Alice Adams--Booth Tarkington [43]
"Which one? 'Lest thy love prove likewise variable'? Juliet was saying it to a MAN, you know. She seems to have been ready to worry about his constancy pretty early in their affair!"
Her companion was again thoughtful. "Yes," he said, seeming to be rather irksomely impressed with Alice's suggestion. "Yes; it does appear so."
Alice glanced at his serious face, and yielded to an audacious temptation. "You mustn't take it so hard," she said, flippantly.
"It isn't about you: it's only about Romeo and Juliet."
"See here!" he exclaimed. "You aren't at your mind-reading again, are you? There are times when it won't do, you know!"
She leaned toward him a little, as if companionably: they were walking slowly, and this geniality of hers brought her shoulder in light contact with his for a moment. "Do you dislike my mind-reading?" she asked, and, across their two just touching shoulders, gave him her sudden look of smiling wistfulness. "Do you hate it?"
He shook his head. "No, I don't," he said, gravely. "It's quite pleasant. But I think it says, 'Gentlemen, beware!'"
She instantly moved away from him, with the lawless and frank laugh of one who is delighted to be caught in a piece of hypocrisy. "How lovely!" she cried. Then she pointed ahead. "Our walk is nearly over. We're coming to the foolish little house where I live. It's a queer little place, but my father's so attached to it the family have about given up hope of getting him to build a real house farther out. He doesn't mind our being extravagant about anything else, but he won't let us alter one single thing about his precious little old house. Well!" She halted, and gave him her hand. "Adieu!"
"I couldn't," he began; hesitated, then asked: "I couldn't come in with you for a little while?"
"Not now," she said, quickly. "You can come----" She paused.
"When?"
"Almost any time." She turned and walked slowly up the path, but he waited. "You can come in the evening if you like," she called back to him over her shoulder.
"Soon?"
"As soon as you like!" She waved her hand; then ran indoors and watched him from a window as he went up the street. He walked rapidly, a fine, easy figure, swinging his stick in a way that suggested exhilaration. Alice, staring after him through the irregular apertures of a lace curtain, showed no similar buoyancy. Upon the instant she closed the door all sparkle left her: she had become at once the simple and sometimes troubled girl her family knew.
"What is going on out there?" her mother asked, approaching from the dining-room.
"Oh, nothing," Alice said, indifferently, as she turned away. "That Mr. Russell met me downtown and walked up with me."
"Mr. Russell? Oh, the one that's engaged to Mildred?"
"Well--I don't know for certain. He didn't seem so much like an engaged man to me." And she added, in the tone of thoughtful preoccupation: "Anyhow--not so terribly!"
Then she ran upstairs, gave her father his tobacco, filled his pipe for him, and petted him as he lighted it.
CHAPTER XI
After that, she went to her room and sat down before her three-leaved mirror. There was where she nearly always sat when she came into her room, if she had nothing in mind to do. She went to that chair as naturally as a dog goes to his corner.
She leaned forward, observing her profile; gravity seemed to be her mood. But after a long, almost motionless scrutiny, she began to produce dramatic sketches upon that ever-ready stage, her countenance: she showed gaiety, satire, doubt, gentleness, appreciation of a companion and love-in-hiding-- all studied in profile first, then repeated for a "three- quarter view." Subsequently she ran through them, facing herself in full.
In this manner she outlined a playful scenario for her next interview with Arthur Russell; but grew solemn again, thinking of the impression she had already sought to give him. She had no twinges for any underminings of her "most intimate friend"--in fact, she felt that her work on a new portrait of Mildred for Mr.
Russell had been