"The best man in the Department," Dibdin put in encouragingly.
"Sergeant Cullum _is_ the bureau of missing persons."
"Give me a little time," he urged again, with the fervid intensity of
prayer--Time! And it was Alicia who was missing!
I shook his hand and gave him time and parted from him with a hope that
I should not have to wait for his ecstatic visions to restore her.
"He'll find her!" Dibdin exclaimed reassuringly. "Never fear. If there
is one thing I've learned, it's to accept the methods of people so long
as they produce the results. Let them use the divining rod if they want
to, or incantations with henbane and hellebore, or trances and visions,
or prayer. This almost human race of ours is made up of some very odd
fish," he added with a laugh, and he looked at me quizzically as though
I were the oddest fish of them all.
"But an ecstatic policeman"--I murmured--
"Yes--queer--I know," said Dibdin, "but I don't care. And now, old boy,
I've got to run back to the museum and take a squint at the work. Cheer
up."
I was alone in my study after a pretense of eating supper with the
children, when Jimmie burst in and flung himself upon me.
"I want to know where is Alicia," he demanded with quivering lips, and
he burst into a pitiful freshet of bitter weeping. His childish tears
fell like scalding lead upon my hands and I hugged the quivering small
figure to me in an anguished embrace.
"Don't you want Laura to put you to bed?" I murmured with my lips
against his ear.
"Don't want Laura," he sobbed chokingly; "want Alicia to give me my bath
and put me to bed. Where is she? Why don't she come?"
It was a cry that tore at my heart as it echoed there and reverberated.
I hugged him closer.
"I'll give you your bath, Jimmikins," I endeavored to soothe him, "and
we'll float ships."
"'Licia--tells me--stories!" he sobbed out, as one broken with tragedy,
and I declare I came very near to joining him in his grief.
"I'll--tell you a story--Jimmie," I gulped foolishly, "and until Alicia
comes back you must be the fine little man you are--and let me."
"When is she coming back?"
"I am not sure, Jimmie--possibly to-morrow." It was my throbbing hope.
For that we could go on any longer without her was simply inconceivable
to me.
Gradually his paroxysm subsided. He grew quiescent in my arms and
heaved a deep sigh as we nestled against each other in silence. It is
fortunate that the grief of children is like a summer shower. For so
intense is it while it lasts that any serious continuation of agony
would rack their small frames to pieces.
"All right, Uncle Ranny," he murmured finally. "Will you come in and
give me my bath? I'll go and run it--I know how, first the hot and then
the cold. And I'll put the ships in and undress. Then you come in and
tell me a long story while I sail them." And he ran out of the room in
a little whirlwind of energy.
I sat bowed in silence for a few minutes and then heavily made my way to
the bathroom.
"Is the temp'ture a'right?" queried Jimmie, with an intense air of
responsibility, his erect nude little figure standing with a ship under
each arm, like a symbol of man adventuring his petty argosies on this
storm-beaten planet. I put my hand judicially into the water. How
important is the temperature of a child's bath! It must be neither too
hot nor too cold, or disastrous results might follow.
I began to tell him an ancient story of an island that proved to be a
sleeping whale, but he was impatient of that.
"'Licia," he informed me in deprecating protest, "tells me stories of
Mowgli in the jungle--out of the 'Jungle Book.'" I endeavored with a
heavy heart to match Alicia, and gradually I became absorbed in my task
and in Jimmie, so that the darkness of life fell away from me. The
water splashed and the ships tacked about in wild maneuvers, while
Jimmie kept reminding me that "he was listening, Uncle Ranny."
The great mystics are those who submerge their intellect and senses into
night so that their souls emerge before them like the full moon out of
the blackness. Every parent, I suppose, must be in part a mystic: for
by centering his heart on little children he discerns the pulsating
irresistible life of the universe, the past and the future, alpha and
omega.
At least Jimmie was courteous enough to assure me, when he hugged me for
the last time, with sleepy eyes, that my tale was won'erful. "But, oh,
Uncle Ranny," he whispered, "say that Alicia will be back to-morrow."
I kissed him but made no promise. In the dining room Laura and Randolph
were sitting over their books,--Laura grave with an anxious pucker in
her white forehead and Randolph with dilated, somewhat fevered eyes. He
was obviously thinking rather than reading. But I dared not enter into
any more discussion of Alicia's absence that evening.
Only now after many days can I write down the events of the day
following my last entry with anything approximating composure; and even
now my fingers are tremulous as they hold the pencil.
I had risen early, for my sleep had been broken and fitful--as, indeed,
how could it have been otherwise?
I was parched and burning within, to act, to do something, to range the
city, the country--Good God, I thought, can a person like Alicia
disappear in that way like a pebble in the sea? But my frenzy of
thought, that seemed as if it would burst the poor narrow limits of my
skull, produced no definite idea. I lashed against the bars of the
brain like a beast in its cage.
I entertained no thought of going to the office that morning, but half
an hour after I was up, that was the only thought that flooded my mind.
There are blessings in a routine of daily labor that those engaged
therein can hardly understand. The treadmill, I imagine, leaves the
mule but little time for speculation or grief or any other emotions. I
was that kind--or, rather that mule let loose--that could find oblivion
nowhere better than in the treadmill. For routine can dull despair.
It was still half an hour before breakfast when my nephew Randolph came
clattering down the stairs, meticulously dressed, though somewhat
wild-eyed. He gave me the impression of having--he also--slept badly.
"Uncle Ranny," he approached me, "are you going to the office this
morning?"
"Yes, I think I am. Why, Randolph?"
"I'd like to go in to town with you--and go round--look around."
"What do you mean, my boy?"
"Somebody ought to be looking for Alicia all the time--don't you think
so, Uncle Ranny? I'd like to try," and he looked away shamefaced.
A boy in his sixteenth year can be a considerable pillar in a household.
I had somehow overlooked Randolph in that role. Perhaps I had been
inclined to treat Laura's children too much as nestlings all, wholly
dependent upon me? I experienced a thrill of pleasurable surprise in
the boy's words and manner. He had said no word concerning his father,
had asked no disconcerting questions. He merely desired to help.
"But of course there is somebody looking for Alicia," I informed him.
"Yes, I know, Uncle Ranny--a policeman! What does a policeman know
about girls like Alicia? I--we talked a lot, she and I," he stammered.
"I have a hunch I could sort of tell what she'd _think_ of doing if she
left home. Let me have a try at it, Uncle Ranny, please. It'll only be
a few nickels in carfare."
"Certainly, my boy," I put my arm about his shoulders. To frustrate
young intentions simply because they are young has never appealed to me
as wisdom. "Come into town with me by all means. I am certain Alicia
will come back"--he could not know the effort this easy answer was
costing me--"but there is no reason why you shouldn't try to find her."
I had thrown off any mask of secrecy with all excepting Jimmie.
Insincerity is a difficult habit to wear.
"Thanks, Uncle Ranny," he answered with suppressed jubilation, and for
the first time in our common history I suddenly felt that I had a
companion in Randolph--that he was growing up.
When he left me at the station, charged with avuncular instructions that
he was to telephone me at various times of the day and that he was to
lunch with me if he could, I had a tender impulse to embrace this lad,
Laura's first-born, before all the concourse. But I knew he would be
shamed to death by such a demonstration. So I tapped him on the shoulder
and we parted grinning to keep each other in heart. I experienced a
fleeting intuition that Alicia would be restored to us, but I expected
nothing at all from Randolph's romantic quest for her.
My heart went out to the boy as I saw him merge and lose himself in the
crowd; I felt very tenderly not only toward those of my flesh, but to
all young things facing the hurly-burly of this oddly jumbled sphere.
I was becoming an ogler in my old age. Every young girl I saw in the
streets, in cars, at crossings, I scrutinized searchingly, with painful
leapings of the heart, when any of them in the slightest particular
resembled Alicia. And the melancholy truth came to me that you can build
a life to any design you please, but only a miracle will keep it intact.
Visconti was in the office when I arrived and he was kindness itself
when he saw my face.
"_Caro mio!_" he grasped my hand. "Something serious?"
"Some domestic trouble--a little painful," I stammered, and he saw that
I did not wish to speak of it. And the vast loneliness of human beings
traversing their orbits on earth struck me as I sat heavily down to my
work. What did I know of Visconti--or Visconti of me? For ages I had
worked near him and I knew he trusted and had what is called regard for
me. Yet the planets in trackless space knew more of each other. I
believe he knows that I am a middle-aged bachelor and I know he has a
daughter who is the apple of his eye--and he pays the wage by which I
live. But what else did we know? He had lost a deeply loved wife and
remained a widower. My heart warmed to him in a sudden sympathy. As
though reciprocating, he came bustling to my desk a minute later and
bending toward me whispered:
"Do not forget that your time is your own--if your _demarches_--private
business--do not forget!" I thanked him but he waved his pudgy hand in
sign of friendly deprecation of formalities.
... com 'e duro calle
Lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale,
lamented Dante. Yes, hard is the path, the going up and down other
people's stairs, when you depend for your livelihood upon them. But
Visconti in his manner endeavored to make his "stairs" those of a
friend.
There was no word from Randolph that morning and my heart grew every
moment heavier.
I seemed to require no food. I straggled aimlessly during the noon hour
through mean streets, from Bleecker Street to Abingdon Square, in a
world of listless women and dirty children, a desert, ghostly world,
drab and wretched.
Shuttling back and forth, all but inanimate, I passed Minot Blackden's
studio, but with sudden horror recoiled from entering. I was driven
about like a leaf. I was a shadow in a world of shadows.
Towards four o'clock I rose heavily from my desk, determined to drag
myself to police headquarters in search of Sergeant Cullum. I expected
nothing from him, but, still, he might utter a word of hope.
At that moment my telephone rang. It was Randolph!
His voice was charged and crackling with excitement and importance.
"Will you meet me at Brentano's, corner Twenty-sixth Street and the
Avenue right away?"
"Why," I said piteously--"tell me, in God's name--have you news?--what
d'you mean?"
A swirl of hope and apprehension swept me like a wave and left me
gasping.
"Yes, Uncle Ranny," was the chuckling reply. "I have news--she's--I
know where she is--Come right over!"
And without giving me a chance to say more, the young devil hung up the
receiver. I cursed the boy in my heart for being a boy--for his
callousness to another's suffering.
Exactly how I reached that corner, I cannot now remember. I did not
walk and yet I cannot for the life of me recall what manner of
conveyance I used. So much happened in my mind during that transit that
external matters left absolutely no impression upon it. The first
impression I do recall is the shock of blank chagrin that struck me like
a shot in the vitals when I saw Randolph standing jauntily alone at the
corner, staring at the passing crowd. Alicia was not with him.
Yet how important the young rascal suddenly seemed in my eyes. He alone
in all the world had present knowledge of her. I could have fallen upon
him and hugged him then and there--and shamed him to death.
"Where--where is she?" I blurted out. "I thought you--tell me, in
heaven's name!" and I seized hold of him fiercely, as though he were a
pickpocket caught in the act. He glanced at me with humorous cockiness
and laughed. Then suddenly conscious that people were staring at us,
and that a policeman was speculatively watching our encounter, he
hastily put his arm through mine and drew me away.
"Come on, Uncle Ranny, I'll lead you to where she is."
"You amazing boy!" I muttered. "But are you really sure?"
"Sure I'm sure!" he crowed. "I think it's nothing to be a detective. I
believe I'd make a good one," he bragged.
"Brag, you young devil," I thought indulgently, but I made no audible
reply and merely made him walk faster.
He was leading me into Twenty-ninth Street beyond Brentano's and to my
amazement I found myself at the well-remembered door of Andrews'
bookshop.
"Here!" I cried in stupefaction. He nodded, grinning as though he
expected an oration of praise for his acumen then and there. He did not
get it. I rushed in wildly, like a mad man, into those silent precincts
where so often I had passed blissfully silent hours. Who would desire a
garish light in this pleasant temple? For a moment I seemed to be in
utter darkness.
"Kind of dark," murmured Randolph, "but I spotted her."
On a sudden my dilated eyes encountered two human beings simultaneously
in their line of vision. Andrews was standing in dignity in the middle
of his shop like a monarch about to receive royalty, and behind him, at
a desk in the rear, a girl was bending over some writing, an electric
light illumining her fair head.
The girl--yes!--It was Alicia!
I felt the effect of a sharp blow over the heart and, brushing the
astonished Andrews aside, I made a crazy leap toward her.
"Why, Mr. Randolph Byrd!" began Andrews. "Haven't seen you--"
"Alicia!" I cried out in what sounded even in my own ears like a sob.
"Oh, Uncle Ranny!" She jumped from her chair with a little scream, and,
before I knew it, I was pressing her to my heart with a quivering
convulsive joy that choked all utterance.
She gasped in pain, the poor child. But when my arms relaxed, she lay
sobbing happily against my heart.
Randolph was so scandalized that he sullenly turned his back upon us.
Andrews was watching us with discreet and sober interest.
"My dearest child!" I whispered, still in a sort of trance of ecstasy,
and Alicia, with the tears trickling down her face, murmured softly.
"Oh, how glad I am I'm found! And there's Randolph," she added with a
happy laugh.
Her last words suddenly woke me out of my trance. I loosed my arms and
stood for an instant baffled, uncertain, shamefaced.
"What are you doing here?" I then brusquely demanded with stupid
severity to conceal the turbulent emotions within me.
"I--oh, didn't you get my letter?" she faltered. "I tried to explain--I
had nowhere to go--" her lips were quivering--"he told me what a burden
I was--I seemed to be only making a lot of trouble--and I had nowhere to
go," she wept.
"He? Who? Andrews?" I demanded harshly.
"No, no!--Mr. Pendleton," she was sobbing again.
"Ah, of course, Pendleton." I felt myself turning livid with hate for
the man whose purpose in life seemed to be to wreck my own.
"And did Andrews know you were my--my ward?"
"Oh, no, Uncle Ranny," and her voice was like a child's tired of crying.
"I meant to tell him later--after I told you. He just took me
without--anything."
Glancing now toward Andrews, I found him discreetly standing, still in
the middle of his shop, but somehow he had managed to draw my
scandalized nephew into conversation to afford me the courtesy of a
greater privacy. My heart went out to him in affection as never before.
"Andrews!" I called, pulling myself together to a semblance of dignity.
Andrews gave a nod to Randolph and without any unseemly haste approached
me, pleasantly smiling.
"This is my ward--Miss Alicia Palmer," I managed to say with forced
calmness.
Andrews bowed ceremoniously as though he were meeting the owner of the
Huth library or Bernard Quaritch. Yet there was a curious twinkle in
his shrewd old Scotch eyes.
"Like all young women of the present day," I went on, with astonishing
glibness--that is at its best when a man is lying for a woman--"she
wanted to prove her independence by scorning my poor protection,
Andrews--to earn her own living--you understand, Andrews?"
"Indeed--indeed?" said Andrews. "And she can earn it, too. Now I
understand the mystery. She recognized a second edition of 'Paradise
Lost' at a glance. Your training, Mr. Byrd--your salary is advanced,
Miss Palmer."
Alicia smiled, blushing faintly, and in that smile I suddenly realized
how much of the child still clung to this well-grown young woman--how
much of the child, no doubt, remains clinging to every woman. She was
pained, distraught, suffering, yet she seemed to feel that she had done
something very courageous and dignified. And it was to her dignity I
hung on with tenacity, for instinctively I recognized that this was a
turning point in her life--that the woman was now putting away the child
in the cradle of the past.
"I think I shall ask you to release her, Andrews." I laid a hand upon
his shoulder. "Some day I shall explain to you more fully. It's
been--but never mind that. I should like to take my ward home--with
your permission?"
"Certainly, certainly," he affirmed with spontaneous vehemence. "But
come in soon, both of you--she's of our stripe, Mr. Byrd--she loves the
good things!--come in both. I expect to have some new things from
Professor Gurney's library that'll delight you."
"We shall indeed, my dear Andrews. Get your hat, Alicia." And as she
turned away for her things, I managed to murmur this much to the kindly
Andrews:
"I shall never forget your conduct in this matter, Andrews--you're a
great bookseller, but, man dear, you're even a greater gentleman!"
And with as little delay as possible we left the shop.
A spate of questions boiled in my brain and foamed up like turbulent
waters backed by a dam. But all at once I came to a sharp decision.
I knew enough. It was that devil Pendleton that had filled her mind
with the thought that she was a burden until the poor child was wild
with a frenzy of distraction. But he had not been able to trust to his
persuasions. Then there was the scene of that dreadful evening when, in
her bewilderment, she realized herself as an apple of discord, a
shatterer of families. I believed I understood enough.
"Where did you sleep, Alicia?" I asked her nonchalantly.
"I have a little room in Twenty-fourth Street," she answered simply. "I
haven't paid for it yet. The landlady wanted money in advance, but I
told her I didn't have it, so she let me stay, anyway."
"Let us go there, my dear, and settle it now."
"Yes, Uncle Ranny," she murmured low.
"I've got to hand it to you, 'Licia," broke out Randolph, emerging from
his silence. "You're a true sport--for a girl!" Whereat we all burst
into happy laughter.
And for the rest of our peregrinations as well as in the train, the lad
could not take his eyes from Alicia in sheer amazed admiration. It was
as though he were seeing her for the first time.
*CHAPTER XX*
Had I time to speculate philosophically, I could expend much of it in
wondering why pure joy cannot be recorded. Perhaps because we
experience so little of it.
Of sorrow and tribulation we strange creatures that are men can give a
pretty fair account. From Job down we have excelled in it. But before
sheer joy we are dumb. I can only repeat to myself the poor colorless
words that I am happy, happy, happy as the day is short.
For one brief space of reaction after finding Alicia, the senses reeled,
the worn body and mind swooned into a sort of deliquescence of
lassitude, the eyes smarted with unshed meaningless moisture, the
overdriven heart throbbed with a vast supernal relief, coextensive with
the universe. Then, swiftly, with an almost audible sound, that
unnerved brain slid into its customary shape of health, more wholesomely
joyous than ever before, and all the world was bathed in freshness.
The blue of the sky was fairer, the sunlight purer, and even the poor
suburban grass of Crestlands autumnally waning, glistened with the
verdure and brightness of a new creation. But who can describe
happiness?
Pendleton is gone, Alicia--the children are here.
No eight words in the language of Shakespeare and Milton have ever
breathed to me the same meaning as those eight words. Yet what do they
signify on paper?
All Europe is in a turmoil, and the Germans have all but taken Paris,
yet this, I perceive, is my first mention of a vast catastrophe. What
tiny self-absorbed creatures are men! People are dying and suffering by
the thousands, yet we cisatlantians scan the headlines and pursue our
own ends in the accustomed way. What though half the planet is in
peril--I have reconquered my home!
Why, I wonder, had I ever imagined myself to have a horror of home? A
home is a little island of personal love in the vast impersonal chaos of
existence--and pity him or her who never lands upon that island.
Of nights, occasionally, I now indulge myself in a fire on the hearth.
The wood that burns brightest, I note, leaves only a little heap of
white ashes. When my eyes rest upon Alicia, or I see the children
flitting about, or hear their ringing voices through the house, I
experience a wonderful contentment that I am the fire at which they may
warm their hands. I, who once entertained fantastic visions of future
greatness, of name and fame, now feel content to become a little heap of
white ashes.
Sergeant Cullum, excellent man, journeyed out here two days after I had
found Alicia, a day after the legal ceremony of adoption, to apprise me
that "he believed my ward to be in Baltimore." I was about to burst
into uncontrollable laughter, but my conscience smote me and I was
ashamed. In my vast relief I had wholly and selfishly forgotten this
good man who was still upon the quest. What power of divination or
answer to prayer had directed his thoughts to Baltimore, I cannot
imagine. But with my contrite apology and thanks went a gift that I
trust has soothed his ruffled feelings. We parted in friendship. Oh,
excellent thaumaturgic policeman!
Randolph burst into a loud sniffing laugh when I told him and Alicia of
Sergeant Cullum's visit and the Baltimore "clew."
"Oh, cops are idiots!" he chuckled arrogantly and looked toward Alicia
with a haughty proprietorial air. "They don't know _anything_! Didn't
take me long to dope out where to look for 'Licia," he boasted. "I
figured it out like this: 'Licia is bugs on your old books. She was
looking for a job to earn her own living, wasn't she?" Alicia bent her
head, still shamefaced over the episode. "What'd I do? I'm strong on
engines. Wouldn't I go to a place where they make or sell engines?
Well, with her it was books. I went around to some book places--'n'
then suddenly I had a hunch: Andrews--that you and she always jaw about.
I looked him up in the 'phone book. An' sure enough, when I went round
and peeped in through the door, I saw Alicia upon a ladder handling some
of those old books there. I thought I'd go in and call her down, but
then I thought 't would surprise her more if you and I came in on her
together--and I beat it hot-foot to a 'phone. Cops!--They'd say,
Baltimore--South America--anything, so it sounds good!"
And again his glance wholly appropriated Alicia. The youngster seems to
think he invented her. But I am full of gratitude to that boy.
The closure of the Stock Exchange and the abrupt slowing up of financial
business has filtered like a shadow even into Visconti's and is giving
me some unhurried hours in which to ponder the future.
How many middle-aged bachelors, I wonder, have conjured similar visions,
constructed the same castles of thin air? To educate Alicia, to serve
and to love her until my love surrounds her so that she cannot choose
but return it--to create a woman Pygmalion-like out of this very sweet
Galatea--what could be more blissful? Alicia is now in her teens. But
suppose she were sweet-and-twenty, could she ever think with anything
but filial affection of a man nearly twice her age who stands to her in
_loco parentis_?
Like a lovesick boy who pulls at the faint intimations of his mustache
and searches the newspaper for cases of marriage at seventeen, I eagerly
scan the prints and cudgel my memory for such unions as ours would be.
But the papers are filled with war and rumors of war. It comes to me
suddenly that a certain aged Senator has not so long ago married his
ward, under even a greater disparity of ages--and I am absurdly happy. I
see myself with Alicia matured and radiant, ever young--living a life of
bright serenity, calling endearing names.
"Did I hear it half in a doze
Long since, I know not where?
Did I dream it an hour ago,
When asleep in this arm-chair?"
But this is folly. Tennyson is out of fashion and there are greater
fools than old fools. I ask too much of the high gods. Enough has
already been given to a crusty bookworm like me. Suppose I had married
Gertrude! The children's voices would never have made music for my ears.
Nevertheless, Alicia shall have the best education I can give her.
Visconti must be aging, I fear, for he has taken to repeating himself.
He has told me often before that his daughter Gina is the apple of his
eye, but during these somewhat listless days in the office in which
"extras" figure largely and strategy is the one indoor game, he has been
going into more detail.
I dined at his house last night and to-day he asked me again to dine on
Saturday. I dislike refusing him and I like lying less. But I declined
on the plea of an engagement.
"I always forget," he returned with a laugh, "that a young man is not
_un' burbero_ of a widower like me--that a young man, in short, has
engagements."
I made some sort of deprecating noise. He talks as though I were
twenty-two, and I like him for it.
"But you see, _amico mio_," he went on explaining, "it is like this:
Gina, the _carissima bambina mia_, is the apple of my eye. And she must
be--what do you call it--amused--amused, made gay, bright--you see?"