Alice Adams quotes

Every evening he told her that anybody with ordinary gumption ought to realize that night air was bad for the human frame.

“The human frame won’t stand everything, Miss Perry,” he warned her, resentfully.

“Even a child, if it had just ordinary gumption, ought to know enough not to let the night air blow on sick people yes, nor well people, either! ‘Keep out of the night air, no matter how well you feel.’

and then Alice, getting more championship than she sought, grew uneasy lest Mrs. Adams should repeat such defenses “outside the family”; and Mrs. Adams ended by weeping because the daughter so distrusted her intelligence.

Alice frequently thought it necessary to instruct her mother.

Her morning greeting was an instruction today; or, rather, it was an admonition in the style of an entreaty, the more petulant as Alice thought that Mrs. Adams might have had a glimpse of the posturings to the mirror. This was a needless worry;

it covered the walls, covered the ceiling, and was smeared darker and thicker in all corners. Yet here was no fault of housewifery; the curse could not be lifted, as the ingrained smudges permanent on the once white woodwork proved.

The grime was perpetually renewed; scrubbing only ground it in.

This particular ugliness was small part of Alice’s discontent, for though the coating grew a little deeper each year she was used to it.

Probably all the other girls and women would agree with them and would laugh at her when they got together, and, what might be fatal, would try to make all the men think her a silly pretender.

Men were just like sheep, and nothing was easier than for women to set up as shepherds and pen them in a fold.

“To keep out outsiders,” Alice thought. “And make ’em believe I am an outsider. What’s the use of living?”

These crowds of other girls had all done their best, also, to look beautiful, though not one of them had worked so hard for such a consummation as Alice had.

They did not need to; they did not need to get their mothers to make old dresses over; they did not need to hunt violets in the rain.

At home her dress had seemed beautiful; but that was different, too, where there were dozens of brilliant fabrics, fashioned in new ways—some of these new ways startling, which only made the wearers centers of interest and shocked no one.

When the musicians again lowered their instruments for an interval she had returned, alone, to her former seat within the partial shelter of the box-trees.

She had now to practice an art that affords but a limited variety of methods, even to the expert: the art of seeming to have an escort or partner when there is none.

The practitioner must imply, merely by expression and attitude, that the supposed companion has left her for only a few moments, that she herself has sent him upon an errand;

And Alice may have been too eager to secure new retainers, too kind in her efforts to keep the old ones.

She had been a belle too soon.

and then as soon as anybody else so much as glanced at them—even her father, who loved her—the pretty designs were stricken with a desolating pallor. “Is this life?” Alice wondered, not doubting that the question was original and all her own.

“Is it life to spend your time imagining things that aren’t so, and never will be? Beautiful things happen to other people; why should I be the only one they never can happen to?”

The mood lasted overnight; and was still upon her the next afternoon when an errand for her father took her downtown.

“I? Why, yes,” he said.

“I’d take you for anything you wanted me to.”

“Why, what a speech!” she cried, and, laughing, gave him a quick glance in which there glimmered some real surprise. He was looking at her quizzically, but with the liveliest appreciation. Her surprise increased; and she was glad that he had joined her.

After that, she went to her room and sat down before her three-leaved mirror. There was where she nearly always sat when she came into her room, if she had nothing in mind to do.

She went to that chair as naturally as a dog goes to his corner.

She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity seemed to be her mood. But after a long, almost motionless scrutiny, she began to produce dramatic sketches upon that ever-ready stage, her countenance:

she had just been practicing them. “What’s the idea?” she wondered. “What makes me tell such lies? Why shouldn’t I be just myself?” And then she thought,

“But which one is myself?”

Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips, disquieted by a deepening wonder, parted to whisper:

Her eyes dwelt on the solemn eyes in the mirror; and her lips, disquieted by a deepening wonder, parted to whisper:

“Who in the world are you?”

The apparition before her had obeyed her like an alert slave, but now, as she subsided to a complete stillness, that aspect changed to the old mockery with which mirrors avenge their wrongs.

“Who in the world are you?”

The apparition before her had obeyed her like an alert slave, but now, as she subsided to a complete stillness, that aspect changed to the old mockery with which mirrors avenge their wrongs.

The nucleus of some queer thing seemed to gather and shape itself behind the nothingness of the reflected eyes until it became almost an actual strange presence.

but, if he does, he will not postpone the first opportunity to say something more.

Little affairs, once begun, must be warmed quickly; for if they cool they are dead.

But Alice was not thinking of Arthur Russell. When she tossed away the carnations she likewise tossed away her thoughts of that young man.

“No, no,” he protested. “I want to know. Will you let me come pretty often?”

“Lean toward me a little,” Alice said. “I want you to understand.”

And as he obediently bent his head near hers, she inclined toward him as if to whisper; then, in a half-shout, she cried,

You’re the closest man I ever knew: it’s like pulling teeth to get a dollar out of you for her, now and then, and yet you hide some away, every month or so, in some wretched little investment or other. You—”

“Look here, now,” he interrupted, angrily.

“You look here! If I didn’t put a little by whenever I could, in a bond or something, where would you be if anything happened to me? The insurance doctors never passed me; you know that.

she might better not have told him from the first, as she had indeed told him by intimation, that she was the pampered daughter of an indulgent father, presumably able to indulge her; for now she must elaborately keep to the part.

Veracity is usually simple; and its opposite, to be successful, should be as simple; but practitioners of the opposite are most often impulsive, like Alice; and, like her, they become enmeshed in elaborations.

“It wouldn’t be very nice for me to go to her house,” Alice went on, “when I wouldn’t want her in mine. I’ve never admired her.

She courtesied. “Oh, pretty enough! But a girl who’s talked about has a weakness that’s often a fatal one.”

“It’s this: when she’s talked about she isn’t there. That’s how they kill her.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

Before his surrender he had always supposed that if he did such an unthinkable thing as to seize upon the glue process for himself, what he would feel must be an overpowering shame.

But shame is the rarest thing in the world: what he felt was this unremittent curiosity about his old employer’s thoughts.

It was an obsession, yet he did not want to hear what Lamb “thought” from Lamb himself, for Adams had a second obsession, and this was his dread of meeting the old man face to face.

“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!”

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!

”

Thus his eyes saw as little as his body felt, and so he failed to observe something that would have given him additional light upon an old phrase that already meant quite enough for him.

There are in the wide world people who have never learned its meaning; but most are either young or beautifully unobservant who remain wholly unaware of the inner poignancies the words convey: “a rain of misfortunes.”

It is a boiling rain, seemingly whimsical in its choice of spots whereon to fall; and, so far as mortal eye can tell, neither the just nor the unjust may hope to avoid it, or need worry themselves by expecting it.