CHAPTER V.
THE LITTLE RED HOUSE
The next day it stormed. A biting north wind hunted across river andcity; a wind that carried the first ice-particles of the approachingwinter. There were no children on the Drive or in the park, except a fewsturdy urchins neither of the age nor class attended by nurses. No oneuncompelled cared to face the grim, gray, scowling day whose breath wasfreezing.
In the Adriances' breakfast-room, an effort had been made to offset theoutside cheerlessness by aid of lamps glowing under gold-colored shades.But only an optimist could have deluded vision into accepting theartificial sunshine as satisfactory. Tony Adriance was even irritated bythe feeble sham, and snapped out the lamp nearest to him as he took hisseat.
The action was trifling, but Mr. Adriance, seated on the opposite sideof the round table, glanced keenly at his son and read an interpretationof it. He believed that Tony wished to shadow the pale exhaustion ofhis face. In this he was wrong; Tony Adriance was quite past thoughts ofhis appearance. Not having looked in a mirror, he was not even aware ofthe traces left by the last night. He did not at all appreciate thesignificance with which his father presently inquired, courteouslyconcerned:
"You are not well, this morning?"
"Quite well, thank you," Tony replied; he glanced up from his platesomewhat surprised at the question.
Mr. Adriance met the glance with sincere curiosity. His first hazardfailing, he sought for a second. Indeed, he knew very well that Tony hadnone of the habits which lead to uncomfortable mornings, although to acasual regard his present bearing suggested a white night. Fortunately,he had not perceived the innuendo within the older man's question andwas not offended. Mr. Adriance detested being in the wrong.
Tony was too listless to pursue the subject at all. After vainly waitinga moment for his father to explain the inquiry, he proceeded with thebusiness of breakfasting more or less indifferently. He wasconjecturing as to his own ability to set forth his trouble for the calminspection of the gentleman across the table. He had come down-stairswith that intention, born of the night's bitter experience of solitudein unhappiness. Now he felt that the project was impossible. His fatherand he were not on terms of sufficient intimacy. He suffered an accessof discouragement and weariness. His only idea had failed, yet somethingmust be decided, some course followed.
"You dined at the Mastersons', last night, I believe?" Mr. Adriance hadfound his second hazard. Unconsciously his voice sharpened; it would beintolerable if Tony and Masterson had made some clumsy scene betweenthem. Occasionally Mr. Adriance wondered what so clever a woman asLucille Masterson had seen in either of the two.
"No," Tony denied.
"No? I had understood----?"
"I dined down-town."
That was the first deliberate lie the younger man had told the older inall their life together. But Tony confronted an utter impossibility; hecould not confess that he had sat until midnight in a park pavilion,with no more thought of life's common-sense routine than a sentimentalboy. Nevertheless, his voice sounded unconvincing to his own ears, andhumiliation swept over him like a wave of heat. The desire to get awayfrom everyone and everything familiar made it difficult for him not tospring up and leave the room and the unfinished breakfast.
But Mr. Adriance was convinced and appeased. In his relief, he felt areally kind desire to relieve Tony from his evident depression.
"You appear to have something on your mind," he observed. "If it isanything I might remove, pray call upon me, Tony."
"Financially?" queried his son, drily.
"Certainly, if you wish. You are not in the least extravagant. In fact,you are a charming contradiction of a great many popular conceptionsconcerning those not forcibly employed."
"Thank you. But I wish you would employ me, sir, if not forcibly. I wantto go away for a time; not just--for amusement. Can you not send mesomewhere to take charge of your interests instead of a hired agent? Icould learn to help you, perhaps."
The last expression was unfortunate. Mr. Adriance's brow contracted andthe cordiality left his gaze.
"I am not yet superannuated," he signified. "When I am in need of help,I will ask it, Tony. Naturally I intend training you to take charge ofyour own affairs after my death. You will find that quite enough tooccupy you, some day. I am sorry if you are unable to amuse yourself,already. Next year, if you like, we will take up the matter of yourbusiness education. This year, I shall be too busy. You are young and Iam not old."
His glance turned toward a mirror set in a buffet opposite. The facereflected was clear in outline, firm to the verge of hardness; the eyesfull and alert, the carefully brushed hair so abundant that its graynessgave dignity without the effect of age. Self-appreciation touched Mr.Adriance's lip with a smile, as he gazed, smoothing away his slightannoyance. His son, tracing that glance, felt a movement of kindredadmiration and a renewed sense of his own personal inadequacy. TonyAdriance had accomplished nothing, yet he was already tired. How wouldhe look when he was thirty years older? Hardly like that, he feared. Norwould Fred Masterson! Whose was the fault, and what the remedy?
Mr. Adriance, returning to his coffee, surprised the other's observationof him, and shrugged an unembarrassed acceptance of the verdict.
"We have plenty of time, you see," he remarked. "Moreover, you arehardly ready for abstract affairs. You are not sufficiently settled.After you are married that will come. I myself married young. Marriagemakes private life sufficiently monotonous not to interfere with theconduct of outside matters of importance."
"Does it?" speculated Tony, doubtingly.
"It should. Monotony is closer to content than is agitation, would younot say?"
"Doesn't that depend on the kind of monotony?"
"Surely. That is why each man should choose his own wife."
"I see. If I ever choose a wife, I shall remember the advice."
This time Mr. Adriance was astonished. He did not miss the significanceof the remark, or the alteration in Tony since the previous day, when hehad last seen him. It was not possible to be explicit in a matter sodelicate, especially with servants present; but his curiosity was not tobe denied.
"You have not--reached that point? I had fancied----"
"I have no such engagement at present," was the steady reply.
Mr. Adriance pushed away his finger bowl and allowed his cigar to belighted by the deferential automaton behind his chair.
"I am sorry," he said.
His son did not misunderstand him; in fact, he understood more clearlythan perhaps did the older man himself. Mr. Adriance had chosen thehostess he wanted for his house, or rather, he had been enchanted byTony's supposed choice. Lucille Masterson filled his ideal of his son'swife. Her loveliness would be a point of pride; her social experiencewould make her competent for the position; moreover, she was too clevernot to have courted and won the genuine liking of Tony's father longago. Fred Masterson was hardly considered, except as an obstacle readilyremoved, when the proper time came. And now, Tony himself wasoverturning all the pleasant family life that Mr. Adriance had planned.He knew that his father never willingly relinquished a perfected plan;rarely, indeed, was he turned aside from a purpose on which his mind wasfixed.
"Perhaps you will reconsider that statement later," Mr. Adriancepresently suggested.
"I think not, in the sense you mean," he made slow reply.
Mr. Adriance raised himself abruptly.
"I hope so," he said, with a touch of sharpness; "I hope you are notgoing to grow irresolute and changeable, Tony. I detest weakness ofcharacter. Perhaps you had better take a trip somewhere and get yourselfin tone."
"Perhaps," Tony agreed; his voice was not yielding, but sullen anddesperate.
Indeed, he was as near illness as a man may be without physical injuryor disease. After his father had left the breakfast-room he sat for along time in utter mental incapacity to undertake any line of effort.Finally he arose, oppressed with a sense of suffocation in the rich,sombre a
tmosphere; of imprisonment and helplessness. He wanted air andsolitude, the solitude he had come to the breakfast-room to escape, andhe could think of no place where he could be so well assured of both asin his motor-car.
In his abstraction he walked bareheaded and without an overcoat acrossthe frozen stretch of lawn between the house and the garage. He wasquite indifferent to the weather; his chauffeur put him into furs andpassed him his gloves and cap as a matter of course, or he might havefared forth poorly equipped to meet the wind and storm.
He swung his machine from the cement incline into the street and turnedacross Broadway. He did not wish to pass Elsie Murray ensconced in thepark pavilion with Holly Masterson at her knees; yet his thoughts wereso swayed by her that when he reached One Hundred and Thirtieth Streethe turned west again and took the ferry across the Hudson. He had nobetter reason for doing so than the tranquillity and content she seemedto draw from contemplating the opposite shore.
He sped up Fort Lee hill with a crowd of other cars, turned west andnorth to escape their companionship and all the landmarks he knew. Heavoided the main highway and chose mere cross and hill roads and lanes.Always he had before him the vivid, pretty face of Lucille, the tiredyoung face of Masterson and the gray eyes of Elsie Murray.
A nurse-maid! The girl who had told him the legend of Raoul Galvez, thegirl by whose standard he had come to measure himself and his companionsand who had fixed the sluggish attention of his conscience upon themischief being wrought by his yielding good nature--that girl wasLucille's nurse-maid. That amazement of the night before remained withhim, coloring all other emotions. He had come out to arrange histhoughts, but the hours passed and they remained in chaotic condition.
Near noon he was running through a narrow woodland track when a bend inthe road suddenly revealed his way blockaded by an enormous wagon thatstood before him. It was a moving van; its canvas sides distended bybulky furniture and household fittings, its rear doors tied open toallow a huge old-fashioned cupboard to stand between. Adriance broughthis machine to an abrupt halt.
"Clear the way there," he impatiently shouted to the invisible driver;"what is the matter--broken down?"
The answer came, not from the concealed front of the van, but from thebank bordering on the side of the road.
"All right; but ain't it a shame that you blew in at dinner-time!"
The reply was unexpected; Adriance looked towards the complainant'svoice. In the shelter of a big boulder that gave some protection fromthe wind, three men were seated, each with a leather lunch-box on hisknee. Two of them wore the striped aprons of moving-men; the thirdevidently was the spokesman and the driver. All three held variousportions of food and stared down at the intruder in the attitude inwhich his advance had arrested them.
"It ain't as if we could just turn out," the driver pursued, notresentfully but with an impersonal disgust. He put the apple in his handback into his lunch-box and stood up. "We've got to go on a mile beforethere's room for you to pass. Come on, boys."
"No," Adriance aroused himself from self-absorption to forbid theupheaval. "I am in no hurry; finish your lunch, and I will wait."
The three on the bank stared harder.
"You're a sport," complimented the driver; "but it ain't more than fiveminutes after twelve."
"What has that to do with it? Oh, I see; you mean that you rest untilone?"
"You're on."
"Well, I said that I was not in a hurry," he accepted the delay he hadnot contemplated. "Take your rest and I will smoke."
The three men regarded each other, then the driver slowly sat down. Themunching horses were blanketed against the cold, but the men appearedcareless of temperature. They obviously were constrained by the presenceof the man in the automobile, however.
"This road ain't much used," the driver ventured presently. "We'retaking this load to a farmhouse up here a ways. That's why we thought wecould stop traffic without being noticed."
His round, bright eyes asked a question that Adriance answered withdoubtful truthfulness.
"I lost my way."
"Oh!" The driver paused, then suddenly slid down the bank.
"Ain't we the hogs," he observed deprecatingly, coming up to the side ofthe car and offering his lunch-box. "Won't you eat?"
The tired, dark-blue eyes of Tony Adriance met the cheerful, light-blueeyes of the other man. The two men were about the same age, and one ofthem was desperately lonely and sick of his own thoughts. They bothsmiled involuntarily.
"Thanks, I will," said Adriance; and took a thick, rye bread sandwichfrom the box presented. The driver sat down on the running-board of theautomobile and there ensued a well-employed silence.
The sandwich was excellent. Adriance had eaten little breakfast; yet,left to himself, he would hardly have thought of food in his bitterpreoccupation; but it did him good. The ham smeared with cheap mustardhad a zest of its own, a little brutal, perhaps, but effective. It was agenerously designed sandwich, too, not a frail wafer. He ate it all,even the acrid crust.
"'Nother?" invited the host.
"No, thanks; but that one tasted good." Adriance drew out hiscigar-case. "Won't you all have a smoke with me, now?"
The cigars were passed and lighted. Before returning the case, thedriver frankly inspected the fine leather toy with the tiny monogram inone corner.
"That's all right," he approved, returning it to its owner. "I wasafraid you'd pull out a little gold box of cigarettes."
"Why?" amused.
"Oh, I don't know, my luck, I guess."
"You don't like them?"
"Me? I got a pipe three years old that holds _some_ tobacco--that forme. But this cigar is all right. Ever try a pipe?"
"Yes."
The driver leaned back comfortably against the spare tire strappedbeside the car, gazing up at the gray, cold sky.
"A pipe, my feet on the kitchen stove, the kids and the missus--me forthat, nights."
Adriance looked at him with startled scrutiny. Almost he could haveimagined that Elsie Murray had come to the man's side and prompted him.What, was it then real and usual, that homely content she once hadpainted so vividly? Did most men have such homes?
"You're married?" he vaguely asked.
"Sure, these five years; we got two kids." The boyish driver chuckledand shook his head reminiscently. "Darn little tykes! What they ain't upto I don't know. Dragged a big bull pup in off the street last week,they did, and scared the missus into fits. Pete--he's four--had it bythe collar bold as brass, and it ugly enough to scare you. Say, I'mtrying one of those schemes for training kids on him; exercising him,you know. You ought to see the muscles he's got already, arms and legshard as nails. Think it will work all right?"
Adriance looked down into the eager face.
"Yes, I do," he said slowly. "You cannot be more than twenty-five orsix----?"
"Twenty-five is right."
"You must have worked pretty hard?"
"Ever since I was fourteen," was the cheerful assent. He pulled out awatch of the dollar variety and looked at it. "One o'clock it is! We'llget along again, boys. Yes, I've been busy. But the missus and I aresaving up. Some day I'm going to have a trucking business of my own;there's good money in it. Well, we're sure obliged to you for waitingfor us."
The other two men were coming down the bank. Adriance drew off his gloveand held out his hand to his acquaintance.
"I am glad I met you. Good luck!"
"Same to you!" He pulled off his mitten to give the clasp. "Are yougoing to the ferry?"
"I--I--? Yes."
"Well, turn off when you get to the next road. It's a poor one, but it'sa short cut to the Palisades road."
The horses were unblanketed and the bags which had held their luncheonremoved. The men climbed into their places, and presently Adriance'slusty machine was rebelliously crawling on behind the moving-van.
At the end of a mile they came to the side road, and parted withcheerful shouts of farewell.
It was
impossible to measure the good that interlude of healthycompanionship had done to Tony Adriance. It had swept aside vapors,cleared his mind to normality, invigorated him like a pungent tonic. Yetit had laid a reproach upon him. He contrasted himself with that boyishhusband and father; yes, contrasted Mr. Adriance, senior, with thatdriver who was anxiously training his son's body by his own effortsafter the day's work. He could not recollect his father ever playingwith him or seriously advising him. Even Fred Masterson was doingbetter.
The road debouched abruptly upon the main highway. A passing automobilemomentarily delayed Adriance, and looking idly across the way, heperceived a house. After the other car had passed and the way was open,he sat quite still in his machine, gazing.
There was nothing about the house before him to catch the eye except acertain air of quaint sturdiness that had survived desertion. It wasrather a cottage than a house, bearing a sign "For Sale," andunoccupied. It was a red-painted cottage, built in that absurd Gothicfashion once favored by some insane builders. Its ridiculous roof andwindows were highly peaked; its high, narrow porch had a pointed toplike a caricature of the entrance to _Notre Dame de Paris_. It stoodquite back from the road with an air of abandonment; but it wasunconquerably cheerful, even against the gray sky. It was a house thatwanted to be cosy.
Suddenly Adriance realized that he was very tired. He was not ready togo home; he even thought with abhorrence of going there. Yet he wasweary of guiding his machine along the highway. He left his seat andwalked up the wood path--two planks in width--leading to the cottage.The windows gaped, uncurtained; he looked in, then deliberately seatedhimself upon the step and lapsed into heavy revery.
There were few passers-by on such a day. Those who were compelled to theroad lingered in the cold to look curiously at the automobile standingby the gutter and at the young man who sat on the old wooden step.
It was four o'clock when Tony Adriance rose and went back to hisautomobile. He did not turn down to the ferry, but looked again at thesignboard on the house; then turned his machine about and drove to anaddress which was seven miles inland.
A Man's Hearth Page 5