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Title: The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

Creator: Henry James Forman

Release date: August 21, 2015 [eBook #49757]

Language: English



*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE ***




Produced by Al Haines.





                           *THE MAN WHO LIVED
                               IN A SHOE*


                                   BY

                          *HENRY JAMES FORMAN*



                                 BOSTON
                       LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
                                  1922




                           _Copyright, 1922,_
                     By LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.

                         _All rights reserved_

                       Published September, 1922
                       Reprinted September, 1922
                        Reprinted October, 1922



                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                                   TO
                                MY WIFE




                               *BOOK ONE*


                           *THE MAN WHO LIVED
                               IN A SHOE*


                              *CHAPTER I*


Are there any women today, I wonder, like the girl wife of Jacopone da
Todi, who are found in the midst of worldly brilliance wearing the hair
shirt of piety and devotion over their spotless hearts?

I doubt it.

It is no wonder that Jacopone, that "smart" thirteenth-century Italian
lawyer, became a great saint when he made that discovery, after his
beautiful young wife’s accidental death.  It would make a saint of
anybody.

I am quite sure Gertrude is not like that.  But then Gertrude is not my
wife—as yet.  Nor am I Jacopone. I am nothing more, I fear, than a
contented voluptuary of a bookworm.  Like King James, I feel that were
it my fate to be a captive, I should wish to be shut up in a great
library consuming my days among my fellow-prisoners, the blessed books.

To distil the reading of a lifetime into a little wisdom for my poor
wits, that has been all my aim and my ambition, if by any name so
dynamic as ambition I may call it.  An old young man is what I have been
called, and Gertrude seems propelled by some potent urge to change
me—God knows why.

I have just been talking with—I mean listening to—Gertrude.

We are to be married, she says, in three weeks.


Time out of mind we have been friends, Gertrude and I, as our mothers
had been before us.  She, the highly modern spinster and I, such as I
am, have been linked for years by an engagement which is not an
engagement in the old sense at all.  It is a sort of _entente cordiale_.
An engagement in the conventional meaning of the word would be as
abhorrent to Gertrude as the old-fashioned marriage.  As soon would she
think of "being given in marriage" with bell, book and orange blossoms
as of calling herself "Mrs. Randolph Byrd"—or anything but Miss Bayard.

That is what we have been discussing this gloomy afternoon in my snug
little apartment before a garrulous fire.  For Gertrude is not so absurd
as to hesitate to call on me at my apartment any more than I would
hesitate to call on her in Gramercy Park.

"But won’t it be awkward," I ventured in mild speculation, "if after we
are married we have to stay at an hotel together, or share a cabin on a
ship—to be Miss Bayard and Mr. Byrd?"

"Don’t be absurd, Ranny," retorted Gertrude, with her usual introductory
phrase.  "Awkward or not, do you think I should give up my name that I
have lived under all my life, fought for and established?"

"Of course not," I hastily apologized.  "I hadn’t thought of that."  I
could not help wondering what she meant by having established her name.
Except as regards one or two committees and vacation funds Gertrude’s
name is unknown to celebrity.

"You with your H.H.," she ran on briskly, with the triumph of having
scored.  "Surely you don’t want to cling to the musty old formulas?"

"No, certainly not," I answered her readily.  I am no match for Gertrude
in argument.  Of a sudden I became aware that despite the hissing fire
in the grate there was no sparkle in the air this chill November
afternoon. The H.H. to which Gertrude had alluded was the only thing
resembling an emotion that betrayed any sign of smoldering life within
me in that discussion of ours touching matrimony.

The H.H., I would better explain, stands for Horror of Home—for my
profound repugnance toward anything resembling the fettering bonds of
domesticity.  A man, I feel, should be as free to do what he pleases and
to go where he likes when and if married as when single.  Otherwise who
would assume the chains and slavery of that shadowed prison-house?
To-morrow, my heart suddenly tells me, I must be off upon a journey of
unknown duration.

Once again I would see the estraded gardens of the Riviera, the olive
groves of Italy, the sacred parchments and incunabula of the Laurentian
Library in Florence. I would wander anew in the wilderness of the
Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris and on the left bank of the Seine, where
once I collected the lore of Balzac and of Sainte-Beuve.  And who dare
prevent my setting off at a moment’s notice for the ill-lighted rotunda
of the British Museum or the cloister precincts of the Bodleian at
Oxford?  Even as Gertrude was speaking, I experienced an irresistible
longing for all those places, for the turf walks and pleached alleys of
Oxford and the beautiful "Backs" of the Cambridge Colleges.  There is a
manuscript at Trinity that I must see again, and I have long promised
myself a month in Pepys’s old library at Magdelene in Cambridge.

But Gertrude is not like other women.

"What I like about you, Ranny," she remarked, flicking the ash from her
cigarette with unerring aim into the hearth, "is your reasonableness.
You hate as I do to see two people handcuffed together like a pair of
convicts for life.  Might as well go back to the Stone Age or to the
times of a dozen children in the house and the mother grilling herself
all day before the kitchen fire. Ugh!" and she gave a shudder.

"No fear of that with you," I laughed.

"No, I should hope not," she puffed energetically.

"Well, anyway," I found myself reassuring her quickly, "even as it is,
you have three weeks to think it over—to back out in.  Three weeks is a
good long time, Gertrude.  Much can happen in three weeks."

On the table before me lay a new life of Leonardo da Vinci, just arrived
from Paris that day.  My fingers itched to open it and turn the pages.
But that would have been rude, so I forebore.

"I am not like that," Gertrude murmured reflectively, "and you know it,
Ranny."

"Of course not," I guiltily assented.

"I know," she tapped my cheek with a playful finger—Gertrude can be very
charming if she thinks of it—"I know perfectly what I want to do.  And
when I make up my mind to do a thing I stick to it."

And so she does, the clever girl!

"I wish I were like you," I muttered.  "I am a sort of drifter, I’m
afraid."

"That’s why you need a manager," laughed Gertrude. "Wait till you’ve got
me.  Then you won’t be just running after books and telling yourself
what you’re going to do some day.  You’ll be doing, publishing,
lecturing; you’ll be known—famous."

"Oh my heavens!" I cried out in a terror, throwing up a defensive hand.
"I think I’ll run away."

"Too late," she smiled, with a cool archness.  When Gertrude smiles she
is exceedingly handsome.  "I’ve ordered my trousseau.  You wouldn’t
leave me waiting at the City Hall, would you?"

"I might," I answered, smiling back at her.  "If there should happen to
be a book auction that morning. And it’s only a subway fare back to your
flat."

"Now, this is the program," she announced, assuming her magisterial
tone, which instantaneously reduces me to a spineless worm before her.
"You will come to my flat on the twenty-fourth at ten o’clock.  Then we
shall drive down in a taxi to the City Hall and get the license—or
whatever they call it—"

"Lucky you’ll be there," I could not help murmuring. "I should probably
get a dog license or a motor-car license instead of the correct one—"

"Then," went on Gertrude, very properly ignoring me, "we can have the
alderman of the day sing the necessary song."

"He may want to sing an encore—or kiss the bride," I warned her.

"He won’t want to kiss me when I look at him," answered Gertrude
imperturbably.  Nor will he!  "Then," she added, "we can stop here at
your place and pick up your hand luggage, and mine on the way to the
Grand Central Station.  You can send your trunk the day before and I’ll
send mine.  No time lost, you see, no waste, no foolishness."

"Perfect efficiency, in short—"

"Yes," said Gertrude, "you’ll probably forget some important detail in
the arrangement, but there’s time enough to drill you into it the next
three weeks."

"Forget," I repeated, somewhat dazedly, I admit. "What is there to
forget—except possibly my name, age or color?"

"You needn’t worry," flashed Gertrude.  "I’ll remember those for
you—when you need them.  I meant," she explained, "about your trunk or
railway tickets and so on.  But anyway, it doesn’t matter.  I’ll remind
you of everything the day before."

I promised to tie a knot in my handkerchief.

"And may I ask," I ventured, "where we are going?"

"I haven’t decided yet," Gertrude informed me.  "I’ll let you know
later, Ranny dear."

There is something very wholesome and complete about Gertrude.  That is
the reason, I suppose, I have so long been fond of her.  How she can put
up with a dreamer like me is more than I can grasp.  Without any
picturesque or romantic significance to the phrase, I am a sort of beach
comber, sunning myself in her cloudless energy on the indolent sands of
life.  Every one either tells me or implies that Gertrude is far too
good for me.  Nor do I doubt it.  But I wish we could go on as we are
without exposing her to the inconvenience of being married to me.  But
Gertrude knows best.

"Won’t you stay and share my humble crust this evening?" I asked her as
she rose to go.

"No, thanks, Ranny," she smiled, somewhat enigmatically, I thought.  "We
shall often dine together—afterwards."

"Of course," I agreed flippantly.  "We may even meet at the races."

"I promised," said Gertrude, "to dine at the Club with Stella
Blackwelder—to settle some committee matters before I go away.  Shall
you be alone, poor thing?"

"Yes—but that doesn’t matter.  I am often alone. I prop up a book
against a glass candlestick and the dinner is gone before I am aware of
it."

"It might as well be sawdust, for all you know," laughed Gertrude.

"So it might," I told her, "except that Griselda can do better than
sawdust.  I might, of course," I added, "call up Dibdin and have him
feast with me."

"Your trampy friend," commented Gertrude.  "Yes, better do it.  I don’t
like to think of you so much alone."

"Now, that is very sweet of you, my dear.  I’ll do exactly that."

Her cool lips touched mine for an instant and she was gone.




                              *CHAPTER II*


To my shame I must record that, once I was alone, the appalling fact of
marriage overwhelmed me like a landslide.  With a sense of suffocation
and wild struggle I longed to do in earnest what I had threatened to do
in jest, to run away, blindly, madly, anywhere, to freedom, as far as
ever I could go.

When I should have been rejoicing, I desired, in a manner, to sit upon
the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.  I thought upon
Lincoln, a brave man if ever one there was, who had paled before the
thought of marriage and wrote consoling letters to another in similar
case.  When I ought to have been feeling at my most virile, I felt
unmanned.

Yet, was I a boy to be a prey to these emotions?  At twenty-nine surely
a man should know his own mind and be in possession of himself.  Never
before had I doubted my way in life.  In a world where every one who has
no money proceeds with energy to make it, and every one who has a little
tirelessly labors to acquire more, I had wittingly and of full purpose
turned my life away from the market place and toward a studious devotion
to books.  On my compact income of less than two hundred and fifty
dollars monthly left me by generous parents, I was able to maintain my
modest apartment in Twelfth Street and to live a life, purposeless in
the eyes of some, no doubt, but which to me is priceless.

That slender income and the old Scotchwoman, Griselda Dow, with her
Biblical austerity and North British economy, surround my existence with
the comfort of a cushion.  Because two sparrows sold for one farthing,
was to Griselda a reason and an incentive for miracles of thrift.  To
change all this in three weeks—and I have not yet informed Griselda!  In
a welter of agitation I began to pace the room.

Perhaps I am a fool to harbor such emotions, but I confess that the
sight of my pleasant study, covered to the ceiling with the books that I
love, and so many of which I have gathered, fills me with a poignant
melancholy. To uproot all this or to change it violently seems like a
sin I cannot bring myself to commit.  How had I come to think of
committing it?

Gertrude is, of course, a splendid girl.  With all her energy, she can
yet sympathize with the mild successes of a poor bookworm and listen
with patience to the tales of his triumphs as though he had captured an
army corps. My first edition of the "Religio Medici" can mean nothing to
her, who has never read it, but she seemed gladdened by my victory when
I acquired it under the very nose of a wily bookseller.

When was it that I had first asked Gertrude to marry me?  It is odd that
I cannot remember, for our friendship could have continued on the same
pleasant basis for the rest of our lives.

I was dining alone with her one evening at her apartment in Gramercy
Park, I remember, and there was sparkling Moselle.  I am not one of your
experienced topers, and that sparkling Moselle entered my blood like a
Caxton in a Zaehnsdorf binding or a First Folio of Shakespeare.  A
golden haze had seemed to emanate from every object in the region of
that Moselle.  Then, I recollect, Gertrude and I were on a new plane of
being. We were speaking of marriage.  Without being "engaged", we were,
in Gertrude’s phrase, talking of "marrying each other."  It was on that
evening I must have asked her, though, oddly enough, I have no
recollection of the fact.  And now, it seems, three pleasant years have
passed and the time has come.

Again it occurred to me abruptly that I had not yet informed Griselda.

What if Gertrude should insist upon my removing myself to her apartment;
would she accept Griselda?  And how would my precious books be
domiciled?  How human they are, those books, even though silent!  Always
I have found them waiting whenever I returned from journeys, from summer
visits, from the country, from anywhere.  Their backs and bindings seem
to shimmer and flash forth a stately greeting, to exhale that subtle
fragrance of leather, ink, and paper that none but book-lovers know.
They have developed a sense in me to perceive these things as no one
else can perceive them.  How delightful it has been to find them in
their peaceful legions, arrayed and changeless, retaining the very marks
and slips I have left in them, faithful servitors and friends!

I take down the "Antigone" in the Cambridge Sophocles that faces me as I
stand and open at random to the chorus: "Love, invincible love! who
makest havoc of wealth, who keepest vigil on the soft cheek of the
maiden;—no immortal can escape thee, nor any among men whose life is for
a day; and he to whom thou hast come is mad."  It is clear that
Sophocles was no modern.

Ah, me!  I must tell Griselda at once, lest her Scotch probity should
charge me with disingenuousness or evasion.  I pressed a bell.  I could
not face Griselda in the kitchen which is her stronghold.  I must summon
her to mine.

Griselda, with a heather-blue cap awry on her coarse gray hair, appeared
at the door.

"You called?" she demanded.

"Yes, Griselda, I called.  Come in; I wish to speak to you."

Griselda has known me since I was seven and all my gravity counts for
ever so little with her.  So redolent is she of rich encrusted
personality that she gives to my poor small apartment the air of an
establishment.

"You always call me, Mr. Randolph," she somewhat testily informed me,
"just when I have my hands in the dough pan or when the pot is boiling
over."

"Which is it now?" I asked her, laughing somewhat ruefully.

"Both," was her laconic answer.

"Hurry back then," I told her.  "What I wanted to say will keep."

"Just like a man," muttered Griselda and left me without ceremony.

The relief I felt was shameful.  To face Griselda with news of a
possible derangement of our lives required a courage, a girding up of
one’s resolution to which at the moment I felt myself woefully unequal.

There was Dibdin and his blessed archeological expedition.  He had told
me that there might be a berth for me as a sort of keeper of records and
archives.  If only he had started last week.  In a mist of vision well
known to daydreamers, I suddenly saw the trim shipshape steamer with
holystoned decks, the glinting metal work, the opulent South-Pacific sun
pouring down on lightly clad passengers lounging in deck chairs; girls
in white lazily flirting with indolent men.  What oceans of joy and ease
were to be found in the world for those who knew how to take them!

Ah, well!  Gertrude would make no opposition to my going, since absolute
individual liberty is the very keystone in the arch of our coming
marriage.

I decided to ring up Dibdin.

"Our line is out of order," the switchboard below informed me.  "They’ll
have a man up here as soon as possible."

Frustration!  I did not wish the colored door boy below to hear what I
said.  He has a notion of my dignity.

With a restless agitation new to me I again fell to pacing the room, a
room not contrived for exercise. It occurred to me that I must go to see
my sister, my only near relative.  She was sure to be at home, for she,
poor girl, is always at home,—what with her three children and her
broken health.

If it were not that the damnable telephone is out of order, I would ring
her up immediately.  What with her three young children and an income
the exact equivalent of my own, she has little diversion unless I take
her to the theater or the opera.  How does the poor girl manage, I
wonder?  I dread to ask her and she never complains.  I ought to see her
oftener; if only she lived nearer than the depths of Brooklyn.

There is the result of romantic marriage for you! Poor Laura committed
the error of falling in love with a man on a steamer when she was barely
nineteen and marrying him secretly; after seven years and three babies,
the scoundrel Pendleton, with his smooth ways and unsteady eye, deserted
her, disappeared into the blue. The poor girl’s health has never been
good since then.

It is irritating to think that I might have done more than an occasional
gift for Laura and the children.  But I am so wretchedly poor myself.

I still cannot comprehend how Laura could have been so inconceivably
foolish as to marry that ruffian Pendleton before she had known him
three months—and then to acquire three babies!

Gertrude, at all events, could not be guilty of anything so perverse.

Marriage—children—chains—slavery—how sordid it all is and how
disturbing!  Good enough perhaps for the hopeless middle class,
semi-animal types, who have nothing else to expect of life, or to absorb
them.  But for folk with ambitions and ideals!

What are my ambitions and ideals, I cannot at times help wondering?
Useless to analyze.  Freedom to have them is the first of all.

How eager I used to be to discuss them with Laura during those long
summers at our cottage in Westchester when life seemed endless and the
future infinite. Between sets at tennis I poured out to her the things I
was going to do in the world.  Laura is only two years older than I, but
how well she had understood and how sympathetic she was!  It was the
motherhood within her, I suppose, that drove her to the marriage and the
kiddies.

The scent of those summers comes to my nostrils now, the fragrance of
lilac and honeysuckle, that brought ideas to one’s head, dreams of
achievement, of perfection and happiness.  Who has that cottage now, I
wonder?  Poor Laura’s dreams have been distorted into a very dismal sort
of reality.  And what of my own?  But here is Griselda and she is
announcing Dibdin.


That grizzled priest of what he is pleased to call science growled in a
way he meant to be pleasant as he shouldered into my comfortable study
and sank sprawling into my best chair.  He never seems quite at home in
a civilized room.

"Couldn’t get you on the telephone," he remarked. "Thought I’d drop over
and see what iniquities you’re up to."

"As you see," I told him, "I’m deep in crime."

"Will you feed me?" he demanded with a gruffness that is part of his
charm.

"Certainly.  What else can I do when you come at this hour?"

"All right; then I’ll listen to you," he said.

"But how," I wondered, "do you know I want to say anything?"

"You look charged to the nozzle," he answered elegantly.  "What is it—a
rare edition of somebody or other?"  Amazing devil, Dibdin.  I always
resent his ability to read me in this manner.  But he tells me that in
his archeological expeditions he has had so often to watch faces of
Indians, Chinese, negroes, Turks and others whose language he did not
speak, that to see the desires of men in their eyes amounts with him to
an added sense.

"Well, if you must know," I sat down facing him, "I am nonplussed,
baffled, perplexed, at sea, on the horns of a dilemma—all of those
things.  I am to be married in three weeks."

"Eager swain!" was his only comment.

"Is that all you can say?"

"Well, feeling about it the way you seem to feel, I might add that
you’re a damn fool."

"Tell me something novel!" I retorted irritably.

"Can’t," he said.  "That’s the only thing I know."

"Comprehensive," I sneered.

"Complete," was his succinct rejoinder.

"What a comfort you are!" I cried with a harassed laugh.

"What the devil made you get into it?" he growled.

"Fate," I told him.

"It’s a poor fate that doesn’t work both ways," he observed.

"I suppose I sound to you like either a brute or a cad or both," I
pursued.  "But the fact is, Dibdin, I am not a marrying man.  The girl
in question has nothing to do with it.  She’s an admirable, a splendid
girl, far too good for the likes of me.  But I simply hate the thought
of marriage—of owing duties to anybody.  I want to be free to do
absolutely as I please, to go off with you to the Solomon Islands, or
China or Popocatepetl if I want to, or to run after some first edition
if I feel inclined.  In short, I don’t want to bother about wives or
children or whooping cough or measles, or have them bother about me.
Would you call that selfish?"

"Damnably," said Dibdin without emotion.

"Well, then, that is what I am," I retorted warmly, "and it is no use
trying to change.  It takes myriad kinds to make a world.  I am one
kind—that kind."

"No," said Dibdin gravely, "no—I think you’re some other kind."

"This eternal, beautiful, boundless freedom," I went on, ignoring
him—"surely it is good that some mortals should have it, Dibdin—and I am
losing it."

"Three weeks off, did you say—the obsequies?" he queried.

"Yes," I answered sadly.

"Then maybe it won’t happen," he remarked to the ceiling.

"What makes you say that?" I caught him up.

"Don’t know," he replied in his carefully lazy tone that he assumed when
he wished to sound oracular. "Just a feeling—that you deserve something,
a good deal—worse than marriage."  Then abruptly sitting up in his chair
and pulling a thin volume out of his pocket, "Look at this," he
muttered.

I took the vellum-bound book and opened it.

"An Elzevir ’Horace’!" I exclaimed.  "Where did you get it?"  All the
rest of the world and all my cares thinned to insignificance before this
treasure.

"A plutocratic book collector living in a mausoleum on Fifth Avenue has
just given it to me," he replied. "It’s a duplicate.  He has another and
a better one of the same date.  D’you value it any at all?"

"Value it!" I cried, as my fingers caressed it.  "Why, certainly I value
it.  It is a perfectly genuine Elzevir—the great Louis himself printed
this at Leyden.  It is not what you would call a tall copy, and binders
have sacrilegiously spoiled an originally fine broad margin.  It’s not
perfect.  But it’s a splendid specimen of early printing, with title
page and colophon intact.  It’s a beauty!"

"You beat the devil," murmured Dibdin in his beard. "You can be
enthusiastic about some things, that’s clear. Anyway, the book is
yours," he concluded.  "I have no use for it."

"You don’t mean it!" I exulted incredulously.  "I am simply delighted,
Dibdin, tickled pink, as you would say!  I have long wanted the Elzevir
’Horace.’  I haven’t a single Elzevir to compare with this.  Think of
this coming out of the blue!"  And in my foolish way I fell to gloating
over the thin, musty little volume, examining the worm drills, holding
it up to the light for watermarks in the gray paper and, in general, I
suppose, behaving like an imbecile.

"Illustrates my point," muttered Dibdin, fumbling with a malodorous corn
cob and a tobacco pouch.

"Point?  What point?"  I looked up at him abstractedly.

"Out of the blue—this book you say you yearned for—anything may happen."

"And you call yourself a scientist," I marveled, leaning back in the
chair.  "Things like this happen—yes. But in the serious business of
life you’re ground between the millstones of the gods—a victim of events
you cannot control.  Look at Rabelais and Montaigne, two free spirits if
ever there were any.  Yet one was a victim of priestcraft so that he
cried out until he roared with orgiastic laughter, and the other a
victim of property,—took a wife that disgusted him.  (I have beautiful
editions of both of them, by the way, which you ought to look at.)  But
each of them was a victim."

"A victim if you’re victimized."  Dibdin puffed at his foul pipe.  (I
cannot make him smoke a decent cigarette.)  "But if you know how to play
with circumstances, you use them as I saw a cowboy in Arizona ride a
bucking broncho.  You ride them till you break them. Look at me, my
boy," he went on, with a grin of mingled modesty and bravado.  "I knew I
was a tramp at heart. But my people would have been broken with
humiliation if I had turned out a ’hobo’ on their hands.  So I took to
ruins and buried cities in out-of-the-way places, and politely speaking
I’m an archeologist.  But I tramp about the world to my heart’s
content."

That, I admit, presented Dibdin and the whole matter in a new light to
me.

"Why," I finally asked, "didn’t I do that?"

"Because you’re not a tramp at heart," puffed Dibdin.

"Yes, I am!" I almost shouted at him.  "That is exactly what I must be,
since I have such a horror of home, of domesticity."

"You with all this comfort—a flat, a housekeeper, all the truck in this
room?  No, no, my boy!  You’re cast for something else.  Hanged if I
know for what, though.  These things are too deep to generalize about.
Time will tell."

I rose and circled the room, inanely surveying "this comfort" that seems
to offend Dibdin, though he likes well enough to sprawl in my best
arm-chair.  The books, the rugs, the fire, the alluring chairs, the
happy hours that I have spent here seemed to crowd about me like the
ghosts of familiars, praying to be not driven from their haunts.

"Then why the devil," I demanded accusingly, pausing before him, "did
you encourage me and praise my little papers and bits of work in college
when you were teaching me?"

"Trying to teach you," he corrected placidly.  "You’ve never been a
teacher in a large fashionable college, my boy.  When most of your
so-called students are taking your course because it is reported to be a
snap, so they can spend their evenings at billiards, musical comedies,
or the like, any young devil with a ray of intellectual interest becomes
the teacher’s golden-haired boy.  Even teachers are human.  You’ll admit
you haven’t set even so much as your own ink-well on fire as yet."

"All that is beside the point," I returned irritably. "Here I am in the
devil of a fix and you are talking like Job’s comforters."

"Yes," he agreed, "I suppose I am.  But in the end it was not the
comforters but events that pulled Job up. Await events with resignation
and expectancy, Randolph, my lad, and play the game.  Stake your coin
and wait until the wheel stops and see what happens."

"A fine teacher you are!" I laughed at him, albeit mirthlessly.

"No good at all," he assented cheerfully, knocking his pipe against the
ash tray and pocketing the noisome thing.  "And didn’t I chuck teaching
the minute events made it possible?  Events, my boy; they are the
teacher and the deities to tie to.  Set up a little altar to the great
god Event—right here in your perfumed little temple. That’s what I
should do," he concluded, muttering into his beard.

"Incidentally," he added, "I’m getting extraordinarily hungry."

"Oh, sorry," I murmured.  "Glad you’re here to eat with me, anyway.  It
enables me to put off breaking the news of my coming marriage to
Griselda."

"What—you haven’t told her yet?" shouted Dibdin, sitting up in his
chair.  "That fine, upright Highland lassie?  Then you’re no disciple of
mine!  Face things with courage and face ’em fairly, Randolph.  Go and
tell her now!  I’ll wait here with my highly moral support."

"I—I can’t," I blurted miserably.

"Yes, you can," he insisted with obstinacy.  "Go and do it now."

With a gesture of desperation I pressed the bell.

"If I am going to tell her anything," I mumbled between my teeth, "I’ll
say it right here."  Dibdin laughed ghoulishly.

"This cowardice—this shrinking from life," he philosophized
detestably—"that’s what our kind of education brings about."

Griselda appeared at the door.

"You rang, Mr. Randolph."

"Yes—er—yes, Griselda," and I felt myself idiotically hot and flushed.
"I wanted to say—" and beads of perspiration prickled my forehead.  Then
in desperation, I stammered out,

"Mr. Dibdin, Griselda—he is dining here to-night—that’s all, Griselda!"

Dibdin’s laugh rattled throatily in the room.  How I hated him at that
moment!  Griselda swept us with an impenetrable glance.

"There is a place laid for him," she uttered in the tone of one whose
patience is a sternly acquired virtue. And she left us.

"Better strip, my lad," chuckled Dibdin, "and put on your wrestling
trunks."

"What d’you mean?" I demanded sulkily.

"The tussle that life is going to give you will be a caution."

"A lot you know about life!"

"Not much, that’s a fact," Dibdin observed more soberly.  "But I’ve had
to face some things, Randolph. I’ve had to grin at a lot of greasy Arabs
in the desert who thought they would hold me for ransom.  I’ve had to
laugh out of their dull ambition a pack of villainous Chinese thugs in
Gobi, who felt it would profit them to cut my throat.  I’ve had to make
my way alone through a jungle in Central America for days when the
beastly natives absconded with the supplies and left me in the middle of
a job of excavation.  I’ve had other little episodes.  But never, son, I
may say truthfully, have I shown such blue funk as you did just then
before the patient Griselda."

"Rot!" was my only answer.  "Let’s go in to dinner."


It is after ten.  Old Dibdin is gone and I have been putting down these
foolish notes.

It must be by some odd law of balance or compensation, I suppose, that
those whose lives are least important keep the fullest record of them.
It is a weakness of mine to wish to read in the future the things I
failed to do in the past.  It is really for you, O Randolph Byrd, aged
seventy, that I am writing these notes.

If only Gertrude had made up her masterful mind to three months hence,
instead of three weeks, I should have taken my last fling and gone by
the next boat to Italy.

Biagi, that courteous scholar and humanist, writes me from the
Laurentian at Florence that he has discovered some new material
concerning Brunetto Latini—the teacher of Dante.  Among the few
ambitions that I dally with there has always been the one to write a
life of Brunetto, who taught Dante how a man may become immortal.  I
have a fine copy of Ser Brunetto’s works, the "Tesoro" and the
"Tesoretto", and it seems a shabby enough little encyclopedia in verse
of knowledge now somewhat out of date.  There must have been, therefore,
something in the man himself that enabled Dante to attribute his own
greatness to the teacher.

But I cannot go to Florence and return in three weeks.

Gertrude, I know, will tell me I can do it after we’re married.  But she
will expect me to "clean up the job" in two weeks.

There is nothing about Gertrude that terrifies me so much as her
efficiency.  I shall never dare to mention the subject to her, and so I
shall never attempt it and never know the mystery of Dante’s
immortality.  It is all one, however; what have I to do with greatness?
No more than with marriage.

Bur-r-r!  The room is cold.  _Sparge ligna super foco_, as cheerful old
Horace advises.  I have just complied and put another log on the fire.

My nerves must be a shade off color to-night.  I could have sworn a
moment ago, as the room grew chilly, that my sister Laura was standing
before me.  It is my guilty conscience, I suppose.  Too late to call her
now.  Besides, the telephone is no doubt still "out of order."  Poor
Laura!  I saw her, white as death, with tears running down her drawn
cheeks.  What things are human nerves when a bit unstrung!  I shall go
and see Laura to-morrow.

I have had my conversation with Griselda and it came off not amiss.

"Griselda," I began carelessly, after Dibdin had gone, "did I mention to
you that I am to be married in three weeks?"

Griselda is not one to waste breath in futile and flamboyant feminine
exclamations.  She turned somewhat pale, I thought.

"You know very well you did not," she answered in level tones, polishing
a spoon the while.

"Well, I meant to," I told her truthfully enough. "Didn’t you expect
it?"

"No, sir," was her blunt reply.

"Neither did I," I blurted out before I knew it.

A wry, unaccustomed smile for a moment illumined her dark, gypsy-like
features.

"You needn’t tell me that," she retorted, and I wonder what she meant by
it.  It is not like her to waste words. "Am I," she continued, "to take
this as notice to find a new place?"

"God forbid!" I cried in horror.  "Whatever happens, Griselda, you
remain with me—let that be understood."

"And suppose Miss Bayard shouldn’t want me?" she demanded with quiet
intensity.

"Then she will probably not want me," I told her. "That question won’t
arise.  Besides, Griselda," I went on, "we haven’t decided yet how we
are going to manage.  Miss Bayard will probably want to keep her
apartment and I mine.  She would hardly wish to be bothered with me all
the time."

"And you would call that marriage!" exclaimed Griselda aghast.

"Why not?" I queried mildly.  "I don’t know much about it, Griselda, but
marriage is determined by the kind of license you get at the City Hall
and what the alderman says to you.  The leases of apartments have
nothing to do with it, I’m quite sure—though I might inquire."

Griselda’s face was blank for a moment.  Then on a sudden she was bent
double in a gale of wild, hysterical laughter.  Never have I known her
so shaken by meaningless cachinnation.  Perhaps her own nerves are no
better than mine.  Even now I still hear her rattling deeply from time
to time like muffled thunder.  But I don’t care now.  What a relief to
get it over!

It is nearly bedtime.  Casting over the events of the day, I cannot but
conclude that my own will has played too small a part in the whole
matter.

I must see Gertrude to-morrow in good time and acquaint her with my
desire to run over to Florence before we are married and look up Biagi’s
new material bearing upon the blessed old heathen, Brunetto Latini.
Since Gertrude desires me to be great and famous, she cannot deny me the
opportunity to discover how a great and famous man accomplished the
trick.  Besides, what has been delayed three years can surely support a
further delay of three months.

But, good heavens!  What is this?  Voices—the scuffling of feet in the
hallway—what army is invading me at this hour!  I believe I hear
children’s voices—and a scream from Griselda, who has never screamed in
her life!




                             *CHAPTER III*


Laura—my dear sister Laura—is dead!  Her children are with me!

Without warning she dropped suddenly under her burdens and with her
dying breath confided her children to me—me!

That one cataclysmic fact has taken its abode in my brain and numbed it
as well as all my nerves to a chill and deadly paralysis that excludes
everything else.  It still seems wholly unbelievable—some nightmare from
which I shall awake with a vast sickly sort of relief to the old custom
of my tranquil life.

The turbulence and the pain of the last three days, however, are still
lashing about me like the angry waves after a tempest, in a manner too
realistic for any dream. I am broad awake now, I know, and for hours I
have been blankly staring into a very abyss of darkness.

What will happen or what I shall do next, I haven’t the shadow of an
idea.

Laura is dead and her children are with me, and I am their guardian and
sole reliance.  Who could have forecast such a fate or such a rôle for
me?  Three days!  It is incredible!  Only three days ago, I was
languidly protesting because I could not take ship forthwith for Italy
to examine some manuscript at the Laurentian in Florence!

No, by heavens!  It was not I.  It was some one else—some one I knew
vaguely, in a past age, a man to be envied, serene and cheerful, blest
of life, whom I shall never meet again.

The last three days!  I cannot banish them and yet I cannot meet the
memory of them.  Was it I who faced the tragedy, or was it some one
else?  Nothing surely is more tragic than a young mother’s death—and
that young mother my own sister!  Who was it that stonily passed through
the ordeal of the "arrangements" and the black pantomime of the
sepulture?  I cannot record it even for myself, for never, I know, shall
I desire to be reminded of it.  At the death of my mother, I still had
Laura with her practical woman’s sense.  But now I was alone.  I say now
because however remote it seems, this tragedy will always be present.
My life must forever remain under its stupefying spell.

It is not credible that only three days ago I sat here in my study
revolving trifles, those many shining trifles that went to make up my
former life.

Three days ago the silence of this house was disturbed by the voices of
children, the clatter of their feet, and for the first time in my life I
heard Griselda scream.

"Oh, Mr. Randolph," she rushed in, sobbing, with the dry tearless sobs
of those much acquainted with grief, "Miss Laura—she—the children are
here!"

I knew.  Though inwardly I sank all but lifeless under the blow, I knew
clearly that Laura was dead.

"Is she very ill?" I heard myself asking faintly, with a clutching
desire to shrink still from the appalling truth.

"She—oh, Mr. Randolph,’" she lamented, "don’t you understand—ye know
very well!" she suddenly added with a harshness that surprised me.  "We
shall have to put the children to bed in your bedroom."

It was as though she had suddenly revolted at the softness of the
atmosphere in my environment, at any artificiality or evasion.  She
seemed abruptly determined to face the stark facts in the open.

"The girl will sleep with me," she concluded tonelessly and turned to
go.

"Which girl?" I queried dazedly.

"Her that brought the bairns," she replied and left me.

"Send her in here—I want to speak to her!" I shouted after Griselda.  I
could not face the thought of going out there.  I was held to my chair
by a sheer pitiful lack of courage to move into the dreadful gulf before
me.

I closed my eyes and endeavored to still the tumult in my brain into
silence.  I wanted to think.  But only those can achieve silence who do
not need it.  I could not.  I opened my eyes.

A thin little girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen stood before me.  This
surely could not be the girl Griselda had referred to in charge of the
children.  She was herself a child.  Were my disordered senses tricking
me? I experienced the thrill Poe’s hero must have felt at sight of the
raven on the bust of Pallas.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

"I am Alicia, sir," she answered with large, frightened gray eyes
fastened upon mine.

"What—what is it?" I stammered.

"The lady said you wanted to see me."

"Did you bring the children?" I breathed, incredulous.

"Yes, sir."

I was awestruck.  Her eyes, were the eyes of a child yet they were
filled with sorrow and a searching fear old as the world.

"How old are you?" I could not help asking, with an irrelevance foolish
enough in the circumstances.

"Going on fourteen, sir."

"And you—you are the nurse?"

"I helped Mrs. Pendleton with the children before school and after
school," she answered with more assurance now, but still uneasy.  "I am
a mother’s helper, sir."  There was no mirth in my soul, but the muscles
contorted my features into a sickly grin.

"I see," I murmured mendaciously.  But I saw only my own confused
turpitude at my blindness and neglect in face of the shifts and needs
poor Laura had been compelled to suffer.

"Where do you come from?" I inquired with a dry throat, ashamed to ask
anything of importance.

"From—the Home for—Dependent Children—in Sullivan County," she murmured
hesitatingly, with a tinge of color in her cheeks.  On a sudden I saw
her pale lips tremble and guiltily I realized that, thoughtless, after
my wont, I was subjecting her to an ordeal merely because I was in
torment.

"Sit down," I forced myself to speak evenly, "and tell me exactly what
happened."

She sidled to the big chair, her gaze still fixed upon me, as though to
watch me was henceforth her first anxiety.  She gripped the arm of the
chair and hung undecided for a moment as though fearful of making
herself so much at home as to sit down in this room.

"Sit down," I reiterated more encouragingly, "and tell me what happened
to my sister."

"Yes, sir," she murmured obediently, perching on the edge of the great
chair.  "Well," she began, "when I came home from school in the
afternoon Mrs. Pendleton was lying down.  The children were hanging
about her bed and she looked very pale."

"Yes, yes," I urged her on impatiently.

"Then I took them downstairs and gave them their bread and milk and
tried to read to them so as to keep them quiet.  But only the littlest
one, Jimmie, wanted to listen.  Randolph and Laura wanted to play Kings
and Queens."  I realized that I must hear the story in the girl’s own
way.

"Then," she continued, with an effort at exactitude, "I thought that
Jimmie and I had better join them, because then I could keep them from
making so much noise. We played until supper time.  But Mrs. Pendleton
didn’t feel well enough to come down.  So the children and I had supper
downstairs and Hattie—that’s the cook—took Mrs. Pendleton’s supper up on
a tray."

That must have been while I was lamenting to Dibdin over the hardness of
my lot.

"Then what happened?" I muttered, turning away from her gaze.

"I went up to see if Mrs. Pendleton wanted anything," she resumed
nervously, frightened by my movement, "and she said no, but that she’d
get up later when it was time for them to go to bed.  So I helped them
with their lessons until bedtime and Mrs. Pendleton came down.  She said
she felt a little better, but she looked very sad and white.  And when
she began to walk up the stairs—" her lips grew tremulous again and the
tears dashed out of her eyes, but she finally controlled herself
bravely.

"—She fell—and—" she began to weep bitterly, "she just said, ’The
children—my brother—telephone—’ and that was all—" and that piteous
child who was no kindred to my poor sister sobbed convulsively.

That must have been about the time when I was at table with Dibdin and,
over the sauterne, complaining to him of the narrowness of my income in
view of the lacunæ and wants of my library.

"We couldn’t—get you—on the telephone," she found breath to utter at
last.  "So I brought the children here—Hattie told me how to go—Hattie’s
over there alone."

Nothing in this world can ever stab me again as the poignancy of her
recital stabbed me.  My life seemed shattered, irreparable.  All my
dreams were at an end. Laura was gone and here were her children thrust
by destiny upon my hands—unless their scoundrel of a father should ever
return to relieve me of them.  I had lived peacefully and harmlessly in
my way, but for some inscrutable reason Fate had selected me for her
heaviest blow.

"Very well," I told her as kindly as I could in the conditions, "now you
go back to Griselda and go to bed. I’ll have to think things out."

"Oh—but the house!" exclaimed the little girl—and never again do I wish
to see such horror on a childish countenance as at that instant froze
the features of little Alicia.  "All alone," she added, her thin
shoulders heaving.  "Aren’t you going over now, sir?"

"Now!" I exclaimed, looking automatically at my watch.  "Why—yes—in a
few minutes, child."

"But—Hattie is there alone—" she stammered. "There’s nobody else—then
I’d better go back."

It was obvious, of course, that I must go at once.  But why should a
child see spontaneously that to which I am obtuse?

"Oh, well, you are right, of course—I must go immediately—I hadn’t
thought—I’ll go over now"—and I turned away from her, lifted the curtain
and gazed out into the wet, murky street below.  Life had collapsed and
the ruins of it were tumbled about my hot ears.  I hardly know how long
I stood there, completely oblivious of the girl Alicia.

"Please, Mr. Byrd," I was startled to hear a tearful, childish voice
behind me—"won’t you see the children before you go, sir?"

I wheeled about sharply.

"The children?  Oh, yes—no!"  The horror of the situation fell about me
like an avalanche that had hung suspended for a moment and then crashed
smotheringly over me.  "No," I whispered huskily, "I can’t—not now—not
now!"  A kind of chill darkness numbed my senses.

Like a pistol shot I suddenly heard the harsh voice of Griselda in the
doorway.

"The cab is at the door, Mr. Randolph.  Don’t forget your rubbers."

And like an automaton galvanized into life I found myself whirling to
the house of death.




                              *CHAPTER IV*


For a week the children have been with me and nothing has yet been done
about them.  Another week, I think, will drive me mad with indecision.

I seem unable to emerge from the shadow of mystery and terror into which
my serene world has been so suddenly plunged.  The book-lined study is
my solitary refuge; and like a schoolgirl I can do no more than unpack
my heart with words.

I have seen Gertrude.

It is astonishing how resourceless are even one’s nearest and dearest
friends in face of anything really capital.

"Poor Ranny!  How ghastly!" Gertrude cried, when she first heard of it,
wringing my hand.  "But buck up, dear boy.  You know how I feel.  There
is a way out for everything."  She spoke, I thought, as though I were in
need of ready money.

She was here this afternoon to see the children. Gertrude is no hand
with children.  They seemed strangely shy of her, a woman, though they
literally fell upon the neck of growling, grizzled old Dibdin.  They are
still subdued by the suddenness of their tragedy, though real sorrow
Gertrude tells me, is, thank Heaven, beyond them.

"We’ll have to think up a way of disposing of the dear things," she
remarked briskly.  And though I am myself completely at a loss what to
do with them, I cannot say I relished her way of putting it.

"What, for instance, could you suggest?" I inquired dully.

"Schools, Ranny dear, schools," she impatiently answered.  "There are
homelike places run by splendid women—just made for such cases.  Why,
even the little one—Jimmie, is it?—How old is he; four?—There are places
even for kiddies as young as that."

A heavy confusion, the reverse of enthusiasm, oppressed me.

"You forget, Gertrude," I endeavored as gently as possible to remind
her, "Laura confided those children to me with her dying breath—to
me—her only relative. Do you think I ought to fling them out at once,
God knows where!"

"Good Lord, Ranny!" she cried, flushing with a smile of anger peculiar
to Gertrude when she is annoyed. "What a sentimentalist you are at
bottom—after all!"

"A sentimentalist—I?"  I felt hurt.  "Just put yourself in my place,
Gertrude, and see how easy such a decision would be for you."

"I do, Ranny; that is just what I am doing," she insisted impatiently.
"But don’t you see that if there is any one thing you cannot do, it is
to keep them here—or in my apartment?"

"Yes," I said, "I see that.  But I also see that I can’t pitch them out
among total strangers, a week after their mother’s—"  I could not trust
my foolish voice to finish.

"Do you forget," demanded Gertrude with her smile that brands me
imbecile, "do you forget, Ranny, that we are to be married in two
weeks?"

"No, Gertrude—far from it.  But that is why we are discussing this
problem—because it is perplexing. Besides, schools of the right sort are
bound to be pretty expensive things."

"Oh," said Gertrude, "of course.  But poor Laura’s income ought to be
enough—"

"My dear Gertrude, that is what I don’t know. Carmichael is to give me
an accounting of it to-day or to-morrow.  Laura never spoke of her money
matters to me.  But, as you say, there will probably be enough. Only, it
isn’t altogether that—you see, Gertrude—"  I floundered.

"Yes, I see, Ranny, I see," she hammered at me in the maddening way
women have.  "You simply can’t get up enough will power to do something.
It’s the old story. But you’ll have to, my dear," and she smiled
sweetly. "You have all my sympathy and all the coöperation you’ll take.
But the one thing we can’t do is stand still. You understand that—don’t
you, Ranny?"

"Yes.  I understand that.  But my brain is as fertile of plans as a
glass door knob."

"I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Ranny," Gertrude summarized. "I know all
this has been a great shock to you. I’ll let you alone for a couple of
days to turn things over.  And think of what I’ve said.  But then we
must come to some definite decision.  I’d give anything if this terrible
thing had not happened now—but it can’t be helped, can it?"

Now, that was very sweet and reasonable of Gertrude. And it is a
thousand pities that she feels distressed. But it would have been ten
thousand more if poor Laura had died just after we had been married
instead of before.  As it is, the problem before me is largely mine.
Were we now married, Gertrude must have had to bear an undue share of
it.

Shall I ever win back to the old tranquillity and the peace that was
mine?  That was the first thought that came to me when I parted from
Gertrude, a selfish thought as I immediately realized, in view of what
is facing me.  I can no longer think as I have thought and new feelings
are struggling for birth within me, commensurate with the new
responsibility.  The world, as I walk through it, seems to present an
aspect strangely different from what it did a week ago.  It is so chill
and alien and hollow!

As I was reëntering my study I heard a crash in the dining room, which
is now the children’s room, and when I glanced in upon them the girl
Alicia was gathering up smithereens of glass and Ranny, the eldest boy,
quietly announced, "It broke" in a manner that so obviously gave him
away, all the others could not help laughing; and they laughed the
louder when I joined them.  Confused and angry, the boy ran out of the
room.

It is a world apart, the world of children, into which parents, I
suppose, grow gradually.  Not being the parent of these children, I fear
I shall never penetrate it.

Sooner or later they must be sent away, even as Gertrude maintains.  And
I must face that event forthwith.

I was interrupted at this point by the irruption into the room of
Jimmie, the youngest, inimitably, grotesquely shapeless in his
nightgear, pattering toward me and taking refuge between my knees.  He
was being pursued by the girl Alicia who stood shyly and distressfully
smiling in the doorway, as though all explanation were futile.

"Well, old boy, what is it?" I demanded with mock severity, though in
truth I was more afraid of him than he evidently was of me.

"Iwantsayprayerstoyoulikeamummy," he uttered in one excited breath, as
though it were one single word.

"You want what?"

"He says he wants to say his prayers to you, sir," spoke up the girl
clearly.  "I am sorry—he broke away. Shall I take him away, sir?"

"Wanto say my prayers to you like to mummy," insisted Laura’s child,
scrambling upon my knees.  And with a pang of sadness that set all my
senses aching I saw the picture of the past—poor Laura with her sweet,
resigned face, living when she lived only in her children, listening to
the prayers of this sprite with the silken sunshine in his hair.

"All right, Jimmie," I murmured faintly, as he clung to me; "go ahead."

Tightly clutching me about the neck and nestling his face against mine,
he brought forth with childish throaty sweetness the few words to the
creative Spirit that mankind the world over, in one form or another,
addresses as Our Father.  "And God," he concluded with brilliant triumph
in his eyes, "bless Mummy and Uncle Ranny."

Nothing that I can remember has ever moved me as that child moved me.
Like St. Catherine of Genoa at her decisive confessional I seemed to
receive a profound inner wound by that child’s act, tender and bitter
and sweet, that I never desire to heal.  For the moment Laura and I were
nearer to being one than ever we had been in her lifetime.  Nevermore
shall I forget the sweetness and fragrance of that little child and his
warm nestling faith in me.  And I am planning to cast him off.

"Come, now," interposed Alicia, as though breaking a spell.

"One more hug," cried Jimmie, with the arrogance of righteousness.  And
suiting his action to his words, he clambered down with engaging
clumsiness from my knees and padded toward Alicia.  Once more I was
alone with my thoughts.

Can it be that some instinct in the child whose heart is still imbedded
in his mother’s had made him seek the one person who had been nearest
his mother?

I cannot say, I cannot say.

Oh, God—and I must send him and the others, Laura’s children, away, away
among strangers!

There seems to be no other way out.

I have been turning idly the pages of books in a way bookish people
have, seeking for inspiration, for some word of guidance.  Brunetto
tells me on the word of St. Bernard, that tarnished gold is better than
shining copper; and that the wild ass brays once every hour and thus
makes an excellent timepiece for his savage neighborhood.  But nothing
of this casts a glimmer of light upon my dilemma.  Rabelais keeps
shouting from his yellow page, "_fais ce que vondras_."  But what is it
that I desire to do?

Ah, I know what I desire to do!  There is counsel in the old books,
after all.

I will have in the girl Alicia, and see what I can glean. She was
brought up without kith or kin of her own. And though an institution is
more of a machine than a good school, still those who had the rearing of
her were total strangers.  There might be some gleam of suggestion in
that.


Alicia has been here.

"Come, child, sit down," I invited her, observing that she still
displayed a tendency to stand in awe of me.  "I wish to ask you some
questions."  But her tense little face was still haunted by a vague
fear.  "It’s about the children," I added, and she seemed somewhat more
at ease on the edge of her chair.

"How long were you at that Home—in Sullivan County?" I began, grinning
by way of ingratiating myself.

"Ever since I can remember, sir," she answered.

"Were they kind to you?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"How kind?—What did they do for you?"

"They gave us food and—and medicine when we were sick.  And on Christmas
we had a tree.  Only nobody ever came to see me.  I always looked out of
the window for somebody to come.  But no one came."

"Yes, yes, I know," I pursued.  "But did they show you
affection—sympathy?"

Alicia was silent.

"Don’t you know what I mean?" I pressed.

"Yes, sir, I think I do."

"Then why don’t you answer?"

"I—it’s hard to explain," and she laughed a frightened little laugh.
"There is no one there to—to do those things you said.  There were five
hundred of us there.  If you’re not sick you just go on like all the
rest. If you’re sick they give you oil or something.  Sometimes a child
pretends it’s sick just so the matron or a nurse might take it in her
lap and make a fuss over it. And some are naughty—for the same reason."

I nodded gravely, but my heart was gripped by a poignant aching.  I saw
Laura’s children compelled to feign illness or delinquency in order to
receive a touch of individual attention which, I suppose, every child
spontaneously craves.

"Were you glad to leave there?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, sir!" she answered eagerly.

"Tragic, my poor sister dying," I said, half to myself. "She was an
ideal mother.  Now—I hardly know what to do."

Alicia leaped from her chair and came yearning toward me.  Her little
face tremulous and working, she cried out:

"Oh, Mr. Byrd, you won’t send us away—to a Home—will you?"

"No, no!—Not to a Home," I replied defensively. "But schools—there must
be good places for children—"

"They’d feel terribly," she stifled a sob.  "They love it so here—Even
here Laura cries for her mother every night—and little Jimmie—"

"Never mind," I took her up hastily, "nothing is decided yet, my dear
child.  I’m glad I spoke to you.  You see," I ran on, "there’s so little
room here, and I—I know nothing about children—"

"But there’s nothing to do," she protested, sobbing.

"Nothing?"  I smiled vaguely in an effort to cheer her and laid my hand
upon her thin shoulder.

"Nothing except just love them," she said.  "I’ll take care of them—all
I can."  How simple!

"Well, well, we shall see," I aimed to be reassuring.

"Do I have to go—back to the Home?" she asked brokenly, with an arm
hiding her face.

"Oh, no, certainly not," I answered hastily.  "We’ll find a better way
than that.  Now," I added, "be a good girl, dry your eyes; run along and
don’t say a word about—our conversation."

"No, sir," she murmured obediently.  And still gulping, she left me.

It is obvious that the girl Alicia has been of decisive help to me!

Yet it is equally obvious that I cannot keep the children here.


Dibdin has been here and he has left me in a state of distraction, worse
if possible than that I had been in before.

The good fellow endeavored to be vastly and solidly cheering.

"All nonsense," he growled, "about children being hostages to fortune.
They are the only contribution a human being really makes to the world.
All the digging that burrowing animals such as I do in the four corners
of the earth, all the fuss that fellows in laboratories make over test
tubes and microscopes and metals and germs, all the stuff that people
sat up nights to put into those damned books of yours—all of that is
done for them—for the next generation and the generations they will
beget."

"Eloquent!" I flippantly mocked him; "but how is it you’ve elected to be
what you call a tramp?"

"Elected?" he grunted disdainfully.  "I didn’t elect. It elected me.
Besides," he continued, lowering his voice, "I would have given it up
like a shot—given up anything, changed my life inside out, done anything
if I had been able to marry the one woman I wanted.  I’m one of those
strange beasts for whom there is only one woman in the world—no other:

    ’If heaven would make me such another world
    Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,
    I’d not have sold her for it,’

he quoted, and added with a hoarse laugh, "you ought to know your
Othello."

"Then why on earth didn’t you marry her?" I could not help marveling.

"Too late," he murmured, with a whimsical smiling twitch to his head,
that is very engaging.  "She was already married to somebody else when I
first saw her. Too late," he repeated with ruminative sadness.  "But
don’t let us talk about that," he broke off abruptly. "Have the kids
begun to go to school yet?"

"What is the use?" I answered him gloomily.  "I haven’t formed any plans
for them yet."

"Plans?  What do you mean?" he inquired, puzzled. Like the girl Alicia
he seemed to think there was nothing to do that required any thought.
And I wondered if the simple souls in life are only the improvident or
the very young.

"Do you see this place," I demanded irritably, "as a home for a family
with three children, to say nothing of a fourth in attendance upon
them?"

"Have to have a larger place—farther out—of course," he answered glibly,
puffing at his pipe.

"And am I a person to take care of and bring up three or four children?"

"Why the devil not?" he demanded.

"Why the devil yes?" I retorted fiercely.  "What do I know about
children?  What experience have I had?  Do you see me as a wet nurse to
a lot of babies?"

"Wet nurse be hanged," he responded gruffly. "Here’s your first chance
to be of use in the world and—you talk like that—"

"Easy to talk," ruefully from me.

"Well, what the blazes do you mean to do?"

"That is what I am trying to work out," I fell upon him bitterly.
"D’you think it’s easy?  I’ve got to work out some plan—find homes for
them—the right kind of schools—with a home environment.  Oh, it’s easy,
I assure you!  Besides," I ran on savagely, "you seem to forget I’m to
be married in two weeks."

"I did forget that," growled Dibdin, with a semblance of contrition.
"What does the lady say?"

"Well, what should she say?  Could you expect a girl on her wedding day
to become the harassed mother of three children not her own?"

Dibdin jumped from his chair, ground an oath between his teeth and his
forehead was a file of wrinkles.

"Listen, Randolph," he began in another voice.  "It’s damnably tough,
and I know it.  But you can’t, you simply can’t disperse your sister’s
children to God knows where.  You are the only relation they’ve got.
Put yourself in their place.  It would be damnation.  If you need—more
money," he stammered in confusion, "why, dash it—I’m an old enough
friend of yours to—to advance you some, eh?"

And he laughed raucously, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

"You are a good sort—of tramp," I grinned sheepishly, seizing his hand.
"But it isn’t that.  I don’t know as yet what Laura left them.  But it
isn’t that.  I feel like—like hell about it—but what can I do—what with
Gertrude and—and everything else.  Oh, it’s the easiest thing in the
world, I assure you.—But I wish to God I could see my way to keeping
them!"

"Easy or not," said Dibdin huskily, "if you send those children away,
I’ll break every bone in your body."

I laughed almost hysterically.  I know Dibdin.  When he is most moved
and most sympathetic, he is at his most violent.

"Don’t go," I clung to him as with sunken head he shouldered toward the
door.

"Must," he growled.  "I’ve got to think, too."

"I wish you had married, Dibdin, and had children of your own," I all
but whispered with my hand on his shoulder.  "And I’m sorry for the
woman.  You’re a good devil, Dibdin.  I wish I knew who the woman is."

"I’ll tell you," murmured Dibdin, with a queer throatiness of tone.
"I’ll tell you who she was.  It can’t matter now.  She was—No, by God!
I can’t—not now!"

And he shuffled out, leaving me gazing after him speechless and
open-mouthed.




                              *CHAPTER V*


The girl Alicia keeps watching me like some bewildered household animal
dimly aware of the breaking up of its household.  Always I am conscious
of her great eyes upon me.  To her, I presume, I am a Setebos who can
inflict pain and torture, like Death himself; who can disrupt her little
world of clinging affections by the merest movement of my hand.

I am in that process of turning things over to which Gertrude has
indulgently consigned me and I am if anything farther away from a
decision than I was twenty-four hours ago.  I finger my books and open
at random a volume of Florio’s "Montaigne" in an edition that is as
fragrant of good ink and paper as the Tudor English is rich, and the
first line that falls under my eye is that of Seneca, "_He that lives
not somewhat to others, liveth little to himself._"  Does this mean that
my long absorption in my own small concerns has made me incapable of
decision in anything of importance—that I live too little?

I stole into the bedroom last night where the children were sleeping,
while Griselda was making up my couch in the study.

With their flushed faces they lay there almost visibly glowing before my
eyes with that perfect faith that children seem to have in the grown-up
world about them. Heine somewhere speaks of angels guarding the child’s
couch, and it is not sheer poetry.  Their faith and trust, still
illusioned, brevets, I suppose, to angelic rank every one about them.
Randolph, with a slight frown and moving lips, dreaming seemingly of
something active and strenuous, as befits his ripe age of eleven; Laura,
serene with her mother’s countenance and straying curls, and little
Jimmie with his tumbled hair like that of some child by Praxiteles or
Phidias—they slept—secure in their trust, despite their recent
shattering bereavement.

No one can really know anything about children until he has seen them
sleeping.  Like fortune, they are always trustfully in the lap of the
gods.  Never before had they touched me as they seemed to touch the
hidden springs in me at that moment.  It was so, I pictured, that Laura
was wont to steal into their dormitory of nights before going to bed;
and that vision, no doubt, was a potent help to her courage to continue
uncomplainingly and brave in the face of sorrow, humiliation and her
self-effacing loneliness.  Would I had been able to picture such things
more clearly while she was living.

Griselda surprised me emerging from the room and she smiled, the
austere, inscrutable Griselda, with such a smile as Michelangelo might
have depicted on the face of one of his Sistine Sybils, those weird
sisters who seem to know all things because they have suffered all.

I muttered a casual good night to Griselda and brushed by her
nonchalantly, as a boy whistles with apparent carelessness when he feels
most awkward or uneasy.

I slept upon my problem in the way old wives advise you, but to-day I am
no nearer the solution.

I keep trying coolly to imagine them in appropriately chosen schools and
homes, and yet some tugging at my heart strings, some strange alchemy of
the brain, wipes out those images before they are formed and replaces
them with the vision I saw last night in my invaded bedroom.

Who is to help me make a choice?  And before I have put down these words
I realize that no one will help me. My dining room is at this moment
vocal with their laughter—but something within me is more loudly
clamorous yet against the treachery I am planning them. Treachery!  That
is nonsense, of course.  I have a perfect right to decide what I choose.
But already that word keeps recurring in my brain whenever I envisage
their dispersal.


My decision is taken.

I can hardly say who made it.  In reality, I suppose it has made itself.
But however it came about, there—heaven help me!—it is.

Gertrude telephoned that she was coming this afternoon. I offered to go
to her, but she would drop in, she graciously insisted, now that I was a
family man, after lunching with a friend at the Brevoort.

Gertrude’s entry is always breezy and cheerful.

"Hello, Ranny," she murmured lightly, sinking on the sofa and holding
out both hands.  I took them, kissed them and held them in mine.  I was
well aware that for her these were days of tension.

"That’s nice," said Gertrude with a laugh.  "But what I want is a
cigarette, a match and an ash tray."

"Of course, how stupid of me!" I mumbled and supplied her with her
wants.

"Those books, Ranny," she puffed, scanning my laden shelves, "they
terrify me afresh every time I see them—when I think you’ve read them
all."

"They needn’t alarm you," I deprecated quite sincerely. "The more I read
them the less I seem to know—as you will agree."  And I sat facing her.

"No room for the brains to turn round in?" she laughed.  "Oh, come, dear
boy, it’s not so bad as that. I really think," she added more soberly,
"you have a very wise old bean on your shoulders."

"What sudden and startling discovery leads you to words so rash?" I
inquired.

"I’ve made the discovery all right," she nodded with emphasis.  "Anybody
who can handle a situation like this the way you’re handling it is no
piker."

Gertrude often affects the slang of the day as a humorous protest
against what she terms my purism.  But the truth is, I like the
vernacular myself.

"Impart it," I urged her, whereat she smiled.

"Regular street Arab you are," she declared with arch satire, "but what
I mean is this.  I am always one for quick action—and I don’t know much
about children. I urged you to send them away at once.  But I realize
now that so soon after poor Laura’s passing away that would have been
cruel—and it wouldn’t have looked well, besides.  Now I see it more your
way, Ranny."

"You do!" I could not help exclaiming.

"Yes," she continued firmly.  "I see your way is best. I see that we can
be quietly married and have our little trip just the same.  Then, when
we come back, in the natural course of events and rearrangement, we can
look up places for them and settle it all right as rain.  That’s what
you had in your clever old head, Ranny, I’m quite sure—and I admire you
for it."

"I see," I gasped, wondering what words or acts of mine had conveyed
this elaborate strategy to Gertrude. For the space of a minute perhaps I
was sunk in thought. The vision of the children asleep in their innocent
faith in me suddenly arose vividly and smote me to the heart. The
nestling image of Jimmie—the girl Alicia with her great, wistful eyes
telling me that there was nothing to do "but just love them"—all this
was throbbing in my brain with every heartbeat.  And had I in reality
schemed out the intricate design with which Gertrude now credited me?
By no cudgeling of my poor brains could I recall any such devising.  It
was impossible.  It was new to me.  Then something in me that is either
better or worse than myself took the reins of the occasion and, like the
auditor of another’s speech, I heard myself saying with solemn firmness:

"No, Gertrude—you must have mistaken me.  I had no such plan.  We shall
be married, of course, but our marriage can make no difference.  I
cannot turn these children, Laura’s children, out of the house.  Not
now, at all events, not until they’re older.  They have no one in the
world but me and I mean to keep them."

"Mean to keep them!  You mean that?" she gasped. And it pained me to be
the cause of a deep flush on Gertrude’s face and neck.

"I’ve never meant anything more certainly in my life," I told her.

"Then we can’t marry," said Gertrude in a low tone, still scrutinizing
me as though she were wondering whether she had ever met me before.

"Why not?" I cried.  "Why should they make so great a difference?  In
any case, didn’t you have an idea that we would each keep our separate
flats?"

"Don’t talk rot," flared Gertrude in an exasperation which I still
deplore, for the steely glitter in her eyes was not pleasant.  "I am not
going to make myself ridiculous by marrying a houseful of kids for whom
my husband is the nurse.  Do you really stick to that, Ranny?"

"Yes, Gertrude," I nodded.  "I must."

Gertrude gazed at me searchingly for a moment, then to my amazement she
laughed in my face, a trifle louder than her wont.  Laughter was at that
instant far from my thoughts.

"Oh, well," she resumed her earlier lightness of tone, "then we’ll
simply postpone our marriage a while. You’ll get tired of this maternity
game, Ranny, depend on it.  We’ve postponed it three years—a few months
more can’t make much difference, can it?"

Then she approached me and took my hand.

"Little boy’s tender conscience must be given its fling, mustn’t it?"
she began mockingly, in imitation of a child’s speech, in which she does
not excel.  "Never mind, give its little whim its head."

A remarkable woman, is Gertrude.

"Perhaps it’s only proper," she concluded more seriously, "that we
should postpone it, since you are just now in mourning."

"Nonsense," I answered her.  "Laura would certainly never have desired
any such thing.  Our marriage will not be a thing of pomp and orange
blossoms. We could just as well get married now as any other time."

"No, Ranny," she replied decisively.  "Now it’s my turn to be firm.  I
think I am right."

I should honestly have preferred, in spite of the conditions that
surrounded me, to have married Gertrude then and there without further
delay.  We are neither of us young things full of ineffable inanities on
the subject of romance and I experienced a sober desire for all possible
finality in the midst of the jumbled and painful confusion into which
Fate had seen fit to cast me.  But Gertrude was obdurate.

Just as she was about to go there was a gentle tap on the door.
Gertrude, whose hand was already on the knob, opened it.  It was the
girl Alicia.

With a downward quizzical glance Gertrude fixed the girl so that for a
moment she stood fascinated, unable to detach her eyes from Gertrude’s.
She turned them in my direction finally and they were troubled and
imploring.

"Please, Mr. Byrd," she said, "the children want to go for a walk now,
instead of lessons.  The sun is out. Can I take them?"

"Yes, yes," I said hastily.  "By all means."

"Wait a minute," commanded Gertrude, smiling mechanically.  "What is
your name, child?"

"Alicia, ma’am."

"Alicia what?"

"Alicia Palmer," and the child’s voice was tremulous with trepidation.

"And do you give the children lessons?"

"Yes, ma’am," she answered, lowering her eyes as though a crime had
found her out.

"And how old are you?" asked Gertrude not unkindly.

"Going on fourteen, ma’am."  The girl looked up at once, responsive to
the gentler tone.  But wishing to relieve her of the interrogatory, I
lamely put in a word urging that she take the children out at once
before the sun had disappeared.  The girl glided away like a shadow.

"Why, she’s quite attractive—the little thing," murmured Gertrude.
"You’ll have quite a menagerie."  Then, laughingly turning to me, she
cried, "Oh, Ranny, Efficiency ought to be your middle name."

"Perhaps I’d better adopt it?" I murmured.

"Do," said Gertrude.  "Well, so long, old boy, I must be running."  And
in her haste she even forgot to let me kiss her good-by.

So after all the alderman at the City Hall was not to sing his song over
us yet.  For no reason that I can help I seem to be in disgrace with
fortune, Gertrude and aldermen’s eyes.

A nameless melancholy, a kind of humorous sadness, has taken possession
of me.

It is not my lost tranquillity that I regret now, nor does Gertrude’s
taunt of inefficiency disturb me.  But at bottom I have always realized
the type of man that I am not.  The type of man who stands four-square
in face of all the shocks and emergencies of life, who can meet all
changes and events with equal courage, who can take any situation
smilingly by the hand as though he were its indisputable and indulgent
master, that is the sort of man I should wish to be.  But all my own
defects clamorously accuse me of embodying the exact opposite of such an
ideal.  I have shrunk away from life until it fits me like a coarse
ill-cut garment rather than a glove. It takes a vast deal of living to
be alive, and the dread obsession haunts me that I have become as one
mummified in this dim catacomb of books.


I have been to Carmichael’s office at his request and the blow that he
has dealt me is heavier than any since Laura’s death.

Laura, it appears, in her desperate desire to increase her income, had
been speculating in the lying promises of oil and mining stocks which
offered fabulous returns. One after another her substantial railway and
steel bonds went to her brokers for "margins" and some were sold for
current livelihood.  No wonder she was compelled to resort to an
orphanage for a "mother’s helper", who is herself a child.  The result
is that something less than two thousand dollars of Laura’s capital
remains for her three motherless and fatherless children, the oldest of
whom is eleven.

I have no doubt but that her tortured and silent anxiety on this score
hastened my poor sister’s death.  Carmichael himself, her lawyer and
adviser, was ignorant of her acts until it was too late.  The dread
goddess Fortune plainly does nothing by halves.  If it were not for my
grief over the suffering that poor Laura must have endured so
uncomplainingly, I should be moved to uproarious laughter.  Job, I feel
sure, must have had his moments when the comforters were not there, when
he laughed until the tears bedewed his dejected old beard.

And I, incompetent recluse that I am, have undertaken the care and the
rearing of three children!  I should at least admire the completeness
with which Fate plays her hands or produces her situations, were I not
at this moment utterly and stonily impervious to all thought and all
emotion—unless an inert and deadly sense of disaster be an emotion.


No, that was not enough.  What a glutton is that same Fate!  Dibdin has
been here to say a hasty good-by.

He has heard of a ship that sails from San Francisco in a week and that
will touch at his particular group of islands, so that he will not have
to trans-ship at Papeete, as had been his earlier plan.  I have never
before in my life felt so utterly alone!

He laughed a curious laugh, that seemed foolish yet exulting, when I
told him I had decided to keep the children.  His eyes glittered and he
turned away for an instant to hide them.

"Look here," he muttered hoarsely, with the assumption of his most
matter-of-fact manner, "let me advance you a thousand dollars or so—in
case you should have a use for it.  Be an investment for me," he added,
with a short laugh.  "What use is it to me in the Marquesas or Solomon
Islands, eh?"

"No, thanks, Dibdin," I told him.  "I can mention one or two good banks
on the Island of Manhattan—if you don’t know of any."

"Don’t be an ass, Randolph," he came back with severity.  "I’ll write
you a cheque."

"No, you won’t," I replied with equal obstinacy.  "I won’t take it.  If
I need it, I’ll cable you."

"Devil you will," he growled irritably.  "Cables don’t run where I’ll
be.  You’re an ass, after all."

"Thanks.  Would you like to see the children before you go?"

"H’m, yes," he answered meditatively.  "No, by gosh!" he added in sudden
confusion.  "No, I can’t. Got to run.  Slews of things still to do."

Inscrutable devil, Dibdin!  Who would have supposed him such a bundle of
oddly-assorted emotions?

"By the way," he said abruptly, as he was starting, "Carmichael—heard
from him—everything all right?"

Inwardly I felt a tug as though some one had pulled violently upon some
cord inside me.

"Oh, yes," I lied as urbanely as I was able, "everything quite all
right.  You’ll keep me in addresses, I suppose?"

He scrutinized me for an instant so searchingly that with a tremor I
feared he would see through me.

"Oh, yes, of course," he finally answered.  "The Hotel de France,
Papeete, is a good address until you hear of another.  They know me
there."

"Good," I tapped him on the back.  "Write a fellow a word whenever you
can.  Pretty lonely here after you’re gone."

"Lonely!" he repeated.  "And you—oh, by George, and I’d almost
forgotten—and you to be married in a few days—lonely!"

"That’s—off," I faltered—"for the present."

"Off!" he exclaimed aghast.  "Did she break it off?"

"Put it off," I corrected.

"When you told her of keeping the kids?"

I nodded my head slowly, watching the odd play of his features.

He opened his arms quickly as though he were about to hug me like some
grizzly old bear—then as quickly he dropped them, shamefaced.

"By God!" he uttered solemnly.  "This—this gets me—the way things came
about.  You—you are a man, Randolph, my lad.  Courage—that wins
everything in the end.  Even when it loses, it wins.  Yes, sir."

I have not the remotest idea what he meant by those words.

"Broken up about it?" he demanded abruptly.

What my gesture proclaimed to Dibdin I don’t know. For me it expressed
all that I had passed through during the last ten days.

"No, you’re right.  No use," he said, clapping me on the shoulder.  "Sit
tight, my boy.  Courage—the only thing!  Now, good-by," he wrung my
hand, "and God bless you."

"Same to you, old boy, and best of luck."

And now the only intimate friend I possess has gone and left a hole in
the atmosphere as large as Central Park.




                              *CHAPTER VI*


An odd look of overt approval I have surprised of late in Griselda’s
eyes causes me a peculiar twinge of regret.  It shows that new
conditions have overwhelmingly ousted the old.  Griselda never troubled
to approve of me before.  I have no desire for any change in Griselda,
even for the better.

I have been successful, however, I am bound to record. I have found an
outdoor school for Ranny and Laura in Macdougal Street near Washington
Square, and a nearby kindergarten for Jimmie.  The girl Alicia is able
to take Ranny and Laura to Macdougal Street on the way to her own public
school.  Jimmie, who does not go until later in the morning, is a
problem.  Thus far I have been conducting him to his kindergarten
myself.  But obviously that cannot continue, despite the fact that
Jimmie, seeing his elder brother depart with two girls, turns to me with
a look of inimitable superiority and observes:

"We men must stick together, mustn’t we, Uncle Ranny."

I gravely agree with him on the general policy, though I aim to
forestall future trouble by indicating that expediency often governs
these things.

The term bills paid in advance to the schools have left a gap in my
exchequer.  For the first time I have been compelled to decline a
genuine bargain.  Andrews, the bookseller, called me up with the
announcement that he had something I could not resist.  Laughing, I
asked him to name it.

"It is nothing less than Boswell’s ’Johnson’," he told me with
particular solemnity, "first edition, with the misprint on page 135—a
beautiful copy."

"Dated April 10, 1791?"

"Dated April 10, 1791," he repeated with impressive triumph.  My heart
sank, though it was beating loudly. For many years I have had an order
for that Boswell.

"And the price?" I murmured faintly.

"For you," he said, "four hundred dollars."

Griselda would approve of me blatantly did she know the courage it
required to answer Andrews.

"No, friend, I am sorry but I cannot afford it at present."

Andrews was incredulous.  "Do I hear you correctly?" he queried.

"Accurately," I told him, "if you hear that I can’t take it."

"Then I refuse to accept the evidence of my ears," he retorted with
spirit.  "I shall send it down to you."  I told him it was useless.
"Oh, you needn’t buy it," he shouted.  "But I insist on giving an old
customer the pleasure of seeing it at his leisure, in his own library."

A shrewd, good devil is Andrews, even though he is a good salesman.  I
have been feasting my senses on the Boswell, but it will have to go
back.

Dibdin’s going so abruptly has left me very heavy at times upon my own
hands.  He had a way of dropping in unannounced when you least expected
him, so that I came to count upon him at unexpected moments.  There is
no one to take his place.  Now on clear evenings I ramble aimlessly
northward and often turn in at the club, though so little have I been a
frequenter of it I hardly know a soul in the place.  Last night I ran
into my classmate, Fred Salmon, for the first time in months.

Fred is, I should say, my exact antithesis.  He is full of laughter and
noise and exuberance.  Riches are his goal in life, and if he expended
one half the vitality on the acquisition of riches that he devotes to
the collection of humorous anecdotes, he would be a wealthy man to-day.

"Hello, Ranny," he shouted when he saw me, "you’re just in time to join
me in a little refreshment.  What you doing now?"  Luckily he seldom
waits for an answer.  With trained rapidity he gave his order to a
waiter and continued, "Come across any rare editions lately, any fine
copies, such as ’Skeezicks’ or ’Toodlums’ by Gazook?"

"No," I told him, "my collection is lacking in those masterpieces."

"Tell you what you ought to be, Ranny," he boomed, as the waiter put
down the glasses.  "You ought to be (here’s how!)—a bond salesman!" he
decided after a pause and gulped down his liquor;—"or else a dog
fancier."

"Why those exalted callings?" I asked with only the mildest curiosity.

"You are such a simp and you look so damn honest," he elucidated, "that
anybody would believe anything you say."

"Then will you believe me if I say I don’t want to be either of those
things—or anything else?"

"Oh, sure!" he responded heartily.  "I know that all right.  You haven’t
got anything on me.  I’d rather own a few good horses and follow the
races round the tracks of the world, if I had my choice.  Instead of
which I’ve got to separate the world from enough dollars to keep me
going.  If ever you get hard up, Ran," he concluded reflectively, "let
me know.  I’ll set you up in the right game.  Never make a mistake.  I
took a course in character reading for five dollars—by
correspondence—that’s how I know so much."

Dollars!  Dollars!  Dollars!  Must every one then become merely a
dollar-amassing machine?  I remember Fred in college, ruddy with the
freshness of youth, when he was making jokes for the _Lampoon_ and, so
abundant was his energy, everybody expected him to do Great Things.  And
now he can talk of nothing but dollars—and he doesn’t seem to be
oversupplied with those.  I am nothing myself, but at least no one
expected anything of me.

Fred proposed that we play a game of poker, bridge, checkers or
cribbage.  But as none of those manly sports tempted me at the moment we
parted and he cordially informed me that he would look me up one day.

Nevertheless, with all his noise and emptiness, Fred was glowing, or
seemed to be glowing to me.  His ideas are puerile.  His talk is cast in
one mold, upon one design, that of evoking laughter.  But he is alive.
He is not apathetic.  That is what I deplore in myself, the apathy that
has saturated me after the recent events, that are like a dark liquid
which has entered my mind at one point and then by natural action
unchecked has stained every fiber of my being.  It is not thus I shall
acquit myself of the task I have assumed.  I must become alive!

The children, I am beginning to think, are the only creatures really
alive in this world.  They don’t hanker after musty-smelling first
editions, after knowledge of bygone old worthies like Ser Brunetto some
seven centuries dead, nor yet after the eternal conversion of life into
dollars.

To-day I witnessed a curious excrescence of their bubbling imaginations.
My door standing open, I was able to observe a ceremony that transformed
my dining room into a church and the four infants with solemn faces into
the vivid celebrants of the sacrament of marriage.  They are evidently
ignorant of the "alderman" method.  To the delight of Jimmie and Laura,
Ranny, my oldest nephew, with hieratic pomp, was being married to the
girl Alicia.  Even she knew better than to laugh as the boy was slipping
a ring upon her finger, murmuring some gibberish which he had either
learned or invented, and endowing her with all his worldly goods.  The
goods consisted first of all in the number of a hundred kisses, which
the boy proceeded to administer with savage realism to the crowing
delight of Jimmie and the uncontrollable giggling of Laura.  This part
of the endowment being finally completed, he brought forth from his
pocket a small toy pistol and gravely placed it in her hand.  I nearly
jumped from my chair when I saw that. A pistol of all things!  What
could have made the little apes think of that?  What a text for a cynic!
Perhaps every bride ought to receive a pistol as part of her wedding
dower?  They then proceeded merrily to eat bits of cake and to laugh and
chatter like any other wedding guests.  I closed my door softly and for
a space I was lost in reflection.  For it suddenly came to me that to
approach life with anything less than the playful zest of children was a
grim, a fatal error.

It was odd that Gertrude should have chosen that hour to evince the only
sign since her decision that she had any memory of me.  When she came
in, preceded by the knock and laconic announcement of Griselda, the
first words she spoke were:

"Well, Ranny, and how is domesticity?"

"Highly educative," I told her, as I ministered to her usual wants.  "I
have just learned the proper way of marrying a woman."

"Indeed?" murmured Gertrude, somewhat sourly, I thought, "and how is
that?"

"It’s not the alderman that is important," I informed her.  "It’s done
with a hundred kisses and a pistol."  In reply to her look of
incomprehension, I described to her the episode of the dining room.  To
my surprise Gertrude could see no humor in that.

"What a child you are, Ranny," she shook her head sadly.  "And I thought
that with all your faults you were a serious person."

"That must have been your fundamental mistake about me," I answered
somewhat sheepishly and yet nettled.  "I fear I am not half as serious
as the children are."

"No," said Gertrude.  Then after a brief pause,

"Have you decided yet that the children ought to be sent away to
schools?"

"Why, no, Gertrude!  Such a thing has not entered my head since—since we
talked of it," I told her.

"Ranny," she solemnly leaned forward, "I think I know what’s troubling
you.  You needn’t be so foolishly proud with me.  It’s a question of
money, I take it. Well, I’m ready to help out with their bills.  I know
these things are expensive.  I am willing to set aside part of my income
for their bills.  We could arrange that part of it somehow.  Why, you
foolish boy, won’t you take me into your confidence?"

"It isn’t that—at all," I stammered.  "Why won’t you understand—it’s the
children themselves.  How can I throw them over?"

"You don’t think you’re doing anything for them here—you and this
foundling-asylum girl, who comes from goodness knows what parents?
Better let me manage this—"

Curiously, I felt offended at her speaking thus of the girl Alicia who
seems as integrally a part of my charge and household as any of the
rest.

"It’s very good of you, Gertrude," I muttered, "to offer so much.  But
to take money from you for my sister’s children is—out of the question."
This put her more than ever out of temper.

"I never knew any one quite so idiotic," she retorted caustically.  "You
can do nothing yourself and you won’t let anybody who can, help you."
And after smoking in silence for a few minutes, Gertrude turned from me
in disgust.  Very smartly dressed she was, too, with a most becoming
winter hat and handsome furs.  I should like to please Gertrude.  But
she seems unable to grasp my point of view, namely, that touching those
children I feel my responsibility to be personal.

"If only some one nearer to them than myself turned up," I murmured
abjectly, "you’d see me bundling them out so quick it would make their
little heads buzz."

"Nearer," she repeated vaguely, "when you know there is no such person."

"Their father, for instance," I explained.  "I have no reason to think
him dead.  Laura had always felt certain he was alive.  There are all
sorts of explanations possible for his absence.  He may come back, you
know."

Gertrude laughed at me bitterly.

"The only likely explanation," she retorted, "is that he was tired of
his wife and children.  He is probably having a good time somewhere with
some one who knows how to hold him."

That was a phrase that stung me.  Why must she slur my poor sister now
in her grave?  I bowed my head but I could not reply even though I admit
to a feeling of gloomy certainty that Jim Pendleton will never return.

"Good-by," said Gertrude, smiling grimly at me.

"Au revoir," I answered, letting her out.  But she paid no further heed
to me.

Why I should vent my undeniable irritation upon Alicia I do not know.
But I called her into my study as soon as Gertrude had gone and she
entered smiling brightly.  The child, I believe, looks considerably
happier than she did when first she came here and her eyes are less
wistful.  I was conscious of the sternness of a hanging judge upon my
visage.  But Alicia ignored my mood.  Possibly she has found me out and
knows that I am least to be feared when in appearance most despotic.

"Alicia," I began severely, "how are the children getting on?  Are they
all right?"  (What an imbecile query!)

"Oh, yes, sir," she wonderingly answered.

"I mean—are they happy here?" I scowled at her.

"Yes, sir—they think it’s lovely."

"Are they—are they afraid of me?" I demanded austerely, looking grimly
at my finger nails.

"No-o, sir," she stammered, "they—they are not."

I was terrifying the child, I realized with a pang.  But when I looked
up suddenly the little vixen seemed to be struggling with
laughter—though that can hardly be. She had the manners to turn away.
An attaching little baggage is this child, but I’ll have no nonsense.

"And you—" I pulled her up sharply, too sharply perhaps, whereat I
grinned in mitigation—

"Do you feel competent to go on taking care of them?"

"Oh," she gasped—no suspicion of laughter now—"I just love it—Oh, you’re
not thinking of—of sending me away, after all, Mr. Byrd?"

There was a catch in the poor girl’s voice and I felt stupid and brutal.

"No—no," I growled judicially.  "Not at all.  I merely wanted to make
sure that there is no trouble of any sort.  I suggest that you report to
me every day or two upon anything that occurs to you—that you think I
ought to know."

"Yes, sir," she faltered, "I will, sir."

"Have they clothes and shoes and things—warm enough for this weather?"

"Oh, yes, sir—heaps," she answered, smiling again.

"And you, have you everything you need?"

"Why, yes, sir—I think I have."  Her shoes seemed thin and worn.  I was
in no mood to be superficial or evasive.

"Are those the best shoes you have?"

"Yes, sir," she answered faintly.  Her calico frock also seemed
extremely thin.

"That is all," I dismissed her curtly.  "Ask Griselda to come to me,
please."

"Griselda," I began, genial enough to one that is not in awe of me, "I
wish you would look over the girl Alicia’s wardrobe and get her whatever
she needs in the way of shoes and things.  Would you mind doing that?"

"Ay, I’ll do it, Mr. Randolph.  I know some cheap places in Fourteenth
Street—"

"Heaven forbid, Griselda," I interrupted her.  "I won’t have that.
There is enough inequality and heart-burning in the world without
putting it among children. No, no.  Buy the things where you bought the
others—for Miss Laura’s children."

Griselda laughed hoarsely.

"You’ll not begin ruining the lassie with gaudy clothes!" she exclaimed.

"No, Griselda, I’ll not.  Good clothes have never yet ruined anybody," I
gave her as my genuine conviction. "It’s the other way about.  It’s poor
clothes eat at the vitals of your self-respect like the fox in the tale
of the Spartan lad."

"Have ye gone into the bills for the clothes for the bairns?" she flung
at me.

"Not yet," I answered mildly.  "But I’ll make a walking tour through
them one of these days."

"You’ll walk backwards when you do, I’m thinking," flung out Griselda,
and disappeared, muttering.  In Griselda’s lexicon extravagance is
synonymous with crime and even outtops it.  But she is certain to do as
I ask.


There was a book auction to-day.  And two days having elapsed since my
interview with Gertrude I was sufficiently myself, when I lay down the
paper announcing it, to think of going.  The news of an auction still
has the effect upon me that a bugle might exert upon some battered,
superannuated cavalry horse.  Despite the rise of the plutocratic
collector, despite the shoals of dealers who have made of book-buying
almost an exact science, I still dream of encountering one day the
fortune of Edward Malone, who, late in the eighteenth century, bought
Shakespeare’s sonnets in the edition of 1609 and a first printing of the
"Rape of Lucrece", all for two guineas.

I had already conducted Jimmie to his kindergarten. On the way, as he
nestled his hand more firmly in mine, he looked up at me with a humorous
smile and informed me that "we men have won’erful times together."  It
gave me a curious thrill and I felt grateful even for this companionship
in my solitary life which Gertrude and so many others find foolish and
despicable.

I was letting myself out at the front door when a plain, large-mouthed
young woman of perhaps thirty, austerely garbed in black, stood facing
me.  I remained for a moment bereft of speech and then, of course, I
foolishly apologized, I don’t know why—perhaps for encumbering the
earth.

"You wish to see Griselda?" I mumbled, with my hat in my hand.

"No," she declared, scrutinizing me in the murky hallway.  "I want to
see Mr. Randolph Byrd."

"I am he," I told her.

"I should like to talk to you," she said in a low voice. Mentally I
waved a sad farewell to the book auction and to any bargains it might
hold and led the way to my study.

"I am at your service," I told her, grinning, and all but offered her a
cigarette.

"It’s about the little girl, Alicia Palmer," she began hesitantly as
though she had something dreadful to impart.

"Are you her teacher?" I wonderingly asked.

"No, Mr. Byrd, I am from the Home for Dependent Children—I am one of the
inspectors."

"Ah, I see.  You wish to—to inspect her," I blundered on stupidly,
whereat she laughed.

"No—not exactly," she smiled.  "To tell the truth, Mr. Byrd, I wish to
inspect you—"

"Well, this is all there is of me," I broke in.

"And I want," she added, "to take her back to the Home."

"Take her back!" I cried, stung by something in her tone.  "But—but
why?"

"We don’t allow our girls to live in the homes of bachelors," she
murmured, lowering her eyes for an instant.

"Oh!" I gasped feebly.  It is my eternal wrongness that seems to be at
the bottom of everything.  The picture of the children upon my hands
without the girl Alicia swept me with a chill dismay.

"It ought to have been reported to us," she said reprovingly.  "It
really ought."

"What ought to have been reported?" I groped in bewilderment.

"The change—the transfer.  We sent Alicia to Mrs. Pendleton," she
explained.  "When Mrs. Pendleton—er—died, we ought to have been
notified—so we could look after her."

"I understand," I murmured weakly.  "You see, my sister’s death was so
sudden that nobody thought of such things.  I didn’t even know she had
taken this girl from your Home."

In my blundering way I then explained to her how the children came here,
of their attachment to Alicia and of my own absurd dependence upon
her—which I abruptly realized.  I told her quite truthfully, I believe,
that now the children could not get on without her.  And the bitter
thought assailed me that nothing in this world that is pleasant or
fitting or agreeable can long be left unshattered; that everything human
and sweet and tranquil must be by some human hands undone.  What a
miserably destructive race we are!

"Well," I concluded sadly, "I suppose now you’ll take her away—and what
I shall do with these three children is beyond me."

To my surprise, as I looked up, I distinctly saw a tear glisten in her
eye.  She looked away.

"You have a great many books," she observed with nervous irrelevance.

"The result of a misspent life," I sighed.

"Well, I don’t know what to do or say," she said, rising awkwardly.
"I’d like to see Alicia and—the other children.  And I’ll have to
report—I shall call up the matron of the Home on the telephone."

"Won’t you do it now?" I eagerly prompted.

"I’d better see Alicia first, I think—when will she be in?"

"At lunch time," I said; "won’t you stay, or come to lunch?"

She seemed to recall that this was that obscene environment, the home of
a bachelor.

"No, thank you," she murmured primly.  "I’d better come again in the
afternoon.  Would three-thirty do all right?"

"Admirably," I told her.

"I’ll do the very best I can," she reassured me.

"That’s very good of you," I answered from a grateful heart.

Farewell, auctions!  Farewell, peace!  Once again I am in troubled
waters, predestined like a bit of flotsam to bob about only in storm.
Obscurely, deep within me, I long for power to do everything, to arrange
everything, to make my world swing about me rhythmically instead of my
lurching about it drunkenly.  Even on this secret page, meant for no
eyes but mine, I would pour out my grief and tragedy, the eternal
underlying sadness of life—and then rise up a man of will and energy to
manage my affairs.  Instead, I can only weakly scribble ineptitudes to
while away the time until a poor underpaid girl inspectress returns to
pronounce sentence upon me.  Am I, or am I not, to be allowed to live
within hailing of tranquillity?  Gertrude, I am wretchedly afraid, was
right after all.  What business has a manikin like myself to look with
bold eyes upon duty, or to grapple with responsibility which an ordinary
man would assume as if adding another key to his key-ring—to pocket and
forget?


Falstaff could not have been more genial or hilarious than I feel at
this moment, nor yet the ancient Pistol. When I left the dining room a
few minutes ago, my dignity would have suffered permanent eclipse had
the children espied me after I closed my door.  I capered about the room
like some rheumatic goat lilting a wild melody _sotto voce_.

The inspectress has pointed her thumbs upward.  I hardly know whether
Alicia, the children or Griselda decided the issue favorably.

"Do you wish to see Alicia alone?" I asked the inspectress when she
returned.  She will never know, that nice plain girl, with what tension
I had awaited her.  No lover she may have had has ever kept a tryst for
her more tremulously—or she would not now be Miss Smith.

"No," was her reply, "she is only a child.  I want to see her with the
children."  Alicia was already prepared and, I am bound to admit,
partially primed.

"Here is Miss Smith, come to see you, Alicia," I announced with assumed
lightness, as I ushered the lady in. Oh, it was very distinctly
"ushered."

"How do you do, Alicia," Miss Smith held out her hand, melting at the
sight of the children in the midst of play.  "How are you—well and
happy?"

"Oh, so happy!" answered Alicia, coming forward with flushed cheeks.  "I
am so glad you came."

"But why didn’t you write us, child?" was the gentle remonstrance.

"I am awfully sorry, Miss Smith," from contrite Alicia.  "But the time
passed so quickly—I was just going to—and I had to get new clothes—and
there are so many things to do."

Miss Smith looked down at Alicia’s clothes dubiously. Perhaps she
thought their quality too ruinously good for one of the inmates of her
Home.  She then glanced at the silent, wondering children.

"Hello, Miss Smith!" they cried in broken chorus, catching her eye.  It
was she who had originally brought Alicia to them.  "You won’t take
Alicia away, will you?" Laura spoke up bravely.

"Why, dear?—Wouldn’t you like to have her go away?" she returned,
smiling uncertainly.

"No!  We wouldn’t!" replied all the children actually in one voice, with
little Jimmie loudest, whereat we both laughed.

"Who," demanded Randolph sternly, "will sew our buttons on?"

"And who’ll give me my baf?" cried Jimmie.

"Or help us with our lessons?" put in Laura.

"Well, we’ll see!" Miss Smith came back brightly.  I believe that young
woman is genuinely fond of children. "What are you playing just now?"

They all began to explain at once.

"Shall I leave you with them?" I murmured.

"Yes—I’ll stay a minute or two," she nodded—and I tiptoed out to await
doom.

When I returned a few minutes later, I heard to my surprise Griselda’s
voice, just before I opened the door, rising to the full height of her
indignation:

"If this is no fitting, then nothing is fitting—" whereupon I opened the
door.

The children had disappeared.  Griselda with flashing eyes was literally
towering over poor Miss Smith. Evidently Griselda had been bearing
testimony.  Most excellent witness, Griselda!  What chance had any Miss
Smith against a rock of sheer personality like Griselda?

"It’s all right," Miss Smith announced, smiling faintly as I entered.
"I called up the matron this noon and she left it in my hands.  This is
an exception—the first of its kind in our institution—but I mean to let
Alicia stay.  She—she seems so happy here," she added, faltering.

"That’s very gracious of you," I bowed.  "I thank you.  Shall we—tell
them your decision?"

Griselda opened the door of the bedroom where they all had been cooped
up like so many frightened little hares, and Randolph, unable to contain
himself, demanded eagerly:

"Can she stay?"

"Yes," nodded Miss Smith, and wild shouts must have shattered the nerves
of the other tenants.  Jimmie, as a mark of highest favor, ran to Miss
Smith and held forth his arms to be taken up into hers.  He could not
bestow a greater confidence.  Alicia dabbed some happy tears from her
cheeks.  I begged Miss Smith to stay to tea with them, and unobtrusively
escaped.  Now my mind is agog with triumphant imaginings.  If ever I
become President, Griselda of a certainty shall be my Secretary of
State.




                             *CHAPTER VII*


Now that the Christmas holidays have passed and I have been casting up
accounts, the uneasy knowledge has come to me that I am no longer living
on my income. The freshet of bills is surging about me yet.  Perhaps I
have been improvident, but I have not bought a book in ages.  Andrews,
the bookseller, informed me the other day, with an expression more of
sorrow than of anger, that though he couldn’t comprehend my
unaccountable refusal of the Boswell, he had not the heart to offer it
to any one else.  He was holding it still, he declared, in order to
spare a friend regrets.

"Sell it, Andrews, for God’s sake—sell it," I told him.

"But you’ve had your order in for three years," he protested, "and never
canceled it.  Now suddenly you refuse it.  That must mean something!"

"It means—I’ll tell you what it means, Andrews: I have acquired a young
family."  I then briefly explained to him my situation.

"You don’t tell me, Mr. Byrd—you don’t tell me!" he repeated over and
over.  "Then this is what I do," he announced with a sudden ferocity of
decision.  "I hold that work, if I have to hold it for ten years, until
such a time as you feel you can take it.  Only I am so short of room
here," he added blandly, "will you not store it for me on your shelves?"

"Why, you—you Samaritan!" I laughed in my embarrassment, clapping him on
the shoulder.  "What are you trying to do—make a bankrupt of me?"

"If you will include it under your insurance—" he answered—"but never
mind: I’ll insure it myself."  And then he talked of something else.  He
was as good as his word.  Before I reached home that Boswell was here
and is now on my shelves.  I have been gloating over that epic of
personality and it occurs to me that Johnson and Griselda are kindred of
the spirit.

Two months!  It is incredible.  Years must have passed since the
children have come here.  My past life seems remote as ancient Egypt.
This morning came a letter from Biagi of the Laurentian, asking why he
did not hear from me, when was I coming to Florence, and adding that at
Oxford also some Brunetto Latini material has been recently unearthed
and that I might stop on the way and examine it.  I laughed.  Gone are
those days, never, I fear, to return.  If only I could smell a good old
parchment once again!  I still remember the thrill I felt when Biagi
first showed me the vellum script of Sophocles at the Laurentian.  I
could actually see the scribe in the Byzantium of the eleventh century
reverently copying the lofty beautiful words, in a spirit of high
worship, his pale cheeks flushed with his pious task. I _was_ that
scribe!  Why, I ask, was that strange and eager feeling implanted in my
particular bosom?  Could it be that in some past age, I was myself the
scholarly Greek?—But that is nonsense.

If only I could pay my bills.  Yet I dare not touch the trifle Laura
left to her children.  That must remain for emergency.

And on May first we must change our quarters.  The renting agent, a
decent enough little person, was very apologetic.

"I have kids myself," he informed me deprecatingly, "and I know what it
is.  But you understand.  A bachelor is one thing and four children is
quite another. Makes a difference."  I told him that I was more or less
aware of the difference it made.

"And these people here, in this here, now, building," he explained,
"they’re so nasty nice—they can’t stand the sight of a kid, let alone
the sound."  I made no comment, for too recently had I been just so
nasty-nice.

We shall have to seek some pastures new.


Fred Salmon, as good as his word, has actually looked me up.

I don’t know why the mere entry of that breezy Mohock into the room
brought my unwilling fatherhood into a relief ten times sharper than I
had felt it before. I suddenly felt myself a gawk and a failure before a
man of the world—even though I did not wholly respect the man of the
world.  Once more I was acutely aware of lost freedom.  Abstract
Freedom, out of which I had stepped as a man steps from life into death.

Luckily Fred is not one to beat about the bush.

"You remember," he began, skillfully rotating the mutilated end of a
cigar between his teeth, "my telling you at the club the kind of
business you’d be suited for?"

"A bond salesman or a dog fancier," I answered promptly.

"Have you gone into anything?"

I replied in the negative.

"Well, I’m thinking of starting something," he announced solemnly.

"A dog kennel?" I queried.

"No—a bond business, Ran."

"I wish you luck, my boy," I told him.

"None of that—" he grinned, "I want you to go in with me."

I gazed at him in speechless astonishment.

"Have I said a bellyful?" he demanded, removing his vile cigar.

"A—yes," I gasped, "and more."

"Ha!  That’s the way I am," he laughed.  "Ideas come to me and I act
upon them."

"But—what have I done—" I began, stammering, "to deserve this—"

"You’re the man for my money," he erupted boisterously, "I sometimes
make a mistake in picking a horse, but never in picking a man, Ranny, my
boy, never!"

When Henry the Fowler was tranquilly snaring finches and news was
suddenly brought him that he had been elected Emperor, I doubt whether
he had felt more completely graveled than did I at that moment.  But to
be serious with Fred Salmon was just then beyond me.

"You have come to the right man, this time, Fred," I gave him back a
parody of his own tone, "not a doubt of it!"

"You bet I have, old Hoss," he cried, "don’t I know it?"

"That is," I went on, "if fitness, training, experience, capacity,
predilection and abundance of capital are factors, you have selected the
one man—"

"Yah!" broke in Fred, "I know all about that. Don’t try the sarcastic
with me, old boy.  I know all you can say and a darn sight more.  But I
told you it’s the cut of your mug I want.  What good is the best trained
two-year old if he’s a hammer-head?  It’s with a man as with a horse.
You’ve got the right look to you—and that’s what counts!"

The mockery of my thanks and all further attempts at clumsy satire were
utterly ignored by Fred.

"You’re comfortably fixed, I know," he said, ruminatively scanning my
books, which curiously suggest wealth to every one.  "But dash it all,
man, you must want more money for something or other—more books, maybe.
Everybody wants more something.  I know," he ran on, "it isn’t every
fellah makes up his mind on the dot the way I do.  You’ve got to turn it
over in your so-called bean, I suppose.  All right.  But remember—I
don’t take no for answer."

"With that trifling limitation, I assume, I have a wide liberty of
choice?" I ventured.

"Oh, yes," he grinned.  "Outside the fact that you’re coming in, you can
go as far as you like.  Salmon and Byrd!" he exclaimed suddenly.  "How’s
that for a firm name?  By gosh!—There’s genius in it!  May have been
that which was driving me to you.  I never go wrong.  Salmon and
Byrd—Gad!  It’s so good it scares me!"

"Salmon and Byrd," I repeated after him mechanically. "The _menu_
strikes me as incomplete for a _viveur_ like you.  Add a little shrimp
salad—or at least an artichoke."

He grinned but he would none of my flippancy.

"No, no," he wagged his head.  "None of that. Don’t spoil a fine thing.
It’s—what do they call it—sacrilege.  A good firm name—it’s half the
battle.  By George!  This has been a day’s work for me.  I didn’t know
it was going to be so rich.  We ought to have a dinner on it at the
Knickerbocker—or Claridge’s.  What d’you say?"

In a flash I saw the vista of Fred’s life spread out before me—noise and
laughter, ventripotent bouts with costly dishes in expensive places,
tinkling glasses—the world of money-making which consists as much in
riotous expenditure as in half-jocund half-fanatical getting.  It was to
this world that Fred was inviting me.

"There will be supper at six o’clock, if you care to stay," I suggested
mildly.

"No-no, thanks," said Fred reflectively.  "I’d like to. But somehow not
to-night.  I couldn’t.  Better come along with me.  And we’ll work out
details."

I resisted his urging, however, and he left me with this Parthian arrow:

"Think it over as much as you like, Randolph, my boy.  But it’s a go.
Nothing you can say against it will hold a candle to the reasons in
favor.  The firm name alone is worth a hundred thousand dollars.
Consider it settled.  Never felt so sure of anything in all my life. So
long, my boy.  You’ll hear from me."

He did not even turn his head when he heard my burst of almost
hysterical laughter as he was closing the door. Always heretofore I had
counted myself, how humble and insignificant soever, as of the
priesthood in the temple of fine things.  It was abasing to think that
Fred had claimed me for the money-changers.


Never again do I wish to experience the martyred minutes of anguish that
I have passed through during the last twenty-four hours.

For some reason that none can explain Jimmie suddenly came down with a
fever.  That bright little whorl of life all at once looked white,
refused his food with the pallid pitiful smile of an octogenarian and,
in a twinkling it seemed, his cheeks were burning, his eyes glittered
dryly and his lips were parched.  Called to his bedside, I leaned over
him and the air about me seemed to darken.  Laura’s child was, I
believed, dangerously ill.  The heart within me turned leaden and even
Griselda displayed alarm.  Then and there I vowed inwardly that no
strangers should have the care of this child if he recovered, so long as
I could care for him myself.

The nearest doctor, who occupies a ground-floor apartment below, a brute
of a man of thirty-five or so, elected, when he came up, to look wise
and inscrutable.  Calm and grave, he prescribed oil and with a murmured,
"We shall see in the morning" he left me in an agony of doubt and
anxiety.

The only person who exhibited any degree of calm was Alicia.  And though
she is still a child herself I confess to a feeling of resentment
against what seemed to me callousness in the face of our perturbation.
I saw visions of any number of diseases, of being quarantined, of
Jimmie’s possible death, of my bearing forevermore a feeling of nameless
guilt before Laura’s memory.  I told them I should sit up the night.

"Oh, no, Mr. Byrd," insisted the girl with sudden vehemence.  "Don’t do
that.  I’ll make up a place in the dining room and leave the door of
their room open. I’ll hear him if he wakes."

"I’m afraid, Alicia, you don’t take this seriously enough," I told her
sternly.  She looked at me wistfully for a moment and then faintly
smiled.

"Yes, sir, I do," she answered.  "But it’s no use our all wearing
ourselves out at once if it’s real sickness. But I don’t think it’s
anything much."

"How can you know?" I demanded suspiciously.

"I just think so," she asserted.  "At the Home children were always
coming down like this.  The next day they were as well as ever again."

"But this is not the Home," I retorted severely.  The girl flushed.  I
saw I had hurt her.

"But he’s a child," she insisted doggedly, in a low voice.  I shook my
head.

"I shall sit up in the study," I told her, "with the door open.  I shall
hear him if he calls.  You’d better go to bed."

Her great haunting eyes looked at me for an instant and she left me.  In
the study I lighted a fire, drew up the large chair, lighted a cigarette
and in dressing gown and slippers composed myself for the night,
determined to spend it waking.

In my mind were revolving many things.  Fred Salmon’s absurd proposal,
the strange trick of circumstances that had suddenly made me responsible
for a houseful of children, the whereabouts of Dibdin, the amazing
multiplicity of bills, the little lad’s burning fever.  Drowsiness began
to assault my eyelids before the glowing fire.  To combat it, I took
down that sonata in words, Conrad’s "The Nigger of the Narcissus", and
reread the description of the Cape storm, which is not a description so
much as the expression of the storm itself.  As always in reading that
book, I was overawed to the point of pain by what language can do.  And
pondering upon that, I allowed myself to doze off for a few seconds.
Suddenly I awoke with a tremor and looked at my watch. To my amazement
it was half-past six in the morning.

Abjectly guilty, I stole out and tiptoed into the dining room.  The
light was burning.  I saw three chairs with a crumpled pillow upon them
and Alicia, smiling drowsily, was gliding out of the children’s room.

"How is he now?" I asked in a muffled tone, thinking basely to give her
the idea that I had watched the night through.

"Sleeping quietly," was the reply.  "His fever is mostly gone."

"That’s splendid," I murmured sheepishly.  "You are up—er—early, aren’t
you?"

"I just lay here on these chairs," she answered quietly. "I looked in at
Jimmie about every half hour.  He had a very good night."  With a sharp
pang of annoyance mingled with relief, I felt myself stark and unmasked.
We gazed at each other in silence for a moment, and then I broke into
muffled laughter, in which she softly joined. And though I felt myself a
fool, I vow I could have hugged that child to my heart of hearts for her
sense of humor no less than for her silent unfailing constancy.


Like sunlight after storm, Jimmie’s recovery is making the apartment
ring again, and when it rings too much I close my door.

I close my door, but not upon the bills.  These keep pouring in with the
insistent buzzing of a swarm of hornets, and every day I see them with a
more helpless dismay.  I figure and I add and I calculate, but I seem
unable to subtract.  I cannot see how we could do without the things
that are bought.  Already my modest current account is near the point of
exhaustion and nothing can possibly come in before April.

To-day, in my perplexity, I took an elevated train and journeyed
southward into the region of money.  What I should do there I hardly
knew, but a nameless inner necessity seemed to be driving me to do
something.  I had a vague notion of consulting with Carmichael.  But
when I came into lower Broadway and was actually at Carmichael’s door, I
fled in disgust with myself for the sufficiently transparent reason that
I really had nothing to say to him.  I felt like a debutant pickpocket
who turns back abruptly from the threshold of his calling because he
realizes the absence of a vocation or is overcome by cowardice.

In the street I looked upon the driving masses of people, swarming,
streaming, with strained faces, urged on by invisible whips of need, of
desire, driven like the souls in Dante’s hell by demoniac powers who
ever cry, "Pay your way! pay your way!"  They did not hear the cry now,
the continual snapping of the infernal whips, but I heard them and I
quaked inwardly.  To myself I fancied the most of these surging figures
upon a level of life that has few problems, that is always "happy" with
the dull unexultant happiness of the slave or the captive, coming
briskly to the office of a morning with a sort of tarnished metallic
gayety, lunching at Childs’ or at a counter unprovided with stools,
clinging to a strap in a car jammed with their kind, visiting a
motion-picture "palace" in the evening and living within their incomes
because they must.  And though all the rest was abhorrent, that last
detail made me envy them.

Pay your way!  Pay your way!  The cry was beating in my pulses as I came
away, droning in the car wheels as I traveled northward, dully insistent
in the very noises of the streets about me.

Once within my own door the warmth enveloped me like summer air and with
the warmth came the joyous laughter of the children playing in the
dining room.  In a bubbling of happy turbulence they came rushing toward
me as I looked in upon them, demanding that I judge between them on the
rules of their game.

"Just because she’s a girl," complained Randolph loudly, indicating
Laura, "she always wants to be queen."

"It isn’t because I’m a girl," broke in Laura, panting. "It’s because
it’s fair.  Boys never want to be fair, Uncle Ranny, that’s what’s the
matter.  He’s been king for half an hour and he always wants us to do
impossible things so he can be king forever."

"And I want to be king, too," loudly proclaimed Jimmie.

I suppressed the nascent revolt as best I could and soothed the passions
of pretenders.  I reminded them that this was a democracy and that
royalty in our land could count only upon a visitor’s welcome.

"Aw, don’t I know?" said Randolph fiercely.  "I wouldn’t be really truly
king for anything."

It was a pleasure to me to enter from the turmoil of the outer world to
this playing fountain of affectionate young life.  Jimmie, Laura,
Randolph, little glimmers of spark-like personality were fitfully
flickering over their childish heads and it was my task to turn them
into steady flames.  That was what I owed to my sister Laura and that
was the course upon which I was irrevocably embarked.  But now, alone in
my study, I still hear in the hum and rumor of the streets the insistent
imperative cry, Pay your way!  Pay your way!




                             *CHAPTER VIII*


The incredible has happened.  No, not the incredible. The incredible is
always happening.  It is the impossible that has taken place.

I, Randolph Byrd, am now a business man—no priest of the temple, but a
brazen money-changer as ever was.

The hum and the noise and rattle of it are perpetually in my ears like
the whirr of machinery in the brain of the factory hand.  I cannot think
or put myself in the moods of thought.  The sound of the ticker is
constantly in my head, and my nerves crave movement.

Fred Salmon has accomplished his will.

"You must stir it and stump it and blow your own trumpet," is his motto,
and he is teaching me to blow. The firm of Salmon and Byrd is an
actuality and clownishly Fred is making the most of the humor of the
name and doing his best to make me abet him.  I say Fred has
accomplished it all.  But at the bottom it is Laura’s children who are
innocently the primal cause of my debâcle.

"D’you know what you are?" Fred shot at me to-day in a flash of
inspiration—he is dowered with a fecundity of flashes these days.  "You
are the original Old Man Who Lived in a Shoe!  It’s the kids that made
you get into the game.  Gosh!  I wish we could get that fact on our
letterhead!"

With Fred to think of an idiotic notion is to utter and commit it.  And
I live in constant dread lest some of our customers and clients, a
sporadic body as yet, should inquire as to the children with which I
know not what to do.  Fred is an Elizabethan.  In the spacious days he
would have ruffed and strutted and wenched and taken chances with
careless slashing humor among the best or the worst of them.  He is a
buccaneer who can throw the dice with jovial laughter when things loom
blackest under the very guns of disaster.  He is an enigma.  He is, in
short, my exact opposite.

Yet he has made me his partner and accomplice.  I used to think myself
adamant, but in his hands I am clay.

It is now late in March.  The cold blasts are often succeeded by genial
days of brilliant sunshine that already promise the birth of a new
spring.  How much I should delight in the flower market near the
Laurentian or in walking up the hill toward Fiesole past the fairy-like
Florentine villas, or strolling in the Lungarno and across the Ponte
Vecchio to San Miniato—to the Pitti—the Uffizi—the gentle air of Fra
Angelico’s cloisters—what absurd fancies! ... I am in wintry New York,
yoked to a broker, or as the letterhead styles us—Investment Bankers.
And though we have received no cables as yet, we are equipped with a
fascinating code cable address, which is "Sambyrd!"  There is no end to
our grandeur.

Sambyrd!  How it all came about is still swathed in a sort of
semi-transparent mystery for me—semi-transparent, for even now I do see
one thing clearly: My income was hopelessly inadequate to the rearing of
three children and my capital was already invaded.  With the capital
gone what was there left for me but addressing envelopes, the children
in a Home like that which Alicia came from and general collapse and
catastrophe!

And then there was Fred’s enthusiasm.

"Money," said he sententiously, "is a very simple matter.  It won’t come
rolling to you of its own accord, but you can get it.  Every one must
find his own way. This is my way—Salmon and Byrd.  Will you join me and
make it your way, too?"

And I, struggling like a fish in a net, like a bird in a snare, like any
beast caught in a trap, could discern no way of my own.

"But what," I demanded in a sort of despairing indignation, "can I do at
that business?"

"You can learn," said Fred.  "And you’ll be making something before you
know it.  And as we grow you’ll make more."

And then I made the startling discovery that there are no parallels in
life.  Writers may babble of types and statisticians of means and
averages and populations of facts, but I realized with pain that with
all my books I knew of no guide or inspiration.  The case of every
blessed one of us is unique.  I could think of no one in precisely my
own circumstances.  A pathetic, dejected melancholy overcame me at my
fatal tardiness in learning that the world, like a hungry beast, was
clamoring for decisions.  "Decide!  Decide!  Decide!" it seems to roar
with slavering jaws, "or I devour you!  And if you don’t decide I shall
still devour you."  The drifters perish without a struggle.  I had
drifted heretofore but now I must flagellate the will for a choice.

And so I yielded.

The half of my capital has already gone into our offices, and if chairs,
desks and tables will make for success we shall both be millionaires.
There are magnificent leather sofas such as I never dreamed of lolling
on, but discussions and transactions of money, it seems, must be done
within walls padded with luxury.  Money breeds money, Fred is ever
telling me, and even as bees are attracted by honey, so the opulent
investors will flock to our richly fitted hive.  The droning of the
ticker and the sound of a typewriter are the only noises permissible,
and the smoke of cigars must be the most fragrant.

I hardly know why I should be ironic.  Never before have I derived so
much amusement in a short space of time.  There was the entrance of our
first customer, Signor Visconti.  He came, this enterprising Milanese,
in response to one of the hundreds of individual circular letters we
sent out to small banks and investors, on magnificent stationery,
announcing our rare bargains in securities so safe that the rock of
Gibraltar was pasteboard by comparison, so gilt-edged that only the best
of government paper could dare to crackle in their presence; so
remunerative that—anyway, Mr. Visconti, admirably dressed, came in.

The young woman who brought in his name had been drilled not to seem
flustered.  Fred flushed purple with pleasure and executed a brief but
exquisite war dance on the rug.

"Tell him I shall see him directly," he murmured to the young woman and
sprawled on the leather chair beside me in his triumph.

"Why don’t you see him then?" I could not help asking.

"Wouldn’t do," Fred wagged his head mysteriously. "Must keep him waiting
at least a minute or two—though I’m burning up to get my talons into
him."

I laughed at him.

"Now this is what you do, my boy," Fred gave me quick instruction in the
hushed voice of a conspirator. "A minute or so after I leave you, you
take your hat and coat and pass through the room where I’m talking to
him.  I won’t notice you.  When you’re nearly at the door, I’ll call you
back.  You’ll be in a hurry, but you’ll come back.  I’ll introduce you
to Mr. Visconti, then I’ll say confidential-like, but loud enough for
him to hear, ’You going out about those bonds?’  ’Yes,’ you answer, ’but
I’ll be back soon.’  ’While you’re about it,’ I’ll say, ’you can tell
Spifkins we can let him have that two-hundred thousand on call at four
and three quarters.’  You just nod quickly, like a busy man, salute Mr.
Visconti and out you go."

"Where—do I go?" I stammered in a daze.

"You go to a telephone booth downstairs in the lobby and you call me up
on the wire.  And don’t be surprised at anything I say until I hang up.
Then you can walk round the block and come back.  Is that clear?"

"Clear as an asphalt pavement," I answered in my bewilderment.

"That’s all right then," he grinned and left me.

Complying with his absurd charge, nevertheless, I was duly introduced to
the well-dressed, well-fed, deep-hued Italian banker from Macdougal
Street and made my way to the telephone booth in the lobby of the
building below. And this is what I heard in Fred’s most suave and
ingratiating tone.

"Oh, not at all, Mr. Ferris—always glad to hear from a customer.
Ah—yes, Mr. Ferris.  We can still let you have those bonds.  Though in
reality they are sold to another client.  But I think we can give him
something just as good that will suit him equally well. Yes, that will
be all right.  A hundred thousand, wasn’t it?  Well, well—ha! ha!
Better late than never. Don’t let that bother you.  Yes, yes, Mr.
Ferris.  Send them over to your office as soon as my partner comes back.
I am a little busy now with a customer.  Oh, don’t mention it, don’t
mention it!  Eh?  Why, yes—thanks. At the Waldorf about five, then.
Ta-ta."  And he hung up the receiver.

For a moment I stood speechless in the steaming booth with the telephone
receiver in my hands and then I staggered out, shaken by helpless
laughter.

When I returned, Visconti, smiling broadly, was in the process of being
ushered out by Fred with warm exchanges of amiabilities.  We all shook
hands on the threshold in a cordial flurry of busy enthusiasm and a
moment later Fred and I were alone.

"Just sold that fine peach of a Guinea ten thousand dollars’ worth of
Hesperus Power bonds," chuckled Fred in irrepressible glee.

"But where," I demanded, "did you get the bonds to sell?"

"Haven’t got them yet," he paced the room in nervous jubilation.  "But
we’ll get them in a jiffy—at the National City Bank.  They’ve got lots
of ’em over there."

Something dark and heavy and cold seemed to have dropped inside of me
upon the vital parts, and chilled me for an instant.

"So this is this kind of a business?" I muttered.

"This is the way this kind of a business begins," he replied composedly.

That interlude of actual business after the ferocious activity of
renting, equipping and furnishing an office, getting stationery printed
and engraved, installing a ticker, making that mysterious body of
connections that was Fred’s province, was sufficiently exhilarating to
make me accept it without much scrutiny.  After all, what could I do?
This was the furrow in which my plow was set and this, I suppose, is the
custom of the country.

"How," I could not help wonderingly asking, "did you land the effulgent
Visconti?"

"Oh, he’s a good scout," explained Fred.  "He runs a banking house for
his fellow dagoes in Macdougal Street.  He saw we were new and he likes
to give young fellows a chance.  He was quite frank.  You see, it’s
nothing for the big houses to sell ten bonds or so.  But he knows that
to us just opening up it means a lot more than the commission.  It means
a Sale.  Oh, he’s a sport, all right."

"That surprises me more than I can say," I told him.

"There are some good-hearted brutes even in this business," growled
Fred, "and don’t you forget it."

"Do you think," I asked with a twinge of shame, "he saw through your
telephoning business and that rigmarole of yours to me in the booth?"

"Damn if I don’t think he did!" roared Fred.  "But never mind.  He’s a
sport.  And some day, when we’re big guns, we’ll show him that we
appreciate his hand-out by putting him on to something good—see if we
don’t!"

I felt as shamefaced as though we had committed a felony.  Yet I suppose
that this is the ordinary comparatively innocent chicane of even honest
business, remnants of oriental chaffering and huckstering that still
survive. I am hoping we shall grow out of it.  Though at times I suspect
a certain flamboyancy of temperament in Fred that makes him resort to
such shifts rather than not.

A man who had purchased some bonds called up and inquired whether we
would take them back.  There was no reason for Fred’s offering anything
but an endeavor to dispose of them.  But instead his grandiose reply
was:

"Why, certainly we shall take those bonds back, Mr. Smith—and as many
more of them as you’ve got. Yes, bring them down by all means."

Once he had hung up the receiver he turned toward me with blank dismay,
muttering:

"Now what the hell shall we do with those things?"

I own to a flash of genuine anger at his imbecile untruthfulness.

"You don’t know what to do?" I spluttered.  "Then why on earth did you
speak as though you had a dozen buyers waiting in a row?"

"Because that’s business," he tried to shout me down. "That devil will
have more confidence in us if we let him go back on his bargain than if
he made a lot of money on it.  Don’t you know human nature?"

"Not human nature like that," I retorted bitterly. "Tell me what you are
going to do about it."

"Let’s get on the telephone, both of us," he spoke cheerfully, "and each
call up as many people as we can and offer them those bonds before that
weak sister gets here."

"A desperate remedy," I growled irritably.  "Let me see you do it."

Fred lighted a cigar and gazed out of the window. When he turned his
face was suave and benignant.  He looked like nothing so much as a man
about to fill a row of Christmas stockings.  Then he betook himself to
the telephone.  In a cheerful, friendly, lingering voice he began to
offer his gift to one after another of his list as though an inward and
spiritual grace were moving him irresistibly to benefaction.  His face
was on a broad grin even under a series of repeated refusals, and I
confess to experiencing a sort of truculent joy at what I believed to be
his discomfiture.  His accents, however, never lost their velvety
quality nor did he betray by a single note any trace of disappointment.
On the contrary he was warming to his work with a keen gusto. On a
sudden the young woman at the telephone outside informed him that he was
being called.  He listened.

"Mr. Smith?" he answered mildly.  "Hello!  Bringing us those bonds?
What?  Decided to keep them, after all?  Well, well," with a laugh, "the
Lord be with you then, Mr. Smith.  We could have sold them ten times
over since you first called me.  No, no.  It doesn’t matter.  I’ll find
something else for the others.  You’re mighty wise, Mr. Smith—I’ll hand
that to you.  No, it’s all right.  Come and see us.  Good-by—good-by,
sir!"

When he turned away from the telephone the perspiration beaded his
forehead and puffy cheeks and he grinned genially.

"Whew," he whistled, passing a handkerchief over his face.  "That was
great fun.  But why do they want to break in on the innocent morning
with things like that! Well, that’s how it is, Randolph, my boy," he
added lightly and turned away to other things.  In his way Fred compels
my admiration.  For this is only one instance of many, one thread in the
texture of our daily life.  How I long to read a few pages of "Urn
Burial" in order to forget it all!

It is too soon to know whether or not we are a success. But we are each
of us drawing a small salary and to me that is an immediate help.

What a curious jumble is our life!  Forces strange and awe-inspiring,
the very stars in their courses seem to be defending Laura’s children,
lest I should do them an injury.  But in order to keep them and rear
them I must resort to a kind of olla-podrida of backstairs shifts and
devices, such as I have described, that make my cheek burn.  But I
suppose it is as Dibdin says: We are all the ministers and retinue, be
it in court dress or in tinsel and livery, of that exalted prince of the
world, the child. For me, however, it is still a struggle to grasp that
ineluctable truth.  Perhaps as a reward for this, as a sort of pourboire
of Fate, I shall become gruesomely rich, a kind of Mæcenas, an orgulous
figure among scholars, and finance some new Tudor or early English texts
or latter-day collections of the classics?

My pipe has gone out.  I have taken to puffing a pipe in a manner that
would delight the soul of Dibdin. Dibdin!  Every day I expect to hear
from him, but still my expectation is vain.  The children are all abed
and I sit here filled with a sense that I am responsible for all of
them, sleeping and waking, for their nourishment and existence, for all
this machinery that keeps the six of us going, and the thought fills me
with awe—and yet there is a kind of pleasant sense of pride in it, too.
Dibdin would say that I reminded him of a broody hen, and Dibdin would
be right.  A broody hen is a model of responsibility for all mankind.

Yet though I cannot look with young-eyed confidence upon all of this, or
upon my enterprise with Fred, I can hardly resist a feeling that
something of the youth and manhood I have spent as a solitary among
books, something stirring and effervescent that I have suppressed, is
struggling for an outlet.  Fred’s methods of business, though I wince at
some of them, fill me with gusts of irresistible laughter.  His constant
horseplay and good humor are infectious.

To-day he came to me with a grave countenance and informed me that
Sampson and Company, a house from which we sometimes buy a few bonds,
desired to know whether we would join them in underwriting the Roumanian
loan.

"And what did you say?" I inquired with equal gravity.

"Naturally I told him I must consult my partner."

"What did they say to that?"

"’Oh, sure,’ he said, ’but it isn’t a large loan—only fifteen millions.
All we want you to take is about three millions.’"

I looked at him quizzically.

"Well, what d’you say, partner, shall we take it?"

I scrutinized his baffling expression and roared with laughter.  He
joined me, laughing, until the tears trickled down his cheeks.

"But look here," he began, the flamboyancy of his manner persisting even
in private, "three millions isn’t so much—and the profit would be
large."

So long as it was horseplay I enjoyed the joke.  But with Fred the
barrier between jest and earnest is very thin, often indistinguishable.

"Don’t talk rot," I told him.  "Do you want a short cut to bankruptcy?"

"Well, it would be in a great cause," he grinned. "Got to help dear old
Roumania!"  And humming a musical-comedy tune, he left me.  But I am
still conscious of a dread lest Fred, in some moment of irresistible
magnificence, should commit poor little Salmon and Byrd to the devil or
the deep.




                              *CHAPTER IX*


To-day is a red-letter day for me.  The red letter came from Dibdin.  As
a matter of fact his brief scrawl in the peculiar, heavy, unadorned
script which I love is written on the minutely ruled paper and in the
violet ink of the Hotel de France at Papeete.  But it was so
delightfully cheering to see his dear old fist again—almost like seeing
the man himself.  The sheet is dated more than two months ago, and
postmarked San Francisco six days ago.  I wonder what brute intrusted
with mailing it has carried it about in his pocket.

Without a word of preamble it begins in Dibdin’s abrupt manner.

"I’ve got you on my mind.  How are the kids prospering—and you, old
bookworm?  I’ve picked up something for you even out here—a first
edition of Balzac’s ’Père Goriot’, somewhat fly-blown and the worse for
wear, but intact all the same.  I won’t intrust it to the mails.  I’ll
bring it to you.

"I am enclosing a check for a thousand dollars.  Now don’t be an idiot,
however difficult that may prove.  I know all you can say, and believe
me it isn’t worth a damn.  Use it in some way for the kids and make me
feel happy out here among the wrecks and loafers of white humanity.  I
wish you could come out here some day and see to what creatures that
once were white men will stoop just to avoid a little work.  However,
that’s by the way.  I count on you to do as I ask or you’ll make me
sore.

"The blessed old tub I came out in sails for Suva in three days.  And
from Suva I go to the Marquesas. You’ll hear from me again before long.
If you want to take a chance and write me, the Hotel de France, Papeete,
is still the best address I can offer you.  Yours, Dibdin."

That was all—after months of waiting.  I wish the old fellow enjoyed
writing letters a little more than he seems to.  Nevertheless I was
delighted.  The irrepressible tramp!  He speaks of the Marquesas as if
they were around the corner.

As to his check, my first impulse was to destroy it immediately.  I
shall keep it, however, as a memento of Dibdin’s absurd generosity of
spirit.  It would have to be some desperate need that would ever compel
me to use it.  Dibdin little dreams of Salmon and Byrd.

I called in the children to show them the letter.  And though they were
less excited about it than I was, they seemed delighted at the fact that
after a day in the office I should appear gay and cheerful instead of
weary and careworn.  Care is the badge of incomplete lives.  And what I
needed was a letter from Dibdin.

A breath of the wide world has come to me with that pleasant burly note,
of other-worldliness, of freedom, of rovings and wanderings, something
of the zest I used to feel.  I used to feel myself (or so I think)
strung like a lute, sensitive to every breath and sign of beauty, to all
the subtle tunes of life.  My nerves are duller now, responsive only to
the obvious.  In the inverted world of business I suppose that is
progress.  Dibdin’s letter has brought back something of my old self, at
least a nostalgia of other days.

And here my conscience smites me.  It is long since I have seen
Gertrude.  I must rectify that omission at once.  After all, Gertrude
has been patience itself with my vagaries.  And the thought of the old
freedom is struck through with the years of her friendship. Gertrude
never interfered.


I have seen Gertrude and she was indulgently amiable when I read her
Dibdin’s letter.

"I believe, Ranny," she was pleased to say, "you are developing.  Do you
know, I think business experience very good for you?"  It was very
agreeable to see Gertrude curled up on a sofa in a very pretty tea gown
comfortably smoking her cigarette.  I felt suddenly that the neglect of
feminine society is a mistake for any man, most of all for myself.

"I’m glad my partner isn’t here," I told her.  "He might give me away."

"I don’t care," she answered.  "You are a stronger man to-day than you
were a few months and even a few weeks ago.  Here you are attracting
money.  A thousand dollars is always a thousand dollars."

"Yes, indeed!  Let Morgan look to his laurels," I relied.  "His days are
numbered."

"Don’t be absurd," she laughed.  "You’ll be rich before you know it.
But that isn’t the point.  Lots of other things you’ll see in a new way.
You’ve been a sentimentalist, Ranny," she went on explaining. "Business
gives a man judgment instead of sentimentality. You’ll come to
understand that my advice to you in a number of things, including the
children, had more sense to it then you guessed.  You will recognize
that even children can be cared for better by efficient people trained
for it than by an inexperienced bachelor and a little foundling girl.
Don’t worry about that now," she added hastily, "but you’ll find out."

My answering grin must have been of a sickly pallid hue, for I own I
felt myself chilling at her words.

"I thought," I put in, "that that was all over and settled between us."

"So it is, Ranny dear," she answered quickly. "Don’t misunderstand.  I
am not advising now.  I am merely prophesying."

"Oh, in that case," I endeavored to be conciliatory, "it will be a
pleasant game to watch how true your prophecy comes."

"Yes," she spoke more eagerly.  "Now tell me about your business.  It
must be horribly interesting."

"It horribly is," I agreed, "and fearfully done."  And I went on to
describe to her amusement some of the ways and means of the ingenious
Fred Salmon.

"How delightful," was her laughing comment.  "Do you know, Ranny, when
we’re married I mean to come down to your office quite often?"

"Better come now," I suggested.  "Who knows—whether there’ll be an
office by then?"

"Oh, it isn’t so long to wait—perhaps in—June—or when you take your
holiday."

"The sooner the better," I told her quite sincerely. "I see no object in
any further delay—" whereat Gertrude seemed pleased.

"Oh, I’ll spring it on you one of these days," she smiled gayly.  "Now
will you have some tea or something to drink?"

A very companionable person is Gertrude.  Since, as a great man has
said, a grand passion is as rare as a grand opera, I presume that
notwithstanding novelists and romancers to the contrary, companionship
is what virtually all successful marriages are based on.  One thing my
business experience has taught me thus far is a disgust with vague and
indefinite conditions.  The sooner Gertrude and I are married, the
better I shall like it.

Barely had I written down the last words above than something occurred
to give them the lie.  I am still shaken with anger at what I have
learned.

Alicia, whom I had thought to be in bed, rapped gently on my door and
came in, her sweet candid face so charged with pain and alarm that I
jumped from my chair at sight of her.  I have seemed scarcely to notice
her these months, yet I realize she has grown as dear to me as any of
the other children.  To see her suffering seemed poignantly intolerable.

"What on earth," I gasped, "is the matter, Alicia?"  She could scarcely
speak for the tears that were choking her.  "Is it any of the children?"

"N-no, sir," she sobbed.  "They—are—all right."

"What on earth can it be then?" I demanded, putting my arm about this
little Niobe and gently seating her in the big chair.  "Come, my dear,
tell me about it."  She made an effort to control her sobs.

"You are—going to—send me away," she wept. The same old story.  That, I
thought, must be this child’s obsession.

"Am I?"  I spoke as gently as I knew how, taking her little cold hand in
mine, "and why am I going to do that?"

"I don’t know," she sobbed bitterly.  "I suppose because I am no use
here—because you don’t want me."  I laughed at her boisterously in an
endeavor to shake her out of that notion.

"And who," I asked, "has said anything of the kind?"  She did not
answer.  "Was it Griselda?"

"No, sir," she breathed.

"Was it any of the children?"

"Oh, no, Uncle Ranny—I mean Mr. Byrd.  They like me."

"What was it then?" I insisted gayly.  "Come, out with it.  I never
heard such bosh.  Come, tell me the whole story, Alicia."

"I—I was in the square this afternoon," she began, drying her eyes with
a very wet and crumpled little handkerchief, "playing with Jimmie while
Laura and Ranny were roller-skating—" and she paused.

"Yes, yes," I urged, "and then?"

"A lady stopped to talk to me—it was Miss—Miss Bayard."

"Miss Bayard?"  I repeated wonderingly.  It was strange Gertrude had not
mentioned it.  She must, I thought, have forgotten the incident.  "And
what," I prompted, "did Miss Bayard say?"

"She said," and Alicia’s lips quivered pitifully, "’are you still here,
child?’"

"Yes—go on!" I could hardly trust myself to speak for the premonitory
anger that was rising within me.

"I told her, yes, ma’am."  Alicia spoke somewhat more easily, feeling,
evidently, that I was not against her. "And Miss Bayard said," she went
on, "that she thought I had gone away weeks ago.  I didn’t understand
what she meant, and I asked her where she thought I had gone. ’Didn’t
anybody from the Home come to look you up?’ she asked me.  And I told
her that Miss Smith had come. And she asked me whether Miss Smith hadn’t
done anything about me.  And I told her that Miss Smith had—that she
said I could stay."

"And what did she say to that?" I gasped, by this time livid with anger.

"She said it was very strange—that she did not understand it.  She
didn’t say it to me.  She seemed to be speaking to herself.  And then
she just gave a little nod and walked away."

"Just gave a little nod and walked away," I repeated after her
mechanically.  "And because of that you thought I was planning to send
you away?"

"Yes, Mr. Byrd," she murmured with a dejection that in the young is so
profoundly touching it makes one’s heart ache.

"Well," and I hope my sickly laugh was as reassuring as it was meant to
be, "and if I tell you that I knew nothing at all about it—will that
make you feel better?"  She nodded.  "And if I tell you that so far from
planning to send you away, I couldn’t do without you; that you are
necessary in this house, that you are just the same to me as any of the
other children; that I make no distinction between you; that, in
short—this house is your home until—until you grow up and get married—as
long as you want to be here—" and I sat on the side of the chair, drew
her to me and patted her as I might have patted little Laura.  "Is that
all right?"

"Yes, Uncle—Mr. Ranny," she whispered, her head sinking toward me like a
child’s, and a sigh of deep content escaped her.  "I don’t want anything
else in this world!"

How beautifully affection sits upon a child!

"Now go to bed, Alicia," I urged her gently, "and don’t bother your
innocent little head about anything of that sort.  Miss Bayard was
probably joking, but—she won’t do that again—when she knows how badly it
made you feel."

She stirred as from a trance and slowly rose.  "How is the school work
going?" I asked her.  "All right?"

"Yes, Mr. Byrd," she murmured, "except the Latin—I don’t put in enough
time on it, the teacher says, especially the Latin composition."

"Ah, we’ll have to remedy that.  You must come and let me help you.
What are you reading in Latin?"

"Cæsar’s Commentaries," she smiled, shamefacedly, like a troubled child
that has been restored to happiness.

"Ah, then you _must_ get it right.  For what would happen, Alicia, if
you were to face the world ignorant of how Cæsar conquered the Belgians!
And if you should go out into life without an intimate knowledge of the
equipment of Cæsar’s light-armed infantry, of the habits of the Gauls
and the right use of the catapult or the proper employment of the
chariot, the consequences might be little short of ignominious!  Better
come to me and let me set you straight.  I know you understand indirect
discourse from the way you told me your story to-night.  But the
subjunctive, my dear—ah, the subjunctive must be closer to you than a
brother and nearer than hands and feet!"

She laughed a merry, delicious peal of laughter and when she said good
night I put my hand upon her soft silken hair and sent from the room a
very radiant, happy little girl.

But now, as my thought wanders back to Gertrude’s surprising _démarche_,
uncontrollable indignation again possesses me.  To think that it was she
who had instigated the visit of that little inspectress, Miss Smith,
weeks ago!  It is unbelievable.  Underhand methods in Gertrude are new
to me.

I have called up Gertrude on the telephone.  And in spite of the
lateness of the hour she insisted in a somewhat wintry voice that I had
better come up at once and see her, as she put it, settle it once for
all.  _Je m’y rend_. To settle it once for all is precisely what I
desire.


My desire has been stormily satisfied.  Though inwardly indignant, I
returned to Gertrude with every intention of being very bland and very
reasonable, hoping against hope to have the unlovely fact somehow
cleared away.  But Gertrude, it seems, had decided that the indignation
properly belonged to her.

"Hello, Ranny," she greeted me easily, in the gray tone that precedes a
tempest.  "What do you mean by speaking to me as you did over the
telephone?"

"I—I mean this," I faltered, but that was the last time I faltered in
speaking to her.  "Did you or did you not report the case of Alicia to
the Home and send an inspectress to me?"

She watched me with narrowed eyelids for a moment and then, deciding
evidently, that a little truculence would reduce me to my normal state
of pulp, she answered coolly:

"And suppose I did—what of it?"

"I merely want to know the truth," I answered her quietly enough.  "Lies
are so detestable to me."  She flinched perceptibly, but drew herself up
with hauteur.

"Well, then I didn’t!" she returned loftily.  "But what if I had?
Somebody ought to have reported it," she ran on with gathering temper by
which she thought to crush me.  "I think it’s indecent for you to have
in the house a girl of that age who’s no relation to you. The fact that
you are a fool doesn’t make it any less indecent.  I’m the only woman
friend you have and somebody has to see you don’t make a worse idiot of
yourself than nature made you to start with.  Now do you understand, my
excellent friend?"

And having discharged this volley she stood panting lividly, as if
viewing my ruins.  At the moment however I could not consider her.  I
knew only that flashes of red appeared before my eyes, that I spoke the
literal truth when I told her:

"To me such an action and the person guilty of it would be equally
contemptible."

"You say that to me?" she gasped, taking a step forward, with a
colorable imitation of incredulity, strange in view of her denial.

"To you—yes," I told her, quietly enough, for now I was more master of
myself.  "And contemptible is only a mild euphemism for what I should
really think."  She stared at me speechless for a moment.

"_You_ think!" she uttered in mocking scorn. "You’ve posed as a sort of
God’s fool—but what you are is the devil’s tool."

"Take care, Gertrude," I warned her.  "You might say something that you
will regret even more."

She waved me contemptuously away.

"I’ll say this," she returned in level tones, seating herself and
clenching her hands in an effort at control—but in reality she was
beginning a new offensive. "You’d better go home, Ranny, and make up
your mind to send that girl away.  All men are rotten.  But it’s because
I thought you were different that—that—" she did not finish, but added:
"And to have you gathering in girls from the gutter—"

"Stop!" I cried, "I won’t hear another word," and turned away as if to
go, not trusting myself to say more.

"Come back!" she called, jumping from the sofa. "Come back and listen:
Either you send that girl away or I’ll have nothing more to do with you.
Is that understood?"

I laughed at her mirthlessly.

"Choose between her and me," she uttered with the touch of melodrama
that few women seem to escape.

"Don’t be theatrical," I told her, now more in control of myself.  "That
girl makes it possible for me to bring up Laura’s children.  She is no
more to me than any of the others.  But however that may be, she
stays—understand that, please, Gertrude: she stays!"

"Then you’ve chosen?" she demanded in livid stupefaction.

"I’ve announced no choice.  But the girl stays."

"Thank God!" she lifted her hands upwards, and I hope her prayer was
acceptable.  "I knew I was tied to a fool," she added, as though I had
been holding her enchained, "but I did not know he was a knave as well.
I’m free at last!"

I walked out without trusting myself to make reply.

I sincerely hope Gertrude will enjoy her freedom more than she did her
bondage.  Anyway, I am glad she has entered a denial.

As I walked home under a starry sky, however, I was amazed to feel my
anger cooling rapidly; the sense of defeat, of disappointment with human
nature, giving way to a new feeling of freedom, to an elation I had not
experienced in years.  I definitely felt a leap of exhilaration in the
wake of the other mingled emotions.  It took me by surprise.

Matrimony is obviously not for such shameful villains as myself.  If
Gertrude expects me to return on bended marrow bones and sue for
forgiveness, I am certain she is mistaken.  Matrimony is not for me.
That at least is clear.




                              *CHAPTER X*


The dancing flamboyancy in his veins has proved too much for my revered,
partner, Fred Salmon.

With a glimmer hall bravado, half amusement in his eyes, he announced to
me this morning that he has "signed on for a piece of the Roumanian
loan."

I was stupefied.

"How much?" I gasped faintly, watching him closely, for I could not
believe it.

"Only a measly million," he replied with deprecating cockiness.  "It was
as much as I could do to make them let us come in at all.  If it weren’t
for your cold feet I would have taken the three millions."  And his
chuckle irritated me beyond words.

He was in earnest.  He was not joking.

"And where the devil," I spluttered, "will you get the money for even
the initial payment?"

"Raise it, my boy, raise it," he bent, beetling over me. "If we want to
amount to anything we’ve got to take chances.  One syndicate
participation like that and perhaps another with the newspaper
publicity, and we’re made men in the Street.  Got to do it.  Want to be
a piker all your life?  I don’t!"

"You’re—mad—" I stammered limply.  "Stark, raving mad.  And how do you
propose to raise the money?"

"By selling the bonds, fellow!" he announced with aloof superiority.

"Have you got the bonds?"

"No.  They are not even in this country.  We give them _ad interim_
certificates until the bonds arrive."

"Have you got the certificates?"

"No," was the astounding reply.  "We’ll sell ’em first, get the money
for ’em, turn it over to Sampson & Company, the syndicate managers, and
draw our certificates.  That’s how it works.  Of course if we were a
bigger house, better known, it would be easier.  But we’ll do it—don’t
you worry—we’ll do it!"

"You mean," I groped, "we have to sell something we haven’t even in hand
and get money for it?"

"That’s what it amounts to," he grinned, though less jauntily than
before.

I felt myself crumbling to dust.

"Don’t sit there like that!" he cried, regarding me as one looks down
from the side of a great liner upon a drifting derelict.  "Get busy!
Get on the telephone and sell some Roumanian bonds!"  And he chuckled in
his absurd triumphant manner that will one day drive me to desperation.
"Begin with your friend Visconti," he suggested.  "He seems to have
taken a shine to you. Talk to him in Dago."

Many and many a time had I asked myself what I was doing in that
particular galley.  To enter a new occupation without enthusiasm, for a
cloistered monk like myself to go out into the market place as a
chafferer and a huckster, among a race I had not even cared to
understand, and to embrace their ideals and their career, concerning
which I had not even curiosity, had been difficult enough.  With the
lash of my need I had whipped myself like a flagellant to the daily
grind until custom had given it the ungrateful familiarity that the
treadmill must have for the mule.

But to embark upon this murky enterprise of Fred’s, charged for me with
the dread of a hundred lurking pitfalls, into which I should infallibly
stumble, charged with the fear of certain failure, all my instincts
revolted against it.  Nevertheless, like a lost soul, I suffered myself
to be driven because I must.

It is to the glory of human nature that there is more of the milk and
marrow of human kindness in it than pessimists give it credit for.  The
excellent Visconti, after listening to me in silence while I lamely and
guiltily explained my offer to him, courteously replied in Italian.

"If you recommend them, Signor, I will take them. I cannot take many,
but I will take five."

I thanked him as best I could, but I shrank back as under a blow.  This
man was buying not Roumanian bonds so much as my Word.  Besides, though
the bonds were right enough, I had nothing to give him and yet I wanted
his money.  I could not face it, and so I informed my egregious Fred.

"That’s so," said Fred reflectively and for a moment he was lost in
thought.  Then, as is his wont, he suddenly began to radiate the heat of
a new inspiration. "I’ve got it!" he cried.  "Listen here.  You’ve only
put half your capital into this business.  You’ve got in the vault—how
much is it?  Twenty-five thousand in securities?"

I gaped at him in terror.

"Well," he ran on, "suppose you bring them over, deposit them with
Sampson and Company against that much in _ad interim_ certificates—or
else borrow money on ’em.  Don’t you see?" he slapped his knee
gleefully, "then we have those certificates on hand.  We can pass ’em
right out to fellows like Visconti, who come straight across, and so go
on with the game.  When we’re through, all you’ve done is to lend
yourself—the firm—twenty-five thousand in securities, given us a big
lift and you put your securities back in the vault.  Don’t you see
that?"

"No."

"Isn’t that clear?" he asked in an injured tone.

"Clear as pitch," I answered truthfully.

"Never mind," he clapped me smartly on the shoulder. "You go bring your
securities over.  I’ll make it clear. Of course you’ll draw interest on
the loan you’re making the firm."

And like the mule I am, I dully complied.  And now we are laboring on
with the sale of the million in foreign bonds to people the majority of
whom have not a notion whether Roumania is the capital of Rome or a
Central American republic.  "_L’insuccess_," declares Balzac, "_nous
accuse toujours la puissance de nos pretentious_."  But as I had no
pretensions in this business, loss and failure would be doubly
humiliating.  What then, I ask myself again, am I doing in that galley?
Meantime what remains of my slender possessions is hypothecated to the
pretensions I had never entertained.


I have been house-hunting in the suburbs.  It is idle for me to try to
find either a house or an apartment in any region that would be suitable
for both my means and the children in New York.  So for two Saturdays
and two Sundays I have been trudging the dreariness of the less
expensive suburbs in quest of a house.

"What!" exclaimed Fred, when he heard of it, "not going to leave the
Shoe?"

"Yes," I told him.  "The Shoe pinches, I must find another."

"Well, you’re a funny old geezer," was his laughing comment.  I could do
better than that in describing him.

When I come home depressed and weary I find a shower of little
attentions awaiting me, very winning and touchingly agreeable.  Little
Jimmie, with great serious eyes, ostentatiously brings me my slippers
and dressing gown and watches my face intently for the reward of
commendation.  When I murmur, "Thanks, old man, very good of you," I can
virtually see his little pulses pounding with exultation in his veins.

"Are you vewy tired, Uncle Ranny?" he inquires, keeping up the high
drama of profound concern.

"So, so, old chap," I tell him, kissing his serious little face.
"Nothing to worry about."  A moment later I hear him dashing about the
dining room very properly and completely oblivious of my fatigue.

Laura in the rôle of Hebe, gravely brings me tea on a small tray, and
asks whether there is any book I desire or anything else that she might
bring me.

But behind all these attentions I discern the directing hand of Alicia.
Can it be that the child has instinctively divined that I have actually
broken with Gertrude on her account, that the little woman’s soul in her
secretly exults in a feeling of victory?  Since she cannot know all the
conditions, she can feel, at most, I suppose, only a vague primitive
sense of triumph in defeating the will of another woman.  Perhaps I am
attributing too much to her young intelligence, but at times I seem to
perceive in her eyes, in her bearing, a touch of the protective
instinct, of almost the maternal toward me, that I had never observed in
her before.  Possibly it is merely a sense of gratitude.  At all events,
those attentions of the little people are very soothing and grateful,
notably now, since Griselda’s have declined perforce, in view of her
greatly increased work in the kitchen.  Yet it staggers me at times when
I realize the number of souls for whose shelter and livelihood I am
responsible, for the complex machinery that I must keep revolving.
Experience like that should be acquired young.  Like Mr. Roosevelt, I
would advocate early marriages.


I have found a house.

In Crestlands (thrilling are the names of suburbs!) thirty-five minutes
from Grand Central Station, in Westchester County.  I came upon a
châlet-like cottage built largely upon a rock that I believe will answer
our purpose.  The rent is moderate and there is said to be an asparagus
bed somewhere in the "grounds."  I know there are two trees with gnarled
roots grasping their way downward among the stones, in a business-like
struggle for existence, and there are a few inches of lawn for the
children.  With a veritable terrain like that as dower, it will surprise
no one that I took the cottage.

"The latitude’s rather uncertain, and the longitude also is vague," as
vague, almost, as that of Roumania; nevertheless I shall be henceforth a
dweller of Suburbia.

This being Sunday, I took the children out there in the afternoon to
examine their new demesne.  With the air of a castellan exhibiting an
old castle, I showed them through the rooms and in the phrases of the
real-estate dealer I enumerated their advantages—with a heavy heart.
But the children cared nothing about that. Randolph saw visions of a
tent or an Indian tepee under one of the gnarled old trees and Jimmie
illustrated how he would "woll down" the slope; all our "grounds" are
slope _et praeterea nihil_.  But Laura, detecting a neglected rose bush
near one of the windows, clapped her hands for joy.

"This is like the house in ’Peter Pan’, Uncle Ranny," she cried
delightedly.  "There will be roses peeping in, and babies peeping out."

I looked at her in poignant surprise.  It was so absolutely the voice of
her mother when she was a girl, the spirit and the expression.  It is
exactly that feature that my poor sister would have first taken into
account; it might have been Laura herself.  I turned away in order not
to cloud their delight.  The poetry of life is the only thing worth
living for, yet what a toll the world exacts on that commodity!

Griselda, in spite of all temptation, had declined to come.

"Is there a good kitchen?" she demanded.  I told her I thought there
was.

"Then I will not waste my time looking for the birdies in the trees or
the paint on the roof," she retorted stoutly. She even demurred at
Alicia’s coming.  "There’s over much to do," she protested darkly.


Of discomfort and wretchedness let none speak.  I have sounded both and
so much else that is unpleasant to the abysmal depths that I shall never
again look with the same eyes upon the impassive faces of the men in the
moving express train.  They have all no doubt lived and suffered even as
I, these, my brothers!

I have moved the household to my suburb, and this is a lament _de
profundis_.

The legendary mandrake is a gurgling infant to the way my books cried
upon removing.  They not only screamed; they sobbed and quivered like
broken souls to be dislodged from their place that has known and loved
them so well and so long.  Every object in the flat was a whole
plantation of mandrakes.  Their wailing and ululation resounds yet in
their new and changed surroundings.  Roses peeping in, indeed!  To my
books this is a house of sorrow.  Forlorn and jumbled and still unsorted
they stand and lie in heaps so that their fallen state wrings my
lacerated heart.  Alicia, to whom I sadly complained of this condition,
consolingly answered:

"But my English teacher in school would say that that was a ’pathetic
fallacy’, Mr. Ranny.  Books and things don’t really feel, do they?"

"Don’t they!" I bitterly exclaimed.  "Let unemotional pedants speak as
they stupidly will, Alicia.  Nothing can be more poignantly pathetic
than a fallacy!"

"Yes, sir," murmured Alicia and with reverent fingers she silently
helped me to place some of those books.  She has a tender touch for the
objects of other people’s love, a charming attribute in a woman.


And from the physical chaos in the châlet at Crestlands I am whirled
madly every morning in a crowded express train, then in a convulsively
serried subway car, to the more subtle chaos in the office of Salmon and
Byrd—to sell Roumanian bonds.  Roumanian bonds are overrunning those
offices like the rats in the town of Hamelin. Ah, will not some piper,
pied or otherwise, come and pipe them all into the sea?  The answer, I
grieve to say, is no!  The impossibility of shifting one’s burdens is
the fundamental mistake of Creation.

Nothing irritates me more after a morning’s fruitless telephoning or
ineffectual running about than to have Fred Salmon smile sleekly, clap
me on the back and mumble mechanically:

"Great work, old boy!  You’re doing fine!"

What is the use of these false inanities?  On Saturday he came to me
with the gratifying intelligence that Imber and Smith, who took two
millions of the bonds, have already sold out their allotment.

"Damn them!" was the only answer I could find.

"That’s what I say," he answered in his perfect rôle of being all things
to all men, then reflectively, "I think Smith’s a liar, though."  I’ll
wager nevertheless that he congratulated Smith as heartily as he bruises
my back. To be all things to all men is surely one of the most
disgusting traits in a human biped.  Fitfully ever and again I wish
myself out of the ruck and rabble of all that.  But sadly and heavily it
comes to me that it is better perhaps to bear the ills one has than to
fly to others that are a mere sinister blank.  I seem like a man on a
raft with the storm-lashed waves washing over me the while I gasp for
breath and hope for rescue.

I wonder what this life would be like if upon coming home to Crestlands
there were not those eager little retrievers to fetch and to carry and
to wait upon me, to surround me with their glad young freshness.  But in
candor I must admit that but for them I should be leading my old
secluded life, undisturbed among books, that now seems remote as a past
incarnation.


The weeks go by and, toiling under our burden, we are desperately trying
to stem the rush of time.  In certain hard-pressed moments I have a
sickly feeling that time will win—and crush us.  A revoltingly new
discovery I made yesterday, that Fred has taken to drinking during
business hours, suddenly drew the life out of me like a suction pump.
Then, realizing the meaning and the enormity of the fact, I was
frightened out of fear and talked to him in as friendly and kindly a
vein as the circumstances would permit, in an effort to show him our
position and where it might lead us.

His first snarl of defiance gave way to contrition.  He wept maudlin
tears and made promises so robust that they ought to outlive him, but—I
feel shaken as never before.

Meanwhile Sampson and Company are calling for the payments due on our
allotment of bonds, and Fred, the smiler and the diplomat, is shirking
interviews with them.

"What we need, Ranny," he said to me to-day in chastened mood, "is
capital, more capital.  We went into this business on a shoe
string—sometimes it will hold till you can get a rope and sometimes—"

—"Even a life line is too late," I supplied.

He did not answer.  But after a pause he began afresh:

"Couldn’t you get round and see some of your rich friends—see whether
they could tide us over for a spell?"

"Rich friends!" I writhed as one in torment. "Who are my rich friends?
I have none, as you ought to know.  I have now put in every cent of
capital that I own—against your business experience, Fred.  And this is
where we’ve arrived.  If my sister’s children weren’t dependent upon
me—but then," I ended bitterly, "I shouldn’t be here, as I think you
know."

He bowed his head.

"Didn’t your sister—wasn’t there anything—?"  But to his credit, he did
not finish.  If, as I suppose, he meant to ask whether Laura left any
money that I could use, he evidently thought better of it and walked
away in a somber silence.  And that is where we stand.

That is where we stand in our business, and the needs of my household
are expanding.  Griselda knows nothing of my affairs and yet I surprise
her dark eyes, singularly lustrous for one of her years, watching me at
times out of her swarthy wrinkled face, as if divining the Jehannum I am
experiencing.  More than ever she lays herself out to perform incredible
feats of economy, whilst I hypocritically pretend to be unaware of it.

The children, having prospered and grown during the winter, are in need
of new summer wardrobes, which I have ordered bought.  If it is to be
disaster, then shabbiness shall not betray us.  Like the man who donned
evening clothes in which to sink with the _Titanic_, I have always
entertained a stubborn faith in the policy of good clothes.  Policy,
policy—the trail of policy is over me like a fetid odor—and how clean
and unsmirched I have always felt in my stupid transparency!  Gertrude,
if she knew it, would now rejoice that she had thrown me over.

I envy our clerks and typists who banish all cares at five in the
afternoon and do not resume them until the following morning.  What a
gay life is theirs—if they but knew it.  They jest and fool and hurl
picturesque slang at one another and draw their pay on Saturdays,
unconscious of how near to perdition we totter.  If we go to the wall
they will soon find other places.  But I—shall find the wall.  I wish I
knew what the emotions of Fred are as, rucking his forehead heavily, he
strides about our rugs.  I only know, however, that mine are emotions of
doom.


The black doom is upon us.

After days of haggling and lying and shuffling and paltering we have, as
a firm, expired.

Our vain and concentrated efforts to sell something that we had not the
necessary means and connections to sell led us to neglect the things we
could have done.

I shall not soon forget the vile outburst of the heavy-jowled Sampson
when as by a Sultan’s firman, he imperiously summoned us to his office
and told us in his language what he thought of us.

"People like you don’t belong in the Street—they belong in jail.
Assign!" he snarled, "Better assign at once and clear out!"

And not the least of the bitterness of that moment was the acrid
realization that I could not charge him with having flattered and
hounded Fred into the vanity of the enterprise, because at that moment
Fred and I were one—with this distinction: What Fred was suffering would
roll from his back like water from a rhinoceros, whereas I would remain
obscenely branded by his words forevermore.

It was useless to argue, futile to protest.  There was no time or place
for extenuating circumstances.  I was too full of shame and humiliation
to offer any conciliatory suggestions, and I still had enough of mulish
pride not to truckle to that fish-eyed bully.  We walked out of that
man’s office bankrupts.

I still marvel how I found my way back to our own office through the
lurid darkness that encompassed me. The world about me—the palpitating,
pressing eager world, of which in a measure I had been a part—was
suddenly strange and phantasmal and alien, the ghostly city of a dream.
The people were shadows and their hurrying steps and errands as
mysterious and as unrelated to my life as those of a colony of ants.
The only actuality I did not envisage in that dark moment which was
coextensive with eternity, was that _I_ was the anemic ghost stalking at
noonday and the others were the reality.

"If only you had not taken the balance of my capital—" was the thought
throbbing under my overwhelming misery—"if only you had left me that!"
But I could not bring myself to whine to Fred.  I kept stonily silent.
A burning resentment swelled my heart so that I could not speak.  The
newspaper publicity Fred had craved would come to him now with a
vengeance.

Now they are busy dismembering the corpse and colporting the remains,
whilst I sit darkly at home in Crestlands like one disembodied, dead.




                              *CHAPTER XI*


I have had time to grow dulled to the shabby peripety of my career as a
business man.  The sickening details and legal forms of our failure are
over, and I am wretchedly surviving on the loan made upon an insurance
policy, but still I have evolved no plans for the future.

I sit in the shadow of the châlet watching Jimmie rolling down the slope
and endeavoring to roll up again. The early August sun is hot in the
heavens and the air even of Crestlands is muggy.  And my pulses keep
insistently repeating, repeating, "What is to become of us?"  My
pulses—but not my mind.  That useless functionary has quite simply
suspended operations.

I used to feel wise in reading Montaigne and Buckle, humorous with
Rabelais and Cervantes, acute and a man of the world with Balzac or
Sainte-Beuve.  But none of these erstwhile comforters, it appears, seems
able to lift up my spirit.  Modern young critics talk of escape in
literature, but it seems one can only escape when there is nothing very
serious to escape from.  Like a debauchee who had killed his palate or
one who has swallowed an unwholesome dish overnight, the zestful taste
for an essay of Elia, the gustatory rolling under the tongue of
sentences in "Religio Medici", the keen pleasure in a Dryden preface,
all these are now impossible. The savor of them has died for me.  My
dreams of Mæcenasship for Tudor Texts have gone a-glimmering.

For joy in books the tranquil heart is needed.  The world has been too
much with me and neither poppy nor mandragora can banish the effects of
it.  There is no balm to sane me.


There was escape after all, though—if not in reading, then in writing.
I can quite understand now the persistence of diarists in the world.  I
had no sooner written down the words above than a tremor of resolution
shook me and I went into the baking city in quest of livelihood.  I
found nothing save exhaustion, but it is certain that in Crestlands I
shall find even less.

I looked upon the teeming streets wide-eyed like a gawk, surprised anew
that so many should find a foothold and sustenance where I had failed.
The mystery of that will always baffle me.  The deepening gloom gave
way, however, when I entered Andrews’ bookshop.  His welcome was warm.

"Stranger," he greeted me cordially, "come into your own."

"I don’t deny I have felt it calling," I admitted.

"’Course you did—there is nothing else in the world."

"Ah, how much else, Andrews!" I told him sadly.

Whether he has heard of my failure or not I cannot tell.  If he has, he
was tact itself.

"Here are some beautiful things for you to see," he announced, bustling
as he led me to a table in the rear of the shop.  I looked at his
beautiful things and was able to give him some useful points about one
or two of them.  He has actually come upon a Caxton, the lucky devil!
This was indeed "my own", as Andrews was shrewd enough to divine.  _Ça
me connait_.  And his courtesy and his deference were strangely
consoling in the light of my recent experiences.  Courtesy and deference
cost others so little, but what refreshing manna they are to one’s
self-respect!


I go on tramping the pavements of New York and I wish there were more
point in my trampings.

Every morning I go forth with a faint glow of hope, and the dim basis of
my hope, when I come to think it out, is something like this: In the
haunts of men I may meet somebody, an old acquaintance who may know or
hear of something whereby a broken reed like myself, a pronounced
failure, may get the chance of earning a livelihood.  A desperate enough
situation when reduced to the glaring light of plain speech—but that is
the best that I am able to do.  If only Dibdin were here! Despairingly I
am in need of a friend.  But my past life has separated and insulated
me, so that when I think of friends and my thought convulsively darts
out this way and that, it encounters nothing but vacancy, empty air.
Fred Salmon is avoiding the Club.  He is the only one who had reached to
me from the past, and the result I have already recorded.  I am not
eager to meet him, though I have worn out any hostility I may have felt
toward him.  _C’est un mauvais metier que celui de medire_. I find my
inward man the better for thinking of Fred neutrally, when I think of
him at all.


Illness was the one thing lacking to my ineffable Pilgrim’s Progress, so
infallibly illness has appeared.

Jimmie came down with measles on Saturday and yesterday Alicia followed
his example.  The crumpling of Alicia under illness has proved like the
shattering of a column in the edifice of my household.  The whole
insecure structure is tottering.  And though she is burning with fever,
the unhappy girl is murmuring with anxiety that stockings go unmended
and buttons unsewn.

"Don’t you worry about that, little girl," I keep telling her.
"Griselda will do those things."

"Griselda has too much to do as it is," she gulps and the tears start to
her hot eyes.  I have isolated her and Jimmie in my room, and Randolph
and Laura are cautioned to keep as far as possible away from them.  I
remember the time when I would have flown from the fear of infection as
from the plague, but now my anxieties are of a wholly different nature.
Jimmie is mending now, but Alicia is far more ill than she knows.

Griselda has undertaken the stockings and at night, when I sit watching
and waiting for sounds from either of my invalids, I operate upon the
buttons.  It is curious how much art enters into the sewing of a button.
A dog of a bachelor though I have ever been, I have never been compelled
to learn that handicraft before.  But I have learned from Griselda, who
smiled crookedly when she imparted the law, that if you twist the thread
around several times after you have sewn it, the whole thing acquires,
relatively, the strength of a cable.  To your punctured fingers you
attend afterwards.

Alicia, awakening at midnight, sat up in bed and caught me at my task;
she moaned most dolefully.  I hastily put Jimmie’s little "undies"
behind me, but too late.

"You’ll never want me—or need me again—what’s the use of getting well?"
she wailed weakly.

"Oh, yes, I shall, Alicia—more than ever," I hastened to assure her.

"You do everything now that I ought to do," she pressed with febrile
insistence.  "I shall be no use any more."

"But don’t you see, Alicia," I argued, touching her hot forehead, "that
I shall have to be earning money while you are doing the buttons?  I
ought to be earning it now, so get well as quickly as you can.  Jimmie
sees it; he’s much better already."  That logic seemed to soothe her
more than I had expected.  She caught my hand impulsively and pressed it
to her cheek.  The tremendous part played by affection in the lives of
children is a never-ceasing wonder to me.


Alicia is convalescent again, _laus Domini_, and Jimmie is now running
about the little house filling it with noise—which is music to my ears.
Laura and Randolph have fortunately thus far escaped infection.  Jimmie
is wanting to resume "wolling up and down" the slope again, but this is
still _verboten_.

I can now take up my journeys into town again and I note with a pang
that I am growing shabby.  The yearly purchases of clothes had been as
regular with me as my meals, but I have ordered no clothes for the
spring or summer.  Odd, what a deleterious effect the shabbiness of
clothes has upon one’s consciousness!  The tinge of inferiority it
brings touches some very tender places in one’s spirit, almost like a
shabby conscience.  But the doctor of the neighborhood, a contemplative
fellow who obviously knows his business, though he talks of his
laboratory and his experiments like an alchemist, has earned the clothes
that I must do without.  And of the two I needed them more.


My search is ended.  There is jubilation in my heart again.  I have
fallen into a livelihood; like the bricklayer who used to fare forth,
dinner pail in hand, I have found work.

And the way of it was an odd little stroke of Fate, a whimsicality that
would have pleased the ironic soul of Thomas Hardy.

An old college friend of mine, Minot Blackden, whom I used to call
Leonardo da Vinci because he was so full of ideas and inventions, had
rediscovered, he said, the art of glass-staining.  After a five years’
residence in Italy, on a modest patrimony, most of which had gone into
glass or into stain, he had returned to his native land and set up a
shop _à la_ William Morris somewhere in the region of Bleecker Street,
and proceeded to stain glass. He had had some newspaper publicity
recently, and there were cuts of his work.

While passing a church in my hot and dusty peregrinations, it occurred
to me that here might be a chance of serving him and also myself.  By
writing an interesting booklet about his craft, illustrating it
profusely and sending it with personal letters to all the vestries in
the country, I might bring a flood of custom to his shop.  It is with
this forlorn proposal that I was blundering about to discover Minot
Blackden.  I failed to find his shop, but I came face to face with my
old Salmon and Byrd acquaintance, Signor Visconti.

In his palm beach suit and Panama hat, Visconti made a splendent and
impressive figure in the purlieus of Bleecker Street.

"Ah-h, Signor Byrd," he cried with Latin cordiality, seizing my hand in
both his own, "you are what you call a sight for sick eyes.  I have
often wonder about you—you must come into my banca—we must have leetla
refreshment!"

Refreshment appealed to me at the moment and gladly I accompanied him to
his private office in the bank, that stands between a junk warehouse and
a delicatessen emporium.  With a charming tact he touched upon the hard
luck of Salmon and Byrd and dismissed the subject for good.

Briefly—for him—that is, with a wealth of gesture and illustration, he
informed me that he was looking for a man for his enlarging bank, and
asked me to recommend one.

"I want a fina man—" he explained.  "American gentleman—who speeks a
leetla da Italian—who put up what you call a fina fronta—understand me?"

"A fine front," I mused aloud, "and speaks Italian—no, Signor Visconti,
we had no such young man in our office.  I can think of no one I could
recommend."

He was obviously nonplused.

"I thinka," he said, with, a gesture of final resolution, "if I could
finda some gentleman lika you, Mr. Byrd, he would be _precisamente_ what
I look for.  I know," he added hastily with an apologetic laugh, "man
lika you, Signor, be hard to find!"  And again he laughed heartily,
though watching me between narrowed eyelids.  His drift was now obvious.
I was silent for a moment.

"Well, if it comes to that, Signor Visconti," I answered slowly, "I am
doing nothing in particular just now.  I may be utterly no good for you,
but—but if—"

"Ah, you would try old Visconti, Signor!"  And up flew his arms like
windmills.  "You no ashamed to work in vot you Americans call da Guinea
colony!—no, no!"  He noted the deprecating shadow on my face.  "Ah, you
understanda—you know the granda history of the Italiana people.
You—but, Mr. Byrd—" and with an admirable histrionic transition he
suddenly turned grave and sad—"Mr. Byrd, you are the very man I looka
for," and he gripped both my hands.  "But, Meester Byrd—I fear I cannot
afford to pay what you would expect.  Ah, _sacra_—if I could!  You, the
very man—_Dio_—" and he clapped a hand dramatically to his forehead—"the
very man, but!—" and his full smile of sad and wistful regret seemed
genuine for all its histrionic value.

"What do you propose to pay, Signor Visconti?" I inquired.

"I can only pay to start," he whispered hoarsely, with the round eyes of
a man facing the inevitable, "thirty-fiva, maybe forty dollars week.
Too leetla, I know," he added slowly, letting his hands fall on his
knees with resignation.

"Very well, Signor Visconti," I said.  "If you will try me, I shall be
glad to come at forty dollars."

Visconti fairly leaped at my hand and the bargain was struck.

I am to begin earning a livelihood on Monday.

Who said that adversity is the best teacher?  Possibly it is, but
gladness is the ablest cocktail.  There is no stimulant like a little
success.


I am an august personage.

I shall choke with pride, so august am I become in the Banca e Casa
Commerciale Visconti.

I call up the National City Bank concerning the price of bonds, or the
rate of exchange, in English so presumably impeccable that Signor
Visconti visibly puffs out his magnificent chest as he listens.  There
is a divinity that shapes our "frontas", rough-hew them how we will.

"Visconti’s speaking," I say with firmness and the head of Visconti’s
curls his fine dyed mustache and turns away, glowing with ill-concealed
pleasure.  This is seemingly what the head of Visconti’s has been
waiting for.  Mentally I offer a fervent prayer that he may never be
disillusioned as to my capacity.

I toil as I have never toiled before.  I come early and go late and
frequently have my lunch sent in from the adjoining delicatessen,
powdered no doubt by the contiguous junk house, and the "boss", as the
others call him, smiles with a rare unction that spells approval.

With difficulty we are actually living on my income. If I had the half
of my capital back that I had no business to put into Salmon and
Byrd—but ifs inaugurate depressing trains of thoughts.  My library alone
stands between me and disaster, so like a prudent man of business I have
begun a catalogue of it and I am training Alicia to help me.  I must not
again be caught by so desperate a prospect as recently faced me.

How my little household had been affected by my late slough of despond I
realize only now that I have passed it.  Laughter and high spirits seem
to have been uncorked again.  We play and we rollic and chatter, more
than in the early days of our _vie de famille_—how long ago is
it?—something less than a year, no longer!

It is now the end of September and the schools have reopened.  We are
all sanely and industriously busy, like a normal American family, and as
though its so-called head were an adequately competent being, and not
the bungling masquerading amateur that he is.  "Who never ate in tears
his bread"—well, we have made intimate acquaintance of poverty and we
fear it less than of yore—though we hate it more.  It may be an
impostor, but who maintains that all impostors are harmless?  I
certainly would deny that premise, so—we are cataloguing the library.

"Here is ’The Anatomy of Melancholy’ by Burton," announces Alicia,
taking down a volume.

"Small quarto, printed at Oxford, 1621," I finish for her.

"Yes," she breathes, marveling wide-eyed.  "How can you remember such
things, Uncle Ranny?" for so I have asked her to call me.

"How can I remember?" I ask in surprise.  "How can I remember that you
are Alicia Palmer, close to the towering age of fifteen, or that Jimmie
Pendleton is five?"

"But we—are people," avers Alicia, "and we are—yours."  I own to a
slight thrill at this sweet investiture, implicit in her words, but I
seem obtuse to it.

"But so is a great book a person," I sententiously inform her, "and
’Oxford, 1621’, means a first edition, Alicia—not merely a person but a
personage.  That book is as proud an aristocrat as though it were
plastered with coronets and simply throbbing with Norman blood.  There
is a whole heraldry about it—it is a prince among books.  And all,
Alicia, because it aroused men’s interest and has given them delight
from about the time the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth.  It’s a book
that could take Doctor Johnson out of bed two hours sooner than he
wished to rise.  Also, if the worst came to the worst, it could feed us
for a time, and that is very important, isn’t it, Alicia?"

"Yes," she breathes in awe which for some reason delights me.  "What a
wonderful thing it must be to write a great book."  And she fingers the
next volume with even greater reverence.

"The ’Life of Edward Malone’, by Sir James Prior," reads Alicia.  "Is
that a prince among books, too?"

"No," I answer.  "That is just a friend.  Malone, you see, was crossed
in love in the days of Doctor Johnson, and by way of consolation became
a book-collector and a Shakesperian commentator.  They say the Irish are
fickle.  But here is one who could never love again. So whenever I read
his life, I think I see through a sort of mist the lovely lady whom he
lost and all about him is curiously dear to me.  He wouldn’t feed us for
very long, Alicia, but he has given me many hours of pleasure."

"Are book-collectors people—crossed in love?" she inquires with gentle
subtlety, and I am surprised that one of her youthfulness should be
arrested by that particular point.

"If you mean me," I answer quietly, "then I can tell you that I wasn’t.
No one ever loved me enough to cross me.  I am a collector by a sort
of—spontaneous degeneration."

Alicia throws her fine young head back and peals with delicious
laughter.  Afterwards I catch her smiling to herself as she copies down
the titles.

I am amazed to note how lovely that child has become since she has been
here.  Her thin, frightened expression has given way to one of happy
confidence.  All too soon she will be enriching some young man’s life
with happiness.  Her interest in my musty old books has given her a
value of companionship in my eyes that I trust I shall not exaggerate at
the expense of my niece and nephews—though Alicia is hardly one to take
advantage of such a situation.  Nevertheless, I must be on my guard.

After all, though she is the chartered, custodian of the others, and
_quis custodiet ipsos_—who shall watch over Alicia?  Obviously, it is my
task to improve her mind in order to make her the better guardian for
them.

And Alicia’s mind is improving apace.

"Uncle Ranny," she inquired the other day, "may I ask what that first
edition of Boswell’s ’Johnson’, cost you?"

"It costs me nothing but a sleepless hour now and then," I told her.
"It is not paid for.  But I owe Andrews four hundred dollars for it.
God knows when I shall pay it.  But why do you ask, Alicia?"

"I have just read in _Book Prices Current_ that a copy was sold by
Sotheby’s in London for one hundred pounds."

"Already!" I murmured and I was lost in admiration not of the accretion
in value—I am used to that—but of the girl’s facility in acquiring the
interest and the jargon of my hobby.

"Oh, Mr. Andrews must have a wonderful place!" she exclaimed.  "That
must be a splendid business. Where is he?  How I’d love to see it!"

"You shall some day, Alicia," I told her.  "He is in Twenty-ninth
Street, and an excellent fellow he is."

I then explained to her how Andrews had insisted upon planting the book
on my shelves.

Alicia gazed at me in silence for a moment, then suddenly tears
glittered in her eyes.

"It’s because of us," she said, with a quivering lip, "because we came
that you couldn’t buy it!"

"Don’t talk rubbish, Alicia," I flared at her.  "A collector gets almost
as much pleasure in thinking of books he can’t get as in those he buys.
Don’t you think you alone are worth more to me than an old Boswell?"

"No," she murmured gloomily, "but I’m going to try to be."




                               *BOOK TWO*


                             *CHAPTER XII*


Many months have passed since I last made an entry in this, which I mean
to be a record of my life for later years, when I am grown old and white
and memory gives back vividly only the days of childhood.

It must be that the stoking of the furnace below all winter, or else my
absorption in Visconti’s, has banished reflection upon events from out
of my mind.  It is not reflection that was banished, however, but only
the energy to record it.  The folk who work the treadmill leave few
records behind them.  And I am of the treadmill, occupant of an office
chair, one of the gray mass of dwellers in the suburbs of life.

The office of Visconti’s, that was at first like a queer old wharf in
some foreign city to a ship from distant parts, has grown familiar and
almost homelike, so that I feel the barnacles gathering about my hulk at
the mooring place.

It is ever the same.  I come and I labor and I go. The chair and the
desk await me of a morning and by ten o’clock it is as though I had
never left them.  I go forth of an afternoon into freedom and feel a
momentary desire to wander about as of old.  The bland frontages of New
York still have a lure for me.  But the nestlings for whom I am laboring
are at Crestlands and to them I automatically hasten my steps.

But is all that about to end?

To-day, for the first time since his disappearance, I heard of poor
Laura’s husband,—Pendleton.

For to-day I have received an astonishing letter from Dibdin, and it is
that, I suppose, which has stirred me to writing again.

"Be prepared," Dibdin’s letter begins, after his usual abrupt manner,
"be prepared for a sort of shock."

"A week ago I arrived in Yokohama with half a schooner-load of stocks
and stones, carvings, idols, etc., homeward bound.

"If you have ever been in Yokohama you will remember the Grand Hotel on
the Bund."  Yes, I do remember. It was the one bright spot for me in
Japan on my brief and disappointing journey six years ago.  Heaven knows
why I went there.  Once I had viewed the Temples at Nikko, the sacred
deer on the Island of Miyajima and the volcanic cone of Fujiyama, there
was nothing else to do.  I am not an ethnologist and there were no
bookshops.  While awaiting my steamer, the only refuge was that
self-same Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where you can still sit in a chair
facing a window, as commercial travelers in provincial hotels in America
sit, and look out across the water towards Tokio, and smoke and idle and
gossip.  Of an afternoon there is tea with excellent little cakes—served
by Japanese girls in kimonos so gorgeous that even a geisha would be too
modest to wear them in the street.  The color, however, is meant for
western eyes.  The ladies, American and English from Tokio and
thereabout, wives of commission merchants, agents, naval officers,
diplomats, tourists, gather around and do what they can to annihilate
reputations,—as is the way the world over.

There is also a bar—the longest in Asia.  Incidentally, every bar in the
East is the longest and men from Hongkong, Shanghai, Peking, Kobe and
Yokohama carry the measurements of their respective bars in their heads
for purposes of competitive argument.  We all need something to brag
about, and there’s little else in those parts.  When the ladies have
finished their tea and have gone to their rooms or their ’rickshaws, the
bar at the Grand is the next halting stage for the men.  I have not
thought of it for years, though it is vivid enough to me now.  It is one
of the five points on the globe where, if you loiter long enough, you
are certain to encounter every one you ever knew.  But—Pendleton!

"If you remember this setting," runs Dibdin’s letter, "you will realize
how easy it was even for a bear like me to pick up quickly the gossip of
the place and, incidentally, the legend of Patterson.  Patterson I
learned was a drifter, an idler, a gambler, and a staunch support of the
Grand bar.  He is adroit, suave, pleasant, shifty—an American.  Some
trader found him on the beach in the Marquesas, took him along for
company among the islands and ultimately landed him here.  He has traded
in skins, in silk, in insurance; is said to have all but killed a man in
a card brawl and has cleaned out many a tourist at poker.  Now, he is no
longer allowed to play cards at the Grand.

"I had a curiosity to see this bird of plumage and two days ago,
Mainwaring, the excellent manager of this hotel, pointed him out to me.

"Judge of my amazement, as novelists say, when I recognized in Patterson
none other than the author of all your troubles, your vanished
brother-in-law—_Pendleton!_

"Will it surprise you to learn that my first emotion was a desire to
rush upon him as he leaned across the bar and drive a knife into his
back?

"Instead, however, I got Mainwaring to introduce me and if Pendleton was
surprised, he concealed it successfully.  Presently he was drinking my
liquor and chattering about the islands from which I am a recent
arrival.  If I disguised the cold rage I felt against the man you must
give me credit for more diplomacy than you ordinarily do.

"’You talk like a New Yorker,’ I presently let fall in a casual manner.

"’Ah, there you have me!’ he threw out in a blandly mysterious sort of
way.  ’Truth is, I don’t know where I come from!’

"In short, he tried on the lapsed memory sort of thing. Woke up one day
to find himself at Manila.  Didn’t know his own name or who he was or
whence.  Initials on his linen were J.P. so he took the name of
Patterson—as good as any other, and so forth.  Very sad.  But then one
must take life as one finds it.  Some of us are elected to martyrdom in
this world.  That, you understand, was his drift.

"’Well,’ I told him calmly, ’if you really want to know who you are, I
can tell you.’

"He turned, I thought, a shade paler, but he played his part smoothly.

"’You don’t mean it!’ he exclaimed with a quite seraphic ecstasy.  ’You
know me!  My God, man, you are my deliverer come at last!’

"’You are Jim Pendleton,’ I told him quietly and then I told him a few
other things.  My reasoning was like this: If he is the thorough hound I
thought he was, he would have an excellent chance of bolting—and good
riddance.  If there was a shred of decency left in the man, now was the
time for it to show.

"Well, he surprised me.  I saw real tears in his eyes. He begged for
every detail I could give him.  His voice broke when he tried to ask
questions about Laura and the kids.  He has not bolted.  He is quite
pathetically attached to me.  I am dashed if I can tell whether it’s
real or not.  I don’t believe for a minute in the lapsed memory dodge,
but I am flabbergasted.  He seems so pitifully keen for every scrap I
can tell him.  Maybe the poor brute is really ashamed of his past and is
trying only to save his face under this rigmarole of lost identity?  He
clings to me and I have him, so to speak, under observation. If it
should even seem remotely possible to make a man of him again, don’t you
think the risk of bringing him home might be worth taking?  I don’t
know, I don’t know.  I shall use the best judgment I’ve got about me,
but don’t for a moment think I’ll let you down.  It’s your interest I’m
thinking of and the interest of the kids.

"I can’t leave here for several weeks yet.  That ought to give me time
to take his measure.  I know what he has been.  Question is, can a
leopard change his spots, or a beachcomber his character?  We’ll see,
Randolph, my boy, we’ll see what we see.  Hard luck is hard luck, but
this man—well, I needn’t tell you.  There is such a thing, to be sure,
as trying back.  I’d like to have a second chance myself, if I behaved
like a villain.  But of this fellow I am far from sure.  I will say,
though, that he’s drinking less and trying to keep decent not only in my
own sight, but to the surprise of all the white colony here.

"You will hear from me again before long."

As I read, I felt gradually overshadowed by the immense somber fact
conveyed in this letter.  It was like a black cloud bank that comes up
swiftly, blotting out the sun from over the landscape.  It was not a
thing to blink, to wave aside or to dismiss with a shrug of the
shoulders.  It was instant and tyrannous, demanding anew urgent thought
and decision.  Fortunately I am no longer the same creature that was
bodily hurled from tranquillity and leisure, like a monk from his cell,
into the cold wind-swept ways of life.  I seem a little less like chaff
in the breeze.  My backbone seemed actually to stiffen and settle as I
posed the problem.

The problem is the fate of the children.  To receive and re-create
Pendleton means to give them up.

Well—and did I not assume their care only because there was none else?
Now there would be—there might be—some one else.  Pendleton has a legal
right to his own children and, if he could establish it satisfactorily,
no doubt a moral right as well.

The advent of Pendleton might prove to have incalculable advantages for
myself.  Here, on the one side, is the treadmill.  On the other there
is, or there was, ease and leisure and dreams.  My small competency is
gone in the wake of that man’s destructive progress. But for myself, I
might manage an easier and more agreeable way of subsisting than the way
of Visconti’s. Those are the cold facts, clearly enough—but somehow they
will not let me rest.  My world has been violently jarred, for all my
painful calmness, and I seem unable to fit the parts again into exactly
the old solidity of groove and joint.  There are lurking interstices
which I cannot fill.  "Who is Kim—Kim—Kim?" the hero of an unforgettable
tale was wont to ask himself.  And he felt his soul floating off and
dipping into the infinite. Likewise, I ask myself now, Who is Randolph
Byrd? And the startling truth returns that the children in my house and
I are inseparable, that I and they are one!

With this and the fact that Pendleton is in all likelihood coming back
to claim them, I am, pending further news from Dibdin, left to grapple.
At any rate, Dibdin also is returning.

It is now the spring and the year is beginning to smile again.  I have
been prospering at Visconti’s and my income is now again the same as it
was before ever the children came to me—before I became a business man.
But there is not a soul to whom I can confide my new dilemma.

There is Minot Blackden, the glass stainer, whom I have finally
discovered to be a near neighbor of Visconti’s.  To be exact, his studio
and living quarters are in King Street, and we sometimes have our lunch
together. But Blackden is so much in the grip of his medieval art that
it gets into his food, stains his tapering hands and even spatters upon
his finely pointed blue-black beard.  All he can see in me is the
Philistine who has cast all else aside for the sizzling fleshpots.  When
I chanced to mention having four children in my house, he looked upon me
as a bird-of-Paradise might look upon a polar bear; I was to him a
visible but incredible symbol of something strange and gross.  There is
nothing placid or resigned about Blackden.  He is intense, incandescent.

"Do you realize," he said to me, "that I am restoring a lost art to the
world?"

"But does it give you food?" I asked him.

"What does food matter?" he expostulated.  "What does anything else in
the world matter?"

Nevertheless, he was eager to take up my suggestion concerning the
writing of a booklet upon his new craft and he has been sending it out
broadcast.  But so intensely devotional is his attitude to the whole
business that I have not the face to suggest payment for the work, nor
has he referred to it again.  I know little of his art, but I know that
his returns are increasing.  It is obvious that I cannot burden a soul,
burning with that gemlike flame of Blackden’s, with any such confidence
as the impending return of Pendleton.  At times I think that Minot
Blackden and Gertrude Bayard ought to marry each other.  They are both
so single-minded and so absolutely sure of themselves.  But in the
meantime there is no one I can talk to.

No—absolutely no one.

Walking to Grand Central station these brilliant afternoons is a thing I
cannot resist.  It is the only exercise I get.  Crossing Washington
Square, I strike into Fifth Avenue and by the time I reach Fourteenth
Street I have a delicious sense of losing myself, of merging into the
crowd, that is very soothing after a day in the office. There is nothing
so stimulating as the energetic crowd in Fifth Avenue.  At Brentano’s
bookstore I usually pause and scrutinize the window.  I am very sound in
the latest novels and the newest developments in stationery.

To-day, as my eyes were feasting on the cover jacket of Mr. Arnold
Bennett’s latest, a lady coming down the avenue likewise paused before
the window and as we glanced at each other I found I was facing
Gertrude. Of course she had a perfect right to cut me.  She smiled
uncertainly instead and put out her hand.

"Hello, Ranny," she murmured casually.  "No reason why we can’t meet as
friends, is there?"

"Not the least in the world," I returned hastily. "Why should there be?"

"I didn’t know—but of course you always were a sensible person."

I grinned in my guilty fashion.

"How is everything?" she continued brightly.  "I heard—about your firm.
You in business now?"

I mentioned my connection with Visconti’s Banca e Casa Commerciale.

"You’re a sort of hero of romance," she smiled speculatively over my
head.  "And the kiddies," she added, "they all right?"

"Going strong."  She made no reference to Alicia but I thought it only
decent not to leave her in doubt. "Everything in my household is about
the same," I said. She nodded.

The years of our friendship flashed through my mind, with a sense of
regret at the passing and crumbling of human relations.  Gertrude would
quite naturally have been the one I could have talked to concerning the
probable return of Pendleton.  Then, on a sudden occurred one of those
coincidences which invariably surprise me. For what Gertrude uttered
quite carelessly as though merely to fill the conversational pause, was
this:

"No news of their father, I suppose?"

I have never yet lied to Gertrude.  I detest lies in general.  I was
silent.  My face must have betrayed me. Gertrude glanced into my eyes
and in a startled voice she queried:

"_Have_ you?"

Briefly, without going into detail, I told her.

"Why, Ranny," she exclaimed with a new manner, in a new voice, "that’s
the most wonderful thing I ever heard.  Wonderful!  That’s the greatest
luck for you. Your troubles will be over!"

"Ah, will they?" I speculated ruefully, rubbing my cheek.  "That’s the
problem.  Shall I be able to trust the children to him again?"

"Don’t be a—foolish!" she retorted in almost her old manner.  "The
responsibility will make a man of him again.  Besides—you’ll have to.
They are his. I should think you’d jump for joy at the relief.  Dear me,
what a story!"

"Oh—er—I must beg you not—not to mention a word of this to any one," I
stammered.  "You understand—it’s a ticklish business—for the children’s
sake."

"Don’t be absurd," she retorted impatiently.  "I don’t blab.  Will you
promise to let me hear how—how things come out?"  I promised.

At this moment Minot Blackden, his eyes blinded by visions of rose
windows, no doubt, bore down and all but collided with us.  I introduced
them mechanically to mitigate his apologies and left them both bound in
the same direction southward.  Gertrude waved a hand gayly.

"I’ll expect good news!" were her parting words.

So I have told some one, I reflected, as I made my way toward Grand
Central, and Gertrude expressed what all the world would say: "I ought
to jump for joy at the relief.  Besides, I shall have to turn them over
to Pendleton."  The wheels of the train I somberly boarded kept
insistently repeating the same self-evident opinion. In addition there
was the sickness of death in my soul for the folly of having given the
thing away to Gertrude, of all people.


I wish I were not obliged to parry social invitations just at present.
The excellent Visconti who had asked me to dinner two or three times
during the winter, has suddenly taken a notion to ask me at least once
every week.  I hope I am not grown so churlish but that I appreciate his
well-meant courtesy.  But the fag is too great.

He has a house in Thirteenth Street neighboring on St. Vincent’s
Hospital, and he also has a motherless daughter, Gina, abounding in
vitality, who must be amused.  The proximity to the hospital, he
intimates, the smell of carbolate and iodoform, depress young blood, and
Gina, being super-American, must not be allowed to remember that there
is anything unpleasant in life.  I trust I am not the only vessel chosen
to bring more lively spirits to that girl.

The effort for me is immense.  I go to Crestlands after office hours,
dress, return to town, and then make a late train for Crestlands again.
The food is excellent and Gina sings prettily in a soprano as rich as
her coloring.  But the next morning Visconti’s does not enjoy the fruit
of my undimmed energies.

More recently, Visconti has urged me not to dress and in that I see the
fine hand of Gina at work.  As an American-born girl, Gina is quick and
eager to read the signs and weather indications.  And though I am
becoming dexterous in excuses, I dined at the Visconti’s last night
nevertheless.  Gina sang the _Sole mio_ and _Una voce poco fa_ and even
told my fortune in cards, predicting that I should "be married a second
time."

"But never a first time?" I queried simply.

"Oh, then you’ve never been married at all!" Gina exulted, and she
energetically read the cards for me afresh.  Her sortilege evidently is
not a perfect science. But it occurs to me that by means of it the
clever Gina found out more about my personal life than ever I had
vouchsafed to her in all our acquaintance.

When I returned home I found Alicia in my study sitting late over the
catalogue, a copy of which she is now completing.  She jumped from her
chair.

"Oh, I am so glad you’ve come, Uncle Ranny," she clapped her hands
joyously.  "I have found something we have overlooked."

"What is it, Alicia?"  And my gaze was, I admit, fascinated by her
flushed cheeks and starlike eyes sparkling with excitement.  She seemed
the Muse incarnating those books, the very spirit of beauty they
enshrine. And yet she is not quite sixteen.

"It’s Shelley’s ’Alastor’!" she cried.  "And it’s so thin that it had
slipped in between the covers of another book.  It’s a first
edition—1816, isn’t it?"

"Yes, Alicia.  And a very beautiful poem besides."

"Oh, isn’t it!" she cried in exultation.  "I have read it all, Uncle
Ranny, and do you know what I found out?"—and her voice became more
solemn—"it is your life Shelley was writing!"

I laughed uproariously.

"Yes, he did!" flashed Alicia.  "Only your life is so much better.  He
was so absorbed in himself, Alastor, that he died in his loneliness.
And you—you are simply surrounded by people who love you.  You—!"

And then, I regret to record, self-consciousness overtook Alicia.  She
became aware of her own vehemence and blushing furiously made as if to
run out of the room.

My position of vantage near the door enabled me to stop her.

"Wait, my dear," I endeavored to lift her lowered chin.  "Enthusiasm is
nothing to be ashamed of.  It’s one of the finest things in life.  And
I’ll tell you more—we are always applying to ourselves everything we
read in books."

"Isn’t that," murmured Alicia shamefacedly, "why people love books?"
Foolish girl—to wake the sleeping pedant in me!

"Not altogether, Alicia.  When we get older we become less personal.  I
love books because they hold the truth and the wisdom of men’s minds.
And aside from life and love, Alicia, wisdom and truth are the greatest
realities in the world.  There is death, of course, but who cares to
dwell upon death?"

"I always did think that life and—and—love were greater than books,"
stammered Alicia earnestly.  "And now that you yourself say so, I am
sure of it!"

Astonishing child!  When has she had the time to speculate upon the
magnitude of life and love?  Always that young thing keeps revealing
herself to me afresh. I looked at her in silence for a moment.  Here was
a better counselor than any one, Dibdin excepted, with whom I might
discuss the impending return of Pendleton.

"Alicia," I began in another tone, "there is something I should like to
talk to you about.  It’s criminally late, I know, and you ought to be in
bed, but since you will dissipate on the catalogue, I’ll keep you up a
little longer."  I led her back to a chair and she gazed at me
wide-eyed.

"Is it anything about—the—children?" she whispered, somewhat frightened.

"Yes—in a way—it is about the children.  But more particularly it is
about their father.  Have you ever heard of him?"

"Their father!—I thought he was dead!" she murmured, awe-struck.

"There were times when we all thought so.  He disappeared some years
ago.  But he’s alive, Alicia.  I’ve just heard from Dibdin, who found
him in Japan."  Her eyes grew wider.

"How terrible!" she breathed.  "Does he know all—that has happened?"

"He does now—of course he didn’t until Mr. Dibdin told him."  And then
this occurred to me.  Ought I to shield Pendleton to the extent of
telling her positively that he had lost his memory or identity?  No.  A
confidant deserves scrupulous honesty, even if that confidant be as
young as Alicia.  "He told Dibdin," I went on, "that he lost his memory
of the past and found himself one day stranded in Manila.  Led rather a
wild and worthless life afterwards—people who lose their memories seem
to do that."

"Do you think that’s true?" she queried.

"I don’t know, Alicia, but when he comes back I suppose we’ll have to
accept that version.  Dibdin will have some advice on that point, I feel
sure."

Alicia remained silent for a time lost in reflection. Her child’s face
in her perturbation was the face of a grown woman.

"Do you think he’ll want to take back the children, Uncle Ranny?"

"That’s the crux of the whole matter, Alicia.  I don’t know.  But if he
does, he’ll have a right to do so, of course; they are his."

"Oh, oh!" and her hands flew up to her face in a gesture of poignant
despair.  "Turn them over to such a man!  Is that the way the world’s
arranged?"

I smiled gloomily.  I saw that there was no need of comment upon the
arrangement of the world.  This girl young in her teens understood it as
well as any one.

"Then I’d have to go, too," she uttered hoarsely with a dry sob of
bitterness in her throat.

"Not necessarily," I interposed.

"Oh, yes, I should," she insisted doggedly, as though driving something
painful into her flesh.  "But it doesn’t matter about me.  But, Uncle
Ranny, you won’t—you can’t give them up!  They’re all so happy here.
Little Jimmie and Laura and Randolph!  What chance would they have of
growing up fine—away from you—-with a man like that?  You won’t let them
go—you won’t, you won’t!  Oh, it would be horrible, horrible!" she ended
passionately.

"Listen, my dear," I tried to calm her.  "I had no wish to harrow your
feelings.  I told you because you love the children—and we must face all
this together. I shall want your help, your support."  She flashed a
sweet look mingled of pride and gratitude.

"After all you—have been through," she murmured incoherently.  "But why
don’t you do this, Uncle Ranny!" and with the quick transition possible
to youth, she was again alive, eager, excited, this little fellow
conspirator of mine.  "Why don’t you let him come here and live right in
this house for a while?  We’ll be awfully crowded," she ran on with
flushed energy, "but we’ll find room for him.  And let’s be awfully nice
to him—and believe everything he says.  Then we could watch him, and I
just know we’ll find out whether he’s all right or not!"

I laughed at her enthusiasm.

"You forget, Alicia," I informed her, "that even if he shouldn’t prove
all right, he is still the father of those children."

"I don’t care," she returned stoutly.  "If he’s bad and sees that we see
he’s bad, he wouldn’t have the face to take them away from here.  Even a
bad father wants his children to be all right!"

"And how in the world do you know that, you astounding infant?"

"Oh, I know!" with a triumphant laugh, "At the Home—some fathers brought
their children and cried—one of them did—because he was so bad he didn’t
think he was fit to have a child near him.  I had tiptoed into the
matron’s office, and I heard him!"

"Perhaps he didn’t want to support the brat," I scoffed to cover up my
wonder.

"Well, and do you think he will?"  Alicia snatched at my words.  "A man
who ran away from them, loafing round for years?  Oh, it will be easy,
Uncle Ranny!" she chuckled.  "He couldn’t fool us!"

"And why, my little Portia, couldn’t he?"

"Because," said Alicia thoughtfully, "he will always be thinking of
himself and we—won’t."

"You mean," I pressed, delightedly, "he’ll be self-conscious and give
himself away, the while we are clothed in our rectitude?"

"Yes!" she cried, with a laugh.  "We’ll be thinking of Jimmie and Laura
and Randolph—and it’s always easier to think what to do when you’re
thinking of somebody else—not of yourself."

"And did you discover that also in the matron’s office at the Home?" I
leaned toward her in amazement.

"No," she bent her gaze downward, "I learned that right here."

I kissed Alicia upon the cheek.  It lies heavy at my door that I have
shown her too little affection in the past merely because she is not
related to me.  It startled me to realize that dear to me as Laura’s
children are, Alicia is the dearest of them all.

As with a gentle good night she slipped away, a profound sigh of relief
escaped me.  That child succeeded in almost wholly blotting out my
feeling of bitter perplexity after talking with Gertrude.  Do Alicias
upon growing older turn into Gertrudes, I wonder?  No, I think not.
Surely not.

I now look to the return of Pendleton almost with equanimity.




                             *CHAPTER XIII*


I am agitated like a hen with a newly hatched brood.

It has suddenly been revealed to me that the complacency with which I
have been regarding my care and rearing of the children is abysmally
false and wholly unjustified.

They are not properly clothed for New York and even here in Crestlands
they seem on a sudden pitifully shabby. The competition in that sort of
thing in a suburb is keen. Everybody’s children seem better dressed than
my own and yet, do what I will, I cannot afford to spend more.
Randolph’s high-school dignity is positively impaired by clothes which
he is constantly outgrowing.  And the rate at which Jimmie wears out
trousers and soils white suits is simply unbelievable.  Laura alone
seems to have the gift of always keeping her things fresh and wearing
them as though they were new.

As for Alicia, that girl ought to be clothed in purple, at least
figuratively, if only I could afford it.  It seems to me I cannot live
another day unless I procure for Alicia a large collection of frocks and
blouses and shoes and whatever else would set off that faunlike
creature, compact of energy and grace.  For almost daily that child
grows more beautiful in a way that pulls at my heartstrings.

I trust I am no idiotic parent, or foster parent, to rave about her eyes
and complexion and the like.  I am as dispassionate as any one can well
be.  But truly there is something starlike in her eyes and at times,
when she is sewing or reading or working on my eternal catalogue, I
surprise her pensive, absorbed in some long thoughts of her own that not
for worlds would I disturb.  At such moments I am absolutely fascinated
by those soft pools of light that irradiate her face.

Are other girls like that at her age, I wonder?  It seems scarcely
conceivable.  At any rate, I have never seen any others like her.  But
then, I have seen so few.

The truth remains, however, that I positively must dress her better.
Even my dull fancy joyously leaps at the vision of Alicia beautifully
dressed and diffusing sweetness and fragrance through the house.  Of
course, I cannot single her out.  There is Laura, too.  And it might
seem invidious, although as the eldest of them all, Alicia is entitled
to especial consideration.  I cannot moreover allow Pendleton to observe
that I have kept his children shabby.  Few are the claims that Pendleton
can legitimately array against me, but the shabbiness of the children
would too flagrantly proclaim my failure. Nor does Dibdin know as yet my
rake’s progress since Fred Salmon made a business man of me.

But where am I to get the money for clothes when the mere routine of
subsistence absorbs it all?  There is still Dibdin’s yellowing cheque
intact, but I cannot use that—no.

Ah—I have it!  I shall sell "Alastor!"

Since I had overlooked it, I shall merely assume I never had it.  In its
Rivière binding "Alastor" should bring at least two hundred dollars and
may bring more. Heaven knows it cost me more.  It holds some marginal
memoranda by Leigh Hunt, which should not detract from its value.  Since
Alicia opines that my life is more laudable than Alastor’s because there
are those who love me, she shall profit by her judgment.  "Alastor"
shall be sacrificed for her soft and lovely frocks.

Sooner or later I had to come to it.  What is a volume more or less
compared to the happiness of a household? I am glad I have decided this.
So farewell, "Alastor, Spirit of Solitude!"


I seem to be possessed by the mad feverish spirit of carnival.

Having sold my "Alastor" by means of an advertisement in the Sunday
_Times_ for two hundred and twenty-five dollars, I experienced a
sensation of richer blood in my veins by that accession of wealth.
"Alastor" has clothed all my family.  I am sorry for the old woman who
lived in a shoe.  She possessed no library.  The moral is obvious.  What
though I parted with a little bit of myself when I parted with that
book, I have engrafted something else in its place.  For the children
also are myself.

I do not delegate Griselda any more to do the buying for them.

First I took Jimmie and Randolph to a men’s outfitting shop where the
atmosphere is august.  Alicia offered to come along, but though Jimmie
is hotly attached to her, he was vocal with objections.

"This is men’s business," he cried, "and us men must go alone."

"_We_ men," corrected Laura, laughing and kissing him.

"_Us_ men know how to talk!" he retorted, violently rubbing the kiss
from his cheek.  Kisses, he implied, were all very well in their place,
but not at important crises in masculine lives, not when the _toga
virilis_ was hanging grandly from their shoulders.

"Come on, old man," Randolph interposed with a wink in my direction, and
Jimmie’s wrath was appeased.  The "old man" soothed and uplifted him to
the proper pitch of virile dignity.

The seventy-five dollars laid out upon those two boys have given me more
satisfaction than anything else recently—until I spent the balance upon
the girls.  Men’s shops are prosaic and dull compared with those Greek
temples that line Fifth Avenue with feminine apparel. As the paymaster
for the boys I was unnoticed.  As the "uncle" of the two girls opening
the door to heart’s desire, I was an object of almost affectionate
solicitude to the saleswoman.  They were alert to help and advise. What
a freemasonry, an empire within an empire, is the domain of women’s
clothes!  In the latest slang and in words from Shakespeare the jaded
saleswomen were eager to interpret my wishes.

"I want some frocks and things for these girls," I announced boldly in
one of the great shops.  "Not too expensive but things nice girls ought
to wear."

"I know," nasally asserted an efficient blonde, ceasing her mastication
and mysteriously secreting what she was chewing somewhere in her
capacious mouth. "Somethin’ nice and classy—and quiet, but—_you_ know!"

"Er—precisely—"

"Neat but not gaudy?" put in her more pallid, more "cultured" companion,
with a faded smile to complete the specification.

"Ah—exactly so," I murmured and Laura seemed to experience a difficulty
in restraining herself from giggling.

Alicia, however, with the simple directness that is hers, proceeded
quietly to mention voiles and organdies and soon the discussion became
technical and I helpless.  I thought it wise to whisper to Alicia the
amount of money at her disposal.  She gasped her astonishment with a
blush and then a beautiful light of gratitude and pleasure leaped into
her eyes and I believe the child was going to cry.  I turned away
quickly, and steadily she proceeded with the business in hand.

To the lady who quoted Polonius, the neat but not gaudy one, I intrusted
the selection of those things that I was not to see; she was sincerely
gratified at my confidence and, I believe, conscientious.

There was just about enough change left for refreshments at Huyler’s for
the girls and paterfamilias.  Gay were the spirits in which we three
traveled homeward. How ridiculous Gertrude would make me, if she knew
it!

I felt excitement and happiness bounding in my veins, a new quality of
those emotions, the like of which I had never experienced before.  And
my heart positively missed a beat when the crushing thought struck me:
Must I now lose these young creatures and pass again into the emptiness
of life?

We Americans are like the French in that we think our climate the best
in the world.  Or, if not the best, at least so far superior to many
others that, like the French, we are steeped in vanity about it.

Of Saturdays I reach home early after midday, yet it has been
persistently and infallibly raining every Saturday afternoon the entire
blessed spring.  If perchance I want to take a walk and breathe some
air, I cannot stir out of the house.

Yet a nervous restlessness possesses me: I must have some diversion.  It
suddenly occurred to me to ask the girls to put on their various new
frocks that came last evening.  For a moment I was a little ashamed at
the thought.  But at bottom, I suppose, every male is a Persian
Ahasuerus, desirous of displaying and gloating over the beauty of his
women folk.  I have no doubt but that the king secretly admired Vashti
even though he was wroth at her disobedience.

Laura, it appeared, was in the next street at the house of a school
friend, but Alicia complied eagerly, displaying anything but the
suffragette indignation of Vashti. She was, in fact, eager to parade her
frocks with quite feminine excitement.

In her clinging voile, in soft-tinted organdie, in white slippers and
silk stockings, Alicia appeared,—a vision surprising, disturbingly
radiant with youthful charm. There was something with a blue sash that
made her simply exquisite, the very incarnation of grace.  Her hair
gathered tightly at the nape of her neck and then spreading out into a
great brush, a cloud of shimmering fine gold on her shoulders, seemed
the only mark of childhood left that prevented me from being like
another St. Anthony, miserably afraid of her.

I know not what devil possessed me to ask her to go and put up her hair
before she took off that frock.  How different must have been the
character of Persia’s queen. For Alicia ran out of the room and almost
in a twinkling she was back with her hair up.

I sat for a moment staring at her speechless, dry-lipped and
open-mouthed.  For before me, flushed and sparkling, stood the most
adorable young creature I had ever seen.  Why should there be so much
mystery in feminine hair?

"You—you—_child_!" I blurted out finally in a sort of choleric
tenderness.  "How dare you look so beauti—so grown up in my house!"

A peal of excited laughter was her answer and she made as if she would
rush toward me with open arms, as might an affectionate child eager to
caress an indulgent parent—and then on a sadden she checked herself, a
blush suffusing her cheeks and her very ears.

"Go call Griselda," I commanded, to cover her confusion, "and show her
the young woman we’ve been harboring in the guise of a child."

Alicia ran out of the room to comply and for a moment I remained sitting
in my chair as under a spell. Then I rose hastily to dispel such
nonsensical emotions and left my room, only to come face to face with
Alicia and Griselda in the dining room.

"Oh, ay—yes!" muttered my aging Griselda, her swarthy countenance hot
from the kitchen stove, looking more forbiddingly sybilline than ever,
"It’s all over!" she added mysteriously.

"What do you mean—all over?" I demanded a little stupidly, though dimly
I suppose I understood her.

"The young besoms grow up sae fast, it’s a meeracle they dinna wed in
their cradles!"

"Wed!" I cried in disgust at the word.  "You women are always thinking
of only one thing—even you, Griselda.  Go," I turned to Alicia, "let
down your hair again this minute, so you won’t put such wild notions
into Griselda’s frivolous mind."

Alicia laughed deliciously and even Griselda with a sort of dark twisted
smile reiterated:

"Oh, ay—the young besoms!"  Whereupon my young woman impulsively threw
her arms about Griselda and kissed the brown cheek with gusto.  Griselda
returned by pinching Alicia’s cheek fiercely.

My nephew Randolph and a companion, a tall gawky boy coming into the
house at that moment, stood in their raincoats at the dining-room door
and gaped, blocking Alicia’s path.

"I say!  Look who’s here!" my young hopeful exclaimed with a low
whistle, wagging his head from side to side.  The other boy merely
stared in dumb awe, twisting his wet cap in his fingers.  That gawk and
Alicia are the same age, yet—the difference!

"Let her go through and unmask," I waved them aside and Alicia, with her
head down, ran laughing out of the room.

I returned to my chair and sat down as one dazed. My policy henceforth
will be to frown on suchlike tricks—though I myself had instigated this
one.  What an occupation for a man of books and tranquillity—one who
desired to write of Brunetto Latini—to add to the body of scholarship
upon Dante!

And suddenly I put my head down on my arms and laughed long and I am
sure quite meaninglessly.

For if I were a woman, I might just as easily have sobbed in a way to
tear out the heart.  Decidedly the suspense of awaiting news from Dibdin
regarding Pendleton must be undermining my nerves.


I am gey ill to live with.

I seem to myself like the irascible old gentlemen in the comedies with
the prithees and monstrous fine epigrams, forever taking snuff—save that
there is no comedy about me.

I take down books and I cannot read them.  What pleasure I used to
experience in leaving some of the leaves uncut in fine editions so as to
cut them on further readings!  I have tried to extract that joy by
cutting some recently, but there is no joy in it.

Why am I so certain that Pendleton will take away all these that I love
and leave me desolate?  All his past seems to argue against the
probability.  Yet constantly I see before me the picture of their going
in a body with that man while I stand speechless, attempting to smile
benignantly.  How we dramatize ourselves, even the least imaginative
amongst us!  And all the time I feel as though great gouts of blood were
dripping, dripping from my heart in nameless anguish.

Alicia, that divine child, is watching me unobtrusively though closely,
whenever she can.  She surrounds me with comforts and attentions.  But
like some sick owl, I prefer to brood alone.

The somewhat isolated position of my châlet on the rock and the lack of
a wife in the household has saved me from making intimate acquaintances
among my Crestlands neighbors.  But there is one young man, Judkins, an
architect in the stucco house opposite, who strides over to my porch and
insists upon talking of his performances at golf.

"Ought to join the Club," he keeps reiterating. "Nothing like eighteen
holes to take the kinks outa your brain after the hullabaloo in the
city."

"Er—do I seem to have many kinks?" I ask, whereat he laughs in his harsh
voice.

"All got ’em!" he cries.  "Can’t get away from ’em. Books!" he adds
explosively, "books are no good! They give you the willies!"

And that man claims to have studied at the Beaux Arts!  Edmond de
Goncourt, that neurasthenic philosopher, prayed that he might make a
hundred thousand francs from his play "Germinie Lacerteux," so that he
might buy the house opposite and put this notice on it: "To be let to
people who have no children, who do not play any musical instrument, and
who will be permitted to keep only goldfish as pets."  As for me, I
should waive the children, the pets and the musical instruments; I would
merely say, "No proselyting golfers need apply."

Alicia, to mitigate my mood, I suppose, devised a picnic in the woods.
No one was to come save the children and I and that gawky companion of
Randolph’s, the boy John Purington, lest Randolph should be bored.
Randolph, it appears, is easily bored.  The consciousness of my recent
hypochondriac behavior led me to accept the suggestion with alacrity.

The luncheon Griselda prepared was packed in paper boxes by Alicia and
together, _en masse_, our little procession set forth and made its way
to a grove less than two miles distant bordering on the great Croton
aqueduct.

Randolph and the gawky boy fell at once to tossing a baseball, Jimmie
rolled delightedly about the lush grass, still grappling with his
insoluble problem of rolling up a slope and still perplexed as to why it
should be easier to roll down.  Laura ran to his aid and Alicia sat
beside me and laughed.

"That is the whole problem of life that Jimmie is facing," I observed
gloomily.

"No, it isn’t, Uncle Ranny," she put her hand on my arm as she
contradicted.  "That is only the law of gravitation.  There is a lot
more to life than that!"

"Yes, Alicia," I lowered my voice, "but when that man comes, how it will
hurt to think of little Jimmie, of all those children of my sister’s in
the care of that man who’s really her—her murderer!"

"Please, please, don’t think of that!" she begged, with imploring eyes.
"That hasn’t happened yet.  And we’ll—we’ll manage it somehow.  Maybe
he’s a good man, after all—and, oh; we’ll watch him—we’ll watch him!
Besides, he mayn’t come.  If he is what you think, then I am sure he
won’t come!"

That proved a very cheering thought.

Before I knew it, I was myself tossing a ball with Alicia and romping
with the rest of them.

It was only after the lunch had been eaten under the trees and the egg
shells and papers were gathered and stowed away, and the gawky boy
proceeded clumsily to monopolize Alicia, who has not the heart to snub
anybody, that my depression returned.

Whereupon Alicia gayly proposed that it was time to think of going home,
because Jimmie was drowsy and must not forego his nap.

Was it adroitness or spontaneity?  I cannot tell, but it is marvelous
how that girl anticipates and understands.

It was a happy, tired, air-steeped company that returned home.


A telegram has just arrived.  Dibdin and Pendleton have landed in San
Francisco!...




                             *CHAPTER XIV*


Pendleton is here.  He has been here a week. Like one in the dazed
excitement of some dream, the sort of farrago that leaves you limp and
weakly smiling when you wake up and see the sun, I have been going about
with numb limbs, strangely galvanized, not so much into activity as the
expectation of activity.

What is it I have been expecting to happen?  I hardly know.  But perhaps
I have been expecting melodrama.  And I am overcome by the obvious
truism that genuine melodrama is anything but melodramatic.  That is why
melodrama on the stage, with its ranting and strutting and flourishes,
disgusts one by its bathos.

The presence of Pendleton in my house, occupying my bedroom while I have
withdrawn into my little study, is the essence of melodrama.

Yet every one and everything is in a tacit conspiracy to make it seem
natural.  There is a tension in the atmosphere, without doubt, but we
are all of us madly, energetically ignoring it, hiding it.

The man’s conduct has been astounding, unimpeachable, unexceptionable.

He out-Enochs Enoch Arden.  Yet—why should I disguise the fact to
myself—I hate him.  That, too, I suppose, is melodrama.  But do what I
will, he remains detestable to me.  I cannot trust him.  I try, however,
not to show it.  Dibdin has acquired a deep furrow between the eyes, due
doubtless to his sense of responsibility in having resuscitated
Pendleton.  He carries the air of some magician or sorcerer who has
evoked a demon and is overwhelmed with terror by the problem of what to
do with him.

But I must in decency acknowledge that Pendleton’s behavior has been
without blemish.

Dibdin had sent me a long night letter from San Francisco saying he
would remain there a few days, "to give the fellow chance to bolt if he
wants to."  There had been other telegrams.  I was not to meet them at
the train but to give explicit directions.  It was as well. I could not
have met Pendleton at the train even if he were coming from the dead.  A
week ago, when Dibdin telephoned from the city, I went so far as to
order a cab to meet them.

There again the histrionics of the situation were at a hopeless
disadvantage.  For what I remember most vividly of that Saturday evening
was the sickness of my soul as I sat awaiting their arrival.  Again and
again I had steeled myself to tell the children of their father’s
coming.  I framed words and sentences in my mind until the cold
perspiration moistened my forehead, but I could not face the ordeal.  I
had thought I knew myself—that I was steeled to the tests of life.  But
I saw I was still a reed.  It came to within a couple of hours before
their arrival and still I had not told them.  I found myself on my
two-inch terrace and a stream of profanity was breaking from my lips.
On a sudden I saw Jimmie standing beside me.  Shame and chagrin overtook
me and I bent down to him and begged him to forgive me.

"Don’t you mind me, Uncle Ranny," he put his hand in mine.  "I’m a man,
and I know a man has got to swear sometimes."

"No, Jimmie—not if the man has brains enough with which to think."

That contact with the child, however, seemed to release something in my
clamped and aching skull.

"Run, Jimmie," I said, "and send Alicia out to me. I wish to speak to
her."

Jimmie, to whom commissions are delight, was off like an arrow.

Some moments elapsed before Alicia could come to me and during that time
I had a mad impulse to fly from it all, to, seize my hat and steal away,
to take a train to the city and not to return, until it was all over.
But I waited nevertheless and Alicia, who had been helping Griselda,
came running out flushed, with concern in her eyes.

"Alicia," I began miserably, "I have tried to screw up my courage to
tell the children about the coming of—of their father.  But I simply
can’t do it, Alicia; it’s—it’s beyond me.  I—I want you to tell them," I
faltered like a guilty schoolboy.  The girl winced perceptibly but—

"All right," she answered; "do you mean now?"

"About half-past six—the train gets here at six thirty-five.  You take
them into the garden—and keep them there until after the men come, and—I
call you."

"Yes—Uncle Ranny," she whispered—"but, oh, please don’t worry about it
so much!"

"No, my dear," I murmured and at that moment I felt closer to her than
to any other living being.  To take the children out of the house upon
the coming of their father—it sounded like a funeral.  And it was at
that moment—my funeral.  And the rest of the afternoon was a blur and
the encompassing world was a shadow. It was broken; no, it was too
insubstantial for breaking. It kept thinning and receding away from me
and I was left a dully throbbing entity in the primal chaos before
Creation.

I was startled at last by hearing the wheezy groan of an aged taxi
outside and like the galvanized corpse I was, I felt my members heavily
stirring and propelling me to the door.

On the path in the curiously sickly light of a premature dusk under a
clouded, lifeless sky I saw Dibdin and Pendleton, slightly stooping
forward to the slope, walking toward me.  That moment of poignant joy at
seeing Dibdin, of exquisite pain on beholding Pendleton—I shall never
forget it!

"Dibdin!" I cried, rushing at his hand and clinging to it to defer as
long as possible touching the other’s. Then, after ages it seemed, my
eyes slowly turned to the tall figure of Pendleton and rested on the
fleshy face, somewhat loose and pendulous, smooth-shaven and purplish,
with eyes that fell before my own.  Finally I disengaged my hand and
held it out to him.  I could not do otherwise.

"Jim," I murmured and my voice had labored over a universe of barriers
to achieve that.  But I could utter no more.

He peered at me from his protruding eyes as though he also were
struggling, struggling with memory and with memories, with a teeming
past, with all that he had been and committed, and for an instant I felt
sorry for him.

"Come in," I breathed deeply, and we made our way into the house and
into my study.

"Randolph," Pendleton finally uttered with a profound sigh, and then I
recalled that he was playing a part.  To me the appalling reality of the
whole episode had been so excruciating that momentarily I forgot that he
was in all likelihood playing a part.  But was he? How could he?  In the
face of these children, in the face of all he is guilty of, how could he
play a part, when the truth would raise him almost to a kind of manhood?
I cannot give him the benefit of the doubt and yet I cannot wholly doubt
him.  Some idiotic simplicity or imbecility inside me makes it
impossible for me to envisage any creature in human form as so
consummate a villain. Perhaps—perhaps there is something—

"Randolph," he murmured in a deep guttural—"I know you—I remember
you—yes, you are—you are—" and he paused.  We hung for a moment like
things dangling by threads, like marionettes motionless. Then, with a
prickling sensation of sweat over all my body, I broke the spell by
fumbling with a box of cigarettes and with a hand spasmodically
quivering like the needle of a seismograph, I held them out.

"Have a good voyage?" I heard myself saying, as we all smoked and
covertly stole glances at one another. I was not flying at his throat.
Dibdin puffed heavily with the crease deepening between his eyes and
Pendleton’s gaze roved questing and unsteady about the room. Melodrama!
There never was any except on the stage! In life there is only drama—and
pain.

"How are the kids?" Dibdin asked abruptly.

"Fine!" I exclaimed automatically, in an unnatural voice, like a pistol
shot.  "They are out in the garden there," and Dibdin nodded.  I felt
certain that his mind also was seeing the analogy to a funeral.  And now
my brain seemed to be shaking off its dull lethargy.  From somewhere in
Maeterlinck the haunting memory of a phrase came glimmering through my
consciousness, like a dim light through a fog, to the effect that if
Socrates and Christ had been in the palace of Agamemnon, the tragedies
of the house of Atreus could not have happened. I longed for a little
wisdom to deal with the situation.

"Would you like," I turned to Pendleton, "to see the children?"

"The children," he repeated dazedly.  "Yes—yes—I’d like to see them.
But—just a moment.  The children," he repeated piteously, "but no
Laura!"

Sharp, sharp was the stab at my heart when he spoke her name.  But
either he is a supreme master in deceit or I am the dullest of
simpletons.  For the struggle through clouds of memory that his features
expressed seemed real to me.

"I told you she was dead!" snapped Dibdin gruffly, without turning to
him.

"You told me?  Ah, yes."  And he sighed heavily. "Of course you told
me."  And his chin sank weightily to his breast.  We remained thus
silent for a space. Then—

"Come," I said, standing up.  "I’ll take you to the children."

He rose ponderously, his great frame limp and leaden, and followed me
somberly.  He seemed sincere enough in his grief, I must own that.
Dibdin did not move.

I led him into the garden toward the spot where the children were
huddled about Alicia.  She was talking to them in low tones and they
were listening in dead silence.  Never again, I hope, shall I experience
that sense of going to my own execution that I experienced at that
instant.  Execution—no!  I could have walked to a gibbet or a guillotine
smiling, I am quite sure.  What is my life to me?  I was walking rather
to the execution of those four young souls under the gnarled old apple
tree.

Alicia, too!  By Heaven!  Like a lightning stroke that fact crashed into
my soul.  He would take Alicia also.  No—no!  He had no claim upon her,
thank God!

"Not Alicia!" my voice broke out from the turmoil of my thoughts like
the voice in a dream breaking the barriers of sleep.

"Eh?" said Pendleton faintly.

"Did you call, Uncle Ranny?" Alicia turned and asked in a clear, steady
voice.

"Yes, Alicia," I struggled for control.  "Here is Mr. Pendleton—come to
see the children."  I meant to say "his children," but I could not.

The whole sickly-colored evening seemed to shudder at my words.  The
children seemed like wraiths under the tree to shudder away from the
intruding material world.

In a moment—what a tragic moment—Pendleton was bending toward them,
peering, peering into their white, frightened faces.  Then his gaze
settled on Alicia and hung there for a space.

"This must be Randolph," he finally turned to the eldest boy,
"grown—grown up—isn’t it?" and his arms stirred forward.

"Yes, sir," the boy answered hoarsely and put out his hand.

"And this—can this be baby Laura?"  Laura hung her head then raised it
bravely and with shy resolution held out her hand.  Pendleton took it
and kissed her clumsily on the cheek.

Jimmie, hanging back, clung to Alicia’s skirt and watched the
proceedings with troubled stealth from behind her.

"And this is Jimmie," I said, taking the child by the shoulder—"the
youngest of them."

As Pendleton was stooping toward him, Jimmie uttered a wild scream of
heartbreaking terror, wrenched himself from my hold and fled like some
little wounded animal toward the house.  Pendleton gave a short,
mirthless laugh.

My throat was parched, my heart Was thumping like a rabbit’s, but how I
loved Jimmie at that moment!

"He is only a baby," put in Alicia softly.

Again Pendleton looked at her—obliquely.

"And this is—" he murmured.

"Alicia Palmer," I supplied hastily, "who has been looking after them."

"Ah, Alicia—a little deputy mother—" and he held out his hand with
shamefaced suavity.

The scene was over—the incredible episode—commonplace enough as I write
it down.  But I lived a dozen melodramas in that eternity that a clock
would tick off in three or four minutes of time.




                              *CHAPTER XV*


Walking about as I do under sentence, I am like a man of my
acquaintance, a stodgy, a terrible Philistine, who cherished for years a
fancy that he could write Gilbert and Sullivan operas.  In all his life
he had probably never rhymed anything more subtle than love, above and
dove.  Since any fool, in his opinion, could supply the music, he
aspired only to the Gilbertian librettos. Incessantly and hopelessly out
of key he went about humming the Sullivan tunes to the lyrics he alleged
to have in his mind.

Similarly, I go about with a sense of mendacious buoyancy,—like a
shipwrecked passenger bobbing helplessly in a troubled sea, but still
alive; a flickering glimmer of hope, like a desperate man facing a
tiger, but still undevoured.

Brazenly I still expect happiness to emerge, somehow, out of
hopelessness.

It is easy, of course, to lapse into moods of despondency, into wishing
I were dead, since I cannot live in happiness,

    And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
    From this world-wearied flesh.


But such moments pass.  There is a sort of tonic in the rough of life
when the smooth is absent, and the wits, my poor dull wits, brace
themselves for the shock of action.  I feel certain now that in all my
years of tranquillity it is the salt of suffering that was lacking.  Yet
who would seek suffering for its own sake?  I know, however, that I feel
younger and more energetic to-day than ever I felt five years ago.

Even Pendleton has his uses.  He is the thorn in the side, the fox
gnawing at my vitals under the cloak, but here he is in my house as its
guest.

He goes with me to the city of a morning on his quest for work, "a
connection" as he calls it, and often I find him at home before me when
I arrive, in my room, smoking, or out in the garden with the children.
I wince inwardly, but I hope I do not show it.

I spoke of hating him, but that is untrue.  You cannot persistently hate
any man, notably a guest in your house.  You can only suspect him.  Yet,
when I see the children still shy of him, why does it give me a
throbbing sense of triumph?  I do not know, but so it is. Randolph alone
seems to approach him nearer as the days go by.  They go on walks
together and Randolph confides to Alicia that he is fascinated by the
tales of his father’s experiences in the tropics, of ships and islands
and pearl-fishing and native customs.  I fancy Pendleton must be
selectively on the alert in his narratives with his young son as the
listener.  His past must contain many things that none of us in this
quiet haven will ever hear recounted.

But I am indifferent to his past.  I could listen and even tolerate him
as my guest, if only the children were not passing to his care.  He
talks of "relieving" me of the burden.

"Don’t hurry, old man," I answer casually, "they are no burden to me."

He gazes at me and lowers his eyes.

"I tell you, Randolph, you’re a revelation to me.  I never knew a man
like you before.  They don’t make them like that these days."

"Praise from Sir Hubert," occurs to me, but I don’t say it.  I am in
reality at his mercy, I suppose, but I often feel as though he were at
mine.  The glossing over of his atrocious conduct, the taking him at his
word on the subject of his lapsed memory, which we either slur or don’t
refer to at all, seem to give me a tremendous advantage over him,—the
commonplace advantage of simple honesty over mendacity.  Not for a
moment do I now believe in his lapsed memory story.  I cannot deny,
however, that his air is one of repentance and, as Dibdin has said, who
in this world is so hard but he wouldn’t give a fellow man a second
chance?

Jim Pendleton, now that he has been to a New York tailor’s, appears as
impressive and debonair as ever.  He must be in the middle forties and
he is not ill-looking. It is chiefly his eyes that seem changed to me.
Do what I will, I cannot look at them.  There is a certain disturbing
obliqueness about his gaze that makes me turn mine away in a sort of
vicarious shame.


But, again, _C’est un mauvais metier que celui de medire_. And conscious
of that truth, I mean to speak or think no more ill of Jim Pendleton.
After all, his large contact with the world has given him something that
I lack.

Last evening at dinner he was regaling us with an experience of his of
spearing fish in the Marquesas.

"I was in the back of the boat," he was saying, "with a torch in my
hand, and my islander, who was an expert at it, held his spear ready for
the first fish that leaped.  Several of them leaped and fell again into
the water round us churning it up, so that we were wet with spray.
Suddenly I saw a huge mass glistening in the torchlight, falling, it
seemed, right on top of us.

"The native buried his spear upward in the thing as it fell.  I tell you
that man was quick!  But it was too late. The huge fish flopped into the
boat with its great head on my knees and the full weight of his body on
the man, sending him overboard and splintering the side of the boat.  In
just about a second we were in total darkness, floundering in the water,
with an overturned boat.  I was badly bruised and the native had both
legs broken.

"In spite of his broken legs, however, he offered to swim ashore, to the
nearest projecting rock.  But I was sure he couldn’t make it and very
certain I couldn’t.  It was a job, I can tell you, righting that boat,
helping that man into it and scrambling in myself; and then with a piece
of splintered oar rowing ourselves in.  The fellow with his broken legs,
worked just as hard as I did and never uttered so much as a groan.  It
did me up for some time.  But that fellow was spearing fish again in ten
days or so."

Jimmie, who is sometimes allowed to take his supper with us, sat gazing
at his father, fascinated by the narrative until the last word.  Then
seemingly jealous that any one, even this strange father, should exceed
me in prowess, his little face clouded and he demanded:

"Uncle Ranny, didn’t you ever spear a big fish?"

"No, Jimmie," I laughed, "but maybe you and I will go there one day and
spear some together."

"Well, anyway," he retorted stoutly, "you took us on a picnic."

Whereat we all laughed, albeit my own laugh was rueful.  The thought
flashed through my mind that Pendleton was certain to win them to
himself the moment he decided to do so.  The very memory of me would
become ridiculous to them.

"Uncle Ranny," spoke up Laura, "has been too busy feeding us and buying
us clothes to go traveling."

Alicia smiled radiantly at Laura across the table, and Griselda, who had
just come in with the dessert, nodded her head with somber emphasis as
she placed the bowl before me.

I could have hugged them all three in gratitude, but nevertheless I
pressed Pendleton to narrate more of his experiences.

"No," he shook his head, evidently taking the children’s comment to
heart.  "That’s yarn enough for one evening."

That seemed to me very decent of Pendleton.


I could not help laughing at Dibdin to-day.  I called him up on the
telephone and demanded what he meant by coming from devil knows where
after more than two years’ absence and virtually cutting me.

"Come to lunch at the Salmagundi Club," he growled.

"Does it pain you as much as that to ask me?"

"Don’t be a damn fool," he retorted.

"Don’t be so wickedly witty," I replied.

"At twelve-thirty," he muttered and hung up the receiver.  From which I
gathered that he was out of sorts.

In the hall of the Club where he was waiting, I greeted him with,

    "’Is it weakness of intellect, birdie,’ I cried,
    ’Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?’"


He stared at me.

"How you can be so light and idiotic in the face of circumstances," he
began, "passes my comprehension."

"Circumstances, my dear fellow, are all there is to life."

"Want to wash your paws?"

"No—I am as clean as I shall ever be."

I put my arm through his and allowed him to lead me to a quiet table in
the rear of the billiard room, softly illumined by a shaded lamp at
midday.

"What a delightful place!" I exclaimed.  "Residence of Q.T.
tranquillity."

"Tranquillity be blowed," he grunted, as he sat down facing me.  "What
are you going to do about that Old Man of the Sea of yours?"

"You mean Pendleton?"

"Whom the devil else can I mean?"

"Why, nothing of course, but give him a leg up if we can.  What else is
there to do?  I just received a letter this morning from an insurance
company asking for confidential information about him.  He’s given me as
a reference and they’re evidently considering him."

"The Danbury and Phoenix?" he asked.

"Yes.  How did you know?"

"I got one, too."

"I suppose we are really his only two possible sponsors at present."

"I’d as soon recommend a convict from Sing Sing," he muttered.

"Oh, no!" I protested.  "Not as bad as that.  Besides, sometimes you
have to recommend even a convict."

"I’d much rather recommend a convict.  I hate to lie about this man.
I’ve been asked whether I would trust him and I have to say yes.  But
you know dashed well I wouldn’t.  Give me a cigarette," he ended
savagely.

"I think he’ll go straight now," I murmured dully, passing my case to
Dibdin and looking away.  "The children will no doubt have an influence
on him."

"You judge everybody by yourself."

"How d’ye mean—myself?"

"The long and the short of it is," he declared, putting both elbows on
the table, "I had no idea what the children would do to you."

"What did they do to me?" I queried, mystified.

"Made you over—that’s all."

"Explain," I said, gazing at him stupidly.

"What is there to explain?" growled Dibdin, when the waiter was out of
earshot.  "You were always a decent sort of idiot—bookworm, muddler,
dilettante, whatever it was—afraid of real life, fit only to collect
pretty little books or old musty volumes that nobody really cares to
read in—a drifter, with about as much knowledge of the problems of
existence as a stuffed owl in a glass.

"What happened?  Your sister’s orphans come to you.  You plunge into
life, go into business which you detest, lose your money, go to work as
a clerk, by George! You of all people!—Keep a roof over them, bring them
up and hang me if I don’t think you were idiotically happy in it all
until I brought this Old Man of the Sea!—What right had I to pick him up
and bring him and bungle it all?  And why the hell didn’t you warn me
not to fetch him?  I thought I was helping you out.  I’d sooner have
chucked the brute overboard—I would, by Heaven!"

For a moment I could reply nothing at all to Dibdin. His estimate and
account of my actions were natural enough to him who, despite his burly
manner, exaggerates everybody’s qualities.  It seemed the more
remarkable that he who so firmly believed in the second chance should
now find no word to say in Pendleton’s favor. But I could see clearly
enough that what troubled him was the pain he instinctively realized the
departure of the children from me to Pendleton was certain to bring me.

"Why didn’t you cable me, ’Lose the brute?’" he took up his argument.

"Because, my dear fellow," I put my hand on his arm across the table,
"it was too late; once you had found him and told him of what had
occurred in his absence, it was too late.  Would you like to live with
the menacing uncertainty of him overhanging in space?  Rather have him
here and face him.  Besides, the children are his"—I knew I must state
my view squarely on that head—"If he is fit to take them, then have them
he must, regardless."

"Regardless of you, you mean?" He put it darkly.

"Yes—regardless of me, certainly.  I don’t count."

"By the Lord!" and his fine head shot upwards in a gesture that was in
itself invigorating.  "D’you know you are twenty times the man you
were?" he cried.  "I couldn’t have believed it.  You—you’re stupendous!"

I laughed and waved him away with a "_Retro, Satanas_."

"You’re going it blind like that," he ran on, disregarding me,—"Salmon
and Byrd," with a laugh—"losing all your money and
then—Visconti’s—slaving for the kids—meeting it all—by gad, you are
living life!—heroic, I call it—I take off my hat to you!"

"Put it on again," I murmured, moved by his vehemence. It was certainly
agreeable to hear such words from Dibdin, who never lied.  Praise is a
savory dish, not a thing that my misspent life has been surfeited with,
and it was exquisitely soothing to one’s vanity.  But it was clear
enough that Dibdin was wrong.  His usually lucid view was obscured by
the tangle of circumstances that weighed upon him.  Naturally, I could
not leave him in his error.

"If you knew," I managed to stammer, "the malignant fear that is eating
my liver white, you—"

"Fear of what?" he broke in.

"Of turning those kids over to him;" I lowered my voice—"just that
and—nothing else."

"Just that," he repeated gloomily, nodding his head. "Who would have
supposed it?  By the Lord!  If ever there was a bull in a China shop, I
am that bull.  Why the devil did I ever pick the brute up?  Look here!"
he flashed with sudden inspiration, "why not deport him as we imported
him, eh?  I might manage it—I might!"

"No—no, Dibdin—neither you nor I would do such a thing."

"Why not?" he growled.

"That would make us—worse than he is, or was," I explained sadly.  For I
must own that for an instant my heart leaped at his suggestion.
"Besides," I went on prosily, "it’s not so easy to lay a ghost when once
you’ve raised it.  We’ve got to believe him, Dibdin, my boy—if only for
the young ones’ sake.  He will probably get his job, and the thing to do
now is not to arouse his suspicion of how we feel about him.  Believe
everything he says—believe in him.  Thousands every year, according to
the newspapers, turn up willfully missing! He was tired of the humdrum
life and lit out; that is all there was to it.  Now he wants to try
back.  You yourself thought he ought to have another chance."

There was genuine pathos in old Dibdin’s voice when he spoke out with a
humid somber look:

"By George, that chap’s the Nemesis of us all!  By his one willful act
of destructive irresponsibility he has affected all our lives
destructively.  It’s maddening that one worthless brute should be able
to do all that.  He killed Laura, damn him; he orphaned these kids; he’s
upset your life—he makes wretched conspirators of you and me—g-r-r-r!
I’d like to pound him to a jelly!"

I laughed joylessly.

"What would that undo?"

"Nothing, I dare say," snapped Dibdin.  "Besides, you really have no
complaint, boy.  You tower, Randolph, my lad; yes, by George! you tower
head and shoulders above any one I know!  His very villainy has made you
over—blown the breath of life into you."

I believe I answered something flippant.

"Look here!" he cried, with a sudden movement upsetting a glass of water
and disregarding it.  "If those kids go over to him, we can keep an eye
on him—just the same—as though we were with them!"

"How d’you mean?" I queried, puzzled.

"That girl—what’s her name—Alicia!  She’ll keep an eye on him—and them.
She’s sharp, I tell you, with her innocent blue eyes.  Give you a daily
report like—like—"

"No!" I emphatically interrupted him.  "That, never!  She is not going
from my house—certainly not to him!"

I was the more abashed by my own vehemence when I saw Dibdin staring at
me with lifted eyebrows.

"Why—you are not—" he began blankly—but I interrupted him hotly.

"I am nothing!—She is to me just as Jimmie and Laura and Randolph are,
but they are unfortunately his. Don’t you know the meaning of
responsibility for young lives, Dibdin?  I want to give her her chance,
educate her, make a fine woman of her.  They have a father; she has no
one but me.  I can’t turn her out—and I wish," I added lamely, "I had as
much right to keep them all."

"Whew!" he whistled in renewed astonishment.

"I can only say I don’t know you any more.  I used to know you, but I’m
proud to make the acquaintance of the new Mr. Randolph Byrd."

"Don’t be a damn fool, Dibdin," I mumbled in exasperation.  "You know
you are talking rot.  Why the devil are you so interested in the kids?
There is that cheque you sent—!"

"You haven’t cashed it," he interposed, moving his shoulders as one
shaking off something.  "Why the deuce haven’t you?"

"I will some day," I grinned at him feebly, "when I need it more.  But
you haven’t answered my question."

I felt I was goading him brutally but for once I seemed to have the dear
old tramp upon the hip.  For all his gruffness he was as full of
emotions as anybody.  It seemed to me absurd for a man to hide his
implanted instinct, one of the noblest of all the little hidden
root-cellars of our instincts, under a false shame or indifference.
Women are wiser—they don’t hide theirs; and I had become shameless about
mine.

"Why," I repeated, "are you so much interested in those kids?"

"Don’t be an ass!" he grunted, looking down upon the wet tablecloth, and
a spasm as of pain crossed his countenance.

"Ah, you see!" I laughed, attempting to lighten his mood.

"Randolph," he uttered in a strange solemn tone that sent a slight
thrill through me.  "I told you once there was a woman I had cared
about—and only one."

"Yes—but you never married her."

"No," he continued in the etiolated tone of a dead grief.  "She was
married already when I knew her."

And then my sympathy went out to grizzled old Dibdin.

"I am sorry," I murmured, touching his hand across the table.  "Did I
know her?"

"Yes," he said quietly, "you knew her.  It was Laura."

In a flash of poignantly bitter and vain regret I saw the vista of the
dead years—of what might have been! ...




                             *CHAPTER XVI*


Miracles—miracles are common as blackberries!

Pendleton is once again a faithful worker in the vineyard of the
insurance company.

A commonplace miracle enough, but all miracles, I suppose, are
commonplaces that happen to surprise us or that we don’t understand.

The abstract office, I am sure, has more joy over one sinner that
repenteth than over ninety and nine—but I do not wish to be blasphemous.
Like Death, it claims us all in the end.  A voluptuary, an idler like
myself, or a renegade who broke from it indefensibly like Jim
Pendleton—all, sooner or later—turn or return to its yoke like starved
runaway slaves—the unrelenting office!  What a change it must be to Jim
after the beaches and the barrooms of the gorgeous East!  But for one
closely relevant circumstance I could find it in my heart to be sorry
for him.

What a strange and wonderful institution is the family! Another of those
commonplace miracles so charged with mystery, like birth and death.  If
I were a classical writer or a Sir Barnes Newcome I might expatiate at
length upon the subject.  The things we swallow and condone and cover up
for the sake of its ties!

Suffice it, however, that Jim Pendleton is quietly working out his
salvation, a salary and plans for re-creating his dismembered home.

The children are becoming quite used to him.  Randolph seems to be the
nearest to him and Jimmie remains stubbornly farthest away.  It is
painful to think however that Jimmie’s youth will the more certainly and
completely detach him from me in the end.

When is it all to happen?  I for one dare not fix the fateful day which,
with every passing hour, draws nearer. No one fixes the day.  It is left
dangling in the air by an invisible thread of uncertain length and
strength—

There are times when I could cry out in my anguish, my agony of nameless
pain, fear, apprehension.  But what a spectacle I should make of myself
if I gave vent to emotion!  We humans are not so much whited sepulchers
as masked and silent volcanoes.

And Jim Pendleton—what is he thinking, feeling? He is suave, quiet,
controlled.  He is very gentle with them all, and particularly
soft-spoken with Alicia.  He has taken to consulting and confabulating
with her touching the characteristics and the needs of the children. At
times it seems to me that I cannot bear it and once at least I have
called her and spoken harshly to her, and charged her with having
mislaid a volume of _Book Prices Current_.

How childish on my part!  But my nerves are not what once they were.
They are tetchy and fractious. It has been decreed that I am to have a
vacation and go away for a fortnight—go to Maine or New Hampshire. If I
were to burst into laughter at the thought, I might end like an
hysterical woman, in uncontrollable tears.  I could no more go now than
I could spread my arms and fly.  I am as remote from the holiday spirit
as from the North Star.

Poor Dibdin—how mistaken he is in me!  He blathers of my "towering head
and shoulders"—b-r-r-r! it makes me shudder with shame.  What a weakling
I am in the face of life!

No—I am a toiler in Bleecker Street, of its reeking pavements, its
fly-infested purlieus, where the Italian children grub and shout and sun
themselves in the gutters, in the air of a thousand smells throbbing
under the noonday sun.  The homecoming to the third-rate suburb used to
be refreshing and soothing like a delicate perfume.  To see the children
laughing and rosy in the square inch of garden, to see Alicia, sparkling
with her young energy and enthusiasm,—it had all been like coming into a
cool temple filled with shapes of beauty, after wandering in some fetid
bazaar.  Now it is dust and ashes.  I could never convey to Dibdin or to
any one else how alone I feel in the world, what chill and cutting
blasts of desolation sweep into my life every time I think of its
present or its future.


Minot Blackden came in to Visconti’s at noon to-day to drag me out to
lunch.

"Let’s stop in at my studio for a minute," he proposed as he steered me
round a corner.  "Something for you to see."

He showed me a small rose window designed for some church in Cincinnati
and turned expectantly to catch my exclamations.  I gasped out some
inanities.

"Art, my boy!" he gloated.  "That’s art for you!"

"It is, indeed!" I assented helplessly.  "Only surprising thing is how a
real artist can acquire so much fame.  Seems to me I see something about
you in every Sunday newspaper I take up."

"Ah, that’s business instinct," he chuckled.  "I am no amateur, I can
tell you.  I live this thing.  You may think it insane, but sometimes I
think I am Benvenuto Cellini reincarnated."  He was not laughing; he was
in deadly earnest.  "Come in," he added solemnly, directing me to a door
in the rear of his shop.  "I want to introduce you to my press agent."

I was duly introduced to a plain bustling Mrs. Smith of perhaps
thirty-five, who rose from a typewriter and spoke with a devotional, a
reverential fervor of "our work", while casting worshipful glances at
the artist. How do the Minot Blackdens inspire such adoration?  I know I
have rediscovered no lost art and it is plain I am no incarnation of
Benvenuto Cellini.  No one will ever worship me.

"Have you seen Miss Bayard lately?" Blackden inquired as we sat down to
an Italian luncheon, beginning with sardines and red pepper.

"No—I haven’t," I answered, surprised.  "Do you know her?"

"Do I know her!  Don’t you remember introducing us in front of
Brentano’s?"

I had forgotten it, and it seemed to hurt him that I did not regard his
movements and events with the devotional attention of his press agent.

"Of course," I murmured lamely.  "You’ve seen her again?"  He smiled a
detached, superior smile such as the immortals might smile over erring,
unregenerate humans, and ran his fingers through his dark, artistic
hair.

"I see her quite often," he explained.  "Very wonderful woman, Miss
Bayard.  She is a great inspiration to me in my art.  My art has taken
strides and leaps since I met her.  Surprised you don’t seize the
opportunity of seeing her oftener—a truly artistic nature!"

"Ass!" I thought.  But aloud I explained that domestic preoccupations
left me little time for social or any other visits.  The casualness of
my answer seemed to brighten Blackden perceptibly.

I recalled, incidentally, that I had promised Gertrude, though heaven
knows why, to let her know the upshot of Pendleton’s return.

"Tell her, when you see her, that I am coming very soon.  I’ve had a
good deal on my hands.  She will understand."

"She understands everything," murmured Blackden absently.  "Ah, there is
a woman!  Yes, I’ll tell her."  And his eyes glowed in anticipation.

He was positively affectionate to me, this austere artist, when he left
me at Visconti’s door.


To come home, as I have said, used to be a delight. The presence of one
person in it has changed it to a torment.

This evening when I approached my châlet on the rock, I found Pendleton
in high good humor playing a game with the children on the lawn.

A flap of canvas, making a sort of pup tent, had been fastened to the
tree for Jimmie, to give him that touch of savage life which even at
Crestlands little boys seem to crave.  Savage life at Crestlands!  Yet
once the Mohicans roamed here and the Mohican that is in all of us
craves an outlet in Jimmie.  It craved an outlet in me when I saw the
great hulk of Pendleton squatting tailor-fashion in the tent entrance,
enacting the rôle of cannibal chief.  I stood unobserved for a moment,
watching the scene with bitterness in my heart and shame on top of the
bitterness.

"Bring the prisoner before me," grunted Pendleton in the character of
the chief.

Tittering in suppressed glee, Randolph and Laura marched Jimmie up to
Pendleton, who measured the child with a fearful frown and demanded
where were the other prisoners.

"They escaped, your majesty," exploded Randolph with stifled laughter.
"This white man alone dared to remain and brave your power!"

"He should be boiled and eaten by rights," Pendleton growled
truculently.  "He dares to face the Big Chief of the Cannibal Islands!
Because of his great courage, however," he added as an afterthought, "we
shall spare his life.  Of such stuff great warriors are made."

"Beware, your Majesty," giggled Laura, "he might treacherously plan some
harm to you.  He is very brave, this white chief!"

"We see he is a desperate blade," answered Pendleton judicially.  "But
we admire bravery.  He shall be our spear-bearer in battle."

"No, I want to be eaten!" shrilled Jimmie in his excitement, whereat the
others shrieked and shook with laughter.

Alicia alone seemed moderate in her merriment.  I hugged it to my heart
that she appeared to look a shade sadly upon the scene.  But I am
probably wrong.  I went indoors and sank my chin upon my hands with a
turmoil of emotions which I wish to forget.

Pendleton is winning them, there is no doubt about that.  In all the
world there is not a soul who would cling to me, excepting possibly
Griselda.  Shakespeare never uttered anything truer than that life was
"a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

I wish I had never been born.

This morning I longed to romp and riot with the children, to shake off
every atom of care, to laugh and roll on the floor with them, to be
happy as I have been happy, but I could not.  Held in the grip of a
heartache that permeated every fiber in my body, I slunk sullenly away
to my study after dinner to be alone.  But even that I could not have.

Pendleton followed on my heels, lit a cigar and inquired whether he
could have a talk with me.  Naturally I could not prevent it.  I can
prevent nothing, for I am no longer master in my own house.

"Old man," he began in his suave thick voice, which he means to be
friendly, which to me seems orgulous with triumph.  "Seems to me you’re
about due for a rest."

"What d’you mean?" I faltered, wincing, though inwardly I knew well
enough what he meant.

"Just what I say," he smiled.  "You have worked hard enough—supporting
my family.  Time I took the load off your shoulders—that’s what I mean."

I waved my hand in a gesture of deprecation, but I could not speak.

"Oh, I know," he insisted doggedly, though even now he cannot look me in
the eyes, "you didn’t do it specially for me.  You did it because you
are a man—you—bah! they don’t make ’em like you, as I’ve told you.  But
you don’t want praise from me, I know that.  You don’t need it.  What’s
more to the point is, it’s time I took a flat or small house in one of
the suburbs and had the lot of them move over and live on me for a
while.  About time," he nodded his head and shifted his cigar, "about
time!"

Every word was a stab, but I steeled myself for the ordeal.  Wasn’t that
what I had been expecting all this time?

"When—do you want to make the change?" I endeavored to speak crisply, as
when I address the National City or the Guaranty Trust over the
telephone at Visconti’s.

"Well, I thought I’d begin to look round to-morrow. There’ll be the
place to find, some furniture to get—the installment plan will
help—whole job ought to be fixed up in two or three weeks, I guess," he
added with a laugh. "Uncle Ranny will have to come to supper pretty
often to keep the kids as happy as we’d like to see them, eh?"

"But a going household—" I spoke quickly in a sort of last spasm of
pitiful expostulation—"it’s quite a—an undertaking to set going?"

"Yes—I know," he nodded soberly.  "Don’t think I don’t know I’ll have to
push the wheel hard—with both shoulders.  But d’you know," he lifted a
confidential eyebrow, "that young woman—Alicia—will be a great help to
me—quite a little housekeeper, she is—quite a kid—I hope Laura will take
after her."

My heart was of lead.  If he was watching my face, he must have
perceived a deadly pallor sweeping every drop of blood away from it.
There was a pounding in my ear’s like rushing waters.

"Alicia," I heard myself saying as one speaking after being rescued from
drowning, "Alicia, you know, isn’t my child—or yours.  I can’t send her
to you.  She—there are formalities—but, anyway, her wishes are a factor
in the matter.  I’ll do anything, old man," my head seemed to swell
suddenly and shoot upwards like a cork from an abyss, and my face was
damp with perspiration—"anything, but I can’t send that child to you
unless—unless she is keen—you see that, don’t you?"

"Oh, yes, I see—certainly."  He was looking away as he spoke.  I have a
lingering hope he had not been watching my face.  "That’s all true, of
course.  But put yourself in my place, Randolph.  Here are three
motherless children.  She, that girl, has been a kind of mother to them.
Seems to have a born faculty for it. What would I do without her, just
starting in like that—you understand!"

"Surely, surely!"  I hastened to assure him, because I felt slightly
more master of myself.  "But you see my point—she doesn’t belong to me.
And even if she did—I can’t just pass her about—it’s a
responsibility—her wish—what I mean is, I can’t coerce her in any way."

And suddenly I saw the children away from me, with this dubious,
mysterious man, alone, and my heart was wrung with agony.  With Alicia,
at least—but, no!  I could not acquiesce so completely.

"Coerce—certainly not," was his wholly reasonable comment.  "I reckon a
word from you would go a long way, though.  But I see your point,
Randolph, I see your point.  Tell you what!" he began in a new tone.
"Suppose we put it this way.  I’ll speak to her myself—I’ll put it up to
her—leave you out of it altogether, see?—leave it to her to decide—so
you won’t have to—you’ll be neutral, you see?—What’s the matter with
doing it that way?"

A thousand devils within me moved me with all but irresistible force to
jump at his throat, to stifle his words, to choke the beastly life out
of him, to end the torment then and there.  But I could not—I could not.
I knew he was expressing by his words his sense of certainty that he
could win over Alicia, as he had won the children—that I was helpless in
his hands—that I was a weakling whom he was making the barest pretense
of respecting—that he could strip my household of all I held dear with
an ease so laughable that he could not even bother to ridicule me.  And
yet I could not rise up and strangle him.

As one in a vise, I sat for a moment chained by wild conflicting
passions, and then—a strange thing happened. A feeling of nakedness, a
sense of being stripped of everything like another Job, of being utterly
alone in the world fell about me like an atmosphere.  I felt deprived of
everything, though not bereft.  It was an odd feeling, a sort of
involuntary renunciation of all that was my life in which yet I calmly
acquiesced.  I faced and addressed Pendleton almost with tranquillity.
Certainly I experienced a strange new dignity that was very soothing,
very grateful, as water to the thirsty after battle.

"Very well, Jim," I heard myself saying quietly. "Go ahead your own way.
That perhaps is best."

All that I remember is a gleam of triumph in his eye. No word of all his
chunnering and maundering afterwards do I recall.  He talked on,
smoking, for perhaps four or five minutes and then he left me.

By myself I felt at once strangely heavy as a mountain and insubstantial
as the shadow thereof.




                             *CHAPTER XVII*


Again and again I have been told that I am a fool. But not even my
dearest friends have called me mad.

Are the gods then really so anxious to destroy me? What have I done to
deserve it?

This morning, after last night’s interview with Pendleton, I saw
Alicia—suddenly saw her as it seemed for the first time.  And yet an
overwhelming realization flooded me like a tidal wave that through
countless ages she and she alone had been inexpressibly dear to me. She,
the divine ideal I had been pursuing, catching fitful glimpses of in
glades and forests, on mountain tops, in palaces, in fantastic
surroundings, amid incredible scenes of a dim and ancient dream-life,
more real than any reality—_she_ was Alicia, this child Alicia.

And I am more than twice her age!

Nothing can come of it but misery and wretchedness for me.  By no word
or sign dare I convey such a thing to her or to any one else—to no one
except these pale pages that receive my poor motley confidences with the
only discretion I can trust.

She is dearer to me than all the worlds.  Yet not only must I remain
dumb but I must guard my every word, gesture, thought even, as never
before.

In the midst of all else this is a catastrophe.  Yet it overshadows and
overbalances everything.

Let me disclose the truth by so much as a sign, and every act and motive
of mine becomes abruptly suspect, and I shall stand revealed for the
immoral, shameful creature that I suppose I am.

I could face that, I believe, if there were any possibility—but there
isn’t.

I must hide and cover and conquer the feeling by inanition.  But how can
I, when she is so untellably dear and precious to me?

No, no!  A thousand times no!  I cannot let Pendleton try to inveigle
her to leave me.  No!

And all I have to do is to betray this garish resolution and my secret
will be out, and all that I am and have done will stand forth as naked
pretense and I shall appear stripped and manacled like a common criminal
too good for the hangman.

And I have dared to judge Pendleton!

The time-honored remedy in fiction, when a man finds himself in love
with any one he has no business to love is, I believe, to go away, to
travel.  How ridiculous that sounds to me.  The only place I can go to
is Visconti’s. To Visconti’s!  And now I have come back from Visconti’s
and I cannot stay in the house.

I cannot stay in the house because Alicia is in it—and Pendleton!

Oh, he will have his way, I am sure!  The Old Man of the Sea infallibly
has.  Why should the unscrupulous always have the advantage?  I abhor to
think of him.

It is Alicia that is filling my mind, my heart, my life. I have been
trying to think of her even until yesterday as a child, and I know I
have been deceitful.  She is a woman—she is womanhood.  I see her now in
her radiance and every movement and gesture of her, every act, every
glance speaks of the freshness and youth of life, of a supreme, a divine
beauty.  I have called her a child and I yearn to sink at her knees and
cry out my anguish and my adoration.  I am the child, helpless before
her.  Whatever I conceal, I cannot conceal what her going would do to
me.  It would shatter what remains of my life.  And I suffered Pendleton
yesterday to propose calmly that she go over to him—trafficking in
Alicia!—and with Pendleton!  It is stifling to think of. I must go out.
But I cannot let any of them see me.  I feel like a thief in my own
house.  The window—ah, I can slip out for at least a solitary hour under
the stars!


I did not manage to get out under the stars after all. Just as I began
to fumble with the screen Alicia asked leave to come in.  No presence
could have been more welcome to me, but the dark thoughts under which I
had been brooding made me wince with pain as she entered. Nevertheless I
contrived to greet her with almost normal cheerfulness.

"Uncle Ranny," she began hurriedly in an undertone, coming close to me,
"is it really coming, then?"

"What do you mean, my dear?" I asked her, though such subterfuges are
quite useless with Alicia.

"Oh, he’s just been telling me that he has his eye on a flat near
Columbia University in New York—that he expects to have it going by the
time the schools open—hasn’t he told you?"

"What else did he say?" I queried breathlessly.

"Nothing much—only he asked me whether I didn’t think it was wise to get
settled there as soon as possible. He is very nice to me."

"Is that all?" I breathed.

"Yes, that’s about all—but isn’t that enough?"

I smiled feebly and sank into my chair with immense relief.

I longed to draw her to me, to enfold her, to rest her head against my
heart, to hold her close and to exclude thereby all black care and
worry, all overhanging shadows, all the threatening and looming clouds
of existence—to make my world blissfully complete.  But I am only "Uncle
Ranny" to her—and I felt a shudder pass down my spine.

"And you, Alicia," I managed to say.  "What did you answer?"

"Of course, I said that was true—what could I say? But oh, Uncle Ranny,"
she leaned toward me as she stood at my desk, "I am afraid, Uncle Ranny!
They are ours—aren’t they—I know he’s their father, but I can’t help
feeling as though we were—handing them over to a stranger—Oh, I suppose
I ought not say it—some one we don’t know at all!"

And she burst into tears.

Blood and flesh could not bear it longer.  I twitched and writhed in my
chair for an instant, then I leaped up and threw my arms about her and
strained her to me.

"My darling," I murmured brokenly, "and how do you suppose I feel?"

"I know," she sobbed and gently, very much as Jimmie or Laura might have
done, she put her arms about me and nestled as though I were some one
old and fragile for whom she had a deep affection—but that was all.
Alicia’s first embrace!

And then I knew also.  She did not, I trust, for an instant suspect the
bitterness of the cup I was that moment draining.  But why should I
expect anything else? The guilt in my own heart tells me enough,—and too
much—of exactly where I stand.  Alicia is still a child. As yet
evidently she did not even suspect that Pendleton was bent upon taking
her also.  Suppose I prevented that, then what of the other three whom,
in another way, I love no less?  My head was throbbing dizzily, my
pulses were beating like drums.  For me this was the supreme moment of
anguish and sacrifice, the dark night of the soul, that _noche oscura_
that St. John of the Cross knows so well how to describe, that shakes
one’s being and changes one’s life forever more.  My lot seemed to be to
sacrifice and break myself in final and complete renunciation, to drain
my cup of bitterness to its uttermost dregs.

For a moment the world was as a shadow, swaying, airy and insubstantial.
The cowled monk that is buried somewhere within me was suddenly
uppermost and the life of the world seemed sordid and leprous; a deadly
thing rotted with lusts and passions, a thing to run away from—that was
pulling me into its sensual center.  But only for a moment.

Then suddenly the blood surged to my temples, as Alicia lay in my arms,
and the ancient cunning of a thousand male ancestors, of savage hunters
and crafty warriors who died that I might live, swept into my thews and
nerves and brain and I crackled with eagerness to fight for my own.

No!—I would not—could not give up all that I held dear.  I would fight!
I gripped Alicia’s shoulders in a spasm of fierce joy and in a hoarse
guttural voice that surprised her no more than it surprised me, I
breathed out:

"Never fear, Alicia—it can’t be!  It won’t be.  He hasn’t done it yet.
I’ll do something—I don’t know what as yet.  But give me time—a little
time—I’ll work it out.  We’ll fight if we must—but we won’t give up
tamely!"

Alicia’s warm cheek against mine, though with a trust that can only be
described as childlike, was reward enough for victory, let alone for
this still empty challenge.  But an irresistible, throbbing feeling of
confidence tells me that something will happen—that I shall win!

Is it simply the confidence of a fool, and the surge of melodrama that
is never very far from any of us? Possibly.  But my blood still throbs
and my muscles still crackle with the strange eagerness and lust for
battle. It may be that the fragrance and the starry look of Alicia that
linger with me yet, the sweet joy and pride of Alicia when she returned
my good-night kiss before she left me, the affection with which she
clung, the reluctance with which she went, all have something to do with
this new accession of courage.  But I do not comfort myself with vain
things.  Alicia happens to be a girl whose affections have never been
pampered by any doting parents.  If she looks upon me _in loco
parentis_, that ought to be enough for me.  It is not enough.  And the
pain of that leaves a barbed sting in my breast.  But that wound I shall
carry gladly—I shall wear my hair shirt like the girl wife of Jacopone
da Todi—if only I can play the man.


The evening and the morning were a day—the first day of a new life, and
what a day!

I went down in the train with Pendleton and briskly suggested that he
need not hurry with his arrangements.

"I thought," said he, with a furtive, sidelong glance at me, "that my
first duty was to ease you.  I owe you too much already," he added,
looking out toward the drabness of the Mt. Vernon right of way.

"It’s only strangers and enemies that owe each other things;" I
countered easily.  "Friends owe each other everything and nothing.
There is no audit for such accounts."

He laughed out of proportion to the deserts of this lump of wisdom and
exclaimed:

"You’re great, Randolph—great!"

It was my turn to laugh, and I felt that I had the advantage of him.
With the sixth sense, or the pineal gland, or whatever it is, I was
conscious that he was a little afraid of me—and that did not damage my
temper.

"Your experience in life has been so—peculiar," I told him, "that
anybody would be glad to be of any service possible.  And you must
remember that Laura was my only sister.  Tell me," I added
conversationally, "don’t you find the harness galling at times after
all—you have been through?"

"Galling!  Say, Randolph, those little machine people in their
skyscraper beehives—cages—don’t know what living is!—Freedom!" ...

For the first time I had noted the light of spontaneity glowing in his
eyes, and my heart bounded: I was about to hear a confession.  But on a
sudden he checked himself and looked away.  "Of course," he added in a
forced tone, "one has to face one’s responsibilities.  No—take it all in
all, I am glad to be doing my share of the work and carrying my burden."

I knew he was lying.  I knew that his first outburst was the true
Pendleton; that the addendum was meant, as politicians say, for home
consumption.

"Of course, of course," I muttered hastily, "but we’re only human."  And
alternately I cudgeled my poor wits to stand by me and prayed to them as
to deities to light my way.

This lawless spirit, Pendleton, I had a vague gleam of intuition, was
repenting his return to the yoke of duty, to the restraints of
civilization.  What, then, was it that held him?  It was not a suddenly
developed conscience.  Of that I was certain.  There was a problem I
must solve and solve immediately.

We parted with cordiality at Grand Central station and twenty minutes
later I was one of those little machines functioning at Visconti’s.

"I want a draft at thirty days," I was saying, "for ten thousand lire on
Naples.  Your best rate at that date."  And with the receiver to my ear
I heard a voice within me, independent of the telephone, whispering:

"Could it be that he too is bewitched by Alicia?—with all his roving and
experience—or is it his sense of duty to his children?"

"Four ninety-eight," said the exchange man, Hoskyns, at the National
City, and "four ninety-eight," I repeated after him automatically.
"Can’t you do better—at thirty days?"  And the independent voice in my
brain put in: "Perhaps I am hipped upon the subject of Alicia?"  And so
the morning wore on.

Gertrude, to my surprise and confusion, rang me up at eleven.

"Good morning, Ranny," she opened sweetly.  "You haven’t kept your
promise, have you?"

"Promise?" I repeated dully.  "What promise?"

"You said you would keep me informed about Pendleton’s return.  You
haven’t done it—have you?"

"But you have been away for the summer, haven’t you?" I ventured
desperately.

"Yes, and I am back," she murmured gently, "and still—better come and
lunch with me to-day—don’t you think so?"

If there’s any one thing that my career as a business man has done for
me, it is to implant in my heart a hatred for procrastination and
shiftiness.  I had no luncheon engagement, and yet I despairingly told
her I had.

"Dinner," she answered, "would suit me even better."

"I ought to go home," I protested feebly, with a sinking instinctive
feeling that I really ought not to resume such relations with Gertrude.

"We’ll have an early little meal, at six-thirty," she smoothly ignored
me, "Until then, good-by."

I clicked the receiver angrily for a moment, but Gertrude had hung up.
Her high-handed manner irritated me, but that was her characteristic.
We were more leagues apart, Gertrude and I, than ever she or I could
travel backward.  And though the results of our meeting seemed to be
unsatisfactory to Gertrude, I must in justice to her admit that she is
always an admirable hostess.

I had telephoned to my house that I was not to be expected to dinner,
and when Griselda had dryly answered, "Ye don’t know what ye’ll miss," I
thought with a pang that I knew more about that than she did. Gertrude’s
calm and comfortable atmosphere, however, her deep chairs and sofas and
the air of excluding a disorderly world, were not disagreeable to one
fresh from the filthy pavements south of Fourth Street.  Could those
junk shops, paper-box factories, delicatessen "garages" and machine
shops be in the same world with Gertrude’s flat, in Gramercy Park?  Yet
they were only a little more than a mile away, and those were my real
world, my daily environment.  Gertrude’s flat was now foreign ground.

"Yes—goose of a man!—don’t you see?  What could be better?  The man
comes back anxious to reassume his responsibilities.  You have had a
Hades of a time, but you have done the square thing, acquitted yourself
like a man and a hero.  And now the little romance ends happily and
everything is satisfactory and you are free again—what could be more
delightful?"

The heaviness of my heart portended anything but delight, but I remained
silent.

"Don’t think I am being trivial, Ranny," she resumed with a more sober
vehemence.  "It was a wonderful thing to do.  I feel I was wrong in what
I advised in the past.  Your sticking to the children has done heaps for
you—for your development, I mean—more for you than for them, perhaps,"
she inserted as a parenthesis with a laugh.  "But don’t be quixotic now.
Everything’s coming right in the best of all possible worlds. So don’t
go throwing a wrench into the machinery just because you’ve had the
wrench in your hand so long you can’t think what else to do with it!"

"I am not good at changes," I murmured gloomily. "I was catapulted from
one kind of life into another by main force of circumstances.  Now I
don’t feel I can stand being shot back into something else.  The wear
and tear, the strain is too great."

I will not deny that what I chiefly saw at that moment was a disruption
that would rob me not only of the affection of the children of which I
could not speak, but of Alicia, of whom I could speak even less.

Gertrude graciously lit a cigarette for me and sat down beside me.  She
herself, however, was not smoking.

"There is one change, Ranny," she began in a new and strange voice that
was almost tender, "that would do you more good than anything else in
the world—can you guess what I mean?"

"A trip abroad?" I fumbled uncertainly.

"No"—smiled Gertrude quietly laying her hand on mine, "I mean—marriage."

"Oh, my God!" I exclaimed in an agony of apprehension, and a cold
perspiration bedewed my forehead. That was one thing I never had
expected Gertrude to discuss with me again, even in the abstract.

I do not remember what I ate, except that the dinner was dainty and cool
and exquisite.  There was a dewy cup of something light and refreshing
and Gertrude’s frock was charming, her eyes were bright and there was a
touch of color in her cheeks.  She did little talking herself at first,
but pressed me to tell her all I could of Pendleton.

I told her.  I told her of his coming, of his air of penitence, of his
returning to the offices of the insurance company and of his present
effort to reëstablish a home for his children.  The only suppressions I
was conscious of were any references to Alicia or to my own somber
emotions on the score of the children.  Otherwise I was frank enough,
Heaven knows, for it is hard for me not to be.  To the very end Gertrude
did not interrupt me.  Only when I had done she made one crisp, incisive
comment with a faint smile that was merely a lift of the upper lip.

"The one thing I cannot understand, Ranny," she observed, "is your
unreasonable skepticism."

"You feel you could trust such a man implicitly?" I demanded.

"Yes," was the firm reply.  "If there is any one thing clear, it is that
Jim Pendleton is genuinely penitent. Suppose that lost-memory story is
all moonshine, as you and Dibdin seem to think.  By coming back that way
doesn’t the man really display more character than if it were true?  He
really shows that if he’s gone wrong he has the stamina to come right
again—and that’s a good deal in this wicked world, Ranny."

"I had not looked at it in that light," I muttered, disturbed.

"I know you haven’t," she gave a triumphant laugh. "You couldn’t be calm
on the subject.  You really are an emotional, high-strung romantic,
Ranny, and I don’t altogether blame you for being prejudiced.  But any
dispassionate person knowing the facts will tell you I am right."

"It would be difficult for me to feel dispassionate on the subject," I
returned doggedly.

"Certainly it would," was her ready reply.  "That’s why I am glad I
captured you.  Some friend had to show you your own interest."

"My interest?"

"Ranny," she cried in a voice charged with purpose if not with
emotion,—with an intense, a vibrating resolution that impinged like a
heavy weight upon my senses. "Ranny—don’t let’s be children—we are too
old for that.  Let bygones be bygones.  I’ll humiliate myself before
you.  I—I love you, Ranny—" and her lips really quivered—"I have always
loved you—will you marry me, Ranny?"

Her face seemed strange, transformed by the force of an irresistible, a
final compulsion.  I writhed under her gaze as one on a rack.  She hung
for a moment, her eyes glittering into mine, positively tremulous; I had
never seen Gertrude so serious.  I could not bear it.  It was
excruciating.  I know Gertrude was not herself.  I leaped from the sofa,
her hand still clinging to mine.

"I can’t—I can’t, Gertrude," I whispered hoarsely. "Oh—I—wish—but I am
horribly sorry—I can’t!"

Gertrude’s nerves are strong and her control over them is stronger.  She
gazed at me for an instant, intently, searchingly, dropped my hand and
turned away.

"There is some one else," she murmured in level tones to herself; "there
is some one else now."

"Yes," I breathed, "though it won’t—it can’t—" and I paused.

"You needn’t tell me," she turned, smiling harshly. "I know—it’s that
girl—the gutter-sni—but it doesn’t matter.  Every man is a fool—and you
are the least likely to prove an exception.  Oh, I always knew that—felt
it—but never mind.  I can’t humiliate myself any more, can I?—Ranny,"
her voice suddenly struck a quieter note.  "One thing I must ask for our
old friendship’s sake: You will forget this—episode—will you not?  And I
shall try to."

"My dear Gertrude—"  I threw out my hands in a gesture of helplessness.
If there was any humiliation it was I who was suffering it.  She looked
at me calmly, stonily.  The color in her cheeks was exactly the same as
before.  Had Gertrude stooped to rouge?

"Your dear Gertrude—yes; then that’s all right. Have a drink before you
go?  No?  Very well.  You will remember some day that I have given you
my best—done my best for you."

It seems inherent in the nature of woman, so cosmic is the sweep of her
outlook, or else so near to the earth, that when her desires are
frustrated she feels the laws of the universe are frustrated.  I did not
make this comment to Gertrude, however; I could only murmur an entreaty
for her forgiveness—which she ignored.  Her only answer was a brief hard
gesture of the head, a sort of jerk that expressed at once futility,
contempt and dismissal.

As one dazed and paralyzed I must have made my way somehow downstairs,
into a street car or some other conveyance at Fourth Avenue and into the
babel at Grand Central station.  But of this I have no recollection
whatsoever.  It is a blank.  I must have walked like a somnambulist.  I
never came to until I left the train at Crestlands about a quarter past
nine, and the first thing I was conscious of was the pain I must have
inflicted.




                            *CHAPTER XVIII*


I can write this almost calmly now because so much has passed since that
dreadful evening and details begin to emerge cloudily from the fog of
that confusion.

I remember striking out homeward from the station down our drably
progressive suburban Main Street, following the bumping, grinding,
loitering trolley across the little bridge over a stream that sends up a
dank, fishy odor, though all the living things I have ever seen in its
neighborhood were mosquitoes and water snakes.

Over the rusty iron parapet I stood leaning for a few minutes and the
original thought feebly stirred my dazed brain that life was not so much
a dream—as the Spaniard Calderon would have it—as it is a stream.  There
is no knowing what it may not bring upon its bosom.

"That’s it," I muttered to myself aloud.  "Life is a stream within a
dream."

"That’s about the size of it," gruffly remarked a passing laborer behind
me, his dinner pail clanking against his side, and he burst into a
hoarse guffaw.

I laughed too, and concluded that I was still maudlin at the end of my
perfect day.

I left the bridge and the highway, turned to the right and began to
climb the ill-lighted crooked street, anciently a Dutch cattle track, no
doubt, that leads to my isolated châlet upon the rock.

With all geography, history, the visible and invisible universe to draw
upon, the fathers of Crestlands had denominated this obscure street
Milwaukee Avenue. Milwaukee Avenue put the last touch to my nightmarish
state.  A sickly laugh escaped me as I bent my back to the ascent.

A young mounted policeman, who rode like another Lancelot by this remote
Shalott, interrupted his tune long enough to give me a cheery greeting
and rode on humming to himself.

The September evening was mild and I vaguely purposed walking past my
house and strolling about for a bit before I went in.  It was early for
returning from dinner in town, and I was not overanxious to encounter
anybody.  A sudden sense of something eerie and awesome came to me as I
looked at that deeply shadowed cottage.  It appeared unfamiliarly
remote, detached, and I gazed upon it with a weird sense of foreboding
that sent a slight shiver down my back.  The window shades of the châlet
were drawn with only their rectangular lines of light showing
through,—light, I reflected bitterly, by which Pendleton was no doubt
beguiling Alicia to desert my house and follow him.

This thought lodged like a barb in my heart and my feet suddenly turned
to lead.  I could not go on farther and irresistibly I felt myself drawn
homeward.

The somber habit of my recent reflections urged me with a plausibility
strange and inexplicable to enter my study by the window instead of the
comparatively public door.  The window nearly always stood open.  In
case of storm Griselda or Alicia would dash about the house and close
the windows, beginning always with my study. But this day had been
clear.

I tiptoed around through the garden to the side upon which my study
window gives.  From it the land slopes away under a covering of trees
until it reaches the stream.

There was a light in the study, though the shade was drawn, flapping
gently against the rusty wire screen. This shade, as it happens, does
not quite fit.  It is short a full half-inch on either side, so that the
peering observer can see as much as he pleases of what is going on in
that room when it is lighted.

Automatically, without any premeditation that I can now recall, I gazed
into my own room like a prowling thief.  The picture I saw riveted me to
the spot with an irresistible magnetic force.

Alicia was reclining on my leather couch, seemingly asleep.
Instinctively I knew that she had decided to wait up for me and with
some book in her hands had nodded in her vigil.  It was still early, but
Alicia’s day began early and was always charged with activity.  What an
exquisite picture she made as she lay there in her thin frock, with a
look of childlike trust and unconsciousness—radiating beauty.

Pendleton, who at that moment entered the door of the study, possibly to
find Alicia, stood for a few moments spellbound by the picture, even as
I stood outside. My burglarious entry was now frustrated.  I must make
use of the door.  But I could not move from the spot.  Somehow I could
not let Pendleton out of my sight.

How dared he look at her in that manner!

My nerves were suddenly tense and my muscles quivering. Strange
unfamiliar thoughts of savage acts, of sudden violence, of thrusts and
blows, of blood-lust seethed and bubbled within me like a lurid boiling
pitch. The inhibitions and restraints of a lifetime, however, held me
writhing as in a vise.

I turned away for a twinkling as though to gather resolution from the
murmurous night.

On a sudden, as I peered again eagerly, I saw Pendleton’s great hulk
bending over her, with a look peculiar and intense, with a strange
speculation in his eyes that froze me.  His huge hands were
spasmodically, irresistibly hovering as if to embrace her delicate
unconscious shoulders.  Before I knew it he was kissing her cheek and it
was I—I—who felt his hot vile breath as though Alicia’s face and mine
were one!

I cried out in a torment of fury and pain, but only a hoarse distant
sound as of some night bird issued out of my parched constricted throat.

I rattled the sash violently, seized the screen and ripped it out,
tearing my hands with the cheap twisted screen frame, though I was
unaware of it then.  The thin opaque shade flapped defiantly in my face.
And all at once I heard a piercing scream—the terrified voice of Alicia!

Rage maddened me.  And because of my state, I experienced difficulty,
this time of all times, in entering the window out of which normally I
stepped with ease. I stumbled, slipped, fell, rose again and leaped into
the room like a maniac.

But Griselda, drawn by Alicia’s scream, no doubt, was already filling
the doorway, facing Pendleton, and with a look of concentrated hatred
that remains engraved in my memory she was saying:

"Ye blackguard!  Ye vile, black-hearted blackguard!"

With a wild leap to my table I seized a pointed bronze paper cutter.  I
should have plunged it into his heart, but for the swift intervention of
the aged Griselda.

"No!" she cried huskily, seizing the blade, "we need nae add murder to
this!"

I dropped the paper cutter to the floor and threw myself at the purple
throat of the beast Pendleton.  For a moment the guilty hang-dog look
left his eyes and with an oath he thrust out his open hands against my
face to throw me off.  I was blinded by his huge hot palms against my
eyes but I clung convulsively to his throat. His hands spasmodically
closed about my neck; a momentary blackness fell upon me but I clung, my
fingers eating more savagely into the hateful flesh of his throat. The
pent-up force of years of hostility was that instant in my destroying
hands.  He gurgled and gasped and reeled backward.

In the meanwhile Alicia, emerging from her bewilderment and realizing
the scene enacting itself with lightning-like rapidity, gave a low cry
and sat up, moaning with terror.  This vision of Alicia recalled me to
myself.  I flung his head away from me and I myself staggered backward
with the force of my effort.  I was breathing like a wrestler as I stood
leaning with one hand upon the table.  I could not speak.

My desire was to fold Alicia in my arms, to press her to me, exulting in
her safety.  But I dared not move for fear I should topple and fall,
with the sheer working of the rage that was tearing me.

"Go—Alicia!" I gasped out finally.  "Upstairs. Leave us!"  Dead, banal
phrases, when I panted to pour out endearments!

With a look of wild anxiety from Pendleton to me, like a terrified doe,
Alicia rose, stood for a moment irresolute, then suddenly throwing up
her hands to her face, she ran out of the room with a piteous stifled
cry.

We stood for a space silent, all three of us, Griselda, Pendleton and I,
after the door had closed.

"Now, Pendleton," I said finally, when I was a little more sure of my
voice, "nothing you can say will matter in the slightest.  We saw.
Question is what d’you mean to do?"

He glanced hostilely toward Griselda.  She, interpreting his look,
flashed defiantly, with arms akimbo.

"Look, ye villain, look your fill.  I will na leave the master alone
with a murderer, the likes of you!  No, I will na!"  How often I have
wished since then that she had not been so zealous.

"Talk about murder!"  Pendleton, with the ghost of a grin, pointed at
the paper knife still clutched in Griselda’s hand.

"You needn’t be afraid on my account," I told Griselda quietly.  "I
don’t fear him."

"I will na go away," obstinately retorted Griselda, moving forward,
pushing Pendleton aside like a man, and placing her back against the
door.

"Very well, Griselda," I said.  "I have no secrets to hide from you.
And this man has betrayed what he can never hope to hide.  Pendleton,
what do you mean to do?"

"Do—" muttered Pendleton, with a dark abstraction in his look, "I’d like
to tell you what I’d like to do to such as you—but it isn’t worth while.
This namby-pamby, mollycoddle, rotten doll-life favors you.  Do! If I
had the money, I’d get so far away I couldn’t even think of insects like
you."

"Then you realize you are no more fit to take Laura’s children than
you’re fit to live among decent people?"  He was silent for a moment,
with the abstraction merging into cunning in his eye, and that in turn,
as though cunning were of no avail, fading into heaviness.

"They’ll become like you," he finally answered with the somber trace of
a sneer.  "There’s the oldest boy—I wish—I’d make a man of him."  A
snort of derision from Griselda interrupted.

"You mean a criminal," I put in, in spite of myself. "Well, you can’t,
Pendleton.  Lift a finger and as surely as you sit there, I’ll prosecute
you—children or no children.  Don’t forget I have witnesses."

He gazed at me open-mouthed with half-defiance, half-alarm on his moist
fleshy countenance.

"That’s your little scheme, is it?" he muttered sardonically.

"Only if you drive me to it!"

"Blackmail, eh?"

I laughed at him.  "What’s the use of being melodramatic, Pendleton?
You are hardly the one to talk like that."

"Where’s the money Laura left?" he snapped with truculent sharpness, and
I experienced a pang of pain to hear her name upon his lips.
Nevertheless, I answered him evenly:

"That exists intact—about nineteen hundred dollars. It’s the children’s,
unless I should need it for their education.  I am the executor."

"Give me a thousand of that!" he cried passionately, yet with a
tentative uncertainty in his voice, "and I’ll go where I’ll never see
your face again!"

"That’s a consummation, Pendleton—but of that not a penny!"

"Executor!" he repeated with vicious bitterness—"with your little laws
and safeguards.  God!  How I hate you all!  God!  To be again where real
men are—who move—and laugh—and live!  Peddling mollycoddles—caged white
mice!  Damn you!  I wish to God I had never met any of you!"

"You don’t know how often I have wished that," I murmured, but he paid
no heed.

"Lord!  I want to be again where the sun shines, where a man can take a
chance!  I wish to God I had never met that moldy old rotten Dibdin!  I
was going into the commission business with an Englishman at Osaka—or I
could have gone into one of the mines of Kuhara in Korea—copper—made a
fortune!"—he spoke as if he were vehemently thinking aloud—"but that
plausible rotter Dibdin came along—dragged me away—and I had a hankering
for the lights of Broadway. Broadway!  What have I seen of it?  Want to
put me in a cage—in a flat!  Hell, man!  Give me a thousand dollars—and
let me—I’ll pay it back!"

I did not laugh at his last words.  His mention of Dibdin suddenly
brought to my mind what was like a flash of light.  To be rid of him was
my paramount desire.  Dibdin—Dibdin’s check—_to be used for the
children_!  It lay yellowing in my pocketbook.  Now if ever was the
time.  Never, I felt certain after Pendleton’s confession, could I
benefit the children more with a thousand dollars!

"Yes!" I cried explosively.  "I understand you, Pendleton.  I’ll give
you a thousand dollars.  You don’t belong here—it was a mistake bringing
you—go where you came from—where you’ll be at home."  It was only
afterwards I recalled that he had mentioned blackmail.

"You’ll give it to me?" he exclaimed avidly, thrusting out his hand.

"Yes—I will!"

"Now?"

"To-morrow morning."  His face fell.

"Some trick?  You’ll go back on it."  I ignored him.

"But you can’t sleep here," I went on.  "I’ll meet you in town anywhere
you say.  No, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.  I’ll come with you to town
now, to-night. To-morrow morning we’ll settle it."

To be rid of him—to get him out from under this roof—seemed suddenly a
great, a priceless boon.

"God!  I could kiss you!" he cried in derisive exultation.

"Go pack your things," I said, through the tumult in my brain.  "I’ll
call a cab—or better still, you telephone Hickson, Griselda.  I’ll go
and help him."

Pendleton nodded with grim insolence and shouldered out of the door.

"A better night’s work ye’ve never done in your life," flashed Griselda,
with a look of approbation that pleased me as much as any praise I have
ever received; and she shuffled out to the telephone.

For one moment of silence I stood alone in the middle of my study,
throbbing with a jumble of half-formed thoughts and racing flashes of
ideas upon none of which my mind was able to fasten.  But this single
fact finally emerged from the welter: It was I, by my own act, who was
now sending the father of Laura’s children into exile.  But on the heels
of that came the certain conviction that never had any judge since
justice was invented made a more accurate decision.  And it seemed to me
then as though something new and massive and stubborn and hard was born
in my bosom that solidified and toughened me: That, come sorrow or joy,
I should be able to present a surer front to their encounter, a greater
certitude in meeting them.  I felt myself at last an active, fashioned
and tempered part of the machinery of life, and all my past seemed as
chaff that had been blown by the winds of circumstance.

Alicia!  My heart cried out for her!  But I could not go to her now.  I
must clean my house for her and when next I saw her it should be in a
cleared and wholesome atmosphere that no longer reeked of Pendleton.  I
made my way to his room and opened the door.

"Have you packing space enough?" I asked him coldly.

"I could use another suit case," he muttered.

"I’ll give you mine," I told him and brought forth my bag from a closet
in the hall.  Whether Alicia had heard any or all of our words I could
not tell.  The children were evidently sleeping.  I walked on tiptoe.

"Where d’you intend to go?" growled Pendleton, without looking at me.

"To an hotel," I told him curtly—"any hotel you like."

"Go to the Hotel de Gink for all I care," he muttered and went on with
his packing.

"Do you want to see the children before you go?"

I could not forbear asking him that.  He paused for a moment and
straightened up, breathing heavily.  Then he shook his head.  "No—I
guess not."

The tin taxicab was rattling at the door, and Griselda came futilely to
announce it.

"You’ll hear from me to-morrow morning some time," I whispered to her
quickly, as Pendleton, stooping under his bags, lumbered on in front of
me.  "Look after Alicia—and the others."

"Ay," she murmured, "have no fear."

There was a train, and in the longest half-hour of any journey we were
at the Manhattan Hotel.  Adjoining rooms were assigned to us with a
bathroom between. There had been a sort of intoxication about the entire
business that had carried me on with a blind nameless force as one is
carried in a dream.  Once I was alone in the four walls of the
impersonal chamber, a sudden lassitude fell upon me, followed by an
immense wave of dreariness.  How somber and sinister was life, full of a
drab and hidden tragedy.  Trafficking with Pendleton—slaving at
Visconti’s—the dreams that had been mine!  And this was the life I was
living.  Suppose in the morning he should refuse?  On a sudden my door
opened and Pendleton’s hatless head appeared.

"Sure you won’t back out in the morning?"

And again my nerves snapped back into their steel-like tension.

"Not even doomsday morning."

"Will you have a drink on it?"

"No," I told him, "but there is no reason why you shouldn’t have one."

"I think I will," he said, and with a malign gleam of triumph he
approached the telephone in my room.

"The bar!" he demanded, and when the connection was made he added: "Two
rye highs for 436."  Then he turned his face toward me and grinned.

"Now, Randolph," he began quite amicably, "why keep me here any longer
than you can help?"

"What d’you mean?"

"This: It’s only about half-past ten—quarter to eleven.  There is—there
must be a train for the West round midnight.  Why prolong the sweet
agony of parting—why not let me go?"

"Now?  You must be crazy!" I exploded nervously. "How can I get the
money for you?  Besides, there’s another thing—I want you to sign
something—something a lawyer must draw up—a paper of some sort—so you
can’t repeat this business."

"So that’s it—is it?" he nodded his heavy head up and down, as though
thinking aloud.  "Well, put that out of your mind.  I’ll sign nothing.
Take me for a fool?  Here’s your chance.  Give me the money now and let
me go or the deal’s off.  See?  I’m just as anxious to go as you’re to
have me go.  But I wasn’t born yesterday.  I’ll sign no papers in any
damn lawyer’s office.  Take it or leave it.  That’s that!"

There was something unspeakably horrible to me about sitting there and
chaffering with this man whose every word breathed contamination.  For a
moment the thought of Dibdin came to me.  I would call upon Dibdin in
this emergency.  Dibdin had hardly been near me of late.  Excepting for
an occasional luncheon together or a sporadic telephone conversation, I
had scarcely seen him.  It was as though he dreaded to encounter the
monster Pendleton, whom, in a sort he had himself brought into being,
and was only waiting until I should be free of him.  But somehow I could
not then call Dibdin. This was _my_ crisis and my mind revolted at
dragging any one else into it.  Oddly enough it was not the children
that seemed to be the barrier, but Alicia.  The picture of Pendleton
obscenely hovering over her came scorching, before my vision and I at
once, dismissed the thought of calling upon Dibdin.  The club,—that was
my one chance of getting cash at that hour.

"What’s the matter with your club?" Pendleton snapped me up so suddenly
that I was startled.  Could that fleshy brute read my thoughts?

"Just what I was thinking of," I murmured excitedly and snatched up the
telephone.  "Give me 9100 Bryant."

"Damn it—you’re a sport!  I like a dead game bird like you."

When the club answered, I asked whether Mr. Fred Salmon happened to be
in and was informed that the doorman thought he was and that he would
page him. I sat waiting with the receiver to my ear.

"Tell you what I’ll do," said Pendleton, under the stimulus of
expectation.  "If you pull this off for me so I can start to-night,
while the mood’s on me, I’ll sign any damn thing you please."

"Hello!" I suddenly heard in Fred Salmon’s deep voice, "Salmon
speaking."

"Fred," I told him, "this is Randolph Byrd."

"Hello, Ranny!" he broke in exuberantly.  "Well, of all the ghosts—" but
I checked him.

"—I want to cash a check for a thousand dollars right now, Fred.  I am
at the Manhattan Hotel.  The banks are closed.  Will you do this for me:
Ask at the office and turn out your pockets and get what you can from
any of the card players there and anybody else you know.  Do you follow
me?"

"I get you all right—all right—" said the voice of Fred, hardening to a
businesslike tone now that money was in question.  "Hold the wire a
minute, Ran.  I’ll see what I can do."

Fred’s raucous voice was as plainly audible to Pendleton as it was to
me.

"Get it," he muttered.  "Get it.  I’d hate to wait till to-morrow."

I nodded.  To be rid of him to-night would be a vast relief.  And I
longed to return home.

"I guess we can fix it all right," came Fred’s voice in the telephone.
"But you’d better come over with the check.  There’s about six hundred
dollars in the club till. I have a couple of hundred with me.  And we
can raise the rest."

Pendleton heard him.

"Go ahead," he said.  "I’ll fix up about a berth with the head porter in
the meanwhile."

"What’s the big idea?" was Fred’s greeting, as I entered the club.

"Private," I told him laconically.  "Sending a man to the antipodes
because he’s unfit to live in this climate."

"Oh—sick man?" Fred was sympathetic.

"Very sick," I told him.  "Incurable,"

Fifteen minutes later I was in the hotel, handing Pendleton the money.

"Now what d’you want me to sign?" he queried carelessly.

"Not a thing," I answered.  For on a sudden the futility of holding
Pendleton to any bond overwhelmed me.  Any respite, even a few weeks
from his presence, seemed a paradise.  Paradise seemed cheap at a
thousand dollars.  And who can safeguard paradise?  Besides, if I knew
my man at all, it would be some time before he would return to an
environment he so thoroughly loathed. I was no more safe with his
signature than without—and no less.

"That’s about all, then," he said, and he had the decency not to hold
out his hand.  "Good luck," he added in an undertone.

I made no answer and turned my face away from him with a wonderful sense
of relief.

No sooner had the porter bustled out with his things and the door closed
than I looked toward my own small bag with the dominant thought of
returning home.  But I could not move.  I found myself shaking like a
leaf and I sank down in the nearest chair, quivering as though the
vibration in my nerves would hurl my body to pieces. No, I could not go
home in this state.  And taking off my coat with hands that shook as in
a palsy, I threw myself upon the bed.  But before I passed into the
sleep of stupefied exhaustion a single insistent foreboding kept dully
throbbing through my brain.

"He will come back—Pendleton will come back!"




                             *CHAPTER XIX*


Exultation filled me when I awoke late in the morning.

Though I had slept in my clothes and felt particularly disheveled, I
stripped with the joy of an athlete after a victory and plunged into the
cool invigorating bath.

Pendleton was gone!  I do not remember the emotions of Sinbad when he
had rid himself of the Old Man of the Sea.  But his emotions must have
resembled mine.  My heart sang, I sang myself.  I was manumitted.  I was
free.  To my intimate journal may I not say that I felt myself a man?

I had fought the beast at Ephesus, my pulses blasphemously and
jubilantly informed me, and by the Lord, I had won!

The children were mine!  Alicia was mine!  Would that I could bind them
to me with triple brass.  But I have bound them.  In ridding myself of
Pendleton, I had made them securely mine.  Suppose he should return one
day?  They would be grown—reared by me. He would be merely the family
skeleton.  What is a family without a skeleton?  He was that now.  He
wouldn’t matter.  It is human destiny to revolve about the child, about
children.  With the exception of Pendleton the outcast and Gertrude
the—well, Gertrude—every one attained completeness only in rearing the
next generation.  And as I rubbed my body with the coarse towel I felt
complete!

As for Alicia—ah—well, who was I to expect from life _everything_?  At
any rate she was mine, now, even as the children were mine.  And the
very first thing I would do—oh, jeweled inspiration—is to adopt her,
legally and formally.  That thought suddenly made the blood sing in my
ears to so delicious a tune that absurdly, ridiculously, I began like
some pagan or satyr to dance about the room.  _Mine, mine, mine_!  I
danced into the room in which Pendleton had not slept and with crazy
gestures made as if to sweep his memory out of the garish window.  I had
saved the children and safeguarded Alicia.

I felt I had played the man.  And let no man say he has lived until he
has fought for those he loves. Inevitably my mind dwelt upon Alicia.
Who is that child? What were her beginnings?  Did she come out of the
sea and chaos of life only to vanish in some bitter poignant dream like
that of last night?  I only knew that she was mine now and that I would
bind her to me yet more strongly.  I would not ask for too much; I would
be humbly grateful.  She had come into my life as a divine offering and
I would not question overmuch.  There is no other origin.  I felt
supremely, tremulously content. If only she would abide and never leave
me!

And it occurred to me, as I stood shaving before the mirror, that life
is a beleaguered city, with deadly arrows falling over the wall, and the
great enemy, death, certain to enter in the end.  But by virtue of the
love implanted in the human heart, one may snatch many hours of
happiness amid the tumult and the shouting in the winding ways.

Over my hasty breakfast I recalled with a shock of guilt that I had not
yet communicated with Griselda. But as I was already late I decided I
should call her from the office.


How swift is mischief to enter in the thoughts of desperate men I
discovered bitterly only a few minutes later.

For the first word I received upon entering Visconti’s was that Griselda
had called me repeatedly and Griselda’s news chilled and numbed every
fiber in my body.

Alicia had disappeared!

Pendleton!  That was the thought that seared my brain.

"You—don’t think"—I stammered brokenly to Griselda, "that she—that
Pendleton—"

"I have thought of that," was her reply.  "But—no! It canna be possible.
She hated him—no!  She must hae gone before ye left the house.  I looked
into her room soon after and she wasna there.  I thought the girlie was
hiding somewhere—or maybe she had run out into the garden until the
mischief should blow over. I looked high and low; I called her in the
garden.  But she was nowhere to be found."

"Did she take any things?" I queried huskily.

"A wee bundle—" said Griselda—"night things and the like."

The shuddering dismay of that moment I shall never forget.

"Did she talk with—with him at all during the evening?"  The words
struggled out of my parched throat in spite of me, and I should have
hated to see my own eyes.

"Ay," said Griselda, "that he did, the leper!  All the evening he was
wheedling her to come to him with the bairns when he set up his house.
She was weeping sair to me in the kitchen afterward.  It was to ask you
if you wanted her to go that she waited for you in the study—and fell
asleep, the poor maidie!"

"And what did you say to her?" I all but whispered into the mouthpiece.

"I told the lass not to greet," shouted Griselda.  "I told her I could
nae believe it would happen.  He would never take the bairns.  And if he
did he would nae keep them.  He was a bad one—the evil brute!  But she
was frightened, the puir lassie!"

"Very well, Griselda," I muttered stonily.  "I must think.  I shall call
you a little later.  Don’t alarm the others."

She hated him, had said Griselda!  There was a meager ray of comfort.
But do what I would, my stunned mind continued to flutter heavily like a
half-scorched moth around the ugly, sinister vision of Pendleton.  Could
he be at the bottom of Alicia’s disappearance?  How had he contrived the
trick?  If only I had gone to the station with him!  Was it that that
accounted for his hurry to be gone?  No!  It was impossible. Ought I to
start in pursuit at once?  No, no, no! I could not believe it.  It could
not be—not of her own free will!  Yet my heart was lacerated by the
possibility. When I lifted my head from my bosom, I gasped in a
desolation of emptiness.

I had stifled the prompting to call Dibdin last night, but now I felt I
must find him.  I needed the solace and advice of a friend.  I rose
heavily and put on my hat. Visconti had not yet come in.

"Tell Mr. Visconti," I said to Varesi, my young understudy, "that I have
been called away suddenly, on a serious private matter.  I shall
telephone him later."

"Yes, Mr. Byrd," responded Varesi, his lustrous Italian eyes flashing
sympathy.  He thought, no doubt, from what he must have overheard, that
some rascal had run off with my younger sister—a killing matter, very
possibly, to a properly constituted male.  Had he known the truth, his
Latin mind would have been shocked at my seeming Anglo-Saxon composure.
Out of doors I heaved a deep sigh and boarded a north-bound elevated
train for the eighties, where Dibdin has his lodgings, near the Museum
of Natural History.

I found Dibdin not at his lodging but at the Museum, directing the
rearrangement of the Polynesian section in the light of his additions to
it.

He turned one intense glance upon me without speaking, hurriedly gave
some directions to the men at work, and led me to an alcove where there
was a bench.

"Now, let’s hear—" he said.  "What’s he been doing?"  He concluded at
once that Pendleton was at the bottom of whatever wild appearance I must
have presented.

Briefly, but without omitting any essential detail, I gave him an
account of all that had happened the previous evening, including
Griselda’s announcement of the morning.

"And you think he enticed her to go off with him?" he demanded.

"Well—what do you think?" I queried.

"I think no," said Dibdin.  "What does Griselda say?"

"She says Alicia hated him."

"Then take her word for it!" snapped Dibdin.  "But why the devil didn’t
you call me last night from the Manhattan?" he turned upon me angrily.

"Why didn’t I?" I murmured.  "Maybe it’s because you’ve done
enough—maybe it’s because there are some things a man wants to do
without assistance."

Dibdin glanced at me sharply and gave a low whistle.

"Oh, that’s it—" he muttered—"I see," and he looked away.

I am certain that at that moment Dibdin read my secret.  For his
expression swiftly changed.  He grew suddenly warm and friendly, more
than his usual self.

"A fine job you did there, Randolph," he cried, clapping my shoulder;
"an excellent piece of work.  I certainly admire your technique.  As for
Alicia—she didn’t go with him—of that I feel sure!"  I could have
groveled before him in gratitude for those words.

"But where do you suppose she is?" I could not help eagerly asking.
There was a gleam of amusement mingled with the sympathy in his eyes.

"Not very far, I imagine.  We’ll find her.  Have no fear.  Young girls
are funny things.  The instinct of sacrifice and the instinct of
independence are always struggling in a woman like the twins in
Rebekah’s womb.  When they’re young it hits them very hard. Some notion
like that must have swamped Alicia—sacrifice—earn her own living—ceasing
to be a source of trouble—who knows?  They don’t think when they’re
young—or even when they’re old.  They feel.  We’ll find her—but we’ve
got to think.  Pull yourself together, old man."

"How," I asked in stupefaction, "do you come to know all that about
women?"  And my heart felt perceptibly lightened at his words.

"Oh, I’ve been studying them all my life," he laughed. "Never having had
one of my own, I’ve been watching and thinking about the whole sex all
over the earth. We’ll find her.  Have you communicated with the police?"

At the word "police," my heart turned leaden again.

"The—p-police!" I stammered aghast.  "Invoke the publicity that
means?—Horrible!"  A shudder ran down my back.

"Right again!" cried Dibdin, nudging me.  "Young man, you have an
appreciation!  Quite useless—the police.  But you still—have a suspicion
of Pendleton, haven’t you?"  I found myself wishing that even the best
of men weren’t so ready to imagine themselves amateur detectives.  The
very core of my heart of hearts, Alicia, had disappeared, and I wanted
swift concrete help, not speculative questions.

I admitted that I had a lingering suspicion of Pendleton.

"Then, this is what we do," Dibdin rubbed his forehead as over a problem
in chess.  "We see a private detective agency here and acquaint them
with the facts. Have them pick up Pendleton on the way—he hasn’t reached
Chicago yet, you know—and see if he’s traveling alone.  If he is, let
him go on his way.  If not—then, a description of the girl—you
understand—"

A livid fury possessed me suddenly as I saw the all too vivid picture
that Dibdin had evoked and was now trying to believe.

"No, no!" I cried.  "I am going myself.  I dare not—I cannot trust
anybody else to do this.  You don’t know—you can’t understand—"

"I know only too damned well," growled Dibdin staring at me quizzically.
"But I am trying to show you sense—difficult, I admit, to one in your
condition. However, I must try again," he went on with the patience of
resignation.

"You are only one man—don’t you see?  A detective agency is an
organization of many men in different places who can concentrate on the
same job simultaneously. At this minute they would know on which train
he might be traveling and some one or several could already be watching
for his arrival.  Suppose they miss him.  There are many hotels in
Chicago—there are many trains leaving for the coast—don’t you see?"

"Yes," I breathed brokenly.  "Then it’s useless."

"Far from it," he laughed.  "Come with me."

Less than an hour later we were at the Mahoney Detective Agency and a
suave young Irishman was listening without emotion or eagerness to my
story supplemented by Dibdin’s interpolations.  He seemed to care little
for what concerned me most, but he was keen for personal details of
Pendleton’s appearance, height, build, clothes, lettering on his luggage
and so on.

When it came to giving a detailed description of Alicia, my confusion
was so pitiful that even the young detective glanced at me only once and
then, like the gentleman he was, looked sedulously down upon the paper
before him.

"Sixteen—in her seventeenth year!" he murmured in astonishment.

"But she is an unusual girl—well grown for her age," I caught him up.

"I see," he murmured gravely.  "What’s the color of her hair?"

I went on as best I could with the description.

"I could save you money," he smiled blandly, "by telling you that the
girl is not with him—" and I could have wrung his hand like a brother’s.
"But," he added, "it won’t cost much to pick him up.  I’ll have news for
you to-morrow this time, I’m thinking."

As I sat down to lunch with Dibdin at his club, though in truth nothing
was farther from my cravings than food, he suddenly burst forth into
hearty laughter.

"So it’s my thousand you gave Pendleton?" he chuckled.  "That was sheer
inspiration, Randolph—sheer, unadulterated genius!  If you weren’t so
lugubrious just now, I could accuse you of a high ironic sense of humor
that only a great man would be capable of!"

How terrible were the next twenty-four hours, in spite of Dibdin’s
companionship and his efforts to cheer me, no one will ever know.  No
funeral could possibly have darkened my household to such an extent.  I
dreaded to be seen by the children, who walked about like wraiths under
the sense of tragedy.  I dreaded to tell them lies and yet I could not
tell them the truth.  Finally I felt I must say something to Laura and
Randolph.

The departure of their father they received without the least surprise.
Randolph inquired where he had gone, but this, I answered, I could not
tell him, save that he had gone West.  But the absence of Alicia left
them puzzled and strained and awed.  Alicia’s disappearance shook them
almost as it had shaken me.

"When will she be back?" demanded Randolph.

"I don’t know exactly," I answered miserably, "soon, I hope."

The following morning I gave up all thought of going to the office.  If
my mysterious truancy should cost me my job, then it must be so.  I
hovered in the region of the telephone.  Again and again I was about to
call up Mahoney’s, but I forebore.  Finally, toward noon, I could wait
no longer.  When the connection was made, I gave my name and asked for
the young man who had charge of my case.

"Was just going to call you," was the bland apologetic answer.  "Your
man is at the La Salle Hotel, going out on the Santa Fe to-night.  He is
alone and arrived alone last night.  We’ll see whether he starts alone
to-night."

Then, of course, I cursed myself for my folly in thinking that it might
be otherwise and realized that I had really thought nothing of the sort.

But where in the meanwhile was Alicia?

I had believed myself by now schooled to emergencies, but here was an
emergency that left me dazed and helpless. I had fondly thought myself a
match for life, but life was crushing me with pain like a blind force.

I leaped up suddenly and wandered about the house and the garden like a
dog searching miserably for a departed loved one.  There was the
stream—but I turned from it shivering.  No—that was impossible!  The
sense of life in Alicia, her vitality, was too potent, too radiant to
suffer extinction.  I looked up at my little nest from the edge of the
muddy stream, that frail eyrie upon the rock that I had felt so
nestling, secure; barred by the trunks of intervening trees, it now
seemed a prison.  A faint breeze that was stirring the leaves made them
murmurous with secret things which my heart cried out to interpret.  Was
it a litany, a dirge, or a whisper of hope?  I could not read the
riddle, but my bruised spirit was passionately clinging to hope.

Dibdin pretended not to observe my vagaries; when I returned I found him
absorbed in Epictetus.

"This is rather good," he growled, pointing to a passage and puffing his
pipe as he spoke:

"Have you not received facilities by which you may support any event?
Have you not received a manly soul?  Have you not received patience?"

"Yes," I muttered dejectedly, "all very well, but Epictetus never lost
Alicia."

Dibdin laughed shortly.  "Now," he said, "we must start out to find her.
Though my feeling is she’ll come back of her own accord very soon.  The
girl was frightened—no more."

I ignored the last part of his speech but leaped at the first.

"How would you start?" I queried sharply.

"What is the high-sounding name of that institution where she was
brought up?"

"Oh, don’t tell them, for Heaven’s sake," I cried out in alarm.  "If she
is not there and they learn I have lost her, they’ll never consent to my
adopting her; they’ll consider me irresponsible."

"Don’t let’s be fools," retorted Dibdin.  "Those people are not.  Do you
know how many boys, girls, men and women turn up ’willfully missing’
every year?"  No, I didn’t know.

"But, by George!" he suddenly clapped his forehead in a burst of
inspiration—"Sergeant Cullum!  Ever hear of Sergeant Cullum?."  I shook
my head.  "He is a policeman I know who has a genius for finding missing
persons.  It’s positively a sixth sense with him.  He’s a prodigy—has
traveled everywhere—a human bloodhound—he is the man to go to!"

"But—the police!" I stammered.

"Yes, I know—but we’ll see whether we can make him take this as a
private case—out of hours—I’ll find him!"

The surge of hope to my eyes must have told Dibdin better than any words
I could have uttered what I felt at that instant.

"But first we’ll call that institution," he directed. "You put in a call
for the number and I’ll tell you what to say."

"You needn’t," I decided after a moment’s reflection. "I know.  I shall
simply inquire about the regulations governing adoptions.  I can so word
it that if Alicia is there they will tell me."

"Ah, now your brain is functioning again," he concluded.  "That being
so, I shall leave you and look up Cullum at the bureau of missing
persons."

Then I recalled that I had met with the phrase in newspapers.  The fact
that missing persons were so numerous that a bureau of the metropolitan
police was required to handle them cheered me more than any other single
fact.  It was consoling to feel that even, in my peculiar misery I had
joined a great multitude who suffered the loss of loved ones, even as in
toil and labor and poverty I had merged into the vast majority.

When Dibdin left me I learned that I might adopt Alicia without any
great obstacles, if she were willing, but I was no wiser as to her
whereabouts.  The Home, in the person of the Matron, inquired how "she
was getting along."  She was obviously not there, and I experienced a
misery of guilt as though I had robbed the world of its dearest
possession and then lost it.

Alone and bereft I sat, sinking to a mere pin’s point in my abasement.
I had begun to believe myself schooled in life, something of a man among
men.  But my own ineffectiveness was now dismally revealed to me.  I had
proved myself incapable of guarding even what was dearest to me in the
world.  I was at the bottom of an abyss from which I now felt hopeless
to scramble upward.  The sheer and beetling walls of granite were
overpoweringly steep and forbidding.  For the first time in long years,
I believe I mentally prayed.  I waited for Dibdin.

And then suddenly, as is the way with me when I am at the bottom, my
spirits bounded upward.  Alicia would come back to me, I felt in a
sudden surge of assurance. At that moment I felt sure that she was
thinking of me, that she was yearning to return.  And before I knew it,
I was blocking in magnificent plans for her education, for making a
splendid woman of her, even though she already seemed perfect, of
supplementing nature’s handiwork with all the force that was in me.  I
saw her resplendent, a shining creature, the woman of my dreams! What a
florid designer is hope!

But why should she have been taken from me so abruptly?  The vast
mystery of life encompassed me again like a shell, impenetrable—a
carapace through which nature must supply the openings—and she had
evidently not supplied them.  Would Dibdin never come with his
policeman?

Books, for so long my mainstay and support, were now useless to me.  I
turned over many volumes idly but my mind no longer reacted to that old
and magical alchemy. The volume of Epictetus that Dibdin had fingered
might have been a seed catalogue, so remote it seemed and so null.  I
was now a ghost among my books: I was plunged in "The Woods of
Westermain," and my memory flung me the lines:

    Enter these enchanted woods,
      You who dare.
    Nothing harms beneath the leaves
    More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
    Toss your heart up with the lark,
    Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
      Fair you fare.
    Only at a dread of dark
    Quaver, and they quit their form;
    Thousand eyeballs under hoods
      Have you by the hair.
    Enter these enchanted woods,
      You who dare.


It was clear.  I must toss my heart up with the lark to fare fairly,
even though my pain was great.

Late that afternoon; Dibdin returned, bringing Sergeant Cullum.

That excellent policeman gave me more hope than any one, excepting my
own heart, had yet succeeded in doing.  He insisted upon being made
privy to all the circumstances, to which he listened, his broad shaven
face turned ceilingward, with the rapt air of a mystic, expecting
momentarily that lightning flash of inspiration that would reveal all.
Then he asked to be allowed to wander by himself throughout the house,
over which he went pointing and sniffing like some well-trained hound.
In the end he declared himself satisfied.

"Now give me a little time," he said.

"But what means—how do you go to work?" I asked, nettled that he should
see possibilities regarding Alicia that I had overlooked.

"I swear, Mr. Byrd, I don’t know," he answered reverently.  "I wait for
guidance."

"Guidance?" I faltered.

"Yes—from on high."

"You depend on that—only?"

"Only!—Well, yes and no.  I pray, Mr. Byrd—I pray."

"You have no other means?" I queried, with a sinking heart.

"What other means are there," he demanded with glowing eyes, "that the
Lord can’t supply?  What detective in the world can equal the Lord—tell
me that, Mr. Byrd."

I saw that I was in the presence of a fanatic and I stood abashed.

"The best man in the Department," Dibdin put in encouragingly.
"Sergeant Cullum _is_ the bureau of missing persons."

"Give me a little time," he urged again, with the fervid intensity of
prayer—Time!  And it was Alicia who was missing!

I shook his hand and gave him time and parted from him with a hope that
I should not have to wait for his ecstatic visions to restore her.

"He’ll find her!" Dibdin exclaimed reassuringly. "Never fear.  If there
is one thing I’ve learned, it’s to accept the methods of people so long
as they produce the results.  Let them use the divining rod if they want
to, or incantations with henbane and hellebore, or trances and visions,
or prayer.  This almost human race of ours is made up of some very odd
fish," he added with a laugh, and he looked at me quizzically as though
I were the oddest fish of them all.

"But an ecstatic policeman"—I murmured—

"Yes—queer—I know," said Dibdin, "but I don’t care.  And now, old boy,
I’ve got to run back to the museum and take a squint at the work.  Cheer
up."


I was alone in my study after a pretense of eating supper with the
children, when Jimmie burst in and flung himself upon me.

"I want to know where is Alicia," he demanded with quivering lips, and
he burst into a pitiful freshet of bitter weeping.  His childish tears
fell like scalding lead upon my hands and I hugged the quivering small
figure to me in an anguished embrace.

"Don’t you want Laura to put you to bed?" I murmured with my lips
against his ear.

"Don’t want Laura," he sobbed chokingly; "want Alicia to give me my bath
and put me to bed.  Where is she?  Why don’t she come?"

It was a cry that tore at my heart as it echoed there and reverberated.
I hugged him closer.

"I’ll give you your bath, Jimmikins," I endeavored to soothe him, "and
we’ll float ships."

"’Licia—tells me—stories!" he sobbed out, as one broken with tragedy,
and I declare I came very near to joining him in his grief.

"I’ll—tell you a story—Jimmie," I gulped foolishly, "and until Alicia
comes back you must be the fine little man you are—and let me."

"When is she coming back?"

"I am not sure, Jimmie—possibly to-morrow."  It was my throbbing hope.
For that we could go on any longer without her was simply inconceivable
to me.

Gradually his paroxysm subsided.  He grew quiescent in my arms and
heaved a deep sigh as we nestled against each other in silence.  It is
fortunate that the grief of children is like a summer shower.  For so
intense is it while it lasts that any serious continuation of agony
would rack their small frames to pieces.

"All right, Uncle Ranny," he murmured finally. "Will you come in and
give me my bath?  I’ll go and run it—I know how, first the hot and then
the cold. And I’ll put the ships in and undress.  Then you come in and
tell me a long story while I sail them."  And he ran out of the room in
a little whirlwind of energy.

I sat bowed in silence for a few minutes and then heavily made my way to
the bathroom.

"Is the temp’ture a’right?" queried Jimmie, with an intense air of
responsibility, his erect nude little figure standing with a ship under
each arm, like a symbol of man adventuring his petty argosies on this
storm-beaten planet.  I put my hand judicially into the water.  How
important is the temperature of a child’s bath!  It must be neither too
hot nor too cold, or disastrous results might follow.

I began to tell him an ancient story of an island that proved to be a
sleeping whale, but he was impatient of that.

"’Licia," he informed me in deprecating protest, "tells me stories of
Mowgli in the jungle—out of the ’Jungle Book.’"  I endeavored with a
heavy heart to match Alicia, and gradually I became absorbed in my task
and in Jimmie, so that the darkness of life fell away from me.  The
water splashed and the ships tacked about in wild maneuvers, while
Jimmie kept reminding me that "he was listening, Uncle Ranny."

The great mystics are those who submerge their intellect and senses into
night so that their souls emerge before them like the full moon out of
the blackness.  Every parent, I suppose, must be in part a mystic: for
by centering his heart on little children he discerns the pulsating
irresistible life of the universe, the past and the future, alpha and
omega.

At least Jimmie was courteous enough to assure me, when he hugged me for
the last time, with sleepy eyes, that my tale was won’erful.  "But, oh,
Uncle Ranny," he whispered, "say that Alicia will be back to-morrow."

I kissed him but made no promise.  In the dining room Laura and Randolph
were sitting over their books,—Laura grave with an anxious pucker in her
white forehead and Randolph with dilated, somewhat fevered eyes. He was
obviously thinking rather than reading.  But I dared not enter into any
more discussion of Alicia’s absence that evening.


Only now after many days can I write down the events of the day
following my last entry with anything approximating composure; and even
now my fingers are tremulous as they hold the pencil.

I had risen early, for my sleep had been broken and fitful—as, indeed,
how could it have been otherwise?

I was parched and burning within, to act, to do something, to range the
city, the country—Good God, I thought, can a person like Alicia
disappear in that way like a pebble in the sea?  But my frenzy of
thought, that seemed as if it would burst the poor narrow limits of my
skull, produced no definite idea.  I lashed against the bars of the
brain like a beast in its cage.

I entertained no thought of going to the office that morning, but half
an hour after I was up, that was the only thought that flooded my mind.
There are blessings in a routine of daily labor that those engaged
therein can hardly understand.  The treadmill, I imagine, leaves the
mule but little time for speculation or grief or any other emotions.  I
was that kind—or, rather that mule let loose—that could find oblivion
nowhere better than in the treadmill.  For routine can dull despair.

It was still half an hour before breakfast when my nephew Randolph came
clattering down the stairs, meticulously dressed, though somewhat
wild-eyed.  He gave me the impression of having—he also—slept badly.
"Uncle Ranny," he approached me, "are you going to the office this
morning?"

"Yes, I think I am.  Why, Randolph?"

"I’d like to go in to town with you—and go round—look around."

"What do you mean, my boy?"

"Somebody ought to be looking for Alicia all the time—don’t you think
so, Uncle Ranny?  I’d like to try," and he looked away shamefaced.

A boy in his sixteenth year can be a considerable pillar in a household.
I had somehow overlooked Randolph in that rôle.  Perhaps I had been
inclined to treat Laura’s children too much as nestlings all, wholly
dependent upon me?  I experienced a thrill of pleasurable surprise in
the boy’s words and manner.  He had said no word concerning his father,
had asked no disconcerting questions.  He merely desired to help.

"But of course there is somebody looking for Alicia," I informed him.

"Yes, I know, Uncle Ranny—a policeman!  What does a policeman know about
girls like Alicia?  I—we talked a lot, she and I," he stammered.  "I
have a hunch I could sort of tell what she’d _think_ of doing if she
left home.  Let me have a try at it, Uncle Ranny, please. It’ll only be
a few nickels in carfare."

"Certainly, my boy," I put my arm about his shoulders. To frustrate
young intentions simply because they are young has never appealed to me
as wisdom.  "Come into town with me by all means.  I am certain Alicia
will come back"—he could not know the effort this easy answer was
costing me—"but there is no reason why you shouldn’t try to find her."
I had thrown off any mask of secrecy with all excepting Jimmie.
Insincerity is a difficult habit to wear.

"Thanks, Uncle Ranny," he answered with suppressed jubilation, and for
the first time in our common history I suddenly felt that I had a
companion in Randolph—that he was growing up.

When he left me at the station, charged with avuncular instructions that
he was to telephone me at various times of the day and that he was to
lunch with me if he could, I had a tender impulse to embrace this lad,
Laura’s first-born, before all the concourse.  But I knew he would be
shamed to death by such a demonstration. So I tapped him on the shoulder
and we parted grinning to keep each other in heart.  I experienced a
fleeting intuition that Alicia would be restored to us, but I expected
nothing at all from Randolph’s romantic quest for her.

My heart went out to the boy as I saw him merge and lose himself in the
crowd; I felt very tenderly not only toward those of my flesh, but to
all young things facing the hurly-burly of this oddly jumbled sphere.

I was becoming an ogler in my old age.  Every young girl I saw in the
streets, in cars, at crossings, I scrutinized searchingly, with painful
leapings of the heart, when any of them in the slightest particular
resembled Alicia. And the melancholy truth came to me that you can build
a life to any design you please, but only a miracle will keep it intact.

Visconti was in the office when I arrived and he was kindness itself
when he saw my face.

"_Caro mio!_" he grasped my hand.  "Something serious?"

"Some domestic trouble—a little painful," I stammered, and he saw that I
did not wish to speak of it. And the vast loneliness of human beings
traversing their orbits on earth struck me as I sat heavily down to my
work.  What did I know of Visconti—or Visconti of me?  For ages I had
worked near him and I knew he trusted and had what is called regard for
me.  Yet the planets in trackless space knew more of each other.  I
believe he knows that I am a middle-aged bachelor and I know he has a
daughter who is the apple of his eye—and he pays the wage by which I
live.  But what else did we know?  He had lost a deeply loved wife and
remained a widower.  My heart warmed to him in a sudden sympathy.  As
though reciprocating, he came bustling to my desk a minute later and
bending toward me whispered:

"Do not forget that your time is your own—if your _demarches_—private
business—do not forget!"  I thanked him but he waved his pudgy hand in
sign of friendly deprecation of formalities.

    ... com ’e duro calle
    Lo scendere e il salir per l’altrui scale,

lamented Dante.  Yes, hard is the path, the going up and down other
people’s stairs, when you depend for your livelihood upon them.  But
Visconti in his manner endeavored to make his "stairs" those of a
friend.

There was no word from Randolph that morning and my heart grew every
moment heavier.

I seemed to require no food.  I straggled aimlessly during the noon hour
through mean streets, from Bleecker Street to Abingdon Square, in a
world of listless women and dirty children, a desert, ghostly world,
drab and wretched.

Shuttling back and forth, all but inanimate, I passed Minot Blackden’s
studio, but with sudden horror recoiled from entering.  I was driven
about like a leaf.  I was a shadow in a world of shadows.

Towards four o’clock I rose heavily from my desk, determined to drag
myself to police headquarters in search of Sergeant Cullum.  I expected
nothing from him, but, still, he might utter a word of hope.

At that moment my telephone rang.  It was Randolph!

His voice was charged and crackling with excitement and importance.

"Will you meet me at Brentano’s, corner Twenty-sixth Street and the
Avenue right away?"

"Why," I said piteously—"tell me, in God’s name—have you news?—what
d’you mean?"

A swirl of hope and apprehension swept me like a wave and left me
gasping.

"Yes, Uncle Ranny," was the chuckling reply.  "I have news—she’s—I know
where she is—Come right over!"

And without giving me a chance to say more, the young devil hung up the
receiver.  I cursed the boy in my heart for being a boy—for his
callousness to another’s suffering.

Exactly how I reached that corner, I cannot now remember.  I did not
walk and yet I cannot for the life of me recall what manner of
conveyance I used.  So much happened in my mind during that transit that
external matters left absolutely no impression upon it.  The first
impression I do recall is the shock of blank chagrin that struck me like
a shot in the vitals when I saw Randolph standing jauntily alone at the
corner, staring at the passing crowd.  Alicia was not with him.

Yet how important the young rascal suddenly seemed in my eyes.  He alone
in all the world had present knowledge of her.  I could have fallen upon
him and hugged him then and there—and shamed him to death.

"Where—where is she?" I blurted out.  "I thought you—tell me, in
heaven’s name!" and I seized hold of him fiercely, as though he were a
pickpocket caught in the act.  He glanced at me with humorous cockiness
and laughed.  Then suddenly conscious that people were staring at us,
and that a policeman was speculatively watching our encounter, he
hastily put his arm through mine and drew me away.

"Come on, Uncle Ranny, I’ll lead you to where she is."

"You amazing boy!" I muttered.  "But are you really sure?"

"Sure I’m sure!" he crowed.  "I think it’s nothing to be a detective.  I
believe I’d make a good one," he bragged.

"Brag, you young devil," I thought indulgently, but I made no audible
reply and merely made him walk faster.

He was leading me into Twenty-ninth Street beyond Brentano’s and to my
amazement I found myself at the well-remembered door of Andrews’
bookshop.

"Here!" I cried in stupefaction.  He nodded, grinning as though he
expected an oration of praise for his acumen then and there.  He did not
get it.  I rushed in wildly, like a mad man, into those silent precincts
where so often I had passed blissfully silent hours.  Who would desire a
garish light in this pleasant temple?  For a moment I seemed to be in
utter darkness.

"Kind of dark," murmured Randolph, "but I spotted her."

On a sudden my dilated eyes encountered two human beings simultaneously
in their line of vision.  Andrews was standing in dignity in the middle
of his shop like a monarch about to receive royalty, and behind him, at
a desk in the rear, a girl was bending over some writing, an electric
light illumining her fair head.

The girl—yes!—It was Alicia!

I felt the effect of a sharp blow over the heart and, brushing the
astonished Andrews aside, I made a crazy leap toward her.

"Why, Mr. Randolph Byrd!" began Andrews. "Haven’t seen you—"

"Alicia!" I cried out in what sounded even in my own ears like a sob.

"Oh, Uncle Ranny!"  She jumped from her chair with a little scream, and,
before I knew it, I was pressing her to my heart with a quivering
convulsive joy that choked all utterance.

She gasped in pain, the poor child.  But when my arms relaxed, she lay
sobbing happily against my heart.

Randolph was so scandalized that he sullenly turned his back upon us.
Andrews was watching us with discreet and sober interest.

"My dearest child!" I whispered, still in a sort of trance of ecstasy,
and Alicia, with the tears trickling down her face, murmured softly.

"Oh, how glad I am I’m found!  And there’s Randolph," she added with a
happy laugh.

Her last words suddenly woke me out of my trance. I loosed my arms and
stood for an instant baffled, uncertain, shamefaced.

"What are you doing here?" I then brusquely demanded with stupid
severity to conceal the turbulent emotions within me.

"I—oh, didn’t you get my letter?" she faltered.  "I tried to explain—I
had nowhere to go—" her lips were quivering—"he told me what a burden I
was—I seemed to be only making a lot of trouble—and I had nowhere to
go," she wept.

"He?  Who?  Andrews?" I demanded harshly.

"No, no!—Mr. Pendleton," she was sobbing again.

"Ah, of course, Pendleton."  I felt myself turning livid with hate for
the man whose purpose in life seemed to be to wreck my own.

"And did Andrews know you were my—my ward?"

"Oh, no, Uncle Ranny," and her voice was like a child’s tired of crying.
"I meant to tell him later—after I told you.  He just took me
without—anything."

Glancing now toward Andrews, I found him discreetly standing, still in
the middle of his shop, but somehow he had managed to draw my
scandalized nephew into conversation to afford me the courtesy of a
greater privacy. My heart went out to him in affection as never before.

"Andrews!" I called, pulling myself together to a semblance of dignity.
Andrews gave a nod to Randolph and without any unseemly haste approached
me, pleasantly smiling.

"This is my ward—Miss Alicia Palmer," I managed to say with forced
calmness.

Andrews bowed ceremoniously as though he were meeting the owner of the
Huth library or Bernard Quaritch.  Yet there was a curious twinkle in
his shrewd old Scotch eyes.

"Like all young women of the present day," I went on, with astonishing
glibness—that is at its best when a man is lying for a woman—"she wanted
to prove her independence by scorning my poor protection, Andrews—to
earn her own living—you understand, Andrews?"

"Indeed—indeed?" said Andrews.  "And she can earn it, too.  Now I
understand the mystery.  She recognized a second edition of ’Paradise
Lost’ at a glance. Your training, Mr. Byrd—your salary is advanced, Miss
Palmer."

Alicia smiled, blushing faintly, and in that smile I suddenly realized
how much of the child still clung to this well-grown young woman—how
much of the child, no doubt, remains clinging to every woman.  She was
pained, distraught, suffering, yet she seemed to feel that she had done
something very courageous and dignified. And it was to her dignity I
hung on with tenacity, for instinctively I recognized that this was a
turning point in her life—that the woman was now putting away the child
in the cradle of the past.

"I think I shall ask you to release her, Andrews."  I laid a hand upon
his shoulder.  "Some day I shall explain to you more fully.  It’s
been—but never mind that.  I should like to take my ward home—with your
permission?"

"Certainly, certainly," he affirmed with spontaneous vehemence.  "But
come in soon, both of you—she’s of our stripe, Mr. Byrd—she loves the
good things!—come in both.  I expect to have some new things from
Professor Gurney’s library that’ll delight you."

"We shall indeed, my dear Andrews.  Get your hat, Alicia."  And as she
turned away for her things, I managed to murmur this much to the kindly
Andrews:

"I shall never forget your conduct in this matter, Andrews—you’re a
great bookseller, but, man dear, you’re even a greater gentleman!"

And with as little delay as possible we left the shop.

A spate of questions boiled in my brain and foamed up like turbulent
waters backed by a dam.  But all at once I came to a sharp decision.

I knew enough.  It was that devil Pendleton that had filled her mind
with the thought that she was a burden until the poor child was wild
with a frenzy of distraction. But he had not been able to trust to his
persuasions. Then there was the scene of that dreadful evening when, in
her bewilderment, she realized herself as an apple of discord, a
shatterer of families.  I believed I understood enough.

"Where did you sleep, Alicia?" I asked her nonchalantly.

"I have a little room in Twenty-fourth Street," she answered simply.  "I
haven’t paid for it yet.  The landlady wanted money in advance, but I
told her I didn’t have it, so she let me stay, anyway."

"Let us go there, my dear, and settle it now."

"Yes, Uncle Ranny," she murmured low.

"I’ve got to hand it to you, ’Licia," broke out Randolph, emerging from
his silence.  "You’re a true sport—for a girl!"  Whereat we all burst
into happy laughter.

And for the rest of our peregrinations as well as in the train, the lad
could not take his eyes from Alicia in sheer amazed admiration.  It was
as though he were seeing her for the first time.




                              *CHAPTER XX*


Had I time to speculate philosophically, I could expend much of it in
wondering why pure joy cannot be recorded.  Perhaps because we
experience so little of it.

Of sorrow and tribulation we strange creatures that are men can give a
pretty fair account.  From Job down we have excelled in it.  But before
sheer joy we are dumb.  I can only repeat to myself the poor colorless
words that I am happy, happy, happy as the day is short.

For one brief space of reaction after finding Alicia, the senses reeled,
the worn body and mind swooned into a sort of deliquescence of
lassitude, the eyes smarted with unshed meaningless moisture, the
overdriven heart throbbed with a vast supernal relief, coextensive with
the universe.  Then, swiftly, with an almost audible sound, that
unnerved brain slid into its customary shape of health, more wholesomely
joyous than ever before, and all the world was bathed in freshness.

The blue of the sky was fairer, the sunlight purer, and even the poor
suburban grass of Crestlands autumnally waning, glistened with the
verdure and brightness of a new creation.  But who can describe
happiness?

Pendleton is gone, Alicia—the children are here.

No eight words in the language of Shakespeare and Milton have ever
breathed to me the same meaning as those eight words.  Yet what do they
signify on paper?

All Europe is in a turmoil, and the Germans have all but taken Paris,
yet this, I perceive, is my first mention of a vast catastrophe.  What
tiny self-absorbed creatures are men!  People are dying and suffering by
the thousands, yet we cisatlantians scan the headlines and pursue our
own ends in the accustomed way.  What though half the planet is in
peril—I have reconquered my home!

Why, I wonder, had I ever imagined myself to have a horror of home?  A
home is a little island of personal love in the vast impersonal chaos of
existence—and pity him or her who never lands upon that island.

Of nights, occasionally, I now indulge myself in a fire on the hearth.
The wood that burns brightest, I note, leaves only a little heap of
white ashes.  When my eyes rest upon Alicia, or I see the children
flitting about, or hear their ringing voices through the house, I
experience a wonderful contentment that I am the fire at which they may
warm their hands.  I, who once entertained fantastic visions of future
greatness, of name and fame, now feel content to become a little heap of
white ashes.


Sergeant Cullum, excellent man, journeyed out here two days after I had
found Alicia, a day after the legal ceremony of adoption, to apprise me
that "he believed my ward to be in Baltimore."  I was about to burst
into uncontrollable laughter, but my conscience smote me and I was
ashamed.  In my vast relief I had wholly and selfishly forgotten this
good man who was still upon the quest.  What power of divination or
answer to prayer had directed his thoughts to Baltimore, I cannot
imagine. But with my contrite apology and thanks went a gift that I
trust has soothed his ruffled feelings.  We parted in friendship.  Oh,
excellent thaumaturgic policeman!

Randolph burst into a loud sniffing laugh when I told him and Alicia of
Sergeant Cullum’s visit and the Baltimore "clew."

"Oh, cops are idiots!" he chuckled arrogantly and looked toward Alicia
with a haughty proprietorial air. "They don’t know _anything_!  Didn’t
take me long to dope out where to look for ’Licia," he boasted.  "I
figured it out like this: ’Licia is bugs on your old books. She was
looking for a job to earn her own living, wasn’t she?"  Alicia bent her
head, still shamefaced over the episode.  "What’d I do?  I’m strong on
engines. Wouldn’t I go to a place where they make or sell engines?
Well, with her it was books.  I went around to some book places—’n’ then
suddenly I had a hunch: Andrews—that you and she always jaw about.  I
looked him up in the ’phone book.  An’ sure enough, when I went round
and peeped in through the door, I saw Alicia upon a ladder handling some
of those old books there.  I thought I’d go in and call her down, but
then I thought ’t would surprise her more if you and I came in on her
together—and I beat it hot-foot to a ’phone. Cops!—They’d say,
Baltimore—South America—anything, so it sounds good!"

And again his glance wholly appropriated Alicia.  The youngster seems to
think he invented her.  But I am full of gratitude to that boy.

The closure of the Stock Exchange and the abrupt slowing up of financial
business has filtered like a shadow even into Visconti’s and is giving
me some unhurried hours in which to ponder the future.

How many middle-aged bachelors, I wonder, have conjured similar visions,
constructed the same castles of thin air?  To educate Alicia, to serve
and to love her until my love surrounds her so that she cannot choose
but return it—to create a woman Pygmalion-like out of this very sweet
Galatea—what could be more blissful? Alicia is now in her teens.  But
suppose she were sweet-and-twenty, could she ever think with anything
but filial affection of a man nearly twice her age who stands to her in
_loco parentis_?

Like a lovesick boy who pulls at the faint intimations of his mustache
and searches the newspaper for cases of marriage at seventeen, I eagerly
scan the prints and cudgel my memory for such unions as ours would be.
But the papers are filled with war and rumors of war. It comes to me
suddenly that a certain aged Senator has not so long ago married his
ward, under even a greater disparity of ages—and I am absurdly happy. I
see myself with Alicia matured and radiant, ever young—living a life of
bright serenity, calling endearing names.

    "Did I hear it half in a doze
      Long since, I know not where?
    Did I dream it an hour ago,
      When asleep in this arm-chair?"


But this is folly.  Tennyson is out of fashion and there are greater
fools than old fools.  I ask too much of the high gods.  Enough has
already been given to a crusty bookworm like me.  Suppose I had married
Gertrude! The children’s voices would never have made music for my ears.
Nevertheless, Alicia shall have the best education I can give her.


Visconti must be aging, I fear, for he has taken to repeating himself.
He has told me often before that his daughter Gina is the apple of his
eye, but during these somewhat listless days in the office in which
"extras" figure largely and strategy is the one indoor game, he has been
going into more detail.

I dined at his house last night and to-day he asked me again to dine on
Saturday.  I dislike refusing him and I like lying less.  But I declined
on the plea of an engagement.

"I always forget," he returned with a laugh, "that a young man is not
_un’ burbero_ of a widower like me—that a young man, in short, has
engagements."

I made some sort of deprecating noise.  He talks as though I were
twenty-two, and I like him for it.

"But you see, _amico mio_," he went on explaining, "it is like this:
Gina, the _carissima bambina mia_, is the apple of my eye.  And she must
be—what do you call it—amused—amused, made gay, bright—you see?"

I signified my clairvoyance.

"She is nineteen—a _fanciulla_ of nineteen, she must have
much—eh—amusement, not so?"

He is fond of the Socratic method and I humored him.

"But doesn’t she go to parties—has she no girl friends?"

"Ah, _sicurissimo, sicurissimo_.  But a girl—nineteen years—it is young
men in the house that amuse her, eh?"  And he slapped me on the back and
roared with laughter of a boisterous heartiness that somewhat, as
novelists say, "took me aback."

I have not exactly been seeing myself in the guise of a youth cut out to
amuse Gina Visconti.

"How of Sunday?" he asked, with a sudden quizzical soberness.  "Sunday
you can come?"

I regretted his insistence, but somewhat laboredly I explained that I am
weakly addicted to books; and that Sunday was the single day when I
could sit among my books and—

"Ah, but of course!" gravely.  He understood full well that I was a
student, a scholar, who outside office hours pursued a higher life, and
so forth.

I felt mawkish and mean but I clung to my Sunday.

"Monday, then—shall we call it Monday?" he pressed.

I could not be so churlish as to decline further.  But I hardly knew why
a sense of uneasiness stole into my bosom after his subsequent words.

"The _fanciulla_," he went on, thoughtfully vehement. "She is all I
possess—all in the world.  At my death she shall possess everything I
have.  She has it now! For whom then do I work if not for Gina?  As for
me, I could go back to Italy—maybe.  I have enough.  But Gina—she is
American girl—ah!" and he kissed his finger tips with unction.  "She is
fine American girl!"

Having said that, he veered into talk about Belgium, Von Kluck and
general strategy.

But why should he so persistently sing the praises and prospects of his
daughter to me, a clerk in his office?

I had a sudden impulse to go to him and unbosom myself on the score of
my own _bambimi_ and my own aspirations for them—but somehow I could
not.  That is an island girdled, not only by ordinary reticence, which
is with me a vice, but by a host of emotions like those flames that
circled the sleeping goddess.  I am not a Latin; I cannot bubble forth
my inmost hopes or flaunt my heart upon my sleeve.

Sunday evening—after a wonderful walk with Alicia through the already
waning woods of Westchester. There has been a certain air of gravity
overhanging her, of contrition perhaps, that stabbed with pain.  I
realized then to what degree her blithe spirit and the starry laughter
of her eyes had been the wine of my recent life.  I could not tolerate
her seeming depression. Besides, there was the matter of her education
to be discussed.  Jimmie clamored to go with us, but this time even his
privileged position did not avail him.  I desired to be alone with
Alicia.

Was it my mood, I wonder, or do the woods in reality begin to whisper a
farewell in the decline of the year? Every tree, even to the youngest
sapling, seemed to nod to us as we walked and to rustle a murmur like
the leavetaking of a pilgrim bent on a lengthy journey.  I have ever
been impatient of reading descriptions of nature and have chimed with
the scoffers at the pathetic fallacy. Nevertheless, I can bemuse myself
for hours listening to the wind among the tree tops or gazing at the
haze upon the hills; and in a slow measured rhythm, as if having endless
time before them, they invariably spell a message,—a message infinitely
sad, but for the creative laughing sun that rides triumphant, high over
all.

"Come, Alicia!" I broke out brusquely, joining the sun in his laughter,
"we have some bright things to talk over.  Don’t let us allow the woods
to lull us.  They are going to sleep; we are not.  Here you are ready
for college.  Isn’t that soul-stirring?"

She emerged from her reverie as a person shaken from a drowse and smiled
with, a distant look in her eyes.

"Bright things," she murmured pensively; "everything that has happened
to me since I came to you has been bright, and everything soul-stirring.
That’s what makes it so hard, Uncle Ranny—I have been so useless. What
good am I?"

I laughed uproariously enough to make the woods shake.  Did Alicia know
how much I enjoyed combating such statements or did she really mean it?

"You have been—"  I wanted to tell her banteringly that she had been a
burden and a drag upon my household, a weight not to be borne—but I
perceived that she was more than serious.  She was sad.

"Now you are, of course, talking nonsense," I answered flatly.  "But
there is college before you; that ought to cure all that.  Perhaps
you’re a little morbid. Bright associations will change that."

"But how," she protested, "can you talk of sending me to college—with
all the expense?  And I so worthless?"

"We won’t discuss that, my child," I broke in.  The expense had indeed
occupied my mind—but I had formed a plan for that.  "Tell me what you
would like best to study—to be?"

"That’s the trouble, Uncle Ranny," she replied pathetically.  "What can
I be?—Perhaps I might work for Mr. Andrews?"

"Modern girls," I informed her, "judging by our fiction, invariably
develop literary, dramatic or histrionic talent.  She must act, write
fiction, or preferably plays. Journalism and settlement work are no
longer fashionable. If the worst comes to the worst, they turn militant
suffragists, but even that is on the wane; but the two careers are not
incompatible.  Don’t you feel the urge in your young bones?  Which of
the arts is it that is calling you?  The pen?  The stage?  Speak,
Alicia—for this is the critical hour!"

She detected raillery in my voice and laughed softly.

"I know you are making fun of me, Uncle Ranny," she said, "but it’s not
of me alone.  All the same, I wish I did have some talent, but, oh, I
know I haven’t! Sometimes—I wish—I think—oh, Uncle Ranny, I am ashamed
to tell you what I—" and without finishing her sentence she covered her
face with her hands and I noted that her neck was suffused with a deep
blush.

"But you must tell me, my dear," I gently took her hands from her face.
"Haven’t I just become your parent and guardian by ironclad legal
adoption?  And a terribly stern parent and guardian I am—make no mistake
about that!"

"Well," she gazed downward shamefacedly, still exquisitely blushing, "I
suppose I must, then.  Sometimes I think, Uncle Ranny," she went on with
deliberate firmness, "that there is one thing girls always think of, but
never talk about—that is more important than any of the others.  Oh, I
suppose I am terribly improper and immodest, but if I am, it’s because—I
don’t know any better—so you’ll have to forgive me.  But, oh, I
suppose—he’ll come some day and—to—to make a home and—and to bring up
children seems—more wonderful than anything else!  You’ve made me say
it, Uncle Ranny!" she turned away with tears of vexation—"I suppose I am
horrid—but you’ve made me tell you and I told you.  Can’t a girl study
to be—for that—as for anything else?"  And still tormented by her brazen
immodesty, she plucked yellowing leaves agitatedly and scattered them to
the winnowing breeze.

As she was turned from me, she could not have seen my arms going out
suddenly as if to take her, and then falling again to my sides.  I
longed to embrace her and to crown her with all the glory of womanhood.
But my conscience warned me away.  In my heart, however, happiness
leaped up like the lark I have never seen and warbled joyously a divine
melody that I had never heard. It required courage for Alicia, a young
girl, to confess what she had confessed.  And courage joined to all the
other qualities I knew her possessed of must produce the best that is in
womanhood.

It is a commentary on our times that Alicia, a girl ready for college,
was ashamed of what she had told me!

I was a fool to press her further, I suppose, but then and there I
determined to be at least as brave as was Alicia.

"Have you," I asked, hoping my voice was not shaking, "have you already
some one in mind?"  She shook her head vehemently, still plucking at the
leaves, I could not repress a profound sigh.  "What does he look like in
your mind’s eye, Alicia?  What is your vision of him?"  I knew I was
courting pain, but there are moments when even torture is irresistible.

"I hope he will be strong—and fine—and manly," she murmured as if to
herself—"and have at least some of your—goodness, Uncle Ranny."  Every
attribute of that hypothetical "he" was a reproach to my infirmities—a
blow at my peculiar weaknesses.  But I had invited it.  The ideal of a
girl never errs.  It is her emotions that may lead her astray.  Oh,
yes—she credited me with some "goodness."  Few are the women, however,
who choose a man for his goodness.  In my quality of "Uncle Ranny" I was
"good."  I stood for a moment in silence, writhing with anguish,
alternately conjuring up and banishing the hatefully magnificent
creature of Alicia’s dreams.  But at last I gripped my soul with sudden
resolution.  Now at least she was mine; and I must accustom myself to
the idea of her being some one else’s at the earliest moment—to the
inevitable renunciation. She had innocently and adorably honored me with
her greatest confidence: For the present, at least, I must make the most
of my little happiness.

"Come, dear," I gently touched her on the shoulder. "You have told me
what I wanted to know."  I put her hand through my arm and we strolled
on slowly. "We are horrible old fogies, Alicia, and we mustn’t tell a
soul about our views—or we should be ostracized and possibly jailed.
But nothing you could have said would have made me happier than what you
have just told me. I know of no greater career than the one you have
chosen. And college, much or little as you like of it, can serve you for
a finer womanhood no less than it can for anything else.  In fact, more,
I think."  From still swimming eyes she gave me a sidelong glance
mingled so much of gratitude, shame and pride, that I laughed aloud.

"There is one thing you’ve got to make up your mind to, Alicia."  I drew
her close to my side.  "You must come and tell me everything that’s on
your mind without repression.  Don’t forget, my dear, that I am your
father, mother and most intimate friends.  Think how sorry we should
both have been if you had suppressed and hidden what you have told me."

"Yes, Uncle Ranny," she breathed and very sweetly in a way to melt the
heart of a man, she lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it.  I was
irreparably "Uncle Ranny!"

I dared not make a movement in return.  At that moment I might have
betrayed more than ever again I could hide.  But the woods were now of
another hue; the invisible lark was still singing, albeit a sadder
strain.

We decided that Alicia is to enter Barnard next week and commute with me
on the daily train.




                             *CHAPTER XXI*


Dear God!  How I cry out for peace, and there is no peace!

Who would have looked for disaster at the plump hands of Gina Visconti?
Yet, as though she had willfully shut the door of my livelihood in my
face, that innocent girl has abruptly cut me off.

I cannot go back to Visconti’s.  That accursed dinner, which instinct
made me shun, was the cause and occasion of it all.

I had begun foolishly to feel myself at home in the Visconti household.
When the housemaid informed me that the _signorina_ would be down
directly, I strolled into the drawing-room leisurely, not in the least
surprised that I was apparently the only guest, and gazed again at the
shining new furniture, costly and glistening, for the _n_th time
wondering how it continued to stay so new.  There is a scattering of
saccharine pictures on the walls that invariably make me smile: Cherry
Ripe, the Old Oaken Bucket, Sweet Sixteen; a glittering small marble of
Cupid and Psyche and a crayon enlargement of the very stout lady that
was Gina’s mother.  Why, I wondered, do not modern Italians stick to
their own old masters?  I once bought a very fair copy of Pope Julian II
in Florence for fifty lire.  Even Gina’s energetic modernism, however,
seemed unable to exorcise the peculiar airless odor of an Italian’s
drawing-room, due largely, I suppose, to hermetically sealed windows and
constantly lowered shades.

Gina came down directly, as had been promised, in a very pretty satin
evening frock that struck me as too light for a girl as full-bodied as
she.  That is a detail, however, which was superseded in my mind by the
query as to why she should feel it necessary to romp into a room rather
than walk.  But I know she aspires to be hyper-American.  Her greeting
is always warm and her energy was the one touch of ozone in that stuffy
drawing-room.  A moment later entered her father, his dark-red face
pardonably gleaming like a moon through the haze at the charms of his
only daughter.  For Gina is not only pretty—she is eminently modish, to
the last wave of her rich black hair.

"Is she a fine American girl—or is she not, eh?" Visconti’s half-proud,
half-defiant look seems to challenge all present.

The dinner was more than usually exuberant with a wealth of champagne
for so small a company and hothouse grapes; indeed the exuberance itself
seemed of the hothouse variety.  We jested, we laughed at nothing, we
were gay as old friends at a reunion.  At the Visconti’s I am always
foolishly like that Byron-worshiping lady who could not long abstain
from referring to Missolonghi. Somehow I find myself caressingly
touching the subjects of Dante or Petrarch or even Leopardi, and
invariably Gina caroms against me with a thrilling cabaret, a new dance
or the latest "show"—and I am nowhere.

After the coffee Visconti, whose mind seemed preoccupied, rose abruptly
and with one of his gleaming smiles left us on the hackneyed plea of
letters to be written.

Gina was restless for a minute or two after her father’s departure.  She
walked over to the piano, struck a chord standing, then suddenly sheered
to the phonograph and asked would I dance if she turned on a lovely fox
trot.  Apologetically I was compelled to inform her that the fox trot
was as foreign to my accomplishments as an act on the trapeze.

"I know you could learn to be a lovely dancer," said Gina, She then sat
down beside me on the expensive tapestry davenport, with one foot under
her and one ankle to the wide world and leaned forward on her elbows so
that the slender shoulder straps of her frock pressed upward four little
mounds of pink flesh toward her ears.  She has very pretty ears, has
Gina.  A very engaging child, I thought.  Holding this soulful attitude,
Gina queried softly,

"Don’t you love the movies?"

"Yes," I said.

"What have you seen lately?" she pursued.

"I have only seen one—it was a series of pictures of the South Sea
Islands."

"You mean you’ve never seen any others?"

"No—I’m afraid not."

"Oh," she gasped, "I’ve loved the movies since I was that high"—and she
pointed to a somewhat excessively oily portrait of herself painted at
about the age of ten or eleven.

"I believe in having a lively time," she ran on. "When I was in public
school some of them called me the ’little guinea girl.’  I cried
terribly—but I made up my mind I wasn’t going to be a ’guinea girl.’  I
was going to be an American.  Wasn’t I as good as any of them?" she
demanded passionately.  "What was the matter with me?  Then I found out
what was the matter with me—American girls are always having good times.
So I thought I’d have as good a time as anybody.

"I cried until my father let me go to the movies nearly every afternoon
and twice on Saturday.  And I always treated some other girl—an American
girl—to a ticket to go with me.  They were friendly then, you can bet.
They stopped calling me a guinea girl."

Gina could not possibly know how pathetic that sounded to me.  The
curious savagery of children toward those alien of race, I reflected, is
one of the last survivals of the tribal state of mankind.  The somewhat
overpowering scent she used struck me as a survival also, though I could
not remember of what.

"There is my cousin, Jennie—her name is really Gemma"—the girl warmed to
her story—"she tried to be American, too, but she gave it up.  When I
went to finishing school in Darien, she was already married. Four years
she’s been married and has three children. Now what’s the use of that?
She can’t have a good time now!  Babies—babies—babies!—she hardly ever
goes out.  And her husband’s quite well off, too. He’s a contractor.
But he’s an Italian—and thinks that’s the right way for a girl to live.
Uh-h!" and she shuddered slightly.  "I’m going to marry an American!"

A fierce light of resolution leaped to her liquid dark eyes and I own I
felt terrified.

"But—but aren’t you young to think of marriage?" I murmured lamely.

"Young!" repeated Gina in surprise.  "I’ve been thinking about the kind
of man I’m going to marry since I was thirteen years old!"

Obviously that was one subject she had given mature reflection.

"Haven’t you?" she demanded.

"No," I laughed, "not as young as that."

"Do you like Italian girls?" she leaned toward me abruptly, wistfully.

"Yes, indeed!" I answered her, laughing.  "There is Dante’s Beatrice—and
Petrarch’s Laura—and even Raphael’s Fornarina must have been—"

"Oh, I don’t mean those," she cried, flushing excitedly. "I mean
Italian-American girls—I love American men!  The man I’m going to marry
is—something like you."

I like simplicity, and disingenuousness in the young—or in the old, for
that matter—but her attitude was now so—so unconventional, with her
large ankle rocking to and fro and her bosom, as she leaned forward,
almost touching my shirt front—that I feared her father might be
displeased were he to enter the room suddenly.  The scent, moreover, was
clouding my wits.  With my hand to my forehead I rose ponderously.

"Let me see—" I mused with heavy facetiousness, as though cogitating a
deep problem, "do I like them?"  I walked a step or two and faced her.
"You are the only one I know—and I certainly like you," I added mildly.

She uncoiled herself, rose up swiftly and took a step in my direction.
On a sudden she stumbled, gave a little cry and pitched forward, so that
I barely had time to catch her.

"Did you turn your ankle?"

"No—yes," she gasped and lay for a moment in my arms breathing heavily,
her bosom pressing against mine.

"Let me lead you—" I began.

"It’s all right," she whispered thickly.  "Just let me rest a minute."
And then that astonishing girl suddenly lifted up her hand, passed it
lightly over my head and murmured that she loved the color of my hair!

"It’s light brown," she explained, "not pitch black like mine," and then
she rested her head lightly on my shoulder.  "And I love your name—it’s
so nice—_Randolph_!"

"Let me lead you," I murmured, as though I were the helpless one.

"_Ecco!_"  I suddenly heard the voice of Visconti laughing behind me,
and Gina’s hand clutched my shoulder convulsively.  I confess that at my
heart was a clutch of sheer blue funk.

"She has just turned her ankle!" I exclaimed mechanically.

"It’s all right, papa," put in Gina’s cheerful voice. "It’s these old
slippers.  I’ll go and change them."  And to my amazement she
straightened up, flashed a radiant smile at both of us, and walked to
the door with only the slightest of limps.

"Sure you can walk alone?" I managed to stammer.

"Oh, yes!"  Gina waved her hand at the door.  "I’ll be down soon."

The father laughed loudly and put his hand upon my shoulder.

"Come, _caro mio_, let us have a little smoke."  I followed him dazedly.
"Wonderful girl, Gina!" he exclaimed.  "High spirits, eh?"

"Er—yes, indeed—very high."  I felt as though I had emerged from a
severe physical struggle.

"I can see—oh, even an old man like me can see," he chuckled jovially,
as he held his cigar box toward me in the smoking room, "that you young
people like each other—eh?  Oh, sit down, sit down, _amico mio_.  It is
all right—all right.  I must get used to the idea of the bambino, being
grown up," and forcing me down into a leather chair, he continued to tap
my shoulder by way of emphasizing his words.  "I have been young—yes!  I
understand—and trust me, my boy, you cannot do better.  Gina—Gina is one
treasure for a man.  Ah—yes! No love like the Italian woman’s love.  She
will make you the best—"

"But wait—for God’s sake, Mr. Visconti, wait," I cried in agony, leaping
from my chair.  "I can’t—I mustn’t even pretend to think of such a
thing.  Gina is far too—"

"Say no more!" he interrupted vehemently, tapping me with the back of
his hand on the chest.  "You are a fine, gooda young man!"

"Thanks!" I gasped, "but you don’t understand.  I am in no position to
marry any woman at this time. I’m—"

"Hold on!" he flung me back into the chair with an exuberant force that
would have made me laugh if my vitals had not been chilled by terror.
"Is it that I do not know?  Do I not know how your capital did go—pouf!
like that?  But all that I have—Gina has it.  She will have enough," and
he nodded his head with pregnant emphasis, "enough, my friend.  And
Gina’s husband—he will be my son!"  He struck his large chest a mighty
blow and threw back his head with triumphant finality.

I attempted no more to rise.  It was useless.

"Signor Visconti," I began huskily, "you do not understand me.  I cannot
marry anybody, ever.  I have four children to bring up—educate—to be
responsible for.  The youngest of them is eight.  I—you honor me greatly
by your kindness—but marriage is not for me."

He stared in speechless stupefaction at me as though I had revealed some
incredible horror to his eyes.

"Four children!" he whispered, with dilated eyes. "But who—but I thought
you have never been married?"

"I have not," I replied with an intense relief that was like a
restorative.  Then, catching his meaning glance, I went on hastily;
"They are my sister’s orphans.  I am responsible for them.  They have no
one else."

"Ah!" he drew in his breath with the sound of a syphon.  "That is it, is
it?"

"Yes," I murmured, rising, resolved to put an end to this ghastly
episode.  "Now, if you will excuse me—"

All at once his hands shot out and clutched both of mine.

"You’re not good man!" he shouted vehemently. "No—not only good—you’re a
great man!  _Caro mio_—ah, I never make mistake—no!"  And before I knew
what he was doing, he had embraced me in Continental fashion and large
tears stood in his eyes.

The cup of my torment was complete.  A mad desire to get away possessed
me—only to get away.  I stirred to move but he held me resolutely.

"We will think it out, my friend," he announced with sober energy.  "We
will talk it over—work it out.  I, too, am a man with a heart, _caro
mio_.  It is I who understand—Have I not lost my poor Giovanna—Gina’s
mother?  If you two love each other—well—we must find—a way."

Hope bounded in my pulses as I noted that his enthusiasm was now
tempered by thoughtfulness.

"No, Mr. Visconti," I murmured with painful firmness.  "I have no right
to love Miss Gina—and I wouldn’t dream of telling her so, even if I
did—I am not free—"

"You—you’re not _promesso_—what d’you call it—engaged?"

"Oh, no, no!  It is only my heart that is engaged—not my word—there is
some one else—but it can never be anything—"

"But what does it mean?" he flashed, dark anger purpling his features
and kindling the air like a torch. "What did I see!  My girl in your
arms—what was that!"  His eyes now darted fiery anger and his arms were
arrested in the midst of a violent gesture.

I shook my head slowly.  His anger was infinitely more agreeable to
me—like manna—after his parching enthusiasm.

"There was nothing," I answered quietly.  "Miss Gina really turned her
ankle on the rug.  And I caught her as she fell—just as you would have
done."

He stood panting for a moment, his gaze riveted upon me.  At last he
turned away, with a pitiful movement of regret, apology, resignation.
The excellent man gave me the benefit of the doubt.

"Ah, _Dio mio_," he muttered.  "_Poverina_!  Go, my friend, now.  I must
think.  _Bellessa mia!—cara mia!_—what will I say to her?  Ah, _Dio_!
what a bitter world!"

"I am more distressed than I can say," I murmured, with the crushed
voice of poignant suffering, "but what can I do—or say—more?"

"_Niente_—nothing, nothing," he muttered.  "Good night!" and my
admiration for his spirit was high when he held out his trembling hand.

I tiptoed to the door like a thief and as I took my coat and hat, Gina
called out from the top of the stairs in uncomprehending astonishment.

"Not going—Randolph!"  And like a small avalanche she shot down the
stairs.

"Yes—yes—he is going, _bellessa mia_!" firmly shouted Visconti as he
came running towards us.  "He is called away—good night—good night!"

"Good night," I said and held out my hand to Gina. But Gina’s manners
are more modern than her father’s. She was dumbfounded and she turned
her back upon me angrily, registering doubtless some standard emotion
from a favorite movie.  It was useless to try to placate her.  I slipped
out of the door which will never more open for me.


The nightmarish quality of the episode persisted in my consciousness
like a drug throughout the passage homeward, and it was not until I
entered my door and saw a light in my study that reality began to assert
itself.

Reality meant the end—the end of my livelihood, the end of my hopes and
plans—the end of the tether.  Like an unfledged boy I must begin to
breast the future all over again.  A hero of romance would doubtless at
that moment have thrilled to the struggle with new and seemingly
insuperable obstacles.  But alas!  I am not a hero of romance!  As I
threw my coat upon the hatstand, a great weariness and a deep dejection
fell upon me.

Alicia came out of my study to greet me.  As usual she had been waiting
up for me.

"Why on earth aren’t you in bed?" I growled irritably. Alicia scanned my
face amid the shadows cast by the lamplight.  "Go to bed, child," I
repeated; "go to bed."

"Something has happened," she murmured, frightened; "something has
happened.  Oh, tell me—what was it, Uncle Ranny?"

I looked down at her with a scowl that was meant to be forbidding—a
warning that I was in no mood for triflingness.

She seized my hand, still holding my gaze with that starry look in her
eyes that invariably probes deep and rests in my inmost soul.

"Something has hurt you, Uncle Ranny," she whispered tremulously, "and
you must tell me."  Our eyes dwelt together for a space.  "Oh, tell me!"
she gulped, with a sudden terror dilating her eyes.  "It isn’t—it isn’t
that—man come back!"

"Oh, no!"  I shuddered involuntarily at the image she evoked of
Pendleton.  "Not that.  Thank Heaven, Alicia, you’re no Pollyanna; you
see the worst at once."

"No," I finally muttered, looking away, "I have hurt somebody."

"I can’t believe that," she retorted vehemently.  "But if you think
so—Please, please, tell me.  It will be so much better, for you, Uncle
Ranny."

I had a sudden impulse to take her in my arms, but the emotion was not
paternal.  And—I was to her "Uncle Ranny."  All unconscious she was
guarded by her circle of sacred flames.  Spasmodically I tore my hand
out of her grasp and walked unsteadily across the room to my table.

"Sit down over there," I motioned her as far away from me as possible.
She stood still without complying.

"What was it, Uncle Ranny, dear?" she breathed.

A sort of bittersweet pain went through me at the epithet and I reviled
myself inwardly for the impurity of my dark mind in the presence of this
simple, lovely purity.  A profound sigh escaped me as I leaned my elbows
on the table and made a feeble effort to smile at the mocking visage of
Fate.

"I cannot go back to Visconti’s any more, Alicia," I told her.
"Something has happened.  That is ended. I must look about for something
else."

"Oh!" she gasped, "is it as bad as that?"

"As bad as that," I repeated mechanically.

"Then I know it was nothing you could help," she answered with a sudden
radiance that was like a benediction.

"So there is no use worrying about that.  But you mean the money," and
her face clouded anxiously.  "But I know what I’ll do, Uncle Ranny," she
came gliding toward me.  "There is always Mr. Andrews for me, you know.
You remember what he said: He’ll take me back any time."

An instant of blackness was succeeded by a sudden burst of illumination.
Andrews!  Andrews and the library—the library, all catalogued—complete!
Andrews would either buy it or help me to dispose of it, and Alicia and
the children need not after all suffer by my catastrophe.  My books were
more like my flesh and blood, and to part with them—-but that
consideration was of singularly brief endurance at the moment.  Those
books, like a troop of old friends; would rescue us all from
disaster—come like a phalanx between us and defeat.

"You amazing child!" I cried, leaping to my feet. "Light!—You’ve brought
me light!  Andrews!—The very man!  To-morrow I am going to Andrews!"

I seized her by the shoulders and whirled her about the room like a
marionette in a savage burst of energy. Alicia gasped and, spinning
away, laughed wildly with a laughter that bordered upon sobs.  I dread
to reflect what our neighbors would have concluded, had they observed
through the windows the strange Dionysian rite of the quiet middle-aged
bachelor and his youthful pretty ward.

"Now go to bed, child," I commanded brusquely.  "I have some thinking to
do."

"Shall I make you some coffee?" she pleaded, coming toward me, still
laughing.

"No—go to bed!"  Before I was aware she had left a darting birdlike kiss
upon my cheek and fled like a breeze from the room.

My eyes dwelt upon the door for a space where she had vanished, and then
they turned involuntarily to the serried peaceful rows of books that had
been my life,—that now, in the last extremity of need, must, like the
camel in the desert, yield up their blood to be my livelihood.


The following morning, that is to-day, I made my way to Andrews, armed
with my catalogue, and greatly to that good fellow’s astonishment
offered him the sale of my library.

He stared at me in blank amazement for an instant and then, recovering
himself, declared that he would like to see it.

"Come back to lunch with me," I suggested.

He could not do that, but agreed to come to dinner in the evening.

His shrewd old eyes took in much more than the details of my copies and
editions during his two or three hours at my house.  With discreet but
observant gaze he followed the children about and measured, more
accurately no doubt than I could have done, the worth and solidity of my
household.  He had seen something of my easy bachelor life in the old
days and, doubtless, was now drawing his contrasts and conclusions.

"What do you think you can offer?" I queried with some anxiety, as he
stood carefully fingering the books which, like Milton’s one talent, it
were death to hide—for they were bread.

Andrews sat down and stared for an interval thoughtfully before him.

"I’ll tell you what I’d like to offer you before we talk about the
books—" he spoke with an even, a studied deliberation.  "I’d like to
offer you—a partnership!"

It was my turn to stare in stupefaction.

"It would be a great thing for me if you came in with me, Mr. Byrd," he
now spoke more quickly.  "You see, I’m an old man, getting on,
sir—getting on.  I want some new blood in the place—new blood—a fresh
point of view and young enthusiasm.  That young lady of yours coming in
the way she did woke me up to that. And whom could I leave it to when it
comes to the end?" he speculated wistfully.  "I have no relations."

I opened my mouth to speak, but Andrews took the privilege of age to
disregard me.

"I want a man with the tender touch for books, Mr. Byrd—the tender
touch.  It’s a beautiful business," he smacked his lips—"beautiful!  The
hunting for them—it’s—it’s a knightly quest.  And to find homes for
them—it’s like placing bonny children.  The bookmen of America are
generous.  We ought to go to England—buy libraries—increase our
treasure."

"But, my dear Andrews," I spluttered, in agitated protest.  "Do you know
what you are offering me?  A career, a livelihood, life itself—the
future of those children of mine—what can I contribute, except these
books—and compared to your business and good will!—"

"If you were rich," he interrupted, "do you suppose I’d have the
effrontery to make you the offer?  You see, I’ve known you a long time,
Mr. Byrd—and it’s been a great pleasure to me.  If I had a son—but," and
his voice struck a harsher note with things repressed—"it’s no use going
into that.  That is the business for a man like you.

"We all need money," he pursued with new energy. "It’s a thing to
despise if you can—a thing for sentimentalists to drivel about.  But so
long as our present social and economic system continues, only a fool
would decry money.  It’s no good to you when your heart is breaking, but
neither is food nor water, nor shelter nor leisure.  But when you want
food and shelter and leisure, that is as long as you’re above ground,
you want money.  I have prospered—done well.  Will you come with me,
Randolph Byrd?"

"My dear good Andrews," I paced the room agitated, exultant, terrified
by this stroke of good fortune.  "But how can I take advantage of your
unheard-of generosity? What can I offer?  Will you take my books as a
contribution to capital?"

"No," he shook his head, with twinkling eyes and a queer crinkling of
the crow’s-feet about them.  "I don’t think we need them.  Books are
always—books," he concluded oracularly, with a ring in his voice of the
true bibliophile’s reverence.

"Say you will come."

My heart was suddenly flooded by a rich inundation of hope.  This was
permanence that Andrews was holding out—this was an anchorage.  It was
neither Salmon and Byrd, nor Visconti’s.  This was my own peculiar
realm, and only a snob or a fool could reject it. _Ça me connait_.  All
the turmoil and troubles of the past seemed to be melting rapidly away
like the shapes in dreams or unsubstantial clouds.  My life would be
secure, the children nourished and educated.  Alicia should have her
chance unchallenged—should be prepared against the advent of that
dream-hero of hers,—when he comes—when he comes!  What else was I now
living for?  I felt as might have felt the old woman of the nursery
rhyme, who lived in a shoe, had any one suddenly offered her a vine-clad
well-stocked cottage of many chambers, with a future reasonably safe for
her progeny.  I saw on a sudden the clamorous city that had more than
once droned forth my doom, now rich in prospects and gayly reciting the
flattering tale of hope in my ears—the hope of becoming a bookseller in
face of my dreams of scholarship, eminence—fame, possibly! But this was
no dream.  With a flitting smile I recognized the wayward cynicism and
irony of it.  And in deep gratitude I gripped the hand of Andrews to
seal the bargain.




                              *BOOK THREE*


                             *CHAPTER XXII*


In returning to this all but neglected record of the things that made up
my life I realize with incredulity the passage of time.  I realize, too,
that when you live the most fully, you write, reflect and record the
least. It was _after_ his years of slavery that Cervantes wrote Don
Quixote and inside a prison house that Bunyan and Sir Walter Raleigh
composed their best-known works.

I shall never compose "works", I am certain now, for my lot is business
to the end.  Three times during the past two years I have been in
England and in France, attending sales, buying books, manuscripts and
libraries, and very narrowly I escaped sailing on the _Lusitania_, which
would probably have been the end of these memoirs and of me.  Would it
have mattered?  To the children, possibly.  Not to me, certainly—except
in so far as they would have suffered by my exit.  For though the
business of books is to me the one nearest akin to pleasure, it is
nevertheless a chaffering and a haggling in the market-place—the reverse
of all my tastes and aptitudes.

It is odd that externally I bear few of the marks of the indolent
lotus-eating soul that possesses me.  People viewing me superficially
might think, with Andrews, that I am fitted for stratagems, spoils
and—business.

Yet how happy I was when Andrews made me his offer!  How I plunged into
his affairs—our affairs—and gave them all my energy!  The children, I
exulted inwardly, the children are now safe!

But nature abhors anomalies.  To work for children alone is not enough.
One desires to work for a bosom companion, for some beloved woman, whose
breast is home, whose warm arms are the one refuge against the world,
whose eyes are the bright gateways to heaven. That fulfillment I never
had and never shall have.  Hence the anomalous sense of frustration, of
incompleteness. Some psychoanalyst would doubtless brand this as a
well-known middle-aged complex, call it by name like a familiar and
proceed to "cure" me of it.  But I am not going to any psychoanalyst.  I
know my trouble and also its name—-though I cannot call it after King
OEdipus or King David or the like.

_Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse_ mourned the flame-like Francesca
da Rimini.  And the name and the author of my trouble is not Galeotto
but—Alicia—Alicia whom I did not take and now can never have.

I am no romantic Paolo to Alicia’s Francesca.  I am a business man—yes,
a middle-aged, almost alert New York business man of the approved
hard-varnish variety—with good, pat stereotyped phrases and a show of
manly sincerity.  Who does not know that straight talk of most of us
modern business men, under which we can hide so much cunning, shrewdness
and chicane?  Could I not have simply taken possession of Alicia by a
sort of eminent domain?  Oh, I don’t mean anything improper! I mean by
all the astute and usual methods, the bell—book—candle and
orange-blossoms sort of thing, like the hardheaded Mr. Pettigrew of
American novels, or the wicked marquess or baronet of the English.

But I could not—I could not.

Under the carapace of the turtle or the armadillo is a body of flesh
with nerves and blood and viscera—a soft living part.  So also under the
shell of the maligned business man.

An infinite pity and tenderness stir me at the thought of Alicia.  I
suddenly feel in my inmost soul the softness of her cheek and it touches
me as the delicacy of one’s own child’s flesh must touch one.  If I had
a child of my own—but on that I must not let my mind dwell even in
dreams.

Yet, why not?  Dreams are all I am going to have and, pardie, it is more
than I deserve.  Much, very much has been given to me and I ought to
feel profoundly grateful.  And I do feel grateful.

But—Alicia—is engaged.

I can hardly write the words, though these are the words that have
driven me to writing again.

I have been happy these two years and more—happy in my fashion.  In
midst of the tumult and throb of the war spirit I, in common with other
business men, have been buying and selling and chaffering and
huckstering, rearing Laura’s children, educating Alicia and prospering.
If newly rich labor has been buying motor cars, it must be admitted that
some abruptly enriched business men and their wives have had time to
turn from furs and bric-a-brac and interior decorating so far afield as
my own remote specialty.  They have been buying books—libraries by the
yard, classics and first editions by the hundred.  The fact that that
admirable American book-man, the young Widener, had managed to gather a
magnificent collection during his all too brief life, has stimulated
many to emulation.  Shelley need no longer weep for Adonais.  I have
sold collections of Keats _en bloc_ to gentlemen who have probably never
read Endymion in their lives, and even now I am holding a set of Shelley
first editions only because I could not bring myself to part with them
to the very crude, almost illiterate, customer who proves to be the
highest bidder.  Rather would I sell them for less to a more enlightened
bookman. Oh, yes, I have been happy in my fashion.  Yet, glancing over
the few brief scattering entries in this record, why does the tinge of
melancholy persist?

I find a quotation from Anatole France under date of some twenty-six
months ago to the point that "even the most desired changes have their
sadness, for all that we leave behind is a part of ourselves.  One must
die to one sort of life in order to enter another."

What is it that I regret or regretted—unless it is the mere passage of
time that makes me older and older? And again I find:

"Life is a game best played by children and by those who retain the
hearts of children.  To those who have the misfortune to grow up it is
often a nightmare."  There it is again—the persistent note of regret.
Time will take them all from me—all, including Alicia.  And then?—How
did I ever come to let passion steal into my heart?

I find some phrases from Hazlitt to the effect that "we take a dislike
to our favorite books after a time," and that "If mankind had wished for
what is right they might have had it long ago," and then later, a sort
of credo, or confession or apologia _pro vita mea_:

"This is a commercial age.  If business is the path of least resistance
to a livelihood, so that a slenderly endowed creature like myself may
cling to the surface of the planet and pass on what has been
accomplished to the generations that must accomplish more—if that is the
easiest way, then that is the way of nature, my way. All business may be
more or less ignoble.  But, if so, who in the present state of evolution
can wholly escape the ignoble?"

Yet I have not altered in essentials.  Who shall say how I thrill at the
sight of beauty, or the rare work of a master?  I cannot declare how my
pulses throb when a new author swims into my ken—his new voice, his
fresh note catch at my throat like a haunting melody and I have known my
eyes to fill at the sheer joy of the discovery.

Oh, you, Randolph Byrd, aged seventy, when you come with your white hair
and purblind eyes to scan these notes, will you receive them at their
face value?  Will you believe that the sense of frustration underlying
them has to do with careers and fame and lives of Brunetto Latini?  No,
my septuagenarian self—I have a respect for you and a warm pity.  I
cannot so coldly gull you—take advantage of you!  Damn careers and
business and Brunetto Latinis!  I want love, passionate love and
children of my own loins and the beloved on my heart, and just the
common run of happiness that a thousand thousand men are at this moment
enjoying.  Then why have I not taken it?  Why have I not taken Alicia as
King David took Bathsheba, or whatever the lady’s name was, in virtue of
sheer desire and power?  Because I have been a finicking, hyper-refined,
hyper-sensitive fool, my aged friend; and now that she is engaged to be
married I should be—but now it’s too late!  Always, always, Randolph
Byrd, you have been too late!

All the world can give me advice and analyze me, yet nobody really knows
me.  Dibdin, who knows me best of all, in reality knows me least.  He
summed me up, or thought he did, before his periodical departure for
parts unknown, some twenty months ago.

"You see," he said, "you’ve really got a genius for kids.  I told you
how I felt about Laura.  Yet what do I do?  I go off to the devil knows
where, because I am a tramp.  That is stronger in me than anything else.
But you, you see, gave up everything else for them—everything.  Who but
a fool could blink the meaning of that?"

Who but a fool, my dear old Dibdin, could be so blind as you?  Who but a
fool could fail to see that I am consumed with passion for Alicia and
had only been waiting, dreading, hoping until she might be old enough to
know her own mind and heart—and waiting too long?

And now Alicia is engaged—and to my own nephew, Randolph—and life for
me, life in the rich, vivid, colorful, romantic sense of the word, is at
an end.

My nephew Randolph—a sophomore at Columbia—engaged to Alicia!

Flashes of savagery strike into my heart when I could find it possible
to hate that youth—notably when I catch the Pendleton expression in his
face, the Pendleton shiftiness in his eyes.  At such moments I
experience an intense, all but irresistible desire to grapple with him
as on a certain occasion I grappled with his father, to knock his head
against the wall and choke that brazen-faced, insolent temerity out of
him with his last breath.

But I am only Uncle Ranny—and I don’t suppose I shall do anything of the
kind.  Have I not brought him up?  Have I not labored and toiled for
him, watched over him?  Is he not my child like the rest?  There is
something about the person, the very flesh of the child one has reared
that disarms one’s anger and turns the heart to water.  His bad manners
hurt more deeply, yet they are not like the bad manners of a stranger.
His transgressions are not like others’ transgressions.  In God’s name,
your soul cries out, there must be redeeming features, extenuating
conditions!  Have I not had a hand in shaping him?  And was he not
ineffably endearing as a child?  He may be somewhat wild now, but is not
all youth like that on its path to manhood?

This is a parent’s point of view, I see, not a rival’s. Why, why did
that boy, of all the males in the world, take Alicia from me?

It was only yesterday that it happened, but already it seems like an
ancient calamity that stamps its victim with the slow grind of years of
pain, blanches his flesh and presses him down into the limbo of those
undergoing the slow drawn-out tortures of life.

Yet I was happy yesterday.  I came home at one, as I do of Saturdays,
and the early April sunshine, while still treacherous, was nevertheless
full of dazzling promise of spring, of relief from the dread winter we
have endured.  My head had been buzzing with schemes like a hive.  The
lease of the châlet expires in May and I was full of vain notions of
taking a larger, more attractive house that should be a suitable setting
for Alicia.  Only one year more of college is left for Alicia after this
and then—and then—Alicia had talked of entering the shop, and I should
have her with me all the time.  How I longed and looked forward to that
day!  Alicia my constant companion, sharing every moment of the day,
going and coming together, lunching together, discussing everything.
Who shall blame me if I saw visions?

And then, perhaps an hour after lunch, they suddenly entered my study
together—Randolph a half-pace or so behind her with something hangdog in
his look—an expression I detest in him—and Alicia, head high, flushed
with a look of desperate resolution about the somewhat haggard eyes that
startled me.

I had been occupied in turning over the pages and collating a Caxton, a
genuine Caxton that I meant later to show to Alicia—"The Royal Book,"
(1480, 2d year of the Regne of King Rychard the thyrd)—a beautiful
incunabulum.

Randolph moved abruptly forward with a jerk of the head, and, his eyes
failing to meet mine, he blurted out huskily:

"We’re engaged, Uncle Ran—’Licia and I!"

"What!" I yelled harshly as one in pain and fell against the back of my
chair.  "What—what on earth do you mean!"

But he merely looked away, making no response.

"Is this true, Alicia?" I shouted, as if to overtop the tumult in my
breast.

"Yes, Uncle Ranny," breathed Alicia, her eyes gazing into mine with a
look so poignantly sad and charged with pain that it froze me as I was
about to speak.  I sat for a space, my mouth open, our eyes dwelling
together for an instant.  And then, as by a sudden effort, Alicia smiled
valiantly, laid her hand stoutly on the shrinking boy’s arm, and then
abruptly she lowered her gaze.

"But—but why—why now?" I spluttered.  "You are both so young—you only a
sophomore, Randolph—and you, Alicia—in God’s name, why now?"

Alicia glanced at Randolph as though depending on him to speak and then
contemptuously giving it up as hopeless, she straightened her shoulders
bravely and murmured in low distinct tones:

"I promised Randolph.  He wants me to be engaged to him and I promised
him I would."

"You—you mean you—you love each other?" I stammered miserably, for every
word was a knife thrust into my own heart.

The lad Randolph was now shamed into a little manliness.

"Yes, we do, Uncle Ranny," came forth in his throaty voice.  "That’s
just it—we—we love each other. And—’Licia has promised to be engaged to
me ’til I am through college and get a job."

"I suppose it had to come, Uncle Ranny," explained Alicia with what
seemed to me a very labored serenity. "We grew up together.  We have
been such chums and—and Randolph seemed to—to need me.  Don’t you see,
Uncle Ranny?"  There was a piteous note of appeal in her voice which
only seemed to lacerate me the more. But I could not speak.

The sunshine had gone out of the April afternoon. Waves of darkness
seemed to be beating over me, and the strength and energy of a few
minutes back had oozed out of me like so much water.  So weak and
shattered did I feel that on a sudden I was seized by a panic fear of
collapse.

"Please leave me now," my lips, strange cold dead things that seemed in
no way a part of my body, brought forth mechanically, yet with heavy
effort.  "It’s—it’s a shock—we’ll discuss it later."  I do not envy
those two the sight of my face at that moment.  I am pretty certain
Randolph did not see it, for he turned away, but I am in doubt about
Alicia.  Her eyes were brimming with tears and she came toward me with a
sudden curious movement of the hands, as though she felt rather than saw
her way.  Then abruptly her hands dropped to her side and she paused and
turned back sharply.

They left me then, both of them.  I remained alone—crushed, stunned,
alone.

And suffering agony though I am, there is now in me a strange new sense
of familiarity with suffering. Anguish and heartache, thank God, are no
longer novelties. That much anodyne the sheer business of living does
bring to one.  I am as sensitive to them as ever I was in my prehistoric
days of ease and leisure and reclusion, but they are old acquaintances
now.  I must go on, hiding my dolor as best I can, working for the sunny
comely lad, Jimmie, so brilliant with promise, for the grave sweet-faced
Laura, replica of her mother, and—yes—for Randolph and Alicia.  I cannot
rant and I must not betray any grief or make a spectacle of myself
before them.  I must carry on.

"Small as might be your lamp," observes the sage of Belgium, "never part
with the oil that feeds it, but only give the flame that crowns it."

A poor and tenuous oil is that of my peculiar lamp, a petty flame and a
murky result.  But such as they are, I must guard them.

I cannot down the feeling, however, that there is some mystery, some
secret reason behind this lightning-like development between Alicia and
the boy.  With a leaden heart I must record it that he has proven a
disappointment to me.  His mediocrity as a student concerns me less than
his general tendency to shiftiness, his unsteady eye and his heavy
drooping nether lip when he tells me that he "spent the night with the
fellows at the frat house", that "a fellow’s got to associate with
friends of his own age", that "he’s got to make friends", and so on.  He
is through his allowance four days after receiving it and repeatedly
begs for more.  More than once I have caught the odor of alcohol about
him as he came in late at night, and only the fact that he is Laura’s
boy and that I have reared him has made me condone his many offenses.

Have I been spoiling him, I wonder?  Would I have condoned and tolerated
as much if he were my own son? He is over a year younger than Alicia and
though a handsome enough lad in his way, I fancy I see too much of
Pendleton in his face for comfort.  His father also was markedly
good-looking when he married poor Laura. Have I, I wonder, been rearing
another Pendleton?

But Alicia, the bright, the fair, the radiant, almost a woman now, with
more wisdom than I ever before found in women—how came she to do such a
thing as to engage herself to him?  I can understand his possible
infatuation.  But a girl, I had always believed, learns her woman’s arts
by instinct.  How can she be so blind to the boy’s character and
defects?  Can it be that she really loves him?  Love, love, love!  That
blind force that is said to move the stars—why can it be so haggard,
gaunt and painful a thing in the ordinary light of day?  Woe is me that
I am too dull to comprehend it! Like the blooded horse in _Werther_ that
bites his own vein to ease his overstrained heart, I must bleed
inwardly—I must suffer and endure.




                            *CHAPTER XXIII*


Since it is for you, Randolph Byrd, aged seventy, that this vagrom
journal has been written, I should deem myself derelict and insincere if
I did not convey to you in every detail the sort of creature you were in
middle life.  If you fail to approve of your progenitor, I shall know
that I have been exact, for I fail to approve of him myself.

We are at war.  Every fiber in me should thrill to the President’s
declaration of war against Germany, but here I have been calmly turning
the pages of "The Description of a Maske", by Thomas Campion (S.
Dunstone’s Churchyard in Fleetstreet 1607).  It is a beautiful volume in
excellent preservation, one of five brought in by a young man who is
going to enlist.  He inherited them from a grandfather, possibly an old
fellow like you, who held them precious.  I bought them eagerly, for I
know where I can dispose of them, though I should dearly like to place
them in my own shelves.  We shall make a profit on them, and a handsome
one.  That is the sort of thought that runs through my head, Randolph
Byrd, _aet._ 70, and that is the sort of man you were thirty odd years
ago.  You never were young in your youth, my fine friend.  Perhaps you
will grow younger as you grow older.

But that is not all.  Above the sensuous pleasure in the books and
overriding the thought of lucre, is the strange romance of Alicia and
your namesake, Randolph Pendleton.  It blasts all my previous
conceptions of romance.  Where is the color and the warmth and the glory
of it?  I had expected after their announcement of a few days ago that I
should be bitterly engaged in watching a glorious April dawn that would
blind me with its strange flames because it was not for me.  Instead I
seem to see only a somber murky twilight whenever I surprise those two
in private colloquy.  The mere thought of the possibility of Alicia
loving me (fantastic arrogance!) was wont to irradiate my heart and to
make me positively light-headed, so that I could scarcely withhold my
lips from smiling publicly.  But my young cub of a nephew seems haggard
and obsessed by care, and upon Alicia’s eyes I have more than once
observed traces of tears.

What can be the meaning of that?

Were I in reality a parent instead of masquerading as one, I should no
doubt endeavor to fathom this mystery. But you see, I am still, as
always, inadequate.  The truth is, I dare not yet talk to Alicia about
her love.  A little later, Randolph Byrd, a little later—when the pain
is more decently domesticated in my bosom and will not fly out like a
newly unchained hound.  Meanwhile is it not best that I fasten my
attention upon Thomas Campion his Maske?


I may fill a little of the interim perhaps by telling you what I had
passed over in the busy silence of the last two or three years, that
Fred Salmon has attempted to make _amende honorable_.  Fred Salmon, who
was the means of my losing all of the meager capital you should have
lived upon in your old age, has reappeared with a commendable attempt at
restitution.

Begoggled and be-linen-dustered, he drove up to the châlet some ten
months ago in a magnificently shining car of bizarre design and he
entered my door booming like not too distant thunder.

"Hello, Ranny!" he shouted out, and in a twinkling my study seemed to be
brimming with him, inundated by him, overflowing with Fred and his
Salmonism.  "Have a cigar, my boy—how are you?—how is the family?—how is
the book business?"

"Which am I to answer first?" I grinned mildly.

"Never mind!" roared Fred.  "I see you’re all right. Ask me how’s tricks
with me?"  He was so obviously bursting with news that I complied at
once.

"Very well—how are your tricks, Fred?"

"Booming, booming, Randolph, my boy—and kiting! Jack Morgan himself
wouldn’t blush to be in what I’ve got into!  Put that on your piano,
Randolph, my boy!"

Fred is one of those who likes to talk of Jack Morgan, Harry Davison,
Gene Meyer and Barney Baruch, as though they were his daily cocktail
companions.  This distant familiarity of moneyed men gives him a strange
exuberance.

"Consider that I have tried it on my piano and like the prelude," I told
him.  "Now for the rest of the opus."

"O-puss!  Oh, fudge!" he laughed.  "Gosh! You’re a great old bird,
Rannie—great old bird!  Well, listen here, fellah—" he ran on, wild
horses could not have held him—"you think I like to brag, don’t you?
Don’t deny it—you know you do!  Well, it’s God’s truth, Randolph, I do.
Some folks are like that—me, for instance.  But I had nothing to brag
about, see? So I made up my mind I’d get into something so good it could
stand any amount of bragging.  So what do I do, but go into oil—oil,
Randolph, my lad—and now I’ve got it—I’ve got it!  Rich?  Say, I’m going
to be filthy with it, Randolph, positively oozing, crawling with money.
That’s how it’s with me, boy!"

"Congratulations!"  I held out my hand.  He gripped it hard.  "And what
do you do with your millions?" I added blandly.

"Oh, I ain’t got ’em yet!" he shouted.  "But they’re coming,
Randolph—they’re on the way, on the way! I hear the sound of their dear
little golden feet right now—sweetest sound you ever heard.  And that
reminds me!—"  And on a sudden he opened his duster and from his bosom
pocket brought forth a number of dazzling yellow certificates with
gorgeous blood red seals upon them.

"See these?" his large features were beaming a noon-day flood of
generosity.  "Remember that twenty-five thousand you put in of your own
spondulix just before Salmon and Byrd went blooy?  Well, this is that!
Here is a thousand shares of Salmon Oil to cover that, Randolph—and some
day you’ll cash in with interest, my boy—big interest too—and don’t you
forget it!"

I stared at him in silence for a space.  But so genuine and sincere
seemed his air of righteous triumph that I repressed the Rabelaisian
laughter that shook me inwardly and only said:

"Thank you, Fred.  You’re a—white man."

"Don’t say a word!" shouted Fred, thumping me on the back.  "It’s all to
the good!"

"By the way," I could not help adding after a glowing moment, "what is
the stock selling at now?"

Not for nothing am I the partner of the canny Andrews.

"Oh, now," retorted Fred in a tone somewhat injured at my lack of
romanticism—"now it ain’t selling at all—yet!  It’s not issued yet, see?
We haven’t floated it yet.  I’m giving you this out of mine.  You can’t
sell it for a year.  This is organizer’s stock.  But never fear, my boy,
this will net you more than twenty-five thousand some day, or my name’s
Hubbard Squash!"

There was nothing to do but to hail Fred as a philanthropist and
humanitarian and to thank him for his golden-hued certificates,—sweet
augury of fabulous riches to come.  I keep a small iron safe in my study
now to house such precious objects as the Campion Maske and the Caxton
that I bring home overnight or longer for study and collation.  Very
solemnly I clicked the combination lock, opened the safe and carefully,
with ritualistic, almost hieratic movements, I reverently put Fred’s
certificates into one of the little drawers.  Fred watched me
attentively.  That ceremony seemed to answer his sense of the dramatic.

"Yes, sir!" he nodded with great satisfaction, as a period to my
movements.  "You have put away a little gold mine there, my boy.  And
you don’t have to work it, either.  I’ll do that!  All you’ll have to do
is to cash the dividend checks.  And a word in your ear, Randolph: If I
’phone you and tell you to buy more, just you do it, boy—just you do
it!"  Without describing to him my momentary mental reservation I, as it
were, promised.

"And, oh, say," bubbled Fred, struck by a sudden memory, "who do you
think is in on this property with me?  You’d never guess in the world,
so might as well tell you!  It’s our old college chum, Visconti—the
guinea—and a great little sport that guinea is, let your uncle Fred tell
you.  He’s got the spondulix, boy, and he’ll have more, he will.  He’ll
strike it rich on this deal, you bet your hat, and he’ll be richer than
ever.  And say!" one idea seemed to follow another in Fred’s brain like
salmon running over rapids.  "Hasn’t he got a peacherine of a daughter,
the old boy?  Know her? Great girl, Gina—wonderfully good sport!  She
and I—say, we’re great pals, that girl and I—cabarets, dancing"—and he
shook and quivered in a sudden fragmentary movement of the latest
dance—"great sport!" he concluded, panting ponderously.

"Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" I heard myself murmuring.

"Here!  What you praying about?" demanded Fred, humorously suspicious.

"It was an invocation, Fred," I explained, "it’s the most wonderful
thing I ever heard.  Why, you and Gina are meant for each other.  She’s
a fine American girl"—I almost said "fina Americana girl," "and
you—you’re a—you were simply created for each other!"

"Say," grinned Fred exultantly, "honest, Randolph, do you think so?"

"I do, most certainly."

"Well, well—wait and see.  Stop, look, listen—watchful waiting is the
word," he muttered mysteriously. "Ta-ta, old man, I’ve got to shoot away
from here. Now remember what I said: Don’t buy until you hear from me,
nor don’t sell until you hear from me!"

"Stay to lunch," I begged.  "After all, it’s Sunday."

"Sorry, can’t," he returned importantly.  "Big things brewing.  See you
again.  Ta-ta!"  And he was gone.

Such was the recrudescence of Fred Salmon and the certificates are still
in my safe in witness of it, and greatly to my surprise they have a
market value now, even though I cannot sell them.  Judging by the curb
quotations the golden-hued leaflets are worth ten thousand dollars
to-day.  But I know too well that something will happen before the year
is up and they will be worthless again.  How should it be otherwise,
since they are mine?

Fred Salmon was never meant to be a whisperer or a negotiator of secret
treaties.  The children in the house that Sunday morning could not fail
to overhear him and ever since he has been known to them and referred to
as "Brewster’s Millions."

There is no contour to life.  Life is chaotic.  Whenever I thought of
Fred as marrying at all, I had mentally mated him with Gertrude.  That,
in my opinion, would have been an ideally eugenic combination.  But
instead, Fred is obviously attaching himself to Gina and Gertrude has
been eighteen months married to Minot Blackden, the rediscoverer of
glass-staining.  They live happily in apartments, about a mile apart,
and I am told breakfast together occasionally.

And this notation, oh, my aged correspondent, proves to me that I am not
a novelist.  For were I a novelist, I should doubtless idealize these
pictures—romanticize as I note them.  Gertrude—my old cold flame,
Gertrude—married to Blackden!  There ought to be a chapter of that—a
veritable lyric epithalamium upon those highly modern spousals.
Blackden should fix them forever in a series of stained-glass windows!

Instead of that, my feeling is, "What am I to Gertrude now, or what is
Gertrude to me?  No more than Hecuba to the Player in ’Hamlet.’"  Always
in place of romance, reality seems to break in, to take possession of my
pen and, willy-nilly, I find myself recording events as they happen,
without varnish or adornment.


But if my pen is so veracious as I have intimated above, why is it so
overproud and under-honest as not to record the torture that persists
beneath the seemingly calm surface of life, the agony, the anguish of
seeing Alicia daily under unaltered conditions, the same beloved Alicia,
yet with a barrier reared before her to which the screen of the Sleeping
Beauty was a miserable clipped privet hedge, to which Brynhild’s circle
of fire was a pitiful conjuror’s trick?

Having been forced by the pressure of circumstance into ordered and
natural life, I am now maddened by a passion to straighten it altogether
out of its odd contortions and entanglements.  My soul cries out to live
naturally and virtually whispers to me every day that natural living is
the first requisite to constructively social living.  I see heights
glimmering of service, of great impersonal love—but only through
personal love lies my path toward them.

In other words, I am now aware that you cannot, like another Aaron
Latta, "violate the feelings of sex."  A few primal instincts there are,
so tremendously important, so powerfully imbedded in the human, in the
animal organism, that to violate them is to twist and crumple the
personality, the very soul within one—life itself. A normal man must
wive and beget and rear before his imagination is disentangled and freed
for the constructive and corporate life of humanity—before his use to
society is real and stable, reliable and not a sham.

I have reared children, but I have never had a wife or ever begotten any
children of my own.  Alicia embodies the completion of life for me—and
Alicia is now pledged to some one else, leaving my world empty and
meaningless.  Come what will and avoid me as she may, existence cannot
go on in this manner.  I must take the risk of private talk with
Alicia—to my pain, possibly, but for my information inevitably.  Is she
in reality in love with my nephew?


"Alicia," I began gruffly this evening after dinner, "I want to talk to
you.  Will you come into my study in a few minutes?"

She lifted her eyes to mine searchingly for an instant and lowered them
again swiftly.

"Yes, Uncle Ranny," she murmured.  There are times when I feel I could
jump out of my skin, as the phrase is, when she calls me Uncle Ranny.
That "uncleship" has been my undoing.  Yet what a wealth of prerogatives
it has brought me!

I chose this evening because somehow all the world lay tranquillized.
Gusts of wind and plumps of April rain during the day gave way to a
great stillness even over this suburban countryside, where the rumble of
the trains is never absent; but the humid smell of the newly stirring
earth was still in my nostrils and our little lawn was already green
with young grass.  One could almost hear the sap mounting in the trees.
There was a vernal feeling of peace and hope in the house—in my very
nerves.

We were in particular good humor moreover under the influence of
Jimmie’s table talk.  That boy is a source of constant delight and
bubbles vitality like a fountain. His presence in a room positively
gives the effect of added light.  He is just now in love with long words
and announced that he "would give me a composition on how to tie a
necktie."  He meant a demonstration and we all laughed heartily.

"Never mind," murmured Jimmie cheerfully to himself.  "Demonstration—I
won’t forget that one."

Griselda declares he is exactly as I was at his age. But I am certain I
never was half so delightful.

Laura was not with us.  She is at a boarding-school at Rye this year and
comes home only upon alternate week-ends.  Laura, sweet and grave-faced
like her mother, is never as hilarious as the rest of us often are. My
nephew Randolph was also absent.  He, I suppose, was dining at his
eternal "frat house."

It occurred to me how happy we could be, just the three of us, Alicia,
Jimmie and I—plus, of course, Griselda.  Alicia is beautiful now with a
tender coloring and movements of exuberant gayety that are like wine to
the heart.  When her face is animated and her eyes flashing with
merriment, the house seems charged with the very elixir of delight.  Of
late, however, I have seen little of her gayety and more of her pensive,
silent mood and that has been depressing.  But to-night Alicia was her
old lovely self of the days before the engagement and I seized the
occasion to discover what I could about that puzzle.

Alone in my study, puffing at a cigarette which might have been a string
of hemp for all the taste I discerned in it, I feasted my mental eyes
for the _n_th time upon the picture of Alicia married to me, greeting me
as a wife upon my home-coming at night, nestling in my arms for the
delicious intimate fragmentary talk of the day lived through, of the
myriad little threads that take their place in the woof of life only
after the beloved has touched them with her love.  The long quiet
evenings of intimacy and the nights which, in Goethe’s phrase, become a
beautiful half of the life span.

Am I immoral, O Randolph of seventy?  Then I dismally fear I am immoral.
For these are the pictures, old man, and these the thoughts that produce
them—bad as they certainly are for me.  For Alicia is my ward—my child.
And whatever happens she must not suspect them. With an effort and a
corrugated brow I dismissed them as I heard Alicia’s step on the
doorway.  Very straight and demure she was as she entered, bringing with
her that aura of infinitude which always quickens my foolish pulses.

"Sit down, Alicia," I waved her to a chair with an attempt at a smile.

"Is anything the matter, Uncle Ranny?"

"No—no—nothing—" with exaggerated naturalness. "I only wanted to talk to
you."

"Wasn’t Jimmie cunning!" she laughed, slipping into a chair.  "He says
he is going to be a writer like Mark Twain and let you sell his books.
This environment, he says, is enough to make a writer of any fellow."  I
laughed.

"Tell me, Alicia—" I began briskly enough, and then, noting her eyes
upon me, those deep eyes of a woman, I faltered:

"Do you—did you—when did this love affair between you and Randolph
begin?"

Alicia made no answer.

"Was it sudden—spontaneous—like that?" and I snapped my fingers, still
clinging to the spirit of lightness with which we had left the table.

"I have loved all of them—always," she murmured, gazing downward, "ever
since I’ve been with them."

"I know that—so have I—so do I—" and my laugh sounded in my own ears
like the grating of rough metallic surfaces together.  "But I don’t go
marrying you all—do I?  That’s a very serious business, Alicia, this
marrying."

How dull and prosy the words fell upon the air about me!  Does middle
age mean being prosy when you mean to be alert, bright and crisp?  Yet I
feel younger than any of them.

Her face lifting slowly and her wide-open gray eyes searching mine
suddenly struck me as so piteously sad that I then and there wrote
myself down an ass and a cad and turned away to hide my shame.

"I know it’s serious, Uncle Ranny!" and her voice was like the muted
strings of a violin.  "But don’t you think I understand?  Please don’t
be afraid of me—won’t you trust me—please?"  And she left her chair and
made a step toward me with an imploring gesture of the hands.

"I am not a designing woman," she declared, with a half smile, and then
she ran on more vehemently, "I know that Randolph is younger than I.  He
can tire of me a hundred times before he is ready to marry.  Oh, we are
a long way from marrying.  But he—he begged me to—to be engaged to him
and—and for certain reasons that I can’t tell _any one_, I agreed.  And
I’ll keep my word if he keeps—" and there she paused.

A solemn, quite maternal tenderness in her face as she uttered those
words so fascinated me that suddenly I saw her anew—a new Alicia—and
with a strange tug at the heartstrings I marveled at the miracle.

I saw her suddenly not as _a_ woman, but as Woman—the mother of mankind,
the nurse, the nourisher of all the generations.  There was in her eyes
a something rapt and sybilline—she was the eternal maternal principle in
nature, the keeper of man’s destiny, older than I, as old as the
race—the spirit of motherhood!

And _she_ was engaged to Randolph!

Then, as though emerging from a maze, I blurted out, "You are not in
love with him, then?" ...

"Of course I love him!" she returned with fire.  "I love everybody in
this house.  This has been home—heaven to me.  Why shouldn’t I?—Oh, you
Randolph Byrd!—why are men so blind?  I’ve trusted you all my life as if
you were God—and you can’t let me manage—but you’ve got to trust me!—I
can help—I must—I can’t tell you—but you’ll never regret it!—Oh, please,
Uncle Ranny, don’t press me any more," she added more plaintively, her
force suddenly leaving her as though she had come to herself with a
shock.  A gush of tears filled her eyes.  "Don’t be—too hard on me," she
faltered.  Her hand groped for the chair behind her, and she sank
weeping into it.

"Alicia!  My God!" I cried out, choking.  Flesh and blood could not bear
it.  I leaped toward her with a wild impulse to take her in my arms, to
comfort her, to pour out against her lips the truth that I trusted her
and loved her more than any human being on earth.... My arms went out
and all but engulfed her. But—strangely—I checked myself.  A powerful
inhibition suddenly held me arrested as in a vise.  Both the curse and
the blessing of middle age were inherent in that inhibition.  If I had
so much as touched her then, I knew in a flash of quivering intuition
that the truth I had perforce so carefully guarded would be spilled like
water.  If I touched her then, I was lost!

Hastily I retreated a step or two.  For a space of intense charged
silence Alicia sat drying her eyes, a little crumpled Niobe, the while I
with trembling fingers of the hand that was on my table fumbled stupidly
in the cigarette box.

"Trust you, Alicia!" I muttered, with an immense effort to control my
voice.  "I trust you beyond any one.  You are mistress in this house.
Do whatever you think best.  I didn’t mean to make you cry, child,
forgive me.  You—you have answered my question. Now don’t let’s have any
more tears—please!"

And lighting a cigarette automatically I now approached her and stood
nearer to her.

"I’m—s-sorry, Uncle Ranny," she faltered.

She had called me Randolph Byrd in her vehemence and the sound of it was
still reverberating in my brain. But I was back to Uncle Ranny, like
another Cinderella in her pumpkin.

"Do you know what you are, Alicia?"  I stood over her, puffing and
chattering against time, "You are an old-fashioned girl, that’s what you
are—with emotions and—and all sorts of curious traits, when you ought to
be discussing Freud and complexes and the single standard and the right
of woman—" the right of woman, I had almost said, to motherhood
irrespective of marriage, upon which I had heard a fashionable young
woman descant only that morning in the shop, apropos of a book she was
buying on the Dark Lady of the Sonnets.  But I paused in time.

"And all sorts of things," I trailed off lamely.

"Yes," she murmured, a faint sad smile wavering on her lips.  "I’ll do
that next time.  I’ll deliver a lecture to Jimmie some evening on the
OEdipus complex—or why it’s inadvisable to marry your own grandmother."

Clearly Alicia is no stranger to the patter of the time. But what a
glorious, natural creature she is!

Her touch of satire after her tempest of emotion ravished me as perhaps
nothing else.  How adorable she was in all her moods!

"Do it now, Alicia," I cried.

"Now—I must go up and wash my face," she murmured.  I couldn’t bear to
let her go.

"Where—where is Randolph to-night?" I clutched at her presence for
another instant.

"I don’t know," and with a sudden swift movement she glided out of the
room.  If only she knew how bewitching she is!  But perhaps she is
better ignorant.

One thing is certain.  She has answered my question. She is not in love
with Randolph.

Dimly I perceive a faint cohesiveness to the swimming lines of the
picture.  For some reason that she knows best, that seemed good to her,
she yielded to the boy’s importunities.  In some way the mother in her
is involved.  How little, after all, I know of my eldest nephew!  Alicia
doubtless knows more—much more.

But this is the query that rises before me like a black pillar in the
roadway:

Can that splendid girl be deliberately planning to sacrifice herself for
some real or fancied good to the boy—hoping the while that by the time
his dangers are past, he might tire of her, and release her plighted
word?  But suppose he shouldn’t tire—as indeed how could he? Can I risk
her happiness in that manner—her happiness which means to me a thousand
times more than my own?

My own happiness—useless to think of that new! Whatever Alicia did or
didn’t betray, it was patently obvious that I am simply Uncle Ranny—as
ever was. For one instant of excitement I was Randolph Byrd—but only for
that.  Ah, well, no use to dwell upon that bitterness now.

But about that young pair—what would I better do, my aged counselor?
Doubtless at seventy you will be able to give me the sagest of advice.
But that will be too late, friend, _par trop_, too late.  I must watch
more closely from this moment on.  I have much to learn, Randolph Byrd.
Of this, however, I am certain: One individual may with nobility
sacrifice his life for another. That, according to my lights, is
inherent in the very order of the universe.  But every one is entitled
to his or her own happiness.  Woe and shame to the crippled soul that
allows another to maim him in his happiness.  Every human being has the
unequivocal right to his share!

I am rambling, I see.  My brain doubtless is still awhirl with the
emotions and overtones of the interview with Alicia.

The headlines of the evening paper over which my tired eyes stray are
vocal with the war spirit, with news of bridges guarded, of
preparations, of munitions, of espionage, of ships, troops,
volunteering!  But the import of these makes hardly an impression upon
my mind. So impersonal a thing is patriotism juxtaposed to the intimate
business of living!

It is late.  I must go to bed.  Alicia’s fiancé has not yet come in.


To-day arrived a letter which overshadows all else, which momentarily
put even my last night’s talk with Alicia in the background and aroused
strange sleeping instincts of alarm, of combat, of savage alertness.
The last thing I could now have expected or thought of was this letter
from Pendleton.  The brilliant April sun turned darker as I opened it
and the warmth went out of the vernal air, turning spring back into
winter.  This is what I read:


DEAR RANDOLPH:

I am writing you from St. Vincent’s Hospital in San Francisco.  A
business trip that brought me here laid me flat with typhoid, and all my
money, what remained for the return trip to Kobe, is gone.

I ask you to do me the great favor of advancing me three hundred
dollars.  I shall be out of hospital in a week or ten days at most and I
want to return at once. Immediately I get back to Kobe I shall send you
a draft in repayment.  You must do this for me, Randolph, as I have no
one else to turn to.  Unless I can get back I am stranded and my only
alternative will be to beat my way back to New York, which is the last
thing I want to do.  Please let me hear from you by wire that you’ll do
this.

Faithfully,
       JIM PENDLETON.


The impudent blackmailing scoundrel!  His only alternative will be New
York.  That is his threat, and as a threat he means it.  Yet I would
send him the money willingly if only I were sure that he would really
use it for passage to Kobe or to the devil—so long as it is far enough
away.  But what security have I?

Nevertheless it comes to me sadly that I shall have to take the risk and
send him the money.  To have Pendleton in New York again—at any cost I
must take any chance to prevent that.  And arrant blackmailer that he
is, he understands that!

What could he do if he were here?  The children? Though all minors, the
two eldest are old enough to choose and I believe I am secure in my
feelings as to their choice.  He will not, moreover, be charging himself
with the responsibility of the children, if only I seem indifferent
enough as to whether he takes them or not. Alicia he is powerless to
touch.  Oh, I have learned something of the weapons needed to fight such
a beast. But it is his hateful presence that I cannot stomach the
thought of.  And that he knows also.  I must send him the money and take
the chance that he will really return to his accustomed lairs.  It will
be an uneasy time for a while, nevertheless.  But too much ease would
now sit queerly upon my shoulders.

I shall send him the money.




                             *CHAPTER XXIV*


I have had a week of illness and it has been the happiest of my life.

Alicia has been my nurse and no one, I fervently hope, will ever
discover that the larger half of that week has been sheer malingering.
I might have got up in three days!

    ’Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
    But better late than never
    I shall have lived a little while,
    Before I die forever.


The Shropshire Lad was perfectly right in the two middle lines of his
quatrain, but oddly wrong in the others.  It was _not_ late to hearken
or to smile.  It never is late.  Every moment has been heavenly for me.
And who ever stops to dwell upon Purgatory once he has entered Paradise?
I am very certain that by a law of spiritual physics past suffering is
wiped out without a trace.

If "The Rosary" were not so absurd I should sing it to myself over and
over.  But being constructively a convalescent why may I not be absurd?
Who shall say me nay?  So being alone, I am humming the tune of "The
Rosary" over and over and taking my pleasure in it.

The hours I have spent with Alicia no one can take from me.  What a
petulant patient I have been!  I chuckle as I think of it.  It’s like
_Felix Culpa_.  Happy grippe-cold!

Alicia, let us say, brings me some broth upon a tray.

"Will you be comfortable, Uncle Ranny," she asks with concern in her
voice, "until I come back with the rest?"

"No!" growls the eccentric uncle.  "Not a bit of it. I want company
while I eat."

Alicia laughs softly.

"But who is going to prepare the other tray, while Griselda is so busy?"

"Don’t care," mutters the grouchy invalid.  "I want company.  If I let
you go now, will you bring up your own luncheon and eat it here?"

"But that makes such a lot of dishes, Uncle Ranny."

"Don’t care.  I’m obstinate, fussy, irritable, sick. Have to be humored.
Ask the doctor!"

Alicia peals a delicious silvery laugh and then I see a film as of tears
in her eyes.

"All right—I’ll humor you, Uncle Ranny.  But I should think you’d be
sick of seeing me round by this time!"

"Am sick," growl I.  "Get a colored nurse to-morrow!"  Whereupon I hear
Alicia’s laughter all the way down the stairs.

I wonder why Griselda’s Scotch broth tastes so amazingly delicious,
these days.  Is it possible that an invalid’s palate is more sensitive
to culinary virtues and savors? I must ask the doctor.

On the little table at my bedside lies the Valdarfer Boccaccio, printed
1471, which Andrews, excellent fellow, had bought at a sale in my
absence and, thrice excellent fellow, brought up for my delectation when
he came to visit the sick.  I once spent a delightful week in the
British Museum, virtually under guard, examining that rare and beautiful
volume.  Now its only replica in America is near me and I ought to be
feasting all my senses upon its vellum-bound richness and beauty.  It
was once the property of a Medici and has delighted the hours of popes,
princes, dukes, lords; men have longed for it, have treasured it, loved
it as men treasure and love diamonds or women.  It is worth a moderate
fortune. But I leave it neglected.  I am waiting for the rattle of a
tray and the entrance of the girl behind the tray.  What would Rosenbach
or any decent bookman say if they knew?  But I don’t care.  Boccaccio
himself would have approved me.

Alicia enters and the room is flooded with sunshine and I am quick with
life.

"Why, Uncle Ranny!"  Alicia pauses alarmed, tray in hand.  "Do you think
you have fever again?  Your eyes are so bright!"

"’The better to see you with,’ said the wolf," I mutter and turn away.

"And your cheeks are red."  She puts down the tray, ignoring my
nonsense.

"Let me feel if they are hot," she persists anxiously and her cool
fingers barely touch my cheek which I hastily draw aside.

"I have no fever, I tell you, Alicia," I murmur irritably.  "I am
ravenous.  Food, child—food is my craving.  Sit down and eat—and let me
eat."

"Very well, dear grouchy Uncle Ranny," answers Alicia, cheerfully
placing my dishes on the invalid’s table suspended over the counterpane
and leaving her own on the tray.  "It shall eat to its heart’s content,
it shall—this nice chop and this lovely muffin, and this luscious
jam—greasing its little fisteses up to its little wristeses, the dirty
little beasteses!"

Whereupon I am in good humor again.

"Have you looked over this Valdarfer Boccaccio at all?" asks Alicia
lightly, by way of making conversation.  I nod.

"Isn’t it a love?"  I nod again.

"What a history that book has had—and you know every detail of it, I
suppose.  All the princes and kings who owned it—all the romance it has
accumulated in nearly five hundred years—don’t you?"

"Don’t I what?"

"Know about it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Look here," cries Alicia with mock anger, "don’t you go and become a
blatant materialist thinking only of money and profits—like all the rest
of the world. That would be horrible, Uncle Ranny—when I’ve been adoring
you so abjectly because even your business is lovely and intellectual
and romantic!"

And that girl is betrothed to my nephew Randolph! flashes through my
mind.  Aloud I say with a faint grin meant to exasperate her:

"Who on earth cares for anything but money?"

That she very properly ignores and in a softer, more serious tone, she
murmurs:

"I came across a little rhyme of Goethe’s—’_Kophtisches Lied_.’  Do you
remember it?—’Upon Fortune’s great scale the index never rests.  You
must either rise or sink, rule and win, or serve and lose; suffer or
triumph, be anvil or hammer.’  Isn’t it lovely?"

"Yes.  Did you translate that in your head as you went along?" I ask.

"Yes, Uncle Ranny—and you have triumphed over Goethe’s wisdom.  You have
always triumphed even when you suffered—you have always been you,
through all your troubles—Salmon and Byrd—Visconti’s. You don’t know how
I, too, lived through all those things—even when I was a child and
hardly dared to speak to you—I was, oh, so anxious—and so glad when you
seemed to be happy.  And even now—oh, it’s been so wonderful to watch
you!"  The tears fill her eyes and she turns her face from me.  "That’s
been my life."

"You little witch!" my heart cries out dumbly, in a very ache of
tenderness.  "And have you been mothering me in your thoughts all these
years as you have mothered the children?"

"No, Alicia—I haven’t triumphed," I whisper huskily.  "But I am
triumphing now."

She turns toward me again with a smile of misty radiance.  By an effort
I control my voice and launch out briskly:

"Did I ever tell you, Alicia, how I nearly owned the priceless copy of
his Essays that Bacon inscribed and gave to Shakespeare?"


I am well again—and therefore solitary.  It is little enough I have seen
of my nephew Randolph during my illness and little that Alicia has seen
of her fiancé.

This being a Saturday when Randolph is at home, Alicia stopped him as he
was about to leave the house to go to New York, "on business," as my
"conditioned" Sophomore put it, and firmly proposed a walk with her
instead.  He demurred, the egregious whelp, demurred to a walk with
Alicia!  I surprised a note that was almost pleading beneath the bright
decision—Alicia pleading to be taken for a walk!  I could have trounced
the boy in my hot indignation.

They departed—I saw them depart.  They were in the obscure little hall
and my door was open.  Alicia waved her hand, smiling.  "Just a wee bit
walk!" she called out in Griselda’s language.  She could not have known
the tug of longing and envy with which my heart and spirit followed her
as my body felt suddenly and disconsolately heavy against the chair.

"Have a good time," I waved my hand back, "and greet the spring for me!"


The birds are reappearing and an enterprising family of wrens are
already building urgently over my window. Robins are courting and
strutting.  The trees are tender with leaf and the throb of spring is in
the air like a mighty force, ceaseless, slow, careless, yet
all-penetrating. The morning sun was bathing all the world in the very
elixir of youth.  A fly was buzzing madly against the pane.  I felt
intensely solitary, poignantly alone.

The Valdarfer Boccaccio lay opened on my desk—but he was four and a half
centuries removed from this sunlight.  I almost hated it—hated all the
beloved objects about me.  My precious books were dumb, inert, a clog
upon all the senses.  With a heart passionately hungry I craved for
youth, freshness, activity.  I seized the Valdarfer Boccaccio as though
to hurl it from me.  Then, restraining myself, I brought it down on the
table with a bang that nearly shattered its precious binding.  I laughed
ruefully.  I determined on a sudden to greet the spring for myself.

Griselda came bustling as she heard me rattling the canes in the jar.

"You’re going out?" she demanded.

"Yes, Griselda."  I am always a little apologetic with Griselda, for did
she not know me as a boy?  It is a part of the instinctive clutching at
youth that makes us respect our elders.  That puts them at once in their
own elderly world.  Besides, Griselda is always in the right.

"Then why did ye not go with the bairns?"

"_They_ didn’t want anybody with them," and I winked Spartan-wise—I can
wink at Griselda.  Has she not spent her life serving me?  In this rare
world you can do anything to people who love you enough.

"Havers!" muttered Griselda, with an enigmatic toss of her old head.
"Then see that ye take your light coat."

"A coat to-day?" I protested.

"Aye—a coat to-day, young man!"

"Call me young man again, and I’ll don goloshes and fur mittens," I
challenged her.

"Child, I should have called ye," murmured Griselda, fumbling at the
hook upon which my top coat hung.

"I’ll put on rubber boots and a sou’wester for that," I told her and
struggled into the sleeves as she held the garment out for me.

"I wouldna go too far to-day," cautioned Griselda. "Ye’re not over
strong yet."

"Just a little way," I mumbled, ashamed at her affection and care for
one so worthless.  "Thank you, Griselda!"  She would have been shocked
and scandalized had she known that at that moment there was a moderate
lump in my throat and that I all but kissed her brown old face.

How much the spring had advanced during my days of imprisonment!  The
grasses were assertively green as though they had never been otherwise.
Birds were twittering.  Neighbors, or opulent neighbors’ gardeners, were
busy at their flower beds, and early blooms in some of them,
transplanted from boxes or hothouses—violets, hyacinths, daffodils,
cried forth their beauties in a way to make my breath catch.  Queer,
hungering, clamorous sensations stirred in my emaciated frame.  How well
I understood at that instant Verlaine’s unshed tears of the heart when
he sang:

    Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est la,
      Simple et tranquille
    Cette paisible rumeur—la
      Vient de la ville.

    —Qu’as tu fait, o toi que voila
      Pleurant sans cesse,
    Dis, qu’as-tu fait, toi que voila
      De ta jeunesse?


That bitterly anguished cry of the heart: What have you made of your
youth?

I strode on grimly in a sort of nameless anger, past the outlying
houses, past empty lots with rank grass still awaiting the pressure of
habitation, until the futilely laid-out streets, empty of all life, gave
way to open country and meadowland.  I was making my way to the wood
that lies between the meadows, a skirting dairy farm or two, some
scraggy orchard here and there, and the great line of the aqueduct, the
most Roman of our enterprises, that carries the water to New York.  In
the wood I somehow felt I should be taken again to the bosom of earth
and the sickness of my soul be healed.

I looked up at the sky and it was radiant with dazzling white clouds
that made my mole’s eyes water.  A merry breeze fanned the newborn earth
and once on the edge of the wood I caught that indescribable whisper of
trees which to me is the earth-note, the age-long speech and intimation
of the planet that, at all hazards, life must go on; that it is decreed,
irresistible and sweet.  A pang of envy stabbed my breast at the thought
of the lovers abroad to-day, even though those lovers were almost my
children.  I for one find it difficult to keep apart those conflicting
emotions of the heart.  But do parents of the flesh, I wonder, encounter
no similar struggles?  Once among the trees I was permeated by that type
of gentle melancholy serenity that woods induce.  Softly I strolled
about on last year’s pine needles and leaves, sodden now after a
winter’s snowfall and a year’s rains.  The cat-like tread of your
primeval aborigine returns even to your civilized boots in the Woods of
Westermain, the stalker and the hunter throbs faintly in your blood.

My path led me up a slope where the trees, youngish still, like myself,
were no saplings, however, but towered in a slender abandon toward the
patches of cerulean sky overhead.  They seemed to escort me, those
tapering maples and sycamores with their feathery foliage, like a troop
of young monks still fresh from their novitiate, still full of the sap
of life.  Somehow trees in a forest have always reminded me of monks
chanting litanies and benedictions.  The bass-note of all their
murmurings is invariably so solemn.  From the crest the land drops in a
declivity and thence, soon abandoning the woodland in a fringe of bushes
and underbrush, rolls on to the massive moundlike line of the aqueduct.

On a sudden I heard voices beneath me a little way down the declivity.
And peering down with the delicious thrill of alertness that returns
from primitive ages even to-day among trees, I perceived Alicia and
Randolph with their backs to me in earnest colloquy.

My first impulse, naturally, was to hail them or to make some sort of
monitory sound that might apprise them of my presence.  But a sudden
movement of Alicia’s arrested all force or motion on my part.

Her hands shot forward and with a vehemence that was obviously not
loverlike, she cried out in a tormented voice:

"But you’ve promised me that over and over again, ’Dolph!  How many
times"—she unconsciously shook him as she spoke, "how many times do you
suppose you have promised me that you wouldn’t drink and wouldn’t
play—that you’d give up going about with that set—that you’d leave it
altogether?  How many, many times?" she reiterated, with a pathetic note
of indignation.

"A fellow can’t quit cold like that," I barely heard the lad
muttering—"got to have some friends!"

"Friends!" Alicia cried, in a voice of bitter exasperation. "Do you call
Billy Banning and Tertius Cullen and Arthur Bloodgood friends?  They’re
your worst enemies—almost criminals!"  And on a sudden I realized that I
was an eavesdropper and a flush of shame heated my cheeks.  I was about
to make a sound but my throat was dry and no sound came.

"Think what it would mean," took up Alicia, "if Uncle Ranny found it
out—" and I could not choose but listen—"all that he has been to
us—father and mother and everything else.  Everything in the world he
has given up for us," she cried with quivering lips, her voice thinning
with passionate anguish.  "His comfort, his leisure, his whole life he
has sacrificed with a smile for us—for you and Jimmie and Laura and—and
even me!  Oh, ’Dolph, ’Dolph—do you suppose there are many such men in
the world?  And you want to break his heart by drinking and gambling and
Heaven knows what else it might lead to?"

I write these words with shame.  I had no business to hear them.  I
gathered my arrested forces to compel myself to move away, when I heard
the boy’s bass mutter:

"I know I’m rotten, ’Licia—rotten as they make ’em—but give me another
chance, ’Licia—just one more, sweetheart—I tell you it’s—"

"Yes," was the bitter interruption, "you made me those promises when I
said I would be engaged to you—what have they amounted to?  It would
have broken his heart if it had come out then.  I—I promised the Dean
for you—that time—" her voice charged with emotion so she could scarcely
speak—"and now—"

"But wait—wait, ’Licia," the boy suddenly drew her to him with
passionate earnestness by both hands. "I give you my word of honor this
time it’s different. It isn’t for myself—yes, it is, though—but it isn’t
for what you mean—not for anything you can think of. It is for a
Purpose," he explained with great emphasis—"a Purpose—I can’t tell
you—but—"

"But you must tell me," insisted Alicia, searching his eyes tremulously.

"Can’t—I can’t!" he shook his head vehemently. "’Licia, darling, be good
to me.  I must have it.  If I only had about fifty dollars!  I could win
it—I know—I am awfully good at poker—I can bluff the lot of ’em.  But
I’ve got to have ten to start—and I promise, word of honor, I’ll never
play again—word of honor, ’Licia."

It was too late now for me to betray my presence.  I was contemptible in
my own eyes, ashamed, yet exultant—I hardly knew what.  My frame shook
with a cold rage, with shame at my blindness, and yet a curious sense of
vast illumination surrounded me like an atmosphere. I moved away, hardly
knowing or caring whether I made any sound, and with bowed head and a
tumult throbbing hot and cold within me, I walked down the slope through
the still whispering woods.

What I had long fitfully suspected was how somewhat darkly apparent: In
some manner Alicia was endeavoring to stand between the boy and evil,
shame, disgrace, sacrificing herself deliberately, resolutely, without a
word to me—because it might "break my heart!"  Through an empty barren
landscape, with unseeing eyes, conscious only of a welter of incoherent
thoughts and emotions, as though boiling in a vacuum, I made my way
homeward. It might "break my heart!"

"And did ye walk too far?" Griselda came hurriedly to the entrance hall
when she heard me.

"No—no!  Greatest walk of my life," I laughed absently into her face.
"Feel like another man."

She scrutinized me sharply for an instant, and muttering something about
a cup of cocoa and a biscuit, whisked away to the kitchen.

Dumb, distraught, I fell wearily into my chair, gazing vacantly at the
rows of books, at the telephone instrument, the safe, the furniture and
cushions, at all the apparatus of living about me, realizing clearly
only one thing: that it is the simple basal things of life that alone
tend to elude one.  For years I had been clinging to them, faint but
pursuing, but still they were eluding me. Still I was a groping
elementary learner in life.  Rage and depreciate myself as I would, I
felt nevertheless that I was facing a problem momentarily beyond me, but
which I urgently knew I must solve.  If I had been blind, I could not
continue blind.  Suddenly, thought suspended as a bird sometimes hangs
in the air, I seemed to be watching instinct taking command, instinct
overriding thought and shame, rage and grief—instinct taking a pen and a
cheque book and writing with my hand a check in Alicia’s name for fifty
dollars.  Why was my hand doing this?  A slight tremor of revulsion
shook me before this trivial deed accomplished—and I made a movement as
though to destroy the cheque I had written. But I did not destroy it.  I
sat gazing at it stupidly, as one might sit before a puzzle.

Griselda at this point entered with a tray bearing cocoa and biscuits.

"Oh, thanks, Griselda," I murmured, as one emerging from a trance.  "By
the way, I wish, you wouldn’t mention to Alicia or—anybody, my having
walked this morning."  Griselda uttered a brief laugh.  Then—"Did ye see
them?" she queried abruptly.

"See them?" I repeated dully.  "What a question for you to ask,
Griselda!  If I had seen them would I ask you not to mention it?"

"Oh, ay—surely—I am a fool!" muttered Griselda, slowly turning to leave
me.  But her expression was not that of one chastened in her folly.

"Is Jimmie in the house?" I asked.

"No, Jimmie is across the way playing with the Sturgis boy."

"Very well, Griselda.  Thank you."

A few minutes later Alicia entered the house—alone.

I rose heavily and walked toward the open door leading to the hallway.
Her drooping dispirited look struck me like a blow—my radiant Alicia!
Even her pretty small hat that I admired seemed to squat listlessly upon
her beautiful head—beautiful even in dejection.  But no sooner did she
perceive me approaching than she looked up and smiled piteously.

"Oh, hello, Uncle Ranny—" but the usual sparkle in her tone was sadly
lacking—"have you been all right?"  She removed her hat.

"Oh, quite—thanks, Alicia.  But a little lonely. Won’t you come in and
talk to me, if you have nothing better to do?"

"Of course I shall, you poor Uncle Ranny—" and her tone became more
hearty.  "What have you been doing with yourself all alone—?"  And I
realized that endearments were trembling on the tip of her tongue and my
soul craved them, but I interrupted her.  She had had enough that
morning.  And the endearments of pity would have crushed me utterly.

"Oh, there’s Boccaccio," I muttered, "and puttering about generally—at
which I’m an expert.  Sit down," I added, as she entered the study.  "Am
I mistaken, or did you tire yourself out walking too far?"

"Oh, no, dear—I had a lovely walk," she answered brightly.  "Don’t you
go wasting sympathy on me.  I feel ashamed of my robustiousness, and you
convalescing here alone.  But I shan’t leave you alone again to-day.
Wouldn’t you like me to read some Boccaccio to you?—But then my Italian
is so ferocious, and yours is so beautiful, you’d hate me if I clipped
the vowels too short."

She had thus far made no mention of Randolph.

So full did my heart feel of love and sympathy for this poor beautiful
child struggling alone with her problem and pain that I ached to take
her to my heart, to beg her to confide in me, to let me share her
troubles.  A lump rose in my throat and I knew that one movement in her
direction would make all my manhood dissolve in tears like a child!  No,
I must not—I could not.

"Read me," I whispered huskily, after a pause, "two or three of the
sonnets in the ’Vita Nuova’ of Dante."

"Lovely!" cried Alicia, jumping up and seizing the book.

"_A ciascun alma presa_," she began—"to every captive soul and gentle
heart ... greeting in the name of their Lord, who is love!"

I did not listen after the first stanza.  I endeavored only to still the
tumult in my brain and to think what to do for Alicia.

Somehow, some way, I must put an end at once to this beloved child’s
torment—without causing her pain.

Three sonnets she had read, or possibly four, and then she paused and
searched my face.

"Do you want any more?"

"Thank you very much, Alicia, I feel brighter already. I think that will
be enough for to-day.  By the way, Alicia," I went on rapidly, fumbling
with my papers, "it strikes me your allowance is too small.  You must
need dozens and dozens of things that cost money.  Here is a cheque for
fifty dollars I wrote out this morning—but," I added half absently—"if
you need more I can just as easily make it a hundred," and I laughed a
trifle foolishly—oh, I could act, this morning, act almost as well as
Alicia.

She gazed at me intently for a space, silent, alert—a flash of
suspicion—and then with an ineffable tenderness and a great relief
shining in her eyes.

"Oh, you darling Uncle Ranny," she leaped from her chair and flew toward
me, pressing both her hands down on my shoulders.  Immobile as a Buddha
I sat as she kissed me on the cheek.

"But do you really think you can—give me all this?"

"Oh, yes, Alicia," I laughed with the bravado of Fred Salmon.  "I am
quite sure I can.  What are uncles for if—" but I could say no more.

She hung over me for an instant and then abruptly left me.  She, too,
was fearful of saying more.  But not for the same reason—oh, not for the
same reason!


All that day, Alicia, as I could not help overhearing, was vainly
endeavoring to reach Randolph on the telephone in New York.  She rang
the fraternity house. She tried the homes of his friends.  But all to no
purpose.  Randolph was not to be found.  And that evening Alicia mounted
the stairs to her room with a sort of drooping, febrile anxiety, with an
anxious unnatural gayety.




                             *CHAPTER XXV*


Only some fifteen hours have passed and the world is changed to a
dazzling brilliance.

Alicia would not leave me, poor overwrought child. She has refused to go
to bed and insisted upon staying near me, upon "meeting the dawn" with
me.  She now lies stretched upon my couch, covered over with a rug, and
she has just been overtaken by slumber.

And her presence there under my eyes, Randolph Byrd, is the nearest
taste of Heaven that you and I have known, or possibly ever will know,
in this life.  It is dawn enough for me now and for you, my friend—a
dawn so resplendent that I for one shall never desire a brighter.

And since there can be no more sleep for me this night, and since this
may be the last entry for you in these memoirs, for many a day, if not
forever, I shall endeavor to still the flying heart, the mad exultation
rioting in my veins, by noting down for you, how sketchily and
incoherently soever, the momentous occurrences of the youngest hours.

It came about—but has it come about?  Or is this some mad dream from
which I shall wake to the old somber reality?  How can a dark turbid
current so suddenly bring one out into a flashing, sparkling, sunlit
lagoon, overhung with a verdure so rich and lustrous it would seem to
have come fresh from the Creator’s hand? I hear birds piping in wondrous
music, or do I imagine it?  But I began by telling you I should be
incoherent.

It must have been some time past midnight when I screened the fire, put
out the lights and wearily, in darkness, made my way up the stairs.

The fire had unaccountably and fitfully smoked to-night and I remember
the last thing I did was to take out Fred Salmon’s gold-colored
certificates from the safe, examine them with smarting eyes and then
gaze in sleepy astonishment at the quotation of Salmon Oil in the
newspapers.  According to that the shares were now worth twenty-six
thousand dollars!  It seemed incredible, absurd.  And the year was up
and I might sell the stuff. Like a miser who has nothing else in life to
look for, I gazed spellbound at those securities in whose security I
even now could not believe.  But unlike the miser of fiction, but like
my dull, stupid self, I neglected to replace the crackling papers,
though I did put the Valdarfer Boccaccio in and closed the safe.

In the upper passageway, I distinctly recall walking on tiptoe so that
Alicia might not be disturbed.  Was it hallucination I wonder, or did I
actually hear like a sighing whisper through the darkness,

"Good night, Uncle Ranny!"

I am always imagining her voice and her gestures in my brain.  I must
ask her when she wakes up.  At any rate, that mysterious whisper it was,
or the hallucination of a whisper, that stirred me into wakefulness
again.  I began to undress and paused, realizing that I was now too
wakeful to sleep.  I donned a dressing gown over my waistcoat, adjusted
the light and lay down upon the bed with Baudelaire’s "Fleurs de Mai" in
my hand.  A little of Baudelaire had the effect upon my mind of rich
food upon a furred tongue.  Why, I wondered, do I keep that gloomy book
upon my bedside table?  I threw it down in disgust and took up a volume
of Florio’s Montaigne instead.

To read and enjoy Montaigne is a certain sign of middle age.  I have
long enjoyed Montaigne.  A French verse to the effect that "a peaceful
indifference is the sagest of virtues" came into my head and with sudden
violence I threw away Montaigne.

I was not middle-aged.  I was not indifferent.  The heart of frustrated
youth in me was crying out for life and love!  Alicia was two doors away
from me.  She did not love my nephew.  Could I not, if I plucked up
energy and resolution, make her love me?  Was I then so irrevocably
Uncle Ranny?  I leaped up feverishly, lifted the shade and looked out
upon the blinking stars. Their message was a very simple one.  From
Virgo to Cassiopeia, from the Pole star to the farthest twinkler they
seemed to say:

"The trifling planet Earth is yours—if you know how to use it."

With a muffled tread I paced the room agitatedly. This affair between
Alicia and Randolph was absurd. Randolph was unfit for the very thought
of marriage. A wise parent would know how to deal with the situation.
But, alas!  I was neither wise nor a parent. Nevertheless I must find a
way of liquidating this business not later than to-morrow.  It could not
go on.  The lamplight showed me in my dull perplexity and I turned it
off angrily and again threw myself on the bed to think in Egyptian
darkness.

On a sudden I heard a low murmur of voices without. It is seldom that
voices are heard late at night in our secluded situation.  Possibly the
policeman exchanging comments on the night with some solitary passer-by.
A moment later, however, I heard a key inserted in a lock and a door
open.  My nephew Randolph returning home at last!  Then to-morrow would
be the same?  I asked myself.  Alicia would turn over the cheque to him
and all would go on as before?  No, no, that could not be. Yet what
could I do?  Turn the boy adrift, Laura’s boy, and revolt Alicia’s
spirit—make her hate me?  What a horrible impasse!

I listened for Randolph’s footsteps on the stairs, but there was no
sound.  Suppose I were to call him into my room and tell him that I knew
all—appeal to his better nature.  Was not that what parents were obliged
to do the world over?  I should talk tenderly to the boy—but in my heart
I own I did not feel tenderly toward him.

Still there was no sound of steps on the stairs.

The black darkness made the tension of waiting intolerable. I switched
on the light and automatically made toward the door.  Then all at once
the low hum of voices overtook me.  Had Alicia descended to meet him?
No—I had not heard her door.  Surely Randolph in his sober senses would
not bring friends of his to the house at this hour!  I looked at my
watch; it was twenty minutes past two!

Noiselessly I opened my door and in the soft moccasin slippers I was
wearing tiptoed down the hall.  At the top of the stairs I paused to
listen.  Primeval instincts of alertness stirred within me.  My heart
was throbbing against my throat and I literally felt my eyes dilating in
the darkness.  I found myself smiling at the primitive machinery that is
set in motion within us, slumber though it might, at the slightest
provocation.  Still treading softly I descended the stairs.

No light was showing anywhere.  The darkness was absolute.  What under
heaven could be the meaning of that?  The primitive instinct of the
stalker was again to the fore.  At the foot of the stairs I paused.
Sounds were audible.  They came from my study!

"Upon my word!" I thought with indignation.  The young man could not
possibly be in his right mind.  The study door was closed, but through
the slightest of chinks between door and lintel, left evidently to
obviate the noise of the clicking fixture, I perceived a faint, fitful
spot of light flickering about, like the light of Tinker Bell in "Peter
Pan."

With a slight pressure I pushed the door gently ajar. Randolph, with a
small spotlight in his hand, was standing at my desk.  Except for the
circle of light about him the room was in darkness.  The rim of his hat
shading his eyes, he was scanning the Salmon Oil certificates; with his
trembling left hand he was counting them, under the quivering spot of
light proceeding from his right.

"Eight—nine—ten!"  I heard him breathe heavily. "A hundred each!"

I stood stock-still, overwhelmed, scarcely breathing, frozen with a
sickening shame of horror.  The meaning of it was so crushingly plain!

"Take two of them!" I heard a mysterious hoarse whisper coming from the
window.  "Put the rest back. He’ll never miss ’em."

"All right," whispered Randolph, with quaking huskiness.

"Give ’em to me!" came from the window.

My power of motion at that instant suddenly flooded back into my
muscles.  I lifted my hand as though fearful of rending the darkness,
pushed the switch-button inside the door and the room was bathed in
light from the single lamp on my table—intense after the pregnant
darkness.

Then a vision that sent a chill shock through my nerves and stunned all
senses left me gaping—petrified.

In the window was framed the abhorrent, dilapidated parody of the face
of Pendleton!

It could not be! was the thought sluggishly struggling through my numbed
brain.  It was a nightmare.

Then a sudden sharp cry threw me into a momentary tremor.  I wheeled
about.

Alicia, fully dressed, with one hand to her eyes, was leaning against
the doorpost!

Without speaking, I automatically bounded forward to the window.  The
muffled sound of heavy steps running on the turf fell upon my ears and
dimly, through the starlit darkness, I caught a glimpse of the stooping
bulk of a large man receding down the slope, toward the brook.

Had my senses been tricking me or had I really seen the face of
Pendleton?

"Who was it?" I cried fiercely to Randolph, still hanging stupefied and
immobile, with blank terror upon his features, over my desk.

He made no answer.

"Sit down over there!" I commanded sharply.  As one under the influence
of a drug or a hypnotic spell, the boy loosely moved to obey, but
remained standing irresolute at my chair, a mass of helplessness, his
head dropping limply on his chest.

Anger and pain struggling for mastery within me, I turned abruptly to
Alicia.

"Haven’t you been asleep, child?  Better go upstairs—please go," I
entreated.

"No, I won’t!" she retorted with a cry of passionate vehemence and with
a rush she flung past me toward Randolph.

"So that is what you wanted the money for!"—she shook with the fury of
her emotion—"to give to that brute!  And he has got you—got hold of
you—come back to make a thief of you!"

Then it _was_ Pendleton.  I was not mistaken!

"Why do you suppose I engaged myself to you, you poor contemptible
weakling!  Do you suppose I am in love with you?"  Her tears gushed
forth, and she rocked her arms passionately.  "Love a thing like you?  I
wanted to keep your weakness and your spinelessness from Uncle Ranny—to
save him from the pain he is suffering now because you’re a thief!  You
promised, promised me over and over you’d keep straight—wouldn’t
gamble—wouldn’t drink—over and over—" she wailed with the anguished note
that drags on tears—"and this is what you’ve got to!  Stealing!  And
from Uncle Ranny of all people, who’s been father and mother to
you—everything in the world!  If I didn’t adore him more than anybody on
earth; do you think I would have looked at you?  Oh, how I wish I could
beat you to a pulp!"  She lifted her hands on high and for one
fascinated instant I actually thought she would.

"I wish I could feel sure of never seeing your face again!" she
concluded, collapsing with her own anger.

Slowly, under the blows of her words, the boy lifted his eyes, eyes
smoldering with shame, with abject misery, with the hopeless pathos of
the weak.

"Then you never cared a damn?" he muttered.

"No—I never cared a damn—in your sense!" she cried, forgetting all
restraint in her passionate exasperation.  "And I never can and never
will now.  I’d hoped you’d become a man.  But I’m through with you for
good!"

I had been standing aside, awed, involuntarily spell-bound with the
aloofness and indecision of surprise.  I now made a move toward Alicia,
to lead her away.  "If I didn’t adore him more than anybody on earth."
I ought not to have heard that.  But I had and my pulses began to throb
anew.

A sudden loud rapping at the door, however, startled us all out of our
tempest of pain into a common alertness. I glanced at the huddled form
of Randolph, at the still quivering figure of Alicia.

"I’ll see who it is!" I muttered, moving toward the hall.  Alicia stood
for a moment irresolute, and then ran out behind me and disappeared in
the darkened dining room.

"What," it flashed through my mind as I unlocked the door, "what if
Pendleton was caught—the father of Laura’s children, snatched like the
thief he was, in his flight?"

And I felt the prickling sensation of sweat against my clothes as I
swung open the door.

The mounted policeman, Halloran, was looming in the doorway.  He was
clutching by the arm a hulking figure in a shabby top coat, a man, a man
panting like a beast, who was shrinkingly, miserably averting his face
from the light.

"I saw this man running away from your house just now," began Halloran
briskly.  "Mighty suspicious, he looked—running away this hour of the
night.  Picked him up—to see if they was anything wrong."

I peered at the indistinct features of the man.

It was the dissipated ashen-white, almost leprous face of Pendleton.

With an incredible swiftness I felt my mental machinery working.
Something must be done.  All hate of him and all fear of him vanished
from my mind before a faint lucid beam of a sort of indolent humor.

"That you, Jim?" I queried, peering more closely. "Hello, Jim!" I
greeted him in a jocund undertone, bringing my voice round, with a great
effort, to a pitch of naturalness.

"No, officer," I went on glibly.  "Nothing wrong. This man was here on a
business matter.  Left late. Running for a train, I suppose—weren’t you,
Jim?"

"Yes," came hoarsely from Pendleton, and a quiver of triumph ran down my
spine.

"There’ll be a train—let’s see—" I fumbled.  The policeman glanced
quizzically from one to the other of us, then shrewdly interposed:

"Train to N’York at three-seven.  No use running," he grinned.  My ear,
hypersensitive at that moment, seemed still to catch a note of doubt in
the zealous constable’s voice.  And when I longed to fling out, in the
words of the ballad—

    He is either himsel’ a devil frae hell,
    Or else his mother a witch maun be,


I heard myself saying calmly, "Thank you, officer."  Then to Pendleton:

"Don’t you want to come in and spend the night after all, Jim?"

"No, I better go," mumbled Pendleton, edging away.

"Sorry to have troubled you, gentlemen," apologized Halloran suavely.
"But you know—so many robberies in the suburbs—orders is to look out
extry sharp. Good night to ye, Mr. Byrd.  Good night, sir," he nodded
with ill-concealed contempt at Pendleton.

"Good night," muttered Pendleton and slouched off heavily down the
gravel path.

"No harm done," grinned Halloran, looking queerly after his recent
prisoner.  "But I could have sworn—"  I interrupted him with a
boisterous laugh.

"Not at all, officer.  Sorry you had the trouble—many thanks for your
watchfulness.  See you to-morrow."

"All right!" he responded with smart alacrity. "Good night, sir."  I
closed the door.

In the room the lad Randolph sat alone, somewhat straighter now, gazing
before him.  He must have heard the colloquy at the door.

"Well, Randolph," I approached him quietly, "now what do you want to say
to me?"

He did not answer for a space.  Finally he spoke:

"What are you going to do with me, Uncle Ranny?"

My anger against him had subsided.  I saw only the frail young mortal,
Laura’s son, whom I had undertaken to make a man of—and I had failed!

"What do you think I ought to do with you?" I queried gently.  There was
no longer even rancor in my heart.

"Put me away, I guess," he answered dully.  "That’s what I deserve."

"When did you first meet your—your father?"  I found myself wincing at
the word, but after all Pendleton _was_ his father.

"About three weeks ago," was the reply.

"How did it happen?"

"He came here and followed ’Licia and me to town one morning on the
train.  He watched for me till I came out of lecture and then he spoke
to me."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, asked whether I’d forgotten him, took me to lunch and told me you
gave him a rotten deal—took his children away from him—sent him into
exile, and so on."

"Didn’t he tell you that he deserted your mother and you three children
and that your mother died of it?"

"No," said Randolph wearily, "but I knew that.  Oh, you needn’t think I
took to him right off the bat."

"Didn’t he tell you that he went away of his own desire—after a horrible
scene with—with Alicia?"  I felt the truth must be told the boy now.
"Didn’t he tell you that I gave him money to go and that only recently I
sent him more money to San Francisco, because he wanted to get back to
the East?"

"No," said the boy in wide-eyed amazement.  "He said you had taken
everything from him because of the mistake he’d made—and tried to keep
him down. That’s what first began to get me.  Oh, what’s the use, Uncle
Ranny?  It’s a hard thing to say, but I guess he’s pretty rotten, even
if he is my father.  He got me drunk to-night to do this—" he waved his
hand heavily toward the desk.  "Said there was some island he’d found
where he wanted to raise copra or cocoanuts or something—end his
days—-if he only had a little money—that’s why.—But what’s the use,
Uncle Ranny," he went on in the same weary tones, "I’m through with him.
I don’t care a curse about him now.  What are you going to do with me?"

A great tenderness for the boy stabbed at my heart. I longed to comfort
him as I could comfort Laura or Jimmie.  Was he not their brother and as
much as they my child?  Like a disease, misfortune and dishonor had
suddenly attacked him.  My breast was simmering with bitter
self-reproach.

"Come, Randolph," I put my arm about his shoulder. "Pull yourself
together.  We must live this business down.  There’s your education to
be thought of.  You must finish, don’t you see?"

"You mean—you’d give me another chance?"

"Yes, Randolph," I answered huskily, "and still another."  At that
moment I felt I could have given him seventy-times seven.

"Well, then," he answered, with the first gleam of interest I discerned
in him, "will you let me go ahead and enlist?"

"Enlist," I recoiled from that.  "In the army, you mean?  You are so
young."

"I mean in the navy—I want to do it, Uncle Ranny—I must do it—That’s the
only way I can begin again. I can’t stay round where Alicia is."

My heart went utterly out to the boy in his misery. I knew not what to
say to him.  The pangs of despised love!

"Alicia has been your—" but it was futile to talk to him of Alicia.

"Go to bed, my boy," I said, gently urging him toward the door.  "Get
some rest and still your poor nerves. To-morrow we shall discuss and
settle this matter in your best interests.  Remember you are surrounded
by your friends."  With a faint gleam of gratitude in his eyes, he
shuffled out unsteadily and I pressed his hand as we parted at the door.
I heard him moving about in his room.

Then I realized that I must find Alicia.




                             *CHAPTER XXVI*


Treading speedily with a strange lightness of step, I mounted the stairs
first to see whether Alicia might have returned to her room, as was
natural, and found her door ajar and the apartment empty.

My brain still wheeling, I seemed to float dawn the stairway and into
the dining room, but no one was there. Somewhat uneasily I passed
through the narrow box-like pantry into the kitchen and there the door
that gave on the garden stood open wide.

In the shadow, under the starlit sky, under the mystical blue of
overhanging boughs, stood Alicia alone, gazing into the velvety night,
straight as a silvery Diana, mysterious, tragic.

At the sight of her the mad tumult of the evening seemed to ooze away
from me in waves.  By an effort of will I forced my heart to beat more
soberly, as I approached her softly.

"Alicia!" I whispered behind her so as not to startle her.  Slowly she
turned toward me.

Her face was but dimly discernible but her eyes shone in the night with
the brightness of the stars.  The one thought of my heart was to bring
Alicia back to the life of the past, to wipe out as swiftly as possible
the ravages of the emotional storm, to bring her back to the tranquil
blissful life that her happy presence made for me.  A sad Alicia was
unthinkable.

"You must come in, my child!"  I touched her gently.

"I have tried so hard, Uncle Ranny," she turned her face and laid a hand
timidly upon my arm, "I have tried so hard to keep all this pain from
you—so that you could go on being your happy, lovely self."

My own thoughts concerning her!  She was giving them back to me—with the
poignant wistful gloom, the intense pathos of the young that is so
touching, in the young you love so lacerating.  Did I ever say that
there are no women to-day who wear the hair shirt, like the radiant girl
wife of Jacopone da Todi?  Blind fool that I have been!

"But my darling girl," I seized both her cold little hands, "don’t worry
about me.  I am old and tough—seasoned to the fortunes of life—and to
the misfortunes, too.  It is sad, very sad, but it is nothing.  It’s you
I am thinking of.  Things happen, my dear.  Life is like that.  There is
a lot of happiness and serenity in it.  But you must not let this bite
into your soul—it will pass, Alicia—it has passed already.  I want you
to return to your happy blissful self—the self that has made me—all of
us—so happy—so very happy."

"I ask nothing more or better, Uncle Ranny," she pressed my hands with
quick intense little movements, "than to be near you, to work and to—to
serve you—that is all I ask in the world!"

Almost I had committed the unpardonable sin—almost I had taken advantage
of her mood and of her grief, taken her to my heart and poured out the
words of love that a hundred, hundred times had overflowed my heart and
clamored for utterance.  A pretty head of a family, a fine protector of
the young I should then have been!

With a tremulous movement I put both her hands together between my own
and whispered to her lest my voice should betray me.

"That is exactly what I want you to do, my dearest girl—live quietly and
happily near me, be happy until the—the supreme happiness comes to
you—until—" I added with a painful laugh, "the Prince in the fairy
tale—comes along—to claim you."

It was the hardest utterance of my life, but I felt a flash of triumph
to have uttered it.

"The Prince in the fairy tale," Alicia repeated slowly, looking rapt
before her, "he came long ago—I have had more than I deserve—so much, so
much, that I often tremble to think of it.  All the Prince and all the
fairy tale I want, or shall ever want."

For one instant I thrilled from head to foot.  A darkness filled my
being for a moment and then it was rayed and forked by the lightnings of
a strange intoxication.

"You can’t mean, Alicia," I breathed huskily from a parched throat,
"you—that it is me—that you—"

And I knew instantaneously that all the restraint and resolutions had
been swept aside—that after all I was as weak and weaker than the boy
Randolph.  For I had spoken without the iota of a wish to resist my
desires!

Slowly, very slowly, she drew closer to me so that her sweet breath of
violets was warm and fragrant on my cheek.  My head swam.

"Ever since I came to you;" she breathed ever so softly, "ever since I
was fifteen you have filled my thoughts, my heart, my life.  I
have—loved you always."  The blood roared in my ears.  I was filled with
madness.  But too long had I doubted happiness to receive it with open
arms.  I had made a stranger of it as does a miser by keeping his wealth
hidden away.

"Think what you are saying, Alicia," I took her face convulsively in
both my hands.  "I have loved you beyond anything on earth, beyond life
itself.  I have dreamed of you, dwelt upon you until I am mad.  Do you
really mean you can love me—as a man?  After all those foolish years of
hiding and suffering?  Is that what you mean, or is it just—Uncle
Ranny?"

"Yes—that is what I mean, my Prince of the fairy tale," she whispered,
hiding her face against mine—"if you’ll take me!"

My senses reeled and swooned.  She was tightly gripped in my arms.  I
was straining her to my heart. The months, the years of love hunger
charged through my veins and sinews like an inexorable force,
remorseless, irresistible.

The margin of the garden was a few yards away but it might have been an
infinity.  The scant trees, countable upon the fingers of one hand,
might have been a forest of congregated giants with their vast secret
life brooding and sheltering us.  Infinity and our small intense reality
were merged and met.  I felt coextensive with the vast majestic
universe.  I babbled broken words against her lips—I don’t know what I
babbled.  For the vast majestic universe was locked in the circle of my
arms.


"Let us go in, my darling," I murmured at last. "The dew is heavy and
you must get your rest.  I shall not attempt to sleep what remains of
this night of nights."

"Nor I," replied Alicia dreamily.  "I want to meet the dawn with you
this morning.  Isn’t it marvelous, dearest, that in spite of everything,
in spite of that poor boy in there," she added with a note of pathos,
"we two can be so wildly happy?"

"Yes, my child, marvelous and awe-inspiring.  But happiness is the first
decree—the foremost law."

"I shall never be as wise as you, Uncle Ranny," she laughed softly,
lingering in my arms.  "There!  I have called you Uncle Ranny again.  I
am afraid—oh, so afraid, I shall always call you that!"

I sealed her lips.

"Oh, if that is all you’re afraid of," I murmured in the tone of devout
thanksgiving, "if that is all—let us go in, my own."


And now Alicia is waiting to meet the dawn with me.

Up, up, heart of my heart, star of my life, happiness, nearer to me than
my own soul, fire-bringer, life-bringer—up, or I shall deify you in my
mad folly.  Up, up, my Alicia—for the dawn is breaking!




                               *EPILOGUE*


I have been sitting in the shade of a trellis watching the miraculously
mobile suspension of a humming bird over a cluster of honeysuckle
blooms.  That humming bird, whorl of triumphant aspiration that it
is—aspiration of insect to become bird—seems in a manner to embody my
life story.

For the humming bird the Golden Age is this perfect summer day, with its
tendril and leaf, its beds of bleeding heart and bridal wreath, sweet
William, larkspur and marigold and the heavy fragrant breath of
honeysuckle. And so it is for me, also.  No fable is deadlier to the
human race, to human weal and human hope, than that same fable of the
Golden Age.  There never was an age one half so golden as the now, nor
the infinitesimalest part so golden as the ages that await us.  My son
there, sleeping in his hammock under the tree, overhung by fine netting,
Randolph Byrd, the younger, will see a more wondrous human life than any
we have yet beheld.

Two years and more have passed since I have opened this record of yours,
Randolph the Aged, and I open it now with a purpose, for a special and
peculiar reason.

Alicia has chanced to see it and she fell upon it with a strange—to me
inexplicable—delight.  She desires me to "round it off", as she puts it,
to disguise it a trifle here and there as to names and places, and to
publish it for the edification of mankind!  If only we could appear to
the world in the stature loving eyes see us!  But laugh as I will at
Alicia, she persists obstinately in her wish.

"But it was only meant as a memoir for a friend of mine," I tell her,
"who is daily growing nearer to me—to Randolph Byrd, aged seventy."

"Oh, no!" cries Alicia, looking with eyes shining with happiness and a
face suddenly thrillingly transfigured at the sleeping baby in the
hammock.  "It is meant for another Randolph—Randolph the Young, over
there, the pride and joy of his father—the hope of the world."

"It will hardly amuse him," I grunt.

"It will—won’t it, Griselda?" says Alicia to our aged friend who at this
moment emerges from the kitchen to consult with her mistress.  Griselda
looks mystified. "Say, yes—it’s for Baby," urges Alicia cunningly.

"Oh, ay—if it’s good for the bairn, I’ll say it!"

Griselda, still vigorous, goes her way.

"One would think," I scoff, "you had found in the manuscript all the
jests of Sancho Panza, falling like drops of rain."

"Jests!" mocks Alicia.  "Who cares about jests, but the mysterious
readers of comic supplements?  I find in it the record of a beautiful
love."

"But even love birds," I tease, "are only a species of parrot—though
many think they’re birds of paradise. Besides," I urge, "I should have
to call the thing a novel—and this is only a fragment of life seen
through two particular eyes and a very peculiar temperament.  There is
no contour to it, any more than there is to life itself. Were I a
novelist, my dearest, I should not improbably make two or three novels
of the stuff.  I should at least assume the jolly privilege of playing
destiny to all those people.  All things and all persons should be
rhythmically accounted for."

"Fudge!" says Alicia.  "Don’t be so cubist!"  I ignore her modernism.

"Pendleton would not be left roaming about the world with endless
possibility of still blackmailing me and his children.  Should he not
have ended his existence on the third rail as he ran, the night of his
last appearance? And his son, Randolph—would he not have met with a
heroic and glorious end in France or at sea, instead of living a highly
contented and commonplace life with the pretty Irish peasant girl he has
brought from Queenstown—a mere ordinary decent automobile salesman?
Would those people go on living in the unremarkable flowing manner of
life?  No, my heart," I continue soberly, "a story must be tricked and
padded with tracery and decoration.  And where is the bevy of young
adventuresses at play—without which no novel is worthy of the name?"

In justice to Alicia, however, I must recall that Gertrude, of all the
others, has emerged true to her form. She carries, I believe, besides
the military title of Major, a decoration from every Allied Nation in
Europe and at least two bestowed by reigning sovereigns.  She drove out
here in her handsome car to see us the other day and was much amazed by
the sight of my infant son.

"What, Ranny!" she exclaimed with her usual freedom of speech, now
enhanced by life in camp as well as court.  "You’ve just brought up one
family and you’re starting out to get another?  You surely are the
original of the old woman who lived in a shoe.  What a reactionary you
are!"

"Reactionary?  Yes, Gertrude," I smiled in reply, "I suspect I am—in
some things.  I hate poverty.  I hate to think of city or country slums,
of oppression, of disorder and uncleanliness—of lawless, rich or
unheeded poor.  Possibly from among those I rear, some one will arise to
fathom and solve these things.  I am sure greater wisdom is slowly
filtering into our lives.  In many respects I am, as you charge,
reactionary.  I still have a feeling that every human being must be a
center of creative life—and that he who rears children is multiplying
creators in the world—against the resplendent future!"

Gertrude laughed, a shade bitterly I thought, and waved her hand in a
gesture of despair at my ancient stupidity.  Perhaps I should not have
prattled in this strain to Gertrude—more particularly since her recent
husband, Minot Blackden, has followed the desire of his eyes elsewhere
in Gertrude’s absence, is now happily divorced and married to some one
who shares his apartment, and is himself shamelessly begetting
offspring!

No, Gertrude aside, there is no contour to my story. Dibdin, indeed,
still appears and disappears, ever the Flying Dutchman, as of old.  He
is at home now and often sits and smokes in my study and moralizes—may I
whisper it?—perhaps a shade more prosily than of old.

"The only devil in the world," he puffed out last night in his gruff
manner, as though, pronouncing somebody’s doom, "the only devil is the
darkness of chaos.  Children are the gage the human race, wisely abetted
by Nature, is throwing down to this devil."

"And supposing the children you rear should turn out to be ’nobodies’?"
I mildly put in, as an obliging straw man.

"What does that matter?" he growled.  "Most people are nobodies.  It’s
the nobodies of the world that bring about its catastrophic changes.
Mark Antony cunningly put a tongue in every wound of Cæsar’s body in the
Forum.  Mark Antonys are rare, I grant you. But it’s the First Citizen
and Second Citizen who pulled down Republican Rome about the ears of
Brutus. Shakespeare as well as Mark Antony knew that in the nobodies
resides the real power for doing.  The thinkers are the few; the doers
are the many.  We need ’em all, all—and that’s what kids are for."

Perhaps I should own at this point that in my secret heart I agree with
Dibdin, just as in reality I am certain that life has a contour and
rhythm of its own.  The world may appear harsh, may be truly ill-adapted
for justice, culture, beauty.  But whatever its shortcomings, the
business of the human race in it seems to me clear: To extend and carry
on the race of man—the measure of all things—to create a better life on
earth.  All the world is a man living in a shoe.  But somehow, very
slowly, it is acquiring knowledge, learning what to do.  We may indeed
be such stuff as dreams are made on, and our life rounded with a sleep
is, in truth, pitifully little.  But that little seems mysteriously,
tremendously important.

And by that token it appears to me that there is no such creature as a
living pessimist.  The only certain sign of genuine conviction on the
part of a pessimist is his suicide.  To go on living is to hope for
better things—and to hope for them is to bring them about.  That is how
life appears to me.  But are the views of a shrewd bookseller who plays
golf of Saturdays of any account?

But enough of my prating.  Alicia will doubtless have her way.  She is
now engaged in the august rites of the younger Randolph’s bath.  I
expect to be summoned to the ceremony at any time.  To such small
dimensions has my family dwindled that all attention is inevitably
centered on the Baby.  Laura is thousands of miles away, in California,
with, the young surgeon she met and married in France; and Jimmie,
within two years of college, is summering in a camp on a Canadian
island. Randolph Junior reigns supreme.  Well, I am content—and long
live the King!  But they are all as near and dear, to me as ever.  For
as old Burton his "Anatomy" hath it: "No cord nor cable can so forcibly
draw or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread."

I see life stretching and dynamic before me, glittering with possibility
as the atmosphere sometimes glitters in the sunlight with flittering
dancing, revolving points—for eyes made like mine.  Though late in
starting, I must plunge into the life of responsibility, helping, how
slightly soever, to join the long generations of the past in preparing
the dazzling future.

The name of the new time spirit is Responsibility.

At this point Alicia appeared to summon me to the Rites of the Bath, and
hung for a moment reading over my shoulder.

"I insist upon adding two words to that," she announced, "and they shall
be the last."

"It is your privilege, beloved," I agreed and eagerly made way for her.
Then Alicia wrote:

"And Love."



                                THE END



           *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *



                        *By Henry James Forman*


                                *NOVELS*

                        The Captain of His Soul
                             Fire of Youth
                      The Man Who Lived in a Shoe


                                *TRAVEL*

                       In the Footprints of Heine
                         The Ideal Italian Tour
                      London: An Intimate Picture








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