Alice Adams

hat 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. I don'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 sure I am!” 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
know I have. 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.