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_ Mrs. Adams had remained in Alice's room, but her mood seemed to
have changed, during her daughter's little more than momentary
absence.
"What did he SAY?" she asked, quickly, and her tone was hopeful.
"'Say?' " Alice repeated, impatiently. "Why, nothing. I didn't
let him. Really, mama, I think the best thing for you to do
would be to just keep out of his room, because I don't believe
you can go in there and not talk to him about it, and if you do
talk we'll never get him to do the right thing. Never!"
The mother's response was a grieving silence; she turned from her
daughter and walked to the door.
"Now, for goodness' sake!" Alice cried. "Don't go making tragedy
out of my offering you a little practical advice!"
"I'm not," Mrs. Adams gulped, halting. "I'm just--just going to
dust the downstairs, Alice." And with her face still averted,
she went out into the little hallway, closing the door behind
her. A moment later she could be heard descending the stairs,
the sound of her footsteps carrying somehow an effect of
resignation.
Alice listened, sighed, and, breathing the words, "Oh, murder!"
turned to cheerier matters. She put on a little apple-green
turban with a dim gold band round it, and then, having shrouded
the turban in a white veil, which she kept pushed up above her
forehead, she got herself into a tan coat of soft cloth fashioned
with rakish severity. After that, having studied herself gravely
in a long glass, she took from one of the drawers of her
dressing- table a black leather card-case cornered in silver
filigree, but found it empty.
She opened another drawer wherein were two white pasteboard boxes
of cards, the one set showing simply "Miss Adams," the other
engraved in Gothic characters, "Miss Alys Tuttle Adams." The
latter belonged to Alice's "Alys" period--most girls go through
it; and Alice must have felt that she had graduated, for, after
frowning thoughtfully at the exhibit this morning, she took the
box with its contents, and let the white shower fall from her
fingers into the waste-basket beside her small desk. She
replenished the card-case from the "Miss Adams" box; then, having
found a pair of fresh white gloves, she tucked an ivory-topped
Malacca walking-stick under her arm and set forth.
She went down the stairs, buttoning her gloves and still wearing
the frown with which she had put "Alys" finally out of her life.
She descended slowly, and paused on the lowest step, looking
about her with an expression that needed but a slight deepening
to betoken bitterness. Its connection with her dropping "Alys"
forever was slight, however.
The small frame house, about fifteen years old, was already
inclining to become a new Colonial relic. The Adamses had built
it, moving into it from the "Queen Anne" house they had rented
until they took this step in fashion. But fifteen years is a
long time to stand still in the midland country, even for a
house, and this one was lightly made, though the Adamses had not
realized how flimsily until they had lived in it for some time.
"Solid, compact, and convenient" were the instructions to the
architect, and he had made it compact successfully. Alice,
pausing at the foot of the stairway, was at the same time fairly
in the "living-room," for the only separation between the "living
room" and the hall was a demarcation suggested to willing
imaginations by a pair of wooden columns painted white. These
columns, pine under the paint, were bruised and chipped at the
base; one of them showed a crack that threatened to become a
split; the "hard-wood" floor had become uneven; and in a corner
the walls apparently failed of solidity, where the wall-paper had
declined to accompany some staggerings of the plaster beneath it.
The furniture was in great part an accumulation begun with the
wedding gifts; though some of it was older, two large patent
rocking-chairs and a footstool having belonged to Mrs. Adams's
mother in the days of hard brown plush and veneer. For
decoration there were pictures and vases. Mrs. Adams had always
been fond of vases, she said, and every year her husband's
Christmas present to her was a vase of one sort or
another--whatever the clerk showed him, marked at about twelve or
fourteen dollars. The pictures were some of them etchings framed
in gilt: Rheims, Canterbury, schooners grouped against a wharf;
and Alice could remember how, in her childhood, her father
sometimes pointed out the watery reflections in this last as very
fine. But it was a long time since he had shown interest in such
things--"or in anything much," as she thought.
Other pictures were two water-colours in baroque frames; one
being the Amalfi monk on a pergola wall, while the second was a
yard-wide display of iris blossoms, painted by Alice herself at
fourteen, as a birthday gift to her mother. Alice's glance
paused upon it now with no great pride, but showed more approval
of an enormous photograph of the Colosseum. This she thought of
as "the only good thing in the room"; it possessed and bestowed
distinction, she felt; and she did not regret having won her
struggle to get it hung in its conspicuous place of honour over
the mantelpiece. Formerly that place had been held for years by
a steel-engraving, an accurate representation of the Suspension
Bridge at Niagara Falls. It was almost as large as its
successor, the "Colosseum," and it had been presented to Mr.
Adams by colleagues in his department at Lamb and Company's.
Adams had shown some feeling when Alice began to urge its removal
to obscurity in the "upstairs hall"; he even resisted for several
days after she had the "Colosseum" charged to him, framed in oak,
and sent to the house. She cheered him up, of course, when he
gave way; and her heart never misgave her that there might be a
doubt which of the two pictures was the more dismaying.
Over the pictures, the vases, the old brown plush rocking-chairs
and the stool, over the three gilt chairs, over the new
chintz-covered easy chair and the gray velure sofa--over
everything everywhere, was the familiar coating of smoke grime.
It had worked into every fibre of the lace curtains, dingying
them to an unpleasant gray; it lay on the window- sills and it
dimmed the glass panes; it covered the walls, covered the
ceiling, and was smeared darker and thicker in all corners. Yet
here was no fault of housewifery; the curse could not be lifted,
as the ingrained smudges permanent on the once white woodwork
proved. The grime was perpetually renewed; scrubbing only ground
it in.
This particular ugliness was small part of Alice's discontent,
for though the coating grew a little deeper each year she was
used to it. Moreover, she knew that she was not likely to find
anything better in a thousand miles, so long as she kept to
cities, and that none of her friends, however opulent, had any
advantage of her here. Indeed, throughout all the great
soft-coal country, people who consider themselves comparatively
poor may find this consolation: cleanliness has been added to the
virtues and beatitudes that money can not buy.
Alice brightened a little as she went forward to the front door,
and she brightened more when the spring breeze met her there.
Then all depression left her as she walked down the short brick
path to the sidewalk, looked up and down the street, and saw how
bravely the maple shade-trees, in spite of the black powder they
breathed, were flinging out their thousands of young green
particles overhead.
She turned north, treading the new little shadows on the pavement
briskly, and, having finished buttoning her gloves, swung down
her Malacca stick from under her arm to let it tap a more
leisurely accompaniment to her quick, short step. She had to
step quickly if she was to get anywhere; for the closeness of her
skirt, in spite of its little length, permitted no natural
stride; but she was pleased to be impeded, these brevities
forming part of her show of fashion.
Other pedestrians found them not without charm, though approval
may have been lacking here and there, and at the first crossing
Alice suffered what she might have accounted an actual injury,
had she allowed herself to be so sensitive. An elderly woman in
fussy black silk stood there, waiting for a streetcar; she was
all of a globular modelling, with a face patterned like a
frost-bitten peach; and that the approaching gracefulness was
uncongenial she naively made too evident. Her round, wan eyes
seemed roused to bitter life as they rose from the curved high
heels of the buckled slippers to the tight little skirt, and
thence with startled ferocity to the Malacca cane, which plainly
appeared to her as a decoration not more astounding than it was
insulting.
Perceiving that the girl was bowing to her, the globular lady
hurriedly made shift to alter her injurious expression. "Good
morning, Mrs. Dowling," Alice said, gravely. Mrs. Dowling
returned the salutation with a smile as convincingly benevolent
as the ghastly smile upon a Santa Claus face; and then, while
Alice passed on, exploded toward her a single compacted breath
through tightened lips.
The sound was eloquently audible, though Mrs. Dowling remained
unaware that in this or any manner whatever she had shed a light
upon her thoughts; for it was her lifelong innocent conviction
that other people saw her only as she wished to be seen, and
heard from her only what she intended to be heard. At home it
was always her husband who pulled down the shades of their
bedroom window.
Alice looked serious for a few moments after the little
encounter, then found some consolation in the behaviour of a
gentleman of forty or so who was coming toward her. Like Mrs.
Dowling, he had begun to show consciousness of Alice's approach
while she was yet afar off; but his tokens were of a kind
pleasanter to her. He was like Mrs. Dowling again, however, in
his conception that Alice would not realize the significance of
what he did. He passed his hand over his neck-scarf to see that
it lay neatly to his collar, smoothed a lapel of his coat, and
adjusted his hat, seeming to be preoccupied the while with
problems that kept his eyes to the pavement; then, as he came
within a few feet of her, he looked up, as in a surprised
recognition almost dramatic, smiled winningly, lifted his hat
decisively, and carried it to the full arm's length.
Alice's response was all he could have asked. The cane in her
right hand stopped short in its swing, while her left hand moved
in a pretty gesture as if an impulse carried it toward the heart;
and she smiled, with her under lip caught suddenly between her
teeth. Months ago she had seen an actress use this smile in a
play, and it came perfectly to Alice now, without conscious
direction, it had been so well acquired; but the pretty hand's
little impulse toward the heart was an original bit all her own,
on the spur of the moment.
The gentleman went on, passing from her forward vision as he
replaced his hat. Of himself he was nothing to Alice, except for
the gracious circumstance that he had shown strong consciousness
of a pretty girl. He was middle-aged, substantial, a family man,
securely married; and Alice had with him one of those long
acquaintances that never become emphasized by so much as five
minutes of talk; yet for this inconsequent meeting she had
enacted a little part like a fragment in a pantomime of Spanish
wooing.
It was not for him--not even to impress him, except as a
messenger. Alice was herself almost unaware of her thought,
which was one of the running thousands of her thoughts that took
no deliberate form in words. Nevertheless, she had it, and it
was the impulse of all her pretty bits of pantomime when she met
other acquaintances who made their appreciation visible, as this
substantial gentleman did. In Alice's unworded thought, he was
to be thus encouraged as in some measure a champion to speak well
of her to the world; but more than this: he was to tell some
magnificent unknown bachelor how wonderful, how mysterious, she
was.
She hastened on gravely, a little stirred reciprocally with the
supposed stirrings in the breast of that shadowy ducal mate, who
must be somewhere "waiting," or perhaps already seeking her; for
she more often thought of herself as "waiting" while he sought
her; and sometimes this view of things became so definite that it
shaped into a murmur on her lips. "Waiting. Just waiting." And
she might add, "For him!" Then, being twenty-two, she was apt to
conclude the mystic interview by laughing at herself, though not
without a continued wistfulness.
She came to a group of small coloured children playing waywardly
in a puddle at the mouth of a muddy alley; and at sight of her
they gave over their pastime in order to stare. She smiled
brilliantly upon them, but they were too struck with wonder to
comprehend that the manifestation was friendly; and as Alice
picked her way in a little detour to keep from the mud, she heard
one of them say, "Lady got cane! Jeez'!"
She knew that many coloured children use impieties familiarly,
and she was not startled. She was disturbed, however, by an
unfavourable hint in the speaker's tone. He was six, probably,
but the sting of a criticism is not necessarily allayed by
knowledge of its ignoble source, and Alice had already begun to
feel a slight uneasiness about her cane. Mrs. Dowling's stare
had been strikingly projected at it; other women more than merely
glanced, their brows and lips contracting impulsively; and Alice
was aware that one or two of them frankly halted as soon as she
had passed.
She had seen in several magazines pictures of ladies with canes,
and on that account she had bought this one, never questioning
that fashion is recognized, even in the provinces, as soon as
beheld. On the contrary, these staring women obviously failed to
realize that what they were being shown was not an eccentric
outburst, but the bright harbinger of an illustrious mode. Alice
had applied a bit of artificial pigment to her lips and cheeks
before she set forth this morning; she did not need it, having a
ready colour of her own, which now mounted high with annoyance.
Then a splendidly shining closed black automobile, with windows
of polished glass, came silently down the street toward her.
Within it, as in a luxurious little apartment, three comely
ladies in mourning sat and gossiped; but when they saw Alice they
clutched one another. They instantly recovered, bowing to her
solemnly as they were borne by, yet were not gone from her sight
so swiftly but the edge of her side glance caught a flash of
teeth in mouths suddenly opened, and the dark glisten of black
gloves again clutching to share mirth.
The colour that outdid the rouge on Alice's cheek extended its
area and grew warmer as she realized how all too cordial had been
her nod and smile to these humorous ladies. But in their
identity lay a significance causing her a sharper smart, for they
were of the family of that Lamb, chief of Lamb and Company, who
had employed her father since before she was born.
"And know his salary! They'd be SURE to find out about that!"
was her thought, coupled with another bitter one to the effect
that they had probably made instantaneous financial estimates of
what she wore though certainly her walking-stick had most fed
their hilarity.
She tucked it under her arm, not swinging it again; and her
breath became quick and irregular as emotion beset her. She had
been enjoying her walk, but within the space of the few blocks
she had gone since she met the substantial gentleman, she found
that more than the walk was spoiled: suddenly her life seemed to
be spoiled, too; though she did not view the ruin with
complaisance. These Lamb women thought her and her cane
ridiculous, did they? she said to herself. That was their
parvenu blood: to think because a girl's father worked for their
grandfather she had no right to be rather striking in style,
especially when the striking WAS her style. Probably all the
other girls and women would agree with them and would laugh at
her when they got together, and, what might be fatal, would try
to make all the men think her a silly pretender. Men were just
like sheep, and nothing was easier than for women to set up as
shepherds and pen them in a fold. "To keep out outsiders," Alice
thought. "And make 'em believe I AM an outsider. What's the use
of living?"
All seemed lost when a trim young man appeared, striding out of a
cross-street not far before her, and, turning at the corner, came
toward her. Visibly, he slackened his gait to lengthen the time
of his approach, and, as he was a stranger to her, no motive
could be ascribed to him other than a wish to have a longer time
to look at her.
She lifted a pretty hand to a pin at her throat, bit her lip--not
with the smile, but mysteriously--and at the last instant before
her shadow touched the stranger, let her eyes gravely meet his.
A moment later, having arrived before the house which was her
destination, she halted at the entrance to a driveway leading
through fine lawns to the intentionally important mansion. It
was a pleasant and impressive place to be seen entering, but
Alice did not enter at once. She paused, examining a tiny bit of
mortar which the masons had forgotten to scrape from a brick in
one of the massive gate-posts. She frowned at this tiny
defacement, and with an air of annoyance scraped it away, using
the ferrule of her cane an act of fastidious proprietorship. If
any one had looked back over his shoulder he would not have
doubted that she lived there.
Alice did not turn to see whether anything of the sort happened
or not, but she may have surmised that it did. At all events, it
was with an invigorated step that she left the gateway behind her
and went cheerfully up the drive to the house of her friend
Mildred. _
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