It is astonishing how resourceless are even one's nearest and dearest
friends in face of anything really capital.
"Poor Ranny! How ghastly!" Gertrude cried, when she first heard of it,
wringing my hand. "But buck up, dear boy. You know how I feel. There
is a way out for everything." She spoke, I thought, as though I were in
need of ready money.
She was here this afternoon to see the children. Gertrude is no hand
with children. They seemed strangely shy of her, a woman, though they
literally fell upon the neck of growling, grizzled old Dibdin. They are
still subdued by the suddenness of their tragedy, though real sorrow
Gertrude tells me, is, thank Heaven, beyond them.
"We'll have to think up a way of disposing of the dear things," she
remarked briskly. And though I am myself completely at a loss what to
do with them, I cannot say I relished her way of putting it.
"What, for instance, could you suggest?" I inquired dully.
"Schools, Ranny dear, schools," she impatiently answered. "There are
homelike places run by splendid women--just made for such cases. Why,
even the little one--Jimmie, is it?--How old is he; four?--There are
places even for kiddies as young as that."
A heavy confusion, the reverse of enthusiasm, oppressed me.
"You forget, Gertrude," I endeavored as gently as possible to remind
her, "Laura confided those children to me with her dying breath--to
me--her only relative. Do you think I ought to fling them out at once,
God knows where!"
"Good Lord, Ranny!" she cried, flushing with a smile of anger peculiar
to Gertrude when she is annoyed. "What a sentimentalist you are at
bottom--after all!"
"A sentimentalist--I?" I felt hurt. "Just put yourself in my place,
Gertrude, and see how easy such a decision would be for you."
"I do, Ranny; that is just what I am doing," she insisted impatiently.
"But don't you see that if there is any one thing you cannot do, it is
to keep them here--or in my apartment?"
"Yes," I said, "I see that. But I also see that I can't pitch them out
among total strangers, a week after their mother's--" I could not trust
my foolish voice to finish.
"Do you forget," demanded Gertrude with her smile that brands me
imbecile, "do you forget, Ranny, that we are to be married in two
weeks?"
"No, Gertrude--far from it. But that is why we are discussing this
problem--because it is perplexing. Besides, schools of the right sort
are bound to be pretty expensive things."
"Oh," said Gertrude, "of course. But poor Laura's income ought to be
enough--"
"My dear Gertrude, that is what I don't know. Carmichael is to give me
an accounting of it to-day or to-morrow. Laura never spoke of her money
matters to me. But, as you say, there will probably be enough. Only, it
isn't altogether that--you see, Gertrude--" I floundered.
"Yes, I see, Ranny, I see," she hammered at me in the maddening way
women have. "You simply can't get up enough will power to do something.
It's the old story. But you'll have to, my dear," and she smiled
sweetly. "You have all my sympathy and all the cooeperation you'll take.
But the one thing we can't do is stand still. You understand that--don't
you, Ranny?"
"Yes. I understand that. But my brain is as fertile of plans as a
glass door knob."
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Ranny," Gertrude summarized. "I know all
this has been a great shock to you. I'll let you alone for a couple of
days to turn things over. And think of what I've said. But then we
must come to some definite decision. I'd give anything if this terrible
thing had not happened now--but it can't be helped, can it?"
Now, that was very sweet and reasonable of Gertrude. And it is a
thousand pities that she feels distressed. But it would have been ten
thousand more if poor Laura had died just after we had been married
instead of before. As it is, the problem before me is largely mine.
Were we now married, Gertrude must have had to bear an undue share of
it.
Shall I ever win back to the old tranquillity and the peace that was
mine? That was the first thought that came to me when I parted from
Gertrude, a selfish thought as I immediately realized, in view of what
is facing me. I can no longer think as I have thought and new feelings
are struggling for birth within me, commensurate with the new
responsibility. The world, as I walk through it, seems to present an
aspect strangely different from what it did a week ago. It is so chill
and alien and hollow!
As I was reentering my study I heard a crash in the dining room, which
is now the children's room, and when I glanced in upon them the girl
Alicia was gathering up smithereens of glass and Ranny, the eldest boy,
quietly announced, "It broke" in a manner that so obviously gave him
away, all the others could not help laughing; and they laughed the
louder when I joined them. Confused and angry, the boy ran out of the
room.
It is a world apart, the world of children, into which parents, I
suppose, grow gradually. Not being the parent of these children, I fear
I shall never penetrate it.
Sooner or later they must be sent away, even as Gertrude maintains. And
I must face that event forthwith.
I was interrupted at this point by the irruption into the room of
Jimmie, the youngest, inimitably, grotesquely shapeless in his
nightgear, pattering toward me and taking refuge between my knees. He
was being pursued by the girl Alicia who stood shyly and distressfully
smiling in the doorway, as though all explanation were futile.
"Well, old boy, what is it?" I demanded with mock severity, though in
truth I was more afraid of him than he evidently was of me.
"Iwantsayprayerstoyoulikeamummy," he uttered in one excited breath, as
though it were one single word.
"You want what?"
"He says he wants to say his prayers to you, sir," spoke up the girl
clearly. "I am sorry--he broke away. Shall I take him away, sir?"
"Wanto say my prayers to you like to mummy," insisted Laura's child,
scrambling upon my knees. And with a pang of sadness that set all my
senses aching I saw the picture of the past--poor Laura with her sweet,
resigned face, living when she lived only in her children, listening to
the prayers of this sprite with the silken sunshine in his hair.
"All right, Jimmie," I murmured faintly, as he clung to me; "go ahead."
Tightly clutching me about the neck and nestling his face against mine,
he brought forth with childish throaty sweetness the few words to the
creative Spirit that mankind the world over, in one form or another,
addresses as Our Father. "And God," he concluded with brilliant triumph
in his eyes, "bless Mummy and Uncle Ranny."
Nothing that I can remember has ever moved me as that child moved me.
Like St. Catherine of Genoa at her decisive confessional I seemed to
receive a profound inner wound by that child's act, tender and bitter
and sweet, that I never desire to heal. For the moment Laura and I were
nearer to being one than ever we had been in her lifetime. Nevermore
shall I forget the sweetness and fragrance of that little child and his
warm nestling faith in me. And I am planning to cast him off.
"Come, now," interposed Alicia, as though breaking a spell.
"One more hug," cried Jimmie, with the arrogance of righteousness. And
suiting his action to his words, he clambered down with engaging
clumsiness from my knees and padded toward Alicia. Once more I was
alone with my thoughts.
Can it be that some instinct in the child whose heart is still imbedded
in his mother's had made him seek the one person who had been nearest
his mother?