"And may I ask," I ventured, "where we are going?"
"I haven't decided yet," Gertrude informed me. "I'll let you know
later, Ranny dear."
There is something very wholesome and complete about Gertrude. That is
the reason, I suppose, I have so long been fond of her. How she can put
up with a dreamer like me is more than I can grasp. Without any
picturesque or romantic significance to the phrase, I am a sort of beach
comber, sunning myself in her cloudless energy on the indolent sands of
life. Every one either tells me or implies that Gertrude is far too
good for me. Nor do I doubt it. But I wish we could go on as we are
without exposing her to the inconvenience of being married to me. But
Gertrude knows best.
"Won't you stay and share my humble crust this evening?" I asked her as
she rose to go.
"No, thanks, Ranny," she smiled, somewhat enigmatically, I thought. "We
shall often dine together--afterwards."
"Of course," I agreed flippantly. "We may even meet at the races."
"I promised," said Gertrude, "to dine at the Club with Stella
Blackwelder--to settle some committee matters before I go away. Shall
you be alone, poor thing?"
"Yes--but that doesn't matter. I am often alone. I prop up a book
against a glass candlestick and the dinner is gone before I am aware of
it."
"It might as well be sawdust, for all you know," laughed Gertrude.
"So it might," I told her, "except that Griselda can do better than
sawdust. I might, of course," I added, "call up Dibdin and have him
feast with me."
"Your trampy friend," commented Gertrude. "Yes, better do it. I don't
like to think of you so much alone."
"Now, that is very sweet of you, my dear. I'll do exactly that."
Her cool lips touched mine for an instant and she was gone.
*CHAPTER II*
To my shame I must record that, once I was alone, the appalling fact of
marriage overwhelmed me like a landslide. With a sense of suffocation
and wild struggle I longed to do in earnest what I had threatened to do
in jest, to run away, blindly, madly, anywhere, to freedom, as far as
ever I could go.
When I should have been rejoicing, I desired, in a manner, to sit upon
the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings. I thought upon
Lincoln, a brave man if ever one there was, who had paled before the
thought of marriage and wrote consoling letters to another in similar
case. When I ought to have been feeling at my most virile, I felt
unmanned.
Yet, was I a boy to be a prey to these emotions? At twenty-nine surely
a man should know his own mind and be in possession of himself. Never
before had I doubted my way in life. In a world where every one who has
no money proceeds with energy to make it, and every one who has a little
tirelessly labors to acquire more, I had wittingly and of full purpose
turned my life away from the market place and toward a studious devotion
to books. On my compact income of less than two hundred and fifty
dollars monthly left me by generous parents, I was able to maintain my
modest apartment in Twelfth Street and to live a life, purposeless in
the eyes of some, no doubt, but which to me is priceless.
That slender income and the old Scotchwoman, Griselda Dow, with her
Biblical austerity and North British economy, surround my existence with
the comfort of a cushion. Because two sparrows sold for one farthing,
was to Griselda a reason and an incentive for miracles of thrift. To
change all this in three weeks--and I have not yet informed Griselda!
In a welter of agitation I began to pace the room.
Perhaps I am a fool to harbor such emotions, but I confess that the
sight of my pleasant study, covered to the ceiling with the books that I
love, and so many of which I have gathered, fills me with a poignant
melancholy. To uproot all this or to change it violently seems like a
sin I cannot bring myself to commit. How had I come to think of
committing it?
Gertrude is, of course, a splendid girl. With all her energy, she can
yet sympathize with the mild successes of a poor bookworm and listen
with patience to the tales of his triumphs as though he had captured an
army corps. My first edition of the "Religio Medici" can mean nothing to
her, who has never read it, but she seemed gladdened by my victory when
I acquired it under the very nose of a wily bookseller.
When was it that I had first asked Gertrude to marry me? It is odd that
I cannot remember, for our friendship could have continued on the same
pleasant basis for the rest of our lives.
I was dining alone with her one evening at her apartment in Gramercy
Park, I remember, and there was sparkling Moselle. I am not one of your
experienced topers, and that sparkling Moselle entered my blood like a
Caxton in a Zaehnsdorf binding or a First Folio of Shakespeare. A
golden haze had seemed to emanate from every object in the region of
that Moselle. Then, I recollect, Gertrude and I were on a new plane of
being. We were speaking of marriage. Without being "engaged", we were,
in Gertrude's phrase, talking of "marrying each other." It was on that
evening I must have asked her, though, oddly enough, I have no
recollection of the fact. And now, it seems, three pleasant years have
passed and the time has come.
Again it occurred to me abruptly that I had not yet informed Griselda.
What if Gertrude should insist upon my removing myself to her apartment;
would she accept Griselda? And how would my precious books be
domiciled? How human they are, those books, even though silent! Always
I have found them waiting whenever I returned from journeys, from summer
visits, from the country, from anywhere. Their backs and bindings seem
to shimmer and flash forth a stately greeting, to exhale that subtle
fragrance of leather, ink, and paper that none but book-lovers know.
They have developed a sense in me to perceive these things as no one
else can perceive them. How delightful it has been to find them in
their peaceful legions, arrayed and changeless, retaining the very marks
and slips I have left in them, faithful servitors and friends!
I take down the "Antigone" in the Cambridge Sophocles that faces me as I
stand and open at random to the chorus: "Love, invincible love! who
makest havoc of wealth, who keepest vigil on the soft cheek of the
maiden;--no immortal can escape thee, nor any among men whose life is
for a day; and he to whom thou hast come is mad." It is clear that
Sophocles was no modern.
Ah, me! I must tell Griselda at once, lest her Scotch probity should
charge me with disingenuousness or evasion. I pressed a bell. I could
not face Griselda in the kitchen which is her stronghold. I must summon
her to mine.
Griselda, with a heather-blue cap awry on her coarse gray hair, appeared
at the door.
"You called?" she demanded.
"Yes, Griselda, I called. Come in; I wish to speak to you."
Griselda has known me since I was seven and all my gravity counts for
ever so little with her. So redolent is she of rich encrusted
personality that she gives to my poor small apartment the air of an
establishment.
"You always call me, Mr. Randolph," she somewhat testily informed me,
"just when I have my hands in the dough pan or when the pot is boiling
over."
"Which is it now?" I asked her, laughing somewhat ruefully.
"Both," was her laconic answer.
"Hurry back then," I told her. "What I wanted to say will keep."
"Just like a man," muttered Griselda and left me without ceremony.
The relief I felt was shameful. To face Griselda with news of a
possible derangement of our lives required a courage, a girding up of
one's resolution to which at the moment I felt myself woefully unequal.
There was Dibdin and his blessed archeological expedition. He had told
me that there might be a berth for me as a sort of keeper of records and
archives. If only he had started last week. In a mist of vision well
known to daydreamers, I suddenly saw the trim shipshape steamer with
holystoned decks, the glinting metal work, the opulent South-Pacific sun
pouring down on lightly clad passengers lounging in deck chairs; girls
in white lazily flirting with indolent men. What oceans of joy and ease
were to be found in the world for those who knew how to take them!
Ah, well! Gertrude would make no opposition to my going, since absolute
individual liberty is the very keystone in the arch of our coming
marriage.