The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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metaphor, simile, and invective with it; and thus may be said to have enjoyed it. But the man who produced it took a hot bath as soon as he reached his home the evening of that first day when his manufacturing began. Then he put on fresh clothes; but after dinner he seemed to be haunted, and asked his wife if she "noticed anything."
She laughed and inquired what he meant.
"Seems to me as if that glue-works smell hadn't quit hanging to me," he explained. "Don't you notice it?"
"No! What an idea!"
He laughed, too, but uneasily; and told her he was sure "the dang glue smell" was somehow sticking to him. Later, he went outdoors and walked up and down the small yard in the dusk; but now and then he stood still, with his head lifted, and sniffed the air suspiciously. "Can YOU smell it?" he called to Alice, who sat upon the veranda, prettily dressed and waiting in a reverie.
"Smell what, papa?"
"That dang glue-works."
She did the same thing her mother had done: laughed, and said, "No! How foolish! Why, papa, it's over two miles from here!"
"You don't get it at all?" he insisted.
"The idea! The air is lovely to-night, papa."
The air did not seem lovely to him, for he was positive that he detected the taint. He wondered how far it carried, and if J. A. Lamb would smell it, too, out on his own lawn a mile to the north; and if he did, would he guess what it was? Then Adams laughed at himself for such nonsense; but could not rid his nostrils of their disgust. To him the whole town seemed to smell of his glue-works.
Nevertheless, the glue was making, and his sheds were busy. "Guess we're stirrin' up this ole neighbourhood with more than the smell," his foreman remarked one morning.
"How's that?" Adams inquired.
"That great big, enormous ole dead butterine factory across the street from our lot," the man said. "Nothin' like settin' an example to bring real estate to life. That place is full o' carpenters startin' in to make a regular buildin' of it again. Guess you ought to have the credit of it, because you was the first man in ten years to see any possibilities in this neighbourhood."
Adams was pleased, and, going out to see for himself, heard a great hammering and sawing from within the building; while carpenters were just emerging gingerly upon the dangerous roof. He walked out over the dried mud of his deep lot, crossed the street, and spoke genially to a workman who was removing the broken glass of a window on the ground floor.
"Here! What's all this howdy-do over here?"
"Goin' to fix her all up, I guess," the workman said. "Big job it is, too."
"Sh' think it would be."
"Yes, sir; a pretty big job--a pretty big job. Got men at it on all four floors and on the roof. They're doin' it RIGHT."
"Who's doing it?"
"Lord! I d' know. Some o' these here big manufacturing corporations, I guess."
"What's it going to be?"
"They tell ME," the workman answered--"they tell ME she's goin' to be a butterine factory again. Anyways, I hope she won't be anything to smell like that glue-works you got over there not while I'm workin' around her, anyways!"
"That smell's all right," Adams said. "You soon get used to it."
"You do?" The man appeared incredulous. "Listen! I was over in France: it's a good thing them Dutchmen never thought of it; we'd of had to quit!"
Adams laughed, and went back to his sheds. "I guess my foreman was right," he told his wife, that evening, with a little satisfaction. "As soon as one man shows enterprise enough to found an industry in a broken-down neighbourhood, somebody else is sure to follow. I kind of like the look of it: it'll help make our place seem sort of more busy and prosperous when it comes to getting a loan from the bank--and I got to get one mighty soon, too. I did think some that if things go as well as there's every reason to think they OUGHT to, I might want to spread out and maybe get hold of that old factory myself; but I hardly expected to be able to handle a proposition of that size before two or three years from now, and anyhow there's room enough on the lot I got, if we need more buildings some day. Things are going about as fine as I could ask: I hired some girls to-day to do the bottling--coloured girls along about sixteen to twenty years old. Afterwhile, I expect to get a machine to put the stuff in the little bottles, when we begin to get good returns; but half a dozen of these coloured girls can do it all right now, by hand. We're getting to have really quite a little plant over there: yes, sir, quite a regular little plant!"
He chuckled, and at this cheerful sound, of a kind his wife had almost forgotten he was capable of producing, she ventured to put her hand upon his arm. They had gone outdoors, after dinner, taking two chairs with them, and were sitting through the late twilight together, keeping well away from the "front porch," which was not yet occupied, however Alice was in her room changing her dress.
"Well, honey," Mrs. Adams said, taking confidence not only to put her hand upon his arm, but to revive this disused endearment;--"it's grand to have you so optimistic. Maybe some time you'll admit I was right, after all. Everything's going so well, it seems a pity you didn't take this--this step--long ago. Don't you think maybe so, Virgil?"
"Well--if I was ever going to, I don't know but I might as well of. I got to admit the proposition begins to look pretty good: I know the stuff'll sell, and I can't see a thing in the world to stop it. It does look good, and if--if----" He paused.
"If what?" she said, suddenly anxious.
He laughed plaintively, as if confessing a superstition. "It's funny--well, it's mighty funny about that smell. I've got so used to it at the plant I never seem to notice it at all over there. It's only when I get away. Honestly, can't you notice----?"
"Virgil!" She lifted her hand to strike his arm chidingly. "Do quit harping on that nonsense!"
"Oh, of course it don't amount to anything," he said. "A person can stand a good deal of just smell. It don't WORRY me any."
"I should think not especially as there isn't any."
"Well," he said, "I feel pretty fair over the whole thing--a lot better'n I ever expected to, anyhow. I don't know as there's any reason I shouldn't tell you so."
She was deeply pleased with this acknowledgment, and her voice had tenderness in it as she responded: "There, honey! Didn't I always say you'd be glad if you did it?"
Embarrassed, he coughed loudly, then filled his pipe and lit it. "Well," he said, slowly, "it's a puzzle. Yes, sir, it's a puzzle."
"What is?"
"Pretty much everything, I guess."
As he spoke, a song came to them from a lighted window over their heads. Then the window darkened abruptly, but the song continued as Alice went down through the house to wait on the little veranda. "Mi chiamo Mimi," she sang, and in her voice throbbed something almost startling in its sweetness. Her father and mother listened, not speaking until the song stopped with the click of the wire screen at the front door as Alice came out.
"My!" said her father. "How sweet she does sing! I don't know as I ever heard her voice sound nicer than it did just then."
"There's something that makes it sound that way," his wife told him.
"I suppose so," he said, sighing. "I suppose so. You think----"
"She's just terribly in love with him!"
"I expect that's the way it ought to be," he said, then drew upon his pipe for reflection, and became murmurous with the symptoms of melancholy laughter. "It don't make things less of a puzzle, though, does