Adriance-Murray. Elsie Galvez Murray to Anthony Adriance, Jr., by the Rev. Dr. Van Huyden, at St. Dunstan's Cathedral.
Adriance-Murray. Elsie Galvez Murray to Anthony Adriance, Jr., by the Rev. Dr. Van Huyden, at St. Dunstan's Cathedral.
It was very simply done, for so daring an adventure.
When they stood outside, in the sparkling autumn sunshine, Elsie Adriance asked her first question.
"Where are we going?" she wondered, in her soft, blurred speech that now Adriance recognized as of the South. Her middle name had caught his attention also. There once had been a governor of Louisiana called Galvez; New Orleans has a street named for him.
But he was not thinking of ancestry now. He looked doubtfully at his companion. In spite of his repressed bearing, he was suffering a terrible excitement and a tearing conflict of will and desire. He was acutely conscious of the finality of what had been done; and one part of him wished it undone. He thought of his father and Lucille as a man in a fever thinks; glimpsing them in a confusion of remembered pictures, conceiving their future attitude with the exaggeration of his unreasoning sense of guilt and belated regret. He felt himself in bonds, and the instinct of escape gripped and shook him. But he kept himself in hand.
"Where do you wish to go?" he temporized, withholding his own wish. It became him to consider her first, now and hereafter.
She shook her head.
"I follow you," she reminded him, quite simply and gravely. "Where would—it be easiest for you? You spoke of going out of town; perhaps that would be best. I think, it seems to me, that we should start as we mean to go on."
"Yes!" he exclaimed eagerly. She had offered him his inmost desire; in his gratitude he caught her hand, stammering in the rush of words released. "Yes. If you will go, I have a house—our house. Let me tell you. Yesterday, after meeting you at Masterson's the night before, I was at the limit. I had to keep out of doors and keep moving, or go to pieces. I kept seeing Fred, and Holly. Well, I took a long drive; across the river, I went, perhaps because you were always looking over there as if it were some kind of a fairyland. And on the way back, on the road along the Palisades, I saw the house. It was—I stopped and went in. It looked like a place you had made a picture of. I can't explain what I mean, but I sat down there and thoughtthings out. You won't be angry? I bought it. Not that I was so sure of you! You see, if you refused to take me, I knew I had money enough to buy fifty like it for a whim. And if you would come, it was the house."
There was no anger in her glance, only a heartening comprehension and cordial willingness.
"Let us go there," she agreed. "I should like that best of all."
Reanimated, he put her into the waiting taxicab, gave the chauffeur his directions, and closed the door upon their first wedded solitude.
"But this is one of the things we must not do," she told him, bringing the relief of humor to the situation. "We must not take taxis and let them wait for us with a price on the head of each moment. It is more than extravagant; it is reckless."
He laughed out, surprised.
"So it is. I am afraid you will have a lot to teach me."
"Yes," she assumed the burden. "Yes."
They rode down to the ferry, and the taxicab rolled on board the broad, unsavory-smellingboat. When the craft started, the vibration of the engine sent a throbbing sense of departure through Adriance such as he never had felt in starting a European voyage. This time he could not return. He was humbly grateful for Elsie's silence, which permitted his own.
On the Jersey side their cab slowly moved through the dark ferry house, then plunged out into a sun-drenched world and swung blithely up to the long Edgewater hill. They left the river shipping behind, presently. The sunlight glittered through the woods that still clothe the long, rampart-like stretches along the summit of the great cliffs; a forest of jewels like the subterranean woods of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, only instead of silver and diamonds these trees displayed the red of cornelian and brown of topaz all set in copper and bronze. The storm of the night before had littered the ground with the spoils of Lady Autumn's jewel-box; the air was spicily sweet and very clear.
The village on the first slope of the hills had been dingy and poor. Here above, on the heights winding up the river, there were few houses, with long spaces between. Elsie leaned at thewindow, her wide eyes embracing all. Adriance leaned back, seeing nothing.
The taxicab finally stopped, nevertheless, at his signal, before a little red cottage set far back from the road.
"Here?" the chauffeur queried, with incredulous scorn.
"Here," Adriance affirmed, swinging out their two suit-cases and his wife. He laughed a little at the man's face. "How much?"
The toll pointed Elsie's warning. She made a grimace at her pupil. His spirits mounting again, Adriance answered the rebuke by catching her hand to lead her up the absurd, staggering Gothic porch in miniature.
"I'll come back for the baggage," he promised. "Come look, first."
"Is there anything inside?"
"Oh, yes. I——" he looked askance at her. "I bought things, at a shop in Fort Lee, early this morning. I suppose they're all wrong."
She met his diffidence with a smile so warm, so enchanting in its sweet, maternal raillery and indulgence that his heart melted within him. And then, as he fumbled with the key, she tookfrom her hand-bag a book and a small glass bottle, and gave them to him.
"What——?" he marvelled.
"Don't you know?" she wondered at him. "'Where was you done raised, man?' Don't you know there is no luck in the house unless the first things carried into it are the Bible and the salt?"
He did not know, but he found the superstition of a singular charm.
"Give me the salt, then, and you take the other," he divided the ceremony.
"No," she denied quietly. "You should carry the Book, because you will make the laws. I will take the salt, because I shall keep the hearth."
So they went in, he oddly sobered by the dignity she laid upon him.
There were only two rooms on the ground floor. The one into which they stepped was large and square, with a floor of brick faded to a mellow Tuscan red, and walls of soft brown plaster. A brick fireplace was built against the north side; the furnishings comprehended two arm-chairs, a round Sheraton table and chinacloset, a tall wooden clock, and four rag rugs in red and white. In one corner, modestly retired, a plain deal table supported an oil cook-stove, with an air of decent humility and shrinking from observation. The open door beyond revealed a bed-chamber, also rag-rugged, furnished with a noble meagreness, but displaying a four-posted bed of carved and time-darkened ash. Elsie took a long, full look, then regarded her husband with widening eyes.
"Anthony,wheredid you buy them? And what did you pay for them?"
No one within his memory had ever called Adriance by his unabbreviated name. It came to him as part of this new life where he was full-grown man and master. And he welcomed the frank comradeship with which she used it, without a sentimental affectation of shyness.
"At a little place with a sign 'Antiques'," he confessed. "I had passed it in the car. I thought they might do as well as new things, since we have got to economize. I never bought any furniture before; if they won't do——"
"They are perfect." The mirth in her eyes deepened. "But you had better let me helpyou, next time we shop economically. Hadn't we better build a fire, first, to drive away the chill? Oh, and is there anything to eat?"
"In the cupboard over there; everything the grocer could think of," he said meekly. "I'll go get anything else you say. First, though, I'll run down to the gate and bring in our suit-cases."
"Do," she approved. "I want an apron. Do you know, you never asked me if I could cook."
"Can you?"
"Wait and see. What woman thought of the oil-stove?"
"The antiquarian's wife. She said the fireplace was more bother than it was use and suggested stuffing it with paper to keep the draughts out."
"Well, we will stuff it with fire," she declared.
They built the fire; or rather, Adriance built it, aided by the girl's tactful advice. When the flames were roaring and leaping, she sent him to the nearest shop where lamps could be purchased,the trifling question of light having been overlooked.
When he hurried back from the village, the need of light was becoming imminent. Dusky twilight came early here under the edge of the hills. Climbing the steep road, Anthony Adriance looked across the violet-tinted river toward the chain of lights marking the street where Tony Adriance had lived and idled. Already he knew himself removed, altered; he was interested in keeping on with this thing. Of course, he must keep on, he had set a barrier blocking retreat; he had taken a wife.
He opened the brown door of the shabby little cottage, and stopped.
The fire on the hearth had settled to a warm, rosy steadiness, filling the room with its glow and starting velvet shadows that tapestried the simple place with an airy brocade of shifting patterns. In the centre of the room stood the round table, robed in white and gay with the antique shop's ware of blue-and-white Wedgewood. The perfume of coffee and fragrance of good food floated on the warm air. The fire snapped at intervals as if from jovial excessof spirits, and a tea-kettle was bubbling with the furious enthusiasm of all true tea-kettles. It was the room of his fancy, the unattainable home that Elsie had pictured on the first evening he had spoken to her out of his sick heart.
Elsie herself stood beside the hearth. Elsie? He never had seen her like this. But then, he scarcely had seen her at all except in the severe black of a nurse's livery.
She had merely taken off her jacket, now, although he did not realize the fact. Her soft white blouse rolled away from a round, full throat pure in color and smoothness as cream. She was no sylph-slim beauty, but a deep-bosomed, young girl-woman, fashioned with that rich fulness of curve and outline that artists once loved, but which Fashion now disapproves. Her mouth, too, curved in generous, womanly softness; neither a thin line nor a round rosebud. Her dark hair rippled of itself around her forehead and was lustrous in the firelight.
His entrance caught her off guard. He surprised herself in her eyes, before she masked feeling in gayety. And he saw a wistful, frightenedgirl whose trembling excitement matched his own.
The latching of the door behind him ended the brief instant of revelation. At once she turned to him the cordial comrade's face he knew.
"Dinner is served," she announced merrily. "At least, it is waiting in the oven. We have hot biscuits, scrambled eggs, a fifty-eighth variety of baked beans, and strawberry jam. There is no meat, because you only shopped at a grocery, sir. Do you really adore canned oysters, Anthony?"
"I never tasted one," he slowly replied, putting down the packages he had brought, without taking his gaze from her.
"Well, you bought six tins of them," she shrugged.
He made no pretense of replying, this time, moving across the room toward her. He was remembering that she was a bride, who by her confession loved him, and that he had given her nothing except the gold ring compelled by custom; not a caress, not a flower, even, to speak of tenderness and reassurance. He was astoundedat himself, appalled by his degree of selfish absorption. All day she had given him of her understanding, her warm companionship, her gracious tact and heartening cheerfulness, exacting nothing—and he had taken. Oh, yes, he had taken!
Troubled by his silence, her color mounting in a vivid sweep, the girl tried to turn aside from his approach.
"We must have a little cat," she essayed diversion. "I hope you like kittens? Purrs should go with crackling logs. Not an Angora or a Persian; just a pussy."
Her voice died away. Very quietly and firmly Adriance had taken her into his arms.
"I've made a bad beginning," he made grave avowal. "I am learning how much I need to learn. And I don't deserve my luck in having you to teach me."
She rested quietly in his arms, as if conceding his right, but she did not look at him. She was very supple and soft to hold, he found. There breathed from her a fresh, faint fragrance like the clean scent of just-gathered daffodils, but no perfume that he recognized. Shewas individual even in little things. He wondered what she was thinking. The uneven rise and fall of her breast timed curiously with the pulse of his heart, as she leaned there, and the fact affected him unreasonably. He did not want her to move; warmth and content were flowing into him. Content, yet—— Suddenly, he knew; a man confronted with a blaze of light after long groping.
"Elsie!" he cried, his voice sounding through the room his great amazement. "Elsie! Elsie!"
She looked at him then, putting her two little hands on his breast and forcing herself back against his arm that she might read his face. But he would not have it so, compelling her submission to the marvel that had mastered him. What the church had essayed to do was done, now. Anthony Adriance had taken a wife.
"I love you," he repeated, inarticulate still with wonder, his lips against her cheek. "Why didn't you tell me? I love you."
He never forgot that she met him generously, with no mean reminder of his tardiness. She took his surrender, and set no price on her own.Her lips were fresh as a cup lifted to his thirst for good and simple things; he thought her kiss was to the touch what her eyes were to the gaze, and tried clumsily to tell her so.
When they finally remembered the delayed supper, that meal was in need of repairs. And because now Adriance would not suffer the width of the room between himself and his wife, he insisted in aiding her in the process, thereby delaying matters still further. Nine o'clock had been struck by the clock in the corner when they sat down to table, lighted by the new lamp. It had a garnet shade, that lamp, upon which its purchaser received the compliments of Mrs. Adriance.
She delivered an impromptu lecture on the subject, as the light glowed into full radiance and illumined her, seated behind it.
"Red, sir, is the color of life. It was the color of the alchemist's fabled rose, looked for in their mystic cauldrons, because if the ruddy image formed on the surface of the brew, the bubbling liquid was indeed the true elixir of youth and immortality. Red is the color of dawn, of sunset, of a fireside; of bright blood,poured splendidly for a good cause or daintily glimpsed in a girl's blush. Red are a cardinal's robes, a Chinese bride's gown, a Spanish bride's flowers. To be kept in a red-draped chamber, in Queen Elizabeth's time, was believed to cure beauty of the smallpox without a scar. Lastly, red is the color of the heart."
"'Lord, keep our heart's-blood red,'" paraphrased Adriance soberly. "I am not clever like you, but I know red is the color of your own jewels."
"Mine?"
He caught her hands across the table.
"Have you forgotten what stones were likened to the value of a good woman? Elsie, Elsie, when I can, I will give you—not diamonds or pearls, but rubies. Rubies, for to-night."
Neither of the two was given to continued sentimentality of speech. But the deep happiness, the shining wonder that still dazzled them found expression in plans for this new future; mere suggestions for the comfort of the house or the pleasure of their leisure together. She mentioned a much-discussed book, and he promised to read it aloud to her.
"I've always wanted to read aloud, but I never found anyone who would listen," he told her, over the strawberry jam and coffee. "You can't escape, so——! You can embroider, and listen."
"Embroider!" She heaped scorn on the word. "Let me inform you, sir, that there will be dish-towels to hem, and napkins. Do you know we have only one tablecloth, and that has a frightful border, with fringe? Blue fringe? And there are no curtains at the windows. Embroider? I shallsew, and listen."
"Well, so long as you listen!" He lighted a cigar and leaned back luxuriously. "What little hands you have!"
She spread them out on the table and seriously contemplated them.
"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 anduseless 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 assisting 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 anticipate; 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 dischargedme, 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 Maît' 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 byhim. 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 thinkingthat?" 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.
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 classified 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 basement, 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.
"Chauffeur!" he muttered. "Walks as if Adriance's was his private garage an' he was buildin' himself a better one around the corner! Hope Ransome throws him out!"
But Ransome of the motor-trucks was in urgent need of men and disposed to be more tolerant. Moreover, his sensitive vanity had taken no hurt that morning. But he looked rather closely at the applicant, nevertheless.
"Used to chauffing private cars, aren't you?" he shrewdly questioned.
"Yes," admitted Adriance.
"I thought so! Where was your last place?"
"I drove for Mr. Adriance, junior," was the grave response.
The man whistled.
"You did, eh? Why did he fire you?"
"He left New York for the winter, without taking his machines along."
"Did he give you a reference?"
"I can bring one to-morrow, or I can go get it now, if you want me to start work at once. I haven't it with me."
"Why not?"
"I forgot it would be needed."
This was unusual, and produced a pause. Ransome studied his man, and liked what he saw.
"Married?" he shot the next routine question.
"Yes."
"Anything against you on the police records? Accidents? Overspeeding?"
"Nothing."
"I can see you don't drink. You know Jersey?"
"Not so well as New York, but well enough to pick up the rest as I go along."
"Well, it's irregular, but we're short-handed.Give me your license number so I can verify that. Bring your reference to-morrow, and if it is all right—— I'll take you on to-day, on trial. Wait; I'll give you your card."
The inquisition was safely past. Adriance smiled to himself as he watched the superintendent fill out the card that grudgingly permitted him to earn his first wage. He was intoxicated, almost bewildered by his own lightheartedness. His body was still tired and beaten after the miserable conflict from which his mind had resiliently leaped erect to stand rejoicing in the sunlight. To-day he could have overcome a hundred ill chances, where one had yoked him yesterday.
"Name?" came the crisp demand from the man writing.
"Anthony Adriance."
"What!" The superintendent's head came up abruptly. "Why—what connection——?"
"Poor relation," classified Adriance coolly. He had anticipated this, but he could not have endured the furtive discomfort and risk of a false name. "All rich men have them, I suppose."
His indifference was excellently done. The superintendent nodded acquiescence.
"I suppose so; must have been queer, though! What did young Adriance call you? Did he know?"
"Oh, yes. 'Andy' is a noncommittal nickname."
"All right; here is your card."
Mr. Ransome watched the new employee cross the floor, with a meditative consideration of the uselessness of the shadow of the purple without its comfortable substance; but he was not especially surprised after the first moment. Few wealthy men trouble themselves about the distant branches of their families, and babies are frequently named after them by hopeful kinsmen.
At the other end of the subterranean chamber where trucks rolled in and out, piloted by weather-beaten chauffeurs and loaded with heavy packages and bales by perspiring porters, a little man in a derby hat and shirt sleeves was in command. With him the matter passed still more easily for the stranger.
"What's your name?" he shrilled in a peculiarlyflat treble voice, across the uproar of thudding weight, rolling wheels and panting machinery. "Andy? Well, take out number thirty-five. Mike, Mike! Where is that—that Russian? Here, Mike, you are to go with number thirty-five. Bring your truck in for its load and get your directions from the boss there, Andy. Report when you get back."
A huge figure lounged across the electric-lighted space toward Adriance; a pair of mild brown eyes gazed down at him from under a shock of red hair.
"I guess you're new," pronounced the heavy accent of Russian Mike; "I guess I show you?"
"I wish you would," Adriance cordially accepted the patronizing kindness. He found time to marvel at the readiness of his own smile since last night, and at the response it evoked from these strangers. "I don't know where to find thirty-five yet, or who is the boss."
"I know," announced Mike, grandly comprehensive; "you ride with me, Andy; I'll learn you."
So Andy of the trucks began his education.
A motor-truck is not a high-priced pleasurecar. Nor is the trucking department of a large factory professional in its courtesy. Tony Adriance learned a great many things in breathless sequence. And he never had been quite so much interested by anything in his life—except his newly-made wife. The men were not gentle, but they were merry. They shouted gaily back and forth at each other with a humor of their own. When Tony stalled his unfamiliar motor there was much unpolished witticism at his expense; but also a neighbor jumped down to crank the machine for him, and another sprang up to the seat beside the new man and gave him a score of valuable hints in a dozen terse sentences. When he finally drove up the incline into the street, he found that Russian Mike appeared to have a complete map of the Jersey City river front engraved on his otherwise blank intelligence and proved as willingly efficient a guide on the streets as in the factory. If the difficulties were more numerous than the novice had anticipated and the work harder, these things were more than offset by the unexpected comradeship he encountered.
All day, amid the steady press of events, thethought of his wife lay warm at the core of his heart. His love was matched only by his deep wonder at the thing which had befallen him. The exultation of successful escape was strong upon him; escape from loathsome bonds, from complicated problems his innately simple mind detested, above all, from the guidance of other people. He and Elsie were alone as no distance around the world could have made them. He had come to a place in life where he was not a boy to be governed, but master in his own right. A heat of pride had burned his face when he had answered "Yes" to the superintendent's question: "Married?" Decidedly he meant to stay in the home and the factory of his first adventure, if possible.
On his first trip he made an excuse to stop at a stationer's, where he wrote for himself a recommendation signed by Anthony Adriance, Junior. The ruse amused him; he found himself childishly ready to be amused. When he brought the truck in from the last journey of the day he presented this letter to Mr. Ransome, who read and returned it with a nod of content.
"All right; to-morrow at seven," he said briefly.
He ached in every unaccustomed muscle bent to toil when he strode up the hill at dusk, his day's work over. But he was no more affected by that than a boy on his first day of camping—it was part of the sport. Because he was learning unselfishness he felt more anxiety as to how Elsie had got through the day. Housework in the rather primitive cottage was a different thing from caring for Holly Masterson in his luxurious pink-and-gold nursery. Would he find her discouraged, tired—perhaps cross? He smiled audacious confidence in his ability to caress her into good humor, but he wondered rather uneasily whether his wages would support a maid should Elsie demand one as necessary. He was utterly unused to the practical apportionment of money.
There were new curtains draped across the lighted windows of the little red house. As he turned up the ridiculous plank walk he saw a very diminutive kitten seated on the window-sill inside washing its face. And then he heard a fresh, smooth voice singing the drollest littleair he ever had heard in his musical experience—a minor grotesquerie distinctive as the flavor ofbouillabaisse orléanais. He opened the door and his wife laughed at him across the bright room, flushed with fire heat, dainty in her lavender frock and white ruffled apron, arrested with a steaming tureen uplifted in her little hands.
Perhaps she had doubted how he would come home from that first day of work. For just a moment they drank full reassurance from each other's eyes; then Adriance was across the room.
"Put it down or I'll spill it!"
"Sir, this is a soup extraordinary! Would you overturn your supper?"
"Yes, for this," said Adriance, and kissed her soft mouth.
"Anthony, can one betoohappy and affront the fates?"
"No."
"We can go on and on, and nothing will happen!"
"Please God!" said Tony Adriance with perfect reverence.
"It is not a wonderful adventure now; it is just life?"
"Of course. I say—I wish that van-driver could see me now—the one I told you about last night."
"The butcher gave me the kitten, Anthony."
"Of course he did; any man would give you all he had. What were you singing when I came in?"
"How should I know? I know a thousand bits of song and a thousand stories, and they march in and out of my head. Our dinner is spoiling, Mr. Adriance."
"I love you!"
"I dislike you!" she mocked him.
There was no one in New York who would have quite recognized either Anthony or Elsie Adriance in these two children at play together.
"Next Saturday evening I want you to take me shopping, please," she told him when they were seated at supper.
"Enchanted; but why Saturday?"
"Because you will have your wages then, naturally. We need more dishes, and a casserole,and a ribbon for the kitten, and—thousands of things."
"Shall I have wealth enough?"
"Plenty; we are going to the 5-10-20 cent store."
"I thought those were the prices of melodrama on the East Side."
"Wait. You may find the event even tragic, if I want too many seductive articles," she cautioned him. "But let us not talk of mere things—aren't you going to tell me about your day?"
"I am. But it was a day like any other workingman's, I suppose; nothing happened."
"Did you want anything to happen? I imagined——"
"All I want," said Tony Adriance fervently, "is to be left alone, with you."
Nothing did happen. None of the traditionary usual experiences overtook the two in the little red house, as November ran out and December stormed in like a lusty viking from northern seas, attended by tremendous winds and early snow.
In the first place, the marriage of Anthony Adriance, Junior, somehow escaped the sensational journals, as a pleasing theme. There were no headlines announcing: "Son of a millionaire weds a nursemaid." No reporters discovered the house on the Palisades, to photograph its diminutive Gothic front for Sunday specials. Adriance had written a letter of explanation, so far as explanation might be, to his father. That was on the morning of his marriage, and as he had given no address, naturally he had received no answer. There were no reproaches and no pursuit.
Nor was Tony Adriance gnawed by vain regrets.According to every rule of romance and reason, he should have suffered from at least brief seasons of repining; at least have been twinged by memories of things foregone, yet desired. But he felt nothing of the kind. Masculine independence was aroused in him, and held reign in riotous good spirits. With a boy's triumphant bravado he faced down cold and hard work, delighting in the victory. He rose early and built Elsie's fires before permitting her to rise, while she sat up protesting in the four-posted bed as he bullied and loved and mastered her. He walked two miles to and from work morning and evening, and drove his big motor-truck eight hours a day. Moreover, he gained weight on the régime, and the springing step of a man in training. He never had suspected it, but his whole body had craved outdoors and employment of its forces; Nature had built him for work, not idleness. The atmosphere in which he had been reared was, by a trick of temperament, foreign to him.
"I'm plain vulgarian," he laughed to his wife one morning as he started to work. "I would rather drive one of my father's trucksand come home to your pork-chops, than I would to dawdle around his house and dine with a strong man standing behind my chair to save me the fatigue of putting sugar in my own coffee. Are you going to have some of those jolly little apple-fritters with butter and cinnamon on them for supper to-night?"
She made a tantalizing face at him. It was two days before Christmas, and so cold that her lips and cheeks were stung poppy-bright as she stood in the doorway.
"Of course not; now I know that you want them. We will have cold meat. What are you going to give me for my stocking, Anthony?"
"A cold-meat fork," he countered promptly. "How did you know I meant to give you anything?"
"I didn't," she calmly told him. "But I am going to give you something, so I thought it only kind to remind you."
He swung himself easily over the railing and smothered her in an embrace made bear-like by his shaggy coat.
"The chauffeur's peerless bride shall not weep," he soothed her. "For ten days her rubystomacher has been ordered by her devoted husband. Now let your Romeo depart, or his pay will get docked next Saturday."
She lingered in his arms an instant, her shining dark hair pressed against the rough darkness of his cheap fur coat.
"Anthony, don't they ever notice your name, down there? Didn't they ever ask about it?"
"Surely! The first day I went in, the superintendent asked if I were related to Mr. Adriance. I told him yes, a poor relation. True, isn't it? He was satisfied, anyhow. They call me Andy, down there."
"Andy!" she essayed experimentally. "Andy! It goes pretty well."
They laughed together, then he gently pushed her toward the door.
"Go in," he bade, with his commanding manner; the manner Elsie had taught him. "You will take a royal cold out here, and then what should I do for my meals? I have to eat if I am to labor; besides, I like my food. What did you call those cakes we had this morning?"
"'Belle cala, tout chaud!'" she intoned thesoft street-cry of old New Orleans' breakfast hours, her voice catching the quaint, enticing inflections of those dark-skinned vendors who once loitered their sunny rounds freighted with fragrant baskets. "Some day I will show you what I call a city, sir; if you'll take me?"
"I'll take you anywhere, but I'll not let you go as far as the next corner. Now, go in-doors, and good-bye."
She obeyed him so far as to draw back into the warm doorway. There, sheltered, she stayed to watch him swinging down the hill through the gray winter morning. It was nearly seven o'clock, but the sun had not yet warmed or gilded the atmosphere. Bleakness reigned, except in the hearts of the man and woman.
They had been married two months. Elsie Adriance slowly closed the door and turned to the uncleared breakfast table. But presently she left the dishes she had begun to assemble, and walked to one of the rear windows. There she leaned, gazing where Anthony never gazed: toward the gray-and-white stateliness of New York, across the ice-dotted river. She contemplated the city, not with defiance or challenge,but with the steady-eyed gravity, of one measuring an enemy.
Two months, and the victory was still with her! Yet, she warned herself, surely some day New York would call. She never quite could forget that. She herself was not unlike a city preparing for defence, feverishly grasping at every stone to build her ramparts. How she envied Lucille Masterson her beauty, the elder Adriance his wealth, since those possessions might have bound Anthony closer to her! She recalled Mrs. Masterson's exquisite costumes, colored like flowers and as delightful to the touch; the costly perfumes that made all her belongings fragrant; the studied coquetry that kept her like Cleopatra, never customary or stale. To oppose all this, Anthony's wife had only—her hearth. For she never would keep her husband against his will; Elsie Adriance never would claim as a right what she had held as a gift.
The kitten, a black-and-white midget suggestive of a Coles-Phillips drawing, rubbed insistently against the girl's foot. She picked up the living toy and nestled its furry warmth beneath her chin, as she turned in quest of milk.She thrust forebodings from her mind with resolute will. It was too soon to think of these things; Anthony loved her, Anthony was content.
She had no conception of how fervently glad Anthony was to be rid of harassing thoughts and complications, or how gratefully the luxury of peace enfolded him and dwarfed the mere physical luxuries of idleness and lavish expenditure. Nor, being a woman, did she sufficiently value his pride in the possessions he had bought with his own labor. Tony Adriance never had noticed the table service in his father's house; he had been known to overturn a whole tray of translucent coffee-cups set in lace-fine silver work, without a second glance at the destruction. But he knew every one of the cheap, heavy dishes he and Elsie had added to their equipment on Saturday evening shopping orgies at a five-and-ten-cent store. Knew, and admired them! When Elsie would call from her "kitchen corner;" "Bring me the Niagara platter, honey," he could locate that ceramic atrocity at a glance. And when he let fall the Whistler bread-plate—it had a nocturnal, black-lined landscape effect in its centre—he was truly grieved. Indeed, it was hewho selected their china, Elsie's taste being inclined toward a simplicity he refused as monotonous. He never had realized the pleasure of purchasing until he went shopping with his wife, chose with her, overruled her or indulged her in some fancy, then drew out his newly-received wage and paid, magnificent.
He could not have explained his emotions to Elsie. But his candid delight in those expeditions came to her memory, as she poured the kitten's milk into a saucer enamelled with blue forget-me-nots. She lifted her head and again glanced toward the distant city; but this time she smiled with certain triumph. He was her husband; better still, he was as eagerly her playmate as any lonely boy who first finds a chum. She knew Lucille Masterson did not possess the art of comradeship among her talents; it was an art too unselfish.
"When he begins to tire of just playing this way," she half-unconsciously addressed the kitten, "we will find something else. There will always be something for us to think of, together. It will come when it is needed. Perhaps——"
Arrested, her breath failed speech. It was as if her own words had thrown open a door before which she faltered, her eyes sun-dazzled, yet glimpsing a wide horizon.
Soothed by her silent neighborhood, the kitten finished lapping its milk and went to sleep against her skirt. But the girl stood still for a long time, steadying her heart, which seemed to her to be filling like a cup held under a clear fountain.
Later in the day a boy brought wreaths and sprays of holly to the door. Elsie bought recklessly, so Adriance came home that night to a house Yule-gay with scarlet and green, spicy with the cinnamon fragrance of the apple-fritters, and holding a mistress who showed him a Christmas face of merry content.
"I could not wait two days," she explained to him. "We'll begin now and work up to it gradually."
But after all, Christmas morning came as a surprise, and achieved a final defeat of doubts and forebodings that drove them out of sight for many a day. For, kissing his wife awake atdawn, Anthony made his gift first, forestalling hers.
"You never had an engagement ring," he reminded her. "I'll have to make a tremendous record as a husband to live down my blunders as a fiancé! Here, let me put it on for you. What clever dimples you've got in your fingers! I noticed them our first night here, remember?"
She frankly cried in her great surprise and passionate joy in his thought of her. It really was a spectacular ring, and glittered bravely in the early light; an oval of dark-red stones like a shield set above her wedding ring.
"They're only garnets," he stilled her protest of extravagance. "But they are the color of rubies; and the promise of them. Don't—please don't! Come, what have you got for me? Give it up."
The diversion succeeded. Laughing before her eyes were dry, she answered:
"He is in the wood-box. I had to keep him in the house where it was warm, and I was so afraid you would hear him and spoil the surprise. But he was as good as possible; he never said one word. Open the lid, dear."
"He?" echoed her husband. "Him?"
The wood-box yielded him; a small, jovial, bandy-legged puppy.
"He isalmosta Boston bull," Elsie explained conscientiously. "If he had been quite one, I couldn't have afforded to buy him. But he is a love. Anthony, he is the watch-dog, you know."
Finding both faces within reach, as he hung over Anthony's arm, the puppy licked them with fond impartiality.
It was the day after Christmas that Adriance was sent over to New York with his motor-truck, for the first time since he had become that massive vehicle's pilot. His destination was in Brooklyn, so that he had the entire city to cross, and lights were commencing to twinkle here and there through the gray of the short winter afternoon when he turned homeward.
The experience had not been without a novel interest. Holiday traffic crowded the streets; traffic officers, tired and chilled by a biting east wind, were not patient. Adriance chose Fifth Avenue for his route up-town with the naturalness of long custom, without reflecting upon the greater freedom of travel he would have found on one of the dingy streets usually followed by such vehicles as his. However, the difficulties exhilarated him. Andy of the truck could not but wonder how the policeman who roughly ordered him away from the entrance of the Parkmight have phrased that request if he had known that the intruder was Tony Adriance, "paper, you know!" Perhaps, because of this wonder, his cheerful grin drew a sour smile from the officer.
"Don't you know you've not got a limousine there? You from the woods?" came the not ill-natured sarcasm.
"Worse than that: from Jersey," Adriance shot back. "All right; I'm sorry."
"Plain streets for yours; round the circle," was the direction, which also implied a release.
"Thanks," Adriance called acknowledgment, as he obeyed.
The bulky figure beside the chauffeur stirred.
"You got a nerve," commented the man, his slow, heavy voice tinged with admiration. "I seen guys pulled fer less, Andy."
Adriance laughed. He and his big assistant were very good friends, after weeks of sharing the truck's seat. The chauffeur appeared a stripling by comparison with the man lounging beside him, huge arms folded across thick chest. "Mike," as he was known to his fellow-workers, was a Russian peasant. His upbringing in aHoboken slum had fixed his patriotism and language, but had left his physique that of his inheritance. His reddish-yellow head was set on a massive neck whose base his open shirt showed to be covered with a red growth of hair extending down over his chest. His large features and mild, slow-moving eyes, his heavy, placid manner of speech were absurdly alien to the colloquial language that he spoke. Adriance knew his helper had been an employee of the factory for ten years, but he did not know that Mike was always assigned to a new chauffeur until the stranger proved himself trustworthy. Mike was dull, but he was stolidly honest. Valuable boxes or packages were not reported "lost" from trucks under his care. Adriance had no idea of the truth that "Russian Mike" actually had determined the permanence of his position in his father's great mill.
"If I cannot go through the Park, I'll go back to the avenue," Adriance declared, when the turning had been negotiated. "I want gayety, Michael; boulevard gayety! Four o'clock on Fifth Avenue—shall a poor workingman be deprived of the sight? It is true that we aretoo far uptown, but the principle is the same. You agree with me?"
"It ain't nothin' to me," averred the magnificent guardian, shifting to a new position with an indolent movement that swelled the muscles under his flannel shirt until the fabric strained. His glance at his companion was mildly indulgent.
"Of course not. But it will be, next time; that is, if you do not die of pneumonia after taking this drive with your coat wide open. Appreciation will grow on you. What do you think of that girl in gray, in the limousine? Pretty? I used to go to school with her, Michael; dancing school."
The Slavic brown eyes became humorous.
"Fact," Adriance met the incredulity. "And now she doesn't recognize me; and neither of us cares."
The uplifted hand of another traffic officer halted the long lines of vehicles. Three deep from the curb on either side, so that the street was solidly filled, automobiles, carriages, green and yellow busses and ornate delivery-cars stopped in a close, orderly mass. Adriance'struck was next to the sidewalk, in obedience to the rule for slow-moving vehicles. As his laughing voice answered Mike, his tone raised to carry across the roar of sound about them, a woman who had emerged from one of the shops stopped abruptly. Her glance quested along the rows, to rest upon Adriance with eager attention. A moment later, the man started at the sound of his own name, spoken beside him.
"How do you do, Tony. And aren't you—rather out of place?"
Momentarily dumb, he looked down into the large, cool eyes of Lucille Masterson. She did not smile, but faced his regard with a composure that made his embarrassment a fault. Against the white fur of her stole was fastened a knot of pink-and-white sweet peas; beside them her face showed as softly tinted, and artificially posed, as the flowers. Beside the wheel of the huge truck, she appeared smaller and more fragile than Adriance remembered her. Without the slightest cause he felt himself a culprit surprised by her. He had all the sensations of a deserter confronted with the heartlessly abandoned.
"Aren't you going to speak to me?" she queried, when he remained voiceless. "I have missed you, Tony."
He hastily aroused himself.
"Of course! I mean—you are very kind. I—we have been out of town."
Feeling the utter idiocy into which he was stumbling, he checked himself. The current of traffic was flowing on once more, leaving his machine stranded against the curb; made fast, as it were, by the white-gloved hand Mrs. Masterson had laid upon the wheel.
Without heeding his incoherence, she looked at a tiny watch on her wrist, half-hidden by her wide, furred sleeve. With her movement a drift of fragrance was set afloat on the thick, city air.
"I want you to take me to tea," she announced, with her accustomed imperativeness. "I have things to say to you. Let your man take your car home."
In spite of his exasperation, Adriance laughed. He was aware of the staring admiration which held the big man beside him intent upon the beautiful woman; he had heard the greedy intake of breath with which the otherabsorbed the perfume shaken from her daintiness, and could guess the effect ofEssence Enivranteupon untutored nostrils. But for all that, he could not imagine Russian Mike obeying the order proposed.
"You see, he isn't my man," he excused himself from compliance. "Thank you very much, but it is not possible."
"Then let him wait for you. Really, Tony, I think you owe me a little courtesy."
Adriance flushed before the rebuke. He never had seen Lucille Masterson since that rough farewell of their final quarrel. He had left her, to marry another woman inside of the next thirty-six hours. He always had been at his weakest with Mrs. Masterson; he slipped now into his old mistake of temporizing.
"I am not dressed for a tea-room," he deprecated. "Otherwise, I should be delighted."
Her eyes glinted. Grasping the slight concession, she leaned toward Adriance's assistant with her brilliant, arrogant smile.
"You will watch the car for Mr. Adriance, just a few moments, will you not?" she appealed."I have something of importance to say to him. I should be much obliged."
The white-gloved hand slipped forward and left a bank note in the hairy fist. Dazed, Mike vaguely jerked his cap in salute, still staring at the woman. Neither money nor beauty might have lured him to an actual breach of duty, but this was the last trip of the day and the truck was empty. It could not matter if the return were delayed half an hour; a belated ferryboat might lose so much time. Moreover, he was not only willing, but anxious, to do Andy a favor, and the bill in his clutch assured a glorious Saturday night.
"Sure," he mumbled, with a grin of shyness like a colossal child's.
"Come, Tony," directed Mrs. Masterson.
Because he saw nothing else to do, Tony reluctantly swung himself down to the pavement beside her.
"I can only stay for a word," he essayed revolt. "It is hardly worth while to go anywhere. We should have to go find some place where these clothes would pass and where no one knew us."
"On the contrary! We must go where you are so well-known that your dress does not matter," she contradicted him. "The Elizabeth Tea-room is just here, and we used to go there often."
He could think of no objection to the proposal. Presently he found himself following his captor into the pretty, yellow-and-white tea-room.
As the Elizabeth affected an English atmosphere and had not adopted thethé dansant, the place was not overfull. The quaintly-gowned waitress greeted them with a murmur of recognition and led the way to a table without a glance at the chauffeur's attire. Mrs. Masterson ordered something; an order which Adriance seconded without having heard it. He was recovering his poise, and marvelling at himself for coming here no less than at Lucille for bringing him. What could they have to say to each other, now? The scented warmth of the room brought to his realization the cold in which he had left Mike to wait, and he was nipped by remorse.
It was a consequence of his education amongpeople who never considered that narrowness of convention which they designated as middle-class, that Adriance had no sense of disloyalty either to Elsie or Fred Masterson in being here. On the contrary, the knowledge of his marriage would have enabled him to welcome frankly either of the two had they chanced to enter and find him. It was as if his assured position chaperoned the situation. But, truly masculine, since he no longer loved Lucille Masterson he detested being with her. He resented the acute discomfort he felt in her presence.
She was drawing off her gloves with a slowness that irritated him as an affectation; he thought the artificial perfection of her hands hideous as a waxwork. They were not really a good shape, nor small, but merely blanched very white and manicured to a glistening illusion. And he saw with disgust that she wore a ring he once had given her because she made it plain to him that the costly gift was expected. He knew she had lied to her husband as to the giver; "Tony" had been startled and half-awakened from his hazy content by that discovery at the time. Now he looked at the bulkypearl set around with diamonds and recalled the modest garnets he had given Elsie.
"I am sorry, but I haven't long to stay," he said. "You spoke of something important to discuss."
"Did I?"
"Certainly!"
She studied him with open curiosity.
"You want to go back to that wagon with the gorilla of a man?"
"Yes."
"Are you still very much married, Tony?" she questioned maliciously.
His eyes blazed, then chilled. Her lack of finesse had led her to a final mistake.
"You forget that my wife is an unfashionable woman. I am still happily married," he retorted.
"How—romantic!"
"Very."
"Still, two months, or is it three? Even Fred and I lasted that long. You will not mind my saying that you are a bit fickle, Tony. What will you do when you grow bored? Or do you believe that you never will? Elsie must haveresources that I never suspected. Does she tell you the story of—Monsieur Raoul, was it?"
"She has others more pleasant. With Mrs. Adriance boredom is not possible," he controlled his anger to state. But he felt himself clumsy and inadequate.
The quaint little waitress was beside him, and proceeded to her duty of service with exasperating slowness and precision. She was a pretty girl, in a butter-cup-yellow frock and ruffled white cap and apron. Adriance became conscious of his work-darkened hands, of a collar that showed a day's accumulated dust, and other signs that differentiated him from the usual idle and dainty patrons of this place.
"Youarea bit seedy," corroborated Mrs. Masterson, watching him with furtive acuteness. She permitted herself an ironic smile. "Do you not think it time you went home, and changed?"
He divined an innuendo, adouble entendrein the speech that he did not comprehend, yet which enraged him. He wondered if she had brought him here for the purpose of forcing this contrast between his present life and hispast, and so tainting him with discontent or even regret of his marriage. If so, she had failed. He merely visited his humiliation on her, and found her beauty spoiled by her spitefulness.
"I shall be home in an hour," he said. "And of course I am anxious to be there, so you will forgive my reminding you of whatever we have to discuss."
"Oh, of course." She paused until their attendant fluttered away through a swinging door. "You are quite cured of me, aren't you, Tony? Don't trouble about denying politely, please. But it is lucky no one really knew about us—I suppose you have not told?"
"Mrs. Masterson!"
She hushed the protest, laughing across the spray of sweet-peas she had lifted against her smooth red lips.
"Very well, very well! But promise you never will. Promise, Tony."
"It is not necessary," he replied stiffly. "But if you think it so, I give you my word."
"Never to tell that I thought of marrying you, whatever may happen?"
"Yes."
She dropped the sweet-peas and sat in silence for a space, her gaze dwelling on him. Neither of the two made any pretense of pouring the tea cooling in the diminutive pots between them, or of tasting the miniature sandwiches and cakes. Months later, Adriance was to learn something of Lucille Masterson's thoughts during that interval. He himself thought of Russian Mike waiting in the motor-truck, and that he would be so late home that Elsie might be worried. He had wanted to stop at a shop to buy a toy bull-dog collar for his Christmas puppy, but now that must be postponed. He was amazed and infinitely angry at himself for yielding so easily to Lucille's whim to bring him here.
Unconsciously he looked toward her with open impatience in his glance. She responded at once, with a shrug.
"Go, by all means. Pray go, Tony. Am I keeping you? I am not the kind of woman who mourns, you know. Just remember that our episode is not only closed, but locked, when we meet again. Good-bye."
"And the important communication that I was to hear?"
"I have forgotten what I wanted to say. Good-bye, Tony."
Puzzled and angry, he rose, leaving on the table twice the amount of the check, at which he had not looked. Mrs. Masterson nodded an acknowledgment of his grim salute. Her eyes had a look of triumph, and as the girl in yellow ushered him out, Adriance saw the other turn with appetite to the sandwiches and tea.
The east wind had grown stronger and its current was thick with whirling particles of snow. Darkness had come with the storm, turning dusk into night. Adriance shivered and buttoned his cheap fur coat as he hurried across the wet, shining pavement. Mike aroused himself with a grunt when the chauffeur swung up into the seat beside him.
"Swell dame, Andy!" he commented, staring with heavy curiosity at the man pushing throttle and spark. "I guess maybe you're a swell, too, like a movie show I seen once?"
Adriance stepped down again, to go forward and crank the motor. He began to glimpse thepossible complications if Mike recounted this adventure among his mates. He wondered, also, if Lucille had noticed the name on the truck. Altogether, he was in a vicious enough mood to lie, and he did so.
"No," he asserted flatly, when he had regained his seat. "Don't be an idiot, Mike. I—used to be employed by that lady."
"Drive her automobile?"
"Yes."
The explanation was accepted as satisfactory. An intimate acquaintance with the etiquette of intercourse between mistress and chauffeur was not one of the examiner's accomplishments. But the incident appealed to Mike as romantic, and for him romance flowed from one source only.
"She looks like one of them actresses from the movies," he averred, folding his huge arms comfortably across his breast. "I guess she is, maybe? I seen queens like her, there."
"It is a good way to see them, if they are like her," observed Adriance ruefully. He laughed in spite of vexation. "Better stick to the movie girls, Michael; it's safer! Now stoptalking to me; if this brute of a truck swerves an inch in this slush, some pretty car is going to feel as if an elephant had stepped on it."
But the ill luck of that day was over. They made a fast trip up-town and just caught a ferry-boat on the point of leaving.
After all, they were not to be noticeably late. And since there would be no need of explanation, it occurred to Adriance that he might not recount to Elsie the tale of his discomfiture. He was keenly ashamed of the poor rôle Lucille Masterson had made him play. She had whistled him to heel, and he had come with the meekness of the well-trained. She had amused herself with him as long as she chose, then dismissed him, humiliated and helpless. He did not want Elsie to picture her husband in that situation, nor to find him still unable to say no to Mrs. Masterson.
By the time he had walked up the long hill through a beating snow-storm, he was thoroughly chilled and self-disgusted, desirous only of shelter and peace. Both met him, when he pushed open the door of his house and stepped into the warm, bright room. When the doorclosed behind him, he definitely shut outside the image of Lucille Masterson.
With a little rush Elsie came to meet him, lifting her warm and rosy face for his kiss. The puppy scrambled across the floor, uttering staccato yelps of salute.
"I've named our house," the girl announced gleefully. "You know, we have named everything else. Don't you like Alaric Cottage?"