I am gey ill to live with.I seem to myself like the irascible old gentlemen in the comedies with the prithees and monstrous fine epigrams, forever taking snuff—save that there is no comedy about me.I take down books and I cannot read them. What pleasure I used to experience in leaving some of the leaves uncut in fine editions so as to cut them on further readings! I have tried to extract that joy by cutting some recently, but there is no joy in it.Why am I so certain that Pendleton will take away all these that I love and leave me desolate? All his past seems to argue against the probability. Yet constantly I see before me the picture of their going in a body with that man while I stand speechless, attempting to smile benignantly. How we dramatize ourselves, even the least imaginative amongst us! And all the time I feel as though great gouts of blood were dripping, dripping from my heart in nameless anguish.Alicia, that divine child, is watching me unobtrusively though closely, whenever she can. She surrounds me with comforts and attentions. But like some sick owl, I prefer to brood alone.The somewhat isolated position of my châlet on the rock and the lack of a wife in the household has saved me from making intimate acquaintances among my Crestlands neighbors. But there is one young man, Judkins, an architect in the stucco house opposite, who strides over to my porch and insists upon talking of his performances at golf."Ought to join the Club," he keeps reiterating. "Nothing like eighteen holes to take the kinks outa your brain after the hullabaloo in the city.""Er—do I seem to have many kinks?" I ask, whereat he laughs in his harsh voice."All got 'em!" he cries. "Can't get away from 'em. Books!" he adds explosively, "books are no good! They give you the willies!"And that man claims to have studied at the Beaux Arts! Edmond de Goncourt, that neurasthenic philosopher, prayed that he might make a hundred thousand francs from his play "Germinie Lacerteux," so that he might buy the house opposite and put this notice on it: "To be let to people who have no children, who do not play any musical instrument, and who will be permitted to keep only goldfish as pets." As for me, I should waive the children, the pets and the musical instruments; I would merely say, "No proselyting golfers need apply."Alicia, to mitigate my mood, I suppose, devised a picnic in the woods. No one was to come save the children and I and that gawky companion of Randolph's, the boy John Purington, lest Randolph should be bored. Randolph, it appears, is easily bored. The consciousness of my recent hypochondriac behavior led me to accept the suggestion with alacrity.The luncheon Griselda prepared was packed in paper boxes by Alicia and together,en masse, our little procession set forth and made its way to a grove less than two miles distant bordering on the great Croton aqueduct.Randolph and the gawky boy fell at once to tossing a baseball, Jimmie rolled delightedly about the lush grass, still grappling with his insoluble problem of rolling up a slope and still perplexed as to why it should be easier to roll down. Laura ran to his aid and Alicia sat beside me and laughed."That is the whole problem of life that Jimmie is facing," I observed gloomily."No, it isn't, Uncle Ranny," she put her hand on my arm as she contradicted. "That is only the law of gravitation. There is a lot more to life than that!""Yes, Alicia," I lowered my voice, "but when that man comes, how it will hurt to think of little Jimmie, of all those children of my sister's in the care of that man who's really her—her murderer!""Please, please, don't think of that!" she begged, with imploring eyes. "That hasn't happened yet. And we'll—we'll manage it somehow. Maybe he's a good man, after all—and, oh; we'll watch him—we'll watch him! Besides, he mayn't come. If he is what you think, then I am sure he won't come!"That proved a very cheering thought.Before I knew it, I was myself tossing a ball with Alicia and romping with the rest of them.It was only after the lunch had been eaten under the trees and the egg shells and papers were gathered and stowed away, and the gawky boy proceeded clumsily to monopolize Alicia, who has not the heart to snub anybody, that my depression returned.Whereupon Alicia gayly proposed that it was time to think of going home, because Jimmie was drowsy and must not forego his nap.Was it adroitness or spontaneity? I cannot tell, but it is marvelous how that girl anticipates and understands.It was a happy, tired, air-steeped company that returned home.A telegram has just arrived. Dibdin and Pendleton have landed in San Francisco!...CHAPTER XIVPendleton is here. He has been here a week. Like one in the dazed excitement of some dream, the sort of farrago that leaves you limp and weakly smiling when you wake up and see the sun, I have been going about with numb limbs, strangely galvanized, not so much into activity as the expectation of activity.What is it I have been expecting to happen? I hardly know. But perhaps I have been expecting melodrama. And I am overcome by the obvious truism that genuine melodrama is anything but melodramatic. That is why melodrama on the stage, with its ranting and strutting and flourishes, disgusts one by its bathos.The presence of Pendleton in my house, occupying my bedroom while I have withdrawn into my little study, is the essence of melodrama.Yet every one and everything is in a tacit conspiracy to make it seem natural. There is a tension in the atmosphere, without doubt, but we are all of us madly, energetically ignoring it, hiding it.The man's conduct has been astounding, unimpeachable, unexceptionable.He out-Enochs Enoch Arden. Yet—why should I disguise the fact to myself—I hate him. That, too, I suppose, is melodrama. But do what I will, he remains detestable to me. I cannot trust him. I try, however, not to show it. Dibdin has acquired a deep furrow between the eyes, due doubtless to his sense of responsibility in having resuscitated Pendleton. He carries the air of some magician or sorcerer who has evoked a demon and is overwhelmed with terror by the problem of what to do with him.But I must in decency acknowledge that Pendleton's behavior has been without blemish.Dibdin had sent me a long night letter from San Francisco saying he would remain there a few days, "to give the fellow chance to bolt if he wants to." There had been other telegrams. I was not to meet them at the train but to give explicit directions. It was as well. I could not have met Pendleton at the train even if he were coming from the dead. A week ago, when Dibdin telephoned from the city, I went so far as to order a cab to meet them.There again the histrionics of the situation were at a hopeless disadvantage. For what I remember most vividly of that Saturday evening was the sickness of my soul as I sat awaiting their arrival. Again and again I had steeled myself to tell the children of their father's coming. I framed words and sentences in my mind until the cold perspiration moistened my forehead, but I could not face the ordeal. I had thought I knew myself—that I was steeled to the tests of life. But I saw I was still a reed. It came to within a couple of hours before their arrival and still I had not told them. I found myself on my two-inch terrace and a stream of profanity was breaking from my lips. On a sudden I saw Jimmie standing beside me. Shame and chagrin overtook me and I bent down to him and begged him to forgive me."Don't you mind me, Uncle Ranny," he put his hand in mine. "I'm a man, and I know a man has got to swear sometimes.""No, Jimmie—not if the man has brains enough with which to think."That contact with the child, however, seemed to release something in my clamped and aching skull."Run, Jimmie," I said, "and send Alicia out to me. I wish to speak to her."Jimmie, to whom commissions are delight, was off like an arrow.Some moments elapsed before Alicia could come to me and during that time I had a mad impulse to fly from it all, to, seize my hat and steal away, to take a train to the city and not to return, until it was all over. But I waited nevertheless and Alicia, who had been helping Griselda, came running out flushed, with concern in her eyes."Alicia," I began miserably, "I have tried to screw up my courage to tell the children about the coming of—of their father. But I simply can't do it, Alicia; it's—it's beyond me. I—I want you to tell them," I faltered like a guilty schoolboy. The girl winced perceptibly but—"All right," she answered; "do you mean now?""About half-past six—the train gets here at six thirty-five. You take them into the garden—and keep them there until after the men come, and—I call you.""Yes—Uncle Ranny," she whispered—"but, oh, please don't worry about it so much!""No, my dear," I murmured and at that moment I felt closer to her than to any other living being. To take the children out of the house upon the coming of their father—it sounded like a funeral. And it was at that moment—my funeral. And the rest of the afternoon was a blur and the encompassing world was a shadow. It was broken; no, it was too insubstantial for breaking. It kept thinning and receding away from me and I was left a dully throbbing entity in the primal chaos before Creation.I was startled at last by hearing the wheezy groan of an aged taxi outside and like the galvanized corpse I was, I felt my members heavily stirring and propelling me to the door.On the path in the curiously sickly light of a premature dusk under a clouded, lifeless sky I saw Dibdin and Pendleton, slightly stooping forward to the slope, walking toward me. That moment of poignant joy at seeing Dibdin, of exquisite pain on beholding Pendleton—I shall never forget it!"Dibdin!" I cried, rushing at his hand and clinging to it to defer as long as possible touching the other's. Then, after ages it seemed, my eyes slowly turned to the tall figure of Pendleton and rested on the fleshy face, somewhat loose and pendulous, smooth-shaven and purplish, with eyes that fell before my own. Finally I disengaged my hand and held it out to him. I could not do otherwise."Jim," I murmured and my voice had labored over a universe of barriers to achieve that. But I could utter no more.He peered at me from his protruding eyes as though he also were struggling, struggling with memory and with memories, with a teeming past, with all that he had been and committed, and for an instant I felt sorry for him."Come in," I breathed deeply, and we made our way into the house and into my study."Randolph," Pendleton finally uttered with a profound sigh, and then I recalled that he was playing a part. To me the appalling reality of the whole episode had been so excruciating that momentarily I forgot that he was in all likelihood playing a part. But was he? How could he? In the face of these children, in the face of all he is guilty of, how could he play a part, when the truth would raise him almost to a kind of manhood? I cannot give him the benefit of the doubt and yet I cannot wholly doubt him. Some idiotic simplicity or imbecility inside me makes it impossible for me to envisage any creature in human form as so consummate a villain. Perhaps—perhaps there is something—"Randolph," he murmured in a deep guttural—"I know you—I remember you—yes, you are—you are—" and he paused. We hung for a moment like things dangling by threads, like marionettes motionless. Then, with a prickling sensation of sweat over all my body, I broke the spell by fumbling with a box of cigarettes and with a hand spasmodically quivering like the needle of a seismograph, I held them out."Have a good voyage?" I heard myself saying, as we all smoked and covertly stole glances at one another. I was not flying at his throat. Dibdin puffed heavily with the crease deepening between his eyes and Pendleton's gaze roved questing and unsteady about the room. Melodrama! There never was any except on the stage! In life there is only drama—and pain."How are the kids?" Dibdin asked abruptly."Fine!" I exclaimed automatically, in an unnatural voice, like a pistol shot. "They are out in the garden there," and Dibdin nodded. I felt certain that his mind also was seeing the analogy to a funeral. And now my brain seemed to be shaking off its dull lethargy. From somewhere in Maeterlinck the haunting memory of a phrase came glimmering through my consciousness, like a dim light through a fog, to the effect that if Socrates and Christ had been in the palace of Agamemnon, the tragedies of the house of Atreus could not have happened. I longed for a little wisdom to deal with the situation."Would you like," I turned to Pendleton, "to see the children?""The children," he repeated dazedly. "Yes—yes—I'd like to see them. But—just a moment. The children," he repeated piteously, "but no Laura!"Sharp, sharp was the stab at my heart when he spoke her name. But either he is a supreme master in deceit or I am the dullest of simpletons. For the struggle through clouds of memory that his features expressed seemed real to me."I told you she was dead!" snapped Dibdin gruffly, without turning to him."You told me? Ah, yes." And he sighed heavily. "Of course you told me." And his chin sank weightily to his breast. We remained thus silent for a space. Then—"Come," I said, standing up. "I'll take you to the children."He rose ponderously, his great frame limp and leaden, and followed me somberly. He seemed sincere enough in his grief, I must own that. Dibdin did not move.I led him into the garden toward the spot where the children were huddled about Alicia. She was talking to them in low tones and they were listening in dead silence. Never again, I hope, shall I experience that sense of going to my own execution that I experienced at that instant. Execution—no! I could have walked to a gibbet or a guillotine smiling, I am quite sure. What is my life to me? I was walking rather to the execution of those four young souls under the gnarled old apple tree.Alicia, too! By Heaven! Like a lightning stroke that fact crashed into my soul. He would take Alicia also. No—no! He had no claim upon her, thank God!"Not Alicia!" my voice broke out from the turmoil of my thoughts like the voice in a dream breaking the barriers of sleep."Eh?" said Pendleton faintly."Did you call, Uncle Ranny?" Alicia turned and asked in a clear, steady voice."Yes, Alicia," I struggled for control. "Here is Mr. Pendleton—come to see the children." I meant to say "his children," but I could not.The whole sickly-colored evening seemed to shudder at my words. The children seemed like wraiths under the tree to shudder away from the intruding material world.In a moment—what a tragic moment—Pendleton was bending toward them, peering, peering into their white, frightened faces. Then his gaze settled on Alicia and hung there for a space."This must be Randolph," he finally turned to the eldest boy, "grown—grown up—isn't it?" and his arms stirred forward."Yes, sir," the boy answered hoarsely and put out his hand."And this—can this be baby Laura?" Laura hung her head then raised it bravely and with shy resolution held out her hand. Pendleton took it and kissed her clumsily on the cheek.Jimmie, hanging back, clung to Alicia's skirt and watched the proceedings with troubled stealth from behind her."And this is Jimmie," I said, taking the child by the shoulder—"the youngest of them."As Pendleton was stooping toward him, Jimmie uttered a wild scream of heartbreaking terror, wrenched himself from my hold and fled like some little wounded animal toward the house. Pendleton gave a short, mirthless laugh.My throat was parched, my heart Was thumping like a rabbit's, but how I loved Jimmie at that moment!"He is only a baby," put in Alicia softly.Again Pendleton looked at her—obliquely."And this is—" he murmured."Alicia Palmer," I supplied hastily, "who has been looking after them.""Ah, Alicia—a little deputy mother—" and he held out his hand with shamefaced suavity.The scene was over—the incredible episode—commonplace enough as I write it down. But I lived a dozen melodramas in that eternity that a clock would tick off in three or four minutes of time.CHAPTER XVWalking about as I do under sentence, I am like a man of my acquaintance, a stodgy, a terrible Philistine, who cherished for years a fancy that he could write Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In all his life he had probably never rhymed anything more subtle than love, above and dove. Since any fool, in his opinion, could supply the music, he aspired only to the Gilbertian librettos. Incessantly and hopelessly out of key he went about humming the Sullivan tunes to the lyrics he alleged to have in his mind.Similarly, I go about with a sense of mendacious buoyancy,—like a shipwrecked passenger bobbing helplessly in a troubled sea, but still alive; a flickering glimmer of hope, like a desperate man facing a tiger, but still undevoured.Brazenly I still expect happiness to emerge, somehow, out of hopelessness.It is easy, of course, to lapse into moods of despondency, into wishing I were dead, since I cannot live in happiness,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh.But such moments pass. There is a sort of tonic in the rough of life when the smooth is absent, and the wits, my poor dull wits, brace themselves for the shock of action. I feel certain now that in all my years of tranquillity it is the salt of suffering that was lacking. Yet who would seek suffering for its own sake? I know, however, that I feel younger and more energetic to-day than ever I felt five years ago.Even Pendleton has his uses. He is the thorn in the side, the fox gnawing at my vitals under the cloak, but here he is in my house as its guest.He goes with me to the city of a morning on his quest for work, "a connection" as he calls it, and often I find him at home before me when I arrive, in my room, smoking, or out in the garden with the children. I wince inwardly, but I hope I do not show it.I spoke of hating him, but that is untrue. You cannot persistently hate any man, notably a guest in your house. You can only suspect him. Yet, when I see the children still shy of him, why does it give me a throbbing sense of triumph? I do not know, but so it is. Randolph alone seems to approach him nearer as the days go by. They go on walks together and Randolph confides to Alicia that he is fascinated by the tales of his father's experiences in the tropics, of ships and islands and pearl-fishing and native customs. I fancy Pendleton must be selectively on the alert in his narratives with his young son as the listener. His past must contain many things that none of us in this quiet haven will ever hear recounted.But I am indifferent to his past. I could listen and even tolerate him as my guest, if only the children were not passing to his care. He talks of "relieving" me of the burden."Don't hurry, old man," I answer casually, "they are no burden to me."He gazes at me and lowers his eyes."I tell you, Randolph, you're a revelation to me. I never knew a man like you before. They don't make them like that these days.""Praise from Sir Hubert," occurs to me, but I don't say it. I am in reality at his mercy, I suppose, but I often feel as though he were at mine. The glossing over of his atrocious conduct, the taking him at his word on the subject of his lapsed memory, which we either slur or don't refer to at all, seem to give me a tremendous advantage over him,—the commonplace advantage of simple honesty over mendacity. Not for a moment do I now believe in his lapsed memory story. I cannot deny, however, that his air is one of repentance and, as Dibdin has said, who in this world is so hard but he wouldn't give a fellow man a second chance?Jim Pendleton, now that he has been to a New York tailor's, appears as impressive and debonair as ever. He must be in the middle forties and he is not ill-looking. It is chiefly his eyes that seem changed to me. Do what I will, I cannot look at them. There is a certain disturbing obliqueness about his gaze that makes me turn mine away in a sort of vicarious shame.But, again,C'est un mauvais metier que celui de medire. And conscious of that truth, I mean to speak or think no more ill of Jim Pendleton. After all, his large contact with the world has given him something that I lack.Last evening at dinner he was regaling us with an experience of his of spearing fish in the Marquesas."I was in the back of the boat," he was saying, "with a torch in my hand, and my islander, who was an expert at it, held his spear ready for the first fish that leaped. Several of them leaped and fell again into the water round us churning it up, so that we were wet with spray. Suddenly I saw a huge mass glistening in the torchlight, falling, it seemed, right on top of us."The native buried his spear upward in the thing as it fell. I tell you that man was quick! But it was too late. The huge fish flopped into the boat with its great head on my knees and the full weight of his body on the man, sending him overboard and splintering the side of the boat. In just about a second we were in total darkness, floundering in the water, with an overturned boat. I was badly bruised and the native had both legs broken."In spite of his broken legs, however, he offered to swim ashore, to the nearest projecting rock. But I was sure he couldn't make it and very certain I couldn't. It was a job, I can tell you, righting that boat, helping that man into it and scrambling in myself; and then with a piece of splintered oar rowing ourselves in. The fellow with his broken legs, worked just as hard as I did and never uttered so much as a groan. It did me up for some time. But that fellow was spearing fish again in ten days or so."Jimmie, who is sometimes allowed to take his supper with us, sat gazing at his father, fascinated by the narrative until the last word. Then seemingly jealous that any one, even this strange father, should exceed me in prowess, his little face clouded and he demanded:"Uncle Ranny, didn't you ever spear a big fish?""No, Jimmie," I laughed, "but maybe you and I will go there one day and spear some together.""Well, anyway," he retorted stoutly, "you took us on a picnic."Whereat we all laughed, albeit my own laugh was rueful. The thought flashed through my mind that Pendleton was certain to win them to himself the moment he decided to do so. The very memory of me would become ridiculous to them."Uncle Ranny," spoke up Laura, "has been too busy feeding us and buying us clothes to go traveling."Alicia smiled radiantly at Laura across the table, and Griselda, who had just come in with the dessert, nodded her head with somber emphasis as she placed the bowl before me.I could have hugged them all three in gratitude, but nevertheless I pressed Pendleton to narrate more of his experiences."No," he shook his head, evidently taking the children's comment to heart. "That's yarn enough for one evening."That seemed to me very decent of Pendleton.I could not help laughing at Dibdin to-day. I called him up on the telephone and demanded what he meant by coming from devil knows where after more than two years' absence and virtually cutting me."Come to lunch at the Salmagundi Club," he growled."Does it pain you as much as that to ask me?""Don't be a damn fool," he retorted."Don't be so wickedly witty," I replied."At twelve-thirty," he muttered and hung up the receiver. From which I gathered that he was out of sorts.In the hall of the Club where he was waiting, I greeted him with,"'Is it weakness of intellect, birdie,' I cried,'Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?'"He stared at me."How you can be so light and idiotic in the face of circumstances," he began, "passes my comprehension.""Circumstances, my dear fellow, are all there is to life.""Want to wash your paws?""No—I am as clean as I shall ever be."I put my arm through his and allowed him to lead me to a quiet table in the rear of the billiard room, softly illumined by a shaded lamp at midday."What a delightful place!" I exclaimed. "Residence of Q.T. tranquillity.""Tranquillity be blowed," he grunted, as he sat down facing me. "What are you going to do about that Old Man of the Sea of yours?""You mean Pendleton?""Whom the devil else can I mean?""Why, nothing of course, but give him a leg up if we can. What else is there to do? I just received a letter this morning from an insurance company asking for confidential information about him. He's given me as a reference and they're evidently considering him.""The Danbury and Phoenix?" he asked."Yes. How did you know?""I got one, too.""I suppose we are really his only two possible sponsors at present.""I'd as soon recommend a convict from Sing Sing," he muttered."Oh, no!" I protested. "Not as bad as that. Besides, sometimes you have to recommend even a convict.""I'd much rather recommend a convict. I hate to lie about this man. I've been asked whether I would trust him and I have to say yes. But you know dashed well I wouldn't. Give me a cigarette," he ended savagely."I think he'll go straight now," I murmured dully, passing my case to Dibdin and looking away. "The children will no doubt have an influence on him.""You judge everybody by yourself.""How d'ye mean—myself?""The long and the short of it is," he declared, putting both elbows on the table, "I had no idea what the children would do to you.""What did they do to me?" I queried, mystified."Made you over—that's all.""Explain," I said, gazing at him stupidly."What is there to explain?" growled Dibdin, when the waiter was out of earshot. "You were always a decent sort of idiot—bookworm, muddler, dilettante, whatever it was—afraid of real life, fit only to collect pretty little books or old musty volumes that nobody really cares to read in—a drifter, with about as much knowledge of the problems of existence as a stuffed owl in a glass."What happened? Your sister's orphans come to you. You plunge into life, go into business which you detest, lose your money, go to work as a clerk, by George! You of all people!—Keep a roof over them, bring them up and hang me if I don't think you were idiotically happy in it all until I brought this Old Man of the Sea!—What right had I to pick him up and bring him and bungle it all? And why the hell didn't you warn me not to fetch him? I thought I was helping you out. I'd sooner have chucked the brute overboard—I would, by Heaven!"For a moment I could reply nothing at all to Dibdin. His estimate and account of my actions were natural enough to him who, despite his burly manner, exaggerates everybody's qualities. It seemed the more remarkable that he who so firmly believed in the second chance should now find no word to say in Pendleton's favor. But I could see clearly enough that what troubled him was the pain he instinctively realized the departure of the children from me to Pendleton was certain to bring me."Why didn't you cable me, 'Lose the brute?'" he took up his argument."Because, my dear fellow," I put my hand on his arm across the table, "it was too late; once you had found him and told him of what had occurred in his absence, it was too late. Would you like to live with the menacing uncertainty of him overhanging in space? Rather have him here and face him. Besides, the children are his"—I knew I must state my view squarely on that head—"If he is fit to take them, then have them he must, regardless.""Regardless of you, you mean?" He put it darkly."Yes—regardless of me, certainly. I don't count.""By the Lord!" and his fine head shot upwards in a gesture that was in itself invigorating. "D'you know you are twenty times the man you were?" he cried. "I couldn't have believed it. You—you're stupendous!"I laughed and waved him away with a "Retro, Satanas.""You're going it blind like that," he ran on, disregarding me,—"Salmon and Byrd," with a laugh—"losing all your money and then—Visconti's—slaving for the kids—meeting it all—by gad, you are living life!—heroic, I call it—I take off my hat to you!""Put it on again," I murmured, moved by his vehemence. It was certainly agreeable to hear such words from Dibdin, who never lied. Praise is a savory dish, not a thing that my misspent life has been surfeited with, and it was exquisitely soothing to one's vanity. But it was clear enough that Dibdin was wrong. His usually lucid view was obscured by the tangle of circumstances that weighed upon him. Naturally, I could not leave him in his error."If you knew," I managed to stammer, "the malignant fear that is eating my liver white, you—""Fear of what?" he broke in."Of turning those kids over to him;" I lowered my voice—"just that and—nothing else.""Just that," he repeated gloomily, nodding his head. "Who would have supposed it? By the Lord! If ever there was a bull in a China shop, I am that bull. Why the devil did I ever pick the brute up? Look here!" he flashed with sudden inspiration, "why not deport him as we imported him, eh? I might manage it—I might!""No—no, Dibdin—neither you nor I would do such a thing.""Why not?" he growled."That would make us—worse than he is, or was," I explained sadly. For I must own that for an instant my heart leaped at his suggestion. "Besides," I went on prosily, "it's not so easy to lay a ghost when once you've raised it. We've got to believe him, Dibdin, my boy—if only for the young ones' sake. He will probably get his job, and the thing to do now is not to arouse his suspicion of how we feel about him. Believe everything he says—believe in him. Thousands every year, according to the newspapers, turn up willfully missing! He was tired of the humdrum life and lit out; that is all there was to it. Now he wants to try back. You yourself thought he ought to have another chance."There was genuine pathos in old Dibdin's voice when he spoke out with a humid somber look:"By George, that chap's the Nemesis of us all! By his one willful act of destructive irresponsibility he has affected all our lives destructively. It's maddening that one worthless brute should be able to do all that. He killed Laura, damn him; he orphaned these kids; he's upset your life—he makes wretched conspirators of you and me—g-r-r-r! I'd like to pound him to a jelly!"I laughed joylessly."What would that undo?""Nothing, I dare say," snapped Dibdin. "Besides, you really have no complaint, boy. You tower, Randolph, my lad; yes, by George! you tower head and shoulders above any one I know! His very villainy has made you over—blown the breath of life into you."I believe I answered something flippant."Look here!" he cried, with a sudden movement upsetting a glass of water and disregarding it. "If those kids go over to him, we can keep an eye on him—just the same—as though we were with them!""How d'you mean?" I queried, puzzled."That girl—what's her name—Alicia! She'll keep an eye on him—and them. She's sharp, I tell you, with her innocent blue eyes. Give you a daily report like—like—""No!" I emphatically interrupted him. "That, never! She is not going from my house—certainly not to him!"I was the more abashed by my own vehemence when I saw Dibdin staring at me with lifted eyebrows."Why—you are not—" he began blankly—but I interrupted him hotly."I am nothing!—She is to me just as Jimmie and Laura and Randolph are, but they are unfortunately his. Don't you know the meaning of responsibility for young lives, Dibdin? I want to give her her chance, educate her, make a fine woman of her. They have a father; she has no one but me. I can't turn her out—and I wish," I added lamely, "I had as much right to keep them all.""Whew!" he whistled in renewed astonishment."I can only say I don't know you any more. I used to know you, but I'm proud to make the acquaintance of the new Mr. Randolph Byrd.""Don't be a damn fool, Dibdin," I mumbled in exasperation. "You know you are talking rot. Why the devil are you so interested in the kids? There is that cheque you sent—!""You haven't cashed it," he interposed, moving his shoulders as one shaking off something. "Why the deuce haven't you?""I will some day," I grinned at him feebly, "when I need it more. But you haven't answered my question."I felt I was goading him brutally but for once I seemed to have the dear old tramp upon the hip. For all his gruffness he was as full of emotions as anybody. It seemed to me absurd for a man to hide his implanted instinct, one of the noblest of all the little hidden root-cellars of our instincts, under a false shame or indifference. Women are wiser—they don't hide theirs; and I had become shameless about mine."Why," I repeated, "are you so much interested in those kids?""Don't be an ass!" he grunted, looking down upon the wet tablecloth, and a spasm as of pain crossed his countenance."Ah, you see!" I laughed, attempting to lighten his mood."Randolph," he uttered in a strange solemn tone that sent a slight thrill through me. "I told you once there was a woman I had cared about—and only one.""Yes—but you never married her.""No," he continued in the etiolated tone of a dead grief. "She was married already when I knew her."And then my sympathy went out to grizzled old Dibdin."I am sorry," I murmured, touching his hand across the table. "Did I know her?""Yes," he said quietly, "you knew her. It was Laura."In a flash of poignantly bitter and vain regret I saw the vista of the dead years—of what might have been! ...CHAPTER XVIMiracles—miracles are common as blackberries!Pendleton is once again a faithful worker in the vineyard of the insurance company.A commonplace miracle enough, but all miracles, I suppose, are commonplaces that happen to surprise us or that we don't understand.The abstract office, I am sure, has more joy over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine—but I do not wish to be blasphemous. Like Death, it claims us all in the end. A voluptuary, an idler like myself, or a renegade who broke from it indefensibly like Jim Pendleton—all, sooner or later—turn or return to its yoke like starved runaway slaves—the unrelenting office! What a change it must be to Jim after the beaches and the barrooms of the gorgeous East! But for one closely relevant circumstance I could find it in my heart to be sorry for him.What a strange and wonderful institution is the family! Another of those commonplace miracles so charged with mystery, like birth and death. If I were a classical writer or a Sir Barnes Newcome I might expatiate at length upon the subject. The things we swallow and condone and cover up for the sake of its ties!Suffice it, however, that Jim Pendleton is quietly working out his salvation, a salary and plans for re-creating his dismembered home.The children are becoming quite used to him. Randolph seems to be the nearest to him and Jimmie remains stubbornly farthest away. It is painful to think however that Jimmie's youth will the more certainly and completely detach him from me in the end.When is it all to happen? I for one dare not fix the fateful day which, with every passing hour, draws nearer. No one fixes the day. It is left dangling in the air by an invisible thread of uncertain length and strength—There are times when I could cry out in my anguish, my agony of nameless pain, fear, apprehension. But what a spectacle I should make of myself if I gave vent to emotion! We humans are not so much whited sepulchers as masked and silent volcanoes.And Jim Pendleton—what is he thinking, feeling? He is suave, quiet, controlled. He is very gentle with them all, and particularly soft-spoken with Alicia. He has taken to consulting and confabulating with her touching the characteristics and the needs of the children. At times it seems to me that I cannot bear it and once at least I have called her and spoken harshly to her, and charged her with having mislaid a volume ofBook Prices Current.How childish on my part! But my nerves are not what once they were. They are tetchy and fractious. It has been decreed that I am to have a vacation and go away for a fortnight—go to Maine or New Hampshire. If I were to burst into laughter at the thought, I might end like an hysterical woman, in uncontrollable tears. I could no more go now than I could spread my arms and fly. I am as remote from the holiday spirit as from the North Star.Poor Dibdin—how mistaken he is in me! He blathers of my "towering head and shoulders"—b-r-r-r! it makes me shudder with shame. What a weakling I am in the face of life!No—I am a toiler in Bleecker Street, of its reeking pavements, its fly-infested purlieus, where the Italian children grub and shout and sun themselves in the gutters, in the air of a thousand smells throbbing under the noonday sun. The homecoming to the third-rate suburb used to be refreshing and soothing like a delicate perfume. To see the children laughing and rosy in the square inch of garden, to see Alicia, sparkling with her young energy and enthusiasm,—it had all been like coming into a cool temple filled with shapes of beauty, after wandering in some fetid bazaar. Now it is dust and ashes. I could never convey to Dibdin or to any one else how alone I feel in the world, what chill and cutting blasts of desolation sweep into my life every time I think of its present or its future.
I am gey ill to live with.
I seem to myself like the irascible old gentlemen in the comedies with the prithees and monstrous fine epigrams, forever taking snuff—save that there is no comedy about me.
I take down books and I cannot read them. What pleasure I used to experience in leaving some of the leaves uncut in fine editions so as to cut them on further readings! I have tried to extract that joy by cutting some recently, but there is no joy in it.
Why am I so certain that Pendleton will take away all these that I love and leave me desolate? All his past seems to argue against the probability. Yet constantly I see before me the picture of their going in a body with that man while I stand speechless, attempting to smile benignantly. How we dramatize ourselves, even the least imaginative amongst us! And all the time I feel as though great gouts of blood were dripping, dripping from my heart in nameless anguish.
Alicia, that divine child, is watching me unobtrusively though closely, whenever she can. She surrounds me with comforts and attentions. But like some sick owl, I prefer to brood alone.
The somewhat isolated position of my châlet on the rock and the lack of a wife in the household has saved me from making intimate acquaintances among my Crestlands neighbors. But there is one young man, Judkins, an architect in the stucco house opposite, who strides over to my porch and insists upon talking of his performances at golf.
"Ought to join the Club," he keeps reiterating. "Nothing like eighteen holes to take the kinks outa your brain after the hullabaloo in the city."
"Er—do I seem to have many kinks?" I ask, whereat he laughs in his harsh voice.
"All got 'em!" he cries. "Can't get away from 'em. Books!" he adds explosively, "books are no good! They give you the willies!"
And that man claims to have studied at the Beaux Arts! Edmond de Goncourt, that neurasthenic philosopher, prayed that he might make a hundred thousand francs from his play "Germinie Lacerteux," so that he might buy the house opposite and put this notice on it: "To be let to people who have no children, who do not play any musical instrument, and who will be permitted to keep only goldfish as pets." As for me, I should waive the children, the pets and the musical instruments; I would merely say, "No proselyting golfers need apply."
Alicia, to mitigate my mood, I suppose, devised a picnic in the woods. No one was to come save the children and I and that gawky companion of Randolph's, the boy John Purington, lest Randolph should be bored. Randolph, it appears, is easily bored. The consciousness of my recent hypochondriac behavior led me to accept the suggestion with alacrity.
The luncheon Griselda prepared was packed in paper boxes by Alicia and together,en masse, our little procession set forth and made its way to a grove less than two miles distant bordering on the great Croton aqueduct.
Randolph and the gawky boy fell at once to tossing a baseball, Jimmie rolled delightedly about the lush grass, still grappling with his insoluble problem of rolling up a slope and still perplexed as to why it should be easier to roll down. Laura ran to his aid and Alicia sat beside me and laughed.
"That is the whole problem of life that Jimmie is facing," I observed gloomily.
"No, it isn't, Uncle Ranny," she put her hand on my arm as she contradicted. "That is only the law of gravitation. There is a lot more to life than that!"
"Yes, Alicia," I lowered my voice, "but when that man comes, how it will hurt to think of little Jimmie, of all those children of my sister's in the care of that man who's really her—her murderer!"
"Please, please, don't think of that!" she begged, with imploring eyes. "That hasn't happened yet. And we'll—we'll manage it somehow. Maybe he's a good man, after all—and, oh; we'll watch him—we'll watch him! Besides, he mayn't come. If he is what you think, then I am sure he won't come!"
That proved a very cheering thought.
Before I knew it, I was myself tossing a ball with Alicia and romping with the rest of them.
It was only after the lunch had been eaten under the trees and the egg shells and papers were gathered and stowed away, and the gawky boy proceeded clumsily to monopolize Alicia, who has not the heart to snub anybody, that my depression returned.
Whereupon Alicia gayly proposed that it was time to think of going home, because Jimmie was drowsy and must not forego his nap.
Was it adroitness or spontaneity? I cannot tell, but it is marvelous how that girl anticipates and understands.
It was a happy, tired, air-steeped company that returned home.
A telegram has just arrived. Dibdin and Pendleton have landed in San Francisco!...
CHAPTER XIV
Pendleton is here. He has been here a week. Like one in the dazed excitement of some dream, the sort of farrago that leaves you limp and weakly smiling when you wake up and see the sun, I have been going about with numb limbs, strangely galvanized, not so much into activity as the expectation of activity.
What is it I have been expecting to happen? I hardly know. But perhaps I have been expecting melodrama. And I am overcome by the obvious truism that genuine melodrama is anything but melodramatic. That is why melodrama on the stage, with its ranting and strutting and flourishes, disgusts one by its bathos.
The presence of Pendleton in my house, occupying my bedroom while I have withdrawn into my little study, is the essence of melodrama.
Yet every one and everything is in a tacit conspiracy to make it seem natural. There is a tension in the atmosphere, without doubt, but we are all of us madly, energetically ignoring it, hiding it.
The man's conduct has been astounding, unimpeachable, unexceptionable.
He out-Enochs Enoch Arden. Yet—why should I disguise the fact to myself—I hate him. That, too, I suppose, is melodrama. But do what I will, he remains detestable to me. I cannot trust him. I try, however, not to show it. Dibdin has acquired a deep furrow between the eyes, due doubtless to his sense of responsibility in having resuscitated Pendleton. He carries the air of some magician or sorcerer who has evoked a demon and is overwhelmed with terror by the problem of what to do with him.
But I must in decency acknowledge that Pendleton's behavior has been without blemish.
Dibdin had sent me a long night letter from San Francisco saying he would remain there a few days, "to give the fellow chance to bolt if he wants to." There had been other telegrams. I was not to meet them at the train but to give explicit directions. It was as well. I could not have met Pendleton at the train even if he were coming from the dead. A week ago, when Dibdin telephoned from the city, I went so far as to order a cab to meet them.
There again the histrionics of the situation were at a hopeless disadvantage. For what I remember most vividly of that Saturday evening was the sickness of my soul as I sat awaiting their arrival. Again and again I had steeled myself to tell the children of their father's coming. I framed words and sentences in my mind until the cold perspiration moistened my forehead, but I could not face the ordeal. I had thought I knew myself—that I was steeled to the tests of life. But I saw I was still a reed. It came to within a couple of hours before their arrival and still I had not told them. I found myself on my two-inch terrace and a stream of profanity was breaking from my lips. On a sudden I saw Jimmie standing beside me. Shame and chagrin overtook me and I bent down to him and begged him to forgive me.
"Don't you mind me, Uncle Ranny," he put his hand in mine. "I'm a man, and I know a man has got to swear sometimes."
"No, Jimmie—not if the man has brains enough with which to think."
That contact with the child, however, seemed to release something in my clamped and aching skull.
"Run, Jimmie," I said, "and send Alicia out to me. I wish to speak to her."
Jimmie, to whom commissions are delight, was off like an arrow.
Some moments elapsed before Alicia could come to me and during that time I had a mad impulse to fly from it all, to, seize my hat and steal away, to take a train to the city and not to return, until it was all over. But I waited nevertheless and Alicia, who had been helping Griselda, came running out flushed, with concern in her eyes.
"Alicia," I began miserably, "I have tried to screw up my courage to tell the children about the coming of—of their father. But I simply can't do it, Alicia; it's—it's beyond me. I—I want you to tell them," I faltered like a guilty schoolboy. The girl winced perceptibly but—
"All right," she answered; "do you mean now?"
"About half-past six—the train gets here at six thirty-five. You take them into the garden—and keep them there until after the men come, and—I call you."
"Yes—Uncle Ranny," she whispered—"but, oh, please don't worry about it so much!"
"No, my dear," I murmured and at that moment I felt closer to her than to any other living being. To take the children out of the house upon the coming of their father—it sounded like a funeral. And it was at that moment—my funeral. And the rest of the afternoon was a blur and the encompassing world was a shadow. It was broken; no, it was too insubstantial for breaking. It kept thinning and receding away from me and I was left a dully throbbing entity in the primal chaos before Creation.
I was startled at last by hearing the wheezy groan of an aged taxi outside and like the galvanized corpse I was, I felt my members heavily stirring and propelling me to the door.
On the path in the curiously sickly light of a premature dusk under a clouded, lifeless sky I saw Dibdin and Pendleton, slightly stooping forward to the slope, walking toward me. That moment of poignant joy at seeing Dibdin, of exquisite pain on beholding Pendleton—I shall never forget it!
"Dibdin!" I cried, rushing at his hand and clinging to it to defer as long as possible touching the other's. Then, after ages it seemed, my eyes slowly turned to the tall figure of Pendleton and rested on the fleshy face, somewhat loose and pendulous, smooth-shaven and purplish, with eyes that fell before my own. Finally I disengaged my hand and held it out to him. I could not do otherwise.
"Jim," I murmured and my voice had labored over a universe of barriers to achieve that. But I could utter no more.
He peered at me from his protruding eyes as though he also were struggling, struggling with memory and with memories, with a teeming past, with all that he had been and committed, and for an instant I felt sorry for him.
"Come in," I breathed deeply, and we made our way into the house and into my study.
"Randolph," Pendleton finally uttered with a profound sigh, and then I recalled that he was playing a part. To me the appalling reality of the whole episode had been so excruciating that momentarily I forgot that he was in all likelihood playing a part. But was he? How could he? In the face of these children, in the face of all he is guilty of, how could he play a part, when the truth would raise him almost to a kind of manhood? I cannot give him the benefit of the doubt and yet I cannot wholly doubt him. Some idiotic simplicity or imbecility inside me makes it impossible for me to envisage any creature in human form as so consummate a villain. Perhaps—perhaps there is something—
"Randolph," he murmured in a deep guttural—"I know you—I remember you—yes, you are—you are—" and he paused. We hung for a moment like things dangling by threads, like marionettes motionless. Then, with a prickling sensation of sweat over all my body, I broke the spell by fumbling with a box of cigarettes and with a hand spasmodically quivering like the needle of a seismograph, I held them out.
"Have a good voyage?" I heard myself saying, as we all smoked and covertly stole glances at one another. I was not flying at his throat. Dibdin puffed heavily with the crease deepening between his eyes and Pendleton's gaze roved questing and unsteady about the room. Melodrama! There never was any except on the stage! In life there is only drama—and pain.
"How are the kids?" Dibdin asked abruptly.
"Fine!" I exclaimed automatically, in an unnatural voice, like a pistol shot. "They are out in the garden there," and Dibdin nodded. I felt certain that his mind also was seeing the analogy to a funeral. And now my brain seemed to be shaking off its dull lethargy. From somewhere in Maeterlinck the haunting memory of a phrase came glimmering through my consciousness, like a dim light through a fog, to the effect that if Socrates and Christ had been in the palace of Agamemnon, the tragedies of the house of Atreus could not have happened. I longed for a little wisdom to deal with the situation.
"Would you like," I turned to Pendleton, "to see the children?"
"The children," he repeated dazedly. "Yes—yes—I'd like to see them. But—just a moment. The children," he repeated piteously, "but no Laura!"
Sharp, sharp was the stab at my heart when he spoke her name. But either he is a supreme master in deceit or I am the dullest of simpletons. For the struggle through clouds of memory that his features expressed seemed real to me.
"I told you she was dead!" snapped Dibdin gruffly, without turning to him.
"You told me? Ah, yes." And he sighed heavily. "Of course you told me." And his chin sank weightily to his breast. We remained thus silent for a space. Then—
"Come," I said, standing up. "I'll take you to the children."
He rose ponderously, his great frame limp and leaden, and followed me somberly. He seemed sincere enough in his grief, I must own that. Dibdin did not move.
I led him into the garden toward the spot where the children were huddled about Alicia. She was talking to them in low tones and they were listening in dead silence. Never again, I hope, shall I experience that sense of going to my own execution that I experienced at that instant. Execution—no! I could have walked to a gibbet or a guillotine smiling, I am quite sure. What is my life to me? I was walking rather to the execution of those four young souls under the gnarled old apple tree.
Alicia, too! By Heaven! Like a lightning stroke that fact crashed into my soul. He would take Alicia also. No—no! He had no claim upon her, thank God!
"Not Alicia!" my voice broke out from the turmoil of my thoughts like the voice in a dream breaking the barriers of sleep.
"Eh?" said Pendleton faintly.
"Did you call, Uncle Ranny?" Alicia turned and asked in a clear, steady voice.
"Yes, Alicia," I struggled for control. "Here is Mr. Pendleton—come to see the children." I meant to say "his children," but I could not.
The whole sickly-colored evening seemed to shudder at my words. The children seemed like wraiths under the tree to shudder away from the intruding material world.
In a moment—what a tragic moment—Pendleton was bending toward them, peering, peering into their white, frightened faces. Then his gaze settled on Alicia and hung there for a space.
"This must be Randolph," he finally turned to the eldest boy, "grown—grown up—isn't it?" and his arms stirred forward.
"Yes, sir," the boy answered hoarsely and put out his hand.
"And this—can this be baby Laura?" Laura hung her head then raised it bravely and with shy resolution held out her hand. Pendleton took it and kissed her clumsily on the cheek.
Jimmie, hanging back, clung to Alicia's skirt and watched the proceedings with troubled stealth from behind her.
"And this is Jimmie," I said, taking the child by the shoulder—"the youngest of them."
As Pendleton was stooping toward him, Jimmie uttered a wild scream of heartbreaking terror, wrenched himself from my hold and fled like some little wounded animal toward the house. Pendleton gave a short, mirthless laugh.
My throat was parched, my heart Was thumping like a rabbit's, but how I loved Jimmie at that moment!
"He is only a baby," put in Alicia softly.
Again Pendleton looked at her—obliquely.
"And this is—" he murmured.
"Alicia Palmer," I supplied hastily, "who has been looking after them."
"Ah, Alicia—a little deputy mother—" and he held out his hand with shamefaced suavity.
The scene was over—the incredible episode—commonplace enough as I write it down. But I lived a dozen melodramas in that eternity that a clock would tick off in three or four minutes of time.
CHAPTER XV
Walking about as I do under sentence, I am like a man of my acquaintance, a stodgy, a terrible Philistine, who cherished for years a fancy that he could write Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In all his life he had probably never rhymed anything more subtle than love, above and dove. Since any fool, in his opinion, could supply the music, he aspired only to the Gilbertian librettos. Incessantly and hopelessly out of key he went about humming the Sullivan tunes to the lyrics he alleged to have in his mind.
Similarly, I go about with a sense of mendacious buoyancy,—like a shipwrecked passenger bobbing helplessly in a troubled sea, but still alive; a flickering glimmer of hope, like a desperate man facing a tiger, but still undevoured.
Brazenly I still expect happiness to emerge, somehow, out of hopelessness.
It is easy, of course, to lapse into moods of despondency, into wishing I were dead, since I cannot live in happiness,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh.
And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh.
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh.
But such moments pass. There is a sort of tonic in the rough of life when the smooth is absent, and the wits, my poor dull wits, brace themselves for the shock of action. I feel certain now that in all my years of tranquillity it is the salt of suffering that was lacking. Yet who would seek suffering for its own sake? I know, however, that I feel younger and more energetic to-day than ever I felt five years ago.
Even Pendleton has his uses. He is the thorn in the side, the fox gnawing at my vitals under the cloak, but here he is in my house as its guest.
He goes with me to the city of a morning on his quest for work, "a connection" as he calls it, and often I find him at home before me when I arrive, in my room, smoking, or out in the garden with the children. I wince inwardly, but I hope I do not show it.
I spoke of hating him, but that is untrue. You cannot persistently hate any man, notably a guest in your house. You can only suspect him. Yet, when I see the children still shy of him, why does it give me a throbbing sense of triumph? I do not know, but so it is. Randolph alone seems to approach him nearer as the days go by. They go on walks together and Randolph confides to Alicia that he is fascinated by the tales of his father's experiences in the tropics, of ships and islands and pearl-fishing and native customs. I fancy Pendleton must be selectively on the alert in his narratives with his young son as the listener. His past must contain many things that none of us in this quiet haven will ever hear recounted.
But I am indifferent to his past. I could listen and even tolerate him as my guest, if only the children were not passing to his care. He talks of "relieving" me of the burden.
"Don't hurry, old man," I answer casually, "they are no burden to me."
He gazes at me and lowers his eyes.
"I tell you, Randolph, you're a revelation to me. I never knew a man like you before. They don't make them like that these days."
"Praise from Sir Hubert," occurs to me, but I don't say it. I am in reality at his mercy, I suppose, but I often feel as though he were at mine. The glossing over of his atrocious conduct, the taking him at his word on the subject of his lapsed memory, which we either slur or don't refer to at all, seem to give me a tremendous advantage over him,—the commonplace advantage of simple honesty over mendacity. Not for a moment do I now believe in his lapsed memory story. I cannot deny, however, that his air is one of repentance and, as Dibdin has said, who in this world is so hard but he wouldn't give a fellow man a second chance?
Jim Pendleton, now that he has been to a New York tailor's, appears as impressive and debonair as ever. He must be in the middle forties and he is not ill-looking. It is chiefly his eyes that seem changed to me. Do what I will, I cannot look at them. There is a certain disturbing obliqueness about his gaze that makes me turn mine away in a sort of vicarious shame.
But, again,C'est un mauvais metier que celui de medire. And conscious of that truth, I mean to speak or think no more ill of Jim Pendleton. After all, his large contact with the world has given him something that I lack.
Last evening at dinner he was regaling us with an experience of his of spearing fish in the Marquesas.
"I was in the back of the boat," he was saying, "with a torch in my hand, and my islander, who was an expert at it, held his spear ready for the first fish that leaped. Several of them leaped and fell again into the water round us churning it up, so that we were wet with spray. Suddenly I saw a huge mass glistening in the torchlight, falling, it seemed, right on top of us.
"The native buried his spear upward in the thing as it fell. I tell you that man was quick! But it was too late. The huge fish flopped into the boat with its great head on my knees and the full weight of his body on the man, sending him overboard and splintering the side of the boat. In just about a second we were in total darkness, floundering in the water, with an overturned boat. I was badly bruised and the native had both legs broken.
"In spite of his broken legs, however, he offered to swim ashore, to the nearest projecting rock. But I was sure he couldn't make it and very certain I couldn't. It was a job, I can tell you, righting that boat, helping that man into it and scrambling in myself; and then with a piece of splintered oar rowing ourselves in. The fellow with his broken legs, worked just as hard as I did and never uttered so much as a groan. It did me up for some time. But that fellow was spearing fish again in ten days or so."
Jimmie, who is sometimes allowed to take his supper with us, sat gazing at his father, fascinated by the narrative until the last word. Then seemingly jealous that any one, even this strange father, should exceed me in prowess, his little face clouded and he demanded:
"Uncle Ranny, didn't you ever spear a big fish?"
"No, Jimmie," I laughed, "but maybe you and I will go there one day and spear some together."
"Well, anyway," he retorted stoutly, "you took us on a picnic."
Whereat we all laughed, albeit my own laugh was rueful. The thought flashed through my mind that Pendleton was certain to win them to himself the moment he decided to do so. The very memory of me would become ridiculous to them.
"Uncle Ranny," spoke up Laura, "has been too busy feeding us and buying us clothes to go traveling."
Alicia smiled radiantly at Laura across the table, and Griselda, who had just come in with the dessert, nodded her head with somber emphasis as she placed the bowl before me.
I could have hugged them all three in gratitude, but nevertheless I pressed Pendleton to narrate more of his experiences.
"No," he shook his head, evidently taking the children's comment to heart. "That's yarn enough for one evening."
That seemed to me very decent of Pendleton.
I could not help laughing at Dibdin to-day. I called him up on the telephone and demanded what he meant by coming from devil knows where after more than two years' absence and virtually cutting me.
"Come to lunch at the Salmagundi Club," he growled.
"Does it pain you as much as that to ask me?"
"Don't be a damn fool," he retorted.
"Don't be so wickedly witty," I replied.
"At twelve-thirty," he muttered and hung up the receiver. From which I gathered that he was out of sorts.
In the hall of the Club where he was waiting, I greeted him with,
"'Is it weakness of intellect, birdie,' I cried,'Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?'"
"'Is it weakness of intellect, birdie,' I cried,'Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?'"
"'Is it weakness of intellect, birdie,' I cried,
'Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?'"
He stared at me.
"How you can be so light and idiotic in the face of circumstances," he began, "passes my comprehension."
"Circumstances, my dear fellow, are all there is to life."
"Want to wash your paws?"
"No—I am as clean as I shall ever be."
I put my arm through his and allowed him to lead me to a quiet table in the rear of the billiard room, softly illumined by a shaded lamp at midday.
"What a delightful place!" I exclaimed. "Residence of Q.T. tranquillity."
"Tranquillity be blowed," he grunted, as he sat down facing me. "What are you going to do about that Old Man of the Sea of yours?"
"You mean Pendleton?"
"Whom the devil else can I mean?"
"Why, nothing of course, but give him a leg up if we can. What else is there to do? I just received a letter this morning from an insurance company asking for confidential information about him. He's given me as a reference and they're evidently considering him."
"The Danbury and Phoenix?" he asked.
"Yes. How did you know?"
"I got one, too."
"I suppose we are really his only two possible sponsors at present."
"I'd as soon recommend a convict from Sing Sing," he muttered.
"Oh, no!" I protested. "Not as bad as that. Besides, sometimes you have to recommend even a convict."
"I'd much rather recommend a convict. I hate to lie about this man. I've been asked whether I would trust him and I have to say yes. But you know dashed well I wouldn't. Give me a cigarette," he ended savagely.
"I think he'll go straight now," I murmured dully, passing my case to Dibdin and looking away. "The children will no doubt have an influence on him."
"You judge everybody by yourself."
"How d'ye mean—myself?"
"The long and the short of it is," he declared, putting both elbows on the table, "I had no idea what the children would do to you."
"What did they do to me?" I queried, mystified.
"Made you over—that's all."
"Explain," I said, gazing at him stupidly.
"What is there to explain?" growled Dibdin, when the waiter was out of earshot. "You were always a decent sort of idiot—bookworm, muddler, dilettante, whatever it was—afraid of real life, fit only to collect pretty little books or old musty volumes that nobody really cares to read in—a drifter, with about as much knowledge of the problems of existence as a stuffed owl in a glass.
"What happened? Your sister's orphans come to you. You plunge into life, go into business which you detest, lose your money, go to work as a clerk, by George! You of all people!—Keep a roof over them, bring them up and hang me if I don't think you were idiotically happy in it all until I brought this Old Man of the Sea!—What right had I to pick him up and bring him and bungle it all? And why the hell didn't you warn me not to fetch him? I thought I was helping you out. I'd sooner have chucked the brute overboard—I would, by Heaven!"
For a moment I could reply nothing at all to Dibdin. His estimate and account of my actions were natural enough to him who, despite his burly manner, exaggerates everybody's qualities. It seemed the more remarkable that he who so firmly believed in the second chance should now find no word to say in Pendleton's favor. But I could see clearly enough that what troubled him was the pain he instinctively realized the departure of the children from me to Pendleton was certain to bring me.
"Why didn't you cable me, 'Lose the brute?'" he took up his argument.
"Because, my dear fellow," I put my hand on his arm across the table, "it was too late; once you had found him and told him of what had occurred in his absence, it was too late. Would you like to live with the menacing uncertainty of him overhanging in space? Rather have him here and face him. Besides, the children are his"—I knew I must state my view squarely on that head—"If he is fit to take them, then have them he must, regardless."
"Regardless of you, you mean?" He put it darkly.
"Yes—regardless of me, certainly. I don't count."
"By the Lord!" and his fine head shot upwards in a gesture that was in itself invigorating. "D'you know you are twenty times the man you were?" he cried. "I couldn't have believed it. You—you're stupendous!"
I laughed and waved him away with a "Retro, Satanas."
"You're going it blind like that," he ran on, disregarding me,—"Salmon and Byrd," with a laugh—"losing all your money and then—Visconti's—slaving for the kids—meeting it all—by gad, you are living life!—heroic, I call it—I take off my hat to you!"
"Put it on again," I murmured, moved by his vehemence. It was certainly agreeable to hear such words from Dibdin, who never lied. Praise is a savory dish, not a thing that my misspent life has been surfeited with, and it was exquisitely soothing to one's vanity. But it was clear enough that Dibdin was wrong. His usually lucid view was obscured by the tangle of circumstances that weighed upon him. Naturally, I could not leave him in his error.
"If you knew," I managed to stammer, "the malignant fear that is eating my liver white, you—"
"Fear of what?" he broke in.
"Of turning those kids over to him;" I lowered my voice—"just that and—nothing else."
"Just that," he repeated gloomily, nodding his head. "Who would have supposed it? By the Lord! If ever there was a bull in a China shop, I am that bull. Why the devil did I ever pick the brute up? Look here!" he flashed with sudden inspiration, "why not deport him as we imported him, eh? I might manage it—I might!"
"No—no, Dibdin—neither you nor I would do such a thing."
"Why not?" he growled.
"That would make us—worse than he is, or was," I explained sadly. For I must own that for an instant my heart leaped at his suggestion. "Besides," I went on prosily, "it's not so easy to lay a ghost when once you've raised it. We've got to believe him, Dibdin, my boy—if only for the young ones' sake. He will probably get his job, and the thing to do now is not to arouse his suspicion of how we feel about him. Believe everything he says—believe in him. Thousands every year, according to the newspapers, turn up willfully missing! He was tired of the humdrum life and lit out; that is all there was to it. Now he wants to try back. You yourself thought he ought to have another chance."
There was genuine pathos in old Dibdin's voice when he spoke out with a humid somber look:
"By George, that chap's the Nemesis of us all! By his one willful act of destructive irresponsibility he has affected all our lives destructively. It's maddening that one worthless brute should be able to do all that. He killed Laura, damn him; he orphaned these kids; he's upset your life—he makes wretched conspirators of you and me—g-r-r-r! I'd like to pound him to a jelly!"
I laughed joylessly.
"What would that undo?"
"Nothing, I dare say," snapped Dibdin. "Besides, you really have no complaint, boy. You tower, Randolph, my lad; yes, by George! you tower head and shoulders above any one I know! His very villainy has made you over—blown the breath of life into you."
I believe I answered something flippant.
"Look here!" he cried, with a sudden movement upsetting a glass of water and disregarding it. "If those kids go over to him, we can keep an eye on him—just the same—as though we were with them!"
"How d'you mean?" I queried, puzzled.
"That girl—what's her name—Alicia! She'll keep an eye on him—and them. She's sharp, I tell you, with her innocent blue eyes. Give you a daily report like—like—"
"No!" I emphatically interrupted him. "That, never! She is not going from my house—certainly not to him!"
I was the more abashed by my own vehemence when I saw Dibdin staring at me with lifted eyebrows.
"Why—you are not—" he began blankly—but I interrupted him hotly.
"I am nothing!—She is to me just as Jimmie and Laura and Randolph are, but they are unfortunately his. Don't you know the meaning of responsibility for young lives, Dibdin? I want to give her her chance, educate her, make a fine woman of her. They have a father; she has no one but me. I can't turn her out—and I wish," I added lamely, "I had as much right to keep them all."
"Whew!" he whistled in renewed astonishment.
"I can only say I don't know you any more. I used to know you, but I'm proud to make the acquaintance of the new Mr. Randolph Byrd."
"Don't be a damn fool, Dibdin," I mumbled in exasperation. "You know you are talking rot. Why the devil are you so interested in the kids? There is that cheque you sent—!"
"You haven't cashed it," he interposed, moving his shoulders as one shaking off something. "Why the deuce haven't you?"
"I will some day," I grinned at him feebly, "when I need it more. But you haven't answered my question."
I felt I was goading him brutally but for once I seemed to have the dear old tramp upon the hip. For all his gruffness he was as full of emotions as anybody. It seemed to me absurd for a man to hide his implanted instinct, one of the noblest of all the little hidden root-cellars of our instincts, under a false shame or indifference. Women are wiser—they don't hide theirs; and I had become shameless about mine.
"Why," I repeated, "are you so much interested in those kids?"
"Don't be an ass!" he grunted, looking down upon the wet tablecloth, and a spasm as of pain crossed his countenance.
"Ah, you see!" I laughed, attempting to lighten his mood.
"Randolph," he uttered in a strange solemn tone that sent a slight thrill through me. "I told you once there was a woman I had cared about—and only one."
"Yes—but you never married her."
"No," he continued in the etiolated tone of a dead grief. "She was married already when I knew her."
And then my sympathy went out to grizzled old Dibdin.
"I am sorry," I murmured, touching his hand across the table. "Did I know her?"
"Yes," he said quietly, "you knew her. It was Laura."
In a flash of poignantly bitter and vain regret I saw the vista of the dead years—of what might have been! ...
CHAPTER XVI
Miracles—miracles are common as blackberries!
Pendleton is once again a faithful worker in the vineyard of the insurance company.
A commonplace miracle enough, but all miracles, I suppose, are commonplaces that happen to surprise us or that we don't understand.
The abstract office, I am sure, has more joy over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine—but I do not wish to be blasphemous. Like Death, it claims us all in the end. A voluptuary, an idler like myself, or a renegade who broke from it indefensibly like Jim Pendleton—all, sooner or later—turn or return to its yoke like starved runaway slaves—the unrelenting office! What a change it must be to Jim after the beaches and the barrooms of the gorgeous East! But for one closely relevant circumstance I could find it in my heart to be sorry for him.
What a strange and wonderful institution is the family! Another of those commonplace miracles so charged with mystery, like birth and death. If I were a classical writer or a Sir Barnes Newcome I might expatiate at length upon the subject. The things we swallow and condone and cover up for the sake of its ties!
Suffice it, however, that Jim Pendleton is quietly working out his salvation, a salary and plans for re-creating his dismembered home.
The children are becoming quite used to him. Randolph seems to be the nearest to him and Jimmie remains stubbornly farthest away. It is painful to think however that Jimmie's youth will the more certainly and completely detach him from me in the end.
When is it all to happen? I for one dare not fix the fateful day which, with every passing hour, draws nearer. No one fixes the day. It is left dangling in the air by an invisible thread of uncertain length and strength—
There are times when I could cry out in my anguish, my agony of nameless pain, fear, apprehension. But what a spectacle I should make of myself if I gave vent to emotion! We humans are not so much whited sepulchers as masked and silent volcanoes.
And Jim Pendleton—what is he thinking, feeling? He is suave, quiet, controlled. He is very gentle with them all, and particularly soft-spoken with Alicia. He has taken to consulting and confabulating with her touching the characteristics and the needs of the children. At times it seems to me that I cannot bear it and once at least I have called her and spoken harshly to her, and charged her with having mislaid a volume ofBook Prices Current.
How childish on my part! But my nerves are not what once they were. They are tetchy and fractious. It has been decreed that I am to have a vacation and go away for a fortnight—go to Maine or New Hampshire. If I were to burst into laughter at the thought, I might end like an hysterical woman, in uncontrollable tears. I could no more go now than I could spread my arms and fly. I am as remote from the holiday spirit as from the North Star.
Poor Dibdin—how mistaken he is in me! He blathers of my "towering head and shoulders"—b-r-r-r! it makes me shudder with shame. What a weakling I am in the face of life!
No—I am a toiler in Bleecker Street, of its reeking pavements, its fly-infested purlieus, where the Italian children grub and shout and sun themselves in the gutters, in the air of a thousand smells throbbing under the noonday sun. The homecoming to the third-rate suburb used to be refreshing and soothing like a delicate perfume. To see the children laughing and rosy in the square inch of garden, to see Alicia, sparkling with her young energy and enthusiasm,—it had all been like coming into a cool temple filled with shapes of beauty, after wandering in some fetid bazaar. Now it is dust and ashes. I could never convey to Dibdin or to any one else how alone I feel in the world, what chill and cutting blasts of desolation sweep into my life every time I think of its present or its future.