The Real Adventure
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.