A Man's Hearth
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor M. Ingram
Chapter 1: Tony Adriance—”Millions, You Know!”
The man who had taken shelter in the stone pavilion hesitated before taking a place on the curved bench before him. He had the air of awaiting some sign of welcome or dismissal from the seat’s occupant; receiving none, he sat down and turned his gaze toward the broad Drive, where people were scattering before the sudden flurry of rain. It suggested spring rather than autumn, this shower that had swept out of a wind-blown cloud and was already passing.
After a moment he drew a cigar-case from his pocket, then paused. Obviously, he was not familiar with the etiquette of the public parks, with their freedom and lack of formalities. He was beside a woman—a girl. He had no wish to be inconsiderate, yet, to speak—in suspicious, sardonic New York—that was to invite misconstruction, or a flirtation. Still——
“May I smoke?” he suddenly and brusquely shot his question.
The girl turned towards him. Her eyes were as gray as the rain; heavily shadowed by their lashes, their expression had a misted aloofness suggesting thoughts hastily recalled from remote distances. He realized that he might have come, smoked, and gone without drawing her notice any more than a blowing leaf. She was not a beauty, but he liked the clearing frankness of the glance with which she judged him, and judged aright. He liked it, too, that she did not smile, and that her steadfast regard showed neither invitation nor hostility.
“Thank you,” she answered. “Please do.”
The form of her reply seemed to him peculiarly gracious and unexpected, as if she gave with both hands instead of doling out the merely necessary. He never had known a woman who gave; they always took, in his experience. Unconsciously he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of the tone rather than the permission. That was all, of course. She returned to her study of river and sky, while he drew out his cigar. But afterward he looked at her, unobtrusively.
She was dressed altogether in black, but not the black of mourning, he judged. The costume, plain but not shabby, conventional without being up-to-date, touched him with a vague sense of familiarity, yet escaped recognition. It should have told him something of her, but it did not, except that she had not much money for frocks. He was only slightly interested; he might not have glanced her way again if he had not been struck by her rapt absorption in the sunset panorama before them. She had gone back to that place of thought from which his speech had called her; withdrawn from all around her as one who goes into a secret room and closes a door against the world. And she looked happy, or at least serenely at peace with her dreams. The man sighed with envious impatience, striving to follow her gaze and share the enchantment.
The enchantment was not for him. The brief storm had left tumbled masses of purple cloud hanging in the deep-rose tinted sky, in airy mockery and imitation of the purplish wall of the Palisades standing knee-deep in the rosy waters of the Hudson. Along the crest of the great rock walls lights blossomed like flowers through the violet mist, at the walls’ base half-seen buildings flashed with lighted windows. He saw that it was all very pretty, but he had seen it so a hundred times without especial emotion.
His cigar was finished, yet the girl had not once moved. Abruptly, as before, he spoke to her, as he moved to leave.
“What are you looking at?” he demanded. “Oh, I’m not trying to be impertinent—I would like to know what you see worth while? You have not moved for half an hour. I wish you could show me something worth that.”
Again she turned and considered him with grave attention. His tired young face bore the scrutiny; she answered him.
“I am seeing all the things I have not got.”
“Over there?”
She yielded his lack of imagination.
“Well, yes; over there. Don’t you know it is always Faeryland—the place over there?”
“It is only Jersey—?”
She corrected him.
“The place out of reach. The place between which and ourselves flows a river, or rises a cliff. One can imagine anything to be there. See that grim, unreal castle, there in the shadows, its windows all gleaming with light from within. Well, it is a factory where they make soap-powder, but from here I can see Fair Rosamond leaning from its arched windows, if I choose, or armored and plumed knights riding into its gates.”
“Oh!” Disappointment made the exclamation listless. “Story-making, you were? I am afraid I can’t see that way, thank you; I haven’t the head for it.”
For the first time she smiled, with a warm lighting of her rain-gray eyes and a Madonna-like protectiveness of expression. He felt as distinct an impression as if she had laid her hand on his arm with an actual touch of sympathy.
“But I do not see that way, either,” she explained. “That was an illustration. I mean that one can make pictures there of all the real things that are not real for one’s self; at least, not yet real. It is a game to play, I suppose, while one waits.”
“I do not understand.”
She made a gesture of resignation, and was mute. He comprehended that confidence would go no farther.
“Thank you,” he accepted the rebuke. “It was good of you to put up with my curiosity and—not to misunderstand my speaking.”
“Oh, no! I hate to misunderstand, ever; it is so stupid.”
Although he had risen, he did not go at once. The evening colors faded, first from river, then from sky. With autumn’s suddenness, dusk swept down. Playing children, groups of young people and promenaders passed by the little pavilion in a gay current; automobiles multiplied with the homing hour of the city. New York thought of dining, simply or superbly, as might be.
The silent tête-à-tête in the pavilion was broken by the softest sound in the world—a baby’s drowsy, gurgling chuckle of awakening. Instantly the girl in black started from revery, and then the man first noticed that a white-and-gold baby carriage stood at her end of the curved seat. Astonished, incredulous, he saw her throw back miniature coverlets of frost-white eiderdown and bend over the little face, pink as a hollyhock, nestled there. For the first time in his life he witnessed the pretty byplay of the nursery—dropped kisses, the answering pats of chubby, useless hands, love-words and replying baby speech, inarticulate, adorable.
The scene struck deeply into inner places of thought he had never known lay at the back of consciousness. He never had thought very profoundly, until the last few weeks. And even yet he was struggling, turning in a mental circle of doubt, rather than thinking. The girl and the child flung open a door through which he glimpsed strange vistas, startling in their forbidden possibilities. He stood watching, dumb, until she turned to him. Her face was kindled and laughing; she looked infinitely candid and good. But—she looked maid, not mother. Somehow he felt that.
“You are married?” he questioned, almost roughly. “I did not suppose—— You are married, then?”
Into her expression swept scorn for his dulness, compassion for his ignorance, fused by the flaring fire of some intense feeling far beyond his ken.
“Married? No. Or I would not be here!”
“Why? Where would you be?”
The baby was standing upright in its coach. The girl passed an arm about the tottering form to steady the fat little feet, and retorted on her questioner.
“Where? Home, of course, making ready for my man! If I lived there,”—with a gesture toward the tall, luxurious apartment houses on the Drive, behind them, “I would be choosing my prettiest frock and coiling my hair the way he liked best. If I lived there, across the river in one of those little houses, I would be making the house bright with lamps; wearing my whitest apron and making the supper hot—very hot, for there is frost in the air and he would be cold and tired and hungry. And I would have his chair ready and draw the curtains because he was inside and no one else mattered.” She paused, drawing a deep breath. “That is where I would be,” she concluded, as one patiently lessoning a dull pupil, and reseated the baby in its coach in obvious preparation for departure.
The man had stood quite still, dazed. But when she turned away, with a bend of her dark little head by way of farewell, he roused himself and overtook her in a stride.
“Thank you,” he said, “I mean for letting me know anyone could feel like that. I suppose a great many people do, only I have not met that kind? No, never mind answering; how should you know? But, thank you. May I—if I see you again—may I speak to you?”
She surveyed him gravely, as if with clairvoyant ability to read a history from his face, a face open-browed and planned for strength, by its square outlines, but that somehow only succeeded in being pleasant and passively agreeable. It was the face of a man who never had been brought against conflict or any need for stern decision, whose true character was a sword never yet drawn from the sheath. And now, he was in trouble; so much lay plain to see. He was in bitter trouble and, she guessed, alone with the trouble.
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