The Essential Booth Tarkington Collection. Booth Tarkington
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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?"
"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!"
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."
Russell was amused. "Well, you see," he informed her, "as it happened, we had at least several other majors in our army. Why would I always be something 'pretty grand?'"
"You're related to the Palmers. Don't you notice they always affect the pretty grand?"
"Then you think I'm only one of their affectations, I take it."
"Yes, you seem to be the most successful one they've got!" Alice said, lightly. "You certainly do belong to them." And she laughed as if at something hidden from him. "Don't you?"
"But you've just excused me for that," he protested. "You said nobody could be blamed for my being their third cousin. What a contradictory girl you are!"
Alice shook her head. "Let's keep away from the kind of girl I am."
"No," he said. "That's just what I came here to talk about."
She shook her head again. "Let's keep first to the kind of man you are. I'm glad you were in the War."
"Why?"
"Oh, I don't know." She was quiet a moment, for she was thinking that here she spoke the truth: his service put about him a little glamour that helped to please her with him. She had been pleased with him during their walk; pleased with him on his own account; and now that pleasure was growing keener. She looked at him, and though the light in which she saw him was little more than starlight, she saw that he was looking steadily at her with a kindly and smiling seriousness. All at once it seemed to her that the night air was sweeter to breathe, as if a distant fragrance of new blossoms had been blown to her. She smiled back to him, and said, "Well, what kind of man are you?"
"I don't know; I've often wondered," he replied. "What kind of girl are you?"
"Don't you remember? I told you the other day. I'm just me!"
"But who is that?"
"You forget everything;" said Alice. "You told me what kind of a girl I am. You seemed to think you'd taken quite a fancy to me from the very first."
"So I did," he agreed, heartily.
"But how quickly you forgot it!"
"Oh, no. I only want YOU to say what kind of a girl you are."
She mocked him. "'I don't know; I've often wondered!' What kind of a girl does Mildred tell you I am? What has she said about me since she told you I was 'a Miss Adams?'"
"I don't know; I haven't asked her."
"Then DON'T ask her," Alice said, quickly.
"Why?"
"Because she's such a perfect creature and I'm such an imperfect one. Perfect creatures have the most perfect way of ruining the imperfect ones."
"But