In a day when organised Social Work was considered an original and rather daring departure for women Lottie Payson seemed destined by temperament and character to be a successful settlement worker. But she never became one. Lottie had too much humour and humaneness for the drab routine of school-teaching; not enough hardness and aggressiveness for business; none of the creative spark that marks the genius in art. She was sympathetic without being sentimental; just and fair without being at all stern or forbidding. Above all she had the gift of listening. The kind of woman who is better-looking at thirty-five than at twenty. The kind of woman who learns with living and who marries early or never. With circumstance and a mother like Mrs. Carrie Payson against her, Lottie's chances of marrying early were hardly worth mentioning. Lottie was the kind of girl who "is needed at home."
Don't think that she hadn't young men to walk home with her from school. She had. But they were likely to be young men whose collars were not guiltless of eraser marks; who were active in the debating societies; and whose wrists hung, a red oblong, below their too-short sleeves. The kind of young man destined for utter failure or great success. The kind of young man who tries a pecan grove in Carolina, or becomes president of a bank in New York. None of these young men ever kissed Lottie. I think that sometimes, looking at her serious pretty lips closed so firmly over the white teeth, they wanted to. I'm sure that Lottie, though she did not know it, wished they would. But they never did. Lottie absolutely lacked coquetry as does the woman who tardily develops a sense of sex power. In Lottie's junior year these gawky and studious young men narrowed down to one. His name was Rutherford Hayes Adler and he was a Jew. There is no describing him without the use of the word genius, and in view of his novels of to-day (R. H. Adler) there is no need to apologise for the early use of the word. He was a living refutation of the belief that a brilliant mathematician has no imagination. His Armour report cards would have done credit to young Euclid; and he wrote humorous light verse to Lottie and sold insurance on the side. Being swarthy, black-haired, and black-eyed he was cursed with a taste for tan suits and red neckties. These, with the high choker collar of the period, gave him the look of an end-man strayed from the minstrel troupe. Being naturally shy, he assumed a swagger. He was lovable and rather helpless, and his shoe strings were always coming untied. His humour sense was so keen, so unerring, so fastidious as to be almost a vice. Armour students who did not understand it said, "He's a funny fellow. I don't know—kind of batty, isn't he?"
This young man it was who walked home with Lottie Payson all through her junior and senior years; sat next to her at meetings of the debating society; escorted her to school festivities; went bicycling with her on Saturday afternoons. The Payson household paid little attention to him or to Lottie. Belle was busy with her love affair. Henry Kemp had just appeared on her horizon. Mrs. Payson was deep in her real estate transactions. On the few occasions when Rutherford Hayes actually entered the house and sat down to await Lottie the two were usually on their way to some innocuous entertainment or outing. So that it was Aunt Charlotte, if anybody, who said "How do you do, young man. Oh yes, you're Mr. Adler. Lottie'll be right down." A little silence. Then kindly, from Aunt Charlotte, "H'm! How do you like your school work?" Years afterwards Adler put Aunt Charlotte into one of his books. And Lottie. And Mrs. Carrie Payson, too. He had reason to remember Mrs. Carrie Payson.
It was at the end of Lottie's senior year that Mrs. Payson became aware of this young man whose swart face seemed always to be just appearing or disappearing around the corner with Lottie either smiling in greeting or waving a farewell. End-of-the-year school festivities were accountable for this. Then, too, Belle must have registered some objection. When next young Adler appeared at the Prairie Avenue house it was Mrs. Payson who sailed down the rather faded green river of the parlor carpet.
"How do you do," said Mrs. Payson; her glance said, "What are you doing here, in this house?"
Rutherford Hayes Adler wanted to get up from the chair into which his lank length was doubled. He knew he should get up. But a hideous shyness kept him there—bound him with iron bands. When finally, with a desperate effort, he broke them and stumbled to his feet it was too late. Mrs. Payson had seated herself—if being seated can describe the impermanent position which she now assumed on the extreme edge of the stiffest of the stiff parlor chairs.
The sallow, skinny little Carrie Thrift had mellowed—no, that word won't do—had developed into an erect, dignified, white-haired woman of rather imposing mien. The white hair, in particular, was misleadingly softening.
"May I ask your father's name?" she said. Just that.
The boy had heard that tone used many times in the past nineteen hundred years. "Adler," he replied.
"Yes, I know. But his first name. What is his first name, please?"