Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 99, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 May 1917 — THE REAL ADVENTURE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE REAL ADVENTURE

By HENRY KITCHELL WEBSTER

point of departure. But Edna offered to wait for hen- g “No, you run along,” Rose said. ’Tve some errands, and I don’t feel like seeing a movie tonight, anyway.” : Edna looked a little odd about it, but hurried along after the others. A saleswoman —the same one the manager had assigned to Rose, under the misconception which that smart French ulster of hers had created when she came into the store —now came around behind the screen to gather up the frocks the girls had shed. “Will you please bring me,” said Rose, “the Poiret model you showed ine before the .others came in? I’ll try it on.” The saleswoman’s manner was different now, and she grumbled something about its being closing time. . “Then, if you’ll bring It at once . . .” said Rose. And the saleswoman went on the errand. Five minutes later, Galbraith, from staring gloomily at the mournful heap of trouble Mrs. Goldsmith had' left on his hands, looked up to confront a vision that made him gasp. “I wanted you to see if you liked this,” said Rose. “If I like it!” he echoed. “Look here! If you knew enough, to pick <!Ut things like, that, that woman waste everybody’s time with junk like this? ’ Why didn't you help her out?” “I couldn’t have done much,” Rose said, “even if my offering to do anything hadn’t made her angry—and I think it would have. You see, she’s got lots of taste, only it's bad. She wasn't bewildered a bit. She knew just what she wanted, and she got it. It’s the badness of these things she likes. And I thought . . She hesitated a little over this ... "I thought that it would be easier to throw them all out and get a fresh start.” He stared at her with a frown of curiosity, “That’s good sense,” he said. “But. why should you bother to think of it?” Her color came up perceptibly as she answered. “Why—l want the piece to succeed, of course . . .” Rose turned rather suddenly to the saleswoman. “J wish you’d get that little Empire frock in maize and cornflower,” she said. “I’d like Mr. Galbraith to see that, too.” And the saleswoman, now placated, bustled away. “This thing that Tve got on,” said Rose swiftly, “costs a hundred and fifty dollars, but I know I can copy it for twenty. I can’t get the materials exactly, of course, but I can come near enough.”' “Will you try this one on, miss?” asked the saleswoman, coming on the scene again with the frock she had been sent for. “No,” said Rose. “"Just hold It up.” Galbraith admitted it was beautiful, but wasn’t overwhelmed at all as he had been by the other. “It’s not quite so much your style, is it? Not drive enough?” “It isn’t for me,” said Rose. “It’s for Edna Larson to wear in that ‘All Alone’ number for the sextette.” Galbraith st ared at her a moment. Then, “Put on your street things,” he said brusquely. “I’ll wait.”

CHAPTER XVIII. A Business Proposition. Buzzing around in the back of John Galbraith’s mind was an unworded protest against the way Rose had just killed her own beauty; with a thick' white veil, so nearly opaque that all It let him see of her face was an intermittent gleam of her eyes. The business between them was over, and all she was waiting for was a word of dismissal, to nod him a farewell and go swinging away down the avenue. Still he didn’t speak, and she moved a little restlessly. At last: “Do you mind crossing the street?” he asked abruptly. “Then we can talk as we walk along,” She must have hesitated, because he added, “It’s too” cola to stand here.” “Of course,” she said then. All that had made her hesitate was her sur-

prise over his having made a request instead of giving an order. “Do you think you’ll be able to convince Mrs. Goldsmith,’* she asked, walked down the east side of the avenue together, “that her gowns don’t look well on the stage?” “Probably not,” he said. “No, she won’t be convinced, and if I know Goldsmith, he’ll say his wife’s taste is good enough for him. So if we want a change, wfe’ve a fight on our hands.” ■ The way he had unconsciously phrased that sentence startled him a little. < “The question is,” he went on, “whether they’re worth making a fight about. Are they as bad as I think they are ?" ——- “Oh, yes,” said Rose. “They’re dowdy and fourth-class and ridiculous. Of course I don’t know how many people in the audience would know that.” “And I don’t care,” said John Galbraith, with a flash of intensity that made her look around at him. “That’s hdt A ddrisideration I'll give any weigfif to. When I put a production under my name, it's the best I can. make with “what Tve got. When I have to take a cynical view and try to get by with bad work because most of the people out in front won’t know the difference, I'll go out to my little farm on Long Island and raise garden truck.” There was another momentary silence, for the girl made no comment at all on this statement of his credo. But he felt sure, somehow, that she understood it, and presently he went on speaking. “Would it be possible, do you think, to get better gowns that would also be cheaper? That argument would bring Goldsmith around in a hurry. It’s ridiculous, of course, but that’s the trouble with making a production for amateurs. You spendjuore time fighting them than you do producing the show.” "I don’t believe,” said Rose, “that you could get better ready-made costumes a lot cheaper; the two or three we might be able to find wouldn't us much.” . “And I suppose," he said dubiously, “it’s out of the question getting them any other way than ready made; that is, and cheaper, too.” The only sign of excitement there was jn the girl's voice when she un-

swered, was a sort of exaggerated mat-ter-of-factness. “I could design the costumes and pick out the materials," she said, “but we’d have to get a good sewing woman —perhaps more than one—to get them done.” He wasn’t greatly surprised. Perhaps the notion that she might suggest somethihg of the sort was responsible for the tentative, dubious way in which he had said he supposed it couldn’t be done. “You’ve had—experience in designing gowns, have you?" Galbraith asked. “Only for myself,” she admitted. “But I know I can do that part of it. I’m not good at sewing, though”—she reverted to the other part of the plan. "I’d have to have somebody awfully good, who’d do exactly what I told her.” “Oh, that* can be managed,” he said a little absently, and at the end of a silence which lasted while they walked a whole block: “I was just figuring out a way to work it,” he said, explaining his silence. “I shall tell Goldsmith qnd Block (Block was. the junior partner in the enterprise) that I’ve got hold of a costumer agrees to deliver twelve costumes satisfactory to me, at an average of, say, twenty per cent less chan the ones Mrs. Goldsmith picked out. If they aren't satisfactory,

it’s the costtnner’s loss and we can buy those that Mrs. Goldsmith picked out, or others that will do as w§ll, at Lessing’s. I think that saving will be decisive with them>” “But do you know a costumer?” Rose asked. “You’re the costumer?’ said Galbraith. “You design the costumes, buy the fabrics, superintend the making of them. As for the woman you speak of, we’ll get the wardrobe mistress at the Globe. I happen to know she’s competent, and she’s at a loose end just now, because her show is closing when ours opens. You’ll buy_ the fabrics and you'll phy*her. And what profit you can make out of the deal, you’re entitled to. I’ll finance you myself. If they won’t take what we show them, why, you’ll be out your time and trouble, and I’ll be out the price of materials and the woman’s labor." “I don’t think it would be fair," she said, and she found difficulty in speaking at all because of a sudden disposition of li'CT tmtr tu chattel—"! duu’t think it would be fair for me to take all the profit and you take all the risk.” "Well, I can’t take any profit, that’s clear enough,” he said; and she noticed now a tinge of amusement in his voice. “You see I’m- retained —body and soul —to put this production over. I can’t make money out of those fellows on the side. But you’re not retained. You’re employed as a member of the chorus. And, so far, you’re not even paid for the work you’re doing. So long as you work to my satisfaction there on the stage, nothing more can be asked of you. As for the risk, I .don’t believe it’s serious, I don’t think you’ll fall down on the job, and I don’t believe Goldsmith and Block will throw away a chance to save some money.” And then he pressed her for an immediate decision. The job would be a good deal of a scramble at best, as the time was short. They had reached the Randolph street end of the avenue, and -a--peheemam- Tike- Moses eleaving- the Red-sea, had opened a way through the tide of motors for a throng of pedestrians.

“Come across here,” said Galbraith, taking her by the arm and stemming this current with her. “We’ve got to have a minute of shelter to finish this up in,’.’ and die led her into the north lobby of the public - library. The stale, baked air of the place almost made them gasp. But, anyway, it was quiet and altogether deserted. They could hear themselves think in there, he said, and led the way to a marble bench alongside the staircase. Rose unpinned - her veil and, to his surprise, because of course she was going in a minute, put it into her ulster pocket. But, curiously enough, the sight of her face only intensified an impression that had been strong upon him during the last part of their walk —the impression that she was a long way off. It wash’t the familiar contemplative brown study, either. There was an active, eager excitement about it—that made it more -beautiful than he had ever seen it before. But it was as if she were looking at something he couldn’t see—listening to words he couldn’t hear. “Well,” he said a little impatiently, “are you going to do it?” And at that the glow of her was turned fairly upon him. “Yes,” she said, “I’m going to do it. I suppose I mustn’t thank you,” she went on, “be- - cause you say it isn’t anything you’re doing for me. But it is—a great thing for me—greater —than I could tell you. And I won’t fail. You needn’t be afraid.” He counted out a hundred and twenty dollars, which he handed over to .her. She folded it and put it away in her wristbag. The glow of her hadn’t faded, but once more it was turned on something—or someone—else. It wasn’t until he rose a little abruptly from the marble'bench that she roused herself with a shake of the head, arose too, and once more faced him. “You’re right about our having to hurry/’ she sald, and before _he could find the first of the words he wanted, she had giien him that curt farewSH nod which from the first had stirred and warmed him, and turned- away toward the door. And she had never seen what was fairly shining In his face. She couldn’t, of course, have missed a thing as plain as that but for a complete preoccupation of thought and feeling that would have left her oblivious to almost anything that could happen to her. The flaming vortex of thoughts, hopes, desires which enveloped her was so Intense as almost to evoke a sense of the physical presence of the subject of them—of that big, powerfulminded, clean-souled husband of hers, who loved her so rapturously, and who had driven her away, from him because that rapture was the only thing he would share with her. Since she had left his house and begun this new life of hers, she had, as best she could, been fighting him out of her thoughts altogether. She had shrunk from anything that car-

There comes Into Rose’s life a new crisis which means more hard work and much worry. Th© next installment covers important developments in the story.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

ried association of him with it That all thoughts and memories of him must necessarily be painful, she had taken for granted. But with this sudden lighting up of hope, she flung the closed door wide and called her husband back into her thoughts. Th!" hard thing that she was going to do—this thing that meant sleepless nights, and feverishly active days—was an expression simply of her love for him—a sacrificial offering to.be laid before the shrine of him inner hekrt. ■ Yet,the fact that Bose’s heart was racing and her nerves were tingling with a newly welcomed sense of her lover’s spiritual presence, did not prevent her flying along west on Randolph 'street and south again on the west side of State, with a very clearly visualized purpose. ’Half an hour litter she hailed a passing cab and de posited in it one dressmaking form, a huge bundle of paper cambric —in black, white and washed-out blue, and her own weary but still excited and exultant self. It was after eight o'clock when sh« reached her room. Rehearsal was at eight-thirty and she had had nothins to eat since noqn. But she stole the time, nevertheless, to tear the wrap pings off her “form” and gaze on its respectable nakedness for two or thret minutes with a contemplative eye Then, reluctantly—it was th_e firsi time she had left that room with re luctancer—she turned out the light anc hurried off to the little lunch roorr that lay on the way to the dance hall It was during that first rehearsal which she so narrowly missed beinj late for, that she got the genera ■schemes— fw —both seta of costumes She began studying the girls for theii individual peculiarities of style. Eaci one of the costumes she made was go ing to be for a particular girl. At last when a shout from Gal braith aroused her tothe fact thai she had missed an entrance cue alto gether, in her entranced absorption it these visions of hers, and had causec that unpardonable thing, a stage wait she resolutely clamped down the : lk upc- her Imagination and, until the? were dismissed, devoted herself to th< rehearsal.

But the pressure kept mountlnf higher and higher, and she found her self furiously Impatient to get away back to her own private wonderland the squalid little room down th< street, that had three bolts of cam brie In it and a dressriiaker’s manne quin—the raw materials for her magic Rose couldn’t draw a bit. Sht Irndn’t the faintest impulse to make a beginning by putting a picture down on paper and making a dress from it afterward. She couldn’t have told Just why she had bought those three shades of paper cambric. What she had felt, of course, at the very outset, was the need of something to Indicate, roughly, the darks and lights In her design. And, short of the wild extravagance of slashing into the fabrics themselves ~ and- making her mistakes at their expense, she could think of nothing better than the scheme she chose. Rehearsal was dismissed a little early that night, and she was back in her room by eleven. Arrived there, she took off her outer clothes, sal down cross-legged on the floor, and went to work. When at last, with a little sigh, and a tremulously smiling acknowledgment of fatigue, she got up and looked at her watch, it was four o’clock In the morning. She’d had one of those experiences of which every artist can remember a few in his life, when it 18 impossible for anything to go wrong; when the vision miraculously better?' itself in the execution; when the only difficulty is that which the hands have in the purely mechanical operation of keeping up.

“Are They as Bad as I Think They Are?"