________________________________________________
_ On a morning, a week after this collapse of festal hopes, Mrs.
Adams and her daughter were concluding a three-days' disturbance,
the "Spring house-cleaning"-- postponed until now by Adams's long
illness--and Alice, on her knees before a chest of drawers, in
her mother's room, paused thoughtfully after dusting a packet of
letters wrapped in worn muslin. She called to her mother, who
was scrubbing the floor of the hallway just beyond the open door,
"These old letters you had in the bottom drawer, weren't they
some papa wrote you before you were married?"
Mrs. Adams laughed and said, "Yes. Just put 'em back where they
were--or else up in the attic-- anywhere you want to."
"Do you mind if I read one, mama?"
Mrs. Adams laughed again. "Oh, I guess you can if you want to.
I expect they're pretty funny!"
Alice laughed in response, and chose the topmost letter of the
packet. "My dear, beautiful girl," it began; and she stared at
these singular words. They gave her a shock like that caused by
overhearing some bewildering impropriety; and, having read them
over to herself several times, she went on to experience other
shocks.
MY DEAR, BEAUTIFUL GIRL:
This time yesterday I had a mighty bad case of blues because I
had not had a word from you in two whole long days and when I do
not hear from you every day things look mighty down in the mouth
to me. Now it is all so different because your letter has
arrived and besides I have got a piece of news I believe you will
think as fine as I do. Darling, you will be surprised, so get
ready to hear about a big effect on our future. It is this way.
I had sort of a suspicion the head of the firm kind of took a
fancy to me from the first when I went in there, and liked the
way I attended to my work and so when he took me on this business
trip with him I felt pretty sure of it and now it turns out I was
about right. In return I guess I have got about the best boss in
this world and I believe you will think so too. Yes, sweetheart,
after the talk I have just had with him if J. A. Lamb asked me
to cut my hand off for him I guess I would come pretty near doing
it because what he says means the end of our waiting to be
together. From New Years on he is going to put me in entire
charge of the sundries dept. and what do you think is going to
be my salary? Eleven hundred cool dollars a year ($1,100.00).
That's all! Just only a cool eleven hundred per annum! Well, I
guess that will show your mother whether I can take care of you
or not. And oh how I would like to see your dear, beautiful,
loving face when you get this news.
I would like to go out on the public streets and just dance and
shout and it is all I can do to help doing it, especially when I
know we will be talking it all over together this time next week,
and oh my darling, now that your folks have no excuse for putting
it off any longer we might be in our own little home before Xmas.
Would you be glad?
Well, darling, this settles everything and makes our future just
about as smooth for us as anybody could ask. I can hardly
realize after all this waiting life's troubles are over for you
and me and we have nothing to do but to enjoy the happiness
granted us by this wonderful, beautiful thing we call life. I
know I am not any poet and the one I tried to write about you the
day of the picnic was fearful but the way I THINK about you is a
poem.
Write me what you think of the news. I know but write me anyhow.
I'll get it before we start home and I can be reading it over all
the time on the tram.
Your always loving
VIRGIL.
The sound of her mother's diligent scrubbing in the hall came
back slowly to Alice's hearing, as she restored the letter to the
packet, wrapped the packet in its muslin covering, and returned
it to the drawer. She had remained upon her knees while she read
the letter; now she sank backward, sitting upon the floor with
her hands behind her, an unconscious relaxing for better ease to
think. Upon her face there had fallen a look of wonder.
For the first time she was vaguely perceiving that life is
everlasting movement. Youth really believes what is running
water to be a permanent crystallization and sees time fixed to a
point: some people have dark hair, some people have blond hair,
some people have gray hair. Until this moment, Alice had no
conviction that there was a universe before she came into it.
She had always thought of it as the background of herself: the
moon was something to make her prettier on a summer night.
But this old letter, through which she saw still flickering an
ancient starlight of young love, astounded her. Faintly before
her it revealed the whole lives of her father and mother, who had
been young, after all--they REALLY had--and their youth was now
so utterly passed from them that the picture of it, in the
letter, was like a burlesque of them. And so she, herself, must
pass to such changes, too, and all that now seemed vital to her
would be nothing.
When her work was finished, that afternoon, she went into her
father's room. His recovery had progressed well enough to permit
the departure of Miss Perry; and Adams, wearing one of Mrs.
Adams's wrappers over his night-gown, sat in a high- backed chair
by a closed window. The weather was warm, but the closed window
and the flannel wrapper had not sufficed him: round his shoulders
he had an old crocheted scarf of Alice's; his legs were wrapped
in a heavy comfort; and, with these swathings about him, and his
eyes closed, his thin and grizzled head making but a slight
indentation in the pillow supporting it, he looked old and little
and queer.
Alice would have gone out softly, but without opening his eyes,
he spoke to her: "Don't go, dearie. Come sit with the old man a
little while."
She brought a chair near his. "I thought you were napping."
"No. I don't hardly ever do that. I just drift a little
sometimes."
"How do you mean you drift, papa?"
He looked at her vaguely. "Oh, I don't know. Kind of pictures.
They get a little mixed up--old times with times still ahead,
like planning what to do, you know. That's as near a nap as I
get-- when the pictures mix up some. I suppose it's sort of
drowsing."
She took one of his hands and stroked it. "What do you mean when
you say you have pictures like 'planning what to do'?" she asked.
"I mean planning what to do when I get out and able to go to work
again."
"But that doesn't need any planning," Alice said, quickly.
"You're going back to your old place at Lamb's, of course."
Adams closed his eyes again, sighing heavily, but made no other
response.
"Why, of COURSE you are!" she cried. "What are you talking
about?"
His head turned slowly toward her, revealing the eyes, open in a
haggard stare. "I heard you the other night when you came from
the party," he said. "I know what was the matter."
"Indeed, you don't," she assured him. "You don't know anything
about it, because there wasn't anything the matter at all."
"Don't you suppose I heard you crying? What'd you cry for if
there wasn't anything the matter?"
"Just nerves, papa. It wasn't anything else in the world."
"Never mind," he said. "Your mother told me."
"She promised me not to!"
At that Adams laughed mournfully. "It wouldn't be very likely
I'd hear you so upset and not ask about it, even if she didn't
come and tell me on her own hook. You needn't try to fool me; I
tell you I know what was the matter."
"The only matter was I had a silly fit," Alice protested. "It
did me good, too."
"How's that?"
"Because I've decided to do something about it, papa."
"That isn't the way your mother looks at it," Adams said,
ruefully. "She thinks it's our place to do something about it.
Well, I don't know--I don't know; everything seems so changed
these days. You've always been a good daughter, Alice, and you
ought to have as much as any of these girls you go with; she's
convinced me she's right about THAT. The trouble is----" He
faltered, apologetically, then went on, "I mean the question
is--how to get it for you."
"No!" she cried. "I had no business to make such a fuss just
because a lot of idiots didn't break their necks to get dances
with me and because I got mortified about Walter--Walter WAS
pretty terrible----"
"Oh, me, my!" Adams lamented. "I guess that's something we just
have to leave work out itself. What you going to do with a boy
nineteen or twenty years old that makes his own living? Can't
whip him. Can't keep him locked up in the house. Just got to
hope he'll learn better, I suppose."
"Of course he didn't want to go to the Palmers'," Alice
explained, tolerantly--"and as mama and I made him take me, and
he thought that was pretty selfish in me, why, he felt he had a
right to amuse himself any way he could. Of course it was awful
that this--that this Mr. Russell should----" In spite of her,
the recollection choked her.
"Yes, it was awful," Adams agreed. "Just awful. Oh, me, my!"
But Alice recovered herself at once, and showed him a cheerful
face. "Well, just a few years from now I probably won't even
remember it! I believe hardly anything amounts to as much as we
think it does at the time."
"Well--sometimes it don't."
"What I've been thinking, papa: it seems to me I ought to DO
something."
"What like?"
She looked dreamy, but was obviously serious as she told him:
"Well, I mean I ought to be something besides just a kind of
nobody. I ought to----" She paused.
"What, dearie?"
"Well--there's one thing I'd like to do. I'm sure I COULD do it,
too."
"What?"
"I want to go on the stage: I know I could act." At this, her
father abruptly gave utterance to a feeble cackling of laughter;
and when Alice, surprised and a little offended, pressed him for
his reason, he tried to evade, saying, "Nothing, dearie. I just
thought of something." But she persisted until he had to
explain.
"It made me think of your mother's sister, your Aunt Flora, that
died when you were little," he said. "She was always telling how
she was going on the stage, and talking about how she was certain
she'd make a great actress, and all so on; and one day your
mother broke out and said she ought 'a' gone on the stage,
herself, because she always knew she had the talent for it--and,
well, they got into kind of a spat about which one'd make the
best actress. I had to go out in the hall to laugh!"
"Maybe you were wrong," Alice said, gravely. "If they both felt
it, why wouldn't that look as if there was talent in the family?
I've ALWAYS thought----"
"No, dearie," he said, with a final chuckle. "Your mother and
Flora weren't different from a good many others. I expect ninety
per cent. of all the women I ever knew were just sure they'd be
mighty fine actresses if they ever got the chance. Well, I guess
it's a good thing; they enjoy thinking about it and it don't do
anybody any harm."
Alice was piqued. For several days she had thought almost
continuously of a career to be won by her own genius. Not that
she planned details, or concerned herself with first steps; her
picturings overleaped all that. Principally, she saw her name
great on all the bill-boards of that unkind city, and herself,
unchanged in age but glamorous with fame and Paris clothes,
returning in a private car. No doubt the pleasantest development
of her vision was a dialogue with Mildred; and this became so
real that, as she projected it, Alice assumed the proper
expressions for both parties to it, formed words with her lips,
and even spoke some of them aloud. "No, I haven't forgotten you,
Mrs. Russell. I remember you quite pleasantly, in fact. You
were a Miss Palmer, I recall, in those funny old days. Very kind
of you, I'm shaw. I appreciate your eagerness to do something
for me in your own little home. As you say, a reception WOULD
renew my acquaintanceship with many old friends-- but I'm shaw
you won't mind my mentioning that I don't find much inspiration
in these provincials. I really must ask you not to press me. An
artist's time is not her own, though of course I could hardly
expect you to understand----"
Thus Alice illuminated the dull time; but she retired from the
interview with her father still manfully displaying an outward
cheerfulness, while depression grew heavier within, as if she had
eaten soggy cake. Her father knew nothing whatever of the stage,
and she was aware of his ignorance, yet for some reason his
innocently skeptical amusement reduced her bright project almost
to nothing. Something like this always happened, it seemed; she
was continually making these illuminations, all gay with gildings
and colourings; and then as soon as anybody else so much as
glanced at them--even her father, who loved her--the pretty
designs were stricken with a desolating pallor. "Is this LIFE?"
Alice wondered, not doubting that the question was original and
all her own. "Is it life to spend your time imagining things
that aren't so, and never will be? Beautiful things happen to
other people; why should I be the only one they never CAN happen
to?"
The mood lasted overnight; and was still upon her the next
afternoon when an errand for her father took her down-town.
Adams had decided to begin smoking again, and Alice felt rather
degraded, as well as embarrassed, when she went into the large
shop her father had named, and asked for the cheap tobacco he
used in his pipe. She fell back upon an air of amused
indulgence, hoping thus to suggest that her purchase was made for
some faithful old retainer, now infirm; and although the calmness
of the clerk who served her called for no such elaboration of her
sketch, she ornamented it with a little laugh and with the
remark, as she dropped the package into her coat-pocket, "I'm
sure it'll please him; they tell me it's the kind he likes."
Still playing Lady Bountiful, smiling to herself in anticipation
of the joy she was bringing to the simple old negro or Irish
follower of the family, she left the shop; but as she came out
upon the crowded pavement her smile vanished quickly.
Next to the door of the tobacco-shop, there was the open entrance
to a stairway, and, above this rather bleak and dark aperture, a
sign-board displayed in begrimed gilt letters the information
that Frincke's Business College occupied the upper floors of the
building. Furthermore, Frincke here publicly offered "personal
instruction and training in practical mathematics, bookkeeping,
and all branches of the business life, including stenography,
typewriting, etc."
Alice halted for a moment, frowning at this signboard as though
it were something surprising and distasteful which she had never
seen before. Yet it was conspicuous in a busy quarter; she
almost always passed it when she came down-town, and never
without noticing it. Nor was this the first time she had paused
to lift toward it that same glance of vague misgiving.
The building was not what the changeful city defined as a modern
one, and the dusty wooden stairway, as seen from the pavement,
disappeared upward into a smoky darkness. So would the footsteps
of a girl ascending there lead to a hideous obscurity, Alice
thought; an obscurity as dreary and as permanent as death. And
like dry leaves falling about her she saw her wintry imaginings
in the May air: pretty girls turning into withered creatures as
they worked at typing-machines; old maids "taking dictation" from
men with double chins; Alice saw old maids of a dozen different
kinds "taking dictation." Her mind's eye was crowded with them,
as it always was when she passed that stairway entrance; and
though they were all different from one another, all of them
looked a little like herself.
She hated the place, and yet she seldom hurried by it or averted
her eyes. It had an unpleasant fascination for her, and a
mysterious reproach, which she did not seek to fathom. She
walked on thoughtfully to-day; and when, at the next corner, she
turned into the street that led toward home, she was given a
surprise. Arthur Russell came rapidly from behind her, lifting
his hat as she saw him.
"Are you walking north, Miss Adams?" he asked. "Do you mind if I
walk with you?"
She was not delighted, but seemed so. "How charming!" she cried,
giving him a little flourish of the shapely hands; and then,
because she wondered if he had seen her coming out of the
tobacco-shop, she laughed and added, "I've just been on the most
ridiculous errand!"
"What was that?"
"To order some cigars for my father. He's been quite ill, poor
man, and he's so particular--but what in the world do _I_ know
about cigars?"
Russell laughed. "Well, what DO you know about 'em? Did you
select by the price?"
"Mercy, no!" she exclaimed, and added, with an afterthought, "Of
course he wrote down the name of the kind he wanted and I gave it
to the shopman. I could never have pronounced it." _
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