"Griselda," I began carelessly, after Dibdin had gone, "did I mention to
you that I am to be married in three weeks?"
Griselda is not one to waste breath in futile and flamboyant feminine
exclamations. She turned somewhat pale, I thought.
"You know very well you did not," she answered in level tones, polishing
a spoon the while.
"Well, I meant to," I told her truthfully enough. "Didn't you expect
it?"
"No, sir," was her blunt reply.
"Neither did I," I blurted out before I knew it.
A wry, unaccustomed smile for a moment illumined her dark, gypsy-like
features.
"You needn't tell me that," she retorted, and I wonder what she meant by
it. It is not like her to waste words. "Am I," she continued, "to take
this as notice to find a new place?"
"God forbid!" I cried in horror. "Whatever happens, Griselda, you
remain with me--let that be understood."
"And suppose Miss Bayard shouldn't want me?" she demanded with quiet
intensity.
"Then she will probably not want me," I told her. "That question won't
arise. Besides, Griselda," I went on, "we haven't decided yet how we
are going to manage. Miss Bayard will probably want to keep her
apartment and I mine. She would hardly wish to be bothered with me all
the time."
"And you would call that marriage!" exclaimed Griselda aghast.
"Why not?" I queried mildly. "I don't know much about it, Griselda, but
marriage is determined by the kind of license you get at the City Hall
and what the alderman says to you. The leases of apartments have
nothing to do with it, I'm quite sure--though I might inquire."
Griselda's face was blank for a moment. Then on a sudden she was bent
double in a gale of wild, hysterical laughter. Never have I known her
so shaken by meaningless cachinnation. Perhaps her own nerves are no
better than mine. Even now I still hear her rattling deeply from time
to time like muffled thunder. But I don't care now. What a relief to
get it over!
It is nearly bedtime. Casting over the events of the day, I cannot but
conclude that my own will has played too small a part in the whole
matter.
I must see Gertrude to-morrow in good time and acquaint her with my
desire to run over to Florence before we are married and look up Biagi's
new material bearing upon the blessed old heathen, Brunetto Latini.
Since Gertrude desires me to be great and famous, she cannot deny me the
opportunity to discover how a great and famous man accomplished the
trick. Besides, what has been delayed three years can surely support a
further delay of three months.
But, good heavens! What is this? Voices--the scuffling of feet in the
hallway--what army is invading me at this hour! I believe I hear
children's voices--and a scream from Griselda, who has never screamed in
her life!
*CHAPTER III*
Laura--my dear sister Laura--is dead! Her children are with me!
Without warning she dropped suddenly under her burdens and with her
dying breath confided her children to me--me!
That one cataclysmic fact has taken its abode in my brain and numbed it
as well as all my nerves to a chill and deadly paralysis that excludes
everything else. It still seems wholly unbelievable--some nightmare
from which I shall awake with a vast sickly sort of relief to the old
custom of my tranquil life.
The turbulence and the pain of the last three days, however, are still
lashing about me like the angry waves after a tempest, in a manner too
realistic for any dream. I am broad awake now, I know, and for hours I
have been blankly staring into a very abyss of darkness.
What will happen or what I shall do next, I haven't the shadow of an
idea.
Laura is dead and her children are with me, and I am their guardian and
sole reliance. Who could have forecast such a fate or such a role for
me? Three days! It is incredible! Only three days ago, I was
languidly protesting because I could not take ship forthwith for Italy
to examine some manuscript at the Laurentian in Florence!
No, by heavens! It was not I. It was some one else--some one I knew
vaguely, in a past age, a man to be envied, serene and cheerful, blest
of life, whom I shall never meet again.
The last three days! I cannot banish them and yet I cannot meet the
memory of them. Was it I who faced the tragedy, or was it some one
else? Nothing surely is more tragic than a young mother's death--and
that young mother my own sister! Who was it that stonily passed through
the ordeal of the "arrangements" and the black pantomime of the
sepulture? I cannot record it even for myself, for never, I know, shall
I desire to be reminded of it. At the death of my mother, I still had
Laura with her practical woman's sense. But now I was alone. I say now
because however remote it seems, this tragedy will always be present.
My life must forever remain under its stupefying spell.
It is not credible that only three days ago I sat here in my study
revolving trifles, those many shining trifles that went to make up my
former life.
Three days ago the silence of this house was disturbed by the voices of
children, the clatter of their feet, and for the first time in my life I
heard Griselda scream.
"Oh, Mr. Randolph," she rushed in, sobbing, with the dry tearless sobs
of those much acquainted with grief, "Miss Laura--she--the children are
here!"
I knew. Though inwardly I sank all but lifeless under the blow, I knew
clearly that Laura was dead.
"Is she very ill?" I heard myself asking faintly, with a clutching
desire to shrink still from the appalling truth.
"She--oh, Mr. Randolph,'" she lamented, "don't you understand--ye know
very well!" she suddenly added with a harshness that surprised me. "We
shall have to put the children to bed in your bedroom."
It was as though she had suddenly revolted at the softness of the
atmosphere in my environment, at any artificiality or evasion. She
seemed abruptly determined to face the stark facts in the open.
"The girl will sleep with me," she concluded tonelessly and turned to
go.
"Which girl?" I queried dazedly.
"Her that brought the bairns," she replied and left me.
"Send her in here--I want to speak to her!" I shouted after Griselda. I
could not face the thought of going out there. I was held to my chair
by a sheer pitiful lack of courage to move into the dreadful gulf before
me.
I closed my eyes and endeavored to still the tumult in my brain into
silence. I wanted to think. But only those can achieve silence who do
not need it. I could not. I opened my eyes.
A thin little girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen stood before me. This
surely could not be the girl Griselda had referred to in charge of the
children. She was herself a child. Were my disordered senses tricking
me? I experienced the thrill Poe's hero must have felt at sight of the
raven on the bust of Pallas.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
"I am Alicia, sir," she answered with large, frightened gray eyes
fastened upon mine.
"What--what is it?" I stammered.
"The lady said you wanted to see me."
"Did you bring the children?" I breathed, incredulous.
"Yes, sir."
I was awestruck. Her eyes, were the eyes of a child yet they were
filled with sorrow and a searching fear old as the world.
"How old are you?" I could not help asking, with an irrelevance foolish
enough in the circumstances.
"Going on fourteen, sir."
"And you--you are the nurse?"
"I helped Mrs. Pendleton with the children before school and after
school," she answered with more assurance now, but still uneasy. "I am
a mother's helper, sir." There was no mirth in my soul, but the muscles
contorted my features into a sickly grin.
"I see," I murmured mendaciously. But I saw only my own confused
turpitude at my blindness and neglect in face of the shifts and needs
poor Laura had been compelled to suffer.
"Where do you come from?" I inquired with a dry throat, ashamed to ask
anything of importance.
"From--the Home for--Dependent Children--in Sullivan County," she
murmured hesitatingly, with a tinge of color in her cheeks. On a sudden
I saw her pale lips tremble and guiltily I realized that, thoughtless,
after my wont, I was subjecting her to an ordeal merely because I was in
torment.
"Sit down," I forced myself to speak evenly, "and tell me exactly what
happened."
She sidled to the big chair, her gaze still fixed upon me, as though to
watch me was henceforth her first anxiety. She gripped the arm of the
chair and hung undecided for a moment as though fearful of making
herself so much at home as to sit down in this room.
"Sit down," I reiterated more encouragingly, "and tell me what happened
to my sister."
"Yes, sir," she murmured obediently, perching on the edge of the great
chair. "Well," she began, "when I came home from school in the
afternoon Mrs. Pendleton was lying down. The children were hanging
about her bed and she looked very pale."
"Yes, yes," I urged her on impatiently.
"Then I took them downstairs and gave them their bread and milk and
tried to read to them so as to keep them quiet. But only the littlest
one, Jimmie, wanted to listen. Randolph and Laura wanted to play Kings
and Queens." I realized that I must hear the story in the girl's own
way.
"Then," she continued, with an effort at exactitude, "I thought that
Jimmie and I had better join them, because then I could keep them from
making so much noise. We played until supper time. But Mrs. Pendleton
didn't feel well enough to come down. So the children and I had supper
downstairs and Hattie--that's the cook--took Mrs. Pendleton's supper up
on a tray."
That must have been while I was lamenting to Dibdin over the hardness of
my lot.
"Then what happened?" I muttered, turning away from her gaze.
"I went up to see if Mrs. Pendleton wanted anything," she resumed
nervously, frightened by my movement, "and she said no, but that she'd
get up later when it was time for them to go to bed. So I helped them
with their lessons until bedtime and Mrs. Pendleton came down. She said
she felt a little better, but she looked very sad and white. And when
she began to walk up the stairs--" her lips grew tremulous again and the
tears dashed out of her eyes, but she finally controlled herself
bravely.
"--She fell--and--" she began to weep bitterly, "she just said, 'The
children--my brother--telephone--' and that was all--" and that piteous
child who was no kindred to my poor sister sobbed convulsively.
That must have been about the time when I was at table with Dibdin and,
over the sauterne, complaining to him of the narrowness of my income in
view of the lacunae and wants of my library.
"We couldn't--get you--on the telephone," she found breath to utter at
last. "So I brought the children here--Hattie told me how to
go--Hattie's over there alone."
Nothing in this world can ever stab me again as the poignancy of her
recital stabbed me. My life seemed shattered, irreparable. All my
dreams were at an end. Laura was gone and here were her children thrust
by destiny upon my hands--unless their scoundrel of a father should ever
return to relieve me of them. I had lived peacefully and harmlessly in
my way, but for some inscrutable reason Fate had selected me for her
heaviest blow.
"Very well," I told her as kindly as I could in the conditions, "now you
go back to Griselda and go to bed. I'll have to think things out."
"Oh--but the house!" exclaimed the little girl--and never again do I
wish to see such horror on a childish countenance as at that instant
froze the features of little Alicia. "All alone," she added, her thin
shoulders heaving. "Aren't you going over now, sir?"
"Now!" I exclaimed, looking automatically at my watch. "Why--yes--in a
few minutes, child."
"But--Hattie is there alone--" she stammered. "There's nobody else--then
I'd better go back."
It was obvious, of course, that I must go at once. But why should a
child see spontaneously that to which I am obtuse?
"Oh, well, you are right, of course--I must go immediately--I hadn't
thought--I'll go over now"--and I turned away from her, lifted the
curtain and gazed out into the wet, murky street below. Life had
collapsed and the ruins of it were tumbled about my hot ears. I hardly
know how long I stood there, completely oblivious of the girl Alicia.
"Please, Mr. Byrd," I was startled to hear a tearful, childish voice
behind me--"won't you see the children before you go, sir?"