A Man's Hearth
by Eleanor M. Ingram · English · Gutenberg #36503 · 355,967 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: A Man's Hearth
Author: Eleanor M. Ingram
Illustrator: Edmund Frederick
Release date: June 23, 2011 [eBook #36503]
Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A MAN'S HEARTH ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Susan Skinner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
A MAN'S HEARTH
* * * * *
[Illustration: ELSIE FELT THE GLANCE PASS ACROSS HER AND REST ON ANTHONY
_Page 223_]
* * * * *
A MAN'S HEARTH
BY
ELEANOR M. INGRAM
AUTHOR OF
"FROM THE CAB BEHIND," "THE UNAFRAID," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOR BY
EDMUND FREDERICK
[Illustration]
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1915
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. TONY ADRIANCE----"MILLIONS, YOU KNOW!" 9
II. HIS NEIGHBOR'S WIFE 27
III. THE GIRL OUTSIDE 45
IV. THE WOMAN WHO GRASPED 55
V. THE LITTLE RED HOUSE 77
VI. THE WOMAN WHO GAVE 96
VII. THE DARING ADVENTURE 109
VIII. ANDY OF THE MOTOR-TRUCKS 110
IX. THE LUCK IN THE HOUSE 144
X. MRS. MASTERSON TAKES TEA 155
XI. THE GLOWING HEARTH 173
XII. THE UPPER TRAIL 184
XIII. WHAT TONY BUILT 203
XIV. THE CABARET DANCER 215
XV. THE OTHER MAN'S ROAD 229
XVI. THE GUITAR OF ALENYA OF THE SEA 243
XVII. RUSSIAN MIKE AND MAITRE RAOUL GALVEZ 261
XVIII. THE CHALLENGE 271
XIX. THE ADRIANCES 283
XX. THE CORNERSTONE 308
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Elsie felt the Glance pass across Her and Rest on Anthony _Frontispiece_
There Would Have Been no more Bedtime Romps for Masterson and His Son 71
The Winter was Hard and Long, but Never Dull to Them 173
A MAN'S HEARTH
CHAPTER I
TONY ADRIANCE--"MILLIONS, YOU KNOW!"
The man who had taken shelter in the stone pavilion hesitated before
taking a place on the curved bench before him. He had the air of
awaiting some sign of welcome or dismissal from the seat's occupant;
receiving none, he sat down and turned his gaze toward the broad Drive,
where people were scattering before the sudden flurry of rain. It
suggested spring rather than autumn, this shower that had swept out of a
wind-blown cloud and was already passing.
After a moment he drew a cigar-case from his pocket, then paused.
Obviously, he was not familiar with the etiquette of the public parks,
with their freedom and lack of formalities. He was beside a woman--a
girl. He had no wish to be inconsiderate, yet, to speak--in suspicious,
sardonic New York--that was to invite misconstruction, or a flirtation.
Still----
"May I smoke?" he suddenly and brusquely shot his question.
The girl turned towards him. Her eyes were as gray as the rain; heavily
shadowed by their lashes, their expression had a misted aloofness
suggesting thoughts hastily recalled from remote distances. He realized
that he might have come, smoked, and gone without drawing her notice any
more than a blowing leaf. She was not a beauty, but he liked the
clearing frankness of the glance with which she judged him, and judged
aright. He liked it, too, that she did not smile, and that her steadfast
regard showed neither invitation nor hostility.
"Thank you," she answered. "Please do."
The form of her reply seemed to him peculiarly gracious and unexpected,
as if she gave with both hands instead of doling out the merely
necessary. He never had known a woman who gave; they always took, in his
experience. Unconsciously he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of the
tone rather than the permission. That was all, of course. She returned
to her study of river and sky, while he drew out his cigar. But
afterward he looked at her, unobtrusively.
She was dressed altogether in black, but not the black of mourning, he
judged. The costume, plain but not shabby, conventional without being
up-to-date, touched him with a vague sense of familiarity, yet escaped
recognition. It should have told him something of her, but it did not,
except that she had not much money for frocks. He was only slightly
interested; he might not have glanced her way again if he had not been
struck by her rapt absorption in the sunset panorama before them. She
had gone back to that place of thought from which his speech had called
her; withdrawn from all around her as one who goes into a secret room
and closes a door against the world. And she looked happy, or at least
serenely at peace with her dreams. The man sighed with envious
impatience, striving to follow her gaze and share the enchantment.
The enchantment was not for him. The brief storm had left tumbled masses
of purple cloud hanging in the deep-rose tinted sky, in airy mockery and
imitation of the purplish wall of the Palisades standing knee-deep in
the rosy waters of the Hudson. Along the crest of the great rock walls
lights blossomed like flowers through the violet mist, at the walls'
base half-seen buildings flashed with lighted windows. He saw that it
was all very pretty, but he had seen it so a hundred times without
especial emotion.
His cigar was finished, yet the girl had not once moved. Abruptly, as
before, he spoke to her, as he moved to leave.
"What are you looking at?" he demanded. "Oh, I'm not trying to be
impertinent--I would like to know what you see worth while? You have not
moved for half an hour. I wish you could show me something worth that."
Again she turned and considered him with grave attention. His tired
young face bore the scrutiny; she answered him.
"I am seeing all the things I have not got."
"Over there?"
She yielded his lack of imagination.
"Well, yes; over there. Don't you know it is always Faeryland--the place
over there?"
"It is only Jersey--?"
She corrected him.
"The place out of reach. The place between which and ourselves flows a
river, or rises a cliff. One can imagine anything to be there. See that
grim, unreal castle, there in the shadows, its windows all gleaming with
light from within. Well, it is a factory where they make soap-powder,
but from here I can see Fair Rosamond leaning from its arched windows,
if I choose, or armored and plumed knights riding into its gates."
"Oh!" Disappointment made the exclamation listless. "Story-making, you
were? I am afraid I can't see that way, thank you; I haven't the head
for it."
For the first time she smiled, with a warm lighting of her rain-gray
eyes and a Madonna-like protectiveness of expression. He felt as
distinct an impression as if she had laid her hand on his arm with an
actual touch of sympathy.
"But I do not see that way, either," she explained. "That was an
illustration. I mean that one can make pictures there of all the _real_
things that are not real for one's self; at least, not yet real. It is a
game to play, I suppose, while one waits."
"I do not understand."
She made a gesture of resignation, and was mute. He comprehended that
confidence would go no farther.
"Thank you," he accepted the rebuke. "It was good of you to put up with
my curiosity and--not to misunderstand my speaking."
"Oh, no! I hate to misunderstand, ever; it is so stupid."
Although he had risen, he did not go at once. The evening colors faded,
first from river, then from sky. With autumn's suddenness, dusk swept
down. Playing children, groups of young people and promenaders passed by
the little pavilion in a gay current; automobiles multiplied with the
homing hour of the city. New York thought of dining, simply or superbly,
as might be.
The silent tete-a-tete in the pavilion was broken by the softest sound
in the world--a baby's drowsy, gurgling chuckle of awakening. Instantly
the girl in black started from revery, and then the man first noticed
that a white-and-gold baby carriage stood at her end of the curved seat.
Astonished, incredulous, he saw her throw back miniature coverlets of
frost-white eiderdown and bend over the little face, pink as a
hollyhock, nestled there. For the first time in his life he witnessed
the pretty byplay of the nursery--dropped kisses, the answering pats of
chubby, useless hands, love-words and replying baby speech,
inarticulate, adorable.
The scene struck deeply into inner places of thought he had never known
lay at the back of consciousness. He never had thought very profoundly,
until the last few weeks. And even yet he was struggling, turning in a
mental circle of doubt, rather than thinking. The girl and the child
flung open a door through which he glimpsed strange vistas, startling in
their forbidden possibilities. He stood watching, dumb, until she turned
to him. Her face was kindled and laughing; she looked infinitely candid
and good. But--she looked maid, not mother. Somehow he felt that.
"You are married?" he questioned, almost roughly. "I did not suppose----
You are married, then?"
Into her expression swept scorn for his dulness, compassion for his
ignorance, fused by the flaring fire of some intense feeling far beyond
his ken.
"Married? No. Or I would not be here!"
"Why? Where would you be?"
The baby was standing upright in its coach. The girl passed an arm about
the tottering form to steady the fat little feet, and retorted on her
questioner.
"Where? Home, of course, making ready for my man! If I lived
there,"--with a gesture toward the tall, luxurious apartment houses on
the Drive, behind them, "I would be choosing my prettiest frock and
coiling my hair the way he liked best. If I lived there, across the
river in one of those little houses, I would be making the house bright
with lamps; wearing my whitest apron and making the supper hot--very
hot, for there is frost in the air and he would be cold and tired and
hungry. And I would have his chair ready and draw the curtains because
he was inside and no one else mattered." She paused, drawing a deep
breath. "That is where I would be," she concluded, as one patiently
lessoning a dull pupil, and reseated the baby in its coach in obvious
preparation for departure.
The man had stood quite still, dazed. But when she turned away, with a
bend of her dark little head by way of farewell, he roused himself and
overtook her in a stride.
"Thank you," he said, "I mean for letting me know anyone could feel like
that. I suppose a great many people do, only I have not met that kind?
No, never mind answering; how should you know? But, thank you. May I--if
I see you again--may I speak to you?"
She surveyed him gravely, as if with clairvoyant ability to read a
history from his face, a face open-browed and planned for strength, by
its square outlines, but that somehow only succeeded in being pleasant
and passively agreeable. It was the face of a man who never had been
brought against conflict or any need for stern decision, whose true
character was a sword never yet drawn from the sheath. And now, he was
in trouble; so much lay plain to see. He was in bitter trouble and, she
guessed, alone with the trouble.
He stood in mute acceptance of her scrutiny, recognizing her right,
since he had asked so much. Before she spoke, he knew her answer, seeing
it foreshadowed in the gray eyes.
"If you wish to very much. But--not too soon again."
She stepped from the curb, allowing no reply, but without apparent
haste, pushing the carriage in which the baby chuckled and twisted to
peep back at her. He watched her thread her way through the rushing
lines of pleasure traffic; saw her reach the other side and disappear
behind a knoll clothed with turf and evergreens that rose between them.
The woman from whose presence he had come to this chance encounter once
had told him that any human being looked absurd propelling a baby-coach.
He recalled that statement now, and did not find it true. It was such a
sane thing to do, so natural and good. At least, it seemed so when this
girl did it. He envied the man, whoever he might be, who did, or would
love her; envied him the clean simplicity she would make of life and the
absence of hateful complications.
People were glancing curiously at his motionless figure; he aroused
himself and walked on. He had chosen his own way of living, he angrily
told himself; there was no excuse for whining if he did not like the
place where free-will had led him. Yet--had he? Or had he, instead,
been trapped? The doubt was ugly. He walked faster to escape it, but it
ran at his heels like one of those sinister demon-animals of medieval
legend.
Across the blackening river electric signs were flashing into view;
gigantic affairs insolently shouldering themselves into the unwilling
attention, as indeed they were designed to do by Jersey's desire for the
greater city's patronage. Looking toward one of these, the man read it
with a sullen distaste: "Adriance's Paper." That simple announcement
marked an industry, even a monopoly, great enough to have been subjected
more than once to the futile investigations of an uneasy government.
The family name was sufficiently unusual, the family fortune
sufficiently well known to have been bracketted together for him
wherever he had gone. In school, in college, and later, always he had
found a courier whisper running officiously before him, "Young
Adriance--paper, you know. Millions!" And always it had led him into
trouble; at twenty-six he was just commencing to realize that fact. The
trouble never had been very serious until now. He never had committed
anything his mother's church would have called a mortal sin. Even yet he
stood only on the verge of commission. But he could not draw back; he
was like a man being inexorably pushed into a dark place.
The house toward which he turned did not arrest the eye by any
ostentatious display. In fact, it was remarkable only for being one of
the very few houses on lower Riverside Drive which possessed lawns and
verandas. Set in a small town, or a suburb, the gray stone villa would
have been merely "very handsome." Here, it gained the value of an
exotic. To Anthony Adriance, junior, as he climbed the steps that night,
it seemed to stare arrogantly from its score of blinking windows at the
glittering sign on the opposite shore. Cause and effect, they duly
acknowledge each other. The man paused to glance at them both, then let
his gaze fall to the avenue below the terraced lawn. That way the
black-gowned girl had gone. Probably she had turned across into the
city; her dress was hardly that of a resident of the neighborhood.
The man who took his hat and coat deferentially breathed a message. Mr.
Adriance was in the library and desired to know if his son was dining at
home.
"Yes," was the prompt, even eager reply. "Certainly, if he wishes it.
Or--never mind; I will go in, myself."
The inquiry was unusual. It was not Mr. Adriance's habit to question his
son's movements. One might have said they did not interest him. He and
"Tony" were very good acquaintances and lived quite without friction. He
was too busy, too self-centred and ultra-modern to desire any warmer
relation. Affection was a sentimentality never mentioned in that
household; a mutilated household, for Mrs. Adriance had died twenty
years before Tony's majority.
But it was not curiosity, rather an odd, faintly flickering hope that
lighted the younger man's eyes as he entered the room and returned his
father's nod of greeting. The two were not unlike, at a first glance;
definitely good features: eyes so dark that they were frequently
mistaken for black instead of blue, upright figures that made the most
of their moderate height,--these they had in common. The great
difference between them was in expression; the difference between
untempered and tempered metal. No one would ever have nicknamed the
elder Anthony "Tony."
"I shall be glad to dine with you," the younger Anthony opened, at once.
"I'll go change, and be back. Were you going to try the new Trot
tonight--I think you said so?"
"No. I had an hour this afternoon," Mr. Adriance stated, picking up a
pen from the table and turning it in his fingers. He had a habit of
playing with small articles at times--to distract his listener's
attention rather than his own, said those who knew him well. Neither to
his son nor to himself did it occur as incongruous that he should
discuss a lesson in dancing with the matter-of-fact decision that made
his speech cold and sharp as the crackle of a step on a frost-bound
road. "It is not so difficult as the tango, though more fatiguing. Where
had you intended to dine, tonight? At the Mastersons'?"
Tony Adriance colored a slow, painful red that burned over face and neck
like a flame scar.
"Fred asked me," he made difficult work of the reply. "I couldn't get
out of it very well, but I am glad of an excuse to stay away. It is
early enough to 'phone."
Mr. Adriance turned the pen around.
"If Masterson was to be there, you might safely have gone," he
pronounced.
"If----"
"Exactly. Dining with Mrs. Masterson will no longer do. Am I speaking to
a full-grown man or a boy? If Mrs. Masterson chooses to get a divorce,
and you afterward marry her, very good. It is done; divorce is accepted
among us. But there must be no gossip concerning the lady."
"There is no cause for any," retorted the other, but the defense lacked
fire. He looked suddenly haggard, and the shamed red scorched still
deeper. "She--isn't that kind."
"No. She is very clever." He laid down the pen and took up a book. "I
was cautioning you. Will you hurry your dressing a little? I have an
early engagement down-town this evening."
The dry retort was not resented. The younger man did not retreat,
although way was shown to him. Since the subject had been dragged into
the open ground of speech, he had more to say, with whatever reluctance.
"You don't seem to consider Fred," he finally said.
"Why should I?" Mr. Adriance looked up perfunctorily. "Masterson is
nothing to me. You have not considered him."
"I have! At least, I tried to stop this--after I understood. I never
meant----"
There was a pause, during which Mr. Adriance turned a page. The sentence
was not completed, but Tony Adriance lingered as if in expectation of
some reply to it; an expectation half eager, half defiant. No reply was
made; finally it became evident there was to be none.
"I thought you might object." He forced a laugh with the avowal, but his
eyes denied the lightness. "Parents do in books and plays, you know. I
thought you might tell me---- Oh, well, to pull out of this and bring
home a woman of my own instead of some other man's woman. It isn't very
pretty!"
Mr. Adriance looked up with a certain curiosity.
"You have a sentimental streak, Tony? I never suspected it. Why should I
object to an affair so suitable? You have been following Mrs. Masterson
about for a year; she is altogether charming and will make a good
hostess here--a great lack in our household. I admire her myself, more
than any debutante I ever saw. I am very well satisfied. Suppose you had
brought home some milkmaid romance, a wife to stumble over the rugs and
defer to the servants? No, no; manage this properly, that is all my
advice. Meanwhile, do you know it is after seven o'clock? Unless you
hurry----"
"Oh, I'll hurry," was the dry promise. "And I am much obliged for the
advice. But I fancy a good many of us may defer to the milkmaids, after
we are dead."
He swung the door shut with unnecessary force, as he went out. While he
climbed the broad, darkly-lustrous stairs, he was aware that his father
was turning another page of the book; and as a pendant to that picture
had a mental glimpse of Lucille Masterson, lovely, perfect in every line
of costume and tint of color, waiting for a man who was not her husband.
What would the girl in black think of that, he wondered? Yet Lucille
was altogether beyond reproach. She had every right to contemplate a
divorce, in view of Fred Masterson's undoubted wildness and
extravagance. If only she had not discussed it with him, Tony Adriance,
he thought impatiently. If only she had announced her intention to her
husband and the world, instead of broaching it secretly to the admirer
she had chosen for her second husband! It was horrible to meet Masterson
with this knowledge thrust like a stone blocking the way of intercourse.
Certainly she lacked delicacy.
Of course he must go on gracefully. It was very like climbing these
stairs; one step taken implied taking the next. But he wished that he
had not met the girl in the pavilion.
CHAPTER II
HIS NEIGHBOR'S WIFE
During the next few days, Tony Adriance several times saw the girl in
black. But he did not venture to approach or speak to her. It was too
soon; moreover, he was not altogether certain that he wished to be with
her. She was too disturbing, too concrete an evidence of other
possibilities in life than those he had been taught. He remembered the
story of the Grecian lake that was only muddy when stirred. Probably
those who lived within view of its waters seldom "disturbed Comarina."
Nevertheless, he always regarded the girl with a keen interest he could
not have explained even to himself. He would glimpse her from his
automobile in passing, or observe her from the opposite sidewalk as he
went in or out of his father's house. She always had the child with her,
and always wore the same frock. Usually, she was to be found in the
white stone pavilion, established on the curved stone bench with a bit
of sewing or a book. He never had imagined so quietly monotonous a life
as hers seemed to be.
It was at the end of the first week after their meeting that Adriance,
riding slowly along the bridle-path through the park, saw an itinerant
vendor of toy balloons and pinwheels wander into the pavilion where girl
and baby were ensconced.
The sunlight glittered bravely on the gaudy colors of fluted paper
wheels, the plump striped sides of bobbing globes, and the sleepy, brown
face of the Syrian pedler who mutely presented his wares. The girl
lifted her smiling eyes to meet the man's questioning glance, and shook
her head with a pretty gesture that somehow implied admiration and a gay
friendliness which made her refusal more gracious than another's
purchase. The pedler smiled, also, and lingered to hoist the straps
supporting his tray into a new position upon his bent, velveteen-clad
shoulders, before moving on his way.
The baby had not been consulted. But his attention had been none the
less enchained. Those pink and yellow things set spinning by the fresh
morning breeze, those red balloons tugging at their cords like unwilling
captives hungry for the clear upper spaces of blue--to see all this
radiance departing was too much! He spread wide both chubby arms and
plunged in pursuit.
"Holly!" the girl cried, arresting his flight from the coach. "Why,
Holly?"
Holly hurled himself into magnificent rage. Halted by the outburst, the
Syrian turned back with an air of experienced victory.
"_Now_ you buy?" he interrogated.
The girl shook her head, struggling to appease the young
insurrectionist.
"No, no. Please go away, and he will forget."
The man took a step away. The baby's screams redoubled; he stamped with
small, fat feet and brandished small, fat fists.
"You buy?" the pedler blandly insisted.
"No!" the girl panted. "Please do go. I cannot; I have no money with me.
Holly, dear----!"
Adriance had found a boy to hold his horse, and came up in time to
overhear the last statement. He halted the Syrian with a gesture.
"I have," he made his presence known to the combatants. "Won't you let
me gratify a fellowman? Here, bring those things nearer. Which shall it
be, young chap--or both?"
The girl turned to him with candid relief warming her surprise.
"Oh!" she exclaimed her recognition. "You are very good. I am afraid,
really afraid it will have to be both. _Oh_----!"
Holly had deliberately lunged forward and clutched a double handful of
the alluring wares.
By the time calm was re-established and the amused Adriance had paid, it
seemed altogether natural that he should take his place on the seat
beside the girl; as natural as the pedler's placid departure. Holly lay
back on his cushions in vast content, two balloons floating from their
tethers at the foot of his coach and a pinwheel clasped in his hand.
"I should like to say that he is not often like this," remarked the
girl, gathering together her scattered sewing, "But he likes having his
own way as much as Mait' Raoul Galvez; and everyone knows what _he_
raised."
"I don't," Adriance confessed. He noticed for the first time a softening
of her words, not enough to be called an accent, far less a lisp, but
yet a trick of speech, unfamiliar to him. "What did he raise?"
"Satan," she gravely told him. "Mait' Raoul knew more about voodooism
and black magic than any white man ever should. It is said he vowed that
he would have the devil up in person to play cards with him, or never be
content on earth or under it. And he did, although he knew well enough
Satan never gambles except for souls."
"Who won?"
"Satan did. Yet he lost again, for Mait' Raoul tricked him in the
contract so cleverly that it did not bind and the soul was free. There
is a great split rock near Galvez Bayou where they say the demon stamped
in his rage so fiercely the stone burst."
"Then Maitre Raoul escaped Hades, after all?"
"Oh, no! He went there, but merely as a point of honor. He was a
gambler, but he always paid his losses."
Adriance laughed, yet winced a little, too. A baffled, helpless
bitterness darkened across his expression, as it had done on the
evening of their first meeting. He looked down at the pavement as if in
fear of accidentally encountering his companion's clear glance.
"I never read that story," he acknowledged. "Thank you."
"I fancy it never was written," she returned. "There is a song about it;
a sleepy, creepy song which should never be sung between midnight and
dawn."
He watched her draw the thread in and out, for a space. She was
embroidering an intricate monogram in the centre of a square of fine
linen, working with nice exactitude and daintiness.
"What is it?" he wondered, finally.
Her glance traced the direction of his.
"A net for goldfish," she replied.
It was not until long afterward he understood she had told him that she
sold her work.
The river glittered, breaking into creamy furrows of foam under the
ploughing traffic. The sunshine was warm and sank through Adriance with
a lulling sense of physical pleasure and tranquil laziness. How bright
and clean a world he seemed to view, seated here! He felt a pang of
longing, keen as pain, when he thought that he might have had such
content as this as an abiding state, instead of a brief respite. How had
he come to shut himself away from peace, all unaware? How was it that he
never had valued the colorless blessing, until it was lost?
After a while he fell to envying Maitre Raoul, who had gone to the devil
honorably.
A long sigh from Holly, slumbering amid his trophies, awoke Adriance to
realization that his companion possessed the gift of being silent
gracefully. He had not spoken to her for quite half an hour, yet she
appeared neither bored nor offended, but as if she had been engaged in
following out some pleasant theme of meditation. A sparrow tilted and
preened itself on the rail, not a yard from her bent, dark head. Over at
the curbstone, the boy who guarded Adriance's horse had slipped the
bridle over one arm and was playing marbles with two cheerful comrades
who made calculated allowances for his handicap, based on his coming
reward from the rider.
"I am afraid I am very dull," Adriance presently offered vague apology.
"Are you?"
"I mean, I am not entertaining."
She lifted her eyes from her sewing to regard him with delicate
raillery.
"No. If you had been the entertaining sort of person, I could never have
let you talk to me," she said. "But I think you had better go, please,
now. Two imported nursemaids in bat-wing cloaks have been glowering at
us for some time as it is. Holly and I shall be grateful to you a
thousand years for this morning's rescue."
He rose reluctantly, with a feeling of being ejected from the only
serene spot on earth.
"Thank you for letting me stay," he answered. "You are very kind. I----"
His lowered glance had encountered her little feet, demurely crossed
under the edge of her sober skirt. They were very small, serious shoes
indeed; not a touch of the day's capricious fancy in decoration relieved
them. But what struck to the man's heart was their brave blackness, the
blackness of polish that could not quite conceal that they had been
mended. Of course, he at once looked away, but the impression remained.
"I hope Holly will not imitate Mait' Raoul any more," he finished
lamely.
The girl frankly turned to watch him ride away. Her natural interest
seemed to the man more modest than any pose of indifference.
But it seemed that she was appointed by Chance to make Tony Adriance
dissatisfied and restive. It was altogether absurd, but the fanciful
legend she had told him taunted and hunted his sullen thoughts. He took
it with him to his home, when he changed into suitable attire to keep a
luncheon engagement with Mrs. Masterson. It still accompanied him when
he entered the great apartment house where the Mastersons lived.
He had not wanted to act as Lucille Masterson's escort on this occasion.
His attendance had been skilfully compelled. But now he hated the duty
so much that he was dangerously near rebellion. He hesitated on the
threshold of the building, half inclined not to enter; to go, instead,
to a telephone and excuse himself for desertion on some pretext.
It was too late. Already the door was held open for him by a footman
whose discreetly familiar smile Adriance saw, and resented. He winced
again when the elevator boy stopped at the Mastersons' floor without
being told, implying the impossibility of Mr. Adriance's call being
intended for any other household. He never had noticed these things
before; now, he felt himself disgracefully exposed before these black
men.
He was altogether in a mood of bitter exasperation, when he was ushered
into Mrs. Masterson's little drawing-room. He recognized this condition
with a vague sense of surprise at himself underlying the dominant
emotion. All his life he had been singularly even-tempered. Now he
combated a wish to say ugly, caustic things to the woman who had brought
him here. He did not want to see her.
Yet she was very pleasant to see. Indeed, both the scene and his hostess
were charming, as they met his view. Mrs. Masterson was standing before
a long mirror, surveying herself, so that Adriance saw her twice; once
in fact, and once as a reflection. Sunlight filled the room, which was
furnished and draped in a curious shade of deep blue with a shimmering
richness of color, so that the lady's gray-clad figure stood out in
clear and precise detail. But Mrs. Masterson could bear that strong
light, and knew it. Without turning, she smiled into the mirror toward
the man whose image she saw there.
"How do you like the last Viennese fancy, Tony?" she composedly greeted
him.
Her voice was not one of her good points. It was naturally too
high-pitched and harsh, and although by careful training she had
accustomed herself to speak with a suppressed evenness of tone that
smothered the defect to most ears, there resulted a lack of expression
or modulation perilously near monotony. Adriance listened now, with a
fresh sense of irritation, to the fault he only had observed recently.
Before answering, he surveyed critically the decided lines of the
costume offered for his approval; its audacious little waistcoat of
cerise-and-black checked velvet, the diminutive hat that seemed to have
alighted like a butterfly on the shining yellow hair brushed smoothly
back from Mrs. Masterson's pink ears, and the high-buttoned gray boots
with a silk tassel pendant at each ankle. Those exquisite and costly
boots taunted him with their sharp contrast to those he had studied an
hour before; they spurred him on to rudeness as if actual rowels were
affixed to their little French heels.
"The skirt is too extreme," he stated perversely.
"They are going to be so; this is quite a bit in advance," she returned.
"Do you like it?"
"Not so well! It makes a woman look like a child; except for her face."
Lucille Masterson's tact was often at fault from her lack of humor.
Instead of retorting with laughter or silence, she opposed offence to
his wilfulness.
"Thank you," she answered freezingly. "I seem to have aged rather
suddenly."
"You know well enough how handsome you are," he said, a trifle ashamed.
"Of course I did not mean what you imply. But, after all, we are not
children, Lucille, either of us. We are a man and a woman who are
going----"
"Well?"
"To gather a rather nasty apple!" He forced a smile to temper the
statement.
She slowly turned around and regarded him.
"What do you mean?" she demanded, lifting her narrow, arched eyebrows.
"My _costume trottoir_, and apples----? Aren't you considerably
confused, Tony?"
"Can't we at least face what we are doing?" he countered. "If we are
able to do a thing, we ought to be able to look at it, surely. We can
put through this thing, and our friends will think none the less of us;
they are that kind. But they are not all the people on earth, you know.
What the maid who brushes your gown or the man who opens the door for me
says of us downstairs may come nearer the general opinion. Perhaps we
would better have considered that. For I am afraid the majority of the
white man's world cannot be altogether wrong."
There was a quality in his voice that alarmed her. He had flung himself
into a chair beside her desk, and sat nervously moving back and forth
the trinkets nearest his hand. She stood quite still, studying him
before committing herself by a reply. This was a Tony Adriance strange
to her.
"It seems very cowardly, to me, to be afraid of what people will say,"
she slowly answered. "And I will not have you speak to me as if I were a
wicked woman, Tony. You know that I am not. You know I have borne with
Fred's neglect and extravagance much longer than other women would."
He flushed dark-red at the taunt of cowardice, but he spoke doggedly,
tenacious of his purpose.
"You could not give Fred another chance? You remember, he and I were
friends, once. He has played too much with the stock market. Well, I
might get my father to help him there; we might fix it so that he won
sometimes, instead of lost. You do not know how hard it is for me to
come into Fred's house this way."
A flash of blended anger and fear crossed Mrs. Masterson's large,
light-colored eyes.
"Is it?" she doubted, cuttingly. "You have been coming here for a whole
year, Tony."
She had found the one retort he could not answer. Adriance opened his
lips, then closed them with a grim recognition of defeat. Who would
believe he had come here innocently? How could he tell this beautiful
and sophisticated woman that he had been vaguely, romantically charmed
by her without ever dreaming of any issue to the affair or of letting
her suspect his mild sentimentality? How could he hope she would credit
the tale, if he did tell her?
She had been watching his changing expression; herself paled by a very
genuine dread. Now, suddenly she was beside him, her hands on his
shoulders.
"Don't you love me any more, Tony? You come in here to-day and rage at
me----! Have you taught me for months to need you and count on you for
all the future, only to leave me, now? Oh, I believed _you_ were strong
and true!"
A caress from her was so rare an event, so unfamiliar a concession, that
her mere nearness fired Adriance. Her fragrant face was close to his;
he looked into her eyes, like jewels under water, suffused by her terror
of losing him.
His kiss was her victory. Instantly she was away from him; half across
the room and sending furtive glances toward the curtained doorways, even
toward the windows five stories above the street. The guilt implied in
the action made it to Adriance as if a hand had struck the kiss from his
lips.
"We must be careful," she cautioned. "Suppose someone were coming in?
You didn't mean all that, Tony? You love me as much as ever?"
Adriance moved toward her.
"I won't answer that in Masterson's house," he said, his voice shaken.
"Lucille, you have got to do now what I asked you to do weeks ago: you
must leave here at once and marry me as soon as it can be done. Since we
have begun this thing, we must carry it through as decently as possible.
And it is not decent for you to stay here or for me to come here. If you
come with me now, to-day, I will put you with someone who can act as
chaperon until the divorce is obtained; one of my aunts, perhaps. If
you do this, and help me to keep what honestly is left, I give you my
word that I never will fail you as long as I live, come what may."
She drew back from his vehemence. Assured of herself and him, now, she
permitted a frown to tangle her fair brow in half-amused rebuke.
"My dear boy, what a dramatic tirade! Of course I will come to you the
first moment possible--but, to-day? And just now you were deprecating
gossip! You must let me arrange this affair. I am not ready to leave
Fred, yet. Do you not understand? I must wait until he makes another one
of his scenes; I must have a fresh reason for going, not a past one
already tacitly overlooked."
"You will not come?"
She turned from his darkened face to the mirror.
"You really are very selfish, Tony. Pray think a little of me instead of
yourself. But I will try to do as you wish; next month, perhaps. I could
go to Florida for the winter."
Adriance sat down again beside the desk and took a cigarette from a
small lacquered tray that stood there. He was beaten, but he was not
submissive. He bent his head to the yoke with a bitter, sick reluctance.
Yet he understood that it was too late to draw out. Lucille loved him;
whether intentionally or not, he had won her. No, he must finish what he
had begun.
The cigarette was perfumed, and nauseated him. He dropped it into an
ash-receiver, but it had given him a moment to steady himself. After
all, Masterson did neglect his wife. If he could not keep his own, why
should Tony Adriance turn altruist and try to do it for him? At least,
Lucille might be happy.
Mrs. Masterson had touched her hat into place, surveying her vivid
reflection. She was wise enough to take her triumph casually.
"Shall we go?" she questioned. "Nan Madison hates late arrivals, you
know. Do make your man throw away that cravat you are wearing, Tony.
Gray is not your color. It makes you look too pale; too much----"
"Like Maitre Raoul Galvez?" he dryly supplied, rising.
"Who was he?"
"A man who raised the Devil. I am quite ready if you wish to go."
CHAPTER III
THE GIRL OUTSIDE
Tony Adriance slipped into the habit of pausing for a few words with the
girl in black whenever circumstances set them opposite each other. And
that was quite often, since his home was so near the pavilion she had
adopted as her place of repose. He rather avoided his friends, during
the days following his futile rebellion against Lucille Masterson's
will, yet he was lonely and eager to escape thought. He could talk to
the girl, he admitted to himself, because she did not know him.
They met with a casual frankness, the girl and he, like two men who find
each other congenial, yet whose lives lie far apart. Their brief
conversations were intimate without being inquisitively personal. She
had a trick of saying things that lingered in the memory; at least, in
his memory. Not that she was especially brilliant; her charm was her
earnestness, at once vivid and tranquil, and the odd glamor of
enchantment she threw over plain commonsense, making it no longer
plain, but alluring as folly.
But she continued to wear the shabby little boots, with their optimistic
bravery of blacking. They really were respectable boots, aging, not
aged. The fault lay with Adriance, not them; he was too much accustomed
to women "whose sandals delighted his eyes." If her feet had been less
childishly small, they might have preoccupied him less. As it was, they
preoccupied him more and more.
There is no accepted way of offering a pair of shoes to a feminine
acquaintance. Nevertheless, in the third week of his friendship with the
girl, Adriance bought a pair of pumps for her. He had seen them in a
glass case set out before a shop and stopped to gaze, astonished. They
were so unmistakably hers; the size, the rounded lines, the very arch
and tilt were right! They were of shining black, with Spanish heels and
glinting buckles.
He took them home with him, but of course he dared not give them to her.
He had an idea that he might essay the venture on the last occasion of
their meeting; if she punished him with banishment, then, it would not
matter. For he meant to leave New York when Lucille went to Florida. He
would spend the necessary interval between the divorce and his marriage,
in Canada, alone.
Meanwhile, there was the girl.
It was on the last day of October that he found her knitting instead of
embroidering; a web of gay scarlet across her knees.
"A new suit for Holly's big Teddybear," she explained, as he sat down
opposite to her. "Christmas is coming, you know. I like to have all
ready in advance. Don't you think the color should become a brown-plush
bear?"
"It is not depressing."
"It is the color of holly. And depression is not a sensation to
cultivate, is it?" She paused to gaze across the river, already shadowed
by approaching evening. "I believe in fighting it off with both hands;
driving a spear right through the ugly thing and holding it up like Sir
Sintram with that wriggly monster in the old picture."
"You would be a good one to be in trouble with," he said abruptly.
She disentangled his meaning from the extremely vague speech, and nodded
serious assent.
"Yes, perhaps. I'm used to making the most of things."
"The best of them," he corrected.
"Of course! The most best--why should anyone make more worst?"
They laughed together. But directly the restless unhappiness flowed back
into his eyes.
"They do, though!" he exclaimed.
"Then they are wrong, all wrong," she said decidedly. "They should set
themselves right the moment they find it out."
"But if they can't?" he urged, with a personal heat and protest. "Things
aren't so simple as all that. Suppose they can't set one thing straight
without knocking over a lot of others? You _cannot_ go cutting and
slashing through like that!"
"Oh, yes; you can," she contradicted, sitting very upright, her gray
eyes fired. "You must; anyone must. It is cowardly to let things,
crooked things, grow and grow. And one could not knock down anything
worth while that easily. Good things are strong."
He shook his head. But she had stirred him so that he sat silent for a
while, then rather suddenly rose to take his leave.
"You never told me your name," he remarked, looking down at her. He
noticed again how supple and deft her fingers were, and their capable
swiftness at the work.
"No. Why?" she replied simply.
"I don't know," he accepted the rebuke. "I--beg your pardon."
"Oh, certainly. Holly is trying to shake hands before you go."
Of course he and the baby had become friends. He carefully yielded his
forefinger to the clutching hands, but he did not smile as usual.
"Look here," he spoke out brusquely. "Just as an illustration that
things are not as easily kept straight as you seem to think--I know a
man who somehow got to following one woman around. I don't think he
knows quite how. Of course, he admired her immensely, and liked her.
Well, I suppose he felt more than that! But he never even imagined
making love to her, because she was married. You see, he was a fool. One
day when he called, she told him that she was going to get a divorce
from her husband. She has the right. And the man found she expected to
marry him, afterward; she thought he had meant that all along. What
could he do? What can he do?"
The baby gurgled merrily, dropping the forefinger and yawning. The girl
laid down her work to tuck a coverlet about her charge.
"I do not know," she admitted, her voice low.
Adriance drew a quick breath.
"That isn't all of it. The husband is the man's friend. Why, they used
to sleep together, eat together----! And he doesn't know. Don't you see,
the man has to fail either the husband or wife? How can you straighten
that?"
She looked up, to meet the unconscious self-betrayal of his defiant,
unhappy eyes.
"I am very sorry for him," she answered gravely. And, after a moment.
"She must be very clever."
He started away from the suggestion with sharp resentment. Clever--that
was his father's term for Lucille Masterson; and it was hateful to him.
He would not analyze why he felt that repugnance to hearing Lucille
called clever. He refused to consider what that implied, what ugly
depths of doubt were stirred in him to make him wince in anger and
humiliation. Suddenly he bitterly regretted having told the story to
this girl, even under the concealed identity.
"No doubt," he made a coldly vague rejoinder. "I dare say the matter
will work itself out well enough. It is getting late; I think I must
go."
It was altogether too abrupt, and he knew it. But he could do no better.
He knew the girl's eyes followed him away, and he walked with careful
ease and nonchalance.
Out of her sight, he walked more slowly. Already the autumn twilight was
settling down like a delicate gray veil. At the foot of the Palisades,
opposite, a familiar point of light sprang into view among the myriad
lights there; a point that ran like fire through tow, up, across, around
until the glittering words shone complete: "Adriance's Paper."
The name was reflected in the dark water. Down there, it swayed weakly
and its legend was broken by the river's ripples. "You shine, up there,
but I govern here," the Hudson flung its scorn back to the man-made
arrogance. He was like that reflection, Tony Adriance thought, with a
fancy caught from the girl's trick of imagery; he was the mere
reflection of his father's successes, shifting, worthless, inseparable
from the gold-colored reality above, dancing and broken on the current
of a woman's will. He himself was--nothing. He winced under the
self-applied lash. It was knotted with truth; he, personally, never had
counted. Even Lucille never had said she loved him; she simply had taken
his devotion for granted, and used it. Would she have promised herself
to him if he had been a poor man? Would she ever have contemplated
divorce from Masterson, with all his faults, if Tony Adriance had not
brought himself and his gilded possibilities across her path? The
questions were ugly, and sent the blood into his face. He stopped
walking and stood by the stone wall edging the sidewalk, facing the
river.
He always had resented being merely his father's heir, in a vague,
unanalyzed way. Now resentment threatened to flame into rebellion.
Rebellion against what? His father, who left him absolute freedom from
any restraint? Lucille, whom he was at perfect liberty never to see
again, if he chose to deny her assumption? He was very completely
trapped by circumstance, since the trap was open and yet he could not
leave it.
The delicate dot on the _i_ of irony was that he had loved Lucille, yet
he knew he must be miserable with her all their lives. He thought of her
even now with a certain longing, yet he would always distrust her and
detest himself. His fingers gripped the stone edge; he felt a passionate
envy of men who were strong enough to do insane, desperate things, to
tear their own way ruthlessly through the clinging web of other people's
ways. He fancied the girl in black to be such a person; if she
considered herself right in any course, she would take it.
But after a while he turned away and began to walk home. He had to
dress, for he was dining with the Mastersons. It had been insisted upon,
to make amends for the night he had stayed away to dine with his
father. Lucille was not yet ready for any audible whisper to suggest
divorce to the world or her husband. Tony must come and go as usual for
a few weeks more. She had chosen to forget his appeal, after quelling
his mutiny. Mrs. Masterson was not a generous victor.
CHAPTER IV
THE WOMAN WHO GRASPED
The Mastersons' apartment had, like many such apartments, a charming
little foyer. It was lighted by a jade-green lamp, swung in bronze
chains delicately green from the tinting of time; and the notes of
bronze and dull jade were carried through all the furnishings, through
leather and tapestry and even a great, dragon-clasped Chinese vase. But
those greenish lights were not always becoming to visitors. When Tony
Adriance entered the foyer that evening they were so unbecoming to him
that the maid privately decided he was ill. Her master not infrequently
came home with that worn look about the eyes and mouth. She wondered if
Mr. Adriance gambled.
None of the other guests had arrived. Indeed, it was not yet time. The
clink of glass and bustle of servants in the dining-room alone told of
the coming event in hospitality. Hospitality? Tony Adriance stood still,
arrested in his movement toward the drawing-room; the sick distaste of
all the last weeks finally culminated in paralysis before the prospect
of the farce he was expected to play out, with his unconscious host as
spectator.
"I--am not ready," he found himself temporizing with the maid. His
glance fell upon a desk and prompted him. "I have forgotten an important
letter; I will write it before I go in. Don't wait; I know my way."
She obeyed him. Of course he had nothing to write, but he fumbled for a
sheet of paper and picked up a pen. He was awake at last to the enormity
of his presence here as a guest; before he had glimpsed it, now he saw
it, stripped naked.
He could not go on. There was no reason why the conviction should have
come to him at this moment, but it did so. As he sat there, that
knowledge rose slowly to full stature before his vision like an actual
figure reared in the path he had been following. It was no longer a
question of Lucille's desires or his own; he could not do this thing.
He was not accustomed to intricate windings of thought, or to
self-analysis. He hardly understood, as yet, what was aroused in him, or
why. But he knew that he must act; that his time of passive drifting was
ended. Once Lucille had reproached him with cowardice. To-day, the girl
in the pavilion had innocently brought the charge again. And the girl
was right; it was cowardly to let a wrong grow and grow. Masterson's
friend in Masterson's house! Adriance dropped the pen his clenching
fingers had bent, and stood up.
The maid had gone back to that centre of approaching activities, the
kitchen. Alone, Adriance went down the corridor to the drawing-room.
Mrs. Masterson was alone there, moving some introduced chairs into less
conspicuous situations. The alien chairs were covered in rose-color and
marred the clouded-blue effect of the room. She pushed them about with a
vicious force, as though she hated the inanimate offenders; her
expression was sullen and fretful.
That expression altered too quickly, when she saw Adriance standing on
the threshold. He caught the skilful change that transformed it into
winning plaintiveness.
"You, Tony?" she greeted him, advancing to give him her hand. "I am so
glad it was no one else. _You_ know how I must contrive and make the
best of what little I have. How I loathe this cramped place, and
bringing chairs from bed-chambers to have enough, and all pinching----!"
She glanced about her with a flare of contempt, her smooth scarlet lip
lifting in a sneer.
Adriance slowly looked over the room, not very large, perhaps, yet
scarcely cramped; made lovely by opalescent lamps and fragrant by the
perfume of roses set in high, slender vases of rock-crystal. All one
wall was smothered in the silken warmth of a Chinese rug, against whose
blue was lifted the creamy whiteness of an ivory elephant quaintly
carved and poised on its pedestal. Even to his eyes nothing here
warranted discontent.
"I thought this very pretty," he dissented. "I thought Masterson had
done things very well, here."
"Well enough, for a nook in a house; not for the house," she retorted.
"I hate living in apartments. I always have wanted stairs; wide, shining
stairs down which I would pass to cross broad rooms!"
She drew a thirsty breath. In the gleaming gown which left uncovered as
much of her beauty as an indulgent fashion allowed, her large light eyes
avid, her yellow head thrown slightly forward as she looked up at the
man, she was a vivid and unconscious embodiment of greed. Not the
pitiful greed of necessity, but the greed which, having much, covets
more. As if he shared her mind, Adriance knew that she pictured herself
descending the stairs in his father's house gowned and jewelled as Mrs.
Tony Adriance could be and Lucille Masterson could not.
He was not aware of the change in his own face until he saw its
reflection in the sudden alarm and question clouding hers. He answered
her expression, then, compelling his voice to hold its low evenness of
speech with the inborn distaste of well-bred modern man for betrayed
emotion.
"That is it," he interpreted. "That is why you would marry me and leave
Masterson. You want more than he can give you. If he had as much to give
as I have, it would not matter what he did. You would bear with him.
Perhaps you have been bearing with me."
"Tony!" she stammered.
"It is quite true. I have been a solemn fool. I have been nerving myself
to lay down my self-respect without flinching, because I believed that I
had led you to count upon me; and all the while you were counting upon
what I owned."
She gathered her forces together after the surprise.
"Rather severe, Tony, because I dislike expensive tenement life!" she
commented, with careful irony. Turning aside, she laid her lace scarf
across a table, gaining a respite from his gaze. "Have I ever pretended
not to care for beautiful, luxurious things? And does that argue that I
care for nothing else? I think you should apologize--and pay more heed
to your digestion."
He paused an instant, steadying himself. As usual, she had contrived to
make him feel in the wrong and ashamed.
"I do apologize," he said, less certainly. "I did not come in here to
say all that, Lucille. But I did come to say what reaches the same end.
We cannot finish this thing we have begun. We could not stand it. Think
whatever you may of me as a coward, I am not going on."
"Indeed, I think you have gone far enough," she calmly returned.
"Suppose we sit down and be civilized. Will you smoke before dinner?"
He shook his head, baffled in spite of himself by her elusiveness, but
also angered to resolution. And he knew that he had seen her truly a
moment since; the loveliness that had glamoured his sight for a year
could not hide from memory that glimpse of her mind.
"I am not staying to dinner, thanks," he refused. "And I am not playing.
Our matter looked bad enough as it was, but you showed me a worse thing,
just now. It was bad enough to take my friend's wife for love; I can't
and won't take her by means of my father's money."
She wheeled about, swiftly and hotly aflame, and they stared at each
other as strangers.
"You have forgotten that we are engaged," she said stingingly. "Or
doesn't your conscience heed a broken word?"
"Perhaps it is heeding the tactfulness of being engaged to one man while
you are married to another," he struck back, goaded to a brutality
foreign to his nature.
The faint chime of touching glasses checked them on the brink of a
breach that would have made reconciliation impossible. Mrs. Masterson
dropped into a chair, snatching up a fan to shade her flushed face.
Adriance stood stiffly, where he was, wisely making no attempt at
artificial nonchalance. The servant who entered saw only composure in
his immobility.
Mrs. Masterson eagerly lifted the offered cocktail to her lips, as if
anger had parched them. Adriance took a glass from the tray presented to
him, but at once set it aside upon the table; now that he realized, he
felt that the hospitality of this house was not for him. But the brief
interlude helped both of them.
When the servant had gone, Adriance spoke with restored calmness.
"You see, even now the situation has warped us all awry. If it were
not so, I should like to buy things for you, I suppose. I can
imagine----"
He broke the sentence; quite suddenly he had remembered the little
buckled shoes bought for the girl in the pavilion. He had looked
interestedly at other things in the shop, while he waited for his
parcel. It would have given him delight to purchase certain elaborate
stockings and absurd lace-frilled handkerchiefs.
"I can imagine that I should," he finished lamely. "Lucille, you will
come to agree with me, I hope. But even if you do not, I cannot go on."
She rose and came up to him with a swift movement that brought both her
hands against his shoulders before he grasped her intention. Her warm
face was directly beneath his own.
"Is there someone else, Tony?" she demanded. "Some girl? Of course it
would be a young girl who inspired all this; 'pure as water'--and as
tasteless! Is that it?"
She might have struck him with less effect. Tony Adriance went
absolutely numb with disgusted wrath. What preposterous thing did she
imply? The shining gray eyes of the girl in the pavilion looked at him
across the alert, probing gaze of Lucille Masterson; looked at him with
beautiful candor, with indignation. He felt outraged, as if the young
girl herself had been made present in this nasty scene. And without
cause! He had no thought of loving that sober little figure; he was sick
of love.
"I am sorry you cannot credit me with one disinterested motive," he said
coldly. "As it happens, you are wrong. There is no one except you. I am
going away because you are neither unmarried nor a widow, since you
force me to repeat all this. If you were either----"
"You would stay?" she whispered.
He looked down at her, and as always before her magic his strength grew
weak. He lifted her hands from his shoulders, before replying.
"Yes," he conceded, his voice changed. "But it is over, Lucille. Tell
Masterson I have gone abroad; to stay."
As he moved toward the door, Mrs. Masterson turned to the table and
caught up his untouched glass. Fear and chagrin were swept from her
face; it still glowed from her late rage, but her eyes were lighted
with confidence and ironic relief.
"To your safe voyage and pleasant return!" she exclaimed lightly, facing
him across the room. "For you will come back, Tony. The spasm will pass;
and leave you lonely. I can wait, then. Good-night."
She laughed outright at the consternation in his glance, as he paused.
But he turned and went out, leaving her leaning across the arm of one of
the discordant rose-colored chairs, watching him.
Back in the foyer, Adriance stopped to recover a conventional composure
of bearing before going out. He recalled that he must pass inspection by
the elevator boy and footman; must meet their wonder, no less obvious
because dumb, at his departure before the dinner.
The heavy blankness of his waiting was broken by the gayest sound in the
world. The gurgling laughter of a happy child rippled through the
silence like a brook, cascading down in a cadence of chuckles. As if to
confirm the recognition to which Adriance started, a girl's clear laugh
joined the baby merriment. Opposite him, light showed in a thin line
through a curtained doorway. Without the slightest remembrance of
proprieties or conventions, he sprang that way and swung the door open.
He was on the threshold of a nursery; a room pink as the inside of a
rosebud, gay with all the adorable paraphernalia babyhood demands,
fragrant with violet-powder and warm as a nest. At the foot of a shining
little bed, clutching the brass rail for support while executing a
stamping dance, was the lord of the domain; his silk-fine, frankly red
hair rumpled into glinting ringlets about his moist, rosy face, his blue
eyes crinkled shut by mirth. The girl knelt opposite, steadying the
chubby figure and serenely indifferent to the small, mischievous fingers
that had loosened her dark hair from its braids. Without her hat, she
was younger, even more wholesome and good than he had thought. She
looked as fresh and candid as the damp, open-lipped kisses the baby
lavished upon her.
Perhaps the intruder moved, perhaps she felt his gaze, for as he watched
the girl broke up the picture. She rose abruptly, turned, and saw him
standing there.
At first her startled face told only of surprise; indeed his mere
presence there gave her no reason to feel more. But in his dismay and
bewilderment and complete obsession Tony Adriance betrayed himself.
"I didn't know," he stammered, grasping blindly at justification and
apology. "I didn't know who Holly was--or that you lived here. I am
sorry; I should not have spoken----"
He stopped short. He had forgotten the fiction of a third person with
which he had masked his confidence in the park; forgotten that the girl
knew neither his name nor his purpose in this house. Quite without
necessity he had enlightened her.
For the girl was swift of perception. Perhaps his expression alone would
have told her the truth, if he had been silent. Mechanically she had put
one arm around the baby, now she drew it closer, as if in protection.
Her rain-gray eyes grieved, reproached, rebuked him. Possessed of
Lucille Masterson's plans, holding her son, she faced him in judgment.
Of course he had known Lucille had a child, somewhat as he knew his
father owned the factory behind the electric sign. He never had seen
either of them, except distantly; they meant nothing actual to him. But
now, there seemed nothing in the world so important. The girl had not
spoken, yet she had abruptly brought him face to face with new things.
"You know, I would have taken him, too," he tried to answer all she left
unsaid, hating himself for the unsteady humility he could not keep from
his voice. "I always meant to. I meant to do everything for the boy. I
could--I am Anthony Adriance."
She spoke, then, her smooth voice all roughened.
"You can buy him everything? You cannot buy him his father. And nothing
will make up for that."
"But----"
She struck down the weak protest.
"I _know_. I have a good father. And Holly," the infinite compassion of
her glance embraced the baby, "he has not even a real mother to do her
half. It is not right; you cannot make it right."
"But I have! I am going----!"
He faltered. How was he to explain to her the scene that had just been
enacted? Was it decent to Lucille?
"I've done my best," he stammered. "I told you; you know I've not liked
this."
The exclamation blended defiance and appeal; it was almost a cry wrested
from him. His position had been hard enough before the introduction of
this new element. The girl understood, for the anger died from her eyes
like a blown-out flame.
"There must be a way," she said quite gently. "There is always a right
way, if one can only find it. I think you had better not stay here, now.
Mr. Masterson always comes at this time; it is even late for him."
The warning had been delayed too long. Almost with the last word, a
man's step sounded in the foyer, the curtains rustled apart and the door
swung.
"What, Tony in a nursery!" exclaimed the master of the house, with an
oddly tired gayety. He came forward and gave his hand to Adriance, his
amused scrutiny wholly cordial. If he wondered how the other man came
here, he was both too indifferent and too well-bred to betray the fact.
"You have caught me; here is the only place I am behind the times," he
added. "Hello, son!"
Adriance was spared the necessity of replying. The baby, who had stood
staring round-eyed at the visitor, exploded into a very madness of
chuckles and shouts, twisting out of the girl's hold and plunging toward
the newcomer with fat arms insistently spread. With an apologetic,
half-diffident glance at his guest, Masterson caught and swung Holly
into the game of romps demanded.
It was a good game, evidently the result of practice. The pink room rang
with treble shrieks of glee; and Masterson laughed, too, occasionally
interjecting phrases of caution or comment.
"Jove, what a punch! How's that for muscle, Tony? Easy, son! How do
_you_ like your wig pulled? Steady, now."
[Illustration: THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO MORE BEDTIME ROMPS FOR MASTERSON
AND HIS SON]
The two in the background looked on. Adriance's throat was contracting;
he was suffocating with a terrible sense of barely having escaped a
shameful action. He understood the girl even better now. Only, if he
loathed himself so much, yet knew that at least he had ended the wrong,
how much more must her clear sight find him despicable in her ignorance
of his tardy amendment! He dared not look at her. He tried to remember
Lucille Masterson's regretfully murmured plaints of Fred's carelessness
with money, his "wildness" and neglect of her. But he could only think
heavily that if Mrs. Masterson had obtained a divorce, the custody of
the child would surely have been awarded to her, the irreproachable
wife. There would have been no more bedtime romps for Fred Masterson and
his son. How much alike the two looked! He had forgotten how very auburn
Fred's hair was, and how boyish his eyes were when he laughed.
With a final toss and shout the dishevelled, panting baby was replaced
in the bed, one cheek poppy-red from a rough masculine caress. A little
shame-faced over the sentimentality, Masterson turned to his guest.
"All over!" he affected lightness. "Come have a Martini before dinner,
Tony."
"No, thanks. I couldn't." Adriance pulled himself together with a sharp
effort. "I heard your kiddie laughing, and just looked in here. I ought
to apologize; I have not yet met this lady----"
Masterson regarded him curiously.
"Miss Elsie Murray, Mr. Adriance," he obeyed the implied request. "Miss
Murray is good enough to be Holly's guardian, since no one of his family
has time for that--or inclination."
She was a nurse. The simple fact came home to Adriance for the first
time. The severe black dress, the little white cuffs and collar that
made it a uniform, her constant attendance upon the baby--all the
obvious evidence had been overshadowed for him by her face and bearing,
the personality out of all accord with the position in which she was.
There was no change in her face. He comprehended that she never had
imagined him ignorant of her relation to Holly. Through all his
whirling confusion of thought, Adriance contrived to hold outward
composure and acknowledge the introduction as he would that to any
gentlewoman. The quaint word seemed to suit her.
She met him with a poise at least equal to his own. But it was he who
offered his hand, heedless of Masterson's observation. It seemed to him
that he never had desired anything in his life so desperately, with such
passionate eagerness as he desired to be justified before this girl. He
wanted her to know the very thing he could not honorably tell anyone:
that he had broken with Lucille Masterson of his own free will. His eyes
sought hers, unconsciously beseeching her grace of comprehension;
indeed, he had a confused idea that she would comprehend that his
offered handclasp was ventured only because he was not going to do the
wrong they both hated.
Perhaps she did understand. At least, she gave him her hand, for the
first time in their acquaintance. He grasped it with a brightening of
his drawn face, leaning toward her.
"Thank you!" he said. "I congratulate Holly; you will teach him in time
about Maitre Raoul Galvez."
That speech took her by surprise; for an instant she did not withdraw
her hand, her direct gaze meeting his. He saw her gray eyes cloud and
clear, and cloud again; abruptly her dark lashes cloaked them from him.
"Yes," she murmured. "Yes."
Masterson was staring at the two, his lips parted by cynical interest.
But no one perceived the second observer. Mrs. Masterson had come to the
doorway while Masterson was playing with the baby and still stood there,
narrowed, incredulous eyes appraising the amazing tableau offered by her
nursemaid and Tony Adriance. She herself had followed Adriance for a
last word, unaware of her husband's return home. And she had found this
group, in her nursery.
When the others moved, she drew back. The curtains noiselessly fell
shut. The two men came into the foyer almost immediately, but the bronze
lamp lighted an empty room.
Masterson asked no questions of his guest as they paused outside the
nursery, but Adriance had recollected himself enough to shelter the
girl from embarrassment.
"I stopped one day to speak to your boy in the park," he remarked
casually. "Miss Murray was telling him an odd fairy tale that struck my
fancy; Creole, I should think."
Masterson dropped his hand on the other's shoulder with an intimacy long
unused between them, ignoring the explanation.
"We never seem to get together, any more, except at some society
nonsense," he regretted. "We used to be pretty close, Tony. Remember
that night in the Maine camp after the canoe had upset, when there was
only one blanket left and we tossed up for it? I don't remember who won,
but I know we both slept under it----as much as we could get under." He
laughed reminiscently. "Well, it's a far cry from there to here! Shall
we go in to Lucille?"
"Thank you, but I have made my excuses to Mrs. Masterson," Adriance
answered steadily. "I had a telegram----! I am off for the rest of the
year; perhaps longer. I am going to South America."
"Your father's business? I remember you once spoke of some such thing.
I wish I were going with you."
He sighed with impatient fatigue, and the two stood for a silent moment.
Masterson aroused himself to hold out his slender, nervous hand.
"Well, good luck go with you, Tony. It usually does, though! 'To him
who hath----.'"
CHAPTER V.
THE LITTLE RED HOUSE
The next day it stormed. A biting north wind hunted across river and
city; a wind that carried the first ice-particles of the approaching
winter. There were no children on the Drive or in the park, except a few
sturdy urchins neither of the age nor class attended by nurses. No one
uncompelled cared to face the grim, gray, scowling day whose breath was
freezing.
In the Adriances' breakfast-room, an effort had been made to offset the
outside cheerlessness by aid of lamps glowing under gold-colored shades.
But only an optimist could have deluded vision into accepting the
artificial sunshine as satisfactory. Tony Adriance was even irritated by
the feeble sham, and snapped out the lamp nearest to him as he took his
seat.
The action was trifling, but Mr. Adriance, seated on the opposite side
of the round table, glanced keenly at his son and read an interpretation
of it. He believed that Tony wished to shadow the pale exhaustion of
his face. In this he was wrong; Tony Adriance was quite past thoughts of
his appearance. Not having looked in a mirror, he was not even aware of
the traces left by the last night. He did not at all appreciate the
significance with which his father presently inquired, courteously
concerned:
"You are not well, this morning?"
"Quite well, thank you," Tony replied; he glanced up from his plate
somewhat surprised at the question.
Mr. Adriance met the glance with sincere curiosity. His first hazard
failing, he sought for a second. Indeed, he knew very well that Tony had
none of the habits which lead to uncomfortable mornings, although to a
casual regard his present bearing suggested a white night. Fortunately,
he had not perceived the innuendo within the older man's question and
was not offended. Mr. Adriance detested being in the wrong.
Tony was too listless to pursue the subject at all. After vainly waiting
a moment for his father to explain the inquiry, he proceeded with the
business of breakfasting more or less indifferently. He was
conjecturing as to his own ability to set forth his trouble for the calm
inspection of the gentleman across the table. He had come down-stairs
with that intention, born of the night's bitter experience of solitude
in unhappiness. Now he felt that the project was impossible. His father
and he were not on terms of sufficient intimacy. He suffered an access
of discouragement and weariness. His only idea had failed, yet something
must be decided, some course followed.
"You dined at the Mastersons', last night, I believe?" Mr. Adriance had
found his second hazard. Unconsciously his voice sharpened; it would be
intolerable if Tony and Masterson had made some clumsy scene between
them. Occasionally Mr. Adriance wondered what so clever a woman as
Lucille Masterson had seen in either of the two.
"No," Tony denied.
"No? I had understood----?"
"I dined down-town."
That was the first deliberate lie the younger man had told the older in
all their life together. But Tony confronted an utter impossibility; he
could not confess that he had sat until midnight in a park pavilion,
with no more thought of life's common-sense routine than a sentimental
boy. Nevertheless, his voice sounded unconvincing to his own ears, and
humiliation swept over him like a wave of heat. The desire to get away
from everyone and everything familiar made it difficult for him not to
spring up and leave the room and the unfinished breakfast.
But Mr. Adriance was convinced and appeased. In his relief, he felt a
really kind desire to relieve Tony from his evident depression.
"You appear to have something on your mind," he observed. "If it is
anything I might remove, pray call upon me, Tony."
"Financially?" queried his son, drily.
"Certainly, if you wish. You are not in the least extravagant. In fact,
you are a charming contradiction of a great many popular conceptions
concerning those not forcibly employed."
"Thank you. But I wish you would employ me, sir, if not forcibly. I want
to go away for a time; not just--for amusement. Can you not send me
somewhere to take charge of your interests instead of a hired agent? I
could learn to help you, perhaps."
The last expression was unfortunate. Mr. Adriance's brow contracted and
the cordiality left his gaze.
"I am not yet superannuated," he signified. "When I am in need of help,
I will ask it, Tony. Naturally I intend training you to take charge of
your own affairs after my death. You will find that quite enough to
occupy you, some day. I am sorry if you are unable to amuse yourself,
already. Next year, if you like, we will take up the matter of your
business education. This year, I shall be too busy. You are young and I
am not old."
His glance turned toward a mirror set in a buffet opposite. The face
reflected was clear in outline, firm to the verge of hardness; the eyes
full and alert, the carefully brushed hair so abundant that its grayness
gave dignity without the effect of age. Self-appreciation touched Mr.
Adriance's lip with a smile, as he gazed, smoothing away his slight
annoyance. His son, tracing that glance, felt a movement of kindred
admiration and a renewed sense of his own personal inadequacy. Tony
Adriance had accomplished nothing, yet he was already tired. How would
he look when he was thirty years older? Hardly like that, he feared. Nor
would Fred Masterson! Whose was the fault, and what the remedy?
Mr. Adriance, returning to his coffee, surprised the other's observation
of him, and shrugged an unembarrassed acceptance of the verdict.
"We have plenty of time, you see," he remarked. "Moreover, you are
hardly ready for abstract affairs. You are not sufficiently settled.
After you are married that will come. I myself married young. Marriage
makes private life sufficiently monotonous not to interfere with the
conduct of outside matters of importance."
"Does it?" speculated Tony, doubtingly.
"It should. Monotony is closer to content than is agitation, would you
not say?"
"Doesn't that depend on the kind of monotony?"
"Surely. That is why each man should choose his own wife."
"I see. If I ever choose a wife, I shall remember the advice."
This time Mr. Adriance was astonished. He did not miss the significance
of the remark, or the alteration in Tony since the previous day, when he
had last seen him. It was not possible to be explicit in a matter so
delicate, especially with servants present; but his curiosity was not to
be denied.
"You have not--reached that point? I had fancied----"
"I have no such engagement at present," was the steady reply.
Mr. Adriance pushed away his finger bowl and allowed his cigar to be
lighted by the deferential automaton behind his chair.
"I am sorry," he said.
His son did not misunderstand him; in fact, he understood more clearly
than perhaps did the older man himself. Mr. Adriance had chosen the
hostess he wanted for his house, or rather, he had been enchanted by
Tony's supposed choice. Lucille Masterson filled his ideal of his son's
wife. Her loveliness would be a point of pride; her social experience
would make her competent for the position; moreover, she was too clever
not to have courted and won the genuine liking of Tony's father long
ago. Fred Masterson was hardly considered, except as an obstacle readily
removed, when the proper time came. And now, Tony himself was
overturning all the pleasant family life that Mr. Adriance had planned.
He knew that his father never willingly relinquished a perfected plan;
rarely, indeed, was he turned aside from a purpose on which his mind was
fixed.
"Perhaps you will reconsider that statement later," Mr. Adriance
presently suggested.
"I think not, in the sense you mean," he made slow reply.
Mr. Adriance raised himself abruptly.
"I hope so," he said, with a touch of sharpness; "I hope you are not
going to grow irresolute and changeable, Tony. I detest weakness of
character. Perhaps you had better take a trip somewhere and get yourself
in tone."
"Perhaps," Tony agreed; his voice was not yielding, but sullen and
desperate.
Indeed, he was as near illness as a man may be without physical injury
or disease. After his father had left the breakfast-room he sat for a
long time in utter mental incapacity to undertake any line of effort.
Finally he arose, oppressed with a sense of suffocation in the rich,
sombre atmosphere; of imprisonment and helplessness. He wanted air and
solitude, the solitude he had come to the breakfast-room to escape, and
he could think of no place where he could be so well assured of both as
in his motor-car.
In his abstraction he walked bareheaded and without an overcoat across
the frozen stretch of lawn between the house and the garage. He was
quite indifferent to the weather; his chauffeur put him into furs and
passed him his gloves and cap as a matter of course, or he might have
fared forth poorly equipped to meet the wind and storm.
He swung his machine from the cement incline into the street and turned
across Broadway. He did not wish to pass Elsie Murray ensconced in the
park pavilion with Holly Masterson at her knees; yet his thoughts were
so swayed by her that when he reached One Hundred and Thirtieth Street
he turned west again and took the ferry across the Hudson. He had no
better reason for doing so than the tranquillity and content she seemed
to draw from contemplating the opposite shore.
He sped up Fort Lee hill with a crowd of other cars, turned west and
north to escape their companionship and all the landmarks he knew. He
avoided the main highway and chose mere cross and hill roads and lanes.
Always he had before him the vivid, pretty face of Lucille, the tired
young face of Masterson and the gray eyes of Elsie Murray.
A nurse-maid! The girl who had told him the legend of Raoul Galvez, the
girl by whose standard he had come to measure himself and his companions
and who had fixed the sluggish attention of his conscience upon the
mischief being wrought by his yielding good nature--that girl was
Lucille's nurse-maid. That amazement of the night before remained with
him, coloring all other emotions. He had come out to arrange his
thoughts, but the hours passed and they remained in chaotic condition.
Near noon he was running through a narrow woodland track when a bend in
the road suddenly revealed his way blockaded by an enormous wagon that
stood before him. It was a moving van; its canvas sides distended by
bulky furniture and household fittings, its rear doors tied open to
allow a huge old-fashioned cupboard to stand between. Adriance brought
his machine to an abrupt halt.
"Clear the way there," he impatiently shouted to the invisible driver;
"what is the matter--broken down?"
The answer came, not from the concealed front of the van, but from the
bank bordering on the side of the road.
"All right; but ain't it a shame that you blew in at dinner-time!"
The reply was unexpected; Adriance looked towards the complainant's
voice. In the shelter of a big boulder that gave some protection from
the wind, three men were seated, each with a leather lunch-box on his
knee. Two of them wore the striped aprons of moving-men; the third
evidently was the spokesman and the driver. All three held various
portions of food and stared down at the intruder in the attitude in
which his advance had arrested them.
"It ain't as if we could just turn out," the driver pursued, not
resentfully but with an impersonal disgust. He put the apple in his hand
back into his lunch-box and stood up. "We've got to go on a mile before
there's room for you to pass. Come on, boys."
"No," Adriance aroused himself from self-absorption to forbid the
upheaval. "I am in no hurry; finish your lunch, and I will wait."
The three on the bank stared harder.
"You're a sport," complimented the driver; "but it ain't more than five
minutes after twelve."
"What has that to do with it? Oh, I see; you mean that you rest until
one?"
"You're on."
"Well, I said that I was not in a hurry," he accepted the delay he had
not contemplated. "Take your rest and I will smoke."
The three men regarded each other, then the driver slowly sat down. The
munching horses were blanketed against the cold, but the men appeared
careless of temperature. They obviously were constrained by the presence
of the man in the automobile, however.
"This road ain't much used," the driver ventured presently. "We're
taking this load to a farmhouse up here a ways. That's why we thought we
could stop traffic without being noticed."
His round, bright eyes asked a question that Adriance answered with
doubtful truthfulness.
"I lost my way."
"Oh!" The driver paused, then suddenly slid down the bank.
"Ain't we the hogs," he observed deprecatingly, coming up to the side of
the car and offering his lunch-box. "Won't you eat?"
The tired, dark-blue eyes of Tony Adriance met the cheerful, light-blue
eyes of the other man. The two men were about the same age, and one of
them was desperately lonely and sick of his own thoughts. They both
smiled involuntarily.
"Thanks, I will," said Adriance; and took a thick, rye bread sandwich
from the box presented. The driver sat down on the running-board of the
automobile and there ensued a well-employed silence.
The sandwich was excellent. Adriance had eaten little breakfast; yet,
left to himself, he would hardly have thought of food in his bitter
preoccupation; but it did him good. The ham smeared with cheap mustard
had a zest of its own, a little brutal, perhaps, but effective. It was a
generously designed sandwich, too, not a frail wafer. He ate it all,
even the acrid crust.
"'Nother?" invited the host.
"No, thanks; but that one tasted good." Adriance drew out his
cigar-case. "Won't you all have a smoke with me, now?"
The cigars were passed and lighted. Before returning the case, the
driver frankly inspected the fine leather toy with the tiny monogram in
one corner.
"That's all right," he approved, returning it to its owner. "I was
afraid you'd pull out a little gold box of cigarettes."
"Why?" amused.
"Oh, I don't know, my luck, I guess."
"You don't like them?"
"Me? I got a pipe three years old that holds _some_ tobacco--that for
me. But this cigar is all right. Ever try a pipe?"
"Yes."
The driver leaned back comfortably against the spare tire strapped
beside the car, gazing up at the gray, cold sky.
"A pipe, my feet on the kitchen stove, the kids and the missus--me for
that, nights."
Adriance looked at him with startled scrutiny. Almost he could have
imagined that Elsie Murray had come to the man's side and prompted him.
What, was it then real and usual, that homely content she once had
painted so vividly? Did most men have such homes?
"You're married?" he vaguely asked.
"Sure, these five years; we got two kids." The boyish driver chuckled
and shook his head reminiscently. "Darn little tykes! What they ain't up
to I don't know. Dragged a big bull pup in off the street last week,
they did, and scared the missus into fits. Pete--he's four--had it by
the collar bold as brass, and it ugly enough to scare you. Say, I'm
trying one of those schemes for training kids on him; exercising him,
you know. You ought to see the muscles he's got already, arms and legs
hard as nails. Think it will work all right?"
Adriance looked down into the eager face.
"Yes, I do," he said slowly. "You cannot be more than twenty-five or
six----?"
"Twenty-five is right."
"You must have worked pretty hard?"
"Ever since I was fourteen," was the cheerful assent. He pulled out a
watch of the dollar variety and looked at it. "One o'clock it is! We'll
get along again, boys. Yes, I've been busy. But the missus and I are
saving up. Some day I'm going to have a trucking business of my own;
there's good money in it. Well, we're sure obliged to you for waiting
for us."
The other two men were coming down the bank. Adriance drew off his glove
and held out his hand to his acquaintance.
"I am glad I met you. Good luck!"
"Same to you!" He pulled off his mitten to give the clasp. "Are you
going to the ferry?"
"I--I--? Yes."
"Well, turn off when you get to the next road. It's a poor one, but it's
a short cut to the Palisades road."
The horses were unblanketed and the bags which had held their luncheon
removed. The men climbed into their places, and presently Adriance's
lusty machine was rebelliously crawling on behind the moving-van.
At the end of a mile they came to the side road, and parted with
cheerful shouts of farewell.
It was impossible to measure the good that interlude of healthy
companionship had done to Tony Adriance. It had swept aside vapors,
cleared his mind to normality, invigorated him like a pungent tonic. Yet
it had laid a reproach upon him. He contrasted himself with that boyish
husband and father; yes, contrasted Mr. Adriance, senior, with that
driver who was anxiously training his son's body by his own efforts
after the day's work. He could not recollect his father ever playing
with him or seriously advising him. Even Fred Masterson was doing
better.
The road debouched abruptly upon the main highway. A passing automobile
momentarily delayed Adriance, and looking idly across the way, he
perceived a house. After the other car had passed and the way was open,
he sat quite still in his machine, gazing.
There was nothing about the house before him to catch the eye except a
certain air of quaint sturdiness that had survived desertion. It was
rather a cottage than a house, bearing a sign "For Sale," and
unoccupied. It was a red-painted cottage, built in that absurd Gothic
fashion once favored by some insane builders. Its ridiculous roof and
windows were highly peaked; its high, narrow porch had a pointed top
like a caricature of the entrance to _Notre Dame de Paris_. It stood
quite back from the road with an air of abandonment; but it was
unconquerably cheerful, even against the gray sky. It was a house that
wanted to be cosy.
Suddenly Adriance realized that he was very tired. He was not ready to
go home; he even thought with abhorrence of going there. Yet he was
weary of guiding his machine along the highway. He left his seat and
walked up the wood path--two planks in width--leading to the cottage.
The windows gaped, uncurtained; he looked in, then deliberately seated
himself upon the step and lapsed into heavy revery.
There were few passers-by on such a day. Those who were compelled to the
road lingered in the cold to look curiously at the automobile standing
by the gutter and at the young man who sat on the old wooden step.
It was four o'clock when Tony Adriance rose and went back to his
automobile. He did not turn down to the ferry, but looked again at the
signboard on the house; then turned his machine about and drove to an
address which was seven miles inland.
CHAPTER VI
THE WOMAN WHO GAVE
Tony Adriance had not really heeded the weather until he found his way
to the stone pavilion on Riverside Drive at dusk that evening. Cold and
wind had recorded slight impression on his preoccupied mind and his
healthy body. Indeed, his feeling was that of a man passing through a
fever, rather than one chilled. And he was hot with a savage sense of
victory, for he brought decision back with him. He knew, at last, what
he meant to do.
He was brought to heed the weather by his need of seeing the girl who
was Holly's nurse. He stood for a while in the pavilion, after realizing
the absurdity of expecting to find her, and considered. He was
accustomed to having his own way; hardly likely to abandon it when his
necessity loomed urgent. His distrust of himself was deep, if
unconfessed; he dared not wait until the next day. Besides, the storm
might continue. After a brief pause of bafflement, he walked up to
Broadway, found a stationer's shop and a messenger, and dispatched a
note to Miss Elsie Murray. He looked curiously at the name, after it was
written; it seemed so soft, even childish, matched with that
steadfastness of hers to which he held as to the one stable thing in his
knowledge.
Would she come? The doubt bore him company on his way back to the
pavilion. Could she free herself from duties to come, if she wished? He
did not know, but he was obstinately resolved to see her that night. He
was indeed like a man in a fever; one idea consumed him.
A quarter of an hour passed; a half hour. Dusk, their hour of adventure
fixed by chance, had almost darkened to night when Adriance saw the
small figure for which he watched step from the curb. She hurried,
almost ran across the broad avenue, the wind wrapping her garments
around her.
"Thank you," the man greeted her, his gratitude very earnest.
The girl brushed aside his speech with a gesture. She was breathing
rapidly; amid all the shadows her face showed white and small.
"Of course I came," she said. "It was not easy--to come. I cannot stay
long. But I knew you would not have sent unless it was important."
"No," he affirmed, and paused. "I wonder why you are there? I mean, why
are you somebody's nurse, to be ordered about when you could do so much
better things? Of course, I can see how different you are!"
He stopped, with a sense of alarmed clumsiness. Because she was weary,
the girl sat down on the cold stone bench before answering.
"You are quite wrong," she said quietly. "I cannot do clever things at
all. I do not mean that I am stupid, exactly, but that I cannot do
anything so especially well as to make people pay me for it. Neither can
my father. I think he is the best man in the world, and my mother the
dearest woman, but they cannot make money. He is a professor of romance
and history, at a small college in Louisiana. There are a good many of
us--I have four younger sisters--so I came North to support myself."
"But----"
"Not as a nurse, of course. I came with an old lady whose son we knew at
the college. She asked me to be her private secretary. But after a few
months she died. I could not go back to be a burden. After I had tried
to find other things to do, and failed, I came to take care of Holly.
Why are we talking about me? There was something important, you said?"
"I--yes," Adriance said. He could read so much more than she told.
Afterward he was ashamed to remember that he neither felt nor expressed
any pity for her disappointed hopes. His whole attention was fixed on
her steady courage; the fighting spirit that he had divined in her and
toward which his indecision reached weak hands groping in the dark for
support.
The girl shrank behind the stone column nearest her as a blast of
freezing wind rushed past.
"Well?" she spurred his hesitation.
She was successful. He moved nearer her to be heard; the fever of the
last twenty-four hours thickened and hurried his speech.
"I'm not going to tell you about Mrs. Masterson," he told her. "In the
first place, you would not listen, and in the second place, I have
nothing to say. But you must know that last evening she broke her
engagement with me. I mean, before I saw you in the nursery. I was free,
then."
"She dismissed you?"
He had deliberately thought out the falsehood that protected Lucille
Masterson at his own expense. But it was harder than he had anticipated
to play this weak role before Elsie Murray.
"Yes," he forced the difficult acknowledgment.
"You need not have told me that," her slow reply crossed the darkness to
him. "I know it is not true. And I know what is true. It does not matter
how I--learned. But we may as well speak honestly."
He could have cried out in his great relief. Instead, he seized the
offered privilege of speech.
"I will, then! You know what I have done to Fred Masterson. I brought
the glamour of money, of what I could buy, into his household and made
his wife awake to discontent and ambition. I didn't know what mischief I
was working, until too late. I did not understand some of it until last
night. Now, what? Suppose I go away? Where can I go? Abroad, or on a
hunting trip? While I was gone she would get the divorce, when I came
back she and the rest would push me into the marriage. My own father is
pushing me. Everyone pities her and thinks the thing is suitable. You
don't know me! I like her, and I'm easily pushed. I tell you I never did
anything but drift, until last night. I am afraid of myself, yet."
"Then, why have you sent for me?" she asked, after a silence.
There was as much sullenness as resolution in the unconscious gesture
with which he folded his arms.
"Because I mean to stop this thing. Because I am going to take my own
way for the rest of the journey instead of being pushed and pulled. I
quit, to-night."
"How? What do you mean?"
"I am leaving the position where I am not strong enough to stand firm.
And because I know myself, I am fixing it so I cannot go back. You"--he
stumbled over the word--"you are not much better off than I, so far as
getting what you want out of life is concerned. Do you want--will you
try the venture with me? I think, I'm sure I could keep my half of a
home. You once said you would like to be a poor man's wife----"
The last word died away as if its boldness hushed him with a sense of
what he asked so readily. The girl rose to her feet, swaying slightly in
the strong wind; her fingers gripped the stone railing behind her while
she strove to see his face through the dark. A street lamp sent a faint
grayness into the pavilion, but he stood in shadows.
"You--are asking--me----?"
He laughed shortly to cover his own embarrassment.
"To marry a man who isn't much more than a chauffeur out of work!
Driving a car is my only way of earning money, just now. Of course, if
we go away together we will have to live on what I can bring in. It's
not very dazzling, but neither is being a nurse."
Comprehension slowly came to her.
"You would do this so you never could go back," she whispered, half to
herself. "To be cut off from everyone, because of me!"
"Not that!" he offered quick apology. "Why, you are above me by every
count I can make! No, it is because I can't stand alone. And, of
course--if I were married----"
"Mrs. Masterson would give her husband another chance," she finished.
He could not see her expression, but he felt her bitterness, and that he
was losing.
"Don't be offended," he appealed. "I thought we could be good
friends--why, if I did not respect and--and admire you, would I be
asking to spend my life with you? I know I am not offering you much, but
it's my best."
"You do not love me."
He bent his head to the assertion; for it was an assertion, not a
question. After the dazzling companionship of Lucille Masterson, love
was scarcely an emotion he could associate with the grave, quiet little
figure of Elsie Murray. He was surprised and embarrassed anew, and
showed it.
"I am not very sentimental, I'm afraid. Couldn't we start with
friendship? I'll try to make a good comrade for everyday."
The delay was long, so long that he anticipated the refusal and felt his
heart sink with a sense of loss and apprehension. All his plans, he
suddenly realized, were founded upon a strength drawn from her. He felt
the tremor of his structure of resolution, with that support withdrawn.
Unreasonable bitterness surged over him. Even she would not have him,
penniless.
She was shivering. He noticed that, when she spoke.
"You wish us to understand each other?" she said, her voice quite
steady. "Very well. Remember, then, I never knew who you were until last
night. You were just a man who seemed lonely, as I was just a woman
alone. Remember that I am human, too, and imagine things, and how
monotonous it is to be a nurse and do the same things every day. I
thought you talked to me and came so often because you were commencing
to like me. Once you bought violets from a man on the corner, then threw
them away before you crossed to me. I knew you meant them for me, but
feared I would not like you to give them to me. I liked you better for
throwing them away than for buying them. I was--foolish. And I cannot
marry you, because you do not love me, while I--might you."
With the last low word, she passed him and went from the pavilion, not
in running flight, but with the swift, certain step of finality.
Adriance was left standing, struck out of articulate thought. The
astounding blow had fallen among his accumulated ideas and scattered
them like dust. She loved him. Slowly stupefaction gave place to hot
shame for the insult of his proposal to her. He had been coarse, selfish
beyond belief and wrapped in egotism. He had asked her to be his wife
with the grace of one engaging a housemaid. And he might have had the
unbelievable! A slow-rising excitement mounted through him; a tingling,
vivifying interest in the future he had faced with such sullen
indifference.
She was gone from sight. Adriance was not rapid of thought, or
readjustment. But he knew where to look for her, now. He sprang from the
pavilion and ran, throwing his weight against the wind's blustering
opposition. The physical effort, in that stinging air, sent his blood
racing with tonic exhilaration. He felt dulness and morbidity dropping
away from him; zest of life taking their place.
The girl was crossing a dark little strip of park that lay before the
house where the Mastersons lived, when he overtook her.
"Elsie Murray!" he panted. "Elsie Murray!"
His voice had changed, and his accent. He spoke to her possessively; he
no longer depended, he directed. Instantly sensitive to the difference,
the girl stopped.
"Are you running away from me, Elsie Murray?" His hand closed lightly on
her arm, he stood over her with the advantage of his superior height,
and she heard him draw the cold air deeply into his lungs. "I did not
tell you the truth, back there. I meant to, but I did not know it
myself. I want what you might give, and I want to give as much to you.
Why, do you know what started me toward ending all this bad business,
what has given me the will to keep on? It was what you said, the first
night I saw you, about a woman waiting for her husband, with the lamps
lit, and all. I can't say what I mean--I'm clumsy! But, will you come
keep the lamp for me?"
She tried to speak, but to his dismay and her own, instead covered her
face; not weeping, but fiercely struggling not to weep.
"No," she flung refusal at him. "No! No!"
As her firmness lessened, his gained. She looked pitiful and helpless,
she, his tower of strength. Suddenly, protectingly, he caught her from
the assault of a violent swirl of the gale; caught and held her against
him, in the curve of his arm.
"If you may love me, and I want you, we have enough to start with," he
gently insisted. "I promise you I'll do my part. Will you try it with
me?"
She remained still. But the long pause, the contact between them, joined
with the change in the man and helped him.
"Will you marry me to-night?" he pressed.
She drew away from him with a flare of her natural resolution.
"No! Not to-night, if you could!"
"To-morrow, then?"
"Go home," she bade him. "Go home; think of everything--of what you have
and what you would leave, of all you want and must miss. _Think._ And
if, to-morrow----"
"Yes?"
"If you are sure, come back. I----may try it."
He knew better than to force her further.
"To-morrow, then, I will meet you at noon, in the pavilion," he yielded,
quietly, in spite of his leaping excitement. "And there is something
else. Once I bought these, for you. Of course I dared not give them to
you, afterward. But I did not throw them away, and I brought them in my
pocket to-night. Perhaps you will wear them to-morrow, when we go away."
The storm swooped down again. This time he did not hold her from the
gust, and she flitted with it into the darkness. But she took the little
package he had pressed into her hands; she had at last the little pair
of buckled shoes.
CHAPTER VII
THE DARING ADVENTURE
They were married at two o'clock the next day. The wedding was in
church, at Elsie Murray's desire. With a certain defiance expressive of
his attitude toward all the world, Adriance, after obtaining their
license, took her to the rector of that costly and fashion-approved
cathedral which the Adriances graced with their membership and
occasional attendance. Of course the two were met with astonishment, but
there was a decision in the young man's speech and bearing that forbade
interference. The clergyman did not find the familiar, easy,
good-natured Tony Adriance in the man who curtly silenced delicate
allusion to the wedding's unexpectedness and the surprising absence of
Mr. Adriance, senior.
"I am over age, and so is Miss Murray," was the brief statement, whose
finality ended comment. "Will you be good enough not to delay us; we are
leaving town?"
There were no more objections. Of course the bride was not recognized as
Mrs. Masterson's nurse; she simply was an unknown girl. And she did not
in any way suggest that Mr. Adriance was marrying out of his world.
Adriance himself entirely approved of her in this new role. He liked her
dark-blue suit with its relieving white at throat and wrists, and her
small hat with a modest white quill at just the right angle. And she
wore the shining, Spanish-heeled, small shoes of his choosing. He
noticed how large her gray eyes were, when she lifted them to his,
large, and clear as pure water is clear under a still, gray sky. But her
heavy lashes threw shadows across them, as he had once seen lines of
shadow lie across a little lake in Maine on an autumn day. He wondered
if she was happy, or frightened. He could not tell what she was thinking
or feeling.
So they were married before the imposing altar of cream-hued marble, and
the conventional notice went to the newspapers:
Adriance-Murray. Elsie Galvez Murray to Anthony Adriance, Jr.,
by the Rev. Dr. Van Huyden, at St. Dunstan's Cathedral.
It was very simply done, for so daring an adventure.
When they stood outside, in the sparkling autumn sunshine, Elsie
Adriance asked her first question.
"Where are we going?" she wondered, in her soft, blurred speech that now
Adriance recognized as of the South. Her middle name had caught his
attention also. There once had been a governor of Louisiana called
Galvez; New Orleans has a street named for him.
But he was not thinking of ancestry now. He looked doubtfully at his
companion. In spite of his repressed bearing, he was suffering a
terrible excitement and a tearing conflict of will and desire. He was
acutely conscious of the finality of what had been done; and one part of
him wished it undone. He thought of his father and Lucille as a man in a
fever thinks; glimpsing them in a confusion of remembered pictures,
conceiving their future attitude with the exaggeration of his
unreasoning sense of guilt and belated regret. He felt himself in bonds,
and the instinct of escape gripped and shook him. But he kept himself in
hand.
"Where do you wish to go?" he temporized, withholding his own wish. It
became him to consider her first, now and hereafter.
She shook her head.
"I follow you," she reminded him, quite simply and gravely. "Where
would--it be easiest for you? You spoke of going out of town; perhaps
that would be best. I think, it seems to me, that we should start as we
mean to go on."
"Yes!" he exclaimed eagerly. She had offered him his inmost desire; in
his gratitude he caught her hand, stammering in the rush of words
released. "Yes. If you will go, I have a house--our house. Let me tell
you. Yesterday, after meeting you at Masterson's the night before, I was
at the limit. I had to keep out of doors and keep moving, or go to
pieces. I kept seeing Fred, and Holly. Well, I took a long drive; across
the river, I went, perhaps because you were always looking over there as
if it were some kind of a fairyland. And on the way back, on the road
along the Palisades, I saw the house. It was--I stopped and went in. It
looked like a place you had made a picture of. I can't explain what I
mean, but I sat down there and thought things out. You won't be angry?
I bought it. Not that I was so sure of you! You see, if you refused to
take me, I knew I had money enough to buy fifty like it for a whim. And
if you would come, it was the house."
There was no anger in her glance, only a heartening comprehension and
cordial willingness.
"Let us go there," she agreed. "I should like that best of all."
Reanimated, he put her into the waiting taxicab, gave the chauffeur his
directions, and closed the door upon their first wedded solitude.
"But this is one of the things we must not do," she told him, bringing
the relief of humor to the situation. "We must not take taxis and let
them wait for us with a price on the head of each moment. It is more
than extravagant; it is reckless."
He laughed out, surprised.
"So it is. I am afraid you will have a lot to teach me."
"Yes," she assumed the burden. "Yes."
They rode down to the ferry, and the taxicab rolled on board the broad,
unsavory-smelling boat. When the craft started, the vibration of the
engine sent a throbbing sense of departure through Adriance such as he
never had felt in starting a European voyage. This time he could not
return. He was humbly grateful for Elsie's silence, which permitted his
own.
On the Jersey side their cab slowly moved through the dark ferry house,
then plunged out into a sun-drenched world and swung blithely up to the
long Edgewater hill. They left the river shipping behind, presently. The
sunlight glittered through the woods that still clothe the long,
rampart-like stretches along the summit of the great cliffs; a forest of
jewels like the subterranean woods of the Twelve Dancing Princesses,
only instead of silver and diamonds these trees displayed the red of
cornelian and brown of topaz all set in copper and bronze. The storm of
the night before had littered the ground with the spoils of Lady
Autumn's jewel-box; the air was spicily sweet and very clear.
The village on the first slope of the hills had been dingy and poor.
Here above, on the heights winding up the river, there were few houses,
with long spaces between. Elsie leaned at the window, her wide eyes
embracing all. Adriance leaned back, seeing nothing.
The taxicab finally stopped, nevertheless, at his signal, before a
little red cottage set far back from the road.
"Here?" the chauffeur queried, with incredulous scorn.
"Here," Adriance affirmed, swinging out their two suit-cases and his
wife. He laughed a little at the man's face. "How much?"
The toll pointed Elsie's warning. She made a grimace at her pupil. His
spirits mounting again, Adriance answered the rebuke by catching her
hand to lead her up the absurd, staggering Gothic porch in miniature.
"I'll come back for the baggage," he promised. "Come look, first."
"Is there anything inside?"
"Oh, yes. I----" he looked askance at her. "I bought things, at a shop
in Fort Lee, early this morning. I suppose they're all wrong."
She met his diffidence with a smile so warm, so enchanting in its sweet,
maternal raillery and indulgence that his heart melted within him. And
then, as he fumbled with the key, she took from her hand-bag a book and
a small glass bottle, and gave them to him.
"What----?" he marvelled.
"Don't you know?" she wondered at him. "'Where was you done raised,
man?' Don't you know there is no luck in the house unless the first
things carried into it are the Bible and the salt?"
He did not know, but he found the superstition of a singular charm.
"Give me the salt, then, and you take the other," he divided the
ceremony.
"No," she denied quietly. "You should carry the Book, because you will
make the laws. I will take the salt, because I shall keep the hearth."
So they went in, he oddly sobered by the dignity she laid upon him.
There were only two rooms on the ground floor. The one into which they
stepped was large and square, with a floor of brick faded to a mellow
Tuscan red, and walls of soft brown plaster. A brick fireplace was built
against the north side; the furnishings comprehended two arm-chairs, a
round Sheraton table and china closet, a tall wooden clock, and four
rag rugs in red and white. In one corner, modestly retired, a plain deal
table supported an oil cook-stove, with an air of decent humility and
shrinking from observation. The open door beyond revealed a bed-chamber,
also rag-rugged, furnished with a noble meagreness, but displaying a
four-posted bed of carved and time-darkened ash. Elsie took a long, full
look, then regarded her husband with widening eyes.
"Anthony, _where_ did you buy them? And what did you pay for them?"
No one within his memory had ever called Adriance by his unabbreviated
name. It came to him as part of this new life where he was full-grown
man and master. And he welcomed the frank comradeship with which she
used it, without a sentimental affectation of shyness.
"At a little place with a sign 'Antiques'," he confessed. "I had passed
it in the car. I thought they might do as well as new things, since we
have got to economize. I never bought any furniture before; if they
won't do----"
"They are perfect." The mirth in her eyes deepened. "But you had better
let me help you, next time we shop economically. Hadn't we better build
a fire, first, to drive away the chill? Oh, and is there anything to
eat?"
"In the cupboard over there; everything the grocer could think of," he
said meekly. "I'll go get anything else you say. First, though, I'll run
down to the gate and bring in our suit-cases."
"Do," she approved. "I want an apron. Do you know, you never asked me if
I could cook."
"Can you?"
"Wait and see. What woman thought of the oil-stove?"
"The antiquarian's wife. She said the fireplace was more bother than it
was use and suggested stuffing it with paper to keep the draughts out."
"Well, we will stuff it with fire," she declared.
They built the fire; or rather, Adriance built it, aided by the girl's
tactful advice. When the flames were roaring and leaping, she sent him
to the nearest shop where lamps could be purchased, the trifling
question of light having been overlooked.
When he hurried back from the village, the need of light was becoming
imminent. Dusky twilight came early here under the edge of the hills.
Climbing the steep road, Anthony Adriance looked across the
violet-tinted river toward the chain of lights marking the street where
Tony Adriance had lived and idled. Already he knew himself removed,
altered; he was interested in keeping on with this thing. Of course, he
must keep on, he had set a barrier blocking retreat; he had taken a
wife.
He opened the brown door of the shabby little cottage, and stopped.
The fire on the hearth had settled to a warm, rosy steadiness, filling
the room with its glow and starting velvet shadows that tapestried the
simple place with an airy brocade of shifting patterns. In the centre of
the room stood the round table, robed in white and gay with the antique
shop's ware of blue-and-white Wedgewood. The perfume of coffee and
fragrance of good food floated on the warm air. The fire snapped at
intervals as if from jovial excess of spirits, and a tea-kettle was
bubbling with the furious enthusiasm of all true tea-kettles. It was the
room of his fancy, the unattainable home that Elsie had pictured on the
first evening he had spoken to her out of his sick heart.
Elsie herself stood beside the hearth. Elsie? He never had seen her like
this. But then, he scarcely had seen her at all except in the severe
black of a nurse's livery.
She had merely taken off her jacket, now, although he did not realize
the fact. Her soft white blouse rolled away from a round, full throat
pure in color and smoothness as cream. She was no sylph-slim beauty, but
a deep-bosomed, young girl-woman, fashioned with that rich fulness of
curve and outline that artists once loved, but which Fashion now
disapproves. Her mouth, too, curved in generous, womanly softness;
neither a thin line nor a round rosebud. Her dark hair rippled of itself
around her forehead and was lustrous in the firelight.
His entrance caught her off guard. He surprised herself in her eyes,
before she masked feeling in gayety. And he saw a wistful, frightened
girl whose trembling excitement matched his own.
The latching of the door behind him ended the brief instant of
revelation. At once she turned to him the cordial comrade's face he
knew.
"Dinner is served," she announced merrily. "At least, it is waiting in
the oven. We have hot biscuits, scrambled eggs, a fifty-eighth variety
of baked beans, and strawberry jam. There is no meat, because you only
shopped at a grocery, sir. Do you really adore canned oysters, Anthony?"
"I never tasted one," he slowly replied, putting down the packages he
had brought, without taking his gaze from her.
"Well, you bought six tins of them," she shrugged.
He made no pretense of replying, this time, moving across the room
toward her. He was remembering that she was a bride, who by her
confession loved him, and that he had given her nothing except the gold
ring compelled by custom; not a caress, not a flower, even, to speak of
tenderness and reassurance. He was astounded at himself, appalled by
his degree of selfish absorption. All day she had given him of her
understanding, her warm companionship, her gracious tact and heartening
cheerfulness, exacting nothing--and he had taken. Oh, yes, he had taken!
Troubled by his silence, her color mounting in a vivid sweep, the girl
tried to turn aside from his approach.
"We must have a little cat," she essayed diversion. "I hope you like
kittens? Purrs should go with crackling logs. Not an Angora or a
Persian; just a pussy."
Her voice died away. Very quietly and firmly Adriance had taken her into
his arms.
"I've made a bad beginning," he made grave avowal. "I am learning how
much I need to learn. And I don't deserve my luck in having you to teach
me."
She rested quietly in his arms, as if conceding his right, but she did
not look at him. She was very supple and soft to hold, he found. There
breathed from her a fresh, faint fragrance like the clean scent of
just-gathered daffodils, but no perfume that he recognized. She was
individual even in little things. He wondered what she was thinking. The
uneven rise and fall of her breast timed curiously with the pulse of his
heart, as she leaned there, and the fact affected him unreasonably. He
did not want her to move; warmth and content were flowing into him.
Content, yet---- Suddenly, he knew; a man confronted with a blaze of
light after long groping.
"Elsie!" he cried, his voice sounding through the room his great
amazement. "Elsie! Elsie!"
She looked at him then, putting her two little hands on his breast and
forcing herself back against his arm that she might read his face. But
he would not have it so, compelling her submission to the marvel that
had mastered him. What the church had essayed to do was done, now.
Anthony Adriance had taken a wife.
"I love you," he repeated, inarticulate still with wonder, his lips
against her cheek. "Why didn't you tell me? I love you."
He never forgot that she met him generously, with no mean reminder of
his tardiness. She took his surrender, and set no price on her own. Her
lips were fresh as a cup lifted to his thirst for good and simple
things; he thought her kiss was to the touch what her eyes were to the
gaze, and tried clumsily to tell her so.
When they finally remembered the delayed supper, that meal was in need
of repairs. And because now Adriance would not suffer the width of the
room between himself and his wife, he insisted in aiding her in the
process, thereby delaying matters still further. Nine o'clock had been
struck by the clock in the corner when they sat down to table, lighted
by the new lamp. It had a garnet shade, that lamp, upon which its
purchaser received the compliments of Mrs. Adriance.
She delivered an impromptu lecture on the subject, as the light glowed
into full radiance and illumined her, seated behind it.
"Red, sir, is the color of life. It was the color of the alchemist's
fabled rose, looked for in their mystic cauldrons, because if the ruddy
image formed on the surface of the brew, the bubbling liquid was indeed
the true elixir of youth and immortality. Red is the color of dawn, of
sunset, of a fireside; of bright blood, poured splendidly for a good
cause or daintily glimpsed in a girl's blush. Red are a cardinal's
robes, a Chinese bride's gown, a Spanish bride's flowers. To be kept in
a red-draped chamber, in Queen Elizabeth's time, was believed to cure
beauty of the smallpox without a scar. Lastly, red is the color of the
heart."
"'Lord, keep our heart's-blood red,'" paraphrased Adriance soberly. "I
am not clever like you, but I know red is the color of your own jewels."
"Mine?"
He caught her hands across the table.
"Have you forgotten what stones were likened to the value of a good
woman? Elsie, Elsie, when I can, I will give you--not diamonds or
pearls, but rubies. Rubies, for to-night."
Neither of the two was given to continued sentimentality of speech. But
the deep happiness, the shining wonder that still dazzled them found
expression in plans for this new future; mere suggestions for the
comfort of the house or the pleasure of their leisure together. She
mentioned a much-discussed book, and he promised to read it aloud to
her.
"I've always wanted to read aloud, but I never found anyone who would
listen," he told her, over the strawberry jam and coffee. "You can't
escape, so----! You can embroider, and listen."
"Embroider!" She heaped scorn on the word. "Let me inform you, sir, that
there will be dish-towels to hem, and napkins. Do you know we have only
one tablecloth, and that has a frightful border, with fringe? Blue
fringe? And there are no curtains at the windows. Embroider? I shall
_sew_, and listen."
"Well, so long as you listen!" He lighted a cigar and leaned back
luxuriously. "What little hands you have!"
She spread them out on the table and seriously contemplated them.
"Most Southerners have. Didn't you ever notice it, even with the men?
Down in Louisiana most of us have some French or Spanish blood. But mine
have not been do-nothing hands, and I think they show it a little bit."
He stopped her, with a sudden distasteful memory of certain wax-white,
wax-smooth and useless hands that almost had laid hold on his life.
"I hope that mine may soon show something. To-morrow I will try to
become a wage-earner, and start a pay envelope to bring you."
"So soon?"
"Right away. Am I one of the idle rich? The fact is, our grocer tells me
chauffeurs are badly needed at a certain factory near the foot of the
hill. I think I should rather drive a motor truck than pilot a private
car, open doors and touch my cap."
She nodded agreement.
"Yes, of course. What factory is it, Anthony?"
He regarded her with a whimsical humor.
"Well, to be exact, it is not a factory unfamiliar to us. It is one
whose sign you often have viewed from the aristocratic side of the
Hudson, and it is the property of Mr. Anthony Adriance, senior."
"Oh!" startled. "Is, is that--safe?"
"Why not?" he wondered. "We haven't broken any laws, have we? The worst
he could do, if he wanted to do something melodramatic, would be to
fire me. But he will not. In the first place, why should he? In the
second, he knows a trifle more about the natives of Patagonia than he
knows about the men who drive his trucks. I don't believe he has been in
this factory for ten years. New York is his end. And I'm giving him a
square deal; he will have a very valuable chauffeur, Mrs. Adriance--one
who can drive a racing-machine, if required!"
She disclosed two dimples he had not previously observed. But her eyes
hid from the challenge of his and she rose hastily to clear away the
dishes.
"Let them stand," he commanded, man-like.
There she was firm in rebellion, however. Finally they compromised on
his assisting her.
"We must have a dog, too," he decided, when all was neat once more. He
glanced about the fire-bright room with a proprietary air. "One that
will not eat your kitten."
"With a nice watch-doggy bark?"
"With anything you want!" He turned abruptly and drew her to him.
"Elsie, suppose I had missed you? What a poor fool I've been! Last
night---- Why don't you take it out of me? Why don't you make me pay as
I deserve?"
She smiled with the delicately-mocking indulgence he was learning to
know and anticipate; it sat upon her youth with so quaint a wisdom.
"Perhaps I am, or will."
"I believe now that I loved you from the first day. I know that I kept
thinking about you and considering everything from the point of view I
fancied you would take. You"--with sudden anxiety--"you do not regret
coming with me, Elsie? What were you thinking of, just now, when your
eyes darkened? You looked----"
"Of Holly," she answered simply. "I hope his new nurse will play with
him, and cuddle him."
"The baby?" Her fidelity touched him with a warm sense of promise for
his own future. "Yes, I have taken you from him. But, we left him his
father."
The allusion brought a constraint. The words spoken, Adriance flushed
like a woman and turned his ashamed eyes away from the girl.
"You did not take me from Holly," Elsie hurriedly corrected. "Mrs.
Masterson discharged me, night before last. I was to go to-day,
anyhow."
"You? Why?"
She hesitated.
"She came to the nursery door while you were speaking to me of telling
Holly the story of Mait' Raoul Galvez. You know, Holly is too much a
baby to hear stories, so she understood that you meant--other things.
And it seems that once you had spoken to her of that story. She--made
connections. She accused me of--of flirting with her guests; of
being--an improper person."
"Elsie!"
"It is all over. It does not matter, now. But that was how I knew she
did not send you away. Of course she said nothing to tell me; she is too
clever. But, you see I knew so much already; and when I saw she was
jealous even of your speaking to me----!"
The silence continued long. Both were thinking of Lucille Masterson. As
if she feared the man's thoughts, Elsie shrank away from her husband's
clasp, the movement unnoticed by him. Her clear eyes clouded with
doubt, a creeping chill extinguished their glow.
Adriance spoke first, breaking at once the pause and the barrier.
"Once they must have been like this--like us. She would have left Fred,
left him down and out, for a new man; and she his wife!"
Disgust was in his voice, wondering contempt. He pressed his own wife
hard against his side. But Elsie dragged her arms from the hold that
bound them, and impulsively clasped them about his neck in her first
offered caress.
"You were thinking _that_?" she cried, fiercely glad in her triumph.
"Anthony, you were thinking that?"
He stooped his head to meet her glance; standing together, they looked
into each other's eyes.
CHAPTER VIII
ANDY OF THE MOTOR-TRUCKS.
The man behind the wicket leaned forward to survey the man outside. The
gate-keeper at the main entrance to Adriance's was the prey of a double
vanity that kept his attention alert: he was vain of his own position,
and of his ability to judge the positions of other men. This was his
seventeenth year in the cage of ornamental iron-work, and he had brought
his hobby into it with his first day there. He delighted in difficult
subjects, now, who baffled a casual inspection.
It was, therefore, with an air of bored certainty that he classified
this morning visitor at a glance, and settled back on his high stool.
"Office door to the right, sir," he directed, briefly, but respectfully.
"Boy there will take in your card, sir."
"I understand chauffeurs are wanted here," said the visitor, his
composed gaze dwelling on a poster to that effect affixed to the nearest
wall.
The gate-keeper stared.
"I guess so----?"
"Is the office the place where I should apply for such work?"
"Trucking department; turn left, down basement, Mr. Ransome," vouchsafed
the chagrined concierge, severely wounded in his self-esteem. So blatant
a mistake had not offended his pride in years. He turned in his seat and
craned his thin neck to watch the stranger swing blithely away in the
direction indicated.
"Chauffeur!" he muttered. "Walks as if Adriance's was his private garage
an' he was buildin' himself a better one around the corner! Hope Ransome
throws him out!"
But Ransome of the motor-trucks was in urgent need of men and disposed
to be more tolerant. Moreover, his sensitive vanity had taken no hurt
that morning. But he looked rather closely at the applicant,
nevertheless.
"Used to chauffing private cars, aren't you?" he shrewdly questioned.
"Yes," admitted Adriance.
"I thought so! Where was your last place?"
"I drove for Mr. Adriance, junior," was the grave response.
The man whistled.
"You did, eh? Why did he fire you?"
"He left New York for the winter, without taking his machines along."
"Did he give you a reference?"
"I can bring one to-morrow, or I can go get it now, if you want me to
start work at once. I haven't it with me."
"Why not?"
"I forgot it would be needed."
This was unusual, and produced a pause. Ransome studied his man, and
liked what he saw.
"Married?" he shot the next routine question.
"Yes."
"Anything against you on the police records? Accidents? Overspeeding?"
"Nothing."
"I can see you don't drink. You know Jersey?"
"Not so well as New York, but well enough to pick up the rest as I go
along."
"Well, it's irregular, but we're short-handed. Give me your license
number so I can verify that. Bring your reference to-morrow, and if it
is all right---- I'll take you on to-day, on trial. Wait; I'll give you
your card."
The inquisition was safely past. Adriance smiled to himself as he
watched the superintendent fill out the card that grudgingly permitted
him to earn his first wage. He was intoxicated, almost bewildered by his
own lightheartedness. His body was still tired and beaten after the
miserable conflict from which his mind had resiliently leaped erect to
stand rejoicing in the sunlight. To-day he could have overcome a hundred
ill chances, where one had yoked him yesterday.
"Name?" came the crisp demand from the man writing.
"Anthony Adriance."
"What!" The superintendent's head came up abruptly. "Why--what
connection----?"
"Poor relation," classified Adriance coolly. He had anticipated this,
but he could not have endured the furtive discomfort and risk of a false
name. "All rich men have them, I suppose."
His indifference was excellently done. The superintendent nodded
acquiescence.
"I suppose so; must have been queer, though! What did young Adriance
call you? Did he know?"
"Oh, yes. 'Andy' is a noncommittal nickname."
"All right; here is your card."
Mr. Ransome watched the new employee cross the floor, with a meditative
consideration of the uselessness of the shadow of the purple without its
comfortable substance; but he was not especially surprised after the
first moment. Few wealthy men trouble themselves about the distant
branches of their families, and babies are frequently named after them
by hopeful kinsmen.
At the other end of the subterranean chamber where trucks rolled in and
out, piloted by weather-beaten chauffeurs and loaded with heavy packages
and bales by perspiring porters, a little man in a derby hat and shirt
sleeves was in command. With him the matter passed still more easily for
the stranger.
"What's your name?" he shrilled in a peculiarly flat treble voice,
across the uproar of thudding weight, rolling wheels and panting
machinery. "Andy? Well, take out number thirty-five. Mike, Mike! Where
is that--that Russian? Here, Mike, you are to go with number
thirty-five. Bring your truck in for its load and get your directions
from the boss there, Andy. Report when you get back."
A huge figure lounged across the electric-lighted space toward Adriance;
a pair of mild brown eyes gazed down at him from under a shock of red
hair.
"I guess you're new," pronounced the heavy accent of Russian Mike; "I
guess I show you?"
"I wish you would," Adriance cordially accepted the patronizing
kindness. He found time to marvel at the readiness of his own smile
since last night, and at the response it evoked from these strangers. "I
don't know where to find thirty-five yet, or who is the boss."
"I know," announced Mike, grandly comprehensive; "you ride with me,
Andy; I'll learn you."
So Andy of the trucks began his education.
A motor-truck is not a high-priced pleasure car. Nor is the trucking
department of a large factory professional in its courtesy. Tony
Adriance learned a great many things in breathless sequence. And he
never had been quite so much interested by anything in his life--except
his newly-made wife. The men were not gentle, but they were merry. They
shouted gaily back and forth at each other with a humor of their own.
When Tony stalled his unfamiliar motor there was much unpolished
witticism at his expense; but also a neighbor jumped down to crank the
machine for him, and another sprang up to the seat beside the new man
and gave him a score of valuable hints in a dozen terse sentences. When
he finally drove up the incline into the street, he found that Russian
Mike appeared to have a complete map of the Jersey City river front
engraved on his otherwise blank intelligence and proved as willingly
efficient a guide on the streets as in the factory. If the difficulties
were more numerous than the novice had anticipated and the work harder,
these things were more than offset by the unexpected comradeship he
encountered.
All day, amid the steady press of events, the thought of his wife lay
warm at the core of his heart. His love was matched only by his deep
wonder at the thing which had befallen him. The exultation of successful
escape was strong upon him; escape from loathsome bonds, from
complicated problems his innately simple mind detested, above all, from
the guidance of other people. He and Elsie were alone as no distance
around the world could have made them. He had come to a place in life
where he was not a boy to be governed, but master in his own right. A
heat of pride had burned his face when he had answered "Yes" to the
superintendent's question: "Married?" Decidedly he meant to stay in the
home and the factory of his first adventure, if possible.
On his first trip he made an excuse to stop at a stationer's, where he
wrote for himself a recommendation signed by Anthony Adriance, Junior.
The ruse amused him; he found himself childishly ready to be amused.
When he brought the truck in from the last journey of the day he
presented this letter to Mr. Ransome, who read and returned it with a
nod of content.
"All right; to-morrow at seven," he said briefly.
He ached in every unaccustomed muscle bent to toil when he strode up the
hill at dusk, his day's work over. But he was no more affected by that
than a boy on his first day of camping--it was part of the sport.
Because he was learning unselfishness he felt more anxiety as to how
Elsie had got through the day. Housework in the rather primitive cottage
was a different thing from caring for Holly Masterson in his luxurious
pink-and-gold nursery. Would he find her discouraged, tired--perhaps
cross? He smiled audacious confidence in his ability to caress her into
good humor, but he wondered rather uneasily whether his wages would
support a maid should Elsie demand one as necessary. He was utterly
unused to the practical apportionment of money.
There were new curtains draped across the lighted windows of the little
red house. As he turned up the ridiculous plank walk he saw a very
diminutive kitten seated on the window-sill inside washing its face. And
then he heard a fresh, smooth voice singing the drollest little air he
ever had heard in his musical experience--a minor grotesquerie
distinctive as the flavor of _bouillabaisse orleanais_. He opened the
door and his wife laughed at him across the bright room, flushed with
fire heat, dainty in her lavender frock and white ruffled apron,
arrested with a steaming tureen uplifted in her little hands.
Perhaps she had doubted how he would come home from that first day of
work. For just a moment they drank full reassurance from each other's
eyes; then Adriance was across the room.
"Put it down or I'll spill it!"
"Sir, this is a soup extraordinary! Would you overturn your supper?"
"Yes, for this," said Adriance, and kissed her soft mouth.
"Anthony, can one be _too_ happy and affront the fates?"
"No."
"We can go on and on, and nothing will happen!"
"Please God!" said Tony Adriance with perfect reverence.
"It is not a wonderful adventure now; it is just life?"
"Of course. I say--I wish that van-driver could see me now--the one I
told you about last night."
"The butcher gave me the kitten, Anthony."
"Of course he did; any man would give you all he had. What were you
singing when I came in?"
"How should I know? I know a thousand bits of song and a thousand
stories, and they march in and out of my head. Our dinner is spoiling,
Mr. Adriance."
"I love you!"
"I dislike you!" she mocked him.
There was no one in New York who would have quite recognized either
Anthony or Elsie Adriance in these two children at play together.
"Next Saturday evening I want you to take me shopping, please," she told
him when they were seated at supper.
"Enchanted; but why Saturday?"
"Because you will have your wages then, naturally. We need more dishes,
and a casserole, and a ribbon for the kitten, and--thousands of
things."
"Shall I have wealth enough?"
"Plenty; we are going to the 5-10-20 cent store."
"I thought those were the prices of melodrama on the East Side."
"Wait. You may find the event even tragic, if I want too many seductive
articles," she cautioned him. "But let us not talk of mere
things--aren't you going to tell me about your day?"
"I am. But it was a day like any other workingman's, I suppose; nothing
happened."
"Did you want anything to happen? I imagined----"
"All I want," said Tony Adriance fervently, "is to be left alone, with
you."
CHAPTER IX
THE LUCK IN THE HOUSE.
Nothing did happen. None of the traditionary usual experiences overtook
the two in the little red house, as November ran out and December
stormed in like a lusty viking from northern seas, attended by
tremendous winds and early snow.
In the first place, the marriage of Anthony Adriance, Junior, somehow
escaped the sensational journals, as a pleasing theme. There were no
headlines announcing: "Son of a millionaire weds a nursemaid." No
reporters discovered the house on the Palisades, to photograph its
diminutive Gothic front for Sunday specials. Adriance had written a
letter of explanation, so far as explanation might be, to his father.
That was on the morning of his marriage, and as he had given no address,
naturally he had received no answer. There were no reproaches and no
pursuit.
Nor was Tony Adriance gnawed by vain regrets. According to every rule
of romance and reason, he should have suffered from at least brief
seasons of repining; at least have been twinged by memories of things
foregone, yet desired. But he felt nothing of the kind. Masculine
independence was aroused in him, and held reign in riotous good spirits.
With a boy's triumphant bravado he faced down cold and hard work,
delighting in the victory. He rose early and built Elsie's fires before
permitting her to rise, while she sat up protesting in the four-posted
bed as he bullied and loved and mastered her. He walked two miles to and
from work morning and evening, and drove his big motor-truck eight hours
a day. Moreover, he gained weight on the regime, and the springing step
of a man in training. He never had suspected it, but his whole body had
craved outdoors and employment of its forces; Nature had built him for
work, not idleness. The atmosphere in which he had been reared was, by a
trick of temperament, foreign to him.
"I'm plain vulgarian," he laughed to his wife one morning as he started
to work. "I would rather drive one of my father's trucks and come home
to your pork-chops, than I would to dawdle around his house and dine
with a strong man standing behind my chair to save me the fatigue of
putting sugar in my own coffee. Are you going to have some of those
jolly little apple-fritters with butter and cinnamon on them for supper
to-night?"
She made a tantalizing face at him. It was two days before Christmas,
and so cold that her lips and cheeks were stung poppy-bright as she
stood in the doorway.
"Of course not; now I know that you want them. We will have cold meat.
What are you going to give me for my stocking, Anthony?"
"A cold-meat fork," he countered promptly. "How did you know I meant to
give you anything?"
"I didn't," she calmly told him. "But I am going to give you something,
so I thought it only kind to remind you."
He swung himself easily over the railing and smothered her in an embrace
made bear-like by his shaggy coat.
"The chauffeur's peerless bride shall not weep," he soothed her. "For
ten days her ruby stomacher has been ordered by her devoted husband.
Now let your Romeo depart, or his pay will get docked next Saturday."
She lingered in his arms an instant, her shining dark hair pressed
against the rough darkness of his cheap fur coat.
"Anthony, don't they ever notice your name, down there? Didn't they ever
ask about it?"
"Surely! The first day I went in, the superintendent asked if I were
related to Mr. Adriance. I told him yes, a poor relation. True, isn't
it? He was satisfied, anyhow. They call me Andy, down there."
"Andy!" she essayed experimentally. "Andy! It goes pretty well."
They laughed together, then he gently pushed her toward the door.
"Go in," he bade, with his commanding manner; the manner Elsie had
taught him. "You will take a royal cold out here, and then what should I
do for my meals? I have to eat if I am to labor; besides, I like my
food. What did you call those cakes we had this morning?"
"'_Belle cala, tout chaud!_'" she intoned the soft street-cry of old
New Orleans' breakfast hours, her voice catching the quaint, enticing
inflections of those dark-skinned vendors who once loitered their sunny
rounds freighted with fragrant baskets. "Some day I will show you what I
call a city, sir; if you'll take me?"
"I'll take you anywhere, but I'll not let you go as far as the next
corner. Now, go in-doors, and good-bye."
She obeyed him so far as to draw back into the warm doorway. There,
sheltered, she stayed to watch him swinging down the hill through the
gray winter morning. It was nearly seven o'clock, but the sun had not
yet warmed or gilded the atmosphere. Bleakness reigned, except in the
hearts of the man and woman.
They had been married two months. Elsie Adriance slowly closed the door
and turned to the uncleared breakfast table. But presently she left the
dishes she had begun to assemble, and walked to one of the rear windows.
There she leaned, gazing where Anthony never gazed: toward the
gray-and-white stateliness of New York, across the ice-dotted river. She
contemplated the city, not with defiance or challenge, but with the
steady-eyed gravity, of one measuring an enemy.
Two months, and the victory was still with her! Yet, she warned herself,
surely some day New York would call. She never quite could forget that.
She herself was not unlike a city preparing for defence, feverishly
grasping at every stone to build her ramparts. How she envied Lucille
Masterson her beauty, the elder Adriance his wealth, since those
possessions might have bound Anthony closer to her! She recalled Mrs.
Masterson's exquisite costumes, colored like flowers and as delightful
to the touch; the costly perfumes that made all her belongings fragrant;
the studied coquetry that kept her like Cleopatra, never customary or
stale. To oppose all this, Anthony's wife had only--her hearth. For she
never would keep her husband against his will; Elsie Adriance never
would claim as a right what she had held as a gift.
The kitten, a black-and-white midget suggestive of a Coles-Phillips
drawing, rubbed insistently against the girl's foot. She picked up the
living toy and nestled its furry warmth beneath her chin, as she turned
in quest of milk. She thrust forebodings from her mind with resolute
will. It was too soon to think of these things; Anthony loved her,
Anthony was content.
She had no conception of how fervently glad Anthony was to be rid of
harassing thoughts and complications, or how gratefully the luxury of
peace enfolded him and dwarfed the mere physical luxuries of idleness
and lavish expenditure. Nor, being a woman, did she sufficiently value
his pride in the possessions he had bought with his own labor. Tony
Adriance never had noticed the table service in his father's house; he
had been known to overturn a whole tray of translucent coffee-cups set
in lace-fine silver work, without a second glance at the destruction.
But he knew every one of the cheap, heavy dishes he and Elsie had added
to their equipment on Saturday evening shopping orgies at a
five-and-ten-cent store. Knew, and admired them! When Elsie would call
from her "kitchen corner;" "Bring me the Niagara platter, honey," he
could locate that ceramic atrocity at a glance. And when he let fall the
Whistler bread-plate--it had a nocturnal, black-lined landscape effect
in its centre--he was truly grieved. Indeed, it was he who selected
their china, Elsie's taste being inclined toward a simplicity he refused
as monotonous. He never had realized the pleasure of purchasing until he
went shopping with his wife, chose with her, overruled her or indulged
her in some fancy, then drew out his newly-received wage and paid,
magnificent.
He could not have explained his emotions to Elsie. But his candid
delight in those expeditions came to her memory, as she poured the
kitten's milk into a saucer enamelled with blue forget-me-nots. She
lifted her head and again glanced toward the distant city; but this time
she smiled with certain triumph. He was her husband; better still, he
was as eagerly her playmate as any lonely boy who first finds a chum.
She knew Lucille Masterson did not possess the art of comradeship among
her talents; it was an art too unselfish.
"When he begins to tire of just playing this way," she
half-unconsciously addressed the kitten, "we will find something else.
There will always be something for us to think of, together. It will
come when it is needed. Perhaps----"
Arrested, her breath failed speech. It was as if her own words had
thrown open a door before which she faltered, her eyes sun-dazzled, yet
glimpsing a wide horizon.
Soothed by her silent neighborhood, the kitten finished lapping its milk
and went to sleep against her skirt. But the girl stood still for a long
time, steadying her heart, which seemed to her to be filling like a cup
held under a clear fountain.
Later in the day a boy brought wreaths and sprays of holly to the door.
Elsie bought recklessly, so Adriance came home that night to a house
Yule-gay with scarlet and green, spicy with the cinnamon fragrance of
the apple-fritters, and holding a mistress who showed him a Christmas
face of merry content.
"I could not wait two days," she explained to him. "We'll begin now and
work up to it gradually."
But after all, Christmas morning came as a surprise, and achieved a
final defeat of doubts and forebodings that drove them out of sight for
many a day. For, kissing his wife awake at dawn, Anthony made his gift
first, forestalling hers.
"You never had an engagement ring," he reminded her. "I'll have to make
a tremendous record as a husband to live down my blunders as a fiance!
Here, let me put it on for you. What clever dimples you've got in your
fingers! I noticed them our first night here, remember?"
She frankly cried in her great surprise and passionate joy in his
thought of her. It really was a spectacular ring, and glittered bravely
in the early light; an oval of dark-red stones like a shield set above
her wedding ring.
"They're only garnets," he stilled her protest of extravagance. "But
they are the color of rubies; and the promise of them. Don't--please
don't! Come, what have you got for me? Give it up."
The diversion succeeded. Laughing before her eyes were dry, she
answered:
"He is in the wood-box. I had to keep him in the house where it was
warm, and I was so afraid you would hear him and spoil the surprise. But
he was as good as possible; he never said one word. Open the lid,
dear."
"He?" echoed her husband. "Him?"
The wood-box yielded him; a small, jovial, bandy-legged puppy.
"He is _almost_ a Boston bull," Elsie explained conscientiously. "If he
had been quite one, I couldn't have afforded to buy him. But he is a
love. Anthony, he is the watch-dog, you know."
Finding both faces within reach, as he hung over Anthony's arm, the
puppy licked them with fond impartiality.
CHAPTER X
MRS. MASTERSON TAKES TEA
It was the day after Christmas that Adriance was sent over to New York
with his motor-truck, for the first time since he had become that
massive vehicle's pilot. His destination was in Brooklyn, so that he had
the entire city to cross, and lights were commencing to twinkle here and
there through the gray of the short winter afternoon when he turned
homeward.
The experience had not been without a novel interest. Holiday traffic
crowded the streets; traffic officers, tired and chilled by a biting
east wind, were not patient. Adriance chose Fifth Avenue for his route
up-town with the naturalness of long custom, without reflecting upon the
greater freedom of travel he would have found on one of the dingy
streets usually followed by such vehicles as his. However, the
difficulties exhilarated him. Andy of the truck could not but wonder how
the policeman who roughly ordered him away from the entrance of the
Park might have phrased that request if he had known that the intruder
was Tony Adriance, "paper, you know!" Perhaps, because of this wonder,
his cheerful grin drew a sour smile from the officer.
"Don't you know you've not got a limousine there? You from the woods?"
came the not ill-natured sarcasm.
"Worse than that: from Jersey," Adriance shot back. "All right; I'm
sorry."
"Plain streets for yours; round the circle," was the direction, which
also implied a release.
"Thanks," Adriance called acknowledgment, as he obeyed.
The bulky figure beside the chauffeur stirred.
"You got a nerve," commented the man, his slow, heavy voice tinged with
admiration. "I seen guys pulled fer less, Andy."
Adriance laughed. He and his big assistant were very good friends, after
weeks of sharing the truck's seat. The chauffeur appeared a stripling by
comparison with the man lounging beside him, huge arms folded across
thick chest. "Mike," as he was known to his fellow-workers, was a
Russian peasant. His upbringing in a Hoboken slum had fixed his
patriotism and language, but had left his physique that of his
inheritance. His reddish-yellow head was set on a massive neck whose
base his open shirt showed to be covered with a red growth of hair
extending down over his chest. His large features and mild, slow-moving
eyes, his heavy, placid manner of speech were absurdly alien to the
colloquial language that he spoke. Adriance knew his helper had been an
employee of the factory for ten years, but he did not know that Mike was
always assigned to a new chauffeur until the stranger proved himself
trustworthy. Mike was dull, but he was stolidly honest. Valuable boxes
or packages were not reported "lost" from trucks under his care.
Adriance had no idea of the truth that "Russian Mike" actually had
determined the permanence of his position in his father's great mill.
"If I cannot go through the Park, I'll go back to the avenue," Adriance
declared, when the turning had been negotiated. "I want gayety, Michael;
boulevard gayety! Four o'clock on Fifth Avenue--shall a poor workingman
be deprived of the sight? It is true that we are too far uptown, but
the principle is the same. You agree with me?"
"It ain't nothin' to me," averred the magnificent guardian, shifting to
a new position with an indolent movement that swelled the muscles under
his flannel shirt until the fabric strained. His glance at his companion
was mildly indulgent.
"Of course not. But it will be, next time; that is, if you do not die of
pneumonia after taking this drive with your coat wide open. Appreciation
will grow on you. What do you think of that girl in gray, in the
limousine? Pretty? I used to go to school with her, Michael; dancing
school."
The Slavic brown eyes became humorous.
"Fact," Adriance met the incredulity. "And now she doesn't recognize me;
and neither of us cares."
The uplifted hand of another traffic officer halted the long lines of
vehicles. Three deep from the curb on either side, so that the street
was solidly filled, automobiles, carriages, green and yellow busses and
ornate delivery-cars stopped in a close, orderly mass. Adriance's truck
was next to the sidewalk, in obedience to the rule for slow-moving
vehicles. As his laughing voice answered Mike, his tone raised to carry
across the roar of sound about them, a woman who had emerged from one of
the shops stopped abruptly. Her glance quested along the rows, to rest
upon Adriance with eager attention. A moment later, the man started at
the sound of his own name, spoken beside him.
"How do you do, Tony. And aren't you--rather out of place?"
Momentarily dumb, he looked down into the large, cool eyes of Lucille
Masterson. She did not smile, but faced his regard with a composure that
made his embarrassment a fault. Against the white fur of her stole was
fastened a knot of pink-and-white sweet peas; beside them her face
showed as softly tinted, and artificially posed, as the flowers. Beside
the wheel of the huge truck, she appeared smaller and more fragile than
Adriance remembered her. Without the slightest cause he felt himself a
culprit surprised by her. He had all the sensations of a deserter
confronted with the heartlessly abandoned.
"Aren't you going to speak to me?" she queried, when he remained
voiceless. "I have missed you, Tony."
He hastily aroused himself.
"Of course! I mean--you are very kind. I--we have been out of town."
Feeling the utter idiocy into which he was stumbling, he checked
himself. The current of traffic was flowing on once more, leaving his
machine stranded against the curb; made fast, as it were, by the
white-gloved hand Mrs. Masterson had laid upon the wheel.
Without heeding his incoherence, she looked at a tiny watch on her
wrist, half-hidden by her wide, furred sleeve. With her movement a drift
of fragrance was set afloat on the thick, city air.
"I want you to take me to tea," she announced, with her accustomed
imperativeness. "I have things to say to you. Let your man take your car
home."
In spite of his exasperation, Adriance laughed. He was aware of the
staring admiration which held the big man beside him intent upon the
beautiful woman; he had heard the greedy intake of breath with which the
other absorbed the perfume shaken from her daintiness, and could guess
the effect of _Essence Enivrante_ upon untutored nostrils. But for all
that, he could not imagine Russian Mike obeying the order proposed.
"You see, he isn't my man," he excused himself from compliance. "Thank
you very much, but it is not possible."
"Then let him wait for you. Really, Tony, I think you owe me a little
courtesy."
Adriance flushed before the rebuke. He never had seen Lucille Masterson
since that rough farewell of their final quarrel. He had left her, to
marry another woman inside of the next thirty-six hours. He always had
been at his weakest with Mrs. Masterson; he slipped now into his old
mistake of temporizing.
"I am not dressed for a tea-room," he deprecated. "Otherwise, I should
be delighted."
Her eyes glinted. Grasping the slight concession, she leaned toward
Adriance's assistant with her brilliant, arrogant smile.
"You will watch the car for Mr. Adriance, just a few moments, will you
not?" she appealed. "I have something of importance to say to him. I
should be much obliged."
The white-gloved hand slipped forward and left a bank note in the hairy
fist. Dazed, Mike vaguely jerked his cap in salute, still staring at the
woman. Neither money nor beauty might have lured him to an actual breach
of duty, but this was the last trip of the day and the truck was empty.
It could not matter if the return were delayed half an hour; a belated
ferryboat might lose so much time. Moreover, he was not only willing,
but anxious, to do Andy a favor, and the bill in his clutch assured a
glorious Saturday night.
"Sure," he mumbled, with a grin of shyness like a colossal child's.
"Come, Tony," directed Mrs. Masterson.
Because he saw nothing else to do, Tony reluctantly swung himself down
to the pavement beside her.
"I can only stay for a word," he essayed revolt. "It is hardly worth
while to go anywhere. We should have to go find some place where these
clothes would pass and where no one knew us."
"On the contrary! We must go where you are so well-known that your dress
does not matter," she contradicted him. "The Elizabeth Tea-room is just
here, and we used to go there often."
He could think of no objection to the proposal. Presently he found
himself following his captor into the pretty, yellow-and-white tea-room.
As the Elizabeth affected an English atmosphere and had not adopted the
_the dansant_, the place was not overfull. The quaintly-gowned waitress
greeted them with a murmur of recognition and led the way to a table
without a glance at the chauffeur's attire. Mrs. Masterson ordered
something; an order which Adriance seconded without having heard it. He
was recovering his poise, and marvelling at himself for coming here no
less than at Lucille for bringing him. What could they have to say to
each other, now? The scented warmth of the room brought to his
realization the cold in which he had left Mike to wait, and he was
nipped by remorse.
It was a consequence of his education among people who never considered
that narrowness of convention which they designated as middle-class,
that Adriance had no sense of disloyalty either to Elsie or Fred
Masterson in being here. On the contrary, the knowledge of his marriage
would have enabled him to welcome frankly either of the two had they
chanced to enter and find him. It was as if his assured position
chaperoned the situation. But, truly masculine, since he no longer loved
Lucille Masterson he detested being with her. He resented the acute
discomfort he felt in her presence.
She was drawing off her gloves with a slowness that irritated him as an
affectation; he thought the artificial perfection of her hands hideous
as a waxwork. They were not really a good shape, nor small, but merely
blanched very white and manicured to a glistening illusion. And he saw
with disgust that she wore a ring he once had given her because she made
it plain to him that the costly gift was expected. He knew she had lied
to her husband as to the giver; "Tony" had been startled and
half-awakened from his hazy content by that discovery at the time. Now
he looked at the bulky pearl set around with diamonds and recalled the
modest garnets he had given Elsie.
"I am sorry, but I haven't long to stay," he said. "You spoke of
something important to discuss."
"Did I?"
"Certainly!"
She studied him with open curiosity.
"You want to go back to that wagon with the gorilla of a man?"
"Yes."
"Are you still very much married, Tony?" she questioned maliciously.
His eyes blazed, then chilled. Her lack of finesse had led her to a
final mistake.
"You forget that my wife is an unfashionable woman. I am still happily
married," he retorted.
"How--romantic!"
"Very."
"Still, two months, or is it three? Even Fred and I lasted that long.
You will not mind my saying that you are a bit fickle, Tony. What will
you do when you grow bored? Or do you believe that you never will? Elsie
must have resources that I never suspected. Does she tell you the story
of--Monsieur Raoul, was it?"
"She has others more pleasant. With Mrs. Adriance boredom is not
possible," he controlled his anger to state. But he felt himself clumsy
and inadequate.
The quaint little waitress was beside him, and proceeded to her duty of
service with exasperating slowness and precision. She was a pretty girl,
in a butter-cup-yellow frock and ruffled white cap and apron. Adriance
became conscious of his work-darkened hands, of a collar that showed a
day's accumulated dust, and other signs that differentiated him from the
usual idle and dainty patrons of this place.
"You _are_ a bit seedy," corroborated Mrs. Masterson, watching him with
furtive acuteness. She permitted herself an ironic smile. "Do you not
think it time you went home, and changed?"
He divined an innuendo, a _double entendre_ in the speech that he did
not comprehend, yet which enraged him. He wondered if she had brought
him here for the purpose of forcing this contrast between his present
life and his past, and so tainting him with discontent or even regret
of his marriage. If so, she had failed. He merely visited his
humiliation on her, and found her beauty spoiled by her spitefulness.
"I shall be home in an hour," he said. "And of course I am anxious to be
there, so you will forgive my reminding you of whatever we have to
discuss."
"Oh, of course." She paused until their attendant fluttered away through
a swinging door. "You are quite cured of me, aren't you, Tony? Don't
trouble about denying politely, please. But it is lucky no one really
knew about us--I suppose you have not told?"
"Mrs. Masterson!"
She hushed the protest, laughing across the spray of sweet-peas she had
lifted against her smooth red lips.
"Very well, very well! But promise you never will. Promise, Tony."
"It is not necessary," he replied stiffly. "But if you think it so, I
give you my word."
"Never to tell that I thought of marrying you, whatever may happen?"
"Yes."
She dropped the sweet-peas and sat in silence for a space, her gaze
dwelling on him. Neither of the two made any pretense of pouring the tea
cooling in the diminutive pots between them, or of tasting the miniature
sandwiches and cakes. Months later, Adriance was to learn something of
Lucille Masterson's thoughts during that interval. He himself thought of
Russian Mike waiting in the motor-truck, and that he would be so late
home that Elsie might be worried. He had wanted to stop at a shop to buy
a toy bull-dog collar for his Christmas puppy, but now that must be
postponed. He was amazed and infinitely angry at himself for yielding so
easily to Lucille's whim to bring him here.
Unconsciously he looked toward her with open impatience in his glance.
She responded at once, with a shrug.
"Go, by all means. Pray go, Tony. Am I keeping you? I am not the kind of
woman who mourns, you know. Just remember that our episode is not only
closed, but locked, when we meet again. Good-bye."
"And the important communication that I was to hear?"
"I have forgotten what I wanted to say. Good-bye, Tony."
Puzzled and angry, he rose, leaving on the table twice the amount of the
check, at which he had not looked. Mrs. Masterson nodded an
acknowledgment of his grim salute. Her eyes had a look of triumph, and
as the girl in yellow ushered him out, Adriance saw the other turn with
appetite to the sandwiches and tea.
The east wind had grown stronger and its current was thick with whirling
particles of snow. Darkness had come with the storm, turning dusk into
night. Adriance shivered and buttoned his cheap fur coat as he hurried
across the wet, shining pavement. Mike aroused himself with a grunt when
the chauffeur swung up into the seat beside him.
"Swell dame, Andy!" he commented, staring with heavy curiosity at the
man pushing throttle and spark. "I guess maybe you're a swell, too, like
a movie show I seen once?"
Adriance stepped down again, to go forward and crank the motor. He began
to glimpse the possible complications if Mike recounted this adventure
among his mates. He wondered, also, if Lucille had noticed the name on
the truck. Altogether, he was in a vicious enough mood to lie, and he
did so.
"No," he asserted flatly, when he had regained his seat. "Don't be an
idiot, Mike. I--used to be employed by that lady."
"Drive her automobile?"
"Yes."
The explanation was accepted as satisfactory. An intimate acquaintance
with the etiquette of intercourse between mistress and chauffeur was not
one of the examiner's accomplishments. But the incident appealed to Mike
as romantic, and for him romance flowed from one source only.
"She looks like one of them actresses from the movies," he averred,
folding his huge arms comfortably across his breast. "I guess she is,
maybe? I seen queens like her, there."
"It is a good way to see them, if they are like her," observed Adriance
ruefully. He laughed in spite of vexation. "Better stick to the movie
girls, Michael; it's safer! Now stop talking to me; if this brute of a
truck swerves an inch in this slush, some pretty car is going to feel as
if an elephant had stepped on it."
But the ill luck of that day was over. They made a fast trip up-town and
just caught a ferry-boat on the point of leaving.
After all, they were not to be noticeably late. And since there would be
no need of explanation, it occurred to Adriance that he might not
recount to Elsie the tale of his discomfiture. He was keenly ashamed of
the poor role Lucille Masterson had made him play. She had whistled him
to heel, and he had come with the meekness of the well-trained. She had
amused herself with him as long as she chose, then dismissed him,
humiliated and helpless. He did not want Elsie to picture her husband in
that situation, nor to find him still unable to say no to Mrs.
Masterson.
By the time he had walked up the long hill through a beating snow-storm,
he was thoroughly chilled and self-disgusted, desirous only of shelter
and peace. Both met him, when he pushed open the door of his house and
stepped into the warm, bright room. When the door closed behind him, he
definitely shut outside the image of Lucille Masterson.
With a little rush Elsie came to meet him, lifting her warm and rosy
face for his kiss. The puppy scrambled across the floor, uttering
staccato yelps of salute.
"I've named our house," the girl announced gleefully. "You know, we have
named everything else. Don't you like Alaric Cottage?"
"I like the inside of it to-night, all right. But why Alaric?"
"Because it is so early-Gothic, of course. You must appreciate our front
porch, Anthony. Oh, you _are_ wet and cold! Hurry and change your
things--I have them all laid out--and I will feed you, sir."
So the matter passed for that time, and was forgotten.
CHAPTER XI
THE GLOWING HEARTH
Christened Noel, in honor of the day of his arrival, the puppy thrived
and grew toward young doghood in a household atmosphere of serene
content. From Christmas to Easter the days flowed by in an untroubled
current of time. Day after day, Anthony and Elsie Adriance grew into
closer and fuller companionship. The winter was a hard and long one, but
never dull to them.
They found so much to do. In return for his reading to her, Elsie
sometimes put out the lamp and in the flickering firelight told him
quaint, grotesque legends of Creole and negro lore. Her soft accents
fell naturally into patois; she was a born mimic, and interspersed
fragments of plaintive songs, old as the tragedy of slavery or the
romance of a pre-Napoleonic France. Her voice could be drowsy as
sunshine on a still lagoon, or instinct with life as the ring of a
marching regiment's tread.
She taught him to play chess, too, with a wonderful set of
jade-and-ivory men produced from among her few belongings.
"Do you know these must be mighty valuable?" Adriance exclaimed, the
first time he saw them.
"I know they are mighty old," she mocked his seriousness. "And I
wouldn't sell them, so the rest doesn't matter."
"Tell me about them."
"There is nothing very definite to tell." She regarded him askance from
the corner of a laughing eye. "Can you bear the shock of hearing that
one of your wife's ancestors was suspected of having secret relations
with the notorious LaFitte?"
"Who was he?"
"LaFitte was a pirate and freebooter, sir, who had a stronghold below
New Orleans, where the mouth of the Mississippi widens into the Gulf.
Many a ship paid toll to him, many curious prizes fell into his greedy
hands; and it was whispered that some of these strange, foreign things
mysteriously appeared in the house of Martin Galvez. Negroes were heard
to tell, with breath hushed and eyes rolling, of a swift-sailing sloop,
black of hull and rigged in black canvas, lines, and all. It slipped up
the river at midnight and down again before dawn, past all defences,
they said--and its point of landing was Colonel Galvez's wharf, ten
miles above the city. No one ever knew more than a rumor that ran
untraced like the black sloop. But it was said the ivory-and-jade
chessmen had travelled by that craft, as had great-great-grandmother's
string of pink pearls which are painted around her neck in her portrait.
Loud and often her husband laughed at the tales, inviting all who chose
to watch his wharf between sunset and sunrise, any night. The chessmen,
he declared, were presented to him by a prince of Cairo, whose enemies
had betrayed him into the hands of a slave-trader. The Egyptian noble's
dark skin and ignorance of Western speech had made him a helpless
victim; he faced the final degradation of the lash when Colonel Galvez
saw and rescued him. His gratitude sent the pretty playthings. As for
the pink pearls, they came from Vienna, by lawful purchase. At least, so
the worthy Colonel was fond of relating, with a convincing detail, over
his incomparable French wines and Havana cigars."
"But, what was truth? Which, I mean?" he questioned.
She shut her eyes in droll disclaimer.
"How should I know? The pink pearls disappeared before Josephine Galvez
married Fairfax Murray, sixty years ago. The chessmen are dumb. But I
know of many an old toy from overseas, around our house still. Nothing
of great value! We are as poor as ecclesiastical mice; the family wealth
long ago fled down the wind on the black sails of ill-luck. Yes, the
Murrays usually held poor hands at cards. Will you move first, or shall
I?"
"You," he invited. He looked at her with curiosity. "Why didn't you tell
me before that you were a princess in disguise? I never knew you had an
ancestor on record, and here you have a procession of them. You're a
funny girl."
If you don't like me,
Why do you, why do you,
_Why_ do you stay around?
She sang the very modern verse to him with a mockery altogether
tantalizing; and he upset all the chessboard in answering her properly.
Little by little he learned a great deal about her home; which, he
discovered, had once been the veritable home of the punctilious Mait'
Raoul Galvez of surprising memory. He made acquaintance with her parents
and her sisters, as Elsie brought before him a living simulacra of each
one with her magician-like arts of description and mimicry. There were
five sisters, it appeared: Lee, Roberta, Virginia, Clotilda and
Nicolette.
"Mother named the first three of us and Daddy the last three," she
explained. "Wasn't he right polite to wait so long? Mother is a rebel
Confederate up to this minute, while Daddy altogether indorses the North
and is a professional delver in romantic history."
"'Elsie' is not historical," he objected, much diverted.
"Oh, my truly name is Elcise; I come before Clotilda and Nicolette. But
my grandfather insisted upon calling me Elsie as long as he lived, so in
deference to him the first intention was abandoned. Poor Daddy lost one
of his turns, after all. It happened very well, though! Elsie is more
practical, and I am the most practical member of the whole family
circle."
"Really?"
"Why, certainly! Lee married a dramatic poet, who is also the editor of
a newspaper," she retorted upon his incredulity. "And one who lets his
two vocations interfere with one another! Roberta has been engaged to an
army officer these five years. He is stationed in the Philippines, where
she is to join him and live in some jungle with him whenever he is
sufficiently promoted to marry. Virginia is a beauty, who has the entire
college full of young men vibrating around our house; and she declares
that she is going into a convent when she is twenty-five. Clotilda and
Nicolette are twin babies of eleven years. They still have plenty of
time to do anything, you see. We were all perfectly happy as we were,
but it became really necessary for someone to relieve Daddy, if only by
supporting herself and leaving more for the others. So I began, and went
as private secretary and companion with the old lady of whom I have told
you. Wasn't that practical? Of course, Lee's husband supports her,
usually.
"But the spring that I came away, Daddy had urged him to resign from the
newspaper and come home for six months in order to write a poetic drama
over which they both were enthusiastic. No one expects it to make much
money, but, as Daddy said, we have always had enough for dignified
simplicity, and it should be our duty as well as our glory to help Lee's
husband to fame."
"Elsie's husband means to support her all the time."
"Oh, I told you Elsie was practical. She married sensibly."
"Should you call it that?" doubtingly.
"Her husband is quite kind to her, you know."
"Well, he is still in love. When that wears off as she grows tired of
feeding him, and ill-tempered----?"
They laughed at one another across the hearth. But presently Adriance
became serious.
"Elsie, I think that I should write to your father. One does not snatch
a man's daughter in this barefaced fashion, without so much as a word to
him, in civilized lands. Why haven't I thought of that before? And I
should like to be welcomed into your family, or at least tolerated
there. Do you suppose we might visit them, some day when our finances
permit? Or perhaps some of my sisters-in-law might come to see us?
George, what a time we could have given those girls with some of the
money that I had, and haven't!"
His wife leaned toward him, her gray eyes quite wet with her
earnestness.
"Anthony, there is nothing in the world that would make me so happy as
for you to write home and tell them that I belong to you. I have so
_hoped_ you would think of it!"
"Why didn't you tell me to do so, long ago?" he asked reproachfully.
"Now, how could I tell you a thing like that?"
"Why not?" he wondered, densely.
She made an expressive gesture with her little hands, resigning the
hopeless task of explanation.
"Never mind. But I shall be so glad! You see, they do not know that I am
married at all. I have not dared tell them, because they have such
stately, quaint ideas that they would be profoundly offended if you did
not write yourself. They would consider it a great slight to me. So I
have just waited."
He gazed at her in utter marvel at such patience.
"Never do it again," he requested. "Please remember that you have
deigned to wed a poor, dull animal who needs your constant guidance.
Even yet, I have failed to grasp the delicate point of your not setting
me to work at this weeks ago. But bring the writing things and sit
beside me as expert critic; we will attend to this before we sleep."
They did so; and were drawn still closer together by the fulfillment of
that act of courtesy and consideration which they unwittingly had
neglected so long.
The warm, gay intimacy of their life together sank deeper into the fibre
of both, as the days went by. They found a comradeship of minds as well
as hearts, never failing in novelty and delight to the man.
"I never before had an intimate friend," he said, one morning, with a
wondering realization of the fact. "I knew so many people that I never
guessed it, Elsie, but I've been lonely all my life. I can't see how I
could be any happier than I am now."
They had just risen from the breakfast-table.
Across it Elsie met her husband's eyes; her own infinitely wise,
splendidly happy as his, yet touched with that delicate raillery which
caressed and laughed at him.
"Oh, yes!" she dissented. "Yes, Anthony."
Puzzled, he searched her meaning in her shining gaze.
"I could be happier?"
"Yes. _We_ could be."
"But----?"
She came around the table and told him the answer, putting her hands
into his. She did not speak shyly, but proudly, with frank courage and
comradeship.
An hour later, when Adriance went down the long hill to his day's work,
he carried himself with a dignity new as the blended exaltation and
dread that paled his face. Once he stopped in the snapping March wind to
bare his head and draw a full, deep breath, looking up at the
bright-blue sky where tufts of white cloud sailed. Although the season
was so far advanced, new-fallen snow overlay road and hills, so that
Adriance seemed to himself as standing between two surfaces of pure,
glinting brightness. His thoughts were only now becoming articulate, yet
a sense of final change had settled through him. His manhood had come to
full dignity. Now he knew what he had done when he snatched Elsie Murray
out of her cross-current of life and took her for himself. He had found
love like a jewel on the road; content had reared a shelter for his
inexperience. Now, he stood as protector and shelter as long as he
should live for the weaker ones who were his. And with responsibility,
ambition sprang fully grown to life and challenged him. Was his wife to
rank as a chauffeur's wife, and nothing more? Was their child to be
reared in that place, and he to give the two nothing better? Anthony
Adriance passed his glance, with his father's cold accuracy of
appraisal, over the great factory lying far down at the foot of the
cliffs, where he himself was awaited to drive a truck.
Presently he went on, down the road. But he went differently.
CHAPTER XII
THE UPPER TRAIL
Adriance had not spent half a year in the mill, even in the limited
capacity of chauffeur, without observing many things. He had come to
recognize flaws in that smooth-running mechanism of which he was a part.
Might he not find in this fact an opportunity? He saw much that he
himself, given authority, might do to promote efficiency. He did not
delude himself with the idea that he could go into any factory as an
efficiency expert; he did see that here he might fairly earn and ask for
a salary that would give Elsie more luxuries than she had even known in
her own home and more than he himself had learned to desire. After all,
there had been no quarrel between his father and himself. When the young
man had chosen a course that he knew to be disagreeable to the older, he
simply had withdrawn from their life together as a matter of courtesy
and self-respect. Since he no longer gave what was expected of Tony
Adriance, he could not take Tony's privileges; now however, knowledge
of Elsie had changed the situation. His father had only to meet his
wife, Anthony felt assured, for his marriage to explain itself. Even if
Mr. Adriance were disappointed by the simplicity of his son's choice and
ambitions, even if he preferred the brilliant Mrs. Masterson to the
serene young gentlewoman as a daughter-in-law, why should there be
rancor between the two men? For the first time it occurred to Adriance
that his father might be lonely and welcome a reconciliation. They never
had been intimate, but they had been companions, or at least pleasant
acquaintances. The house on the Drive had not contained only servants,
as now it must--servants who were merely servants, too, not the
faithful, devoted, tactful servitors of romance, but the average modern
hireling. The house-keeper engaged and dismissed them and was herself a
shadowy automaton, who appeared only to receive special orders and
render monthly accounts. For any atmosphere of home created in the
house, the Adriances might as well have been established in a hotel.
Anthony wondered if even Elsie could leaven that dense mass of
formality, or if her art was too delicate, too subtle a combination of
heart and mind and personality to affect such conditions. He could not
be certain. He could well imagine her, daintily gowned and demurely
self-possessed, as mistress of that household; but he could not imagine
the household itself as altered very much or made less stupidly
ponderous by her presence. He had not thought of this before, but now he
could not think his pleasure would be quite the same if they sat
together in state in that drawing-room he knew so well, while she told
him the tales he had learned to delight in. It could not be quite the
same as a hearth of their own, and his pipe, burning with a coarse,
outrageous energy, expressed in volumes of smoke, while Elsie leaned
forward, little hands animated, gray eyes sparkling, and mimicked or
drolled or sang as the mood swayed them or the tale demanded. He knew
that he himself could never read aloud with enthusiasm and verve if Mr.
Adriance listened with amused criticism. No, Anthony realized with some
astonishment that he did not want to take his wife home.
Nevertheless, the thing must be done. It was a duty. He could not
selfishly continue in the way he liked so well. He must consider Elsie
and the third who was to join their circle. He must pick up for them
what he had thrown aside for himself.
But he refused to go back to his father like a defeated incompetent to
plead for his inheritance. His pride recoiled from the certainty that
his father would so regard his return; there must be a middle course. At
the great gate to the factory yard he paused to survey again the
enormous buildings with their teeming life. In more than one sense this
was his workshop.
There was more than the usual hubbub and confusion in the shipping-room
when he went down the stone incline to that vast subterranean apartment.
The little wizened man in horn-rimmed spectacles, who vibrated around
his long platform, checking rolls and bales and boxes as they were
loaded into the trucks, had already the appearance of wearied
distraction. His thin hair was flattened by perspiration across his
knobby forehead, although it was not yet eight o'clock and freezing
draughts of air swept the place as the doors swung unceasingly open and
shut. Groups of grinning chauffeurs and porters loitered in corners or
behind pillars, eying with enjoyment or indifference, as the case might
be, the little man's bustling energy and anxiety.
This condition had already lasted two days, like a veritable festival of
confusion. Adriance had watched it with the utter indifference of his
mates, merely attending to the duties assigned him and leaving Mr. Cook
to solve his own perplexities; but this morning he hesitated beside the
fiery, streaming little man. The little man caught sight of his not
unsympathetic face and hailed him, calling through the tumult of cars,
rattling hand-trucks, pushed by blue-shirted porters, and the complex
din of the place.
"Here, Andy--you know New York, how long should I allow this man to go
to the Valparaiso dock, unload and get back? Three hours?"
"Two," responded Adriance, mounting the long platform beside his chief.
"Can't be done," the chauffeur of the waiting truck sullenly
contradicted.
"Why not?"
"You ain't allowing for the ferry running across here only every half
hour, nor for the traffic over on the other side."
The tone was insolent, and Adriance answered sharply, unconsciously
speaking as Tony rather than as Andy:
"You don't know your business when you propose going that way. Go down
the Jersey side here where the way is open, and take the down-town
ferry, that runs every ten minutes. And come back by the same route."
"Who are you----" the chauffeur began, but was curtly checked by Mr.
Cook:
"Do as you're told, Pedersen, and if I catch you at more tricks like
that you're fired. You've got two hours. Next! Herman, get your truck
loaded and take the same route and time; do you hear?"
"Yes, sir; but----"
"Get out, and the two of you come in together."
"Excuse me, Mr. Cook;" said Adriance, his glance taking appraisal of the
second truck; "Herman has a cargo of heavy stuff, he can hardly get it
unloaded in as short a time as Pedersen."
The little man turned on him wrathfully.
"Can't? Can't? They've got to get back for second trips."
"Then give him two extra helpers."
Mr. Cook stared at him through his spectacles, then turned and shouted
the order. When he turned back he dried his forehead and relieved
himself by a burst of confidence.
"There's a lot of stuff to go to South America by the boat sailing at
three o'clock. A rush order, and just when we are rushed with other
deliveries; and Ransome is home sick. _I_ never send out the trucks; _I_
don't know when they should come in or how they should go. I've got all
my own work checking over every shipment that goes out, too. It's too
much, it can't be done. The chauffeurs are playing me, I know they are.
Look at the stuff left over that ought to have been got out yesterday,
not moved yet! They tell me lies about the motors breaking down; I know
they are lies; why should half the trucks in the place break down just
when Ransome is away? But I can't prove it."
"Why not put a mechanic in a light machine to go out to any truck that
breaks down, and then give orders that any man whose truck stops is to
'phone in here at once?" suggested Adriance.
This time Mr. Cook regarded him steadily for a full minute. Seizing the
advantage of the other man's attention, Adriance struck again:
"Would you like me to take Mr. Ransome's place for the day? I know both
cities pretty well and I know your men. One of the other men can take
out my truck; Russian Mike, for instance."
"He can't drive."
"I beg your pardon, he drives very well; I taught him myself this
winter."
The little man jerked a telephone receiver from the wall beside him.
"Mr. Goodwin! Cook, sir. I've got a man here to fill Ransome's place for
the present; one of our chauffeurs, sir. Oh, yes! Andy--I forget his
last name. He's all right, yes. I've got to have help; can't handle the
men, Mr. Goodwin. All right; thank you, sir."
He whirled about to Andy. In the brief moments of their talk the
congestion had thickened appallingly, and Mr. Cook looked at the
disorder aghast.
"Go over to Ransome's box," he snapped; "you're appointed; and I wish
you luck! Fire them if they kick, and, you may count on it, I'll back
you up."
Ransome's box was on a small pier run out upon the main floor, in such a
situation that every vehicle leaving or entering must pass it and
report. It was railed around and contained a desk, a telephone and a
chair. Adriance slipped off his overcoat and cap as he walked out on the
little elevation and took his place. The men lounging about the rooms
straightened themselves and stared up at this new arrival. A little
improvement in calmness came over the horde at the mere sight of a
figure in the post of authority.
The invalided Ransome was missed no more. Opportunity had visited
Adriance on the day when he was inspired to seize it and attuned to
accord with it. He and his fellow chauffeurs had been very good friends,
but only as their work for the same employer brought them together. None
of them had been so intimate with him as to feel his present position a
slight upon themselves. Indeed, they were a good-natured, hard-working
set, whose heckling of Mr. Cook had been as much mischief as any desire
to take a mean advantage of the present situation.
There was an authority in Adriance himself of which he was quite
conscious, a personal force that grew with exercise. He stood on his
elevation, sending out man after man with clear, reasonable orders,
noting the distance, the time of departure and the time allowed for the
errand of each. He acquainted each man with the new rule concerning
machines broken down or temporarily disabled, wisely giving this as an
order of Mr. Cook's. When Russian Mike came by with Andy's truck, the
big man smiled up at the man on the pier.
"I ain't going to bust her," he assured him; "I guess I'm a pretty good
driver?"
"Of course you are," laughed Adriance, leaning down to give him his slip
and a hand-clasp by way of encouragement. "You're all right, Michael;
take care of yourself and remember what I told you about going slow."
"Sure!" A smile widened the broad lips. "Say, I guess it's a pretty good
thing we wasn't being checked up this way when we met that actor lady,
yes?"
"Never mind her." Adriance's color rose a trifle. "I am not holding any
one down to too close time, either; but this is a rush morning. Go along
now."
And Michael placidly went.
The room began to clear before the efforts of the excitable, nervous Mr.
Cook at one end and the quiet management of the young man at the other
extremity of the place. This was far more exacting work than driving one
of those motor-trucks he dispatched in such imperious fashion, Adriance
soon discovered. For he did not merely hand each driver a slip stating
his destination, as was the custom of Ransome. Under that system
Adriance knew from his own observation that hours a day were wasted by
the men. Only if a chauffeur outrageously over-staid the reasonable time
for his journey did he receive a sarcastic rebuke, which was
sufficiently answered by the allegation of engine trouble. The new
method was received with astonishment and some scowls, but without
revolt. Instead of each truck sent out failing to return until the noon
hour, two, and even three trips were completed during the morning. There
were some complaints, of course. Adriance cut them off in their
incipience. He was enjoying himself in spite of the strain.
In the middle of the morning, when the trucks first sent out began to
come in again, Cook left his post for a few moments. Adriance did not
see him leave, nor did he note that two other men returned with his
temporary colleague and remained standing for some time in the shadow of
the pillared arcade around the wall, watching the proceedings on the
floor. During a lull in the coming and going, when Adriance was sorting
his piles of slips, one of these men walked out to his raised enclosure.
"Good morning," the stranger opened.
"Good morning," Adriance absently replied; turning his head and
perceiving his visitor to be a frail little old gentleman, he offered
him the solitary chair. Of course he knew that his visitor must be
connected with the factory, if only from the air of tranquil assurance
with which he settled his _pince-nez_ and surveyed the younger man.
"How do you keep all those apart?" he questioned, motioning toward the
slips.
"Put them in order on a file as the men go out, then turn the heap over.
The first one out should be the first one in," explained Adriance,
smiling. "Of course, I have to keep together those who have
approximately the same distance to cover. It is a very rough and ready
method, I know; but it was devised under the stress of the moment. A row
of boxes with a compartment for each truck numbered to correspond would
be one better way that occurs to me; but, of course, I am merely a
temporary interloper."
"My name is Goodwin; Mr. Cook did not tell me yours----?"
The manager of the factory and his father's associate! It was the purest
chance that Tony and he never had met at the Adriance house. But Mr.
Goodwin belonged to an older generation than the senior Adriance, his
home was in Englewood and he rarely came to New York unless upon
business--the great city was distasteful to him. Something of this
Adriance recollected after his first dismay, and drew such reassurance
from it as he might, as he answered:
"My name is Adriance, Mr. Goodwin."
"Adriance?"
"Yes, sir. It is not so odd; I am a distant connection of the New York
family, I believe." He had a cloudy recollection of a witty Frenchman
who alluded to an estranged member of his family as his "distant
brother."
"I see, I see; after all, even somewhat unusual names are constantly
repeated." Mr. Goodwin scrutinized the other in the glare of artificial
light that rather confused vision. "But, excuse me, you hardly speak
like a chauffeur."
"Does not that depend on the chauffeur?" Adriance parried pleasantly. "I
hope not to remain one all my life, anyhow."
"Ah--certainly. Mr. Cook asked me to come down and observe the
improvement in the conditions here this morning. I am pleased, much
pleased. I should have regulated the system in this department before;
but these modern innovations press upon me rather fast. I looked forward
to retiring, I do indeed," he coughed impatiently and glanced vaguely
over the great room. "However, that is not the point. I should like you
to keep this position, Adriance; at least until Mr. Ransome recovers. I
hear he is threatened with pneumonia."
"I should be glad to do so, Mr. Goodwin."
"We might use him in the office to better advantage. Well, we will try
your system first. Write an order for any filing cabinets or apparatus
you deem necessary. Give it to Mr. Cook and I will see personally that
all is supplied. This is a critical moment on which may depend a
considerable trade with South America. Cook tells me that more goods
have been moved this morning than in any entire day recently. We had
thought of buying more trucks."
"I think that is not required, sir; I wish you would try my way for a
week before doing so, at least. It is only a question of using to the
full extent the materials on hand. I fancy new troubles grow up with new
institutions, and an outsider may more easily see the remedy."
"Yes? Young blood in the business, you think? Perhaps, perhaps."
Two trucks roared into the place and up to Adriance's post. When he had
finished with them and sent them on to Cook's end of the room, he turned
back to Mr. Goodwin; but that gentleman, satisfied as to the improved
conditions, was already stepping into the elevator to return to his own
offices above.
"Seventy-three, the old top is," remarked Cook, running over to pass his
fellow-worker a mass of memoranda. "Keen as ever, but not up-to-date,
that is all. Here--these to the dock, these to the Erie yards; this
straight to the decorator on Fifth Avenue, who is waiting for it--it's a
special design landscape-paper for a club grill-room on Long Island.
Rush the one to the steamer--Long Island and Buffalo can wait."
"You were mighty good to help me that way," said Adriance. He took the
slip, regarding the little man with a glance in which many thoughts met.
He smiled at one of these, and his face became warmly kind for an
instant and rather startled Cook.
"You helped me out of a scrape by volunteering this morning," Cook
answered, a trifle abruptly. "I only asked him to come see how things
were going. You are to keep on here?"
"Yes, for the present."
"Glad of it! Ever do this kind of work before?"
"Handling trucks?"
"No; handling men."
Adriance considered.
"Only on a yacht, I think."
A group of four trucks came in. Outside a whistle began to blow; others
joined the clamor and a gong clanged heavily through the intermittent
shudder of the machinery-crowded building. Twelve o'clock! Cook hurried
away to his own men, who had fallen idle with the surprising promptness
of the true workmen; and the examination was ended. Adriance foresaw
that it would recommence, but he was indifferent. He cared very little
how soon his father discovered him, now that he had resolved to seek his
father as soon as he saw his way a little more clearly.
He was profoundly gratified and excited by this morning's success. It
gave him self-confidence, and it enabled him to ask a share in the
factory's management with something more tangible to offer his father
than the mere assertion that he saw improvements to be made. He actually
had accomplished something. He would save many thousands of dollars by
utilizing the machines on hand instead of purchasing more of the costly
motor-trucks, with their expenses of upkeep, additional chauffeurs, and
inevitable deterioration from use.
He walked out into the cold, fresh air to glimpse the sunshine and cool
his hot flush of satisfaction. He thought of Elsie with a passion of
tenderness and triumph. He resolved that he would not tell her of his
plans until they were better assured. He must begin to shelter her from
excitement or possible disappointment. No, he would not speak of the
reconciliation he hoped to effect with his father; not yet. But of
course he would tell her of his new position in the factory, and they
would exult over it together. Adriance decided he would wait until their
dinner was over and cleared away, then he would draw her down beside him
in the firelight and astonish her.
There was a little lunch cart across the way, much frequented by
chauffeurs, car-conductors and ferry-men. He went there for his lunch,
as he usually did when noon found him near the factory. It seemed to him
that there was already a little difference in the way the fellow-workers
whom he found there treated him. Already they seemed to feel that he was
moving away from them--had taken the upper trail, as it were. Indeed, he
felt a change in himself not to be denied. It was not arrogance, merely
the assurance of a man who sees a definite path before him and follows
it to his own end; he had ceased to live from day to day.
But he was quite sure that he would never forget this day. If he had a
son he would tell him about this when he reached manhood. And he would
be his son's guide to this satisfaction of work accomplished, lest he
miss it altogether, as Tony himself so nearly had done. There were to be
no worthless Adriances.
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT TONY BUILT
By a caprice of chance, it was that day Masterson came; almost at the
hour when Adriance, tired and exultant, was rearing a structure of good
dreams as he ate his cheap food at the counter of the lunch-cart under
the shadow of the huge electric sign bearing his name.
Morning had arrived at noon, when Elsie was called to her front door by
a clang of the bell; one of those small gongs favored years ago, that
snap with a pulled handle. Down at the end of the straight path she
heard laughter and the high-pitched voices of women above the soft roll
of an automobile's motor. Surprised, she opened the door.
Before her, on the high, absurd little porch, a man in motoring furs
stood and steadied himself by grasping the snow-powdered railing.
Confronted by a woman, he lifted his cap, and a sunbeam piercing the old
roof gleamed across his close-clipped auburn curls.
"I was told at the little shop that a chauffeur lived here," he
explained, pleasantly enough. The glare of the sun on snow dazzled his
first vision. "Our compressed air system is out of order, and my man
forgot to put in a hand-pump. I----"
His voice trailed away into silence. He had seen her face.
"Elsie?" he doubted. "Elsie?"
She smiled at him with her serene composure, although deep color swept
over her face with the startled movement of her blood.
"Mrs. Adriance," she corrected. "Will you not come in? I am sorry Mr.
Adriance is not at home."
He crossed the threshold mechanically, his gaze not leaving her.
"I did not believe it," he exclaimed, under his breath. "I thought
Lucille--lied
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