________________________________________________
_ Alice was busy with herself for two hours after dinner; but a
little before nine o'clock she stood in front of her long mirror,
completed, bright-eyed and solemn. Her hair, exquisitely
arranged, gave all she asked of it; what artificialities in
colour she had used upon her face were only bits of emphasis that
made her prettiness the more distinct; and the dress, not rumpled
by her mother's careful hours of work, was a white cloud of
loveliness. Finally there were two triumphant bouquets of
violets, each with the stems wrapped in tin-foil shrouded by a
bow of purple chiffon; and one bouquet she wore at her waist and
the other she carried in her hand.
Miss Perry, called in by a rapturous mother for the free treat of
a look at this radiance, insisted that Alice was a vision.
"Purely and simply a vision!" she said, meaning that no other
definition whatever would satisfy her. "I never saw anybody look
a vision if she don't look one to-night," the admiring nurse
declared. "Her papa'll think the same I do about it. You see if
he doesn't say she's purely and simply a vision."
Adams did not fulfil the prediction quite literally when Alice
paid a brief visit to his room to "show " him and bid him
good-night; but he chuckled feebly. "Well, well, well!" he said.
"You look mighty fine--MIGHTY fine!" And he waggled a bony finger
at her two bouquets. "Why, Alice, who's your beau?"
"Never you mind!" she laughed, archly brushing his nose with the
violets in her hand. "He treats me pretty well, doesn't he?"
"Must like to throw his money around! These violets smell mighty
sweet, and they ought to, if they're going to a party with YOU.
Have a good time, dearie."
"I mean to!" she cried; and she repeated this gaily, but with an
emphasis expressing sharp determination as she left him. "I MEAN
to!"
"What was he talking about?" her mother inquired, smoothing the
rather worn and old evening wrap she had placed on Alice's bed.
"What were you telling him you 'mean to?'"
Alice went back to her triple mirror for the last time, then
stood before the long one. "That I mean to have a good time
to-night," she said; and as she turned from her reflection to the
wrap Mrs. Adams held up for her, "It looks as though I COULD,
don't you think so?"
"You'll just be a queen to-night," her mother whispered in fond
emotion. "You mustn't doubt yourself."
"Well, there's one thing," said Alice. "I think I do look nice
enough to get along without having to dance with that Frank
Dowling! All I ask is for it to happen just once; and if he
comes near me to-night I'm going to treat him the way the other
girls do. Do you suppose Walter's got the taxi out in front?"
"He--he's waiting down in the hall," Mrs. Adams answered,
nervously; and she held up another garment to go over the wrap.
Alice frowned at it. "What's that, mama?"
"It's--it's your father's raincoat. I thought you'd put it on
over----"
"But I won't need it in a taxicab."
"You will to get in and out, and you needn't take it into the
Palmers'. You can leave it in the--in the ----It's drizzling,
and you'll need it."
"Oh, well," Alice consented; and a few minutes later, as with
Walter's assistance she climbed into the vehicle he had provided,
she better understood her mother's solicitude.
"What on earth IS this, Walter?" she asked.
"Never mind; it'll keep you dry enough with the top up," he
returned, taking his seat beside her. Then for a time, as they
went rather jerkily up the street, she was silent; but finally
she repeated her question: "What IS it, Walter?"
"What's what?"
"This--this CAR?"
"It's a ottomobile."
"I mean--what kind is it?"
"Haven't you got eyes?"
"It's too dark."
"It's a second-hand tin Lizzie," said Walter. "D'you know what
that means? It means a flivver."
"Yes, Walter."
"Got 'ny 'bjections?"
"Why, no, dear," she said, placatively. "Is it yours, Walter?
Have you bought it?"
"Me?" he laughed. "_I_ couldn't buy a used wheelbarrow. I rent
this sometimes when I'm goin' out among 'em. Costs me
seventy-five cents and the price o' the gas."
"That seems very moderate."
"I guess it is! The feller owes me some money, and this is the
only way I'd ever get it off him."
"Is he a garage-keeper?"
"Not exactly!" Walter uttered husky sounds of amusement. "You'll
be just as happy, I guess, if you don't know who he is," he said.
His tone misgave her; and she said truthfully that she was
content not to know who owned the car. "I joke sometimes about
how you keep things to yourself," she added, "but I really never
do pry in your affairs, Walter."
"Oh, no, you don't!"
"Indeed, I don't."
"Yes, you're mighty nice and cooing when you got me where you
want me," he jeered. "Well, _I_ just as soon tell you where I
get this car."
"I'd just as soon you wouldn't, Walter," she said, hurriedly.
"Please don't."
But Walter meant to tell her. "Why, there's nothin' exactly
CRIMINAL about it," he said. "It belongs to old J. A. Lamb
himself. He keeps it for their coon chauffeur. I rent it from
him."
"From Mr. LAMB?"
"No; from the coon chauffeur."
"Walter!" she gasped.
"Sure I do! I can get it any night when the coon isn't goin' to
use it himself. He's drivin' their limousine to-night--that
little Henrietta Lamb's goin' to the party, no matter if her
father HAS only been dead less'n a year!" He paused, then
inquired: "Well, how d'you like it?"
She did not speak, and he began to be remorseful for having
imparted so much information, though his way of expressing regret
was his own. "Well, you WILL make the folks make me take you to
parties!" he said. "I got to do it the best way I CAN, don't I?"
Then as she made no response, "Oh, the car's CLEAN enough," he
said. "This coon, he's as particular as any white man; you
needn't worry about that." And as she still said nothing, he
added gruffly, "I'd of had a better car if I could afforded it.
You needn't get so upset about it."
"I don't understand--" she said in a low voice-- "I don't
understand how you know such people."
"Such people as who?"
"As--coloured chauffeurs."
"Oh, look here, now!" he protested, loudly. "Don't you know this
is a democratic country?"
"Not quite that democratic, is it, Walter?"
"The trouble with you," he retorted, "you don't know there's
anybody in town except just this silk-shirt crowd." He paused,
seeming to await a refutation; but as none came, he expressed
himself definitely: "They make me sick."
They were coming near their destination, and the glow of the big,
brightly lighted house was seen before them in the wet night.
Other cars, not like theirs, were approaching this center of
brilliance; long triangles of light near the ground swept through
the fine drizzle; small red tail-lights gleamed again from the
moist pavement of the street; and, through the myriads of little
glistening leaves along the curving driveway, glimpses were
caught of lively colours moving in a white glare as the
limousines released their occupants under the shelter of the
porte-cochere.
Alice clutched Walter's arm in a panic; they were just at the
driveway entrance. "Walter, we mustn't go in there."
"What's the matter?"
"Leave this awful car outside."
"Why, I----"
"Stop!" she insisted, vehemently. "You've got to! Go back!"
"Oh, Glory!"
The little car was between the entrance posts; but Walter backed
it out, avoiding a collision with an impressive machine which
swerved away from them and passed on toward the porte-cochere,
showing a man's face grinning at the window as it went by.
"Flivver runabout got the wrong number!" he said.
"Did he SEE us?" Alice cried.
"Did who see us?"
"Harvey Malone--in that foreign coupe."
"No; he couldn't tell who we were under this top," Walter assured
her as he brought the little car to a standstill beside the
curbstone, out in the street. "What's it matter if he did, the
big fish?"
Alice responded with a loud sigh, and sat still.
"Well, want to go on back?" Walter inquired. "You bet I'm
willing!"
"No."
"Well, then, what's the matter our drivin' on up to the
porte-cochere? There's room for me to park just the other side
of it."
"No, NO!"
"What you expect to do? Sit HERE all night?"
"No, leave the car here."
"_I_ don't care where we leave it," he said. "Sit still till I
lock her, so none o' these millionaires around here'll run off
with her." He got out with a padlock and chain; and, having put
these in place, offered Alice his hand. "Come on, if you're
ready."
"Wait," she said, and, divesting herself of the raincoat, handed
it to Walter. "Please leave this with your things in the men's
dressing-room, as if it were an extra one of your own, Walter."
He nodded; she jumped out; and they scurried through the drizzle.
As they reached the porte-cochere she began to laugh airily, and
spoke to the impassive man in livery who stood there. "Joke on
us!" she said, hurrying by him toward the door of the house.
"Our car broke down outside the gate."
The man remained impassive, though he responded with a faint
gleam as Walter, looking back at him, produced for his benefit a
cynical distortion of countenance which offered little
confirmation of Alice's account of things. Then the door was
swiftly opened to the brother and sister; and they came into a
marble-floored hall, where a dozen sleeked young men lounged,
smoked cigarettes and fastened their gloves, as they waited for
their ladies. Alice nodded to one or another of these, and went
quickly on, her face uplifted and smiling; but Walter detained
her at the door to which she hastened.
"Listen here," he said. "I suppose you want me to dance the
first dance with you----"
"If you please, Walter," she said, meekly.
"How long you goin' to hang around fixin' up in that
dressin'-room?"
"I'll be out before you're ready yourself," she promised him; and
kept her word, she was so eager for her good time to begin. When
he came for her, they went down the hall to a corridor opening
upon three great rooms which had been thrown open together, with
the furniture removed and the broad floors waxed. At one end of
the corridor musicians sat in a green grove, and Walter, with
some interest, turned toward these; but his sister, pressing his
arm, impelled him in the opposite direction.
"What's the matter now?" he asked. "That's Jazz Louie and his
half-breed bunch--three white and four mulatto. Let's----?"
"No, no," she whispered. "We must speak to Mildred and Mr. and
Mrs. Palmer."
"'Speak' to 'em? I haven't got a thing to say to THOSE berries!"
"Walter, won't you PLEASE behave?"
He seemed to consent, for the moment, at least, and suffered her
to take him down the corridor toward a floral bower where the
hostess stood with her father and mother. Other couples and
groups were moving in the same direction, carrying with them a
hubbub of laughter and fragmentary chatterings; and Alice,
smiling all the time, greeted people on every side of her
eagerly--a little more eagerly than most of them responded--while
Walter nodded in a noncommittal manner to one or two, said
nothing, and yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who
finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn
and was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm
made him understand that he must abandon this method of
reassuring himself. They were close upon the floral bower.
Mildred was giving her hand to one and another of her guests as
rapidly as she could, passing them on to her father and mother,
and at the same time resisting the efforts of three or four
detached bachelors who besought her to give over her duty in
favour of the dance-music just beginning to blare.
She was a large, fair girl, with a kindness of eye somewhat
withheld by an expression of fastidiousness; at first sight of
her it was clear that she would never in her life do anything
"incorrect," or wear anything "incorrect." But her correctness
was of the finer sort, and had no air of being studied or
achieved; conduct would never offer her a problem to be settled
from a book of rules, for the rules were so deep within her that
she was unconscious of them. And behind this perfection there
was an even ampler perfection of what Mrs. Adams called
"background." The big, rich, simple house was part of it, and
Mildred's father and mother were part of it. They stood beside
her, large, serene people, murmuring graciously and gently
inclining their handsome heads as they gave their hands to the
guests; and even the youngest and most ebullient of these took on
a hushed mannerliness with a closer approach to the bower.
When the opportunity came for Alice and Walter to pass within
this precinct, Alice, going first, leaned forward and whispered
in Mildred's ear. "You DIDN'T wear the maize georgette! That's
what I thought you were going to. But you look simply DARLING!
And those pearls----"
Others were crowding decorously forward, anxious to be done with
ceremony and get to the dancing; and Mildred did not prolong the
intimacy of Alice's enthusiastic whispering. With a faint
accession of colour and a smile tending somewhat in the direction
of rigidity, she carried Alice's hand immediately onward to Mrs.
Palmer's. Alice's own colour showed a little heightening as she
accepted the suggestion thus implied; nor was that emotional tint
in any wise decreased, a moment later, by an impression that
Walter, in concluding the brief exchange of courtesies between
himself and the stately Mr. Palmer, had again reassured himself
with a yawn.
But she did not speak of it to Walter; she preferred not to
confirm the impression and to leave in her mind a possible doubt
that he had done it. He followed her out upon the waxed floor,
said resignedly: "Well, come on," put his arm about her, and they
began to dance.
Alice danced gracefully and well, but not so well as Walter. Of
all the steps and runs, of all the whimsical turns and twirlings,
of all the rhythmic swayings and dips commanded that season by
such blarings as were the barbaric product, loud and wild, of the
Jazz Louies and their half-breed bunches, the thin and sallow
youth was a master. Upon his face could be seen contempt of the
easy marvels he performed as he moved in swift precision from one
smooth agility to another; and if some too-dainty or jealous
cavalier complained that to be so much a stylist in dancing was
"not quite like a gentleman," at least Walter's style was what
the music called for. No other dancer in the room could be
thought comparable to him. Alice told him so.
"It's wonderful!" she said. "And the mystery is, where you ever
learned to DO it! You never went to dancing-school, but there
isn't a man in the room who can dance half so well. I don't see
why, when you dance like this, you always make such a fuss about
coming to parties."
He sounded his brief laugh, a jeering bark out of one side of the
mouth, and swung her miraculously through a closing space between
two other couples. "You know a lot about what goes on, don't
you? You prob'ly think there's no other place to dance in this
town except these frozen-face joints."
"'Frozen face?' " she echoed, laughing. "Why, everybody's having
a splendid time. Look at them."
"Oh, they holler loud enough," he said. "They do it to make each
other think they're havin' a good time. You don't call that
Palmer family frozen-face berries, I s'pose. No?"
"Certainly not. They're just dignified and----"
"Yeuh!" said Walter. "They're dignified, 'specially when you
tried to whisper to Mildred to show how IN with her you were, and
she moved you on that way. SHE'S a hot friend, isn't she!"
"She didn't mean anything by it. She----"
"Ole Palmer's a hearty, slap you-on-the-back ole berry," Walter
interrupted; adding in a casual tone, "All I'd like, I'd like to
hit him."
"Walter! By the way, you mustn't forget to ask Mildred for a
dance before the evening is over."
"Me?" He produced the lop-sided appearance of his laugh, but
without making it vocal. "You watch me do it!"
"She probably won't have one left, but you must ask her, anyway."
"Why must I?"
"Because, in the first place, you're supposed to, and, in the
second place, she's my most intimate friend."
"Yeuh? Is she? I've heard you pull that 'most- intimate-friend'
stuff often enough about her. What's SHE ever do to show she
is?"
"Never mind. You really must ask her, Walter. I want you to;
and I want you to ask several other girls afterwhile; I'll tell
you who."
"Keep on wanting; it'll do you good."
"Oh, but you really----"
"Listen!" he said. "I'm just as liable to dance with any of
these fairies as I am to buy a bucket o' rusty tacks and eat 'em.
Forget it! Soon as I get rid of you I'm goin' back to that room
where I left my hat and overcoat and smoke myself to death."
"Well," she said, a little ruefully, as the frenzy of Jazz Louie
and his half-breeds was suddenly abated to silence, "you
mustn't--you mustn't get rid of me TOO soon, Walter."
They stood near one of the wide doorways, remaining where they
had stopped. Other couples, everywhere, joined one another,
forming vivacious clusters, but none of these groups adopted the
brother and sister, nor did any one appear to be hurrying in
Alice's direction to ask her for the next dance. She looked
about her, still maintaining that jubilance of look and manner
she felt so necessary-- for it is to the girls who are "having a
good time" that partners are attracted--and, in order to lend
greater colour to her impersonation of a lively belle, she began
to chatter loudly, bringing into play an accompaniment of
frolicsome gesture. She brushed Walter's nose saucily with the
bunch of violets in her hand, tapped him on the shoulder, shook
her pretty forefinger in his face, flourished her arms, kept her
shoulders moving, and laughed continuously as she spoke.
"You NAUGHTY old Walter!" she cried. "AREN'T you ashamed to be
such a wonderful dancer and then only dance with your own little
sister! You could dance on the stage if you wanted to. Why, you
could made your FORTUNE that way! Why don't you? Wouldn't it be
just lovely to have all the rows and rows of people clapping
their hands and shouting, 'Hurrah! Hurrah, for Walter Adams!
Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"
He stood looking at her in stolid pity.
"Cut it out," he said. "You better be givin' some of these
berries the eye so they'll ask you to dance."
She was not to be so easily checked, and laughed loudly,
flourishing her violets in his face again. "You WOULD like it;
you know you would; you needn't pretend! Just think! A whole
big audience shouting, 'Hurrah! HURRAH! HUR----'"
"The place'll be pulled if you get any noisier," he interrupted,
not ungently. "Besides, I'm no muley cow."
"A 'COW?' " she laughed. "What on earth----"
"I can't eat dead violets," he explained. "So don't keep tryin'
to make me do it."
This had the effect he desired, and subdued her; she abandoned
her unsisterly coquetries, and looked beamingly about her, but
her smile was more mechanical than it had been at first.
At home she had seemed beautiful; but here, where the other girls
competed, things were not as they had been there, with only her
mother and Miss Perry to give contrast. 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. And Alice
remembered that she had heard a girl say, not long before, "Oh,
ORGANDIE! Nobody wears organdie for evening gowns except in
midsummer." Alice had thought little of this; but as she looked
about her and saw no organdie except her own, she found greater
difficulty in keeping her smile as arch and spontaneous as she
wished it. In fact, it was beginning to make her face ache a
little.
Mildred came in from the corridor, heavily attended. She carried
a great bouquet of violets laced with lilies of-the-valley; and
the violets were lusty, big purple things, their stems wrapped in
cloth of gold, with silken cords dependent, ending in long
tassels. She and her convoy passed near the two young Adamses;
and it appeared that one of the convoy besought his hostess to
permit "cutting in"; they were "doing it other places" of late,
he urged; but he was denied and told to console himself by
holding the bouquet, at intervals, until his third of the
sixteenth dance should come. Alice looked dubiously at her own
bouquet.
Suddenly she felt that the violets betrayed her; that any one who
looked at them could see how rustic, how innocent of any
florist's craft they were "I can't eat dead violets," Walter
said. The little wild flowers, dying indeed in the warm air,
were drooping in a forlorn mass; and it seemed to her that
whoever noticed them would guess that she had picked them
herself. She decided to get rid of them.
Walter was becoming restive. "Look here!" he said. "Can't you
flag one o' these long-tailed birds to take you on for the next
dance? You came to have a good time; why don't you get busy and
have it? I want to get out and smoke."
"You MUSTN'T leave me, Walter," she whispered, hastily.
"Somebody'll come for me before long, but until they do----"
"Well, couldn't you sit somewhere?"
"No, no! There isn't any one I could sit with."
"Well, why not? Look at those ole dames in the corners. What's
the matter your tyin' up with some o' them for a while?"
"PLEASE, Walter; no!"
In fact, that indomitable smile of hers was the more difficult to
maintain because of these very elders to whom Walter referred.
They were mothers of girls among the dancers, and they were there
to fend and contrive for their offspring; to keep them in
countenance through any trial; to lend them diplomacy in the
carrying out of all enterprises; to be "background" for them; and
in these essentially biological functionings to imitate their own
matings and renew the excitement of their nuptial periods. Older
men, husbands of these ladies and fathers of eligible girls, were
also to be seen, most of them with Mr. Palmer in a billiard-room
across the corridor. Mr. and Mrs. Adams had not been invited.
"Of course papa and mama just barely know Mildred Palmer," Alice
thought, "and most of the other girls' fathers and mothers are
old friends of Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, but I do think she might
have ASKED papa and mama, anyway--she needn't have been afraid
just to ask them; she knew they couldn't come." And her smiling
lip twitched a little threateningly, as she concluded the silent
monologue. "I suppose she thinks I ought to be glad enough she
asked Walter!"
Walter was, in fact, rather noticeable. He was not Mildred's
only guest to wear a short coat and to appear without gloves; but
he was singular (at least in his present surroundings) on account
of a kind of coiffuring he favoured, his hair having been shaped
after what seemed a Mongol inspiration. Only upon the top of the
head was actual hair perceived, the rest appearing to be nudity.
And even more than by any difference in mode he was set apart by
his look and manner, in which there seemed to be a brooding,
secretive and jeering superiority and this was most vividly
expressed when he felt called upon for his loud, short, lop-sided
laugh. Whenever he uttered it Alice laughed, too, as loudly as
she could, to cover it.
"Well," he said. "How long we goin' to stand here? My feet are
sproutin' roots."
Alice took his arm, and they began to walk aimlessly through the
rooms, though she tried to look as if they had a definite
destination, keeping her eyes eager and her lips parted;--people
had called jovially to them from the distance, she meant to
imply, and they were going to join these merry friends. She was
still upon this ghostly errand when a furious outbreak of drums
and saxophones sounded a prelude for the second dance.
Walter danced with her again, but he gave her a warning. "I
don't want to leave you high and dry," he told her, "but I can't
stand it. I got to get somewhere I don't haf' to hurt my eyes
with these berries; I'll go blind if I got to look at any more of
'em. I'm goin' out to smoke as soon as the music begins the next
time, and you better get fixed for it."
Alice tried to get fixed for it. As they danced she nodded
sunnily to every man whose eye she caught, smiled her smile with
the under lip caught between her teeth; but it was not until the
end of the intermission after the dance that she saw help coming.
Across the room sat the globular lady she had encountered that
morning, and beside the globular lady sat a round-headed,
round-bodied girl; her daughter, at first glance. The family
contour was also as evident a characteristic of the short young
man who stood in front of Mrs. Dowling, engaged with her in a
discussion which was not without evidences of an earnestness
almost impassioned. Like Walter, he was declining to dance a
third time with sister; he wished to go elsewhere.
Alice from a sidelong eye watched the controversy: she saw the
globular young man glance toward her, over his shoulder;
whereupon Mrs. Dowling, following this glance, gave Alice a look
of open fury, became much more vehement in the argument, and even
struck her knee with a round, fat fist for emphasis.
"I'm on my way," said Walter. "There's the music startin' up
again, and I told you----"
She nodded gratefully. "It's all right--but come back before
long, Walter."
The globular young man, red with annoyance, had torn himself from
his family and was hastening across the room to her. "C'n I have
this dance?"
"Why, you nice Frank Dowling!" Alice cried. "How lovely!" _
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