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_ With this, having more immediately practical questions before
them, they dropped the subject, to bend their entire attention
upon the dress; and when the lunch-gong sounded downstairs Alice
was still sketching repairs and alterations. She continued to
sketch them, not heeding the summons.
"I suppose we'd better go down to lunch," Mrs. Adams said,
absently. "She's at the gong again." In a minute, mama. Now
about the sleeves----" And she went on with her planning.
Unfortunately the gong was inexpressive of the mood of the person
who beat upon it. It consisted of three little metal bowls upon
a string; they were unequal in size, and, upon being tapped with
a padded stick, gave forth vibrations almost musically pleasant.
It was Alice who had substituted this contrivance for the brass
"dinner-bell" in use throughout her childhood; and neither she
nor the others of her family realized that the substitution of
sweeter sounds had made the life of that household more
difficult. In spite of dismaying increases in wages, the Adamses
still strove to keep a cook; and, as they were unable to pay the
higher rates demanded by a good one, what they usually had was a
whimsical coloured woman of nomadic impulses. In the hands of
such a person the old-fashioned "dinner-bell" was satisfying;
life could instantly be made intolerable for any one dawdling on
his way to a meal; the bell was capable of every desirable
profanity and left nothing bottled up in the breast of the
ringer. But the chamois-covered stick might whack upon Alice's
little Chinese bowls for a considerable length of time and
produce no great effect of urgency upon a hearer, nor any other
effect, except fury in the cook. The ironical impossibility of
expressing indignation otherwise than by sounds of gentle harmony
proved exasperating; the cook was apt to become surcharged, so
that explosive resignations, never rare, were somewhat more
frequent after the introduction of the gong.
Mrs. Adams took this increased frequency to be only another
manifestation of the inexplicable new difficulties that beset all
housekeeping. You paid a cook double what you had paid one a few
years before; and the cook knew half as much of cookery, and had
no gratitude. The more you gave these people, it seemed, the
worse they behaved--a condition not to be remedied by simply
giving them less, because you couldn't even get the worst unless
you paid her what she demanded. Nevertheless, Mrs. Adams
remained fitfully an optimist in the matter. Brought up by her
mother to speak of a female cook as "the girl," she had been
instructed by Alice to drop that definition in favour of one not
an improvement in accuracy: "the maid." Almost always, during
the first day or so after every cook came, Mrs. Adams would say,
at intervals, with an air of triumph: "I believe--of course it's
a little soon to be sure--but I do really believe this new maid
is the treasure we've been looking for so long!" Much in the same
way that Alice dreamed of a mysterious perfect mate for whom she
"waited," her mother had a fairy theory that hidden somewhere in
the universe there was the treasure, the perfect "maid," who
would come and cook in the Adamses' kitchen, not four days or
four weeks, but forever.
The present incumbent was not she. Alice, profoundly interested
herself, kept her mother likewise so preoccupied with the dress
that they were but vaguely conscious of the gong's soft warnings,
though these were repeated and protracted unusually. Finally the
sound of a hearty voice, independent and enraged, reached the
pair. It came from the hall below.
"I says goo'-BYE!" it called. "Da'ss all!"
Then the front door slammed.
"Why, what----" Mrs. Adams began.
They went down hurriedly to find out. Miss Perry informed them.
"I couldn't make her listen to reason," she said. "She rang the
gong four or five times and got to talking to herself; and then
she went up to her room and packed her bag. I told her she had
no business to go out the front door, anyhow."
Mrs. Adams took the news philosophically. "I thought she had
something like that in her eye when I paid her this morning, and
I'm not surprised. Well, we won't let Mr. Adams know anything's
the matter till I get a new one."
They lunched upon what the late incumbent had left chilling on
the table, and then Mrs. Adams prepared to wash the dishes; she
would "have them done in a jiffy," she said, cheerfully. But it
was Alice who washed the dishes.
"I DON'T like to have you do that, Alice," her mother protested,
following her into the kitchen. "It roughens the hands, and when
a girl has hands like yours----"
"I know, mama." Alice looked troubled, but shook her head. "It
can't be helped this time; you'll need every minute to get that
dress done."
Mrs. Adams went away lamenting, while Alice, no expert, began to
splash the plates and cups and saucers in the warm water. After
a while, as she worked, her eyes grew dreamy: she was making
little gay-coloured pictures of herself, unfounded prophecies of
how she would look and what would happen to her that evening.
She saw herself, charming and demure, wearing a fluffy
idealization of the dress her mother now determinedly struggled
with upstairs; she saw herself framed in a garlanded archway, the
entrance to a ballroom, and saw the people on the shining floor
turning dramatically to look at her; then from all points a rush
of young men shouting for dances with her; and she constructed a
superb stranger, tall, dark, masterfully smiling, who swung her
out of the clamouring group as the music began. She saw herself
dancing with him, saw the half-troubled smile she would give him;
and she accurately smiled that smile as she rinsed the knives and
forks.
These hopeful fragments of drama were not to be realized, she
knew; but she played that they were true, and went on creating
them. In all of them she wore or carried flowers--her mother's
sorrow for her in this detail but made it the more important--
and she saw herself glamorous with orchids; discarded these for
an armful of long-stemmed, heavy roses; tossed them away for a
great bouquet of white camellias; and so wandered down a
lengthening hothouse gallery of floral beauty, all costly and
beyond her reach except in such a wistful day-dream. And upon
her present whole horizon, though she searched it earnestly, she
could discover no figure of a sender of flowers.
Out of her fancies the desire for flowers to wear that night
emerged definitely and became poignant; she began to feel that it
might be particularly important to have them. "This might be the
night!" She was still at the age to dream that the night of any
dance may be the vital point in destiny. No matter how
commonplace or disappointing other dance nights have been this
one may bring the great meeting. The unknown magnifico may be
there.
Alice was almost unaware of her own reveries in which this being
appeared--reveries often so transitory that they developed and
passed in a few seconds. And in some of them the being was not
wholly a stranger; there were moments when he seemed to be
composed of recognizable fragments of young men she knew--a smile
she had liked, from one; the figure of another, the hair of
another--and sometimes she thought he might be concealed, so to
say, within the person of an actual acquaintance, someone she had
never suspected of being the right seeker for her, someone who
had never suspected that it was she who "waited" for him.
Anything might reveal them to each other: a look, a turn of the
head, a singular word--perhaps some flowers upon her breast or in
her hand.
She wiped the dishes slowly, concluding the operation by dropping
a saucer upon the floor and dreamily sweeping the fragments under
the stove. She sighed and replaced the broom near a window,
letting her glance wander over the small yard outside. The
grass, repulsively besooted to the colour of coal-smoke all
winter, had lately come to life again and now sparkled with
green, in the midst of which a tiny shot of blue suddenly fixed
her absent eyes. They remained upon it for several moments,
becoming less absent.
It was a violet.
Alice ran upstairs, put on her hat, went outdoors and began to
search out the violets. She found twenty-two, a bright
omen--since the number was that of her years--but not enough
violets. There were no more; she had ransacked every foot of the
yard.
She looked dubiously at the little bunch in her hand, glanced at
the lawn next door, which offered no favourable prospect; then
went thoughtfully into the house, left her twenty-two violets in
a bowl of water, and came quickly out again, her brow marked with
a frown of decision. She went to a trolley-line and took a car
to the outskirts of the city where a new park had been opened.
Here she resumed her search, but it was not an easily rewarded
one, and for an hour after her arrival she found no violets. She
walked conscientiously over the whole stretch of meadow, her eyes
roving discontentedly; there was never a blue dot in the groomed
expanse; but at last, as she came near the borders of an old
grove of trees, left untouched by the municipal landscapers, the
little flowers appeared, and she began to gather them. She
picked them carefully, loosening the earth round each tiny plant,
so as to bring the roots up with it, that it might live the
longer; and she had brought a napkin, which she drenched at a
hydrant, and kept loosely wrapped about the stems of her
collection.
The turf was too damp for her to kneel; she worked patiently,
stooping from the waist; and when she got home in a drizzle of
rain at five o'clock her knees were tremulous with strain, her
back ached, and she was tired all over, but she had three hundred
violets. Her mother moaned when Alice showed them to her,
fragrant in a basin of water.
"Oh, you POOR child! To think of your having to: work so hard to
get things that other girls only need; lift their little fingers
for!"
"Never mind," said Alice, huskily. "I've got 'em and I AM going
to have a good time to-night!"
"You've just got to!" Mrs. Adams agreed, intensely sympathetic.
"The Lord knows you deserve to, after picking all these violets,
poor thing, and He wouldn't be mean enough to keep you from it.
I may have to get dinner before I finish the dress, but I can get
it done in a few minutes afterward, and it's going to look right
pretty. Don't you worry about THAT! And with all these lovely
violets----"
"I wonder----" Alice began, paused, then went on, fragmentarily:
"I suppose--well, I wonder--do you suppose it would have been
better policy to have told Walter before----"
"No," said her mother. "It would only have given him longer to
grumble."
"But he might----"
"Don't worry," Mrs. Adams reassured her. "He'll be a little
cross, but he won't be stubborn; just let me talk to him and
don't you say anything at all, no matter what HE says."
These references to Walter concerned some necessary manoeuvres
which took place at dinner, and were conducted by the mother,
Alice having accepted her advice to sit in silence. Mrs. Adams
began by laughing cheerfully. "I wonder how much longer it took
me to cook this dinner than it does Walter to eat it?" she said.
"Don't gobble, child! There's no hurry."
In contact with his own family Walter was no squanderer of words.
"Is for me," he said. "Got date."
"I know you have, but there's plenty of time."
He smiled in benevolent pity. "YOU know, do you? If you made
any coffee--don't bother if you didn't. Get some down-town." He
seemed about to rise and depart; whereupon Alice, biting her lip,
sent a panic-stricken glance at her mother.
But Mrs. Adams seemed not at all disturbed; and laughed again.
"Why, what nonsense, Walter! I'll bring your coffee in a few
minutes, but we're going to have dessert first."
"What sort?"
"Some lovely peaches."
"Doe' want 'ny canned peaches," said the frank Walter, moving
back his chair. "G'-night."
"Walter! It doesn't begin till about nine o'clock at the
earliest."
He paused, mystified. "What doesn't?"
"The dance."
"What dance?"
"Why, Mildred Palmer's dance, of course."
Walter laughed briefly. "What's that to me?"
"Why, you haven't forgotten it's TO-NIGHT, have you?" Mrs. Adams
cried. "What a boy!"
"I told you a week ago I wasn't going to that ole dance," he
returned, frowning. "You heard me."
"Walter!" she exclaimed. "Of COURSE you're going. I got your
clothes all out this afternoon, and brushed them for you.
They'll look very nice, and----"
"They won't look nice on ME," he interrupted. "Got date
down-town, I tell you."
"But of course you'll----"
"See here!" Walter said, decisively. "Don't get any wrong ideas
in your head. I'm just as liable to go up to that ole dance at
the Palmers' as I am to eat a couple of barrels of broken glass."
"But, Walter----"
Walter was beginning to be seriously annoyed. "Don't 'Walter'
me! I'm no s'ciety snake. I wouldn't jazz with that Palmer
crowd if they coaxed me with diamonds."
"Walter----"
"Didn't I tell you it's no use to 'Walter' me?" he demanded.
"My dear child----"
"Oh, Glory!"
At this Mrs. Adams abandoned her air of amusement, looked hurt,
and glanced at the demure Miss Perry across the table. "I'm
afraid Miss Perry won't think you have very good manners,
Walter."
"You're right she won't," he agreed, grimly. "Not if I haf to
hear any more about me goin' to----"
But his mother interrupted him with some asperity: "It seems very
strange that you always object to going anywhere among OUR
friends, Walter."
"YOUR friends!" he said, and, rising from his chair, gave
utterance to an ironical laugh strictly monosyllabic. "Your
friends!" he repeated, going to the door. "Oh, yes! Certainly!
Good-NIGHT!"
And looking back over his shoulder to offer a final brief view of
his derisive face, he took himself out of the room.
Alice gasped: "Mama----"
"I'll stop him!" her mother responded, sharply; and hurried after
the truant, catching him at the front door with his hat and
raincoat on.
"Walter----"
"Told you had a date down-town," he said, gruffly, and would have
opened the door, but she caught his arm and detained him.
"Walter, please come back and finish your dinner. When I take
all the trouble to cook it for you, I think you might at
least----"
"Now, now!" he said. "That isn't what you're up to. You don't
want to make me eat; you want to make me listen."
"Well, you MUST listen!" She retained her grasp upon his arm, and
made it tighter. "Walter, please!" she entreated, her voice
becoming tremulous. "PLEASE don't make me so much trouble!"
He drew back from her as far as her hold upon him permitted, and
looked at her sharply. "Look here!" he said. "I get you, all
right! What's the matter of Alice GOIN' to that party by
herself?"
"She just CAN'T!"
"Why not?"
"It makes things too MEAN for her, Walter. All the other girls
have somebody to depend on after they get there."
"Well, why doesn't she have somebody?" he asked, testily.
"Somebody besides ME, I mean! Why hasn't somebody asked her to
go? She ought to be THAT popular, anyhow, I sh'd think--she
TRIES enough!"
"I don't understand how you can be so hard," his mother wailed,
huskily. "You know why they don't run after her the way they do
the other girls she goes with, Walter. It's because we're poor,
and she hasn't got any background.
"'Background?' " Walter repeated. "'Background?' What kind of
talk is that?"
"You WILL go with her to-night, Walter?" his mother pleaded, not
stopping to enlighten him. "You don't understand how hard things
are for her and how brave she is about them, or you COULDN'T be
so selfish! It'd be more than I can bear to see her disappointed
to-night! She went clear out to Belleview Park this afternoon,
Walter, and spent hours and hours picking violets to wear. You
WILL----"
Walter's heart was not iron, and the episode of the violets may
have reached it. "Oh, BLUB!" he said, and flung his soft hat
violently at the wall.
His mother beamed with delight. "THAT'S a good boy, darling!
You'll never be sorry you----"
"Cut it out," he requested. "If I take her, will you pay for a
taxi?"
"Oh, Walter!" And again Mrs. Adams showed distress. "Couldn't
you?"
"No, I couldn't; I'm not goin' to throw away my good money like
that, and you can't tell what time o' night it'll be before she's
willin' to come home. What's the matter you payin' for one?"
"I haven't any money."
"Well, father----"
She shook her head dolefully. "I got some from him this morning,
and I can't bother him for any more; it upsets him. He's ALWAYS
been so terribly close with money----"
"I guess he couldn't help that," Walter observed. "We're liable
to go to the poorhouse the way it is. Well, what's the matter
our walkin' to this rotten party?"
"In the rain, Walter?"
"Well, it's only a drizzle and we can take a streetcar to within
a block of the house."
Again his mother shook her head. "It wouldn't do."
"Well, darn the luck, all right!" he consented, explosively.
"I'll get her something to ride in. It means seventy-five
cents."
"Why, Walter!" Mrs. Adams cried, much pleased. "Do you know how
to get a cab for that little? How splendid!"
"Tain't a cab," Walter informed her crossly. "It's a tin Lizzie,
but you don't haf' to tell her what it is till I get her into it,
do you?"
Mrs. Adams agreed that she didn't. _
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