CHAPTER XIXExultation filled me when I awoke late in the morning.Though I had slept in my clothes and felt particularly disheveled, I stripped with the joy of an athlete after a victory and plunged into the cool invigorating bath.Pendleton was gone! I do not remember the emotions of Sinbad when he had rid himself of the Old Man of the Sea. But his emotions must have resembled mine. My heart sang, I sang myself. I was manumitted. I was free. To my intimate journal may I not say that I felt myself a man?I had fought the beast at Ephesus, my pulses blasphemously and jubilantly informed me, and by the Lord, I had won!The children were mine! Alicia was mine! Would that I could bind them to me with triple brass. But I have bound them. In ridding myself of Pendleton, I had made them securely mine. Suppose he should return one day? They would be grown—reared by me. He would be merely the family skeleton. What is a family without a skeleton? He was that now. He wouldn't matter. It is human destiny to revolve about the child, about children. With the exception of Pendleton the outcast and Gertrude the—well, Gertrude—every one attained completeness only in rearing the next generation. And as I rubbed my body with the coarse towel I felt complete!As for Alicia—ah—well, who was I to expect from lifeeverything? At any rate she was mine, now, even as the children were mine. And the very first thing I would do—oh, jeweled inspiration—is to adopt her, legally and formally. That thought suddenly made the blood sing in my ears to so delicious a tune that absurdly, ridiculously, I began like some pagan or satyr to dance about the room.Mine, mine, mine! I danced into the room in which Pendleton had not slept and with crazy gestures made as if to sweep his memory out of the garish window. I had saved the children and safeguarded Alicia.I felt I had played the man. And let no man say he has lived until he has fought for those he loves. Inevitably my mind dwelt upon Alicia. Who is that child? What were her beginnings? Did she come out of the sea and chaos of life only to vanish in some bitter poignant dream like that of last night? I only knew that she was mine now and that I would bind her to me yet more strongly. I would not ask for too much; I would be humbly grateful. She had come into my life as a divine offering and I would not question overmuch. There is no other origin. I felt supremely, tremulously content. If only she would abide and never leave me!And it occurred to me, as I stood shaving before the mirror, that life is a beleaguered city, with deadly arrows falling over the wall, and the great enemy, death, certain to enter in the end. But by virtue of the love implanted in the human heart, one may snatch many hours of happiness amid the tumult and the shouting in the winding ways.Over my hasty breakfast I recalled with a shock of guilt that I had not yet communicated with Griselda. But as I was already late I decided I should call her from the office.How swift is mischief to enter in the thoughts of desperate men I discovered bitterly only a few minutes later.For the first word I received upon entering Visconti's was that Griselda had called me repeatedly and Griselda's news chilled and numbed every fiber in my body.Alicia had disappeared!Pendleton! That was the thought that seared my brain."You—don't think"—I stammered brokenly to Griselda, "that she—that Pendleton—""I have thought of that," was her reply. "But—no! It canna be possible. She hated him—no! She must hae gone before ye left the house. I looked into her room soon after and she wasna there. I thought the girlie was hiding somewhere—or maybe she had run out into the garden until the mischief should blow over. I looked high and low; I called her in the garden. But she was nowhere to be found.""Did she take any things?" I queried huskily."A wee bundle—" said Griselda—"night things and the like."The shuddering dismay of that moment I shall never forget."Did she talk with—with him at all during the evening?" The words struggled out of my parched throat in spite of me, and I should have hated to see my own eyes."Ay," said Griselda, "that he did, the leper! All the evening he was wheedling her to come to him with the bairns when he set up his house. She was weeping sair to me in the kitchen afterward. It was to ask you if you wanted her to go that she waited for you in the study—and fell asleep, the poor maidie!""And what did you say to her?" I all but whispered into the mouthpiece."I told the lass not to greet," shouted Griselda. "I told her I could nae believe it would happen. He would never take the bairns. And if he did he would nae keep them. He was a bad one—the evil brute! But she was frightened, the puir lassie!""Very well, Griselda," I muttered stonily. "I must think. I shall call you a little later. Don't alarm the others."She hated him, had said Griselda! There was a meager ray of comfort. But do what I would, my stunned mind continued to flutter heavily like a half-scorched moth around the ugly, sinister vision of Pendleton. Could he be at the bottom of Alicia's disappearance? How had he contrived the trick? If only I had gone to the station with him! Was it that that accounted for his hurry to be gone? No! It was impossible. Ought I to start in pursuit at once? No, no, no! I could not believe it. It could not be—not of her own free will! Yet my heart was lacerated by the possibility. When I lifted my head from my bosom, I gasped in a desolation of emptiness.I had stifled the prompting to call Dibdin last night, but now I felt I must find him. I needed the solace and advice of a friend. I rose heavily and put on my hat. Visconti had not yet come in."Tell Mr. Visconti," I said to Varesi, my young understudy, "that I have been called away suddenly, on a serious private matter. I shall telephone him later.""Yes, Mr. Byrd," responded Varesi, his lustrous Italian eyes flashing sympathy. He thought, no doubt, from what he must have overheard, that some rascal had run off with my younger sister—a killing matter, very possibly, to a properly constituted male. Had he known the truth, his Latin mind would have been shocked at my seeming Anglo-Saxon composure. Out of doors I heaved a deep sigh and boarded a north-bound elevated train for the eighties, where Dibdin has his lodgings, near the Museum of Natural History.I found Dibdin not at his lodging but at the Museum, directing the rearrangement of the Polynesian section in the light of his additions to it.He turned one intense glance upon me without speaking, hurriedly gave some directions to the men at work, and led me to an alcove where there was a bench."Now, let's hear—" he said. "What's he been doing?" He concluded at once that Pendleton was at the bottom of whatever wild appearance I must have presented.Briefly, but without omitting any essential detail, I gave him an account of all that had happened the previous evening, including Griselda's announcement of the morning."And you think he enticed her to go off with him?" he demanded."Well—what do you think?" I queried."I think no," said Dibdin. "What does Griselda say?""She says Alicia hated him.""Then take her word for it!" snapped Dibdin. "But why the devil didn't you call me last night from the Manhattan?" he turned upon me angrily."Why didn't I?" I murmured. "Maybe it's because you've done enough—maybe it's because there are some things a man wants to do without assistance."Dibdin glanced at me sharply and gave a low whistle."Oh, that's it—" he muttered—"I see," and he looked away.I am certain that at that moment Dibdin read my secret. For his expression swiftly changed. He grew suddenly warm and friendly, more than his usual self."A fine job you did there, Randolph," he cried, clapping my shoulder; "an excellent piece of work. I certainly admire your technique. As for Alicia—she didn't go with him—of that I feel sure!" I could have groveled before him in gratitude for those words."But where do you suppose she is?" I could not help eagerly asking. There was a gleam of amusement mingled with the sympathy in his eyes."Not very far, I imagine. We'll find her. Have no fear. Young girls are funny things. The instinct of sacrifice and the instinct of independence are always struggling in a woman like the twins in Rebekah's womb. When they're young it hits them very hard. Some notion like that must have swamped Alicia—sacrifice—earn her own living—ceasing to be a source of trouble—who knows? They don't think when they're young—or even when they're old. They feel. We'll find her—but we've got to think. Pull yourself together, old man.""How," I asked in stupefaction, "do you come to know all that about women?" And my heart felt perceptibly lightened at his words."Oh, I've been studying them all my life," he laughed. "Never having had one of my own, I've been watching and thinking about the whole sex all over the earth. We'll find her. Have you communicated with the police?"At the word "police," my heart turned leaden again."The—p-police!" I stammered aghast. "Invoke the publicity that means?—Horrible!" A shudder ran down my back."Right again!" cried Dibdin, nudging me. "Young man, you have an appreciation! Quite useless—the police. But you still—have a suspicion of Pendleton, haven't you?" I found myself wishing that even the best of men weren't so ready to imagine themselves amateur detectives. The very core of my heart of hearts, Alicia, had disappeared, and I wanted swift concrete help, not speculative questions.I admitted that I had a lingering suspicion of Pendleton."Then, this is what we do," Dibdin rubbed his forehead as over a problem in chess. "We see a private detective agency here and acquaint them with the facts. Have them pick up Pendleton on the way—he hasn't reached Chicago yet, you know—and see if he's traveling alone. If he is, let him go on his way. If not—then, a description of the girl—you understand—"A livid fury possessed me suddenly as I saw the all too vivid picture that Dibdin had evoked and was now trying to believe."No, no!" I cried. "I am going myself. I dare not—I cannot trust anybody else to do this. You don't know—you can't understand—""I know only too damned well," growled Dibdin staring at me quizzically. "But I am trying to show you sense—difficult, I admit, to one in your condition. However, I must try again," he went on with the patience of resignation."You are only one man—don't you see? A detective agency is an organization of many men in different places who can concentrate on the same job simultaneously. At this minute they would know on which train he might be traveling and some one or several could already be watching for his arrival. Suppose they miss him. There are many hotels in Chicago—there are many trains leaving for the coast—don't you see?""Yes," I breathed brokenly. "Then it's useless.""Far from it," he laughed. "Come with me."Less than an hour later we were at the Mahoney Detective Agency and a suave young Irishman was listening without emotion or eagerness to my story supplemented by Dibdin's interpolations. He seemed to care little for what concerned me most, but he was keen for personal details of Pendleton's appearance, height, build, clothes, lettering on his luggage and so on.When it came to giving a detailed description of Alicia, my confusion was so pitiful that even the young detective glanced at me only once and then, like the gentleman he was, looked sedulously down upon the paper before him."Sixteen—in her seventeenth year!" he murmured in astonishment."But she is an unusual girl—well grown for her age," I caught him up."I see," he murmured gravely. "What's the color of her hair?"I went on as best I could with the description."I could save you money," he smiled blandly, "by telling you that the girl is not with him—" and I could have wrung his hand like a brother's. "But," he added, "it won't cost much to pick him up. I'll have news for you to-morrow this time, I'm thinking."As I sat down to lunch with Dibdin at his club, though in truth nothing was farther from my cravings than food, he suddenly burst forth into hearty laughter."So it's my thousand you gave Pendleton?" he chuckled. "That was sheer inspiration, Randolph—sheer, unadulterated genius! If you weren't so lugubrious just now, I could accuse you of a high ironic sense of humor that only a great man would be capable of!"How terrible were the next twenty-four hours, in spite of Dibdin's companionship and his efforts to cheer me, no one will ever know. No funeral could possibly have darkened my household to such an extent. I dreaded to be seen by the children, who walked about like wraiths under the sense of tragedy. I dreaded to tell them lies and yet I could not tell them the truth. Finally I felt I must say something to Laura and Randolph.The departure of their father they received without the least surprise. Randolph inquired where he had gone, but this, I answered, I could not tell him, save that he had gone West. But the absence of Alicia left them puzzled and strained and awed. Alicia's disappearance shook them almost as it had shaken me."When will she be back?" demanded Randolph."I don't know exactly," I answered miserably, "soon, I hope."The following morning I gave up all thought of going to the office. If my mysterious truancy should cost me my job, then it must be so. I hovered in the region of the telephone. Again and again I was about to call up Mahoney's, but I forebore. Finally, toward noon, I could wait no longer. When the connection was made, I gave my name and asked for the young man who had charge of my case."Was just going to call you," was the bland apologetic answer. "Your man is at the La Salle Hotel, going out on the Santa Fe to-night. He is alone and arrived alone last night. We'll see whether he starts alone to-night."Then, of course, I cursed myself for my folly in thinking that it might be otherwise and realized that I had really thought nothing of the sort.But where in the meanwhile was Alicia?I had believed myself by now schooled to emergencies, but here was an emergency that left me dazed and helpless. I had fondly thought myself a match for life, but life was crushing me with pain like a blind force.I leaped up suddenly and wandered about the house and the garden like a dog searching miserably for a departed loved one. There was the stream—but I turned from it shivering. No—that was impossible! The sense of life in Alicia, her vitality, was too potent, too radiant to suffer extinction. I looked up at my little nest from the edge of the muddy stream, that frail eyrie upon the rock that I had felt so nestling, secure; barred by the trunks of intervening trees, it now seemed a prison. A faint breeze that was stirring the leaves made them murmurous with secret things which my heart cried out to interpret. Was it a litany, a dirge, or a whisper of hope? I could not read the riddle, but my bruised spirit was passionately clinging to hope.Dibdin pretended not to observe my vagaries; when I returned I found him absorbed in Epictetus."This is rather good," he growled, pointing to a passage and puffing his pipe as he spoke:"Have you not received facilities by which you may support any event? Have you not received a manly soul? Have you not received patience?""Yes," I muttered dejectedly, "all very well, but Epictetus never lost Alicia."Dibdin laughed shortly. "Now," he said, "we must start out to find her. Though my feeling is she'll come back of her own accord very soon. The girl was frightened—no more."I ignored the last part of his speech but leaped at the first."How would you start?" I queried sharply."What is the high-sounding name of that institution where she was brought up?""Oh, don't tell them, for Heaven's sake," I cried out in alarm. "If she is not there and they learn I have lost her, they'll never consent to my adopting her; they'll consider me irresponsible.""Don't let's be fools," retorted Dibdin. "Those people are not. Do you know how many boys, girls, men and women turn up 'willfully missing' every year?" No, I didn't know."But, by George!" he suddenly clapped his forehead in a burst of inspiration—"Sergeant Cullum! Ever hear of Sergeant Cullum?." I shook my head. "He is a policeman I know who has a genius for finding missing persons. It's positively a sixth sense with him. He's a prodigy—has traveled everywhere—a human bloodhound—he is the man to go to!""But—the police!" I stammered."Yes, I know—but we'll see whether we can make him take this as a private case—out of hours—I'll find him!"The surge of hope to my eyes must have told Dibdin better than any words I could have uttered what I felt at that instant."But first we'll call that institution," he directed. "You put in a call for the number and I'll tell you what to say.""You needn't," I decided after a moment's reflection. "I know. I shall simply inquire about the regulations governing adoptions. I can so word it that if Alicia is there they will tell me.""Ah, now your brain is functioning again," he concluded. "That being so, I shall leave you and look up Cullum at the bureau of missing persons."Then I recalled that I had met with the phrase in newspapers. The fact that missing persons were so numerous that a bureau of the metropolitan police was required to handle them cheered me more than any other single fact. It was consoling to feel that even, in my peculiar misery I had joined a great multitude who suffered the loss of loved ones, even as in toil and labor and poverty I had merged into the vast majority.When Dibdin left me I learned that I might adopt Alicia without any great obstacles, if she were willing, but I was no wiser as to her whereabouts. The Home, in the person of the Matron, inquired how "she was getting along." She was obviously not there, and I experienced a misery of guilt as though I had robbed the world of its dearest possession and then lost it.Alone and bereft I sat, sinking to a mere pin's point in my abasement. I had begun to believe myself schooled in life, something of a man among men. But my own ineffectiveness was now dismally revealed to me. I had proved myself incapable of guarding even what was dearest to me in the world. I was at the bottom of an abyss from which I now felt hopeless to scramble upward. The sheer and beetling walls of granite were overpoweringly steep and forbidding. For the first time in long years, I believe I mentally prayed. I waited for Dibdin.And then suddenly, as is the way with me when I am at the bottom, my spirits bounded upward. Alicia would come back to me, I felt in a sudden surge of assurance. At that moment I felt sure that she was thinking of me, that she was yearning to return. And before I knew it, I was blocking in magnificent plans for her education, for making a splendid woman of her, even though she already seemed perfect, of supplementing nature's handiwork with all the force that was in me. I saw her resplendent, a shining creature, the woman of my dreams! What a florid designer is hope!But why should she have been taken from me so abruptly? The vast mystery of life encompassed me again like a shell, impenetrable—a carapace through which nature must supply the openings—and she had evidently not supplied them. Would Dibdin never come with his policeman?Books, for so long my mainstay and support, were now useless to me. I turned over many volumes idly but my mind no longer reacted to that old and magical alchemy. The volume of Epictetus that Dibdin had fingered might have been a seed catalogue, so remote it seemed and so null. I was now a ghost among my books: I was plunged in "The Woods of Westermain," and my memory flung me the lines:Enter these enchanted woods,You who dare.Nothing harms beneath the leavesMore than waves a swimmer cleaves.Toss your heart up with the lark,Foot at peace with mouse and worm,Fair you fare.Only at a dread of darkQuaver, and they quit their form;Thousand eyeballs under hoodsHave you by the hair.Enter these enchanted woods,You who dare.It was clear. I must toss my heart up with the lark to fare fairly, even though my pain was great.Late that afternoon; Dibdin returned, bringing Sergeant Cullum.That excellent policeman gave me more hope than any one, excepting my own heart, had yet succeeded in doing. He insisted upon being made privy to all the circumstances, to which he listened, his broad shaven face turned ceilingward, with the rapt air of a mystic, expecting momentarily that lightning flash of inspiration that would reveal all. Then he asked to be allowed to wander by himself throughout the house, over which he went pointing and sniffing like some well-trained hound. In the end he declared himself satisfied."Now give me a little time," he said."But what means—how do you go to work?" I asked, nettled that he should see possibilities regarding Alicia that I had overlooked."I swear, Mr. Byrd, I don't know," he answered reverently. "I wait for guidance.""Guidance?" I faltered."Yes—from on high.""You depend on that—only?""Only!—Well, yes and no. I pray, Mr. Byrd—I pray.""You have no other means?" I queried, with a sinking heart."What other means are there," he demanded with glowing eyes, "that the Lord can't supply? What detective in the world can equal the Lord—tell me that, Mr. Byrd."I saw that I was in the presence of a fanatic and I stood abashed."The best man in the Department," Dibdin put in encouragingly. "Sergeant Cullumisthe bureau of missing persons.""Give me a little time," he urged again, with the fervid intensity of prayer—Time! And it was Alicia who was missing!I shook his hand and gave him time and parted from him with a hope that I should not have to wait for his ecstatic visions to restore her."He'll find her!" Dibdin exclaimed reassuringly. "Never fear. If there is one thing I've learned, it's to accept the methods of people so long as they produce the results. Let them use the divining rod if they want to, or incantations with henbane and hellebore, or trances and visions, or prayer. This almost human race of ours is made up of some very odd fish," he added with a laugh, and he looked at me quizzically as though I were the oddest fish of them all."But an ecstatic policeman"—I murmured—"Yes—queer—I know," said Dibdin, "but I don't care. And now, old boy, I've got to run back to the museum and take a squint at the work. Cheer up."I was alone in my study after a pretense of eating supper with the children, when Jimmie burst in and flung himself upon me."I want to know where is Alicia," he demanded with quivering lips, and he burst into a pitiful freshet of bitter weeping. His childish tears fell like scalding lead upon my hands and I hugged the quivering small figure to me in an anguished embrace."Don't you want Laura to put you to bed?" I murmured with my lips against his ear."Don't want Laura," he sobbed chokingly; "want Alicia to give me my bath and put me to bed. Where is she? Why don't she come?"It was a cry that tore at my heart as it echoed there and reverberated. I hugged him closer."I'll give you your bath, Jimmikins," I endeavored to soothe him, "and we'll float ships.""'Licia—tells me—stories!" he sobbed out, as one broken with tragedy, and I declare I came very near to joining him in his grief."I'll—tell you a story—Jimmie," I gulped foolishly, "and until Alicia comes back you must be the fine little man you are—and let me.""When is she coming back?""I am not sure, Jimmie—possibly to-morrow." It was my throbbing hope. For that we could go on any longer without her was simply inconceivable to me.Gradually his paroxysm subsided. He grew quiescent in my arms and heaved a deep sigh as we nestled against each other in silence. It is fortunate that the grief of children is like a summer shower. For so intense is it while it lasts that any serious continuation of agony would rack their small frames to pieces."All right, Uncle Ranny," he murmured finally. "Will you come in and give me my bath? I'll go and run it—I know how, first the hot and then the cold. And I'll put the ships in and undress. Then you come in and tell me a long story while I sail them." And he ran out of the room in a little whirlwind of energy.I sat bowed in silence for a few minutes and then heavily made my way to the bathroom."Is the temp'ture a'right?" queried Jimmie, with an intense air of responsibility, his erect nude little figure standing with a ship under each arm, like a symbol of man adventuring his petty argosies on this storm-beaten planet. I put my hand judicially into the water. How important is the temperature of a child's bath! It must be neither too hot nor too cold, or disastrous results might follow.I began to tell him an ancient story of an island that proved to be a sleeping whale, but he was impatient of that."'Licia," he informed me in deprecating protest, "tells me stories of Mowgli in the jungle—out of the 'Jungle Book.'" I endeavored with a heavy heart to match Alicia, and gradually I became absorbed in my task and in Jimmie, so that the darkness of life fell away from me. The water splashed and the ships tacked about in wild maneuvers, while Jimmie kept reminding me that "he was listening, Uncle Ranny."The great mystics are those who submerge their intellect and senses into night so that their souls emerge before them like the full moon out of the blackness. Every parent, I suppose, must be in part a mystic: for by centering his heart on little children he discerns the pulsating irresistible life of the universe, the past and the future, alpha and omega.At least Jimmie was courteous enough to assure me, when he hugged me for the last time, with sleepy eyes, that my tale was won'erful. "But, oh, Uncle Ranny," he whispered, "say that Alicia will be back to-morrow."I kissed him but made no promise. In the dining room Laura and Randolph were sitting over their books,—Laura grave with an anxious pucker in her white forehead and Randolph with dilated, somewhat fevered eyes. He was obviously thinking rather than reading. But I dared not enter into any more discussion of Alicia's absence that evening.Only now after many days can I write down the events of the day following my last entry with anything approximating composure; and even now my fingers are tremulous as they hold the pencil.I had risen early, for my sleep had been broken and fitful—as, indeed, how could it have been otherwise?I was parched and burning within, to act, to do something, to range the city, the country—Good God, I thought, can a person like Alicia disappear in that way like a pebble in the sea? But my frenzy of thought, that seemed as if it would burst the poor narrow limits of my skull, produced no definite idea. I lashed against the bars of the brain like a beast in its cage.I entertained no thought of going to the office that morning, but half an hour after I was up, that was the only thought that flooded my mind. There are blessings in a routine of daily labor that those engaged therein can hardly understand. The treadmill, I imagine, leaves the mule but little time for speculation or grief or any other emotions. I was that kind—or, rather that mule let loose—that could find oblivion nowhere better than in the treadmill. For routine can dull despair.It was still half an hour before breakfast when my nephew Randolph came clattering down the stairs, meticulously dressed, though somewhat wild-eyed. He gave me the impression of having—he also—slept badly. "Uncle Ranny," he approached me, "are you going to the office this morning?""Yes, I think I am. Why, Randolph?""I'd like to go in to town with you—and go round—look around.""What do you mean, my boy?""Somebody ought to be looking for Alicia all the time—don't you think so, Uncle Ranny? I'd like to try," and he looked away shamefaced.A boy in his sixteenth year can be a considerable pillar in a household. I had somehow overlooked Randolph in that rôle. Perhaps I had been inclined to treat Laura's children too much as nestlings all, wholly dependent upon me? I experienced a thrill of pleasurable surprise in the boy's words and manner. He had said no word concerning his father, had asked no disconcerting questions. He merely desired to help."But of course there is somebody looking for Alicia," I informed him."Yes, I know, Uncle Ranny—a policeman! What does a policeman know about girls like Alicia? I—we talked a lot, she and I," he stammered. "I have a hunch I could sort of tell what she'dthinkof doing if she left home. Let me have a try at it, Uncle Ranny, please. It'll only be a few nickels in carfare.""Certainly, my boy," I put my arm about his shoulders. To frustrate young intentions simply because they are young has never appealed to me as wisdom. "Come into town with me by all means. I am certain Alicia will come back"—he could not know the effort this easy answer was costing me—"but there is no reason why you shouldn't try to find her." I had thrown off any mask of secrecy with all excepting Jimmie. Insincerity is a difficult habit to wear."Thanks, Uncle Ranny," he answered with suppressed jubilation, and for the first time in our common history I suddenly felt that I had a companion in Randolph—that he was growing up.When he left me at the station, charged with avuncular instructions that he was to telephone me at various times of the day and that he was to lunch with me if he could, I had a tender impulse to embrace this lad, Laura's first-born, before all the concourse. But I knew he would be shamed to death by such a demonstration. So I tapped him on the shoulder and we parted grinning to keep each other in heart. I experienced a fleeting intuition that Alicia would be restored to us, but I expected nothing at all from Randolph's romantic quest for her.My heart went out to the boy as I saw him merge and lose himself in the crowd; I felt very tenderly not only toward those of my flesh, but to all young things facing the hurly-burly of this oddly jumbled sphere.I was becoming an ogler in my old age. Every young girl I saw in the streets, in cars, at crossings, I scrutinized searchingly, with painful leapings of the heart, when any of them in the slightest particular resembled Alicia. And the melancholy truth came to me that you can build a life to any design you please, but only a miracle will keep it intact.Visconti was in the office when I arrived and he was kindness itself when he saw my face."Caro mio!" he grasped my hand. "Something serious?""Some domestic trouble—a little painful," I stammered, and he saw that I did not wish to speak of it. And the vast loneliness of human beings traversing their orbits on earth struck me as I sat heavily down to my work. What did I know of Visconti—or Visconti of me? For ages I had worked near him and I knew he trusted and had what is called regard for me. Yet the planets in trackless space knew more of each other. I believe he knows that I am a middle-aged bachelor and I know he has a daughter who is the apple of his eye—and he pays the wage by which I live. But what else did we know? He had lost a deeply loved wife and remained a widower. My heart warmed to him in a sudden sympathy. As though reciprocating, he came bustling to my desk a minute later and bending toward me whispered:"Do not forget that your time is your own—if yourdemarches—private business—do not forget!" I thanked him but he waved his pudgy hand in sign of friendly deprecation of formalities.... com 'e duro calleLo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale,lamented Dante. Yes, hard is the path, the going up and down other people's stairs, when you depend for your livelihood upon them. But Visconti in his manner endeavored to make his "stairs" those of a friend.There was no word from Randolph that morning and my heart grew every moment heavier.I seemed to require no food. I straggled aimlessly during the noon hour through mean streets, from Bleecker Street to Abingdon Square, in a world of listless women and dirty children, a desert, ghostly world, drab and wretched.Shuttling back and forth, all but inanimate, I passed Minot Blackden's studio, but with sudden horror recoiled from entering. I was driven about like a leaf. I was a shadow in a world of shadows.Towards four o'clock I rose heavily from my desk, determined to drag myself to police headquarters in search of Sergeant Cullum. I expected nothing from him, but, still, he might utter a word of hope.At that moment my telephone rang. It was Randolph!His voice was charged and crackling with excitement and importance."Will you meet me at Brentano's, corner Twenty-sixth Street and the Avenue right away?""Why," I said piteously—"tell me, in God's name—have you news?—what d'you mean?"A swirl of hope and apprehension swept me like a wave and left me gasping."Yes, Uncle Ranny," was the chuckling reply. "I have news—she's—I know where she is—Come right over!"And without giving me a chance to say more, the young devil hung up the receiver. I cursed the boy in my heart for being a boy—for his callousness to another's suffering.Exactly how I reached that corner, I cannot now remember. I did not walk and yet I cannot for the life of me recall what manner of conveyance I used. So much happened in my mind during that transit that external matters left absolutely no impression upon it. The first impression I do recall is the shock of blank chagrin that struck me like a shot in the vitals when I saw Randolph standing jauntily alone at the corner, staring at the passing crowd. Alicia was not with him.Yet how important the young rascal suddenly seemed in my eyes. He alone in all the world had present knowledge of her. I could have fallen upon him and hugged him then and there—and shamed him to death."Where—where is she?" I blurted out. "I thought you—tell me, in heaven's name!" and I seized hold of him fiercely, as though he were a pickpocket caught in the act. He glanced at me with humorous cockiness and laughed. Then suddenly conscious that people were staring at us, and that a policeman was speculatively watching our encounter, he hastily put his arm through mine and drew me away."Come on, Uncle Ranny, I'll lead you to where she is.""You amazing boy!" I muttered. "But are you really sure?""Sure I'm sure!" he crowed. "I think it's nothing to be a detective. I believe I'd make a good one," he bragged."Brag, you young devil," I thought indulgently, but I made no audible reply and merely made him walk faster.He was leading me into Twenty-ninth Street beyond Brentano's and to my amazement I found myself at the well-remembered door of Andrews' bookshop."Here!" I cried in stupefaction. He nodded, grinning as though he expected an oration of praise for his acumen then and there. He did not get it. I rushed in wildly, like a mad man, into those silent precincts where so often I had passed blissfully silent hours. Who would desire a garish light in this pleasant temple? For a moment I seemed to be in utter darkness."Kind of dark," murmured Randolph, "but I spotted her."On a sudden my dilated eyes encountered two human beings simultaneously in their line of vision. Andrews was standing in dignity in the middle of his shop like a monarch about to receive royalty, and behind him, at a desk in the rear, a girl was bending over some writing, an electric light illumining her fair head.The girl—yes!—It was Alicia!I felt the effect of a sharp blow over the heart and, brushing the astonished Andrews aside, I made a crazy leap toward her."Why, Mr. Randolph Byrd!" began Andrews. "Haven't seen you—""Alicia!" I cried out in what sounded even in my own ears like a sob."Oh, Uncle Ranny!" She jumped from her chair with a little scream, and, before I knew it, I was pressing her to my heart with a quivering convulsive joy that choked all utterance.She gasped in pain, the poor child. But when my arms relaxed, she lay sobbing happily against my heart.Randolph was so scandalized that he sullenly turned his back upon us. Andrews was watching us with discreet and sober interest."My dearest child!" I whispered, still in a sort of trance of ecstasy, and Alicia, with the tears trickling down her face, murmured softly."Oh, how glad I am I'm found! And there's Randolph," she added with a happy laugh.Her last words suddenly woke me out of my trance. I loosed my arms and stood for an instant baffled, uncertain, shamefaced."What are you doing here?" I then brusquely demanded with stupid severity to conceal the turbulent emotions within me."I—oh, didn't you get my letter?" she faltered. "I tried to explain—I had nowhere to go—" her lips were quivering—"he told me what a burden I was—I seemed to be only making a lot of trouble—and I had nowhere to go," she wept."He? Who? Andrews?" I demanded harshly."No, no!—Mr. Pendleton," she was sobbing again."Ah, of course, Pendleton." I felt myself turning livid with hate for the man whose purpose in life seemed to be to wreck my own."And did Andrews know you were my—my ward?""Oh, no, Uncle Ranny," and her voice was like a child's tired of crying. "I meant to tell him later—after I told you. He just took me without—anything."Glancing now toward Andrews, I found him discreetly standing, still in the middle of his shop, but somehow he had managed to draw my scandalized nephew into conversation to afford me the courtesy of a greater privacy. My heart went out to him in affection as never before."Andrews!" I called, pulling myself together to a semblance of dignity. Andrews gave a nod to Randolph and without any unseemly haste approached me, pleasantly smiling."This is my ward—Miss Alicia Palmer," I managed to say with forced calmness.Andrews bowed ceremoniously as though he were meeting the owner of the Huth library or Bernard Quaritch. Yet there was a curious twinkle in his shrewd old Scotch eyes."Like all young women of the present day," I went on, with astonishing glibness—that is at its best when a man is lying for a woman—"she wanted to prove her independence by scorning my poor protection, Andrews—to earn her own living—you understand, Andrews?""Indeed—indeed?" said Andrews. "And she can earn it, too. Now I understand the mystery. She recognized a second edition of 'Paradise Lost' at a glance. Your training, Mr. Byrd—your salary is advanced, Miss Palmer."Alicia smiled, blushing faintly, and in that smile I suddenly realized how much of the child still clung to this well-grown young woman—how much of the child, no doubt, remains clinging to every woman. She was pained, distraught, suffering, yet she seemed to feel that she had done something very courageous and dignified. And it was to her dignity I hung on with tenacity, for instinctively I recognized that this was a turning point in her life—that the woman was now putting away the child in the cradle of the past."I think I shall ask you to release her, Andrews." I laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Some day I shall explain to you more fully. It's been—but never mind that. I should like to take my ward home—with your permission?""Certainly, certainly," he affirmed with spontaneous vehemence. "But come in soon, both of you—she's of our stripe, Mr. Byrd—she loves the good things!—come in both. I expect to have some new things from Professor Gurney's library that'll delight you.""We shall indeed, my dear Andrews. Get your hat, Alicia." And as she turned away for her things, I managed to murmur this much to the kindly Andrews:"I shall never forget your conduct in this matter, Andrews—you're a great bookseller, but, man dear, you're even a greater gentleman!"And with as little delay as possible we left the shop.A spate of questions boiled in my brain and foamed up like turbulent waters backed by a dam. But all at once I came to a sharp decision.I knew enough. It was that devil Pendleton that had filled her mind with the thought that she was a burden until the poor child was wild with a frenzy of distraction. But he had not been able to trust to his persuasions. Then there was the scene of that dreadful evening when, in her bewilderment, she realized herself as an apple of discord, a shatterer of families. I believed I understood enough."Where did you sleep, Alicia?" I asked her nonchalantly."I have a little room in Twenty-fourth Street," she answered simply. "I haven't paid for it yet. The landlady wanted money in advance, but I told her I didn't have it, so she let me stay, anyway.""Let us go there, my dear, and settle it now.""Yes, Uncle Ranny," she murmured low."I've got to hand it to you, 'Licia," broke out Randolph, emerging from his silence. "You're a true sport—for a girl!" Whereat we all burst into happy laughter.And for the rest of our peregrinations as well as in the train, the lad could not take his eyes from Alicia in sheer amazed admiration. It was as though he were seeing her for the first time.
CHAPTER XIX
Exultation filled me when I awoke late in the morning.
Though I had slept in my clothes and felt particularly disheveled, I stripped with the joy of an athlete after a victory and plunged into the cool invigorating bath.
Pendleton was gone! I do not remember the emotions of Sinbad when he had rid himself of the Old Man of the Sea. But his emotions must have resembled mine. My heart sang, I sang myself. I was manumitted. I was free. To my intimate journal may I not say that I felt myself a man?
I had fought the beast at Ephesus, my pulses blasphemously and jubilantly informed me, and by the Lord, I had won!
The children were mine! Alicia was mine! Would that I could bind them to me with triple brass. But I have bound them. In ridding myself of Pendleton, I had made them securely mine. Suppose he should return one day? They would be grown—reared by me. He would be merely the family skeleton. What is a family without a skeleton? He was that now. He wouldn't matter. It is human destiny to revolve about the child, about children. With the exception of Pendleton the outcast and Gertrude the—well, Gertrude—every one attained completeness only in rearing the next generation. And as I rubbed my body with the coarse towel I felt complete!
As for Alicia—ah—well, who was I to expect from lifeeverything? At any rate she was mine, now, even as the children were mine. And the very first thing I would do—oh, jeweled inspiration—is to adopt her, legally and formally. That thought suddenly made the blood sing in my ears to so delicious a tune that absurdly, ridiculously, I began like some pagan or satyr to dance about the room.Mine, mine, mine! I danced into the room in which Pendleton had not slept and with crazy gestures made as if to sweep his memory out of the garish window. I had saved the children and safeguarded Alicia.
I felt I had played the man. And let no man say he has lived until he has fought for those he loves. Inevitably my mind dwelt upon Alicia. Who is that child? What were her beginnings? Did she come out of the sea and chaos of life only to vanish in some bitter poignant dream like that of last night? I only knew that she was mine now and that I would bind her to me yet more strongly. I would not ask for too much; I would be humbly grateful. She had come into my life as a divine offering and I would not question overmuch. There is no other origin. I felt supremely, tremulously content. If only she would abide and never leave me!
And it occurred to me, as I stood shaving before the mirror, that life is a beleaguered city, with deadly arrows falling over the wall, and the great enemy, death, certain to enter in the end. But by virtue of the love implanted in the human heart, one may snatch many hours of happiness amid the tumult and the shouting in the winding ways.
Over my hasty breakfast I recalled with a shock of guilt that I had not yet communicated with Griselda. But as I was already late I decided I should call her from the office.
How swift is mischief to enter in the thoughts of desperate men I discovered bitterly only a few minutes later.
For the first word I received upon entering Visconti's was that Griselda had called me repeatedly and Griselda's news chilled and numbed every fiber in my body.
Alicia had disappeared!
Pendleton! That was the thought that seared my brain.
"You—don't think"—I stammered brokenly to Griselda, "that she—that Pendleton—"
"I have thought of that," was her reply. "But—no! It canna be possible. She hated him—no! She must hae gone before ye left the house. I looked into her room soon after and she wasna there. I thought the girlie was hiding somewhere—or maybe she had run out into the garden until the mischief should blow over. I looked high and low; I called her in the garden. But she was nowhere to be found."
"Did she take any things?" I queried huskily.
"A wee bundle—" said Griselda—"night things and the like."
The shuddering dismay of that moment I shall never forget.
"Did she talk with—with him at all during the evening?" The words struggled out of my parched throat in spite of me, and I should have hated to see my own eyes.
"Ay," said Griselda, "that he did, the leper! All the evening he was wheedling her to come to him with the bairns when he set up his house. She was weeping sair to me in the kitchen afterward. It was to ask you if you wanted her to go that she waited for you in the study—and fell asleep, the poor maidie!"
"And what did you say to her?" I all but whispered into the mouthpiece.
"I told the lass not to greet," shouted Griselda. "I told her I could nae believe it would happen. He would never take the bairns. And if he did he would nae keep them. He was a bad one—the evil brute! But she was frightened, the puir lassie!"
"Very well, Griselda," I muttered stonily. "I must think. I shall call you a little later. Don't alarm the others."
She hated him, had said Griselda! There was a meager ray of comfort. But do what I would, my stunned mind continued to flutter heavily like a half-scorched moth around the ugly, sinister vision of Pendleton. Could he be at the bottom of Alicia's disappearance? How had he contrived the trick? If only I had gone to the station with him! Was it that that accounted for his hurry to be gone? No! It was impossible. Ought I to start in pursuit at once? No, no, no! I could not believe it. It could not be—not of her own free will! Yet my heart was lacerated by the possibility. When I lifted my head from my bosom, I gasped in a desolation of emptiness.
I had stifled the prompting to call Dibdin last night, but now I felt I must find him. I needed the solace and advice of a friend. I rose heavily and put on my hat. Visconti had not yet come in.
"Tell Mr. Visconti," I said to Varesi, my young understudy, "that I have been called away suddenly, on a serious private matter. I shall telephone him later."
"Yes, Mr. Byrd," responded Varesi, his lustrous Italian eyes flashing sympathy. He thought, no doubt, from what he must have overheard, that some rascal had run off with my younger sister—a killing matter, very possibly, to a properly constituted male. Had he known the truth, his Latin mind would have been shocked at my seeming Anglo-Saxon composure. Out of doors I heaved a deep sigh and boarded a north-bound elevated train for the eighties, where Dibdin has his lodgings, near the Museum of Natural History.
I found Dibdin not at his lodging but at the Museum, directing the rearrangement of the Polynesian section in the light of his additions to it.
He turned one intense glance upon me without speaking, hurriedly gave some directions to the men at work, and led me to an alcove where there was a bench.
"Now, let's hear—" he said. "What's he been doing?" He concluded at once that Pendleton was at the bottom of whatever wild appearance I must have presented.
Briefly, but without omitting any essential detail, I gave him an account of all that had happened the previous evening, including Griselda's announcement of the morning.
"And you think he enticed her to go off with him?" he demanded.
"Well—what do you think?" I queried.
"I think no," said Dibdin. "What does Griselda say?"
"She says Alicia hated him."
"Then take her word for it!" snapped Dibdin. "But why the devil didn't you call me last night from the Manhattan?" he turned upon me angrily.
"Why didn't I?" I murmured. "Maybe it's because you've done enough—maybe it's because there are some things a man wants to do without assistance."
Dibdin glanced at me sharply and gave a low whistle.
"Oh, that's it—" he muttered—"I see," and he looked away.
I am certain that at that moment Dibdin read my secret. For his expression swiftly changed. He grew suddenly warm and friendly, more than his usual self.
"A fine job you did there, Randolph," he cried, clapping my shoulder; "an excellent piece of work. I certainly admire your technique. As for Alicia—she didn't go with him—of that I feel sure!" I could have groveled before him in gratitude for those words.
"But where do you suppose she is?" I could not help eagerly asking. There was a gleam of amusement mingled with the sympathy in his eyes.
"Not very far, I imagine. We'll find her. Have no fear. Young girls are funny things. The instinct of sacrifice and the instinct of independence are always struggling in a woman like the twins in Rebekah's womb. When they're young it hits them very hard. Some notion like that must have swamped Alicia—sacrifice—earn her own living—ceasing to be a source of trouble—who knows? They don't think when they're young—or even when they're old. They feel. We'll find her—but we've got to think. Pull yourself together, old man."
"How," I asked in stupefaction, "do you come to know all that about women?" And my heart felt perceptibly lightened at his words.
"Oh, I've been studying them all my life," he laughed. "Never having had one of my own, I've been watching and thinking about the whole sex all over the earth. We'll find her. Have you communicated with the police?"
At the word "police," my heart turned leaden again.
"The—p-police!" I stammered aghast. "Invoke the publicity that means?—Horrible!" A shudder ran down my back.
"Right again!" cried Dibdin, nudging me. "Young man, you have an appreciation! Quite useless—the police. But you still—have a suspicion of Pendleton, haven't you?" I found myself wishing that even the best of men weren't so ready to imagine themselves amateur detectives. The very core of my heart of hearts, Alicia, had disappeared, and I wanted swift concrete help, not speculative questions.
I admitted that I had a lingering suspicion of Pendleton.
"Then, this is what we do," Dibdin rubbed his forehead as over a problem in chess. "We see a private detective agency here and acquaint them with the facts. Have them pick up Pendleton on the way—he hasn't reached Chicago yet, you know—and see if he's traveling alone. If he is, let him go on his way. If not—then, a description of the girl—you understand—"
A livid fury possessed me suddenly as I saw the all too vivid picture that Dibdin had evoked and was now trying to believe.
"No, no!" I cried. "I am going myself. I dare not—I cannot trust anybody else to do this. You don't know—you can't understand—"
"I know only too damned well," growled Dibdin staring at me quizzically. "But I am trying to show you sense—difficult, I admit, to one in your condition. However, I must try again," he went on with the patience of resignation.
"You are only one man—don't you see? A detective agency is an organization of many men in different places who can concentrate on the same job simultaneously. At this minute they would know on which train he might be traveling and some one or several could already be watching for his arrival. Suppose they miss him. There are many hotels in Chicago—there are many trains leaving for the coast—don't you see?"
"Yes," I breathed brokenly. "Then it's useless."
"Far from it," he laughed. "Come with me."
Less than an hour later we were at the Mahoney Detective Agency and a suave young Irishman was listening without emotion or eagerness to my story supplemented by Dibdin's interpolations. He seemed to care little for what concerned me most, but he was keen for personal details of Pendleton's appearance, height, build, clothes, lettering on his luggage and so on.
When it came to giving a detailed description of Alicia, my confusion was so pitiful that even the young detective glanced at me only once and then, like the gentleman he was, looked sedulously down upon the paper before him.
"Sixteen—in her seventeenth year!" he murmured in astonishment.
"But she is an unusual girl—well grown for her age," I caught him up.
"I see," he murmured gravely. "What's the color of her hair?"
I went on as best I could with the description.
"I could save you money," he smiled blandly, "by telling you that the girl is not with him—" and I could have wrung his hand like a brother's. "But," he added, "it won't cost much to pick him up. I'll have news for you to-morrow this time, I'm thinking."
As I sat down to lunch with Dibdin at his club, though in truth nothing was farther from my cravings than food, he suddenly burst forth into hearty laughter.
"So it's my thousand you gave Pendleton?" he chuckled. "That was sheer inspiration, Randolph—sheer, unadulterated genius! If you weren't so lugubrious just now, I could accuse you of a high ironic sense of humor that only a great man would be capable of!"
How terrible were the next twenty-four hours, in spite of Dibdin's companionship and his efforts to cheer me, no one will ever know. No funeral could possibly have darkened my household to such an extent. I dreaded to be seen by the children, who walked about like wraiths under the sense of tragedy. I dreaded to tell them lies and yet I could not tell them the truth. Finally I felt I must say something to Laura and Randolph.
The departure of their father they received without the least surprise. Randolph inquired where he had gone, but this, I answered, I could not tell him, save that he had gone West. But the absence of Alicia left them puzzled and strained and awed. Alicia's disappearance shook them almost as it had shaken me.
"When will she be back?" demanded Randolph.
"I don't know exactly," I answered miserably, "soon, I hope."
The following morning I gave up all thought of going to the office. If my mysterious truancy should cost me my job, then it must be so. I hovered in the region of the telephone. Again and again I was about to call up Mahoney's, but I forebore. Finally, toward noon, I could wait no longer. When the connection was made, I gave my name and asked for the young man who had charge of my case.
"Was just going to call you," was the bland apologetic answer. "Your man is at the La Salle Hotel, going out on the Santa Fe to-night. He is alone and arrived alone last night. We'll see whether he starts alone to-night."
Then, of course, I cursed myself for my folly in thinking that it might be otherwise and realized that I had really thought nothing of the sort.
But where in the meanwhile was Alicia?
I had believed myself by now schooled to emergencies, but here was an emergency that left me dazed and helpless. I had fondly thought myself a match for life, but life was crushing me with pain like a blind force.
I leaped up suddenly and wandered about the house and the garden like a dog searching miserably for a departed loved one. There was the stream—but I turned from it shivering. No—that was impossible! The sense of life in Alicia, her vitality, was too potent, too radiant to suffer extinction. I looked up at my little nest from the edge of the muddy stream, that frail eyrie upon the rock that I had felt so nestling, secure; barred by the trunks of intervening trees, it now seemed a prison. A faint breeze that was stirring the leaves made them murmurous with secret things which my heart cried out to interpret. Was it a litany, a dirge, or a whisper of hope? I could not read the riddle, but my bruised spirit was passionately clinging to hope.
Dibdin pretended not to observe my vagaries; when I returned I found him absorbed in Epictetus.
"This is rather good," he growled, pointing to a passage and puffing his pipe as he spoke:
"Have you not received facilities by which you may support any event? Have you not received a manly soul? Have you not received patience?"
"Yes," I muttered dejectedly, "all very well, but Epictetus never lost Alicia."
Dibdin laughed shortly. "Now," he said, "we must start out to find her. Though my feeling is she'll come back of her own accord very soon. The girl was frightened—no more."
I ignored the last part of his speech but leaped at the first.
"How would you start?" I queried sharply.
"What is the high-sounding name of that institution where she was brought up?"
"Oh, don't tell them, for Heaven's sake," I cried out in alarm. "If she is not there and they learn I have lost her, they'll never consent to my adopting her; they'll consider me irresponsible."
"Don't let's be fools," retorted Dibdin. "Those people are not. Do you know how many boys, girls, men and women turn up 'willfully missing' every year?" No, I didn't know.
"But, by George!" he suddenly clapped his forehead in a burst of inspiration—"Sergeant Cullum! Ever hear of Sergeant Cullum?." I shook my head. "He is a policeman I know who has a genius for finding missing persons. It's positively a sixth sense with him. He's a prodigy—has traveled everywhere—a human bloodhound—he is the man to go to!"
"But—the police!" I stammered.
"Yes, I know—but we'll see whether we can make him take this as a private case—out of hours—I'll find him!"
The surge of hope to my eyes must have told Dibdin better than any words I could have uttered what I felt at that instant.
"But first we'll call that institution," he directed. "You put in a call for the number and I'll tell you what to say."
"You needn't," I decided after a moment's reflection. "I know. I shall simply inquire about the regulations governing adoptions. I can so word it that if Alicia is there they will tell me."
"Ah, now your brain is functioning again," he concluded. "That being so, I shall leave you and look up Cullum at the bureau of missing persons."
Then I recalled that I had met with the phrase in newspapers. The fact that missing persons were so numerous that a bureau of the metropolitan police was required to handle them cheered me more than any other single fact. It was consoling to feel that even, in my peculiar misery I had joined a great multitude who suffered the loss of loved ones, even as in toil and labor and poverty I had merged into the vast majority.
When Dibdin left me I learned that I might adopt Alicia without any great obstacles, if she were willing, but I was no wiser as to her whereabouts. The Home, in the person of the Matron, inquired how "she was getting along." She was obviously not there, and I experienced a misery of guilt as though I had robbed the world of its dearest possession and then lost it.
Alone and bereft I sat, sinking to a mere pin's point in my abasement. I had begun to believe myself schooled in life, something of a man among men. But my own ineffectiveness was now dismally revealed to me. I had proved myself incapable of guarding even what was dearest to me in the world. I was at the bottom of an abyss from which I now felt hopeless to scramble upward. The sheer and beetling walls of granite were overpoweringly steep and forbidding. For the first time in long years, I believe I mentally prayed. I waited for Dibdin.
And then suddenly, as is the way with me when I am at the bottom, my spirits bounded upward. Alicia would come back to me, I felt in a sudden surge of assurance. At that moment I felt sure that she was thinking of me, that she was yearning to return. And before I knew it, I was blocking in magnificent plans for her education, for making a splendid woman of her, even though she already seemed perfect, of supplementing nature's handiwork with all the force that was in me. I saw her resplendent, a shining creature, the woman of my dreams! What a florid designer is hope!
But why should she have been taken from me so abruptly? The vast mystery of life encompassed me again like a shell, impenetrable—a carapace through which nature must supply the openings—and she had evidently not supplied them. Would Dibdin never come with his policeman?
Books, for so long my mainstay and support, were now useless to me. I turned over many volumes idly but my mind no longer reacted to that old and magical alchemy. The volume of Epictetus that Dibdin had fingered might have been a seed catalogue, so remote it seemed and so null. I was now a ghost among my books: I was plunged in "The Woods of Westermain," and my memory flung me the lines:
Enter these enchanted woods,You who dare.Nothing harms beneath the leavesMore than waves a swimmer cleaves.Toss your heart up with the lark,Foot at peace with mouse and worm,Fair you fare.Only at a dread of darkQuaver, and they quit their form;Thousand eyeballs under hoodsHave you by the hair.Enter these enchanted woods,You who dare.
Enter these enchanted woods,You who dare.Nothing harms beneath the leavesMore than waves a swimmer cleaves.Toss your heart up with the lark,Foot at peace with mouse and worm,Fair you fare.Only at a dread of darkQuaver, and they quit their form;Thousand eyeballs under hoodsHave you by the hair.Enter these enchanted woods,You who dare.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form;
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
You who dare.
It was clear. I must toss my heart up with the lark to fare fairly, even though my pain was great.
Late that afternoon; Dibdin returned, bringing Sergeant Cullum.
That excellent policeman gave me more hope than any one, excepting my own heart, had yet succeeded in doing. He insisted upon being made privy to all the circumstances, to which he listened, his broad shaven face turned ceilingward, with the rapt air of a mystic, expecting momentarily that lightning flash of inspiration that would reveal all. Then he asked to be allowed to wander by himself throughout the house, over which he went pointing and sniffing like some well-trained hound. In the end he declared himself satisfied.
"Now give me a little time," he said.
"But what means—how do you go to work?" I asked, nettled that he should see possibilities regarding Alicia that I had overlooked.
"I swear, Mr. Byrd, I don't know," he answered reverently. "I wait for guidance."
"Guidance?" I faltered.
"Yes—from on high."
"You depend on that—only?"
"Only!—Well, yes and no. I pray, Mr. Byrd—I pray."
"You have no other means?" I queried, with a sinking heart.
"What other means are there," he demanded with glowing eyes, "that the Lord can't supply? What detective in the world can equal the Lord—tell me that, Mr. Byrd."
I saw that I was in the presence of a fanatic and I stood abashed.
"The best man in the Department," Dibdin put in encouragingly. "Sergeant Cullumisthe bureau of missing persons."
"Give me a little time," he urged again, with the fervid intensity of prayer—Time! And it was Alicia who was missing!
I shook his hand and gave him time and parted from him with a hope that I should not have to wait for his ecstatic visions to restore her.
"He'll find her!" Dibdin exclaimed reassuringly. "Never fear. If there is one thing I've learned, it's to accept the methods of people so long as they produce the results. Let them use the divining rod if they want to, or incantations with henbane and hellebore, or trances and visions, or prayer. This almost human race of ours is made up of some very odd fish," he added with a laugh, and he looked at me quizzically as though I were the oddest fish of them all.
"But an ecstatic policeman"—I murmured—
"Yes—queer—I know," said Dibdin, "but I don't care. And now, old boy, I've got to run back to the museum and take a squint at the work. Cheer up."
I was alone in my study after a pretense of eating supper with the children, when Jimmie burst in and flung himself upon me.
"I want to know where is Alicia," he demanded with quivering lips, and he burst into a pitiful freshet of bitter weeping. His childish tears fell like scalding lead upon my hands and I hugged the quivering small figure to me in an anguished embrace.
"Don't you want Laura to put you to bed?" I murmured with my lips against his ear.
"Don't want Laura," he sobbed chokingly; "want Alicia to give me my bath and put me to bed. Where is she? Why don't she come?"
It was a cry that tore at my heart as it echoed there and reverberated. I hugged him closer.
"I'll give you your bath, Jimmikins," I endeavored to soothe him, "and we'll float ships."
"'Licia—tells me—stories!" he sobbed out, as one broken with tragedy, and I declare I came very near to joining him in his grief.
"I'll—tell you a story—Jimmie," I gulped foolishly, "and until Alicia comes back you must be the fine little man you are—and let me."
"When is she coming back?"
"I am not sure, Jimmie—possibly to-morrow." It was my throbbing hope. For that we could go on any longer without her was simply inconceivable to me.
Gradually his paroxysm subsided. He grew quiescent in my arms and heaved a deep sigh as we nestled against each other in silence. It is fortunate that the grief of children is like a summer shower. For so intense is it while it lasts that any serious continuation of agony would rack their small frames to pieces.
"All right, Uncle Ranny," he murmured finally. "Will you come in and give me my bath? I'll go and run it—I know how, first the hot and then the cold. And I'll put the ships in and undress. Then you come in and tell me a long story while I sail them." And he ran out of the room in a little whirlwind of energy.
I sat bowed in silence for a few minutes and then heavily made my way to the bathroom.
"Is the temp'ture a'right?" queried Jimmie, with an intense air of responsibility, his erect nude little figure standing with a ship under each arm, like a symbol of man adventuring his petty argosies on this storm-beaten planet. I put my hand judicially into the water. How important is the temperature of a child's bath! It must be neither too hot nor too cold, or disastrous results might follow.
I began to tell him an ancient story of an island that proved to be a sleeping whale, but he was impatient of that.
"'Licia," he informed me in deprecating protest, "tells me stories of Mowgli in the jungle—out of the 'Jungle Book.'" I endeavored with a heavy heart to match Alicia, and gradually I became absorbed in my task and in Jimmie, so that the darkness of life fell away from me. The water splashed and the ships tacked about in wild maneuvers, while Jimmie kept reminding me that "he was listening, Uncle Ranny."
The great mystics are those who submerge their intellect and senses into night so that their souls emerge before them like the full moon out of the blackness. Every parent, I suppose, must be in part a mystic: for by centering his heart on little children he discerns the pulsating irresistible life of the universe, the past and the future, alpha and omega.
At least Jimmie was courteous enough to assure me, when he hugged me for the last time, with sleepy eyes, that my tale was won'erful. "But, oh, Uncle Ranny," he whispered, "say that Alicia will be back to-morrow."
I kissed him but made no promise. In the dining room Laura and Randolph were sitting over their books,—Laura grave with an anxious pucker in her white forehead and Randolph with dilated, somewhat fevered eyes. He was obviously thinking rather than reading. But I dared not enter into any more discussion of Alicia's absence that evening.
Only now after many days can I write down the events of the day following my last entry with anything approximating composure; and even now my fingers are tremulous as they hold the pencil.
I had risen early, for my sleep had been broken and fitful—as, indeed, how could it have been otherwise?
I was parched and burning within, to act, to do something, to range the city, the country—Good God, I thought, can a person like Alicia disappear in that way like a pebble in the sea? But my frenzy of thought, that seemed as if it would burst the poor narrow limits of my skull, produced no definite idea. I lashed against the bars of the brain like a beast in its cage.
I entertained no thought of going to the office that morning, but half an hour after I was up, that was the only thought that flooded my mind. There are blessings in a routine of daily labor that those engaged therein can hardly understand. The treadmill, I imagine, leaves the mule but little time for speculation or grief or any other emotions. I was that kind—or, rather that mule let loose—that could find oblivion nowhere better than in the treadmill. For routine can dull despair.
It was still half an hour before breakfast when my nephew Randolph came clattering down the stairs, meticulously dressed, though somewhat wild-eyed. He gave me the impression of having—he also—slept badly. "Uncle Ranny," he approached me, "are you going to the office this morning?"
"Yes, I think I am. Why, Randolph?"
"I'd like to go in to town with you—and go round—look around."
"What do you mean, my boy?"
"Somebody ought to be looking for Alicia all the time—don't you think so, Uncle Ranny? I'd like to try," and he looked away shamefaced.
A boy in his sixteenth year can be a considerable pillar in a household. I had somehow overlooked Randolph in that rôle. Perhaps I had been inclined to treat Laura's children too much as nestlings all, wholly dependent upon me? I experienced a thrill of pleasurable surprise in the boy's words and manner. He had said no word concerning his father, had asked no disconcerting questions. He merely desired to help.
"But of course there is somebody looking for Alicia," I informed him.
"Yes, I know, Uncle Ranny—a policeman! What does a policeman know about girls like Alicia? I—we talked a lot, she and I," he stammered. "I have a hunch I could sort of tell what she'dthinkof doing if she left home. Let me have a try at it, Uncle Ranny, please. It'll only be a few nickels in carfare."
"Certainly, my boy," I put my arm about his shoulders. To frustrate young intentions simply because they are young has never appealed to me as wisdom. "Come into town with me by all means. I am certain Alicia will come back"—he could not know the effort this easy answer was costing me—"but there is no reason why you shouldn't try to find her." I had thrown off any mask of secrecy with all excepting Jimmie. Insincerity is a difficult habit to wear.
"Thanks, Uncle Ranny," he answered with suppressed jubilation, and for the first time in our common history I suddenly felt that I had a companion in Randolph—that he was growing up.
When he left me at the station, charged with avuncular instructions that he was to telephone me at various times of the day and that he was to lunch with me if he could, I had a tender impulse to embrace this lad, Laura's first-born, before all the concourse. But I knew he would be shamed to death by such a demonstration. So I tapped him on the shoulder and we parted grinning to keep each other in heart. I experienced a fleeting intuition that Alicia would be restored to us, but I expected nothing at all from Randolph's romantic quest for her.
My heart went out to the boy as I saw him merge and lose himself in the crowd; I felt very tenderly not only toward those of my flesh, but to all young things facing the hurly-burly of this oddly jumbled sphere.
I was becoming an ogler in my old age. Every young girl I saw in the streets, in cars, at crossings, I scrutinized searchingly, with painful leapings of the heart, when any of them in the slightest particular resembled Alicia. And the melancholy truth came to me that you can build a life to any design you please, but only a miracle will keep it intact.
Visconti was in the office when I arrived and he was kindness itself when he saw my face.
"Caro mio!" he grasped my hand. "Something serious?"
"Some domestic trouble—a little painful," I stammered, and he saw that I did not wish to speak of it. And the vast loneliness of human beings traversing their orbits on earth struck me as I sat heavily down to my work. What did I know of Visconti—or Visconti of me? For ages I had worked near him and I knew he trusted and had what is called regard for me. Yet the planets in trackless space knew more of each other. I believe he knows that I am a middle-aged bachelor and I know he has a daughter who is the apple of his eye—and he pays the wage by which I live. But what else did we know? He had lost a deeply loved wife and remained a widower. My heart warmed to him in a sudden sympathy. As though reciprocating, he came bustling to my desk a minute later and bending toward me whispered:
"Do not forget that your time is your own—if yourdemarches—private business—do not forget!" I thanked him but he waved his pudgy hand in sign of friendly deprecation of formalities.
... com 'e duro calleLo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale,
... com 'e duro calleLo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale,
... com 'e duro calle
Lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale,
lamented Dante. Yes, hard is the path, the going up and down other people's stairs, when you depend for your livelihood upon them. But Visconti in his manner endeavored to make his "stairs" those of a friend.
There was no word from Randolph that morning and my heart grew every moment heavier.
I seemed to require no food. I straggled aimlessly during the noon hour through mean streets, from Bleecker Street to Abingdon Square, in a world of listless women and dirty children, a desert, ghostly world, drab and wretched.
Shuttling back and forth, all but inanimate, I passed Minot Blackden's studio, but with sudden horror recoiled from entering. I was driven about like a leaf. I was a shadow in a world of shadows.
Towards four o'clock I rose heavily from my desk, determined to drag myself to police headquarters in search of Sergeant Cullum. I expected nothing from him, but, still, he might utter a word of hope.
At that moment my telephone rang. It was Randolph!
His voice was charged and crackling with excitement and importance.
"Will you meet me at Brentano's, corner Twenty-sixth Street and the Avenue right away?"
"Why," I said piteously—"tell me, in God's name—have you news?—what d'you mean?"
A swirl of hope and apprehension swept me like a wave and left me gasping.
"Yes, Uncle Ranny," was the chuckling reply. "I have news—she's—I know where she is—Come right over!"
And without giving me a chance to say more, the young devil hung up the receiver. I cursed the boy in my heart for being a boy—for his callousness to another's suffering.
Exactly how I reached that corner, I cannot now remember. I did not walk and yet I cannot for the life of me recall what manner of conveyance I used. So much happened in my mind during that transit that external matters left absolutely no impression upon it. The first impression I do recall is the shock of blank chagrin that struck me like a shot in the vitals when I saw Randolph standing jauntily alone at the corner, staring at the passing crowd. Alicia was not with him.
Yet how important the young rascal suddenly seemed in my eyes. He alone in all the world had present knowledge of her. I could have fallen upon him and hugged him then and there—and shamed him to death.
"Where—where is she?" I blurted out. "I thought you—tell me, in heaven's name!" and I seized hold of him fiercely, as though he were a pickpocket caught in the act. He glanced at me with humorous cockiness and laughed. Then suddenly conscious that people were staring at us, and that a policeman was speculatively watching our encounter, he hastily put his arm through mine and drew me away.
"Come on, Uncle Ranny, I'll lead you to where she is."
"You amazing boy!" I muttered. "But are you really sure?"
"Sure I'm sure!" he crowed. "I think it's nothing to be a detective. I believe I'd make a good one," he bragged.
"Brag, you young devil," I thought indulgently, but I made no audible reply and merely made him walk faster.
He was leading me into Twenty-ninth Street beyond Brentano's and to my amazement I found myself at the well-remembered door of Andrews' bookshop.
"Here!" I cried in stupefaction. He nodded, grinning as though he expected an oration of praise for his acumen then and there. He did not get it. I rushed in wildly, like a mad man, into those silent precincts where so often I had passed blissfully silent hours. Who would desire a garish light in this pleasant temple? For a moment I seemed to be in utter darkness.
"Kind of dark," murmured Randolph, "but I spotted her."
On a sudden my dilated eyes encountered two human beings simultaneously in their line of vision. Andrews was standing in dignity in the middle of his shop like a monarch about to receive royalty, and behind him, at a desk in the rear, a girl was bending over some writing, an electric light illumining her fair head.
The girl—yes!—It was Alicia!
I felt the effect of a sharp blow over the heart and, brushing the astonished Andrews aside, I made a crazy leap toward her.
"Why, Mr. Randolph Byrd!" began Andrews. "Haven't seen you—"
"Alicia!" I cried out in what sounded even in my own ears like a sob.
"Oh, Uncle Ranny!" She jumped from her chair with a little scream, and, before I knew it, I was pressing her to my heart with a quivering convulsive joy that choked all utterance.
She gasped in pain, the poor child. But when my arms relaxed, she lay sobbing happily against my heart.
Randolph was so scandalized that he sullenly turned his back upon us. Andrews was watching us with discreet and sober interest.
"My dearest child!" I whispered, still in a sort of trance of ecstasy, and Alicia, with the tears trickling down her face, murmured softly.
"Oh, how glad I am I'm found! And there's Randolph," she added with a happy laugh.
Her last words suddenly woke me out of my trance. I loosed my arms and stood for an instant baffled, uncertain, shamefaced.
"What are you doing here?" I then brusquely demanded with stupid severity to conceal the turbulent emotions within me.
"I—oh, didn't you get my letter?" she faltered. "I tried to explain—I had nowhere to go—" her lips were quivering—"he told me what a burden I was—I seemed to be only making a lot of trouble—and I had nowhere to go," she wept.
"He? Who? Andrews?" I demanded harshly.
"No, no!—Mr. Pendleton," she was sobbing again.
"Ah, of course, Pendleton." I felt myself turning livid with hate for the man whose purpose in life seemed to be to wreck my own.
"And did Andrews know you were my—my ward?"
"Oh, no, Uncle Ranny," and her voice was like a child's tired of crying. "I meant to tell him later—after I told you. He just took me without—anything."
Glancing now toward Andrews, I found him discreetly standing, still in the middle of his shop, but somehow he had managed to draw my scandalized nephew into conversation to afford me the courtesy of a greater privacy. My heart went out to him in affection as never before.
"Andrews!" I called, pulling myself together to a semblance of dignity. Andrews gave a nod to Randolph and without any unseemly haste approached me, pleasantly smiling.
"This is my ward—Miss Alicia Palmer," I managed to say with forced calmness.
Andrews bowed ceremoniously as though he were meeting the owner of the Huth library or Bernard Quaritch. Yet there was a curious twinkle in his shrewd old Scotch eyes.
"Like all young women of the present day," I went on, with astonishing glibness—that is at its best when a man is lying for a woman—"she wanted to prove her independence by scorning my poor protection, Andrews—to earn her own living—you understand, Andrews?"
"Indeed—indeed?" said Andrews. "And she can earn it, too. Now I understand the mystery. She recognized a second edition of 'Paradise Lost' at a glance. Your training, Mr. Byrd—your salary is advanced, Miss Palmer."
Alicia smiled, blushing faintly, and in that smile I suddenly realized how much of the child still clung to this well-grown young woman—how much of the child, no doubt, remains clinging to every woman. She was pained, distraught, suffering, yet she seemed to feel that she had done something very courageous and dignified. And it was to her dignity I hung on with tenacity, for instinctively I recognized that this was a turning point in her life—that the woman was now putting away the child in the cradle of the past.
"I think I shall ask you to release her, Andrews." I laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Some day I shall explain to you more fully. It's been—but never mind that. I should like to take my ward home—with your permission?"
"Certainly, certainly," he affirmed with spontaneous vehemence. "But come in soon, both of you—she's of our stripe, Mr. Byrd—she loves the good things!—come in both. I expect to have some new things from Professor Gurney's library that'll delight you."
"We shall indeed, my dear Andrews. Get your hat, Alicia." And as she turned away for her things, I managed to murmur this much to the kindly Andrews:
"I shall never forget your conduct in this matter, Andrews—you're a great bookseller, but, man dear, you're even a greater gentleman!"
And with as little delay as possible we left the shop.
A spate of questions boiled in my brain and foamed up like turbulent waters backed by a dam. But all at once I came to a sharp decision.
I knew enough. It was that devil Pendleton that had filled her mind with the thought that she was a burden until the poor child was wild with a frenzy of distraction. But he had not been able to trust to his persuasions. Then there was the scene of that dreadful evening when, in her bewilderment, she realized herself as an apple of discord, a shatterer of families. I believed I understood enough.
"Where did you sleep, Alicia?" I asked her nonchalantly.
"I have a little room in Twenty-fourth Street," she answered simply. "I haven't paid for it yet. The landlady wanted money in advance, but I told her I didn't have it, so she let me stay, anyway."
"Let us go there, my dear, and settle it now."
"Yes, Uncle Ranny," she murmured low.
"I've got to hand it to you, 'Licia," broke out Randolph, emerging from his silence. "You're a true sport—for a girl!" Whereat we all burst into happy laughter.
And for the rest of our peregrinations as well as in the train, the lad could not take his eyes from Alicia in sheer amazed admiration. It was as though he were seeing her for the first time.