Alice Adams

er mother's wailing could still be heard from overhead, though more
faintly; and old Charley Lohr was coming down the stairs alone.

He looked at Alice compassionately. “I was just comin' to suggest maybe
you'd excuse yourself from your company,” he said. “Your mother was
bound not to disturb you, and tried her best to keep you from hearin'
how she's takin' on, but I thought probably you better see to her.”

“Yes, I'll come. What's the matter?”

“Well,” he said, “I only stepped over to offer my sympathy and
services, as it were. I thought of course you folks knew all about it.
Fact is, it was in the evening paper--just a little bit of an item on
the back page, of course.”

“What is it?”

He coughed. “Well, it ain't anything so terrible,” he said. “Fact is,
your brother Walter's got in a little trouble--well, I suppose you might
call it quite a good deal of trouble. Fact is, he's quite considerable
short in his accounts down at Lamb and Company.”

Alice ran up the stairs and into her father's room, where Mrs. Adams
threw herself into her daughter's arms. “Is he gone?” she sobbed. “He
didn't hear me, did he? I tried so hard----”

Alice patted the heaving shoulders her arms enclosed. “No, no,” she
said. “He didn't hear you--it wouldn't have mattered--he doesn't matter
anyway.”

“Oh, POOR Walter!” The mother cried. “Oh, the POOR boy! Poor, poor
Walter! Poor, poor, poor, POOR----”

“Hush, dear, hush!” Alice tried to soothe her, but the lament could
not be abated, and from the other side of the room a repetition in
a different spirit was as continuous. Adams paced furiously there,
pounding his fist into his left palm as he strode. “The dang boy!” he
said. “Dang little fool! Dang idiot! Dang fool! Whyn't he TELL me, the
dang little fool?”

“He DID!” Mrs. Adams sobbed. “He DID tell you, and you wouldn't GIVE it
to him.”

“He DID, did he?” Adams shouted at her. “What he begged me for was money
to run away with! He never dreamed of putting back what he took. What
the dangnation you talking about--accusing me!”

“He NEEDED it,” she said. “He needed it to run away with! How could he
expect to LIVE, after he got away, if he didn't have a little money? Oh,
poor, poor, POOR Walter! Poor, poor, poor----”

She went back to this repetition; and Adams went back to his own, then
paused, seeing his old friend standing in the hallway outside the open
door.

“Ah--I'll just be goin', I guess, Virgil,” Lohr said. “I don't see as
there's any use my tryin' to say any more. I'll do anything you want me
to, you understand.”

“Wait a minute,” Adams said, and, groaning, came and went down the
stairs with him. “You say you didn't see the old man at all?”

“No, I don't know a thing about what he's going to do,” Lohr said, as
they reached the lower floor. “Not a thing. But look here, Virgil,
I don't see as this calls for you and your wife to take on so hard
about--anyhow not as hard as the way you've started.”

“No,” Adams gulped. “It always seems that way to the other party that's
only looking on!”

“Oh, well, I know that, of course,” old Charley returned, soothingly.
“But look here, Virgil: they may not catch the boy; they didn't even
seem to be sure what train he made, and if they do get him, why, the ole
man might decide not to prosecute if----”

“HIM?” Adams cried, interrupting. “Him not prosecute? Why, that's what
he's been waiting for, all along! He thinks my boy and me both cheated
him! Why, he was just letting Walter walk into a trap! Didn't you say
they'd been suspecting him for some time back? Didn't you say they'd
been watching him and were just about fixing to arrest him?”

“Yes, I know,” said Lohr; “but you can't tell, especially if you raise
the money and pay it back.”

“Every cent!” Adams vociferated. “Every last penny! I can raise it--I
GOT to raise it! I'm going to put a loan on my factory to-morrow. Oh,
I'll get it for him, you tell him! Every last penny!”

“Well, ole feller, you just try and get quieted down some now.” Charley
held out his hand in parting. “You and your wife just quiet down some.
You AIN'T the healthiest man in the world, you know, and you already
been under quite some strain before this happened. You want to take
care of yourself for the sake of your wife and that sweet little girl
upstairs, you know. Now, good-night,” he finished, stepping out upon the
veranda. “You send for me if there's anything I can do.”

“Do?” Adams echoed. “There ain't anything ANYBODY can do!” And then, as
his old friend went down the path to the sidewalk, he called after him,
“You tell him I'll pay him every last cent! Every last, dang, dirty
PENNY!”

He slammed the door and went rapidly up the stairs, talking loudly to
himself. “Every dang, last, dirty penny! Thinks EVERYBODY in this family
wants to steal from him, does he? Thinks we're ALL yellow, does he?
I'll show him!” And he came into his own room vociferating, “Every last,
dang, dirty penny!”

Mrs. Adams had collapsed, and Alice had put her upon his bed, where she
lay tossing convulsively and sobbing, “Oh, POOR Walter!” over and
over, but after a time she varied the sorry tune. “Oh, poor Alice!” she
moaned, clinging to her daughter's hand. “Oh, poor, POOR Alice to have
THIS come on the night of your dinner--just when everything seemed to be
going so well--at last--oh, poor, poor, POOR----”

“Hush!” Alice said, sharply. “Don't say 'poor Alice!' I'm all right.”

“You MUST be!” her mother cried, clutching her. “You've just GOT to be!
ONE of us has got to be all right--surely God wouldn't mind just ONE of
us being all right--that wouldn't hurt Him----”

“Hush, hush, mother! Hush!”

But Mrs. Adams only clutched her the more tightly. “He seemed SUCH a
nice young man, dearie! He may not see this in the paper--Mr. Lohr said
it was just a little bit of an item--he MAY not see it, dearie----”

Then her anguish went back to Walter again; and to his needs as a
fugitive--she had meant to repair his underwear, but had postponed doing
so, and her neglect now appeared to be a detail as lamentable as the
calamity itself. She could neither be stilled upon it, nor herself
exhaust its urgings to self-reproach, though she finally took up another
theme temporarily. Upon an unusually violent outbreak of her husband's,
in denunciation of the runaway, she cried out faintly that he was cruel;
and further wearied her broken voice with details of Walter's beauty as
a baby, and of his bedtime pieties throughout his infancy.

So the hot night wore on. Three had struck before Mrs. Adams was got to
bed; and Alice, returning to her own room, could hear her father's bare
feet thudding back and forth after that. “Poor papa!” she whispered in
helpless imitation of her mother. “Poor papa! Poor mama! Poor Walter!
Poor all of us!”

She fell asleep, after a time, while from across the hall the bare
feet still thudded over their changeless route; and she woke at seven,
hearing Adams pass her door, shod. In her wrapper she ran out into the
hallway and found him descending the stairs.

“Papa!”

“Hush,” he said, and looked up at her with reddened eyes. “Don't wake
your mother.”

“I won't,” she whispered. “How about you? You haven't slept any at all!”

“Yes, I did. I got some sleep. I'm going over to the works now. I got
to throw some figures together to show the bank. Don't worry: I'll get
things fixed up. You go back to bed. Good-bye.”

“Wait!” she bade him sharply.

“What for?”

“You've got to have some breakfast.”

“Don't want 'ny.”

“You wait!” she said, imperiously, and disappeared to return almost at
once. “I can cook in my bedroom slippers,” she explained, “but I don't
believe I could in my bare feet!”

Descending softly, she made him wait in the dining-room until she
brought him toast and eggs and coffee. “Eat!” she said. “And I'm going
to telephone for a taxicab to take you, if you think you've really got
to go.”

“No, I'm going to walk--I WANT to walk.”

She shook her head anxiously. “You don't look able. You've walked all
night.”

“No, I didn't,” he returned. “I tell you I got some sleep. I got all I
wanted anyhow.”

“But, papa----”

“Here!” he interrupted, looking up at her suddenly and setting down his
cup of coffee. “Look here! What about this Mr. Russell? I forgot all
about him. What about him?”

Her lip trembled a little, but she controlled it before she spoke.
“Well, what about him, papa?” she asked, calmly enough.

“Well, we could hardly----” Adams paused, frowning heavily. “We could
hardly expect he wouldn't hear something about all this.”

“Yes; of course he'll hear it, papa.”

“Well?”

“Well, what?” she asked, gently.

“You don't think he'd be the--the cheap kind it'd make a difference
with, of course.”

“Oh, no; he isn't cheap. It won't make any difference with him.”

Adams suffered a profound sigh to escape him. “Well--I'm glad of that,
anyway.”

“The difference,” she explained--“the difference was made without his
hearing anything about Walter. He doesn't know about THAT yet.”

“Well, what does he know about?”

“Only,” she said, “about me.”

“What you mean by that, Alice?” he asked, helplessly.

“Never mind,” she said. “It's nothing beside the real trouble we're
in--I'll tell you some time. You eat your eggs and toast; you can't keep
going on just coffee.”

“I can't eat any eggs and toast,” he objected, rising. “I can't.”

“Then wait till I can bring you something else.”

“No,” he said, irritably. “I won't do it! I don't want any dang food!
And look here”--he spoke sharply to stop her, as she went toward the
telephone--“I don't want any dang taxi, either! You look after your
mother when she wakes up. I got to be at WORK!”

And though she followed him to the front door, entreating, he could not
be stayed or hindered. He went through the quiet morning streets at
a rickety, rapid gait, swinging his old straw hat in his hands, and
whispering angrily to himself as he went. His grizzled hair, not trimmed
for a month, blew back from his damp forehead in the warm breeze; his
reddened eyes stared hard at nothing from under blinking lids; and one
side of his face twitched startlingly from time to time;--children might
have run from him, or mocked him.

When he had come into that fallen quarter his industry had partly
revived and wholly made odorous, a negro woman, leaning upon her
whitewashed gate, gazed after him and chuckled for the benefit of a
gossiping friend in the next tiny yard. “Oh, good Satan! Wha'ssa matter
that ole glue man?”

“Who? Him?” the neighbour inquired. “What he do now?”

“Talkin' to his ole se'f!” the first explained, joyously. “Look like
gone distracted--ole glue man!”

Adams's legs had grown more uncertain with his hard walk, and he
stumbled heavily as he crossed the baked mud of his broad lot, but cared
little for that, was almost unaware of it, in fact. Thus his eyes saw
as little as his body felt, and so he failed to observe something that
would have given him additional light upon an old phrase that already
meant quite enough for him.

There are in the wide world people who have never learned its meaning;
but most are either young or beautifully unobservant who remain
wholly unaware of the inner poignancies the words convey: “a rain of
misfortunes.” It is a boiling rain, seemingly whimsical in its choice of
spots whereon to fall; and, so far as mortal eye can tell, neither the
just nor the unjust may hope to avoid it, or need worry themselves by
expecting it. It had selected the Adams family for its scaldings; no
question.

The glue-works foreman, standing in the doorway of the brick shed,
observed his employer's eccentric approach, and doubtfully stroked a
whiskered chin.

“Well, they ain't no putticular use gettin' so upset over it,” he said,
as Adams came up. “When a thing happens, why, it happens, and that's all
there is to it. When a thing's so, why, it's so. All you can do about it
is think if there's anything you CAN do; and that's what you better be
doin' with this case.”

Adams halted, and seemed to gape at him. “What--case?” he said, with
difficulty. “Was it in the morning papers, too?”

“No, it ain't in no morning papers. My land! It don't need to be in no
papers; look at the SIZE of it!”

“The size of what?”

“Why, great God!” the foreman exclaimed. “He ain't even seen it. Look!
Look yonder!”

Adams stared vaguely at the man's outstretched hand and pointing
forefinger, then turned and saw a great sign upon the facade of the big
factory building across the street. The letters were large enough to be
read two blocks away.

“AFTER THE FIFTEENTH OF NEXT MONTH
THIS BUILDING WILL BE OCCUPIED BY
THE J. A. LAMB LIQUID GLUE CO. INC.”

A gray touring-car had just come to rest before the principal entrance
of the building, and J. A. Lamb himself descended from it. He glanced
over toward the humble rival of his projected great industry, saw his
old clerk, and immediately walked across the street and the lot to speak
to him.

“Well, Adams,” he said, in his husky, cheerful voice, “how's your
glue-works?”

Adams uttered an inarticulate sound, and lifted the hand that held his
hat as if to make a protective gesture, but failed to carry it out; and
his arm sank limp at his side. The foreman, however, seemed to feel that
something ought to be said.

“Our glue-works, hell!” he remarked. “I guess we won't HAVE no
glue-works over here not very long, if we got to compete with the sized
thing you got over there!”

Lamb chuckled. “I kind of had some such notion,” he said. “You see,
Virgil, I couldn't exactly let you walk off with it like swallering a
pat o' butter, now, could I? It didn't look exactly reasonable to expect
me to let go like that, now, did it?”

Adams found a half-choked voice somewhere in his throat. “Do you--would
you step into my office a minute, Mr. Lamb?”

“Why, certainly I'm willing to have a little talk with you,” the old
gentleman said, as he followed his former employee indoors, and he
added, “I feel a lot more like it than I did before I got THAT up, over
yonder, Virgil!”

Adams threw open the door of the rough room he called his office, having
as justification for this title little more than the fact that he had a
telephone there and a deal table that served as a desk. “Just step into
the office, please,” he said.

Lamb glanced at the desk, at the kitchen chair before it, at the
telephone, and at the partition walls built of old boards, some covered
with ancient paint and some merely weatherbeaten, the salvage of a
house-wrecker; and he smiled broadly. “So these are your offices, are
they?” he asked. “You expect to do quite a business here, I guess, don't
you, Virgil?”

Adams turned upon him a stricken and tortured face. “Have you seen
Charley Lohr since last night, Mr. Lamb?”

“No; I haven't seen Charley.”

“Well, I told him to tell you,” Adams began;--“I told him I'd pay
you----”

“Pay me what you expect to make out o' glue, you mean, Virgil?”

“No,” Adams said, swallowing. “I mean what my boy owes you. That's what
I told Charley to tell you. I told him to tell you I'd pay you every
last----”

“Well, well!” the old gentleman interrupted, testily. “I don't know
anything about that.”

“I'm expecting to pay you,” Adams went on, swallowing again, painfully.
“I was expecting to do it out of a loan I thought I could get on my
glue-works.”

The old gentleman lifted his frosted eyebrows. “Oh, out o' the
GLUE-works? You expected to raise money on the glue-works, did you?”

At that, Adams's agitation increased prodigiously. “How'd you THINK I
expected to pay you?” he said. “Did you think I expected to get money on
my own old bones?” He slapped himself harshly upon the chest and legs.
“Do you think a bank'll lend money on a man's ribs and his broken-down
old knee-bones? They won't do it! You got to have some BUSINESS
prospects to show 'em, if you haven't got any property nor securities;
and what business prospects have I got now, with that sign of yours up
over yonder? Why, you don't need to make an OUNCE o' glue; your sign's
fixed ME without your doing another lick! THAT'S all you had to do; just
put your sign up! You needn't to----”

“Just let me tell you something, Virgil Adams,” the old man interrupted,
harshly. “I got just one right important thing to tell you before we
talk any further business; and that's this: there's some few men in this
town made their money in off-colour ways, but there aren't many; and
those there are have had to be a darn sight slicker than you know how to
be, or ever WILL know how to be! Yes, sir, and they none of them had the
little gumption to try to make it out of a man that had the spirit not
to let 'em, and the STRENGTH not to let 'em! I know what you thought.
'Here,' you said to yourself, 'here's this ole fool J. A. Lamb; he's
kind of worn out and in his second childhood like; I can put it over on
him, without his ever----'”

“I did not!” Adams shouted. “A great deal YOU know about my feelings
and all what I said to myself! There's one thing I want to tell YOU,
and that's what I'm saying to myself NOW, and what my feelings are this
MINUTE!”

He struck the table a great blow with his thin fist, and shook the
damaged knuckles in the air. “I just want to tell you, whatever I did
feel, I don't feel MEAN any more; not to-day, I don't. There's a meaner
man in this world than I am, Mr. Lamb!”

“Oh, so you feel better about yourself to-day, do you, Virgil?”

“You bet I do! You worked till you got me where you want me; and
I wouldn't do that to another man, no matter what he did to me! I
wouldn't----”

“What you talkin' about! How've I 'got you where I want you?'”

“Ain't it plain enough?” Adams cried. “You even got me where I can't
raise the money to pay back what my boy owes you! Do you suppose
anybody's fool enough to let me have a cent on this business after one
look at what you got over there across the road?”

“No, I don't.”

“No, you don't,” Adams echoed, hoarsely. “What's more, you knew my house
was mortgaged, and my----”

“I did not,” Lamb interrupted, angrily. “What do I care about your
house?”

“What's the use your talking like that?” Adams cried. “You got me where
I can't even raise the money to pay what my boy owes the company, so't
I can't show any reason to stop the prosecution and keep him out the
penitentiary. That's where you worked till you got ME!”

“What!” Lamb shouted. “You accuse me of----”

“'Accuse you?' What am I telling you? Do you think I got no EYES?” And
Adams hammered the table again. “Why, you knew the boy was weak----”

“I did not!”

“Listen: you kept him there after you got mad at my leaving the way
I did. You kept him there after you suspected him; and you had him
watched; you let him go on; just waited to catch him and ruin him!”

“You're crazy!” the old man bellowed. “I didn't know there was anything
against the boy till last night. You're CRAZY, I say!”

Adams looked it. With his hair disordered over his haggard forehead and
bloodshot eyes; with his bruised hands pounding the table and flying in
a hundred wild and absurd gestures, while his feet shuffled constantly
to preserve his balance upon staggering legs, he was the picture of a
man with a mind gone to rags.

“Maybe I AM crazy!” he cried, his voice breaking and quavering. “Maybe
I am, but I wouldn't stand there and taunt a man with it if I'd done to
him what you've done to me! Just look at me: I worked all my life for
you, and what I did when I quit never harmed you--it didn't make two
cents' worth o' difference in your life and it looked like it'd mean all
the difference in the world to my family--and now look what you've DONE
to me for it! I tell you, Mr. Lamb, there never was a man looked up to
another man the way I looked up to you the whole o' my life, but I don't
look up to you any more! You think you got a fine day of it now, riding
up in your automobile to look at that sign--and then over here at my
poor little works that you've ruined. But listen to me just this
one last time!” The cracking voice broke into falsetto, and the
gesticulating hands fluttered uncontrollably. “Just you listen!” he
panted. “You think I did you a bad turn, and now you got me ruined for
it, and you got my works ruined, and my family ruined; and if anybody'd
'a' told me this time last year I'd ever say such a thing to you I'd
called him a dang liar, but I DO say it: I say you've acted toward me
like--like a--a doggone mean--man!”

His voice, exhausted, like his body, was just able to do him this final
service; then he sank, crumpled, into the chair by the table, his chin
down hard upon his chest.

“I tell you, you're crazy!” Lamb said again. “I never in the world----”
But he checked himself, staring in sudden perplexity at his accuser.
“Look here!” he said. “What's the matter of you? Have you got another of
those----?” He put his hand upon Adams's shoulder, which jerked feebly
under the touch.

The old man went to the door and called to the foreman.

“Here!” he said. “Run and tell my chauffeur to bring my car over here.
Tell him to drive right up over the sidewalk and across the lot. Tell
him to hurry!”

So, it happened, the great J. A. Lamb a second time brought his former
clerk home, stricken and almost inanimate.