CHAPTER VIII

RODNEY'S EXPERIMENT

The wedding was set for the first week in June. And the decision,

instantly acquiesced in by everybody, was that it was to be as quiet--as

strictly a family affair--as possible. The recentness of the death of

Rodney's mother gave an adequate excuse for such an arrangement, but the

comparative narrowness of the Stantons' domestic resources enforced it.

Indeed, the notion of even a simple wedding into the Aldrich family left

Portia rather aghast.

But this feeling was largely allayed by Frederica's first call. Being a

celebrated beauty and a person of great social consequence didn't, it

appeared, prevent one from being human and simple mannered and

altogether delightful to have about. She was so competent, too, and

intelligent (Rose didn't see why Portia should find anything

extraordinary in all this. Wasn't she Rodney's sister?) that her

conquest of the Stanton family was instantaneous. They didn't suspect

that it was deliberate.

Rodney had made his great announcement to her, characteristically, over

the telephone, from his office. "Do you remember asking me, Freddy, two

or three weeks ago, who Rosalind Stanton was? Well, she's the girl I'm

going to marry."

She refused to hear a word more in those circumstances. "I'm coming

straight down," she said, "and we'll go somewhere for lunch. Don't you

realize that we can't talk about it like this? Of course you wouldn't,

but it's so."

Over the lunch table she got as detailed an account of the affair as

Rodney, in his somnambulistic condition, was able to give her, and she

passed it on to Martin that evening as they drove across to the north

side for dinner.

"Well, that all sounds exactly like Rodney," he commented. "I hope

you'll like the girl."

"That isn't what I hope," said Frederica. "At least it isn't what I'm

most concerned about. I hope I can make her like me. Roddy's the only

brother I've got in the world, and I'm not going to lose him if I can

help it. That's what will happen if she doesn't like me."

Frederica was perfectly clear about this, though she admitted it had

taken her fifteen minutes or so to see it.

"All the way down-town to talk to Rodney," she said, "I sat there

deciding what she ought to be like--as if she were going to be brought

up to me to see if she'd do. And then all at once I thought, what good

would it do me to decide that she wouldn't? I couldn't change his

relation to her one bit. But, if she decides I won't do, she can change

his relation to me pretty completely. It's about the easiest thing a

wife can do.

"Well, I'm going to see her, and her mother and sister--that's the

family--to-morrow. And if they don't like me before I come away and

think of me as a nice sort of person to be related by marriage to, it

won't be because I haven't tried. It will be because I'm just a

naturally repulsive person and can't help it."

As it happened though, she forgot all about her resolution almost with

her first look at Rose. Rodney's attempts at description of her had been

well meaning; but what he had prepared his sister for, unconsciously of

course, in his emphasis on one or two phases of their first

acquaintance, had been a sort of slatternly Amazon. But the effect of

this was, really, very happy; because when a perfectly presentably clad,

well-bred, admirably poised young girl came into the room and greeted

her neither shyly nor eagerly, nor with any affectation of ease, a girl

who didn't try to pretend it wasn't a critical moment for her but was

game enough to meet it without any evidences of panic--when Frederica

realized that this was the Rose whom Rodney had been telling her about,

she fell in love with her on the spot.

Amazingly, as she watched the girl and heard her talk, she found she was

considering, not Rose's availability as a wife for Rodney, but Rodney's

as a husband for her. It was this, perhaps, that led her to say, at the

end of her leave-taking, just as Rose, who had come out into the hall

with her, was opening the door:

"Roddy has been such a wonderful brother, always, to me, that I suspect

you'll find him, sometimes, being a brother to you. Don't let it hurt

you if that happens."

The most vivid of all the memories that Frederica took away with her

from that memorable visit was the smile with which Rose had answered

that remark. She had her chauffeur stop at the first drug store they

came to and called up Rodney on the telephone, just because she was too

impatient to wait any longer for a talk with him.

"I'm simply idiotic about her," she told him. "I know, now, what you

meant when you were trying to tell me about her smile. She looked at me

like that just as I was leaving, and my throat's tight with it yet.

She's such a darling! Don't be too much annoyed if I put my oar in once

in a while, just to see that you're treating her properly."

She walked into his office one morning a few days later, dismissed his

stenographer with a nod, and sat down in the just vacated chair. She was

sorry, she said, but it was the only way she had left, nowadays, of

getting hold of him. Then she introduced a trivial, transparent little

errand for an excuse, and, having got it out of the way, inquired after

Rose. What had the two of them been doing lately?

"Getting acquainted," he said. "It's going to be an endless process,

apparently. Heavens, what a lot there is to talk about!"

"Yes," Frederica persisted, "but what do you do by way of being--nice to

her?" And as he only looked puzzled and rather unhappy, she elucidated

further. "What's your concession, dear old stupid, to the fact that

you're her lover--in the way of presents and flowers and theaters and

things?"

"But Rose isn't like the rest of them," he objected. "She doesn't care

anything about that sort of thing."

Whereat Frederica laughed. "Try it," she said, "just for an experiment,

Roddy. Don't ask her if she wants to go, ask her to go. Get tickets for

one of the musical things, engage a table for dinner and for supper, at

two of the restaurants, and send her flowers. Do it handsomely, you

know, as if ordinary things weren't good enough for her. Oh, and take

our big car. Taxis wouldn't quite be in the picture. Try it, Roddy, just

to see what happens."

He looked thoughtful at first, then interested, and at last he smiled,

reached over and patted her hand. "All right, Freddy," he said. "The

handsome thing shall be done."

The result was that at a quarter past one A.M., a night or two later, he

tipped the carriageman at the entrance to the smartest of Chicago's

supper restaurants, stepped into Martin's biggest limousine, and dropped

back on the cushions beside a girl he hardly knew.

"You wonder!" he said, as her hand slid into his. "I didn't know you

could shine like that. All the evening you've kept my heart in my

throat. I don't know a thing we've seen or eaten--hardly where we've

been."

"I do," she declared, "and I shall never forget it. Not one smallest

thing about it. You see, it's the first time anything like it ever

happened to me."

He exclaimed incredulously at that--wanted to know what she meant.

He felt the weight of her relaxed contented body, as she leaned closer

to him--felt her draw in a long slow sigh. "I don't know whether I can

talk sense to-night or not," she said, "but I'll try. Why, I've been

quite a lot at the theater, of course, and two or three times to the

restaurants. But never--oh, as if I belonged like that. It always seemed

a little wrong, and extravagant. And then, it's never lasted. After the

theater, or the dinner, I've walked over to the elevated, you know. So

this has been like--well, like flying in a dream, without any bumps to

wake me up. It sort of goes to my head just to be sitting here like

this, floating along home. Only--only, I wish it was to our home,

Rodney, instead of just mine."

"You darling!" he said. And, presently: "I'll tell you what we'll do

to-morrow, if you'll run away from your dressmaker. We'll go and buy a

car for ourselves. It's ridiculous I didn't get one long ago.

Frederica's always been at me to. You see, mother wouldn't have anything

but horses, and I sold those, of course, when she died. I've meant to

get a car, but I just never got round to it."

A small disagreeable voice, hermetically sealed in one of the remoter

caverns of him, remarked at this point that he was a liar. A motor-car,

it pointed out, was one of the things he had always denounced as a part

of the useless clutter of existence that he refused to be embarrassed

with. But it didn't speak with much conviction.

She picked up his hand and brushed her lips softly against the palm of

it. "You're so wonderful to me," she said. "You give me so much. And

I--I have so little to give back. And I want to--I want to give you all

the world." And then, suddenly, she put her bare arm around his neck,

drew his face to hers and kissed him.

It was the first time she had ever begun a caress like that.