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A MAN'S HEARTH
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[Illustration: ELSIE FELT THE GLANCE PASS ACROSS HER AND REST ON ANTHONY
_Page 223_]
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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.