A Man's Hearth Part 29

"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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed. It crept like a bright tide, shining on the figure of the woman who stood behind the table, rising over the n.o.ble 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, s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 pa.s.sion 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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sured. 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 a.s.sured 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.