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

ingredient in the situation. She had done an unconventional thing for the sake of a principle!

"Well," said Jimmy Wallace after a while, heading the conversation away, as he was wont to do, from what might be an endless discussion of moral principles, "the purpose of this council of war is to decide what we are going to do about it. Are we going to tell Aldrich or his sister about the dressmaker who looks so much like his wife, and let them find out for themselves whether she is or not? Or are we going to make sure first by going back on the stage there and having a talk with her? Or are we just going to shut up about it--never have been to the Globe at all; or, in my case, never to have noticed the resemblance?"

"On the chance, you mean," John inquired, "that Rodney and Frederica never find out at all? How much does that chance amount to?"

"Well," said Jimmy, "the show's in its fourth week, and the story hasn't got into the papers yet. So the chances are now it won't. And you're about the only person in your crowd that makes a practise of going to the Globe. If you haven't heard any rumors it probably means that you two are the only ones who know, so far. People who knew her before she was married may have recognized her, to be sure, but they aren't likely to go around either to Aldrich or to Mrs. Whitney with the story. Of course there's always a big margin for the unforeseeable. But even at that, I think you might call it an even chance."

"That's what I vote for then," said John, "shut up."

"I certainly don't want to go back on the stage and talk to Rose," said Violet, "and I simply couldn't make myself tell either Rodney or Frederica. It would be just too ghastly! But there's another thing you haven't thought of. Suppose they both know already. I've got an idea they do."

This was a possibility they hadn't thought of, but the more they canvassed it, the likelier it grew.

"He acts as if he knew," Violet said, "now I come to think of it. Oh, I can't tell exactly why! Just the way he talks about her and--doesn't talk about her. And then there's Harriet. She came home from Washington and stayed three days with Frederica and then went away again. She kept house for him while Rose was laid up, and why shouldn't she be doing it now, except that she's perhaps spoken her mind a little too freely and Rodney doesn't want her around? There'd be no nonsense about Harriet, you could count on that."

"It would be like Rose," said John, "to tell him herself. It wouldn't be like her, when you come to think of it, to do anything else."

"Oh, yes, she'd tell him," said Violet. "If she had some virtuous woman-suffrage reason, she'd do more than tell him. She'd rub it in. Of course he knows. Well, what shall we do about that?"

"Same vote," said John Williamson; "shut up. Certainly if he knows, that lets us out."

But Violet wasn't satisfied. "That's the easiest thing, certainly," she said, "but I don't believe it's right. I think the people who know him best, ought to know--just a few, the people he still drops in on, like the Crawfords, and the Wests, and Eleanor and James Randolph; just so that they could--well, _not_ know completely enough; so that they wouldn't, innocently, you know, say ghastly things to him. Or even, perhaps, do them, like making him go to musical shows, or talking about people who run away to go on the stage. There are millions of things like that that could happen, and if they know, they'll be careful."

Her husband wasn't very completely convinced, though she expounded her reasons at length, and urged them with growing intensity. But he'd never put a categorical veto upon her yet, and it wasn't likely he'd begin by trying to, now.

As for Jimmy Wallace, he was really out of it. But he went home feeling rather blue.


CHAPTER XI

THE SHORT CIRCUIT AGAIN

It was, after all, out of that limbo that Jimmy had spoken of as the margin of the unforeseeable, that the blind instrument of Fate appeared. He was a country lawyer from down-state, who, for a client of his own, had retained Rodney to defend a will that presented complexities in the matter of perpetuities and contingent remainders utterly beyond his own powers. He'd been in Chicago three or four days, spending an hour or two of every day in Rodney's office in consultation with him, and, for the rest of the time, dangling about, more or less at a loose end. A belated sense of this struck Rodney when, at the end of their last consultation, the country lawyer shook hands with him and announced his departure for home on the five o'clock train.

"I'm sorry I haven't been able to do more," Rodney said,--"do anything really, in the way of showing you a good time. As a matter of fact, I've spent every evening this week here in the office."

"Oh, I haven't lacked for entertainment," the man said. "We hayseeds find the city a pretty lively place. I went to see a show just last night called _The Girl Up-stairs_. I suppose you've seen it."

"No," said Rodney, "I haven't."

"Well, the title's pretty raw, of course, but the show's all right. Nothing objectionable about it, and it was downright funny. I haven't laughed so hard in a year. Pretty tunes, too. I tried to-day to get some records of it but they didn't have any yet. If you want a real good time, you go to see it."

The client was working his way to the door all the while and Rodney followed him, so that the last part of this conversation took place in the outer office. Rodney saw the man off with a final hand-shake, closed the door after him and strolled irresolutely back toward Miss Beach's desk.

It was true, as he had told his client, that he had been spending most of his evenings lately in his office, and it was also true that he had an immense amount of work to do; he'd been taking it on rather recklessly during the last two months. But they'd been pretty sterile, those long solitary evening hours. He'd worked fitfully, grinding away by brute strength for a while, without interest, without imagination, and then, in a frenzy of impatience, thrusting the legal rubbish out of the way and letting the enigma of his great failure usurp, once more, his mind and his memories.

It had occurred to him to wonder, as he stood listening to his client's enthusiastic description of the show at the Globe, whether it would be possible, in any surroundings, for him, for an hour or two, to laugh and be jolly--and forget. It might be an experiment worth trying!

"Telephone over to the University Club," he said suddenly to Miss Beach, "and see if you can get me a seat for _The Girl Up-stairs_."

The office boy was out on an errand and in his absence the switchboard was Miss Beach's care.

"The--_The Girl Up-stairs_?" she repeated.

"That's what he said, isn't it?"

"Yes," she assented. "That's--the name of it."

He might have been expected, after giving an order like that, to go striding back into his private office and slam the door after him. It wasn't at all his way to keep a lingering hand on a task after he'd delegated it to some one else. But he didn't on this occasion act as she'd expected him to; remained abstractedly where he was while something turned itself over in his mind.

There was nothing urgent about his order of course, and it was natural enough that she should go on with her typing to the end of a sentence, or even of a paragraph. But he stayed on and on, and Miss Beach went steadily on with her typing. Finally he roused himself enough to look around at her.

"Go ahead and telephone," he said. "I want to find out if I can get a seat."

She arose obediently and moved over to the switchboard, then began fumbling with the directory.

"Good lord!" said Rodney. "You know the number of the University Club!"

Of course it was true she did. She called it up for him on an average of a dozen times a week. He was looking at her now with undisguised curiosity. She was acting, for a perfectly infallible machine like Miss Beach, almost queer. But she acted queerer the next moment. She laid down the directory, clasped her hands tight and pressed her lips together. Then, without looking around at him, she said:

"You don't want to go to see that show, Mr. Aldrich. It--it isn't good at all."

Rodney was more nearly amused than he had been in a month.

"You've been to see it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said, and managed to go on a little more naturally, "Mr. Craig took me. We had a bet on what the Supreme Court's decision would be in the Roderick case--theater tickets against two pounds of home-made fudge, and I won. And--that's where we went."

"And you didn't like it, eh?"

"No," she said.

By now he was grinning at her outright. "Vulgar?" he asked.

Her color had mounted again. "Yes," she said.

The notion of having his dramatic entertainment censored by a frail, prim little thing like Miss Beach tickled his burly sense of humor. "It would be a horrible thing if I should go to see anything vulgar, wouldn't it?" he observed. "But I think I'll take a chance. You go ahead and telephone."

At that she rose and, for the first time, faced him. To his amazement, he saw that she was in a perfect panic of embarrassment and fright. But, for some grotesque reason, she was determined, too. She was blushing up to the hair and her lips were trembling.

"Mr. Aldrich," she said, "you won't like that show. If--if you go, you'll be sorry."

While he was still staring at her, young Craig came bursting blithely out of his office, a bundle of papers in his hand and the pucker of a silent whistle still on his lips. "Oh, Miss Beach!" he said, and then stopped short, seeing that something had happened.

Rodney tried an experiment. "Craig," he said, "Miss Beach doesn't want me to buy a ticket for _The Girl Up-stairs_. She says I won't like it. Do you agree with her?"

A flare of red came up into the boy's face, and his jaw dropped. Then, as well as he could, he pulled himself together. "Yes, sir," he said, swung around and marched back into his own cubby-hole.

"You needn't telephone, Miss Beach," said Rodney curtly. And without another word he put on his hat and overcoat and left the office.

It was not a very profound emotion that drove him along; a violent superficial one, rather, like the gusty wrath which had precipitated the last phase of his great struggle with Rose--the time he told her he wouldn't jeopardize the children's lives to satisfy her whims. He was furiously impatient with the good intentions of his friends. He had been aware of a sort of unnatural gentleness about them ever since Christmas; but either it had intensified during the last ten days, or else he had suddenly got