Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 236, Indianapolis, Marion County, 10 February 1923 — Page 8

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ALICE ADAMS by BOOTH, TARKINGTON Second novel In the Times series by Indiana writers Copyright, 1921, by Doubleday, Page & Cos.

, T T'S better to have too much ** I than too little,” her mother B mother said cheerfully. "We don’t want him to think we’re the kind that skimp. Lord knows we nave to enough, though, most of the time! Get the flowers in water, child. I bought ’em at market because they are so much cheaper there, but they’ll keep fresh and nice. You fix ’em any way you want. Hurry! It’s got to be a busy day.” She had bought three dozen little roses. Alice took them hnd began to arrange them in vases, keeping the steins separated as far as possible so that the clumps would look larger. She put half a dozen in each of three vases in the “living-room,” placing one at each end of the mantelpiece. Then she took the rest of the roses to the dining-room, but she postponed the arrangement of them until the table should be set, just before dinner. She was thoughtful, planning to dry the stems and lay them on the tablecloth like a vine of roses running in a delicate, design, if she found that the dozen and a half she had left were eroug l . £:r that. If they weren’t she would arrange them in a vase. She looked a long time at the little roses in the basin of water, where she had put them: then she sighed, and went away to heavier tasks, while her mother worked in the kitchen with Malena. Alice dusted the “living room” and the dining room vigorously, though all the time with a look that grew more and more pensive; and having dusted everything, she wiped the furniture; rubbed it hard. After that, she washed the floors and the woodwork. Emerging from the kitchen at noon, Mrs. Adams found her daughter on hands and knees, scrubbing the of the columns between the hail and the “living room.” “Now, dearie,” she said, “you mustn’t ‘ire yourself out, and you’d better come and eat something. Your ifcther said he’d get a bite downtown today—he was going down to the bank—and Wf Iter eats downtown all the time lately, so I thought we * to set the table for lunch. Come <n. we’ll have something in the kitchen. "No,” Alice said, dully, as zb." went on with her work. “I don’t want anything.” Her mother came closer to her. “Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, briskly, “You seem kind of pale, to me; and you don’t 100k —you don’t look happy.” “Well ” Alice began, uncertainly, but said no more. “See here!” Mrs. Adams exclaimed. “This is all just for you! You ought to be enjoying it. Why, it’s the first time we’ve —we’ve entertained in 1 don’t know how long! I guess it’s almost since we had that little party when you were eighteen. What’s the matter with you?” “Nothing. I don’t know.” “But, dearies, aren’t you looking torward to this evening?” The girl looked up, showing a pallid and solemn face. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said, and tried to smile. “Os course we had to do it—l do think It’ll be nice. Os course I’m looking forward to it." CHAPTER XX SHE was indeed “looking forward” to that evening, but in a cloud of apprehension: and, although she could never have guessed it, this was the simultaneous condition of another person—none other than the guest for whose pleasure so much cooking and scrubbing seemed to be necessary. Morover, Mr. Arthur Russell’s premonitions were no product of mere coincidence; neither had any magical sympathy produced them. His state of mind was rather the result of rougher undercurrents which had all the time been running beneath the surface of a romantic friendship. Never shrewder than when she analyzed the gentlemen, Alice did not libel him when she said he was one of those quiet men who are a bit flirtatious, by which she meant that he was

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a bit “susceptible,” the same thing—and he had proved himself susceptible to Alice upon his first sight of her. “There!” he said to himself. “Who’s that?” And in the crowd of girls at his cousin’s dance, all strangers to him, she was the one he wanted to know. Since then, his summer evenings with her had been as secluded as if, for three hours after the falling of dusk, they two had drawn apart from the world to some dear bower of their own. The little veranda was that glamorous nook, with a faint golden light falling through the glass of the closed door upon Alice, and darkness elsewhere, except for the one round globe of the street lamp at the corner. The people who passed along the sidewalk, now and then, were only shadows with voices, moving vaguely under the maple trees that loomed in obscure contours against the stars. So, as the two sat together, the back of the world was the wall and closed door behind them; and Russell, when he was away from Alice, always thought of her as sitting there before the closed door. A glamour was about her thus, and a spell upon him; but he had a formless anxiety never put into words; all the pictures of her in his mind stopped at the closed door. He had another anxiety; and, for the greater part, this was of her own creating. She had too often asked him (no matter how gaily) what he heard about her; too often begged him j not to hear anything. Then, hoping to forestall whatever he might hear, she had been at too great pains to account for it, to discredit and mock it; and, though he laughed at her for this, telling her truthfully he did not even hear her mentioned, the everlasting irony that deals with all such human forefendings prevailed. Lately, he had half confessed to her what a nervousness she had produced. “You make me dread the day when I’ll hear somebody speaking of you. You’re getting me so upset about it that if I ever hear anybody so much as say the name 'Alice Adams,’ I’ll j run!” The confession was but half of one because he laughed; and she took it for an assurance of loyalty in the from of burlesque. She misunderstood; he laughed, but his nervousness was genuine. After any stroke of events, whe’her a ha/ vg -v;e or a catastrophe, we see that the m.**rials for it were a long time gathering, a; V the only marvel is that the stroke waa .i-H prophesied. What bore the air of coincidence may remain fatal to this later flew; but, with the ha v hazard aspect dispelled, there is left for scrutiny the same ancient hint from the Infinite to the effect that since events have never yet failed to be law-abiding, perhaps it were well | for us to deduce that they will continue to be so until further notice. . . . On the day that was to open the closed door in the background of his pictures of Alice, Russell lunched with his relatives. There were but the four people, Russell and Mildred and her mother and father, in the great, cool dining-room. Arched French windows, shaded by awnings, admitted a mellow light and looked out upon a green lawn ending in a long conservatory, which revealed through, its glass panes a carnival of plants in luxuriant blossom. From his seat at the table, Russell glanced out at this pretty display, and informed his cousins that he was surprised. “You have such a glorious spread of flowers all over the house,” he said, “I didn't suppose you’d have any left out yonder. In fact, I didn’t know there were so many splendid flowers in the world.” Mrs. Palmer, large, calm, fair, like her daughter, responded with a mild reproach: “That’s because you haven’t been cousinly enough to get used to them, Arthur, lou ve almost taught us to forget what you look like.” In defense Russell waved a hand toward her husband. “You see, he's begun to keep me so hard at work —” But Mr. Palmer declined the responsibility. “Up to four or five in the afternoon, perhaps,” he said. “After that, the young gentleman is as much a stranger to me as he is to my family. I’ve been wondering who she could be.” “When a man’s preoccupied there must be a lady then?” Russell inquired. I “That seems to be the view of your ; sex,” Mrs. Palmer suggested. “It was my husband who said it, not Mildred or I.” Mildred smiled faintly. “Papa may be singular in his ideas; they may come entirely from his own experi- ! ence, and have nothing to do with ArI thur.” “Thank you, Mildred,” her cousin said, bowing to her gratefully. "You seem to understand my character—and your father’s quite as well!” However, Mildred remained grave in the face of this customary pleasantry, not because the old jesL, worn round, like what preceded it, rolled in an old groove, but because of some preoccupation of her own. Her faint smile had disappeared, and, as her cousin’s glance met hers, she looked down; yet not before he had seen in her eyes the flicker of something like a question—a question both poignant and dismayed. He may have understood it; for his own smile vanished at once in favor of a reciprocal solemnity. “You see, Arthur," Mrs. Palmer said, “Mildred is always a good cousin. She and I stand by you, even if you do stay away from us for weeks and weeks.” Then, observing that he appeared to be so occupied with a bunch of iced grapes upon his plate that he had not heard her, she began to talk to her husband, asking him what was “going on downtown.” Arthur continued to eat his grapes, but he ventured to look again at Mildred after a few moments. She, also, appeared to be occupied with a bunch of grapes though she ate none, and only pulled them from their stems. She sat straight, her features as composed and pure as those of anew marble saint in a cathedral niche; yet her downcast eyes seemed to conceal many thoughts; and her cousin, against his will, was more aware of what these thoughts might be than of the leisurely conversation between her father and mother. All at once, however, he heard something that startled j him, and he listened—and here was the effect of all Alice’s forefendings; he listened from the first with a sinking- heart.

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Mr. Palmer, mildly amused by what he was telling his wife, had just spoken the words, "this Virgil Adams.” What he had said was, “this Virgil Adams —that's the man’s name. Queer case." "Who told you?” Mrs. Palmer inj quired, not much interested. "Alfred Lamb,” her husband answered. "He was laughing about his father, at the club. You see the old gentleman takes a great pride in his

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

THE OLD HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

judgment of men, and always boasted to his sons that he’d never in his life made a mistake in trusting the wrong man. Now Alfred and James Albert, Junior, think they have a great joke on him; and they’ve twitted him so much about it he’ll scarcely speak to them. From the first, Alfred says, the old chap’s only repartee was, ‘You wait and you’ll- see’. And they’ve | asked him so often to show them what * they’re goin£ to see that he won’t

THE IAHiANALOLIS TIMES

say anything at all!” "He’s a funny old fellow,” Mrs. Palmer observed. “But he's so shrewd I can’t imagine his being deceived for such a long time. Twenty years, you said?” “Yes, longer than that, I understand. It appears when this man—this Adams —was a young clerk, the old gentleman trusted him with one of his business secrets, a glue process that Mr. Lamb had spent some money

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to get hold of. The old chap thought this Adams was going to have quite a feature with the Lamb concern, and of course never dreamed he was dishonest. Alfred says this Adams hasn’t been of any real use for years, and they should have let him go as dead wood, but the old gentleman wouldn't hear of it, and insisted on his being kept on the pay roll; so they just decided to look on it as a sort of pension. Well, one morning last March

FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—By AHERN

the man had an attack of some soi-t down there, and Mr. Lamb got his own car out and went home with him, himself, and worried about him and went to see him no end, all the time he was ill.” “He would,” Mrs. Palmer said, approvingly. “He's a kind-hearted creature, that old man.” Her husband laughed. “Alfred says he thinks his kind-heartedness is about cured! It seems that as soon as the

SATURDAY, I LB. 10,

—By ALLMAN

man get well again he deliberately walked off with the old gentleman’s glue secret. Just calmly stole it! Alfred says he believes that if he had a stroke in the office now, himself, his father wouldn’t lift a linger to help him!” Mrs. .Palmer repeated the name to herself thoughtfully. “ ‘Adams'—’Virgil Adams.* You said his name was Virgil Adams?” "Yes.” (To Be Continued,)