Alice Adams Booth Tarkington (ebook reader txt) đ
- Author: Booth Tarkington
Book online «Alice Adams Booth Tarkington (ebook reader txt) đ». Author Booth Tarkington
Thereupon she kissed him a consoling goodbye, and made another gay departure, the charming hand again fluttering like a white butterfly in the shadow of the closing door.
IIIMrs. Adams had remained in Aliceâs room, but her mood seemed to have changed, during her daughterâs little more than momentary absence.
âWhat did he say?â she asked, quickly, and her tone was hopeful.
âââSayâ?â Alice repeated, impatiently. âWhy, nothing. I didnât let him. Really, mama, I think the best thing for you to do would be to just keep out of his room, because I donât believe you can go in there and not talk to him about it, and if you do talk weâll never get him to do the right thing. Never!â
The motherâs response was a grieving silence; she turned from her daughter and walked to the door.
âNow, for goodnessâ sake!â Alice cried. âDonât go making tragedy out of my offering you a little practical advice!â
âIâm not,â Mrs. Adams gulped, halting. âIâm justâ âjust going to dust the downstairs, Alice.â And with her face still averted, she went out into the little hallway, closing the door behind her. A moment later she could be heard descending the stairs, the sound of her footsteps carrying somehow an effect of resignation.
Alice listened, sighed, and, breathing the words, âOh, murder!â turned to cheerier matters. She put on a little apple-green turban with a dim gold band round it, and then, having shrouded the turban in a white veil, which she kept pushed up above her forehead, she got herself into a tan coat of soft cloth fashioned with rakish severity. After that, having studied herself gravely in a long glass, she took from one of the drawers of her dressing-table a black leather card-case cornered in silver filigree, but found it empty.
She opened another drawer wherein were two white pasteboard boxes of cards, the one set showing simply âMiss Adams,â the other engraved in Gothic characters, âMiss Alys Tuttle Adams.â The latter belonged to Aliceâs âAlysâ periodâ âmost girls go through it; and Alice must have felt that she had graduated, for, after frowning thoughtfully at the exhibit this morning, she took the box with its contents, and let the white shower fall from her fingers into the wastebasket beside her small desk. She replenished the card-case from the âMiss Adamsâ box; then, having found a pair of fresh white gloves, she tucked an ivory-topped Malacca walking-stick under her arm and set forth.
She went down the stairs, buttoning her gloves and still wearing the frown with which she had put âAlysâ finally out of her life. She descended slowly, and paused on the lowest step, looking about her with an expression that needed but a slight deepening to betoken bitterness. Its connection with her dropping âAlysâ forever was slight, however.
The small frame house, about fifteen years old, was already inclining to become a new Colonial relic. The Adamses had built it, moving into it from the Queen Anne house they had rented until they took this step in fashion. But fifteen years is a long time to stand still in the midland country, even for a house, and this one was lightly made, though the Adamses had not realized how flimsily until they had lived in it for some time. âSolid, compact, and convenientâ were the instructions to the architect, and he had made it compact successfully. Alice, pausing at the foot of the stairway, was at the same time fairly in the living-room, for the only separation between the living-room and the hall was a demarcation suggested to willing imaginations by a pair of wooden columns painted white. These columns, pine under the paint, were bruised and chipped at the base; one of them showed a crack that threatened to become a split; the hardwood floor had become uneven; and in a corner the walls apparently failed of solidity, where the wallpaper had declined to accompany some staggerings of the plaster beneath it.
The furniture was in great part an accumulation begun with the wedding gifts; though some of it was older, two large patent rocking-chairs and a footstool having belonged to Mrs. Adamsâs mother in the days of hard brown plush and veneer. For decoration there were pictures and vases. Mrs. Adams had always been fond of vases, she said, and every year her husbandâs Christmas present to her was a vase of one sort or anotherâ âwhatever the clerk showed him, marked at about twelve or fourteen dollars. The pictures were some of them etchings framed in gilt: Rheims, Canterbury, schooners grouped against a wharf; and Alice could remember how, in her childhood, her father sometimes pointed out the watery reflections in this last as very fine. But it was a long time since he had shown interest in such thingsâ ââor in anything much,â as she thought.
Other pictures were two watercolours in baroque frames; one being the Amalfi monk on a pergola wall, while the second was a yard-wide display of iris blossoms, painted by Alice herself at fourteen, as a birthday gift to her mother. Aliceâs glance paused upon it now with no great pride, but showed more approval of an enormous photograph of the Colosseum. This she thought of as âthe only good thing in the roomâ; it possessed and bestowed distinction, she felt; and she did not regret having won her struggle to get it hung in its conspicuous place of honour over the mantelpiece. Formerly that place had been held for years by a steel-engraving, an accurate representation of the Suspension Bridge at Niagara Falls. It was almost as large as its successor, the Colosseum, and it had been presented to Mr. Adams by colleagues in his department at Lamb and Companyâs. Adams had shown
Comments (0)