ALICE ADAMS by BOOTH TARKINGTON

ALICE ADAMS by BOOTH TARKINGTON
CHAPTER I
The patient, an old-fashioned man, thought the nurse made a
mistake in keeping both of the windows open, and her sprightly
disregard of his protests added something to his hatred of her.
Every evening he told her that anybody with ordinary gumption
ought to realize that night air was bad for the human frame.
"The human frame won't stand everything, Miss Perry," he warned
her, resentfully. "Even a child, if it had just ordinary
gumption, ought to know enough not to let the night air blow on
sick people yes, nor well people, either! 'Keep out of the night
air, no matter how well you feel.' That's what my mother used to
tell me when I was a boy. 'Keep out of the night air, Virgil,'
she'd say. 'Keep out of the night air.'"
"I expect probably her mother told her the same thing," the nurse
suggested.
"Of course she did. My grandmother----"
"Oh, I guess your GRANDmother thought so, Mr. Adams! That was
when all this flat central country was swampish and hadn't been
drained off yet. I guess the truth must been the swamp
mosquitoes bit people and gave 'em malaria, especially before
they began to put screens in their windows. Well, we got screens
in these windows, and no mosquitoes are goin' to bite us; so just
you be a good boy and rest your mind and go to sleep like you
need to."
"Sleep?" he said. "Likely!"
He thought the night air worst of all in April; he hadn't a doubt
it would kill him, he declared. "It's miraculous what the human
frame WILL survive," he admitted on the last evening of that
month. "But you and the doctor ought to both be taught it won't
stand too dang much! You poison a man and poison and poison him
with this April night air----"
"Can't poison you with much more of it," Miss Perry interrupted
him, indulgently. "To-morrow it'll be May night air, and I
expect that'll be a lot better for you, don't you? Now let's
just sober down and be a good boy and get some nice sound sleep."
She gave him his medicine, and, having set the glass upon the
center table, returned to her cot, where, after a still interval,
she snored faintly. Upon this, his expression became that of a
man goaded out of overpowering weariness into irony.
"Sleep? Oh, CERTAINLY, thank you!"
However, he did sleep intermittently, drowsed between times, and
even dreamed; but, forgetting his dreams before he opened his
eyes, and having some part of him all the while aware of his
discomfort, he believed, as usual, that he lay awake the whole
night long. He was conscious of the city as of some single great
creature resting fitfully in the dark outside his windows. It
lay all round about, in the damp cover of its night cloud of
smoke, and tried to keep quiet for a few hours after midnight,
but was too powerful a growing thing ever to lie altogether
still. Even while it strove to sleep it muttered with digestions
of the day before, and these already merged with rumblings of the
morrow. "Owl" cars, bringing in last passengers over distant
trolley-lines, now and then howled on a curve; faraway metallic
stirrings could be heard from factories in the sooty suburbs on
the plain outside the city; east, west, and south, switch-engines
chugged and snorted on sidings; and everywhere in the air there
seemed to be a faint, voluminous hum as of innumerable wires
trembling overhead to vibration of machinery underground.
In his youth Adams might have been less resentful of sounds such
as these when they interfered with his night's sleep: even during
an illness he might have taken some pride in them as proof of his
citizenship in a "live town"; but at fifty-five he merely hated
them because they kept him awake. They "pressed on his nerves,"
as he put it; and so did almost everything else, for that matter.
He heard the milk-wagon drive into the cross-street beneath his
windows and stop at each house. The milkman carried his jars
round to the "back porch," while the horse moved slowly ahead to
the gate of the next customer and waited there. "He's gone into
Pollocks'," Adams thought, following this progress. "I hope
it'll sour on 'em before breakfast. Delivered the Andersons'.
Now he's getting out ours. Listen to the darn brute! What's HE
care who wants to sleep!" His complaint was of the horse, who
casually shifted weight with a clink of steel shoes on the worn
brick pavement of the street, and then heartily shook himself in
his harness, perhaps to dislodge a fly far ahead of its season.
Light had just filmed the windows; and with that the first
sparrow woke, chirped instantly, and roused neighbours in the
trees of the small yard, including a loud-voiced robin.
Vociferations began irregularly, but were soon unanimous.
"Sleep? Dang likely now, ain't it!"
Night sounds were becoming day sounds; the far-away hooting of
freight-engines seemed brisker than an hour ago in the dark. A
cheerful whistler passed the house, even more careless of
sleepers than the milkman's horse had been; then a group of
coloured workmen came by, and although it was impossible to be
sure whether they were homeward bound from night-work or on their
way to day- work, at least it was certain that they were jocose.
Loose, aboriginal laughter preceded them afar, and beat on the
air long after they had gone by.
The sick-room night-light, shielded from his eyes by a newspaper
propped against a water-pitcher, still showed a thin glimmering
that had grown offensive to Adams. In his wandering and
enfeebled thoughts, which were much more often imaginings than
reasonings, the attempt of the night-light to resist the dawn
reminded him of something unpleasant, though he could not
discover just what the unpleasant thing was. Here was a puzzle
that irritated him the more because he could not solve it, yet
always seemed just on the point of a solution. However, he may
have lost nothing cheerful by remaining in the dark upon the
matter; for if he had been a little sharper in this introspection
he might have concluded that the squalor of the night-light, in
its seeming effort to show against the forerunning of the sun
itself, had stimulated some half-buried perception within him to
sketch the painful little synopsis of an autobiography.
In spite of noises without, he drowsed again, not knowing that he
did; and when he opened his eyes the nurse was just rising from
her cot. He took no pleasure in the sight, it may be said. She
exhibited to him a face mismodelled by sleep, and set like a clay
face left on its cheek in a hot and dry studio. She was still
only in part awake, however, and by the time she had extinguished
the night-light and given her patient his tonic, she had
recovered enough plasticity. "Well, isn't that grand! We've had
another good night," she said as she departed to dress in the
bathroom.
"Yes, you had another!" he retorted, though not until after she
had closed the door.
Presently he heard his daughter moving about in her room across
the narrow hall, and so knew that she had risen. He hoped she
would come in to see him soon, for she was the one thing that
didn't press on his nerves, he felt; though the thought of her
hurt him, as, indeed, every thought hurt him. But it was his
wife who came first.
She wore a lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of gray hair
escaped to one temple from beneath the handkerchief she had worn
upon her head for the night and still retained; but she did
everything possible to make her expression cheering.
"Oh, you're better again! I can see that, as soon as I look at
you," she said. "Miss Perry tells me you've had another splendid
night."
He made a sound of irony, which seemed to dispose unfavourably of
Miss Perry, and then, in order to be more certainly intelligible,
he added, "She slept well, as usual!"
But his wife's smile persisted. "It's a good sign to be cross;
it means you're practically convalescent right now."
"Oh, I am, am I?"
"No doubt in the world!" she exclaimed. "Why, you're practically
a well man, Virgil--all except getting your strength back, of
course, and that isn't going to take long. You'll be right on
your feet in a couple of weeks from now."
"Oh, I will?"
"Of course you will!" She laughed briskly, and, going to the
table in the center of the room, moved his glass of medicine an
inch or two, turned a book over so that it lay upon its other
side, and for a few moments occupied herself with similar
futilities, having taken on the air of a person who makes things
neat, though she produced no such actual effect upon them. "Of
course you will," she repeated, absently. "You'll be as strong
as you ever were; maybe stronger." She paused for a moment, not
looking at him, then added, cheerfully, "So that you can fly
around and find something really good to get into."
Something important between them came near the surface here, for
though she spoke with what seemed but a casual cheerfulness,
there was a little betraying break in her voice, a trembling just
perceptible in the utterance of the final word. And she still
kept up the affectation of being helpfully preoccupied with the
table, and did not look at her husband-- perhaps because they had
been married so many years that without looking she knew just
what his expression would be, and preferred to avoid the actual
sight of it as long as possible. Meanwhile, he stared hard at
her, his lips beginning to move with little distortions not
lacking in the pathos of a sick man's agitation.
"So that's it," he said. "That's what you're hinting at."
"'Hinting?' " Mrs. Adams looked surprised and indulgent. "Why,
I'm not doing any hinting, Virgil."
"What did you say about my finding 'something good to get into?'"
he asked, sharply. "Don't you call that hinting?"
Mrs. Adams turned toward him now; she came to the bedside and
would have taken his hand, but he quickly moved it away from her.
"You mustn't let yourself get nervous," she said. "But of course
when you get well there's only one thing to do. You mustn't go
back to that old hole again."
"'Old hole?' That's what you call it, is it?" In spite of his
weakness, anger made his voice strident, and upon this
stimulation she spoke more urgently.
"You just mustn't go back to it, Virgil. It's not fair to any of
us, and you know it isn't."
"Don't tell me what I know, please!"
She clasped her hands, suddenly carrying her urgency to plaintive
entreaty. "Virgil, you WON'T go back to that hole?"
"That's a nice word to use to me!" he said. "Call a man's
business a hole!"
"Virgil, if you don't owe it to me to look for something
different, don't you owe it to your children? Don't tell me you
won't do what we all want you to, and what you know in your heart
you ought to! And if you HAVE got into one of your stubborn fits
and are bound to go back there for no other reason except to have
your own way, don't tell me so, for I can't bear it!"
He looked up at her fiercely. "You've got a fine way to cure a
sick man!" he said; but she had concluded her appeal--for that
time--and instead of making any more words in the matter, let him
see that there were tears in her eyes, shook her head, and left
the room.
Alone, he lay breathing rapidly, his emaciated chest proving
itself equal to the demands his emotion put upon it. "Fine!" he
repeated, with husky indignation. "Fine way to cure a sick man!
Fine!" Then, after a silence, he gave forth whispering sounds as
of laughter, his expression the while remaining sore and far from
humour.
"And give us our daily bread!" he added, meaning that his wife's
little performance was no novelty.
CHAPTER II
In fact, the agitation of Mrs. Adams was genuine, but so well
under her control that its traces vanished during the three short
steps she took to cross the narrow hall between her husband's
door and the one opposite. Her expression was matter-of-course,
rather than pathetic, as she entered the pretty room where her
daughter, half dressed, sat before a dressing-table and played
with the reflections of a three-leafed mirror framed in blue
enamel. That is, just before the moment of her mother's
entrance, Alice had been playing with the mirror's
reflections--posturing her arms and her expressions, clasping her
hands behind her neck, and tilting back her head to foreshorten
the face in a tableau conceived to represent sauciness, then one
of smiling weariness, then one of scornful toleration, and all
very piquant; but as the door opened she hurriedly resumed the
practical, and occupied her hands in the arrangement of her
plentiful brownish hair.
They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate and fine. "The
best things she's got!" a cold- blooded girl friend said of them,
and meant to include Alice's mind and character in the implied
list of possessions surpassed by the notable hands. However that
may have been, the rest of her was well enough. She was often
called "a right pretty girl"--temperate praise meaning a girl
rather pretty than otherwise, and this she deserved, to say the
least. Even in repose she deserved it, though repose was
anything but her habit, being seldom seen upon her except at
home. On exhibition she led a life of gestures, the unkind said
to make her lovely hands more memorable; but all of her usually
accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders ever giving
them their impulses first, and even her feet being called upon,
at the same time, for eloquence.
So much liveliness took proper place as only accessory to that of
the face, where her vivacity reached its climax; and it was
unfortunate that an ungifted young man, new in the town, should
have attempted to define the effect upon him of all this
generosity of emphasis. He said that "the way she used her cute
hazel eyes and the wonderful glow of her facial expression gave
her a mighty spiritual quality." His actual rendition of the
word was "spirichul"; but it was not his pronunciation that
embalmed this outburst in the perennial laughter of Alice's girl
friends; they made the misfortune far less his than hers.
Her mother comforted her too heartily, insisting that Alice had
"plenty enough spiritual qualities," certainly more than
possessed by the other girls who flung the phrase at her, wooden
things, jealous of everything they were incapable of themselves;
and then Alice, getting more championship than she sought, grew
uneasy lest Mrs. Adams should repeat such defenses "outside the
family"; and Mrs. Adams ended by weeping because the daughter so
distrusted her intelligence. Alice frequently thought it
necessary to instruct her mother.
Her morning greeting was an instruction to-day; or, rather, it
was an admonition in the style of an entreaty, the more petulant
as Alice thought that Mrs. Adams might have had a glimpse of the
posturings to the mirror. This was a needless worry; the mother
had caught a thousand such glimpses, with Alice unaware, and she
thought nothing of the one just flitted.
"For heaven's sake, mama, come clear inside the room and shut the
door! PLEASE don't leave it open for everybody to look at me!"
"There isn't anybody to see you," Mrs. Adams explained, obeying.
"Miss Perry's gone downstairs, and----"
"Mama, I heard you in papa's room," Alice said, not dropping the
note of complaint. "I could hear both of you, and I don't think
you ought to get poor old papa so upset--not in his present
condition, anyhow."
Mrs. Adams seated herself on the edge of the bed. "He's better
all the time," she said, not disturbed. "He's almost well. The
doctor says so and Miss Perry says so; and if we don't get him
into the right frame of mind now we never will. The first day
he's outdoors he'll go back to that old hole--you'll see! And if
he once does that, he'll settle down there and it'll be too late
and we'll never get him out."
"Well, anyhow, I think you could use a little more tact with
him."
"I do try to," the mother sighed. "It never was much use with
him. I don't think you understand him as well as I do, Alice."
"There's one thing I don't understand about either of you," Alice
returned, crisply. "Before people get married they can do
anything they want to with each other. Why can't they do the
same thing after they're married? When you and papa were young
people and engaged, he'd have done anything you wanted him to.
That must have been because you knew how to manage him then. Why
can't you go at him the same way now?"
Mrs. Adams sighed again, and laughed a little, making no other
response; but Alice persisted. "Well, WHY can't you? Why can't
you ask him to do things the way you used to ask him when you
were just in love with each other? Why don't you anyhow try it,
mama, instead of ding-donging at him?"
"'Ding-donging at him,' Alice?" Mrs. Adams said, with a pathos
somewhat emphasized. "Is that how my trying to do what I can for
you strikes you?"
"Never mind that; it's nothing to hurt your feelings." Alice
disposed of the pathos briskly. "Why don't you answer my
question? What's the matter with using a little more tact on
papa? Why can't you treat him the way you probably did when you
were young people, before you were married? I never have
understood why people can't do that."
"Perhaps you WILL understand some day," her mother said, gently.
"Maybe you will when you've been married twenty-five years."
"You keep evading. Why don't you answer my question right
straight out?"
"There are questions you can't answer to young people, Alice."
"You mean because we're too young to understand the answer? I
don't see that at all. At twenty-two a girl's supposed to have
some intelligence, isn't she? And intelligence is the ability to
understand, isn't it? Why do I have to wait till I've lived with
a man twenty-five years to understand why you can't be tactful
with papa?"
"You may understand some things before that," Mrs. Adams said,
tremulously. "You may understand how you hurt me sometimes.
Youth can't know everything by being intelligent, and by the time
you could understand the answer you're asking for you'd know it,
and wouldn't need to ask. You don't understand your father,
Alice; you don't know what it takes to change him when he's made
up his mind to be stubborn."
Alice rose and began to get herself into a skirt. "Well, I don't
think making scenes ever changes anybody," she grumbled. "I
think a little jolly persuasion goes twice as far, myself."
"'A little jolly persuasion!' " Her mother turned the echo of
this phrase into an ironic lament. "Yes, there was a time when I
thought that, too! It didn't work; that's all."
"Perhaps you left the 'jolly' part of it out, mama."
For the second time that morning--it was now a little after seven
o'clock--tears seemed about to offer their solace to Mrs. Adams.
"I might have expected you to say that, Alice; you never do miss
a chance," she said, gently. "It seems queer you don't some time
miss just ONE chance!"
But Alice, progressing with her toilet, appeared to be little
concerned. "Oh, well, I think there are better ways of managing
a man than just hammering at him."
Mrs. Adams uttered a little cry of pain. "'Hammering,' Alice?"
"If you'd left it entirely to me," her daughter went on, briskly,
"I believe papa'd already be willing to do anything we want him
to."
"That's it; tell me I spoil everything. Well, I won't interfere
from now on, you can be sure of it."
"Please don't talk like that," Alice said, quickly. "I'm old
enough to realize that papa may need pressure of all sorts; I
only think it makes him more obstinate to get him cross. You
probably do understand him better, but that's one thing I've
found out and you haven't. There!" She gave her mother a
friendly tap on the shoulder and went to the door. "I'll hop in
and say hello to him now."
As she went, she continued the fastening of her blouse, and
appeared in her father's room with one hand still thus engaged,
but she patted his forehead with the other.
"Poor old papa-daddy!" she said, gaily. "Every time he's better
somebody talks him into getting so mad he has a relapse. It's a
shame!"
Her father's eyes, beneath their melancholy brows, looked up at
her wistfully. "I suppose you heard your mother going for me,"
he said.
"I heard you going for her, too!" Alice laughed. "What was it
all about?"
"Oh, the same danged old story!"
"You mean she wants you to try something new when you get well?"
Alice asked, with cheerful innocence. "So we could all have a
lot more money?"
At this his sorrowful forehead was more sorrowful than ever. The
deep horizontal lines moved upward to a pattern of suffering so
familiar to his daughter that it meant nothing to her; but he
spoke quietly. "Yes; so we wouldn't have any money at all, most
likely."
"Oh, no!" she laughed, and, finishing with her blouse, patted his
cheeks with both hands. "Just think how many grand openings
there must be for a man that knows as much as you do! I always
did believe you could get rich if you only cared to, papa."
But upon his forehead the painful pattern still deepened. "Don't
you think we've always had enough, the way things are, Alice?"
"Not the way things ARE!" She patted his cheeks again; laughed
again. "It used to be enough, maybe anyway we did skimp along on
it-- but the way things are now I expect mama's really pretty
practical in her ideas, though, I think it's a shame for her to
bother you about it while you're so weak. Don't you worry about
it, though; just think about other things till you get strong."
"You know," he said; "you know it isn't exactly the easiest thing
in the world for a man of my age to find these grand openings you
speak of. And when you've passed half-way from fifty to sixty
you're apt to see some risk in giving up what you know how to do
and trying something new."
"My, what a frown!" she cried, blithely. "Didn't I tell you to
stop thinking about it till you get ALL well?" She bent over him,
giving him a gay little kiss on the bridge of his nose. "There!
I must run to breakfast. Cheer up now! Au 'voir!" And with her
pretty hand she waved further encouragement from the closing door
as she departed.
Lightsomely descending the narrow stairway, she whistled as she
went, her fingers drumming time on the rail; and, still
whistling, she came into the dining-room, where her mother and
her brother were already at the table. The brother, a thin and
sallow boy of twenty, greeted her without much approval as she
took her place.
"Nothing seems to trouble you!" he said.
"No; nothing much," she made airy response. "What's troubling
yourself, Walter?"
"Don't let that worry you!" he returned, seeming to consider this
to be repartee of an effective sort; for he furnished a short
laugh to go with it, and turned to his coffee with the manner of
one who has satisfactorily closed an episode.
"Walter always seems to have so many secrets!" Alice said,
studying him shrewdly, but with a friendly enough amusement in
her scrutiny. "Everything he does or says seems to be acted for
the benefit of some mysterious audience inside himself, and he
always gets its applause. Take what he said just now: he seems
to think it means something, but if it does, why, that's just
another secret between him and the secret audience inside of him!
We don't really know anything about Walter at all, do we, mama?"
Walter laughed again, in a manner that sustained her theory well
enough; then after finishing his coffee, he took from his pocket
a flattened packet in glazed blue paper; extracted with stained
fingers a bent and wrinkled little cigarette, lighted it, hitched
up his belted trousers with the air of a person who turns from
trifles to things better worth his attention, and left the room.
Alice laughed as the door closed. "He's ALL secrets," she said.
"Don't you think you really ought to know more about him, mama?"
"I'm sure he's a good boy," Mrs. Adams returned, thoughtfully.
"He's been very brave about not being able to have the advantages
that are enjoyed by the boys he's grown up with. I've never
heard a word of complaint from him."
"About his not being sent to college?" Alice cried. "I should
think you wouldn't! He didn't even have enough ambition to
finish high school!"
Mrs. Adams sighed. "It seemed to me Walter lost his ambition
when nearly all the boys he'd grown up with went to Eastern
schools to prepare for college, and we couldn't afford to send
him. If only your father would have listened----"
Alice interrupted: "What nonsense! Walter hated books and
studying, and athletics, too, for that matter. He doesn't care
for anything nice that I ever heard of. What do you suppose he
does like, mama? He must like something or other somewhere, but
what do you suppose it is? What does he do with his time?"
"Why, the poor boy's at Lamb and Company's all day. He doesn't
get through until five in the afternoon; he doesn't HAVE much
time."
"Well, we never have dinner until about seven, and he's always
late for dinner, and goes out, heaven knows where, right
afterward!" Alice shook her head. "He used to go with our
friends' boys, but I don't think he does now."
"Why, how could he?" Mrs. Adams protested. "That isn't his
fault, poor child! The boys he knew when he was younger are
nearly all away at college."
"Yes, but he doesn't see anything of 'em when they're here at
holiday-time or vacation. None of 'em come to the house any
more."
"I suppose he's made other friends. It's natural for him to want
companions, at his age."
"Yes," Alice said, with disapproving emphasis. "But who are
they? I've got an idea he plays pool at some rough place
down-town."
"Oh, no; I'm sure he's a steady boy," Mrs. Adams protested, but
her tone was not that of thoroughgoing conviction, and she added,
"Life might be a very different thing for him if only your father
can be brought to see----"
"Never mind, mama! It isn't me that has to be convinced, you
know; and we can do a lot more with papa if we just let him alone
about it for a day or two. Promise me you won't say any more to
him until--well, until he's able to come downstairs to table.
Will you?"
Mrs. Adams bit her lip, which had begun to tremble. "I think
you can trust me to know a FEW things, Alice," she said. "I'm a
little older than you, you know."
"That's a good girl!" Alice jumped up, laughing. "Don't forget
it's the same as a promise, and do just cheer him up a little.
I'll say good-bye to him before I go out."
"Where are you going?"
"Oh, I've got lots to do. I thought I'd run out to Mildred's to
see what she's going to wear to-night, and then I want to go down
and buy a yard of chiffon and some narrow ribbon to make new bows
for my slippers--you'll have to give me some money----"
"If he'll give it to me!" her mother lamented, as they went
toward the front stairs together; but an hour later she came into
Alice's room with a bill in her hand.
"He has some money in his bureau drawer," she said. "He finally
told me where it was."
There were traces of emotion in her voice, and Alice, looking
shrewdly at her, saw moisture in her eyes.
"Mama!" she cried. "You didn't do what you promised me you
wouldn't, did you--NOT before Miss Perry!"
"Miss Perry's getting him some broth," Mrs. Adams returned,
calmly. "Besides, you're mistaken in saying I promised you
anything; I said I thought you could trust me to know what is
right."
"So you did bring it up again!" And Alice swung away from her,
strode to her father's door, flung it open, went to him, and put
a light hand soothingly over his unrelaxed forehead.
"Poor old papa!" she said. "It's a shame how everybody wants to
trouble him. He shan't be bothered any more at all! He doesn't
need to have everybody telling him how to get away from that old
hole he's worked in so long and begin to make us all nice and
rich. HE knows how!"
Thereupon she kissed him a consoling good-bye, and made another
gay departure, the charming hand again fluttering like a white
butterfly in the shadow of the closing door.
CHAPTER III
Mrs. Adams had remained in Alice's room, but her mood seemed to
have changed, during her daughter's little more than momentary
absence.
"What did he SAY?" she asked, quickly, and her tone was hopeful.
"'Say?' " Alice repeated, impatiently. "Why, nothing. I didn't
let him. Really, mama, I think the best thing for you to do
would be to just keep out of his room, because I don't believe
you can go in there and not talk to him about it, and if you do
talk we'll never get him to do the right thing. Never!"
The mother's response was a grieving silence; she turned from her
daughter and walked to the door.
"Now, for goodness' sake!" Alice cried. "Don't go making tragedy
out of my offering you a little practical advice!"
"I'm not," Mrs. Adams gulped, halting. "I'm just--just going to
dust the downstairs, Alice." And with her face still averted,
she went out into the little hallway, closing the door behind
her. A moment later she could be heard descending the stairs,
the sound of her footsteps carrying somehow an effect of
resignation.
Alice listened, sighed, and, breathing the words, "Oh, murder!"
turned to cheerier matters. She put on a little apple-green
turban with a dim gold band round it, and then, having shrouded
the turban in a white veil, which she kept pushed up above her
forehead, she got herself into a tan coat of soft cloth fashioned
with rakish severity. After that, having studied herself gravely
in a long glass, she took from one of the drawers of her
dressing- table a black leather card-case cornered in silver
filigree, but found it empty.
She opened another drawer wherein were two white pasteboard boxes
of cards, the one set showing simply "Miss Adams," the other
engraved in Gothic characters, "Miss Alys Tuttle Adams." The
latter belonged to Alice's "Alys" period--most girls go through
it; and Alice must have felt that she had graduated, for, after
frowning thoughtfully at the exhibit this morning, she took the
box with its contents, and let the white shower fall from her
fingers into the waste-basket beside her small desk. She
replenished the card-case from the "Miss Adams" box; then, having
found a pair of fresh white gloves, she tucked an ivory-topped
Malacca walking-stick under her arm and set forth.
She went down the stairs, buttoning her gloves and still wearing
the frown with which she had put "Alys" finally out of her life.
She descended slowly, and paused on the lowest step, looking
about her with an expression that needed but a slight deepening
to betoken bitterness. Its connection with her dropping "Alys"
forever was slight, however.
The small frame house, about fifteen years old, was already
inclining to become a new Colonial relic. The Adamses had built
it, moving into it from the "Queen Anne" house they had rented
until they took this step in fashion. But fifteen years is a
long time to stand still in the midland country, even for a
house, and this one was lightly made, though the Adamses had not
realized how flimsily until they had lived in it for some time.
"Solid, compact, and convenient" were the instructions to the
architect, and he had made it compact successfully. Alice,
pausing at the foot of the stairway, was at the same time fairly
in the "living-room," for the only separation between the "living
room" and the hall was a demarcation suggested to willing
imaginations by a pair of wooden columns painted white. These
columns, pine under the paint, were bruised and chipped at the
base; one of them showed a crack that threatened to become a
split; the "hard-wood" floor had become uneven; and in a corner
the walls apparently failed of solidity, where the wall-paper had
declined to accompany some staggerings of the plaster beneath it.
The furniture was in great part an accumulation begun with the
wedding gifts; though some of it was older, two large patent
rocking-chairs and a footstool having belonged to Mrs. Adams's
mother in the days of hard brown plush and veneer. For
decoration there were pictures and vases. Mrs. Adams had always
been fond of vases, she said, and every year her husband's
Christmas present to her was a vase of one sort or
another--whatever the clerk showed him, marked at about twelve or
fourteen dollars. The pictures were some of them etchings framed
in gilt: Rheims, Canterbury, schooners grouped against a wharf;
and Alice could remember how, in her childhood, her father
sometimes pointed out the watery reflections in this last as very
fine. But it was a long time since he had shown interest in such
things--"or in anything much," as she thought.
Other pictures were two water-colours in baroque frames; one
being the Amalfi monk on a pergola wall, while the second was a
yard-wide display of iris blossoms, painted by Alice herself at
fourteen, as a birthday gift to her mother. Alice's glance
paused upon it now with no great pride, but showed more approval
of an enormous photograph of the Colosseum. This she thought of
as "the only good thing in the room"; it possessed and bestowed
distinction, she felt; and she did not regret having won her
struggle to get it hung in its conspicuous place of honour over
the mantelpiece. Formerly that place had been held for years by
a steel-engraving, an accurate representation of the Suspension
Bridge at Niagara Falls. It was almost as large as its
successor, the "Colosseum," and it had been presented to Mr.
Adams by colleagues in his department at Lamb and Company's.
Adams had shown some feeling when Alice began to urge its removal
to obscurity in the "upstairs hall"; he even resisted for several
days after she had the "Colosseum" charged to him, framed in oak,
and sent to the house. She cheered him up, of course, when he
gave way; and her heart never misgave her that there might be a
doubt which of the two pictures was the more dismaying.
Over the pictures, the vases, the old brown plush rocking-chairs
and the stool, over the three gilt chairs, over the new
chintz-covered easy chair and the gray velure sofa--over
everything everywhere, was the familiar coating of smoke grime.
It had worked into every fibre of the lace curtains, dingying
them to an unpleasant gray; it lay on the window- sills and it
dimmed the glass panes; it covered the walls, covered the
ceiling, and was smeared darker and thicker in all corners. Yet
here was no fault of housewifery; the curse could not be lifted,
as the ingrained smudges permanent on the once white woodwork
proved. The grime was perpetually renewed; scrubbing only ground
it in.
This particular ugliness was small part of Alice's discontent,
for though the coating grew a little deeper each year she was
used to it. Moreover, she knew that she was not likely to find
anything better in a thousand miles, so long as she kept to
cities, and that none of her friends, however opulent, had any
advantage of her here. Indeed, throughout all the great
soft-coal country, people who consider themselves comparatively
poor may find this consolation: cleanliness has been added to the
virtues and beatitudes that money can not buy.
Alice brightened a little as she went forward to the front door,
and she brightened more when the spring breeze met her there.
Then all depression left her as she walked down the short brick
path to the sidewalk, looked up and down the street, and saw how
bravely the maple shade-trees, in spite of the black powder they
breathed, were flinging out their thousands of young green
particles overhead.
She turned north, treading the new little shadows on the pavement
briskly, and, having finished buttoning her gloves, swung down
her Malacca stick from under her arm to let it tap a more
leisurely accompaniment to her quick, short step. She had to
step quickly if she was to get anywhere; for the closeness of her
skirt, in spite of its little length, permitted no natural
stride; but she was pleased to be impeded, these brevities
forming part of her show of fashion.
Other pedestrians found them not without charm, though approval
may have been lacking here and there, and at the first crossing
Alice suffered what she might have accounted an actual injury,
had she allowed herself to be so sensitive. An elderly woman in
fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was
all of a globular modelling, with a face patterned like a
frost-bitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was
uncongenial she naively made too evident. Her round, wan eyes
seemed roused to bitter life as they rose from the curved high
heels of the buckled slippers to the tight little skirt, and
thence with startled ferocity to the Malacca cane, which plainly
appeared to her as a decoration not more astounding than it was
insulting.
Perceiving that the girl was bowing to her, the globular lady
hurriedly made shift to alter her injurious expression. "Good
morning, Mrs. Dowling," Alice said, gravely. Mrs. Dowling
returned the salutation with a smile as convincingly benevolent
as the ghastly smile upon a Santa Claus face; and then, while
Alice passed on, exploded toward her a single compacted breath
through tightened lips.
The sound was eloquently audible, though Mrs. Dowling remained
unaware that in this or any manner whatever she had shed a light
upon her thoughts; for it was her lifelong innocent conviction
that other people saw her only as she wished to be seen, and
heard from her only what she intended to be heard. At home it
was always her husband who pulled down the shades of their
bedroom window.
Alice looked serious for a few moments after the little
encounter, then found some consolation in the behaviour of a
gentleman of forty or so who was coming toward her. Like Mrs.
Dowling, he had begun to show consciousness of Alice's approach
while she was yet afar off; but his tokens were of a kind
pleasanter to her. He was like Mrs. Dowling again, however, in
his conception that Alice would not realize the significance of
what he did. He passed his hand over his neck-scarf to see that
it lay neatly to his collar, smoothed a lapel of his coat, and
adjusted his hat, seeming to be preoccupied the while with
problems that kept his eyes to the pavement; then, as he came
within a few feet of her, he looked up, as in a surprised
recognition almost dramatic, smiled winningly, lifted his hat
decisively, and carried it to the full arm's length.
Alice's response was all he could have asked. The cane in her
right hand stopped short in its swing, while her left hand moved
in a pretty gesture as if an impulse carried it toward the heart;
and she smiled, with her under lip caught suddenly between her
teeth. Months ago she had seen an actress use this smile in a
play, and it came perfectly to Alice now, without conscious
direction, it had been so well acquired; but the pretty hand's
little impulse toward the heart was an original bit all her own,
on the spur of the moment.
The gentleman went on, passing from her forward vision as he
replaced his hat. Of himself he was nothing to Alice, except for
the gracious circumstance that he had shown strong consciousness
of a pretty girl. He was middle-aged, substantial, a family man,
securely married; and Alice had with him one of those long
acquaintances that never become emphasized by so much as five
minutes of talk; yet for this inconsequent meeting she had
enacted a little part like a fragment in a pantomime of Spanish
wooing.
It was not for him--not even to impress him, except as a
messenger. Alice was herself almost unaware of her thought,
which was one of the running thousands of her thoughts that took
no deliberate form in words. Nevertheless, she had it, and it
was the impulse of all her pretty bits of pantomime when she met
other acquaintances who made their appreciation visible, as this
substantial gentleman did. In Alice's unworded thought, he was
to be thus encouraged as in some measure a champion to speak well
of her to the world; but more than this: he was to tell some
magnificent unknown bachelor how wonderful, how mysterious, she
was.
She hastened on gravely, a little stirred reciprocally with the
supposed stirrings in the breast of that shadowy ducal mate, who
must be somewhere "waiting," or perhaps already seeking her; for
she more often thought of herself as "waiting" while he sought
her; and sometimes this view of things became so definite that it
shaped into a murmur on her lips. "Waiting. Just waiting." And
she might add, "For him!" Then, being twenty-two, she was apt to
conclude the mystic interview by laughing at herself, though not
without a continued wistfulness.
She came to a group of small coloured children playing waywardly
in a puddle at the mouth of a muddy alley; and at sight of her
they gave over their pastime in order to stare. She smiled
brilliantly upon them, but they were too struck with wonder to
comprehend that the manifestation was friendly; and as Alice
picked her way in a little detour to keep from the mud, she heard
one of them say, "Lady got cane! Jeez'!"
She knew that many coloured children use impieties familiarly,
and she was not startled. She was disturbed, however, by an
unfavourable hint in the speaker's tone. He was six, probably,
but the sting of a criticism is not necessarily allayed by
knowledge of its ignoble source, and Alice had already begun to
feel a slight uneasiness about her cane. Mrs. Dowling's stare
had been strikingly projected at it; other women more than merely
glanced, their brows and lips contracting impulsively; and Alice
was aware that one or two of them frankly halted as soon as she
had passed.
She had seen in several magazines pictures of ladies with canes,
and on that account she had bought this one, never questioning
that fashion is recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as
beheld. On the contrary, these staring women obviously failed to
realize that what they were being shown was not an eccentric
outburst, but the bright harbinger of an illustrious mode. Alice
had applied a bit of artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks
before she set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a
ready colour of her own, which now mounted high with annoyance.
Then a splendidly shining closed black automobile, with windows
of polished glass, came silently down the street toward her.
Within it, as in a luxurious little apartment, three comely
ladies in mourning sat and gossiped; but when they saw Alice they
clutched one another. They instantly recovered, bowing to her
solemnly as they were borne by, yet were not gone from her sight
so swiftly but the edge of her side glance caught a flash of
teeth in mouths suddenly opened, and the dark glisten of black
gloves again clutching to share mirth.
The colour that outdid the rouge on Alice's cheek extended its
area and grew warmer as she realized how all too cordial had been
her nod and smile to these humorous ladies. But in their
identity lay a significance causing her a sharper smart, for they
were of the family of that Lamb, chief of Lamb and Company, who
had employed her father since before she was born.
"And know his salary! They'd be SURE to find out about that!"
was her thought, coupled with another bitter one to the effect
that they had probably made instantaneous financial estimates of
what she wore though certainly her walking-stick had most fed
their hilarity.
She tucked it under her arm, not swinging it again; and her
breath became quick and irregular as emotion beset her. She had
been enjoying her walk, but within the space of the few blocks
she had gone since she met the substantial gentleman, she found
that more than the walk was spoiled: suddenly her life seemed to
be spoiled, too; though she did not view the ruin with
complaisance. These Lamb women thought her and her cane
ridiculous, did they? she said to herself. That was their
parvenu blood: to think because a girl's father worked for their
grandfather she had no right to be rather striking in style,
especially when the striking WAS her style. Probably all the
other girls and women would agree with them and would laugh at
her when they got together, and, what might be fatal, would try
to make all the men think her a silly pretender. Men were just
like sheep, and nothing was easier than for women to set up as
shepherds and pen them in a fold. "To keep out outsiders," Alice
thought. "And make 'em believe I AM an outsider. What's the use
of living?"
All seemed lost when a trim young man appeared, striding out of a
cross-street not far before her, and, turning at the corner, came
toward her. Visibly, he slackened his gait to lengthen the time
of his approach, and, as he was a stranger to her, no motive
could be ascribed to him other than a wish to have a longer time
to look at her.
She lifted a pretty hand to a pin at her throat, bit her lip--not
with the smile, but mysteriously--and at the last instant before
her shadow touched the stranger, let her eyes gravely meet his.
A moment later, having arrived before the house which was her
destination, she halted at the entrance to a driveway leading
through fine lawns to the intentionally important mansion. It
was a pleasant and impressive place to be seen entering, but
Alice did not enter at once. She paused, examining a tiny bit of
mortar which the masons had forgotten to scrape from a brick in
one of the massive gate-posts. She frowned at this tiny
defacement, and with an air of annoyance scraped it away, using
the ferrule of her cane an act of fastidious proprietorship. If
any one had looked back over his shoulder he would not have
doubted that she lived there.
Alice did not turn to see whether anything of the sort happened
or not, but she may have surmised that it did. At all events, it
was with an invigorated step that she left the gateway behind her
and went cheerfully up the drive to the house of her friend
Mildred.
CHAPTER IV
Adams had a restless morning, and toward noon he asked Miss Perry
to call his daughter; he wished to say something to her.
"I thought I heard her leaving the house a couple of hours
ago--maybe longer," the nurse told him. "I'll go see." And she
returned from the brief errand, her impression confirmed by
information from Mrs. Adams. "Yes. She went up to Miss Mildred
Palmer's to see what she's going to wear to-night."
Adams looked at Miss Perry wearily, but remained passive, making
no inquiries; for he was long accustomed to what seemed to him a
kind of jargon among ladies, which became the more
incomprehensible when they tried to explain it. A man's best
course, he had found, was just to let it go as so much sound.
His sorrowful eyes followed the nurse as she went back to her
rocking-chair by the window, and her placidity showed him that
there was no mystery for her in the fact that Alice walked two
miles to ask so simple a question when there was a telephone in
the house. Obviously Miss Perry also comprehended why Alice
thought it important to know what Mildred meant to wear. Adams
understood why Alice should be concerned with what she herself
wore "to look neat and tidy and at her best, why, of course she'd
want to," he thought-- but he realized that it was forever beyond
him to understand why the clothing of other people had long since
become an absorbing part of her life.
Her excursion this morning was no novelty; she was continually
going to see what Mildred meant to wear, or what some other girl
meant to wear; and when Alice came home from wherever other girls
or women had been gathered, she always hurried to her mother with
earnest descriptions of the clothing she had seen. At such
times, if Adams was present, he might recognize "organdie," or
"taffeta," or "chiffon," as words defining certain textiles, but
the rest was too technical for him, and he was like a dismal boy
at a sermon, just waiting for it to get itself finished. Not the
least of the mystery was his wife's interest: she was almost
indifferent about her own clothes, and when she consulted Alice
about them spoke hurriedly and with an air of apology; but when
Alice described other people's clothes, Mrs. Adams listened as
eagerly as the daughter talked.
"There they go!" he muttered to-day, a moment after he heard the
front door closing, a sound recognizable throughout most of the
thinly built house. Alice had just returned, and Mrs. Adams
called to her from the upper hallway, not far from Adams's door.
"What did she SAY?"
"She was sort of snippy about it," Alice returned, ascending the
stairs. "She gets that way sometimes, and pretended she hadn't
made up her mind, but I'm pretty sure it'll be the maize
Georgette with Malines flounces."
"Didn't you say she wore that at the Pattersons'?" Mrs. Adams
inquired, as Alice arrived at the top of the stairs. "And didn't
you tell me she wore it again at the----"
"Certainly not," Alice interrupted, rather petulantly. "She's
never worn it but once, and of course she wouldn't want to wear
anything to-night that people have seen her in a lot."
Miss Perry opened the door of Adams's room and stepped out.
"Your father wants to know if you'll come and see him a minute,,
Miss Adams."
"Poor old thing! Of course!" Alice exclaimed, and went quickly
into the room, Miss Perry remaining outside. "What's the matter,
papa? Getting awful sick of lying on his tired old back, I
expect."
"I've had kind of a poor morning," Adams said, as she patted his
hand comfortingly. "I been thinking----"
"Didn't I tell you not to?" she cried, gaily. "Of course you'll
have poor times when you go and do just exactly what I say you
mustn't. You stop thinking this very minute!"
He smiled ruefully, closing his eyes; was silent for a moment,
then asked her to sit beside the bed. "I been thinking of
something I wanted to say," he added.
"What like, papa?"
"Well, it's nothing--much," he said, with something deprecatory
in his tone, as if he felt vague impulses toward both humour and
apology. "I just thought maybe I ought to've said more to you
some time or other about--well, about the way things ARE, down at
Lamb and Company's, for instance."
"Now, papa!" She leaned forward in the chair she had taken, and
pretended to slap his hand crossly. "Isn't that exactly what I
said you couldn't think one single think about till you get ALL
well?"
"Well----" he said, and went on slowly, not looking at her, but
at the ceiling. "I just thought maybe it wouldn't been any harm
if some time or other I told you something about the way they
sort of depend on me down there."
"Why don't they show it, then?" she asked, quickly. "That's just
what mama and I have been feeling so much; they don't appreciate
you."
"Why, yes, they do," he said. "Yes, they do. They began
h'isting my salary the second year I went in there, and they've
h'isted it a little every two years all the time I've worked for
'em. I've been head of the sundries department for seven years
now, and I could hardly have more authority in that department
unless I was a member of the firm itself."
"Well, why don't they make you a member of the firm? That's what
they ought to've done! Yes, and long ago!"
Adams laughed, but sighed with more heartiness than he had
laughed. "They call me their 'oldest stand-by' down there." He
laughed again, apologetically, as if to excuse himself for taking
a little pride in this title. "Yes, sir; they say I'm their
'oldest stand-by'; and I guess they know they can count on my
department's turning in as good a report as they look for, at the
end of every month; but they don't have to take a man into the
firm to get him to do my work, dearie."
"But you said they depended on you, papa."
"So they do; but of course not so's they couldn't get along
without me." He paused, reflecting. "I don't just seem to know
how to put it--I mean how to put what I started out to say. I
kind of wanted to tell you--well, it seems funny to me, these
last few years, the way your mother's taken to feeling about it.
I'd like to see a better established wholesale drug business than
Lamb and Company this side the Alleghanies--I don't say bigger, I
say better established--and it's kind of funny for a man that's
been with a business like that as long as I have to hear it
called a 'hole.' It's kind of funny when you think, yourself,
you've done pretty fairly well in a business like that, and the
men at the head of it seem to think so, too, and put your salary
just about as high as anybody could consider customary-- well,
what I mean, Alice, it's kind of funny to have your mother think
it's mostly just--mostly just a failure, so to speak."
His voice had become tremulous in spite of him; and this sign of
weakness and emotion had sufficient effect upon Alice. She bent
over him suddenly, with her arm about him and her cheek against
his. "Poor papa!" she murmured. "Poor papa!"
"No, no," he said. "I didn't mean anything to trouble you. I
just thought----" He hesitated. "I just wondered--I thought
maybe it wouldn't be any harm if I said something about how
things ARE down there. I got to thinking maybe you didn't
understand it's a pretty good place. They're fine people to work
for; and they've always seemed to think something of me;--the way
they took Walter on, for instance, soon as I asked 'em, last
year. Don't you think that looked a good deal as if they thought
something of me, Alice?"
"Yes, papa," she said, not moving.
"And the work's right pleasant," he went on. "Mighty nice boys
in our department, Alice. Well, they are in all the departments,
for that matter. We have a good deal of fun down there some
days."
She lifted her head. "More than you do at home 'some days,' I
expect, papa!" she said.
He protested feebly. "Now, I didn't mean that-- I didn't want to
trouble you----"
She looked at him through winking eyelashes. "I'm sorry I called
it a 'hole,' papa."
"No, no," he protested, gently. "It was your mother said that."
"No. I did, too."
"Well, if you did, it was only because you'd heard her."
She shook her head, then kissed him. "I'm going to talk to her,"
she said, and rose decisively.
But at this, her father's troubled voice became quickly louder:
"You better let her alone. I just wanted to have a little talk
with you. I didn't mean to start any--your mother won't----"
"Now, papa!" Alice spoke cheerfully again, and smiled upon him.
"I want you to quit worrying! Everything's going to be all right
and nobody's going to bother you any more about anything. You'll
see!"
She carried her smile out into the hall, but after she had closed
the door her face was all pity; and her mother, waiting for her
in the opposite room, spoke sympathetically.
"What's the matter, Alice? What did he say that's upset you?"
"Wait a minute, mama." Alice found a handkerchief, used it for
eyes and suffused nose, gulped, then suddenly and desolately sat
upon the bed. "Poor, poor, POOR papa!" she whispered.
"Why?" Mrs. Adams inquired, mildly. "What's the matter with
him? Sometimes you act as if he weren't getting well. What's he
been talking about?"
"Mama--well, I think I'm pretty selfish. Oh, I do!"
"Did he say you were?"
"Papa? No, indeed! What I mean is, maybe we're both a little
selfish to try to make him go out and hunt around for something
new."
Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. "Oh, that's what he was up to!"
"Mama, I think we ought to give it up. I didn't dream it had
really hurt him."
"Well, doesn't he hurt us?"
"Never that I know of, mama."
"I don't mean by SAYING things," Mrs. Adams explained,
impatiently. "There are more ways than that of hurting people.
When a man sticks to a salary that doesn't provide for his
family, isn't that hurting them?"
"Oh, it 'provides' for us well enough, mama. We have what we
need--if I weren't so extravagant. Oh, _I_ know I am!"
But at this admission her mother cried out sharply.
"'Extravagant!' You haven't one tenth of what the other girls you
go with have. And you CAN'T have what you ought to as long as he
doesn't get out of that horrible place. It provides bare food
and shelter for us, but what's that?"
"I don't think we ought to try any more to change him."
"You don't?" Mrs. Adams came and stood before her. "Listen,
Alice: your father's asleep; that's his trouble, and he's got to
be waked up. He doesn't know that things have changed. When you
and Walter were little children we did have enough-- at least it
seemed to be about as much as most of the people we knew. But
the town isn't what it was in those days, and times aren't what
they were then, and these fearful PRICES aren't the old prices.
Everything else but your father has changed, and all the time
he's stood still. He doesn't know it; he thinks because they've
given him a hundred dollars more every two years he's quite a
prosperous man! And he thinks that because his children cost him
more than he and I cost our parents he gives them-- enough!"
"But Walter----" Alice faltered. "Walter doesn't cost him
anything at all any more." And she concluded, in a stricken
voice, "It's all--me!"
"Why shouldn't it be?" her mother cried. "You're young--you're
just at the time when your life should be fullest of good things
and happiness. Yet what do you get?"
Alice's lip quivered; she was not unsusceptible to such an
appeal, but she contrived the semblance of a protest. "I don't
have such a bad time not a good DEAL of the time, anyhow. I've
got a good MANY of the things other girls have----"
"You have?" Mrs. Adams was piteously satirical. "I suppose
you've got a limousine to go to that dance to-night? I suppose
you've only got to call a florist and tell him to send you some
orchids? I suppose you've----"
But Alice interrupted this list. Apparently in a single instant
all emotion left her, and she became businesslike, as one in the
midst of trifles reminded of really serious matters. She got up
from the bed and went to the door of the closet where she kept
her dresses. "Oh, see here," she said, briskly. "I've decided
to wear my white organdie if you could put in a new lining for
me. I'm afraid it'll take you nearly all afternoon."
She brought forth the dress, displayed it upon the bed, and Mrs.
Adams examined it attentively.
"Do you think you could get it done, mama?"
"I don't see why not," Mrs. Adams answered, passing a thoughtful
hand over the fabric. "It oughtn't to take more than four or
five hours."
"It's a shame to have you sit at the machine that long," Alice
said, absently, adding, "And I'm sure we ought to let papa alone.
Let's just give it up, mama."
Mrs. Adams continued her thoughtful examination of the dress.
"Did you buy the chiffon and ribbon, Alice?"
"Yes. I'm sure we oughtn't to talk to him about it any more,
mama."
"Well, we'll see."
"Let's both agree that we'll NEVER say another single word to him
about it," said Alice. "It'll be a great deal better if we just
let him make up his mind for himself."
CHAPTER V
With this, having more immediately practical questions before
them, they dropped the subject, to bend their entire attention
upon the dress; and when the lunch-gong sounded downstairs Alice
was still sketching repairs and alterations. She continued to
sketch them, not heeding the summons.
"I suppose we'd better go down to lunch," Mrs. Adams said,
absently. "She's at the gong again." In a minute, mama. Now
about the sleeves----" And she went on with her planning.
Unfortunately the gong was inexpressive of the mood of the person
who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal bowls upon
a string; they were unequal in size, and, upon being tapped with
a padded stick, gave forth vibrations almost musically pleasant.
It was Alice who had substituted this contrivance for the brass
"dinner-bell" in use throughout her childhood; and neither she
nor the others of her family realized that the substitution of
sweeter sounds had made the life of that household more
difficult. In spite of dismaying increases in wages, the Adamses
still strove to keep a cook; and, as they were unable to pay the
higher rates demanded by a good one, what they usually had was a
whimsical coloured woman of nomadic impulses. In the hands of
such a person the old-fashioned "dinner-bell" was satisfying;
life could instantly be made intolerable for any one dawdling on
his way to a meal; the bell was capable of every desirable
profanity and left nothing bottled up in the breast of the
ringer. But the chamois-covered stick might whack upon Alice's
little Chinese bowls for a considerable length of time and
produce no great effect of urgency upon a hearer, nor any other
effect, except fury in the cook. The ironical impossibility of
expressing indignation otherwise than by sounds of gentle harmony
proved exasperating; the cook was apt to become surcharged, so
that explosive resignations, never rare, were somewhat more
frequent after the introduction of the gong.
Mrs. Adams took this increased frequency to be only another
manifestation of the inexplicable new difficulties that beset all
housekeeping. You paid a cook double what you had paid one a few
years before; and the cook knew half as much of cookery, and had
no gratitude. The more you gave these people, it seemed, the
worse they behaved--a condition not to be remedied by simply
giving them less, because you couldn't even get the worst unless
you paid her what she demanded. Nevertheless, Mrs. Adams
remained fitfully an optimist in the matter. Brought up by her
mother to speak of a female cook as "the girl," she had been
instructed by Alice to drop that definition in favour of one not
an improvement in accuracy: "the maid." Almost always, during
the first day or so after every cook came, Mrs. Adams would say,
at intervals, with an air of triumph: "I believe--of course it's
a little soon to be sure--but I do really believe this new maid
is the treasure we've been looking for so long!" Much in the same
way that Alice dreamed of a mysterious perfect mate for whom she
"waited," her mother had a fairy theory that hidden somewhere in
the universe there was the treasure, the perfect "maid," who
would come and cook in the Adamses' kitchen, not four days or
four weeks, but forever.
The present incumbent was not she. Alice, profoundly interested
herself, kept her mother likewise so preoccupied with the dress
that they were but vaguely conscious of the gong's soft warnings,
though these were repeated and protracted unusually. Finally the
sound of a hearty voice, independent and enraged, reached the
pair. It came from the hall below.
"I says goo'-BYE!" it called. "Da'ss all!"
Then the front door slammed.
"Why, what----" Mrs. Adams began.
They went down hurriedly to find out. Miss Perry informed them.
"I couldn't make her listen to reason," she said. "She rang the
gong four or five times and got to talking to herself; and then
she went up to her room and packed her bag. I told her she had
no business to go out the front door, anyhow."
Mrs. Adams took the news philosophically. "I thought she had
something like that in her eye when I paid her this morning, and
I'm not surprised. Well, we won't let Mr. Adams know anything's
the matter till I get a new one."
They lunched upon what the late incumbent had left chilling on
the table, and then Mrs. Adams prepared to wash the dishes; she
would "have them done in a jiffy," she said, cheerfully. But it
was Alice who washed the dishes.
"I DON'T like to have you do that, Alice," her mother protested,
following her into the kitchen. "It roughens the hands, and when
a girl has hands like yours----"
"I know, mama." Alice looked troubled, but shook her head. "It
can't be helped this time; you'll need every minute to get that
dress done."
Mrs. Adams went away lamenting, while Alice, no expert, began to
splash the plates and cups and saucers in the warm water. After
a while, as she worked, her eyes grew dreamy: she was making
little gay-coloured pictures of herself, unfounded prophecies of
how she would look and what would happen to her that evening.
She saw herself, charming and demure, wearing a fluffy
idealization of the dress her mother now determinedly struggled
with upstairs; she saw herself framed in a garlanded archway, the
entrance to a ballroom, and saw the people on the shining floor
turning dramatically to look at her; then from all points a rush
of young men shouting for dances with her; and she constructed a
superb stranger, tall, dark, masterfully smiling, who swung her
out of the clamouring group as the music began. She saw herself
dancing with him, saw the half-troubled smile she would give him;
and she accurately smiled that smile as she rinsed the knives and
forks.
These hopeful fragments of drama were not to be realized, she
knew; but she played that they were true, and went on creating
them. In all of them she wore or carried flowers--her mother's
sorrow for her in this detail but made it the more important--
and she saw herself glamorous with orchids; discarded these for
an armful of long-stemmed, heavy roses; tossed them away for a
great bouquet of white camellias; and so wandered down a
lengthening hothouse gallery of floral beauty, all costly and
beyond her reach except in such a wistful day-dream. And upon
her present whole horizon, though she searched it earnestly, she
could discover no figure of a sender of flowers.
Out of her fancies the desire for flowers to wear that night
emerged definitely and became poignant; she began to feel that it
might be particularly important to have them. "This might be the
night!" She was still at the age to dream that the night of any
dance may be the vital point in destiny. No matter how
commonplace or disappointing other dance nights have been this
one may bring the great meeting. The unknown magnifico may be
there.
Alice was almost unaware of her own reveries in which this being
appeared--reveries often so transitory that they developed and
passed in a few seconds. And in some of them the being was not
wholly a stranger; there were moments when he seemed to be
composed of recognizable fragments of young men she knew--a smile
she had liked, from one; the figure of another, the hair of
another--and sometimes she thought he might be concealed, so to
say, within the person of an actual acquaintance, someone she had
never suspected of being the right seeker for her, someone who
had never suspected that it was she who "waited" for him.
Anything might reveal them to each other: a look, a turn of the
head, a singular word--perhaps some flowers upon her breast or in
her hand.
She wiped the dishes slowly, concluding the operation by dropping
a saucer upon the floor and dreamily sweeping the fragments under
the stove. She sighed and replaced the broom near a window,
letting her glance wander over the small yard outside. The
grass, repulsively besooted to the colour of coal-smoke all
winter, had lately come to life again and now sparkled with
green, in the midst of which a tiny shot of blue suddenly fixed
her absent eyes. They remained upon it for several moments,
becoming less absent.
It was a violet.
Alice ran upstairs, put on her hat, went outdoors and began to
search out the violets. She found twenty-two, a bright
omen--since the number was that of her years--but not enough
violets. There were no more; she had ransacked every foot of the
yard.
She looked dubiously at the little bunch in her hand, glanced at
the lawn next door, which offered no favourable prospect; then
went thoughtfully into the house, left her twenty-two violets in
a bowl of water, and came quickly out again, her brow marked with
a frown of decision. She went to a trolley-line and took a car
to the outskirts of the city where a new park had been opened.
Here she resumed her search, but it was not an easily rewarded
one, and for an hour after her arrival she found no violets. She
walked conscientiously over the whole stretch of meadow, her eyes
roving discontentedly; there was never a blue dot in the groomed
expanse; but at last, as she came near the borders of an old
grove of trees, left untouched by the municipal landscapers, the
little flowers appeared, and she began to gather them. She
picked them carefully, loosening the earth round each tiny plant,
so as to bring the roots up with it, that it might live the
longer; and she had brought a napkin, which she drenched at a
hydrant, and kept loosely wrapped about the stems of her
collection.
The turf was too damp for her to kneel; she worked patiently,
stooping from the waist; and when she got home in a drizzle of
rain at five o'clock her knees were tremulous with strain, her
back ached, and she was tired all over, but she had three hundred
violets. Her mother moaned when Alice showed them to her,
fragrant in a basin of water.
"Oh, you POOR child! To think of your having to: work so hard to
get things that other girls only need; lift their little fingers
for!"
"Never mind," said Alice, huskily. "I've got 'em and I AM going
to have a good time to-night!"
"You've just got to!" Mrs. Adams agreed, intensely sympathetic.
"The Lord knows you deserve to, after picking all these violets,
poor thing, and He wouldn't be mean enough to keep you from it.
I may have to get dinner before I finish the dress, but I can get
it done in a few minutes afterward, and it's going to look right
pretty. Don't you worry about THAT! And with all these lovely
violets----"
"I wonder----" Alice began, paused, then went on, fragmentarily:
"I suppose--well, I wonder--do you suppose it would have been
better policy to have told Walter before----"
"No," said her mother. "It would only have given him longer to
grumble."
"But he might----"
"Don't worry," Mrs. Adams reassured her. "He'll be a little
cross, but he won't be stubborn; just let me talk to him and
don't you say anything at all, no matter what HE says."
These references to Walter concerned some necessary manoeuvres
which took place at dinner, and were conducted by the mother,
Alice having accepted her advice to sit in silence. Mrs. Adams
began by laughing cheerfully. "I wonder how much longer it took
me to cook this dinner than it does Walter to eat it?" she said.
"Don't gobble, child! There's no hurry."
In contact with his own family Walter was no squanderer of words.
"Is for me," he said. "Got date."
"I know you have, but there's plenty of time."
He smiled in benevolent pity. "YOU know, do you? If you made
any coffee--don't bother if you didn't. Get some down-town." He
seemed about to rise and depart; whereupon Alice, biting her lip,
sent a panic-stricken glance at her mother.
But Mrs. Adams seemed not at all disturbed; and laughed again.
"Why, what nonsense, Walter! I'll bring your coffee in a few
minutes, but we're going to have dessert first."
"What sort?"
"Some lovely peaches."
"Doe' want 'ny canned peaches," said the frank Walter, moving
back his chair. "G'-night."
"Walter! It doesn't begin till about nine o'clock at the
earliest."
He paused, mystified. "What doesn't?"
"The dance."
"What dance?"
"Why, Mildred Palmer's dance, of course."
Walter laughed briefly. "What's that to me?"
"Why, you haven't forgotten it's TO-NIGHT, have you?" Mrs. Adams
cried. "What a boy!"
"I told you a week ago I wasn't going to that ole dance," he
returned, frowning. "You heard me."
"Walter!" she exclaimed. "Of COURSE you're going. I got your
clothes all out this afternoon, and brushed them for you.
They'll look very nice, and----"
"They won't look nice on ME," he interrupted. "Got date
down-town, I tell you."
"But of course you'll----"
"See here!" Walter said, decisively. "Don't get any wrong ideas
in your head. I'm just as liable to go up to that ole dance at
the Palmers' as I am to eat a couple of barrels of broken glass."
"But, Walter----"
Walter was beginning to be seriously annoyed. "Don't 'Walter'
me! I'm no s'ciety snake. I wouldn't jazz with that Palmer
crowd if they coaxed me with diamonds."
"Walter----"
"Didn't I tell you it's no use to 'Walter' me?" he demanded.
"My dear child----"
"Oh, Glory!"
At this Mrs. Adams abandoned her air of amusement, looked hurt,
and glanced at the demure Miss Perry across the table. "I'm
afraid Miss Perry won't think you have very good manners,
Walter."
"You're right she won't," he agreed, grimly. "Not if I haf to
hear any more about me goin' to----"
But his mother interrupted him with some asperity: "It seems very
strange that you always object to going anywhere among OUR
friends, Walter."
"YOUR friends!" he said, and, rising from his chair, gave
utterance to an ironical laugh strictly monosyllabic. "Your
friends!" he repeated, going to the door. "Oh, yes! Certainly!
Good-NIGHT!"
And looking back over his shoulder to offer a final brief view of
his derisive face, he took himself out of the room.
Alice gasped: "Mama----"
"I'll stop him!" her mother responded, sharply; and hurried after
the truant, catching him at the front door with his hat and
raincoat on.
"Walter----"
"Told you had a date down-town," he said, gruffly, and would have
opened the door, but she caught his arm and detained him.
"Walter, please come back and finish your dinner. When I take
all the trouble to cook it for you, I think you might at
least----"
"Now, now!" he said. "That isn't what you're up to. You don't
want to make me eat; you want to make me listen."
"Well, you MUST listen!" She retained her grasp upon his arm, and
made it tighter. "Walter, please!" she entreated, her voice
becoming tremulous. "PLEASE don't make me so much trouble!"
He drew back from her as far as her hold upon him permitted, and
looked at her sharply. "Look here!" he said. "I get you, all
right! What's the matter of Alice GOIN' to that party by
herself?"
"She just CAN'T!"
"Why not?"
"It makes things too MEAN for her, Walter. All the other girls
have somebody to depend on after they get there."
"Well, why doesn't she have somebody?" he asked, testily.
"Somebody besides ME, I mean! Why hasn't somebody asked her to
go? She ought to be THAT popular, anyhow, I sh'd think--she
TRIES enough!"
"I don't understand how you can be so hard," his mother wailed,
huskily. "You know why they don't run after her the way they do
the other girls she goes with, Walter. It's because we're poor,
and she hasn't got any background.
"'Background?' " Walter repeated. "'Background?' What kind of
talk is that?"
"You WILL go with her to-night, Walter?" his mother pleaded, not
stopping to enlighten him. "You don't understand how hard things
are for her and how brave she is about them, or you COULDN'T be
so selfish! It'd be more than I can bear to see her disappointed
to-night! She went clear out to Belleview Park this afternoon,
Walter, and spent hours and hours picking violets to wear. You
WILL----"
Walter's heart was not iron, and the episode of the violets may
have reached it. "Oh, BLUB!" he said, and flung his soft hat
violently at the wall.
His mother beamed with delight. "THAT'S a good boy, darling!
You'll never be sorry you----"
"Cut it out," he requested. "If I take her, will you pay for a
taxi?"
"Oh, Walter!" And again Mrs. Adams showed distress. "Couldn't
you?"
"No, I couldn't; I'm not goin' to throw away my good money like
that, and you can't tell what time o' night it'll be before she's
willin' to come home. What's the matter you payin' for one?"
"I haven't any money."
"Well, father----"
She shook her head dolefully. "I got some from him this morning,
and I can't bother him for any more; it upsets him. He's ALWAYS
been so terribly close with money----"
"I guess he couldn't help that," Walter observed. "We're liable
to go to the poorhouse the way it is. Well, what's the matter
our walkin' to this rotten party?"
"In the rain, Walter?"
"Well, it's only a drizzle and we can take a streetcar to within
a block of the house."
Again his mother shook her head. "It wouldn't do."
"Well, darn the luck, all right!" he consented, explosively.
"I'll get her something to ride in. It means seventy-five
cents."
"Why, Walter!" Mrs. Adams cried, much pleased. "Do you know how
to get a cab for that little? How splendid!"
"Tain't a cab," Walter informed her crossly. "It's a tin Lizzie,
but you don't haf' to tell her what it is till I get her into it,
do you?"
Mrs. Adams agreed that she didn't.
CHAPTER VI
Alice was busy with herself for two hours after dinner; but a
little before nine o'clock she stood in front of her long mirror,
completed, bright-eyed and solemn. Her hair, exquisitely
arranged, gave all she asked of it; what artificialities in
colour she had used upon her face were only bits of emphasis that
made her prettiness the more distinct; and the dress, not rumpled
by her mother's careful hours of work, was a white cloud of
loveliness. Finally there were two triumphant bouquets of
violets, each with the stems wrapped in tin-foil shrouded by a
bow of purple chiffon; and one bouquet she wore at her waist and
the other she carried in her hand.
Miss Perry, called in by a rapturous mother for the free treat of
a look at this radiance, insisted that Alice was a vision.
"Purely and simply a vision!" she said, meaning that no other
definition whatever would satisfy her. "I never saw anybody look
a vision if she don't look one to-night," the admiring nurse
declared. "Her papa'll think the same I do about it. You see if
he doesn't say she's purely and simply a vision."
Adams did not fulfil the prediction quite literally when Alice
paid a brief visit to his room to "show " him and bid him
good-night; but he chuckled feebly. "Well, well, well!" he said.
"You look mighty fine--MIGHTY fine!" And he waggled a bony finger
at her two bouquets. "Why, Alice, who's your beau?"
"Never you mind!" she laughed, archly brushing his nose with the
violets in her hand. "He treats me pretty well, doesn't he?"
"Must like to throw his money around! These violets smell mighty
sweet, and they ought to, if they're going to a party with YOU.
Have a good time, dearie."
"I mean to!" she cried; and she repeated this gaily, but with an
emphasis expressing sharp determination as she left him. "I MEAN
to!"
"What was he talking about?" her mother inquired, smoothing the
rather worn and old evening wrap she had placed on Alice's bed.
"What were you telling him you 'mean to?'"
Alice went back to her triple mirror for the last time, then
stood before the long one. "That I mean to have a good time
to-night," she said; and as she turned from her reflection to the
wrap Mrs. Adams held up for her, "It looks as though I COULD,
don't you think so?"
"You'll just be a queen to-night," her mother whispered in fond
emotion. "You mustn't doubt yourself."
"Well, there's one thing," said Alice. "I think I do look nice
enough to get along without having to dance with that Frank
Dowling! All I ask is for it to happen just once; and if he
comes near me to-night I'm going to treat him the way the other
girls do. Do you suppose Walter's got the taxi out in front?"
"He--he's waiting down in the hall," Mrs. Adams answered,
nervously; and she held up another garment to go over the wrap.
Alice frowned at it. "What's that, mama?"
"It's--it's your father's raincoat. I thought you'd put it on
over----"
"But I won't need it in a taxicab."
"You will to get in and out, and you needn't take it into the
Palmers'. You can leave it in the--in the ----It's drizzling,
and you'll need it."
"Oh, well," Alice consented; and a few minutes later, as with
Walter's assistance she climbed into the vehicle he had provided,
she better understood her mother's solicitude.
"What on earth IS this, Walter?" she asked.
"Never mind; it'll keep you dry enough with the top up," he
returned, taking his seat beside her. Then for a time, as they
went rather jerkily up the street, she was silent; but finally
she repeated her question: "What IS it, Walter?"
"What's what?"
"This--this CAR?"
"It's a ottomobile."
"I mean--what kind is it?"
"Haven't you got eyes?"
"It's too dark."
"It's a second-hand tin Lizzie," said Walter. "D'you know what
that means? It means a flivver."
"Yes, Walter."
"Got 'ny 'bjections?"
"Why, no, dear," she said, placatively. "Is it yours, Walter?
Have you bought it?"
"Me?" he laughed. "_I_ couldn't buy a used wheelbarrow. I rent
this sometimes when I'm goin' out among 'em. Costs me
seventy-five cents and the price o' the gas."
"That seems very moderate."
"I guess it is! The feller owes me some money, and this is the
only way I'd ever get it off him."
"Is he a garage-keeper?"
"Not exactly!" Walter uttered husky sounds of amusement. "You'll
be just as happy, I guess, if you don't know who he is," he said.
His tone misgave her; and she said truthfully that she was
content not to know who owned the car. "I joke sometimes about
how you keep things to yourself," she added, "but I really never
do pry in your affairs, Walter."
"Oh, no, you don't!"
"Indeed, I don't."
"Yes, you're mighty nice and cooing when you got me where you
want me," he jeered. "Well, _I_ just as soon tell you where I
get this car."
"I'd just as soon you wouldn't, Walter," she said, hurriedly.
"Please don't."
But Walter meant to tell her. "Why, there's nothin' exactly
CRIMINAL about it," he said. "It belongs to old J. A. Lamb
himself. He keeps it for their coon chauffeur. I rent it from
him."
"From Mr. LAMB?"
"No; from the coon chauffeur."
"Walter!" she gasped.
"Sure I do! I can get it any night when the coon isn't goin' to
use it himself. He's drivin' their limousine to-night--that
little Henrietta Lamb's goin' to the party, no matter if her
father HAS only been dead less'n a year!" He paused, then
inquired: "Well, how d'you like it?"
She did not speak, and he began to be remorseful for having
imparted so much information, though his way of expressing regret
was his own. "Well, you WILL make the folks make me take you to
parties!" he said. "I got to do it the best way I CAN, don't I?"
Then as she made no response, "Oh, the car's CLEAN enough," he
said. "This coon, he's as particular as any white man; you
needn't worry about that." And as she still said nothing, he
added gruffly, "I'd of had a better car if I could afforded it.
You needn't get so upset about it."
"I don't understand--" she said in a low voice-- "I don't
understand how you know such people."
"Such people as who?"
"As--coloured chauffeurs."
"Oh, look here, now!" he protested, loudly. "Don't you know this
is a democratic country?"
"Not quite that democratic, is it, Walter?"
"The trouble with you," he retorted, "you don't know there's
anybody in town except just this silk-shirt crowd." He paused,
seeming to await a refutation; but as none came, he expressed
himself definitely: "They make me sick."
They were coming near their destination, and the glow of the big,
brightly lighted house was seen before them in the wet night.
Other cars, not like theirs, were approaching this center of
brilliance; long triangles of light near the ground swept through
the fine drizzle; small red tail-lights gleamed again from the
moist pavement of the street; and, through the myriads of little
glistening leaves along the curving driveway, glimpses were
caught of lively colours moving in a white glare as the
limousines released their occupants under the shelter of the
porte-cochere.
Alice clutched Walter's arm in a panic; they were just at the
driveway entrance. "Walter, we mustn't go in there."
"What's the matter?"
"Leave this awful car outside."
"Why, I----"
"Stop!" she insisted, vehemently. "You've got to! Go back!"
"Oh, Glory!"
The little car was between the entrance posts; but Walter backed
it out, avoiding a collision with an impressive machine which
swerved away from them and passed on toward the porte-cochere,
showing a man's face grinning at the window as it went by.
"Flivver runabout got the wrong number!" he said.
"Did he SEE us?" Alice cried.
"Did who see us?"
"Harvey Malone--in that foreign coupe."
"No; he couldn't tell who we were under this top," Walter assured
her as he brought the little car to a standstill beside the
curbstone, out in the street. "What's it matter if he did, the
big fish?"
Alice responded with a loud sigh, and sat still.
"Well, want to go on back?" Walter inquired. "You bet I'm
willing!"
"No."
"Well, then, what's the matter our drivin' on up to the
porte-cochere? There's room for me to park just the other side
of it."
"No, NO!"
"What you expect to do? Sit HERE all night?"
"No, leave the car here."
"_I_ don't care where we leave it," he said. "Sit still till I
lock her, so none o' these millionaires around here'll run off
with her." He got out with a padlock and chain; and, having put
these in place, offered Alice his hand. "Come on, if you're
ready."
"Wait," she said, and, divesting herself of the raincoat, handed
it to Walter. "Please leave this with your things in the men's
dressing-room, as if it were an extra one of your own, Walter."
He nodded; she jumped out; and they scurried through the drizzle.
As they reached the porte-cochere she began to laugh airily, and
spoke to the impassive man in livery who stood there. "Joke on
us!" she said, hurrying by him toward the door of the house.
"Our car broke down outside the gate."
The man remained impassive, though he responded with a faint
gleam as Walter, looking back at him, produced for his benefit a
cynical distortion of countenance which offered little
confirmation of Alice's account of things. Then the door was
swiftly opened to the brother and sister; and they came into a
marble-floored hall, where a dozen sleeked young men lounged,
smoked cigarettes and fastened their gloves, as they waited for
their ladies. Alice nodded to one or another of these, and went
quickly on, her face uplifted and smiling; but Walter detained
her at the door to which she hastened.
"Listen here," he said. "I suppose you want me to dance the
first dance with you----"
"If you please, Walter," she said, meekly.
"How long you goin' to hang around fixin' up in that
dressin'-room?"
"I'll be out before you're ready yourself," she promised him; and
kept her word, she was so eager for her good time to begin. When
he came for her, they went down the hall to a corridor opening
upon three great rooms which had been thrown open together, with
the furniture removed and the broad floors waxed. At one end of
the corridor musicians sat in a green grove, and Walter, with
some interest, turned toward these; but his sister, pressing his
arm, impelled him in the opposite direction.
"What's the matter now?" he asked. "That's Jazz Louie and his
half-breed bunch--three white and four mulatto. Let's----?"
"No, no," she whispered. "We must speak to Mildred and Mr. and
Mrs. Palmer."
"'Speak' to 'em? I haven't got a thing to say to THOSE berries!"
"Walter, won't you PLEASE behave?"
He seemed to consent, for the moment, at least, and suffered her
to take him down the corridor toward a floral bower where the
hostess stood with her father and mother. Other couples and
groups were moving in the same direction, carrying with them a
hubbub of laughter and fragmentary chatterings; and Alice,
smiling all the time, greeted people on every side of her
eagerly--a little more eagerly than most of them responded--while
Walter nodded in a noncommittal manner to one or two, said
nothing, and yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who
finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn
and was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm
made him understand that he must abandon this method of
reassuring himself. They were close upon the floral bower.
Mildred was giving her hand to one and another of her guests as
rapidly as she could, passing them on to her father and mother,
and at the same time resisting the efforts of three or four
detached bachelors who besought her to give over her duty in
favour of the dance-music just beginning to blare.
She was a large, fair girl, with a kindness of eye somewhat
withheld by an expression of fastidiousness; at first sight of
her it was clear that she would never in her life do anything
"incorrect," or wear anything "incorrect." But her correctness
was of the finer sort, and had no air of being studied or
achieved; conduct would never offer her a problem to be settled
from a book of rules, for the rules were so deep within her that
she was unconscious of them. And behind this perfection there
was an even ampler perfection of what Mrs. Adams called
"background." The big, rich, simple house was part of it, and
Mildred's father and mother were part of it. They stood beside
her, large, serene people, murmuring graciously and gently
inclining their handsome heads as they gave their hands to the
guests; and even the youngest and most ebullient of these took on
a hushed mannerliness with a closer approach to the bower.
When the opportunity came for Alice and Walter to pass within
this precinct, Alice, going first, leaned forward and whispered
in Mildred's ear. "You DIDN'T wear the maize georgette! That's
what I thought you were going to. But you look simply DARLING!
And those pearls----"
Others were crowding decorously forward, anxious to be done with
ceremony and get to the dancing; and Mildred did not prolong the
intimacy of Alice's enthusiastic whispering. With a faint
accession of colour and a smile tending somewhat in the direction
of rigidity, she carried Alice's hand immediately onward to Mrs.
Palmer's. Alice's own colour showed a little heightening as she
accepted the suggestion thus implied; nor was that emotional tint
in any wise decreased, a moment later, by an impression that
Walter, in concluding the brief exchange of courtesies between
himself and the stately Mr. Palmer, had again reassured himself
with a yawn.
But she did not speak of it to Walter; she preferred not to
confirm the impression and to leave in her mind a possible doubt
that he had done it. He followed her out upon the waxed floor,
said resignedly: "Well, come on," put his arm about her, and they
began to dance.
Alice danced gracefully and well, but not so well as Walter. Of
all the steps and runs, of all the whimsical turns and twirlings,
of all the rhythmic swayings and dips commanded that season by
such blarings as were the barbaric product, loud and wild, of the
Jazz Louies and their half-breed bunches, the thin and sallow
youth was a master. Upon his face could be seen contempt of the
easy marvels he performed as he moved in swift precision from one
smooth agility to another; and if some too-dainty or jealous
cavalier complained that to be so much a stylist in dancing was
"not quite like a gentleman," at least Walter's style was what
the music called for. No other dancer in the room could be
thought comparable to him. Alice told him so.
"It's wonderful!" she said. "And the mystery is, where you ever
learned to DO it! You never went to dancing-school, but there
isn't a man in the room who can dance half so well. I don't see
why, when you dance like this, you always make such a fuss about
coming to parties."
He sounded his brief laugh, a jeering bark out of one side of the
mouth, and swung her miraculously through a closing space between
two other couples. "You know a lot about what goes on, don't
you? You prob'ly think there's no other place to dance in this
town except these frozen-face joints."
"'Frozen face?' " she echoed, laughing. "Why, everybody's having
a splendid time. Look at them."
"Oh, they holler loud enough," he said. "They do it to make each
other think they're havin' a good time. You don't call that
Palmer family frozen-face berries, I s'pose. No?"
"Certainly not. They're just dignified and----"
"Yeuh!" said Walter. "They're dignified, 'specially when you
tried to whisper to Mildred to show how IN with her you were, and
she moved you on that way. SHE'S a hot friend, isn't she!"
"She didn't mean anything by it. She----"
"Ole Palmer's a hearty, slap you-on-the-back ole berry," Walter
interrupted; adding in a casual tone, "All I'd like, I'd like to
hit him."
"Walter! By the way, you mustn't forget to ask Mildred for a
dance before the evening is over."
"Me?" He produced the lop-sided appearance of his laugh, but
without making it vocal. "You watch me do it!"
"She probably won't have one left, but you must ask her, anyway."
"Why must I?"
"Because, in the first place, you're supposed to, and, in the
second place, she's my most intimate friend."
"Yeuh? Is she? I've heard you pull that 'most- intimate-friend'
stuff often enough about her. What's SHE ever do to show she
is?"
"Never mind. You really must ask her, Walter. I want you to;
and I want you to ask several other girls afterwhile; I'll tell
you who."
"Keep on wanting; it'll do you good."
"Oh, but you really----"
"Listen!" he said. "I'm just as liable to dance with any of
these fairies as I am to buy a bucket o' rusty tacks and eat 'em.
Forget it! Soon as I get rid of you I'm goin' back to that room
where I left my hat and overcoat and smoke myself to death."
"Well," she said, a little ruefully, as the frenzy of Jazz Louie
and his half-breeds was suddenly abated to silence, "you
mustn't--you mustn't get rid of me TOO soon, Walter."
They stood near one of the wide doorways, remaining where they
had stopped. Other couples, everywhere, joined one another,
forming vivacious clusters, but none of these groups adopted the
brother and sister, nor did any one appear to be hurrying in
Alice's direction to ask her for the next dance. She looked
about her, still maintaining that jubilance of look and manner
she felt so necessary-- for it is to the girls who are "having a
good time" that partners are attracted--and, in order to lend
greater colour to her impersonation of a lively belle, she began
to chatter loudly, bringing into play an accompaniment of
frolicsome gesture. She brushed Walter's nose saucily with the
bunch of violets in her hand, tapped him on the shoulder, shook
her pretty forefinger in his face, flourished her arms, kept her
shoulders moving, and laughed continuously as she spoke.
"You NAUGHTY old Walter!" she cried. "AREN'T you ashamed to be
such a wonderful dancer and then only dance with your own little
sister! You could dance on the stage if you wanted to. Why, you
could made your FORTUNE that way! Why don't you? Wouldn't it be
just lovely to have all the rows and rows of people clapping
their hands and shouting, 'Hurrah! Hurrah, for Walter Adams!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"
He stood looking at her in stolid pity.
"Cut it out," he said. "You better be givin' some of these
berries the eye so they'll ask you to dance."
She was not to be so easily checked, and laughed loudly,
flourishing her violets in his face again. "You WOULD like it;
you know you would; you needn't pretend! Just think! A whole
big audience shouting, 'Hurrah! HURRAH! HUR----'"
"The place'll be pulled if you get any noisier," he interrupted,
not ungently. "Besides, I'm no muley cow."
"A 'COW?' " she laughed. "What on earth----"
"I can't eat dead violets," he explained. "So don't keep tryin'
to make me do it."
This had the effect he desired, and subdued her; she abandoned
her unsisterly coquetries, and looked beamingly about her, but
her smile was more mechanical than it had been at first.
At home she had seemed beautiful; but here, where the other girls
competed, things were not as they had been there, with only her
mother and Miss Perry to give contrast. These crowds of other
girls had all done their best, also, to look beautiful, though
not one of them had worked so hard for such a consummation as
Alice had. They did not need to; they did not need to get their
mothers to make old dresses over; they did not need to hunt
violets in the rain.
At home her dress had seemed beautiful; but that was different,
too, where there were dozens of brilliant fabrics, fashioned in
new ways--some of these new ways startling, which only made the
wearers centers of interest and shocked no one. And Alice
remembered that she had heard a girl say, not long before, "Oh,
ORGANDIE! Nobody wears organdie for evening gowns except in
midsummer." Alice had thought little of this; but as she looked
about her and saw no organdie except her own, she found greater
difficulty in keeping her smile as arch and spontaneous as she
wished it. In fact, it was beginning to make her face ache a
little.
Mildred came in from the corridor, heavily attended. She carried
a great bouquet of violets laced with lilies of-the-valley; and
the violets were lusty, big purple things, their stems wrapped in
cloth of gold, with silken cords dependent, ending in long
tassels. She and her convoy passed near the two young Adamses;
and it appeared that one of the convoy besought his hostess to
permit "cutting in"; they were "doing it other places" of late,
he urged; but he was denied and told to console himself by
holding the bouquet, at intervals, until his third of the
sixteenth dance should come. Alice looked dubiously at her own
bouquet.
Suddenly she felt that the violets betrayed her; that any one who
looked at them could see how rustic, how innocent of any
florist's craft they were "I can't eat dead violets," Walter
said. The little wild flowers, dying indeed in the warm air,
were drooping in a forlorn mass; and it seemed to her that
whoever noticed them would guess that she had picked them
herself. She decided to get rid of them.
Walter was becoming restive. "Look here!" he said. "Can't you
flag one o' these long-tailed birds to take you on for the next
dance? You came to have a good time; why don't you get busy and
have it? I want to get out and smoke."
"You MUSTN'T leave me, Walter," she whispered, hastily.
"Somebody'll come for me before long, but until they do----"
"Well, couldn't you sit somewhere?"
"No, no! There isn't any one I could sit with."
"Well, why not? Look at those ole dames in the corners. What's
the matter your tyin' up with some o' them for a while?"
"PLEASE, Walter; no!"
In fact, that indomitable smile of hers was the more difficult to
maintain because of these very elders to whom Walter referred.
They were mothers of girls among the dancers, and they were there
to fend and contrive for their offspring; to keep them in
countenance through any trial; to lend them diplomacy in the
carrying out of all enterprises; to be "background" for them; and
in these essentially biological functionings to imitate their own
matings and renew the excitement of their nuptial periods. Older
men, husbands of these ladies and fathers of eligible girls, were
also to be seen, most of them with Mr. Palmer in a billiard-room
across the corridor. Mr. and Mrs. Adams had not been invited.
"Of course papa and mama just barely know Mildred Palmer," Alice
thought, "and most of the other girls' fathers and mothers are
old friends of Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, but I do think she might
have ASKED papa and mama, anyway--she needn't have been afraid
just to ask them; she knew they couldn't come." And her smiling
lip twitched a little threateningly, as she concluded the silent
monologue. "I suppose she thinks I ought to be glad enough she
asked Walter!"
Walter was, in fact, rather noticeable. He was not Mildred's
only guest to wear a short coat and to appear without gloves; but
he was singular (at least in his present surroundings) on account
of a kind of coiffuring he favoured, his hair having been shaped
after what seemed a Mongol inspiration. Only upon the top of the
head was actual hair perceived, the rest appearing to be nudity.
And even more than by any difference in mode he was set apart by
his look and manner, in which there seemed to be a brooding,
secretive and jeering superiority and this was most vividly
expressed when he felt called upon for his loud, short, lop-sided
laugh. Whenever he uttered it Alice laughed, too, as loudly as
she could, to cover it.
"Well," he said. "How long we goin' to stand here? My feet are
sproutin' roots."
Alice took his arm, and they began to walk aimlessly through the
rooms, though she tried to look as if they had a definite
destination, keeping her eyes eager and her lips parted;--people
had called jovially to them from the distance, she meant to
imply, and they were going to join these merry friends. She was
still upon this ghostly errand when a furious outbreak of drums
and saxophones sounded a prelude for the second dance.
Walter danced with her again, but he gave her a warning. "I
don't want to leave you high and dry," he told her, "but I can't
stand it. I got to get somewhere I don't haf' to hurt my eyes
with these berries; I'll go blind if I got to look at any more of
'em. I'm goin' out to smoke as soon as the music begins the next
time, and you better get fixed for it."
Alice tried to get fixed for it. As they danced she nodded
sunnily to every man whose eye she caught, smiled her smile with
the under lip caught between her teeth; but it was not until the
end of the intermission after the dance that she saw help coming.
Across the room sat the globular lady she had encountered that
morning, and beside the globular lady sat a round-headed,
round-bodied girl; her daughter, at first glance. The family
contour was also as evident a characteristic of the short young
man who stood in front of Mrs. Dowling, engaged with her in a
discussion which was not without evidences of an earnestness
almost impassioned. Like Walter, he was declining to dance a
third time with sister; he wished to go elsewhere.
Alice from a sidelong eye watched the controversy: she saw the
globular young man glance toward her, over his shoulder;
whereupon Mrs. Dowling, following this glance, gave Alice a look
of open fury, became much more vehement in the argument, and even
struck her knee with a round, fat fist for emphasis.
"I'm on my way," said Walter. "There's the music startin' up
again, and I told you----"
She nodded gratefully. "It's all right--but come back before
long, Walter."
The globular young man, red with annoyance, had torn himself from
his family and was hastening across the room to her. "C'n I have
this dance?"
"Why, you nice Frank Dowling!" Alice cried. "How lovely!"
CHAPTER VII
They danced. Mr. Dowling should have found other forms of
exercise and pastime.
Nature has not designed everyone for dancing, though sometimes
those she has denied are the last to discover her niggardliness.
But the round young man was at least vigorous enough--too much
so, when his knees collided with Alice's--and he was too sturdy
to be thrown off his feet, himself, or to allow his partner to
fall when he tripped her. He held her up valiantly, and
continued to beat a path through the crowd of other dancers by
main force.
He paid no attention to anything suggested by the efforts of the
musicians, and appeared to be unaware that there should have been
some connection between what they were doing and what he was
doing; but he may have listened to other music of his own, for
his expression was of high content; he seemed to feel no doubt
whatever that he was dancing. Alice kept as far away from him as
under the circumstances she could; and when they stopped she
glanced down, and found the execution of unseen manoeuvres,
within the protection of her skirt, helpful to one of her insteps
and to the toes of both of her slippers.
Her cheery partner was paddling his rosy brows with a fine
handkerchief. "That was great!" he said. "Let's go out and sit
in the corridor; they've got some comfortable chairs out there."
"Well--let's not," she returned. "I believe I'd rather stay in
here and look at the crowd."
"No; that isn't it," he said, chiding her with a waggish
forefinger. "You think if you go out there you'll miss a chance
of someone else asking you for the next dance, and so you'll have
to give it to me."
"How absurd!" Then, after a look about her that revealed nothing
encouraging, she added graciously, "You can have the next if you
want it."
"Great!" he exclaimed, mechanically. "Now let's get out of
here--out of THIS room, anyhow."
"Why? What's the matter with----"
"My mother," Mr. Dowling explained. "But don't look at her.
She keeps motioning me to come and see after Ella, and I'm simply
NOT going to do it, you see!"
Alice laughed. "I don't believe it's so much that," she said,
and consented to walk with him to a point in the next room from
which Mrs. Dowling's continuous signalling could not be seen.
"Your mother hates me."
"Oh, no; I wouldn't say that. No, she don't," he protested,
innocently. "She don't know you more than just to speak to, you
see. So how could she?"
"Well, she does. I can tell."
A frown appeared upon his rounded brow. "No; I'll tell you the
way she feels. It's like this: Ella isn't TOO popular, you
know--it's hard to see why, because she's a right nice girl, in
her way--and mother thinks I ought to look after her, you see.
She thinks I ought to dance a whole lot with her myself, and stir
up other fellows to dance with her--it's simply impossible to
make mother understand you CAN'T do that, you see. And then
about me, you see, if she had her way I wouldn't get to dance
with anybody at all except girls like Mildred Palmer and
Henrietta Lamb. Mother wants to run my whole programme for me,
you understand, but the trouble of it is--about girls like that,
you see well, I couldn't do what she wants, even if I wanted to
myself, because you take those girls, and by the time I get Ella
off my hands for a minute, why, their dances are always every
last one taken, and where do I come in?"
Alice nodded, her amiability undamaged. "I see. So that's why
you dance with me."
"No, I like to," he protested. "I rather dance with you than I
do with those girls." And he added with a retrospective
determination which showed that he had been through quite an
experience with Mrs. Dowling in this matter. "I TOLD mother I
would, too!"
"Did it take all your courage, Frank?"
He looked at her shrewdly. "Now you're trying to tease me," he
said. "I don't care; I WOULD rather dance with you! In the
first place, you're a perfectly beautiful dancer, you see, and in
the second, a man feels a lot more comfortable with you than he
does with them. Of course I know almost all the other fellows
get along with those girls all right; but I don't waste any time
on 'em I don't have to. _I_ like people that are always cordial
to everybody, you see--the way you are."
"Thank you," she said, thoughtfully.
"Oh, I MEAN it," he insisted. "There goes the band again. Shall
we?"
"Suppose we sit it out?" she suggested. "I believe I'd like to
go out in the corridor, after all--it's pretty warm in here."
Assenting cheerfully, Dowling conducted her to a pair of
easy-chairs within a secluding grove of box- trees, and when they
came to this retreat they found Mildred Palmer just departing,
under escort of a well-favoured gentleman about thirty. As these
two walked slowly away, in the direction of the dancing- floor,
they left it not to be doubted that they were on excellent terms
with each other; Mildred was evidently willing to make their
progress even slower, for she halted momentarily, once or twice;
and her upward glances to her tall companion's face were of a
gentle, almost blushing deference. Never before had Alice seen
anything like this in her friend's manner.
"How queer!" she murmured.
"What's queer?" Dowling inquired as they sat down.
"Who was that man?"
"Haven't you met him?"
"I never saw him before. Who is he?"
"Why, it's this Arthur Russell."
"What Arthur Russell? I never heard of him." Mr. Dowling was
puzzled. "Why, THAT'S funny! Only the last time I saw you, you
were telling me how awfully well you knew Mildred Palmer."
"Why, certainly I do," Alice informed him. "She's my most
intimate friend."
"That's what makes it seem so funny you haven't heard anything
about this Russell, because everybody says even if she isn't
engaged to him right now, she most likely will be before very
long. I must say it looks a good deal that way to me, myself."
"What nonsense!" Alice exclaimed. "She's never even mentioned
him to me."
The young man glanced at her dubiously and passed a finger over
the tiny prong that dashingly composed the whole substance of his
moustache.
"Well, you see, Mildred IS pretty reserved," he remarked. "This
Russell is some kind of cousin of the Palmer family, I
understand."
"He is?"
"Yes--second or third or something, the girls say. You see, my
sister Ella hasn't got much to do at home, and don't read
anything, or sew, or play solitaire, you see; and she hears about
pretty much everything that goes on, you see. Well, Ella says a
lot of the girls have been talking about Mildred and this Arthur
Russell for quite a while back, you see. They were all wondering
what he was going to look like, you see; because he only got here
yesterday; and that proves she must have been talking to some of
'em, or else how----"
Alice laughed airily, but the pretty sound ended abruptly with an
audible intake of breath. "Of course, while Mildred IS my most
intimate friend," she said, "I don't mean she tells me
everything--and naturally she has other friends besides. What
else did your sister say she told them about this Mr. Russell?"
"Well, it seems he's VERY well off; at least Henrietta Lamb told
Ella he was. Ella says----"
Alice interrupted again, with an increased irritability. "Oh,
never mind what Ella says! Let's find something better to talk
about than Mr. Russell!"
"Well, I'M willing," Mr. Dowling assented, ruefully. "What you
want to talk about?"
But this liberal offer found her unresponsive; she sat leaning
back, silent, her arms along the arms of her chair, and her eyes,
moist and bright, fixed upon a wide doorway where the dancers
fluctuated. She was disquieted by more than Mildred's reserve,
though reserve so marked had certainly the significance of a
warning that Alice's definition, "my most intimate friend,"
lacked sanction. Indirect notice to this effect could not well
have been more emphatic, but the sting of it was left for a later
moment. Something else preoccupied Alice: she had just been
surprised by an odd experience. At first sight of this Mr.
Arthur Russell, she had said to herself instantly, in words as
definite as if she spoke them aloud, though they seemed more like
words spoken to her by some unknown person within her: "There!
That's exactly the kind of looking man I'd like to marry!"
In the eyes of the restless and the longing, Providence often
appears to be worse than inscrutable: an unreliable Omnipotence
given to haphazard whimsies in dealing with its own creatures,
choosing at random some among them to be rent with tragic
deprivations and others to be petted with blessing upon blessing.
In Alice's eyes, Mildred had been blessed enough; something ought
to be left over, by this time, for another girl. The final touch
to the heaping perfection of Christmas-in-everything for Mildred
was that this Mr. Arthur Russell, good-looking, kind- looking,
graceful, the perfect fiance, should be also "VERY well off." Of
course! These rich always married one another. And while the
Mildreds danced with their Arthur Russells the best an outsider
could do for herself was to sit with Frank Dowling--the one last
course left her that was better than dancing with him.
"Well, what DO you want to talk about?" he inquired.
"Nothing," she said. "Suppose we just sit, Frank." But a moment
later she remembered something, and, with a sudden animation,
began to prattle. She pointed to the musicians down the
corridor. "Oh, look at them! Look at the leader! Aren't they
FUNNY? Someone told me they're called 'Jazz Louie and his
half-breed bunch.' Isn't that just crazy? Don't you love it? Do
watch them, Frank."
She continued to chatter, and, while thus keeping his glance away
from herself, she detached the forlorn bouquet of dead violets
from her dress and laid it gently beside the one she had carried.
The latter already reposed in the obscurity selected for it at
the base of one of the box-trees.
Then she was abruptly silent.
"You certainly are a funny girl," Dowling remarked. "You say you
don't want to talk about anything at all, and all of a sudden you
break out and talk a blue streak; and just about the time I begin
to get interested in what you're saying you shut off! What's the
matter with girls, anyhow, when they do things like that?"
"I don't know; we're just queer, I guess."
"I say so! Well, what'll we do NOW? Talk, or just sit?"
"Suppose we just sit some more." ,
"Anything to oblige," he assented. "I'm willing to sit as long
as you like."
But even as he made his amiability clear in this matter, the
peace was threatened--his mother came down the corridor like a
rolling, ominous cloud. She was looking about her on all sides,
in a fidget of annoyance, searching for him, and to his dismay
she saw him. She immediately made a horrible face at his
companion, beckoned to him imperiously with a dumpy arm, and
shook her head reprovingly. The unfortunate young man tried to
repulse her with an icy stare, but this effort having obtained
little to encourage his feeble hope of driving her away, he
shifted his chair so that his back was toward her discomfiting
pantomime. He should have known better, the instant result was
Mrs. Dowling in motion at an impetuous waddle.
She entered the box-tree seclusion with the lower rotundities of
her face hastily modelled into the resemblance of an
over-benevolent smile a contortion which neglected to spread its
intended geniality upward to the exasperated eyes and anxious
forehead.
"I think your mother wants to speak to you, Frank," Alice said,
upon this advent.
Mrs. Dowling nodded to her. "Good evening, Miss Adams," she
said. "I just thought as you and Frank weren't dancing you
wouldn't mind my disturbing you----"
"Not at all," Alice murmured.
Mr. Dowling seemed of a different mind. "Well, what DO you
want?" he inquired, whereupon his mother struck him roguishly
with her fan.
"Bad fellow!" She turned to Alice. "I'm sure you won't mind
excusing him to let him do something for his old mother, Miss
Adams."
"What DO you want?" the son repeated.
"Two very nice things," Mrs. Dowling informed him. "Everybody
is so anxious for Henrietta Lamb to have a pleasant evening,
because it's the very first time she's been anywhere since her
father's death, and of course her dear grandfather's an old
friend of ours, and----"
"Well, well!" her son interrupted. "Miss Adams isn't interested
in all this, mother."
"But Henrietta came to speak to Ella and me, and I told her you
were so anxious to dance with her----"
"Here!" he cried. "Look here! I'd rather do my own----"
"Yes; that's just it," Mrs. Dowling explained. "I just thought
it was such a good opportunity; and Henrietta said she had most
of her dances taken, but she'd give you one if you asked her
before they were all gone. So I thought you'd better see her as
soon as possible."
Dowling's face had become rosy. "I refuse to do anything of the
kind."
"Bad fellow!" said his mother, gaily. "I thought this would be
the best time for you to see Henrietta, because it won't be long
till all her dances are gone, and you've promised on your WORD to
dance the next with Ella, and you mightn't have a chance to do it
then. I'm sure Miss Adams won't mind if you----"
"Not at all," Alice said.
"Well, _I_ mind!" he said. "I wish you COULD understand that
when I want to dance with any girl I don't need my mother to ask
her for me. I really AM more than six years old!"
He spoke with too much vehemence, and Mrs. Dowling at once saw
how to have her way. As with husbands and wives, so with many
fathers and daughters, and so with some sons and mothers: the man
will himself be cross in public and think nothing of it, nor will
he greatly mind a little crossness on the part of the woman; but
let her show agitation before any spectator, he is instantly
reduced to a coward's slavery. Women understand that ancient
weakness, of course; for it is one of their most important means
of defense, but can be used ignobly.
Mrs. Dowling permitted a tremulousness to become audible in her
voice. "It isn't very--very pleasant --to be talked to like that
by your own son--before strangers!"
"Oh, my! Look here!" the stricken Dowling protested. "_I_
didn't say anything, mother. I was just joking about how you
never get over thinking I'm a little boy. I only----"
Mrs. Dowling continued: "I just thought I was doing you a little
favour. I didn't think it would make you so angry."
"Mother, for goodness' sake! Miss Adams'll think----"
"I suppose," Mrs. Dowling interrupted, piteously, "I suppose it
doesn't matter what _I_ think!"
"Oh, gracious!"
Alice interfered; she perceived that the ruthless Mrs. Dowling
meant to have her way. "I think you'd better go, Frank.
Really."
"There!" his mother cried. "Miss Adams says so, herself! What
more do you want?"
"Oh, gracious!" he lamented again, and, with a sick look over his
shoulder at Alice, permitted his mother to take his arm and
propel him away. Mrs. Dowling's spirits had strikingly
recovered even before the pair passed from the corridor: she
moved almost bouncingly beside her embittered son, and her eyes
and all the convolutions of her abundant face were blithe.
Alice went in search of Walter, but without much hope of finding
him. What he did with himself at frozen-face dances was one of
his most successful mysteries, and her present excursion gave her
no clue leading to its solution. When the musicians again
lowered their instruments for an interval she had returned,
alone, to her former seat within the partial shelter of the
box-trees.
She had now to practice an art that affords but a limited variety
of methods, even to the expert: the art of seeming to have an
escort or partner when there is none. The practitioner must
imply, merely by expression and attitude, that the supposed
companion has left her for only a few moments, that she herself
has sent him upon an errand; and, if possible, the minds of
observers must be directed toward a conclusion that this errand
of her devising is an amusing one; at all events, she is alone
temporarily and of choice, not deserted. She awaits a devoted
man who may return at any instant.
Other people desired to sit in Alice's nook, but discovered her
in occupancy. She had moved the vacant chair closer to her own,
and she sat with her arm extended so that her hand, holding her
lace kerchief, rested upon the back of this second chair,
claiming it. Such a preemption, like that of a traveller's bag
in the rack, was unquestionable; and, for additional evidence,
sitting with her knees crossed, she kept one foot continuously
moving a little, in cadence with the other, which tapped the
floor. Moreover, she added a fine detail: her half-smile, with
the under lip caught, seemed to struggle against repression, as
if she found the service engaging her absent companion even more
amusing than she would let him see when he returned: there was
jovial intrigue of some sort afoot, evidently. Her eyes, beaming
with secret fun, were averted from intruders, but sometimes, when
couples approached, seeking possession of the nook, her thoughts
about the absentee appeared to threaten her with outright
laughter; and though one or two girls looked at her skeptically,
as they turned away, their escorts felt no such doubts, and
merely wondered what importantly funny affair Alice Adams was
engaged in. She had learned to do it perfectly.
She had learned it during the last two years; she was twenty when
for the first time she had the shock of finding herself without
an applicant for one of her dances. When she was sixteen "all
the nice boys in town," as her mother said, crowded the Adamses'
small veranda and steps, or sat near by, cross-legged on the
lawn, on summer evenings; and at eighteen she had replaced the
boys with "the older men." By this time most of "the other
girls," her contemporaries, were away at school or college, and
when they came home to stay, they "came out"--that feeble revival
of an ancient custom offering the maiden to the ceremonial
inspection of the tribe. Alice neither went away nor "came out,"
and, in contrast with those who did, she may have seemed to lack
freshness of lustre--jewels are richest when revealed all new in
a white velvet box. And Alice may have been too eager to secure
new retainers, too kind in her efforts to keep the old ones. She
had been a belle too soon.
CHAPTER VIII
The device of the absentee partner has the defect that it cannot
be employed for longer than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and
it may not be repeated more than twice in one evening: a single
repetition, indeed, is weak, and may prove a betrayal. Alice
knew that her present performance could be effective during only
this interval between dances; and though her eyes were guarded,
she anxiously counted over the partnerless young men who lounged
together in the doorways within her view. Every one of them
ought to have asked her for dances, she thought, and although she
might have been put to it to give a reason why any of them
"ought," her heart was hot with resentment against them.
For a girl who has been a belle, it is harder to live through
these bad times than it is for one who has never known anything
better. Like a figure of painted and brightly varnished wood,
Ella Dowling sat against the wall through dance after dance with
glassy imperturbability; it was easier to be wooden, Alice
thought, if you had your mother with you, as Ella had. You were
left with at least the shred of a pretense that you came to sit
with your mother as a spectator, and not to offer yourself to be
danced with by men who looked you over and rejected you--not for
the first time. "Not for the first time": there lay a sting!
Why had you thought this time might be different from the other
times? Why had you broken your back picking those hundreds of
violets?
Hating the fatuous young men in the doorways more bitterly for
every instant that she had to maintain her tableau, the smiling
Alice knew fierce impulses to spring to her feet and shout at
them, "You IDIOTS!" Hands in pockets, they lounged against the
pilasters, or faced one another, laughing vaguely, each one of
them seeming to Alice no more than so much mean beef in clothes.
She wanted to tell them they were no better than that; and it
seemed a cruel thing of heaven to let them go on believing
themselves young lords. They were doing nothing, killing time.
Wasn't she at her lowest value at least a means of killing time?
Evidently the mean beeves thought not. And when one of them
finally lounged across the corridor and spoke to her, he was the
very one to whom she preferred her loneliness.
"Waiting for somebody, Lady Alicia?" he asked, negligently; and
his easy burlesque of her name was like the familiarity of the
rest of him. He was one of those full-bodied, grossly handsome
men who are powerful and active, but never submit themselves to
the rigour of becoming athletes, though they shoot and fish from
expensive camps. Gloss is the most shining outward mark of the
type. Nowadays these men no longer use brilliantine on their
moustaches, but they have gloss bought from manicure-girls, from
masseurs, and from automobile-makers; and their eyes, usually
large, are glossy. None of this is allowed to interfere with
business; these are "good business men," and often make large
fortunes. They are men of imagination about two things--women
and money, and, combining their imaginings about both, usually
make a wise first marriage. Later, however, they are apt to
imagine too much about some little woman without whom life seems
duller than need be. They run away, leaving the first wife well
enough dowered. They are never intentionally unkind to women,
and in the end they usually make the mistake of thinking they
have had their money's worth of life. Here was Mr. Harvey
Malone, a young specimen in an earlier stage of development,
trying to marry Henrietta Lamb, and now sauntering over to speak
to Alice, as a time-killer before his next dance with Henrietta.
Alice made no response to his question, and he dropped lazily
into the vacant chair, from which she sharply withdrew her hand.
"I might as well use his chair till he comes, don't you think?
You don't MIND, do you, old girl?"
"Oh, no," Alice said. "It doesn't matter one way or the other.
Please don't call me that."
"So that's how you feel?" Mr. Malone laughed indulgently,
without much interest. "I've been meaning to come to see you for
a long time honestly I have--because I wanted to have a good talk
with you about old times. I know you think it was funny, after
the way I used to come to your house two or three times a week,
and sometimes oftener--well, I don't blame you for being hurt,
the way I stopped without explaining or anything. The truth is
there wasn't any reason: I just happened to have a lot of
important things to do and couldn't find the time. But I AM
going to call on you some evening--honestly I am. I don't wonder
you think----"
"You're mistaken," Alice said. "I've never thought anything
about it at all."
"Well, well!" he said, and looked at her languidly. "What's the
use of being cross with this old man? He always means well."
And, extending his arm, he would have given her a friendly pat
upon the shoulder but she evaded it. "Well, well!" he said.
"Seems to me you're getting awful tetchy! Don't you like your
old friends any more?"
"Not all of them."
"Who's the new one?" he asked, teasingly. "Come on and tell us,
Alice. Who is it you were holding this chair for?"
"Never mind."
"Well, all I've got to do is to sit here till he comes back; then
I'll see who it is."
"He may not come back before you have to go."
"Guess you got me THAT time," Malone admitted, laughing as he
rose. "They're tuning up, and I've got this dance. I AM coming
around to see you some evening." He moved away, calling back
over his shoulder, "Honestly, I am!"
Alice did not look at him,
She had held her tableau as long as she could; it was time for
her to abandon the box-trees; and she stepped forth frowning, as
if a little annoyed with the absentee for being such a time upon
her errand; whereupon the two chairs were instantly seized by a
coquetting pair who intended to "sit out" the dance. She walked
quickly down the broad corridor, turned into the broader hall,
and hurriedly entered the dressing-room where she had left her
wraps.
She stayed here as long as she could, pretending to arrange her
hair at a mirror, then fidgeting with one of her slipper-buckles;
but the intelligent elderly woman in charge of the room made an
indefinite sojourn impracticable. "Perhaps I could help you with
that buckle, Miss," she suggested, approaching. "Has it come
loose?" Alice wrenched desperately; then it was loose. The
competent woman, producing needle and thread, deftly made the
buckle fast; and there was nothing for Alice to do but to express
her gratitude and go.
She went to the door of the cloak-room opposite, where a coloured
man stood watchfully in the doorway. "I wonder if you know which
of the gentlemen is my brother, Mr. Walter Adams," she said.
"Yes'm; I know him."
"Could you tell me where he is?"
"No'm; I couldn't say."
"Well, if you see him, would you please tell him that his sister,
Miss Adams, is looking for him and very anxious to speak to him?"
"Yes'm. Sho'ly, sho'ly!"
As she went away he stared after her and seemed to swell with
some bursting emotion. In fact, it was too much for him, and he
suddenly retired within the room, releasing strangulated
laughter.
Walter remonstrated. Behind an excellent screen of coats and
hats, in a remote part of the room, he was kneeling on the floor,
engaged in a game of chance with a second coloured attendant; and
the laughter became so vehement that it not only interfered with
the pastime in hand, but threatened to attract frozen-face
attention.
"I cain' he'p it, man," the laughter explained. "I cain' he'p
it! You sut'n'y the beatin'es' white boy 'n 'is city!"
The dancers were swinging into an "encore" as Alice halted for an
irresolute moment in a doorway. Across the room, a cluster of
matrons sat chatting absently, their eyes on their dancing
daughters; and Alice, finding a refugee's courage, dodged through
the scurrying couples, seated herself in a chair on the outskirts
of this colony of elders, and began to talk eagerly to the matron
nearest her. The matron seemed unaccustomed to so much vivacity,
and responded but dryly, whereupon Alice was more vivacious than
ever; for she meant now to present the picture of a jolly girl
too much interested in these wise older women to bother about
every foolish young man who asked her for a dance.
Her matron was constrained to go so far as to supply a tolerant
nod, now and then, in complement to the girl's animation, and
Alice was grateful for the nods. In this fashion she
supplemented the exhausted resources of the dressing-room and the
box-tree nook; and lived through two more dances, when again Mr.
Frank Dowling presented himself as a partner.
She needed no pretense to seek the dressing-room for repairs
after that number; this time they were necessary and genuine.
Dowling waited for her, and when she came out he explained for
the fourth or fifth time how the accident had happened. "It was
entirely those other people's fault," he said. "They got me in a
kind of a corner, because neither of those fellows knows the
least thing about guiding; they just jam ahead and expect
everybody to get out of their way. It was Charlotte Thom's
diamond crescent pin that got caught on your dress in the back
and made such a----"
"Never mind," Alice said in a tired voice. "The maid fixed it so
that she says it isn't very noticeable."
"Well, it isn't," he returned. "You could hardly tell there'd
been anything the matter. Where do you want to go? Mother's
been interfering in my affairs some more and I've got the next
taken."
"I was sitting with Mrs. George Dresser. You might take me back
there."
He left her with the matron, and Alice returned to her
picture-making, so that once more, while two numbers passed,
whoever cared to look was offered the sketch of a jolly, clever
girl preoccupied with her elders. Then she found her friend
Mildred standing before her, presenting Mr. Arthur Russell, who
asked her to dance with him.
Alice looked uncertain, as though not sure what her engagements
were; but her perplexity cleared; she nodded, and swung
rhythmically away with the tall applicant. She was not grateful
to her hostess for this alms. What a young hostess does with a
fiance, Alice thought, is to make him dance with the unpopular
girls. She supposed that Mr. Arthur Russell had already danced
with Ella Dowling.
The loan of a lover, under these circumstances, may be painful to
the lessee, and Alice, smiling never more brightly, found nothing
to say to Mr. Russell, though she thought he might have found
something to say to her. "I wonder what Mildred told him," she
thought. "Probably she said, 'Dearest, there's one more girl
you've got to help me out with. You wouldn't like her much, but
she dances well enough and she's having a rotten time. Nobody
ever goes near her any more.'"
When the music stopped, Russell added his applause to the
hand-clapping that encouraged the uproarious instruments to
continue, and as they renewed the tumult, he said heartily,
"That's splendid!"
Alice gave him a glance, necessarily at short range, and found
his eyes kindly and pleased. Here was a friendly soul, it
appeared, who probably "liked everybody." No doubt he had
applauded for an "encore" when he danced with Ella Dowling, gave
Ella the same genial look, and said, "That's splendid!"
When the "encore" was over, Alice spoke to him for the first
time.
"Mildred will be looking for you," she said. "I think you'd
better take me back to where you found me."
He looked surprised. "Oh, if you----"
"I'm sure Mildred will be needing you," Alice said, and as she
took his arm and they walked toward Mrs. Dresser, she thought it
might be just possible to make a further use of the loan. "Oh, I
wonder if you----" she began.
"Yes?" he said, quickly.
"You don't know my brother, Walter Adams," she said. "But he's
somewhere I think possibly he's in a smoking-room or some place
where girls aren't expected, and if you wouldn't think it too
much trouble to inquire----"
"I'll find him," Russell said, promptly. "Thank you so much for
that dance. I'll bring your brother in a moment."
It was to be a long moment, Alice decided, presently. Mrs.
Dresser had grown restive; and her nods and vague responses to
her young dependent's gaieties were as meager as they could well
be. Evidently the matron had no intention of appearing to her
world in the light of a chaperone for Alice Adams; and she
finally made this clear. With a word or two of excuse, breaking
into something Alice was saying, she rose and went to sit next to
Mildred's mother, who had become the nucleus of the cluster. So
Alice was left very much against the wall, with short stretches
of vacant chairs on each side of her. She had come to the end of
her picture-making, and could only pretend that there was
something amusing the matter with the arm of her chair.
She supposed that Mildred's Mr. Russell had forgotten Walter by
this time. "I'm not even an intimate enough friend of Mildred's
for him to have thought he ought to bother to tell me he couldn't
find him," she thought. And then she saw Russell coming across
the room toward her, with Walter beside him. She jumped up
gaily.
"Oh, thank you!" she cried. "I know this naughty boy must have
been terribly hard to find. Mildred'll NEVER forgive me! I've
put you to so much----"
"Not at all," he said, amiably, and went away, leaving the
brother and sister together.
"Walter, let's dance just once more," Alice said, touching his
arm placatively. "I thought--well, perhaps we might go home
then."
But Walter's expression was that of a person upon whom an outrage
has just been perpetrated. "No," he said. "We've stayed THIS
long, I'm goin' to wait and see what they got to eat. And you
look here!" He turned upon her angrily. "Don't you ever do that
again!"
"Do what?"
"Send somebody after me that pokes his nose into every corner of
the house till he finds me! 'Are you Mr. Walter Adams?' he
says. I guess he must asked everybody in the place if they were
Mr. Walter Adams! Well, I'll bet a few iron men you wouldn't
send anybody to hunt for me again if you knew where he found me!"
"Where was it?"
Walter decided that her fit punishment was to know. "I was
shootin' dice with those coons in the cloak-room."
"And he saw you?"
"Unless he was blind!" said Walter. "Come on, I'll dance this
one more dance with you. Supper comes after that, and THEN we'll
go home."
Mrs. Adams heard Alice's key turning in the front door and
hurried down the stairs to meet her.
"Did you get wet coming in, darling?" she asked. "Did you have a
good time?"
"Just lovely!" Alice said, cheerily, and after she had arranged
the latch for Walter, who had gone to return the little car, she
followed her mother upstairs and hummed a dance-tune on the way.
"Oh, I'm so glad you had a nice time," Mrs. Adams said, as they
reached the door of her daughter's room together. "You DESERVED
to, and it's lovely to think----"
But at this, without warning, Alice threw herself into her
mother's arms, sobbing so loudly that in his room, close by, her
father, half drowsing through the night, started to full
wakefulness.
CHAPTER IX
On a morning, a week after this collapse of festal hopes, Mrs.
Adams and her daughter were concluding a three-days' disturbance,
the "Spring house-cleaning"-- postponed until now by Adams's long
illness--and Alice, on her knees before a chest of drawers, in
her mother's room, paused thoughtfully after dusting a packet of
letters wrapped in worn muslin. She called to her mother, who
was scrubbing the floor of the hallway just beyond the open door,
"These old letters you had in the bottom drawer, weren't they
some papa wrote you before you were married?"
Mrs. Adams laughed and said, "Yes. Just put 'em back where they
were--or else up in the attic-- anywhere you want to."
"Do you mind if I read one, mama?"
Mrs. Adams laughed again. "Oh, I guess you can if you want to.
I expect they're pretty funny!"
Alice laughed in response, and chose the topmost letter of the
packet. "My dear, beautiful girl," it began; and she stared at
these singular words. They gave her a shock like that caused by
overhearing some bewildering impropriety; and, having read them
over to herself several times, she went on to experience other
shocks.
MY DEAR, BEAUTIFUL GIRL:
This time yesterday I had a mighty bad case of blues because I
had not had a word from you in two whole long days and when I do
not hear from you every day things look mighty down in the mouth
to me. Now it is all so different because your letter has
arrived and besides I have got a piece of news I believe you will
think as fine as I do. Darling, you will be surprised, so get
ready to hear about a big effect on our future. It is this way.
I had sort of a suspicion the head of the firm kind of took a
fancy to me from the first when I went in there, and liked the
way I attended to my work and so when he took me on this business
trip with him I felt pretty sure of it and now it turns out I was
about right. In return I guess I have got about the best boss in
this world and I believe you will think so too. Yes, sweetheart,
after the talk I have just had with him if J. A. Lamb asked me
to cut my hand off for him I guess I would come pretty near doing
it because what he says means the end of our waiting to be
together. From New Years on he is going to put me in entire
charge of the sundries dept. and what do you think is going to
be my salary? Eleven hundred cool dollars a year ($1,100.00).
That's all! Just only a cool eleven hundred per annum! Well, I
guess that will show your mother whether I can take care of you
or not. And oh how I would like to see your dear, beautiful,
loving face when you get this news.
I would like to go out on the public streets and just dance and
shout and it is all I can do to help doing it, especially when I
know we will be talking it all over together this time next week,
and oh my darling, now that your folks have no excuse for putting
it off any longer we might be in our own little home before Xmas.
Would you be glad?
Well, darling, this settles everything and makes our future just
about as smooth for us as anybody could ask. I can hardly
realize after all this waiting life's troubles are over for you
and me and we have nothing to do but to enjoy the happiness
granted us by this wonderful, beautiful thing we call life. I
know I am not any poet and the one I tried to write about you the
day of the picnic was fearful but the way I THINK about you is a
poem.
Write me what you think of the news. I know but write me anyhow.
I'll get it before we start home and I can be reading it over all
the time on the tram.
Your always loving
VIRGIL.
The sound of her mother's diligent scrubbing in the hall came
back slowly to Alice's hearing, as she restored the letter to the
packet, wrapped the packet in its muslin covering, and returned
it to the drawer. She had remained upon her knees while she read
the letter; now she sank backward, sitting upon the floor with
her hands behind her, an unconscious relaxing for better ease to
think. Upon her face there had fallen a look of wonder.
For the first time she was vaguely perceiving that life is
everlasting movement. Youth really believes what is running
water to be a permanent crystallization and sees time fixed to a
point: some people have dark hair, some people have blond hair,
some people have gray hair. Until this moment, Alice had no
conviction that there was a universe before she came into it.
She had always thought of it as the background of herself: the
moon was something to make her prettier on a summer night.
But this old letter, through which she saw still flickering an
ancient starlight of young love, astounded her. Faintly before
her it revealed the whole lives of her father and mother, who had
been young, after all--they REALLY had--and their youth was now
so utterly passed from them that the picture of it, in the
letter, was like a burlesque of them. And so she, herself, must
pass to such changes, too, and all that now seemed vital to her
would be nothing.
When her work was finished, that afternoon, she went into her
father's room. His recovery had progressed well enough to permit
the departure of Miss Perry; and Adams, wearing one of Mrs.
Adams's wrappers over his night-gown, sat in a high- backed chair
by a closed window. The weather was warm, but the closed window
and the flannel wrapper had not sufficed him: round his shoulders
he had an old crocheted scarf of Alice's; his legs were wrapped
in a heavy comfort; and, with these swathings about him, and his
eyes closed, his thin and grizzled head making but a slight
indentation in the pillow supporting it, he looked old and little
and queer.
Alice would have gone out softly, but without opening his eyes,
he spoke to her: "Don't go, dearie. Come sit with the old man a
little while."
She brought a chair near his. "I thought you were napping."
"No. I don't hardly ever do that. I just drift a little
sometimes."
"How do you mean you drift, papa?"
He looked at her vaguely. "Oh, I don't know. Kind of pictures.
They get a little mixed up--old times with times still ahead,
like planning what to do, you know. That's as near a nap as I
get-- when the pictures mix up some. I suppose it's sort of
drowsing."
She took one of his hands and stroked it. "What do you mean when
you say you have pictures like 'planning what to do'?" she asked.
"I mean planning what to do when I get out and able to go to work
again."
"But that doesn't need any planning," Alice said, quickly.
"You're going back to your old place at Lamb's, of course."
Adams closed his eyes again, sighing heavily, but made no other
response.
"Why, of COURSE you are!" she cried. "What are you talking
about?"
His head turned slowly toward her, revealing the eyes, open in a
haggard stare. "I heard you the other night when you came from
the party," he said. "I know what was the matter."
"Indeed, you don't," she assured him. "You don't know anything
about it, because there wasn't anything the matter at all."
"Don't you suppose I heard you crying? What'd you cry for if
there wasn't anything the matter?"
"Just nerves, papa. It wasn't anything else in the world."
"Never mind," he said. "Your mother told me."
"She promised me not to!"
At that Adams laughed mournfully. "It wouldn't be very likely
I'd hear you so upset and not ask about it, even if she didn't
come and tell me on her own hook. You needn't try to fool me; I
tell you I know what was the matter."
"The only matter was I had a silly fit," Alice protested. "It
did me good, too."
"How's that?"
"Because I've decided to do something about it, papa."
"That isn't the way your mother looks at it," Adams said,
ruefully. "She thinks it's our place to do something about it.
Well, I don't know--I don't know; everything seems so changed
these days. You've always been a good daughter, Alice, and you
ought to have as much as any of these girls you go with; she's
convinced me she's right about THAT. The trouble is----" He
faltered, apologetically, then went on, "I mean the question
is--how to get it for you."
"No!" she cried. "I had no business to make such a fuss just
because a lot of idiots didn't break their necks to get dances
with me and because I got mortified about Walter--Walter WAS
pretty terrible----"
"Oh, me, my!" Adams lamented. "I guess that's something we just
have to leave work out itself. What you going to do with a boy
nineteen or twenty years old that makes his own living? Can't
whip him. Can't keep him locked up in the house. Just got to
hope he'll learn better, I suppose."
"Of course he didn't want to go to the Palmers'," Alice
explained, tolerantly--"and as mama and I made him take me, and
he thought that was pretty selfish in me, why, he felt he had a
right to amuse himself any way he could. Of course it was awful
that this--that this Mr. Russell should----" In spite of her,
the recollection choked her.
"Yes, it was awful," Adams agreed. "Just awful. Oh, me, my!"
But Alice recovered herself at once, and showed him a cheerful
face. "Well, just a few years from now I probably won't even
remember it! I believe hardly anything amounts to as much as we
think it does at the time."
"Well--sometimes it don't."
"What I've been thinking, papa: it seems to me I ought to DO
something."
"What like?"
She looked dreamy, but was obviously serious as she told him:
"Well, I mean I ought to be something besides just a kind of
nobody. I ought to----" She paused.
"What, dearie?"
"Well--there's one thing I'd like to do. I'm sure I COULD do it,
too."
"What?"
"I want to go on the stage: I know I could act." At this, her
father abruptly gave utterance to a feeble cackling of laughter;
and when Alice, surprised and a little offended, pressed him for
his reason, he tried to evade, saying, "Nothing, dearie. I just
thought of something." But she persisted until he had to
explain.
"It made me think of your mother's sister, your Aunt Flora, that
died when you were little," he said. "She was always telling how
she was going on the stage, and talking about how she was certain
she'd make a great actress, and all so on; and one day your
mother broke out and said she ought 'a' gone on the stage,
herself, because she always knew she had the talent for it--and,
well, they got into kind of a spat about which one'd make the
best actress. I had to go out in the hall to laugh!"
"Maybe you were wrong," Alice said, gravely. "If they both felt
it, why wouldn't that look as if there was talent in the family?
I've ALWAYS thought----"
"No, dearie," he said, with a final chuckle. "Your mother and
Flora weren't different from a good many others. I expect ninety
per cent. of all the women I ever knew were just sure they'd be
mighty fine actresses if they ever got the chance. Well, I guess
it's a good thing; they enjoy thinking about it and it don't do
anybody any harm."
Alice was piqued. For several days she had thought almost
continuously of a career to be won by her own genius. Not that
she planned details, or concerned herself with first steps; her
picturings overleaped all that. Principally, she saw her name
great on all the bill-boards of that unkind city, and herself,
unchanged in age but glamorous with fame and Paris clothes,
returning in a private car. No doubt the pleasantest development
of her vision was a dialogue with Mildred; and this became so
real that, as she projected it, Alice assumed the proper
expressions for both parties to it, formed words with her lips,
and even spoke some of them aloud. "No, I haven't forgotten you,
Mrs. Russell. I remember you quite pleasantly, in fact. You
were a Miss Palmer, I recall, in those funny old days. Very kind
of you, I'm shaw. I appreciate your eagerness to do something
for me in your own little home. As you say, a reception WOULD
renew my acquaintanceship with many old friends-- but I'm shaw
you won't mind my mentioning that I don't find much inspiration
in these provincials. I really must ask you not to press me. An
artist's time is not her own, though of course I could hardly
expect you to understand----"
Thus Alice illuminated the dull time; but she retired from the
interview with her father still manfully displaying an outward
cheerfulness, while depression grew heavier within, as if she had
eaten soggy cake. Her father knew nothing whatever of the stage,
and she was aware of his ignorance, yet for some reason his
innocently skeptical amusement reduced her bright project almost
to nothing. Something like this always happened, it seemed; she
was continually making these illuminations, all gay with gildings
and colourings; and then as soon as anybody else so much as
glanced at them--even her father, who loved her--the pretty
designs were stricken with a desolating pallor. "Is this LIFE?"
Alice wondered, not doubting that the question was original and
all her own. "Is it life to spend your time imagining things
that aren't so, and never will be? Beautiful things happen to
other people; why should I be the only one they never CAN happen
to?"
The mood lasted overnight; and was still upon her the next
afternoon when an errand for her father took her down-town.
Adams had decided to begin smoking again, and Alice felt rather
degraded, as well as embarrassed, when she went into the large
shop her father had named, and asked for the cheap tobacco he
used in his pipe. She fell back upon an air of amused
indulgence, hoping thus to suggest that her purchase was made for
some faithful old retainer, now infirm; and although the calmness
of the clerk who served her called for no such elaboration of her
sketch, she ornamented it with a little laugh and with the
remark, as she dropped the package into her coat-pocket, "I'm
sure it'll please him; they tell me it's the kind he likes."
Still playing Lady Bountiful, smiling to herself in anticipation
of the joy she was bringing to the simple old negro or Irish
follower of the family, she left the shop; but as she came out
upon the crowded pavement her smile vanished quickly.
Next to the door of the tobacco-shop, there was the open entrance
to a stairway, and, above this rather bleak and dark aperture, a
sign-board displayed in begrimed gilt letters the information
that Frincke's Business College occupied the upper floors of the
building. Furthermore, Frincke here publicly offered "personal
instruction and training in practical mathematics, bookkeeping,
and all branches of the business life, including stenography,
typewriting, etc."
Alice halted for a moment, frowning at this signboard as though
it were something surprising and distasteful which she had never
seen before. Yet it was conspicuous in a busy quarter; she
almost always passed it when she came down-town, and never
without noticing it. Nor was this the first time she had paused
to lift toward it that same glance of vague misgiving.
The building was not what the changeful city defined as a modern
one, and the dusty wooden stairway, as seen from the pavement,
disappeared upward into a smoky darkness. So would the footsteps
of a girl ascending there lead to a hideous obscurity, Alice
thought; an obscurity as dreary and as permanent as death. And
like dry leaves falling about her she saw her wintry imaginings
in the May air: pretty girls turning into withered creatures as
they worked at typing-machines; old maids "taking dictation" from
men with double chins; Alice saw old maids of a dozen different
kinds "taking dictation." Her mind's eye was crowded with them,
as it always was when she passed that stairway entrance; and
though they were all different from one another, all of them
looked a little like herself.
She hated the place, and yet she seldom hurried by it or averted
her eyes. It had an unpleasant fascination for her, and a
mysterious reproach, which she did not seek to fathom. She
walked on thoughtfully to-day; and when, at the next corner, she
turned into the street that led toward home, she was given a
surprise. Arthur Russell came rapidly from behind her, lifting
his hat as she saw him.
"Are you walking north, Miss Adams?" he asked. "Do you mind if I
walk with you?"
She was not delighted, but seemed so. "How charming!" she cried,
giving him a little flourish of the shapely hands; and then,
because she wondered if he had seen her coming out of the
tobacco-shop, she laughed and added, "I've just been on the most
ridiculous errand!"
"What was that?"
"To order some cigars for my father. He's been quite ill, poor
man, and he's so particular--but what in the world do _I_ know
about cigars?"
Russell laughed. "Well, what DO you know about 'em? Did you
select by the price?"
"Mercy, no!" she exclaimed, and added, with an afterthought, "Of
course he wrote down the name of the kind he wanted and I gave it
to the shopman. I could never have pronounced it."
CHAPTER X
In her pocket as she spoke her hand rested upon the little sack
of tobacco, which responded accusingly to the touch of her
restless fingers; and she found time to wonder why she was
building up this fiction for Mr. Arthur Russell. His discovery
of Walter's device for whiling away the dull evening had shamed
and distressed her; but she would have suffered no less if almost
any other had been the discoverer. In this gentleman, after
hearing that he was Mildred's Mr. Arthur Russell, Alice felt not
the slightest "personal interest"; and there was yet to develop
in her life such a thing as an interest not personal. At
twenty-two this state of affairs is not unique.
So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have worn a placard,
"Engaged." She looked upon him as diners entering a restaurant
look upon tables marked "Reserved": the glance, slightly
discontented, passes on at once. Or so the eye of a prospector
wanders querulously over staked and established claims on the
mountainside, and seeks the virgin land beyond; unless, indeed,
the prospector be dishonest. But Alice was no claim-jumper--so
long as the notice of ownership was plainly posted.
Though she was indifferent now, habit ruled her: and, at the very
time she wondered why she created fictitious cigars for her
father, she was also regretting that she had not boldly carried
her Malacca stick down-town with her. Her vivacity increased
automatically.
"Perhaps the clerk thought you wanted the cigars for yourself,"
Russell suggested. "He may have taken you for a Spanish
countess."
"I'm sure he did!" Alice agreed, gaily; and she hummed a bar or
two of "LaPaloma," snapping her fingers as castanets, and swaying
her body a little, to suggest the accepted stencil of a "Spanish
Dancer." "Would you have taken me for one, Mr. Russell?" she
asked, as she concluded the impersonation.
"I? Why, yes," he said. "I'D take you for anything you wanted
me to."
"Why, what a speech!" she cried, and, laughing, gave him a quick
glance in which there glimmered some real surprise. He was
looking at her quizzically, but with the liveliest appreciation.
Her surprise increased; and she was glad that he had joined her.
To be seen walking with such a companion added to her pleasure.
She would have described him as "altogether quite
stunning-looking"; and she liked his tall, dark thinness, his
gray clothes, his soft hat, and his clean brown shoes; she liked
his easy swing of the stick he carried.
"Shouldn't I have said it?" he asked. "Would you rather not be
taken for a Spanish countess?"
"That isn't it," she explained. "You said----"
"I said I'd take you for whatever you wanted me to. Isn't that
all right?"
"It would all depend, wouldn't it?"
"Of course it would depend on what you wanted."
"Oh, no!" she laughed. "It might depend on a lot of things."
"Such as?"
"Well----" She hesitated, having the mischievous impulse to say,
"Such as Mildred!" But she decided to omit this reference, and
became serious, remembering Russell's service to her at Mildred's
house. "Speaking of what I want to be taken for," she
said;--"I've been wondering ever since the other night what you
did take me for! You must have taken me for the sister of a
professional gambler, I'm afraid!"
Russell's look of kindness was the truth about him, she was to
discover; and he reassured her now by the promptness of his
friendly chuckle. "Then your young brother told you where I
found him, did he? I kept my face straight at the time, but I
laughed afterward --to myself. It struck me as original, to say
the least: his amusing himself with those darkies."
"Walter IS original," Alice said; and, having adopted this new
view of her brother's eccentricities, she impulsively went on to
make it more plausible. "He's a very odd boy, and I was afraid
you'd misunderstand. He tells wonderful 'darky stories,' and
he'll do anything to draw coloured people out and make them talk;
and that's what he was doing at Mildred's when you found him for
me--he says he wins their confidence by playing dice with them.
In the family we think he'll probably write about them some day.
He's rather literary."
"Are you?" Russell asked, smiling.
"I? Oh----" She paused, lifting both hands in a charming gesture
of helplessness. "Oh, I'm just-- me!"
His glance followed the lightly waved hands with keen approval,
then rose to the lively and colourful face, with its hazel eyes,
its small and pretty nose, and the lip-caught smile which seemed
the climax of her decorative transition. Never had he seen a
creature so plastic or so wistful.
Here was a contrast to his cousin Mildred, who was not wistful,
and controlled any impulses toward plasticity, if she had them.
"By George!" he said. "But you ARE different!"
With that, there leaped in her such an impulse of roguish
gallantry as she could never resist. She turned her head, and,
laughing and bright-eyed, looked him full in the face.
"From whom?" she cried.
"From--everybody!" he said. "Are you a mind-reader?"
"Why?"
"How did you know I was thinking you were different from my
cousin, Mildred Palmer?"
"What makes you think I DID know it?"
"Nonsense!" he said. "You knew what I was thinking and I knew
you knew."
"Yes," she said with cool humour. "How intimate that seems to
make us all at once!"
Russell left no doubt that he was delighted with these gaieties
of hers. "By George!" he exclaimed again. "I thought you were
this sort of girl the first moment I saw you!"
"What sort of girl? Didn't Mildred tell you what sort of girl I
am when she asked you to dance with me?"
"She didn't ask me to dance with you--I'd been looking at you.
You were talking to some old ladies, and I asked Mildred who you
were."
"Oh, so Mildred DIDN'T----" Alice checked herself. "Who did she
tell you I was?"
"She just said you were a Miss Adams, so I----"
"'A' Miss Adams?" Alice interrupted.
"Yes. Then I said I'd like to meet you."
"I see. You thought you'd save me from the old ladies."
"No. I thought I'd save myself from some of the girls Mildred
was getting me to dance with. There was a Miss Dowling----"
"Poor man!" Alice said, gently, and her impulsive thought was
that Mildred had taken few chances, and that as a matter of
self-defense her carefulness might have been well founded. This
Mr. Arthur Russell was a much more responsive person than one
had supposed.
"So, Mr. Russell, you don't know anything about me except what
you thought when you first saw me?"
"Yes, I know I was right when I thought it."
"You haven't told me what you thought."
"I thought you were like what you ARE like."
"Not very definite, is it? I'm afraid you shed more light a
minute or so ago, when you said how different from Mildred you
thought I was. That WAS definite, unfortunately!"
"I didn't say it," Russell explained. "I thought it, and you
read my mind. That's the sort of girl I thought you were--one
that could read a man's mind. Why do you say 'unfortunately'
you're not like Mildred?"
Alice's smooth gesture seemed to sketch Mildred. "Because she's
perfect--why, she's PERFECTLY perfect! She never makes a
mistake, and everybody looks up to her--oh, yes, we all fairly
adore her! She's like some big, noble, cold statue--'way above
the rest of us--and she hardly ever does anything mean or
treacherous. Of all the girls I know I believe she's played the
fewest really petty tricks. She's----"
Russell interrupted; he looked perplexed. "You say she's
perfectly perfect, but that she does play SOME----"
Alice laughed, as if at his sweet innocence. "Men are so funny!"
she informed him. "Of course girls ALL do mean things sometimes.
My own career's just one long brazen smirch of 'em! What I mean
is, Mildred's perfectly perfect compared to the rest of us.
"I see," he said, and seemed to need a moment or two of
thoughtfulness. Then he inquired, "What sort of treacherous
things do YOU do?"
"I? Oh, the very worst kind! Most people bore me particularly
the men in this town--and I show it."
"But I shouldn't call that treacherous, exactly."
"Well, THEY do," Alice laughed. "It's made me a terribly
unpopular character! I do a lot of things they hate. For
instance, at a dance I'd a lot rather find some clever old woman
and talk to her than dance with nine-tenths of these nonentities.
I usually do it, too."
"But you danced as if you liked it. You danced better than any
other girl I----"
"This flattery of yours doesn't quite turn my head, Mr.
Russell," Alice interrupted. "Particularly since Mildred only
gave you Ella Dowling to compare with me!"
"Oh, no," he insisted. "There were others--and of course
Mildred, herself."
"Oh, of course, yes. I forgot that. Well----" She paused, then
added, "I certainly OUGHT to dance well."
"Why is it so much a duty?"
"When I think of the dancing-teachers and the expense to papa!
All sorts of fancy instructors--I suppose that's what daughters
have fathers for, though, isn't it? To throw money away on
them?"
"You don't----" Russell began, and his look was one of alarm.
"You haven't taken up----"
She understood his apprehension and responded merrily, "Oh,
murder, no! You mean you're afraid I break out sometimes in a
piece of cheesecloth and run around a fountain thirty times, and
then, for an encore, show how much like snakes I can make my arms
look."
"I SAID you were a mind-reader!" he exclaimed. "That's exactly
what I was pretending to be afraid you might do."
"'Pretending?' That's nicer of you. No; it's not my mania."
"What is?"
"Oh, nothing in particular that I know of just now. Of course
I've had the usual one: the one that every girl goes through."
"What's that?"
"Good heavens, Mr. Russell, you can't expect me to believe
you're really a man of the world if you don't know that every
girl has a time in her life when she's positive she's divinely
talented for the stage! It's the only universal rule about women
that hasn't got an exception. I don't mean we all want to go on
the stage, but we all think we'd be wonderful if we did. Even
Mildred. Oh, she wouldn't confess it to you: you'd have to know
her a great deal better than any man can ever know her to find
out."
"I see," he said. "Girls are always telling us we can't know
them. I wonder if you----"
She took up his thought before he expressed it, and again he was
fascinated by her quickness, which indeed seemed to him almost
telepathic. "Oh, but DON'T we know one another, though!" she
cried.
"Such things we have to keep secret--things that go on right
before YOUR eyes!"
"Why don't some of you tell us?" he asked.
"We can't tell you."
"Too much honour?"
"No. Not even too much honour among thieves, Mr. Russell. We
don't tell you about our tricks against one another because we
know it wouldn't make any impression on you. The tricks aren't
played against you, and you have a soft side for cats with lovely
manners!"
"What about your tricks against us?"
"Oh, those!" Alice laughed. "We think they're rather cute!"
"Bravo!" he cried, and hammered the ferrule of his stick upon the
pavement.
"What's the applause for?"
"For you. What you said was like running up the black flag to
the masthead."
"Oh, no. It was just a modest little sign in a pretty
flower-bed: 'Gentlemen, beware!'"
"I see I must," he said, gallantly.
"Thanks! But I mean, beware of the whole bloomin' garden!" Then,
picking up a thread that had almost disappeared: "You needn't
think you'll ever find out whether I'm right about Mildred's not
being an exception by asking her," she said. "She won't tell
you: she's not the sort that ever makes a confession."
But Russell had not followed her shift to the former topic.
"'Mildred's not being an exception?' " he said, vaguely. "I
don't----"
"An exception about thinking she could be wonderful thing on the
stage if she only cared to. If you asked her I'm pretty sure
she'd say, 'What nonsense!' Mildred's the dearest, finest thing
anywhere, but you won't find out many things about her by asking
her."
Russell's expression became more serious, as it did whenever his
cousin was made their topic. "You think not?" he said. "You
think she's----"
"No. But it's not because she isn't sincere exactly. It's only
because she has such a lot to live up to. She has to live up to
being a girl on the grand style to herself, I mean, of course."
And without pausing Alice rippled on, "You ought to have seen ME
when I had the stage-fever! I used to play 'Juliet' all alone in
my room.' She lifted her arms in graceful entreaty, pleading
musically,
"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest thy love prove----"
She broke off abruptly with a little flourish, snapping thumb and
finger of each outstretched hand, then laughed and said, "Papa
used to make such fun of me! Thank heaven, I was only fifteen; I
was all over it by the next year."
"No wonder you had the fever," Russell observed. "You do it
beautifully. Why didn't you finish the line?"
"Which one? 'Lest thy love prove likewise variable'? Juliet was
saying it to a MAN, you know. She seems to have been ready to
worry about his constancy pretty early in their affair!"
Her companion was again thoughtful. "Yes," he said, seeming to
be rather irksomely impressed with Alice's suggestion. "Yes; it
does appear so."
Alice glanced at his serious face, and yielded to an audacious
temptation. "You mustn't take it so hard," she said, flippantly.
"It isn't about you: it's only about Romeo and Juliet."
"See here!" he exclaimed. "You aren't at your mind-reading
again, are you? There are times when it won't do, you know!"
She leaned toward him a little, as if companionably: they were
walking slowly, and this geniality of hers brought her shoulder
in light contact with his for a moment. "Do you dislike my
mind-reading?" she asked, and, across their two just touching
shoulders, gave him her sudden look of smiling wistfulness. "Do
you hate it?"
He shook his head. "No, I don't," he said, gravely. "It's quite
pleasant. But I think it says, 'Gentlemen, beware!'"
She instantly moved away from him, with the lawless and frank
laugh of one who is delighted to be caught in a piece of
hypocrisy. "How lovely!" she cried. Then she pointed ahead.
"Our walk is nearly over. We're coming to the foolish little
house where I live. It's a queer little place, but my father's
so attached to it the family have about given up hope of getting
him to build a real house farther out. He doesn't mind our being
extravagant about anything else, but he won't let us alter one
single thing about his precious little old house. Well!" She
halted, and gave him her hand. "Adieu!"
"I couldn't," he began; hesitated, then asked: "I couldn't come
in with you for a little while?"
"Not now," she said, quickly. "You can come----" She paused.
"When?"
"Almost any time." She turned and walked slowly up the path, but
he waited. "You can come in the evening if you like," she called
back to him over her shoulder.
"Soon?"
"As soon as you like!" She waved her hand; then ran indoors and
watched him from a window as he went up the street. He walked
rapidly, a fine, easy figure, swinging his stick in a way that
suggested exhilaration. Alice, staring after him through the
irregular apertures of a lace curtain, showed no similar
buoyancy. Upon the instant she closed the door all sparkle left
her: she had become at once the simple and sometimes troubled
girl her family knew.
"What is going on out there?" her mother asked, approaching from
the dining-room.
"Oh, nothing," Alice said, indifferently, as she turned away.
"That Mr. Russell met me downtown and walked up with me."
"Mr. Russell? Oh, the one that's engaged to Mildred?"
"Well--I don't know for certain. He didn't seem so much like an
engaged man to me." And she added, in the tone of thoughtful
preoccupation: "Anyhow--not so terribly!"
Then she ran upstairs, gave her father his tobacco, filled his
pipe for him, and petted him as he lighted it.
CHAPTER XI
After that, she went to her room and sat down before her
three-leaved mirror. There was where she nearly always sat when
she came into her room, if she had nothing in mind to do. She
went to that chair as naturally as a dog goes to his corner.
She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity seemed to be
her mood. But after a long, almost motionless scrutiny, she
began to produce dramatic sketches upon that ever-ready stage,
her countenance: she showed gaiety, satire, doubt, gentleness,
appreciation of a companion and love-in-hiding-- all studied in
profile first, then repeated for a "three- quarter view."
Subsequently she ran through them, facing herself in full.
In this manner she outlined a playful scenario for her next
interview with Arthur Russell; but grew solemn again, thinking of
the impression she had already sought to give him. She had no
twinges for any underminings of her "most intimate friend"--in
fact, she felt that her work on a new portrait of Mildred for Mr.
Russell had been honest and accurate. But why had it been her
instinct to show him an Alice Adams who didn't exist?
Almost everything she had said to him was upon spontaneous
impulse, springing to her lips on the instant; yet it all seemed
to have been founded upon a careful design, as if some hidden
self kept such designs in stock and handed them up to her,
ready-made, to be used for its own purpose. What appeared to be
the desired result was a false-coloured image in Russell's mind;
but if he liked that image he wouldn't be liking Alice Adams; nor
would anything he thought about the image be a thought about her.
Nevertheless, she knew she would go on with her false, fancy
colourings of this nothing as soon as she saw him again; she had
just been practicing them. "What's the idea?" she wondered.
"What makes me tell such lies? Why shouldn't I be just myself?"
And then she thought, "But which one is myself?"
Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips,
disquieted by a deepening wonder, parted to whisper:
"Who in the world are you?"
The apparition before her had obeyed her like an alert slave, but
now, as she subsided to a complete stillness, that aspect changed
to the old mockery with which mirrors avenge their wrongs. The
nucleus of some queer thing seemed to gather and shape itself
behind the nothingness of the reflected eyes until it became
almost an actual strange presence. If it could be identified,
perhaps the presence was that of the hidden designer who handed
up the false, ready-made pictures, and, for unknown purposes,
made Alice exhibit them; but whatever it was, she suddenly found
it monkey- like and terrifying. In a flutter she jumped up and
went to another part of the room.
A moment or two later she was whistling softly as she hung her
light coat over a wooden triangle in her closet, and her musing
now was quainter than the experience that led to it; for what she
thought was this, "I certainly am a queer girl!" She took a
little pride in so much originality, believing herself probably
the only person in the world to have such thoughts as had been
hers since she entered the room, and the first to be disturbed by
a strange presence in the mirror. In fact, the effect of the
tiny episode became apparent in that look of preoccupied
complacency to be seen for a time upon any girl who has found
reason to suspect that she is a being without counterpart.
This slight glow, still faintly radiant, was observed across the
dinner-table by Walter, but he misinterpreted it. "What YOU
lookin' so self-satisfied about?" he inquired, and added in his
knowing way, "I saw you, all right, cutie!"
"Where'd you see me?"
"Down-town."
"This afternoon, you mean, Walter?"
"Yes, 'this afternoon, I mean, Walter,' " he returned,
burlesquing her voice at least happily enough to please himself;
for he laughed applausively. "Oh, you never saw me! I passed
you close enough to pull a tooth, but you were awful busy. I
never did see anybody as busy as you get, Alice, when you're
towin' a barge. My, but you keep your hands goin'! Looked like
the air was full of 'em! That's why I'm onto why you look so
tickled this evening; I saw you with that big fish."
Mrs. Adams laughed benevolently; she was not displeased with
this rallying. "Well, what of it, Walter?" she asked. "If you
happen to see your sister on the street when some nice young man
is being attentive to her----"
Walter barked and then cackled. "Whoa, Sal!" he said. "You got
the parts mixed. It's little Alice that was 'being attentive.' I
know the big fish she was attentive to, all right, too."
"Yes," his sister retorted, quietly. "I should think you might
have recognized him, Walter."
Walter looked annoyed. "Still harpin' on THAT!" he complained.
"The kind of women I like, if they get sore they just hit you
somewhere on the face and then they're through. By the way, I
heard this Russell was supposed to be your dear, old, sweet
friend Mildred's steady. What you doin' walkin' as close to him
as all that?"
Mrs. Adams addressed her son in gentle reproof, "Why Walter!"
"Oh, never mind, mama," Alice said. "To the horrid all things
are horrid."
"Get out!" Walter protested, carelessly. "I heard all about this
Russell down at the shop. Young Joe Lamb's such a talker I
wonder he don't ruin his grandfather's business; he keeps all us
cheap help standin' round listening to him nine-tenths of our
time. Well, Joe told me this Russell's some kin or other to the
Palmer family, and he's got some little money of his own, and
he's puttin' it into ole Palmer's trust company and Palmer's
goin' to make him a vice-president of the company. Sort of a
keep- the-money-in-the-family arrangement, Joe Lamb says."
Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. "I don't see----" she began.
"Why, this Russell's supposed to be tied up to Mildred," her son
explained. "When ole Palmer dies this Russell will be his
son-in-law, and all he'll haf' to do'll be to barely lift his
feet and step into the ole man's shoes. It's certainly a mighty
fat hand-me- out for this Russell! You better lay off o' there,
Alice. Pick somebody that's got less to lose and you'll make
better showing."
Mrs. Adams's air of thoughtfulness had not departed. "But you
say this Mr. Russell is well off on his own account, Walter."
"Oh, Joe Lamb says he's got some little of his own. Didn't know
how much."
"Well, then----"
Walter laughed his laugh. "Cut it out," he bade her. "Alice
wouldn't run in fourth place."
Alice had been looking at him in a detached way, as though
estimating the value of a specimen in a collection not her own.
"Yes," she said, indifferently. "You REALLY are vulgar, Walter."
He had finished his meal; and, rising, he came round the table to
her and patted her good-naturedly on the shoulder. "Good ole
Allie!" he said. "HONEST, you wouldn't run in fourth place. If
I was you I'd never even start in the class. That frozen-face;
gang will rule you off the track soon as they see your colours."
"Walter!" his mother said again.
"Well, ain't I her brother?" he returned, seeming to be entirely
serious and direct, for the moment, at least. "_I_ like the ole
girl all right. Fact is, sometimes I'm kind of sorry for her."
"But what's it all ABOUT?" Alice cried. "Simply because you met
me down-town with a man I never saw but once before and just
barely know! Why all this palaver?"
"'Why?'" he repeated, grinning. "Well, I've seen you start
before, you know!" He went to the door, and paused. "I got no
date to-night. Take you to the movies, you care to go."
She declined crisply. "No, thanks!"
"Come on," he said, as pleasantly as he knew how.
"Give me a chance to show you a better time than we had up at
that frozen-face joint. I'll get you some chop suey afterward."
"No, thanks!"
"All right," he responded and waved a flippant adieu. "As the
barber says, 'The better the advice, the worse it's wasted!'
Good-night!"
Alice shrugged her shoulders; but a moment or two later, as the
jar of the carelessly slammed front door went through the house,
she shook her head, reconsidering. "Perhaps I ought to have gone
with him. It might have kept him away from whatever dreadful
people are his friends--at least for one night."
"Oh, I'm sure Walter's a GOOD boy," Mrs. Adams said, soothingly;
and this was what she almost always said when either her husband
or Alice expressed such misgivings. "He's odd, and he's picked
up right queer manners; but that's only because we haven't given
him advantages like the other young men. But I'm sure he's a
GOOD boy."
She reverted to the subject a little later, while she washed the
dishes and Alice wiped them. "Of course Walter could take his
place with the other nice boys of the town even yet," she said.
"I mean, if we could afford to help him financially. They all
belong to the country clubs and have cars and----"
"Let's don't go into that any more, mama," the daughter begged
her. "What's the use?"
"It COULD be of use," Mrs. Adams insisted. "It could if your
father----"
"But papa CAN'T."
"Yes, he can."
"But how can he? He told me a man of his age CAN'T give up a
business he's been in practically all his life, and just go
groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I
think he's right about it, too, of course!"
Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new vigour
heightened by an old bitterness. "Oh, yes," she said. "He talks
that way; but he knows better."
"How could he 'know better,' mama?"
"HE knows how!"
"But what does he know?"
Mrs. Adams tossed her head. "You don't suppose I'm such a fool
I'd be urging him to give up something for nothing, do you,
Alice? Do you suppose I'd want him to just go 'groping around'
like he was telling you? That would be crazy, of course. Little
as his work at Lamb's brings in, I wouldn't be so silly as to ask
him to give it up just on a CHANCE he could find something else.
Good gracious, Alice, you must give me credit for a little
intelligence once in a while!"
Alice was puzzled. "But what else could there be except a
chance? I don't see----"
"Well, I do," her mother interrupted, decisively. "That man
could make us all well off right now if he wanted to. We could
have been rich long ago if he'd ever really felt as he ought to
about his family."
"What! Why, how could----"
"You know how as well as I do," Mrs. Adams said, crossly. "I
guess you haven't forgotten how he treated me about it the Sunday
before he got sick."
She went on with her work, putting into it a sudden violence
inspired by the recollection; but Alice, enlightened, gave
utterance to a laugh of lugubrious derision. "Oh, the GLUE
factory again!" she cried. "How silly!" And she renewed her
laughter.
So often do the great projects of parents appear ignominious to
their children. Mrs. Adams's conception of a glue factory as a
fairy godmother of this family was an absurd old story which
Alice had never taken seriously. She remembered that when she
was about fifteen her mother began now and then to say something
to Adams about a "glue factory," rather timidly, and as a vague
suggestion, but never without irritating him. Then, for years,
the preposterous subject had not been mentioned; possibly because
of some explosion on the part of Adams, when his daughter had not
been present. But during the last year Mrs. Adams had quietly
gone back to these old hints, reviving them at intervals and also
reviving her husband's irritation. Alice's bored impression was
that her mother wanted him to found, or buy, or do something, or
other, about a glue factory; and that he considered the proposal
so impracticable as to be insulting. The parental conversations
took place when neither Alice nor Walter was at hand, but
sometimes Alice had come in upon the conclusion of one, to find
her father in a shouting mood, and shocking the air behind him
with profane monosyllables as he departed. Mrs. Adams would be
left quiet and troubled; and when Alice, sympathizing with the
goaded man, inquired of her mother why these tiresome bickerings
had been renewed, she always got the brooding and cryptic answer,
"He COULD do it--if he wanted to." Alice failed to comprehend
the desirability of a glue factory--to her mind a father engaged
in a glue factory lacked impressiveness; had no advantage over a
father employed by Lamb and Company; and she supposed that Adams
knew better than her mother whether such an enterprise would be
profitable or not. Emphatically, he thought it would not, for
she had heard him shouting at the end of one of these painful
interviews, "You can keep up your dang talk till YOU die and _I_
die, but I'll never make one God's cent that way!"
There had been a culmination. Returning from church on the
Sunday preceding the collapse with which Adams's illness had
begun, Alice found her mother downstairs, weeping and
intimidated, while her father's stamping footsteps were loudly
audible as he strode up and down his room overhead. So were his
endless repetitions of invective loudly audible: "That woman!
Oh, that woman; Oh, that danged woman!"
Mrs. Adams admitted to her daughter that it was "the old glue
factory" and that her husband's wildness had frightened her into
a "solemn promise" never to mention the subject again so long as
she had breath. Alice laughed. The "glue factory" idea was not
only a bore, but ridiculous, and her mother's evident seriousness
about it one of those inexplicable vagaries we sometimes discover
in the people we know best. But this Sunday rampage appeared to
be the end of it, and when Adams came down to dinner, an hour
later, he was unusually cheerful. Alice was glad he had gone
wild enough to settle the glue factory once and for all; and she
had ceased to think of the episode long before Friday of that
week, when Adams was brought home in the middle of the afternoon
by his old employer, the "great J. A. Lamb," in the latter's
car.
During the long illness the "glue factory" was completely
forgotten, by Alice at least; and her laugh was rueful as well as
derisive now, in the kitchen, when she realized that her mother's
mind again dwelt upon this abandoned nuisance. "I thought you'd
got over all that nonsense, mama," she said.
Mrs. Adams smiled, pathetically. "Of course you think it's
nonsense, dearie. Young people think everything's nonsense that
they don't know anything about."
"Good gracious!" Alice cried. "I should think I used to hear
enough about that horrible old glue factory to know something
about it!"
"No," her mother returned patiently. "You've never heard
anything about it at all."
"I haven't?"
"No. Your father and I didn't discuss it before you children.
All you ever heard was when he'd get in such a rage, after we'd
been speaking of it, that he couldn't control himself when you
came in. Wasn't _I_ always quiet? Did _I_ ever go on talking
about it?"
"No; perhaps not. But you're talking about it now, mama, after
you promised never to mention it again."
"I promised not to mention it to your father," said Mrs. Adams,
gently. "I haven't mentioned it to him, have I?"
"Ah, but if you mention it to me I'm afraid you WILL mention it
to him. You always do speak of things that you have on your
mind, and you might get papa all stirred up again about--" Alice
paused, a light of divination flickering in her eyes. "Oh!" she
cried. "I SEE!"
"What do you see?"
"You HAVE been at him about it!"
"Not one single word!"
"No!" Alice cried. "Not a WORD, but that's what you've meant all
along! You haven't spoken the words to him, but all this urging
him to change, to 'find something better to go into'--it's all
been about nothing on earth but your foolish old glue factory
that you know upsets him, and you gave your solemn word never to
speak to him about again! You didn't say it, but you meant
it--and he KNOWS that's what you meant! Oh, mama!"
Mrs. Adams, with her hands still automatically at work in the
flooded dishpan, turned to face her daughter. "Alice," she said,
tremulously, "what do I ask for myself?"
"What?"
"I say, What do I ask for myself? Do you suppose _I_ want
anything? Don't you know I'd be perfectly content on your
father's present income if I were the only person to be
considered? What do I care about any pleasure for myself? I'd
be willing never to have a maid again; _I_ don't mind doing the
work. If we didn't have any children I'd be glad to do your
father's cooking and the housework and the washing and ironing,
too, for the rest of my life. I wouldn't care. I'm a poor cook
and a poor housekeeper; I don't do anything well; but it would be
good enough for just him and me. I wouldn't ever utter one word
of com----"
"Oh, goodness!" Alice lamented. "What IS it all about?"
"It's about this," said Mrs. Adams, swallowing. "You and Walter
are a new generation and you ought to have the same as the rest
of the new generation get. Poor Walter--asking you to go to the
movies and a Chinese restaurant: the best he had to offer! Don't
you suppose _I_ see how the poor boy is deteriorating? Don't you
suppose I know what YOU have to go through, Alice? And when I
think of that man upstairs----" The agitated voice grew louder.
"When I think of him and know that nothing in the world but his
STUBBORNNESS keeps my children from having all they want and what
they OUGHT to have, do you suppose I'm going to hold myself bound
to keep to the absolute letter of a silly promise he got from me
by behaving like a crazy man? I can't! I can't do it! No
mother could sit by and see him lock up a horn of plenty like
that in his closet when the children were starving!"
"Oh, goodness, goodness me!" Alice protested. "We aren't
precisely 'starving,' are we?"
Mrs. Adams began to weep. "It's just the same. Didn't I see
how flushed and pretty you looked, this afternoon, after you'd
been walking with this young man that's come here? Do you
suppose he'd LOOK at a girl like Mildred Palmer if you had what
you ought to have? Do you suppose he'd be going into business
with her father if YOUR father----"
"Good heavens, mama; you're worse than Walter: I just barely know
the man! DON'T be so absurd!"
"Yes, I'm always 'absurd,' " Mrs. Adams moaned. "All I can do
is cry, while your father sits upstairs, and his horn of
plenty----"
But Alice interrupted with a peal of desperate laughter. "Oh,
that 'horn of plenty!' Do come down to earth, mama. How can you
call a GLUE factory, that doesn't exist except in your mind, a
'horn of plenty'? Do let's be a little rational!"
"It COULD be a horn of plenty," the tearful Mrs, Adams insisted.
"It could! You don't understand a thing about it."
"Well, I'm willing," Alice said, with tired skepticism. "Make me
understand, then. Where'd you ever get the idea?"
Mrs. Adams withdrew her hands from the water, dried them on a
towel, and then wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. "Your father
could make a fortune if he wanted to," she said, quietly. "At
least, I don't say a fortune, but anyhow a great deal more than
he does make."
"Yes, I've heard that before, mama, and you think he could make
it out of a glue factory. What I'm asking is: How?"
"How? Why, by making glue and selling it. Don't you know how
bad most glue is when you try to mend anything? A good glue is
one of the rarest things there is; and it would just sell itself,
once it got started. Well, your father knows how to make as good
a glue as there is in the world."
Alice was not interested. "What of it? I suppose probably
anybody could make it if they wanted to."
"I SAID you didn't know anything about it. Nobody else could
make it. Your father knows a formula for making it."
"What of that?"
"It's a secret formula. It isn't even down on paper. It's worth
any amount of money."
"'Any amount?'" Alice said, remaining incredulous. "Why hasn't
papa sold it then?"
"Just because he's too stubborn to do anything with it at all!"
"How did papa get it?"
"He got it before you were born, just after we were married. I
didn't think much about it then: it wasn't till you were growing
up and I saw how much we needed money that I----"
"Yes, but how did papa get it?" Alice began to feel a little more
curious about this possible buried treasure. "Did he invent it?"
"Partly," Mrs. Adams said, looking somewhat preoccupied. "He
and another man invented it."
"Then maybe the other man----"
"He's dead."
"Then his family----"
"I don't think he left any family," Mrs. Adams said. "Anyhow,
it belongs to your father. At least it belongs to him as much as
it does to any one else. He's got an absolutely perfect right to
do anything he wants to with it, and it would make us all
comfortable if he'd do what I want him to--and he KNOWS it would,
too!"
Alice shook her head pityingly. "Poor mama!" she said. "Of
course he knows it wouldn't do anything of the kind, or else he'd
have done it long ago."
"He would, you say?" her mother cried. "That only shows how
little you know him!"
"Poor mama!" Alice said again, soothingly. "If papa were like
what you say he is, he'd be--why, he'd be crazy!"
Mrs. Adams agreed with a vehemence near passion. "You're right
about him for once: that's just what he is! He sits up there in
his stubbornness and lets us slave here in the kitchen when if he
wanted to--if he'd so much as lift his little finger----"
"Oh, come, now!" Alice laughed. "You can't build even a glue
factory with just one little finger."
Mrs. Adams seemed about to reply that finding fault with a
figure of speech was beside the point; but a ringing of the front
door bell forestalled the retort. "Now, who do you suppose that
is?" she wondered aloud, then her face brightened. "Ah--did Mr.
Russell ask if he could----"
"No, he wouldn't be coming this evening," Alice said. "Probably
it's the great J. A. Lamb: he usually stops for a minute on
Thursdays to ask how papa's getting along. I'll go."
She tossed her apron off, and as she went through the house her
expression was thoughtful. She was thinking vaguely about the
glue factory and wondering if there might be "something in it"
after all. If her mother was right about the rich possibilities
of Adams's secret--but that was as far as Alice's speculations
upon the matter went at this time: they were checked, partly by
the thought that her father probably hadn't enough money for such
an enterprise, and partly by the fact that she had arrived at the
front door.
CHAPTER XII
The fine old gentleman revealed when she opened the door was
probably the last great merchant in America to wear the chin
beard. White as white frost, it was trimmed short with exquisite
precision, while his upper lip and the lower expanses of his
cheeks were clean and rosy from fresh shaving. With this trim
white chin beard, the white waistcoat, the white tie, the suit of
fine gray cloth, the broad and brilliantly polished black shoes,
and the wide-brimmed gray felt hat, here was a man who had found
his style in the seventies of the last century, and thenceforth
kept it. Files of old magazines of that period might show him,
in woodcut, as, "Type of Boston Merchant"; Nast might have drawn
him as an honest statesman. He was eighty, hale and sturdy, not
aged; and his quick blue eyes, still unflecked, and as brisk as a
boy's, saw everything.
"Well, well, well!" he said, heartily. "You haven't lost any of
your good looks since last week, I see, Miss Alice, so I guess
I'm to take it you haven't been worrying over your daddy. The
young feller's getting along all right, is he?"
"He's much better; he's sitting up, Mr. Lamb. Won't you come
in?"
"Well, I don't know but I might." He turned to call toward twin
disks of light at the curb, "Be out in a minute, Billy"; and the
silhouette of a chauffeur standing beside a car could be seen to
salute in response, as the old gentleman stepped into the hall.
"You don't suppose your daddy's receiving callers yet, is he?"
"He's a good deal stronger than he was when you were here last
week, but I'm afraid he's not very presentable, though."
"'Presentable?'" The old man echoed her jovially. "Pshaw! I've
seen lots of sick folks. _I_ know what they look like and how
they love to kind of nest in among a pile of old blankets and
wrappers. Don't you worry about THAT, Miss Alice, if you think
he'd like to see me."
"Of course he would--if----" Alice hesitated; then said quickly,"
Of course he'd love to see you and he's quite able to, if you
care to come up."
She ran up the stairs ahead of him, and had time to snatch the
crocheted wrap from her father's shoulders. Swathed as usual, he
was sitting beside a table, reading the evening paper; but when
his employer appeared in the doorway he half rose as if to come
forward in greeting.
"Sit still!" the old gentleman shouted. "What do you mean?
Don't you know you're weak as a cat? D'you think a man can be
sick as long as you have and NOT be weak as a cat? What you
trying to do the polite with ME for?"
Adams gratefully protracted the handshake that accompanied these
inquiries. "This is certainly mighty fine of you, Mr. Lamb," he
said. "I guess Alice has told you how much our whole family
appreciate your coming here so regularly to see how this old bag
o' bones was getting along. Haven't you, Alice?"
"Yes, papa," she said; and turned to go out, but Lamb checked
her.
"Stay right here, Miss Alice; I'm not even going to sit down. I
know how it upsets sick folks when people outside the family come
in for the first time."
"You don't upset me," Adams said. "I'll feel a lot better for
getting a glimpse of you, Mr. Lamb."
The visitor's laugh was husky, but hearty and re- assuring, like
his voice in speaking. "That's the way all my boys blarney me,
Miss Alice," he said. "They think I'll make the work lighter on
'em if they can get me kind of flattered up. You just tell your
daddy it's no use; he doesn't get on MY soft side, pretending he
likes to see me even when he's sick."
"Oh, I'm not so sick any more," Adams said. "I expect to be back
in my place ten days from now at the longest."
"Well, now, don't hurry it, Virgil; don't hurry it. You take
your time; take your time."
This brought to Adams's lips a feeble smile not lacking in a kind
of vanity, as feeble. "Why?" he asked. "I suppose you think my
department runs itself down there, do you?"
His employer's response was another husky laugh. "Well, well,
well!" he cried, and patted Adams's shoulder with a strong pink
hand. "Listen to this young feller, Miss Alice, will you! He
thinks we can't get along without him a minute! Yes, sir, this
daddy of yours believes the whole works 'll just take and run
down if he isn't there to keep 'em wound up. I always suspected
he thought a good deal of himself, and now I know he does!"
Adams looked troubled. "Well, I don't like to feel that my
salary's going on with me not earning it."
"Listen to him, Miss Alice! Wouldn't you think, now, he'd let me
be the one to worry about that? Why, on my word. if your daddy
had his way, _I_ wouldn't be anywhere. He'd take all my worrying
and everything else off my shoulders and shove me right out of
Lamb and Company! He would!"
"It seems to me I've been soldiering on you a pretty long while,
Mr. Lamb," the convalescent said, querulously. "I don't feel
right about it; but I'll be back in ten days. You'll see."
The old man took his hand in parting. "All right; we'll see,
Virgil. Of course we do need you, seriously speaking; but we
don't need you so bad we'll let you come down there before you're
fully fit and able." He went to the door. "You hear, Miss
Alice? That's what I wanted to make the old feller understand,
and what I want you to kind of enforce on him. The old place is
there waiting for him, and it'd wait ten years if it took him
that long to get good and well. You see that he remembers it,
Miss Alice!"
She went down the stairs with him, and he continued to impress
this upon her until he had gone out of the front door. And even
after that, the husky voice called back from the darkness, as he
went to his car, "Don't forget, Miss Alice; let him take his own
time. We always want him, but we want him to get good and well
first. Good-night, good-night, young lady!"
When she closed the door her mother came from the farther end of
the "living-room," where there was no light; and Alice turned to
her.
"I can't help liking that old man, mama," she said. "He always
sounds so--well, so solid and honest and friendly! I do like
him."
But Mrs. Adams failed in sympathy upon this point. "He didn't
say anything about raising your father's salary, did he?" she
asked, dryly.
"No."
"No. I thought not."
She would have said more, but Alice, indisposed to listen, began
to whistle, ran up the stairs, and went to sit with her father.
She found him bright-eyed with the excitement a first caller
brings into a slow convalescence: his cheeks showed actual hints
of colour; and he was smiling tremulously as he filled and lit
his pipe. She brought the crocheted scarf and put it about his
shoulders again, then took a chair near him.
"I believe seeing Mr. Lamb did do you good. papa," she said.
"I sort of thought it might, and that's why I let him come up.
You really look a little like your old self again."
Adams exhaled a breathy "Ha!" with the smoke from his pipe as he
waved the match to extinguish it. "That's fine," he said. "The
smoke I had before dinner didn't taste the way it used to, and I
kind of wondered if I'd lost my liking for tobacco, but this one
seems to be all right. You bet it did me good to see J. A.
Lamb! He's the biggest man that's ever lived in this town or
ever will live here; and you can take all the Governors and
Senators or anything they've raised here, and put 'em in a pot
with him, and they won't come out one-two-three alongside o' him!
And to think as big a man as that, with all his interests and
everything he's got on his mind--to think he'd never let anything
prevent him from coming here once every week to ask how I was
getting along, and then walk right upstairs and kind of CALL on
me, as it were well, it makes me sort of feel as if I wasn't so
much of a nobody, so to speak, as your mother seems to like to
make out sometimes."
"How foolish, papa! Of COURSE you're not 'a nobody.'"
Adams chuckled faintly upon his pipe-stem, what vanity he had
seeming to be further stimulated by his daughter's applause. "I
guess there aren't a whole lot of people in this town that could
claim J. A. showed that much interest in 'em," he said. "Of
course I don't set up to believe it's all because of merit, or
anything like that. He'd do the same for anybody else that'd
been with the company as long as I have, but still it IS
something to be with the company that long and have him show he
appreciates it."
"Yes, indeed, it is, papa."
"Yes, sir," Adams said, reflectively. "Yes, sir, I guess that's
so. And besides, it all goes to show the kind of a man he is.
Simon pure, that's what that man is, Alice. Simon pure! There's
never been anybody work for him that didn't respect him more than
they did any other man in the world, I guess. And when you work
for him you know he respects you, too. Right from the start you
get the feeling that J. A. puts absolute confidence in you; and
that's mighty stimulating: it makes you want to show him he
hasn't misplaced it. There's great big moral values to the way a
man like him gets you to feeling about your relations with the
business: it ain't all just dollars and cents--not by any means!"
He was silent for a time, then returned with increasing
enthusiasm to this theme, and Alice was glad to see so much
renewal of life in him; he had not spoken with a like cheerful
vigour since before his illness. The visit of his idolized great
man had indeed been good for him, putting new spirit into him;
and liveliness of the body followed that of the spirit. His
improvement carried over the night: he slept well and awoke late,
declaring that he was "pretty near a well man and ready for
business right now." Moreover, having slept again in the
afternoon, he dressed and went down to dinner, leaning but
lightly on Alice, who conducted him.
"My! but you and your mother have been at it with your scrubbing
and dusting!" he said, as they came through the "living-room."
"I don't know I ever did see the house so spick and span before!"
His glance fell upon a few carnations in a vase, and he chuckled
admiringly. "Flowers, too! So THAT'S what you coaxed that
dollar and a half out o 'me for, this morning!"
Other embellishments brought forth his comment when he had taken
his old seat at the head of the small dinner-table. "Why, I
declare, Alice!" he exclaimed. "I been so busy looking at all
the spick- and-spanishness after the house-cleaning, and the
flowers out in the parlour--'living-room' I suppose you want me
to call it, if I just GOT to be fashionable-- I been so busy
studying over all this so-and-so, I declare I never noticed YOU
till this minute! My, but you ARE all dressed up! What's goin'
on? What's it about: you so all dressed up, and flowers in the
parlour and everything?"
"Don't you see, papa? It's in honour of your coming downstairs
again, of course."
"Oh, so that's it," he said. "I never would 'a' thought of that,
I guess."
But Walter looked sidelong at his father, and gave forth his sly
and knowing laugh. "Neither would I!" he said.
Adams lifted his eyebrows jocosely. "You're jealous, are you,
sonny? You don't want the old man to think our young lady'd make
so much fuss over him, do you?"
"Go on thinkin' it's over you," Walter retorted, amused. "Go on
and think it. It'll do you good."
"Of course I'll think it," Adams said. "It isn't anybody's
birthday. Certainly the decorations are on account of me coming
downstairs. Didn't you hear Alice say so?"
"Sure, I heard her say so."
"Well, then----"
Walter interrupted him with a little music. Looking shrewdly at
Alice, he sang:
"I was walkin' out on Monday with my sweet thing.
She's my neat thing,
My sweet thing:
I'll go round on Tuesday night to see her.
Oh, how we'll spoon----"
"Walter!" his mother cried. "WHERE do you learn such vulgar
songs?" However, she seemed not greatly displeased with him, and
laughed as she spoke.
"So that's it, Alice!" said Adams. "Playing the hypocrite with
your old man, are you? It's some new beau, is it?"
"I only wish it were," she said, calmly. "No. It's just what I
said: it's all for you. dear."
"Don't let her con you," Walter advised his father. "She's got
expectations. You hang around downstairs a while after dinner
and you'll see."
But the prophecy failed, though Adams went to his own room
without waiting to test it. No one came.
Alice stayed in the "living-room" until half-past nine, when she
went slowly upstairs. Her mother, almost tearful, met her at the
top, and whispered, "You mustn't mind, dearie."
"Mustn't mind what?" Alice asked, and then, as she went on her
way, laughed scornfully. "What utter nonsense!" she said.
Next day she cut the stems of the rather scant show of carnations
and refreshed them with new water. At dinner, her father, still
in high spirits, observed that she had again "dressed up" in
honour of his second descent of the stairs; and Walter repeated
his fragment of objectionable song; but these jocularities were
rendered pointless by the eventless evening that followed; and in
the morning the carnations began to appear tarnished and flaccid.
Alice gave them a long look, then threw them away; and neither
Walter nor her father was inspired to any rallying by her plain
costume for that evening. Mrs. Adams was visibly depressed.
When Alice finished helping her mother with the dishes, she went
outdoors and sat upon the steps of the little front veranda. The
night, gentle with warm air from the south, surrounded her
pleasantly, and the perpetual smoke was thinner. Now that the
furnaces of dwelling-houses were no longer fired, life in that
city had begun to be less like life in a railway tunnel; people
were aware of summer in the air, and in the thickened foliage of
the shade-trees, and in the sky. Stars were unveiled by the
passing of the denser smoke fogs, and to-night they could be seen
clearly; they looked warm and near. Other girls sat upon
verandas and stoops in Alice's street, cheerful as young
fishermen along the banks of a stream.
Alice could hear them from time to time; thin sopranos persistent
in laughter that fell dismally upon her ears. She had set no
lines or nets herself, and what she had of "expectations," as
Walter called them, were vanished. For Alice was experienced;
and one of the conclusions she drew from her experience was that
when a man says, "I'd take you for anything you wanted me to," he
may mean it or, he may not; but, if he does, he will not postpone
the first opportunity to say something more. Little affairs,
once begun, must be warmed quickly; for if they cool they are
dead.
But Alice was not thinking of Arthur Russell. When she tossed
away the carnations she likewise tossed away her thoughts of that
young man. She had been like a boy who sees upon the street,
some distance before him, a bit of something round and
glittering, a possible dime. He hopes it is a dime, and, until
he comes near enough to make sure, he plays that it is a dime.
In his mind he has an adventure with it: he buys something
delightful. If he picks it up, discovering only some tin-foil
which has happened upon a round shape, he feels a sinking. A
dulness falls upon him.
So Alice was dull with the loss of an adventure; and when the
laughter of other girls reached her, intermittently, she had not
sprightliness enough left in her to be envious of their gaiety.
Besides, these neighbours were ineligible even for her envy,
being of another caste; they could never know a dance at the
Palmers', except remotely, through a newspaper. Their laughter
was for the encouragement of snappy young men of the stores and
offices down-town, clerks, bookkeepers, what not--some of them
probably graduates of Frincke's Business College.
Then, as she recalled that dark portal, with its dusty stairway
mounting between close walls to disappear in the upper shadows,
her mind drew back as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless,
it was a picture often in her reverie; and sometimes it came
suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her other thoughts,
as if it leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it
arrived it wanted to stay. So a traveller, still roaming the
world afar, sometimes broods without apparent reason upon his
family burial lot: "I wonder if I shall end there."
The foreboding passed abruptly, with a jerk of her breath, as the
street-lamp revealed a tall and easy figure approaching from the
north, swinging a stick in time to its stride. She had given
Russell up --and he came.
"What luck for me!" he exclaimed. "To find you alone!"
Alice gave him her hand for an instant, not otherwise moving.
"I'm glad it happened so," she said. "Let's stay out here, shall
we? Do you think it's too provincial to sit on a girl's front
steps with her?"
"'Provincial?' Why, it's the very best of our institutions," he
returned, taking his place beside her. "At least, I think so
to-night."
"Thanks! Is that practice for other nights somewhere else?"
"No," he laughed. "The practicing all led up to this. Did I
come too soon?"
"No," she replied, gravely. "Just in time!"
"I'm glad to be so accurate; I've spent two evenings wanting to
come, Miss Adams, instead of doing what I was doing."
"What was that?"
"Dinners. Large and long dinners. Your fellow- citizens are
immensely hospitable to a newcomer."
"Oh, no," Alice said. "We don't do it for everybody. Didn't you
find yourself charmed?"
"One was a men's dinner," he explained. "Mr. Palmer seemed to
think I ought to be shown to the principal business men."
"What was the other dinner?"
"My cousin Mildred gave it."
"Oh, DID she!" Alice said, sharply, but she recovered herself in
the same instant, and laughed. "She wanted to show you to the
principal business women, I suppose."
"I don't know. At all events, I shouldn't give myself out to be
so much feted by your 'fellow- citizens,' after all, seeing these
were both done by my relatives, the Palmers. However, there are
others to follow, I'm afraid. I was wondering--I hoped maybe
you'd be coming to some of them. Aren't you?"
"I rather doubt it," Alice said, slowly. "Mildred's dance was
almost the only evening I've gone out since my father's illness
began. He seemed better that day; so I went. He was better the
other day when he wanted those cigars. He's very much up and
down." She paused. "I'd almost forgotten that Mildred is your
cousin."
"Not a very near one," he explained. "Mr. Palmer's father was
my great-uncle."
"Still, of course you are related."
"Yes; that distantly."
Alice said placidly, "It's quite an advantage."
He agreed. "Yes. It is."
"No," she said, in the same placid tone. "I mean for Mildred."
"I don't see----"
She laughed. "No. You wouldn't. I mean it's an advantage over
the rest of us who might like to compete for some of your time;
and the worst of it is we can't accuse her of being unfair about
it. We can't prove she showed any trickiness in having you for a
cousin. Whatever else she might plan to do with you, she didn't
plan that. So the rest of us must just bear it!"
"The 'rest of you!' " he laughed. "It's going to mean a great
deal of suffering!"
Alice resumed her placid tone. "You're staying at the Palmers',
aren't you?"
"No, not now. I've taken an apartment. I'm going to live here;
I'm permanent. Didn't I tell you?"
"I think I'd heard somewhere that you were," she said. "Do you
think you'll like living here?"
"How can one tell?"
"If I were in your place I think I should be able to tell, Mr.
Russell."
"How?"
"Why, good gracious!" she cried. "Haven't you got the most
perfect creature in town for your--your cousin? SHE expects to
make you like living here, doesn't she? How could you keep from
liking it, even if you tried not to, under the circumstances?"
"Well, you see, there's such a lot of circumstances," he
explained; "I'm not sure I'll like getting back into a business
again. I suppose most of the men of my age in the country have
been going through the same experience: the War left us with a
considerable restlessness of spirit."
"You were in the War?" she asked, quickly, and as quickly
answered herself, "Of course you were!'
"I was a left-over; they only let me out about four months ago,"
he said. "It's quite a shake-up trying to settle down again."
"You were in France, then?"
"Oh, yes; but I didn't get up to the front much-- only two or
three times, and then just for a day or so. I was in the
transportation service."
"You were an officer, of course."
"Yes," he said. "They let me play I was a major."
"I guessed a major," she said. "You'd always be pretty grand, of
course."
Russell was amused. "Well, you see," he informed her, "as it
happened, we had at least several other majors in our army. Why
would I always be something 'pretty grand?'"
"You're related to the Palmers. Don't you notice they always
affect the pretty grand?"
"Then you think I'm only one of their affectations, I take it."
"Yes, you seem to be the most successful one they've got!" Alice
said, lightly. "You certainly do belong to them." And she
laughed as if at something hidden from him. "Don't you?"
"But you've just excused me for that," he protested. "You said
nobody could be blamed for my being their third cousin. What a
contradictory girl you are!"
Alice shook her head. "Let's keep away from the kind of girl I
am."
"No," he said. "That's just what I came here to talk about."
She shook her head again. "Let's keep first to the kind of man
you are. I'm glad you were in the War."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know." She was quiet a moment, for she was thinking
that here she spoke the truth: his service put about him a little
glamour that helped to please her with him. She had been pleased
with him during their walk; pleased with him on his own account;
and now that pleasure was growing keener. She looked at him, and
though the light in which she saw him was little more than
starlight, she saw that he was looking steadily at her with a
kindly and smiling seriousness. All at once it seemed to her
that the night air was sweeter to breathe, as if a distant
fragrance of new blossoms had been blown to her. She smiled back
to him, and said, "Well, what kind of man are you?"
"I don't know; I've often wondered," he replied. "What kind of
girl are you?"
"Don't you remember? I told you the other day. I'm just me!"
"But who is that?"
"You forget everything;" said Alice. "You told me what kind of a
girl I am. You seemed to think you'd taken quite a fancy to me
from the very first."
"So I did," he agreed, heartily.
"But how quickly you forgot it!"
"Oh, no. I only want YOU to say what kind of a girl you are."
She mocked him. "'I don't know; I've often wondered!' What kind
of a girl does Mildred tell you I am? What has she said about me
since she told you I was 'a Miss Adams?'"
"I don't know; I haven't asked her."
"Then DON'T ask her," Alice said, quickly.
"Why?"
"Because she's such a perfect creature and I'm such an imperfect
one. Perfect creatures have the most perfect way of ruining the
imperfect ones."
"But then they wouldn't be perfect. Not if they----"
"Oh, yes, they remain perfectly perfect," she assured him.
"That's because they never go into details. They're not so
vulgar as to come right out and TELL that you've been in jail for
stealing chickens. They just look absent-minded and say in a low
voice, 'Oh, very; but I scarcely think you'd like her
particularly'; and then begin to talk of something else right
away."
His smile had disappeared. "Yes," he said, somewhat ruefully.
"That does sound like Mildred. You certainly do seem to know
her! Do you know everybody as well as that?"
"Not myself," Alice said. "I don't know myself at all. I got to
wondering about that--about who I was--the other day after you
walked home with me."
He uttered an exclamation, and added, explaining it, "You do give
a man a chance to be fatuous, though! As if it were walking home
with me that made you wonder about yourself!"
"It was," Alice informed him, coolly. "I was wondering what I
wanted to make you think of me, in case I should ever happen to
see you again."
This audacity appeared to take his breath. "By George!" he
cried.
"You mustn't be astonished," she said. "What I decided then was
that I would probably never dare to be just myself with you--not
if I cared to have you want to see me again--and yet here I am,
just being myself after all!"
"You ARE the cheeriest series of shocks," Russell exclaimed,
whereupon Alice added to the series.
"Tell me: Is it a good policy for me to follow with you?" she
asked, and he found the mockery in her voice delightful. "Would
you advise me to offer you shocks as a sort of vacation from
suavity?"
"Suavity" was yet another sketch of Mildred; a recognizable one,
or it would not have been humorous. In Alice's hands, so
dexterous in this work, her statuesque friend was becoming as
ridiculous as a fine figure of wax left to the mercies of a
satirist.
But the lively young sculptress knew better than to overdo: what
she did must appear to spring all from mirth; so she laughed as
if unwillingly, and said, "I MUSTN'T laugh at Mildred! In the
first place, she's your--your cousin. And in the second place,
she's not meant to be funny; it isn't right to laugh at really
splendid people who take themselves seriously. In the third
place, you won't come again if I do."
"Don't be sure of that," Russell said, "whatever you do."
"'Whatever I do?' " she echoed. "That sounds as if you thought I
COULD be terrific! Be careful; there's one thing I could do that
would keep you away."
"What's that?"
"I could tell you not to come," she said. "I wonder if I ought
to."
"Why do you wonder if you 'ought to?'"
"Don't you guess?"
"No."
"Then let's both be mysteries to each other," she suggested. "I
mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify me because you
don't guess why I wonder. We'll let it go at that, shall we?"
"Very well; so long as it's certain that you DON'T tell me not to
come again."
"I'll not tell you that--yet," she said. "In fact----" She
paused, reflecting, with her head to one side. "In fact, I won't
tell you not to come, probably, until I see that's what you want
me to tell you. I'll let you out easily--and I'll be sure to see
it. Even before you do, perhaps."
"That arrangement suits me," Russell returned, and his voice held
no trace of jocularity: he had become serious. "It suits me
better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can come--oh,
not whenever I want to; I don't expect so much!--but if you mean
that I can see you pretty often."
"Of course I'm in earnest," she said. "But before I say you can
come 'pretty often,' I'd like to know how much of my time you'd
need if you did come 'whenever you want to'; and of course you
wouldn't dare make any answer to that question except one.
Wouldn't you let me have Thursdays out?"
"No, no," he protested. "I want to know. Will you let me come
pretty often?"
"Lean toward me a little," Alice said. "I want you to
understand." And as he obediently bent his head near hers, she
inclined toward him as if to whisper; then, in a half-shout, she
cried,
"YES!"
He clapped his hands. "By George!" he said. "What a girl you
are!"
"Why?"
"Well, for the first reason, because you have such gaieties as
that one. I should think your father would actually like being
ill, just to be in the house with you all the time."
"You mean by that," Alice inquired, "I keep my family cheerful
with my amusing little ways?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"There were only boys in your family, weren't there, Mr.
Russell?"
"I was an only child, unfortunately."
"Yes," she said. "I see you hadn't any sisters."
For a moment he puzzled over her meaning, then saw it, and was
more delighted with her than ever. "I can answer a question of
yours, now, that I couldn't a while ago."
"Yes, I know," she returned, quietly.
"But how could you know?"
"It's the question I asked you about whether you were going to
like living here," she said. "You're about to tell me that now
you know you WILL like it."
"More telepathy!" he exclaimed. "Yes, that was it, precisely. I
suppose the same thing's been said to you so many times that
you----"
"No, it hasn't," Alice said, a little confused for the moment.
"Not at all. I meant----" She paused, then asked in a gentle
voice, "Would you really like to know?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, I was only afraid you didn't mean it."
"See here," he said. "I did mean it. I told you it was being
pretty difficult for me to settle down to things again. Well,
it's more difficult than you know, but I think I can pull through
in fair spirits if I can see a girl like you 'pretty often.'"
"All right," she said, in a business-like tone. "I've told you
that you can if you want to."
"I do want to," he assured her. "I do, indeed!"
"How often is 'pretty often,' Mr. Russell?"
"Would you walk with me sometimes? To-morrow?"
"Sometimes. Not to-morrow. The day after."
"That's splendid!" he said. "You'll walk with me day after
to-morrow, and the night after that I'll see you at Miss Lamb's
dance, won't I?"
But this fell rather chillingly upon Alice. "Miss Lamb's dance?
Which Miss Lamb?" she asked.
"I don't know--it's the one that's just coming out of mourning."
"Oh, Henrietta--yes. Is her dance so soon? I'd forgotten."
"You'll be there, won't you?" he asked. "Please say you're
going."
Alice did not respond at once, and he urged her again: "Please do
promise you'll be there."
"No, I can't promise anything," she said, slowly. "You see, for
one thing, papa might not be well enough."
"But if he is?" said Russell. "If he is you'll surely come,
won't you? Or, perhaps----" He hesitated, then went on quickly,
"I don't know the rules in this place yet, and different places
have different rules; but do you have to have a chaperone, or
don't girls just go to dances with the men sometimes? If they
do, would you--would you let me take you?"
Alice was startled. "Good gracious!"
"What's the matter?"
"Don't you think your relatives---- Aren't you expected to go
with Mildred--and Mrs. Palmer?"
"Not necessarily. It doesn't matter what I might be expected to
do," he said. "Will you go with me?"
"I---- No; I couldn't."
"Why not?"
"I can't. I'm not going."
"But why?"
"Papa's not really any better," Alice said, huskily. "I'm too
worried about him to go to a dance." Her voice sounded
emotional, genuinely enough; there was something almost like a
sob in it. "Let's talk of other things, please."
He acquiesced gently; but Mrs. Adams, who had been listening to
the conversation at the open window, just overhead, did not hear
him. She had correctly interpreted the sob in Alice's voice,
and, trembling with sudden anger, she rose from her knees, and
went fiercely to her husband's room.
CHAPTER XIII
He had not undressed, and he sat beside the table, smoking his
pipe and reading his newspaper. Upon his forehead the lines in
that old pattern, the historical map of his troubles, had grown a
little vaguer lately; relaxed by the complacency of a man who not
only finds his health restored, but sees the days before him
promising once more a familiar routine that he has always liked
to follow.
As his wife came in, closing the door behind her, he looked up
cheerfully, "Well, mother," he said, "what's the news
downstairs?"
"That's what I came to tell you," she informed him, grimly.
Adams lowered his newspaper to his knee and peered over his
spectacles at her. She had remained by the door, standing, and
the great greenish shadow of the small lamp-shade upon his table
revealed her but dubiously. "Isn't everything all right?" he
asked. "What's the matter?"
"Don't worry: I'm going to tell you," she said, her grimness not
relaxed. "There's matter enough, Virgil Adams. Matter enough to
make me sick of being alive!"
With that, the markings on his brows began to emerge again in all
their sharpness; the old pattern reappeared. "Oh, my, my!" he
lamented. "I thought maybe we were all going to settle down to a
little peace for a while. What's it about now?"
"It's about Alice. Did you think it was about ME or anything for
MYSELF?"
Like some ready old machine, always in order, his irritability
responded immediately and automatically to her emotion. "How in
thunder could I think what it's about, or who it's for? SAY it,
and get it over!"
"Oh, I'll 'say' it," she promised, ominously. "What I've come to
ask you is, How much longer do you expect me to put up with that
old man and his doings?"
"Whose doings? What old man?"
She came at him, fiercely accusing. "You know well enough what
old man, Virgil Adams! That old man who was here the other
night."
"Mr. Lamb?"
"Yes; 'Mister Lamb!' " She mocked his voice. "What other old man
would I be likely to mean except J. A. Lamb?"
"What's he been doing now?" her husband inquired, satirically.
"Where'd you get something new against him since the last time
you----"
"Just this!" she cried. "The other night when that man was here,
if I'd known how he was going to make my child suffer, I'd never
have let him set his foot in my house."
Adams leaned back in his chair as though her absurdity had eased
his mind. "Oh, I see," he said. "You've just gone plain crazy.
That's the only explanation of such talk, and it suits the case."
"Hasn't that man made us all suffer every day of our lives?" she
demanded. "I'd like to know why it is that my life and my
children's lives have to be sacrificed to him?"
"How are they 'sacrificed' to him?"
"Because you keep on working for him! Because you keep on
letting him hand out whatever miserable little pittance he
chooses to give you; that's why! It's as if he were some
horrible old Juggernaut and I had to see my children's own father
throwing them under the wheels to keep him satisfied."
"I won't hear any more such stuff!" Lifting his paper, Adams
affected to read.
"You'd better listen to me," she admonished him. "You might be
sorry you didn't, in case he ever tried to set foot in my house
again! I might tell him to his face what I think of him."
At this, Adams slapped the newspaper down upon his knee. "Oh,
the devil! What's it matter what you think of him?"
"It had better matter to you!" she cried. "Do you suppose I'm
going to submit forever to him and his family and what they're
doing to my child?"
"What are he and his family doing to 'your child?'"
Mrs. Adams came out with it. "That snippy little Henrietta Lamb
has always snubbed Alice every time she's ever had the chance.
She's followed the lead of the other girls; they've always all of
'em been jealous of Alice because she dared to try and be happy,
and because she's showier and better- looking than they are, even
though you do give her only about thirty-five cents a year to do
it on! They've all done everything on earth they could to drive
the young men away from her and belittle her to 'em; and this
mean little Henrietta Lamb's been the worst of the whole crowd to
Alice, every time she could see a chance."
"What for?"Adams asked, incredulously. "Why should she or
anybody else pick on Alice?"
"'Why?' 'What for?'" his wife repeated with a greater vehemence.
"Do YOU ask me such a thing as that? Do you really want to
know?"
"Yes; I'd want to know--I would if I believed it."
"Then I'll tell you," she said in a cold fury. "It's on account
of you, Virgil, and nothing else in the world."
He hooted at her. "Oh, yes! These girls don't like ME, so they
pick on Alice."
"Quit your palavering and evading," she said. "A crowd of girls
like that, when they get a pretty girl like Alice among them,
they act just like wild beasts. They'll tear her to pieces, or
else they'll chase her and run her out, because they know if she
had half a chance she'd outshine 'em. They can't do that to a
girl like Mildred Palmer because she's got money and family to
back her. Now you listen to me, Virgil Adams: the way the world
is now, money IS family. Alice would have just as much 'family'
as any of 'em every single bit--if you hadn't fallen behind in
the race."
"How did I----"
"Yes, you did!" she cried. "Twenty-five years ago when we were
starting and this town was smaller, you and I could have gone
with any of 'em if we'd tried hard enough. Look at the people we
knew then that do hold their heads up alongside of anybody in
this town! WHY can they? Because the men of those families made
money and gave their children everything that makes life worth
living! Why can't we hold our heads up? Because those men
passed you in the race. They went up the ladder, and you--you're
still a clerk down at that old hole!"
"You leave that out, please," he said. "I thought you were going
to tell me something Henrietta Lamb had done to our Alice."
"You BET I'm going to tell you," she assured him, vehemently.
"But first I'm telling WHY she does it. It's because you've
never given Alice any backing nor any background, and they all
know they can do anything they like to her with perfect impunity.
If she had the hundredth part of what THEY have to fall back on
she'd have made 'em sing a mighty different song long ago!"
"How would she?"
"Oh, my heavens, but you're slow!" Mrs. Adams moaned. "Look
here! You remember how practically all the nicest boys in this
town used to come here a few years ago. Why, they were all crazy
over her; and the girls HAD to be nice to her then. Look at the
difference now! There'll be a whole month go by and not a young
man come to call on her, let alone send her candy or flowers, or
ever think of TAKING her any place and yet she's prettier and
brighter than she was when they used to come. It isn't the
child's fault she couldn't hold 'em, is it? Poor thing, SHE
tried hard enough! I suppose you'd say it was her fault,
though."
"No; I wouldn't."
"Then whose fault is it?"
"Oh, mine, mine," he said, wearily. "I drove the young men away,
of course."
"You might as well have driven 'em, Virgil. It amounts to just
the same thing."
"How does it?"
"Because as they got older a good many of 'em began to think more
about money; that's one thing. Money's at the bottom of it all,
for that matter. Look at these country clubs and all such
things: the other girls' families belong and we don't, and Alice
don't; and she can't go unless somebody takes her, and nobody
does any more. Look at the other girls' houses, and then look at
our house, so shabby and old-fashioned she'd be pretty near
ashamed to ask anybody to come in and sit down nowadays! Look at
her clothes--oh, yes; you think you shelled out a lot for that
little coat of hers and the hat and skirt she got last March; but
it's nothing. Some of these girls nowadays spend more than your
whole salary on their clothes. And what jewellery has she got?
A plated watch and two or three little pins and rings of the kind
people's maids wouldn't wear now. Good Lord, Virgil Adams, wake
up! Don't sit there and tell me you don't know things like this
mean SUFFERING for the child!"
He had begun to rub his hands wretchedly back and forth over his
bony knees, as if in that way he somewhat alleviated the tedium
caused by her racking voice. "Oh, my, my!" he muttered. "OH,
my, my!"
"Yes, I should think you WOULD say 'Oh, my, my!' " she took him
up, loudly. "That doesn't help things much! If you ever wanted
to DO anything about it, the poor child might see some gleam of
hope in her life. You don't CARE for her, that's the trouble;
you don't care a single thing about her."
"I don't?"
"No; you don't. Why, even with your miserable little salary you
could have given her more than you have. You're the closest man
I ever knew: it's like pulling teeth to get a dollar out of you
for her, now and then, and yet you hide some away, every month or
so, in some wretched little investment or other. You----"
"Look here, now," he interrupted, angrily. "You look here! If I
didn't put a little by whenever I could, in a bond or something,
where would you be if anything happened to me? The insurance
doctors never passed me; YOU know that. Haven't we got to have
SOMETHING to fall back on?"
"Yes, we have!" she cried. "We ought to have something to go on
with right now, too, when we need it. Do you suppose these
snippets would treat Alice the way they do if she could afford to
ENTERTAIN? They leave her out of their dinners and dances simply
because they know she can't give any dinners and dances to leave
them out of! They know she can't get EVEN, and that's the whole
story! That's why Henrietta Lamb's done this thing to her now."
Adams had gone back to his rubbing of his knees. "Oh, my, my!"
he said. "WHAT thing?"
She told him. "Your dear, grand, old Mister Lamb's Henrietta has
sent out invitations for a large party--a LARGE one. Everybody
that is anybody in this town is asked, you can be sure. There's
a very fine young man, a Mr. Russell, has just come to town, and
he's interested in Alice, and he's asked her to go to this dance
with him. Well, Alice can't accept. She can't go with him,
though she'd give anything in the world to do it. Do you
understand? The reason she can't is because Henrietta Lamb
hasn't invited her. Do you want to know why Henrietta hasn't
invited her? It's because she knows Alice can't get even, and
because she thinks Alice ought to be snubbed like this on account
of only being the daughter of one of her grandfather's clerks. I
HOPE you understand!"
"Oh, my, my!" he said. "OH, my, my!"
"That's your sweet old employer," his wife cried, tauntingly.
"That's your dear, kind, grand old Mister Lamb! Alice has been
left out of a good many smaller things, like big dinners and
little dances, but this is just the same as serving her notice
that she's out of everything! And it's all done by your dear,
grand old----"
"Look here!" Adams exclaimed. "I don't want to hear any more of
that! You can't hold him responsible for everything his
grandchildren do, I guess! He probably doesn't know a thing
about it. You don't suppose he's troubling HIS head over----"
But she burst out at him passionately. "Suppose you trouble YOUR
head about it! You'd better, Virgil Adams! You'd better, unless
you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid!
She's still young and she has a chance for happiness, if she had
a father that didn't bring a millstone to hang around her neck,
instead of what he ought to give her! You just wait till you die
and God asks you what you had in your breast instead of a heart!"
"Oh, my, my!" he groaned. "What's my heart got to do with it?"
"Nothing! You haven't got one or you'd give her what she needed.
Am I asking anything you CAN'T do? You know better; you know I'm
not!"
At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub
his knees; and he looked at her fixedly. "Now, tell me," he
said, slowly. "Just what ARE you asking?"
"You know!" she sobbed.
"You mean you've broken your word never to speak of THAT to me
again?"
"What do _I_ care for my word?" she cried, and, sinking to the
floor at his feet, rocked herself back and forth there. "Do you
suppose I'll let my 'word' keep me from struggling for a little
happiness for my children? It won't, I tell you; it won't! I'll
struggle for that till I die! I will, till I die till I die!"
He rubbed his head now instead of his knees, and, shaking all
over, he got up and began with uncertain steps to pace the floor.
"Hell, hell, hell!" he said. "I've got to go through THAT
again!"
"Yes, you have!" she sobbed. "Till I die."
"Yes; that's what you been after all the time I was getting
well."
"Yes, I have, and I'll keep on till I die!"
"A fine wife for a man," he said. "Beggin' a man to be a dirty
dog!"
"No! To be a MAN--and I'll keep on till I die!"
Adams again fell back upon his last solace: he walked, half
staggering, up and down the room, swearing in a rhythmic
repetition.
His wife had repetitions of her own, and she kept at them in a
voice that rose to a higher and higher pitch, like the sound of
an old well-pump. "Till I die! Till I die! Till I DIE!"
She ended in a scream; and Alice, coming up the stairs, thanked
heaven that Russell had gone. She ran to her father's door and
went in.
Adams looked at her, and gesticulated shakily at the convulsive
figure on the floor. "Can you get her out of here?"
Alice helped Mrs. Adams to her feet; and the stricken woman
threw her arms passionately about her daughter.
"Get her out!" Adams said, harshly; then cried, "Wait!"
Alice, moving toward the door, halted, and looked at him blankly,
over her mother's shoulder. "What is it, papa?"
He stretched out his arm and pointed at her. "She says--she says
you have a mean life, Alice."
"No, papa."
Mrs. Adams turned in her daughter's arms. "Do you hear her lie?
Couldn't you be as brave as she is, Virgil?"
"Are you lying, Alice?" he asked. "Do you have a mean time?"
"No, papa."
He came toward her. "Look at me!" he said. "Things like this
dance now--is that so hard to bear?"
Alice tried to say, "No, papa," again, but she couldn't.
Suddenly and in spite of herself she began to cry.
"Do you hear her?" his wife sobbed. "Now do you----"
He waved at them fiercely. "Get out of here!" he said. "Both of
you! Get out of here!"
As they went, he dropped in his chair and bent far forward, so
that his haggard face was concealed from them. Then, as Alice
closed the door, he began to rub his knees again, muttering, "Oh,
my, my! OH, my, my!"
CHAPTER XIV
There shone a jovial sun overhead on the appointed "day after
to-morrow"; a day not cool yet of a temperature friendly to
walkers; and the air, powdered with sunshine, had so much life in
it that it seemed to sparkle. To Arthur Russell this was a day
like a gay companion who pleased him well; but the gay companion
at his side pleased him even better. She looked her prettiest,
chattered her wittiest, smiled her wistfulest, and delighted him
with all together.
"You look so happy it's easy to see your father's taken a good
turn," he told her.
"Yes; he has this afternoon, at least," she said. "I might have
other reasons for looking cheerful, though."
"For instance?"
"Exactly!" she said, giving him a sweet look just enough mocked
by her laughter. "For instance!"
"Well, go on," he begged.
"Isn't it expected?" she asked.
"Of you, you mean?"
"No," she returned. "For you, I mean!"
In this style, which uses a word for any meaning that quick look
and colourful gesture care to endow it with, she was an expert;
and she carried it merrily on, leaving him at liberty (one of the
great values of the style) to choose as he would how much or how
little she meant. He was content to supply mere cues, for
although he had little coquetry of his own, he had lately begun
to find that the only interesting moments in his life were those
during which Alice Adams coquetted with him. Happily, these
obliging moments extended themselves to cover all the time he
spent with her. However serious she might seem, whatever
appeared to be her topic, all was thou-and-I.
He planned for more of it, seeing otherwise a dull evening ahead;
and reverted, afterwhile, to a forbidden subject. "About that
dance at Miss Lamb's --since your father's so much better----"
She flushed a little. "Now, now!" she chided him. "We agreed
not to say any more about that."
"Yes, but since he IS better----"
Alice shook her head. "He won't be better to-morrow. He always
has a bad day after a good one especially after such a good one
as this is."
"But if this time it should be different," Russell persisted;
"wouldn't you be willing to come if he's better by to-morrow
evening? Why not wait and decide at the last minute?"
She waved her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What
does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a dance or
not?"
"Well, I thought I'd made it clear that it looks fairly bleak to
me if you don't go."
"Oh, yes!" she jeered.
"It's the simple truth," he insisted. "I don't care a great deal
about dances these days; and if you aren't going to be there----"
"You could stay away," she suggested. "You wouldn't!"
"Unfortunately, I can't. I'm afraid I'm supposed to be the
excuse. Miss Lamb, in her capacity as a friend of my
relatives----"
"Oh, she's giving it for YOU! I see! On Mildred's account you
mean?"
At that his face showed an increase of colour. "I suppose just
on account of my being a cousin of Mildred's and of----"
"Of course! You'll have a beautiful time, too. Henrietta'll see
that you have somebody to dance with besides Miss Dowling, poor
man!"
"But what I want somebody to see is that I dance with you! And
perhaps your father----"
"Wait!" she said, frowning as if she debated whether or not to
tell him something of import; then, seeming to decide
affirmatively, she asked: "Would you really like to know the
truth about it?"
"If it isn't too unflattering."
"It hasn't anything to do with you at all," she said. "Of course
I'd like to go with you and to dance with you--though you don't
seem to realize that you wouldn't be permitted much time with
me."
"Oh, yes, I----"
"Never mind!" she laughed. "Of course you wouldn't. But even if
papa should be better to-morrow, I doubt if I'd go. In fact, I
know I wouldn't. There's another reason besides papa."
"Is there?"
"Yes. The truth is, I don't get on with Henrietta Lamb. As a
matter of fact, I dislike her, and of course that means she
dislikes me. I should never think of asking her to anything I
gave, and I really wonder she asks me to things SHE gives." This
was a new inspiration; and Alice, beginning to see her way out of
a perplexity, wished that she had thought of it earlier: she
should have told him from the first that she and Henrietta had a
feud, and consequently exchanged no invitations. Moreover, there
was another thing to beset her with little anxieties: she might
better not have told him from the first, as she had indeed told
him by intimation, that she was the pampered daughter of an
indulgent father, presumably able to indulge her; for now she
must elaborately keep to the part. Veracity is usually simple;
and its opposite, to be successful, should be as simple; but
practitioners of the opposite are most often impulsive, like
Alice; and, like her, they become enmeshed in elaborations.
"It wouldn't be very nice for me to go to her house," Alice went
on, "when I wouldn't want her in mine. I've never admired her.
I've always thought she was lacking in some things most people
are supposed to be equipped with--for instance, a certain feeling
about the death of a father who was always pretty decent to his
daughter. Henrietta's father died just, eleven months and
twenty-seven days before your cousin's dance, but she couldn't
stick out those few last days and make it a year; she was there."
Alice stopped, then laughed ruefully, exclaiming, "But this is
dreadful of me!"
"Is it?"
"Blackguarding her to you when she's giving a big party for you!
Just the way Henrietta would blackguard me to you--heaven knows
what she WOULDN'T say if she talked about me to you! It would be
fair, of course, but--well, I'd rather she didn't!" And with
that, Alice let her pretty hand, in its white glove, rest upon
his arm for a moment; and he looked down at it, not unmoved to
see it there. "I want to be unfair about just this," she said,
letting a troubled laughter tremble through her appealing voice
as she spoke. "I won't take advantage of her with anybody,
except just-- you! I'd a little rather you didn't hear anybody
blackguard me, and, if you don't mind--could you promise not to
give Henrietta the chance?"
It was charmingly done, with a humorous, faint pathos altogether
genuine; and Russell found himself suddenly wanting to shout at
her, "Oh, you DEAR!" Nothing else seemed adequate; but he
controlled the impulse in favour of something more conservative.
"Imagine any one speaking unkindly of you--not praising you!"
"Who HAS praised me to you?" she asked, quickly.
"I haven't talked about you with any one; but if I did, I know
they'd----"
"No, no!" she cried, and went on, again accompanying her words
with little tremulous runs of laughter. "You don't understand
this town yet. You'll be surprised when you do; we're different.
We talk about one another fearfully! Haven't I just proved it,
the way I've been going for Henrietta? Of course I didn't say
anything really very terrible about her, but that's only because
I don't follow that practice the way most of the others do. They
don't stop with the worst of the truth they can find: they make
UP things--yes, they really do! And, oh, I'd RATHER they didn't
make up things about me--to you!"
"What difference would it make if they did?" he inquired,
cheerfully. "I'd know they weren't true."
"Even if you did know that, they'd make a difference," she said.
"Oh, yes, they would! It's too bad, but we don't like anything
quite so well that's had specks on it, even if we've wiped the
specks off;--it's just that much spoiled, and some things are all
spoiled the instant they're the least bit spoiled. What a man
thinks about a girl, for instance. Do you want to have what you
think about me spoiled, Mr. Russell?"
"Oh, but that's already far beyond reach," he said, lightly.
"But it can't be!" she protested.
"Why not?"
"Because it never can be. Men don't change their minds about one
another often: they make it quite an event when they do, and talk
about it as if something important had happened. But a girl only
has to go down-town with a shoe-string unfastened, and every man
who sees her will change his mind about her. Don't you know
that's true?"
"Not of myself, I think."
"There!" she cried. "That's precisely what every man in the
world would say!"
"So you wouldn't trust me?"
"Well--I'll be awfully worried if you give 'em a chance to tell
you that I'm too lazy to tie my shoe-strings!"
He laughed delightedly. "Is that what they do say?" he asked.
"Just about! Whatever they hope will get results." She shook
her head wisely. "Oh, yes; we do that here!"
"But I don't mind loose shoe-strings," he said. "Not if they're
yours."
"They'll find out what you do mind."
"But suppose," he said, looking at her whimsically; "suppose I
wouldn't mind anything--so long as it's yours?"
She courtesied. "Oh, pretty enough! But a girl who's talked
about has a weakness that's often a fatal one."
"What is it?"
"It's this: when she's talked about she isn't THERE. That's how
they kill her."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you."
"Don't you see? If Henrietta--or Mildred--or any of 'em--or some
of their mothers--oh, we ALL do it! Well, if any of 'em told you
I didn't tie my shoe-strings, and if I were there, so that you
could see me, you'd know it wasn't true. Even if I were sitting
so that you couldn't see my feet, and couldn't tell whether the
strings were tied or not just then, still you could look at me,
and see that I wasn't the sort of girl to neglect my
shoe-strings. But that isn't the way it happens: they'll get at
you when I'm nowhere around and can't remind you of the sort of
girl I really am."
"But you don't do that," he complained. "You don't remind me you
don't even tell me--the sort of girl you really are! I'd like to
know."
"Let's be serious then," she said, and looked serious enough
herself. "Would you honestly like to know?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, you must be careful."
"'Careful?'" The word amused him.
"I mean careful not to get me mixed up," she said. "Careful not
to mix up the girl you might hear somebody talking about with the
me I honestly try to make you see. If you do get those two mixed
up--well, the whole show'll be spoiled!"
"What makes you think so?"
"Because it's----" She checked herself, having begun to speak too
impulsively; and she was disturbed, realizing in what tricky
stuff she dealt. What had been on her lips to say was, "Because
it's happened before!" She changed to, "Because it's so easy to
spoil anything--easiest of all to spoil anything that's
pleasant."
"That might depend."
"No; it's so. And if you care at all about--about knowing a girl
who'd like someone to know her----"
"Just 'someone?' That's disappointing."
"Well--you," she said.
"Tell me how 'careful' you want me to be, then!"
"Well, don't you think it would be nice if you didn't give
anybody the chance to talk about me the way--the way I've just
been talking about Henrietta Lamb?"
With that they laughed together, and he said, "You may be cutting
me off from a great deal of information, you know."
"Yes," Alice admitted. "Somebody might begin to praise me to
you, too; so it's dangerous to ask you to change the subject if I
ever happen to be mentioned. But after all----" She paused.
"'After all' isn't the end of a thought, is it?"
"Sometimes it is of a girl's thought; I suppose men are neater
about their thoughts, and always finish 'em. It isn't the end of
the thought I had then, though."
"What is the end of it?"
She looked at him impulsively. "Oh, it's foolish," she said, and
she laughed as laughs one who proposes something probably
impossible. "But, WOULDN'T it be pleasant if two people could
ever just keep themselves TO themselves, so far as they two were
concerned? I mean, if they could just manage to be friends
without people talking about it, or talking to THEM about it?"
"I suppose that might be rather difficult," he said, more amused
than impressed by her idea.
"I don't know: it might be done," she returned, hopefully.
"Especially in a town of this size; it's grown so it's quite a
huge place these days. People can keep themselves to themselves
in a big place better, you know. For instance, nobody knows that
you and I are taking a walk together today."
"How absurd, when here we are on exhibition!"
"No; we aren't."
"We aren't?"
"Not a bit of it!" she laughed. "We were the other day, when you
walked home with me, but anybody could tell that had just
happened by chance, on account of your overtaking me; people can
always see things like that. But we're not on exhibition now.
Look where I've led you!"
Amused and a little bewildered, he looked up and down the street,
which was one of gaunt-faced apartment-houses, old, sooty, frame
boarding-houses, small groceries and drug-stores, laundries and
one- room plumbers' shops, with the sign of a clairvoyant here
and there.
"You see?" she said. "I've been leading you without your knowing
it. Of course that's because you're new to the town, and you
give yourself up to the guidance of an old citizen."
"I'm not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean that I don't care
where I follow so long as I follow you."
"Very well," she said. "I'd like you to keep on following me at
least long enough for me to show you that there's something nicer
ahead of us than this dingy street."
"Is that figurative?" he asked.
"Might be!" she returned, gaily. "There's a pretty little park
at the end, but it's very proletarian, and nobody you and I know
will be more likely to see us there than on this street."
"What an imagination you have!" he exclaimed. "You turn our
proper little walk into a Parisian adventure."
She looked at him in what seemed to be a momentary grave
puzzlement. "Perhaps you feel that a Parisian adventure mightn't
please your--your relatives?"
"Why, no," he returned. "You seem to think of them oftener than
I do."
This appeared to amuse Alice, or at least to please her, for she
laughed. "Then I can afford to quit thinking of them, I suppose.
It's only that I used to be quite a friend of Mildred's--but
there! we needn't to go into that. I've never been a friend of
Henrietta Lamb's, though, and I almost wish she weren't taking
such pains to be a friend of yours."
"Oh, but she's not. It's all on account of----"
"On Mildred's account," Alice finished this for him, coolly.
"Yes, of course."
"It's on account of the two families," he was at pains to
explain, a little awkwardly. "It's because I'm a relative of the
Palmers, and the Palmers and the Lambs seem to be old family
friends."
"Something the Adamses certainly are not," Alice said. "Not with
either of 'em; particularly not with the Lambs!" And here, scarce
aware of what impelled her, she returned to her former
elaborations and colourings. "You see, the differences between
Henrietta and me aren't entirely personal: I couldn't go to her
house even if I liked her. The Lambs and Adamses don't get on
with each other, and we've just about come to the breaking-point
as it happens."
"I hope it's nothing to bother you."
"Why? A lot of things bother me."
"I'm sorry they do," he said, and seemed simply to mean it.
She nodded gratefully. "That's nice of you, Mr. Russell. It
helps. The break between the Adamses and the Lambs is a pretty
bothersome thing. It's been coming on a long time." She sighed
deeply, and the sigh was half genuine; this half being for her
father, but the other half probably belonged to her instinctive
rendering of Juliet Capulet, daughter to a warring house. "I
hate it all so!" she added.
"Of course you must."
"I suppose most quarrels between families are on account of
business," she said. "That's why they're so sordid. Certainly
the Lambs seem a sordid lot to me, though of course I'm biased."
And with that she began to sketch a history of the commercial
antagonism that had risen between the Adamses and the Lambs.
The sketching was spontaneous and dramatic. Mathematics had no
part in it; nor was there accurate definition of Mr. Adams's
relation to the institution of Lamb and Company. The point was
clouded, in fact; though that might easily be set down to the
general haziness of young ladies confronted with the mysteries of
trade or commerce. Mr. Adams either had been a vague sort of
junior member of the firm, it appeared, or else he should have
been made some such thing; at all events, he was an old mainstay
of the business; and he, as much as any Lamb, had helped to build
up the prosperity of the company. But at last, tired of
providing so much intelligence and energy for which other people
took profit greater than his own, he had decided to leave the
company and found a business entirely for himself. The Lambs
were going to be enraged when they learned what was afoot.
Such was the impression, a little misted, wrought by Alice's
quick narrative. But there was dolorous fact behind it: Adams
had succumbed.
His wife, grave and nervous, rather than triumphant, in success,
had told their daughter that the great J. A. would be furious
and possibly vindictive. Adams was afraid of him, she said.
"But what for, mama?" Alice asked, since this seemed a turn of
affairs out of reason. "What in the world has Mr. Lamb to do
with papa's leaving the company to set up for himself? What
right has he to be angry about it? If he's such a friend as he
claims to be, I should think he'd be glad--that is, if the glue
factory turns out well. What will he be angry for?"
Mrs. Adams gave Alice an uneasy glance, hesitated, and then
explained that a resignation from Lamb's had always been looked
upon, especially by "that old man," as treachery. You were
supposed to die in the service, she said bitterly, and her
daughter, a little mystified, accepted this explanation. Adams
had not spoken to her of his surrender; he seemed not inclined to
speak to her at all, or to any one.
Alice was not serious too long, and she began to laugh as she
came to the end of her decorative sketch. "After all, the whole
thing is perfectly ridiculous," she said. "In fact, it's FUNNY!
That's on account of what papa's going to throw over the Lamb
business FOR! To save your life you couldn't imagine what he's
going to do!"
"I won't try, then," Russell assented.
"It takes all the romance out of ME," she laughed. "You'll never
go for a Parisian walk with me again, after I tell you what I'll
be heiress to." They had come to the entrance of the little
park; and, as Alice had said, it was a pretty place, especially
on a day so radiant. Trees of the oldest forest stood there,
hale and serene over the trim, bright grass; and the proletarians
had not come from their factories at this hour; only a few
mothers and their babies were to be seen, here and there, in the
shade. "I think I'll postpone telling you about it till we get
nearly home again," Alice said, as they began to saunter down one
of the gravelled paths. "There's a bench beside a spring farther
on; we can sit there and talk about a lot of things--things not
so sticky as my dowry's going to be."
"'Sticky?'" he echoed. "What in the world----" She laughed
despairingly.
"A glue factory!"
Then he laughed, too, as much from friendliness as from
amusement; and she remembered to tell him that the project of a
glue factory was still "an Adams secret." It would be known
soon, however, she added; and the whole Lamb connection would
probably begin saying all sorts of things, heaven knew what!
Thus Alice built her walls of flimsy, working always gaily, or
with at least the air of gaiety; and even as she rattled on,
there was somewhere in her mind a constant little wonder.
Everything she said seemed to be necessary to support something
else she had said. How had it happened? She found herself
telling him that since her father had decided on making so great
a change in his ways, she and her mother hoped at last to
persuade him to give up that "foolish little house" he had been
so obstinate about; and she checked herself abruptly on this
declivity just as she was about to slide into a remark concerning
her own preference for a "country place." Discretion caught her
in time; and something else, in company with discretion, caught
her, for she stopped short in her talk and blushed.
They had taken possession of the bench beside the spring, by this
time; and Russell, his elbow on the back of the bench and his
chin on his hand, the better to look at her, had no guess at the
cause of the blush, but was content to find it lovely. At his
first sight of Alice she had seemed pretty in the particular way
of being pretty that he happened to like best; and, with every
moment he spent with her, this prettiness appeared to increase.
He felt that he could not look at her enough: his gaze followed
the fluttering of the graceful hands in almost continual gesture
as she talked; then lifted happily to the vivacious face again.
She charmed him.
After her abrupt pause, she sighed, then looked at him with her
eyebrows lifted in a comedy appeal. "You haven't said you
wouldn't give Henrietta the chance," she said, in the softest
voice that can still have a little laugh running in it.
He was puzzled. "Give Henrietta the chance?"
"YOU know! You'll let me keep on being unfair, won't you? Not
give the other girls a chance to get even?"
He promised, heartily.
CHAPTER XV
Alice had said that no one who knew either Russell or herself
would be likely to see them in the park or upon the dingy street;
but although they returned by that same ungenteel thoroughfare
they were seen by a person who knew them both. Also, with some
surprise on the part of Russell, and something more poignant than
surprise for Alice, they saw this person.
All of the dingy street was ugly, but the greater part of it
appeared to be honest. The two pedestrians came upon a block or
two, however, where it offered suggestions of a less upright
character, like a steady enough workingman with a naughty book
sticking out of his pocket. Three or four dim shops, a single
story in height, exhibited foul signboards, yet fair enough so
far as the wording went; one proclaiming a tobacconist, one a
junk-dealer, one a dispenser of "soft drinks and cigars." The
most credulous would have doubted these signboards; for the craft
of the modern tradesman is exerted to lure indoors the passing
glance, since if the glance is pleased the feet may follow; but
this alleged tobacconist and his neighbours had long been fond of
dust on their windows, evidently, and shades were pulled far down
on the glass of their doors. Thus the public eye, small of pupil
in the light of the open street, was intentionally not invited to
the dusky interiors. Something different from mere lack of
enterprise was apparent; and the signboards might have been
omitted; they were pains thrown away, since it was plain to the
world that the business parts of these shops were the brighter
back rooms implied by the dark front rooms; and that the commerce
there was in perilous new liquors and in dice and rough girls.
Nothing could have been more innocent than the serenity with
which these wicked little places revealed themselves for what
they were; and, bound by this final tie of guilelessness, they
stood together in a row which ended with a companionable
barbershop, much like them. Beyond was a series of soot-harried
frame two-story houses, once part of a cheerful neighbourhood
when the town was middle- aged and settled, and not old and
growing. These houses, all carrying the label. "Rooms," had the
worried look of vacancy that houses have when they are too full
of everybody without being anybody's home; and there was, too, a
surreptitious air about them, as if, like the false little shops,
they advertised something by concealing it.
One of them--the one next to the barber-shop-- had across its
front an ample, jig-sawed veranda, where aforetime, no doubt, the
father of a family had fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan on
Sunday afternoons, watching the surreys go by, and where his
daughter listened to mandolins and badinage on starlit evenings;
but, although youth still held the veranda, both the youth and
the veranda were in decay. The four or five young men who
lounged there this afternoon were of a type known to shady
pool-parlours. Hats found no favour with them; all of them wore
caps; and their tight clothes, apparently from a common source,
showed a vivacious fancy for oblique pockets, false belts, and
Easter- egg colourings. Another thing common to the group was
the expression of eye and mouth; and Alice, in the midst of her
other thoughts, had a distasteful thought about this.
The veranda was within a dozen feet of the sidewalk, and as she
and her escort came nearer, she took note of the young men, her
face hardening a little, even before she suspected there might be
a resemblance between them and any one she knew. Then she
observed that each of these loungers wore not for the occasion,
but as of habit, a look of furtively amused contempt; the mouth
smiled to one side as if not to dislodge a cigarette, while the
eyes kept languidly superior. All at once Alice was reminded of
Walter; and the slight frown caused by this idea had just begun
to darken her forehead when Walter himself stepped out of the
open door of the house and appeared upon the veranda. Upon his
head was a new straw hat, and in his hand was a Malacca stick
with an ivory top, for Alice had finally decided against it for
herself and had given it to him. His mood was lively: he twirled
the stick through his fingers like a drum-major's baton, and
whistled loudly.
Moreover, he was indeed accompanied. With him was a thin girl
who had made a violent black- and-white poster of herself: black
dress, black flimsy boa, black stockings, white slippers, great
black hat down upon the black eyes; and beneath the hat a curve
of cheek and chin made white as whitewash, and in strong
bilateral motion with gum.
The loungers on the veranda were familiars of the pair; hailed
them with cacklings; and one began to sing, in a voice all tin:
"Then my skirt, Sal, and me did go
Right straight to the moving-pitcher show.
OH, you bashful vamp!"
The girl laughed airily. "God, but you guys are wise!" she said.
"Come on, Wallie."
Walter stared at his sister; then grinned faintly, and nodded at
Russell as the latter lifted his hat in salutation. Alice
uttered an incoherent syllable of exclamation, and, as she began
to walk faster, she bit her lip hard, not in order to look
wistful, this time, but to help her keep tears of anger from her
eyes.
Russell laughed cheerfully. "Your brother certainly seems to
have found the place for 'colour' today," he said. "That girl's
talk must be full of it."
But Alice had forgotten the colour she herself had used in
accounting for Walter's peculiarities, and she did not
understand. "What?" she said, huskily.
"Don't you remember telling me about him? How he was going to
write, probably, and would go anywhere to pick up types and get
them to talk?"
She kept her eyes ahead, and said sharply, "I think his literary
tastes scarcely cover this case!"
"Don't be too sure. He didn't look at all disconcerted. He
didn't seem to mind your seeing him."
"That's all the worse, isn't it?"
"Why, no," her friend said, genially. "It means he didn't
consider that he was engaged in anything out of the way. You
can't expect to understand everything boys do at his age; they do
all sorts of queer things, and outgrow them. Your brother
evidently has a taste for queer people, and very likely he's been
at least half sincere when he's made you believe he had a
literary motive behind it. We all go through----"
"Thanks, Mr. Russell," she interrupted. "Let's don't say any
more."
He looked at her flushed face and enlarged eyes; and he liked her
all the better for her indignation: this was how good sisters
ought to feel, he thought, failing to understand that most of
what she felt was not about Walter. He ventured only a word
more. "Try not to mind it so much; it really doesn't amount to
anything."
She shook her head, and they went on in silence; she did not look
at him again until they stopped before her own house. Then she
gave him only one glimpse of her eyes before she looked down.
"It's spoiled, isn't it?" she said, in a low voice.
"What's 'spoiled?'"
"Our walk--well, everything. Somehow it always--is."
"'Always is' what?" he asked.
"Spoiled," she said.
He laughed at that; but without looking at him she suddenly
offered him her hand, and, as he took it, he felt a hurried,
violent pressure upon his fingers, as if she meant to thank him
almost passionately for being kind. She was gone before he could
speak to her again.
In her room, with the door locked, she did not go to her mirror,
but to her bed, flinging herself face down, not caring how far
the pillows put her hat awry. Sheer grief had followed her
anger; grief for the calamitous end of her bright afternoon,
grief for the "end of everything," as she thought then.
Nevertheless, she gradually grew more composed, and, when her
mother tapped on the door presently, let her in. Mrs. Adams
looked at her with quick apprehension.
"Oh, poor child! Wasn't he----"
Alice told her. "You see how it--how it made me look, mama," she
quavered, having concluded her narrative. "I'd tried to cover up
Walter's awfulness at the dance with that story about his being
'literary,' but no story was big enough to cover this up--and oh!
it must make him think I tell stories about other things!"
"No, no, no!" Mrs. Adams protested. "Don't you see? At the
worst, all HE could think is that Walter told stories to you
about why he likes to be with such dreadful people, and you
believed them. That's all HE'D think; don't you see?"
Alice's wet eyes began to show a little hopefulness. "You
honestly think it might be that way, mama?"
"Why, from what you've told me he said, I KNOW it's that way.
Didn't he say he wanted to come again?"
"N-no," Alice said, uncertainly. "But I think he will. At least
I begin to think so now. He----" She stopped.
"From all you tell me, he seems to be a very desirable young
man," Mrs. Adams said, primly.
Her daughter was silent for several moments; then new tears
gathered upon her downcast lashes. "He's just--dear!" she
faltered.
Mrs. Adams nodded. "He's told you he isn't engaged, hasn't he?"
"No. But I know he isn't. Maybe when he first came here he was
near it, but I know he's not."
"I guess Mildred Palmer would LIKE him to be, all right!" Mrs.
Adams was frank enough to say, rather triumphantly; and Alice,
with a lowered head, murmured:
"Anybody--would."
The words were all but inaudible.
"Don't you worry," her mother said, and patted her on the
shoulder. "Everything will come out all right; don't you fear,
Alice. Can't you see that beside any other girl in town you're
just a perfect QUEEN? Do you think any young man that wasn't
prejudiced, or something, would need more than just one look
to----"
But Alice moved away from the caressing hand. "Never mind, mama.
I wonder he looks at me at all. And if he does again, after
seeing my brother with those horrible people----"
"Now, now!" Mrs. Adams interrupted, expostulating mournfully.
"I'm sure Walter's a GOOD boy----"
"You are?" Alice cried, with a sudden vigour. "You ARE?"
"I'm sure he's GOOD, yes--and if he isn't, it's not his fault.
It's mine."
"What nonsense!"
"No, it's true," Mrs. Adams lamented. "I tried to bring him up
to be good, God knows; and when he was little he was the best boy
I ever saw. When he came from Sunday-school he'd always run to
me and we'd go over the lesson together; and he let me come in
his room at night to hear his prayers almost until he was
sixteen. Most boys won't do that with their mothers--not nearly
that long. I tried so hard to bring him up right--but if
anything's gone wrong it's my fault."
"How could it be? You've just said----"
"It's because I didn't make your father this--this new step
earlier. Then Walter might have had all the advantages that
other----"
"Oh, mama, PLEASE!" Alice begged her. "Let's don't go over all
that again. Isn't it more important to think what's to be done
about him? Is he going to be allowed to go on disgracing us as
he does?"
Mrs. Adams sighed profoundly. "I don't know what to do," she
confessed, unhappily. "Your father's so upset about--about this
new step he's taking--I don't feel as if we ought to----"
"No, no!" Alice cried. "Papa mustn't be distressed with this, on
top of everything else. But SOMETHING'S got to be done about
Walter."
"What can be?" her mother asked, helplessly. "What can be?"
Alice admitted that she didn't know.
At dinner, an hour later, Walter's habitually veiled glance
lifted, now and then, to touch her furtively;--he was waiting, as
he would have said, for her to "spring it"; and he had prepared a
brief and sincere defense to the effect that he made his own
living, and would like to inquire whose business it was to offer
intrusive comment upon his private conduct. But she said
nothing, while his father and mother were as silent as she.
Walter concluded that there was to be no attack, but changed his
mind when his father, who ate only a little, and broodingly at
that, rose to leave the table and spoke to him.
"Walter," he said, "when you've finished I wish you'd come up to
my room. I got something I want to say to you."
Walter shot a hard look at his apathetic sister, then turned to
his father. "Make it to-morrow," he said. "This is Satad'y
night and I got a date."
"No," Adams said, frowning. "You come up before you go out.
It's important."
"All right; I've had all I want to eat," Walter returned. "I got
a few minutes. Make it quick."
He followed his father upstairs, and when they were in the room
together Adams shut the door, sat down, and began to rub his
knees.
"Rheumatism?" the boy inquired, slyly. "That what you want to
talk to me about?"
"No." But Adams did not go on; he seemed to be in difficulties
for words, and Walter decided to help him.
"Hop ahead and spring it," he said. "Get it off your mind: I'll
tell the world _I_ should worry! You aren't goin' to bother ME
any, so why bother yourself? Alice hopped home and told you she
saw me playin' around with some pretty gay-lookin' berries and
you----"
"Alice?" his father said, obviously surprised. "It's nothing
about Alice."
"Didn't she tell you----"
"I haven't talked with her all day."
"Oh, I see," Walter said. "She told mother and mother told you."
"No, neither of 'em have told me anything. What was there to
tell?"
Walter laughed. "Oh, it's nothin'," he said. "I was just
startin' out to buy a girl friend o' mine a rhinestone buckle I
lost to her on a bet, this afternoon, and Alice came along with
that big Russell fish; and I thought she looked sore. She
expects me to like the kind she likes, and I don't like 'em. I
thought she'd prob'ly got you all stirred up about it."
"No, no," his father said, peevishly. "I don't know anything
about it, and I don't care to know anything about it. I want to
talk to you about something important."
Then, as he was again silent, Walter said, "Well, TALK about it;
I'm listening."
"It's this," Adams began, heavily. "It's about me going into
this glue business. Your mother's told you, hasn't she?"
"She said you were goin' to leave the old place down-town and
start a glue factory. That's all I know about it; I got my own
affairs to 'tend to."
"Well, this is your affair," his father said, frowning. "You
can't stay with Lamb and Company."
Walter looked a little startled. "What you mean, I can't? Why
not?"
"You've got to help me," Adams explained slowly; and he frowned
more deeply, as if the interview were growing increasingly
laborious for him. "It's going to be a big pull to get this
business on its feet."
"Yes!" Walter exclaimed with a sharp skepticism. "I should say
it was!" He stared at his father incredulously. "Look here;
aren't you just a little bit sudden, the way you're goin' about
things? You've let mother shove you a little too fast, haven't
you? Do you know anything about what it means to set up a new
business these days?"
"Yes, I know all about it," Adams said. "About this business, I
do."
"How do you?"
"Because I made a long study of it. I'm not afraid of going
about it the wrong way; but it's a hard job and you'll have to
put in all whatever sense and strength you've got."
Walter began to breathe quickly, and his lips were agitated; then
he set them obstinately. "Oh; I will," he said.
"Yes, you will," Adams returned, not noticing that his son's
inflection was satiric. "It's going to take every bit of energy
in your body, and all the energy I got left in mine, and every
cent of the little I've saved, besides something I'll have to
raise on this house. I'm going right at it, now I've got to; and
you'll have to quit Lamb's by the end of next week."
"Oh, I will?" Walter's voice grew louder, and there was a
shrillness in it. "I got to quit Lamb's the end of next week,
have I?" He stepped forward, angrily. "Listen!" he said. "I'm
not walkin' out o' Lamb's, see? I'm not quittin' down there: I
stay with 'em, see?"
Adams looked up at him, astonished. "You'll leave there next
Saturday," he said. "I've got to have you."
"You don't anything o' the kind," Walter told him, sharply. "Do
you expect to pay me anything?"
"I'd pay you about what you been getting down there."
"Then pay somebody else; _I_ don't know anything about glue. You
get somebody else."
"No. You've got to---"
Walter cut him off with the utmost vehemence. "Don't tell me
what I got to do! I know what I got to do better'n you, I guess!
I stay at Lamb's, see?"
Adams rose angrily. "You'll do what I tell you. You can't stay
down there."
"Why can't I?"
"Because I won't let you."
"Listen! Keep on not lettin' me: I'll be there just the same."
At that his father broke into a sour laughter. "THEY won't let
you, Walter! They won't have you down there after they find out
I'm going."
"Why won't they? You don't think they're goin' to be all shot to
pieces over losin' YOU, do you?"
"I tell you they won't let you stay," his father insisted,
loudly.
"Why, what do they care whether you go or not?"
"They'll care enough to fire YOU, my boy!"
"Look here, then; show me why."
"They'll do it!"
"Yes," Walter jeered; "you keep sayin' they will, but when I ask
you to show me why, you keep sayin' they will! That makes little
headway with ME, I can tell you!"
Adams groaned, and, rubbing his head, began to pace the floor.
Walter's refusal was something he had not anticipated; and he
felt the weakness of his own attempt to meet it: he seemed
powerless to do anything but utter angry words, which, as Walter
said, made little headway. "Oh, my, my!" he muttered, "OH, my,
my!"
Walter, usually sallow, had grown pale: he watched his father
narrowly, and now took a sudden resolution. "Look here," he
said. "When you say Lamb's is likely to fire me because you're
goin' to quit, you talk like the people that have to be locked
up. I don't know where you get such things in your head; Lamb
and Company won't know you're gone. Listen: I can stay there
long as I want to. But I'll tell you what I'll do: make it worth
my while and I'll hook up with your old glue factory, after all."
Adams stopped his pacing abruptly, and stared at him. "'Make it
worth your while?' What you mean?"
"I got a good use for three hundred dollars right now," Walter
said. "Let me have it and I'll quit Lamb's to work for you.
Don't let me have it and I SWEAR I won't!"
"Are you crazy?"
"Is everybody crazy that needs three hundred dollars?"
"Yes," Adams said. "They are if they ask ME for it, when I got
to stretch every cent I can lay my hands on to make it look like
a dollar!"
"You won't do it?"
Adams burst out at him. "You little fool! If I had three
hundred dollars to throw away, besides the pay I expected to give
you, haven't you got sense enough to see I could hire a man worth
three hundred dollars more to me than you'd be? It's a FINE time
to ask me for three hundred dollars, isn't it! What FOR?
Rhinestone buckles to throw around on your 'girl friends?' Shame
on you! Ask me to BRIBE you to help yourself and your own
family!"
"I'll give you a last chance," Walter said. "Either you do what
I want, or I won't do what you want. Don't ask me again after
this, because----"
Adams interrupted him fiercely. "'Ask you again!' Don't worry
about that, my boy! All I ask you is to get out o' my room."
"Look here," Walter said, quietly; and his lopsided smile
distorted his livid cheek. "Look here: I expect YOU wouldn't
give me three hundred dollars to save my life, would you?"
"You make me sick," Adams said, in his bitterness. "Get out of
here."
Walter went out, whistling; and Adams drooped into his old chair
again as the door closed. "OH, my, my!" he groaned. "Oh, Lordy,
Lordy! The way of the transgressor----"
CHAPTER XVI
He meant his own transgression and his own way; for Walter's
stubborn refusal appeared to Adams just then as one of the
inexplicable but righteous besettings he must encounter in
following that way. "Oh, Lordy, Lord!" he groaned, and then, as
resentment moved him--"That dang boy! Dang idiot" Yet he knew
himself for a greater idiot because he had not been able to tell
Walter the truth. He could not bring himself to do it, nor even
to state his case in its best terms; and that was because he felt
that even in its best terms the case was a bad one.
Of all his regrets the greatest was that in a moment of vanity
and tenderness, twenty-five years ago, he had told his young wife
a business secret. He had wanted to show how important her
husband was becoming, and how much the head of the universe, J.
A. Lamb, trusted to his integrity and ability. The great man
had an idea: he thought of "branching out a little," he told
Adams confidentially, and there were possibilities of profit in
glue.
What he wanted was a liquid glue to be put into little bottles
and sold cheaply. "The kind of thing that sells itself," he
said; "the kind of thing that pays its own small way as it goes
along, until it has profits enough to begin advertising it right.
Everybody has to use glue, and if I make mine convenient and
cheap, everybody'll buy mine. But it's got to be glue that'll
STICK; it's got to be the best; and if we find how to make it
we've got, to keep it a big secret, of course, or anybody can
steal it from us. There was a man here last month; he knew a
formula he wanted to sell me, 'sight unseen'; but he was in such
a hurry I got suspicious, and I found he'd managed to steal it,
working for the big packers in their glue-works. We've got to
find a better glue than that, anyhow. I'm going to set you and
Campbell at it. You're a practical, wide-awake young feller, and
Campbell's a mighty good chemist; I guess you two boys ought to
make something happen."
His guess was shrewd enough. Working in a shed a little way
outside the town, where their cheery employer visited them
sometimes to study their malodorous stews, the two young men
found what Lamb had set them to find. But Campbell was
thoughtful over the discovery. "Look here," he said. "Why ain't
this just about yours and mine? After all, it may be Lamb's
money that's paid for the stuff we've used, but it hasn't cost
much."
"But he pays US," Adams remonstrated, horrified by his
companion's idea. "He paid us to do it. It belongs absolutely
to him."
"Oh, I know he THINKS it does," Campbell admitted, plaintively.
"I suppose we've got to let him take it. It's not patentable,
and he'll have to do pretty well by us when he starts his
factory, because he's got to depend on us to run the making of
the stuff so that the workmen can't get onto the process. You
better ask him the same salary I do, and mine's going to be high.
But the high salary, thus pleasantly imagined, was never paid.
Campbell died of typhoid fever, that summer, leaving Adams and
his employer the only possessors of the formula, an unwritten
one; and Adams, pleased to think himself more important to the
great man than ever, told his wife that there could be little
doubt of his being put in sole charge of the prospective
glue-works. Unfortunately, the enterprise remained prospective.
Its projector had already become "inveigled into another
side-line," as he told Adams. One of his sons had persuaded him
to take up a "cough-lozenge," to be called the "Jalamb Balm
Trochee"; and the lozenge did well enough to amuse Mr. Lamb and
occupy his spare time, which was really about all he had asked of
the glue project. He had "all the MONEY anybody ought to want,"
he said, when Adams urged him; and he could "start up this little
glue side-line" at any time; the formula was safe in their two
heads.
At intervals Adams would seek opportunity to speak of "the little
glue side-line" to his patron, and to suggest that the years were
passing; but Lamb, petting other hobbies, had lost interest.
"Oh, I'll start it up some day, maybe. If I don't, I may turn it
over to my heirs: it's always an asset, worth something or other,
of course. We'll probably take it up some day, though, you and
I."
The sun persistently declined to rise on that day, and, as time
went on, Adams saw that his rather timid urgings bored his
employer, and he ceased to bring up the subject. Lamb apparently
forgot all about glue, but Adams discovered that unfortunately
there was someone else who remembered it.
"It's really YOURS," she argued, that painful day when for the
first time she suggested his using his knowledge for the benefit
of himself and his family. "Mr. Campbell might have had a right
to part of it, but he died and didn't leave any kin, so it
belongs to you."
"Suppose J. A. Lamb hired me to saw some wood," Adams said.
"Would the sticks belong to me?"
"He hasn't got any right to take your invention and bury it," she
protested. "What good is it doing him if he doesn't DO anything
with it? What good is it doing ANYBODY? None in the world! And
what harm would it do him if you went ahead and did this for
yourself and for your children? None in the world! And what
could he do to you if he WAS old pig enough to get angry with you
for doing it? He couldn't do a single thing, and you've admitted
he couldn't, yourself. So what's your reason for depriving your
children and your wife of the benefits you know you could give
'em?"
"Nothing but decency," he answered; and she had her reply ready
for that. It seemed to him that, strive as he would, he could
not reach her mind with even the plainest language; while
everything that she said to him, with such vehemence, sounded
like so much obstinate gibberish. Over and over he pressed her
with the same illustration, on the point of ownership, though he
thought he was varying it.
"Suppose he hired me to build him a house: would that be MY
house?"
"He didn't hire you to build him a house. You and Campbell
invented----"
"Look here: suppose you give a cook a soup-bone and some
vegetables, and pay her to make you a soup: has she got a right
to take and sell it? You know better!"
"I know ONE thing: if that old man tried to keep your own
invention from you he's no better than a robber!"
They never found any point of contact in all their passionate
discussions of this ethical question; and the question was no
more settled between them, now that Adams had succumbed, than it
had ever been. But at least the wrangling about it was over:
they were grave together, almost silent, and an uneasiness
prevailed with her as much as with him.
He had already been out of the house, to walk about the small
green yard; and on Monday afternoon he sent for a taxicab and
went down-town, but kept a long way from the "wholesale section,"
where stood the formidable old oblong pile of Lamb and Company.
He arranged for the sale of the bonds he had laid away, and for
placing a mortgage upon his house; and on his way home, after
five o'clock, he went to see an old friend, a man whose term of
service with Lamb and Company was even a little longer than his
own.
This veteran, returned from the day's work, was sitting in front
of the apartment house where he lived, but when the cab stopped
at the curb he rose and came forward, offering a jocular
greeting. "Well, well, Virgil Adams! I always thought you had a
sporty streak in you. Travel in your own hired private
automobile nowadays, do you? Pamperin' yourself because you're
still layin' off sick, I expect."
"Oh, I'm well enough again, Charley Lohr," Adams said, as he got
out and shook hands. Then, telling the driver to wait, he took
his friend's arm, walked to the bench with him, and sat down. "I
been practically well for some time," he said. "I'm fixin' to
get into harness again."
"Bein' sick has certainly produced a change of heart in you," his
friend laughed. "You're the last man I ever expected to see
blowin' yourself--or anybody else to a taxicab! For that matter,
I never heard of you bein' in ANY kind of a cab, 'less'n it might
be when you been pall-bearer for somebody. What's come over
you?"
"Well, I got to turn over a new leaf, and that's a fact," Adams
said. "I got a lot to do, and the only way to accomplish it,
it's got to be done soon, or I won't have anything to live on
while I'm doing it."
"What you talkin' about? What you got to do except to get strong
enough to come back to the old place?"
"Well----" Adams paused, then coughed, and said slowly, "Fact is,
Charley Lohr, I been thinking likely I wouldn't come back."
"What! What you talkin' about?"
"No," said Adams. "I been thinking I might likely kind of branch
out on my own account."
"Well, I'll be doggoned!" Old Charley Lohr was amazed; he ruffled
up his gray moustache with thumb and forefinger, leaving his
mouth open beneath, like a dark cave under a tangled wintry
thicket. "Why, that's the doggonedest thing I ever heard!" he
said. "I already am the oldest inhabitant down there, but if you
go, there won't be anybody else of the old generation at all.
What on earth you thinkin' of goin' into?"
"Well," said Adams, "I rather you didn't mention it till I get
started of course anybody'll know what it is by then--but I HAVE
been kind of planning to put a liquid glue on the market."
His friend, still ruffling the gray moustache upward, stared at
him in frowning perplexity. "Glue?" he said. "GLUE!"
"Yes. I been sort of milling over the idea of taking up
something like that."
"Handlin' it for some firm, you mean?"
"No. Making it. Sort of a glue-works likely."
Lohr continued to frown. "Let me think," he said. "Didn't the
ole man have some such idea once, himself?"
Adams leaned forward, rubbing his knees; and he coughed again
before he spoke. "Well, yes. Fact is, he did. That is to say,
a mighty long while ago he did."
"I remember," said Lohr. "He never said anything about it that I
know of; but seems to me I recollect we had sort of a rumour
around the place how you and that man--le's see, wasn't his name
Campbell, that died of typhoid fever? Yes, that was it,
Campbell. Didn't the ole man have you and Campbell workin' sort
of private on some glue proposition or other?"
"Yes, he did." Adams nodded. "I found out a good deal about
glue then, too."
"Been workin' on it since, I suppose?"
"Yes. Kept it in my mind and studied out new things about it."
Lohr looked serious. "Well, but see here," he said. "I hope it
ain't anything the ole man'll think might infringe on whatever he
had you doin' for HIM. You know how he is: broad-minded,
liberal, free-handed man as walks this earth, and if he thought
he owed you a cent he'd sell his right hand for a pork-chop to
pay it, if that was the only way; but if he got the idea anybody
was tryin' to get the better of him, he'd sell BOTH his hands, if
he had to, to keep 'em from doin' it. Yes, at eighty, he would!
Not that I mean I think you might be tryin' to get the better of
him, Virg. You're a mighty close ole codger, but such a thing
ain't in you. What I mean: I hope there ain't any chance for the
ole man to THINK you might be----"
"Oh, no," Adams interrupted. "As a matter of fact, I don't
believe he'll ever think about it at all, and if he did he
wouldn't have any real right to feel offended at me: the process
I'm going to use is one I expect to change and improve a lot
different from the one Campbell and I worked on for him."
"Well, that's good," said Lohr. "Of course you know what you're
up to: you're old enough, God knows!" He laughed ruefully. "My,
but it will seem funny to me--down there with you gone! I expect
you and I both been gettin' to be pretty much dead-wood in the
place, the way the young fellows look at it, and the only one
that'd miss either of us would be the other one! Have you told
the ole man yet?"
"Well----" Adams spoke laboriously. "No. No, I haven't. I
thought--well, that's what I wanted to see you about."
"What can I do?"
"I thought I'd write him a letter and get you to hand it to him
for me."
"My soul!" his friend exclaimed. "Why on earth don't you just go
down there and tell him?"
Adams became pitiably embarrassed. He stammered, coughed,
stammered again, wrinkling his face so deeply he seemed about to
weep; but finally he contrived to utter an apologetic laugh. "I
ought to do that, of course; but in some way or other I just
don't seem to be able to--to manage it."
"Why in the world not?" the mystified Lohr inquired.
"I could hardly tell you--'less'n it is to say that when you been
with one boss all your life it's so-- so kind of embarrassing--to
quit him, I just can't make up my mind to go and speak to him
about it. No; I got it in my head a letter's the only
satisfactory way to do it, and I thought I'd ask you to hand it
to him,"
"Well, of course I don't mind doin' that for you," Lohr said,
mildly. "But why in the world don't you just mail it to him?"
"Well, I'll tell you," Adams returned. "You know, like that,
it'd have to go through a clerk and that secretary of his, and I
don't know who all. There's a couple of kind of delicate points
I want to put in it: for instance, I want to explain to him how
much improvement and so on I'm going to introduce on the old
process I helped to work out with Campbell when we were working
for him, so't he'll understand it's a different article and no
infringement at all. Then there's another thing: you see all
during while I was sick he had my salary paid to me it amounts to
considerable, I was on my back so long. Under the circumstances,
because I'm quitting, I don't feel as if I ought to accept it,
and so I'll have a check for him in the letter to cover it, and I
want to be sure he knows it, and gets it personally. If it had
to go through a lot of other people, the way it would if I put it
in the mail, why, you can't tell. So what I thought: if you'd
hand it to him for me, and maybe if he happened to read it right
then, or anything, it might be you'd notice whatever he'd happen
to say about it--and you could tell me afterward."
"All right," Lohr said. "Certainly if you'd rather do it that
way, I'll hand it to him and tell you what he says; that is, if
he says anything and I hear him. Got it written?"
"No; I'll send it around to you last of the week." Adams moved
toward his taxicab. "Don't say anything to anybody about it,
Charley, especially till after that."
"All right."
"And, Charley, I'll be mighty obliged to you," Adams said, and
came back to shake hands in farewell. "There's one thing more
you might do--if you'd ever happen to feel like it." He kept his
eyes rather vaguely fixed on a point above his friend's head as
he spoke, and his voice was not well controlled. "I been--I been
down there a good many years and I may not 'a' been so much use
lately as I was at first, but I always tried to do my best for
the old firm. If anything turned out so's they DID kind of take
offense with me, down there, why, just say a good word for me--if
you'd happen to feel like it, maybe."
Old Charley Lohr assured him that he would speak a good word if
opportunity became available; then, after the cab had driven
away, he went up to his small apartment on the third floor and
muttered ruminatively until his wife inquired what he was talking
to himself about.
"Ole Virg Adams," he told her. "He's out again after his long
spell of sickness, and the way it looks to me he'd better stayed
in bed."
"You mean he still looks too bad to be out?"
"Oh, I expect he's gettin' his HEALTH back," Lohr said, frowning.
"Then what's the matter with him? You mean he's lost his mind?"
"My goodness, but women do jump at conclusions!" he exclaimed.
"Well," said Mrs. Lohr, "what other conclusion did you leave me
to jump at?"
Her husband explained with a little heat: "People can have a
sickness that AFFECTS their mind, can't they? Their mind can get
some affected without bein' LOST, can't it?"
"Then you mean the poor man's mind does seem affected?"
"Why, no; I'd scarcely go as far as that," Lohr said,
inconsistently, and declined to be more definite.
Adams devoted the latter part of that evening to the composition
of his letter--a disquieting task not completed when, at eleven
o'clock, he heard his daughter coming up the stairs. She was
singing to herself in a low, sweet voice, and Adams paused to
listen incredulously, with his pen lifted and his mouth open, as
if he heard the strangest sound in the world. Then he set down
the pen upon a blotter, went to his door, and opened it, looking
out at her as she came.
"Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty good," he said.
"What you been doing?"
"Just sitting out on the front steps, papa."
"All alone, I suppose."
"No. Mr. Russell called."
"Oh, he did?" Adams pretended to be surprised. "What all could
you and he find to talk about till this hour o' the night?"
She laughed gaily. "You don't know me, papa!"
"How's that?"
"You've never found out that I always do all the talking."
"Didn't you let him get a word in all evening?"
"Oh, yes; every now and then."
Adams took her hand and petted it. "Well, what did he say?"
Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him. "Not what you
think!" she laughed; then slapped his cheek with saucy affection,
pirouetted across the narrow hall and into her own room, and
curtsied to him as she closed her door.
Adams went back to his writing with a lighter heart; for since
Alice was born she had been to him the apple of his eye, his own
phrase in thinking of her; and what he was doing now was for her.
He smiled as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft of the
painful letter; but presently he looked puzzled. After all, she
could be happy just as things were, it seemed. Then why had he
taken what his wife called "this new step," which he had so long
resisted?
He could only sigh and wonder. "Life works out pretty
peculiarly," he thought; for he couldn't go back now, though the
reason he couldn't was not clearly apparent. He had to go ahead.
CHAPTER XVII
He was out in his taxicab again the next morning, and by noon he
had secured what he wanted.
It was curiously significant that he worked so quickly. All the
years during which his wife had pressed him toward his present
shift he had sworn to himself, as well as to her, that he would
never yield; and yet when he did yield he had no plans to make,
because he found them already prepared and worked out in detail
in his mind; as if he had long contemplated the "step" he
believed himself incapable of taking.
Sometimes he had thought of improving his income by exchanging
his little collection of bonds for a "small rental property," if
he could find "a good buy"; and he had spent many of his spare
hours rambling over the enormously spreading city and its
purlieus, looking for the ideal "buy." It remained unattainable,
so far as he was concerned; but he found other things.
Not twice a crow's mile from his own house there was a dismal and
slummish quarter, a decayed "industrial district" of earlier
days. Most of the industries were small; some of them died,
perishing of bankruptcy or fire; and a few had moved, leaving
their shells. Of the relics, the best was a brick building which
had been the largest and most important factory in the quarter:
it had been injured by a long vacancy almost as serious as a
fire, in effect, and Adams had often guessed at the sum needed to
put it in repair.
When he passed it, he would look at it with an interest which he
supposed detached and idly speculative. "That'd be just the
thing," he thought. "If a fellow had money enough, and took a
notion to set up some new business on a big scale, this would be
a pretty good place--to make glue, for instance, if that wasn't
out of the question, of course. It would take a lot of money,
though; a great deal too much for me to expect to handle--even if
I'd ever dream of doing such a thing."
Opposite the dismantled factory was a muddy, open lot of two
acres or so, and near the middle of the lot, a long brick shed
stood in a desolate abandonment, not happily decorated by old
coatings of theatrical and medicinal advertisements. But the
brick shed had two wooden ells, and, though both shed and ells
were of a single story, here was empty space enough for a modest
enterprise--"space enough for almost anything, to start with,"
Adams thought, as he walked through the low buildings, one day,
when he was prospecting in that section. "Yes, I suppose I COULD
swing this," he thought. "If the process belonged to me, say,
instead of being out of the question because it isn't my
property--or if I was the kind of man to do such a thing anyhow,
here would be something I could probably get hold of pretty
cheap. They'd want a lot of money for a lease on that big
building over the way--but this, why, I should think it'd be
practically nothing at all."
Then, by chance, meeting an agent he knew, he made
inquiries--merely to satisfy a casual curiosity, he thought--and
he found matters much as he had supposed, except that the owners
of the big building did not wish to let, but to sell it, and this
at a price so exorbitant that Adams laughed. But the long brick
shed in the great muddy lot was for sale or to let, or "pretty
near to be given away," he learned, if anybody would take it.
Adams took it now, though without seeing that he had been
destined to take it, and that some dreary wizard in the back of
his head had foreseen all along that he would take it, and
planned to be ready. He drove in his taxicab to look the place
over again, then down-town to arrange for a lease; and came home
to lunch with his wife and daughter. Things were "moving," he
told them.
He boasted a little of having acted so decisively, and said that
since the dang thing had to be done, it was "going to be done
RIGHT!" He was almost cheerful, in a feverish way, and when the
cab came for him again, soon after lunch, he explained that he
intended not only to get things done right, but also to "get 'em
done quick!" Alice, following him to the front door, looked at
him anxiously and asked if she couldn't help. He laughed at her
grimly.
"Then let me go along with you in the cab," she begged. "You
don't look able to start in so hard, papa, just when you're
barely beginning to get your strength back. Do let me go with
you and see if I can't help--or at least take care of you if you
should get to feeling badly."
He declined, but upon pressure let her put a tiny bottle of
spirits of ammonia in his pocket, and promised to make use of it
if he "felt faint or any- thing." Then he was off again; and the
next morning had men at work in his sheds, though the wages he
had to pay frightened him.
He directed the workmen in every detail, hurrying them by example
and exhortations, and receiving, in consequence, several
declarations of independence, as well as one resignation, which
took effect immediately. "Yous capitalusts seem to think a man's
got nothin' to do but break his back p'doosin' wealth fer yous to
squander," the resigning person loudly complained. "You look
out: the toiler's day is a-comin', and it ain't so fur off,
neither!" But the capitalist was already out of hearing, gone to
find a man to take this orator's place.
By the end of the week, Adams felt that he had moved
satisfactorily forward in his preparations for the simple
equipment he needed; but he hated the pause of Sunday. He didn't
WANT any rest, he told Alice impatiently, when she suggested that
the idle day might be good for him.
Late that afternoon he walked over to the apartment house where
old Charley Lohr lived, and gave his friend the letter he wanted
the head of Lamb and Company to receive "personally." "I'll take
it as a mighty great favour in you to hand it to him personally,
Charley," he said, in parting. "And you won't forget, in case he
says anything about it--and remember if you ever do get a chance
to put in a good word for me later, you know----"
Old Charley promised to remember, and, when Mrs. Lohr came out
of the "kitchenette," after the door closed, he said
thoughtfully, "Just skin and bones."
"You mean Mr. Adams is?" Mrs. Lohr inquired.
"Who'd you think I meant?" he returned. "One o' these partridges
in the wall-paper?"
"Did he look so badly?"
"Looked kind of distracted to me," her husband replied. "These
little thin fellers can stand a heap sometimes, though. He'll be
over here again Monday."
"Did he say he would?"
"No," said Lohr. "But he will. You'll see. He'll be over to
find out what the big boss says when I give him this letter.
Expect I'd be kind of anxious, myself, if I was him."
"Why would you? What's Mr. Adams doing to be so anxious about?"
Lohr's expression became one of reserve, the look of a man who
has found that when he speaks his inner thoughts his wife jumps
too far to conclusions. "Oh, nothing," he said. "Of course any
man starting up a new business is bound to be pretty nervous a
while. He'll be over here to-morrow evening, all right; you'll
see."
The prediction was fulfilled: Adams arrived just after Mrs. Lohr
had removed the dinner dishes to her "kitchenette"; but Lohr had
little information to give his caller.
"He didn't say a word, Virgil; nary a word. I took it into his
office and handed it to him, and he just sat and read it; that's
all. I kind of stood around as long as I could, but he was
sittin' at his desk with his side to me, and he never turned
around full toward me, as it were, so I couldn't hardly even tell
anything. All I know: he just read it."
"Well, but see here," Adams began, nervously. "Well----"
"Well what, Virg?"
"Well, but what did he say when he DID speak?"
"He didn't speak. Not so long I was in there, anyhow. He just
sat there and read it. Read kind of slow. Then, when he came to
the end, he turned back and started to read it all over again.
By that time there was three or four other men standin' around in
the office waitin' to speak to him, and I had to go."
Adams sighed, and stared at the floor, irresolute. "Well, I'll
be getting along back home then, I guess, Charley. So you're
sure you couldn't tell anything what he might have thought about
it, then?"
"Not a thing in the world. I've told you all I know, Virg."
"I guess so, I guess so," Adams said, mournfully. "I feel mighty
obliged to you, Charley Lohr; mighty obliged. Good-night to
you." And he departed, sighing in perplexity.
On his way home, preoccupied with many thoughts, he walked so
slowly that once or twice he stopped and stood motionless for a
few moments, without being aware of it; and when he reached the
juncture of the sidewalk with the short brick path that led to
his own front door, he stopped again, and stood for more than a
minute. "Ah, I wish I knew," he whispered, plaintively. "I do
wish I knew what he thought about it."
He was roused by a laugh that came lightly from the little
veranda near by. "Papa!" Alice called gaily. "What are you
standing there muttering to yourself about?"
"Oh, are you there, dearie?" he said, and came up the path. A
tall figure rose from a chair on the veranda.
"Papa, this is Mr. Russell."
The two men shook hands, Adams saying, "Pleased to make your
acquaintance," as they looked at each other in the faint light
diffused through the opaque glass in the upper part of the door.
Adams's impression was of a strong and tall young man,
fashionable but gentle; and Russell's was of a dried, little old
business man with a grizzled moustache, worried bright eyes,
shapeless dark clothes, and a homely manner.
"Nice evening," Adams said further, as their hands parted. "Nice
time o' year it is, but we don't always have as good weather as
this; that's the trouble of it. Well----" He went to the door.
"Well--I bid you good evening," he said, and retired within the
house.
Alice laughed. "He's the old-fashionedest man in town, I suppose
and frightfully impressed with you, I could see!"
"What nonsense!" said Russell. "How could anybody be impressed
with me?"
"Why not? Because you're quiet? Good gracious! Don't you know
that you're the most impressive sort? We chatterers spend all
our time playing to you quiet people."
"Yes; we're only the audience."
"'Only!'" she echoed. "Why, we live for you, and we can't live
without you."
"I wish you couldn't," said Russell. "That would be a new
experience for both of us, wouldn't it?"
"It might be a rather bleak one for me," she answered, lightly.
"I'm afraid I'll miss these summer evenings with you when they're
over. I'll miss them enough, thanks!"
"Do they have to be over some time?" he asked.
"Oh, everything's over some time, isn't it?"
Russell laughed at her. "Don't let's look so far ahead as that,"
he said. "We don't need to be already thinking of the cemetery,
do we?"
"I didn't," she said, shaking her head. "Our summer evenings
will be over before then, Mr. Russell."
"Why?" he asked.
"Good heavens!" she said. "THERE'S laconic eloquence: almost a
proposal in a single word! Never mind, I shan't hold you to it.
But to answer you: well, I'm always looking ahead, and somehow I
usually see about how things are coming out."
"Yes," he said. "I suppose most of us do; at least it seems as
if we did, because we so seldom feel surprised by the way they do
come out. But maybe that's only because life isn't like a play
in a theatre, and most things come about so gradually we get used
to them."
"No, I'm sure I can see quite a long way ahead," she insisted,
gravely. "And it doesn't seem to me as if our summer evenings
could last very long. Something'll interfere--somebody will, I
mean--they'll SAY something----"
"What if they do?"
She moved her shoulders in a little apprehensive shiver. "It'll
change you," she said. "I'm just sure something spiteful's going
to happen to me. You'll feel differently about--things."
"Now, isn't that an idea!" he exclaimed.
"It will," she insisted. "I know something spiteful's going to
happen!"
"You seem possessed by a notion not a bit flattering to me," he
remarked.
"Oh, but isn't it? That's just what it is! Why isn't it?"
"Because it implies that I'm made of such soft material the
slightest breeze will mess me all up. I'm not so like that as I
evidently appear; and if it's true that we're afraid other people
will do the things we'd be most likely to do ourselves, it seems
to me that I ought to be the one to be afraid. I ought to be
afraid that somebody may say something about me to you that will
make you believe I'm a professional forger."
"No. We both know they won't," she said. "We both know you're
the sort of person everybody in the world says nice things
about." She lifted her hand to silence him as he laughed at
this. "Oh, of course you are! I think perhaps you're a little
flirtatious--most quiet men have that one sly way with 'em--oh,
yes, they do! But you happen to be the kind of man everybody
loves to praise. And if you weren't, _I_ shouldn't hear anything
terrible about you. I told you I was unpopular: I don't see
anybody at all any more. The only man except you who's been to
see me in a month is that fearful little fat Frank Dowling, and I
sent word to HIM I wasn't home. Nobody'd tell me of your
wickedness, you see."
"Then let me break some news to you," Russell said. "Nobody
would tell me of yours, either. Nobody's even mentioned you to
me."
She burlesqued a cry of anguish. "That IS obscurity! I suppose
I'm too apt to forget that they say the population's about half a
million nowadays. There ARE other people to talk about, you
feel, then?"
"None that I want to," he said. "But I should think the size of
the place might relieve your mind of what seems to insist on
burdening it. Besides, I'd rather you thought me a better man
than you do."
"What kind of a man do I think you are?"
"The kind affected by what's said about people instead of by what
they do themselves."
"Aren't you?"
"No, I'm not," he said. "If you want our summer evenings to be
over you'll have to drive me away yourself."
"Nobody else could?"
"No."
She was silent, leaning forward, with her elbows on her knees and
her clasped hands against her lips. Then, not moving, she said
softly:
"Well--I won't!"
She was silent again, and he said nothing, but looked at her,
seeming to be content with looking. Her attitude was one only a
graceful person should assume, but she was graceful; and, in the
wan light, which made a prettily shaped mist of her, she had
beauty. Perhaps it was beauty of the hour, and of the love scene
almost made into form by what they had both just said, but she
had it; and though beauty of the hour passes, he who sees it will
long remember it and the hour when it came.
"What are you thinking of?" he asked.
She leaned back in her chair and did not answer at once. Then
she said:
"I don't know; I doubt if I was thinking of anything. It seems
to me I wasn't. I think I was just being sort of sadly happy
just then."
"Were you? Was it 'sadly,' too?"
"Don't you know?" she said. "It seems to me that only little
children can be just happily happy. I think when we get older
our happiest moments are like the one I had just then: it's as if
we heard strains of minor music running through them--oh, so
sweet, but oh, so sad!"
"But what makes it sad for YOU?"
"I don't know," she said, in a lighter tone. "Perhaps it's a
kind of useless foreboding I seem to have pretty often. It may
be that--or it may be poor papa."
"You ARE a funny, delightful girl, though!" Russell laughed.
"When your father's so well again that he goes out walking in the
evenings!"
"He does too much walking," Alice said. "Too much altogether,
over at his new plant. But there isn't any stopping him." She
laughed and shook her head. "When a man gets an ambition to be a
multi- millionaire his family don't appear to have much weight
with him. He'll walk all he wants to, in spite of them."
"I suppose so," Russell said, absently; then he leaned forward.
"I wish I could understand better why you were 'sadly' happy."
Meanwhile, as Alice shed what further light she could on this
point, the man ambitious to be a "multi- millionaire" was indeed
walking too much for his own good. He had gone to bed, hoping to
sleep well and rise early for a long day's work, but he could not
rest, and now, in his nightgown and slippers, he was pacing the
floor of his room.
"I wish I DID know," he thought, over and over. "I DO wish I
knew how he feels about it."
CHAPTER XVIII
That was a thought almost continuously in his mind, even when he
was hardest at work; and, as the days went on and he could not
free himself, he became querulous about it. "I guess I'm the
biggest dang fool alive," he told his wife as they sat together
one evening. "I got plenty else to bother me, without worrying
my head off about what HE thinks. I can't help what he thinks;
it's too late for that. So why should I keep pestering myself
about it?"
"It'll wear off, Virgil," Mrs. Adams said, reassuringly. She
was gentle and sympathetic with him, and for the first time in
many years he would come to sit with her and talk, when he had
finished his day's work. He had told her, evading her eye, "Oh,
I don't blame you. You didn't get after me to do this on your
own account; you couldn't help it."
"Yes; but it don't wear off," he complained. "This afternoon I
was showing the men how I wanted my vats to go, and I caught my
fool self standing there saying to my fool self, 'It's funny I
don't hear how he feels about it from SOMEbody.' I was saying it
aloud, almost--and it IS funny I don't hear anything!"
"Well, you see what it means, don't you, Virgil? It only means
he hasn't said anything to anybody about it. Don't you think
you're getting kind of morbid over it?"
"Maybe, maybe," he muttered.
"Why, yes," she said, briskly. "You don't realize what a little
bit of a thing all this is to him. It's been a long, long while
since the last time you even mentioned glue to him, and he's
probably forgotten everything about it."
"You're off your base; it isn't like him to forget things," Adams
returned, peevishly. "He may seem to forget 'em, but he don't."
"But he's not thinking about this, or you'd have heard from him
before now."
Her husband shook his head. "Ah, that's just it!" he said. "Why
HAVEN'T I heard from him?"
"It's all your morbidness, Virgil. Look at Walter: if Mr. Lamb
held this up against you, would he still let Walter stay there?
Wouldn't he have discharged Walter if he felt angry with you?"
"That dang boy!" Adams said. "If he WANTED to come with me now,
I wouldn't hardly let him, What do you suppose makes him so
bull-headed?"
"But hasn't he a right to choose for himself?" she asked. "I
suppose he feels he ought to stick to what he thinks is sure pay.
As soon as he sees that you're going to succeed with the
glue-works he'll want to be with you quick enough."
"Well, he better get a little sense in his head," Adams returned,
crossly. "He wanted me to pay him a three-hundred-dollar bonus
in advance, when anybody with a grain of common sense knows I
need every penny I can lay my hands on!"
"Never mind," she said. "He'll come around later and be glad of
the chance."
"He'll have to beg for it then! _I_ won't ask him again."
"Oh, Walter will come out all right; you needn't worry. And
don't you see that Mr. Lamb's not discharging him means there's
no hard feeling against you, Virgil?"
"I can't make it out at all," he said, frowning. "The only thing
I can THINK it means is that J. A. Lamb is so fair-minded--and
of course he IS one of the fair-mindedest men alive I suppose
that's the reason he hasn't fired Walter. He may know," Adams
concluded, morosely--"he may know that's just another thing to
make me feel all the meaner: keeping my boy there on a salary
after I've done him an injury."
"Now, now!" she said, trying to comfort him. "You couldn't do
anybody an injury to save your life, and everybody knows it."
"Well, anybody ought to know I wouldn't WANT to do an injury, but
this world isn't built so't we can do just what we want." He
paused, reflecting. "Of course there may be one explanation of
why Walter's still there: J. A. maybe hasn't noticed that he IS
there. There's so many I expect he hardly knows him by sight."
"Well, just do quit thinking about it," she urged him. "It only
bothers you without doing any good. Don't you know that?"
"Don't I, though!" he laughed, feebly. "I know it better'n
anybody! How funny that is: when you know thinking about a thing
only pesters you without helping anything at all, and yet you
keep right on pestering yourself with it!"
"But WHY?" she said. "What's the use when you know you haven't
done anything wrong, Virgil? You said yourself you were going to
improve the process so much it would be different from the old
one, and you'd REALLY have a right to it."
Adams had persuaded himself of this when he yielded; he had found
it necessary to persuade himself of it--though there was a part
of him, of course, that remained unpersuaded; and this
discomfiting part of him was what made his present trouble.
"Yes, I know," he said. "That's true, but I can't quite seem to
get away from the fact that the principle of the process is a
good deal the same--well, it's more'n that; it's just about the
same as the one he hired Campbell and me to work out for him.
Truth is, nobody could tell the difference, and I don't know as
there IS any difference except in these improvements I'm making.
Of course, the improvements do give me pretty near a perfect
right to it, as a person might say; and that's one of the things
I thought of putting in my letter to him; but I was afraid he'd
just think I was trying to make up excuses, so I left it out. I
kind of worried all the time I was writing that letter, because
if he thought I WAS just making up excuses, why, it might set him
just so much more against me."
Ever since Mrs. Adams had found that she was to have her way,
the depths of her eyes had been troubled by a continuous
uneasiness; and, although she knew it was there, and sometimes
veiled it by keeping the revealing eyes averted from her husband
and children, she could not always cover it under that assumption
of absent-mindedness. The uneasy look became vivid, and her
voice was slightly tremulous now, as she said, "But what if he
SHOULD be against you--although I don't believe he is, of
course--you told me he couldn't DO anything to you, Virgil."
"No," he said, slowly. "I can't see how he could do anything.
It was just a secret, not a patent; the thing ain't patentable.
I've tried to think what he could do--supposing he was to want
to--but I can't figure out anything at all that would be any harm
to me. There isn't any way in the world it could be made a
question of law. Only thing he could do'd be to TELL people his
side of it, and set 'em against me. I been kind of waiting for
that to happen, all along."
She looked somewhat relieved. "So did I expect it," she said.
"I was dreading it most on Alice's account: it might have--well,
young men are so easily influenced and all. But so far as the
business is concerned, what if Mr. Lamb did talk? That wouldn't
amount to much. It wouldn't affect the business; not to hurt.
And, besides, he isn't even doing that."
"No; anyhow not yet, it seems." And Adams sighed again,
wistfully. "But I WOULD give a good deal to know what he
thinks!"
Before his surrender he had always supposed that if he did such
an unthinkable thing as to seize upon the glue process for
himself, what he would feel must be an overpowering shame. But
shame is the rarest thing in the world: what he felt was this
unremittent curiosity about his old employer's thoughts. It was
an obsession, yet he did not want to hear what Lamb "thought"
from Lamb himself, for Adams had a second obsession, and this was
his dread of meeting the old man face to face. Such an encounter
could happen only by chance and unexpectedly; since Adams would
have avoided any deliberate meeting, so long as his legs had
strength to carry him, even if Lamb came to the house to see him.
But people do meet unexpectedly; and when Adams had to be
down-town he kept away from the "wholesale district." One day he
did see Lamb, as the latter went by in his car, impassive, going
home to lunch; and Adams, in the crowd at a corner, knew that the
old man had not seen him. Nevertheless, in a street car, on the
way back to his sheds, an hour later, he was still subject to
little shivering seizures of horror.
He worked unceasingly, seeming to keep at it even in his sleep,
for he always woke in the midst of a planning and estimating that
must have been going on in his mind before consciousness of
himself returned. Moreover, the work, thus urged, went rapidly,
in spite of the high wages he had to pay his labourers for their
short hours. "It eats money," he complained, and, in fact, by
the time his vats and boilers were in place it had eaten almost
all he could supply; but in addition to his equipment he now
owned a stock of "raw material," raw indeed; and when operations
should be a little further along he was confident his banker
would be willing to "carry" him.
Six weeks from the day he had obtained his lease he began his
glue-making. The terrible smells came out of the sheds and went
writhing like snakes all through that quarter of the town. A
smiling man, strolling and breathing the air with satisfaction,
would turn a corner and smile no more, but hurry. However,
coloured people had almost all the dwellings of this old section
to themselves; and although even they were troubled, there was
recompense for them. Being philosophic about what appeared to
them as in the order of nature, they sought neither escape nor
redress, and soon learned to bear what the wind brought them.
They even made use of it to enrich those figures of speech with
which the native impulses of coloured people decorate their
communications: they flavoured metaphor, simile, and invective
with it; and thus may be said to have enjoyed it. But the man
who produced it took a hot bath as soon as he reached his home
the evening of that first day when his manufacturing began. Then
he put on fresh clothes; but after dinner he seemed to be
haunted, and asked his wife if she "noticed anything."
She laughed and inquired what he meant.
"Seems to me as if that glue-works smell hadn't quit hanging to
me," he explained. "Don't you notice it?"
"No! What an idea!"
He laughed, too, but uneasily; and told her he was sure "the dang
glue smell" was somehow sticking to him. Later, he went outdoors
and walked up and down the small yard in the dusk; but now and
then he stood still, with his head lifted, and sniffed the air
suspiciously. "Can YOU smell it?" he called to Alice, who sat
upon the veranda, prettily dressed and waiting in a reverie.
"Smell what, papa?"
"That dang glue-works."
She did the same thing her mother had done: laughed, and said,
"No! How foolish! Why, papa, it's over two miles from here!"
"You don't get it at all?" he insisted.
"The idea! The air is lovely to-night, papa."
The air did not seem lovely to him, for he was positive that he
detected the taint. He wondered how far it carried, and if J.
A. Lamb would smell it, too, out on his own lawn a mile to the
north; and if he did, would he guess what it was? Then Adams
laughed at himself for such nonsense; but could not rid his
nostrils of their disgust. To him the whole town seemed to smell
of his glue-works.
Nevertheless, the glue was making, and his sheds were busy.
"Guess we're stirrin' up this ole neighbourhood with more than
the smell," his foreman remarked one morning.
"How's that?" Adams inquired.
"That great big, enormous ole dead butterine factory across the
street from our lot," the man said. "Nothin' like settin' an
example to bring real estate to life. That place is full o'
carpenters startin' in to make a regular buildin' of it again.
Guess you ought to have the credit of it, because you was the
first man in ten years to see any possibilities in this
neighbourhood."
Adams was pleased, and, going out to see for himself, heard a
great hammering and sawing from within the building; while
carpenters were just emerging gingerly upon the dangerous roof.
He walked out over the dried mud of his deep lot, crossed the
street, and spoke genially to a workman who was removing the
broken glass of a window on the ground floor.
"Here! What's all this howdy-do over here?"
"Goin' to fix her all up, I guess," the workman said. "Big job
it is, too."
"Sh' think it would be."
"Yes, sir; a pretty big job--a pretty big job. Got men at it on
all four floors and on the roof. They're doin' it RIGHT."
"Who's doing it?"
"Lord! I d' know. Some o' these here big manufacturing
corporations, I guess."
"What's it going to be?"
"They tell ME," the workman answered--"they tell ME she's goin'
to be a butterine factory again. Anyways, I hope she won't be
anything to smell like that glue-works you got over there not
while I'm workin' around her, anyways!"
"That smell's all right," Adams said. "You soon get used to it."
"You do?" The man appeared incredulous. "Listen! I was over in
France: it's a good thing them Dutchmen never thought of it; we'd
of had to quit!"
Adams laughed, and went back to his sheds. "I guess my foreman
was right," he told his wife, that evening, with a little
satisfaction. "As soon as one man shows enterprise enough to
found an industry in a broken-down neighbourhood, somebody else
is sure to follow. I kind of like the look of it: it'll help
make our place seem sort of more busy and prosperous when it
comes to getting a loan from the bank--and I got to get one
mighty soon, too. I did think some that if things go as well as
there's every reason to think they OUGHT to, I might want to
spread out and maybe get hold of that old factory myself; but I
hardly expected to be able to handle a proposition of that size
before two or three years from now, and anyhow there's room
enough on the lot I got, if we need more buildings some day.
Things are going about as fine as I could ask: I hired some girls
to-day to do the bottling--coloured girls along about sixteen to
twenty years old. Afterwhile, I expect to get a machine to put
the stuff in the little bottles, when we begin to get good
returns; but half a dozen of these coloured girls can do it all
right now, by hand. We're getting to have really quite a little
plant over there: yes, sir, quite a regular little plant!"
He chuckled, and at this cheerful sound, of a kind his wife had
almost forgotten he was capable of producing, she ventured to put
her hand upon his arm. They had gone outdoors, after dinner,
taking two chairs with them, and were sitting through the late
twilight together, keeping well away from the "front porch,"
which was not yet occupied, however Alice was in her room
changing her dress.
"Well, honey," Mrs. Adams said, taking confidence not only to
put her hand upon his arm, but to revive this disused
endearment;--"it's grand to have you so optimistic. Maybe some
time you'll admit I was right, after all. Everything's going so
well, it seems a pity you didn't take this--this step--long ago.
Don't you think maybe so, Virgil?"
"Well--if I was ever going to, I don't know but I might as well
of. I got to admit the proposition begins to look pretty good: I
know the stuff'll sell, and I can't see a thing in the world to
stop it. It does look good, and if--if----" He paused.
"If what?" she said, suddenly anxious.
He laughed plaintively, as if confessing a superstition. "It's
funny--well, it's mighty funny about that smell. I've got so
used to it at the plant I never seem to notice it at all over
there. It's only when I get away. Honestly, can't you
notice----?"
"Virgil!" She lifted her hand to strike his arm chidingly. "Do
quit harping on that nonsense!"
"Oh, of course it don't amount to anything," he said. "A person
can stand a good deal of just smell. It don't WORRY me any."
"I should think not especially as there isn't any."
"Well," he said, "I feel pretty fair over the whole thing--a lot
better'n I ever expected to, anyhow. I don't know as there's any
reason I shouldn't tell you so."
She was deeply pleased with this acknowledgment, and her voice
had tenderness in it as she responded: "There, honey! Didn't I
always say you'd be glad if you did it?"
Embarrassed, he coughed loudly, then filled his pipe and lit it.
"Well," he said, slowly, "it's a puzzle. Yes, sir, it's a
puzzle."
"What is?"
"Pretty much everything, I guess."
As he spoke, a song came to them from a lighted window over their
heads. Then the window darkened abruptly, but the song continued
as Alice went down through the house to wait on the little
veranda. "Mi chiamo Mimi," she sang, and in her voice throbbed
something almost startling in its sweetness. Her father and
mother listened, not speaking until the song stopped with the
click of the wire screen at the front door as Alice came out.
"My!" said her father. "How sweet she does sing! I don't know
as I ever heard her voice sound nicer than it did just then."
"There's something that makes it sound that way," his wife told
him.
"I suppose so," he said, sighing. "I suppose so. You think----"
"She's just terribly in love with him!"
"I expect that's the way it ought to be," he said, then drew upon
his pipe for reflection, and became murmurous with the symptoms
of melancholy laughter. "It don't make things less of a puzzle,
though, does it?"
"In what way, Virgil?"
"Why, here," he said--"here we go through all this muck and moil
to help fix things nicer for her at home, and what's it all
amount to? Seems like she's just gone ahead the way she'd 'a'
gone anyhow; and now, I suppose, getting ready to up and leave
us! Ain't that a puzzle to you? It is to me."
"Oh, but things haven't gone that far yet."
"Why, you just said----"
She gave a little cry of protest. "Oh, they aren't ENGAGED yet.
Of course they WILL be; he's just as much interested in her as
she is in him, but----"
"Well, what's the trouble then?"
"You ARE a simple old fellow!" his wife exclaimed, and then rose
from her chair. "That reminds me," she said.
"What of?" he asked. "What's my being simple remind you of?"
"Nothing!" she laughed. "It wasn't you that reminded me. It was
just something that's been on my mind. I don't believe he's
actually ever been inside our house!"
"Hasn't he?"
"I actually don't believe he ever has," she said. "Of course we
must----" She paused, debating.
"We must what?"
"I guess I better talk to Alice about it right now," she said.
"He don't usually come for about half an hour yet; I guess I've
got time." And with that she walked away, leaving him to his
puzzles.
CHAPTER XIX
Alice was softly crooning to herself as her mother turned the
corner of the house and approached through the dusk.
"Isn't it the most BEAUTIFUL evening!" the daughter said. "WHY
can't summer last all year? Did you ever know a lovelier
twilight than this, mama?"
Mrs. Adams laughed, and answered, "Not since I was your age, I
expect."
Alice was wistful at once. "Don't they stay beautiful after my
age?"
"Well, it's not the same thing."
"Isn't it? Not ever?"
"You may have a different kind from mine," the mother said, a
little sadly. "I think you will, Alice. You deserve----"
"No, I don't. I don't deserve anything, and I know it. But I'm
getting a great deal these days-- more than I ever dreamed COULD
come to me. I'm-- I'm pretty happy, mama!"
"Dearie!" Her mother would have kissed her, but Alice drew away.
"Oh, I don't mean----" She laughed nervously. "I wasn't meaning
to tell you I'm ENGAGED, mama. We're not. I mean--oh! things
seem pretty beautiful in spite of all I've done to spoil 'em."
"You?" Mrs. Adams cried, incredulously. "What have you done to
spoil anything?"
"Little things," Alice said. "A thousand little silly--oh,
what's the use? He's so honestly what he is --just simple and
good and intelligent--I feel a tricky mess beside him! I don't
see why he likes me; and sometimes I'm afraid he wouldn't if he
knew me."
"He'd just worship you," said the fond mother. "And the more he
knew you, the more he'd worship you."
Alice shook her head. "He's not the worshiping kind. Not like
that at all. He's more----"
But Mrs. Adams was not interested in this analysis, and she
interrupted briskly, "Of course it's time your father and I
showed some interest in him. I was just saying I actually don't
believe he's ever been inside the house."
"No," Alice said, musingly; "that's true: I don't believe he has.
Except when we've walked in the evening we've always sat out
here, even those two times when it was drizzly. It's so much
nicer."
"We'll have to do SOMETHING or other, of course," her mother
said.
"What like?"
"I was thinking----" Mrs. Adams paused. "Well, of course we
could hardly put off asking him to dinner, or something, much
longer."
Alice was not enthusiastic; so far from it, indeed, that there
was a melancholy alarm in her voice. "Oh, mama, must we? Do you
think so?"
"Yes, I do. I really do."
"Couldn't we--well, couldn't we wait?"
"It looks queer," Mrs. Adams said. "It isn't the thing at all
for a young man to come as much as he does, and never more than
just barely meet your father and mother. No. We ought to do
something."
"But a dinner!" Alice objected. "In the first place, there isn't
anybody I want to ask. There isn't anybody I WOULD ask."
"I didn't mean trying to give a big dinner," her mother
explained. "I just mean having him to dinner. That mulatto
woman, Malena Burns, goes out by the day, and she could bring a
waitress. We can get some flowers for the table and some to put
in the living-room. We might just as well go ahead and do it
to-morrow as any other time; because your father's in a fine
mood, and I saw Malena this afternoon and told her I might want
her soon. She said she didn't have any engagements this week,
and I can let her know to-night. Suppose when he comes you ask
him for to-morrow, Alice. Everything'll be very nice, I'm sure.
Don't worry about it."
"Well--but----" Alice was uncertain.
"But don't you see, it looks so queer, not to do SOMETHING?" her
mother urged. "It looks so kind of poverty-stricken. We really
oughtn't to wait any longer."
Alice assented, though not with a good heart. "Very well, I'll
ask him, if you think we've got to."
"That matter's settled then," Mrs. Adams said. "I'll go
telephone Malena, and then I'll tell your father about it."
But when she went back to her husband, she found him in an
excited state of mind, and Walter standing before him in the
darkness. Adams was almost shouting, so great was his vehemence.
"Hush, hush!" his wife implored, as she came near them. "They'll
hear you out on the front porch!"
"I don't care who hears me," Adams said, harshly, though he
tempered his loudness. "Do you want to know what this boy's
asking me for? I thought he'd maybe come to tell me he'd got a
little sense in his head at last, and a little decency about
what's due his family! I thought he was going to ask me to take
him into my plant. No, ma'am; THAT'S not what he wants!"
"No, it isn't," Walter said. In the darkness his face could not
be seen; he stood motionless, in what seemed an apathetic
attitude; and he spoke quietly, "No," he repeated. "That isn't
what I want."
"You stay down at that place," Adams went on, hotly, "instead of
trying to be a little use to your family; and the only reason
you're ALLOWED to stay there is because Mr. Lamb's never
happened to notice you ARE still there! You just wait----"
"You're off," Walter said, in the same quiet way. "He knows I'm
there. He spoke to me yesterday: he asked me how I was getting
along with my work."
"He did?" Adams said, seeming not to believe him.
"Yes. He did."
"What else did he say, Walter?" Mrs. Adams asked quickly.
"Nothin'. Just walked on."
"I don't believe he knew who you were," Adams declared.
"Think not? He called me 'Walter Adams.'"
At this Adams was silent; and Walter, after waiting a moment,
said:
"Well, are you going to do anything about me? About what I told
you I got to have?"
"What is it, Walter?" his mother asked, since Adams did not
speak.
Walter cleared his throat, and replied in a tone as quiet as that
he had used before, though with a slight huskiness, "I got to
have three hundred and fifty dollars. You better get him to give
it to me if you can."
Adams found his voice. "Yes," he said, bitterly. "That's all he
asks! He won't do anything I ask HIM to, and in return he asks
me for three hundred and fifty dollars! That's all!"
"What in the world!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "What FOR, Walter?"
"I got to have it," Walter said.
"But what FOR?"
His quiet huskiness did not alter. "I got to have it."
"But can't you tell us----"
"I got to have it."
"That's all you can get out of him," Adams said. "He seems to
think it'll bring him in three hundred and fifty dollars!"
A faint tremulousness became evident in the husky voice.
"Haven't you got it?"
"NO, I haven't got it!" his father answered. "And I've got to go
to a bank for more than my pay-roll next week. Do you think I'm
a mint?"
"I don't understand what you mean, Walter," Mrs. Adams
interposed, perplexed and distressed. "If your father had the
money, of course he'd need every cent of it, especially just now,
and, anyhow, you could scarcely expect him to give it to you,
unless you told us what you want with it. But he hasn't got it."
"All right," Walter said; and after standing a moment more, in
silence, he added, impersonally, "I don't see as you ever did
anything much for me, anyhow either of you."
Then, as if this were his valedictory, he turned his back upon
them, walked away quickly, and was at once lost to their sight in
the darkness.
"There's a fine boy to've had the trouble of raising!" Adams
grumbled. "Just crazy, that's all."
"What in the world do you suppose he wants all that money for?"
his wife said, wonderingly. "I can't imagine what he could DO
with it. I wonder ----" She paused. "I wonder if he----"
"If he what?" Adams prompted her irritably.
"If he COULD have bad--associates."
"God knows!" said Adams. "_I_ don't! It just looks to me like
he had something in him I don't understand. You can't keep your
eye on a boy all the time in a city this size, not a boy Walter's
age. You got a girl pretty much in the house, but a boy'll
follow his nature. _I_ don't know what to do with him!"
Mrs. Adams brightened a little. "He'll come out all right," she
said. "I'm sure he will. I'm sure he'd never be anything really
bad: and he'll come around all right about the glue-works, too;
you'll see. Of course every young man wants money--it doesn't
prove he's doing anything wrong just because he asks you for it."
"No. All it proves to me is that he hasn't got good sense asking
me for three hundred and fifty dollars, when he knows as well as
you do the position I'm in! If I wanted to, I couldn't hardly
let him have three hundred and fifty cents, let alone dollars!"
"I'm afraid you'll have to let ME have that much-- and maybe a
little more," she ventured, timidly; and she told him of her
plans for the morrow. He objected vehemently.
"Oh, but Alice has probably asked him by this time," Mrs. Adams
said. "It really must be done, Virgil: you don't want him to
think she's ashamed of us, do you?"
"Well, go ahead, but just let me stay away," he begged. "Of
course I expect to undergo a kind of talk with him, when he gets
ready to say something to us about Alice, but I do hate to have
to sit through a fashionable dinner."
"Why, it isn't going to bother you," she said; "just one young
man as a guest."
"Yes, I know; but you want to have all this fancy cookin'; and I
see well enough you're going to get that old dress suit out of
the cedar chest in the attic, and try to make me put it on me."
"I do think you better, Virgil."
"I hope the moths have got in it," he said. "Last time I wore it
was to the banquet, and it was pretty old then. Of course I
didn't mind wearing it to the banquet so much, because that was
what you might call quite an occasion." He spoke with some
reminiscent complacency; "the banquet," an affair now five years
past, having provided the one time in his life when he had been
so distinguished among his fellow-citizens as to receive an
invitation to be present, with some seven hundred others, at the
annual eating and speech-making of the city's Chamber of
Commerce. "Anyhow, as you say, I think it would look foolish of
me to wear a dress suit for just one young man," he went on
protesting, feebly. "What's the use of all so much howdy-do,
anyway? You don't expect him to believe we put on all that style
every night, do you? Is that what you're after?"
"Well, we want him to think we live nicely," she admitted.
"So that's it!" he said, querulously. "You want him to think
that's our regular gait, do you? Well, he'll know better about
me, no matter how you fix me up, because he saw me in my regular
suit the evening she introduced me to him, and he could tell
anyway I'm not one of these moving-picture sporting-men that's
always got a dress suit on. Besides, you and Alice certainly
have some idea he'll come AGAIN, haven't you? If they get things
settled between 'em he'll be around the house and to meals most
any time, won't he? You don't hardly expect to put on style all
the time, I guess. Well, he'll see then that this kind of thing
was all show-off, and bluff, won't he? What about it?"
"Oh, well, by THAT time----" She left the sentence unfinished, as
if absently. "You could let us have a little money for
to-morrow, couldn't you, honey?"
"Oh, I reckon, I reckon," he mumbled. "A girl like Alice is some
comfort: she don't come around acting as if she'd commit suicide
if she didn't get three hundred and fifty dollars in the next
five minutes. I expect I can spare five or six dollars for your
show-off if I got to."
However, she finally obtained fifteen before his bedtime; and the
next morning "went to market" after breakfast, leaving Alice to
make the beds. Walter had not yet come downstairs. "You had
better call him," Mrs. Adams said, as she departed with a big
basket on her arm. "I expect he's pretty sleepy; he was out so
late last night I didn't hear him come in, though I kept awake
till after midnight, listening for him. Tell him he'll be late
to work if he doesn't hurry; and see that he drinks his coffee,
even if he hasn't time for anything else. And when Malena comes,
get her started in the kitchen: show her where everything is."
She waved her hand, as she set out for a corner where the cars
stopped. "Everything'll be lovely. Don't forget about Walter."
Nevertheless, Alice forgot about Walter for a few minutes. She
closed the door, went into the "living- room" absently, and
stared vaguely at one of the old brown-plush rocking-chairs
there. Upon her forehead were the little shadows of an
apprehensive reverie, and her thoughts overlapped one another in
a fretful jumble. "What will he think? These old
chairs--they're hideous. I'll scrub those soot- streaks on the
columns: it won't do any good, though. That long crack in the
column--nothing can help it. What will he think of papa? I hope
mama won't talk too much. When he thinks of Mildred's house, or
of Henrietta's, or any of 'em, beside this---- She said she'd buy
plenty of roses; that ought to help some. Nothing could be done
about these horrible chairs: can't take 'em up in the attic--a
room's got to have chairs! Might have rented some. No; if he
ever comes again he'd see they weren't here. 'If he ever comes
again'--oh, it won't be THAT bad! But it won't be what he
expects. I'm responsible for what he expects: he expects just
what the airs I've put on have made him expect. What did I want
to pose so to him for--as if papa were a wealthy man and all
that? What WILL he think? The photograph of the Colosseum's a
rather good thing, though. It helps some-- as if we'd bought it
in Rome perhaps. I hope he'll think so; he believes I've been
abroad, of course. The other night he said, 'You remember the
feeling you get in the Sainte-Chapelle'.--There's another lie of
mine, not saying I didn't remember because I'd never been there.
What makes me do it? Papa MUST wear his evening clothes. But
Walter----"
With that she recalled her mother's admonition, and went upstairs
to Walter's door. She tapped upon it with her fingers.
"Time to get up, Walter. The rest of us had breakfast over half
an hour ago, and it's nearly eight o'clock. You'll be late.
Hurry down and I'll have some coffee and toast ready for you."
There came no sound from within the room, so she rapped louder.
"Wake up, Walter!"
She called and rapped again, without getting any response, and
then, finding that the door yielded to her, opened it and went
in. Walter was not there.
He had been there, however; had slept upon the bed, though not
inside the covers; and Alice supposed he must have come home so
late that he had been too sleepy to take off his clothes. Near
the foot of the bed was a shallow closet where he kept his "other
suit" and his evening clothes; and the door stood open, showing a
bare wall. Nothing whatever was in the closet, and Alice was
rather surprised at this for a moment. "That's queer," she
murmured; and then she decided that when he woke he found the
clothes he had slept in "so mussy" he had put on his "other
suit," and had gone out before breakfast with the mussed clothes
to have them pressed, taking his evening things with them.
Satisfied with this explanation, and failing to observe that it
did not account for the absence of shoes from the closet floor,
she nodded absently, "Yes, that must be it"; and, when her mother
returned, told her that Walter had probably breakfasted
down-town. They did not delay over this; the coloured woman had
arrived, and the basket's disclosures were important.
"I stopped at Worlig's on the way back," said Mrs. Adams,
flushed with hurry and excitement. "I bought a can of caviar
there. I thought we'd have little sandwiches brought into the
'living-room' before dinner, the way you said they did when you
went to that dinner at the----"
"But I think that was to go with cocktails, mama, and of course
we haven't----"
"No," Mrs. Adams said. "Still, I think it would be nice. We
can make them look very dainty, on a tray, and the waitress can
bring them in. I thought we'd have the soup already on the
table; and we can walk right out as soon as we have the
sandwiches, so it won't get cold. Then, after the soup, Malena
says she can make sweetbread pates with mushrooms: and for the
meat course we'll have larded fillet. Malena's really a fancy
cook, you know, and she says she can do anything like that to
perfection. We'll have peas with the fillet, and potato balls
and Brussels sprouts. Brussels sprouts are fashionable now, they
told me at market. Then will come the chicken salad, and after
that the ice-cream--she's going to make an angel-food cake to go
with it--and then coffee and crackers and a new kind of cheese I
got at Worlig's, he says is very fine."
Alice was alarmed. "Don't you think perhaps it's too much,
mama?"
"It's better to have too much than too little," her mother said,
cheerfully. "We don't want him to think we're the kind that
skimp. Lord knows we have to enough, though, most of the time!
Get the flowers in water, child. I bought 'em at market because
they're so much cheaper there, but they'll keep fresh and nice.
You fix 'em any way you want. Hurry! It's got to be a busy
day."
She had bought three dozen little roses. Alice took them and
began to arrange them in vases, keeping the stems separated as
far as possible so that the clumps would look larger. She put
half a dozen in each of three vases in the "living-room," placing
one vase on the table in the center of the room, and one at each
end of the mantelpiece. Then she took the rest of the roses to
the dining-room; but she postponed the arrangement of them until
the table should be set, just before dinner. She was thoughtful;
planning to dry the stems and lay them on the tablecloth like a
vine of roses running in a delicate design, if she found that the
dozen and a half she had left were enough for that. If they
weren't she would arrange them in a vase.
She looked a long time at the little roses in the basin of water,
where she had put them; then she sighed, and went away to heavier
tasks, while her mother worked in the kitchen with Malena. Alice
dusted the "living-room" and the dining-room vigorously, though
all the time with a look that grew more and more pensive; and
having dusted everything, she wiped the furniture; rubbed it
hard. After that, she washed the floors and the woodwork.
Emerging from the kitchen at noon, Mrs. Adams found her daughter
on hands and knees, scrubbing the bases of the columns between
the hall and the "living-room."
"Now, dearie," she said, "you mustn't tire yourself out, and
you'd better come and eat something. Your father said he'd get a
bite down-town to-day-- he was going down to the bank--and Walter
eats down-town all the time lately, so I thought we wouldn't
bother to set the table for lunch. Come on and we'll have
something in the kitchen."
"No," Alice said, dully, as she went on with he work. "I don't
want anything."
Her mother came closer to her. "Why, what's the matter?" she
asked, briskly. "You seem kind of pale, to me; and you don't
look--you don't look HAPPY."
"Well----" Alice began, uncertainly, but said no more.
"See here!" Mrs. Adams exclaimed. "This is all just for you!
You ought to be ENJOYING it. Why, it's the first time
we've--we've entertained in I don't know how long! I guess it's
almost since we had that little party when you were eighteen.
What's the matter with you?"
"Nothing. I don't know."
"But, dearie, aren't you looking FORWARD to this evening?"
The girl looked up, showing a pallid and solemn face. "Oh, yes,
of course," she said, and tried to smile. "Of course we had to
do it--I do think it'll be nice. Of course I'm looking forward
to it."
CHAPTER XX
She was indeed "looking forward" to that evening, but in a cloud
of apprehension; and, although she could never have guessed it,
this was the simultaneous condition of another person--none other
than the guest for whose pleasure so much cooking and scrubbing
seemed to be necessary. Moreover, Mr. Arthur Russell's
premonitions were no product of mere coincidence; neither had any
magical sympathy produced them. His state of mind was rather the
result of rougher undercurrents which had all the time been
running beneath the surface of a romantic friendship.
Never shrewder than when she analyzed the gentlemen, Alice did
not libel him when she said he was one of those quiet men who are
a bit flirtatious, by which she meant that he was a bit
"susceptible," the same thing--and he had proved himself
susceptible to Alice upon his first sight of her. "There!" he
said to himself. "Who's that?" And in the crowd of girls at his
cousin's dance, all strangers to him, she was the one he wanted
to know.
Since then, his summer evenings with her had been as secluded as
if, for three hours after the falling of dusk, they two had drawn
apart from the world to some dear bower of their own. The little
veranda was that glamorous nook, with a faint golden light
falling through the glass of the closed door upon Alice, and
darkness elsewhere, except for the one round globe of the street
lamp at the corner. The people who passed along the sidewalk,
now and then, were only shadows with voices, moving vaguely under
the maple trees that loomed in obscure contours against the
stars. So, as the two sat together, the back of the world was
the wall and closed door behind them; and Russell, when he was
away from Alice, always thought of her as sitting there before
the closed door. A glamour was about her thus, and a spell upon
him; but he had a formless anxiety never put into words: all the
pictures of her in his mind stopped at the closed door.
He had another anxiety; and, for the greater part, this was of
her own creating. She had too often asked him (no matter how
gaily) what he heard about her, too often begged him not to hear
anything. Then, hoping to forestall whatever he might hear, she
had been at too great pains to account for it, to discredit and
mock it; and, though he laughed at her for this, telling her
truthfully he did not even hear her mentioned, the everlasting
irony that deals with all such human forefendings prevailed.
Lately, he had half confessed to her what a nervousness she had
produced. "You make me dread the day when I'll hear somebody
speaking of you. You're getting me so upset about it that if I
ever hear anybody so much as say the name 'Alice Adams,' I'll
run!" The confession was but half of one because he laughed; and
she took it for an assurance of loyalty in the form of burlesque.
She misunderstood: he laughed, but his nervousness was genuine.
After any stroke of events, whether a happy one or a catastrophe,
we see that the materials for it were a long time gathering, and
the only marvel is that the stroke was not prophesied. What bore
the air of fatal coincidence may remain fatal indeed, to this
later view; but, with the haphazard aspect dispelled, there is
left for scrutiny the same ancient hint from the Infinite to the
effect that since events have never yet failed to be law-abiding,
perhaps it were well for us to deduce that they will continue to
be so until further notice.
. . . On the day that was to open the closed door in the
background of his pictures of Alice, Russell lunched with his
relatives. There were but the four people, Russell and Mildred
and her mother and father, in the great, cool dining-room.
Arched French windows, shaded by awnings, admitted a mellow light
and looked out upon a green lawn ending in a long conservatory,
which revealed through its glass panes a carnival of plants in
luxuriant blossom. From his seat at the table, Russell glanced
out at this pretty display, and informed his cousins that he was
surprised. "You have such a glorious spread of flowers all over
the house," he said, "I didn't suppose you'd have any left out
yonder. In fact, I didn't know there were so many splendid
flowers in the world."
Mrs. Palmer, large, calm, fair, like her daughter, responded
with a mild reproach: "That's because you haven't been cousinly
enough to get used to them, Arthur. You've almost taught us to
forget what you look like."
In defense Russell waved a hand toward her husband. "You see,
he's begun to keep me so hard at work----"
But Mr. Palmer declined the responsibility. "Up to four or five
in the afternoon, perhaps," he said. "After that, the young
gentleman is as much a stranger to me as he is to my family.
I've been wondering who she could be."
"When a man's preoccupied there must be a lady then?" Russell
inquired.
"That seems to be the view of your sex," Mrs; Palmer suggested.
"It was my husband who said it, not Mildred or I."
Mildred smiled faintly. "Papa may be singular in his ideas; they
may come entirely from his own experience, and have nothing to do
with Arthur."
"Thank you, Mildred," her cousin said, bowing to her gratefully.
"You seem to understand my character--and your father's quite as
well!"
However, Mildred remained grave in the face of this customary
pleasantry, not because the old jest, worn round, like what
preceded it, rolled in an old groove, but because of some
preoccupation of her own. Her faint smile had disappeared, and,
as her cousin's glance met hers, she looked down; yet not before
he had seen in her eyes the flicker of something like a
question--a question both poignant and dismayed. He may have
understood it; for his own smile vanished at once in favour of a
reciprocal solemnity.
"You see, Arthur," Mrs. Palmer said, "Mildred is always a good
cousin. She and I stand by you, even if you do stay away from us
for weeks and weeks." Then, observing that he appeared to be so
occupied with a bunch of iced grapes upon his plate that he had
not heard her, she began to talk to her husband, asking him what
was "going on down-town."
Arthur continued to eat his grapes, but he ventured to look again
at Mildred after a few moments. She, also, appeared to be
occupied with a bunch of grapes though she ate none, and only
pulled them from their stems. She sat straight, her features as
composed and pure as those of a new marble saint in a cathedral
niche; yet her downcast eyes seemed to conceal many thoughts; and
her cousin, against his will, was more aware of what these
thoughts might be than of the leisurely conversation between her
father and mother. All at once, however, he heard something that
startled him, and he listened--and here was the effect of all
Alice's forefendings; he listened from the first with a sinking
heart.
Mr. Palmer, mildly amused by what he was telling his wife, had
just spoken the words, "this Virgil Adams." What he had said
was, "this Virgil Adams --that's the man's name. Queer case."
"Who told you?" Mrs. Palmer inquired, not much interested.
"Alfred Lamb," her husband answered. "He was laughing about his
father, at the club. You see the old gentleman takes a great
pride in his judgment of men, and always boasted to his sons that
he'd never in his life made a mistake in trusting the wrong man.
Now Alfred and James Albert, Junior, think they have a great joke
on him; and they've twitted him so much about it he'll scarcely
speak to them. From the first, Alfred says, the old chap's only
repartee was, 'You wait and you'll see!' And they've asked him so
often to show them what they're going to see that he won't say
anything at all!"
"He's a funny old fellow," Mrs. Palmer observed. "But he's so
shrewd I can't imagine his being deceived for such a long time.
Twenty years, you said?"
"Yes, longer than that, I understand. It appears when this
man--this Adams--was a young clerk, the old gentleman trusted him
with one of his business secrets, a glue process that Mr. Lamb
had spent some money to get hold of. The old chap thought this
Adams was going to have quite a future with the Lamb concern, and
of course never dreamed he was dishonest. Alfred says this Adams
hasn't been of any real use for years, and they should have let
him go as dead wood, but the old gentleman wouldn't hear of it,
and insisted on his being kept on the payroll; so they just
decided to look on it as a sort of pension. Well, one morning
last March the man had an attack of some sort down there, and Mr.
Lamb got his own car out and went home with him, himself, and
worried about him and went to see him no end, all the time he was
ill."
"He would," Mrs. Palmer said, approvingly. "He's a kind-hearted
creature, that old man."
Her husband laughed. "Alfred says he thinks his kind-heartedness
is about cured! It seems that as soon as the man got well again
he deliberately walked off with the old gentleman's glue secret.
Just calmly stole it! Alfred says he believes that if he had a
stroke in the office now, himself, his father wouldn't lift a
finger to help him!"
Mrs. Palmer repeated the name to herself thoughtfully.
"'Adams'--'Virgil Adams.' You said his name was Virgil Adams?"
"Yes."
She looked at her daughter. "Why, you know who that is,
Mildred," she said, casually. "It's that Alice Adams's father,
isn't it? Wasn't his name Virgil Adams?"
"I think it is," Mildred said.
Mrs. Palmer turned toward her husband. "You've seen this Alice
Adams here. Mr. Lamb's pet swindler must be her father."
Mr. Palmer passed a smooth hand over his neat gray hair, which
was not disturbed by this effort to stimulate recollection. "Oh,
yes," he said. "Of course--certainly. Quite a good-looking
girl--one of Mildred's friends. How queer!"
Mildred looked up, as if in a little alarm, but did not speak.
Her mother set matters straight. "Fathers ARE amusing," she said
smilingly to Russell, who was looking at her, though how fixedly
she did not notice; for she turned from him at once to enlighten
her husband. "Every girl who meets Mildred, and tries to push
the acquaintance by coming here until the poor child has to hide,
isn't a FRIEND of hers, my dear!"
Mildred's eyes were downcast again, and a faint colour rose in
her cheeks. "Oh, I shouldn't put it quite that way about Alice
Adams," she said, in a low voice. "I saw something of her for a
time. She's not unattractive in a way."
Mrs. Palmer settled the whole case of Alice carelessly. "A
pushing sort of girl," she said. "A very pushing little person."
"I----" Mildred began; and, after hesitating, concluded, "I
rather dropped her."
"Fortunate you've done so," her father remarked, cheerfully.
"Especially since various members of the Lamb connection are here
frequently. They mightn't think you'd show great tact in having
her about the place." He laughed, and turned to his cousin.
"All this isn't very interesting to poor Arthur. How terrible
people are with a newcomer in a town; they talk as if he knew all
about everybody!"
"But we don't know anything about these queer people, ourselves,"
said Mrs. Palmer. "We know something about the girl, of
course--she used to be a bit too conspicuous, in fact! However,
as you say, we might find a subject more interesting for Arthur."
She smiled whimsically upon the young man. "Tell the truth," she
said. "Don't you fairly detest going into business with that
tyrant yonder?"
"What? Yes--I beg your pardon!" he stammered.
"You were right," Mrs. Palmer said to her husband. "You've
bored him so, talking about thievish clerks, he can't even answer
an honest question."
But Russell was beginning to recover his outward composure. "Try
me again," he said. "I'm afraid I was thinking of something
else."
This was the best he found to say. There was a part of him that
wanted to protest and deny, but he had not heat enough, in the
chill that had come upon him. Here was the first "mention" of
Alice, and with it the reason why it was the first: Mr. Palmer
had difficulty in recalling her, and she happened to be spoken
of, only because her father's betrayal of a benefactor's trust
had been so peculiarly atrocious that, in the view of the
benefactor's family, it contained enough of the element of humour
to warrant a mild laugh at a club. There was the deadliness of
the story: its lack of malice, even of resentment. Deadlier
still were Mrs. Palmer's phrases: "a pushing sort of girl," "a
very pushing little person," and "used to be a bit TOO
conspicuous, in fact." But she spoke placidly and by chance;
being as obviously without unkindly motive as Mr. Palmer was
when he related the cause of Alfred Lamb's amusement. Her
opinion of the obscure young lady momentarily her topic had been
expressed, moreover, to her husband, and at her own table. She
sat there, large, kind, serene--a protest might astonish but
could not change her; and Russell, crumpling in his strained
fingers the lace-edged little web of a napkin on his knee, found
heart enough to grow red, but not enough to challenge her.
She noticed his colour, and attributed it to the embarrassment of
a scrupulously gallant gentleman caught in a lapse of attention
to a lady. "Don't be disturbed," she said, benevolently.
"People aren't expected to listen all the time to their
relatives. A high colour's very becoming to you, Arthur; but it
really isn't necessary between cousins. You can always be
informal enough with us to listen only when you care to."
His complexion continued to be ruddier than usual, however,
throughout the meal, and was still somewhat tinted when Mrs.
Palmer rose. "The man's bringing you cigarettes here," she said,
nodding to the two gentlemen. "We'll give you a chance to do the
sordid kind of talking we know you really like. Afterwhile,
Mildred will show you what's in bloom in the hothouse, if you
wish, Arthur."
Mildred followed her, and, when they were alone in another of the
spacious rooms, went to a window and looked out, while her mother
seated herself near the center of the room in a gilt armchair,
mellowed with old Aubusson tapestry. Mrs. Palmer looked
thoughtfully at her daughter's back, but did not speak to her
until coffee had been brought for them.
"Thanks," Mildred said, not turning, "I don't care for any
coffee, I believe."
"No?" Mrs. Palmer said, gently. "I'm afraid our good-looking
cousin won't think you're very talkative, Mildred. You spoke
only about twice at lunch. I shouldn't care for him to get the
idea you're piqued because he's come here so little lately,
should you?"
"No, I shouldn't," Mildred answered in a low voice, and with that
she turned quickly, and came to sit near her mother. "But it's
what I am afraid of! Mama, did you notice how red he got?"
"You mean when he was caught not listening to a question of mine?
Yes; it's very becoming to him."
"Mama, I don't think that was the reason. I don't think it was
because he wasn't listening, I mean."
"No?"
"I think his colour and his not listening came from the same
reason," Mildred said, and although she had come to sit near her
mother, she did not look at her. "I think it happened because
you and papa----" She stopped.
"Yes?" Mrs. Palmer said, good-naturedly, to prompt her. "Your
father and I did something embarrassing?"
"Mama, it was because of those things that came out about Alice
Adams."
"How could that bother Arthur? Does he know her?"
"Don't you remember?" the daughter asked. "The day after my
dance I mentioned how odd I thought it was in him--I was a little
disappointed in him. I'd been seeing that he met everybody, of
course, but she was the only girl HE asked to meet; and he did it
as soon as he noticed her. I hadn't meant to have him meet
her--in fact, I was rather sorry I'd felt I had to ask her,
because she oh, well, she's the sort that 'tries for the new
man,' if she has half a chance; and sometimes they seem quite
fascinated --for a time, that is. I thought Arthur was above all
that; or at the very least I gave him credit for being too
sophisticated."
"I see," Mrs. Palmer said, thoughtfully. "I remember now that
you spoke of it. You said it seemed a little peculiar, but of
course it really wasn't: a 'new man' has nothing to go by, except
his own first impressions. You can't blame poor Arthur--she's
quite a piquant looking little person. You think he's seen
something of her since then?"
Mildred nodded slowly. "I never dreamed such a thing till
yesterday, and even then I rather doubted it--till he got so red,
just now! I was surprised when he asked to meet her, but he just
danced with her once and didn't mention her afterward; I forgot
all about it--in fact, I virtually forgot all about HER. I'd
seen quite a little of her----"
"Yes," said Mrs. Palmer. "She did keep coming here!"
"But I'd just about decided that it really wouldn't do," Mildred
went on. "She isn't--well, I didn't admire her."
"No," her mother assented, and evidently followed a direct
connection of thought in a speech apparently irrelevant. "I
understand the young Malone wants to marry Henrietta. I hope she
won't; he seems rather a gross type of person."
"Oh, he's just one," Mildred said. "I don't know that he and
Alice Adams were ever engaged--she never told me so. She may not
have been engaged to any of them; she was just enough among the
other girls to get talked about--and one of the reasons I felt a
little inclined to be nice to her was that they seemed to be
rather edging her out of the circle. It wasn't long before I saw
they were right, though. I happened to mention I was going to
give a dance and she pretended to take it as a matter of course
that I meant to invite her brother--at least, I thought she
pretended; she may have really believed it. At any rate, I had
to send him a card; but I didn't intend to be let in for that
sort of thing again, of course. She's what you said, 'pushing';
though I'm awfully sorry you said it."
"Why shouldn't I have said it, my dear?"
"Of course I didn't say 'shouldn't.' " Mildred explained,
gravely. "I meant only that I'm sorry it happened."
"Yes; but why?"
"Mama"--Mildred turned to her, leaning forward and speaking in a
lowered voice--"Mama, at first the change was so little it seemed
as if Arthur hardly knew it himself. He'd been lovely to me
always, and he was still lovely to me but--oh, well, you've
understood--after my dance it was more as if it was just his
nature and his training to be lovely to me, as he would be to
everyone a kind of politeness. He'd never said he CARED for me,
but after that I could see he didn't. It was clear--after that.
I didn't know what had happened; I couldn't think of anything I'd
done. Mama--it was Alice Adams."
Mrs. Palmer set her little coffee-cup upon the table beside her,
calmly following her own motion with her eyes, and not seeming to
realize with what serious entreaty her daughter's gaze was fixed
upon her. Mildred repeated the last sentence of her revelation,
and introduced a stress of insistence.
"Mama, it WAS Alice Adams!"
But Mrs. Palmer declined to be greatly impressed, so far as her
appearance went, at least; and to emphasize her refusal, she
smiled indulgently. "What makes you think so?"
"Henrietta told me yesterday."
At this Mrs. Palmer permitted herself to laugh softly aloud.
"Good heavens! Is Henrietta a soothsayer? Or is she Arthur's
particular confidante?"
"No. Ella Dowling told her."
Mrs. Palmer's laughter continued. "Now we have it!" she
exclaimed. "It's a game of gossip: Arthur tells Ella, Ella tells
Henrietta, and Henrietta tells----"
"Don't laugh, please, mama," Mildred begged. "Of course Arthur
didn't tell anybody. It's roundabout enough, but it's true. I
know it! I hadn't quite believed it, but I knew it was true when
he got so red. He looked--oh, for a second or so he looked
--stricken! He thought I didn't notice it. Mama, he's been to
see her almost every evening lately. They take long walks
together. That's why he hasn't been here."
Of Mrs. Palmer's laughter there was left only her indulgent
smile, which she had not allowed to vanish. "Well, what of it?"
she said.
"Mama!"
"Yes," said Mrs. Palmer. "What of it?"
"But don't you see?" Mildred's well-tutored voice, though
modulated and repressed even in her present emotion, nevertheless
had a tendency to quaver. "It's true. Frank Dowling was going
to see her one evening and he saw Arthur sitting on the stoop
with her, and didn't go in. And Ella used to go to school with a
girl who lives across the street from here. She told Ella----"
"Oh, I understand," Mrs. Palmer interrupted. "Suppose he does
go there. My dear, I said, 'What of it?'"
"I don't see what you mean, mama. I'm so afraid he might think
we knew about it, and that you and papa said those things about
her and her father on that account--as if we abused them because
he goes there instead of coming here."
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Palmer rose, went to a window, and, turning
there, stood with her back to it, facing her daughter and looking
at her cheerfully. "Nonsense, my dear! It was perfectly clear
that she was mentioned by accident, and so was her father. What
an extraordinary man! If Arthur makes friends with people like
that, he certainly knows better than to expect to hear favourable
opinions of them. Besides, it's only a little passing thing with
him."
"Mama! When he goes there almost every----"
"Yes," Mrs. Palmer said, dryly. "It seems to me I've heard
somewhere that other young men have gone there 'almost every!'
She doesn't last, apparently. Arthur's gallant, and he's
impressionable-- but he's fastidious, and fastidiousness is
always the check on impressionableness. A girl belongs to her
family, too--and this one does especially, it strikes me!
Arthur's very sensible; he sees more than you'd think."
Mildred looked at her hopefully. "Then you don't believe he's
likely to imagine we said those things of her in any meaning
way?"
At this, Mrs. Palmer laughed again. "There's one thing you seem
not to have noticed, Mildred."
"What's that?"
"It seems to have escaped your attention that he never said a
word."
"Mightn't that mean----?" Mildred began, but she stopped.
"No, it mightn't," her mother replied, comprehending easily. "On
the contrary, it might mean that instead of his feeling it too
deeply to speak, he was getting a little illumination."
Mildred rose and came to her. "WHY do you suppose he never told
us he went there? Do you think he's--do you think he's pleased
with her, and yet ashamed of it? WHY do you suppose he's never
spoken of it?"
"Ah, that," Mrs. Palmer said,--"that might possibly be her own
doing. If it is, she's well paid by what your father and I said,
because we wouldn't have said it if we'd known that Arthur----"
She checked herself quickly. Looking over her daughter's
shoulder, she saw the two gentlemen coming from the corridor
toward the wide doorway of the room; and she greeted them
cheerfully. "If you've finished with each other for a while,"
she added, "Arthur may find it a relief to put his thoughts on
something prettier than a trust company--and more fragrant."
Arthur came to Mildred.
"Your mother said at lunch that perhaps you'd----"
"I didn't say 'perhaps,' Arthur," Mrs. Palmer interrupted, to
correct him. "I said she would. If you care to see and smell
those lovely things out yonder, she'll show them to you. Run
along, children!"
Half an hour later, glancing from a window, she saw them come
from the hothouses and slowly cross the lawn. Arthur had a fine
rose in his buttonhole and looked profoundly thoughtful.
CHAPTER XXI
That morning and noon had been warm, though the stirrings of a
feeble breeze made weather not flagrantly intemperate; but at
about three o'clock in the afternoon there came out of the
southwest a heat like an affliction sent upon an accursed people,
and the air was soon dead of it. Dripping negro ditch-diggers
whooped with satires praising hell and hot weather, as the
tossing shovels flickered up to the street level, where sluggish
male pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and fanned
themselves with straw hats, or, remaining covered, wore soaked
handkerchiefs between scalp and straw. Clerks drooped in silent,
big department stores, stenographers in offices kept as close to
electric fans as the intervening bulk of their employers would
let them; guests in hotels left the lobbies and went to lie
unclad upon their beds; while in hospitals the patients murmured
querulously against the heat, and perhaps against some noisy
motorist who strove to feel the air by splitting it, not troubled
by any fore- boding that he, too, that hour next week, might need
quiet near a hospital. The "hot spell" was a true spell, one
upon men's spirits; for it was so hot that, in suburban
outskirts, golfers crept slowly back over the low undulations of
their club lands, abandoning their matches and returning to
shelter.
Even on such a day, sizzling work had to be done, as in winter.
There were glowing furnaces to be stoked, liquid metals to be
poured; but such tasks found seasoned men standing to them; and
in all the city probably no brave soul challenged the heat more
gamely than Mrs. Adams did, when, in a corner of her small and
fiery kitchen, where all day long her hired African immune cooked
fiercely, she pressed her husband's evening clothes with a hot
iron. No doubt she risked her life, but she risked it cheerfully
in so good and necessary a service for him. She would have given
her life for him at any time, and both his and her own for her
children.
Unconscious of her own heroism, she was surprised to find herself
rather faint when she finished her ironing. However, she took
heart to believe that the clothes looked better, in spite of one
or two scorched places; and she carried them upstairs to her
husband's room before increasing blindness forced her to grope
for the nearest chair. Then, trying to rise and walk, without
having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit down again; but
after a little while she was able to get upon her feet; and,
keeping her hand against the wall, moved successfully to the door
of her own room. Here she wavered; might have gone down, had she
not been stimulated by the thought of how much depended upon
her;--she made a final great effort, and floundered across the
room to her bureau, where she kept some simple restoratives.
They served her need, or her faith in them did; and she returned
to her work.
She went down the stairs, keeping a still tremulous hand upon the
rail; but she smiled brightly when Alice looked up from below,
where the woodwork was again being tormented with superfluous
attentions.
"Alice, DON'T!" her mother said, commiseratingly. "You did all
that this morning and it looks lovely. What's the use of wearing
yourself out on it? You ought to be lying down, so's to look
fresh for to-night."
"Hadn't you better lie down yourself?" the daughter returned.
"Are you ill, mama?"
"Certainly not. What in the world makes you think so?"
"You look pretty pale," Alice said, and sighed heavily. "It
makes me ashamed, having you work so hard--for me."
"How foolish! I think it's fun, getting ready to entertain a
little again, like this. I only wish it hadn't turned so hot:
I'm afraid your poor father'll suffer--his things are pretty
heavy, I noticed. Well, it'll do him good to bear something for
style's sake this once, anyhow!" She laughed, and coming to
Alice, bent down and kissed her. "Dearie," she said, tenderly,
"wouldn't you please slip upstairs now and take just a little
teeny nap to please your mother?"
But Alice responded only by moving her head slowly, in token of
refusal.
"Do!" Mrs. Adams urged. "You don't want to look worn out, do
you?"
"I'll LOOK all right," Alice said, huskily. "Do you like the way
I've arranged the furniture now? I've tried all the different
ways it'll go."
"It's lovely," her mother said, admiringly. "I thought the last
way you had it was pretty, too. But you know best; I never knew
anybody with so much taste. If you'd only just quit now, and
take a little rest----"
"There'd hardly be time, even if I wanted to; it's after five but
I couldn't; really, I couldn't. How do you think we can manage
about Walter--to see that he wears his evening things, I mean?"
Mrs. Adams pondered. "I'm afraid he'll make a lot of
objections, on account of the weather and everything. I wish
we'd had a chance to tell him last night or this morning. I'd
have telephoned to him this afternoon except--well, I scarcely
like to call him up at that place, since your father----"
"No, of course not, mama."
"If Walter gets home late," Mrs. Adams went on, "I'll just slip
out and speak to him, in case Mr. Russell's here before he
comes. I'll just tell him he's got to hurry and get his things
on."
"Maybe he won't come home to dinner," Alice suggested, rather
hopefully. "Sometimes he doesn't."
"No; I think he'll be here. When he doesn't come he usually
telephones by this time to say not to wait for him; he's very
thoughtful about that. Well, it really is getting late: I must
go and tell her she ought to be preparing her fillet. Dearie, DO
rest a little."
"You'd much better do that yourself," Alice called after her, but
Mrs. Adams shook her head cheerily, not pausing on her way to
the fiery kitchen.
Alice continued her useless labours for a time; then carried her
bucket to the head of the cellar stairway, where she left it upon
the top step; and, closing the door, returned to the
"living-room;" Again she changed the positions of the old plush
rocking-chairs, moving them into the corners where she thought
they might be least noticeable; and while thus engaged she was
startled by a loud ringing of the door-bell. For a moment her
face was panic-stricken, and she stood staring, then she realized
that Russell would not arrive for another hour, at the earliest,
and recovering her equipoise, went to the door.
Waiting there, in a languid attitude, was a young coloured woman,
with a small bundle under her arm and something malleable in her
mouth. "Listen," she said. "You folks expectin' a coloured
lady?"
"No," said Alice. "Especially not at the front door."
"Listen," the coloured woman said again. "Listen. Say, listen.
Ain't they another coloured lady awready here by the day?
Listen. Ain't Miz Malena Burns here by the day this evenin'?
Say, listen. This the number house she give ME."
"Are you the waitress?" Alice asked, dismally.
"Yes'm, if Malena here."
"Malena is here," Alice said, and hesitated; but she decided not
to send the waitress to the back door; it might be a risk. She
let her in. "What's your name?"
"Me? I'm name' Gertrude. Miss Gertrude Collamus."
"Did you bring a cap and apron?"
Gertrude took the little bundle from under her arm. "Yes'm. I'm
all fix'."
"I've already set the table," Alice said. "I'll show you what we
want done."
She led the way to the dining-room, and, after offering some
instruction there, received by Gertrude with languor and a slowly
moving jaw, she took her into the kitchen, where the cap and
apron were put on. The effect was not fortunate; Gertrude's eyes
were noticeably bloodshot, an affliction made more apparent by
the white cap; and Alice drew her mother apart, whispering
anxiously,
"Do you suppose it's too late to get someone else?"
"I'm afraid it is," Mrs. Adams said. "Malena says it was hard
enough to get HER! You have to pay them so much that they only
work when they feel like it."
"Mama, could you ask her to wear her cap straighter? Every time
she moves her head she gets it on one side, and her skirt's too
long behind and too short in front--and oh, I've NEVER seen such
FEET!" Alice laughed desolately. "And she MUST quit that
terrible chewing!"
"Never mind; I'll get to work with her. I'll straighten her out
all I can, dearie; don't worry." Mrs. Adams patted her
daughter's shoulder encouragingly. "Now YOU can't do another
thing, and if you don't run and begin dressing you won't be
ready. It'll only take me a minute to dress, myself, and I'll be
down long before you will. Run, darling! I'll look after
everything."
Alice nodded vaguely, went up to her room, and, after only a
moment with her mirror, brought from her closet the dress of
white organdie she had worn the night when she met Russell for
the first time. She laid it carefully upon her bed, and began to
make ready to put it on. Her mother came in, half an hour later,
to "fasten" her.
"I'M all dressed," Mrs. Adams said, briskly. "Of course it
doesn't matter. He won't know what the rest of us even look
like: How could he? I know I'm an old SIGHT, but all I want is
to look respectable. Do I?"
"You look like the best woman in the world; that's all!" Alice
said, with a little gulp.
Her mother laughed and gave her a final scrutiny. "You might use
just a tiny bit more colour, dearie-- I'm afraid the excitement's
made you a little pale. And you MUST brighten up! There's sort
of a look in your eyes as if you'd got in a trance and couldn't
get out. You've had it all day. I must run: your father wants
me to help him with his studs. Walter hasn't come yet, but I'll
look after him; don't worry, And you better HURRY, dearie, if
you're going to take any time fixing the flowers on the table."
She departed, while Alice sat at the mirror again, to follow her
advice concerning a "tiny bit more colour." Before she had
finished, her father knocked at the door, and, when she
responded, came in. He was dressed in the clothes his wife had
pressed; but he had lost substantially in weight since they were
made for him; no one would have thought that they had been
pressed. They hung from him voluminously, seeming to be the
clothes of a larger man.
"Your mother's gone downstairs," he said, in a voice of distress.
"One of the buttonholes in my shirt is too large and I can't keep
the dang thing fastened. _I_ don't know what to do about it! I
only got one other white shirt, and it's kind of ruined: I tried
it before I did this one. Do you s'pose you could do anything?"
"I'll see," she said.
"My collar's got a frayed edge," he complained, as she examined
his troublesome shirt. "It's a good deal like wearing a saw; but
I expect it'll wilt down flat pretty soon, and not bother me
long. I'm liable to wilt down flat, myself, I expect; I don't
know as I remember any such hot night in the last ten or twelve
years." He lifted his head and sniffed the flaccid air, which
was laden with a heavy odour. "My, but that smell is pretty
strong!" he said.
"Stand still, please, papa," Alice begged him. "I can't see
what's the matter if you move around. How absurd you are about
your old glue smell, papa! There isn't a vestige of it, of
course."
"I didn't mean glue," he informed her. "I mean cabbage. Is that
fashionable now, to have cabbage when there's company for
dinner?"
"That isn't cabbage, papa. It's Brussels sprouts."
"Oh, is it? I don't mind it much, because it keeps that glue
smell off me, but it's fairly strong. I expect you don't notice
it so much because you been in the house with it all along, and
got used to it while it was growing."
"It is pretty dreadful," Alice said. "Are all the windows open
downstairs?"
"I'll go down and see, if you'll just fix that hole up for me."
"I'm afraid I can't," she said. "Not unless you take your shirt
off and bring it to me. I'll have to sew the hole smaller."
"Oh, well, I'll go ask your mother to----"
"No," said Alice. "She's got everything on her hands. Run and
take it off. Hurry, papa; I've got to arrange the flowers on the
table before he comes."
He went away, and came back presently, half undressed, bringing
the shirt. "There's ONE comfort," he remarked, pensively, as she
worked. "I've got that collar off--for a while, anyway. I wish
I could go to table like this; I could stand it a good deal
better. Do you seem to be making any headway with the dang
thing?"
"I think probably I can----"
Downstairs the door-bell rang, and Alice's arms jerked with the
shock.
"Golly!" her father said. "Did you stick your finger with that
fool needle?"
She gave him a blank stare. "He's come!"
She was not mistaken, for, upon the little veranda, Russell stood
facing the closed door at last. However, it remained closed for
a considerable time after he rang. Inside the house the warning
summons of the bell was immediately followed by another sound,
audible to Alice and her father as a crash preceding a series of
muffled falls. Then came a distant voice, bitter in complaint.
"Oh, Lord!" said Adams. "What's that?"
Alice went to the top of the front stairs, and her mother
appeared in the hall below.
"Mama!"
Mrs. Adams looked up. "It's all right," she said, in a loud
whisper. "Gertrude fell down the cellar stairs. Somebody left a
bucket there, and----" She was interrupted by a gasp from Alice,
and hastened to reassure her. "Don't worry, dearie. She may
limp a little, but----"
Adams leaned over the banisters. "Did she break anything?" he
asked.
"Hush!" his wife whispered. "No. She seems upset and angry
about it, more than anything else; but she's rubbing herself, and
she'll be all right in time to bring in the little sandwiches.
Alice! Those flowers!"
"I know, mama. But----"
"Hurry!" Mrs. Adams warned her. "Both of you hurry! I MUST let
him in!"
She turned to the door, smiling cordially, even before she opened
it. "Do come right in, Mr. Russell," she said, loudly, lifting
her voice for additional warning to those above. "I'm SO glad to
receive you informally, this way, in our own little home.
There's a hat-rack here under the stairway," she continued, as
Russell, murmuring some response, came into the hall. "I'm
afraid you'll think it's almost TOO informal, my coming to the
door, but unfortunately our housemaid's just had a little
accident--oh, nothing to mention! I just thought we better not
keep you waiting any longer. Will you step into our living-room,
please?"
She led the way between the two small columns, and seated herself
in one of the plush rocking-chairs, selecting it because Alice
had once pointed out that the chairs, themselves, were less
noticeable when they had people sitting in them. "Do sit down,
Mr. Russell; it's so very warm it's really quite a trial just to
stand up!"
"Thank you," he said, as he took a seat. "Yes. It is quite
warm." And this seemed to be the extent of his responsiveness
for the moment. He was grave, rather pale; and Mrs. Adams's
impression of him, as she formed it then, was of "a
distinguished-looking young man, really elegant in the best sense
of the word, but timid and formal when he first meets you." She
beamed upon him, and used with everything she said a continuous
accompaniment of laughter, meaningless except that it was meant
to convey cordiality. "Of course we DO have a great deal of warm
weather," she informed him. "I'm glad it's so much cooler in the
house than it is outdoors."
"Yes," he said. "It is pleasanter indoors." And, stopping with
this single untruth, he permitted himself the briefest glance
about the room; then his eyes returned to his smiling hostess.
"Most people make a great fuss about hot weather," she said.
"The only person I know who doesn't mind the heat the way other
people do is Alice. She always seems as cool as if we had a
breeze blowing, no matter how hot it is. But then she's so
amiable she never minds anything. It's just her character.
She's always been that way since she was a little child; always
the same to everybody, high and low. I think character's the
most important thing in the world, after all, don't you, Mr.
Russell?"
"Yes," he said, solemnly; and touched his bedewed white forehead
with a handkerchief.
"Indeed it is," she agreed with herself, never failing to
continue her murmur of laughter. "That's what I've always told
Alice; but she never sees anything good in herself, and she just
laughs at me when I praise her. She sees good in everybody ELSE
in the world, no matter how unworthy they are, or how they behave
toward HER; but she always underestimates herself. From the time
she was a little child she was always that way. When some other
little girl would behave selfishly or meanly toward her, do you
think she'd come and tell me? Never a word to anybody! The
little thing was too proud! She was the same way about school.
The teachers had to tell me when she took a prize; she'd bring it
home and keep it in her room without a word about it to her
father and mother. Now, Walter was just the other way. Walter
would----" But here Mrs. Adams checked herself, though she
increased the volume of her laughter. "How silly of me!" she
exclaimed. "I expect you know how mothers ARE, though, Mr.
Russell. Give us a chance and we'll talk about our children
forever! Alice would feel terribly if she knew how I've been
going on about her to you."
In this Mrs. Adams was right, though she did not herself suspect
it, and upon an almost inaudible word or two from him she went on
with her topic. "Of course my excuse is that few mothers have a
daughter like Alice. I suppose we all think the same way about
our children, but SOME of us must be right when we feel we've got
the best. Don't you think so?"
"Yes. Yes, indeed."
"I'm sure _I_ am!" she laughed. "I'll let the others speak for
themselves." She paused reflectively. "No; I think a mother
knows when she's got a treasure in her family. If she HASN'T got
one, she'll pretend she has, maybe; but if she has, she knows it.
I certainly know _I_ have. She's always been what people call
'the joy of the household'-- always cheerful, no matter what went
wrong, and always ready to smooth things over with some bright,
witty saying. You must be sure not to TELL we've had this little
chat about her--she'd just be furious with me--but she IS such a
dear child! You won't tell her, will you?"
"No," he said, and again applied the handkerchief to his forehead
for an instant. "No, I'll----" He paused, and finished lamely:
"I'll--not tell her."
Thus reassured, Mrs. Adams set before him some details of her
daughter's popularity at sixteen, dwelling upon Alice's
impartiality among her young suitors: "She never could BEAR to
hurt their feelings, and always treated all of them just alike.
About half a dozen of them were just BOUND to marry her!
Naturally, her father and I considered any such idea ridiculous;
she was too young, of course."
Thus the mother went on with her biographical sketches, while the
pale young man sat facing her under the hard overhead light of a
white globe, set to the ceiling; and listened without
interrupting. She was glad to have the chance to tell him a few
things about Alice he might not have guessed for himself, and,
indeed, she had planned to find such an opportunity, if she
could; but this was getting to be altogether too much of one, she
felt. As time passed, she was like an actor who must improvise
to keep the audience from perceiving that his fellow-players have
missed their cues; but her anxiety was not betrayed to the still
listener; she had a valiant soul.
Alice, meanwhile, had arranged her little roses on the table in
as many ways, probably, as there were blossoms; and she was still
at it when her father arrived in the dining-room by way of the
back stairs and the kitchen.
"It's pulled out again," he said. "But I guess there's no help
for it now; it's too late, and anyway it lets some air into me
when it bulges. I can sit so's it won't be noticed much, I
expect. Isn't it time you quit bothering about the looks of the
table? Your mother's been talking to him about half an hour now,
and I had the idea he came on your account, not hers. Hadn't you
better go and----"
"Just a minute." Alice said, piteously. "Do YOU think it looks
all right?"
"The flowers? Fine! Hadn't you better leave 'em the way they
are, though?"
"Just a minute," she begged again. "Just ONE minute, papa!" And
she exchanged a rose in front of Russell's plate for one that
seemed to her a little larger.
"You better come on," Adams said, moving to the door.
"Just ONE more second, papa." She shook her head, lamenting.
"Oh, I wish we'd rented some silver!"
"Why?"
"Because so much of the plating has rubbed off a lot of it. JUST
a second, papa." And as she spoke she hastily went round the
table, gathering the knives and forks and spoons that she thought
had their plating best preserved, and exchanging them for more
damaged pieces at Russell's place. "There!" she sighed, finally.
"Now I'll come." But at the door she paused to look back
dubiously, over her shoulder.
"What's the matter now?"
"The roses. I believe after all I shouldn't have tried that vine
effect; I ought to have kept them in water, in the vase. It's so
hot, they already begin to look a little wilted, out on the dry
tablecloth like that. I believe I'll----"
"Why, look here, Alice!" he remonstrated, as she seemed disposed
to turn back. "Everything'll burn up on the stove if you keep
on----"
"Oh, well," she said, "the vase was terribly ugly; I can't do any
better. We'll go in." But with her hand on the door-knob she
paused. "No, papa. We mustn't go in by this door. It might
look as if----"
"As if what?"
"Never mind," she said. "Let's go the other way."
"I don't see what difference it makes," he grumbled, but
nevertheless followed her through the kitchen, and up the back
stairs then through the upper hallway. At the top of the front
stairs she paused for a moment, drawing a deep breath; and then,
before her father's puzzled eyes, a transformation came upon her.
Her shoulders, like her eyelids, had been drooping, but now she
threw her head back: the shoulders straightened, and the lashes
lifted over sparkling eyes; vivacity came to her whole body in a
flash; and she tripped down the steps, with her pretty hands
rising in time to the lilting little tune she had begun to hum.
At the foot of the stairs, one of those pretty hands extended
itself at full arm's length toward Russell, and continued to be
extended until it reached his own hand as he came to meet her.
"How terrible of me!" she exclaimed. "To be so late coming down!
And papa, too--I think you know each other."
Her father was advancing toward the young man, expecting to shake
hands with him, but Alice stood between them, and Russell, a
little flushed, bowed to him gravely over her shoulder, without
looking at him; whereupon Adams, slightly disconcerted, put his
hands in his pockets and turned to his wife.
"I guess dinner's more'n ready," he said. "We better go sit
down."
But she shook her head at him fiercely, "Wait!" she whispered.
"What for? For Walter?"
"No; he can't be coming," she returned, hurriedly, and again
warned him by a shake of her head. "Be quiet!"
"Oh, well----" he muttered.
"Sit down!"
He was thoroughly mystified, but obeyed her gesture and went to
the rocking-chair in the opposite corner, where he sat down, and,
with an expression of meek inquiry, awaited events.
Meanwhile, Alice prattled on: "It's really not a fault of mine,
being tardy. The shameful truth is I was trying to hurry papa.
He's incorrigible: he stays so late at his terrible old
factory--terrible new factory, I should say. I hope you don't
HATE us for making you dine with us in such fearful weather! I'm
nearly dying of the heat, myself, so you have a fellow-sufferer,
if that pleases you. Why is it we always bear things better if
we think other people have to stand them, too?" And she added,
with an excited laugh: "SILLY of us, don't you think?"
Gertrude had just made her entrance from the dining-room, bearing
a tray. She came slowly, with an air of resentment; and her
skirt still needed adjusting, while her lower jaw moved at
intervals, though not now upon any substance, but reminiscently,
of habit. She halted before Adams, facing him.
He looked plaintive. "What you want o' me?" he asked.
For response, she extended the tray toward him with a gesture of
indifference; but he still appeared to be puzzled. "What in the
world----?" he began, then caught his wife's eye, and had
presence of mind enough to take a damp and plastic sandwich from
the tray. "Well, I'll TRY one," he said, but a moment later, as
he fulfilled this promise, an expression of intense dislike came
upon his features, and he would have returned the sandwich to
Gertrude. However, as she had crossed the room to Mrs. Adams he
checked the gesture, and sat helplessly, with the sandwich in his
hand. He made another effort to get rid of it as the waitress
passed him, on her way back to the dining-room, but she appeared
not to observe him, and he continued to be troubled by it.
Alice was a loyal daughter. "These are delicious, mama," she
said; and turning to Russell, "You missed it; you should have
taken one. Too bad we couldn't have offered you what ought to go
with it, of course, but----"
She was interrupted by the second entrance of Gertrude, who
announced, "Dinner serve'," and retired from view.
"Well, well!" Adams said, rising from his chair, with relief.
"That's good! Let's go see if we can eat it." And as the little
group moved toward the open door of the dining-room he disposed
of his sandwich by dropping it in the empty fireplace.
Alice, glancing back over her shoulder, was the only one who saw
him, and she shuddered in spite of herself. Then, seeing that he
looked at her entreatingly, as if he wanted to explain that he
was doing the best he could, she smiled upon him sunnily, and
began to chatter to Russell again.
CHAPTER XXII
Alice kept her sprightly chatter going when they sat down, though
the temperature of the room and the sight of hot soup might have
discouraged a less determined gayety. Moreover, there were
details as unpropitious as the heat: the expiring roses expressed
not beauty but pathos, and what faint odour they exhaled was no
rival to the lusty emanations of the Brussels sprouts; at the
head of the table, Adams, sitting low in his chair, appeared to
be unable to flatten the uprising wave of his starched bosom; and
Gertrude's manner and expression were of a recognizable hostility
during the long period of vain waiting for the cups of soup to be
emptied. Only Mrs. Adams made any progress in this direction;
the others merely feinting, now and then lifting their spoons as
if they intended to do something with them.
Alice's talk was little more than cheerful sound, but, to fill a
desolate interval, served its purpose; and her mother supported
her with ever-faithful cooings of applausive laughter. "What a
funny thing weather is!" the girl ran on. "Yesterday it was
cool--angels had charge of it--and to-day they had an engagement
somewhere else, so the devil saw his chance and started to move
the equator to the North Pole; but by the time he got half-way,
he thought of something else he wanted to do, and went off; and
left the equator here, right on top of US! I wish he'd come back
and get it!"
"Why, Alice dear!" her mother cried, fondly. "What an
imagination! Not a very pious one, I'm afraid Mr. Russell might
think, though!" Here she gave Gertrude a hidden signal to remove
the soup; but, as there was no response, she had to make the
signal more conspicuous. Gertrude was leaning against the wall,
her chin moving like a slow pendulum, her streaked eyes fixed
mutinously upon Russell. Mrs. Adams nodded several times,
increasing the emphasis of her gesture, while Alice talked
briskly; but the brooding waitress continued to brood. A faint
snap of the fingers failed to disturb her; nor was a covert
hissing whisper of avail, and Mrs. Adams was beginning to show
signs of strain when her daughter relieved her.
"Imagine our trying to eat anything so hot as soup on a night
like this!" Alice laughed. "What COULD have been in the cook's
mind not to give us something iced and jellied instead? Of
course it's because she's equatorial, herself, originally, and
only feels at home when Mr. Satan moves it north." She looked
round at Gertrude, who stood behind her. "Do take this dreadful
soup away!"
Thus directly addressed, Gertrude yielded her attention, though
unwillingly, and as if she decided only by a hair's weight not to
revolt, instead. However, she finally set herself in slow
motion; but overlooked the supposed head of the table, seeming to
be unaware of the sweltering little man who sat there. As she
disappeared toward the kitchen with but three of the cups upon
her tray he turned to look plaintively after her, and ventured an
attempt to recall her.
"Here!" he said, in a low voice. "Here, you!"
"What is it, Virgil?" his wife asked.
"What's her name?"
Mrs. Adams gave him a glance of sudden panic, and, seeing that
the guest of the evening was not looking at her, but down at the
white cloth before him, she frowned hard, and shook her head.
Unfortunately Alice was not observing her mother, and asked,
innocently: "What's whose name, papa?"
"Why, this young darky woman," he explained. "She left mine."
"Never mind," Alice laughed. "There's hope for you, papa. She
hasn't gone forever!"
"I don't know about that," he said, not content with this
impulsive assurance. "She LOOKED like she is." And his remark,
considered as a prediction, had begun to seem warranted before
Gertrude's return with china preliminary to the next stage of the
banquet.
Alice proved herself equal to the long gap, and rattled on
through it with a spirit richly justifying her mother's praise of
her as "always ready to smooth things over"; for here was more
than long delay to be smoothed over. She smoothed over her
father and mother for Russell; and she smoothed over him for
them, though he did not know it, and remained unaware of what he
owed her. With all this, throughout her prattlings, the girl's
bright eyes kept seeking his with an eager gayety, which but
little veiled both interrogation and entreaty--as if she asked:
"Is it too much for you? Can't you bear it? Won't you PLEASE
bear it? I would for you. Won't you give me a sign that it's
all right?"
He looked at her but fleetingly, and seemed to suffer from the
heat, in spite of every manly effort not to wipe his brow too
often. His colour, after rising when he greeted Alice and her
father, had departed, leaving him again moistly pallid; a
condition arising from discomfort, no doubt, but, considered as a
decoration, almost poetically becoming to him. Not less becoming
was the faint, kindly smile, which showed his wish to express
amusement and approval; and yet it was a smile rather strained
and plaintive, as if he, like Adams, could only do the best he
could.
He pleased Adams, who thought him a fine young man, and decidedly
the quietest that Alice had ever shown to her family. In her
father's opinion this was no small merit; and it was to Russell's
credit, too, that he showed embarrassment upon this first
intimate presentation; here was an applicant with both reserve
and modesty. "So far, he seems to be first rate a mighty fine
young man," Adams thought; and, prompted by no wish to part from
Alice but by reminiscences of apparent candidates less pleasing,
he added, "At last!"
Alice's liveliness never flagged. Her smoothing over of things
was an almost continuous performance, and had to be. Yet, while
she chattered through the hot and heavy courses, the questions
she asked herself were as continuous as the performance, and as
poignant as what her eyes seemed to be asking Russell. Why had
she not prevailed over her mother's fear of being "skimpy?" Had
she been, indeed, as her mother said she looked, "in a trance?"
But above all: What was the matter with HIM? What had happened?
For she told herself with painful humour that something even
worse than this dinner must be "the matter with him."
The small room, suffocated with the odour of boiled sprouts, grew
hotter and hotter as more and more food appeared, slowly borne
in, between deathly long waits, by the resentful, loud-breathing
Gertrude. And while Alice still sought Russell's glance, and
read the look upon his face a dozen different ways, fearing all
of them; and while the straggling little flowers died upon the
stained cloth, she felt her heart grow as heavy as the food, and
wondered that it did not die like the roses.
With the arrival of coffee, the host bestirred himself to make
known a hospitable regret, "By George!" he said. "I meant to buy
some cigars." He addressed himself apologetically to the guest.
"I don't know what I was thinking about, to forget to bring some
home with me. I don't use 'em myself--unless somebody hands me
one, you might say. I've always been a pipe-smoker, pure and
simple, but I ought to remembered for kind of an occasion like
this."
"Not at all," Russell said. "I'm not smoking at all lately; but
when I do, I'm like you, and smoke a pipe."
Alice started, remembering what she had told him when he overtook
her on her way from the tobacconist's; but, after a moment,
looking at him, she decided that he must have forgotten it. If
he had remembered, she thought, he could not have helped glancing
at her. On the contrary, he seemed more at ease, just then, than
he had since they sat down, for he was favouring her father with
a thoughtful attention as Adams responded to the introduction of
a man's topic into the conversation at last. "Well, Mr.
Russell, I guess you're right, at that. I don't say but what
cigars may be all right for a man that can afford 'em, if he
likes 'em better than a pipe, but you take a good old pipe
now----"
He continued, and was getting well into the eulogium customarily
provoked by this theme, when there came an interruption: the
door-bell rang, and he paused inquiringly, rather surprised.
Mrs. Adams spoke to Gertrude in an undertone:
"Just say, 'Not at home.'"
"What?"
"If it's callers, just say we're not at home."
Gertrude spoke out freely: "You mean you astin' me to 'tend you'
front do' fer you?"
She seemed both incredulous and affronted, but Mrs. Adams
persisted, though somewhat apprehensively. "Yes.
Hurry--uh--please. Just say we're not at home if you please."
Again Gertrude obviously hesitated between compliance and revolt,
and again the meeker course fortunately prevailed with her. She
gave Mrs. Adams a stare, grimly derisive, then departed. When
she came back she said:
"He say he wait."
"But I told you to tell anybody we were not at home," Mrs Adams
returned. "Who is it?"
"Say he name Mr. Law."
"We don't know any Mr. Law."
"Yes'm; he know you. Say he anxious to speak Mr. Adams. Say he
wait."
"Tell him Mr. Adams is engaged."
"Hold on a minute," Adams intervened. "Law? No. I don't know
any Mr. Law. You sure you got the name right?"
"Say he name Law," Gertrude replied, looking at the ceiling to
express her fatigue. "Law. 'S all he tell me; 's all I know."
Adams frowned. "Law," he said. "Wasn't it maybe 'Lohr?'"
"Law," Gertrude repeated. 'S all he tell me; 's all I know."
"What's he look like?"
"He ain't much," she said. "'Bout you' age; got brustly white
moustache, nice eye-glasses."
"It's Charley Lohr!" Adams exclaimed. "I'll go see what he
wants."
"But, Virgil," his wife remonstrated, "do finish your coffee; he
might stay all evening. Maybe he's come to call."
Adams laughed. "He isn't much of a caller, I expect. Don't
worry: I'll take him up to my room." And turning toward Russell,
"Ah--if you'll just excuse me," he said; and went out to his
visitor.
When he had gone, Mrs. Adams finished her coffee, and, having
glanced intelligently from her guest to her daughter, she rose.
"I think perhaps I ought to go and shake hands with Mr. Lohr,
myself," she said, adding in explanation to Russell, as she
reached the door, "He's an old friend of my husband's and it's a
very long time since he's been here."
Alice nodded and smiled to her brightly, but upon the closing of
the door, the smile vanished; all her liveliness disappeared; and
with this change of expression her complexion itself appeared to
change, so that her rouge became obvious, for she was pale
beneath it. However, Russell did not see the alteration, for he
did not look at her; and it was but a momentary lapse the
vacation of a tired girl, who for ten seconds lets herself look
as she feels. Then she shot her vivacity back into place as by
some powerful spring.
"Penny for your thoughts!" she cried, and tossed one of the
wilted roses at him, across the table. "I'll bid more than a
penny; I'll bid tuppence--no, a poor little dead rose a rose for
your thoughts, Mr. Arthur Russell! What are they?"
He shook his head. "I'm afraid I haven't any."
"No, of course not," she said. "Who could have thoughts in
weather like this? Will you EVER forgive us?"
"What for?"
"Making you eat such a heavy dinner--I mean LOOK at such a heavy
dinner, because you certainly didn't do more than look at it--on
such a night! But the crime draws to a close, and you can begin
to cheer up!" She laughed gaily, and, rising, moved to the door.
"Let's go in the other room; your fearful duty is almost done,
and you can run home as soon as you want to. That's what you're
dying to do."
"Not at all," he said in a voice so feeble that she laughed
aloud.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "I hadn't realized it was THAT bad!"
For this, though he contrived to laugh, he seemed to have no
verbal retort whatever; but followed her into the "living-room,"
where she stopped and turned, facing him.
"Has it really been so frightful?" she asked.
"Why, of course not. Not at all."
"Of course yes, though, you mean!"
"Not at all. It's been most kind of your mother and father and
you."
"Do you know," she said, "you've never once looked at me for more
than a second at a time the whole evening? And it seemed to me I
looked rather nice to-night, too!"
"You always do," he murmured.
"I don't see how you know," she returned; and then stepping
closer to him, spoke with gentle solicitude: "Tell me: you're
really feeling wretchedly, aren't you? I know you've got a
fearful headache, or something. Tell me!"
"Not at all."
"You are ill--I'm sure of it."
"Not at all."
"On your word?"
"I'm really quite all right."
"But if you are----" she began; and then, looking at him with a
desperate sweetness, as if this were her last resource to rouse
him, "What's the matter, little boy?" she said with lisping
tenderness. "Tell auntie!"
It was a mistake, for he seemed to flinch, and to lean backward,
however, slightly. She turned away instantly, with a flippant
lift and drop of both hands. "Oh, my dear!" she laughed. "I
won't eat you!"
And as the discomfited young man watched her, seeming able to
lift his eyes, now that her back was turned, she went to the
front door and pushed open the screen. "Let's go out on the
porch," she said. "Where we belong!"
Then, when he had followed her out, and they were seated, "Isn't
this better?" she asked. "Don't you feel more like yourself out
here?"
He began a murmur: "Not at----"
But she cut him off sharply: "Please don't say 'Not at all'
again!"
"I'm sorry."
"You do seem sorry about something," she said. "What is it?
Isn't it time you were telling me what's the matter?"
"Nothing. Indeed nothing's the matter. Of course one IS rather
affected by such weather as this. It may make one a little
quieter than usual, of course."
She sighed, and let the tired muscles of her face rest. Under
the hard lights, indoors, they had served her until they ached,
and it was a luxury to feel that in the darkness no grimacings
need call upon them.
"Of course, if you won't tell me----" she said.
"I can only assure you there's nothing to tell."
"I know what an ugly little house it is," she said. "Maybe it
was the furniture--or mama's vases that upset you. Or was it
mama herself--or papa?"
"Nothing 'upset' me."
At that she uttered a monosyllable of doubting laughter. "I
wonder why you say that."
"Because it's so."
"No. It's because you're too kind, or too conscientious, or too
embarrassed--anyhow too something-- to tell me." She leaned
forward, elbows on knees and chin in hands, in the reflective
attitude she knew how to make graceful. "I have a feeling that
you're not going to tell me," she said, slowly. "Yes--even that
you're never going to tell me. I wonder--I wonder----"
"Yes? What do you wonder?"
"I was just thinking--I wonder if they haven't done it, after
all."
"I don't understand."
"I wonder," she went on, still slowly, and in a voice of
reflection, "I wonder who HAS been talking about me to you, after
all? Isn't that it?"
"Not at----" he began, but checked himself and substituted
another form of denial. "Nothing is 'it.'"
"Are you sure?"
"Why, yes."
"How curious!" she said.
"Why?"
"Because all evening you've been so utterly different."
"But in this weather----"
"No. That wouldn't make you afraid to look at me all evening!"
"But I did look at you. Often."
"No. Not really a LOOK."
"But I'm looking at you now."
"Yes--in the dark!" she said. "No--the weather might make you
even quieter than usual, but it wouldn't strike you so nearly
dumb. No--and it wouldn't make you seem to be under such a
strain-- as if you thought only of escape!"
"But I haven't----"
"You shouldn't," she interrupted, gently. "There's nothing you
have to escape from, you know. You aren't committed to--to this
friendship."
"I'm sorry you think----" he began, but did not complete the
fragment.
She took it up. "You're sorry I think you're so different, you
mean to say, don't you? Never mind: that's what you did mean to
say, but you couldn't finish it because you're not good at
deceiving."
"Oh, no," he protested, feebly. "I'm not deceiving. "I'm----"
"Never mind," she said again. "You're sorry I think you're so
different--and all in one day--since last night. Yes, your voice
SOUNDS sorry, too. It sounds sorrier than it would just because
of my thinking something you could change my mind about in a
minute so it means you're sorry you ARE different."
"No--I----"
But disregarding the faint denial, "Never mind," she said. "Do
you remember one night when you told me that nothing anybody else
could do would ever keep you from coming here? That if you--if
you left me it would be because I drove you away myself?"
"Yes," he said, huskily. "It was true."
"Are you sure?"
"Indeed I am," he answered in a low voice, but with conviction.
"Then----" She paused. "Well--but I haven't driven you away."
"No."
"And yet you've gone," she said, quietly.
"Do I seem so stupid as all that?"
"You know what I mean." She leaned back in her chair again, and
her hands, inactive for once, lay motionless in her lap. When
she spoke it was in a rueful whisper:
"I wonder if I HAVE driven you away?"
"You've done nothing--nothing at all," he said.
"I wonder----" she said once more, but she stopped. In her mind
she was going back over their time together since the first
meeting--fragments of talk, moments of silence, little things of
no importance, little things that might be important; moonshine,
sunshine, starlight; and her thoughts zigzagged among the
jumbling memories; but, as if she made for herself a picture of
all these fragments, throwing them upon the canvas haphazard, she
saw them all just touched with the one tainting quality that gave
them coherence, the faint, false haze she had put over this
friendship by her own pretendings. And, if this terrible dinner,
or anything, or everything, had shown that saffron tint in its
true colour to the man at her side, last night almost a lover,
then she had indeed of herself driven him away, and might well
feel that she was lost.
"Do you know?" she said, suddenly, in a clear, loud voice. "I
have the strangest feeling. I feel as if I were going to be with
you only about five minutes more in all the rest of my life!"
"Why, no," he said. "Of course I'm coming to see you--often.
I----"
"No," she interrupted. "I've never had a feeling like this
before. It's--it's just SO; that's all! You're GOING--why,
you're never coming here again!" She stood up, abruptly,
beginning to tremble all over. "Why, it's FINISHED, isn't it?"
she said, and her trembling was manifest now in her voice. "Why,
it's all OVER, isn't it? Why, yes!"
He had risen as she did. "I'm afraid you're awfully tired and
nervous," he said. "I really ought to be going."
"Yes, of COURSE you ought," she cried, despairingly. "There's
nothing else for you to do. When anything's spoiled, people
CAN'T do anything but run away from it. So good-bye!"
"At least," he returned, huskily, "we'll only--only say
good-night."
Then, as moving to go, he stumbled upon the veranda steps, "Your
HAT!" she cried. "I'd like to keep it for a souvenir, but I'm
afraid you need it!"
She ran into the hall and brought his straw hat from the chair
where he had left it. "You poor thing!" she said, with quavering
laughter. "Don't you know you can't go without your hat?"
Then, as they faced each other for the short moment which both of
them knew would be the last of all their veranda moments, Alice's
broken laughter grew louder. "What a thing to say!" she cried.
"What a romantic parting--talking about HATS!"
Her laughter continued as he turned away, but other sounds came
from within the house, clearly audible with the opening of a door
upstairs--a long and wailing cry of lamentation in the voice of
Mrs. Adams. Russell paused at the steps, uncertain, but Alice
waved to him to go on.
"Oh, don't bother," she said. "We have lots of that in this
funny little old house! Good-bye!"
And as he went down the steps, she ran back into the house and
closed the door heavily behind her.
CHAPTER XXIII
Her mother's wailing could still be heard from overhead, though
more faintly; and old Charley Lohr was coming down the stairs
alone.
He looked at Alice compassionately. "I was just comin' to
suggest maybe you'd excuse yourself from your company," he said.
"Your mother was bound not to disturb you, and tried her best to
keep you from hearin' how she's takin' on, but I thought probably
you better see to her."
"Yes, I'll come. What's the matter?"
"Well," he said, "_I_ only stepped over to offer my sympathy and
services, as it were. _I_ thought of course you folks knew all
about it. Fact is, it was in the evening paper--just a little
bit of an item on the back page, of course."
"What is it?"
He coughed. "Well, it ain't anything so terrible," he said.
"Fact is, your brother Walter's got in a little trouble--well, I
suppose you might call it quite a good deal of trouble. Fact is,
he's quite considerable short in his accounts down at Lamb and
Company."
Alice ran up the stairs and into her father's room, where Mrs.
Adams threw herself into her daughter's arms. "Is he gone?" she
sobbed. "He didn't hear me, did he? I tried so hard----"
Alice patted the heaving shoulders her arms enclosed. "No, no,"
she said. "He didn't hear you-- it wouldn't have mattered--he
doesn't matter anyway."
"Oh, POOR Walter!" The mother cried. "Oh, the POOR boy! Poor,
poor Walter! Poor, poor, poor, POOR----"
"Hush, dear, hush!" Alice tried to soothe her, but the lament
could not be abated, and from the other side of the room a
repetition in a different spirit was as continuous. Adams paced
furiously there, pounding his fist into his left palm as he
strode. "The dang boy!" he said. "Dang little fool! Dang
idiot! Dang fool! Whyn't he TELL me, the dang little fool?"
"He DID!" Mrs. Adams sobbed. "He DID tell you, and you wouldn't
GIVE it to him."
"He DID, did he?" Adams shouted at her. "What he begged me for
was money to run away with! He never dreamed of putting back
what he took. What the dangnation you talking about--accusing
me!"
"He NEEDED it," she said. "He needed it to run away with! How
could he expect to LIVE, after he got away, if he didn't have a
little money? Oh, poor, poor, POOR Walter! Poor, poor,
poor----"
She went back to this repetition; and Adams went back to his own,
then paused, seeing his old friend standing in the hallway
outside the open door.
"Ah--I'll just be goin', I guess, Virgil," Lohr said. "I don't
see as there's any use my tryin' to say any more. I'll do
anything you want me to, you understand."
"Wait a minute," Adams said, and, groaning, came and went down
the stairs with him. "You say you didn't see the old man at
all?"
"No, I don't know a thing about what he's going to do," Lohr
said, as they reached the lower floor. "Not a thing. But look
here, Virgil, I don't see as this calls for you and your wife to
take on so hard about--anyhow not as hard as the way you've
started."
"No," Adams gulped. "It always seems that way to the other party
that's only looking on!"
"Oh, well, I know that, of course," old Charley returned,
soothingly. "But look here, Virgil: they may not catch the boy;
they didn't even seem to be sure what train he made, and if they
do get him, why, the ole man might decide not to prosecute
if----"
"HIM?" Adams cried, interrupting. "Him not prosecute? Why,
that's what he's been waiting for, all along! He thinks my boy
and me both cheated him! Why, he was just letting Walter walk
into a trap! Didn't you say they'd been suspecting him for some
time back? Didn't you say they'd been watching him and were just
about fixing to arrest him?"
"Yes, I know," said Lohr; "but you can't tell, especially if you
raise the money and pay it back."
"Every cent!" Adams vociferated. "Every last penny! I can raise
it--I GOT to raise it! I'm going to put a loan on my factory
to-morrow. Oh, I'll get it for him, you tell him! Every last
penny!"
"Well, ole feller, you just try and get quieted down some now."
Charley held out his hand in parting. "You and your wife just
quiet down some. You AIN'T the healthiest man in the world, you
know, and you already been under quite some strain before this
happened. You want to take care of yourself for the sake of your
wife and that sweet little girl upstairs, you know. Now,
good-night," he finished, stepping out upon the veranda. "You
send for me if there's anything I can do."
"Do?" Adams echoed. "There ain't anything ANYBODY can do!" And
then, as his old friend went down the path to the sidewalk, he
called after him, "You tell him I'll pay him every last cent!
Every last, dang, dirty PENNY!"
He slammed the door and went rapidly up the stairs, talking
loudly to himself. "Every dang, last, dirty penny! Thinks
EVERYBODY in this family wants to steal from him, does he?
Thinks we're ALL yellow, does he? I'll show him!" And he came
into his own room vociferating, "Every last, dang, dirty penny!"
Mrs. Adams had collapsed, and Alice had put her upon his bed,
where she lay tossing convulsively and sobbing, "Oh, POOR
Walter!" over and over, but after a time she varied the sorry
tune. "Oh, poor Alice!" she moaned, clinging to her daughter's
hand. "Oh, poor, POOR Alice to have THIS come on the night of
your dinner--just when everything seemed to be going so well--at
last--oh, poor, poor, POOR----"
"Hush!" Alice said, sharply. "Don't say 'poor Alice!' I'm all
right."
"You MUST be!" her mother cried, clutching her. "You've just GOT
to be! ONE of us has got to be all right--surely God wouldn't
mind just ONE of us being all right--that wouldn't hurt Him----"
"Hush, hush, mother! Hush!"
But Mrs. Adams only clutched her the more tightly. "He seemed
SUCH a nice young man, dearie! He may not see this in the
paper--Mr. Lohr said it was just a little bit of an item--he MAY
not see it, dearie----"
Then her anguish went back to Walter again; and to his needs as a
fugitive--she had meant to repair his underwear, but had
postponed doing so, and her neglect now appeared to be a detail
as lamentable as the calamity itself. She could neither be
stilled upon it, nor herself exhaust its urgings to selfreproach,
though she finally took up another theme temporarily.
Upon an unusually violent outbreak of her husband's, in
denunciation of the runaway, she cried out faintly that he was
cruel; and further wearied her broken voice with details of
Walter's beauty as a baby, and of his bedtime pieties throughout
his infancy.
So the hot night wore on. Three had struck before Mrs. Adams
was got to bed; and Alice, returning to her own room, could hear
her father's bare feet thudding back and forth after that. "Poor
papa!" she whispered in helpless imitation of her mother. "Poor
papa! Poor mama! Poor Walter! Poor all of us!"
She fell asleep, after a time, while from across the hall the
bare feet still thudded over their changeless route; and she woke
at seven, hearing Adams pass her door, shod. In her wrapper she
ran out into the hallway and found him descending the stairs.
"Papa!"
"Hush," he said, and looked up at her with reddened eyes. "Don't
wake your mother."
"I won't," she whispered. "How about you? You haven't slept any
at all!"
"Yes, I did. I got some sleep. I'm going over to the works now.
I got to throw some figures together to show the bank. Don't
worry: I'll get things fixed up. You go back to bed. Good-bye."
"Wait!" she bade him sharply.
"What for?"
"You've got to have some breakfast."
"Don't want 'ny."
"You wait!" she said, imperiously, and disappeared to return
almost at once. "I can cook in my bedroom slippers," she
explained, "but I don't believe I could in my bare feet!"
Descending softly, she made him wait in the dining-room until she
brought him toast and eggs and coffee. "Eat!" she said. "And
I'm going to telephone for a taxicab to take you, if you think
you've really got to go."
"No, I'm going to walk--I WANT to walk."
She shook her head anxiously. "You don't look able. You've
walked all night."
"No, I didn't," he returned. "I tell you I got some sleep. I
got all I wanted anyhow."
"But, papa----"
"Here!" he interrupted, looking up at her suddenly and setting
down his cup of coffee. "Look here! What about this Mr.
Russell? I forgot all about him. What about him?"
Her lip trembled a little, but she controlled it before she
spoke. "Well, what about him, papa?" she asked, calmly enough.
"Well, we could hardly----" Adams paused, frowning heavily. "We
could hardly expect he wouldn't hear something about all this."
"Yes; of course he'll hear it, papa."
"Well?"
"Well, what?" she asked, gently.
"You don't think he'd be the--the cheap kind it'd make a
difference with, of course."
"Oh, no; he isn't cheap. It won't make any difference with him."
Adams suffered a profound sigh to escape him. "Well--I'm glad of
that, anyway."
"The difference," she explained--"the difference was made without
his hearing anything about Walter. He doesn't know about THAT
yet."
"Well, what does he know about?"
"Only," she said, "about me."
"What you mean by that, Alice?" he asked, helplessly.
"Never mind," she said. "It's nothing beside the real trouble
we're in--I'll tell you some time. You eat your eggs and toast;
you can't keep going on just coffee."
"I can't eat any eggs and toast," he objected, rising. "I
can't."
"Then wait till I can bring you something else."
"No," he said, irritably. "I won't do it! I don't want any dang
food! And look here"--he spoke sharply to stop her, as she went
toward the telephone --"I don't want any dang taxi, either! You
look after your mother when she wakes up. I got to be at WORK!"
And though she followed him to the front door, entreating, he
could not be stayed or hindered. He went through the quiet
morning streets at a rickety, rapid gait, swinging his old straw
hat in his hands, and whispering angrily to himself as he went.
His grizzled hair, not trimmed for a month, blew back from his
damp forehead in the warm breeze; his reddened eyes stared hard
at nothing from under blinking lids; and one side of his face
twitched startlingly from time to time;--children might have run
from him, or mocked him.
When he had come into that fallen quarter his industry had partly
revived and wholly made odorous, a negro woman, leaning upon her
whitewashed gate, gazed after him and chuckled for the benefit of
a gossiping friend in the next tiny yard. "Oh, good Satan!
Wha'ssa matter that ole glue man?"
"Who? Him?" the neighbour inquired. "What he do now?"
"Talkin' to his ole se'f!" the first explained, joyously. "Look
like gone distracted--ole glue man!"
Adams's legs had grown more uncertain with his hard walk, and he
stumbled heavily as he crossed the baked mud of his broad lot,
but cared little for that, was almost unaware of it, in fact.
Thus his eyes saw as little as his body felt, and so he failed to
observe something that would have given him additional light upon
an old phrase that already meant quite enough for him.
There are in the wide world people who have never learned its
meaning; but most are either young or beautifully unobservant who
remain wholly unaware of the inner poignancies the words convey:
"a rain of misfortunes." It is a boiling rain, seemingly
whimsical in its choice of spots whereon to fall; and, so far as
mortal eye can tell, neither the just nor the unjust may hope to
avoid it, or need worry themselves by expecting it. It had
selected the Adams family for its scaldings; no question.
The glue-works foreman, standing in the doorway of the brick
shed, observed his employer's eccentric approach, and doubtfully
stroked a whiskered chin.
"Well, they ain't no putticular use gettin' so upset over it," he
said, as Adams came up. "When a thing happens, why, it happens,
and that's all there is to it. When a thing's so, why, it's so.
All you can do about it is think if there's anything you CAN do;
and that's what you better be doin' with this case."
Adams halted, and seemed to gape at him. "What --case?" he said,
with difficulty. "Was it in the morning papers, too?"
"No, it ain't in no morning papers. My land! It don't need to
be in no papers; look at the SIZE of it!"
"The size of what?"
"Why, great God!" the foreman exclaimed. "He ain't even seen it.
Look! Look yonder!"
Adams stared vaguely at the man's outstretched hand and pointing
forefinger, then turned and saw a great sign upon the facade of
the big factory building across the street. The letters were
large enough to be read two blocks away.
"AFTER THE FIFTEENTH OF NEXT MONTH
THIS BUILDING WILL BE OCCUPIED BY
THE J. A. LAMB LIQUID GLUE CO. INC."
A gray touring-car had just come to rest before the principal
entrance of the building, and J. A. Lamb himself descended from
it. He glanced over toward the humble rival of his projected
great industry, saw his old clerk, and immediately walked across
the street and the lot to speak to him.
"Well, Adams," he said, in his husky, cheerful voice, "how's your
glue-works?"
Adams uttered an inarticulate sound, and lifted the hand that
held his hat as if to make a protective gesture, but failed to
carry it out; and his arm sank limp at his side. The foreman,
however, seemed to feel that something ought to be said.
"Our glue-works, hell!" he remarked. "I guess we won't HAVE no
glue-works over here not very long, if we got to compete with the
sized thing you got over there!"
Lamb chuckled. "I kind of had some such notion," he said. "You
see, Virgil, I couldn't exactly let you walk off with it like
swallering a pat o' butter, now, could I? It didn't look exactly
reasonable to expect me to let go like that, now, did it?"
Adams found a half-choked voice somewhere in his throat. "Do
you--would you step into my office a minute, Mr. Lamb?"
"Why, certainly I'm willing to have a little talk with you," the
old gentleman said, as he followed his former employee indoors,
and he added, "I feel a lot more like it than I did before I got
THAT up, over yonder, Virgil!"
Adams threw open the door of the rough room he called his office,
having as justification for this title little more than the fact
that he had a telephone there and a deal table that served as a
desk. "Just step into the office, please," he said.
Lamb glanced at the desk, at the kitchen chair before it, at the
telephone, and at the partition walls built of old boards, some
covered with ancient paint and some merely weatherbeaten, the
salvage of a house-wrecker; and he smiled broadly. "So these are
your offices, are they?" he asked. "You expect to do quite a
business here, I guess, don't you, Virgil?"
Adams turned upon him a stricken and tortured face. "Have you
seen Charley Lohr since last night, Mr. Lamb?"
"No; I haven't seen Charley."
"Well, I told him to tell you," Adams began;-- "I told him I'd
pay you----"
"Pay me what you expect to make out o' glue, you mean, Virgil?"
"No," Adams said, swallowing. "I mean what my boy owes you.
That's what I told Charley to tell you. I told him to tell you
I'd pay you every last----"
"Well, well!" the old gentleman interrupted, testily. "I don't
know anything about that."
"I'm expecting to pay you," Adams went on, swallowing again,
painfully. "I was expecting to do it out of a loan I thought I
could get on my glue-works."
The old gentleman lifted his frosted eyebrows. "Oh, out o' the
GLUE-works? You expected to raise money on the glue-works, did
you?"
At that, Adams's agitation increased prodigiously. "How'd you
THINK I expected to pay you?" he said. "Did you think I expected
to get money on my own old bones?" He slapped himself harshly
upon the chest and legs. "Do you think a bank'll lend money on a
man's ribs and his broken-down old knee-bones? They won't do it!
You got to have some BUSINESS prospects to show 'em, if you
haven't got any property nor securities; and what business
prospects have I got now, with that sign of yours up over yonder?
Why, you don't need to make an OUNCE o' glue; your sign's fixed
ME without your doing another lick! THAT'S all you had to do;
just put your sign up! You needn't to----"
"Just let me tell you something, Virgil Adams," the old man
interrupted, harshly. "I got just one right important thing to
tell you before we talk any further business; and that's this:
there's some few men in this town made their money in off-colour
ways, but there aren't many; and those there are have had to be a
darn sight slicker than you know how to be, or ever WILL know how
to be! Yes, sir, and they none of them had the little gumption
to try to make it out of a man that had the spirit not to let
'em, and the STRENGTH not to let 'em! I know what you thought.
'Here,' you said to yourself, 'here's this ole fool J. A. Lamb;
he's kind of worn out and in his second childhood like; I can put
it over on him, without his ever----'"
"I did not!" Adams shouted. "A great deal YOU know about my
feelings and all what I said to myself! There's one thing I want
to tell YOU, and that's what I'm saying to myself NOW, and what
my feelings are this MINUTE!"
He struck the table a great blow with his thin fist, and shook
the damaged knuckles m the air. "I just want to tell you,
whatever I did feel, I don't feel MEAN any more; not to-day, I
don't. There's a meaner man in this world than _I_ am, Mr.
Lamb!"
"Oh, so you feel better about yourself to-day, do you, Virgil?"
"You bet I do! You worked till you got me where you want me; and
I wouldn't do that to another man, no matter what he did to me!
I wouldn't----"
"What you talkin' about! How've I 'got you where I want you?'"
"Ain't it plain enough?" Adams cried. "You even got me where I
can't raise the money to pay back what my boy owes you! Do you
suppose anybody's fool enough to let me have a cent on this
business after one look at what you got over there across the
road?"
"No, I don't."
"No, you don't," Adams echoed, hoarsely. "What's more, you knew
my house was mortgaged, and my----"
"I did not," Lamb interrupted, angrily. "What do _I_ care about
your house?"
"What's the use your talking like that?" Adams cried. "You got
me where I can't even raise the money to pay what my boy owes the
company, so't I can't show any reason to stop the prosecution and
keep him out the penitentiary. That's where you worked till you
got ME!"
"What!" Lamb shouted. "You accuse me of----"
"'Accuse you?' What am I telling you? Do you think I got no
EYES?" And Adams hammered the table again. "Why, you knew the
boy was weak----"
"I did not!"
"Listen: you kept him there after you got mad at my leaving the
way I did. You kept him there after you suspected him; and you
had him watched; you let him go on; just waited to catch him and
ruin him!"
"You're crazy!" the old man bellowed. "I didn't know there was
anything against the boy till last night. You're CRAZY, I say!"
Adams looked it. With his hair disordered over his haggard
forehead and bloodshot eyes; with his bruised hands pounding the
table and flying in a hundred wild and absurd gestures, while his
feet shuffled constantly to preserve his balance upon staggering
legs, he was the picture of a man with a mind gone to rags.
"Maybe I AM crazy!" he cried, his voice breaking and quavering.
"Maybe I am, but I wouldn't stand there and taunt a man with it
if I'd done to him what you've done to me! Just look at me: I
worked all my life for you, and what I did when I quit never
harmed you--it didn't make two cents' worth o' difference in your
life and it looked like it'd mean all the difference in the world
to my family--and now look what you've DONE to me for it! I tell
you, Mr. Lamb, there never was a man looked up to another man
the way I looked up to you the whole o' my life, but I don't look
up to you any more! You think you got a fine day of it now,
riding up in your automobile to look at that sign--and then over
here at my poor little works that you've ruined. But listen to
me just this one last time!" The cracking voice broke into
falsetto, and the gesticulating hands fluttered uncontrollably.
"Just you listen!" he panted. "You think I did you a bad turn,
and now you got me ruined for it, and you got my works ruined,
and my family ruined; and if anybody'd 'a' told me this time last
year I'd ever say such a thing to you I'd called him a dang liar,
but I DO say it: I say you've acted toward me like--like a--a
doggone mean--man!"
His voice, exhausted, like his body, was just able to do him this
final service; then he sank, crumpled, into the chair by the
table, his chin down hard upon his chest.
"I tell you, you're crazy!" Lamb said again. "I never in the
world----" But he checked himself, staring in sudden perplexity
at his accuser. "Look here!" he said. "What's the matter of
you? Have you got another of those----?" He put his hand upon
Adams's shoulder, which jerked feebly under the touch.
The old man went to the door and called to the foreman.
"Here!" he said. "Run and tell my chauffeur to bring my car over
here. Tell him to drive right up over the sidewalk and across
the lot. Tell him to hurry!"
So, it happened, the great J. A. Lamb a second time brought his
former clerk home, stricken and almost inanimate.
CHAPTER XXIV
About five o'clock that afternoon, the old gentleman came back to
Adams's house; and when Alice opened the door, he nodded, walked
into the "living-room" without speaking; then stood frowning as
if he hesitated to decide some perplexing question.
"Well, how is he now?" he asked, finally.
"The doctor was here again a little while ago; he thinks papa's
coming through it. He's pretty sure he will."
"Something like the way it was last spring?"
"Yes."
"Not a bit of sense to it!" Lamb said, gruffly. "When he was
getting well the other time the doctor told me it wasn't a
regular stroke, so to speak-- this 'cerebral effusion' thing.
Said there wasn't any particular reason for your father to expect
he'd ever have another attack, if he'd take a little care of
himself. Said he could consider himself well as anybody else
long as he did that."
"Yes. But he didn't do it!"
Lamb nodded, sighed aloud, and crossed the room to a chair. "I
guess not," he said, as he sat down. "Bustin' his health up over
his glue-works, I expect."
"Yes."
"I guess so; I guess so." Then he looked up at her with a
glimmer of anxiety in his eyes. "Has he came to yet?"
"Yes. He's talked a little. His mind's clear; he spoke to mama
and me and to Miss Perry." Alice laughed sadly. "We were lucky
enough to get her back, but papa didn't seem to think it was
lucky. When he recognized her he said, 'Oh, my goodness, 'tisn't
YOU, is it!'"
"Well, that's a good sign, if he's getting a little cross. Did
he--did he happen to say anything-- for instance, about me?"
This question, awkwardly delivered, had the effect of removing
the girl's pallor; rosy tints came quickly upon her cheeks.
"He--yes, he did," she said. "Naturally, he's troubled
about--about----" She stopped.
"About your brother, maybe?"
"Yes, about making up the----"
"Here, now," Lamb said, uncomfortably, as she stopped again.
"Listen, young lady; let's don't talk about that just yet. I
want to ask you: you understand all about this glue business, I
expect, don't you?"
"I'm not sure. I only know----"
"Let me tell you," he interrupted, impatiently. "I'll tell you
all about it in two words. The process belonged to me, and your
father up and walked off with it; there's no getting around THAT
much, anyhow."
"Isn't there?" Alice stared at him. "I think you're mistaken,
Mr. Lamb. Didn't papa improve it so that it virtually belonged
to him?"
There was a spark in the old blue eyes at this. "What?" he
cried. "Is that the way he got around it? Why, in all my life I
never heard of such a----" But he left the sentence unfinished;
the testiness went out of his husky voice and the anger out of
his eyes. "Well, I expect maybe that was the way of it," he
said. "Anyhow, it's right for you to stand up for your father;
and if you think he had a right to it----"
"But he did!" she cried.
"I expect so," the old man returned, pacifically. "I expect so,
probably. Anyhow, it's a question that's neither here nor there,
right now. What I was thinking of saying--well, did your father
happen to let out that he and I had words this morning?"
"No."
"Well, we did." He sighed and shook his head. "Your
father--well, he used some pretty hard expressions toward me,
young lady. They weren't SO, I'm glad to say, but he used 'em to
me, and the worst of it was he believed 'em. Well, I been
thinking it over, and I thought I'd just have a kind of little
talk with you to set matters straight, so to speak."
"Yes, Mr. Lamb."
"For instance," he said, "it's like this. Now, I hope you won't
think I mean any indelicacy, but you take your brother's case,
since we got to mention it, why, your father had the whole thing
worked out in his mind about as wrong as anybody ever got
anything. If I'd acted the way your father thought I did about
that, why, somebody just ought to take me out and shoot me! Do
YOU know what that man thought?"
"I'm not sure."
He frowned at her, and asked, "Well, what do you think about it?"
"I don't know," she said. "I don't believe I think anything at
all about anything to-day."
"Well, well," he returned; "I expect not; I expect not. You kind
of look to me as if you ought to be in bed yourself, young lady."
"Oh, no."
"I guess you mean 'Oh, yes'; and I won't keep you long, but
there's something we got to get fixed up, and I'd rather talk to
you than I would to your mother, because you're a smart girl and
always friendly; and I want to be sure I'm understood. Now,
listen."
"I will," Alice promised, smiling faintly.
"I never even hardly noticed your brother was still working for
me," he explained, earnestly. "I never thought anything about
it. My sons sort of tried to tease me about the way your
father--about his taking up this glue business, so to speak--and
one day Albert, Junior, asked me if I felt all right about your
brother's staying there after that, and I told him--well, I just
asked him to shut up. If the boy wanted to stay there, I didn't
consider it my business to send him away on account of any
feeling I had toward his father; not as long as he did his work
right--and the report showed he did. Well, as it happens, it
looks now as if he stayed because he HAD to; he couldn't quit
because he'd 'a' been found out if he did. Well, he'd been
covering up his shortage for a considerable time--and do you know
what your father practically charged me with about that?"
"No, Mr. Lamb."
In his resentment, the old gentleman's ruddy face became ruddier
and his husky voice huskier. "Thinks I kept the boy there
because I suspected him! Thinks I did it to get even with HIM!
Do I look to YOU like a man that'd do such a thing?"
"No," she said, gently. "I don't think you would."
"No!" he exclaimed. "Nor HE wouldn't think so if he was himself;
he's known me too long. But he must been sort of brooding over
this whole business-- I mean before Walter's trouble he must been
taking it to heart pretty hard for some time back. He thought I
didn't think much of him any more--and I expect he maybe wondered
some what I was going to DO--and there's nothing worse'n that
state of mind to make a man suspicious of all kinds of meanness.
Well, he practically stood up there and accused me to my face of
fixing things so't he couldn't ever raise the money to settle for
Walter and ask us not to prosecute. That's the state of mind
your father's brooding got him into, young lady--charging me with
a trick like that!"
"I'm sorry," she said. "I know you'd never----"
The old man slapped his sturdy knee, angrily. "Why, that dang
fool of a Virgil Adams!" he exclaimed. "He wouldn't even give me
a chance to talk; and he got me so mad I couldn't hardly talk,
anyway! He might 'a' known from the first I wasn't going to let
him walk in and beat me out of my own--that is, he might 'a'
known I wouldn't let him get ahead of me in a business
matter--not with my boys twitting me about it every few minutes!
But to talk to me the way he did this morning--well, he was out
of his head; that's all! Now, wait just a minute," he
interposed, as she seemed about to speak. "In the first place,
we aren't going to push this case against your brother. I
believe in the law, all right, and business men got to protect
themselves; but in a case like this, where restitution's made by
the family, why, I expect it's just as well sometimes to use a
little influence and let matters drop. Of course your brother'll
have to keep out o' this state; that's all."
"But--you said----" she faltered.
"Yes. What'd I say?"
"You said, 'where restitution's made by the family.' That's what
seemed to trouble papa so terribly, because--because restitution
couldn't----"
"Why, yes, it could. That's what I'm here to talk to you about."
"I don't see----"
"I'm going to TELL you, ain't I?" he said, gruffly. "Just hold
your horses a minute, please." He coughed, rose from his chair,
walked up and down the room, then halted before her. "It's like
this," he said. "After I brought your father home, this morning,
there was one of the things he told me, when he was going for me,
over yonder--it kind of stuck in my craw. It was something about
all this glue controversy not meaning anything to me in
particular, and meaning a whole heap to him and his family.
Well, he was wrong about that two ways. The first one was, it
did mean a good deal to me to have him go back on me after so
many years. I don't need to say any more about it, except just
to tell you it meant quite a little more to me than you'd think,
maybe. The other way he was wrong is, that how much a thing
means to one man and how little it means to another ain't the
right way to look at a business matter."
"I suppose it isn't, Mr. Lamb."
"No," he said. "It isn't. It's not the right way to look at
anything. Yes, and your father knows it as well as I do, when
he's in his right mind; and I expect that's one of the reasons he
got so mad at me--but anyhow, I couldn't help thinking about how
much all this thing HAD maybe meant to him;--as I say, it kind of
stuck in my craw. I want you to tell him something from me, and
I want you to go and tell him right off, if he's able and willing
to listen. You tell him I got kind of a notion he was pushed
into this thing by circumstances, and tell him I've lived long
enough to know that circumstances can beat the best of us--you
tell him I said 'the BEST of us.' Tell him I haven't got a bit of
feeling against him--not any more--and tell him I came here to
ask him not to have any against me."
"Yes, Mr. Lamb."
"Tell him I said----" The old man paused abruptly and Alice was
surprised, in a dull and tired way, when she saw that his lips
had begun to twitch and his eyelids to blink; but he recovered
himself almost at once, and continued: "I want him to remember,
'Forgive us our transgressions, as we forgive those that
transgress against us'; and if he and I been transgressing
against each other, why, tell him I think it's time we QUIT such
foolishness!"
He coughed again, smiled heartily upon her, and walked toward the
door; then turned back to her with an exclamation: "Well, if I
ain't an old fool!"
"What is it?" she asked.
"Why, I forgot what we were just talking about! Your father
wants to settle for Walter's deficit. Tell him we'll be glad to
accept it; but of course we don't expect him to clean the matter
up until he's able to talk business again."
Alice stared at him blankly enough for him to perceive that
further explanations were necessary. "It's like this," he said.
"You see, if your father decided to keep his works going over
yonder, I don't say but he might give us some little competition
for a time, 'specially as he's got the start on us and about
ready for the market. Then I was figuring we could use his
plant--it's small, but it'd be to our benefit to have the use of
it--and he's got a lease on that big lot; it may come in handy
for us if we want to expand some. Well, I'd prefer to make a
deal with him as quietly as possible---no good in every Tom, Dick
and Harry hearing about things like this--but I figured he could
sell out to me for a little something more'n enough to cover the
mortgage he put on this house, and Walter's deficit, too--THAT
don't amount to much in dollars and cents. The way I figure it,
I could offer him about ninety-three hundred dollars as a
total--or say ninety-three hundred and fifty-- and if he feels
like accepting, why, I'll send a confidential man up here with
the papers soon's your father's able to look 'em over. You tell
him, will you, and ask him if he sees his way to accepting that
figure?"
"Yes," Alice said; and now her own lips twitched, while her eyes
filled so that she saw but a blurred image of the old man, who
held out his hand in parting. "I'll tell him. Thank you."
He shook her hand hastily. "Well, let's just keep it kind of
quiet," he said, at the door. "No good in every Tom, Dick and
Harry knowing all what goes on in town! You telephone me when
your papa's ready to go over the papers--and call me up at my
house to-night, will you? Let me hear how he's feeling?"
"I will," she said, and through her grateful tears gave him a
smile almost radiant. "He'll be better, Mr. Lamb. We all
will."
CHAPTER XXV
One morning, that autumn, Mrs. Adams came into Alice's room, and
found her completing a sober toilet for the street; moreover, the
expression revealed in her mirror was harmonious with the
business-like severity of her attire. "What makes you look so
cross, dearie?" the mother asked. "Couldn't you find anything
nicer to wear than that plain old dark dress?"
"I don't believe I'm cross," the girl said, absently. "I believe
I'm just thinking. Isn't it about time?"
"Time for what?"
"Time for thinking--for me, I mean?"
Disregarding this, Mrs. Adams looked her over thoughtfully. "I
can't see why you don't wear more colour," she said. "At your
age it's becoming and proper, too. Anyhow, when you're going on
the street, I think you ought to look just as gay and lively as
you can manage. You want to show 'em you've got some spunk!"
"How do you mean, mama?"
"I mean about Walter's running away and the mess your father made
of his business. It would help to show 'em you're holding up
your head just the same."
"Show whom!"
"All these other girls that----"
"Not I!" Alice laughed shortly, shaking her head. "I've quit
dressing at them, and if they saw me they wouldn't think what you
want 'em to. It's funny; but we don't often make people think
what we want 'em to, mama. You do thus and so; and you tell
yourself, 'Now, seeing me do thus and so, people will naturally
think this and that'; but they don't. They think something
else--usually just what you DON'T want 'em to. I suppose about
the only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling
ourselves that we fool somebody."
"Well, but it wouldn't be pretending. You ought to let people
see you're still holding your head up because you ARE. You
wouldn't want that Mildred Palmer to think you're cast down
about--well, you know you wouldn't want HER not to think you're
holding your head up, would you?"
"She wouldn't know whether I am or not, mama." Alice bit her
lip, then smiled faintly as she said:
"Anyhow, I'm not thinking about my head in that way--not this
morning, I'm not."
Mrs. Adams dropped the subject casually. "Are you going
down-town?" she inquired.
"Yes."
"What for?"
"Just something I want to see about. I'll tell you when I come
back. Anything you want me to do?"
"No; I guess not to-day. I thought you might look for a rug, but
I'd rather go with you to select it. We'll have to get a new rug
for your father's room, I expect."
"I'm glad you think so, mama. I don't suppose he's ever even
noticed it, but that old rug of his-- well, really!"
"I didn't mean for him," her mother explained, thoughtfully.
"No; he don't mind it, and he'd likely make a fuss if we changed
it on his account. No; what I meant--we'll have to put your
father in Walter's room. He won't mind, I don't expect--not
much."
"No, I suppose not," Alice agreed, rather sadly. "I heard the
bell awhile ago. Was it somebody about that?"
"Yes; just before I came upstairs. Mrs. Lohr gave him a note to
me, and he was really a very pleasant-looking young man. A VERY
pleasant-looking young man," Mrs. Adams repeated with increased
animation and a thoughtful glance at her daughter. "He's a Mr.
Will Dickson; he has a first-rate position with the gas works,
Mrs. Lohr says, and he's fully able to afford a nice room. So
if you and I double up in here, then with that young married
couple in my room, and this Mr. Dickson in your father's, we'll
just about have things settled. I thought maybe I could make one
more place at table, too, so that with the other people from
outside we'd be serving eleven altogether. You see if I have to
pay this cook twelve dollars a week--it can't be helped, I
guess--well, one more would certainly help toward a profit. Of
course it's a terribly worrying thing to see how we WILL come
out. Don't you suppose we could squeeze in one more?"
"I suppose it COULD be managed; yes."
Mrs. Adams brightened. "I'm sure it'll be pleasant having that
young married couple in the house and especially this Mr. Will
Dickson. He seemed very much of a gentleman, and anxious to get
settled in good surroundings. I was very favourably impressed
with him in every way; and he explained to me about his name; it
seems it isn't William, it's just 'Will'; his parents had him
christened that way. It's curious." She paused, and then, with
an effort to seem casual, which veiled nothing from her daughter:
"It's QUITE curious," she said again. "But it's rather
attractive and different, don't you think?"
"Poor mama!" Alice laughed compassionately. "Poor mama!"
"He is, though," Mrs. Adams maintained. "He's very much of a
gentleman, unless I'm no judge of appearances; and it'll really
be nice to have him in the house."
"No doubt," Alice said, as she opened her door to depart. "I
don't suppose we'll mind having any of 'em as much as we thought
we would. Good-bye."
But her mother detained her, catching her by the arm. "Alice,
you do hate it, don't you!"
"No," the girl said, quickly. "There wasn't anything else to
do."
Mrs. Adams became emotional at once: her face cried tragedy, and
her voice misfortune. "There MIGHT have been something else to
do! Oh, Alice, you gave your father bad advice when you upheld
him in taking a miserable little ninety-three hundred and fifty
from that old wretch! If your father'd just had the gumption to
hold out, they'd have had to pay him anything he asked. If he'd
just had the gumption and a little manly COURAGE----"
"Hush!" Alice whispered, for her mother's voice grew louder.
"Hush! He'll hear you, mama."
"Could he hear me too often?" the embittered lady asked. "If
he'd listened to me at the right time, would we have to be taking
in boarders and sinking DOWN in the scale at the end of our
lives, instead of going UP? You were both wrong; we didn't need
to be so panicky--that was just what that old man wanted: to
scare us and buy us out for nothing! If your father'd just
listened to me then, or if for once in his life he'd just been
half a MAN----"
Alice put her hand over her mother's mouth. "You mustn't! He
WILL hear you!"
But from the other side of Adams's closed door his voice came
querulously. "Oh, I HEAR her, all right!"
"You see, mama?" Alice said, and, as Mrs. Adams turned away,
weeping, the daughter sighed; then went in to speak to her
father.
He was in his old chair by the table, with a pillow behind his
head, but the crocheted scarf and Mrs. Adams's wrapper swathed
him no more; he wore a dressing-gown his wife had bought for him,
and was smoking his pipe. "The old story, is it?" he said, as
Alice came in. "The same, same old story! Well, well! Has she
gone?"
"Yes, papa."
"Got your hat on," he said. "Where you going?"
"I'm going down-town on an errand of my own. Is there anything
you want, papa?"
"Yes, there is." He smiled at her. "I wish you'd sit down a
while and talk to me unless your errand----"
"No," she said, taking a chair near him. "I was just going down
to see about some arrangements I was making for myself. There's
no hurry."
"What arrangements for yourself, dearie?"
"I'll tell you afterwards--after I find out something about 'em
myself."
"All right," he said, indulgently. "Keep your secrets; keep your
secrets." He paused, drew musingly upon his pipe, and shook his
head. "Funny --the way your mother looks at things! For the
matter o' that, everything's pretty funny, I expect, if you stop
to think about it. For instance, let her say all she likes, but
we were pushed right spang to the wall, if J. A. Lamb hadn't
taken it into his head to make that offer for the works; and
there's one of the things I been thinking about lately, Alice:
thinking about how funny they work out."
"What did you think about it, papa!"
"Well, I've seen it happen in other people's lives, time and time
again; and now it's happened in ours. You think you're going to
be pushed right up against the wall; you can't see any way out,
or any hope at all; you think you're GONE--and then something you
never counted on turns up; and, while maybe you never do get back
to where you used to be, yet somehow you kind of squirm out of
being right SPANG against the wall. You keep on going--maybe you
can't go much, but you do go a little. See what I mean?"
"Yes. I understand, dear."
"Yes, I'm afraid you do," he said. "Too bad! You oughtn't to
understand it at your age. It seems to me a good deal as if the
Lord really meant for the young people to have the good times,
and for the old to have the troubles; and when anybody as young
as you has trouble there's a big mistake somewhere."
"Oh, no!" she protested.
But he persisted whimsically in this view of divine error: "Yes,
it does look a good deal that way. But of course we can't tell;
we're never certain about anything--not about anything at all.
Sometimes I look at it another way, though. Sometimes it looks
to me as if a body's troubles came on him mainly because he
hadn't had sense enough to know how not to have any--as if his
troubles were kind of like a boy's getting kept in after school
by the teacher, to give him discipline, or something or other.
But, my, my! We don't learn easy!" He chuckled mournfully. "Not
to learn how to live till we're about ready to die, it certainly
seems to me dang tough!"
"Then I wouldn't brood on such a notion, papa," she said.
"'Brood?' No!" he returned. "I just kind o' mull it over." He
chuckled again, sighed, and then, not looking at her, he said,
"That Mr. Russell --your mother tells me he hasn't been here
again-- not since----"
"No," she said, quietly, as Adams paused. "He never came again."
"Well, but maybe----"
"No," she said. "There isn't any 'maybe.' I told him good-bye
that night, papa. It was before he knew about Walter--I told
you."
"Well, well," Adams said. "Young people are entitled to their
own privacy; I don't want to pry." He emptied his pipe into a
chipped saucer on the table beside him, laid the pipe aside, and
reverted to a former topic. "Speaking of dying----"
"Well, but we weren't!" Alice protested.
"Yes, about not knowing how to live till you're through
living--and THEN maybe not!" he said, chuckling at his own
determined pessimism. "I see I'm pretty old because I talk this
way--I remember my grandmother saying things a good deal like all
what I'm saying now; I used to hear her at it when I was a young
fellow--she was a right gloomy old lady, I remember. Well,
anyhow, it reminds me: I want to get on my feet again as soon as
I can; I got to look around and find something to go into."
Alice shook her head gently. "But, papa, he told you----"
"Never mind throwing that dang doctor up at me!" Adams
interrupted, peevishly. "He said I'd be good for SOME kind of
light job--if I could find just the right thing. 'Where there
wouldn't be either any physical or mental strain,' he said.
Well, I got to find something like that. Anyway, I'll feel
better if I can just get out LOOKING for it."
"But, papa, I'm afraid you won't find it, and you'll be
disappointed."
"Well, I want to hunt around and SEE, anyhow."
Alice patted his hand. "You must just be contented, papa.
Everything's going to be all right, and you mustn't get to
worrying about doing anything. We own this house it's all
clear--and you've taken care of mama and me all our lives; now
it's our turn."
"No, sir!" he said, querulously. "I don't like the idea of being
the landlady's husband around a boarding- house; it goes against
my gizzard. _I_ know: makes out the bills for his wife Sunday
mornings-- works with a screw-driver on somebody's bureau drawer
sometimes--'tends the furnace maybe--one the boarders gives him a
cigar now and then. That's a FINE life to look forward to! No,
sir; I don't want to finish as a landlady's husband!"
Alice looked grave; for she knew the sketch was but too
accurately prophetic in every probability. "But, papa," she
said, to console him, "don't you think maybe there isn't such a
thing as a 'finish,' after all! You say perhaps we don't learn
to live till we die but maybe that's how it is AFTER we die,
too--just learning some more, the way we do here, and maybe
through trouble again, even after that."
"Oh, it might be," he sighed. "I expect so."
"Well, then," she said, "what's the use of talking about a
'finish?' We do keep looking ahead to things as if they'd finish
something, but when we get TO them, they don't finish anything.
They're just part of going on. I'll tell you--I looked ahead all
summer to something I was afraid of, and I said to myself, 'Well,
if that happens, I'm finished!' But it wasn't so, papa. It did
happen, and nothing's finished; I'm going on, just the same
only----" She stopped and blushed.
"Only what?" he asked.
"Well----" She blushed more deeply, then jumped up, and, standing
before him, caught both his hands in hers. "Well, don't you
think, since we do have to go on, we ought at least to have
learned some sense about how to do it?"
He looked up at her adoringly.
"What _I_ think," he said, and his voice trembled;-- "I think
you're the smartest girl in the world! I wouldn't trade you for
the whole kit-and-boodle of 'em!"
But as this folly of his threatened to make her tearful, she
kissed him hastily, and went forth upon her errand.
Since the night of the tragic-comic dinner she had not seen
Russell, nor caught even the remotest chance glimpse of him; and
it was curious that she should encounter him as she went upon
such an errand as now engaged her. At a corner, not far from
that tobacconist's shop she had just left when he overtook her
and walked with her for the first time, she met him to-day. He
turned the corner, coming toward her, and they were face to face;
whereupon that engaging face of Russell's was instantly reddened,
but Alice's remained serene.
She stopped short, though; and so did he; then she smiled
brightly as she put out her hand.
"Why, Mr. Russell!"
"I'm so--I'm so glad to have this--this chance," he stammered.
"I've wanted to tell you--it's just that going into a new
undertaking--this business life --one doesn't get to do a great
many things he'd like to. I hope you'll let me call again some
time, if I can."
"Yes, do!" she said, cordially, and then, with a quick nod, went
briskly on.
She breathed more rapidly, but knew that he could not have
detected it, and she took some pride in herself for the way she
had met this little crisis. But to have met it with such easy
courage meant to her something more reassuring than a momentary
pride in the serenity she had shown. For she found that what she
had resolved in her inmost heart was now really true: she was
"through with all that!"
She walked on, but more slowly, for the tobacconist's shop was
not far from her now--and, beyond it, that portal of doom,
Frincke's Business College. Already Alice could read the
begrimed gilt letters of the sign; and although they had spelled
destiny never with a more painful imminence than just then, an
old habit of dramatizing herself still prevailed with her.
There came into her mind a whimsical comparison of her fate with
that of the heroine in a French romance she had read long ago and
remembered well, for she had cried over it. The story ended with
the heroine's taking the veil after a death blow to love; and the
final scene again became vivid to Alice, for a moment. Again, as
when she had read and wept, she seemed herself to stand among the
great shadows in the cathedral nave; smelled the smoky incense on
the enclosed air, and heard the solemn pulses of the organ. She
remembered how the novice's father knelt, trembling, beside a
pillar of gray stone; how the faithless lover watched and
shivered behind the statue of a saint; how stifled sobs and
outcries were heard when the novice came to the altar; and how a
shaft of light struck through the rose-window, enveloping her in
an amber glow.
It was the vision of a moment only, and for no longer than a
moment did Alice tell herself that the romance provided a
prettier way of taking the veil than she had chosen, and that a
faithless lover, shaking with remorse behind a saint's statue,
was a greater solace than one left on a street corner protesting
that he'd like to call some time--if he could! Her pity for
herself vanished more reluctantly; but she shook it off and tried
to smile at it, and at her romantic recollections--at all of
them. She had something important to think of.
She passed the tobacconist's, and before her was that dark
entrance to the wooden stairway leading up to Frincke's Business
College--the very doorway she had always looked upon as the end
of youth and the end of hope.
How often she had gone by here, hating the dreary obscurity of
that stairway; how often she had thought of this obscurity as
something lying in wait to obliterate the footsteps of any girl
who should ascend into the smoky darkness above! Never had she
passed without those ominous imaginings of hers: pretty girls
turning into old maids "taking dictation" --old maids of a dozen
different types, yet all looking a little like herself.
Well, she was here at last! She looked up and down the street
quickly, and then, with a little heave of the shoulders, she went
bravely in, under the sign, and began to climb the wooden steps.
Half-way up the shadows were heaviest, but after that the place
began to seem brighter. There was an open window overhead
somewhere, she found; and the steps at the top were gay with
sunshine.