1922 Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington

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intermittently, she had not sprightliness enough left in her to be envious of their gaiety. Besides, these
neighbours were ineligible even for her envy, being of another caste; they could never know a dance at the
Palmers', except remotely, through a newspaper. Their laughter was for the encouragement of snappy young
men of the stores and offices down-town, clerks, bookkeepers, what not--some of them probably graduates of
Frincke's Business College.
Then, as she recalled that dark portal, with its dusty stairway mounting between close walls to disappear in the
upper shadows, her mind drew back as from a doorway to Purgatory. Nevertheless, it was a picture often in
her reverie; and sometimes it came suddenly, without sequence, into the midst of her other thoughts, as if it
leaped up among them from a lower darkness; and when it arrived it wanted to stay. So a traveller, still
roaming the world afar, sometimes broods without apparent reason upon his family burial lot: "I wonder if I
shall end there."
The foreboding passed abruptly, with a jerk of her breath, as the street-lamp revealed a tall and easy figure
approaching from the north, swinging a stick in time to its stride. She had given Russell up --and he came.
"What luck for me!" he exclaimed. "To find you alone!"
Alice gave him her hand for an instant, not otherwise moving. "I'm glad it happened so," she said. "Let's stay
out here, shall we? Do you think it's too provincial to sit on a girl's front steps with her?"
"'Provincial?' Why, it's the very best of our institutions," he returned, taking his place beside her. "At least, I
think so to-night."
"Thanks! Is that practice for other nights somewhere else?"
CHAPTER XII 77
"No," he laughed. "The practicing all led up to this. Did I come too soon?"
"No," she replied, gravely. "Just in time!"
"I'm glad to be so accurate; I've spent two evenings wanting to come, Miss Adams, instead of doing what I
was doing."
"What was that?"
"Dinners. Large and long dinners. Your fellow- citizens are immensely hospitable to a newcomer."
"Oh, no," Alice said. "We don't do it for everybody. Didn't you find yourself charmed?"
"One was a men's dinner," he explained. "Mr. Palmer seemed to think I ought to be shown to the principal
business men."
"What was the other dinner?"
"My cousin Mildred gave it."
"Oh, DID she!" Alice said, sharply, but she recovered herself in the same instant, and laughed. "She wanted to
show you to the principal business women, I suppose."
"I don't know. At all events, I shouldn't give myself out to be so much feted by your 'fellow- citizens,' after all,
seeing these were both done by my relatives, the Palmers. However, there are others to follow, I'm afraid. I
was wondering--I hoped maybe you'd be coming to some of them. Aren't you?"
"I rather doubt it," Alice said, slowly. "Mildred's dance was almost the only evening I've gone out since my
father's illness began. He seemed better that day; so I went. He was better the other day when he wanted those
cigars. He's very much up and down." She paused. "I'd almost forgotten that Mildred is your cousin."
"Not a very near one," he explained. "Mr. Palmer's father was my great-uncle."
"Still, of course you are related."
"Yes; that distantly."
Alice said placidly, "It's quite an advantage."
He agreed. "Yes. It is."
"No," she said, in the same placid tone. "I mean for Mildred."
"I don't see----"
She laughed. "No. You wouldn't. I mean it's an advantage over the rest of us who might like to compete for
some of your time; and the worst of it is we can't accuse her of being unfair about it. We can't prove she
showed any trickiness in having you for a cousin. Whatever else she might plan to do with you, she didn't plan
that. So the rest of us must just bear it!"
"The 'rest of you!' " he laughed. "It's going to mean a great deal of suffering!"
CHAPTER XII 78
Alice resumed her placid tone. "You're staying at the Palmers', aren't you?"
"No, not now. I've taken an apartment. I'm going to live here; I'm permanent. Didn't I tell you?"
"I think I'd heard somewhere that you were," she said. "Do you think you'll like living here?"
"How can one tell?"
"If I were in your place I think I should be able to tell, Mr. Russell."
"How?"
"Why, good gracious!" she cried. "Haven't you got the most perfect creature in town for your--your cousin?
SHE expects to make you like living here, doesn't she? How could you keep from liking it, even if you tried
not to, under the circumstances?"
"Well, you see, there's such a lot of circumstances," he explained; "I'm not sure I'll like getting back into a
business again. I suppose most of the men of my age in the country have been going through the same
experience: the War left us with a considerable restlessness of spirit."
"You were in the War?" she asked, quickly, and as quickly answered herself, "Of course you were!'
"I was a left-over; they only let me out about four months ago," he said. "It's quite a shake-up trying to settle
down again."
"You were in France, then?"
"Oh, yes; but I didn't get up to the front much-- only two or three times, and then just for a day or so. I was in
the transportation service."
"You were an officer, of course."
"Yes," he said. "They let me play I was a major."
"I guessed a major," she said. "You'd always be pretty grand, of course." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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