CHAPTER XXThe Cornerstone

"My son is inexact, as usual," Mr. Adriance gave her space, 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 passed. It crept like a bright tide, shining on the figure of the woman who stood behind the table, rising over the noble 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 separatedis 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, snatched 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 thechild 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 awayfrom a brutal nurse in the Park; and how Mr. Adriance,theMr. 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 makewar 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 passion 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 ofcommonplace, 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 behappy, 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 entitled 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 assured. 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, sinceTony 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 assured 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.

"Let us say a question of business," he suggested. "Six months ago I entered your employ as a chauffeur. You will find my record has no marks against it. I did not think at that time of drawing any advantage from the fact that the mill belonged to you; I worked exactly as I must have done for any stranger. I was not late or absent, I accomplished rather more each day than the average chauffeur in the place. Cook and Ransome can tell you whether I gave them satisfaction. I only speak of this, sir, because I should like you to understand that I was in earnest. It was not until months had passed at this work that I began to think of changing my position. One day Ransome fell sick. I asked for his place to try out a better system of checking the shipping that had occurred to me. I was given this at first tentatively, then permanently. In fact, the systemworked so successfully that—Mr. Goodwin came to see me." He hesitated. "I wish you would ask Mr. Goodwin to tell you himself something of what has happened."

"Very well."

The laconic assent was somehow disconcerting.

"I had to tell him who I was," Anthony resumed, with less certainty, "I had meant to find out what your attitude would be, before that happened, but I had no choice. He was good enough to take me into his office and offer to teach me the management of your factory. Now——"

"Now, since it is a matter of business," said Mr. Adriance, dryly, "what do you want?"

"I want a stranger's chance, and your pull," was the prompt return; Anthony's smile flashed across seriousness. "That is, I want your influence to give me Mr. Goodwin's position as manager, and after that I am willing to stand on the basis of my business value to you. Goodwin is old and anxious to retire. If I hold his place for a year and fail to earn his salary, then discharge me and I'll not complain. I know thisend of your business as you do not, sir. You are brilliant, a genius of big affairs; I have discovered in myself a capacity for meticulous attention to detail. Will you take this little book home with you? It contains a collection of notes and figures for which you would gladly pay an outsider. Mr. Goodwin and I have found the plant is enormously wasteful; every department contributes its quota of mismanagement, except the office under his own eye. I want a chance to do this work, to buy a house I like up on the hill, here, and put my delicate Southern wife in a setting suitable for her. Will you let me earn all this?"

"I am not aware that it has been my custom to interfere with you," retorted Mr. Adriance. He eyed his son with icy disfavor. "Between you and Mr. Masterson it appears to be established that I am the typical oppressor of fiction and melodrama. Kindly look at the other side of the shield. Last autumn you chose to marry and leave my house. You did both, without paying me the trifling courtesy of announcing your intentions. I knew of no quarrel between us. The rudeness appeared to me quite without warrant.Nevertheless, I tied all the loose ends you had left behind. I kept your marriage from furnishing a sensation to the journals. The lady who is now my wife helped me in convincing our friends that your wedding was in no way unusual or unexpected, if a little sudden, and that you had met the young lady from Louisiana at her house. In short, I smothered curiosity, a task with which you had not concerned yourself. You choose to enter this place as a truck driver. You did not ask if that were pleasant to me. It was not, but I made no objection. Oh, yes; of course I have known what you were doing! Why should I not know? Now, you meet me with the air of a man hampered and pursued. Why?"

"I was wrong," admitted Anthony, simply. He had flushed hotly before the rebuke, but his eyes met his father's frankly and with a relief that gladly found himself at fault rather than the other. "I did not understand. I am sorry."

They shook hands. A constraint between them was not to be avoided. The marriage of the older man had thrust them apart. Unforgiveable things had been said of LucilleAdriance; things that had the biting permanence of truth.

"I will arrange for Goodwin's retirement," Mr. Adriance remarked. "You will take his place, and this winter's work may pass as your whim to study the business from the bottom. I spent an hour discussing your affairs with him, on my way here, to-night. I had called on him to ascertain your exact address. He has agreed to remain as your adviser and assistant for a month or two, until you have quite found yourself. And of course I will be at your service. That is enough for this evening; I have already stayed here too long. Come to my office to-morrow."

When he turned toward the door, Elsie was awaiting him. A moment before she had slipped away from the two men.

"This is the first time you have been in Anthony's house," she said, her soft speech very winning. "You aren't going without taking our hospitality?"

She held a little round tray on which stood a cup and plate. The action was gracious and graceful, quaintly alien as her own legends.Mr. Adriance gazed at her, then bowed ceremoniously, lifted the coffee and drank.

"I think I had forgotten to congratulate Tony," he regretted. "Allow me to do so, most warmly."

Anthony closed the door behind his guest; presently the sound of a starting motor ruffled the calm hush of the spring evening.

"I want my supper," Anthony announced, practically. "I shall not have any more of your cooking, Elsie. What are you going to do with your idle time—learn to play bridge?"

She ran into his arms.

When they looked for Fred Masterson, he was not there. Elsie remembered, then, that he had gone into Holly's room while Anthony and his father were intent on each other. On the bed where the baby was asleep they found an envelope upon which was scrawled a message.

"I'm off for the present," Anthony read. "I'll drop in to-morrow or next day, when Holly is awake. Thank Mrs. Adriance for me. I'm going to be old-fashioned, Tony—God bless you both."

"He never will come, I know it!" Elsie exclaimed, her heavy lashes wet. "Can't we do something? Can't we go after him?"

"I will go after him," her husband agreed. "But not to-night." He crumpled the envelope and flung it aside. "Fred Masterson is not going under without a fight. If doctors, sanitariums, his love for Holly and our help can set him on his feet again, he shall be cured anddo all he dreams of doing. To-morrow I will find him."

"Not to-night?"

"Not to-night. Elsie, don't you understand? He loved his wife. If I lost you so—if you married someone else——"

She put her small fingers across his lips, stilling the sacrilege.

"No! Do not let our little house even hear you say it!"

"Nor any house of ours! To-morrow I will buy the house we looked at together, and you shall have an orgy of shopping to furnish it. Oh, yes, you shall, and I'll help you. Have lots of dark red things and brown leather in that front room where you told me about Alenya of the Sea. And—do nurseries have to be pink?"

"Of course not, foolish one. We might make ours sunshine-color, like the satiny inside of a buttercup or a drop of honey in a daffodil. Anthony——"

"Yes?"

The rain-gray eyes laughed up at him, demure and daring.

"Please, I want a cloak all gorgeous without and furry within; a shimmery, glittery, useless brocaded cloak like those in the cloak-room of that restaurant. I—I just want it!"

"How do you know?" he wondered at her. "How do you always know the gracious way to delight me most? What a time we are going to have, girl! I'm going to drag Cook out of his rut and start him up the ladder, for one thing. If he hadn't given me a chance, and then brought Mr. Goodwin down to see how I handled it, who can tell how much I might have missed? I shall bring him here for you to see, before we move, too. You won't mind?"

"Try it and see."

"And we will spend my first vacation in Louisiana! Can't we take a trunkful of junk to each girl—including your mother? Let's bribe a publisher to bring out the poetic drama, if it's ever finished. Ah, be ready to come to Tiffany's next week. I'm going to buy you a ruby as big as the diamond advertisements on the backs of the magazines."

"Anthony!"

"Two of them!"

"Dear," she hesitated, "are we going to have so much money? I do not quite see——"

Her husband looked at her, and laughed.

"You haven't learned to understand your father-in-law. I have not mastered that study, myself, but I know some branches. He is not a half-way man. He will expect Tony and Mrs. Tony to proceed precisely as Tony used to do. And we will offend and disgust him with our small-mindedness if we do not take this for granted. When I remember the things I allowed Fred to make me believe of him! Elsie, I always could have earned our living somehow; I think the best news to-night was that my father is as fine as I grew up to believe him. By George, I never told him——"

"What, dear?"

"Don't you know?"

They had almost finished their delayed supper, an hour later, when Adriance set down his cup with an exclamation and stared across the table at his wife.

"I have just thought of something! Now I understand what Lucille Masterson wanted ofme, that day, in the tea-room. She made me give my word never to tell anyone that she had been willing to marry me. I was angry enough that she should suppose such a promise necessary. But now I can see the reason: she feared I might tell my father enough of that affair to prevent his falling in love with her. You do not know him, Elsie. If he had suspected her attachment to him was greed, and that she had been willing to marry either Adriance for the Adriance possessions, he would have suffered nothing to bring them together, nothing whatever. I suppose she told him she never thought of me except as a pleasant young fool. Think of us!" He pushed back his chair and took an angry turn across the room. "Fred, and I, and my father—all puppets for her to move about!"

"Holly has Mrs. Masterson, and I have you," Elsie demurred, her mouth curling into a smile as her glance followed him. "And I do not believe she has your father, Anthony; I think he has her. You know—excuse me, dear—both you and Fred Masterson were too young and inexperienced. And your father heard, in spite of himself, Mr. Masterson's story, this evening.I'm going to borrow a sentence from Mike: 'She's got her a boss.' Let the mills grind; we know what grain we put in! Anthony, did you notice that I gave your father coffee in the Vesuvius cup? If he noticed its five-cent atrocity, he will ostracize me; and you know who bought it."

"It is a good cup!" He dropped into his chair again and leaned across the table to catch her hands in his. "Elsie, we will never sell this house, or change anything in it, will we? We can come back to it, often, for just a day. It was the beginning place, however far we go."

"Yes. Oh, yes! Anthony, our hearthstone is our cornerstone; on it we're going to build, build splendidly, eternally——"

Her voice faltered before the vision. Silent, the two looked into each other's eyes, seeing a happiness strongly secured, closing them around like folded wings.

Finis

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Heart's Content

By RALPH HENRY BARBOUR. Illustrations in color by H. Weston Taylor. Page Decorations by Edward Stratton Holloway. Handsome cloth binding. In sealed packet. $1.50 net.

This is the tale of a summer love affair carried on by an unusual but altogether bewitching lover in a small summer resort in New England. Allan Shortland, a gentleman, a tramp, a poet, and withal the happiest of happy men, is the hero; Beryl Vernon, as pretty as the ripple of her name, is the heroine. Two more appealing personalities are seldom found within the covers of a book. Fun and plenty of it, romance and plenty of it,—and an end full of happiness for the characters, and to the reader regret that the story is over. The illustrations by H. Weston Taylor, the decorations by Edward Stratton Holloway and the tasteful sealed package are exquisite.

A New Volume in THE STORIES ALL CHILDREN LOVE SERIES

Heidi

By JOHANNA SPYRI. Translated by ELISABETH P. STORK. Introduction by Charles Wharton Stork. With eight illustrations in color by Maria L. Kirk. 8vo. $1.25 net.

This is the latest addition to the Stories All Children Love Series. The translation of the classic story has been accomplished in a marvellously simple and direct fashion,—it is a high example of the translator's art. American children should be as familiar with it as they are with "Swiss Family Robinson," and we feel certain that on Christmas Day joy will be brought to the nurseries in which this book is a present. The illustrations by Maria L. Kirk are of the highest calibre,—the color, freshness and fantastic airiness present just the spark to kindle the imagination of the little tots.

HEWLETT'S GREATEST WORK:Romance, Satire and a German

The Little Iliad

By MAURICE HEWLETT. Colored frontispiece by Edward Burne-Jones. 12mo. $1.35 net.

A "Hewlett" that you and every one else will enjoy! It combines the rich romance of his earliest work with the humor, freshness and gentle satire of his more recent.

The whimsical, delightful novelist has dipped his pen in the inkhorn of modern matrimonial difficulties and brings it out dripping with amiable humor, delicious but fantastic conjecture. Helen of Troy lives again in the Twentieth Century, but now of Austria; beautiful, bewitching, love-compelling, and with it all married to a ferocious German who has drained the cup and is now squeezing the dregs of all that life has to offer. He has locomotor ataxia but that does not prevent his Neitschean will from dominating all about him, nor does it prevent Maurice Hewlett from making him one of the most interesting and portentous characters portrayed by the hand of an Englishman in many a day. Four brothers fall in love with the fair lady,—there are amazing but happy consequences. The author has treated an involved story in a delightful, naive and refreshing manner.

The Sea-Hawk

By RAPHAEL SABATINI. 12mo. Cloth. $1.25 net.

Sabatini has startled the reading public with this magnificent romance! It is a thrilling treat to find a vivid, clean-cut adventure yarn. Sincere in this, we beg you, brothers, fathers, husbands and comfortable old bachelors, to read this tale and even to hand it on to your friends of the fairer sex, provided you are certain that they do not mind the glint of steel and the shrieks of dying captives.

The Man From the Bitter Roots

By CAROLINE LOCKHART. 3 illustrations in color by Gayle Hoskins. 12mo. $1.25 net.

"Better than 'Me-Smith'"—that is the word of those who have read this story of the powerful, quiet, competent Bruce Burt. You recall the humor of "Me-Smith,"—wait until you read the wise sayings of Uncle Billy and the weird characters of the Hinds Hotel. You recall some of those flashing scenes of "Me-Smith"—wait until you read of the blizzard in the Bitter Roots, of Bruce Burt throwing the Mexican wrestling champion, of the reckless feat of shooting the Roaring River with the dynamos upon the rafts, of the day when Bruce Burt almost killed a man who tried to burn out his power plant,—then you will know what hair-raising adventures really are. The tale is dramatic from the first great scene in that log cabin in the mountains when Bruce Burt meets the murderous onslaught of his insane partner.

A Man's Hearth

By ELEANOR M. INGRAM. Illustrated in color by Edmund Frederick. 12mo. $1.25 net.

The key words to all Miss Ingram's stories are "freshness," "speed" and "vigor." "From the Car Behind" was aptly termed "one continuous joy ride." "A Man's Hearth" has all the vigor and go of the former story and also a heart interest that gives a wider appeal. A young New York millionaire, at odds with his family, finds his solution in working for and loving the optimistic nursemaid who brought him from the depths of trouble and made for him a hearthstone. There are fascinating side issues but this is the essential story and it is an inspiring one. It will be one of the big books of the winter.

By the author of "MARCIA SCHUYLER" "LO! MICHAEL" "THE BEST MAN" etc.

The Obsession of Victoria Gracen

By GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL LUTZ. Illustrated in color. 12mo. $1.25 net.

Every mother, every church-worker, every individual who desires to bring added happiness into the lives of others should read this book. A new novel by the author of "Marcia Schuyler" is always a treat for those of us who want clean, cheerful, uplifting fiction of the sort that you can read with pleasure, recommend with sincerity and remember with thankfulness. This book has the exact touch desired. The story is of the effect that an orphan boy has upon his lonely aunt, his Aunt Vic. Her obsession is her love for the lad and his happiness. There is the never-failing fund of fun and optimism with the high religious purpose that appears in all of Mrs. Lutz's excellent stories.

Miranda

By GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL LUTZ. Illustrated in color by E. L. Henry. 12mo. $1.25 net.

Nearly all of us fell in love with Miranda when she first appeared in "Marcia Schuyler," but those who missed that happiness will now find her even more lovable in this new book of which she is the central figure. From cover to cover it is a tale of optimism, of courage, of purpose. You lay it down with a revivified spirit, a stronger heart for the struggle of this world, a clearer hope for the next, and a determination to make yourself and the people with whom you come in contact cleaner, more spiritual, more reverent than ever before. It is deeply religious in character: a novel that will bring the great spiritual truths of God, character and attainment straight to the heart of every reader.

"GRIPPING" DETECTIVE TALES

The White Alley

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