CHAPTER IV

ROSALIND STANTON DOESN'T DISAPPEAR

Rodney found a pipe of his that he kept concealed on the premises,

loaded and lighted it, sat down astride a spindling little chair that

looked hardly up to his weight, settled his elbows comfortably on the

back of it, and then asked his sister what Martin had meant--what was he

in for?

Frederica, curled up in a corner of the sofa, finished her own train of

thought aloud, first.

"She's awfully attractive, don't you think? His wife, I mean. Oh, James

Randolph's, of course." She turned to Rodney, looked at him at first

with a wry pucker between her eyebrows, then with a smile, and finally

answered his question. "Nothing," she said. "I mean, I was going to

scold you, but I'm not."

"Why, yes," he admitted through his smoke. "Randolph's wife's a mighty

pretty woman. But I expect that lets her out, doesn't it?"

Frederica shook her head. "She's a good deal of a person, I should say,

on the strength of to-night's showing. She kept her face perfectly

through the whole thing--didn't try to nag at him or apologize to the

rest of us. I'd like to know what she's saying to him now."

Then, "Oh, I was furious with you an hour ago," she went on. "I'd made

such a nice, reasonable, really beautiful plan for you, and given you a

tip about it, and then I sat and watched you in that thoroughgoing way

of yours, kicking it all to bits. But somehow, when I see you all by

yourself, this way, it changes things. I get to thinking that perhaps my

plan was silly after all--anyhow, it was silly to make it. The plan was,

of course, to marry you off to Hermione Woodruff."

He turned this over in his deliberate way, during the process of

blowing two or three smoke rings, began gradually to grin, and said at

last, "That was some plan, little sister. How do you think of things

like that? You ought to write romances for the magazines, that's what

you ought to do."

"I don't know," she objected. "If reasonableness counted for anything in

things like that, it was a pretty good plan. It would have to be

somebody like Hermione. You can't get on at all with young girls. As

long as you remember they're around, you're afraid to say anything

except milk and water out of a bottle that makes them furious, and then

if you forget whom you're talking to and begin thinking out loud,

developing some idea or other, you--simply paralyze them.

"Well, Hermione's sophisticated and clever, she's lived all over the

place; she isn't old yet, and she was a brick about that awful husband

of hers--never made any fuss--bluffed it out until he, luckily, died. Of

course she'll marry again, and I just thought, if you liked the idea, it

might as well be you."

"I don't know," said Rodney, "whether Mrs. Woodruff knows what she wants

or not, but I do. She wants a run for her money--a big house to live in

three months in the year, with a flock of servants and a fleet of

motor-cars, and a string of what she'll call cottages to float around

among, the rest of the time. And she'll want a nice, tame, trick husband

to manage things for her and be considerate and affectionate and

amusing, and, generally speaking, Johnny-on-the-spot whenever she wants

him. If she has sense enough to know what she wants in advance, it will

be all right. She can take her pick of dozens. But if she gets a

sentimental notion in her head--and I've a hunch that she's subject to

them--that she wants a real man, with something of his own to do,

there'll be, saving your presence, hell to pay. And if the man happened

to be me ...!"

Frederica stretched her slim arms outward. Thoughtful-faced, she made no

comment on his analysis of the situation, unless a much more observant

person than Rodney might have imagined there was one in the deliberate

way in which she turned her rings, one at a time, so that the brilliant

masses of gems were inside, and then clenched her hands over them.

He had got up and was ranging comfortably up and down the room.

"I know I look more or less like a nut to the people who've always known

us--father's and mother's friends, and most of their children. But I

give you my word, Freddy, that most of them look like nuts to me. Why,

they live in curiosity shops--so many things around, things they have

and things they've got to do, that they can't act or think for fear of

breaking something.

"Why a man should load himself up with three houses and a yacht, a

stable of motor-cars, and God knows what besides, when he's rich enough

to buy himself real space and leisure to live in, is a thing I can't

figure out on any basis except of defective intelligence. I suppose

they're equally puzzled about me when I refuse a profitable piece of law

work they've offered me, because I don't consider it interesting. All

the same, I get what I want, and I'm pretty dubious sometimes whether

they do. I want space--comfortable elbow room, so that if I happen to

get an idea by the tail, I can swing it around my head without knocking

over the lamp."

"It's a luxury though, Rod, that kind of spaciousness, and you aren't

very rich. If you married a girl without anything ..."

He broke in on her with that big laugh of his. "You've kept your sense

of humor pretty well, sis, considering you've been married all these

years to a man as rich as Martin, but don't spring remarks like that, or

I'll think you've lost it. If a man can't keep an open space around him,

even after he's married, on an income, outside of what he can earn, of

ten or twelve thousand dollars a year, the trouble isn't with his

income. It's with the content of his own skull."

She gave a little shiver and snuggled closer into a big down pillow.

"You will marry somebody, though, won't you, Roddy? I'll try not to nag

at you and I won't make any more silly plans, but I can't help worrying

about you, living alone in that awful big old house. Anybody but you

would die of despondency."

"Oh," he said, "that's what I meant to talk to you about! I sold it

to-day--fifty thousand dollars--immediate possession. Man wants to build

a printing establishment there. You come down sometime next week and

pick out all the things you think you and Harriet would like to keep,

and I'll auction off the rest."

She shivered again and, to her disgust, found that her eyes were

blurring up with tears. She was a little bit slack and edgy to-day,

anyhow.

But really there was something rather remorseless about Rodney. It

occurred to her that the woman he finally did marry would need to be

strong and courageous and rather insensitive to sentimental fancies, to

avoid a certain amount of unhappiness.

What he had just referred to in a dozen brisk words, was the final

disappearance of the home they had all grown up in. Their father, one of

Chicago's great men during the twenty great years between the Fire and

the Fair, had built it when the neighborhood included nearly all the

other big men of that robust period, and had always been proud of it.

There was hardly a stone or stick about it that hadn't some tender happy

association for her. Of course for years the neighborhood had been

impossible. Her mother had clung to it after her husband's death, as was

of course natural.

But when she had followed him, a year ago now, it was evident that the

old place would have to go. Rodney, who had lived alone with her there,

had simply stayed on, since her death, waiting for an offer for it that

suited him. Frederica had known that, of course--had worried about him,

as she said, and in her imagination, had colored his loneliness to the

same dismal hue her own would have taken on in similar circumstances.

All the same, his curt announcement that the long-looked-for change had

come, brought up quick unwelcomed tears. She squeezed them away with her

palms.

"You'll come to us then, won't you?" she asked, but quite without

conviction. She knew what he'd say.

"Heavens, no! Oh, I'll go to a hotel for a while--maybe look up a

little down-town apartment, with a Jap. It doesn't matter much about

that. It's a load off, all right."

"Is that," she asked, "why you've been looking so sort of--gay, all the

evening--as if you were licking the last of the canary's feathers off

your whiskers?"

"Perhaps so," he said. "It's been a pretty good day, take it all round."

She got up from the couch, shook herself down into her clothes a little,

and came over to him.

"All right, since it's been a good day, let's go to bed." She put her

hands upon his shoulders. "You're rather dreadful," she said, "but

you're a dear. You don't bite my head off when I urge you to get

married, though I know you want to. But you will some day--I don't mean

bite my head off--won't you, Rod?"

"When I see any prospect of being as lucky as Martin--find a girl who

won't mind when I turn up for dinner looking like a drowned tramp, or

kick her plans to bits, after she's tipped me off as to what she wants

me to do ..."

Frederica took her hands off, stepped back and looked at him. There was

an ironical sort of smile on her lips.

"You're such an innocent," she said. "You've got an idea you know

me--know how I treat Martin. Roddy, dear, a girl's brother doesn't

matter. She isn't dependent on him, nor responsible for him. And if

she's rather sillily fond of him, she's likely to spoil him frightfully.

Don't think the girl you marry will ever treat you like that."

"But look here!" he exclaimed. "You say I don't know you, whom I've

lived with off and on for thirty years--don't know how you'd treat me if

you were married to me. How in thunder am I going to know about the girl

I get engaged to, before it's too late?"

"You won't," she said. "You haven't a chance in the world."

"Hm!" he grunted, obviously struck with this idea. "You're giving the

prospect of marriage new attractions. You're making the thing out--an

adventure."

She nodded rather soberly. "Oh, I'm not afraid for you," she said. "Men

like adventures--you more than most. But women don't. They like to dream

about them, but they want to turn over to the last chapter and see how

it's going to end. It's the girl I'm worried about.... Oh, come along!

We're talking nonsense. I'll go up with you and see that they've given

you pajamas and a tooth-brush."

She had accomplished this purpose, kissed him good night, and under the

hint of his unbuttoned waistcoat and his winding watch, turned to leave

the room, when her eye fell on a heap of damp, warped, pasteboard-bound

note-books, which she remembered having observed in his side pockets

when he first came in. The color on the pasteboard binding had run, and

as they lay on the drawn linen cover to the chiffonier, she went over

and picked them up to see how much damage they'd done. Then she frowned,

peered at the paper label that had half peeled off of the topmost cover,

and read what was written on it.

"Who," she asked with considerable emphasis, "is Rosalind Stanton?"

"Oh," said Rodney very casually, behind the worst imitation of a yawn

she had ever seen, "oh, she got put off the car when I did."

"That sounds rather exciting," said Frederica behind an imitation yawn

of her own--but a better one. "Going to tell me about it?"

"Nothing much to tell," said Rodney. "There was a row about a fare, as I

said. The conductor was evidently solid concrete above the collar-bone,

and didn't think she'd paid. And she grabbed him and very nearly threw

him out into the street--could have done it, I believe, as easily as

not. And he began to talk about punching somebody's head. And then, we

both got put off. So, naturally, I walked with her over to the elevated.

And then I forgot to give her her note-books and came away with them."

"What sort of looking girl?" asked Frederica. "Is she pretty?"

"Why, I don't know," said Rodney judicially. "Really, you know, I hardly

got a fair look at her."

Frederica made a funny sounding laugh and wished him an abrupt "good

night."

She was a great old girl, Frederica--pretty wise about lots of things,

but Rodney was inclined to think she was mistaken in saying women didn't

like adventures. Take that girl this afternoon, for example. Evidently

she was willing to meet one half-way. And how she'd blazed up when that

conductor touched her! Just the memory of it brought back something of

the thrill he had felt when he saw it happen.

"You're a liar, you know," remarked his conscience, "telling Frederica

you hadn't had a good look at her."

On the contrary, he argued, it was perfectly justifiable to deny that a

look as brief as that, was good. He wouldn't deny, however, that the

thing had been a wholly delightful and exhilarating little episode. That

was the way to have things happen! Have them pop out of nowhere at you

and disappear presently, into the same place.

"Disappear indeed!" sneered his conscience. "How about those note-books,

with her name and address on every one. And there's another lie you

told--about forgetting to give them to her!"

He protested that it was entirely true. He had gone into the station

with the girl, shaken hands with her, said good night, and turned away

to leave the station, unaware--as evidently she was--that he still had

her note-books under his arm. But it was equally true that he had

discovered them there, a good full second before the girl had turned the

corner of the stairs--in plenty of time to have called her back to the

barrier, and handed them over to her.

"All right, have it your own way," said Rodney cheerfully, as he turned

out the light.