The Real Adventure by Henry Kitchell Webster

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THE REAL ADVENTURE

A Novel

by

HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER

Illustrated by R.M. Crosby

Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
Serial Version 1915
The Ridgway Company
Press of Braunworth & Co.
Bookbinders and Printers
Brooklyn, N.Y.

1916

[Illustration: "We can't talk here," he said. "We must go elsewhere."]

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE GREAT ILLUSION

CHAPTER

I A Point of Departure
II Beginning an Adventure
III Frederica's Plan and What Happened to It
IV Rosalind Stanton Doesn't Disappear
V The Second Encounter
VI The Big Horse
VII How It Struck Portia
VIII Rodney's Experiment
IX After Breakfast

BOOK II

LOVE AND THE WORLD

I The Princess Cinderella
II The First Question and an Answer to It
III Where Did Rose Come In
IV Long Circuits and Short
V Rodney Smiled
VI The Damascus Road
VII How the Pattern Was Cut
VIII A Birthday
IX A Defeat
X The Door That Was to Open
XI An Illustration
XII What Harriet Did
XIII Fate Plays a Joke
XIV The Dam Gives Way
XV The Only Remedy
XVI Rose Opens the Door

BOOK III

THE WORLD ALONE

I The Length of a Thousand Yards
II The Evening and the Morning Were the First Day
III Rose Keeps the Path
IV The Girl With the Bad Voice
V Mrs. Goldsmith's Taste
VI A Business Proposition
VII The End of a Fixed Idea
VIII Success--and a Recognition
IX The Man and the Director
X The Voice of the World
XI The Short Circuit Again
XII "I'm All Alone"
XIII Frederica's Paradox
XIV The Miry Way
XV In Flight
XVI Anti-Climax
XVII The End of the Tour
XVIII The Conquest of Centropolis

BOOK IV

THE REAL ADVENTURE

I The Tune Changes
II A Broken Parallel
III Friends
IV Couleur-de-rose
V The Beginning

BOOK ONE

The Great Illusion

CHAPTER I

A POINT OF DEPARTURE

"Indeed," continued the professor, glancing demurely down at his notes,
"if one were the editor of a column of--er advice to young girls, such
as I believe is to be found, along with the household hints and the
dress patterns, on the ladies' page of most of our newspapers--if one
were the editor of such a column, he might crystallize the remarks I
have been making this morning into a warning--never marry a man with a
passion for principles."

It drew a laugh, of course. Professorial jokes never miss fire. But
_the_ girl didn't laugh. She came to with a start--she had been staring
out the window--and wrote, apparently, the fool thing down in her
note-book. It was the only note she had made in thirty-five minutes.

All of his brilliant exposition of the paradox of Rousseau and
Robespierre (he was giving a course on the French Revolution), the
strange and yet inevitable fact that the softest, most sentimental,
rose-scented religion ever invented, should have produced, through its
most thoroughly infatuated disciple, the ghastliest reign of terror that
ever shocked the world; his masterly character study of the "sea-green
incorruptible," too humane to swat a fly, yet capable of sending half of
France to the guillotine in order that the half that was left might
believe unanimously in the rights of man; all this the girl had let go
by unheard, in favor, apparently, of the drone of a street piano, which
came in through the open window on the prematurely warm March wind. Of
all his philosophizing, there was not a pen-track to mar the virginity
of the page she had opened her note-book to when the lecture began.

And then, with a perfectly serious face, she had written down his silly
little joke about advice to young girls.

There was no reason in the world why she should be The Girl. There were
fifteen or twenty of them in the class along with about as many men.
And, partly because there was no reason for his paying any special
attention to her, it annoyed him frightfully that he did.

She was good-looking, of course--a rather boyishly splendid young
creature of somewhere about twenty, with a heap of hair that had, in
spite of its rather commonplace chestnut color, a sort of electric
vitality about it. She was slightly prognathous, which gave a humorous
lift to her otherwise sensible nose. She had good straight-looking,
expressive eyes, too, and a big, wide, really beautiful mouth, with
square white teeth in it, which, when she smiled or yawned--and she
yawned more luxuriously than any girl who had ever sat in his
classes--exerted a sort of hypnotic effect on him. All that, however,
left unexplained the quality she had of making you, whatever she did,
irresistibly aware of her. And, conversely, unaware of every one else
about her. A bit of campus slang occurred to him as quite literally
applicable to her. She had all the rest of them faded.

It wasn't, apparently, an effect she tried for. He had to acquit her of
that. Not even, perhaps, one that she was conscious of. When she came
early to one of his lectures--it didn't happen often--the men, showed a
practical unanimity in trying to choose seats near by, or at least where
they could see her. But while this didn't distress her at all--they were
welcome to look if they liked--she struck no attitudes for their
benefit. A sort of breezy indifference--he selected that phrase finally
as the best description of her attitude toward all of them, including
himself. When she was late, as she usually was, she slid
unostentatiously into the back row--if possible at the end where she
could look out the window. But for three minutes after she had come in,
he knew he might as well have stopped his lecture and begun reciting the
Greek alphabet. She was, in the professor's mind, the final argument
against coeducation. Her name was Rosalind Stanton, but his impression
was that they called her Rose.

The bell rang out in the corridor. He dismissed the class and began
stacking up his notes. Then:

"Miss Stanton," he said.

She detached herself from the stream that was moving toward the door,
and with a good-humored look of inquiry about her very expressive
eyebrows, came toward him. And then he wished he hadn't called her. She
had spoiled his lecture--a perfectly good lecture--and his impulse had
been to remonstrate with her. But the moment he saw her coming, he knew
he wasn't going to be able to do it. It wasn't her fault that her teeth
had hypnotized him, and her hair tangled his ideas.

"This is an idiotic question," he said, as she paused before his desk,
"but did you get anything at all out of my lecture except my bit of
facetious advice to young girls about to marry?"

She flushed a little (a girl like that hadn't any right to flush; it
ought to be against the college regulations), drew her brows together in
a puzzled sort of way, and then, with her wide, boyish, good-humored
mouth, she smiled.

"I didn't know it was facetious," she said. "It struck me as pretty
good. But--I'm awfully sorry if you thought me inattentive. You see,
mother brought us all up on the Social Contract and The Age of Reason,
things like that, and I didn't put it down because ..."

"I see," he said. "I beg your pardon."

She smiled, cheerfully begged his and assured him she'd try to do
better.

Another girl who'd been waiting to speak to the professor, perceiving
that their conversation was at an end, came and stood beside her at the
desk--a scrawny girl with an eager voice, and a question she wanted to
ask about Robespierre; and for some reason or other, Rosalind Stanton's
valedictory smile seemed to include a consciousness of this other
girl--a consciousness of a contrast. It might not have been any more
than that, but somehow, it left the professor feeling that he had given
himself away.

He was particularly polite to the other girl, because his impulse was to
act so very differently.

There is nothing cloistral about the University of Chicago except its
architecture. The presence of a fat abbot, or a lady prioress in the
corridor outside the recitation room would have fitted in admirably with
the look of the warm gray walls and the carven pointed arches of the
window and door casements, the blackened oak of the doors themselves.

On the other hand, the appearance of the person whom Rose found waiting
for her out there, afforded the piquant effect of contrast. Or would
have done so, had the spectacle of him in that very occupation not been
so familiar.

He was a varsity half-back, a gigantic blond young man in a blue serge
suit. He said, "Hello, Rose," and she said, "Hello, Harry." And he
heaved himself erect from the wall he had been leaning against and
reached out an immense hand to absorb the little stack of note-books she
carried. She ignored the gesture, and when he asked for them said she'd
carry them herself. There was a sort of strategic advantage in having
your own note-books under your own arm--a fact which no one appreciated
better than the half-back himself.

He looked a little hurt. "Sore about something?" he asked.

She smiled widely and said, "Not a bit."

"I didn't mean at me necessarily," he explained, and referred to the
fact that the professor had detained her after he had dismissed the
class. "What'd he try to do--call you down?"

There was indignation in the young man's voice--a hint of the protector
aroused--of possible retribution.

She grinned again. "Oh, you needn't go back and kill him," she said.

He blushed to the ears. "I'm sorry," he observed stiltedly, "if I appear
ridiculous." But she went on smiling.

"Don't you care," she said. "Everybody's ridiculous in March. You're
ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he"--she nodded along the corridor--"he's
plumb ridiculous."

He wasn't wholly appeased. It was rather with an air of resignation that
he held the door for her to go out by. They strolled along in silence
until they rounded the corner of the building. Here, ceremoniously, he
fell back, walked around behind her and came up on the outside. She
glanced up and asked him, incomprehensibly, to walk on the other side,
the way they had been. He wanted to know why. This was where he
belonged.

"You don't belong there," she told him, "if I want you the other way.
And I do."

He heaved a sigh, and said "Women!" under his breath. _Mutabile semper_!
No matter how much you knew about them, they remained incomprehensible.
Their whims passed explanation. He was getting downright sulky.

As a matter of fact, he did her an injustice. There was a valid reason
for her wanting him to walk on the other side. What gave the appearance
of pure caprice to her request was just her womanly dislike of hurting
his feelings. There was a small boil on the left side of his neck and
when he walked at her left hand, it didn't show.

"Oh, don't be fussy," she said. "It's such a dandy day."

But the half-back refused to be comforted. And he was right about that.
A woman never tells you to cheer up in that brisk unfeeling way if she
really cares a cotton hat about your troubles. And a candid deliberate
self-examination would have convinced Rose that she didn't, in spite of
the sentimentally warm March wind that was blowing her hair about. She
was less moved by the half-back's sorrows this morning than at any time
during the last six months. She'd hardly have minded the boil before
to-day.

Six months ago, he had been a very wonderful person to her. There had
been a succession of pleasant--of really thrilling discoveries. First,
that he'd rather dance with her than with any other girl in the
university. (You're not to forget that he was a celebrity. During the
football season, his name was on the sporting page of the Chicago papers
every day--generally in the head-lines when there was a game to write
about, and Walter Camp had devoted a whole paragraph to explaining why
he didn't put him on the first all-American eleven but on the second
instead--a gross injustice which she had bitterly resented.)

There was a thrill, then, in the discovery that he liked her better than
other girls, and a greater thrill in the subsequent discovery that she
had become the basis of his whole orientation. It was her occupations
that left him leisure for his own; his leisure was hers to dispose of as
she liked; his energy, including his really prodigious physical prowess,
to be directed toward any object she thought laudable. Six months ago
she would not have laughed--not in that derisive way at least--at the
notion of his going back and beating up the professor.

There had been a thrill, too, in their more sentimental passages. But at
this point, there developed a most perplexing phenomenon. The idea that
he wanted to make love to her, really moved and excited her; set her
imagination to exploring all sorts of roseate mysteries. The first time
he had ever held her hand--it was inside her muff, one icy December day
when he hadn't any gloves on--the memory of the feel of that big hand,
and of the timbre of his voice, left her starry-eyed with a new wonder.
She dreamed of other caresses; of wonderful things that he should say to
her and she should say to him.

But here arose the perplexity. It was her imagination of the thing that
she enjoyed rather than the thing itself. The wonderful scenes that her
own mind projected never came true. The ones that happened were
disappointing--irritating, and eventually and unescapably, downright
disagreeable to her. There was no getting away from it, the ideal lover
of her dreams, whose tenderness and chivalry and devotion were so highly
desirable, although he might wear the half-back's clothes and bear his
face and name, was not the half-back. She might dote on his absence, but
his presence was another matter.

The realization of this fact had been gradual. She wasn't fully
conscious of it, even on this March morning. But something had happened
this morning that made a difference. If she'd been ascending an
imperceptible gradient for the last three months, to-day she had come to
a recognizable step up and taken it. Oddly enough, the thing had
happened back there in the class-room as she stood before the
professor's desk and caught his eye wavering between herself and the
scrawny girl who wanted to ask a question about Robespierre. There had
been more than blank helpless exasperation in that look of his, and it
had taught her something. She couldn't have explained what.

To the half-back she attributed it to the month of March. "You're
ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he's ridiculous." That was about as well as
she could put it.

She and the half-back had walked about a hundred yards in silence. Now
they were arriving at a point where the path forked.

"You're elegant company this morning, I must say," he commented
resentfully.

Again she smiled. "I'm elegant company for myself," she said, and held
out her hand. "Which way do _you_ go?" she asked.

A minute later she was swinging along alone, her shoulders back,
confronting the warm March wind, drawing into her good deep chest, long
breaths. She had just had, psychically speaking, a birthday.

She played a wonderful game of basket-ball that afternoon.

CHAPTER II

BEGINNING AN ADVENTURE

It was after five o'clock when, at the conclusion of the game and a cold
shower, a rub and a somewhat casual resumption of her clothes, she
emerged from the gymnasium. High time that she took the quickest way of
getting home, unless she wanted to be late for dinner.

But the exhilaration of the day persisted. She felt like doing something
out of the regular routine. Even a preliminary walk of a mile or so
before she should cross over and take the elevated, would serve to
satisfy her mild hunger for adventure. And, really, she liked to be a
little late for dinner. It was always pleasanter to come breezing in
after things had come to a focus, than to idle about for half an hour in
that no-man's-land of the day, when the imminence of dinner made it
impossible to do anything but wait for it.

So, with her note-books under her arm and her sweater-jacket unfastened,
at a good four-mile swing, she started north. In the purlieus of the
university she was frequently hailed by friends of her own sex or the
other. But though she waved cheerful responses to their greetings, she
made her stride purposeful enough to discourage offers of company. They
all seemed young to her to-day. All her student activities seemed young.
As if, somehow, she had outgrown them. The feeling was none the less
real after she had laughed at herself for entertaining it.

She noticed presently that it was a good deal darker than it had any
right to be at this hour, and the sudden fall of the breeze and a
persistent shimmer of lightning supplied her with the explanation. When
she reached Forty-seventh Street, the break of the storm was obviously a
matter of minutes, so she decided to ride across to the elevated--it was
another mile, perhaps--rather than walk across as she had meant to do.
She didn't in the least mind getting wet, providing she could keep on
moving until she could change her clothes. But a ten-mile ride in the
elevated, with water squashing around in her boots and dripping out of
her hair, wasn't an alluring prospect.

She found quite a group of people waiting on the corner for a car, and
the car itself, when it came along, was crowded. So she handed her
nickel to the conductor over somebody's shoulder, and moved back to the
corner of the vestibule. It was frightfully stuffy inside and most of
the newly received passengers seemed to agree with her that the platform
was a pleasanter place to stay; which did very well until the next stop,
where half a dozen more prospective passengers were waiting. They were
in a hurry, too, since it had begun in very downright fashion to rain.

The conductor had been chanting, "Up in the car, please," in a
perfunctory cry all along. But at this crisis, his voice got a new
urgency. "Come on, now," he proclaimed, "you'll have to get inside!"

From the step the new arrivals pushed, the conductor pushed, and finally
he was able to give the signal for starting the car. The obvious
necessity of making room for those who'd be waiting at the next corner,
kept him at the task of herding them inside and the sheep-like docility
of an American crowd helped him.

Regretfully, with the rest, Rose made her way to the door.

"Fare, please," he said sharply as she came along.

She told him she had paid her fare, but for some reason, perhaps because
he was tired at the end of a long run, perhaps because he saw some one
else he suspected of being a spotter, he elected not to believe her.

"When did you pay it?" he demanded.

"A block back," she said, "when all those other people got on."

"You didn't pay it to me," he said truculently. "Come along! Pay your
fare or get off the car."

"I paid it once," she said quietly, "and I'm not going to pay it again."
With that she started forward toward the door.

He reached out across his little rail and caught her by the arm. It was
a natural act enough--not polite, to be sure, by no means chivalrous.
Still, he probably put into his grip no more strength than he thought
necessary to prevent her walking by into the car.

But it had a surprising result--a result that normally would not have
happened. Yet, on this particular day, it could not have happened
differently. It had been a red-letter day from the beginning, from no
assignable cause an exciting joyous day, and the thrill of the hard fast
game, the shower, the rub, the walk, had brought her up to what
engineers speak of as a "peak."

Well, the conductor didn't know that. If he had, he would either have
let the girl go by, or have put a good deal more force into his attempt
to stop her. And the first thing he knew, he found both his wrists
pinned in the grip of her two hands; found himself staring stupidly into
a pair of great blazing blue eyes--it's a wrathful color, blue, when you
light it up--and listening uncomprehendingly to a voice that said,
"Don't dare touch me like that!"

The episode might have ended right there, for the conductor's
consternation was complete. If she could have walked straight into the
car, he would not have pursued her. But her note-books were scattered
everywhere and had to be gathered up, and there were two or three of the
passengers who thought the situation was funny, and laughed, which did
not improve the conductor's temper.

Rose was aware, as she gathered up her note-books, of another hand that
was helping her--a gloved masculine hand. She took the books it held out
to her as she straightened up, and said, "Thank you," but without
looking around for the face that went with it. The conductor's
intentions were still at the focal point of her mind. They were,
apparently, unaltered. He had jerked the bell while she was collecting
her note-books and the car was grinding down to a stop.

"You pay your fare," he repeated, "or you get off the car right here."

"Right here" was in the middle of what looked like a lake, and the rain
was pouring down with a roar.

She didn't hesitate long, but before she could answer a voice spoke--a
voice which, with intuitive certainty, she associated with the gloved
hand that had helped gather up her note-books--a very crisp, finely
modulated voice.

"That's perfectly outrageous," it said. "The young lady has paid her
fare."

"Did you see her pay it?" demanded the conductor.

"Naturally not," said the voice. "I got on at the last corner. She was
here then. But if she said she did, she did."

It seemed to relieve the conductor to have some one of his own sex to
quarrel with. He delivered a stream of admonition somewhat sulphurously
phrased, to the general effect that any one whose concern the present
affair was not, could, at his option, close his jaw or have his block
knocked off.

Rose hadn't, as yet, looked round at her champion. But she now became
aware that inside a shaggy gray sleeve which hung beside her, there was
a sudden tension of big muscles; the gloved hand that had helped gather
up her note-books, clenched itself into a formidable fist. The thought
of the sort of thud that fist might make against the over-active jaw of
the conductor was pleasant. Still, the thing mustn't be allowed to
happen.

She spoke quickly and decisively. "I won't pay another fare, but of
course you may put me off the car."

"All right," said the conductor.

The girl smiled over the very gingerly way in which he reached out for
her elbow to guide her around the rail and toward the step. Technically,
the action constituted putting her off the car. She heard the crisp
voice once more, this time repeating a number, "twenty-two-naught-five,"
or something like that, just as she splashed down into the two-inch lake
that covered the hollow in the pavement. The bell rang twice, the car
started with a jerk, there was another splash, and a big gray-clad
figure alighted in the lake beside her.

"I've got his number," the crisp voice said triumphantly.

"But," gasped the girl, "but what in the world did you get off the car
for?"

It wasn't raining. It was doing an imitation of Niagara Falls, and the
roar of it almost drowned their voices.

"What did I get off the car for!" he shouted. "Why, I wouldn't have
missed it for anything. It was immense! It's so confounded seldom," he
went on, "that you find anybody with backbone enough to stick up for a
principle ..."

He heard a brief, deep-throated little laugh and pulled up short with a,
"What's the joke?"

"I laughed," she said, "because you have been deceived." And she added
quickly, "I don't believe it's quite so deep on the sidewalk, is it?"
With that she waded away toward the curb.

He followed, then led the way to a lee-wall that offered, comparatively
speaking, shelter.

Then, "Where's the deception?" he asked.

On any other day, it's probable she'd have acted differently; would have
paid some heed, though a bit contemptuously, perhaps, to the precepts of
ladylike behavior, in which she'd been admirably grounded. The case for
reticence and discretion was a strong one. The night was dark; the
rain-lashed street deserted; the man an utterly casual stranger--why,
she hadn't even had a straight look into his face. His motive in getting
off the car was at least dubitable. Even if not sinister, it could
easily be unpleasantly gallant. A man might not contemplate doing her
bodily harm, and still be capable of trying to collect some sort of
sentimental reward for the ducking he had submitted himself to.

Her instinct rejected all that. The sound of his voice, the
general--atmosphere of him had been exactly right. And then, he'd left
undone the things he ought not to have done. He hadn't tried to take
hold of her arm as they had splashed along through the lake to the curb.
He hadn't exhibited any tenderly chivalrous concern over how wet she
was. And, to-day being to-day, she consigned ladylike considerations to
the inventor of them, and gave instinct its head.