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_ The device of the absentee partner has the defect that it cannot
be employed for longer than ten or fifteen minutes at a time, and
it may not be repeated more than twice in one evening: a single
repetition, indeed, is weak, and may prove a betrayal. Alice
knew that her present performance could be effective during only
this interval between dances; and though her eyes were guarded,
she anxiously counted over the partnerless young men who lounged
together in the doorways within her view. Every one of them
ought to have asked her for dances, she thought, and although she
might have been put to it to give a reason why any of them
"ought," her heart was hot with resentment against them.
For a girl who has been a belle, it is harder to live through
these bad times than it is for one who has never known anything
better. Like a figure of painted and brightly varnished wood,
Ella Dowling sat against the wall through dance after dance with
glassy imperturbability; it was easier to be wooden, Alice
thought, if you had your mother with you, as Ella had. You were
left with at least the shred of a pretense that you came to sit
with your mother as a spectator, and not to offer yourself to be
danced with by men who looked you over and rejected you--not for
the first time. "Not for the first time": there lay a sting!
Why had you thought this time might be different from the other
times? Why had you broken your back picking those hundreds of
violets?
Hating the fatuous young men in the doorways more bitterly for
every instant that she had to maintain her tableau, the smiling
Alice knew fierce impulses to spring to her feet and shout at
them, "You IDIOTS!" Hands in pockets, they lounged against the
pilasters, or faced one another, laughing vaguely, each one of
them seeming to Alice no more than so much mean beef in clothes.
She wanted to tell them they were no better than that; and it
seemed a cruel thing of heaven to let them go on believing
themselves young lords. They were doing nothing, killing time.
Wasn't she at her lowest value at least a means of killing time?
Evidently the mean beeves thought not. And when one of them
finally lounged across the corridor and spoke to her, he was the
very one to whom she preferred her loneliness.
"Waiting for somebody, Lady Alicia?" he asked, negligently; and
his easy burlesque of her name was like the familiarity of the
rest of him. He was one of those full-bodied, grossly handsome
men who are powerful and active, but never submit themselves to
the rigour of becoming athletes, though they shoot and fish from
expensive camps. Gloss is the most shining outward mark of the
type. Nowadays these men no longer use brilliantine on their
moustaches, but they have gloss bought from manicure-girls, from
masseurs, and from automobile-makers; and their eyes, usually
large, are glossy. None of this is allowed to interfere with
business; these are "good business men," and often make large
fortunes. They are men of imagination about two things--women
and money, and, combining their imaginings about both, usually
make a wise first marriage. Later, however, they are apt to
imagine too much about some little woman without whom life seems
duller than need be. They run away, leaving the first wife well
enough dowered. They are never intentionally unkind to women,
and in the end they usually make the mistake of thinking they
have had their money's worth of life. Here was Mr. Harvey
Malone, a young specimen in an earlier stage of development,
trying to marry Henrietta Lamb, and now sauntering over to speak
to Alice, as a time-killer before his next dance with Henrietta.
Alice made no response to his question, and he dropped lazily
into the vacant chair, from which she sharply withdrew her hand.
"I might as well use his chair till he comes, don't you think?
You don't MIND, do you, old girl?"
"Oh, no," Alice said. "It doesn't matter one way or the other.
Please don't call me that."
"So that's how you feel?" Mr. Malone laughed indulgently,
without much interest. "I've been meaning to come to see you for
a long time honestly I have--because I wanted to have a good talk
with you about old times. I know you think it was funny, after
the way I used to come to your house two or three times a week,
and sometimes oftener--well, I don't blame you for being hurt,
the way I stopped without explaining or anything. The truth is
there wasn't any reason: I just happened to have a lot of
important things to do and couldn't find the time. But I AM
going to call on you some evening--honestly I am. I don't wonder
you think----"
"You're mistaken," Alice said. "I've never thought anything
about it at all."
"Well, well!" he said, and looked at her languidly. "What's the
use of being cross with this old man? He always means well."
And, extending his arm, he would have given her a friendly pat
upon the shoulder but she evaded it. "Well, well!" he said.
"Seems to me you're getting awful tetchy! Don't you like your
old friends any more?"
"Not all of them."
"Who's the new one?" he asked, teasingly. "Come on and tell us,
Alice. Who is it you were holding this chair for?"
"Never mind."
"Well, all I've got to do is to sit here till he comes back; then
I'll see who it is."
"He may not come back before you have to go."
"Guess you got me THAT time," Malone admitted, laughing as he
rose. "They're tuning up, and I've got this dance. I AM coming
around to see you some evening." He moved away, calling back
over his shoulder, "Honestly, I am!"
Alice did not look at him,
She had held her tableau as long as she could; it was time for
her to abandon the box-trees; and she stepped forth frowning, as
if a little annoyed with the absentee for being such a time upon
her errand; whereupon the two chairs were instantly seized by a
coquetting pair who intended to "sit out" the dance. She walked
quickly down the broad corridor, turned into the broader hall,
and hurriedly entered the dressing-room where she had left her
wraps.
She stayed here as long as she could, pretending to arrange her
hair at a mirror, then fidgeting with one of her slipper-buckles;
but the intelligent elderly woman in charge of the room made an
indefinite sojourn impracticable. "Perhaps I could help you with
that buckle, Miss," she suggested, approaching. "Has it come
loose?" Alice wrenched desperately; then it was loose. The
competent woman, producing needle and thread, deftly made the
buckle fast; and there was nothing for Alice to do but to express
her gratitude and go.
She went to the door of the cloak-room opposite, where a coloured
man stood watchfully in the doorway. "I wonder if you know which
of the gentlemen is my brother, Mr. Walter Adams," she said.
"Yes'm; I know him."
"Could you tell me where he is?"
"No'm; I couldn't say."
"Well, if you see him, would you please tell him that his sister,
Miss Adams, is looking for him and very anxious to speak to him?"
"Yes'm. Sho'ly, sho'ly!"
As she went away he stared after her and seemed to swell with
some bursting emotion. In fact, it was too much for him, and he
suddenly retired within the room, releasing strangulated
laughter.
Walter remonstrated. Behind an excellent screen of coats and
hats, in a remote part of the room, he was kneeling on the floor,
engaged in a game of chance with a second coloured attendant; and
the laughter became so vehement that it not only interfered with
the pastime in hand, but threatened to attract frozen-face
attention.
"I cain' he'p it, man," the laughter explained. "I cain' he'p
it! You sut'n'y the beatin'es' white boy 'n 'is city!"
The dancers were swinging into an "encore" as Alice halted for an
irresolute moment in a doorway. Across the room, a cluster of
matrons sat chatting absently, their eyes on their dancing
daughters; and Alice, finding a refugee's courage, dodged through
the scurrying couples, seated herself in a chair on the outskirts
of this colony of elders, and began to talk eagerly to the matron
nearest her. The matron seemed unaccustomed to so much vivacity,
and responded but dryly, whereupon Alice was more vivacious than
ever; for she meant now to present the picture of a jolly girl
too much interested in these wise older women to bother about
every foolish young man who asked her for a dance.
Her matron was constrained to go so far as to supply a tolerant
nod, now and then, in complement to the girl's animation, and
Alice was grateful for the nods. In this fashion she
supplemented the exhausted resources of the dressing-room and the
box-tree nook; and lived through two more dances, when again Mr.
Frank Dowling presented himself as a partner.
She needed no pretense to seek the dressing-room for repairs
after that number; this time they were necessary and genuine.
Dowling waited for her, and when she came out he explained for
the fourth or fifth time how the accident had happened. "It was
entirely those other people's fault," he said. "They got me in a
kind of a corner, because neither of those fellows knows the
least thing about guiding; they just jam ahead and expect
everybody to get out of their way. It was Charlotte Thom's
diamond crescent pin that got caught on your dress in the back
and made such a----"
"Never mind," Alice said in a tired voice. "The maid fixed it so
that she says it isn't very noticeable."
"Well, it isn't," he returned. "You could hardly tell there'd
been anything the matter. Where do you want to go? Mother's
been interfering in my affairs some more and I've got the next
taken."
"I was sitting with Mrs. George Dresser. You might take me back
there."
He left her with the matron, and Alice returned to her
picture-making, so that once more, while two numbers passed,
whoever cared to look was offered the sketch of a jolly, clever
girl preoccupied with her elders. Then she found her friend
Mildred standing before her, presenting Mr. Arthur Russell, who
asked her to dance with him.
Alice looked uncertain, as though not sure what her engagements
were; but her perplexity cleared; she nodded, and swung
rhythmically away with the tall applicant. She was not grateful
to her hostess for this alms. What a young hostess does with a
fiance, Alice thought, is to make him dance with the unpopular
girls. She supposed that Mr. Arthur Russell had already danced
with Ella Dowling.
The loan of a lover, under these circumstances, may be painful to
the lessee, and Alice, smiling never more brightly, found nothing
to say to Mr. Russell, though she thought he might have found
something to say to her. "I wonder what Mildred told him," she
thought. "Probably she said, 'Dearest, there's one more girl
you've got to help me out with. You wouldn't like her much, but
she dances well enough and she's having a rotten time. Nobody
ever goes near her any more.'"
When the music stopped, Russell added his applause to the
hand-clapping that encouraged the uproarious instruments to
continue, and as they renewed the tumult, he said heartily,
"That's splendid!"
Alice gave him a glance, necessarily at short range, and found
his eyes kindly and pleased. Here was a friendly soul, it
appeared, who probably "liked everybody." No doubt he had
applauded for an "encore" when he danced with Ella Dowling, gave
Ella the same genial look, and said, "That's splendid!"
When the "encore" was over, Alice spoke to him for the first
time.
"Mildred will be looking for you," she said. "I think you'd
better take me back to where you found me."
He looked surprised. "Oh, if you----"
"I'm sure Mildred will be needing you," Alice said, and as she
took his arm and they walked toward Mrs. Dresser, she thought it
might be just possible to make a further use of the loan. "Oh, I
wonder if you----" she began.
"Yes?" he said, quickly.
"You don't know my brother, Walter Adams," she said. "But he's
somewhere I think possibly he's in a smoking-room or some place
where girls aren't expected, and if you wouldn't think it too
much trouble to inquire----"
"I'll find him," Russell said, promptly. "Thank you so much for
that dance. I'll bring your brother in a moment."
It was to be a long moment, Alice decided, presently. Mrs.
Dresser had grown restive; and her nods and vague responses to
her young dependent's gaieties were as meager as they could well
be. Evidently the matron had no intention of appearing to her
world in the light of a chaperone for Alice Adams; and she
finally made this clear. With a word or two of excuse, breaking
into something Alice was saying, she rose and went to sit next to
Mildred's mother, who had become the nucleus of the cluster. So
Alice was left very much against the wall, with short stretches
of vacant chairs on each side of her. She had come to the end of
her picture-making, and could only pretend that there was
something amusing the matter with the arm of her chair.
She supposed that Mildred's Mr. Russell had forgotten Walter by
this time. "I'm not even an intimate enough friend of Mildred's
for him to have thought he ought to bother to tell me he couldn't
find him," she thought. And then she saw Russell coming across
the room toward her, with Walter beside him. She jumped up
gaily.
"Oh, thank you!" she cried. "I know this naughty boy must have
been terribly hard to find. Mildred'll NEVER forgive me! I've
put you to so much----"
"Not at all," he said, amiably, and went away, leaving the
brother and sister together.
"Walter, let's dance just once more," Alice said, touching his
arm placatively. "I thought--well, perhaps we might go home
then."
But Walter's expression was that of a person upon whom an outrage
has just been perpetrated. "No," he said. "We've stayed THIS
long, I'm goin' to wait and see what they got to eat. And you
look here!" He turned upon her angrily. "Don't you ever do that
again!"
"Do what?"
"Send somebody after me that pokes his nose into every corner of
the house till he finds me! 'Are you Mr. Walter Adams?' he
says. I guess he must asked everybody in the place if they were
Mr. Walter Adams! Well, I'll bet a few iron men you wouldn't
send anybody to hunt for me again if you knew where he found me!"
"Where was it?"
Walter decided that her fit punishment was to know. "I was
shootin' dice with those coons in the cloak-room."
"And he saw you?"
"Unless he was blind!" said Walter. "Come on, I'll dance this
one more dance with you. Supper comes after that, and THEN we'll
go home."
Mrs. Adams heard Alice's key turning in the front door and
hurried down the stairs to meet her.
"Did you get wet coming in, darling?" she asked. "Did you have a
good time?"
"Just lovely!" Alice said, cheerily, and after she had arranged
the latch for Walter, who had gone to return the little car, she
followed her mother upstairs and hummed a dance-tune on the way.
"Oh, I'm so glad you had a nice time," Mrs. Adams said, as they
reached the door of her daughter's room together. "You DESERVED
to, and it's lovely to think----"
But at this, without warning, Alice threw herself into her
mother's arms, sobbing so loudly that in his room, close by, her
father, half drowsing through the night, started to full
wakefulness. _
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