Alice Adams - Booth Tarkington (chrome ebook reader .TXT) 📗

Walter looked annoyed. “Still harpin’ on that!” he complained. “The kind of women I like, if they get sore they just hit you somewhere on the face and then they’re through. By the way, I heard this Russell was supposed to be your dear, old, sweet friend Mildred’s steady. What you doin’ walkin’ as close to him as all that?”

Mrs. Adams addressed her son in gentle reproof, “Why Walter!”

“Oh, never mind, mama,” Alice said. “To the horrid all things are horrid.”

“Get out!” Walter protested, carelessly. “I heard all about this Russell down at the shop. Young Joe Lamb’s such a talker I wonder he don’t ruin his grandfather’s business; he keeps all us cheap help standin’ round listening to him nine-tenths of our time. Well, Joe told me this Russell’s some kin or other to the Palmer family, and he’s got some little money of his own, and he’s puttin’ it into ole Palmer’s trust company and Palmer’s goin’ to make him a vice-president of the company. Sort of a keep-the-money-in-the-family arrangement, Joe Lamb says.”

Mrs. Adams looked thoughtful. “I don’t see⁠—” she began.

“Why, this Russell’s supposed to be tied up to Mildred,” her son explained. “When ole Palmer dies this Russell will be his son-in-law, and all he’ll haf’ to do’ll be to barely lift his feet and step into the ole man’s shoes. It’s certainly a mighty fat hand-me-out for this Russell! You better lay off o’ there, Alice. Pick somebody that’s got less to lose and you’ll make better showing.”

Mrs. Adams’s air of thoughtfulness had not departed. “But you say this Mr. Russell is well off on his own account, Walter.”

“Oh, Joe Lamb says he’s got some little of his own. Didn’t know how much.”

“Well, then⁠—”

Walter laughed his laugh. “Cut it out,” he bade her. “Alice wouldn’t run in fourth place.”

Alice had been looking at him in a detached way, as though estimating the value of a specimen in a collection not her own. “Yes,” she said, indifferently. “You really are vulgar, Walter.”

He had finished his meal; and, rising, he came round the table to her and patted her good-naturedly on the shoulder. “Good ole Allie!” he said. “Honest, you wouldn’t run in fourth place. If I was you I’d never even start in the class. That frozen-face gang will rule you off the track soon as they see your colours.”

“Walter!” his mother said again.

“Well, ain’t I her brother?” he returned, seeming to be entirely serious and direct, for the moment, at least. “I like the ole girl all right. Fact is, sometimes I’m kind of sorry for her.”

“But what’s it all about?” Alice cried. “Simply because you met me downtown with a man I never saw but once before and just barely know! Why all this palaver?”

“ ‘Why’?” he repeated, grinning. “Well, I’ve seen you start before, you know!” He went to the door, and paused. “I got no date tonight. Take you to the movies, you care to go.”

She declined crisply. “No, thanks!”

“Come on,” he said, as pleasantly as he knew how.

“Give me a chance to show you a better time than we had up at that frozen-face joint. I’ll get you some chop suey afterward.”

“No, thanks!”

“All right,” he responded and waved a flippant adieu. “As the barber says, ‘The better the advice, the worse it’s wasted!’ Good night!”

Alice shrugged her shoulders; but a moment or two later, as the jar of the carelessly slammed front door went through the house, she shook her head, reconsidering. “Perhaps I ought to have gone with him. It might have kept him away from whatever dreadful people are his friends⁠—at least for one night.”

“Oh, I’m sure Walter’s a good boy,” Mrs. Adams said, soothingly; and this was what she almost always said when either her husband or Alice expressed such misgivings. “He’s odd, and he’s picked up right queer manners; but that’s only because we haven’t given him advantages like the other young men. But I’m sure he’s a good boy.”

She reverted to the subject a little later, while she washed the dishes and Alice wiped them. “Of course Walter could take his place with the other nice boys of the town even yet,” she said. “I mean, if we could afford to help him financially. They all belong to the country clubs and have cars and⁠—”

“Let’s don’t go into that any more, mama,” the daughter begged her. “What’s the use?”

“It could be of use,” Mrs. Adams insisted. “It could if your father⁠—”

“But papa can’t.”

“Yes, he can.”

“But how can he? He told me a man of his age can’t give up a business he’s been in practically all his life, and just go groping about for something that might never turn up at all. I think he’s right about it, too, of course!”

Mrs. Adams splashed among the plates with a new vigour heightened by an old bitterness. “Oh, yes,” she said. “He talks that way; but he knows better.”

“How could he ‘know better,’ mama?”

“He knows how!”

“But what does he know?”

Mrs. Adams tossed her head. “You don’t suppose I’m such a fool I’d be urging him to give up something for nothing, do you, Alice? Do you suppose I’d want him to just go ‘groping around’ like he was telling you? That would be crazy, of course. Little as his work at Lamb’s brings in, I wouldn’t be so silly as to ask him to give it up just on a chance he could find something else. Good gracious, Alice, you must give me credit for a little intelligence once in a while!”

Alice was puzzled. “But what else could there be except a chance? I don’t see⁠—”

“Well, I do,” her mother interrupted, decisively. “That man could make us all well off right now if he wanted to. We could have been rich long ago if he’d ever really felt as he ought to about his family.”

“What! Why, how could⁠—”

“You know how as well as I do,” Mrs. Adams said, crossly. “I guess you haven’t forgotten how he treated me about it the Sunday before he got sick.”

She went on