CHAPTER XVII

THE END OF THE TOUR

From Dubuque the company made a circuit northward into Wisconsin and

Minnesota, swung around a loop and worked their way south again.

Disaster stalked behind them all the way, casting its lengthening shadow

before for them to walk in. On the very first salary day after Rodney's

newspaper had informed Rose of her true financial situation, the manager

doled out a little money on account to the more exigent members of the

company, and remunerated the others with thanks, a nervous smile, and

the rock-ribbed assurance that they'd get it all next week. The long

jump they'd just taken, and a couple of bad houses (they were all bad,

but the two he spoke of couldn't be called audiences at all, except by

courtesy) had caused a temporary stringency.

Rose saw what the more experienced members of the company were doing,

and knew that she ought to follow their example; keep after the manager

for her money, hound him, appeal to him, invent fictitious needs, and

then not spend a cent except what was absolutely wrung out of her by

necessity, so that when the crash came, she wouldn't be left penniless.

But she lacked the energy to do it. She was going through a passing

phase of that same melancholy acquiescence in the decrees of Fate, which

had been Olga Larson's permanent characteristic until Rose's own fire

and a turn in the tide of fortune had roused her.

One little sequence of events springing directly from Rodney's visit to

Dubuque, contributed largely to this result. The principal actor in it

was Dolly.

Dolly's manner toward her had altered that very morning in Dubuque,

though Rose, in her preoccupation, didn't mark the change for a day or

two afterward. Then she saw that her frail little roommate had stopped

chattering; that she no longer made nervous little excuses for leaving

her, nor invented transparent little fibs to account for absences. She

became, in her absurdly ineffectual little way, surly and defiant. She

took to going about openly with her chorus-man, sharing his seat with

him on the train, letting him carry her bag for her on the way to the

hotel; and her manner toward Rose, when any of these manifestations fell

beneath her eye, was one of uneasy challenge. Let Rose just try to

remonstrate with her if she dared! She no longer came back to the hotel

with Rose after the performances, took to turning up at their room at

hours that grew steadily later and more outrageous, and while at first

she stole in very quietly, undressed in the dark and tried to creep into

bed without awakening her, she grew rapidly more brazen about it; turned

on the light and undressed before the mirror, talked elaborately about

nothing and laughed her high nervous little laugh without occasion.

It was not a lack 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 matinée 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 matinée 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, and the illusions had been too tawdry to regret. As for doing

anything, what was there one could do?

There wasn't much that Rose could do at any rate. Because after weeks of

drifting, she'd come to a resolution.

She didn't go to the railway station to sign her receipt and get her

ticket to Chicago. What was there in Chicago for her? She meant to stay,

for the present, at any rate, in Centropolis. She checked her suit-case

in the coat-room and, with a sensation of relief, watched the mournful

company file away.

She had three dollars and some small change, and the day before her.