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_ After that, she went to her room and sat down before her
three-leaved mirror. There was where she nearly always sat when
she came into her room, if she had nothing in mind to do. She
went to that chair as naturally as a dog goes to his corner.
She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity seemed to be
her mood. But after a long, almost motionless scrutiny, she
began to produce dramatic sketches upon that ever-ready stage,
her countenance: she showed gaiety, satire, doubt, gentleness,
appreciation of a companion and love-in-hiding-- all studied in
profile first, then repeated for a "three- quarter view."
Subsequently she ran through them, facing herself in full.
In this manner she outlined a playful scenario for her next
interview with Arthur Russell; but grew solemn again, thinking of
the impression she had already sought to give him. She had no
twinges for any underminings of her "most intimate friend"--in
fact, she felt that her work on a new portrait of Mildred for Mr.
Russell had been honest and accurate. But why had it been her
instinct to show him an Alice Adams who didn't exist?
Almost everything she had said to him was upon spontaneous
impulse, springing to her lips on the instant; yet it all seemed
to have been founded upon a careful design, as if some hidden
self kept such designs in stock and handed them up to her,
ready-made, to be used for its own purpose. What appeared to be
the desired result was a false-coloured image in Russell's mind;
but if he liked that image he wouldn't be liking Alice Adams; nor
would anything he thought about the image be a thought about her.
Nevertheless, she knew she would go on with her false, fancy
colourings of this nothing as soon as she saw him again; she had
just been practicing them. "What's the idea?" she wondered.
"What makes me tell such lies? Why shouldn't I be just myself?"
And then she thought, "But which one is myself?"
Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips,
disquieted by a deepening wonder, parted to whisper:
"Who in the world are you?"
The apparition before her had obeyed her like an alert slave, but
now, as she subsided to a complete stillness, that aspect changed
to the old mockery with which mirrors avenge their wrongs. The
nucleus of some queer thing seemed to gather and shape itself
behind the nothingness of the reflected eyes until it became
almost an actual strange presence. If it could be identified,
perhaps the presence was that of the hidden designer who handed
up the false, ready-made pictures, and, for unknown purposes,
made Alice exhibit them; but whatever it was, she suddenly found
it monkey- like and terrifying. In a flutter she jumped up and
went to another part of the room.
A moment or two later she was whistling softly as she hung her
light coat over a wooden triangle in her closet, and her musing
now was quainter than the experience that led to it; for what she
thought was this, "I certainly am a queer girl!" She took a
little pride in so much originality, believing herself probably
the only person in the world to have such thoughts as had been
hers since she entered the room, and the first to be disturbed by
a strange presence in the mirror. In fact, the effect of the
tiny episode became apparent in that look of preoccupied
complacency to be seen for a time upon any girl who has found
reason to suspect that she is a being without counterpart.
This slight glow, still faintly radiant, was observed across the
dinner-table by Walter, but he misinterpreted it. "What YOU
lookin' so self-satisfied about?" he inquired, and added in his
knowing way, "I saw you, all right, cutie!"
"Where'd you see me?"
"Down-town."
"This afternoon, you mean, Walter?"
"Yes, 'this afternoon, I mean, Walter,' " he returned,
burlesquing her voice at least happily enough to please himself;
for he laughed applausively. "Oh, you never saw me! I passed
you close enough to pull a tooth, but you were awful busy. I
never did see anybody as busy as you get, Alice, when you're
towin' a barge. My, but you keep your hands goin'! Looked like
the air was full of 'em! That's why I'm onto why you look so
tickled this evening; I saw you with that big fish."
Mrs. Adams laughed benevolently; she was not displeased with
this rallying. "Well, what of it, Walter?" she asked. "If you
happen to see your sister on the street when some nice young man
is being attentive to her----"
Walter barked and then cackled. "Whoa, Sal!" he said. "You got
the parts mixed. It's little Alice that was 'being attentive.' I
know the big fish she was attentive to, all right, too."
"Yes," his sister retorted, quietly. "I should think you might
have recognized him, Walter."
Walter looked annoyed. "Still harpin' on THAT!" he complained.
"The kind of women I like, if they get sore they just hit you
somewhere on the face and then they're through. By the way, I
heard this Russell was supposed to be your dear, old, sweet
friend Mildred's steady. What you doin' walkin' as close to him
as all that?"
Mrs. Adams addressed her son in gentle reproof, "Why Walter!"
"Oh, never mind, mama," Alice said. "To the horrid all things
are horrid."
"Get out!" Walter protested, carelessly. "I heard all about this
Russell down at the shop. Young Joe Lamb's such a talker I
wonder he don't ruin his grandfather's business; he keeps all us
cheap help standin' round listening to him nine-tenths of our
time. Well, Joe told me this Russell's some kin or other to the
Palmer family, and he's got some little money of his own, and
he's puttin' it into ole Palmer's trust company and Palmer's
goin' to make him a vice-president of the company. Sort of a
keep- the-money-in-the-family arrangement, Joe Lamb says."
Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. "I don't see----" she began.
"Why, this Russell's supposed to be tied up to Mildred," her son
explained. "When ole Palmer dies this Russell will be his
son-in-law, and all he'll haf' to do'll be to barely lift his
feet and step into the ole man's shoes. It's certainly a mighty
fat hand-me- out for this Russell! You better lay off o' there,
Alice. Pick somebody that's got less to lose and you'll make
better showing."
Mrs. Adams's air of thoughtfulness had not departed. "But you
say this Mr. Russell is well off on his own account, Walter."
"Oh, Joe Lamb says he's got some little of his own. Didn't know
how much."
"Well, then----"
Walter laughed his laugh. "Cut it out," he bade her. "Alice
wouldn't run in fourth place."
Alice had been looking at him in a detached way, as though
estimating the value of a specimen in a collection not her own.
"Yes," she said, indifferently. "You REALLY are vulgar, Walter."
He had finished his meal; and, rising, he came round the table to
her and patted her good-naturedly on the shoulder. "Good ole
Allie!" he said. "HONEST, you wouldn't run in fourth place. If
I was you I'd never even start in the class. That frozen-face;
gang will rule you off the track soon as they see your colours."
"Walter!" his mother said again.
"Well, ain't I her brother?" he returned, seeming to be entirely
serious and direct, for the moment, at least. "_I_ like the ole
girl all right. Fact is, sometimes I'm kind of sorry for her."
"But what's it all ABOUT?" Alice cried. "Simply because you met
me down-town with a man I never saw but once before and just
barely know! Why all this palaver?"
"'Why?'" he repeated, grinning. "Well, I've seen you start
before, you know!" He went to the door, and paused. "I got no
date to-night. Take you to the movies, you care to go."
She declined crisply. "No, thanks!"
"Come on," he said, as pleasantly as he knew how.
"Give me a chance to show you a better time than we had up at
that frozen-face joint. I'll get you some chop suey afterward."
"No, thanks!"
"All right," he responded and waved a flippant adieu. "As the
barber says, 'The better the advice, the worse it's wasted!'
Good-night!"
Alice shrugged her shoulders; but a moment or two later, as the
jar of the carelessly slammed front door went through the house,
she shook her head, reconsidering. "Perhaps I ought to have gone
with him. It might have kept him away from whatever dreadful
people are his friends--at least for one night."
"Oh, I'm sure Walter's a GOOD boy," Mrs. Adams said, soothingly;
and this was what she almost always said when either her husband
or Alice expressed such misgivings. "He's odd, and he's picked
up right queer manners; but that's only because we haven't given
him advantages like the other young men. But I'm sure he's a
GOOD boy."
She reverted to the subject a little later, while she washed the
dishes and Alice wiped them. "Of course Walter could take his
place with the other nice boys of the town even yet," she said.
"I mean, if we could afford to help him financially. They all
belong to the country clubs and have cars and----"
"Let's don't go into that any more, mama," the daughter begged
her. "What's the use?"
"It COULD be of use," Mrs. Adams insisted. "It could if your
father----"
"But papa CAN'T."
"Yes, he can."
"But how can he? He told me a man of his age CAN'T give up a
business he's been in practically all his life, and just go
groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I
think he's right about it, too, of course!"
Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new vigour
heightened by an old bitterness. "Oh, yes," she said. "He talks
that way; but he knows better."
"How could he 'know better,' mama?"
"HE knows how!"
"But what does he know?"
Mrs. Adams tossed her head. "You don't suppose I'm such a fool
I'd be urging him to give up something for nothing, do you,
Alice? Do you suppose I'd want him to just go 'groping around'
like he was telling you? That would be crazy, of course. Little
as his work at Lamb's brings in, I wouldn't be so silly as to ask
him to give it up just on a CHANCE he could find something else.
Good gracious, Alice, you must give me credit for a little
intelligence once in a while!"
Alice was puzzled. "But what else could there be except a
chance? I don't see----"
"Well, I do," her mother interrupted, decisively. "That man
could make us all well off right now if he wanted to. We could
have been rich long ago if he'd ever really felt as he ought to
about his family."
"What! Why, how could----"
"You know how as well as I do," Mrs. Adams said, crossly. "I
guess you haven't forgotten how he treated me about it the Sunday
before he got sick."
She went on with her work, putting into it a sudden violence
inspired by the recollection; but Alice, enlightened, gave
utterance to a laugh of lugubrious derision. "Oh, the GLUE
factory again!" she cried. "How silly!" And she renewed her
laughter.
So often do the great projects of parents appear ignominious to
their children. Mrs. Adams's conception of a glue factory as a
fairy godmother of this family was an absurd old story which
Alice had never taken seriously. She remembered that when she
was about fifteen her mother began now and then to say something
to Adams about a "glue factory," rather timidly, and as a vague
suggestion, but never without irritating him. Then, for years,
the preposterous subject had not been mentioned; possibly because
of some explosion on the part of Adams, when his daughter had not
been present. But during the last year Mrs. Adams had quietly
gone back to these old hints, reviving them at intervals and also
reviving her husband's irritation. Alice's bored impression was
that her mother wanted him to found, or buy, or do something, or
other, about a glue factory; and that he considered the proposal
so impracticable as to be insulting. The parental conversations
took place when neither Alice nor Walter was at hand, but
sometimes Alice had come in upon the conclusion of one, to find
her father in a shouting mood, and shocking the air behind him
with profane monosyllables as he departed. Mrs. Adams would be
left quiet and troubled; and when Alice, sympathizing with the
goaded man, inquired of her mother why these tiresome bickerings
had been renewed, she always got the brooding and cryptic answer,
"He COULD do it--if he wanted to." Alice failed to comprehend
the desirability of a glue factory--to her mind a father engaged
in a glue factory lacked impressiveness; had no advantage over a
father employed by Lamb and Company; and she supposed that Adams
knew better than her mother whether such an enterprise would be
profitable or not. Emphatically, he thought it would not, for
she had heard him shouting at the end of one of these painful
interviews, "You can keep up your dang talk till YOU die and _I_
die, but I'll never make one God's cent that way!"
There had been a culmination. Returning from church on the
Sunday preceding the collapse with which Adams's illness had
begun, Alice found her mother downstairs, weeping and
intimidated, while her father's stamping footsteps were loudly
audible as he strode up and down his room overhead. So were his
endless repetitions of invective loudly audible: "That woman!
Oh, that woman; Oh, that danged woman!"
Mrs. Adams admitted to her daughter that it was "the old glue
factory" and that her husband's wildness had frightened her into
a "solemn promise" never to mention the subject again so long as
she had breath. Alice laughed. The "glue factory" idea was not
only a bore, but ridiculous, and her mother's evident seriousness
about it one of those inexplicable vagaries we sometimes discover
in the people we know best. But this Sunday rampage appeared to
be the end of it, and when Adams came down to dinner, an hour
later, he was unusually cheerful. Alice was glad he had gone
wild enough to settle the glue factory once and for all; and she
had ceased to think of the episode long before Friday of that
week, when Adams was brought home in the middle of the afternoon
by his old employer, the "great J. A. Lamb," in the latter's
car.
During the long illness the "glue factory" was completely
forgotten, by Alice at least; and her laugh was rueful as well as
derisive now, in the kitchen, when she realized that her mother's
mind again dwelt upon this abandoned nuisance. "I thought you'd
got over all that nonsense, mama," she said.
Mrs. Adams smiled, pathetically. "Of course you think it's
nonsense, dearie. Young people think everything's nonsense that
they don't know anything about."
"Good gracious!" Alice cried. "I should think I used to hear
enough about that horrible old glue factory to know something
about it!"
"No," her mother returned patiently. "You've never heard
anything about it at all."
"I haven't?"
"No. Your father and I didn't discuss it before you children.
All you ever heard was when he'd get in such a rage, after we'd
been speaking of it, that he couldn't control himself when you
came in. Wasn't _I_ always quiet? Did _I_ ever go on talking
about it?"
"No; perhaps not. But you're talking about it now, mama, after
you promised never to mention it again."
"I promised not to mention it to your father," said Mrs. Adams,
gently. "I haven't mentioned it to him, have I?"
"Ah, but if you mention it to me I'm afraid you WILL mention it
to him. You always do speak of things that you have on your
mind, and you might get papa all stirred up again about--" Alice
paused, a light of divination flickering in her eyes. "Oh!" she
cried. "I SEE!"
"What do you see?"
"You HAVE been at him about it!"
"Not one single word!"
"No!" Alice cried. "Not a WORD, but that's what you've meant all
along! You haven't spoken the words to him, but all this urging
him to change, to 'find something better to go into'--it's all
been about nothing on earth but your foolish old glue factory
that you know upsets him, and you gave your solemn word never to
speak to him about again! You didn't say it, but you meant
it--and he KNOWS that's what you meant! Oh, mama!"
Mrs. Adams, with her hands still automatically at work in the
flooded dishpan, turned to face her daughter. "Alice," she said,
tremulously, "what do I ask for myself?"
"What?"
"I say, What do I ask for myself? Do you suppose _I_ want
anything? Don't you know I'd be perfectly content on your
father's present income if I were the only person to be
considered? What do I care about any pleasure for myself? I'd
be willing never to have a maid again; _I_ don't mind doing the
work. If we didn't have any children I'd be glad to do your
father's cooking and the housework and the washing and ironing,
too, for the rest of my life. I wouldn't care. I'm a poor cook
and a poor housekeeper; I don't do anything well; but it would be
good enough for just him and me. I wouldn't ever utter one word
of com----"
"Oh, goodness!" Alice lamented. "What IS it all about?"
"It's about this," said Mrs. Adams, swallowing. "You and Walter
are a new generation and you ought to have the same as the rest
of the new generation get. Poor Walter--asking you to go to the
movies and a Chinese restaurant: the best he had to offer! Don't
you suppose _I_ see how the poor boy is deteriorating? Don't you
suppose I know what YOU have to go through, Alice? And when I
think of that man upstairs----" The agitated voice grew louder.
"When I think of him and know that nothing in the world but his
STUBBORNNESS keeps my children from having all they want and what
they OUGHT to have, do you suppose I'm going to hold myself bound
to keep to the absolute letter of a silly promise he got from me
by behaving like a crazy man? I can't! I can't do it! No
mother could sit by and see him lock up a horn of plenty like
that in his closet when the children were starving!"
"Oh, goodness, goodness me!" Alice protested. "We aren't
precisely 'starving,' are we?"
Mrs. Adams began to weep. "It's just the same. Didn't I see
how flushed and pretty you looked, this afternoon, after you'd
been walking with this young man that's come here? Do you
suppose he'd LOOK at a girl like Mildred Palmer if you had what
you ought to have? Do you suppose he'd be going into business
with her father if YOUR father----"
"Good heavens, mama; you're worse than Walter: I just barely know
the man! DON'T be so absurd!"
"Yes, I'm always 'absurd,' " Mrs. Adams moaned. "All I can do
is cry, while your father sits upstairs, and his horn of
plenty----"
But Alice interrupted with a peal of desperate laughter. "Oh,
that 'horn of plenty!' Do come down to earth, mama. How can you
call a GLUE factory, that doesn't exist except in your mind, a
'horn of plenty'? Do let's be a little rational!"
"It COULD be a horn of plenty," the tearful Mrs, Adams insisted.
"It could! You don't understand a thing about it."
"Well, I'm willing," Alice said, with tired skepticism. "Make me
understand, then. Where'd you ever get the idea?"
Mrs. Adams withdrew her hands from the water, dried them on a
towel, and then wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. "Your father
could make a fortune if he wanted to," she said, quietly. "At
least, I don't say a fortune, but anyhow a great deal more than
he does make."
"Yes, I've heard that before, mama, and you think he could make
it out of a glue factory. What I'm asking is: How?"
"How? Why, by making glue and selling it. Don't you know how
bad most glue is when you try to mend anything? A good glue is
one of the rarest things there is; and it would just sell itself,
once it got started. Well, your father knows how to make as good
a glue as there is in the world."
Alice was not interested. "What of it? I suppose probably
anybody could make it if they wanted to."
"I SAID you didn't know anything about it. Nobody else could
make it. Your father knows a formula for making it."
"What of that?"
"It's a secret formula. It isn't even down on paper. It's worth
any amount of money."
"'Any amount?'" Alice said, remaining incredulous. "Why hasn't
papa sold it then?"
"Just because he's too stubborn to do anything with it at all!"
"How did papa get it?"
"He got it before you were born, just after we were married. I
didn't think much about it then: it wasn't till you were growing
up and I saw how much we needed money that I----"
"Yes, but how did papa get it?" Alice began to feel a little more
curious about this possible buried treasure. "Did he invent it?"
"Partly," Mrs. Adams said, looking somewhat preoccupied. "He
and another man invented it."
"Then maybe the other man----"
"He's dead."
"Then his family----"
"I don't think he left any family," Mrs. Adams said. "Anyhow,
it belongs to your father. At least it belongs to him as much as
it does to any one else. He's got an absolutely perfect right to
do anything he wants to with it, and it would make us all
comfortable if he'd do what I want him to--and he KNOWS it would,
too!"
Alice shook her head pityingly. "Poor mama!" she said. "Of
course he knows it wouldn't do anything of the kind, or else he'd
have done it long ago."
"He would, you say?" her mother cried. "That only shows how
little you know him!"
"Poor mama!" Alice said again, soothingly. "If papa were like
what you say he is, he'd be--why, he'd be crazy!"
Mrs. Adams agreed with a vehemence near passion. "You're right
about him for once: that's just what he is! He sits up there in
his stubbornness and lets us slave here in the kitchen when if he
wanted to--if he'd so much as lift his little finger----"
"Oh, come, now!" Alice laughed. "You can't build even a glue
factory with just one little finger."
Mrs. Adams seemed about to reply that finding fault with a
figure of speech was beside the point; but a ringing of the front
door bell forestalled the retort. "Now, who do you suppose that
is?" she wondered aloud, then her face brightened. "Ah--did Mr.
Russell ask if he could----"
"No, he wouldn't be coming this evening," Alice said. "Probably
it's the great J. A. Lamb: he usually stops for a minute on
Thursdays to ask how papa's getting along. I'll go."
She tossed her apron off, and as she went through the house her
expression was thoughtful. She was thinking vaguely about the
glue factory and wondering if there might be "something in it"
after all. If her mother was right about the rich possibilities
of Adams's secret--but that was as far as Alice's speculations
upon the matter went at this time: they were checked, partly by
the thought that her father probably hadn't enough money for such
an enterprise, and partly by the fact that she had arrived at the
front door. _
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