A Man's Hearth

by Eleanor M. Ingram

  CHAPTER III

  THE GIRL OUTSIDE

  Tony Adriance slipped into the habit of pausing for a few words with thegirl in black whenever circumstances set them opposite each other. Andthat was quite often, since his home was so near the pavilion she hadadopted as her place of repose. He rather avoided his friends, duringthe days following his futile rebellion against Lucille Masterson'swill, yet he was lonely and eager to escape thought. He could talk tothe girl, he admitted to himself, because she did not know him.

  They met with a casual frankness, the girl and he, like two men who findeach other congenial, yet whose lives lie far apart. Their briefconversations were intimate without being inquisitively personal. Shehad a trick of saying things that lingered in the memory; at least, inhis memory. Not that she was especially brilliant; her charm was herearnestness, at once vivid and tranquil, and the odd glamor ofenchantment she threw over plain commonsense, making it no longerplain, but alluring as folly.

  But she continued to wear the shabby little boots, with their optimisticbravery of blacking. They really were respectable boots, aging, notaged. The fault lay with Adriance, not them; he was too much accustomedto women "whose sandals delighted his eyes." If her feet had been lesschildishly small, they might have preoccupied him less. As it was, theypreoccupied him more and more.

  There is no accepted way of offering a pair of shoes to a feminineacquaintance. Nevertheless, in the third week of his friendship with thegirl, Adriance bought a pair of pumps for her. He had seen them in aglass case set out before a shop and stopped to gaze, astonished. Theywere so unmistakably hers; the size, the rounded lines, the very archand tilt were right! They were of shining black, with Spanish heels andglinting buckles.

  He took them home with him, but of course he dared not give them to her.He had an idea that he might essay the venture on the last occasion oftheir meeting; if she punished him with banishment, then, it would notmatter. For he meant to leave New York when Lucille went to Florida. Hewould spend the necessary interval between the divorce and his marriage,in Canada, alone.

  Meanwhile, there was the girl.

  It was on the last day of October that he found her knitting instead ofembroidering; a web of gay scarlet across her knees.

  "A new suit for Holly's big Teddybear," she explained, as he sat downopposite to her. "Christmas is coming, you know. I like to have allready in advance. Don't you think the color should become a brown-plushbear?"

  "It is not depressing."

  "It is the color of holly. And depression is not a sensation tocultivate, is it?" She paused to gaze across the river, already shadowedby approaching evening. "I believe in fighting it off with both hands;driving a spear right through the ugly thing and holding it up like SirSintram with that wriggly monster in the old picture."

  "You would be a good one to be in trouble with," he said abruptly.

  She disentangled his meaning from the extremely vague speech, and noddedserious assent.

  "Yes, perhaps. I'm used to making the most of things."

  "The best of them," he corrected.

  "Of course! The most best--why should anyone make more worst?"

  They laughed together. But directly the restless unhappiness flowed backinto his eyes.

  "They do, though!" he exclaimed.

  "Then they are wrong, all wrong," she said decidedly. "They should setthemselves right the moment they find it out."

  "But if they can't?" he urged, with a personal heat and protest. "Thingsaren't so simple as all that. Suppose they can't set one thing straightwithout knocking over a lot of others? You _cannot_ go cutting andslashing through like that!"

  "Oh, yes; you can," she contradicted, sitting very upright, her grayeyes fired. "You must; anyone must. It is cowardly to let things,crooked things, grow and grow. And one could not knock down anythingworth while that easily. Good things are strong."

  He shook his head. But she had stirred him so that he sat silent for awhile, then rather suddenly rose to take his leave.

  "You never told me your name," he remarked, looking down at her. Henoticed again how supple and deft her fingers were, and their capableswiftness at the work.

  "No. Why?" she replied simply.

  "I don't know," he accepted the rebuke. "I--beg your pardon."

  "Oh, certainly. Holly is trying to shake hands before you go."

  Of course he and the baby had become friends. He carefully yielded hisforefinger to the clutching hands, but he did not smile as usual.

  "Look here," he spoke out brusquely. "Just as an illustration thatthings are not as easily kept straight as you seem to think--I know aman who somehow got to following one woman around. I don't think heknows quite how. Of course, he admired her immensely, and liked her.Well, I suppose he felt more than that! But he never even imaginedmaking love to her, because she was married. You see, he was a fool. Oneday when he called, she told him that she was going to get a divorcefrom her husband. She has the right. And the man found she expected tomarry him, afterward; she thought he had meant that all along. Whatcould he do? What can he do?"

  The baby gurgled merrily, dropping the forefinger and yawning. The girllaid down her work to tuck a coverlet about her charge.

  "I do not know," she admitted, her voice low.

  Adriance drew a quick breath.

  "That isn't all of it. The husband is the man's friend. Why, they usedto sleep together, eat together----! And he doesn't know. Don't you see,the man has to fail either the husband or wife? How can you straightenthat?"

  She looked up, to meet the unconscious self-betrayal of his defiant,unhappy eyes.

  "I am very sorry for him," she answered gravely. And, after a moment."She must be very clever."

  He started away from the suggestion with sharp resentment. Clever--thatwas his father's term for Lucille Masterson; and it was hateful to him.He would not analyze why he felt that repugnance to hearing Lucillecalled clever. He refused to consider what that implied, what uglydepths of doubt were stirred in him to make him wince in anger andhumiliation. Suddenly he bitterly regretted having told the story tothis girl, even under the concealed identity.

  "No doubt," he made a coldly vague rejoinder. "I dare say the matterwill work itself out well enough. It is getting late; I think I mustgo."

  It was altogether too abrupt, and he knew it. But he could do no better.He knew the girl's eyes followed him away, and he walked with carefulease and nonchalance.

  Out of her sight, he walked more slowly. Already the autumn twilight wassettling down like a delicate gray veil. At the foot of the Palisades,opposite, a familiar point of light sprang into view among the myriadlights there; a point that ran like fire through tow, up, across, arounduntil the glittering words shone complete: "Adriance's Paper."

  The name was reflected in the dark water. Down there, it swayed weaklyand its legend was broken by the river's ripples. "You shine, up there,but I govern here," the Hudson flung its scorn back to the man-madearrogance. He was like that reflection, Tony Adriance thought, with afancy caught from the girl's trick of imagery; he was the merereflection of his father's successes, shifting, worthless, inseparablefrom the gold-colored reality above, dancing and broken on the currentof a woman's will. He himself was--nothing. He winced under theself-applied lash. It was knotted with truth; he, personally, never hadcounted. Even Lucille never had said she loved him; she simply had takenhis devotion for granted, and used it. Would she have promised herselfto him if he had been a poor man? Would she ever have contemplateddivorce from Masterson, with all his faults, if Tony Adriance had notbrought himself and his gilded possibilities across her path? Thequestions were ugly, and sent the blood into his face. He stoppedwalking and stood by the stone wall edging the sidewalk, facing theriver.

  He always had resented being merely his father's heir, in a vague,unanalyzed way. Now resentment threatened to flame into rebellion.

  Rebellion against what? His father, who left him absolute freedom fromany restraint? Lucille, whom
he was at perfect liberty never to seeagain, if he chose to deny her assumption? He was very completelytrapped by circumstance, since the trap was open and yet he could notleave it.

  The delicate dot on the _i_ of irony was that he had loved Lucille, yethe knew he must be miserable with her all their lives. He thought of hereven now with a certain longing, yet he would always distrust her anddetest himself. His fingers gripped the stone edge; he felt a passionateenvy of men who were strong enough to do insane, desperate things, totear their own way ruthlessly through the clinging web of other people'sways. He fancied the girl in black to be such a person; if sheconsidered herself right in any course, she would take it.

  But after a while he turned away and began to walk home. He had todress, for he was dining with the Mastersons. It had been insisted upon,to make amends for the night he had stayed away to dine with hisfather. Lucille was not yet ready for any audible whisper to suggestdivorce to the world or her husband. Tony must come and go as usual fora few weeks more. She had chosen to forget his appeal, after quellinghis mutiny. Mrs. Masterson was not a generous victor.