Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 214, Indianapolis, Marion County, 16 January 1923 — Page 8

8

ALICE ADAMS by BOOTH TARKINGTON Copyright, 1921, by Doubleday, Page & Cos.

Begin Here ALICE ADAMS, high spirited and ambitious for a social career. Jinds many thorns in her path. Her father. VIRGIL ADAMS, for years a faithful employe of . I.AMB & CO., receives scarcely enough salary to keep his family comfortable, ana has succumbed to a nervous breakdown. WALTER, the pampered and only son. seens his friends utside the circle of those oi his family and when asked to tano his sister to the fashionable dance of her MILDRED, refuses emphatically, but is finally persuaded by his mother to do so. Go on with the story ~ y GUESS it Is! The feller owes I me some money, and this 19 the only way I’d ever get It off him.” “Is he a garage-keeper?” "Not exactly!” Walter uttered husky sounds of amusement. “You'll be just as happy, I guess, if you don t know who he is,” he said. His tone misgave her; and she said truthfully that she was content not to know who owned the car. I Joke sometimes about how you keep things to yourself,” she added, “but I really never do pry In your affairs, Walter.” “Oh, no, you don’t!” “Indeed, I don’t.” -Yes, you're mighty nice and cooing when you get me where you want me." he jeered. "Well. I Just as soon tell you where I get this car.” "I’d just as soon you wouldnt, Walter.” she said, hurriedly. “Please don't." , But Walter meant to tell her. 'Why, there’s nothin’ exactly criminal about it,” he said. "It belongs to old J. A. Lamb himself. He keeps it for their coon chauffeur. I rent it from him.” “Prom Mr. Lamb?” "No; from the coon chauffeur.” “Waiter!” she gasped. “Sure I do! I can get It any night when the coon Isn’t goin’ to use it himself. He’s drlvin’ their limousine tonight—that little Henrietta Lamb's goin’ to the party, no matter If her father has only been dead less'n a year!” He paused, then Inquired: ‘Well, how d’you like it?” She did not speak, and he began to be remorseful for haring imparted so much information, though his way of expressing regret was his own. “Well, vou will make the folks make me take you to parties!” he said. "I got to do it the best way I can. don’t I?” Then as she made no response, “Oh, the car’s clean enough.” he said. “This coon, he’s as particular as any white man; you needn’t worry about that.” And as she still said nothing, he added gruffly: “I’d of had a better car if I could afforded It. You needn’t get so upset about It.” “I don't understand —” she said in a low voice—“l don’t understand how you know such people." “Such people as who?” “As —colored chauffeurs." “Oh, look here, now!" he protested, loudly. “Don’t you know this Is a democratic country?” “Not quite that democratic, is it, Walter?” “The trouble with you,” he retorted, “you don’t know there’s anybody in town except Just this silkshirt crowd.” He paused, seeming to await a refutation; but as none came, he expressed himself definitely: “They make me sick.” They were coming near their destination, and the glow of the big. brightly lighted house was seen before them In the wet night Other cars, not like theirs, were approaching this center of brilliance: long triangles of light near the ground swept through the fine drizzle; small red tail-lights gleamed again from the moist pavement of the street; and, through the myriads of little glistening leaves along the curving driveway, glimpses were caught of lively colours moving in a white glare as the limousines released their occupants under the shelter of the porte-cochere. Alice clutched Walter’s arm in a panic: they were just at the driveway entrance. “Walter, we mustn’t go in there. “What’s the matter?*’ “leave this awful car outside.” “Why, I—” “Stop!” she insisted, vehemently. “You’ve got to! Go back!” “Oh, Glory!” The little car was between the entrance posts; but Walter backed It out, avoiding a collision with an impressive machine which swerved away from them and passed on toward the porte-cochere, showing a man’s face grinning at the window as it went by. “Flivver runabout got the wrong number!” he said. “Did he see us?” Alice cried. “Did who see us?” “Harvey Malone —In that foreign coupe.” “No; he couldn't tell who we were under this top,” Walter assured her as he brought * the little car to a standstill beside the curbstone, out in the street. “What’s it matter if he did, the big fish?” “Well, want to go on back?” Walter inquired. “You bet I'm willing!” “No." “Well, then, what's the matter our drivin’ on up to the porte-cochere? There's room for me to park just the •- a- of it.” “no, no!** n- 1 you expect to do? Sit here *.H night?” “No, leave the car here.” “I don't care where we leave it,” he said. “Sit still till I lock her, so none o' these millionaires around here’ll run off with her.” He got out with a padlock and chain; and. haring put these in place, offered Alice his hand. “Come on. If you’re ready.” “Walt,” she said, and. divesting herself of the raincoat, handed it to Walter. "Please leave this with your '•hings in the men’s dressing-room, as f it were an extra one of your own, Walter.” He nodded; she jumped out, and they scurried through the drizzle. As they reached the porte-cochere she began to laugh airily, and spoke to the impassive man In livery who stood there. "Joke on us!” she said, hurrying by him toward the door of the house. “Our car broke down outside the gate.” The man remained impassive, though he responded with a faint gleam as Walter, looking back at him, produced for his benefit a cynical distortion of countenance which offered little confirmation of Alice’s account of things. Then the door was swiftly •pened to the brother and sister, and (Jjey came Into a marble-floored hall.

where a dozen sleeked young men lounged, smoked cigarettes and fastened their gloves as they waited for their ladies. Alice nodded to one or another of these, and went quickly on, her face uplifted and smiling, but Walter detained her at the door to which she hastened. “Listen here,” he said. "I suppose you want me to dance the first dance with you ” “If you please, Walter,” she said meekly. “How long you goin’ to hang around fixin’ up in that dressin’room?” “I’ll be out before you’re ready yourself.” she promised him; and kept her word, she was so eager for her good time to begin. When he came for her, they went down the hall to a corridor opening upon three great rooms that had been thrown open together, with the furniture removed and the broad floors waxed. At one end of the corridor musicians sat in a green grove, and Walter, with some interest, turned toward these; but his sister, pressing his arm, impelled him in the opposite direction. "What’s the matter now 7” he asked. “That’s Jazz Louie and his half-breed bunch—three white and four mulatto. Let’s ?” ri\ T o, no,” she whispered. “We must speak to Mildred and Mr. and Mrs. Palmer. ” “ ‘Speak’ to 'em? I haven’t got a thing to say to those berries!” “Walter, won’t you please behave?” He seemed to consent, for the moment, at least, and suffered her to take him down the corridor toward a floral bower where the hostees stood with her father and mother. Other couples and groups were moving in the same direction, carrying with them a hubbub of laughter and fragmentary chatterfngs; and Alice, smiling all the time, greeted people on every side of her eagerly—a little more eagerly than most of them responded—while Walter nodded In a non-committal manner to one or two, said nothing, and yawned audibly, the last resource of a person who finds himself nervous in a false situation. He repeated his yawn and was beginning another when a convulsive pressure upon his arm made him understand that lie must abandon this method of reassuring himself. They were close upon the floral bower. Mildred was giving her hand to one and another of her guests as rapidly as she could, passing them on to her father and mother, and at the same time resisting the efforts of three or four detached bachelors who besought her to give over her duty in favor of the dance-music just beginning to blare. She was a large, fair girl, with a kindness of eye somewhat withheld by an expression of fastidiousness; at first sight of her it was clear that she would never In her life do anything “incorrect,” or wear anything ‘incorrect.” But her correctness was of the finer sort, and had no air of being studied or achieved; conduct would never offer her a problem to be settled from a book of rules, for the rules were so deep within her that she was unconscious of them. And behind this perfection there was an even ampler perfection of what Mrs. Adams called “background.” The big, rich, simple house was part of it, and Mildred’s father and mother were part of It. They stood beside her, large, serene people, murmuring graciously and gently inclining their handsome heads as they gave their hands to the guests: and even the youngest and most ebullient of these took on a hushed mannerliness with a closer approach to the bower. When the opportunity came for Alice and Walter to pass within this precinct, Alice, going first, leaned forward and whispered In Mildred’s ear: "You didn’t wear the maize georgette! That’s what I thought you were going to. But you look simply darling! And those pearls—" Others were crowding decorously forward, anxious to be done with ceremony and get to the dancing: and Mildred did not prolong the intimacy of Alice’s enthusiastic whispering, with a faint accession of color and a smile tending somewhat in the direction of rigidity, she carried Alice’s hand immediately onward to Mrs. Palmer’s. Alice’s own color showed a little heightening as she accepted the suggestion thus implied; nor was that emotional tint in any wise decreased. a nVbment later, by an impression that Walter, In concluding the brief exchange of courtesies between himself and the stately Mr. Palmer, had again reassured himself with a yawn. But she did not speak of it to "Walter; she preferred not to confirm the impression and to leave in her mind a possible doubt that he had done it. He followed her out upon the waxed floor, said resignedly: “Well, come on,” put his arm about her, and they began to dance. Alice danced gracefully and wen. but not so well as Waiter. Os all the steps and runs, of all the whimsical e.nd twirlings, of all the rhythmic swavings and dips commanded t hat season by such blarings as were tho barbaric product, loud and wild, of the Jazz Louies and their half-breed bunches, the thin and sallow youth was a master. Upon his face could be seen contempt of the eftsy marvels be performed as he moved in swift precision from one smooth agility to another; and if some too-dalnty or jealous cavalier complained that to be so much a stylist in dancing was “not quite like a gentleman.” at least Walter’s style was what the music called for. No other dancer in the room could be thought comparable to him. Alice told him so. “It’s wonderful!” she said. "And the mystery Is, where you ever learned to do it! You never went to dancing-school, but there Isn’t a man in the room who can dance half so well. I don’t see why, when you dance like this, you always make such a fuss about coming to parties." He sounded his brief laugh, a jeering bark out of one side of the mouth, and swung her miraculously through a closing space between two other couples. “You know a lot about what goes on, don’t you. You prob’ly think there’s no other place to dance In this town except these frozen-face joints.” “ ‘Frozen face?’ she echoed, laughingly. "Why, even-body’s having a splendid time. Look at them.” “Oh, they holler loud enough,” he said. "They do It to make each other think they’re havin’ a gx>od time. You

DOINGS OP THE DUFFS—

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don’t call that Palmer family frozenface berries, I s’pose. No?” "Certainly not. They’re just dignified and —” “Yeuh!” said Walter. “They’re dignified, ’specially when you tried to whisper to Mildred to show how in with her you were, and she moved you on that way. She’s a hot friend, isn’t she!” “She didn’t mean anything by lt_ She—"

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

THE OLD HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

“Ole Palmer's a hearty, slap you-on-the-back ole berry,” Walter Interrupted; adding- In a casual tone, "All I’d like, I’d like to hit him.” ’’Walter! By the way, you mustn’t forget to ask Mildred for a dance before the evening Is over.” “Me?” He produced the lop-sided appearance of his laugh, but without making It vocal. “You watch me do ltl” "She won’t have one left.

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but you must ask her, anyway.” “Why must I?” “Because, In the first place, you’re supposed to, and, in the second place, she’s my most Intimate friend-” “Yeuh? Is she? I’ve heard you pull that ‘most-intimate-friend’ stuff often enough about her. What’s she ever do to show she Is?” “Never mind. You really must ask her, Walter. I want you to; and I ■want you to ask several other girls

Olivia Gets a Thrill

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Land This On V<ur Lipstick

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after while; I’ll tell you who.” “Keep on wanting; it’ll do you good.” •> “Oh, but you really—” “Listen!” he said. “I’m just as liable to dance with any of these fairies as I am to buy a bucket o’ rusty tacks and eat ’em. Forget it! Soon as I get rid of you I’m goln’ back to that room where I left my hat and overcoat and smoke myself to death.” “Well,” she said, a little ruefully,

FRECKLES AND HIS

OUK UOARrn.NG HOUSE—By AHERN

as the frenzy of Jazz Louie and his half-breeds was suddenly abated to silence, “you mustn’t —you mustn’t get rid of me too soon, Walter.” (To Be Continued.) 101, No Wrinkles LONDON, Jan. 16.—Mrs. Fanny Haynes’ face doesn’t show a single wrinkle, though she’s just celebrated her 101st birthday her*. She is mother of eight.

FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

Seek Sunken Gold M CAPE TOWN, Jan. 16.—A vasC gold treasure, thought to be In the hull of the sunken steamer Grosvenor, off Pondoland, is being sought by a syndicate which is digging a submarine tunnel in an effort to reach the ship. A cubic foot of water Is convertible Into 1,682 cublo feet ol steam.

JAN. 16, 1923

—By ALLMAN

—By AL POSEN.