The Real Adventure
sort of way every now and then, but didn't concern herself as to the
basis of her curiosity. She knew that it was getting on toward their
dinner-time, but didn't disturb herself as to the effect Inga's
premonitory rattlings out in the dining-room might have on her guest. As
a matter of fact, they had none whatever.
She smiled once widely to herself, over a thought of the half-back. The
man here in the room with her now, chatting so pleasantly with her
mother, wouldn't ask for favors--would accept nothing that wasn't
offered as eagerly as it was sought.
It wasn't until he rose to go that she aroused herself and went with him
into the hall. There, after he'd got into his overcoat and hooked his
stick over his arm, he held out his hand to her in formal leave-taking.
Only it didn't turn out that way. For the effect of that warm lithe grip
flew its flag in both their faces.
"You're such a wonder!" he said.
She smiled. "So are y-you." It was the first time she had ever stammered
in her life.
When she came back into the sitting-room, she found Portia inclined to
be severe.
"Did you ask him to come again?" she wanted to know.
Rose smiled. "I never thought of it," she said.
"Perhaps it's just as well," said Portia. "Did you have anything at all
to say to him before we came home, or were you like that all the while?
How long ago did he come?"
"I don't know," said Rose behind a very real yawn. "I was asleep on the
couch when he came in. That's why I was dressed like this." And then she
said she was hungry.
There wasn't, on the whole, a happier person in the world at that
moment.
Because Rodney Aldrich, pounding along at five miles an hour, in a
direction left to chance, was not happy. Or, if he was, he didn't know
it. He couldn't yield instantly, and easily, to his intuitions, as Rose
had done. He felt that he must think--felt that he had never stood in
such dire need of cool level consideration as at this moment:
But the process was impossible. That fine instrument of precision, his
mind, that had, for many years, done without complaint the work he gave
it to do, had simply gone on a strike. Instead of ratiocinating
properly, it presented pictures. Mainly four: a girl, flaming with
indignation, holding a street-car conductor pinned by the wrists; a girl
in absurd bedroom slippers, her skirt twisted around her knees, her hair
a chaos, stretching herself awake like a big cat; a girl with wonderful,
blue, tear-brimming eyes, from whose glory he had had to turn away. Last
of all, the girl who had said with that adorable stammer, "So are
y-you," and smiled a smile that had summed up everything that was
desirable in the world.
It was late that night when his mind, in a dazed sort of way, came back
on the job. And the first thing it pointed out to him was that Frederica
had undoubtedly been right in telling him that, though they had lived
together off and on for thirty years, they didn't know each other. The
pictures his memory held of his sister, covered no such emotional range
as these four. Did Martin's? It seemed absurd, yet there was a strong
intrinsic probability of it.
Anyway, it was a remark Frederica had made last night that gave him
something to hold on by. Marriage, she had said, was an adventure, the
essential adventurousness of which no amount of cautious thought taken
in advance could modify. There was no doubt in his mind that marriage
with that girl would be a more wonderful adventure than any one had ever
had in the world.
All right then, perhaps his mind had been right in refusing to take up
the case. The one tremendous question,--would the adventure look
promising enough to her to induce her to embark on it?--was one which
his own reasoning powers could not be expected to answer. It called
simply for experiment.
So, turning off his mind again, with the electric light, he went to bed.
CHAPTER VII
HOW IT STRUCK PORTIA
It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to
marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of
surprise than, hitherto, she had experienced in the sixty years of a
tolerably eventful life.
Rose found her neatly writing a paper at the boudoir desk in the little
room she called her den. And standing dutifully at her mother's side
until she saw the pen make a period, made then her momentous
announcement, much in the tone she would have used had it been to the
effect that she was going to the matinee with him that afternoon.
Mrs. Stanton said, "What, dear?" indifferently enough, just in
mechanical response to the matter-of-fact inflection of Rosalind's
voice. Then she laid down her pen, smiled in a puzzled way up into her
daughter's face, and added, "My ears must have played me a funny trick.
What did you say?"
Rose repeated: "Rodney Aldrich and I are going to be married."
But when she saw a look of painful incomprehension in her mother's face,
she sat down on the arm of the chair, slid a strong arm around the
fragile figure and hugged it up against herself.
"I suppose," she observed contritely, "that I ought to have broken it
more gradually. But I never think of things like that."
As well as she could, her mother resisted the embrace.
"I can't believe," she said, gripping the edge of her desk with both
hands, "that you would jest about a solemn subject like that, Rose, and
yet it's incredible!... How many times have you seen him?"
"Oh, lots of times," Rose assured her, and began checking them off on
her fingers. "There was the first time, in the street-car, and the time
he brought the books back, and that other awful call he made one
evening, when we were all so suffocatingly polite. You know about those
times. But three or four times more, he's come down to the
university--he's great friends with several men in the law faculty, so
he's there quite a lot, anyway--but several times he's picked me up, and
we've gone for walks, miles and miles and miles, and we've talked and
talked and talked. So really, we know each other awfully well."
"I didn't know," said her mother in a voice still dull with astonishment,
"that you even liked him. You've been so silent--indifferent--both times
he was here to call...."
"Oh, I haven't learned yet to talk to him when any one else is around,"
Rose admitted. "There's so little to say, and it doesn't seem worth the
bother. But, truly, I do like him, mother. I like everything about him.
I love his looks--I don't mean just his eyes and nose and mouth. I like
the shape of his ears, and his hands. I like his big loud voice"--her
own broadened a little as she added, "and the way he swears. Oh, not at
me, mother! Just when he gets so interested in what he's saying that he
forgets I'm a lady.
"And I like the way he likes to fight--not with his fists, I mean,
necessarily. He's got the most wonderful mind to--wrestle with, you
know. I love to start an argument with him, just to see how easy it is
for him to--roll me in the dirt and walk all over me."
The mother freed herself from the girl's embrace, rose and walked away
to another chair. "If you'll talk rationally and seriously, my dear,"
she said, "we can continue the conversation. But this flippant,
rather--vulgar tone you're taking, pains me very much."
The girl flushed to the hair. "I didn't know I was being flippant and
vulgar," she said. "I didn't mean to be. I was just trying to tell
you--all about it."
"You've told me," said her mother, "that Mr. Aldrich has asked you to
marry him and that you've consented. It seems to me you have done so
hastily and thoughtlessly. He's told you he loves you, I've no doubt,
but I don't see how it's possible for you to feel sure on such short
acquaintance."
"Why, of course he's told me," Rose said, a little bewildered. "He can't
help telling me all the time, any more than I can help telling him.
We're--rather mad about each other, really. I think he's the most
wonderful person in the world, and"--she smiled a little
uncertainly--"he thinks I am. But we've tried to be sensible about it,
and think it out reasonably. We're both strong and healthy, and we like
each other.... I mean--things about each other, like I've said. So, as
far as we can tell, we--fit. He said he couldn't guarantee that we'd be
happy; that no pair of people could be sure of that till they'd tried.
But he said it looked to him like the most wonderful, magnificent
adventure in the world, and asked if it looked to me like that, and I
said it did. Because it's true. It's the only thing in the world that
seems worth--bothering about. And we both think--though, of course, we
can't be sure we're thinking straight--that we've got a good chance to
make it go."
Even her mother's bewildered ears couldn't distrust the sincerity with
which the girl had spoken. But this only increased the bewilderment. She
had listened with a sort of incredulous distaste she couldn't keep her
face from showing, and at last she had to wipe away her tears.
At that Rose came over to her, dropped on the floor at her knees and
embraced her.
"I guess perhaps I understand, mother," she said. "I didn't
realize--you've always been so intellectual and advanced--that you'd
feel that way about it--be shocked because I hadn't pretended not to
care for him and been shy and coy"--in spite of herself, her voice got
an edge of humor in it--"and a startled fawn, you know, running away,
but just not fast enough so that he wouldn't come running after and
think he'd made a wonderful conquest by catching me at last. But a man
like Rodney Aldrich wouldn't plead and protest, mother. He wouldn't
_want_ me unless I wanted him just as much."
It was a long time before her mother spoke and when she did, she spoke
humbly--resignedly, as if admitting that the situation she was
confronted with was beyond her powers.
"It's the one need of a woman's life, Rose, dear," she said, "--the
corner-stone of all her happiness, that her husband, as you say, 'wants'
her. It's something that--not in words, of course, but in all the little
facts of married life--she'll need to be reassured about every day.
Doubt of it is the one thing that will have the power to make her
bitterly unhappy. That's why it seems to me so terribly necessary that
she be sure about it before it's too late."
"Yes, of course," said Rose. "But that's true of the man, too, isn't it?
Otherwise, where's the equality?"
Her mother couldn't answer that except with a long sigh.
Strangely enough, it wasn't until after Rose had gone away, and she had
shut herself up in her room to think, that any other aspect of the
situation occurred to her--even that there was another aspect of it
which she'd naturally have expected to be the first and only critical
one.
Ever since babyhood Rose had been devoted, by all her mother's plans and
hopes, to the furtherance of the cause of Woman, whose ardent champion
she herself had always been. For Rose--not Portia--was the devoted one.
The elder daughter had been born at a time when her own activities were
at their height. As Portia herself had said, when she and her two
brothers were little, their mother had been too busy to--luxuriate in
them very much and during those early and possibly suggestible years,
Portia had been suffered to grow up, as it were, by herself. She was not
neglected, of course, and she was dearly loved. But when, for the first
time since actual babyhood, she got into the focal-plane of her mother's
mind again, there was a subtle, but, it seemed, ineradicable antagonism
between them, though that perhaps is too strong a word for it. A
difference there was, anyway, in the grain of their two minds, that
hindered unreserved confidences, no matter how hard they might try for