________________________________________________
_ In her pocket as she spoke her hand rested upon the little sack
of tobacco, which responded accusingly to the touch of her
restless fingers; and she found time to wonder why she was
building up this fiction for Mr. Arthur Russell. His discovery
of Walter's device for whiling away the dull evening had shamed
and distressed her; but she would have suffered no less if almost
any other had been the discoverer. In this gentleman, after
hearing that he was Mildred's Mr. Arthur Russell, Alice felt not
the slightest "personal interest"; and there was yet to develop
in her life such a thing as an interest not personal. At
twenty-two this state of affairs is not unique.
So far as Alice was concerned Russell might have worn a placard,
"Engaged." She looked upon him as diners entering a restaurant
look upon tables marked "Reserved": the glance, slightly
discontented, passes on at once. Or so the eye of a prospector
wanders querulously over staked and established claims on the
mountainside, and seeks the virgin land beyond; unless, indeed,
the prospector be dishonest. But Alice was no claim-jumper--so
long as the notice of ownership was plainly posted.
Though she was indifferent now, habit ruled her: and, at the very
time she wondered why she created fictitious cigars for her
father, she was also regretting that she had not boldly carried
her Malacca stick down-town with her. Her vivacity increased
automatically.
"Perhaps the clerk thought you wanted the cigars for yourself,"
Russell suggested. "He may have taken you for a Spanish
countess."
"I'm sure he did!" Alice agreed, gaily; and she hummed a bar or
two of "LaPaloma," snapping her fingers as castanets, and swaying
her body a little, to suggest the accepted stencil of a "Spanish
Dancer." "Would you have taken me for one, Mr. Russell?" she
asked, as she concluded the impersonation.
"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.
To be seen walking with such a companion added to her pleasure.
She would have described him as "altogether quite
stunning-looking"; and she liked his tall, dark thinness, his
gray clothes, his soft hat, and his clean brown shoes; she liked
his easy swing of the stick he carried.
"Shouldn't I have said it?" he asked. "Would you rather not be
taken for a Spanish countess?"
"That isn't it," she explained. "You said----"
"I said I'd take you for whatever you wanted me to. Isn't that
all right?"
"It would all depend, wouldn't it?"
"Of course it would depend on what you wanted."
"Oh, no!" she laughed. "It might depend on a lot of things."
"Such as?"
"Well----" She hesitated, having the mischievous impulse to say,
"Such as Mildred!" But she decided to omit this reference, and
became serious, remembering Russell's service to her at Mildred's
house. "Speaking of what I want to be taken for," she
said;--"I've been wondering ever since the other night what you
did take me for! You must have taken me for the sister of a
professional gambler, I'm afraid!"
Russell's look of kindness was the truth about him, she was to
discover; and he reassured her now by the promptness of his
friendly chuckle. "Then your young brother told you where I
found him, did he? I kept my face straight at the time, but I
laughed afterward --to myself. It struck me as original, to say
the least: his amusing himself with those darkies."
"Walter IS original," Alice said; and, having adopted this new
view of her brother's eccentricities, she impulsively went on to
make it more plausible. "He's a very odd boy, and I was afraid
you'd misunderstand. He tells wonderful 'darky stories,' and
he'll do anything to draw coloured people out and make them talk;
and that's what he was doing at Mildred's when you found him for
me--he says he wins their confidence by playing dice with them.
In the family we think he'll probably write about them some day.
He's rather literary."
"Are you?" Russell asked, smiling.
"I? Oh----" She paused, lifting both hands in a charming gesture
of helplessness. "Oh, I'm just-- me!"
His glance followed the lightly waved hands with keen approval,
then rose to the lively and colourful face, with its hazel eyes,
its small and pretty nose, and the lip-caught smile which seemed
the climax of her decorative transition. Never had he seen a
creature so plastic or so wistful.
Here was a contrast to his cousin Mildred, who was not wistful,
and controlled any impulses toward plasticity, if she had them.
"By George!" he said. "But you ARE different!"
With that, there leaped in her such an impulse of roguish
gallantry as she could never resist. She turned her head, and,
laughing and bright-eyed, looked him full in the face.
"From whom?" she cried.
"From--everybody!" he said. "Are you a mind-reader?"
"Why?"
"How did you know I was thinking you were different from my
cousin, Mildred Palmer?"
"What makes you think I DID know it?"
"Nonsense!" he said. "You knew what I was thinking and I knew
you knew."
"Yes," she said with cool humour. "How intimate that seems to
make us all at once!"
Russell left no doubt that he was delighted with these gaieties
of hers. "By George!" he exclaimed again. "I thought you were
this sort of girl the first moment I saw you!"
"What sort of girl? Didn't Mildred tell you what sort of girl I
am when she asked you to dance with me?"
"She didn't ask me to dance with you--I'd been looking at you.
You were talking to some old ladies, and I asked Mildred who you
were."
"Oh, so Mildred DIDN'T----" Alice checked herself. "Who did she
tell you I was?"
"She just said you were a Miss Adams, so I----"
"'A' Miss Adams?" Alice interrupted.
"Yes. Then I said I'd like to meet you."
"I see. You thought you'd save me from the old ladies."
"No. I thought I'd save myself from some of the girls Mildred
was getting me to dance with. There was a Miss Dowling----"
"Poor man!" Alice said, gently, and her impulsive thought was
that Mildred had taken few chances, and that as a matter of
self-defense her carefulness might have been well founded. This
Mr. Arthur Russell was a much more responsive person than one
had supposed.
"So, Mr. Russell, you don't know anything about me except what
you thought when you first saw me?"
"Yes, I know I was right when I thought it."
"You haven't told me what you thought."
"I thought you were like what you ARE like."
"Not very definite, is it? I'm afraid you shed more light a
minute or so ago, when you said how different from Mildred you
thought I was. That WAS definite, unfortunately!"
"I didn't say it," Russell explained. "I thought it, and you
read my mind. That's the sort of girl I thought you were--one
that could read a man's mind. Why do you say 'unfortunately'
you're not like Mildred?"
Alice's smooth gesture seemed to sketch Mildred. "Because she's
perfect--why, she's PERFECTLY perfect! She never makes a
mistake, and everybody looks up to her--oh, yes, we all fairly
adore her! She's like some big, noble, cold statue--'way above
the rest of us--and she hardly ever does anything mean or
treacherous. Of all the girls I know I believe she's played the
fewest really petty tricks. She's----"
Russell interrupted; he looked perplexed. "You say she's
perfectly perfect, but that she does play SOME----"
Alice laughed, as if at his sweet innocence. "Men are so funny!"
she informed him. "Of course girls ALL do mean things sometimes.
My own career's just one long brazen smirch of 'em! What I mean
is, Mildred's perfectly perfect compared to the rest of us.
"I see," he said, and seemed to need a moment or two of
thoughtfulness. Then he inquired, "What sort of treacherous
things do YOU do?"
"I? Oh, the very worst kind! Most people bore me particularly
the men in this town--and I show it."
"But I shouldn't call that treacherous, exactly."
"Well, THEY do," Alice laughed. "It's made me a terribly
unpopular character! I do a lot of things they hate. For
instance, at a dance I'd a lot rather find some clever old woman
and talk to her than dance with nine-tenths of these nonentities.
I usually do it, too."
"But you danced as if you liked it. You danced better than any
other girl I----"
"This flattery of yours doesn't quite turn my head, Mr.
Russell," Alice interrupted. "Particularly since Mildred only
gave you Ella Dowling to compare with me!"
"Oh, no," he insisted. "There were others--and of course
Mildred, herself."
"Oh, of course, yes. I forgot that. Well----" She paused, then
added, "I certainly OUGHT to dance well."
"Why is it so much a duty?"
"When I think of the dancing-teachers and the expense to papa!
All sorts of fancy instructors--I suppose that's what daughters
have fathers for, though, isn't it? To throw money away on
them?"
"You don't----" Russell began, and his look was one of alarm.
"You haven't taken up----"
She understood his apprehension and responded merrily, "Oh,
murder, no! You mean you're afraid I break out sometimes in a
piece of cheesecloth and run around a fountain thirty times, and
then, for an encore, show how much like snakes I can make my arms
look."
"I SAID you were a mind-reader!" he exclaimed. "That's exactly
what I was pretending to be afraid you might do."
"'Pretending?' That's nicer of you. No; it's not my mania."
"What is?"
"Oh, nothing in particular that I know of just now. Of course
I've had the usual one: the one that every girl goes through."
"What's that?"
"Good heavens, Mr. Russell, you can't expect me to believe
you're really a man of the world if you don't know that every
girl has a time in her life when she's positive she's divinely
talented for the stage! It's the only universal rule about women
that hasn't got an exception. I don't mean we all want to go on
the stage, but we all think we'd be wonderful if we did. Even
Mildred. Oh, she wouldn't confess it to you: you'd have to know
her a great deal better than any man can ever know her to find
out."
"I see," he said. "Girls are always telling us we can't know
them. I wonder if you----"
She took up his thought before he expressed it, and again he was
fascinated by her quickness, which indeed seemed to him almost
telepathic. "Oh, but DON'T we know one another, though!" she
cried.
"Such things we have to keep secret--things that go on right
before YOUR eyes!"
"Why don't some of you tell us?" he asked.
"We can't tell you."
"Too much honour?"
"No. Not even too much honour among thieves, Mr. Russell. We
don't tell you about our tricks against one another because we
know it wouldn't make any impression on you. The tricks aren't
played against you, and you have a soft side for cats with lovely
manners!"
"What about your tricks against us?"
"Oh, those!" Alice laughed. "We think they're rather cute!"
"Bravo!" he cried, and hammered the ferrule of his stick upon the
pavement.
"What's the applause for?"
"For you. What you said was like running up the black flag to
the masthead."
"Oh, no. It was just a modest little sign in a pretty
flower-bed: 'Gentlemen, beware!'"
"I see I must," he said, gallantly.
"Thanks! But I mean, beware of the whole bloomin' garden!" Then,
picking up a thread that had almost disappeared: "You needn't
think you'll ever find out whether I'm right about Mildred's not
being an exception by asking her," she said. "She won't tell
you: she's not the sort that ever makes a confession."
But Russell had not followed her shift to the former topic.
"'Mildred's not being an exception?' " he said, vaguely. "I
don't----"
"An exception about thinking she could be wonderful thing on the
stage if she only cared to. If you asked her I'm pretty sure
she'd say, 'What nonsense!' Mildred's the dearest, finest thing
anywhere, but you won't find out many things about her by asking
her."
Russell's expression became more serious, as it did whenever his
cousin was made their topic. "You think not?" he said. "You
think she's----"
"No. But it's not because she isn't sincere exactly. It's only
because she has such a lot to live up to. She has to live up to
being a girl on the grand style to herself, I mean, of course."
And without pausing Alice rippled on, "You ought to have seen ME
when I had the stage-fever! I used to play 'Juliet' all alone in
my room.' She lifted her arms in graceful entreaty, pleading
musically,
"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest thy love prove----"
She broke off abruptly with a little flourish, snapping thumb and
finger of each outstretched hand, then laughed and said, "Papa
used to make such fun of me! Thank heaven, I was only fifteen; I
was all over it by the next year."
"No wonder you had the fever," Russell observed. "You do it
beautifully. Why didn't you finish the line?"
"Which one? 'Lest thy love prove likewise variable'? Juliet was
saying it to a MAN, you know. She seems to have been ready to
worry about his constancy pretty early in their affair!"
Her companion was again thoughtful. "Yes," he said, seeming to
be rather irksomely impressed with Alice's suggestion. "Yes; it
does appear so."
Alice glanced at his serious face, and yielded to an audacious
temptation. "You mustn't take it so hard," she said, flippantly.
"It isn't about you: it's only about Romeo and Juliet."
"See here!" he exclaimed. "You aren't at your mind-reading
again, are you? There are times when it won't do, you know!"
She leaned toward him a little, as if companionably: they were
walking slowly, and this geniality of hers brought her shoulder
in light contact with his for a moment. "Do you dislike my
mind-reading?" she asked, and, across their two just touching
shoulders, gave him her sudden look of smiling wistfulness. "Do
you hate it?"
He shook his head. "No, I don't," he said, gravely. "It's quite
pleasant. But I think it says, 'Gentlemen, beware!'"
She instantly moved away from him, with the lawless and frank
laugh of one who is delighted to be caught in a piece of
hypocrisy. "How lovely!" she cried. Then she pointed ahead.
"Our walk is nearly over. We're coming to the foolish little
house where I live. It's a queer little place, but my father's
so attached to it the family have about given up hope of getting
him to build a real house farther out. He doesn't mind our being
extravagant about anything else, but he won't let us alter one
single thing about his precious little old house. Well!" She
halted, and gave him her hand. "Adieu!"
"I couldn't," he began; hesitated, then asked: "I couldn't come
in with you for a little while?"
"Not now," she said, quickly. "You can come----" She paused.
"When?"
"Almost any time." She turned and walked slowly up the path, but
he waited. "You can come in the evening if you like," she called
back to him over her shoulder.
"Soon?"
"As soon as you like!" She waved her hand; then ran indoors and
watched him from a window as he went up the street. He walked
rapidly, a fine, easy figure, swinging his stick in a way that
suggested exhilaration. Alice, staring after him through the
irregular apertures of a lace curtain, showed no similar
buoyancy. Upon the instant she closed the door all sparkle left
her: she had become at once the simple and sometimes troubled
girl her family knew.
"What is going on out there?" her mother asked, approaching from
the dining-room.
"Oh, nothing," Alice said, indifferently, as she turned away.
"That Mr. Russell met me downtown and walked up with me."
"Mr. Russell? Oh, the one that's engaged to Mildred?"
"Well--I don't know for certain. He didn't seem so much like an
engaged man to me." And she added, in the tone of thoughtful
preoccupation: "Anyhow--not so terribly!"
Then she ran upstairs, gave her father his tobacco, filled his
pipe for him, and petted him as he lighted it. _
Read next: CHAPTER 11
Read previous: CHAPTER 9
Table of content of Alice Adams
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
