and he remember suddenly and be +embarrassed and stop. + +In the deeper sense--and she was breathlessly conscious of this too--he +hadn't forgotten she was there. He was telling it all because she was +there--because she was herself and nobody else. She knew, though how she +couldn't have explained,--with that intuitive certainty that is the only +real certainty there is,--that the story couldn't have been evoked from +him in just that way, by any one else in the world. + +At the end of two years in the state's attorney's office, he told her, +he figured he had had his training and was ready to begin. + +"I made just one resolution when I hung out my shingle," he said, "and +that was that no matter how few cases I got, I wouldn't take any that +weren't interesting--that didn't give me something to bite on. A lot of +my friends thought I was crazy, of course--the ones who came around +because they liked me, or had liked my father, to offer me nice plummy +little sinecures, and got told I didn't want them. Just for the sake of +looking successful and accumulating a lot of junk I didn't want, I +wasn't going to asphyxiate myself, have strings tied to my arms and legs +like a damned marionette. I wasn't willing to be bored for any reward +they had to offer me. It's cynical to be bored. It's the worst +immorality there is. Well, and I never have been." + +It wasn't all autobiographical and narrative. There was a lot of his +deep-breathing, spacious philosophy of life mixed up in it. And this the +girl, consciously, and deliberately, provoked. It didn't need much. She +said something about discipline and he snatched the word away from her. + +"What is discipline? Why, it's standing the gaff--_standing_ it, not +submitting to it. It's accepting the facts of life--of your own life, as +they happen to be. It isn't being conquered by them. It's not making +masters of them, but servants to the underlying things you want." + +She tried to make a reservation there--suppose the things you wanted +weren't good things. + +But he wouldn't allow it. + +"Whatever they are," he insisted, "your desires are the only motive +forces you've got. No matter how fine your intelligence is, it can't +ride anywhere except on the backs of your own passions. There's no good +lamenting that they're not different, and it's silly to beat them to +death and make a merit of not having ridden anywhere because they might +have carried you into trouble. Learn to ride them--control them--spur +them. But don't forget that they're _you_ just as essentially as the +rider is." + +It was with a curiously relaxed body, her chin cradled in the crook of +her arm that lay along the back of the couch, her eyes unfocused on the +window, that the girl listened to it. + +Primarily, indeed, she wasn't exactly listening. Much of the narrative +went by almost unheard. Much of the philosophy she hardly tried to +understand. What was constantly present and more and more poignantly +vivid with every five minutes that ticked away on the banjo clock, was a +consciousness of the man himself, the driving power of him, the +boisterous health and freshness and confidence. She was conscious, too, +of something formidable--carelessly exultant in his own strength. She +got to thinking of the flight of a great bird wheeling up higher and +higher on his powerful wings. + +He had caught her up, too, and was carrying her to altitudes far beyond +her own powers. He might drop her, but if he did, it wouldn't be through +weakness. At what he said about riding on the backs of one's own +passions, her imagination varied the picture so that she saw him +galloping splendidly by. + +At that, suddenly and to her consternation, she felt her eyes flushing +up with tears. She tried to blink them away, but they came too fast. + +Presently he stopped short in his walk--stopped talking, with a gasp, +in the middle of a sentence, and looked into her face. She couldn't see +his clearly, but she saw his hands clench and heard him draw a long +breath. Then he turned abruptly and walked to the window and for a +mortal endless minute, there was a silence. + +At last she found something--it didn't matter much what--to say, and the +conversation between them, on the surface of it, was just what it had +been for the first ten minutes after he had come in. But, paradoxically, +this superficial commonplaceness only heightened the tensity of the +thing that underlay it. Something had happened during that moment while +he stood looking into her tear-flushed eyes; something momentous, +critical, which no previous experience in her life had prepared her for. + +And it had happened to him, too. The memory of his silhouette as he +stood there with his hands clenched, between her and the window, would +have convinced her, had she needed convincing. + +The commonplace thing she had found to say met, she knew, a need that +was his as well as hers, for breathing-space--for time for the recovery +of lost bearings. Had he not felt it as well as she--she smiled a little +over this--he wouldn't have yielded. The man on horseback would have +taken an obstacle like that without breaking the stride of his gallop. + +What underlay her quiet meaningless chat, was wonder and fear, and more +deeply still, a sort of cosmic contentment--the acquiescence of a +swimmer in the still irresistible current of a mighty river. + +It was distinctly a relief to her when her mother came in and, +presently, Portia. She introduced him to them, and then dropped out of +the conversation altogether. As if it were a long way off, she heard him +retailing last night's adventure and expressing his regret that he +hadn't taken her to Frederica (that was his sister, Mrs. Whitney) to be +dried out, before he sent her home. + +She was aware that Portia stole a look at her in a puzzled penetrating +sort of way every now and then, but didn't concern herself as to the +basis of her curiosity. She knew that it was getting on toward their +dinner-time, but didn't disturb herself as to the effect Inga's +premonitory rattlings out in the dining-room might have on her guest. As +a matter of fact, they had none whatever. + +She smiled once widely to herself, over a thought of the half-back. The +man here in the room with her now, chatting so pleasantly with her +mother, wouldn't ask for favors--would accept nothing that wasn't +offered as eagerly as it was sought. + +It wasn't until he rose to go that she aroused herself and went with him +into the hall. There, after he'd got into his overcoat and hooked his +stick over his arm, he held out his hand to her in formal leave-taking. +Only it didn't turn out that way. For the effect of that warm lithe grip +flew its flag in both their faces. + +"You're such a wonder!" he said. + +She smiled. "So are y-you." It was the first time she had ever stammered +in her life. + +When she came back into the sitting-room, she found Portia inclined to +be severe. + +"Did you ask him to come again?" she wanted to know. + +Rose smiled. "I never thought of it," she said. + +"Perhaps it's just as well," said Portia. "Did you have anything at all +to say to him before we came home, or were you like that all the while? +How long ago did he come?" + +"I don't know," said Rose behind a very real yawn. "I was asleep on the +couch when he came in. That's why I was dressed like this." And then she +said she was hungry. + +There wasn't, on the whole, a happier person in the world at that +moment. + +Because Rodney Aldrich, pounding along at five miles an hour, in a +direction left to chance, was not happy. Or, if he was, he didn't know +it. He couldn't yield instantly, and easily, to his intuitions, as Rose +had done. He felt that he must think--felt that he had never stood in +such dire need of cool level consideration as at this moment: + +But the process was impossible. That fine instrument of precision, his +mind, that had, for many years, done without complaint the work he gave +it to do, had simply gone on a strike. Instead of ratiocinating +properly, it presented pictures. Mainly four: a girl, flaming with +indignation, holding a street-car conductor pinned by the wrists; a girl +in absurd bedroom slippers, her skirt twisted around her knees, her hair +a chaos, stretching herself awake like a big cat; a girl with wonderful, +blue, tear-brimming eyes, from whose glory he had had to turn away. Last +of all, the girl who had said with that adorable stammer, "So are +y-you," and smiled a smile that had summed up everything that was +desirable in the world. + +It was late that night when his mind, in a dazed sort of way, came back +on the job. And the first thing it pointed out to him was that Frederica +had undoubtedly been right in telling him that, though they had lived +together off and on for thirty years, they didn't know each other. The +pictures his memory held of his sister, covered no such emotional range +as these four. Did Martin's? It seemed absurd, yet there was a strong +intrinsic probability of it. + +Anyway, it was a remark Frederica had made last night that gave him +something to hold on by. Marriage, she had said, was an adventure, the +essential adventurousness of which no amount of cautious thought taken +in advance could modify. There was no doubt in his mind that marriage +with that girl would be a more wonderful adventure than any one had ever +had in the world. + +All right then, perhaps his mind had been right in refusing to take up +the case. The one tremendous question,--would the adventure look +promising enough to her to induce her to embark on it?--was one which +his own reasoning powers could not be expected to answer. It called +simply for experiment. + +So, turning off his mind again, with the electric light, he went to bed. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HOW IT STRUCK PORTIA + + +It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to +marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of +surprise than, hitherto, she had experienced in the sixty years of a +tolerably eventful life. + +Rose found her neatly writing a paper at the boudoir desk in the little +room she called her den. And standing dutifully at her mother's side +until she saw the pen make a period, made then her momentous +announcement, much in the tone she would have used had it been to the +effect that she was going to the matinee with him that afternoon. + +Mrs. Stanton said, "What, dear?" indifferently enough, just in +mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's +voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her +daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick. +What did you say?" + +Rose repeated: "Rodney Aldrich and I are going to be married." + +But when she saw a look of painful incomprehension in her mother's face, +she sat down on the arm of the chair, slid a strong arm around the +fragile figure and hugged it up against herself. + +"I suppose," she observed contritely, "that I ought to have broken it +more gradually. But I never think of things like that." + +As well as she could, her mother resisted the embrace. + +"I can't believe," she said, gripping the edge of her desk with both +hands, "that you would jest about a solemn subject like that, Rose, and +yet it's incredible!... How many times have you seen him?" + +"Oh, lots of times," Rose assured her, and began checking them off on +her fingers. "There was the first time, in the street-car, and the time +he brought the books back, and that other awful call he made one +evening, when we were all so suffocatingly polite. You know about those +times. But three or four times more, he's come down to the +university--he's great friends with several men in the law faculty, so +he's there quite a lot, anyway--but several times he's picked me up, and +we've gone for walks, miles and miles and miles, and we've talked and +talked and talked. So really, we know each other awfully well." + +"I didn't know," said her mother in a voice still dull with astonishment, +"that you even liked him. You've been so silent--indifferent--both times +he was here to call...." + +"Oh, I haven't learned yet to talk to him when any one else is around," +Rose admitted. "There's so little to say, and it doesn't seem worth the +bother. But, truly, I do like him, mother. I like everything about him. +I love his looks--I don't mean just his eyes and nose and mouth. I like +the shape of his ears, and his hands. I like his big loud voice"--her +own broadened a little as she added, "and the way he swears. Oh, not at +me, mother! Just when he gets so interested in what he's saying that he +forgets I'm a lady. + +"And I like the way he likes to fight--not with his fists, I mean, +necessarily. He's got the most wonderful mind to--wrestle with, you +know. I love to start an argument with him, just to see how easy it is +for him to--roll me in the dirt and walk all over me." + +The mother freed herself from the girl's embrace, rose and walked away +to another chair. "If you'll talk rationally and seriously, my dear," +she said, "we can continue the conversation. But this flippant, +rather--vulgar tone you're taking, pains me very much." + +The girl flushed to the hair. "I didn't know I was being flippant and +vulgar," she said. "I didn't mean to be. I was just trying to tell +you--all about it." + +"You've told me," said her mother, "that Mr. Aldrich has asked you to +marry him and that you've consented. It seems to me you have done so +hastily and thoughtlessly. He's told you he loves you, I've no doubt, +but I don't see how it's possible for you to feel sure on such short +acquaintance." + +"Why, of course he's told me," Rose said, a little bewildered. "He can't +help telling me all the time, any more than I can help telling him. +We're--rather mad about each other, really. I think he's the most +wonderful person in the world, and"--she smiled a little +uncertainly--"he thinks I am. But we've tried to be sensible about it, +and think it out reasonably. We're both strong and healthy, and we like +each other.... I mean--things about each other, like I've said. So, as +far as we can tell, we--fit. He said he couldn't guarantee that we'd be +happy; that no pair of people could be sure of that till they'd tried. +But he said it looked to him like the most wonderful, magnificent +adventure in the world, and asked if it looked to me like that, and I +said it did. Because it's true. It's the only thing in the world that +seems worth--bothering about. And we both think--though, of course, we +can't be sure we're thinking straight--that we've got a good chance to +make it go." + +Even her mother's bewildered ears couldn't distrust the sincerity with +which the girl had spoken. But this only increased the bewilderment. She +had listened with a sort of incredulous distaste she couldn't keep her +face from showing, and at last she had to wipe away her tears. + +At that Rose came over to her, dropped on the floor at her knees and +embraced her. + +"I guess perhaps I understand, mother," she said. "I didn't +realize--you've always been so intellectual and advanced--that you'd +feel that way about it--be shocked because I hadn't pretended not to +care for him and been shy and coy"--in spite of herself, her voice got +an edge of humor in it--"and a startled fawn, you know, running away, +but just not fast enough so that he wouldn't come running after and +think he'd made a wonderful conquest by catching me at last. But a man +like Rodney Aldrich wouldn't plead and protest, mother. He wouldn't +_want_ me unless I wanted him just as much." + +It was a long time before her mother spoke and when she did, she spoke +humbly--resignedly, as if admitting that the situation she was +confronted with was beyond her powers. + +"It's the one need of a woman's life, Rose, dear," she said, "--the +corner-stone of all her happiness, that her husband, as you say, 'wants' +her. It's something that--not in words, of course, but in all the little +facts of married life--she'll need to be reassured about every day. +Doubt of it is the one thing that will have the power to make her +bitterly unhappy. That's why it seems to me so terribly necessary that +she be sure about it before it's too late." + +"Yes, of course," said Rose. "But that's true of the man, too, isn't it? +Otherwise, where's the equality?" + +Her mother couldn't answer that except with a long sigh. + +Strangely enough, it wasn't until after Rose had gone away, and she had +shut herself up in her room to think, that any other aspect of the +situation occurred to her--even that there was another aspect of it +which she'd naturally have expected to be the first and only critical +one. + +Ever since babyhood Rose had been devoted, by all her mother's plans and +hopes, to the furtherance of the cause of Woman, whose ardent champion +she herself had always been. For Rose--not Portia--was the devoted one. + +The elder daughter had been born at a time when her own activities were +at their height. As Portia herself had said, when she and her two +brothers were little, their mother had been too busy to--luxuriate in +them very much and during those early and possibly suggestible years, +Portia had been suffered to grow up, as it were, by herself. She was not +neglected, of course, and she was dearly loved. But when, for the first +time since actual babyhood, she got into the focal-plane of her mother's +mind again, there was a subtle, but, it seemed, ineradicable antagonism +between them, though that perhaps is too strong a word for it. A +difference there was, anyway, in the grain of their two minds, that +hindered unreserved confidences, no matter how hard they might try for +them. Portia's brusk disdain of rhetoric, her habit of reducing +questions to their least denominator of common sense, carried a constant +and perfectly involuntary criticism of her mother's ampler and more +emotional style--made her suspect that Portia regarded her as a +sentimentalist. + +But Rose, with her first adorable smile, had captured her mother's heart +beyond the possibility of reservation or restraint. And, as the child +grew and her splendid, exuberant vitality and courage and wide-reaching, +though not facile, affection became marked characteristics, the hope +grew in her mother that here was a new leader born to the great Cause. +It would need new leaders. She herself was conscious of a side drift to +the great current, that threatened to leave her in a backwater. Or, as +she put it to herself, that threatened to sweep over the banks of +righteousness and decorum, and inundate, disastrously, the peaceful +fields. + +She couldn't expect to have the strength to resist this drift herself, +but she had a vision of her daughter rising splendidly to the task. And +for that task she trained her--or thought she did; saw to it that the +girl understood the Eighteenth Century Liberalism, which, limited to the +fields of politics and education, and extended to include women equally +with men, was the gospel of the movement she had grown up in. With it +for a background, with a university education and a legal training, the +girl would have everything she needed. + +She expected her to marry, of course. But in her day-dreams, it was to +be one of Rose's converts to the cause--won perhaps by her advocacy at +the bar, of some legal case involving the rights of woman--who was to +lay his new-born conviction, along with his personal adoration, at the +girl's feet. + +Certainly Rodney Aldrich, who, as Rose outrageously had boasted, rolled +her in the dust and tramped all over her in the course of their +arguments, presented a violent contrast to the ideal husband she had +selected. Indeed, it should be hard to think of him as anything but the +rock on which her whole ambition for the girl would be shattered. + +It was strange she hadn't thought of that during her talk with Rose! + +Now that the idea had occurred to her she tried hard to look at the +event that way and to nurse into energetic life a tragic regret over the +miscarriage of a lifetime's hope. It was all so obviously what she +ought to feel. Yet the moment she relaxed the effort, her mind flew back +to a vibration between a hope and a fear: the hope, that the man Rose +was about to marry would shelter and protect her always, as tenderly as +she herself had sheltered her; the terror--and this was stronger--that +he might not. + +That night, during the process of getting ready for bed, Rose put on a +bath-robe, picked up her hair brush and went into Portia's room. Portia, +much quicker always about such matters, was already on the point of +turning out the light, but guessing what her sister wanted, she stacked +her pillows, lighted a cigarette, climbed into bed and settled back +comfortably for a chat. + +"I hope," Rose began, "that you're really pleased about it. Because +mother isn't. She's terribly unhappy. Do you suppose it's because she +thinks I've--well, sort of deserted her, in not going on and being a +lawyer--and all that?" + +"Oh, perhaps," said Portia indifferently. "I wouldn't worry about that, +though. Because really, child, you had no more chance of growing up to +be a lawyer and a leader of the 'Cause' than I have of getting to be a +brigadier-general." + +Rose stopped brushing her hair and demanded to be told why not. She had +been getting on all right up to now, hadn't she? + +"Why, just think," said Portia, "what mother herself had gone through +when she was your age; put herself through college because her father +didn't believe in 'higher education'--practically disowned her. She'd +taught six months in that awful school--remember?--she was used to being +abused and ridiculed. And she was working hard enough to have killed a +camel. But you!... Why, Lamb, you've never really _had_ to do anything +in your life. If you felt like it, all right--and equally all right if +you didn't. You've never been hurt--never even been frightened. You +wouldn't know what they felt like. And the result is ..." + +Portia drew in a long puff, then eyed her cigarette thoughtfully through +the slowly expelled smoke. "The result is," she concluded, "that you +have grown up into a big, splendid, fearless, confiding creature that +it's perfectly inevitable some man like Rodney Aldrich would go straight +out of his head about. And there you are." + +A troubled questioning look came into the younger sister's eyes. "I've +been lazy and selfish, I know," she said. "Perhaps more than I thought. +I haven't meant to be. But ... Do you think I'm any good at all?" + +"That's the real injustice of it," said Portia; "that you are. You've +stayed big and simple. It couldn't possibly occur to you now to say to +yourself, 'Poor old Portia! She's always been jealous because mother +liked me best, and now she's just green with envy because I'm going to +marry Rodney Aldrich.'" + +She wouldn't stop to hear Rose's protest. "I know it couldn't," she went +on. "That's what I say. And yet there's more than a little truth in it, +I suppose. Oh, I don't mean I'm sorry you're going to be happy--I +believe you are, you know. I'm just a little sorry for myself. Curious, +anyway, to see where I've missed all the big important things you've +kept. I've been afraid of my instincts, I suppose. Never able to take a +leap because I've always stopped to look, first. I'm too narrow between +the cheek-bones, perhaps. Anyhow, here I stay, grinding along, wondering +what it's all about and what after all's the use.... While you, you +baby! are going to find out." + +What Rose wanted to do was to gather her sister up in her arms and kiss +her. But the faint ironic smile on Portia's fine lips, the twist of her +eyebrows, the poise of her body as she sat up in bed watching the +blue-brown smoke rising in a straight thin line from her diminishing +cigarette, combined to make such a demonstration altogether impossible. + +"Mother thinks, I guess," she said, to break the silence, "that I ought +to have looked a little longer. She thinks Rodney would have 'wanted' me +more, if I hadn't thrown myself at him like that." + +Portia extinguished her cigarette in a little ash-tray, and began +unpacking her pillows before she spoke. "I don't know," she said at +last. "It's been said for a long time that the only way to make a man +want anything very wildly, is to make him think it's desperately hard to +get. But I suspect there are other ways. I don't believe you'll ever +have any trouble making him 'want' you as much as you like." + +The color kept mounting higher and higher in the girl's face during the +moment of silence while she pondered this remark. "Why should I--make +him want me?--Any more than ... I think that's rather--horrid, Portia." + +Portia gave a little shiver and huddled down into her blankets. "You +don't put things out of existence by deciding they're horrid, child," +she said. "Open my window, will you? And throw out that cigarette. +There. Now, kiss me and run along to bye-bye. And forget my nonsense." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +RODNEY'S EXPERIMENT + + +The wedding was set for the first week in June. And the decision, +instantly acquiesced in by everybody, was that it was to be as quiet--as +strictly a family affair--as possible. The recentness of the death of +Rodney's mother gave an adequate excuse for such an arrangement, but the +comparative narrowness of the Stantons' domestic resources enforced it. +Indeed, the notion of even a simple wedding into the Aldrich family left +Portia rather aghast. + +But this feeling was largely allayed by Frederica's first call. Being a +celebrated beauty and a person of great social consequence didn't, it +appeared, prevent one from being human and simple mannered and +altogether delightful to have about. She was so competent, too, and +intelligent (Rose didn't see why Portia should find anything +extraordinary in all this. Wasn't she Rodney's sister?) that her +conquest of the Stanton family was instantaneous. They didn't suspect +that it was deliberate. + +Rodney had made his great announcement to her, characteristically, over +the telephone, from his office. "Do you remember asking me, Freddy, two +or three weeks ago, who Rosalind Stanton was? Well, she's the girl I'm +going to marry." + +She refused to hear a word more in those circumstances. "I'm coming +straight down," she said, "and we'll go somewhere for lunch. Don't you +realize that we can't talk about it like this? Of course you wouldn't, +but it's so." + +Over the lunch table she got as detailed an account of the affair as +Rodney, in his somnambulistic condition, was able to give her, and she +passed it on to Martin that evening as they drove across to the north +side for dinner. + +"Well, that all sounds exactly like Rodney," he commented. "I hope +you'll like the girl." + +"That isn't what I hope," said Frederica. "At least it isn't what I'm +most concerned about. I hope I can make her like me. Roddy's the only +brother I've got in the world, and I'm not going to lose him if I can +help it. That's what will happen if she doesn't like me." + +Frederica was perfectly clear about this, though she admitted it had +taken her fifteen minutes or so to see it. + +"All the way down-town to talk to Rodney," she said, "I sat there +deciding what she ought to be like--as if she were going to be brought +up to me to see if she'd do. And then all at once I thought, what good +would it do me to decide that she wouldn't? I couldn't change his +relation to her one bit. But, if she decides I won't do, she can change +his relation to me pretty completely. It's about the easiest thing a +wife can do. + +"Well, I'm going to see her, and her mother and sister--that's the +family--to-morrow. And if they don't like me before I come away and +think of me as a nice sort of person to be related by marriage to, it +won't be because I haven't tried. It will be because I'm just a +naturally repulsive person and can't help it." + +As it happened though, she forgot all about her resolution almost with +her first look at Rose. Rodney's attempts at description of her had been +well meaning; but what he had prepared his sister for, unconsciously of +course, in his emphasis on one or two phases of their first +acquaintance, had been a sort of slatternly Amazon. But the effect of +this was, really, very happy; because when a perfectly presentably clad, +well-bred, admirably poised young girl came into the room and greeted +her neither shyly nor eagerly, nor with any affectation of ease, a girl +who didn't try to pretend it wasn't a critical moment for her but was +game enough to meet it without any evidences of panic--when Frederica +realized that this was the Rose whom Rodney had been telling her about, +she fell in love with her on the spot. + +Amazingly, as she watched the girl and heard her talk, she found she was +considering, not Rose's availability as a wife for Rodney, but Rodney's +as a husband for her. It was this, perhaps, that led her to say, at the +end of her leave-taking, just as Rose, who had come out into the hall +with her, was opening the door: + +"Roddy has been such a wonderful brother, always, to me, that I suspect +you'll find him, sometimes, being a brother to you. Don't let it hurt +you if that happens." + +The most vivid of all the memories that Frederica took away with her +from that memorable visit was the smile with which Rose had answered +that remark. She had her chauffeur stop at the first drug store they +came to and called up Rodney on the telephone, just because she was too +impatient to wait any longer for a talk with him. + +"I'm simply idiotic about her," she told him. "I know, now, what you +meant when you were trying to tell me about her smile. She looked at me +like that just as I was leaving, and my throat's tight with it yet. +She's such a darling! Don't be too much annoyed if I put my oar in once +in a while, just to see that you're treating her properly." + +She walked into his office one morning a few days later, dismissed his +stenographer with a nod, and sat down in the just vacated chair. She was +sorry, she said, but it was the only way she had left, nowadays, of +getting hold of him. Then she introduced a trivial, transparent little +errand for an excuse, and, having got it out of the way, inquired after +Rose. What had the two of them been doing lately? + +"Getting acquainted," he said. "It's going to be an endless process, +apparently. Heavens, what a lot there is to talk about!" + +"Yes," Frederica persisted, "but what do you do by way of being--nice to +her?" And as he only looked puzzled and rather unhappy, she elucidated +further. "What's your concession, dear old stupid, to the fact that +you're her lover--in the way of presents and flowers and theaters and +things?" + +"But Rose isn't like the rest of them," he objected. "She doesn't care +anything about that sort of thing." + +Whereat Frederica laughed. "Try it," she said, "just for an experiment, +Roddy. Don't ask her if she wants to go, ask her to go. Get tickets for +one of the musical things, engage a table for dinner and for supper, at +two of the restaurants, and send her flowers. Do it handsomely, you +know, as if ordinary things weren't good enough for her. Oh, and take +our big car. Taxis wouldn't quite be in the picture. Try it, Roddy, just +to see what happens." + +He looked thoughtful at first, then interested, and at last he smiled, +reached over and patted her hand. "All right, Freddy," he said. "The +handsome thing shall be done." + +The result was that at a quarter past one A.M., a night or two later, he +tipped the carriageman at the entrance to the smartest of Chicago's +supper restaurants, stepped into Martin's biggest limousine, and dropped +back on the cushions beside a girl he hardly knew. + +"You wonder!" he said, as her hand slid into his. "I didn't know you +could shine like that. All the evening you've kept my heart in my +throat. I don't know a thing we've seen or eaten--hardly where we've +been." + +"I do," she declared, "and I shall never forget it. Not one smallest +thing about it. You see, it's the first time anything like it ever +happened to me." + +He exclaimed incredulously at that--wanted to know what she meant. + +He felt the weight of her relaxed contented body, as she leaned closer +to him--felt her draw in a long slow sigh. "I don't know whether I can +talk sense to-night or not," she said, "but I'll try. Why, I've been +quite a lot at the theater, of course, and two or three times to the +restaurants. But never--oh, as if I belonged like that. It always seemed +a little wrong, and extravagant. And then, it's never lasted. After the +theater, or the dinner, I've walked over to the elevated, you know. So +this has been like--well, like flying in a dream, without any bumps to +wake me up. It sort of goes to my head just to be sitting here like +this, floating along home. Only--only, I wish it was to our home, +Rodney, instead of just mine." + +"You darling!" he said. And, presently: "I'll tell you what we'll do +to-morrow, if you'll run away from your dressmaker. We'll go and buy a +car for ourselves. It's ridiculous I didn't get one long ago. +Frederica's always been at me to. You see, mother wouldn't have anything +but horses, and I sold those, of course, when she died. I've meant to +get a car, but I just never got round to it." + +A small disagreeable voice, hermetically sealed in one of the remoter +caverns of him, remarked at this point that he was a liar. A motor-car, +it pointed out, was one of the things he had always denounced as a part +of the useless clutter of existence that he refused to be embarrassed +with. But it didn't speak with much conviction. + +She picked up his hand and brushed her lips softly against the palm of +it. "You're so wonderful to me," she said. "You give me so much. And +I--I have so little to give back. And I want to--I want to give you all +the world." And then, suddenly, she put her bare arm around his neck, +drew his face to hers and kissed him. + +It was the first time she had ever begun a caress like that. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +AFTER BREAKFAST + + +For their honeymoon, Martin had loaned them his camp up in northern +Wisconsin--uncut forest mostly, with a river and a lot of little lakes +in it. There were still deer and bear to be shot there, there was +wonderful fishing, and, more to the point in the present instance, as +fine a brand of solitude as civilization can ask to lay its hands on. It +was modified, and mitigated too, by a backwoods family--a man and his +wife, a daughter or two, and half a dozen sons, who lived there the year +round, of course; so that by telegraphing two or three days in advance, +you could be met by a buckboard at the nearest railroad station for the +twenty-five-mile drive over to the camp. You could find the house itself +(a huge affair, decorously built of logs, as far as its exterior +manifestations went, but amply supplied on the interior with bathrooms, +real beds and so forth) opened and warmed and flavored with the odor of +fried venison steak. Also, there was always a boy to paddle a canoe for +you, or saddle a horse, if you didn't feel like doing it for yourself. + +Rodney and Rose spent a night in this establishment, then rigged up an +outfit for camping of a less symbolistic sort, and repaired to an island +out in the lake, where for two weeks they lived gorgeously, like the +savages they both, to a very considerable extent, really were. + +But, at the end of this fortnight, a whipping north wind, with a fine +penetrating rain in its teeth, settled down for a three-days' visit, and +drove them back to adequate shelter. One rainy day in an outdoor camp is +a good thing; a second requires fortitude; a third carries the +conviction that it has been raining from the first day of Creation and +will keep on till the Last Judgment, and if you have anywhere to go to +get dry, you do. + +Of course the storm blew itself away when it had accomplished its +purpose of driving them from their island paradise, but they didn't go +back to it. Two weeks of camp-fires, hemlock boughs and blankets, had +given them an appreciation for sleeping between smooth sheets, and +coming down to a breakfast that was prepared for them. And one morning +Rose came into the big living-room to find Rodney lounging there, in +front of the fire, with a book. + +It wasn't the first time he had done that. But always before, on seeing +her come in, he had chucked the book away and come to meet her. This +time, he went on reading. + +She moved over toward him, meaning to sit down on the arm of his chair, +cuddle her arm around his neck, and at the same time, discover what it +was that so absorbed him. But half-way across the room, she changed her +mind. He hadn't even reached out an unconscious hand toward her. He went +on reading as if, actually, he were alone in the room. Evidently, too, +it was a book he'd brought with him--a formidable-looking volume printed +in German--she got near enough to see that. So she picked up an old +magazine from the table, and found a chair of her own, smiling a little +in anticipation of the effect this maneuver would have. + +She opened the magazine at random, and, presently, for the sake of +verisimilitude, turned a page. Rodney was turning pages as regularly as +clockwork. It was a silly magazine! She wished she'd found something +that really could interest her. It was getting harder and harder to sit +still. He couldn't be angry about anything, could he? No, that was +absurd. There hadn't been the slightest trace of a disagreement between +them. She wouldn't go on pretending to read, anyhow, and she tossed the +magazine away. + +She had meant it to fall back on the table. But she put more nervous +force than she realized into the toss, so that it skittered across the +table and fell on the floor with a slap. + +That roused him. He closed his book--on his finger, though--looked +around at her, stretched his arms and smiled. "Isn't this great?" he +said. + +It wasn't a sentiment she could echo quite whole-heartedly just then, +so she asked him what he meant--wasn't what great. + +"Oh, this," he told her. "Being like this." + +"Sitting half a mile apart this way," she asked, "each of us reading our +own book?" + +She didn't realize how completely provocative her meaning was, until, to +her incredulous bewilderment, he said enthusiastically, "Yes! exactly!" + +He wasn't looking at her now, but into the fire, and he rummaged for a +match and relighted his pipe before he said anything more. "Being +permanent, you know," he explained, "and--well, our real selves again." + +She tried hard to keep her voice even when she asked, "But--but what +have we been?" + +And at that he laughed out. "Good heavens, what haven't we been! A +couple of transfigured lunatics. Why, Rose, I haven't been able to see +straight, or think straight, for the last six weeks. And I don't believe +you have either. My ideas have just been running in circles around you. +How I ever got through those last two cases in the Appellate Court, I +don't see. When I made an argument before the bench, I was--talking to +you. When I wrote my briefs, I was writing you love-letters. And if I'd +had sense enough to realize my condition, I'd have been frightened to +death. But now--well, we've been sitting here reading away for an hour, +without having an idea of each other in our heads." + +By a miracle of self-command, she managed to keep control of her voice. +"Yes," she said. "That--that other's all over, isn't it?" + +"I wouldn't go so far as to say that," he demurred around a comfortable +yawn. "I expect it will catch us again every now and then. But, in the +main, we're sane people, ready to go on with our own business. What was +it you were reading?" + +"I don't believe I'll read any more just now," she said. "I think I'll +go out for a walk." And she managed to get outside the room without his +discovering that anything was wrong. + +It was, indeed, her first preoccupation, to make sure he shouldn't +discover the effect his words had had on her--to get far enough away +before the storm broke so that she could have it out by herself. The +crowning humiliation would be if he came blundering in on her and asked +her what was the matter. + +She fled down the trail to the little lake, ran out a canoe, caught up a +paddle and bent a feverish energy to the task of getting safely around +into the shelter of a fir-grown point before she let herself stop, as +she would have said, to think. It wasn't really to think, of course. +Not, that is, to interpret out to the end of all its logical +implications, the admission he had so unconsciously made to her that +morning. + +She had never seriously been hurt or frightened, Portia had said weeks +ago. And when she said it, it was true. She was both hurt and frightened +now, and the instinct that had urged her to fly was as simple and +primitive as that which urges a wounded animal to hide. + +Indeed, if you could have seen her after she had swung her paddle +inboard, sitting there, gripping the gunwales with both hands, panting, +her wide eyes dry, you might easily have thought of some defenseless +wild thing cowering in a momentary shelter, listening for the baying of +pursuing hounds. + +He didn't love her any more, that was what he had said. For what was the +thing he had so cheerfully described himself as cured of, what were the +symptoms he had enumerated as if he had been talking about a +disease--the obsession with her, the inability to get her further away +than the middle ground of his thoughts, and then only temporarily; the +necessity of saying everything he said and doing everything he did, with +reference to her; the fact that his mind could focus itself sharply on +nothing in the world but just herself?--What was all that but the +veritable description, though in hostile terms, of the love he had +promised to feel for her till death should--part them; of the very love +she felt for him, this moment stronger than ever? + +Recurrent waves of the panic broke over her, during which she would +catch up her paddle again and drive ahead, blindly, without any +conscious knowledge of where she was going. And in the intervals, she +drifted. + +The relief of tears didn't come to her until she saw, just ahead, the +island where, for two paradisiacal weeks, she and Rodney had made their +camp. Here she beached her canoe and went ashore; crept into a little +natural shelter under a jutting rock, where they had lain one day while, +for three hours, a violent unheralded storm had whipped the lake to +lather. The heap of hemlock branches he had cut for a couch for them was +still there. + +At the end of half an hour, she observed with a sort of apathetic +satisfaction, that the weather conditions of their former visit were +going to be repeated now--a sudden darkness, a shriek of wind, a wild +squall flashing across the surface of the little lake, and a driving +rain so thick that small as the lake was, it veiled the shore of it. + +She watched it for an hour before it occurred to her to wonder what +Rodney would be doing--whether he'd have discovered her absence from the +house and begun to worry about her. She told herself that he +wouldn't--that he'd sit there until he finished his book, or until they +called him for lunch, without, as he himself had boasted that morning, a +thought of her entering his mind. + +She wept again over this notion, luxuriating rather, it must be +confessed, in the pathos of it, until she caught herself in the act and, +disgustedly, dried her eyes. Of course he'd worry about her. Only there +was nothing either of them could do about it until the storm should be +over; then she'd paddle back to the house as fast as she could and set +his mind at rest. + +Suddenly she sat erect, looked, rubbed her eyes, looked again, then +sprang to her feet and went out into the driving rain. A spot of white, +a larger one of black, two moving pin-points of light, was what she saw. +The white was Rodney's shirt, the black the canoe, the pin-points the +reflection from the two-bladed paddle as, recklessly, he forced his way +with it into the teeth of the storm. He wanted her, after all. + +So, with a racing heart and flushed cheeks, she watched him. It was not +until he had come much nearer that she went white with the realization +of his danger--not until she could see how desperately it needed all his +strength and skill to keep his little cockle-shell from broaching to +and being swamped. + +[Illustration: "Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"] + +She went as far to meet him as she could--out to the end of the point, +and then actually into the water to help him with the half-filled boat. + +They emptied it and hauled it up on the beach. Then, looking up at him a +little tremulously, between a smile and tears, she saw how white he was, +caught him in her arms and felt how he was trembling. + +"I thought you were gone," he said, but couldn't manage any more than +that because of a great shuddering sob that stopped him. + +"Don't!" she cried. "Don't.--Oh, my dear! I didn't know!" + +Presently, back in the shelter again, she drew his head down on her +breast and held him tight. + +Logically, of course, the situation wasn't essentially changed. It +couldn't be a part of their daily married routine that he should think +he'd lost her and come through perils to the rescue. When the storm had +blown over and they'd come back to the house--still more, when after +another few weeks they'd gone back to town, he'd still have a world of +his own to withdraw into, a business of his own to absorb him, and she, +with no world at all except the one he was the principal inhabitant of, +would be left outside. But you couldn't have expected her to think of +that while she held him, quivering, in her arms. + + + + +BOOK TWO + +Love and the World + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE PRINCESS CINDERELLA + + +When the society editor of "America's foremost newspaper," as in its +trademark it proclaims itself to be, announced that the Rodney Aldriches +had taken the Allison McCreas' house, furnished, for a year, beginning +in October, she spoke of it as an ideal arrangement. As everybody knew, +it was an ideal house for a young married couple, and it was equally +evident that the Rodney Aldriches were an ideal couple for it. + +In the sense that it left nothing to further realization, it was an +ideal house; an old house in the Chicago sense, built over into +something very much older still--Tudor, perhaps--Jacobean, anyway--by a +smart young society architect who wore soft collars and an uptwisted +mustache, and who, by a perfectly reciprocal arrangement which almost +deserves to be called a form of perpetual motion, owed the fact that he +was an architect to his social position, and maintained his social +position by being an architect. + +He had cooperated enthusiastically with Florence McCrea, not only in the +design of the house, but in the supplementary matters of furniture, +hangings, rugs and pictures, with the effect that the establishment +presented the last politely spoken word in things as they ought to be. +The period furniture was accurate almost to the minute, and the +arrangement of it, the color schemes and the lighting, had at once the +finality of perfection and the perfection of finality. If you happened +to like that sort of thing, it was precisely the sort of thing you'd +like. + +The same sort of neat, fully acquired perfection characterized the +McCreas' domestic arrangements. Allison McCrea's income, combined with +his wife's, was exactly enough to enable them to live in this house and +entertain on the scale it very definitely prescribed, just half the +time. Every other year they went off around the world in one direction +or another, and rented their house furnished for exactly enough to pay +all their expenses. They had no children, and his business, which +consisted in allowing his bank to collect his invariable quarterly +dividends for him and credit them to his account, offered no obstacle to +this arrangement. On the alternate years, they came back and spent two +years' income living in their house. + +Florence was an old friend of Rodney's and it was her notion that it +would be just the thing he'd want. She made no professions of +altruism--admitted she was fussy about whom she rented her darling house +to, and that Rodney and his wife would be exactly right. Still, she +didn't believe he could do better. They'd have to have some sort of +place to live in, in the autumn. It would be such a mistake to buy a lot +of stuff in a hurry and find out later that they didn't want it! The +arrangement she proposed would leave him an idyllically untroubled +summer--nothing to fuss about, and provide ... Well, Rodney knew for +himself what the house was--complete down to the cork-screws. + +Even the servant question was eliminated. "Ours are so good," Florence +said, "that the last time we rented the house, we put them in the lease. +I wouldn't do that with you, of course, but I know they'll be just what +you want." And six thousand dollars a year was simply dirt cheap. + +To clinch the thing, Florence went around and saw Frederica about it. +And Frederica, after listening, non-committally, dashed off to the last +meeting of the Thursday Club (all this happened in June, just before the +wedding) and talked the matter over with Violet Williamson on the way +home, afterward. + +"John said once," observed Violet, "that if he had to live in that +house, he'd either go out and buy a plush Morris chair from +feather-your-nest Saltzman's, and a golden oak sideboard, or else run +amuck." + +Frederica grinned, but was sure it wouldn't affect Rodney that way. +He'd never notice that there _wasn't_ a golden oak sideboard with a +beveled mirror in it. As for Rose, she thought Rose would like it--for a +while, anyway. Of course it wasn't forever. But this wasn't the point. +It was something else she had to get an unprejudiced opinion on, "simply +because in this case my own isn't trustworthy. I'm so foolish about old +Roddy, that I can't be sure I haven't--well, caught being mad about Rose +from him. It all depends, you see, on whether Rose is going to be a hit +this winter or not. If she is, they'll want a place just like that and +it would be a shame for her to be bothered and unsettled when she might +have everything all oiled for her. But of course if she doesn't--go (and +it all depends on her; Rodney won't be much help)--why, having a house +like that might be pretty sad. So, if you're a true friend, you'll tell +me what you think." + +"What I really think," said Violet, "--of course I suppose I'd say this +anyway, but I do honestly mean it--is that she'll be what John calls a +'knock-out.' To be sure, I've only met her twice, but I think she's +absolutely thrilling. She's so perfectly simple. She's never--don't you +know--_being_ anything. She just is. And she thinks we're all so +wonderful--clever and witty and beautiful and all that--just honestly +thinks so, that she'll make everybody feel warm and nice inside, and +they'll be sure to like her. Of course, when she gets over feeling that +way about us...." + +"She's got a real eye for clothes, too," said Frederica. "We've been +shopping. Well then, I'm going to tell Rodney to go ahead and take the +house." + +Rose was consulted about it of course, though consulted is perhaps not +the right word to use. She was taken to see it, anyway, and asked if she +liked it, a question in the nature of the case superfluous. One might as +well have asked Cinderella if she liked the gown the fairy godmother had +provided her with for the prince's ball. + +It didn't occur to her to ask how much the rent would be, nor would the +fact have had any value for her as an illuminant, because she would have +had no idea whether six thousand dollars was a half or a hundredth of +her future husband's income. The new house was just a part--as so many +of the other things that had happened to her since that night when +Rodney had sent her flowers and taken her to the theater and two +restaurants in Martin's biggest limousine had been parts--of a +breath-arresting fairy story. + +It takes a consciousness of resistance overcome to make anything feel +quite real, and Rose, during the first three months after their return +to town in the autumn, encountered no resistance whatever. It was all, +as Frederica had said, oiled. She was asked to make no effort. The whole +thing just happened, exactly as it had happened to Cinderella. All she +had to do was to watch with wonder-wide eyes, and feel that she was, +deliciously, being floated along. + +The conclusion Frederica and Violet had come to about her chance for +social success was amply justified by the event, and it is probable that +Violet had put her finger on the mainspring of it. One needn't assume +that there were not other young women at the prince's ball as beautiful +as Cinderella, and other gowns, perhaps, as marvelous as the one +provided by the fairy godmother. The godmother's greatest gift, I should +say, though the fable lays little stress on it, was a capacity for +unalloyed delight. No other young girl, beautiful as she may have been, +if she were accustomed to driving to balls in coaches and having princes +ask her to dance with them, could possibly have looked at that prince +the way Cinderella must have looked at him. + +While a sophisticated woman can affect this sort of simplicity well +enough to take in the men, the affectation is always transparently clear +to other women and they detest her for it. But it was altogether the +real thing with Rose, and they knew it and took to her as naturally as +the men did. + +So it fell out that what with the Junior League, the woman's auxiliary +boards of one or two of the more respectably elect charities, the +Thursday Club and The Whifflers (this was the smallest and smartest +organization of the lot--fifteen or twenty young women supposed to +combine and reconcile social and intellectual brilliancy on even terms. +They met at one another's houses and read scintillating papers about +nothing whatever under titles selected generally from _Through the +Looking-glass_ or _The Hunting of the Snark_)--what with all this, her +days were quite as full as the evenings were, when she and Rodney dined +and went to the opera and paid fabulous prices to queer professionals, +to keep themselves abreast of the minute in all the new dances. + +But it wasn't merely the events of this sort, sitting in boxes at the +opera and going to marvelous supper dances afterward, that had this +thrilling quality of incredibility to Rose. The connective tissue of her +life gave her the same sensation, perhaps even more strongly. + +Portia had been quite right in saying that she had never _had_ to do +anything; the rallying of all her forces under the spur of necessity was +an experience she had never undergone. And it was also true that her +mother, and for that matter, Portia herself had spoiled her a lot--had +run about doing little things for her, come in and shut down her windows +in the morning, and opened the register, and on any sort of excuse, on a +Saturday morning, for example, had brought her her breakfast on a tray. + +But these things had been favors, not services--never to be asked for, +of course, and always to be accepted a little apologetically. She never +knew what it was really to be served, until she and Rodney came back +from their camp in the woods. The whole mechanism of ringing bells for +people, telling them, quite courteously of course, but with no spare +words, precisely what she wanted them to do and seeing them, with no +words at all of their own, except the barest minimum required to +indicate respectful acquiescence--carrying out these instructions, was +in its novelty, as sensuously delightful a thing to her feelings as the +contact with a fine fabric was to her finger-tips. + +"I haven't," Rose, in bed, told Rodney one morning, "a single, blessed, +mortal thing to do all day." Some fixture scheduled for that morning had +been moved, she went on to explain, and Eleanor Randolph was feeling +seedy and had called off a little luncheon and matinee party. So, she +concluded with a deep-drawn sigh, the day was empty. + +"Oh, that's too bad," he said with concern. "Can't you manage +something ...?" + +"Too bad!" said Rose in lively dissent. "It's too heavenly! I've got a +whole day just to enjoy being myself;--being"--she reached across to the +other bed for his hand, and getting it, stroked her cheek with +it--"being my new self. You've no idea how new it is, or how exciting +all the little things about it are. State Street's so different +now--going and getting the exact thing I want, instead of finding +something I can make do, and then faking it up to look as much like the +real thing as I could. Portia used to think I faked pretty well. It was +the one thing she really admired about me, because she couldn't do it +herself at all. But I never was--don't you know?--right. + +"And then when I was going anywhere, I'd figure out the through routes +and where I'd take transfers, and how many blocks I'd have to walk, and +what kind of shoes I'd have to wear. And coming home in time for dinner +always meant the rush hour, and I'd have to stand. And it simply never +occurred to me that everybody else didn't do it that way. Except"--she +smiled--"except in Robert Chambers' novels and such." + +It wasn't necessary to see Rose smile to know she did it. Her voice, +broadening out and--dimpling, betrayed the fact. This smile, plainly +enough, went rather below the surface, carried a reference to something. +But Rodney didn't interrupt. He let her go on and waited to inquire +about it later. + +"So you see," she concluded, "it's quite an adventure just to say--well, +that I want the car at a quarter to eleven and to tell Otto exactly +where I want him to drive me to. I always feel as if I ought to say that +if he'll just stop the car at the corner of Diversey Street, I can +walk." + +He laughed out at that and asked her how long she thought this blissful +state of things would last. + +"Forever," she said. + +But presently she propped herself up on one elbow and looked over at him +rather thoughtfully. "Of course it's none of it new to you," she +said--"not the silly little things I've been talking about, nor the +things we do together--oh, the dinners, and the dances, and the operas. +Do you sort of--wish I'd get tired of it? Is it a dreadful bore to you?" + +"So long as it doesn't bore you," he said; "so long as you go +on--shining the way you do over it, and I am where I can see you +shine"--he got out of his bed, sat down on the edge of hers, and took +both her hands--"so long as it's like that, you wonder," he said, "well, +the dinners and the operas and all that may be piffle, but I shall be +blind to the fact." + +She kissed his hands and told him contentedly that he was a darling. +But, after a moment's silence, a little frown puckered her eyebrows and +she asked him what he was so solemn about. + +Well, he had told her the truth. The edge of excitement in his voice +would have carried the irresistible conviction to anybody, that the +thing he had said was, without reserve, the very thing he meant. But +precisely as he said it, as if, indeed, the thing that he had said were +the detonating charge that fires the shell, he felt the impact, away +down in the inner depths of him, of a realization that he was not the +same man he had been six months ago. Not the man who had tramped +impatiently back and forth across Frederica's drawing-room, expounding +his ideals of space and leisure--open, wind-swept space, for the free +range of a hard, clean, athletic mind. Not the man who despised the +clutter of expensive junk--"so many things to have and to do, that one +couldn't turn around for fear of breaking something." That man would +have derided the possibility that he could ever say this thing that he, +still Rodney Aldrich, had just said to Rose--and meant. + +To that man, the priceless hour of the day had always been precisely +this one, the first waking hour, when his mind, in the enjoyment of a +sort of clairvoyant limpidity, had been wont to challenge its stiffest +problems, wrestle with them, and whether triumphant or not, despatch him +to his office avid for the day's work and strides ahead of where he had +left it the night before. + +He spent that hour very differently now. He spent all his hours, even +the formal working ones, differently. And the terrifying thing was that +he hadn't resisted the change, hadn't wanted to resist, didn't want to +now, as he sat there looking down at her--at the wonderful hair which +framed her face and, in its two thick braids, the incomparable whiteness +of her throat and bosom--at the slumberous glory of her eyes. + +So, when she asked him what he was looking so solemn about, he said with +more truth than he pretended to himself, that it was enough to make +anybody solemn to look at her. And then, to break the spell, he asked +her why she had laughed a little while back, over something she had said +about Robert W. Chambers' novels. + +"I was thinking," she said, "of the awful disgrace I got into yesterday, +with somebody--well, with Bertram Willis, by saying something like that. +I'll have to tell you about it." + +Bertram Willis, it should be said, was the young architect with the +upturned mustaches and the soft Byronic collars, who had done the house +for the McCreas. And I must warn you to take the adjective young, with a +grain of salt. Youth was no mere accident with him. He made an art of +it, just as he did of eating and drinking and love-making and, +incidentally, architecture. He was enormously in demand, chiefly +perhaps, among young married women whose respectability and social +position were alike beyond cavil. He never carried anything too far, you +see. He was no pirate--a sort, rather, of licensed privateer. And what +made him so invincibly attractive--after you had granted his other +qualities, that is--was that he professed himself, among women, +exceedingly difficult to please, so that attentions from him, even of a +casual sort, became _ex hypothesi_ compliments of the first order. If he +asked you, in his innocently shameless way, to belong to his _hareem_, +you boasted of it afterward;--jocularly, to be sure, but you felt +pleased just the same. The thing that had given the final cachet of +distinction to Rose's social success that season, had been the fact that +he had shown a disposition to flirt with her quite furiously. + +Rose didn't need to tell her husband that, of course, because he knew it +already, as he also knew that Willis had asked her to be one of the +Watteau group he was getting up for the charity ball (the ball was to +be a sumptuously picturesque affair that year), nor that he had been +spending hours with her over the question of costumes--getting as good +as he gave, too, because her eye for clothes amounted to a really +special talent. + +All that Rodney didn't know, was about the conversation the two of them +had had yesterday afternoon at tea-time. + +Rose, intent on telling him all about it, had postponed the recital +while she made up her own mind as to how she should regard the thing +herself; whether she ought to have been annoyed, or seriously +remonstrant, or whether the smile of pure amusement which had come so +spontaneously to her lips, had expressed, after all, an adequate +emotion. + +The look in her husband's face made an end of all doubts, reduced the +episode of yesterday to its proper scale. Married to a man who could +look at her like that, she needn't take any one else's looks or speeches +very seriously. It was at this angle that she told about it. + +"Why," she said, "of course he's always talked to me as if I were about +six--sixteen, anyway, no older than that, and the names he makes up to +call me are simply too silly to repeat. But I never paid any attention, +because--well, everybody knows he's that way to everybody. 'Flower face' +was one of his favorites, but there were others that were worse. Well, +yesterday he brought around some old costume plates, but he wouldn't let +me look at them without coming round beside me and--holding my hand, so +that didn't work very well. And then he got quite solemn and said +I'd--given him the only real regret of his life, because he hadn't seen +me until it was too late." + +"I didn't know," said Rodney, "that he ever let obstacles like husbands +bother him." + +"That's what I thought he meant at first," said Rose, "but it wasn't. He +didn't mean it was too late because of my being married to you. He meant +too late because of him. He couldn't love me, he said, as I deserved, +because he'd been in love so many times before, himself. + +"And then, of course, just when I should have been looking awfully sad +and sympathetic, I had to go and grin, and he wanted to know why, and I +said, 'Nothing,' but he insisted, you know, so then I told him. + +"Well, it was just what I said to you a while ago--that I didn't know +any men ever talked like that except in books by Hichens or +Chambers--why do you suppose they're both named Robert?--and he went +perfectly purple with rage and said I was a savage. And then he got +madder still and said he'd like to be a savage himself for about five +minutes; and I wanted to tell him to go ahead and try, and see what +happened, but I didn't. I asked him how he wanted his tea, and he didn't +want it at all, and went away." + +As she finished, she glanced up into his face for a hardly-needed +reassurance that the episode looked to him, as it had looked to her, +trivial. Then, with a contented little sigh, for his look gave her just +what she wanted, she sat up and slid her arms around his neck. + +"How plumb ridiculous it would have been," she said, "if either of us +had married anybody else." + +If Rodney, that is, had married a girl who'd have taken Bertram Willis +seriously; or if she had married a man capable of thinking the +architect's attentions important. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE FIRST QUESTION AND AN ANSWER TO IT + + +But within a day or two, when a conversation overheard at a luncheon +table recalled the architect to her mind, a rather perplexing question +propounded itself to her. Why had it infuriated him so--why had he +glared at her with that air of astounded incredulity, on discovering +that she wasn't prepared to take him seriously? There could be only one +answer to that question. He could not have expected Rose to be properly +impressed and fluttered, unless that were the effect he was in the habit +of producing on other women. These others, much older that Rose all of +them (because no debutantes were ever invited to belong to the +_hareem_), these new, brilliant, sophisticated friends her marriage with +Rodney had brought her, did not, evidently, regard the dapper little +architect with feelings anything like the mild, faintly contemptuous +mirth that he had roused so spontaneously and irresistibly in Rose. +Every one of them had a husband of her own, hadn't she? And they were +happily married, too. Well, then ...! + +She found Violet Williamson in Frederica's box at the Symphony concert +one Friday afternoon, and took them both home to tea with her afterward. +And when the talk fairly got going, she tossed her problem about Bertie +Willis and his _hareem_ into the vortex to see what would come of it. + +It was always easy to talk with Frederica and Violet, there was so much +real affection under the amusement they freely expressed over her youth +and inexperience and simplicity. They always laughed at her, but they +came over and hugged her afterward. + +"I'm turned out of the _hareem_," she said, apropos of the mention of +him, "in disgrace." + +Violet wanted to know whatever in the world she had done to him. +"Because, he's been positively--what do you call it?--dithyrambic about +you for the last three months." + +"I laughed," Rose acknowledged; "in the wrong place of course." + +The two older women exchanged glances. + +"Do you suppose it's ever been done to him before," asked Frederica, "in +the last fifteen years, anyway?" And Violet solemnly shook her head. + +"But why?" demanded Rose. "That's what I want to know. How can any one +help thinking he's ridiculous. Of course if you were alone on a desert +island with him like the Bab Ballad, I suppose you'd make the best of +him. But with any one else that was--real, you know, around ..." + +Only a very high vacuum--this was the idea Rose seemed to be getting +at--might be expected, _faute de mieux_, to tolerate Bertie. So if you +found him tolerated seriously in a woman's life, you couldn't resist the +presumption that there was a vacuum there. + +"Don't ask me about him," said Frederica. "He never would have anything +to do with me; said I was a classic type and they always bored him +stiff. But Violet, here ..." + +"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I lasted one season, and then he dropped me. He +beat me to it by about a minute. All the same--oh, I can understand it +well enough. You see, what he builds on is that a woman's husband is +always the least interesting man in the world. Oh, I don't mean we don't +love them, or that we want to change them--permanently, you know. Take +Frederica and me. We wouldn't exchange for anything. Yet, we used to +have long arguments. I've said that Martin was more--interesting, witty, +you know, and all that, than John. And Frederica says John is more +interesting than Martin. Oh, just to talk to, I mean. Not about anything +in particular, but when you haven't anything else to do." + +She paused long enough to take a tentative sip or two of boiling hot +tea. But the way she had hung up the ending to her sentence, told them +she wasn't through with the topic yet. + +"It's funny about that, too," she went on, "because really, we see each +other so much and have known each other so long, that I know +Martin's--repertory, about as well as Frederica. I mean, it isn't like +Walter Mill, when he was just back from the Legation at Pekin, or even +like Jimmy Wallace, who spends half his time playing around with all +sorts of impossible people--chorus-girls and such, and tells you queer +stories about them. There's something besides the--familiarness that +makes husbands dull. And that's what makes Bertie amusing." + +"Oh, of course," said Frederica, "everybody likes to flirt--whether they +have to or not." + +"Have to?" Rose echoed. She didn't want to miss anything. + +Frederica hesitated. Then, rather tentatively, began her exegesis. + +"Why, there are a lot of women--especially of our sort, I suppose, who +are always ... well, it's like taking your own temperature--sticking a +thermometer into their mouths and looking at it. They think they know +how they ought to feel about certain things, and they're always looking +to see if they do. And when they don't, they think their emotional +natures are being starved, or some silly thing like that. And of course, +if you're that way, you're always trying experiments, just the way +people do with health foods. In the end, they generally settle on +Bertie. He's perfectly safe, you know--just as anxious as they are not +to do anything really outrageous. Bertie keeps them in a pleasant sort +of flutter, and maybe he does them good. I don't know.--Drink your tea, +Violet. We've got to run." + +That was explicit enough anyway. But it didn't solve Rose's +problem--broadened and deepened it rather, and gave it a greater basis +of reality. It was silly, of course, always to be asking yourself +questions. But after all, you didn't question a thing that wasn't +questionable. There had been no necessity for a compromise between +romance and reality in her own case. She hadn't any need of a +thermometer. Why had they? + +Of course she knew well enough that marriage was not always the blissful +transformation it had been for her. There were unhappy marriages. There +were such things in the world as unfaithful husbands and brutal drunken +husbands, who had to be divorced. And equally, too, there were +cold-blooded, designing, mercenary wives. (In the back of her mind was +the unacknowledged notion that these people existed generally in novels. +She knew, of course, that those characters must have real prototypes +somewhere. Only, it hadn't occurred to her to identify them with people +of her own acquaintance.) But the idea had been that, barring these +tragic and disastrous types, marriage was a state whose happy +satisfactoriness could, more or less, be taken for granted. + +Oh, there were bumps and bruises, of course. She hadn't forgotten that +tragic hour in the canoe last summer. There had, indeed, been two or +three minor variants on the same theme since. She had seen Rodney drop +off now and again into a scowling abstraction, during which it was so +evident he didn't want to talk to her, or even be reminded that she was +about, that she had gone away flushed and wondering, and needing an +effort to hold back the tears. + +These weren't frequent occurrences, though. Once settled into what +apparently was going to be their winter's routine, they had so little +time alone together that these moments, when they came, had almost the +tension of those that unmarried lovers enjoy. They were something to +look forward to and make the delicious utmost of. + +So, until she got to wondering about Bertie, Rose's instinctive attitude +toward the group of young to middle-aged married people into which her +own marriage had introduced her, was founded on the assumption that, +allowing for occasional exceptions, the husbands and wives felt toward +each other as she and Rodney did--were held together by the same +irresistible, unanalyzable attraction, could remember severally, their +vivid intoxicating hours, just as she remembered the hour when Rodney +had told her the story and the philosophy of his life. + +Bertie, or rather the demand for what Bertie supplied, together with +Frederica's explanation of it, brought her the misgiving that marriage +was not, perhaps, even between people who loved each other,--between +husbands who were not "unfaithful" and wives who were not +"mercenary"--quite so simple as it seemed. + +The misgiving was not very serious at first--half amused, and wholly +academic, because she hadn't, as yet, the remotest notion that the thing +concerned, or ever could concern, herself; but the point was, it formed +a nucleus, and the property of a nucleus is that it has the power of +attracting to itself particles out of the surrounding nebulous vapor. It +grows as it attracts, and it attracts more strongly as it grows. + +An illustration of this principle is in the fact that, but for the +misgiving, she would hardly have asked Simone Greville what she meant by +saying that though she had always supposed the fundamental sex +attraction between men and women to be the same in its essentials, in +all epochs and in all civilizations, her acquaintance with upper-class +American women was leading her to admit a possible exception. + +Since that amiable celestial, Wu Ting Fang, made his survey of our +western civilization and left us wondering whether after all we had the +right name for it, no one has studied our leisured and cultivated +classes with more candor and penetration than this great Franco-Austrian +actress. She had ample opportunities for observation, because during the +first week of her tour the precise people who count the most in our +informal social hierarchy took her up and, upon examination, took her +in. Playing in English as she did, and with an American supporting +company, she did not make a great financial success (the Continental +technique, especially when contrasted so intimately with the one we are +familiar with does not attract us), but socially she was a sensation. So +during her four weeks in Chicago, while she played to houses that +couldn't be dressed to look more than a third full, she was enormously +in demand for luncheons, teas, dinners, suppers, Christmas bazaars, +charity dances and so on. (If it had only been possible to establish a +scale of fees for these functions, her manager used to reflect +despairingly, he might have come out even after all.) Any other sort of +engagement melted away like snow in the face of an opportunity of +meeting Simone Greville. + +Rose had met her a number of times before the incident referred to +happened, but had always surveyed the lioness from afar. What could she, +whose acquaintance with Europe was limited to one three-months trip, +undertaken by the family during the summer after she graduated from high +school, have to say to an omniscient cosmopolite like that? + +So she hung about, within ear-shot when it was possible, and watched, +leaving the active duties of entertainment to heavily cultured +illuminati like the Howard Wests, or to clever creatures like Hermione +Woodruff and Frederica, and Constance Crawford, whose French was good +enough to fill in the interstices in Madame Greville's English. + +She was standing about like that at a tea one afternoon, when she heard +the actress make the remark already quoted, to the effect that American +women seemed to her to be an exception to what she always supposed to be +the general law of sex attraction. + +It was taken, by the rather tense little circle gathered around her, as +a compliment; exactly as, no doubt, Greville intended it to be taken. +But her look flashed out beyond the confines of the circle and +encountered a pair of big luminous eyes, under brows that had a +perplexed pucker in them. Whereupon she laughed straight into Rose's +face and said, lifting her head a little, but not her voice: + +"Come here, my child, and tell me who you are and why you were looking +at me like that." + +Rose flushed, smiled that irresistible wide smile of hers, and came, not +frightened a bit, nor, exactly, embarrassed; certainly not into +pretending she was not surprised, and a little breathlessly at a loss +what to say. + +"I'm Rose Aldrich." She didn't, in words, say, "I'm just Rose Aldrich." +It was the little bend in her voice that carried that impression. "And I +suppose I was--looking that way, because I was wishing I knew exactly +what you meant by what you said." + +Greville's eyes, somehow, concentrated and intensified their gaze upon +the flushed young face; took a sort of plunge, so it seemed to Rose, to +the very depths of her own. It was an electrifying thing to have happen +to you. + +"_Mon dieu_," she said, "_j'ai grande envie de vous le dire_." She +hesitated the fraction of a moment, glanced at a tiny watch set in a +ring upon the middle finger of her right hand, took Rose by the arm as +if to keep her from getting away, and turned to her hostess. + +"You must forgive me," she said, "if I make my farewells a little soon. +I am under orders to have some air each day before I go to the theater, +and if it is to be done to-day, it must be now. I am sorry. I have had a +very pleasant afternoon.--Make your farewells, also, my child," she +concluded, turning to her prisoner, "because you are going with me." + +There was something Olympian about the way she did it. The excuse was +made, and the regret expressed in the interest of courtesy, but neither +was insisted on as a fact, nor was seriously intended, it appeared, even +to disguise the fact, which was simply that she had found something +better worth her while, for the moment, than that tea. It occurred to +Rose that there wasn't a woman in town--not even terrible old Mrs. +Crawford, Constance's mother-in-law, who could have done that thing in +just that way; no one who felt herself detached, or, in a sense, +superior enough, to have done it without a trace of self-consciousness, +and consequently without offense. An empress must do things a good deal +like that. + +The effect on Rose was to make complete frankness seem the easiest thing +in the world. And frankness seemed to be the thing called for. Because +no sooner were they seated in the actress' car and headed north along +the drive, than she, instead of answering Rose's question, repeated one +of her own. + +"I ask who you are, and you say your name--Rose something. But that +tells me nothing. Who are you--one of them?" + +"No, not exactly," said Rose. "Only by accident. The man I married +is--one of them, in a way. I mean, because of his family and all that. +And so they take me in." + +"So you are married," said the French woman. "But not since long?" + +"Six months," said Rose. + +She said it so with the air of regarding it as a very considerable +period of time that Greville laughed. + +"But tell me about him then, this husband of yours. I saw him perhaps at +the tea this afternoon?" + +Rose laughed. "No, he draws the line at teas," she said. "He says that +from seven o'clock on, until as late as I like, he's--game, you +know--willing to do whatever I like. But until seven, there are +no--well, he says, siren songs for him." + +"Tell me--you will forgive the indiscretions of a stranger?--how has it +arrived that you married him? Was it one of your American romances?" + +"It didn't seem very romantic," said Rose. "I mean not much like the +romantic stories you read, and of course one couldn't make a story about +it, because there was nothing to tell. We just happened to get +acquainted, and we knew almost straight off that we wanted to marry each +other, so we did. Some people thought it was a little--headlong, I +suppose, but he said it was an adventure anyway, and that people could +never tell how it was going to come out until they tried. So we tried, +and--it came out very well." + +"It 'came out'?" questioned the actress. + +"Yes," said Rose. "Ended happily, you know." + +"Ended!" Madame Greville echoed. Then she laughed. + +Rose flushed and smiled at herself. "Of course I don't mean that," she +admitted, "and I suppose six months isn't so very long. Still you could +find out quite a good deal ..." + +"What is his affair?" The actress preferred asking another question, it +seemed, to committing herself to an answer to Rose's unspoken one. "Is +he one of your--what you call tired business men?" + +"He's never tired," said Rose, "and he isn't a business man. He's a +lawyer--a rather special kind of lawyer. He has other lawyers, mostly, +for his clients, he's awfully enthusiastic about it. He says it's the +finest profession in the world, if you don't let yourself get dragged +down into the stupid routine of it. It certainly sounds thrilling when +he tells about it." + +The actress looked round at her. "So," she said, "you follow his work as +he follows your play? He talks seriously to you about his affairs?" + +"Why, yes," said Rose, "we have wonderful talks." Then she hesitated. +"At least we used to have. There hasn't seemed to be much--time, lately. +I suppose that's it." + +"One question more," said the French woman, "and not an idle one--you +will believe that? _Alors!_ You love your husband. No need to ask that. +But how do you love him? Are you a little indulgent, a little cool, a +little contemptuous of the grossness of masculine clay, and still +willing to tolerate it as part of your bargain? Is that what you mean by +love? Or do you mean something different altogether--something vital and +strong and essential--the meeting of thought with thought, need with +need, desire with desire?" + +"Yes," said Rose after a little silence, "that's what I mean." + +She said it quietly, but without embarrassment and with full meaning; +and as if conscious of the adequacy of her answer, she forbore to +embroider on the theme. There was a momentary silence, while the French +woman gazed contemplatively out of the open window of the limousine, at +a skyscraping apartment building which jutted boldly into a curve of the +parkway they were flying along. + +"That's a beauty, isn't it?" said Rose, following her gaze. "Every +apartment in that building has its own garage that you get to with an +elevator." + +The actress nodded. "You Americans do that;" she said, "better than any +one else in the world. The--surfaces of your lives are to marvel at." + +"But with nothing inside?" asked Rose. "Is that what you mean? Is--that +what you mean about--American women, that you said you'd tell me?" + +Madame Greville took her time about answering. "They are an enigma to +me," she said, "I confess it. I have never seen such women anywhere, as +these upper-class Americans. They are beautiful, clever, they know how +to dress. For the first hour, or day, or week, of an acquaintance, they +have a charm quite incomparable. And, up to a certain point, they +exercise it. Your _jeunes filles_ are amazing. All over the world, men +go mad about them. But when they marry ..." She finished the sentence +with the ghost of a shrug, and turned to Rose. "Can you account for +them? Were you wondering at them, too, with those great eyes of yours? +_Alors_! Are we puzzled by the same thing? What is it, to you, they +lack?" + +Rose stirred a little uneasily. "I don't know very much," she said. "I +don't know them well at all, and of course I shouldn't criticize ..." + +"Ah, child," broke in the actress, "there you mistake yourself. One must +always criticize. It is by the power of criticism and the courage of +criticism, that we have become different from the beasts." + +"I don't know," said Rose, "except that some of them seem a little +dissatisfied and restless, as if--well, as if they wanted something they +haven't got." + +"But do they truly want it?" Madame Greville demanded. "I am willing to +be convinced, but myself, I find of your women of the aristocrat class, +the type most characteristic is"--she paused and said the thing first +to herself in French, then translated--"is a passive epicure in +sensations; sensations mostly mental, irritating or soothing--a pleasant +variety. She waits to be made to feel; she perpetually--tastes. One may +demand whether it is that their precocity has exhausted them before they +are ripe, or whether your Puritan strain survives to make all passion +reprehensible, or whether simply they have too many ideas to leave room +for anything else. But, from whatever cause, they give to a stranger +like me, the impression of being perfectly frigid, perfectly +passionless. And so, as you say, of missing the great thing altogether. + +"A few of your women are great, but not as women, and of second-rate men +in petticoats, you have a vast number. But a woman, great by the +qualities of her sex, an artist in womanhood, I have not seen." + +"Oh, I wish," cried Rose, "that I knew what you meant by that!" + +"Why, regard now," said the actress. "In every capital of Europe--and I +know them all--wherever you find great affairs--matters of state, +diplomacy, politics--you find the influence of women in them; women of +the great world, sometimes, sometimes of the half-world; great women, at +all events, with the power to make or ruin great careers; women at whose +feet men of the first class lay all they have; women the tact of whose +hands is trusted to determine great matters. They may not be beautiful +(I have seen a faded little woman of fifty, of no family or wealth, +whose salon attracted ministers of state), they haven't the education, +nor the liberties that your women enjoy, and, in the mass, they are not +regarded--how do you say?--chivalrously. Yet there they are! + +"And why? Because they are capable of great passions, great desires. +They are willing to take the art of womanhood seriously, make sacrifices +for it, as one must for any art, in order to triumph in it." + +Rose thought this over rather dubiously. It was a new notion to her--or +almost new. Portia had told her once she never would have any trouble +making her husband "want" her as much as she liked. This idea of making +a serious art of your power to attract and influence men, seemed to +range itself in the same category. + +"But suppose," she objected, "one doesn't want to triumph at it? Suppose +one wants to be a--person, rather than just a woman?" + +"There are other careers indeed," Madame Greville admitted, "and one can +follow them in the same spirit, make the sacrifices--pay the price they +demand. _Mon dieu!_ How I have preached. Now you shall talk to me. It +was for that I took you captive and ran away with you." + +For the next half-hour, until the car stopped in front of her house, +Rose acted on this request; told about her life before and since her +marriage to Rodney, about her friends, her amusements--anything that +came into her mind. But she lingered before getting out of the car, to +say: + +"I hope I haven't forgotten a single word of your--preaching. You said +so many things I want to think about." + +"Don't trouble your soul with that, child," said the actress. "All the +sermon you need can be boiled down into a sentence, and until you have +found it out for yourself, you won't believe it." + +"Try me," said Rose. + +"Then attend.--How shall I say it?--Nothing worth having comes as a +gift, nor even can be bought--cheap. Everything of value in your life +will cost you dear; and some time or other you'll have to pay the price +of it." + +It was with a very thoughtful, perplexed face that Rose watched the car +drive away, and then walked slowly into her house--the ideal house that +had cost Florence McCrea and Bertie Willis so many hours and so many +hair-line decisions--and allowed herself to be relieved of her wraps by +the perfect maid, who had all but been put in the lease. + +The actress had said many strange and puzzling things during their ride; +things to be accepted only cautiously, after a careful thinking out. But +strangest of all was this last observation of hers; that there was +nothing of worth in your life that you hadn't to pay a heavy price for. + +Certainly it contradicted violently everything in Rose's experience, for +everything she valued had come to her precisely as a gift. Her mother's +and Portia's love of her, the life that had surrounded her in school and +at the university, the friends; and then, with her marriage, the sudden +change in her estate, the thrills, the excitement, the comparative +luxuries of the new life. Why,--even Rodney himself, about whom +everything else swung in an orbit! What price had she paid for him, or +for any of the rest of it? It was all as free as the air she breathed. +It had come to her without having cost even a wish. Was Rodney's love +for her, therefore, valueless? No, the French woman was certainly wrong +about that. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +WHERE DID ROSE COME IN + + +However, it was one thing to decide that this was so, and quite another +thing to dismiss the preposterous idea from her mind. There was still an +hour before she need begin dressing for the Randolph dinner, but as she +had already had her tea and there was nothing else to do, she thought +she might as well go about it. It might help her resist a certain +perfectly irrational depression which the talk with the actress, +somewhat surprisingly, had produced. And besides, if she were all +dressed when Rodney came home, she'd be free to visit with him while he +dressed--to sit and watch him swearing at his studs, and tell him about +the events of her day, including their climax in the ride with the +famous Simone Greville. And he'd come over every now and then and +interrupt himself and her with some sort of unexpected caress--a kiss on +the back of her neck, or an embrace that would threaten her +coiffure--and this vague, scary, nightmarish sort of feeling, which for +no reasonable reason at all seemed to be clutching at her, would be +forgotten. + +It was a queer sort of feeling--a kind of misgiving, in one form or +another, as to her own identity--as if all the events since her marriage +were nothing but a dream of Rose Stanton's, from which, with vague +painful stirrings, she was just beginning to wake. Or, again, as if for +all these months, she had been playing a part in a preposterously long +play, on which the curtain was, presently, going to be rung down. She +wished Rodney would come--hoped he wouldn't be late, and finally sat +down before the telephone with a half-formed idea of calling him up and +reminding him that they were dining with the Randolphs. + +Just as she laid her hand upon the receiver, the telephone bell rang. It +was Rodney calling her. + +"Oh, that you, Rose?" he said. "I shan't be out till late to-night. +I've got to work." + +She wanted to know what he meant by late. + +"I've no idea," he said. "Ten--twelve--two. I've got to get hold of +something, but I've no idea how long it will take." + +"But, Roddy, dearest," she protested. "You have to come home. You've got +the Randolphs' dinner." + +"Oh, the devil!" he said. "I forgot all about it. But it doesn't make a +bit of difference, anyway. I wouldn't leave the office before I finished +this job, for anybody short of the Angel Gabriel." + +"But what shall we do?" she asked despairingly. + +"I don't know," said Rodney. "Call them up and tell them. Randolph will +understand." + +"But,"--it was absurd that her eyes should be filling up and her throat +getting lumpy over a thing like this,--"but what shall I do? Shall I +tell Eleanor _we_ can't come, or shall I offer to come without you?" + +"Lord!" he said, "I don't care. Do whichever you like. I've got enough +to think about without deciding that. Now do hang up and run along." + +"But, Rodney, what's happened? Has something gone wrong?" + +"Heavens, no!" he said. "What is there to go wrong? I've got a big day +in court to-morrow and I've struck a snag, and I've got to wriggle out +of it somehow, before I quit. It's nothing for you to worry about. Go to +your dinner and have a good time. Good-by." + +The click in the receiver told her he had hung up. The difficulty about +the Randolphs was managed easily enough. Eleanor was perfectly gracious +about it and insisted that Rose should come by herself. + +She was completely dressed a good three-quarters of an hour before it +was time to start, and after pretending for fifteen interminable minutes +to read a magazine, she chucked it away and told her maid to order the +car at once. If she drove straight down-town, she could have a +ten-minute visit with Rodney and still not be late for the dinner. She +was a little vague as to why she wanted it so much, but the prospect +was irresistible. + +If any one had accused her of feeling very meritorious over not having +allowed herself to be hurt at his rudeness to her or annoyed at the way +he had demolished their evening's plans, and of hoping to make him feel +a little contrite by showing him how sweet she was about it, she might, +with a rueful grin, have acknowledged a tincture of truth about the +charge; but she didn't discover it by herself. As she dreamed out the +little scene, riding down-town in the car, she'd come stealing up behind +him as he sat, bent wearily over his book, and clasp her hands over his +eyes and stroke the wrinkles out of his forehead. He'd give a long sigh +of relaxation, and pull her down on the chair-arm and tell her what it +was that troubled him, and she'd tell him not to worry--it was surely +coming out all right. And she'd stroke his head a little longer and +offer not to go to the dinner if he wanted her to stay, and he'd say, +no, he was better already, and then she'd give him a good-by kiss and +steal away, and be the life of the party at the Randolphs' dinner, but +her thoughts would never leave him.... + +She knew she was being silly of course, and her beautiful wide mouth +smiled an acknowledgment of the fact, even while her checks flushed and +her eyes brightened over the picture. Of course it wouldn't come out +exactly like that. + +Well, it didn't! + +She found a single elevator in commission in the great gloomy rotunda of +the office building, and the watchman who ran her up made a terrible +noise shutting the gate after he had let her out on the fifteenth floor. +The dim marble corridor echoed her footfalls ominously, and when she +reached the door to his outer office and tried it, she found it locked. +The next door down the corridor was the one that led directly into his +private office, and here the light shone through the ground-glass. + +She stole up to it as softly as she could, tried it and found it locked, +too, so she knocked. Through the open transom above it, she heard him +say "Hell!" in a heartfelt sort of way, and heard his chair thrust +back. The next moment he opened the door with a jerk. + +His glare of annoyance changed to bewilderment at the sight of her, and +he said: + +"Rose! Has anything happened? What's the matter?" And catching her by +the arm, he led her into the office. "Here, sit down and get your breath +and tell me about it!" + +She smiled and took his face in both her hands. "But it's the other +way," she said. "There's nothing the matter with me. I came down, you +poor old boy, to see what was the matter with you." + +He frowned and took her hands away and stepped back out of her reach. +Had it not been for the sheer incredibility of it, she'd have thought +that her touch was actually distasteful to him. + +"Oh," he said. "I thought I told you over the phone there was nothing +the matter!--Won't you be awfully late to the Randolphs'?" + +"I had ten minutes," she said, "and I thought ..." + +She broke off the sentence when she saw him snap out his watch and look +at it. + +"I know there's something," she said. "I can tell just by the way your +eyes look and the way you're so tight and--strained. If you'd just tell +me about it, and then sit down and let me--try to take the strain +away...." + +Beyond a doubt the strain was there. The laugh he meant for a +good-humored dismissal of her fears, didn't sound at all as it was +intended to. + +"Can't you tell me?" she repeated. + +"Good heavens!" he said. "There's nothing to tell! I've got an argument +before the Court of Appeals to-morrow and there's a ruling decision +against me. It is against me, and it's bad law. But that isn't what I +want to tell them. I want some way of making a distinction so that I can +hold that the decision doesn't rule." + +"And it wouldn't help," she ventured, "if you told me all about it? I +don't care about the dinner." + +"I couldn't explain in a month," he said. + +"Oh, I wish I were some good," she said forlornly. + +He pulled out his watch again and began pacing up and down the room. + +"I just can't stand it to see you like that," she broke out again. "If +you'll only sit down for five minutes and let me try to get that +strained look out of your eyes...." + +"Good God, Rose!" he shouted. "Can't you take my word for it and let it +alone? I'm not ill, nor frightened, nor broken-hearted. I don't need to +be comforted nor encouraged. I'm in an intellectual quandary. For the +next three hours, or six, or however long it takes, I want my mind to +run cold and smooth. I've got to be tight and strained. That's the way +the job's done. You can't solve an intellectual problem by having your +hand held, or your eyes kissed, or anything like that. Now, for God's +sake, child, run along and let me forget you ever existed, for a while!" + +And he ground his teeth over an impulse that all but got the better of +him, after she'd shut the door, to follow her out into the corridor and +pull her up in his arms and kiss her face all over, and to consign the +Law and the Prophets both, to the devil. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +LONG CIRCUITS AND SHORT + + +James Randolph was a native Chicagoan, but his father, an intelligent +and prosperous physician, with a general practise in one of the northern +suburbs, afterward annexed to the city, did not belong to the old +before-the-fire aristocracy that Rodney and Frederica, and Martin +Whitney, the Crawfords and Violet Williamson were born into. The medical +tradition carried itself along to the third generation, when James made +a profession of it, and in him, it flowered really into genius. From the +beginning his bent toward the psychological aspect of it was marked and +his father was sympathetic enough to give it free sway. After graduating +from one of the Chicago medical colleges he went to Johns Hopkins, and +after that to Vienna, where he worked mostly under Professor Freud. + +It was in Vienna that he met Eleanor Blair. She, too, was a native of +Illinois, but this fact cut a very different figure in her life from +that which it cut in his. Her grandfather, a pioneer, forceful, thrifty +and probably rather unscrupulous, had settled on the wonderfully fertile +land at a time when one had almost to drive the Indians off it. He had +accumulated it steadily to the day of his death and died in possession +of about thirty thousand acres of it. It was in much this fashion that a +feudal adventurer became the founder of a line of landed nobility, but +the centrifugal force of American life caused the thing to work out +differently. His son had an eastern college education, got elected to +Congress, as a preliminary step in a political career, went to +Washington, fell in love with and married the beautiful daughter of an +unreconstructed and impoverished southern gentleman. She detested the +North, and as her love for the South found its expression in passionate +laments over its ruin, uncomplicated by any desire to live there, she +spent more and more of her time--her husband's faint wishes becoming +less and less operative with her until they ceased altogether--in one +after another of the European capitals. + +So Eleanor, two generations away from the fertile soil of central +Illinois, was as exotic to it as an orchid would be in a New England +garden. Two or three brief perfunctory visits to the land her income +came from, and to the relatives who still lived upon it, became the +substitute for what, in an older and stabler civilization, would have +been the dominant tradition in her life. + +She must have been a source of profound satisfaction to large numbers of +French, Italian, Austrian and English persons, to whose eminent social +circles her mother's wealth and breeding gained admittance, by embodying +for them, with perfect authenticity, their notion of the American girl. +She was rich, beautiful, clever in a rather shallow, "American" way, she +had a will of her own, and was indulged by her mother with an astounding +amount of liberty; she was audacious, yet with a tempering admixture of +cool shrewdness, which kept her out of the difficulties she was always +on the brink of. + +Kept her out of them, that is, until, in Vienna, as I have said, she met +James Randolph. That she fell in love with him is one of those facts +which seem astonishing the first time you look at them, and inevitable +when you look again. Physically, a sanguine blond, with a narrow head, a +forward thrusting nose, and really blue eyes, his dominating spiritual +quality was the sort of asceticism which proclaims not weak anemic +desires, but strong unruly ones, curbed in by the hand of a still +stronger will. He was highly imaginative, as a successful follower of +the Freudian method must be. He was capable of the gentlest sympathy, +and of the most relentless insistence. And he thought, until he met +Eleanor Blair, that he was, indisputably, his own master. + +The wide social gulf between them--between a beautiful American heiress +with the entry into all circles of aristocratic society, except the +highest, and an only decently pecunious medical student, caught both of +them off their guard. The utter unlikelihood of anything coming of such +an acquaintance as theirs, was just the ambush needed to make it +possible for them to fall in love. They would, probably, have attracted +each other anywhere. But, in a city like Vienna, where all the sensuous +appurtenances of life are raised to their highest power, the attraction +became irresistible. + +He did resist as long as he could--successfully, indeed, to the point of +holding himself back from asking her to marry him, or even explicitly +from making love to her. But the thing shone through his deeply-colored +emotions, like light through a stained-glass window. And when she asked +him to marry her, as she did in so many words--pleaded her homesickness +for a home she had never known, and a loneliness she had suddenly become +aware of, amid would-be friends and lovers, who could not, not one of +them, be called disinterested, his resistance melted like a powder of +April snow. + +It was the only serious obstacle she had to overcome. The terms of her +father's will left her share of the income of the estate wholly at her +disposal. And so, in spite of her mother's horrified protest, they were +married, and not long afterward, her mother, who was still a year or two +on the sunny side of fifty, gratified her aristocratic yearnings by +marrying a count herself. + +The Randolphs came back to America and, somewhat against Eleanor's +wishes, settled in Chicago. With her really very large income, her +exotic type of beauty and her social skill, she was probably right in +thinking she could have made a success anywhere. One of the larger +eastern cities--preferably New York or Washington, would have suited her +better. But Chicago, he said, was where he belonged and where his best +chance for professional success lay, and she yielded, though without +waiving her privilege of making a more or less good-humored grievance of +it. However, she found the place much more tolerable than riding into +and out of it on the train a few times had led her to expect. + +She knew a few people of exactly the right sort and she neatly and +almost painlessly detached her husband from his old Lake View +associations. She looked out a house in precisely the right +neighborhood, and furnished it to combine the splendor of her income +with the simple austerity of his profession in just the right +proportions. She trailed her game with unfailing precision, never barked +up the wrong tree, could distinguish a goat from a sheep as far as she +could see one, and in no time at all had won the exact position she +wanted. + +Her attitude toward her husband (you have already had a sample of it at +Frederica's famous dinner, where Rodney was supposed to take the +preliminary steps toward marrying Hermione Woodruff) attracted general +admiration, and it was fortified, of course, by the story of their +romantic marriage. It was conceded she had done a very fine and splendid +thing in marrying the man she loved, settling down to live with him on +so comparatively simple and modest a scale, and devoting herself so +whole-heartedly to his career. She had an air--and it wasn't consciously +assumed, either--of living wholly with reference to him, which people +found exceedingly engaging. (A cynic might observe at this point that +the same quality in a homely unattractive woman would fail of producing +this effect.) + +Indeed, he had much to be grateful for. But for the fact that his wife +was accepted without reserve, a man whose principal preoccupation was +with matters of sex psychology, who was said to cure hysterical and +neurasthenic patients by the interpretation of their dreams, would have +been regarded askance by the average run of common-sense, golf-playing +men of affairs. Even his most miraculous cures would be attributed to +the imaginary nature of the disease, rather than to the skill of the +physician. + +Not even his wife's undeniable charm could altogether efface this +impression from the mind of this sort of man. But though his way of +turning the theme of a smoking-room story into a subject for serious +scientific discussion might make you uncomfortable, you couldn't meet +James Randolph and hear him talk, without respecting him. He was +attractive to women (it amounted almost to fascination with the neurotic +type), and to men of high intelligence, like Rodney, he was a boon and +a delight. And the people who liked him least were precisely those most +attracted by his wife. Anyhow, no one refused an invitation to their +dinners. + +Rose's arrival at this one--a little late, to be sure, but not +scandalously--created a mild sensation. None of the other guests were +strangers, either, on whom she could have the effect of novelty. They +were the same crowd, pretty much, who had been encountering one another +all winter--dancing, dining and talking themselves into a state of +complete satiety with one another. They'd split up pretty soon and +branch out in different directions--the Florida east coast, California, +Virginia Hot Springs and so on, and so galvanize their interest in life +and in one another. At present they were approaching the lowest ebb. + +But when Rose came into the drawing-room--in a wonderful gown that dared +much, and won the reward of daring--a gown she'd meant to hold in +reserve for a greater occasion, but had put on to-night because she had +felt somehow like especially pleasing Rodney--when she came in, she +reoxygenated the social atmosphere. She won a moment of complete +silence, and when the buzz of talk arose again, it was jerky--the +product of divided minds and unstable attentions. + +She was, in fact, a stranger. Her voice had a bead on it which roused a +perfectly unreasoning physical excitement--the kind of bead which, in +singing, makes all the difference between a church choir and grand +opera. The glow they were accustomed to in her eyes, concentrated itself +into flashes, and the flush that so often, and so adorably, suffused her +face, burnt brighter now in her cheeks and left the rest pale. + +And these were true indices of the change that had taken place within +her. From sheer numb incredulity, which was all she had felt as she'd +walked away from Rodney's office door, and from the pain of an +intolerable hurt, she had reacted to a fine glow of indignation. She had +found herself suddenly feeling lighter, older, indescribably more +confident. That dinner was to be gone through with, was it? Well, it +should be! They shouldn't suspect her humiliation or her hurt. She was +conscious suddenly of enormous reserves of power hitherto unsuspected--a +power that could be exercised to any extent she chose, according to her +will. + +Her husband, James Randolph reflected, had evidently either been making +love to her, or indulging in the civilized equivalent of beating her; he +was curious to find out which. And having learned from his wife that +Rose was to sit beside him at the table, he made up his mind that he +would make her tell him. + +He didn't attempt it, though, during his first talk with her--confined +himself rigorously to the carefully sifted chaff which does duty for +polite conversation over the same hors-d'oeuvres and entrees, from one +dinner to the next, the season round. It wasn't until Eleanor had turned +the table the second time, that he made his first gambit in the game. + +"No need asking you if you like this sort of thing," he said. "I would +like to know how you keep it up. You have the same things said to you +seven nights a week and you make the same answers--thrust and parry, +carte and tierce, buttons on the foils. It can't any of it get anywhere. +What's the attraction?" + +"You can't get a rise out of me to-night," said Rose. "Not after what +I've been through to-day. Madame Greville's been talking to me. She +thinks American women are dreadful dubs,--or she would if she knew the +word--thinks we don't know our own game. Do you agree with her?" + +"I'll tell you that," he said, "after you answer my question. What's the +attraction?" + +"Don't you think it would be a mistake," said Rose, "for me to try to +analyze it? Suppose I did and found there wasn't any! You aren't +supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, you know." + +"Is that what's the matter with Rodney?" he asked. "Is this sort of"--a +gesture with his head took in the table--"caramel diet, beginning to go +against his teeth?" + +"He had to work to-night," Rose said. "He was awfully sorry he couldn't +come." + +She smiled just a little ironically as she said it, and exaggerated by +a hair's breadth, perhaps, the purely conventional nature of the reply. + +"Yes," he observed, "that's what we say. Sometimes it gets us off and +sometimes it doesn't." + +"Well, it got him off to-night," she said. "He was pretty impressive. He +said there was a ruling decision against him and he had to make some +sort of distinction so that the decision wouldn't rule. Do you know what +that means? I don't." + +"Why didn't you ask him?" Randolph wanted to know. + +"I did and he said he could explain it, but that it would take a month. +So of course there wasn't time." + +"I thought," said Randolph, "that he used to talk law to you by the +hour." + +The button wasn't on the foil that time, because the thrust brought +blood--a bright flush into her cheeks and a sudden brightness into her +eyes that would have induced him to relent if she hadn't followed the +thing up of her own accord. + +"I wish you'd tell me something," she said. "I expect you know better +than any one else I could ask. Why is it that husbands and wives can't +talk to each other? With people who live the way we do, it isn't that +they've worn each other out, because they see no more of each other, +hardly, than they do of the others. And it isn't that they're naturally +more uninteresting to each other than the rest of the people they know. +Because then, why did they marry each other in the first place, instead +of any one of the others who are so easy to talk to afterward? Imagine +what this table would be if the husbands and wives sat side by side! +Would Eleanor ever be able to turn it so that they talked that way?" + +"That's a fascinating speculation," he said. "I wish I could persuade +her some time to indulge the wild eccentricity of trying it out." + +"Well, why?" she demanded. + +"Shall I try to say something witty," he asked, "or do you want it, as +near as may be, absolutely straight?" + +"Let's indulge," she said, "in the wild, eccentricity of talking +straight." + +The cigarettes came around just then, and he lighted one rather +deliberately, at one of the candles, before he answered. + +"I am under the impression," he said, "that husbands and wives can talk +exactly as well as any other two people. Exactly as well, and no better. +The necessary conditions for real conversation are a real interest in +and knowledge of a common subject; ability on the part of both to +contribute something to that subject. Well, if a husband and wife can +meet those terms, they can talk. But the joker is, as our legislative +friend over there would say," (he nodded down the table toward a young +millionaire of altruistic principles, who had got elected to the state +assembly) "the joker is that a man and a woman who aren't married, and +who are moderately attracted to each other, can talk, or seem to talk, +without meeting those conditions." + +"Seem to talk?" she questioned. + +"Seem to exchange ideas mutually. They think they do, but they don't. +It's pure illusion, that's the answer." + +"I'm not clever, really," said Rose, "and I don't know much, and I +simply don't understand. Will you explain it, in short words,"--she +smiled--"since we're not married, you know?" + +He grinned back at her. "All right," he said, "since we're not married, +I will. We'll take a case ..." He looked around the table. "We'll be +discreet," he amended, "and take a hypothetical case. We'll take Darby +and Joan. They encounter each other somewhere, and something about them +that men have written volumes about and never explained yet, sets +up--you might almost call it a chemical reaction between them--a +physical reaction, certainly. They arrest each other's attention--get to +thinking about each other, are strongly drawn together. + +"It's a sex attraction--not quite the oldest and most primitive thing in +the world, but nearly. Only, Darby and Joan aren't primitive people. If +they were, the attraction would satisfy itself in a direct primitive +way. But each of them is carrying a perfectly enormous superstructure of +ideas and inhibitions, emotional refinements and capacities, and the sex +attraction is so disguised that they don't recognize it. Do you know +what a short circuit is in electricity?" + +"I think so," said Rose, "but you'd better not take a chance. Tell me +that, too." + +"Why," he said, "the juice that comes into your house to light it and +heat the flat-irons and the toaster, and so on, comes in by one wire and +goes out by another. Before it can get out, it's got to do all the work +you want it to do--push its way through the resistance of fine tungsten +filaments in your lamps and the iron wires in your heaters that get +white hot resisting it. When it's pushed its way through all of them and +done the work you want it to do, it's tired out and goes away by the +other wire. But if you cut off the insulation down in the basement, +where those two wires are close together, and make it possible for the +current to jump straight across without doing any work, it will take the +short circuit instead of the long one and you won't have any lights in +your house. Now do you see what I mean? + +"Darby and Joan are civilized. That is to say, they're insulated. The +current's there, but it's long-circuited. The only expression it's got +is through the intelligence,--so it lights the house. Absence of common +knowledge and common interests only adds to the resistance and makes it +burn all the brighter. Naturally Darby and Joan fall victims to the very +dangerous illusion that they're intellectual companions. They think +they're having wonderful talks. All they are doing, is long-circuiting +their sex attraction. Well, marriage gives it a short circuit. Why +should the current light the lamps when it can strike straight across? +There you are!" + +"And poor Joan," said Rose, after a palpable silence, but evenly enough, +"who has thought all along that she was attracting a man by her +intelligence and her understanding, and all that, wakes up to find that +she's been married for her long eyelashes, and her nice voice--and her +pretty ankles. That's a little hard on her, don't you think, if she's +been taking herself seriously?" + +"Nine times in ten," he said, "she's fooling herself. She's taken her +own ankles much more seriously than she has her mind. She's capable of +real sacrifices for them--for her sex charm, that is. She'll undergo a +real discipline for it. Intelligence she regards as a gift. She thinks +the witty conversation she's capable of after dinner, on a cocktail and +two glasses of champagne, or the bright letters she can write to a +friend, are real exercises of her mind--real work. But work isn't done +like that. Work's overcoming something that resists; and there's strain +in it, and pain and discouragement." + +In her cheeks the red flared up brighter. She smiled again--not her own +smile--one at any rate that was new to her. + +"You don't 'solve an intellectual problem' then;" she quoted, "'by +having your hand held, or your eyes kissed?'" + +Whereupon he shot a look at her and observed that evidently he wasn't as +much of a pioneer as he thought. + +She did not rise to this cast, however. "All right;" she said, +"admitting that her ankles are serious and her mind isn't, what is Joan +going to do about it?" + +"It's easier to say what she's not to do," he decided, after hesitating +a moment. "Her fatal mistake will be to despise her ankles without +disciplining her mind. If she will take either one of them seriously, or +both for that matter--it's possible--she'll do very well." + +He could, no doubt, have continued on the theme indefinitely, but the +table turned the other way just then and Rose took up an alleged +conversation with the man at her right which lasted until they left the +table and included such topics as indoor golf, woman's suffrage, the new +dances, Bernard Shaw, Campanini and the Progressive party; with a +perfectly appropriate and final comment on each. + +Rose didn't care. She was having a wonderful time--a new kind of +wonderful time. No longer gazing, big-eyed like little Cinderella at a +pageant some fairy godmother's whim had admitted her to, but consciously +gazed upon; she was the show to-night, and she knew it. Her low, finely +modulated voice so rich in humor, so varied in color, had to-night an +edge on it that carried it beyond those she was immediately speaking to +and drew looks that found it hard to get away again. For the first time +in her life, with full self-consciousness, she was producing effects, +thrilling with the exercise of a power as obedient to her will as +electricity to the manipulator of a switchboard. + +She was like a person driving an aeroplane, able to move in all three +dimensions. Pretty soon, of course, she'd have to come hack to earth, +where certain monstrously terrifying questions were waiting for her. + +Madame Greville's final apothegm had suggested one of them. Was all she +valued in the world just so much fairy gold that would change over night +into dry leaves in her treasure chest because she had never earned +it--paid the price for it that life relentlessly exacts for all we may +be allowed to call ours? + +Her tragi-comic scene with Rodney suggested another. What was her value +to him? Was she something enormously desirable when he wanted his hand +held and his eyes kissed, but an infernal nuisance when serious matters +were concerned? A fine and luxurious dissipation, not dangerous unless +recklessly indulged in, but to be kept strictly in her place? Before her +talk with Randolph she'd have laughed at that. + +But did the horrible plausibility of what he had said actually cover the +truth? Did she owe that first golden hour with Rodney, his passionate +thrilling avowal of his life's philosophy, to nothing deeper in herself +than her unconscious power of rousing in him an equally unconscious, +primitive sex desire? Was the fine mutuality of understanding she had so +proudly boasted to her mother clear illusion? Now that the short circuit +had been established, would the lights never burn in the upper stories +of their house again? Turned about conversely the question read like +this: Was the thing that had, in Randolph himself, aroused his vivid +interest in the subject--well, nothing more than the daring cut of her +gown, the gleam of her jewels, the whiteness of her skin ...? + +Those questions were waiting for her to come back to earth; and they +wouldn't get tired and go away. But for the present the knowledge that +they were there only made the aeroplane ride the more exhilarating. + +She was called to the telephone just as she was on the point of +starting reluctantly for home, and found Rodney on the wire. He told her +that he had got hold of the thing he was looking for, but that there +were still hours of work ahead of him while he was fortifying himself +with necessary authorities. He wouldn't come home to-night at all, he +said. When his work was finished, he'd go to the club and have a Turkish +bath and all the sleep he had time for. When he got through in court +to-morrow afternoon, he'd come home. + +It was all perfectly reasonable--it was to her finely tuned ear just a +shade too reasonable. It had been thought out as an excuse. Because it +wasn't for the Turkish bath nor the extra hour's sleep that he was +staying away from home. It was herself he was staying away from. He +wanted his mind to stay cold and taut, and he was afraid to face the +temptation of her eyes and her soft white arms. And in the mood of that +hour, it pleased her that this should be so--that the ascetic in him +should pay her the tribute of fear. + +Afterward, of course, she felt like lashing herself for having felt like +that and for having replied, in a spirit of pure coquetry, in a voice of +studied, cool, indifferent good humor: + +"That's a good idea, Roddy. I'm glad you're not coming back. Good +night." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +RODNEY SMILED + + +It was with a reminiscent smile that Rose sat down before her telephone +the next morning and called a number from memory. Less than a year ago, +it had been such a thrilling adventure to call the number of that +fraternity house down at the university and ask, in what she conceived +to be a businesslike way, for Mr. Haines. And then, presently, to hear +the voice of the greatest half-back the varsity had boasted of in years, +saying in answer to her "Hello, Harry," "Hello, Rose." + +It was really less than a year, and yet it was so immensely long ago, +judged by anything but the calendar, that the natural way to think of +him was as a married man with a family somewhere and faint memories of +the days when he was a student and used to flirt with a girl called Rose +something--Rose Stanton, that was it! + +It was during one of the interminable waking hours of last night that +she had thought of the half-back as a person who might be able, and +willing, to do her the service she wanted, and she had spent a long +while wondering how she could get track of him. Then the logic of the +calendar had forced the conviction on her, that he was, in all +probability still at the university, dozing through recitations, or +lounging about the corridors, in a blue serge suit and a sweater with a +C on it, waiting for some other girl to come out of her class-room; and +that between the hours of ten-fifteen and eleven, it was altogether +likely that she'd find him again, as she had so many times in the past, +at his fraternity house, going through the motions of getting up an +eleven o'clock recitation. It was absurd enough now to find herself +calling the old number and asking again for Mr. Haines. The dreamlike +unreality of it grew stronger, when the voice that answered said, "Just +a minute," and then bellowed out his old nickname--"Hello, Tiny! Phone!" +and, after a wait, she heard his own very deep bass. + +"Hello. What is it?" + +"Hello, Harry," she said. "This is Rose Aldrich. Do you remember +me?--Rose Stanton, you know." + +The ensuing silence was so long, that she said "Hello" again to make +sure that he was still there. + +"Y--yes," he said. "Of--of course I haven't forgotten. I--I only ... +I ..." + +She wondered what he was so embarrassed about, but to save the +situation, she interrupted. + +"Are you going to be awfully busy this afternoon? Because, if you +aren't, there's something you can do for me. You're in the law school +this year, aren't you?" + +"Yes," he said. "Of course I'm not busy at all." + +"It'll take quite a little while," she warned him, "an hour or so, and I +don't want to interfere with anything you've got to do." + +Again he assured her that he hadn't anything. + +"Well, then," she said rather dubiously, because his voice sounded still +so constrained and unnatural, "I'll come down in the car and pick you up +about half past one. Is that all right?" + +"Yes," he said. "Yes, of course. Thank you very much." + +Had inclination led Rose to do a little imaginative thinking about the +half-back, from his own point of view, she might, without much trouble, +have approximated the cause of his embarrassment. + +Here is a poor but honest young man, who has devoted himself, heart, +brain and good right arm, to the service of a beautiful young fellow +student at the university. They must wait for each other, of course, +until he can graduate and get admitted to the bar and make a success +that will enable him to support her as she deserves to be supported. The +girl declines to wait. A much older man--a great, trampling brute of a +man, possessed of wealth and fame, and a social altitude positively +vertiginous--asks her to marry him. She, woman-weak, yields to the +temptation of all the gauds and baubles that go with his name, and +marries him. Indeed, few young men at the university ever have as valid +an excuse for becoming broken-hearted misogynists as the half-back. He +would he faithful, of course, though she was not. And some day, years +later, it might he, she would come hack broken-hearted to him, confess +the fatal mistake that she had made; seek his protection, perhaps, +against the cruelties of the monster she had come to hate. He would +forgive her, console her--in a perfectly moral way, of course--and for a +while, they would just be friends. Then the wicked husband would +conveniently die, and after long years, they could find happiness. + +It made a very pretty idea to entertain during the semi-somnolent hours +of dull lectures and while he was waiting for the last possible moment +to leap out of bed in the morning and make a dash for his first +recitation. Written down on paper, the imaginary conversation between +them would have filled volumes. + +But to be called actually to the telephone--she had telephoned to him a +thousand times in the dream--and hear her say, just as in the dream she +had said--"This is Rose; do you remember me?" was enough to make even +his herculean knees knock together. To be sure her voice wasn't choked +with sobs, but you never could tell over the telephone. + +What did she want to do? Confront her husband with him, perhaps, this +very afternoon, and say, "Here is the man I love?" And what would he do +then? He'd have to back her up, of course--and until his next mouth's +allowance came in, he had only a dollar and eighty-five cents in the +world! + +Rose couldn't have filled in all the details, of course, but she might +have approximated the final result. Indeed, I think she had done so, +unconsciously, by half past one, when her car stopped in front of the +fraternity house and, instantaneously, like a cuckoo out of a clock, the +half-back appeared. He was portentously solemn, and Rose thought he +looked a little pale. + +"Get in," she said holding out a hand to him. "I'm going to take you +down-town to do an errand for me--well, two errands, really. My, but +it's a long time since I've seen you!" + +She didn't look tragic, to be sure--not as if there were livid bruises +underneath her furs. And nothing about the manner of her greeting +suggested that she was on the point of sobbing out a plea to be +forgiven. Still, what did she mean by an errand? It might be anything. + +"You see," she explained, "I happened to remember that you were going to +begin studying law this year, and that you were just the person who +wouldn't mind doing what I want." + +"Divorce!" thought the half-back with a shudder. + +"I want you," she went on, "to tell me just how you begin studying +law--what text-books you get, and where you get them. I want you to come +along and pick them out for me. You see, I've decided to study it +myself." + +It was a fact that the half-back was enormously relieved. But it was a +brutal derisive fact--an unescapable one. He wasn't heart-broken over +the dashing of a suddenly raised hope. He was, in his heart of hearts, +saying, "Thank the Lord!" + +If he had been pale before, he was red enough now. He felt ridiculous +and irritable. + +"Your husband knows all that a great deal better than I, of course," he +said. + +"Yes, of course," Rose was thoughtless enough to admit, "but you see, I +don't want him to know." She flushed a little herself. "It's going to be +a--surprise for him," she said. + +"And, after we've got the books," she went on, "I want you to do +something else. He's making an argument in court to-day, and I want to +go and hear him. Only--I'm so ignorant, you see, I don't know how to do +it and I didn't want to tell him I was going. So you're to find out +where the court room is and how to get me in. Now, tell me all about +everything and what's been happening since I went away. I saw you made +the all-American last fall, and meant to write you a note about it, but +I didn't get a chance. That was great!" + +But even at this new angle, the talk didn't run smoothly. Because, +precisely as the half-back forgot his terrors and the hopes that had +prompted them, and the absurdity of both--precisely as he began to feel, +after all, that it was a very superb and grown-up thing to be a familiar +friend of a married woman with a limousine and a respectful chauffeur, +and wonderful clothes and an air of taking them all for +granted--precisely as he made up his mind to this, he became so very +mature, and wise and blase, modeled his manners and his conversation so +strictly on John Drew in his attempt to rise to the situation, that the +schoolboy topics she suggested froze on his tongue. So that, by the time +he had picked out the books for her and seen them stowed away in the +car, and then had telephoned Rodney's office to find what court he was +appearing before, and finally taken her up to the eighth floor in the +Federal Building and left her there, she was, though grateful, +distinctly glad to be rid of him. + +What heightened this feeling was that just as she caught herself smiling +a little, down inside, over his callow absurdity, she reflected that a +year ago they had been equals; that, as far as actual intelligence went, +he was no doubt her equal to-day--her superior, perhaps. He'd gone on +studying and she hadn't. Except for the long-circuited sex attraction +that Doctor Randolph had been talking about last night, he was as +capable of being an intellectual companion to her husband as she was. +That idea stung the red of resolution into her cheeks. She would study +law. She'd study it with all her might! + +She was successful in her project of slipping into the rear of the court +room without attracting her husband's attention, and for two hours and a +half, she listened with mingled feelings, to his argument. A good part +of the time she was occupied in fighting off, fiercely, an almost +overwhelming drowsiness. The court room was hot of course, the glare +from the skylight pressed down her eyelids; she hadn't slept much the +night before. And then, there was no use pretending that she could +follow her husband's reasoning. Listening to it had something the same +effect on her as watching some enormous, complicated, smooth-running +mass of machinery. She was conscious of the power of it, though +ignorant of what made it go, and of what it was accomplishing. + +The three stolid figures behind the high mahogany bench seemed to be +following it attentively, though they irritated her bitterly, sometimes, +by indulging in whispered conversations. Toward the end, though, as +Rodney opened the last phase of his argument, one of them, the +youngest--a man with a thick neck and a square head--hunched forward and +interrupted him with a question; evidently a penetrating one, for the +man sitting across the table from Rodney looked up and grinned, and +interjected a remark of his own. + +"I simply followed the cases cited in _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_," he +said. "I have a copy of the work here, in case Mr. Aldrich didn't bring +one along himself, which I'd be glad to submit to the Court." + +Rose gasped. It was his own book they were quoting against him. + +"I propose to show," said Rodney, "if the Court please, that an +absolutely vital distinction is to be made between the cases cited in +the section of _Aldrich on Quasi Contracts_, which my honorable opponent +refers to, and the case before the Court." + +Then the other judges spoke up. They knew the cases, it appeared, and +didn't want to look at the book, but it was clear that they were +skeptical about the distinction. For five minutes the formal argument +was lost in swift flashing phrases in which everybody took a part. +Rodney was defending himself against them all. And Rose, in an agony +because she couldn't understand it, was reminded, grotesquely enough, of +the Gentleman of France, or some other of the sword-and-cloak heroes of +her girlhood, defending the head of the stairway against the +simultaneous assault of half a dozen enemies. And then suddenly it was +over. The judges settled back again, the argument went on. + +At half past four, the oldest judge, who sat in the middle, interrupted +again to tell Rodney, with what seemed to Rose brutally bad manners, +what time it was. + +"If you can finish your argument in fifteen minutes, Mr. Aldrich, we'll +hear you out. If it's going to take longer than that, the Court will +adjourn till to-morrow morning." + +"I don't think I shall want more than fifteen minutes," said Rodney, and +he went on again. + +And, presently, he just stopped talking and began stacking up his notes. +The oldest judge mumbled something, everybody stood up and the three +stiff formidable figures filed out by a side door. It was all over. + +But nothing had happened! + +Rose had been looking forward, you see, to a driving finish; to a +dramatic summoning of reserves, a mighty onslaught. And at the end of +it, as from the umpire at a ball game, to a decision. She had expected +to leave the court room in the blissful knowledge of Rodney's victory or +the tragic acceptance of his defeat. In her surprise over the failure of +this climax to materialize, she almost neglected to make her escape +before he discovered her there. + +One practical advantage she had gained out of what was, on the whole, a +rather unsatisfactory afternoon. When she had gone home and changed into +the sort of frock she thought he'd like and come down-stairs in it in +answer to his shouted greeting from the lower hall, she didn't say, as +otherwise she would have done, "How did it come out, Roddy? Did you +win?" + +In the light of her newly-acquired knowledge, she could see how a +question of that sort would irritate him. Instead of that, she said: +"You dear old boy, how dog tired you must be! How do you think it went? +Do you think you impressed them? I bet you did." + +And not having been rubbed the wrong way by a foolish question, he held +her off with both hands for a moment, then hugged her up and told her +she was a trump. + +"I had a sort of uneasy feeling," he confessed, "that after last +night--the way I threw you out of my office, fairly, I'd find +you--tragic. I might have known I could count on you. Lord, but it's +good to have you like this! Is there anywhere we have got to go? Or can +we just stay home?" + +He didn't want to flounder through an emotional morass, you see. A firm +smooth-bearing surface, that was what, for every-day use, he wanted her +to provide him with; lightly given, casual caresses that could be +accepted with a smile, pleasantness, a confident security that she +wouldn't be "tragic." And on the assumption that she couldn't walk +beside him on the main path of his life, it was just and sensible. But +it wasn't good enough for Rose. + +So the very next morning, she stripped the cover off the first of the +books the half-back had picked out for her, and really went to work. She +bit down, angrily, the yawns that blinded her eyes with tears; she made +desperate efforts to flog her mind into grappling with the endless +succession of meaningless pages spread out before her, to find a germ of +meaning somewhere in it that would bring the dead verbiage to life. She +tried to recall the thrill in Rodney's voice when he had told her, on +that wonderful wind-swept afternoon, that the law was the finest +profession in the world. Also, he had told her, he'd never been bored +with it--it was immoral to be bored. It was a confession of defeat, +anyway, she could see that. And she wouldn't--she absolutely would not +be defeated. + +In a variety of moods which included everything except real hope and +confidence, she kept the thing up for weeks--didn't give up indeed, +until Fate stepped in, in her ironic way, and took the decision out of +her hands. She was very secretive about it; developed an almost morbid +fear that Rodney would discover what she was doing and laugh his big +laugh at her. She resisted innumerable questions she wanted to propound +to him, from a fear that they'd betray her secret. + +She even forbore to ask him about the case--it was The Case in her +mind--the one she knew about, and as she struggled along with her heavy +text-books, and a realization grew in her mind of the countless hours of +such struggling on his part which must have lain behind his ability to +make that argument that day, the thing accumulated importance to her. +How could he, under the suspense of waiting for that decision, +concentrate his mind on anything else? + +She discovered in the newspaper one day, a column summary of court +decisions that had been handed down, and though The Case wasn't in it, +she kept, from that day forward, a careful watch--discovered where the +legal news was printed, and never overlooked a paragraph. And at last +she found it--just the bare statement "Judgment affirmed." Rodney, she +knew, had represented the appellant. He was beaten. + +For a moment the thing bruised her like a blow. She had never succeeded +in entertaining, seriously, the possibility that it could end otherwise +than in victory for him. She read it again and made sure. She remembered +the names of both parties to the suit, and she knew which side Rodney +was on. There couldn't be any mistake about it. And the certainty +weighed down her spirits with a leaden depression. + +And then, all at once, in the indrawing of a single breath, she saw it +differently. Now that it had happened--and she couldn't help its +happening--didn't it give her, after all, the very opportunity she +wanted? She remembered what he had said the night he had turned her out +of his office. He wasn't sick or discouraged. He was in an intellectual +quandary that couldn't be solved by having his hand held or his eyes +kissed. + +She saw now, that that had been just enough. She couldn't help him out +of his intellectual quandaries--yet. But under the discouragement and +lassitude of defeat, couldn't she help him? She remembered how many +times she had gone to him for help like that. In panicky moments when +the new world she had been transplanted into seemed terrible to her; in +moments when she feared she had made hideous mistakes; and, most +notably, during the three or four days of an acute illness of her +mother's, when she had been brought face to face with the monstrous, +incredible possibility of losing her, how she had clung to him, how his +tenderness had soothed and quieted her--how his strength and steady +confidence had run through her veins like wine! + +He had never come to her like that. She knew now it was a thing she had +unconsciously longed for. And to-night she'd have a chance! Oddly +enough, it turned out to be the happiest day she'd known in a long +while. There was a mounting excitement in her, as the hours passed--a +thrilling suspense. Perhaps, after all, it wasn't going to be necessary +to grind through all those law-books in order to win the place beside +him that she wanted. If she could comfort him--mother him in his defeat +and discouragement--hold him fast when his world reeled around him, that +would be the basis of a better companionship than mere ability to chop +legal logic with him. She could he content with the shallow sparkle of +the stream of their life together, if it deepened, now and then, into +still pools like this. + +She resisted the impulse to call him up on the telephone, and a stronger +one to go straight to him at his office. She'd wait until he came home +to her. She had been feeling wretched lately--headachy, nervous, +sickish;--probably, she thought, from staying in the house too much and +bending over her heavy law-books. Perhaps she had strained her eyes. But +to-day these discomforts were forgotten. Every little while she +straightened up and stood at an open window drawing in long breaths. He +should see her at her best to-night--serene--triumphant. The pallor of +her cheeks he had commented on lately, shouldn't be there to trouble +him. + +For two hours that afternoon, she listened for his latch-key, and when +at last she heard it she stole down the stairs. He didn't shout her name +from the hall, as he often did. He didn't hear her coming, and she got a +look at his face as he stood at the table absently turning over some +mail that lay there. He looked tired, she thought. + +He saw her when she reached the lower landing, but for just a fraction +of a second his gaze left her and went back to the letter he held in his +hand, as if to satisfy himself it was of no importance before he tossed +it away. Then he came to meet her. + +"Oh!" he said. "I thought you were going to be off somewhere with +Frederica this afternoon. It's been a great day. I hope you haven't +spent the whole of it indoors. You're looking great, anyway. Come here +and give me a kiss." + +Because she had hesitated, a little perplexed. Did he mean not to tell +her--to "spare" her, as he'd have said? The kiss she gave had a +different quality from those that ordinarily constituted her greetings, +and the arms that went round his neck, didn't give him their customary +hug. But they stayed there. + +"You poor dear old boy!" she said. And then, "Don't you care, Roddy!" + +He returned the caress with interest, before he seemed to realize the +different significance of it. Then he pushed her away by the shoulders +and held her where he could look into her face. + +"What do you mean?" he asked. "Don't care about what?" + +It didn't seem like bravado--like an acted out pretense, and yet of +course it must be. + +"Don't," she said. "Because I know. I've known all day. I read it in the +paper this morning." + +From puzzled concern, the look in his face took on a deeper intensity. +"Tell me what it is," he said very quietly. "I don't know. I didn't read +the paper this morning. Is it Harriet?" Harriet was his other +sister--married, and not very happily, it was beginning to appear, to an +Italian count. + +A revulsion--a sort of sick misgiving took the color out of Rose's +cheeks. + +"It isn't any one," she said. "It's nothing like that. It's--it's that +case." Her lips stumbled over the title of it. "It's been decided +against you. Didn't you know?" + +For a moment his expression was simply the absence of all expression +whatever. "Good lord!" he murmured. Then, "But how the dickens did you +know anything about it? How did you happen to see it in the paper? How +did you know the title of it?" + +"I was in the court the day you argued it," she said unevenly. "And when +I found they printed those things in the paper, I kept watch. And to-day +..." + +"Why, you dear child!" he said. And the queer ragged quality of his +voice drew her eyes back to his, so that she saw, wonderingly, that they +were bright with tears. "And you never said a word, and you've been +bothering your dear little head about it all the time. Why, you +darling!" + +He sat down on the edge of the table, and pulled her up tight into his +arms again. She was glad to put her head down--didn't want to look at +his face; she knew that there was a smile there along with the tears. + +"And you thought I was worrying about it," he persisted, "and that I'd +be unhappy because I was beaten?" He patted her shoulder consolingly +with a big hand. "But that's all in the day's work, child. I'm beaten +somewhere nearly as often as I win. And really, down inside, leaving out +a little superficial pleasure, I don't care a damn whether I win or +lose. A man couldn't be any good as a lawyer, if he did care, any more +than a surgeon could be any good if he did. You've got to keep a cold +mind or you can't do your best work. And if you've done your best work, +there's nothing to care about. I honestly haven't thought about the +thing once from that day to this. Don't you see how it is?" + +He couldn't see how it was, that was plain enough. What he very +reasonably expected was that after so lucid an explanation, she would +turn her wet face up to his, with her old wide smile on it. But that was +not what happened at all. Instead, she just went limp in his arms, and +the sobs that shook her seemed to be meeting no resistance whatever. It +wasn't like her to work herself up in that way over trifles, either; +yet, surely a trifle was all this could be called--a laughable mistake +he couldn't help loving her for, or a touching demonstration of +affection that he couldn't help smiling at. Either way you took it, it +was nothing to make a scene about. Where was her sense of humor? That +was the thing to do--get her quiet first, and then persuade her to laugh +at the whole affair with him. + +He was saved from carrying out this program by the fact that Rose, of +her own accord, anticipated him. At least she controlled, rather +suddenly, her sobs, sat up, wiped her eyes and, after a fashion, smiled. +Not at him, though; resolutely away from him, he might almost have +thought--as if she didn't want him to see. + +"That's right," he said, craning round to make sure that the smile was +there. "Have a look at the funny side of it." + +She winced at that as from a blow and pulled herself away from him. +Then she controlled herself and, in answer to his look of troubled +amazement, said: + +"It's all right. Only it happens that you're the one who d-doesn't know +how awfully funny it really is." Her voice shook, but she got it in hand +again. "No, I don't mean anything by that. Here! Give me a kiss and then +let me wash my face." + +And for the whole evening, and again next morning until he left the +house, she managed to keep him in the only half-questioning belief that +nothing was the matter. + +It was about an hour after that, that her maid came into her bedroom, +where she had had her breakfast, and said that Miss Stanton wanted to +see her. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE DAMASCUS ROAD + + +It argued no real lack of sisterly affection that Rose didn't want to +see Portia that morning. Even if there had been no other reason, being +found in bed at half past ten in the morning by a sister who inflexibly +opened her little shop at half past eight, regardless of bad weather, +backaches and other potentially valid excuses, was enough to make one +feel apologetic and worthless. Rose could truthfully say that she was +feeling wretched. But Portia would sit there, slim and erect, in a +little straight-backed chair, and whatever perfunctory commiseration she +might manage to express, the look of her fine eyebrows would be +skeptical. Justly, too. Rose could never deny that. Not so long as she +could remember the innumerable times when she had yielded to her +mother's persuasions that she was over-tired and that a morning in bed +was just what she needed. Portia, so far as she could remember, had +never been the subject of these persuasions. + +But this was only the beginning of Rose's troubles to-day. She was +paying the price of yesterday's exaltation and her spirits had sunk down +to nowhere. What a fool's paradise yesterday had been with its vision of +her big self-sufficient husband coming to her for mothering because he +had lost a law-suit! What a piece of mordant irony it was, that she +should have found herself, after all her silly hopes, sobbing in his +arms, while he comforted her for her bitter disappointment over not +being able to comfort him! She had told the truth when she said he was +the one, really, who didn't know how funny it was. + +Well, and wasn't her other effort just as ridiculous? If ever he found +her heap of law-books and learned of the wretched hours she had spent +trying to discover what they were all about in the hope of promoting +herself to a true intellectual companionship with him, wouldn't he take +the discovery in exactly the same way--be touched by the childish +futility of it and yet amused at the same time--cuddle her indulgently +in his arms and soothe her disappointment;--and then urge her to look at +the funny side of it? He must know hundreds of practising lawyers. Were +there a dozen out of them all whose minds had the power to stimulate and +bring into action the full powers of his own? + +Well then, what was the use of trying? If James Randolph was right--and +it seemed absurd to question it--she had just one charm for her +husband--the charm of sex. To that she owed her hours of simulated +companionship with him, his tenderness for her, his willingness to make +her pleasures his own. To that she owed the extravagantly pretty clothes +he was always urging her to buy--the house he kept her in--the servants +he paid to wait on her. Well then, why not make the best of it? + +Only, if she went on much longer, feeling sick and faded like this, +she'd have nothing left to make the most of, and then where would she +be? + +Oh, she was getting maudlin, and she knew it! And when she got over +feeling so weak and giddy, she'd brace up and be herself again. But for +the present, she didn't feel like seeing Portia. + +But Rose's shrinking from a talk with Portia that morning was a mild +feeling compared with Portia's dread of the impending talk with Rose. +Twice she had walked by the perfect doorway of the McCrea house before +she entered it; ostensibly to give herself a little more time to +think--really, because she shrank from the ordeal that awaited her in +there. + +Her sister's menage had been a source of irritation to Portia ever since +it was established, though a deeper irritation was her own with herself +for allowing it to affect her thus. Rose's whole-hearted plunge into the +frivolities of a social season, her outspoken delight in it, her finding +in it, apparently, a completely satisfactory solution to the problem of +existence, couldn't fail to arouse Portia's ironic smile. This was the +sort of vessel her mother had freighted with her hopes! This was the +course she steered. + +She had fought this feeling with a bitter self-contempt. The trouble +with her was, she told herself in icy self-communings, that she envied +Rose her happiness, her opportunities, her husband--even her house. Why +should all that wonderful furniture have been wasted on Rose, to whom a +perfect old Jacobean gate-legged table was nothing but a surface to drop +anything on that she wanted out of her hands? Why should a man of +Rodney's powerful intelligence waste his time on her frivolous +amusements, content, apparently, just to sit and gaze at her, oblivious +of any one else who might happen to be about? She knew that she, Portia, +out of her disciplined experience of life, and her real eagerness for +knowledge of it, was better able to challenge the attention of his mind +than Rose. And yet she had never really got it. She remained half +invisible to him--some one to be remembered with a start, after an +interval of oblivion, and treated considerately--even affectionately, +for that matter--as Rose's sister! + +They had been seeing each other with reasonable frequency all winter. +The Aldriches had Portia and her mother in to a family dinner pretty +often, and always came out to Edgewater for a one-o'clock dinner with +the Stantons on Sunday. The habit was for Rose to come out early in the +car and take them to church, while Rodney walked out later, and turned +up in time for dinner. + +Mrs. Stanton had taken a great liking to Rodney. His manner toward her +had just the blend of deference and breezy unconventionality that +pleased her. So, while Portia would worry through the dinner, for fear +it wouldn't be cooked well enough, or served well enough, not to present +a sorry contrast to the meals her guests were accustomed to, her mother +would sit beaming upon the pair with a contentment as unalloyed as if +Rose were the acknowledged new leader of the great Cause and her husband +her adoring convert, as they had been in her old day-dream. + +As far as Rodney went, the dream might have been true, for he showed an +unending interest in the Woman Movement--never tired of drawing from his +mother-in-law the story of her labors and the exposition of her beliefs. +Sometimes he argued with her playfully in order to get her started. More +often, and as far as Portia could see, quite seriously, he professed +himself in full accord with her views. + +After this had been going on for about so long, Rose would yawn and +stretch and sit down on the arm of her mother's chair, begin stroking +her hair and offering her all manner of quaint unexpected caresses. And +then, pretty soon, Rodney's attention to the subject would begin to +wander and at last flag altogether and leave him stranded, gazing and +unable to do anything but gaze, at the lovely creature--the still +miraculous creature, who, when he got her home again, would come and sit +on the arm of his chair like that! When this happened, Portia found it +hard to stay in the room. + +Until Mrs. Stanton's terrifying illness along in January, these meetings +constituted the whole of the intercourse between the families. Rose had +done her best to carry Portia with her, to some extent at least, into +her new life--to introduce her to her new friends and make her, as far +as might be, one of them. And in this she was seconded very amiably, by +Frederica. But Portia had put down a categorical veto on all these +attempts. She hadn't the inclination nor the energy, she said, and her +mother needed all the time she could spare away from her business. Once, +when Rose pressed the matter, she gave a more genuine reason. Rose's new +friends, she said, would regard her introduction to them solely as a bid +for business. She didn't want them coming around to her place to buy +their wedding presents "in order to help out that poor old maid sister +of Rose Aldrich's." She was getting business enough in legitimate ways. + +Sometimes she told herself that if Rose had really wanted her, she'd +have pressed the matter harder--wouldn't have given up unless she was +clutching with real relief at an excuse that let her out of an +embarrassment. But at other times she accused herself of having acted in +a petty snobbish spirit in declining the chance not only for pleasant +new friendships, especially Frederica's, but for a closer association +with her sister. Well, the thing was done now, and the question +certainly never would rise again. + +The reason why it couldn't arise again was what Portia came to tell Rose +this morning. She hoped she'd be able to tell it gently--provide Rose +with just the facts she'd have to know, and get away without letting any +other facts escape, so that afterward she'd have the consolation of +being able to say to herself, "That was finely done." All her life, she +told herself, she had been doing fine things grudgingly, mutilating them +in the doing. If she weren't very careful, that would happen this +morning. If she could have known the truth and made her resolution, and +confided it to Rose during the first hours of her mother's illness, when +the fight for life had drawn them together, it would not have been hard. +But with the beginning of convalescence, when Rose, with an easy visit +and a few facile caresses, could outweigh in one hour, all of Portia's +unremitting tireless service during the other twenty-three, and carry +off as a prize the whole of her mother's gratitude and affection, the +old envy and irritation had come back threefold. + +Rose greeted her with a "Hello, Angel! Why didn't you come right up? +Isn't it disgraceful to be lying around in bed like this in the middle +of the morning?" + +"I don't know," said Portia. "Might as well stay in bed, if you've +nothing to do when you get up." She meant it to sound good-humored, but +was afraid it didn't. "Anyhow," she added after a straight look into +Rose's face, "you look, this morning, as if bed was just where you ought +to be. What's the matter with you, child?" + +"Nothing," said Rose, "--nothing that you'd call anything at any rate." + +Portia smiled ironically. "I'm still the same old dragon, then," she +said. And then, with a gesture of impatience, turned away. She hadn't +meant to begin like that. Why couldn't she keep her tongue in control! + +"I only meant," said Rose very simply, "that you'd say it was nothing, +if it was the matter with you. I've seen you, so many times, get up +looking perfectly sick and, without any breakfast but a cup of black +coffee, put on your old mackintosh and rubbers and start off for the +shop, saying you were all right and not to bother, that I knew that was +what you'd say now, if you felt the way I do." + +"I'm sorry," said Portia. "I might have known that was what you meant. I +wonder if you ever want to say ugly things and don't, or if it's just +that it never occurs to you to try to hurt anybody. I didn't mean to say +that either. I've had a rather worrying sort of week." + +"What is it?" said Rose. "Tell me about it. Can I help?" + +"No," said Portia. "I've thought it over and it isn't your job." She got +up and went to the window where Rose couldn't see her face, and stood +looking out. "It's about mother," she concluded. + +Rose sat up with a jerk. "About mother!" she echoed. "Has she been ill +again this week? And you haven't let me know! It's a shame I haven't +been around, but I've been busy"--her smile reflected some of the irony +of Portia's--"and rather miserable. Of course I was going this +afternoon." + +"Yes," said Portia, "I fancied you'd come this afternoon. That's why I +wanted to see you alone first." + +"Alone!" Rose leaned sharply forward. "Oh, don't stand there where I +can't see you! Tell me what it is." + +"I'm going to," said Portia. "You see, I wasn't satisfied with old +Murray. That soothing bedside manner of his, and his way of encouraging +you as if you were a child going to have a tooth pulled, drove me nearly +wild. I thought it was possible, either that he didn't understand +mother's case, or else that he wouldn't tell me what he suspected. So +a week ago to-day, I got her to go with me to a specialist. He made a +very thorough examination, and the next day I went around to see him." +Her voice got a little harder and cooler. "Mother'll never be well, +Rose. She's got an incurable disease. There's a long name for it +that I can't remember. What it means is that her heart is getting +flabby--degenerating, he called it. He says we can't do anything except +to retard the progress of the disease. It may go fast, or it may go +slowly. That attack she had was just a symptom, he said. She'll have +others. And by and by, of course, a fatal one." + +Still she didn't look around from the window. She knew Rose was crying. +She had heard the gasp and choke that followed her first announcement of +the news, and since then, irregularly, a muffled sound of sobbing. She +wanted to go over and comfort the young stricken thing there on the bed, +but she couldn't. She could feel nothing but a dull irresistible anger +that Rose should have the easy relief of tears, which had been denied +her. Because Portia couldn't cry. + +"He said," she went on, "that the first thing to do was to get her away +from here. He said that in this climate, living as she has been doing, +she'd hardly last six months. But he said that in a bland climate like +Southern California, in a bungalow without any stairs in it, if she's +carefully watched all the time to prevent excitement or over-exertion, +she might live a good many years. + +"So that's what we're going to do. I've written the Fletchers to look +out a place for us--some quiet little place that won't cost too much, +and I've sold out my business. I thought I'd get that done before I +talked to you about it. I'll give the house here to the agent to sell or +rent, and as soon as we hear from the Fletchers, we'll begin to pack. +Within a week, I hope." + +Rose said a queer thing then. She cried out incredulously, "And you and +mother are going away to California to live! And leave me here all +alone!" + +"All alone with the whole of your own life," thought Portia, but didn't +say it. + +"I can't realize it at all," Rose went on after a little silence. "It +doesn't seem--possible. Do you believe the specialist is right? They're +always making mistakes, aren't they--condemning people like that, when +the trouble isn't what they say? Can't we go to some one else and make +sure?" + +"What's the use?" said Portia. "Suppose we did find a man who said it +probably wasn't so serious as that, and that she could probably live +all right here? We shouldn't know that he was right--wouldn't dare trust +to that. Besides, if I drag mother around to any more of them, she'll +know." + +Rose looked up sharply. "Doesn't she know?" + +"No," said Portia in that hard even voice of hers. "I lied to her of +course. I told her the doctor said her condition was very serious, and +that the only way to keep from being a hopeless invalid would be to do +what he said--go out to California--take an absolute rest for two or +three years--no lectures, no writing, no going about. + +"You know mother well enough to know what she'd do if she knew the truth +about it. She'd say, 'If I can never be well, what's the use of +prolonging my life a year, or two, or five; not really living, just +crawling around half alive and soaking up somebody else's life at the +same time?' She'd say she didn't believe it was so bad as that anyway, +but that whether it was or not, she'd go straight along and live as +she's always done, and when she died, she'd be dead. Don't you know how +it's always pleased her when old people could die--'in harness,' as she +says?" + +Her voice softened a little as she concluded and the tenseness of her +attitude, there at the window, relaxed. The ordeal, or the worst of it, +was over; what she had meant to say was said, and what she had meant not +to say, if hinted at once or twice, had not caught Rose's ear. She +turned for the first time to look at her. Rose was drooping forlornly +forward, one arm clasped around her knees, and she was trying to dry her +tears on the sleeve of her nightgown. The childlike pathos of the +attitude caught Portia like the surge of a wave. She crossed the room +and sat down on the edge of the bed. She'd have come still closer and +taken the girl in her arms but for the fear of starting her crying +again. + +"Yes," Rose said. "That's mother. And I guess she's right about it. It +must be horrible to be half alive;--to know you're no use and never will +be. Only I don't believe it will be that way with her. I believe you +told her the truth without knowing it. It's just a feeling, but I'm sure +of it. She'll get strong and well again out there. You'll think so, too, +when you get rested up a little.--You're so frightfully tired, poor +dear. It makes me sick to think what a week you've had. And that you've +gone through it all alone;--without ever giving Rodney and me a chance +to help. I don't see why you did that, Portia." + +"Oh, I saw it was my job," Portia said, in that cool dry way of hers. +"It couldn't work out any other way. It had to be done and there was no +one else to do it. So what was the use of making a fuss? It was easier, +really, without, and--I didn't want any extra difficulties." + +"But all the work there must have been!" Rose protested. "Selling your +shop, and all. How did you ever manage to do it?" + +"That was luck, of course," Portia admitted. "Do you know that Craig +woman? You may have met her. She's rather on the fringe of your set, I +believe. She's got a good deal of money and nothing to do, and I think +she's got a fool notion that it'll be _chic_ to go 'into trade.' She +came and offered to buy me out a month ago, and of course I wouldn't +listen. But just by luck she called me up again the very day I went to +talk to the specialist. I asked for twenty-four hours to think it over, +and by that time I'd made up my mind. I got a very good price from her, +really. She bought the whole thing; lease, stock and good-will." + +It wasn't more than a very subconscious impression in the back of Rose's +mind, that Portia must be pretty callous and cold to have been able on +the very day of the doctor's sentence to look as far ahead as that, and +to drive a good bargain on the next--awfully efficient, anyway. "I wish +I was more like you," she said. + +But she didn't want to be questioned as to just what she meant by it +and, aware that Portia had just shot a queer searching look at her, she +changed the subject, or thought she did. + +"Anyway, I'm glad it worked out so well for you," she went on; "selling +the shop so easily, and all. And I believe it'll do you as much good as +mother. Getting a rest.... You do need it. You're worked right down to +the bones. And out there where it's warm and bright all the time, and +you don't have to get up in the dark any more winter mornings and wade +off through the slush to the street-car.... And a nice little bungalow +to live in--just you and mother.... I--I sort of wish I was going too." + +Portia laughed--a ragged, unnatural sounding laugh that brought a look +of puzzled inquiry from Rose. + +"Why, nothing," Portia explained. "It was just the notion of your +leaving Rodney and all you've got here--all the wonderful things you +have to do--for what we'll have out there. The idea of your envying me +is something worth a small laugh, don't you think?" + +Rose's head drooped lower. She buried her face in her hands. "I do envy +you," she said. There was a dull muffled passion in her voice. "Why +shouldn't I envy you? You're so cold and certain all the time. You make +up your mind what you'll do, and you do it. I try to do things and just +make myself ridiculous. Oh, I know I've got a motor and a lot of French +dresses, and a maid, and I don't have to get up in the morning, because, +as you say, I have nothing else to do--and I suppose that might make +some people happy." + +"You've got a husband," said Portia in a thin brittle voice. "That might +count for something, I should think." + +"Yes, and what good am I to him?" Rose demanded. "He can't talk to +me--not about his work or anything like that. And I can't help him any +way. I'm something nice for him to make love to, when he feels like +doing it, and I'm a nuisance when I make scenes and get tragic. And +that's all. That's--marriage, I guess. You're the lucky one, Portia." + +The silence had lasted a good while before Rose noticed that there was +any special quality about it--became aware that since the end of her +outburst--of which she was ashamed even while she yielded to it, because +it represented not what she meant, but what, at the moment, she +felt--Portia had not stirred; had sat there as rigidly still as a figure +carved in ivory. + +Becoming aware of that, she raised her head. Portia wasn't looking at +her, but down at her own clenched hands. + +"It needed just that, I suppose," she heard her older sister say between +almost motionless lips. "I thought it was pretty complete before, but +it took that to make it perfect--that you think I'm the lucky one--lucky +never to have had a husband, or any one else for that matter, to love +me. And lucky now, to have to give up the only substitute I had for +that." + +"Portia!" Rose cried out, for the mordant alkaline bitterness in her +sister's voice and the tragic irony in her face, were almost terrifying. +But the outcry might never have been uttered for any effect it had. + +"I hoped this wouldn't happen," the words came steadily on, one at a +time. "I hoped I could get this over and get away out of your life +altogether without letting it happen. But I can't. Perhaps it's just as +well--perhaps it may do you some good. But that's not why I'm doing it. +I'm doing it for myself. Just for once, I'm going to let go! You won't +like it. You're going to get hurt." + +Rose drew herself erect and a curious change went over her face, so that +you wouldn't have known she'd been crying. She drew in a long breath and +said, very steadily, "Tell me. I shan't try to get away." + +"A man came to our house one day to collect a bill," Portia went on, +quite as if Rose hadn't spoken. "Mother was out, and I was at home. I +was seventeen then, getting ready to go to Vassar. Fred was a sophomore +at Ann Arbor, and Harvey was going to graduate in June. You were only +seven--I suppose you were at school. Anyhow, I was at home, and I let +him in, and he made a fuss. Said he'd have us black-listed by other +grocers, if it wasn't paid. + +"It was the first I ever knew about anything like that. I knew we +weren't rich, of course--I never had quite enough pocket money. But the +idea of an old unpaid grocery bill made me sick. I talked things over +with mother the next day--told her I wasn't going to college--said I was +going to get a job. I got her to tell me how things stood, and she did, +as well as she could. The boys were getting their college education out +of the capital of father's estate, so that the income of it was getting +smaller. She had meant that I should do the same. But the income wasn't +really big enough to live on as it was. + +"Mother could earn money of course, lecturing and writing, but money +wasn't one of the things she naturally thought about, and when there was +something big and worth while to do, she plunged in and did it whether +it was going to pay her anything or not. And there were you coming +along, and mother wasn't so very strong even then, and I--well, I saw +where I came in. + +"I got mother to let me run all the accounts after that, and attend to +everything. And I got a job and began paying my way within a week." + +"If I had a thing like that to remember," said Rose unsteadily, "I'd +never forget to be proud of it so long as I lived!" + +"I wish I could be proud of it," said Portia. "But, like everything else +I do, I spoiled it. I knew that mother was doing a big fine work worth +doing--worth my making a sacrifice for, and I wanted to make the +sacrifice. But I couldn't help making a sort of grievance of it, too. In +all these years I've always made mother afraid of me--always made her +feel that I was, somehow, contemptuous of her work and ideas. That's +rather a strong way of putting it, perhaps. But I've seen her trying to +hide her enthusiasms from me a little, because of my nasty way of +sticking pins in them. + +"Oh, of course in a way I was making the enthusiasms possible--I knew +that. She never could have gone on as she did if she'd been nagged at +all the time for money. Big ideas are always more important to her than +small facts, but without some narrow-minded, literal person to look +after the facts her ideas wouldn't have had much chance. I grubbed away +until I got things straightened out, so that her income was enough +to live on--enough for her to live on. I'd pulled her through. But +then ..." + +"But then there was me," said Rose. + +"I thought I was going to let you go," Portia went on inflexibly. "You'd +got to be just the age I was when I went to work, and I said there was +no reason why you shouldn't come in for your share. If things had +happened a little differently, I'd have told mother how matters stood +and you'd have got a job somewhere and gone to work. But things didn't +come out that way--at least I couldn't make up my mind to make them--so +you went to the university. I paid for that, and I paid for your +trousseau, and then I was through." + +Rose was trembling, but she didn't flinch. "Wh--what was it," she asked +quietly, "what was it that might have been different and wasn't? Was +it--was it somebody you wanted to marry--that you gave up so I could +have my chance?" + +Portia's hard little laugh cut like a knife. "I ought to believe that," +she said. "I've told myself so enough times. But it's not true. I wonder +why you should have thought of that--why it occurred to you that a +cold-blooded fish like me should want to marry?" + +Rose didn't try to answer. She waited. + +"You have always thought me cold," Portia said. "So has mother. I'm not, +really. I'm--the other way. I don't believe there ever was a girl that +wanted love and marriage more than I. But I didn't attract anybody. I +was working pretty hard, of course, and that left me too tired to go out +and play--left me a little cross and acid most of the time. But I don't +believe that was the whole reason. It wouldn't have worked out that way +with you. But nobody ever saw me at all. The men I was introduced to +forgot me--were polite to me--got away as soon as they could. They were +always craning around for a look at somebody else. The few men--the two +or three who weren't like that, weren't good enough. But a man did want +me to marry him at last, and for a while I thought I would. Just--just +for the sake of marrying somebody. He wasn't much, but he was some one. +But I knew I'd come to hate him for not being some one else and I +couldn't make up my mind to it. So I took you on instead. + +"I stopped hoping, you see, and tried to forget all about it--tried to +crowd it out of my life. I said I'd make my work a substitute for it. +And, in a way, I succeeded. The work opened up and got more interesting +as it got bigger. It wasn't just selling four-dollar candlesticks and +crickets and blue glass flower-holders. I was beginning to get real jobs +to do--big jobs for big people, and it was exciting. That made it easier +to forget. I was beginning to think that some day I'd earn my way into +the open big sort of life that your new friends have had for nothing. + +"And then, a week ago, there came the doctor and cut off that chance. +Oh, there's no way out, I know that! That's the way the pattern was cut, +I suppose, in the beginning. I've always suspected the cosmic Dressmaker +of having a sense of humor. Now I know it. I'm the lucky one who isn't +going to have to wade through the slush any more. I'm to go out to +southern California and live in a nice little bungalow and be a nurse +for five or ten years, and then I'm going to be left alone in genteel +poverty, without an interest in the world, and too tired to make any. +And I'll probably live to eighty. + +"And yet,"--she leaned suddenly forward, and the passion that had been +suppressed in her voice till now, leaped up into flame--"and yet, can +you tell me what I could have done differently? I've lived the kind of +life they preach about--a life of noble sacrifice. It hasn't ennobled +me. It's made me petty--mean--sour. It's withered me up. Look at the +difference between us! Look at you with your big free spaciousness--your +power of loving and attracting love! Why, you even love me, now, in +spite of all I've said this morning. I've envied you that--I've almost +hated you for it. + +"No, that's a lie. I've wanted to. The only thing I could ever hate you +for, would be for failing. You've got to make good! You've had my share +as well as yours--you're living my life as well as yours. I'm the branch +they cut off so that you could grow. If you give up and let the big +thing slip out of your hands the way you were talking this morning, +because you're too weak to hold it and haven't pluck enough to fight for +it...." + +"Look at me!" said Rose. The words rang like a command on a +battle-field. + +Portia looked. Rose's blue eyes were blazing. "I won't do that," she +said very quietly. "I promise you that." Then the hard determination in +her face changed to something softer, and as if Portia's resistance +counted no more than that of a child, she pulled her sister up in her +arms and held her tight. And so at last Portia got the relief of tears. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HOW THE PATTERN WAS CUT + + +Through the two weeks that intervened before Portia and her mother left +for the West, Rose disregarded the physical wretchedness--which went on +getting worse instead of better--and dismissed her psychical worries +until she should have time to attend to them. She helped Portia pack, +she presented a steady cheerful radiance of optimism to her mother, that +never faltered until the last farewells were said. + +Just how she'd take up the fight again for the great thing Portia had +adjured her not to miss, she didn't know. She supposed she'd go back to +her law-books--at any rate until she could work out something better. + +But the pattern, it seemed, was cut differently. She went to the +doctor's office the day after Portia took her mother away, and +discovered the cause of her physical wretchedness. She was pregnant. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +A BIRTHDAY + + +Rodney heard young Craig, who deviled up law for him, saying good night +to the stenographer; glanced at his watch and opened the door to his +outer office. + +"You may go home, Miss Beach," he said. "I'm staying on for a while but +I shan't want you." Then, to the office boy: "You, too, Albert." + +He waited till he heard them go, then went out and disconnected his own +desk telephone, which the office boy, on going home, always left plugged +through; went back into his inner office again and shut the door after +him. + +There was more than enough pressing work on his desk to fill the clear +hour that remained to him before he had to start for home. But he didn't +mean to do it. He didn't mean to do anything except drink down thirstily +the sixty minutes of pure solitude that were before him; to let his mind +run free from the clutch of circumstance. That hour had become a habit +with him lately, like--he smiled at the comparison--like taking a drug. +When something happened that forced him to forego it, he felt +cheated--irrationally irritable. He was furtive about it, too. He never +corrected Rose's assumption that the thing which kept him late at the +office so much of the time nowadays was a press of work. He even +concealed the fact that he pulled his telephone plug, by sticking it +back again every night just before he left. + +He tried to laugh that guilty feeling out of existence. But he couldn't. +He knew too well whence it sprang. He knew whom he was stealing that +hour from. It wasn't the world in general he intrenched himself against. +It was his wife. The real purpose of that sixty minutes was to enable +him to stop thinking and feeling about her. + +It was not that she had faded for him--become less the poignant, vivid, +irresistible thing he had first fallen in love with. Rather the +contrary. The simple rapture of desire that had characterized the period +of their engagement and the first months of their marriage, had lost +something--not so much, either--of its tension. But it had +broadened--deepened into something more compelling, more +pervasive--more, in his present mood, formidable. + +She hadn't seemed quite well, lately, nor altogether happy, and he had +not been able to find out why. He had attributed it at first to the +shock occasioned by her mother's illness and her departure with Portia +to California, but this explanation seemed not to cover the ground. Why +couldn't she have talked freely with him about that? Inquiries about her +health, attempts--clumsily executed, no doubt--to treat her with special +tenderness and guard her against overexertion, only irritated her, drove +her to the very edge of her self-control--or over it. She was all right, +she always said. He couldn't force confidences from her of course. But +her pale face and eyes wide with a trouble in them he could not fathom +stirred something deeper in him than the former glow and glory had ever +reached. + +And there was a new thing that gripped him in a positively terrifying +way--a realization of his importance to her. The after-effect of her +invasion of his office the night of the Randolphs' dinner and of his +learning of the tremulous interest with which she had afterward followed +the case he was then working on, had been very different from his first +irritation and his first amusement. + +He had discovered, too, one day--a fortnight or so ago, in the course of +a rummage after some article he had mislaid, a heap of law-books that +weren't his. He had guessed the explanation of them, but had said +nothing to Rose about it--had found it curiously impossible to say +anything. If only she had taken up something of her own! It seemed as +essentially a law of her being to attempt to absorb herself in him, as +it was a law of his to resist that absorption of himself in her. + +But resistance was difficult. The tendency was, after his perfectly +solid, recognizable duties had been given their places in the cubic +content of his day, that Rose should fill up the rest. It was as if you +had a bucket half full of irregularly shaped stones and filled it up +with water. And yet there was a man in him who was neither the +hard-working, successful advocate, nor Rose's husband--a man whose +existence Rose didn't seem to suspect. (Was there then in her no woman +that corresponded to him?) That man had to fight now for a chance to +breathe. + +He got a pipe out of a drawer in his desk, loaded and lighted it, +stretched his arms, and sat down in his desk chair. In the middle of his +blotter was a stack of papers his stenographer had laid there just +before she went out. On top of the heap was a memorandum in her +handwriting, and mechanically he read it. + +"Please ask Mrs. Aldrich about this bill," it read. "The work done seems +to be the same that was paid for last month." + +The rest of the month's bills lay beneath, all neatly scheduled and +totaled; and the total came to more than three thousand dollars. He +damned them cordially and moved them over to one side. + +But the mood of quiet contentment he had, for just a moment, captured, +had given place to angry exasperation. He felt like a bull out in a ring +tormented by the glare and the clamor and the flutter of little red +flags. + +There was nothing ruinous about his way of living. Including his +inherited income with what he could earn, working the way he had been +working lately, he could meet an expenditure of thirty-six thousand +dollars a year well enough. It meant thinking about his fees of course, +seeing to it that the work he undertook was profitable as well as +interesting. Only, declared the man who was not Rose's husband, it was +senseless--suffocating! Rodney tried, with an athletic sweep of his +will, to crowd that train of thought out of his mind as, with his hand, +he had swept the papers that gave rise to it. + +He leaned his elbows on the cleared blotter and propped up his chin on +his fists. The thing exactly in front of his eyes was his desk calendar. +There was something familiar about the date--some subconscious +association that couldn't quite rise to the surface. Was there something +he had to do to-day, that he'd forgotten? No, Miss Beach would have +reminded him of anything except a social engagement. And he distinctly +remembered that Rose had said this morning that the evening was clear. +And yet, surely ... Then, with a grunt of relief and amusement, he got +it. It was his birthday! Another mile-stone. + +Where had he been, what had he been doing a year ago to-day? It would be +interesting if he could manage to remember. + +A year ago--why, good lord! That was the day it had all begun. He'd sold +the old house that day and then had started to walk over to Frederica's +for dinner, and got caught in the rain and taken a street-car. He had +heard a vibrant young voice say, "Don't dare touch me like that," and, +turning, had seen the blazing glorious creature who held the conductor +pinned by both wrists. That had been Rose--his Rose; whom he was +spending these sixty minutes out of the twenty-four hours trying to +forget about! + +And that was only a year ago. It was curiously hard to realize. Their +identities had shifted so strangely--his own as well as hers. Well, and +in what direction had, he changed? How did he compare--the man who sat +here now, with the man who had unhesitatingly jumped off the car to +follow a new adventure--the man who had turned up water-logged at +Frederica's dinner and made hay of her plan to marry him off to Hermione +Woodruff? + +They had had a great old talk that night, Frederica and he, he +remembered. He remembered what he had talked about, and he smiled grimly +over the recollection--space and leisure; the defective intelligence +that trapped men into cluttering their lives with useless junk; so many +things to have and to do that they couldn't turn around without breaking +something. Had he been a fool then, or was he a fool now? Both, +perhaps. But how old Frederica must have grinned over the naivete of +him. Which of the two of him in her candid opinion would be the better +man? + +He believed he could answer that question. Oh, he was succeeding all +right--increasing his practise, making money, getting cautious--prudent; +he didn't bolt the track any more. And the quality of his work was good, +he couldn't quarrel with that. Only, the old big free dreams that had +glorified it, were gone. He was in harness, drawing a cart; following a +bundle of hay. + +He sprang impatiently to his feet, thrust back his chair so violently as +he did so that it tipped over with a crash. The one really footling, +futile, fool thing to do, was what he was doing now--lamenting his old +way of life and making no effort to recapture it! Let him either accept +the situation, make up his mind to it and stop complaining, or else +offer it some effective resistance--sweep the flummery out of his +life--clear decks for action. + +Well, and that was the most asinine consideration of all. Because +of course he couldn't do one thing or the other. As long as +the man who wasn't Rose's husband remained alive in him, he'd +protest--struggle--clamor for his old freedom. And yet, as long as the +million tiny cords that bound hum, Gulliver-like, went back to Rose, +talk of breaking them was sophomoric foolishness. He'd better go home! + +The building was pretty well deserted by now, and against the silence he +heard the buzzer in his telephone switchboard proclaiming insistently +that some one was trying to get him on the telephone. His hour of +recollection hadn't been a success, but the invasion of it irritated him +none the less. He thought at first he wouldn't answer. He didn't care +who was on the wire. He didn't want to talk to anybody. But no one can +resist the mechanical bell-ringers they use in exchanges nowadays--the +even-spaced ring and wait, ring and wait, so manifestly incapable of +discouragement. At the end of forty-five seconds, he snatched open his +door, punched the jack into its socket, caught up the head-piece, and +bellowed, "Hello!" into the dangling transmitter. + +And then the look of annoyance in his face changed to one of +incredulous pleasure. "Good God!" he said. "Is that you, Barry Lake? Are +you here in Chicago? And Jane, too? How long you going to be here?... +Lord, but that's immense!" + +And five minutes later he was calling Rose on the wire. "Rose, listen to +this! Barry Lake and his wife are here. He just called up. They got in +from New York at five o'clock, and I've asked them out to dinner. Barry +Lake and Jane! What's the matter? Can't you hear me?... Why, they're +about the best friends I've got. The magazine writer, you know, and his +wife. And they're coming out to dinner--coming right out. I told them +not to dress. I'll come straight home myself--get there before they do, +I guess.... Why, Rose, what's the matter? Aren't you well? Look here! If +you're below par, and don't feel like having them come, I can call it +off and go over to the hotel and dine with them.... You'd rather we came +out to the house? You're sure? Because they won't mind a bit. I can take +them to a restaurant or anywhere.... All right, if you're sure it won't +be too much for you. I'll be home in fifteen minutes. Lord, but it was +good to hear old Barry's voice again! I haven't seen him for over a +year. You're sure you'd rather?... All right. Good-by." + +But he sat there frowning in a puzzled sort of way for half a minute +after he'd pulled the plug. Rose's voice had certainly sounded queer. He +was sure she hadn't planned anything else for to-night. He distinctly +remembered her saying just before he left for the office that they'd +have the evening to themselves. And it was incredible that she minded +his bringing home two old friends like the Lakes on the spur of the +moment, to take pot-luck. Oh, well, you couldn't tell about people's +voices over the telephone. There must have been something funny about +the connection. + +An opportune taxi just passing the entrance to his office building as he +came out, enabled him to better the fifteen minutes he'd allowed for +getting home. But in spite of this he found Rose rather splendidly +gowned for her expected guests. + +"Good gracious!" he cried excitedly. "What did you do that for? I +thought I told you over the phone the Lakes weren't going to dress." + +"I was--dressed like this when you telephoned," Rose said. "And I was +afraid there wouldn't be time to change into anything else." + +"We weren't going anywhere, were we?" he asked. "There's nothing I've +forgotten?" + +"No," she said, "we weren't going anywhere." + +"And you dressed like that just for a--treat for me?" + +She nodded. "Just for you," she said. "Roddy, who are the Lakes? Oh, I +know his articles, I think! But where were they friends of yours, and +when?" + +"Why, for years, until they moved to New York. They used to live here. I +know I must have told you about them. I was always having dinner with +them--either out in Rogers Park, where they lived, or at queer, terrible +little restaurants down-town. They were always game to try anything, +once. He's the longest, leanest, angularest, absent-mindedest chap in +the world. And just about the best. And his wife fits all his angles. +She's a good chap, too. That's the way you have to think of her. They're +a great pair. She writes, too. Oh, you're sure to like them! They're +going to be out here for months, he says. He's going to specialize in +women, and he's come back here where they've got the vote and all, to +make headquarters. Lord, but it's great! I haven't had a real talk with +anybody since he went away, over a year ago!" + +Then, at the sound of the bell, he cried out, "There they are!" and +dashed down into the hall ahead of the parlor maid, as eagerly as a +schoolboy anticipating a birthday present. + +Rose followed more slowly, and by the time she had reached the landing +she found him slapping Barry on the back and shaking both hands with +Jane, and trying to help both of them out of their wraps at once. + +The last thing she could have thought of just then, was of making, for +herself, an effective entrance on the scene. But it worked out rather +that way. The three of them, Rodney and the Lakes, at the foot of the +stairs, in the clothes they had been working and traveling in all day, +looked up simultaneously and saw Rose, gowned for a treat for Rodney, on +the first landing; a wonderful rose-colored Boucher tapestry (guaranteed +authentic by Bertie Willis) on the wall behind her for a background, and +the carved Gothic newel-post bringing out the whiteness of the hand that +rested upon it. The picture would have won a moment's silence from +anybody. And Barry and Jane simply gazed at her wide-eyed. + +[Illustration: "Oh, my dear! I didn't know!"] + +Rodney was the first to speak. "It's really the Lakes, Rose. I couldn't +quite believe it till I saw them. And the lady on the landing," he went +on, turning to his guests, "is really my wife. It's all a little +incredible, isn't it?" + +When the greetings were over and they were on the way up-stairs again, +he said: "I told Rose we weren't going to dress, but she explained she +didn't put on this coronation robe for you, but for a treat for me +before I telephoned, and hadn't time to change back." + +And when Jane cried out, as they entered the drawing room, "Good +heavens, Rodney, what a house!" he answered: "It isn't ours, thank God! +We rented it for a year in a sort of honeymoon delirium, I guess. We +don't live up to it, of course. Nobody could, but the woman who built +it. But we do our damnedest." + +The gaiety in his voice clouded a little as he said it, and his grin, +for a moment, had a rueful twist. But for a moment only. Then his +untempered delight in the possession of his old friends took him again +and, with the exception of one or two equally momentary cloud-shadows, +lasted all evening. + +They talked--heavens how they talked! It was like the breaking up of a +log-jam. The two men would rush along, side by side, in perfect +agreement for a while, catching each other's half expressed ideas, and +hurling them forward, and then suddenly they'd meet, head on, in +collision over some fundamental difference of opinion, amid a prismatic +spray of epigram. Jane kept up a sort of obbligato to the show, +inserting provocative little witticisms here and there, sometimes as +Rodney's ally, sometimes as her husband's, and luring them, when she +could, into the quiet backwaters of metaphysics, where she was more than +a match for the two of them. Jane could juggle Plato, Bergson and +William James, with one hand tied behind her. But when she incautiously +ventured out of this domain, as occasionally she did--when, for example, +she confessed herself in favor of a censorship of the drama, she was +instantly demolished. + +"The state's got no business with morals," said Barry. + +"That's the real cause of most of our municipal corruption," said +Rodney. "A city administration, for instance, is corrupt exactly in +ratio to its attempt to be moral. The more moral issues you import into +politics--gambling, prostitution, Sunday closing, censored movies, and +the rest--the more corrupt and helpless and inefficient your government +will be." And, between them, for the next half-hour, they kept on +demonstrating it until the roar of their heavy artillery fairly drove +Jane from her trenches. + +But all this was preliminary to the main topic of the evening, which got +launched when Rodney seized the advantage of a pause to say: + +"A series of articles on women, eh! What are you going to do to them?" + +With that the topic of feminism was on the carpet and it was never +thereafter abandoned. "Utopia to Brass Tacks," was the slogan Barry's +chief had provided him with, he said. We were about the end of the +heroic age of the movement, the age of myths and saints and prophecies. +A transition was about due to smaller, more immediate things. The +quality of the leaders would probably change. The heroines of the last +three or four decades, women like Naomi Rutledge Stanton, to take a fine +type of them. + +"She's my mother," said Rose. + +Barry Lake's aplomb was equal to most situations, but it failed him +here; for a moment he could only stare. The contrast between the picture +in his mind's eye, of the plain, square-toed, high-principled and rather +pathetic champion of the Cause--pathetic in the light of what she hoped +from it--facing indifference and ridicule with the calm smile of one +who has climbed her mountain and looked into the promised +land,--between that and the lovely, sensitive, sensuous creature he was +staring at, was enough to stagger anybody. He got himself together in a +moment, said very simply and gravely how much he admired her and how +high a value, he believed, the future would put on her work; then he +picked up his sentence where Rose had broken it. + +The heroines and the prophets were going to be replaced, he believed, by +leaders much more practical and less scrupulous, and the movement would +follow the leaders. As far as polities went, he not only looked for no +millennium, but for a reaction in the other direction. There'd be more +open graft, he thought. + +Rose asked him if he meant that he thought women were less honest than +men. + +"It isn't a lack of old-fashioned honesty that makes a man a grafter," +he said. "It's seeing the duties and privileges of a public office in a +private and personal way, instead of in a public, impersonal one; being +kind to old friends who need a helping hand, and grateful to people +who've held out helping hands to you. Well, and women have been trained +for hundreds of years to see things in that private and personal way, +and to exalt the private and personal virtues. Just as they've been +trained to stick to rule of thumb methods that more or less work, rather +than to try experiments. So, on the whole, I think their getting the +vote will mean that politics will be crookeder and more reactionary than +they've been in a good many years. All the same I'm for it, because it's +a part of democracy, and I'm for democracy all the way. Not because you +get good government out of it; you don't. You get as good as you +deserve, and in the long run I think a society that has to deserve as +good a government as it gets, grows stronger and healthier than one that +gets a better government than it deserves." + +"That old tory radical over there," said Jane, with a nod at Rodney, +"has been grinning away for half an hour without saying a word. I'd like +to know what you think about it." + +"'Tory radical'?" questioned Rose. + +"That's what Barry calls him," Jane explained. "He's so conservative +about the law that he calls Blackstone an upstart and a faker, but the +things he'd do, when it comes, down to cases--on good old common law +principles, of course, would make the average Progressive's hair curl. +Why, when people were getting excited over Roosevelt's recall of +judicial decisions--remember?--Rodney was for abolishing the Bill of +Rights altogether." + +"What's the Bill of Rights?" asked Rose. + +Jane headed Rodney off. "Oh, life, liberty and property without due +process of law," she said. "Neither of these men has any opinion of +rights. The only natural inalienable right you've got, they say, is to +take what you can get and keep it until somebody stronger than you, that +you can't run away from, catches you. What you call your individual +rights are just what society has made and doesn't for the moment need, +to keep itself going. If it does need them, it takes them back. Only, of +course, it has got to keep itself going. If it doesn't, people get up +and kick it to bits and start again." She turned to Rodney. "But what do +you think about it, really? What Barry's been talking about, I mean. Are +you for it?" + +"For what?" Rodney wanted to know. + +"For what women want," said Jane. "Economic independence, equality, easy +divorce--all the new stuff." + +"I'm not against it," Rodney said, "any more than I'm against to-morrow +being Tuesday. It's going to be Tuesday whether I like it or not. But +that conviction keeps me from crusading for it very hard. What I'm +curious about is how it's going to work. When they get what they want, +do you suppose they're going to want what they get?" + +"I knew there was something deadly about your grin," said Jane. "What +are you so cantankerous about?" + +"Why, the thing," said Rodney, "that sours my naturally sweet +disposition is this economic independence. I've been hearing it at +dinner tables all winter. When I hear a woman with five hundred dollars' +worth of clothes on--well, no, not on her back--and anything you like in +jewelry, talking about economic independence as if it were something +nice--jam on the pantry shelf that we men were too greedy to let them +have a share of--I have to put on the brakes in order to stay on the +rails. + +"We men have to fight for economic independence from the time we're +twenty, more or less, till the time we die. It's a sentence to hard +labor for life; that's what economic independence is. How does that +woman think she'd set about it, to make her professional services worth +a hundred dollars a day--or fifty, or ten? What's she got that has a +market value? What is there that she can capitalize? She's got her +physical charm, of course, and there are various professions besides the +oldest one, where she can make it pay. Well, and what else?" + +"She can bear children," said Jane. "She ought to be paid well for +that." + +"You're only paid well," Rodney replied, "for something you can do +exceptionally well, or for something that few people can do at all. As +long as the vast majority of women can bear children, the only women who +could get well paid for it would be those exceptionally qualified, or +exceptionally proficient. This is economics, now we're talking. Other +considerations are left out. No, I tell you. Economic independence, if +she really got it--the kind of woman I've been talking about--would make +her very, very sick." + +"She'd get over being sick though, wouldn't she," said Rose, "after a +while? And then, don't you think she'd be glad?" + +Rodney laughed. "The sort of woman I've been talking about," he said, +"would feel, when all was said, that she'd got a gold brick." + +Rose poured his coffee with a steady hand. They were in the library by +now. + +"If that's so," she said, "then the kind of woman you've been talking +about has already got a profession--the one you were just speaking of +as--as the oldest. As Doctor Randolph says, she's cashed in on her +ankles. But maybe you're mistaken in thinking she wouldn't choose +something else if she had a chance. Maybe she wouldn't have done it, +except because her husband wanted her to and she was in love with him +and tried to please. You can't always tell." + +It was almost her first contribution to the talk that evening. She had +asked a few questions and said the things a hostess has to say. The +other three were manifestly taken by surprise--Rodney as well as his +guests. + +But surprise was not the only effect she produced. Her husband had never +seen her look just like that before (remember, he had not been a guest +at the Randolphs' dinner on the night he had turned her out of his +office), the flash in her eyes, the splash of bright color in her +cheeks. + +Barry saved him the necessity of trying to answer, by taking up the +cudgels himself. Rodney didn't feel like answering, nor, for the moment, +like listening to Barry. His interest in the discussion was eclipsed for +the moment, by the thrill and wonder of his wife's beauty. + +He walked round behind her chair, on the pretext of getting his coffee +cup, and rested his hand, for an instant, on her bare shoulder. He was +puzzled at the absence of response to the caress. For there was none, +unless you could call it a response that she sat as still as ivory until +he took his hand away. And looking into her face, he thought she had +gone pale. Evidently though, it was nothing. Her color came back in a +moment, and for the next half-hour she matched wits with Barry Lake very +prettily. + +When Jane declared that they must go, her husband protested. + +"I haven't managed yet to get a word out of Rodney about any of his +things. He dodged when I asked him how his Criminal Procedure Reform +Society was getting on, and he changed the subject when I wanted to know +about his model Expert Testimony Act." He turned on Rodney. "But there's +one thing you're not going to get out of. I want to know how far you've +come along with your book on Actual Government. It was a great start you +had on that, and a bully plan. I shan't let you off any details. I want +the whole thing. Now." + +"I've had my fling," said Rodney, with a sort of embarrassed good humor. +"And I don't say I shall never have another. But just now, there are no +more intellectual wild-oats for me. What I sow, I sow in a field and in +a furrow. And I take good care to be on hand to gather the crop. Model +Acts and Reform of Procedure! Have you forgotten you're talking to a +married man?" + +On learning their determination to walk down-town, he said he'd go with +them part of the way. Would Rose go, too? But she thought not. + +"Well, I can't pretend to think you need it," he admitted. Then, turning +to the Lakes: "You people must spend a lot of evenings with us like +this. You've done Rose a world of good. I haven't seen her look so well +in a month of Sundays." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A DEFEAT + + +The gown that Rodney had spoken of apologetically to the Lakes as a +coronation robe, was put away; the maid was sent to bed. Rose, huddled +into a big quilted bath-robe, and in spite of the comfortable warmth of +the room, feeling cold clear in to the bones--cold and tremulous, and +sure that when she tried to talk her teeth would chatter--sat waiting +for Rodney to come back from seeing the Lakes part way home. + +It was over an hour since they had gone, but she was in no hurry for his +return. She wanted time for getting things straight before he came--for +letting the welter subside and getting the two or three essentials clear +in her mind. She hadn't cried a tear. + +The old Rose would have cried--the Rose of a month ago, before that +devastating, blinding scene with Portia, and what had happened since. +She even managed to smile a little satirically, now, over the way that +child would have taken it. Here it was their first anniversary of the +day--the great day in their two lives--their birthday, as well as his! +And he'd forgotten it! He had remained oblivious that morning, in spite +of all the little evocative references she had made. She hadn't let +herself be hurt about that--not much, anyway; had managed to smile +affectionately over his masculine obtuseness, as if it had meant no more +to her than it would have, say, to Frederica. She had impressed him +strongly, though--or tried to--with the idea that the evening was to be +kept clear just for their two selves. And then she had arranged a +feast--a homely little feast that was to culminate in a cake with a +hedge of little candles around the edge for his birthday, and a single +red one in the center, for theirs. + +Well, and that was only part of it. She had planned, when the cake +should have come in, all lighted up, and the servants had gone away and +the other lights had been put out,--she had planned to tell him her +great news. She hadn't told him yet, though it was over a fortnight +since her visit to the doctor. + +She had no reasoned explanation of her postponement of it. The instinct +that led her to keep it wholly to herself, was probably one of the +reflections of that morning with Portia. She was still in a penitential +mood when she went to the doctor--a mood which the contemplation of +Portia's frustrated life and her own undeservedly happy one, had bitten +deep into her soul. It was a mood that nothing but pain could satisfy. +The only relief she could get during that fortnight of packing and +leave-taking, came in flogging herself to do hard things--things that +hurt, physically and literally, I mean; that made her back ache and +cramped the muscles of her arms. Her spiritual aches were too +contemptible to pay any attention to. + +Conversely, in that mood, the thing she couldn't endure, that made her +want to scream, was precisely what, all her life, she had taken for +granted; tenderness, concern, the smoothing away of little difficulties +for which the people about her had always sacrificed themselves. That +mood made it hard to go to the doctor. But, after she had fainted dead +away twice in one morning, a saving remnant of common sense--the +reflection that if there were anything organically wrong with her, it +would be a poor trick to play on Rodney, not to take remedial measures +as soon as possible--dictated the action. + +When the doctor told her what had happened, she was a little bewildered. +She hadn't, in her mind, any prepared background for the news. She and +Rodney had decided at the beginning not to have any children for the +first year or two--in view of Rose's extreme youth, the postponement +seemed sensible--and the decision once made, neither of them had thought +much more about it. + +Rodney's vigorously objective mind had always been so fully occupied +with things as they were that it found little leisure for speculation +on things as they might be. The day's work was always so vividly +absorbing to him that day-dreams never got a chance. His sex impulses +had always been crowded down to the smallest possible compass, not +because he was a Puritan, but because he was, spiritually and mentally, +an athlete. He had never thought of marriage as a serious possibility, +Frederica's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding, until, in a moment +of bewilderment, he found himself head over ears in love with Rose +Stanton. That this emotion had been able to fight its way into the +fortress of his life spoke volumes for the power and the vitality of it. +Once it got inside, it formed a part of the garrison of the fort. And, +just as the contemplation of marriage had had to wait until there was a +Rose Stanton to make it concrete and irresistible, so the contemplation +of fatherhood would have to wait for a concrete fact to drive it home. + +With certain important differences, Rose was a good deal like him. She +had never had time to dream much. The pretending games of +childhood--playing with dolls, playing house--had never attracted her +away from more vigorous and athletic enterprises. A superb physique gave +her an outlet for her emotional energy, so that she satisfied her wants +pretty much as she became aware of them. And, conversely, she remained +unaware of possibilities she had not, as yet, the means to realize. + +They were both rather abnormally normal about this. Persons of robust +emotions seldom think very much about them. The temperament that +cultivates its emotional soil assiduously, warms it, waters it and +watches anxiously for the first sprouts, gets a rather anemic growth for +its pains. Which of these facts is cause and which effect, one need not +pretend to say: whether it is a lack of vitality in the seed that +prompts the instinct of cultivation, or whether it is the cultivation +that prevents a sturdy growth. But, feeble as the results of cultivation +may be, they produce at least the apparent advantage of running true to +form. The thing that sprouts in cultivated soil will be what was planted +there--will be, at all events, appropriate. + +But in Rose's penitential mood, and in the absence of a prepared +background, it was the processes of her pregnancy rather than the issue +of it, that got into the foreground of her mind. She was in for an +experience now that no one could call trivial. She had months of misery +ahead of her, she assumed, reasoning from the one she had just gone +through with, surmounted by hours of agony and peril that even Portia +wouldn't deny the authenticity of. + +Well, she was glad of it; glad she was going to be hurt. She could get +back some of her self-respect, she thought, by enduring it all, first +the wretchedness, then the pain, with a Spartan fortitude. There would +he a sort of savage satisfaction in marching through all her miseries +with her head up. + +She couldn't do that if Rodney knew. He wouldn't let her. He'd want to +care for her, comfort her, pack her in cotton-wool. And there was a +terrible yearning down in her heart, to let him. For just that reason, +he mustn't be told. + +But, as the sharp edges of this mood wore off, she saw a little more +justly. Already he suspected something. She caught, now and again, a +puzzled, worried, almost frightened look in his face. It was a poor +penance that others had to share. So, at the end of her feast to-night, +when the candles were lighted and the servants gone away, she'd tell +him. And, oh, what a comfort it would be to have him know! + +That was the moment she was waiting for when he telephoned that he was +bringing the Lakes out for dinner. The old Rose might well have cried. + +But now, as she sat trembling in front of her little boudoir fire, the +door open behind her so that she'd surely hear him when he came in, the +disappointment and the hurt that had clutched at her throat when she +turned from the telephone, were wholly forgotten. As I said, she hadn't +shed a tear. + +The situation she was confronted with now was beyond tears. Portia's +stinging words went over and over through her mind. "If you let the big +thing slip out of your hands because you haven't the pluck to fight ..." +and her own, "I promise I won't do that." It would mean a fight. She +must keep her head. + +She gave a last panicky shiver when she heard his latch-key, then +pulled herself together. + +"Come in here, Roddy," she called, as he reached the head of the stairs. +"I want to talk about something." + +He had hoped, evidently, to find her abed and fast asleep. His cautious +footfalls on the stairs made clear his intention not to waken her. + +"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, pausing in the doorway to her dressing-room, +but not coming in. "I didn't know you meant to sit up for me. If I'd +known you were waiting, I'd have come back sooner. But we got to talking +and we were at the hotel before we knew it, and it was so long since I'd +seen them ..." + +"I haven't minded," she told him. "I've been glad of a chance to think. +But now ... Oh, please come in and shut the door!" + +He did come in, but with manifest reluctance, and he stayed near the +door in an attitude of arrested departure. + +"It's pretty late," he protested with a nonchalance that rang a little +flat. "You must be awfully tired. Hadn't we better put off our pow-wow?" + +She understood well enough. The look in her face, some uncontrolled +inflection in the voice she had meant to keep so even, had given her +away. He suspected she was going to be "tragic." If he didn't look out, +there'd be a "scene." + +"We can't put it off," she said. "I let you have your talk out with the +Lakes, but you'll have to talk with me now." + +"We spent most of the time talking about you, anyway," he said +pleasantly. "They're both mad about you. Barry says you've got a fine +mind." + +She laughed at that, a little raggedly. Whereupon Rodney looked hurt and +protested against this imputation of insincerity against his friend. + +"When you know him better," he said, "you will see he couldn't say a +thing like that unless he meant it." + +"Oh, he meant it, all right," said Rose. And she added incomprehensibly, +"It isn't his fault, of course. It's just the way the world's made." + +She had been in good looks to-night, she knew; hurt, humiliated, +confronted with a crisis, she had rallied her powers just as she had +done at the Randolphs' dinner. She had been aware of the color in her +cheeks, the brightness in her eyes, the edge to her voice. Each of the +two men had responded to the effect she produced. Barry had talked with +her all the last part of the evening--brilliantly, eagerly, and had come +away saying she had a fine mind. Her husband had come across to her and +put his hand on her bare shoulder. And the two of them had responded to +an identical impulse, although they translated it so differently--one +over the long circuit, the other over the short. + +Lacking the clue, Rodney, of course, didn't understand. The look in +Rose's eyes softened suddenly. + +"Don't mind, dear;" she said. "I'm truly glad if they liked me. It will +make things a lot easier." + +At that his eyes lighted up. "Do you seriously think any one could +resist you, you darling?" he said. "You were a perfect miracle to-night, +when they were here. But now, like this ..." He came over to her with +his arms out. + +But she cried out "Don't!" and sprang away from him. "Please don't, +Roddy--not to-night! I can't stand it to have you touch me to-night!" + +He stared at her, gave a shrug of exasperation, and then turned away. +"You _are_ angry about something then," he said. "I thought so when I +first came in. But I honestly don't know what it's about." + +"I'm _not_ angry," she said as steadily as she could. She mustn't let it +go on like this. They were getting started all wrong somehow. "You +didn't want me to touch you, the night when I came to your office, when +you were working on that case. But it wasn't because you were angry with +me. Well, I'm like that to-night. There's something that's got to be +thought out. Only, I'm not like you. I can't do it alone. I've got to +have help. I don't want to be soothed and comforted like a child, and I +don't want to be made love to. I just want to be treated like a human +being." + +"I see," he said. Very deliberately he lighted a cigarette, found +himself an ash-tray and settled down astride a spindling little chair. +(It was lucky for Florence McCrea's peace of mind that she didn't see +him do it.) "All right," he said. "Now, come on with your troubles." He +didn't say "little troubles," but his voice did and his smile. The whole +thing would probably turn out to be a question about a housemaid, or a +hat. + +Rose steadied herself as well as she could. She simply mustn't let +herself think of things like that. If she lost her temper she'd have no +chance. + +"We've made a horrible mistake," she began. "I don't suppose it's either +of our faults exactly. It's been mine in a way of course, because it +wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been--thoughtless and ignorant. I +might have seen it if I'd thought to look. But I didn't--not really, +until to-night." + +He wanted to know what the mistake was. He was still smiling in +good-humored amusement over her seriousness. + +"It's pretty near everything," she said, "about the way we've +lived--renting this house in the first place." + +He frowned and flushed. "Good heavens, child!" he said. "Can't you take +a joke? I didn't mean anything by what I said about the house--except +that--well, it is a precious, soulful, sacred--High Church sort of +house, and we're not the sort of people, thank God--I'll say it +again--who'd have built it and furnished it for ourselves. You _aren't_ +right, Rose. You're run down and very tired and hypersensitive, or you +wouldn't have spent an evening worrying over a thing like that." + +"You can make jokes about a thing that's true," she persisted. "And it's +true that you've hated the way we've lived--the way this house has made +us live.--No, please listen and let me talk. I can't help it if my voice +chokes up. My mind's just as cool as yours and you've got to listen. It +isn't the first time I've thought of it. It's always made me feel a +little unhappy when people have laughed about the 'new leaf' you've +turned over; how 'civilized' you've got, learning all the new dances and +going out all the time and not doing any of the--wild things you used to +do. In a joking sort of way, people have congratulated me about it, as +if it were some sort of triumph of mine. I haven't liked it, really. +But I never stopped to think out what it meant." + +"What it does mean," he said, with a good deal of attention to his +cigarette, "is that I've fallen in love with you and married you and +that things are desirable to me now, because I am in love with you, that +weren't desirable before. And things that were desirable before, are +less so. I don't see anything terrible about that." + +"There isn't," she said, "when--when you're in love with me." + +He shot a frowning look at her and echoed her phrase interrogatively. +She nodded. + +"Because you aren't in love with me all the time. And when you aren't, +you must see what I've done to you. You must--hate me for what I've done +to you. I remember the first day we ever talked--when you laughed at my +note-books. You talked about people who wore blinders and drew a cart +and followed a bundle of hay. That's what I've made you do." + +His face flushed deep. He sprang to his feet and threw his cigarette +into the fire. "That's perfectly outrageous nonsense," he said. "I won't +listen to it." + +"If it weren't true," she persisted, "you wouldn't be excited like that. +If I hadn't known it before, I'd have known it when I saw you with the +Lakes. You can give them something you can't give me, not with all the +love in the world. I never heard about them till to-night--not in a way +I'd remember. And there are other people--you spoke of some of them at +dinner--who are living here, that you've never mentioned to me before. +You've tried to sweep them all out of your life; to go to dances and the +opera and things with me. You did it because you loved me, but it wasn't +fair to either of us, Roddy. Because you can't love me all the time. I +don't believe a man--a real man--_can_ love a woman all the time. And if +she makes him hate her when he doesn't love her, he'll get so he hates +loving her." + +"You're talking nonsense!" he said again roughly. He was pacing the room +by now. "Stark staring nonsense!" + +Of course the reason it caught him like that was simply that it echoed +so uncannily the things that went through his own head sometimes in his +stolen hours of solitude--thoughts he had often tried, unavailingly, to +stamp out of existence. + +"I'd like to know where you get that stuff. Is it from James Randolph? +He's dangerous, that fellow. Oh, he's interesting, and I like him, but +he's a cynic. He doesn't want anybody to be happier than he is. But what +may be true of him, isn't true of me. I've never stopped loving you +since the first day we talked together. And I should think I'd done +enough to prove it." + +"That's it," she said. "You've done too much. And you're so sorry for me +when you don't love me, that it makes you do all the more." + +She had found another joint in his armor. She was absolutely clairvoyant +to-night, and this time he fairly cried out, "Stop it!" + +Then he got himself together and begged her pardon. "After all, I don't +see what it comes to," he said. "I don't know what we're fighting about +to-night. You're saying you think we ought to do more playing around +with the Lakes and people like that; not spend all our time with the +Casino set, as we have done this winter. Well, that may be good sense. +I've no objection certainly." + +"Well, then," she said, "that's settled--that's one thing settled. But +there's something else. Oh, it all comes to the same thing, really. +Roddy,"--she had to gulp and draw a long breath and steady herself +before this--"Roddy, how much money have you got, and how much are we +spending?" + +"Oh, good lord!" he cried. "_Please_ don't go into that now, Rose. It's +after one o'clock, and you're worn to a frazzle. If we've got to go into +it, let's do it some other time, when we can be sensible about it." + +"When I am, you mean?" + +"Yes," he said. + +"Well, I'm sensible now. I can't help it if my--voice chokes and my eyes +fill up. That's silly, of course, but down in my mind, I don't believe +I've ever been as sensible as I am right now. And I've had the nerve to +ask--I don't know when I will again--and I know you won't bring the +subject up by yourself. I've been trying to for ever so long. But +money's always seemed the one thing I couldn't b-bear to talk about with +you. + +"You see, when I first told mother and Portia about you--about how you +helped me with the conductor that night, I told them your name, and +Portia said she didn't think it could be you, because you were a +millionaire. I supposed she knew. Anyway, I didn't think very much about +it. You yourself,--just being with you and hearing you talk, were so +much more important. After we got engaged, and you began doing all +sorts of lovely things for me, I enjoyed it of course. But it was just +something that went with you. After we were married and took this +house ... Well, I knew, of course, I hadn't married you for money, but +I thought it would sound sort of queer and prying to ask questions about +it; because I hadn't anything." + +He had looked up two or three times and drawn in his breath for a +protest, but apparently he couldn't think of anything effective to say. +Now though, he cried out, "Rose! Please!" + +But she went steadily on. "You were always so dear about it. You never +let me feel like a beggar, and--well, it was the easy way, and I took +it. I got worried once during the winter when I heard the Crawfords +talking. All those people were millionaires, I'd supposed. They were +going on at a dinner here, one night, about being awfully hard up, and I +began to wonder if we were. I spent a week trying to--get up my courage +to ask you about it. But then Constance got a new necklace on her +birthday, and they went off to Palm Beach the next week, so I persuaded +myself it was all a joke. The thing's come up again several times since, +but never so that I couldn't side-step it some way, until to-night. But +to-night--oh, Roddy ...!" Her silly ragged voice choked there and +stopped and the tears brimmed up and spilled down her cheeks. But she +kept her face steadfastly turned to his. + +"That's what I said about being married and not sowing wild oats, I +suppose," he said glumly. "It was a joke. Do you suppose I'd have said +it if I meant it?" + +"It wasn't only that," she managed to go on. "It was the way they looked +at the house; the way you apologized for my dress; the way you looked +when you tried to get out of answering Barry Lake's questions about what +you were doing. Oh, how I despised myself! And how I knew you and they +must be despising me!" + +"The one thing I felt about you all evening," he said, with the patience +that marks the last stage of exasperation, "was pride. I was rather +crazily proud of you." + +"As my lover you were proud of me," she said. "But the other man--the +man that's more truly you--was ashamed, as I was ashamed. Oh, it doesn't +matter! Being ashamed won't accomplish anything. But what we'll _do_ is +going to accomplish something." + +"What do you mean to do?" he asked. + +"I want you to tell me first," she said, "how much money we have, and +how much we've been spending." + +"I don't know," he said stubbornly. "I don't know exactly." + +"You've got enough, haven't you, of your own ... I mean, there's enough +that comes in every year, to live on, if you didn't earn a cent by +practising law? Well, what I want to do, is to live on that. I want to +live however and wherever we have to to live on that--out in the suburbs +somewhere, or in a flat, so that you will be free; and I can work--be +some sort of help. Barry and the others--your real friends, that you +really care about, won't mind. And as long as we want to get rid of the +other people anyway, that's the way to do it." + +"You can wash the dishes and scrub the floors," he supplemented, "and I +can carry my lunch to the office with me in a little tin box." He looked +at his watch. "And now that the thing's reduced to an absurdity, let's +go to bed. It's getting along toward two o'clock." + +"You don't have to get to the office till nine to-morrow morning," said +Rose. "And I want to talk it out now. And I don't think I said anything +that was absurd." + +The devil of it was she hadn't. The precise quality about her +suggestions that pointed and barbed them, was their fantastic logic. It +would be ridiculous--impossible--to uproot their life as she wanted it +done. One simply couldn't do such a thing. Serious discussion of it was +preposterous. But to explain why ...! He was apt enough at explanations +generally. This one seemed to present difficulties. + +"I shouldn't have called it absurd," he admitted after a rather long +silence. "But it's exaggerated and unnecessary. I don't care to make a +public proclamation that I'm not able to support you and run our +domestic establishment in a way that we find natural and agreeable;--and +that I've been a fool to try. The situation doesn't call for it. You've +made a mountain out of an ant-hill. When our lease is up, if we think +this house is more than we want, we can find something simpler." + +"But we'll begin economizing now," she pleaded; "change things as much +as we can, even if we do have to go on living in this house. It won't +hurt me a bit to work, and you could go back to your book. We'd both be +happier, if I were something besides just a drag on you." + +"Discharge a couple of maids, you mean," he asked, "and sweep and make +beds and that sort of thing yourself?" + +"I don't know exactly how we'd do it," she said. "That's why I said I +needed your help in figuring it out. Something like that, I suppose. +Sweeping and making beds isn't very much, but it's something." + +"The most we could save that way," he said, "would be a few hundred +dollars a year. It wouldn't be a drop in the bucket. But everything +would run at cross-purposes. You'd be tired out all the time--you're +that pretty much as it is lately, we'd have to stop having people in; +you'd be bored and I'd be worried. When you start living on a certain +scale, everything about your life has to be done on that scale. Next +October, as I said, when the lease on this house runs out, we can +manage, perhaps, to change the scale a little. There you are! Now do +stop worrying about it and let's go to bed." + +But she sat there just as she was, staring at the dying fire, her hands +lying slack in her lap, all as if she hadn't heard. The long silence +irked him. He pulled out his watch, looked at it and began winding it. +He mended the fire so that it would be safe for the night; bolted a +window. Every minute or two, he stole a look at her, but she was always +just the same. Except for the faint rise and fall of her bosom, she +might have been a picture, not a woman. + +At last he said again, "Come along, Rose, dear." + +"It'll be too late in October," she said. "That's why I wanted to decide +things to-night. Because we must begin right away." Then she looked up +into his face. "It will be too late in October," she repeated, "unless +we begin now." + +The deep tense seriousness of her voice and her look arrested his full +attention. + +"Why?" he asked. And then, "Rose, what do you mean?" + +"We're going to have a baby in October," she said. + +He stared at her for a minute without a word, then drew in a deep breath +and pressed his hands against his eyes. All he could say at first was +just her name. But he dropped down beside her and got her in his arms. + +"So that's it," he said raggedly at last. "Oh, Rose, darling, it's such +a relief! I've been so terrified about you--so afraid something had gone +wrong. And you wouldn't let me ask, and you seemed so unhappy. I'd even +thought of talking to Randolph. I might have guessed, I suppose. I've +been stupid about it. But, you darling, I understand it all now." + +She didn't see just what he meant by that, but she didn't care. It was +such a wonderful thing to stop fighting and let the tension relax, +cuddle close into his embrace, and know nothing in the world but the one +fact that he loved her; that their tale of golden hours wasn't +spent--was, perhaps, illimitable. She was even too drowsily happy to +think what he meant when he said a little later: + +"So now you won't let anything trouble you, will you, child? And if +queer worrying ideas get into your head about the way we live, and about +being a drag on me and making me hate you, you'll laugh at them? You'll +be able to laugh, because you'll know why they're there." + +It wasn't until the next day that she recalled that remark of his and +analyzed it. It meant, of course, that she was beaten; that her first +fight for the big thing had been in vain. There would be no use, for the +present, in renewing the struggle. He'd taken the one ground that was +impregnable. So long as he could go on honestly interpreting every plea +of hers for a share in the hard part of his life as well as in the soft +part of it, for a way of life that would make them something more than +lovers--as wholly subjective to herself, the inevitable accompaniment of +her physical condition--the pleas and the struggles would indeed be +wasted. She'd have to wait. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE DOOR THAT WAS TO OPEN + + +She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch, as Rose was forced by +her husband's attitude to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a +wonderful anodyne. And so it proved in her ease. Indeed, within a day +after her talk with Rodney, though it had ended in total defeat, she +felt like a person awakened out of a nightmare. There had taken place, +somehow, an enormous letting-off of strain--a heavenly relaxation of +spiritual muscles. It was so good just to have him know; to have others +know, as all her world did within the next week! + +Ultimately nothing was changed, of course. The great thing that she had +promised Portia she wouldn't fail in getting--the real thing that should +solve the problem, equalize the disparity between her husband and +herself and give them a life together in satisfying completeness beyond +the joys of a pair of lovers;--that was still to be fought for. + +She'd have to make that fight alone. Rodney wouldn't help her. He +wouldn't know how to help her. Indeed, interpreting from the way he +winced under her questions and suggestions, as if they wounded some +essentially masculine, primitive element of pride in him, it seemed +rather more likely that he'd resist her efforts--fight blindly against +her. She must be more careful about that when she took up the fight +again; must avoid hurting him if she could. + +She hadn't an idea on what lines the fight was to be made. Perhaps +before the time for its beginning, a way would appear. The point was +that for the present, she'd have to wait--coolly and thoughtfully, not +fritter her strength away on futile struggles or harassments. + +The tonic effect of that resolution was really wonderful. She got her +color back--I mean more than just the pink bloom in her cheeks--and her +old, irresistible, wide slow smile. She'd never been so beautiful as she +was during the next six months. + +People who thought they loved her before--Frederica for example, found +they hadn't really, until now. She dropped in on Eleanor Randolph one +day, after a morning spent with Rose, simply because she was bursting +with this idea and had to talk to somebody. That was very like +Frederica. + +She found Eleanor doing her month's bills, but glad to shovel them into +her desk, light up a cigarette, and have a chat; a little rueful though, +when she found that Rose was to be the subject of it. + +"She's perfectly wonderful," Frederica said. "There's a sort of look +about her ..." + +"Oh, I know," Eleanor said. "We dined there last night." + +"Well, didn't it just--get you?" insisted Frederica. + +"It did," said Eleanor. "It also got Jim. He was still talking about her +when I went to sleep, about one o'clock. I don't a bit blame him for +being perfectly maudlin about her. As I say, I was a good deal that way +myself, though a half-hour's steady raving was enough for me. But poor +old Jim! She isn't one little bit crazy about him, either--unfortunately." + +"_Un_fortunately!" thought Frederica. This was rather illuminating. The +Randolphs' love-match had been regarded as establishing a sort of +standard of excellence. But when you heard a woman trying to arrange +subsidiary romances for her husband, or lamenting the failure of them, +it meant, as a rule, that things were wearing rather thin. However, she +dismissed this speculation for a later time, and went back to Rose. + +"I had been worrying about her, too;" she said. "Rodney was so funny +about her. _He_ was worried, I could see that. And he means the best in +the world, the dear. But he could be a dreadful brute, just in his +simplicity. Oh, I know! He and I were always rather special pals--more +than Harriet. But no man ever learned less from his sisters,--about +women, I mean. He's always been so big and healthy and even-minded, you +couldn't tell him anything, except what you could print right out in +black and white. So when you were feeling edgy and blue and miserable +you either kept out of his way or kept your troubles to yourself. He was +always easy to fool--there was that about it. If you wiped your eyes and +blew your nose, he always thought you had a cold. Which is all very nice +about a brother; but in a husband ..." + +Something that Eleanor did with her shoulders, the way she blew out her +smoke and twisted her mouth around, caught Frederica's eye. "What did +you mean by that?" she asked. "Oh, I know you didn't say anything." + +Eleanor got up restlessly, squared the cushions on her _chaise longue_, +tapped her cigarette ash into a receiver and said that Rose was happy +enough now, anyway, if looks were anything to go by; hesitated again, +and finally answered Frederica's question. + +"Why," she said, "whenever I hear a woman miaouling about being +misunderstood, I always want to tell her she doesn't know her luck. Wait +till she marries a man who really does understand--too well. Let her see +how she likes it, whenever she turns loose and gets--going a little, to +have him look interested, as if he were taking notes, and begin asking +questions that are--a little too intelligent. How does she think it'll +feel never to know, _never_--I mean that, that she isn't +being--experimented on!" + +It was a rather horrible idea, Frederica didn't try to deny it. But not +being understood wasn't very agreeable either. What did they want then? + +Eleanor laughed. "Did you ever think," she asked, "that one of these +regular stage husbands would be rather satisfactory? Terribly +particular, you know, and bossy and domineering. The kind that discovers +a letter or a handkerchief or sees you going into some other man's +'rooms' and gets frightfully jealous, and denounces you without giving +you a chance to explain, and drags you round by the hair and threatens +to kill you? And then discovers--in the last act, you know,--that you +were perfectly innocent all the while, and repents all over the place +and begs you to forgive him and take him back; and you do? Do you +suppose any of the men we know would be capable of acting like that? +Don't you think we'd like it if they were? Not if they really did those +things, perhaps, but if we thought they might?" + +Frederica was amused, but didn't think there was much to that. Of +course, if the play was very thrilling, and you liked the leading man, +you might build yourself into the romance somehow. But when it came to +the real thing ... + +"No, there is something in it," Eleanor insisted. "There's something you +can't get in any other way. Whom do you think I'd pick," she asked +suddenly, "for the happiest wife I know? Edith Welles. Yes, really. Oh, +I know, her husband's a slacker and no real good to anybody. And he goes +out every now and then and drinks too much and doesn't know just what +happens afterward. But he always comes back and wants to be forgiven. +And he thinks she's an angel,--which she is--and he thinks he isn't +worthy to put on her rubbers--which he isn't, and--well, there you are! +She knows she's _got_ him, somehow. + +"But you take Jim. I can get my way with him always. I can outmaneuver +him every time. He's positively simple about things, unless they happen +to strike him--professionally. But there's always something that gets +away. Something I'm no nearer now than I was the day I first saw him. +And I sometimes think that if there were--something horrible I had to +forgive him for--if I could get something on him as they say.... It's +rather fun, isn't it, sometimes, just to let your mind go wild and see +where you bring up. Awful rot, of course. Can you stop for lunch?" + +Frederica thought she couldn't; must run straight along. But the talk +had been amusing. "Only--you won't mind?--don't spring any of that stuff +on Rose. She's just a child, really you know, and entitled to any +illusions that Rodney leaves; especially these days." + +"You, as an old hen fussing about your new chicken!" Eleanor mocked. +"Wait till you can look the part a little better, Frederica, dear. But +really, I'm harmless. Talk to Jim and Rodney and those fearful and +wonderful Lakes of his. They were there, and--well, you ought to have +heard the talk. I thought I was pretty well hardened, but once or twice +I gasped. Jim's pretty weird when he gets going, but that Barry Lake has +a sort of--surgical way of discussing just _anything_, and his wife's as +bad. Oh, she's awfully interesting, I'll admit that, and she's as crazy +about Rose as any of the rest of us, which is to her credit. + +"We never got off women all the evening. Barry Lake had their history +down from the early Egyptians, and Jim had an endless string of +pathological freaks to tell about. And then Rodney came out strong for +economic independence, only with his own queer angle on it of course. He +thought it would be a fine thing, but it wouldn't happen until the men +insisted on it. When a girl wasn't regarded as marriageable unless she +had been trained to a trade or a profession, then things would begin to +happen. I think he meant it, too, though he was more than usually +outrageous in his way of putting things. + +"Well, and all the while there sat Rose, taking it all in with those big +eyes of hers, smiling to herself now and then; saying things, too, +sometimes, that were pretty good, though nobody but Jim seemed to +understand, always, just what she meant. They've talked before, those +two. But she didn't mind--anything; no more embarrassed than as if we'd +been talking embroidery stitches. You don't need to worry about her. And +she absolutely seemed to like Jane Lake." + +Frederica did worry. Seriously meditated running in on Rodney before she +went home to lunch and giving him a tip that a young wife in Rose's +condition wanted treating a little more carefully. It was not for +prudential reasons that she decided against doing it. She was perfectly +willing to have her head bitten off in a good cause. But she knew Rodney +down to the ground; knew that it was utterly impossible for him, +whatever his previous resolutions might be, to pull up on the brink of +anything. Once you launched a topic that interested him, he'd go through +with it. So the only thing that would do any good would be to ban the +Lakes and James Randolph completely. And Rodney, if persuaded to do +that--he would in a minute, of course, if he thought it would be good +for Rose--would be incapable of concealing from her why he had done it; +which would leave matters worse than ever. + +The only outcome, then, of her visit to Eleanor and her subsequent +cogitations, was that Martin, when he came home that night, found her +unusually affectionate and inclined to be misty about the eyes. "I'm +a--lucky guy, all right"--this was her explanation,--"being married to +you. Instead of any of the others." + +He was a satisfactory old dear. He took her surplus tenderness as so +much to the good, and didn't bother over not knowing what it was all +about. + +Eleanor was right in her surmise that Rose had really taken a fancy to +Jane Lake. She was truly--and really humbly--grateful to Jane, in the +first place, for liking her, finding her, in Jane's own phrase, "worth +while," and her ideas worth listening to. Because here was something, +you see, that she could take at its face value. There was no +long-circuited sex attraction to discount everything, in Jane's case. +But she had another reason. + +Rodney, it seemed, had told the Lakes about the prospective baby the +very morning after he'd learned the news himself, and Jane--this was +perfectly characteristic of her--had come straight up to see Rose about +it; even before Frederica. And about the first thing she said was: + +"Which do you want--a boy or a girl?" + +Rose looked puzzled, then surprised. "Why," she said at last, "I don't +believe I know." + +"It's funny about that," said Jane. "The one thing I was frightened +about--the first time, you know--was that it might be a girl. I think +Barry really wanted a girl, too. He does now, and we're going to try to +have one, though we can't rightly afford it. But I'm just primitive +enough--I'm a cave person, really--to have felt that having a girl, at +least before you had a boy, would be a sort of disgrace. Like the Hindoo +women in Kipling. But don't you really care?" + +"Why, the queer thing is," said Rose, who had been in a daze ever since +Jane's first question, "that I hadn't thought of it as anything at all +but--It. Hardly that, really. I've known how miserable I've been, and +that there were things I must be careful not to do,--and, of course, +what was going to happen. But that when it was all over there'd be a +baby left,--a--a son or a daughter, why, that's ..." + +Her surprise had carried her into a confidence that her budding +friendship for Jane was hardly ripe for, and she pulled up rather +suddenly. "I didn't know you had any children," she concluded, by way of +avoiding a further discussion of the marvel just then. "Are they here +with you now?" + +Jane explained why they were not. They weren't babies any more, two +husky little boys of five and three, and they were rejoicing in the care +of a grandmother and a highly competent nurse. "One of those terribly +infallible people, you know. Oh, I don't like it. I get a night letter +every morning, and, of course, if one of them got the sniffles I'd be +off home like a shot. I'd like to be a regular domestic mother; not let +another soul but me touch them (Jane really believed this) but you see +we can't well afford it. Barry pays me five dollars a day for working +for him. I scout around and dig up material and interview people for +him--I used to be a reporter, you know. He'd have to hire somebody, and +it might better be me and keep the money in the family. Because the +nurse who takes my place doesn't cost near so much as that. All the +same, as I say, I don't half like it. You can preach the new stuff till +you're black in the face, but there's no job for a woman like taking +care of her own children." + +Rose listened to all this, as well as to Jane's subsequent remarks, with +only so much attention as was required to keep her guest from suspecting +that she wasn't really listening at all. Jane didn't stay long. She had +to go out and earn Barry's five dollars--she'd lose her job if she +didn't, so she said, and Rose was presently left alone to dream, +actually for the first time, of the wonders that were before her. + +What a silly little idiot she'd been not to have seen the thing for +herself! She'd been, all the while, beating her head against blind +walls when there was a door there waiting to open of itself when the +time came. Motherhood! There'd be a doctor and a nurse at first, of +course, but presently they'd go away and she'd be left with a baby. Her +own baby! She could care for him with her own hands, feed him--her joy +reached an ecstasy at this--feed him from her own breast. + +That life which Rodney led apart from her, the life into which she had +tried with such ludicrous unsuccess to effect an entrance, was nothing +to this new life which was to open before her in a few short months now. +Meanwhile, she not only must wait; she could well afford to. + +That was why she could listen with that untroubled smile of hers to the +terrible things that Rodney and James Randolph and Barry Lake and Jane +got into the way of hurling across her dinner table, and to the more +mildly expressed but equally alkaline cynicisms of Jimmy Wallace. + +(Jimmy was dramatic critic on one of the evening papers, as well as a +bit of a playwright. He was a slim, cool, smiling, highly sophisticated +young man, who renounced all privileges as an interpreter of life in +favor of remaining an unbiased observer of it. He never bothered to +speculate about what you ought to do;--he waited to see what you did. He +knew, more or less, everybody in the world,--in all sorts of worlds. He +was, for instance, a great friend of Violet Williamson's and Bella +Forrester's and was, at the same time, on terms of avuncular confidence +with Dotty Blott of the Globe chorus. And he was exactly the same man to +the three of them. He fitted admirably in with their new circle.) + +Well, in the light of the miraculous transformation that lay before her +Rose could listen undaunted to the tough philosophizings her husband and +Barry Lake delighted in as well as to the mordant merciless realities +with which Doctor Randolph and Jimmy Wallace confirmed them. She wasn't +indifferent to it all. She listened with all her might. + +If there was anything in prenatal influence, that baby of hers was going +to be intelligent! + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +AN ILLUSTRATION + + +So far as externals went, her life, that spring, was immensely +simplified. The social demands on her, which had been so insistent all +winter, stopped almost automatically. The only exception was the Junior +League show in Easter week, for which she put in quite a lot of work. +She was to have danced in it. + +This is an annual entertainment by which Chicago sets great store. All +the smartest and best-looking of the younger set take part in it, in +costumes that would do credit to Mr. Ziegfeld, and as much of Chicago as +is willing and able to pay five dollars a seat for the privilege is +welcome to come and look. Delirious weeks are spent in rehearsal, under +a first-class professional director, audience and performers have an +equally good time, and Charity, as residuary legatee, profits by +thousands. + +Rose dropped in at a rehearsal one day at the end of a solid two hours +of committee work, found it unexpectedly amusing, and made a point +thereafter of attending when she could. Her interest was heightened if +not wholly actuated by some things Jimmy Wallace had been telling her +lately about how such things were done on the real stage. + +He had written a musical comedy once, lived through the production of +it, and had spent a hard-earned two-weeks vacation trouping with it on +the road, so he could speak with authority. It was a wonderful Odyssey +when you could get him to tell it, and as she made a good audience she +got the whole thing--what everybody was like, from the director down, +how the principals dug themselves in and fought to the last trench for +every line and bit of business in their parts, and sapped and mined +ahead to get, here or there, a bit more;--how insanely hard the chorus +worked.... + +The thing got a sociological twist eventually, of course, when Jane +wanted to know if it were true, as alleged by a prominent woman writer +on feminism, that the chorus-girls were driven to prostitution by +inadequate pay. Jimmy demolished this assertion with more warmth than he +often showed. He didn't know any other sort of job that paid a totally +untrained girl so well. There were initial requirements, of course. She +had to have reasonably presentable arms and legs and a rudimentary sense +of rhythm. But it took a really accomplished stenographer, for instance, +to earn as much a week as was paid the average chorus-girl. The trouble +was that the indispensable assets in the business were not character and +intelligence and ambition, but just personal charms. + +Rose grinned across at Rodney. "That's like wives, isn't it?" she +observed. + +"And then," Jimmy went on, "the work isn't really hard enough, except +during rehearsals, to keep them out of mischief." Rose smiled again, but +didn't press her analogy any further. "But a girl who's serious about +it, who doesn't have to be told the same thing more than once, and +catches on, sometimes, without being told at all,--why, she can always +have a job and she can be as independent as anybody. She can get +twenty-five dollars a week or even as high as thirty. It's surprising +though," he concluded, "considering what a bunch of morons most of them +are, that they work as well as they do; turn up on time for rehearsals +and performances, even when they're feeling really seedy, stand the +awful bawling out they get every few minutes--because some directors are +downright savages--and keep on going over and over a thing till they're +simply reeling on their pins, without any fuss at all." + +"They can always lose their job," said Barry. "There's great merit in +that." + +The latter part of this conversation was what she was to remember +afterward, but the thing which impressed Rose at the time, and that held +her for hours looking on at the League show rehearsals, was what Jimmy +had told her about the technical side of the work of production, the +labors of the director, and so on. + +The League was paying their director three hundred dollars a week, and +by the end of the third rehearsal Rose decided that he earned it. The +change he could make, even with one afternoon's work, in the +effectiveness, the carrying power, of a dance number was astonishing. It +wasn't at all a question of good taste. There stood Bertie Willis simply +awash with good taste and oozing suggestions whose hopeless futility was +demonstrated, even to him, the moment an attempt was made to put them +into effect. The director was concerned with matters of fact. There were +ascertained methods of getting a certain range of effects and he knew +what they were and applied them--as well as the circumstances admitted. +He was working under difficulties, poor chap! Rose, enlightened by Jimmy +Wallace, could see that. A man habituated to bawling at a girl, when the +spirit so moved him, "Here, you Belmont! What do you think you're trying +to do? You try sleeping at night and staying awake at rehearsal. See how +it works!"--accustomed to the liberty of saying things like that, and +then finding himself under the necessity of swallowing hard and counting +ten, and beginning with an--"I think, if you don't mind ...!" was in a +hard case. + +Bertie Willis had his usefulness here. Sometimes Rose heard the director +whisper hoarsely, "For God's sake, don't let her do that! She _can't_ do +that!" and then Bertie would intervene and accomplish wonders by +diplomacy. + +But it must be wonderfully exhilarating, Rose thought, to know exactly +why that girl was ridiculous and what to do to make her look right. And +to be able to sell your knowledge for three hundred dollars a week. This +was the sort of thing Rodney did, when one came to think of it. She +wondered whether he could sell his special sort of knowledge for as +much. That must be: the sort of possession Simone Greville had had in +mind when she said that nothing worth having could be bought cheap. +Neither Rodney nor the director had found his specialty growing on a +bush! + +But her specialty, which in her life was to fill the place a knowledge +of stage dancing filled in the director's, was to come in a different +way. You paid a price, of course, for motherhood, in pain and peril, but +it remained a miraculous gift, for all that. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +WHAT HARRIET DID + + +She must wait for her miracle. As the weeks and months wore away, and as +the season of violent and high-frequency alternations between summer and +winter, which the Chicagoan calls spring, gave place to summer itself, +Rose was driven to intrench herself more and more deeply behind this +great expectation. It was like a dam holding back waters that otherwise +would have rushed down upon her and swept her away. + +The problems went on mounting up behind the dam, of course. All the +minor luxuries of their way of living, which had been so keen a delight +to her during the first unthinking months of their married life; all the +sumptuous little elaborations of existence which she had explored with +such adventurous delight, had changed--now that she knew they had been +bought by the abridgment of her husband's freedom, by the invasion of +the clear space about himself which he had always so jealously +guarded--into a cloud of buzzing stinging distractions. + +And they were the harder to bear now that she recognized how hard they +were going to be to drive away. It would have to be effected without +wounding Rodney's primitive masculine pride--without convicting him of +being an inadequate provider. + +The baffling thing about him was that he had, quite unconsciously and +sincerely, two points of view. His affection for her, his wife, lover, +mistress, was a lens through which he sometimes looked out on the world. +As she refracted the facts of life for him they presented themselves in +the primitive old-fashioned way. + +But there was another window in his soul through which he saw life with +no refractions whatever; remorselessly, logically. Looking through the +window, as he did when he talked to Barry Lake, or James Randolph, he +saw life as a mass of unyielding reciprocities. You got what you paid +for. You paid for what you got. And he saw both men and women--though +chiefly women--tangling and nullifying their lives in futile efforts to +evade this principle; looking for an Eldorado where something was to be +had for nothing; for panaceas; for the soft without the hard. + +He was perfectly capable of seeing and describing an abstract wife like +that in blistering terms that would make an industrious street-walker +look almost respectable by comparison. But when he looked at Rose, he +saw her through the lens, as some one to be loved and desired,--and +prevented, if possible, from paying anything. + +Somehow or other those two views must be reconciled before a life of +real comradeship between them was possible; before the really big thing +she had promised Portia to fight for could be anything more than a +tormenting dream. + +Would the miracle solve this? It must. It was the only thing left to +hope for. In the shelter of the great dam she could wait serene. + +And then came Harriet, and the pressure behind the dam rose higher. + +Rose had tried, rather unsuccessfully, to realize, when during the +earlier days of her marriage she had heard Harriet talked about, that +there was actually in existence another woman who occupied, by blood +anyway, the same position toward Rodney and herself that Frederica did. +She felt almost like a real sister toward Frederica. But without quite +putting the notion into words, she had always felt it was just as well +that Harriet was an Italian _contessa_ four thousand miles away. Rodney +and Frederica spoke of her affectionately, to be sure, but their +references made a picture of a rather formidably correct, seriously +aristocratic sort of person. Harriet had always had, Rose could see, a +very effective voice in the family councils. She hadn't much of a mind, +perhaps; Rodney described it once as a small, well oiled, easy running +sort of mind that stitched away without misgivings, to its conclusions. +Rodney never could have been very fond of her. But she had something he +knew he lacked, and in matters which he regarded as of minor +importance--things that he didn't consider worth bothering much about +one way or the other--he'd submit to her guidance, it appeared, without +much question. + +She had written, on the occasion of Rodney's marriage, a letter to Rose, +professing with perfect adequacy, to give her a sisterly welcome into +the family. But Rose felt pretty sure (a fragment of talk she overheard, +an impatient laugh of Rodney's, and Frederica's "Oh, that's Harriet of +course," had perhaps suggested it) that the _contessa_ regarded Rodney's +marriage as a _mesalliance_. She had entertained this notion the more +easily because at that time what Harriet thought--whatever Harriet might +think--seemed a matter of infinitesimal importance. + +She'd discovered, along in the winter sometime, that Harriet's affairs +were going rather badly. Neither Rodney nor Frederica had gone into +details. But it was plain enough that both of them were looking for a +smash of some sort. It was in May that the cable came to Frederica +announcing that Harriet was coming back for a long visit. "That's all +she said," Rodney explained to Rose. "But I suppose it means the finish. +She said she didn't want any fuss made, but she hinted she'd like to +have Freddy meet her in New York, and Freddy's going. Poor old Harriet! +That's rather a pill for her to swallow, if it's so. We must try to +cheer her up." + +She didn't seem much in need of cheering up, Rose thought, when they +first met. All that showed on the _contessa's_ highly polished surface +was a disposition to talk humorously over old times with her old +friends, including her brother and sister, and a sort of dismayed +acquiescence in the smoky seriousness, the inadequate civilization, the +sprawling formlessness of the city of her birth, not excluding that part +of it which called itself society. + +In broad strokes, you could describe Harriet by saying she was as +different as a beautiful woman could be from Frederica. She wasn't so +beautiful as Frederica, to be sure, but together they made a +wonderfully contrasted pair--Harriet almost as perfect a brunette type +as Frederica was a blonde, and got up with her ear-rings and her hair +and all to look rather exotic. Her speech, too, and the cultivated +things she could do with her shoulders, carried out the impression. She +had a trick--when she wanted to be disagreeable an ill-natured observer +would have said--of making remarks in Italian and then translating them. + +She wasn't disagreeable though--not malicious anyway, and the very hard +finish she carried, had been developed probably as a matter of +protection. She must have been through a good deal in the last few +years. She'd had two children stillborn, for one thing, and she was +frankly afraid to try it again. She never wanted any sympathy from +anybody. If it came down to that, she'd prefer arsenic. She resisted +Rose's rather poignant charm, as she resisted any other appeal to her +emotions. With the charm left out, Rose was simply a well meaning, +somewhat insufficiently civilized young person, the beneficiary, through +her marriage with Rodney, of a piece of unmerited good fortune. She +didn't in the least mean to be unkind to her, however, and didn't dream +that she was giving Rose an inkling how she thought of her. + +Her manner toward this new member of the family was studiously +affectionate. She avoided being either disagreeable or patronizing. Rose +could see, indeed, how carefully she avoided it. She knew, too, that +Frederica saw the same thing and tried to compensate for it by a little +extra affectionateness. She even thought--though perhaps this was mere +self-consciousness--that she detected a trace of the same thing in +Rodney. + +The tie of blood is a powerful thing. Rose had never realized before how +powerful. With Harriet's arrival, she became aware of the Aldrich family +as a sodality--something she didn't belong to and never could. It was +quite true, as Frederica had said, that she and Rodney had always been +special pals. Harriet fitted into the family on the other side of +Frederica from her brother. She was a person with a good deal of what +one calls magnetism, and she attracted Frederica toward herself--made +her, when she was about, a somewhat different Frederica. She even +attracted Rodney a little in the same way. + +The time of the year (it was after the end of the social season) made it +natural for them to be together a good deal. And of course Harriet's +return, after an absence of years, made them seek such meetings. The +result was that Rose, at the end of almost a year of marriage, got her +first real taste of lonesomeness. When the four of them were together, +Rose felt like an outsider intruding on intimates. They didn't mean her +to feel that way--made a distinct effort, Rodney and Frederica, anyway, +to prevent her feeling that way; which of course only pointed it. They +had old memories to talk about; old friendships. They had, like all +close knit families, a sort of shorthand language to talk in. If Rose +came into the room where they were, she'd often be made aware that the +current subject of the conversation had been dropped and a new one was +getting started; or else there'd be laborious explanations. + +It wouldn't have mattered--not so much anyway, if Rose had had a similar +sodality of her own to fall back on--a mass of roots extending out into +indigenous soil. But Rose, you see, had been transplanted. Her two +brothers were hardly more than faint memories of her childhood. One was +a high-school principal down in Pennsylvania; the other a professor of +history at one of the western state universities. Both of them had +married young and had been very much married--on small incomes--ever +since. The only family she had that counted, was her mother and Portia. +And they were gone now to California. + +She had had a world of what she called friends, of course, of her own +age, at the high school and at the university. But her popularity in +those circles, her easy way of liking everybody, and her energetic +preoccupation with things to do, had prevented any of these friendships +from biting in very deep. None of them had been solidly founded enough +to withstand the wavelike rush of Rodney Aldrich into her life. She had +gone over altogether into her husband's world. The world that had been +her own, hadn't much more existence, except for her mother and sister +out in California, than the memory of a dream. + +But it took Harriet's arrival to make her realize this. And the +realization, when it was pressed home particularly hard, brought with it +moments of downright panic. Everything--everything she had in the world, +went back to Rodney. Except for him, she was living in an absolute +vacuum. What would happen if the stoutly twisted cable that bound her to +him should be broken, as the cable that bound Harriet to her husband +was, apparently, broken? What would she have then of which she could +say, "This much is mine"? Well, she'd have the child. That would be, +partly at least, hers. + +But Harriet's contribution to Rose's difficulties, to the mounting +pressure behind the dam, was destined to be more serious--more actual, +anyway--before very long. + +The question where Rose and Rodney were going to live after their lease +on the McCrea house ended, had begun to press for an answer. October +first was when the lease expired and it wasn't far from the date at +which they expected the baby. Rose wouldn't be in any condition for +house hunting during the hot summer months. Things would have to be +settled somehow before then. A heavy calendar of important cases had +kept Rodney from giving as much attention to the problem as he himself +felt it needed. He had delighted Rose with the suggestion that they go +out into the country somewhere. Not the real country of course, but up +along the shore, where the train service was good and the motor a +possible alternative. + +They spent some very lovely afternoons during the early days of the +emerging spring, cruising about looking at possible places. They talked +of building at first, but long before they could make up their minds +what they wanted it had become too late for that, and they shifted to +the notion of buying an old place somewhere and remodeling it. One +reason why they made no more progress was because they were looking for +such different things. Rodney wanted acres. He'd never gardened a bit, +and never would; was an altogether urban person, despite the physical +energy which took him pounding off on long country walks. But when he +heard there was a tract just west of Martin Whitney's, up at Lake +Forest, that could be had at a bargain--thirty-five thousand dollars--he +let his eye rove over it appreciatively. And Frank Crawford and Howard +West knew of advantageous sites, also, on which to expatiate with +convincing enthusiasm. The kind of house you'd have to build on that +sort of place would cost you an easy thirty thousand more. + +Rose didn't even yet know much about money, to be sure, but she knew +enough to be aghast at all that. What she tried to make Rodney look for +was a much more modest establishment--a yard big enough to hold a tennis +court, perhaps, and a house, well, that could be added to as they needed +room. + +Neither of them stuck very close to the main point on these expeditions. +They always had too good a time together--more like a pair of children +on a picnic than serious home-hunters, and they frittered a good deal of +time away that they couldn't well afford. + +This was the situation when Harriet took a hand in it. It was a +situation made to order for Harriet to take a hand in. She'd sized it up +at a glance, made up her mind in three minutes what was the sensible +thing for them to do, written a note to Florence McCrea in Paris, and +then bided her opportunity to put her idea into effect. She went out +cruising with Rose in the car two or three times, looking at places, but +gave her no indications that she felt more than the most languid +interest in the problem. She could seem less interested in a thing +without being quite impolite, than any one Rose knew. + +When she got Florence McCrea's answer to her letter, she took the first +occasion to get Rodney off by himself and talk a little common sense +into him. + +"What about where to live, Rodney?" she asked. "Made up your mind about +it yet? I suppose you know how many months there are between the first +of June and the first of October." + +"We haven't got much of anywhere," he admitted. "We know we want to live +in the country, that's about all." + +"Out in the country just as winter's getting started?" she asked. +"Settling into a new place--Rose with a new baby--everybody else back in +town;--simply no _chance_ of keeping servants? Roddy, old man, you're +entitled to be a babe in the woods, of course. Any man is who does the +kind of work you do. But it is time some one with a little common sense +straightened you out about this." + +Harriet couldn't be sure from the length of time he took seeing that his +pipe was properly alight, whether he altogether liked this method of +approach or not. + +"Common sense always was a sort of specialty of yours, sis," he said at +last, "and straightening out. You were always pretty good at it." Then, +out of a cloud of his own smoke, "Fire away." + +"Well, in the first place;" she said, "remodeling is the slowest work in +the world, and the fussiest. And you can't just tell an architect, with +a wave of the hand, to go ahead. You have to do your own fussing, which +would drive you crazy. If you had your house to-day, you'd be lucky if +the paint was dry and the thing was fit to move into by the first of +September. And next September, if it's blazing hot, won't be exactly the +time for Rose to go ramping around trying to buy furniture for a whole +establishment--because you haven't a stick yourselves, of course--and +getting settled in, hiring servants, getting the thing going. You can't +be sure you'll have till the first of October. Things like that don't +always happen exactly as they are expected to. But suppose you have good +luck and manage it. Then where are you? Out in the woods somewhere at +the beginning of winter, just when you ought to be settled comfortably +somewhere in town. + +"Oh, I know it's all very poetic, sitting in front of a roaring fire of +logs, while the wind bangs the shutters, and that sort of thing, Rose +singing to the baby and all. But you're not an Arcadian one bit. Neither +is she, really, and you'll simply perish out there, both of you, and be +back in town before the holidays. + +"Rose oughtn't to be in town this summer. But she'll have to be to put +this through. She ought to be down at York Harbor, or one of those Cape +Cod places, instead of in this horrible smoky hole. Because she's not so +very fit, really do you think? Bit moody, I'd say." + +"But good lord, Harriet, we've got to get out of here anyway, in +October. And that means we've got to have some sort of place to get +into. It is an awkward time, I'll admit." + +"No, you haven't," she said. "You can stay right here another six +months, if you like. I've heard from Florence. I met her in Paris in +April, and found she wasn't a bit keen to come back and take this house +on. Their securities have gone down again, and they're feeling hard-up. +Florence has got an old barn of an _atelier_, and she's puttering around +in the mud thinking she's making statuary. Well, when I found how things +stood here, I wrote and asked her if she'd lease for six months more if +she got the chance, and she wrote back and simply grabbed at it. All +you've got to do is to send her a five-word cable and you're fixed. +Then, next spring, when your troubles are over, and you know what you +want, you can look out a place up the shore and have the summer there." + +Rodney smoked half-way through his pipe before he made any comment on +this suggestion. + +"This house isn't just what we want," he said. "In the first place, it's +damned expensive." + +Harriet shrugged her shoulders, found herself a cigarette and lighted +it; picked up one of Florence's poetry books and eyed the heavily tooled +binding with a satirical smile before she replied. She could feel him +looking at her, and she knew he'd wait till she got ready to go on. + +"I'd an idea there was that in it," she said at last. "Freddy said +something ... Rose had been talking to her." Then after another little +silence, and with a sudden access of vehemence, "You don't want to go +and do a regular _fool_ thing, Roddy. You're getting on perfectly +splendidly. You'll be at the head of the bar out here in ten years, if +you keep on. Frank Crawford was telling me about you the other day. +You've settled down, and we thought you never would. It was a corking +move, your taking this house, just because it made you settle down. You +can earn forty thousand dollars next year, just with your practise, if +you want to. But if you pull up and go to live in a barn somewhere, and +stop seeing anybody--people that count, I mean ..." + +Rodney grunted. "You're beyond your depth, sis," he said. "Come back +where you don't have to swim. The expense isn't a capital consideration, +I'll admit that. Now go on from there." + +"That's like old times," she observed with a not ill-humored grimace. "I +wonder if you talk to Rose like that. Oh, I know the house is rather +solemn and absurd. It's Florence herself all over, that's the size of +it, and I suppose you are getting pretty well fed up with it. But what +does that matter for six months more? Heavens! You won't know where +you're living. But the place is comfortable, and there's room in it for +nurses and all and the best doctor in town in the line you'll want, is +right around the corner. And, as I say, when your troubles are over and +you know what you want ..." + +He pocketed his pipe and got up out of this chair. + +"There's something in it," he admitted. "I'll think it over." + +"Better cable Florence as soon as you can," she advised. "She'll want to +know ..." + +Rose protested when the plan for living six months more in Florence +McCrea's house was broached to her. She made the best fight she could. +But Harriet's arguments, re-stated now by Rodney with full conviction, +were too much for her. When she broke down and cried, as she couldn't +help doing, Rodney soothed and comforted her, assured her that this +notion of hers about the expensiveness of it all, was just a +notion--obsession was the word he finally came to--which she must +struggle against as best she could. She'd see things in a truer +proportion afterward. + +Then it came out that he had made all his plans for a long summer +vacation. There was no court work in July and August anyway. He was +going to carry her off to a quiet little place out on Cape Cod that he +knew about, and just luxuriate in her; have her all to himself--not a +soul they knew about them. They would lie about in the sands all day, +building air castles. If she got tired of him, any person she wanted to +see should be telegraphed for forthwith. The one thing she had to bear +in mind was that she was to be happy and not bother about things; leave +everything to him. + +This plan was carried out, and in a paradise, made up of blue sea, white +sands, warm sun and Rodney--Rodney always there, and queerly content to +drowse away the time with her, she almost forgot the great dam and the +pressure of the waters that had mounted up behind it. Was it an +obsession just as Rodney said? Would she find when it was all over and +she rallied herself for the great endeavor, that there was, after all, +no battle to be fought--nothing but a baby at her breast? + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +FATE PLAYS A JOKE + + +Traveling bars flowing along parallel, black and white; the white ones +incandescent;--and a small helpless harried thing struggling to keep in +the shadow of the black ones, or to regain it again across the pitiless +zone of white that the little helpless thing called pain.--Traveling +bars flowing along endlessly. + +And then a great ball whirling in planetary space, half dark, half +incandescent white, having for its sole inhabitant, the small harried +thing that struggled to keep in the dark out of the glare of that +pitiless white pain.--One watched its struggles from a long way +off--like God.--But the ball whirled drunkenly and it made one sick to +look.--And then a supervening chaos--no longer a ball but still +whirling, reeling, tottering. Rectangles of light, which, had they kept +still, would have been windows--a mirror. + +And then, very fine and small and weak, something that knew it was Rose +Stanton--Rose Stanton lying in a bed with people about her. She let her +eyes fall heavily shut again lest they should discover she was there and +want her to speak or think. + +The bars came back, but the whiteness of them was no longer so white, +and slowly they faded out. Then, for a long time, nothing. Then sounds, +movements--soft, skilful, disciplined sounds and movements. And, +presently, a hand--a firm powerful hand, that picked up and supported a +heavy limp wrist--Rose Stanton's wrist--and two sensitive finger-tips +that rested lightly on the upper surface of it. After that, an even +measured voice--a voice of authority, whose words no doubt made sense, +only Rose was too tired to think what the sense was: + +"She's out of the ether now, practically. That's a splendid pulse. +She's doing the best thing she can, sleeping like that. It's been a +thoroughly normal delivery from the beginning. Oh, a long difficult one, +I'll admit. But there's nothing now, that you could want better than +what you've got." + +And then another voice, utterly unlike Rodney's and yet unmistakably +his--a ragged voice that tried to talk in a whisper but couldn't manage +it; broke queerly. + +"That's all right," it said. "But I'll find it easier to believe +when ..." + +She must see him--must know what it meant that he should talk like that. +With a strong physical effort, she opened her eyes and tried to speak +his name. + +She couldn't; but some one must have been watching and seen, because a +woman's voice said quickly and quietly, "Mr. Aldrich." + +And the next moment, vast and towering, and very blurred in outline, +but, like his voice, unmistakable, was Rodney--her own big strong +Rodney. She tried to hold her arms up to him, but of course she +couldn't. + +And then he shortened suddenly. He had knelt down beside her bed, that +was it. And she felt upon her palm, the pressure of his lips, and his +unshaven cheek, and on her wrist, a warm wetness that must be--tears. + +Why was he crying? What had happened? She must try to think. + +It was very hard. She didn't want to think, but she must. She must begin +with something she knew. She knew who she was. She was Rose--Rodney's +Rose. Here was his mouth down close to the pillow saying her name over +and over and over again. And she was in her own bed. But what had +happened? She must try to remember. She remembered something she had +said--said to herself over and over again an illimitable while ago. +"It's coming. The miracle's beginning." What had she meant by that? + +And then she knew. The urgency of a sudden terror gave her her voice. + +"Roddy," she said. "There was going to be a--baby. Isn't there?" + +Something queerly like a laugh broke his voice when he answered. "Oh, +you darling! Yes. It's all right. That isn't why I'm crying. It's just +because I'm so happy." + +"But the baby!" she persisted. "Why isn't it here?" + +Rodney turned and spoke to some one else. "She wants to see," he said. +"May she?" + +And then a woman's voice (why, it was the nurse, of course! Miss Harris, +who had come last night) said in an indulgent soothing tone, "Why, +surely she may. Wait just a minute." + +But the wait seemed hours. Why didn't they bring the baby--her baby? +There! Miss Harris was coming at last, with a queerly bulky, shapeless +bundle. Rodney stepped in between and cut off the view, but only to +slide an arm under mattress and pillow and raise her a little so that +she could see. And then, under her eyes, dark red and hairy against the +whiteness of the pillow, were two small heads--two small shapeless +masses leading away from them, twitching, squirming. She stared, +bewildered. + +"There were twins, Rose," she heard Rodney explaining triumphantly, but +still with something that wasn't quite a laugh, "a boy and a girl. +They're perfectly splendid. One weighs seven pounds and the other six." + +Her eyes widened and she looked up into his face so that the pitiful +bewilderment in hers was revealed to him. + +"But the _baby!_" she said. Her wide eyes filled with tears and her +voice broke weakly. "I wanted a baby." + +"You've got a baby," he insisted, and now laughed outright. "There are +two of them. Don't you understand, dear?" + +Her eyes drooped shut, but the tears came welling out along her lashes. +"Please take them away," she begged. And then, with a little sob she +whispered, "I wanted a baby, not those." + +Rodney started to speak, but some sort of admonitory signal from the +nurse silenced him. + +The nurse went away with her bundle, and Rodney stayed stroking her limp +hand. + +In the dark, ever so much later, she awoke, stirred a little restlessly, +and the nurse, from her cot, came quickly and stood beside her bed. She +had something in her hands for Rose to drink, and Rose drank it +dutifully. + +"Is there anything else?" the nurse asked. + +"I just want to know," Rose said; "have I been dreaming, or is it true? +Is there a baby, or are there twins?" + +"Twins, to be sure," said the nurse cheerfully. "The loveliest, +liveliest little pair you ever saw." + +"Thank you," said Rose. "I just wanted to know." + +She shut her eyes and pretended to go to sleep. But she didn't. It was +true then. Her miracle, it seemed somehow, had gone ludicrously awry. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE DAM GIVES WAY + + +She began getting her strength back very fast after the next two or +three days, but this queer kink in her emotions didn't straighten out. +She came to see that it was absurd--monstrous almost, but that didn't +help. Instead of a baby, she had given birth to two. They were hers of +course, as much as one would have been. Only, her soul, which had been +waiting so ecstatically for its miracle--for the child which, by making +her a mother, should supply what her life needed--her soul +wouldn't--couldn't accept the substitution. Those two droll, thin +voiced, squirming little mites that were exhibited to her every morning, +were as foreign to her, as detached from her, as if they had been +brought into the house in a basket. + +There was a certain basis of reason back of this. At some time, during +those early hours of misty half-consciousness, it had been decided that +two children would be too much for her to attempt to nurse. + +She had a notion that this idea hadn't originated with the doctor, +though it was he who had stated it to her with the most plausible +firmness. Rodney had backed the doctor up, firmly, too. Rose was only a +girl in years--why, just a child herself; hadn't had her twenty-second +birthday yet; the labor had been long, she was very weak, the children +were big and vigorous, and she couldn't hope to supply them both for +more than a very few weeks, anyway. And, at this time of year, as the +doctor said, there was no difficulty to be apprehended from bottle +feeding. It would be better on all accounts. + +Still, it didn't sound exactly like Roddy's idea either. + +When Harriet came in for the first time to see her, Rose knew. Harriet +was living here now, running the house for Rodney, while Rose was laid +up. Doing it beautifully well, too, through all the confusion of nurses +and all. Not the slightest jar or creak of their complex domestic +machinery ever reached Rose in the big chamber where she lay. Harriet +said: + +"I think you're in great luck to have had two at once; get your duty to +posterity done that much sooner. And, of course, you couldn't possibly +be expected to nurse two great creatures like that." + +Rose acquiesced. What was the use of struggling against so formidable a +unanimity? She would have struggled though, she knew, but for that queer +trick Fate had played her. Her heart ached, as did her breasts. But that +was for the lips of the baby--the baby she hadn't had! + +When she found that struggling with herself, denouncing herself for a +brute, didn't serve to bring up the feelings toward the twins that she +knew any proper mother ought to have, she buried the dark fact as deep +as she could, and pretended. It was only before Rodney that the pretense +was necessary. And with him, really, it was hardly a pretense at all. He +was such a child himself, in his gleeful delight over the possession of +a son and a daughter, that she felt for him, tenderly, mistily, +luminously, the very emotion she was trying to capture for them--felt +like cradling his head in her weak arms, kissing him, crying over him a +little. + +She wouldn't have been allowed to do that to the babies anyway. They +were going to be terribly well brought up, those twins; that was +apparent from the beginning. They had two nurses all to themselves, +quite apart from Miss Harris, who looked after Rose: one uncannily +infallible person, omniscient in baby lore--thoroughgoing, logical, +efficient, remorseless as a German staff officer; and a bright-eyed, +snub-nosed, smart little maid, for an assistant, who boiled bottles, +washed clothes, and, at certain stated hours, over a previously +determined route, at a given number of miles per hour, wheeled the twins +out, in a duplex perambulator, which Harriet had acquired as soon as the +need for it had become evident. + +Miss Harris was to go away to another case at the end of the month. But +Mrs. Ruston (she was the staff officer) and Doris, the maid, were +destined, it appeared, to be as permanent as the babies. But Rose had +the germ of an idea of her own about that. + +They got them named with very little difficulty. The boy was Rodney, of +course, after his father and grandfather before him. Rose was a little +afraid Rodney would want the girl named after her, and was relieved to +find he didn't. There'd never in the world be but one Rose for him, he +said. So Rose named the girl Portia. + +They kept Rose in bed for three weeks; flat on her back as much as +possible, which was terribly irksome to her, since her strength and +vitality were coming back so fast. The irksomeness was added to by a +horrible harness largely of whalebone. Rose got the notion, too, that +the purpose of all this was not quite wholly hygienic. Harriet had said +once: "You know the most distinguished thing about you, Rose, +dear--about your looks, I mean--is that lovely boyish line of yours. It +will be a perfect crime if you let yourself spread out." + +This wasn't the sort of consideration to make the inactivity any easier +to endure. She might have rebelled, had it not been for that germinant +idea of hers. It wouldn't do, she saw, in the light of that, to give +them any excuse for calling her unreasonable. + +At the end of this purgatorial three weeks, she was carried to a chair +and allowed to sit up a little, and by the end of another, to walk +about--just a few steps at a time of course. One Sunday morning, Rodney +carried her up-stairs to the nursery to see her babies bathed. This was +a big room at the top of the house which Florence McCrea had always +vaguely intended to make into a studio. But, in a paralysis of +indecision as to what sort of studio to make it (book-binding, pottery +and art weaving called her about equally) she had left the thing bare. + +Rodney had given Harriet _carte blanche_ to go ahead and fit it up +before he and Rose came back from the seashore, and the layette was a +monument to Harriet's thoroughgoing practicality. There had been a wild +day of supplementing of course, when it was discovered that there were +two babies instead of one. + +The room, when they escorted Rose into it, was a terribly impressive +place. The spirit of a barren sterile efficiency brooded everywhere. And +this appearance of barrenness obtained despite the presence of an +enormous number of articles; a pair of scales, a perfect battery of +electric heaters of various sorts; rows of vacuum jars for keeping +things cold or hot; a small sterilizing oven; instruments and appliances +that Rose couldn't guess the uses or the names of. Mrs. Ruston, of +course, was master of them all, and Doris flew about to do her bidding, +under a watchful and slightly suspicious eye. (Doris was the sort of +looking girl who might be suspected of kissing a tiny pink hand when no +one was looking.) + +Rose surveyed this scene, just as she would have surveyed a laboratory, +or a factory where they make something complicated, like watches. That's +what it was, really. Those two pink little objects, in their two +severely sanitary baskets, were factory products. At precise and +unalterable intervals, a highly scientific compound of fats and proteids +was put into them. They were inspected, weighed, submitted to a routine +of other processes. And in all the routine, there was nothing that their +mother, now they were fairly born, was wanted for. Indispensable to a +certain point, no doubt. But after that rather the other way about--an +obstacle to the routine instead of a part of it. + +Rose kept these ideas to herself and kept her eye on young Doris; +listened to the orders she got; and studied alertly what she did in the +execution of them. + +Rodney had a lovely time watching the twins bathed. He stood about in +everybody's way, made what he conceived to be alluring noises, in the +perfectly unsuccessful attempt to attract the infants' attention, and +finally, when the various processes were complete, on schedule, like a +limited train, and the thermometrically correct bottles of food were +ready, one for each baby, he turned suddenly to his wife and said: +"Don't you want to--hold them, Rose?" She'd have held a couple of +glowing brands in her arms for him, the way he had looked and the way +he had said it. + +A stab of pain went through her and tears came up into her eyes. "Yes, +give them to me," she started to say. + +But Mrs. Ruston spoke before she could frame the words. It was their +feeding hour, she pointed out; a bad time for them to be excited, and +the bottles were heated exactly right. + +By that time Rose's idea had flowered into resolution. She knew exactly +what she was going to do. But she mustn't jeopardize the success of her +plan by trying to put it into effect too soon. + +She waited patiently, reasonably, for another fortnight. Harriet by that +time had gone off to Washington on a visit, taking Rodney's heartfelt +thanks with her. Rose expressed hers just as warmly, and felt ashamed +that they were so unreal. She simply mustn't let herself get to +resenting Harriet! At the end of the fortnight, the doctor made his +final visit. Rose had especially asked Rodney to be on hand to hear his +report when the examination was over. Rose and the doctor found him +waiting in the library. + +"He says," Rose told her husband, "that I'm perfectly well." She turned +to the doctor for confirmation, "Don't you?" + +The doctor smiled. "As far as my diagnostic resources go, Mrs. Aldrich, +you are perfectly well." + +Rodney was pleased of course, and expressed this feeling fervently. But +he looked across at his glowing radiant wife, with a touch of misgiving. + +"What are you trying to put over on me?" he asked. + +"Not a thing," said Rose demurely. "I thought you'd be glad to know that +I needn't be kept in cotton-wool any more, and that you'd feel surer of +it if he told you." + +"I feel surer that you've got something up your sleeve," he said. And, +to the doctor: "I don't imagine that in saying my wife is perfectly +well, you mean to suggest an absence of all reasonable caution." + +The doctor took the hint, expatiated largely; it was always well to be +careful--one couldn't, in fact, be too careful. The human body at best, +more especially the--ah--feminine human body, was a delicate machine, +not to be abused without inviting serious consequences. He was even a +little reproachful about it. + +"But there's no more reason, is there," Rose persisted, "why I should be +careful than why any other woman should--my nurse-maid for example? Is +she any healthier than I am?" + +It was indiscreet of the doctor to look at her before he answered. Her +eyes were sparkling, the color bright in her cheeks; unconsciously, she +had flattened her shoulders back and drawn a good deep breath down into +her lungs. The doctor smiled a smile of surrender and turned back to +Rodney. "I'll confess," he said, "that in my experience, Mrs. Aldrich is +almost a _lusus naturae_--a perfectly sound, healthy woman." + +Rose smiled widely and contentedly on the pair of them. "That's more +like it," she said to the doctor. "Thanks very much." + +But after he had gone, she did not spring anything on Rodney, as he +fully expected she would. She took him out for a tramp through the park +in the dusk of a perfect autumn afternoon, and went to a musical show +with him in the evening. She might have been, as far as he could see, +the Rose of a year ago. She had the same lithe boyish swing. She even +wore, though he didn't know it, the same skirt for their walk in the +park that she had worn on some of their tramps before they were married. +And when they had had their evening at the theater, and a bite of supper +somewhere, and come home, she let him drop off to sleep without a word +that would explain her insistence on getting a clean bill of health from +the doctor. + +But the next morning, while Doris was busy in the laundry, she found +Mrs. Ruston in the nursery and had a talk with that lady, which was +destined to produce seismic upheavals. + +"I've decided to make a little change in our arrangements, Mrs. Ruston," +she said. "But I don't think it's one that will disturb you very much. +I'm going to let Doris go--I'll get her another place, of course--and do +her work myself." + +Mrs. Ruston compressed her lips, and went on for a minute with what she +was doing to one of the twins, as if she hadn't heard. + +"Doris is quite satisfactory, madam," she said at last. "I'd not advise +making a change. She's a dependable young woman, as such go. Of course I +watch her very close." + +"I think I can promise to be dependable," Rose said. "I don't know much +about babies, of course, but I think I can learn as well as Doris. +Anyhow, I can wheel them about and wash their clothes and boil bottles +and things as well as she does. For the rest, you can tell me what to do +just as you tell her." + +Mrs. Ruston took a considerably longer interval to digest this reply. +"Then you're meaning to give the girl her notice at once, madam?" she +asked. + +"I'm not going to give her notice at all," said Rose. "I'm going to find +her another place. I shan't have any trouble about it though. As you +say, she's a very good nurse-maid, and she's a pleasant sort of a human +being besides. But as soon as I can find her another place, I'm going to +take over her work." + +To this last observation it became evident that Mrs. Ruston meant to +make no reply at all. She gave Rose some statistical information about +the twins instead, in which Rose showed herself politely interested and +presently withdrew. + +It soon appeared, however, that though Mrs. Ruston might be slow and +sparing of speech, she was capable of acting with a positively +Napoleonic dash. Rodney wore a queer expression all through dinner, and +when he got Rose alone in the library afterward, he explained it. Mrs. +Ruston had made her two-hour constitutional that afternoon into an +opportunity for calling on him at his office. She had given him notice, +contingently. She made it an inviolable rule of conduct, it appeared, +never to undertake the care of two infants without the assistance of a +nurse-maid. She was a conscientious person and she felt she couldn't do +justice to her work on any other basis. Rose had informed her of her +intention to dispense with the services of the nurse-maid, without +engaging any one else to take her place. If Rose adhered to this +intention, Mrs. Ruston must leave. + +It was some sort of absurd misunderstanding, of course, Rodney concluded +and wanted to know what it was all about. + +"I did say I meant to let Doris go," Rose explained, "but I told her I +meant to take Doris' job myself. I said I thought I could be just as +good a nurse-maid as she was. I said I'd boil bottles and wash clothes +and take Mrs. Ruston's orders exactly as if I were being paid six +dollars a week and board for doing it. And I meant it just as literally +as I said it." + +He was prowling about the room in a worried sort of way, before she got +as far as that. + +"I don't see, child," he exclaimed, "why you couldn't leave well enough +alone! If it's that old economy bug of yours again, it's nonsense. You'd +save, including board, about ten dollars a week. And it would work out +one of two ways: If you didn't do all the maid's work. Mrs. Ruston would +have a real grievance. She's right about needing all the help she gets. +If you did do it, it would mean that you'd work yourself sick.--Oh, I +know what the doctor said, but that's all rot, and he knew it. You had +him hypnotized. You'd have to give up everything for it--all your social +duties, all our larks together. Oh, it's absurd! You, to spend all your +time doing menial work--scrubbing and washing bottles, to save me ten +dollars a week!" + +"It isn't menial work," Rose insisted. "It's--apprentice work. After +I've been at it six months, learning as fast as I can, I'll be able to +let Mrs. Ruston go and take _her_ job. I'll be really competent to take +care of my own children. I don't pretend I am now." + +"I don't see why you can't do that as things are now. She'll let you +practise bathing them and things like that, and certainly no one would +object to your wheeling them out in the pram. But the nurse-maid would +be on hand in case ..." + +"I'm to take it on then," said Rose, and her voice had a new ring in +it--the ring of scornful anger--"I'm to take it on as a sort of polite +sentimental amusement. I'm not to do any real work for them that depends +on me to get done. I'm not to be able to feel that, even in a +bottle-washing sort of way, I'm doing an indispensable service for them. +They're not to need me for anything, the poor little mites! They're to +be something for me to have a sort of emotional splurge with, just +as"--she laughed raggedly--"just as some of the wives you're so fond of +talking about, are to their husbands." + +He stared at her in perfectly honest bewilderment. He'd never seen her +like this before. + +"You're talking rather wild I think, Rose," he said very quietly. + +"I'm talking what I've learned from you," she said, but she did get her +voice in control again. "You've taught me the difference between real +work, and the painless imitation of it that a lot of us women spend our +lives on--between doing something because it's got to be done and is up +to you, and--finding something to do to spend the time. + +"Oh, Rodney, _please_ try to forget that I'm your wife and that you're +in love with me. Can't you just say: `Here's A, or B, or X, a perfectly +healthy woman, twenty-two years old, and a little real work would be +good for her'?" + +She won, with much pleading, a sort of troubled half-assent from him. +The matter might be borne in mind. It could be taken up again with Mrs. +Ruston. + +But Mrs. Ruston was adamant. Under no conceivable circumstances could +she consent to regard her employer's wife as a substitute for her own +hired assistant. There were other nurses though, to be got. Somewhere +one could be found, no doubt, who'd take a broader view. + +Given a fair field, Rose might have won a victory here. But, as Portia +had said once, the pattern was cut differently. There was a sudden alarm +one night, when her little namesake was found strangling with the croup. +There were seven terrifying hours--almost unendurable hours, while the +young life swung and balanced over the ultimate abyss. The heroine of +those hours was Mrs. Ruston. It was her watchfulness that had been +accessible to the first alarm--her instant doing of the one right thing +that stemmed the first onrush. That the child lived was clearly +creditable to her. + +Rose made another effort even after that, though she knew she was beaten +in advance. She waited until the storm had subsided, until the old calm +routine was reestablished. Then, once more, she asked for her chance. + +But Rodney exploded before she got the words fairly out of her mouth. + +"No," he shouted, "I won't consider it! She's saved that baby's life. +Another woman might have, but it's more likely not. You'll have to find +some way of satisfying your whims that won't jeopardize those babies' +lives. After that night--good God, Rose, have you forgotten that +night?--I'm going to play it safe." + +Rose paled a little and sat ivory still in her chair. There were no +miracles any more. The great dam was swept away. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE ONLY REMEDY + + +The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's +soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to +become at last rather apologetic. He said he didn't know why her request +had got him like that. It had seemed to him for a moment as if she +didn't realize what the children's lives meant to them--almost as if she +didn't love them. He knew that was absurd, of course. + +Her own rather monstrous comments on these observations had luckily +remained unspoken. What if she did lose a child as a result of her +effort to care for it herself? She could bear more children. And what +chance had she to love them? Where was the soil for love to take root +in, unless she took care of them herself? These weren't really thoughts +of hers--just a sort of crooked reflection of what he was saying off the +surface of a mind terribly preoccupied with something else. + +She was in the grip of an appalling realization. This moment--this +actually present moment that was going to last only until she should +speak for the next time, or move her eyes around to his face--was the +critical moment of her life. She had, for just this moment, a choice of +two things to say when next she should speak--a choice of two ways of +looking into his face. A mountaineer, standing on the edge of a +crevasse, deciding whether to try to leap across and win a precarious +way to the summit, or to turn back and confess the climb has been in +vain, is confronted by a choice like that. If ever the leap was to be +made, it must be made now. The rainbow bridge across the crevasse, the +miracle of motherhood, had faded like the mist it was composed of. + +She was a mother now. Yet her relation to her husband's life was the +same as that of the girl who had gone to his office the night of the +Randolphs' dinner. And no external event--nothing that could _happen_ to +her (remember that even motherhood had "happened" in her case) could +ever transmute that relation into the thing she wanted. If the alchemy +were to be wrought at all, it would be by the act of her own will--at +the cost of a deliberately assumed struggle. There was nothing, any +more, to hope from waiting. The thing that whispered, "Wait! +To-morrow--some to-morrow or other, it may be easier! Wait until, for +yourself, you've thought out the consequences,"--that was the voice of +cowardice. If she turned back, down the easier path, to-night, it must +be under no delusion that she'd ever try to climb again, or find a pair +of magic wings that would carry her, effortless, to what she wanted. + +Well, then, she had her choice. One of two things she might do now. It +was in her power to look up at him and smile, and say: "All right, +Roddy, old man, I'll stop being disagreeable. I won't have any more +whims." And she could go to him and clasp her hands behind his head and +feel the rough pressure of his cheeks against the velvety surfaces of +her forearms, and kiss his eyes and mouth; surrender to the embrace she +knew so well would follow. + +She could make, after a fashion, a life of that. She had no fear but it +would last. Barring incalculable misfortunes, she ought to be able to +keep her looks and her charm for him, unimpaired, or but little +impaired, for twenty years--twenty-five, with care. For the rich, the +resources of modern civilization would almost guarantee that. Well, +twenty-five years would see Rodney through his fifties. She needn't, +barring accident, have any more children. He'd probably be content with +two; especially as they were boy and girl. + +The other man in him--the man who wasn't her lover--would struggle of +course. Except when she was by, the lover would probably have a bad time +of it. She'd have to find some amusing sort of occupation to enable her +to forget that. But when she was there, it would be strange if she and +her lover together couldn't, most of the time, keep the other man locked +up where he wouldn't disturb them much. + +Lived without remorse or misgivings, played magnificently for all it +was worth, as she could play it--she knew that now--it would be a rather +wonderful life. They must be decidedly an exceptional pair of lovers, +she thought. Certainly Madame Greville's generalization about Americans +did not apply to them, and she was coming to suspect it did apply to the +majority of her friends. She could have that life--safely, surely, as +far as our poor mortality can be sure of anything. She had only to reach +out her hands. + +But if, instead, she took the leap ...! + +"Roddy ..." she said. + +He was slumped down in a big easy chair at the other side of the table, +swinging a restless foot; drumming now and then with his fingers. It was +many silent minutes since the storm of reproach with which he had +repelled her plea for a part in the actual responsible care of her +children had died away. He had spoken with unnecessary vehemence, he +knew. He had admitted that--said he was sorry, as well as he could +without withdrawing from his position. But he had been met by that most +formidable of all weapons--a blank silence--an inscrutable face. Some +sort of scene was inevitable, he knew. And he sat there waiting for it. +She had been hurt. She was undoubtedly very angry. + +He thought he was ready for anything. But just the way she spoke his +name, startled--almost frightened--him, she said it so quietly, +so--tenderly. + +"Roddy," she said, "I want you to come over here and kiss me, and then +go back and sit down in that chair again." + +He went a little pale at that. The swing of his foot was arrested +suddenly. But, for a moment, he made no move--just looked wonderingly +into her great grave eyes. + +"Something's going to happen," she went on, "and before it's over, I'm +afraid it's going to hurt you terribly--and me. And I want the kiss for +us to remember. So that we'll always know, whatever happens afterward, +that we loved each other." She held out her arms to him. "Won't you +come?" + +He came--a man bewildered--bent down over her and found her lips; but +almost absently, out of a daze. + +"No, not like that," she murmured. "In the old way." + +There was a long embrace. + +"I wouldn't do it," she said, "I don't believe I'd have the courage to +do it, if it were just me. But there's some one else--I've made some one +a promise. I can't tell you about that. Now please go back and sit over +there where you were, where we can talk quietly.--Oh, Roddy, I love you +so!--No, please go back, old man! And--and light your pipe. Oh, don't +tremble like that! It--it isn't a tragedy. It's--for us, it's the +greatest hope in the world." + +He went back to his chair. He even lighted his pipe as she asked him to, +and waited as steadily as he could for her to begin. + +But she couldn't begin while she looked at him. She moved a little +closer to the table and leaned her elbow on it, shaded her eyes with one +hand, while the other played with the stump of a pencil that happened to +be lying there. + +"Do you remember ..." she began, and it was wonderful how quiet and +steady her voice was. There was even the trace of a smile about her +wonderful mouth. "Do you remember that afternoon of ours, the very first +of them, when you brought home my note-books and found me asleep on the +couch in our old back parlor? Do you remember how you told me that one's +desires were the only motive power he had? One couldn't ride anywhere, +you said, except on the backs of his own passions? Well, it was a funny +thing--I got to wondering afterward what my desires were, and it seemed +I hadn't any. Everything had, somehow, come to me before I knew I wanted +it. Everything in the world, even your love for me, came like that. + +"But I've got a passion now, Rodney. I've had it for a long while. It's +a desire I can't satisfy. The thing I want, and there's nothing in the +world that I wouldn't give to get it, is--well, your friendship; that's +a way of saying it." + +What he had been waiting to hear, of course, she didn't know. But she +knew by the way he started and stared at her, that it hadn't been for +that. The thing struck him, it seemed, as a sort of grotesquely +irritating anti-climax. + +"Gracious Heaven!" he said. "My friendship! Why, I'm in love with you! +That's certainly a bigger thing. Go back to your geometry, child. The +greater includes the less, doesn't it?" + +"I don't know whether it's a bigger thing or not," she said. "But it +doesn't include the other. Love's just a sort of miracle thing that +happens to you. You don't have it because you deserve it. The person I +made that promise to would have earned it, if any one could. But it +doesn't come that way. It's like lightning. It strikes or else it +doesn't. Well, it struck us. But friendship--there's this about it. You +can't get it any way in the world, except just by earning it. Nobody can +give it to you, no matter how hard he tries. So when you've got it, you +can always say, 'There's something that I'm entitled to--something +that's mine.' Your love isn't mine any more than the air is. I never did +anything to earn it. + +"And that's why it can't satisfy me.--Because it doesn't, Roddy. It +hasn't for ever so long. It's something wonderful that's--_happened_ to +me. It's the loveliest thing that ever happened to anybody. And just +because it's so wonderful and beautiful, I can't bear to--well, this is +hard to say--I can't bear to use it to live on. I can't bear to have it +mixed up in things like millinery bills and housekeeping expense. I +can't bear to see it become a thing that piles a load of hateful +obligations on your back. I could live on your friendship, Roddy; +because your friendship would mean that somehow I was earning my way, +but I can't live on your love; any more than you could on mine. Won't +you--won't you just try to think for a moment what that would mean to +you?" + +Now that he had sensed the direction her talk was headed in, even though +he hadn't even vaguely glimpsed the point at which she was going to +bring up, he made it much harder for her to talk to him. He was tramping +up and down the room, stopping and turning short every now and then with +a gesture of exasperation, or an interruption that never got beyond two +or three words and broke off always in a sort of frantic speechlessness. + +She knew he couldn't help it. Down underneath his mind, controlling +utterly its processes, was a ganglion of instincts that were utterly +outraged by the things she was saying to him. It was they and not his +intelligence she had to fight. She must be patient, as gentle as she +could, but she must make him listen. + +"You've got my friendship!" he cried out now. "It's a grotesque +perversion of the facts to say you haven't." + +She smiled at him as she shook her head. "I've spent too many months +trying to get it and seeing myself fail--oh, so ridiculously!--not to +know what I am talking about, Roddy." + +And then, still smiling, rather sadly, she told what some of the +experiments had been--some of her attempts to break into the life he +kept locked away from her and carry off a share of it for herself. + +"I was angry at first when I found you keeping me out," she said, "angry +and hurt. I used to cry about it. And then I saw it wasn't your fault. +That's how I discovered friendship had to be earned." + +But her power to maintain that attitude of grave detachment was about +spent. The passion mounted in her voice and in her eyes as she went on. + +"You thought it was because of my condition, as you called it, that my +mind had got full of wild ideas;--the wild idea that I wasn't really and +truly your wife at all, but only your mistress, and that I was pulling +you down from something free and fine that you had been, to something +that you despised yourself for being and had to try to deny you were. +Those were the obsessions of a pregnant woman, you thought--something +she was to be soothed and coddled into forgetting. You were wrong about +that, Roddy. + +"I did have an obsession, but it wasn't the thing you thought. It was an +obsession that kept me quiet, and contented and happy, and willing to +wait in spite of everything. The obsession was that none of those things +mattered because a big miracle was coming that was going to change it +all. I was going to have a job at last--a job that was just as real as +yours--the job of being a mother." + +Her voice broke in a fierce sharp little laugh over the word, but she +got it back in control again. + +"I was going to have a baby to feed out of my own body, to keep alive +with my own care. There was going to be responsibility and hard work, +things that demanded courage and endurance and sacrifice. I could earn +your friendship with that, I said. That was the real obsession, Roddy, +and it never really died until to-night. Because of course I have kept +on hoping, even after I might have seen how it was. But the babies' +lives aren't to be jeopardized to gratify my whims. Well, I suppose I +can't complain. It's over, that's the main thing. + +"And now, here I am perfectly normal and well again--as good as ever. +I've kept my looks--oh, my hair and my complexion and my figure. I could +wear pretty clothes again and start going out to things now that the +season's begun, just as I did a year ago. People would admire me, and +you'd be pleased, and you'd love me as much as ever, and it would all be +like the paradise it was last year, except for one thing. The one thing +is that if I do that, I'll know this time what I really am. Your +mistress, Roddy; your legal, perfectly respectable mistress,--and a +little more despicable rather than less, I think, because of the +adjectives." + +"I've let that word go by once," he said quietly, but with a dangerous +light of anger in his eyes. "I won't again. It's perfectly outrageous +and inexcusable that you should talk like that, and I'll ask you never +to do it again." + +"I won't," she flashed back at him, "if you'll explain why I'm not +exactly what I say." And after ten seconds of silence, she went on. + +"Why, Roddy, I've heard you describe me a hundred times. Not the you +that's my lover. The other you; talking all over the universe to Barry +Lake. You've described the woman who's never been trained nor taught nor +disciplined; who's been brought up soft, with the bloom on, for the +purpose of making her marriageable; who's never found her job in +marriage, who doesn't cook, nor sew, nor spin, nor even take care of her +own children; the woman who uses her sex charm to save her from having +to do hard ugly things, and keep her in luxury. Do you remember what +you've called her, Roddy? Do you remember the word you've used? I've +used a gentler word than that. + +"Oh, you didn't know, you poor blind boy, that I was the woman you were +talking about. You never saw it at all. But I am. I was brought up like +that.--Oh, not on purpose. Dear old mother! She wasn't trying to make me +into a prostitute any more then you are trying to make me into your +mistress. You both love me, that's all. It's just an instinct not to let +anything hurt me, nor frighten me, nor tire me, nor teach me what work +is. She thought she was educating me to be a lawyer so that when the +time came, I could be one of the leaders of the woman movement just as +she'd been. And all the while, without knowing it, she was educating me +to be the sort of person you'd fall in love with--something precious and +expensive--something to be taken care of. + +"I didn't understand any of that when you married me, Roddy; it was just +like a dream to me--like a fairy story come true. If any one had told me +a year ago, that I should ever be anything but perfectly happy in your +love for me, I'd have laughed at him. I remember telling Madame Greville +that our marriage had turned out well--ended happily. And she did laugh. +That was before I'd begun to understand. But I do understand now. I know +why it was you could talk to me, back in those days before we were +married, about anything under the sun--things ten thousand miles above +my head; what it was that fooled me into thinking we were friends as +well as lovers. I know why you've never been able to talk to me like +that since. And I know--this is the worst of all, Roddy,--this is the +piece of knowledge that makes it impossible--I know what a good mistress +I could make. I know I could make you love me whether you wanted to or +not; whether I loved you or not. I could make other men love me, if I +could make up my mind to do it--make them tell me all their hopes and +dreams, and think I had a fine mind and a wonderful understanding. Oh, +it's too easy--it's too hatefully easy! + +"Do you know why I told you that? Because if you believe it and +understand it, you will see why I can't go on living on your love. +Because how can you be sure, knowing that my position in the world, my +friends--oh, the very clothes on my back, and the roof over my head, are +dependent on your love,--how are you going to be sure that my love for +you is honest and disinterested? What's to keep you from +wondering--asking questions? Love's got to be free, Roddy. The only way +to make it free is to have friendship growing alongside it. So, when I +can be your partner and your friend, I'll be your mistress, too. But +not--not again, Roddy, till I can find a way. I'll have to find it for +myself. I'll have to go...." + +She broke down there over a word she couldn't at first say, buried her +face in her arms and let a deep racking sob or two have their own way +with her. But presently she sat erect again and, with a supreme effort +of will, forced her voice to utter the word. + +"I've got to go somewhere alone--away from you, and stay until I find +it. If I ever do, and you want me, I'll come back." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ROSE OPENS THE DOOR + + +The struggle between them lasted a week--a ghastly week, during which, +as far as the surface of things showed, their life flowed along in its +accustomed channels. It was a little worse than that, really, because +the week included, so an ironic Fate had decreed, Thanksgiving Day and a +jolly family party at Frederica's, with congratulations on the past, +plans for the future. And Rose and Rodney, as civilized persons will do, +kept their faces, accepted congratulations, made gay plans for the +twins; smiled or laughed when necessary--somehow or other, got through +with it. + +But at all sorts of times, and in all sorts of places when they were +alone together, the great battle was renewed; mostly through the dead +hours of the night, in Rose's bedroom, she sitting up in bed, he +tramping up and down, shivering and shuddering in a big bath-robe. It +had a horrible way of interrupting itself for small domestic +commonplaces, which in their assumption of the permanency of their old +life, their blind disregard of the impending disaster, had an almost +unendurable poignancy. A breakfast on the morning of an execution is +something like that. + +The hardest thing about it all for Rose--the thing that came nearest to +breaking down her courage--was to see how slowly Rodney came to realize +it at all. He was like a trapped animal pacing the four sides of his +cage confident that in a moment or two he would find the way out, and +then, incredulously, dazedly, coming to the surmise that there was no +way out. She really meant to go away and leave him--leave the babies; go +somewhere where his care and protection could not reach her! She was +actually planning to do it--planning the details of doing it! By the end +of one of their long talks, it would seem to her he had grasped this +monstrous intention and accepted it. But before the beginning of the +next one, he seemed to manage somehow to dismiss the thing as an +impossible nightmare. + +An invitation came in from the Crawfords for a dance at the Blackstone, +the fifth of December, and he said something about accepting it. + +"I shan't be here then, Roddy, you know," she said. + +He went completely to pieces at that, as if the notion of her going away +had never really reached his mind before. + +The struggle ranged through the widest possible gamut of moods. They had +their moments of rapturous love--passionate attempts at self-surrender. +They had long hours of cool discussion, as impersonal as if they had +been talking about the characters out of a hook instead of about +themselves. They had stormy nerve-tearing hours of blind agonizing, +around and around in circles, lacerating each other, lashing out at each +other, getting nowhere. They had moments of incandescent anger. + +He tried, just once, early in the fight, to take the ground he had taken +once before; that she was irresponsible, obsessed. There was a fracture +somewhere, as James Randolph's jargon had it, in her unconscious mind. +She didn't let him go far with that. He saw her blaze up in a splendid +burst of wrath, as she had blazed once--oh, an eternity ago, at a +street-car conductor. Her challenge rang like a sword out of a scabbard. + +"We'll settle that before we go any further," she said. "Telephone for +James Randolph, or any other alienist you like. Let him take me and put +me in a sanatorium somewhere and keep me under observation as long as he +pleases, until he's satisfied whether I'm out of my mind or not. But +unless you're willing to do that, don't call me irresponsible." + +He grew more reasonable as a belief in her complete seriousness and +determination sobered him. He made desperate efforts to recover his +self-control--to get his big, cool, fine mechanism of a mind into +action. But his mind, to his complete bewilderment, betrayed him. He'd +always looked at Rose before, through the lens of his emotions. But now +that he forced himself to look at her through the non-refracting window +from which he looked at the rest of the world, she compelled him again +and again to admit that she was right. + +"Why shouldn't I be right?" she said with a woebegone smile. "These are +all just things I've learned from you." + +After a long and rather angry struggle with himself, he made up his mind +to a compromise, and in one of their cooler talks together, he offered +it. + +"We've both of us pretty well lost our sense of proportion, it seems to +me," he said. "This whole ghastly business started from my refusing to +let Mrs. Ruston go and get a nurse who'd allow you to be your own +nurse-maid. Well, I'm willing to give up completely on that point. You +can let Mrs. Ruston go as soon as you like and get a nurse who'll meet +with your ideas." + +"You're doing that," said Rose thoughtfully, "rather than let me go +away. That's the way it is, isn't it?" + +"Why, yes, of course," he admitted. "I was looking at things from the +children's point of view, and I thought I was right. From their point of +view, I still think so." + +She drew in a long sigh and shook her head. "It won't do, Roddy. Can't +you see you're giving way practically under a threat--because I'll go +away if you don't? But think what it would mean if I did stay, on those +terms. The thing would rankle always. And if anything did happen to one +of the babies because the new nurse wasn't quite so good, you'd never +forgive me--not in all the world. + +"And," she added a little later, "that would be just as true of any +other compromise. I mean like going and living in a flat and letting me +do the housework--any of the things we've talked about. I can say I am +going away, don't you see, but I couldn't say I'd go away--_unless_ ... +I couldn't use that threat to extort things from you without killing our +whole life dead. Can't you see that?" + +His mind infuriated him by agreeing with her--goaded him into another +passionate outburst during which he accused her of bad faith, of being +tired of him, anxious to get away from him--seizing pretexts. But he +offered no more compromises. The thing he fell back on after that was a +plea for delay. The question must be decided coolly; not like this. Let +them just put it out of their minds for a while, go on with the old +routine as if nothing threatened it and see if things didn't work +somewhat better--see if they weren't, after all, better friends than she +thought. + +"If I were ill, Roddy," she said, "and there was an operation talked +about; if they said to you that there was something I might drag along +for years, half alive, without, but that if I had it, it would either +kill or cure, you wouldn't urge delay. We'd decide for or against it and +be done. It's--it's taking just all the courage I've got to face this +thing now that I am excited--now that I've thought it out and talked it +out with you--now that I've got the big hope before my eyes. But to wait +until I was tangled in the old routine and the babies began to get a +little older and more--human, so that they knew me, and then do it in +cold blood! I couldn't do that. We'd patch up some sort of a life, +pretending a little, quarreling a little, and when my feelings got +especially hurt about something, I'd try to make myself think, and you, +that I was going away. And we'd both know down inside that we were +cowards." + +He protested against the word, but she stuck to it. + +"We're both afraid now," she insisted. "That's one of the things that +makes us so cruel to each other when we talk--fear. The world's a +terrible place to me, Roddy. I've never ventured out alone in it; not a +step. A year ago, I don't think I'd have been so frightened. I didn't +know then--I'd never really thought about it--what a hard dangerous +thing it is, just to earn enough to keep yourself alive. I haven't any +illusions now that it's easy--not after the things I've heard Barry Lake +tell about. But sometimes I think you're more afraid than I; and that +you've got a more intolerable thing to fear--ridicule--an intangible +sort of pitying ridicule that you can't get hold of; guessing at the +sort of things people will say and never really quite knowing. And we +have each got the other's fear to suffer under, too.--Oh, Roddy, Roddy, +don't hate me too bitterly ...! But I think if we can both endure it, +stand the gaff, as you said once, and know that the other's standing it, +too, perhaps that'll be the real beginning of the new life." + +Somehow or other, during their calmer moments toward the end, practical +details managed to get talked about--settled after a fashion, without +the admission really being made on his part that the thing was going to +happen at all. + +"I'd do everything I could of course, to make it easier," she said. "We +could have a story for people that I'd gone to California to make mother +a long visit. You could bring Harriet home from Washington to keep house +while I was gone. I'd take my trunks, you see, and really go. People +would suspect of course, after a while, but they'll always pretend to +believe anything that's comfortable--anything that saves scenes and +shocks and explanations." + +"Where would you go, really?" he demanded. "Have you any plan at all?" + +"I have a sort of plan," she said. "I think I know of a way of earning a +living." + +But she didn't offer to go on and tell him what it was, and after a +little silence, he commented bitterly on this omission. + +"You won't even give me the poor satisfaction of knowing what you're +doing," he said. + +"I'd love to," she said, "--to be able to write to you, hear from you +every day. But I don't believe you want to know. I think it would be too +hard for you. Because you'd have to promise not to try to get me +back--not to come and rescue me if I got into trouble and things went +badly and I didn't know where to turn. Could you promise that, Roddy?" + +He gave a groan and buried his face in his hands. Then: + +"No," he said furiously. "Of course I couldn't. See you suffering and +stand by with my hands in my pockets and watch!" He sprang up and seized +her by the arms in a grip that actually left bruises, and fairly shook +her in the agony of his entreaty. "Tell me it's a nightmare, Rose," he +said. "Tell me it isn't true. Wake me up out of it!" + +But under the indomitable resolution of her blue eyes, he turned away. +This was the last appeal of that sort that he made. + +"I'll promise," she said presently, "to be sensible--not to take any +risks I don't have to take. I'll regard my life and my health and all, +as something I'm keeping in trust for you. I'll take plenty of warm +sensible clothes when I go; lots of shoes and stockings--things like +that, and if you'll let me, I'll--I'll borrow a hundred dollars to start +myself off with. It isn't a tragedy, Roddy,--not that part of it. You +wouldn't be afraid for any one else as big and strong and healthy as I." + +Gradually, out of the welter of scenes like that, the thing got itself +recognized as something that was to happen. But the parting came at last +in a little different way from any they had foreseen. + +Rodney came home from his office early one afternoon, with a telegram +that summoned him to New York to a conference of counsel in a big public +utility case he had been working on for months. He must leave, if he +were going at all, at five o'clock. He ransacked the house, vainly at +first, for Rose, and found her at last in the trunk-room--dusty, +disheveled, sobbing quietly over something she held hugged in her arms. +But she dried her eyes and came over to him and asked what it was that +had brought him home so early. + +He showed her the telegram. "I'll have to leave in an hour," he said, +"if I'm to go." + +She paled at that, and sat down rather giddily on a trunk. "You must +go," she said, "of course. And--Roddy, I guess that'll be the easiest +way. I'll get my telegram to-night--pretend to get it--from Portia. And +you can give me the hundred dollars, and then, when you come back, I'll +be gone." + +The thing she had been holding in her hands slipped to the floor. He +stooped and picked it up--stared at it with a sort of half awakened +recognition. + +"I f--found it," she explained, "among some old things Portia sent over +when she moved. Do you know what it is? It's one of the note-books that +got wet--that first night when we were put off the street-car. And--and, +Roddy, look!" + +She opened it to an almost blank page, and with a weak little laugh, +pointed to the thing that was written there: + +"'March fifteenth, nineteen twelve!' Your birthday, you see, and the day +we met each other." + +And then, down below, the only note she had made during the whole of +that lecture, he read: "Never marry a man with a passion for +principles." + +"That's the trouble with us, you see," she said. "If you were just an +ordinary man without any big passions or anything, it wouldn't matter +much if your life got spoiled. But with us, we've got to try for the +biggest thing there is. Oh, Roddy, Roddy, darling! Hold me tight for +just a minute, and then I'll come and help you pack." + + + + +BOOK THREE + +The World Alone + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE LENGTH OF A THOUSAND YARDS + + +"Here's the first week's rent then," said Rose, handing the landlady +three dollars, "and I think you'd better give me a receipt showing till +when it's paid for. Do you know where there's an expressman who would go +for a trunk?" + +The landlady had tight gray hair, a hard bitten hatchet face, and a back +that curved through a forty-degree arc between the lumbar and the +cervical vertebrae, a curve which was accentuated by the faded +longitudinal blue and white stripes--like ticking--of the dress she +wore. She had no charms, one would have said, of person, mind or manner. +But it was nevertheless true that Rose was renting this room largely on +the strength of the landlady. She was so much more humanly possible than +any of the others at whose placarded doors Rose had knocked or rung ...! + +For the last year and a half, anyway since she had married Rodney +Aldrich, the surface that life had presented to her had been as bland as +velvet. She'd never been spoken to by anybody except in terms of +politeness. All the people she encountered could be included under two +categories: her friends, if one stretches the word to include all her +social acquaintances, and, in an equally broad sense, her servants; that +is to say, people who earned their living by doing things she wanted +done. Her friends' and her servants' manners were not alike, to be sure, +but as far as intent went, they came to the same thing. They presented, +whatever passions, misfortunes, dislikes, uncomfortable facts of any +sort might lie in the background, a smooth and practically frictionless, +bearing surface. A person accustomed to that surface develops a soft +skin. This was about the first of Rose's discoveries. + +To be looked at with undisguised suspicion--to have a door slammed in +her face as the negative answer to a civil question, left her at first +bewildered, and then enveloped in a blaze of indignation. It was perhaps +lucky for her that this happened at the very beginning of her +pilgrimage. Because, with that fire once alight within her, Rose could +go through anything. The horrible fawning, leering landlady whom she had +encountered later, might have turned her sick, but for that fine steady +glow. The hatchet-faced one she had finally arrived at, made no +protestations of her own respectability, and she seemed, though rather +reluctantly, willing to assume that of her prospective lodger. She was +puzzled about something, Rose could see; disposed to be very watchful +and at no pains to conceal this attitude. + +Well, she'd probably learned that she had to watch, poor thing! And, for +that matter, Rose would probably have to do some watching on her own +account. And, if the fact was there, why bother to keep up a +contradictory fiction. So Rose asked for a receipt. + +The matter of the trunk was easily disposed of. Rose had a check for it. +It was at the Polk Street Station. There was a cigar and news stand two +blocks down, the landlady said, where an expressman had his +headquarters. There was a blue sign out in front: "Schulz Express"; Rose +couldn't miss it. + +The landlady went away to write out a receipt. Rose closed the door +after her and locked it. + +It was a purely symbolistic act. She wasn't going to change her clothes +or anything, and she didn't particularly want to keep anybody out. But, +in a sense in which it had never quite been true before, this was her +room, a room where any one lacking her specific invitation to enter, +would be an intruder--a condition that had not obtained either in her +mother's house or in Rodney's. + +She smiled widely over the absurdity of indulging in a pleasurable +feeling of possession in a squalid little cubby-hole like this. The +wall-paper was stained and faded, the paint on the soft-wood floor worn +through in streaks; there was an iron bed--a double bed, painted light +blue and lashed with string where one of its joints showed a disposition +to pull out. The mattress on the bed was lumpy. There was a +dingy-looking oak bureau with a rather small but pretty good plate-glass +mirror on it; a marble topped, black walnut wash-stand; a pitcher of the +plainest and cheapest white ware standing in a bowl on top of it, and a +highly ornate, hand-painted slop-jar--the sole survivor, evidently, of a +much prized set--under the lee of it. The steep gable of the roof cut +away most of one side of the room, though there would be space for +Rose's trunk to stand under it, and across the corner, at a curiously +distressing angle, hung an inadequate curtain that had five or six +clothes hooks behind it. + +In the foreground of the view out of the window, was a large oblong +plateau--the flat roof of an extension which had casually been attached +to the front of the building and carried it forward to the sidewalk over +what had once been a small front yard. The extension had a plate-glass +front and was occupied, Rose had noticed before she plunged into the +little tunnel that ran alongside it and led to the main building, by a +dealer in delicatessen. Over the edge of the flat roof, she could see +the top third of two endless streams of trolley-cars, for the traffic in +this street was heavy, by night, she imagined, as well as by day. + +The opposite facade of the street, like the one of which her own wall +and window formed a part, was highly irregular and utterly casual. There +were cheap two-story brick stores with false fronts that carried them up +a half story higher. There were little gable-ended cottages with their +fronts hacked out into show-windows. There were double houses of brick +with stone trimmings that once had had some residential pretensions. The +one characteristic that they possessed in common, was that of having +been designed, patently, for some purpose totally different from the one +they now served. + +The shops on the street level had, for the most part, an air of shabby +prosperity. There was, within the space Rose's window commanded, a cheap +little tailor shop, the important part of whose business was advertised +by the sign "pressing done." There was a tobacconist's shop whose +unwashed windows revealed an array of large wooden buckets and dusty +lithographs; a shoe shop that did repairing neatly while you waited; a +rather fly-specked looking bakery. There was a saloon on the corner, and +beside it, a four-foot doorway with a painted transom over it that +announced it as the entrance of the Bellevue Hotel. + +The signs on the second-story windows indicated dentist parlors, the +homes of mid-wives, ladies' tailors and dressmakers, and everywhere +furnished rooms for light housekeeping to let. + +The people who patronized those shops, who drank their beer at the +corner saloon, who'd be coming hurriedly in the night to ring up the +mid-wife, who smoked the sort of tobacco that was sold from those big +wooden buckets; the people who lounged along the wide sidewalks, or came +riding down-town at seven in the morning, and back at six at night, +packed so tight that they couldn't get their arms up to hold by the +straps in the big roaring cars that kept that incessant procession going +in the middle of the street--they all inhabited, Rose realized, a world +utterly different from the one she had left. The distance between the +hurrying life she looked out on through her grimy window, and that which +she had been wont to contemplate through Florence McCrea's exquisitely +leaded casements, was simply planetary. + +And yet, queerly enough, in terms of literal lineal measurement, the +distance between the windows themselves, was less than a thousand yards. +Less than ten minutes' walking from the mouth of the little tunnel +alongside the delicatessen shop, would take her back to her husband's +door. She had, in her flight out into the new world, doubled back on her +trail. And, such is the enormous social and spiritual distance between +North Clark Street and The Drive, she was as safely hidden here, as +completely out of the orbit of any of her friends, or even of her +friends' servants, as she could have been in New York or in San +Francisco. + +Having to come away furtively like this was a terrible countermine +beneath her courage. If only she could have had a flourish of defiant +trumpets to speed her on her way! But, done like that, the thing would +have hurt Rodney too intolerably. His intelligence might be twentieth +century or beyond. It might acquiesce in, or even enthusiastically +advocate, a relation between men and women that hadn't existed, anyway +since the beginning of the Christian Era; it might accept without +faltering, all the corollaries pendent to that relation. But his +actuating instincts, his psychical reflexes, stretched their roots away +back to the Middle Ages. Under the dominance of those instincts, a man +lost caste--became an object of contemptuous derision, if he couldn't +keep his wife. It was bad enough to have another man take her away from +him, but it was worse to have her go away in the absence of such an +excuse; worst of all, to have her go away to seek a job and earn her own +living. + +Rose didn't know how long the secret could be kept. Wherever she went, +whatever she did, there'd always be the risk that some one who could +carry back the news to Rodney's friends, would recognize her. It was a +risk that had to be taken, and she didn't intend to allow herself to be +paralyzed by a perpetual dread of what might at any time happen. At the +same time, she'd protect the secret as well as she could. + +But there were two people it couldn't be kept from--Portia and her +mother. Rose had at first entertained the notion of keeping her mother +in the dark. It wasn't until she had spent a good many hours figuring +out expedients for keeping the deception going, that she realized it +couldn't be done. She had been writing her mother a letter a week ever +since the departure to California--letters naturally full of domestic +details that simply couldn't be kept up. The only possible deception +would be a compromise with the truth and compromises of that sort are +apt to be pretty unsatisfactory. They suggest concealments in every +phase, and to an imaginative mind, are more terrifying, nine times in +ten, than the truth you're trying to soften. Then, too, the story given +out to Rodney's friends being that Rose was in California with her +mother and Portia, left the chance always open for some contretemps +which would lead to her mother's discovering the truth in a surprising +and shocking way. + +But the truth itself, confidently stated, not as a tragic ending, but +as the splendid hopeful beginning of a life of truer happiness for Rose +and her husband, needn't be a shock. So this was what Rose had borne +down on in her letter to Portia. It wasn't a very long letter, +considering how much it had to tell. + + "... I have found the big thing couldn't be had without a fight," + she wrote. "You shouldn't be surprised, because you've probably + found out for yourself that nothing worth having comes very easily. + But you're not to worry about me, nor be afraid for me, because I'm + going to win. I'm making the fight, somehow, for you as well as for + myself. I want you to know that. I think that realizing I was + living your life as well as mine, is what has given me the courage + to start.... + + "I've got some plans, but I'm not going to tell you what they are. + But I'll write to you every week and tell you what I've done and I + want you to write to Rodney. I want to be sure that you understand + this: Rodney isn't to blame for what's happened. I don't feel that + I am, either, exactly. We're just in a situation that there's only + one real way out of. I don't know whether he sees that yet or not. + He's too terribly hurt and bewildered. But we haven't quarreled, + and I believe we're further in love with each other than we've ever + been before. I know I am with him.... + + "Break this thing to mother as gently as you like, but tell her + everything before you stop...." + +This letter written and despatched, she had worked out the details of +her departure with a good deal of care. In her own house, before her +servants, she had tried to act--and she felt satisfied that her attempt +was successful--just as she would have done had her pretended telegram +really come from Portia. She had packed, looked up trains, made a +reservation. She had called up Frederica and told her the news. The +train she had selected left at an hour and on a day when she knew +Frederica wouldn't be able to come and see her off. Frederica had come +down to the house of course to say good-by to her, and carrying her +pretense through that scene, that had for her so much deeper and more +poignant a regret than she dared show--because she really loved +Frederica--was, next to bidding the twins good-by, the hardest thing she +had to go through with. Lying and pretending were always terribly hard +for Rose, and a lie to any one she was fond of, almost impossible. The +only thing that enabled her to see it through, was the consideration +that she was doing it for Rodney. He'd probably tell Frederica what had +happened in time, but Rose was determined that he should have the +privilege of choosing his own time for doing it. + +Her bag was packed, her trunk was gone, her motor waiting at the door to +take her to the station, when the maid Doris brought the twins home from +their airing. This wasn't chance, but prearrangement. + +"Give them to me;" Rose said, "and then you may go up and tell Mrs. +Ruston she may have them in a few minutes." + +She took them into her bedroom and laid them side by side on her bed. +They had thriven finely--justified, as far as that went, Harriet's +decision in favor of bottle feeding. Had she died back there in that bed +of pain, never come out of the ether at all, they'd still be just like +this--plump, placid, methodical. Rose had thought of that a hundred +times, but it wasn't what she was thinking of now. + +The thing that caught her as she stood looking down on them, was the +wave of sudden pity. She saw them suddenly as persons with the long road +all ahead of them, as a boy and a girl, a youth and a maid, a man and a +woman. They were destined to have their hopes and loves, fears, +triumphs, tragedies perhaps. The boy there, Rodney, might have to face, +some day, the situation his father confronted now; might have to come +back into an empty home, and turn a stiff inexpressive face on a coolly +curious world. Little Portia there might find herself, some day, gazing +with wide seared eyes, at a life some unexpected turn of the wheel of +Fate had thrust her, all unprepared, into the midst of. Or it might be +her fate to love without attracting love--to drain all the blood out of +her life in necessary sacrifices; to wither that some one else might +have a chance to grow. Those possibilities were all there before these +two solemn, staring, little helpless things on the bed. What toys of +Chance they were! + +She'd never thought of them like that before. The baby she had looked +forward to--the baby she hadn't had--had never been thought of that way +either. It was to be something to provide her, Rose, with an occupation; +to enable her to interpret her life in new terms; to make an alchemic +change in the very substance of it. The transmutation hadn't taken +place. She surmised now, dimly, that she hadn't deserved it should. + +"You've never had a mother at all, you poor little mites," she said. +"But you're going to have one some day. You're going to be able to come +to her with your troubles, because she'll have had troubles herself. +She'll help you bear your hurts, because she's had hurts of her own. And +she'll be able to teach you to stand the gaff, because she's stood it +herself." + +For the first time since they were born, she was thinking of their need +of her rather than of her need of them and with that thought, came for +the first time, the surge of passionate maternal love that she had +waited for, so long in vain. There was, suddenly, an intolerable ache in +her heart that could only have been satisfied by crushing them up +against her breast; kissing their hands--their feet. + +Rose stood there quivering, giddy with the force of it. "Oh, you +darlings!" she said. "But wait--wait until I deserve it!" And without +touching them at all, she went to the door and opened it. Mrs. Ruston +and Doris were both waiting in the hall. + +"I must go now," she said. "Good-by. Keep them carefully for me." Her +voice was steady, and though her eyes were bright, there was no trace of +tears upon her cheeks. But there was a kind of glory shining in her face +that was too much for Doris, who turned away and sobbed loudly. Even +Mrs. Ruston's eyes were wet. + +"Good-by," said Rose again, and went down composedly enough to her car. + +She rode down to the station, shook hands with and said good-by to +Otto, the chauffeur, allowed the porter to carry her bag into the +waiting-room. There she tipped the porter, picked up the bag herself, +and walked out the other door; crossed over to Clark Street and took a +street-car. At Chicago Avenue she got off and walked north, keeping her +eye open for placards advertising rooms to let. It was at the end of +about a half mile that she found the hatchet-faced landlady, paid her +three dollars, and locked her door, as a symbol, perhaps, of the bigger +heavier door that she had swung to and locked on the whole of her past +life. + +Amid all the welter of emotions boiling up within her, grief was not +present. There was a very deep-reaching excitement that sharpened all +her faculties; that even made her see colors more brightly and hear +fainter sounds. There was an intent eagerness to get the new life fairly +begun. But, strangest of all, and yet so vivid that even its strangeness +couldn't prevent her being aware of it, was a perfectly enormous relief. +The thing which, when she had first faced it as the only thoroughfare to +the real life she so passionately wanted, had seemed such a veritable +nightmare, was an accomplished fact. The week of acute agony she had +lived through while she was forcing her sudden resolution on Rodney had +been all but unendurable with the enforced contemplation of the moment +of parting which it brought so relentlessly nearer. There had been a +terror, too, lest when the moment actually came, she couldn't do it. +Well, and now it had come and gone! The surgery of the thing was over. +The nerves and sinews were cut. The thing was done. The girl who stood +there now in her three-dollar room was free; had won a fresh blank page +to write the characters of her life upon. + +She felt a little guilty about this. What heartless sort of a monster +must she be to feel--why, actually happy, at a moment like this? She +ought to be prone on the bed, her face buried in the musty pillow, +sobbing her heart out. + +But presently, standing there, looking down on the lumpy bed, she smiled +widely instead, over the notion of doing it as a sort of concession to +respectability. She had got her absolution from Rodney himself out of +the memory of their first real talk together. Discipline, he'd said, was +accepting the facts of life as they were. Not raising a lamentation +because they weren't different. The only way you had of getting anywhere +was by riding on the backs of your own passions. Well, her great ride +was just beginning! + +Rose dusted the mirror with a towel--a reckless act, as she saw for +herself, when she discovered she was going to have to use that towel for +a week--and took an appraising look at herself. Then she nodded +confidently--there was nothing the matter with her looks--and resumed +her ulster, her rubbers and her umbrella, for it was the kind of +December day that called for all three. Her landlady could stick the +receipt under the door, she reflected, as she locked it. + +Two blocks down the street, she found, as predicted, the cigar store +with the blue sign, "Schulz Express," and left her trunk check there +with her address and fifty cents. Then, putting up her umbrella, and +glowingly conscious that she was saving a nickel by so doing, she set +off down-town afoot to get a job. She meant to get it that very +afternoon. And, partly because she meant to so very definitely, she did. + +I don't mean to say that getting a job is a purely volitional matter. +There is the factor of luck, always large of course, though not quite so +large as a great many people suppose, and the factor of intelligence. +Rose's intelligence had been in pretty active training for the last +year. Ever since her talk with Simone Greville had set her thinking, she +had been learning how to weigh and assess facts apart from their +emotional nebulae. She'd taught herself how to look a disagreeable or +humiliating fact in the face as steadily and as coolly as she looked at +any other fact. + +She had accumulated a whole lot of facts about women in industry from +Barry Lake and Jane. She knew the sort of job and the sort of pay that +the average untrained woman gets. She knew some of the reasons why the +pay was so miserably, intolerably small. She knew about the vast army of +young women who weren't expected to be fully self-supporting, who +counted on marrying comfortably enough some day, and accepted board and +lodging at home as one of the natural laws of existence. But who, if +they wanted pocket money, pretty enough clothes to make them attractive +enough for men to want to marry; who, if they wanted to escape the +stupid drudgery of housework at home, had to go to work. They'd rather +get eight dollars a week than six, of course, or ten than eight. But as +long as even six was velvet (cotton-backed velvet, one might say) they'd +take that, cheerfully oblivious to the fact, as naturally one might +expect them to be, that by taking six, they established a standard at +which a girl who had to earn her own living simply couldn't live. + +Rose knew exactly what would happen to her if she went to one of the big +State Street department stores and asked for a job. Jane had been trying +some experiments lately, and stating her results with convincing +vivacity at their little dinners afterward. There was no thoroughfare +there. + +She knew too, what sort of life she'd have to face if she offered +herself out in the West Side factory district as a cracker packer, a +chocolate dipper, a glove stitcher; any of those things. You got a sort +of training, of course, at any one of these trades. You learned to +develop a certain uncanny miraculous speed and skill in some one small +operation, as remorseless and unvaried as the coming into mesh and out +again of two cogs in a pair of gears. But the very highest skill could +just about be made to keep you alive, and it led to nothing else. You +wore out your body and asphyxiated your soul. + +Rose didn't mean to do that. She was holding both body and soul in +trust. The penitential mood that had resulted from her talk with Portia +was utterly gone. She wasn't looking for hurts. Deliberately to impose +tortures on herself was as far from her intent as shirking any of the +inevitable trials that should come to her in the course of the day's +work. The only way she could see to a life of decent self-respecting +independence lay through some sort of special training--business +training, she thought. She'd begin by learning to be a stenographer--a +cracking good stenographer. Miss Beach had begun that way. She had a +real job. + +Only, Rose had first to get a job that would pay for her training; and +not only pay for it, but leave time for it; a problem which might have +seemed like the problem of lifting yourself by your boot straps, if it +hadn't been for Jimmy Wallace--Jimmy with his talk about chorus-girls. + +The trouble with that profession, Jimmy had said, was that the +indispensable assets in it were not industry, intelligence, ambitions, +but a reasonably presentable pair of arms and legs (a good-looking face +would surely come in handy too) and a rudimentary sense of rhythm. +Another demoralizing thing about it, he had said, was the fact that the +work wasn't hard enough, except during rehearsal, to keep its votaries +out of mischief. + +When the notion first occurred to her that these statements of Jimmy's +might some day have an interest for her that was personal rather than +academic, she had dismissed it with a shrug of good-humored amusement. +It wasn't until her idea of leaving Rodney and going out and making a +living and a life for herself had hardened into a fixed resolution, and +she had begun serious consideration of ways and means, that she called +it back into her mind. There was no use blinking the facts. The one +marketable asset she would possess when she walked out of her husband's +house, was simply--how she looked. + +Well then, if that was all you had, there was no degradation in using it +until you could make yourself the possessor of something else. And the +merit of this particular sort of job, for her, lay precisely in the +thing that Jimmy had cited as its chief disadvantage--it left you +abundant leisure. You might occupy that leisure getting into +mischief--no doubt most chorus-girls did. But there was nothing to +prevent your using it to better advantage. + +With this in mind, on the Sunday before Rose went away, she had studied +the dramatic section of the morning paper with a good deal of care and +was rewarded by finding among the news notes, an item referring to a +new musical comedy that was to be produced at the Globe Theater +immediately after the Christmas holidays. _The Girl Up-stairs_ was the +title of it. It was spoken of as one of the regular Globe productions, +so it was probable that Jimmy Wallace's experience with the production +of an earlier number in the series would at least give her something to +go by. The thing must be in rehearsal now. + +Granted that she was going to be a chorus-girl for a while, she could +hardly find a better place than one of the Globe productions to be one +in. According to Jimmy Wallace, it was a decent enough little place, and +yet it possessed the advantage of being spiritually as well as actually, +west of Clark Street. Rodney's friends were less likely to go there, and +so have a chance of recognizing her, than to any other theater in the +city, barring of course the flagrantly and shamelessly vulgar ones of +the purlieus. + +Among her older friends of school and college days, the chances were of +course worse. But even if she were seen on the stage by people who knew +her, even though they were to say to each other that that girl looked +surprisingly like Rose Aldrich, this would be a very different thing +from full recognition. She would be well protected by the utter +unlikelihood of her being in such a place; by the absence of anybody's +knowledge that she had flown off at a tangent from the orbit of Rodney's +world. Then, too, she'd be somewhat disguised no doubt, by make-up. Of +course with all those considerations weighed at their full value, there +remained a risk that she would be fully discovered and recognized. But +it was a risk that couldn't be avoided, whatever she did. + +She entertained for a while, the notion of taking Jimmy Wallace into her +confidence--he had as many depositors of confidences on his books, as a +savings bank, and he was just as safe. It was altogether likely that he +could get her a job out of hand. He was still on the best of terms with +the Globe people, and he was a really influential critic. But even if he +didn't get her a job outright, he could at least tell her how to set +about getting one for herself--where to go, whom to ask for, the right +way to phrase her request, which makes such an enormous difference in +things of that kind. + +But she wasn't long in abandoning the notion of appealing to Jimmy at +all. The corner-stone of her new adventure must be that she was doing +things for herself; that she was through being helped, having ways +smoothed for her, things done for her. If she owed her first job even +indirectly to Jimmy, all the rest of her structure would be out of +plumb. Whatever success she might have would be tainted by the misgiving +that but for somebody else's help, she might have failed. Rose Stanton +who had rented that three-dollar room was going to be beholden to +nobody! + +The news item in the paper gave her really all she needed. It told her +that a production was in rehearsal and it mentioned the name of the +director, John Galbraith, referring to him as one of the three most +prominent musical-comedy directors in the country; imported from New +York at vast expense, to make this production unique in the annals of +the Globe, and so forth. + +They hadn't rehearsed Jimmy's piece, she knew, in the theater itself, +but in all sorts of queer out-of-the-way places--in theaters that +happened for the moment to be "dark," in dance-halls; pretty much +anywhere. This was because there was another show running at the time at +the Globe. She had looked in the theater advertisements to see whether a +show was running there now. Yes, there was. Well, that gave her her +formula. + +When she asked at the box office at the Globe Theater, where they were +rehearsing _The Girl Up-stairs_ to-day, the nicely manicured young man +inside, answered automatically, "North End Hall." + +Evidently Jimmy Wallace couldn't have phrased the question better +himself. But the quality of the voice that asked it had, even to his not +very sensitive ear, an unaccustomed flavor. So, almost simultaneously +with his answer, he looked up from his finger-nails and shot an +inquiring glance through the grille. + +What he saw betrayed him into an involuntary stare. He didn't mean to +stare; he meant to be respectful. But he was surprised. Rose, in the +plainest suit that she could hope would seem plausible to her servants +for a traveling costume to California, an ulster and a little beaver hat +with a quill in it, had no misgivings about looking the part of a +potentially hard-working young woman renting a three-dollar room on +North Clark Street and seeking employment in a musical-comedy chorus. A +realization that her neat black seal dressing-case wasn't quite in the +picture, helped to account for the landlady's puzzlement about her. But +it hadn't been introduced in evidence here. And yet the young man behind +the grille seemed as surprised as the landlady. + +He repeated his answer to her question with the lubricant of a few more +words and a fatuous sort of smile. "I believe they rehearse in the North +End Hall this afternoon." + +Rose couldn't help smiling a little herself. "I'm afraid," she said, +"I'll have to ask where that is." + +"Not at all," said the young man idiotically, and he told her the +address; then cast about for a slip of paper to write it down on, +racking his thimbleful of brains all the while to make out who she could +be. She wasn't one of the principals in the company. They'd all reported +and he hadn't heard that any of them was to be replaced. + +"Oh, you needn't write it," said Rose. "I can remember, thank you." She +gave him a pleasant sort of boyish nod that didn't classify at all with +anything in his experience, and walked out of the lobby. + +He stared after her almost resentfully, feeling all mussed up, somehow, +and inadequate; as if here had been a situation that he had failed +signally to make the most of. He sat there for the next half-hour +gloomily thinking up things he might have said to her. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY + + +With her umbrella over her shoulder, Rose set sail northward again +through the rain, absurdly cheered; first by the fact that the opening +skirmish had distinctly, though intangibly, gone her way; secondly by +the small bit of luck that North End Hall would be, judging by its +number on North Clark Street, not more than a block or two from her +three-dollar room. + +The sight of the entrance to it gave her a pang of misgiving. A pair of +white painted doors opened from the street level upon the foot of a +broadish stair which took you up rather suddenly; there was space enough +between the foot of the stair and the doors for a ticket-window, but it +was too small to be called a lobby; an arc lamp hung there though, and +two more--all three were extinct--hung just outside. What gave the place +its air of vulgarity, a suggestion of being the starting and finishing +point for lewd, drink sodden revels, she couldn't determine. It did +suggest this plainly. But, in the light of what Jimmy Wallace had told +her, she didn't think it likely there'd be any reveling to speak of at +rehearsal. + +At the head of the stairway, tilted back in a kitchen chair beneath a +single gas-jet whose light he was trying to make suffice for the perusal +of a green newspaper, sat a man, under orders no doubt, to keep +intruders away. + +Rose cast about as she climbed for the sort of phrase that would +convince him she wasn't an intruder. She would ask him, but in the +manner of one who seeks a formal assurance merely, if this was where +they were rehearsing _The Girl Up-stairs_. Three steps from the top, she +changed her tactics, as a result of a glance at his unshaven face. The +thing to do was to go by as if he weren't there at all--as if, for such +as she, watchmen didn't exist. The rhythmic pounding of feet and the +frayed chords from a worn-out piano, convinced her she was in the right +place. + + +Her stratagem succeeded, but not without giving her a bad moment. The +man glanced up and, though she felt he didn't return to his paper again, +he made no attempt to stop her. But right before her was another pair of +big white doors, closed with an effect of permanence--locked, she +suspected. A narrower door to the left stood open, but over it was +painted the disconcerting legend "Bar," flanked on either side, to make +the matter explicit even to the unlearned, by pictorial representations +of glasses of foaming beer. She hadn't time to deliberate over her +choice. The watchman's eyes were boring into her back. If she chose +wrong, or if she visibly hesitated, she knew she'd hear a voice say, +"Here! Where you going!" + +She caught a quick breath, turned to the left and walked steadily +through the narrower door into the bar. It proved to be a deserted, +shrouded, sinister-looking place, with an interminable high mahogany +counter at one side, and with a lot of little iron tables placed by +pairs, their tops together, so that half of them had their legs in the +air. Its lights were fled, its garlands dead all right, but there wasn't +anything poetic about it. However, there was another open door at the +far end of the room, through which sounds and light came in. And the +watchman hadn't interfered with her. Evidently she had chosen right. + +She paused for a second steadying breath before she went through that +farther door, her eyes starry with resolution, her cheeks, just for the +moment, a little pale. If the comparison suggests itself to you of an +early Christian maiden about to step out into an arena full of wild +beasts, then you will have mistaken Rose. The arena was there, true +enough. But she was stepping out into it with the intention of, like +Androcles, taming the lion. + +The room was hot and not well lighted--a huge square room with a very +high ceiling. In the farther wall of it was a proscenium arch and a +raised stage somewhat brighter than the room itself, though the stained +brick wall at the back, in the absence of any scenery, absorbed a good +deal of the light. On the stage, right and left, were two irregular +groups of girls, with a few men, awkwardly, Rose thought, disposed among +them. All were swaying a little to mark the rhythm of the music +industriously pounded out by a sweaty young man at the piano--a swarthy, +thick young man in his undershirt. There were a few more people, Rose +was aware without exactly looking at any of them, sprawled in different +parts of the hall, on sofas or cushioned window-seats. + +It was all a little vague to her at first, because her attention was +focused on a single figure--a compact, rather slender figure, and tall, +Rose thought--of a man in a blue serge suit, who stood at the exact +center of the stage and the extreme edge of the footlights. He was +counting aloud the bars of the music--not beating time at all, nor +yielding to the rhythm in any way; standing, on the contrary, rather +tensely still. That was the quality about him, indeed, that riveted +Rose's attention and held her as still as he was, in the doorway--an +exhilarating sort of intensity that had communicated itself to the +swaying groups on the stage. You could tell from the way he counted that +something was gathering itself up, getting ready to happen. "Three ... +Four ... Five ... Six ... Seven ... _Now!_" he shouted on the eighth +bar, and with the word, one of the groups transformed itself. One of the +men bowed to one of the girls and began waltzing with her; another +couple formed, then another. + +Rose watched breathlessly, hoping the maneuver wouldn't go wrong;--for +no reason in the world but that the man, there at the footlights, was so +tautly determined that it shouldn't. + +Determination triumphed. The number was concluded to John Galbraith's +evident satisfaction. "Very good," he said. "If you'll all do exactly +what you did that time from now on, I'll not complain." Without a pause +he went on, "Everybody on the stage--big girls--all the big girls!" And, +to the young man at the piano, "We'll do _Afternoon Tea_." There was a +momentary pause then, filled with subdued chatter, while the girls and +men re-alined themselves for the new number--a pause taken advantage of +by an exceedingly blond young man to scramble up on the stage and make a +few remarks to the director. He was the musical director, Rose found out +afterward. Galbraith, to judge from his attitude, gave his colleague's +remarks about twenty-five per cent. of his attention, keeping his eye +all the while on the chorus, to see that they got their initial +formation correctly. Rose looked them over, too. The girls weren't, on +an average, extravagantly beautiful, though, with the added charm of +make-up allowed for, there were no doubt many the audiences would +consider so. What struck Rose most emphatically about them, was their +youth and spirit. How long they had been rehearsing this afternoon she +didn't know. But now, when they might have gone slack and silent, they +pranced and giggled instead and showed a disposition to lark about, +which evidently would have carried them a good deal further but for the +restraining presence of the director. They were dressed in pretty much +anything that would allow perfect freedom to their bodies; especially +their arms and legs; bathing suits mostly, or middy-blouses and +bloomers. Rose noted this with satisfaction. Her old university +gymnasium costume would do perfectly. Anything, apparently, would do, +because as her eye adjusted itself to details, she discovered romper +suits, pinafores, chemises, overalls--all equally taken for granted. +There weren't nearly so many chorus men as girls. She couldn't be sure +just how many there were, because they couldn't be singled out. As they +wore no distinctly working costume, merely took off their coats, +waistcoats and collars, they weren't distinguishable from most of the +staff, who, with the exception of the director, garbed themselves +likewise. + +Galbraith dismissed the musical director with a nod, struck his hands +together for silence, and scrutinized the now motionless group on the +stage. + +"We're one shy," he said. "Who's missing?" And then answered his own +question: "Grant!" He wheeled around and his eyes searched the hall. + +Rose became aware for the first time, that a mutter of conversation had +been going on incessantly since she had come in, in one of the recessed +window-seats behind her. Now, when Galbraith's gaze plunged in that +direction, she turned and looked too. A big blonde chorus-girl was in +there with a man, a girl, who, with twenty pounds trained off her, and +that sulky look out of her face, would have been a beauty. She had +roused herself with a sort of defiant deliberation at the sound of the +director's voice, but she still had her back to him and went on talking +to the man. + +"Grant!" said John Galbraith again, and this time his voice had a +cutting edge. "Will you take your place on the stage, or shall I suspend +rehearsal until you're ready?" + +For answer she turned and began walking slowly across the room toward +the door in the proscenium that led to the stage. She started walking +slowly, but under Galbraith's eye, she quickened her pace, +involuntarily, it seemed, until it was a ludicrous sort of run. +Presently she emerged on the stage, looking rather artificially +unconcerned, and the rehearsal went on again. + +But just before he gave the signal to the pianist to go ahead, Galbraith +with a nod summoned a young man from the wings and said something to +him, whereupon, clearly carrying out his orders, he vaulted down from +the stage and came walking toward the doorway where Rose was still +standing. The director's gaze as it flashed about the hall, had +evidently discovered more than the sulky chorus-girl. + +The young man wasn't intrinsically formidable--a rather limp, +deprecatory sort, he looked. But, as an emissary from Galbraith, he +quickened Rose's heart-beat a trifle. She smiled though as she made a +small bet with herself that he wouldn't be able to turn her out, even in +his capacity of envoy. + +But he didn't come straight to Rose; deflected his course a little +uncertainly, and brought up before a woman who sat in a folding chair a +little farther along the wall. + +Rose hadn't observed her particularly before, though she was aware that +one of the "big girls" who had responded promptly to Galbraith's first +call for them, had been talking to her when Rose came in, and she had +assumed her to be somebody connected with the show; at least with an +unchallengeable right to watch its rehearsals. But she had corrected +this impression even before she had heard what John Galbraith's +assistant said to the woman and what she said to him; for she drew +herself defensively erect when she saw him turn toward her, assumed a +look of calculated disdain; tapped a foot inadequately shod for +Chicago's pavements in December, although evidently it had experienced +them--gave, on the whole, as well as she could, an imitation of a +duchess being kept waiting. + +But the limp young man didn't seem disconcerted, and inquired in so many +words, what her business was. The duchess said in a harsh high voice +with a good deal of inflection to it, that she wanted to see the +director; a very partic'lar friend of his, she assured the young man, +had begged her to do so. "You'll have to wait till he's through +rehearsing," said the young man, and then he came over to Rose. + +The vestiges of the smile the duchess had provoked were still visible +about her mouth when he came up. "May I wait and see Mr. Galbraith after +the rehearsal?" she asked. "If I won't be in the way?" + +"Sure," said the young man. "He won't be long now. He's been rehearsing +since two." Then, rather explosively, "Have a chair." + +He struck Rose as being a little flustered and uncertain, somehow, and +he now made a tentative beginning of actually bringing a chair for her. + +"Oh, don't bother," said Rose, and now she couldn't help smiling +outright. "I'll find one for myself." + +But, whenever he had begun rehearsing, it was evident that John +Galbraith didn't mean to stop until he got through, and it was a long +hour that Rose sat there in a little folding chair similar to the one +occupied by the duchess; an hour which, in spite of all her will could +do, took some of the crispness out of her courage. It was all very well +to reflect with pitying amusement on the absurdities of the duchess. But +it was evident the duchess was waiting with a purpose like her own. She +meant to get a job in the chorus. Her rather touching ridiculousness as +a human being wouldn't stand in her way. It was likely that she had had +dozens of jobs in choruses before, knew exactly what would be wanted of +her, and was confident of her ability to deliver it. + +As Rose's heart sank lower with the dragging minutes she even took into +account the possibility that the duchess had spoken the truth about John +Galbraith's "partic'lar friend." Just the mention of a name might settle +the whole business. Then her spirits went down another five degrees. +Here she had been assuming all along that there was a job for either of +them to get! But it was quite likely there was not. The chorus looked +complete enough; there was no visible gap in the ranks crying aloud for +a recruit. + +When at last, a little after six o'clock, Galbraith said, "Quarter to +eight, everybody," and dismissed them with a nod for a scurry to what +were evidently dressing-rooms at the other side of the ball, the ship of +Rose's hopes had utterly gone to pieces. She had a plank to keep herself +afloat on. It was the determination to stay there until he should tell +her in so many words that he hadn't any use for her and under no +conceivable circumstances ever would have. + +The deprecatory young man was talking to him now, about her and the +duchess evidently, for he peered out into the hall to see if they were +still there; then vaulted down from the stage and came toward them. + +The duchess got up, and with a good deal of manner, went over to meet +him. Rose felt outmaneuvered here. She should have gone to meet him +herself, but a momentary paralysis kept her in her chair. She didn't +hear what the duchess said. The manner of it was confidential, in marked +protest against the proximity of a handful of other people--the blond +musical director, the thick pianist in his undershirt, a baby-faced man +in round tortoise-shell spectacles, three or four of the chorus people, +each of whom had serious matters to bring before the director's +attention. + +But all the confidences, it seemed, were on the side of the duchess. +Because, when John Galbraith answered her, his voice easily filled +the room. "You tell Mr. Pike, if that's his name, that I'm very much +obliged to him, but we haven't any vacancies in the chorus at present. +If you care to, leave your name and address with Mr. Quan, the assistant +stage manager; then if we find we need you, we can let you know." + +[Illustration: "I want a job in the chorus."] + +He said it not unkindly, but he exercised some power of making it +evident that as he finished speaking, the duchess, for him, simply +ceased to exist. Anything she might say or do thereafter, would be so +much effort utterly wasted. + +The duchess drew herself up and walked away. + +And Rose? Well, the one thing she wanted passionately to do just then, +was to walk away herself out of that squalid horrible room; to soften +her own defeat by evading the final sledge-hammer blow. What he had said +to the duchess licensed her to do so. If there were no vacancies ... But +she clenched her hands, set her teeth, pulled in a long breath, and +somehow, set herself in motion. Not toward the door, but toward where +John Galbraith was standing. + +But before she could get over to him, the pianist and the musical +director had got his attention. So she waited quietly beside him for two +of the longest minutes that ever were ticked off by a clock. Then, with +disconcerting suddenness, right in the middle of one of the musical +director's sentences, he looked straight into her face and said: "What +do you want?" + +She'd thought him tall, but he wasn't. He was looking on a perfect level +into her eyes. + +"I want a job in the chorus," said Rose. + +"You heard what I said to that other woman, I suppose?" + +"Yes," said Rose, "but ..." + +"But you thought you'd let me say it to you again." + +"Yes," she said. And, queerly enough, she felt her courage coming back. +She managed the last "yes" very steadily. It had occurred to her that if +he'd wanted merely to get rid of her, he could have done it quicker than +this. He was looking her over now with a coolly appraising eye. + +"What professional experience have you had?" he asked. + +"I haven't had any." + +He almost smiled when she stopped there. + +"Any amateur experience?" he inquired. + +"Quite a lot," said Rose; "pageants and things, and two or three little +plays." + +"Can you dance?" + +"Yes," said Rose. + +He said he supposed ballroom dancing was what she meant, whereupon she +told him she was a pretty good ballroom dancer, but that it was +gymnastic dancing she had had in mind. + +"All right," he said. "See if you can do this. Watch me, and then +imitate me exactly." + +In the intensity of her absorption in his questions and her own answers +to them, she had never given a thought to the bystanders. But now as +they fell back to give him room, she swept a glance across their faces. +They all wore smiles of sorts. There was something amusing about +this--something out of the regular routine. A little knot of +chorus-girls halted in the act of going out the wide doors and stood +watching. Was it just a hoax? The suppressed unnatural silence sounded +like it. But at what John Galbraith did, one of the bystanders guffawed +outright. + +It wasn't pretty, the dance step he executed--a sort of stiff-legged +skip accompanied by a vulgar hip wriggle and concluding with a +straight-out sidewise kick. + +A sick disgust clutched at Rose as she watched--an utter revulsion from +the whole loathly business. She could scrub floors--starve if she had +to. She couldn't do the thing he demanded of her here out in the middle +of the floor, in her street clothes, without the excuse of music to make +it tolerable--and before that row of leering faces. + +"Well?" he asked, turning to her as he finished. He wasn't smiling at +all. + +"I'm not dressed to do that," she said. + +"I know you're not," he admitted coolly, "but it can be done. Pick up +your skirts and do it as you are,--if you really want a job." + +There was just a faint edge of contempt in that last phrase and, +mercifully, it roused her anger. A blaze kindled in her blue eyes, and +two spots of vivid color defined themselves in her cheeks. + +She caught up her skirts as he had told her to do, executed without +compromise the stiff-legged skip and the wriggle, and finished with a +horizontal sidewise kick that matched his own. Then, panting, trembling +a little, she stood looking straight into his face. + +The first thing she realized when the processes of thought began again +was that even if there had been a hoax, she was not, in the event, the +victim of it. The attitude of her audience told her that. Galbraith was +staring at her with a look that expressed at first, clear astonishment, +but gradually complicated itself with other emotions--confusion, a glint +of whimsical amusement. That gleam, a perfectly honest, kindly one, +decided Rose to take him on trust. He wasn't a brute, however it might +suit his purposes to act like one. And with an inkling of how her blaze +of wrath must be amusing him, she smiled slowly and a little +uncertainly, herself. + +"We've been rehearsing this piece two weeks," he said presently, looking +away from her when he began to talk, "and I couldn't take any one into +the chorus now whom I'd have to teach the rudiments of dancing to. I +must have people who can do what I tell them. That's why a test was +necessary. Also, from now on, it would be a serious thing to lose +anybody out of the chorus. I couldn't take anybody who had come down +here--for a lark." + +"It's not a lark to me," said Rose. + +Now he looked around at her again. "I know it isn't," he said. "But I +thought when you first came in here, that it was." + +With that, Rose understood the whole thing. It was evidently a fact that +despite the plain little suit, the beaver hat, the rough ulster she was +wearing, she didn't look like the sort of girl who had to rely on +getting a job in the chorus for keeping a roof over her head. Looks, +speech, manner--everything segregated her from the type. It was all +obvious enough, only Rose hadn't happened to think of it. It accounted, +of course, for the rather odd way in which the landlady, the +ticket-seller at the Globe, and meek little Mr. Quan, the assistant +stage manager, all had looked at her, as at some one they couldn't +classify. John Galbraith, out of a wider experience of life, had +classified her, or thought he had, as a well-bred young girl who, in a +moment of pique, or mischief, had decided it would be fun to go on the +stage. The test he had applied wasn't, from that point of view, +unnecessarily cruel. The girl he had taken her for, would, on being +ordered to repeat that grotesque bit of vulgarity of his, have drawn her +dignity about her like a cloak, and gone back in a chastened spirit to +the world where she belonged. + +A gorgeous apparition came sweeping by them just now, on a line from the +dressing-room to the door--a figure that, with regal deliberation, was +closing a blue broadcloth coat, trimmed with sable, over an authentic +Callot frock. The Georgette hat on top of it was one that Rose had last +seen in a Michigan Avenue shop. She had amused herself by trying to +vizualize the sort of person who ought to buy it. It had found its +proper buyer at last--fulfilled its destiny. + +"Oh, Grant!" said John Galbraith. + +The queenly creature stopped short and Rose recognized her with a jump, +as the sulky chorus-girl. Dressed like this, her twenty pounds of +surplus fat didn't show. + +Galbraith walked over to her. "I shan't need you any more, Grant." He +spoke in a quiet impersonal sort of way, but his voice had, as always, a +good deal of carrying power. "It's hardly worth your while trying to +work, I suppose, when you're so prosperous as this. And it isn't worth +my while to have you soldiering. You needn't report again." + +He nodded not unamiably, and turned away. Evidently she had ceased to +exist for him as completely as the duchess. She glared after him and +called out in a hoarse throaty voice, "Thank Gawd I don't _have_ to work +for you." + +He'd come back to Rose again by this time, and she saw him smile. "When +you do it," he said over his shoulder, "thank Him for me too." Then to +Rose: "She's a valuable girl; had lots of experience; good-looking; +audiences like her. I'm giving you her place because as long as she's +got those clothes and the use of a limousine, she won't get down to +business. I'd rather have a green recruit who will. I'm hiring you +because I think you will be able to understand that what you feel like +doing isn't important and that what I tell you to do is. The next +rehearsal is at a quarter to eight to-night. Give your name and address +to Mr. Quan before you go. By the way, what is your name?" + +"Rose Stanton," she said. "But ..." She had to follow him a step or two +because he had already turned away. "But, may I give some other name +than that to Mr. Quan?" He frowned a little dubiously and asked her how +old she was. And even when she told him twenty-two, he didn't look +altogether reassured. + +"That's the truth, is it? I mean, there's nobody who can come down here +about three days before we open and call me a kidnaper, and lead you +away by the ear?" + +"No," said Rose gravely, "there's no one who'll do that." + +"Very good," he said. "Tell Quan any name you like." + +The name she did tell him was Doris Dane. + +It was a quarter to seven when she came out through the white doors into +North Clark Street. The thing that woke her out of a sort of daze as she +trudged along toward her room in the unrelenting rain was a pleasurable +smell of fried onions; whereupon she realized that she was legitimately +and magnificently hungry. In any other condition, the dingy little +lunch-room she presently turned into, would hardly have invited her. But +the spots on the frayed starchy table-cloth, the streakiness of the +glasses, the necessity of polishing knife and fork upon her damp napkin, +couldn't prevent her doing ample justice to a small thick platter of ham +and eggs, and a plate of thicker wheat-cakes. + +It occurred to her as she finished, that a quarter to eight probably +meant the hour at which the rehearsal was to begin. She'd have to be +back at the hail at least fifteen minutes earlier, in order to be +dressed and ready. She had no time to waste; would even have to hurry a +little. + +She didn't try to explore for the reason why this discovery pleased her +so much. It was enough that it did. She flew along through the rain to +her tunnel, charged up the narrow stair, and in the unlighted corridor +outside her room, collided with her trunk. Well, it was lucky it had +come anyway. She tugged it into her room after she had lighted the gas. + +You might have seen, if you had been there to see, just a momentary +hesitation after she'd got her trunk key out of her purse before she +unlocked it. It was a sort of Jack-in-the-box, that trunk. Would the +emotions with which she'd packed it, spring out and clutch her as she +released the hasp? The saving factor in the situation was that it was a +quarter past seven. In fifteen minutes she must be back at North End +Hall, getting ready to go to work at her job. Suppose she hadn't found a +job this afternoon? The thought turned her giddy. + +She plunged into her trunk, rummaged out a middy-blouse, a pair of black +silk bloomers, and her gymnasium sneakers, rolled them all together in a +bundle, got into her rubbers and her ulster again, and--I'm afraid there +is no other word for it--fled. + +She was one of the first of the chorus to reach the hail and she had +nearly finished putting on her working clothes before the rest of them +came pelting in. But she didn't get out quickly enough to miss the +sensation that was exciting them all--the news that Grant had been +dropped. A few of them were indignant; the rest merely curious. The +indignant ones allowed themselves a license in the expression of this +feeling that positively staggered Rose; made use in a quite +matter-of-fact way of words she had supposed even a drunken truck-man +would have attempted to refrain from in the presence of a woman. She +made a discovery afterward, that there were many girls in the chorus who +never talked like that; and among those who did, the further distinction +between those who used vile language casually, or even jocularly, and +those who were driven to it only by anger. But for these first few +minutes in the dressing-room, she felt as if she had blundered into some +foul pit abysmally below the lowest level of decency. + +One of the girls advanced the theory that Grant hadn't finally been +dropped; it was absurd that she should be. She was one of the most +popular chorus-girls in Chicago. The director was merely trying to scare +her into doing better work for him. She'd come back, all right. She had +reasons of her own, this girl intimated, for wanting to work, despite +the possession of French clothes and the use of a limousine. Her +"friend," it seemed, needed to be taught some sort of lesson. Grant +would come around before to-morrow night, and eat enough humble pie to +induce Galbraith to take her back. + +If this theory were sound, and it had a dreadful plausibility to Rose, +her only chance for keeping her job would be to do as well as Grant +could do, to-night, in this very first rehearsal; and she went out on +the stage in a perfect agony of determination. She must see everything, +hear everything; put all she knew and every ounce of energy she had, +into the endeavor to make John Galbraith forget that she was a recruit +at all. + +The intensity of this preoccupation was a wonderful protection to her. +It kept away the sick disgust that had threatened her in the +dressing-room; prevented her even glancing ahead to a future that would, +had she taken to guessing about it, utterly have overwhelmed her. The +intensely illuminated present instant kept her mind focused to its +sharpest edge. + +It is true that before she had been working fifteen minutes, she had +forgotten all about Grant and the possibility of her return. She'd even +forgotten her resolution not to let John Galbraith remember she was a +recruit. Indeed, she had forgotten she was a recruit. She was nothing at +all but just a reflection of his will. She'd felt that quality strongly +in him even behind his back during the afternoon rehearsal. Now, on the +stage in front of him, she was completely possessed by it. + +She didn't know she was tired, panting, wet all over with sweat. Really, +of course, she was pretty soft, judged by her own athletic standards. +She hadn't done anything so physically exacting as this for over a year. +But she had the illusion that she wasn't _doing_ anything now; that she +was just a passive plastic thing, tossed, flung, swirled about by the +driving power of the director's will. It wouldn't have surprised her if +the chairs had danced for him. + +It couldn't of course have occurred to her that she was producing her +own effect on the director; she couldn't have surmised that he was +driving his rehearsal at a faster pace and with a renewed energy and +fire because of the presence, there in the ranks of his chorus, of a +glowing, thrilling creature who devoured his intentions half formed, met +them with a blue spark across the poles of their two minds. + +She realized, when the rehearsal was over, that it had gone well and +that it couldn't have gone so if her own part had been done badly. She +hesitated a moment after he'd finally dismissed them with a nod, and an, +"Eleven o'clock to-morrow morning, everybody," from a previously formed +intention of asking him if she'd do. But she felt, somehow, that such a +question would be foolish and unnecessary. + +He had marked her hesitation and shot her a look that she felt followed +her as she walked off, and she heard him say to the world in general and +in a heartfelt sort of way, "Good God!" But she didn't know that it was +the highest encomium he was capable of, nor that it was addressed to +her. + +She carried away, however, a glow that saw her back to her room, and +through the processes of unpacking and getting ready for bed, though it +faded swiftly during the last of these. But when the last thing that she +could think of to do had been done, when there was no other pretext, +even after a desperate search for one, that could be used to postpone +turning out her light and getting into bed, she had to confess to +herself that she was afraid to do it. And with that confession, the +whole pack of hobgoblin terrors she had kept at bay so valiantly since +shutting her husband's door behind her, were upon her back. + +Here she was, Rose Aldrich, in a three-dollar-a-week room on North Clark +Street, having deserted her husband and her babies--a loving honest +husband, and a pair of helpless babies not yet three months old--to +become a member of the chorus in a show called _The Girl Up-stairs!_ Was +there a human being in the world, except herself, who would not, as the +most charitable of possible explanations, assume her to be mad? Could +she herself, seeing her act cut out in silhouette like that, be sure she +wasn't mad? Hysterical anyway, the victim of her own rashly encouraged +fancies, just as Rodney had so often declared she was? Oughtn't she to +have let James Randolph explore the subconscious part of her mind and +find the crack there must be in it, that could have driven her to a +crazy act like this? + +It didn't matter now. She couldn't go back. She never could go back +after the things she had said to Rodney, until she had made good those +fantastic theories of hers. Probably he wouldn't want her to come back +even then. He'd find out where she was of course--what she was doing. +Why had she been such a fool, going away, as not to have gone far enough +to be safe? He'd feel that she'd disgraced him. Any man would. And he'd +never forgive her. He'd divorce her, perhaps. He'd have a right to, if +she stayed away long enough. And, without her there, with nothing of her +but memories--tormenting memories, he'd perhaps fall in love with some +one else--marry some one else. And her two babies would call that +unknown some one "mother." She must have been crazy! She'd thought she +didn't love them. That had been a delusion anyway. Her heart ached for +them now--an actual physical ache that almost made her cry out. And for +Rodney himself, for his big strong arms around her! Would she ever feel +them again? + +She told herself this was a nightmare--something to be fought off, kept +at bay. But how did that help her now, when the armor must be laid +aside? Sometime or other she must turn out that light and lie down in +that bed, defenseless. She had never in her life asked more of her +courage than when, at last, she did that thing. There were nine hours +then ahead of her before eleven o'clock and the next rehearsal. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +ROSE KEEPS THE PATH + + +Rose rehearsed twice a day for a solid week without forming the faintest +conception of who "the girl" was or why she was "the girl up-stairs." +She didn't know what sort of scene it was for instance that they burst +in on through the space marked by two of the little folding chairs +brought up from the floor of the dance-hall for the purpose. The group +of iron tables borrowed from the bar and set solidly together in the +upper right-hand corner of the stage whenever they rehearsed a certain +one of their song numbers, might with equal plausibility represent a +mountain in Arizona, the front veranda of a house or a banquet table in +the gilded dining-hall of some licentious multi-millionaire. They got up +on the insecure thing and tried to dance; that was all she knew. + +During the entire period, and for that matter, right up to the opening +night she never saw a bar of music except what stood on the piano rack, +nor a written word of the lyrics she was supposed to sing. Rose couldn't +sing very much. She had a rather timorous, throaty little contralto that +contrasted oddly with the fine free thrill of her speaking voice. But +nobody had asked her what her voice was, nor indeed, whether she could +sing at all. She picked up the tunes quickly enough, by ear, but the +words she was always a little uncertain about. + +It all seemed too utterly haphazard to be possible, but Rose decided not +to ask any of the authorities about this, because, while the possibility +of Grant's return dangled over her head, she didn't want to remind +anybody how green she was. But she finally questioned one of her +colleagues in the chorus about it, and was told that back at the +beginning of things, they had had their voices tried by the musical +director, who had conducted three or four music rehearsals before John +Galbraith arrived. They had never had any music to sing from but there +had been half a dozen mimeograph copies of the words to the songs, which +the girls had put their heads together over in groups of three or four, +and more or less learned. What had become of this dope, and whether it +was still available for Rose in case she were animated by a purely +supererogatory desire to study it, the girl didn't know. + +She was a pale-haired girl, whom Rose thought she had heard addressed as +Larson, and she had emerged rather slowly as an individual personality, +out of the ruck of the chorus; a fact in her favor, really, because the +girls who had first driven themselves home to Rose through the shell of +her intense preoccupation with doing what John Galbraith wanted, had +been the vividly and viciously objectionable ones. The thing that had +prompted her to sit down beside Larson and, with this question about how +one learned the words to the songs, take her first real step toward an +acquaintance, was an absence of any strong dislike, rather than the +presence of a real attraction. + +She made a surprising discovery when the girl, with a friendly pat on +the sofa beside her, for an invitation to her to sit down, began +answering her question. She was a real beauty. Or, more accurately, she +possessed the constituent qualities of beauty. She was pure English +eighteenth century; might have stepped down out of a Gainsborough +portrait. Dressed right, and made up a little, with her effects +legitimately heightened (and warned not to speak), she could have gone +to the Charity Ball as the Honorable Mrs. Graham, and Bertie Willis +would have gone mad about her. Only you had to look twice at her to +perceive that this was so; and what she lacked was just the unanalyzable +quality that makes one look twice. + +Her speaking voice would have driven Bertie mad, too--foaming, biting +mad. It was disconcertingly loud, in the first place, and it came +out upon the promontories of speech with a flat whang that fairly +made you jump. Its undulations of pitch gave you something the same +sensation as riding rapidly over a worn-out asphalt pavement in a +five-hundred-dollar automobile; unforeseen springs into the air, +descents into unexpected pits. Her grammar wasn't flagrantly bad, though +it had, rather pitiably, a touch of the genteel about it. But now, when +she spoke to Rose, and with the lassitude of fatigue in her voice +besides, Rose heard something friendly about it. + +"I don't know what you should worry about any of that stuff for," she +said. "How you sing or what you sing don't make much difference." + +Rose admitted that it didn't seem to. "But you see," she said (she +hadn't had a human soul to talk to for more than a week and she had to +make a friend of somebody); "you see, I've just got to keep this job. +And if every little helps, as they say, perhaps that would." + +The girl looked at her oddly, almost suspiciously, as if for a moment +she had doubted whether Rose had spoken in good faith. "You've got as +good a chance of losing your job," she said, "as Galbraith has of losing +his." + +"I don't worry about it," said Rose, "when I'm up there on the stage at +work. It's too exciting. And then, I feel somehow that it's going all +right. But early in the morning, I get to imagining all sorts of things. +He's so terribly sudden. The girl whose place I got,--she hadn't any +warning, you know. It just happened." + +The Larson girl gave a decisive little nod. Not so much, it seemed, in +assent to what Rose had just said, but as if some question in her own +mind had been answered. + +"You'll get used to that feeling," she said. "You've got to take a +chance anyway, so why worry? We can work our heads off, but if the piece +is a fliv the opening night, they'll tack up the notice, and there we'll +be with two weeks' pay for eight weeks' work, and another six weeks' +work for nothing in something else if we're lucky enough to get it." + +This was a possibility Rose hadn't thought of. "But--that isn't fair!" +she said. + +The other girl laughed grimly. "Fair!" she echoed. "What they want to +print that word in the dictionary for, I don't see. Because what it +means don't exist. Not where I live, anyway. But what's the good of +making a fuss about it? We've got to take our chance like everybody +else." + +"I don't believe this piece will fall, though," said Rose. "I don't +think Mr. Galbraith would let it. I think he's a perfect wonder, don't +you?" + +The Larson girl looked at her again. "He's supposed to be about the best +in the business," she said, "and I guess he is." She added, "Dave tells +me he's going to put you with us in the sextette." + +Dave was the thick pianist, and Rose had found him in the highest degree +obnoxious. He seemed to occupy an indeterminate social position in their +ship's company, between the forecastle, which was the chorus, and the +quarter-deck, which comprised Galbraith (you might call him the pilot), +the baby-faced man with the tortoise-shell spectacles, reputed to be the +author, two awesome intermittent gentlemen identified in the +dressing-room as the owners of the piece, and the musical director, +together with one or two more as yet unclassified. The principals, when +they should appear, would, Rose assumed, belong on the quarter-deck too. +The social gap between this afterguard and Rose and her colleagues in +the chorus, was not so very wide, but it was abysmally deep. +Nevertheless, the pianist, buoyed up on the wings of a boundless +effrontery, seemed to manage to remain unaware of it. + +He had started rehearsals with this piece, it appeared, as a chorus-man, +and had become a pianist, thanks to the interposition of Fate (the real +pianist had fallen suddenly and desperately ill), and to his own +irresistible assurance that he could do anything. He could keep time and +he hit perhaps a third of the notes right. + +The chorus liked him. The girls all called him Dave, seemed to +appreciate his notion of humor, and accepted his hugs and pawings as a +matter of course. But he took his jokes, his familiarities, and his +apparently impregnable self-esteem, upon the quarter-deck--slapped the +author on the back now and then, and had even been known to address John +Galbraith as "Old man." Incidentally, he hung about within ear-shot +during conferences of the powers, freely offered his advice, and +brought all sorts of interesting tidbits of gossip and prophecy back to +the chorus. + +His announcement that Rose was going to be put into the sextette was +entitled to consideration, even though it couldn't be banked on. There +were three mediums and three big girls in the sextette. (Olga Larson was +one of the mediums and so needn't fear replacement by Rose, who was a +big girl.) Besides appearing in two numbers as a background to one of +the principals, they had one all to themselves, a fact which constituted +them a sort of super-chorus. Galbraith used to keep them for endless +drills after the general rehearsal was dismissed. + +But the intimation that Rose was to be promoted to this select inner +circle, didn't, as it first came to her, give her any pleasure. Somehow, +as Larson told her about it, she could fairly see the knowing greasy +grin that would have been Dave's comment on this prophecy. And in the +same flash, she interpreted the Larson girl's look, half incredulous, +half satirical, and her, "You've got as good a chance of losing your job +as Galbraith has of losing his." + +"I haven't heard anything about being put in the sextette," she said +quietly, "and I don't believe I will be." + +"Well, I don't know why not." There was a new warmth in the medium's +voice. Rose had won a victory here, and she knew it. "You've got the +looks and the shape, and you can dance better than any of the big girls, +or us mediums, either. And if he doesn't put that big Benedict lemon +into the back line where she belongs, and give you her place in the +sextette, it will be because he's afraid of her drag." + +Rose forbore to inquire into the nature of the Benedict girl's drag. +Whatever it may have been, John Galbraith was evidently not afraid of +it, because as he dismissed that very rehearsal, calling the rest of the +chorus for twelve the following morning, and the sextette for eleven, he +told Rose to report at the earlier hour. And a moment later, she heard +Dave say to the big show girl named Vesta Folsom (some one with a vein +of playful irony must have been responsible for this christening), +"Well, maybe I didn't call that turn." + +"You're the original wise guy, all right," Vesta admitted. "You're +Joseph to all the sure things." + +Barring Olga Larson, the chorus was probably unanimous, Rose reflected, +in looking at it like that. They accounted for her having got a job in +the first place at Grant's expense, and a promotion so soon thereafter +to the sextette, by assuming that John Galbraith had a sentimental +interest in her. Whether his reward had been collected in advance, or +was still unpaid, was an interesting theme for debate. But that, past or +present, the reward was his actuating motive, it wouldn't occur to +anybody to question. + +There was no malice in this. Rose didn't lose caste with any of them on +account of it. But a chorus-girl is the most sentimental person in the +world. If there's anybody who really believes that love makes the world +go round, she is that one. It's love that actuates men to deeds of +heroism or of crime; it's love that makes men invest good money in +musical comedies; love that makes stars out of her undeserving sisters +in the chorus; love that is always waiting round the corner to open the +door to wealth and fame for her. + +So when Grant came back and ate her humble pie in vain, and later, when +Benedict was relegated to a place in the back line, the natural +explanation was that Galbraith was crazy about the new girl. + +Of course it set Rose all ablaze with wrath when she became aware of +this. It was precisely because she had rebelled against the theory that +love was what made the world go round, that she was here in the chorus. +Had she been content to let it make her world go round, she never would +have left Rodney. The only way she had of refuting the assumption in +this case would be by making good so demonstrably and instantaneously, +that they'd be compelled to see that her promotion had been inevitable. + +It was in this spirit, with blazing cheeks and eyes, that she attacked +the next morning's rehearsal. She was only dimly aware of Benedict out +in the hall in front, viperishly waiting for the arrival of one of the +owners to make an impassioned plea for reinstatement. Her tears or her +tantrums were matters of supremely little importance. But that John +Galbraith should see that he had promoted her on merit and on nothing +but merit, mattered enormously. + +Lacking the clue, he watched her in a sort of amused perplexity. Her way +of snatching his instructions, her almost viciously determined manner of +carrying them out, would have been natural had she been working under +the spur of some stinging rebuke, instead of under the impetus of an +unexpected promotion. + +"Don't make such hard work of it, Dane," he said at last. "You're all +right, but have a little fun out of it. There are eight hundred people +out there," he waved his arm out toward the empty hall, "who have paid +their hard-earned money to feel jolly and have a good time. If you go on +looking like that, they'll think this piece was produced by Simon +Legree." + +There came the same gleaming twinkle in his eye that had disarmed her +resentment once before, and as before, she found herself feeling rather +absurd. What mattered the microcephalic imaginings of greasy Dave and +his friends among the chorus? John Galbraith wasn't the sort of man to +get infatuated with a chorus-girl. The gleam in his eye was enough, all +by itself, to make that plain. + +So, flushing up a little, she grinned back at him, gave him a nod of +acquiescence, and fell back to her place for the beginning of the next +evolution. + +"If she smiles like that," thought John Galbraith, "she'll break up the +show." At the end of the rehearsal, he said to her, "You're doing very +well indeed, Dane. If I could have caught you ten years ago, I could +have made a dancer out of you." + +It was a very real, unqualified compliment, and as such Rose understood +it. Because, by a dancer, he meant something very different from a +prancing chorus-girl. The others giggled and exchanged glances with Dave +at the piano. They didn't understand. To them, the compliment seemed to +have been delivered with the left hand. And somehow, an amused +recognition of the fact that they didn't understand, as well as of the +fact that she did, flashed across from John Galbraith's eyes to hers. + +"Just a minute," he said as they all started to leave the stage, and +they came back and gathered in a half-circle around him. "We'll rehearse +the first act to-night with the principals. You six girls are supposed +to be young millionairesses, very up-to-date-bachelor-girl type, +intimate friends of the leading lady, who is a multi-millionairess +that's run away from home. You've all got a few lines to say. Go to Mr. +Quan and get your parts and have them up by to-night." + +At half past four that afternoon, when the regular chorus rehearsal was +over, Rose asked John Galbraith if she might speak to him for a minute. +He had one foot on a chair and was in the act of unlacing his dancing +shoes, so he seemed to be, for him, comparatively permanent. He had a +disconcerting way, she had noticed, of walking away on some business of +his own in the middle of other people's sentences, intending to come +back, no doubt, in time to hear the end of them, but forgetting to. + +"Fire away," he said, looking around at her over his shoulder. Then, +with reference to the blue-bound pair of sides she held in her hand, +"What's the matter? Isn't the part fat enough for you?" + +"Fat enough?" Rose echoed inquiringly. "Oh, you mean long enough." She +smiled in good-humored acknowledgment of his joke, and let that do for +an answer. + +John Galbraith hadn't been sure that it would be a joke to Rose. He'd +been a musical-comedy producer so long that no megalomaniacal absurdity +could take him by surprise. There were chorus-girls no doubt in this +very company, who, on being promoted to microscopic parts, would be +capable of complaining because they weren't bigger. + +"All the same," said Rose, "I'm afraid I've got to tell you that I can't +take this, and to ask you to put me back into the regular chorus." + +He wasn't immune to surprise after all, it seemed. He straightened up in +a flash and stared at her. "What on earth are you talking about?" he +asked. + +"If I have words to say, even only a few, wouldn't anybody who happened +to be in the audience, know who I was?--I mean if they knew me already." + +"Of course they would. What of it?" + +"I told you," said Rose, "the day you gave me a job, that it wasn't a +lark. I had to begin earning my own living suddenly, and without any +training for it at all, and this seemed to be the best way. That's--all +true, and it's true that no one could come and, as you say, lead me away +by the ear. Nobody's responsible for me but myself. But there are people +who'd be terribly shocked and hurt if they found out I'd gone on the +stage. They know I'm earning my own living, but they don't know how I'm +doing it. I thought that as just one of the chorus, made up and all, I'd +be safe. But with these lines to say ..." + +"Now listen to me," said John Galbraith; "listen as hard as you can. +Because when I've done talking, you will have to make up your mind. In +the first place you wouldn't be 'safe,' as you said, even in the chorus. +A make-up isn't a disguise. You will be rouged and powdered, your +eyelashes blackened, your lips reddened and so on, not to make you look +different, but to keep you looking the same under the strong lights. +You're not the sort of person to escape notice. That's the reason I made +up my mind to hire you before I knew you could dance. I saw you standing +back there in the doorway. You've got the quality about you that makes +people see you. That's one of your assets. + +"So, if you're ashamed of being recognized in this business, you'd +better get out of it altogether. On the other hand, it seems to me that +if you've got to earn your living, it's nobody's business but your own +how you do it. You're the one who'll go hungry if you don't earn it, not +these friends of yours. So, if it seems a legitimate way of earning a +living to you, if you don't feel disgraced or degraded by being in it, +you'd better forget your friends and go ahead. You've made an excellent +start; you've earned a legitimate promotion. It will mean that instead +of getting twenty dollars a week when the show opens, you will get +twenty-five. It's a long time since I've given a person without +experience a chance like that. I gave it to you because you seemed +ambitious and intelligent--the sort who'd see me through. But if you +aren't ambitious, if the game doesn't look worth playing to you, and you +aren't willing to play it for all it's worth--why, good as you are, I +don't want you at all. So that's your choice!" + +His manner wasn't quite so harsh as his words, but it convinced her that +he meant every one of them right to the foot of the letter. + +She couldn't answer for a moment. She hadn't guessed that the choice he +was going to offer her would be between taking the little part he had +given her and playing it for all it was worth, defiant of Rodney's +feelings and of the scandal of the Lake Shore Drive--and going back to +her three-dollar room this afternoon, out of a job and without even a +glimmering chance of finding another. + +"Take your time," he said. "I don't want to be a brute about it, but +look here! Try to see it my way for a minute. Here are my employers, the +owners of this piece. They're putting thousands of dollars into the +production of it. They've hired me to make that production a success. +Well, I don't know about other games, but this game's a battle. If we +win, it will be because we put every bit of steam and every bit of +confidence we've got into it and _make_ it win. That goes for me, and +for the principals, and right down through to the last girl in the +chorus. Every night there'll be a new audience out there that you will +have to fight--shake up out of the grouch they get when they pay for +their tickets; persuade to laugh and loosen up and come and play with +you. + +"Will you be able to do your share, do you suppose, if you're slinking +around, afraid of being recognized? We don't care whether your pussy-cat +friends get their fur rubbed the wrong way or not. The only thing we +care about is putting this show across. Well, if you feel the way we do +about it, if you can make it the one thing you do care about, too--why, +come along. Let the pussy-cats go ..." He finished with a snap of his +fingers. + +"The only one that really matters isn't a pussy-cat," said Rose, with a +reluctant wide smile, "and--he'd agree with you altogether, if he didn't +know you were talking to me. And I'm really very much obliged to you." + +"You will come along then?" + +"Yes," said Rose, "I'll come." + +"No flutters?" questioned Galbraith. "No eleventh-hour repentance?" + +"No," said Rose, "I'll see it through." + +John Galbraith went away satisfied. Rose had the same power that he had, +of making a simple unemphatic statement irresistibly convincing. When +she said that she would go through, he knew that unless struck by +lightning, she would. But there had been something at once ironic and +tender about the girl's smile, when she had spoken of the only one who +really mattered, that he couldn't account for. Who was the only one that +really mattered, anyway? Her husband? He didn't think it likely. Young +women who quarreled with their husbands and ran away from them to go on +the stage, wouldn't, as far as his experience went, be likely to smile +over them like that. More probably a brother--a younger brother, +perhaps, fiercely proud as such a boy would be of such a sister. + +She certainly had sand, that girl. He was mighty glad his bluff that he +would put her out of the chorus altogether, unless she took the little +part in the sextette, had worked. He'd have felt rather a fool if she +had called it. + +Of course the thing that had got Rose was the echo, through everything +John Galbraith had said, of Rodney's own philosophy; his dear, big, +lusty, rather remorseless way. And now again, as before when she had +left him, it was his view of life that was recoiling upon his own head. + +She was really grateful to Galbraith. What had she left Rodney for, +except to build a self for herself; to acquire, through whatever pains +might be the price of it, a life that didn't derive from him; that was, +at the core of it, her own? Yet here, right at the beginning of her +pilgrimage, she'd have turned down the by-path of self-sacrifice; have +begun ordering her life with reference to Rodney, rather than herself, +if John Galbraith hadn't headed her back. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE GIRL WITH THE BAD VOICE + + +The Girl Up-stairs had quite a miscellaneous lot of plot; indeed a plot +fancier might have detected nearly all the famous strains in its +lineage. Its foci were Sylvia Huntington, the beautiful +multi-millionairess, and Richard Benham, nephew of Minim, the Cosmetic +King and head of the Talcum Trust. Sylvia, tired of being sought for her +wealth, and yearning to be loved for herself alone, has run away to +Bohemia and installed herself in an attic over a studio occupied by two +penniless artists, one a poet, the other a musician. Only they aren't +penniless any more, having leaped to wealth and fame with an immensely +successful musical comedy they have just written. And, like Nanki Poo, +the musician isn't really a musician, but is the talented, rebellious +nephew of the Cosmetic King, none other than Dick Benham himself, a +truant from his tyrannical uncle's determination to make him into a +rouge and talcum salesman. He falls in love with Sylvia, not knowing her +as Sylvia, of course, but only as the girl up-stairs, a poor little +wretch to whom in the goodness of his heart, he is giving singing +lessons. And she falls in love with him, knowing him neither as Dick +Benham, nor as the successful composer (because his authorship of the +musical comedy has been kept a secret from her), but only as a poor +struggling musician. Poor Dick's affections are temporarily led astray +by the mercenary seductions of the leading lady in his opera, who has +learned the secret of his true identity and vast wealth, and means to +marry him under the cloak of disinterested affection. He gets bad advice +from his poet friend, too, who has dishonorable designs on the girl +up-stairs and so warns Dick against throwing himself away on a nobody, +of, possibly, doubtful virtue. It is, of course, essential to Sylvia +that Dick should ask her to marry him before he learns who she really +is, in order that she may be sure it isn't for her wealth that he is +seeking her. + +This was the general lie of the land, though the thing was complicated, +of course, by minor intrigues, as for instance in the first act, when +Minim, the uncle, came to inquire of the successful composer what his +terms would be for introducing a song into his opera, extolling the +merits of Minim's newest brand of liquid face-powder. Then there was the +comic detective, whom Sylvia's frantic father had given the job of +finding her, and who, considering that he was the typical idiot +detective of musical comedy, came unaccountably close to doing it. + +Then in the second act, there was the confusion produced by the fact +that Dick and his poet friend gave a midnight party on the roof, unaware +of the fact that Sylvia made it a practise, during these hot nights, to +crawl out from her attic, on to this same roof and sleep there. And on +this particular night, she had invited her six bachelor-girl friends, +who were in her confidence, to come and share its hospitalities with +her. The mutual misunderstandings, by this time piled mountain high, +were projected into the third act by the not entirely unprecedented +device of a mask ball in the palatial Fifth Avenue mansion of Sylvia's +father, in celebration of her return home--a ball whose invitation list +was precisely coincident, even down to the detective, with the persons +who had appeared in the first two acts. One minute before the last +curtain, Dick and Sylvia manage to thread their way out of the tangle of +scandal and misconception, and satisfy each other as to the +disinterested quality of their mutual adoration, falling into each +other's arms just as the curtain starts down. + +It was not, of course, until after a good many rehearsals that Rose +could have given a connected account of it like that. They worked for +three hours on this first occasion, merely getting through the first +act--a miserable three hours, too, for Rose, owing to a little +misfortune that befell her right at the beginning. + +The glow of determination Galbraith had inspired her with, to put her +own shoulder to the wheel and do her very topmost best, for the one +great desideratum, the success of the show, had kept her studying her +little handful of lines long after she supposed she knew them perfectly. +They weren't very satisfactory lines to study--just the smallest of +conversational small change, little ejaculations of delight or dismay, +acquiescence or dissent. But the trouble with them was, they were, for +the most part, exactly the last expressions that a smart young woman of +the type she was supposed to represent would use. + +So, remembering what Galbraith had said about everybody down to the last +chorus-man doing the best he knew for the success of the show, Rose +sought him out, for a minute, just before the rehearsal began, and asked +if she might change two of her lines a little. + +Galbraith grinned at her, turned and beckoned to the baby-faced man in +spectacles who stood a dozen paces away. "Oh, Mr. Mills!" he called. +"Can you come over here a minute?" + +"He's the author," Galbraith then explained to Rose, "and we can't +change this book of his without his permission." + +Then, "This is Miss Dane of the sextette," he said to Mills, "and she +tells me she'd like to make one or two changes in her lines." + +It didn't need a sensitive ear to detect a note of mockery in this +speech, though Galbraith's face was perfectly solemn. But the face of +the author went a delicate pink all over, and his round eyes stared. "My +God!" he said. + +The exclamation was explosive enough to catch the ear of an extremely +pretty young woman who stood near by with her hands in her pockets. She +wore a Burberry raglan and an entirely untrimmed soft felt hat, and she +came over unceremoniously and joined the group. + +"Miss Devereux," said the author, with hard-fetched irony, "here's a +chorus-girl in perfect agreement with you. She's got about six lines to +say, and she wants to change two of them." + +"What are your changes, Dane?" Galbraith asked. + +Queerly enough, the curt seriousness of his speech was immensely +grateful to her--suggested that she perhaps hadn't been, wholly anyhow, +the object of his derision before. + +"I only thought," said Rose, "that if instead of saying, 'My gracious, +Sylvia!' I said, 'Sylvia, _dear_!' or something like that, it would +sound a little more natural. And if I said, 'I _do_ wish, Sylvia' +instead of, 'I wish to goodness, Sylvia ...'" + +She had said it all straight to the author. + +"I suppose," he said, sneering very hard, "that your own personal +knowledge of the way society women talk is what leads you to believe +that your phrases are better than mine?" + +"Yes," said Rose, serenely matter-of-fact, "it is." + +Sarcasm is an uncertain sort of pop-gun. You never can tell from which +end it's going to go off. + +"I don't know," said Miss Devereux, turning now a deadly smile on him, +"whether Miss--what's-her-name--agrees with me or not. But, do you know, +I agree with her." + +"Oh, I don't care a _damn_!" said Mr. Harold Mills. "Go as far as you +like. I don't recognize the piece now. What it'll be when you--butchers +get through with it ...!" He flung out his hands and stalked away. + +"Go find Mr. Quan," said Galbraith to Rose, "and tell him to mark those +changes of yours in the book. Tell him I said so." + +It was, though, a pretty unsatisfactory victory. Everybody was grinning; +for the tale spread fast, and while Rose knew it wasn't primarily at +her, her sensations were those of a perfectly serious, well-meaning +child, in adult company, who, in all innocence has just made a remark +which, for some reason incomprehensible to him, has convulsed one member +of it with fury, and the others with laughter. More or less she could +imagine where the joke lay. Harold had evidently been quarreling with +pretty much all of the principals, over more or less necessary changes +in his precious text, until everybody was rather on edge about it, +loaded and primed for all sorts of explosions; when, cheerfully along +came Rose, a perfectly green young chorus-girl, unsuspectingly carrying +the match for the mine, or the straw for the camel, whichever way you +wanted to put it. + +She wouldn't have minded the way she had blundered into the focus of +public attention, if, in other particulars, the rehearsal had been +going well with her. Unluckily, though, she started off wrong foot +foremost in the very first of their numbers, with a mistake that snarled +up everything and brought down an explosion of wrath from Galbraith. +Even if she'd been trying, he groaned, to make mistakes, he didn't see +how she'd managed that one. But the real nightmare didn't begin till the +first of her scenes with Sylvia, where she had to talk. + +She'd said her lines over about a thousand times apiece, and practised +their inflection and phrasing in as many ways as she could think of, but +she had neglected to memorize her cues. Not altogether, of course; she +thought she'd learned them, but they were terribly scanty little cues +anyway, just a single word, usually, and never more than two, and +nothing short of absolutely automatic memorization was any good. So she +sat serene through a five-second stage wait while Quan frantically spun +the pages of his book to find the place--he ought to have been following +of course, but he'd yielded to the temptation of trying to do something +else at the same time and had got lost--and then dry-throated, incapable +of a sound for a couple of seconds more--hours they seemed--after she +had been identified as the culprit who had failed to come in on a cue. + +The sight of the author out in the hall invoking his gods to witness +that this girl who had presumed to change his lines, was an idiot +incapable of articulate speech, brought her out of her daze. But even +then she couldn't get anything quite right. There seemed to be no golden +mean between the bellow of a fireman and a tone which Galbraith assured +her wouldn't be audible three rows back. And when they came to one of +the lines she'd been allowed to change, in her panic over the thing, she +mixed the two versions impartially together into a sputter of words that +meant nothing at all, whereupon the author, out at the back of the hall, +laughed maniacally. + +She would have gone on stuttering at it until she got it straight, if +Galbraith hadn't put her out of her misery by striding over, snatching +the book from Quan, and reading the line himself. She hadn't anything +more to say in the first act, and she managed to get through the rest of +the song numbers without disaster, if equally without confidence or +dash. She felt as limp as if she had been boiled and put through the +clothes-wringer. And when, as he dismissed the rehearsal Galbraith told +her to wait a minute, she expected nothing less than ignominious +reduction to the ranks. + +"That matter of putting your voice over, Dane," he said, to her +amazement quite casually, "is just a question of thinking where you want +it to go. If you'll imagine a target against the back wall over there, +and will your voice to hit it, whatever direction you're speaking in, +and however softly you speak, you will be heard. If you forget the +target and think you're talking to the person on the stage you're +supposed to be talking to, you won't be heard. Say your lines over to me +now, without raising your voice or looking out there. But keep the +target in mind." + +Rose said all the lines she had in the whole three acts. It didn't take +a minute. He nodded curtly. "You've got the idea." He added, just as she +turned away, "You were quite right to suggest those changes. They're an +improvement." + +That rehearsal marked the nadir of Rose's career at the Globe. From then +on, she was steadily in the ascendent, not only in John Galbraith's good +graces, which was all of course that mattered. She won, it appeared, a +sort of tolerant esteem from some of the principals, and even the owners +themselves spoke to her pleasantly. + +They entertained her vastly, now that a confidence in her ability to do +her own part left her leisure to look around a bit. The contrast between +the two leading women, Patricia Devereux, who played the title part, and +little Anabel Astor, who played the mercenary seductress, was a piquant +source of speculation. As far as speech and manners went, Miss Devereux +might have been a born citizen of the world Rose had been naturalized +into by her marriage with Rodney; in fact, she reminded her rather +strikingly of Harriet. She was cool, brusk, hard finished, and, as was +evident from Galbraith's manifest satisfaction with her, thoroughly +workmanly and competent. Yet she never seemed really to work in +rehearsal. She gave no more than a bare outline of what she was going to +do. But the outline, in all its salient angles, was perfectly +indicated. She rehearsed in her ordinary street clothes, with her hat +on, and as often as not, with a wrist-bag in one hand. She neither +danced, sang, nor acted. But she had her part letter perfect before any +of the other principals. She never missed a cue, and though she sang off +the top of her voice, and let the confines of a very scant little tailor +skirt mark the limits of her dancing, she sang her songs in perfect +tempo and always made it completely clear to Galbraith and the musical +director, just how much of the stage in every direction, her dances were +going to occupy and precisely the _tempi_ at which they were to be +executed. In a word, if her work had no more emotional value than a +mechanical drawing, it did have the precision of one. + +Rose mightn't have appreciated tins, had she not seen and admired Miss +Devereux from the front in a production she and Rodney had been two or +three times to see the season before. + +Little Anabel Astor presented as striking a contrast to all this as it +would be possible to imagine. She, too, had attained a good deal of +celebrity in the musical-comedy world--was to be one of the features of +the cast. She'd come up from the ranks of the chorus. She'd been one of +the ponies, years ago, in some of George M. Cohan's productions, and she +was still just a chorus-girl. But a chorus-girl raised to the third, or +fourth, or, if you like, the _n_th power. She had an electric grin, and +a perfectly boundless vitality, which she spent as freely on rehearsals +as on performances. She always dressed for rehearsals just as the chorus +did, in a middy-blouse and bloomers, and she worked as hard as they did, +and even more ungrudgingly. + +She was a pretty little thing, with nothing very feminine about +her--even her voice had a harsh boyish quality--and she never looked +prettier to Rose than when, her face flushed with an hour's honest toil, +she would wipe the copious sweat of it off with her sleeve, and panting, +look up with a smile at John Galbraith and an expectant expression, +waiting for his next command, which reminded Rose of the look of a +terrier alert for the stick his master means to throw for him. Her +speech was unaffectedly that of a Milwaukee Avenue gamin, and it served +adequately and admirably as a vehicle for the expression of her emotions +and ideas. + +She formed her likes and dislikes with a complete disregard of the +social or professional importance of the objects of them. She took an +immediate liking to Rose; gave her some valuable hints on dancing, took +to calling her "dearie" before the end of the second rehearsal and, with +her arm around her, confided to her in terms of blood-curdling +profanity, her opinion of Stewart Lester, the tenor, who played the part +of Dick Benham in the piece. + +The queer thing was that she and Patricia were on the best of terms. +They didn't compete, that was it, Rose supposed, and they were both good +enough cosmopolites to bridge across the antipodal distances between +their respective traditions and environments. Patricia hated the tenor +as bitterly as Anabel. And, in her own way, she was as pleasantly +friendly to Rose. There were no endearments or caresses, naturally, but +her brusk nods of greeting and farewell seemed to have real good feeling +behind them. + +The men principals--this was rather a surprise to Rose--weren't nearly +so pleasant nor so friendly. Most of them professed to be totally +unaware of her existence and the one or two who showed an +awareness--Freddy France, who played the comic detective, was chief of +these offenders--did it in a way that brought the fighting blood into +her cheeks. + +My astronomical figure for the expression of Rose's rise in her +profession is, in one important particular, misleading. There was +nothing precalculable about it, as there is about the solemn swing of +the stars. The impetus and direction of Rose's career derived from two +incidents that might just as well not have happened--two of the flukiest +of small chances. + +The first of these chances concerned itself with Olga Larson and her bad +voice. Olga, as I think I have told you, was one of the sextette. And, +oddly enough, she owed her membership in this little group of quasi +principals, to her voice and nothing else. Because it was a bad voice +only when she talked. When she sang, it had a gorgeous thrilling ring to +it that made Patricia Devereux, when she heard it, clench her hands and +narrow her eyes. She'd never been taught what to do with it, but then, +for what Galbraith wanted of her she needed no teaching. Her ear was +infallible; let her hear a tune once and she could reproduce it +accurately, squarely up to time, squarely, always, in the middle of the +pitch. When she opened her rather dainty-looking mouth and sang, she +could give you across the footlights the impression that at least four +first-class sopranos were going uncommon strong. She hadn't a salient or +commonplace enough sort of beauty to have singled her out from the +chorus and she was no better a dancer than passable. But none of the +girls who would be picked out by a committee of automobile salesmen as +the prettiest and the best dancers in the chorus could sing a note, and +the sextette would have been dumb without her voice. + +It was natural enough that Patricia didn't like it. She owed her own +position as a leading light-opera soprano to the cultivation to its +highest possible perfection of a distinctly second-rate voice, to a +precise knowledge of its limitations and to a most scrupulous economy in +its effects. Inevitably, then, the raw splendors that Olga Larson +dispensed so prodigally gave Patricia the creeps. + +Inevitably, too, without any conscious malice about it, she made up her +clear, hard little mind the moment she heard Olga talk, that she was +utterly impossible for the sextette. "Really, my dear man," she told +Galbraith after the first rehearsal, "you'll have to find some one else. +American audiences will stand a good deal, I know, in the way of +atrocious speech, but positively she'll be hooted. They'll all sound +frightful enough, especially because that Dane girl, if that's her name, +talks like a lady, but this one ...!" She gave a cruelly adequate little +imitation of Olga's delivery of one of her lines. "Like some one who +doesn't know how, trying to play the slide trombone," she commented. + +Galbraith couldn't pretend that she exaggerated the horrors of it, but +explained why the girl was indispensable. The explanation didn't please +Patricia any too well, either. + +"Sing!" she cried hotly. "But she sings detestably!" + +"No doubt," Galbraith admitted, "but she makes a great big noise always +on the right note, and that's what that bunch of penny whistlers can't +do without. Give her a little time," he concluded diplomatically, "and +I'll try to teach her." + +"It can't be taught," said Patricia. "That's too much even for you." + +So it happened that when Rose came out of her own nightmare, got her +breath and found leisure to look around, she found some one else whose +troubles weren't so transitory. The little scene in the first act, +between Sylvia and the sextette, was held up again and again, endlessly, +it seemed to Rose,--and what must it have seemed to the poor +victim?--while Galbraith bellowed Larson's lines after her, sometimes in +grotesque imitation of her own inflections, sometimes in what was meant +as a pattern for her to follow. The girl whose ear was so wonderfully +sensitive to pitch and rhythm, was simply deaf, it seemed, to the +subtleties of inflection. She reduced Galbraith to helpless wrath, in +her panic, by mistaking now and again, his imitations for his models. +The chorus tittered; the spectators suffocated their guffaws as well as +they could. Patricia grew more and more acutely and infuriatingly ironic +all the while. + +Evidently Galbraith didn't mean to be a brute about it. He began every +one of these tussles to improve her reading of a line, with a gentleness +that would have done credit to a kinder-gartener. But, after three +attempts, each more ominously gentle and deliberate than the last, his +temper would suddenly fly all to pieces. "--No--no--no!" he would roar +at her, and the similes his exasperation would supply him with, for a +description of what her speech was like, were as numerous as the acids +in a chemical laboratory; and they all bit and burned just as hard. + +Rose looked on with rather tepid feelings. She sympathized with +Galbraith on the whole. The poor man was doing his best; and the girl, +queerly, didn't seem to care. She confronted him in a sort of stockish +stupidity, saying her lines, when he told her to try again, with the +same frightful whang he was doing his best to correct, so that he was +justified, Rose felt, in accusing her of not trying, or even listening +to him. + +It was in the dressing-room one night, after one of these rehearsals, +that she caught a different view of the situation. She sat down on a +bench to unlace her shoes and looked straight into Olga Larson's face--a +face sunken with a despair that turned Rose cold all over. The tearless +tragic eyes were staring, without recognition, straight into Rose's own. +It must be with faces like this that people mounted the rails on the +high bridge in Lincoln Park, intent on leaving a world that had become +intolerable. Packed in all around her in the inadequate dressing-room, +the other girls were chattering, squealing, scrambling into their +clothes, as unaware of her tense motionless figure, as if it had been a +mere inanimate lump. She couldn't have been more alone if she had been +sitting out on the rock of Juan Fernandez. + +Rose invented various pretexts to delay her own dressing until the other +girls were gone. She could no more have abandoned that hopeless creature +there, than she could have left a person drowning. When they had the +room to themselves, she sat down on the bench beside her. + +"You're all right," she said, feeling rather embarrassed and inadequate +and not knowing just how to begin. "I'm going to help you." + +"It's always like this," the girl said. "It's no use. He'll put me back +in the chorus again." + +"Not if I can help it," Rose said. "But the first thing to do is to put +on your clothes. Then we'll go out and get something to eat." + +Even that little beginning involved a struggle--a conscious exertion of +all the power Rose possessed. She learned, for the first time, what the +weight of an immense melancholy inertia like that can be. The girl was +like one paralyzed. She was willing enough to talk. She told Rose the +whole story of her life; not as one making confidences to a friend; +rather with the curious detachment of a melancholy spectator discussing +an unfortunate life she had no concern with. + +She knew how good her voice was, and, equally, how badly it needed +training. She'd had, always, a passionate desire to sing and a belief in +her possibilities. If she could get a chance, she could succeed. She'd +undergone heartbreaking privations, trying to save money enough out of +her earnings at one form of toil after another, to take lessons. But, +repeatedly, these small savings had, by some disaster, been swept away: +stolen once, by a worthless older brother; absorbed on another occasion +by her mother's fatal illness. Two years ago she had drifted into the +chorus, but had been altogether unlucky in her various ventures. She +wasn't naturally graceful--had been slow learning to dance. Again and +again, she'd been dropped at the end of three or four weeks of rehearsal +(gratuitous of course) and seen another girl put in her place. When this +hadn't happened, the shows she had been in had failed after a few weeks' +life. + +When Galbraith had put her into the sextette in _The Girl Up-stairs_, a +hope, just about dead, had been awakened. She'd at last learned to dance +well enough to escape censure and she had seen for herself how +indispensable her singing voice was to the group. And then it had +appeared she'd have to talk! And, inexplicably to herself, her talking +wasn't right. The thing had just been another mirage. It was hopeless. +Galbraith would put her back into the chorus--drop her, likely enough, +altogether. + +The thing that at first exasperated Rose and later, as she came vaguely +to understand it, aroused both her pity and her determination, was the +girl's strange, dully fatalistic acquiescence in it all. The sort of +circumstances that in Rose herself set the blood drumming through her +arteries, keyed her will to the very highest pitch, quickened her brain, +made her feel in some inexplicable way, confident and irresistible, laid +on this girl a paralyzing hand. It wasn't her fault that she didn't meet +her difficulties half-way with a vicious, driving offensive--rout them, +demoralize them. It was her tragedy. + +"All right," Rose apostrophized them grimly. "This time you're up +against me." + +"Look here!" she said to Olga, when the story was told (this was across +the table in the dingy lunch-room where, as Doris Dane, she had had her +first meal, and most of her subsequent ones), "look here, and listen to +what I'm going to tell you. I know what I'm talking about. You're going +to learn to say your lines before to-morrow's rehearsal, so that Mr. ... +So that Galbraith won't stop you once." (This was a trick of speech that +came hard to Rose, but she was gradually learning it.) "We're going up +to my room now, and I'm going to teach you. We've got lots of time. +Rehearsal to-morrow isn't till twelve o'clock. You're going to stay in +the sextette, and when the piece opens, you're going to make a hit." + +She hesitated a moment, then added in the same blunt matter-of-fact way, +"You're one of the most beautiful women in Chicago. Did you know that? +Dressed right and with your hair done right, you could make them stare. +Have you finished your coffee? Then come along. Here! Give me your part. +You don't want to lose it." + +For the girl, pitiably, almost ludicrously, was staring at Rose in a +sort of somnambulistic daze. She hadn't been hypnotized, but she might +about as well have been, for any real resistance her mind, or her will, +could offer to her new friend's vibrant confidence. + +She went with Rose up to the little three-dollar room. Rose put her into +a chair, sat down opposite her, took the first phrase of her first +speech, and said it very slowly, very quietly, half a dozen times. That +was at half past eleven o'clock at night. By midnight, Olga could say +those first three words, if not to Rose's complete satisfaction, at +least a lot better. She went on and finished the sentence. They worked +straight through the night, except that two or three times the girl +broke down; said it was hopeless. She got up once and said that she was +going home, whereupon Rose locked the door and put the key in her +stocking. She sulked once, and for fifteen minutes wouldn't say a word. +But by seven o'clock in the morning, when they went back to the +lunch-room and ate an enormous breakfast, Olga's sluggish blood was +fired at last. It was a profane thought, but you _could_ take the Fatal +Sisters by the hair and coerce a change in the pattern they were +weaving. + +And Rose, by that time, by the plain brute force of necessity, was a +teacher of phonetics. She'd discovered how she made sounds herself and +had, with the aid of a hand mirror, developed a rough-and-ready +technique for demonstrating how it was done. She remembered, with bitter +regret, a course she had dozed through at the university, dreaming about +the half-back, which, had she only listened to the professor instead, +would be doing her solid service now. Had there been other courses like +that, she wondered vaguely? Had the education she had spent fifteen +years or so on an actual relation to life after all? It was a startling +idea. + +She walked Olga out to the park and back at seven-thirty, and at eight +they were up in her room again. They raided the delicatessen at eleven +o'clock, and made an exiguous meal on the plunder. And at twelve, husky +of voice, but indomitable of mind, they, with the others, confronted +Galbraith upon the stage in North End Hall. + +"Do you suppose," Olga said during the preliminary bustle of getting +started, "that he's put any one else in my part already?" + +It was a fear Rose had entertained, but had avoided suggesting to her +pupil. + +"I don't believe so," she said. "If he has, I'll talk to him." + +"No, you won't!" said Olga. "I'll talk to him myself." + +There was a ring to that decision that did Rose's heart good. It took a +long time to get that northern blood on fire, but when you did, you +could count on its not going cold again overnight. + +It got pretty exciting of course, as the scene between Sylvia and the +sextette drew near, and when it came, Rose could hardly manage her own +first line--hung over it a second, indeed, before she could make her +voice work at all, and drew a sharp look of inquiry from Galbraith. But +on Olga's first cue, her line was spoken with no hesitation at all, and +in tone, pitch and inflection, it was almost a phonographic copy of the +voice that had served it for a model. + +There was a solid two seconds of silence. For once in her life Patricia +Devereux had missed a cue! + +John Galbraith had been an acrobat as well as a dancer, and he was +quick on his feet. He had just turned, unexpectedly, an intellectual +somersault, but he landed cleanly and without a stagger. "Come, Miss +Devereux," he said, "that's your line." And the scene went on. + +But when, about four o'clock that afternoon, the rehearsal was over, +Galbraith called Olga out to him and allowed himself a long incredulous +stare at her. "Will you tell me, Larson," he asked, "why in the name of +Heaven, if you could do that, you didn't do it yesterday?" + +"I couldn't do it yesterday," she said. "Dana taught me." + +"Taught you!" he echoed. "Beginning after last night's rehearsal?... +Dane!" he called to Rose, who had been watching a little anxiously to +see what would happen. + +"You've learned it very well indeed," he said with a nod of dismissal to +Olga, as Rose came up. "Don't try to change it. Stick to what you've +got." + +Then, to Rosa, "Larson tells me you taught her. How did you do it?" + +"Why, I just--taught her," said Rosa. "I showed her how I said each +line, and I kept on showing her until she could do it." + +"How long did it take you--all night?" + +"All the time there's been since last rehearsal," said Rosa, "except for +three meals." + +"Good God!" said Galbraith. "Devereux said it couldn't be done, and I +agreed with her. Well, live and learn. Look here! Will you teach the +others--the other four in the sextette? I'll see you're paid for it." + +"Why, yes,--of course," said Rose, hesitating a little. + +"Oh, I don't mean overnight," he said, "but mornings--between +rehearsals--whenever you can." + +"I wasn't thinking of that," said Rose. "I was just wondering if they'd +want to be taught--I mean, by another chorus-girl, you know." + +"They'll want to be taught if they want to keep their jobs," said +Galbraith. And then, to her astonishment, and also perhaps to his, for +the thing was radically out of the etiquette of the occasion, he reached +out and shook hands with her. "I'm very much obliged to you," he said. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +MRS. GOLDSMITH'S TASTE + + +If there was a profession in the world which Rose had never either idly +or seriously considered as a possible one for herself, that of a teacher +was it. And yet, the first money she ever earned in her life was the +twenty dollars the management paid her for teaching the other four girls +in the sextette to say their lines. She was a born teacher, too. And the +born teacher is a rare bird. + +One must know something in the first place, of course, before one can +teach it--a fact that has resulted in the fitting of an enormous number +of square pegs into round holes. Most of the people in the world who are +trying to teach, are those whose aptitude is for learning. But the +scholar's temper and the teacher's are antipodal; a salient, vivid +personality that can command attention, the unconscious will to +conquer--to enforce (a very different thing from the wish to do these +things) that is the _sine qua non_ for a real teacher. And that, of +course, was Rose all over. + +Those four sulky, rather supercilious chorus-girls, coming to Rose under +a threat of dismissal, for lessons in the one last thing that a +free-born American will submit to dictation about, might not want to +learn, nor mean to learn, but they couldn't help learning. You couldn't +be unaware of Rose and, being aware of her, you couldn't resist doing +things as she wanted you to. + +Informally, too, she taught them other things than speech. "Here, +Waldron!" Galbraith would say. "This is no cake-walk. All you've got to +do is to cross to that chair and sit down in it like a lady. Show her +how to do it, Dane." And Rose, with her good-humored disarming smile at +the infuriated Waldron, would go ahead and do it. + +I won't pretend that she was a favorite with the other members of the +sextette, barring Olga. But she managed to avoid being cordially hated, +which was a very solid personal triumph. + +I have said that there were two small incidents destined to have a +powerful influence at this time, in Rose's life. One of them I have told +you about--the chance that led her to teach Olga Larson to talk. The +other concerned itself with a certain afternoon frock in a Michigan +Avenue shop. + +The owners of _The Girl Up-stairs_ were very inadequately experienced in +the business of putting on musical comedies. Galbraith spoke of them as +amateurs, and couldn't, really, have described them better. Your +professional gambler--for musical-comedy producing is an especially +sporting form of gambling and nothing else--assesses his chances in +advance, decides coolly whether they are worth taking or not, and then, +with a steely indifference awaits the event. The amateur, on the +contrary, is always fluttering between an insane confidence and a +shuddering despair; between a reckless disregard of money and a foolish +attempt to save it. It had been in one of their hot fits that the owners +of _The Girl Up-stairs_ had retained Galbraith. The news item Rose had +read had not exceeded truth in saying that he was one of the three +greatest directors in the country. They couldn't have got him out to +Chicago at all but for the chance that he was, just then, at the end of +a long-time contract with the Shumans and holding off for better terms +before he signed a new one. The owners were staggered at the prices they +had to pay him, at that, but they recovered and were still blowing warm +when they authorized him to engage Devereux, Stewart, Astor and McGill +(McGill was the chief comedian, the Cosmetic King) for all of these were +high-priced people. + +But by the time the question of costumes came up, they were shivering in +a perfect ague of apprehension. Was there no limit to the amount they +were to be asked to spend? This figure that Galbraith indicated as the +probable cost of having a first-class brigand in New York design the +costumes and a firm of pirates in the same neighborhood execute them, +was simply insane. New York managers might be boobs enough to submit to +such an extortion, but they, believe them, were not. Many of the +costumes could be bought, ready made, on State Street or Michigan +Avenue. Some of the fancy things could be executed by a competent +wardrobe mistress, if some one would give her the ideas. And ideas--one +could pick them up anywhere. Mrs. Goldsmith, now,--she was the wife of +the senior of the two owners--had splendid taste and would be glad to +put it at their service. There was no reason why she should not at once +take the sextette down-town and fit them out with their dresses. + +Galbraith shrugged his shoulders, but made no further complaint. It was, +he admitted, as they had repeatedly pointed out, their own money. So a +rendezvous was made between Mrs. Goldsmith and the sextette for +Lessing's store on Michigan Avenue at three o'clock on an afternoon when +Galbraith was to be busy with the principals. He might manage to drop in +before they left to cast his eye over and approve the selection. + +It was with some rather uncomfortable misgivings that Rose set out to +revisit a part of town so closely associated with the first year of her +married life. The particular shop wasn't, luckily, one that she had +patronized in that former incarnation. But it was in the same block with +a half dozen that were, and she hadn't been east of Clark Street since +the day Otto had driven her to the Polk Street Station. + +The day was cold and blustery--a fact that she was grateful for, as it +gave her an excuse for wearing a thick white veil, which was almost as +good as a mask. It was with a rather breathless excitement that +persisted in feeling like guilt--her heart wouldn't have beaten any +faster, she believed, if she had just robbed a jewelry store and were +walking away with the swag in her pocket--that she debouched out of Van +Buren Street, around the corner of the Chicago Club, and into the +avenue. Unconsciously, she had been expecting to meet every one she +knew, beginning with Frederica, in the course of the two blocks or so +she had to walk. Very naturally, she didn't catch even a glimpse of any +one she even remotely knew. Suppose there should be any one in the +store! But this, she realized, wasn't likely. + +It wasn't a really smart shop. It paid an enormous rent there in that +neighborhood in order to pretend to be, and the gowns on the wax figures +in its windows, were taken on faith by pleasurably scandalized +pedestrians as the very latest scream of fashion. The prices on these +confections were always in the process of a violent reduction, as large +exclamatory placards grievously testified. The legend eighty-eight +dollars crossed out in red lines, with thirty-nine seventy-five written +below, for a sample. The most exclusive smartness for the economy-loving +multitude. This was the slogan. + +Rose, arriving promptly at the hour agreed on, had a wait of fifteen +minutes before any of her sisters of the sextette, or Mrs. Goldsmith +arrived. She told the suave manager that she was waiting for friends, +but this didn't deter him from employing a magnificent wave of the hand +to summon one of the saleswomen and consigning Rose almost tenderly, to +her care. He didn't know her, but he knew that that ulster of hers had +come straight over from Paris, had cost not less than two hundred +dollars, and had been selected by an excellently discriminating eye; and +that was enough for him. + +"I don't want anything just now," Rose told the saleswoman. But she +hadn't, in these few weeks of Clark Street, lost the air of one who will +buy if she sees anything worth buying. In fact, the saleswoman thought, +correctly, that she knew her and was in for a shock a little later when +Mrs. Goldsmith and the other five members of the sextette arrived. + +Meanwhile, she showed Rose the few really smart things they had in the +store--a Poiret evening gown, a couple of afternoon frocks from Jennie, +and so on. There wasn't much, she admitted, it being just between +seasons. Their Palm Beach things weren't in yet. + +Rose made a few appreciative, but decidedly respect-compelling comments, +and faithfully kept one eye on the door. + +The rest of the sextette arrived in a pair and a trio. One of them +squealed, "Hello, Dane!" The saleswoman got her shock on seeing Rose nod +an acknowledgment of this greeting and just about that time, they heard +Mrs. Goldsmith explaining who she was and the nature of her errand, to +the manager. The necessary identifications got themselves made somehow. +They weren't in any sense introductions, everybody in the store felt +that plainly. Mrs. Goldsmith was touching the skirts of musical comedy +with a very long pair of tongs. There was absolutely no connection, +social or personal, between herself and the young persons who were to +wear the frocks she was going to buy. + +She stood them up and stared at them through her eye-glasses, discussed +their various physical idiosyncrasies with candor, and, one by one, +packed them off to try on haphazard selections from the mounds which +three industrious saleswomen piled up before her. You couldn't deny her +the possession of a certain force of character, for not one of the six +girls uttered a word of suggestion or of protest. + +And the sort of gowns she was exclaiming over with delight and ordering +put into the heap of possibilities, were horrible enough to have drawn a +protest from the wax figures in the windows. The more completely the +fundamental lines of a frock were disguised with sartorial scroll-saw +work, the more successful this lady felt it to be. An ornament, to Mrs. +Goldsmith, did not live up to its possibilities, unless it in turn were +decorated with ornaments of its own; like the fleas on the fleas on the +dog. + +It is a tribute to one of the qualities that made John Galbraith a +successful director, that Rose spent a miserable half-hour worrying over +these selections of the wife of the principal owner of the show, feeling +she ought to put up some sort of fight and hardly deterred by the patent +futility of such a course. To rest her esthetic senses from the delirium +of fussiness that was giving Mrs. Goldsmith so much pleasure, she began +thinking about that Poiret frock--the superb simple audacity of it! It +had been made by an artist who knew where to stop. And he had stopped +rather incredibly soon. Just suppose ... And then her eyes lighted up, +gazed thoughtfully out the window across the wind-swept desert of the +avenue, and, presently she grinned--widely, contentedly. + +For the next hour and a half, during the intervals of her own trying on, +she entertained herself very happily with the day-dream that she herself +had a commission to design the costumes for _The Girl Up-stairs_. She +had always done that more or less, she realized, when she went to +musical-comedy shows with Rodney, especially when they were badly +costumed. But this time she did it a good deal more vividly, partly +because her interest in the piece was more intense, partly because her +imagination had a blank canvas to work on. + +All the while, like Sister Anne in the tower, she kept one eye on the +door and prayed for the arrival of John Galbraith. + +He came in just as Mrs. Goldsmith finished her task--just when, by a +process of studious elimination, every passable thing in the store had +been discarded and the twelve most utterly hopeless ones--two for each +girl--laid aside for purchase. The girls were despatched to put on the +evening frocks first, and were then paraded before the director. + +He was a diplomat as I have said (possibly I spoke of him before as an +acrobat. It comes to the same thing), and he was quick on his feet. +Rose, watching his face very closely, thought that for just a split +second, she caught a gleam of ineffable horror. But it was gone so +quickly she could almost have believed that she had been mistaken. He +didn't say much about the costumes, but he said it so promptly and +adequately that Mrs. Goldsmith beamed with pride. She sent the girls +away to put on the other set--the afternoon frocks, and once more the +director's approbation, though laconic, was one hundred per cent. pure. + +"That's all," he said in sudden dismissal of the sextette. "Rehearsal at +eight-thirty." + +Five of them scurried like children let out of school, around behind the +set of screens that made an extemporaneous dressing-room, and began +changing in a mad scramble, hoping to get away and to get their dinners +eaten soon enough to enable them to see the whole bill at a movie show +before the evening's rehearsal. + +But Rose didn't avail herself of her dismissal--remained hanging about, +a couple of paces away from where Galbraith was talking to Mrs. +Goldsmith. The only question that remained, he was telling her, was +whether her selections were not too--well, too refined, genteel, one +might say, for the stage. Regretfully he confessed he was a little +afraid they were. It needed a certain crudity to withstand the glare of +the footlights and until these gowns had been submitted to that glare, +one couldn't be sure. + +He wasn't looking at her as he talked, and presently, as his gaze +wandered about the store, it encountered Rose's face. She hadn't +prepared it for the encounter, and it wore, hardly veiled, a look of +humorous appreciation. His sentence broke, then completed itself. She +turned away, but the next moment he called out to her, "Were you waiting +for me, Dane?" + +"I'd like to speak to you a minute," she said, "when you have time." + +"All right. Go and change your clothes first," he said. + +Out of the tail of her eye as she departed, she saw him shaking hands +with the owner's wife and thanking her effusively for her help. +Incidentally, he was leading her toward the door as he did it. And at +the door, he declined an offer to be taken anywhere he might want to go +in her electric. + +She found the other girls on the point of departure. But Olga offered to +wait for her. + +"No, you run along," Rose said. "I've some errands and I don't feel like +seeing a movie to-night, anyway." + +Olga looked a little odd about it, but hurried along after the others. + +A saleswoman--the same one the manager assigned to Rose under the +misconception which that smart French ulster of hers had created when +she came into the store--now came around behind the screen to gather up +the frocks the girls had shed. + +"Will you please bring me," said Rose, "that Poiret model you showed me +before the others came in? I'll try it on." + +The saleswoman's manner was different now and she grumbled something +about its being closing time. + +"Then, if you'll bring it at once ..." said Rose. And the saleswoman +went on the errand. + +Five minutes later, Galbraith from staring gloomily at the mournful heap +of trouble Mrs. Goldsmith had left on his hands, looked up to confront a +vision that made him gasp. + +[Illustration: "It isn't quite so much your style, is it?"] + +"I wanted you to see if you liked this," said Rose. + +"If I liked it!" he echoed. "Look here! If you know enough to pick out +things like that, why did you let that woman waste everybody's time with +junk like this? Why didn't you help her out?" + +"I couldn't have done much," Rose said, "even if my offering to do +anything hadn't made her angry--and I think it would have. You see, +she's got lots of taste, only it's bad. She wasn't bewildered a bit. She +knew just what she wanted and she got it. It's the badness of these +things she likes. And I thought ..." She hesitated a little over this. +"I thought as long as they couldn't be good, perhaps the next best thing +would be to have them as bad as possible. I mean that it would be easier +to throw them all out and get a fresh start." + +He stared at her with a frown of curiosity. "That's good sense," he +said. "But how did you come to think of it?--Oh, I don't mean that!" he +went on impatiently. "Why should you bother to think of it?" + +Her color came up perceptibly as she answered. "Why--I want the piece to +succeed, of course. I was awfully miserable when I saw the sort of +things she was picking out and I spent half an hour trying to think what +I could do about it. And then I saw that the best thing I could do, was +nothing." + +"You didn't do nothing though," he said. "That thing you've got on is a +start." + +Rose turned rather suddenly to the saleswoman. "I wish you'd get that +little Empire frock in maize and corn-flower," she said. "I'd like Mr. +Galbraith to see that, too." And the saleswoman, now placated, bustled +away. + +"This thing that I've got on," said Rose swiftly, "costs a hundred and +fifty dollars, but I know I can copy it for twenty. I can't get the +materials exactly of course, but I can come near enough." + +"Will you try this one on, miss?" asked the saleswoman, coming on the +scene again with the frock she had been sent for. + +"No," said Rose. "Just hold it up." + +Galbraith admitted it was beautiful, but wasn't overwhelmed at all as +he had been by the other. + +"It's not quite so much your style, is it? Not drive enough?" + +"It isn't for me," said Rose. "It's for Olga Larson to wear in that _All +Alone_ number for the sextette." + +"Why Larson especially?" he asked. "Except that she's a friend of +yours." + +"She isn't," said Rose, "particularly. And anyway, that wouldn't be a +reason. But--did you ever really look at her? She's the one really +beautiful woman in the company." + +"Larson?" said John Galbraith incredulously. + +And Rose, with a flush and a smile partly deprecatory over her +presumption in venturing to say such things to a formidable authority +like the director, and partly the result of an exciting conviction that +she was right, told him her mind on the subject, while Galbraith, half +fascinated, half amused, listened. + +"I don't happen to remember the portrait of the Honorable Mrs. Graham +that you speak about," he said, "but I won't deny that you may be right +about it." + +It was well after closing time by now--a fact that the manager, coming +to reinforce the saleswoman, contrived, without saying so, to indicate. + +"Put on your street things," said Galbraith bruskly. "I'll wait." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A BUSINESS PROPOSITION + + +"Why, this was what I wanted to say," said Rose, taking up the broken +conversation as he pulled the shop door to behind him. She didn't go out +on to the sidewalk, but lingered in the recessed doorway. "I thought if +you'd let me fake that evening frock for twenty dollars, and then buy +the little Empire one for Olga Larson--it's only eighty--that the two +would average just about what Mrs. Goldsmith was paying for the others." + +"Why not fake the other one too?" he asked. + +"It couldn't be done," said Rose decisively. "There's no idea in it, you +see, that just jumps out and catches you. It gets its style from being +so--reserved and so just exactly right. And of course that's true of the +girl herself. She's perfect, just about. But it's a perfection that it's +awfully easy to kill. She kills it herself by the way she does her +hair." + +Buzzing around in the back of John Galbraith's mind was an unworded +protest against the way Rose had just killed her own beauty with a thick +white veil so nearly opaque that all it let him see of her face was an +intermittent gleam of her eyes. Keenly aware--a good deal more keenly +aware than he was willing to admit--of the sort of splendor which, but +for the veil, he'd be looking at now, a splendor which nothing short of +a complete mask could hide, he was not quite in the mood to wax +enthusiastic over a beauty so fragile as that of the girl they had been +talking about. There was a momentary silence, broken again, by Rose. + +"Of course, you'll want to take a look at her for yourself, before you +decide," she said; "but I'm pretty sure you'll see it." She put a +cadence of finality into her voice. The business between them was over, +it said, and all she was waiting for was a word of dismissal, to nod +him a farewell and go swinging away down the avenue. Still he didn't +speak, and she moved a little restlessly. At last:-- + +"Do you mind crossing the street?" he asked abruptly. "Then we can talk +as we walk along." She must have hesitated, because he added, "It's too +cold to stand here." + +"Of course," she said then. All that had made her hesitate was her +surprise over his having made a request instead of giving an order. + +Galbraith turned her north on the vast empty east sidewalk--a highway in +itself broader than many a famous European street, and they walked a +little way in silence. + +No observant Chicagoan, Rose reflected, need ever yearn for the wastes +of the Sahara when a desire for solitude or the need of privacy came +upon him. The east side of Michigan Avenue was just as solitary and +despite the difficulty of getting across to it, really a good deal more +accessible. The west side was one unbroken glow of light and though the +Christmas crowds had thinned somewhat with the closing of the shops, +they were still thick enough to have made it difficult for two people to +walk and talk together. A quadruple stream of motors, bellowing warnings +at one another, roaring with suddenly opened throttles, squealing under +sudden applications of the brake, occupied the roadway and served more +than the mere distance would have done, to isolate the pair that had the +east sidewalk all to themselves. + +He couldn't be looking for a better place to talk than this, Rose +thought. Why didn't he begin? Probably he'd got started thinking about +something else. A motor coming along near the curb emitted a +particularly wanton bellow, and she saw him jump like a nervous woman, +then stand still and glare after the offender. He must be feeling +specially irritable to-night, she thought. + +It was a good diagnosis. And his irritation had, for him, a most unusual +cause. Chorus-girls, principals, owners, authors, costumers, were +frequently the objects of his exasperated dissatisfaction. But to-night +the person he was out of all patience with was himself. He couldn't make +up his mind what he wanted to do. Or rather, knowing what he wanted to +do, he couldn't make up his mind to do it. It was this indecision of his +that had produced the silence while he and Rose had stood in the +entrance to Lessing's store. The only resolution he had come to there +had been not to allow her to say good night to him and walk away. But +now that she was striding along beside him, he couldn't make up his mind +what to say to her. + +A more self-conscious man would have forgiven himself his indecision +from recognizing the real complexities of the case. He was, to begin +with, an artist--almost a great artist. And a universal characteristic +of such is a complete detachment from the materials in which they +work--a sort of remorselessness in the use of anything that can +contribute to their complete expression. The raw materials of John +Galbraith's art were paint and canvas, fabrics, tunes, men and women. It +was an axiom in his experience, that any personal feeling--any sort of +human relation with one of the units in the mosaic he was building--was +to be avoided like the plague. His professional and personal contempt +for a colleague capable of a love-affair with a woman in a company he +was directing, would be inexpressible--unfathomable. Of course when a +man's job was finished--and this sort of job nearly always did finish on +the opening night--why, after that, his affairs were his own affair. + +In a word: he ordered his life on the perfectly sound masculine instinct +for keeping his work and his sex emotions in separate water-tight +compartments. Rose was a working member of his production, and it was +therefore flagrantly impossible that his relation with her should be +other than purely professional. + +And yet there had been something intangibly personal from the very +first, about every one of their broken momentary conversations--almost +about every meeting of their eyes. It had disturbed him the first time +he had ever seen her smile. He remembered the occasion well enough. She +had just finished executing the dance step--the almost inexcusably +vulgar little dance step he had ordered her to do as a condition of +getting the job she said she wanted--had turned on him blazing with +indignation; but right in the full blaze of it, at something she must +have seen, and understood, in his own face, in deprecation of her own +wrath, she had, slowly and widely, smiled. + +And then the way she worked for him in rehearsal! He'd seen girls work +hard before--desperately, frantically hard, under the fear that they +weren't good enough to hold their jobs. That wasn't the spirit in which +this girl worked. She seemed possessed by a blazing determination that +the results he wanted should he obtained. It seemed she couldn't devour +his intentions quickly enough, and her little unconscious nod of +satisfaction after he had corrected a mistake and she felt sure that now +she knew exactly what he wanted, was like nothing in his previous +experience. + +The wonderful thing about it was that she carried that eagerness beyond +the confines of her own job. And she put it to good effect too. She had +taken that Larson girl and, by the plain force of personal dominance, +made her talk right. Well, why? That was the question. Who was she +anyway? Where had she come from? Who was "the only person who really +mattered" to her--the person who wasn't a pussy-cat? + +He had tried hard to convince himself that these were all professional +questions. It was true they had a bearing on the more important and +perfectly legitimate question whether he had, in this altogether +extraordinary personality, discovered a new star. He had, during the +last quarter century, discovered a number--one or two of them +authentically of the first magnitude. + +It would have simplified matters immensely if he could have seen Rose in +this category. But the stubborn fact was, he couldn't. She couldn't sing +a bit, and marked as her natural talent was for dancing, she hadn't +begun young enough ever to master the technique of it. That left acting; +but he doubted if she could ever go very far at that. Salient as her +personality was, she hadn't the instinct for putting it over. Or, if she +had it, she distrusted it. She was handicapped, too, by her sense of +humor. A real star in the egg, wouldn't have stopped in the middle of +that first fine blaze of wrath he'd seen, to join him in smiling at it. +A real actress wouldn't have spent her energies teaching another woman +to talk, nor persuading him to buy another woman a beautiful frock. The +focus had to be sharper than that. The only way you got the drive it +took to spell your name in electric lights, was by subordinating +everything else to the projection of yourself, treating your +surroundings, with irresistible conviction, merely as a background. This +girl could never do that. + +Yet the notion wouldn't leave his mind that she could do something, and +do it more than commonly well. She must have an instinct of her own for +effects to enable her to understand so instantaneously what he was +trying to do. And once in a while, especially lately, he'd seen, over +some experiment of his, a flash of dissent across her eager face which +gave him the preposterous idea that by asking her--asking a +chorus-girl!--he might get a suggestion worth thinking about. + +Certainly she had helped him in another way, there was no doubt of that. +That sextette, thanks to her teaching, would be the smartest, best +mannered bunch of chorus-girls that had adorned a production of his in a +long, long time. + +And here, perhaps, he came closer than anywhere else to an understanding +of the source of the girl's attraction for him. John Galbraith could +remember the time when, a nameless little rat of a cockney, he had slept +under London bridges, opened cab doors for half-pence, carried links on +foggy nights. By the clear force of genius he had made his way up from +that;--from throwing cart-wheels for the amusement of the queues waiting +at the pit entrances of theaters, from the ribald knock-about of East +End halls, from the hilarity of Drury Lane pantomimes. Professionally +his success was a solid indubitable thing. If he weren't actually +preeminent in his special field, at least there was no one who was +accorded a preeminence over him. + +But another ambition, quite apart from the professional one, was hardly +so well satisfied. From the time of his very earliest memories he had +felt a passionate admiration for good breeding, and a consuming envy of +the lucky unconscious possessors of it. Since ten years old, he had +been possessed by the great desire to be acknowledged a gentleman. There +was nothing of vulgar veneer about this. It was the real interior thing +he wanted; that invisible yet perfectly palpable hall-mark which without +explanations or credentials, classified you. His profession had not +brought him in contact more than very infrequently with people of this +sort, and his personal interests never could be made to do so with +results perfectly satisfactory to himself. There it was,--the thing +those lucky elect possessed without a thought or an effort. It was an +indestructible possession, apparently, too. You couldn't throw it away. +Dissipation, dishonesty, even a total collapse that brought its victim +down to the sink that he himself had sprouted from, seemed powerless to +efface that hall-mark. + +He learned to suppose that if it were indestructible, it was also +unattainable, though perhaps he himself failed of attaining it only in +the consciousness of having failed--in the inability to stop trying for +it, straining all his actions through a sieve in the effort to conform +to a standard not his own. + +Well, this girl, whose own life must have collapsed under her in a +peculiarly cruel and dramatic fashion so that she had had to come to him +and ask him for a job in the chorus--she had the hall-mark. She had +besides a lot of the qualities that traditionally went with it, but +often didn't. She was game--game as a fighting-cock. What must it not +have meant to her to come down into that squalid dance-hall in the first +place and submit to the test he had subjected her to! How must the +dressing-room conversation of her colleagues in the chorus have revolted +and sickened her? What must it mean to her to take his orders--sharp +rasping orders, with the sting of ridicule in the tail of them when they +had to be repeated;--to be addressed by her last name like a servant? +Why, this very afternoon, how must she have felt, standing there like a +manikin, ordered to put on this dress and that, by a fussy fat woman who +wouldn't have touched her with tongs? But from not one of these +experiences had he ever seen her flinch or protest. Oh, yes, she was +game, and she was simple, as they always were; a fine type of the real +thing. + +And, somehow, he felt, she treated him as if he were hall-marked too. +He hadn't much to go by--absurdly little things really. But, after all, +it was the little things that counted;--a fine distinction in the +cadence of a voice, in the sort of nod of greeting or farewell one gave. +She never nodded at him in that curt telegraphic sort of way without +warming him up a bit inside. + +And all the while he was a director and she was a chorus-girl and an +unyielding etiquette of their respective professions forbade a word of +human intercourse between them! He had violated it, as both of them had +been aware, when he shook hands with her and thanked her for having +taught Olga Larson to talk. And just because he recognized quite well +how necessary the barrier was in all but one out of a thousand cases, +its existence in this one case baffled and irritated him. + +Up to the hour when he had turned into Lessing's store this afternoon, +for a look at the dresses Mrs. Goldsmith had been picking out for the +sextette, this feeling of baffled curiosity and of irritation over the +etiquette that forbade his satisfying it, would have summed up, +adequately enough, all the emotions he was conscious of toward the girl. +His professional admiration for her was another thing of course--a +perfectly legitimate thing. But with her appearance from behind the +screen, in that French evening gown--a gown she wore with the +indescribable air of belonging in it--with all her vibrant, irregular, +fascinating, eupeptic beauty fully revealed, his mood of impatient +acquiescence had fallen away. The basis of his feeling toward her +shifted in a manner that James Randolph wouldn't have had a moment's +difficulty in explaining, although Galbraith didn't understand it +himself. + +The thing he was conscious of was, when she made that offer to copy this +gown herself for twenty dollars and so leave him leeway for the purchase +of the Empire frock for Olga--offering to go to that trouble not for +herself or her friend, but to further the accomplishment of what he +wanted; namely, the success of his production--what he was conscious of +then, was an overpowering desire to make a confidante of her; to talk +matters out with her, show her some of the major strategy of the game +that he had to consider, and find out how the thing would look to her. + +It was all against the rules, of course. But to this case--the one in a +thousand certainly, in ten thousand maybe--the rules manifestly did not +apply. + +If it hadn't been for that opaque white veil, the glow of light and +eagerness in her face would probably have conquered his resistance +finally and for good, while they stood there in the entry to the store. +As it was, he was still hanging on a dead center as they walked down the +east side of the avenue together. + +Ahead of them, and to the right, over in Grant Park, was the colossal +municipal Christmas tree, already built, and getting decorated against +the celebration of Christmas Eve, now only two days away. + +"Shall we rehearse on Christmas Day?" Rose asked. + +He came out of his preoccupation a little vaguely. "Why, yes. Yes, of +course," he said absently. Then, coming a little further, and with a +different intonation, he went on: "We're really getting pressed for +time, you see. And the opening won't wait for anybody. It's hard luck +though, isn't it?" + +"I suppose it is, for the others;" Rose said, "but--I'm glad." + +It wouldn't have needed so sensitive an ear as his to catch the girl's +full meaning. Christmas--this Christmas, the first since that mysterious +collapse of her life, whose effect he had seen, but whose cause he +couldn't guess--was going to be a terrible day for her. She had dreaded +lest it should be empty. He wanted to say, "You poor child!" But--this +was the simple fact--he was afraid to. + +There was another momentary silence, and again Rose broke it. + +"Do you think you'll be able to convince Mrs. Goldsmith," she asked, +"that her gowns don't look well on the stage?" + +"Probably not," he said in quick relief. Rose had decided the issue for +herself; brought up the very topic he'd wanted to bring up; got him off +his dead center at last. Back of Rose, of course, was the municipal +Christmas tree with its power of suggesting a lot of ideas she must +fight out of her mind. + +"Certainly not," he went on, "if you're right about her, and I fancy you +are, that her taste isn't negative, but bad, and that it's the very +hideousness of the things she likes. No, she won't be convinced, and if +I know Goldsmith, he'll say his wife's taste is good enough for him. So +if we want a change, we've a fight on our hands." + +The way he had unconsciously phrased that sentence startled him a +little. + +"The question is," he went on, "whether they're worth making a fight +about. Are they so bad as I think they are?" + +"Oh, yes," said Rose. "They're dowdy and fourth-class and ridiculous. Of +course I don't know how many people in the audience would know that." + +"And I don't care." said John Galbraith with a flash of intensity that +made her look round at him. "That's not a consideration I'll give any +weight to. When I put out a production under my name, it means it's the +best production I can make with the means I've got. There may be men who +can work differently; but when I have to take a cynical view of it and +try to get by with bad work because most of the people out in front +won't know the difference, I'll retire. I'm only fifty and I've got ten +or fifteen good years in me yet. But before I'll do that, I'll go out to +my little farm on Long Island and raise garden truck." + +There was another momentary silence, for the girl made no comment at all +on this statement of his _credo_. But he felt sure, somehow, that she +understood it and there was nothing deprecatory about the tone in which, +presently, he went on speaking. + +"Of course a director's got only one weapon to use against the owners of +a show, when it comes down to an issue, and that's a threat to resign +unless they let him have his way. I've used that twice in this +production already, and I can see one or two places coming where I may +have to use it again. So, if there's any way of throwing out those +costumes without giving them their choice between getting new ones or +getting a new director, I'd like to find it. Would it be possible, do +you think, to get better ones that would also be cheaper? That argument +would bring Goldsmith around in a hurry. It's ridiculous, of course, but +that's the trouble with making a production for amateurs. You spend more +time fighting them, than you do producing the show." + +"I don't believe," said Rose, "that you could get better ready-made +costumes a lot cheaper; at least, not enough to go around, and in a +hurry. Of course every now and then, you can pick up a tremendous +bargain--some imported model that's a little extreme, or made in trying +colors, that they want to get rid of and will sell almost for whatever +you'll pay. But the two or three we might be able to find, wouldn't help +us much." + +"And I suppose," he said dubiously, "it's out of the question getting +them any other way than ready-made; that is, and cheaper too." + +The only sign of excitement there was in the girl's voice when she +answered, was a sort of exaggerated matter-of-factness. Oh, yes, there +was besides a wire edge on it, so that the words came to him through the +cold air with a kind of ringing distinctness. + +"I could design the costumes and pick out the materials," she said, "but +we'd have to get a good sewing woman--perhaps more than one, to get them +done." + +He wasn't greatly surprised. Perhaps the notion that she might suggest +something of the sort was responsible for the tentative dubious way in +which he had said he supposed it couldn't be done. + +But Rose, at the sound of her own voice and the extraordinary +proposition it was uttering, was astonished clear through. She hadn't +had the remotest idea of saying such a thing a moment or two before. +What had suggested it, she couldn't have told. That day-dream perhaps, +that she had amused herself with while Mrs. Goldsmith was making up the +tale of her atrocities. Perhaps it had been just the suggestions +speaking in the tone, not the words, of John Galbraith's voice--that he +hoped she'd offer something like that. + +Anyway, whatever it was that presented the idea to her, the thing that +seized on it and spoke it aloud was an instinct that didn't need to stop +and think--an instinct that realized indeed, if this isn't too +far-fetched a way of putting it, that its only chance lay in escaping +into the open ahead of the slower-footed processes of thought. If she +hadn't spoken instantly like that, it's perfectly clear she wouldn't +have spoken at all. But, having heard her own voice say the words, she +resolved, in spite of her fright--because she was frightened--to back +them up. + +"You've had--experience in designing gowns, have you?" Galbraith asked. + +"Only for myself," she admitted. "But I know I can do that part of it." + +And she wasn't telling more than the truth! The confident excitement +that possessed her, gave a stronger assurance than any amount of +experience could have done. + +"But,"--she reverted to the other part of the plan--"I'm not a good +sewer. I'd have to have somebody awfully good, who'd do exactly what I +told her." + +"Oh, that can be managed;" he said a little absently, and with what +struck Rose as a mere man's ignorance of the difficulties of the +situation. Expert sewing women didn't grow on every bush. But at the end +of a silence that lasted while they walked a whole block, he convinced +her that she had been mistaken. + +"I was just figuring out the way to work it," he said then, explaining +his silence. "I shall tell Goldsmith and Block (Block was the junior +partner in the enterprise) that I've got hold of a costumer who agrees +to deliver twelve costumes satisfactory to me, at an average of say, +twenty per cent less than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out. If they +aren't satisfactory, it's the costumer's loss and we can buy these that +Mrs. Goldsmith picked out, or others that will do as well, at Lessing's. +I think that saving will be decisive with them." + +"But do you know a costumer?" Rose asked. + +"You're the costumer;" said Galbraith. "You design the costumes, buy the +fabrics, superintend the making of them. As for the woman you speak of, +we'll get the wardrobe mistress at the Globe. I happen to know she's +competent, and she's at a loose end just now, because her show is +closing when ours opens. You'll buy the fabrics and you'll pay her. And +what profit you can make out of the deal, you're entitled to. I'll +finance you myself. If they won't take what we show them, why, you'll be +out your time and trouble, and I'll be out the price of materials and +the woman's labor." + +"I don't think it would be fair," she said, and she found difficulty in +speaking at all because of a sudden disposition of her teeth to +chatter--"I don't think it would be fair for me to take all the profit +and you take all the risk." + +"Well, I can't take any profit, that's clear enough," he said; and she +noticed now a tinge of amusement in his voice. "You see, I'm retained, +body and soul, to put this production over. I can't make money out of +those fellows on the side. But you're not retained. You're employed as a +member of the chorus. And so far, you're not even being paid for the +work you're doing. As long as you work to my satisfaction there on the +stage, nothing more can be asked of you. As for the risk, I don't +believe it's serious. I don't think you'll fall down on the job, and I +don't believe Goldsmith and Block will throw away a chance to save some +money." + +At the end of another silence, for Rose was speechless here, he went on +expanding the plan a little further. And if the assurances he gave her +were essentially mendacious, he himself wasn't exactly aware that they +were. It had often happened in productions of his, he said--and this +much was true--that to save time or to accomplish some result he wanted, +he put up a little of his own money for something and trusted to a +prosperous event for getting it back. It was clearly for the good of the +show that the costumes for the sextette should be better than the ones +Mrs. Goldsmith had picked out. The only alternative way of getting them, +to a knock-down and carry-away fight with Goldsmith and Block, which, +even if it were successful, would weaken the effect of his next +ultimatum, was the plan he now proposed to Rose. She needn't regard the +money he put up as in any sense a personal loan to her. They were simply +cooperating for the good of the enterprise. If her work turned out to be +valuable, it was only right she should be paid for it. + +And then he pressed her for an immediate decision. The job would be a +good deal of a scramble at best, as the time was short. If she agreed to +it, he'd get in touch with the wardrobe mistress at the Globe, to-night. +As for the money, he had a hundred dollars or so in his pocket, which +she could take to start out with. + +Of course the only lie involved in all this was the warp of the whole +fabric; that he was doing it, impersonally, for the success of the show. +And that might well enough have been true. Only in this case, it +definitely wasn't. He was doing it because it would establish a personal +connection, the want of which was becoming so tormenting a thing to his +soul, between himself and this girl whom he had to order about on the +stage and call by her last name, or rather by a last name that wasn't +hers--an imagination-stirring, question-compelling, warm human creature, +who, up to now, had been as completely shut away from him as if she had +been a wax figure in a show-window. + +They had reached the Randolph Street end of the avenue, and a policeman, +like Moses cleaving the Red Sea, had opened the way through the tide of +motors for a throng of pedestrians bound across the viaduct to the +Illinois Central suburban station. + +"Come across here," said Galbraith taking her by the arm and stemming +this current with her. "We've got to have a minute of shelter to finish +this up in," and he led her into the north lobby of the public library. +The stale baked air of the place almost made them gasp. But, anyway, it +was quiet and altogether deserted. They could hear themselves think in +here, he said, and led the way to a marble bench alongside the +staircase. + +Rose unpinned her veil and, to his surprise, because of course she was +going out in a minute, put it into her ulster pocket. But, curiously +enough, the sight of her face only intensified an impression that had +been strong on him during the last part of their walk--the impression +that she was a long way off. It wasn't the familiar contemplative brown +study, either. There was an active eager excitement about it that made +it more beautiful than ever he had seen it before. But it was as if she +were looking at something he couldn't see--listening to words he +couldn't hear. + +"Well," he said a little impatiently, "are you going to do it?" + +At that the glow of her was turned fairly on him. "Yes," she said, "I'm +going to do it. I suppose I mustn't thank you," she went on, "because +you say it isn't anything you're doing for me. But it is--a great thing +for me--greater than I could tell you. And I won't fail. You needn't be +afraid." + +Inexplicably to him (the problem wouldn't have troubled James Randolph) +the very completeness with which she made this acknowledgment--the very +warmth of the hand-clasp with which she bound the bargain, vaguely +disappointed him--left him feeling a little flat and empty over his +victory. + +He found his pocketbook and counted out a hundred and twenty dollars, +which he handed over to her. She folded it and put it away in her +wrist-bag. The glow of her hadn't faded, but once more it was turned on +something--or some one--else. It wasn't until he rose a little abruptly +from the marble bench, that she roused herself with a shake of the head, +arose too, and once more faced him. + +"You're right about our having to hurry," she said. "Don't you suppose +that some of the department stores on the west side of State Street +would still be open--on account of Christmas, you know?" + +"I don't know," he said. "Very likely. But look here!" He pulled out his +watch. "It's after seven already. And rehearsal's at eight-thirty. +You've got to get some dinner, you know." + +"Dinner doesn't take long at the place where I go," she reminded him. +"But if I can get one or two things now--I don't mean the +materials--why, I can get a start to-night after the rehearsal's over." + +"I don't like it," he said glumly. "Oh, I know, it's a rush job and +you'll have to work at it at all sorts of hours. If only you ... If I +could just ease up a bit on your rehearsals! Only, you see, the sextette +would he lost without you. Look here! There's nothing life or death +about this, you know. You don't want to forget that you've got a limit, +and crowd the late-at-night and early-in-the-morning business too hard. +Think where we'd be if you turned up missing on the opening night!" + +"I shan't do that," she said absently almost, and not in his direction. +Then, with another little shake, bringing herself back to him with a +visible effort: "If you only knew what a wonderful thing it's going to +be, to have something for late at night and early in the morning ..." + +Before he could find the first one of the words he wanted, she had given +him that curt farewell nod which, so inexplicably, from the first had +stirred and warmed him, and turned away toward the door. + +And she had never seen what was fairly shining in his face; no more than +she had heard the thing that rang so eagerly in his voice through the +thin disguise of an impersonal, director-like concern that she shouldn't +impair her health so far as to spoil her for the sextette! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE END OF A FIXED IDEA + + +She couldn't of course have missed a thing as plain as that but for a +complete preoccupation of thought and feeling that would have left her +oblivious to almost anything that could happen to her. Galbraith himself +had detected this preoccupation, but he would have been staggered had he +known its intensity. He had likened it in his own thoughts, to an effect +that might have been caused by the presence with her of another person +whom he could neither see nor hear. And that, had he believed it +seriously, would have been an almost uncannily correct guess. + +The flaming vortex of thoughts, hopes, desires which enveloped her, was +so intense as almost to evoke a sense of the physical presence of the +subject of them--of that big, powerful-minded, clean-souled husband of +hers, who loved her so rapturously, and who had driven her away from him +because that rapture was the only thing he would share with her. + +She had been living, since that day of his departure for New York, when +she had felt the last of his strong embraces, a life that fell into two +hemispheres as distinct from each other as tropic night from day. One +half of it had been lighted and made tolerable by the exactions of her +new job. "What you feel like doing isn't important, and what I tell you +to do is," John Galbraith had said to her on the day this strange +divided life of hers had begun. And this lesson, taken to heart, had +spelt salvation to her--for half of the time; for as many hours of the +day as he went on telling her to do something. Those hours, in a way +almost incredible to herself when they were over, had been almost +happy--would have been altogether happy, but for the stain that soaked +through in memory and in anticipation, from the other half of her days. + +But when evening rehearsal was over and she came back to her room and +had to undress and put out her light and relax her mind for sleep, +letting the terrors that came to tear at her do their unopposed worst, +then the girl who sang and danced and was so nearly happy snatching John +Galbraith's intentions half formed, and executing them in the thrill of +satisfaction over work well done, became an utterly unreal, incredible +person--the mere figment of a dream that couldn't--couldn't possibly +recur again even as a dream; the only self in her that had any actual +existence was Rodney Aldrich's wife and the mother of his children, +lying here in a mean bed, or looking with feverish eyes out of the +window in a North Clark Street rooming house, in a torment of thwarted +desire for him that was by no means wholly mental or psychical. + +And what was he doing now in her absence? Was he in torment, too; shaken +by gusts of uncontrollable longing for her; fighting off nightmare +imaginings of disasters that might be befalling her? Or was he happy, +drinking down in great thirsty drafts the nectar of liberty which her +incursion into his life had deprived him of? She didn't know which of +these alternatives was the more intolerable to her. + +And the twins! Were they, the fine lusty little cherubs she had parted +from that day, smiling up with growing recognition into other +faces--Mrs. Ruston's and the maid Doris'? Or might there have been, +since the last information relayed by Portia, a sudden illness? Might it +be that there was going on now, in that house not a thousand yards away, +another life-and-death struggle like the one which had made an end of +all her hopes for the efficacy of her miracle? + +The only treatment for hobgoblins like that was plain endurance. This +was a part of a somber sobering discovery that Rose had made during the +first few days of her new life. Courage of the active sort she'd always +had. The way she went up to North End Hall and wrested a job that didn't +strictly exist, from John Galbraith, was an example of it. When it was a +question of blazing up and doing something, she had rightly counted on +herself not to fail. This was what she'd foreseen when she promised +Portia that she would fight for the big thing. + +But that part of the battle of life had to consist just in doing +nothing, enduring with a stiff mouth and clenched hands assaults that +couldn't be replied to, was a fact she hadn't foreseen. What a child she +had always been! Rodney, Portia, everybody who amounted to anything, +must have learned that lesson of sheer endurance long ago. + +The queerly incredible quality of the lighted half of her life--the half +that John Galbraith's will galvanized into motion--prevented any +afterglow from illuminating and making tolerable the dark half. No +achievement of her days--not even teaching the sextette to talk--had the +power to give her, in her nights, a sense of progress, or to lessen the +necessity for that sheer dumb endurance which was the only weapon she +had. Because she was in the fetters of a fixed idea. + +Of course it was only by virtue of the possession of a fixed idea--a +purpose as rigid in its outlines as the steel frame of a +sky-scraper--that she had been able to force herself to leave Rodney and +set out in pursuit of a job that would make a life of her own a possible +thing. You are already acquainted with the outlines of that purpose. She +lacked the special training which alone could make any sort of +self-respecting life possible. The only thing she had to capitalize when +she left her husband's house, was the thing which had got her into +it--her sex charm. The only excuse for capitalizing that again was that +it would make it possible for her to acquire a special training in some +other field. Stenography, she had thought vaguely, would be the first +round of the ladder. Until this production opened and she began drawing +a salary, she couldn't really begin doing the thing she had set out to +do. + +Consequently, anything that seemed like progress during her day's work +for Galbraith--any glow of triumph she came away with after meeting and +conquering some difficulty--must be pure illusion. + +It was all perfectly logical and it was all perfectly false. She had +been growing really, in strides, from day to day, since that first day +of all when, after hearing the director tell another woman that there +were no vacancies in the chorus, she had forced herself to go up and ask +him for a job. She had been disciplining herself under Rodney's own +definition of the term. Discipline, he had said, was standing the +gaff--standing it, not submitting to it; accepting the facts of your own +life as they happened to be! Not making masters of them, but servants to +the underlying thing you wanted. + +And if only she could have believed her own vision, the outlines of the +underlying thing she wanted were beginning to appear, as in a half +developed negative. It hadn't been from a cold sense of duty, or from a +cold fear of losing her job, that she had thrown herself into the +accomplishment of John Galbraith's wishes, or had felt that almost +fierce desire that some effect he was trying for and that she +understood, should get an objective validity. It hadn't been out of pure +altruism that she'd spent those twelve solid hours compelling Olga +Larson to talk better. She might have felt sorry for the girl--might +have loaned her money, comforted her; but she wouldn't have locked her +in her room and beaten down her sullen opposition, set her afire with +her own vitality, except that it was a thing that had to be done for the +good of the show. + +In short, she was, to fall back on Rodney's phrase again, for the first +time driving herself with the motive power of her own desires--riding +the back of a hitherto unsuspected passion. But the binding force of +that fixed idea of hers had been sufficient all along to keep up the +delusion of unreality about the real half of her life and to make the +nightmare half of it seem true. + +It wasn't until she heard herself telling John Galbraith that she could +design those costumes for him, and in a flame of suddenly kindled +excitement, resolved to make that unexpected promise good, that the +fetters of her false logic fell away from her. + +The truth of the matter, the wonderful, almost incredible truth, kept +coming up brighter and clearer as she walked silently along beside him +down the avenue. The real beginning of the pilgrimage that was to carry +her back into her husband's life, wasn't a thing that had to be waited +for. It could begin now! No, the truth was better than that; it had +begun already! Because if John Galbraith had come to her house a month +ago, when she was casting about so desperately for a way of earning a +living, and had offered her the chance just as he had offered it +to-night, she'd have declined it. She wouldn't have known what he +wanted. She'd rightly have said that the thing was utterly beyond her +powers. To-night she knew what he wanted and she was utterly confident +of her ability to give it to him. + +And the one word that blaze of confidence spelled for her in letters of +fire, was her husband's name. This chance that had been offered her was +a ladder that would enable her to climb part of the way back to him. Her +accomplishment of this first breathlessly exciting task would be a +thing, when it was achieved, that she could recount to him--well, as man +to man. Her success, if she succeeded--and the alternative was something +she wouldn't contemplate--would compel the same sort of respect from him +that he accorded to a diagnosis of James Randolph's, or an article of +Barry Lake's. + +Since she had left his house and begun this new life of hers, she had, +as best she could, been fighting him out of her thoughts altogether. She +had shrunk from anything that carried associations of him with it. +Outside the hours of rehearsal (and how grateful she always was when +they protracted themselves unduly) she had walked timidly, like a child +down a dim hallway with black yawning doorways opening out of it, in a +dread which sometimes reached the intensity of terror, lest reminders of +the man she loved should spring out upon her. That all thoughts and +memories of him must necessarily be painful, she had taken for granted. + +But with this sudden lighting up of hope, which took place within her +when she made John Galbraith that astonishing offer and he accepted it, +she flung the closed door wide and called her husband back into her +thoughts--greeted the image of him passionately, in an almost palpable +embrace. This hard thing that she was going to do, which had, to +common-sense calculation, so many chances of disaster in it--this thing +that meant sleepless nights, and feverishly active days, was an +expression simply of her love for him; a sacrificial offering to be laid +before the shrine of him in her heart. Well, it was no wonder then that +to John Galbraith she had seemed preoccupied and far away, nor that amid +the surging thoughts and memories of her lover, coming in like a +returning tide, she should have been deaf to a meaning in the director's +tones that any one of the stupid little flutterers in the chorus would +instantly have understood. + +A man with a volcanic incandescence within him such as was now afire in +Rose, is utterly useless until it subsides--totally incapable, at least, +of any sort of creative or imaginative work. Until the fire can be, by +one means or another and for the time being, put out, he has no energies +worth mentioning, to devote to anything else. And, just as no woman can +understand the cold austerities of the cell into which a man must retire +in order to give his finer faculties free play, so no man can possibly +understand, although objective evidence may compel him to admit and +chronicle it as a fact, that a woman borne along as Rose was, upon an +irresistible tide of passions, memories and hopes, which all but made +her absent husband actually visible to her, could at the same time, be +seeing visions of her accomplished work and laying plans--limpid +practicable plans, for their realization. + +This is, perhaps, one of the few, and certainly one of the most +fundamental chasms of cleavage between the two sexes; a chasm bridged by +habit invariably, because some sort of thoroughfare has to exist, +bridged, too, more rarely, by intellectual understanding. But never +bridged, I think, between two persons strongly masculine and feminine +respectively, by an instinctive sympathy. To each, the other's way of +life must always be mysterious, and at times exasperating or a little +contemptible. + +To the woman, with the finely constant impenetration of love through all +her spiritual life, the man's uncontrollable blaze and his alternate +coldness, seem fitful--weak--brutish, almost unworthy of a creature with +a soul. + +To the man who knows the value of his phases of high austerity and +understands quite well the price at which he obtains them, the woman who +fails to understand the necessity or to appreciate the mood seems +sentimental and a little unworthy. + +Well, the fact that Rose's heart was racing and her nerves were tingling +with a newly welcomed sense of her lover's spiritual presence, did not +prevent her flying along west on Randolph Street and south again on the +west side of State, with a very clearly visualized purpose. She had +forgotten to replace her veil, but at that hour it didn't matter. The +west side of State Street, anyway, is almost as far from the east as +North Clark Street is from the Drive. + +As she came abreast of the first of the big department stores which line +the west side of this thoroughfare, she saw that her surmise had been +correct. It was open. Throngs of weary shoppers were crowding out, and a +very respectable stream of them were forcing their way in. She told an +exhausted floor-walker that she wanted to buy a dressmaking form. And, +spent as he was, he reflected a little of her own animation in his +unusually precise reply; had, indeed, a little of it left over for his +next inquirer. + +Something automatic in her mind took charge of Rose and delivered her, +presently, unconscious of intervening processes, at the counter where +the forms were sold. She selected what she wanted instantly, and counted +out the money from her own purse. She didn't have to dip into John +Galbraith's hundred and twenty dollars for this. + +"Address?" inquired the saleswoman preparing to make out her sales-slip. +Then, as Rose didn't answer instantly, she looked up frowning into her +face. "You want it sent, don't you?" she added. + +The question was rhetorical, because with its standard, the thing stood +five feet high and weighed twenty-five pounds. + +A frown of perplexity in Rose's face gave way to her own wide smile. "I +guess I'll have to take it with me," she said. Because as near +Christmas as this, the thing mightn't be delivered for two days. + +"Take it with you?" the woman echoed, aghast. + +"Have it wrapped up," said Rose decisively, "and put my name on +it--Mrs. ..." She checked herself with another smile. She had nearly +said, "Mrs. Rodney Aldrich." But the mistake didn't hurt as it would +have hurt yesterday. "Doris Dane," she went on. "And have it sent down +to the main entrance. I'll be there as soon as it is. Do you know where +I can buy paper cambric?" But she had to get that information from +another floor-walker. + +Paper cambric seemed to have more of a bearing upon the approach of +Christmas Day than dressmaking forms, though just what the connection +was, Rose couldn't make out. There was a crowd at the counter, anyhow. +It was five minutes before she could get waited on. But once she caught +a saleswoman's eye, her purchase was quickly made. She bought three +bolts: one of black, one of white, and one of a washed-out blue. Once +more she counted out the money, and this time, "I'll take it with me," +she said. + +Strong as she was, the immense bundle was almost more than she could +carry. But she managed to make her way at last to the main entrance, +where, under the incredulous eye of the doorman, she found a porter +waiting with her dressmaking form. + +"That's mine," she said. "Doris Dane is the name on it." Then, to the +doorman as the porter made off, "Will you get me a cab?" + +But this particular store had, quite naturally, no facilities for doing +a carriage business, a fact which the doorman laconically explained. + +"All right," said Rose dumping her heavy bundle beside the dressmaking +form. "You won't mind keeping an eye on this for a minute, will you?" +She didn't actually smile, but there was in her face a humorous +appreciation of the fact that a mountain like this wouldn't be hard to +watch. + +The doorman grinned back at her. "Sure I will," he said. "I'm sorry I +can't leave the door to get you a cab." + +Rose hailed one that happened to be passing, a creaking, +mud-bespattered disreputable affair with a driver to match, and briskly +drove a bargain with him. He announced when she told him the address +that the fare would be a dollar and a half. She offered him seventy-five +cents, which he, with the air of a disillusioned optimist in a bitter +world, accepted. "Christmas, too!" he muttered ironically. + +"Oh, come," said Rose, grinning up at him. "How many tired people have +you given free rides to to-day, on the strength of that?" + +"All right, miss; I don't complain," he said. He did, though, but +humorously, when Rose, assisted by a page boy the doorman had impressed +for her, carried the dressmaker's form and the other heavy bundle out to +the curb. He declared the form should go as another passenger (its +semi-human shape was clearly visible through the wrappings) and that the +other bundle ought to have a van. All the same, when at her destination +Rose had paid him, he came down, voluntarily from the box--voluntarily +but with a sort of reluctance--and carried the form up to her room for +her. + +Also, rather incredibly, he refused an extra quarter she had ready for +him when he had completed this service. "Just to show no ill feelings," +he said, and he told her where his stand was and gave himself a little +recommendation: "Honest and reliable." + +Here in her close little room, the suggestion of an alcoholic basis for +this generosity obtruded itself, but Rose didn't care. She wished him a +merry Christmas and waved him off with a smile. + +It was now after eight o'clock. Rehearsal was at eight-thirty and she +had had nothing to eat since noon. But she stole the time, nevertheless, +to tear the wrappings off her "form" and gaze on its respectable +nakedness for two or three minutes with a contemplative eye. Then, +reluctantly--it was the first time she had left that room with +reluctance--she turned out the light and hurried off to the little +lunch-room that lay on the way to the dance-hall. + +She never again, in the active practise of her profession, knew +anything quite like the ensuing seventy-two hours. Every stimulus was, +of course, abnormally heightened. There was the novelty, the thrilling +sense of adventure that missed being fear only through an inexplicable +confidence of success. And then, anyway, her imagination was a virgin +field that had never been cropped, and the luxurious fertility of it was +amazing. + +It was during that first rehearsal, which she so narrowly missed being +late for, that she got the general schemes for both sets of costumes. +That there must be a general scheme she had decided at once. The +sextette was a unit; none of the members of it ever appeared without the +others, and it would be immensely more effective, she perceived, if this +fact were expressed somehow in the costumes. Not by means of a stupid +uniformity, of course. The effect she wanted was subtler than that. But +if each one of the six costumes that these girls first appeared in could +be made somehow to express the same thing in a different way--not only +in different, though harmonious, colors, but in different, though +related, forms--the effect produced by the six of them together would be +immensely greater than the sum of their individual effects. + +This, of course, wasn't what Rose said to herself. She just wanted a +scheme, and with ridiculous ease, she got it. She didn't even get it. +There it was staring at her. And the other scheme for the evening frocks +was knocking at the door, too, eager to get in the moment she could give +it a chance. She began studying the girls for their individual +peculiarities of style. Each one of the costumes she made was going to +be for a particular girl, suited, without losing its place in the +general plan, to the enhancement of her special approximation to beauty. + +At last, when a shout from Galbraith aroused her to the fact that she +had missed an entrance cue altogether, in her entranced absorption in +these visions of hers, and had caused that unpardonable thing, a stage +wait, she resolutely clamped down the lid upon her imagination and, +until they were dismissed, devoted herself to the rehearsal. + +But the pressure kept mounting higher and higher and she found herself +furiously impatient to get away, back to her own private wonderland, the +squalid little room down the street, that had three bolts of cambric in +it and a dressmaker's manikin--the raw materials for her magic! + +Rose couldn't draw a bit. Her mother's fine contempt for ladylike +accomplishments had even intervened in the high-school days to prevent +her taking a free-hand course required in the curriculum, during which +you spent weeks making a charcoal study of a bust of Demosthenes. But +this lack never even occurred to Rose as a handicap. She hadn't the +faintest impulse to make a beginning by putting a picture down on paper +and making a dress of it afterward. She went straight at her materials, +or the equivalent of her materials, as a sculptor goes at his clay. She +couldn't have told just why she had bought those three shades of paper +cambric. + +"I'm really awfully obliged to you for having explained it to me," she +told Burton, the portrait painter long afterward. + +"I see!" he had exclaimed, on the occasion of an initiatory visit to her +workroom. "You design these things in their values first, just the way +the old masters used to paint. Once you get the values in, you can +project them in any colors that will leave your value scale true." + +And Rose, as she said, was really grateful to him for telling her what +it was she had been doing all the while, just as Monsieur Jourdain was +grateful for the information that he had been talking prose all his life +and never known it. + +What she had felt, of course, at the very outset, was the need of +something to indicate roughly the darks and lights in her design. And, +short of the wild extravagance of slashing into the fabrics themselves +and making her mistakes at their expense, she could think of nothing +better than the scheme she chose. + +She came to the conclusion afterward that even apart from the +consideration of expense, her own plan was better. You got more vigor +somehow, into the actual construction of the thing, if you could make it +express something quite independently of color and texture. + +Rehearsal was dismissed a little early that first night, and she was +back in her room by eleven. Arrived there, she took off her outer +clothes, sat down cross-legged on the floor, and went to work. When at +last, with a little sigh, and a tremulously smiling acknowledgment of +fatigue, she got up and looked at her watch, it was four o'clock in the +morning. She'd had one of those experiences that every artist can +remember a few of in his life, when it is impossible for anything to go +wrong; when each tentative experiment accomplishes not only its purpose, +but another unsuspected purpose as well; when the vision miraculously +betters itself in the execution; when the only difficulty is that which +the hands have in the purely mechanical operation of keeping up. + +She was destined later, of course, even during the achievement of this +first success, to learn the comparative rarity of those hours. Though, +as she looked back on it afterward, the whole of this first job seemed +to have been done with a kind of miraculous facility she couldn't +account for. + +And all through those five hours, fast as her mind flew, utterly +absorbed as it seemed to be, she never once lost the consciousness of +the almost palpable presence of Rodney Aldrich there in the room with +her. Once she laughed outright over the memory of a girl who had tried +to win her husband's friendship by studying law. Fancy Rodney trying to +study costumes! But he would understand what it meant to conceive them +and the sort of work it took, once they were conceived, to project them +as something objective to herself--something that had to challenge +expert opinion; meet the exactions of criticism. He'd understand the +thrill, too, of seeing them come up for judgment--the triumph of getting +them accepted and paid for. + +And, in the confidence born of that understanding, he'd be able to offer +for her to understand, the fundamentals of his own work. Not the dry +husks of technical considerations. What did they amount to anyway, +except as they formed the boundaries of the live thing he meant? But the +live thing itself--the thing that spelled challenge and work and victory +for him,--that thing, since at last she'd grown to deserve it, he'd +give her. Freely, fully,--just because he couldn't help giving it. + +Tired as she was, she could hardly bear to stop work. The half finished +thing on the manikin lured her on from one moment to another. It was +really insane not to stop. She must get up at seven-thirty, three hours +or so from now, in order to get to the shops ahead of the crowds and +begin the selection of her fabrics. At last, with a single movement of +resolution she turned out the gas and undressed, or rather, finished +undressing, in the dark, amid a litter of pins and paper cambric. + +And now, for the first time in this squalid, mean little room, the dark +had balm in it, became a fragrant miracle, obliterating the harsh +actualities of her immediate yesterdays and to-morrows, winging her +spirit for a breathless flight straight to the end she sought,--to the +time when the long pilgrimage before her should be accomplished. + +What a wonderful thing Rodney's cool firm friendship would be! Worth +anything, anything in the world it might cost to win it. But ... But.... + +She drew in a long unsteady breath and pressed her cooling hands down +upon her face. + +What a thing his love would be, when it should come, free of its tasks +and obligations; no longer in the treadmill making her world go round, +but given its wings again! + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +SUCCESS--AND A RECOGNITION + + +There is a kaleidoscopic character about the events of the ten days or +so preceding the opening performance of most musical comedies which +would make a sober chronicle of them seem fantastically incredible; and +this law of Nature made no exception in the case of _The Girl +Up-stairs_. There were rehearsals which ran so smoothly and swiftly that +they'd have done for performances; there were others so abominably bad +that the bare idea of presenting the mess resulting from six weeks' +toil, before people who had paid money to see it, was a nightmare. + +As the nervous pressure mounted, people took to exploding all over the +place in the most grotesquely inconceivable ways and from totally +unpredictable causes. Freddy France, who played the comic detective +(like most comedians he had no sense of humor whatever and treated his +"art" with a sort of sacrificial solemnity), developed delusions of +persecution, proclaimed himself the victim of a conspiracy to which the +owners, the author, Galbraith and most of the principals were parties, +and finally, when the director cut out a little scene that he had two +feeble jokes in, reached up unexpectedly and hit McGill on the nose, +flung his part on the stage, stamped on it and left the theater. Quan +read his lines in a painstaking manner for two days and then, after a +three-hour session in the Sherman House bar, Freddy was induced to come +back. + +Stewart Lester, one day, at the end of a long patient effort of +Galbraith's to improve his acting (he acted like a tenor; one needn't +say more than that), licked his thin red lips, and in a feline fury, +announced his indifference as to whether the management accepted his +resignation or that of Miss Devereux. As long as she insisted on +treating her vis-a-vis like a chorus-man, she'd perhaps be happier if a +chorus-man were given the part; and he would he only too happy, in case +the management agreed with her, to make the substitution possible. +Whereupon Miss Devereux remarked that even having been a failure in +grand opera didn't necessarily assure a man success in musical comedy, +and that possibly a chorus-man would be an improvement. Galbraith had a +long private conference with each of them--the fact that they would not +speak at all off stage guaranteed him against their comparing notes as +to what he'd said--and while the thing he effected could not be called a +reconciliation, it amounted to a sort of armed truce. They went through +their love scenes without actually scratching and biting. + +Even little Anabel Astor, whose good humor for a long time had seemed +invincible, tempestuously left the stage one day in the middle of one of +her scenes with her dancing partner, and could be heard sobbing loudly +in the wings through all that remained of that rehearsal. + +Queer things began happening to the plot, resulting sometimes from the +violent transposition of song numbers from one act to another, sometimes +from the interpolation of songs or specialties. Two or three scenes, +which the author regarded with special pride and was prepared to die in +the defense of, were pronounced by Galbraith to be junk. He had made +superhuman efforts, he told Goldsmith and Block, to put a little life +into them, and had demonstrated that this miracle was impossible of +performance. They were dead and they'd got to be buried before they +became, to the olfactory sense, any more unpleasant. + +There was an ominous breathlessness in the air after this ultimatum had +been delivered, and at the next rehearsal, when the director announced +the cut of six solid pages of manuscript, the voice of the author was +heard from back of the hall proclaiming in a hollow Euripidean bellow +that it was all over. He was going to his lawyer to get an injunction +against the production of the piece. + +Of all the persons directly, or even remotely, affected by this +nerve-shattering confusion, Rose was perhaps the least perturbed. The +only thing that really mattered to her, was the successful execution of +those twelve costumes. The phantasmagoria at North End Hall was a +regrettable, but necessary, interruption of her more important +activities. The interruption didn't interfere so seriously as at first +she thought it would. The routine of rehearsal as Galbraith developed +it, began with special scenes--isolated bits that needed modification or +polishing. The general rehearsals, taking this act or that and going +through with it from beginning to end, and involving, of course, the +presence of everybody in the company, didn't, as a rule, begin till +three in the afternoon; sometimes till as late as five. Of course when +they did begin, they lasted until all hours. + +But the labors of the chorus, and even of the sextette, shrank very much +in proportion to the work of the principals. Nearly all the changes that +were made were in the direction of compressing the chorus and giving the +principals more room. So that for long stretches of time, during which, +dressed in her working clothes and curled up in one of the remoter of +the cushioned window-seats, but ready to answer a summons to the stage +as promptly as a fireman, she could let her mind run without +interruption on the solution of some of her own problems, and then be +ready when she went back to her room, to fall into bed and asleep (the +two acts had become practically simultaneous) secure in the possession +of a clearly thought out program for the morrow. + +She wakened automatically at half past seven and was down-town by half +past eight, to do whatever shopping the work of the previous day +revealed the need of. The fact that it was, for the greater part, John +Galbraith's money she was spending (she had managed to put in a little +herself by calculating down to a fine point the necessary margin for +existence) worked to her advantage in these operations. She could not, +but for that fact, have forced herself to hunt down bargains so +persistently nor to keep the incidental expense for findings and such, +so low. + +At nine-thirty in the morning--an unheard of hour in the theater--the +watchman at the Globe let her in the stage door, and Rose had half an +hour before the arrival of the wardrobe mistress and her assistant, for +looking over the work done since she had left for rehearsal the day +before. + +She liked this quiet, cavernous old barn of a place down under the Globe +stage; liked it when she had it to herself before the two sewing women +came and later, when, with a couple of sheets spread down on the floor +she cut and basted according to her cambric patterns, keeping ahead of +the flying needles of the other two. After her own little room, the mere +spaciousness of it seemed almost noble. She even liked it, when, about +half past one in the afternoon, on matinee days, the chorus-girls of the +show now drawing to the end of its run, began dawdling in, passing +shrill jokes with Bill Flynn, the fireman, rummaging through the mail in +the letter-box, casually unfastening their clothes all the while, +preliminary to kimonos and make-up, gathering in little knots about the +sewing-machines and exclaiming in profane delight over the costumes. She +wondered at herself, sometimes, for having ceased to mind their +language, their shameless way of going half-clad, their general +atmosphere of moth-like worthlessness--and then laughed at herself for +wondering! + +How would her own quality be finer, her soul a more ample thing, for the +keeping, on one of the shelves of it, of a pot of carefully preserved +horror? If she could succeed with these costumes, her success, she +hoped, would lead her directly into the business of designing other +costumes for the stage. And if she became a professional stage costumer, +this rather loose, ramshackle, down-at-the-heel morality of back-stage +musical comedy would be a permanent fact in her life, just as the +dustiness of law-books and the stuffiness of court rooms were permanent +facts in Rodney's. + +As the work went on, her confidence in the success of this initiatory +venture became less ecstatic and more reasonable. A few of the costumes +were finished and, seen on live models (a couple of girls in the chorus +in the Globe show had volunteered to try on) were, if Rose knew anything +at all about clothes, without doubt or qualification, good. + +She had had just one really bad quarter of an hour over them, and that, +back on Christmas Day as it happened, was when Galbraith, having +detained her after he had dismissed the rehearsal, asked to see her +sketches. + +"Sketches!" she echoed, perplexed. + +"Oh, I don't mean regular water-colored plates," he said. "Just whatever +rough drafts of the things you will have put down on paper to start +yourself off with. It's simple curiosity, you understand." + +"But," she gasped, "I haven't put anything down on paper--not anything +at all! I don't know how to draw." + +And now he was perplexed in turn. How could one design a costume without +drawing a picture of it? + +She explained her working method to him; though not, she felt, very +successfully. She was perhaps a bit flustered, and he didn't seem to be +giving her his complete attention--seemed to be covering up, with the +pretense of listening, a strong interior abstraction. + +This was again a good diagnosis as far as it went. Only it didn't dig in +far enough for even the faintest surmise as to what the nature of his +abstraction was. + +"I could bring the patterns down here. Or, if you had time, you could +come up to my room and see them. But I'm afraid you couldn't tell much +from that, because they're all taken apart, you see, and they're just in +paper cambric and not the right colors." + +What the man was struggling for--it had been his sole reason for +detaining her in the first place--was some sort of opening that would +make it seem natural to tell her he hoped her Christmas Day had not been +too intolerably unhappy; to shake hands with her and wish her +luck--assure her in one way or another, that she had in him a friend she +could bring her troubles to--any sort of troubles. He'd made up his mind +to do this when the Christmas rehearsal should he over, as long ago as +the night of their walk down the avenue. This resolution had been +reinforced by the look he had caught in her face when she came up to +rehearsal this afternoon--a rather misty, luminous, exalted look,--a +little lack of definition about her eyelids suggesting there had been +tears there. + +This was good observation like her own of him. But, again like hers, in +its failure to get the central clue, it only mislead him, the worse. If +he could have guessed that she had been having a Christmas celebration +of her own that day; that there had been unwrapped and displayed, three +little presents she had bought the day before; one for her husband, and +one for each of her two babies, and that, just before starting for +rehearsal, she had wrapped them up and put them into her trunk to await +the day when they could be given, it might have altered matters +somewhat. + +The thing that finally made it clearly impossible for Galbraith to +express anything at all of this feeling which he, in good faith, called +friendship for her, was her alternative offer--if he had time, to take +him up to her room for a look at the patterns. + +If she's seen him as anything at all but starkly her employer and her +financier; if she's had the faintest glimmer of him as one who held for +her any personal feelings whatever, she never would have suggested as an +alternative to her bringing the patterns here to rehearsal, his coming +up to her room for a look at them. + +The thing of all others that irritated Galbraith was the possession of a +divided mind. Just now, disappointed as he was, almost to the point of +pain, though he wouldn't acknowledge to himself that it went as far as +that, over the evident fact that his relation to the girl, in spite of +their partnership, was exactly what it had been from the beginning, he +was still aware that if he'd got the opening he wanted, had managed +another of those warm lithe hand-clasps with her, and had got the notion +across to her that he wanted her to make a friend of him and a +confidant, he'd be going away now, afterward, under the painful +misgiving that he was a bit of an old fool. The product of all this +irritation was, however, that he declined Rose's offer of a view of her +patterns rather bruskly. + +"It was just curiosity, as I said. Go along your own way and don't worry +about me. You will be all right." + +Rose couldn't feel much conviction behind this expression of +confidence, and she went away, as I have said, in a sort of panic. Was +she all wrong, after all? Couldn't you design stage costumes except by +making pictures of them? She knew what he meant by water-colored plates. +She'd seen them framed in the lobbies at musical shows she'd been to +with Rodney. That was how costume designers worked, was it? Well she +knew she never could do anything like that. + +But her fears only lasted until she got back to her room and caught a +reassuring look at the pattern that was assembled on the form. After +all, the pictures in the lobby weren't so important as the costumes on +the stage. And as for Galbraith--well, if he didn't expect too much of +her, that was all the better. + +In keeping with the good luck which had attended everything that +happened in connection with this first venture of hers, she was able to +tell Galbraith that both sets of costumes were done and ready to try on, +on the very day he announced that the next rehearsal would be held at +ten to-morrow morning at the Globe. It might very easily have happened, +of course, that Rose's enterprise, together with Galbraith's partnership +in it, had become known here or there, got passed on from one to +another, with modifications and embellishments according to fancy, and +grown to be a monument of scandal and conjecture. But nothing is more +capricious than the heat-lightning of gossip, and it just chanced that, +up to the morning of Rose's little triumph, no one beyond Galbraith and +Rose herself even suspected the identity with Dane of the chorus, of the +costumer who was to submit, on approval, gowns for the sextette. The +fact, of course, was bound to come out on the day the company moved over +for rehearsals to the Globe, and the event was very happily dramatized +for Rose, by her ability to let the costumes appear first and her +authorship of them only after their success was beyond dispute. + +She persuaded the girls to wait until all six were dressed in the +afternoon frocks and until she herself had had a chance to give each of +them a final inspection and to make a few last touches and +readjustments. Then they all trooped out on the stage and stood in a +row, turned about, walked here and there, in obedience to Galbraith's +instructions shouted from the back of the theater. + +It was dark out there and disconcertingly silent. The glow of two cigars +indicated the presence of Goldsmith and Block in the middle of a little +knot of other spectators. + +The only response Rose got--the only index to the effect her labors had +produced--was the tone of Galbraith's voice. It rang on her ear a little +sharper, louder, and with more of a staccato bruskness than the +directions he was giving called for. And it was not his practise to put +more cutting edge into his blade, or more power behind his stroke, than +was necessary to accomplish what he wanted. He was excited, therefore. +But was it by the completeness of her success or the calamitousness of +her failure? + +"All right," he shouted. "Go and put on the others." + +There was another silence after they had fled out on the stage again, +clad tins time in the evening gowns--a hollow heart-constricting +silence, almost literally sickening. But it lasted only a moment. Then, +"Will you come down here, Miss Dane?" called Galbraith. + +There was a slight, momentary, but perfectly palpable shock accompanying +these words--a shock felt by everybody within the sound of his voice. +Because the director had not said, "Dane, come down here." He had said, +"Will you come here, Miss Dane?" And the thing amounted, so rigid is the +etiquette of musical comedy, to an accolade. The people on the stage and +in the wings didn't know what she'd done, nor in what character she was +about to appear, but they did know she was, from now on, something +besides a chorus-girl. + +Rose obediently crossed the runway and walked up the aisle to where +Galbraith stood with Goldsmith and Block, waiting for her. She was still +feeling a little numb and empty. + +Galbraith, as she came up, held out a hand to her. "I congratulate you, +Miss Dane," he said. "They're admirable. With all the money in the +world, I wouldn't ask for anything handsomer." + +Before she could say anything in reply, he directed her attention, with +a nod of the head, to the partners, and walked away. Rose gasped at +that. She'd never thought beyond him--beyond the necessity of pleasing +him; and that he'd carry the details of the business through with +Goldsmith and Block, she'd taken for granted. Now, here she was chucked +into the water and told to swim. She'd never in her life, of course, +tried to sell anything. What her mind first awoke to was that the +partners were looking rather blank. Block, indeed, let his eyes follow +the retreating Galbraith with a momentary look of outraged astonishment. +Her wits, quickened by the emergency, interpreted the look. Galbraith, +chucking her into the water indeed, had thrown her a life-preserver--the +tip that her wares were good. + +Goldsmith, quicker and shrewder than his junior, was already smiling +politely. "They really are very good," he said. "If they are not too +expensive for us, we'll consider buying them." + +"They'll be," said Rose, "the twelve of them, four hundred and +sixty-five dollars." She had something the same feeling of astonishment +on hearing herself say this, that she'd had when she heard herself +telling Galbraith that she'd design the costumes. Something or other had +spoken without her will--almost without her knowledge. She had one +figure clearly etched in her brain; that was the one hundred and ninety +dollars she must pay back to Galbraith; and she'd put in fifty of her +own. There was also a matter of twenty dollars or so still to be paid to +the wardrobe mistress and her assistant. But this four hundred and +sixty-five dollars had simply come out of the air. + +Block pursed his lips and emitted a fine thin whistle of astonishment. + +Goldsmith heaved a sigh. "My dear young lady," he protested. "The +inducement held out to us to wait for these costumes of yours, was that +they were to be cheap. But four hundred and sixty-five dollars is +ridiculous! That's a lot of money." + +"Quite a lot less," said Rose, "than the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out +came to. They were just over six hundred." Goldsmith smiled +indulgently. "By the figures on the tags, yes," he said. "But would we +have paid that, do you think? Those figures represent what they'd like +to get from people who buy one apiece. But from us, buying twelve ..." +He shrugged his shoulders expressively. + +Well, this was reasonable and no doubt true and it left Rose rather +aghast. She turned away toward the stage with the best appearance of +indifference she could muster. Her mind was making an agonized effort to +add up one hundred and ninety, fifty and twenty. But in the excitement +of the moment it simply balked--rejected the problem altogether. She +didn't think that the total came to much over three hundred dollars, but +she couldn't be sure. And then there was, sticking burr-like, somewhere, +the consciousness of another hundred unaccounted for in this total. +Until she could discover what the gowns had actually cost her, she +couldn't say anything. Therefore, she just stood where she was and said +nothing whatever. + +Goldsmith cleared his throat. "Really," he said in an intensely +aggrieved tone, "you must try to see it from our point of view. This +production's cost us thousands of dollars. If we bankrupt ourselves +before the opening night it will be a bad business for everybody. You +ought to see that. The costumes are very nice, I admit that. But +remember we took a chance on it. We waited for them with the idea that +you'd cooperate with us in saving money." + +Rose made a last frantic struggle to induce her figures to add up, but +they were getting more meaningless every minute. + +There was another moment of silence. Then Block took up the refrain with +variations. But just as he began to speak, a brilliantly luminous ray of +light struck Rose. She could have answered Goldsmith's arguments--would +have done so, but for her preoccupation with that trifling sum in +arithmetic. But it was incomparably better tactics not to answer at all. +Because if she could answer their arguments, they in turn could answer +hers. She'd be a child in their hands once she began to talk. But her +silence disconcerted them--gave them nothing to go on. Well, then, +she'd let them do the work and see what happened. + +But suppose, through her stubborn insistence, they should refuse the +costumes at any price! Well, the world wouldn't come to an end. She'd +live through it somehow, and somehow she'd manage to repay Galbraith. + +The partners went on talking alternately with symptoms of rising +impatience. + +"Oh, come," said Block at last, "we can't be all day about this! Your +figure is out of all reason. If you'd said even four hundred now ..." + +"Oh, yes," said Goldsmith. "We want to be liberal. We appreciate you've +done a good job. Say four hundred and I'll write you a check for it +now." He took a small check-book and a fountain pen out of his pocket. +"That's all right, eh?" + +Rose made another effort at addition. A hundred and ninety, and fifty, +and twenty, and the other ghostly hundred that wouldn't account for +itself and yet insisted on coming in and mixing everything up. She +turned on the two partners a look of perfectly genuine distress. + +"If you'll let me go away and add it up ..." she began. + +Goldsmith's heart was touched. The costumes were a bargain at four +hundred and sixty-five, and he knew it. There was an indescribable sort +of dash to them that would lend tone to the whole production. And then +the face of that pretty young girl who must have worked so desperately +hard to make them and who was so obviously helpless at this bargaining +game, would have moved a harder heart than his. + +"Oh, all right!" he said. "We'll give in. Four hundred"--he began making +out the check, but his hand hung over it a moment--"and fifty. How's +that?" + +Rose drew in a long breath. "That's all right," she said. + +It was just as she turned away with the check made out to Doris Dane in +her wrist-bag, that the mystery of that phantom hundred dollars solved +itself. It was the hundred dollars she'd borrowed from Rodney and could +now return to him! + +Galbraith took the first chance he could make to shoot her a low-voiced +question. "How much did you get?" he asked, and his face showed +downright surprise when she told him. "That's a pretty fair price," he +commented. "I was afraid they'd screw you way down on it, and I wanted +to help you out, but ..." + +"Oh, you did," said Rose. "Telling me they were good. Of course you +couldn't have done anything more. The first thing I want to do," she +went on, "is to pay you back. But I don't know just how to do it. I +can't go to the bank where they know me and--anyway, the name on the +check isn't right." + +He told her how easily that could be fixed. He'd take her to the bank he +used here in town and identify her. Then she could pay him and deposit +the balance to her own account. It was a bank where they didn't mind +small accounts. That would be much better than carrying her money around +with her where it could too easily be stolen. + +He was very kind about it all and they put the program through that day. +Yet she was vaguely conscious of a sense that he seemed a little +chilled, as if something about the transaction unaccountably depressed +him. + +And indeed it was true that he'd have found his tendency to fall in love +with her a good deal harder to resist if she'd shown herself more +helpless in the hands of Goldsmith and Block. She'd actually driven a +good bargain--an unaccountably good bargain! He wished he'd been on hand +to see how she did it. Well, women were queer, there was no getting away +from that. + +But Goldsmith and Block came back the next day and drove, in turn, a +good bargain of their own. + +"You've certainly got a good eye for costumes, Miss Dane," Goldsmith +said, "and here's a proposition we'd like to make. A lot of these other +things we've got for the regular chorus don't look so good as they +might. You'll be able to see changes in them that'll improve them maybe +fifty per cent. Well, you take it on, and we'll begin paying you your +regular salary now; you understand, twenty-five dollars a week, +beginning to-day." + +Rose accepted this proposition with a warm flush of gratitude. It +indicated, she felt, that they were still friendly toward her, disposed +of certain misgivings she'd experienced the night before, lest in +driving, unwittingly, so good a bargain with them, she had incurred +their enmity. + +But, from the moment her little salary began, she found herself +retained, body and soul, exactly as Galbraith himself was. They'd bought +all her ideas, all her energy, all her time, except a few scant hours +for sleep and a few snatched minutes for meals. She gave her employers, +up to the time when the piece opened at the Globe, at a conservative +calculation, about five times their money's worth. Even if she hadn't +been in the company she'd have found something like two days' work in +every twenty-four hours, just in the wardrobe room. Because the costumes +were cheap and the frank blaze of borders, footlights and spots, +pitilessly betrayed the fact. One set for the ponies was so hopelessly +bad that the owners refused to accept them, and Rose, on the spur of the +moment, made up a costume--they were uniform, fortunately--to replace +them. The wardrobe mistress, with two assistants, and under Rose's +intermittent supervision, managed somehow to get them made. And there +wasn't a single costume, outside Rose's own twelve, that hadn't to be +remodeled more or less. + +On top of all that, the really terrible grind of rehearsals began; +property rehearsals, curiously disconcerting at first, where instead of +indicating the business with empty hands, you actually lighted the +cigarette, picked up the paper knife, pulled the locket out from under +your dress and opened it--and, in the process of doing these things, +forgot everything else you knew; scenery rehearsals that caused the +stage to seem small and cluttered up and actually made some of the +evolutions you'd been routined in, impossible. At last and ghastliest, a +dress rehearsal, which began at seven o'clock one night and lasted till +four the next morning. + +It would all have been so ludicrously easy, Rose used to reflect in +despair, if, like the other girls in the sextette, she'd had only her +own part in the performance to attend to--only to get into her costumes +at the right time, be waiting in the wings for the cue, and then come on +and do the things they'd taught her to do. But, between Goldsmith and +Block, who were now in a state of frantic activity and full of insane +suggestions, and the wardrobe mistress who was always having to be told +how to do something, every minute was occupied. She would try +desperately to keep an ear alert for what was happening on the stage, in +order to be on hand for her entrances. But, in spite of her, it +sometimes happened that she'd be snatched from something by a furious +roar from Galbraith. + +"Miss Dane!" And then, when she appeared, bewildered, contrite. "You +_must_ attend to the rehearsal. Those other matters can be attended to +at some other time. If necessary, I can stop the rehearsal and wait till +you're at liberty. But I can't pretend to rehearse and be kept waiting." + +She never made any excuses; just took her place with a nod of +acquiescence. But she often felt like doing as some of the rest of them +did; felt it would be a perfectly enormous relief to shriek out +incoherent words of abuse, burst into tears and sobs, and rush from the +stage. Her position--her new position, she fancied, would entitle her to +do that--once. And then the notion that she was saving up that luxurious +possibility for some time when it would do the most good, would bring +back her old smile. And Galbraith, lost in wonder at her already, would +wonder anew. + +They followed the traditions of the Globe in giving _The Girl Up-stairs_ +its try-out in Milwaukee--four performances; from a Thursday to a +Saturday night, with rehearsals pretty much all the time in between. + +About all that this hegira meant to Rose was that she got two solid +hours' sleep on the train going up on Thursday afternoon and another two +hours on the train coming back on Sunday morning. She had domesticated +herself automatically, in the little hotel across from the theater, and +she had gone right on working just as she did at the Globe. Oddly +enough, she didn't differentiate much between rehearsals and the +performances. Perhaps because she was so absorbed with her labors off +the stage; perhaps because the thoroughly tentative nature of everything +they did was so strongly impressed on her. + +The piece was rewritten more or less after every performance. They +didn't get the curtain down on the first one until five minutes after +twelve--for even an experienced director like Galbraith can make a +mistake in timing--and the mathematically demonstrated necessity for +cutting, or speeding, a whole hour out of the piece, tamed even the +wild-eyed Mr. Mills. The principals, after having for weeks been +routined in the reading of their lines and the execution of their +business, were given new speeches to say and new things to do at a +moment's notice--literally, sometimes, while the performance was going +on. Ghastly things happened, of course. A tricky similarity of cues +would betray somebody into a speech three scenes ahead; a cut would have +the unforeseen effect of leaving somebody stranded, half-changed, in his +dressing-room when his entrance cue came round; an actor would dry up, +utterly forget his lines in the middle of a scene he could have repeated +in his sleep--and the amazing way in which these disasters were +retrieved, the way these people who hadn't, so far, impressed Rose very +strongly with their collective intelligence, extemporized, righted the +capsizing boat, kept the scene going--somehow--no matter what happened, +gave her a new respect for their claims to a real profession. + +This was the great thing they had, she concluded; the quality of coming +up to the scratch, of giving whatever it took out of themselves to meet +the need of the moment. They weren't--her use of this phrase harked back +to the days of the half-back--yellow. If you'd walked through the train +that took them back to Chicago Sunday morning, had seen them, glum, +dispirited, utterly fagged out, unsustained by a single gleam of hope, +you'd have said it was impossible that they should give any sort of +performance that night--let alone a good one. But by eight o'clock that +night, when the overture was called, you wouldn't have known them for +the same people. + +There is, to begin with, a certain magic about make-up which lends a +color of plausibility to the paradoxical theory that our emotions spring +from our facial expressions rather than the other way about. Certainly +to an experienced actor, his paint--the mere act of putting it on and +looking at himself in the glass as it is applied--effects for him a +solution of continuity between his real self, if you can call it that, +and his part; so that fatigues, discouragements, quarrels, ailments--I +don't mean to say are forgotten; they are remembered well enough, but +are given the quality of belonging to some one else. But beyond all that +was the feeling, on the edge of this first performance, that they were +now on their own. Harold Mills and the composer, Goldsmith and Block, +John Galbraith, had done their best, or their worst, as the case might +be. But their labors to-night would mean nothing to that rustling +audience out in front. From now on it was up to the company! + +The appearance, back on the stage, of John Galbraith in evening dress, +just as the call of the first act brought them trooping from their +dressing-rooms, intensified this sensation. He was going to be, +to-night, simply one of the audience. + +As a sample of the new spirit, Rose noted with hardly a sensation of +surprise, that Patricia Devereux nodded amiably enough to Stewart Lester +and observed that she believed the thing was going to go; and that +Lester in reply said, yes, he believed it was. + +Rose herself was completely dominated by it. Her nerves--slack, frayed, +numb, an hour ago--had sprung miraculously into tune. She not only +didn't feel tired. It seemed she never could feel tired again. Not even, +going back to her university days, on the eve of a class basket-ball +game, or a tennis match, had she felt that fine thrill of buoyant +confidence and adequacy quite so strongly! + +It wasn't until along in the third act that the audience became, for +her, anything but a colloid mass--something that you squeezed and +thumped and worked as you did clay, to get into a properly plastic +condition of receptivity, so that the jokes, the songs, the dances, +even the spindling little shafts of romance that you shot out into it, +could be felt to dig in and take hold. It never occurred to her to think +of it with a plural pronoun; it was "it" simply, an inchoate monster, +which was, as the show progressed, delightfully loosening up, becoming +good-humored, undiscriminating, stupidly infatuate; laughing at things +no human being would consider funny, approving with a percussive roar +things not in the least good; a monster, all the same, whose approbation +gave you an intense, if quite unreasoning, pleasure. + +But, along in the third act, as I said, as she came down to the +footlights with the rest of the sextette in their _All Alone_ number, +one face detached itself suddenly from the pasty gray surface of them +that spread over the auditorium; became human--individual--and intensely +familiar. Became the face, unmistakably, of Jimmy Wallace! + +It is probable that of all the audience, only two men saw that anything +had happened, so brief was the frozen instant while she stood +transfixed. One of them was John Galbraith, in the back row, and he let +his breath go out again in relief almost in the act of catching it. He +guessed what had happened well enough--that she'd recognized one of +those friends whose potential horror had made her willing to give up her +promotion and her little part--the one she'd spoken of, perhaps, as the +"only one that really mattered." But it was all right. She was going on +as if nothing had happened. + +The other man was Jimmy Wallace himself. He released, too, a little sigh +of relief when he saw her off in her stride again after that momentary +falter. But he hardly looked at the stage after that; stared absently at +his program instead, and, presently, availed himself of the dramatic +critic's license and left the theater. + +But it wasn't to go to his desk and write his story (he was on an +evening paper and so had no deadline staring him in the face) but to a +quiet corner in his club, where he could, undistractedly, think. + +From the moment of Rose's first appearance on the stage he had been +tormented by a curiosity as to whether she was indeed Rose, or merely +some one unbelievably like her. Because the fantastic impossibility that +Rose Aldrich should be a member of the Globe chorus was reinforced by +the fact that her gaze had traveled unconcernedly across his face a +dozen times--his seat was in the fourth row, too--without the slightest +flicker of recognition. Of course the way she stood there frozen for a +second, when at last she did see him, settled that question. She was +Rose Aldrich and she was in the Globe chorus! + +But this certainty merely left him with a more insoluble perplexity on +his hands; two, in fact--oh, half a dozen! What was she doing there? Did +Rodney know? Well, those questions, and others in their train, could +wait. But--what was he going to do about it? + +As for Rose herself, it was a mere automaton that moved off in the dance +and said the two or three lines that remained to her in the act as if +nothing had happened, because all her mind and all her capacity for +feeling were occupied and tested by something else. + +Incredible as it seems, she had utterly overlooked Jimmy--overlooked the +fact that, as a dramatic critic, he'd be certain to be present at the +opening performance of _The Girl Up-stairs_--certain to be sitting close +to the front, and certain, of course, to recognize her the moment she +came on the stage. She hadn't even had him in mind when the fear lest +some one of Rodney's friends might, for a lark, drop in at the Globe and +recognize her, had led her to tell John Galbraith that she couldn't be +in the sextette. Since that question had been settled, she'd hardly +considered the possibility at all. And, during the three weeks before +the opening, since she'd embarked on her career as a costumer, she +literally hadn't given it a thought. + +She had dreaded various things as the hour of the opening performance +drew near--reasonable things like the failure of the piece to please, +the reception of their offerings in a chilly silence intensified by +contemptuous little riffles of applause. (She had been in audiences +which had treated plays like that--taken her own part in the expression +of chill disfavor, and she knew now she could never do it again.) She +had dreaded unreasonable things, like the total failure of any audience +to appear and the necessity of playing to empty rows as they had done in +rehearsal; nightmare things, like a total loss of memory, which should +leave her stranded in the middle of a silent stage before a jeering +audience. But it hadn't occurred to her to dread that the rise of the +curtain would reveal to her any of the faces that belonged to a world +which the last six weeks had already made to seem unreal. + +So the sight of Jimmy Wallace had something the effect that a sudden +awakening has on a somnambulist--bewilderment at first, and after that a +sort of panic. Her first thought was that she must get word to him, +somehow, before he left the theater. Unless she could do that, what was +to prevent his going straight to Rodney, to-night, and telling him all +about it? He was under no obligation not to do it. He was Rodney's +friend quite as much as he was hers. + +It didn't take her long to make up her mind though that he wouldn't do +that. Jimmy was never precipitate. He'd give her a chance. To-morrow +morning would do. She could call him up at his office. + +But as she began formulating her request and phrasing the preface of +explanations she'd have to make before she'd be--well, entitled to ask a +favor of him, she found herself in a difficulty. She didn't want to +enter into a secret with him--with any man, this meant, of +course--against Rodney. She couldn't think of any way of stating her +reason for wanting her husband kept in the dark that didn't seem to +slight him, belittle him, make him faintly ridiculous--like the +pussy-cat John Galbraith had snapped his fingers at. + +So she came, rather swiftly indeed, to the decision (she had arrived at +it before Jimmy left the theater) that she wouldn't make any appeal to +him at all. She'd do nothing that could lead him to think, either that +she was ashamed of herself, or that she was afraid Rodney would be +ashamed of her. In the absence of any appeal from her, mightn't he +perhaps decide that Rodney was in her confidence and so say nothing +about it? But even if he should tell Rodney ... + +In her conscious thoughts she went no further than that; didn't +recognize the hope already beating tumultuously in her veins, that he +would tell Rodney--that perhaps even before she got back to her dismal +little room, Rodney, pacing his, would know. + +It was so irrational a hope--so unexpected and so well disguised--that +she mistook it for a fear. But fear never made one's heart glow like +that. + +That's where all her thoughts were when John Galbraith halted her on the +way to the dressing-room after the performance was over. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE MAN AND THE DIRECTOR + + +He said, "I want a talk with you," and she, thinking he meant then and +there, glanced about for a corner where they'd be tolerably secure +against the charging rushes of grips, property men and electricians, all +racing against time to get the third act struck and the first one set +and make their escape from the theater. + +"Oh, I don't mean here in this bedlam," he explained with a tinge of +impatience. And then his manner changed. "I'd like, for once, a chance +to sit down with you where it's--quiet and we don't have to feel in a +hurry." He added, a second later, answering a shade of what he took to +be doubt or hesitation in her face, "You're frightfully tired I know. If +you'd rather wait till to-morrow ..." + +"Oh, it wasn't that," said Rose. "I was just trying to think where a +place was where one could be quiet and needn't hurry and where two +people could talk." + +He smiled. "You can leave that to me," he said. "That is, if you don't +mind a restaurant and a little supper." + +"Of course I don't mind," she said. "I'd like it very much." + +He nodded. "Don't rush your dressing," he suggested, as he moved away. +"I've got plenty to do." + +The sextette dressed together in a sort of pen--big enough, because they +had all sorts of room down under the old Globe stage, but so far as +appointments went, decidedly primitive. The walls were of matched +boards; there was a shelf two feet wide or so around three sides of it, +to make a sort of continuous dressing-table; there were six mirrors, six +deal chairs and a few hooks. These were for your street clothes. The +stage costumes hung in neat ranks outside under the eye of the wardrobe +mistress. When you wanted to put one on you went out and got it, and if +the time allowed for the change were sufficient you took it back into +your dressing-room. Otherwise you plunged into it just where you were. +When you wanted to wash before putting on or after taking off your +make-up you went to a row of stationary wash-bowls down the corridor. + +All told it wasn't a place to linger in over the indulgence of +day-dreams. But the first glimpse Rose caught, as she opened the door, +in the mirror next her own, was the entranced face of Olga Larson. The +other girls were in an advanced state of undress, intent on getting out +as quickly as they could. They were all talking straight along, of +course, but that didn't delay their operations a bit. They talked +through the towels they were wiping off the make-up with, talked bent +double over shoe-buckles, talked in little gasps as they tugged at tight +sweaty things that didn't want to come off. And they made a striking +contrast to Olga, who sat there just as she'd left the stage, without a +hook unfastened, in a rapturous reverie, waiting for Rose. + +In the instant before her entrance was noticed, Rose made an effort to +shake herself together so that she should be not too inadequate to the +situation that awaited her. + +She was, of course, immensely pleased over Olga's little triumph. + +(For it had been a triumph. Galbraith had persuaded Goldsmith and Block +to buy the little Empire dress in maize and corn-flower; Rose had done +her hair, and Olga had been allowed to sing, on the first _encore_, the +refrain to _All Alone_, quite by herself. She'd gone up an octave on the +end of it to a high A, which in its perfect clarity had sounded about a +third higher and had brought down the house. Patricia had been furious, +of course, but was at bottom too decent to show it much and had actually +congratulated Olga when she came off. It looked as if she'd really got +her foot on the ladder.) + +Well, as I said, Rose was immensely pleased about it--for the girl, who +certainly deserved a little good luck at last; for herself, whose +judgment had been vindicated, and for the show, to the success of which +the experiment had contributed. But she'd have been a good deal better +pleased if Olga could have taken her success as simply her own, instead +of being so adoringly grateful to Rose about it. Olga had been adoring +her with a somewhat embarrassing intensity ever since the night she had +locked her in her room and taught her to talk. + +Rose had convicted herself here of a failure in human sympathy, and had +done her best to correct it, without much avail. The stubborn fact was +that, wishing Olga all the good fortune in the world, and being willing +to take any amount of trouble to bring it about, she didn't particularly +like her. And she flinched involuntarily, from the girl's more romantic +and sentimental manifestations. This distaste had been heightened by the +fact that along with Olga's adoration had gone a sense of +proprietorship, with its inevitable accompaniment of jealousy. + +Olga bridled every time she found Rose chatting with another member of +the chorus, and when, up in Milwaukee, Patricia had invited her, along +with Anabel, to come up to her room for a little supper after rehearsal, +Olga had been sulky and injured for the whole of the next day. + +It was something deeper in Rose than a mere surface distaste that made +all this--the caresses, as well as the sulky exactions--repellent to +her. And to-night, with her mind full of Rodney--full of that strange +hope that disguised itself as fear, the repulsion was stronger than +ever. She made an effort to conquer it. It would be a shame to throw a +wet blanket on the girl's attempt to enjoy her triumph in her own way. + +So Rose kissed her and told her how pleased she was, and good-humoredly +forbore to disclaim, except as her wide smile did it for her, Olga's +extravagant protestations of undying love and gratitude. Rose injected +common-sense considerations where she could. Olga had better get out of +that frock before she ruined it with grease paint, and unless she at +least began to dress pretty soon she'd find herself locked up for the +night in the theater. + +"I wouldn't care," Olga said. "You'd be locked up, too. Because you +aren't any further along than I am." + +"I'm going to be, though," said Rose, "in about two minutes." The +thought of what John Galbraith's disgust would be, in spite of his +good-natured assurance she needn't hurry, if she really kept him +waiting, set her at her task with flying fingers. + +"There's no use hurrying," Olga commented on this burst of speed, +"because you're going to wait for me. This is my night. We'll have a +little table all by ourselves at Max's and then you'll come up and sleep +with me to-night." + +An instinct prompted Rose to defer the necessary negative to this +suggestion until the last of the other girls, who was just then pinning +on her hat, should have gone. When the door clicked, she said she was +sorry but the plan couldn't be carried out. + +Olga looked at her intensely. "I need you to-night," she said, "and if +you care anything about me at all you'll come." + +"I'd come if I could," said Rose, "but it can't be managed. I've +promised to do something else." + +Olga's face paled a little and her eyes burned. "So that's it, is it?" +she said furiously. "You're going out with Galbraith." She went on to +say more than that, but her meaning was plain at the first words. + +Rose looked at her a little incredulous, quite cool, so far as her mind +went (because, of course, Olga's accusation was merely grotesque) but +curiously and most unpleasantly stirred, disgusted almost to the point +of nausea. She stopped the tirade, not because she cared what the girl +was saying, but because she couldn't stay in the room with a person +making that sort of an exhibition of herself. It took no more than half +a dozen words to accomplish this result. The mere fact that she spoke, +after that rather long blank period of speechlessness, and the cold +blaze of her blue eyes that accompanied her words, effected more than +the words themselves. And then, in a tempest of tears and +self-reproaches, Olga repented--a phase of the situation which was +worse, almost, than the former one, because it couldn't be dealt with +quite so summarily. + +But Rose went on dressing as fast as she could all the while, and at +last, long before Olga had begun putting on her street clothes, she was +ready to go. With her hand on the door-latch she paused. + +"I am going to have supper with Mr. Galbraith," she said. "He told me +there was something he wanted to talk to me about." And with that she +let herself out of the room, indifferent to the effect these last words +of hers might produce. + +She caught sight of Galbraith down at the end of the corridor waiting +for her, but she paused a moment, pulled in a long breath and grinned at +herself. In the state of mind she was in just then, divided between her +impatience to get back to her own room where her thoughts could be free +to run upon the one theme they welcomed, and her wrath and disgust over +the scene Olga had just subjected her to, the poor man was in danger of +having a pretty unsatisfactory sort of hour with her. She must brace up +and really try to be nice to him. + +So through all the preliminaries to the real talk which he'd said he +wanted with her, she was consciously as cordial and friendly as she knew +how to be. She said she hoped she hadn't kept him waiting too long, and +when he apologized for taking her out through the stage door and the +alley, with the explanation that the front of the house was by this time +locked, she made a good-humored reference to the fact that the alley and +the stage door were now her natural walk in life, and that it was just +as well she shouldn't be spoiled with liberties. + +He asked her if she had any preference as to where they went for supper, +and the way she acknowledged, again with a smile, that she'd rather not +go to Rector's, nor to any of the places over on Michigan Avenue, was an +admission, in candid confidence, of the existence of another half of her +life which she wished to keep, if possible, unentangled with this. She +showed herself frankly pleased with the taxi he provided, sank back +into her place in it with a sigh of clear satisfaction, and was, as far +as he could see, completely incurious about the address he gave the +chauffeur. The place he picked out was an excellent little chop-house in +one of the courts south of Van Buren Street, a place little frequented +at night--manned, indeed, after dinner, merely by the proprietor, one +waiter and a man cook in the grille, and kept open to avoid the chance +of disappointing any of the few epicurean clients who wouldn't eat +anywhere else. + +But neither the neighborhood nor the loneliness of the place got even so +much as a questioning glance from Rose. She left the ordering of the +supper to him, and assented with a nod to his including with it a bottle +of sparkling Burgundy. + +There is nothing quite so disconcerting as to be prepared to overcome a +resistance and then to find no resistance there; to be ready with +convincing arguments, and then not have them called for. This, very +naturally, was the plight of John Galbraith. + +Rose wasn't a child even on the day when she came and asked him for a +job, and in the six weeks that had intervened since then she'd been +dressing in the same room with chorus-girls--hearing the sort of things +they talked about in the wings. Indeed, unless he was mistaken, she must +have heard them linking her own name with his. His very special interest +in her, and the way he'd shown it, promoting her to the sextette, and +giving her a chance to design the costumes, was a thing they wouldn't +have missed nor failed to put their own construction on. She must know +then what their inferences would be from the fact of his asking her out +to supper on the opening night. + +What he'd been prepared to urge was that now that his connection with +the enterprise had terminated, now that he was no longer a director and +the representative of her employers, she should take him on trust simply +as a friend. He was prepared to answer protests, to offer +compromises--concessions to appearances. He'd expected her to exhibit +some shyness of the taxi. According to his unconscious ideal of the +situation she should have looked questioningly at him--hesitated, and +then let him assure her that it was all right. She should have gasped a +little when the car turned south in the dark little court below Van +Buren Street, have shrunk a little at the isolation the emptiness of the +restaurant enforced upon them, and declined, with something not far +short of panic, her share of that bottle of Burgundy. Because all these +flutters and questionings would just have opened the way for his +assurances--perfectly honest assurances, too, as far as he knew--of the +candor of his feelings and intentions toward her. + +She needed a friend, that was plain enough, some one who had her best +interests honestly at heart; some one who knew the pitfalls and the +difficulties of this pilgrimage she'd so strangely set out on, and could +advise her how to avoid them. That he was, potentially, that friend, he +truly believed. And what better way could there be of convincing her of +it than by persuading her to trust him, and then proving that her trust +had not been misplaced? + +But what was one to do--how was one to make a beginning when she trusted +him without any persuasion? Trusted him as a matter of course, without +the glimmer of any sort of emotion whatever; about as if he'd +been--well, say, her brother-in-law! + +He was at a loss for a peg to hang his definite sense of injury upon. He +couldn't blame the girl for having trusted him, nor for proving so +perfectly adequate to the unconventional situation he'd created. He +couldn't reproach her, even in his thoughts, for the frankly expressed +pleasure she took in the leisured dignity of the little restaurant, with +its modestly sumptuous appointments (she even let him see that she +appreciated the fineness of the napery and the handsomeness of the +tableware; admitted, indeed, how sharply it contrasted with what she'd +been used to lately), nor for the real appreciation she showed of the +supper he selected. + +But the moment he had been planning, counting on for days--weeks, if it +came to that--with an excitement he couldn't deny, a tensity that had +increased as the prospect of it drew nearer, was not exciting nor tense +for her. If anything, she'd relaxed a little, as if the big moment of +her day had passed--or, postponed by this affair of his, were still to +come. Once or twice when her gaze detached itself from him and rested +unfocused on the other side of the room, he saw little changes of +expression go over her face that didn't relate to him at all. He simply +wasn't in focus, that was the size of it. He had never seen her look +lovelier, more completely desirable than she did right now, dressed as +she was in her very simple street clothes and relaxed by the surrounding +quiet and comfort and her own fatigue. And yet, all alone with him as +she had so confidingly permitted herself to be, and near enough to reach +with the bare stretching out of a hand, she'd never been further away +nor seemed more unattainable. + +As she came back from one of these momentary excursions she found him +staring at her, and with a faint flush and a smile of contrition she +pulled herself back, as it were, into his presence. + +"I know you're tired," he said bruskly. "But I fancied you'd be tireder +in the morning and I have to leave for New York on the fast train. So, +you see, it was now or never." Strangely enough, that got her. She +stared at him a little incredulous, almost in consternation. + +"Do you mean you're going away?" she asked. "To-morrow?" + +"Of course," he said rather sharply. "I've nothing more to stay around +here for." He added, as she still seemed not to have got it through her +head. "My contract with Goldsmith and Block ended to-night, with the +opening performance." + +"Of course," she said in deprecation of her stupidity, "I didn't think +you were going to stay indefinitely--as long as the show ran. And yet I +never thought of your going away. It's always seemed that you were the +show--or, rather, that the show was you; just something that you made +go. It doesn't seem possible that it can keep on going with you not +there." + +The sincerity of that made it a really fine compliment--just the sort +of compliment he'd appreciate. But--the old perversity again--the very +freedom with which she said it spoiled it for him. + +"I may be missed," he said--it was more of a growl really--"but I shan't +be regretted. There's always a sort of Hallelujah chorus set up by the +company when they realize I'm gone." + +"I shall regret it very much," said Rose. The words would have set his +blood on fire if she'd just faltered over them. But she didn't. She was +hopelessly serene about it. "You're the person who's made this six weeks +bearable and, in a way, wonderful. I never could thank you enough for +the things you've done for me, though I hope I may try to some time." + +"I don't want any thanks," he said. And this was completely true. It was +something very different from gratitude that he wanted. But he realized +how abominably ungracious his words sounded, and hastened to amend them. +"What I mean is that you don't owe me any. Anything I've done that's +worked out to your advantage was done because I believed it was to the +advantage of the men who hired me--beginning with the afternoon when I +first took you on in the chorus." + +This didn't satisfy him either. Rose said nothing. He had indeed left +her nothing to say. But there was a look of perplexity in her eyes--as +if she were casting about for some stupidly tactless act or omission of +her own to account for his surliness--that made him recant altogether. + +"I don't know why in the world I should have said a thing like that!" he +burst out. "It wasn't true. I've wanted to do things for you--wanted to +do more than I could, and I want to still. You've done a lot to make +this show go, as well as it did, in more ways than you know about. It +wasn't for me, personally, that you did it. But all the same, I'm +grateful. And it's to convince you of that that I asked you to come +around here to-night." + +She really lighted up over his praise, thanked him for it very +prettily. But then, after a little silence, she went on reflectively, +"It was, in a way, for you, personally, that I was working all the time. +I don't know if I can explain that, though I think I understand it +myself. But just because you wanted things so hard--you were so +perfectly determined that something should happen in a certain way--I +just _had_ to help bring it about, or try to. It would have been +exciting enough just to see that things were wrong and to watch them +coming right. But taking hold one's self and helping a little to make +them come right was--well, as I said, wonderful." + +"Well," he said--and now he was brusk again--"I hope Goldsmith and Block +are satisfied. They won't be; of course, unless the thing runs forty +weeks. But that isn't what I want to talk about. I want to talk about +you. I want to know what you're aiming at. I don't mean to-morrow or +next week. You'll stay with this piece, I suppose, as long as the run +lasts. But in the end, what's the idea? Do you want to be an actress?" + +He had kept on going after that first question of his, because it was +obvious the girl wasn't ready to answer. She seemed to be struggling to +get the bearings of a perfectly new idea. At length she gave him the +clue. + +"It's that forty weeks," she said. "The notion of just going on--not +changing anything or improving anything; doing the same thing over and +over again for forty weeks, or even four, seems perfectly ghastly. And +yet I suppose that's what everybody in the company is hoping for--just +to keep going round and round like a horse at the end of a pole. What +I'd like to do, now that this is finished, is--well, to start another." + +His eyes kindled. "That's it," he said. "That's what I've felt about you +all along. I suppose it's the reason I felt you never could be an +actress. You see the thing the way I do--the whole fun of the game is +getting the timing. Once it's got ..." He snapped his fingers; and with +an eager nod she agreed. + +He was in focus now, there could he no doubt of that. But it didn't +occur to him that it was the director who was in focus, not the man. +The fact was that in evoking the director she'd banished the man--a +triumph she wasn't to realize the importance of until a good deal later. + +"Well, then, look here," he said. "I've an idea that I could use you to +good advantage as a sort of personal assistant. There'll be a good deal +of work just of the sort you did with the sextette, teaching people to +talk and move about like the sort of folk they're supposed to represent. +That's coming in more and more in musical comedies, the use of the +chorus as real people in the story--accounting for their exits and +entrances. It would be done more if we could teach chorus people to act +human. Well, you can do that better than I; that's the plain truth. And +then I think after you'd got my idea of a dance number you could +probably rehearse it yourself, take some of that routine off my hands. +Under this new contract of mine, that I expect to sign in a day or two, +I'll simply have to have somebody. And then, of course, there's the +costuming. That's a great game, and I've a notion, though of course I +haven't a great deal to go by, that you could swing it. I think you've a +talent for it. + +"There you are! The job will be paid from the first a great deal better +than what you've got here. And the costuming end of it, if you succeed, +would run to real money. Well, how about it?" + +"But," said Rose a little breathlessly--"but don't I have to stay here +with _The Girl Up-stairs_? I couldn't just leave, could I?" + +"Oh, I shan't be ready for you just yet anyway," he said. "I'll write +when I am and by that time you'll be perfectly free to give them your +two weeks' notice. By the way, haven't you some other address than care +of the theater--a permanent address somewhere?" + +"Care of Miss Portia Stanton," she told him, and as he got out his card +and wrote it down, she added the California address. It recalled to his +mind that she had told him her name was Rose Stanton on the day he had +given her a job, and the memory diverted him for a moment. Then he +pulled himself back. + +"They'll be annoyed, of course--Goldsmith and Block. But, after all, +you've given them more than their money's worth already. Well--will you +come if I write?" + +"It seems to be too wonderful to be true," she said. "Yes, I'll come, of +course." + +He sat there gazing at her in a sort of fascination. Because she was +fairly lambent with the wonder of it. Her eyes were starry, her lips a +little parted, and she was so still she seemed not even to be breathing. +But the eyes weren't looking at him. Another vision filled them. The +vision--oh, he was sure of it now!--of that "only one," whoever he was, +that mattered. + +He thrust back his chair with an abruptness that startled her out of her +reverie, and the action, rough as it was, wasn't violent enough to +satisfy the sudden exasperation that seized him. If he could have +smashed the caraffe or something ... + +"I won't keep you any longer," he said. "I'll have them get a taxi and +send you home." + +She said she didn't want a taxi. If he'd just walk over with her to a +Clark Street car ... And she thanked him for everything, including the +supper. But all the time he could see her trying, with a perplexity +almost pathetic, to discover what she had done to change his manner +again like that. + +He was thoroughly contrite about it, and he did his best to recover an +appearance of friendly good will. He didn't demur to her wish to be put +on a car, and at the crossing where they waited for it, after an almost +silent walk, he did manage to shake hands and wish her luck and tell her +she'd hear from him soon, in a way that he felt reassured her. + +But he kicked his way to the curb after the car had carried her off, and +marched to his hotel in a sort of baffled fury. He didn't know exactly +what had gone wrong about the evening. He couldn't, in phrases, tell +himself just what it was he'd wanted. But he did know, with a perfectly +abysmal conviction, that he was a fool! + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE VOICE OF THE WORLD + + +If you were to accost the average layman, especially the layman who has, +at one time or another, found his personal affairs, or those of his +friends, casually illuminated by the straying search-light of newspaper +notoriety, and put this hypothetical question to him: What chance would +there be that a young married woman, who, in a social sense, really +"belonged," could leave her husband for a musical-comedy chorus in the +city he lived in, and escape having the fact chronicled in the daily +press?--that layman would tell you that there was simply no chance at +all. But if you were to put the same question to a person expert in the +science of publicity--to an alumnus of the local room of any big city +daily, you'd get a very different answer. Because your expert knows how +many good stories there are that never get into the papers. He allows +for the element of luck; he knows how vitally important it is that the +right person should become aware of the fact at exactly the right time, +in order that a simple happening may be converted into news. + +Rose's "escapade"--that's how it would have been described--didn't get +into the papers. Jimmy Wallace, of course, before the bar of his own +conscience, stood convicted of high treason. There was no use arguing +with himself that he was hired as a critic and not as a reporter. For, +just as it is the doctor's duty to prolong, if possible, the life of his +patient, or the lawyer's duty to defend his client, so it is the duty of +every man who writes for a newspaper, to turn himself into a reporter +when a story breaks under his eye. Jimmy ought that very night as soon +as he had made sure of his facts, to have left a note on his city +editor's desk informing him that Mrs. Rodney Aldrich was a member of the +chorus in the new Globe show. + +He didn't do it, even though he knew that a more troublesome accuser +than his own conscience--namely, the city editor himself--would confront +him, in case any of his colleagues on the other papers had happened to +recognize her and, dutifully, had turned the story in. He read the other +papers for the next twenty-four hours, rather more carefully than usual, +and then with a sigh of relief, told his conscience to go to the devil. +It was a well trained, obedient conscience, and it subsided meekly. + +But his curiosity was neither meek nor accustomed to having its +liberties interfered with, and it declined to leave the problem alone. +Problem! It was a whole nest of problems. If you isolated one and worked +out a tolerably satisfactory answer to it, you discovered that this +answer made all the rest more fantastically impossible of solution than +before. It actually began to cost him sleep! What made it harder to +bear, of course, was the tantalizing possibility of finding out +something by dropping in at the Globe during a performance, wandering +back on the stage, where he was always perfectly welcome, going up and +speaking to her and--seeing what happened. Something more or less +illuminating would have to happen. Because, even in the extremely +improbable case of her pretending she didn't know him, he'd then have +something to go on. He dismissed this temptation as often as it showed +its face around the corner of the door of his mind--dismissed it with +objurgations. But it was a persistent temptation and it wouldn't stay +away. + +It was a real relief to him when Violet Williamson telephoned to him one +day and asked him to come out to dinner. There'd be no one but herself +and John, she said, and he needn't dress unless he liked. She'd been in +New York for a fortnight and had only been back two days. He mustn't +fail to come. There was a sort of suppressed excitement about Violet's +voice over the telephone, which led him to suspect she might be able to +throw some light on the enigma. + +But light, it appeared, was what John and Violet wanted from him. + +They were both in the library when he came in, and after the barest +preliminaries in the way of greetings and cigarettes, and the swiftest +summary of her visit to New York ("I stayed just long enough to begin +being not quite so furious with John for not taking me there to live,") +Violet made a little silence, visibly lighted her bomb, and threw it. +"John and I went to the Globe last night to see _The Girl Up-stairs_," +she said. + +Jimmy carried his cocktail over to the fire, drew sharply on his +cigarette to get it evenly lighted, and by that time had decided on his +line. + +"That's an amazing resemblance, isn't it?" he said. + +"Resemblance fiddle-dee-dee!" said Violet. + +John Williamson hunched himself around in his chair. "Well, you know," +he protested to his wife, "that's the way I dope it out myself." + +"Oh, _you!_" she said, with good-natured contempt. "You think you think +so. Because you've always been wild about Rose ever since Rodney married +her, you just won't let yourself think anything else. But Jimmy here, +doesn't even think he thinks so. He knows better." + +"They're the limit, aren't they?" said John in rueful appeal to his +guest. "They not only know what you think, but what you think you think! +It's a marvelous thing--feminine intuition." + +"'Intuition,' nothing!" said Violet. Then she rounded on Jimmy. + +"How much have you found out about her--this girl with the 'astonishing +resemblance'?" + +"Not very much," Jimmy confessed. "According to the program, her name is +Doris Dane. I did ask Block about her. He's one of the owners of the +piece. But he couldn't tell me very much. She's from out of town, he +thinks, and he said something about her being a dressmaker. She did some +work for them on the costumes. And she started in with this show as a +chorus-girl. But Galbraith, the director, got interested in her, and put +her into the sextette." + +"Well, there we are," said John Williamson. "That settles it. Rose never +was a dressmaker, that's a cinch." + +Even Violet seemed a little shaken, and Jimmy was just beginning to +congratulate himself on the skill with which he had modified what Block +had told him about the costumes, when Violet began on him again. + +"All right!" she said. "Where are we? You know quite a lot of people in +that show, don't you?" This was a rhetorical question. It was notorious +that Jimmy knew more or less everybody. So, without waiting for an +answer, she went on, "Well, have you been behind the scenes there since +the thing began?" + +"No, I've not gone back," said Jimmy. "Why should I?" + +"You haven't even been curious," she questioned, "to find out what a +girl who looked and talked as much like Rose as that, was like?" She +concluded, for good measure, with one more question voiced a little +differently--more casually. "Have you happened to see Rodney lately?" + +"Why, yes," Jimmy said unwarily. "I met him at the club the other day; +only saw him for a minute or two. We had one drink." + +"And did you happen to tell him," she asked, "about this dressmaker in +_The Girl Up-stairs_ who looked so wonderfully like Rose? Did you offer +to take him round to see for himself?" + +"I tell you there's nothing to that!" said John. He'd been caught in the +same trap, it seemed. "What's the use of butting in? If anything has +gone wrong with those two ..." + +"You've always said there hasn't," Violet interrupted. + +"And you've said," he countered, "that you were sure there had. Well, +then, if there's a chance of it, why run the risk, just for nothing?" + +Jimmy, as it happened, had never heard even a suggestion that Rose and +Rodney were on any other terms than those of perfect amity. He hoped +they'd go on and tell him more. So to prevent their becoming suddenly +discreet, he promptly changed the subject. + +"I thought you had a taboo against the Globe," he said to Violet. "How +did you happen to go there?" + +"John went while I was in New York," she explained. + +[Illustration: "Don't you know that that was Rose Aldrich?"] + +"He's--well, a regular fan, you know. He hasn't missed a show there in +years. And he was _too_ queer and absent-minded and fidgety for words, +when I came back. I thought a bank must be going to fail, or something. +And when he said, after dinner last night, that he felt like going to a +musical show, of course I said I'd go with him. And when I found it was +the Globe--he already had tickets--I was too--kind and sorry for him to +make a fuss. Well, and then she came out on the stage, and I knew what +it was all about." + +"Where did you sit?" Jimmy asked. + +"Fifth row," said John. + +Violet hadn't got the bearing of Jimmy's question. "Oh, you couldn't +mistake her," she said, "any more than you could in this room, now." + +"Do you mean," John asked, "that she might have recognized us?" + +"They can't," said Violet, "across the footlights,--can they?" + +Jimmy nodded. "In a little theater like that," he said, "anywhere in the +house. But it seems she didn't recognize you." + +"Look here!" said Violet. "Don't you know, in your own mind, just as +well as that you're standing there, that that was Rose Aldrich?" + +Jimmy dropped down into a big chair. "Well," he said, "I'm willing to +accept it as a working hypothesis." + +"You men!" said Violet. + +Dinner was announced just then, and the theme had to be dismissed until +at last they were left alone with the dessert. + +"What breaks me all up," Violet burst out, abandoning the pretense of +picking over her walnuts, and showing, with a little outflung gesture, +how impatient she had been to take it up, "what breaks me all up is how +this'll hit Frederica. She just adores Rodney and she's been simply +wonderful to Rose--for him, of course." + +Neither of the men said anything, but she felt a little stir of protest +from both of them and qualified the last phrase. + +"Oh, she liked her for herself, too. We all did. We couldn't help it. +But you haven't any idea, either of you, of even the beginning of what +Frederica did for her--steered her just right, and pushed her just +enough, and all the while seeming not to be doing a thing. Freddy's such +a peach at that! And she's been so big-hearted about it; never even +_felt_ jealous. If it had been me, and I'd adored a brother like that, +and he'd gone off and fallen in love with a girl nobody knew, just +because he saw her in a wrestling-match with a street-car conductor, I'd +have wanted, whatever I might have done, to--well, show her up. And yet, +even after Rose had left him, for no reason at all, Freddy ..." + +"You're just guessing at all that, you know," her husband interrupted +quietly. "You don't _know_ a single thing about it." + +"Well, what reason _could_ Rose have for leaving him?" she flashed back. +"Hasn't Rodney been perfectly crazy about her ever since he married her? +Has he ever _seen_ another woman the last two years? Or maybe you think +he's been coming home drunk and beating her with a trunk-strap." + +But John stuck to his guns. "You don't even know she's left him. The +only thing you do know is that Bella Forrester met Frederica one day, +about a week before Christmas, in the railway station at Los Angeles." + +"Well, can you tell me any other reason," Violet demanded, "why Freddy +should dash off alone to California, right in the middle of the holiday +rush, without saying a word to anybody, and be back here in just a week; +and not tell even _me_ what she'd been doing, or where she'd been, so +that if Bella hadn't written to me, I'd never have known about it at +all? Is there any way of explaining that, except by supposing that Rose +had quarreled with Rodney and left him and that Freddy was trying to get +her to come back?" + +Neither of the men could offer, on the spur of the moment, the +alternative explanation she demanded. Indeed it would have taken a good +deal of ingenuity to construct one. It was safer, anyway, just to go on +looking incredulous. + +There was silence for a minute or two, then Violet burst out again. "And +then, after all Freddy had done, for Rose to come back here to Chicago, +with all the other cities in the country where it wouldn't matter what +she did, and start to be, of all things, a chorus-girl! It's just +a"--she hesitated over the word, and then used it with an inflection +that gave it its full literal meaning--"just a _dirty_ trick. And poor +Freddy, when she knows ...!" + +"I don't believe a word of it," said John Williamson. "I don't believe +Doris Dane--if that's her name--is Rose, in the first place. And I don't +believe Rose has had a quarrel with Rodney. But if she has, and if she's +really there in that show ... Well, I know Rose--not so well as I'd have +liked to, but pretty well--and I know she's a fine girl and I know she's +square. And if I ever saw a girl in love with her husband, she was. +Well, and if she has done it, she's got a reason for it. Oh, I don't +mean another woman or a trunk-strap, or any of the regular divorce court +stuff. That's absurd, of course. And it may be, really, a fool reason. +But you can bet it didn't look like that to her. She wouldn't have done +it, admitting it's what she's done, unless she felt she had to." + +"Oh, yes," said Violet, "I expect she's feeling awfully noble about it, +and I'll admit she was in love with Rodney. And that makes it all the +worse! If she'd fallen in love with some other man and run off with +him--well, that isn't pretty, but it's happened before and people have +got away with it. But this running away on account of some silly idea +that she's picked up from that votes-for-women mother of hers, running +away from a man like Rodney, too, just makes you sick." + +Her husband didn't try to answer her, except with a regretful sigh. He +recognized in the stinging contempt of his wife's words, the voice of +their world. If Doris Dane of the sextette were really Rose--and in the +bottom of his heart, despite his valiant pretense, he couldn't manage +more than a feeble doubt of it--she had committed the unforgivable sin. +Or so he thought, leaving out of his calculations one ingredient in the +situation. She had done an unconventional thing for the sake of a +principle! + +"Well," said Jimmy Wallace after a while, heading the conversation away, +as he was wont to do, from what might be an endless discussion of moral +principles, "the purpose of this council of war is to decide what we are +going to do about it. Are we going to tell Aldrich or his sister about +the dressmaker who looks so much like his wife, and let them find out +for themselves whether she is or not? Or are we going to make sure first +by going back on the stage there and having a talk with her? Or are we +just going to shut up about it--never have been to the Globe at all; or, +in my case, never to have noticed the resemblance?" + +"On the chance, you mean," John inquired, "that Rodney and Frederica +never find out at all? How much does that chance amount to?" + +"Well," said Jimmy, "the show's in its fourth week, and the story hasn't +got into the papers yet. So the chances are now it won't. And you're +about the only person in your crowd that makes a practise of going to +the Globe. If you haven't heard any rumors it probably means that you +two are the only ones who know, so far. People who knew her before she +was married may have recognized her, to be sure, but they aren't likely +to go around either to Aldrich or to Mrs. Whitney with the story. Of +course there's always a big margin for the unforeseeable. But even at +that, I think you might call it an even chance." + +"That's what I vote for then," said John, "shut up." + +"I certainly don't want to go back on the stage and talk to Rose," said +Violet, "and I simply couldn't make myself tell either Rodney or +Frederica. It would be just too ghastly! But there's another thing you +haven't thought of. Suppose they both know already. I've got an idea +they do." + +This was a possibility they hadn't thought of, but the more they +canvassed it, the likelier it grew. + +"He acts as if he knew," Violet said, "now I come to think of it. Oh, I +can't tell exactly why! Just the way he talks about her and--doesn't +talk about her. And then there's Harriet. She came home from Washington +and stayed three days with Frederica and then went away again. She kept +house for him while Rose was laid up, and why shouldn't she be doing it +now, except that she's perhaps spoken her mind a little too freely and +Rodney doesn't want her around? There'd be no nonsense about Harriet, +you could count on that." + +"It would be like Rose," said John, "to tell him herself. It wouldn't be +like her, when you come to think of it, to do anything else." + +"Oh, yes, she'd tell him," said Violet. "If she had some virtuous +woman-suffrage reason, she'd do more than tell him. She'd rub it in. Of +course he knows. Well, what shall we do about that?" + +"Same vote," said John Williamson; "shut up. Certainly if he knows, that +lets us out." + +But Violet wasn't satisfied. "That's the easiest thing, certainly," she +said, "but I don't believe it's right. I think the people who know him +best, ought to know--just a few, the people he still drops in on, like +the Crawfords, and the Wests, and Eleanor and James Randolph; just so +that they could--well, _not_ know completely enough; so that they +wouldn't, innocently, you know, say ghastly things to him. Or even, +perhaps, do them, like making him go to musical shows, or talking about +people who run away to go on the stage. There are millions of things +like that that could happen, and if they know, they'll be careful." + +Her husband wasn't very completely convinced, though she expounded her +reasons at length, and urged them with growing intensity. But he'd never +put a categorical veto upon her yet, and it wasn't likely he'd begin by +trying to, now. + +As for Jimmy Wallace, he was really out of it. But he went home feeling +rather blue. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE SHORT CIRCUIT AGAIN + + +It was, after all, out of that limbo that Jimmy had spoken of as the +margin of the unforeseeable, that the blind instrument of Fate appeared. +He was a country lawyer from down-state, who, for a client of his own, +had retained Rodney to defend a will that presented complexities in the +matter of perpetuities and contingent remainders utterly beyond his own +powers. He'd been in Chicago three or four days, spending an hour or two +of every day in Rodney's office in consultation with him, and, for the +rest of the time, dangling about, more or less at a loose end. A belated +sense of this struck Rodney when, at the end of their last consultation, +the country lawyer shook hands with him and announced his departure for +home on the five o'clock train. + +"I'm sorry I haven't been able to do more," Rodney said,--"do anything +really, in the way of showing you a good time. As a matter of fact, I've +spent every evening this week here in the office." + +"Oh, I haven't lacked for entertainment," the man said. "We hayseeds +find the city a pretty lively place. I went to see a show just last +night called _The Girl Up-stairs_. I suppose you've seen it." + +"No," said Rodney, "I haven't." + +"Well, the title's pretty raw, of course, but the show's all right. +Nothing objectionable about it, and it was downright funny. I haven't +laughed so hard in a year. Pretty tunes, too. I tried to-day to get some +records of it but they didn't have any yet. If you want a real good +time, you go to see it." + +The client was working his way to the door all the while and Rodney +followed him, so that the last part of this conversation took place in +the outer office. Rodney saw the man off with a final hand-shake, closed +the door after him and strolled irresolutely back toward Miss Beach's +desk. + +It was true, as he had told his client, that he had been spending most +of his evenings lately in his office, and it was also true that he had +an immense amount of work to do; he'd been taking it on rather +recklessly during the last two months. But they'd been pretty sterile, +those long solitary evening hours. He'd worked fitfully, grinding away +by brute strength for a while, without interest, without imagination, +and then, in a frenzy of impatience, thrusting the legal rubbish out of +the way and letting the enigma of his great failure usurp, once more, +his mind and his memories. + +It had occurred to him to wonder, as he stood listening to his client's +enthusiastic description of the show at the Globe, whether it would be +possible, in any surroundings, for him, for an hour or two, to laugh and +be jolly--and forget. It might be an experiment worth trying! + +"Telephone over to the University Club," he said suddenly to Miss Beach, +"and see if you can get me a seat for _The Girl Up-stairs_." + +The office boy was out on an errand and in his absence the switchboard +was Miss Beach's care. + +"The--_The Girl Up-stairs_?" she repeated. + +"That's what he said, isn't it?" + +"Yes," she assented. "That's--the name of it." + +He might have been expected, after giving an order like that, to go +striding back into his private office and slam the door after him. It +wasn't at all his way to keep a lingering hand on a task after he'd +delegated it to some one else. But he didn't on this occasion act as +she'd expected him to; remained abstractedly where he was while +something turned itself over in his mind. + +There was nothing urgent about his order of course, and it was natural +enough that she should go on with her typing to the end of a sentence, +or even of a paragraph. But he stayed on and on, and Miss Beach went +steadily on with her typing. Finally he roused himself enough to look +around at her. + +"Go ahead and telephone," he said. "I want to find out if I can get a +seat." + +She arose obediently and moved over to the switchboard, then began +fumbling with the directory. + +"Good lord!" said Rodney. "You know the number of the University Club!" + +Of course it was true she did. She called it up for him on an average of +a dozen times a week. He was looking at her now with undisguised +curiosity. She was acting, for a perfectly infallible machine like Miss +Beach, almost queer. But she acted queerer the next moment. She laid +down the directory, clasped her hands tight and pressed her lips +together. Then, without looking around at him, she said: + +"You don't want to go to see that show, Mr. Aldrich. It--it isn't good +at all." + +Rodney was more nearly amused than he had been in a month. + +"You've been to see it?" he asked. + +"Yes," she said, and managed to go on a little more naturally, "Mr. +Craig took me. We had a bet on what the Supreme Court's decision would +be in the Roderick case--theater tickets against two pounds of home-made +fudge, and I won. And--that's where we went." + +"And you didn't like it, eh?" + +"No," she said. + +By now he was grinning at her outright. "Vulgar?" he asked. + +Her color had mounted again. "Yes," she said. + +The notion of having his dramatic entertainment censored by a frail, +prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It +would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar, +wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. You go ahead +and telephone." + +At that she rose and, for the first time, faced him. To his amazement, +he saw that she was in a perfect panic of embarrassment and fright. But, +for some grotesque reason, she was determined, too. She was blushing up +to the hair and her lips were trembling. + +"Mr. Aldrich," she said, "you won't like that show. If--if you go, +you'll be sorry." + +While he was still staring at her, young Craig came bursting blithely +out of his office, a bundle of papers in his hand and the pucker of a +silent whistle still on his lips. "Oh, Miss Beach!" he said, and then +stopped short, seeing that something had happened. + +Rodney tried an experiment. "Craig," he said, "Miss Beach doesn't want +me to buy a ticket for _The Girl Up-stairs_. She says I won't like it. +Do you agree with her?" + +A flare of red came up into the boy's face, and his jaw dropped. Then, +as well as he could, he pulled himself together. "Yes, sir," he said, +swung around and marched back into his own cubby-hole. + +"You needn't telephone, Miss Beach," said Rodney curtly. And without +another word he put on his hat and overcoat and left the office. + +It was not a very profound emotion that drove him along; a violent +superficial one, rather, like the gusty wrath which had precipitated the +last phase of his great struggle with Rose--the time he told her he +wouldn't jeopardize the children's lives to satisfy her whims. He was +furiously impatient with the good intentions of his friends. He had been +aware of a sort of unnatural gentleness about them ever since Christmas; +but either it had intensified during the last ten days, or else he had +suddenly got more sensitive to it. The latter, most likely. And yet +Violet Williamson's manner the last Sunday evening he had spent at her +house, had stopped just short of a hushed voice and tiptoes. He'd been +momentarily expecting her to offer him an egg-nog. + +But this paroxysm of tact that had just broken out in his office was +really too much. Of course they'd been talking him over, those two. It +must have been amply obvious to them for a good while that there was +something more than met the eye, about that long visit of his wife's to +California. And it was nice and human of them to feel sorry for him. But +that they should decide, because _The Girl Up-stairs_ contained some +rather coarsely derisive song, perhaps, about men whose wives run away +from them, or something in the plot about a trip to California with a +less honorable purpose than its ostensible one, that he should on no +account be permitted to see the show, was ridiculous. He walked straight +over to the club and told the man at the cigar counter to get him a +ticket for to-night's performance. + +It was then after five and he decided not to go back to the office +before dinner. In fact, he might as well dine down here. So he went up +to the lounge, armed himself with an evening paper against casual +acquaintances, ordered a drink and dropped into a big leather chair. + +But all his carefully contrived environment hadn't the power, it seemed, +to shift the current of his thoughts. They went on dwelling on the +behavior of Miss Beach and young Craig, which really got queerer the +more one thought about it. It was hard to conceive of any allusion in +the plot or the songs of a silly little musical comedy, pointed enough +to account for Miss Beach's frantically determined effort to keep him +away, or for the instantaneous flush that had leaped into young Craig's +face. Because, after all, they didn't actually know that his great +adventure had come to grief, and whatever either of them might have +thought of the applicability of something that was said on the stage, to +their employer's ease, it wouldn't have been a bit like either of them +to discuss it with the other. In the absence of such a discussion, and +the prevision of his going to the show, you couldn't account for young +Craig's having caught the point instantly like that. And yet, what other +explanation could there be? There was none, and there was an end of it! + +Only it wasn't the end of it. The straying search-light of his memory +picked up a moment during that last evening at the Williamsons'. The +Crawfords had been there, and somebody else--a man he didn't know; and +the stranger had said something, a harmless stupid remark enough, about +the tired business man and the sort of musical-comedy he liked; +whereupon both Constance and Violet had made a sort of concerted swoop +and changed the subject almost violently. John Williamson made a +practise of going to the Globe, he knew, but that John, who never +spotted an allusion in his life, should have come home and passed the +word along, and that all references to musical-comedy should therefore +be taboo on Rodney's account, was simply fantastic. + +But the fantasticality of an idea seemed, in his mood to-night, merely +to give it the burr-like quality of sticking in his mind, holding on +there with a hundred tiny barbs, despite his endeavors to pluck it out. +It even occurred to him that the manner of the man at the cigar +counter--the man he had just told to get him a ticket, had not been +quite natural; had been a little exaggeratedly matter-of-fact. He always +got his seats of that man, and the man always made some little +encouraging remark, as, for example, that he'd heard it was a good show; +or, more non-committally, that he hoped Mr. Aldrich would enjoy it. +To-night, certainly, he'd said nothing of the sort. + +The absurdity of this consideration was simply intolerable. He flung +down his paper and went into the adjoining room--a room full of tables +of various sizes, and thronged, at this hour, with members getting up an +appetite for dinner by the shortest route. The large round table nearest +the door was preempted by a group of men he knew; some of them well, +some only casually, and he came up with the intention of dropping into +the one vacant chair. But just before the first of them caught a glimpse +of him, his ear picked up the phrase, "_The Girl Up-stairs_." And then a +lawyer named Gaylord looked up and recognized him. "Hello, Aldrich," he +said, and Rodney would have sworn that the flash of silence that +followed had a galvanic quality that wasn't given it merely by his own +imagination. The others began greeting him, urging him to sit down and +have a drink. + +Rodney pulled in a long breath: "Didn't I hear some one talking about +_The Girl Up-stairs_?" he asked. "Is it a good show? Shall I go to see +it?" + +The silence was even briefer this time. + +Gaylord spoke through what would pass for a yawn. "I don't know," he +said. "I haven't seen it." + +One or two of the others shook their heads blankly. Finally somebody +else said: "Just a regular Globe show, I guess. All right; but hardly +worth bothering about." + +Once more they urged him to sit down and have a drink, but he said he +was looking for somebody and walked away down the room and out the +farther door. + +He knew now that he was afraid. Yet the thing he was afraid of refused +to come out into the open, where he could see it and know what it was. +He still believed that he didn't know what it was, when he walked past +the framed photographs in the lobby of the theater without looking at +them and stopped at the box-office to exchange his seat, well down in +front, for one near the back of the theater. + +But when the sextette made their first entrance upon the stage, he knew +that he had known for a good many hours. + +He never stirred from his seat during either of the intermissions. But +along in the third act, he got up and went out. + +I doubt if ever a troglodytic ancestor of his had been as angry as +Rodney was at that moment. Because, long before the pressure of the +troglodyte's anger had mounted to the pressure of Rodney's, it would +have relieved itself in action. He'd have descended on the scene, +beating down any of the onlookers who might be fools enough to try to +oppose his purpose, seized his woman and carried her off to his cave. +Which is precisely and literally what Rodney, with every aching filament +of nerve tissue in his body, most passionately wanted to do. + +The knout that flogged his soul had a score of lashes, each with the +sting of its own peculiar venom. Everybody who knew him, his closer +friends, and his casual acquaintances as well, must have known, for +weeks, of this disgrace. His friends had been sorry for him, with just a +grain of contempt; his acquaintances had grinned over it with just a +pleasurable salt of pity. "Do you know Aldrich? Well, his wife's in the +chorus at the Globe Theater. And he doesn't know it, poor devil." That +group at the round table at the club to-night. He could fancy their +faces after he'd turned away. + +Oh, but what did they matter after all? What did any of them matter? +What did anything matter in the world, except that the woman he'd so +whole-heartedly and utterly loved and lived for--the woman who'd left +him with those protestations of the need of his friendship and respect, +was there on that stage disporting herself for hire--and cheap hire at +that, before this fatuous mass of humanity packed in all about him. They +were staring at her, as the money they'd paid for admission entitled +them to stare, licking their lips over her. + +He hadn't had a moment's uncertainty that it was indeed she. Couldn't +shelter himself, even for an instant, behind Jimmy Wallace's theory of +an "amazing resemblance." + +The others of their world had always known Rose as a person with a good +deal of natural and quite unconscious dignity. She had never romped nor +larked before any of them, and she conveyed the impression, not of +refraining as a concession to good manners, but simply of being the sort +of person who didn't, naturally, express herself in those ways. But in +the interior privacies of their life together, she'd often shown +herself, for him, a different Rose. She'd played with him with the +abandon of a young kitten--romped and wrestled with him. And there'd +been a deliciousness about this phase of her, which resided, for him, in +the fact that it was kept for him alone. + +But now, here on the stage of a cheap theater, she was parading that +exquisite thing before the world! Along in the second act, where +Sylvia's six friends come to spend the night with her and sleep out on +the roof, there was a mad lark which brought up maddening memories. He +felt that he must get his hands on her--shake her--beat her! + +Yet, all the while, if any of his neighbors thought of him at +all--became aware of him and wondered at him, it was only because he sat +so still. And when the thing had become, at last, utterly unbearable, +and he got up to go out, he managed to look at his watch first, quite in +the manner of a "commuter" with anxieties about the ten-fifty-five +train. + +The northwest wind, which had been blowing icily since sundown, had +increased in violence to a gale. But he strode out of the lobby and +into the street, unaware of it. There must be a stage door somewhere, he +knew, and he meant to find it. It didn't occur to him to inquire. He'd +quite lost his sense of social being; of membership in a civilized +society. He was another Ishmael. + +It took him a long time to find that door, for, as it happened, he +started around the block in the wrong direction and fruitlessly explored +two alleys before he came on the right one. But he found it at last and +pulled the door open. An intermittent roar of hand-clapping, increasing +and diminishing with the rapid rise and fall of the curtain, told him +that the performance was just over. + +A doorman stopped him and asked him what he wanted. + +"I want to see Mrs. Aldrich," he said, "Mrs. Rodney Aldrich." + +"No such person here," said the man, and Rodney, in his rage, simply +assumed that he was lying. It didn't occur to him that Rose would have +taken another name. + +He stood there a moment debating whether to attempt to force an entrance +against the doorman's unmistakable intention to stop him, and decided to +wait instead. + +The decision wasn't due to common sense, but to a wish not to dissipate +his rage on people that didn't matter. He wanted it intact for Rose. + +He went back into the alley, braced himself in the angle of a brick pier +and waited. He neither stamped his feet nor flailed his arms about to +drive off the cold. He just stood still with the patience of his +immemorial ancestor, waiting. Unconscious of the lapse of time, +unconscious of the figures that presently began straggling out of the +narrow door, that were not she. + +Presently she came. A buffet of wind struck her as she closed the door +behind her, and whipped her unbuttoned ulster about, but she did not +cower under it, nor turn away--stood there finely erect, confronting it. +There was something alert about her pose--he couldn't clearly see her +face--that suggested she was expecting somebody. And then, not loud, but +very distinctly: + +"Roddy," she said. + +He tried to speak her name, but his dry throat denied it utterance. He +began suddenly to tremble. He came forward out of the shadow and she saw +him and came to meet him, and spoke his name again. + +"I saw you when you went out," she said. "I was afraid you mightn't +wait. I hurried as fast as I could. I've--w-waited so long. Longer than +you." + +They were so near together now, that she became aware how he was +trembling--shuddering fairly. + +"You're c-cold," she said. + +He managed at last to speak, and as he did so, reached out and took her +by the shoulders. "Come home," he said. "You must come home." + +At that she stepped back and shook her head. But he had discovered while +his hands held her, that she was trembling, too. + +The stage door opened again to emit a group of three of the ponies. + +"My Gawd," one of them shrilled, "what a hell of a night!" + +They stared curiously at Dane and the big man who stood there with her, +then scurried away down the alley. + +"We can't talk here," he said. "We must go somewhere." + +She nodded assent and they moved off side by side after the three little +girls, but slower. In an accumulation of shadows, half-way down the +alley, he reached out for her arm. It might have begun as an automatic +act--just an unconscious instinct to prevent her stumbling, there in the +dark. But the moment he touched her, the quality of it changed. He +gripped her arm tight and they both stood still. The next moment, and +without a word, they moved on again. At the corner of the alley, they +turned north. This was on Clark Street. Finally: + +"Are you all right, Roddy? And the babies?" she managed to say. "It's a +good many days since I've heard from Portia." And then, suddenly, "Was +it because anything had gone wrong that you came?" + +"I didn't know you were here until I saw you on the stage." + +This was all, in words, that passed until they reached the bridge. But +there needed no words to draw up, tighter and tighter between them, a +singing wire of memories and associations; there was no need, even, of a +prolonged contact between their bodies. He had let go her arm when they +came out of the alley, and they walked the half-mile to the bridge side +by side and in step, and except for an occasional brush of her shoulder +against his arm, without touching. + +But the Clark Street bridge, with a February gale blowing from the west +down the straight reach of the river, is not to be negotiated lightly. +Strong as they were, the force of the wind actually stopped them at the +edge of the draw, caught Rose a little off her balance, turned her half +around and pressed her up against him. + +She made an odd noise in her throat, a gasp that had something of a sob +in it, and something of a laugh. + +For a moment--so vivid was the blaze of memory--he seemed veritably to +be standing on another bridge (over the north branch of the Drainage +Canal, of all places) with the last, leonine blizzard of a March, which +had been treacherously lamblike before, swirling drunkenly about. He had +been tramping for hours over the clay-rutted roads with a girl he had +known a fortnight and had asked, the day before, to marry him. They had +been discussing this project very sensibly, they'd have said, in the +light of pure reason; and they were both unconscionably proud of the +fact that since the walk began there had been nothing a bystander could +have called a caress or an endearment between them. But there on the +bridge, a buffet of the gale had unbalanced her, and she--with just that +little gasping laugh--had clutched at his shoulder. He had flung one arm +around her and then the other. Without struggling at all she had held +herself away for a moment, taut as a strung bow, her hands clutching his +shoulders, her forearms braced against his chest; then, with the +rapturous relaxation of surrender, her body went soft in his embrace and +her arms slid round his neck; their faces, cool with the fine sleety +sting of the snow, came together. + +The vision passed. The wind was colder to-night than that March +blizzard had been, and the dry groan of a passing electric car came +mingled with the whine of it. Muffled pedestrians, bent doggedly down +against it, jostled them as they went by. + +He steadied her with a hand upon her shoulder, slipped round to the +windward side, and linked his arm within hers. But it was a moment +before they started on again. Their hands touched and, electrically, +clasped. Like his, hers were ungloved. She'd had them in her ulster +pockets. + +"Do you remember the other bridge?" he asked. + +Her answer was to press, suddenly--fiercely--the hand she held up +against her breast. Even through the thickness of the ulster, he could +feel her heart beat. They crossed the bridge, but the hand-clasp did not +slacken when they reached the other side. Their pace quickened, but +neither of them was conscious of it. + +As for Rodney, he was not even conscious what street they were walking +on, nor how far they went. He had no destination consciously in mind or +any avowed plan or hope for what should happen when they reached it. Yet +he walked purposefully and, little by little, faster. He looked about +him in a sort of dazed bewilderment when she disengaged her hand and +stopped, at last, at the corner of the delicatessen shop, beside the +entrance to her little tunnel. + +"Here's where I live," she said. + +"Where you _live!_" he echoed blankly. + +"Ever since I went away--to California. I've been right here--where I +could almost see the smoke of your chimneys. I've a queer little room--I +only pay three dollars a week for it--but--it's big enough to be alone +in." + +"Rose ..." he said hoarsely. + +A drunken man came lurching pitiably down the street. She shrank into +the dark mouth of the passage and Rodney followed her, found her with +his hands, and heard her voice, speaking breathlessly, in gasps. He +hardly knew what she was saying. + +"It's been wonderful.... I know we haven't talked; we'll do that some +other time, somewhere where we can.... But to-night, walking along like +that, just as ... To-morrow, I shall think it was all a dream." + +"Rose ..." + +"Wh-what is it?" she prompted, at last. + +"Let me in," he said. "Don't turn me away to-night! I--I can't ..." + +The only sound that came in answer was a long tremulously indrawn +breath. But presently her hand took the one of his that had been +clutching her shoulder and led him toward the end of the passage, where +a faint light through a transom showed a door. She opened the door with +a latch-key, and then, behind her, he made his way up two flights of +narrow stairs, whose faint creak made all the sound there was. In the +black little corridor at the top she unlocked another door. + +"Wait till I light the gas," she breathed. + +There was nothing furtive about their silence; it was the wonder, the +magic of being together again, that made them steal forward like awed +children. + +Into an ugly, dingy, cramped, cold little room, with a rickety dresser +and a lumpy bed and a grimy window, rattling fiercely in the gusts of +wind that went whipping down the street.... Into a palace of +enchantment. + +She left the gas turned low, took off her hat and ulster, pulled down +the blind over the window and shut the door, hung up a garment that had +been left flung over her trunk and dumped a bundle of laundry that had +not been put away, into a bureau drawer. All the time he'd been watching +her hungrily, without a word. + +She turned and looked into his face, her eyes searching it as his were +searching hers, luminously and with a swiftly kindling fire. Her lips +parted a little, trembling. There was a sort of bloom on her skin that +became more visible as the blood, wave on wave, came flushing in behind +it. His vision of her swam suddenly away in a blur as his own eyes +filled up with tears. + +And then, with that little sob in her throat, she came to him. "Oh, +Roddy ... Roddy!" was all she said. With her own lithe arms she strained +his embrace the tighter. + +So far as the superstructures of their two lives were concerned,--the +part of them that floated above the level of consciousness, the whole +fabric of their thoughts and theories and ideals, that made them to +their friends and to each other, and very largely to themselves, Rose +and Rodney,--they were as far apart as on the day she had left his +house. There hadn't been, since then, a word between them of argument or +compromise. The great _impasse_ was still unforced. He hadn't, as yet, +shown that he could give her the friendship she demanded. She'd had no +chance to tell him of any of the small triumphs and disciplines of her +new life that she hoped would win it from him. + +And as for Rodney, he was the same man who, an hour ago, in the theater, +had raged and writhed under what he felt to be an invasion of his +proprietary rights in her. + +He wouldn't have defined it that way, to be sure, in a talk with Barry +Lake. Would have denied, indeed, with the best of them, that a husband +had any proprietary rights in his wife. But the intolerable sense of +having become an object of derision, or contemptuous pity, of being +disgraced and of her being degraded, through the appearance on the stage +of a public theater, of a woman who was his wife; and through her +exhibition, for pay, of charms he had always supposed would be kept for +him, couldn't derive from anything else but just that. He'd waited there +in the alley, full of bitter thoughts that were ready to leap forth in +denunciations. He'd waited there, ready, he thought, to use actual +physical force on her, in the unthinkable event of its becoming +necessary, to drag her out of this pit where he had found her, back to +his side again. + +But somehow, when he had heard her speak his name, he'd begun to +tremble. And when he had felt her trembling, too, the bitter phrases had +died on his tongue and the thoughts that propelled them were smothered +like fire under sand. And as he'd stood confronting her in her mean +little room, his eyes searching her face, all he had been looking for +was a sign of the hunger--the ages-old hunger--that was devouring him. +And when he'd found it, that was enough for him. The great issue that +was to be fought out between them remained intact, but the hunger had to +be satisfied first. + +It was hours later, in the very dead of the night, as he sat on the edge +of the bed, with his back to her, that the old sense of outrage and +degradation, almost as suddenly as it had left him, came back. And came +back in a way that made it more intolerable than ever. For the clear +flame of it had lost its clarity; the confidence that had fanned it was +gone--the sense of his own rightness. The irresistible surge of passion +that had carried him off, had destroyed that. The flame smoked and +smoldered. + +"Have you anything here," he asked her dully, "besides what will go in +your trunk?" + +It was the surliness of his tone, rather than the words themselves, that +startled her. + +"No," she said puzzled. "Of course not." + +"Then let's throw them into it quickly," he said, "and we'll lock the +thing up. Do you owe any rent?" + +"Roddy!" she said. He heard her moving behind him. She struck a match +and lighted the gas. Then came around in front of him and stared at him +in frowning incredulity. "What do you mean?" + +"I mean we're going to get out of this abominable place now--to-night. +We're going home. We can leave an address for the trunk. If it never +comes, so much the better." + +Again all she could do was to ask him, with a bewildered stammer, what +he meant. "Because," she added, "I can't go home yet. I've--only +started." + +"Started!" he echoed. "Do you think I'm going to let this beastly farce +go any further?" + +And with that the smoldering fire licked up into flame again. He told +her what had happened in his office this afternoon; told her of the +attitude of his friends, how they'd all known about it--undoubtedly had +come to see for themselves, and, out of pity or contempt, hadn't told +him. He told her how he'd felt, sitting there in the theater; why he'd +waited at the stage door for her. He accused her, as with its +self-engendered heat his wrath burned brighter, of having selected the +thing to do that would hurt him worst, of having borne a grudge against +him and avenged it. + +It was the ignoblest moment of his life, and he knew it. The accusations +he was making against her were nothing to those that were storing up in +his mind against himself. The sense of rightness that would have made +him gentle, had been carried away by the passion he'd shared with her, +and he couldn't get it back. + +He didn't look at her as he talked, and she didn't interrupt; said no +word of denial or defense. The big outburst spent itself. He lapsed into +an uneasy silence, got himself together again, and went on trying to +restate his grievance--this time more reasonably, retracting a little. +But under her continued silence, he grew weakly irritated again. + +When at last she spoke, he turned his eyes toward her and saw a sort of +frozen look in her dull white face that he had never seen in it before. +Her intonation was monotonous, her voice scarcely audible. + +"I guess I understand," she said. "I don't know whether I wish I was +dead or not. If I'd died when the babies were born ... But I'm glad I +came away when I did. And I'm glad,"--she gave a faint shudder there at +the alternative--"I'm glad I've got a job and that I can pay back that +hundred dollars I owe you. I've had it quite a while. But I've kept it, +hoping you might find out where I was and come to me, as you did, and +that we might have a chance to talk. I thought I'd tell you how I'd +earned it, and that you'd be a little--proud with me about it, proud +that I could pay it back so soon." + +She smiled a little over that, a smile he had to turn away from. But +this tortured smile shriveled in the flame of passion with which she +went on. "If I couldn't pay it back to-night, after this, I'd feel like +killing myself, or like--going out and earning it in the streets. +Because that's what you've made me to-night!" + +He cried out her name at that, but she went on as if she hadn't heard; +only calm again--or so one might have thought from the sound of her +voice. + +"I went away, you see, because I couldn't bear to have the love part of +your life without a sort of friendly partnership in the rest of it. But +I didn't know then that you could love me while you hated me, while you +felt that I'd unspeakably degraded myself and disgraced you. So that +while you loved me and had me in your arms, you felt degraded for doing +it. I didn't know that till now. + +"I suppose I'll be glad some day that it all happened; that I met you +and loved you and had the babies, even though it's all had to end," she +shuddered again, "like this." + +It wasn't till he tried to speak that her apparent calm was broken. +Then, with a sudden frantic terror in her eyes, she begged him, not +to--begged him to go away, if he had any mercy for her at all, quickly +and without a word. In a sort of daze he obeyed her. + +The tardy winter morning, looking through her grimy window, found her +sitting there, huddled in a big bath-robe, just as she'd been when he +closed the door. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +"I'M ALL ALONE" + + +The same grizzly dawn that looked in on Rose through the dim window of +her room on Clark Street, saw Rodney letting himself in his own front +door with a latch-key after hours of aimless tramping through deserted, +unrecognized streets. He was in a welter of emotions he could no more +have given names to than to the streets whose dreary lengths he had +plodded. + +The one thing that isolated itself from the rest, climbed up into his +mind and there kept goading him into a weak helpless fury, was a +jingling tune and a set of silly words that Rose and her sisters in the +sextette had sung the night before: "You're all alone, I'm all alone; +come on, let's be lonesome together." And then a line he couldn't +remember exactly, containing, for the sake of the rhyme, some total +irrelevancy about the weather, and a sickening bit of false rhyming to +end up with, about loving forever and ever. The jingle of that tune had +kept time to his steps, and the silly words had sung themselves over and +over endlessly in his brain until the mockery of it had become +absolutely excruciating. Except for that damnable tune, there was +nothing in his mind at all. Everything else was synthesized into a dull +ache, a hollow, gnawing, physical ache. But he'd endure that, he +thought, if he could get rid of the diabolical malice of that tune. +Perhaps if he stopped walking and just sat still it would go away. + +That's why he went home, let himself in with his latch-key and made his +way furtively to the library, where the embers of last night's fire were +still warm. He had an hour at least before the servants would be +stirring. He was terribly cold and pretty well exhausted, and the +comfort of his big chair and the glow of the fire carried him off +irresistibly into a doze--a doze that was troubled by fantastic dreams. + +With the first early morning stirrings in the house, the sounds of +opening doors here and there, the penetrating cry of one of the +babies--muffled, to be sure, and a long way off, but still audible--he +came broad awake again, but sat for a while staring about the room; at +the wonderful ornate perfection of the Italian marble chimney-piece that +framed the dying fire; at the tall carved chairs, the simple grandeur of +the three-hundred-year-old table and the subdued richness, in the half +light, of the tapestries that hung on the walls. + +It was Florence McCrea's masterpiece, this room. But this morning its +perfections mocked him with the ferocious irony of the contrast they +presented to that other room--that unspeakably horrible room where he +had left Rose. Details of its hideousness, that he hadn't been conscious +of observing during the hours he had spent in it, came back to him, +bitten out with acid clearness;--the varnished top of the bureau mottled +with water stains, the worn splintered floor, the horrible hard blue of +the iron bed, the florid pattern on the hand-painted slop-jar. + +And that abominable room was where Rose was now! She was sitting, +perhaps, just as he'd left her, with that look of frozen, dumb agony +still in her face, while he sat here ... + +He sprang up in a sort of frenzy. The parlor maid would be in here any +minute now, on her morning rounds, and would wish him a respectful good +morning, and ask him what he wanted for breakfast. And then, with +automatic perfection, would appear his coffee, his grapefruit, and the +rest of it--all exactly right, the result of a perfect precalculation of +his wishes. While Rose ... + +He put on his outdoor things and left the house, motivated now, for the +first time in many hours, with a clear purpose. He'd go back to that +room and get Rose out of it. He was incapable of planning how it should +be done, but somehow--anyhow, it should be; that was all he knew! + +But this purpose was frustrated the moment he reached Clark Street, by +the realization that he hadn't an idea within half a mile at least, +where the room was. Neither when he went into it with Rose, nor when he +left it, had he picked up any sort of landmark. There was a passage, he +remembered, leading back between two buildings, which projected to the +sidewalk. But there were a dozen of these in every block. + +A miserable little lunch-room caught his eye, displaying in its dingy +windows, pies, oranges, big shallow pans of pork and beans. This was the +sort of place Rose would have to come to, he reflected, for her +breakfast. And with that thought--hardly the conscious hope that she +would actually come to this place this morning--he turned in, sat down +at a cloth spotted with coffee and catsup stains, and ordered his +breakfast of a yawning waiter. He even forced himself, when it was +brought in, to eat it. If it was good enough for Rose, wasn't it good +enough for him? + +And all the while he kept his eye on the street door, in the +irrepressible, unacknowledged hope that the gods would be kind enough to +bring her there. + +But it was a mocking hope, he knew, and he didn't linger after he'd +finished. He walked down-town to his office. It was still pretty +early--not yet eight o'clock. Even his office boy wouldn't be down for +three-quarters of an hour. He was safe, he found himself saying, for so +long, anyway. + +He sat down at his desk and stared bewildered at the stack of letters +that lay there awaiting his signature. They were the very letters Miss +Beach had been typing when he had told her to telephone to the club and +get him a seat for _The Girl Up-stairs_, by way of passing a pleasant +evening;--and had laughed at her when she protested. Oh, God! + +He felt like a sort of inverted Rip Van Winkle--like a man who had been +away twenty years--in hell twenty years!--and coming back found +everything exactly as he had left it. As if, in reality, his absence had +lasted only overnight. + +He pulled himself together and began to read the letters, but +interrupted himself before he'd gone far, to laugh aloud. The laugh +startled him a little. He hadn't expected to do more than smile. But +certainly it was worth a laugh, the solemn importance with which he'd +dictated those letters; the notion that it mattered what he said, how he +advised his clients in their bloodless, parchment-like affairs; that +anything in all the files behind the black door of that vault +represented more than the empty victories and defeats of a childish +game. The dead smug orderliness of the place, with the infallible Miss +Beach as its presiding genius, infuriated him. Clearly he couldn't stay +here till he was better in hand than this. + +He signed his letters without reading them, and scribbled a note to +Craig that he'd been called out of town for a day or two on a matter of +urgent personal business. He hadn't thought of actually going out of +town until the note was written. But once he saw the statement in black +and white, the notion of making it true, invited him. He'd run off to +some small city where no curious eyes, animated by the knowledge that he +was Rodney Aldrich whose wife had left him to become a chorus-girl, +could steal glances at him. Where he needn't speak to any one from +morning till night. Where he could really get himself together and +think. + +He added in a postscript to the note to Craig, instructions to call up +his house and tell them he was out of town. + +The thought cropped up in one of the more automatic sections of his +brain, that for traveling he ought to have a bag, night things, fresh +underclothes, and so on, and the routine method of supplying that need +suggested itself to him; namely, to telephone to the house, have one of +the maids pack his bag for him and send it down-town in the car. But +just as he had rejected the notion of breakfasting at home, and had gone +out to that miserable Clark Street lunch-room instead, so he rejected +this. All the small civilized refinements of his way of life went +utterly against his grain. They'd continue to be intolerable to him, he +thought, as long as he had to go on envisaging Rose in that ghastly +environment of hers. + +He left his office and turned into one of the big department stores that +backs up on Dearborn Street, where he bought himself a cheap bag and +furnished it with a few necessaries. Then, leaving the store, simply +kept on going to the first railway station that lay in his way. He chose +a destination quite at random. The train announcer, with a megaphone, +was calling off a list of towns which a train, on the point of +departure, would stop at. Rodney picked one that he had never visited, +bought a ticket, walked down the platform past the Pullmans, and found +himself a seat in a coach. + +He found a measure of relief in all this. It gave him the illusion, at +least, of doing something. Or, more accurately, of getting ready to do +something, while it liberated him from the immediate necessity of doing +it. He'd go to a hotel in that town whose name was printed on his +ticket, and hire a room; lock himself up in it, and then begin to think. +Once he could get the engine of his mind to going, he'd be all right. +There must be some right thing to do. Or if not that, at least something +that was better to do than anything else. And when his mind should have +discovered what that thing was, he'd have, he felt, resolution enough to +go on and do it. Until he should find it, he was like a man +shamed--naked, unable to encounter the most casual glance of any of the +persons in his world who knew his shame. Once he was safe in that hotel +room, the process of thinking could begin. He wouldn't have to hurry +about it. He could take all the time he liked. + +For the present, he was getting a queer sort of comfort out of what +would ordinarily be labeled the discomforts of his surroundings: the +fierce dry heat of the car, the smells--that of oranges was perhaps the +strongest of these--the raucous persistence of the train butcher hawking +his wares; and, most of all, in the very density of the crowd. + +This is one of the comforts that many a member of the favored, +chauffeur-driven, servant-attended class lives his life in ignorance of, +the nervous relief that comes from ceasing, for a while, to be an +isolated, sharply bounded, perfectly visible entity, and subsiding, +indistinguishably, into a mere mass of humanity; in being nobody for a +while. It was a want which, in the old days before his marriage, Rodney +had often, unconsciously, felt and gratified. He had enjoyed being +herded about, riding in crowded street-cars, working his way through the +press in the down-town streets during the noon hour. + +He was no more conscious of it now, but it was distinctly pleasant to +him to be identified for the conductor merely by a bit of blue +pasteboard with punch marks in it, stuck in his hat-band. + +The pleasant torpor didn't last long, because presently, the rhythmic +thud of the wheels began singing to him the same damned tune that had +dogged his footsteps earlier that morning: "I'm all alone, you're all +alone; come on, let's be lonesome together." + +This was intolerable! To break it up, he bought a magazine from the +train-boy and tried to read. But the story he lighted on concerned +itself with a ravishingly beautiful young woman and an incredibly +meritorious young man, and worked itself out, cleverly enough to be +sure--which made it worse--upon the assumption that all that was needed +for their supreme and permanent happiness was to get into each other's +arms, which eventually they did. + +Rose had been in his arms last night! + +So the scorching treadmill round began again. But at last sheer physical +exhaustion intervened and he fell heavily asleep. He didn't waken until +the conductor took up his bit of pasteboard again, shook him by the +shoulder, and told him that he'd be at his destination in five minutes. + +Presently, in the hotel, he locked his door, opened the window and sat +down to think. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +FREDERICA'S PARADOX + + +Two days later, at half past eight in the morning, he walked in on +Frederica at breakfast with her two eldest children. He had been able to +count on this because the Whitneys had a certain pride in preserving +some of the customs of the generation before them; at least Martin had, +and Frederica's good-natured, rueful acquiescence gave her at once +something to laugh at him a little about and a handy leverage for the +extraction of miscellaneous concessions. It wasn't exactly a misdemeanor +to be late to breakfast--it began promptly at eight o'clock--but it was +distinctly meritorious not to be. Martin never was and he always left +the house for his office at exactly eight-twenty. His chauffeur was +trained to take just ten minutes trundling the big car down-town, and +eight-thirty found him at his desk as invariably as it had found his +father before him. It was all perfectly ritualistic, of course. There +wasn't the slightest need for any of it. + +A knowledge of the ritual, though, stood Rodney in good stead this +morning. He liked Martin well enough--had really a traditional and +vicarious affection for him. But he was about the last man he wanted to +see to-day. + +The children were a boy of ten, Martin, junior, and a girl, Ellen, of +eight. There was a three-year-old baby, too, but his nurse looked after +him. They had finished breakfast, but Frederica had a way of keeping +them at the table for a little while every morning, chatting with +her--oh, about anything they pleased. If it was a design for their +improvement, they didn't suspect it. The talk broke off short when the +three of them, almost simultaneously, looked up and saw Rodney in the +doorway. + +"Hello!" Frederica said, holding out a hand to him, but not rising. +"Just in time for breakfast." + +"Don't ring," he said quickly. "I've had all I want. My train got in an +hour ago and I had a try at the station restaurant." + +"Well, sit down anyway," said Frederica. + +"Take this chair, Uncle Rod," said the boy in a voice of brusk +indifference. "Excuse me, mother?" He barely waited for her nod and +blundered out of the room. + +The girl came round to Rodney's chair to offer him her hand and drop her +curtsy; took a carnation from a bowl on the table and tucked it into his +button-hole, slid her arm around his neck and kissed his cheek. + +Both the children, Frederica was aware, had remarked something troubled +and serious about their uncle's manner and each had acted on this +observation in his own way. The boy, distressed and only afraid of +showing it, had bolted from the room with a panicky assumption of +indifference. The girl, though two years younger, was quite at ease in +expressing her sympathy, and conscious of how decoratively she did it. +(This was Frederica's analysis, anyhow. As is the wont of mothers, she +liked the boy better.) + +"I think Miss Norris is waiting for you, my dear." + +"_Oui, maman_," said Ellen dutifully. + +She was supposed to talk French all the morning, but somehow this +particular observance of the regime irritated her mother a little and +she rather visibly waited while Ellen quite adequately made her +farewells to her uncle and gracefully left the room. + +The tenseness of her attitude relaxed suddenly when the child was gone. +She reached out a cool soft hand and laid it on one of Rodney's that +rested limply on the table. There was rather a long silence--ten seconds +perhaps. Then: + +"How did you find out about it?" Rodney asked. + +They were both too well accustomed to these telepathic short-cuts to +take any note of this one. She'd seen that he knew, just with her first +glance at him there in the doorway; and something a little tenderer and +gentler than most of her caresses about this one, told him that she did. +What it was they knew, went of course without saying. + +"Harriet's back," she said. "She got in day before yesterday. Constance +said something to her about it, thinking she knew. They've thought all +along that you and I knew, too. Harriet was quick enough and clever +enough to pretend she did and yet find out about it, all at the same +time. So that's so much to the good. That's better than having them find +out we didn't know. Of course Harriet came straight to me. I'm glad it +was Harriet Constance spoke to about it and not me. I'd probably have +given it away. But Harriet never batted an eye." + +"No," said Rodney, "Harriet wouldn't." + +It was a certain dryness in his intonation rather than the words +themselves Frederica answered. + +"She'd do anything in the world for you, Roddy," she said, with a +vaguely troubled intensity. + +This time his mind didn't follow hers. For an instant he misunderstood +her pronoun, then he saw what she meant. + +"Harriet?--Oh, yes, Harriet's all right," he said absently. + +She left his preoccupation alone for a minute or two, but at last broke +in on it with a question. "How did you find out about it, Roddy? Who +told you?" + +"No one," he said in a voice unnaturally level and dry. "I went to see +the show on the recommendation of a country client, and there she was on +the stage." + +"Oh!" cried Frederica--a muffled, barely audible cry of passionate +sympathy. Then: + +"Roddy," she demanded, "are you sure it's true? Are you absolutely sure +that it's really Rose? Or if it is, that she's in her right mind--that +she hasn't just wandered off as people do sometimes without knowing who +they are?" + +"There's nothing in that notion," he said. "It's Rose all right, and she +knows what she's doing." + +"You mean you've seen her off the stage--talked with her?" + +He nodded. + +She pulled in a long sigh of anticipatory relief. + +"Well, then," she demanded, "what did she say? How did she explain how +she _could_ have done such a thing as that?" + +"I didn't ask her to explain," said Rodney. "I asked her to come home, +and she wouldn't." + +"Oh, it's wicked!" she cried. "It's the most abominably selfish thing I +ever heard of!" + +He made a gesture of protest, but it didn't stop her. + +"Oh, I suppose," she flashed, "she didn't _mean_ any harm--wasn't just +trying to do the cruelest thing she could to you. But it would be a +little less infuriating if she had." + +"Pull up, Freddy!" he said. Rather gently though, for him. "There's no +good going on like that. And besides ... You were saying Harriet would +do anything in the world for me. Well, there's something _you_ can do. +You're the only person I know who can." + +Her answer was to come around behind his chair, put her cheek down +beside his, and reach for his hands. + +"Let's get away from this miserable breakfast table," she said. "Come up +to where I live, where we can be safely by ourselves; then tell me about +it." + +In front of her boudoir fire, looking down on her as she sat in her +flowered wing chair, an enormously distended rug-covered pillow beside +her knees waiting for him to drop down on when he felt like it, he began +rather cautiously to tell her what he wanted. + +"I'll tell you the reason why I've come to you," he began, "and then +you'll see. Do you remember nearly two years ago, the night I got wet +coming down here to dinner--the night you were going to marry me off to +Hermione Woodruff? We had a long talk afterward, and you said, speaking +of the chances people took getting married, that it wasn't me you +worried about, but the girl, whoever she might be, who married me." + +The little gesture she made admitted the recollection, but denied its +relevancy. She'd have said something to that effect, but he prevented +her. + +"No," he insisted, "it wasn't just talk. There was something to it. +Afterward, when we were engaged, two or three times, you gave me tips +about things. And since we've been married ... Well, somehow, I've had +the feeling that you were on her side; that you saw things her +way--things that I didn't see." + +"Little things," she protested; "little tiny things that couldn't +possibly matter--things that any woman would be on another +woman's--side, as you say, about." + +But she contradicted this statement at once. "Oh, I _did_ love her!" she +said fiercely. "Not just because she loved you, but because I thought +she was altogether adorable. I couldn't help it. And of course that's +what makes me so perfectly furious now--that she should have done a +thing like this to you." + +"All right," he said. "Never mind about that. This is what I want you to +do. I want you to go to see her, and I want you to ask her, in the first +place, to try to forgive me." + +"What for?" Frederica demanded. + +"I want you to tell her," he went on, "that it's impossible that she +should be more horrified at the thing I did than I am myself. I want you +to ask her, whatever she thinks my deserts are, to do just one thing for +me, and that is to let me take her out of that perfectly hideous place. +I don't ask anything else but that. She can make any terms she likes. +She can live where or how she likes. Only--not like that. Maybe it's a +deserved punishment, but I can't stand it!" + +There was the crystallization of what little thinking he had managed to +do in the two purgatorial days he'd spent in that down-state hotel--in +the intervals of fighting off the torturing jingle of that tune, and the +memory of the dull frozen agony he'd seen in Rose's face as he left her. +No great result, truly. The mountain had labored and brought forth a +mouse. + +But reflect for a moment what Rodney's life had been; how gently, for +all his buoyant theories about the acceptance of discipline, the world, +in its material aspect at any rate, had dealt with him. How completely +that boyish arrogance of his had been allowed to grow unbruised by +circumstance. He'd always been rich, in the sense that his means had +always been sufficient to his wants. He'd never in his life had an +experience that even resembled Portia's with that old unpaid grocery +bill. He'd enjoyed wearing shabby clothes, but he'd never worn them +because he could afford no better. He'd always been democratic in the +narrower social sense, but he'd never realized how easy that sort of +democracy is and how little it means to a man never associated with +persons who assert a social superiority over him. He'd always made a +point of despising luxuries, to be sure. But it hadn't been brought to +his attention at how high a level he drew the line between luxuries and +mere decent necessities. + +He wasn't then, near so much of a Spartan as he thought. His long +association with the Lakes and their friends might, you'd think, have +brought him the consolatory reflection that a woman who earned even a +successful chorus-girl's wages, needn't be pitied too lamentably on the +score of poverty; that Rose could, no doubt, have afforded a better room +than that, if she'd wanted to. And that even a three-dollar room, a +whole room that you hadn't to share with anybody, would--if the rent of +it left you money enough to send out your clothes to the laundry and to +buy adequate meals in restaurants--represent luxury--well, to more +people than one likes to think about. + +Rodney knew that well enough, of course. He'd read the Sage Foundation +reports on housing; he was familiar with the results of the Pittsburgh +Survey. But the person in question now, wasn't the Working Girl. It was +his Rose! + +Out of all the chaos of thought and feeling that had been boiling within +him since the night he had gone with Rose to her room, there emerged, +then, two outstanding ideas. One was that he had outraged her; the other +that she simply couldn't be allowed to go on living as he had found her. + +Frederica, naturally, was mystified. "That's absurd, of course, Roddy," +she said gently. "You haven't done anything to Rose to be forgiven for." + +"You'll just have to take my word for it," he said shortly. "I'm not +exaggerating." + +"But, Roddy!" she persisted. "You must be sensible. Oh, it's no wonder! +You're all worn out. You look as if you hadn't slept for nights. I wish +you'd sit down and be a little bit comfortable. But I _know_ you're +wrong about that! + +"I went out to California with the idea that you might have been--well, +awfully stupid about something and hurt Rose dreadfully without knowing +it. I was perfectly ready to be--on her side, as you say. I thought we'd +have a good talk and I'd find out what it was all about, and then come +home and pack you out there yourself. + +"Well, of course I didn't see Rose, and Portia wasn't very +communicative. She'd always been a little stiff with me. I never managed +to get her altogether. But she was clear enough about it at any rate, +that Rose was more in love with you than ever and she didn't blame you +for a thing. The thing that she seemed most anxious about was that her +mother shouldn't blame you. Of course that took the wind out of my sails +and I had to come back. So it's absurd for you to be talking as if she +had a real reason for--detesting you." + +"She hadn't, then," said Rodney, and he walked uneasily away to the +window. + +"Well, if you mean the other night, the only time you've seen her since, +then it's all the more ridiculous. What if you were angry and lost your +temper and hurt her feelings? Heavens! Weren't you entitled to, after +what she'd done? And when she'd left you to find it out like that?" + +"I tell you you don't know the first thing about it." + +"I don't suppose you--beat her, did you?" It was too infuriating, having +him meek like this! + +His reply was barely audible. "I might better have done it." + +Frederica sprang to her feet. "Well, then, I'll tell you!" she said. "I +won't go to her. I'll go if you'll give me a free hand. If you'll let me +tell her what I think of what she's done and the way she's done it--not +letting you know--not giving you a chance. But go and beg her to forgive +_you_, I won't. + +"All right," he said dully. "You're within your rights, of course." + +The miserable scene dragged on a little longer. Frederica cried and +pleaded and stormed, without moving him at all. He seemed distressed at +her grief, urged her to treat his request as if he hadn't made it; but +he explained nothing, answered none of her questions. + +It was an enormous relief to her, and, she fancied, to him, for that +matter, when, after a premonitory knock at the door, Harriet walked in +on them. + +The situation didn't need much explaining, but Frederica summed it up +while the others exchanged their coolly friendly greetings, with the +statement: + +"Rod's been trying to get me to go to Rose and say that it was all his +fault, and I won't." + +"Why not?" said Harriet. "What earthly thing does it matter whose fault +it is? He can have it his fault if he likes." + +"You know it isn't," Frederica muttered rebelliously. + +Harriet seated herself delicately and deliberately in one of the curving +ends of a little Victorian sofa, and stretched her slim legs out in +front of her. + +"Certainly I don't care whose fault it is," she said. "You never get +anywhere by trying to decide a question like that. What I'm interested +in is what can be done about it. It's not a very nice situation. Nobody +likes it--at least I should _think_ Rose would be pretty sick of it by +now. She may have been crazy for a stage career, but she's probably seen +that the chorus of a third-rate musical comedy won't take her anywhere. + +"The thing's simply a mess, and the only thing to do, is to clear it up +as quickly and as decently as we can--and it can be cleared up, if we go +at it right. Only, for the love of Heaven, Freddy, before you let Rod go +out of the house, give him a dose of veronal and pack him off to a quiet +room up-stairs to sleep around the clock! The way he looks now, he's a +proclamation of calamity across the street!" + +She wasn't at all disturbed by the outburst this provoked from Rodney. +Indeed, Frederica, from a glimpse she got of her face as she sat +listening to his blistering denunciation of this apparently +whole-hearted concern for appearances, and his passionate denial that +they meant anything at all to him, suspected that her sister's words +had been calculated to produce just this result. When it had subsided, +Harriet's first words proved it. + +[Illustration: "What earthly thing does it matter whose fault it is?"] + +"All right," she observed. "I knew you'd want to say that. Now, it's off +your mind. Appearances do matter to Freddy and me, and of course they +matter to you too, though you don't like to think so. They matter to all +our kind of people. We're supposed to have been trained to take our +medicine without making faces. If we've got cuts and sores and bruises, +we cover them. We don't parade them as a bid for sympathy. We leave +howling about rights and wrongs and soul-mates and affinities and +'ideals,' to the shabby sort of people who like to do that shabby sort +of thing. According to our traditions, the decent thing to do is to shut +up and keep your face and make it possible for other people to keep +theirs. You're as strong for that as I am, really, Rod, and that's why I +want you to back me up in the line I took with Constance. Pretend you've +known all about what Rose was doing, and that you aren't ashamed of it. +It would have been easier, of course, if she'd played fair with us at +the start ..." + +"She did play fair," he interrupted. "She offered to tell me what she +was going to do. I wouldn't let her." + +Harriet's only commentary on this was a faint shrug. + +"Anyhow," she went on, "the point is that once we begin pretending, +everybody else will have to pretend to believe us. Of course the thing +to do is to get her out of that horrible place as soon as we can. And I +suppose the best way of doing it, will be to get her into something +else--take her down to New York and work her into a small part in some +good company. Almost anything, if it came to that, as long as it wasn't +music. Oh, and have her use her own name, and let us make as much of it +as we can. Face it out. Pretend we like it. I don't say it's ideal, but +it's better than this." + +"Her own name!" he echoed blankly. "Do you mean she made one up?" + +Harriet nodded. "Constance mentioned it," she said, "but that was before +I knew what she was talking about. And of course I couldn't go back and +ask. Daphne something, I think. It sounded exactly like a chorus name, +anyhow." And then: "Well, how about it? Will you play the game?" + +"Oh, yes," he said with a docility that surprised Frederica. "I'll play +it. It comes to exactly the same thing, what we both want done, and our +reasons for doing it are important to nobody but ourselves." + +She turned to Frederica. + +"You too, Freddy?" she asked. "Will you give your moral principles a +vacation and take Rod's message to Rose, even though you may think it's +Quixotic nonsense?" + +"I'll see Rose myself," said Rodney quietly. + +It struck Frederica that if not his natural self, he had gone a long way +at least, to recovering his natural manner. Telling Martin all about it +that night, as she always told him about everything (because Martin was +Frederica's discovery and her secret. No one else suspected, not even +Martin himself, how intelligent and understanding he was, nor how +luminous his simple remarks about complex situations could sometimes +be), she adverted to a paradox which had often puzzled her in the past. +Rodney was twice as fond of her as he was of Harriet, just as she was +twice as fond of him as Harriet was. And yet, again and again, where her +own love and sympathy had failed dismally to effect anything, Harriet's +dry astringent cynicism would come along and produce highly desirable +results. + +"It seems as if it oughtn't to work out that way," she concluded. "You'd +think that loving a person and feeling his troubles the way he feels +them himself, ought to enable you to help him rather than just irritate. +However, as long as it doesn't work that way with you ..." + +He reached out, took her by the chin, tilted her face back and kissed +her expertly on the mouth. A rather horrifyingly familiar thing to do, +one might think, to the Venus of Milo, or Frederica, or any one as +simply and grandly beautiful as that. But she seemed to like it. + +"No chance for the experiment," said Martin. "I shall never have any +troubles while you're around." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE MIRY WAY + + +Rodney's docility didn't go to the length of the dose of veronal Harriet +had recommended, but it did assent to a program that occupied the +greater part of the day, including a Turkish bath, a good sleep, fresh +clothes and the first decently cooked meal he had had since he'd dined +at the club three days ago. When he turned into his office, about five +o'clock, he was his own man again, perfectly capable of a greeting to +Craig and Miss Beach which consigned the last scene between them here in +the office to oblivion. + +His fortitude was put to the test, too, during the first five minutes. +In the stack of correspondence on his desk, to which Miss Beach directed +his attention, was an unopened envelope addressed to him in Rose's +handwriting. He couldn't restrain, of course, a momentary wild hope that +she had written to tell him he was forgiven, or at least to offer him +the chance of asking her forgiveness. But he paused to steel himself +against this hope before looking to see what the thing contained. + +It was well he did so, because there was nothing in it but a postal +money-order for a hundred dollars; not an explanatory line of any sort. +Of course the message it carried didn't need writing. It smarted like a +slap across the face. Yet, down underneath the smart, he felt something +that glowed more deeply, a feeling he couldn't have named or recognized, +of pride in her courage. + +He was badly in need of something to be proud of, too, for the next two +days were full of humiliations. When he told Harriet and Frederica that +he would see Rose himself, he hadn't any program for carrying out this +intention. He didn't want to wait for her again at the stage door. +There mustn't be anything about their next talk together to remind her +of their last one, and it would be better if she could be assured in +advance that she had nothing to fear from him. So the first thing to do +was to write her a letter that would show her how he felt and how little +he meant to ask. But before he could write the letter, he must learn her +name. + +He thought of Jimmy Wallace as a person who'd be able to help him out, +here, but in the circumstances Jimmy was the last person he wanted to go +to. There was no telling how much Jimmy might know about the situation +already. The intolerable thought occurred to him that Rose might even +have talked with Jimmy about going on the stage before she left his +house. No, the person to see was the manager of the theater. He'd +describe Rose to him and ask him who she was. + +His attempt to carry out this part of his plan was disastrously +unsuccessful. Theatrical managers no doubt cherish an ideal of courteous +behavior. But, since ninety-nine out of a hundred of the strangers who +ask for them at the box-office window, are actuated by a desire to get +into their theaters without paying for their seats, they develop, +protectively, a manner of undisguised suspicion toward all people who +don't know them, and toward about three-quarters of those who pretend +they do. It wasn't a manner Rodney was accustomed to, and it irritated +him. Then, until he had got his request half stated, it didn't occur to +him in what light the manager would be amply justified in regarding it. +That notion, which he interpreted from a look in the manager's face, +confused and angered him, and he stumbled and stammered, which angered +him still more. + +"We don't do that sort of thing in this theater," the manager said +loudly (the conversation had taken place in the lobby of the theater, +too) and turned away. + +The grotesque improbability of the true explanation that the woman whose +name he was inquiring about was his wife, silenced him and turned him +away. It was fortunate for Rodney it did so. The thing would have made a +wonderful story for the press agent, if he hadn't stopped just where he +did. + +He spent the rest of that evening, and a good part of the next day, +trying to think of some alternative to waiting again at the stage door. +But, except for the still inadmissible one of going to Jimmy Wallace, he +couldn't think of one. So, at a quarter past seven that night, he +stationed himself once more in the miserable alley, to wait for Rose. +Seeing her before the show would, he thought, be an improvement on +waiting till after it. The mere fact that they wouldn't have very long +to talk, ought to reassure her that he didn't mean to take any +advantages. He could show her how contrite he was, how little he meant +to ask, and then leave it to her to select a place, at her own leisure +and convenience, to talk over the terms of their treaty. + +He waited from a quarter after seven to half past eight, but Rose didn't +come. The thought that perhaps he hadn't taken his station early enough +sent him back to another vigil at half past ten. At a quarter to twelve, +his patience exhausted, he opened the stage door and told the doorman he +was waiting for one of the girls in the sextette. The doorman informed +him they had all gone home. + +There was, unfortunately, no matinee the next day, and it was only by +the exercise of all the will power he had, that he stayed in his office +and did his work and waited for the hour of the evening performance. +Then he went to the theater and bought a ticket. When the sextette made +its first appearance on the stage, he saw that another girl than Rose +was taking her part. He went out into the lobby, and once more sought +the manager. But this time with a different air. + +"Haven't you an office somewhere where we can talk?" he demanded. "This +is important." + +Evidently the manager saw it was, because he conducted him to a small +room with a desk in it, half-way up the balcony stairs, and nodded him +to a chair. + +"There was a young woman in your company," Rodney said, "in the +sextette. She isn't playing to-night. I want to know what her stage name +is, and where she can be found. I assure you that it's of the first +importance to her that I should find her." + +The manager's manner was different, too. He looked perplexed and rather +unhappy. But he didn't tell Rodney what he wanted to know. + +"She's left the company," he said, "permanently. That's all I can tell +you." + +"Is she ill?" Rodney demanded. + +The manager said not that he knew of, but this was all that was to be +got out of him. + +The thing that finally silenced Rodney and sent him away, was the +reflection that the man might be withholding information about her, on +Rose's own request. + +He went away, sore, angry, discouraged. Jimmy Wallace seemed about the +only hope there was. But he'd be damned if he'd go to Jimmy. Not yet, +anyway. And then he thought of Portia! + +She'd tell him. She'd have to tell him. Why hadn't he thought of her +before? He'd write to her the message to Rose he'd tried to get +Frederica to carry. No, he wouldn't do that! He'd go to her. And there +was a chance ... Why, there was the best kind of chance! Why hadn't he +thought of it before? Why had he been such an idiot as to waste all +these days! + +It seemed almost certain he'd find Rose there with her. She'd felt--she +couldn't have helped feeling after the things he'd said to her that +ghastly night in the little North Clark Street room--that she couldn't +go on. And stripped of her job like that, with nothing else to turn to, +where should she go but home to her mother and sister? To the only +friends and comforters she had in the world. + +He'd send no word in advance of his coming. He'd just come up to the +door of the little bungalow and ring the bell. And there was a chance +that the person who'd come to answer it would be Rose herself. + +The idea came to him all in a flash as he walked away from the theater, +and his impulse from it was to jump into a taxicab and catch a +ten-thirty train to the coast, that he had just time for. He denied the +impulse as part of the discipline he'd been imposing on himself since +his talk with Harriet, and went home instead. From now on he was going +to act like a reasonable man, not like a distracted one. + +He had his bag packed and his tickets bought the next morning, went to +the office and put things in train to accommodate a week's absence, +wrote a note to Frederica telling her of his discovery that Rose had +left the company of _The Girl Up-stairs_, and of his hope of finding her +in California with her mother and Portia; and when he settled himself in +his compartment for the three-day ride he even had two or three books in +his bag to pass the time with, as if it had been an ordinary journey. He +didn't make much of them, it's true, but his honest attempt to, gave him +the glimmering dawn of a discovery. + +The cardinal principle of his life, if such a thing could be stated in a +phrase, was self-expression through self-discipline. Well, his discovery +was (it didn't come to much more than a surmise, it is true, but it was +a beginning) that in his relations to Rose he'd never disciplined +himself at all. The network of his instincts, passions, desires, that +had involved her, had been allowed to grow unchecked, unscrutinized. He +didn't begin to scrutinize them now. He was in no mind for the task. How +could he undertake it until the fearful hope that he was actually on the +way to her now should have been answered one way or the other! + +It proved a vain hope. The person who answered his ring at the door of +the little bungalow, on that wonderful sun-bathed, rose-scented morning +(false auguries that mocked his disappointment and made it almost +intolerable) was Portia. + +She flushed at sight of him, then almost as quickly went pale. She +stepped outside the door and closed it behind her before she spoke. + +"I'm afraid I mustn't let mother know you're here," she said. "She's not +been well these last days and she mustn't be excited. I don't want to +let her suspect that things have changed or in any way gone wrong with +Rose. I told her I was going out for a walk. Will you come with me?" + +He nodded and did not even speak until they'd got safely away from the +house. Then: + +"I came out here," he said, "almost sure that I should find her. Isn't +she here?" + +"No," said Portia. Then she added with a sort of gasp, as if she'd tried +to check her words in their very utterance, "Don't you know her better +than that?" + +"Do you know where she is?" + +This question she didn't answer at all. They walked on a dozen paces in +silence. + +"Portia," he demanded, "is she ill? You'll have to tell me that." + +Even this question she didn't answer immediately. "No," she said at +last. "She's not ill. I'll take the responsibility of telling you that." + +"You mean that's all you will tell me?" he persisted. "Why? On her +instructions?" + +"I think we'll have to sit down somewhere," said Portia. "Beside the +road over there where it's shady." + +"I got a letter from Rose yesterday," she said, after they'd been seated +for a while. "She asked me in it not to go on writing you the +little--bulletins that I'd been sending every week; not to tell you +anything at all. So you see I've gone rather beyond her instructions in +saying even as much as I have." + +"And you," he asked quickly; "you mean to comply with a request like +that?" + +"I must," said Portia. "I can't do anything else." + +He made no comment in words, but she interpreted his uncontrollable +gesture of angry protest, and answered it. + +"It's not a question of conscientious scruples; keeping my word, not +betraying a confidence; anything like that. A year ago if she'd made +such a request I'd have paid no attention to it. I'd have taken the +responsibility of acting against her wishes, for her own good, if I +happened to see it that way, without any hesitation at all. But Rose has +shown herself so much bigger and stronger a person than I, and she's +done a thing that would have been so splendidly beyond my courage to do +that there's no question of my interfering. She's entitled to make her +own decisions. So," she went on with a little difficulty, "I shan't +betray her confidence nor disregard her instructions. But there's one +thing I can do, one thing I can tell you, because it's my confidence, +not hers." + +The very obvious fact that her confidences were not of great moment to +him, the way he sat there beside her in a glum abstraction through the +rather long silence that followed her preface, made it easier for her to +go on. + +"You see," she said at last, "I'd always regarded Rose as a spoiled +child. I'd loved her a lot, of course; but I'd despised her a little. At +least I'd tried to, because I was jealous of her; of the big simple easy +way she had--of making people love her. All the hard things came to me, +I felt, and all the easy ones to her. And on the day I came to tell her +about mother, and how we had to move out here--well, I was feeling +sorrier for myself than usual. If you'll remember when that was and what +her condition was (I didn't know about it then and neither did she) +you'll understand my having found her terribly blue and unhappy. She +talked discontentedly about her--failure with you and how she seemed to +be nothing to you except ... Well, she said she envied me. And that, as +I was feeling just then, was too much for me. I lashed out at her; told +her a lot of things she'd never known--about how we'd lived, and so on; +things I'd done for her. I said she'd got my life to live as well as her +own, and that if she failed with it I'd never forgive her. She made me a +promise that she wouldn't, no matter how hard she had to fight for it." + +"She spoke to me once of a promise," Rodney said dully, "but of course I +didn't know what she meant." + +Portia got to her feet. "I can't leave mother for very long," she said, +"and I've some little errands at the shops before I can go back. So ..." + +"I see," he said. "I mustn't detain you any longer. I don't know, +anyhow, that there's anything more to say." + +"I'm sorry I can't--help you. You're entitled to--hate me, I think. +Because it all goes back to that. I've been glad of a chance to tell +you. And that makes me all the sorrier that I can't in any way make it +up to you. But you see--don't you--how it is?" + +"Yes," he said. "I see. I suppose, if it came to hating, that you're +entitled to hate me. But there'll be no great satisfaction in that, I +guess, for either of us." He held out his hand to her and with a painful +sort of shy stiffness, she grasped it. "If Rose changes her +instructions, or if you change your mind as to your duty under them, +you'll let me know?" + +She nodded. "Good-by," she said. + +Rodney walked back to the railway station where he had checked his bag. +In two hours he was on a train bound back to Chicago. + +Various things occurred to him during the journey eastward that he might +have said to Portia. He hadn't asked, for instance, whether Rose's +embargo on news of herself to him had been made effective also in the +other direction. Had she cut herself off from Portia's bulletins about +himself and the babies? Could Portia have transmitted a message from him +to Rose--the one Frederica had declined to take? But he felt in a way +rather glad that he hadn't asked any more questions, nor offered any +messages. He wasn't looking now for an intermediary between Rose and +himself. He wanted Rose, and he meant to find her. His whole mind, by +now, had crystallized into that hard-faceted, sharp-edged determination. +The sore masculine vanity that had kept him from appealing to the man +most likely to be able to help him was almost incredible now. + +From the railway station in Chicago, the moment he got in, he telephoned +Jimmy Wallace at his newspaper office. It was then about half past four +in the afternoon. Jimmy couldn't leave for another hour, it seemed. It +was his afternoon at home to press agents, and he always gave them till +five-thirty to drop in. But he didn't think there were likely to be any +more to-day, and if Rodney would come over ... + +Rodney got into a taxi and came, and found the critic at his shabby old +desk under a green-shaded electric light, in the midst of a vast +solitude, the editorial offices of an evening newspaper at that hour +being about the loneliest place in the world. There was a rusty look +about this particular local room, too, that made you wonder that any +real news ever could emanate from it. Yet only this afternoon they had +beaten the city in the announcement of the failure of the +Mortimore-Milligan string of banks. + +"I've come," said Rodney, finding a sort of fierce satisfaction in +grasping the nettle as tightly as possible, "to see if you can tell me +anything about my wife." + +Jimmy may have felt a bit flushed and flustered, but the fact didn't +show, and an imaginative insight he was in the habit of denying the +possession of led him to draw most of the sting out of the situation +with the first words he said. + +"I'll tell you all I know, of course, but it isn't much. Because I +haven't had a word with her since the last time I dined at your house, +way back last September, I think it was. I saw her on the stage at the +Globe, the opening night of _The Girl Up-stairs_, and I saw that she +recognized me. That's how I knew it was really she. And--well, I want +you to know this! I haven't told anybody that she was there." + +"You needn't tell me that," said Rodney. "I'm sure of it. But I'm glad +you did tell me the other thing. But here's the situation: she's left +that company; left it, I believe, as a result of a talk I had with her +after I found her there, and I don't know where she is. The one thing I +have got to do just now is to find her. I've asked at the theater, and +they won't tell me. I imagine they're acting on her instructions. And as +I don't even know the name she goes by I've found it pretty hard to get +anywhere. I want you to help me." + +"Her name there at the Globe was Doris Dane," said Jimmy, "and I imagine +that unless she's left the show business altogether she'll have kept it; +because it would be, in a small way, an asset. And, as she'll be easier +to find if she has stayed in the business than if she hasn't, why, +that's the presumption to begin on." + +He lighted his pipe and lapsed into a thoughtful silence. "There are two +things she may have done," he went on after a while. "She may have gone +to New York, and in that case she's likely to have applied to the man +who put on _The Girl_ out here; that's John Galbraith. He took quite an +interest in her, I understand; believed she had a future. But the other +thing she may have done strikes me as a little more likely. How long ago +was it you talked to her?" + +"It's the better part of two weeks," said Rodney. + +"Well," said Jimmy, "they sent out a Number Two company of _The Girl +Up-Stairs_ a week ago last Sunday night. If she had any reason for +wanting to leave Chicago she might, I should think, have gone to them +and asked them to let her go out on the road with that. They wouldn't +have done it, of course, unless she'd convinced them that she was going +to quit the Chicago company anyway. But if she had convinced them of +that they'd have done it right enough. On the whole, that seems to me +the likeliest place to look." + +"Yes," said Rodney, "I think it is. Well, have you any way of finding +out where the Number Two company is playing?" + +Jimmy was rummaging in the litter of magazines on the top of his desk. +He pulled one out and searched among the back pages of it for a moment. + +"Here we are!" he said. "_The Girl Up-stairs,_" and he began reading off +the route. "They're playing to-night," he said, "at Cedar Rapids; +to-morrow night in Dubuque." + +"All right," said Rodney. "The next thing to find out is whether she's +with the company. Who is there we can telephone to out there?" + +"Why," said Jimmy, "I suppose we might raise the manager of the +opera-house. They're at Cedar Rapids to-night, and we might get a good +enough wire so that a proper name would be understood." He glanced at +his watch. "But there's a quicker and surer and cheaper way, and that's +to ask Alec McEwen. He's the press agent of the company here, and he'd +be sure to know." + +"He'd know," Rodney demurred, "but would he tell?" + +"He'd tell me," said Jimmy. + +"Can you find him?" Rodney wanted to know. "Where would he be at this +time of day--at his office or his house?" + +He hadn't any office nor any house, Jimmy said. "But since he's +undoubtedly cleaned up the newspaper offices by now, on his weekly +round," he concluded, "we can find him easily enough. I'll guarantee to +locate him--within three bars. There'll be no one in to see me after +this," he went on, slamming down the roll-top to his desk, getting up +and reaching for his overcoat, "so we may as well go straight at it." + +They walked down to the street entrance in silence. There Jimmy, with a +nonchalance that rang a little flat on his own ear, pulled up and said: + +"Look here! There's no need your trailing around on this job. Tell me +where you will be in an hour and I'll call you up." + +"Oh, I've nothing else to do," said Rodney, "and I'll be glad to go +along." + +They were at cross-purposes here. Jimmy didn't want him along. He had a +hunch that Rodney wouldn't find little Alec very satisfactory, but he +didn't know just how to say so. Rodney, on his part, strongly +disrelished the notion of trailing the press agent from bar to bar. But +he attributed the same distaste to Jimmy and felt it wouldn't be fair +not to share it with him. There was, besides, a certain satisfaction in +making his pride do penance. + +Jimmy hadn't overestimated his knowledge of little Alec McEwen's orbit. +They walked together to the corner of Clark and Randolph Streets and, +working radially from there, in the third bar they found him. + +Even before this, however, Rodney regretted that he hadn't let Jimmy do +the job alone. He was not an habitue of the sumptuous bars of the Loop, +and the voices of the men he found in them, the sort of men they were, +and the sort of things they talked about found raw nerves all over him. +On another errand, he realized, he wouldn't have minded. But it seemed +as if Rose herself were somehow soiled by the necessity of visiting +places like this in search of information about her. + +The feeling he had come back with from that down-state town to which he +had fled, that she was in a miry pit from which, at any cost, she must +be saved, had been a good deal weakened during the ten days that had +intervened since then. Her having sent back that hundred dollars; what +Portia had said about her courage; Harriet's notion that a stage career, +if properly managed, was something one could at least pretend not to be +ashamed of; and, most lately, what Jimmy Wallace had said about the New +York director who thought she had a future--all these things had +contributed to the result. + +But this pursuit, from one drinking bar to another, of the only man who +could tell him where she was, was bringing the old feeling back in +waves. + +"Here we are," said Jimmy, as they entered the third place. It was a +cramped cluttered room, thick with highly varnished, carved woodwork and +upholstered leather. Its principal ornament was a nude Bouguereau in a +red-draped alcove, heavily overlighted and fearfully framed; the sort of +picture any one would have yawned at in a gallery, it acquired here, +from the hard-working indecency of its intent, a weak salaciousness. + +Rodney found himself being led up to a group in the far corner of the +bar, and guessed rightly that the young man with the high voice and the +seemingly permanent smile, who greeted Jimmy with a determined +facetiousness, "Hello, old Top! Drunk again?" was the man they sought. + +"Not yet," said Jimmy, "but I'm willing to help you along. What'll it +be?" Then to Rodney: "This is Mr. Alexander McEwen, the leading liar +among our local press agents." He added quickly: "You didn't come around +this afternoon, so I suppose there's nothing stirring. How's business +over at the Globe?" + +"Immense," said Alec. "Sold out three times last week." + +"Do you hear anything," Jimmy asked, "about the road company, what +they're doing?" + +"Rotten," said Alec. "But that don't worry Goldsmith and Block. They +sold out their road rights to Block's brother-in-law." + +"By the way," said Jimmy, "who's the girl in the sextette that's quit?" + +"Doris Dane?" said little Alec. "Say no more. So you were on that lay, +too, you old fox!" his smile widened as he looked round at Rodney, and +his voice turned to a crow. "Trust this solemn old bird not to miss a +bet. She was some lady, all right! Why," he went on to Jimmy, "she has +some sort of a row with her lover; big brute that used to lie in wait +for her in the alley. You ought to hear the ponies go on about it. So +she gets scared and goes to Goldsmith and gets herself sent out with the +Number Two. And Goldsmith--believe me--crazy! He had his eye on it, +too." + +Jimmy finished his drink with a jerk. "Come along," he said to Rodney. +"I don't like this place. Let's get out." + +Rodney has never managed to forget little Alec McEwen. For weeks after +that bar-room encounter he was haunted by the vision of the small bright +prying eyes, the fatuously cynical smile, and by the sound of the high +crowing voice. Little Alec became monstrous to him; impersonal, a symbol +of the way the world looked at Rose, and he dreamed sometimes, +half-waking dreams, of choking the life out of him. Not out of little +Alec personally. He, obviously, wasn't worth it; but out of all the +weakly venomous slander that he typified. + +He managed a nod that seemed unconcerned enough, in response to Jimmy's +suggestion, and followed him out to the sidewalk. The sort of florid +rococo chivalry that would have "vindicated his wife's honor" by +knocking little Alec down was an inconceivable thing to him. But the +thing cut deep. He felt bemired. He wouldn't have minded that, of +course, except that the miry way he'd trodden since he'd first gone to +the stage door for Rose was the way she's taken ahead of him. He must +overtake her and bring her back! + +"I'm a thousand times obliged," he said in an even enough tone to Jimmy. +"I'll find her at Dubuque, then, to-morrow." + +"That's Wednesday," said Jimmy. "They may be playing a matinee, you +know. She'll be there, right enough." + +Then, to make the separation they both wanted come a little easier, he +invented an errand over on State Street and nodded Rodney farewell. For +the next half-hour he cursed himself with vicious heartfelt fluency for +a fool. Mightn't he have known what little Alec McEwen would say? + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +IN FLIGHT + + +Analyzing what little Alec McEwen actually said, disregarding the tone +of his voice and the look in his eye; disregarding, indeed, the meaning +he attached to his own words, and sticking simply to the words +themselves, it would be difficult to bring home against him the charge +of untruthfulness, or even of exaggeration. + +Because it was in a simple panic that Rose, on the morning after +Rodney's visit, had gone to Goldsmith and demanded to be transferred to +the second company, which had started rehearsing as soon as a month of +capacity business had demonstrated that the piece was a success. + +Goldsmith was disgusted. Little Alec had been right about that, too. The +unnaturalness of the request--for indeed it flew straight in the face of +all traditions that a girl who might stay in Chicago if she liked, +taking it easy and having a lot of fun, and rejoicing in the possession +of a job that was going to last for months, should deliberately swap +this highly desirable position for the hazards and discomforts of a +second-rate road company, playing one-night stands over the kerosene +circuit--was one too many for him. He demanded explanations without +getting any. And as Jimmy Wallace had guessed, it was not until she'd +convinced him that in no circumstances would she stay on in the Chicago +company that he assented to the transfer. He didn't abandon his attempts +to dissuade her until the very last moment. But neither his pictures of +the discomforts of the road, nor his carefully veiled promises of +further advancement if she stayed in Chicago, had the slightest effect +on her. All that she wanted was to get away, and as quickly as she +could! + +The collapse of her courage was not quite the sudden thing it seemed. +Forces she was vaguely aware had been at work, but didn't realize the +seriousness of, had been undermining it steadily since the opening night +when she recognized Jimmy Wallace in the audience, and when later she +parted from Galbraith with his promise of a New York job as soon as he +could get his own affairs ready for her. + +Chief of these forces was the simple reaction of fatigue. Strong as she +was, she had abused her strength somewhat during the last weeks of +rehearsal; had taken on and triumphantly accomplished more than any one +has a right to accomplish without calculating on replacing his depleted +capital of energy afterward. It was her first experience with this sort +of exhaustion, and she hadn't learned (indeed it is a lesson she never +did fully learn) to accept the phase with philosophic calm as the +inevitable alternate to the high-tension effective one. + +She missed Galbraith horribly. She had, as she'd told him, personified +the show as a mere projection of himself; he was it and it was he. +Everything she said and did on the stage had continued, as it had begun +in her very first rehearsal by being, just the expression of his will +through her instrumentality. It was amazing to her that, with the core +of it drawn out, the fabric should still stand; that the piece should go +on repeating itself night after night, automatically, awakening the +delighted applause of that queer foolish monster, the audience, just +with its galvanic simulation of the life he had once imparted to it. + +She was doing her own part, she felt at all events, in a manner utterly +lifeless and mechanical. It was a stifling existence! + +The most discouraging thing about it was that the others in the company +seemed not to feel it in the same way. Anabel Astor for example: night +after night she seemed to be born anew into her part with the rise of +the first curtain; she fought and conquered and cajoled, and luxuriated +in the approbation of every new audience, just as she had in the case of +the first, and came off all aglow with her triumph, as if the thing had +never happened to her before. And with the others, in varying degrees, +even with the chorus people, the effect seemed to be the same. + +But it was actually in the air, Rose believed, not merely in her own +fancy, that she was failing to justify the promise she had given at +rehearsal. Not alarmingly, to be sure. She was still plenty good enough +to hold down her job. But the notion, prevalent, it appeared, before the +opening, that she was one of those persons who can't be kept down in the +chorus, but project themselves irresistibly into the ranks of the +principals, was coming to be considered a mistake. + +Galbraith, as was evident from his last talk with her, hadn't made that +mistake. She remembered his having said she never could be an actress. +That was all right of course. She didn't want to be. In a way, it was +just because she didn't want to be that she couldn't be. But having it +come home to her as it was doing now, in her own experience, made her +all the more impatient to get out of the profession that wasn't hers and +into the one that had beckoned her so alluringly. + +It was just here that her disappointment was sharpest. The light that +for a few weeks had flared up so brightly, showing a clear path of +success that would lead her back to Rodney, had, suddenly, just when she +needed it most, gone out and left her wondering whether, after all, it +had been a true beacon or only fool's fire. + +A resolution she came to within twenty-four hours after Galbraith left +was that she would not wait passively for his letter summoning her to +New York. She'd go straight to work (and fill in the disconcerting +emptiness of her days at the same time) preparing herself for the +profession of stage costume designing. She wasn't entirely clear in her +mind as to just what steps this preparation should consist in, but the +fact that Galbraith had once asked to see her sketches and had seemed +amazed to learn that she hadn't any, gave her the hint that she might do +well to learn to draw. She knew, of course, that she couldn't learn very +much in the fortnight or so she supposed would elapse before Galbraith's +letter came in, but she could learn a little. And anything to do that +went in the right direction was better than blankly doing nothing. + +Her first adventure in this direction was downright ludicrous, as she +was aware without being able to summon the mood to appreciate it. The +girls she'd known, back in the Edgewater days, who had ambitions to +learn to draw went to the Art Institute. So Rose, summoning her courage +for a sortie across the avenue, want there too, and felt, as she climbed +the steps between the lions, a little the way Christian did in similar +circumstances. After waiting a while she was shown into the office of an +affable young man, with efficient looking eye-glasses and a keen sort of +voice, and told him with admirable brevity that she wanted to learn to +draw, as a preliminary to designing costumes. + +He approved this ambition cordially enough and made it evident that the +resources of the institute were entirely adequate to her needs. But +then, just about simultaneously, she made the discovery that the course +he was talking about was one of from three to five years' duration, and +he, that the time immediately at her disposal amounted to something like +a fortnight. They were mutually too completely disconcerted to do +anything, for a moment, but stare at each other. When he found his +breath he told her that he was afraid they couldn't do anything for her. + +"There are places, of course, here in town (there's one right down the +street) where they'll take you on for a month, or a week, or a day, if +you like; let you begin working in oil in the life class the vary first +morning, if you've a notion to. But we don't believe in that +get-rich-quick sort of business. We believe in laying the foundation +first." + +His manner in describing the other sort of place had been so +annihilating, his purpose in citing this horrible example was so plain, +that he was justifiably taken aback when she asked him, very politely, +to be sure, "Would you mind telling me where that other place is; the +one down the street?" + +He did mind exceedingly, and it is likely he wouldn't have done it if +she'd been less extraordinarily good to look at and if there hadn't +been, in her very expressive blue eyes, a gleam that suggested she was +capable of laughing at him for having trapped himself like that. She +wasn't laughing at him now, be it understood; had made her request with +a quite adorable seriousness. Only ... + +He gave her the address of an art academy on Madison Street and thither +at once she made her way, faintly cheered by the note on which her +encounter with the young man had ended, but on the whole rather +depressed by the thought of the five years he'd talked about. + +They were more tactful at the new place. _Ars Longa est_ was not a motto +they paraded. They were not shocked at all at the notion of a young +woman's learning as much as she could about drawing in two weeks. There +was a portrait sketch class every morning; twenty minute poses. You put +down as much as you could of how the model looked to you in that space +of time, and then began again on something else. All the equipment Rose +would need was a big apron, a stick of charcoal and a block of drawing +paper; all of which were obtainable on the premises. She could begin +this minute if she liked. It was almost as simple as getting on a +pay-as-you-enter street-car. + +This jumped with Rose's mood exactly, and she promptly fell to, with a +momentary flare-up of the zest with which she had gone to work for +Galbraith. But it was only momentary. She hadn't a natural aptitude for +drawing, and her attempts to make the black lines she desperately dug +and smudged into the white paper represent, recognizably, the object she +was looking at failed so lamentably as to discourage her almost from the +start. + +She kept at it for the two weeks she'd contracted for, but at the end of +that time she gave it up. She hadn't made any visible progress, and +besides, she might be hearing from Galbraith almost any day now. + +And when, four or five days later, her intolerable restlessness over +waiting for a letter that didn't come, making up reasons why it hadn't +come, one minute, and deciding that it never would, the next, drove her +to do something once more, she set out on a new tack. If the ability to +make fancy little water-colors of impossible-looking girls in only less +impossible costumes were really an essential part of the business of +designing the latter, then she'd have to set about learning, in a +systematic way, to paint them; find out the proper way to begin, and +take her time about it. Her two weeks at the academy had proved that it +wasn't a knack that she could pick up casually. But there were books on +costumes, she knew; histories of clothes, that went as far back as any +sort of histories, with marvelous colored plates which gave you all the +details. Bertie Willis had told her all about that when they were +getting up their group for the Charity Ball. There were shelves of them, +she knew, over at the Newberry Library. A knowledge of their contents +would be sure to be valuable to her when Galbraith should set her to +designing more costumes for him--if ever he did. + +This misgiving, that she might never hear from him, that his plans had +changed since their talk, so that he wasn't going to need any assistant, +or that he had found some one in New York better qualified for the work, +was, really, a little artificial. She encouraged it as a defense against +another which was, in its insidious way, much more terrifying. + +Would she ever be capable, again, of producing another idea in case it +should be wanted? That one little flash of inspiration she'd had, that +had resulted in the twelve costumes for the sextette--where had it come +from? How had she happened on it? Wasn't it, perhaps, just a fluke that +never could be repeated? During those wonderful days she had had antennae +out everywhere, bringing her impressions, suggestions from the +unlikeliest objects. Now they were all drawn in and the part of her mind +that had responded to them felt numb. + +She ignored this sensation, or rather this absence of sensation, as well +as she could; just as one might ignore the creeping approach of +paralysis. She had an unacknowledged reason for going to the library and +beginning that historic study of costumes. Certainly the sight of those +quaint old plates ought to set her imagination racing again. + +But it didn't work that way. She found herself poring over them, +yawning herself blind over the French legends that accompanied them. +(They were nearly all in French, these books, and though Rose had done +two years' work in this language at the university and passed all her +examinations, she found these technical descriptions of costumes +frightfully hard to understand.) She stuck at it, though, for a long +while, until one morning a comparison occurred to her that made her shut +the folio with a slam. It had been in just this way, with just this +dogged, blind, hopeless persistence, that, ages ago, in that former +incarnation, she'd tried to study law! + +This was too much for her. She walked out of the library with the best +appearance of unconcern that she could muster,--it had been a near thing +that she didn't break down and cry--and she did not go back. Probably it +was just as well that Galbraith hadn't sent for her. She'd only have +made a ghastly failure of it, if he had. + +The background, of course, to all these endeavors and discouragements, +or, to describe it more justly, the indivisible, all-permeating ether +they floated about in, was, just as it had been in the time of her +success--Rodney. The occupations, routine and otherwise, that she gave +her mind to, might seem, in a way, to crowd him out of it, although not +one of them was undertaken without some reference to him; the success of +this, the failure of that, brought him nearer, put him farther away, +like the children's game of _Warm and Cold_. + +When she ran out of occupations that could absorb the conscious part of +her mind, she did not even try to resist direct thoughts about him. +She'd spent uncounted hours since that opening night, wondering if he +knew where she was, inventing reasons why, knowing, he didn't come to +her; explanations of the possibility of his still remaining in +ignorance. She'd gone over and over again, the probable things that he +would say, the things that she would say in reply, when he did come. + +She was prepared for his anger. He was, she felt, entitled to be angry. +But she felt sure she could get him to listen while she told him just +why and how she had done it, and what she had done, and she had a sort +of tremulous confidence that when the story was told, entire, his anger +would be found to have abated, if not altogether to have disappeared. +And afterward, when the shock had worn off, and he had had time to +adjust himself to things, he'd begin to feel a little proud of her. They +could commence--being friends. She'd constructed and let her mind dwell +on almost every conceivable combination of circumstances, except the one +thing that happened. + +Only, as the active actual half of her life grew more discouraging, +harder to steer toward any object that seemed worth attaining, her +imaginary life with Rodney lost its grip on fact and reason; became +roseate, romantic, a thinner and more iridescent bubble, readier to +burst and disappear altogether at an ungentle touch. + +So you will understand, I think, that the Rose, who incredulously heard +him ask in that dull sullen tone, if she had anything besides what would +go into her trunk; the Rose who got up and turned on the light for a +look at him in the hope that the evidence of her eyes would belie that +of her ears; the Rose he left shuddering at the window in that quilted +dressing-gown, was not the Rose who had left him three months before and +rented that three-dollar room and wrung a job out of Galbraith! + +Dimly she was aware of this herself. At her best she wouldn't have lost +her head, wouldn't have flown to pieces like that. If she'd kept any +sort of grip on the situation, she might at least have averted a total +shipwreck. She understood even on that gray morning, that the terrible +things he'd said to her had been a mere outcry; the expression of a mood +she had encountered before, though this was an extreme example of it. + +But it was a long time before she went any further than that. The memory +of the whole episode from the moment when he came up to her there in the +alley and took her by the shoulders, until he closed her door upon +himself four hours or so later, was so exquisitely painful that any +reasoned analysis of it, any construction of potential alternatives to +the thing that had happened, was simply impossible. The misgiving that +with a little more courage and patience on her part, it might have +terminated differently, only added to her misery. + +She felt like a coward when she went to Goldsmith and demanded to be +sent out on the road, and she experienced for a while, the utter +demoralization of cowardice. The logic of the situation told her to stay +where she was. If it were true, as she had fiercely told him that night, +that their life together was ended, the whole fabric that they had woven +for themselves rent clean across, then the only thing for her to do was +to begin living now, as she had made an effort to do before, quite +without reference to him, ordering her own existence as if he had ceased +to exist; stick to whatever offered herself, Doris Dane, the best chance +for success and advancement. She was, of course, seriously injuring +Doris Dane's chances by going out on the road. + +And, even with reference to Rodney, it was hard to see how her flight +could help the situation. If what she'd done had really disgraced him in +his own eyes and in those of his world, the disgrace was already +complete. Acquiescing in that point of view, as by her flight she did, +couldn't lighten it. + +But all the power these considerations had, was to make her flight seem +more ignominious. They were utterly incapable of preventing it. + +A disinterested friend, had she boasted such a possession just then, +might have pointed out for her comfort, that her rout was not complete. +It was a retreat, but not a surrender. She hadn't become Rose Stanton +again and gone back to Portia and her mother. Doris Dane, though badly +battered, was still intact! + +The first ten days of her life on the road had, on the whole, a +distinctly restorative effect. I have never heard of a physician's +recommending a course of one-night stands as a rest cure to nervously +exhausted patients, but I am inclined to think the idea has its merits, +for all that. Certainly the regime was, for a while, beneficial to Rose. +The merit of it was that it offered some sort of occupation for +practically all her time. + +A typical day consisted in getting up in the morning at an hour +determined for you either by the call posted on the bulletin board in +the theater the night before, telling you what time you were to be at +the railway station, or by the last moment at which you could get into +the dining-room in the hotel. You ate all you could manage at breakfast, +because lunch was likely to consist of a sandwich and an orange bought +from the train butcher; with perhaps the lucky addition of a cup of +coffee at some junction point where you changed trains. You lugged your +suit-case down to the station, and had your arrival there noted by the +manager, who, of course, bought all the tickets for the company. You +needn't even bother to know where you were going, except out of idle +curiosity. The train came along and you got a seat by yourself on the +shady side, if you could; though the men being more agile, generally got +there first. + +The convention of giving precedence to the ladies, Rose promptly +discovered, and with a sort of satisfaction, did not apply. Indeed, all +the automatic small courtesies and services which, in any life she'd +known, men had been expected to show to women, were here completely +barred. A girl could let a man come up to her on a platform where they +were all gathered waiting for the train, and casually slide an arm +around her, without any one's paying the slightest attention to the act. +But if, when the train came along, she permitted him to pick up her +suit-case, carry it into the train and find a seat for her, there would +be nods and glances. + +Well, you got into the train and dozed and read a magazine (or both) and +by and by, when everybody else did, you got up and got out. Perhaps you +waited on a triangular railway platform for another train, or perhaps +you trailed along in a procession, to a hotel. In the latter case, you +got a meal and found out where the opera-house was. + +There were various minor occupations that you slipped into the +interstices of a day like this whenever they happened to come. You +combed out and brushed your hair (a hundred strokes) which you were too +tired to do at night after the performance and seldom waked up in time +for in the morning. And, if you were wise, as Rose was, thanks to a tip +from Anabel, and had emancipated yourself from the horror of overnight +laundries by providing yourself with crepe underclothes and dark little +silk blouses, you got all the hot water you could beg of the +chambermaid, and did the family wash in the bowl in your room, on an +afternoon when you had a short jump and there was no matinee. + +It was a life, of course, that abounded in what pass for hardships. +There is no desolation to surpass that of the second-best hotel (rates +two dollars a day), in a small middle western city, except the same kind +of hotel in the same sort of city in the South. Bad air, bad beds and +bad food are their staples and what passes for service seems especially +calculated to encourage the victim to dispense with it as far as +possible. The stages and dressing-rooms in the theaters were almost +always dirty and were frequently overrun with rats. It was always cold +and drafty back there, except when it happened to be suffocating. Also, +the day's work by no means invariably concluded with even a half a bed +in a two-dollar-a-day hotel. If there happened to be a train coming +along at two o'clock in the morning, and also happened to be a chance to +play a matinee in the town you were jumping to, you took your suit-case +to the theater, lugged it from there after the performance, to the +station, and spent an indefinite number of hours thereafter, in an +air-tight waiting-room. Waiting, be it observed, for a chance to curl up +in a seat in the day-coach, when the train came along. + +But Rose didn't mind this very much. The rooms assigned to her and her +roommate were fully as comfortable as the one she had lived in on Clark +Street, and the meals, as a whole, were rather better than those her +habitual lunch-room had provided. As for riding on the train: it gave +you the sense of doing something and getting somewhere, without imposing +the necessity either for judgment or for resolution. The real +discomforts to Rose were not the material ones. + +The piece had been, as she discovered during the one rehearsal she had +attended in Chicago, deliberately cheapened and vulgarized for the road. +The only one of the principals who had a shred of professional +reputation, was a comedian named Max Webber, who played the part of the +cosmetic king. He'd come up in vaudeville and his methods reeked of it. +He was featured in the billing and he arrogated all the privileges of a +real star. He was intensely and destructively jealous of any approbation +he didn't himself arouse, even if it was manifested when he was not on +the stage. He distended his part out of all reasonable semblance, and to +the practical annihilation of the plot, by the injection into it of +musty vaudeville specialties of his, which he assured the weak-kneed +management were knock-outs. And his clowning and mugging made it +impossible to play a legitimate scene with him, with any shadow of +professional self-respect. + +The result of this was that the girl who had rehearsed Patricia +Devereux's part, an ambitious, well-equipped young woman who would have +added much-needed strength to the cast, delivered an ultimatum during +the last rehearsal but one, and on having her very reasonable demands +rejected, walked out. Olga Larson, who had understudied Patricia ever +since the Chicago opening, was given the part. The rest of the +principals were either pathetic failures with lamentable stories of +better days, or promising youngsters, like Olga herself, with no +adequate training. + +The chorus was similarly constituted. There were fifteen girls in it, +including the sextette, now a trio, part of them worn-out veterans (one +of these was the duchess--do you remember her?--who had applied to +Galbraith for a job the day that Rose got hers) and the others green +young girls, not more than sixteen or seventeen, some of them, who had +never been on the stage before. It was one of these, a tiny, slim, +black-haired little thing, who gave her name as Dolly Darling, but +hadn't memorized it yet herself, obviously a runaway in quest of +romantic adventure, whom Rose adopted as a permanent roommate. + +Her doing so opened up the breach between herself and Olga Larson. It +had existed, beneath the surface, ever since the night she had gone to +supper with Galbraith. It wasn't that Olga believed Rose had taken +Galbraith as a lover. She hadn't believed that even when she hurled the +accusation against her. The wounding thing was that Rose seemed not to +care whether she believed it or not; had met her tempestuous pleas for +forgiveness and her offers of unlimited love and faith "whatever Rose +might do and however things might look," with a cold distaste that +hardly differed from the feeling she had shown in response to the +tempest of angry accusation. She told Olga, to be sure, that everything +was all right; that the thing for both of them to do, was to treat the +quarrel as if it hadn't occurred. + +This wasn't what Olga wanted at all. She wanted Rose as an emotional +objective, to love passionately and be jealous of, and, for a moment now +and then, hate, as a preliminary to another passionate reconciliation. + +Rose had divined that this was so. Indeed, she understood it far better +than Olga did, having had to evade one or two "crushes" of a similar +sort while she was at the university. It was a sort of thing that went +utterly against her instincts, and she was secretly glad that the +quarrel on the opening night had given her a method of resisting this +one that need not seem too utterly heartless. + +Since the quarrel, Olga had been distant and dignified. She had a +grievance (that Rose, pretending to forgive her confessed mistake, had +really not done so) but she was bearing it bravely. Rose, when she could +manage the manner, was good-humored and casual, and completely blind to +the existence of the grievance Olga so nobly concealed. But Olga's +wonderful good fortune, coming quite unheralded as it did, an +advancement she had played with in her day-dreams, and never thought of +as a realizable possibility, swept her out of her pose and carried her +with a rush into Rose's arms. + +This happened not a quarter of an hour after Rose had secured +Goldsmith's consent to her own transfer to the Number Two company, and +the first thing that registered on her mind was that she, who had taught +Olga to talk, saved her her job, prevailed on Galbraith to dress her +properly, and won her a chance for the space of that one song refrain, +to make her individual appeal to the audience--Rose, who had done all +this, was now going out as a chorus-girl in the company of which Olga +was the leading woman. She didn't regret Olga's promotion, but she did +wish, for herself, that she might have been spared just now, this ironic +little cackle of laughter on the part of the malicious Goddess of +Chance. + +She was ashamed of the feeling--was she getting as small as that?--and, +in consequence, she congratulated Olga a good deal more warmly than +otherwise she would have done. But this warmer manner of hers opened +Olga's flood-gates so wide, swamped her in such a torrent of sentiment, +that Rose simply took to flight. + +There was an element of real maternal pity in Rose's adoption of little +Dolly Darling as her chum. Dolly was obviously as fragile and ephemeral +as a transparent sand-fly. She had nothing that you could call a mind or +a character, even of the most rudimentary sort. She knew nothing, except +how to dance, and she knew that exactly as a kitten knows how to play +with a ball of string; she dreamed of diamonds and wonderful restaurants +and a sardonic hero nine feet tall with a straight nose and a long chin, +who would clutch her passionately in his arms (there was no more real +passion in her than there is in a soap-bubble) and murmur vows of +eternal adoration in her ears. + +She was a soap-bubble; that's the figure for her; just an iridescent +reflection, wondrously distorted, of the tawdry life about her--a +reflection, and then nothing! + +But just the thin empty frailness of her, her gaiety in the face of +perfectly inevitable destruction, appealed to Rose. She had Dolly in her +pocket in five minutes, and before the end of the rehearsal, their +treaty was signed and sealed. They were to be chums, bosom friends! The +notion of it gave Rose the most spontaneous smile she'd had in days; the +first one that hadn't had a bitter quirk in it. + +When, down at the union station on Sunday morning, as they were leaving, +Olga unfolded her plan that she and Rose should room together, Rose +owned up to herself that there had been another element than maternal +pity in her adoption of Dolly. She'd suspected that Olga would propose +something of this sort, and she had fortified herself against it. + +Olga was furious, of course, when she learned what Rose had done, and +accused her, with a measure of justice, of having done it to be rid of +her. If Rose didn't want to remain under this imputation, she could +break with Dolly. When Rose refused to do this, Olga cut her off +utterly; damned her, disowned her. They were the first pair in the +company to begin not to speak. + +As I said, the chief discomforts for Rose in those first ten days on the +road, were not the material ones. Olga's absurd way of ignoring her, the +fact that she attributed their quarrel, for the benefit of the company, +to Rose's jealousy of her success; worst of all, the fact that Rose +couldn't be sure she wasn't jealous of Olga's success, didn't feel at +least, contemplating their reversed positions, more like a failure than +she would have felt had the original girl kept the leading part,--all +this contributed to a discomfort that did matter, that tormented, +abraded, rankled. + +It became the core of a sensation that she had turned cheap and shabby; +that the distinction, which with her first entrance into this life, she +had built up between herself and most of her colleagues, was breaking +down; that her fiber was coarsening, her fine sensitiveness becoming +calloused. It troubled her that she should feel so languid an +indifference over the vulgarity of the piece, a vulgarity which, under +Webber's infection, grew more blatant every day. + +It was obvious to her that this quality was destroying whatever slim +chance for success they had. The lines, with the new ugly twist that had +been imparted to them, might draw a half dozen rude guffaws from +different parts of the audience, but the chill disfavor with which they +were received by the rest of the house, must, she felt, have been +apparent to everybody. There seemed, though, to be a superstition that a +laugh was a sacred thing; something to be fed carefully with more of the +same thing that had originally produced it. This treatment was persisted +in, despite the fact that the audiences shrank and shriveled and the +box-office receipts, she gathered from the gossip of the company, hung +just about at the minimum required to keep them going. + +What troubled her was her own apathetic acceptance of it all. Just as +her ear seemed to have grown dull to the offenses that nightly were +committed against it on the stage, and to the leering response, which +was all they ever got from across the footlights, so her spirit +submitted tamely to the prospect of failure. She hardly seemed to +herself the same person who had set to work in a blaze of eager +enthusiasm, on the part she played so mechanically now. + +She tried to reassure herself with the reflection that the tour meant +nothing to her, except as it fell in with an ulterior purpose, and that +it was actually serving that purpose well enough. She'd deliberately +turned aside from the main channel of her new life to give mind and soul +a rest they needed. When she'd got that rest and rallied her courage, +she'd take a fresh start. She had, lying safely in the bank in Chicago, +where Galbraith had taken her, something over two hundred dollars; for +she'd lived thriftily during the Chicago engagement and had added a +little every week to her nest-egg of profit from the costuming business. +So she had enough to get her to New York and see her through the process +of finding a new job. What sort of job it would be, she was still too +tired to think, but she was sure she could find something. + +Meantime, out there on the road, she was making no effort to save. She +indulged in whatever small ameliorations to their daily discomforts her +weekly wage would run to. + +It was thus that matters stood with her, when, with the rest of the +company, she arrived in Dubuque on a Wednesday morning, with an hour or +so to spare before the matinee. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +ANTI-CLIMAX + + +It was a beastly day. A gusty rain, whipping up from the south, by way +of answer to the challenge of a heavy snowfall the day before, inflicted +a combination of the rigors of winter, with a debilitating, disquieting +hint of spring. The train, for which they had been routed out that +morning at seven o'clock, had been blistering hot and the necessarily +open windows had let in choking clouds of smoke. + +The hotel was hot, too. Rose and Dolly, as soon as they had registered, +went up to their room and washed off the stains of travel, as well as +they could in translucent water that was the color of weak coffee. Then +Rose, in a kimono, stretched out on the bed to make up some of the rest +their early departure from Cedar Rapids had deprived her of. She did +this methodically whenever opportunity offered, but without any great +conviction. + +Dolly, though she looked a bit hollow-eyed and much more in need of rest +than Rose (for she hadn't any stamina at all. She was an +under-nourished, and probably anemic little thing, and was always +train-sick when their jumps began too early in the morning), went +straight ahead with her toilet, tried to correct her pallor with a +little too much rouge, and with the glaring falsehood that it was +clearing up, put on the pathetic little fifteen-dollar suit that she +religiously guarded for occasions. + +She was very fidgety, a little bit furtive, and elaborately over-casual +about all this; a fact to which Rose was, also a little artificially, +oblivious. + +Their partnership had not proved, from Dolly's point of view, at any +rate, an unqualified success. They'd not been on the road three days +before she'd begun to wonder whether she hadn't been hasty in the +selection of her chum. Doris Dane was a very magnificent person, of +course. She made the rest of the company, including the principals, look +(this was a phrase Dolly had unguardedly used the day Rose first +appeared at rehearsal) like a bunch of rummies. And of course it was an +immense compliment to be singled out by an awe-inspiring person like +that, for her particular chum. Only, once the compliment had been paid, +its value as an abiding possession became a little doubtful. Awe is not +a very comfortable sort of emotion to eat breakfast with. + +Evidently the rest of the company felt that way about it, for Dane was +not popular. She gave no handle for an active grievance, to be sure. She +wasn't superior in the sense in which Dolly used the word. She didn't +look haughty nor say withering things to people, nor tell +passionately-believed stories designed to convince her hearers that her +rightful place in the world was immensely higher than the one she now +occupied. One didn't hear her exclaiming under some bit of managerial +tyranny, that never, in the course of her whole life, had she been +subjected to such an affront. But she had a blank, rather tired way of +keeping silence when other people told stories like that, or made +protests like that, which was subtly infuriating. The very fact that she +never tried to impress the company, was presumptive evidence that the +company didn't very greatly impress her. If their common feeling about +her had ever crystallized into a phrase, its effect would have been, +that all their affairs, personal and professional, past, present and to +come, even those she shared with them, were not of sufficient importance +to her ever to get quite the whole of her attention. It was a notion +that irritated the women and frightened off the men. Probably nothing +else could have kept a young woman of Rose's physical attractions from +being, on a tour like that, with that sort of company, the object of, at +least, experiments. + +Men may consider these experiments worth trying in the face of a +determined hostility on the part of the subject of them. The most +rigorous primness of behavior does not daunt them, nor the assertion of +an icily virtuous intangibility. But the sort of good-humored +preoccupation that doesn't see them at all, that sees the pattern in the +wall-paper behind their backs, that tries, half-heartedly, to be +adequately courteous, is too much for them. And the more experienced +they are in conquests, and the higher, on the basis of their own +experience, they rate the irresistibility of their powers, the less of +his particular sort of treatment they can stand. The mere sight of her, +after the first day or two, was enough to give a professional "killer" +like Max Webber, the creeps. + +But Rose's manner not only kept the men away from herself. It kept them +away from Dolly. Poor Dolly didn't know what the matter was, at first. + +She had been told terrible stories by her mother and her elder brother, +about the perils that beset young girls who ran away from good +respectable homes. She had been told them with the misguided purpose of +keeping her from running away from her own home, which was no doubt +respectable, but was also deadly dull. She had run away and it was +perils she was looking for. She didn't mean to succumb to them. None of +the heroines of the only literature she knew--of the movies, that is to +say--succumbed to perils. They were beset by the most terrific perils. +It was over perils that they climbed to soul-entrancing heights of +romance. It was because they were the almost certain victims of +diabolical machinations, that wonderful heroes, with long eyelashes and +curly hair, came to their rescue and clasped them in their arms and +looked unutterable things into their eyes, just as the picture faded +out. + +Dolly had joined the chorus of a musical comedy, because that profession +offered more alluring wares in the way of perils than any other that was +open to her. And then she discovered that her calculations had gone +awry. The impalpable shield her formidable friend carried with her, +turned the perils aside. The little group of half-grown boys one +sometimes found waiting at the stage door, never even spoke to Rose, and +Dolly, in her company, partook of this unwelcomed immunity. As for the +men in the company, Dolly found them letting her entirely alone. + +She was bitterly unhappy at first about this, taking it as an +indication of the insufficiency of her charms. But once she got the +clue, she set about righting matters. She began taking tentative little +strolls about the hotel lobbies by herself, and on her train journeys, +when the motion and the odor of the men's pipes didn't make her too +sick, she'd kneel upon a seat and look over the back of it into one of +the perpetual poker-games they used to pass the time. It was astonishing +how quickly she got results. + +She wandered over to the cigar-stand at one of their hotels, one +afternoon, a week before the arrival in Dubuque, to look at a rack of +picture postcards. One of the chorus-men came over to buy some +cigarettes. She felt him look at her, and she felt herself flush a +little. And then he came a step closer to look at the postcards for +himself, and sighed and said he wished he had somebody to send postcards +to. He supposed she sent _him_ one every day. Whereupon Dolly said she +wasn't going to send him one to-day, anyway. They strolled across the +lobby together and sat down in two of the wide-armed unsatisfactory +chairs they have at such places; chairs that kept them so far apart they +had to shout at each other. So, after a few minutes, it being a fine +day, he suggested they go out for a walk. She had on her outdoor wraps +and his overcoat lay across a chair. + +She had already nodded acquiescence to his proposal, when she saw Rose +coming in through the door. + +"Wait," she whispered to him. "Don't come out with me. I'll wait +outside." And with that she walked up to Rose and told her she was going +out to get some cold cream. + +Five per cent., perhaps, of the motive that prompted this maneuver, was +what it pretended to be, a fear of Rose's disapprobation and a wish to +avoid it. The other ninety-five per cent. of it was just instinctive +love of intrigue. + +The chorus-boy waited, blankly wooden enough to have attracted the +suspicion of any eye less preoccupied than Rose's, until she had got +around the curve of the stair. Then, joining Dolly on the pavement, he +demanded to be told what it was all about. + +Dolly, making up her little mystery as she went along, and making +herself more interesting at every step, told him. They took a long walk, +and by the time they got back to the hotel, they were in love. But they +were separated by the malign influence of Dolly's friend. They developed +a code of signals for circumventing her watchful eye. They slipped +unsigned notes to each other. + +So Dolly, on this blustering morning in Dubuque, fidgeting about the +room, thinking up a perfectly unnecessary excuse for going out, to give +to Rose, answered a knock at the door very promptly and took the folded +bit of paper the bell-boy handed her, without listening to what he said, +if indeed he said anything at all to her. + +She carried it over to the window, turned her back to Rose, unfolded the +bit of paper and read it; read it again, frowned in a puzzled way, and +said: + +"I didn't know there was anybody in the company named Rodney." + +"What's his last name?" asked Rose. There was nothing in her tone that +challenged Dolly's attention, though the quality of it would have caught +a finer ear. And even if Dolly had looked up, she'd have seen nothing. +Rose lay there just as she had been lying a moment ago. It would have +needed a better observer than Dolly to see that she had stopped +breathing. + +"There ain't any last name," said Dolly. "He seems to think I'll know +him by the first one." It pleased Dolly to make a parade of frankness +about this note. She couldn't be sure Rose had been as oblivious as she +seemed, to those the chorus-man had been sending her. This, to her +rudimentary mind, seemed a good opportunity to allay Dane's suspicions. +"See if you can make anything out of it," she said, and handed it over +to Rose. + +Rose got up off the bed and carried the note to the window. She stood +there with it a long time. + +"What's the matter?" said Dolly. "Can't you read his writing?" + +"Yes," said Rose. "I know who he is. It's meant for me." + +The tone, though barely audible, was automatic. It brushed Dolly away +as if she had been a buzzing fly, and she felt distinctly aggrieved by +it. That Dane, with all her loftily assumed indifference to men, even to +a star like Max Webber, should get a note like that, and should have the +nerve to betray no confusion over having her pretense thus confounded! +Dolly had read the note thoroughly, and it had struck her as cryptic and +suggestive in the extreme. + +"I want to sec you very much," it said, "and shall wait in the lobby +unless you say impossible. I'll submit to any conditions you wish to +make. No bad news." + +It sounded like a code to Dolly. + +Rose stood there a long time. When she turned around, Dolly saw she was +pale. She'd crumpled the note tight in one palm, and her hands were +trembling. Then, with great swiftness, she began to dress. But though +her haste was evident, she didn't ask Dolly to help her; didn't seem to +know, indeed, that she was in the room. It was no way for a friend to +act! + +The thing that had moved Rose to an extent that terrified her was that +last phrase. The desire it showed to play fair with her; the +unwillingness to take advantage of a fear his coming like that might +have inspired her with. And then the way he had made it possible for +her, with a single word, to send him away! And the restraint of that "I +want to see you very much!" It wasn't like any Rodney she knew, to be +humble like that. His humility stripped her of her armor. If he'd been +imperious, exigeant, she could have gone down to meet him with her head +up. Suppose she found him broken, aged, with a dumb need for her crying +out in his eyes, what would she do? What could she trust herself not to +do? But just in human mercy to him she mustn't let him see she was +wavering. + +The Rose he was waiting for, there in the lobby, the only Rose he had +been able to picture to himself for more than a fortnight of distressful +days, was the Rose he'd last seen in that North Clark Street room; the +Rose with a look of dumb frozen agony in her face. The one idea he'd +clung to since starting for Dubuque, had been that he mustn't frighten +her. She must see, with her first glance at him, that she had nothing +to fear from a repetition of his former behavior. She must see that the +brute in him--that was the way he put it to himself--was completely +tamed. + +Their meeting was a shock to both of them; an incredible mocking sort of +anti-climax. + +He was standing near the foot of the stairs when she came down, with a +raincoat on, and a newspaper twisted up in his hands, and at sight of +her, he took off his soft wet hat, and crunched it up along with the +newspaper. He moved over toward her, but stopped two or three feet away. +"It's very good of you to come," he said, his voice lacking a little of +the ridiculous stiffness of his words, not much. "Is there some place +where we can talk a little more--privately than here? I shan't keep you +long." + +"There's a room here somewhere," she said. "I noticed it this morning +when we came in. Oh, yes! It's over there." + +The room she led him to, was an appropriately preposterous setting for +the altogether preposterous talk that ensued between them. It had a +mosaic floor with a red plush carpet on it, two stained glass windows in +yellow and green, flanking an oak mantel, which framed an enormous +expanse of mottled purple tile, with a diminutive gas log in the middle. +A glassy looking oak table occupied most of the room, and the chairs +that were crowded in around it were upholstered in highly polished +coffee-colored horse-hide, with very ornate nails. A Moorish archway +with a spindling grill across the top, gave access to it. The room +served, doubtless, to gratify the proprietor's passion for beauty. The +flagrant impossibility of its serving any other purpose, had preserved +it in its pristine splendor. One might imagine that no one had ever been +in there, barring an occasional awed maid with a dust cloth, until +Rodney and Rose descended on it. + +"It's dreadfully hot in here," Rose said. "You'd better take off your +coat." She squeezed in between the table and one of the chairs, and +seated herself. + +Rodney threw down his wet hat, his newspaper, and then his raincoat, on +the table, and slid into a chair opposite her. + +If only one of them could have laughed! But the situation was much too +tragic for that. + +"I want to tell you first," Rodney said, and his manner was that of a +schoolboy reciting to his teacher an apology that has been rehearsed at +home under the sanction of paternal authority, "I want to tell you how +deeply sorry I am for ... I want to say that you can't be any more +horrified over what I did--that night than I am." + +He had his newspaper in his hands again and was twisting it up. His eyes +didn't once seek her face. But they might have done so in perfect +safety, because her own were fixed on his hands and the newspaper they +crumpled. + +He didn't presume to ask her forgiveness, he told her. He couldn't +expect that; at least not at present. He went on lamely, in broken +sentences, repeating what he'd said, in still more inadequate words. He +was unable to stop talking until she should say something, it hardly +mattered what. And she was unable to say anything. There was a reason +for this: + +The thing that had amazed her by crowding up into her mind, demanding to +be said, was that she forgave him utterly--if indeed she had anything +more to forgive than he. She'd never thought it before. Now she realized +that it was true. He was as guiltless of premeditation on that night as +she. If he had yielded to a rush of passion, even while his other +instincts felt outraged by the things she had done, hadn't she yielded +too, without ever having tried to tell him certain material facts that +might change his feeling? They'd both been victims, if one cared to put +it like that, of an accident; had ventured, incautiously, into the rim +of a whirlpool whose irresistible force they both knew. + +She fought the realization down with a frantic repression. It wasn't--it +couldn't be true! Why hadn't she seen it was true before? Why must the +reflection have come at a moment like this, while he sat there, across +the table from her in a public room, laboriously apologizing? + +The formality of his phrases got stiffer and finally congealed into a +blank silence. + +Finally she said, with a gasp: "I have something to ask you to--forgive +me for. That's for leaving you to find out--where I was, the way you +did. You see, I thought at first that no one would know me, made up and +all. And when I found out I would be recognizable, it was too late to +stop--or at least it seemed so. Besides, I thought you knew. I saw Jimmy +Wallace out there the opening night, and saw he recognized me, and--I +thought he'd tell you. And then I kept seeing other people out in front +after that, people we knew, who'd come to see for themselves, and I +thought, of course, you knew. And--I suppose I was a coward--I waited +for you to come. I wasn't, as you thought, trying to hurt you. But I can +see how it must have looked like that." + +He said quickly: "You're not to blame at all. I remember how you offered +to tell me what you intended to do before you went away, and that I +wouldn't let you." + +Silence froze down on them again. + +"I can't forgive myself," he said at last, "for having driven you +out--as I'm sure I did--from your position in the Chicago company. I +went back to the theater to try and find you, three days after--after +that night, but you were gone. I've been trying to find you ever since. +I've wanted to take back the things I said that night--about being +disgraced and all. I was angry over not having known when the other +people did. It wasn't your being on the stage. We're not so bigoted as +that. + +"I've come to ask a favor of you, though, and that is that you'll let +me--let us all, help you. I can't--bear having you live like this, +knocking about like this, where all sorts of things can happen to you. +And going under an assumed name. I've no right to ask a favor, I know, +but I do. I ask you to take your own name again, Rose Aldrich. And I +want you to let us help you to get a better position than this; that is, +if you haven't changed your mind about being on the stage; a position +that will have more hope and promise in it. I want you to feel that +we're--with you." + +"Who are 'we'?" She accompanied that question with a straight look into +his eyes; the first since they had sat down across this table. + +"Why," he said, "the only two people I've talked with about +it--Frederica and Harriet. I thought you'd be glad to know that they +felt as I did." + +The first flash of genuine feeling she had shown, was the one that broke +through on her repetition of the name "Harriet!" + +"Yes," he said, and he had, for about ten seconds, the misguided sense +of dialectical triumph. "I know a little how you feel toward her, and +maybe she's justified it. But not in this case. Because it was Harriet +who made me see that there wasn't anything--disgraceful about your going +on the stage. It was her own idea that you ought to use your own name +and give us a chance to help you. She'll be only too glad to help. And +she knows some people in New York who have influence in such matters." + +During the short while she let elapse before she spoke, his confidence +in the conviction-carrying power of this statement ebbed somewhat, +though he hadn't seen yet what was wrong with it. + +"Yes," she said at last, "I think I can see Harriet's view of it. As +long as Rose had run away and joined a fifth-rate musical comedy in +order to be on the stage, and as long as everybody knew it, the only +thing to do was to get her into something respectable so that you could +all pretend you liked it. It was all pretty shabby, of course, for the +Aldriches, and in a way, what you deserved for marrying a person like +that. Still, that was no reason for not putting the best face on it you +could.--And that's why you came to find me!" + +"No, it isn't," he said furiously. His elaborately assumed manner had +broken down, anyway. "I came because I couldn't help coming. I've been +sick--sick ever since that night over the way you were living, over the +sort of life I'd--driven you to. I've felt I couldn't stand it. I wanted +you to know that I'd assent to anything, any sort of terms that you +wanted to make that didn't involve--this. If it's the stage, all +right.--Or if you'd come home--to the babies. I wouldn't ask anything +for myself. You could be as independent of me as you are here...." + +He'd have gone on elaborating this program rather further but the look +of blank incredulity in her face stopped him. + +"I say things wrong," he concluded with a sudden humility that quenched +the spark of anger in her eyes. "I was a fool to quote Harriet, and I +haven't done much better in speaking for myself. I can't make you see." + +"Oh, I can see plainly enough, Roddy," she said, with a tired little +grimace that was a sorry reminder of her old smile. "I guess I see too +well. I'm sorry to have hurt you and made you miserable. I knew I was +going to do that, of course, when I went away, but I hoped that after a +while, you'd come to see my side of it. You can't at all. You couldn't +believe that I was happy in that little room up on Clark Street; that I +thought I was doing something worth doing; something that was making me +more nearly a person you could respect and be friends with. And, from +what you've said just now, it seems as if you couldn't believe even that +I was a person with any decent _self_-respect. The notion that I could +blackmail your family into lending me their name and social position to +get me a better job on the stage than I could earn! Or the notion that +I could come back to your house and pretend to be your wife without +even ...!" + +The old possibility of frank talk between them was gone. She couldn't +complete the sentence. + +"So I guess," she concluded after a silence, "that the only thing for +you to do is to go home and forget about me as well as you can and be as +little miserable about me as possible. I'll tell you this, that may make +it a little easier: you're not to think of me as starving or miserable, +or even uncomfortable for want of money. I'm earning plenty to live on, +and I've got over two hundred dollars in the bank. So, on that score at +least, you needn't worry." + +There was a long silence while he sat there twisting the newspaper in +his hands, his eyes downcast, his face dull with the look of defeat that +had settled over it. + +In the security of his averted gaze, she took a long look at him. Then, +with a wrench, she looked away. + +"You will let me go now, won't you?" she asked. "This is--hard for us +both, and it isn't getting us anywhere. And--and I've got to ask you not +to come back. Because it's impossible, I guess, for you to see the thing +my way. You've done your best to, I can see that." + +He got up out of his chair, heavily, tiredly; put on his raincoat and +stood, for a moment, crumpling his soft hat in his hands, looking down +at her. She hadn't risen. She'd gone limp all at once, and was leaning +over the table. + +"Good-by," he said at last. + +She said, "Good-by, Roddy," and watched him walking across the lobby and +out into the rain. He'd left his newspaper. She took it, gripped it in +both hands, just as he'd done, then, with an effort, got up and mounted +the stairs to her room. Dolly, fortunately, had gone out. + +The violent struggle she had had to make during the last few moments in +her effort to retain her self-control, had pretty well exhausted her. +Only, had it been self-control, after all? That question shook her. Had +she meant to be merciless to him like that; to send him away utterly +discouraged in his sad humility, when the touch of an outreached hand +would have changed the whole face of the world for him? Had she really +been as noble as she felt while she was defending the impregnable +righteousness of her position and so completely demolishing his? + +She remembered a day when he had been beaten in a law-suit, and she had +waited for him to come to her in his discouragement for help and +comfort. It was thus he had come to her to-day. How helpless he was! +What a boy he was! + +Her memory flashed back over their not quite two years of life together +and she realized that he had always been like that whenever his emotions +toward her came into play. All his finely trained, formidable +intelligence had always deserted him here. She remembered his having +told her, the night he'd turned her out of his office, that his mind had +to run cold. She hadn't really known what he meant. She saw now that her +own mind didn't run cold, that it never really aroused itself except +under the spur of strong emotion. So that just where he was most +helpless, she was at her strongest. A victory over him in those +circumstances, was about as much to feel triumphant over as one over a +small child would be. + +She realized now, more fully than before, what a crucifixion of his +boyish pride it must have been to see her on the stage. It was no answer +to say that with his intellectual concept of the ideal relations between +men and women, he shouldn't have felt like that. Shouldn't have felt! +The phrase was self-contradictory. Feelings weren't decorative +abstractions which you selected according to your best moral and +esthetic judgment out of an unlimited stock, and ordered wrapped and +sent home. They were things that happened to you. In this case, two +violently opposed feelings of terrible intensity had happened to him at +once; had torn each other, and, in their struggle, had torn him. +Justified or not, it was her act in leaving him, that had turned those +feelings loose upon him. It was through her that he had suffered; that +was plain enough. It must have been terribly plain to him. + +And yet, despite the suffering she had caused him, he had crucified his +pride again and come to find her; not with reproaches, with utter +contrition and humility. The measures he'd suggested for easing their +strained situation were, to be sure, maddeningly beside the mark. The +fact that he'd offered them betrayed his complete failure to understand +the situation. But it had cost him, evidently, as much pain to work them +out and bring them to her, as if they had been the real solvents he took +them for. And she had contemptuously torn them to shreds, and sent him +away feeling like an unpardoned criminal. She hadn't drawn the sting +from one of the barbs she'd planted in him, in her anger, before he'd +left her in that North Clark Street room. + +She didn't blame herself for the anger, nor for the panic of revulsion +that had excited it. That was a feeling that had happened to her. What +she did blame herself for was that, seeing them both now, as the victims +of a regrettable accident (did she really regret it? Were it in her +power to obliterate the memory of it altogether, as a child with a wet +sponge can obliterate a misspelled word from a slate, would she do it? +She dismissed that question unanswered.), she had allowed him to go away +with his burden of guilt unlightened. She had done that, she told +herself, out of sheer cowardice. She had been afraid of impairing the +luster of her virtuously superior position. + +Yet now, she protested, she was being as unfair to herself as she had +been to him. What sort of situation would they have found themselves in, +had she confessed her true new feelings about the love-storm that had +swept over them, that night of the February gale? What good would +protestations of love and sympathy for him do, if she had to go on +denying him the tangible evidence and guarantee of these feelings? + +She must deny them. Could she go home to him now, a repentant prodigal? +Or even if, after hearing her story, he denied she was a prodigal; +professed to see in it a reason for taking her fully into his life as +his friend and partner? They might have a wonderful week together, +living up to their new standard, professing all sorts of new +understandings. But the thing wasn't to be for a week. It was for the +rest of their lives. She'd never be able to feel that, in the bottom of +his heart, he wasn't ashamed of her, as his world would say he ought to +be. What satisfying guarantee could he ever give her that he wasn't +ashamed? She couldn't think of any. + +Oh, it was all hopeless! It didn't matter what you did. You didn't do +things, anyway. They got done for you--and to you, by a blind force that +masqueraded as your own will. The things she and Rodney had been saying +to each other hadn't been the things they'd wanted to say. They'd been +things wrung out between the rollers of a situation they hadn't produced +and couldn't control. + +What were they, the pair of them, but chips floating down the current; +thrown together by one casual eddy, and parted by another! Half an hour +ago, longing for each other unspeakably, they had been within hand's +reach. Now, thanks to a few meaningless words, arguments, ideas--what +was the good of ideas and words? Why couldn't they be like +animals?--they were parted and she was clutching as a sole tangible +memento of him, a rolled-up newspaper that she loved because she'd seen +his strong lean hands gripping it. + +She unrolled it and pressed it against her face, then laid it on her +knee and smoothed out its rumpled folds and stroked it. + +When Dolly came in a half-hour later, or so, to put on her other suit +preparatory to the matinee, Rose opened up the paper and pretended to +read. She was glad of the protection of it. As she felt just now, she +didn't think she could stand Dolly's chatter without the intervention of +some excuse for monosyllabic replies. She didn't notice that Dolly +wasn't chattering. Mechanically she read the head-lines: _Mortimore +Banks Crash_! She knew who Mortimore was. Once a powerful boss, now a +discredited politician. He'd owned a whole string of banks, it +appeared--along with the hitherto unheard of Milligan--whose solvency +seemed to have evaporated along with the decay of his prestige. + +She read without interest, but just because it was printed in +black-faced type, a list of the banks in Chicago that the examiner had +closed. But presently she turned back with a look a little more +thoughtful, and read it again. The names of banks were so absurdly alike +one never could tell. Presently she went over to her suit-case, rummaged +in it, and produced a little bank-book. Then she dropped the book and +the newspaper together into her bag and shut it. + +She smiled a little cynically. Would she have refused Rodney's offer of +help, she wondered, if she had known an hour ago, that the two hundred +dollars she'd relied on so confidently to pull her out of this rut and +give her a fresh start whenever she was ready to attempt it, were gone +into the pockets of that fat-faced politician? + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE END OF THE TOUR + + +From Dubuque the company made a circuit northward into Wisconsin and +Minnesota, swung around a loop and worked their way south again. +Disaster stalked behind them all the way, casting its lengthening shadow +before for them to walk in. On the very first salary day after Rodney's +newspaper had informed Rose of her true financial situation, the manager +doled out a little money on account to the more exigent members of the +company, and remunerated the others with thanks, a nervous smile, and +the rock-ribbed assurance that they'd get it all next week. The long +jump they'd just taken, and a couple of bad houses (they were all bad, +but the two he spoke of couldn't be called audiences at all, except by +courtesy) had caused a temporary stringency. + +Rose saw what the more experienced members of the company were doing, +and knew that she ought to follow their example; keep after the manager +for her money, hound him, appeal to him, invent fictitious needs, and +then not spend a cent except what was absolutely wrung out of her by +necessity, so that when the crash came, she wouldn't be left penniless. +But she lacked the energy to do it. She was going through a passing +phase of that same melancholy acquiescence in the decrees of Fate, which +had been Olga Larson's permanent characteristic until Rose's own fire +and a turn in the tide of fortune had roused her. + +One little sequence of events springing directly from Rodney's visit to +Dubuque, contributed largely to this result. The principal actor in it +was Dolly. + +Dolly's manner toward her had altered that very morning in Dubuque, +though Rose, in her preoccupation, didn't mark the change for a day or +two afterward. Then she saw that her frail little roommate had stopped +chattering; that she no longer made nervous little excuses for leaving +her, nor invented transparent little fibs to account for absences. She +became, in her absurdly ineffectual little way, surly and defiant. She +took to going about openly with her chorus-man, sharing his seat with +him on the train, letting him carry her bag for her on the way to the +hotel; and her manner toward Rose, when any of these manifestations fell +beneath her eye, was one of uneasy challenge. Let Rose just try to +remonstrate with her if she dared! She no longer came back to the hotel +with Rose after the performances, took to turning up at their room at +hours that grew steadily later and more outrageous, and while at first +she stole in very quietly, undressed in the dark and tried to creep into +bed without awakening her, she grew rapidly more brazen about it; turned +on the light and undressed before the mirror, talked elaborately about +nothing and laughed her high nervous little laugh without occasion. + +It was not a lack of daring that kept Rose from asking the questions +that were so patently waiting to be answered, or from making the +remonstrances that Dolly's behavior so definitely invited. She knew she +ought to stir herself up and do something. She had assumed, she knew, a +measure of moral responsibility for the fluffy helpless little thing she +had conquered so easily at first and taken for her chum. Of course +remonstrances, moral lectures, scoldings, wouldn't accomplish anything. +What the situation called for was a second conquest; a reassertion of +her moral dominance over the girl. She would have to reconstruct the +relation which, since the first week of their tour, she had, in her +apathy, allowed to lapse. But that apathy had become too strong to +break. She couldn't rouse herself from it. And, failing that, she kept +silent; let Dolly go her ways. + +But a fortnight after Dubuque, an incident occurred that even her +acquiescent passivity couldn't ignore. There came a fine bright +afternoon with no matinee and no washing or mending that needed to be +done, when she suggested to Dolly that they go out for a good walk. +Dolly didn't assent to the proposal, though the suggestion seemed to +interest her. + +"Where is there to walk to?" she asked. "These towns are all alike." + +"I don't mean just a stroll around the town," Rose said. "Look here! +I'll show you." She pointed from the window. "Across that bridge (they +were playing one of the Mississippi River towns) and up to the top of +that hill on the other side." + +"Gee!" said Dolly. "That's miles." + +"Do you good," said Rose. + +"Are you going there anyway?" asked Dolly. + +Rose nodded. "You'd better come along," she said. By turning on her full +powers of persuasion, she might, she felt, have pulled Dolly along with +her; swept her off and begun the reconquest she knew she ought to make. +But somehow her will failed her. Dolly could come if she liked. + +Dolly didn't refuse very decisively, but she watched Rose's preparations +for departure without making any of her own. It wasn't until Rose, at +the door, turned back to renew the invitation for the last time, that +she said impatiently: "Oh, go along! I'll take a nap, I guess." + +So Rose set out by herself. + +The day proved colder than it looked; a fact that Rose tried to correct +by walking more briskly. But when she got out on the bridge where the +sharp wind got a full sweep at her, she saw it wasn't going to do. She'd +be chilled to the bones long before she reached that hill and it would +be colder coming back. She must go back for her ulster. + +Fifteen minutes later, she tried the door of her room and found it +locked. There was a moment of dead silence. But the realization that it +hadn't been quite so silent the moment before, caused her to knock +again. Then she heard the creak of the bed and the thud of Dolly's +unshod feet on the floor, and then her steps coming toward the door. + +"W--what--what is it?" Rose heard her ask. + +"Let me in," said Rose. "Sorry I disturbed your nap, but I had to come +back for my ulster." + +Dolly was standing just at the other side of the door, she knew, but +there was no sound of drawing the bolt. Only a long silence and then a +sob. + +"What's the matter?" Rose demanded. "Let me in." + +"You _can't_ come in!" said Dolly, and panic couldn't have spoken +plainer than in her voice. "Oh, go away! What did you come back for? You +said you were going to be gone hours. Go away!" + +Out of a frozen throat Rose answered: + +"All right. I'll go away." The situation was too miserably clear. + +She went down to the lobby and a sudden giddiness caused her to drop +down into the first chair she saw. She sat there for an hour, then went +to the desk and told the clerk she wanted a room for that night by +herself. She'd pay the extra price of it now. + +The clerk took the money and selected a key from the rack. The look he +saw in Rose's face silenced any comment, jocular or otherwise, that he +might have made. + +Rose went to her new room, took off her hat and jacket, and washed her +face. When she heard the supper bell ringing down-stairs, she went back +to her old room and knocked. + +"Come in," said Dolly, and Rose entering, found her standing at the +window looking out. + +She had tried, while she sat down there in the lobby, and later in her +own room, to think out what she'd say to Dolly when they next met. She +hadn't been able to think of anything to say. She could think of nothing +now. So, in silence, she began putting her smaller belongings into her +half unpacked suit-case and laying the clothes that hung in the closet +across a chair. + +"So you're going to walk out on me are you?" said Dolly. Rose was aware +that she'd been watching these proceedings. + +"I'm going to have a room by myself for to-night," said Rose. + +Dolly amazed her by flying into a sudden rage. + +"Oh, you!" she said. "You make me sick. You're a hypocrite, that's what +you are. Pretending to be so haughty and innocent, and then come spying +back here, on purpose, and acting so shocked! You don't think I'm fit to +live with, do you. Just because I've got a friend. You thought you was +fit to live with me, all right, when you had two of them and wasn't +straight with either." + +Rose straightened up and looked at her. "What do you mean?" she +demanded. + +"That's right, go on with the bluff," said Dolly furiously. "But you +can't bluff me. Larson put me wise to you that day in Dubuque, when that +big guy--'Rodney'--came up to see you. He was one of them, and the +fellow who put on the show in Chicago--what's his name?--Galbraith, was +the other. You tried to play them both and got left." + +"That's what Olga Larson told you?" asked Rose. + +"You bet it's what she told me," said Dolly. "It's about half what she +told me. And now you try to pull your high-and-mighty airs on me, just +because Charlie and I are in love and ain't married yet. We're going to +be. We're going into vaudeville as soon as this tour ends. He says the +managers don't object to vaudeville teams being married. But we've got +to wait till then, because theatrical managers won't have it. And yet +you're walking out on me because you're too superior...." + +"I don't feel superior," said Rose. "I'm sorry, that's all." + +"Yes, you hypocrite!" said Dolly. "Go on and walk out on me. I'm glad of +it." + +Rose picked up her suit-case and the heap of clothes and left the room +without another word. + +She tried to be more astonished and indignant over Olga Larson's part in +this affair than she really felt. It seemed so horribly cynical not to +be surprised. But it was not cynicism; just an unconscious understanding +of the fundamental processes of Olga's mind. + +There was no malice in the story she had told Dolly, just after the two +of them, looking through the Moorish archway in the hotel there in +Dubuque, had seen Rose and Rodney deep in confidential talk. Olga had +shown surprise and then, elaborately, tried to conceal it. She knew the +man, all right, but hadn't expected him to follow Dane out here. Dolly +told her about the note, and Olga's jealousy, which had been smoldering +ever since the tour began, flared up again. Even in the days of their +closest friendship--this was the way it looked to her distorted +vision--Rose had never been frank with her. She had never mentioned a +man named Rodney, nor even shown her a photograph. The only person Olga +had known to be jealous of, was Galbraith. Her unacknowledged reason for +inventing the calumny she recited so glibly for Dolly, was the hope that +Dolly would go straight to Rose with it. + +That couldn't fail, she thought, to break down Rose's attitude of icy +indifference and precipitate a quarrel; and a quarrel was what she +wanted. Because quarrels led to reconciliations. She wanted Rose to be +angry with her and then forgive her, although the latter part of her +hope was quite unconscious. + +As I say, Rose understood. She didn't work the thing out in detail; +didn't want to. But she knew that if she sought Olga out and demanded an +explanation of the detestable things she'd said about her, the scene +would terminate in a torrent of self-reproach from Olga, protestations +of undying love, fondlings ... + +So Rose shuddered and said nothing. The only thing to do about the whole +unspeakable business was, as far as possible, to disregard it. + +It wasn't possible to disregard it utterly, because the story was +evidently spread. She became conscious of a touch of contemptuous +hostility on the part of everybody. Not on account of her moral +derelictions, but because of her hypocrisy in pretending to a set of +standards of breeding and behavior superior to those held by the rest of +them. + +Altogether it made complete and irresistible, a whole-souled loathing of +the life. Her attempt to find a way to a career along this filthy +stage-door alley must be confessed a total failure. She could never, she +knew, nerve herself to look for another job in a musical-comedy chorus. + +At the next overnight stop they made, Dolly went in to room with the +duchess, and the duchess' former roommate, a fattish blonde girl with a +permanent cold in the head, came in with her. + +Somehow the days dragged along until the pursuing and long visible +disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is +not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer +than the one it boasts). They played a matinee here and an evening +performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them the _coup de +grace_. + +There was no call posted on the bulletin board that night, and the next +day, after a brisk exchange of telegrams with Chicago, the manager +called the company together in one of the sample-rooms of the hotel and +announced that the tour was off. He also announced, with a magnanimity +that put far into the background the fact that he owed them all at least +two weeks' salary, that everybody in the company would be provided with +a first-class ticket for Chicago. There was nothing, except his +scrupulous sense of honor, he managed to imply without saying it in so +many words, to prevent his going off to Chicago all by himself and +leaving them stranded here. But, though this might be good business, he +was incapable of it. If they would all come down to the station at +eleven o'clock, and sign a receipt discharging him from further +obligations, he would see that their transportation was arranged for. + +It was just after this that Rose caught a glimpse of Dolly shivering in +a corner, weeping into a soiled pocket-handkerchief. The fat girl with a +cold supplied her with the explanation. + +Dolly's chorus-man, it seemed, had already departed on an earlier train +to St. Louis, where he lived, without taking any leave of her at all. + +Rose wanted to go over and try to comfort the child, but somehow she +couldn't manage to. Sentimentalizing over her grief and disillusionment +wouldn't do any good. The grief probably wasn't more than an inch deep +anyway, and the illusions had been too tawdry to regret. As for doing +anything, what was there one could do? + +There wasn't much that Rose could do at any rate. Because after weeks of +drifting, she'd come to a resolution. + +She didn't go to the railway station to sign her receipt and get her +ticket to Chicago. What was there in Chicago for her? She meant to stay, +for the present, at any rate, in Centropolis. She checked her suit-case +in the coat-room and, with a sensation of relief, watched the mournful +company file away. + +She had three dollars and some small change, and the day before her. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE CONQUEST OF CENTROPOLIS + + +Centropolis wasn't a very big town, but it had a wide, well paved street +lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round +hills that had neat and fairly prosperous-looking houses scattered over +them. A rather dignified old court-house among the big trees of the +Square proclaimed the place a county seat. It was a warm April day; the +grass was green and the little leaves already were bursting out on the +shrubbery. + +Rose's idea was to stroll about a little and get her bearings first, and +then go into one store after another on Main Street until she should +find a job. She had no serious misgiving that she wouldn't get one +eventually; before night, this was to say. + +Her confidence sprang from two sources: one, that though inexperienced +she knew she was intelligent, willing and attractive. People, she found, +were apt to be disposed in her favor. The other source of her confidence +was that she wasn't looking for much. She would take, for the present, +anything that offered. Because any sort of work, even menial work, would +be a relief after that nightmare tour. The weeks since she had left +Chicago, especially the last two or three of them, seemed unreal, and +the incidents of them as if they couldn't have happened. Anything that +didn't involve associations with that detestable company, and the +unspeakable piece they had played, would seem--well, almost heavenly. If +she couldn't get a job in a store, she'd go and be a waitress at the +hotel. She could make a pretty good waitress, she thought. + +But her confidence was short-lived. She cut short her ramble about the +streets because of the stares she attracted, and the remarks about +herself that she couldn't ignore. Young men shouted at each other +directing attention to her with a brutality of epithet that brought the +blood to her cheeks. During all the time she had had that room on Clark +Street in Chicago, through their rehearsals and that month of +performances, she'd gone alone about the streets at all sort of hours, +both in the theatrical part of the loop and in the district where she +lived, without any molestation whatever. The small towns that she had +visited with the company had been different of course. She'd been stared +at in the streets and not infrequently addressed. She'd forgiven that +because she was a member of the company. It was natural enough for +people to stare at a girl they'd paid to see on the stage the night +before, or were going to see to-night. + +Now she discovered that the company had been an immense protection to +her; had accounted for her, caused her to be taken, to a certain extent, +for granted. The wild beast that comes to town with the circus, though +an object of legitimate curiosity, does not excite the hostile and +fearful speculation that he would if he were left behind after the +circus had gone. + +People got together in groups and nodded at her, pointed at her. A few +of them leered, but more of them scowled. There seemed to be a sense of +outrage that she hadn't left the town when the rest did. + +There was a dry-goods store on the principal corner of the street, which +she'd selected as she walked along as the place to begin her quest. She +made a detour around two or three blocks in order to avoid retracing her +steps down Main Street and slipped into the door of this establishment +as unostentatiously as she could. + +She was saved inquiring for the proprietor by the conviction that the +rather dapper-looking gray-haired man who came blinking toward her in a +near-sighted way as she paused in the main aisle, was he. He had a good +deal of manner and was evidently proud of it. But he looked neither weak +nor foolish. + +"My name's Rose Stanton," she said as he came up. "I've come to see if I +can get employment in your store." + +His manner changed instantly. He came a step closer and stared at her +with a surprise he didn't try to conceal. + +"I haven't had any experience as a saleswoman," she went on, "and I know +there's a lot to learn. But I'd work hard and learn as fast as ..." + +"Excuse me," he said, "but aren't you a member of that theatrical +company that was here last night?" + +The intensity with which he was staring at her made her look away and +her eyes rested on a young man whose strong family likeness to the +proprietor identified him for her as his son; he had come up and was +waiting for a word with his father. At this question he stared at her +too. + +The older man whipped around on his son. "Clear out, Jim," he said +sharply. And then to Rose: "You haven't answered my question." + +"I was a member of that company," she said. "But ..." + +"We have no vacancy at present," he said sharply. "Good day." + +She flinched a little but stood her ground. "I said I wasn't experienced +as a saleswoman," she said, "but there are some things I know a good +deal about--clothes and hats...." + +He hadn't stayed to listen; had walked straight to the door and opened +it. Reluctantly she followed him. + +"There's no place," he said, "in this store, or I trust in the town +either, for young women of your sort. Good day!" + +Rose made five more applications for work on Main Street, all with the +same result. Some of those who refused her were panicky about it; one +threatened to have her put in jail. One looked knowing and after he had +expressed in jocular though emphatic terms, his sense of her +impossibility as a publicly acknowledged employee, intimated a desire to +prosecute a personal acquaintance with her further. + +She had left the first store incredulous rather than angry, under the +impression that she had encountered a chance fanatic. It seemed +impossible that anybody with a well-balanced mind, could treat her as if +she carried contamination, merely because she had earned a living for a +while in the chorus of a musical comedy. It was fortunate for her that +her first applications were met by anger, rude discourtesy, and openly +avowed suspicion, because this treatment roused in her, for the first +time in months, a strong surge of indignation. Her blood came up after +these encounters, nearer and nearer the boiling point. The man who +smiled at her like a satyr, was shriveled by the blaze of her blue eyes, +and was left, red-faced, blustering weakly after her. + +When she walked back to the hotel along Main Street the lassitude that +had so long held her half-paralyzed was gone. She was the old Rose +again; the Rose whom Galbraith would have recognized. + +She didn't know it. She was conscious of nothing but a hot determination +that had not, as yet, even expressed itself in terms. It was just a +newly kindled fire that warmed her shivering spirit; that made her +fearless; in a quite unreasoning way, confident. + +The only touch of self-conscious thought about her was a vague wonder at +her long submission. What had she been doing all that while, drifting +like that, letting herself be beaten like that, consenting to live amid +the shabby degradations of the life that had surrounded her ever since +the company had gone on the road? The sense of the unreality of those +past weeks grew stronger. She felt like a person just waking out of a +long troubled dream. + +She mode her way among the loungers in the lobby of the hotel, not +unmindful of their stares, but magnificently impervious to them; came up +to the desk and told the clerk she wanted to see the proprietor. + +"Nothing doing," said the clerk. + +Then as he got the straight look of her eyes, he amended his speech a +little. + +"It won't do you any good to see him," he said sulkily. + +"I'll see him, if you please," said Rose. "Will you have him called?" + +The clerk hesitated. Stranded "actresses" weren't in the habit of +talking like that. They always wanted to see the proprietor, they were +always on the point of receiving an ample remittance from some generally +distant place. They were often very queenly, incredibly outraged that +their solvency should be questioned. But their voices never had the cool +confident ring that this girl's voice had, nor the look in their eyes, +the purposeful thrust. + +He hesitated uncomfortably. Then his difficulty was solved for him. + +"There he goes now," he said. "You can talk to him if you like." + +The proprietor was sixty years old, perhaps; gray, stooped, stringy of +neck. He had a short-cropped mustache, one corner of which he was always +caressing with a protruding under-lip. He had a good shrewd pair of +eyes, not altogether unkindly. Rose had seen him before, but hadn't +known who he was. + +He was making, just now, for a little office he had, that opened into +the railed-off space behind the desk, and, by another door, into the +corridor. He had another man with him, but it was evident that their +business wasn't going to take long. The door into the corridor was left +open behind them, and there Rose waited. When the other man came out, +she stepped inside. + +There was nothing kindly about the look the proprietor's eyes directed +at her when he saw who she was. He looked up at her with a frown of +resignation. + +"So you didn't go to Chicago with the rest of the troupe?" he said. +"That's where you made a mistake, I guess." + +"I didn't want to go to Chicago," she said. + +"I suppose," he drawled ironically, "you've written or telegraphed to +some friends for money, and that it's surely coming, and that you want +to stay here in my hotel on credit till it does. Well, there's not a +chance in the world. The clerk could have told you that. I suppose he +did." + +"I haven't sent for money," said Rose. "There's no one I could send to. +I've got to earn it for myself and I thought there was as good a chance +to earn it here as in Chicago." + +"Well, by God!" said the proprietor. "You've got your nerve with you at +any rate. But I'll tell you, young woman, the town of Centropolis don't +take kindly to the efforts of young women of your sort to make a living +nor to the way they make it." + +"You're wrong," said Rose, dangerously quiet, "if you think I mean to +make a living in any other than a decent honest way. I have already +asked for work in five places on Main Street and I have been refused as +if I were the--sort of person you've just called me. I'm going to keep +on until I find somebody in this town who's clean enough minded to +recognize decency when he sees it. There are people like that, of +course, even in Centropolis. I didn't come in here to borrow money of +you, nor to ask for credit. I came to ask for a job as a waitress." + +The proprietor stared at her. "Well," he said, "you are a new one on +John Culver. I never got up against _your_ game before." + +"I haven't any game," said Rose. "I've told you the exact truth." + +Culver twisted around uneasily in his chair and began biting +thoughtfully on the end of a lead-pencil. + +"Well," he said at last, "I'll take a chance. I'll tell you about a job +I think you can get. Only it won't do you any good to use my name. If +the man you go to comes to me, I can't tell him anything about you but +what I know. His name's Albert Zeider and he's got a picture house three +doors down the street. He's just put in a glass cage out in front, and +he wants a pretty girl to sit in it and sell tickets. He hasn't been +able to get anybody yet that filled the bill. So maybe he'd take a +chance on you. Only, mind, don't tell him I recommended you." + +"I won't," said Rose. "I won't go to him at all. I've walked the length +of Main Street and back this morning, and I won't sit in Mr. Zeider's +glass cage. I'll wash dishes or scrub floors, but I won't do that." + +The proprietor flung out his hands with the air of a man of whom nothing +more could be expected. + +"Well, then," he said, "if you won't take a decent job that's offered to +you ..." + +"It's not a decent job," said Rose. "Not for me; not for a girl who's +looked on in this town as I am. I want work! Don't you understand?" +Then, after a pause, "Won't you give it to me?" + +"Well, I should say not," said John Culver. "Look here! What's the use? +Suppose you are what you say ..." + +"You know I am," interrupted Rose. + +"Well, I say, suppose it's true. What's the use? Do you think any decent +store-keeper on Main Street would risk his reputation by giving a job to +a stranded actress that had come here with a rotten show like the one +you was with; or that I could have you in my dining-room? This is a +respectable hotel, I tell you." + +He broke off to wave his hand genially to a man who was walking slowly +by the door on his way down to the dining-room. + +"There!" he went on to Rose. "That's what I mean! That's Judge Granger +of the Supreme Court of this state. He's come here regularly for meals, +when he ain't in Springfield, for the last fifteen years. He's the +biggest man in this county. Do you suppose he'd stand for it, if I asked +him to give his order to a busted actress?" + +"Would you stand for it if he did?" demanded Rose. "If he told you that +I was all right and asked you to give me a job, would you do it?" + +The proprietor laughed impatiently. "What's the good of talking +nonsense?" he demanded. "Yes, I would, if that'll satisfy you. But you'd +better take the next train for Chicago. And if ..." He hesitated, +stroked his mustache again with his under-lip, and went on,--"Oh, I +suppose I'm a damned fool, but if a couple of dollars will help you +out ..." + +"No, thank you," said Rose. "I'm going to see the judge." And she cut +off John Culver's exclamation of protest by walking out of the office. + +Rose went back to the desk, told the clerk she wanted dinner, and +forestalled the objection she saw him preparing to make, by laying a +dollar bill on the counter. He even hesitated a little over that, but +he took it and gave her a quarter in change. + +"That'll be all right," he said, and she went the way the judge had +gone, down the corridor to the dining-room. A glance showed her where he +sat, and without waiting for the assistance of the head waitress, she +chose a chair near the door, facing it, and with her back to the judge. + +Those were rather audacious tactics. Seventy-five cents, in the present +state of her finances, was a good deal to squander on a meal. And the +fact that she was openly stalking the judge might lead John Culver to +give his honored patron a word of warning. But Rose didn't care. No +tactics but the simplest and most direct appealed to her. When the judge +finished his dinner, she would follow him to his office, wherever it +might be, walk in with him, and demand a hearing. If he were forewarned, +she would find some other way of getting access to him. + +But, whether the proprietor was really ignorant of her plan, or whether +the little scene with her in his office had shaken him so that he didn't +care to try conclusions with her again, the judge was left to his fate. +Rose followed him, unmolested, down the corridor and out into the +street, across the road and up a flight of outside steps, to the second +story of a brick building opposite. + +He was fitting his key into the lock when she came up. And though he +drew his eyebrows down into a frown as he looked at her, it seemed to be +rather in the effort to make out who she was, than from any feeling of +hostility. He asked her with a dry and rather affected judicial +courtesy, what he could do for her. + +"You can do me a service," said Rose, "that I don't think you will mind. +Will you let me come in for about a minute and tell you what it is?" + +His manner chilled a little, but his curt nod gave her permission to +precede him into his office. + +The outer room was bleak enough, furnished with three or four hard +chairs, a table and an old black walnut desk with a typewriter on it. +His secretary or stenographer was evidently still at dinner, because the +room was empty. + +The judge walked straight into an inner room and Rose followed him. + +It was a big, rather fine-looking room, or so it looked to Rose after +the places she had been seeing lately; evidently, from a beam across the +middle of the ceiling, cut out of two. There was a fireplace with a fire +in it, a big oak table and a number of easy chairs. There were two or +three good rugs on the floor, and the walls were completely lined with +books; the familiar buckram and leather-bound, red-labeled law-books +that gave her memory a pang. + +In these surroundings, the judge took on an added impressiveness, and he +was not an unimpressive-looking man. He was not large. Nose, mouth and +chin were small and rather fine, and he had the shape of head that is +described as a scholar's. One might not have remarked it in the hotel +dining-room, but in these surroundings, he looked altogether a judge. + +But the effect of this on Rose was only to heighten her confidence. She +hadn't used the dinner hour to think out what she'd say to him. She'd +been thinking of Rodney again. Somehow, just the rebirth of a sense of +power in her, had brought the image of him back. She was throbbing with +that sense now, and her thoughts of Rodney had given her an exhilarating +idea. This man that she was about to confront was one whom Rodney had +often confronted. It was before this man, on the bench of the Supreme +Court, up at Springfield, that Rodney had made uncounted arguments. She +would try to do as well as he did. + +The judge was staring at her in growing perplexity. Who in the world +could she be. What did she want? His very greatness in this little town +made him accessible. It was so unthinkable a thing that any one should +intrude upon his time frivolously. But this girl! She didn't belong in +the town. Hadn't he seen her about the hotel yesterday, with that shabby +theatrical troupe? + +"You will please be brief," he said. "My time is limited." + +"I'll be as brief as I can," said Rose. + +He sat down in his desk chair, but she did not avail herself of the +permission his half-hearted nod toward another chair accorded her; +remained standing across the table from him. + +"I came to Centropolis day before yesterday," said Rose, "with a +theatrical company that failed. They went away this morning unpaid, with +nothing but tickets to Chicago. I decided to stay here and try to get +work. I applied for it at five places on Main Street this morning, and +then went to Mr. Culver at the hotel. I asked him for a position as a +waitress." + +Already the judge was tapping his pencil. + +"This doesn't concern me in the least," he said. "I have no possible +employment for you. I can do nothing for you. Good day!" + +"Employment isn't what I want from you," said Rose. "I'll come to what I +do want in a minute." + +It is safe to say that the judge hadn't been caught up with a round turn +like that in years. He stared at her now in perfectly blank amazement. + +"Mr. Culver," she went on, "told me why I hadn't been successful. He +accused me of being the sort of person no decent employer would give +work to, of being a person of bad character. I convinced him, I think, +that I was not. Then he said that even though I were a perfectly honest, +decent woman, he wouldn't dare put me in his dining-room. He cited you +as the reason." + +At that the judge suddenly went purple. + +"Me!" he shouted. + +The tension of Rose's body relaxed a little. A smile flickered just +instantaneously over her mouth. + +"He used you as an example," she explained. "He said that you were the +most important person in the county; that your opinion counted for the +most. He said that you were a regular patron of his hotel, and that +you'd object seriously to giving your order, as he said, to a 'busted +actress.'" + +"That's perfectly unwarranted," fumed the judge. "Culver had no right to +use my name like that. It's outrageous!" + +"I hoped you'd feel that way," said Rose. + +The judge pounded on the desk. "That's not what I mean. He had no right +to drag me into it at all; into a miserable business like that." + +"It is a miserable business," Rose assented. "It's a thoroughly +contemptible business. But Mr. Culver didn't drag you into it +deliberately. You were passing the door as we stood talking, and he used +you for an illustration. But afterward he said that if you told him it +was all right to give me a job, he would do it. That's what I have come +up to ask you to do." + +"That," said the judge, setting his teeth and breathing hard, "is the +most monstrous piece of impudence I have ever heard of. On his part as +well as yours. What have I to do with John Culver's waitresses?" + +He wasn't expecting an answer to this question, but Rose had one ready +for him. + +"You've given him the idea, without meaning to most likely, that you +wouldn't tolerate a girl among them who'd been earning her living on the +stage. If that's just a stupid mistake of his, I'm asking you to tell +him so." + +"Well, I won't," said the judge. "The thing's preposterous. You're +asking me for what amounts to a guarantee. In the first place, I don't +know that you're not--after all--what you say you convinced Culver that +you were not." + +"I think you do," said Rose thoughtfully, with a steady look he angrily +turned away from. "I think you knew, without any reason at all, just +from your instinct and your experience in judging people. And if you +don't know it that way, I think you can prove it to yourself by common +sense. Do you think it likely that if a girl of my--appearance +and--manners, had a mind to practise the--profession you've talked +about, she would be here in Centropolis, fighting desperately like this, +going through humiliations like this, for a chance to be a waitress in +Mr. Culver's dining-room?" + +She stopped there and took a good deep breath and waited. There was a +solid minute of silence. The judge got up out of his chair and began +pacing the room with short impatient steps. He stopped with a jerk two +or three times, as if he were about to demolish her with speech, but +always gave up the attempt before a word was spoken. + +"Oh, I admit it's a hard case," he said at last. "You've apparently been +a victim of circumstance. The people down in this part of the country +are perhaps narrow. In the main it's a good sort of narrowness. It's +better than the broadness of your cities. But in an isolated case it may +work an injustice." Then he wheeled on her. "But I can't do anything for +you. Can't you see that I can't do anything for you?" + +"I don't see," said Rose, "why you can't do what I ask." + +"Have it known," shouted the judge, "in this town and all over the +county, and all over the Supreme Court district, as it would be in +another week, that I had gone to John Culver and got a job in his +hotel--the hotel where I go myself, three times a day--for a girl who +got left behind by a stranded comic-opera company? Now can't you see? +I'm coming up for re-election in two years." + +Rose drew in a long sigh and for a moment drooped a little. + +"Yes, I see," she said with a rueful little smile. They were afraid of +him, and he was afraid of them. + +"I'm sorry about it," said the judge. "If there's anything else I can +do ..." He put his hand tentatively in his pocket. + +"No," Rose said, "that isn't what I want. Mr. Culver offered me two +dollars to go away. I suppose you might offer me ten. But I'm not going. +There is somebody in this town who isn't afraid of anybody, if I can +only find out who that somebody is." + +For a moment the judge looked annoyed; tried to collect his scattered +dignity. But presently a twinkle lighted up in his eye. Then he smiled. +"You might try Miss Gibbons," he said. + +"Who is she?" Rose asked. + +By now the judge was smiling broadly. Apparently there was something +exquisitely humorous in the notion of an encounter between Rose and this +lady he'd mentioned. + +"She's lived," he said, "and practised gossip and millinery, for the +last thirty years, up over the drug-store on the next corner. It's quite +true that there's nobody in this tier of counties that she's afraid of. +But I don't recommend her seriously. You will get small comfort out of +her." + +"All right," said Rose, "we'll see." + +She walked straight from the judge's office to the stairs beside the +drug-store on the next corner, which led up to Miss Gibbons' atelier. +She walked fast, conserving as a precious thing that might ebb away from +her, the warm feeling of indignant contempt her talk with the judge had +inspired her with. He was the biggest man in this part of the state, was +he! Why, he was a hollow man! A fabric of lath and plaster with no +structural pillars inside! Well, if the rest of the town was afraid of +him, she certainly wasn't afraid of the rest of the town. + +She hadn't any thought of conciliating Miss Gibbons, of asking Miss +Gibbons to give her a chance. She was going to give Miss Gibbons a +chance to prove whether she was lath and plaster like the judge, or a +real person with something besides her facade to hold her up. + +So it wasn't at all in the manner of a disheartened applicant for work +that she pushed open the glass door with _"Gibbons. Modes_." painted on +it, and stepped inside. + +A bell had rung somewhere in the distance as she opened the door, and +there was no one in the room as she entered it. But she hadn't much time +to look around--only long enough to get the impression that the place +was somehow overflowing with hats--when another door opened, and a thin, +gray-haired, tight little woman (she had a tight dress and tight hair, +and her joints, when she moved, seemed to be tight, too) confronted her. +She was unmistakably Miss Gibbons and in that first glance, Rose liked +her. Her features were rather too big for her small face--a big nose not +finely made, a wide thin-lipped mouth, and a long chin--and her eyes, +looking very straight out through gold-rimmed spectacles, had a +penetrating brightness about them that was a little formidable. It was +not what one would call a good-natured face. But good-natured +sentimentality was the last thing Rose was looking for. + +"What can I do for you?" she asked. Her voice was as tight and brisk as +the rest of her. + +"I'm looking for a job," said Rose. + +Miss Gibbons came a step closer and her bright look pierced a little +more deeply. + +"So!" she said. "You're the actress, are you?" + +Rose smiled at that. "I'm not a real actress," she said, "but I'm who +you mean. I was a chorus-girl with that company that broke down here." + +"Why didn't you go away when the rest of them did?" the milliner +demanded. + +"I decided I didn't want to go on being a chorus-girl," said Rose, "and +I thought there was as good a chance of getting other work here as in +Chicago." + +"That was a sort of fool idea, I guess, wasn't it?" Miss Gibbons +suggested. + +"It seems so, up to now," said Rose. "I spent the morning on Main Street +without having any luck. I went to five places ..." + +"Five?" questioned Miss Gibbons. "I knew about Arthur Perkins and Sim +Laidlaw and Tabby Parkes. Who were the other two?" + +Rose couldn't enlighten her. She'd forgotten their names. + +"I've had work offered to me," she went on, "or at least suggested. Mr. +Culver at the hotel told me of a moving-picture place ..." + +"Where you could sit in that glass cage of Al Zeider's and sell +tickets?" Miss Gibbons broke in. "Why didn't you take it?" + +"I told Mr. Culver," said Rose, "that I'd already walked the length of +Main Street and back, and that was enough for me." + +"How did John Culver happen to say anything about that? How come it you +were talking to him?" + +"I'd asked him to hire me as a waitress," said Rose. + +"And I reckon," said Miss Gibbons, "that he told you he kept a +respectable hotel. He may have put some frills on it, but that's close +enough to go on, isn't it?" + +Rose nodded. In her relief at finding her situation so well understood, +she was turning a little limp. + +"Why did you come to me?" Miss Gibbons demanded. "He never would have +thought of sending you here." + +Rose braced up once more and told about her conversation with Judge +Granger. + +This time the milliner heard her through. + +"And so the judge sent you to me," she said, when Rose had finished. "I +suppose that was his fool idea of being funny. He thought it was a +chance to get me poison mad." + +Rose nodded a little wearily. + +"Yes," she said, "I suppose that was it." + +The milliner shot out a sharp glance at her. "Sit down," she said +bruskly, and nodded to a chair. + +Rose didn't much want to. Her instinct was to stay on her feet until +she'd won her battle, and her fatigue only heightened it. But Miss +Gibbons had given her an order rather than an invitation, and she obeyed +it. + +The older woman didn't sit down. + +"Harvey Granger," she said thoughtfully, "will never forgive me as long +as he lives, for not thinking he's a great man. That's just ridiculous, +of course, because I know Harve. Years ago, you see,--so long ago that +everybody's forgotten it--my father was the big man down in this part of +the state. He was a circuit judge, when circuit judges amounted to +something, and he was one of the best of them. But he was a fool about +money and he got mixed up in things--and died. I was twenty-five years +old then, and I took to hats. + +"Well, Harve Granger was my father's law-clerk before father was elected +judge. I used to see him night and morning. And, as I say, I know him +all the way through. He knows I know him, and that's what he can't get +over." + +There was a little silence when she finished; a silence Rose's instinct +told her not to break. Presently the little woman wheeled around on her. + +"Well," she said, "you came to me anyway, though you saw the judge +meant it for a joke. Why did you do that?" + +"I don't know," said Rose. "I thought I would." + +"And you haven't told me yet," said Miss Gibbons, "that you're really +straight and respectable. What have you got to say about that?" + +"Nothing much," said Rose. "I am straight and respectable. But I suppose +a woman who wasn't would pretend to be. So you will have to decide about +that for yourself." + +"Hmph!" grunted Miss Gibbons. "I don't know why I asked a fool question +like that, unless it's because, like the rest of them, I live in +Centropolis. I know what you are, as well as you do yourself." + +The words were brusk, and the inflection of them not much gentler, but +they fell on Rose's heart like rain; like an unexpected warm little +shower out of a brazen sky. She caught her breath, and, to her +consternation, felt her eyes flushing up with tears. She hadn't realized +the tension she had been under, until it was relaxed. She gave a shaky +half-suppressed sob and then made a desperate effort to pull herself +together. + +"Now, look here!" said Miss Gibbons, in a tone harder and dryer than +ever. "I'm not going to take you in and pay you wages just because +you're a cat in a strange garret and don't know where to turn. I'm not +even going to do it to spite Harve Granger. But, if you've got any sort +of gumption about hats, I am going to do it, and the rest of this fool +town can say what it likes and do what it pleases. So the thing for you +to do is to quiet down sensibly and show me whether you can trim a hat." + +It took Rose a few minutes to carry out the first part of this +injunction. The rush of relief and gratitude and happiness shook her. +Given _carte blanche_ to design a special angel from Heaven to come down +and give her just the comfort and encouragement she wanted, she couldn't +have imagined one so good as Miss Gibbons,--with those keen +straight-looking eyes that had observed her fellow citizens of +Centropolis for the last half-century or so, not in vain; with her +courageous common sense, and with that dry, cool, astringent manner, +which lay with a pleasant healing sting on the lacerations of Rose's +soul. + +For a while she just sat still and tried to get the catch out of her +breathing. At last, when she thought she could trust her voice not to +break absurdly, she smiled and said: + +"What sort of hat do you want me to trim? I mean, for what sort of +person?" + +"What sort of person!" echoed Miss Gibbons and gave Rose a rather keen +look. "Why," she said, after hesitating a moment, "there's a silly old +maid in this town. She ain't more than ten years younger than I am, but +her hair's stayed sort of fluffy and yellow, and she's kept part of her +looks, though not near as much of them as she thinks. She was a +beautiful girl at twenty, I'll say that for her. None of these girls now +compares with her. But she was a little too sure of herself and took too +long deciding among the young men of this town, until all at once, she +found that nobody wanted her. She's been trying ever since to show she +doesn't care; and she pesters the life out of me twice a year trying to +fit her out with a hat. I won't let her go around the streets looking +like a giddy young fool, and that's what she's determined to do. So, if +you can suit her _and_ me, you will be doing pretty well." + +The description made a picture for Rose. She saw the faded pathetic +prettiness of the woman who'd looked too long and had been trying to +pretend for the last fifteen years or so that she didn't care. And the +picture in her mind's eye was surmounted by a hat; a hat that conceded +some of the years Miss Gibbons had insisted on, and that her client was +unwilling to acknowledge, and yet retained a sort of jauntiness. + +She didn't know whether she could execute the thing she saw or not, out +of the stock of materials at her disposal. But it hadn't cost her a +thought or an effort to see the hat. + +"All right," she said after a bit. "I'll see what I can do. If you'll +show me where the things are ..." + +It was a much humbler sort of job, of course, designing a hat for a +middle-aged village spinster, than making those dozen gowns for +Goldsmith and Block had been. But this consideration never occurred to +her. She found, and was not even amazed to find, the same thrill of +exhilaration in conquering the small problem, that she had found in the +larger one. She worked with the same swift unconscious economy of labor +and materials. + +At the end of two hours, she presented the result of her labors for the +milliner's approval. + +Miss Gibbons surveyed it with a smile of ironic appreciation. + +"It isn't what I'd call a real finished job," she commented after a +minute inspection of some of the details of Rose's sewing. "I wouldn't +trust it in a high wind not to scatter all the way from here to the +Presbyterian church. But it will certainly suit Agatha Stebbins." + +She looked at it a while longer. "And I don't know," she concluded a +little reluctantly, "as it'll look so all-mighty foolish on her, either. +Will ten dollars a week suit you to begin on?" + +"Yes," said Rose, "that will suit me very well indeed." + +"All right," said Miss Gibbons. "That's settled. There's one more thing +to settle now, and that's where you're going to live." + +Rose contemplated this question a little blankly for a moment. + +"Do you suppose," she said, "there's any place in this town where I +_can_ live; where they'd take a person like me? Or would it be all +right, if you asked them?" + +"Oh, I guess," said Miss Gibbons, "we could most likely find somebody. +I'll think about it." + +She gave Rose some work to do and didn't refer to the matter again till +nearly six o'clock. + +"I've been thinking," she said then, "that I've got room for a boarder +myself. There's a little room back here that I don't use; there's a +black girl does me out and cooks my dinner and supper, and I get my own +breakfast. The girl could cook for two as well as one, and I guess I +could feed you for two dollars a week. If that ain't satisfactory, you +can just say so." + +"Satisfactory!" said Rose, and once more her voice broke. + +"All right," said Miss Gibbons hastily, "we'll say no more about it. +That's settled. I'll send the girl to the hotel to get your bags." + + +John Galbraith's letter asking Rose to report to him July first in New +York, reached her via Portia, during the last week in June, and made an +abrupt conclusion to her life at Centropolis. + +Those weeks with Miss Gibbons in the millinery parlor, when she looked +back on them afterward, set in as they were between that purgatorial +winter and the first breathless months while she was establishing +herself in New York, had a quality of happiness and peace, which she was +wont to describe as heavenly. + +She'd probably have taken to Miss Gibbons in any circumstance. But, +coming into her life just when she did, the little woman was the shadow +of a great rock to her. She was in a state, when she settled down in the +milliner's spare back room over the drug-store, where all the warmer +emotions seemed terrible to her. It was Rodney's love for her and hers +for him, that had bruised and lacerated her; that had made the winter +months a long torment, unmitigated during the last of them, by any form +of adequate self-expression. The two parodies on love which had been +thrust into her face just at the end, Olga Larson's inverted form of it +toward herself, and Dolly's shabby little romance, had given her an +absolute loathing for it. To her, in that condition, any expression of +friendship that was warm and soft, and in the least sentimental, would +have been almost unendurable to her. Miss Gibbons, in that acrid +antiseptic way of hers, simply washed her soul in cold water and clothed +it again in the garments of self-respect. + +Her manner to Rose, even as their friendship ripened and grew more +confident, never changed. Nor did the manner Rose adopted toward her. +Their endless talks resulted in a good deal of self-revelation, but this +was never direct. Miss Gibbons never again came as near to a +confidential account of her life, as she did on that first afternoon, +when she explained the thoroughness of her acquaintance with Judge +Granger. And Rose never explained how it had happened that she was left +at the mercy of the town of Centropolis by the failure of _The Girl +Up-stairs_ company. But she poured out for her friend a wealth of +illustrative reminiscences, drawn from her childhood, her days at the +university, her life on the stage; and though she was a good deal more +reticent about it, she even touched on her married life with Rodney; at +least, on the collateral incidents of it. + +Miss Gibbons listened to all this with a hunger she didn't conceal, and +this eagerness gave Rose a pretty vivid picture of the inner life the +little woman had lived here in Centropolis. + +If she'd been born a boy instead of a girl, she'd probably have equaled, +or outstripped, Rose thought, her father's eminence. With her courage, +her vitality, her fine penetrating intelligence, she'd have managed to +win her way out of this stagnant little back-water of life. But, having +been born a girl, brought up helpless, as became the daughter of the +circuit judge, and then having had this support wrenched from under her +at the critical moment, there had been nothing for her but--hats. + +She'd never gone sour, at that; never, apparently, wasted any hours in +repining. She'd made, after a fashion, a career of hats; had risen on +them, to a position of acknowledged social consequence. There must have +been disquieting echoes in her, rhythms that answered to the pulsation +of an ampler life. She never could hope to get out into it, she +undoubtedly knew, but she took every opportunity she could get for a +glimpse at it. Rose's incursion into her life must have been a godsend +to her. + +She probably pieced together a pretty good picture of Rose, too. But she +did this piecing in silence and kept her surmises to herself. + +In a material way, her adoption of Rose was an immense success. +Centropolis, when it learned the news, was thunder-struck. For a matter +of hours, one might say, the town held its breath. Then it began to +talk. The women began asking questions: What did the actress look like? +The men offered lame descriptions. Rose had been seen, apparently, that +morning on Main Street, by the entire male population, but their +descriptions weren't satisfactory. Curiosity must be assuaged! But Rose +never went into the stores on Main Street; never patronized the +picture-show, and even had these glimpses been afforded, they'd have +been pretty unsatisfactory. There was only one real way of discovering +what the creature was like; discovering for yourself, that is--and +hearsay evidence is notoriously unreliable; that was to buy a hat of +Lizzie Gibbons. + +The first daring adventurer was Agatha Stebbins. Agatha found, you will +remember, the hat Rose had already designed for her. And, as Miss +Gibbons caustically disclaimed the authorship of it ("I'd never have +made you up a thing like that, you can believe!") and as Miss Stebbins, +after a moment's hesitation, decided she adored it, another inducement, +though perhaps a superfluous one, was offered for visits to the atelier. + +"Of course she isn't what you could call genteel," Miss Stebbins +explained, parading her acquisition, "and she's never had any +advantages. And as to her moral character, I suppose the less said the +better. Lizzie Gibbons can settle that question with her own conscience. +But when it comes to hats she's got more gimp in her little finger than +Lizzie's got in both hands. Dear, no! She's not what I call pretty. Not +with a mouth like that. Of course the men ..." + +So Miss Gibbons' spring business was distended to unrecognizable +proportions. Rose fitted on hats in the show-room during business hours +and took a mischievous delight in the assumption of the intangible +manner of a perfect shop-assistant; in saying "Yes, madam," and "No, +madam," and "Will you try this, madam?" with a perfection of politeness +that baffled the most determined curiosity. Miss Gibbons got as much fun +out of it as she did. + +The hours in the workroom were pleasant ones, too, with their perpetual +reminder that the creative power that had deserted her last January, had +come back. The little problems were ludicrously easy, of course but they +stimulated a pleasant sense of reserve power. + +She couldn't, of course, have stayed in Centropolis indefinitely. In +time, that feeling of mounting energy would have driven her out in +search of something that would test it. + +But, when Galbraith's letter came, it took her a little aback. Miss +Gibbons had brought it in; because Rose, even then, didn't go to the +post-office. Miss Gibbons watched her tear open the big envelope +addressed to Rose in the handwriting that always went with the +California post-mark, and saw her take another unopened letter out of +it. She saw the girl's face set itself in a sudden gravity; watched her +with a hungry misgiving, while she read the enclosure, and felt the +misgiving mount to an unhappy certainty, when Rose put it away without +comment. + +But Rose wasn't certain, or she felt that night when she went to bed +that she was not. Galbraith's letter frightened her a little. It was a +dictated letter, very stiff, wholly businesslike. It offered to make her +his personal assistant at a salary of fifty dollars a week. He +summarized in rather formidable terms, what her duties would be. He +wished her to report to him promptly, July first, and to telegraph him +at her earliest convenience, whether she accepted his offer. There was +no explanation of his long delay in sending for her. + +Rose had no illusions as to what its acceptance would mean. It would +mean gripping life again with the full strength of both hands. It would +mean many anxious days and sleepless nights. It would mean spurring +herself to a high degree of competency. You didn't get fifty dollars a +week for anything that was easy to do. She knew that now, by hard +experience. And then the transplantation to New York would mean an end +of the cool healing peace of her present life. Things would begin +happening to her that she couldn't foresee nor control. Feelings would +begin happening to her; the kind of feelings that scorched and terrified +you. They wouldn't happen to her here in Centropolis. + +She fell asleep that night under the persuasion that the thing wasn't +decided; that the safe, quiet, peaceful way was still open to her. But +when she awakened in the morning, she knew it was not. + +"I surmise," said Miss Gibbons that morning at breakfast, "that you're +figuring to go away." + +Rose smiled and sighed. "I don't know how you guess things like that," +she said, "but it's true. I must be in New York on the first of July." + +"Well, the sooner the quicker," said Miss Gibbons dryly. "You came all +at once and I guess it's just as well you should go the same way. I +guess neither of us is sorry you came, and I hope you'll never be sorry +you went." + +That was her nearest approach to an affectionate farewell. Rose managed +to express her affection and gratitude a little more adequately, but not +much. "It isn't the end of us, you know," she concluded. "You're coming +to see me in New York." + +Miss Gibbons smiled with good-humored skepticism at that. + +Rose telegraphed Galbraith that morning, and she took the noon train for +St. Louis. She needed a day or two there to make the modest supplements +to her wardrobe that her savings permitted. + + + + +BOOK FOUR + +The Real Adventure + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE TUNE CHANGES + + +John Williamson's doctor packed him off to Carlsbad just about the time +that Rose achieved the conquest of Centropolis (along in April, 1914, +that was). Violet and their one child, a girl of twelve, went along with +him to keep him company; at rather long range, it seemed, because they +were both in Paris on the first of August, when the war broke out, and +John spent six frantic days getting into Switzerland and out again into +France, before his attempt to join them was successful. They had run the +full gamut of refugees' experiences, by the time they got to England and +secured accommodations on a liner to New York, and the tale got an added +touch from the stratagem Violet employed in successfully bringing off +all her new French frocks. + +It took just two hours' steady talking to tell the story, and Violet +figured that during the first week after her return to Chicago, she told +it on an average of three times a day. So that by the time she could +manage a day for motoring out to Lake Forest to see Constance Crawford, +she was ready to talk about something else. + +Constance had lately had her fourth--and she asserted, last--baby, and +wasn't seeing anybody yet, except intimates, one at a time; and she +relaxed a little deeper, with a sigh of relief, into her cushioned +chair, when Violet said: + +"The same things happened to us that happened to everybody else, so you +don't have to hear them. Oh, it was nice, in a way, being separated from +poor John when the thing happened, because--well, he hasn't got over it +yet. He's still more as he was when we were first engaged, than he's +ever been since. And at thirty-seven that's something! And then it's a +satisfaction about the clothes. It seems as if I must have had a +premonition that something was going to happen, because I bought +absolutely everything I wanted. + +"Of course it was an awful moment when John said we couldn't take +anything but hand-luggage. But I got three perfectly enormous +straw-telescopes--you know the kind--about four feet long, and then we +left everything else behind, except a tooth-brush and a comb apiece. And +what with that and the biggest hat box in the world--my, but it's lucky +hats are small!--we managed it. + +"But all the stuff about having your automobile taken away and riding in +a cart, and thinking you're going to be arrested as a spy, and living +for days on milk-chocolate and _vin ordinaire_, you've heard it all a +hundred times already, so we'll talk about something else." + +"I never heard anything so heroic in my life," Constance said. "But you +don't need to be, because I'm perishing for details.--Unless," she went +on, "it isn't heroism at all, but something else you want to talk +about." + +"Just my luck!" said Violet. "I thought I was going to get away with +that. There _is_ something I'm frantic with curiosity about, and you're +the first person I've seen I could ask. I spent two hours trying to get +up my courage with Frederica, but I couldn't. Do you know anything about +them--Rose and Rodney? Does any one know anything about her since she +disappeared from the Globe?" + +"Why, I fancy _they_ do," said Constance, "Rodney and Frederica. I don't +know just why I think so. Frank sees Rodney every day or two at lunch +time at the club; says he seems all right. He's working terribly hard. +And the money he's making! Frank says he's a regular robber in the fees +he asks--and gets. He says he speaks of Rose once in a while, and +not--at least not exactly, as if she were dead. You know what I mean! +Just in that maddening, matter-of-course way, as if everybody knew all +about her. + +"Frederica won't talk about her at all. I mean, she won't start the +subject, and nobody has the nerve to start it with her. Freddy can be +like that, you know. She'd make a perfectly wonderful queen--did you +ever think of that? Of England. Harriet's the only one who'd talk, and +of course she's gone back. You knew that, didn't you? Oh, but naturally, +since you've talked to Freddy." + +Violet nodded. "It all sounded so exactly like Harriet," she said, "as +Freddy told about it. No confidences, no flutters. She didn't even seem +interested until the day England went in. And then at lunch that day, +she said to Frederica, 'I've just cabled Tony that I'm coming back on +the next boat. And I telephoned Rodney just now, to find out what the +next boat for Genoa was, or Naples, and get me a stateroom. Lend me +Marie, will you, to help pack? Because I'll probably have to take the +five-thirty.' Harriet all over. Well, on the whole, I'm glad." + +"Oh, yes," said Constance. "She'd always be at a loose end in this +country. She doesn't believe in divorce. She might, of course, if she +fell in love with another man over here. But that's not likely to +happen. And she can't stand America any more. So even an unsuccessful +marriage over there, especially if Italy gets drawn into the war, and +her man gets ..." + +"Constance!" cried Violet, horrified. + +"Oh, not necessarily killed," Constance went on. "Crippled or something, +or even if he really got interested in the profession of being a +soldier. She's done well to go back to him." + +"Anyway, that wasn't what I meant," said Violet. "I meant I was glad for +Rodney and--Rose. Mind you, I don't _know_ a single thing. But I've just +got a hunch that with Harriet off the board, it will be a little more +possible for those two to get together." + +Constance looked at her intently. "You've changed your tune," she said. +"I thought you were through with Rose for good and all. I thought what +you were rooting for was a divorce and a fresh start for Rodney." + +"I thought so, too," said Violet, "until I saw her." + +"Saw her!" Constance cried. "Where? When?" + +"In New York on the way home," said Violet. + +"Well--tell me all about it," said Constance, when she saw Violet wasn't +going on of her own accord. "You, pretending you wanted to know about +everything, and pretending to be a heroine for not telling me all about +being a refugee! What is she doing? What did she look like? What did she +say?" + +"You've changed your tune, too," said Violet. "Because you were through +with her just as much as I was. You didn't want to hear anything more +about her. Of course she could ran away and go on the stage if she +liked, you said, but she'd better not try to come back." + +Constance pointed out that she hadn't, as yet, expressed the hope that +Rodney would make it up with her. But she pleaded guilty to a strong +curiosity. + +"Well, I can't tell you much," said Violet. "John and I were coming down +Fifth Avenue in a taxi one afternoon, and were stopped by the traffic at +Forty-fourth Street. And right there, in another taxi, was Rose. I +didn't see her till just as we got the whistle to go ahead. I was so +surprised I could only grab John and tell him to look. I did shriek at +her at last, and she saw us and lighted up and smiled. Just that old +smile of hers, you know. But her car was turning west, down past +Sherry's, and we were going straight ahead and we weren't quick enough +to tell the chauffeur to turn, too. We did turn on Forty-third and came +around the block, and of course we missed her. + +"We went to three musical shows in the next two days, in the hope of +spotting her in the chorus. But she wasn't in any of them, and then I +simply dragged John home. There was no way of finding her of course, nor +of her finding us, because John's given up the Holland House at last and +taken to the Vanderbilt. But it was rather maddening." + +"Well, I don't know," said Constance. "Oh, yes, maddening of course, +because one would be curious. But that sort of curiosity might prove +pretty expensive if you gratified it. Talk about the clutch of a +drowning person! It's nothing to the clutch of a _declassee_ woman. And +if she's been somebody once who really mattered, and somebody you were +really fond of ... Because it _is_ no use. They can't ever come back." + +Violet stirred in her chair. "Of course we're all perfectly good +Christians," she observed ironically. "And once a week we say 'Forgive +us our debts,' besides teaching it to the kids." + +Constance broke in on her hotly. "Oh, come, Violet! You know it's not a +question of forgiveness. I don't claim any moral superiority over Rose. +I'm just talking about her social possibility. A person who does an +outrageous thing, knowing it's outrageous, just because he--or +she--wants to do it, can be downright immoral without being impossible. +But a person who's done the other sort of thing, a shabby thing--and +what Rose did was shabby--will always be on the defensive about it. They +can't let it alone. They're always making references you can't ignore; +always seeing references in perfectly harmless things that other people +say. And the only society where they're ever happy, is that of a lot of +other people with shady, shabby things that _they're_ on the defensive +about. And they all get together and call it Bohemia. And they sprawl +around in studios and talk about sex and try to feel superior and +emancipated. Well, maybe they are. All I say is they don't belong with +us. Oh, you know it's true! You hate that as much as I do." + +"Oh, yes," said Violet. "Only, since I've seen Rose--even for that +minute--it doesn't seem possible to apply it to her. You know, I don't +believe she's on the stage any more." + +Constance asked with good-humored satire, "Why? From the way she looked +in the taxi-cab?" + +"Yes," said Violet. "Just from that. There she was in an open taxi, on +Fifth Avenue, at half past four in the afternoon, and she didn't look +somehow, as if how she looked mattered. She wasn't on parade a bit. She +looked smart and successful, but busy. Not exactly irritated at being +held up in the block, but keen to get out of it. The way Frank or John +would look on the way to a directors' meeting. And the way she smiled +when she saw us ... It's not quite exactly her old smile, either, but +it's just as fascinating. It pleased her to see us all right. But as for +her caring a rap what we thought--well, you couldn't imagine it. +Defensive indeed! And poor old John just about went out of his head with +disappointment when we lost her." + +"Oh, I'll never deny she's a charmer," said Constance. "All the same ..." + +"You wait till you see her!" said Violet. + +Violet's report of the glimpse she had had of Rose, together with what +were felt to be the rather amusingly extravagant set of deductions she +had made from it, spread in diminishing ripples of discussion through +all their circle. And then, concentrically, into wider circles. Most of +their own intimate group took Constance's attitude. Forced to concede a +lively curiosity as to what had become of Rose, they still professed +that the way of discretion lay not in gratifying it; at least not at +first-hand. When they were in New York, they kept an eye open for a +sight of her, on the stage and elsewhere, and an alert ear for news, +finding a sort of fearful joy in wondering what they would do if an +encounter took place. They were mildly derisive with Violet over her +_volte-face_. + +Secretly, Violet was a good deal closer to agreeing with them than she'd +admit. For, as the effect of her encounter lost its vividness, with the +recession of the encounter itself, she began to suspect that she had +gone unwarranted lengths in her interpretations from it. But under fire, +she stuck to her guns. Her husband, who delighted in her public +attitude, was amazed when she rounded upon him in their domestic +sanctuary, and emphatically took the other side. In his disgust, he made +a very penetrating observation, whose cogency Violet realized, though +she loftily ignored it at the time it was uttered. But three or four +nights later, at an opera dinner at the Heaton-Duncans, she fired it off +shamelessly, as a shot out of her own locker. + +"It's all very well," she exploded, "to say that Rose can't come back. +But as a matter of fact she's never been out of it. At least the hole +she left has never closed up. You all agree that she's to be forgotten +and treated as a regrettable incident, but you keep on talking about +her. It's like Roosevelt. There she is all the time." + +She didn't dare catch John's eye for the next twenty minutes, but she +knew precisely, without looking, the exasperated quality of his stare. + +It was true. They couldn't let her alone. Speculation flared up again, +and this time with a justifiable basis, when it became known that +Rodney had bought the McCrea house; bought it outright, for cash, with +its complete contents. + +Of course everybody knew that Rodney was getting rich. And he was doing +it, as Frank Crawford pointed out to Constance, with precisely the same +contemptuous disregard of money that he had shown before his marriage. + +"He doesn't care what he charges, and he didn't care then. Only then it +was out of the little end of the horn, and now it's out of the big. And +the thing that seems to make him particularly wild is that the higher +the price he puts on his opinions, the more people there are who think +that nobody's opinion but his is any good. So he just grins at them and +goes up another notch. He's no better a lawyer, he says, than he was +when his practise brought him in ten thousand a year. Of course he is a +better lawyer. He's getting better all the time. He does deliver the +goods. And fighting out these great big cases really educates a man. You +can't be really first-class unless you've got first-class things to do. +And down inside Rodney knows that as well as anybody. + +"Only, with all his money, after the way he's talked about that +house--the way he's damned it and made fun of it, what did he want to go +and buy it for?" + +Constance had an idea he'd got it at a bargain. The McCreas had made a +flying trip home just to sell it. Their investments had gone off, it +seemed, still further, and besides, Florence had at last found something +in the world to be in earnest about, and that was in France; the +American hospital. Florence had already taken an emergency training +course in nursing. Her husband, whose one marked talent was that of a +chauffeur, was going to drive a motor ambulance, and they were both on +fire to get back to Paris into the thick of things. Almost any round +sum, in absolutely spot cash, would satisfy them. So Rodney, too busy +with other things to take the trouble to invest his money, would have +been in a position to get the house cheap. It was Constance's opinion +that he had. + +"Do you know anybody in the world," her husband demanded, "less likely +to be interested in a bargain than Rodney? Or to pick a thing up because +it is cheap?" + +"Well, then," Constance said, "you must think he's expecting Rose, +sometime or other, to come back to him. Because if he meant to get a +divorce and marry some one else, he certainly wouldn't want to live in +that house with her. He'd want as few reminders as possible, not as +many. And yet, it was Rose herself, according to Harriet, who was so +anxious, toward the last, to get rid of the place. So there you are! +It's a mystery any way you take it." + +John Williamson said he understood, though when Violet pressed him for +an explanation he was a little vague. + +"Why," he said, "it's just a polite way of telling us all to go to the +devil. He knows we're all talking our heads off about him, and +sympathizing with him, and wondering what he's going to do, and he buys +that house to serve notice that he's going to stay put. Business as +usual at the old stand. I shouldn't be surprised if he meant the same +message for Rose. That is to say, that the place will always be there +for her to come back to." + +Outside their immediate circle, no such imaginative explanations were +resorted to. Rose was coming back of course. And the interesting theme +for speculation was what would happen to her when she did. Would she try +to take her old place; ignore the past; treat that outrageous escapade +with the Globe chorus as if it had never happened? And if she did try to +do that, could she succeed? It all depended on what a few people did. If +they, the three or four supremely right ones, were to acquiesce in this +treatment of the situation, Rose could, more or less, get away with it. +Although even then, things could never be quite the same. + +But the sterility of these speculations gradually became apparent as the +winter months slipped away and Rose did not come back. It was felt, +though such a feeling would have looked absurd if put into words, that +by failing to come when the stage was set for her, as by Rodney's act in +purchasing the McCrea house it was, missing her cue like that, letting +them, with such a lot of solemn thought, discuss and prepare their +attitudes toward her, all in vain, she had, somehow, aggravated her +original offense in running away. + +And, just as suddenly as they had begun talking about her, they +stopped. Rodney and the twins, living alone in the perfect house, under +the ministrations of a housekeeper, a head nurse and an undiminished +corps of servants, came to be accepted as a fact that could be mentioned +without any string of commiserations tied to it. Their world wagged on +as usual. If, as John Williamson said, the hole where Rose had been torn +out of it had never been closed up, people managed to walk around the +edge of it with an apparently complete unawareness that it was there. +There were fresher themes for gossip: + +Hermione Woodruff's amazing marriage, for example, to a dapper little +futurist painter named Bunting, ten years, the uncharitable said, +younger than she was. And then the Randolphs! After all the thrilling +events of their romance, were they drifting on the reefs? There were +straws that indicated the wind was blowing that way. + +This was the state of things when Jimmy Wallace threw his bomb. + +There was always a warm, corner in Jimmy Wallace's bachelor heart for +youth, and innocence, and enthusiasm. Especially for young girls who +were innocent and enthusiastic. But since he suspected himself of a +tendency to idealize these qualities, even to sentimentalize upon them, +he generally kept a cautious distance off. Rose, with the bloom that was +on her, and the glow that radiated from her the night he was introduced +to her at a dinner party at the Williamsons', had struck him--he was +unconscious of this mental process no doubt--as a person whom it would +be difficult, at close range, to remain quite level-headed about. + +Consequently, though his and Rodney's common friendship for the Lakes +had drawn him rather intimately into their circle, his attitude toward +Rose herself throughout had remained deliberately detached and +impersonal. He was not in the least priggish about it. He was quite +willing to let it appear that he liked her and to admit that she liked +him. But their talk had always been not only objective, but about +objects comparatively remote; chorus-girls, for example, and Norse +sagas, to take at random two of his wide assortment of hobbies. + +He never felt himself in any danger of idealizing Violet Williamson or +Bella Forrester, and they, along with their respective husbands, were +the nearest approach to intimates he had in that segment of society +which gets itself spelled with a capital S. + +Violet's attitude toward Rose, as revealed to him at the little dinner +following the Williamsons' discovery of Rose in the Globe chorus, had +not in the least surprised him. For, with her husband he had recognized +in her biting contempt of the thing the girl had done, the typical +attitude of her class. He didn't do Society very much, but he dipped +expertly now and then. He understood the class--loyalty that is woven +into all their traditions, and knew how violently it was outraged by +Rose's inexplicable bolt. + +But, as I said, he went home after that dinner, rather mournful over +Violet's failure to see an aspect of the thing which, it seemed to him, +should have been apparent to anybody: this was Rose's courage in +actually doing the thing. The idea that had evidently prompted the act +was a perfectly familiar guest at their tea-tables. Rose wouldn't have +had to go to "that votes-for-women mother of hers" to pick up the notion +of the desirability of economic independence for women. But, instead of +playing with the idea, Rose had gripped it in both hands and gone +through with it; and at what cost of resolution and courage Jimmy was +perhaps the only one of her friends capable of forming an adequate +conception. But he'd have thought that even Violet might be expected to +see that a mere petulant restlessness wouldn't have carried her through; +might have admitted, if only in parenthesis, the gameness the girl had +shown. + +She'd made no attempt to get the cards stacked in her favor, as she +might so easily have done. She must have thought of coming to him for +advice and help; must have known how gladly he'd give it. A note from +him to Goldsmith would have spared her untold terrors and +uncertainties. Yet she had denied herself that help; gone ahead and +done the thing on her own. + +He could imagine the sort of test Galbraith had put her to before giving +her a job at all. He'd seen inexperienced girls applying for positions +in the chorus. He knew the sort of work that lay behind her advancement +to the sextette. He knew that her presence there on the stage of the +Globe the opening night, unrecognized by any one in the company as +anybody except Doris Dane of nowhere, represented a solid achievement +that a girl with Rose's background and training might be proud of. + +For Jimmy it had stamped her, once and for all, as sterling metal; as +one who, however mistaken her judgments, or misguided her +actions--admitting for the sake of argument that they were +misguided--must be taken seriously; admitted to be the real thing. She'd +given indisputable guarantees of good faith. + +There was no good, of course, getting warm over the flippant cynicisms +of her former friends. There was no use even in trying to make them +understand how the thing looked to him. But there crystallized in him a +wish that he might some day see Rose's critics fluttering about her and, +as it were, eating out of her hand. He used to amuse himself by +arranging all sorts of extravagant settings for this picture. He never +included Rodney in this vengeance, although he felt sure--indeed Rodney +had practically admitted as much to him--that it had been her husband's +disapproval, rather than the miscellaneous gossip of society at large, +which had driven her from the security and promise of the Globe to the +exiguities of a fly-by-night road company. Rodney never brought up the +subject again after his return from Dubuque, though it soon became plain +enough without that, that his journey had accomplished nothing. + +Jimmy kept track of the company's route after that, through the list of +bookings printed in his theater weekly, and when he learned that the +tour had been abandoned, he dropped in one night at the Globe on the +off-chance that she might have come back and got herself reinstated in +the Number One company, which was still doing a prosperous business. + +He didn't expect to find her there; hardly hoped to. A somewhat better +chance was that he might find Alec McEwen in the lobby, and that if +little Alec were properly primed with alcohol and led to a discussion of +the collapse of the road company, he might volunteer some scrap of +information about her. + +Little Alec was found in the lobby, right enough, and properly primed in +the bar next door, and he described very vigorously, the disgust of +Block's brother-in-law over the lemon the astute partners had sold him; +for real money, too. But not a word did little Alec offer about Rose. + +It was Jimmy's practise to make two professional visits to New York +every year; one in the autumn, one in the spring, in order that he might +have interesting matters to write about when the local theatrical doings +had been exhausted. + +On his first trip after Rose's disappearance, he went faithfully to +every musical show in New York, and, as far as Rose was concerned, drew +blank. He'd have taken more active measures for finding her; would have +made inquiries of people he knew, had it not been for a sort of morbid +delicacy about interfering in a concern that not only was none of his, +but that was supremely the concern of Rodney Aldrich, his friend. + +But from his spring pilgrimage, he came back wearing a deep-lying and +contented smile, and a few days later, after a talk over the telephone +with Rodney, he headed a column of gossip about the theater, with the +following paragraph: + +"_Come On In_, as the latest of the New York revues is called, is much +like all the others. It contains the same procession of +specialty-mongers, the same cacophony of rag-time, the same gangway out +into the audience which refreshes tired business men with a thrilling, +worm's-eye view of dancing girls' knees _au naturel_. And up and down +this straight and narrow pathway of the chorus there is the customary +parade of the same haughty beauties of Broadway. Only in one item is +there a deviation from the usual formula: the costumes. For several +years past, the revues at this theater (the Columbian) have been +caparisoned with the decadent colors and bizarre designs of the exotic +Mr. Grenville Melton. I knew there had been a change for the better as +soon as I saw the first number, for these dresses have the stimulating +quality of a healthy and vigorous imagination, as well as a vivid +decorative value. They are exceedingly smart, of course, or else they +would never do for a Broadway revue, but they are also alive, while +those of Mr. Melton were invariably sickly. Curiously enough, the name +of the new costume designer has a special interest for Chicago. She is +Doris Dane, who participated in _The Girl Up-stairs_ at the Globe. Miss +Dane's stage experience here was brief, but nevertheless her striking +success in her new profession will probably cause the formation of a +large and enthusiastic 'I-knew-her-when' club." + +Jimmy expected to produce an effect with it. But what he did produce +exceeded his wildest anticipations. The thing came out in the three +o'clock edition, and before he left the office that afternoon (he stayed +a little late, it is true, and it wasn't his "At home" to press agents +either) he had received, over the telephone, six invitations to dinner; +three of them for that night. + +He declined the first two on the ground of an enormous press of work +incident to his fresh return from a fortnight in New York. But when +Violet called up and said, with a reference to a previous engagement +that was shamelessly fictitious: + +"Jimmy, you haven't forgotten you're dining with us to-night, have you? +It's just us, so you needn't dress," he answered: + +"Oh, no, I've got it down on my calendar all right. Seven-thirty?" + +Violet snickered and said: "You wait!--Or rather, don't wait. Make it +seven." + +Jimmy was glad to be let off that extra half-hour of waiting. He was +impatient for the encounter with Violet--a state of mind most rare with +him. He meant to wring all the pleasure out of it he could by way of +compensating himself for that other dinner when Violet had decided that +all Rodney's most intimate friends ought really to be told what Rose had +done, in order that they might be scrupulous enough in avoiding subjects +which he might take as a reference to his disgrace. + +Violet said, the moment he appeared in the drawing-room doorway, "John +made me swear not to let you tell me a word until he came in. He's +simply burbling. He's out in the pantry now mixing some extra-special +cocktails--with his own hands, you know--to celebrate the event. But +there's one thing he won't mind your telling me, and that's her address. +I'm simply perishing to write her a note and tell her how glad we are." + +Jimmy made a little gesture of regret. He'd have spoken too, but she +didn't give him time. + +"You don't mean to tell me," she cried, "that you didn't find out where +she lived while you were right there in New York!" + +John came in just then with the cocktails and Violet, turning to him +tragically, repeated, "He doesn't even know where she lives!" + +"Oh, I'm a boob, I know," said Jimmy. "Give me a cocktail. A telephone's +the driest thing in the world to talk into. But, as I told the other +five ..." + +Violet frowned as she echoed, "The other five--what?" + +Jimmy turned to John Williamson with a perfectly electric grin. + +"The other five of Rose Aldrich's friends--and yours," he said, "who +called me up this afternoon and invited me to dinner, and asked for her +address so that they could write her notes and tell her how glad they +were." + +John said, "Whoosh!" all but upset his tray and slammed it down on the +piano, in order to leave himself free to jubilate properly. With solemn +joy he ceremoniously shook hands with Jimmy. + +Violet stood looking at them thoughtfully. A little flush of color was +coming up into her face. + +"You two men," she said, "are trying to act as if I weren't in this; as +if I weren't just as glad as you are, and hadn't as good a right to be. +John here," this was to Jimmy, "has been gloating ever since he came +home with the paper. And you ... Did you mean me by that snippy little +thing you said about the 'I-knew-her-when' club? Oh, it was fair enough. +I'm glad you said it. Because some people we know have been downright +catty about her. But you both know perfectly well that I've stood up for +her ever since last fall when we came through New York." + +John grinned. "When you saw her," he pointed out, "riding down Fifth +Avenue in a taxi, in an expensive dress...." + +"It wasn't. I didn't see what she had on. I just saw that she +looked ..." + +"Successful," John interrupted. But, meeting her eye, he apologized +hastily and withdrew the word. His gale of spirits had blown him a +little too far. + +"I saw," said Violet with dignity, "that she looked busy and cheerful, +as if she knew, in her own mind, that she was all right. And I was glad +for her, and for us. Because you can say what you like, you can't do +anything with the people who have made mistakes and know it, and are +always on the defensive about them. When I saw she didn't feel like +that, that was enough for me. And," she fairly impaled John Williamson +now with her eye, "and you know it." + +It was an able summary of her public attitude since the encounter on +Fifth Avenue, and her look at her husband relegated any private +observations of hers at variance with it into the limbo, not of things +forgotten, but of things undone, unsaid, dissolved by the sheer force of +their unfitness to exist, into the breath that begot them. + +"You're quite right about it," said Jimmy. "We men are sentimentalists, +as long as things don't come home. But when they do, we're as +uncomfortable about penitents as anybody, and we give them as wide a +berth." + +"You're my friend, Jimmy," she said. "There's dinner! But you won't be +allowed to eat. You'll have to begin at the beginning and tell us all +about her! Though I don't see," she went on, "how you can know very +much more than you put in the paper, if you didn't even find out where +she lived." + +Jimmy, his effect produced, his long meditated vengeance completed by +the flare of color he'd seen come up in Violet's cheeks, settled down +seriously to the telling of his tale, stopping occasionally to bolt a +little food just before his plate was snatched away from him, but +otherwise without intermission. + +He'd suspected nothing about the costumes on that opening night of _Come +On In_, until a realization of how amazingly good they were, made him +search his program. The line "Costumes by Dane," had lighted up in his +mind a wild surmise of the truth, though he admitted it had seemed +almost too good to be true. Because the costumes were really wonderful. +He tried to tell them how wonderful they were, but Violet seemed to +regard this as a digression. She wanted facts. + +"Anyhow," he put in in confirmation, "there wasn't a single paper the +next day that didn't feature the costumes in speaking of the +performance. They were the one unqualified hit of the show." + +He cast about in his mind, he said, for some way of finding out who Dane +really was. And having learned that Galbraith was putting on the show at +the Casino, and having reflected that he was as likely to know about +Rose as anybody, he looked him up. + +"Galbraith, you know," he explained, "is the man who put on _The Girl +Up-stairs_ here at the Globe, winter before last." + +Galbraith proved a mine of information--no, not a mine, because you had +to dig to get things out of a mine. Galbraith was more like one of those +oil-wells that is technically known as a gusher. He simply spouted facts +about Rose and couldn't be stopped. She was his own discovery. He'd seen +her possibilities when she designed and executed those twelve costumes +for the sextette in _The Girl Up-stairs_. He'd brought her down to New +York to act as his assistant. She worked for Galbraith the greater part +of last season. Jimmy had never known of anybody having just that sort +of job before. Galbraith, busy with two or three productions at once, +had put over a lot of the work of conducting rehearsals on her +shoulders. He'd get a number started, having figured out the maneuvers +the chorus were to go through, the steps they'd use and so on, and then +Rose would actually take his place; would be in complete charge of the +rehearsal as the director's representative, while he was off doing +something else. + +It must have been an extraordinarily interesting job, Jimmy thought, and +evidently she'd got away with it, since Galbraith spoke of the loss of +her with unqualified regret. + +The costuming, last season, had been a side issue, at the beginning at +least, but she'd done part of the costumes for one of his productions, +and they were so strikingly successful that Abe Shuman had simply +snatched her away from him. + +"The funny thing is the way she does them," Jimmy said. "Everybody else +who designs costumes, just draws them; dinky little water-colored +plates, and the plates are sent out to a company like The Star Costume +Company, and they execute them. But Rose can't draw a bit. She got a +manikin--not an ordinary dressmaker's form, but a regular painter's +manikin with legs, and made her costumes on the thing; or at least cut +out a sort of pattern of them in cloth. But somehow or other, the +designing of them and the execution are more mixed up together by Rose's +method than by the orthodox one. She wanted to get some women in to sew +for her, and see the whole job through herself; deliver the costumes +complete, and get paid for them. But it seems that the Shumans, on the +side, owned The Star Company and raked off a big profit on the costumes +that way. I don't know all the details. I don't know that Galbraith did. +But, anyhow, the first thing anybody knew, Rose had financed herself. +She got one of those rich young bachelor women in New York to go into +the thing with her, and organized a company, and made Abe Shuman an +offer on all the costumes for _Come On In_. Galbraith thinks that Abe +Shuman thought she was sure to lose a lot of money on it and go broke +and that then he could put her to work at a salary, so he gave her the +job. + +"But she didn't lose. She evidently made a chunk out of it, and her +reputation at the same time." + +Violet was immensely thrilled by this recital. "Won't she be perfectly +wonderful," she exclaimed, "for the Junior League show, when she comes +back!" + +Jimmy found an enormous satisfaction in saying, "Oh, she'll be too +expensive for you. She's a regular robber, she says." + +"She _says_!" cried Violet. "Do you mean you've talked with her?" + +"Do you think I'd have come hack from New York without?" said Jimmy. +"Galbraith told me to drop in at the Casino that same afternoon. Some of +the costumes were to be tried on, and either 'Miss Dane' or some one of +her assistants would be there. Probably she herself, though he knew she +was dreadfully busy. + +"Well, and she came. I almost fell over her out there in the dark, +because of course the auditorium wasn't lighted at all. I'll admit she +rather took my breath, just glancing up at me, and peering to make out +who I was, and then her face going all alight with that smile of hers. I +didn't know what to call her, and was stammering over a mixture of Miss +Dane and Mrs. Aldrich, when she laughed and held out a hand to me and +said she didn't remember whether I'd ever called her Rose or not, but +she'd like to hear some one call her that, and wouldn't I begin." + +"And of course," said Violet, "you fell in love with her on the spot." + +"No, that wasn't the spot," said Jimmy. "It was where she stood on the +Globe stage, the opening night of _The Girl Up-stairs_, when she caught +my eye and gave a sort of little gasp, and then went on with her dance +as if nothing had happened that mattered to her. I saw then that she had +more sand than I knew was in the world." + +"And all your pretending that night you were here, then," said Violet, +"all that stuff about an amazing resemblance and a working +hypothesis ..." + +"All bunk," said Jimmy. "I'd have gone a lot further if there'd been any +use." + +"All right," said Violet. "I'll forgive you, if you'll tell me every +word she said." + +Jimmy explained that there hadn't been any chance to talk much. The +costumes began coming up on the stage just then (on chorus-girls, of +course) and she was up over the runway in a minute, talking them over +with Galbraith. "When she'd finished, she came down to me again for a +minute, but it was hardly longer than that really. She said she wished +she might see me again, but that she couldn't ask me to come to the +studio, because it was a perfect bedlam, and that there was no use +asking me to come to her apartment, because she was never there herself +these days, except for about seven hours a night of the hardest kind of +sleep. If I could stay around till her rush was over ... But then, of +course, she knew I couldn't." + +"And you never thought of asking her," Violet wailed, "where the +apartment was, so that the rest of us, if we were in New York, could +look her up, or write to her from here?" + +"No," said Jimmy. "I never thought of asking for her address. But it's +the easiest thing in the world to get it. Call up Rodney. He knows. +That's what I told the other five." + +"What makes you think he knows?" Violet demanded. "We thought he knew +about that other thing, but I don't believe he did." + +"Well, for one thing," said Jimmy, "when Rose was asking for news of all +of you, she said 'I hear from Rodney regularly. Only he doesn't tell me +much gossip.'" + +"_Hears_ from him!" gasped Violet. "_Regularly!_" She was staring at +Jimmy in a dazed sort of way. "Well, does she write to him? Has she made +it up with him? Is she coming back?" + +"I suppose you can just hear me asking her all those questions? +Casually, in the aisle of a theater, while she was getting ready for a +running jump into a taxi?" + +The color came up into Violet's face again. There was a maddening sort +of jubilant jocularity about these men, the looks and almost winks they +exchanged, the distinctly saucy quality of the things they said to her. + +"Of course," she said coolly, "if Rose had told me that she heard from +Rodney regularly, although he didn't send her much of the gossip, I +shouldn't have had to ask her those questions I'd have known from the +way she looked and the way her voice sounded, whether she was writing to +Rodney or not and whether she meant to come back to him or not; whether +she was ready to make it up if he was--all that. Any woman who knew her +at all would. Only a man, perfectly infatuated, grinning ... See if you +can't tell what she looked like and how she said it." + +Jimmy, meek again, attempted the task. + +"Well," he said, "she didn't look me in the eye and register deep +meanings or anything like that. I don't know where she looked. As far as +the inflection of her voice went, it was just as casual as if she'd been +telling me what she'd had for lunch. But the quality of her voice +just--richened up a bit, as if the words tasted good to her. And she +smiled just barely as if she knew I'd be staggered and didn't care a +damn. There you are! Now interpret unto me this dream, oh, Joseph." + +Violet's eyes were shining. "Why, it's as plain!" she said. "Can't you +see that she's just waiting for him; that she'll come like a shot the +minute he says the word? And there he is, eating his heart out for her, +and in his rage charging poor John perfectly terrific prices for his +legal services, when all he's got to do is to say 'please,' in order to +be happy." + +There was a little silence after that. Then: + +"Don't you suppose," she went on, "there's something we can do?" + +A supreme contentment always made John Williamson silent. He'd been +beaming at Jimmy all through the dinner, guarding him tenderly against +interruptions, with pantomimic instructions to the servants. If the +vague look in Jimmy's eyes suggested the want of a cigarette, John +nodded one up for him. He didn't ask a question. Evidently, between +Jimmy and Violet, the story was being elicited to his satisfaction. But +it was amazing how quickly that last words of his wife's snatched him +out of that beatific abstraction. + +"No, there is not," he said. + +The tone of his voice was a good deal more familiar to his fellow +directors in some of his enterprises, than it was to his wife. She +looked at him as if she couldn't quite believe she'd understood. + +"There is not what?" she asked. + +"There is not a thing that we can do or are going to do about Rose and +Rodney. We did something once before and made a mess of it. This time +we're going to let them alone. They're both of age and of sound mind, +and they've got each other's addresses. If they want to get together +again, they will." + + * * * * * + +"I've had a perfectly bang-up evening," said Jimmy to Violet a little +later when he took his leave. + +"I know you have," she said dryly. Then, with a change of manner, "But I +have, too, Jimmy. You believe that, don't you?" + +"Sure I do," he said, and shook hands with her all over again. Violet +was a good sort. + +Riding home in the elevated train, Jimmy Wallace hummed what he +conceived to be a tune. And when he did that ...! + + + + +CHAPTER II + +A BROKEN PARALLEL + + +None of the speculative explanations Rodney's friends advanced for his +having bought that precious solemn house of the McCreas, together with +all its rarified esthetic furniture, exactly covered the ground. He +didn't buy it in the expectation that Rose was coming back to live in +it, and still less with the even remote notion of finding a successor to +her. He hadn't bought it because it was a bargain. He had very little +idea whether it was a bargain or not. And if there was a grain of truth +in John Williamson's explanation, Rodney was only vaguely aware of it. + +He'd have said, if he'd set about formulating an explanation, that he +bought the house as a result of eliminating the alternatives to buying +it. Florence meant to sell it to somebody, and if he didn't buy it, he'd +have to move out. Rather disingenuously, he represented to himself that +his dislike of moving out sprang from the trouble that would be involved +in finding some other place to live in, furnishing it, reorganizing his +establishment. Really, he hadn't time for that. Frederica would have +done it for him in a minute, but he ignored that possibility. + +Down underneath these shallow practical considerations, lay the fact +that such a reorganization would have been a tacit acknowledgment of +defeat; not only an acknowledgment to the world, which he'd have liked +to pretend didn't matter much, but an acknowledgment of defeat to +himself. What he had been trying to do ever since his return from that +maddening talk with Rose in Dubuque, had been just to sit tight; to go +on living a day at a time; to take the future in as small doses as he +could manage. + +Had he been the sort of person who finds comfort in mottoes, he'd have +laid in a stock, such as, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof"; +"Holdfast is the only dog"; "Don't cross your bridges until you come to +them." As the period between the night of his discovery of Rose on the +Globe stage and the day of his return from Dubuque receded, and as the +fierceness of the pain of it died away again (because such pains do die +away. They can't keep screwed up into an ecstasy of torment forever) the +part he'd played in the events of it, seemed to him less and less worthy +of the sort of man he'd always considered himself to be; a +self-controlled, self-disciplined adult. He'd acted for a while there, +with the savage egotism of a distracted boy; thrown his dignity to the +winds; made a holy show of himself. Well, that period was over at all +events. Whatever the future might confront him with, he could promise +himself, he thought, to keep his head. + +But for a while, he didn't want to be confronted with anything, let +alone to start anything; not until he could get his breath; not until he +had time to think everything out; discover, if possible, where the whole +miserable trouble had begun. He'd go back to the beginning, sometime, +and try to work it all out. It went, probably, a long way back of the +night when that hasty speech of his about not jeopardizing the +children's lives to gratify his wife's whims had set the match to her +resolution to leave him and the babies and live a life for herself. + +But, though he told himself every day that he must begin ordering his +old memories, analyzing them, in search of the clue, he didn't begin the +process. Spiritually, he just held himself rigidly still. He might have +compared himself to a man standing off a pack of wolves, knowing that +his slightest move would precipitate a rush upon him. Or, perhaps more +nearly, to a man just recovering consciousness after an accident, afraid +to stir lest the smallest movement might reveal more serious injuries +than he suspected. + +His mind had never worked so brilliantly as it was working now. The +problems involved in his clients' affairs were child's play to him. He +took them apart and put them together again with a careless, confident, +infallible perspicacity that amazed his colleagues and his opponents. +And, as Frank Crawford had pointed out, he took a savagely contemptuous +pleasure in making those clients pay through the nose. + +But he could look neither back at Rose, nor forward to her. He could +not, by any stretch of resolution, have nerved himself to the point of +giving up that house that had nearly all his memories of her associated +with it. There hadn't been a change of a single piece of furniture in it +since she went away. Her bedroom and her dressing-room were just as she +had left them. Her clothes were just as they had been left after the +packing of that small trunk. She might have been off spending a week-end +somewhere. + +The attitude couldn't be kept up forever, he knew. Some time or other +he'd have to cross the next bridge; come to some more definite +understanding with Rose than that inconclusive ridiculous scene there in +Dubuque had left him with. (_What_ a fool he had been that day!) There +were the twins coming along. For the present, their nurse (It wasn't +Mrs. Ruston. He'd taken the first reasonable excuse for supplanting +her.) and the pretty little snub-nosed nurse-maid Rose had liked, could +supply their wants well enough. But the time wasn't so far ahead when +they'd need a mother. What would he do then; let Rose have them half the +time and keep them half the time himself? He'd read a perfectly beastly +book once,--he couldn't remember the title of it--about a child who had +been brought up that way. But, at all events, he needn't do anything +yet. + +Meanwhile, it healed his lacerated pride to march along and keep the +routine going. It was with a perfectly immense relief that he snatched +at the chance to buy the McCrea house, and by so doing make the +permanency of his way of life a little more secure. He could keep what +he had, anyway. And he could show the world, and Rose, that he wasn't +the broken frantic creature he knew she'd seen, and suspected it had +glimpsed. John Williamson's explanation wasn't altogether wrong. + +Perhaps, had it been possible for Jimmy Wallace to tell him, just as he +told Violet and John Williamson, how Rose's voice "richened up as if +the words tasted good to her," when she mentioned the fact that she +heard from her husband "regularly but not much," he might have drawn the +same favorable augury from it that Violet did. But from her answering +communications, though he drew comfort, he got no hope. + +It was Rose herself who began this correspondence, within a month of her +arrival in New York. And Rodney, when he finished reading her letter, +tore it to pieces and flung it into the fire, in a transport of +disappointment and anger. The sight of her writing on the envelope had +brought his heart into his mouth, of course. And when his shaking +fingers had got it open and he saw that it indeed contained a letter +from her, beginning "Dear Rodney," and signed "Rose," the wild surge of +hope that swept over him actually turned him giddy, so that it was two +or three minutes before he could read it. + +But the thing ran like another instalment of the talk they had had in +Dubuque. She knew he had been distressed over the shabbiness of her +surroundings, knocking about with that road company, and she was afraid +that in spite of the assurance she had then given him, he was still +worried about her. She was sure he'd be glad to know that she'd quit the +stage for good, as an active performer on it, at least; that she was +earning an excellent salary, fifty dollars a week, doing a highly +congenial kind of work that had good prospects of advancement in it. She +had a very comfortable little apartment (she gave him the address of it) +and was living in a way that--she had written "even Harriet," but +scratched this out--Frederica, for example, would consider entirely +respectable. So he needn't feel another moment's anxiety about her. +She'd have written sooner, but had wanted to get fully settled in her +new job and be sure she was going to be able to keep it, in order that +she might have something definitely reassuring to tell him. And she +hoped he and the babies were well. + +It was not until hours afterward, when the letter was an +indistinguishable fluff of white ash in the fireplace, that it occurred +to him that it had no satirical intent whatever and that the purpose of +it had been, quite simply, what it had pretended to be; namely, to +reassure him and put an end to his anxieties. + +As he had read it in the revulsion from that literally sickening hope of +his, it had seemed about the most mordant piece of irony that had ever +been launched against him. The assumption of it had seemed to be that he +was the most pitiable snob in the world; that all he'd cared for had +been that she'd disgraced him by going on the stage. He'd be glad to +know that she was once more "respectable." + +Well--this was the question which, as I said, he did not ask himself +until hours later--wasn't she justified in believing that? Certainly +that night, in her little room on North Clark Street, he'd given her +reason enough for thinking so. But later, in Dubuque--well, hadn't he +quoted Harriet to her? Hadn't he offered to help her as a favor to +himself, because he couldn't endure it that she should live like this? +Had he exhibited anything to her at all in their two encounters, but an +uncontrolled animal lust and a perfectly contemptible vanity? + +He bitterly regretted having destroyed the letter. But the tone of it, +he was sure, except for that well merited jibe about Harriet, which had +been erased, was kindly. Yet he had acted once more, like a spoiled +child about it. + +Could he write and thank her? In Dubuque she had asked him not to come +back. Did that prohibition cover writing? Her letter did not explicitly +revoke it. She asked him no questions. But he remembered now a +post-script, which, at the time of reading, he'd taken merely as a final +barb of satire. "I am still Doris Dane down here, of course," it had +read. If she hadn't meant that for a sneering assurance that his +precious name wasn't being taken in vain--and had he ever heard Rose +sneer at anybody?--what could have been the purpose of it except to make +sure that a letter from him wouldn't come addressed "Rose Aldrich," and +so fail to be delivered to her. + +It was due only to luck that, in his first disappointment, he hadn't +destroyed her address with the letter. But she had duplicated it on the +flap of the envelope, and the envelope was not thrown in the fire. + +He spent hours composing a reply. And the thing he finally sent off, +once it was committed to the post, seemed quite the worst of all his +efforts. His impulse was to send another on the heels of it. But he +waited a week, then wrote again. And this time, the stiffness of +self-consciousness was not quite so paralyzing. He managed to give her a +little real information about the condition of the twins and the +household. About himself, he stated that he was well, though busier than +he liked to be. + +He experienced a very vague, faint satisfaction, two days later, over +the reflection that this letter was in her hands, and he came presently +to the audacious resolution that until she forbade him, he would go on +writing to her every week. She'd see that she needn't answer and it +would no doubt add something--how much he didn't dare to try to +estimate--to her happiness, to know that all was going well in the home +that she had left. + +She began pretty soon to answer these letters with stiff little notes, +strictly limited to a bulletin of her own activities and a grateful +acknowledgment of the latest one he had sent her. Invariably, every +Tuesday morning, one of these notes arrived. And this state of things +continued, unchanged, for months. + +He experienced a bewildering mixture of emotions over these letters of +hers. They drove him, sometimes, into outbursts of petulant rage. Often +the knowledge that one of them was to be expected in the morning, +delivered him up, against all the resistance he could make, to a flood +of tormenting memories of her. And across the mood the letter would find +him in, its cool little commonplaces would sting like the cut of a whip. + +The mere facts her letters recounted aroused contradictory emotions in +him, too. They all spelled success and assurance, and almost from week +to week they marked advancement. The first effect of this was always to +make his heart sink; to make her seem farther away from him; to make the +possibility of any future need of him that would give him his +opportunity, seem more and more remote. The other feeling, whose glow he +was never conscious of till later--a feeling so surprising and +irrational that he could hardly call it by name, was pride. What in +God's name had he to be proud of? Was she a possession of his? Could he +claim any credit for her success? But the glow persisted in spite of +these questions. + +His satisfaction in his own letters to her was less mixed. They must, he +thought, gradually be restoring in her mind, the image of himself as a +man who, as Harriet said, could take his medicine without making faces; +who could endure pain and punishment without howling about it. Perhaps, +in time, those letters would obliterate the memory of the vain beast +he'd been that night.... + +If Rodney had done an unthinkable thing; if he had kept copies of his +letters to Rose, along with her answers, in a chronological file the way +Miss Beach kept his business correspondence, he would have made the +discovery that the stiffness of them had gradually worn away and that +they were now a good deal more than mere _pro forma_ bulletins. There +had crept into them, so subtly and so gently that between one of them +and the next no striking difference was to be observed, a friendliness, +quite cool, but wonderfully firm. She was frankly jubilant over the +success of her costumes in _Come On In_ and she enclosed with her letter +a complete set of newspaper reviews of the piece. They reached him a day +or two before Jimmy Wallace telephoned, and this fact perhaps had +something to do with the gruff good humor with which he told Jimmy to go +as far as he liked in his newspaper paragraph. + +It was a week later that she wrote: + +"I met James Randolph coming up Broadway yesterday afternoon, about five +o'clock. I had a spare half-hour and he said he had nothing else but +spare half-hours; that was what he'd come to New York for. So we turned +into the Knickerbocker and had tea. He's changed, somehow, since I saw +him last; as brilliant as ever, but rather--lurid. Do you suppose things +are going badly between him and Eleanor? I'd hate to think that, but I +shouldn't be surprised. He spoke of calling me up again, but this +morning, instead, I got a note from him saying he was going back to +Chicago. He told me he hadn't seen you forever. Why don't you drop in on +him?" + + * * * * * + +It was quite true that Rodney had seen very little of the Randolphs +since Rose went away. His liking for James had always been an affair of +the intelligence. The doctor's mind, with its powers of dissecting and +coordinating the phenomena of every-day life, its luminous flashes, its +readiness to go all the way through to the most startling conclusions, +had always so stimulated and attracted his own, that he'd never stopped +to ask whether or not he liked the rest of the man that lay below the +intelligence. + +When it came to confronting his friends, in the knowledge that they knew +that Rose had left him for the Globe chorus, he found that James +Randolph was one he didn't care to face. He knew too damned much. He'd +be too infernally curious; too full of surmises, eager for experiments. + +The Rodney of a year before, intact, unscarred, without, he'd have said, +a joint in his harness, could afford to enjoy with no more than a +deprecatory grin, the doctor's outrageous and remorseless way of pinning +out on his mental dissecting board, anything that came his way. The +Rodney who came back from Dubuque couldn't grin. He knew too much of the +intimate agony that produced those interesting lesions and +abnormalities. Even in the security, if it could have been had, that his +own situation wouldn't be scientifically dissected and discussed, he'd +still have wanted to keep away from James Randolph. + +But Rose's letter put a different face on the matter. He felt perfectly +sure that Randolph hadn't been analyzing her during that spare half-hour +at the Knickerbocker. The shoe, it appeared, had been on the other foot. +The fact that she'd put him, partly at least, in possession of what she +had observed and what she guessed, gave him a sort of shield against the +doctor. He told himself that his principal reason for going was to get a +little bit more information about Rose than her letters provided him +with. But the anticipation he dwelt on with the greatest pleasure, +really, was of saying, "Oh, yes. Rose wrote that she'd seen you." + +So one evening, after keeping up the pretense through his solitary +dinner and the cigar that followed it, that he meant presently to go up +to his study and correct galley proofs on an enormous brief, he slipped +out about nine o'clock, and walked around to the Randolphs' new house. + +This latest venture of Eleanor's had attracted a good deal of comment +among her friends. Somebody called it, with a rather cruel _double +entendre_, Bertie Willis' last word. In the obvious sense of the phrase, +this was true. Eleanor had given him a free hand, and he had gone his +limit. He'd been working slowly backward from Jacobean, through Tudor. +But this thing was perfect Perpendicular. You could, as John Williamson +said, kid yourself into the notion, when you walked under the +keel-shaped arch to their main doorway, that you were going to church. +And the style was carried out with inexorable rigor, down to the most +minute details. But since everybody knew that the latest thing, the +inevitably coming thing, was the pure unadulterated ugliness of +Georgian, a style that Bertie had opposed venomously (because he +couldn't build it, the uncharitable said); and because even Bertie's +carefully preserved youth was felt to have gone a little stale and it +was no longer fashionable to consider his charms irresistible, the +phrase, "his last word," was instantly understood, as I said, to have a +secondary sense. + +No one, of course, could tell Eleanor anything about what the coming +styles were going to be, in architecture or anything else. She was one +of these persons with simply a sixth sense for fashions, and her having +gone to Bertie Willis, instead of to young Mellish of the historic New +York firm, McCleod, Hill, Stone & Black, who was doing such delightfully +hideous things in Georgian, caused, among her friends, a good deal of +comment. Her explanation that medicine was a medieval profession and +that she had to have a medieval house to go with James, was felt to be a +mere evasion. + +It was recognized that one had to flirt with Bertie while he was +building her house. And in the days when everybody else had been doing +it, too, it didn't matter. But now that the celebrated _hareem_ had +ceased to exist, it was felt that one would do well to be a little +careful; at least, to put a more or less summary end to the flirtation +when the house was finished. But Eleanor hadn't done that. She was +playing with him more exclusively than ever. + +Rodney hadn't been in the house before, and he reflected, as he stood at +the door, after ringing the bell, that his own house was quite meek and +conventional alongside this. The grin that this consideration afforded +him, was still on his lips when, a servant having opened the door, he +found himself face to face with the architect. + +Bertie, top-coated and hat in hand, was waiting for Eleanor, who was +coming down the stairs followed by a maid with her carriage coat. He +returned Rodney's nod pretty stiffly, as was natural enough, since +Rodney's grin had distinctly brightened up at sight of him. + +Eleanor said, rather negligently, "Hello, Rod. We're just dashing off to +the Palace to see a perfectly exquisite little dancer Bertie's +discovered down there. She comes on at half past nine, so we've got to +fly. Want to come?" + +"No," Rodney said. "I came over to see Jim. Is he at home?" + +The maid was holding out the coat for Eleanor's arms, Bertie was fussing +around ineffectually, hooking his stick over his left arm to give him a +free right hand to do something with, he didn't quite know what. But +Eleanor, at Rodney's question, just stood for a second quite still. She +wasn't looking at anybody, but the expression in her eyes was sullen. + +"Yes, he's at home," she said at last. + +"Busy, I suppose;" said Rodney. Her inflection had dictated this reply. + +"Yes, he's busy," she repeated absently and in a tone still more coldly +hostile, though Rodney perceived that the hostility was not meant for +him. And so plainly did the tone and the look and the arrested attitude +proclaim that she was following out a train of thought and hadn't as yet +got to the end of it, that he stood as still as she was. + +Bertie, irreproachably correct as always, settled his shoulders inside +his coat, and took his stick in his right hand again. Eleanor now looked +around at him. + +"Wait two minutes," she said, "if you don't mind." Then, to Rodney, +"Come along." And she led the way up the lustrous, velvety teakwood +stair. + +He followed her. But arrived at the drawing-room floor, he protested. + +"Look here!" he said. "If Jim's busy ..." + +"You've never been in here before, have you?" she asked. "How's Rose? +Jim saw her, you know, in New York." + +"Yes," he said. "Rose wrote to me she'd seen him, and I thought I'd drop +around for a chat. But if he's busy ..." + +"Oh, don't be _too_ dense, Rodney!" she said. "A man has to be busy when +he's known to be in the house and won't entertain his wife's guests. Go +up one flight more and to the door that corresponds to that one. It +won't do you any good to knock. He'll either not answer or else tell you +to go to hell. Just sing out who you are and go right in." + +She gave him a nod and a hard little smile, and went down-stairs again +to Bertie. + +Rodney stood where she had left him, in two minds whether to carry out +her instructions or to wait until he heard her and Bertie go out and +then quietly follow them. It was a beastly situation, dragged into a +family quarrel like that; forced to commit an intrusion that was so +plainly labeled in advance. And on the other hand, it was a decidedly +interesting situation. If Eleanor was as reckless as that with facts +most women keep to themselves as long as possible, what would her +outspoken husband be. But if he were full of his grievances, he probably +wouldn't talk about Rose. + +What really determined his action was Eleanor's discovery, or pretended +discovery down in the hall below, that her gloves weren't what she +wanted and her instructions to the maid to go up and get her a fresh +pair. It would be too ridiculous to be caught there--lurking. + +So he mounted the next flight, found the door Eleanor had indicated, +knocked smartly on it, and to forestall his getting told to go to hell, +sang out at the same time, "This is Rodney Aldrich. May I come in?" + +"Come in, of course," Randolph called. "I'm glad to see you," he added, +coming to meet his guest. "But do you mind telling me how the devil you +got in here? Some poor wretch will lose his job, you know, if Eleanor +finds out about this. When I'm in this room, sacred to reflection and +research, it's a first-class crime to let me be disturbed." + +It didn't need his sardonic grin to point the satire of his words. The +way he had uttered "sacred to reflection and research," was positively +savage. + +Rodney said curtly, "Eleanor sent me up herself. I didn't much want to +come, to tell the truth, when I heard you were busy." + +"Eleanor!" her husband repeated. "I thought she'd gone out--with her +poodle." + +Rodney said, with unconcealed distaste, "They were on the point of going +out when I came in. That's how Eleanor happened to see me." + +With a visible effort, Randolph recovered a more normal manner. "I'm +glad it happened that way," he said. "Get yourself a drink. You'll find +anything you want over there, I guess, and something to smoke; then +we'll sit down and have an old-fashioned talk." + +The source of drinks he indicated was a well-stocked cellarette at the +other side of the room. But Rodney's eye fell first on a decanter and +siphon on the table, within reach of the chair Randolph had been sitting +in. His host's glance followed his. + +"This is Bourbon I've got over here," he added. "I suppose you prefer +Scotch." + +"I don't believe I want anything more to drink just now," Rodney said. +And as he turned to the smoking table to get a cigar, Randolph allowed +himself another sardonic grin. + +The preliminaries were gone through rather elaborately; chairs drawn up +and adjusted, ash-trays put within reach; cigars got going +satisfactorily. But the talk they were supposed to prepare the way for +didn't at once begin. + +Randolph took another stiffish drink and settled back into a dull +sullen abstraction. + +Rodney wanted to say, "I hear from Rose you had a little visit with her +in New York." But, with his host's mood what it was, he shrank from +introducing that topic. Finally, for the sake of saying something, he +remarked: + +"This is a wonderful room, isn't it?" + +Randolph roused himself. "Never been in here before?" he asked. + +"I've never been in the house before, I'm ashamed to say." + +"What!" Randolph cried. "My God! Well, then, come along." + +Rodney resisted a little. He was comfortable. They could look over the +house later. But Randolph wouldn't listen. + +"That's the first thing to do," he insisted. "Indispensable preliminary. +You can't enjoy the opera without a libretto. Come along." + +It was a remarkable house. Before the first fifteen minutes of their +inspection were over, Rodney had come to the conclusion that though +Bertie Willis might be an ass, was indeed an indisputable ass, he was no +fool. It was almost uncannily clever, the way all the latest devices for +modern comfort wore, so demurely, the mask of a perfectly consistent +medievalism. And there were some effects that were really magnificent. +The view of the drawing-room, for instance, from the recessed dais at +the far end of it, where the grand piano stood--a piano that contrived +to look as if it might have been played upon by the second wife of Henry +VIII,--down toward the magnificent stone chimney at the other; the +octagonal dining-room with the mysterious audacity of its lighting; the +kitchen with its flag floor (only they were not flags, but an artful +linoleum), its great wrought-iron chains and hoods beneath which all the +cooking was done--by electricity. + +Randolph took him over the whole thing from bottom to top. Through it +all, he kept up the glib patter of a showman; the ironic intent of it +becoming more and more marked all the while. + +They brought up at last in the study they had started from. + +"Oh, but wait a moment!" Randolph said. "Here's two more rooms for you +to see." + +The first one explained its purpose at a glance, with a desk and +typewriter, and filing cabinets around the walls. + +"Rubber floor," Randolph pointed out, "felt ceiling; absolutely +sound-proof. Here's where my stenographer sits all day, ready,--like a +fireman. And this," he concluded, leading the way to the other room, "is +the holy of holies." + +It had a rubber floor, too, and Rodney supposed, a felt ceiling. But its +only furniture was one straight-back chair and a canvas cot. + +"Sound-proof too," said Randolph. "But sounding-boards or something in +all the walls. I press this button, start a dictaphone, and talk in any +direction, anywhere. It's all taken down. Here's where I'm supposed to +think, make discoveries, and things. No distractions. One hundred per +cent. efficient. My God! I tried it for a while. Felt like a fool actor +in a Belasco play. Do you remember? The one with the laboratory and the +doctor?" + +They went back into the study. + +"Clever beasts, though--poodles," he remarked, as he nodded Rodney to +his chair and poured himself another drink. "Learn their tricks very +nicely. But good Heavens, Aldrich, think of him as a man! Think what our +American married women are up against, when they want somebody to play +off against their husbands and have to fall back on tired little beasts +like that. In all the older countries there are plenty of men, real men +who've got something, that a married woman can fall back on. But think +of a woman of Eleanor's attractions having to take up a thing like that. +There's nothing else for her. Would _you_ come around and hold her hand +and make love to her, or any other man like you? Not once in a thousand +times. Eleanor doesn't mean anything. She's trying to make me jealous. +That's her newest experiment. But it's downright pitiful, I say." + +Rodney got up out of his chair. It wasn't a possible conversation. + +"I'll be running along, I think," he said. "I've a lot of proof to +correct to-night, and you've got work of your own, I expect." + +"Sit down again," said Randolph sharply. "I'm just getting drunk. But +that can wait. I'm going to talk. I've got to talk. And if you go, I +swear I'll call up Eleanor's butler and talk to him. You'll keep it to +yourself, anyway." + +He added, as Rodney hesitated, "I want to tell you about Rose. I saw her +in New York, you know." + +Rodney sat down again. "Yes," he said, "so she wrote. Tell me how she +looked. She's been working tremendously hard, and I'm a little afraid +she's overdoing it." + +"She looks," Randolph said very deliberately, "a thousand years old." He +laughed at the sharp contraction of Rodney's brows. "Oh, not like that! +She's as beautiful as ever. More. Facial planes just a hair's breadth +more defined perhaps--a bit more of what that painter Burton calls edge. +But not a line, not a mark. Her skin's still got that bloom on it, and +she still flushes up when she smiles. She's lost five pounds, perhaps, +but that's just condition. And vitality! My God!--But a thousand years +old just the same." + +"I'd like to know what you mean by that," said Rodney. He added, "if you +mean anything," but the words were unspoken. + +Randolph did mean something. + +"Why, look here," he said. "You know what a kid she was when you married +her. Schoolgirl! I used to tell her things and she'd listen, all +eyes--holding her breath! Until I felt almost as wise as she thought I +was. She was always game, even then. If she started a thing, she saw it +through. If she said, 'Tell it to me straight,' why she took it, +whatever it might be, standing up. She wasn't afraid of anything. +Courage of innocence. Because she didn't know. + +"Well, she's courageous now, because she knows. She's been through it +all and beaten it all, and she knows she can beat it again. She +understands--I tell you--everything. + +"Why, look here! We all but ran into each other on the corner, there, of +Broadway and Forty-second Street; shook hands, said howdy-do. How long +was I here for? Was Eleanor with me? And so on. If I had a spare +half-hour, would I come in and have tea with her at the Knickerbocker? +She'd nodded at two or three passing people while we stood there. And +then somebody said, 'Hello, Dane,' and stopped. A miserable, shabby, +shivering little painted thing. Rose said, 'Hello,' and asked how she +was getting along. Was she working now? She said no; did Rose know of +anything? Rose said, 'Give me your address and if I can find anything, +I'll let you know.' The horrible little beast told where she lived and +went away. Rose didn't say anything to me, except that she was somebody +who'd been out in a road company with her. But there was a look in her +eyes ...! Oh, she knew--everything. Knew what that kid was headed for. +Knew there was nothing to be done about it. She had no flutters about +it, didn't pull a long face, didn't, as I told you, say a word. But +there was a look in her eyes, behind her eyes, somehow, that understood +and _faced_--God!--everything. And then we went in and had our tea. + +"I had a thousand curiosities about her. I'd have found out anything I +could. But it was she who did the finding out. Beyond inquiring about +you, how lately I'd seen you, and so on, she hardly asked a question; +talked about indifferent things: New York, the theaters, how we passed +the time out here, I don't know what. But pretty soon I saw that she +understood me, saw right into me like through an open window into a +lighted room. As easily as that. She knew what was the matter with me; +knew what I'd made of myself. And by God, Aldrich, she didn't even +despise me! + +"I came back here to kick this damned thing to pieces, give myself a +fresh start. And when I got here, I hadn't the sand. I get drunk +instead." + +He poured himself another long drink and sipped it slowly. "Everybody +knows," he said at last, "that prostitutes almost invariably take to +drugs or drink. But I know why they do." + +That remark stung Rodney out of his long silence. During the whole of +Randolph's recital of his encounter with Rose, he'd never once lifted +his eyes from the gray ash of his cigar, and the violet filament of +smoke that arose from it. He didn't want to look at Randolph, nor think +about him. Just wanted to remember every word he said, so that he could +carry the picture away intact. Now that the picture was finished, he +wanted to get out of that room, with it; out into the dark and +loneliness of the streets, where he could walk and think. + +There was something peculiarly horrifying to him in the exhibition +Randolph was making of himself. He'd never in his life taken a drink, +except convivially, and then he took as little as would pass muster. +He'd always found it hard to be sensibly tolerant of the things men said +and did in liquor, even when their condition had overtaken them +unawares. Going off alone and deliberately fuddling one's self as a +means of escaping unpleasant realities, struck him as an act of the +basest cowardice. Whether Randolph's revelation of himself were true or +distorted by alcohol, didn't seem much to matter. But for that picture +of Rose, he'd have gone long ago and left the man to his bemused +reflections. Only ... + +He'd said that Rose understood everything and didn't despise him. A +drunken fancy likely enough. She had seen something though. Her letter +proved that. And having seen it, she'd asked him to drop in on the +doctor for a visit. Did she mean she wanted him to try to help? + +He tried, though not very successfully, to conceal his violent disrelish +of the task, when he said: + +"Look here, Jim! What the devil is the matter with you? Are you sober +enough to tell me?" + +Randolph put down his glass. "I have told you," he said. "It's a thing +that can be told in one word. I'm a prostitute. I'm Eleanor's kept man. +Well kept, oh, yes. Beautifully kept. I'm nothing in God's world but a +possession of hers! A trophy of sorts, an ornament. I'm something she's +made. I have a hell of a big practise. I'm the most fashionable doctor +in Chicago. They come here, the women, damn them, in shoals. That's +Eleanor's doing. I'm a faker, a fraud, a damned actor. I pose for them. +I play up. I give them what they want. And that's her doing. They go +silly about me; fancy they're in love with me. That's what she wants +them to do. It increases my value for her as a possession. + +"I haven't done a lick of honest work in the last year. I can't work. +She won't let me work. She--smothers me. Wherever I turn, there she is, +smoothing things out, trying to making it easy, trying to anticipate my +wants. I've only one want. That's to be let alone. She can't do that. +She's insatiable. She can't help it. There's something drives her on so +that she never can feel sure that she possesses me completely enough. +There's always something more she's trying to get, and I'm always trying +to keep something away from her, and failing. + +"And why? Do you want to know why, Aldrich? That's the cream of the +thing. Because we're so damnably in love with each other. She wants me +to live on her love. To have nothing else to live on. Do you know why +she won't have any children? Because she's jealous of them. Afraid +they'd get between us. She tries to make me jealous with that poodle of +hers--and she succeeds. With that! I'd like to wring his neck. + +"Do you want to know what my notion of Heaven is? It would be to go off +alone, with one suit of clothes in a handbag, oh, and fifty or a hundred +dollars in my pocket--I wouldn't mind that; I don't want to be a +tramp--to some mining town, or mill town, or slum, where I could start a +general practise; where the things I'd get would be accident cases, +confinement cases; real things, urgent things, that night and day are +all alike to. I'd like to start again and be poor; get this stink of +easy money out of my nostrils. I'd like to see if I could make good on +my own; have something I could look at and say, 'That's mine. I did +that. I had to sweat for it.' + +"I've been thinking about that for two years. It makes quite a +fancy-picture. There are a million details I can fill into it. A rotten +little office over a drug-store somewhere; people coming in with real +ills, and I curing them up and charging them a dollar, and sending them +away happy. I smoke a pipe because I can't afford cigars; get my meals +at lunch-counters. I sit up here--in this room--and think about it. + +"I came back from New York, after that look at Rose, meaning to do it; +meaning to talk it out with Eleanor and tell her why, and then go. +Well, I talked. Talk's cheap. But I didn't go. I'll never go. I'll go on +getting softer and more of a fake; more dependent. And Eleanor will go +on eating me up, until the last thing in me that's me myself, is gone. +And then, some day, she'll look at me and see that I'm nothing. That I +have nothing left to love her with." + +Then, with suddenly thickened speech (an affectation, perhaps) he looked +up at Rodney and demanded: + +"What the hell are you looking so s-solemn about? Can't you take a joke? +Come along and have another drink. The night's young." + +"No," Rodney said, "I'm going. And you'd better get to bed." + +"A couple more drinks," Randolph said, "to put the cap on a jolly +evening. Always get drunk th-thoroughly. Then in the morning, you wake +up a wiser man. Wise enough to forget what a damned fool you've been. +You don't want to forget that, Aldrich. You've been drunk and you've +talked like a damned fool. And I've been drunk and I've talked like a +damned fool. But we'll both be wiser in the morning." + +Rodney walked home that night like a man dazed. The vividness of one +blazing idea blinded him. The thing that Randolph had seen and lacked +the courage to do; the thing Rodney despised him for a coward for having +failed to do, that thing Rose had done. Line by line, the parallel +presented itself to him, as the design comes through in a half-developed +photographic plate. + +Without knowing it, yielding to a blind, unscrutinized instinct, he'd +wanted Rose to live on his love. He'd tried to smooth things out for +her, anticipate her wants. He'd wanted her soft, helpless, dependent. As +a trophy? That was what Randolph had said. Had he been as bad as that? +From what other desire of his than that could have come the sting of +exasperation he'd always felt when she'd urged him to let her work for +him; help him to economize, dust and make beds, so that he could go on +writing his book? She'd seen, even then, something he'd been blind +to--something he'd blinded himself to; that love, by itself, was not +enough. That it could poison, as well as feed. + +And, seeing, she had the courage ... He pressed his hands against his +eyes. + +When there could be friendship as well as love between them, she said, +she'd come back. Would she come back now, even for his friendship? He +doubted it. Dared not hope. There came up before him that face of frozen +agony that had confronted him in the room on Clark Street, and he +remembered what she'd said then--with a shudder--about it all ending +"like this." Ending! + +His love had played her false; had tried, instinctively, to smother her, +and defeated at that, had outraged and tortured her. She couldn't +possibly look at it any way but that. And now that she was free, +self-discovered, victorious, was it likely she would submit to its blind +caprices again? The thing Randolph had said was his notion of Heaven, +she'd triumphantly attained. Wouldn't it be her notion of Heaven too? + +But she had won, among the rest of her spoils of victory, the thing she +had originally set out to get. His friendship and respect. Friendship, +he remembered her saying, was a thing you had to earn. When you'd earned +it, it couldn't be withheld from you. Well, it was right she should be +told that; made to understand it to the full. He couldn't ask her to +come back to him. But she must know that her respect was as necessary +now to him, as she'd once said his was to her. He must tell her that. He +must see her and tell her that. + +He stopped abruptly in his walk. His bones, as the Psalmist said, turned +to water. How should he confront that gaze of hers, which knew so much +and understood so deeply--he with the memory of his two last ignominious +encounters with her, behind him? + + + + +CHAPTER III + +FRIENDS + + +Except for the vacuum where the core and heart of it all ought to have +been, Rose's life in New York during the year that put her on the high +road to success as a designer of costumes for the theater, was a good +life, broadening, stimulating, seasoning. It rested, to begin with, on a +foundation of adequate material comfort which the unwonted physical +privations of the six months that preceded it--the room on Clark Street, +the nightmare tour on the road, and even the little back room in Miss +Gibbons' apartment over the drug-store in Centropolis--made seem like +positive luxury. + +After a preliminary fortnight in a little hotel off Washington Square, +which she had heard Jane Lake speak of once as a possible place for a +respectable young woman of modest means to live in, she found an +apartment in Thirteenth Street, not far west of Sixth Avenue. It was in +a quiet block of old private residences. But this building was clean and +new, with plenty of white tile and modern plumbing, and an elevator. Her +apartment had two rooms in it, one of them really spacious to poor Rose +after what she'd been taking for granted lately, besides a nice white +bathroom and a kitchenette. She paid thirty-seven dollars a month for +it, and five dollars a month for a share in a charwoman who came in +every day and made her bed and washed up dishes. + +The extensiveness of this domestic establishment frightened her a little +at first. But she reassured herself with the reflection that under the +rule Gertrude Morse had quoted to her, one week's pay for one month's +rent, she still had a comfortable margin. She furnished it a bit at a +time, with articles chosen in the order of their indispensability, and +she went on, during the summer, to buy some things which were not +indispensable at all. But not very many. Like most persons with a highly +specialized creative talent for one form of beauty (in her case this was +clothes) she was more or less indifferent about others. Witness how +little interest she had taken in the labored beauties of Florence +McCrea's house, even in the unthinking days before she had begun +worrying about the expense of that establishment. Her indifference had +always made Portia boil. Also it may be noted, that Florence McCrea +herself, always went about looking a perfect frump. + +So that, by the time Rose's apartment was furnished to the point of +adequate comfort and decency, she took it for granted and stopped there. +For her, the temptations of old brass, mezzo-tints, and Italian +majolica--Fourth Avenue generally--simply did not exist. + +She bought real china to eat her breakfasts out of, and the occasional +suppers she had at home. She had had enough of thick cups and plates in +the last six months to last her the rest of her life. And it is probable +that she ate up, literally, the margin she had under Gertrude Morse's +rule, in somewhat better restaurants than she need have patronized. + +She did save money though, and put it away in a safe bank. But she never +saved quite so much as she was always meaning to, and she carried along, +for months after she went to work for Galbraith, an almost guilty sense +of luxury. In spite of the fact that she was working very hard and of +the further fact that her hours of labor were largely coincident with +the leisure hours of other people, she made a good many friends. The +first of these was Gertrude Morse, and it was through her, directly or +indirectly, that she acquired the others. + +Gertrude was Abe Shuman's confidential secretary and you can get a +fairly good working notion of her by conceiving the type of person +likely to be found in the borderland of theatrical enterprises, and +then, in all respects, taking the exact antithesis of it. She was a +brisk, prim-mannered, snub-nosed little thing, who wore her hair brushed +down as flat as possible and showed an affection for mannish clothes. +She had a level head, a keen and rather biting wit, which had the +effect of making her constant acts of kindness always unexpected; and +an education which, in her surroundings, seemed almost fantastic. She +was a Radcliff Master of Arts. + +Every one who had any dealings with Abe Shuman perforce knew Gertrude, +and Rose got acquainted with her the first day. Galbraith introduced +them in Shuman's office, and Rose found herself being investigated by a +bright, penetrating and decidedly complex look which she +interpreted--pretty accurately as she found out later--as saying, "Well, +you're about what I expected; ornamental and enthusiastic; just what an +otherwise sane and successful man of fifty would pick out for an +'assistant.' Aren't they just children at that age! But you're welcome. +They deserve it. Good luck to you!" + +But when Rose returned the look with a comprehending smile which said +good-naturedly, "All right! You wait and see," Gertrude's expression +altered into a frankly questioning frown. Two or three days later she +dropped in at a rehearsal, ostensibly with a message from Shuman to +Galbraith. He was on the point of leaving and had turned over the +rehearsal to Rose. Gertrude, when he had gone, settled down comfortably +in the back of the auditorium and watched through a solid hour, +obviously under instructions from Abe to bring back a report as to +whether Galbraith's infatuation should be tolerated or suppressed. At +the end of the hour, during a brief lull in the rehearsal, she came down +the aisle and stopped beside Rose who still had her eye on the stage. + +"I apologize," she said. + +Rose grinned around at her. It was not necessary to ask what for. "Much +obliged," she said. + +"I didn't know that a woman could do that," Gertrude went on. "Didn't +think she'd have the--drive. But you've got it, all right. I don't +suppose you've got an idea when you'll be free for lunch?" + +Rose hadn't, but it was not many days before they got together for that +meal at a business woman's club down on Fortieth Street, and from then +on their acquaintance progressed rapidly. She helped Rose find the +little apartment on Thirteenth Street, entertaining her during the +search with a highly instructive disquisition on the social topography +of New York, and on the following Sunday she ran in, she said, to see if +she could help her get settled. There was no settling to do, but she sat +down and talked--most of the time--for an hour or so. It was a theory of +Gertrude's that the way to find out about people was to talk to them. + +"You can't tell much," she used to say, "by the things people say to +you. Perhaps they've just heard somebody else say them. Maybe they've +got a repertory that it will take you weeks to get to the end of. Or +they may not be able to show you at all what's really inside them. But +from how they take the things you say to them--the things they light up +at and the things they look blank about, the things they're too anxious +to show you they understand, and the things they dare admit they never +heard of--you can tell every time. Find out all you want to know about +anybody in an hour!" + +Rose, it seemed, reacted satisfactorily to her tests, since she was +introduced as rapidly thereafter as their scanty leisure made possible, +to Gertrude's more immediate circle of friends. + +During that first winter, she enjoyed them immensely. They were all +interesting; all "did things"; widely various things, yet, somehow, +related. There was a red-haired fire-brand whose specialty seemed to be +bailing out girls arrested for picketing and whose Sunday diversion +consisted in going down to Paterson, New Jersey, making the police +ridiculous and unhappy for an hour or so, delivering herself of a speech +in defiance of their preventive efforts and finally escaping arrest by a +hair's breadth. They got her finally but since she enjoyed the privilege +of addressing as Uncle a man whose name was uttered with awe about the +corner of Broad Street and Exchange Place, they had to let her go. + +There was a young woman lawyer, associated with Gertrude in an +organization for getting jobs for girls who had just been let out of +jail, a level-headed enterprise, which by conserving its efforts for +those who really wished to benefit by them, managed to accomplish a good +deal. One of their circle was associate editor of a popular magazine and +another wrote short stories, mostly about shop-girls. The last one of +them for Rose to meet, she having been out of town all summer, was +Alice Perosini. She was the daughter of a rich Italian Jew, a +beautiful--really a wonderful person to look at--but a little +unaccountable, especially with the gorgeous clothes she wore, in their +circle. Rose took her time about deciding that she liked her but ended +by preferring her to all the rest. She never talked much; would smoke +and listen, making most of her comments in pantomime, but she had a +trick of capping a voluble discussion with a hard-chiseled phrase which, +whether you felt it precisely fitted or not, you found it difficult to +escape from. + +What forced Rose to a realization of her preference for Alice was the +impulse to tell her who she really was and the suddenly following +reflection that she never had wanted to tell any of the others; that she +had taken care to avoid all reference to the husband and the babies she +had fled from in search of a life of her own. + +She never tried to explain to herself the feeling that imposed this +reticence on her, until the discovery that it didn't exist toward Alice. +She couldn't have feared that they would not approve of what she had +done; it squared so exactly with all their ideas. Indeed the one real +bond between them was a common revolt against the traditional notion +that the way for a woman to effect her will in the world was by +"influencing" a man. They wanted to hold the world in their own hands. +They contemned the "feminine" arts of cajolery. They wanted no odds from +anybody. There wasn't a real man-hater in the crowd, they were too +normal and healthy for that. But they didn't talk much about men; never, +as far as Rose knew, about men--as such. Was the topic suppressed, she +wondered, or was it just that they didn't think about them? + +That question made her realize how little she knew of any of them; how +limited was the range of their intercourse. It was as if they met in a +sort of mental gymnasium, fenced with one another, did callisthenics. +Oh, that was going too far, of course; it was more real than that. But +it was true that it was only their minds that met. And it seemed to be +true that in the realm of mind they were content to live. Had they, +like herself, deep labyrinthine, half-lit caverns down underneath those +north-lighted, logically ordered apartments where Rose always found +them? If they had they never let her or one another suspect it. + +They'd be capable of deciding the great issue between herself and +Rodney, if ever they were told the story, in a half dozen brisk +sentences. Rose would be held to have been right and Rodney wrong, +demonstrably. Rose, illogically, perhaps, shrank from that conclusion or +at least from having it reached that way. There was more to it than +that. There were elements in the situation they wouldn't know how to +allow for. + +But Alice Perosini, she thought, was different. She'd be able to make +some of those allowances. Rose didn't tell her the story but she felt +that at a pinch she could and this feeling was enough to establish Alice +on a different basis from the others. It was with Alice that she +discussed the more personal sort of problems that arose in connection +with her new job. (One of these, as you are to be told, was highly +personal.) And when the question came up of finding the capital that +would enable her to make the Shumans a bid on all the costumes for _Come +On In_ it was Alice, who, with all the sang-froid in the world, sketched +out the articles of partnership and brought her in a certified check for +three thousand dollars. + +The fact that they had become partners served, somehow, to divert a +relation between them which might otherwise have developed into a +first-class friendship. Not that they quarreled or even disappointed +each other in the close contacts of the day's work. They were admirably +complementary. Alice had the business acumen, the executive grasp, the +patient willingness to master details, which were needed to set Rose +free for the more imaginative part of the enterprise. Both were +immensely determined on success. Alice couldn't have been keener about +it if every cent she had in the world had been embarked in the business. + +But at the end of the day's work they tended to fly apart rather than to +stick together. Both were charged with the same kind of static +electricity. It was an instinct they were sensible enough to follow. +Both realized that they were more efficient as partners from not going +too intimately into each other's outside affairs. + +But when the winter had passed and the early spring had brought its +triumph, with the success of her costumes in _Come On In_, and when the +inevitable reaction from the burst of energy that had won that triumph +had taken possession of her, Rose found herself in need of a friendship +that would grip deeper, understand more. And with the realization of the +need of it she found she had it. It was a friendship that had grown in +the unlikeliest soil in the world, the friendship of a man who had +wanted to be her lover. The man was John Galbraith. + +For the first month after she came to New York to work for him she had +found Galbraith a martinet. She never once caught that twinkling gleam +of understanding in his eye that had meant so much to her during the +rehearsals of _The Girl Up-stairs_. His manner toward her carried out +the tone of the letter she'd got from him in Centropolis. It was stiff, +formal, severe. He seldom praised her work and never ungrudgingly. His +censure was rare too, to be sure, but this obviously was because Rose +almost never gave him an excuse for it. Of course she was up to her +work, but, well, she had better be. This, in a nutshell, was his +attitude toward her. Nothing but the undisputable fact that she was up +to her work (Gertrude was comforting here, with her reticent but +convincing reports of Abe Shuman's satisfaction with her) kept Rose from +losing confidence. Even as it was, working for Galbraith in this mood +gave her the uneasy sensation one experiences when walking abroad under +a sultry overcast sky with mutterings and flashes in it. And then one +night the storm broke. + +They had lingered in the theater after the dismissal of a rehearsal, to +talk over a change in one of the numbers Rose had been working on. It +refused to come out satisfactorily. Rose thought she saw a way of doing +it that would work better and she had been telling him about it. +Eagerly, at first, and with a limpid directness which, however, became +clouded and troubled when she felt he wasn't paying attention. It was a +difficulty with him she had encountered before. Some strong +preoccupation she could neither guess the nature of nor lure him away +from. + +But to-night after an angry turn down the aisle and back he suddenly +cried out, "I don't know. I don't know what you've been talking about. I +don't know and I don't care." And then confronting her, their faces not +a foot apart, for by now she had got to her feet, his hands gripped +together and shaking, his teeth clenched, his eyes glowing there in the +half-light of the auditorium, almost like an animal's, he demanded, +"Can't you see what's the matter with me? Haven't you seen it yet? My +God!" + +Of course she saw it now, plainly enough. She sat down again, managing +an air of deliberation about it, and gripped the back of the orchestra +chair in front of her. He remained standing over her there in the aisle. + +When the heightening tension of the silence that followed this outburst +had grown absolutely unendurable she spoke. But the only thing she could +find to say was almost ludicrously inadequate. + +"No, I didn't see it until now. I'm sorry." + +"You didn't see it," he echoed. "I know you didn't. You've never seen me +at all, from the beginning, as anything but a machine. But why haven't +you? You're a woman. If I ever saw a woman in my life you're one all the +way through. Why couldn't you see that I was a man? It isn't because +I've got gray hair, nor because I'm fifty years old. You aren't like +that. I don't believe you're like that. But even back there in Chicago, +the night we walked down the avenue from Lessing's store--or the night +we had supper together after the show...." + +"I suppose I ought to have seen," she said dully. "Ought to have known +that that was all there was to it. That there couldn't be anything else +in the world. But I didn't." + +"Well, you see it now," he said savagely fairly, and strode away up the +aisle and then back to her. He sat down in the seat in front of her and +turned around. "I want to see your face," he said. "There's something +I've got to know. Something you've got to tell me. You said once, back +there in Chicago, that there was only one person who really mattered to +you. I want to know who that one person is. What he is. Whether he's +still the one person who really matters. If he isn't I'll take my +chance. I'll make you love me if it's the last thing I ever do in the +world." + +Remembering the scene afterward Rose was a little surprised that she'd +been able to answer him as she did, without a hesitation or a stammer, +and with a straight gaze that held his until she had finished. + +"The only person in the world," she said, "who ever has mattered to me, +or ever will matter, is my husband. I fell in love with him the day I +met him. I was in love with him when I left him. I'm in love with him +now. Everything I do that's any good is just something he might be proud +of if he knew it. And every failure is just something I hope I could +make him understand and not despise me for. It's months since I've seen +him but there isn't a day, there isn't an hour in a day, when I don't +think about him and--want him. I don't know whether I'll ever see him +again but if I don't it won't make any difference with that. That's why +I didn't see what I might have seen about you. It wasn't possible for me +to see. I'd never have seen it if you hadn't told me in so many words, +like this. Do you see now?" + +He turned away from her with a nod and put his hands to his face. She +waited a moment to see whether he had anything else to say, for the +habit of waiting for his dismissal was too strong to be broken even in a +situation like this. But finding that he hadn't she rose and walked out +of the theater. + +There was an hour after she had gained the haven of her own apartment, +when she pretty well went to pieces. So this was all, was it, that she +owed her illusory appearance of success to? The amorous desires of a man +old enough to be her father! Once more, she blissfully and ignorantly +unsuspecting all the while, it was love that had made her world go +round. The same long-circuited sex attraction that James Randolph long +ago had told her about. But for that attraction she'd never have got +this job in New York, never have had the chance to design those costumes +for Goldsmith and Block. Never, in all probability, have got even that +job in the chorus of _The Girl Up-stairs_. All she'd accomplished in +that bitter year since she left Rodney had been to make another man fall +in love with her! + +But she didn't let herself go like that for long. The situation was too +serious for the indulgence of an emotional sprawl. Here she was in an +apartment that cost her thirty-seven dollars a month. She'd got to earn +a minimum of thirty dollars a week to keep on with it. Of course she +couldn't go on working for Galbraith. The question was, what could she +do? Well, she could do a good many things. Whatever Galbraith's motives +had been in giving her her chance, she had taken that chance and made +the most of it. Gertrude Morse knew what she could do. For that matter, +so did Abe Shuman himself. The thing to do now was to go to bed and get +a night's sleep and confront the situation with a clear mind in the +morning. + +It was a pretty good indication of the way she had grown during the last +year that she was able to conquer the shuddering revulsion that had at +first swept over her, get herself in hand again, eat a sandwich and +drink a glass of milk, re-read a half dozen chapters of Albert Edwards' +_A Man's World_, and then put out her light and sleep till morning. + +It was barely nine o'clock when Galbraith called her up on the +telephone. She hadn't had her breakfast yet and had not even begun to +think out what the day's program must be. + +He apologized for calling her so early. "I wanted to be sure of catching +you," he said, "before you did anything. You haven't yet, have you? Not +written to Shuman throwing up your job, or anything like that?" + +Even over the telephone his manner was eloquent with relief when she +told him she had not. "I want to talk with you," he said. "It's got to +be somewhere where we won't be interrupted." He added, "I shan't say +again what I said last night. You'll find me perfectly reasonable." + +Somehow his voice carried entire conviction. The man she visualized at +the other telephone was neither the distracted pleader she had left last +night, nor the martinet she had been working for during the last month +here in New York, but the John Galbraith she had known in Chicago. + +"All right," she said, "I don't know any better place than here in my +apartment, if that's convenient for you." + +"Yes," he said, "that's all right. When may I come? The sooner the +better of course." + +"Can you give me an hour?" she asked, and he said he could. + +It occurred to her, as the moment of his arrival drew near, that she +might better have thought twice before appointing their meeting here in +her apartment. Discretion perhaps would have suggested a more neutral +rendezvous. But she didn't take this consideration very seriously and +with the first real look she got into his face after she had let him in, +she dismissed it utterly. They shook hands and said, "Good morning," and +she asked him to sit down, all as if nothing had happened the night +before. But he wasted no time in getting to the point. + +"There's one idea you'll have got, from what I said last night, that's a +mistake and that's got to be set right before we go any further. That +is, that you owe your position here, as my assistant, to the fact that +I'd fallen in love with you. That's not true. In fact, it's the opposite +of the truth. That feeling of mine has worked against you instead of for +you. I'll have to explain that a little to make you understand it. And +if you won't mind I'll have to talk pretty straight." She gave him a nod +of assent, but he did not immediately go on. It was a reflective pause, +not an embarrassed one. + +"I've always despised;" he said, "a man who mixed up his love-affairs +with his business. In my business, perhaps, there's a certain temptation +to do that and I've always been on guard against it. I've had +love-affairs, more or less, all along. But in my vacations. You can't do +decent honest work when your mind's on that sort of thing, and I care +more about my work than anything else. + +"Well, that night in Chicago, after the opening of _The Girl +Up-stairs_, when I took you out to supper, I didn't know what I wanted. +That's the truth. I'd been fighting my interest in you, my personal +interest that is, calling myself all kinds of an old fool. I'd never had +a thing get me like that before and I didn't know what to make of it. +Well, the business was over, of course. I was entitled to a little +vacation. I suppose, that night, if you'd shown the least sense of how I +felt, even if it was just by seeming frightened, I might have flared up +and made love to you. But you didn't see it at all. You had some sort +of--fence around you that held me off. And for a while you even made me +forget that I was in love with you. Forget that you were anything but +the cleverest person I had known at catching my ideas and putting them +over. I saw how enormously valuable you'd be to me, in this job you've +got now, and I offered it to you. + +"And then, all in a wave the other feeling came back. On my way to New +York I decided that as long as I felt like that I'd have nothing more to +do with you. A man couldn't possibly do any decent work with a woman he +was in love with, either after he'd got her or while he was trying to +get her. That's why you didn't hear from me within a month after I'd got +back to New York. But as time went on I forgot how strong my feeling had +been. I decided. I'd got over it. I'd been looking for some one else to +take the place I'd designed for you and I couldn't find anybody. + +"I might have got a man, but I didn't want a man, because if he were +clever enough to be any good he'd be out after my job from the very +first day. It would suit Abe Shuman down to the ground to have me teach +a man all I know in two years and then put him in my place at half my +pay. As for women, well, I've never seen a woman yet with just your +combination of qualities, your drive and your knack. So I persuaded +myself that it would be all right. That I could get along without +thinking about you the other way. And I sent for you. + +"But the minute I saw you I knew I'd have to look out. I've tried to; +you know that. I've been treating you like a sweep since you've been +down here. I didn't mean to but I couldn't help it. I was in such a +rage with myself for going on like a sentimental fool about you. And the +way you took it, always good-humored and never afraid, made me all the +more ashamed of myself and all the more in love with you. And so last +night I burst. In a way I'm glad I did. I think perhaps it will clear +the air. But I'll come to that later. I want to know now whether you're +convinced that what I said is true. That the fact that I fell in love +with you has been against you and not in your favor." + +"Yes," Rose said, "I'm convinced of that and I want to thank you for +telling me. Because the other feeling was pretty--discouraging." + +"All right," he said with a nod, "that's understood. Now, here's my +proposition. That you go on working for me exactly as if nothing had +happened." + +"Oh, but that's impossible!" she said, and when he put in "Why is it?" +she told him he had just said so himself. That it was impossible for a +man to do decent work with a woman he was in love with. + +"That's what I thought last night when I blew up," he admitted, "but +I've got things a bit straighter since. In the first place, we have been +doing decent work all this last month. We've been doing, between us, the +work of two high-priced directors." + +She said, "Yes, but I didn't know ..." + +"Understanding's better than ignorance," he interrupted, "any time. +Between people of sense, that is. We'd get on better together, not +worse. Look at us now. We're talking together sensibly enough, aren't +we? And we're here in your sitting-room, talking about the fact that I +fell in love with you. Couldn't we talk just as sensibly in the theater, +about whether a song or number was in the right place or not? Of course +we could." + +The truth of this argument rather stumped Rose. It didn't seem +reasonable, but it was true. Instead of embarrassing and distressing +her, this talk with Galbraith was doing her good, restoring her +confidence. The air between them was easier to breathe than it had been +for weeks. + +"You seem different this morning, somehow," she said. + +"Why," he told her, "I am different. Permanently different toward you. I +am convinced of it. I don't pretend to understand it myself, but +somehow--I'm relieved. For one thing, I never wanted to fall in love +with you. It was quite against my will that I did it. And then I've +always been tortured with curiosity about you. I've wondered. Were you +as unconscious of me as you seemed? Was it possible that you didn't +know. And if you did know, was it possible that you were--waiting? That +it only needed a word of mine to put everything between us on a +different basis? I couldn't get rid of that idea. It kept nagging at me. +But after what you told me last night--and you certainly told it +straight--that idea's exploded. What you said explains everything about +you. I know now that I haven't a chance in the world. From now on, I +imagine, I'll be able to treat you like a human being. Well, are you +willing to try it?" + +Up to now they'd been sitting quietly in their two chairs with most of +the width of the room between them. But at this last question of his she +got up and walked over to the window. + +"I don't know," she said at last. "It seems dangerous, somehow; like +courting trouble. I know ..." She hesitated, but then decided to say +what was in her mind. "I know how terribly strong those feelings are and +I've found out how little they've got to do with what it's so easy to +decide is reasonable." Now she turned and faced him. + +"Don't you think it would be more sensible for me to find another job? +So that we could--well, take a fresh start?" + +"Child," he said, "don't you know there's no such thing in the world as +a fresh start? Or a new leaf? That's a comfortable delusion for cowards. +The situation's in a mess, is it? All right, run away. Begin again with +a clean slate. But the first thing written down on that slate is that +you've just run away. Besides, suppose you do get another job, working, +say, for another director. How do you know that he won't fall in love +with you?" + +That last sentence went by unheard. She was staring at him, almost in +consternation. "That's true," she said. "That's perfectly true. That +about running away. I--I never thought of it before." She went back to +her chair and dropped into it rather limply. She sat there through a +long silence, still thinking over his words and apparently almost +frightened over her own implications from them. + +At last he said, "You've no cause for worry over that, I should think. I +don't believe you've ever run away from anything yet." + +"I don't know," she answered thoughtfully. "I don't know whether I did +or not." + +"Well," he came out at last, getting to his feet, "how about it? What +shall we do this time? Shall we tackle the situation and try to make the +best of it, or ..." + +"Yes, that's what we'll do," she said. "And, well, I'm much obliged to +you for putting me right." + +"I made all the trouble in the first place," said Galbraith, with a +rueful sort of grin. "It was up to me to think of something." + +And after the elevator she'd escorted him to had carried him down, she +stood there in the hallway smiling, with the glow of a quite new +friendliness for him warming her heart. + +It was natural, of course, that the relation between them after that day +should not prove quite so simple and manageable a thing as it had looked +that morning. There were breathless days when the storm visibly hung in +the sky; there were strained, stiff, self-conscious moments of rigidly +enforced politeness. Things got said despite his resolute repression +that had, as resolutely, to be ignored. + +But in the intervals of these failures there emerged, and endured +unbroken for longer periods, the new thing they sought--genuine +friendliness, partnership. + +It was just after Christmas that Abe Shuman took her away from him and +put her to work exclusively on costumes. And the swift sequence of +events within a month thereafter launched her in an independent +business; the new partnership with Alice Perosini, with the details of +which, through Jimmy Wallace, you are already sufficiently acquainted. +By the time that happened the friendship had gone so far that Rose's +chief reluctance in making the change sprang from a fear that the change +would interrupt it. + +But the thing worked the other way. Released from the compulsory +relation of employer and employee, they frankly sought each other as +friends, and found that they got more out of a half-hour together over a +hasty lunch than a whole day's struggle over a common task had given +them. + +There were long stretches of days, of course, when they saw nothing of +each other, and Rose, so long as she had plenty to do, was never +conscious of missing him. She never, in the course of her own day's +work, made an unconscious reference to him, as she was always making +them to Rodney. But the prospect of an empty Sunday morning, for +instance, was always enormously brightened if he called up to say that +it was empty for him, too, and shouldn't they go for a walk or a ferry +ride somewhere. + +He did the greater part of the talking. Told her, a good deal to his own +surprise, stories of his early life in London--a chapter he'd never +been willing to refer to, except in the vaguest terms, to anybody else. +He told her, too, with more and more freedom and explicitness, as he +discovered how straight and honest her mind was, how eager it was for +facts instead of for sentimental refractions of them, about certain +emotional adventures of his as he was emerging into manhood, and of the +marks they had left on him. + +All told, she learned more about men, as such, from him than ever she +had learned, consciously at least, from Rodney. She'd never been able to +regard her husband as a specimen. He was Rodney, _sui generis_, and it +had never occurred to her either to generalize from him to other men, or +to explain any of the facts she had noted about him, on the mere ground +of his masculinity. She began doing that now a little, and the exercise +opened her eyes. + +In many ways Galbraith and her husband were a good deal alike. Both were +rough, direct, a little remorseless, and there was in both of them, +right alongside the best and finest and clearest things they had, an +unaccountable vein of childishness. She'd never been willing to call it +by that name in Rodney. But when she saw it in Galbraith, too, she +wondered. Was that just the man of it? Were they all like that; at least +all the best of them? Did a man, as long as he lived, need somebody in +the role of--mother? The thought all but suffocated her. + +She did not return Galbraith's confidences with any detailed account of +her own life, and the one great emotional experience of it that seemed +to have absorbed all the rest and drawn it up into itself. But she had a +comforting sense that, scanty as was the framework of facts he had to go +on, he knew, somehow, all about it; all the essentials of it; knew +infinitely more about her than Alice Perosini did, although from time to +time she had told Alice a good deal. + +Spring came on them with a rush that year; swept a vivid flush of green +over the parks and squares, all in a day; pumped the sap up madly into +the little buds, so that they could hardly swell fast enough, and burst +at last into a perfectly riotous fanfare through the shrubberies. It +pumped blood, too, as well as sap, and made hearts flutter to strange +irregular rhythms with the languorous insolence of its perfumes, and the +soft caressing pressures of its south wind. + +It worried Rose nearly mad. She was bound to have gone slack anyway; to +have experienced the well-earned, honest lassitude of a finished +struggle and an achieved victory. Dane & Company had any amount of work +in sight, to be sure--a success of such triumphant proportions as they +had had with _Come On In_, made that inevitable--but it would be months +before any of the new work was wanted. + +Alice, who could see plainly enough that something was the matter, kept +urging Rose to run away somewhere for a long vacation. Why not, if it +came to that, put in a few weeks in London and Paris? She was almost +sure to pick up some valuable ideas over there. Rose declined that +suggestion almost sharply. If she'd had any practical training as a +nurse, she'd go over to Paris and stay, but to use that magnificently +courageous tragic city as a source of ideas for a Shuman _revue_ was out +of the question. As for the quiet place in the Virginia mountains, +which Alice had suggested as an alternative, Rose would die of ennui +there within three days. The only thing to do was to stick to her +routine as well as she could, and worry along. + +These weren't reasons that she gave Alice, they were excuses. The +reason, which she tried to avoid stating, even to herself, was that she +couldn't bear the thought of going one step farther away from Rodney +than she was already. + +A letter from him was always in the first Saturday morning delivery and +she never left for her atelier till she got it. She had perceived, what +he had not, the steadily growing friendliness of these letters. It +wasn't a made-up thing, either. He was not telling her things because he +thought she'd like to be told, but because it had insensibly become a +need of his to tell her. + +A year ago those letters would have made her wildly happy; would have +filled her with the confidence that the end she sought was in sight at +last. Now they drove her half mad with disappointment. She never opened +one of those dearly familiar envelopes without the irrepressible hope +that it contained a love-letter; a passionate demand that she come back +to him; leave all she had and come back to him; his woman to her man. +And her disappointment and inconsistency bewildered her. + +Her two chance encounters, first with Jimmy Wallace in the theater, and +later with James Randolph, made her restlessness more nearly +unendurable. The thought that they were going back to Chicago and would, +no doubt, within a few days after their talks with her, see and talk +with him, was like the cup of Tantalus. And if she could encounter them +by chance, like that, why mightn't she encounter him? Why mightn't he +come to New York on business? She never walked anywhere, nowadays, +without watching for him. + +She didn't yield, passively, to these thoughts and feelings. She fought +them relentlessly, methodically. She went to a women's gymnasium every +evening, threw a medicine ball around for a while, and then played a +hard game of squash, in the sometimes successful attempt to get tired +enough so that she'd have to sleep. Also she tried riding in the park, +mornings, but that didn't work so well, and she gave it up. + +There came a Saturday morning, toward the end of May, which brought no +letter from Rodney, and she stayed in all day, from one delivery to the +next, waiting for it. She tried to disguise her excitement over its +failure to arrive, as a fear lest something might have gone wrong with +him or with the twins, but did not succeed. If anything had gone wrong +she knew she'd have heard. The thing that kept clutching at her heart +was hope. The hope that the letter wouldn't come at all; that there'd be +a telephone call instead--and Rodney's voice. + +The telephone did ring just before noon, but the voice was Galbraith's. +He wanted to know if she wouldn't come over to his Long Island farm the +following morning and spend the day. + +She had visited the place two or three times and had always enjoyed it +immensely there. It wasn't much of a farm, but there was a delightful +old Revolutionary farmhouse on it, with ceilings seven feet high and +casement windows, and the floors of all the rooms on different levels; +and Galbraith, there, was always quite at his best. His sister and her +husband, whom he had brought over from England when he bought the place, +ran it for him. They were the simplest sort of peasant people who had +hardly stirred from their little Surrey hamlet until that meteoric +brother of theirs had summoned them on their breath-taking voyage to +America, and for whom now, on this little Long Island farm, New York +might have been almost as far away as London. Mrs. Flaxman did all the +work of the house and farmyard without the aid of a servant, and her +husband raised vegetables for the New York market. + +What the pair really thought of the life John Galbraith led, or of the +guests he sometimes brought out for week-end visits, no one knew. But +the pleasant sort of homely hospitality one always found there was +extremely attractive to Rose, and with Rodney's regular Saturday letter +at hand she'd have accepted the invitation eagerly. As it was, she +answered almost shortly that she couldn't come. Then, contrite, she +hastened to dilute her refusal with an elaboration of regrets and +hastily contrived reasons. + +"All right," he said good-humoredly, "I shan't ask any one else, but if +you happen to change your mind call me on the phone in the morning. Tell +me what train you're coming down on and I'll meet you." + +She didn't expect to change her mind, but a phonograph did it for her. +This instrument was domesticated across the court somewhere--she had +never bothered to discover just which pair of windows the sound of it +issued from--and it was addicted to fox-trots, comic recitations in +negro dialect, and the melodies of Mr. Irving Berlin. It was jolly and +companionable and Rose regarded it as a friend. But on this Saturday +night, perversely enough, perhaps because its master was in Pittsburgh +on a business trip and hadn't come home as expected, the thing turned +sentimental. It sang _I'm on My Way to Mandalay_, under the impression +that Mandalay was an island somewhere. It played _The Rosary_, done as a +solo on the cornet; and over and over again it sang, with the thickest, +sirupiest sentiment that John McCormack at his best is capable of, + + "Just a little love, a li--ttle kiss, + Just an hour that holds a world of bliss, + Eyes that tremble like the stars above me, + And the little word that says you love me." + +It was a song that had tormented Rose before with the abysmal fatuity of +its phrases, its silly sloppy melody, and yet--this was the infuriating +thing--the way it had of getting into her, somehow, reaching bare nerves +and setting them all aquiver. + +To-night it broke her down. She closed the windows, despite the +sultriness of the night, but the tune, having once got in, couldn't be +shut out. Whether she heard it or only fancied she did, didn't matter. +The words bored their way into her brain. + + "Just a little love, a little kiss, + I would give you all my life for this, + As I hold you fast and bend above you ..." + +It was a white night for Rose. The morning sun had been streaming into +her bedroom for an hour before she finally fell asleep. And at nine +o'clock, when she wakened, she heard the phonograph going again. It was +now on its way to Mandalay, but John McCormack was no doubt waiting in +the background. She went to the telephone and called up Galbraith, +telling him she'd come by the first train she could get. + +He met her with a dog-cart and a fat pony, and when they had jogged +their way to their destination they spent what was left of the morning +looking over the farm. Then there was a midday farm dinner that Rose +astonished herself by dealing with as it deserved and by feeling sleepy +at the conclusion of. Galbraith caught her biting down a yawn and packed +her off to the big Gloucester swing in the veranda, the one addition +he'd built on the place, for a nap; and obediently she did as he bade +her. + +Coming into the veranda about four o'clock, and finding her awake, he +suggested that they go for a walk. She had dressed, in anticipation of +this, in a short skirt and heavy walking boots, so they set out across +the fields. Two hours later, having swung her legs over a stone wall +that had a comfortably inviting flat top, she remained sitting there and +let her gaze rest, unfocused, on the pleasant farm land that lay below +them. + +After a glance at her he leaned back against the wall at her side and +began filling his pipe. She dropped her hand on his nearer shoulder. +After all these months of friendship it was the first approach to a +caress that had passed between them. + +"You're a good friend," she said, and then the hand that had rested on +him so lightly suddenly gripped hard. "And I guess I need one," she +ended. + +He went on filling his pipe. "Anything special you need one for?" he +asked quietly. + +[Illustration: "You're a good friend," she said.] + +She gave a ragged little laugh. "I guess not. Just somebody strong and +steady to hold on to like this." + +"Well," he said very deliberately, "you want to realize this: You say +I'm a friend and I am, but if there is anything in this friendship which +can be of use to you you're entitled to it; to everything there is in +it. Because you made it." + +"One person can't make a friendship," she said. "Even two people can't. +It's got to--grow out of them somehow." + +He assented with a nod. "But in this case who gave it a chance to grow? +Where would it have been if I'd had my way? If you hadn't pulled me up +and set me straight?" + +"For that matter," she said, "where would it have been if I had had +mine? If I'd run away and tried for a fresh start, as I'd have done if +you hadn't set me right?" + +"Make it so," he said. "Say we've equal rights in it. Still you needn't +worry about my not getting my share of the benefits." + +"You _are_ content with it, aren't you? Like this? I haven't--cheated? +Used you? It's easy for a woman to do that, I think. It isn't ...?" She +asked that last question by taking her hand off his shoulder. + +"No, put it back," he said. "It's all right." He smoked in silence for a +minute; then went on. "Why, 'content' is hardly the word for it. When I +think what it was I wanted and what you've given me instead ...! It +wasn't self-denial or any other high moral principle that kept me from +flaring up when you took hold of me just now. It's because I've got a +better thing. Something I wouldn't trade for all the love in the world. +'Content'!" + +"I'd like to believe it was a better thing," she said; "but I'm afraid I +can't." + +"Neither could I when I was--how old are you?--twenty-four. Perhaps when +you're fifty-one you can." + +"I suppose so," she said absently. "Perhaps if it were a question of +choosing between a love that hadn't any friendship in it and a +friendship ... But it _can't_ be like that!--Can it? Can't one have +both? Can't a man--love a woman and be her friend and partner all at the +same time?" + +"I can't answer for every man," he said reflectively. "There are all +kinds of men. And that's not mentioning the queers, who aren't real men +at all. Take a dozen sound, normal, healthy men and if you could find +out the truth about them, which it would be pretty hard to do, you'd +find immense differences in their wants, habits, feelings; in the way +things _took_ them. But I've a notion that nine out of the dozen, if you +could get down to the actual bedrock facts about them, would own up that +if they were in love with a woman--really, you know, all the way--they +wouldn't want her for a partner, and wouldn't be able to see her as a +friend. That's just a guess, of course. But there's one thing I know, +and that is that I couldn't." + +She gave a little shiver. "_Oh_, what a mess it is!" she said. "What a +perfectly hopeless blunder it is!" She slid down from the wall. "Come; +let's walk." + +He fell in beside her and they tramped sturdily along for a while in +silence. At last she said, "Can you tell me why? Suppose there hadn't +been any one else with me; suppose I'd felt toward you the way you did +toward me, then; why couldn't you have gone on being my friend and +partner as well as my lover? You'd have known I was worth it; have known +I understood the things you were interested in and--yes, and was able to +help you to work them out. Why would all that have had to go?" + +"Oh, I don't know that I can explain it," he said. "But I don't think +I'd call it a blunder that a strip of spring steel can't bend in your +fingers like copper and still go on being a spring. You see, a man +wants his work and then he wants something that isn't his work; that's +altogether apart from his work; doesn't remind him of it. Love's about +as far away as anything he can get. So that the notion of our working +ourselves half to death over the same job, and then going home +together ..." + +"Yes," she admitted. "I can see that. But that doesn't cover +friendship." + +He owned that it didn't. "But when I'm in love with a woman--this isn't +a fact I'm proud of, but it's true--I'm jealous of her. Not of other +men alone, though I'm that, too, but jealous of everything. I want to be +all around her. I want to be everything to her. I want her to think +there's nobody like me; that nobody else could be right and I be wrong. +And I want to be able to think the same of her. I want her to hide, from +me, the things about herself that I wouldn't like. When I ask her what +she thinks about something, I want her to say--what I want her to think. +I know what I want her to think, and if she doesn't say it she hurts my +feelings." + +He thought it over a bit longer and then went on. "No, I've been in love +with women I could suspect of anything. Women I thought were lying to +me, cheating me; women I've hated; women I've known hated me. But I've +never been in love with a woman who was my friend. I'd never figured it +out before, but it's so." + +In the process of figuring it out he'd more or less forgotten Rose. He +had been tramping along communing with his pipe; thinking aloud. If he'd +been watching her face he wouldn't have gone so far. + +"Well, if it's like that," she said, and the quality of her voice drew +his full attention instantly--"if love has to be like that, then the +game doesn't seem worth going on with. You can't live with it, and you +can't live--without it." Her voice dropped a little, but gained in +intensity. "At least I can't. I don't believe I can." She stopped and +faced him. "What can one _do_?" she demanded. "Wait, I suppose you'll +say, till you're fifty. Well, you're fifty, and the thing can still +torment you; spring on you when you aren't looking; twist you about." +She turned away with a despairing gesture and stood gazing out, +tear-blinded, over the little valley the hilltop they had reached +commanded. + +"You want to remember this," he said at last. "I've been talking about +myself. I haven't even pretended to guess for more than nine of those +twelve men. That leaves three who are, I am pretty sure, different. I +might have been different myself, a little anyway, if I'd got a +different sort of start. If my first love-affair had been an altogether +different thing. If it had been the kind that gave me a home and kids. +So you don't want to take what I've said for anything more than just the +truth about me. And I'm not, thank God, a fair sample." + +He stood behind her, miserably helpless to say or do anything to comfort +her. An instinct told him she didn't want his hands on her just then, +and he couldn't unsay the things he had told her any further than he had +already. + +Presently she turned back to him, slid her hand inside his arm, and +started down the road with him. "My love-affair brought me a home +and--kids," she said. "There are two of them--twins--a year and a half +old now; and I went off and left them; left him. And all I did it for +was to make myself over, into somebody he could be friends with, instead +of just--as I said then--his mistress. I'd never known a woman then who +was a man's mistress, really, and I didn't see why he should be so angry +over my using the word. I thought it was fair enough. And the day I left +his house I came to you and got a job in the chorus in _The Girl +Up-stairs_. I thought that by earning my own way, building a life that +he didn't--surround, as you say--I could win his friendship. And have +his love besides. I don't suppose you would have believed there could be +such a fool in the world as I was to do that." + +He took a while digesting this truly amazing statement of hers, a +half-mile perhaps of steady silent tramping. But at last he said, "No, I +wouldn't call you a fool. I call a fool a person who thinks he can get +something for nothing. You didn't think that. You were willing to pay--a +heavy price it must have been, too--for what you wanted. And I've an +idea, you know, that you never really pay without getting something; +though you don't always get what you expect. You've got something now. A +knowledge of what you can do; of what you are worth; and I don't believe +you'd trade it for what you had the day before you came to me for a +job." + +"I don't know," she said raggedly. "Perhaps ..." A sob clutched at her +throat and she did not try to conclude the sentence. + +"As to whether you did right or wrong in leaving him," he went on, +"you've got to figure it this way. It isn't fair to say, 'Knowing what I +know now and being what I am now, but in the situation I was in then, +I'd have done differently.' The thing you've got to take into account +is, being what you were then, suppose you hadn't gone? You thought then +that you were just his mistress, not knowing what a real mistress was +like; and you thought that by going away you could make yourself his +friend. You thought that was your great chance. Well, you couldn't have +stayed without feeling that you had thrown away your chance; without +knowing that you'd had your big thing to do and had been afraid to do +it. And that knowledge would have gone a long way toward making you the +thing you thought you were. + +"Well, you did your big thing. And a person who's done that has stayed +alive anyway; and he knows that when his next big thing comes along +he'll do that too. I don't pretend that you'll always come out right in +the end if you do the big thing, but I'm pretty sure of this; that you +never come out at all if you refuse it." + +His amazement over what she had done increased as he thought about it +and was testified to every now and then by grunts and snorts and little +exclamations, but he made no more articulate comment. + +There was a seven-thirty train she thought she ought to take back to +town and as their walk had led in that direction they finished it at the +station, where he waited with her for the train to come in. + +"It's been a good day," she said. "I feel as if you'd somehow pulled me +through." + +"And I," he said, "feel like a wind-bag. I've talked and talked; smug +comfortable preaching." + +"No, it's helped," she insisted. "Or something has. Just having you +there, perhaps. I feel better, anyway." + +But after she'd got her last look at him on the platform, when the train +had carried her off, an observer, seeing the way the color faded out of +her face, and the look in the eyes, which, so wide open and so unseeing, +stared straight ahead, would have said that the benefit hadn't lasted +long. There was about her the look of somber terror, just verging on +panic, which you have seen in a child's face when he has been sent +up-stairs to bed alone in the dark. + +Fragments of Galbraith's talk came back to her. It was by ceasing to be +her lover and her partner that he had become her friend. Rodney, it +seemed from his letters, was becoming her friend too. Was it because he, +too, had ceased to be her lover? if ever she stood face to face with him +again would she search in vain for that look of hunger--of ages-old +hunger and need--that she'd last seen when they stood face to face in +her little room on Clark Street? + +She walked down-town to her apartment from the Pennsylvania station end, +though the natural effect of fatigue was to quicken her pace, and though +she was indubitably tired, she walked slowly; slowly, and still more +slowly. She found she dreaded going back to that apartment of hers and +shutting herself in for the night, alone. + +She found two corners of white projecting from under her door. And when +she'd unlocked and opened it she stooped and picked them up, a visiting +card and a folded bit of paper. She turned the card over and gave a +little half-suffocated cry. + +It was Rodney's card and on it he'd written, "Sorry to have missed you. +I'll come back at eight." + +Her shaking fingers fumbled pitifully over the folds of the note, but +she got it open at last. It was from him too. It read: + + "DEAR ROSE: + + "This is hard luck. I suppose you're off for a week-end somewhere. I + want very much to see you. When you come back and have leisure for + me, will you call me up? I know how busy you are so I'll wait until + I hear from you. + + "RODNEY." + +Her heart felt like lead when she'd read it. Dazedly, a little giddily, +she pulled her door shut, went into her room and sat down. + +He was in New York! He'd been to see her this afternoon--and left a +card! And the note he'd written after his second visit was what Howard +West might have written, or any other quite casual, slightly over-polite +acquaintance. And it was from Rodney to her! + +She couldn't see him if he felt like that; couldn't stand it to see him +if he felt like that! Bitterness, contempt, hatred, anything would be +easier to bear than that. She was to call up his hotel, was she? Well, +she wouldn't! + +And then suddenly she spread the note open again and read it once more. +Turned it over and scrutinized the reverse side of the paper, and +uttered a little sobbing laugh. If he'd been as cool, unmoved, +self-possessed, as that note had tried to sound, would he have forgotten +to tell her at what hotel she was to call him up? + +Then, with a gasp, she wondered how she _could_ call him up. He'd think +she knew where he was; he'd wait; and after he'd waited a while, in +default of word from her, wouldn't he take her silence for an answer and +go back to Chicago? + +She clenched her hands at that and tried to think. Well, the obvious +thing to do seemed to be the only one. She must try one hotel after +another until she found him. After all, there probably weren't more than +a dozen to choose among. It wouldn't be easy looking up numbers with +everything dancing before her eyes like this, but if she took the +likeliest ones first she mightn't have to go very far. And, indeed, at a +third attempt she found him. + +When the telephone girl switched her to the information desk, and the +information clerk said, "Mr. Rodney Aldrich? Just a moment," and then; +"Mr. Aldrich is in fifteen naught five," the dry contraction in her +throat made it impossible for her to speak. + +But the switchboard girl had evidently been listening in and plugged her +through, because she heard the throb of another ring, a click of a +receiver and then--then Rodney's voice. + +She couldn't answer his first "Hello," and he said it again, sharply, +"Hello, what is it?" + +And then suddenly her voice came back. A voice that startled her with +its distinctness. "Hello, Rodney," she said; "this is Rose." + +There was a perfectly blank silence after that and, then the crisp voice +of an operator somewhere--"Waiting?" + +"Yes," she heard Rodney say, "get off the line." And then to her. "I +came to see you this afternoon and again to-night." + +"Yes, I know," she said. "I just this minute got in. Can't you come back +again now?" + +How in the world, she had wondered, could she manage her voice like +that! From the way it sounded she might have been speaking to Alice +Perosini; and yet her shaking hand could hardly hold the receiver. She +heard him say: + +"It's pretty late, isn't it? I don't want to ... You'll be tired +and ..." + +"It's not too late for me," she said, "only you might come straight +along before it gets any later." + +She managed to wait until she heard him say, "All right," before she +hung up the receiver. Then a big racking sob, not to be denied any +longer, pounced on her and shook her. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +COULEUR-DE-ROSE + + +The fact that the length of time it would take a taxi to bring him down +from his hotel to her apartment was not enough to decide anything in, +plan anything in, was no more than enough, indeed, to give her a chance +to stop crying and wash her face, was a saving factor in the situation. + +In the back of her mind, as with a hairpin or two she righted her hair +and decided, glancing down over herself, against attempting to change +even her tumbled blouse or her dusty boots, was an echoing consciousness +of something Galbraith had said that afternoon--"And you know when your +next big thing comes along you will do that too." + +Without actually quoting those words to herself, she experienced a +sudden confidence that was almost serene. In a few minutes now, not more +than five, probably--she hoped not more than that--something +incalculable, tremendous, was going to begin happening to her. A thing +whose issue would in all likelihood determine the course of her whole +life. There might be a struggle, a tempest, but she made no effort to +foresee the nature of it. She just relaxed physical and spiritual +muscles and waited. Only she hoped she wouldn't have to wait long. + +No--there was the bell. + +It was altogether fortunate for Rose that she had attempted no +preparation, because the situation she found herself in when she'd +opened the door for her husband, shaken hands with him, led him into her +sitting-room and asked him to sit down, was one that the wildest cast of +her imagination would never have suggested as a possible one for her and +Rodney. And it lasted--recurred, at least, whenever they were +together--almost unaltered, for two whole days. + +It was his manner, she felt sure, that had created it; and yet, so +prompt and automatic had been her response that she couldn't be sure, +not for the first half-hour or so, anyway, that he wasn't attributing it +to her. It wasn't so much the first words he said, when, opening her +door, she saw him standing in the hallway, as it was his attitude; his +rather formal attitude; the way he held his hat; the fact--this was +absurd, of course, but she reconstructed the memory very clearly +afterward--that his clothes were freshly pressed. It was the slightly +anxious, very determined attitude of an estimable and rather shy young +man making his first call on a young lady, on whom he is desperately +desirous of making a favorable impression. + +What he said was something not very coherent about being very glad and +its being very good of her, and almost simultaneously she gasped out +that she was glad, and wouldn't he come in. She held out her hand to +him, politely, and he, compensating for an imperceptible hesitation with +a kind of clumsy haste, took it and released it almost as hastily. She +showed him where to hang his coat and hat, conducted him into her +sitting-room and invited him to sit down. And there they were. + +And he was Rodney, and she was Rose! It was like an absurd dream. + +For a while she talked desperately, under the same sort of delirious +conviction one has in dreams that if he desists one moment from some +grotesquely futile form of activity a cosmic disaster will instantly +take place. A moment of silence between them would be, she felt, +something unthinkably terrible. It was not a fear of what might emerge +from such a silence, the sudden rending of veils and the confrontation +of two realities; it was a dread, purely, of the silence itself. But the +feeling did not last very long. + +"Won't you smoke?" she asked suddenly; and hurried on when he hesitated, +"I don't do it myself, but most of my friends do, and I keep the +things." From a drawer in her writing-desk she produced a tin box of +cigarettes. "They're your kind--unless you've changed," she commented, +and went over to the mantel shelf for an ash-tray and a match-safe. The +match-safe was empty and she left the room to get a fresh supply from +her kitchenette. + +On the inner face of her front door was a big mirror, and in it, as she +came back through the unlighted passage, she saw her husband. He was +sitting just as she'd left him, and as his face was partly turned away +from her, it could not have been from the expression of it that she got +her revelation. But she stopped there in the dark and caught her breath +and leaned back against the wall and squeezed the tears out of her eyes. + +Perhaps it was just because he was sitting so still, a thing it was +utterly unlike him to do. The Rodney of her memories was always ranging +about the rooms that confined him. Or the grip of the one hand she could +see upon the chair-arm it rested on may have had something to do with +it. But it was not, really, a consciously deductive process at all; just +a clairvoyant look--_into_ him, and a sudden, complete, utterly +confident understanding. + +He had come down here to New York to make another beginning. He meant to +assert no rights, not even in their common memories, he would make no +appeal. But something that he felt he had forfeited he was going to try +to earn back. What was the thing he sought--her friendship, or her love? +She knew! No plea that the inspired rhetoric of passion could be capable +of could have convinced her of his love for her and of his need for her +love as did the divine absurdity of this attempt of his to show her that +she need give him--nothing. She knew. Oh, how she knew! + +She stole back into her little kitchen and shut the door and leaned +giddily against it, trying to get her breath to coming steadily again. +At last she straightened up and wiped her eyes. A smile played across +her lips; the smile of deep maternal tenderness. Then she picked up her +box of matches and carried them to him in the sitting-room. + +He stayed that first evening a little less than an hour, and when he got +up to go, she made no effort to detain him. The thing had been, as its +unbroken surface could testify, a highly successful first call. Before +she let him go, though, she asked him how long he was going to be in New +York, and on getting a very indeterminate answer that offered a minimum +of "two or three days" and a maximum that could not even be guessed at, +she said: + +"I hope you're not going to be too dreadfully busy for us to see a lot +of each other. I wish we might manage it once every day." + +That shook him; for a moment, she thought the lightning was going to +strike and stood very still holding her breath, waiting for it. + +But he steadied himself, said he could certainly manage that if she +could, and as the elevator came up in response to her ring, said that he +would call her up in the morning at her office. + +She puzzled a little during the intermittent processes of undressing, +over why she had let him go like that. She found it easy to name some of +the things that were _not_ the reason. It was not--oh, a thousand times +it was not!--that she wasn't quite sure of him. There was no expressing +the completeness of her certainty that, with a look, a sudden holding +out of the hands to him, the release of one little love-cry from her +lips, a half-articulate, "Come and take me, Roddy! That's all I want!" +she could have shattered, annihilated, that brittle restraint of his; +released the full tempest of his passion; found herself--lost +herself--in his embrace. + +Certainly it was no doubt of that that had held her back. And, no more +than doubt, was it pride or modesty. The one thing her whole being was +crying out for was a complete surrender to him. + +But the real reason seemed rather absurd, when she tried to state it to +herself. She had felt that it would be a _brutal_ thing to do. Really, +her feeling toward him was that of a mother toward a child who, having, +he thinks, merited her displeasure, offers her, by way of atonement, +some dearly prized possession; an iron fire-engine, a woolly sheep. What +mother wouldn't accept an offering like that gravely! + +This thing that Rodney had offered her, the valiant, heart breaking +pretense that she needn't give him anything--to her, whose aching need +was to give him everything she had!--was just as absurd as the child's +toy could have been. But it had cost him.... Oh, what must it not have +cost him in struggle and sacrifice, to construct that pitiful, +transparent pretense!--to maintain that manner! And the struggle and the +sacrifice must not be cheapened, made absurd by a sudden shattering +demonstration that they'd been unnecessary. His pretense must be melted, +not shattered. And until it could be melted, that aching need of hers +must wait. + +And then she realized that the ache was gone--the tormenting restless +hunger for him that had been nagging at her ever since the first rush of +spring was somehow appeased. She'd have said, twenty-four hours ago, +that to be with him, have him near her, in any other relation than that +of her lover, would be unendurable. Twenty-four hours ago! She thought +of that as she was winding her watch. It seemed incredible that it was +no longer than that since the saccharine little sob in John McCormack's +voice as he had sung "Just a little love, a li-ttle ki-iss," had driven +her frantic. + +She turned out her light and opened her bedroom window. The phonograph +across the court was going again. But now, evidently, its master had +come back from Pittsburgh, for it was singing lustily, "That's why I +wish again that I was in Michigan, back on the farm." + +Rose smiled her old wide smile, and cuddled her cheek into the pillow. +She was the happiest person in the world. + +When he called her up the next morning, she asked him to come down to +the premises of Dane & Company (it was a loft on lower Fifth Avenue) +about noon and go out to lunch with her, and she made no secret of her +motive in selecting their rendezvous. "I'd like to have you see what our +place is like;" she said, "though it isn't like anything much just now, +between seasons this way. Still you can get an idea." + +He said he would be immensely interested to see the place, and from the +cadence of his voice was apparently prepared to let the conversation end +there. But she prolonged it a little. + +"Do you hear from--Chicago while you're down here, Roddy?" she asked. +"Whether everything's all right--at home, I mean?" + +It was a second or two before he answered, but when he did, his voice +was perfectly steady. + +"Yes," he said. "I get a night-letter every morning from Miss French. +(This was Mrs. Ruston's successor.) It's--everything's all right." + +"Good-by, then, till noon," she said. And if he could have seen the +smile that was on her lips, and the brightness that was in her eyes as +she said it ...! + +It was a part, you see, of his Quixotic determination to make no claims, +that he had not said a word, during his evening call, about the +twins--her babies! + +On the stroke of twelve his card was brought to her, and she went out +into their bare little waiting-room to meet him. + +"We aren't a regular dressmaking establishment, you see," she said. "The +people we have to impress aren't the ones we make the clothes for. So we +can be as shabby down here as we please, and Alice says--Alice Perosini, +you know--that our shabbiness really does impress them. Shows we don't +care what they think. + +"You're sure you've plenty of time to see around in?" she went on. "That +it won't cut into your time for lunch?" + +He made it plain that he had plenty of time, and she took him into her +own studio, a big north-lighted room at the back of the building, with +the painter's manikins that Jimmy Wallace had told about, standing about +in it, and some queer-looking electric-light fixtures suggestive of the +stage; a big tin-lined box with half a dozen powerful tungsten lamps in +it, and grooves in the mouth of it for the reception of colored slides. +And a sort of search-light that swung on a pivot. There was a high +cutting-table with a deep indentation in it, in which Rose could stand +with her work all around her. On a shelf in a corner he noticed two or +three little figures twelve inches high or so that he'd have thought of +as dolls had it not been that their small heads gave them the scale of +adults. Rose followed his glance. + +"I play with those," she said. "Dress them in all sorts of +things--tissue-paper mostly. It seems easier to catch an idea small in +the tips of my fingers, and then let it grow up. You have to find out +for yourself how you can do things, don't you?" + +Then she took him out into the workroom, where there were more +cutting-tables and power-driven sewing-machines. + +"'It never rains but it pours,' is the motto of this business," she told +him. "Nobody ever knows what he wants until the very last minute, and +then he wants it the next, and everybody wants it at once. And then this +place is like a madhouse. We simply go out of our heads. It was like +that when Jimmy Wallace was down here. I hadn't a minute for him." + +She added deliberately, "I'm glad you didn't come down then," and went +swiftly on to explain to him a sort of pantograph arrangement which +could be set with reference to the measurements of the manikin Rose had +designed the costume upon, and those of the girl who was going to wear +it, so that the pattern for the costume itself, as distinct from Rose's +master-pattern, was cut almost automatically to fit. + +"It's not really automatic, of course," she said. "No costume's done +until I have seen it on the girl who's going to wear it. But it does +save time." + +Alice Perosini came in just then, and a breath-taking spectacle she'd +have been to most men in the frock she had on. But it was not Rodney who +gasped. It was Alice herself who almost did, when Rose introduced him to +her, without explanations, as Mr. Aldrich and said she was going out to +lunch with him. + +"And there's no telling when I'll be back," she added, "so if there's +anything to talk about, you'd better seize the chance and tell me now." + +Alice couldn't be blamed if her face was a study. She knew that Aldrich +was the name of Rose's abandoned husband, and it would have been natural +to believe that this highly impressive-looking person, whom Rose so +casually introduced, was he. But the matter-of-fact way in which Rose +was trotting him about the shop, and spoke of carrying him off to lunch, +seemed to make such a conclusion fantastic. + +There was nothing casual about the man, though, she reflected +afterward. He'd taken his part, adequately and politely, of course, in +the introduction and the fragmentary word or two of small-talk that had +followed it, but Alice doubted if he'd really seen her at all. And when +a man didn't see Alice--this was a line of reasoning she was quite +candidly capable of--it meant an intensity of preoccupation that one +might call monstrous--portentous, anyway. + +Rose asked him if he minded the Brevoort, which was near by and airy, on +a warm spring day like this, and he assented to it with enthusiasm. He +hadn't been there in years, he said. She wished, a little later, that +she had thought twice and had taken him somewhere else, where she wasn't +quite so obviously well acquainted. The cordial salutation of the head +waiter, the number of people who nodded at her from this table or that, +might well have been dispensed with on an occasion like this. And the +climax was when the table waiter, well accustomed to having her bring +guests of either sex to lunch with her, and on confidential terms with +her gustatory preferences, handed her a menu--as a matter of form--told +her what he thought she'd like to-day, and, getting out his pencil and +his card, prepared to write it down. She saw Rodney looking pretty +blank, so she checked the waiter and said: + +"I think I _did_ ask you to lunch with me, but if you'd rather I lunched +with you ... You can have it whichever way you like." + +He hesitated just an instant; then said he'd like to lunch with her. And +somehow their eyes met over that in a way that, once more, made Rose +hold her breath. But the lightning didn't strike that time. + +Even so, their hour wasn't wasted on the polite topics of custom-made +conversation, as, for a while, she had feared it would be; because he +asked her, presently--and she could see he really wanted to know--how +she had got started in this costuming business. It was evidently a thing +she had a genius for, but how had she found it out, and how had she +worked out that technique which, even to the eyes of his ignorance, was +clearly extraordinary? + +And Rose, beginning a little timidly, because she knew there were rocks +ahead for him, told him the tale that had its beginning in Lessing's +store; the story of Mrs. Goldsmith and her bad taste, of the Poiret +model that had suggested her great idea, of the offer she had made +Galbraith, the way she had bought her dressmaker's form and her bolts of +paper-cambric out of the Christmas rush, and had cut out her patterns in +the dead of nights after rehearsals, up in her little room on Clark +Street. She told him of the wild rush with which the costumes themselves +got made down under the stage at the Globe; of Galbraith's enthusiasm, +of the bargain she'd driven with Goldsmith and Block--the unwittingly +good bargain that had left her a profit of over two hundred dollars. She +told him how Goldsmith and Block had driven a good bargain of their own, +hiring her at her chorus-girl's salary for the last two delirious weeks; +how insanely hard she'd worked, and how, at last, after the opening +performance, Galbraith had offered her a job in New York when he should +be ready for her. + +Somehow, while she told it, though it was only occasionally that she +glanced up at him--somehow, as she told it, she seemed to be hearing it +with his ears--to be thinking, actually, the very thoughts that were +going through his mind. + +The central cord of it all, that everything else depended from, was, she +knew, the reflection that this triumphant narrative he was listening to +now, had been waiting on her lips to be told to him that night in the +room on Clark Street, and that the smoking smoldering fires of his +outraged pride and masculine sense of possession, had made the telling +impossible--had made everything impossible but that dull outcry of hers +that it had ended--like this. + +But he never winced. Indeed, now and then when she tried to run ahead in +a way to elide this incident or that, he asked questions that brought +out all the details, and at the end he said with undisguised gravity, +but quite steadily: + +"So after the play opened you were just waiting for Galbraith to send +for you. Why--why did you go on the road, instead of to New York?" + +"He hadn't sent for me yet, and I'd made up my mind, by that time, that +he meant not to. And I was too tired just then to come down here and try +for anything else. I went on the road for a sort of rest-cure." + +He sat for a good while after that in a reflective silence. And, at the +end of it, deliberately introduced a new and entirely harmless topic of +conversation. She knew why he did that. She understood now that there +was more on his program than his manner last night had indicated. That +had been a preliminary, but the past wasn't to be ignored forever. A +time was coming when the issue between them should be brought up and +settled. But the time was not now, nor the place this crowded +restaurant. + +She was perfectly docile to his new conversational lead, but the fact +that she yielded, that she knew it would be beyond her powers to force +that issue until he was ready for it, thrilled her--brought the blood +into her cheeks. The thing he was doing might be absurd, but his way of +doing it was not absurd. He had changed, somehow, or something had +changed between them. She engaged all his powers. If there should be a +struggle now, his mind would not betray him. + +Just before they left the restaurant he asked her if she would dine with +him some night and go to a show afterward, and when she said she would +he asked what night would be convenient to her. + +Her inflection was perfectly demure and even casual, but nothing could +keep the sudden "richening" that Jimmy Wallace had tried to describe out +of her voice, and the light of mischief danced openly in her eyes when +she said: + +"Why, to-night's all right for me." She added, "If that's not too soon +for you." + +He flushed and dropped his hands from the edge of the table where they'd +been resting, but he answered evenly enough: + +"No, it's not too soon for me." + +And then force of habit betrayed Rose into a stupid blunder that almost +precipitated a small quarrel. + +"Tell me what you'd like to see," she said, "and I'll telephone for the +seats." + +Then, at his horrified stare, she gasped out an explanation. "Roddy, I +didn't mean _buy_ the seats! I don't have to buy seats at any theater. +And at this time of year they're so glad to have somebody to give them +to that it seems sort of--wicked to pay real money." + +"It's my mistake," he said. "Naturally, going to the theater wouldn't be +much of a--treat to you. I'd forgotten that." + +"Going with _you_ would be a treat to me," she said earnestly. "That's +why I didn't think about the other part of it. But I needn't have been +so stupid as that. Will you forget I said it, please?" + +He smiled now at himself, the first smile of genuine amusement she had +seen on his lips for--how long? + +"And I needn't have been quite so horrified," he admitted. "All the +same, I hope I may manage to hit on a restaurant up-town somewhere, +where the waiter won't hand you the check." + +It was on this note that he parted from her at Dane & Company's doorway. + +But the ice didn't melt so fast as she had expected it would, and she +went to bed that night, after he'd brought her home in a taxi and, +having told the chauffeur to wait, formally escorted her to her +elevator, in a state of mind not quite so serenely happy as that of the +night before. She had held her breath a good many times during the +dinner, and even in the theater, where certain old memories and +associations sprang at them both, as it were, from ambush. But always, +at the breaking point, he managed to summon up unexpected reserves for +resistance, intrenched himself in the manner of his first call. + +Rose both smiled and wept over her review of this evening, and was a +long while getting off to sleep. She felt she couldn't stand this state +of things much longer. + +But it was not required of her. With the last of the next day's light, +the ice broke up and the floods came. + +She had taken him to a studio tea in the upper sixties just off West End +Avenue, the proprietors of the studio being a tousled, bearded, blond +anarchist of a painter and his exceedingly pretty, smart, +frivolous-looking wife--who had more sense than she was willing to let +appear. They had lived in Paris for years, but the fact that he had a +German-sounding name had driven them back to New York. It was through +Gertrude that Rose had got acquainted with them--she having wrung from +Abe Shuman permission for the painter to prowl around back-stage and +make notes for a series of queerly lighted pictures of chorus-girls and +dancers--"Degas--and then some," as his admirers said. Gertrude was at +the tea and two or three others. It wasn't a party. + +The two men had instinctively drawn controversial swords almost at sight +of each other and for the hour and a half that they were together the +combat raged mightily, to the unmixed satisfaction of both participants. +The feelings of the bystanders were perhaps more diverse, but Rose, at +least, enjoyed herself thoroughly, not only over seeing her husband's +big, formidable, finely poised mind in action again, but over a change +that had taken place in the nature of some of his ideas. The talk, of +course, ranged everywhere: Socialism, feminism, law and its crimes, art +and the social mind. Gertrude took a hand in it now and then, and it was +something Rodney said to her, in answer to a remark about dependent +wives, that really made Rose sit up. + +"Wives aren't dependents," he said, "except as they let their husbands +make them think they are. Or only in very rare cases. Certainly I don't +know of a wife who doesn't render her husband valuable economic services +in exchange for her support. I can hardly imagine one. Of course if they +don't recognize that these services are valuable, they can be made to +feel dependent all right." + +Gertrude demurred. She was willing to admit that a wife who took care of +a husband's house, cooked his meals, brought up his children, did him an +economic service and that if she didn't feel that she was earning her +way in the world it was because she had been imposed on. But here in New +York, anyway--she didn't know how it might be out in Chicago--one didn't +have to resort to his imagination to conjure up a wife who rendered none +of these services whatever. "They live, thousands of them, in smart +up-town apartments, don't do a lick of work, choke up Fifth Avenue with +their limousines in the afternoon, dress like birds of paradise, or as +near to it as they can come, dine with their husbands in the +restaurants, go to the first nights, eat lobster Newburg afterward, and +spend the next morning in bed getting over it. Those that can't afford +that kind of life scrape along giving the best imitation of it they know +how. Thousands of them--thousands and thousands. If they aren't +dependents ..." + +"They're not, though," said Rodney. "Not a bit of it. They're giving +their husbands an economic service of a peculiarly indispensable sort. +The first requisite for success to the husbands of women who live like +that is the appearance of success. Their status, their front, is the one +thing they can't do without. Well, and it's a curious fact that a man +can't keep up his own front. If he tries to dress extravagantly, wear +diamonds, spend his money on himself, he doesn't look prosperous. He +looks a fool. People won't take him seriously. If he can get a wife +who's ornamental, who has attractive manners, who can convey the +appearance of being expensive without being vulgar, she's of a perfectly +enormous economic advantage to him. She'd only have to quit buying the +sort of clothes he could parade her in, and begin spoiling her looks +with a menial domestic routine, to draw howls of protest from him. +Only, so long as she doesn't call his bluff, she leaves him free +to think that he's doing it all for her and that except for her +extravagance--extravagance, mind you, that nine times out of ten he's +absolutely rammed down her throat--he'd be as rich, really, as he has to +try to pretend he is. He tells her so, with perfect sincerity--and she +believes it." Rose enjoyed the look in Gertrude's face as she listened +to that. + +It was half past six or thereabout when they left the studio, and the +late May afternoon was at its loveliest. It was the sort of day, as +Rodney said, that convicted you, the minute you came out of it, of +abysmal folly in having wasted any of it indoors. + +"I want to walk," said Rose, "after that tea, if I'm ever to want any +dinner." + +He nodded a little absently, she thought, and fell in step beside her. +There was no mention at any time, of their destination. + +It was a good while before Rose got the key to his preoccupation. They +had turned into the park at Sixty-sixth Street, and were half-way over +to the Fifth Avenue corner at Fifty-ninth, before he spoke out. + +"On a day like this," he said, "to have sat there for two or three +mortal hours arguing about stale ideas! Threshing over the straw--almost +as silly an occupation as chess--when we might have been out here, being +alive! But it must have seemed natural to you to hear me going on like +that." And then with a burst, before she could speak: + +"You must remember me as the most blindly opinionated fool in the +world!" + +She caught her breath, then said very quietly, with a warm little laugh +in her voice, "That's not how I remember you, Rodney." + +She declined to help him when he tried to scramble back to the safe +shores of conventional conversation. That sort of thing had lasted long +enough. She just walked along in step with him and, for her part, in +silence. It wasn't long before he fell silent too. + +A thing that Rose hadn't counted on was the effect produced on both of +them just by walking along like this together, side by side, in step. +Just the rhythm of it established a sort of communion--and it was a +communion fortified by many associations. Practically the whole of their +courtship, from the day when he dropped off the street-car with her in +the rain and walked her over to the elevated and kept her note-books, +down to the day on the bridge over the Drainage Canal in the swirl of +that March blizzard, when she'd felt his first embrace, had been on foot +like this, tramping along side by side; miles and miles and miles, as +she'd told her mother. And there had been other walks since. Do you +remember the last time they had walked together? It was from the stage +door of the Globe theater to her little room on North Clark Street. Rose +remembered it and she felt sure that he did. The same singing wire of +memories and associations that had vibrated between them then was +vibrating between them now and drawing up palpably tighter with every +half-mile they walked. Their pace quickened a little. + +Straight down Fifth Avenue they walked to the corner of Thirteenth +Street, and then west. And when they stopped and faced each other in the +entrance to the gray brick building where Rose's apartment was, it was +at the end of a mile or more of absolutely unbroken silence. And facing +each other there, all that was said between them was her: + +"You'll come in, won't you?" and his, "Yes." + +But the gravity with which she'd uttered the invitation and the +tenseness of his acceptance of it, the square look that passed between +them, marked an end of something and the beginning of something new. + +She left him in her sitting-room while she went through into her bedroom +to take off her hat and jacket and take a glance into her mirror. When +she came back, she found him standing at her window looking out. He +didn't turn when she came in, but almost immediately he began speaking. +She went rather limp at the sound of his voice and dropped down on a +cushioned ottoman in front of the fireplace, and squeezed her hands +together between her knees. + +"I don't know how much you will have understood," he began, "probably a +good deal. You told me in Dubuque--as you were quite right to tell +me--that I mustn't come back to you. And now I've disobeyed you and +come. What I hope you will have guessed is that I wouldn't have come +except that I'd something to tell you--something different from +the--idiocies I tormented you with in Dubuque;--something I felt you +were entitled to be told. But I felt--this is what you won't have +understood--I felt that I hadn't any right to speak to you at all, about +anything vital, about anything that concerned us, until I'd given you +some sort of guarantee--until I'd shown you that I was a person it was +possible to deal reasonably with." + +She smiled, then pressed her hands suddenly to her eyes. + +"I understood," she said. + +"Well, then ..." But he didn't at once go on. Stood there a while longer +at the window, then crossed the room and brought up before her +book-shelves, staring blindly at the titles. He hadn't looked at her +even as he crossed the room. + +"Oh, it's a presumptuous thing to try to say," he broke out at last, "a +pitifully unnecessary thing to say, because you must know it without my +telling you. But when you went away you said--you said it was because +you hadn't--my--friendship! You said that was the thing you wanted and +that you were going to try to earn it. And in Dubuque you told me that +I'd evidently never be able to understand that you could have been happy +in that room on Clark Street, that I'd wanted to 'rescue' you from; that +I'd never be able to see that the thing you were doing there was a fine +thing, worth doing, entitled to my respect. Well, the things I'd been +saying to you and the things I'd been doing, justified you in thinking +that. But what I've come down here to say is--is that now--at last--I do +see it." + +She would have spoken then if she could have commanded her voice, and as +it was, the sound she made conveyed her intention to him, for he turned +on her quickly as if to interrupt the unspoken words, and went on with +an almost savage bitterness. + +"Oh, I'm under no illusions about it. I had my chance to see, when +seeing would have meant something to you--helped you. When any one but +the blindest sort of fool would have seen. I didn't. Now, when the thing +is patent for the world to see--now that Violet Williamson has seen it +and Constance, and God knows who of the rest of them, who were so +tactful and sympathetic about my 'disgrace'--now that you've won your +fight without any help from me ... Without any help! In spite of every +hindrance that my idiocy could put in your way! Now, after all--I come +and tell you that you've earned the thing you've set out to get." + +There was a little silence after that. She got up and took the post he +had abandoned at the window. + +"Why did you do it, Roddy?" she asked. "I mean, why did you want to come +and tell me?" + +"Why, in the first place," he said, "I wanted to get back a little of my +self-respect. I couldn't get that until I'd told you." + +This time the silence was longer. + +"What else did you want?" she asked. "What--in the second place?" + +"I don't know why I put it like that," he said. "Please don't think ... +I can't bear to have you think that I came down here to--ask anything of +you--anything in the way of a reward for having seen what is so plain to +every one. I haven't any--claim at all. I want to earn your friendship. +It's the biggest thing I've got to hope for. But I've no idea that you +can hand it out to me ready-made. I believe you'd do it if you could. +But you said once, yourself, that it wasn't a thing that could be given. +It was a thing that had to be earned. And you were right about that, as +you were about so many other things. Well, I'm going to try to earn it." +"Is that--all you want?" she asked, and then hearing the little gasp he +gave, she swung round quickly and looked at him. It was pretty dark in +the room, but his face in the dusk seemed to have whitened. + +"Is friendship all you want of me, Roddy?" she asked again. + +She stood there waiting, a full minute, in silence. Then she said, "You +don't have to tell me that. Because I know. Oh--oh, my dear, how well I +know!" + +He didn't come to her; just stood there, gripping the corner of her +bookcase and staring at her silhouette, which was about all he could see +of her against the window. At last he said, in a strained dry voice +she'd hardly have known for his: + +"If you know that--if I've let you see that, then I've done just +about the last despicable thing there was left for me to do. I've +come down here and--made you feel sorry for me. So that with +that--divine--kindliness of yours, you're willing to give +me--everything." + +He straightened up and came a step nearer. "Well, I won't have it, I +tell you! I don't know how you guessed. If I'd dreamed I was betraying +that to you ...! Don't I know--it's burnt into me so that I'll never +forget--what the memory of my love must be to you--the memory of the +hideous things it's done to you. And now, after all that--after you've +won your fight--alone--and stand where you stand now--for me to come +begging! And take a gift like that! I tell you it _is_ pity. It can't be +anything else." + +There was another minute of silence, and then he heard her make a little +noise in her throat, a noise that would have been a sob had there not +been something like a laugh in it. The next moment she said, "Come over +here, Roddy," and as he hesitated, as if he hadn't understood, she +added, "I want you to look at me. Over here by the window, where there's +light enough to see me by." + +He came wonderingly, very slowly, but at last, with her outstretched +hand she reached him and drew him around between her and the window. + +"Look into my face," she commanded. "Look into my eyes; as far in as you +can. Is it--oh, my dearest"--the sob of pure joy came again--"is it pity +that you see?" + +She'd had her hands upon his shoulders, but now they clasped themselves +behind his head. Her vision of him had swum away in a blur, and without +the support she got from him she'd have been swaying giddily. + +"Roddy, old man," she said, "if I hadn't seen--in the first--ten +minutes, the thing you--meant so hard I shouldn't see--I think it would +have--killed me. If I hadn't seen that you loved me--after all; after +everything. After all the tortures you'd suffered, through me. Because +that's all I want--in the world." + +At that he put his arms around her and pulled her up to him. But the +manner of it was so different from his old embraces that presently she +drew him around so that what little light there was fell on his face, +and searched it thoughtfully. + +"You _do_ believe me, Roddy, don't you--that there isn't any pity about +it? There isn't any room for pity. There's nothing in me at all but just +a great big--want of you. Don't you understand that?" + +He did understand it with his mind, but he was a little dazed, like +one who has stood too near where the lightning struck. The hope +he had kept buried alive so long--buried alive because it wouldn't +die--could not be brought out into a blinding glory like this without +shrinking--pain--exquisite terrifying pain. + +The knowledge she had acquired by her own suffering stood her in good +stead now. She did not mistake, as the Rose he had married might have +done, the weakness of his response for coldness--indifference. + +She went back and began making love to him more gently; released herself +from his arms, led him over to her one big chair, and made him sit down +in it, settled herself upon the arm of it and contented herself with one +of his hands. Presently he took one of hers, bent his face down over it +and brushed the back of it with his lips. + +The timidity of that caress, with all it revealed to her, was too much +for her. She swallowed one sob, and another, but the next one got away +from her and she broke out in a passionate fit of weeping. + +That roused him from his daze a little, and he pulled her down in his +arms--held her tight--comforted her. + +When she got herself in hand again, she got up, went away to wash her +face, and coming back in the room again, lighted a reading-lamp and drew +down the blinds. + +"Rose," he said presently, "what are we going to do?" + +She knew she was not answering the true intent of his question when she +said: + +"Well, for one thing we can get a little supper. I don't know what we've +got to eat, but we won't care--to-night." + +There was a ring of decision in his voice that startled her a little +when he said: + +"No, we won't do that to-night. We'll go out somewhere to a +restaurant." + +Their eyes met--unwavering. + +"Yes," she said, "that's what we'll do." + +They didn't talk much across the table in the deserted little Italian +restaurant they went to. Neither of them afterward could remember +anything they'd said. They ate their meal in a sort of grave contented +happiness that was reaching down deeper and deeper into them every +minute, and they walked back to the gray brick building in Thirteenth +Street, arm in arm, hand in hand, in silence. But when she stopped +there, he said: + +"Let's walk a little farther, Rose. There are things we've got to +decide, and--and I'm not going in with you again to-night." + +She caught her breath at that, and her hand tightened its hold on his. +But she walked on with him. + +He said, presently, "You understand, don't you?" + +She answered, "Oh, my dear!--yes." But she added, a little shakily, "I +wish we had a magic-carpet right here, that we could fly home on." + +Then they walked a while in silence. + +At last he said: "There's this we can do. I can go back to my hotel +to-night, and tell them that I'm expecting you--that I'm expecting my +wife to join me there. To-morrow? And then I can come and get you and +bring you there. It's not home, and it's not the place I'd choose +for--for a honeymoon, but ..." + +The way she echoed the word set him thinking. But before his thoughts +had got to their destination she said: + +"Shall we make it a real honeymoon, Roddy--make it as complete as we +can? Forget everything and let all the world be ..." + +He supplied a word for her, "Rose-color?" + +She accepted it with a caressing little laugh, "... for a while?" + +"That's what I was fumbling for," he said, "but I can't think very +straight to-night. I've got it now, though. That cottage we had--before +the twins were born--down on the Cape. There won't be a soul there this +time of the year. We'd have the world to ourselves." + +"Yes," she said, "for a little while, we'd want it like that. But after +a while--after a day or two, could we have the babies? Could the nurse +bring them on to me and then go straight back, so that I could have +them--and you, altogether?" + +He said, "You darling!" But he couldn't manage more than that. + +A little later he suggested that they could get the place by telegraph +and could set out for it to-morrow. + +She laughed and asked, "Will you let me be as silly as I like for once? +Will you give me a week--well, till Saturday; that would do--to get +ready in?" + +"Get ready?" he echoed. + +"Clothes and thinks," she said. "A--trousseau, don't you see? I've been +so busy making clothes for other people that I've got just about nothing +myself. And I'd like ... But I don't really care, Roddy. I'll go with +you to-morrow, 'as is,' if you want me to." + +"No," he said. "We'll do it the other way." + +And then he took her back to the gray brick entrance and, just out of +range of the elevator man, kissed her good night. + +"But will you telephone to me as soon as you wake up in the morning, so +that I'll know it's true?" + +She nodded. Then her eyes went wide and she clung to him. + +"_Is_ it true, Roddy? Is it possible for a thing to come back like that? +Are we really the old Rodney and Rose, planning our honeymoon again? It +wasn't quite three years ago. Three years next month. Will it be like +that?" + +"Not like that, perhaps," he said, "exactly. It will be better by all +we've learned and suffered since." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE BEGINNING + + +There was a sense in which this prediction of Rodney's about their +honeymoon was altogether true, They had great hours--hours of an +emotional intensity greater than any they had known during that former +honeymoon, greater by all they had learned and suffered since--hours +that repaid all that suffering, and could not have been captured at any +smaller price. There were hours when the whole of their two selves +literally seemed transfused into one essence; when there was nothing of +either of them that was not the other; when all their thoughts, +impulses, desires, flowered spontaneously out of a common mind. There +was no precalculating these experiences. They came upon them, seized +them, carried them off. + +One of these, that neither of them will ever forget, came at the end of +a long tramp through the dawn of their second day. They had been +swinging along in almost unbroken silence through the gray mist, had +mounted a little hillock and halted, hand in hand, as the first lance of +sunlight transfixed and flushed the still vaporous air, and it had +seemed to them, as they watched, breathless, while the sun mounted, that +the whole of the life that lay before them was a track of gold like that +which blazed across the sea, leading to an intolerable glory. + +And there were other hours of equally memorable transfiguration, which +their surroundings had nothing whatever to do with--hours lighted only +by the flame that flared up from their two selves. + +But life, of course, can not be made up of hours like that. No sane +person can even want to live in a perpetual ecstasy. What makes a +mountain peak is the fall away into the surrounding valleys. + +In their valleys of commonplace, every-day existence--and these +occurred even in their first days together--they were stiff, shy, +self-conscious with each other. And their attempt to ignore this fact +only made the self-consciousness the worse. It troubled and bewildered +both of them. + +Rose's misgiving had been justified. They weren't the old Rodney and +Rose. Those two splendid careless savages, who had lived for a fortnight +on an island in the midst of Martin Whitney's carefully preserved +solitude in Northern Wisconsin, accepting the gifts of the gods with +such joyous confidence that none of them could ever turn bitter, those +two zestful children, had ceased to exist. + +John Galbraith had spoken truth when he said there was no such thing as +a fresh start. For good or evil, you were the product of your +yesterdays. The nightmare tour on the road with _The Girl Up-stairs_ +company was a part of Rose; the day in Centropolis, the night when +Galbraith had made love to her. The hour in the University Club, when +Rodney's heart had first shrunk from an unacknowledged fear; the days +and weeks of humiliation and distress that had succeeded it, were a part +of him--an ineffaceable part. + +So it was natural enough--though not, therefore, the less +distressing--that Rose should note, with wonder, a tendency in him to +revert to the manner which had characterized his first call on her in +New York; a tendency to be--of all things--polite. He didn't swear any +more, nor contradict. He chose his words, got up when she did, picked up +things she dropped. And when she was quite sure she was safe from +discovery, she sometimes wept forlornly, for the rough, outrageous, +absent-minded, imperious lover of the old days. + +She did not know that she was different too--as remote from the girl she +had been during the first six months of their marriage--the girl who, +"all eyes," had held her breath while Doctor Randolph told her things; +the girl who had smiled over Bertie Willis' love-making, because she +didn't know that such things happened except in books--as he was from +the old Rodney. Even Violet had seen, in the glimpse she'd caught across +two taxicabs, that her smile was somehow different, and James Randolph +had come back from his tea with her in the Knickerbocker, saying that +she was a thousand years old. + +So it was not wonderful that Rodney should have found a new mystery in +her; nor that, seeing in her look, sometimes--especially when it was not +meeting his own--the reflections of a thousand experiences he had not +shared with her, he should have felt that she was a long way off. And +his heart ached for the old Rose, whom he had so completely +"surrounded"--the Rose who had consulted him about the menus for her +dinners, who had brought him all her little troubles; who had +tried--bless her!--to study law, and had stolen into court to hear his +argument, so that she could talk with him. Whatever the future might +have for him, it would never bring that Rose back. + +The arrival of the twins, in the convoy of a badly flustered--and, to +tell the truth, a somewhat scandalized--Miss French, simplified the +situation a little--by complicating it! They absolutely enforced a +routine. They had needs that must be met on the minute. And they gave +Rose and Rodney so many occupations that the contemplation of their +complicated states of mind was much abridged. + +But even her babies brought Rose a disappointment along with them. From +the time of the receipt of Miss French's telegram acknowledging Rodney's +and telling them what train she and the twins would take, Rose had been +telling off the hours in mounting excitement. The two utterly adorable +little creatures, as the pictures of them in Rodney's pocketbook showed +them to be, who were, miraculously--incredibly--hers, were coming to +bring motherhood to her; a long-deferred payment for the labor and the +agony with which she had borne them; the realization of half-forgotten +hopes that had, during the period of her pregnancy, been the mainstay of +her life. There was now no Mrs. Ruston, no Harriet, no plausible +physician to keep them away from her. Rose had a smile of tender pity +for the memory of the girl who had struggled so ineffectually and yet +with such heart-breaking earnestness to break the filaments of the web +they'd spun around her. + +No, it wouldn't be like that now. Rodney had agreed explicitly that +Miss French was to be allowed to stay only as long as Rose wanted her; +only for the few days--or hours--she would need for making herself +mistress of their regime. Then the nurse was to be sent away on a +vacation and Rose should have her children to herself. + +She didn't go to Boston with Rodney to meet them; nor even to the +station; stayed in the cottage, ostensibly to see to it, up to the very +last minute, that the fires were right (June had come in cold and rainy) +and in general to be ready on the moment to produce anything that their +rather unforeseeable needs might call for. Her real reason was a +shrinking from having her first meeting with them in the confusion of +arrival on a station platform, under the eyes of the world, amid the +distractions of things like luggage. + +Rodney understood this well enough, and arriving at the cottage, he +clambered out of the wagon with them and carried them both straight in +to Rose, leaving the nurse and the bewildering paraphernalia of travel +for a second trip. + +Rose, in the passionate surge of gratified desire that came with the +sight of them, caught them from him, crushed them up tight against her +breast--and frightened them half to death. So that without +dissimulation, they howled and brought Miss French flying to the rescue. + +Rose didn't make a tragedy of it; managed a smile at herself, though she +suspected she'd cry when she got the chance, and subjected her ideas to +an instantaneous revision. They were--_persons_, those two funnily +indignant little mites, with their own ideas, their own preferences, and +the perfectly adequate conviction of being entitled to them. How would +she herself have liked it, to have a total stranger, fifteen feet high +or so, snatch at her like that? + +She was rather apologetic all day, and got her reward; especially from +the boy, who was an adventurous and rather truculent baby, much she +fancied, as his father must once have been, and who took to her more +quickly than the girl did. Indeed, the second Rodney fell in love with +her almost as promptly as his father had done before him. But little +Portia wasn't very far behind. Two days sufficed for the conquest of +the pair of them. + +The really disquieting discovery awaited the time when the wire-edge of +novelty about this adventure in motherhood had worn off; when she could +bathe them, dress them, feed them their very strictly regimented meals, +without being spurred to the highest pitch of alertness by the fear of +making a mistake--forgetting something, like the juice of a half orange +at ten o'clock in the morning, the omission of which might have--who +knew what disastrous consequences! + +That attitude can't last any woman long, and Rose, with her wonderfully +clever hands, her wits trained--as the wits of persons who had worked +for John Galbraith were always trained--not to be told the same thing +twice, her pride keeping in sharp focus the determination that Rodney +should see that she could be as good a nurse as Miss French--Rose wore +off that nervous tenseness over her new job very quickly. Within a week +she had a routine established that was noiseless--frictionless. + +But do you remember how aghast she was over the forty weeks John +Galbraith had talked about as the probable run of _The Girl Up-stairs_; +her consternation over the idea of just going on doing the same thing +over and over again, "around and round, like a horse at the end of a +pole"? What she would like to do, she had told him, now that this was +done, was to begin on something else. + +Well, it was with something the same feeling of consternation that, +having thrown herself heart and soul into the task of planning and +setting in motion a routine for two year-and-a-half-old babies, she +found herself straightening up and saying "What next?" And realizing, +that as far as this job was concerned, there was no "next." The supreme +merit of her care, from now on, would be--barring emergencies--the +placid continuation of that routine. There were no heroics about +motherhood--save in emergency, once more. It was a question of +remembering a hundred trivial details, and executing them in the same +way every day. It was a question of doing a thousand little services, +not one of which was serious enough to occupy her mind, every one of +which was capable of being done almost automatically--but not quite! The +whole of the attention was never quite taken, and yet it was never, all +the way around the clock, entirely left free. And her love for them, +which had become almost as intense and overmastering a thing as her love +for her husband, could never be expressed fully, as was her love for +him. It would be cruelly unfair, she recognized that, to emotionalize +over them--force them. + +It was a fine relation. It was, perhaps, the very finest in the world. +But as a job, it wasn't so satisfactory. Four-fifths of it, anyway, +could be done with better results for the children by a placid, +unimaginative, tolerably stupid person, who had no stronger feeling for +them than the mild temporary affection they could excite in any one not +a monster. And the other fifth of it wasn't strictly a job at all. + +On the whole, then, leaving their miraculous hours out of the +account--and, being incommensurable, imponderable, they couldn't be +included in an inventory--their honeymoon, considered as an attempt to +revisit Arcady, to seize a golden day that looked neither toward the +past nor toward the future, complete in itself, perfect--was a failure. + +It was not until, pretty ruefully, they acknowledged this, tore up their +artificial resolution not to look at the future, and deliberately set +themselves to the contemplation of a life that would have to take into +account complex and baffling considerations, that their honeymoon became +a success. It was well along in their month that this happened. + +Rose had spent a maddening sort of day, a day that had been all edges, +trying not to let herself feel hurt over fantastic secondary meanings +which it was possible to attach to some of the things Rodney had said, +frying to be cheerful and sensible, and to ignore the patent fact that +his cheerfulness was as forced and unnatural a thing as hers. The +children--as a rule the best-behaved little things in the world--had +been refractory. They'd refused to take their morning nap for some +reason or other, and had been fractious ever since. So, after their +supper, when they'd finally gone off to sleep, and Rose had rejoined +Rodney in the sitting-room, she was in a state where it did not take +much to set her off. + +It was not much that did; nothing more, indeed, than the fact that she +found her husband brooding in front of the fire, and that the smile with +which he greeted her was a little too quick and bright and mechanical, +and that it soon faded out. The Rodney of her memories had never done +things like that. If you found him sitting in a chair, you found him +reading a book. When he was thinking something out he tramped back and +forth, twisted his face up, made gestures! That habit couldn't have +changed. It was just that he wasn't being natural with her! Couldn't +feel at home with her! Before she knew it, she was crying. + +He asked, in consternation, what the matter was. What had happened? + +"Nothing," she said. "Absolutely nothing. Really." + +"Then it's just--that you're not happy. With me, like this." He brought +that out gravely, a word at a time; as though they hurt. + +"Are you happy? With me--like this?" she countered. + +It was a question he could not answer categorically and she did not give +him time for anything else. "What's the matter with us, Roddy?" she +demanded. "We ought to be happy. We meant to be. We said that we'd been +through a lot, and that probably there was a lot mere to go through--in +the way of working things out, at least--and that we'd take a month just +for nothing but to be happy in--just for pure joy." Her voice broke in a +sob over that. "And here we are--like this!" + +"It hasn't all been like this," he said. "There have been hours, a day +or two, that I'd go through the whole thing for, again, if necessary." + +She nodded assent to that. "But the rest of the time!" she cried. "Why +can't we be--comfortable together? Why ... Roddy, why can't you be +natural with me? Like your old self. Why don't you roar at me any more? +And swear when you run into things? I've never seen you formal before +--not with anybody. Not even with strangers. And now you're formal with +me." + +The rueful grin with which he acknowledged the truth of this indictment +was more like him, and it cheered her immensely. She answered it with +one of her own, dried her eyes and asked again, more collectedly: + +"Well, can you tell me why?" + +"Why, it seemed to me," he said, "that it was you who were different. +And you have changed, of course, down inside, more than I have. You've +been through things in the last year and a half; found out things that I +know nothing about, except as I have read about them in books. I've +never had to ask a stranger for a job. I've never been--brought to bay, +the way you were in that damned town of Centropolis (I'd like to burn +it). And other things--horrible things, have--have come so near you, +that if it hadn't been for that--white flame of yours, they'd have +marked you. When I think of those things I feel like a schoolboy beside +you. You've no idea how--how innocent a man can be, Rose. That's not the +tradition, but it's true. So, when I remember how things used to be +between us, how I used to be the one who knew things, and how I preached +and spouted, I get to feeling that the man you remember must look to you +now, like--well, like a schoolboy. Showing off." + +She stared at him incredulously. "But that's downright morbid," she +said. "You don't have to go--into the gutter to learn things. And what +you say about innocence ... A man can't keep his innocence by being +ignorant, Roddy. If he's kept it, he must have--fought for it. I know +that." + +She was still deeply disturbed. "It's horrible that I should make you +feel like that," she concluded. + +"It isn't you," he told her. "It's just--the situation. I can't help +feeling that I'm taken--on approval. Oh, it's _got_ to be like that! +There are things that, with all the forgiveness in the world, you can't +forget. And until you have seen that I am different, that I have made +myself different...." + +"What things?" she demanded. + +"Well--a thing," he amended. "You know what I mean. The night I came to +the stage door of the Globe for you." + +She colored at that, and then, to his amazement, she smiled. + +"I've been such a coward about that," she said. "I've tried to tell you +a dozen times up here, and I've been afraid you'd be--shocked. I expect +you will be, now. But I've got to tell you just the same. + +"Roddy, when you were talking to me, there in the hotel at Dubuque, +telling me how horrified you were over that, it came over me all at once +that I had nothing to forgive; that if the thing was a fault at all, it +was mine as much as yours, and that it wasn't so much of a fault as +an--accident. You couldn't help hating me, and you couldn't help loving +me. And you did both at once. And I, when I could have told you +something that would have made you--well, hate me less, anyhow--didn't +take the trouble. I said to myself then that it was too bad it happened, +but that it wasn't, at least, your fault. And I was afraid to tell you +so. + +"But, Roddy, during these last months, down here in New York, I've +been--glad it happened. It's been something to hold on to, that your +love of me was strong enough, so that the hate couldn't kill it. It +helped me to hope that it would be strong enough, some day or other, to +bring you back to me. And without that hope, I couldn't have gone on. +It's what I have lived on. The only thing that any of my--successes has +meant has been that perhaps it brought that nearer." + +She gave a shaky laugh. "On approval!" Her eyes filled again. "Roddy, +you can't mean that." + +She came over and sat down in his lap, and slid her arm around his neck. + +"This is where we'll begin!" she said. "That I'll never--whatever +happens--walk out on you again. Whether things go well or badly with us, +we'll work it out, somehow, together." + +It was not until she heard the long shuddering sigh he drew at that, and +felt him go limp under her, that she realized how genuine his fear had +been--the perfectly preposterous fear that if their new experiment +didn't come up to her anticipation she'd tell him so, and leave him +once more. This time for good. + +It was a good while before they took up a rational discussion again, but +at last she said: + +"It will take working out, though. We've been shirking that. Hadn't we +better begin?" + +He assented. "Only, you'll have to get up," he said, "and sit down +somewhere else. Out of reach." + +She smiled as she obeyed him. "It's hard for a woman to remember," she +said, "that a man can't think about other things when he's making love, +and can't think about the person he's in love with when he's doing other +things. Because, that's about the easiest thing a woman does." + +She saw by the expression that went over his face that her remark had +chilled him a little. He didn't like to think of her as "a woman," nor +as of his relation to her as accounted for by the fact that he was "a +man." He'd generalize fast enough about the world at large, but it would +always be hard for him to include her and himself in his +generalizations. + +"Well," he said when he'd got his pipe alight, "it's the first question +I asked you after--after I got my eyes open: What are we going to do?" + +"I told Alice Perosini," she said, "the day before we left to come up +here, that I'd come back in a month, and that I'd stay until I'd +finished all the work that we were contracted for. I felt I had to do +that. It would have been so beastly unfair not to. You understand, don't +you?" + +"Of course," he said. "You couldn't consider anything else. But then +what?" + +"Then," she said after a silence, "then, if it's what you want me to do, +Roddy, I'll come back to Chicago--for good." + +"Give up your business, you mean?" he asked quickly. + +She nodded. "It can't be done out there," she said. "All the big +productions that there's any money in are made in New York. I'll come +back and just be your wife. I'll keep your house and mother the +children, and--what was it you said to Gertrude?--maintain your status, +if you don't think I'm spoiled for that." + +That last phrase, though, was said with a smile, which he answered with +one of his own and threw in in parenthesis, "You ought to hear Violet go +on, and Constance." But with an instant return to seriousness, he said: + +"I've not asked that, Rose. I wouldn't dream of asking it!" + +"I know," she said. "It's a thing I'm glad you let me give--unasked. But +I mean it, Roddy. I've meant it from the first, when I told you you were +all I wanted. There wasn't any string tied to that." + +"I know," he said. "But all the same, it wouldn't work, Rose." + +"There's a real job there," she persisted, "just in being successfully +the wife of a successful man. I can see that now. I never saw it when it +was my job. Hardly caught a glimpse of it. I didn't even see my bills; +let you pay them down at the office, with all your own work that you had +to do." + +"It wasn't me," he said. "It was Miss Beach." + +She stared at that and gave a short laugh. "If I'd known that ...!" she +said. + +Then she came back to the point. + +"It is a real job, and I think I could learn to do it pretty well. And +of course a wife's the only person who can do it properly." + +Still he shook his head. But he hadn't, as yet, any reasoned answer to +make, except as before, that it wouldn't work. + +"I shouldn't mind the money end of it," she said. "I mean living on +yours. I know I can earn my way, and I know you know it. So that +wouldn't matter. I'd never feel like a beggar again, Roddy." + +"I know," he agreed. "But that isn't it. It isn't a question of what +you'd like to be, or are willing to be. It's a question of what you are. +You're something more than just my wife. You've got certain +talents--certain proved capacities. That's as true as that I am +something besides--just your husband. There you are! Try it on the other +way around. Suppose I should offer to give up my practise and come down +here to live with you--be just your husband and, say, your business +manager. You can see that that's preposterous. Or, for that matter, we +could both quit. I've made a devil of a lot of money lately. I've an +income from my investments of from twenty-five to thirty thousand a year +that we could live on, and not do a blessed thing but be husband and +wife to each other. Like the McCreas. But it wouldn't work. You've got +to be what you are, that's the point, and somehow or other, cut your +life to fit. I expect that's one of the things that's been the trouble +with us down here. We've both been trying so damned hard to _be_ +something. And that won't work." + +"What will work then?" she asked. And this was a question he couldn't +answer. + +"We've just got to go ahead," he said at last, "and see what happens. +Perhaps you can work it out so that you can do part of your work at +home. We could move the nursery and give you Florence's old studio. And +then it would do if you only came down here for your two big +seasons--fall and spring." + +"That doesn't seem fair to you," she protested. "You deserve a real +wife, Roddy; not somebody dashing in and dashing out." + +"I don't deserve anything I can't get," he said. "I'd rather have a part +interest in you than to possess, lock, stock and barrel, any other woman +I can think of." + +She came back to him again and settled down in his arms. + +"You used to possess me, lock, stock and barrel," she said. "You can do +it again, if you'll say the word, Rodney." + +He shook his head. "That's just what I can't do," he told her. "That's +gone and we'll never get it back. And I don't believe I'd have it back +if I could. For one thing, you can't possess without being possessed. I +know that back in those days you're talking about I used to try to fight +you out of my thoughts. Used to stay down late at the office, not +working, just--trying not to think about you. Trying to save out part of +myself from being--saturated with you. It was the fact that I was so +terribly important to you that used to make me feel like that; the fact +of your--dependence--I don't mean for money--on me. I used to think--it +wasn't your lover that thought that; it was the other man--that it +would be a perfectly wonderful relief to me if you could just get some +interest that left me out. And all the while the lover in me was trying +to have all of you there was. It's a hard thing to talk sense about." + +"A man told me," Rose said, "--John Galbraith told me, that he couldn't +be a woman's friend and her lover at the same time, any more than a +steel spring could be made soft so that it would bend in your fingers +like copper, and still be a spring. He said that was true of him, +anyway, and he felt sure it was true of nine men out of a dozen. Do you +think it's true? Have we got to decide which we'll be?" + +"We can't decide," he said with an impatient laugh. "That's just what +I've been telling you. We've got to take what we can get. We've got to +work out the relation between ourselves that is _our_ relation--the Rose +and Rodney relation. It'll probably be a little different from any +other. There'll be friendship in it, and there'll be love in it. Imagine +our 'deciding' that we wouldn't be lovers! But I guess that what +Galbraith said was true to this extent: that each of those will be more +or less at the expense of the other. It won't spring quite so well, and +it will bend a little." + +She was still disposed to rebel at this conclusion. "I don't see why it +has to be that way," she insisted. "Why it can't be a perfect thing +instead of just a compromise. Why being friends and partners shouldn't +make us better lovers, and why being lovers shouldn't make us better +friends." + +"Like the doctrine of the Trinity," he murmured. "'Three in one; one in +three. Without confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.' It's +a wonderful idea, certainly." + +"Well, then," she demanded, "isn't it what we ought to try for? The very +best there is?" + +"That's what they tell us," he admitted. "'Aim high,' they say. I'm not +sure it isn't better sense to aim at something you can hit. Why, look at +us, these last three weeks! We said we were going to have a month of +pure happiness. One hundred per cent. pure. We waked up every morning +telling ourselves we'd got to be happy, and we made ourselves miserable +every night wondering if we'd been happy enough." + +"I'm glad you were miserable, too," she said. "I was _so_ ashamed of +myself for being." + +After a while he said, "Here's what we've got to build on: Whatever else +it may or may not be, this relation between us is a permanent thing. +We've lived with each other and without each other, and we know which we +want. If we find it has its limitations and drawbacks we needn't worry. +Just go ahead and make the best of it we can. There's no law that +decrees we've got to be happy. When we _are_ happy it'll be so much to +the good. And when we aren't ..." + +She gave a contented little laugh and cuddled closer down against him. +"You talk like Solomon in all his solemnity," she said. "But you can't +imagine that we're going to be unhappy. Really." + +His answer was that perhaps he couldn't imagine it, but that he knew it, +just the same. "Even an ordinary marriage isn't any too easy; a +marriage, I mean, where it's quite well understood which of the parties +to it shall always submit to the other; and which of them is the +important one who's always to have the right of way. There's generally +something perfectly unescapable that decides that question. But with us +there isn't. So the question who's got to give in will have to be +decided on its merits every time a difference arises." + +She burlesqued a look of extreme apprehension. She was deeply and +utterly content with life just then. But he wouldn't be diverted. + +"There's another reason," he went on. "I've a notion that the thing +we're after is about the finest thing there is. If that's so, we'll have +to pay for it, in one way or another. But we aren't going to worry about +it. We'll just go ahead--and see what happens." + +"Do you remember when you said that before?" asked Rose. "You told me +that marriage was an adventure anyway, and that the only thing to do was +to try it--and see what happened." + +He grunted. "The real adventure's just begun," he said. + +"Anyhow," she murmured drowsily, "you can talk to me again. Just as if +we weren't married." + + * * * * * + +And there is just about where they stand to-day--at the beginning, or +hardly past the beginning, of what he spoke of as their real adventure; +they are going forward prepared to make the best of it and see what +happens. + +What did happen within two or three days after this last conversation of +theirs that I have chronicled was that Rose went back with Rodney and +the twins to Chicago, stayed there only until Miss French could be +summoned back from her vacation, and then went on to New York to a badly +worried Alice and the now extremely urgent affairs of Dane & Company. + +Summer is a slack time for a lawyer, of course, since judges are +gentlemen who like long vacations. So Rodney persuaded Rose to take a +bigger apartment in the same building and to put a card in the mail-box +that would account for him as well as for herself. He came down pretty +often, and always had, it must be owned, a rather hard time of it. The +spectacle of Rose driving along an ungodly number of hours a day while +he idled about doing nothing was one he found it hard to get used to. It +didn't altogether reconcile him to it to have her point out that there +were times when he drove like that. They had two or three good Sundays, +though; one of them out on Long Island with John Galbraith--a meeting +and the beginning of a friendship that Rose had been very keen to bring +about. + +Her work ended with a terrific climax in September, just about as his +began, and Rose came back to Chicago, spent a joyous month with the +twins and with the little of Rodney his office could spare of him. Then, +taking the babies and their nurse with her, she went out to California +to see her mother and Portia. + +Without any special incentive, just the natural desire of a daughter and +a sister for reunion after so long a parting would have taken her there. + +But Rose had a special incentive. She wanted to talk to Portia. They +hadn't had a real talk since that devastating day--ages ago--when, +yielding to an impulse of passionate self-revelation, Portia had +exhibited her great sacrifice and her equally great, though thwarted +desire; had said to Rose, "I am the branch they cut off so that you +could grow. You're living my life as well as yours. The only thing I +ever could hate you for would be for failing." She wanted to tell Portia +how the life she had given up the chance of living had grown in her +sister's trust. She wanted Portia's, "Well done." + +Also, as a practical matter of justice, she wanted to repay, as far as +money could repay--what Portia, at such a cost, had given her. It was a +project that had often been in her thoughts; at first, just as a dream, +latterly, as a realizable hope. + +Considered just as a visit to her mother and sister, the journey to +California was a success. Her mother, especially, got a vast +satisfaction out of the twins, and Rose herself an equal satisfaction +out of seeing how happy and content she was. + +She was writing a book--a sort of autobiography. Not that her life, as +she modestly said, was worth writing about, but that the progress of the +Cause she had devoted her life to could hardly be illustrated in a +better way than with an account of that life; of the ideas she had found +current in her girlhood; of the long struggle by means of which those +ideas had become modified; and, last and most important, of the danger +lest, now that the old fixed ideas had become fluid, they should flow in +the wrong direction. Portia was acting as her amanuensis--faithful, +competent, devoted, and just as of old--or perhaps more so, Rose +couldn't be sure--ironic; a little acrid. + +Mrs. Stanton's attitude toward Rose's own adventure perplexed and amused +her a little. She'd half expected to be embarrassed with approbation. +She was prepared to deprecate a little the idea that by the example of +her revolt and her attained independence she had done a service to the +great Cause. She didn't feel at all sure that she had; couldn't believe +that she and Rodney, with all their struggles, had settled anything; +and she had hesitated as to how far she could convey that doubt to her +mother. + +But she might have spared her pains. Mrs. Stanton's attitude, while it +fell short of "the less said the better," was one, at least, of +suspended judgment. She couldn't, conceivably, ever have left Henry +Stanton. She couldn't, evidently, understand why Rose mightn't have done +her wifely duty and been content with that. She felt it incumbent on +women to demonstrate to men that the new liberties they sought would +not, when granted, lead them to disregard the ties that were the +essential foundations of Christian society. But Rose belonged to the new +generation--a generation that confronted, no doubt, new problems, and +would have to solve them for itself. + +This suited Rose well enough. What she wanted from her mother, anyway, +was just the old look of love and trust and confidence. And she got that +abundantly. + +The thing she wanted from Portia she didn't get. As long as any one else +was by--her mother, or Miss French in charge of the twins--she and +Portia chatted easily, on the best of terms. But, left alone with +her--as it seemed to Rose she actually took pains not to be--Portia's +manner took on that old ironic aloofness that had always silenced her +when she was a girl. She made at last a resolute effort to break +through. + +"One of the things I came out for," she said, "was to talk to you--talk +it all out with you. I want to know what sort of job you think I've made +of it." + +"You've evidently made a good job of the costume business," said Portia. +"I read that little article about you in _Vanity_ about a month ago. +That didn't seem to leave much doubt as to who's who." + +"I don't mean that," said Rose. "I mean what sort of job of it +altogether; of the--of the life that's yours as well as mine." + +She stopped there and waited, but all the assent she got from Portia was +that she forbore to change the subject. They were sitting in the study +which her mother had just abandoned for her afternoon nap, and Portia +had busied herself sorting over the litter of papers her mother's +activities always left. + +"I want to tell you all about it," Rose said. "I'd like to tell you +every smallest thing about it, if it were possible, so that you +could--remember it as I do." + +She tried to do this; to give her sister--not a narrative (her letters, +after all, had put Portia in possession of the outlines of the +story)--but at least an interpretation of it that would go to the +bottom; things she couldn't write in her letters, the actuating desires +and hopes that lay behind the things she'd done. But the attempt +collapsed. She was talking in a vacuum. Her phrases grew more disjointed +until she felt that they were meaningless. At least, scrambling back to +solid ground again, she told Portia that she wanted to pay back to her +the cost of her education, as well as that could be calculated, and of +her trousseau. + +Portia's negative of this proposition was as keen and straight as a +knife-edge. The thing wasn't to be discussed; not to be considered for +an instant. "We're perfectly well off, mother and I. We're living easily +within our income out here, and--we're as contented as possible." The +cadence of those last three words had a finality about it that closed +the subject. + +Portia didn't want to share, vicariously, in the life she'd made +possible for Rose. The branch had withered indeed and didn't want the +pain of feeling the sap struggling up under its bark again. The ashes +had better be left banked up about the fading coal. The silence was like +the click of a closing door. Then Portia said: + +"What does the North Side bunch think of you now you've come back? And +those Lake Forest friends of yours? They must have been hideously +scandalized. Are they going to forgive you?" + +"Oh, they're lovely to me," said Rose. "The only one I've lost out with +is Frederica. She'll be a long time making it up with me, if she ever +does." + +"She saw what Rodney went through while you were away, I expect," +Portia suggested. + +"That, of course," said Rose. "And then--well, my going away like that, +especially as she began to see what the idea was, must have seemed a +sort of criticism on her own way of life, which she's every reason to +feel perfectly satisfied with. And that, after she'd let herself get +really fond of me, and had brought me up by hand--which is what she did +that first season, must be pretty hard to forgive. She has forgiven me, +of course. She's a dear. But we've--sort of got to begin again." + +Portia wanted to know about all the others: that pretty Williamson +woman, and a few more whose names she remembered. + +Rose told her; showed a feverish interest in the rather indifferent +topic just to bury the memory of the one that had failed so dismally. +She described a dinner or two she had been to since her return, and told +of the little triumph that had been made for her on the occasion of the +Chicago opening of _Come On In_. Everybody had been there and the +Crawfords had given a supper dance for her at the Blackstone afterward. +And driving in the last nail, she told of the feeble little witticism +old Mrs. Crawford had made apropos of her return--a remark whose tinge +of malice was so mild that it was felt by all to constitute an official +sanction of her social rehabilitation. + +Portia honestly enjoyed all that, but Rose went back to the hotel +feeling pretty blue. (They were stopping at the hotel. The twins alone, +to say nothing of Miss French and herself, would have been too much for +the modest confines of the bungalow.) She wished she could have a good +long talk, to-night, with Rodney. + +She had a sense of somebody, away up above all mundane affairs--not +responsible for them, perhaps, but capable, at all events, of thoroughly +taking them in--smiling at them all with a sort of ferocious cynicism. +In the foreground of this impression were the good friends--the really +good friends she had just been telling Portia about, who had taken her +back with so warm a welcome--because she'd succeeded; got away with it! + +It was with a deeper feeling of melancholy that she thought of Portia +and her mother. Portia, who had fought so gallantly and deserved so +much, thwarted, withered, huddling her ashes around her so that her coal +of fire might never be fanned into flame again. Her mother, living +gently in the afterglow of an outworn gospel. Must every one come to an +end like that when some initial store of energy was spent? Begin walling +himself in against life? Stuffing new experiences into pigeonholes, +unscrutinized? Would the time come when little Portia would have to +begin treating _her_ with the same tender-patronage that Rose felt now +for her mother? Would little Portia, some day, smile over her like that, +and wonder whether she'd ever--really lived? + +She did wish she could have a talk with Rodney. + +The telephone switchboard in the lobby gave her an idea. It was five +o'clock, now; seven in Chicago. He'd just be sitting down to dinner, all +by himself, poor dear, most likely, and wishing for a talk with her. +Well, why not? + +She rather electrified the hotel office when she put in that call. The +whole place wore an important air for the next half-hour. She went up to +her room to wait for it, and before the line was put through she thought +of something that would have prevented her doing it if she'd thought in +time. He'd probably think something horrible had happened to one of +them. So the moment she heard his voice--it was faint and far-away but +clear enough that she could detect the straining urgency of it--she +said: + +"It's all right, Roddy. There isn't a thing the matter. Did I frighten +you half to death?" + +He said, "Thank God!" And then, "I don't suppose it was two minutes I +waited for your voice, but it seemed a year. What is it?" + +"I'm ashamed to tell you, after a scare like that. It's nothing, Roddy. +Just to hear you say hello. It seems a pretty unjust sort of world, +to-night, and I wanted to be reminded that you were in it. That's all." + +She had to say it all over again before she could make him believe he'd +heard her straight, and by that time she was feeling pretty foolish over +the impulse she had yielded to. But just the sound of his good big +laugh, when he understood, was worth it. + +"You aren't running it, you know," he told her. "Leave the worry to the +Authorities. I can't philosophize any better than that at twenty dollars +a minute. I wish you were here." + +"I wish so too," she said. "I will be next week." + +When she had hung up the receiver, she had to squeeze the tears out of +her eyes before she could see to do anything else. But it was with her +own smile that she contemplated what she meant to do next. She went into +the adjoining room, relegated Miss French to the side lines and +undressed the twins herself. + +The twins adored her and had the most ineffably delicious ways of +showing it. But an added attraction for Rose resided in the fact that +this incursion of hers always--just a little--annoyed Miss French. +Clever as the nurse was about handling the twins, she could not manage +even the pretense to that professional superiority which is the +prerogative of nurses toward mothers. Rose, with those highly trained +hands of hers, a twin in each of them, could exhibit a dazzling +virtuosity that left Miss French nowhere. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE REAL ADVENTURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 15384.txt or 15384.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15384 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: +https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/15384.zip b/15384.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..106c9a7 --- /dev/null +++ b/15384.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..792f4e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #15384 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15384) |
