THE OTHER MAN'S ROAD
The damp cold of a March night closed chillingly around the two, as they
passed through the revolving door into the street. The restaurant did
not face on Broadway, the street of a million lights; for a moment they
seemed to have stepped into darkness, after the dazzle of light just
left. Adriance turned away from the vociferous proffers of taxicabs,
with an economy prompted by Elsie's guiding hand rather than his own
prudence. Indeed, his great amazement and vicarious shame for Masterson
left him with slight attention for ordinary matters.
But they were not allowed to reach the subway, and return as they had
come. As they neared the station entrance, a limousine rolled up to the
curb and halted across their path. The car's occupant threw open the
door before the chauffeur could do so, and leaned out.
"Come in," commanded, rather than invited Masterson's voice. "You
didn't wait for me, so I had a chase to catch you. Put Mrs. Adriance in,
Tony, and tell the man where you want to go. The ferry, is it? All
right; tell him so."
He spoke with an abrupt impatience and strain that excused much by its
account of his sick nerves. Adriance complied without objection. Before
she quite realized the situation, Elsie found herself seated beside him,
opposite Masterson in the warmed interior of the car.
The air of the limousine was not only warm, but perfumed. Without
analyzing their reason, it struck both the Adriances as peculiarly
shocking that this should be so. Elsie identified the white heliotrope
scent worn by the dancer. The globe set in the ceiling was not lighted,
but the street lamps shone in, showing the thinness of Masterson's
flushed face and its haggardness, accentuated by smudges of make-up
imperfectly removed. Elsie felt a quivering embarrassment for him, and a
desperate hopelessness of finding anything possible to say. She divined
that Anthony was experiencing the same feelings, but intensified.
The car rolled smoothly around Columbus Circle and settled into a steady
pace up Broadway. The rush of after-theatre traffic was long since over,
the streets comparatively clear. Masterson spoke first, with a defiance
that attempted to be light.
"Well, haven't you any compliments for me? I've been told I do it pretty
well. That's the only thing I learned at college of any use to me!"
"How did you come----?" Adriance began, brusquely. "I mean--what sent
you there, to that? Why, Fred----?"
"I thought it was you, Tony, until to-day," was the dry retort. "I've
thought so ever since I found out who was financing the case. Until this
morning, I believed Lucille lied when she told me you were married. I
suppose I should apologize to you; consider it done, if you like."
"Don't!" Adriance begged. His hand closed sharply over his wife's.
"We have been married since last November," she gravely came to his aid.
"I am sure Mrs. Masterson told you only the truth in that. Indeed, the
announcement was published in the newspapers! Since then, we have been
living where you saw me this morning; on a honeymoon quite out of the
world."
"I don't read more of any newspaper than the first pages," Masterson
returned. "I see you two do not read even so much, or you would hardly
have been taken by surprise, to-night. Shocked, were you, Tony? I
suppose I would have been, myself, once. Now----"
"Now----?" Adriance prompted, after waiting.
Masterson faced his friend with a sudden blaze in his hollow eyes.
"Now, I am through with being shocked at myself, through with thinking
of myself or sparing myself and other people. Can't you see, can't you
guess for whom alone I would do this--or anything else? Have you
forgotten Holly? I may not have a wife, but I have a son. And I will not
have my son reared as I was, married as I was, and ruined as I am. I am
going to have money, if I fish it out of the gutter, to take him away to
some clean, far-off place. There I shall rear him myself, understand! He
shall never know this Fred Masterson. Roughing it outdoors will put me
in fit condition long before he is old enough to criticise. He's got a
fine little body, Tony! I'll have him as hard and straight as a pine
tree. I'll teach him to work. What will I care for the squalls of this
corner of the world, when I have done that? Since Lucille divorced me,
I've stripped my mind of a good deal of hampering romance."
He was interrupted by the exclamation of both his listeners.
"Divorced you?" Adriance echoed, stifled by the pressure of warring
emotions. "Divorced you, after all?"
"You don't mean to say you didn't know?" He studied the two faces with
incredulous astonishment; then, convinced by their patent honesty,
shrugged derision of himself. "Conceited lot, all of us! We think if our
tea-cups drop, the crash is heard around the world. Yes, I have been a
single man for three months. You have been away for six, remember. But
it went through very quietly. Lucille is strong for propriety and
conventions. She even," his face darkened with an angry flood of
bitterness startling as a self-betrayal, "she even is willing to pay
pretty highly for them. Holly----"
The sentence remained unfinished. Elsie's memory returned to that
morning, when Masterson told her that he had lost Holly. She glimpsed
his meaning now.
The automobile had long since left behind the flash and glitter of
theatrical Broadway. When the gliding silence of the progress was
suddenly broken by a blast of the car's electric horn sounding warning
to some late pedestrian, the three within started as if at an unnatural
happening.
"It went through quietly," Masterson sullenly picked up the broken
thread, "because she bargained with me. She said that if I made no
defence, she would let me take Holly. Well, I kept my word; I stayed
away from the whole business and didn't even get a lawyer--like a fool.
I don't even know what they said about me. I didn't care, since she
wanted it. And then she asked the court for the custody of Holly; and
got him. It was only for the boy's good, she says; I was not fit to have
charge of him."
"Oh!" Elsie gasped.
Masterson lighted a cigarette with an attempt at unconcern. He had a
singular difficulty in bringing the burning match in contact with the
end of the little paper tube--a lack of coordination between the nerves
and muscles that held a sinister meaning for one able to interpret the
signs.
"Thanks," he acknowledged the unworded sympathy. "Maybe you know I was
fit, then; or, at least, would have been fit if I had had him. Not
having him, I went to--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Adriance."
"Fred----" Adriance essayed.
The other man hushed him with a gesture.
"I know what you are going to say, Tony. Don't! My wife, my _late_ wife
and I have managed this business. Keep out of what doesn't concern you.
Here, I'll give her due to her, too! If I had not been weak, all this
would never have happened. But if she had played the game, it would
never have happened, either. Well, I lose. But Holly shall not pay for
the game he had no share in. I am telling you two what I have told no
one else. When I have enough money, I shall buy Holly from his mother
and take him to Oregon. Lucille always needs money. Phillips is out
there, Tony. Do you remember my Cousin Phil? Well, I started him out
there ten years ago; sold my first automobile to help him out of a bad
scrape. He says there is room for me; work that will support any man who
doesn't want too much. They raise square miles of fruit. I only wish it
was the other side of the world!"
The limousine swung to the left, jarring across a network of car tracks.
They were turning down to the ferry. Elsie nestled her hand into her
husband's, divining his pain.
"Nice machine, this," Masterson observed, casually. "One thing, I'm not
making a gutter exit! You wouldn't believe what they pay me for my bit
of college theatrical work. I did it at first on a bet, after a supper
party I gave to celebrate my freedom. I think it must annoy Lucille
considerably. It suits me; and there isn't any other way I could earn so
quickly what I need. Here we are."
The automobile had stopped, and the chauffeur threw open the door.
"The ferry-boat is just coming across, sir," he stated.
"Very well," his employer dismissed him. "Mrs. Adriance, you had better
stay in here until the boat docks; it is cold, to-night. Tony and I will
go buy the tickets."
"You might say Elsie, still," she answered gently. "You know we were
always good friends."
"You are good to say so now," he returned. "Thank you."
The two men did not buy the tickets; instead, they walked side by side
across the rough, cobblestone square in front of the ferry-house.
Adriance was pale, but steadily set of face and determination to have
done, here and now with all deceit.
"Fred, I've got to clear things between us," he forced the distasteful
speech. "Before I met my wife, I did see a great deal of Mrs. Masterson.
You spoke a while ago of believing me responsible for her wanting a
divorce. Once I might have done such a thing, I do not know. But, I did
not. I went away, in order that I should not."
The other nodded, almost equally embarrassed by the difficult avowal.
"That's all right, Tony. I understand. But don't blame me too much for
my mistake. Do you know who paid all the expenses of the case, whose
influence kept it out of the newspapers as much as possible--in short,
who managed the whole campaign? Except about Holly; that was a woman's
trick! Do you know?"
"Why, no. How should I?"
The boat was in the slip; across the clank of unwinding chains, the fall
of gangways and tread of men and horses, Masterson's reply came:
"Your father."
The amazing statement stunned Adriance beyond the possibility of reply.
No outcry, no denial of complicity could have been so convincing as the
utter stupefaction of the regard he fixed upon his friend. What had the
senior Adriance to do with this affair? What had he to do with Lucille
Masterson?
"It is true," Masterson answered his doubt. "Now you know why I did not
believe you were married, until I met your wife, this morning. And," he
hesitated, "that is why, when I did understand, I brought you to see me,
to-night. I could not say so before Mrs. Adriance, but evidently your
father is not pleased with your marriage, since you're living like a
laborer, across the river. Make no mistake, Tony; your father never in
his life did anything without reason. If he got Lucille her divorce,
why, he knows you admired her, once. And he always liked her, himself.
Suppose he figured that if she were free, you might wish to become so?
Why not? We all know couples where both parties have been divorced and
married several times, and no one says a word against them."
The recoil that shook Adriance was strong as physical sickness. Like a
woman, he was glad of the darkness.
Divorce between Elsie and himself? He could have laughed at the coarse
absurdity of the idea, if it had not been for his disgust and desire to
get away from the subject.
"We shall miss the boat," he said curtly. "Thank you, Fred, but that is
all nonsense. The truth of the matter is that you are sick--and no
wonder! Come, man, pull yourself up and you'll get past all this. Why,
you are only twenty-eight; start over again here! Drop everything and
come home with Elsie and me for a while. You saw how we live; it isn't
much, perhaps, but you would get back your health. And we can force Mrs.
Masterson to let you have Holly part of the time, at least."
"I saw the way you live," Masterson repeated. "Yes. And you see the way
I live. I'm no preacher, but measure them up and choose if ever you feel
discontented, Tony. As for taking me home, neither of us could stand it.
I drink all day to keep myself merry enough to stand that restaurant,
and take morphine at night to keep myself asleep. No, we will not talk
about it. I must put this through in my own way, and then leave this
part of the earth. I can drop all this at once when I am ready. I am no
weakling physically."
The two wanted back to the car. Just before they reached it, Masterson
closed the discussion.
"Think over what I've told you. You can't love your wife any more than I
did Lucille." He shivered in the damp air, drawing his fur-lined coat
closer about him. "I couldn't keep her, though I tried hard, at first.
Wish you better luck."
It was three o'clock in the morning when Adriance slipped his key into
the clumsy old lock of his house-door, while Elsie perched herself on
the railing of the porch. Within they heard his dog barking boisterous
welcome.
"Up to work at seven," he commented, as the clock struck simultaneously
with the opening of the door. But there was no complaint in his tone. He
threw his arm around Elsie and drew her across the threshold with a deep
breath of relief.
"Let me light the lamp," she offered.
"I'll light it." He held her closer. "Wait a moment; the hearth gives
glow enough. I have been thinking--if it should be a boy, I would like
to call our son after that jolly old ancestor of yours: the black-sloop
man, Martin Galvez."
"Not Anthony?"
"No."
The brevity of the answer silenced her. She gave her consent more
delicately than in words. But still Adriance did not move toward the
lamp, or release his companion.
"Elsie, you are happy, aren't you?"
"More than happy, dear."
"If ever you are not, if you want anything you have not got, tell me.
You know I am not going to keep you in this poor place always, or let
you work for me; I am working towards better things for you, now. I have
not told you, yet--I was promoted to a new position to-day. I have work
inside the factory, and some individuality. I am no longer just one of a
troup of chauffeurs. And, of course, this is only a beginning. It is all
for you, everything, will you remember? If ever--I'm often stupid and,
well, a man!--if ever you find me lacking, you will tell me, won't you?"
She clasped her hands over the hand that held her. This ending to the
day of doubt and anxiety closed her round with a hush of deep content.
She wanted to cry out her love and happiness and gratitude for his
tenderness, to exalt him above herself. But with a new wisdom, she did
not. Where he had placed her, she stood.
"Yes," she assented. "Yes."