CHAPTER XXVITreading 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!EPILOGUEI 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 FormanNOVELSThe Captain of His SoulFire of YouthThe Man Who Lived in a ShoeTRAVELIn the Footprints of HeineThe Ideal Italian TourLondon: An Intimate Picture*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKTHE MAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE***
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 SoulFire of YouthThe Man Who Lived in a Shoe
TRAVEL
In the Footprints of HeineThe Ideal Italian TourLondon: An Intimate Picture
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKTHE MAN WHO LIVED IN A SHOE***