He was in his old chair by the table, with a pillow behind his head, but the crocheted scarf and Mrs. Adams’s wrapper swathed him no more; he wore a dressing-gown his wife had bought for him, and was smoking his pipe. “The old story, is it?” he said, as Alice came in. “The same, same old story! Well, well! Has she gone?”
“Yes, papa.”
“Got your hat on,” he said. “Where you going?”
“I’m going downtown on an errand of my own. Is there anything you want, papa?”
“Yes, there is.” He smiled at her. “I wish you’d sit down a while and talk to me unless your errand–-“
“No,” she said, taking a chair near him. “I was just going down to see about some arrangements I was making for myself. There’s no hurry.”
“What arrangements for yourself, dearie?”
“I’ll tell you afterwards—after I find out something about ‘em myself.”
“All right,” he said, indulgently. “Keep your secrets; keep your secrets.” He paused, drew musingly upon his pipe, and shook his head. “Funny —the way your mother looks at things! For the matter o’ that, everything’s pretty funny, I expect, if you stop to think about it. For instance, let her say all she likes, but we were pushed right spang to the wall, if J. A. Lamb hadn’t taken it into his head to make that offer for the works; and there’s one of the things I been thinking about lately, Alice: thinking about how funny they work out.”
“What did you think about it, papa!”
“Well, I’ve seen it happen in other people’s lives, time and time again; and now it’s happened in ours. You think you’re going to be pushed right up against the wall; you can’t see any way out, or any hope at all; you think you’re GONE—and then something you never counted on turns up; and, while maybe you never do get back to where you used to be, yet somehow you kind of squirm out of being right SPANG against the wall. You keep on going—maybe you can’t go much, but you do go a little. See what I mean?”
“Yes. I understand, dear.”
“Yes, I’m afraid you do,” he said. “Too bad! You oughtn’t to understand it at your age. It seems to me a good deal as if the Lord really meant for the young people to have the good times, and for the old to have the troubles; and when anybody as young as you has trouble there’s a big mistake somewhere.”
“Oh, no!” she protested.
But he persisted whimsically in this view of divine error: “Yes, it does look a good deal that way. But of course we can’t tell; we’re never certain about anything—not about anything at all. Sometimes I look at it another way, though. Sometimes it looks to me as if a body’s troubles came on him mainly because he hadn’t had sense enough to know how not to have any—as if his troubles were kind of like a boy’s getting kept in after school by the teacher, to give him discipline, or something or other. But, my, my! We don’t learn easy!” He chuckled mournfully. “Not to learn how to live till we’re about ready to die, it certainly seems to me dang tough!”
“Then I wouldn’t brood on such a notion, papa,” she said.
“‘Brood?’ No!” he returned. “I just kind o’ mull it over.” He chuckled again, sighed, and then, not looking at her, he said, “That Mr. Russell —your mother tells me he hasn’t been here again— not since–-“
“No,” she said, quietly, as Adams paused. “He never came again.”
“Well, but maybe–-“
“No,” she said. “There isn’t any ‘maybe.’ I told him good-bye that night, papa. It was before he knew about Walter—I told you.”
“Well, well,” Adams said. “Young people are entitled to their own privacy; I don’t want to pry.” He emptied his pipe into a chipped saucer on the table beside him, laid the pipe aside, and reverted to a former topic. “Speaking of dying–-“
“Well, but we weren’t!” Alice protested.
“Yes, about not knowing how to live till you’re through living—and THEN maybe not!” he said, chuckling at his own determined pessimism. “I see I’m pretty old because I talk this way—I remember my grandmother saying things a good deal like all what I’m saying now; I used to hear her at it when I was a young fellow—she was a right gloomy old lady, I remember. Well, anyhow, it reminds me: I want to get on my feet again as soon as I can; I got to look around and find something to go into.”
Alice shook her head gently. “But, papa, he told you–-“
“Never mind throwing that dang doctor up at me!” Adams interrupted, peevishly. “He said I’d be good for SOME kind of light job—if I could find just the right thing. ‘Where there wouldn’t be either any physical or mental strain,’ he said. Well, I got to find something like that. Anyway, I’ll feel better if I can just get out LOOKING for it.”
“But, papa, I’m afraid you won’t find it, and you’ll be disappointed.”
“Well, I want to hunt around and SEE, anyhow.”
Alice patted his hand. “You must just be contented, papa. Everything’s going to be all right, and you mustn’t get to worrying about doing anything. We own this house it’s all clear—and you’ve taken care of mama and me all our lives; now it’s our turn.”
“No, sir!” he said, querulously. “I don’t like the idea of being the landlady’s husband around a boarding-house; it goes against my gizzard.
Alice looked grave; for she knew the sketch was but too accurately prophetic in every probability. “But, papa,” she said, to console him, “don’t you think maybe there isn’t such a thing as a ‘finish,’ after all! You say perhaps we don’t learn to live till we die but maybe that’s how it is AFTER we die, too—just learning some more, the way we do here, and maybe through trouble again, even after that.”
“Oh, it might be,” he sighed. “I expect so.”
