The Real Adventure
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