________________________________________________
_ There shone a jovial sun overhead on the appointed "day after
to-morrow"; a day not cool yet of a temperature friendly to
walkers; and the air, powdered with sunshine, had so much life in
it that it seemed to sparkle. To Arthur Russell this was a day
like a gay companion who pleased him well; but the gay companion
at his side pleased him even better. She looked her prettiest,
chattered her wittiest, smiled her wistfulest, and delighted him
with all together.
"You look so happy it's easy to see your father's taken a good
turn," he told her.
"Yes; he has this afternoon, at least," she said. "I might have
other reasons for looking cheerful, though."
"For instance?"
"Exactly!" she said, giving him a sweet look just enough mocked
by her laughter. "For instance!"
"Well, go on," he begged.
"Isn't it expected?" she asked.
"Of you, you mean?"
"No," she returned. "For you, I mean!"
In this style, which uses a word for any meaning that quick look
and colourful gesture care to endow it with, she was an expert;
and she carried it merrily on, leaving him at liberty (one of the
great values of the style) to choose as he would how much or how
little she meant. He was content to supply mere cues, for
although he had little coquetry of his own, he had lately begun
to find that the only interesting moments in his life were those
during which Alice Adams coquetted with him. Happily, these
obliging moments extended themselves to cover all the time he
spent with her. However serious she might seem, whatever
appeared to be her topic, all was thou-and-I.
He planned for more of it, seeing otherwise a dull evening ahead;
and reverted, afterwhile, to a forbidden subject. "About that
dance at Miss Lamb's --since your father's so much better----"
She flushed a little. "Now, now!" she chided him. "We agreed
not to say any more about that."
"Yes, but since he IS better----"
Alice shook her head. "He won't be better to-morrow. He always
has a bad day after a good one especially after such a good one
as this is."
"But if this time it should be different," Russell persisted;
"wouldn't you be willing to come if he's better by to-morrow
evening? Why not wait and decide at the last minute?"
She waved her hands airily. "What a pother!" she cried. "What
does it matter whether poor little Alice Adams goes to a dance or
not?"
"Well, I thought I'd made it clear that it looks fairly bleak to
me if you don't go."
"Oh, yes!" she jeered.
"It's the simple truth," he insisted. "I don't care a great deal
about dances these days; and if you aren't going to be there----"
"You could stay away," she suggested. "You wouldn't!"
"Unfortunately, I can't. I'm afraid I'm supposed to be the
excuse. Miss Lamb, in her capacity as a friend of my
relatives----"
"Oh, she's giving it for YOU! I see! On Mildred's account you
mean?"
At that his face showed an increase of colour. "I suppose just
on account of my being a cousin of Mildred's and of----"
"Of course! You'll have a beautiful time, too. Henrietta'll see
that you have somebody to dance with besides Miss Dowling, poor
man!"
"But what I want somebody to see is that I dance with you! And
perhaps your father----"
"Wait!" she said, frowning as if she debated whether or not to
tell him something of import; then, seeming to decide
affirmatively, she asked: "Would you really like to know the
truth about it?"
"If it isn't too unflattering."
"It hasn't anything to do with you at all," she said. "Of course
I'd like to go with you and to dance with you--though you don't
seem to realize that you wouldn't be permitted much time with
me."
"Oh, yes, I----"
"Never mind!" she laughed. "Of course you wouldn't. But even if
papa should be better to-morrow, I doubt if I'd go. In fact, I
know I wouldn't. There's another reason besides papa."
"Is there?"
"Yes. The truth is, I don't get on with Henrietta Lamb. As a
matter of fact, I dislike her, and of course that means she
dislikes me. I should never think of asking her to anything I
gave, and I really wonder she asks me to things SHE gives." This
was a new inspiration; and Alice, beginning to see her way out of
a perplexity, wished that she had thought of it earlier: she
should have told him from the first that she and Henrietta had a
feud, and consequently exchanged no invitations. Moreover, there
was another thing to beset her with little anxieties: 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.
I've always thought she was lacking in some things most people
are supposed to be equipped with--for instance, a certain feeling
about the death of a father who was always pretty decent to his
daughter. Henrietta's father died just, eleven months and
twenty-seven days before your cousin's dance, but she couldn't
stick out those few last days and make it a year; she was there."
Alice stopped, then laughed ruefully, exclaiming, "But this is
dreadful of me!"
"Is it?"
"Blackguarding her to you when she's giving a big party for you!
Just the way Henrietta would blackguard me to you--heaven knows
what she WOULDN'T say if she talked about me to you! It would be
fair, of course, but--well, I'd rather she didn't!" And with
that, Alice let her pretty hand, in its white glove, rest upon
his arm for a moment; and he looked down at it, not unmoved to
see it there. "I want to be unfair about just this," she said,
letting a troubled laughter tremble through her appealing voice
as she spoke. "I won't take advantage of her with anybody,
except just-- you! I'd a little rather you didn't hear anybody
blackguard me, and, if you don't mind--could you promise not to
give Henrietta the chance?"
It was charmingly done, with a humorous, faint pathos altogether
genuine; and Russell found himself suddenly wanting to shout at
her, "Oh, you DEAR!" Nothing else seemed adequate; but he
controlled the impulse in favour of something more conservative.
"Imagine any one speaking unkindly of you--not praising you!"
"Who HAS praised me to you?" she asked, quickly.
"I haven't talked about you with any one; but if I did, I know
they'd----"
"No, no!" she cried, and went on, again accompanying her words
with little tremulous runs of laughter. "You don't understand
this town yet. You'll be surprised when you do; we're different.
We talk about one another fearfully! Haven't I just proved it,
the way I've been going for Henrietta? Of course I didn't say
anything really very terrible about her, but that's only because
I don't follow that practice the way most of the others do. They
don't stop with the worst of the truth they can find: they make
UP things--yes, they really do! And, oh, I'd RATHER they didn't
make up things about me--to you!"
"What difference would it make if they did?" he inquired,
cheerfully. "I'd know they weren't true."
"Even if you did know that, they'd make a difference," she said.
"Oh, yes, they would! It's too bad, but we don't like anything
quite so well that's had specks on it, even if we've wiped the
specks off;--it's just that much spoiled, and some things are all
spoiled the instant they're the least bit spoiled. What a man
thinks about a girl, for instance. Do you want to have what you
think about me spoiled, Mr. Russell?"
"Oh, but that's already far beyond reach," he said, lightly.
"But it can't be!" she protested.
"Why not?"
"Because it never can be. Men don't change their minds about one
another often: they make it quite an event when they do, and talk
about it as if something important had happened. But a girl only
has to go down-town with a shoe-string unfastened, and every man
who sees her will change his mind about her. Don't you know
that's true?"
"Not of myself, I think."
"There!" she cried. "That's precisely what every man in the
world would say!"
"So you wouldn't trust me?"
"Well--I'll be awfully worried if you give 'em a chance to tell
you that I'm too lazy to tie my shoe-strings!"
He laughed delightedly. "Is that what they do say?" he asked.
"Just about! Whatever they hope will get results." She shook
her head wisely. "Oh, yes; we do that here!"
"But I don't mind loose shoe-strings," he said. "Not if they're
yours."
"They'll find out what you do mind."
"But suppose," he said, looking at her whimsically; "suppose I
wouldn't mind anything--so long as it's yours?"
She courtesied. "Oh, pretty enough! But a girl who's talked
about has a weakness that's often a fatal one."
"What is it?"
"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."
"Don't you see? If Henrietta--or Mildred--or any of 'em--or some
of their mothers--oh, we ALL do it! Well, if any of 'em told you
I didn't tie my shoe-strings, and if I were there, so that you
could see me, you'd know it wasn't true. Even if I were sitting
so that you couldn't see my feet, and couldn't tell whether the
strings were tied or not just then, still you could look at me,
and see that I wasn't the sort of girl to neglect my
shoe-strings. But that isn't the way it happens: they'll get at
you when I'm nowhere around and can't remind you of the sort of
girl I really am."
"But you don't do that," he complained. "You don't remind me you
don't even tell me--the sort of girl you really are! I'd like to
know."
"Let's be serious then," she said, and looked serious enough
herself. "Would you honestly like to know?"
"Yes."
"Well, then, you must be careful."
"'Careful?'" The word amused him.
"I mean careful not to get me mixed up," she said. "Careful not
to mix up the girl you might hear somebody talking about with the
me I honestly try to make you see. If you do get those two mixed
up--well, the whole show'll be spoiled!"
"What makes you think so?"
"Because it's----" She checked herself, having begun to speak too
impulsively; and she was disturbed, realizing in what tricky
stuff she dealt. What had been on her lips to say was, "Because
it's happened before!" She changed to, "Because it's so easy to
spoil anything--easiest of all to spoil anything that's
pleasant."
"That might depend."
"No; it's so. And if you care at all about--about knowing a girl
who'd like someone to know her----"
"Just 'someone?' That's disappointing."
"Well--you," she said.
"Tell me how 'careful' you want me to be, then!"
"Well, don't you think it would be nice if you didn't give
anybody the chance to talk about me the way--the way I've just
been talking about Henrietta Lamb?"
With that they laughed together, and he said, "You may be cutting
me off from a great deal of information, you know."
"Yes," Alice admitted. "Somebody might begin to praise me to
you, too; so it's dangerous to ask you to change the subject if I
ever happen to be mentioned. But after all----" She paused.
"'After all' isn't the end of a thought, is it?"
"Sometimes it is of a girl's thought; I suppose men are neater
about their thoughts, and always finish 'em. It isn't the end of
the thought I had then, though."
"What is the end of it?"
She looked at him impulsively. "Oh, it's foolish," she said, and
she laughed as laughs one who proposes something probably
impossible. "But, WOULDN'T it be pleasant if two people could
ever just keep themselves TO themselves, so far as they two were
concerned? I mean, if they could just manage to be friends
without people talking about it, or talking to THEM about it?"
"I suppose that might be rather difficult," he said, more amused
than impressed by her idea.
"I don't know: it might be done," she returned, hopefully.
"Especially in a town of this size; it's grown so it's quite a
huge place these days. People can keep themselves to themselves
in a big place better, you know. For instance, nobody knows that
you and I are taking a walk together today."
"How absurd, when here we are on exhibition!"
"No; we aren't."
"We aren't?"
"Not a bit of it!" she laughed. "We were the other day, when you
walked home with me, but anybody could tell that had just
happened by chance, on account of your overtaking me; people can
always see things like that. But we're not on exhibition now.
Look where I've led you!"
Amused and a little bewildered, he looked up and down the street,
which was one of gaunt-faced apartment-houses, old, sooty, frame
boarding-houses, small groceries and drug-stores, laundries and
one- room plumbers' shops, with the sign of a clairvoyant here
and there.
"You see?" she said. "I've been leading you without your knowing
it. Of course that's because you're new to the town, and you
give yourself up to the guidance of an old citizen."
"I'm not so sure, Miss Adams. It might mean that I don't care
where I follow so long as I follow you."
"Very well," she said. "I'd like you to keep on following me at
least long enough for me to show you that there's something nicer
ahead of us than this dingy street."
"Is that figurative?" he asked.
"Might be!" she returned, gaily. "There's a pretty little park
at the end, but it's very proletarian, and nobody you and I know
will be more likely to see us there than on this street."
"What an imagination you have!" he exclaimed. "You turn our
proper little walk into a Parisian adventure."
She looked at him in what seemed to be a momentary grave
puzzlement. "Perhaps you feel that a Parisian adventure mightn't
please your--your relatives?"
"Why, no," he returned. "You seem to think of them oftener than
I do."
This appeared to amuse Alice, or at least to please her, for she
laughed. "Then I can afford to quit thinking of them, I suppose.
It's only that I used to be quite a friend of Mildred's--but
there! we needn't to go into that. I've never been a friend of
Henrietta Lamb's, though, and I almost wish she weren't taking
such pains to be a friend of yours."
"Oh, but she's not. It's all on account of----"
"On Mildred's account," Alice finished this for him, coolly.
"Yes, of course."
"It's on account of the two families," he was at pains to
explain, a little awkwardly. "It's because I'm a relative of the
Palmers, and the Palmers and the Lambs seem to be old family
friends."
"Something the Adamses certainly are not," Alice said. "Not with
either of 'em; particularly not with the Lambs!" And here, scarce
aware of what impelled her, she returned to her former
elaborations and colourings. "You see, the differences between
Henrietta and me aren't entirely personal: I couldn't go to her
house even if I liked her. The Lambs and Adamses don't get on
with each other, and we've just about come to the breaking-point
as it happens."
"I hope it's nothing to bother you."
"Why? A lot of things bother me."
"I'm sorry they do," he said, and seemed simply to mean it.
She nodded gratefully. "That's nice of you, Mr. Russell. It
helps. The break between the Adamses and the Lambs is a pretty
bothersome thing. It's been coming on a long time." She sighed
deeply, and the sigh was half genuine; this half being for her
father, but the other half probably belonged to her instinctive
rendering of Juliet Capulet, daughter to a warring house. "I
hate it all so!" she added.
"Of course you must."
"I suppose most quarrels between families are on account of
business," she said. "That's why they're so sordid. Certainly
the Lambs seem a sordid lot to me, though of course I'm biased."
And with that she began to sketch a history of the commercial
antagonism that had risen between the Adamses and the Lambs.
The sketching was spontaneous and dramatic. Mathematics had no
part in it; nor was there accurate definition of Mr. Adams's
relation to the institution of Lamb and Company. The point was
clouded, in fact; though that might easily be set down to the
general haziness of young ladies confronted with the mysteries of
trade or commerce. Mr. Adams either had been a vague sort of
junior member of the firm, it appeared, or else he should have
been made some such thing; at all events, he was an old mainstay
of the business; and he, as much as any Lamb, had helped to build
up the prosperity of the company. But at last, tired of
providing so much intelligence and energy for which other people
took profit greater than his own, he had decided to leave the
company and found a business entirely for himself. The Lambs
were going to be enraged when they learned what was afoot.
Such was the impression, a little misted, wrought by Alice's
quick narrative. But there was dolorous fact behind it: Adams
had succumbed.
His wife, grave and nervous, rather than triumphant, in success,
had told their daughter that the great J. A. would be furious
and possibly vindictive. Adams was afraid of him, she said.
"But what for, mama?" Alice asked, since this seemed a turn of
affairs out of reason. "What in the world has Mr. Lamb to do
with papa's leaving the company to set up for himself? What
right has he to be angry about it? If he's such a friend as he
claims to be, I should think he'd be glad--that is, if the glue
factory turns out well. What will he be angry for?"
Mrs. Adams gave Alice an uneasy glance, hesitated, and then
explained that a resignation from Lamb's had always been looked
upon, especially by "that old man," as treachery. You were
supposed to die in the service, she said bitterly, and her
daughter, a little mystified, accepted this explanation. Adams
had not spoken to her of his surrender; he seemed not inclined to
speak to her at all, or to any one.
Alice was not serious too long, and she began to laugh as she
came to the end of her decorative sketch. "After all, the whole
thing is perfectly ridiculous," she said. "In fact, it's FUNNY!
That's on account of what papa's going to throw over the Lamb
business FOR! To save your life you couldn't imagine what he's
going to do!"
"I won't try, then," Russell assented.
"It takes all the romance out of ME," she laughed. "You'll never
go for a Parisian walk with me again, after I tell you what I'll
be heiress to." They had come to the entrance of the little
park; and, as Alice had said, it was a pretty place, especially
on a day so radiant. Trees of the oldest forest stood there,
hale and serene over the trim, bright grass; and the proletarians
had not come from their factories at this hour; only a few
mothers and their babies were to be seen, here and there, in the
shade. "I think I'll postpone telling you about it till we get
nearly home again," Alice said, as they began to saunter down one
of the gravelled paths. "There's a bench beside a spring farther
on; we can sit there and talk about a lot of things--things not
so sticky as my dowry's going to be."
"'Sticky?'" he echoed. "What in the world----" She laughed
despairingly.
"A glue factory!"
Then he laughed, too, as much from friendliness as from
amusement; and she remembered to tell him that the project of a
glue factory was still "an Adams secret." It would be known
soon, however, she added; and the whole Lamb connection would
probably begin saying all sorts of things, heaven knew what!
Thus Alice built her walls of flimsy, working always gaily, or
with at least the air of gaiety; and even as she rattled on,
there was somewhere in her mind a constant little wonder.
Everything she said seemed to be necessary to support something
else she had said. How had it happened? She found herself
telling him that since her father had decided on making so great
a change in his ways, she and her mother hoped at last to
persuade him to give up that "foolish little house" he had been
so obstinate about; and she checked herself abruptly on this
declivity just as she was about to slide into a remark concerning
her own preference for a "country place." Discretion caught her
in time; and something else, in company with discretion, caught
her, for she stopped short in her talk and blushed.
They had taken possession of the bench beside the spring, by this
time; and Russell, his elbow on the back of the bench and his
chin on his hand, the better to look at her, had no guess at the
cause of the blush, but was content to find it lovely. At his
first sight of Alice she had seemed pretty in the particular way
of being pretty that he happened to like best; and, with every
moment he spent with her, this prettiness appeared to increase.
He felt that he could not look at her enough: his gaze followed
the fluttering of the graceful hands in almost continual gesture
as she talked; then lifted happily to the vivacious face again.
She charmed him.
After her abrupt pause, she sighed, then looked at him with her
eyebrows lifted in a comedy appeal. "You haven't said you
wouldn't give Henrietta the chance," she said, in the softest
voice that can still have a little laugh running in it.
He was puzzled. "Give Henrietta the chance?"
"YOU know! You'll let me keep on being unfair, won't you? Not
give the other girls a chance to get even?"
He promised, heartily. _
Read next: CHAPTER 15
Read previous: CHAPTER 13
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
