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"Look at me!" he said. "Things like this dance now--is that so hard to bear?"
Alice tried to say, "No, papa," again, but she couldn't. Suddenly and in spite of herself she began to cry.
"Do you hear her?" his wife sobbed. "Now do you----"
He waved at them fiercely. "Get out of here!" he said. "Both of you! Get out of here!"
As they went, he dropped in his chair and bent far forward, so that his haggard face was concealed from them. Then, as Alice closed the door, he began to rub his knees again, muttering, "Oh, my, my! OH, my, my!"
CHAPTER XIV
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