Eleanor M. Ingram

“ It seemed to Elsie that the man eyed Anthony with a furtive and malicious comprehension. Had he ever seen Tony Adriance with Mrs. Masterson, she wondered? Did he imagine—she thrust away the thought.
"After all, dear, aren't we prejudiced?" she essayed, unconvinced and unconvincing reason. "Isn't it really as if he were an actor?"
"No, it isn't! You know it's not. It isn't what he does that these people applaud; they applaud because he does it. He succeeds by making a show of himself, his name, his position. The grotesqueness of his being here succeeds, not his work. ”

“ In the gleaming gown which left uncovered as much of her beauty as an indulgent fashion allowed, her large light eyes avid, her yellow head thrown slightly forward as she looked up at the man, she was a vivid and unconscious embodiment of greed. Not the pitiful greed of necessity, but the greed which, having much, covets more. As if he shared her mind, Adriance knew that she pictured herself descending the stairs in his father's house gowned and jewelled as Mrs. Tony Adriance could be and Lucille Masterson could not. ”

“ She felt no self-consciousness, even when the elaborately gowned and coifed women glanced over her appraisingly as she passed by their tables. She looked back at them, serenely sure of herself. She was not at all aware that many of the men stared at her with startled admiration of a visitor alien to this atmosphere. Adriance saw well enough, however. Elsie had an innocent dignity of carriage that, joined with her gravely candid gaze, was not a little imposing. Moreover her pure, bright color and clear eyes were disconcertingly natural beside the artificial beauties. ”

“ The Guitar of Alenya of the Sea
That one day, in a mood of fierce impatience, had seized upon Anthony Adriance and hurried him through a range of feeling and experience such as Time usually brings in leisurely sequence, spaced apart. From Elsie's confidence in the morning, with its moving love and pride and awe he in nowise was afraid to name holy, he had gone to the spectacle of his friend's degradation in the tawdry restaurant. And as a completion, he had been confronted with the new and ugly vision of a father he could not honor. ”

“ A shelf of books had been put up; beneath, a small table held the jade-and-ivory chessmen drawn up in battle array on their field. As always, the fire glowed, and on the hearth the cat stretched drowsily. Cheer dwelt in the place, the atmosphere of comradeship{206} and assured love; and the pulse of it all was the girl who stood, tranquil of regard, rich in life and beautiful with health, princess in her own domain.
At her Masterson looked longest, his handsome, bitter mouth oddly twisted out of shape.
"You're different," he pronounced, finally. ”

“ Back in the foyer, Adriance stopped to recover a conventional composure of bearing before going out. He recalled that he must pass inspection by the elevator boy and footman; must meet their wonder, no less obvious because dumb, at his departure before the dinner.
The heavy blankness of his waiting was broken by the gayest sound in the world. The gurgling laughter of a happy child rippled through the silence like a brook, cascading down in a cadence of chuckles. As if to confirm the recognition to which Adriance started, a girl's clear laugh joined the baby merriment. ”

“ There were no children on the Drive or in the park, except a few sturdy urchins neither of the age nor class attended by nurses. No one uncompelled cared to face the grim, gray, scowling day whose breath was freezing.
In the Adriances' breakfast-room, an effort had been made to offset the outside cheerlessness by aid of lamps glowing under gold-colored shades. But only an optimist could have deluded vision into accepting the artificial sunshine as satisfactory. Tony Adriance was even irritated by the feeble sham, and snapped out the lamp nearest to him as he took his seat. ”

“ He did not delude himself with the idea that he could go into any factory as an efficiency expert; he did see that here he might fairly earn and ask for a salary that would give Elsie more luxuries than she had even known in her own home and more than he himself had learned to desire. After all, there had been no quarrel between his father and himself. When the young man had chosen a course that he knew to be disagreeable to the older, he simply had withdrawn from their life together as a matter of courtesy and self-respect. ”

“ Elsie thought she never had seen a woman so indisputably handsome, or so utterly lacking in feminine allure. Heaps of satin-black hair framed her face and were held by jewelled bandeaux; her corsage was dangerously low, retained in place by narrow strings of brilliants over her strong, smooth, white shoulders. Her skirts were those of the conventional ballet: billows of spangled rose-colored tulle. As she began to dance, her eyes, very large and dark behind their darkened lashes, swept the spectators with a sombre alertness. Elsie felt the glance pass across her and rest on Anthony. ”

“ The face reflected was clear in outline, firm to the verge of hardness; the eyes full and alert, the carefully brushed hair so abundant that its grayness gave dignity without the effect of age. Self-appreciation touched Mr. Adriance's lip with a smile, as he gazed, smoothing away his slight annoyance. His son, tracing that glance, felt a movement of kindred admiration and a renewed sense of his own personal{82} inadequacy. Tony Adriance had accomplished nothing, yet he was already tired. How would he look when he was thirty years older? ”

“ Always he had before him the vivid, pretty face of Lucille, the tired young face of Masterson and the gray eyes of Elsie Murray.
A nurse-maid! The girl who had told him the legend of Raoul Galvez, the girl by whose standard he had come to measure himself and his companions and who had fixed the sluggish attention of his conscience upon the mischief being wrought by his yielding good nature—that girl was Lucille's nurse-maid. ”

“ Now, he stood as protector and shelter as long as he should live for the weaker ones who were his. And with responsibility, ambition sprang fully grown to life and challenged him. Was his wife to rank as a chauffeur's wife, and nothing more? Was their child to be reared in that place, and he to give the two nothing better? Anthony Adriance passed his glance, with his father's cold accuracy of appraisal, over the great factory lying far down at the foot of the cliffs, where he himself was awaited to drive a truck. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Again he looked around, and suddenly laughed out with an over-loud lack of control that in a woman would have been called hysterical.
"Tony Adriance's house!" he cried, striking his gloved hands together. "Tony—idle Tony, easy Tony, Tony of teas and tangos—Tony has built this! Why——," he bent toward her. "You have been matching work with God, Elsie Adriance; you have made a man!" ”

“ But—surely that did not make you ill, Elsie?"
"You never thought that I might mind your going?"
"Why?" he asked simply. "What is it to us? You don't, do you?"
She put up her hands and clasped them behind his head.
"Set down the tea," she laughed, tears in her mockery, "or we will spill it between us. Did you think me an inhuman angel, dear darling? No, I don't mind; but I did."
"Like that?" amazed. "So much?"
"You keep remembering who Maît' Raoul Galvez raised," she warned, her lips against his. "I'm mighty jealous, man!" ”

“ Even Lucille never had said she loved him; she simply had taken his devotion for granted, and used it. Would she have promised herself to him if he had been a poor man? Would she ever have contemplated divorce from Masterson, with all his faults, if Tony Adriance had not brought himself and his gilded possibilities across her path? ”

“ Elsie was making ready for her husband, much as she once had described to him a wife's employment at this hour, and so all unconsciously had cleansed the temple of his heart, thrusting down the false idols to make a place for herself. The table stood arrayed, she herself{284} was daintily fresh in attire and mood; the little house waited, expectant, for the man's return. The soft flattery of love lapped Adriance around whenever he crossed this threshold; life had taught him a new luxury in this bare school-room. ”

“ At a second clang of cymbals they floated with the music into a strange, half-Spanish, half-savage dance; a dance vigorously, even crudely alive and swift as a flight. The woman was not beautiful, but she was incredibly graceful. Her small, arched, flashing feet in their gilded slippers recalled a half-forgotten line to Elsie.
"'And her sandals delighted his eyes——'" she quoted aloud. "Do you remember that, Anthony?"
But Adriance was laughing at her.
"Infant!" he mocked. "Wait until you've seen it as often as I have, and then you will not let your supper grow cold. There, it's over!" ”

“ The Other Man's Road
The damp cold of a March night closed chillingly around the two, as they passed through the revolving door into the street. The restaurant did not face on Broadway, the street of a million lights; for a moment they seemed to have stepped into darkness, after the dazzle of light just left. Adriance turned away from the vociferous proffers of taxicabs, with an economy prompted by Elsie's guiding hand rather than his own prudence. Indeed, his great amazement and vicarious shame for Masterson left him with slight attention for ordinary matters. ”

“ In return for his reading to her, Elsie sometimes put out the lamp and in the flickering firelight told him quaint, grotesque legends of Creole and negro lore. Her soft accents fell naturally into pâtois; she was a born mimic, and interspersed fragments of plaintive songs, old as the tragedy of slavery or the romance of a pre-Napoleonic France. Her voice could be drowsy as sunshine on a still lagoon, or instinct with life as the ring of a marching regiment's tread.{174}
She taught him to play chess, too, with a wonderful set of jade-and-ivory men produced from among her few belongings. ”

“ In fact, it was remarkable only for being one of the very few houses on lower Riverside Drive which possessed lawns and verandas. Set in a small town, or a suburb, the gray stone villa would have been merely "very handsome." Here, it gained the value of an exotic. To Anthony Adriance, junior, as he climbed the steps that night, it seemed to stare arrogantly from its score of blinking windows at the glittering sign on the opposite shore. Cause and effect, they duly acknowledge each other. The man paused to glance at them both, then let his gaze fall to the avenue below the terraced lawn. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was an authority in Adriance himself of which he was quite conscious, a personal force that grew with exercise. He stood on his elevation, sending out man after man with clear, reasonable orders, noting the distance, the time of departure and the time allowed for the errand of each. He acquainted each man with the new rule concerning machines broken down or temporarily disabled, wisely giving this as an order of Mr. Cook's. When Russian Mike came by with Andy's truck, the big man smiled up at the man on the pier. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He winced again when the elevator boy stopped at the Mastersons' floor without being told, implying the impossibility of Mr. Adriance's call being intended for any other household. He never had noticed these things before; now, he felt himself disgracefully exposed before these black men.
He was altogether in a mood of bitter exasperation, when he was ushered into Mrs. Masterson's little drawing-room. He recognized this condition with a vague sense of surprise at himself underlying the dominant emotion. All his life he had been singularly even-tempered. ”

“ There came a day when the country demanded that Selim put away the evil enchantress, or die.{255} One month they gave him for the choice."
"The men of the East were poor lovers," commented Adriance. "He banished the sea-princess?"
"Not at all! He chose death, and a month with Alenya."
"Well, if he lived one month exactly as he willed, he had something."
"Very true, cynical person. But never was such month as his, when the lonely man still possessed his love and the wearied king had found an excitement. Intensity is the leap of a flame, and cannot endure. ”