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."