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 XXIVI 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 neverI 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 wasnotlate 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 likeFelix 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?""Theydidn'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 tranquilleCette paisible rumeur—laVient de la ville.—Qu'as tu fait, o toi que voilaPleurant sans cesse,Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilaDe 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 XXVOnly 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 itwasPendleton. 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 Pendletonwashis 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.
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.
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 neverI shall have lived a little while,Before I die forever.
'Tis late to hearken, late to smile,But better late than neverI shall have lived a little while,Before I die forever.
'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 wasnotlate 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 likeFelix 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?"
"Theydidn'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 tranquilleCette paisible rumeur—laVient de la ville.—Qu'as tu fait, o toi que voilaPleurant sans cesse,Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilaDe ta jeunesse?
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est la,Simple et tranquilleCette paisible rumeur—laVient de la ville.
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est la,
Simple et tranquille
Simple et tranquille
Cette paisible rumeur—la
Vient de la ville.
Vient de la ville.
—Qu'as tu fait, o toi que voilaPleurant sans cesse,Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voilaDe ta jeunesse?
—Qu'as tu fait, o toi que voila
Pleurant sans cesse,
Pleurant sans cesse,
Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voila
De ta jeunesse?
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 itwasPendleton. 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,
He is either himsel' a devil frae hell,Or else his mother a witch maun be,
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 Pendletonwashis 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.