The Real Adventure
because he could afford no better. He'd always been democratic in the
narrower social sense, but he'd never realized how easy that sort of
democracy is and how little it means to a man never associated with
persons who assert a social superiority over him. He'd always made a
point of despising luxuries, to be sure. But it hadn't been brought to
his attention at how high a level he drew the line between luxuries and
mere decent necessities.
He wasn't then, near so much of a Spartan as he thought. His long
association with the Lakes and their friends might, you'd think, have
brought him the consolatory reflection that a woman who earned even a
successful chorus-girl's wages, needn't be pitied too lamentably on the
score of poverty; that Rose could, no doubt, have afforded a better room
than that, if she'd wanted to. And that even a three-dollar room, a
whole room that you hadn't to share with anybody, would--if the rent of
it left you money enough to send out your clothes to the laundry and to
buy adequate meals in restaurants--represent luxury--well, to more
people than one likes to think about.
Rodney knew that well enough, of course. He'd read the Sage Foundation
reports on housing; he was familiar with the results of the Pittsburgh
Survey. But the person in question now, wasn't the Working Girl. It was
his Rose!
Out of all the chaos of thought and feeling that had been boiling within
him since the night he had gone with Rose to her room, there emerged,
then, two outstanding ideas. One was that he had outraged her; the other
that she simply couldn't be allowed to go on living as he had found her.
Frederica, naturally, was mystified. "That's absurd, of course, Roddy,"
she said gently. "You haven't done anything to Rose to be forgiven for."
"You'll just have to take my word for it," he said shortly. "I'm not
exaggerating."
"But, Roddy!" she persisted. "You must be sensible. Oh, it's no wonder!
You're all worn out. You look as if you hadn't slept for nights. I wish
you'd sit down and be a little bit comfortable. But I _know_ you're
wrong about that!
"I went out to California with the idea that you might have been--well,
awfully stupid about something and hurt Rose dreadfully without knowing
it. I was perfectly ready to be--on her side, as you say. I thought we'd
have a good talk and I'd find out what it was all about, and then come
home and pack you out there yourself.
"Well, of course I didn't see Rose, and Portia wasn't very
communicative. She'd always been a little stiff with me. I never managed
to get her altogether. But she was clear enough about it at any rate,
that Rose was more in love with you than ever and she didn't blame you
for a thing. The thing that she seemed most anxious about was that her
mother shouldn't blame you. Of course that took the wind out of my sails
and I had to come back. So it's absurd for you to be talking as if she
had a real reason for--detesting you."
"She hadn't, then," said Rodney, and he walked uneasily away to the
window.
"Well, if you mean the other night, the only time you've seen her since,
then it's all the more ridiculous. What if you were angry and lost your
temper and hurt her feelings? Heavens! Weren't you entitled to, after
what she'd done? And when she'd left you to find it out like that?"
"I tell you you don't know the first thing about it."
"I don't suppose you--beat her, did you?" It was too infuriating, having
him meek like this!
His reply was barely audible. "I might better have done it."
Frederica sprang to her feet. "Well, then, I'll tell you!" she said. "I
won't go to her. I'll go if you'll give me a free hand. If you'll let me
tell her what I think of what she's done and the way she's done it--not
letting you know--not giving you a chance. But go and beg her to forgive
_you_, I won't.
"All right," he said dully. "You're within your rights, of course."
The miserable scene dragged on a little longer. Frederica cried and
pleaded and stormed, without moving him at all. He seemed distressed at
her grief, urged her to treat his request as if he hadn't made it; but
he explained nothing, answered none of her questions.
It was an enormous relief to her, and, she fancied, to him, for that
matter, when, after a premonitory knock at the door, Harriet walked in
on them.
The situation didn't need much explaining, but Frederica summed it up
while the others exchanged their coolly friendly greetings, with the
statement:
"Rod's been trying to get me to go to Rose and say that it was all his
fault, and I won't."
"Why not?" said Harriet. "What earthly thing does it matter whose fault
it is? He can have it his fault if he likes."
"You know it isn't," Frederica muttered rebelliously.
Harriet seated herself delicately and deliberately in one of the curving
ends of a little Victorian sofa, and stretched her slim legs out in
front of her.
"Certainly I don't care whose fault it is," she said. "You never get
anywhere by trying to decide a question like that. What I'm interested
in is what can be done about it. It's not a very nice situation. Nobody
likes it--at least I should _think_ Rose would be pretty sick of it by
now. She may have been crazy for a stage career, but she's probably seen
that the chorus of a third-rate musical comedy won't take her anywhere.
"The thing's simply a mess, and the only thing to do, is to clear it up
as quickly and as decently as we can--and it can be cleared up, if we go
at it right. Only, for the love of Heaven, Freddy, before you let Rod go
out of the house, give him a dose of veronal and pack him off to a quiet
room up-stairs to sleep around the clock! The way he looks now, he's a
proclamation of calamity across the street!"
She wasn't at all disturbed by the outburst this provoked from Rodney.
Indeed, Frederica, from a glimpse she got of her face as she sat
listening to his blistering denunciation of this apparently
whole-hearted concern for appearances, and his passionate denial that
they meant anything at all to him, suspected that her sister's words
had been calculated to produce just this result. When it had subsided,
Harriet's first words proved it.
"All right," she observed. "I knew you'd want to say that. Now, it's off
your mind. Appearances do matter to Freddy and me, and of course they
matter to you too, though you don't like to think so. They matter to all
our kind of people. We're supposed to have been trained to take our
medicine without making faces. If we've got cuts and sores and bruises,
we cover them. We don't parade them as a bid for sympathy. We leave
howling about rights and wrongs and soul-mates and affinities and
'ideals,' to the shabby sort of people who like to do that shabby sort
of thing. According to our traditions, the decent thing to do is to shut
up and keep your face and make it possible for other people to keep
theirs. You're as strong for that as I am, really, Rod, and that's why I
want you to back me up in the line I took with Constance. Pretend you've
known all about what Rose was doing, and that you aren't ashamed of it.
It would have been easier, of course, if she'd played fair with us at
the start ..."
"She did play fair," he interrupted. "She offered to tell me what she
was going to do. I wouldn't let her."
Harriet's only commentary on this was a faint shrug.
"Anyhow," she went on, "the point is that once we begin pretending,
everybody else will have to pretend to believe us. Of course the thing
to do is to get her out of that horrible place as soon as we can. And I
suppose the best way of doing it, will be to get her into something
else--take her down to New York and work her into a small part in some
good company. Almost anything, if it came to that, as long as it wasn't
music. Oh, and have her use her own name, and let us make as much of it
as we can. Face it out. Pretend we like it. I don't say it's ideal, but
it's better than this."
"Her own name!" he echoed blankly. "Do you mean she made one up?"
Harriet nodded. "Constance mentioned it," she said, "but that was before
I knew what she was talking about. And of course I couldn't go back and
ask. Daphne something, I think. It sounded exactly like a chorus name,
anyhow." And then: "Well, how about it? Will you play the game?"
"Oh, yes," he said with a docility that surprised Frederica. "I'll play
it. It comes to exactly the same thing, what we both want done, and our
reasons for doing it are important to nobody but ourselves."
She turned to Frederica.
"You too, Freddy?" she asked. "Will you give your moral principles a
vacation and take Rod's message to Rose, even though you may think it's
Quixotic nonsense?"
"I'll see Rose myself," said Rodney quietly.
It struck Frederica that if not his natural self, he had gone a long way
at least, to recovering his natural manner. Telling Martin all about it
that night, as she always told him about everything (because Martin was
Frederica's discovery and her secret. No one else suspected, not even
Martin himself, how intelligent and understanding he was, nor how
luminous his simple remarks about complex situations could sometimes
be), she adverted to a paradox which had often puzzled her in the past.
Rodney was twice as fond of her as he was of Harriet, just as she was
twice as fond of him as Harriet was. And yet, again and again, where her
own love and sympathy had failed dismally to effect anything, Harriet's
dry astringent cynicism would come along and produce highly desirable
results.
"It seems as if it oughtn't to work out that way," she concluded. "You'd
think that loving a person and feeling his troubles the way he feels
them himself, ought to enable you to help him rather than just irritate.
However, as long as it doesn't work that way with you ..."
He reached out, took her by the chin, tilted her face back and kissed
her expertly on the mouth. A rather horrifyingly familiar thing to do,
one might think, to the Venus of Milo, or Frederica, or any one as
simply and grandly beautiful as that. But she seemed to like it.
"No chance for the experiment," said Martin. "I shall never have any
troubles while you're around."
CHAPTER XIV
THE MIRY WAY
Rodney's docility didn't go to the length of the dose of veronal Harriet
had recommended, but it did assent to a program that occupied the
greater part of the day, including a Turkish bath, a good sleep, fresh
clothes and the first decently cooked meal he had had since he'd dined
at the club three days ago. When he turned into his office, about five
o'clock, he was his own man again, perfectly capable of a greeting to
Craig and Miss Beach which consigned the last scene between them here in
the office to oblivion.
His fortitude was put to the test, too, during the first five minutes.
In the stack of correspondence on his desk, to which Miss Beach directed
his attention, was an unopened envelope addressed to him in Rose's
handwriting. He couldn't restrain, of course, a momentary wild hope that
she had written to tell him he was forgiven, or at least to offer him
the chance of asking her forgiveness. But he paused to steel himself
against this hope before looking to see what the thing contained.
It was well he did so, because there was nothing in it but a postal
money-order for a hundred dollars; not an explanatory line of any sort.
Of course the message it carried didn't need writing. It smarted like a
slap across the face. Yet, down underneath the smart, he felt something
that glowed more deeply, a feeling he couldn't have named or recognized,
of pride in her courage.
He was badly in need of something to be proud of, too, for the next two