Of all his regrets the greatest was that in a moment of vanity and tenderness, twenty-five years ago, he had told his young wife a business secret. He had wanted to show how important her husband was becoming, and how much the head of the universe, J. A. Lamb, trusted to his integrity and ability. The great man had an idea: he thought of “branching out a little,” he told Adams confidentially5, and there were possibilities of profit in glue.
What he wanted was a liquid glue to be put into little bottles and sold cheaply. “The kind of thing that sells itself,” he said; “the kind of thing that pays its own small way as it goes along, until it has profits enough to begin advertising7 it right. Everybody has to use glue, and if I make mine convenient and cheap, everybody'll buy mine. But it's got to be glue that'll STICK; it's got to be the best; and if we find how to make it we've got to keep it a big secret, of course, or anybody can steal it from us. There was a man here last month; he knew a formula he wanted to sell me, 'sight unseen'; but he was in such a hurry I got suspicious, and I found he'd managed to steal it, working for the big packers in their glue-works. We've got to find a better glue than that, anyhow. I'm going to set you and Campbell at it. You're a practical, wide-awake young feller, and Campbell's a mighty8 good chemist; I guess you two boys ought to make something happen.”
His guess was shrewd enough. Working in a shed a little way outside the town, where their cheery employer visited them sometimes to study their malodorous stews9, the two young men found what Lamb had set them to find. But Campbell was thoughtful over the discovery. “Look here,” he said. “Why ain't this just about yours and mine? After all, it may be Lamb's money that's paid for the stuff we've used, but it hasn't cost much.”
“But he pays US,” Adams remonstrated10, horrified11 by his companion's idea. “He paid us to do it. It belongs absolutely to him.”
“Oh, I know he THINKS it does,” Campbell admitted, plaintively12. “I suppose we've got to let him take it. It's not patentable, and he'll have to do pretty well by us when he starts his factory, because he's got to depend on us to run the making of the stuff so that the workmen can't get onto the process. You better ask him the same salary I do, and mine's going to be high.”
But the high salary, thus pleasantly imagined, was never paid. Campbell died of typhoid fever, that summer, leaving Adams and his employer the only possessors of the formula, an unwritten one; and Adams, pleased to think himself more important to the great man than ever, told his wife that there could be little doubt of his being put in sole charge of the prospective13 glue-works. Unfortunately, the enterprise remained prospective.
Its projector14 had already become “inveigled into another side-line,” as he told Adams. One of his sons had persuaded him to take up a “cough-lozenge,” to be called the “Jalamb Balm Trochee”; and the lozenge did well enough to amuse Mr. Lamb and occupy his spare time, which was really about all he had asked of the glue project. He had “all the MONEY anybody ought to want,” he said, when Adams urged him; and he could “start up this little glue side-line” at any time; the formula was safe in their two heads.
At intervals15 Adams would seek opportunity to speak of “the little glue side-line” to his patron, and to suggest that the years were passing; but Lamb, petting other hobbies, had lost interest. “Oh, I'll start it up some day, maybe. If I don't, I may turn it over to my heirs: it's always an asset, worth something or other, of course. We'll probably take it up some day, though, you and I.”
The sun persistently16 declined to rise on that day, and, as time went on, Adams saw that his rather timid urgings bored his employer, and he ceased to bring up the subject. Lamb apparently17 forgot all about glue, but Adams discovered that unfortunately there was someone else who remembered it.
“It's really YOURS,” she argued, that painful day when for the first time she suggested his using his knowledge for the benefit of himself and his family. “Mr. Campbell might have had a right to part of it, but he died and didn't leave any kin6, so it belongs to you.”
“Suppose J. A. Lamb hired me to saw some wood,” Adams said. “Would the sticks belong to me?”
“He hasn't got any right to take your invention and bury it,” she protested. “What good is it doing him if he doesn't DO anything with it? What good is it doing ANYBODY? None in the world! And what harm would it do him if you went ahead and did this for yourself and for your children? None in the world! And what could he do to you if he WAS old pig enough to get angry with you for doing it? He couldn't do a single thing, and you've admitted he couldn't, yourself. So what's your reason for depriving your children and your wife of the benefits you know you could give 'em?”
“Nothing but decency,” he answered; and she had her reply ready for that. It seemed to him that, strive as he would, he could not reach her mind with even the plainest language; while everything that she said to him, with such vehemence18, sounded like so much obstinate19 gibberish. Over and over he pressed her with the same illustration, on the point of ownership, though he thought he was varying it.
“Suppose he hired me to build him a house: would that be MY house?”
“He didn't hire you to build him a house. You and Campbell invented——”
“Look here: suppose you give a cook a soup-bone and some vegetables, and pay her to make you a soup: has she got a right to take and sell it? You know better!”
“I know ONE thing: if that old man tried to keep your own invention from you he's no better than a robber!”
They never found any point of contact in all their passionate20 discussions of this ethical21 question; and the question was no more settled between them, now that Adams had succumbed22, than it had ever been. But at least the wrangling23 about it was over: they were grave together, almost silent, and an uneasiness prevailed with her as much as with him.
He had already been out of the house, to walk about the small green yard; and on Monday afternoon he sent for a taxicab and went down-town, but kept a long way from the “wholesale section,” where stood the formidable old oblong pile of Lamb and Company. He arranged for the sale of the bonds he had laid away, and for placing a mortgage upon his house; and on his way home, after five o'clock, he went to see an old friend, a man whose term of service with Lamb and Company was even a little longer than his own.
This veteran, returned from the day's work, was sitting in front of the apartment house where he lived, but when the cab stopped at the curb24 he rose and came forward, offering a jocular greeting. “Well, well, Virgil Adams! I always thought you had a sporty streak25 in you. Travel in your own hired private automobile26 nowadays, do you? Pamperin' yourself because you're still layin' off sick, I expect.”
“Oh, I'm well enough again, Charley Lohr,” Adams said, as he got out and shook hands. Then, telling the driver to wait, he took his friend's arm, walked to the bench with him, and sat down. “I been practically well for some time,” he said. “I'm fixin' to get into harness again.”
“Bein' sick has certainly produced a change of heart in you,” his friend laughed. “You're the last man I ever expected to see blowin' yourself—or anybody else to a taxicab! For that matter, I never heard of you bein' in ANY kind of a cab, 'less'n it might be when you been pall-bearer for somebody. What's come over you?”
“Well, I got to turn over a new leaf, and that's a fact,” Adams said. “I got a lot to do, and the only way to accomplish it, it's got to be done soon, or I won't have anything to live on while I'm doing it.”
“What you talkin' about? What you got to do except to get strong enough to come back to the old place?”
“Well——” Adams paused, then coughed, and said slowly, “Fact is, Charley Lohr, I been thinking likely I wouldn't come back.”
“What! What you talkin' about?”
“No,” said Adams. “I been thinking I might likely kind of branch out on my own account.”
“Well, I'll be doggoned!” Old Charley Lohr was amazed; he ruffled27 up his gray moustache with thumb and forefinger28, leaving his mouth open beneath, like a dark cave under a tangled29 wintry thicket30. “Why, that's the doggonedest thing I ever heard!” he said. “I already am the oldest inhabitant down there, but if you go, there won't be anybody else of the old generation at all. What on earth you thinkin' of goin' into?”
“Well,” said Adams, “I rather you didn't mention it till I get started of course anybody'll know what it is by then—but I HAVE been kind of planning to put a liquid glue on the market.”
His friend, still ruffling31 the gray moustache upward, stared at him in frowning perplexity. “Glue?” he said. “GLUE!”
“Yes. I been sort of milling over the idea of taking up something like that.”
“Handlin' it for some firm, you mean?”
“No. Making it. Sort of a glue-works likely.”
Lohr continued to frown. “Let me think,” he said. “Didn't the ole man have some such idea once, himself?”
Adams leaned forward, rubbing his knees; and he coughed again before he spoke32. “Well, yes. Fact is, he did. That is to say, a mighty long while ago he did.”
“I remember,” said Lohr. “He never said anything about it that I know of; but seems to me I recollect33 we had sort of a rumour34 around the place how you and that man—le's see, wasn't his name Campbell, that died of typhoid fever? Yes, that was it, Campbell. Didn't the ole man have you and Campbell workin' sort of private on some glue proposition or other?”
“Yes, he did.” Adams nodded. “I found out a good deal about glue then, too.”
“Been workin' on it since, I suppose?”
“Yes. Kept it in my mind and studied out new things about it.”
Lohr looked serious. “Well, but see here,” he said. “I hope it ain't anything the ole man'll think might infringe35 on whatever he had you doin' for HIM. You know how he is: broad-minded, liberal, free-handed man as walks this earth, and if he thought he owed you a cent he'd sell his right hand for a pork-chop to pay it, if that was the only way; but if he got the idea anybody was tryin' to get the better of him, he'd sell BOTH his hands, if he had to, to keep 'em from doin' it. Yes, at eighty, he would! Not that I mean I think you might be tryin' to get the better of him, Virg. You're a mighty close ole codger, but such a thing ain't in you. What I mean: I hope there ain't any chance for the ole man to THINK you might be——”
“Oh, no,” Adams interrupted. “As a matter of fact, I don't believe he'll ever think about it at all, and if he did he wouldn't have any real right to feel offended at me: the process I'm going to use is one I expect to change and improve a lot different from the one Campbell and I worked on for him.”
“Well, that's good,” said Lohr. “Of course you know what you're up to: you're old enough, God knows!” He laughed ruefully. “My, but it will seem funny to me—down there with you gone! I expect you and I both been gettin' to be pretty much dead-wood in the place, the way the young fellows look at it, and the only one that'd miss either of us would be the other one! Have you told the ole man yet?”
“Well——” Adams spoke laboriously36. “No. No, I haven't. I thought—well, that's what I wanted to see you about.”
“What can I do?”
“I thought I'd write him a letter and get you to hand it to him for me.”
“My soul!” his friend exclaimed. “Why on earth don't you just go down there and tell him?”
Adams became pitiably embarrassed. He stammered37, coughed, stammered again, wrinkling his face so deeply he seemed about to weep; but finally he contrived38 to utter an apologetic laugh. “I ought to do that, of course; but in some way or other I just don't seem to be able to—to manage it.”
“Why in the world not?” the mystified Lohr inquired.
“I could hardly tell you—'less'n it is to say that when you been with one boss all your life it's so—so kind of embarrassing—to quit him, I just can't make up my mind to go and speak to him about it. No; I got it in my head a letter's the only satisfactory way to do it, and I thought I'd ask you to hand it to him.”
“Well, of course I don't mind doin' that for you,” Lohr said, mildly. “But why in the world don't you just mail it to him?”
“Well, I'll tell you,” Adams returned. “You know, like that, it'd have to go through a clerk and that secretary of his, and I don't know who all. There's a couple of kind of delicate points I want to put in it: for instance, I want to explain to him how much improvement and so on I'm going to introduce on the old process I helped to work out with Campbell when we were working for him, so't he'll understand it's a different article and no infringement39 at all. Then there's another thing: you see all during while I was sick he had my salary paid to me it amounts to considerable, I was on my back so long. Under the circumstances, because I'm quitting, I don't feel as if I ought to accept it, and so I'll have a check for him in the letter to cover it, and I want to be sure he knows it, and gets it personally. If it had to go through a lot of other people, the way it would if I put it in the mail, why, you can't tell. So what I thought: if you'd hand it to him for me, and maybe if he happened to read it right then, or anything, it might be you'd notice whatever he'd happen to say about it—and you could tell me afterward40.”
“All right,” Lohr said. “Certainly if you'd rather do it that way, I'll hand it to him and tell you what he says; that is, if he says anything and I hear him. Got it written?”
“No; I'll send it around to you last of the week.” Adams moved toward his taxicab. “Don't say anything to anybody about it, Charley, especially till after that.”
“All right.”
“And, Charley, I'll be mighty obliged to you,” Adams said, and came back to shake hands in farewell. “There's one thing more you might do—if you'd ever happen to feel like it.” He kept his eyes rather vaguely41 fixed42 on a point above his friend's head as he spoke, and his voice was not well controlled. “I been—I been down there a good many years and I may not 'a' been so much use lately as I was at first, but I always tried to do my best for the old firm. If anything turned out so's they DID kind of take offense43 with me, down there, why, just say a good word for me—if you'd happen to feel like it, maybe.”
Old Charley Lohr assured him that he would speak a good word if opportunity became available; then, after the cab had driven away, he went up to his small apartment on the third floor and muttered ruminatively44 until his wife inquired what he was talking to himself about.
“Ole Virg Adams,” he told her. “He's out again after his long spell of sickness, and the way it looks to me he'd better stayed in bed.”
“You mean he still looks too bad to be out?”
“Oh, I expect he's gettin' his HEALTH back,” Lohr said, frowning.
“Then what's the matter with him? You mean he's lost his mind?”
“My goodness, but women do jump at conclusions!” he exclaimed.
“Well,” said Mrs. Lohr, “what other conclusion did you leave me to jump at?”
Her husband explained with a little heat: “People can have a sickness that AFFECTS their mind, can't they? Their mind can get some affected45 without bein' LOST, can't it?”
“Then you mean the poor man's mind does seem affected?”
“Why, no; I'd scarcely go as far as that,” Lohr said, inconsistently, and declined to be more definite.
Adams devoted46 the latter part of that evening to the composition of his letter—a disquieting47 task not completed when, at eleven o'clock, he heard his daughter coming up the stairs. She was singing to herself in a low, sweet voice, and Adams paused to listen incredulously, with his pen lifted and his mouth open, as if he heard the strangest sound in the world. Then he set down the pen upon a blotter, went to his door, and opened it, looking out at her as she came.
“Well, dearie, you seem to be feeling pretty good,” he said. “What you been doing?”
“Just sitting out on the front steps, papa.”
“All alone, I suppose.”
“No. Mr. Russell called.”
“Oh, he did?” Adams pretended to be surprised. “What all could you and he find to talk about till this hour o' the night?”
“How's that?”
“You've never found out that I always do all the talking.”
“Didn't you let him get a word in all evening?”
“Oh, yes; every now and then.”
Adams took her hand and petted it. “Well, what did he say?”
Alice gave him a radiant look and kissed him. “Not what you think!” she laughed; then slapped his cheek with saucy49 affection, pirouetted across the narrow hall and into her own room, and curtsied to him as she closed her door.
Adams went back to his writing with a lighter50 heart; for since Alice was born she had been to him the apple of his eye, his own phrase in thinking of her; and what he was doing now was for her.
He smiled as he picked up his pen to begin a new draft of the painful letter; but presently he looked puzzled. After all, she could be happy just as things were, it seemed. Then why had he taken what his wife called “this new step,” which he had so long resisted?
He could only sigh and wonder. “Life works out pretty peculiarly,” he thought; for he couldn't go back now, though the reason he couldn't was not clearly apparent. He had to go ahead.
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1
transgression
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| n.违背；犯规；罪过 | |
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inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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confidentially
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| ad.秘密地，悄悄地 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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stews
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| n.炖煮的菜肴( stew的名词复数 )；烦恼，焦虑v.炖( stew的第三人称单数 )；煨；思考；担忧 | |
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remonstrated
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| v.抗议( remonstrate的过去式和过去分词 )；告诫 | |
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11
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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plaintively
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| adv.悲哀地，哀怨地 | |
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prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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projector
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| n.投影机，放映机，幻灯机 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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persistently
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| ad.坚持地；固执地 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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vehemence
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| n.热切；激烈；愤怒 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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succumbed
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| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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wrangling
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| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的现在分词 ) | |
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curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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ruffled
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| adj. 有褶饰边的, 起皱的 动词ruffle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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ruffling
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| 弄皱( ruffle的现在分词 )； 弄乱； 激怒； 扰乱 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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infringe
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| v.违反，触犯，侵害 | |
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laboriously
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| adv.艰苦地；费力地；辛勤地；（文体等）佶屈聱牙地 | |
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stammered
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| v.结巴地说出( stammer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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infringement
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| n.违反；侵权 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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43
offense
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| n.犯规，违法行为；冒犯，得罪 | |
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44
ruminatively
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| adv.沉思默想地，反复思考地 | |
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45
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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47
disquieting
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| adj.令人不安的，令人不平静的v.使不安，使忧虑，使烦恼( disquiet的现在分词 ) | |
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48
gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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49
saucy
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| adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的 | |
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50
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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