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

of daring that kept Rose from asking the questions that were so patently waiting to be answered, or from making the remonstrances that Dolly's behavior so definitely invited. She knew she ought to stir herself up and do something. She had assumed, she knew, a measure of moral responsibility for the fluffy helpless little thing she had conquered so easily at first and taken for her chum. Of course remonstrances, moral lectures, scoldings, wouldn't accomplish anything. What the situation called for was a second conquest; a reassertion of her moral dominance over the girl. She would have to reconstruct the relation which, since the first week of their tour, she had, in her apathy, allowed to lapse. But that apathy had become too strong to break. She couldn't rouse herself from it. And, failing that, she kept silent; let Dolly go her ways.

But a fortnight after Dubuque, an incident occurred that even her acquiescent passivity couldn't ignore. There came a fine bright afternoon with no matinee and no washing or mending that needed to be done, when she suggested to Dolly that they go out for a good walk. Dolly didn't assent to the proposal, though the suggestion seemed to interest her.

"Where is there to walk to?" she asked. "These towns are all alike."

"I don't mean just a stroll around the town," Rose said. "Look here! I'll show you." She pointed from the window. "Across that bridge (they were playing one of the Mississippi River towns) and up to the top of that hill on the other side."

"Gee!" said Dolly. "That's miles."

"Do you good," said Rose.

"Are you going there anyway?" asked Dolly.

Rose nodded. "You'd better come along," she said. By turning on her full powers of persuasion, she might, she felt, have pulled Dolly along with her; swept her off and begun the reconquest she knew she ought to make. But somehow her will failed her. Dolly could come if she liked.

Dolly didn't refuse very decisively, but she watched Rose's preparations for departure without making any of her own. It wasn't until Rose, at the door, turned back to renew the invitation for the last time, that she said impatiently: "Oh, go along! I'll take a nap, I guess."

So Rose set out by herself.

The day proved colder than it looked; a fact that Rose tried to correct by walking more briskly. But when she got out on the bridge where the sharp wind got a full sweep at her, she saw it wasn't going to do. She'd be chilled to the bones long before she reached that hill and it would be colder coming back. She must go back for her ulster.

Fifteen minutes later, she tried the door of her room and found it locked. There was a moment of dead silence. But the realization that it hadn't been quite so silent the moment before, caused her to knock again. Then she heard the creak of the bed and the thud of Dolly's unshod feet on the floor, and then her steps coming toward the door.

"W--what--what is it?" Rose heard her ask.

"Let me in," said Rose. "Sorry I disturbed your nap, but I had to come back for my ulster."

Dolly was standing just at the other side of the door, she knew, but there was no sound of drawing the bolt. Only a long silence and then a sob.

"What's the matter?" Rose demanded. "Let me in."

"You _can't_ come in!" said Dolly, and panic couldn't have spoken plainer than in her voice. "Oh, go away! What did you come back for? You said you were going to be gone hours. Go away!"

Out of a frozen throat Rose answered: "All right. I'll go away." The situation was too miserably clear.

She went down to the lobby and a sudden giddiness caused her to drop down into the first chair she saw. She sat there for an hour, then went to the desk and told the clerk she wanted a room for that night by herself. She'd pay the extra price of it now.

The clerk took the money and selected a key from the rack. The look he saw in Rose's face silenced any comment, jocular or otherwise, that he might have made.

Rose went to her new room, took off her hat and jacket, and washed her face. When she heard the supper bell ringing down-stairs, she went back to her old room and knocked.

"Come in," said Dolly, and Rose entering, found her standing at the window looking out.

She had tried, while she sat down there in the lobby, and later in her own room, to think out what she'd say to Dolly when they next met. She hadn't been able to think of anything to say. She could think of nothing now. So, in silence, she began putting her smaller belongings into her half unpacked suit-case and laying the clothes that hung in the closet across a chair.

"So you're going to walk out on me are you?" said Dolly. Rose was aware that she'd been watching these proceedings.

"I'm going to have a room by myself for to-night," said Rose.

Dolly amazed her by flying into a sudden rage.

"Oh, you!" she said. "You make me sick. You're a hypocrite, that's what you are. Pretending to be so haughty and innocent, and then come spying back here, on purpose, and acting so shocked! You don't think I'm fit to live with, do you. Just because I've got a friend. You thought you was fit to live with me, all right, when you had two of them and wasn't straight with either."

Rose straightened up and looked at her. "What do you mean?" she demanded.

"That's right, go on with the bluff," said Dolly furiously. "But you can't bluff me. Larson put me wise to you that day in Dubuque, when that big guy--'Rodney'--came up to see you. He was one of them, and the fellow who put on the show in Chicago--what's his name?--Galbraith, was the other. You tried to play them both and got left."

"That's what Olga Larson told you?" asked Rose.

"You bet it's what she told me," said Dolly. "It's about half what she told me. And now you try to pull your high-and-mighty airs on me, just because Charlie and I are in love and ain't married yet. We're going to be. We're going into vaudeville as soon as this tour ends. He says the managers don't object to vaudeville teams being married. But we've got to wait till then, because theatrical managers won't have it. And yet you're walking out on me because you're too superior...."

"I don't feel superior," said Rose. "I'm sorry, that's all."

"Yes, you hypocrite!" said Dolly. "Go on and walk out on me. I'm glad of it."

Rose picked up her suit-case and the heap of clothes and left the room without another word.

She tried to be more astonished and indignant over Olga Larson's part in this affair than she really felt. It seemed so horribly cynical not to be surprised. But it was not cynicism; just an unconscious understanding of the fundamental processes of Olga's mind.

There was no malice in the story she had told Dolly, just after the two of them, looking through the Moorish archway in the hotel there in Dubuque, had seen Rose and Rodney deep in confidential talk. Olga had shown surprise and then, elaborately, tried to conceal it. She knew the man, all right, but hadn't expected him to follow Dane out here. Dolly told her about the note, and Olga's jealousy, which had been smoldering ever since the tour began, flared up again. Even in the days of their closest friendship--this was the way it looked to her distorted vision--Rose had never been frank with her. She had never mentioned a man named Rodney, nor even shown her a photograph. The only person Olga had known to be jealous of, was Galbraith. Her unacknowledged reason for inventing the calumny she recited so glibly for Dolly, was the hope that Dolly would go straight to Rose with it.

That couldn't fail, she thought, to break down Rose's attitude of icy indifference and precipitate a quarrel; and a quarrel was what she wanted. Because quarrels led to reconciliations. She wanted Rose to be angry with her and then forgive her, although the latter part of her hope was quite unconscious.

As I say, Rose understood. She didn't work the thing out in detail; didn't want to. But she knew that if she sought Olga out and demanded an explanation of the detestable things she'd said about her, the scene would terminate in a torrent of self-reproach from Olga, protestations of undying love, fondlings ...

So Rose shuddered and said nothing. The only thing to do about the whole unspeakable business was, as far as possible, to disregard it.

It wasn't possible to disregard it utterly, because the story was evidently spread. She became conscious of a touch of contemptuous hostility on the part of everybody. Not on account of her moral derelictions, but because of her hypocrisy in pretending to a set of standards of breeding and behavior superior to those held by the rest of them.

Altogether it made complete and irresistible, a whole-souled loathing of the life. Her attempt to find a way to a career along this filthy stage-door alley must be confessed a total failure. She could never, she knew, nerve herself to look for another job in a musical-comedy chorus.

At the next overnight stop they made, Dolly went in to room with the duchess, and the duchess' former roommate, a fattish blonde girl with a permanent cold in the head, came in with her.

Somehow the days dragged along until the pursuing and long visible disaster finally overtook the company in Centropolis, Illinois (this is not the real name of the city, but it is no more flagrant a misnomer than the one it boasts). They played a matinee here and an evening performance, to two almost empty houses; that gave them the _coup de grace_.

There was no call posted on the bulletin board that night, and the next day, after a brisk exchange of telegrams with Chicago, the manager called the company together in one of the sample-rooms of the hotel and announced that the tour was off. He also announced, with a magnanimity that put far into the background the fact that he owed them all at least two weeks' salary, that everybody in the company would be provided with a first-class ticket for Chicago. There was nothing, except his scrupulous sense of honor, he managed to imply without saying it in so many words, to prevent his going off to Chicago all by himself and leaving them stranded here. But, though this might be good business, he was incapable of it. If they would all come down to the station at eleven o'clock, and sign a receipt discharging him from further obligations, he would see that their transportation was arranged for.

It was just after this that Rose caught a glimpse of Dolly shivering in a corner, weeping into a soiled pocket-handkerchief. The fat girl with a cold supplied her with the explanation.

Dolly's chorus-man, it seemed, had already departed on an earlier train to St. Louis, where he lived, without taking any leave of her at all.

Rose wanted to go over and try to comfort the child, but somehow she couldn't manage to. Sentimentalizing over her grief and disillusionment wouldn't do any good. The grief probably wasn't more than an inch deep anyway,