The Real Adventure
would die of despondency."
"Oh," he said, "that's what I meant to talk to you about! I sold it
to-day--fifty thousand dollars--immediate possession. Man wants to build
a printing establishment there. You come down sometime next week and
pick out all the things you think you and Harriet would like to keep,
and I'll auction off the rest."
She shivered again and, to her disgust, found that her eyes were
blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack and edgy to-day,
anyhow.
But really there was something rather remorseless about Rodney. It
occurred to her that the woman he finally did marry would need to be
strong and courageous and rather insensitive to sentimental fancies, to
avoid a certain amount of unhappiness.
What he had just referred to in a dozen brisk words, was the final
disappearance of the home they had all grown up in. Their father, one of
Chicago's great men during the twenty great years between the Fire and
the Fair, had built it when the neighborhood included nearly all the
other big men of that robust period, and had always been proud of it.
There was hardly a stone or stick about it that hadn't some tender happy
association for her. Of course for years the neighborhood had been
impossible. Her mother had clung to it after her husband's death, as was
of course natural.
But when she had followed him, a year ago now, it was evident that the
old place would have to go. Rodney, who had lived alone with her there,
had simply stayed on, since her death, waiting for an offer for it that
suited him. Frederica had known that, of course--had worried about him,
as she said, and in her imagination, had colored his loneliness to the
same dismal hue her own would have taken on in similar circumstances.
All the same, his curt announcement that the long-looked-for change had
come, brought up quick unwelcomed tears. She squeezed them away with her
palms.
"You'll come to us then, won't you?" she asked, but quite without
conviction. She knew what he'd say.
"Heavens, no! Oh, I'll go to a hotel for a while--maybe look up a
little down-town apartment, with a Jap. It doesn't matter much about
that. It's a load off, all right."
"Is that," she asked, "why you've been looking so sort of--gay, all the
evening--as if you were licking the last of the canary's feathers off
your whiskers?"
"Perhaps so," he said. "It's been a pretty good day, take it all round."
She got up from the couch, shook herself down into her clothes a little,
and came over to him.
"All right, since it's been a good day, let's go to bed." She put her
hands upon his shoulders. "You're rather dreadful," she said, "but
you're a dear. You don't bite my head off when I urge you to get
married, though I know you want to. But you will some day--I don't mean
bite my head off--won't you, Rod?"
"When I see any prospect of being as lucky as Martin--find a girl who
won't mind when I turn up for dinner looking like a drowned tramp, or
kick her plans to bits, after she's tipped me off as to what she wants
me to do ..."
Frederica took her hands off, stepped back and looked at him. There was
an ironical sort of smile on her lips.
"You're such an innocent," she said. "You've got an idea you know
me--know how I treat Martin. Roddy, dear, a girl's brother doesn't
matter. She isn't dependent on him, nor responsible for him. And if
she's rather sillily fond of him, she's likely to spoil him frightfully.
Don't think the girl you marry will ever treat you like that."
"But look here!" he exclaimed. "You say I don't know you, whom I've
lived with off and on for thirty years--don't know how you'd treat me if
you were married to me. How in thunder am I going to know about the girl
I get engaged to, before it's too late?"
"You won't," she said. "You haven't a chance in the world."
"Hm!" he grunted, obviously struck with this idea. "You're giving the
prospect of marriage new attractions. You're making the thing out--an
adventure."
She nodded rather soberly. "Oh, I'm not afraid for you," she said. "Men
like adventures--you more than most. But women don't. They like to dream
about them, but they want to turn over to the last chapter and see how
it's going to end. It's the girl I'm worried about.... Oh, come along!
We're talking nonsense. I'll go up with you and see that they've given
you pajamas and a tooth-brush."
She had accomplished this purpose, kissed him good night, and under the
hint of his unbuttoned waistcoat and his winding watch, turned to leave
the room, when her eye fell on a heap of damp, warped, pasteboard-bound
note-books, which she remembered having observed in his side pockets
when he first came in. The color on the pasteboard binding had run, and
as they lay on the drawn linen cover to the chiffonier, she went over
and picked them up to see how much damage they'd done. Then she frowned,
peered at the paper label that had half peeled off of the topmost cover,
and read what was written on it.
"Who," she asked with considerable emphasis, "is Rosalind Stanton?"
"Oh," said Rodney very casually, behind the worst imitation of a yawn
she had ever seen, "oh, she got put off the car when I did."
"That sounds rather exciting," said Frederica behind an imitation yawn
of her own--but a better one. "Going to tell me about it?"
"Nothing much to tell," said Rodney. "There was a row about a fare, as I
said. The conductor was evidently solid concrete above the collar-bone,
and didn't think she'd paid. And she grabbed him and very nearly threw
him out into the street--could have done it, I believe, as easily as
not. And he began to talk about punching somebody's head. And then, we
both got put off. So, naturally, I walked with her over to the elevated.
And then I forgot to give her her note-books and came away with them."
"What sort of looking girl?" asked Frederica. "Is she pretty?"
"Why, I don't know," said Rodney judicially. "Really, you know, I hardly
got a fair look at her."
Frederica made a funny sounding laugh and wished him an abrupt "good
night."
She was a great old girl, Frederica--pretty wise about lots of things,
but Rodney was inclined to think she was mistaken in saying women didn't
like adventures. Take that girl this afternoon, for example. Evidently
she was willing to meet one half-way. And how she'd blazed up when that
conductor touched her! Just the memory of it brought back something of
the thrill he had felt when he saw it happen.
"You're a liar, you know," remarked his conscience, "telling Frederica
you hadn't had a good look at her."
On the contrary, he argued, it was perfectly justifiable to deny that a
look as brief as that, was good. He wouldn't deny, however, that the
thing had been a wholly delightful and exhilarating little episode. That
was the way to have things happen! Have them pop out of nowhere at you
and disappear presently, into the same place.
"Disappear indeed!" sneered his conscience. "How about those note-books,
with her name and address on every one. And there's another lie you
told--about forgetting to give them to her!"
He protested that it was entirely true. He had gone into the station
with the girl, shaken hands with her, said good night, and turned away
to leave the station, unaware--as evidently she was--that he still had
her note-books under his arm. But it was equally true that he had
discovered them there, a good full second before the girl had turned the
corner of the stairs--in plenty of time to have called her back to the
barrier, and handed them over to her.
"All right, have it your own way," said Rodney cheerfully, as he turned
out the light.
CHAPTER V
THE SECOND ENCOUNTER
Portia Stanton was late for lunch; so, after stripping off her jacket
and gloves, rolling up her veil and scowling at herself in an oblong
mahogany-framed mirror in the hall, she walked into the dining-room with
her hat on. Seeing her mother sitting alone at the lunch table, she
asked, "Where is Rose?"
"She'll be down presently, I think," her mother said. "She called out to
me that she'd only be a minute, when I passed her door. Does your hat
mean you're going back to the shop this afternoon?"
Portia nodded, pulled back her chair abruptly and sat down. "Oh, don't
ring for Inga," she said. "What's here's all right, and she takes
forever."
"I thought that on Saturday ..." her mother began.
"Oh, I know," said Portia, "but Anne Loomis telephoned she's going to
bring Dora Wild around to pick out which of my three kidney sofas she
wants for a wedding present. That girl I've got isn't much good, and
besides, I think there's a chance that Dora may give me her house to do.
Her man's stupidly rich, they say, and richly stupid, so the job ought
to be worth eating a cold egg for."
You'd have known them for mother and daughter anywhere, and you'd have
had trouble finding any point of resemblance in either of them to the
Amazonian young thing who had so nearly thrown a street-car conductor
into the street the night before. Their foreheads were both narrow and
rather high, their noses small and slightly aquiline, and both of them
had slender fastidious hands.
The mother's hair was very soft and white, and the care with which it
was arranged indicated a certain harmless vanity in it. There was
something a little conscious, too, about her dress--an effect difficult
to describe without exaggeration. It was not bizarre nor "artistic," but
you would have understood at once that its departures from the
prevailing mode were made on principle. If you took it in connection
with a certain resolute amiability about her smile, you would be
entirely prepared to hear her tell Portia that she was reading a paper
on Modern Tendencies before the Pierian Club this afternoon.
A very real person, nevertheless, you couldn't doubt that. The marks of
passionately held beliefs and eagerly given sacrifices were etched with
undeniable authenticity in her face.
Once you got beyond a catalogue of features, Portia presented rather a
striking contrast to this. Her hair was done--you could hardly say
arranged--with a severity that was fairly hostile. Her clothes were
bruskly cut and bruskly worn, their very smartness seeming an impatient
concession to necessity. Her smile, if not ill-natured--it wasn't
that--was distinctly ironic. A very competent, good-looking young woman,
you'd have said, if you'd seen her with her shoulder-blades flattened
down and her chest up. Seeing her to-day, drooping a little over the
cold lunch, you'd have left out the adjective young.
"So Rose didn't come down this morning at all," Portia observed, when
she had done her duty by the egg. "You took her breakfast up to her, I
suppose."
Mrs. Stanton flushed a little. "She didn't want me to; but I thought
she'd better keep quiet."
"Nothing particular the matter with her, is there?" asked Portia.
There was enough real concern in her voice to save the question from
sounding satirical, but her mother's manner was still a little
apologetic when she answered it.
"No, I think not," she said. "I think the mustard foot-bath and the
quinine probably averted serious consequences. But she was in such a
state when she came home last night--literally wet through to the skin,
and blue with cold. So I thought it wouldn't do any harm ..."
"Of course not," said Portia. "You're entitled to one baby anyway,
mother, dear. Life was such a strenuous thing for you when the rest of
us were little, that you hadn't a chance to have any fun with us. And
Rose is all right. She won't spoil badly."
"I'm a little bit worried about the loss of the poor child's
note-books," said her mother. "I rather hoped they'd come in by the noon
mail. But they didn't."