"Oh, I know," he insisted doggedly, though even now he cannot look me in
the eyes, "you didn't do it specially for me. You did it because you
are a man--you--bah! they don't make 'em like you, as I've told you.
But you don't want praise from me, I know that. You don't need it.
What's more to the point is, it's time I took a flat or small house in
one of the suburbs and had the lot of them move over and live on me for
a while. About time," he nodded his head and shifted his cigar, "about
time!"
Every word was a stab, but I steeled myself for the ordeal. Wasn't that
what I had been expecting all this time?
"When--do you want to make the change?" I endeavored to speak crisply,
as when I address the National City or the Guaranty Trust over the
telephone at Visconti's.
"Well, I thought I'd begin to look round to-morrow. There'll be the
place to find, some furniture to get--the installment plan will
help--whole job ought to be fixed up in two or three weeks, I guess," he
added with a laugh. "Uncle Ranny will have to come to supper pretty
often to keep the kids as happy as we'd like to see them, eh?"
"But a going household--" I spoke quickly in a sort of last spasm of
pitiful expostulation--"it's quite a--an undertaking to set going?"
"Yes--I know," he nodded soberly. "Don't think I don't know I'll have
to push the wheel hard--with both shoulders. But d'you know," he lifted
a confidential eyebrow, "that young woman--Alicia--will be a great help
to me--quite a little housekeeper, she is--quite a kid--I hope Laura
will take after her."
My heart was of lead. If he was watching my face, he must have
perceived a deadly pallor sweeping every drop of blood away from it.
There was a pounding in my ear's like rushing waters.
"Alicia," I heard myself saying as one speaking after being rescued from
drowning, "Alicia, you know, isn't my child--or yours. I can't send her
to you. She--there are formalities--but, anyway, her wishes are a
factor in the matter. I'll do anything, old man," my head seemed to
swell suddenly and shoot upwards like a cork from an abyss, and my face
was damp with perspiration--"anything, but I can't send that child to
you unless--unless she is keen--you see that, don't you?"
"Oh, yes, I see--certainly." He was looking away as he spoke. I have a
lingering hope he had not been watching my face. "That's all true, of
course. But put yourself in my place, Randolph. Here are three
motherless children. She, that girl, has been a kind of mother to them.
Seems to have a born faculty for it. What would I do without her, just
starting in like that--you understand!"
"Surely, surely!" I hastened to assure him, because I felt slightly
more master of myself. "But you see my point--she doesn't belong to me.
And even if she did--I can't just pass her about--it's a
responsibility--her wish--what I mean is, I can't coerce her in any
way."
And suddenly I saw the children away from me, with this dubious,
mysterious man, alone, and my heart was wrung with agony. With Alicia,
at least--but, no! I could not acquiesce so completely.
"Coerce--certainly not," was his wholly reasonable comment. "I reckon a
word from you would go a long way, though. But I see your point,
Randolph, I see your point. Tell you what!" he began in a new tone.
"Suppose we put it this way. I'll speak to her myself--I'll put it up
to her--leave you out of it altogether, see?--leave it to her to
decide--so you won't have to--you'll be neutral, you see?--What's the
matter with doing it that way?"
A thousand devils within me moved me with all but irresistible force to
jump at his throat, to stifle his words, to choke the beastly life out
of him, to end the torment then and there. But I could not--I could
not. I knew he was expressing by his words his sense of certainty that
he could win over Alicia, as he had won the children--that I was
helpless in his hands--that I was a weakling whom he was making the
barest pretense of respecting--that he could strip my household of all I
held dear with an ease so laughable that he could not even bother to
ridicule me. And yet I could not rise up and strangle him.
As one in a vise, I sat for a moment chained by wild conflicting
passions, and then--a strange thing happened. A feeling of nakedness, a
sense of being stripped of everything like another Job, of being utterly
alone in the world fell about me like an atmosphere. I felt deprived of
everything, though not bereft. It was an odd feeling, a sort of
involuntary renunciation of all that was my life in which yet I calmly
acquiesced. I faced and addressed Pendleton almost with tranquillity.
Certainly I experienced a strange new dignity that was very soothing,
very grateful, as water to the thirsty after battle.
"Very well, Jim," I heard myself saying quietly. "Go ahead your own way.
That perhaps is best."
All that I remember is a gleam of triumph in his eye. No word of all his
chunnering and maundering afterwards do I recall. He talked on,
smoking, for perhaps four or five minutes and then he left me.
By myself I felt at once strangely heavy as a mountain and insubstantial
as the shadow thereof.
*CHAPTER XVII*
Again and again I have been told that I am a fool. But not even my
dearest friends have called me mad.
Are the gods then really so anxious to destroy me? What have I done to
deserve it?
This morning, after last night's interview with Pendleton, I saw
Alicia--suddenly saw her as it seemed for the first time. And yet an
overwhelming realization flooded me like a tidal wave that through
countless ages she and she alone had been inexpressibly dear to me. She,
the divine ideal I had been pursuing, catching fitful glimpses of in
glades and forests, on mountain tops, in palaces, in fantastic
surroundings, amid incredible scenes of a dim and ancient dream-life,
more real than any reality--_she_ was Alicia, this child Alicia.
And I am more than twice her age!
Nothing can come of it but misery and wretchedness for me. By no word
or sign dare I convey such a thing to her or to any one else--to no one
except these pale pages that receive my poor motley confidences with the
only discretion I can trust.
She is dearer to me than all the worlds. Yet not only must I remain
dumb but I must guard my every word, gesture, thought even, as never
before.
In the midst of all else this is a catastrophe. Yet it overshadows and
overbalances everything.
Let me disclose the truth by so much as a sign, and every act and motive
of mine becomes abruptly suspect, and I shall stand revealed for the
immoral, shameful creature that I suppose I am.
I could face that, I believe, if there were any possibility--but there
isn't.
I must hide and cover and conquer the feeling by inanition. But how can
I, when she is so untellably dear and precious to me?
No, no! A thousand times no! I cannot let Pendleton try to inveigle
her to leave me. No!
And all I have to do is to betray this garish resolution and my secret
will be out, and all that I am and have done will stand forth as naked
pretense and I shall appear stripped and manacled like a common criminal
too good for the hangman.
And I have dared to judge Pendleton!
The time-honored remedy in fiction, when a man finds himself in love
with any one he has no business to love is, I believe, to go away, to
travel. How ridiculous that sounds to me. The only place I can go to
is Visconti's. To Visconti's! And now I have come back from Visconti's
and I cannot stay in the house.