The Real Adventure
"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