A Man's Hearth Part 12

"Most Southerners have. Didn't you ever notice it, even with the men?

Down in Louisiana most of us have some French or Spanish blood. But mine have not been do-nothing hands, and I think they show it a little bit."

He stopped her, with a sudden distasteful memory of certain wax-white, wax-smooth and useless hands that almost had laid hold on his life.

"I hope that mine may soon show something. To-morrow I will try to become a wage-earner, and start a pay envelope to bring you."

"So soon?"

"Right away. Am I one of the idle rich? The fact is, our grocer tells me chauffeurs are badly needed at a certain factory near the foot of the hill. I think I should rather drive a motor truck than pilot a private car, open doors and touch my cap."

She nodded agreement.

"Yes, of course. What factory is it, Anthony?"

He regarded her with a whimsical humor.

"Well, to be exact, it is not a factory unfamiliar to us. It is one whose sign you often have viewed from the aristocratic side of the Hudson, and it is the property of Mr. Anthony Adriance, senior."

"Oh!" startled. "Is, is that--safe?"

"Why not?" he wondered. "We haven't broken any laws, have we? The worst he could do, if he wanted to do something melodramatic, would be to fire me. But he will not. In the first place, why should he? In the second, he knows a trifle more about the natives of Patagonia than he knows about the men who drive his trucks. I don't believe he has been in this factory for ten years. New York is his end. And I'm giving him a square deal; he will have a very valuable chauffeur, Mrs. Adriance--one who can drive a racing-machine, if required!"

She disclosed two dimples he had not previously observed. But her eyes hid from the challenge of his and she rose hastily to clear away the dishes.

"Let them stand," he commanded, man-like.

There she was firm in rebellion, however. Finally they compromised on his a.s.sisting her.

"We must have a dog, too," he decided, when all was neat once more. He glanced about the fire-bright room with a proprietary air. "One that will not eat your kitten."

"With a nice watch-doggy bark?"

"With anything you want!" He turned abruptly and drew her to him.

"Elsie, suppose I had missed you? What a poor fool I've been! Last night---- Why don't you take it out of me? Why don't you make me pay as I deserve?"

She smiled with the delicately-mocking indulgence he was learning to know and antic.i.p.ate; it sat upon her youth with so quaint a wisdom.

"Perhaps I am, or will."

"I believe now that I loved you from the first day. I know that I kept thinking about you and considering everything from the point of view I fancied you would take. You"--with sudden anxiety--"you do not regret coming with me, Elsie? What were you thinking of, just now, when your eyes darkened? You looked----"

"Of Holly," she answered simply. "I hope his new nurse will play with him, and cuddle him."

"The baby?" Her fidelity touched him with a warm sense of promise for his own future. "Yes, I have taken you from him. But, we left him his father."

The allusion brought a constraint. The words spoken, Adriance flushed like a woman and turned his ashamed eyes away from the girl.

"You did not take me from Holly," Elsie hurriedly corrected. "Mrs.

Masterson discharged me, night before last. I was to go to-day, anyhow."

"You? Why?"

She hesitated.

"She came to the nursery door while you were speaking to me of telling Holly the story of Mait' Raoul Galvez. You know, Holly is too much a baby to hear stories, so she understood that you meant--other things.

And it seems that once you had spoken to her of that story. She--made connections. She accused me of--of flirting with her guests; of being--an improper person."

"Elsie!"

"It is all over. It does not matter, now. But that was how I knew she did not send you away. Of course she said nothing to tell me; she is too clever. But, you see I knew so much already; and when I saw she was jealous even of your speaking to me----!"

The silence continued long. Both were thinking of Lucille Masterson. As if she feared the man's thoughts, Elsie shrank away from her husband's clasp, the movement unnoticed by him. Her clear eyes clouded with doubt, a creeping chill extinguished their glow.

Adriance spoke first, breaking at once the pause and the barrier.

"Once they must have been like this--like us. She would have left Fred, left him down and out, for a new man; and she his wife!"

Disgust was in his voice, wondering contempt. He pressed his own wife hard against his side. But Elsie dragged her arms from the hold that bound them, and impulsively clasped them about his neck in her first offered caress.

"You were thinking _that_?" she cried, fiercely glad in her triumph.

"Anthony, you were thinking that?"

He stooped his head to meet her glance; standing together, they looked into each other's eyes.

CHAPTER VIII

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 cla.s.sified 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 bas.e.m.e.nt, 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.