The Real Adventure by Henry Kitchell Webster (pdf to ebook reader txt) 📕

a nurse-maid. She was a conscientious person and she felt she couldn't do justice to her work on any other basis. Rose had informed her of her intention to dispense with the services of the nurse-maid, without engaging any one else to take her place. If Rose adhered to this intention, Mrs. Ruston must leave.

It was some sort of absurd misunderstanding, of course, Rodney concluded and wanted to know what it was all about.

"I did say I meant to let Doris go," Rose explained, "but I told her I meant to take Doris' job myself. I said I thought I could be just as good a nurse-maid as she was. I said I'd boil bottles and wash clothes and take Mrs. Ruston's orders exactly as if I were being paid six dollars a week and board for doing it. And I meant it just as literally as I said it."

He was prowling about the room in a worried sort of way, before she got as far as that.

"I don't see, child," he exclaimed, "why you couldn't leave well enough alone! If it's that old economy bug of yours again, it's nonsense. You'd save, including board, about ten dollars a week. And it would work out one of two ways: If you didn't do all the maid's work. Mrs. Ruston would have a real grievance. She's right about needing all the help she gets. If you did do it, it would mean that you'd work yourself sick.--Oh, I know what the doctor said, but that's all rot, and he knew it. You had him hypnotized. You'd have to give up everything for it--all your social duties, all our larks together. Oh, it's absurd! You, to spend all your time doing menial work--scrubbing and washing bottles, to save me ten dollars a week!"

"It isn't menial work," Rose insisted. "It's--apprentice work. After I've been at it six months, learning as fast as I can, I'll be able to let Mrs. Ruston go and take _her_ job. I'll be really competent to take care of my own children. I don't pretend I am now."

"I don't see why you can't do that as things are now. She'll let you practise bathing them and things like that, and certainly no one would object to your wheeling them out in the pram. But the nurse-maid would be on hand in case ..."

"I'm to take it on then," said Rose, and her voice had a new ring in it--the ring of scornful anger--"I'm to take it on as a sort of polite sentimental amusement. I'm not to do any real work for them that depends on me to get done. I'm not to be able to feel that, even in a bottle-washing sort of way, I'm doing an indispensable service for them. They're not to need me for anything, the poor little mites! They're to be something for me to have a sort of emotional splurge with, just as"--she laughed raggedly--"just as some of the wives you're so fond of talking about, are to their husbands."

He stared at her in perfectly honest bewilderment. He'd never seen her like this before.

"You're talking rather wild I think, Rose," he said very quietly.

"I'm talking what I've learned from you," she said, but she did get her voice in control again. "You've taught me the difference between real work, and the painless imitation of it that a lot of us women spend our lives on--between doing something because it's got to be done and is up to you, and--finding something to do to spend the time.

"Oh, Rodney, _please_ try to forget that I'm your wife and that you're in love with me. Can't you just say: `Here's A, or B, or X, a perfectly healthy woman, twenty-two years old, and a little real work would be good for her'?"

She won, with much pleading, a sort of troubled half-assent from him. The matter might be borne in mind. It could be taken up again with Mrs. Ruston.

But Mrs. Ruston was adamant. Under no conceivable circumstances could she consent to regard her employer's wife as a substitute for her own hired assistant. There were other nurses though, to be got. Somewhere one could be found, no doubt, who'd take a broader view.

Given a fair field, Rose might have won a victory here. But, as Portia had said once, the pattern was cut differently. There was a sudden alarm one night, when her little namesake was found strangling with the croup. There were seven terrifying hours--almost unendurable hours, while the young life swung and balanced over the ultimate abyss. The heroine of those hours was Mrs. Ruston. It was her watchfulness that had been accessible to the first alarm--her instant doing of the one right thing that stemmed the first onrush. That the child lived was clearly creditable to her.

Rose made another effort even after that, though she knew she was beaten in advance. She waited until the storm had subsided, until the old calm routine was reestablished. Then, once more, she asked for her chance.

But Rodney exploded before she got the words fairly out of her mouth.

"No," he shouted, "I won't consider it! She's saved that baby's life. Another woman might have, but it's more likely not. You'll have to find some way of satisfying your whims that won't jeopardize those babies' lives. After that night--good God, Rose, have you forgotten that night?--I'm going to play it safe."

Rose paled a little and sat ivory still in her chair. There were no miracles any more. The great dam was swept away.


CHAPTER XV

THE ONLY REMEDY

The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to become at last rather apologetic. He said he didn't know why her request had got him like that. It had seemed to him for a moment as if she didn't realize what the children's lives meant to them--almost as if she didn't love them. He knew that was absurd, of course.

Her own rather monstrous comments on these observations had luckily remained unspoken. What if she did lose a child as a result of her effort to care for it herself? She could bear more children. And what chance had she to love them? Where was the soil for love to take root in, unless she took care of them herself? These weren't really thoughts of hers--just a sort of crooked reflection of what he was saying off the surface of a mind terribly preoccupied with something else.

She was in the grip of an appalling realization. This moment--this actually present moment that was going to last only until she should speak for the next time, or move her eyes around to his face--was the critical moment of her life. She had, for just this moment, a choice of two things to say when next she should speak--a choice of two ways of looking into his face. A mountaineer, standing on the edge of a crevasse, deciding whether to try to leap across and win a precarious way to the summit, or to turn back and confess the climb has been in vain, is confronted by a choice like that. If ever the leap was to be made, it must be made now. The rainbow bridge across the crevasse, the miracle of motherhood, had faded like the mist it was composed of.

She was a mother now. Yet her relation to her husband's life was the same as that of the girl who had gone to his office the night of the Randolphs' dinner. And no external event--nothing that could _happen_ to her (remember that even motherhood had "happened" in her case) could ever transmute that relation into the thing she wanted. If the alchemy were to be wrought at all, it would be by the act of her own will--at the cost of a deliberately assumed struggle. There was nothing, any more, to hope from waiting. The thing that whispered, "Wait! To-morrow--some to-morrow or other, it may be easier! Wait until, for yourself, you've thought out the consequences,"--that was the voice of cowardice. If she turned back, down the easier path, to-night, it must be under no delusion that she'd ever try to climb again, or find a pair of magic wings that would carry her, effortless, to what she wanted.

Well, then, she had her choice. One of two things she might do now. It was in her power to look up at him and smile, and say: "All right, Roddy, old man, I'll stop being disagreeable. I won't have any more whims." And she could go to him and clasp her hands behind his head and feel the rough pressure of his cheeks against the velvety surfaces of her forearms, and kiss his eyes and mouth; surrender to the embrace she knew so well would follow.

She could make, after a fashion, a life of that. She had no fear but it would last. Barring incalculable misfortunes, she ought to be able to keep her looks and her charm for him, unimpaired, or but little impaired, for twenty years--twenty-five, with care. For the rich, the resources of modern civilization would almost guarantee that. Well, twenty-five years would see Rodney through his fifties. She needn't, barring accident, have any more children. He'd probably be content with two; especially as they were boy and girl.

The other man in him--the man who wasn't her lover--would struggle of course. Except when she was by, the lover would probably have a bad time of it. She'd have to find some amusing sort of occupation to enable her to forget that. But when she was there, it would be strange if she and her lover together couldn't, most of the time, keep the other man locked up where he wouldn't disturb them much.

Lived without remorse or misgivings, played magnificently for all it was worth, as she could play it--she knew that now--it would be a rather wonderful life. They must be decidedly an exceptional pair of lovers, she thought. Certainly Madame Greville's generalization about Americans did not apply to them, and she was coming to suspect it did apply to the majority of her friends. She could have that life--safely, surely, as far as our poor mortality can be sure of anything. She had only to reach out her hands.

But if, instead, she took the leap ...!

"Roddy ..." she said.

He was slumped down in a big easy chair at the other side of the table, swinging a restless foot; drumming now and then with his fingers. It was many silent minutes since the storm of reproach with which he had repelled her plea for a part in the actual responsible care of her children had died away. He had spoken with unnecessary vehemence, he knew. He had admitted that--said he was sorry, as well as he could without withdrawing from his position. But he had been met by that most formidable of all weapons--a blank silence--an inscrutable face. Some sort of scene was inevitable, he knew. And he sat there waiting for it. She had been hurt. She was undoubtedly very angry.

He thought he was ready for anything. But just the way she spoke his name, startled--almost frightened--him, she said it so quietly, so--tenderly.

"Roddy," she said, "I want you to come over here and kiss me, and then go back and sit down in that chair again."

He went a little pale at that. The swing of his foot was arrested suddenly. But, for a moment, he made no move--just looked wonderingly into her great grave eyes.

"Something's