Alicia has been my nurse and no one, I fervently hope, will ever
discover that the larger half of that week has been sheer malingering.
I might have got up in three days!
'Tis late to hearken, late to smile,
But better late than never
I shall have lived a little while,
Before I die forever.
The Shropshire Lad was perfectly right in the two middle lines of his
quatrain, but oddly wrong in the others. It was _not_ late to hearken
or to smile. It never is late. Every moment has been heavenly for me.
And who ever stops to dwell upon Purgatory once he has entered Paradise?
I am very certain that by a law of spiritual physics past suffering is
wiped out without a trace.
If "The Rosary" were not so absurd I should sing it to myself over and
over. But being constructively a convalescent why may I not be absurd?
Who shall say me nay? So being alone, I am humming the tune of "The
Rosary" over and over and taking my pleasure in it.
The hours I have spent with Alicia no one can take from me. What a
petulant patient I have been! I chuckle as I think of it. It's like
_Felix Culpa_. Happy grippe-cold!
Alicia, let us say, brings me some broth upon a tray.
"Will you be comfortable, Uncle Ranny," she asks with concern in her
voice, "until I come back with the rest?"
"No!" growls the eccentric uncle. "Not a bit of it. I want company
while I eat."
Alicia laughs softly.
"But who is going to prepare the other tray, while Griselda is so busy?"
"Don't care," mutters the grouchy invalid. "I want company. If I let
you go now, will you bring up your own luncheon and eat it here?"
"But that makes such a lot of dishes, Uncle Ranny."
"Don't care. I'm obstinate, fussy, irritable, sick. Have to be humored.
Ask the doctor!"
Alicia peals a delicious silvery laugh and then I see a film as of tears
in her eyes.
"All right--I'll humor you, Uncle Ranny. But I should think you'd be
sick of seeing me round by this time!"
"Am sick," growl I. "Get a colored nurse to-morrow!" Whereupon I hear
Alicia's laughter all the way down the stairs.
I wonder why Griselda's Scotch broth tastes so amazingly delicious,
these days. Is it possible that an invalid's palate is more sensitive
to culinary virtues and savors? I must ask the doctor.
On the little table at my bedside lies the Valdarfer Boccaccio, printed
1471, which Andrews, excellent fellow, had bought at a sale in my
absence and, thrice excellent fellow, brought up for my delectation when
he came to visit the sick. I once spent a delightful week in the
British Museum, virtually under guard, examining that rare and beautiful
volume. Now its only replica in America is near me and I ought to be
feasting all my senses upon its vellum-bound richness and beauty. It
was once the property of a Medici and has delighted the hours of popes,
princes, dukes, lords; men have longed for it, have treasured it, loved
it as men treasure and love diamonds or women. It is worth a moderate
fortune. But I leave it neglected. I am waiting for the rattle of a
tray and the entrance of the girl behind the tray. What would Rosenbach
or any decent bookman say if they knew? But I don't care. Boccaccio
himself would have approved me.
Alicia enters and the room is flooded with sunshine and I am quick with
life.
"Why, Uncle Ranny!" Alicia pauses alarmed, tray in hand. "Do you think
you have fever again? Your eyes are so bright!"
"'The better to see you with,' said the wolf," I mutter and turn away.
"And your cheeks are red." She puts down the tray, ignoring my
nonsense.
"Let me feel if they are hot," she persists anxiously and her cool
fingers barely touch my cheek which I hastily draw aside.
"I have no fever, I tell you, Alicia," I murmur irritably. "I am
ravenous. Food, child--food is my craving. Sit down and eat--and let
me eat."
"Very well, dear grouchy Uncle Ranny," answers Alicia, cheerfully
placing my dishes on the invalid's table suspended over the counterpane
and leaving her own on the tray. "It shall eat to its heart's content,
it shall--this nice chop and this lovely muffin, and this luscious
jam--greasing its little fisteses up to its little wristeses, the dirty
little beasteses!"
Whereupon I am in good humor again.
"Have you looked over this Valdarfer Boccaccio at all?" asks Alicia
lightly, by way of making conversation. I nod.
"Isn't it a love?" I nod again.
"What a history that book has had--and you know every detail of it, I
suppose. All the princes and kings who owned it--all the romance it has
accumulated in nearly five hundred years--don't you?"
"Don't I what?"
"Know about it?"
"Oh, yes."
"Look here," cries Alicia with mock anger, "don't you go and become a
blatant materialist thinking only of money and profits--like all the
rest of the world. That would be horrible, Uncle Ranny--when I've been
adoring you so abjectly because even your business is lovely and
intellectual and romantic!"
And that girl is betrothed to my nephew Randolph! flashes through my
mind. Aloud I say with a faint grin meant to exasperate her:
"Who on earth cares for anything but money?"
That she very properly ignores and in a softer, more serious tone, she
murmurs:
"I came across a little rhyme of Goethe's--'_Kophtisches Lied_.' Do you
remember it?--'Upon Fortune's great scale the index never rests. You
must either rise or sink, rule and win, or serve and lose; suffer or
triumph, be anvil or hammer.' Isn't it lovely?"
"Yes. Did you translate that in your head as you went along?" I ask.
"Yes, Uncle Ranny--and you have triumphed over Goethe's wisdom. You
have always triumphed even when you suffered--you have always been you,
through all your troubles--Salmon and Byrd--Visconti's. You don't know
how I, too, lived through all those things--even when I was a child and
hardly dared to speak to you--I was, oh, so anxious--and so glad when
you seemed to be happy. And even now--oh, it's been so wonderful to
watch you!" The tears fill her eyes and she turns her face from me.
"That's been my life."
"You little witch!" my heart cries out dumbly, in a very ache of
tenderness. "And have you been mothering me in your thoughts all these
years as you have mothered the children?"
"No, Alicia--I haven't triumphed," I whisper huskily. "But I am
triumphing now."
She turns toward me again with a smile of misty radiance. By an effort
I control my voice and launch out briskly:
"Did I ever tell you, Alicia, how I nearly owned the priceless copy of
his Essays that Bacon inscribed and gave to Shakespeare?"
I am well again--and therefore solitary. It is little enough I have
seen of my nephew Randolph during my illness and little that Alicia has
seen of her fiance.
This being a Saturday when Randolph is at home, Alicia stopped him as he
was about to leave the house to go to New York, "on business," as my
"conditioned" Sophomore put it, and firmly proposed a walk with her
instead. He demurred, the egregious whelp, demurred to a walk with
Alicia! I surprised a note that was almost pleading beneath the bright
decision--Alicia pleading to be taken for a walk! I could have trounced
the boy in my hot indignation.
They departed--I saw them depart. They were in the obscure little hall
and my door was open. Alicia waved her hand, smiling. "Just a wee bit
walk!" she called out in Griselda's language. She could not have known
the tug of longing and envy with which my heart and spirit followed her
as my body felt suddenly and disconsolately heavy against the chair.
"Have a good time," I waved my hand back, "and greet the spring for me!"
The birds are reappearing and an enterprising family of wrens are
already building urgently over my window. Robins are courting and
strutting. The trees are tender with leaf and the throb of spring is in
the air like a mighty force, ceaseless, slow, careless, yet
all-penetrating. The morning sun was bathing all the world in the very
elixir of youth. A fly was buzzing madly against the pane. I felt
intensely solitary, poignantly alone.
The Valdarfer Boccaccio lay opened on my desk--but he was four and a
half centuries removed from this sunlight. I almost hated it--hated all
the beloved objects about me. My precious books were dumb, inert, a
clog upon all the senses. With a heart passionately hungry I craved for
youth, freshness, activity. I seized the Valdarfer Boccaccio as though
to hurl it from me. Then, restraining myself, I brought it down on the
table with a bang that nearly shattered its precious binding. I laughed
ruefully. I determined on a sudden to greet the spring for myself.
Griselda came bustling as she heard me rattling the canes in the jar.
"You're going out?" she demanded.
"Yes, Griselda." I am always a little apologetic with Griselda, for did
she not know me as a boy? It is a part of the instinctive clutching at
youth that makes us respect our elders. That puts them at once in their
own elderly world. Besides, Griselda is always in the right.
"Then why did ye not go with the bairns?"
"_They_ didn't want anybody with them," and I winked Spartan-wise--I can
wink at Griselda. Has she not spent her life serving me? In this rare
world you can do anything to people who love you enough.
"Havers!" muttered Griselda, with an enigmatic toss of her old head.
"Then see that ye take your light coat."
"A coat to-day?" I protested.
"Aye--a coat to-day, young man!"
"Call me young man again, and I'll don goloshes and fur mittens," I
challenged her.
"Child, I should have called ye," murmured Griselda, fumbling at the
hook upon which my top coat hung.
"I'll put on rubber boots and a sou'wester for that," I told her and
struggled into the sleeves as she held the garment out for me.
"I wouldna go too far to-day," cautioned Griselda. "Ye're not over
strong yet."
"Just a little way," I mumbled, ashamed at her affection and care for
one so worthless. "Thank you, Griselda!" She would have been shocked
and scandalized had she known that at that moment there was a moderate
lump in my throat and that I all but kissed her brown old face.
How much the spring had advanced during my days of imprisonment! The
grasses were assertively green as though they had never been otherwise.
Birds were twittering. Neighbors, or opulent neighbors' gardeners, were
busy at their flower beds, and early blooms in some of them,
transplanted from boxes or hothouses--violets, hyacinths, daffodils,
cried forth their beauties in a way to make my breath catch. Queer,
hungering, clamorous sensations stirred in my emaciated frame. How well
I understood at that instant Verlaine's unshed tears of the heart when
he sang:
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, la vie est la,
Simple et tranquille
Cette paisible rumeur--la
Vient de la ville.
--Qu'as tu fait, o toi que voila
Pleurant sans cesse,
Dis, qu'as-tu fait, toi que voila
De ta jeunesse?
That bitterly anguished cry of the heart: What have you made of your
youth?
I strode on grimly in a sort of nameless anger, past the outlying
houses, past empty lots with rank grass still awaiting the pressure of
habitation, until the futilely laid-out streets, empty of all life, gave
way to open country and meadowland. I was making my way to the wood
that lies between the meadows, a skirting dairy farm or two, some
scraggy orchard here and there, and the great line of the aqueduct, the
most Roman of our enterprises, that carries the water to New York. In
the wood I somehow felt I should be taken again to the bosom of earth
and the sickness of my soul be healed.
I looked up at the sky and it was radiant with dazzling white clouds
that made my mole's eyes water. A merry breeze fanned the newborn earth
and once on the edge of the wood I caught that indescribable whisper of
trees which to me is the earth-note, the age-long speech and intimation
of the planet that, at all hazards, life must go on; that it is decreed,
irresistible and sweet. A pang of envy stabbed my breast at the thought
of the lovers abroad to-day, even though those lovers were almost my
children. I for one find it difficult to keep apart those conflicting
emotions of the heart. But do parents of the flesh, I wonder, encounter
no similar struggles? Once among the trees I was permeated by that type
of gentle melancholy serenity that woods induce. Softly I strolled
about on last year's pine needles and leaves, sodden now after a
winter's snowfall and a year's rains. The cat-like tread of your
primeval aborigine returns even to your civilized boots in the Woods of
Westermain, the stalker and the hunter throbs faintly in your blood.
My path led me up a slope where the trees, youngish still, like myself,
were no saplings, however, but towered in a slender abandon toward the
patches of cerulean sky overhead. They seemed to escort me, those
tapering maples and sycamores with their feathery foliage, like a troop
of young monks still fresh from their novitiate, still full of the sap
of life. Somehow trees in a forest have always reminded me of monks
chanting litanies and benedictions. The bass-note of all their
murmurings is invariably so solemn. From the crest the land drops in a
declivity and thence, soon abandoning the woodland in a fringe of bushes
and underbrush, rolls on to the massive moundlike line of the aqueduct.
On a sudden I heard voices beneath me a little way down the declivity.
And peering down with the delicious thrill of alertness that returns
from primitive ages even to-day among trees, I perceived Alicia and
Randolph with their backs to me in earnest colloquy.
My first impulse, naturally, was to hail them or to make some sort of
monitory sound that might apprise them of my presence. But a sudden
movement of Alicia's arrested all force or motion on my part.
Her hands shot forward and with a vehemence that was obviously not
loverlike, she cried out in a tormented voice:
"But you've promised me that over and over again, 'Dolph! How many
times"--she unconsciously shook him as she spoke, "how many times do you
suppose you have promised me that you wouldn't drink and wouldn't
play--that you'd give up going about with that set--that you'd leave it
altogether? How many, many times?" she reiterated, with a pathetic note
of indignation.
"A fellow can't quit cold like that," I barely heard the lad
muttering--"got to have some friends!"
"Friends!" Alicia cried, in a voice of bitter exasperation. "Do you call
Billy Banning and Tertius Cullen and Arthur Bloodgood friends? They're
your worst enemies--almost criminals!" And on a sudden I realized that
I was an eavesdropper and a flush of shame heated my cheeks. I was
about to make a sound but my throat was dry and no sound came.
"Think what it would mean," took up Alicia, "if Uncle Ranny found it
out--" and I could not choose but listen--"all that he has been to
us--father and mother and everything else. Everything in the world he
has given up for us," she cried with quivering lips, her voice thinning
with passionate anguish. "His comfort, his leisure, his whole life he
has sacrificed with a smile for us--for you and Jimmie and Laura
and--and even me! Oh, 'Dolph, 'Dolph--do you suppose there are many
such men in the world? And you want to break his heart by drinking and
gambling and Heaven knows what else it might lead to?"
I write these words with shame. I had no business to hear them. I
gathered my arrested forces to compel myself to move away, when I heard
the boy's bass mutter:
"I know I'm rotten, 'Licia--rotten as they make 'em--but give me another
chance, 'Licia--just one more, sweetheart--I tell you it's--"
"Yes," was the bitter interruption, "you made me those promises when I
said I would be engaged to you--what have they amounted to? It would
have broken his heart if it had come out then. I--I promised the Dean
for you--that time--" her voice charged with emotion so she could
scarcely speak--"and now--"
"But wait--wait, 'Licia," the boy suddenly drew her to him with
passionate earnestness by both hands. "I give you my word of honor this
time it's different. It isn't for myself--yes, it is, though--but it
isn't for what you mean--not for anything you can think of. It is for a
Purpose," he explained with great emphasis--"a Purpose--I can't tell
you--but--"
"But you must tell me," insisted Alicia, searching his eyes tremulously.
"Can't--I can't!" he shook his head vehemently. "'Licia, darling, be
good to me. I must have it. If I only had about fifty dollars! I
could win it--I know--I am awfully good at poker--I can bluff the lot of
'em. But I've got to have ten to start--and I promise, word of honor,
I'll never play again--word of honor, 'Licia."
It was too late now for me to betray my presence. I was contemptible in
my own eyes, ashamed, yet exultant--I hardly knew what. My frame shook
with a cold rage, with shame at my blindness, and yet a curious sense of
vast illumination surrounded me like an atmosphere. I moved away, hardly
knowing or caring whether I made any sound, and with bowed head and a
tumult throbbing hot and cold within me, I walked down the slope through
the still whispering woods.
What I had long fitfully suspected was how somewhat darkly apparent: In
some manner Alicia was endeavoring to stand between the boy and evil,
shame, disgrace, sacrificing herself deliberately, resolutely, without a
word to me--because it might "break my heart!" Through an empty barren
landscape, with unseeing eyes, conscious only of a welter of incoherent
thoughts and emotions, as though boiling in a vacuum, I made my way
homeward. It might "break my heart!"
"And did ye walk too far?" Griselda came hurriedly to the entrance hall
when she heard me.
"No--no! Greatest walk of my life," I laughed absently into her face.
"Feel like another man."
She scrutinized me sharply for an instant, and muttering something about
a cup of cocoa and a biscuit, whisked away to the kitchen.
Dumb, distraught, I fell wearily into my chair, gazing vacantly at the
rows of books, at the telephone instrument, the safe, the furniture and
cushions, at all the apparatus of living about me, realizing clearly
only one thing: that it is the simple basal things of life that alone
tend to elude one. For years I had been clinging to them, faint but
pursuing, but still they were eluding me. Still I was a groping
elementary learner in life. Rage and depreciate myself as I would, I
felt nevertheless that I was facing a problem momentarily beyond me, but
which I urgently knew I must solve. If I had been blind, I could not
continue blind. Suddenly, thought suspended as a bird sometimes hangs
in the air, I seemed to be watching instinct taking command, instinct
overriding thought and shame, rage and grief--instinct taking a pen and
a cheque book and writing with my hand a check in Alicia's name for
fifty dollars. Why was my hand doing this? A slight tremor of
revulsion shook me before this trivial deed accomplished--and I made a
movement as though to destroy the cheque I had written. But I did not
destroy it. I sat gazing at it stupidly, as one might sit before a
puzzle.
Griselda at this point entered with a tray bearing cocoa and biscuits.
"Oh, thanks, Griselda," I murmured, as one emerging from a trance. "By
the way, I wish, you wouldn't mention to Alicia or--anybody, my having
walked this morning." Griselda uttered a brief laugh. Then--"Did ye
see them?" she queried abruptly.
"See them?" I repeated dully. "What a question for you to ask,
Griselda! If I had seen them would I ask you not to mention it?"
"Oh, ay--surely--I am a fool!" muttered Griselda, slowly turning to
leave me. But her expression was not that of one chastened in her
folly.
"Is Jimmie in the house?" I asked.
"No, Jimmie is across the way playing with the Sturgis boy."
"Very well, Griselda. Thank you."
A few minutes later Alicia entered the house--alone.
I rose heavily and walked toward the open door leading to the hallway.
Her drooping dispirited look struck me like a blow--my radiant Alicia!
Even her pretty small hat that I admired seemed to squat listlessly upon
her beautiful head--beautiful even in dejection. But no sooner did she
perceive me approaching than she looked up and smiled piteously.
"Oh, hello, Uncle Ranny--" but the usual sparkle in her tone was sadly
lacking--"have you been all right?" She removed her hat.
"Oh, quite--thanks, Alicia. But a little lonely. Won't you come in and
talk to me, if you have nothing better to do?"
"Of course I shall, you poor Uncle Ranny--" and her tone became more
hearty. "What have you been doing with yourself all alone--?" And I
realized that endearments were trembling on the tip of her tongue and my
soul craved them, but I interrupted her. She had had enough that
morning. And the endearments of pity would have crushed me utterly.
"Oh, there's Boccaccio," I muttered, "and puttering about generally--at
which I'm an expert. Sit down," I added, as she entered the study. "Am
I mistaken, or did you tire yourself out walking too far?"
"Oh, no, dear--I had a lovely walk," she answered brightly. "Don't you
go wasting sympathy on me. I feel ashamed of my robustiousness, and you
convalescing here alone. But I shan't leave you alone again to-day.
Wouldn't you like me to read some Boccaccio to you?--But then my Italian
is so ferocious, and yours is so beautiful, you'd hate me if I clipped
the vowels too short."
She had thus far made no mention of Randolph.
So full did my heart feel of love and sympathy for this poor beautiful
child struggling alone with her problem and pain that I ached to take
her to my heart, to beg her to confide in me, to let me share her
troubles. A lump rose in my throat and I knew that one movement in her
direction would make all my manhood dissolve in tears like a child! No,
I must not--I could not.
"Read me," I whispered huskily, after a pause, "two or three of the
sonnets in the 'Vita Nuova' of Dante."
"Lovely!" cried Alicia, jumping up and seizing the book.
"_A ciascun alma presa_," she began--"to every captive soul and gentle
heart ... greeting in the name of their Lord, who is love!"
I did not listen after the first stanza. I endeavored only to still the
tumult in my brain and to think what to do for Alicia.
Somehow, some way, I must put an end at once to this beloved child's
torment--without causing her pain.
Three sonnets she had read, or possibly four, and then she paused and
searched my face.
"Do you want any more?"
"Thank you very much, Alicia, I feel brighter already. I think that will
be enough for to-day. By the way, Alicia," I went on rapidly, fumbling
with my papers, "it strikes me your allowance is too small. You must
need dozens and dozens of things that cost money. Here is a cheque for
fifty dollars I wrote out this morning--but," I added half absently--"if
you need more I can just as easily make it a hundred," and I laughed a
trifle foolishly--oh, I could act, this morning, act almost as well as
Alicia.
She gazed at me intently for a space, silent, alert--a flash of
suspicion--and then with an ineffable tenderness and a great relief
shining in her eyes.
"Oh, you darling Uncle Ranny," she leaped from her chair and flew toward
me, pressing both her hands down on my shoulders. Immobile as a Buddha
I sat as she kissed me on the cheek.
"But do you really think you can--give me all this?"
"Oh, yes, Alicia," I laughed with the bravado of Fred Salmon. "I am
quite sure I can. What are uncles for if--" but I could say no more.
She hung over me for an instant and then abruptly left me. She, too,
was fearful of saying more. But not for the same reason--oh, not for
the same reason!
All that day, Alicia, as I could not help overhearing, was vainly
endeavoring to reach Randolph on the telephone in New York. She rang
the fraternity house. She tried the homes of his friends. But all to no
purpose. Randolph was not to be found. And that evening Alicia mounted
the stairs to her room with a sort of drooping, febrile anxiety, with an
anxious unnatural gayety.
*CHAPTER XXV*
Only some fifteen hours have passed and the world is changed to a
dazzling brilliance.
Alicia would not leave me, poor overwrought child. She has refused to go
to bed and insisted upon staying near me, upon "meeting the dawn" with
me. She now lies stretched upon my couch, covered over with a rug, and
she has just been overtaken by slumber.
And her presence there under my eyes, Randolph Byrd, is the nearest
taste of Heaven that you and I have known, or possibly ever will know,
in this life. It is dawn enough for me now and for you, my friend--a
dawn so resplendent that I for one shall never desire a brighter.
And since there can be no more sleep for me this night, and since this
may be the last entry for you in these memoirs, for many a day, if not
forever, I shall endeavor to still the flying heart, the mad exultation
rioting in my veins, by noting down for you, how sketchily and
incoherently soever, the momentous occurrences of the youngest hours.
It came about--but has it come about? Or is this some mad dream from
which I shall wake to the old somber reality? How can a dark turbid
current so suddenly bring one out into a flashing, sparkling, sunlit
lagoon, overhung with a verdure so rich and lustrous it would seem to
have come fresh from the Creator's hand? I hear birds piping in wondrous
music, or do I imagine it? But I began by telling you I should be
incoherent.
It must have been some time past midnight when I screened the fire, put
out the lights and wearily, in darkness, made my way up the stairs.
The fire had unaccountably and fitfully smoked to-night and I remember
the last thing I did was to take out Fred Salmon's gold-colored
certificates from the safe, examine them with smarting eyes and then
gaze in sleepy astonishment at the quotation of Salmon Oil in the
newspapers. According to that the shares were now worth twenty-six
thousand dollars! It seemed incredible, absurd. And the year was up
and I might sell the stuff. Like a miser who has nothing else in life to
look for, I gazed spellbound at those securities in whose security I
even now could not believe. But unlike the miser of fiction, but like
my dull, stupid self, I neglected to replace the crackling papers,
though I did put the Valdarfer Boccaccio in and closed the safe.
In the upper passageway, I distinctly recall walking on tiptoe so that
Alicia might not be disturbed. Was it hallucination I wonder, or did I
actually hear like a sighing whisper through the darkness,
"Good night, Uncle Ranny!"
I am always imagining her voice and her gestures in my brain. I must
ask her when she wakes up. At any rate, that mysterious whisper it was,
or the hallucination of a whisper, that stirred me into wakefulness
again. I began to undress and paused, realizing that I was now too
wakeful to sleep. I donned a dressing gown over my waistcoat, adjusted
the light and lay down upon the bed with Baudelaire's "Fleurs de Mai" in
my hand. A little of Baudelaire had the effect upon my mind of rich
food upon a furred tongue. Why, I wondered, do I keep that gloomy book
upon my bedside table? I threw it down in disgust and took up a volume
of Florio's Montaigne instead.
To read and enjoy Montaigne is a certain sign of middle age. I have
long enjoyed Montaigne. A French verse to the effect that "a peaceful
indifference is the sagest of virtues" came into my head and with sudden
violence I threw away Montaigne.
I was not middle-aged. I was not indifferent. The heart of frustrated
youth in me was crying out for life and love! Alicia was two doors away
from me. She did not love my nephew. Could I not, if I plucked up
energy and resolution, make her love me? Was I then so irrevocably
Uncle Ranny? I leaped up feverishly, lifted the shade and looked out
upon the blinking stars. Their message was a very simple one. From
Virgo to Cassiopeia, from the Pole star to the farthest twinkler they
seemed to say:
"The trifling planet Earth is yours--if you know how to use it."
With a muffled tread I paced the room agitatedly. This affair between
Alicia and Randolph was absurd. Randolph was unfit for the very thought
of marriage. A wise parent would know how to deal with the situation.
But, alas! I was neither wise nor a parent. Nevertheless I must find a
way of liquidating this business not later than to-morrow. It could not
go on. The lamplight showed me in my dull perplexity and I turned it
off angrily and again threw myself on the bed to think in Egyptian
darkness.
On a sudden I heard a low murmur of voices without. It is seldom that
voices are heard late at night in our secluded situation. Possibly the
policeman exchanging comments on the night with some solitary passer-by.
A moment later, however, I heard a key inserted in a lock and a door
open. My nephew Randolph returning home at last! Then to-morrow would
be the same? I asked myself. Alicia would turn over the cheque to him
and all would go on as before? No, no, that could not be. Yet what
could I do? Turn the boy adrift, Laura's boy, and revolt Alicia's
spirit--make her hate me? What a horrible impasse!
I listened for Randolph's footsteps on the stairs, but there was no
sound. Suppose I were to call him into my room and tell him that I knew
all--appeal to his better nature. Was not that what parents were
obliged to do the world over? I should talk tenderly to the boy--but in
my heart I own I did not feel tenderly toward him.
Still there was no sound of steps on the stairs.
The black darkness made the tension of waiting intolerable. I switched
on the light and automatically made toward the door. Then all at once
the low hum of voices overtook me. Had Alicia descended to meet him?
No--I had not heard her door. Surely Randolph in his sober senses would
not bring friends of his to the house at this hour! I looked at my
watch; it was twenty minutes past two!
Noiselessly I opened my door and in the soft moccasin slippers I was
wearing tiptoed down the hall. At the top of the stairs I paused to
listen. Primeval instincts of alertness stirred within me. My heart
was throbbing against my throat and I literally felt my eyes dilating in
the darkness. I found myself smiling at the primitive machinery that is
set in motion within us, slumber though it might, at the slightest
provocation. Still treading softly I descended the stairs.
No light was showing anywhere. The darkness was absolute. What under
heaven could be the meaning of that? The primitive instinct of the
stalker was again to the fore. At the foot of the stairs I paused.
Sounds were audible. They came from my study!
"Upon my word!" I thought with indignation. The young man could not
possibly be in his right mind. The study door was closed, but through
the slightest of chinks between door and lintel, left evidently to
obviate the noise of the clicking fixture, I perceived a faint, fitful
spot of light flickering about, like the light of Tinker Bell in "Peter
Pan."
With a slight pressure I pushed the door gently ajar. Randolph, with a
small spotlight in his hand, was standing at my desk. Except for the
circle of light about him the room was in darkness. The rim of his hat
shading his eyes, he was scanning the Salmon Oil certificates; with his
trembling left hand he was counting them, under the quivering spot of
light proceeding from his right.
"Eight--nine--ten!" I heard him breathe heavily. "A hundred each!"
I stood stock-still, overwhelmed, scarcely breathing, frozen with a
sickening shame of horror. The meaning of it was so crushingly plain!
"Take two of them!" I heard a mysterious hoarse whisper coming from the
window. "Put the rest back. He'll never miss 'em."
"All right," whispered Randolph, with quaking huskiness.
"Give 'em to me!" came from the window.
My power of motion at that instant suddenly flooded back into my
muscles. I lifted my hand as though fearful of rending the darkness,
pushed the switch-button inside the door and the room was bathed in
light from the single lamp on my table--intense after the pregnant
darkness.
Then a vision that sent a chill shock through my nerves and stunned all
senses left me gaping--petrified.
In the window was framed the abhorrent, dilapidated parody of the face
of Pendleton!
It could not be! was the thought sluggishly struggling through my numbed
brain. It was a nightmare.
Then a sudden sharp cry threw me into a momentary tremor. I wheeled
about.
Alicia, fully dressed, with one hand to her eyes, was leaning against
the doorpost!
Without speaking, I automatically bounded forward to the window. The
muffled sound of heavy steps running on the turf fell upon my ears and
dimly, through the starlit darkness, I caught a glimpse of the stooping
bulk of a large man receding down the slope, toward the brook.
Had my senses been tricking me or had I really seen the face of
Pendleton?
"Who was it?" I cried fiercely to Randolph, still hanging stupefied and
immobile, with blank terror upon his features, over my desk.
He made no answer.
"Sit down over there!" I commanded sharply. As one under the influence
of a drug or a hypnotic spell, the boy loosely moved to obey, but
remained standing irresolute at my chair, a mass of helplessness, his
head dropping limply on his chest.
Anger and pain struggling for mastery within me, I turned abruptly to
Alicia.
"Haven't you been asleep, child? Better go upstairs--please go," I
entreated.
"No, I won't!" she retorted with a cry of passionate vehemence and with
a rush she flung past me toward Randolph.
"So that is what you wanted the money for!"--she shook with the fury of
her emotion--"to give to that brute! And he has got you--got hold of
you--come back to make a thief of you!"
Then it _was_ Pendleton. I was not mistaken!
"Why do you suppose I engaged myself to you, you poor contemptible
weakling! Do you suppose I am in love with you?" Her tears gushed
forth, and she rocked her arms passionately. "Love a thing like you? I
wanted to keep your weakness and your spinelessness from Uncle Ranny--to
save him from the pain he is suffering now because you're a thief! You
promised, promised me over and over you'd keep straight--wouldn't
gamble--wouldn't drink--over and over--" she wailed with the anguished
note that drags on tears--"and this is what you've got to! Stealing!
And from Uncle Ranny of all people, who's been father and mother to
you--everything in the world! If I didn't adore him more than anybody
on earth; do you think I would have looked at you? Oh, how I wish I
could beat you to a pulp!" She lifted her hands on high and for one
fascinated instant I actually thought she would.
"I wish I could feel sure of never seeing your face again!" she
concluded, collapsing with her own anger.
Slowly, under the blows of her words, the boy lifted his eyes, eyes
smoldering with shame, with abject misery, with the hopeless pathos of
the weak.
"Then you never cared a damn?" he muttered.
"No--I never cared a damn--in your sense!" she cried, forgetting all
restraint in her passionate exasperation. "And I never can and never
will now. I'd hoped you'd become a man. But I'm through with you for
good!"
I had been standing aside, awed, involuntarily spell-bound with the
aloofness and indecision of surprise. I now made a move toward Alicia,
to lead her away. "If I didn't adore him more than anybody on earth."
I ought not to have heard that. But I had and my pulses began to throb
anew.
A sudden loud rapping at the door, however, startled us all out of our
tempest of pain into a common alertness. I glanced at the huddled form
of Randolph, at the still quivering figure of Alicia.
"I'll see who it is!" I muttered, moving toward the hall. Alicia stood
for a moment irresolute, and then ran out behind me and disappeared in
the darkened dining room.
"What," it flashed through my mind as I unlocked the door, "what if
Pendleton was caught--the father of Laura's children, snatched like the
thief he was, in his flight?"
And I felt the prickling sensation of sweat against my clothes as I
swung open the door.
The mounted policeman, Halloran, was looming in the doorway. He was
clutching by the arm a hulking figure in a shabby top coat, a man, a man
panting like a beast, who was shrinkingly, miserably averting his face
from the light.
"I saw this man running away from your house just now," began Halloran
briskly. "Mighty suspicious, he looked--running away this hour of the
night. Picked him up--to see if they was anything wrong."