Alice Adams

B >> Booth Tarkington >> Alice Adams


He was silent for a time, then returned with increasing
enthusiasm to this theme, and Alice was glad to see so much
renewal of life in him; he had not spoken with a like cheerful
vigour since before his illness. The visit of his idolized great
man had indeed been good for him, putting new spirit into him;
and liveliness of the body followed that of the spirit. His
improvement carried over the night: he slept well and awoke late,
declaring that he was "pretty near a well man and ready for
business right now." Moreover, having slept again in the
afternoon, he dressed and went down to dinner, leaning but
lightly on Alice, who conducted him.

"My! but you and your mother have been at it with your scrubbing
and dusting!" he said, as they came through the "living-room."
"I don't know I ever did see the house so spick and span before!"
His glance fell upon a few carnations in a vase, and he chuckled
admiringly. "Flowers, too! So THAT'S what you coaxed that
dollar and a half out o' me for, this morning!"

Other embellishments brought forth his comment when he had taken
his old seat at the head of the small dinner-table. "Why, I
declare, Alice!" he exclaimed. "I been so busy looking at all
the spick-and-spanishness after the house-cleaning, and the
flowers out in the parlour--'living-room' I suppose you want me
to call it, if I just GOT to be fashionable--I been so busy
studying over all this so-and-so, I declare I never noticed YOU
till this minute! My, but you ARE all dressed up! What's goin'
on? What's it about: you so all dressed up, and flowers in the
parlour and everything?"

"Don't you see, papa? It's in honour of your coming downstairs
again, of course."

"Oh, so that's it," he said. "I never would 'a' thought of that,
I guess."

But Walter looked sidelong at his father, and gave forth his sly
and knowing laugh. "Neither would I!" he said.

Adams lifted his eyebrows jocosely. "You're jealous, are you,
sonny? You don't want the old man to think our young lady'd make
so much fuss over him, do you?"

"Go on thinkin' it's over you," Walter retorted, amused. "Go on
and think it. It'll do you good."

"Of course I'll think it," Adams said. "It isn't anybody's
birthday. Certainly the decorations are on account of me coming
downstairs. Didn't you hear Alice say so?"

"Sure, I heard her say so."

"Well, then----"

Walter interrupted him with a little music. Looking shrewdly at
Alice, he sang:

"I was walkin' out on Monday with my sweet thing.
She's my neat thing,
My sweet thing:
I'll go round on Tuesday night to see her.
Oh, how we'll spoon----"


"Walter!" his mother cried. "WHERE do you learn such vulgar
songs?" However, she seemed not greatly displeased with him, and
laughed as she spoke.

"So that's it, Alice!" said Adams. "Playing the hypocrite with
your old man, are you? It's some new beau, is it?"

"I only wish it were," she said, calmly. "No. It's just what I
said: it's all for you, dear."

"Don't let her con you," Walter advised his father. "She's got
expectations. You hang around downstairs a while after dinner
and you'll see."

But the prophecy failed, though Adams went to his own room
without waiting to test it. No one came.

Alice stayed in the "living-room" until half-past nine, when she
went slowly upstairs. Her mother, almost tearful, met her at the
top, and whispered, "You mustn't mind, dearie."

"Mustn't mind what?" Alice asked, and then, as she went on her
way, laughed scornfully. "What utter nonsense!" she said.

Next day she cut the stems of the rather scant show of carnations
and refreshed them with new water. At dinner, her father, still
in high spirits, observed that she had again "dressed up" in
honour of his second descent of the stairs; and Walter repeated
his fragment of objectionable song; but these jocularities were
rendered pointless by the eventless evening that followed; and in
the morning the carnations began to appear tarnished and flaccid.

Alice gave them a long look, then threw them away; and neither
Walter nor her father was inspired to any rallying by her plain
costume for that evening. Mrs. Adams was visibly depressed.

When Alice finished helping her mother with the dishes, she went
outdoors and sat upon the steps of the little front veranda. The
night, gentle with warm air from the south, surrounded her
pleasantly, and the perpetual smoke was thinner. Now that the
furnaces of dwelling-houses were no longer fired, life in that
city had begun to be less like life in a railway tunnel; people
were aware of summer in the air, and in the thickened foliage of
the shade-trees, and in the sky. Stars were unveiled by the
passing of the denser smoke fogs, and to-night they could be seen
clearly; they looked warm and near. Other girls sat upon
verandas and stoops in Alice's street, cheerful as young
fishermen along the banks of a stream.

Alice could hear them from time to time; thin sopranos persistent
in laughter that fell dismally upon her ears. She had set no
lines or nets herself, and what she had of "expectations," as
Walter called them, were vanished. For Alice was experienced;
and one of the conclusions she drew from her experience was that
when a man says, "I'd take you for anything you wanted me to," he
may mean it or, he may not; but, if he does, he will not postpone
the first opportunity to say something more. Little affairs,
once begun, must be warmed quickly; for if they cool they are
dead.

But Alice was not thinking of Arthur Russell. When she tossed
away the carnations she likewise tossed away her thoughts of
that young man. She had been like a boy who sees upon the
street, some distance before him, a bit of something round and
glittering, a possible dime. He hopes it is a dime, and, until
he comes near enough to make sure, he plays that it is a dime.
In his mind he has an adventure with it: he buys something
delightful. If he picks it up, discovering only some tin-foil
which has happened upon a round shape, he feels a sinking. A
dulness falls upon him.

So Alice was dull with the loss of an adventure; and when the
laughter of other girls reached her, intermittently, she had not
sprightliness enough left in her to be envious of their gaiety.
Besides, these neighbours were ineligible even for her envy,
being of another caste; they could never know a dance at the
Palmers', except remotely, through a newspaper. Their laughter
was for the encouragement of snappy young men of the stores and
offices down-town, clerks, bookkeepers, what not--some of them
probably graduates of Frincke's Business College.

Then, as she recalled that dark portal, with its dusty stairway
mounting between close walls to disappear in the upper shadows,
her mind drew back as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless,
it was a picture often in her reverie; and sometimes it came
suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her other thoughts,
as if it leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it
arrived it wanted to stay. So a traveller, still roaming the
world afar, sometimes broods without apparent reason upon his
family burial lot: "I wonder if I shall end there."

The foreboding passed abruptly, with a jerk of her breath, as the
street-lamp revealed a tall and easy figure approaching from the
north, swinging a stick in time to its stride. She had given
Russell up--and he came.

"What luck for me!" he exclaimed. "To find you alone!"

Alice gave him her hand for an instant, not otherwise moving.
"I'm glad it happened so," she said. "Let's stay out here, shall
we? Do you think it's too provincial to sit on a girl's front
steps with her?"

"'Provincial?' Why, it's the very best of our institutions," he
returned, taking his place beside her. "At least, I think so
to-night."

"Thanks! Is that practice for other nights somewhere else?"

"No," he laughed. "The practicing all led up to this. Did I
come too soon?"

"No," she replied, gravely. "Just in time!"

"I'm glad to be so accurate; I've spent two evenings wanting to
come, Miss Adams, instead of doing what I was doing."

"What was that?"

"Dinners. Large and long dinners. Your fellow-citizens are
immensely hospitable to a newcomer."

"Oh, no," Alice said. "We don't do it for everybody. Didn't you
find yourself charmed?"

"One was a men's dinner," he explained. "Mr. Palmer seemed to
think I ought to be shown to the principal business men."

"What was the other dinner?"

"My cousin Mildred gave it."

"Oh, DID she!" Alice said, sharply, but she recovered herself in
the same instant, and laughed. "She wanted to show you to the
principal business women, I suppose."

"I don't know. At all events, I shouldn't give myself out to be
so much feted by your 'fellow-citizens,' after all, seeing these
were both done by my relatives, the Palmers. However, there are
others to follow, I'm afraid. I was wondering--I hoped maybe
you'd be coming to some of them. Aren't you?"

"I rather doubt it," Alice said, slowly. "Mildred's dance was
almost the only evening I've gone out since my father's illness
began. He seemed better that day; so I went. He was better the
other day when he wanted those cigars. He's very much up and
down." She paused. "I'd almost forgotten that Mildred is your
cousin."

"Not a very near one," he explained. "Mr. Palmer's father was
my great-uncle."

"Still, of course you are related."

"Yes; that distantly."

Alice said placidly, "It's quite an advantage."

He agreed. "Yes. It is."

"No," she said, in the same placid tone. "I mean for Mildred."

"I don't see----"

She laughed. "No. You wouldn't. I mean it's an advantage over
the rest of us who might like to compete for some of your time;
and the worst of it is we can't accuse her of being unfair about
it. We can't prove she showed any trickiness in having you for a
cousin. Whatever else she might plan to do with you, she didn't
plan that. So the rest of us must just bear it!"

"The 'rest of you!'" he laughed. "It's going to mean a great
deal of suffering!"

Alice resumed her placid tone. "You're staying at the Palmers',
aren't you?"

"No, not now. I've taken an apartment. I'm going to live here;
I'm permanent. Didn't I tell you?"

"I think I'd heard somewhere that you were," she said. "Do you
think you'll like living here?"

"How can one tell?"

"If I were in your place I think I should be able to tell, Mr.
Russell."

"How?"

"Why, good gracious!" she cried. "Haven't you got the most
perfect creature in town for your--your cousin? SHE expects to
make you like living here, doesn't she? How could you keep from
liking it, even if you tried not to, under the circumstances?"

"Well, you see, there's such a lot of circumstances," he
explained; "I'm not sure I'll like getting back into a business
again. I suppose most of the men of my age in the country have
been going through the same experience: the War left us with a
considerable restlessness of spirit."

"You were in the War?" she asked, quickly, and as quickly
answered herself, "Of course you were!"

"I was a left-over; they only let me out about four months ago,"
he said. "It's quite a shake-up trying to settle down again."

"You were in France, then?"

"Oh, yes; but I didn't get up to the front much--only two or
three times, and then just for a day or so. I was in the
transportation service."

"You were an officer, of course."

"Yes," he said. "They let me play I was a major."

"I guessed a major," she said. "You'd always be pretty grand, of
course."

Russell was amused. "Well, you see," he informed her, "as it
happened, we had at least several other majors in our army. Why
would I always be something 'pretty grand?'"

"You're related to the Palmers. Don't you notice they always
affect the pretty grand?"

"Then you think I'm only one of their affectations, I take it."

"Yes, you seem to be the most successful one they've got!" Alice
said, lightly. "You certainly do belong to them." And she
laughed as if at something hidden from him. "Don't you?"

"But you've just excused me for that," he protested. "You said
nobody could be blamed for my being their third cousin. What a
contradictory girl you are!"

Alice shook her head. "Let's keep away from the kind of girl I
am."

"No," he said. "That's just what I came here to talk about."

She shook her head again. "Let's keep first to the kind of man
you are. I'm glad you were in the War."

"Why?"

"Oh, I don't know." She was quiet a moment, for she was thinking
that here she spoke the truth: his service put about him a little
glamour that helped to please her with him. She had been pleased
with him during their walk; pleased with him on his own account;
and now that pleasure was growing keener. She looked at him, and
though the light in which she saw him was little more than
starlight, she saw that he was looking steadily at her with a
kindly and smiling seriousness. All at once it seemed to her
that the night air was sweeter to breathe, as if a distant
fragrance of new blossoms had been blown to her. She smiled back
to him, and said, "Well, what kind of man are you?"

"I don't know; I've often wondered," he replied. "What kind of
girl are you?"

"Don't you remember? I told you the other day. I'm just me!"

"But who is that?"

"You forget everything;" said Alice. "You told me what kind of a
girl I am. You seemed to think you'd taken quite a fancy to me
from the very first."

"So I did," he agreed, heartily.

"But how quickly you forgot it!"

"Oh, no. I only want YOU to say what kind of a girl you are."

She mocked him. "'I don't know; I've often wondered!' What kind
of a girl does Mildred tell you I am? What has she said about me
since she told you I was 'a Miss Adams?'"

"I don't know; I haven't asked her."

"Then DON'T ask her," Alice said, quickly.

"Why?"

"Because she's such a perfect creature and I'm such an imperfect
one. Perfect creatures have the most perfect way of ruining the
imperfect ones."

"But then they wouldn't be perfect. Not if they----"

"Oh, yes, they remain perfectly perfect," she assured him.
"That's because they never go into details. They're not so
vulgar as to come right out and TELL that you've been in jail for
stealing chickens. They just look absent-minded and say in a low
voice, 'Oh, very; but I scarcely think you'd like her particularly';
and then begin to talk of something else right away."

His smile had disappeared. "Yes," he said, somewhat ruefully.
"That does sound like Mildred. You certainly do seem to know
her! Do you know everybody as well as that?"

"Not myself," Alice said. "I don't know myself at all. I got to
wondering about that--about who I was--the other day after you
walked home with me."

He uttered an exclamation, and added, explaining it, "You do give
a man a chance to be fatuous, though! As if it were walking home
with me that made you wonder about yourself!"

"It was," Alice informed him, coolly. "I was wondering what I
wanted to make you think of me, in case I should ever happen to
see you again."

This audacity appeared to take his breath. "By George!" he
cried.

"You mustn't be astonished," she said. "What I decided then was
that I would probably never dare to be just myself with you--not
if I cared to have you want to see me again--and yet here I am,
just being myself after all!"

"You ARE the cheeriest series of shocks," Russell exclaimed,
whereupon Alice added to the series.

"Tell me: Is it a good policy for me to follow with you?" she
asked, and he found the mockery in her voice delightful. "Would
you advise me to offer you shocks as a sort of vacation from
suavity?"

"Suavity" was yet another sketch of Mildred; a recognizable one,
or it would not have been humorous. In Alice's hands, so
dexterous in this work, her statuesque friend was becoming as
ridiculous as a fine figure of wax left to the mercies of a
satirist.

But the lively young sculptress knew better than to overdo: what
she did must appear to spring all from mirth; so she laughed as
if unwillingly, and said, "I MUSTN'T laugh at Mildred! In the
first place, she's your--your cousin. And in the second place,
she's not meant to be funny; it isn't right to laugh at really
splendid people who take themselves seriously. In the third
place, you won't come again if I do."

"Don't be sure of that," Russell said, "whatever you do."

"'Whatever I do?'" she echoed. "That sounds as if you thought I
COULD be terrific! Be careful; there's one thing I could do that
would keep you away."

"What's that?"

"I could tell you not to come," she said. "I wonder if I ought
to."

"Why do you wonder if you 'ought to?'"

"Don't you guess?"

"No."

"Then let's both be mysteries to each other," she suggested. "I
mystify you because I wonder, and you mystify me because you
don't guess why I wonder. We'll let it go at that, shall we?"

"Very well; so long as it's certain that you DON'T tell me not to
come again."

"I'll not tell you that--yet," she said. "In fact----" She
paused, reflecting, with her head to one side. "In fact, I won't
tell you not to come, probably, until I see that's what you want
me to tell you. I'll let you out easily--and I'll be sure to see
it. Even before you do, perhaps."

"That arrangement suits me," Russell returned, and his voice held
no trace of jocularity: he had become serious. "It suits me
better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can come--oh,
not whenever I want to; I don't expect so much!--but if you mean
that I can see you pretty often."

"Of course I'm in earnest," she said. "But before I say you can
come 'pretty often,' I'd like to know how much of my time you'd
need if you did come 'whenever you want to'; and of course you
wouldn't dare make any answer to that question except one.
Wouldn't you let me have Thursdays out?"

"No, no," he protested. "I want to know. Will you let me come
pretty often?"

"Lean toward me a little," Alice said. "I want you to
understand." And as he obediently bent his head near hers, she
inclined toward him as if to whisper; then, in a half-shout, she
cried,

"YES!"

He clapped his hands. "By George!" he said. "What a girl you
are!"

"Why?"

"Well, for the first reason, because you have such gaieties as
that one. I should think your father would actually like being
ill, just to be in the house with you all the time."

"You mean by that," Alice inquired, "I keep my family cheerful
with my amusing little ways?"

"Yes. Don't you?"

"There were only boys in your family, weren't there, Mr.
Russell?"

"I was an only child, unfortunately."

"Yes," she said. "I see you hadn't any sisters."

For a moment he puzzled over her meaning, then saw it, and was
more delighted with her than ever. "I can answer a question of
yours, now, that I couldn't a while ago."

"Yes, I know," she returned, quietly.

"But how could you know?"

"It's the question I asked you about whether you were going to
like living here," she said. "You're about to tell me that now
you know you WILL like it."

"More telepathy!" he exclaimed. "Yes, that was it, precisely. I
suppose the same thing's been said to you so many times that
you----"

"No, it hasn't," Alice said, a little confused for the moment.
"Not at all. I meant----" She paused, then asked in a gentle
voice, "Would you really like to know?"

"Yes."

"Well, then, I was only afraid you didn't mean it."

"See here," he said. "I did mean it. I told you it was being
pretty difficult for me to settle down to things again. Well,
it's more difficult than you know, but I think I can pull through
in fair spirits if I can see a girl like you 'pretty often.'"

"All right," she said, in a business-like tone. "I've told you
that you can if you want to."

"I do want to," he assured her. "I do, indeed!"

"How often is 'pretty often,' Mr. Russell?"

"Would you walk with me sometimes? To-morrow?"

"Sometimes. Not to-morrow. The day after."

"That's splendid!" he said. "You'll walk with me day after
to-morrow, and the night after that I'll see you at Miss Lamb's
dance, won't I?"

But this fell rather chillingly upon Alice. "Miss Lamb's dance?
Which Miss Lamb?" she asked.

"I don't know--it's the one that's just coming out of mourning."

"Oh, Henrietta--yes. Is her dance so soon? I'd forgotten."

"You'll be there, won't you?" he asked. "Please say you're
going."

Alice did not respond at once, and he urged her again: "Please do
promise you'll be there."

"No, I can't promise anything," she said, slowly. "You see, for
one thing, papa might not be well enough."

"But if he is?" said Russell. "If he is you'll surely come,
won't you? Or, perhaps----" He hesitated, then went on quickly,
"I don't know the rules in this place yet, and different places
have different rules; but do you have to have a chaperone, or
don't girls just go to dances with the men sometimes? If they
do, would you--would you let me take you?"

Alice was startled. "Good gracious!"

"What's the matter?"

"Don't you think your relatives---- Aren't you expected to go
with Mildred--and Mrs. Palmer?"

"Not necessarily. It doesn't matter what I might be expected to
do," he said. "Will you go with me?"

"I---- No; I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"I can't. I'm not going."

"But why?"

"Papa's not really any better," Alice said, huskily. "I'm too
worried about him to go to a dance." Her voice sounded
emotional, genuinely enough; there was something almost like a
sob in it. "Let's talk of other things, please."

He acquiesced gently; but Mrs. Adams, who had been listening to
the conversation at the open window, just overhead, did not hear
him. She had correctly interpreted the sob in Alice's voice,
and, trembling with sudden anger, she rose from her knees, and
went fiercely to her husband's room.



CHAPTER XIII

He had not undressed, and he sat beside the table, smoking his
pipe and reading his newspaper. Upon his forehead the lines in
that old pattern, the historical map of his troubles, had grown a
little vaguer lately; relaxed by the complacency of a man who not
only finds his health restored, but sees the days before him
promising once more a familiar routine that he has always liked
to follow.

As his wife came in, closing the door behind her, he looked up
cheerfully, "Well, mother," he said, "what's the news downstairs?"

"That's what I came to tell you," she informed him, grimly.

Adams lowered his newspaper to his knee and peered over his
spectacles at her. She had remained by the door, standing, and
the great greenish shadow of the small lamp-shade upon his table
revealed her but dubiously. "Isn't everything all right?" he
asked. "What's the matter?"

"Don't worry: I'm going to tell you," she said, her grimness not
relaxed. "There's matter enough, Virgil Adams. Matter enough to
make me sick of being alive!"

With that, the markings on his brows began to emerge again in all
their sharpness; the old pattern reappeared. "Oh, my, my!" he
lamented. "I thought maybe we were all going to settle down to a
little peace for a while. What's it about now?"

"It's about Alice. Did you think it was about ME or anything for
MYSELF?"

Like some ready old machine, always in order, his irritability
responded immediately and automatically to her emotion. "How in
thunder could I think what it's about, or who it's for? SAY it,
and get it over!"

"Oh, I'll 'say' it," she promised, ominously. "What I've come to
ask you is, How much longer do you expect me to put up with that
old man and his doings?"

"Whose doings? What old man?"

She came at him, fiercely accusing. "You know well enough what
old man, Virgil Adams! That old man who was here the other
night."

"Mr. Lamb?"

"Yes; 'Mister Lamb!'" She mocked his voice. "What other old man
would I be likely to mean except J. A. Lamb?"

"What's he been doing now?" her husband inquired, satirically.
"Where'd you get something new against him since the last time
you----"

"Just this!" she cried. "The other night when that man was here,
if I'd known how he was going to make my child suffer, I'd never
have let him set his foot in my house."

Adams leaned back in his chair as though her absurdity had eased
his mind. "Oh, I see," he said. "You've just gone plain crazy.
That's the only explanation of such talk, and it suits the case."

"Hasn't that man made us all suffer every day of our lives?" she
demanded. "I'd like to know why it is that my life and my
children's lives have to be sacrificed to him?"

"How are they 'sacrificed' to him?"

"Because you keep on working for him! Because you keep on
letting him hand out whatever miserable little pittance he
chooses to give you; that's why! It's as if he were some
horrible old Juggernaut and I had to see my children's own father
throwing them under the wheels to keep him satisfied."

"I won't hear any more such stuff!" Lifting his paper, Adams
affected to read.

"You'd better listen to me," she admonished him. "You might be
sorry you didn't, in case he ever tried to set foot in my house
again! I might tell him to his face what I think of him."