THE ADRIANCES
The weeks ran quietly on, bringing spring as the only visitor to the
little red house. Masterson had been invited to come, but he never
availed himself of the invitation. The Adriances did not speak of him,
by tacit agreement feigning to forget the only painful evening they had
spent since their marriage.
The event that fell like an exploding shell into the tranquil household,
shattering its accustomed life as truly as if by material destruction,
came quite without warning. It chose one of the first evenings of April,
when a delicate, pastel-tinted sunset was concluding the day as
gracefully as the _envoi_ of a poem.
Elsie was making ready for her husband, much as she once had described
to him a wife's employment at this hour, and so all unconsciously had
cleansed the temple of his heart, thrusting down the false idols to make
a place for herself. The table stood arrayed, she herself was daintily
fresh in attire and mood; the little house waited, expectant, for the
man's return. The soft flattery of love lapped Adriance around whenever
he crossed this threshold; life had taught him a new luxury in this bare
school-room.
Elsie was singing, as she went about her pleasant tasks with the deft
surety and swiftness so pretty to watch; singing a lilting, inconsequent
Creole _chanson_, velvet-smooth as the sprays of gray pussy-willow she
presently began to arrange in a squat, earthen jar. She was happy with a
deep, abiding, steadfast content, and a faith that admitted no fear.
She was listening, through all her occupations. The crackle of Anthony's
quick, eager step on the old gravel walk would have brought her at once
to the door. But the sound of an automobile halting before the gate
passed unnoticed; many cars travelled this road, day and night. So, as
before, Masterson came unheralded into his friend's house. Only, this
time he found the door open and entered without knocking. When his
shadow darkened across the room, Elsie turned and saw her visitor.
Rather, her visitors. Masterson carried in the curve of his arm a
diminutive figure clad in white corduroy from tasselled cap to small
leggings. The child's dimpled, ruddy-bright cheek was pressed against
the man's worn and sallow young face, the shining baby-gaze looked out
from beside the fever-dulled eyes of the other. A chubby arm tightly
embraced Masterson's neck.
"Holly!" Elsie cried, the willow-buds slipping through her fingers.
"Why--how----? Oh, how he has grown! Holly, baby, don't you remember
Elsie? He does, truly does--please let me have him!"
Masterson willingly relinquished his charge, putting Holly into the
eager arms held out, and stood watching the ensuing scene of pretty
nonsense and affection. He did not speak or offer interruption. When
Elsie finally looked toward him again, recovering recollection and
curiosity, baby and woman were equally rose-hued and radiant.
"But--how did it happen?" she wondered. "Did--was the agreement kept,
after all? Is Holly to stay with you, now?"
The man met her gaze with a strange blending of defiance and entreaty.
Now she perceived his condition of terrible excitement and that his
dumbness had not been the apathy she fancied. He was on the verge of a
breakdown, perhaps irreparable to mental health. Her question was
answered by her own quick perception before he spoke.
"I have stolen him. No! I did _not_ steal him; I took my own. It was in
the park--he was with a nurse, and she struck him. She didn't know me. I
had stopped to get a sight of him. Well, that is all Lucille will ever
give him: nurses! She never wanted him, or had time to trouble about
him. She doesn't like children. He stumbled, fell down, and the woman
slapped him--more than once."
She looked at him with a sense of helpless inability either to aid or
condemn. Every conscious fibre in her championed his cause, except her
reason. How could this sick man hope to keep Holly against the world?
"You----?" she temporized.
"I've told you what I did; I took him away from her. 'Tell Mrs.
Masterson that Holly has gone with his father,' I said. That was all. I
carried him to my car and drove straight here. You will keep him for me?
You and Tony? I have got to go; to get back and make my last fight."
Elsie gently set down the baby. She saw what Masterson in his dazed and
selfish absorption overlooked: that she and Anthony were to be drawn
into a conflict surely evil for them. Mrs. Masterson must resent this,
and call on the law to undo the kidnapping. She herself and Anthony
would be dragged from their happy obscurity, their long honeymoon ended.
More menacing still, Anthony's position in his father's factory would be
discovered and exploited by the newspapers, with the probable result
that Mr. Adriance would end that situation by dismissing the impromptu
employee.
But she never even thought of sending Masterson away. The baby hands
that grasped her dress grasped deeper at her heart. Also, this man in
need was Anthony's friend and one to whom he owed atonement for a wrong
contemplated, if not committed.
"Of course we will keep him," she promised, kindly and naturally. "But
you must stay, too. You are not well and must rest for a while--it is
absurd to speak of fighting when you can scarcely stand. Sit there, in
that arm-chair. Presently Anthony will come home, then we will have
supper and talk of all this."
The serene good-sense calmed and cooled his fever. Sighing, he relaxed
his tenseness of attitude.
"I must go," he repeated, but without resolution.
For answer she drew forward the chair. He sank into it and lay rather
than sat among its cushions, passive before her firmness.
Elsie moved about the matter at hand with her unfailing practicality.
She took off Holly's wraps and improvised a high-chair by means of a
dictionary and a pillow. To an accompaniment of gay chatter she made
ready her small guest's evening meal, tied a napkin under the fat chin
and superintended the business of supping. Hunger and sleep were
contending before the bread and milk and soft-boiled egg were finished.
Afterward, Elsie carried a very drowsy little boy into her room and made
him a nest in her antique-shop four-posted bed. Masterson looked on,
mutely attentive to every movement of the two as if some dramatic
interest lay in the simple actions. When Elsie returned from the
sleeping baby, he abruptly spoke:
"You know, I only mean you to keep him for to-night, not always. I will
come back for him. You know all I planned for him and myself. This has
hurried me, but I have money enough. Earned money. Did I tell you Mr.
Adriance, Tony's father, has offered me a considerable sum to stop
'making a mountebank' of myself at the restaurant? No? He has. I fancy
her former husband's occupation grates on Lucille." He laughed, moving
his head on the cushions of the high-backed chair. "Well, I refused."
"Of course!"
"You knew I would? Then you grant me more grace than she did."
"She? You said Mr. Adriance offered----"
He glanced keenly at her face, then turned his own face aside that it
might not guide her groping thought.
"I must go," he said, again. But he did not move, nor did Elsie.
The pause was broken by Anthony's whistle, the signal which always
advised his wife of his return.
But to-night it was not the blithe hail of custom. The clear notes were
shaken, curtly eloquent of some anger or distress. Acutely sensitive to
every change or mood of his, Elsie caught both messages, the intentional
and the one sent unaware. Dropping upon the table a box of matches she
had taken up, she ran to the door.
It opened before she reached it. Anthony, his face dark with repressed
anger, his movements stiff with the constraint he forced upon them,
appeared outlined against the soft, clear dusk of April twilight. He
looked behind him, and, holding open the door of his house formally
ushered in a guest.
"My wife, sir," he briefly introduced to his father the girl who drew
back, amazed, before their entrance.
Mr. Adriance showed no less evidence of inward storm than his son. But
he stopped and saluted his daughter-in-law with precise courtesy.
"Mrs. Adriance," he acknowledged the presentation, his voice better
controlled than the younger man's.
"Light the lamp, Elsie," her husband requested, dragging off the clumsy
chauffeur's gloves he had worn home. "It seems that we are under
suspicion of child-stealing. My father has done us the honor of looking
us up, to accuse me of conniving at the kidnapping of Mrs. Masterson's
boy. I have not yet gathered exactly what interest I am supposed to have
in the lady or her affairs, or whether I am presumed to be engaged in a
bandit enterprise for ransom. But I understand that there is a detective
outside, who probably wishes to search the house."
Elsie made no move to obey the command. In the indeterminate light
Masterson's presence had been unnoticed, shadowed as he was by the deep
chair in which he sat. She was not afraid, or bewildered so far as to
conceive keeping him concealed, but she was not yet ready to act.
"My son is inexact, as usual," Mr. Adriance gave her space, aiding her
unaware by his irritation. "Mr. Masterson is known to have crossed the
Edgewater ferry with the child, and we know of no friends he would seek
in this place except Tony and you. His brain is hardly strong enough,
now, to plan any extended moves. Surely it needs no explanation that we
wish to rescue a two-year-old child from the hands of a drug-crazed
incompetent?"
Elsie laid her hand over the match-box, wondering that the other two did
not hear, as she did, the very audible breathing of the man in the
arm-chair.
"He is hardly that," she deprecated. "But, if you find him, what will
you do?"
"To him? Nothing. We want the child. If he persists in annoying the lady
who was his wife, however, he must be put in a sanitarium."
"Elsie, why do you not say that we know nothing of all this?" Anthony
demanded, harsh in his strong impatience. "Why do you feed suspicion by
arguing? I don't say that I would not shelter Holly Masterson, if he
were here--in fact, I should! But I do say that he is not here, sir, and
I expect my word to be taken. Elsie----"
His wife put out her hand in a quieting gesture.
"Now I will light the lamp," she stated, in her full, calm voice.
Oddly checked, the two angry men stood watching her. The flame-touched
wick burned slowly, at first, the light rising gradually to its full
power; the circle of radiance crept out and up, warmed by the crimson
shade through which it passed. It crept like a bright tide, shining on
the figure of the woman who stood behind the table, rising over the
noble swell of her bosom, submerging the curved hollow of her throat
where a small ebony cross lay against a surface of ivory, flooding at
last her face set in generous resolution and glinting in her gray,
serenely fearless eyes. She looked, and was mistress of the place and
situation; perhaps because of all those present she alone was not
thinking of herself.
"You see," she broke the pause, "there was much excuse. It is always
wiser and kinder to listen to the excuse for actions; I think usually
there is one. Mr. Masterson loves his little son very dearly, and that
they have been separated is terrible to him. But he was patient, he did
not interfere until to-day; he saw Holly struck and roughly treated by
the nurse. He could not bear that, and just look on. No one could! So
Mr. Masterson, obeying his first impulse, snatched up the baby, and he
did bring him here. It was only a little while ago, Anthony; a very
little while."
Before either Adriance could speak, the third man lifted himself out of
the shadows into the light. He was laughing slightly, all his reckless,
too-feminine beauty somehow restored as he faced them.
"Here is your drug-crazed incompetent, Mr. Adriance," he mocked. "Have
you succeeded so well in training your own son that you want to
undertake bringing up mine?"
The insult changed the atmosphere to that of crude war. Elsie drew back,
recognizing this field was not for her. Mr. Adriance considered his
antagonist with a deliberation cold and very dangerous.
"I think a comparison between my son and yourself is hardly one you can
afford to challenge," he said bitingly.
"Now, no," Masterson admitted. He laughed again. "But a year ago--who
was the best citizen, then? Fred Masterson, with all his shortcomings,
or Tony Adriance, dangling after Masterson's wife? Hold on, Tony! I'm
not saying this for you; you quit the nasty game as soon as you saw
where it was leading. I'm only explaining to your father, here, that the
difference between you and me is chiefly--our wives. Of course we ought
not to lean on our women; we ought to be strong and independent. But I
was not born that way, and neither were you. Lucille wanted me down, and
I am down; Mrs. Adriance wanted you up, and you're standing up. Be
honest, and out with the truth to yourself, if you never speak it, Tony.
As for your father, if our guardians had started us differently, it
might not have been this way with us. I don't know, but that is the
chance I am giving Holly. He shall not have to pick up his education on
the road. I have brought him here, and here he stays with Mrs. Adriance
until I take him away with me. She has given me her promise."
"You forget that the court has given the child to its mother," Mr.
Adriance reminded him, before Anthony could reply. "And let me tell you
I have nothing except contempt for a man who foists off his
responsibilities upon a woman's shoulders."
"Neither have I," retorted Masterson. "Did you imagine I had any vanity
left, or that my self-respect still breathed? You are dull, Mr.
Adriance! But all that is aside from the case. Holly stays here, unless
Anthony turns him out, and then he goes with me, not with his mother. Do
you think I fail to understand why she wants him, and you want her to
have him? It is because he is a social vindication; her possession of
him brands me as the one found lacking in our partnership. Well, he is
not to be so sacrificed."
"May I ask how you intend to enforce this?"
"You may, and I will tell you." He looked return in full measure of the
older man's irony and determination. "I can enforce it because you care
about the public at large, and I do not; because it would make a
beautiful sob story: how Holly's reprobate father rescued him from
neglect and ill-treatment, taking him away from a brutal nurse in the
Park; and how Mr. Adriance, _the_ Mr. Adriance, pursued and recaptured
the child. The newspapers would be interested in learning that Mr.
Adriance had managed the whole Masterson divorce case; with his usual
tact and success. They might wonder why he had done it. I have wondered,
myself, you know. That is, I might have wondered, if I had not known how
much you once approved of Mrs. Masterson as a possible daughter-in-law,
before Tony disappointed you by marrying to please himself. You have the
reputation of never admitting a defeat; and, after all, two divorces are
as right as one! I beg your pardon, Mrs. Adriance."
Elsie uttered a faint cry, abruptly confronted with the hideous thing
Masterson had shown her husband on the night that had changed Anthony
from her playfellow to her defender and fightingman.
"Fred!" Anthony exclaimed indignant rebuke, springing to the girl's
side.
She caught his arm fiercely, as it clasped her. Suddenly she was one
with the men in mood, burning with defiance and alert to make war for
her own. And Anthony was her own, as she was his. Pressing close to her
husband she held him. Arrayed together, the three who had youth stood
against the man who had everything else.
But Mr. Adriance had reddened through his fine, gray, slightly withered
skin like any schoolboy. His dark eyes lightened and hardened to an
unforgiving grimness of wrath that dwarfed the younger men's passion and
made it puerile.
"You will restrain yourself in speaking of the lady who had the
misfortune to marry you," he signified, with a clipped precision of
speech more menacing than any threat. "Since yesterday she has been my
wife."
Of all the possibilities, this most obvious one never had occurred to
any of the three who heard the announcement. The effect held the group
dumb. All thought had to be readjusted, all recent experience focussed
to this new range of vision. In the long pause, Anthony's dog yawned
with the ridiculous sigh and snap of happy puppyhood; ticking clock and
singing kettle seemed to fill the room with a swell of commonplace,
domestic sound derisive of all complicated life. After all, men were
simple, and involved evil usually a chimera. Plots and counterplots
resolved into a most natural happening; thrown into companionship with
Lucille Masterson by Anthony's flight, Mr. Adriance had fallen in love.
Probably at first he had aided her through sympathy, as Anthony himself
had done. There was no mystery in the rest.
The reckless challenge and false gayety died out of Masterson's face,
leaving it dull and bleak as a stage when the play is over and the
artificial light and color extinguished. Quite suddenly he looked
haggard and appallingly ill. Circles darkened beneath his eyes as if
dashed in by the blue crayon of an artist. He was conquered; with his
fancied right to resentment and contempt he also lost all animation. The
fire was quenched, apparently forever.
"I apologize, of course," he said, his lifeless ease a poor effort at
his former manner. "Certainly I would have been--well, less frank, if I
had understood. Pray convey my congratulations to Mrs. Adriance. No
doubt you will be happy, since you can buy everything she wants. But
neither you nor she can care to keep Holly Masterson in your house. I
want him. After all, I am his father, you know, and entitled to some
direction of his future. No? Come, I'll bargain with you! Leave him
here, and I will do what I refused to do for money: I will quit public
dancing and drop out of sight."
The unexpected offer allured. The wrath in the eyes of Mr. Adriance did
not lessen, but speculation crept into his regard. His abhorrence of
scandal urged him to grasp at this escape from having his wife's name
constantly linked with the escapades of her first husband. There could
be no question of Masterson's genius for spectacular trouble-making.
Moreover, Holly would still be with the Adriances, so that dignity was
assured. He did not believe that Masterson really intended to burden
himself with the child. Lucille Masterson had formed his opinion of the
other man; he credited him with no intention good or stable.
"Of course I must consult Mrs. Adriance," he answered stiffly. "But I
have no doubt that she will meet your wishes in the matter, since Tony
is now the child's step-brother. That is, if my son and his wife are
willing to undertake the charge you thrust upon them?"
He turned toward the two, as he concluded. For the first time, the
Adriance senior and junior, really looked at each other as man at man.
For "Tony" no longer existed; in his place was someone the elder did not
yet know. Indeed, he and Tony had been merely pleasant acquaintances; he
and this new man were strangers.
"Why, yes," Anthony replied to the indirect question. He had regained
his composure as the others had lost theirs. His cool steadiness and
poise contrasted strongly with the strained tension of his guests; he
spoke for both himself and Elsie with the assured masterfulness she had
nursed to life in him during these many months. "We will take charge of
Holly until his father claims him, unless it is going to be too
difficult for me to take care of my own family. As you may see, sir, we
are not rich."
"Is that my affair?"
"It has not been. But it is going to be."
"As a question of money----"
Anthony checked the sentence with a gesture. Gently freeing himself from
Elsie's clasp upon his arm, he drew from a pocket of his rough coat that
notebook which had absorbed so many of his leisure hours.
"Let us say a question of business," he suggested. "Six months ago I
entered your employ as a chauffeur. You will find my record has no marks
against it. I did not think at that time of drawing any advantage from
the fact that the mill belonged to you; I worked exactly as I must have
done for any stranger. I was not late or absent, I accomplished rather
more each day than the average chauffeur in the place. Cook and Ransome
can tell you whether I gave them satisfaction. I only speak of this,
sir, because I should like you to understand that I was in earnest. It
was not until months had passed at this work that I began to think of
changing my position. One day Ransome fell sick. I asked for his place
to try out a better system of checking the shipping that had occurred to
me. I was given this at first tentatively, then permanently. In fact,
the system worked so successfully that--Mr. Goodwin came to see me." He
hesitated. "I wish you would ask Mr. Goodwin to tell you himself
something of what has happened."
"Very well."
The laconic assent was somehow disconcerting.
"I had to tell him who I was," Anthony resumed, with less certainty, "I
had meant to find out what your attitude would be, before that happened,
but I had no choice. He was good enough to take me into his office and
offer to teach me the management of your factory. Now----"
"Now, since it is a matter of business," said Mr. Adriance, dryly, "what
do you want?"
"I want a stranger's chance, and your pull," was the prompt return;
Anthony's smile flashed across seriousness. "That is, I want your
influence to give me Mr. Goodwin's position as manager, and after that I
am willing to stand on the basis of my business value to you. Goodwin is
old and anxious to retire. If I hold his place for a year and fail to
earn his salary, then discharge me and I'll not complain. I know this
end of your business as you do not, sir. You are brilliant, a genius of
big affairs; I have discovered in myself a capacity for meticulous
attention to detail. Will you take this little book home with you? It
contains a collection of notes and figures for which you would gladly
pay an outsider. Mr. Goodwin and I have found the plant is enormously
wasteful; every department contributes its quota of mismanagement,
except the office under his own eye. I want a chance to do this work, to
buy a house I like up on the hill, here, and put my delicate Southern
wife in a setting suitable for her. Will you let me earn all this?"
"I am not aware that it has been my custom to interfere with you,"
retorted Mr. Adriance. He eyed his son with icy disfavor. "Between you
and Mr. Masterson it appears to be established that I am the typical
oppressor of fiction and melodrama. Kindly look at the other side of the
shield. Last autumn you chose to marry and leave my house. You did both,
without paying me the trifling courtesy of announcing your intentions. I
knew of no quarrel between us. The rudeness appeared to me quite without
warrant. Nevertheless, I tied all the loose ends you had left behind.
I kept your marriage from furnishing a sensation to the journals. The
lady who is now my wife helped me in convincing our friends that your
wedding was in no way unusual or unexpected, if a little sudden, and
that you had met the young lady from Louisiana at her house. In short, I
smothered curiosity, a task with which you had not concerned yourself.
You choose to enter this place as a truck driver. You did not ask if
that were pleasant to me. It was not, but I made no objection. Oh, yes;
of course I have known what you were doing! Why should I not know? Now,
you meet me with the air of a man hampered and pursued. Why?"
"I was wrong," admitted Anthony, simply. He had flushed hotly before the
rebuke, but his eyes met his father's frankly and with a relief that
gladly found himself at fault rather than the other. "I did not
understand. I am sorry."
They shook hands. A constraint between them was not to be avoided. The
marriage of the older man had thrust them apart. Unforgiveable things
had been said of Lucille Adriance; things that had the biting
permanence of truth.
"I will arrange for Goodwin's retirement," Mr. Adriance remarked. "You
will take his place, and this winter's work may pass as your whim to
study the business from the bottom. I spent an hour discussing your
affairs with him, on my way here, to-night. I had called on him to
ascertain your exact address. He has agreed to remain as your adviser
and assistant for a month or two, until you have quite found yourself.
And of course I will be at your service. That is enough for this
evening; I have already stayed here too long. Come to my office
to-morrow."
When he turned toward the door, Elsie was awaiting him. A moment before
she had slipped away from the two men.
"This is the first time you have been in Anthony's house," she said, her
soft speech very winning. "You aren't going without taking our
hospitality?"
She held a little round tray on which stood a cup and plate. The action
was gracious and graceful, quaintly alien as her own legends. Mr.
Adriance gazed at her, then bowed ceremoniously, lifted the coffee and
drank.
"I think I had forgotten to congratulate Tony," he regretted. "Allow me
to do so, most warmly."
Anthony closed the door behind his guest; presently the sound of a
starting motor ruffled the calm hush of the spring evening.
"I want my supper," Anthony announced, practically. "I shall not have
any more of your cooking, Elsie. What are you going to do with your idle
time--learn to play bridge?"
She ran into his arms.