I seem to myself like the irascible old gentlemen in the comedies with
the prithees and monstrous fine epigrams, forever taking snuff--save
that there is no comedy about me.
I take down books and I cannot read them. What pleasure I used to
experience in leaving some of the leaves uncut in fine editions so as to
cut them on further readings! I have tried to extract that joy by
cutting some recently, but there is no joy in it.
Why am I so certain that Pendleton will take away all these that I love
and leave me desolate? All his past seems to argue against the
probability. Yet constantly I see before me the picture of their going
in a body with that man while I stand speechless, attempting to smile
benignantly. How we dramatize ourselves, even the least imaginative
amongst us! And all the time I feel as though great gouts of blood were
dripping, dripping from my heart in nameless anguish.
Alicia, that divine child, is watching me unobtrusively though closely,
whenever she can. She surrounds me with comforts and attentions. But
like some sick owl, I prefer to brood alone.
The somewhat isolated position of my chalet on the rock and the lack of
a wife in the household has saved me from making intimate acquaintances
among my Crestlands neighbors. But there is one young man, Judkins, an
architect in the stucco house opposite, who strides over to my porch and
insists upon talking of his performances at golf.
"Ought to join the Club," he keeps reiterating. "Nothing like eighteen
holes to take the kinks outa your brain after the hullabaloo in the
city."
"Er--do I seem to have many kinks?" I ask, whereat he laughs in his
harsh voice.
"All got 'em!" he cries. "Can't get away from 'em. Books!" he adds
explosively, "books are no good! They give you the willies!"
And that man claims to have studied at the Beaux Arts! Edmond de
Goncourt, that neurasthenic philosopher, prayed that he might make a
hundred thousand francs from his play "Germinie Lacerteux," so that he
might buy the house opposite and put this notice on it: "To be let to
people who have no children, who do not play any musical instrument, and
who will be permitted to keep only goldfish as pets." As for me, I
should waive the children, the pets and the musical instruments; I would
merely say, "No proselyting golfers need apply."
Alicia, to mitigate my mood, I suppose, devised a picnic in the woods.
No one was to come save the children and I and that gawky companion of
Randolph's, the boy John Purington, lest Randolph should be bored.
Randolph, it appears, is easily bored. The consciousness of my recent
hypochondriac behavior led me to accept the suggestion with alacrity.
The luncheon Griselda prepared was packed in paper boxes by Alicia and
together, _en masse_, our little procession set forth and made its way
to a grove less than two miles distant bordering on the great Croton
aqueduct.
Randolph and the gawky boy fell at once to tossing a baseball, Jimmie
rolled delightedly about the lush grass, still grappling with his
insoluble problem of rolling up a slope and still perplexed as to why it
should be easier to roll down. Laura ran to his aid and Alicia sat
beside me and laughed.
"That is the whole problem of life that Jimmie is facing," I observed
gloomily.
"No, it isn't, Uncle Ranny," she put her hand on my arm as she
contradicted. "That is only the law of gravitation. There is a lot
more to life than that!"
"Yes, Alicia," I lowered my voice, "but when that man comes, how it will
hurt to think of little Jimmie, of all those children of my sister's in
the care of that man who's really her--her murderer!"
"Please, please, don't think of that!" she begged, with imploring eyes.
"That hasn't happened yet. And we'll--we'll manage it somehow. Maybe
he's a good man, after all--and, oh; we'll watch him--we'll watch him!
Besides, he mayn't come. If he is what you think, then I am sure he
won't come!"
That proved a very cheering thought.
Before I knew it, I was myself tossing a ball with Alicia and romping
with the rest of them.
It was only after the lunch had been eaten under the trees and the egg
shells and papers were gathered and stowed away, and the gawky boy
proceeded clumsily to monopolize Alicia, who has not the heart to snub
anybody, that my depression returned.
Whereupon Alicia gayly proposed that it was time to think of going home,
because Jimmie was drowsy and must not forego his nap.
Was it adroitness or spontaneity? I cannot tell, but it is marvelous
how that girl anticipates and understands.
It was a happy, tired, air-steeped company that returned home.
A telegram has just arrived. Dibdin and Pendleton have landed in San
Francisco!...
*CHAPTER XIV*
Pendleton is here. He has been here a week. Like one in the dazed
excitement of some dream, the sort of farrago that leaves you limp and
weakly smiling when you wake up and see the sun, I have been going about
with numb limbs, strangely galvanized, not so much into activity as the
expectation of activity.
What is it I have been expecting to happen? I hardly know. But perhaps
I have been expecting melodrama. And I am overcome by the obvious
truism that genuine melodrama is anything but melodramatic. That is why
melodrama on the stage, with its ranting and strutting and flourishes,
disgusts one by its bathos.
The presence of Pendleton in my house, occupying my bedroom while I have
withdrawn into my little study, is the essence of melodrama.
Yet every one and everything is in a tacit conspiracy to make it seem
natural. There is a tension in the atmosphere, without doubt, but we
are all of us madly, energetically ignoring it, hiding it.
The man's conduct has been astounding, unimpeachable, unexceptionable.
He out-Enochs Enoch Arden. Yet--why should I disguise the fact to
myself--I hate him. That, too, I suppose, is melodrama. But do what I
will, he remains detestable to me. I cannot trust him. I try, however,
not to show it. Dibdin has acquired a deep furrow between the eyes, due
doubtless to his sense of responsibility in having resuscitated
Pendleton. He carries the air of some magician or sorcerer who has
evoked a demon and is overwhelmed with terror by the problem of what to
do with him.
But I must in decency acknowledge that Pendleton's behavior has been
without blemish.
Dibdin had sent me a long night letter from San Francisco saying he
would remain there a few days, "to give the fellow chance to bolt if he
wants to." There had been other telegrams. I was not to meet them at
the train but to give explicit directions. It was as well. I could not
have met Pendleton at the train even if he were coming from the dead. A
week ago, when Dibdin telephoned from the city, I went so far as to
order a cab to meet them.
There again the histrionics of the situation were at a hopeless
disadvantage. For what I remember most vividly of that Saturday evening
was the sickness of my soul as I sat awaiting their arrival. Again and
again I had steeled myself to tell the children of their father's
coming. I framed words and sentences in my mind until the cold
perspiration moistened my forehead, but I could not face the ordeal. I
had thought I knew myself--that I was steeled to the tests of life. But
I saw I was still a reed. It came to within a couple of hours before
their arrival and still I had not told them. I found myself on my
two-inch terrace and a stream of profanity was breaking from my lips.
On a sudden I saw Jimmie standing beside me. Shame and chagrin overtook
me and I bent down to him and begged him to forgive me.
"Don't you mind me, Uncle Ranny," he put his hand in mine. "I'm a man,
and I know a man has got to swear sometimes."
"No, Jimmie--not if the man has brains enough with which to think."
That contact with the child, however, seemed to release something in my
clamped and aching skull.
"Run, Jimmie," I said, "and send Alicia out to me. I wish to speak to
her."
Jimmie, to whom commissions are delight, was off like an arrow.
Some moments elapsed before Alicia could come to me and during that time
I had a mad impulse to fly from it all, to, seize my hat and steal away,
to take a train to the city and not to return, until it was all over.
But I waited nevertheless and Alicia, who had been helping Griselda,
came running out flushed, with concern in her eyes.
"Alicia," I began miserably, "I have tried to screw up my courage to
tell the children about the coming of--of their father. But I simply
can't do it, Alicia; it's--it's beyond me. I--I want you to tell them,"
I faltered like a guilty schoolboy. The girl winced perceptibly but--
"All right," she answered; "do you mean now?"
"About half-past six--the train gets here at six thirty-five. You take
them into the garden--and keep them there until after the men come,
and--I call you."
"Yes--Uncle Ranny," she whispered--"but, oh, please don't worry about it
so much!"
"No, my dear," I murmured and at that moment I felt closer to her than
to any other living being. To take the children out of the house upon
the coming of their father--it sounded like a funeral. And it was at
that moment--my funeral. And the rest of the afternoon was a blur and
the encompassing world was a shadow. It was broken; no, it was too
insubstantial for breaking. It kept thinning and receding away from me
and I was left a dully throbbing entity in the primal chaos before
Creation.
I was startled at last by hearing the wheezy groan of an aged taxi
outside and like the galvanized corpse I was, I felt my members heavily
stirring and propelling me to the door.
On the path in the curiously sickly light of a premature dusk under a
clouded, lifeless sky I saw Dibdin and Pendleton, slightly stooping
forward to the slope, walking toward me. That moment of poignant joy at
seeing Dibdin, of exquisite pain on beholding Pendleton--I shall never
forget it!
"Dibdin!" I cried, rushing at his hand and clinging to it to defer as
long as possible touching the other's. Then, after ages it seemed, my
eyes slowly turned to the tall figure of Pendleton and rested on the
fleshy face, somewhat loose and pendulous, smooth-shaven and purplish,
with eyes that fell before my own. Finally I disengaged my hand and
held it out to him. I could not do otherwise.
"Jim," I murmured and my voice had labored over a universe of barriers
to achieve that. But I could utter no more.
He peered at me from his protruding eyes as though he also were
struggling, struggling with memory and with memories, with a teeming
past, with all that he had been and committed, and for an instant I felt
sorry for him.
"Come in," I breathed deeply, and we made our way into the house and
into my study.
"Randolph," Pendleton finally uttered with a profound sigh, and then I
recalled that he was playing a part. To me the appalling reality of the
whole episode had been so excruciating that momentarily I forgot that he
was in all likelihood playing a part. But was he? How could he? In the
face of these children, in the face of all he is guilty of, how could he
play a part, when the truth would raise him almost to a kind of manhood?
I cannot give him the benefit of the doubt and yet I cannot wholly doubt
him. Some idiotic simplicity or imbecility inside me makes it
impossible for me to envisage any creature in human form as so
consummate a villain. Perhaps--perhaps there is something--
"Randolph," he murmured in a deep guttural--"I know you--I remember
you--yes, you are--you are--" and he paused. We hung for a moment like
things dangling by threads, like marionettes motionless. Then, with a
prickling sensation of sweat over all my body, I broke the spell by
fumbling with a box of cigarettes and with a hand spasmodically
quivering like the needle of a seismograph, I held them out.
"Have a good voyage?" I heard myself saying, as we all smoked and
covertly stole glances at one another. I was not flying at his throat.
Dibdin puffed heavily with the crease deepening between his eyes and
Pendleton's gaze roved questing and unsteady about the room. Melodrama!
There never was any except on the stage! In life there is only
drama--and pain.
"How are the kids?" Dibdin asked abruptly.
"Fine!" I exclaimed automatically, in an unnatural voice, like a pistol
shot. "They are out in the garden there," and Dibdin nodded. I felt
certain that his mind also was seeing the analogy to a funeral. And now
my brain seemed to be shaking off its dull lethargy. From somewhere in
Maeterlinck the haunting memory of a phrase came glimmering through my
consciousness, like a dim light through a fog, to the effect that if
Socrates and Christ had been in the palace of Agamemnon, the tragedies
of the house of Atreus could not have happened. I longed for a little
wisdom to deal with the situation.
"Would you like," I turned to Pendleton, "to see the children?"
"The children," he repeated dazedly. "Yes--yes--I'd like to see them.
But--just a moment. The children," he repeated piteously, "but no
Laura!"
Sharp, sharp was the stab at my heart when he spoke her name. But
either he is a supreme master in deceit or I am the dullest of
simpletons. For the struggle through clouds of memory that his features
expressed seemed real to me.
"I told you she was dead!" snapped Dibdin gruffly, without turning to
him.
"You told me? Ah, yes." And he sighed heavily. "Of course you told
me." And his chin sank weightily to his breast. We remained thus
silent for a space. Then--
"Come," I said, standing up. "I'll take you to the children."
He rose ponderously, his great frame limp and leaden, and followed me
somberly. He seemed sincere enough in his grief, I must own that.
Dibdin did not move.
I led him into the garden toward the spot where the children were
huddled about Alicia. She was talking to them in low tones and they
were listening in dead silence. Never again, I hope, shall I experience
that sense of going to my own execution that I experienced at that
instant. Execution--no! I could have walked to a gibbet or a
guillotine smiling, I am quite sure. What is my life to me? I was
walking rather to the execution of those four young souls under the
gnarled old apple tree.
Alicia, too! By Heaven! Like a lightning stroke that fact crashed into
my soul. He would take Alicia also. No--no! He had no claim upon her,
thank God!
"Not Alicia!" my voice broke out from the turmoil of my thoughts like
the voice in a dream breaking the barriers of sleep.
"Eh?" said Pendleton faintly.
"Did you call, Uncle Ranny?" Alicia turned and asked in a clear, steady
voice.
"Yes, Alicia," I struggled for control. "Here is Mr. Pendleton--come to
see the children." I meant to say "his children," but I could not.
The whole sickly-colored evening seemed to shudder at my words. The
children seemed like wraiths under the tree to shudder away from the
intruding material world.
In a moment--what a tragic moment--Pendleton was bending toward them,
peering, peering into their white, frightened faces. Then his gaze
settled on Alicia and hung there for a space.
"This must be Randolph," he finally turned to the eldest boy,
"grown--grown up--isn't it?" and his arms stirred forward.
"Yes, sir," the boy answered hoarsely and put out his hand.
"And this--can this be baby Laura?" Laura hung her head then raised it
bravely and with shy resolution held out her hand. Pendleton took it
and kissed her clumsily on the cheek.
Jimmie, hanging back, clung to Alicia's skirt and watched the
proceedings with troubled stealth from behind her.
"And this is Jimmie," I said, taking the child by the shoulder--"the
youngest of them."
As Pendleton was stooping toward him, Jimmie uttered a wild scream of
heartbreaking terror, wrenched himself from my hold and fled like some
little wounded animal toward the house. Pendleton gave a short,
mirthless laugh.
My throat was parched, my heart Was thumping like a rabbit's, but how I
loved Jimmie at that moment!
"He is only a baby," put in Alicia softly.
Again Pendleton looked at her--obliquely.
"And this is--" he murmured.
"Alicia Palmer," I supplied hastily, "who has been looking after them."
"Ah, Alicia--a little deputy mother--" and he held out his hand with
shamefaced suavity.
The scene was over--the incredible episode--commonplace enough as I
write it down. But I lived a dozen melodramas in that eternity that a
clock would tick off in three or four minutes of time.
*CHAPTER XV*
Walking about as I do under sentence, I am like a man of my
acquaintance, a stodgy, a terrible Philistine, who cherished for years a
fancy that he could write Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In all his life
he had probably never rhymed anything more subtle than love, above and
dove. Since any fool, in his opinion, could supply the music, he
aspired only to the Gilbertian librettos. Incessantly and hopelessly out
of key he went about humming the Sullivan tunes to the lyrics he alleged
to have in his mind.
Similarly, I go about with a sense of mendacious buoyancy,--like a
shipwrecked passenger bobbing helplessly in a troubled sea, but still
alive; a flickering glimmer of hope, like a desperate man facing a
tiger, but still undevoured.
Brazenly I still expect happiness to emerge, somehow, out of
hopelessness.
It is easy, of course, to lapse into moods of despondency, into wishing
I were dead, since I cannot live in happiness,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh.
But such moments pass. There is a sort of tonic in the rough of life
when the smooth is absent, and the wits, my poor dull wits, brace
themselves for the shock of action. I feel certain now that in all my
years of tranquillity it is the salt of suffering that was lacking. Yet
who would seek suffering for its own sake? I know, however, that I feel
younger and more energetic to-day than ever I felt five years ago.
Even Pendleton has his uses. He is the thorn in the side, the fox
gnawing at my vitals under the cloak, but here he is in my house as its
guest.
He goes with me to the city of a morning on his quest for work, "a
connection" as he calls it, and often I find him at home before me when
I arrive, in my room, smoking, or out in the garden with the children.
I wince inwardly, but I hope I do not show it.
I spoke of hating him, but that is untrue. You cannot persistently hate
any man, notably a guest in your house. You can only suspect him. Yet,
when I see the children still shy of him, why does it give me a
throbbing sense of triumph? I do not know, but so it is. Randolph alone
seems to approach him nearer as the days go by. They go on walks
together and Randolph confides to Alicia that he is fascinated by the
tales of his father's experiences in the tropics, of ships and islands
and pearl-fishing and native customs. I fancy Pendleton must be
selectively on the alert in his narratives with his young son as the
listener. His past must contain many things that none of us in this
quiet haven will ever hear recounted.
But I am indifferent to his past. I could listen and even tolerate him
as my guest, if only the children were not passing to his care. He
talks of "relieving" me of the burden.
"Don't hurry, old man," I answer casually, "they are no burden to me."
He gazes at me and lowers his eyes.
"I tell you, Randolph, you're a revelation to me. I never knew a man
like you before. They don't make them like that these days."
"Praise from Sir Hubert," occurs to me, but I don't say it. I am in
reality at his mercy, I suppose, but I often feel as though he were at
mine. The glossing over of his atrocious conduct, the taking him at his
word on the subject of his lapsed memory, which we either slur or don't
refer to at all, seem to give me a tremendous advantage over him,--the
commonplace advantage of simple honesty over mendacity. Not for a
moment do I now believe in his lapsed memory story. I cannot deny,
however, that his air is one of repentance and, as Dibdin has said, who
in this world is so hard but he wouldn't give a fellow man a second
chance?
Jim Pendleton, now that he has been to a New York tailor's, appears as
impressive and debonair as ever. He must be in the middle forties and
he is not ill-looking. It is chiefly his eyes that seem changed to me.
Do what I will, I cannot look at them. There is a certain disturbing
obliqueness about his gaze that makes me turn mine away in a sort of
vicarious shame.
But, again, _C'est un mauvais metier que celui de medire_. And conscious
of that truth, I mean to speak or think no more ill of Jim Pendleton.
After all, his large contact with the world has given him something that
I lack.
Last evening at dinner he was regaling us with an experience of his of
spearing fish in the Marquesas.
"I was in the back of the boat," he was saying, "with a torch in my
hand, and my islander, who was an expert at it, held his spear ready for
the first fish that leaped. Several of them leaped and fell again into
the water round us churning it up, so that we were wet with spray.
Suddenly I saw a huge mass glistening in the torchlight, falling, it
seemed, right on top of us.
"The native buried his spear upward in the thing as it fell. I tell you
that man was quick! But it was too late. The huge fish flopped into the
boat with its great head on my knees and the full weight of his body on
the man, sending him overboard and splintering the side of the boat. In
just about a second we were in total darkness, floundering in the water,
with an overturned boat. I was badly bruised and the native had both
legs broken.
"In spite of his broken legs, however, he offered to swim ashore, to the
nearest projecting rock. But I was sure he couldn't make it and very
certain I couldn't. It was a job, I can tell you, righting that boat,
helping that man into it and scrambling in myself; and then with a piece
of splintered oar rowing ourselves in. The fellow with his broken legs,
worked just as hard as I did and never uttered so much as a groan. It
did me up for some time. But that fellow was spearing fish again in ten
days or so."
Jimmie, who is sometimes allowed to take his supper with us, sat gazing
at his father, fascinated by the narrative until the last word. Then
seemingly jealous that any one, even this strange father, should exceed
me in prowess, his little face clouded and he demanded:
"Uncle Ranny, didn't you ever spear a big fish?"
"No, Jimmie," I laughed, "but maybe you and I will go there one day and
spear some together."
"Well, anyway," he retorted stoutly, "you took us on a picnic."
Whereat we all laughed, albeit my own laugh was rueful. The thought
flashed through my mind that Pendleton was certain to win them to
himself the moment he decided to do so. The very memory of me would
become ridiculous to them.
"Uncle Ranny," spoke up Laura, "has been too busy feeding us and buying
us clothes to go traveling."
Alicia smiled radiantly at Laura across the table, and Griselda, who had
just come in with the dessert, nodded her head with somber emphasis as
she placed the bowl before me.
I could have hugged them all three in gratitude, but nevertheless I
pressed Pendleton to narrate more of his experiences.
"No," he shook his head, evidently taking the children's comment to
heart. "That's yarn enough for one evening."
That seemed to me very decent of Pendleton.
I could not help laughing at Dibdin to-day. I called him up on the
telephone and demanded what he meant by coming from devil knows where
after more than two years' absence and virtually cutting me.
"Come to lunch at the Salmagundi Club," he growled.
"Does it pain you as much as that to ask me?"
"Don't be a damn fool," he retorted.
"Don't be so wickedly witty," I replied.
"At twelve-thirty," he muttered and hung up the receiver. From which I
gathered that he was out of sorts.
In the hall of the Club where he was waiting, I greeted him with,
"'Is it weakness of intellect, birdie,' I cried,
'Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?'"
He stared at me.
"How you can be so light and idiotic in the face of circumstances," he
began, "passes my comprehension."
"Circumstances, my dear fellow, are all there is to life."
"Want to wash your paws?"
"No--I am as clean as I shall ever be."
I put my arm through his and allowed him to lead me to a quiet table in
the rear of the billiard room, softly illumined by a shaded lamp at
midday.
"What a delightful place!" I exclaimed. "Residence of Q.T.
tranquillity."
"Tranquillity be blowed," he grunted, as he sat down facing me. "What
are you going to do about that Old Man of the Sea of yours?"
"You mean Pendleton?"
"Whom the devil else can I mean?"
"Why, nothing of course, but give him a leg up if we can. What else is
there to do? I just received a letter this morning from an insurance
company asking for confidential information about him. He's given me as
a reference and they're evidently considering him."
"The Danbury and Phoenix?" he asked.
"Yes. How did you know?"
"I got one, too."
"I suppose we are really his only two possible sponsors at present."
"I'd as soon recommend a convict from Sing Sing," he muttered.
"Oh, no!" I protested. "Not as bad as that. Besides, sometimes you
have to recommend even a convict."
"I'd much rather recommend a convict. I hate to lie about this man.
I've been asked whether I would trust him and I have to say yes. But
you know dashed well I wouldn't. Give me a cigarette," he ended
savagely.
"I think he'll go straight now," I murmured dully, passing my case to
Dibdin and looking away. "The children will no doubt have an influence
on him."
"You judge everybody by yourself."
"How d'ye mean--myself?"
"The long and the short of it is," he declared, putting both elbows on
the table, "I had no idea what the children would do to you."
"What did they do to me?" I queried, mystified.
"Made you over--that's all."
"Explain," I said, gazing at him stupidly.
"What is there to explain?" growled Dibdin, when the waiter was out of
earshot. "You were always a decent sort of idiot--bookworm, muddler,
dilettante, whatever it was--afraid of real life, fit only to collect
pretty little books or old musty volumes that nobody really cares to
read in--a drifter, with about as much knowledge of the problems of
existence as a stuffed owl in a glass.
"What happened? Your sister's orphans come to you. You plunge into
life, go into business which you detest, lose your money, go to work as
a clerk, by George! You of all people!--Keep a roof over them, bring
them up and hang me if I don't think you were idiotically happy in it
all until I brought this Old Man of the Sea!--What right had I to pick
him up and bring him and bungle it all? And why the hell didn't you
warn me not to fetch him? I thought I was helping you out. I'd sooner
have chucked the brute overboard--I would, by Heaven!"
For a moment I could reply nothing at all to Dibdin. His estimate and
account of my actions were natural enough to him who, despite his burly
manner, exaggerates everybody's qualities. It seemed the more
remarkable that he who so firmly believed in the second chance should
now find no word to say in Pendleton's favor. But I could see clearly
enough that what troubled him was the pain he instinctively realized the
departure of the children from me to Pendleton was certain to bring me.
"Why didn't you cable me, 'Lose the brute?'" he took up his argument.
"Because, my dear fellow," I put my hand on his arm across the table,
"it was too late; once you had found him and told him of what had
occurred in his absence, it was too late. Would you like to live with
the menacing uncertainty of him overhanging in space? Rather have him
here and face him. Besides, the children are his"--I knew I must state
my view squarely on that head--"If he is fit to take them, then have
them he must, regardless."
"Regardless of you, you mean?" He put it darkly.
"Yes--regardless of me, certainly. I don't count."
"By the Lord!" and his fine head shot upwards in a gesture that was in
itself invigorating. "D'you know you are twenty times the man you
were?" he cried. "I couldn't have believed it. You--you're
stupendous!"