"Oh, if that is all you're afraid of," I murmured in the tone of devout
thanksgiving, "if that is all--let us go in, my own."
And now Alicia is waiting to meet the dawn with me.
Up, up, heart of my heart, star of my life, happiness, nearer to me than
my own soul, fire-bringer, life-bringer--up, or I shall deify you in my
mad folly. Up, up, my Alicia--for the dawn is breaking!
*EPILOGUE*
I have been sitting in the shade of a trellis watching the miraculously
mobile suspension of a humming bird over a cluster of honeysuckle
blooms. That humming bird, whorl of triumphant aspiration that it
is--aspiration of insect to become bird--seems in a manner to embody my
life story.
For the humming bird the Golden Age is this perfect summer day, with its
tendril and leaf, its beds of bleeding heart and bridal wreath, sweet
William, larkspur and marigold and the heavy fragrant breath of
honeysuckle. And so it is for me, also. No fable is deadlier to the
human race, to human weal and human hope, than that same fable of the
Golden Age. There never was an age one half so golden as the now, nor
the infinitesimalest part so golden as the ages that await us. My son
there, sleeping in his hammock under the tree, overhung by fine netting,
Randolph Byrd, the younger, will see a more wondrous human life than any
we have yet beheld.
Two years and more have passed since I have opened this record of yours,
Randolph the Aged, and I open it now with a purpose, for a special and
peculiar reason.
Alicia has chanced to see it and she fell upon it with a strange--to me
inexplicable--delight. She desires me to "round it off", as she puts
it, to disguise it a trifle here and there as to names and places, and
to publish it for the edification of mankind! If only we could appear
to the world in the stature loving eyes see us! But laugh as I will at
Alicia, she persists obstinately in her wish.
"But it was only meant as a memoir for a friend of mine," I tell her,
"who is daily growing nearer to me--to Randolph Byrd, aged seventy."
"Oh, no!" cries Alicia, looking with eyes shining with happiness and a
face suddenly thrillingly transfigured at the sleeping baby in the
hammock. "It is meant for another Randolph--Randolph the Young, over
there, the pride and joy of his father--the hope of the world."
"It will hardly amuse him," I grunt.
"It will--won't it, Griselda?" says Alicia to our aged friend who at
this moment emerges from the kitchen to consult with her mistress.
Griselda looks mystified. "Say, yes--it's for Baby," urges Alicia
cunningly.
"Oh, ay--if it's good for the bairn, I'll say it!"
Griselda, still vigorous, goes her way.
"One would think," I scoff, "you had found in the manuscript all the
jests of Sancho Panza, falling like drops of rain."
"Jests!" mocks Alicia. "Who cares about jests, but the mysterious
readers of comic supplements? I find in it the record of a beautiful
love."
"But even love birds," I tease, "are only a species of parrot--though
many think they're birds of paradise. Besides," I urge, "I should have
to call the thing a novel--and this is only a fragment of life seen
through two particular eyes and a very peculiar temperament. There is
no contour to it, any more than there is to life itself. Were I a
novelist, my dearest, I should not improbably make two or three novels
of the stuff. I should at least assume the jolly privilege of playing
destiny to all those people. All things and all persons should be
rhythmically accounted for."
"Fudge!" says Alicia. "Don't be so cubist!" I ignore her modernism.
"Pendleton would not be left roaming about the world with endless
possibility of still blackmailing me and his children. Should he not
have ended his existence on the third rail as he ran, the night of his
last appearance? And his son, Randolph--would he not have met with a
heroic and glorious end in France or at sea, instead of living a highly
contented and commonplace life with the pretty Irish peasant girl he has
brought from Queenstown--a mere ordinary decent automobile salesman?
Would those people go on living in the unremarkable flowing manner of
life? No, my heart," I continue soberly, "a story must be tricked and
padded with tracery and decoration. And where is the bevy of young
adventuresses at play--without which no novel is worthy of the name?"
In justice to Alicia, however, I must recall that Gertrude, of all the
others, has emerged true to her form. She carries, I believe, besides
the military title of Major, a decoration from every Allied Nation in
Europe and at least two bestowed by reigning sovereigns. She drove out
here in her handsome car to see us the other day and was much amazed by
the sight of my infant son.
"What, Ranny!" she exclaimed with her usual freedom of speech, now
enhanced by life in camp as well as court. "You've just brought up one
family and you're starting out to get another? You surely are the
original of the old woman who lived in a shoe. What a reactionary you
are!"
"Reactionary? Yes, Gertrude," I smiled in reply, "I suspect I am--in
some things. I hate poverty. I hate to think of city or country slums,
of oppression, of disorder and uncleanliness--of lawless, rich or
unheeded poor. Possibly from among those I rear, some one will arise to
fathom and solve these things. I am sure greater wisdom is slowly
filtering into our lives. In many respects I am, as you charge,
reactionary. I still have a feeling that every human being must be a
center of creative life--and that he who rears children is multiplying
creators in the world--against the resplendent future!"
Gertrude laughed, a shade bitterly I thought, and waved her hand in a
gesture of despair at my ancient stupidity. Perhaps I should not have
prattled in this strain to Gertrude--more particularly since her recent
husband, Minot Blackden, has followed the desire of his eyes elsewhere
in Gertrude's absence, is now happily divorced and married to some one
who shares his apartment, and is himself shamelessly begetting
offspring!
No, Gertrude aside, there is no contour to my story. Dibdin, indeed,
still appears and disappears, ever the Flying Dutchman, as of old. He
is at home now and often sits and smokes in my study and moralizes--may
I whisper it?--perhaps a shade more prosily than of old.
"The only devil in the world," he puffed out last night in his gruff
manner, as though, pronouncing somebody's doom, "the only devil is the
darkness of chaos. Children are the gage the human race, wisely abetted
by Nature, is throwing down to this devil."
"And supposing the children you rear should turn out to be 'nobodies'?"
I mildly put in, as an obliging straw man.
"What does that matter?" he growled. "Most people are nobodies. It's
the nobodies of the world that bring about its catastrophic changes.
Mark Antony cunningly put a tongue in every wound of Caesar's body in
the Forum. Mark Antonys are rare, I grant you. But it's the First
Citizen and Second Citizen who pulled down Republican Rome about the
ears of Brutus. Shakespeare as well as Mark Antony knew that in the
nobodies resides the real power for doing. The thinkers are the few;
the doers are the many. We need 'em all, all--and that's what kids are
for."
Perhaps I should own at this point that in my secret heart I agree with
Dibdin, just as in reality I am certain that life has a contour and
rhythm of its own. The world may appear harsh, may be truly ill-adapted
for justice, culture, beauty. But whatever its shortcomings, the
business of the human race in it seems to me clear: To extend and carry
on the race of man--the measure of all things--to create a better life
on earth. All the world is a man living in a shoe. But somehow, very
slowly, it is acquiring knowledge, learning what to do. We may indeed
be such stuff as dreams are made on, and our life rounded with a sleep
is, in truth, pitifully little. But that little seems mysteriously,
tremendously important.
And by that token it appears to me that there is no such creature as a
living pessimist. The only certain sign of genuine conviction on the
part of a pessimist is his suicide. To go on living is to hope for
better things--and to hope for them is to bring them about. That is how
life appears to me. But are the views of a shrewd bookseller who plays
golf of Saturdays of any account?
But enough of my prating. Alicia will doubtless have her way. She is
now engaged in the august rites of the younger Randolph's bath. I
expect to be summoned to the ceremony at any time. To such small
dimensions has my family dwindled that all attention is inevitably
centered on the Baby. Laura is thousands of miles away, in California,
with, the young surgeon she met and married in France; and Jimmie,
within two years of college, is summering in a camp on a Canadian
island. Randolph Junior reigns supreme. Well, I am content--and long
live the King! But they are all as near and dear, to me as ever. For
as old Burton his "Anatomy" hath it: "No cord nor cable can so forcibly
draw or hold so fast, as love can do with a twined thread."
I see life stretching and dynamic before me, glittering with possibility
as the atmosphere sometimes glitters in the sunlight with flittering
dancing, revolving points--for eyes made like mine. Though late in
starting, I must plunge into the life of responsibility, helping, how
slightly soever, to join the long generations of the past in preparing
the dazzling future.
The name of the new time spirit is Responsibility.
At this point Alicia appeared to summon me to the Rites of the Bath, and
hung for a moment reading over my shoulder.
"I insist upon adding two words to that," she announced, "and they shall
be the last."
"It is your privilege, beloved," I agreed and eagerly made way for her.
Then Alicia wrote:
"And Love."