First I took Jimmie and Randolph to a men's outfitting shop where the
atmosphere is august. Alicia offered to come along, but though Jimmie
is hotly attached to her, he was vocal with objections.
"This is men's business," he cried, "and us men must go alone."
"_We_ men," corrected Laura, laughing and kissing him.
"_Us_ men know how to talk!" he retorted, violently rubbing the kiss
from his cheek. Kisses, he implied, were all very well in their place,
but not at important crises in masculine lives, not when the _toga
virilis_ was hanging grandly from their shoulders.
"Come on, old man," Randolph interposed with a wink in my direction, and
Jimmie's wrath was appeased. The "old man" soothed and uplifted him to
the proper pitch of virile dignity.
The seventy-five dollars laid out upon those two boys have given me more
satisfaction than anything else recently--until I spent the balance upon
the girls. Men's shops are prosaic and dull compared with those Greek
temples that line Fifth Avenue with feminine apparel. As the paymaster
for the boys I was unnoticed. As the "uncle" of the two girls opening
the door to heart's desire, I was an object of almost affectionate
solicitude to the saleswoman. They were alert to help and advise. What
a freemasonry, an empire within an empire, is the domain of women's
clothes! In the latest slang and in words from Shakespeare the jaded
saleswomen were eager to interpret my wishes.
"I want some frocks and things for these girls," I announced boldly in
one of the great shops. "Not too expensive but things nice girls ought
to wear."
"I know," nasally asserted an efficient blonde, ceasing her mastication
and mysteriously secreting what she was chewing somewhere in her
capacious mouth. "Somethin' nice and classy--and quiet, but--_you_
know!"
"Er--precisely--"
"Neat but not gaudy?" put in her more pallid, more "cultured" companion,
with a faded smile to complete the specification.
"Ah--exactly so," I murmured and Laura seemed to experience a difficulty
in restraining herself from giggling.
Alicia, however, with the simple directness that is hers, proceeded
quietly to mention voiles and organdies and soon the discussion became
technical and I helpless. I thought it wise to whisper to Alicia the
amount of money at her disposal. She gasped her astonishment with a
blush and then a beautiful light of gratitude and pleasure leaped into
her eyes and I believe the child was going to cry. I turned away
quickly, and steadily she proceeded with the business in hand.
To the lady who quoted Polonius, the neat but not gaudy one, I intrusted
the selection of those things that I was not to see; she was sincerely
gratified at my confidence and, I believe, conscientious.
There was just about enough change left for refreshments at Huyler's for
the girls and paterfamilias. Gay were the spirits in which we three
traveled homeward. How ridiculous Gertrude would make me, if she knew
it!
I felt excitement and happiness bounding in my veins, a new quality of
those emotions, the like of which I had never experienced before. And
my heart positively missed a beat when the crushing thought struck me:
Must I now lose these young creatures and pass again into the emptiness
of life?
We Americans are like the French in that we think our climate the best
in the world. Or, if not the best, at least so far superior to many
others that, like the French, we are steeped in vanity about it.
Of Saturdays I reach home early after midday, yet it has been
persistently and infallibly raining every Saturday afternoon the entire
blessed spring. If perchance I want to take a walk and breathe some
air, I cannot stir out of the house.
Yet a nervous restlessness possesses me: I must have some diversion. It
suddenly occurred to me to ask the girls to put on their various new
frocks that came last evening. For a moment I was a little ashamed at
the thought. But at bottom, I suppose, every male is a Persian
Ahasuerus, desirous of displaying and gloating over the beauty of his
women folk. I have no doubt but that the king secretly admired Vashti
even though he was wroth at her disobedience.
Laura, it appeared, was in the next street at the house of a school
friend, but Alicia complied eagerly, displaying anything but the
suffragette indignation of Vashti. She was, in fact, eager to parade her
frocks with quite feminine excitement.
In her clinging voile, in soft-tinted organdie, in white slippers and
silk stockings, Alicia appeared,--a vision surprising, disturbingly
radiant with youthful charm. There was something with a blue sash that
made her simply exquisite, the very incarnation of grace. Her hair
gathered tightly at the nape of her neck and then spreading out into a
great brush, a cloud of shimmering fine gold on her shoulders, seemed
the only mark of childhood left that prevented me from being like
another St. Anthony, miserably afraid of her.
I know not what devil possessed me to ask her to go and put up her hair
before she took off that frock. How different must have been the
character of Persia's queen. For Alicia ran out of the room and almost
in a twinkling she was back with her hair up.
I sat for a moment staring at her speechless, dry-lipped and
open-mouthed. For before me, flushed and sparkling, stood the most
adorable young creature I had ever seen. Why should there be so much
mystery in feminine hair?
"You--you--_child_!" I blurted out finally in a sort of choleric
tenderness. "How dare you look so beauti--so grown up in my house!"
A peal of excited laughter was her answer and she made as if she would
rush toward me with open arms, as might an affectionate child eager to
caress an indulgent parent--and then on a sadden she checked herself, a
blush suffusing her cheeks and her very ears.
"Go call Griselda," I commanded, to cover her confusion, "and show her
the young woman we've been harboring in the guise of a child."
Alicia ran out of the room to comply and for a moment I remained sitting
in my chair as under a spell. Then I rose hastily to dispel such
nonsensical emotions and left my room, only to come face to face with
Alicia and Griselda in the dining room.
"Oh, ay--yes!" muttered my aging Griselda, her swarthy countenance hot
from the kitchen stove, looking more forbiddingly sybilline than ever,
"It's all over!" she added mysteriously.
"What do you mean--all over?" I demanded a little stupidly, though dimly
I suppose I understood her.
"The young besoms grow up sae fast, it's a meeracle they dinna wed in
their cradles!"
"Wed!" I cried in disgust at the word. "You women are always thinking
of only one thing--even you, Griselda. Go," I turned to Alicia, "let
down your hair again this minute, so you won't put such wild notions
into Griselda's frivolous mind."
Alicia laughed deliciously and even Griselda with a sort of dark twisted
smile reiterated:
"Oh, ay--the young besoms!" Whereupon my young woman impulsively threw
her arms about Griselda and kissed the brown cheek with gusto. Griselda
returned by pinching Alicia's cheek fiercely.
My nephew Randolph and a companion, a tall gawky boy coming into the
house at that moment, stood in their raincoats at the dining-room door
and gaped, blocking Alicia's path.
"I say! Look who's here!" my young hopeful exclaimed with a low
whistle, wagging his head from side to side. The other boy merely
stared in dumb awe, twisting his wet cap in his fingers. That gawk and
Alicia are the same age, yet--the difference!
"Let her go through and unmask," I waved them aside and Alicia, with her
head down, ran laughing out of the room.
I returned to my chair and sat down as one dazed. My policy henceforth
will be to frown on suchlike tricks--though I myself had instigated this
one. What an occupation for a man of books and tranquillity--one who
desired to write of Brunetto Latini--to add to the body of scholarship
upon Dante!
And suddenly I put my head down on my arms and laughed long and I am
sure quite meaninglessly.
For if I were a woman, I might just as easily have sobbed in a way to
tear out the heart. Decidedly the suspense of awaiting news from Dibdin
regarding Pendleton must be undermining my nerves.