The Real Adventure
proclaim that she was following out a train of thought and hadn't as yet
got to the end of it, that he stood as still as she was.
Bertie, irreproachably correct as always, settled his shoulders inside
his coat, and took his stick in his right hand again. Eleanor now looked
around at him.
"Wait two minutes," she said, "if you don't mind." Then, to Rodney,
"Come along." And she led the way up the lustrous, velvety teakwood
stair.
He followed her. But arrived at the drawing-room floor, he protested.
"Look here!" he said. "If Jim's busy ..."
"You've never been in here before, have you?" she asked. "How's Rose?
Jim saw her, you know, in New York."
"Yes," he said. "Rose wrote to me she'd seen him, and I thought I'd drop
around for a chat. But if he's busy ..."
"Oh, don't be _too_ dense, Rodney!" she said. "A man has to be busy when
he's known to be in the house and won't entertain his wife's guests. Go
up one flight more and to the door that corresponds to that one. It
won't do you any good to knock. He'll either not answer or else tell you
to go to hell. Just sing out who you are and go right in."
She gave him a nod and a hard little smile, and went down-stairs again
to Bertie.
Rodney stood where she had left him, in two minds whether to carry out
her instructions or to wait until he heard her and Bertie go out and
then quietly follow them. It was a beastly situation, dragged into a
family quarrel like that; forced to commit an intrusion that was so
plainly labeled in advance. And on the other hand, it was a decidedly
interesting situation. If Eleanor was as reckless as that with facts
most women keep to themselves as long as possible, what would her
outspoken husband be. But if he were full of his grievances, he probably
wouldn't talk about Rose.
What really determined his action was Eleanor's discovery, or pretended
discovery down in the hall below, that her gloves weren't what she
wanted and her instructions to the maid to go up and get her a fresh
pair. It would be too ridiculous to be caught there--lurking.
So he mounted the next flight, found the door Eleanor had indicated,
knocked smartly on it, and to forestall his getting told to go to hell,
sang out at the same time, "This is Rodney Aldrich. May I come in?"
"Come in, of course," Randolph called. "I'm glad to see you," he added,
coming to meet his guest. "But do you mind telling me how the devil you
got in here? Some poor wretch will lose his job, you know, if Eleanor
finds out about this. When I'm in this room, sacred to reflection and
research, it's a first-class crime to let me be disturbed."
It didn't need his sardonic grin to point the satire of his words. The
way he had uttered "sacred to reflection and research," was positively
savage.
Rodney said curtly, "Eleanor sent me up herself. I didn't much want to
come, to tell the truth, when I heard you were busy."
"Eleanor!" her husband repeated. "I thought she'd gone out--with her
poodle."
Rodney said, with unconcealed distaste, "They were on the point of going
out when I came in. That's how Eleanor happened to see me."
With a visible effort, Randolph recovered a more normal manner. "I'm
glad it happened that way," he said. "Get yourself a drink. You'll find
anything you want over there, I guess, and something to smoke; then
we'll sit down and have an old-fashioned talk."
The source of drinks he indicated was a well-stocked cellarette at the
other side of the room. But Rodney's eye fell first on a decanter and
siphon on the table, within reach of the chair Randolph had been sitting
in. His host's glance followed his.
"This is Bourbon I've got over here," he added. "I suppose you prefer
Scotch."
"I don't believe I want anything more to drink just now," Rodney said.
And as he turned to the smoking table to get a cigar, Randolph allowed
himself another sardonic grin.
The preliminaries were gone through rather elaborately; chairs drawn up
and adjusted, ash-trays put within reach; cigars got going
satisfactorily. But the talk they were supposed to prepare the way for
didn't at once begin.
Randolph took another stiffish drink and settled back into a dull
sullen abstraction.
Rodney wanted to say, "I hear from Rose you had a little visit with her
in New York." But, with his host's mood what it was, he shrank from
introducing that topic. Finally, for the sake of saying something, he
remarked:
"This is a wonderful room, isn't it?"
Randolph roused himself. "Never been in here before?" he asked.
"I've never been in the house before, I'm ashamed to say."
"What!" Randolph cried. "My God! Well, then, come along."
Rodney resisted a little. He was comfortable. They could look over the
house later. But Randolph wouldn't listen.
"That's the first thing to do," he insisted. "Indispensable preliminary.
You can't enjoy the opera without a libretto. Come along."
It was a remarkable house. Before the first fifteen minutes of their
inspection were over, Rodney had come to the conclusion that though
Bertie Willis might be an ass, was indeed an indisputable ass, he was no
fool. It was almost uncannily clever, the way all the latest devices for
modern comfort wore, so demurely, the mask of a perfectly consistent
medievalism. And there were some effects that were really magnificent.
The view of the drawing-room, for instance, from the recessed dais at
the far end of it, where the grand piano stood--a piano that contrived
to look as if it might have been played upon by the second wife of Henry
VIII,--down toward the magnificent stone chimney at the other; the
octagonal dining-room with the mysterious audacity of its lighting; the
kitchen with its flag floor (only they were not flags, but an artful
linoleum), its great wrought-iron chains and hoods beneath which all the
cooking was done--by electricity.
Randolph took him over the whole thing from bottom to top. Through it
all, he kept up the glib patter of a showman; the ironic intent of it
becoming more and more marked all the while.
They brought up at last in the study they had started from.
"Oh, but wait a moment!" Randolph said. "Here's two more rooms for you
to see."
The first one explained its purpose at a glance, with a desk and
typewriter, and filing cabinets around the walls.
"Rubber floor," Randolph pointed out, "felt ceiling; absolutely
sound-proof. Here's where my stenographer sits all day, ready,--like a
fireman. And this," he concluded, leading the way to the other room, "is
the holy of holies."
It had a rubber floor, too, and Rodney supposed, a felt ceiling. But its
only furniture was one straight-back chair and a canvas cot.
"Sound-proof too," said Randolph. "But sounding-boards or something in
all the walls. I press this button, start a dictaphone, and talk in any
direction, anywhere. It's all taken down. Here's where I'm supposed to
think, make discoveries, and things. No distractions. One hundred per
cent. efficient. My God! I tried it for a while. Felt like a fool actor
in a Belasco play. Do you remember? The one with the laboratory and the
doctor?"
They went back into the study.
"Clever beasts, though--poodles," he remarked, as he nodded Rodney to
his chair and poured himself another drink. "Learn their tricks very
nicely. But good Heavens, Aldrich, think of him as a man! Think what our
American married women are up against, when they want somebody to play
off against their husbands and have to fall back on tired little beasts
like that. In all the older countries there are plenty of men, real men
who've got something, that a married woman can fall back on. But think
of a woman of Eleanor's attractions having to take up a thing like that.
There's nothing else for her. Would _you_ come around and hold her hand
and make love to her, or any other man like you? Not once in a thousand
times. Eleanor doesn't mean anything. She's trying to make me jealous.
That's her newest experiment. But it's downright pitiful, I say."
Rodney got up out of his chair. It wasn't a possible conversation.
"I'll be running along, I think," he said. "I've a lot of proof to
correct to-night, and you've got work of your own, I expect."
"Sit down again," said Randolph sharply. "I'm just getting drunk. But
that can wait. I'm going to talk. I've got to talk. And if you go, I
swear I'll call up Eleanor's butler and talk to him. You'll keep it to
yourself, anyway."
He added, as Rodney hesitated, "I want to tell you about Rose. I saw her
in New York, you know."
Rodney sat down again. "Yes," he said, "so she wrote. Tell me how she
looked. She's been working tremendously hard, and I'm a little afraid
she's overdoing it."
"She looks," Randolph said very deliberately, "a thousand years old." He
laughed at the sharp contraction of Rodney's brows. "Oh, not like that!
She's as beautiful as ever. More. Facial planes just a hair's breadth
more defined perhaps--a bit more of what that painter Burton calls edge.
But not a line, not a mark. Her skin's still got that bloom on it, and
she still flushes up when she smiles. She's lost five pounds, perhaps,
but that's just condition. And vitality! My God!--But a thousand years
old just the same."
"I'd like to know what you mean by that," said Rodney. He added, "if you
mean anything," but the words were unspoken.
Randolph did mean something.
"Why, look here," he said. "You know what a kid she was when you married
her. Schoolgirl! I used to tell her things and she'd listen, all
eyes--holding her breath! Until I felt almost as wise as she thought I
was. She was always game, even then. If she started a thing, she saw it
through. If she said, 'Tell it to me straight,' why she took it,
whatever it might be, standing up. She wasn't afraid of anything.
Courage of innocence. Because she didn't know.
"Well, she's courageous now, because she knows. She's been through it
all and beaten it all, and she knows she can beat it again. She
understands--I tell you--everything.
"Why, look here! We all but ran into each other on the corner, there, of
Broadway and Forty-second Street; shook hands, said howdy-do. How long
was I here for? Was Eleanor with me? And so on. If I had a spare
half-hour, would I come in and have tea with her at the Knickerbocker?
She'd nodded at two or three passing people while we stood there. And
then somebody said, 'Hello, Dane,' and stopped. A miserable, shabby,
shivering little painted thing. Rose said, 'Hello,' and asked how she
was getting along. Was she working now? She said no; did Rose know of
anything? Rose said, 'Give me your address and if I can find anything,
I'll let you know.' The horrible little beast told where she lived and
went away. Rose didn't say anything to me, except that she was somebody
who'd been out in a road company with her. But there was a look in her
eyes ...! Oh, she knew--everything. Knew what that kid was headed for.
Knew there was nothing to be done about it. She had no flutters about
it, didn't pull a long face, didn't, as I told you, say a word. But
there was a look in her eyes, behind her eyes, somehow, that understood
and _faced_--God!--everything. And then we went in and had our tea.
"I had a thousand curiosities about her. I'd have found out anything I
could. But it was she who did the finding out. Beyond inquiring about
you, how lately I'd seen you, and so on, she hardly asked a question;
talked about indifferent things: New York, the theaters, how we passed
the time out here, I don't know what. But pretty soon I saw that she
understood me, saw right into me like through an open window into a
lighted room. As easily as that. She knew what was the matter with me;
knew what I'd made of myself. And by God, Aldrich, she didn't even
despise me!