"Look here!" he cried, with a sudden movement upsetting a glass of water
and disregarding it. "If those kids go over to him, we can keep an eye
on him--just the same--as though we were with them!"
"How d'you mean?" I queried, puzzled.
"That girl--what's her name--Alicia! She'll keep an eye on him--and
them. She's sharp, I tell you, with her innocent blue eyes. Give you a
daily report like--like--"
"No!" I emphatically interrupted him. "That, never! She is not going
from my house--certainly not to him!"
I was the more abashed by my own vehemence when I saw Dibdin staring at
me with lifted eyebrows.
"Why--you are not--" he began blankly--but I interrupted him hotly.
"I am nothing!--She is to me just as Jimmie and Laura and Randolph are,
but they are unfortunately his. Don't you know the meaning of
responsibility for young lives, Dibdin? I want to give her her chance,
educate her, make a fine woman of her. They have a father; she has no
one but me. I can't turn her out--and I wish," I added lamely, "I had
as much right to keep them all."
"Whew!" he whistled in renewed astonishment.
"I can only say I don't know you any more. I used to know you, but I'm
proud to make the acquaintance of the new Mr. Randolph Byrd."
"Don't be a damn fool, Dibdin," I mumbled in exasperation. "You know
you are talking rot. Why the devil are you so interested in the kids?
There is that cheque you sent--!"
"You haven't cashed it," he interposed, moving his shoulders as one
shaking off something. "Why the deuce haven't you?"
"I will some day," I grinned at him feebly, "when I need it more. But
you haven't answered my question."
I felt I was goading him brutally but for once I seemed to have the dear
old tramp upon the hip. For all his gruffness he was as full of
emotions as anybody. It seemed to me absurd for a man to hide his
implanted instinct, one of the noblest of all the little hidden
root-cellars of our instincts, under a false shame or indifference.
Women are wiser--they don't hide theirs; and I had become shameless
about mine.
"Why," I repeated, "are you so much interested in those kids?"
"Don't be an ass!" he grunted, looking down upon the wet tablecloth, and
a spasm as of pain crossed his countenance.
"Ah, you see!" I laughed, attempting to lighten his mood.
"Randolph," he uttered in a strange solemn tone that sent a slight
thrill through me. "I told you once there was a woman I had cared
about--and only one."
"Yes--but you never married her."
"No," he continued in the etiolated tone of a dead grief. "She was
married already when I knew her."
And then my sympathy went out to grizzled old Dibdin.
"I am sorry," I murmured, touching his hand across the table. "Did I
know her?"
"Yes," he said quietly, "you knew her. It was Laura."
In a flash of poignantly bitter and vain regret I saw the vista of the
dead years--of what might have been! ...
*CHAPTER XVI*
Miracles--miracles are common as blackberries!
Pendleton is once again a faithful worker in the vineyard of the
insurance company.
A commonplace miracle enough, but all miracles, I suppose, are
commonplaces that happen to surprise us or that we don't understand.
The abstract office, I am sure, has more joy over one sinner that
repenteth than over ninety and nine--but I do not wish to be
blasphemous. Like Death, it claims us all in the end. A voluptuary, an
idler like myself, or a renegade who broke from it indefensibly like Jim
Pendleton--all, sooner or later--turn or return to its yoke like starved
runaway slaves--the unrelenting office! What a change it must be to Jim
after the beaches and the barrooms of the gorgeous East! But for one
closely relevant circumstance I could find it in my heart to be sorry
for him.
What a strange and wonderful institution is the family! Another of those
commonplace miracles so charged with mystery, like birth and death. If
I were a classical writer or a Sir Barnes Newcome I might expatiate at
length upon the subject. The things we swallow and condone and cover up
for the sake of its ties!
Suffice it, however, that Jim Pendleton is quietly working out his
salvation, a salary and plans for re-creating his dismembered home.
The children are becoming quite used to him. Randolph seems to be the
nearest to him and Jimmie remains stubbornly farthest away. It is
painful to think however that Jimmie's youth will the more certainly and
completely detach him from me in the end.
When is it all to happen? I for one dare not fix the fateful day which,
with every passing hour, draws nearer. No one fixes the day. It is left
dangling in the air by an invisible thread of uncertain length and
strength--
There are times when I could cry out in my anguish, my agony of nameless
pain, fear, apprehension. But what a spectacle I should make of myself
if I gave vent to emotion! We humans are not so much whited sepulchers
as masked and silent volcanoes.
And Jim Pendleton--what is he thinking, feeling? He is suave, quiet,
controlled. He is very gentle with them all, and particularly
soft-spoken with Alicia. He has taken to consulting and confabulating
with her touching the characteristics and the needs of the children. At
times it seems to me that I cannot bear it and once at least I have
called her and spoken harshly to her, and charged her with having
mislaid a volume of _Book Prices Current_.
How childish on my part! But my nerves are not what once they were.
They are tetchy and fractious. It has been decreed that I am to have a
vacation and go away for a fortnight--go to Maine or New Hampshire. If I
were to burst into laughter at the thought, I might end like an
hysterical woman, in uncontrollable tears. I could no more go now than
I could spread my arms and fly. I am as remote from the holiday spirit
as from the North Star.
Poor Dibdin--how mistaken he is in me! He blathers of my "towering head
and shoulders"--b-r-r-r! it makes me shudder with shame. What a
weakling I am in the face of life!
No--I am a toiler in Bleecker Street, of its reeking pavements, its
fly-infested purlieus, where the Italian children grub and shout and sun
themselves in the gutters, in the air of a thousand smells throbbing
under the noonday sun. The homecoming to the third-rate suburb used to
be refreshing and soothing like a delicate perfume. To see the children
laughing and rosy in the square inch of garden, to see Alicia, sparkling
with her young energy and enthusiasm,--it had all been like coming into
a cool temple filled with shapes of beauty, after wandering in some
fetid bazaar. Now it is dust and ashes. I could never convey to Dibdin
or to any one else how alone I feel in the world, what chill and cutting
blasts of desolation sweep into my life every time I think of its
present or its future.
Minot Blackden came in to Visconti's at noon to-day to drag me out to
lunch.
"Let's stop in at my studio for a minute," he proposed as he steered me
round a corner. "Something for you to see."
He showed me a small rose window designed for some church in Cincinnati
and turned expectantly to catch my exclamations. I gasped out some
inanities.
"Art, my boy!" he gloated. "That's art for you!"
"It is, indeed!" I assented helplessly. "Only surprising thing is how a
real artist can acquire so much fame. Seems to me I see something about
you in every Sunday newspaper I take up."
"Ah, that's business instinct," he chuckled. "I am no amateur, I can
tell you. I live this thing. You may think it insane, but sometimes I
think I am Benvenuto Cellini reincarnated." He was not laughing; he was
in deadly earnest. "Come in," he added solemnly, directing me to a door
in the rear of his shop. "I want to introduce you to my press agent."
I was duly introduced to a plain bustling Mrs. Smith of perhaps
thirty-five, who rose from a typewriter and spoke with a devotional, a
reverential fervor of "our work", while casting worshipful glances at
the artist. How do the Minot Blackdens inspire such adoration? I know I
have rediscovered no lost art and it is plain I am no incarnation of
Benvenuto Cellini. No one will ever worship me.
"Have you seen Miss Bayard lately?" Blackden inquired as we sat down to
an Italian luncheon, beginning with sardines and red pepper.
"No--I haven't," I answered, surprised. "Do you know her?"
"Do I know her! Don't you remember introducing us in front of
Brentano's?"
I had forgotten it, and it seemed to hurt him that I did not regard his
movements and events with the devotional attention of his press agent.
"Of course," I murmured lamely. "You've seen her again?" He smiled a
detached, superior smile such as the immortals might smile over erring,
unregenerate humans, and ran his fingers through his dark, artistic
hair.
"I see her quite often," he explained. "Very wonderful woman, Miss
Bayard. She is a great inspiration to me in my art. My art has taken
strides and leaps since I met her. Surprised you don't seize the
opportunity of seeing her oftener--a truly artistic nature!"
"Ass!" I thought. But aloud I explained that domestic preoccupations
left me little time for social or any other visits. The casualness of
my answer seemed to brighten Blackden perceptibly.
I recalled, incidentally, that I had promised Gertrude, though heaven
knows why, to let her know the upshot of Pendleton's return.
"Tell her, when you see her, that I am coming very soon. I've had a
good deal on my hands. She will understand."
"She understands everything," murmured Blackden absently. "Ah, there is
a woman! Yes, I'll tell her." And his eyes glowed in anticipation.
He was positively affectionate to me, this austere artist, when he left
me at Visconti's door.
To come home, as I have said, used to be a delight. The presence of one
person in it has changed it to a torment.
This evening when I approached my chalet on the rock, I found Pendleton
in high good humor playing a game with the children on the lawn.
A flap of canvas, making a sort of pup tent, had been fastened to the
tree for Jimmie, to give him that touch of savage life which even at
Crestlands little boys seem to crave. Savage life at Crestlands! Yet
once the Mohicans roamed here and the Mohican that is in all of us
craves an outlet in Jimmie. It craved an outlet in me when I saw the
great hulk of Pendleton squatting tailor-fashion in the tent entrance,
enacting the role of cannibal chief. I stood unobserved for a moment,
watching the scene with bitterness in my heart and shame on top of the
bitterness.
"Bring the prisoner before me," grunted Pendleton in the character of
the chief.
Tittering in suppressed glee, Randolph and Laura marched Jimmie up to
Pendleton, who measured the child with a fearful frown and demanded
where were the other prisoners.
"They escaped, your majesty," exploded Randolph with stifled laughter.
"This white man alone dared to remain and brave your power!"
"He should be boiled and eaten by rights," Pendleton growled
truculently. "He dares to face the Big Chief of the Cannibal Islands!
Because of his great courage, however," he added as an afterthought, "we
shall spare his life. Of such stuff great warriors are made."
"Beware, your Majesty," giggled Laura, "he might treacherously plan some
harm to you. He is very brave, this white chief!"
"We see he is a desperate blade," answered Pendleton judicially. "But
we admire bravery. He shall be our spear-bearer in battle."
"No, I want to be eaten!" shrilled Jimmie in his excitement, whereat the
others shrieked and shook with laughter.
Alicia alone seemed moderate in her merriment. I hugged it to my heart
that she appeared to look a shade sadly upon the scene. But I am
probably wrong. I went indoors and sank my chin upon my hands with a
turmoil of emotions which I wish to forget.
Pendleton is winning them, there is no doubt about that. In all the
world there is not a soul who would cling to me, excepting possibly
Griselda. Shakespeare never uttered anything truer than that life was
"a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."