Booth Tarkington Page 39

  “I think your mother wants to speak to you, Frank,” Alice said, upon this advent.

  Mrs. Dowling nodded to her. “Good evening, Miss Adams,” she said. “I just thought as you and Frank weren’t dancing you wouldn’t mind my disturbing you——”

  “Not at all,” Alice murmured.

  Mr. Dowling seemed of a different mind. “Well, what do you want?” he inquired, whereupon his mother struck him roguishly with her fan.

  “Bad fellow!” She turned to Alice. “I’m sure you won’t mind excusing him to let him do something for his old mother, Miss Adams.”

  “What do you want?” the son repeated.

  “Two very nice things,” Mrs. Dowling informed him. “Everybody is so anxious for Henrietta Lamb to have a pleasant evening, because it’s the very first time she’s been anywhere since her father’s death, and of course her dear grandfather’s an old friend of ours, and——”

  “Well, well!” her son interrupted. “Miss Adams isn’t interested in all this, mother.”

  “But Henrietta came to speak to Ella and me, and I told her you were so anxious to dance with her——”

  “Here!” he cried. “Look here! I’d rather do my own——”

  “Yes; that’s just it,” Mrs. Dowling explained. “I just thought it was such a good opportunity; and Henrietta said she had most of her dances taken, but she’d give you one if you asked her before they were all gone. So I thought you’d better see her as soon as possible.”

  Dowling’s face had become rosy. “I refuse to do anything of the kind.”

  “Bad fellow!” said his mother, gaily. “I thought this would be the best time for you to see Henrietta, because it won’t be long till all her dances are gone, and you’ve promised on your word to dance the next with Ella, and you mightn’t have a chance to do it then. I’m sure Miss Adams won’t mind if you——”

  “Not at all,” Alice said.

  “Well, I mind!” he said. “I wish you could understand that when I want to dance with any girl I don’t need my mother to ask her for me. I really am more than six years old!”

  He spoke with too much vehemence, and Mrs. Dowling at once saw how to have her way. As with husbands and wives, so with many fathers and daughters, and so with some sons and mothers: the man will himself be cross in public and think nothing of it, nor will he greatly mind a little crossness on the part of the woman; but let her show agitation before any spectator, he is instantly reduced to a coward’s slavery. Women understand that ancient weakness, of course; for it is one of their most important means of defense, but can be used ignobly.

  Mrs. Dowling permitted a tremulousness to become audible in her voice. “It isn’t very—very pleasant—to be talked to like that by your own son—before strangers!”

  “Oh, my! Look here!” the stricken Dowling protested. “I didn’t say anything, mother. I was just joking about how you never get over thinking I’m a little boy. I only——”

  Mrs. Dowling continued: “I just thought I was doing you a little favour. I didn’t think it would make you so angry.”

  “Mother, for goodness’ sake! Miss Adams’ll think——”

  “I suppose,” Mrs. Dowling interrupted, piteously, “I suppose it doesn’t matter what I think!”

  “Oh, gracious!”

  Alice interfered; she perceived that the ruthless Mrs. Dow­ling meant to have her way. “I think you’d better go, Frank. Really.”

  “There!” his mother cried. “Miss Adams says so, herself! What more do you want?”

  “Oh, gracious!” he lamented again, and, with a sick look over his shoulder at Alice, permitted his mother to take his arm and propel him away. Mrs. Dowling’s spirits had strikingly recovered even before the pair passed from the corridor: she moved almost bouncingly beside her embittered son, and her eyes and all the convolutions of her abundant face were blithe.

  Alice went in search of Walter, but without much hope of finding him. What he did with himself at frozen-face dances was one of his most successful mysteries, and her present excursion gave her no clue leading to its solution. When the musicians again lowered their instruments for an interval she had returned, alone, to her former seat within the partial shelter of the box-trees.

  She had now to practise an art that affords but a limited variety of methods, even to the expert: the art of seeming to have an escort or partner when there is none. The practitioner must imply, merely by expression and attitude, that the supposed companion has left her for only a few moments, that she herself has sent him upon an errand; and, if possible, the minds of observers must be directed toward a conclusion that this errand of her devising is an amusing one; at all events, she is alone temporarily and of choice, not deserted. She awaits a devoted man who may return at any instant.

  Other people desired to sit in Alice’s nook, but discovered her in occupancy. She had moved the vacant chair closer to her own, and she sat with her arm extended so that her hand, holding her lace kerchief, rested upon the back of this second chair, claiming it. Such a preëmption, like that of a traveller’s bag in the rack, was unquestionable; and, for additional evidence, sitting with her knees crossed, she kept one foot continuously moving a little, in cadence with the other, which tapped the floor. Moreover, she added a fine detail: her half-smile, with the under lip caught, seemed to struggle against repression, as if she found the service engaging her absent companion even more amusing than she would let him see when he returned: there was jovial intrigue of some sort afoot, evidently. Her eyes, beaming with secret fun, were averted from intruders, but sometimes, when couples approached, seeking possession of the nook, her thoughts about the absentee appeared to threaten her with outright laughter; and though one or two girls looked at her skeptically, as they turned away, their escorts felt no such doubts, and merely wondered what importantly funny affair Alice Adams was engaged in. She had learned to do it perfectly.

  She had learned it during the last two years; she was twenty when for the first time she had the shock of finding herself without an applicant for one of her dances. When she was sixteen “all the nice boys in town,” as her mother said, crowded the Adamses’ small veranda and steps, or sat near by, cross-legged on the lawn, on summer evenings; and at eighteen she had replaced the boys with “the older men.” By this time most of “the other girls,” her contemporaries, were away at school or college, and when they came home to stay, they “came out”—that feeble revival of an ancient custom offering the maiden to the ceremonial inspection of the tribe. Alice neither went away nor “came out,” and, in contrast with those who did, she may have seemed to lack freshness of lustre—jewels are richest when revealed all new in a white velvet box. And Alice may have been too eager to secure new retainers, too kind in her efforts to keep the old ones. She had been a belle too soon.

  Chapter VIII

  * * *

  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 tir
ed 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 fiancé, 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!”