Alice Adams

hat 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.