A Man's Hearth Part 23

But they were not allowed to reach the subway, and return as they had come. As they neared the station entrance, a limousine rolled up to the curb and halted across their path. The car's occupant threw open the door before the chauffeur could do so, and leaned out.

"Come in," commanded, rather than invited Masterson's voice. "You didn't wait for me, so I had a chase to catch you. Put Mrs. Adriance in, Tony, and tell the man where you want to go. The ferry, is it? All right; tell him so."

He spoke with an abrupt impatience and strain that excused much by its account of his sick nerves. Adriance complied without objection. Before she quite realized the situation, Elsie found herself seated beside him, opposite Masterson in the warmed interior of the car.

The air of the limousine was not only warm, but perfumed. Without a.n.a.lyzing their reason, it struck both the Adriances as peculiarly shocking that this should be so. Elsie identified the white heliotrope scent worn by the dancer. The globe set in the ceiling was not lighted, but the street lamps shone in, showing the thinness of Masterson's flushed face and its haggardness, accentuated by smudges of make-up imperfectly removed. Elsie felt a quivering embarra.s.sment for him, and a desperate hopelessness of finding anything possible to say. She divined that Anthony was experiencing the same feelings, but intensified.

The car rolled smoothly around Columbus Circle and settled into a steady pace up Broadway. The rush of after-theatre traffic was long since over, the streets comparatively clear. Masterson spoke first, with a defiance that attempted to be light.

"Well, haven't you any compliments for me? I've been told I do it pretty well. That's the only thing I learned at college of any use to me!"

"How did you come----?" Adriance began, brusquely. "I mean--what sent you there, to that? Why, Fred----?"

"I thought it was you, Tony, until to-day," was the dry retort. "I've thought so ever since I found out who was financing the case. Until this morning, I believed Lucille lied when she told me you were married. I suppose I should apologize to you; consider it done, if you like."

"Don't!" Adriance begged. His hand closed sharply over his wife's.

"We have been married since last November," she gravely came to his aid.

"I am sure Mrs. Masterson told you only the truth in that. Indeed, the announcement was published in the newspapers! Since then, we have been living where you saw me this morning; on a honeymoon quite out of the world."

"I don't read more of any newspaper than the first pages," Masterson returned. "I see you two do not read even so much, or you would hardly have been taken by surprise, to-night. Shocked, were you, Tony? I suppose I would have been, myself, once. Now----"

"Now----?" Adriance prompted, after waiting.

Masterson faced his friend with a sudden blaze in his hollow eyes.

"Now, I am through with being shocked at myself, through with thinking of myself or sparing myself and other people. Can't you see, can't you guess for whom alone I would do this--or anything else? Have you forgotten Holly? I may not have a wife, but I have a son. And I will not have my son reared as I was, married as I was, and ruined as I am. I am going to have money, if I fish it out of the gutter, to take him away to some clean, far-off place. There I shall rear him myself, understand! He shall never know this Fred Masterson. Roughing it outdoors will put me in fit condition long before he is old enough to criticise. He's got a fine little body, Tony! I'll have him as hard and straight as a pine tree. I'll teach him to work. What will I care for the squalls of this corner of the world, when I have done that? Since Lucille divorced me, I've stripped my mind of a good deal of hampering romance."

He was interrupted by the exclamation of both his listeners.

"Divorced you?" Adriance echoed, stifled by the pressure of warring emotions. "Divorced you, after all?"

"You don't mean to say you didn't know?" He studied the two faces with incredulous astonishment; then, convinced by their patent honesty, shrugged derision of himself. "Conceited lot, all of us! We think if our tea-cups drop, the crash is heard around the world. Yes, I have been a single man for three months. You have been away for six, remember. But it went through very quietly. Lucille is strong for propriety and conventions. She even," his face darkened with an angry flood of bitterness startling as a self-betrayal, "she even is willing to pay pretty highly for them. Holly----"

The sentence remained unfinished. Elsie's memory returned to that morning, when Masterson told her that he had lost Holly. She glimpsed his meaning now.

The automobile had long since left behind the flash and glitter of theatrical Broadway. When the gliding silence of the progress was suddenly broken by a blast of the car's electric horn sounding warning to some late pedestrian, the three within started as if at an unnatural happening.

"It went through quietly," Masterson sullenly picked up the broken thread, "because she bargained with me. She said that if I made no defence, she would let me take Holly. Well, I kept my word; I stayed away from the whole business and didn't even get a lawyer--like a fool.

I don't even know what they said about me. I didn't care, since she wanted it. And then she asked the court for the custody of Holly; and got him. It was only for the boy's good, she says; I was not fit to have charge of him."

"Oh!" Elsie gasped.

Masterson lighted a cigarette with an attempt at unconcern. He had a singular difficulty in bringing the burning match in contact with the end of the little paper tube--a lack of coordination between the nerves and muscles that held a sinister meaning for one able to interpret the signs.

"Thanks," he acknowledged the unworded sympathy. "Maybe you know I was fit, then; or, at least, would have been fit if I had had him. Not having him, I went to--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Adriance."

"Fred----" Adriance essayed.

The other man hushed him with a gesture.

"I know what you are going to say, Tony. Don't! My wife, my _late_ wife and I have managed this business. Keep out of what doesn't concern you.

Here, I'll give her due to her, too! If I had not been weak, all this would never have happened. But if she had played the game, it would never have happened, either. Well, I lose. But Holly shall not pay for the game he had no share in. I am telling you two what I have told no one else. When I have enough money, I shall buy Holly from his mother and take him to Oregon. Lucille always needs money. Phillips is out there, Tony. Do you remember my Cousin Phil? Well, I started him out there ten years ago; sold my first automobile to help him out of a bad sc.r.a.pe. He says there is room for me; work that will support any man who doesn't want too much. They raise square miles of fruit. I only wish it was the other side of the world!"

The limousine swung to the left, jarring across a network of car tracks.

They were turning down to the ferry. Elsie nestled her hand into her husband's, divining his pain.

"Nice machine, this," Masterson observed, casually. "One thing, I'm not making a gutter exit! You wouldn't believe what they pay me for my bit of college theatrical work. I did it at first on a bet, after a supper party I gave to celebrate my freedom. I think it must annoy Lucille considerably. It suits me; and there isn't any other way I could earn so quickly what I need. Here we are."

The automobile had stopped, and the chauffeur threw open the door.

"The ferry-boat is just coming across, sir," he stated.

"Very well," his employer dismissed him. "Mrs. Adriance, you had better stay in here until the boat docks; it is cold, to-night. Tony and I will go buy the tickets."

"You might say Elsie, still," she answered gently. "You know we were always good friends."

"You are good to say so now," he returned. "Thank you."

The two men did not buy the tickets; instead, they walked side by side across the rough, cobblestone square in front of the ferry-house.

Adriance was pale, but steadily set of face and determination to have done, here and now with all deceit.

"Fred, I've got to clear things between us," he forced the distasteful speech. "Before I met my wife, I did see a great deal of Mrs. Masterson.

You spoke a while ago of believing me responsible for her wanting a divorce. Once I might have done such a thing, I do not know. But, I did not. I went away, in order that I should not."

The other nodded, almost equally embarra.s.sed by the difficult avowal.

"That's all right, Tony. I understand. But don't blame me too much for my mistake. Do you know who paid all the expenses of the case, whose influence kept it out of the newspapers as much as possible--in short, who managed the whole campaign? Except about Holly; that was a woman's trick! Do you know?"

"Why, no. How should I?"

The boat was in the slip; across the clank of unwinding chains, the fall of gangways and tread of men and horses, Masterson's reply came:

"Your father."

The amazing statement stunned Adriance beyond the possibility of reply.

No outcry, no denial of complicity could have been so convincing as the utter stupefaction of the regard he fixed upon his friend. What had the senior Adriance to do with this affair? What had he to do with Lucille Masterson?

"It is true," Masterson answered his doubt. "Now you know why I did not believe you were married, until I met your wife, this morning. And," he hesitated, "that is why, when I did understand, I brought you to see me, to-night. I could not say so before Mrs. Adriance, but evidently your father is not pleased with your marriage, since you're living like a laborer, across the river. Make no mistake, Tony; your father never in his life did anything without reason. If he got Lucille her divorce, why, he knows you admired her, once. And he always liked her, himself.

Suppose he figured that if she were free, you might wish to become so?

Why not? We all know couples where both parties have been divorced and married several times, and no one says a word against them."

The recoil that shook Adriance was strong as physical sickness. Like a woman, he was glad of the darkness.

Divorce between Elsie and himself? He could have laughed at the coa.r.s.e absurdity of the idea, if it had not been for his disgust and desire to get away from the subject.

"We shall miss the boat," he said curtly. "Thank you, Fred, but that is all nonsense. The truth of the matter is that you are sick--and no wonder! Come, man, pull yourself up and you'll get past all this. Why, you are only twenty-eight; start over again here! Drop everything and come home with Elsie and me for a while. You saw how we live; it isn't much, perhaps, but you would get back your health. And we can force Mrs.

Masterson to let you have Holly part of the time, at least."