"I could save you money," he smiled blandly, "by telling you that the
girl is not with him--" and I could have wrung his hand like a
brother's. "But," he added, "it won't cost much to pick him up. I'll
have news for you to-morrow this time, I'm thinking."
As I sat down to lunch with Dibdin at his club, though in truth nothing
was farther from my cravings than food, he suddenly burst forth into
hearty laughter.
"So it's my thousand you gave Pendleton?" he chuckled. "That was sheer
inspiration, Randolph--sheer, unadulterated genius! If you weren't so
lugubrious just now, I could accuse you of a high ironic sense of humor
that only a great man would be capable of!"
How terrible were the next twenty-four hours, in spite of Dibdin's
companionship and his efforts to cheer me, no one will ever know. No
funeral could possibly have darkened my household to such an extent. I
dreaded to be seen by the children, who walked about like wraiths under
the sense of tragedy. I dreaded to tell them lies and yet I could not
tell them the truth. Finally I felt I must say something to Laura and
Randolph.
The departure of their father they received without the least surprise.
Randolph inquired where he had gone, but this, I answered, I could not
tell him, save that he had gone West. But the absence of Alicia left
them puzzled and strained and awed. Alicia's disappearance shook them
almost as it had shaken me.
"When will she be back?" demanded Randolph.
"I don't know exactly," I answered miserably, "soon, I hope."
The following morning I gave up all thought of going to the office. If
my mysterious truancy should cost me my job, then it must be so. I
hovered in the region of the telephone. Again and again I was about to
call up Mahoney's, but I forebore. Finally, toward noon, I could wait
no longer. When the connection was made, I gave my name and asked for
the young man who had charge of my case.
"Was just going to call you," was the bland apologetic answer. "Your
man is at the La Salle Hotel, going out on the Santa Fe to-night. He is
alone and arrived alone last night. We'll see whether he starts alone
to-night."
Then, of course, I cursed myself for my folly in thinking that it might
be otherwise and realized that I had really thought nothing of the sort.
But where in the meanwhile was Alicia?
I had believed myself by now schooled to emergencies, but here was an
emergency that left me dazed and helpless. I had fondly thought myself a
match for life, but life was crushing me with pain like a blind force.
I leaped up suddenly and wandered about the house and the garden like a
dog searching miserably for a departed loved one. There was the
stream--but I turned from it shivering. No--that was impossible! The
sense of life in Alicia, her vitality, was too potent, too radiant to
suffer extinction. I looked up at my little nest from the edge of the
muddy stream, that frail eyrie upon the rock that I had felt so
nestling, secure; barred by the trunks of intervening trees, it now
seemed a prison. A faint breeze that was stirring the leaves made them
murmurous with secret things which my heart cried out to interpret. Was
it a litany, a dirge, or a whisper of hope? I could not read the
riddle, but my bruised spirit was passionately clinging to hope.
Dibdin pretended not to observe my vagaries; when I returned I found him
absorbed in Epictetus.
"This is rather good," he growled, pointing to a passage and puffing his
pipe as he spoke:
"Have you not received facilities by which you may support any event?
Have you not received a manly soul? Have you not received patience?"
"Yes," I muttered dejectedly, "all very well, but Epictetus never lost
Alicia."
Dibdin laughed shortly. "Now," he said, "we must start out to find her.
Though my feeling is she'll come back of her own accord very soon. The
girl was frightened--no more."