The Real Adventure
He stared at her in perfectly honest bewilderment. He'd never seen her
like this before.
"You're talking rather wild I think, Rose," he said very quietly.
"I'm talking what I've learned from you," she said, but she did get her
voice in control again. "You've taught me the difference between real
work, and the painless imitation of it that a lot of us women spend our
lives on--between doing something because it's got to be done and is up
to you, and--finding something to do to spend the time.
"Oh, Rodney, _please_ try to forget that I'm your wife and that you're
in love with me. Can't you just say: `Here's A, or B, or X, a perfectly
healthy woman, twenty-two years old, and a little real work would be
good for her'?"
She won, with much pleading, a sort of troubled half-assent from him.
The matter might be borne in mind. It could be taken up again with Mrs.
Ruston.
But Mrs. Ruston was adamant. Under no conceivable circumstances could
she consent to regard her employer's wife as a substitute for her own
hired assistant. There were other nurses though, to be got. Somewhere
one could be found, no doubt, who'd take a broader view.
Given a fair field, Rose might have won a victory here. But, as Portia
had said once, the pattern was cut differently. There was a sudden alarm
one night, when her little namesake was found strangling with the croup.
There were seven terrifying hours--almost unendurable hours, while the
young life swung and balanced over the ultimate abyss. The heroine of
those hours was Mrs. Ruston. It was her watchfulness that had been
accessible to the first alarm--her instant doing of the one right thing
that stemmed the first onrush. That the child lived was clearly
creditable to her.
Rose made another effort even after that, though she knew she was beaten
in advance. She waited until the storm had subsided, until the old calm
routine was reestablished. Then, once more, she asked for her chance.
But Rodney exploded before she got the words fairly out of her mouth.
"No," he shouted, "I won't consider it! She's saved that baby's life.
Another woman might have, but it's more likely not. You'll have to find
some way of satisfying your whims that won't jeopardize those babies'
lives. After that night--good God, Rose, have you forgotten that
night?--I'm going to play it safe."
Rose paled a little and sat ivory still in her chair. There were no
miracles any more. The great dam was swept away.
CHAPTER XV
THE ONLY REMEDY
The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's
soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to
become at last rather apologetic. He said he didn't know why her request
had got him like that. It had seemed to him for a moment as if she
didn't realize what the children's lives meant to them--almost as if she
didn't love them. He knew that was absurd, of course.
Her own rather monstrous comments on these observations had luckily
remained unspoken. What if she did lose a child as a result of her
effort to care for it herself? She could bear more children. And what
chance had she to love them? Where was the soil for love to take root
in, unless she took care of them herself? These weren't really thoughts
of hers--just a sort of crooked reflection of what he was saying off the
surface of a mind terribly preoccupied with something else.
She was in the grip of an appalling realization. This moment--this
actually present moment that was going to last only until she should
speak for the next time, or move her eyes around to his face--was the
critical moment of her life. She had, for just this moment, a choice of
two things to say when next she should speak--a choice of two ways of
looking into his face. A mountaineer, standing on the edge of a
crevasse, deciding whether to try to leap across and win a precarious
way to the summit, or to turn back and confess the climb has been in
vain, is confronted by a choice like that. If ever the leap was to be
made, it must be made now. The rainbow bridge across the crevasse, the
miracle of motherhood, had faded like the mist it was composed of.
She was a mother now. Yet her relation to her husband's life was the
same as that of the girl who had gone to his office the night of the
Randolphs' dinner. And no external event--nothing that could _happen_ to
her (remember that even motherhood had "happened" in her case) could
ever transmute that relation into the thing she wanted. If the alchemy
were to be wrought at all, it would be by the act of her own will--at
the cost of a deliberately assumed struggle. There was nothing, any
more, to hope from waiting. The thing that whispered, "Wait!
To-morrow--some to-morrow or other, it may be easier! Wait until, for
yourself, you've thought out the consequences,"--that was the voice of
cowardice. If she turned back, down the easier path, to-night, it must
be under no delusion that she'd ever try to climb again, or find a pair
of magic wings that would carry her, effortless, to what she wanted.
Well, then, she had her choice. One of two things she might do now. It
was in her power to look up at him and smile, and say: "All right,
Roddy, old man, I'll stop being disagreeable. I won't have any more
whims." And she could go to him and clasp her hands behind his head and
feel the rough pressure of his cheeks against the velvety surfaces of
her forearms, and kiss his eyes and mouth; surrender to the embrace she
knew so well would follow.
She could make, after a fashion, a life of that. She had no fear but it
would last. Barring incalculable misfortunes, she ought to be able to
keep her looks and her charm for him, unimpaired, or but little
impaired, for twenty years--twenty-five, with care. For the rich, the
resources of modern civilization would almost guarantee that. Well,
twenty-five years would see Rodney through his fifties. She needn't,
barring accident, have any more children. He'd probably be content with
two; especially as they were boy and girl.
The other man in him--the man who wasn't her lover--would struggle of
course. Except when she was by, the lover would probably have a bad time
of it. She'd have to find some amusing sort of occupation to enable her
to forget that. But when she was there, it would be strange if she and
her lover together couldn't, most of the time, keep the other man locked
up where he wouldn't disturb them much.
Lived without remorse or misgivings, played magnificently for all it
was worth, as she could play it--she knew that now--it would be a rather
wonderful life. They must be decidedly an exceptional pair of lovers,
she thought. Certainly Madame Greville's generalization about Americans
did not apply to them, and she was coming to suspect it did apply to the
majority of her friends. She could have that life--safely, surely, as
far as our poor mortality can be sure of anything. She had only to reach
out her hands.
But if, instead, she took the leap ...!
"Roddy ..." she said.
He was slumped down in a big easy chair at the other side of the table,
swinging a restless foot; drumming now and then with his fingers. It was
many silent minutes since the storm of reproach with which he had
repelled her plea for a part in the actual responsible care of her
children had died away. He had spoken with unnecessary vehemence, he
knew. He had admitted that--said he was sorry, as well as he could
without withdrawing from his position. But he had been met by that most
formidable of all weapons--a blank silence--an inscrutable face. Some
sort of scene was inevitable, he knew. And he sat there waiting for it.
She had been hurt. She was undoubtedly very angry.
He thought he was ready for anything. But just the way she spoke his
name, startled--almost frightened--him, she said it so quietly,
so--tenderly.
"Roddy," she said, "I want you to come over here and kiss me, and then
go back and sit down in that chair again."
He went a little pale at that. The swing of his foot was arrested
suddenly. But, for a moment, he made no move--just looked wonderingly
into her great grave eyes.
"Something's going to happen," she went on, "and before it's over, I'm
afraid it's going to hurt you terribly--and me. And I want the kiss for
us to remember. So that we'll always know, whatever happens afterward,
that we loved each other." She held out her arms to him. "Won't you
come?"
He came--a man bewildered--bent down over her and found her lips; but
almost absently, out of a daze.
"No, not like that," she murmured. "In the old way."
There was a long embrace.
"I wouldn't do it," she said, "I don't believe I'd have the courage to
do it, if it were just me. But there's some one else--I've made some one
a promise. I can't tell you about that. Now please go back and sit over
there where you were, where we can talk quietly.--Oh, Roddy, I love you
so!--No, please go back, old man! And--and light your pipe. Oh, don't
tremble like that! It--it isn't a tragedy. It's--for us, it's the
greatest hope in the world."
He went back to his chair. He even lighted his pipe as she asked him to,
and waited as steadily as he could for her to begin.
But she couldn't begin while she looked at him. She moved a little
closer to the table and leaned her elbow on it, shaded her eyes with one
hand, while the other played with the stump of a pencil that happened to
be lying there.
"Do you remember ..." she began, and it was wonderful how quiet and
steady her voice was. There was even the trace of a smile about her
wonderful mouth. "Do you remember that afternoon of ours, the very first
of them, when you brought home my note-books and found me asleep on the
couch in our old back parlor? Do you remember how you told me that one's
desires were the only motive power he had? One couldn't ride anywhere,
you said, except on the backs of his own passions? Well, it was a funny
thing--I got to wondering afterward what my desires were, and it seemed
I hadn't any. Everything had, somehow, come to me before I knew I wanted
it. Everything in the world, even your love for me, came like that.
"But I've got a passion now, Rodney. I've had it for a long while. It's
a desire I can't satisfy. The thing I want, and there's nothing in the
world that I wouldn't give to get it, is--well, your friendship; that's
a way of saying it."
What he had been waiting to hear, of course, she didn't know. But she
knew by the way he started and stared at her, that it hadn't been for
that. The thing struck him, it seemed, as a sort of grotesquely
irritating anti-climax.
"Gracious Heaven!" he said. "My friendship! Why, I'm in love with you!
That's certainly a bigger thing. Go back to your geometry, child. The
greater includes the less, doesn't it?"
"I don't know whether it's a bigger thing or not," she said. "But it
doesn't include the other. Love's just a sort of miracle thing that
happens to you. You don't have it because you deserve it. The person I
made that promise to would have earned it, if any one could. But it
doesn't come that way. It's like lightning. It strikes or else it
doesn't. Well, it struck us. But friendship--there's this about it. You
can't get it any way in the world, except just by earning it. Nobody can
give it to you, no matter how hard he tries. So when you've got it, you
can always say, 'There's something that I'm entitled to--something
that's mine.' Your love isn't mine any more than the air is. I never did
anything to earn it.
"And that's why it can't satisfy me.--Because it doesn't, Roddy. It
hasn't for ever so long. It's something wonderful that's--_happened_ to
me. It's the loveliest thing that ever happened to anybody. And just
because it's so wonderful and beautiful, I can't bear to--well, this is