The Real Adventure
she knew she'd have heard. The thing that kept clutching at her heart
was hope. The hope that the letter wouldn't come at all; that there'd be
a telephone call instead--and Rodney's voice.
The telephone did ring just before noon, but the voice was Galbraith's.
He wanted to know if she wouldn't come over to his Long Island farm the
following morning and spend the day.
She had visited the place two or three times and had always enjoyed it
immensely there. It wasn't much of a farm, but there was a delightful
old Revolutionary farmhouse on it, with ceilings seven feet high and
casement windows, and the floors of all the rooms on different levels;
and Galbraith, there, was always quite at his best. His sister and her
husband, whom he had brought over from England when he bought the place,
ran it for him. They were the simplest sort of peasant people who had
hardly stirred from their little Surrey hamlet until that meteoric
brother of theirs had summoned them on their breath-taking voyage to
America, and for whom now, on this little Long Island farm, New York
might have been almost as far away as London. Mrs. Flaxman did all the
work of the house and farmyard without the aid of a servant, and her
husband raised vegetables for the New York market.
What the pair really thought of the life John Galbraith led, or of the
guests he sometimes brought out for week-end visits, no one knew. But
the pleasant sort of homely hospitality one always found there was
extremely attractive to Rose, and with Rodney's regular Saturday letter
at hand she'd have accepted the invitation eagerly. As it was, she
answered almost shortly that she couldn't come. Then, contrite, she
hastened to dilute her refusal with an elaboration of regrets and
hastily contrived reasons.
"All right," he said good-humoredly, "I shan't ask any one else, but if
you happen to change your mind call me on the phone in the morning. Tell
me what train you're coming down on and I'll meet you."
She didn't expect to change her mind, but a phonograph did it for her.
This instrument was domesticated across the court somewhere--she had
never bothered to discover just which pair of windows the sound of it
issued from--and it was addicted to fox-trots, comic recitations in
negro dialect, and the melodies of Mr. Irving Berlin. It was jolly and
companionable and Rose regarded it as a friend. But on this Saturday
night, perversely enough, perhaps because its master was in Pittsburgh
on a business trip and hadn't come home as expected, the thing turned
sentimental. It sang _I'm on My Way to Mandalay_, under the impression
that Mandalay was an island somewhere. It played _The Rosary_, done as a
solo on the cornet; and over and over again it sang, with the thickest,
sirupiest sentiment that John McCormack at his best is capable of,
"Just a little love, a li--ttle kiss,
Just an hour that holds a world of bliss,
Eyes that tremble like the stars above me,
And the little word that says you love me."
It was a song that had tormented Rose before with the abysmal fatuity of
its phrases, its silly sloppy melody, and yet--this was the infuriating
thing--the way it had of getting into her, somehow, reaching bare nerves
and setting them all aquiver.
To-night it broke her down. She closed the windows, despite the
sultriness of the night, but the tune, having once got in, couldn't be
shut out. Whether she heard it or only fancied she did, didn't matter.
The words bored their way into her brain.
"Just a little love, a little kiss,
I would give you all my life for this,
As I hold you fast and bend above you ..."
It was a white night for Rose. The morning sun had been streaming into
her bedroom for an hour before she finally fell asleep. And at nine
o'clock, when she wakened, she heard the phonograph going again. It was
now on its way to Mandalay, but John McCormack was no doubt waiting in
the background. She went to the telephone and called up Galbraith,
telling him she'd come by the first train she could get.
He met her with a dog-cart and a fat pony, and when they had jogged
their way to their destination they spent what was left of the morning
looking over the farm. Then there was a midday farm dinner that Rose
astonished herself by dealing with as it deserved and by feeling sleepy
at the conclusion of. Galbraith caught her biting down a yawn and packed
her off to the big Gloucester swing in the veranda, the one addition
he'd built on the place, for a nap; and obediently she did as he bade
her.
Coming into the veranda about four o'clock, and finding her awake, he
suggested that they go for a walk. She had dressed, in anticipation of
this, in a short skirt and heavy walking boots, so they set out across
the fields. Two hours later, having swung her legs over a stone wall
that had a comfortably inviting flat top, she remained sitting there and
let her gaze rest, unfocused, on the pleasant farm land that lay below
them.
After a glance at her he leaned back against the wall at her side and
began filling his pipe. She dropped her hand on his nearer shoulder.
After all these months of friendship it was the first approach to a
caress that had passed between them.
"You're a good friend," she said, and then the hand that had rested on
him so lightly suddenly gripped hard. "And I guess I need one," she
ended.
He went on filling his pipe. "Anything special you need one for?" he
asked quietly.
She gave a ragged little laugh. "I guess not. Just somebody strong and
steady to hold on to like this."
"Well," he said very deliberately, "you want to realize this: You say
I'm a friend and I am, but if there is anything in this friendship which
can be of use to you you're entitled to it; to everything there is in
it. Because you made it."
"One person can't make a friendship," she said. "Even two people can't.
It's got to--grow out of them somehow."
He assented with a nod. "But in this case who gave it a chance to grow?
Where would it have been if I'd had my way? If you hadn't pulled me up
and set me straight?"
"For that matter," she said, "where would it have been if I had had
mine? If I'd run away and tried for a fresh start, as I'd have done if
you hadn't set me right?"
"Make it so," he said. "Say we've equal rights in it. Still you needn't
worry about my not getting my share of the benefits."
"You _are_ content with it, aren't you? Like this? I haven't--cheated?
Used you? It's easy for a woman to do that, I think. It isn't ...?" She
asked that last question by taking her hand off his shoulder.
"No, put it back," he said. "It's all right." He smoked in silence for a
minute; then went on. "Why, 'content' is hardly the word for it. When I
think what it was I wanted and what you've given me instead ...! It
wasn't self-denial or any other high moral principle that kept me from
flaring up when you took hold of me just now. It's because I've got a
better thing. Something I wouldn't trade for all the love in the world.
'Content'!"
"I'd like to believe it was a better thing," she said; "but I'm afraid I
can't."
"Neither could I when I was--how old are you?--twenty-four. Perhaps when
you're fifty-one you can."
"I suppose so," she said absently. "Perhaps if it were a question of
choosing between a love that hadn't any friendship in it and a
friendship ... But it _can't_ be like that!--Can it? Can't one have
both? Can't a man--love a woman and be her friend and partner all at the
same time?"
"I can't answer for every man," he said reflectively. "There are all
kinds of men. And that's not mentioning the queers, who aren't real men
at all. Take a dozen sound, normal, healthy men and if you could find
out the truth about them, which it would be pretty hard to do, you'd
find immense differences in their wants, habits, feelings; in the way
things _took_ them. But I've a notion that nine out of the dozen, if you
could get down to the actual bedrock facts about them, would own up that
if they were in love with a woman--really, you know, all the way--they
wouldn't want her for a partner, and wouldn't be able to see her as a
friend. That's just a guess, of course. But there's one thing I know,
and that is that I couldn't."
She gave a little shiver. "_Oh_, what a mess it is!" she said. "What a
perfectly hopeless blunder it is!" She slid down from the wall. "Come;
let's walk."
He fell in beside her and they tramped sturdily along for a while in
silence. At last she said, "Can you tell me why? Suppose there hadn't
been any one else with me; suppose I'd felt toward you the way you did
toward me, then; why couldn't you have gone on being my friend and
partner as well as my lover? You'd have known I was worth it; have known
I understood the things you were interested in and--yes, and was able to
help you to work them out. Why would all that have had to go?"
"Oh, I don't know that I can explain it," he said. "But I don't think
I'd call it a blunder that a strip of spring steel can't bend in your
fingers like copper and still go on being a spring. You see, a man
wants his work and then he wants something that isn't his work; that's
altogether apart from his work; doesn't remind him of it. Love's about
as far away as anything he can get. So that the notion of our working
ourselves half to death over the same job, and then going home
together ..."
"Yes," she admitted. "I can see that. But that doesn't cover
friendship."
He owned that it didn't. "But when I'm in love with a woman--this isn't
a fact I'm proud of, but it's true--I'm jealous of her. Not of other
men alone, though I'm that, too, but jealous of everything. I want to be
all around her. I want to be everything to her. I want her to think
there's nobody like me; that nobody else could be right and I be wrong.
And I want to be able to think the same of her. I want her to hide, from
me, the things about herself that I wouldn't like. When I ask her what
she thinks about something, I want her to say--what I want her to think.
I know what I want her to think, and if she doesn't say it she hurts my
feelings."
He thought it over a bit longer and then went on. "No, I've been in love
with women I could suspect of anything. Women I thought were lying to
me, cheating me; women I've hated; women I've known hated me. But I've
never been in love with a woman who was my friend. I'd never figured it
out before, but it's so."
In the process of figuring it out he'd more or less forgotten Rose. He
had been tramping along communing with his pipe; thinking aloud. If he'd
been watching her face he wouldn't have gone so far.
"Well, if it's like that," she said, and the quality of her voice drew
his full attention instantly--"if love has to be like that, then the
game doesn't seem worth going on with. You can't live with it, and you
can't live--without it." Her voice dropped a little, but gained in
intensity. "At least I can't. I don't believe I can." She stopped and
faced him. "What can one _do_?" she demanded. "Wait, I suppose you'll
say, till you're fifty. Well, you're fifty, and the thing can still
torment you; spring on you when you aren't looking; twist you about."
She turned away with a despairing gesture and stood gazing out,
tear-blinded, over the little valley the hilltop they had reached
commanded.
"You want to remember this," he said at last. "I've been talking about
myself. I haven't even pretended to guess for more than nine of those
twelve men. That leaves three who are, I am pretty sure, different. I
might have been different myself, a little anyway, if I'd got a
different sort of start. If my first love-affair had been an altogether
different thing. If it had been the kind that gave me a home and kids.