CHAPTER XXI
That morning and noon had been warm, though the stirrings of a feeble breeze made weather not flagrantly intemperate; but at about three o’clock in the afternoon there came out of the southwest a heat like an affliction sent upon an accursed people, and the air was soon dead of it. Dripping negro ditch-diggers whooped with satires praising hell and hot weather, as the tossing shovels flickered up to the street level, where sluggish male pedestrians carried coats upon hot arms, and fanned themselves with straw hats, or, remaining covered, wore soaked handkerchiefs between scalp and straw. Clerks drooped in silent, big department stores, stenographers in offices kept as close to electric fans as the intervening bulk of their employers would let them; guests in hotels left the lobbies and went to lie unclad upon their beds; while in hospitals the patients murmured querulously against the heat, and perhaps against some noisy motorist who strove to feel the air by splitting it, not troubled by any foreboding that he, too, that hour next week, might need quiet near a hospital. The “hot spell” was a true spell, one upon men’s spirits; for it was so hot that, in suburban outskirts, golfers crept slowly back over the low undulations of their club lands, abandoning their matches and returning to shelter.
Even on such a day, sizzling work had to be done, as in winter. There were glowing furnaces to be stoked, liquid metals to be poured; but such tasks found seasoned men standing to them; and in all the city probably no brave soul challenged the heat more gamely than Mrs. Adams did, when, in a corner of her small and fiery kitchen, where all day long her hired African immune cooked fiercely, she pressed her husband’s evening clothes with a hot iron. No doubt she risked her life, but she risked it cheerfully in so good and necessary a service for him. She would have given her life for him at any time, and both his and her own for her children.
Unconscious of her own heroism, she was surprised to find herself rather faint when she finished her ironing. However, she took heart to believe that the clothes looked better, in spite of one or two scorched places; and she carried them upstairs to her husband’s room before increasing blindness forced her to grope for the nearest chair. Then, trying to rise and walk, without having sufficiently recovered, she had to sit down again; but after a little while she was able to get upon her feet; and, keeping her hand against the wall, moved successfully to the door of her own room. Here she wavered; might have gone down, had she not been stimulated by the thought of how much depended upon her;—she made a final great effort, and floundered across the room to her bureau, where she kept some simple restoratives. They served her need, or her faith in them did; and she returned to her work.
She went down the stairs, keeping a still tremulous hand upon the rail; but she smiled brightly when Alice looked up from below, where the woodwork was again being tormented with superfluous attentions.
“Alice, DON’T!” her mother said, commiseratingly. “You did all that this morning and it looks lovely. What’s the use of wearing yourself out on it? You ought to be lying down, so’s to look fresh for to-night.”
“Hadn’t you better lie down yourself?” the daughter returned. “Are you ill, mama?”
“Certainly not. What in the world makes you think so?”
“You look pretty pale,” Alice said, and sighed heavily. “It makes me ashamed, having you work so hard—for me.”
“How foolish! I think it’s fun, getting ready to entertain a little again, like this. I only wish it hadn’t turned so hot: I’m afraid your poor father’ll suffer—his things are pretty heavy, I noticed. Well, it’ll do him good to bear something for style’s sake this once, anyhow!” She laughed, and coming to Alice, bent down and kissed her. “Dearie,” she said, tenderly, “wouldn’t you please slip upstairs now and take just a little teeny nap to please your mother?”
But Alice responded only by moving her head slowly, in token of refusal.
“Do!” Mrs. Adams urged. “You don’t want to look worn out, do you?”
“I’ll LOOK all right,” Alice said, huskily. “Do you like the way I’ve arranged the furniture now? I’ve tried all the different ways it’ll go.”
“It’s lovely,” her mother said, admiringly. “I thought the last way you had it was pretty, too. But you know best; I never knew anybody with so much taste. If you’d only just quit now, and take a little rest–-“
“There’d hardly be time, even if I wanted to; it’s after five but I couldn’t; really, I couldn’t. How do you think we can manage about Walter—to see that he wears his evening things, I mean?”
Mrs. Adams pondered. “I’m afraid he’ll make a lot of objections, on account of the weather and everything. I wish we’d had a chance to tell him last night or this morning. I’d have telephoned to him this afternoon except— well, I scarcely like to call him up at that place, since your father–-“
“No, of course not, mama.”
“If Walter gets home late,” Mrs. Adams went on, “I’ll just slip out and speak to him, in case Mr. Russell’s here before he comes. I’ll just tell him he’s got to hurry and get his things on.”
“Maybe he won’t come home to dinner,” Alice suggested, rather hopefully. “Sometimes he doesn’t.”
“No; I think he’ll be here. When he doesn’t come he usually telephones by this time to say not to wait for him; he’s very thoughtful about that. Well, it really is getting late: I must go and tell her she ought to be preparing her fillet. Dearie, DO rest a little.”
“You’d much better do that yourself,” Alice called after her, but Mrs. Adams shook her head cheerily, not pausing on her way to the fiery kitchen.
Alice continued her useless labours for a time; then carried her bucket to the head of the cellar stairway, where she left it upon the top step; and, closing the door, returned to the “living-room;” Again she changed the positions of the old plush rocking-chairs, moving them into the corners where she thought they might be least noticeable; and while thus engaged she was startled by a loud ringing of the door-bell. For a moment her face was panic-stricken, and she stood staring, then she realized that Russell would not arrive for another hour, at the earliest, and recovering her equipoise, went to the door.
Waiting there, in a languid attitude, was a young coloured woman, with a small bundle under her arm and something malleable in her mouth. “Listen,” she said. “You folks expectin’ a coloured lady?”
“No,” said Alice. “Especially not at the front door.”
“Listen,” the coloured woman said again. “Listen. Say, listen. Ain’t they another coloured lady awready here by the day? Listen. Ain’t Miz Malena Burns here by the day this evenin’? Say, listen. This the number house she give ME.”
“Are you the waitress?” Alice asked, dismally.
