________________________________________________
_ He meant his own transgression and his own way; for Walter's
stubborn refusal appeared to Adams just then as one of the
inexplicable but righteous besettings he must encounter in
following that way. "Oh, Lordy, Lord!" he groaned, and then, as
resentment moved him--"That dang boy! Dang idiot" Yet he knew
himself for a greater idiot because he had not been able to tell
Walter the truth. He could not bring himself to do it, nor even
to state his case in its best terms; and that was because he felt
that even in its best terms the case was a bad one.
Of all his regrets the greatest was that in a moment of vanity
and tenderness, twenty-five years ago, he had told his young wife
a business secret. He had wanted to show how important her
husband was becoming, and how much the head of the universe, J.
A. Lamb, trusted to his integrity and ability. The great man
had an idea: he thought of "branching out a little," he told
Adams confidentially, and there were possibilities of profit in
glue.
What he wanted was a liquid glue to be put into little bottles
and sold cheaply. "The kind of thing that sells itself," he
said; "the kind of thing that pays its own small way as it goes
along, until it has profits enough to begin advertising it right.
Everybody has to use glue, and if I make mine convenient and
cheap, everybody'll buy mine. But it's got to be glue that'll
STICK; it's got to be the best; and if we find how to make it
we've got, to keep it a big secret, of course, or anybody can
steal it from us. There was a man here last month; he knew a
formula he wanted to sell me, 'sight unseen'; but he was in such
a hurry I got suspicious, and I found he'd managed to steal it,
working for the big packers in their glue-works. We've got to
find a better glue than that, anyhow. I'm going to set you and
Campbell at it. You're a practical, wide-awake young feller, and
Campbell's a mighty good chemist; I guess you two boys ought to
make something happen."
His guess was shrewd enough. Working in a shed a little way
outside the town, where their cheery employer visited them
sometimes to study their malodorous stews, the two young men
found what Lamb had set them to find. But Campbell was
thoughtful over the discovery. "Look here," he said. "Why ain't
this just about yours and mine? After all, it may be Lamb's
money that's paid for the stuff we've used, but it hasn't cost
much."
"But he pays US," Adams remonstrated, horrified by his
companion's idea. "He paid us to do it. It belongs absolutely
to him."
"Oh, I know he THINKS it does," Campbell admitted, plaintively.
"I suppose we've got to let him take it. It's not patentable,
and he'll have to do pretty well by us when he starts his
factory, because he's got to depend on us to run the making of
the stuff so that the workmen can't get onto the process. You
better ask him the same salary I do, and mine's going to be high.
But the high salary, thus pleasantly imagined, was never paid.
Campbell died of typhoid fever, that summer, leaving Adams and
his employer the only possessors of the formula, an unwritten
one; and Adams, pleased to think himself more important to the
great man than ever, told his wife that there could be little
doubt of his being put in sole charge of the prospective
glue-works. Unfortunately, the enterprise remained prospective.
Its projector had already become "inveigled into another
side-line," as he told Adams. One of his sons had persuaded him
to take up a "cough-lozenge," to be called the "Jalamb Balm
Trochee"; and the lozenge did well enough to amuse Mr. Lamb and
occupy his spare time, which was really about all he had asked of
the glue project. He had "all the MONEY anybody ought to want,"
he said, when Adams urged him; and he could "start up this little
glue side-line" at any time; the formula was safe in their two
heads.
At intervals Adams would seek opportunity to speak of "the little
glue side-line" to his patron, and to suggest that the years were
passing; but Lamb, petting other hobbies, had lost interest.
"Oh, I'll start it up some day, maybe. If I don't, I may turn it
over to my heirs: it's always an asset, worth something or other,
of course. We'll probably take it up some day, though, you and
I."
The sun persistently declined to rise on that day, and, as time
went on, Adams saw that his rather timid urgings bored his
employer, and he ceased to bring up the subject. Lamb apparently
forgot all about glue, but Adams discovered that unfortunately
there was someone else who remembered it.
"It's really YOURS," she argued, that painful day when for the
first time she suggested his using his knowledge for the benefit
of himself and his family. "Mr. Campbell might have had a right
to part of it, but he died and didn't leave any kin, so it
belongs to you."
"Suppose J. A. Lamb hired me to saw some wood," Adams said.
"Would the sticks belong to me?"
"He hasn't got any right to take your invention and bury it," she
protested. "What good is it doing him if he doesn't DO anything
with it? What good is it doing ANYBODY? None in the world! And
what harm would it do him if you went ahead and did this for
yourself and for your children? None in the world! And what
could he do to you if he WAS old pig enough to get angry with you
for doing it? He couldn't do a single thing, and you've admitted
he couldn't, yourself. So what's your reason for depriving your
children and your wife of the benefits you know you could give
'em?"
"Nothing but decency," he answered; and she had her reply ready
for that. It seemed to him that, strive as he would, he could
not reach her mind with even the plainest language; while
everything that she said to him, with such vehemence, sounded
like so much obstinate gibberish. Over and over he pressed her
with the same illustration, on the point of ownership, though he
thought he was varying it.
"Suppose he hired me to build him a house: would that be MY
house?"
"He didn't hire you to build him a house. You and Campbell
invented----"
"Look here: suppose you give a cook a soup-bone and some
vegetables, and pay her to make you a soup: has she got a right
to take and sell it? You know better!"
"I know ONE thing: if that old man tried to keep your own
invention from you he's no better than a robber!"
They never found any point of contact in all their passionate
discussions of this ethical question; and the question was no
more settled between them, now that Adams had succumbed, than it
had ever been. But at least the wrangling about it was over:
they were grave together, almost silent, and an uneasiness
prevailed with her as much as with him.
He had already been out of the house, to walk about the small
green yard; and on Monday afternoon he sent for a taxicab and
went down-town, but kept a long way from the "wholesale section,"
where stood the formidable old oblong pile of Lamb and Company.
He arranged for the sale of the bonds he had laid away, and for
placing a mortgage upon his house; and on his way home, after
five o'clock, he went to see an old friend, a man whose term of
service with Lamb and Company was even a little longer than his
own.
This veteran, returned from the day's work, was sitting in front
of the apartment house where he lived, but when the cab stopped
at the curb he rose and came forward, offering a jocular
greeting. "Well, well, Virgil Adams! I always thought you had a
sporty streak in you. Travel in your own hired private
automobile nowadays, do you? Pamperin' yourself because you're
still layin' off sick, I expect."
"Oh, I'm well enough again, Charley Lohr," Adams said, as he got
out and shook hands. Then, telling the driver to wait, he took
his friend's arm, walked to the bench with him, and sat down. "I
been practically well for some time," he said. "I'm fixin' to
get into harness again."
"Bein' sick has certainly produced a change of heart in you," his
friend laughed. "You're the last man I ever expected to see
blowin' yourself--or anybody else to a taxicab! For that matter,
I never heard of you bein' in ANY kind of a cab, 'less'n it might
be when you been pall-bearer for somebody. What's come over
you?"
"Well, I got to turn over a new leaf, and that's a fact," Adams
said. "I got a lot to do, and the only way to accomplish it,
it's got to be done soon, or I won't have anything to live on
while I'm doing it."
"What you talkin' about? What you got to do except to get strong
enough to come back to the old place?"
"Well----" Adams paused, then coughed, and said slowly, "Fact is,
Charley Lohr, I been thinking likely I wouldn't come back."
"What! What you talkin' about?"
"No," said Adams. "I been thinking I might likely kind of branch
out on my own account."
"Well, I'll be doggoned!" Old Charley Lohr was amazed; he ruffled
up his gray moustache with thumb and forefinger, leaving his
mouth open beneath, like a dark cave under a tangled wintry
thicket. "Why, that's the doggonedest thing I ever heard!" he
said. "I already am the oldest inhabitant down there, but if you
go, there won't be anybody else of the old generation at all.
What on earth you thinkin' of goin' into?"
"Well," said Adams, "I rather you didn't mention it till I get
started of course anybody'll know what it is by then--but I HAVE
been kind of planning to put a liquid glue on the market."
His friend, still ruffling the gray moustache upward, stared at
him in frowning perplexity. "Glue?" he said. "GLUE!"
"Yes. I been sort of milling over the idea of taking up
something like that."
"Handlin' it for some firm, you mean?"
"No. Making it. Sort of a glue-works likely."
Lohr continued to frown. "Let me think," he said. "Didn't the
ole man have some such idea once, himself?"
Adams leaned forward, rubbing his knees; and he coughed again
before he spoke. "Well, yes. Fact is, he did. That is to say,
a mighty long while ago he did."
"I remember," said Lohr. "He never said anything about it that I
know of; but seems to me I recollect we had sort of a rumour
around the place how you and that man--le's see, wasn't his name
Campbell, that died of typhoid fever? Yes, that was it,
Campbell. Didn't the ole man have you and Campbell workin' sort
of private on some glue proposition or other?"
"Yes, he did." Adams nodded. "I found out a good deal about
glue then, too."
"Been workin' on it since, I suppose?"
"Yes. Kept it in my mind and studied out new things about it."
Lohr looked serious. "Well, but see here," he said. "I hope it
ain't anything the ole man'll think might infringe on whatever he
had you doin' for HIM. You know how he is: broad-minded,
liberal, free-handed man as walks this earth, and if he thought
he owed you a cent he'd sell his right hand for a pork-chop to
pay it, if that was the only way; but if he got the idea anybody
was tryin' to get the better of him, he'd sell BOTH his hands, if
he had to, to keep 'em from doin' it. Yes, at eighty, he would!
Not that I mean I think you might be tryin' to get the better of
him, Virg. You're a mighty close ole codger, but such a thing
ain't in you. What I mean: I hope there ain't any chance for the
ole man to THINK you might be----"
"Oh, no," Adams interrupted. "As a matter of fact, I don't
believe he'll ever think about it at all, and if he did he
wouldn't have any real right to feel offended at me: the process
I'm going to use is one I expect to change and improve a lot
different from the one Campbell and I worked on for him."
"Well, that's good," said Lohr. "Of course you know what you're
up to: you're old enough, God knows!" He laughed ruefully. "My,
but it will seem funny to me--down there with you gone! I expect
you and I both been gettin' to be pretty much dead-wood in the
place, the way the young fellows look at it, and the only one
that'd miss either of us would be the other one! Have you told
the ole man yet?"
"Well----" Adams spoke laboriously. "No. No, I haven't. I
thought--well, that's what I wanted to see you about."
"What can I do?"
"I thought I'd write him a letter and get you to hand it to him
for me."
"My soul!" his friend exclaimed. "Why on earth don't you just go
down there and tell him?"
Adams became pitiably embarrassed. He stammered, coughed,
stammered again, wrinkling his face so deeply he seemed about to
weep; but finally he contrived to utter an apologetic laugh. "I
ought to do that, of course; but in some way or other I just
don't seem to be able to--to manage it."
"Why in the world not?" the mystified Lohr inquired.
"I could hardly tell you--'less'n it is to say that when you been
with one boss all your life it's so-- so kind of embarrassing--to
quit him, I just can't make up my mind to go and speak to him
about it. No; I got it in my head a letter's the only
satisfactory way to do it, and I thought I'd ask you to hand it
to him,"
"Well, of course I don't mind doin' that for you," Lohr said,
mildly. "But why in the world don't you just mail it to him?"
"Well, I'll tell you," Adams returned. "You know, like that,
it'd have to go through a clerk and that secretary of his, and I
don't know who all. There's a couple of kind of delicate points
I want to put in it: for instance, I want to explain to him how
much improvement and so on I'm going to introduce on the old
process I helped to work out with Campbell when we were working
for him, so't he'll understand it's a different article and no
infringement at all. Then there's another thing: you see all
during while I was sick he had my salary paid to me it amounts to
considerable, I was on my back so long. Under the circumstances,
because I'm quitting, I don't feel as if I ought to accept it,
and so I'll have a check for him in the letter to cover it, and I
want to be sure he knows it, and gets it personally. If it had
to go through a lot of other people, the way it would if I put it
in the mail, why, you can't tell. So what I thought: if you'd
hand it to him for me, and maybe if he happened to read it right
then, or anything, it might be you'd notice whatever he'd happen
to say about it--and you could tell me afterward."
"All right," Lohr said. "Certainly if you'd rather do it that
way, I'll hand it to him and tell you what he says; that is, if
he says anything and I hear him. Got it written?"
"No; I'll send it around to you last of the week." Adams moved
toward his taxicab. "Don't say anything to anybody about it,
Charley, especially till after that."
"All right."
"And, Charley, I'll be mighty obliged to you," Adams said, and
came back to shake hands in farewell. "There's one thing more
you might do--if you'd ever happen to feel like it." He kept his
eyes rather vaguely fixed on a point above his friend's head as
he spoke, and his voice was not well controlled. "I been--I been
down there a good many years and I may not 'a' been so much use
lately as I was at first, but I always tried to do my best for
the old firm. If anything turned out so's they DID kind of take
offense with me, down there, why, just say a good word for me--if
you'd happen to feel like it, maybe."
Old Charley Lohr assured him that he would speak a good word if
opportunity became available; then, after the cab had driven
away, he went up to his small apartment on the third floor and
muttered ruminatively until his wife inquired what he was talking
to himself about.
"Ole Virg Adams," he told her. "He's out again after his long
spell of sickness, and the way it looks to me he'd better stayed
in bed."
"You mean he still looks too bad to be out?"
"Oh, I expect he's gettin' his HEALTH back," Lohr said, frowning.
"Then what's the matter with him? You mean he's lost his mind?"
"My goodness, but women do jump at conclusions!" he exclaimed.
"Well," said Mrs. Lohr, "what other conclusion did you leave me
to jump at?"
Her husband explained with a little heat: "People can have a
sickness that AFFECTS their mind, can't they? Their mind can get
some affected without bein' LOST, can't it?"
"Then you mean the poor man's mind does seem affected?"
"Why, no; I'd scarcely go as far as that," Lohr said,
inconsistently, and declined to be more definite.
Adams devoted the latter part of that evening to the composition
of his letter--a disquieting task not completed when, at eleven
o'clock, he heard his daughter coming up the stairs. She was
singing to herself in a low, sweet voice, and Adams paused to
listen incredulously, with his pen lifted and his mouth open, as
if he heard the strangest sound in the world. Then he set down
the pen upon a blotter, went to his door, and opened it, looking
out at her as she came.
"Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty good," he said.
"What you been doing?"
"Just sitting out on the front steps, papa."
"All alone, I suppose."
"No. Mr. Russell called."
"Oh, he did?" Adams pretended to be surprised. "What all could
you and he find to talk about till this hour o' the night?"
She laughed gaily. "You don't know me, papa!"
"How's that?"
"You've never found out that I always do all the talking."
"Didn't you let him get a word in all evening?"
"Oh, yes; every now and then."
Adams took her hand and petted it. "Well, what did he say?"
Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him. "Not what you
think!" she laughed; then slapped his cheek with saucy affection,
pirouetted across the narrow hall and into her own room, and
curtsied to him as she closed her door.
Adams went back to his writing with a lighter heart; for since
Alice was born she had been to him the apple of his eye, his own
phrase in thinking of her; and what he was doing now was for her.
He smiled as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft of the
painful letter; but presently he looked puzzled. After all, she
could be happy just as things were, it seemed. Then why had he
taken what his wife called "this new step," which he had so long
resisted?
He could only sigh and wonder. "Life works out pretty
peculiarly," he thought; for he couldn't go back now, though the
reason he couldn't was not clearly apparent. He had to go ahead. _
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