 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 lampshade 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 going to all 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. Get it over with.' "'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 do-ings?' "'Whose do-ings? 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, Mr. 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 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.' Using his paper, Adams effected to read. "'You'd better listen to me,' she admonished him. "'You might be sorry you didn't, in case he ever tried to set foot in my house again. I might tell him to his face what I think of him.' At this Adams slapped the newspaper down upon his knee. "'Oh, the devil, what's it matter what you think of him?' "'It had better matter to you,' she cried. "'Do you suppose I'm going to submit forever to him and his family and what they're doing to my child?' "'What are he and his family doing to your child?' Mrs. Adams came out with it. That snippy little Henrietta Lamb has always snubbed Alice every time she's ever had the chance. She's followed the lead of the other girls. They've always, all of them, 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 them, and this mean little Henrietta Lamb's been the worst of the whole crowd to Alice. Every time she could see a chance. "'What for?' Adams asked incredulously. "'Why should she or anybody else pick on Alice?' "'Why? What for?' his wife repeated with a greater vehemence. "'Do you ask me such a thing as that? Do you really want to know?' "'Yes, I'd want to know. I would if I believed it.' "'Then I'll tell you,' she said, in a cold fury. "'It's on account of you, Virgil, and nothing else in this world.' He hooded 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 just act 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 them. 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 them, every single bit, if you hadn't fallen behind in the race.' "'How did I—' "'Yes, you did,' she cried. "'Twenty-five years ago, when we were starting, and this town was smaller, you and I could have gone with any of them 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'll 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 you why she does it. It's because you've never given Alice any backing or 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 him sing a mighty different song long ago. How would she? "'Oh, my heavens, but you're slow,' Mrs. Adams moaned. "'Look here. You remember how practically all the nicest boys in this town used to come here a few years ago? Why, they were all crazy over her, and the girls had to be nice to her then. Look at the difference now. There'll be a whole month go by and not a young man come to call on her, let alone send her candy or flowers or even think of taking her anyplace. And yet she's prettier and brighter than she was when they used to come. It isn't the child's fault she couldn't hold him, is it? Poor thing. She tried hard enough. I suppose you'd say it was her fault, though.' "'No, I wouldn't.' Then whose fault is it?' "'Oh, mine,' he said wearily. "'Mine. I drove the young men away, of course. You might as well have driven him, Virgil, and amounts to just the same thing.' "'How does it?' "'Because as they got older, a good many of them 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 jewelry 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 means 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! 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. 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 doctor's never passed me, you know that. Haven't we got to have something to fall back on? Yes, we have, she cried. We ought to have something to go on with right now, too, when we need it. Do you suppose these snippets would treat Alice the way they do if she could afford to entertain? They leave her out of their dinners and dances simply because they know she can't give any dinners and dances to leave them out of. They know she can't get even, and that's the whole story. That's why Henrietta Lam's done this thing to her now. Adams had gone back to rubbing his knees. Oh, my! My! He said. What thing? She told him. Your dear, grand old Mr. Lam'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, and 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 Lam hasn't invited her. Do you want to know why Henrietta hasn't invited her? It's because she knows Alice can't get even, and because she thinks Alice ought to be snubbed like this, on account of only being the daughter of one of her grandfather's clerks. I hope you understand. Oh, my! My! He said. Oh, my! That's your sweet old employer, his wife cried, tauntingly. That's your dear, kind, grand old Mr. Lam. Alice has been left out of a good many smaller things, like big dinners and little dances, but this is just the same as serving her notice that she's out of everything. And it's all done by your dear, grand old—look here! Adams exclaimed, I don't want to hear any more of that. You can't hold him responsible for everything his grandchildren do, I guess. He probably doesn't know a thing about it. You don't suppose he's troubling his head over? But she burst out at him, passionately. Suppose you trouble your head about it. You'd better, Virgil Adams. You'd better unless you want to see your child just dry up into a miserable old maid. She's still young, and she has a chance for happiness if she had a father that didn't bring a millstone to hang around her neck instead of what he ought to give her. You just wait till you die and God asks you what you had in your breast instead of a heart. Oh, my! My! He groaned. What's my heart got to do with it? Nothing. You haven't got one, or you'd give her what she needed. Am I asking anything you can't do? You know better. You know I'm not. At this he sat suddenly rigid, his troubled hands ceasing to rub his knees, and he looked at her, fixedly. Now tell me, he said slowly, just what are you asking? You know, she sobbed. You mean you've broken your word never to speak of that to me again? What do I care for my word, she cried, and, sinking to the floor at his feet, she 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. Tell for that till I die, I will, till I die, till I die. He rubbed his head now, instead of his knees, and, shaking all over, he got up and began with uncertain steps to pace the floor. Hell! Hell! Hell! He said. I've got to go through that again. Yes, you have, she sobbed, till I die. Yes, that's what you've been after, all the time I was getting well. Yes I have, and I'll keep on till I die. A fine wife for a man, he said, begging a man to be a dirty dog. No, to be a man, and I'll keep on till I die. Adams again fell back upon his last solace. He walked, half-staggering, up and down the room, swearing in a rhythmic repetition. His wife had repetitions of her own, and she kept at them in a voice that rose to a higher and higher pitch, like the sound of an old well-pump. Till I die, till I die, till I die. She ended in a scream, and Alice, coming up the stairs, thanked Heaven that Russell had gone. She ran to her father's door and went in. Adams looked at her and gesticulated shakily at the convulsive figure on the floor. Can you get her out of here? Alice helped Mrs. Adams to her feet, and the stricken woman threw her arms passionately about her daughter. Get her out, Adams said harshly. Then cried, Wait! Alice, moving toward the door, halted and looked at him blankly over her mother's shoulder. What is it, Papa? He stretched out his arm and pointed at her. She says, She says you have a mean life, Alice. No, Papa. Mrs. Adams turned in her daughter's arms. Do you hear her lie? Couldn't you be as brave as she is, Virgil? Are you lying, Alice? he asked. Do you have a mean time? No, Papa. He came toward her. Look at me, he said. Things like this dance now. Is that so hard to bear? Alice tried to say no, Papa, again, but she couldn't. Suddenly, and in spite of herself, she began to cry. Do you hear her? His wife sobbed. Now do you? He waved at them fiercely. Get out of here, he said. Both of you, get out of here. As they went, he dropped in his chair and bent far forward so that his haggard face was concealed from them. Then as Alice closed the door he began to rub his knees again, muttering, oh, my, my, oh, my, my. CHAPTER XIV There shone a jovial sun overhead on the appointed day after tomorrow, a day not cool yet of a temperature friendly to walkers, and the air, powdered with sunshine, had so much life in it that it seemed to sparkle. To Arthur Russell this was a day like a gay companion who pleased him well. But the gay companion at his side pleased him even better. She looked her prettiest, chattered her wittiest, smiled her wistfulest, and delighted him with all together. You look so happy it's easy to see your father's taken a good turn, he told her. Yes, he has this afternoon, at least, she said. I might have other reasons for looking cheerful, though. For instance? Exactly, she said, giving him a sweet look just enough mocked by her laughter. For instance? Well, go on, he begged. Isn't it expected, she asked? Of you, you mean? No, she returned, for you, I mean. In this style, which uses a word for any meaning that quick look and colourful gesture cared 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 only the 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. Where as serious she might seem, whatever appeared to be her topic, all was thou and I. He planned for more of it, seeing otherwise a dull evening ahead, and reverted, after a while, to a forbidden subject. About that dance it, Miss Lambs, since your father's so much better. She flushed a little. Now-now, she chided him, we agreed not to say any more about that. Yes, but since he is better. Alice shook her head. He won't be better to-morrow. He always is a bad day after a good one, especially after such a good one as this. But if in time it should be different, Russell persisted, wouldn't she be willing to come, if he's better by to-morrow evening? Why not wait and decide at the last minute? She waved her hands airily. What a father, she cried. What does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a dance or not? Well, I thought I made it clear that it looks fairly bleak to me if you don't go. Oh, yes, she jeered. It's the simple truth, he insisted. I don't care a great deal about dances these days, and if you aren't going to be there. You could stay away, she suggested. You wouldn't. Unfortunately I can't. I'm afraid I'm supposed to be the excuse. Miss Lam and her capacity as a friend of my relatives. Oh, she's giving it for you. I see. On Mildred's account, you mean. At that his face showed an increase of color. I suppose just on account of my being a cousin of Mildred's and of—of course, you'll have a beautiful time, too. Henrietta will see that you have somebody to dance with besides Miss Dowling, poor man. But what I want somebody to see is that I dance with you, and perhaps your father—wait, she said, frowning as if she debated whether or not to tell him something of import. Then, seeming to decide affirmatively, she asked, would you really like to know the truth about it? If it isn't too unflattering. It hasn't anything to do with you at all, she said. Of course I'd like to go with you and to dance with you, though you don't seem to realize that you wouldn't be permitted much time with me. Oh, yes, I—never mind, she laughed. Of course you wouldn't. But even if Papa should be better tomorrow, I doubt if I'll go. In fact, I know I wouldn't. There's another reason besides Papa. Is there? Yes. The truth is I don't get on with Henrietta Lam. As a matter of fact, I dislike her, and of course that means she dislikes me. I should never think of asking her to anything I gave, and I really wonder she asks me to things that she gives. This was a new inspiration, and Alice, beginning to see her way out of her perplexity, wished that she had thought of it earlier. She should have told him from the first time that she and Henrietta had a feud, and consequently exchanged no invitations. Moreover, there was another thing to beset her with little anxieties. She might better not to have told him from the first, as she had indeed told him by intimation that she was the pampered daughter of an indulgent father, presumably able to indulge her. For now she must elaborately keep to the part. Veracity is usually simple, and its opposite, to be successful, should be as simple. But practitioners of the opposite are most often impulsive, like Alice, and, like her, they become enmeshed in elaborations. It wouldn't be very nice for me to go to her house, Alice went on, when I wouldn't want her in mine. I've never admired her. I've always thought she was lacking in some things that most people are supposed to be equipped with. For instance, a certain feeling about the death of a father who was always pretty decent to his daughter. Henrietta's father died just 11 months and 27 days before your cousin's dance, but she wouldn't stick out those last few days and make it a year. She was there. Alice stopped, and then laughed, roofily, exclaiming, but this is dreadful of me. Is it? Blaggarding her to you when she's giving a big party for you. Just the way Henrietta would blaggard 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 on 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 like a little rather that you didn't hear anybody blaggard me, and, if you don't mind, could you promise not to give Henrietta the chance? It was charmingly done, with a humorous, faint pathos altogether genuine, and Russell found himself suddenly wanting to shout at her, oh, you dear! Nothing else seemed adequate, but he controlled the impulse in favour of something more conservative. Imagine anyone speaking unkindly of you, not praising you. Who has praised me to you, she asked quickly. I haven't talked about you with anyone, but if I did, I know where they would—oh, 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. You know, I'd rather they didn't make up things about me—to you. What difference would it make if they did? He inquired cheerfully. I would know they weren't true. Even if you did know that, they would 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 specs on it, even if we've wiped the specs off. It's just that much spoiled, and some things are all spoiled the instant they're the least bit spoiled. What a man thinks about a girl, for instance. Do you want to have what you think about me spoiled, Mr. Russell? Oh, but that's already far beyond reach, she said, lightly. But it can't be, she protested. Why not? Because it never can be. Men don't change their minds about one another often. They make it quite an event when they do, and talk about it as if something important has happened. But a girl only has to go downtown with a shoestring unfastened, and every man who sees her will change his mind about her. Don't you think that's true? Not of myself, I think. There, she cried, that's precisely what every man in the world would say. So you wouldn't trust me? Well, I'd be awfully worried if you gave him a chance to tell you that I'm too lazy to tie my shoestrings. He laughed, delightedly. Is that what they do say, he asked, just about whatever they hope will get results. She shook her head wisely. Oh, yes, we do that here. But I don't mind about loose shoestrings, he said, not if they're yours. They'll find out what you do mind. Suppose, he said, looking at her whimsically, suppose I wouldn't mind anything so long as it's yours. She curtsied. Oh, pretty enough. But a girl who's talked about has a weakness that's often a fatal one. What's that? It's this. When she's talked about, she isn't there. That's how they kill her. I'm afraid I don't follow you. Don't you see, if Henrietta or Mildred or any of them or some of their mothers, oh, we all do it? Well, if any of them told you I didn't tie my shoestrings, and if I were there so that you could see me, you'd know it wasn't true, even if I was sitting so that you couldn't see my feet and couldn't tell whether the strings were tied or not just then. Still, you could look at me and see that I wasn't the sort of girl to neglect my shoestrings. But that isn't the way it happens. They'll get at you when I'm nowhere around and can't remind you of the sort of girl I really am. But you don't do that, he complained. You don't remind me. You don't even tell me the sort of girl you really are. I'd like to know. Let's be serious, then, she said, and looked serious enough herself. Would you honestly like to know? Yes. Well, then you must be careful. Careful? The word amused him. I mean careful not to get me mixed up, she said. Careful not to mix up the girl you might hear somebody talking about with the me I honestly try to make you see. If you do get those two mixed up, well, the whole show will be spoiled. What makes you think so? Because it's, she checked herself, having begun to speak too impulsively, and she was disturbed, realizing in what tricky stuff she dealt. What had been on her lips to say was because it's happened before. She changed to because it's so easy to spoil anything, easiest of all to spoil anything that's pleasant. That might depend. No, it's so. And if you care at all about knowing a girl who would like someone to know her, just someone? That's disappointing. Well, you, she said. Tell me how careful you want me to be, then. Well, don't you think it would be nice if you didn't give anybody the chance to talk about me the way I've just been talking about Henrietta Lam? With that they laughed together, and he said, you may be cutting me off from a great deal of information, you know. Yes, Alice admitted. Somebody might begin to praise me to you, too, so it's dangerous to ask you to change the subject if I ever happened to be mentioned. But after all, she paused. After all, isn't the end of a thought, is it? Sometimes it is of a girl's thought. I suppose men are neater about their thoughts and always finish them. It isn't the end of the thought that I had then, though. What is the end of it? She looked at him impulsively. Oh, it's foolish, she said. And she laughed, as laughs one who proposes something probably impossible. But wouldn't it be pleasant if two people could ever just keep themselves to themselves so far as those two were concerned? I mean if they could just manage to be friends without people talking about it, or talking to them about it. I suppose that might be rather difficult, he said, more amused than impressed by her idea. I don't know. It might be done, she returned, hopefully, especially in a town of this size. It's grown, so it's quite a huge place these days. People can keep themselves to themselves in a big place better, you know. For instance, nobody knows that you and I are taking a walk together today. How absurd when here we are on exhibition. No, we aren't. We aren't. Not a bit of it, she laughed. We were the other day when you walked home with me, but anybody could tell that that had just happened by chance. On account of your overtaking me, people can always see things like that. But we're not on exhibition now. Look where I've led you. Amused and a little bewildered, he looked up and down the street, which was one of gaunt-faced apartment houses, old, sooty, frame boarding houses, small groceries, drugstores, laundries, and one room plumber shops, with the sign of a clairvoyant here and there. You see, she said, I've been leading you without you knowing it. Of course, that's because you're new to the town, and you give yourself up to the guidance of an old citizen. I'm not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean that I don't care where I follow so long as I follow you. Very well, she said, I'd like you to keep on following me, at least long enough for me to show you that there's something nicer ahead of us than this dingy street. Is that figurative, he asked? Might be, she returned gaily. There's a pretty little park at the end, but it's very proletarian, and nobody you and I know will be more likely to see us there than on this street. What an imagination you have, he exclaimed. You turn our proper little walk into a Parisian adventure. She looked at him in what seemed to be a momentary grave puzzlement. Perhaps you feel that a Parisian adventure mightn't please your relatives? Why, no, he returned. You seem to think of them oftener than I do. This appeared to amuse Alice, or at least to please her, for she laughed. Then I can afford to quit thinking of them, I suppose. It's only that I used to be quite a friend of Mildred's, but there we needn't go into that. I've never been a friend of Henrietta Lambs, though, and I almost wish she weren't taking such pains to be a friend of yours. Oh, but she's not. It's all on account of—on Mildred's account. Alice finished this for him, coolly. Yes, of course. It's on account of the two families, he was at pains to explain, a little awkwardly. It's because I'm a relative of the Palmer's, and the Palmer's and the Lambs seem to be old friends. Seeing the Adamses certainly are not, Alice said, not with either of them, 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 the Adamses don't get on with each other, and we've just about come to the breaking point as it happens. I hope it's nothing to bother you. Why? A lot of things bother me. I'm sorry they do, he said, and seemed simply to mean it. She nodded, gratefully. That's nice of you, Mr. Russell, it helps. The break between the Adamses and the Lambs is a pretty bothersome thing. It's been coming on a long time. She sighed deeply, and the sigh was half genuine, that half being for her father, but the other half probably belonged to her instinctive rendering of Juliet Capulet, daughter to a warring house. I hate it all so, she added. Of course, you must. I suppose most quarrels between families are on account of business, she said. That's why they're so sordid. Certainly the Lambs seem a sordid lot to me, though, of course I'm biased. And with that she began to sketch a history of the commercial antagonism that had risen between the Adamses and the Lambs. The sketching was spontaneous and dramatic. Mathematics had no part in it, nor was there accurate definition of Mr. Adams's relation to the institution of Lam and Company. The point was clouded, in fact, though that might easily be set down to the general haziness of young ladies confronted with the mysteries of trade or commerce. Mr. Adams either had been a vague sort of junior member of the firm had appeared, or else he should have been made some such thing. At all events, he was an old mainstay of the business, and he, as much as any lamb, had helped to build up the prosperity of the company. But at last, tired of providing so much intelligence and energy for which other people took profit greater than his own, he had decided to leave the company and found a business entirely for himself. The Lambs were going to be enraged when they learned what was afoot. Such was the impression a little misted wrought by Alice's quick narrative. But there was dolerous fact behind it. Adams had succumbed. His wife, grave and nervous, rather than triumphant in success, had told their daughter that the great J.A. would be furious and possibly vindictive. Adams was afraid of him, she said. But what for, Mama, Alice asked, since this seemed a turn of affairs out of reason. What in the world has Mr. Lam to do with Papas 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 would he be angry for? Mrs. Adams gave Alice an uneasy glance, hesitated, and then explained that a resignation from Lambs had always been looked upon, especially by that old man, as treachery. You were supposed to die in the service, she said bitterly. And her daughter, a little mystified, accepted this exclamation. Adams had not spoken to her of his surrender. He seemed not inclined to speak to her at all, or to anyone. 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 an account of what Papas is going to throw over the Lambs business for. To save your life, you couldn't imagine what he's going to do. I won't try, then, Russell assented. It takes all the romance out of me, she laughed. You'll never go for a Parisian walk with me again after I tell you what I'll be heiress to. They had come to the entrance of the little park, and, as Alice had said, it was a pretty place, especially on a day so radiant. Trees of the oldest forest stood there, hail 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 all about it until we get nearly home again, Alice said, as they began to saunter down one of the graveled paths. There's a bench beside the spring farther on. We can sit there and talk about a lot of other things. Things not so sticky as my dowry's going to be. Sticky, he echoed. What in the world? She laughed, despairingly. A glue factory. Then he laughed, too, as much from friendliness as from amusement, and she remembered to tell him that the project of a glue factory was still an Adam's secret. It would be known soon, however, she added, and the whole lamb connection would probably begin saying all sorts of things, heaven knew what. Thus Alice built her walls of flimsy, working always gaily, or with at least the air of gaiety. And even as she rattled on, there was somewhere in her mind a constant little wonder. Everything she said seemed to be necessary to support something else, she had said. How had it happened? She found herself telling him that since her father had decided on making so great a change in his ways, she and her mother hoped at last to persuade him to give up that foolish little house he had been so obstinate about. And she checked herself abruptly on this declivity just as she was about to slide into a remark concerning her own preference for a country place. Discretion caught her in time and something else, in company with discretion, caught her, for she stopped short in her talk and blushed. They had taken possession of the bench beside the spring by this time, and Russell, his elbow on the back of the bench and his chin in his hand, the better to look at her, had no guess as to 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 and 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 still can have a little laugh running in it. He was puzzled. "'Give Henrietta the chance?' "'You know. You'll let me keep on being unfair, won't you? Not give the other girls a chance to get even?' He promised, heartily. CHAPTER XV Alice had said that no one who knew either Russell or herself would be likely to see them in the park or upon the dingy street, but although they returned by that same ungentile 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 working man 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 tradesmen is exerted to lure indoors the passing glance, since if the glance is pleased the feat may follow. But this alleged tobacconist and his neighbors 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. Town was a series of soot-harried frame-two-story houses, once part of a cheerful neighborhood when the town was middle-aged and settled and not old and growing. These houses, all carrying the label Rooms, had the worried look of vacancy that houses have when they are too full of everybody without being anybody's home. And there was, too, a surreptitious air about them, as if, like the false little shops, they advertised something by concealing it. One of them, the one next to the barbershop, had, across its front, an ample jigsawed veranda, where, a four-time, no doubt, the father of a family had fanned himself with a palm-leaf fan on Sunday afternoons, watching the surreys go by, and where his daughter listened to mandolins and badinage on starlit evenings. But although youth still held the veranda, both the youth and the veranda were in decay. The four or five young men who lounged there this afternoon were of a type known to shady pool-parlours. Hats found no favour with them, all of them wore caps, and their tight clothes, apparently from a common source, showed of a vacious fancy for oblique pockets, false belts, and Easter egg colourings. Another thing common to the group was the expression of eye and mouth, and Alice, in the midst of her other thoughts, had a distasteful thought about this. The veranda was within a dozen feet of the sidewalk, and as she and her escort came nearer, she took note of the young men, her face hardening a little, even before she suspected there might be a resemblance between them and anyone she knew. Then she observed that each of these loungers wore, not for the occasion, but as of habit, a look of furtively amused contempt. The mouth smiled to one side as if not to dislodge a cigarette, while the eyes kept languidly superior. All at once Alice was reminded of Walter, and the slight frown caused by this idea had just begun to darken her forehead when Walter himself stepped out of the open door of the house and appeared upon the veranda. Upon his head was a new straw hat, and in his hand was a malacca stick with an ivory top, for Alice had finally decided against it for herself, and had given it to him. His mood was lively, he twirled the stick through his fingers like a drum-major's baton, and whistled loudly. Moreover he was indeed accompanied. With him was a thin girl who had made a violent black and white poster of herself. Black dress, black flimsy boa, black stockings, white slippers, great black hat down upon the black eyes, and beneath the hat a curve of cheek and chin made white as whitewash, and in strong bilateral motion with gum. The loungers on the veranda were familiars of the pair, hailed them with cacklings, and one began to sing in a voice all tin. Then my skirt, sal, and me did go, right straight to the moving picture-show. O you bashful vamp! The girl laughed airily. God, but you guys are wise, she said. Come on, Wally. Walter stared at his sister, then grinned faintly and nodded at Russell as the latter lifted his hat in salutation. Alice uttered an incoherent syllable of exclamation, and as she began to walk faster she bit her lip hard, not in order to look wistful this time, but to help keep her tears of anger from her eyes. Russell laughed cheerfully. Your brother certainly seems to have found the place for colour today, he said. That girl's talk must be full of it. But Alice had forgotten the colour she herself had used in accounting for Walter's peculiarities, and she did not understand. What! she said, huskily. Don't you remember telling me about him how he was going to write, probably, and would go anywhere to pick up types and get them to talk? She kept her eyes ahead and said sharply, I think his literary tastes scarcely cover this case. Don't be too sure. He didn't look at all disconcerted. He didn't seem to mind your seeing him. That's all the worse, isn't it? Why now, her friend said, genially. It means he didn't consider that he was engaged in anything out of the way. You can't expect to understand everything boys do at his age. They do all sorts of queer things and outgrow them. Your brother evidently has a taste for queer people, and very likely he's been at least half sincere when he's made you believe he had a literary motive behind it. We all go through. Thanks, Mr. Russell, she interrupted. Let's don't say any more. He looked at her flushed face and enlarged eyes, and he liked her all the better for her indignation. This was how good sisters ought to feel, he thought, failing to understand that most of what she felt was not about Walter. He ventured only a word more. Try not to mind it so much. It really doesn't amount to anything. She shook her head, and they went on in silence. She did not look at him again until they stopped before her own house. Then she gave him only one glimpse of her eyes before she looked down. It's spoiled, isn't it, she said, in a low voice. What's spoiled? Our walk? Well, everything. Somehow it always is. Always is what, he asked. Spoiled, she said. He laughed at that, but without looking at him, she suddenly offered him her hand. And as he took it he felt a hurried, violent pressure upon his fingers, as if she meant to thank him almost passionately for being kind. She was gone before he could speak to her again. In her room, with the door locked, she did not go to her mirror but to her bed, flinging herself face down, not caring how far the pillows put her hat awry. Sheer grief had followed her anger. Grief for the calamitous end of her bright afternoon. Grief for the end of everything, as she thought then. Nevertheless, she gradually grew more composed, and when her mother tapped on the door presently, let her in. Mrs. Adams looked at her with quick apprehension. Oh, poor child, wasn't he? Alice told her. You see how it made me look, Mama, she quavered, having concluded her narrative. I had 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 believe them. That's all he'd think, don't you see? Alice's wet eyes began to show a little hopefulness. You honestly think it might be that way, Mama? Why, from what you've told me, he said, I know it's that way. Didn't he say he wanted to come again? No, Alice said, uncertainly. But I think he will. At least I begin to think so now. He—she stopped. From all you tell me, he seems to be a very desirable young man, Mrs. Adams said, primly. Her daughter was silent for several moments. Then new tears gathered upon her downcast lashes. He's just—dear, she faltered. Mrs. Adams nodded. He's told you he isn't engaged, hasn't he? No, but I know he isn't. Maybe when he first came here he was near it, but I know he's not. I guess Mildred Palmer would like him to be all right. Mrs. Adams was frank enough to say, rather triumphantly, and Alice, with a lowered head, murmured, anybody would. The words were all but inaudible. Don't you worry, her mother said, and patted her on the shoulder. Everything will come out all right. Don't you fear, Alice? Can't you see that beside any other girl in town you're just a perfect queen? Do you think any young man that wasn't prejudiced or something would need more than just one look to? But Alice moved away from the caressing hand. Never mind, Mama. I wonder he looks at me at all. And if he does again, after seeing my brother with those horrible people— Now, now, Mrs. Adams interrupted, expostulating mournfully. I'm sure Walter's a good boy. You are? Alice cried, with a sudden vigor. You are? I'm sure he's good, yes, and if he isn't, it's not his fault. It's mine. What nonsense! No, it's true, Mrs. Adams lamented. I tried to bring him up to be good, God knows, and when he was little he was the best boy I ever saw. When he came from Sunday school he would always run to me and would go over the lesson together. And he let me come into his room at night to hear his prayers almost until he was sixteen. Most boys wouldn't do that with their mothers, not nearly that long. I tried so hard to bring him up right. But if anything's gone wrong it's my fault. How could it be? You've just said, it's because I didn't make your father take this new step earlier. Then Walter might have had all the advantages that other, oh, Mama, please, Alice begged her. Let's don't go over all that again. Isn't it more important to think what's to be done about him? Is he going to be allowed to go on disgracing us as he does? Mrs. Adams sighed profoundly. I don't know what to do, she confessed, unhappily. Your father's so upset about this new step he's taking. I don't feel as if we ought to. No, no, Alice cried. Papa mustn't be distressed with this on top of everything else. But something's got to be done about Walter. What can be, her mother asked helplessly. What can be? Alice admitted she didn't know. At dinner an hour later Walter's habitually veiled glance lifted now and then to touch her furtively. He was waiting, as he would have said, for her to spring it. But he had prepared a brief and sincere defence to the effect that he made his own living and would like to inquire whose business it was to offer intrusive comment upon his private conduct. But she said nothing, while his father and mother were as silent as she. Walter concluded that there was to be no attack, but changed his mind when his father, who ate only a little and broodingly at that, rose to leave the table and spoke to him. Walter, he said, when you've finished, I wish you'd come up to my room. I've got something I want to say to you. Walter shot a hard look at his apathetic sister, then turned to his father. Make it to-morrow, he said. This is Saturday night and I've got a date. No, Adam said, frowning. You come up before you go out. It's important. All right, I've had all I want to eat. Walter returned. I got a few minutes. Make it quick. He followed his father upstairs, and when they were in the room together, Adam shut the door, sat down, and began to rub his knees. The boy inquired slyly, that what you want to talk to me about? No. But Adam's did not go on. He seemed to be in difficulties for words, and Walter decided to help him. Hop ahead and spring it, he said. Get it off your mind. I'll tell the world I should worry. You aren't going to bother me any, so why bother yourself? Alice hopped home and told you she saw me playing around with some pretty gay-looking berries, and you? Alice? His father said, obviously surprised. It's nothing about Alice. Didn't she tell you? I haven't talked with her all day. Oh, I see, Walter said. She told Mother, and Mother told you. No, neither of them have told me anything. What was there to tell? Walter laughed. Oh, it's nothing, he said. I was just starting out to buy a girlfriend of mine, a rhinestone buckle. I lost her on a bet this afternoon, and Alice came along with that big rustle-fish, and I thought she looked sore. She expects me to like the kind she likes, and I don't like them. I thought she'd probably got you all stirred up about it. No, no, his father said, peevishly. I don't know anything about it, and I don't care to know anything about it. I want to talk to you about something important. Then, as he was again silent, Walter said, well, talk about it, I'm listening. It's this, Adams began, heavily. It's about me going into this glue business. Your mother's told you, hasn't she? She said you were going to leave the old place downtown and start a glue factory. That's all I know about it. I got my own affairs to tend to. Well, this is your affair, his father said, frowning. You can't stay with Lamb and Company. Walter looked a little startled. What do you mean I can't? Why not? You've got to help me, Adams explained, slowly, and he frowned more deeply, as if the interview were growing increasingly laborious for him. It's going to be a big pull to get this business on its feet. Yes, Walter exclaimed, with a sharp skepticism. I should say it was. He stared at his father incredulously. Look here, aren't you just a little bit sudden the way you're going about things? You've let mother shove you a little too fast, haven't you? Do you know anything about what it means to set up a new business these days? Yes, I know all about it, Adams said, about this business I do. How do you? Because I made a long study of it. I'm not afraid of going about it the wrong way, but it's a hard job, and you'll have to put in all whatever sense and strength you've got. Walter began to breathe quickly, and his lips were agitated. Then he set them obstinately. Oh, I will, he said. Yes, you will, Adams returned, not noticing that his son's inflection was satiric. It's going to take every bit of energy in your body, and all the energy I got left in mine, and every scent 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 lambs by the end of next week. Oh, I will! Walter's voice grew louder, and there was a shrillness in it. I got to quit lambs at the end of next week, have I? He stepped forward angrily. Listen, he said. I'm not walking out of lambs, see? I'm not quitting down there. I stay with them, see? Adams looked up at him, astonished. You'll leave there next Saturday, he said. I've got to have you. You don't expect anything of the kind, Walter told him sharply. Do you expect to pay me anything? I'd pay you about what you'd been getting down there. Then pay somebody else. I don't know anything about glue. You get somebody else. No, you've got to. Walter cut him off with the utmost vehemence. Don't tell me what I got to do. I know what I got to do better than you, I guess. I stay at lambs, see? Adams rose angrily. You'll do what I tell you. You can't stay down there. Why can't I? Because I won't let you. Listen, keep on not letting 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 where I'm going. Why won't they? You don't think they're going to be all shot to pieces over losing you, do you? I tell you they won't let you stay, his father insisted, loudly. Why, what do they care whether you go or not? They'll care enough to fire you, my boy. Look here, then. Show me why. They'll do it. Yes, Walter jeered. You keep saying they will, but when I ask you to show me why, you keep saying they will. That makes little headway with me, I can tell you. Adams groaned, and rubbing his head began to pace the floor. Walter's refusal was something he had not anticipated, and he felt the weakness of his own attempt to meet it. He seemed powerless to do anything but utter angry words, which, as Walter said, made little headway. Oh, my, my, he muttered. Oh, my, my. Walter, usually sallow, had grown pale. He washed 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 going 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 as 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. Adam stopped his pacing abruptly and stared at him. Make it worth your while. What do you mean? I got a good use for $300 right now, Walter said. Let me have it, and I'll quit Lamb's to work for you. Don't let me have it, and I swear I won't. Are you crazy? Is everybody crazy that needs $300? Yes, Adam said. They are if they ask me for it when I got to stretch every cent I can lay my hands on to make it look like a dollar. You won't do it. Adam's burst out at him. You little fool, if I had $300 to throw away, besides the pay I expect to give you, haven't you sense enough to see I could hire a man worth $300 more to me than you'd be? It's a fine time to ask me for $300, isn't it? What for? Rhinestone buckles to throw around your girlfriends? Shame on you. Ask me to bribe you to help yourself and your own family. I'll give you a last chance, Walter said. Either you do what I want, or I won't do what you want. Don't ask me again after this, because Adam's interrupted him fiercely. Ask you again. Don't worry about that, my boy. All I ask you is to get out of my room. Look here, Walter said quietly, and his lopsided smile distorted his livid cheek. Look here. I expect you wouldn't give me $300 to save my life, would you? You make me sick, Adam said in his bitterness. Get out of here. Walter went out whistling, and Adam's drooped into his old chair again as the door closed. Oh, my, my, he groaned. Oh, lordy, lordy, the way of the transgressor. End of Chapter 15. He meant his own transgression and his own way, for Walter's stubborn refusal appeared to Adam's, just then, as one of the inexplicable but righteous besettings he must encounter in following that way. Oh, lordy, lord, he groaned, and then, as resentment moved him, that dang boy, dang idiot! Yet he knew himself for a greater idiot, because he had not been able to tell Walter the truth. He could not bring himself to do it, nor even to state his case in its best terms, and that was because he felt that even in its best terms the case was a bad one. Of all his regrets, the greatest was that in a moment of vanity and tenderness twenty-five years ago he had told his young wife a business secret. He had wanted to show how important her husband was becoming, and how much the head of the universe, J. A. Lamb, trusted to his integrity and ability. The great man had an idea. He thought of branching out a little, he told Adam's, and there were possibilities of profit in glue. What he wanted was a liquid glue to be put into little bottles and sold cheaply. That kind of thing sells itself, he said, the kind of thing that pays its own small way as it goes along until it has profits enough to begin advertising it right. Everybody has got to use glue, and if I make mine convenient and cheap everybody will buy mine. But it's got to be glue that'll stick. It's got to be the best. And if we find how to make it, we've got to keep it a big secret, of course, or anybody can steal it from us. There was a man here last month. He knew a formula he wanted to sell me, sight unseen. But he was in such a hurry I got suspicious, and I found he'd managed to steal it, working for the big packers and their glue works. We've got to find a better glue than that, anyhow. I'm going to set you and Campbell at it. You are a practical, wide-awake young feller, and Campbell's a mighty good chemist. I guess you two boys ought to make something happen. His guess was shrewd enough. Working in a shed, a little way outside the town, where their cheery employer visited them sometimes to study their malodorous stews, the two young men found what Lamb had set them to find. But Campbell was thoughtful over the discovery. Look here, he said. Why ain't this just about yours and mine? After all, it may be Lamb's money that's paid for the stuff we've used, but it hasn't cost much. But he pays us, Adams remonstrated, horrified by his companion's idea. He paid us to do it. It belongs absolutely to him. Oh, I know he thinks it does, Campbell admitted, plaintively. I suppose we've got to let him take it. It's not patentable, and he'll have to do pretty well by us when he starts his factory, because he's got to depend on us to run the making of the stuff, so that the workmen can't get on to the process. You better ask him the same salary I do, and mine's going to be pretty high. But the high salary, thus pleasantly imagined, was never paid. Campbell died of typhoid fever that summer, leaving Adams and his employer the only possessors of the formula, an unwritten one. And Adams, pleased to think himself more important to the great man than ever, told his wife that there could be little doubt of his being put in sole charge of the prospective glue-works. Unfortunately, the enterprise remained prospective. Its projector had already become unveiled in another sideline, as he told Adams. One of his sons had persuaded him to take up a cough lossage, to be called the Jalaam Baam Troki. And the lossage did well enough to amuse Mr. Lamb and occupy his spare time, which was really about all he had asked of the glue-project. He had all the money anybody ought to want, he said, when Adams urged him. And he could start up this little glue sideline at any time. The formula was safe in their two heads. At intervals Adams would seek opportunity to speak of the little glue sideline to his patron, and suggest that the years were passing, but Lamb, petting the other hobbies, had lost interest. Oh, I'll start it up some day, maybe. If I don't, I may turn it over to my heirs. It's always an asset worth something or other, of course. We'll probably take it up some day, though, you and I. The sun persistently declined to rise on that day, and as time went on, Adams saw that his rather timid urgings bored his employer, and he ceased to bring up the subject. Lamb apparently forgot all about glue, but Adams discovered that, unfortunately, there was someone else who remembered it. It's really yours, she argued, that painful day when, for the first time, she suggested his using his knowledge for the benefit of himself and his family. Mr. Campbell might have had a right to part of it, but he died and didn't leave any kin, so it belongs to you. Suppose J. A. Lamb hires me to saw some wood, Adams said. Would the sticks belong to me? He hasn't got any right to take your invention and bury it, she protested. What good is it doing him if he doesn't do anything with it? What good is it doing anybody? None in the world. And what harm would it do him if you went ahead and did this all 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 him? Nothing but decency, he answered, and she had her ready reply for that. It seemed to him that strife as he would he could not reach her mind with even the plainest language, while everything that she said to him with such vehemence sounded like so much obstinate gibberish. Over and over he pressed her with the same illustration on the point of ownership, though he thought he was varying it. Suppose he hired me to build him a house. Would that be my house? He didn't hire you to build him a house. You and Campbell invented. Look here. Suppose you give a cook a soup-bone and some vegetables and pay her to make you a soup. Does she got the right to take it and sell it? You know better. I know one thing. If that old man tried to keep your own invention from you, he's no better than a robber. They never found any point of contact in all their passionate discussions of this ethical question, and the question was no more settled between them now that Adams had succumbed than it had ever been. But at least the wrangling about it was over. They were graved together, almost silent, and an uneasiness prevailed with her as much as with him. He had already been out of the house to walk around the small green yard, and on Monday afternoon he sent for a taxi-cab and went downtown, but kept a long way from the whole sale section where stood the formidable old oblong pile of lamb and company. He arranged for the sale of the bonds he had laid away and for placing a mortgage upon his house, and on his way home after five o'clock he went to see an old friend, a man whose term of service with lamb and company was even a little longer than his own. This veteran, returned from the day's work, was sitting in front of the apartment house where he lived, but when the cab stopped at the curb he rose and came forward, offering a jocular greeting. Well, well, Virgil Adams, I always thought you had a sporty streak in you. Travel in your own hired private automobile nowadays, do you? Pamper in yourself because you're still laying off sick, I expect? Oh, I'm well enough again, Charlie Law, 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've been practically well for some time, he said. I'm fixin' to get into harness again. Bein' sick has certainly produced a change of heart in you, his friend laughed. You're the last man I ever expected to see blowin' yourself, or anybody else, to a taxi cab. For that matter I never heard of you bein' in any kind of a cab, lestin' it might be when you were Paul-bearer for somebody. Let's come over you. Well, I got to turn over a new leaf, and that's a fact, Adams said. I got a lot to do, and the only way to accomplish it, it's got to be done soon, or I won't have anything to live on while I'm doing it. What are 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, What is, Charlie-Lor, I've been thinkin' likely I wouldn't come back. What? What are you talkin' about? Nope, Adams said. I've been thinkin' I might likely kind of branch out on my own account. Well, I'll be doggone. Old Charlie-Lor was amazed. He ruffled up his gray moustache with thumb and forefinger, leaving his mouth open beneath, like a dark cave under a tangled wintry thicket. Well, that's the doggonest thing I ever heard, he said. I already am the oldest inhabited down here, but if you go, there won't be anybody else of the old generation at all. What on earth are you thinkin' I goin' into? Well, said Adams, I'd rather you didn't mention it till I get started. Of course, anybody'll know what it is by then, but I have been kind of planning to put a liquid glue on the market. His friend, still ruffling the gray moustache upward, stared at him in frowning perplexity. Glue, he said. Glue? Yeah. I've been sorta millin' over the idea of takin' up somethin' like that. Handling it for some farm, you mean. Nope, makin' it. Sort of a glue-works likely. Lore continued to frown. Let me think, he said. Didn't the old man have some such idea once himself? Adams leaned forward, rubbing his knees, and he coughed again before he spoke. Well, yes, fact is, he did. That is to say, a mighty long while ago he did. I remember, said Lore. He never said anything about it that I know of, but seems to me I recollect we had sort of a rumor around the place, how you and that man—let's see, what wasn't his name, Campbell, that died a typhoid fever? Yeah, that was it, Campbell. Didn't the old man have you and Campbell work in some sort of private on some glue proposition or other? Yes, he did, Adams nodded. I found out a good deal about glue, then, too. Been workin' on it since, I suppose. Yes, kept it in my mind, and studied out new things about it. Lore looked serious. Well, let's see here, he said. I hope it ain't anything the old 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 him from doin' it. Yes, at eighty he would. Not that I mean, I think you might be tryin' to get the better of him, Verge. You're a mighty close old cauder, but such a thing ain't in ya. What I mean, I hope there ain't any chance for the old man to think you might be. Oh, no, Adams interrupted. As a matter of fact, I don't believe he'll have ever thought about it at all, and if he did, he wouldn't have any real right to feel offended at me. The process I'm gonna use is what I expect to change and improve a lot different from the one Campbell and I worked on for him. Well, that's good, said Lore. Of course, you know what you're up to. You're old enough, God knows. He laughed, roofily. My, but it will seem funny to me, down there with you gone. I expect you and I both been gettin' to pretty much deadwood 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 old man yet? Well, Adams spoke laboriously. No, no, I haven't. I thought, well, that's what I wanted to see you about. What can I do? I thought I'd write him a letter and get you to hand it to him for me. My soul, his friend exclaimed, why on earth don't you just go down there and tell him? Adams became piteously embarrassed. He stammered, coughed, stammered again, wrinkling his face so deeply he seemed about to weep. But finally he contrived to utter an apologetic laugh. I ought to do that, of course, but in some way or other I just don't seem to be able to. I can't manage it. Why in the world not? The mystified Lore inquired. I could hardly tell you, lest it is to say that when you've been with one boss all your life it's 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 is the only satisfactory way to do it, and I thought I'd ask you to hand it to him. Of course I don't mind doing that for you, Lore 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 kind of 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 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, so I'll have to 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 happened to say about it, and you could tell me afterward. All right, Lord said. Certainly if you'd rather do it that way I'll hand it to him and tell you what he says. That is, if he says anything and I hear him. Got it written? No. I'll send it around to you the last of the week. Adams moved toward his taxicab. Don't say anything to anybody about it, Charlie, especially to laugh to that. All right. And, Charlie, I'll be mighty obliged to you, Adams said, and he came back to shake hands and farewell. There's one more thing you might do. If you ever happened to feel like it, he kept his eyes rather vaguely fixed on a point above his friend's head as he spoke, and his voice was not well controlled. I've been down there a good many years, and I might not have been so much used lately as I was at first, but I always tried to do my best for the old firm. If anything turned out, so as they did kind of take offence with me down there, why, just say a good word for me if you happen to feel like it, maybe. But Charlie Lohr assured him that he would speak a good word if the 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. Old Verge Adams, he told her, he's out again after his long spell of sickness, and the way it looks to me, he'd a better state in bed. You mean he still looks too bad to be out? Oh, I expect he's getting his health back, Lohr said, frowning. Then what's the matter with him? You mean he's lost his mind? My goodness, women do jump at conclusions, he exclaimed. Well, said Mrs. Lohr, what other conclusion did you leave me to jump at? Her husband explained with a little heat. People can have a sickness that affects their mind, can't it? Their mind can get some affected without being lost, can't it? Then you mean the poor man's mind does seem affected? Well, no, I'd scarcely go as far as that, Lohr said inconsistently, and declined to be more definite. Adams devoted the latter part of that evening to the composition of his letter, a disquieting task not completed when, at eleven o'clock, he heard his daughter coming up the stairs. She was singing to herself in a low, sweet voice, and Adams paused to listen incredulously, with his pen lifted and his mouth open, as if he heard the strangest sound in the world. Then he sent down the pen upon a blotter, went to his door, and opened it, looking out at her as she came. Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty good, he said. Where you been? Just sitting out on the front steps, Papa? All alone, I suppose. No, Mr. Russell called. Oh, he did! Adams pretended to be surprised. What all could you and he find to talk about till this hour of the night? She laughed gaily. You don't know me, Papa. How's that? You never found out that I always do all the talking. Did you let him get a word in all evening? Oh, yes, every now and then. Adams took her hand and petted it. Well, what did he say? Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him. Not what you think, she laughed, then slapped his cheek with saucy affection, pirouetted across the narrow hall and into her own room, and curtsied to him as she closed her door. Adams went back to his writing with a lighter heart, for since Alice was born she had been to him the apple of his eye, his own phrase in thinking of her, and what he was doing now was for her. He smiled as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft of that painful letter, but presently he looked puzzled. After all, she could be happy just as things were, it seemed. Then why had he taken what his wife called this new step, which he had so long resisted? He could only sigh and wonder. Life works out pretty peculiarly, he thought, for he couldn't go back now, though the reason he couldn't was not clearly apparent. He had to go ahead. CHAPTER XVII. He was out in his taxicab again the next morning, and by noon he had secured what he wanted. It was curiously significant that he worked so quickly. All the years during which his wife had pressed him toward his present shift, he had sworn to himself, as well as to her, that he would never yield. And yet when he did yield he had no plans to make, because he found them already prepared and worked out in detail in his mind, as if he had long contemplated the step he believed himself incapable of taking. Sometimes he had thought of improving his income by exchanging his little collection of bonds for a small rental property if he could find a good buy, and he had spent many of his spare hours rambling over the enormously spreading city and its perlews, looking for the ideal buy. It remained unattainable so far as he was concerned, but he found other things. Not twice a crow's-mile from his own house there was a dismal and slummish quarter, a decayed industrial district of earlier days. Most of the industries were small, some of them died, perishing of bankruptcy or fire, and a few had moved, leaving their shells. Of the relics the best was a brick building which had been the largest and most important factory in the quarter. It had been injured by a long vacancy, almost as serious as a fire, in effect, and Adams had often guessed at the sum needed to put it into repair. When he passed it he would look at it with an interest which he supposed detached and idly speculative. That had be just the thing he thought. If a fellow had some money, and took a notion to set up some new business on a big scale, this would be a pretty good place. It would make glue, for instance, if that wasn't out of the question, of course. It would take a lot of money, though, a great deal too much for me to expect to handle, even if I'd ever dream of doing such a thing. Opposite the dismantled factory was a muddy, open lot of two acres or so, and near the middle of the lot a long brick shed stood in a desolate abandonment, not happily decorated by old coatings of theatrical and medicinal advertisements. But the brick shed had two wooden L's, and though both shed and L's were of a single story, here was empty space enough for a modest enterprise. Space enough for almost anything to start with, Adams thought, as he walked through the low buildings one day when he was prospecting in that section. Yes, I suppose I could swing this, he thought. If the process belonged to me, say, instead of being out of the question because it isn't my property, or if I was the kind of man to do such a thing anyhow, here would be something I could probably get hold of pretty cheap. They'd want a lot of money for a lease on that big building over the way, but this, I should think it would be practically nothing at all. Then by chance, meeting an agent he knew, he made inquiries, merely to satisfy a casual curiosity, he thought, and he found matters much as he had supposed, except that the owners of the big building did not wish to let but to sell it, and this at a price so exorbitant that Adams laughed. But the long brick shed in the great muddy lot was for sale or to let, or pretty near to be given away, he learned, if anybody would take it. Adams took it now, though without seeing that he had been destined to take it, and that some dreary wizard in the back of his head had foreseen all along that he would take it and planned to be ready. He drove in his taxicab to look the place over again, then downtown to arrange for a lease, and came home to lunch with his wife and daughter. Things were moving, he told them. He boasted a little of having acted so decisively and said that since the dang thing had to be done it was going to be done right. He was almost cheerful in a feverish way, and when the cab came for him again, soon after lunch, he explained that he intended not only to get things done right, but also to get him done quick. Alice, following him to the front door, looked at him anxiously and asked if she couldn't help. He laughed at her grimly. Then let me go along with you in the cab, she begged. You don't look able to start in so hard, Papa, just when you're barely beginning to get your strength back. Do let me go with you and see if I can't help, or at least take care of you if you should get to feeling badly. He declined, but upon pressure let her put a tiny bottle of spirits of ammonia in his pocket, and promised to make use of it if he felt faint or anything. Then he was off again, and the next morning had men at work in his sheds, though the wages he had to pay frightened him. He directed the workmen in every detail, hurrying them by example and exhortations, and receiving in consequence several declarations of independence as well as one resignation which took effect immediately. You capitalists seem to think a man's got nothing to do but break his back, padoos and wealth, for yous to squander, the resigning person loudly complained. You look out, the toiler's day is a coming, and it ain't so far off, neither. But the capitalist was already out of hearing, gone to find a man to take this orator's place. By the end of the week, Adams felt that he had moved satisfactorily forward in his preparations for the simple equipment he needed. But he hated the pause of a Sunday. He didn't want any rest, he told Alice impatiently, when she suggested that the idle day might be good for him. Late that afternoon he walked over to the apartment house where old Charlie Lorre lived, and gave his friend the letter he wanted the head of Lamb & Company to receive personally. I'll take it as a mighty great favour in you to hand it to him personally, Charlie, he said, in parting. And you won't forget, in case he says anything about it, and remember if you ever do get a chance to put in a good word for me later, you know. Old Charlie promised to remember, and when Mrs. Lorre came out of the kitchenette after the door closed, he said thoughtfully, just skin and bones. You mean Mr. Adams is? Mrs. Lorre inquired. What do you think I meant? He returned. One of these partridges on the wallpaper? Did he look so badly? Look kind of distracted to me, her husband replied. These little thinfellows can stand a heap sometimes, though. He'll be over here again Monday. Did he say he would? No, said Lorre, but he will. You'll see. He'll be over to find out what the big boss says when I give him this letter. Expect I'll be kind of anxious myself if I was him. Why would you? What's Mr. Adams doing to be so anxious about? Lorre's expression became one of reserve, the look of a man who was found that, when he speaks his inner thoughts, his wife jumps too far to conclusions. Oh, nothing, he said. Of course any man starting up a new business is bound to be pretty nervous awhile. He'll be over here tomorrow evening all right, you'll see. The prediction was fulfilled. Adams arrived just after Mrs. Lorre had removed the dinner dishes to her kitchenette, but Lorre 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 sitting at his desk with his side to me, and he never turned around full toward me, as it were, so I couldn't hardly even tell anything. All I know, he just read it. Well, but see here, Adams began nervously. Well, what, Virge? But what did he say when he did speak? He didn't speak, not so long as I was in there anyhow. He just sat there and read it, read kind of slow. Then when he came to the end he turned back and started to read it all over again. By that time there was three or four other men standing around in the office waiting to speak to him, and I had to go. Adams sighed and stared at the floor, irresolute. Well, I'll be getting along back home, then, I guess, Charlie, so you're sure you couldn't tell anything what he might have thought about it, then. Not a thing in the world, I've told you all I know, Virge. I guess so, I guess so, Adams said mournfully. I feel mighty obliged to you, Charlie Lore, mighty obliged. Good night to you. And he departed sighing in perplexity. On his way home, preoccupied with many thoughts, he walked so slowly that once or twice he stopped and stood motionless for a few moments without being aware of it, and when he reached the juncture of the sidewalk with the short brick path that led to his own front door he stopped again and stood for more than a minute. Ah! I wish I knew, he whispered, plaintively. I do wish I knew what he thought about it. He was roused by a laugh that came lightly from the little veranda nearby. Papa! Alice called out gaily. What are you standing there muttering to yourself about? Oh! Are you there, sweetie? He said, and came up the path. A tall figure rose from a chair on the veranda. Papa! This is Mr. Russell. The two men shook hands, Adams saying, pleased to make your acquaintance, as they looked at each other in the faint light diffused through the opaque glass in the upper part of the door. Adams' impression was of a strong and tall young man, fashionable but gentle, and Russell's was of a dried little old businessman with a grizzled mustache, worried bright eyes, shapeless dark clothes and a homely manner. This evening, Adams said further, as their hands parted. Nice time of year it is, but we don't always have as good weather as this. That's the trouble of it. Well—he went to the door. Well—I bid you good evening, he said, and retired within the house. Alice laughed. He's the old, fashionist man in town, I suppose, and frightfully impressed with you, I could see. What nonsense! said Russell. How could anybody be impressed with me? Why not? Because you're quiet, good gracious. Don't you know that you're the most impressive sort? We chatterers spend all our time playing to you quiet people. Yes, we're the only audience. Only, she echoed, why we live for you, and we can't live without you. I wish you couldn't, said Russell. That would be a new experience for both of us, wouldn't it? It might be a rather bleak one for me, she answered lightly. I'm afraid I'll miss these summer evenings with you when they're over. I'll miss them enough, thanks. Do they ever have to be over? He asked. Oh! Everything's over some time, isn't it? Russell laughed at her. Don't let's look so far ahead as that, he said. We don't need to be already thinking of the cemetery, do we? I didn't, she said, shaking her head. Our summer evenings will be over before then, Mr. Russell. Why? he asked. Could heavens, she said, there's laconic eloquence, almost a proposal and a single word. Never mind, I shan't hold you to it, but to answer you, well, I'm always looking ahead, and somehow I usually see about how things are coming out. Yes, he said, I suppose most of us do. At least it seems as if we did, because we so seldom feel surprised by the way they do come out. But maybe that's only because life isn't like a play in a theater, and most things come about so gradually we get used to them. No, I'm sure I can see quite a long way ahead, she insisted, gravely. And it doesn't seem to me as if our summer evenings could last very long. Something will interfere. Somebody will, I mean. They'll say something. What if they do? She moved her shoulders in a little apprehensive shiver. It'll change you, she said. I'm just sure something spiteful's going to happen to me. You'll feel differently about things. Now, isn't that an idea, he exclaimed? It will, she insisted. I know something spiteful's going to happen. You seem possessed by a notion not a bit flattering to me, he remarked. Oh, but isn't it? That's just what it is. Why isn't it? Because it implies that I'm made of such soft material, the slightest breeze will mess me all up. I'm not so like that as I evidently appear, and if it's true that we're afraid other people will do the things we'd most be likely to do ourselves. It seems to me that I ought to be the one to be afraid. I ought to be afraid that somebody may say something about me to you that will make you believe I'm a professional forger. No, we both know they won't, she said. We both know you're the sort of person everybody in the world says nice things about. She lifted her hand to silence him as he laughed about this. Oh, of course you are. I think perhaps you're a little flirtatious. Most quiet men have that one sly way with them. 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 would tell me of your wickedness, you see. Then let me break some news to you, Russell said. Nobody would tell me of yours either. Nobody's even mentioned you to me. She burlesced a cry of anguish. That is obscurity. I suppose I'm too apt to forget that they say the population's about half a million nowadays. There are other people to talk about, you feel that? 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 of me a better man than you do. What kind of a man do I think you are? The kind affected by what's said about people instead of by what they do themselves. Aren't you? No, I'm not, he said. If you want our summer evenings to be over, you'll have to drive me away yourself. Nobody else could? No. She was silent, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her clasped hands against her lips. Then, not moving, she said softly, well, I won't. She was silent again, and he said nothing, but looked at her, seeming to be content with looking. Her attitude was one only a graceful person, should assume, but she was graceful, and in the wanlight which made a prettily shaped mist of her, she had beauty. Perhaps it was beauty of the hour, and of the love scene almost made into form by what they had both just said, but she had it. And though beauty of the hour passes, he who sees it will long remember it, and the hour when it came. What are you thinking of, he asked? She leaned back in her chair and did not answer it once. Then she said, I don't know. I doubt if I was thinking of anything. It seems to me I wasn't. I think I was just sort of being sadly happy just then. Were you? Was it sadly too? Don't you know, she said. It seems to me that only little children can be just happily happy. I think when we get older, our happiest moments are like the one I had just then. It's as if we heard strains of minor music running through them. Oh, so sweet, but oh, so sad. But what makes it sad for you? I don't know, she said, in a lighter tone. Perhaps it's a kind of useless foreboding I seem to have pretty often. It may be that, or it may be poor papa. You are a funny, delightful girl, though, Russell laughed, when your father's so well again that he goes out walking in the evenings. He does too much walking, Alice said, too much altogether over at his new plant. But there isn't any stopping him. She laughed and shook her head. When a man gets an ambition to be a multi-millionaire, his family doesn't appear to have much weight with him. He'll walk all he wants to in spite of them. I suppose so, Russell said, absently. Then he leaned forward. I wish I could understand better why you were sadly happy. Meanwhile, as Alice shed what further light she could on this point, the man ambitious to be a multi-millionaire was indeed walking too much for his own good. He had gone to bed hoping to sleep well and rise early for a long day's work, but he could not rest. And now, in his nightgown and slippers, he was pacing the floor of his room. I wish I did know, he thought, over and over. I do wish I knew how he feels about it. End of CHAPTER XVII. CHAPTER XVIII. OF ALICE ADAMS. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Alice Adams by Booth-Tarkington, CHAPTER XVIII. That was a thought almost continuously in his mind, even when he was hardest at work. And as the days went on and he could not free himself, he became quarrelous about it. I guess I'm the biggest dang fool alive, he told his wife, as they sat together one evening. I got plenty else to bother me without worrying my head off about what he thinks. I can't help what he thinks. It's too late for that. So why should I keep pestering myself about it? It'll wear off, Virgil, Mrs. Adams said, reassuringly. She was gentle and sympathetic with him, and for the first time in many years he would come to sit with her and talk when he had finished his day's work. He had told her, evading her eye, oh, I don't blame you. You didn't get after me to do this on your own account. You couldn't help it. Yes, but it don't wear off, he complained. This afternoon I was showing the men how I wanted my vats to go, and I caught my fool self standing there, saying to my fool self, it's funny I don't hear how he feels about it from somebody. I was saying it aloud, almost, and it is funny I don't hear anything. Well, you see what it means, don't you, Virgil? It only means he hasn't said anything to anybody about it. Don't you think you're getting kind of morbid over it? Maybe. Maybe, he muttered. Why, yes, she said briskly. You don't realize what a little bit of a thing all this is to him. Long, 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 him, but he don't. But he's not thinking about this, so you'd have heard from him before now. Her husband shook his head. Ah, that's just it, he said. Why haven't I heard from him? It's all your morbidness, Virgil. Look at Walter. If Mr. Lamb held this up against you, would he still let Walter stay there? Wouldn't he have discharged Walter if he felt angry with you? That dang boy, Adams said. If he wanted to come with me now, I wouldn't hardly let him. What do you suppose makes him so bullheaded? But hasn't he the right to choose for himself, she asked? I suppose he feels the ought to stick to what he thinks his sure pay. As soon as he sees that you're going to succeed with the glue-works, he'll want to be with you quick enough. Well, he'd better get a little sense in his head, Adams returned, crossly. He wanted me to pay him a three hundred dollar bonus in advance when anybody with a grain of common sense knows I need every penny I can lay my hands on. Never mind, she said. He'll come around later and be glad of the chance. He'll have to beg for it then. I won't ask him again. Oh, Walter will come out all right. You needn't worry. And don't you see that Mr. Lamb's not discharging him means that there's no hard feelings against you, Virgil? I can't make it out at all, he said, frowning. The only thing I can think it means is that J.A. Lamb is so fair-minded, and of course he is one of the fair-mindedest men alive. I suppose that's the reason he hasn't fired Walter. He may know, Adams concluded, morosely. He may know that's just another thing to make me feel all the meaner, keeping my boy there on a salary after I've done him an injury. Now, now, she said, trying to comfort him. You couldn't do anybody an injury to save your life and everybody knows it. Well, anybody ought to know I wouldn't want to do an injury, this world isn't built so as we can do just what we want. He paused, reflecting. Of course, there may be one explanation of why Walter's still there. J.A. maybe hasn't noticed that he is there. There's so many I expect he hardly knows him by sight. Well, just do quit thinking about it, she urged him. It only bothers you without doing any good. Don't you know that? Don't I, though? He laughed, feebly. I know it better than anybody. How funny that is. When you know thinking about a thing only pesters you without helping anything at all, yet you keep right on pestering yourself with it. But why, she said? What's the use when you know you haven't done anything wrong, Virgil? You said yourself you were going to improve the process so much it would be really different from the old one, and you'd really have a right to it. Adams had persuaded himself of this when he yielded. He had found it necessary to persuade himself of it, though there was a part of him, of course, that remained unpersuaded. And this discomforting part of him was what made his present trouble. Yes, I know, he said. That's true. But I can't quite seem to get away from the fact that the principle of the process is a good deal the same. Well, it's more than that. It's just about the same as the one he hired Campbell and me to work out for him. Truth is, nobody could tell the difference, and I don't know as there is any difference, except in these improvements I'm making. Of course, the improvements do give me pretty near a perfect right to it, as a person might say, and that's one of the things I thought of putting in my letter to him. But I was afraid he'd just think I was trying to make up excuses, so I left it out. I kind of worried all the time I was writing that letter, because if he thought I was just making up excuses, why, it might set him just so much more against me. Ever since Mrs. Adams had found that she was to have her way, the depths of her eyes had been troubled by a continuous uneasiness. And although she knew it was there, and sometimes veiled it by keeping the revealing eyes averted from her husband and children, she could not always cover it under the assumption of absent-mindedness. The uneasy look became vivid, and her voice was slightly tremulous now as she said, but what if he should be against you? Although I don't believe he is, of course. You told me he couldn't do anything to you, Virgil. No, he said slowly. I can't see how he could do anything. It was just a secret, not a patent. The thing ain't patentable. I've tried to think what he could do, supposing he was to want to, but I can't figure out anything at all that would be any harm to me. There is in any way in the world that could be made a question of law. Only thing he could do would be to tell people his side of it and set him against me. I've been kind of waiting for that to happen all along. She looked somewhat relieved. So did I expect it, she said. I was dreading it most on Alice's account. It might have—well, young men are so easily influenced in all. But so far as the business is concerned, what if Mr. Lamb did talk? That wouldn't amount to much. It wouldn't affect the business, not to hurt. And besides, he isn't even doing that. No, anyhow not yet, it seems. And Adam sighed again wistfully. But I would give a good deal to know what he thinks. Before his surrender he had always supposed that if he did such an unthinkable thing as to seize upon the glue process for himself, what he would feel must be an overpowering shame. But shame is the rarest thing in the world. What he felt was this unremittant curiosity about his old employer's thoughts. It was an obsession, yet he did not want to hear what Lamb thought from Lamb himself, for Adams had a second obsession, and this was his dread of meeting the old man face to face. Such an encounter could happen only by chance and unexpectedly, since Adams would have avoided any deliberate meeting so long as his legs had strength to carry him, even if Lamb came up to the house to see him. But people do meet unexpectedly, and when Adams had to be downtown he kept away from the wholesale district. One day he did see Lamb as the latter went by in his car, impassive, going home to lunch, and Adams, in the crowd at a corner, knew that the old man had not seen him. Nevertheless, in a street car on the way back to his sheds an hour later he was still subject to little shivering seizures of horror. He worked unceasingly, seeming to keep at it even in his sleep, for he always woke in the midst of a planning and estimating that must have been going on in his mind before consciousness of himself returned. Moreover, the work, thus urged, went rapidly, in spite of the high wages he had to pay his laborers for their short hours. It eats money, he complains, and in fact by the time his vats and boilers were in place it had eaten almost all he could supply. But in addition to his equipment he now owned a stock of raw material, raw indeed, and when operation should be a little further along he was confident his banker would be willing to carry him. Six weeks from the day he had obtained his lease he began his glue-making. The terrible smells came out of the shed 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, colored 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 colored people decorate their communications. They flavored metaphor, simile, and invective with it, and thus may be said to have enjoyed it. But the man who produced it took a hot bath as soon as he reached his home the evening of that first day when his manufacturing began. Then he put on fresh clothes, but after dinner he seemed to be haunted, and asked his wife if she noticed anything. She laughed and inquired what he meant. Used to me as if that glue-work spell hadn't quit hanging onto me, he explained. Don't you notice it? No. What an idea! He laughed, too, but uneasily, and told her he was sure the dang glue smell was somehow sticking to him. Later he went outdoors and walked up and down the small yard in the dusk, but now and then he stood still with his head lifted and sniffed the air suspiciously. Can you smell it? He called to Alice, who sat upon the veranda, prettily dressed and waiting in a reverie. Smell what, Papa? The dang glue-works. She did the same thing her mother had done, laughed, and said, No, how foolish! My Papa, it's over two miles from here. You don't get it at all? He insisted. The idea! The air is lovely to-night, Papa. The air did not seem lovely to him, for he was positive that he smelled 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 stirring up this old neighbourhood with more than the smell, his foreman remarked one morning. How's that? Adams inquired. That great, big, enormous, old dead butterine factory across the street from our lot, the man said, nothing like setting an example to bring real estate to life, that place is full of carpenters getting it ready to make a regular building again. Guess you ought to have the credit of it, because you was the first man in ten years to see any possibilities in this neighbourhood. Adams was pleased, and, going out to see for himself, heard a great hammering and sawing from within the building, while carpenters were just emerging gingerly upon the dangerous roof. He walked out over the dried mud of his deep lot, crossed the street, and spoke genially to a workman who was removing the broken glass of a window on the ground floor. Here, what's all this howdy-do over here? Going to fix her all up, I guess, the workman said. Big job it is, too. Should think it would be. Yes, sir, a pretty big job. Pretty big job. Got men added on all four floors and on the roof. They're doing it right. Who's doing it? Lord, I don't know. Some of these here big manufacturing corporations, I guess. What's it going to be? They tell me, the workman answered, they tell me she's going to be a butterine factory again. Anyways, I hope she won't be anything to smell like that glue work she got over there, not while I'm working around her, anyways. That smells all right, Adam said. You soon get used to it. You do? The man appeared incredulous. Listen, I was over in France. It's a good thing them Dutchmen never thought of it. We'd have had to quit. Adam's 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 neighborhood, 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 today to do the bottling. Colored girls are long about sixteen to twenty years old. After a while 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 colored girls can do it all right now by hand. We're getting to have really quite a little plant over there. Yes, sir, quite a regular little plant. He chuckled, and at this cheerful sound of a kind his wife had almost forgotten he was capable of producing. She ventured to put her hand upon his arm. They had gone outdoors after dinner, taking two chairs with them, and were sitting through the late twilight together, keeping well away from the front porch which was not yet occupied, however. Alice was in her room changing her dress. Well, honey, Mrs. Adams said, taking confidence, not only to put her hand upon his arm but to revive this disused endearment. It's grand to have you so optimistic. Maybe some time you'll admit I was right after all. Things going so well it seems a pity you didn't take this step long ago. Don't you think maybe so, Virgil? Well, if I was ever going to, I don't know, but I might as well have. I got to admit the proposition begins to look pretty good. I know the stuff will sell, and I can't see a thing in the world to stop it. It does look good, and if—if—he paused. If what, she said, anxious. He laughed plaintively as if confessing a superstition. It's funny. Well, it's mighty funny about that smell. Well, I've got so used to it at the plant, I never seem to notice it at all over here. It's only when I get away. Honestly, can't you notice? Virgil! She lifted her hand to strike his arm, chidingly. Do quit harping on that nonsense. Of course it don't amount to anything, he said. A person can stand a good deal at just smell. It don't worry me any. I should think not, especially as there isn't any. Well, he said, I feel pretty fair over the whole thing. A lot better than I ever expected to, anyhow. I don't know if there's any reason I shouldn't tell you so. She was deeply pleased with this acknowledgment, and her voice had tenderness in it, as she responded. There, honey, didn't I always say you'd be glad if you did it? Embarrassed, he coughed loudly, then filled his pipe and lit it. Well, he said slowly, it's a puzzle. Yes, sir, it's a puzzle. What is? Pretty much everything, I guess. As he spoke, a song came to them from a lighted window over their heads. In the window darkened abruptly, but the song continued, as Alice went down through the house to wait on the little veranda. Mickyam o' Mimi, she sang, and in her voice throbbed something almost startling in its sweetness. Her father and mother listened, not speaking until the song stopped, with the click of the wire screen at the front door as Alice came out. My, said her father, how sweet she does sing! I don't know as I ever heard her voice sound nicer than it did just then. There's something that makes it sound that way, his wife told him. I suppose so, he said, sighing. I suppose so. You think? She's just terribly in love with him. I expect that's the way it ought to be, he said. Then he drew upon his pipe for reflection and became murmurous with the symptoms of melancholy laughter. It don't make things less of a puzzle, though, does it? In what way, Virgil? Why here, he said, here we go through all this muck and moil to help fix things nicer for her at home, and what's it all amount to? Seems like she's just gone ahead the way she'd had gone anyhow, and now, I suppose, getting readied up and leave us. Ain't that a puzzle to you? It is to me. Oh! But things haven't gone that far yet. Why, you just said. She gave a little cry of protest. Oh! They aren't engaged yet. Of course they will be. He's just as much interested in her as she is in him, but—well, what's the trouble then? You are a simple old fellow, his wife exclaimed, and then rose from her chair. That reminds me, she said. What of? He asked. What's my being simple remind you of? Nothing, she laughed. It wasn't you that reminded me. It was just something that's been on my mind. I don't believe he's actually ever been inside our house. Has any? I actually don't believe he ever has, she said. Of course we must. She paused, debating. We must what? I guess I better talk to Alice about it right now, she said. He don't usually come for about half an hour yet. I guess I've got time. And with that she walked away, leaving him to his puzzles. End of Chapter 18