The Real Adventure
Dolly didn't refuse very decisively, but she watched Rose's preparations
for departure without making any of her own. It wasn't until Rose, at
the door, turned back to renew the invitation for the last time, that
she said impatiently: "Oh, go along! I'll take a nap, I guess."
So Rose set out by herself.
The day proved colder than it looked; a fact that Rose tried to correct
by walking more briskly. But when she got out on the bridge where the
sharp wind got a full sweep at her, she saw it wasn't going to do. She'd
be chilled to the bones long before she reached that hill and it would
be colder coming back. She must go back for her ulster.
Fifteen minutes later, she tried the door of her room and found it
locked. There was a moment of dead silence. But the realization that it
hadn't been quite so silent the moment before, caused her to knock
again. Then she heard the creak of the bed and the thud of Dolly's
unshod feet on the floor, and then her steps coming toward the door.
"W--what--what is it?" Rose heard her ask.
"Let me in," said Rose. "Sorry I disturbed your nap, but I had to come
back for my ulster."
Dolly was standing just at the other side of the door, she knew, but
there was no sound of drawing the bolt. Only a long silence and then a
sob.
"What's the matter?" Rose demanded. "Let me in."
"You _can't_ come in!" said Dolly, and panic couldn't have spoken
plainer than in her voice. "Oh, go away! What did you come back for? You
said you were going to be gone hours. Go away!"
Out of a frozen throat Rose answered:
"All right. I'll go away." The situation was too miserably clear.
She went down to the lobby and a sudden giddiness caused her to drop
down into the first chair she saw. She sat there for an hour, then went
to the desk and told the clerk she wanted a room for that night by
herself. She'd pay the extra price of it now.
The clerk took the money and selected a key from the rack. The look he
saw in Rose's face silenced any comment, jocular or otherwise, that he
might have made.
Rose went to her new room, took off her hat and jacket, and washed her
face. When she heard the supper bell ringing down-stairs, she went back
to her old room and knocked.
"Come in," said Dolly, and Rose entering, found her standing at the
window looking out.
She had tried, while she sat down there in the lobby, and later in her
own room, to think out what she'd say to Dolly when they next met. She
hadn't been able to think of anything to say. She could think of nothing
now. So, in silence, she began putting her smaller belongings into her
half unpacked suit-case and laying the clothes that hung in the closet
across a chair.
"So you're going to walk out on me are you?" said Dolly. Rose was aware
that she'd been watching these proceedings.
"I'm going to have a room by myself for to-night," said Rose.
Dolly amazed her by flying into a sudden rage.
"Oh, you!" she said. "You make me sick. You're a hypocrite, that's what
you are. Pretending to be so haughty and innocent, and then come spying
back here, on purpose, and acting so shocked! You don't think I'm fit to
live with, do you. Just because I've got a friend. You thought you was
fit to live with me, all right, when you had two of them and wasn't
straight with either."
Rose straightened up and looked at her. "What do you mean?" she
demanded.
"That's right, go on with the bluff," said Dolly furiously. "But you
can't bluff me. Larson put me wise to you that day in Dubuque, when that
big guy--'Rodney'--came up to see you. He was one of them, and the
fellow who put on the show in Chicago--what's his name?--Galbraith, was
the other. You tried to play them both and got left."
"That's what Olga Larson told you?" asked Rose.
"You bet it's what she told me," said Dolly. "It's about half what she
told me. And now you try to pull your high-and-mighty airs on me, just
because Charlie and I are in love and ain't married yet. We're going to
be. We're going into vaudeville as soon as this tour ends. He says the
managers don't object to vaudeville teams being married. But we've got
to wait till then, because theatrical managers won't have it. And yet
you're walking out on me because you're too superior...."
"I don't feel superior," said Rose. "I'm sorry, that's all."
"Yes, you hypocrite!" said Dolly. "Go on and walk out on me. I'm glad of
it."
Rose picked up her suit-case and the heap of clothes and left the room
without another word.
She tried to be more astonished and indignant over Olga Larson's part in
this affair than she really felt. It seemed so horribly cynical not to
be surprised. But it was not cynicism; just an unconscious understanding
of the fundamental processes of Olga's mind.
There was no malice in the story she had told Dolly, just after the two
of them, looking through the Moorish archway in the hotel there in
Dubuque, had seen Rose and Rodney deep in confidential talk. Olga had
shown surprise and then, elaborately, tried to conceal it. She knew the
man, all right, but hadn't expected him to follow Dane out here. Dolly
told her about the note, and Olga's jealousy, which had been smoldering
ever since the tour began, flared up again. Even in the days of their
closest friendship--this was the way it looked to her distorted
vision--Rose had never been frank with her. She had never mentioned a
man named Rodney, nor even shown her a photograph. The only person Olga
had known to be jealous of, was Galbraith. Her unacknowledged reason for
inventing the calumny she recited so glibly for Dolly, was the hope that
Dolly would go straight to Rose with it.
That couldn't fail, she thought, to break down Rose's attitude of icy
indifference and precipitate a quarrel; and a quarrel was what she
wanted. Because quarrels led to reconciliations. She wanted Rose to be
angry with her and then forgive her, although the latter part of her
hope was quite unconscious.
As I say, Rose understood. She didn't work the thing out in detail;
didn't want to. But she knew that if she sought Olga out and demanded an
explanation of the detestable things she'd said about her, the scene
would terminate in a torrent of self-reproach from Olga, protestations
of undying love, fondlings ...
So Rose shuddered and said nothing. The only thing to do about the whole
unspeakable business was, as far as possible, to disregard it.
It wasn't possible to disregard it utterly, because the story was
evidently spread. She became conscious of a touch of contemptuous
hostility on the part of everybody. Not on account of her moral
derelictions, but because of her hypocrisy in pretending to a set of
standards of breeding and behavior superior to those held by the rest of
them.
Altogether it made complete and irresistible, a whole-souled loathing of
the life. Her attempt to find a way to a career along this filthy
stage-door alley must be confessed a total failure. She could never, she
knew, nerve herself to look for another job in a musical-comedy chorus.
At the next overnight stop they made, Dolly went in to room with the
duchess, and the duchess' former roommate, a fattish blonde girl with a
permanent cold in the head, came in with her.
Somehow the days dragged along until the pursuing and long visible
disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is
not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer
than the one it boasts). They played a matinee here and an evening
performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them the _coup de
grace_.
There was no call posted on the bulletin board that night, and the next
day, after a brisk exchange of telegrams with Chicago, the manager
called the company together in one of the sample-rooms of the hotel and
announced that the tour was off. He also announced, with a magnanimity
that put far into the background the fact that he owed them all at least
two weeks' salary, that everybody in the company would be provided with
a first-class ticket for Chicago. There was nothing, except his
scrupulous sense of honor, he managed to imply without saying it in so
many words, to prevent his going off to Chicago all by himself and
leaving them stranded here. But, though this might be good business, he
was incapable of it. If they would all come down to the station at
eleven o'clock, and sign a receipt discharging him from further
obligations, he would see that their transportation was arranged for.
It was just after this that Rose caught a glimpse of Dolly shivering in
a corner, weeping into a soiled pocket-handkerchief. The fat girl with a
cold supplied her with the explanation.
Dolly's chorus-man, it seemed, had already departed on an earlier train
to St. Louis, where he lived, without taking any leave of her at all.
Rose wanted to go over and try to comfort the child, but somehow she
couldn't manage to. Sentimentalizing over her grief and disillusionment
wouldn't do any good. The grief probably wasn't more than an inch deep
anyway, and the illusions had been too tawdry to regret. As for doing
anything, what was there one could do?
There wasn't much that Rose could do at any rate. Because after weeks of
drifting, she'd come to a resolution.
She didn't go to the railway station to sign her receipt and get her
ticket to Chicago. What was there in Chicago for her? She meant to stay,
for the present, at any rate, in Centropolis. She checked her suit-case
in the coat-room and, with a sensation of relief, watched the mournful
company file away.
She had three dollars and some small change, and the day before her.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CONQUEST OF CENTROPOLIS
Centropolis wasn't a very big town, but it had a wide, well paved street
lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round
hills that had neat and fairly prosperous-looking houses scattered over
them. A rather dignified old court-house among the big trees of the
Square proclaimed the place a county seat. It was a warm April day; the
grass was green and the little leaves already were bursting out on the
shrubbery.
Rose's idea was to stroll about a little and get her bearings first, and
then go into one store after another on Main Street until she should
find a job. She had no serious misgiving that she wouldn't get one
eventually; before night, this was to say.
Her confidence sprang from two sources: one, that though inexperienced
she knew she was intelligent, willing and attractive. People, she found,
were apt to be disposed in her favor. The other source of her confidence
was that she wasn't looking for much. She would take, for the present,
anything that offered. Because any sort of work, even menial work, would
be a relief after that nightmare tour. The weeks since she had left
Chicago, especially the last two or three of them, seemed unreal, and
the incidents of them as if they couldn't have happened. Anything that
didn't involve associations with that detestable company, and the
unspeakable piece they had played, would seem--well, almost heavenly. If
she couldn't get a job in a store, she'd go and be a waitress at the
hotel. She could make a pretty good waitress, she thought.
But her confidence was short-lived. She cut short her ramble about the
streets because of the stares she attracted, and the remarks about
herself that she couldn't ignore. Young men shouted at each other
directing attention to her with a brutality of epithet that brought the
blood to her cheeks. During all the time she had had that room on Clark
Street in Chicago, through their rehearsals and that month of
performances, she'd gone alone about the streets at all sort of hours,
both in the theatrical part of the loop and in the district where she