The Real Adventure
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?"