"Don't you want to come in and spend the night after all, Jim?"
"No, I better go," mumbled Pendleton, edging away.
"Sorry to have troubled you, gentlemen," apologized Halloran suavely.
"But you know--so many robberies in the suburbs--orders is to look out
extry sharp. Good night to ye, Mr. Byrd. Good night, sir," he nodded
with ill-concealed contempt at Pendleton.
"Good night," muttered Pendleton and slouched off heavily down the
gravel path.
"No harm done," grinned Halloran, looking queerly after his recent
prisoner. "But I could have sworn--" I interrupted him with a
boisterous laugh.
"Not at all, officer. Sorry you had the trouble--many thanks for your
watchfulness. See you to-morrow."
"All right!" he responded with smart alacrity. "Good night, sir." I
closed the door.
In the room the lad Randolph sat alone, somewhat straighter now, gazing
before him. He must have heard the colloquy at the door.
"Well, Randolph," I approached him quietly, "now what do you want to say
to me?"
He did not answer for a space. Finally he spoke:
"What are you going to do with me, Uncle Ranny?"
My anger against him had subsided. I saw only the frail young mortal,
Laura's son, whom I had undertaken to make a man of--and I had failed!
"What do you think I ought to do with you?" I queried gently. There was
no longer even rancor in my heart.
"Put me away, I guess," he answered dully. "That's what I deserve."
"When did you first meet your--your father?" I found myself wincing at
the word, but after all Pendleton _was_ his father.
"About three weeks ago," was the reply.
"How did it happen?"
"He came here and followed 'Licia and me to town one morning on the
train. He watched for me till I came out of lecture and then he spoke
to me."
"What did he say?"
"Oh, asked whether I'd forgotten him, took me to lunch and told me you
gave him a rotten deal--took his children away from him--sent him into
exile, and so on."
"Didn't he tell you that he deserted your mother and you three children
and that your mother died of it?"
"No," said Randolph wearily, "but I knew that. Oh, you needn't think I
took to him right off the bat."
"Didn't he tell you that he went away of his own desire--after a
horrible scene with--with Alicia?" I felt the truth must be told the
boy now. "Didn't he tell you that I gave him money to go and that only
recently I sent him more money to San Francisco, because he wanted to
get back to the East?"
"No," said the boy in wide-eyed amazement. "He said you had taken
everything from him because of the mistake he'd made--and tried to keep
him down. That's what first began to get me. Oh, what's the use, Uncle
Ranny? It's a hard thing to say, but I guess he's pretty rotten, even
if he is my father. He got me drunk to-night to do this--" he waved his
hand heavily toward the desk. "Said there was some island he'd found
where he wanted to raise copra or cocoanuts or something--end his
days---if he only had a little money--that's why.--But what's the use,
Uncle Ranny," he went on in the same weary tones, "I'm through with him.
I don't care a curse about him now. What are you going to do with me?"
A great tenderness for the boy stabbed at my heart. I longed to comfort
him as I could comfort Laura or Jimmie. Was he not their brother and as
much as they my child? Like a disease, misfortune and dishonor had
suddenly attacked him. My breast was simmering with bitter
self-reproach.
"Come, Randolph," I put my arm about his shoulder. "Pull yourself
together. We must live this business down. There's your education to
be thought of. You must finish, don't you see?"
"You mean--you'd give me another chance?"
"Yes, Randolph," I answered huskily, "and still another." At that
moment I felt I could have given him seventy-times seven.
"Well, then," he answered, with the first gleam of interest I discerned
in him, "will you let me go ahead and enlist?"
"Enlist," I recoiled from that. "In the army, you mean? You are so
young."
"I mean in the navy--I want to do it, Uncle Ranny--I must do it--That's
the only way I can begin again. I can't stay round where Alicia is."
My heart went utterly out to the boy in his misery. I knew not what to
say to him. The pangs of despised love!
"Alicia has been your--" but it was futile to talk to him of Alicia.
"Go to bed, my boy," I said, gently urging him toward the door. "Get
some rest and still your poor nerves. To-morrow we shall discuss and
settle this matter in your best interests. Remember you are surrounded
by your friends." With a faint gleam of gratitude in his eyes, he
shuffled out unsteadily and I pressed his hand as we parted at the door.
I heard him moving about in his room.
Then I realized that I must find Alicia.
*CHAPTER XXVI*
Treading speedily with a strange lightness of step, I mounted the stairs
first to see whether Alicia might have returned to her room, as was
natural, and found her door ajar and the apartment empty.
My brain still wheeling, I seemed to float dawn the stairway and into
the dining room, but no one was there. Somewhat uneasily I passed
through the narrow box-like pantry into the kitchen and there the door
that gave on the garden stood open wide.
In the shadow, under the starlit sky, under the mystical blue of
overhanging boughs, stood Alicia alone, gazing into the velvety night,
straight as a silvery Diana, mysterious, tragic.
At the sight of her the mad tumult of the evening seemed to ooze away
from me in waves. By an effort of will I forced my heart to beat more
soberly, as I approached her softly.
"Alicia!" I whispered behind her so as not to startle her. Slowly she
turned toward me.
Her face was but dimly discernible but her eyes shone in the night with
the brightness of the stars. The one thought of my heart was to bring
Alicia back to the life of the past, to wipe out as swiftly as possible
the ravages of the emotional storm, to bring her back to the tranquil
blissful life that her happy presence made for me. A sad Alicia was
unthinkable.
"You must come in, my child!" I touched her gently.
"I have tried so hard, Uncle Ranny," she turned her face and laid a hand
timidly upon my arm, "I have tried so hard to keep all this pain from
you--so that you could go on being your happy, lovely self."
My own thoughts concerning her! She was giving them back to me--with
the poignant wistful gloom, the intense pathos of the young that is so
touching, in the young you love so lacerating. Did I ever say that
there are no women to-day who wear the hair shirt, like the radiant girl
wife of Jacopone da Todi? Blind fool that I have been!
"But my darling girl," I seized both her cold little hands, "don't worry
about me. I am old and tough--seasoned to the fortunes of life--and to
the misfortunes, too. It is sad, very sad, but it is nothing. It's you
I am thinking of. Things happen, my dear. Life is like that. There is
a lot of happiness and serenity in it. But you must not let this bite
into your soul--it will pass, Alicia--it has passed already. I want you
to return to your happy blissful self--the self that has made me--all of
us--so happy--so very happy."
"I ask nothing more or better, Uncle Ranny," she pressed my hands with
quick intense little movements, "than to be near you, to work and to--to
serve you--that is all I ask in the world!"
Almost I had committed the unpardonable sin--almost I had taken
advantage of her mood and of her grief, taken her to my heart and poured
out the words of love that a hundred, hundred times had overflowed my
heart and clamored for utterance. A pretty head of a family, a fine
protector of the young I should then have been!
With a tremulous movement I put both her hands together between my own
and whispered to her lest my voice should betray me.
"That is exactly what I want you to do, my dearest girl--live quietly
and happily near me, be happy until the--the supreme happiness comes to
you--until--" I added with a painful laugh, "the Prince in the fairy
tale--comes along--to claim you."
It was the hardest utterance of my life, but I felt a flash of triumph
to have uttered it.
"The Prince in the fairy tale," Alicia repeated slowly, looking rapt
before her, "he came long ago--I have had more than I deserve--so much,
so much, that I often tremble to think of it. All the Prince and all
the fairy tale I want, or shall ever want."
For one instant I thrilled from head to foot. A darkness filled my
being for a moment and then it was rayed and forked by the lightnings of
a strange intoxication.
"You can't mean, Alicia," I breathed huskily from a parched throat,
"you--that it is me--that you--"
And I knew instantaneously that all the restraint and resolutions had
been swept aside--that after all I was as weak and weaker than the boy
Randolph. For I had spoken without the iota of a wish to resist my
desires!
Slowly, very slowly, she drew closer to me so that her sweet breath of
violets was warm and fragrant on my cheek. My head swam.
"Ever since I came to you;" she breathed ever so softly, "ever since I
was fifteen you have filled my thoughts, my heart, my life. I
have--loved you always." The blood roared in my ears. I was filled
with madness. But too long had I doubted happiness to receive it with
open arms. I had made a stranger of it as does a miser by keeping his
wealth hidden away.
"Think what you are saying, Alicia," I took her face convulsively in
both my hands. "I have loved you beyond anything on earth, beyond life
itself. I have dreamed of you, dwelt upon you until I am mad. Do you
really mean you can love me--as a man? After all those foolish years of
hiding and suffering? Is that what you mean, or is it just--Uncle
Ranny?"
"Yes--that is what I mean, my Prince of the fairy tale," she whispered,
hiding her face against mine--"if you'll take me!"
My senses reeled and swooned. She was tightly gripped in my arms. I
was straining her to my heart. The months, the years of love hunger
charged through my veins and sinews like an inexorable force,
remorseless, irresistible.
The margin of the garden was a few yards away but it might have been an
infinity. The scant trees, countable upon the fingers of one hand,
might have been a forest of congregated giants with their vast secret
life brooding and sheltering us. Infinity and our small intense reality
were merged and met. I felt coextensive with the vast majestic
universe. I babbled broken words against her lips--I don't know what I
babbled. For the vast majestic universe was locked in the circle of my
arms.
"Let us go in, my darling," I murmured at last. "The dew is heavy and
you must get your rest. I shall not attempt to sleep what remains of
this night of nights."
"Nor I," replied Alicia dreamily. "I want to meet the dawn with you
this morning. Isn't it marvelous, dearest, that in spite of everything,
in spite of that poor boy in there," she added with a note of pathos,
"we two can be so wildly happy?"
"Yes, my child, marvelous and awe-inspiring. But happiness is the first
decree--the foremost law."
"I shall never be as wise as you, Uncle Ranny," she laughed softly,
lingering in my arms. "There! I have called you Uncle Ranny again. I
am afraid--oh, so afraid, I shall always call you that!"