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_ Alice kept her sprightly chatter going when they sat down, though
the temperature of the room and the sight of hot soup might have
discouraged a less determined gayety. Moreover, there were
details as unpropitious as the heat: the expiring roses expressed
not beauty but pathos, and what faint odour they exhaled was no
rival to the lusty emanations of the Brussels sprouts; at the
head of the table, Adams, sitting low in his chair, appeared to
be unable to flatten the uprising wave of his starched bosom; and
Gertrude's manner and expression were of a recognizable hostility
during the long period of vain waiting for the cups of soup to be
emptied. Only Mrs. Adams made any progress in this direction;
the others merely feinting, now and then lifting their spoons as
if they intended to do something with them.
Alice's talk was little more than cheerful sound, but, to fill a
desolate interval, served its purpose; and her mother supported
her with ever-faithful cooings of applausive laughter. "What a
funny thing weather is!" the girl ran on. "Yesterday it was
cool--angels had charge of it--and to-day they had an engagement
somewhere else, so the devil saw his chance and started to move
the equator to the North Pole; but by the time he got half-way,
he thought of something else he wanted to do, and went off; and
left the equator here, right on top of US! I wish he'd come back
and get it!"
"Why, Alice dear!" her mother cried, fondly. "What an
imagination! Not a very pious one, I'm afraid Mr. Russell might
think, though!" Here she gave Gertrude a hidden signal to remove
the soup; but, as there was no response, she had to make the
signal more conspicuous. Gertrude was leaning against the wall,
her chin moving like a slow pendulum, her streaked eyes fixed
mutinously upon Russell. Mrs. Adams nodded several times,
increasing the emphasis of her gesture, while Alice talked
briskly; but the brooding waitress continued to brood. A faint
snap of the fingers failed to disturb her; nor was a covert
hissing whisper of avail, and Mrs. Adams was beginning to show
signs of strain when her daughter relieved her.
"Imagine our trying to eat anything so hot as soup on a night
like this!" Alice laughed. "What COULD have been in the cook's
mind not to give us something iced and jellied instead? Of
course it's because she's equatorial, herself, originally, and
only feels at home when Mr. Satan moves it north." She looked
round at Gertrude, who stood behind her. "Do take this dreadful
soup away!"
Thus directly addressed, Gertrude yielded her attention, though
unwillingly, and as if she decided only by a hair's weight not to
revolt, instead. However, she finally set herself in slow
motion; but overlooked the supposed head of the table, seeming to
be unaware of the sweltering little man who sat there. As she
disappeared toward the kitchen with but three of the cups upon
her tray he turned to look plaintively after her, and ventured an
attempt to recall her.
"Here!" he said, in a low voice. "Here, you!"
"What is it, Virgil?" his wife asked.
"What's her name?"
Mrs. Adams gave him a glance of sudden panic, and, seeing that
the guest of the evening was not looking at her, but down at the
white cloth before him, she frowned hard, and shook her head.
Unfortunately Alice was not observing her mother, and asked,
innocently: "What's whose name, papa?"
"Why, this young darky woman," he explained. "She left mine."
"Never mind," Alice laughed. "There's hope for you, papa. She
hasn't gone forever!"
"I don't know about that," he said, not content with this
impulsive assurance. "She LOOKED like she is." And his remark,
considered as a prediction, had begun to seem warranted before
Gertrude's return with china preliminary to the next stage of the
banquet.
Alice proved herself equal to the long gap, and rattled on
through it with a spirit richly justifying her mother's praise of
her as "always ready to smooth things over"; for here was more
than long delay to be smoothed over. She smoothed over her
father and mother for Russell; and she smoothed over him for
them, though he did not know it, and remained unaware of what he
owed her. With all this, throughout her prattlings, the girl's
bright eyes kept seeking his with an eager gayety, which but
little veiled both interrogation and entreaty--as if she asked:
"Is it too much for you? Can't you bear it? Won't you PLEASE
bear it? I would for you. Won't you give me a sign that it's
all right?"
He looked at her but fleetingly, and seemed to suffer from the
heat, in spite of every manly effort not to wipe his brow too
often. His colour, after rising when he greeted Alice and her
father, had departed, leaving him again moistly pallid; a
condition arising from discomfort, no doubt, but, considered as a
decoration, almost poetically becoming to him. Not less becoming
was the faint, kindly smile, which showed his wish to express
amusement and approval; and yet it was a smile rather strained
and plaintive, as if he, like Adams, could only do the best he
could.
He pleased Adams, who thought him a fine young man, and decidedly
the quietest that Alice had ever shown to her family. In her
father's opinion this was no small merit; and it was to Russell's
credit, too, that he showed embarrassment upon this first
intimate presentation; here was an applicant with both reserve
and modesty. "So far, he seems to be first rate a mighty fine
young man," Adams thought; and, prompted by no wish to part from
Alice but by reminiscences of apparent candidates less pleasing,
he added, "At last!"
Alice's liveliness never flagged. Her smoothing over of things
was an almost continuous performance, and had to be. Yet, while
she chattered through the hot and heavy courses, the questions
she asked herself were as continuous as the performance, and as
poignant as what her eyes seemed to be asking Russell. Why had
she not prevailed over her mother's fear of being "skimpy?" Had
she been, indeed, as her mother said she looked, "in a trance?"
But above all: What was the matter with HIM? What had happened?
For she told herself with painful humour that something even
worse than this dinner must be "the matter with him."
The small room, suffocated with the odour of boiled sprouts, grew
hotter and hotter as more and more food appeared, slowly borne
in, between deathly long waits, by the resentful, loud-breathing
Gertrude. And while Alice still sought Russell's glance, and
read the look upon his face a dozen different ways, fearing all
of them; and while the straggling little flowers died upon the
stained cloth, she felt her heart grow as heavy as the food, and
wondered that it did not die like the roses.
With the arrival of coffee, the host bestirred himself to make
known a hospitable regret, "By George!" he said. "I meant to buy
some cigars." He addressed himself apologetically to the guest.
"I don't know what I was thinking about, to forget to bring some
home with me. I don't use 'em myself--unless somebody hands me
one, you might say. I've always been a pipe-smoker, pure and
simple, but I ought to remembered for kind of an occasion like
this."
"Not at all," Russell said. "I'm not smoking at all lately; but
when I do, I'm like you, and smoke a pipe."
Alice started, remembering what she had told him when he overtook
her on her way from the tobacconist's; but, after a moment,
looking at him, she decided that he must have forgotten it. If
he had remembered, she thought, he could not have helped glancing
at her. On the contrary, he seemed more at ease, just then, than
he had since they sat down, for he was favouring her father with
a thoughtful attention as Adams responded to the introduction of
a man's topic into the conversation at last. "Well, Mr.
Russell, I guess you're right, at that. I don't say but what
cigars may be all right for a man that can afford 'em, if he
likes 'em better than a pipe, but you take a good old pipe
now----"
He continued, and was getting well into the eulogium customarily
provoked by this theme, when there came an interruption: the
door-bell rang, and he paused inquiringly, rather surprised.
Mrs. Adams spoke to Gertrude in an undertone:
"Just say, 'Not at home.'"
"What?"
"If it's callers, just say we're not at home."
Gertrude spoke out freely: "You mean you astin' me to 'tend you'
front do' fer you?"
She seemed both incredulous and affronted, but Mrs. Adams
persisted, though somewhat apprehensively. "Yes.
Hurry--uh--please. Just say we're not at home if you please."
Again Gertrude obviously hesitated between compliance and revolt,
and again the meeker course fortunately prevailed with her. She
gave Mrs. Adams a stare, grimly derisive, then departed. When
she came back she said:
"He say he wait."
"But I told you to tell anybody we were not at home," Mrs Adams
returned. "Who is it?"
"Say he name Mr. Law."
"We don't know any Mr. Law."
"Yes'm; he know you. Say he anxious to speak Mr. Adams. Say he
wait."
"Tell him Mr. Adams is engaged."
"Hold on a minute," Adams intervened. "Law? No. I don't know
any Mr. Law. You sure you got the name right?"
"Say he name Law," Gertrude replied, looking at the ceiling to
express her fatigue. "Law. 'S all he tell me; 's all I know."
Adams frowned. "Law," he said. "Wasn't it maybe 'Lohr?'"
"Law," Gertrude repeated. 'S all he tell me; 's all I know."
"What's he look like?"
"He ain't much," she said. "'Bout you' age; got brustly white
moustache, nice eye-glasses."
"It's Charley Lohr!" Adams exclaimed. "I'll go see what he
wants."
"But, Virgil," his wife remonstrated, "do finish your coffee; he
might stay all evening. Maybe he's come to call."
Adams laughed. "He isn't much of a caller, I expect. Don't
worry: I'll take him up to my room." And turning toward Russell,
"Ah--if you'll just excuse me," he said; and went out to his
visitor.
When he had gone, Mrs. Adams finished her coffee, and, having
glanced intelligently from her guest to her daughter, she rose.
"I think perhaps I ought to go and shake hands with Mr. Lohr,
myself," she said, adding in explanation to Russell, as she
reached the door, "He's an old friend of my husband's and it's a
very long time since he's been here."
Alice nodded and smiled to her brightly, but upon the closing of
the door, the smile vanished; all her liveliness disappeared; and
with this change of expression her complexion itself appeared to
change, so that her rouge became obvious, for she was pale
beneath it. However, Russell did not see the alteration, for he
did not look at her; and it was but a momentary lapse the
vacation of a tired girl, who for ten seconds lets herself look
as she feels. Then she shot her vivacity back into place as by
some powerful spring.
"Penny for your thoughts!" she cried, and tossed one of the
wilted roses at him, across the table. "I'll bid more than a
penny; I'll bid tuppence--no, a poor little dead rose a rose for
your thoughts, Mr. Arthur Russell! What are they?"
He shook his head. "I'm afraid I haven't any."
"No, of course not," she said. "Who could have thoughts in
weather like this? Will you EVER forgive us?"
"What for?"
"Making you eat such a heavy dinner--I mean LOOK at such a heavy
dinner, because you certainly didn't do more than look at it--on
such a night! But the crime draws to a close, and you can begin
to cheer up!" She laughed gaily, and, rising, moved to the door.
"Let's go in the other room; your fearful duty is almost done,
and you can run home as soon as you want to. That's what you're
dying to do."
"Not at all," he said in a voice so feeble that she laughed
aloud.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "I hadn't realized it was THAT bad!"
For this, though he contrived to laugh, he seemed to have no
verbal retort whatever; but followed her into the "living-room,"
where she stopped and turned, facing him.
"Has it really been so frightful?" she asked.
"Why, of course not. Not at all."
"Of course yes, though, you mean!"
"Not at all. It's been most kind of your mother and father and
you."
"Do you know," she said, "you've never once looked at me for more
than a second at a time the whole evening? And it seemed to me I
looked rather nice to-night, too!"
"You always do," he murmured.
"I don't see how you know," she returned; and then stepping
closer to him, spoke with gentle solicitude: "Tell me: you're
really feeling wretchedly, aren't you? I know you've got a
fearful headache, or something. Tell me!"
"Not at all."
"You are ill--I'm sure of it."
"Not at all."
"On your word?"
"I'm really quite all right."
"But if you are----" she began; and then, looking at him with a
desperate sweetness, as if this were her last resource to rouse
him, "What's the matter, little boy?" she said with lisping
tenderness. "Tell auntie!"
It was a mistake, for he seemed to flinch, and to lean backward,
however, slightly. She turned away instantly, with a flippant
lift and drop of both hands. "Oh, my dear!" she laughed. "I
won't eat you!"
And as the discomfited young man watched her, seeming able to
lift his eyes, now that her back was turned, she went to the
front door and pushed open the screen. "Let's go out on the
porch," she said. "Where we belong!"
Then, when he had followed her out, and they were seated, "Isn't
this better?" she asked. "Don't you feel more like yourself out
here?"
He began a murmur: "Not at----"
But she cut him off sharply: "Please don't say 'Not at all'
again!"
"I'm sorry."
"You do seem sorry about something," she said. "What is it?
Isn't it time you were telling me what's the matter?"
"Nothing. Indeed nothing's the matter. Of course one IS rather
affected by such weather as this. It may make one a little
quieter than usual, of course."
She sighed, and let the tired muscles of her face rest. Under
the hard lights, indoors, they had served her until they ached,
and it was a luxury to feel that in the darkness no grimacings
need call upon them.
"Of course, if you won't tell me----" she said.
"I can only assure you there's nothing to tell."
"I know what an ugly little house it is," she said. "Maybe it
was the furniture--or mama's vases that upset you. Or was it
mama herself--or papa?"
"Nothing 'upset' me."
At that she uttered a monosyllable of doubting laughter. "I
wonder why you say that."
"Because it's so."
"No. It's because you're too kind, or too conscientious, or too
embarrassed--anyhow too something-- to tell me." She leaned
forward, elbows on knees and chin in hands, in the reflective
attitude she knew how to make graceful. "I have a feeling that
you're not going to tell me," she said, slowly. "Yes--even that
you're never going to tell me. I wonder--I wonder----"
"Yes? What do you wonder?"
"I was just thinking--I wonder if they haven't done it, after
all."
"I don't understand."
"I wonder," she went on, still slowly, and in a voice of
reflection, "I wonder who HAS been talking about me to you, after
all? Isn't that it?"
"Not at----" he began, but checked himself and substituted
another form of denial. "Nothing is 'it.'"
"Are you sure?"
"Why, yes."
"How curious!" she said.
"Why?"
"Because all evening you've been so utterly different."
"But in this weather----"
"No. That wouldn't make you afraid to look at me all evening!"
"But I did look at you. Often."
"No. Not really a LOOK."
"But I'm looking at you now."
"Yes--in the dark!" she said. "No--the weather might make you
even quieter than usual, but it wouldn't strike you so nearly
dumb. No--and it wouldn't make you seem to be under such a
strain-- as if you thought only of escape!"
"But I haven't----"
"You shouldn't," she interrupted, gently. "There's nothing you
have to escape from, you know. You aren't committed to--to this
friendship."
"I'm sorry you think----" he began, but did not complete the
fragment.
She took it up. "You're sorry I think you're so different, you
mean to say, don't you? Never mind: that's what you did mean to
say, but you couldn't finish it because you're not good at
deceiving."
"Oh, no," he protested, feebly. "I'm not deceiving. "I'm----"
"Never mind," she said again. "You're sorry I think you're so
different--and all in one day--since last night. Yes, your voice
SOUNDS sorry, too. It sounds sorrier than it would just because
of my thinking something you could change my mind about in a
minute so it means you're sorry you ARE different."
"No--I----"
But disregarding the faint denial, "Never mind," she said. "Do
you remember one night when you told me that nothing anybody else
could do would ever keep you from coming here? That if you--if
you left me it would be because I drove you away myself?"
"Yes," he said, huskily. "It was true."
"Are you sure?"
"Indeed I am," he answered in a low voice, but with conviction.
"Then----" She paused. "Well--but I haven't driven you away."
"No."
"And yet you've gone," she said, quietly.
"Do I seem so stupid as all that?"
"You know what I mean." She leaned back in her chair again, and
her hands, inactive for once, lay motionless in her lap. When
she spoke it was in a rueful whisper:
"I wonder if I HAVE driven you away?"
"You've done nothing--nothing at all," he said.
"I wonder----" she said once more, but she stopped. In her mind
she was going back over their time together since the first
meeting--fragments of talk, moments of silence, little things of
no importance, little things that might be important; moonshine,
sunshine, starlight; and her thoughts zigzagged among the
jumbling memories; but, as if she made for herself a picture of
all these fragments, throwing them upon the canvas haphazard, she
saw them all just touched with the one tainting quality that gave
them coherence, the faint, false haze she had put over this
friendship by her own pretendings. And, if this terrible dinner,
or anything, or everything, had shown that saffron tint in its
true colour to the man at her side, last night almost a lover,
then she had indeed of herself driven him away, and might well
feel that she was lost.
"Do you know?" she said, suddenly, in a clear, loud voice. "I
have the strangest feeling. I feel as if I were going to be with
you only about five minutes more in all the rest of my life!"
"Why, no," he said. "Of course I'm coming to see you--often.
I----"
"No," she interrupted. "I've never had a feeling like this
before. It's--it's just SO; that's all! You're GOING--why,
you're never coming here again!" She stood up, abruptly,
beginning to tremble all over. "Why, it's FINISHED, isn't it?"
she said, and her trembling was manifest now in her voice. "Why,
it's all OVER, isn't it? Why, yes!"
He had risen as she did. "I'm afraid you're awfully tired and
nervous," he said. "I really ought to be going."
"Yes, of COURSE you ought," she cried, despairingly. "There's
nothing else for you to do. When anything's spoiled, people
CAN'T do anything but run away from it. So good-bye!"
"At least," he returned, huskily, "we'll only--only say
good-night."
Then, as moving to go, he stumbled upon the veranda steps, "Your
HAT!" she cried. "I'd like to keep it for a souvenir, but I'm
afraid you need it!"
She ran into the hall and brought his straw hat from the chair
where he had left it. "You poor thing!" she said, with quavering
laughter. "Don't you know you can't go without your hat?"
Then, as they faced each other for the short moment which both of
them knew would be the last of all their veranda moments, Alice's
broken laughter grew louder. "What a thing to say!" she cried.
"What a romantic parting--talking about HATS!"
Her laughter continued as he turned away, but other sounds came
from within the house, clearly audible with the opening of a door
upstairs--a long and wailing cry of lamentation in the voice of
Mrs. Adams. Russell paused at the steps, uncertain, but Alice
waved to him to go on.
"Oh, don't bother," she said. "We have lots of that in this
funny little old house! Good-bye!"
And as he went down the steps, she ran back into the house and
closed the door heavily behind her. _
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