He pleased Adams, who thought him a fine young man, and decidedly the quietest that Alice had ever shown to her family. In her father’s opinion this was no small merit; and it was to Russell’s credit, too, that he showed embarrassment upon this first intimate presentation; here was an applicant with both reserve and modesty. “So far, he seems to be first rate a mighty fine young man,” Adams thought; and, prompted by no wish to part from Alice but by reminiscences of apparent candidates less pleasing, he added, “At last!”
Alice’s liveliness never flagged. Her smoothing over of things was an almost continuous performance, and had to be. Yet, while she chattered through the hot and heavy courses, the questions she asked herself were as continuous as the performance, and as poignant as what her eyes seemed to be asking Russell. Why had she not prevailed over her mother’s fear of being “skimpy?” Had she been, indeed, as her mother said she looked, “in a trance?” But above alclass="underline" What was the matter with HIM? What had happened? For she told herself with painful humour that something even worse than this dinner must be “the matter with him.”
The small room, suffocated with the odour of boiled sprouts, grew hotter and hotter as more and more food appeared, slowly borne in, between deathly long waits, by the resentful, loud-breathing Gertrude. And while Alice still sought Russell’s glance, and read the look upon his face a dozen different ways, fearing all of them; and while the straggling little flowers died upon the stained cloth, she felt her heart grow as heavy as the food, and wondered that it did not die like the roses.
With the arrival of coffee, the host bestirred himself to make known a hospitable regret, “By George!” he said. “I meant to buy some cigars.” He addressed himself apologetically to the guest. “I don’t know what I was thinking about, to forget to bring some home with me. I don’t use ‘em myself—unless somebody hands me one, you might say. I’ve always been a pipe-smoker, pure and simple, but I ought to remembered for kind of an occasion like this.”
“Not at all,” Russell said. “I’m not smoking at all lately; but when I do, I’m like you, and smoke a pipe.”
Alice started, remembering what she had told him when he overtook her on her way from the tobacconist’s; but, after a moment, looking at him, she decided that he must have forgotten it. If he had remembered, she thought, he could not have helped glancing at her. On the contrary, he seemed more at ease, just then, than he had since they sat down, for he was favouring her father with a thoughtful attention as Adams responded to the introduction of a man’s topic into the conversation at last. “Well, Mr. Russell, I guess you’re right, at that. I don’t say but what cigars may be all right for a man that can afford ‘em, if he likes ‘em better than a pipe, but you take a good old pipe now–-“
He continued, and was getting well into the eulogium customarily provoked by this theme, when there came an interruption: the door-bell rang, and he paused inquiringly, rather surprised.
Mrs. Adams spoke to Gertrude in an undertone:
“Just say, ‘Not at home.’”
“What?”
“If it’s callers, just say we’re not at home.”
Gertrude spoke out freely: “You mean you astin’ me to ‘tend you’ front do’ fer you?”
She seemed both incredulous and affronted, but Mrs. Adams persisted, though somewhat apprehensively. “Yes. Hurry—uh—please. Just say we’re not at home if you please.”
Again Gertrude obviously hesitated between compliance and revolt, and again the meeker course fortunately prevailed with her. She gave Mrs. Adams a stare, grimly derisive, then departed. When she came back she said:
“He say he wait.”
“But I told you to tell anybody we were not at home,” Mrs Adams returned. “Who is it?”
“Say he name Mr. Law.”
“We don’t know any Mr. Law.”
“Yes’m; he know you. Say he anxious to speak Mr. Adams. Say he wait.”
“Tell him Mr. Adams is engaged.”
“Hold on a minute,” Adams intervened. “Law? No. I don’t know any Mr. Law. You sure you got the name right?”
“Say he name Law,” Gertrude replied, looking at the ceiling to express her fatigue. “Law. ‘S all he tell me; ‘s all I know.”
Adams frowned. “Law,” he said. “Wasn’t it maybe ‘Lohr?’”
“Law,” Gertrude repeated. ‘S all he tell me; ‘s all I know.”
“What’s he look like?”
“He ain’t much,” she said. “‘Bout you’ age; got brustly white moustache, nice eye-glasses.”
“It’s Charley Lohr!” Adams exclaimed. “I’ll go see what he wants.”
“But, Virgil,” his wife remonstrated, “do finish your coffee; he might stay all evening. Maybe he’s come to call.”
Adams laughed. “He isn’t much of a caller, I expect. Don’t worry: I’ll take him up to my room.” And turning toward Russell, “Ah—if you’ll just excuse me,” he said; and went out to his visitor.
When he had gone, Mrs. Adams finished her coffee, and, having glanced intelligently from her guest to her daughter, she rose. “I think perhaps I ought to go and shake hands with Mr. Lohr, myself,” she said, adding in explanation to Russell, as she reached the door, “He’s an old friend of my husband’s and it’s a very long time since he’s been here.”
Alice nodded and smiled to her brightly, but upon the closing of the door, the smile vanished; all her liveliness disappeared; and with this change of expression her complexion itself appeared to change, so that her rouge became obvious, for she was pale beneath it. However, Russell did not see the alteration, for he did not look at her; and it was but a momentary lapse the vacation of a tired girl, who for ten seconds lets herself look as she feels. Then she shot her vivacity back into place as by some powerful spring.
“Penny for your thoughts!” she cried, and tossed one of the wilted roses at him, across the table. “I’ll bid more than a penny; I’ll bid tuppence—no, a poor little dead rose a rose for your thoughts, Mr. Arthur Russell! What are they?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid I haven’t any.”
“No, of course not,” she said. “Who could have thoughts in weather like this? Will you EVER forgive us?”
“What for?”
“Making you eat such a heavy dinner—I mean LOOK at such a heavy dinner, because you certainly didn’t do more than look at it—on such a night! But the crime draws to a close, and you can begin to cheer up!” She laughed gaily, and, rising, moved to the door. “Let’s go in the other room; your fearful duty is almost done, and you can run home as soon as you want to. That’s what you’re dying to do.”
“Not at all,” he said in a voice so feeble that she laughed aloud.
“Good gracious!” she cried. “I hadn’t realized it was THAT bad!”
For this, though he contrived to laugh, he seemed to have no verbal retort whatever; but followed her into the “living-room,” where she stopped and turned, facing him.
“Has it really been so frightful?” she asked.
“Why, of course not. Not at all.”
“Of course yes, though, you mean!”
“Not at all. It’s been most kind of your mother and father and you.”
“Do you know,” she said, “you’ve never once looked at me for more than a second at a time the whole evening? And it seemed to me I looked rather nice to-night, too!”
“You always do,” he murmured.
“I don’t see how you know,” she returned; and then stepping closer to him, spoke with gentle solicitude: “Tell me: you’re really feeling wretchedly, aren’t you? I know you’ve got a fearful headache, or something. Tell me!”
“Not at all.”