A Man's Hearth Part 13

"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," cla.s.sified Adriance coolly. He had antic.i.p.ated 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 s.h.i.+rt sleeves was in command. With him the matter pa.s.sed still more easily for the stranger.

"What's your name?" he shrilled in a peculiarly flat 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 s.p.a.ce toward Adriance; a pair of mild brown eyes gazed down at him from under a shock of red hair.

"I guess you're new," p.r.o.nounced 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 pleasure car. 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 antic.i.p.ated and the work harder, these things were more than offset by the unexpected comrades.h.i.+p he encountered.

All day, amid the steady press of events, the thought 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 was.h.i.+ng its face. And then he heard a fresh, smooth voice singing the drollest little air he ever had heard in his musical experience--a minor grotesquerie distinctive as the flavor of _bouillabaisse orleanais_. 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 rea.s.surance 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.