CHAPTER XVI

ROSE OPENS THE DOOR

The struggle between them lasted a week--a ghastly week, during which,

as far as the surface of things showed, their life flowed along in its

accustomed channels. It was a little worse than that, really, because

the week included, so an ironic Fate had decreed, Thanksgiving Day and a

jolly family party at Frederica's, with congratulations on the past,

plans for the future. And Rose and Rodney, as civilized persons will do,

kept their faces, accepted congratulations, made gay plans for the

twins; smiled or laughed when necessary--somehow or other, got through

with it.

But at all sorts of times, and in all sorts of places when they were

alone together, the great battle was renewed; mostly through the dead

hours of the night, in Rose's bedroom, she sitting up in bed, he

tramping up and down, shivering and shuddering in a big bath-robe. It

had a horrible way of interrupting itself for small domestic

commonplaces, which in their assumption of the permanency of their old

life, their blind disregard of the impending disaster, had an almost

unendurable poignancy. A breakfast on the morning of an execution is

something like that.

The hardest thing about it all for Rose--the thing that came nearest to

breaking down her courage--was to see how slowly Rodney came to realize

it at all. He was like a trapped animal pacing the four sides of his

cage confident that in a moment or two he would find the way out, and

then, incredulously, dazedly, coming to the surmise that there was no

way out. She really meant to go away and leave him--leave the babies; go

somewhere where his care and protection could not reach her! She was

actually planning to do it--planning the details of doing it! By the end

of one of their long talks, it would seem to her he had grasped this

monstrous intention and accepted it. But before the beginning of the

next one, he seemed to manage somehow to dismiss the thing as an

impossible nightmare.

An invitation came in from the Crawfords for a dance at the Blackstone,

the fifth of December, and he said something about accepting it.

"I shan't be here then, Roddy, you know," she said.

He went completely to pieces at that, as if the notion of her going away

had never really reached his mind before.

The struggle ranged through the widest possible gamut of moods. They had

their moments of rapturous love--passionate attempts at self-surrender.

They had long hours of cool discussion, as impersonal as if they had

been talking about the characters out of a hook instead of about

themselves. They had stormy nerve-tearing hours of blind agonizing,

around and around in circles, lacerating each other, lashing out at each

other, getting nowhere. They had moments of incandescent anger.

He tried, just once, early in the fight, to take the ground he had taken

once before; that she was irresponsible, obsessed. There was a fracture

somewhere, as James Randolph's jargon had it, in her unconscious mind.

She didn't let him go far with that. He saw her blaze up in a splendid

burst of wrath, as she had blazed once--oh, an eternity ago, at a

street-car conductor. Her challenge rang like a sword out of a scabbard.

"We'll settle that before we go any further," she said. "Telephone for

James Randolph, or any other alienist you like. Let him take me and put

me in a sanatorium somewhere and keep me under observation as long as he

pleases, until he's satisfied whether I'm out of my mind or not. But

unless you're willing to do that, don't call me irresponsible."

He grew more reasonable as a belief in her complete seriousness and

determination sobered him. He made desperate efforts to recover his

self-control--to get his big, cool, fine mechanism of a mind into

action. But his mind, to his complete bewilderment, betrayed him. He'd

always looked at Rose before, through the lens of his emotions. But now

that he forced himself to look at her through the non-refracting window

from which he looked at the rest of the world, she compelled him again

and again to admit that she was right.

"Why shouldn't I be right?" she said with a woebegone smile. "These are

all just things I've learned from you."

After a long and rather angry struggle with himself, he made up his mind

to a compromise, and in one of their cooler talks together, he offered

it.

"We've both of us pretty well lost our sense of proportion, it seems to

me," he said. "This whole ghastly business started from my refusing to

let Mrs. Ruston go and get a nurse who'd allow you to be your own

nurse-maid. Well, I'm willing to give up completely on that point. You

can let Mrs. Ruston go as soon as you like and get a nurse who'll meet

with your ideas."

"You're doing that," said Rose thoughtfully, "rather than let me go

away. That's the way it is, isn't it?"

"Why, yes, of course," he admitted. "I was looking at things from the

children's point of view, and I thought I was right. From their point of

view, I still think so."

She drew in a long sigh and shook her head. "It won't do, Roddy. Can't

you see you're giving way practically under a threat--because I'll go

away if you don't? But think what it would mean if I did stay, on those

terms. The thing would rankle always. And if anything did happen to one

of the babies because the new nurse wasn't quite so good, you'd never

forgive me--not in all the world.

"And," she added a little later, "that would be just as true of any

other compromise. I mean like going and living in a flat and letting me

do the housework--any of the things we've talked about. I can say I am

going away, don't you see, but I couldn't say I'd go away--_unless_ ...

I couldn't use that threat to extort things from you without killing our

whole life dead. Can't you see that?"

His mind infuriated him by agreeing with her--goaded him into another

passionate outburst during which he accused her of bad faith, of being

tired of him, anxious to get away from him--seizing pretexts. But he

offered no more compromises. The thing he fell back on after that was a

plea for delay. The question must be decided coolly; not like this. Let

them just put it out of their minds for a while, go on with the old

routine as if nothing threatened it and see if things didn't work

somewhat better--see if they weren't, after all, better friends than she

thought.

"If I were ill, Roddy," she said, "and there was an operation talked

about; if they said to you that there was something I might drag along

for years, half alive, without, but that if I had it, it would either

kill or cure, you wouldn't urge delay. We'd decide for or against it and

be done. It's--it's taking just all the courage I've got to face this

thing now that I am excited--now that I've thought it out and talked it

out with you--now that I've got the big hope before my eyes. But to wait

until I was tangled in the old routine and the babies began to get a

little older and more--human, so that they knew me, and then do it in

cold blood! I couldn't do that. We'd patch up some sort of a life,

pretending a little, quarreling a little, and when my feelings got

especially hurt about something, I'd try to make myself think, and you,

that I was going away. And we'd both know down inside that we were

cowards."

He protested against the word, but she stuck to it.

"We're both afraid now," she insisted. "That's one of the things that

makes us so cruel to each other when we talk--fear. The world's a

terrible place to me, Roddy. I've never ventured out alone in it; not a

step. A year ago, I don't think I'd have been so frightened. I didn't

know then--I'd never really thought about it--what a hard dangerous

thing it is, just to earn enough to keep yourself alive. I haven't any

illusions now that it's easy--not after the things I've heard Barry Lake

tell about. But sometimes I think you're more afraid than I; and that

you've got a more intolerable thing to fear--ridicule--an intangible

sort of pitying ridicule that you can't get hold of; guessing at the

sort of things people will say and never really quite knowing. And we

have each got the other's fear to suffer under, too.--Oh, Roddy, Roddy,

don't hate me too bitterly ...! But I think if we can both endure it,

stand the gaff, as you said once, and know that the other's standing it,

too, perhaps that'll be the real beginning of the new life."

Somehow or other, during their calmer moments toward the end, practical

details managed to get talked about--settled after a fashion, without

the admission really being made on his part that the thing was going to

happen at all.

"I'd do everything I could of course, to make it easier," she said. "We

could have a story for people that I'd gone to California to make mother

a long visit. You could bring Harriet home from Washington to keep house

while I was gone. I'd take my trunks, you see, and really go. People

would suspect of course, after a while, but they'll always pretend to

believe anything that's comfortable--anything that saves scenes and

shocks and explanations."

"Where would you go, really?" he demanded. "Have you any plan at all?"

"I have a sort of plan," she said. "I think I know of a way of earning a

living."

But she didn't offer to go on and tell him what it was, and after a

little silence, he commented bitterly on this omission.

"You won't even give me the poor satisfaction of knowing what you're

doing," he said.

"I'd love to," she said, "--to be able to write to you, hear from you

every day. But I don't believe you want to know. I think it would be too

hard for you. Because you'd have to promise not to try to get me

back--not to come and rescue me if I got into trouble and things went

badly and I didn't know where to turn. Could you promise that, Roddy?"

He gave a groan and buried his face in his hands. Then:

"No," he said furiously. "Of course I couldn't. See you suffering and

stand by with my hands in my pockets and watch!" He sprang up and seized

her by the arms in a grip that actually left bruises, and fairly shook

her in the agony of his entreaty. "Tell me it's a nightmare, Rose," he

said. "Tell me it isn't true. Wake me up out of it!"

But under the indomitable resolution of her blue eyes, he turned away.

This was the last appeal of that sort that he made.

"I'll promise," she said presently, "to be sensible--not to take any

risks I don't have to take. I'll regard my life and my health and all,

as something I'm keeping in trust for you. I'll take plenty of warm

sensible clothes when I go; lots of shoes and stockings--things like

that, and if you'll let me, I'll--I'll borrow a hundred dollars to start

myself off with. It isn't a tragedy, Roddy,--not that part of it. You

wouldn't be afraid for any one else as big and strong and healthy as I."

Gradually, out of the welter of scenes like that, the thing got itself

recognized as something that was to happen. But the parting came at last

in a little different way from any they had foreseen.

Rodney came home from his office early one afternoon, with a telegram

that summoned him to New York to a conference of counsel in a big public

utility case he had been working on for months. He must leave, if he

were going at all, at five o'clock. He ransacked the house, vainly at

first, for Rose, and found her at last in the trunk-room--dusty,

disheveled, sobbing quietly over something she held hugged in her arms.

But she dried her eyes and came over to him and asked what it was that

had brought him home so early.

He showed her the telegram. "I'll have to leave in an hour," he said,

"if I'm to go."

She paled at that, and sat down rather giddily on a trunk. "You must

go," she said, "of course. And--Roddy, I guess that'll be the easiest

way. I'll get my telegram to-night--pretend to get it--from Portia. And

you can give me the hundred dollars, and then, when you come back, I'll

be gone."

The thing she had been holding in her hands slipped to the floor. He

stooped and picked it up--stared at it with a sort of half awakened

recognition.

"I f--found it," she explained, "among some old things Portia sent over

when she moved. Do you know what it is? It's one of the note-books that

got wet--that first night when we were put off the street-car. And--and,

Roddy, look!"

She opened it to an almost blank page, and with a weak little laugh,

pointed to the thing that was written there:

"'March fifteenth, nineteen twelve!' Your birthday, you see, and the day

we met each other."

And then, down below, the only note she had made during the whole of

that lecture, he read: "Never marry a man with a passion for

principles."

"That's the trouble with us, you see," she said. "If you were just an

ordinary man without any big passions or anything, it wouldn't matter

much if your life got spoiled. But with us, we've got to try for the

biggest thing there is. Oh, Roddy, Roddy, darling! Hold me tight for

just a minute, and then I'll come and help you pack."

BOOK THREE

The World Alone