The Real Adventure
preoccupation she could neither guess the nature of nor lure him away
from.
But to-night after an angry turn down the aisle and back he suddenly
cried out, "I don't know. I don't know what you've been talking about. I
don't know and I don't care." And then confronting her, their faces not
a foot apart, for by now she had got to her feet, his hands gripped
together and shaking, his teeth clenched, his eyes glowing there in the
half-light of the auditorium, almost like an animal's, he demanded,
"Can't you see what's the matter with me? Haven't you seen it yet? My
God!"
Of course she saw it now, plainly enough. She sat down again, managing
an air of deliberation about it, and gripped the back of the orchestra
chair in front of her. He remained standing over her there in the aisle.
When the heightening tension of the silence that followed this outburst
had grown absolutely unendurable she spoke. But the only thing she could
find to say was almost ludicrously inadequate.
"No, I didn't see it until now. I'm sorry."
"You didn't see it," he echoed. "I know you didn't. You've never seen me
at all, from the beginning, as anything but a machine. But why haven't
you? You're a woman. If I ever saw a woman in my life you're one all the
way through. Why couldn't you see that I was a man? It isn't because
I've got gray hair, nor because I'm fifty years old. You aren't like
that. I don't believe you're like that. But even back there in Chicago,
the night we walked down the avenue from Lessing's store--or the night
we had supper together after the show...."
"I suppose I ought to have seen," she said dully. "Ought to have known
that that was all there was to it. That there couldn't be anything else
in the world. But I didn't."
"Well, you see it now," he said savagely fairly, and strode away up the
aisle and then back to her. He sat down in the seat in front of her and
turned around. "I want to see your face," he said. "There's something
I've got to know. Something you've got to tell me. You said once, back
there in Chicago, that there was only one person who really mattered to
you. I want to know who that one person is. What he is. Whether he's
still the one person who really matters. If he isn't I'll take my
chance. I'll make you love me if it's the last thing I ever do in the
world."
Remembering the scene afterward Rose was a little surprised that she'd
been able to answer him as she did, without a hesitation or a stammer,
and with a straight gaze that held his until she had finished.
"The only person in the world," she said, "who ever has mattered to me,
or ever will matter, is my husband. I fell in love with him the day I
met him. I was in love with him when I left him. I'm in love with him
now. Everything I do that's any good is just something he might be proud
of if he knew it. And every failure is just something I hope I could
make him understand and not despise me for. It's months since I've seen
him but there isn't a day, there isn't an hour in a day, when I don't
think about him and--want him. I don't know whether I'll ever see him
again but if I don't it won't make any difference with that. That's why
I didn't see what I might have seen about you. It wasn't possible for me
to see. I'd never have seen it if you hadn't told me in so many words,
like this. Do you see now?"
He turned away from her with a nod and put his hands to his face. She
waited a moment to see whether he had anything else to say, for the
habit of waiting for his dismissal was too strong to be broken even in a
situation like this. But finding that he hadn't she rose and walked out
of the theater.
There was an hour after she had gained the haven of her own apartment,
when she pretty well went to pieces. So this was all, was it, that she
owed her illusory appearance of success to? The amorous desires of a man
old enough to be her father! Once more, she blissfully and ignorantly
unsuspecting all the while, it was love that had made her world go
round. The same long-circuited sex attraction that James Randolph long
ago had told her about. But for that attraction she'd never have got
this job in New York, never have had the chance to design those costumes
for Goldsmith and Block. Never, in all probability, have got even that
job in the chorus of _The Girl Up-stairs_. All she'd accomplished in
that bitter year since she left Rodney had been to make another man fall
in love with her!
But she didn't let herself go like that for long. The situation was too
serious for the indulgence of an emotional sprawl. Here she was in an
apartment that cost her thirty-seven dollars a month. She'd got to earn
a minimum of thirty dollars a week to keep on with it. Of course she
couldn't go on working for Galbraith. The question was, what could she
do? Well, she could do a good many things. Whatever Galbraith's motives
had been in giving her her chance, she had taken that chance and made
the most of it. Gertrude Morse knew what she could do. For that matter,
so did Abe Shuman himself. The thing to do now was to go to bed and get
a night's sleep and confront the situation with a clear mind in the
morning.
It was a pretty good indication of the way she had grown during the last
year that she was able to conquer the shuddering revulsion that had at
first swept over her, get herself in hand again, eat a sandwich and
drink a glass of milk, re-read a half dozen chapters of Albert Edwards'
_A Man's World_, and then put out her light and sleep till morning.
It was barely nine o'clock when Galbraith called her up on the
telephone. She hadn't had her breakfast yet and had not even begun to
think out what the day's program must be.
He apologized for calling her so early. "I wanted to be sure of catching
you," he said, "before you did anything. You haven't yet, have you? Not
written to Shuman throwing up your job, or anything like that?"
Even over the telephone his manner was eloquent with relief when she
told him she had not. "I want to talk with you," he said. "It's got to
be somewhere where we won't be interrupted." He added, "I shan't say
again what I said last night. You'll find me perfectly reasonable."
Somehow his voice carried entire conviction. The man she visualized at
the other telephone was neither the distracted pleader she had left last
night, nor the martinet she had been working for during the last month
here in New York, but the John Galbraith she had known in Chicago.
"All right," she said, "I don't know any better place than here in my
apartment, if that's convenient for you."
"Yes," he said, "that's all right. When may I come? The sooner the
better of course."
"Can you give me an hour?" she asked, and he said he could.
It occurred to her, as the moment of his arrival drew near, that she
might better have thought twice before appointing their meeting here in
her apartment. Discretion perhaps would have suggested a more neutral
rendezvous. But she didn't take this consideration very seriously and
with the first real look she got into his face after she had let him in,
she dismissed it utterly. They shook hands and said, "Good morning," and
she asked him to sit down, all as if nothing had happened the night
before. But he wasted no time in getting to the point.
"There's one idea you'll have got, from what I said last night, that's a
mistake and that's got to be set right before we go any further. That
is, that you owe your position here, as my assistant, to the fact that
I'd fallen in love with you. That's not true. In fact, it's the opposite
of the truth. That feeling of mine has worked against you instead of for
you. I'll have to explain that a little to make you understand it. And
if you won't mind I'll have to talk pretty straight." She gave him a nod
of assent, but he did not immediately go on. It was a reflective pause,
not an embarrassed one.
"I've always despised;" he said, "a man who mixed up his love-affairs
with his business. In my business, perhaps, there's a certain temptation
to do that and I've always been on guard against it. I've had
love-affairs, more or less, all along. But in my vacations. You can't do
decent honest work when your mind's on that sort of thing, and I care
more about my work than anything else.
"Well, that night in Chicago, after the opening of _The Girl
Up-stairs_, when I took you out to supper, I didn't know what I wanted.
That's the truth. I'd been fighting my interest in you, my personal
interest that is, calling myself all kinds of an old fool. I'd never had
a thing get me like that before and I didn't know what to make of it.
Well, the business was over, of course. I was entitled to a little
vacation. I suppose, that night, if you'd shown the least sense of how I
felt, even if it was just by seeming frightened, I might have flared up
and made love to you. But you didn't see it at all. You had some sort
of--fence around you that held me off. And for a while you even made me
forget that I was in love with you. Forget that you were anything but
the cleverest person I had known at catching my ideas and putting them
over. I saw how enormously valuable you'd be to me, in this job you've
got now, and I offered it to you.
"And then, all in a wave the other feeling came back. On my way to New
York I decided that as long as I felt like that I'd have nothing more to
do with you. A man couldn't possibly do any decent work with a woman he
was in love with, either after he'd got her or while he was trying to
get her. That's why you didn't hear from me within a month after I'd got
back to New York. But as time went on I forgot how strong my feeling had
been. I decided. I'd got over it. I'd been looking for some one else to
take the place I'd designed for you and I couldn't find anybody.
"I might have got a man, but I didn't want a man, because if he were
clever enough to be any good he'd be out after my job from the very
first day. It would suit Abe Shuman down to the ground to have me teach
a man all I know in two years and then put him in my place at half my
pay. As for women, well, I've never seen a woman yet with just your
combination of qualities, your drive and your knack. So I persuaded
myself that it would be all right. That I could get along without
thinking about you the other way. And I sent for you.
"But the minute I saw you I knew I'd have to look out. I've tried to;
you know that. I've been treating you like a sweep since you've been
down here. I didn't mean to but I couldn't help it. I was in such a
rage with myself for going on like a sentimental fool about you. And the
way you took it, always good-humored and never afraid, made me all the
more ashamed of myself and all the more in love with you. And so last
night I burst. In a way I'm glad I did. I think perhaps it will clear
the air. But I'll come to that later. I want to know now whether you're
convinced that what I said is true. That the fact that I fell in love
with you has been against you and not in your favor."
"Yes," Rose said, "I'm convinced of that and I want to thank you for
telling me. Because the other feeling was pretty--discouraging."
"All right," he said with a nod, "that's understood. Now, here's my
proposition. That you go on working for me exactly as if nothing had
happened."
"Oh, but that's impossible!" she said, and when he put in "Why is it?"
she told him he had just said so himself. That it was impossible for a
man to do decent work with a woman he was in love with.
"That's what I thought last night when I blew up," he admitted, "but
I've got things a bit straighter since. In the first place, we have been
doing decent work all this last month. We've been doing, between us, the
work of two high-priced directors."
She said, "Yes, but I didn't know ..."