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"I expect probably her mother told her the same thing," the nurse
"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 have 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."
"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.
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.
"Yes, you had another!" he retorted, though not until after she
had closed the door.
"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.
"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."
"And give us our daily bread!" he added, meaning that his wife's
little performance was no novelty.
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.
"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!"
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
"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."
"Perhaps you WILL understand some day," her mother said, gently.
"Maybe you will when you've been married twenty-five years."
"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."
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!"
"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
"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."
"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
"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
"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."
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?"
"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!"
"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
"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."
"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----"
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."
"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----"
"He has some money in his bureau drawer," she said. "He finally
told me where it was."
"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!"
Mrs. Adams had remained in Alice's room, but her mood seemed to
have changed, during her daughter's little more than momentary
"What did he SAY?" she asked, quickly, and her tone was hopeful.
The mother's response was a grieving silence; she turned from her
daughter and walked to the door.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
Adams had a restless morning, and toward noon he asked Miss Perry
to call his daughter; he wished to say something to her.
"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----"
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."
"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!"
"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
"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
"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."
"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!"
"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
She lifted her head. "More than you do at home 'some days,' I
expect, papa!" she said.
She shook her head, then kissed him. "I'm going to talk to her,"
she said, and rose decisively.
"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
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?"
"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
"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!"
She brought forth the dress, displayed it upon the bed, and Mrs.
Adams examined it attentively.
"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?"
"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."
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."
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
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.
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
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
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.
"Never mind," said Alice, huskily. "I've got 'em and I AM going
to have a good time to-night!"
"No," said her mother. "It would only have given him longer to
"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."
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?"
"Doe' want 'ny canned peaches," said the frank Walter, moving
back his chair. "G'-night."
"The dance."
"What dance?"
"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."
"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----"
"Oh, Glory!"
But his mother interrupted him with some asperity: "It seems very
strange that you always object to going anywhere among OUR
friends, Walter."
And looking back over his shoulder to offer a final brief view of
his derisive face, he took himself out of the room.
"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.
"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
"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
"Why not?"
"It makes things too MEAN for her, Walter. All the other girls
have somebody to depend on after they get there."
"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."
"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
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.
"Cut it out," he requested. "If I take her, will you pay for a
"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?"
"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----"
"Why, Walter!" Mrs. Adams cried, much pleased. "Do you know how
to get a cab for that little? How splendid!"
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.
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.
"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
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?"
"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?"
"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."
"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."
"Yes, Walter."
"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?"
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."
"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."
"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?"
"As--coloured chauffeurs."
"Oh, look here, now!" he protested, loudly. "Don't you know this
is a democratic country?"
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
"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.
"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?"
"No, NO!"
"_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
He nodded; she jumped out; and they scurried through the drizzle.
"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."
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.
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----"
"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."
"She probably won't have one left, but you must ask her, anyway."
"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."
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.
"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
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.
"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?"
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.
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?"
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."
"How absurd!" Then, after a look about her that revealed nothing
encouraging, she added graciously, "You can have the next if you
want it."
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."
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?"
"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!"
"Oh, I MEAN it," he insisted. "There goes the band again. Shall
The young man glanced at her dubiously and passed a finger over
the tiny prong that dashingly composed the whole substance of his
"He is?"
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----"
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!"
"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 think your mother wants to speak to you, Frank," Alice said,
upon this advent.
"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
"But Henrietta came to speak to Ella and me, and I told her you
were so anxious to dance with her----"
"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."
"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----"
"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.
"Oh, gracious!"
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Oh, no," Alice said. "It doesn't matter one way or the other.
Please don't call me that."
"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."
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
"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?"
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
"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!"
"I was sitting with Mrs. George Dresser. You might take me back
When the "encore" was over, Alice spoke to him for the first
"Mildred will be looking for you," she said. "I think you'd
better take me back to where you found me."
"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.
"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."
"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----"
"Walter, let's dance just once more," Alice said, touching his
arm placatively. "I thought--well, perhaps we might go home
"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!"
Walter decided that her fit punishment was to know. "I was
shootin' dice with those coons in the cloak-room."
"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----"
"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."
Mrs. Adams laughed again. "Oh, I guess you can if you want to.
I expect they're pretty funny!"
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.
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
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.
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."
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
Adams closed his eyes again, sighing heavily, but made no other
"Why, of COURSE you are!" she cried. "What are you talking
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?"
"The only matter was I had a silly fit," Alice protested. "It
did me good, too."
"How's that?"
"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."
"Yes, it was awful," Adams agreed. "Just awful. Oh, me, my!"
"Well--sometimes it don't."
"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,
"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----"
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
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."
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."
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!"
"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?"
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.
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
"Perhaps the clerk thought you wanted the cigars for yourself,"
Russell suggested. "He may have taken you for a Spanish
"I'm sure he did!" Alice agreed, gaily; and she hummed a bar or
two of "La Paloma," 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.
"I said I'd take you for whatever you wanted me to. Isn't that
all right?"
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."
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!"
"How did you know I was thinking you were different from my
cousin, Mildred Palmer?"
"Yes," she said with cool humour. "How intimate that seems to
make us all at once!"
"What sort of girl? Didn't Mildred tell you what sort of girl I
am when she asked you to dance with me?"
"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?"
"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?"
"I? Oh, the very worst kind! Most people bore me particularly
the men in this town--and I show it."
"But you danced as if you liked it. You danced better than any
other girl I----"
"You don't----" Russell began, and his look was one of alarm.
"You haven't taken up----"
"What is?"
"What's that?"
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
"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
"Bravo!" he cried, and hammered the ferrule of his stick upon the
"For you. What you said was like running up the black flag to
the masthead."
But Russell had not followed her shift to the former topic.
"'Mildred's not being an exception?'" he said, vaguely.
"I don't----"
"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
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."
"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!"
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!"
"Not now," she said, quickly. "You can come----" She paused.
"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.
"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.
Then she ran upstairs, gave her father his tobacco, filled his
pipe for him, and petted him as he lighted it.
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.
Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips,
disquieted by a deepening wonder, parted to whisper:
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!"
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."
"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."
"Oh, Joe Lamb says he's got some little of his own. Didn't know
how much."
"Well, then----"
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."
"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?"
"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?"
"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 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----"
"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."
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
"I haven't?"
"No; perhaps not. But you're talking about it now, mama, after
you promised never to mention it again."
"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!"
"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----"
"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!"
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
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."
"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?"
"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?"
"He's dead."
"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,
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!"
"Oh, come, now!" Alice laughed. "You can't build even a glue
factory with just one little finger."
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.
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.
"He's much better; he's sitting up, Mr. Lamb. Won't you come
"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."
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.
"Yes, papa," she said; and turned to go out, but Lamb checked
"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."
"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!"
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
"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
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.
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."
"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!"
"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?"
"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?"
"Well, then----"
"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.
"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
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.
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?"
"Oh, no," Alice said. "We don't do it for everybody. Didn't you
find yourself charmed?"
"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 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
"Not a very near one," he explained. "Mr. Palmer's father was
my great-uncle."
"No," she said, in the same placid tone. "I mean for Mildred."
"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?"
"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?"
"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?"
"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?"
Alice shook her head. "Let's keep away from the kind of girl I
She shook her head again. "Let's keep first to the kind of man
you are. I'm glad you were in the War."
"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?"
"Don't you remember? I told you the other day. I'm just me!"
"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?'"
"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."
"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."
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."
"What's that?"
"I could tell you not to come," she said. "I wonder if I ought
"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?"
"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."
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."
"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."
"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.'"
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."
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 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 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?"
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
"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?"
She came at him, fiercely accusing. "You know well enough what
old man, Virgil Adams! That old man who was here the other
"Mr. Lamb?"
"Yes; 'Mister Lamb!'" She mocked his voice. "What other old man
would I be likely to mean except J. A. Lamb?"
"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?"
"I won't hear any more such stuff!" Lifting his paper, Adams
affected to read.
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?"
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."
"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."
"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!"
"No; I wouldn't."
"Oh, mine, mine," he said, wearily. "I drove the young men away,
of course."
"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?"
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!"
"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!"
"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
"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.
"Yes; that's what you been after all the time I was getting
Adams again fell back upon his last solace: he walked, half
staggering, up and down the room, swearing in a rhythmic
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!"
Alice helped Mrs. Adams to her feet; and the stricken woman
threw her arms passionately about her daughter.
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."
"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!"
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.
She flushed a little. "Now, now!" she chided him. "We agreed
not to say any more about that."
She waved her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What
does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a dance or
"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----"
"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
"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?"
"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?"
"I haven't talked about you with any one; but if I did, I know
"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!"
"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?"
"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?"
"Just about! Whatever they hope will get results." She shook
her head wisely. "Oh, yes; we do that here!"
"What is it?"
"It's this: when she's talked about she isn't THERE. That's how
they kill her."
"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?"
"No; it's so. And if you care at all about--about knowing a girl
who'd like someone to know her----"
With that they laughed together, and he said, "You may be cutting
me off from a great deal of information, you know."
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?"
"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!"
"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."
"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'm sorry they do," he said, and seemed simply to mean it.
"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?"
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!"
"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."
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.
"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.
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.
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.
The girl laughed airily. "God, but you guys are wise!" she said.
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.
She kept her eyes ahead, and said sharply, "I think his literary
tastes scarcely cover this case!"
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
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."
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.
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?"
"Why, from what you've told me he said, I KNOW it's that way.
Didn't he say he wanted to come again?"
Her daughter was silent for several moments; then new tears
gathered upon her downcast lashes. "He's just--dear!" she
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:
"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
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----"
"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."
"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----"
"What can be?" her mother asked, helplessly. "What can be?"
Alice admitted that she didn't know.
"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
"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
"Oh, I see," Walter said. "She told mother and mother told you."
"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."
"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."
"Yes, I know all about it," Adams said. "About this business, I
"How do you?"
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."
"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."
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."
"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,
"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,
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."
"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!"
"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!"
"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----"
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----"
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.
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.
"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."
"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
"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.
"He didn't hire you to build him a house. You and Campbell
"I know ONE thing: if that old man tried to keep your own
invention from you he's no better than a robber!"
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
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."
"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."
"No," said Adams. "I been thinking I might likely kind of branch
out on my own account."
"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."
"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."
"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----"
"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?"
"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?"
"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."
"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."
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."
"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?"
"Well," said Mrs. Lohr, "what other conclusion did you leave me
to jump at?"
"Then you mean the poor man's mind does seem affected?"
"How's that?"
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 was out in his taxicab again the next morning, and by noon he
had secured what he wanted.
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.
"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."
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."
"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.
"Oh, are you there, dearie?" he said, and came up the path. A
tall figure rose from a chair on the veranda.
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.
"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."
"'Only!'" she echoed. "Why, we live for you, and we can't live
without you."
"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.
"I didn't," she said, shaking her head. "Our summer evenings
will be over before then, Mr. Russell."
"Why?" he asked.
"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----"
"Oh, but isn't it? That's just what it is! Why isn't it?"
"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."
"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."
"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."
She was silent, leaning forward, with her elbows on her knees and
her clasped hands against her lips. Then, not moving, she said
"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.
She leaned back in her chair and did not answer at once. Then
she said:
"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!"
"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 wish I DID know," he thought, over and over. "I DO wish I
knew how he feels about it."
"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?"
"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?"
"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
"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."
"Well, just do quit thinking about it," she urged him. "It only
bothers you without doing any good. Don't you know that?"
"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."
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."
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."
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."
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.
She did the same thing her mother had done: laughed, and said,
"No! How foolish! Why, papa, it's over two miles from here!"
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.
"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
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.
"Goin' to fix her all up, I guess," the workman said. "Big job
it is, too."
"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."
"That smell's all right," Adams said. "You soon get used to it."
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!"
"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.
"Virgil!" She lifted her hand to strike his arm chidingly. "Do
quit harping on that nonsense!"
"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
"What is?"
"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
"I suppose so," he said, sighing. "I suppose so. You think----"
"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?"
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----"
"You ARE a simple old fellow!" his wife exclaimed, and then rose
from her chair. "That reminds me," she said.
"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.
"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
Mrs. Adams laughed, and answered, "Not since I was your age, I
"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.
"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."
"What like?"
"I was thinking----" Mrs. Adams paused. "Well, of course we
could hardly put off asking him to dinner, or something, much
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?"
"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
"But a dinner!" Alice objected. "In the first place, there isn't
anybody I want to ask. There isn't anybody I WOULD ask."
Alice assented, though not with a good heart. "Very well, I'll
ask him, if you think we've got to."
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."
"Yes. He did."
"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
His quiet huskiness did not alter. "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!"
"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?"
"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----"
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."
"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 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?"
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."
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.
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.
Alice was alarmed. "Don't you think perhaps it's too much,
"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
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 the 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."
"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?"
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."
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.
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."
"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!"
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?"
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!"
She smiled whimsically upon the young man. "Tell the truth," she
said. "Don't you fairly detest going into business with that
tyrant yonder?"
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.
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."
"Mama, I don't think that was the reason. I don't think it was
because he wasn't listening, I mean."
"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.
"Mama, it was because of those things that came out about Alice
"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?"
"But I'd just about decided that it really wouldn't do," Mildred
went on. "She isn't--well, I didn't admire her."
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.
"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."
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
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?"
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.
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 foreboding 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
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
"You look pretty pale," Alice said, and sighed heavily. "It
makes me ashamed, having you work so hard--for me."
"Do!" Mrs. Adams urged. "You don't want to look worn out, do
"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?"
"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
"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.
"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?"
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
"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
"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.
"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
"I didn't mean glue," he informed her. "I mean cabbage. Is that
fashionable now, to have cabbage when there's company for
"It is pretty dreadful," Alice said. "Are all the windows open
"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."
"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."
Downstairs the door-bell rang, and Alice's arms jerked with the
"Golly!" her father said. "Did you stick your finger with that
fool needle?"
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.
Alice went to the top of the front stairs, and her mother
appeared in the hall below.
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----"
"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!"
"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,
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!"
"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.
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?"
"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?"
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.
"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.
"Just ONE more second, papa." She shook her head, lamenting.
"Oh, I wish we'd rented some silver!"
"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.
"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
"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?"
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.
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.
But she shook her head at him fiercely, "Wait!" she whispered.
"Sit down!"
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.
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.
"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.
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!"
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?"
"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
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!"
"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
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."
"But I told you to tell anybody we were not at home," Mrs Adams
returned. "Who is it?"
"Law," Gertrude repeated. "'S all he tell me; 's all I know."
"He ain't much," she said. "'Bout you' age; got brustly white
moustache, nice eye-glasses."
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?"
"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."
"Good gracious!" she cried. "I hadn't realized it was THAT bad!"
"Not at all. It's been most kind of your mother and father and
"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!"
"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."
"Not at all."
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
But she cut him off sharply: "Please don't say 'Not at all'
"I'm sorry."
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.
"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?"
"I was just thinking--I wonder if they haven't done it, after
"Why, yes."
"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----"
"I'm sorry you think----" he began, but did not complete the
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?"
"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----" 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!"
He had risen as she did. "I'm afraid you're awfully tired and
nervous," he said. "I really ought to be going."
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!"
"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.
"What is it?"
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
"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,
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.
"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
"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
"No," Adams gulped. "It always seems that way to the other party
that's only looking on!"
"Yes, I know," said Lohr; "but you can't tell, especially if you
raise the money and pay it back."
"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!"
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
"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----"
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 self-reproach,
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.
"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."
"What for?"
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."
She shook her head anxiously. "You don't look able. You've
walked all night."
"But, papa----"
"Oh, no; he isn't cheap. It won't make any difference with him."
"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
"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!"
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?"
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.
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?"
"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?"
"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----"
The old gentleman lifted his frosted eyebrows. "Oh, out o' the
GLUE-works? You expected to raise money on the glue-works, did
"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 in 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.
"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?'"
"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!"
"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.
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.
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.
"The doctor was here again a little while ago; he thinks papa's
coming through it. He's pretty sure he will."
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."
"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?"
"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?"
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,
"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."
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."
"Why, yes, it could. That's what I'm here to talk to you about."
"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."
"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."
"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
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!"
"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."
"I will," she said, and through her grateful tears gave him a
smile almost radiant. "He'll be better, Mr. Lamb. We all
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?"
"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."
"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!"
"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?"
"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!"
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----"
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
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
"Yes, 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."
"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?"
"No," she said, quietly, as Adams paused. "He never came again."
"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
"But, papa, I'm afraid you won't find it, and you'll be
"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."
"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?"
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.
"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.
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
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