CHAPTER X

THE DOOR THAT WAS TO OPEN

She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch, as Rose was forced by

her husband's attitude to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a

wonderful anodyne. And so it proved in her ease. Indeed, within a day

after her talk with Rodney, though it had ended in total defeat, she

felt like a person awakened out of a nightmare. There had taken place,

somehow, an enormous letting-off of strain--a heavenly relaxation of

spiritual muscles. It was so good just to have him know; to have others

know, as all her world did within the next week!

Ultimately nothing was changed, of course. The great thing that she had

promised Portia she wouldn't fail in getting--the real thing that should

solve the problem, equalize the disparity between her husband and

herself and give them a life together in satisfying completeness beyond

the joys of a pair of lovers;--that was still to be fought for.

She'd have to make that fight alone. Rodney wouldn't help her. He

wouldn't know how to help her. Indeed, interpreting from the way he

winced under her questions and suggestions, as if they wounded some

essentially masculine, primitive element of pride in him, it seemed

rather more likely that he'd resist her efforts--fight blindly against

her. She must be more careful about that when she took up the fight

again; must avoid hurting him if she could.

She hadn't an idea on what lines the fight was to be made. Perhaps

before the time for its beginning, a way would appear. The point was

that for the present, she'd have to wait--coolly and thoughtfully, not

fritter her strength away on futile struggles or harassments.

The tonic effect of that resolution was really wonderful. She got her

color back--I mean more than just the pink bloom in her cheeks--and her

old, irresistible, wide slow smile. She'd never been so beautiful as she

was during the next six months.

People who thought they loved her before--Frederica for example, found

they hadn't really, until now. She dropped in on Eleanor Randolph one

day, after a morning spent with Rose, simply because she was bursting

with this idea and had to talk to somebody. That was very like

Frederica.

She found Eleanor doing her month's bills, but glad to shovel them into

her desk, light up a cigarette, and have a chat; a little rueful though,

when she found that Rose was to be the subject of it.

"She's perfectly wonderful," Frederica said. "There's a sort of look

about her ..."

"Oh, I know," Eleanor said. "We dined there last night."

"Well, didn't it just--get you?" insisted Frederica.

"It did," said Eleanor. "It also got Jim. He was still talking about her

when I went to sleep, about one o'clock. I don't a bit blame him for

being perfectly maudlin about her. As I say, I was a good deal that way

myself, though a half-hour's steady raving was enough for me. But poor

old Jim! She isn't one little bit crazy about him, either--unfortunately."

"_Un_fortunately!" thought Frederica. This was rather illuminating. The

Randolphs' love-match had been regarded as establishing a sort of

standard of excellence. But when you heard a woman trying to arrange

subsidiary romances for her husband, or lamenting the failure of them,

it meant, as a rule, that things were wearing rather thin. However, she

dismissed this speculation for a later time, and went back to Rose.

"I had been worrying about her, too;" she said. "Rodney was so funny

about her. _He_ was worried, I could see that. And he means the best in

the world, the dear. But he could be a dreadful brute, just in his

simplicity. Oh, I know! He and I were always rather special pals--more

than Harriet. But no man ever learned less from his sisters,--about

women, I mean. He's always been so big and healthy and even-minded, you

couldn't tell him anything, except what you could print right out in

black and white. So when you were feeling edgy and blue and miserable

you either kept out of his way or kept your troubles to yourself. He was

always easy to fool--there was that about it. If you wiped your eyes and

blew your nose, he always thought you had a cold. Which is all very nice

about a brother; but in a husband ..."

Something that Eleanor did with her shoulders, the way she blew out her

smoke and twisted her mouth around, caught Frederica's eye. "What did

you mean by that?" she asked. "Oh, I know you didn't say anything."

Eleanor got up restlessly, squared the cushions on her _chaise longue_,

tapped her cigarette ash into a receiver and said that Rose was happy

enough now, anyway, if looks were anything to go by; hesitated again,

and finally answered Frederica's question.

"Why," she said, "whenever I hear a woman miaouling about being

misunderstood, I always want to tell her she doesn't know her luck. Wait

till she marries a man who really does understand--too well. Let her see

how she likes it, whenever she turns loose and gets--going a little, to

have him look interested, as if he were taking notes, and begin asking

questions that are--a little too intelligent. How does she think it'll

feel never to know, _never_--I mean that, that she isn't

being--experimented on!"

It was a rather horrible idea, Frederica didn't try to deny it. But not

being understood wasn't very agreeable either. What did they want then?

Eleanor laughed. "Did you ever think," she asked, "that one of these

regular stage husbands would be rather satisfactory? Terribly

particular, you know, and bossy and domineering. The kind that discovers

a letter or a handkerchief or sees you going into some other man's

'rooms' and gets frightfully jealous, and denounces you without giving

you a chance to explain, and drags you round by the hair and threatens

to kill you? And then discovers--in the last act, you know,--that you

were perfectly innocent all the while, and repents all over the place

and begs you to forgive him and take him back; and you do? Do you

suppose any of the men we know would be capable of acting like that?

Don't you think we'd like it if they were? Not if they really did those

things, perhaps, but if we thought they might?"

Frederica was amused, but didn't think there was much to that. Of

course, if the play was very thrilling, and you liked the leading man,

you might build yourself into the romance somehow. But when it came to

the real thing ...

"No, there is something in it," Eleanor insisted. "There's something you

can't get in any other way. Whom do you think I'd pick," she asked

suddenly, "for the happiest wife I know? Edith Welles. Yes, really. Oh,

I know, her husband's a slacker and no real good to anybody. And he goes

out every now and then and drinks too much and doesn't know just what

happens afterward. But he always comes back and wants to be forgiven.

And he thinks she's an angel,--which she is--and he thinks he isn't

worthy to put on her rubbers--which he isn't, and--well, there you are!

She knows she's _got_ him, somehow.

"But you take Jim. I can get my way with him always. I can outmaneuver

him every time. He's positively simple about things, unless they happen

to strike him--professionally. But there's always something that gets

away. Something I'm no nearer now than I was the day I first saw him.

And I sometimes think that if there were--something horrible I had to

forgive him for--if I could get something on him as they say.... It's

rather fun, isn't it, sometimes, just to let your mind go wild and see

where you bring up. Awful rot, of course. Can you stop for lunch?"

Frederica thought she couldn't; must run straight along. But the talk

had been amusing. "Only--you won't mind?--don't spring any of that stuff

on Rose. She's just a child, really you know, and entitled to any

illusions that Rodney leaves; especially these days."

"You, as an old hen fussing about your new chicken!" Eleanor mocked.

"Wait till you can look the part a little better, Frederica, dear. But

really, I'm harmless. Talk to Jim and Rodney and those fearful and

wonderful Lakes of his. They were there, and--well, you ought to have

heard the talk. I thought I was pretty well hardened, but once or twice

I gasped. Jim's pretty weird when he gets going, but that Barry Lake has

a sort of--surgical way of discussing just _anything_, and his wife's as

bad. Oh, she's awfully interesting, I'll admit that, and she's as crazy

about Rose as any of the rest of us, which is to her credit.

"We never got off women all the evening. Barry Lake had their history

down from the early Egyptians, and Jim had an endless string of

pathological freaks to tell about. And then Rodney came out strong for

economic independence, only with his own queer angle on it of course. He

thought it would be a fine thing, but it wouldn't happen until the men

insisted on it. When a girl wasn't regarded as marriageable unless she

had been trained to a trade or a profession, then things would begin to

happen. I think he meant it, too, though he was more than usually

outrageous in his way of putting things.

"Well, and all the while there sat Rose, taking it all in with those big

eyes of hers, smiling to herself now and then; saying things, too,

sometimes, that were pretty good, though nobody but Jim seemed to

understand, always, just what she meant. They've talked before, those

two. But she didn't mind--anything; no more embarrassed than as if we'd

been talking embroidery stitches. You don't need to worry about her. And

she absolutely seemed to like Jane Lake."

Frederica did worry. Seriously meditated running in on Rodney before she

went home to lunch and giving him a tip that a young wife in Rose's

condition wanted treating a little more carefully. It was not for

prudential reasons that she decided against doing it. She was perfectly

willing to have her head bitten off in a good cause. But she knew Rodney

down to the ground; knew that it was utterly impossible for him,

whatever his previous resolutions might be, to pull up on the brink of

anything. Once you launched a topic that interested him, he'd go through

with it. So the only thing that would do any good would be to ban the

Lakes and James Randolph completely. And Rodney, if persuaded to do

that--he would in a minute, of course, if he thought it would be good

for Rose--would be incapable of concealing from her why he had done it;

which would leave matters worse than ever.

The only outcome, then, of her visit to Eleanor and her subsequent

cogitations, was that Martin, when he came home that night, found her

unusually affectionate and inclined to be misty about the eyes. "I'm

a--lucky guy, all right"--this was her explanation,--"being married to

you. Instead of any of the others."

He was a satisfactory old dear. He took her surplus tenderness as so

much to the good, and didn't bother over not knowing what it was all

about.

Eleanor was right in her surmise that Rose had really taken a fancy to

Jane Lake. She was truly--and really humbly--grateful to Jane, in the

first place, for liking her, finding her, in Jane's own phrase, "worth

while," and her ideas worth listening to. Because here was something,

you see, that she could take at its face value. There was no

long-circuited sex attraction to discount everything, in Jane's case.

But she had another reason.

Rodney, it seemed, had told the Lakes about the prospective baby the

very morning after he'd learned the news himself, and Jane--this was

perfectly characteristic of her--had come straight up to see Rose about

it; even before Frederica. And about the first thing she said was:

"Which do you want--a boy or a girl?"

Rose looked puzzled, then surprised. "Why," she said at last, "I don't

believe I know."

"It's funny about that," said Jane. "The one thing I was frightened

about--the first time, you know--was that it might be a girl. I think

Barry really wanted a girl, too. He does now, and we're going to try to

have one, though we can't rightly afford it. But I'm just primitive

enough--I'm a cave person, really--to have felt that having a girl, at

least before you had a boy, would be a sort of disgrace. Like the Hindoo

women in Kipling. But don't you really care?"

"Why, the queer thing is," said Rose, who had been in a daze ever since

Jane's first question, "that I hadn't thought of it as anything at all

but--It. Hardly that, really. I've known how miserable I've been, and

that there were things I must be careful not to do,--and, of course,

what was going to happen. But that when it was all over there'd be a

baby left,--a--a son or a daughter, why, that's ..."

Her surprise had carried her into a confidence that her budding

friendship for Jane was hardly ripe for, and she pulled up rather

suddenly. "I didn't know you had any children," she concluded, by way of

avoiding a further discussion of the marvel just then. "Are they here

with you now?"

Jane explained why they were not. They weren't babies any more, two

husky little boys of five and three, and they were rejoicing in the care

of a grandmother and a highly competent nurse. "One of those terribly

infallible people, you know. Oh, I don't like it. I get a night letter

every morning, and, of course, if one of them got the sniffles I'd be

off home like a shot. I'd like to be a regular domestic mother; not let

another soul but me touch them (Jane really believed this) but you see

we can't well afford it. Barry pays me five dollars a day for working

for him. I scout around and dig up material and interview people for

him--I used to be a reporter, you know. He'd have to hire somebody, and

it might better be me and keep the money in the family. Because the

nurse who takes my place doesn't cost near so much as that. All the

same, as I say, I don't half like it. You can preach the new stuff till

you're black in the face, but there's no job for a woman like taking

care of her own children."

Rose listened to all this, as well as to Jane's subsequent remarks, with

only so much attention as was required to keep her guest from suspecting

that she wasn't really listening at all. Jane didn't stay long. She had

to go out and earn Barry's five dollars--she'd lose her job if she

didn't, so she said, and Rose was presently left alone to dream,

actually for the first time, of the wonders that were before her.

What a silly little idiot she'd been not to have seen the thing for

herself! She'd been, all the while, beating her head against blind

walls when there was a door there waiting to open of itself when the

time came. Motherhood! There'd be a doctor and a nurse at first, of

course, but presently they'd go away and she'd be left with a baby. Her

own baby! She could care for him with her own hands, feed him--her joy

reached an ecstasy at this--feed him from her own breast.

That life which Rodney led apart from her, the life into which she had

tried with such ludicrous unsuccess to effect an entrance, was nothing

to this new life which was to open before her in a few short months now.

Meanwhile, she not only must wait; she could well afford to.

That was why she could listen with that untroubled smile of hers to the

terrible things that Rodney and James Randolph and Barry Lake and Jane

got into the way of hurling across her dinner table, and to the more

mildly expressed but equally alkaline cynicisms of Jimmy Wallace.

(Jimmy was dramatic critic on one of the evening papers, as well as a

bit of a playwright. He was a slim, cool, smiling, highly sophisticated

young man, who renounced all privileges as an interpreter of life in

favor of remaining an unbiased observer of it. He never bothered to

speculate about what you ought to do;--he waited to see what you did. He

knew, more or less, everybody in the world,--in all sorts of worlds. He

was, for instance, a great friend of Violet Williamson's and Bella

Forrester's and was, at the same time, on terms of avuncular confidence

with Dotty Blott of the Globe chorus. And he was exactly the same man to

the three of them. He fitted admirably in with their new circle.)

Well, in the light of the miraculous transformation that lay before her

Rose could listen undaunted to the tough philosophizings her husband and

Barry Lake delighted in as well as to the mordant merciless realities

with which Doctor Randolph and Jimmy Wallace confirmed them. She wasn't

indifferent to it all. She listened with all her might.

If there was anything in prenatal influence, that baby of hers was going

to be intelligent!