"Broken up about it?" he demanded abruptly.
What my gesture proclaimed to Dibdin I don't know. For me it expressed
all that I had passed through during the last ten days.
"No, you're right. No use," he said, clapping me on the shoulder. "Sit
tight, my boy. Courage--the only thing! Now, good-by," he wrung my
hand, "and God bless you."
"Same to you, old boy, and best of luck."
And now the only intimate friend I possess has gone and left a hole in
the atmosphere as large as Central Park.
*CHAPTER VI*
An odd look of overt approval I have surprised of late in Griselda's
eyes causes me a peculiar twinge of regret. It shows that new
conditions have overwhelmingly ousted the old. Griselda never troubled
to approve of me before. I have no desire for any change in Griselda,
even for the better.
I have been successful, however, I am bound to record. I have found an
outdoor school for Ranny and Laura in Macdougal Street near Washington
Square, and a nearby kindergarten for Jimmie. The girl Alicia is able
to take Ranny and Laura to Macdougal Street on the way to her own public
school. Jimmie, who does not go until later in the morning, is a
problem. Thus far I have been conducting him to his kindergarten
myself. But obviously that cannot continue, despite the fact that
Jimmie, seeing his elder brother depart with two girls, turns to me with
a look of inimitable superiority and observes:
"We men must stick together, mustn't we, Uncle Ranny."
I gravely agree with him on the general policy, though I aim to
forestall future trouble by indicating that expediency often governs
these things.
The term bills paid in advance to the schools have left a gap in my
exchequer. For the first time I have been compelled to decline a
genuine bargain. Andrews, the bookseller, called me up with the
announcement that he had something I could not resist. Laughing, I
asked him to name it.
"It is nothing less than Boswell's 'Johnson'," he told me with
particular solemnity, "first edition, with the misprint on page 135--a
beautiful copy."
"Dated April 10, 1791?"
"Dated April 10, 1791," he repeated with impressive triumph. My heart
sank, though it was beating loudly. For many years I have had an order
for that Boswell.
"And the price?" I murmured faintly.
"For you," he said, "four hundred dollars."
Griselda would approve of me blatantly did she know the courage it
required to answer Andrews.
"No, friend, I am sorry but I cannot afford it at present."
Andrews was incredulous. "Do I hear you correctly?" he queried.
"Accurately," I told him, "if you hear that I can't take it."
"Then I refuse to accept the evidence of my ears," he retorted with
spirit. "I shall send it down to you." I told him it was useless.
"Oh, you needn't buy it," he shouted. "But I insist on giving an old
customer the pleasure of seeing it at his leisure, in his own library."
A shrewd, good devil is Andrews, even though he is a good salesman. I
have been feasting my senses on the Boswell, but it will have to go
back.
Dibdin's going so abruptly has left me very heavy at times upon my own
hands. He had a way of dropping in unannounced when you least expected
him, so that I came to count upon him at unexpected moments. There is
no one to take his place. Now on clear evenings I ramble aimlessly
northward and often turn in at the club, though so little have I been a
frequenter of it I hardly know a soul in the place. Last night I ran
into my classmate, Fred Salmon, for the first time in months.
Fred is, I should say, my exact antithesis. He is full of laughter and
noise and exuberance. Riches are his goal in life, and if he expended
one half the vitality on the acquisition of riches that he devotes to
the collection of humorous anecdotes, he would be a wealthy man to-day.
"Hello, Ranny," he shouted when he saw me, "you're just in time to join
me in a little refreshment. What you doing now?" Luckily he seldom
waits for an answer. With trained rapidity he gave his order to a
waiter and continued, "Come across any rare editions lately, any fine
copies, such as 'Skeezicks' or 'Toodlums' by Gazook?"
"No," I told him, "my collection is lacking in those masterpieces."
"Tell you what you ought to be, Ranny," he boomed, as the waiter put
down the glasses. "You ought to be (here's how!)--a bond salesman!" he
decided after a pause and gulped down his liquor;--"or else a dog
fancier."
"Why those exalted callings?" I asked with only the mildest curiosity.
"You are such a simp and you look so damn honest," he elucidated, "that
anybody would believe anything you say."
"Then will you believe me if I say I don't want to be either of those
things--or anything else?"
"Oh, sure!" he responded heartily. "I know that all right. You haven't
got anything on me. I'd rather own a few good horses and follow the
races round the tracks of the world, if I had my choice. Instead of
which I've got to separate the world from enough dollars to keep me
going. If ever you get hard up, Ran," he concluded reflectively, "let
me know. I'll set you up in the right game. Never make a mistake. I
took a course in character reading for five dollars--by
correspondence--that's how I know so much."
Dollars! Dollars! Dollars! Must every one then become merely a
dollar-amassing machine? I remember Fred in college, ruddy with the
freshness of youth, when he was making jokes for the _Lampoon_ and, so
abundant was his energy, everybody expected him to do Great Things. And
now he can talk of nothing but dollars--and he doesn't seem to be
oversupplied with those. I am nothing myself, but at least no one
expected anything of me.
Fred proposed that we play a game of poker, bridge, checkers or
cribbage. But as none of those manly sports tempted me at the moment we
parted and he cordially informed me that he would look me up one day.
Nevertheless, with all his noise and emptiness, Fred was glowing, or
seemed to be glowing to me. His ideas are puerile. His talk is cast in
one mold, upon one design, that of evoking laughter. But he is alive.
He is not apathetic. That is what I deplore in myself, the apathy that
has saturated me after the recent events, that are like a dark liquid
which has entered my mind at one point and then by natural action
unchecked has stained every fiber of my being. It is not thus I shall
acquit myself of the task I have assumed. I must become alive!
The children, I am beginning to think, are the only creatures really
alive in this world. They don't hanker after musty-smelling first
editions, after knowledge of bygone old worthies like Ser Brunetto some
seven centuries dead, nor yet after the eternal conversion of life into
dollars.
To-day I witnessed a curious excrescence of their bubbling imaginations.
My door standing open, I was able to observe a ceremony that transformed
my dining room into a church and the four infants with solemn faces into
the vivid celebrants of the sacrament of marriage. They are evidently
ignorant of the "alderman" method. To the delight of Jimmie and Laura,
Ranny, my oldest nephew, with hieratic pomp, was being married to the
girl Alicia. Even she knew better than to laugh as the boy was slipping
a ring upon her finger, murmuring some gibberish which he had either
learned or invented, and endowing her with all his worldly goods. The
goods consisted first of all in the number of a hundred kisses, which
the boy proceeded to administer with savage realism to the crowing
delight of Jimmie and the uncontrollable giggling of Laura. This part
of the endowment being finally completed, he brought forth from his
pocket a small toy pistol and gravely placed it in her hand. I nearly
jumped from my chair when I saw that. A pistol of all things! What
could have made the little apes think of that? What a text for a cynic!
Perhaps every bride ought to receive a pistol as part of her wedding
dower? They then proceeded merrily to eat bits of cake and to laugh and
chatter like any other wedding guests. I closed my door softly and for
a space I was lost in reflection. For it suddenly came to me that to
approach life with anything less than the playful zest of children was a
grim, a fatal error.
It was odd that Gertrude should have chosen that hour to evince the only
sign since her decision that she had any memory of me. When she came
in, preceded by the knock and laconic announcement of Griselda, the
first words she spoke were:
"Well, Ranny, and how is domesticity?"
"Highly educative," I told her, as I ministered to her usual wants. "I
have just learned the proper way of marrying a woman."
"Indeed?" murmured Gertrude, somewhat sourly, I thought, "and how is
that?"
"It's not the alderman that is important," I informed her. "It's done
with a hundred kisses and a pistol." In reply to her look of
incomprehension, I described to her the episode of the dining room. To
my surprise Gertrude could see no humor in that.
"What a child you are, Ranny," she shook her head sadly. "And I thought
that with all your faults you were a serious person."
"That must have been your fundamental mistake about me," I answered
somewhat sheepishly and yet nettled. "I fear I am not half as serious
as the children are."
"No," said Gertrude. Then after a brief pause,
"Have you decided yet that the children ought to be sent away to
schools?"
"Why, no, Gertrude! Such a thing has not entered my head since--since
we talked of it," I told her.
"Ranny," she solemnly leaned forward, "I think I know what's troubling
you. You needn't be so foolishly proud with me. It's a question of
money, I take it. Well, I'm ready to help out with their bills. I know
these things are expensive. I am willing to set aside part of my income
for their bills. We could arrange that part of it somehow. Why, you
foolish boy, won't you take me into your confidence?"
"It isn't that--at all," I stammered. "Why won't you understand--it's
the children themselves. How can I throw them over?"
"You don't think you're doing anything for them here--you and this
foundling-asylum girl, who comes from goodness knows what parents?
Better let me manage this--"
Curiously, I felt offended at her speaking thus of the girl Alicia who
seems as integrally a part of my charge and household as any of the
rest.
"It's very good of you, Gertrude," I muttered, "to offer so much. But
to take money from you for my sister's children is--out of the
question." This put her more than ever out of temper.
"I never knew any one quite so idiotic," she retorted caustically. "You
can do nothing yourself and you won't let anybody who can, help you."
And after smoking in silence for a few minutes, Gertrude turned from me
in disgust. Very smartly dressed she was, too, with a most becoming
winter hat and handsome furs. I should like to please Gertrude. But
she seems unable to grasp my point of view, namely, that touching those
children I feel my responsibility to be personal.
"If only some one nearer to them than myself turned up," I murmured
abjectly, "you'd see me bundling them out so quick it would make their
little heads buzz."
"Nearer," she repeated vaguely, "when you know there is no such person."
"Their father, for instance," I explained. "I have no reason to think
him dead. Laura had always felt certain he was alive. There are all
sorts of explanations possible for his absence. He may come back, you
know."
Gertrude laughed at me bitterly.
"The only likely explanation," she retorted, "is that he was tired of
his wife and children. He is probably having a good time somewhere with
some one who knows how to hold him."
That was a phrase that stung me. Why must she slur my poor sister now
in her grave? I bowed my head but I could not reply even though I admit
to a feeling of gloomy certainty that Jim Pendleton will never return.
"Good-by," said Gertrude, smiling grimly at me.
"Au revoir," I answered, letting her out. But she paid no further heed
to me.
Why I should vent my undeniable irritation upon Alicia I do not know.
But I called her into my study as soon as Gertrude had gone and she
entered smiling brightly. The child, I believe, looks considerably
happier than she did when first she came here and her eyes are less
wistful. I was conscious of the sternness of a hanging judge upon my
visage. But Alicia ignored my mood. Possibly she has found me out and
knows that I am least to be feared when in appearance most despotic.
"Alicia," I began severely, "how are the children getting on? Are they
all right?" (What an imbecile query!)
"Oh, yes, sir," she wonderingly answered.
"I mean--are they happy here?" I scowled at her.
"Yes, sir--they think it's lovely."
"Are they--are they afraid of me?" I demanded austerely, looking grimly
at my finger nails.
"No-o, sir," she stammered, "they--they are not."
I was terrifying the child, I realized with a pang. But when I looked
up suddenly the little vixen seemed to be struggling with
laughter--though that can hardly be. She had the manners to turn away.
An attaching little baggage is this child, but I'll have no nonsense.
"And you--" I pulled her up sharply, too sharply perhaps, whereat I
grinned in mitigation--
"Do you feel competent to go on taking care of them?"
"Oh," she gasped--no suspicion of laughter now--"I just love it--Oh,
you're not thinking of--of sending me away, after all, Mr. Byrd?"
There was a catch in the poor girl's voice and I felt stupid and brutal.
"No--no," I growled judicially. "Not at all. I merely wanted to make
sure that there is no trouble of any sort. I suggest that you report to
me every day or two upon anything that occurs to you--that you think I
ought to know."
"Yes, sir," she faltered, "I will, sir."
"Have they clothes and shoes and things--warm enough for this weather?"
"Oh, yes, sir--heaps," she answered, smiling again.
"And you, have you everything you need?"
"Why, yes, sir--I think I have." Her shoes seemed thin and worn. I was
in no mood to be superficial or evasive.
"Are those the best shoes you have?"
"Yes, sir," she answered faintly. Her calico frock also seemed
extremely thin.
"That is all," I dismissed her curtly. "Ask Griselda to come to me,
please."
"Griselda," I began, genial enough to one that is not in awe of me, "I
wish you would look over the girl Alicia's wardrobe and get her whatever
she needs in the way of shoes and things. Would you mind doing that?"
"Ay, I'll do it, Mr. Randolph. I know some cheap places in Fourteenth
Street--"
"Heaven forbid, Griselda," I interrupted her. "I won't have that.
There is enough inequality and heart-burning in the world without
putting it among children. No, no. Buy the things where you bought the
others--for Miss Laura's children."
Griselda laughed hoarsely.
"You'll not begin ruining the lassie with gaudy clothes!" she exclaimed.
"No, Griselda, I'll not. Good clothes have never yet ruined anybody," I
gave her as my genuine conviction. "It's the other way about. It's poor
clothes eat at the vitals of your self-respect like the fox in the tale
of the Spartan lad."
"Have ye gone into the bills for the clothes for the bairns?" she flung
at me.
"Not yet," I answered mildly. "But I'll make a walking tour through
them one of these days."
"You'll walk backwards when you do, I'm thinking," flung out Griselda,
and disappeared, muttering. In Griselda's lexicon extravagance is
synonymous with crime and even outtops it. But she is certain to do as
I ask.
There was a book auction to-day. And two days having elapsed since my
interview with Gertrude I was sufficiently myself, when I lay down the
paper announcing it, to think of going. The news of an auction still
has the effect upon me that a bugle might exert upon some battered,
superannuated cavalry horse. Despite the rise of the plutocratic
collector, despite the shoals of dealers who have made of book-buying
almost an exact science, I still dream of encountering one day the
fortune of Edward Malone, who, late in the eighteenth century, bought
Shakespeare's sonnets in the edition of 1609 and a first printing of the
"Rape of Lucrece", all for two guineas.
I had already conducted Jimmie to his kindergarten. On the way, as he
nestled his hand more firmly in mine, he looked up at me with a humorous
smile and informed me that "we men have won'erful times together." It
gave me a curious thrill and I felt grateful even for this companionship
in my solitary life which Gertrude and so many others find foolish and
despicable.
I was letting myself out at the front door when a plain, large-mouthed
young woman of perhaps thirty, austerely garbed in black, stood facing
me. I remained for a moment bereft of speech and then, of course, I
foolishly apologized, I don't know why--perhaps for encumbering the
earth.
"You wish to see Griselda?" I mumbled, with my hat in my hand.
"No," she declared, scrutinizing me in the murky hallway. "I want to
see Mr. Randolph Byrd."
"I am he," I told her.
"I should like to talk to you," she said in a low voice. Mentally I
waved a sad farewell to the book auction and to any bargains it might
hold and led the way to my study.
"I am at your service," I told her, grinning, and all but offered her a
cigarette.
"It's about the little girl, Alicia Palmer," she began hesitantly as
though she had something dreadful to impart.
"Are you her teacher?" I wonderingly asked.
"No, Mr. Byrd, I am from the Home for Dependent Children--I am one of
the inspectors."
"Ah, I see. You wish to--to inspect her," I blundered on stupidly,
whereat she laughed.
"No--not exactly," she smiled. "To tell the truth, Mr. Byrd, I wish to
inspect you--"
"Well, this is all there is of me," I broke in.
"And I want," she added, "to take her back to the Home."
"Take her back!" I cried, stung by something in her tone. "But--but
why?"
"We don't allow our girls to live in the homes of bachelors," she
murmured, lowering her eyes for an instant.
"Oh!" I gasped feebly. It is my eternal wrongness that seems to be at
the bottom of everything. The picture of the children upon my hands
without the girl Alicia swept me with a chill dismay.
"It ought to have been reported to us," she said reprovingly. "It
really ought."
"What ought to have been reported?" I groped in bewilderment.
"The change--the transfer. We sent Alicia to Mrs. Pendleton," she
explained. "When Mrs. Pendleton--er--died, we ought to have been
notified--so we could look after her."
"I understand," I murmured weakly. "You see, my sister's death was so
sudden that nobody thought of such things. I didn't even know she had
taken this girl from your Home."
In my blundering way I then explained to her how the children came here,
of their attachment to Alicia and of my own absurd dependence upon
her--which I abruptly realized. I told her quite truthfully, I believe,
that now the children could not get on without her. And the bitter
thought assailed me that nothing in this world that is pleasant or
fitting or agreeable can long be left unshattered; that everything human
and sweet and tranquil must be by some human hands undone. What a
miserably destructive race we are!
"Well," I concluded sadly, "I suppose now you'll take her away--and what
I shall do with these three children is beyond me."
To my surprise, as I looked up, I distinctly saw a tear glisten in her
eye. She looked away.
"You have a great many books," she observed with nervous irrelevance.
"The result of a misspent life," I sighed.
"Well, I don't know what to do or say," she said, rising awkwardly.
"I'd like to see Alicia and--the other children. And I'll have to
report--I shall call up the matron of the Home on the telephone."
"Won't you do it now?" I eagerly prompted.
"I'd better see Alicia first, I think--when will she be in?"
"At lunch time," I said; "won't you stay, or come to lunch?"
She seemed to recall that this was that obscene environment, the home of
a bachelor.
"No, thank you," she murmured primly. "I'd better come again in the
afternoon. Would three-thirty do all right?"
"Admirably," I told her.
"I'll do the very best I can," she reassured me.
"That's very good of you," I answered from a grateful heart.
Farewell, auctions! Farewell, peace! Once again I am in troubled
waters, predestined like a bit of flotsam to bob about only in storm.
Obscurely, deep within me, I long for power to do everything, to arrange
everything, to make my world swing about me rhythmically instead of my
lurching about it drunkenly. Even on this secret page, meant for no
eyes but mine, I would pour out my grief and tragedy, the eternal
underlying sadness of life--and then rise up a man of will and energy to
manage my affairs. Instead, I can only weakly scribble ineptitudes to
while away the time until a poor underpaid girl inspectress returns to
pronounce sentence upon me. Am I, or am I not, to be allowed to live
within hailing of tranquillity? Gertrude, I am wretchedly afraid, was
right after all. What business has a manikin like myself to look with
bold eyes upon duty, or to grapple with responsibility which an ordinary
man would assume as if adding another key to his key-ring--to pocket and
forget?
Falstaff could not have been more genial or hilarious than I feel at
this moment, nor yet the ancient Pistol. When I left the dining room a
few minutes ago, my dignity would have suffered permanent eclipse had
the children espied me after I closed my door. I capered about the room
like some rheumatic goat lilting a wild melody _sotto voce_.
The inspectress has pointed her thumbs upward. I hardly know whether
Alicia, the children or Griselda decided the issue favorably.
"Do you wish to see Alicia alone?" I asked the inspectress when she
returned. She will never know, that nice plain girl, with what tension
I had awaited her. No lover she may have had has ever kept a tryst for
her more tremulously--or she would not now be Miss Smith.
"No," was her reply, "she is only a child. I want to see her with the
children." Alicia was already prepared and, I am bound to admit,
partially primed.
"Here is Miss Smith, come to see you, Alicia," I announced with assumed
lightness, as I ushered the lady in. Oh, it was very distinctly
"ushered."
"How do you do, Alicia," Miss Smith held out her hand, melting at the
sight of the children in the midst of play. "How are you--well and
happy?"
"Oh, so happy!" answered Alicia, coming forward with flushed cheeks. "I
am so glad you came."
"But why didn't you write us, child?" was the gentle remonstrance.
"I am awfully sorry, Miss Smith," from contrite Alicia. "But the time
passed so quickly--I was just going to--and I had to get new
clothes--and there are so many things to do."
Miss Smith looked down at Alicia's clothes dubiously. Perhaps she
thought their quality too ruinously good for one of the inmates of her
Home. She then glanced at the silent, wondering children.
"Hello, Miss Smith!" they cried in broken chorus, catching her eye. It
was she who had originally brought Alicia to them. "You won't take
Alicia away, will you?" Laura spoke up bravely.
"Why, dear?--Wouldn't you like to have her go away?" she returned,
smiling uncertainly.
"No! We wouldn't!" replied all the children actually in one voice, with
little Jimmie loudest, whereat we both laughed.
"Who," demanded Randolph sternly, "will sew our buttons on?"
"And who'll give me my baf?" cried Jimmie.
"Or help us with our lessons?" put in Laura.
"Well, we'll see!" Miss Smith came back brightly. I believe that young
woman is genuinely fond of children. "What are you playing just now?"
They all began to explain at once.
"Shall I leave you with them?" I murmured.
"Yes--I'll stay a minute or two," she nodded--and I tiptoed out to await
doom.
When I returned a few minutes later, I heard to my surprise Griselda's
voice, just before I opened the door, rising to the full height of her
indignation:
"If this is no fitting, then nothing is fitting--" whereupon I opened
the door.
The children had disappeared. Griselda with flashing eyes was literally
towering over poor Miss Smith. Evidently Griselda had been bearing
testimony. Most excellent witness, Griselda! What chance had any Miss
Smith against a rock of sheer personality like Griselda?
"It's all right," Miss Smith announced, smiling faintly as I entered.
"I called up the matron this noon and she left it in my hands. This is
an exception--the first of its kind in our institution--but I mean to
let Alicia stay. She--she seems so happy here," she added, faltering.
"That's very gracious of you," I bowed. "I thank you. Shall we--tell
them your decision?"
Griselda opened the door of the bedroom where they all had been cooped
up like so many frightened little hares, and Randolph, unable to contain
himself, demanded eagerly:
"Can she stay?"
"Yes," nodded Miss Smith, and wild shouts must have shattered the nerves
of the other tenants. Jimmie, as a mark of highest favor, ran to Miss
Smith and held forth his arms to be taken up into hers. He could not
bestow a greater confidence. Alicia dabbed some happy tears from her
cheeks. I begged Miss Smith to stay to tea with them, and unobtrusively
escaped. Now my mind is agog with triumphant imaginings. If ever I
become President, Griselda of a certainty shall be my Secretary of
State.
*CHAPTER VII*
Now that the Christmas holidays have passed and I have been casting up
accounts, the uneasy knowledge has come to me that I am no longer living
on my income. The freshet of bills is surging about me yet. Perhaps I
have been improvident, but I have not bought a book in ages. Andrews,
the bookseller, informed me the other day, with an expression more of
sorrow than of anger, that though he couldn't comprehend my
unaccountable refusal of the Boswell, he had not the heart to offer it
to any one else. He was holding it still, he declared, in order to
spare a friend regrets.
"Sell it, Andrews, for God's sake--sell it," I told him.
"But you've had your order in for three years," he protested, "and never
canceled it. Now suddenly you refuse it. That must mean something!"
"It means--I'll tell you what it means, Andrews: I have acquired a young
family." I then briefly explained to him my situation.
"You don't tell me, Mr. Byrd--you don't tell me!" he repeated over and
over. "Then this is what I do," he announced with a sudden ferocity of
decision. "I hold that work, if I have to hold it for ten years, until
such a time as you feel you can take it. Only I am so short of room
here," he added blandly, "will you not store it for me on your shelves?"
"Why, you--you Samaritan!" I laughed in my embarrassment, clapping him
on the shoulder. "What are you trying to do--make a bankrupt of me?"
"If you will include it under your insurance--" he answered--"but never
mind: I'll insure it myself." And then he talked of something else. He
was as good as his word. Before I reached home that Boswell was here
and is now on my shelves. I have been gloating over that epic of
personality and it occurs to me that Johnson and Griselda are kindred of
the spirit.
Two months! It is incredible. Years must have passed since the
children have come here. My past life seems remote as ancient Egypt.
This morning came a letter from Biagi of the Laurentian, asking why he
did not hear from me, when was I coming to Florence, and adding that at
Oxford also some Brunetto Latini material has been recently unearthed
and that I might stop on the way and examine it. I laughed. Gone are
those days, never, I fear, to return. If only I could smell a good old
parchment once again! I still remember the thrill I felt when Biagi
first showed me the vellum script of Sophocles at the Laurentian. I
could actually see the scribe in the Byzantium of the eleventh century
reverently copying the lofty beautiful words, in a spirit of high
worship, his pale cheeks flushed with his pious task. I _was_ that
scribe! Why, I ask, was that strange and eager feeling implanted in my
particular bosom? Could it be that in some past age, I was myself the
scholarly Greek?--But that is nonsense.
If only I could pay my bills. Yet I dare not touch the trifle Laura
left to her children. That must remain for emergency.
And on May first we must change our quarters. The renting agent, a
decent enough little person, was very apologetic.
"I have kids myself," he informed me deprecatingly, "and I know what it
is. But you understand. A bachelor is one thing and four children is
quite another. Makes a difference." I told him that I was more or less
aware of the difference it made.
"And these people here, in this here, now, building," he explained,
"they're so nasty nice--they can't stand the sight of a kid, let alone
the sound." I made no comment, for too recently had I been just so
nasty-nice.
We shall have to seek some pastures new.
Fred Salmon, as good as his word, has actually looked me up.
I don't know why the mere entry of that breezy Mohock into the room
brought my unwilling fatherhood into a relief ten times sharper than I
had felt it before. I suddenly felt myself a gawk and a failure before a
man of the world--even though I did not wholly respect the man of the
world. Once more I was acutely aware of lost freedom. Abstract
Freedom, out of which I had stepped as a man steps from life into death.
Luckily Fred is not one to beat about the bush.
"You remember," he began, skillfully rotating the mutilated end of a
cigar between his teeth, "my telling you at the club the kind of
business you'd be suited for?"
"A bond salesman or a dog fancier," I answered promptly.
"Have you gone into anything?"