BOOK TWOCHAPTER XIIMany months have passed since I last made an entry in this, which I mean to be a record of my life for later years, when I am grown old and white and memory gives back vividly only the days of childhood.It must be that the stoking of the furnace below all winter, or else my absorption in Visconti's, has banished reflection upon events from out of my mind. It is not reflection that was banished, however, but only the energy to record it. The folk who work the treadmill leave few records behind them. And I am of the treadmill, occupant of an office chair, one of the gray mass of dwellers in the suburbs of life.The office of Visconti's, that was at first like a queer old wharf in some foreign city to a ship from distant parts, has grown familiar and almost homelike, so that I feel the barnacles gathering about my hulk at the mooring place.It is ever the same. I come and I labor and I go. The chair and the desk await me of a morning and by ten o'clock it is as though I had never left them. I go forth of an afternoon into freedom and feel a momentary desire to wander about as of old. The bland frontages of New York still have a lure for me. But the nestlings for whom I am laboring are at Crestlands and to them I automatically hasten my steps.But is all that about to end?To-day, for the first time since his disappearance, I heard of poor Laura's husband,—Pendleton.For to-day I have received an astonishing letter from Dibdin, and it is that, I suppose, which has stirred me to writing again."Be prepared," Dibdin's letter begins, after his usual abrupt manner, "be prepared for a sort of shock.""A week ago I arrived in Yokohama with half a schooner-load of stocks and stones, carvings, idols, etc., homeward bound."If you have ever been in Yokohama you will remember the Grand Hotel on the Bund." Yes, I do remember. It was the one bright spot for me in Japan on my brief and disappointing journey six years ago. Heaven knows why I went there. Once I had viewed the Temples at Nikko, the sacred deer on the Island of Miyajima and the volcanic cone of Fujiyama, there was nothing else to do. I am not an ethnologist and there were no bookshops. While awaiting my steamer, the only refuge was that self-same Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where you can still sit in a chair facing a window, as commercial travelers in provincial hotels in America sit, and look out across the water towards Tokio, and smoke and idle and gossip. Of an afternoon there is tea with excellent little cakes—served by Japanese girls in kimonos so gorgeous that even a geisha would be too modest to wear them in the street. The color, however, is meant for western eyes. The ladies, American and English from Tokio and thereabout, wives of commission merchants, agents, naval officers, diplomats, tourists, gather around and do what they can to annihilate reputations,—as is the way the world over.There is also a bar—the longest in Asia. Incidentally, every bar in the East is the longest and men from Hongkong, Shanghai, Peking, Kobe and Yokohama carry the measurements of their respective bars in their heads for purposes of competitive argument. We all need something to brag about, and there's little else in those parts. When the ladies have finished their tea and have gone to their rooms or their 'rickshaws, the bar at the Grand is the next halting stage for the men. I have not thought of it for years, though it is vivid enough to me now. It is one of the five points on the globe where, if you loiter long enough, you are certain to encounter every one you ever knew. But—Pendleton!"If you remember this setting," runs Dibdin's letter, "you will realize how easy it was even for a bear like me to pick up quickly the gossip of the place and, incidentally, the legend of Patterson. Patterson I learned was a drifter, an idler, a gambler, and a staunch support of the Grand bar. He is adroit, suave, pleasant, shifty—an American. Some trader found him on the beach in the Marquesas, took him along for company among the islands and ultimately landed him here. He has traded in skins, in silk, in insurance; is said to have all but killed a man in a card brawl and has cleaned out many a tourist at poker. Now, he is no longer allowed to play cards at the Grand."I had a curiosity to see this bird of plumage and two days ago, Mainwaring, the excellent manager of this hotel, pointed him out to me."Judge of my amazement, as novelists say, when I recognized in Patterson none other than the author of all your troubles, your vanished brother-in-law—Pendleton!"Will it surprise you to learn that my first emotion was a desire to rush upon him as he leaned across the bar and drive a knife into his back?"Instead, however, I got Mainwaring to introduce me and if Pendleton was surprised, he concealed it successfully. Presently he was drinking my liquor and chattering about the islands from which I am a recent arrival. If I disguised the cold rage I felt against the man you must give me credit for more diplomacy than you ordinarily do."'You talk like a New Yorker,' I presently let fall in a casual manner."'Ah, there you have me!' he threw out in a blandly mysterious sort of way. 'Truth is, I don't know where I come from!'"In short, he tried on the lapsed memory sort of thing. Woke up one day to find himself at Manila. Didn't know his own name or who he was or whence. Initials on his linen were J.P. so he took the name of Patterson—as good as any other, and so forth. Very sad. But then one must take life as one finds it. Some of us are elected to martyrdom in this world. That, you understand, was his drift."'Well,' I told him calmly, 'if you really want to know who you are, I can tell you.'"He turned, I thought, a shade paler, but he played his part smoothly."'You don't mean it!' he exclaimed with a quite seraphic ecstasy. 'You know me! My God, man, you are my deliverer come at last!'"'You are Jim Pendleton,' I told him quietly and then I told him a few other things. My reasoning was like this: If he is the thorough hound I thought he was, he would have an excellent chance of bolting—and good riddance. If there was a shred of decency left in the man, now was the time for it to show."Well, he surprised me. I saw real tears in his eyes. He begged for every detail I could give him. His voice broke when he tried to ask questions about Laura and the kids. He has not bolted. He is quite pathetically attached to me. I am dashed if I can tell whether it's real or not. I don't believe for a minute in the lapsed memory dodge, but I am flabbergasted. He seems so pitifully keen for every scrap I can tell him. Maybe the poor brute is really ashamed of his past and is trying only to save his face under this rigmarole of lost identity? He clings to me and I have him, so to speak, under observation. If it should even seem remotely possible to make a man of him again, don't you think the risk of bringing him home might be worth taking? I don't know, I don't know. I shall use the best judgment I've got about me, but don't for a moment think I'll let you down. It's your interest I'm thinking of and the interest of the kids."I can't leave here for several weeks yet. That ought to give me time to take his measure. I know what he has been. Question is, can a leopard change his spots, or a beachcomber his character? We'll see, Randolph, my boy, we'll see what we see. Hard luck is hard luck, but this man—well, I needn't tell you. There is such a thing, to be sure, as trying back. I'd like to have a second chance myself, if I behaved like a villain. But of this fellow I am far from sure. I will say, though, that he's drinking less and trying to keep decent not only in my own sight, but to the surprise of all the white colony here."You will hear from me again before long."As I read, I felt gradually overshadowed by the immense somber fact conveyed in this letter. It was like a black cloud bank that comes up swiftly, blotting out the sun from over the landscape. It was not a thing to blink, to wave aside or to dismiss with a shrug of the shoulders. It was instant and tyrannous, demanding anew urgent thought and decision. Fortunately I am no longer the same creature that was bodily hurled from tranquillity and leisure, like a monk from his cell, into the cold wind-swept ways of life. I seem a little less like chaff in the breeze. My backbone seemed actually to stiffen and settle as I posed the problem.The problem is the fate of the children. To receive and re-create Pendleton means to give them up.Well—and did I not assume their care only because there was none else? Now there would be—there might be—some one else. Pendleton has a legal right to his own children and, if he could establish it satisfactorily, no doubt a moral right as well.The advent of Pendleton might prove to have incalculable advantages for myself. Here, on the one side, is the treadmill. On the other there is, or there was, ease and leisure and dreams. My small competency is gone in the wake of that man's destructive progress. But for myself, I might manage an easier and more agreeable way of subsisting than the way of Visconti's. Those are the cold facts, clearly enough—but somehow they will not let me rest. My world has been violently jarred, for all my painful calmness, and I seem unable to fit the parts again into exactly the old solidity of groove and joint. There are lurking interstices which I cannot fill. "Who is Kim—Kim—Kim?" the hero of an unforgettable tale was wont to ask himself. And he felt his soul floating off and dipping into the infinite. Likewise, I ask myself now, Who is Randolph Byrd? And the startling truth returns that the children in my house and I are inseparable, that I and they are one!With this and the fact that Pendleton is in all likelihood coming back to claim them, I am, pending further news from Dibdin, left to grapple. At any rate, Dibdin also is returning.It is now the spring and the year is beginning to smile again. I have been prospering at Visconti's and my income is now again the same as it was before ever the children came to me—before I became a business man. But there is not a soul to whom I can confide my new dilemma.There is Minot Blackden, the glass stainer, whom I have finally discovered to be a near neighbor of Visconti's. To be exact, his studio and living quarters are in King Street, and we sometimes have our lunch together. But Blackden is so much in the grip of his medieval art that it gets into his food, stains his tapering hands and even spatters upon his finely pointed blue-black beard. All he can see in me is the Philistine who has cast all else aside for the sizzling fleshpots. When I chanced to mention having four children in my house, he looked upon me as a bird-of-Paradise might look upon a polar bear; I was to him a visible but incredible symbol of something strange and gross. There is nothing placid or resigned about Blackden. He is intense, incandescent."Do you realize," he said to me, "that I am restoring a lost art to the world?""But does it give you food?" I asked him."What does food matter?" he expostulated. "What does anything else in the world matter?"Nevertheless, he was eager to take up my suggestion concerning the writing of a booklet upon his new craft and he has been sending it out broadcast. But so intensely devotional is his attitude to the whole business that I have not the face to suggest payment for the work, nor has he referred to it again. I know little of his art, but I know that his returns are increasing. It is obvious that I cannot burden a soul, burning with that gemlike flame of Blackden's, with any such confidence as the impending return of Pendleton. At times I think that Minot Blackden and Gertrude Bayard ought to marry each other. They are both so single-minded and so absolutely sure of themselves. But in the meantime there is no one I can talk to.No—absolutely no one.Walking to Grand Central station these brilliant afternoons is a thing I cannot resist. It is the only exercise I get. Crossing Washington Square, I strike into Fifth Avenue and by the time I reach Fourteenth Street I have a delicious sense of losing myself, of merging into the crowd, that is very soothing after a day in the office. There is nothing so stimulating as the energetic crowd in Fifth Avenue. At Brentano's bookstore I usually pause and scrutinize the window. I am very sound in the latest novels and the newest developments in stationery.To-day, as my eyes were feasting on the cover jacket of Mr. Arnold Bennett's latest, a lady coming down the avenue likewise paused before the window and as we glanced at each other I found I was facing Gertrude. Of course she had a perfect right to cut me. She smiled uncertainly instead and put out her hand."Hello, Ranny," she murmured casually. "No reason why we can't meet as friends, is there?""Not the least in the world," I returned hastily. "Why should there be?""I didn't know—but of course you always were a sensible person."I grinned in my guilty fashion."How is everything?" she continued brightly. "I heard—about your firm. You in business now?"I mentioned my connection with Visconti's Banca e Casa Commerciale."You're a sort of hero of romance," she smiled speculatively over my head. "And the kiddies," she added, "they all right?""Going strong." She made no reference to Alicia but I thought it only decent not to leave her in doubt. "Everything in my household is about the same," I said. She nodded.The years of our friendship flashed through my mind, with a sense of regret at the passing and crumbling of human relations. Gertrude would quite naturally have been the one I could have talked to concerning the probable return of Pendleton. Then, on a sudden occurred one of those coincidences which invariably surprise me. For what Gertrude uttered quite carelessly as though merely to fill the conversational pause, was this:"No news of their father, I suppose?"I have never yet lied to Gertrude. I detest lies in general. I was silent. My face must have betrayed me. Gertrude glanced into my eyes and in a startled voice she queried:"Haveyou?"Briefly, without going into detail, I told her."Why, Ranny," she exclaimed with a new manner, in a new voice, "that's the most wonderful thing I ever heard. Wonderful! That's the greatest luck for you. Your troubles will be over!""Ah, will they?" I speculated ruefully, rubbing my cheek. "That's the problem. Shall I be able to trust the children to him again?""Don't be a—foolish!" she retorted in almost her old manner. "The responsibility will make a man of him again. Besides—you'll have to. They are his. I should think you'd jump for joy at the relief. Dear me, what a story!""Oh—er—I must beg you not—not to mention a word of this to any one," I stammered. "You understand—it's a ticklish business—for the children's sake.""Don't be absurd," she retorted impatiently. "I don't blab. Will you promise to let me hear how—how things come out?" I promised.At this moment Minot Blackden, his eyes blinded by visions of rose windows, no doubt, bore down and all but collided with us. I introduced them mechanically to mitigate his apologies and left them both bound in the same direction southward. Gertrude waved a hand gayly."I'll expect good news!" were her parting words.So I have told some one, I reflected, as I made my way toward Grand Central, and Gertrude expressed what all the world would say: "I ought to jump for joy at the relief. Besides, I shall have to turn them over to Pendleton." The wheels of the train I somberly boarded kept insistently repeating the same self-evident opinion. In addition there was the sickness of death in my soul for the folly of having given the thing away to Gertrude, of all people.I wish I were not obliged to parry social invitations just at present. The excellent Visconti who had asked me to dinner two or three times during the winter, has suddenly taken a notion to ask me at least once every week. I hope I am not grown so churlish but that I appreciate his well-meant courtesy. But the fag is too great.He has a house in Thirteenth Street neighboring on St. Vincent's Hospital, and he also has a motherless daughter, Gina, abounding in vitality, who must be amused. The proximity to the hospital, he intimates, the smell of carbolate and iodoform, depress young blood, and Gina, being super-American, must not be allowed to remember that there is anything unpleasant in life. I trust I am not the only vessel chosen to bring more lively spirits to that girl.The effort for me is immense. I go to Crestlands after office hours, dress, return to town, and then make a late train for Crestlands again. The food is excellent and Gina sings prettily in a soprano as rich as her coloring. But the next morning Visconti's does not enjoy the fruit of my undimmed energies.More recently, Visconti has urged me not to dress and in that I see the fine hand of Gina at work. As an American-born girl, Gina is quick and eager to read the signs and weather indications. And though I am becoming dexterous in excuses, I dined at the Visconti's last night nevertheless. Gina sang theSole mioandUna voce poco faand even told my fortune in cards, predicting that I should "be married a second time.""But never a first time?" I queried simply."Oh, then you've never been married at all!" Gina exulted, and she energetically read the cards for me afresh. Her sortilege evidently is not a perfect science. But it occurs to me that by means of it the clever Gina found out more about my personal life than ever I had vouchsafed to her in all our acquaintance.When I returned home I found Alicia in my study sitting late over the catalogue, a copy of which she is now completing. She jumped from her chair."Oh, I am so glad you've come, Uncle Ranny," she clapped her hands joyously. "I have found something we have overlooked.""What is it, Alicia?" And my gaze was, I admit, fascinated by her flushed cheeks and starlike eyes sparkling with excitement. She seemed the Muse incarnating those books, the very spirit of beauty they enshrine. And yet she is not quite sixteen."It's Shelley's 'Alastor'!" she cried. "And it's so thin that it had slipped in between the covers of another book. It's a first edition—1816, isn't it?""Yes, Alicia. And a very beautiful poem besides.""Oh, isn't it!" she cried in exultation. "I have read it all, Uncle Ranny, and do you know what I found out?"—and her voice became more solemn—"it is your life Shelley was writing!"I laughed uproariously."Yes, he did!" flashed Alicia. "Only your life is so much better. He was so absorbed in himself, Alastor, that he died in his loneliness. And you—you are simply surrounded by people who love you. You—!"And then, I regret to record, self-consciousness overtook Alicia. She became aware of her own vehemence and blushing furiously made as if to run out of the room.My position of vantage near the door enabled me to stop her."Wait, my dear," I endeavored to lift her lowered chin. "Enthusiasm is nothing to be ashamed of. It's one of the finest things in life. And I'll tell you more—we are always applying to ourselves everything we read in books.""Isn't that," murmured Alicia shamefacedly, "why people love books?" Foolish girl—to wake the sleeping pedant in me!"Not altogether, Alicia. When we get older we become less personal. I love books because they hold the truth and the wisdom of men's minds. And aside from life and love, Alicia, wisdom and truth are the greatest realities in the world. There is death, of course, but who cares to dwell upon death?""I always did think that life and—and—love were greater than books," stammered Alicia earnestly. "And now that you yourself say so, I am sure of it!"Astonishing child! When has she had the time to speculate upon the magnitude of life and love? Always that young thing keeps revealing herself to me afresh. I looked at her in silence for a moment. Here was a better counselor than any one, Dibdin excepted, with whom I might discuss the impending return of Pendleton."Alicia," I began in another tone, "there is something I should like to talk to you about. It's criminally late, I know, and you ought to be in bed, but since you will dissipate on the catalogue, I'll keep you up a little longer." I led her back to a chair and she gazed at me wide-eyed."Is it anything about—the—children?" she whispered, somewhat frightened."Yes—in a way—it is about the children. But more particularly it is about their father. Have you ever heard of him?""Their father!—I thought he was dead!" she murmured, awe-struck."There were times when we all thought so. He disappeared some years ago. But he's alive, Alicia. I've just heard from Dibdin, who found him in Japan." Her eyes grew wider."How terrible!" she breathed. "Does he know all—that has happened?""He does now—of course he didn't until Mr. Dibdin told him." And then this occurred to me. Ought I to shield Pendleton to the extent of telling her positively that he had lost his memory or identity? No. A confidant deserves scrupulous honesty, even if that confidant be as young as Alicia. "He told Dibdin," I went on, "that he lost his memory of the past and found himself one day stranded in Manila. Led rather a wild and worthless life afterwards—people who lose their memories seem to do that.""Do you think that's true?" she queried."I don't know, Alicia, but when he comes back I suppose we'll have to accept that version. Dibdin will have some advice on that point, I feel sure."Alicia remained silent for a time lost in reflection. Her child's face in her perturbation was the face of a grown woman."Do you think he'll want to take back the children, Uncle Ranny?""That's the crux of the whole matter, Alicia. I don't know. But if he does, he'll have a right to do so, of course; they are his.""Oh, oh!" and her hands flew up to her face in a gesture of poignant despair. "Turn them over to such a man! Is that the way the world's arranged?"I smiled gloomily. I saw that there was no need of comment upon the arrangement of the world. This girl young in her teens understood it as well as any one."Then I'd have to go, too," she uttered hoarsely with a dry sob of bitterness in her throat."Not necessarily," I interposed."Oh, yes, I should," she insisted doggedly, as though driving something painful into her flesh. "But it doesn't matter about me. But, Uncle Ranny, you won't—you can't give them up! They're all so happy here. Little Jimmie and Laura and Randolph! What chance would they have of growing up fine—away from you—-with a man like that? You won't let them go—you won't, you won't! Oh, it would be horrible, horrible!" she ended passionately."Listen, my dear," I tried to calm her. "I had no wish to harrow your feelings. I told you because you love the children—and we must face all this together. I shall want your help, your support." She flashed a sweet look mingled of pride and gratitude."After all you—have been through," she murmured incoherently. "But why don't you do this, Uncle Ranny!" and with the quick transition possible to youth, she was again alive, eager, excited, this little fellow conspirator of mine. "Why don't you let him come here and live right in this house for a while? We'll be awfully crowded," she ran on with flushed energy, "but we'll find room for him. And let's be awfully nice to him—and believe everything he says. Then we could watch him, and I just know we'll find out whether he's all right or not!"I laughed at her enthusiasm."You forget, Alicia," I informed her, "that even if he shouldn't prove all right, he is still the father of those children.""I don't care," she returned stoutly. "If he's bad and sees that we see he's bad, he wouldn't have the face to take them away from here. Even a bad father wants his children to be all right!""And how in the world do you know that, you astounding infant?""Oh, I know!" with a triumphant laugh, "At the Home—some fathers brought their children and cried—one of them did—because he was so bad he didn't think he was fit to have a child near him. I had tiptoed into the matron's office, and I heard him!""Perhaps he didn't want to support the brat," I scoffed to cover up my wonder."Well, and do you think he will?" Alicia snatched at my words. "A man who ran away from them, loafing round for years? Oh, it will be easy, Uncle Ranny!" she chuckled. "He couldn't fool us!""And why, my little Portia, couldn't he?""Because," said Alicia thoughtfully, "he will always be thinking of himself and we—won't.""You mean," I pressed, delightedly, "he'll be self-conscious and give himself away, the while we are clothed in our rectitude?""Yes!" she cried, with a laugh. "We'll be thinking of Jimmie and Laura and Randolph—and it's always easier to think what to do when you're thinking of somebody else—not of yourself.""And did you discover that also in the matron's office at the Home?" I leaned toward her in amazement."No," she bent her gaze downward, "I learned that right here."I kissed Alicia upon the cheek. It lies heavy at my door that I have shown her too little affection in the past merely because she is not related to me. It startled me to realize that dear to me as Laura's children are, Alicia is the dearest of them all.As with a gentle good night she slipped away, a profound sigh of relief escaped me. That child succeeded in almost wholly blotting out my feeling of bitter perplexity after talking with Gertrude. Do Alicias upon growing older turn into Gertrudes, I wonder? No, I think not. Surely not.I now look to the return of Pendleton almost with equanimity.CHAPTER XIIII am agitated like a hen with a newly hatched brood.It has suddenly been revealed to me that the complacency with which I have been regarding my care and rearing of the children is abysmally false and wholly unjustified.They are not properly clothed for New York and even here in Crestlands they seem on a sudden pitifully shabby. The competition in that sort of thing in a suburb is keen. Everybody's children seem better dressed than my own and yet, do what I will, I cannot afford to spend more. Randolph's high-school dignity is positively impaired by clothes which he is constantly outgrowing. And the rate at which Jimmie wears out trousers and soils white suits is simply unbelievable. Laura alone seems to have the gift of always keeping her things fresh and wearing them as though they were new.As for Alicia, that girl ought to be clothed in purple, at least figuratively, if only I could afford it. It seems to me I cannot live another day unless I procure for Alicia a large collection of frocks and blouses and shoes and whatever else would set off that faunlike creature, compact of energy and grace. For almost daily that child grows more beautiful in a way that pulls at my heartstrings.I trust I am no idiotic parent, or foster parent, to rave about her eyes and complexion and the like. I am as dispassionate as any one can well be. But truly there is something starlike in her eyes and at times, when she is sewing or reading or working on my eternal catalogue, I surprise her pensive, absorbed in some long thoughts of her own that not for worlds would I disturb. At such moments I am absolutely fascinated by those soft pools of light that irradiate her face.Are other girls like that at her age, I wonder? It seems scarcely conceivable. At any rate, I have never seen any others like her. But then, I have seen so few.The truth remains, however, that I positively must dress her better. Even my dull fancy joyously leaps at the vision of Alicia beautifully dressed and diffusing sweetness and fragrance through the house. Of course, I cannot single her out. There is Laura, too. And it might seem invidious, although as the eldest of them all, Alicia is entitled to especial consideration. I cannot moreover allow Pendleton to observe that I have kept his children shabby. Few are the claims that Pendleton can legitimately array against me, but the shabbiness of the children would too flagrantly proclaim my failure. Nor does Dibdin know as yet my rake's progress since Fred Salmon made a business man of me.But where am I to get the money for clothes when the mere routine of subsistence absorbs it all? There is still Dibdin's yellowing cheque intact, but I cannot use that—no.Ah—I have it! I shall sell "Alastor!"Since I had overlooked it, I shall merely assume I never had it. In its Rivière binding "Alastor" should bring at least two hundred dollars and may bring more. Heaven knows it cost me more. It holds some marginal memoranda by Leigh Hunt, which should not detract from its value. Since Alicia opines that my life is more laudable than Alastor's because there are those who love me, she shall profit by her judgment. "Alastor" shall be sacrificed for her soft and lovely frocks.Sooner or later I had to come to it. What is a volume more or less compared to the happiness of a household? I am glad I have decided this. So farewell, "Alastor, Spirit of Solitude!"I seem to be possessed by the mad feverish spirit of carnival.Having sold my "Alastor" by means of an advertisement in the SundayTimesfor two hundred and twenty-five dollars, I experienced a sensation of richer blood in my veins by that accession of wealth. "Alastor" has clothed all my family. I am sorry for the old woman who lived in a shoe. She possessed no library. The moral is obvious. What though I parted with a little bit of myself when I parted with that book, I have engrafted something else in its place. For the children also are myself.I do not delegate Griselda any more to do the buying for them.First I took Jimmie and Randolph to a men's outfitting shop where the atmosphere is august. Alicia offered to come along, but though Jimmie is hotly attached to her, he was vocal with objections."This is men's business," he cried, "and us men must go alone.""Wemen," corrected Laura, laughing and kissing him."Usmen know how to talk!" he retorted, violently rubbing the kiss from his cheek. Kisses, he implied, were all very well in their place, but not at important crises in masculine lives, not when thetoga viriliswas hanging grandly from their shoulders."Come on, old man," Randolph interposed with a wink in my direction, and Jimmie's wrath was appeased. The "old man" soothed and uplifted him to the proper pitch of virile dignity.The seventy-five dollars laid out upon those two boys have given me more satisfaction than anything else recently—until I spent the balance upon the girls. Men's shops are prosaic and dull compared with those Greek temples that line Fifth Avenue with feminine apparel. As the paymaster for the boys I was unnoticed. As the "uncle" of the two girls opening the door to heart's desire, I was an object of almost affectionate solicitude to the saleswoman. They were alert to help and advise. What a freemasonry, an empire within an empire, is the domain of women's clothes! In the latest slang and in words from Shakespeare the jaded saleswomen were eager to interpret my wishes."I want some frocks and things for these girls," I announced boldly in one of the great shops. "Not too expensive but things nice girls ought to wear.""I know," nasally asserted an efficient blonde, ceasing her mastication and mysteriously secreting what she was chewing somewhere in her capacious mouth. "Somethin' nice and classy—and quiet, but—youknow!""Er—precisely—""Neat but not gaudy?" put in her more pallid, more "cultured" companion, with a faded smile to complete the specification."Ah—exactly so," I murmured and Laura seemed to experience a difficulty in restraining herself from giggling.Alicia, however, with the simple directness that is hers, proceeded quietly to mention voiles and organdies and soon the discussion became technical and I helpless. I thought it wise to whisper to Alicia the amount of money at her disposal. She gasped her astonishment with a blush and then a beautiful light of gratitude and pleasure leaped into her eyes and I believe the child was going to cry. I turned away quickly, and steadily she proceeded with the business in hand.To the lady who quoted Polonius, the neat but not gaudy one, I intrusted the selection of those things that I was not to see; she was sincerely gratified at my confidence and, I believe, conscientious.There was just about enough change left for refreshments at Huyler's for the girls and paterfamilias. Gay were the spirits in which we three traveled homeward. How ridiculous Gertrude would make me, if she knew it!I felt excitement and happiness bounding in my veins, a new quality of those emotions, the like of which I had never experienced before. And my heart positively missed a beat when the crushing thought struck me: Must I now lose these young creatures and pass again into the emptiness of life?We Americans are like the French in that we think our climate the best in the world. Or, if not the best, at least so far superior to many others that, like the French, we are steeped in vanity about it.Of Saturdays I reach home early after midday, yet it has been persistently and infallibly raining every Saturday afternoon the entire blessed spring. If perchance I want to take a walk and breathe some air, I cannot stir out of the house.Yet a nervous restlessness possesses me: I must have some diversion. It suddenly occurred to me to ask the girls to put on their various new frocks that came last evening. For a moment I was a little ashamed at the thought. But at bottom, I suppose, every male is a Persian Ahasuerus, desirous of displaying and gloating over the beauty of his women folk. I have no doubt but that the king secretly admired Vashti even though he was wroth at her disobedience.Laura, it appeared, was in the next street at the house of a school friend, but Alicia complied eagerly, displaying anything but the suffragette indignation of Vashti. She was, in fact, eager to parade her frocks with quite feminine excitement.In her clinging voile, in soft-tinted organdie, in white slippers and silk stockings, Alicia appeared,—a vision surprising, disturbingly radiant with youthful charm. There was something with a blue sash that made her simply exquisite, the very incarnation of grace. Her hair gathered tightly at the nape of her neck and then spreading out into a great brush, a cloud of shimmering fine gold on her shoulders, seemed the only mark of childhood left that prevented me from being like another St. Anthony, miserably afraid of her.I know not what devil possessed me to ask her to go and put up her hair before she took off that frock. How different must have been the character of Persia's queen. For Alicia ran out of the room and almost in a twinkling she was back with her hair up.I sat for a moment staring at her speechless, dry-lipped and open-mouthed. For before me, flushed and sparkling, stood the most adorable young creature I had ever seen. Why should there be so much mystery in feminine hair?"You—you—child!" I blurted out finally in a sort of choleric tenderness. "How dare you look so beauti—so grown up in my house!"A peal of excited laughter was her answer and she made as if she would rush toward me with open arms, as might an affectionate child eager to caress an indulgent parent—and then on a sadden she checked herself, a blush suffusing her cheeks and her very ears."Go call Griselda," I commanded, to cover her confusion, "and show her the young woman we've been harboring in the guise of a child."Alicia ran out of the room to comply and for a moment I remained sitting in my chair as under a spell. Then I rose hastily to dispel such nonsensical emotions and left my room, only to come face to face with Alicia and Griselda in the dining room."Oh, ay—yes!" muttered my aging Griselda, her swarthy countenance hot from the kitchen stove, looking more forbiddingly sybilline than ever, "It's all over!" she added mysteriously."What do you mean—all over?" I demanded a little stupidly, though dimly I suppose I understood her."The young besoms grow up sae fast, it's a meeracle they dinna wed in their cradles!""Wed!" I cried in disgust at the word. "You women are always thinking of only one thing—even you, Griselda. Go," I turned to Alicia, "let down your hair again this minute, so you won't put such wild notions into Griselda's frivolous mind."Alicia laughed deliciously and even Griselda with a sort of dark twisted smile reiterated:"Oh, ay—the young besoms!" Whereupon my young woman impulsively threw her arms about Griselda and kissed the brown cheek with gusto. Griselda returned by pinching Alicia's cheek fiercely.My nephew Randolph and a companion, a tall gawky boy coming into the house at that moment, stood in their raincoats at the dining-room door and gaped, blocking Alicia's path."I say! Look who's here!" my young hopeful exclaimed with a low whistle, wagging his head from side to side. The other boy merely stared in dumb awe, twisting his wet cap in his fingers. That gawk and Alicia are the same age, yet—the difference!"Let her go through and unmask," I waved them aside and Alicia, with her head down, ran laughing out of the room.I returned to my chair and sat down as one dazed. My policy henceforth will be to frown on suchlike tricks—though I myself had instigated this one. What an occupation for a man of books and tranquillity—one who desired to write of Brunetto Latini—to add to the body of scholarship upon Dante!And suddenly I put my head down on my arms and laughed long and I am sure quite meaninglessly.For if I were a woman, I might just as easily have sobbed in a way to tear out the heart. Decidedly the suspense of awaiting news from Dibdin regarding Pendleton must be undermining my nerves.
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER XII
Many months have passed since I last made an entry in this, which I mean to be a record of my life for later years, when I am grown old and white and memory gives back vividly only the days of childhood.
It must be that the stoking of the furnace below all winter, or else my absorption in Visconti's, has banished reflection upon events from out of my mind. It is not reflection that was banished, however, but only the energy to record it. The folk who work the treadmill leave few records behind them. And I am of the treadmill, occupant of an office chair, one of the gray mass of dwellers in the suburbs of life.
The office of Visconti's, that was at first like a queer old wharf in some foreign city to a ship from distant parts, has grown familiar and almost homelike, so that I feel the barnacles gathering about my hulk at the mooring place.
It is ever the same. I come and I labor and I go. The chair and the desk await me of a morning and by ten o'clock it is as though I had never left them. I go forth of an afternoon into freedom and feel a momentary desire to wander about as of old. The bland frontages of New York still have a lure for me. But the nestlings for whom I am laboring are at Crestlands and to them I automatically hasten my steps.
But is all that about to end?
To-day, for the first time since his disappearance, I heard of poor Laura's husband,—Pendleton.
For to-day I have received an astonishing letter from Dibdin, and it is that, I suppose, which has stirred me to writing again.
"Be prepared," Dibdin's letter begins, after his usual abrupt manner, "be prepared for a sort of shock."
"A week ago I arrived in Yokohama with half a schooner-load of stocks and stones, carvings, idols, etc., homeward bound.
"If you have ever been in Yokohama you will remember the Grand Hotel on the Bund." Yes, I do remember. It was the one bright spot for me in Japan on my brief and disappointing journey six years ago. Heaven knows why I went there. Once I had viewed the Temples at Nikko, the sacred deer on the Island of Miyajima and the volcanic cone of Fujiyama, there was nothing else to do. I am not an ethnologist and there were no bookshops. While awaiting my steamer, the only refuge was that self-same Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where you can still sit in a chair facing a window, as commercial travelers in provincial hotels in America sit, and look out across the water towards Tokio, and smoke and idle and gossip. Of an afternoon there is tea with excellent little cakes—served by Japanese girls in kimonos so gorgeous that even a geisha would be too modest to wear them in the street. The color, however, is meant for western eyes. The ladies, American and English from Tokio and thereabout, wives of commission merchants, agents, naval officers, diplomats, tourists, gather around and do what they can to annihilate reputations,—as is the way the world over.
There is also a bar—the longest in Asia. Incidentally, every bar in the East is the longest and men from Hongkong, Shanghai, Peking, Kobe and Yokohama carry the measurements of their respective bars in their heads for purposes of competitive argument. We all need something to brag about, and there's little else in those parts. When the ladies have finished their tea and have gone to their rooms or their 'rickshaws, the bar at the Grand is the next halting stage for the men. I have not thought of it for years, though it is vivid enough to me now. It is one of the five points on the globe where, if you loiter long enough, you are certain to encounter every one you ever knew. But—Pendleton!
"If you remember this setting," runs Dibdin's letter, "you will realize how easy it was even for a bear like me to pick up quickly the gossip of the place and, incidentally, the legend of Patterson. Patterson I learned was a drifter, an idler, a gambler, and a staunch support of the Grand bar. He is adroit, suave, pleasant, shifty—an American. Some trader found him on the beach in the Marquesas, took him along for company among the islands and ultimately landed him here. He has traded in skins, in silk, in insurance; is said to have all but killed a man in a card brawl and has cleaned out many a tourist at poker. Now, he is no longer allowed to play cards at the Grand.
"I had a curiosity to see this bird of plumage and two days ago, Mainwaring, the excellent manager of this hotel, pointed him out to me.
"Judge of my amazement, as novelists say, when I recognized in Patterson none other than the author of all your troubles, your vanished brother-in-law—Pendleton!
"Will it surprise you to learn that my first emotion was a desire to rush upon him as he leaned across the bar and drive a knife into his back?
"Instead, however, I got Mainwaring to introduce me and if Pendleton was surprised, he concealed it successfully. Presently he was drinking my liquor and chattering about the islands from which I am a recent arrival. If I disguised the cold rage I felt against the man you must give me credit for more diplomacy than you ordinarily do.
"'You talk like a New Yorker,' I presently let fall in a casual manner.
"'Ah, there you have me!' he threw out in a blandly mysterious sort of way. 'Truth is, I don't know where I come from!'
"In short, he tried on the lapsed memory sort of thing. Woke up one day to find himself at Manila. Didn't know his own name or who he was or whence. Initials on his linen were J.P. so he took the name of Patterson—as good as any other, and so forth. Very sad. But then one must take life as one finds it. Some of us are elected to martyrdom in this world. That, you understand, was his drift.
"'Well,' I told him calmly, 'if you really want to know who you are, I can tell you.'
"He turned, I thought, a shade paler, but he played his part smoothly.
"'You don't mean it!' he exclaimed with a quite seraphic ecstasy. 'You know me! My God, man, you are my deliverer come at last!'
"'You are Jim Pendleton,' I told him quietly and then I told him a few other things. My reasoning was like this: If he is the thorough hound I thought he was, he would have an excellent chance of bolting—and good riddance. If there was a shred of decency left in the man, now was the time for it to show.
"Well, he surprised me. I saw real tears in his eyes. He begged for every detail I could give him. His voice broke when he tried to ask questions about Laura and the kids. He has not bolted. He is quite pathetically attached to me. I am dashed if I can tell whether it's real or not. I don't believe for a minute in the lapsed memory dodge, but I am flabbergasted. He seems so pitifully keen for every scrap I can tell him. Maybe the poor brute is really ashamed of his past and is trying only to save his face under this rigmarole of lost identity? He clings to me and I have him, so to speak, under observation. If it should even seem remotely possible to make a man of him again, don't you think the risk of bringing him home might be worth taking? I don't know, I don't know. I shall use the best judgment I've got about me, but don't for a moment think I'll let you down. It's your interest I'm thinking of and the interest of the kids.
"I can't leave here for several weeks yet. That ought to give me time to take his measure. I know what he has been. Question is, can a leopard change his spots, or a beachcomber his character? We'll see, Randolph, my boy, we'll see what we see. Hard luck is hard luck, but this man—well, I needn't tell you. There is such a thing, to be sure, as trying back. I'd like to have a second chance myself, if I behaved like a villain. But of this fellow I am far from sure. I will say, though, that he's drinking less and trying to keep decent not only in my own sight, but to the surprise of all the white colony here.
"You will hear from me again before long."
As I read, I felt gradually overshadowed by the immense somber fact conveyed in this letter. It was like a black cloud bank that comes up swiftly, blotting out the sun from over the landscape. It was not a thing to blink, to wave aside or to dismiss with a shrug of the shoulders. It was instant and tyrannous, demanding anew urgent thought and decision. Fortunately I am no longer the same creature that was bodily hurled from tranquillity and leisure, like a monk from his cell, into the cold wind-swept ways of life. I seem a little less like chaff in the breeze. My backbone seemed actually to stiffen and settle as I posed the problem.
The problem is the fate of the children. To receive and re-create Pendleton means to give them up.
Well—and did I not assume their care only because there was none else? Now there would be—there might be—some one else. Pendleton has a legal right to his own children and, if he could establish it satisfactorily, no doubt a moral right as well.
The advent of Pendleton might prove to have incalculable advantages for myself. Here, on the one side, is the treadmill. On the other there is, or there was, ease and leisure and dreams. My small competency is gone in the wake of that man's destructive progress. But for myself, I might manage an easier and more agreeable way of subsisting than the way of Visconti's. Those are the cold facts, clearly enough—but somehow they will not let me rest. My world has been violently jarred, for all my painful calmness, and I seem unable to fit the parts again into exactly the old solidity of groove and joint. There are lurking interstices which I cannot fill. "Who is Kim—Kim—Kim?" the hero of an unforgettable tale was wont to ask himself. And he felt his soul floating off and dipping into the infinite. Likewise, I ask myself now, Who is Randolph Byrd? And the startling truth returns that the children in my house and I are inseparable, that I and they are one!
With this and the fact that Pendleton is in all likelihood coming back to claim them, I am, pending further news from Dibdin, left to grapple. At any rate, Dibdin also is returning.
It is now the spring and the year is beginning to smile again. I have been prospering at Visconti's and my income is now again the same as it was before ever the children came to me—before I became a business man. But there is not a soul to whom I can confide my new dilemma.
There is Minot Blackden, the glass stainer, whom I have finally discovered to be a near neighbor of Visconti's. To be exact, his studio and living quarters are in King Street, and we sometimes have our lunch together. But Blackden is so much in the grip of his medieval art that it gets into his food, stains his tapering hands and even spatters upon his finely pointed blue-black beard. All he can see in me is the Philistine who has cast all else aside for the sizzling fleshpots. When I chanced to mention having four children in my house, he looked upon me as a bird-of-Paradise might look upon a polar bear; I was to him a visible but incredible symbol of something strange and gross. There is nothing placid or resigned about Blackden. He is intense, incandescent.
"Do you realize," he said to me, "that I am restoring a lost art to the world?"
"But does it give you food?" I asked him.
"What does food matter?" he expostulated. "What does anything else in the world matter?"
Nevertheless, he was eager to take up my suggestion concerning the writing of a booklet upon his new craft and he has been sending it out broadcast. But so intensely devotional is his attitude to the whole business that I have not the face to suggest payment for the work, nor has he referred to it again. I know little of his art, but I know that his returns are increasing. It is obvious that I cannot burden a soul, burning with that gemlike flame of Blackden's, with any such confidence as the impending return of Pendleton. At times I think that Minot Blackden and Gertrude Bayard ought to marry each other. They are both so single-minded and so absolutely sure of themselves. But in the meantime there is no one I can talk to.
No—absolutely no one.
Walking to Grand Central station these brilliant afternoons is a thing I cannot resist. It is the only exercise I get. Crossing Washington Square, I strike into Fifth Avenue and by the time I reach Fourteenth Street I have a delicious sense of losing myself, of merging into the crowd, that is very soothing after a day in the office. There is nothing so stimulating as the energetic crowd in Fifth Avenue. At Brentano's bookstore I usually pause and scrutinize the window. I am very sound in the latest novels and the newest developments in stationery.
To-day, as my eyes were feasting on the cover jacket of Mr. Arnold Bennett's latest, a lady coming down the avenue likewise paused before the window and as we glanced at each other I found I was facing Gertrude. Of course she had a perfect right to cut me. She smiled uncertainly instead and put out her hand.
"Hello, Ranny," she murmured casually. "No reason why we can't meet as friends, is there?"
"Not the least in the world," I returned hastily. "Why should there be?"
"I didn't know—but of course you always were a sensible person."
I grinned in my guilty fashion.
"How is everything?" she continued brightly. "I heard—about your firm. You in business now?"
I mentioned my connection with Visconti's Banca e Casa Commerciale.
"You're a sort of hero of romance," she smiled speculatively over my head. "And the kiddies," she added, "they all right?"
"Going strong." She made no reference to Alicia but I thought it only decent not to leave her in doubt. "Everything in my household is about the same," I said. She nodded.
The years of our friendship flashed through my mind, with a sense of regret at the passing and crumbling of human relations. Gertrude would quite naturally have been the one I could have talked to concerning the probable return of Pendleton. Then, on a sudden occurred one of those coincidences which invariably surprise me. For what Gertrude uttered quite carelessly as though merely to fill the conversational pause, was this:
"No news of their father, I suppose?"
I have never yet lied to Gertrude. I detest lies in general. I was silent. My face must have betrayed me. Gertrude glanced into my eyes and in a startled voice she queried:
"Haveyou?"
Briefly, without going into detail, I told her.
"Why, Ranny," she exclaimed with a new manner, in a new voice, "that's the most wonderful thing I ever heard. Wonderful! That's the greatest luck for you. Your troubles will be over!"
"Ah, will they?" I speculated ruefully, rubbing my cheek. "That's the problem. Shall I be able to trust the children to him again?"
"Don't be a—foolish!" she retorted in almost her old manner. "The responsibility will make a man of him again. Besides—you'll have to. They are his. I should think you'd jump for joy at the relief. Dear me, what a story!"
"Oh—er—I must beg you not—not to mention a word of this to any one," I stammered. "You understand—it's a ticklish business—for the children's sake."
"Don't be absurd," she retorted impatiently. "I don't blab. Will you promise to let me hear how—how things come out?" I promised.
At this moment Minot Blackden, his eyes blinded by visions of rose windows, no doubt, bore down and all but collided with us. I introduced them mechanically to mitigate his apologies and left them both bound in the same direction southward. Gertrude waved a hand gayly.
"I'll expect good news!" were her parting words.
So I have told some one, I reflected, as I made my way toward Grand Central, and Gertrude expressed what all the world would say: "I ought to jump for joy at the relief. Besides, I shall have to turn them over to Pendleton." The wheels of the train I somberly boarded kept insistently repeating the same self-evident opinion. In addition there was the sickness of death in my soul for the folly of having given the thing away to Gertrude, of all people.
I wish I were not obliged to parry social invitations just at present. The excellent Visconti who had asked me to dinner two or three times during the winter, has suddenly taken a notion to ask me at least once every week. I hope I am not grown so churlish but that I appreciate his well-meant courtesy. But the fag is too great.
He has a house in Thirteenth Street neighboring on St. Vincent's Hospital, and he also has a motherless daughter, Gina, abounding in vitality, who must be amused. The proximity to the hospital, he intimates, the smell of carbolate and iodoform, depress young blood, and Gina, being super-American, must not be allowed to remember that there is anything unpleasant in life. I trust I am not the only vessel chosen to bring more lively spirits to that girl.
The effort for me is immense. I go to Crestlands after office hours, dress, return to town, and then make a late train for Crestlands again. The food is excellent and Gina sings prettily in a soprano as rich as her coloring. But the next morning Visconti's does not enjoy the fruit of my undimmed energies.
More recently, Visconti has urged me not to dress and in that I see the fine hand of Gina at work. As an American-born girl, Gina is quick and eager to read the signs and weather indications. And though I am becoming dexterous in excuses, I dined at the Visconti's last night nevertheless. Gina sang theSole mioandUna voce poco faand even told my fortune in cards, predicting that I should "be married a second time."
"But never a first time?" I queried simply.
"Oh, then you've never been married at all!" Gina exulted, and she energetically read the cards for me afresh. Her sortilege evidently is not a perfect science. But it occurs to me that by means of it the clever Gina found out more about my personal life than ever I had vouchsafed to her in all our acquaintance.
When I returned home I found Alicia in my study sitting late over the catalogue, a copy of which she is now completing. She jumped from her chair.
"Oh, I am so glad you've come, Uncle Ranny," she clapped her hands joyously. "I have found something we have overlooked."
"What is it, Alicia?" And my gaze was, I admit, fascinated by her flushed cheeks and starlike eyes sparkling with excitement. She seemed the Muse incarnating those books, the very spirit of beauty they enshrine. And yet she is not quite sixteen.
"It's Shelley's 'Alastor'!" she cried. "And it's so thin that it had slipped in between the covers of another book. It's a first edition—1816, isn't it?"
"Yes, Alicia. And a very beautiful poem besides."
"Oh, isn't it!" she cried in exultation. "I have read it all, Uncle Ranny, and do you know what I found out?"—and her voice became more solemn—"it is your life Shelley was writing!"
I laughed uproariously.
"Yes, he did!" flashed Alicia. "Only your life is so much better. He was so absorbed in himself, Alastor, that he died in his loneliness. And you—you are simply surrounded by people who love you. You—!"
And then, I regret to record, self-consciousness overtook Alicia. She became aware of her own vehemence and blushing furiously made as if to run out of the room.
My position of vantage near the door enabled me to stop her.
"Wait, my dear," I endeavored to lift her lowered chin. "Enthusiasm is nothing to be ashamed of. It's one of the finest things in life. And I'll tell you more—we are always applying to ourselves everything we read in books."
"Isn't that," murmured Alicia shamefacedly, "why people love books?" Foolish girl—to wake the sleeping pedant in me!
"Not altogether, Alicia. When we get older we become less personal. I love books because they hold the truth and the wisdom of men's minds. And aside from life and love, Alicia, wisdom and truth are the greatest realities in the world. There is death, of course, but who cares to dwell upon death?"
"I always did think that life and—and—love were greater than books," stammered Alicia earnestly. "And now that you yourself say so, I am sure of it!"
Astonishing child! When has she had the time to speculate upon the magnitude of life and love? Always that young thing keeps revealing herself to me afresh. I looked at her in silence for a moment. Here was a better counselor than any one, Dibdin excepted, with whom I might discuss the impending return of Pendleton.
"Alicia," I began in another tone, "there is something I should like to talk to you about. It's criminally late, I know, and you ought to be in bed, but since you will dissipate on the catalogue, I'll keep you up a little longer." I led her back to a chair and she gazed at me wide-eyed.
"Is it anything about—the—children?" she whispered, somewhat frightened.
"Yes—in a way—it is about the children. But more particularly it is about their father. Have you ever heard of him?"
"Their father!—I thought he was dead!" she murmured, awe-struck.
"There were times when we all thought so. He disappeared some years ago. But he's alive, Alicia. I've just heard from Dibdin, who found him in Japan." Her eyes grew wider.
"How terrible!" she breathed. "Does he know all—that has happened?"
"He does now—of course he didn't until Mr. Dibdin told him." And then this occurred to me. Ought I to shield Pendleton to the extent of telling her positively that he had lost his memory or identity? No. A confidant deserves scrupulous honesty, even if that confidant be as young as Alicia. "He told Dibdin," I went on, "that he lost his memory of the past and found himself one day stranded in Manila. Led rather a wild and worthless life afterwards—people who lose their memories seem to do that."
"Do you think that's true?" she queried.
"I don't know, Alicia, but when he comes back I suppose we'll have to accept that version. Dibdin will have some advice on that point, I feel sure."
Alicia remained silent for a time lost in reflection. Her child's face in her perturbation was the face of a grown woman.
"Do you think he'll want to take back the children, Uncle Ranny?"
"That's the crux of the whole matter, Alicia. I don't know. But if he does, he'll have a right to do so, of course; they are his."
"Oh, oh!" and her hands flew up to her face in a gesture of poignant despair. "Turn them over to such a man! Is that the way the world's arranged?"
I smiled gloomily. I saw that there was no need of comment upon the arrangement of the world. This girl young in her teens understood it as well as any one.
"Then I'd have to go, too," she uttered hoarsely with a dry sob of bitterness in her throat.
"Not necessarily," I interposed.
"Oh, yes, I should," she insisted doggedly, as though driving something painful into her flesh. "But it doesn't matter about me. But, Uncle Ranny, you won't—you can't give them up! They're all so happy here. Little Jimmie and Laura and Randolph! What chance would they have of growing up fine—away from you—-with a man like that? You won't let them go—you won't, you won't! Oh, it would be horrible, horrible!" she ended passionately.
"Listen, my dear," I tried to calm her. "I had no wish to harrow your feelings. I told you because you love the children—and we must face all this together. I shall want your help, your support." She flashed a sweet look mingled of pride and gratitude.
"After all you—have been through," she murmured incoherently. "But why don't you do this, Uncle Ranny!" and with the quick transition possible to youth, she was again alive, eager, excited, this little fellow conspirator of mine. "Why don't you let him come here and live right in this house for a while? We'll be awfully crowded," she ran on with flushed energy, "but we'll find room for him. And let's be awfully nice to him—and believe everything he says. Then we could watch him, and I just know we'll find out whether he's all right or not!"
I laughed at her enthusiasm.
"You forget, Alicia," I informed her, "that even if he shouldn't prove all right, he is still the father of those children."
"I don't care," she returned stoutly. "If he's bad and sees that we see he's bad, he wouldn't have the face to take them away from here. Even a bad father wants his children to be all right!"
"And how in the world do you know that, you astounding infant?"
"Oh, I know!" with a triumphant laugh, "At the Home—some fathers brought their children and cried—one of them did—because he was so bad he didn't think he was fit to have a child near him. I had tiptoed into the matron's office, and I heard him!"
"Perhaps he didn't want to support the brat," I scoffed to cover up my wonder.
"Well, and do you think he will?" Alicia snatched at my words. "A man who ran away from them, loafing round for years? Oh, it will be easy, Uncle Ranny!" she chuckled. "He couldn't fool us!"
"And why, my little Portia, couldn't he?"
"Because," said Alicia thoughtfully, "he will always be thinking of himself and we—won't."
"You mean," I pressed, delightedly, "he'll be self-conscious and give himself away, the while we are clothed in our rectitude?"
"Yes!" she cried, with a laugh. "We'll be thinking of Jimmie and Laura and Randolph—and it's always easier to think what to do when you're thinking of somebody else—not of yourself."
"And did you discover that also in the matron's office at the Home?" I leaned toward her in amazement.
"No," she bent her gaze downward, "I learned that right here."
I kissed Alicia upon the cheek. It lies heavy at my door that I have shown her too little affection in the past merely because she is not related to me. It startled me to realize that dear to me as Laura's children are, Alicia is the dearest of them all.
As with a gentle good night she slipped away, a profound sigh of relief escaped me. That child succeeded in almost wholly blotting out my feeling of bitter perplexity after talking with Gertrude. Do Alicias upon growing older turn into Gertrudes, I wonder? No, I think not. Surely not.
I now look to the return of Pendleton almost with equanimity.
CHAPTER XIII
I am agitated like a hen with a newly hatched brood.
It has suddenly been revealed to me that the complacency with which I have been regarding my care and rearing of the children is abysmally false and wholly unjustified.
They are not properly clothed for New York and even here in Crestlands they seem on a sudden pitifully shabby. The competition in that sort of thing in a suburb is keen. Everybody's children seem better dressed than my own and yet, do what I will, I cannot afford to spend more. Randolph's high-school dignity is positively impaired by clothes which he is constantly outgrowing. And the rate at which Jimmie wears out trousers and soils white suits is simply unbelievable. Laura alone seems to have the gift of always keeping her things fresh and wearing them as though they were new.
As for Alicia, that girl ought to be clothed in purple, at least figuratively, if only I could afford it. It seems to me I cannot live another day unless I procure for Alicia a large collection of frocks and blouses and shoes and whatever else would set off that faunlike creature, compact of energy and grace. For almost daily that child grows more beautiful in a way that pulls at my heartstrings.
I trust I am no idiotic parent, or foster parent, to rave about her eyes and complexion and the like. I am as dispassionate as any one can well be. But truly there is something starlike in her eyes and at times, when she is sewing or reading or working on my eternal catalogue, I surprise her pensive, absorbed in some long thoughts of her own that not for worlds would I disturb. At such moments I am absolutely fascinated by those soft pools of light that irradiate her face.
Are other girls like that at her age, I wonder? It seems scarcely conceivable. At any rate, I have never seen any others like her. But then, I have seen so few.
The truth remains, however, that I positively must dress her better. Even my dull fancy joyously leaps at the vision of Alicia beautifully dressed and diffusing sweetness and fragrance through the house. Of course, I cannot single her out. There is Laura, too. And it might seem invidious, although as the eldest of them all, Alicia is entitled to especial consideration. I cannot moreover allow Pendleton to observe that I have kept his children shabby. Few are the claims that Pendleton can legitimately array against me, but the shabbiness of the children would too flagrantly proclaim my failure. Nor does Dibdin know as yet my rake's progress since Fred Salmon made a business man of me.
But where am I to get the money for clothes when the mere routine of subsistence absorbs it all? There is still Dibdin's yellowing cheque intact, but I cannot use that—no.
Ah—I have it! I shall sell "Alastor!"
Since I had overlooked it, I shall merely assume I never had it. In its Rivière binding "Alastor" should bring at least two hundred dollars and may bring more. Heaven knows it cost me more. It holds some marginal memoranda by Leigh Hunt, which should not detract from its value. Since Alicia opines that my life is more laudable than Alastor's because there are those who love me, she shall profit by her judgment. "Alastor" shall be sacrificed for her soft and lovely frocks.
Sooner or later I had to come to it. What is a volume more or less compared to the happiness of a household? I am glad I have decided this. So farewell, "Alastor, Spirit of Solitude!"
I seem to be possessed by the mad feverish spirit of carnival.
Having sold my "Alastor" by means of an advertisement in the SundayTimesfor two hundred and twenty-five dollars, I experienced a sensation of richer blood in my veins by that accession of wealth. "Alastor" has clothed all my family. I am sorry for the old woman who lived in a shoe. She possessed no library. The moral is obvious. What though I parted with a little bit of myself when I parted with that book, I have engrafted something else in its place. For the children also are myself.
I do not delegate Griselda any more to do the buying for them.
First I took Jimmie and Randolph to a men's outfitting shop where the atmosphere is august. Alicia offered to come along, but though Jimmie is hotly attached to her, he was vocal with objections.
"This is men's business," he cried, "and us men must go alone."
"Wemen," corrected Laura, laughing and kissing him.
"Usmen know how to talk!" he retorted, violently rubbing the kiss from his cheek. Kisses, he implied, were all very well in their place, but not at important crises in masculine lives, not when thetoga viriliswas hanging grandly from their shoulders.
"Come on, old man," Randolph interposed with a wink in my direction, and Jimmie's wrath was appeased. The "old man" soothed and uplifted him to the proper pitch of virile dignity.
The seventy-five dollars laid out upon those two boys have given me more satisfaction than anything else recently—until I spent the balance upon the girls. Men's shops are prosaic and dull compared with those Greek temples that line Fifth Avenue with feminine apparel. As the paymaster for the boys I was unnoticed. As the "uncle" of the two girls opening the door to heart's desire, I was an object of almost affectionate solicitude to the saleswoman. They were alert to help and advise. What a freemasonry, an empire within an empire, is the domain of women's clothes! In the latest slang and in words from Shakespeare the jaded saleswomen were eager to interpret my wishes.
"I want some frocks and things for these girls," I announced boldly in one of the great shops. "Not too expensive but things nice girls ought to wear."
"I know," nasally asserted an efficient blonde, ceasing her mastication and mysteriously secreting what she was chewing somewhere in her capacious mouth. "Somethin' nice and classy—and quiet, but—youknow!"
"Er—precisely—"
"Neat but not gaudy?" put in her more pallid, more "cultured" companion, with a faded smile to complete the specification.
"Ah—exactly so," I murmured and Laura seemed to experience a difficulty in restraining herself from giggling.
Alicia, however, with the simple directness that is hers, proceeded quietly to mention voiles and organdies and soon the discussion became technical and I helpless. I thought it wise to whisper to Alicia the amount of money at her disposal. She gasped her astonishment with a blush and then a beautiful light of gratitude and pleasure leaped into her eyes and I believe the child was going to cry. I turned away quickly, and steadily she proceeded with the business in hand.
To the lady who quoted Polonius, the neat but not gaudy one, I intrusted the selection of those things that I was not to see; she was sincerely gratified at my confidence and, I believe, conscientious.
There was just about enough change left for refreshments at Huyler's for the girls and paterfamilias. Gay were the spirits in which we three traveled homeward. How ridiculous Gertrude would make me, if she knew it!
I felt excitement and happiness bounding in my veins, a new quality of those emotions, the like of which I had never experienced before. And my heart positively missed a beat when the crushing thought struck me: Must I now lose these young creatures and pass again into the emptiness of life?
We Americans are like the French in that we think our climate the best in the world. Or, if not the best, at least so far superior to many others that, like the French, we are steeped in vanity about it.
Of Saturdays I reach home early after midday, yet it has been persistently and infallibly raining every Saturday afternoon the entire blessed spring. If perchance I want to take a walk and breathe some air, I cannot stir out of the house.
Yet a nervous restlessness possesses me: I must have some diversion. It suddenly occurred to me to ask the girls to put on their various new frocks that came last evening. For a moment I was a little ashamed at the thought. But at bottom, I suppose, every male is a Persian Ahasuerus, desirous of displaying and gloating over the beauty of his women folk. I have no doubt but that the king secretly admired Vashti even though he was wroth at her disobedience.
Laura, it appeared, was in the next street at the house of a school friend, but Alicia complied eagerly, displaying anything but the suffragette indignation of Vashti. She was, in fact, eager to parade her frocks with quite feminine excitement.
In her clinging voile, in soft-tinted organdie, in white slippers and silk stockings, Alicia appeared,—a vision surprising, disturbingly radiant with youthful charm. There was something with a blue sash that made her simply exquisite, the very incarnation of grace. Her hair gathered tightly at the nape of her neck and then spreading out into a great brush, a cloud of shimmering fine gold on her shoulders, seemed the only mark of childhood left that prevented me from being like another St. Anthony, miserably afraid of her.
I know not what devil possessed me to ask her to go and put up her hair before she took off that frock. How different must have been the character of Persia's queen. For Alicia ran out of the room and almost in a twinkling she was back with her hair up.
I sat for a moment staring at her speechless, dry-lipped and open-mouthed. For before me, flushed and sparkling, stood the most adorable young creature I had ever seen. Why should there be so much mystery in feminine hair?
"You—you—child!" I blurted out finally in a sort of choleric tenderness. "How dare you look so beauti—so grown up in my house!"
A peal of excited laughter was her answer and she made as if she would rush toward me with open arms, as might an affectionate child eager to caress an indulgent parent—and then on a sadden she checked herself, a blush suffusing her cheeks and her very ears.
"Go call Griselda," I commanded, to cover her confusion, "and show her the young woman we've been harboring in the guise of a child."
Alicia ran out of the room to comply and for a moment I remained sitting in my chair as under a spell. Then I rose hastily to dispel such nonsensical emotions and left my room, only to come face to face with Alicia and Griselda in the dining room.
"Oh, ay—yes!" muttered my aging Griselda, her swarthy countenance hot from the kitchen stove, looking more forbiddingly sybilline than ever, "It's all over!" she added mysteriously.
"What do you mean—all over?" I demanded a little stupidly, though dimly I suppose I understood her.
"The young besoms grow up sae fast, it's a meeracle they dinna wed in their cradles!"
"Wed!" I cried in disgust at the word. "You women are always thinking of only one thing—even you, Griselda. Go," I turned to Alicia, "let down your hair again this minute, so you won't put such wild notions into Griselda's frivolous mind."
Alicia laughed deliciously and even Griselda with a sort of dark twisted smile reiterated:
"Oh, ay—the young besoms!" Whereupon my young woman impulsively threw her arms about Griselda and kissed the brown cheek with gusto. Griselda returned by pinching Alicia's cheek fiercely.
My nephew Randolph and a companion, a tall gawky boy coming into the house at that moment, stood in their raincoats at the dining-room door and gaped, blocking Alicia's path.
"I say! Look who's here!" my young hopeful exclaimed with a low whistle, wagging his head from side to side. The other boy merely stared in dumb awe, twisting his wet cap in his fingers. That gawk and Alicia are the same age, yet—the difference!
"Let her go through and unmask," I waved them aside and Alicia, with her head down, ran laughing out of the room.
I returned to my chair and sat down as one dazed. My policy henceforth will be to frown on suchlike tricks—though I myself had instigated this one. What an occupation for a man of books and tranquillity—one who desired to write of Brunetto Latini—to add to the body of scholarship upon Dante!
And suddenly I put my head down on my arms and laughed long and I am sure quite meaninglessly.
For if I were a woman, I might just as easily have sobbed in a way to tear out the heart. Decidedly the suspense of awaiting news from Dibdin regarding Pendleton must be undermining my nerves.