Alice Adams

he 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.