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

pay him anything he asked. If he’d just had the gumption and a little manly courage⁠—”

“Hush!” Alice whispered, for her mother’s voice grew louder. “Hush! He’ll hear you, mama.”

“Could he hear me too often?” the embittered lady asked. “If he’d listened to me at the right time, would we have to be taking in boarders and sinking down in the scale at the end of our lives, instead of going up? You were both wrong; we didn’t need to be so panicky⁠—that was just what that old man wanted: to scare us and buy us out for nothing! If your father’d just listened to me then, or if for once in his life he’d just been half a man⁠—”

Alice put her hand over her mother’s mouth. “You mustn’t! He will hear you!”

But from the other side of Adams’s closed door his voice came querulously. “Oh, I hear her, all right!”

“You see, mama?” Alice said, and, as Mrs. Adams turned away, weeping, the daughter sighed; then went in to speak to her father.

He was in his old chair by the table, with a pillow behind his head, but the crocheted scarf and Mrs. Adams’s wrapper swathed him no more; he wore a dressing-gown his wife had bought for him, and was smoking his pipe. “The old story, is it?” he said, as Alice came in. “The same, same old story! Well, well! Has she gone?”

“Yes, papa.”

“Got your hat on,” he said. “Where you going?”

“I’m going downtown on an errand of my own. Is there anything you want, papa?”

“Yes, there is.” He smiled at her. “I wish you’d sit down a while and talk to me unless your errand⁠—”

“No,” she said, taking a chair near him. “I was just going down to see about some arrangements I was making for myself. There’s no hurry.”

“What arrangements for yourself, dearie?”

“I’ll tell you afterwards⁠—after I find out something about ’em myself.”

“All right,” he said, indulgently. “Keep your secrets; keep your secrets.” He paused, drew musingly upon his pipe, and shook his head. “Funny⁠—the way your mother looks at things! For the matter o’ that, everything’s pretty funny, I expect, if you stop to think about it. For instance, let her say all she likes, but we were pushed right spang to the wall, if J. A. Lamb hadn’t taken it into his head to make that offer for the works; and there’s one of the things I been thinking about lately, Alice: thinking about how funny they work out.”

“What did you think about it, papa!”

“Well, I’ve seen it happen in other people’s lives, time and time again; and now it’s happened in ours. You think you’re going to be pushed right up against the wall; you can’t see any way out, or any hope at all; you think you’re gone⁠—and then something you never counted on turns up; and, while maybe you never do get back to where you used to be, yet somehow you kind of squirm out of being right spang against the wall. You keep on going⁠—maybe you can’t go much, but you do go a little. See what I mean?”

“Yes. I understand, dear.”

“Yes, I’m afraid you do,” he said. “Too bad! You oughtn’t to understand it at your age. It seems to me a good deal as if the Lord really meant for the young people to have the good times, and for the old to have the troubles; and when anybody as young as you has trouble there’s a big mistake somewhere.”

“Oh, no!” she protested.

But he persisted whimsically in this view of divine error: “Yes, it does look a good deal that way. But of course we can’t tell; we’re never certain about anything⁠—not about anything at all. Sometimes I look at it another way, though. Sometimes it looks to me as if a body’s troubles came on him mainly because he hadn’t had sense enough to know how not to have any⁠—as if his troubles were kind of like a boy’s getting kept in after school by the teacher, to give him discipline, or something or other. But, my, my! We don’t learn easy!” He chuckled mournfully. “Not to learn how to live till we’re about ready to die, it certainly seems to me dang tough!”

“Then I wouldn’t brood on such a notion, papa,” she said.

“ ‘Brood’? No!” he returned. “I just kind o’ mull it over.” He chuckled again, sighed, and then, not looking at her, he said, “That Mr. Russell⁠—your mother tells me he hasn’t been here again⁠—not since⁠—”

“No,” she said, quietly, as Adams paused. “He never came again.”

“Well, but maybe⁠—”

“No,” she said. “There isn’t any ‘maybe.’ I told him goodbye that night, papa. It was before he knew about Walter⁠—I told you.”

“Well, well,” Adams said. “Young people are entitled to their own privacy; I don’t want to pry.” He emptied his pipe into a chipped saucer on the table beside him, laid the pipe aside, and reverted to a former topic. “Speaking of dying⁠—”

“Well, but we weren’t!” Alice protested.

“Yes, about not knowing how to live till you’re through living⁠—and then maybe not!” he said, chuckling at his own determined pessimism. “I see I’m pretty old because I talk this way⁠—I remember my grandmother saying things a good deal like all what I’m saying now; I used to hear her at it when I was a young fellow⁠—she was a right gloomy old lady, I remember. Well, anyhow, it reminds me: I want to get on my feet again as soon as I can; I got to look around and find something to go into.”

Alice shook her head gently. “But, papa, he told you⁠—”

“Never mind throwing that dang doctor up at me!” Adams interrupted, peevishly. “He said I’d be good for some kind of light job⁠—if I could find just the right thing. ‘Where there wouldn’t be either any physical or mental strain,’ he said. Well, I got to find something like that. Anyway, I’ll feel better if I can just get out looking for it.”

“But, papa, I’m afraid you