That morning and noon had been warm, though the stirrings of a feeble breeze made weather not flagrantly intemperate; but at about three o'clock in the afternoon there came out of the southwest a heat like an affliction sent upon an accursed people, and the air was soon dead of it. Dripping negro ditch-diggers whooped with satires praising hell and hot weather, as the tossing shovels flickered up to the street level, where sluggish male pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and fanned themselves with straw hats, or, remaining covered, wore soaked handkerchiefs between scalp and straw. Clerks drooped in silent, big department stores, stenographers in offices kept as close to electric fans as the intervening bulk of their employers would let them; guests in hotels left the lobbies and went to lie unclad upon their beds; while in hospitals the patients murmured querulously against the heat, and perhaps against some noisy motorist who strove to feel the air by splitting it, not troubled by any foreboding that he, too, that hour next week, might need quiet near a hospital. The “hot spell” was a true spell, one upon men's spirits; for it was so hot that, in suburban outskirts, golfers crept slowly back over the low undulations of their club lands, abandoning their matches and returning to shelter.
Even on such a day, sizzling work had to be done, as in winter. There were glowing furnaces to be stoked, liquid metals to be poured; but such tasks found seasoned men standing to them; and in all the city probably no brave soul challenged the heat more gamely than Mrs. Adams did, when, in a corner of her small and fiery kitchen, where all day long her hired African immune cooked fiercely, she pressed her husband's evening clothes with a hot iron. No doubt she risked her life, but she risked it cheerfully in so good and necessary a service for him. She would have given her life for him at any time, and both his and her own for her children.
Unconscious of her own heroism, she was surprised to find herself rather faint when she finished her ironing. However, she took heart to believe that the clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched places; and she carried them upstairs to her husband's room before increasing blindness forced her to grope for the nearest chair. Then, trying to rise and walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit down again; but after a little while she was able to get upon her feet; and, keeping her hand against the wall, moved successfully to the door of her own room. Here she wavered; might have gone down, had she not been stimulated by the thought of how much depended upon her;—she made a final great effort, and floundered across the room to her bureau, where she kept some simple restoratives. They served her need, or her faith in them did; and she returned to her work.
She went down the stairs, keeping a still tremulous hand upon the rail; but she smiled brightly when Alice looked up from below, where the woodwork was again being tormented with superfluous attentions.
“Alice, DON'T!” her mother said, commiseratingly. “You did all that this morning and it looks lovely. What's the use of wearing yourself out on it? You ought to be lying down, so's to look fresh for to-night.”
“Hadn't you better lie down yourself?” the daughter returned. “Are you ill, mama?”
“Certainly not. What in the world makes you think so?”
“You look pretty pale,” Alice said, and sighed heavily. “It makes me ashamed, having you work so hard—for me.”
“How foolish! I think it's fun, getting ready to entertain a little again, like this. I only wish it hadn't turned so hot: I'm afraid your poor father'll suffer—his things are pretty heavy, I noticed. Well, it'll do him good to bear something for style's sake this once, anyhow!” She laughed, and coming to Alice, bent down and kissed her. “Dearie,” she said, tenderly, “wouldn't you please slip upstairs now and take just a little teeny nap to please your mother?”
But Alice responded only by moving her head slowly, in token of refusal.
“Do!” Mrs. Adams urged. “You don't want to look worn out, do you?”
“I'll LOOK all right,” Alice said, huskily. “Do you like the way I've arranged the furniture now? I've tried all the different ways it'll go.”
“It's lovely,” her mother said, admiringly. “I thought the last way you had it was pretty, too. But you know best; I never knew anybody with so much taste. If you'd only just quit now, and take a little rest——”
“There'd hardly be time, even if I wanted to; it's after five but I couldn't; really, I couldn't. How do you think we can manage about Walter—to see that he wears his evening things, I mean?”
Mrs. Adams pondered. “I'm afraid he'll make a lot of objections, on account of the weather and everything. I wish we'd had a chance to tell him last night or this morning. I'd have telephoned to him this afternoon except—well, I scarcely like to call him up at that place, since your father——”
“No, of course not, mama.”
“If Walter gets home late,” Mrs. Adams went on, “I'll just slip out and speak to him, in case Mr. Russell's here before he comes. I'll just tell him he's got to hurry and get his things on.”
“Maybe he won't come home to dinner,” Alice suggested, rather hopefully. “Sometimes he doesn't.”
“No; I think he'll be here. When he doesn't come he usually telephones by this time to say not to wait for him; he's very thoughtful about that. Well, it really is getting late: I must go and tell her she ought to be preparing her fillet. Dearie, DO rest a little.”
“You'd much better do that yourself,” Alice called after her, but Mrs. Adams shook her head cheerily, not pausing on her way to the fiery kitchen.
Alice continued her useless labours for a time; then carried her bucket to the head of the cellar stairway, where she left it upon the top step; and, closing the door, returned to the “living-room;” Again she changed the positions of the old plush rocking-chairs, moving them into the corners where she thought they might be least noticeable; and while thus engaged she was startled by a loud ringing of the door-bell. For a moment her face was panic-stricken, and she stood staring, then she realized that Russell would not arrive for another hour, at the earliest, and recovering her equipoise, went to the door.
Waiting there, in a languid attitude, was a young coloured woman, with a small bundle under her arm and something malleable in her mouth. “Listen,” she said. “You folks expectin' a coloured lady?”
“No,” said Alice. “Especially not at the front door.”
“Listen,” the coloured woman said again. “Listen. Say, listen. Ain't they another coloured lady awready here by the day? Listen. Ain't Miz Malena Burns here by the day this evenin'? Say, listen. This the number house she give ME.”
“Are you the waitress?” Alice asked, dismally.
“Yes'm, if Malena here.”
“Malena is here,” Alice said, and hesitated; but she decided not to send the waitress to the back door; it might be a risk. She let her in. “What's your name?”
“Me? I'm name' Gertrude. Miss Gertrude Collamus.”
“Did you bring a cap and apron?”
Gertrude took the little bundle from under her arm. “Yes'm. I'm all fix'.”
“I've already set the table,” Alice said. “I'll show you what we want done.”
She led the way to the dining-room, and, after offering some instruction there, received by Gertrude with languor and a slowly moving jaw, she took her into the kitchen, where the cap and apron were put on. The effect was not fortunate; Gertrude's eyes were noticeably bloodshot, an affliction made more apparent by the white cap; and Alice drew her mother apart, whispering anxiously,
“Do you suppose it's too late to get someone else?”
“I'm afraid it is,” Mrs. Adams said. “Malena says it was hard enough to get HER! You have to pay them so much that they only work when they feel like it.”
“Mama, could you ask her to wear her cap straighter? Every time she moves her head she gets it on one side, and her skirt's too long behind and too short in front—and oh, I've NEVER seen such FEET!” Alice laughed desolately. “And she MUST quit that terrible chewing!”
“Never mind; I'll get to work with her. I'll straighten her out all I can, dearie; don't worry.” Mrs. Adams patted her daughter's shoulder encouragingly. “Now YOU can't do another thing, and if you don't run and begin dressing you won't be ready. It'll only take me a minute to dress, myself, and I'll be down long before you will. Run, darling! I'll look after everything.”
Alice nodded vaguely, went up to her room, and, after only a moment with her mirror, brought from her closet the dress of white organdie she had worn the night when she met Russell for the first time. She laid it carefully upon her bed, and began to make ready to put it on. Her mother came in, half an hour later, to “fasten” her.
“I'M all dressed,” Mrs. Adams said, briskly. “Of course it doesn't matter. He won't know what the rest of us even look like: How could he? I know I'm an old SIGHT, but all I want is to look respectable. Do I?”
“You look like the best woman in the world; that's all!” Alice said, with a little gulp.
Her mother laughed and gave her a final scrutiny. “You might use just a tiny bit more colour, dearie—I'm afraid the excitement's made you a little pale. And you MUST brighten up! There's sort of a look in your eyes as if you'd got in a trance and couldn't get out. You've had it all day. I must run: your father wants me to help him with his studs. Walter hasn't come yet, but I'll look after him; don't worry, And you better HURRY, dearie, if you're going to take any time fixing the flowers on the table.”
She departed, while Alice sat at the mirror again, to follow her advice concerning a “tiny bit more colour.” Before she had finished, her father knocked at the door, and, when she responded, came in. He was dressed in the clothes his wife had pressed; but he had lost substantially in weight since they were made for him; no one would have thought that they had been pressed. They hung from him voluminously, seeming to be the clothes of a larger man.
“Your mother's gone downstairs,” he said, in a voice of distress.
“One of the buttonholes in my shirt is too large and I can't keep the dang thing fastened.Idon't know what to do about it! I only got one other white shirt, and it's kind of ruined: I tried it before I did this one. Do you s'pose you could do anything?”
“I'll see,” she said.
“My collar's got a frayed edge,” he complained, as she examined his troublesome shirt. “It's a good deal like wearing a saw; but I expect it'll wilt down flat pretty soon, and not bother me long. I'm liable to wilt down flat, myself, I expect; I don't know as I remember any such hot night in the last ten or twelve years.” He lifted his head and sniffed the flaccid air, which was laden with a heavy odour. “My, but that smell is pretty strong!” he said.
“Stand still, please, papa,” Alice begged him. “I can't see what's the matter if you move around. How absurd you are about your old glue smell, papa! There isn't a vestige of it, of course.”
“I didn't mean glue,” he informed her. “I mean cabbage. Is that fashionable now, to have cabbage when there's company for dinner?”
“That isn't cabbage, papa. It's Brussels sprouts.”
“Oh, is it? I don't mind it much, because it keeps that glue smell off me, but it's fairly strong. I expect you don't notice it so much because you been in the house with it all along, and got used to it while it was growing.”
“It is pretty dreadful,” Alice said. “Are all the windows open downstairs?”
“I'll go down and see, if you'll just fix that hole up for me.”
“I'm afraid I can't,” she said. “Not unless you take your shirt off and bring it to me. I'll have to sew the hole smaller.”
“Oh, well, I'll go ask your mother to——”
“No,” said Alice. “She's got everything on her hands. Run and take it off. Hurry, papa; I've got to arrange the flowers on the table before he comes.”
He went away, and came back presently, half undressed, bringing the shirt. “There's ONE comfort,” he remarked, pensively, as she worked. “I've got that collar off—for a while, anyway. I wish I could go to table like this; I could stand it a good deal better. Do you seem to be making any headway with the dang thing?”
“I think probably I can——”
Downstairs the door-bell rang, and Alice's arms jerked with the shock.
“Golly!” her father said. “Did you stick your finger with that fool needle?”
She gave him a blank stare. “He's come!”
She was not mistaken, for, upon the little veranda, Russell stood facing the closed door at last. However, it remained closed for a considerable time after he rang. Inside the house the warning summons of the bell was immediately followed by another sound, audible to Alice and her father as a crash preceding a series of muffled falls. Then came a distant voice, bitter in complaint.
“Oh, Lord!” said Adams. “What's that?”
Alice went to the top of the front stairs, and her mother appeared in the hall below.
“Mama!”
Mrs. Adams looked up. “It's all right,” she said, in a loud whisper. “Gertrude fell down the cellar stairs. Somebody left a bucket there, and——” She was interrupted by a gasp from Alice, and hastened to reassure her. “Don't worry, dearie. She may limp a little, but——”
Adams leaned over the banisters. “Did she break anything?” he asked.
“Hush!” his wife whispered. “No. She seems upset and angry about it, more than anything else; but she's rubbing herself, and she'll be all right in time to bring in the little sandwiches. Alice! Those flowers!”
“I know, mama. But——”
“Hurry!” Mrs. Adams warned her. “Both of you hurry! I MUST let him in!”
She turned to the door, smiling cordially, even before she opened it. “Do come right in, Mr. Russell,” she said, loudly, lifting her voice for additional warning to those above. “I'm SO glad to receive you informally, this way, in our own little home. There's a hat-rack here under the stairway,” she continued, as Russell, murmuring some response, came into the hall. “I'm afraid you'll think it's almost TOO informal, my coming to the door, but unfortunately our housemaid's just had a little accident—oh, nothing to mention! I just thought we better not keep you waiting any longer. Will you step into our living-room, please?”
She led the way between the two small columns, and seated herself in one of the plush rocking-chairs, selecting it because Alice had once pointed out that the chairs, themselves, were less noticeable when they had people sitting in them. “Do sit down, Mr. Russell; it's so very warm it's really quite a trial just to stand up!”
“Thank you,” he said, as he took a seat. “Yes. It is quite warm.” And this seemed to be the extent of his responsiveness for the moment. He was grave, rather pale; and Mrs. Adams's impression of him, as she formed it then, was of “a distinguished-looking young man, really elegant in the best sense of the word, but timid and formal when he first meets you.” She beamed upon him, and used with everything she said a continuous accompaniment of laughter, meaningless except that it was meant to convey cordiality. “Of course we DO have a great deal of warm weather,” she informed him. “I'm glad it's so much cooler in the house than it is outdoors.”
“Yes,” he said. “It is pleasanter indoors.” And, stopping with this single untruth, he permitted himself the briefest glance about the room; then his eyes returned to his smiling hostess.
“Most people make a great fuss about hot weather,” she said. “The only person I know who doesn't mind the heat the way other people do is Alice. She always seems as cool as if we had a breeze blowing, no matter how hot it is. But then she's so amiable she never minds anything. It's just her character. She's always been that way since she was a little child; always the same to everybody, high and low. I think character's the most important thing in the world, after all, don't you, Mr. Russell?”
“Yes,” he said, solemnly; and touched his bedewed white forehead with a handkerchief.
“Indeed it is,” she agreed with herself, never failing to continue her murmur of laughter. “That's what I've always told Alice; but she never sees anything good in herself, and she just laughs at me when I praise her. She sees good in everybody ELSE in the world, no matter how unworthy they are, or how they behave toward HER; but she always underestimates herself. From the time she was a little child she was always that way. When some other little girl would behave selfishly or meanly toward her, do you think she'd come and tell me? Never a word to anybody! The little thing was too proud! She was the same way about school. The teachers had to tell me when she took a prize; she'd bring it home and keep it in her room without a word about it to her father and mother. Now, Walter was just the other way. Walter would——” But here Mrs. Adams checked herself, though she increased the volume of her laughter. “How silly of me!” she exclaimed. “I expect you know how mothers ARE, though, Mr. Russell. Give us a chance and we'll talk about our children forever! Alice would feel terribly if she knew how I've been going on about her to you.”
In this Mrs. Adams was right, though she did not herself suspect it, and upon an almost inaudible word or two from him she went on with her topic. “Of course my excuse is that few mothers have a daughter like Alice. I suppose we all think the same way about our children, but SOME of us must be right when we feel we've got the best. Don't you think so?”
“Yes. Yes, indeed.”
“I'm sureIam!” she laughed. “I'll let the others speak for themselves.” She paused reflectively. “No; I think a mother knows when she's got a treasure in her family. If she HASN'T got one, she'll pretend she has, maybe; but if she has, she knows it. I certainly knowIhave. She's always been what people call 'the joy of the household'—always cheerful, no matter what went wrong, and always ready to smooth things over with some bright, witty saying. You must be sure not to TELL we've had this little chat about her—she'd just be furious with me—but she IS such a dear child! You won't tell her, will you?”
“No,” he said, and again applied the handkerchief to his forehead for an instant. “No, I'll——” He paused, and finished lamely: “I'll—not tell her.”
Thus reassured, Mrs. Adams set before him some details of her daughter's popularity at sixteen, dwelling upon Alice's impartiality among her young suitors: “She never could BEAR to hurt their feelings, and always treated all of them just alike. About half a dozen of them were just BOUND to marry her! Naturally, her father and I considered any such idea ridiculous; she was too young, of course.”
Thus the mother went on with her biographical sketches, while the pale young man sat facing her under the hard overhead light of a white globe, set to the ceiling; and listened without interrupting. She was glad to have the chance to tell him a few things about Alice he might not have guessed for himself, and, indeed, she had planned to find such an opportunity, if she could; but this was getting to be altogether too much of one, she felt. As time passed, she was like an actor who must improvise to keep the audience from perceiving that his fellow-players have missed their cues; but her anxiety was not betrayed to the still listener; she had a valiant soul.
Alice, meanwhile, had arranged her little roses on the table in as many ways, probably, as there were blossoms; and she was still at it when her father arrived in the dining-room by way of the back stairs and the kitchen.
“It's pulled out again,” he said. “But I guess there's no help for it now; it's too late, and anyway it lets some air into me when it bulges. I can sit so's it won't be noticed much, I expect. Isn't it time you quit bothering about the looks of the table? Your mother's been talking to him about half an hour now, and I had the idea he came on your account, not hers. Hadn't you better go and——”
“Just a minute.” Alice said, piteously. “Do YOU think it looks all right?”
“The flowers? Fine! Hadn't you better leave 'em the way they are, though?”
“Just a minute,” she begged again. “Just ONE minute, papa!” And she exchanged a rose in front of Russell's plate for one that seemed to her a little larger.
“You better come on,” Adams said, moving to the door.
“Just ONE more second, papa.” She shook her head, lamenting. “Oh, I wish we'd rented some silver!”
“Why?”
“Because so much of the plating has rubbed off a lot of it. JUST a second, papa.” And as she spoke she hastily went round the table, gathering the knives and forks and spoons that she thought had their plating best preserved, and exchanging them for more damaged pieces at Russell's place. “There!” she sighed, finally.
“Now I'll come.” But at the door she paused to look back dubiously, over her shoulder.
“What's the matter now?”
“The roses. I believe after all I shouldn't have tried that vine effect; I ought to have kept them in water, in the vase. It's so hot, they already begin to look a little wilted, out on the dry tablecloth like that. I believe I'll——”
“Why, look here, Alice!” he remonstrated, as she seemed disposed to turn back. “Everything'll burn up on the stove if you keep on——”
“Oh, well,” she said, “the vase was terribly ugly; I can't do any better. We'll go in.” But with her hand on the door-knob she paused. “No, papa. We mustn't go in by this door. It might look as if——”
“As if what?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Let's go the other way.”
“I don't see what difference it makes,” he grumbled, but nevertheless followed her through the kitchen, and up the back stairs then through the upper hallway. At the top of the front stairs she paused for a moment, drawing a deep breath; and then, before her father's puzzled eyes, a transformation came upon her.
Her shoulders, like her eyelids, had been drooping, but now she threw her head back: the shoulders straightened, and the lashes lifted over sparkling eyes; vivacity came to her whole body in a flash; and she tripped down the steps, with her pretty hands rising in time to the lilting little tune she had begun to hum.
At the foot of the stairs, one of those pretty hands extended itself at full arm's length toward Russell, and continued to be extended until it reached his own hand as he came to meet her. “How terrible of me!” she exclaimed. “To be so late coming down! And papa, too—I think you know each other.”
Her father was advancing toward the young man, expecting to shake hands with him, but Alice stood between them, and Russell, a little flushed, bowed to him gravely over her shoulder, without looking at him; whereupon Adams, slightly disconcerted, put his hands in his pockets and turned to his wife.
“I guess dinner's more'n ready,” he said. “We better go sit down.”
But she shook her head at him fiercely, “Wait!” she whispered.
“What for? For Walter?”
“No; he can't be coming,” she returned, hurriedly, and again warned him by a shake of her head. “Be quiet!”
“Oh, well——” he muttered.
“Sit down!”
He was thoroughly mystified, but obeyed her gesture and went to the rocking-chair in the opposite corner, where he sat down, and, with an expression of meek inquiry, awaited events.
Meanwhile, Alice prattled on: “It's really not a fault of mine, being tardy. The shameful truth is I was trying to hurry papa. He's incorrigible: he stays so late at his terrible old factory—terrible new factory, I should say. I hope you don't HATE us for making you dine with us in such fearful weather! I'm nearly dying of the heat, myself, so you have a fellow-sufferer, if that pleases you. Why is it we always bear things better if we think other people have to stand them, too?” And she added, with an excited laugh: “SILLY of us, don't you think?”
Gertrude had just made her entrance from the dining-room, bearing a tray. She came slowly, with an air of resentment; and her skirt still needed adjusting, while her lower jaw moved at intervals, though not now upon any substance, but reminiscently, of habit. She halted before Adams, facing him.
He looked plaintive. “What you want o' me?” he asked.
For response, she extended the tray toward him with a gesture of indifference; but he still appeared to be puzzled. “What in the world——?” he began, then caught his wife's eye, and had presence of mind enough to take a damp and plastic sandwich from the tray. “Well, I'll TRY one,” he said, but a moment later, as he fulfilled this promise, an expression of intense dislike came upon his features, and he would have returned the sandwich to Gertrude. However, as she had crossed the room to Mrs. Adams he checked the gesture, and sat helplessly, with the sandwich in his hand. He made another effort to get rid of it as the waitress passed him, on her way back to the dining-room, but she appeared not to observe him, and he continued to be troubled by it.
Alice was a loyal daughter. “These are delicious, mama,” she said; and turning to Russell, “You missed it; you should have taken one. Too bad we couldn't have offered you what ought to go with it, of course, but——”
She was interrupted by the second entrance of Gertrude, who announced, “Dinner serve',” and retired from view.
“Well, well!” Adams said, rising from his chair, with relief. “That's good! Let's go see if we can eat it.” And as the little group moved toward the open door of the dining-room he disposed of his sandwich by dropping it in the empty fireplace.
Alice, glancing back over her shoulder, was the only one who saw him, and she shuddered in spite of herself. Then, seeing that he looked at her entreatingly, as if he wanted to explain that he was doing the best he could, she smiled upon him sunnily, and began to chatter to Russell again.
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.