Alice's talk was little more than cheerful sound, but, to fill a desolate11 interval12, served its purpose; and her mother supported her with ever-faithful cooings of applausive laughter. “What a funny thing weather is!” the girl ran on. “Yesterday it was cool—angels had charge of it—and to-day they had an engagement somewhere else, so the devil saw his chance and started to move the equator to the North Pole; but by the time he got half-way, he thought of something else he wanted to do, and went off; and left the equator here, right on top of US! I wish he'd come back and get it!”
“Why, Alice dear!” her mother cried, fondly. “What an imagination! Not a very pious13 one, I'm afraid Mr. Russell might think, though!” Here she gave Gertrude a hidden signal to remove the soup; but, as there was no response, she had to make the signal more conspicuous14. Gertrude was leaning against the wall, her chin moving like a slow pendulum15, her streaked16 eyes fixed17 mutinously18 upon Russell. Mrs. Adams nodded several times, increasing the emphasis of her gesture, while Alice talked briskly; but the brooding waitress continued to brood. A faint snap of the fingers failed to disturb her; nor was a covert19 hissing20 whisper of avail, and Mrs. Adams was beginning to show signs of strain when her daughter relieved her.
“Imagine our trying to eat anything so hot as soup on a night like this!” Alice laughed. “What COULD have been in the cook's mind not to give us something iced and jellied instead? Of course it's because she's equatorial, herself, originally, and only feels at home when Mr. Satan moves it north.” She looked round at Gertrude, who stood behind her. “Do take this dreadful soup away!”
Thus directly addressed, Gertrude yielded her attention, though unwillingly21, and as if she decided22 only by a hair's weight not to revolt, instead. However, she finally set herself in slow motion; but overlooked the supposed head of the table, seeming to be unaware23 of the sweltering little man who sat there. As she disappeared toward the kitchen with but three of the cups upon her tray he turned to look plaintively25 after her, and ventured an attempt to recall her.
“Here!” he said, in a low voice. “Here, you!”
“What is it, Virgil?” his wife asked.
“What's her name?”
Mrs. Adams gave him a glance of sudden panic, and, seeing that the guest of the evening was not looking at her, but down at the white cloth before him, she frowned hard, and shook her head.
Unfortunately Alice was not observing her mother, and asked, innocently: “What's whose name, papa?”
“Why, this young darky woman,” he explained. “She left mine.”
“Never mind,” Alice laughed. “There's hope for you, papa. She hasn't gone forever!”
“I don't know about that,” he said, not content with this impulsive26 assurance. “She LOOKED like she is.” And his remark, considered as a prediction, had begun to seem warranted before Gertrude's return with china preliminary to the next stage of the banquet.
Alice proved herself equal to the long gap, and rattled27 on through it with a spirit richly justifying28 her mother's praise of her as “always ready to smooth things over”; for here was more than long delay to be smoothed over. She smoothed over her father and mother for Russell; and she smoothed over him for them, though he did not know it, and remained unaware of what he owed her. With all this, throughout her prattlings, the girl's bright eyes kept seeking his with an eager gayety, which but little veiled both interrogation and entreaty—as if she asked: “Is it too much for you? Can't you bear it? Won't you PLEASE bear it? I would for you. Won't you give me a sign that it's all right?”
He looked at her but fleetingly29, and seemed to suffer from the heat, in spite of every manly30 effort not to wipe his brow too often. His colour, after rising when he greeted Alice and her father, had departed, leaving him again moistly pallid31; a condition arising from discomfort32, no doubt, but, considered as a decoration, almost poetically33 becoming to him. Not less becoming was the faint, kindly34 smile, which showed his wish to express amusement and approval; and yet it was a smile rather strained and plaintive24, as if he, like Adams, could only do the best he could.
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 embarrassment35 upon this first intimate presentation; here was an applicant36 with both reserve and modesty37. “So far, he seems to be first rate a mighty38 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 chattered39 through the hot and heavy courses, the questions she asked herself were as continuous as the performance, and as poignant40 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 all: 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, suffocated41 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 hospitable42 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 spoke43 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 affronted44, but Mrs. Adams persisted, though somewhat apprehensively45. “Yes. Hurry—uh—please. Just say we're not at home if you please.”
Again Gertrude obviously hesitated between compliance46 and revolt, and again the meeker47 course fortunately prevailed with her. She gave Mrs. Adams a stare, grimly derisive48, 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 fatigue49. “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
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