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_ In fact, the agitation of Mrs. Adams was genuine, but so well
under her control that its traces vanished during the three short
steps she took to cross the narrow hall between her husband's
door and the one opposite. Her expression was matter-of-course,
rather than pathetic, as she entered the pretty room where her
daughter, half dressed, sat before a dressing-table and played
with the reflections of a three-leafed mirror framed in blue
enamel. That is, just before the moment of her mother's
entrance, Alice had been playing with the mirror's
reflections--posturing her arms and her expressions, clasping her
hands behind her neck, and tilting back her head to foreshorten
the face in a tableau conceived to represent sauciness, then one
of smiling weariness, then one of scornful toleration, and all
very piquant; but as the door opened she hurriedly resumed the
practical, and occupied her hands in the arrangement of her
plentiful brownish hair.
They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate and fine. "The
best things she's got!" a cold- blooded girl friend said of them,
and meant to include Alice's mind and character in the implied
list of possessions surpassed by the notable hands. However that
may have been, the rest of her was well enough. She was often
called "a right pretty girl"--temperate praise meaning a girl
rather pretty than otherwise, and this she deserved, to say the
least. Even in repose she deserved it, though repose was
anything but her habit, being seldom seen upon her except at
home. On exhibition she led a life of gestures, the unkind said
to make her lovely hands more memorable; but all of her usually
accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders ever giving
them their impulses first, and even her feet being called upon,
at the same time, for eloquence.
So much liveliness took proper place as only accessory to that of
the face, where her vivacity reached its climax; and it was
unfortunate that an ungifted young man, new in the town, should
have attempted to define the effect upon him of all this
generosity of emphasis. He said that "the way she used her cute
hazel eyes and the wonderful glow of her facial expression gave
her a mighty spiritual quality." His actual rendition of the
word was "spirichul"; but it was not his pronunciation that
embalmed this outburst in the perennial laughter of Alice's girl
friends; they made the misfortune far less his than hers.
Her mother comforted her too heartily, insisting that Alice had
"plenty enough spiritual qualities," certainly more than
possessed by the other girls who flung the phrase at her, wooden
things, jealous of everything they were incapable of themselves;
and then Alice, getting more championship than she sought, grew
uneasy lest Mrs. Adams should repeat such defenses "outside the
family"; and Mrs. Adams ended by weeping because the daughter so
distrusted her intelligence. Alice frequently thought it
necessary to instruct her mother.
Her morning greeting was an instruction to-day; or, rather, it
was an admonition in the style of an entreaty, the more petulant
as Alice thought that Mrs. Adams might have had a glimpse of the
posturings to the mirror. This was a needless worry; the mother
had caught a thousand such glimpses, with Alice unaware, and she
thought nothing of the one just flitted.
"For heaven's sake, mama, come clear inside the room and shut the
door! PLEASE don't leave it open for everybody to look at me!"
"There isn't anybody to see you," Mrs. Adams explained, obeying.
"Miss Perry's gone downstairs, and----"
"Mama, I heard you in papa's room," Alice said, not dropping the
note of complaint. "I could hear both of you, and I don't think
you ought to get poor old papa so upset--not in his present
condition, anyhow."
Mrs. Adams seated herself on the edge of the bed. "He's better
all the time," she said, not disturbed. "He's almost well. The
doctor says so and Miss Perry says so; and if we don't get him
into the right frame of mind now we never will. The first day
he's outdoors he'll go back to that old hole--you'll see! And if
he once does that, he'll settle down there and it'll be too late
and we'll never get him out."
"Well, anyhow, I think you could use a little more tact with
him."
"I do try to," the mother sighed. "It never was much use with
him. I don't think you understand him as well as I do, Alice."
"There's one thing I don't understand about either of you," Alice
returned, crisply. "Before people get married they can do
anything they want to with each other. Why can't they do the
same thing after they're married? When you and papa were young
people and engaged, he'd have done anything you wanted him to.
That must have been because you knew how to manage him then. Why
can't you go at him the same way now?"
Mrs. Adams sighed again, and laughed a little, making no other
response; but Alice persisted. "Well, WHY can't you? Why can't
you ask him to do things the way you used to ask him when you
were just in love with each other? Why don't you anyhow try it,
mama, instead of ding-donging at him?"
"'Ding-donging at him,' Alice?" Mrs. Adams said, with a pathos
somewhat emphasized. "Is that how my trying to do what I can for
you strikes you?"
"Never mind that; it's nothing to hurt your feelings." Alice
disposed of the pathos briskly. "Why don't you answer my
question? What's the matter with using a little more tact on
papa? Why can't you treat him the way you probably did when you
were young people, before you were married? I never have
understood why people can't do that."
"Perhaps you WILL understand some day," her mother said, gently.
"Maybe you will when you've been married twenty-five years."
"You keep evading. Why don't you answer my question right
straight out?"
"There are questions you can't answer to young people, Alice."
"You mean because we're too young to understand the answer? I
don't see that at all. At twenty-two a girl's supposed to have
some intelligence, isn't she? And intelligence is the ability to
understand, isn't it? Why do I have to wait till I've lived with
a man twenty-five years to understand why you can't be tactful
with papa?"
"You may understand some things before that," Mrs. Adams said,
tremulously. "You may understand how you hurt me sometimes.
Youth can't know everything by being intelligent, and by the time
you could understand the answer you're asking for you'd know it,
and wouldn't need to ask. You don't understand your father,
Alice; you don't know what it takes to change him when he's made
up his mind to be stubborn."
Alice rose and began to get herself into a skirt. "Well, I don't
think making scenes ever changes anybody," she grumbled. "I
think a little jolly persuasion goes twice as far, myself."
"'A little jolly persuasion!' " Her mother turned the echo of
this phrase into an ironic lament. "Yes, there was a time when I
thought that, too! It didn't work; that's all."
"Perhaps you left the 'jolly' part of it out, mama."
For the second time that morning--it was now a little after seven
o'clock--tears seemed about to offer their solace to Mrs. Adams.
"I might have expected you to say that, Alice; you never do miss
a chance," she said, gently. "It seems queer you don't some time
miss just ONE chance!"
But Alice, progressing with her toilet, appeared to be little
concerned. "Oh, well, I think there are better ways of managing
a man than just hammering at him."
Mrs. Adams uttered a little cry of pain. "'Hammering,' Alice?"
"If you'd left it entirely to me," her daughter went on, briskly,
"I believe papa'd already be willing to do anything we want him
to."
"That's it; tell me I spoil everything. Well, I won't interfere
from now on, you can be sure of it."
"Please don't talk like that," Alice said, quickly. "I'm old
enough to realize that papa may need pressure of all sorts; I
only think it makes him more obstinate to get him cross. You
probably do understand him better, but that's one thing I've
found out and you haven't. There!" She gave her mother a
friendly tap on the shoulder and went to the door. "I'll hop in
and say hello to him now."
As she went, she continued the fastening of her blouse, and
appeared in her father's room with one hand still thus engaged,
but she patted his forehead with the other.
"Poor old papa-daddy!" she said, gaily. "Every time he's better
somebody talks him into getting so mad he has a relapse. It's a
shame!"
Her father's eyes, beneath their melancholy brows, looked up at
her wistfully. "I suppose you heard your mother going for me,"
he said.
"I heard you going for her, too!" Alice laughed. "What was it
all about?"
"Oh, the same danged old story!"
"You mean she wants you to try something new when you get well?"
Alice asked, with cheerful innocence. "So we could all have a
lot more money?"
At this his sorrowful forehead was more sorrowful than ever. The
deep horizontal lines moved upward to a pattern of suffering so
familiar to his daughter that it meant nothing to her; but he
spoke quietly. "Yes; so we wouldn't have any money at all, most
likely."
"Oh, no!" she laughed, and, finishing with her blouse, patted his
cheeks with both hands. "Just think how many grand openings
there must be for a man that knows as much as you do! I always
did believe you could get rich if you only cared to, papa."
But upon his forehead the painful pattern still deepened. "Don't
you think we've always had enough, the way things are, Alice?"
"Not the way things ARE!" She patted his cheeks again; laughed
again. "It used to be enough, maybe anyway we did skimp along on
it-- but the way things are now I expect mama's really pretty
practical in her ideas, though, I think it's a shame for her to
bother you about it while you're so weak. Don't you worry about
it, though; just think about other things till you get strong."
"You know," he said; "you know it isn't exactly the easiest thing
in the world for a man of my age to find these grand openings you
speak of. And when you've passed half-way from fifty to sixty
you're apt to see some risk in giving up what you know how to do
and trying something new."
"My, what a frown!" she cried, blithely. "Didn't I tell you to
stop thinking about it till you get ALL well?" She bent over him,
giving him a gay little kiss on the bridge of his nose. "There!
I must run to breakfast. Cheer up now! Au 'voir!" And with her
pretty hand she waved further encouragement from the closing door
as she departed.
Lightsomely descending the narrow stairway, she whistled as she
went, her fingers drumming time on the rail; and, still
whistling, she came into the dining-room, where her mother and
her brother were already at the table. The brother, a thin and
sallow boy of twenty, greeted her without much approval as she
took her place.
"Nothing seems to trouble you!" he said.
"No; nothing much," she made airy response. "What's troubling
yourself, Walter?"
"Don't let that worry you!" he returned, seeming to consider this
to be repartee of an effective sort; for he furnished a short
laugh to go with it, and turned to his coffee with the manner of
one who has satisfactorily closed an episode.
"Walter always seems to have so many secrets!" Alice said,
studying him shrewdly, but with a friendly enough amusement in
her scrutiny. "Everything he does or says seems to be acted for
the benefit of some mysterious audience inside himself, and he
always gets its applause. Take what he said just now: he seems
to think it means something, but if it does, why, that's just
another secret between him and the secret audience inside of him!
We don't really know anything about Walter at all, do we, mama?"
Walter laughed again, in a manner that sustained her theory well
enough; then after finishing his coffee, he took from his pocket
a flattened packet in glazed blue paper; extracted with stained
fingers a bent and wrinkled little cigarette, lighted it, hitched
up his belted trousers with the air of a person who turns from
trifles to things better worth his attention, and left the room.
Alice laughed as the door closed. "He's ALL secrets," she said.
"Don't you think you really ought to know more about him, mama?"
"I'm sure he's a good boy," Mrs. Adams returned, thoughtfully.
"He's been very brave about not being able to have the advantages
that are enjoyed by the boys he's grown up with. I've never
heard a word of complaint from him."
"About his not being sent to college?" Alice cried. "I should
think you wouldn't! He didn't even have enough ambition to
finish high school!"
Mrs. Adams sighed. "It seemed to me Walter lost his ambition
when nearly all the boys he'd grown up with went to Eastern
schools to prepare for college, and we couldn't afford to send
him. If only your father would have listened----"
Alice interrupted: "What nonsense! Walter hated books and
studying, and athletics, too, for that matter. He doesn't care
for anything nice that I ever heard of. What do you suppose he
does like, mama? He must like something or other somewhere, but
what do you suppose it is? What does he do with his time?"
"Why, the poor boy's at Lamb and Company's all day. He doesn't
get through until five in the afternoon; he doesn't HAVE much
time."
"Well, we never have dinner until about seven, and he's always
late for dinner, and goes out, heaven knows where, right
afterward!" Alice shook her head. "He used to go with our
friends' boys, but I don't think he does now."
"Why, how could he?" Mrs. Adams protested. "That isn't his
fault, poor child! The boys he knew when he was younger are
nearly all away at college."
"Yes, but he doesn't see anything of 'em when they're here at
holiday-time or vacation. None of 'em come to the house any
more."
"I suppose he's made other friends. It's natural for him to want
companions, at his age."
"Yes," Alice said, with disapproving emphasis. "But who are
they? I've got an idea he plays pool at some rough place
down-town."
"Oh, no; I'm sure he's a steady boy," Mrs. Adams protested, but
her tone was not that of thoroughgoing conviction, and she added,
"Life might be a very different thing for him if only your father
can be brought to see----"
"Never mind, mama! It isn't me that has to be convinced, you
know; and we can do a lot more with papa if we just let him alone
about it for a day or two. Promise me you won't say any more to
him until--well, until he's able to come downstairs to table.
Will you?"
Mrs. Adams bit her lip, which had begun to tremble. "I think
you can trust me to know a FEW things, Alice," she said. "I'm a
little older than you, you know."
"That's a good girl!" Alice jumped up, laughing. "Don't forget
it's the same as a promise, and do just cheer him up a little.
I'll say good-bye to him before I go out."
"Where are you going?"
"Oh, I've got lots to do. I thought I'd run out to Mildred's to
see what she's going to wear to-night, and then I want to go down
and buy a yard of chiffon and some narrow ribbon to make new bows
for my slippers--you'll have to give me some money----"
"If he'll give it to me!" her mother lamented, as they went
toward the front stairs together; but an hour later she came into
Alice's room with a bill in her hand.
"He has some money in his bureau drawer," she said. "He finally
told me where it was."
There were traces of emotion in her voice, and Alice, looking
shrewdly at her, saw moisture in her eyes.
"Mama!" she cried. "You didn't do what you promised me you
wouldn't, did you--NOT before Miss Perry!"
"Miss Perry's getting him some broth," Mrs. Adams returned,
calmly. "Besides, you're mistaken in saying I promised you
anything; I said I thought you could trust me to know what is
right."
"So you did bring it up again!" And Alice swung away from her,
strode to her father's door, flung it open, went to him, and put
a light hand soothingly over his unrelaxed forehead.
"Poor old papa!" she said. "It's a shame how everybody wants to
trouble him. He shan't be bothered any more at all! He doesn't
need to have everybody telling him how to get away from that old
hole he's worked in so long and begin to make us all nice and
rich. HE knows how!"
Thereupon she kissed him a consoling good-bye, and made another
gay departure, the charming hand again fluttering like a white
butterfly in the shadow of the closing door. _
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