________________________________________________
_ That was a thought almost continuously in his mind, even when he
was hardest at work; and, as the days went on and he could not
free himself, he became querulous about it. "I guess I'm the
biggest dang fool alive," he told his wife as they sat together
one evening. "I got plenty else to bother me, without worrying
my head off about what HE thinks. I can't help what he thinks;
it's too late for that. So why should I keep pestering myself
about it?"
"It'll wear off, Virgil," Mrs. Adams said, reassuringly. She
was gentle and sympathetic with him, and for the first time in
many years he would come to sit with her and talk, when he had
finished his day's work. He had told her, evading her eye, "Oh,
I don't blame you. You didn't get after me to do this on your
own account; you couldn't help it."
"Yes; but it don't wear off," he complained. "This afternoon I
was showing the men how I wanted my vats to go, and I caught my
fool self standing there saying to my fool self, 'It's funny I
don't hear how he feels about it from SOMEbody.' I was saying it
aloud, almost--and it IS funny I don't hear anything!"
"Well, you see what it means, don't you, Virgil? It only means
he hasn't said anything to anybody about it. Don't you think
you're getting kind of morbid over it?"
"Maybe, maybe," he muttered.
"Why, yes," she said, briskly. "You don't realize what a little
bit of a thing all this is to him. It's been a long, long while
since the last time you even mentioned glue to him, and he's
probably forgotten everything about it."
"You're off your base; it isn't like him to forget things," Adams
returned, peevishly. "He may seem to forget 'em, but he don't."
"But he's not thinking about this, or you'd have heard from him
before now."
Her husband shook his head. "Ah, that's just it!" he said. "Why
HAVEN'T I heard from him?"
"It's all your morbidness, Virgil. Look at Walter: if Mr. Lamb
held this up against you, would he still let Walter stay there?
Wouldn't he have discharged Walter if he felt angry with you?"
"That dang boy!" Adams said. "If he WANTED to come with me now,
I wouldn't hardly let him, What do you suppose makes him so
bull-headed?"
"But hasn't he a right to choose for himself?" she asked. "I
suppose he feels he ought to stick to what he thinks is sure pay.
As soon as he sees that you're going to succeed with the
glue-works he'll want to be with you quick enough."
"Well, he better get a little sense in his head," Adams returned,
crossly. "He wanted me to pay him a three-hundred-dollar bonus
in advance, when anybody with a grain of common sense knows I
need every penny I can lay my hands on!"
"Never mind," she said. "He'll come around later and be glad of
the chance."
"He'll have to beg for it then! _I_ won't ask him again."
"Oh, Walter will come out all right; you needn't worry. And
don't you see that Mr. Lamb's not discharging him means there's
no hard feeling against you, Virgil?"
"I can't make it out at all," he said, frowning. "The only thing
I can THINK it means is that J. A. Lamb is so fair-minded--and
of course he IS one of the fair-mindedest men alive I suppose
that's the reason he hasn't fired Walter. He may know," Adams
concluded, morosely--"he may know that's just another thing to
make me feel all the meaner: keeping my boy there on a salary
after I've done him an injury."
"Now, now!" she said, trying to comfort him. "You couldn't do
anybody an injury to save your life, and everybody knows it."
"Well, anybody ought to know I wouldn't WANT to do an injury, but
this world isn't built so't we can do just what we want." He
paused, reflecting. "Of course there may be one explanation of
why Walter's still there: J. A. maybe hasn't noticed that he IS
there. There's so many I expect he hardly knows him by sight."
"Well, just do quit thinking about it," she urged him. "It only
bothers you without doing any good. Don't you know that?"
"Don't I, though!" he laughed, feebly. "I know it better'n
anybody! How funny that is: when you know thinking about a thing
only pesters you without helping anything at all, and yet you
keep right on pestering yourself with it!"
"But WHY?" she said. "What's the use when you know you haven't
done anything wrong, Virgil? You said yourself you were going to
improve the process so much it would be different from the old
one, and you'd REALLY have a right to it."
Adams had persuaded himself of this when he yielded; he had found
it necessary to persuade himself of it--though there was a part
of him, of course, that remained unpersuaded; and this
discomfiting part of him was what made his present trouble.
"Yes, I know," he said. "That's true, but I can't quite seem to
get away from the fact that the principle of the process is a
good deal the same--well, it's more'n that; it's just about the
same as the one he hired Campbell and me to work out for him.
Truth is, nobody could tell the difference, and I don't know as
there IS any difference except in these improvements I'm making.
Of course, the improvements do give me pretty near a perfect
right to it, as a person might say; and that's one of the things
I thought of putting in my letter to him; but I was afraid he'd
just think I was trying to make up excuses, so I left it out. I
kind of worried all the time I was writing that letter, because
if he thought I WAS just making up excuses, why, it might set him
just so much more against me."
Ever since Mrs. Adams had found that she was to have her way,
the depths of her eyes had been troubled by a continuous
uneasiness; and, although she knew it was there, and sometimes
veiled it by keeping the revealing eyes averted from her husband
and children, she could not always cover it under that assumption
of absent-mindedness. The uneasy look became vivid, and her
voice was slightly tremulous now, as she said, "But what if he
SHOULD be against you--although I don't believe he is, of
course--you told me he couldn't DO anything to you, Virgil."
"No," he said, slowly. "I can't see how he could do anything.
It was just a secret, not a patent; the thing ain't patentable.
I've tried to think what he could do--supposing he was to want
to--but I can't figure out anything at all that would be any harm
to me. There isn't any way in the world it could be made a
question of law. Only thing he could do'd be to TELL people his
side of it, and set 'em against me. I been kind of waiting for
that to happen, all along."
She looked somewhat relieved. "So did I expect it," she said.
"I was dreading it most on Alice's account: it might have--well,
young men are so easily influenced and all. But so far as the
business is concerned, what if Mr. Lamb did talk? That wouldn't
amount to much. It wouldn't affect the business; not to hurt.
And, besides, he isn't even doing that."
"No; anyhow not yet, it seems." And Adams sighed again,
wistfully. "But I WOULD give a good deal to know what he
thinks!"
Before his surrender he had always supposed that if he did such
an unthinkable thing as to seize upon the glue process for
himself, what he would feel must be an overpowering shame. But
shame is the rarest thing in the world: what he felt was this
unremittent curiosity about his old employer's thoughts. It was
an obsession, yet he did not want to hear what Lamb "thought"
from Lamb himself, for Adams had a second obsession, and this was
his dread of meeting the old man face to face. Such an encounter
could happen only by chance and unexpectedly; since Adams would
have avoided any deliberate meeting, so long as his legs had
strength to carry him, even if Lamb came to the house to see him.
But people do meet unexpectedly; and when Adams had to be
down-town he kept away from the "wholesale district." One day he
did see Lamb, as the latter went by in his car, impassive, going
home to lunch; and Adams, in the crowd at a corner, knew that the
old man had not seen him. Nevertheless, in a street car, on the
way back to his sheds, an hour later, he was still subject to
little shivering seizures of horror.
He worked unceasingly, seeming to keep at it even in his sleep,
for he always woke in the midst of a planning and estimating that
must have been going on in his mind before consciousness of
himself returned. Moreover, the work, thus urged, went rapidly,
in spite of the high wages he had to pay his labourers for their
short hours. "It eats money," he complained, and, in fact, by
the time his vats and boilers were in place it had eaten almost
all he could supply; but in addition to his equipment he now
owned a stock of "raw material," raw indeed; and when operations
should be a little further along he was confident his banker
would be willing to "carry" him.
Six weeks from the day he had obtained his lease he began his
glue-making. The terrible smells came out of the sheds and went
writhing like snakes all through that quarter of the town. A
smiling man, strolling and breathing the air with satisfaction,
would turn a corner and smile no more, but hurry. However,
coloured people had almost all the dwellings of this old section
to themselves; and although even they were troubled, there was
recompense for them. Being philosophic about what appeared to
them as in the order of nature, they sought neither escape nor
redress, and soon learned to bear what the wind brought them.
They even made use of it to enrich those figures of speech with
which the native impulses of coloured people decorate their
communications: they flavoured metaphor, simile, and invective
with it; and thus may be said to have enjoyed it. But the man
who produced it took a hot bath as soon as he reached his home
the evening of that first day when his manufacturing began. Then
he put on fresh clothes; but after dinner he seemed to be
haunted, and asked his wife if she "noticed anything."
She laughed and inquired what he meant.
"Seems to me as if that glue-works smell hadn't quit hanging to
me," he explained. "Don't you notice it?"
"No! What an idea!"
He laughed, too, but uneasily; and told her he was sure "the dang
glue smell" was somehow sticking to him. Later, he went outdoors
and walked up and down the small yard in the dusk; but now and
then he stood still, with his head lifted, and sniffed the air
suspiciously. "Can YOU smell it?" he called to Alice, who sat
upon the veranda, prettily dressed and waiting in a reverie.
"Smell what, papa?"
"That dang glue-works."
She did the same thing her mother had done: laughed, and said,
"No! How foolish! Why, papa, it's over two miles from here!"
"You don't get it at all?" he insisted.
"The idea! The air is lovely to-night, papa."
The air did not seem lovely to him, for he was positive that he
detected the taint. He wondered how far it carried, and if J.
A. Lamb would smell it, too, out on his own lawn a mile to the
north; and if he did, would he guess what it was? Then Adams
laughed at himself for such nonsense; but could not rid his
nostrils of their disgust. To him the whole town seemed to smell
of his glue-works.
Nevertheless, the glue was making, and his sheds were busy.
"Guess we're stirrin' up this ole neighbourhood with more than
the smell," his foreman remarked one morning.
"How's that?" Adams inquired.
"That great big, enormous ole dead butterine factory across the
street from our lot," the man said. "Nothin' like settin' an
example to bring real estate to life. That place is full o'
carpenters startin' in to make a regular buildin' of it again.
Guess you ought to have the credit of it, because you was the
first man in ten years to see any possibilities in this
neighbourhood."
Adams was pleased, and, going out to see for himself, heard a
great hammering and sawing from within the building; while
carpenters were just emerging gingerly upon the dangerous roof.
He walked out over the dried mud of his deep lot, crossed the
street, and spoke genially to a workman who was removing the
broken glass of a window on the ground floor.
"Here! What's all this howdy-do over here?"
"Goin' to fix her all up, I guess," the workman said. "Big job
it is, too."
"Sh' think it would be."
"Yes, sir; a pretty big job--a pretty big job. Got men at it on
all four floors and on the roof. They're doin' it RIGHT."
"Who's doing it?"
"Lord! I d' know. Some o' these here big manufacturing
corporations, I guess."
"What's it going to be?"
"They tell ME," the workman answered--"they tell ME she's goin'
to be a butterine factory again. Anyways, I hope she won't be
anything to smell like that glue-works you got over there not
while I'm workin' around her, anyways!"
"That smell's all right," Adams said. "You soon get used to it."
"You do?" The man appeared incredulous. "Listen! I was over in
France: it's a good thing them Dutchmen never thought of it; we'd
of had to quit!"
Adams laughed, and went back to his sheds. "I guess my foreman
was right," he told his wife, that evening, with a little
satisfaction. "As soon as one man shows enterprise enough to
found an industry in a broken-down neighbourhood, somebody else
is sure to follow. I kind of like the look of it: it'll help
make our place seem sort of more busy and prosperous when it
comes to getting a loan from the bank--and I got to get one
mighty soon, too. I did think some that if things go as well as
there's every reason to think they OUGHT to, I might want to
spread out and maybe get hold of that old factory myself; but I
hardly expected to be able to handle a proposition of that size
before two or three years from now, and anyhow there's room
enough on the lot I got, if we need more buildings some day.
Things are going about as fine as I could ask: I hired some girls
to-day to do the bottling--coloured girls along about sixteen to
twenty years old. Afterwhile, I expect to get a machine to put
the stuff in the little bottles, when we begin to get good
returns; but half a dozen of these coloured girls can do it all
right now, by hand. We're getting to have really quite a little
plant over there: yes, sir, quite a regular little plant!"
He chuckled, and at this cheerful sound, of a kind his wife had
almost forgotten he was capable of producing, she ventured to put
her hand upon his arm. They had gone outdoors, after dinner,
taking two chairs with them, and were sitting through the late
twilight together, keeping well away from the "front porch,"
which was not yet occupied, however Alice was in her room
changing her dress.
"Well, honey," Mrs. Adams said, taking confidence not only to
put her hand upon his arm, but to revive this disused
endearment;--"it's grand to have you so optimistic. Maybe some
time you'll admit I was right, after all. Everything's going so
well, it seems a pity you didn't take this--this step--long ago.
Don't you think maybe so, Virgil?"
"Well--if I was ever going to, I don't know but I might as well
of. I got to admit the proposition begins to look pretty good: I
know the stuff'll sell, and I can't see a thing in the world to
stop it. It does look good, and if--if----" He paused.
"If what?" she said, suddenly anxious.
He laughed plaintively, as if confessing a superstition. "It's
funny--well, it's mighty funny about that smell. I've got so
used to it at the plant I never seem to notice it at all over
there. It's only when I get away. Honestly, can't you
notice----?"
"Virgil!" She lifted her hand to strike his arm chidingly. "Do
quit harping on that nonsense!"
"Oh, of course it don't amount to anything," he said. "A person
can stand a good deal of just smell. It don't WORRY me any."
"I should think not especially as there isn't any."
"Well," he said, "I feel pretty fair over the whole thing--a lot
better'n I ever expected to, anyhow. I don't know as there's any
reason I shouldn't tell you so."
She was deeply pleased with this acknowledgment, and her voice
had tenderness in it as she responded: "There, honey! Didn't I
always say you'd be glad if you did it?"
Embarrassed, he coughed loudly, then filled his pipe and lit it.
"Well," he said, slowly, "it's a puzzle. Yes, sir, it's a
puzzle."
"What is?"
"Pretty much everything, I guess."
As he spoke, a song came to them from a lighted window over their
heads. Then the window darkened abruptly, but the song continued
as Alice went down through the house to wait on the little
veranda. "Mi chiamo Mimi," she sang, and in her voice throbbed
something almost startling in its sweetness. Her father and
mother listened, not speaking until the song stopped with the
click of the wire screen at the front door as Alice came out.
"My!" said her father. "How sweet she does sing! I don't know
as I ever heard her voice sound nicer than it did just then."
"There's something that makes it sound that way," his wife told
him.
"I suppose so," he said, sighing. "I suppose so. You think----"
"She's just terribly in love with him!"
"I expect that's the way it ought to be," he said, then drew upon
his pipe for reflection, and became murmurous with the symptoms
of melancholy laughter. "It don't make things less of a puzzle,
though, does it?"
"In what way, Virgil?"
"Why, here," he said--"here we go through all this muck and moil
to help fix things nicer for her at home, and what's it all
amount to? Seems like she's just gone ahead the way she'd 'a'
gone anyhow; and now, I suppose, getting ready to up and leave
us! Ain't that a puzzle to you? It is to me."
"Oh, but things haven't gone that far yet."
"Why, you just said----"
She gave a little cry of protest. "Oh, they aren't ENGAGED yet.
Of course they WILL be; he's just as much interested in her as
she is in him, but----"
"Well, what's the trouble then?"
"You ARE a simple old fellow!" his wife exclaimed, and then rose
from her chair. "That reminds me," she said.
"What of?" he asked. "What's my being simple remind you of?"
"Nothing!" she laughed. "It wasn't you that reminded me. It was
just something that's been on my mind. I don't believe he's
actually ever been inside our house!"
"Hasn't he?"
"I actually don't believe he ever has," she said. "Of course we
must----" She paused, debating.
"We must what?"
"I guess I better talk to Alice about it right now," she said.
"He don't usually come for about half an hour yet; I guess I've
got time." And with that she walked away, leaving him to his
puzzles. _
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