He looked at Alice compassionately2. “I was just comin' to suggest maybe you'd excuse yourself from your company,” he said. “Your mother was bound not to disturb you, and tried her best to keep you from hearin' how she's takin' on, but I thought probably you better see to her.”
“Yes, I'll come. What's the matter?”
“Well,” he said, “I only stepped over to offer my sympathy and services, as it were. I thought of course you folks knew all about it. Fact is, it was in the evening paper—just a little bit of an item on the back page, of course.”
“What is it?”
He coughed. “Well, it ain't anything so terrible,” he said. “Fact is, your brother Walter's got in a little trouble—well, I suppose you might call it quite a good deal of trouble. Fact is, he's quite considerable short in his accounts down at Lamb and Company.”
Alice ran up the stairs and into her father's room, where Mrs. Adams threw herself into her daughter's arms. “Is he gone?” she sobbed3. “He didn't hear me, did he? I tried so hard——”
Alice patted the heaving shoulders her arms enclosed. “No, no,” she said. “He didn't hear you—it wouldn't have mattered—he doesn't matter anyway.”
“Oh, POOR Walter!” The mother cried. “Oh, the POOR boy! Poor, poor Walter! Poor, poor, poor, POOR——”
“Hush4, dear, hush!” Alice tried to soothe5 her, but the lament6 could not be abated7, and from the other side of the room a repetition in a different spirit was as continuous. Adams paced furiously there, pounding his fist into his left palm as he strode. “The dang boy!” he said. “Dang little fool! Dang idiot! Dang fool! Whyn't he TELL me, the dang little fool?”
“He DID!” Mrs. Adams sobbed. “He DID tell you, and you wouldn't GIVE it to him.”
“He DID, did he?” Adams shouted at her. “What he begged me for was money to run away with! He never dreamed of putting back what he took. What the dangnation you talking about—accusing me!”
“He NEEDED it,” she said. “He needed it to run away with! How could he expect to LIVE, after he got away, if he didn't have a little money? Oh, poor, poor, POOR Walter! Poor, poor, poor——”
She went back to this repetition; and Adams went back to his own, then paused, seeing his old friend standing8 in the hallway outside the open door.
“Ah—I'll just be goin', I guess, Virgil,” Lohr said. “I don't see as there's any use my tryin' to say any more. I'll do anything you want me to, you understand.”
“Wait a minute,” Adams said, and, groaning9, came and went down the stairs with him. “You say you didn't see the old man at all?”
“No, I don't know a thing about what he's going to do,” Lohr said, as they reached the lower floor. “Not a thing. But look here, Virgil, I don't see as this calls for you and your wife to take on so hard about—anyhow not as hard as the way you've started.”
“No,” Adams gulped10. “It always seems that way to the other party that's only looking on!”
“Oh, well, I know that, of course,” old Charley returned, soothingly11. “But look here, Virgil: they may not catch the boy; they didn't even seem to be sure what train he made, and if they do get him, why, the ole man might decide not to prosecute12 if——”
“HIM?” Adams cried, interrupting. “Him not prosecute? Why, that's what he's been waiting for, all along! He thinks my boy and me both cheated him! Why, he was just letting Walter walk into a trap! Didn't you say they'd been suspecting him for some time back? Didn't you say they'd been watching him and were just about fixing to arrest him?”
“Yes, I know,” said Lohr; “but you can't tell, especially if you raise the money and pay it back.”
“Every cent!” Adams vociferated. “Every last penny! I can raise it—I GOT to raise it! I'm going to put a loan on my factory to-morrow. Oh, I'll get it for him, you tell him! Every last penny!”
“Well, ole feller, you just try and get quieted down some now.” Charley held out his hand in parting. “You and your wife just quiet down some. You AIN'T the healthiest man in the world, you know, and you already been under quite some strain before this happened. You want to take care of yourself for the sake of your wife and that sweet little girl upstairs, you know. Now, good-night,” he finished, stepping out upon the veranda13. “You send for me if there's anything I can do.”
“Do?” Adams echoed. “There ain't anything ANYBODY can do!” And then, as his old friend went down the path to the sidewalk, he called after him, “You tell him I'll pay him every last cent! Every last, dang, dirty PENNY!”
He slammed the door and went rapidly up the stairs, talking loudly to himself. “Every dang, last, dirty penny! Thinks EVERYBODY in this family wants to steal from him, does he? Thinks we're ALL yellow, does he? I'll show him!” And he came into his own room vociferating, “Every last, dang, dirty penny!”
Mrs. Adams had collapsed14, and Alice had put her upon his bed, where she lay tossing convulsively and sobbing15, “Oh, POOR Walter!” over and over, but after a time she varied16 the sorry tune17. “Oh, poor Alice!” she moaned, clinging to her daughter's hand. “Oh, poor, POOR Alice to have THIS come on the night of your dinner—just when everything seemed to be going so well—at last—oh, poor, poor, POOR——”
“Hush!” Alice said, sharply. “Don't say 'poor Alice!' I'm all right.”
“You MUST be!” her mother cried, clutching her. “You've just GOT to be! ONE of us has got to be all right—surely God wouldn't mind just ONE of us being all right—that wouldn't hurt Him——”
“Hush, hush, mother! Hush!”
But Mrs. Adams only clutched her the more tightly. “He seemed SUCH a nice young man, dearie! He may not see this in the paper—Mr. Lohr said it was just a little bit of an item—he MAY not see it, dearie——”
Then her anguish18 went back to Walter again; and to his needs as a fugitive—she had meant to repair his underwear, but had postponed19 doing so, and her neglect now appeared to be a detail as lamentable20 as the calamity21 itself. She could neither be stilled upon it, nor herself exhaust its urgings to self-reproach, though she finally took up another theme temporarily. Upon an unusually violent outbreak of her husband's, in denunciation of the runaway22, she cried out faintly that he was cruel; and further wearied her broken voice with details of Walter's beauty as a baby, and of his bedtime pieties23 throughout his infancy24.
So the hot night wore on. Three had struck before Mrs. Adams was got to bed; and Alice, returning to her own room, could hear her father's bare feet thudding back and forth25 after that. “Poor papa!” she whispered in helpless imitation of her mother. “Poor papa! Poor mama! Poor Walter! Poor all of us!”
She fell asleep, after a time, while from across the hall the bare feet still thudded over their changeless route; and she woke at seven, hearing Adams pass her door, shod. In her wrapper she ran out into the hallway and found him descending26 the stairs.
“Papa!”
“Hush,” he said, and looked up at her with reddened eyes. “Don't wake your mother.”
“I won't,” she whispered. “How about you? You haven't slept any at all!”
“Yes, I did. I got some sleep. I'm going over to the works now. I got to throw some figures together to show the bank. Don't worry: I'll get things fixed27 up. You go back to bed. Good-bye.”
“Wait!” she bade him sharply.
“What for?”
“You've got to have some breakfast.”
“Don't want 'ny.”
“You wait!” she said, imperiously, and disappeared to return almost at once. “I can cook in my bedroom slippers,” she explained, “but I don't believe I could in my bare feet!”
Descending softly, she made him wait in the dining-room until she brought him toast and eggs and coffee. “Eat!” she said. “And I'm going to telephone for a taxicab to take you, if you think you've really got to go.”
“No, I'm going to walk—I WANT to walk.”
She shook her head anxiously. “You don't look able. You've walked all night.”
“No, I didn't,” he returned. “I tell you I got some sleep. I got all I wanted anyhow.”
“But, papa——”
“Here!” he interrupted, looking up at her suddenly and setting down his cup of coffee. “Look here! What about this Mr. Russell? I forgot all about him. What about him?”
Her lip trembled a little, but she controlled it before she spoke28. “Well, what about him, papa?” she asked, calmly enough.
“Well, we could hardly——” Adams paused, frowning heavily. “We could hardly expect he wouldn't hear something about all this.”
“Yes; of course he'll hear it, papa.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?” she asked, gently.
“You don't think he'd be the—the cheap kind it'd make a difference with, of course.”
“Oh, no; he isn't cheap. It won't make any difference with him.”
Adams suffered a profound sigh to escape him. “Well—I'm glad of that, anyway.”
“The difference,” she explained—“the difference was made without his hearing anything about Walter. He doesn't know about THAT yet.”
“Well, what does he know about?”
“Only,” she said, “about me.”
“What you mean by that, Alice?” he asked, helplessly.
“Never mind,” she said. “It's nothing beside the real trouble we're in—I'll tell you some time. You eat your eggs and toast; you can't keep going on just coffee.”
“I can't eat any eggs and toast,” he objected, rising. “I can't.”
“Then wait till I can bring you something else.”
“No,” he said, irritably29. “I won't do it! I don't want any dang food! And look here”—he spoke sharply to stop her, as she went toward the telephone—“I don't want any dang taxi, either! You look after your mother when she wakes up. I got to be at WORK!”
And though she followed him to the front door, entreating30, he could not be stayed or hindered. He went through the quiet morning streets at a rickety, rapid gait, swinging his old straw hat in his hands, and whispering angrily to himself as he went. His grizzled hair, not trimmed for a month, blew back from his damp forehead in the warm breeze; his reddened eyes stared hard at nothing from under blinking lids; and one side of his face twitched31 startlingly from time to time;—children might have run from him, or mocked him.
When he had come into that fallen quarter his industry had partly revived and wholly made odorous, a negro woman, leaning upon her whitewashed32 gate, gazed after him and chuckled
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