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

“Not a thing in the world. I’ve told you all I know, Virg.”

“I guess so, I guess so,” Adams said, mournfully. “I feel mighty obliged to you, Charley Lohr; mighty obliged. Good night to you.” And he departed, sighing in perplexity.

On his way home, preoccupied with many thoughts, he walked so slowly that once or twice he stopped and stood motionless for a few moments, without being aware of it; and when he reached the juncture of the sidewalk with the short brick path that led to his own front door, he stopped again, and stood for more than a minute. “Ah, I wish I knew,” he whispered, plaintively. “I do wish I knew what he thought about it.”

He was roused by a laugh that came lightly from the little veranda near by. “Papa!” Alice called gaily. “What are you standing there muttering to yourself about?”

“Oh, are you there, dearie?” he said, and came up the path. A tall figure rose from a chair on the veranda.

“Papa, this is Mr. Russell.”

The two men shook hands, Adams saying, “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” as they looked at each other in the faint light diffused through the opaque glass in the upper part of the door. Adams’s impression was of a strong and tall young man, fashionable but gentle; and Russell’s was of a dried, little old business man with a grizzled moustache, worried bright eyes, shapeless dark clothes, and a homely manner.

“Nice evening,” Adams said further, as their hands parted. “Nice time o’ year it is, but we don’t always have as good weather as this; that’s the trouble of it. Well⁠—” He went to the door. “Well⁠—I bid you good evening,” he said, and retired within the house.

Alice laughed. “He’s the old-fashionedest man in town, I suppose and frightfully impressed with you, I could see!”

“What nonsense!” said Russell. “How could anybody be impressed with me?”

“Why not? Because you’re quiet? Good gracious! Don’t you know that you’re the most impressive sort? We chatterers spend all our time playing to you quiet people.”

“Yes; we’re only the audience.”

“ ‘Only’!” she echoed. “Why, we live for you, and we can’t live without you.”

“I wish you couldn’t,” said Russell. “That would be a new experience for both of us, wouldn’t it?”

“It might be a rather bleak one for me,” she answered, lightly. “I’m afraid I’ll miss these summer evenings with you when they’re over. I’ll miss them enough, thanks!”

“Do they have to be over some time?” he asked.

“Oh, everything’s over some time, isn’t it?”

Russell laughed at her. “Don’t let’s look so far ahead as that,” he said. “We don’t need to be already thinking of the cemetery, do we?”

“I didn’t,” she said, shaking her head. “Our summer evenings will be over before then, Mr. Russell.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Good heavens!” she said. “There’s laconic eloquence: almost a proposal in a single word! Never mind, I shan’t hold you to it. But to answer you: well, I’m always looking ahead, and somehow I usually see about how things are coming out.”

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose most of us do; at least it seems as if we did, because we so seldom feel surprised by the way they do come out. But maybe that’s only because life isn’t like a play in a theatre, and most things come about so gradually we get used to them.”

“No, I’m sure I can see quite a long way ahead,” she insisted, gravely. “And it doesn’t seem to me as if our summer evenings could last very long. Something’ll interfere⁠—somebody will, I mean⁠—they’ll say something⁠—”

“What if they do?”

She moved her shoulders in a little apprehensive shiver. “It’ll change you,” she said. “I’m just sure something spiteful’s going to happen to me. You’ll feel differently about⁠—things.”

“Now, isn’t that an idea!” he exclaimed.

“It will,” she insisted. “I know something spiteful’s going to happen!”

“You seem possessed by a notion not a bit flattering to me,” he remarked.

“Oh, but isn’t it? That’s just what it is! Why isn’t it?”

“Because it implies that I’m made of such soft material the slightest breeze will mess me all up. I’m not so like that as I evidently appear; and if it’s true that we’re afraid other people will do the things we’d be most likely to do ourselves, it seems to me that I ought to be the one to be afraid. I ought to be afraid that somebody may say something about me to you that will make you believe I’m a professional forger.”

“No. We both know they won’t,” she said. “We both know you’re the sort of person everybody in the world says nice things about.” She lifted her hand to silence him as he laughed at this. “Oh, of course you are! I think perhaps you’re a little flirtatious⁠—most quiet men have that one sly way with ’em⁠—oh, yes, they do! But you happen to be the kind of man everybody loves to praise. And if you weren’t, I shouldn’t hear anything terrible about you. I told you I was unpopular: I don’t see anybody at all any more. The only man except you who’s been to see me in a month is that fearful little fat Frank Dowling, and I sent word to him I wasn’t home. Nobody’d tell me of your wickedness, you see.”

“Then let me break some news to you,” Russell said. “Nobody would tell me of yours, either. Nobody’s even mentioned you to me.”

She burlesqued a cry of anguish. “That is obscurity! I suppose I’m too apt to forget that they say the population’s about half a million nowadays. There are other people to talk about, you feel, then?”

“None that I want to,” he said. “But I should think the size of the place might relieve your mind of what seems to insist on burdening it. Besides, I’d rather you thought me a better man than you do.”

“What kind of a man do I think you are?”

“The kind affected by what’s said about people instead of by what they do themselves.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not,” he