THE CHALLENGE
Each day found Anthony less willing to leave the place he had chosen. He
did not want to abandon the work commenced in the factory; he had
attained an active personal interest in his progress there. He was well
aware that he would soon know more about some possibilities of the mill
than did Mr. Goodwin himself. His father never had concerned himself at
all with such matters. Mr. Adriance was the converging-point of the many
lines forming a widespread net of affairs in which this factory was but
one strand. He did not even find time to notice Mr. Goodwin's advancing
years and the desire for retirement the old man was too proud to voice.
But the strand whose smallness was disdained by the greater Adriance
might well prove able to support the lesser.
An accident still further determined his wish to remain. One day Mr.
Goodwin came down to the lower room; occupied the chair in Adriance's
enclosure for a quarter-hour and watched the proceedings. These
occasional visits had done much to establish firmly "Andy's" authority,
yielding as they did the manager's sanction to the new order of things.
But this time Mr. Goodwin had something to say to the young man whom he
and Cook had grown to regard as a fortunate discovery of their own.
"Andy," he began, using the nickname as Adriance himself had suggested
on observing the positive reluctance with which the old gentleman
handled familiarly the revered name of the factory's owner; "Andy,
to-morrow there will be a meeting at the office of Mr. Adriance in New
York City; I shall be present." He cleared his throat a trifle
importantly. "I shall have pleasure in mentioning the excellent, the
really excellent, work you have done here. I shall mention you
personally."
Anthony carefully put down the papers he held and stood still, trouble
darkening across his face. He saw what was coming, and he saw no way to
stop it. He did not want his father to learn of his presence here from
an outsider, or at a public meeting. He wanted to tell Mr. Adriance his
own story, with their kinship to help him. He wanted to explain Elsie to
the man who was championing Mrs. Masterson; he wanted to tell him of the
new Adriance to come. He hardly thought it possible that his father
would deny him the simple opportunity he asked, or try to force the
monstrous wrong of a separation between man and wife, if he understood.
But if the bare fact that Tony was secretly in his employ were flung
before him, Mr. Adriance was quite capable of regarding this as an added
defiance and even mockery of himself. Mr. Goodwin's speech flowed
placidly on:
"Your abilities are really exceptional, exceptional; I am sure that they
will be suitably appreciated. You are doing much better work than
Ransome. I shall advise that I be allowed to create a new position for
you at a new salary. I should like you to supervise the entire shipping
department on this floor, not merely the trucking."
"You are very good," Adriance murmured; "I am not quite ready perhaps
for that. By the time the next meeting is held----"
"I have said that you were competent," Mr. Goodwin reminded him with
some stiffness. "I am accustomed to judge such matters, pray recollect.
I am quite sure Mr. Adriance will feel pleasure that a connection of
his, even a distant connection, should thus distinguish himself from the
ordinary employee."
"No! That is--I should wish----" Adriance caught himself stumbling, and
colored before the astonished eyes of the other. "I mean to say, family
influence cannot help me in that way. Can you place the matter before
Mr. Adriance without using my name?"
The older man chilled in severe amazement. Very slowly he took off his
_pince-nez_ with fingers a trifle uncertain.
"Certainly not," he said, rigidly. "Why should I do so remarkable a
thing?"
That challenge was not easily answered. The silence persisted
unpleasantly. Through the breach it made trickled a thin stream of
doubt, which rapidly grew to a full current of suspicion. Still Adriance
could find nothing to reply, and the situation became more than
embarrassing. Mr. Goodwin at last arose.
"I regret that I made this proposition," he said. "Of course it was not
in my calculations that you had anything to conceal, especially from Mr.
Adriance. We will of course drop the matter for the present."
"You mean that I may continue here as I am?"
"I hope so. You will comprehend that it becomes my duty to set this
matter before Mr. Adriance. It is not right that I should employ in his
name a man who fears to have his presence here known to his employer. I
will bid you good-morning."
This condition was worse than the first. Recognizing himself as
cornered, Adriance cast a hurried glance around him, found no one within
ear-shot of his little enclosure, and took a step toward the man about
to leave him.
"Wait! Mr. Goodwin, I am Tony Adriance."
The little old gentleman stared at him blankly.
"My father does not know that I am here, no one knows except my wife.
Will you not sit down again and listen to me?"
Still Mr. Goodwin stared at him, dumb. Smiling in spite of his vexation
and anxiety, the young man quietly fronted the scrutiny. He was quite
aware that in his working clothes, his hands evidencing his winter of
manual labor, his face dark with the tan of months of wind and sun, he
hardly looked the part he claimed; that is, if Mr. Goodwin knew anything
of the former Tony Adriance. But he kept the candid honesty of his eyes
open to the other's reading, and waited. Perhaps if those rather unusual
blue-black eyes he and his father had in common had confronted Mr.
Goodwin in the brightness of daylight, he might before this have been
identified. At any rate, they convinced now, even in the deceptive
light.
"There is a resemblance," murmured Mr. Goodwin.
"To my father? Yes, I think so; I have been told so."
"But--why----?"
One of the usual interruptions called Adriance away before he could
reply. The old gentleman sat dazed, watching him. When the vehicle had
passed on, Adriance turned back to the other man.
"I married without consulting my father, last autumn," he said quietly.
"Will you dine with me to-night, Mr. Goodwin, at my own house up the
hill, and let me explain to you what I am doing and why I am doing it?
If you have any doubt of my identity, you may easily fix it by asking my
father when you see him to-day whether his son is at home or not."
Mr. Goodwin found his voice with some difficulty.
"No, I would prefer to understand before I see Mr. Adriance. Come up to
my private office now; Cook can manage here for an hour without you. I
am astounded, even bewildered, Andy--Mr. Adriance----"
"Try 'Tony'," suggested the other with his sudden smile.
So while the indignant Cook struggled with double duties, Adriance and
Mr. Goodwin sat opposite one another in the latter's private office, and
held long converse.
With the exception of the Masterson side of the affair, Adriance told
the story without reserve. He hoped to win Mr. Goodwin's temporary
silence, but he actually won more than he had imagined possible. Mr.
Goodwin was excited and interested as he had not been for years. When
Adriance concluded, the other was quite the most agitated of the two.
"You will not tell my father to-day of my presence here, you will give
me time to do so myself?"
"I will do better," said Mr. Goodwin, much moved, "I will help you--I
adopt you, as it were. Mr. Adriance----"
"Tony."
"Tony, I will train you to succeed me here. I wish much to retire, as I
have told you. My wife and I--we have no children--have long planned to
travel; we have even selected the places we would visit and the routes
we would prefer to take. It has been, I might say, our dream for years;
but Mr. Adriance would not listen to my desire to leave. He declares
there is no one he could trust in my place." Pride colored the thin old
face. "His esteem flatters me; but now I will give him a successor whom
he can trust. It is very suitable that you should have this position. I
will say nothing to him, as you wish; but do you enter my office here
and study the management of this concern with me. I will myself take
charge of that."
Astonished in his turn, and deeply touched, Adriance took the offered
hand.
"Of course you know I can find no words of sufficient gratitude, Mr.
Goodwin. If you will indeed be so good you shall not find me lacking so
far as my abilities reach."
"They have reached quite far already," said his senior, drily.
What had appeared a calamity had become strange good fortune. Mr.
Goodwin readily satisfied any doubt he might have felt of Tony's
identity. Next morning when he would have gone to his usual place, a
clerk stopped him and took him to Mr. Goodwin's private office, where a
desk awaited him.
"Of course it is all my name, or rather my father's," Adriance said to
Elsie that night. "There are a score of cleverer men than I already
there who will continue, I suppose, plodding on as they are. Cook is one
of them. But I am not altruistic enough to throw away the luck I have
been born into, I am afraid. I shall take all Goodwin will give me, and
if my father refuses to keep me there, at least the training will make
me more fitted to earn our living in some other place."
"Man, you have not enough vanity to nourish you properly," Elsie gravely
told him.
Mr. Goodwin proved a harder taskmaster than Cook or Ransome. He entered
upon the education of Tony Adriance with an enthusiastic zest tempered
with a conscientious severity that made him exacting and meticulous in
detail. Adriance was fond enough of the outdoors to miss the motor-truck
at times--there were even hours when he thought wistfully of Russian
Mike; but he learned rapidly under the forced cultivation. Now he saw
how superficial had been the knowledge of the factory on which he had
prided himself in the shipping room, and how absurdly inadequate to the
management of the great place he would have been had his father put it
in his hands. But under Mr. Goodwin he was becoming in actuality what he
once had fancied himself to be. Incidentally the teacher and the student
grew cordially attached to one another; and as this attachment was
obvious, as the new man was known in every department where he was sent
to gather experience as "Mr. Adriance," and as Mr. Goodwin called him
"Tony," his identity was soon no secret in the factory. But the senior
Adriance never came in personal contact with any member of the force
except Mr. Goodwin, so this was a matter of indifference. Adriance
continued to be entered on the books as a chauffeur, and received the
corresponding salary.
The genuine chauffeurs whose comrade Andy had been looked curiously
after him and whispered among themselves when, he chanced to pass,
although his greetings to them were the same as always. Cook dropped the
use of "Andy," and said "sir" if the young man spoke to him suddenly.
Mr. Goodwin advised his pupil to let such things pass without comment.
Either Anthony's position would be assured and demand such deference, or
he would leave the factory altogether; in either case protest would only
be hypocritical or useless.
The time when Anthony should go to his father with an account of the
affair, was indefinitely postponed. The more accomplished first, the
better. Secretly, both he and Goodwin had come to dread the possibility
that Mr. Adriance would refuse to continue Anthony in his position,
either through resentment or lack of faith in Tony's ability.
Sometimes Anthony felt a sharp misgiving that perhaps the very
preparation that fitted him for the place he so much desired, would
deprive him of it. It was more than possible that Mr. Adriance would
keenly resent what was being done without his knowledge. In a sense
Anthony was fortifying himself in his father's own territory in order to
resist the older man's will in regard to Mrs. Masterson. Anthony never
learned to think without vicarious shame and pain of the treachery his
father had planned against Elsie. He could not reconcile that idea with
anything their years together had shown him of his father. But he worked
on and thrust from his mind what he could not remedy.