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."