CHAPTER XVII

RUSSIAN MIKE AND MAITRE RAOUL GALVEZ

Russian Mike lived in a settlement perhaps a mile back from the river road. He usually passed the Adriances' house each morning, a few moments earlier than the lighter-footed Anthony set forth, whose swinging stride carried him two steps to the big man's one. Elsie had long since made acquaintance with her husband's assistant. During the bitter weather she frequently had called him from the snow-piled road to warm his slow blood with a cup of her vivifying Creole coffee. The Monday morning following the purchase of the guitar, she knew just when to run down the path and find the bulky, lounging figure passing her gate.

At the sight of the girl in her lilac-hued frock, a drift of white-wool scarf wound about her shoulders, her dark little head shining almost bronze in the bright morning light, Mike came to a halt and awkwardly jerked at his coarse cap. It had flaps that fastened down under his chin, so that he was embarrassed equally by the difficulty of removing his headgear and the _inconvenance_ of remaining covered. But Elsie's smile was a sunshine of the heart that melted such chills of doubt, as she came up to him.

"Good-morning, Michael. Thank you for bringing back my kitty-puss, Saturday night. She _will_ run away, somehow."

"It ain't nothing, ma'am," he deprecated, confused, yet gratified.

"It was very kind. Michael," she considerately lowered her eyes to her breeze-blown scarf, "yesterday Mr. Adriance bought a guitar for me, from the antique shop. We heard where it came from--how you brought it. Will you tell the lady who owned it that I should be sorry to keep a thing she might miss? Tell her, please, that I hope she will soon grow well, and when she is ready I shall be happy to return the guitar to her. We will just play that she lent it to me for a while."

His rough face and massive neck slowly reddened to match his fiery hair.

"You, you----" he stammered, inarticulate. His mittened fist wrung the nearest fence paling. "I ain't----! Thank you, lady."

Mischief curled Elsie's lips like poppy petals, as she contemplated the discomfited giant.

"Is she very pretty, Michael?"

"No, ma'am," was the unexpected avowal. "Not 'less she's dolled up for actin'. She's nice, just. I guess many ain't like the swell one Andy used to work for: dolled up any time."

"Andy? Mr. Adriance? He never worked----"

"For an actress; yes, ma'am," finished Mike, calmly assertive. "He treated her to tea, the day after Christmas, when we was sent over to New York. Ain't you seen her? Swell blonde, with awful big sort of light eyes an' nice clothes on?" He leaned against the frail old fence, shutting his eyes reminiscently. "She had on some kind of perfumery----! Since I seen her, nobody else ain't very good-lookin'."

"He treated her to tea?" Elsie faintly repeated. She did not intend an espial upon Anthony; the question was born of pain and bewilderment.

"She ast him to. They went to a eatin' place an' I watched the truck. Tony, _she_ called him." Mike ponderously straightened himself and prepared to depart. "I guess I'll get to work, ma'am."

Elsie nodded, and turning, crept back.

Adriance had appeared on the threshold of the cottage, his dog leaping about him in the daily disappointed, daily renewed hope of accompanying the worshipful master. He was whistling and fumbling in his pockets for a match, as he stood. But he was struck dumb and motionless by the change in the pale girl who turned from the gate. She seemed almost groping her way up the path.

"Elsie!" he called, springing down the steps. "Why, Elsie?"

To his utter dismay, she crumpled into his extended arms, her eyes shut.

He gathered her to him and swept her into the house, himself sick with absolute panic. Illness was so new to them; he did even know of a doctor nearer than the stately and important family physician in New York. He felt the world rock beneath his feet; his world, which held only his wife. Trembling, he laid her on their bed and knelt beside it, her head still on his arm.

"Elsie!" he choked, his eyes searching her face. "Girl!"

Perhaps it was the misery in his voice, perhaps the anguish of love with which he clasped her, but she moved in his arms.

"Yes," she whispered. "I--I shall be well, in a moment."

"You're not dying? Not in pain? What can I do?"

"No, no. Wait a little. Put me down; I must think."

He obeyed, settling her among the pillows with infinite tenderness. He dared not kiss her lest he disturb recovery, but he carefully drew the pins from her hair and smoothed out the thick, soft ripples. He had a vague recollection of reading somewhere that a woman's locks should be unbound when she swooned. It was in a novel, of course; still, it might be true. And there was one panacea that he knew!

Elsie did not open her eyes, but she heard him rise and hurry into the other room. The giddiness had left her now, and she could think.

Of course she had recognized Mike's portrait of Lucille Masterson. She had seen the other woman, lovely, imperious in assured beauty; almost had breathed the rich odor of her _Essence Enivrante_--which was not French at all, but distilled in an upper room on Forty-second street where individual perfumes were composed for those who could pay well. Anthony had gone to her, the day after Christmas. The day after that Christmas! Lying there, Elsie recalled how she and Anthony had gone together to church in Yuletide mood and knelt hand in hand in the bare little pew as simply as children: "because they had found each other." And then their first Christmas dinner in their holly-decked house, when the puppy had sat in rolypoly unsteadiness on Anthony's knee, regaled with food that should have slain him, while she laughed and remonstrated and abetted the crime. The day after all that, the day after he had given her the garnet love-ring, Anthony had gone to Mrs. Masterson? Her reason cried out against the absurdity. Yet, he had gone.

The clink of china hurriedly moved in the next room had ceased. Adriance came to the bedside, leaning over to slip his arm carefully under the pillow and raise the girl's head. In his other hand he held a cup of hot tea, the only medicine he knew.

All his wife's heart melted toward him in his helpless helpfulness. Suddenly she remembered that he had come back to her from that meeting. He had seen the invincible Lucille, yet had returned to glorious content with his wife. The ordeal she long had foreseen and dreaded was over. She opened her eyes and looked up at him quietly.

He looked like a man who had been ill, and his gaze devoured her, enfolded her.

"What was it?" he asked unsteadily. "What is it?"

"Anthony, why did you not tell me that you met Mrs. Masterson?" she put her quiet question. "Why did you leave me to hear it from Michael?"

Startled, he still continued to look down into her eyes with no confusion in his own.

"I suppose I should have told you," he frankly admitted. "But it wasn't of any importance, and I--well, I cut such a poor figure that I dodged exhibiting it to you. The woman caught me on the Avenue and fairly bullied me into a tea-room, with my collar wilted and oily hands. I think she did it out of pure malice, too, for she had nothing to say, after all. 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 Mait' Raoul Galvez raised," she warned, her lips against his. "I'm mighty jealous, man!"

"But I love you," he stammered clumsily. "That woman--she looked like a vixen! Poor Fred!"

Their first misunderstanding was passed, and left no shadow. By and by they drank the cold tea together, and Elsie persuaded her nurse to go to the factory as usual.

"I was not sick, just full of badness," she conscientiously explained. "Although it might not have happened if I had been altogether just the same as usual, Anthony."

They talked over the affair at more leisure, that evening. But they could find no reason for Lucille Masterson's insistence upon that brief interview with Anthony. Why had she forced him to attend her? He could honestly assure Elsie that Mrs. Masterson had made no attempt to win him back to his former allegiance; rather, she had taunted and antagonized him. As a caprice, they finally classified and dismissed the episode.

What they did not dismiss from their thoughts was the conversation they had held in the new white house, the day they had bought the guitar. They did not speak of Anthony's ambitions, but Elsie came to speak often and with freer enthusiasm of her native Louisiana. Her husband saw through the innocent ruse with keener penetration than she recognized, and so far it failed. He understood that she was cunningly preparing to make easy for him their way of retreat, in case he lost his fight; preparing to convince him that was the way she most desired to go. He loved her the better; and was the more obstinately determined to force his own way.