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

listen to me,” she admonished him. “You might be sorry you didn’t, in case he ever tried to set foot in my house again! I might tell him to his face what I think of him.”

At this, Adams slapped the newspaper down upon his knee. “Oh, the devil! What’s it matter what you think of him?”

“It had better matter to you!” she cried. “Do you suppose I’m going to submit forever to him and his family and what they’re doing to my child?”

“What are he and his family doing to ‘your child’?”

Mrs. Adams came out with it. “That snippy little Henrietta Lamb has always snubbed Alice every time she’s ever had the chance. She’s followed the lead of the other girls; they’ve always all of ’em been jealous of Alice because she dared to try and be happy, and because she’s showier and better-looking than they are, even though you do give her only about thirty-five cents a year to do it on! They’ve all done everything on earth they could to drive the young men away from her and belittle her to ’em; and this mean little Henrietta Lamb’s been the worst of the whole crowd to Alice, every time she could see a chance.”

“What for?” Adams asked, incredulously. “Why should she or anybody else pick on Alice?”

“ ‘Why’? ‘What for’?” his wife repeated with a greater vehemence. “Do you ask me such a thing as that? Do you really want to know?”

“Yes; I’d want to know⁠—I would if I believed it.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” she said in a cold fury. “It’s on account of you, Virgil, and nothing else in the world.”

He hooted at her. “Oh, yes! These girls don’t like me, so they pick on Alice.”

“Quit your palavering and evading,” she said. “A crowd of girls like that, when they get a pretty girl like Alice among them, they act just like wild beasts. They’ll tear her to pieces, or else they’ll chase her and run her out, because they know if she had half a chance she’d outshine ’em. They can’t do that to a girl like Mildred Palmer because she’s got money and family to back her. Now you listen to me, Virgil Adams: the way the world is now, money is family. Alice would have just as much ‘family’ as any of ’em every single bit⁠—if you hadn’t fallen behind in the race.”

“How did I⁠—”

“Yes, you did!” she cried. “Twenty-five years ago when we were starting and this town was smaller, you and I could have gone with any of ’em if we’d tried hard enough. Look at the people we knew then that do hold their heads up alongside of anybody in this town! Why can they? Because the men of those families made money and gave their children everything that makes life worth living! Why can’t we hold our heads up? Because those men passed you in the race. They went up the ladder, and you⁠—you’re still a clerk down at that old hole!”

“You leave that out, please,” he said. “I thought you were going to tell me something Henrietta Lamb had done to our Alice.”

“You bet I’m going to tell you,” she assured him, vehemently. “But first I’m telling why she does it. It’s because you’ve never given Alice any backing nor any background, and they all know they can do anything they like to her with perfect impunity. If she had the hundredth part of what they have to fall back on she’d have made ’em sing a mighty different song long ago!”

“How would she?”

“Oh, my heavens, but you’re slow!” Mrs. Adams moaned. “Look here! You remember how practically all the nicest boys in this town used to come here a few years ago. Why, they were all crazy over her; and the girls had to be nice to her then. Look at the difference now! There’ll be a whole month go by and not a young man come to call on her, let alone send her candy or flowers, or ever think of taking her any place and yet she’s prettier and brighter than she was when they used to come. It isn’t the child’s fault she couldn’t hold ’em, is it? Poor thing, she tried hard enough! I suppose you’d say it was her fault, though.”

“No; I wouldn’t.”

“Then whose fault is it?”

“Oh, mine, mine,” he said, wearily. “I drove the young men away, of course.”

“You might as well have driven ’em, Virgil. It amounts to just the same thing.”

“How does it?”

“Because as they got older a good many of ’em began to think more about money; that’s one thing. Money’s at the bottom of it all, for that matter. Look at these country clubs and all such things: the other girls’ families belong and we don’t, and Alice don’t; and she can’t go unless somebody takes her, and nobody does any more. Look at the other girls’ houses, and then look at our house, so shabby and old-fashioned she’d be pretty near ashamed to ask anybody to come in and sit down nowadays! Look at her clothes⁠—oh, yes; you think you shelled out a lot for that little coat of hers and the hat and skirt she got last March; but it’s nothing. Some of these girls nowadays spend more than your whole salary on their clothes. And what jewellery has she got? A plated watch and two or three little pins and rings of the kind people’s maids wouldn’t wear now. Good Lord, Virgil Adams, wake up! Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t know things like this mean suffering for the child!”

He had begun to rub his hands wretchedly back and forth over his bony knees, as if in that way he somewhat alleviated the tedium caused by her racking voice. “Oh, my, my!” he muttered. “Oh, my, my!”

“Yes, I should think you would say ‘Oh, my, my!’ ” she took him up, loudly. “That doesn’t help things much! If you ever wanted to do anything about it, the