The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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she said again. "You're sorry I think you're so different--and all in one day--since last night. Yes, your voice SOUNDS sorry, too. It sounds sorrier than it would just because of my thinking something you could change my mind about in a minute so it means you're sorry you ARE different."
"No--I----"
But disregarding the faint denial, "Never mind," she said. "Do you remember one night when you told me that nothing anybody else could do would ever keep you from coming here? That if you--if you left me it would be because I drove you away myself?"
"Yes," he said, huskily. "It was true."
"Are you sure?"
"Indeed I am," he answered in a low voice, but with conviction.
"Then----" She paused. "Well--but I haven't driven you away."
"No."
"And yet you've gone," she said, quietly.
"Do I seem so stupid as all that?"
"You know what I mean." She leaned back in her chair again, and her hands, inactive for once, lay motionless in her lap. When she spoke it was in a rueful whisper:
"I wonder if I HAVE driven you away?"
"You've done nothing--nothing at all," he said.
"I wonder----" she said once more, but she stopped. In her mind she was going back over their time together since the first meeting--fragments of talk, moments of silence, little things of no importance, little things that might be important; moonshine, sunshine, starlight; and her thoughts zigzagged among the jumbling memories; but, as if she made for herself a picture of all these fragments, throwing them upon the canvas haphazard, she saw them all just touched with the one tainting quality that gave them coherence, the faint, false haze she had put over this friendship by her own pretendings. And, if this terrible dinner, or anything, or everything, had shown that saffron tint in its true colour to the man at her side, last night almost a lover, then she had indeed of herself driven him away, and might well feel that she was lost.
"Do you know?" she said, suddenly, in a clear, loud voice. "I have the strangest feeling. I feel as if I were going to be with you only about five minutes more in all the rest of my life!"
"Why, no," he said. "Of course I'm coming to see you--often. I----"
"No," she interrupted. "I've never had a feeling like this before. It's--it's just SO; that's all! You're GOING--why, you're never coming here again!" She stood up, abruptly, beginning to tremble all over. "Why, it's FINISHED, isn't it?" she said, and her trembling was manifest now in her voice. "Why, it's all OVER, isn't it? Why, yes!"
He had risen as she did. "I'm afraid you're awfully tired and nervous," he said. "I really ought to be going."
"Yes, of COURSE you ought," she cried, despairingly. "There's nothing else for you to do. When anything's spoiled, people CAN'T do anything but run away from it. So good-bye!"
"At least," he returned, huskily, "we'll only--only say good-night."
Then, as moving to go, he stumbled upon the veranda steps, "Your HAT!" she cried. "I'd like to keep it for a souvenir, but I'm afraid you need it!"
She ran into the hall and brought his straw hat from the chair where he had left it. "You poor thing!" she said, with quavering laughter. "Don't you know you can't go without your hat?"
Then, as they faced each other for the short moment which both of them knew would be the last of all their veranda moments, Alice's broken laughter grew louder. "What a thing to say!" she cried. "What a romantic parting--talking about HATS!"
Her laughter continued as he turned away, but other sounds came from within the house, clearly audible with the opening of a door upstairs--a long and wailing cry of lamentation in the voice of Mrs. Adams. Russell paused at the steps, uncertain, but Alice waved to him to go on.
"Oh, don't bother," she said. "We have lots of that in this funny little old house! Good-bye!"
And as he went down the steps, she ran back into the house and closed the door heavily behind her.
CHAPTER XXIII
Her mother's wailing could still be heard from overhead, though more faintly; and old Charley Lohr was coming down the stairs alone.
He looked at Alice compassionately. "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 sobbed. "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----"
"Hush, dear, hush!" Alice tried to soothe her, but the lament could not be abated, 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 standing 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, groaning, 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 gulped. "It always seems that way to the other party that's only looking on!"
"Oh, well, I know that, of course," old Charley returned, soothingly. "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 prosecute 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