The Real Adventure
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.
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