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.