The Real Adventure
"I laughed," she said, "because you have been deceived." And she added
quickly, "I don't believe it's quite so deep on the sidewalk, is it?"
With that she waded away toward the curb.
He followed, then led the way to a lee-wall that offered, comparatively
speaking, shelter.
Then, "Where's the deception?" he asked.
On any other day, it's probable she'd have acted differently; would have
paid some heed, though a bit contemptuously, perhaps, to the precepts of
ladylike behavior, in which she'd been admirably grounded. The case for
reticence and discretion was a strong one. The night was dark; the
rain-lashed street deserted; the man an utterly casual stranger--why,
she hadn't even had a straight look into his face. His motive in getting
off the car was at least dubitable. Even if not sinister, it could
easily be unpleasantly gallant. A man might not contemplate doing her
bodily harm, and still be capable of trying to collect some sort of
sentimental reward for the ducking he had submitted himself to.
Her instinct rejected all that. The sound of his voice, the
general--atmosphere of him had been exactly right. And then, he'd left
undone the things he ought not to have done. He hadn't tried to take
hold of her arm as they had splashed along through the lake to the curb.
He hadn't exhibited any tenderly chivalrous concern over how wet she
was. And, to-day being to-day, she consigned ladylike considerations to
the inventor of them, and gave instinct its head.
She laughed again as she answered his question. "The deception was that
I pretended to do it from principle. The real reason why I wouldn't pay
another fare, is because I had only one more nickel."
"Good lord!" said the man.
"And," she went on, "that nickel will pay my fare home on the elevated.
It's only about half a mile to the station, but from there home it's
ten. So you see I'd rather walk this than that."
"But that's dreadful," he cried. "Isn't there ... Couldn't you let
me ..."
"Oh," she said, "it isn't so bad as that. It's just one of the silly
things that happen to you sometimes, you know. I didn't have very much
money when I started, it being Friday. And then I paid my subscription
to _The Maroon_...." She didn't laugh audibly, but without seeing her
face, he knew she smiled, the quality of her voice enriching itself
somehow.... "And I ate a bigger lunch than usual, and that brought me
down to ten cents. I could have got more of course from anybody, but ten
cents, except for that conductor, would have been enough."
"You will make a complaint about that, won't you?" he urged. "Even if it
wasn't on principle that you refused to pay another fare? And let me
back you up in it. I've his number, you know."
"You deserve that, I suppose," she said, "because you did get off the
car on principle. But--well, really, unless we could prove that I did
pay my fare, by some other passenger, you know, they'd probably think
the conductor did exactly right. Of course he took hold of me, but that
was because I was going right by him. And then, think what I did to
him!"
He grumbled that this was nonsense--the man had been guilty at least of
excessive zeal--but he didn't urge her, any further, to complain.
"There's another car coming," he now announced, peering around the end
of the wall. "You will let me pay your fare on it, won't you?"
She hesitated. The rain was thinning. "I would," she said, "if I
honestly wouldn't rather walk. I'm wet through now, and it'll be
pleasanter to--walk a little of it off than to squeeze into that car.
Thanks, really very, very much, though. Don't _you_ miss it." She thrust
out her hand. "Good-by!"
"I can't pretend to think you need an escort to the elevated," he said.
"I saw what you did to the conductor. I haven't the least doubt you
could have thrown him off the car. But I'd--really like it very much if
you would let me walk along with you."
"Why," she said, "of course! I'd like it too. Come along."
CHAPTER III
FREDERICA'S PLAN AND WHAT HAPPENED TO IT
At twenty minutes after seven that evening, Frederica Whitney was about
as nearly dressed as she usually was ten minutes before the hour at
which she had invited guests to dinner--not quite near enough dressed to
prevent a feeling that she had to hurry.
Ordinarily, though, she didn't mind. She'd been an acknowledged beauty
for ten years and the fact had ceased to be exciting. She took it rather
easily for granted, and knowing what she could do if she chose, didn't
distress herself over being lighted up, on occasions, to something a
good deal less than her full candle-power. To Frederica at thirty--or
thereabout--the job of being a radiantly delightful object of regard
lacked the sporting interest of uncertainty; was almost too simple a
matter to bother about.
But to-night the tenseness of her movements and the faint trace of a
wire edge in the tone in which she addressed the maid, revealed the fact
that she wished she'd started half an hour earlier. Even her husband
discovered it. He brought in a cigarette, left the door open behind him
and stood smiling down at her with the peculiarly complacent look that
characterizes a married man of forty when he finds himself dressed
beyond cavil in the complete evening harness of civilization, ten
minutes before his wife.
She shot a glance of rueful inquiry at him--"Now what have _you_ come
fussing around for?" would be perhaps a fair interpretation of it--and
asked him what time it was, in the evident hope that the boudoir clock
on her dressing-table had deceived her. It had, but in the wrong
direction.
"Seven twenty-two, thirty-six," he told her. It was a perfectly harmless
passion he had for minute divisions of time, but to-night it irritated
her. He might have spared her that thirty-six seconds.
She made no comment except with her eyebrows, but he must have been
looking at her, for he wanted to know, good-humoredly, what all the
excitement was about.
"You could go down as you are and not a man here to-night would know the
difference. And as for the women--well, if they have something on you
for once, they'll be all the better pleased."
"Don't try to be knowing and philosophical, and--Havelock Ellish,
Martin, dear," she admonished him, pending a minute operation with an
infinitesimal hairpin. "It isn't your lay a bit. Just concentrate your
mind on one thing, and that's being nice to Hermione Woodruff...."
She broke off for a long stare into her hand-glass; then finished,
casually, "... and on seeing that Roddy is."
He asked, "Why Rodney?" in a tone that matched hers; looked at her,
widened his eyes, said "Huh!" to himself and, finally, shook his head.
"Nothing to it," he pronounced.
She said, "Nothing to what?" but abandoned this position as untenable.
She despatched the maid with the key to the wall safe in her husband's
room. "Why isn't there?" she demanded. "Rodney won't look at young
girls. They bore him to death--and no wonder, because he freezes them
perfectly brittle with fright. But Hermione's really pretty intelligent.
She can understand fully half the things he talks about and she's clever
enough to pretend about the rest. She's got lots of tact and skill,
she's good-looking and young enough--no older than I and I'm two years
younger than Roddy. She'll appreciate a real husband, after having been
married five years to John Woodruff. And she's rich enough, now, so that
his wild-eyed way of practising law won't matter."
"All very nice and reasonable," he conceded, "but somehow the notion of
Rodney Aldrich trying to marry a rich widow is one I'm not equal to
without a handicap of at least two cocktails." He looked at his watch
again. "By the way, didn't you say he was coming early?"
She nodded. "That's what he told me this morning when I telephoned him
to remind him that it was to-night. He said he had something he wanted
to talk to me about. I knew I shouldn't have a minute, but I didn't say
so because I thought if he tried to get here early, he might miss being
late."
They heard, just then, faint and far-away, the ring of the door-bell, at
which she cried, "Oh, dear! There's some one already."
"Wait a second," he said. "Let's see if it's him."
The paneled walls and ceiling of their hall were very efficient
sounding-boards and there was no mistaking the voice they heard speaking
the moment the door opened--a voice with a crisp ring to it that sounded
always younger than his years. What he said didn't matter, just a
cheerful greeting to the butler. But what they heard the butler say to
him was disconcerting.
"You're terribly wet, sir."
Frederica turned on her husband a look of despair.
"He didn't come in a taxi! He's walked or something, through that rain!
Do run down and see what he's like. And if he's very bad, send him up to
me. I can imagine how he'll look."
She was mistaken about that though. For once Frederica had overestimated
her powers, stimulated though they were by the way she heard her husband
say, "Good lord!" when the sight of his brother-in-law burst on him.
"Praise heaven you can wear my clothes," she heard him add. "Run along
up-stairs and break yourself gently to Freddy."
She heard him come squudging up the stairs and along the hall, and then
in her doorway she saw him. His baggy gray tweed suit was dark with the
water that saturated it. The lower part of his trousers-legs, in
irregular vertical creases, clung dismally to his ankles and toned down
almost indistinguishably into his once tan boots by the medium of a
liberal stipple of mud spatters. Evidently, he had worn no overcoat.
Both his side pockets had been, apparently, strained to the utmost to
accommodate what looked like a bunch of pasteboard-bound note-books,
now far on the way to their original pulp, and lopped despondently
outward. A melancholy pool had already begun forming about his feet.
The maddening, but yet--though she hadn't much room for any other
emotion--touching thing about the look of him, was the way his face,
above the dismal wreck, beamed good-humored innocent affection at her.
It was a big featured, strong, rosy face, and the unmistakable
intellectual power of it, which became apparent the moment he got his
faculties into action, had a trick of hiding, at other times, behind a
mere robust simplicity.
"Good gracious!" he said. "I didn't know you were going to have a
party."
It seemed though, he didn't want to make an issue of that. He hedged. "I
know you said something about a birthday cake, but I thought it would
just be the family. So instead of dressing, I thought I'd walk down from
home. It takes about the same time. And then it came on to rain, so I
took a street-car--and got put off."
It appeared from the way she echoed his last two words that she wanted
an explanation. He was painting with a large brush and a few details got
obliterated.
"Got into a row with the conductor, who wanted to collect two fares for
one ride, so I walked over to the elevated--and back, and here I am."
"Yes, here you are," said Frederica.
She didn't mean anything by that. Already she was making up her mind
what she would do with him. His own suggestion was that he should decamp
furtively by the back stairs, the sound of new arrivals to the dinner
party warning him that the other way of escape was barred. Waiters could
be instructed to rescue his hat for him, and he could toddle along
down-town again.
She didn't give him time to complete the outline of this masterly
stratagem. "Don't be impossible, Rod," she said. "Don't you even know
whose birthday party this is?"
He looked at her, frowned, then laughed. He had a great big laugh.
"I thought it was one of the kid's," he said.