Chapter II: Part 2

Now, that was very sweet and reasonable of Gertrude. And it is a thousand pities that she feels distressed. But it would have been ten thousand more if poor Laura had died just after we had been married instead of before. As it is, the problem before me is largely mine. Were we now married, Gertrude must have had to bear an undue share of it.

Shall I ever win back to the old tranquillity and the peace that was mine? That was the first thought that came to me when I parted from Gertrude, a selfish thought as I immediately realized, in view of what is facing me. I can no longer think as I have thought and new feelings are struggling for birth within me, commensurate with the new responsibility. The world, as I walk through it, seems to present an aspect strangely different from what it did a week ago. It is so chill and alien and hollow!

As I was reentering my study I heard a crash in the dining room, which is now the children's room, and when I glanced in upon them the girl Alicia was gathering up smithereens of glass and Ranny, the eldest boy, quietly announced, "It broke" in a manner that so obviously gave him away, all the others could not help laughing; and they laughed the louder when I joined them. Confused and angry, the boy ran out of the room.

It is a world apart, the world of children, into which parents, I suppose, grow gradually. Not being the parent of these children, I fear I shall never penetrate it.

Sooner or later they must be sent away, even as Gertrude maintains. And I must face that event forthwith.

I was interrupted at this point by the irruption into the room of Jimmie, the youngest, inimitably, grotesquely shapeless in his nightgear, pattering toward me and taking refuge between my knees. He was being pursued by the girl Alicia who stood shyly and distressfully smiling in the doorway, as though all explanation were futile.

"Well, old boy, what is it?" I demanded with mock severity, though in truth I was more afraid of him than he evidently was of me.

"Iwantsayprayerstoyoulikeamummy," he uttered in one excited breath, as though it were one single word.

"You want what?"

"He says he wants to say his prayers to you, sir," spoke up the girl clearly. "I am sorry--he broke away. Shall I take him away, sir?"

"Wanto say my prayers to you like to mummy," insisted Laura's child, scrambling upon my knees. And with a pang of sadness that set all my senses aching I saw the picture of the past--poor Laura with her sweet, resigned face, living when she lived only in her children, listening to the prayers of this sprite with the silken sunshine in his hair.

"All right, Jimmie," I murmured faintly, as he clung to me; "go ahead."

Tightly clutching me about the neck and nestling his face against mine, he brought forth with childish throaty sweetness the few words to the creative Spirit that mankind the world over, in one form or another, addresses as Our Father. "And God," he concluded with brilliant triumph in his eyes, "bless Mummy and Uncle Ranny."

Nothing that I can remember has ever moved me as that child moved me. Like St. Catherine of Genoa at her decisive confessional I seemed to receive a profound inner wound by that child's act, tender and bitter and sweet, that I never desire to heal. For the moment Laura and I were nearer to being one than ever we had been in her lifetime. Nevermore shall I forget the sweetness and fragrance of that little child and his warm nestling faith in me. And I am planning to cast him off.

"Come, now," interposed Alicia, as though breaking a spell.

"One more hug," cried Jimmie, with the arrogance of righteousness. And suiting his action to his words, he clambered down with engaging clumsiness from my knees and padded toward Alicia. Once more I was alone with my thoughts.

Can it be that some instinct in the child whose heart is still imbedded in his mother's had made him seek the one person who had been nearest his mother?

I cannot say, I cannot say.

Oh, God--and I must send him and the others, Laura's children, away, away among strangers!

There seems to be no other way out.

I have been turning idly the pages of books in a way bookish people have, seeking for inspiration, for some word of guidance. Brunetto tells me on the word of St. Bernard, that tarnished gold is better than shining copper; and that the wild ass brays once every hour and thus makes an excellent timepiece for his savage neighborhood. But nothing of this casts a glimmer of light upon my dilemma. Rabelais keeps shouting from his yellow page, "_fais ce que vondras_." But what is it that I desire to do?

Ah, I know what I desire to do! There is counsel in the old books, after all.

I will have in the girl Alicia, and see what I can glean. She was brought up without kith or kin of her own. And though an institution is more of a machine than a good school, still those who had the rearing of her were total strangers. There might be some gleam of suggestion in that.

Alicia has been here.

"Come, child, sit down," I invited her, observing that she still displayed a tendency to stand in awe of me. "I wish to ask you some questions." But her tense little face was still haunted by a vague fear. "It's about the children," I added, and she seemed somewhat more at ease on the edge of her chair.

"How long were you at that Home--in Sullivan County?" I began, grinning by way of ingratiating myself.

"Ever since I can remember, sir," she answered.

"Were they kind to you?"

"Oh, yes, sir."

"How kind?--What did they do for you?"

"They gave us food and--and medicine when we were sick. And on Christmas we had a tree. Only nobody ever came to see me. I always looked out of the window for somebody to come. But no one came."

"Yes, yes, I know," I pursued. "But did they show you affection--sympathy?"

Alicia was silent.

"Don't you know what I mean?" I pressed.

"Yes, sir, I think I do."

"Then why don't you answer?"

"I--it's hard to explain," and she laughed a frightened little laugh. "There is no one there to--to do those things you said. There were five hundred of us there. If you're not sick you just go on like all the rest. If you're sick they give you oil or something. Sometimes a child pretends it's sick just so the matron or a nurse might take it in her lap and make a fuss over it. And some are naughty--for the same reason."

I nodded gravely, but my heart was gripped by a poignant aching. I saw Laura's children compelled to feign illness or delinquency in order to receive a touch of individual attention which, I suppose, every child spontaneously craves.

"Were you glad to leave there?" I asked.

"Oh, yes, sir!" she answered eagerly.

"Tragic, my poor sister dying," I said, half to myself. "She was an ideal mother. Now--I hardly know what to do."

Alicia leaped from her chair and came yearning toward me. Her little face tremulous and working, she cried out:

"Oh, Mr. Byrd, you won't send us away--to a Home--will you?"

"No, no!--Not to a Home," I replied defensively. "But schools--there must be good places for children--"

"They'd feel terribly," she stifled a sob. "They love it so here--Even here Laura cries for her mother every night--and little Jimmie--"

"Never mind," I took her up hastily, "nothing is decided yet, my dear child. I'm glad I spoke to you. You see," I ran on, "there's so little room here, and I--I know nothing about children--"

"But there's nothing to do," she protested, sobbing.

"Nothing?" I smiled vaguely in an effort to cheer her and laid my hand upon her thin shoulder.

"Nothing except just love them," she said. "I'll take care of them--all I can." How simple!

"Well, well, we shall see," I aimed to be reassuring.

"Do I have to go--back to the Home?" she asked brokenly, with an arm hiding her face.

"Oh, no, certainly not," I answered hastily. "We'll find a better way than that. Now," I added, "be a good girl, dry your eyes; run along and don't say a word about--our conversation."

"No, sir," she murmured obediently. And still gulping, she left me.

It is obvious that the girl Alicia has been of decisive help to me!

Yet it is equally obvious that I cannot keep the children here.

Dibdin has been here and he has left me in a state of distraction, worse if possible than that I had been in before.

The good fellow endeavored to be vastly and solidly cheering.

"All nonsense," he growled, "about children being hostages to fortune. They are the only contribution a human being really makes to the world. All the digging that burrowing animals such as I do in the four corners of the earth, all the fuss that fellows in laboratories make over test tubes and microscopes and metals and germs, all the stuff that people sat up nights to put into those damned books of yours--all of that is done for them--for the next generation and the generations they will beget."

"Eloquent!" I flippantly mocked him; "but how is it you've elected to be what you call a tramp?"

"Elected?" he grunted disdainfully. "I didn't elect. It elected me. Besides," he continued, lowering his voice, "I would have given it up like a shot--given up anything, changed my life inside out, done anything if I had been able to marry the one woman I wanted. I'm one of those strange beasts for whom there is only one woman in the world--no other:

'If heaven would make me such another world
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,
I'd not have sold her for it,'

he quoted, and added with a hoarse laugh, "you ought to know your Othello."

"Then why on earth didn't you marry her?" I could not help marveling.

"Too late," he murmured, with a whimsical smiling twitch to his head, that is very engaging. "She was already married to somebody else when I first saw her. Too late," he repeated with ruminative sadness. "But don't let us talk about that," he broke off abruptly. "Have the kids begun to go to school yet?"

"What is the use?" I answered him gloomily. "I haven't formed any plans for them yet."

"Plans? What do you mean?" he inquired, puzzled. Like the girl Alicia he seemed to think there was nothing to do that required any thought. And I wondered if the simple souls in life are only the improvident or the very young.

"Do you see this place," I demanded irritably, "as a home for a family with three children, to say nothing of a fourth in attendance upon them?"

"Have to have a larger place--farther out--of course," he answered glibly, puffing at his pipe.

"And am I a person to take care of and bring up three or four children?"

"Why the devil not?" he demanded.

"Why the devil yes?" I retorted fiercely. "What do I know about children? What experience have I had? Do you see me as a wet nurse to a lot of babies?"

"Wet nurse be hanged," he responded gruffly. "Here's your first chance to be of use in the world and--you talk like that--"

"Easy to talk," ruefully from me.

"Well, what the blazes do you mean to do?"

"That is what I am trying to work out," I fell upon him bitterly. "D'you think it's easy? I've got to work out some plan--find homes for them--the right kind of schools--with a home environment. Oh, it's easy, I assure you! Besides," I ran on savagely, "you seem to forget I'm to be married in two weeks."

"I did forget that," growled Dibdin, with a semblance of contrition. "What does the lady say?"

"Well, what should she say? Could you expect a girl on her wedding day to become the harassed mother of three children not her own?"

Dibdin jumped from his chair, ground an oath between his teeth and his forehead was a file of wrinkles.

"Listen, Randolph," he began in another voice. "It's damnably tough, and I know it. But you can't, you simply can't disperse your sister's children to God knows where. You are the only relation they've got. Put yourself in their place. It would be damnation. If you need--more money," he stammered in confusion, "why, dash it--I'm an old enough friend of yours to--to advance you some, eh?"

And he laughed raucously, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.

"You are a good sort--of tramp," I grinned sheepishly, seizing his hand. "But it isn't that. I don't know as yet what Laura left them. But it isn't that. I feel like--like hell about it--but what can I do--what with Gertrude and--and everything else. Oh, it's the easiest thing in the world, I assure you.--But I wish to God I could see my way to keeping them!"

"Easy or not," said Dibdin huskily, "if you send those children away, I'll break every bone in your body."

I laughed almost hysterically. I know Dibdin. When he is most moved and most sympathetic, he is at his most violent.

"Don't go," I clung to him as with sunken head he shouldered toward the door.

"Must," he growled. "I've got to think, too."

"I wish you had married, Dibdin, and had children of your own," I all but whispered with my hand on his shoulder. "And I'm sorry for the woman. You're a good devil, Dibdin. I wish I knew who the woman is."

"I'll tell you," murmured Dibdin, with a queer throatiness of tone. "I'll tell you who she was. It can't matter now. She was--No, by God! I can't--not now!"

And he shuffled out, leaving me gazing after him speechless and open-mouthed.

*CHAPTER V*

The girl Alicia keeps watching me like some bewildered household animal dimly aware of the breaking up of its household. Always I am conscious of her great eyes upon me. To her, I presume, I am a Setebos who can inflict pain and torture, like Death himself; who can disrupt her little world of clinging affections by the merest movement of my hand.

I am in that process of turning things over to which Gertrude has indulgently consigned me and I am if anything farther away from a decision than I was twenty-four hours ago. I finger my books and open at random a volume of Florio's "Montaigne" in an edition that is as fragrant of good ink and paper as the Tudor English is rich, and the first line that falls under my eye is that of Seneca, "_He that lives not somewhat to others, liveth little to himself._" Does this mean that my long absorption in my own small concerns has made me incapable of decision in anything of importance--that I live too little?

I stole into the bedroom last night where the children were sleeping, while Griselda was making up my couch in the study.

With their flushed faces they lay there almost visibly glowing before my eyes with that perfect faith that children seem to have in the grown-up world about them. Heine somewhere speaks of angels guarding the child's couch, and it is not sheer poetry. Their faith and trust, still illusioned, brevets, I suppose, to angelic rank every one about them. Randolph, with a slight frown and moving lips, dreaming seemingly of something active and strenuous, as befits his ripe age of eleven; Laura, serene with her mother's countenance and straying curls, and little Jimmie with his tumbled hair like that of some child by Praxiteles or Phidias--they slept--secure in their trust, despite their recent shattering bereavement.

No one can really know anything about children until he has seen them sleeping. Like fortune, they are always trustfully in the lap of the gods. Never before had they touched me as they seemed to touch the hidden springs in me at that moment. It was so, I pictured, that Laura was wont to steal into their dormitory of nights before going to bed; and that vision, no doubt, was a potent help to her courage to continue uncomplainingly and brave in the face of sorrow, humiliation and her self-effacing loneliness. Would I had been able to picture such things more clearly while she was living.

Griselda surprised me emerging from the room and she smiled, the austere, inscrutable Griselda, with such a smile as Michelangelo might have depicted on the face of one of his Sistine Sybils, those weird sisters who seem to know all things because they have suffered all.

I muttered a casual good night to Griselda and brushed by her nonchalantly, as a boy whistles with apparent carelessness when he feels most awkward or uneasy.

I slept upon my problem in the way old wives advise you, but to-day I am no nearer the solution.

I keep trying coolly to imagine them in appropriately chosen schools and homes, and yet some tugging at my heart strings, some strange alchemy of the brain, wipes out those images before they are formed and replaces them with the vision I saw last night in my invaded bedroom.

Who is to help me make a choice? And before I have put down these words I realize that no one will help me. My dining room is at this moment vocal with their laughter--but something within me is more loudly clamorous yet against the treachery I am planning them. Treachery! That is nonsense, of course. I have a perfect right to decide what I choose. But already that word keeps recurring in my brain whenever I envisage their dispersal.

My decision is taken.

I can hardly say who made it. In reality, I suppose it has made itself. But however it came about, there--heaven help me!--it is.

Gertrude telephoned that she was coming this afternoon. I offered to go to her, but she would drop in, she graciously insisted, now that I was a family man, after lunching with a friend at the Brevoort.

Gertrude's entry is always breezy and cheerful.

"Hello, Ranny," she murmured lightly, sinking on the sofa and holding out both hands. I took them, kissed them and held them in mine. I was well aware that for her these were days of tension.

"That's nice," said Gertrude with a laugh. "But what I want is a cigarette, a match and an ash tray."

"Of course, how stupid of me!" I mumbled and supplied her with her wants.

"Those books, Ranny," she puffed, scanning my laden shelves, "they terrify me afresh every time I see them--when I think you've read them all."

"They needn't alarm you," I deprecated quite sincerely. "The more I read them the less I seem to know--as you will agree." And I sat facing her.

"No room for the brains to turn round in?" she laughed. "Oh, come, dear boy, it's not so bad as that. I really think," she added more soberly, "you have a very wise old bean on your shoulders."

"What sudden and startling discovery leads you to words so rash?" I inquired.

"I've made the discovery all right," she nodded with emphasis. "Anybody who can handle a situation like this the way you're handling it is no piker."

Gertrude often affects the slang of the day as a humorous protest against what she terms my purism. But the truth is, I like the vernacular myself.

"Impart it," I urged her, whereat she smiled.

"Regular street Arab you are," she declared with arch satire, "but what I mean is this. I am always one for quick action--and I don't know much about children. I urged you to send them away at once. But I realize now that so soon after poor Laura's passing away that would have been cruel--and it wouldn't have looked well, besides. Now I see it more your way, Ranny."

"You do!" I could not help exclaiming.

"Yes," she continued firmly. "I see your way is best. I see that we can be quietly married and have our little trip just the same. Then, when we come back, in the natural course of events and rearrangement, we can look up places for them and settle it all right as rain. That's what you had in your clever old head, Ranny, I'm quite sure--and I admire you for it."

"I see," I gasped, wondering what words or acts of mine had conveyed this elaborate strategy to Gertrude. For the space of a minute perhaps I was sunk in thought. The vision of the children asleep in their innocent faith in me suddenly arose vividly and smote me to the heart. The nestling image of Jimmie--the girl Alicia with her great, wistful eyes telling me that there was nothing to do "but just love them"--all this was throbbing in my brain with every heartbeat. And had I in reality schemed out the intricate design with which Gertrude now credited me? By no cudgeling of my poor brains could I recall any such devising. It was impossible. It was new to me. Then something in me that is either better or worse than myself took the reins of the occasion and, like the auditor of another's speech, I heard myself saying with solemn firmness:

"No, Gertrude--you must have mistaken me. I had no such plan. We shall be married, of course, but our marriage can make no difference. I cannot turn these children, Laura's children, out of the house. Not now, at all events, not until they're older. They have no one in the world but me and I mean to keep them."

"Mean to keep them! You mean that?" she gasped. And it pained me to be the cause of a deep flush on Gertrude's face and neck.

"I've never meant anything more certainly in my life," I told her.

"Then we can't marry," said Gertrude in a low tone, still scrutinizing me as though she were wondering whether she had ever met me before.

"Why not?" I cried. "Why should they make so great a difference? In any case, didn't you have an idea that we would each keep our separate flats?"

"Don't talk rot," flared Gertrude in an exasperation which I still deplore, for the steely glitter in her eyes was not pleasant. "I am not going to make myself ridiculous by marrying a houseful of kids for whom my husband is the nurse. Do you really stick to that, Ranny?"

"Yes, Gertrude," I nodded. "I must."

Gertrude gazed at me searchingly for a moment, then to my amazement she laughed in my face, a trifle louder than her wont. Laughter was at that instant far from my thoughts.

"Oh, well," she resumed her earlier lightness of tone, "then we'll simply postpone our marriage a while. You'll get tired of this maternity game, Ranny, depend on it. We've postponed it three years--a few months more can't make much difference, can it?"

Then she approached me and took my hand.

"Little boy's tender conscience must be given its fling, mustn't it?" she began mockingly, in imitation of a child's speech, in which she does not excel. "Never mind, give its little whim its head."

A remarkable woman, is Gertrude.

"Perhaps it's only proper," she concluded more seriously, "that we should postpone it, since you are just now in mourning."

"Nonsense," I answered her. "Laura would certainly never have desired any such thing. Our marriage will not be a thing of pomp and orange blossoms. We could just as well get married now as any other time."

"No, Ranny," she replied decisively. "Now it's my turn to be firm. I think I am right."

I should honestly have preferred, in spite of the conditions that surrounded me, to have married Gertrude then and there without further delay. We are neither of us young things full of ineffable inanities on the subject of romance and I experienced a sober desire for all possible finality in the midst of the jumbled and painful confusion into which Fate had seen fit to cast me. But Gertrude was obdurate.

Just as she was about to go there was a gentle tap on the door. Gertrude, whose hand was already on the knob, opened it. It was the girl Alicia.

With a downward quizzical glance Gertrude fixed the girl so that for a moment she stood fascinated, unable to detach her eyes from Gertrude's. She turned them in my direction finally and they were troubled and imploring.

"Please, Mr. Byrd," she said, "the children want to go for a walk now, instead of lessons. The sun is out. Can I take them?"

"Yes, yes," I said hastily. "By all means."

"Wait a minute," commanded Gertrude, smiling mechanically. "What is your name, child?"

"Alicia, ma'am."

"Alicia what?"

"Alicia Palmer," and the child's voice was tremulous with trepidation.

"And do you give the children lessons?"

"Yes, ma'am," she answered, lowering her eyes as though a crime had found her out.

"And how old are you?" asked Gertrude not unkindly.

"Going on fourteen, ma'am." The girl looked up at once, responsive to the gentler tone. But wishing to relieve her of the interrogatory, I lamely put in a word urging that she take the children out at once before the sun had disappeared. The girl glided away like a shadow.

"Why, she's quite attractive--the little thing," murmured Gertrude. "You'll have quite a menagerie." Then, laughingly turning to me, she cried, "Oh, Ranny, Efficiency ought to be your middle name."

"Perhaps I'd better adopt it?" I murmured.

"Do," said Gertrude. "Well, so long, old boy, I must be running." And in her haste she even forgot to let me kiss her good-by.

So after all the alderman at the City Hall was not to sing his song over us yet. For no reason that I can help I seem to be in disgrace with fortune, Gertrude and aldermen's eyes.

A nameless melancholy, a kind of humorous sadness, has taken possession of me.

It is not my lost tranquillity that I regret now, nor does Gertrude's taunt of inefficiency disturb me. But at bottom I have always realized the type of man that I am not. The type of man who stands four-square in face of all the shocks and emergencies of life, who can meet all changes and events with equal courage, who can take any situation smilingly by the hand as though he were its indisputable and indulgent master, that is the sort of man I should wish to be. But all my own defects clamorously accuse me of embodying the exact opposite of such an ideal. I have shrunk away from life until it fits me like a coarse ill-cut garment rather than a glove. It takes a vast deal of living to be alive, and the dread obsession haunts me that I have become as one mummified in this dim catacomb of books.

I have been to Carmichael's office at his request and the blow that he has dealt me is heavier than any since Laura's death.

Laura, it appears, in her desperate desire to increase her income, had been speculating in the lying promises of oil and mining stocks which offered fabulous returns. One after another her substantial railway and steel bonds went to her brokers for "margins" and some were sold for current livelihood. No wonder she was compelled to resort to an orphanage for a "mother's helper", who is herself a child. The result is that something less than two thousand dollars of Laura's capital remains for her three motherless and fatherless children, the oldest of whom is eleven.

I have no doubt but that her tortured and silent anxiety on this score hastened my poor sister's death. Carmichael himself, her lawyer and adviser, was ignorant of her acts until it was too late. The dread goddess Fortune plainly does nothing by halves. If it were not for my grief over the suffering that poor Laura must have endured so uncomplainingly, I should be moved to uproarious laughter. Job, I feel sure, must have had his moments when the comforters were not there, when he laughed until the tears bedewed his dejected old beard.

And I, incompetent recluse that I am, have undertaken the care and the rearing of three children! I should at least admire the completeness with which Fate plays her hands or produces her situations, were I not at this moment utterly and stonily impervious to all thought and all emotion--unless an inert and deadly sense of disaster be an emotion.

No, that was not enough. What a glutton is that same Fate! Dibdin has been here to say a hasty good-by.

He has heard of a ship that sails from San Francisco in a week and that will touch at his particular group of islands, so that he will not have to trans-ship at Papeete, as had been his earlier plan. I have never before in my life felt so utterly alone!

He laughed a curious laugh, that seemed foolish yet exulting, when I told him I had decided to keep the children. His eyes glittered and he turned away for an instant to hide them.

"Look here," he muttered hoarsely, with the assumption of his most matter-of-fact manner, "let me advance you a thousand dollars or so--in case you should have a use for it. Be an investment for me," he added, with a short laugh. "What use is it to me in the Marquesas or Solomon Islands, eh?"

"No, thanks, Dibdin," I told him. "I can mention one or two good banks on the Island of Manhattan--if you don't know of any."

"Don't be an ass, Randolph," he came back with severity. "I'll write you a cheque."

"No, you won't," I replied with equal obstinacy. "I won't take it. If I need it, I'll cable you."

"Devil you will," he growled irritably. "Cables don't run where I'll be. You're an ass, after all."

"Thanks. Would you like to see the children before you go?"

"H'm, yes," he answered meditatively. "No, by gosh!" he added in sudden confusion. "No, I can't. Got to run. Slews of things still to do."

Inscrutable devil, Dibdin! Who would have supposed him such a bundle of oddly-assorted emotions?

"By the way," he said abruptly, as he was starting, "Carmichael--heard from him--everything all right?"

Inwardly I felt a tug as though some one had pulled violently upon some cord inside me.

"Oh, yes," I lied as urbanely as I was able, "everything quite all right. You'll keep me in addresses, I suppose?"

He scrutinized me for an instant so searchingly that with a tremor I feared he would see through me.

"Oh, yes, of course," he finally answered. "The Hotel de France, Papeete, is a good address until you hear of another. They know me there."

"Good," I tapped him on the back. "Write a fellow a word whenever you can. Pretty lonely here after you're gone."

"Lonely!" he repeated. "And you--oh, by George, and I'd almost forgotten--and you to be married in a few days--lonely!"

"That's--off," I faltered--"for the present."

"Off!" he exclaimed aghast. "Did she break it off?"

"Put it off," I corrected.

"When you told her of keeping the kids?"

I nodded my head slowly, watching the odd play of his features.

He opened his arms quickly as though he were about to hug me like some grizzly old bear--then as quickly he dropped them, shamefaced.

"By God!" he uttered solemnly. "This--this gets me--the way things came about. You--you are a man, Randolph, my lad. Courage--that wins everything in the end. Even when it loses, it wins. Yes, sir."

I have not the remotest idea what he meant by those words.

"Broken up about it?" he demanded abruptly.

What my gesture proclaimed to Dibdin I don't know. For me it expressed all that I had passed through during the last ten days.

"No, you're right. No use," he said, clapping me on the shoulder. "Sit tight, my boy. Courage--the only thing! Now, good-by," he wrung my hand, "and God bless you."

"Same to you, old boy, and best of luck."

And now the only intimate friend I possess has gone and left a hole in the atmosphere as large as Central Park.

*CHAPTER VI*

An odd look of overt approval I have surprised of late in Griselda's eyes causes me a peculiar twinge of regret. It shows that new conditions have overwhelmingly ousted the old. Griselda never troubled to approve of me before. I have no desire for any change in Griselda, even for the better.

I have been successful, however, I am bound to record. I have found an outdoor school for Ranny and Laura in Macdougal Street near Washington Square, and a nearby kindergarten for Jimmie. The girl Alicia is able to take Ranny and Laura to Macdougal Street on the way to her own public school. Jimmie, who does not go until later in the morning, is a problem. Thus far I have been conducting him to his kindergarten myself. But obviously that cannot continue, despite the fact that Jimmie, seeing his elder brother depart with two girls, turns to me with a look of inimitable superiority and observes:

"We men must stick together, mustn't we, Uncle Ranny."

I gravely agree with him on the general policy, though I aim to forestall future trouble by indicating that expediency often governs these things.

The term bills paid in advance to the schools have left a gap in my exchequer. For the first time I have been compelled to decline a genuine bargain. Andrews, the bookseller, called me up with the announcement that he had something I could not resist. Laughing, I asked him to name it.

"It is nothing less than Boswell's 'Johnson'," he told me with particular solemnity, "first edition, with the misprint on page 135--a beautiful copy."

"Dated April 10, 1791?"

"Dated April 10, 1791," he repeated with impressive triumph. My heart sank, though it was beating loudly. For many years I have had an order for that Boswell.

"And the price?" I murmured faintly.

"For you," he said, "four hundred dollars."

Griselda would approve of me blatantly did she know the courage it required to answer Andrews.

"No, friend, I am sorry but I cannot afford it at present."

Andrews was incredulous. "Do I hear you correctly?" he queried.

"Accurately," I told him, "if you hear that I can't take it."

"Then I refuse to accept the evidence of my ears," he retorted with spirit. "I shall send it down to you." I told him it was useless. "Oh, you needn't buy it," he shouted. "But I insist on giving an old customer the pleasure of seeing it at his leisure, in his own library."

A shrewd, good devil is Andrews, even though he is a good salesman. I have been feasting my senses on the Boswell, but it will have to go back.

Dibdin's going so abruptly has left me very heavy at times upon my own hands. He had a way of dropping in unannounced when you least expected him, so that I came to count upon him at unexpected moments. There is no one to take his place. Now on clear evenings I ramble aimlessly northward and often turn in at the club, though so little have I been a frequenter of it I hardly know a soul in the place. Last night I ran into my classmate, Fred Salmon, for the first time in months.

Fred is, I should say, my exact antithesis. He is full of laughter and noise and exuberance. Riches are his goal in life, and if he expended one half the vitality on the acquisition of riches that he devotes to the collection of humorous anecdotes, he would be a wealthy man to-day.

"Hello, Ranny," he shouted when he saw me, "you're just in time to join me in a little refreshment. What you doing now?" Luckily he seldom waits for an answer. With trained rapidity he gave his order to a waiter and continued, "Come across any rare editions lately, any fine copies, such as 'Skeezicks' or 'Toodlums' by Gazook?"

"No," I told him, "my collection is lacking in those masterpieces."

"Tell you what you ought to be, Ranny," he boomed, as the waiter put down the glasses. "You ought to be (here's how!)--a bond salesman!" he decided after a pause and gulped down his liquor;--"or else a dog fancier."

"Why those exalted callings?" I asked with only the mildest curiosity.

"You are such a simp and you look so damn honest," he elucidated, "that anybody would believe anything you say."

"Then will you believe me if I say I don't want to be either of those things--or anything else?"

"Oh, sure!" he responded heartily. "I know that all right. You haven't got anything on me. I'd rather own a few good horses and follow the races round the tracks of the world, if I had my choice. Instead of which I've got to separate the world from enough dollars to keep me going. If ever you get hard up, Ran," he concluded reflectively, "let me know. I'll set you up in the right game. Never make a mistake. I took a course in character reading for five dollars--by correspondence--that's how I know so much."

Dollars! Dollars! Dollars! Must every one then become merely a dollar-amassing machine? I remember Fred in college, ruddy with the freshness of youth, when he was making jokes for the _Lampoon_ and, so abundant was his energy, everybody expected him to do Great Things. And now he can talk of nothing but dollars--and he doesn't seem to be oversupplied with those. I am nothing myself, but at least no one expected anything of me.

Fred proposed that we play a game of poker, bridge, checkers or cribbage. But as none of those manly sports tempted me at the moment we parted and he cordially informed me that he would look me up one day.

Nevertheless, with all his noise and emptiness, Fred was glowing, or seemed to be glowing to me. His ideas are puerile. His talk is cast in one mold, upon one design, that of evoking laughter. But he is alive. He is not apathetic. That is what I deplore in myself, the apathy that has saturated me after the recent events, that are like a dark liquid which has entered my mind at one point and then by natural action unchecked has stained every fiber of my being. It is not thus I shall acquit myself of the task I have assumed. I must become alive!

The children, I am beginning to think, are the only creatures really alive in this world. They don't hanker after musty-smelling first editions, after knowledge of bygone old worthies like Ser Brunetto some seven centuries dead, nor yet after the eternal conversion of life into dollars.

To-day I witnessed a curious excrescence of their bubbling imaginations. My door standing open, I was able to observe a ceremony that transformed my dining room into a church and the four infants with solemn faces into the vivid celebrants of the sacrament of marriage. They are evidently ignorant of the "alderman" method. To the delight of Jimmie and Laura, Ranny, my oldest nephew, with hieratic pomp, was being married to the girl Alicia. Even she knew better than to laugh as the boy was slipping a ring upon her finger, murmuring some gibberish which he had either learned or invented, and endowing her with all his worldly goods. The goods consisted first of all in the number of a hundred kisses, which the boy proceeded to administer with savage realism to the crowing delight of Jimmie and the uncontrollable giggling of Laura. This part of the endowment being finally completed, he brought forth from his pocket a small toy pistol and gravely placed it in her hand. I nearly jumped from my chair when I saw that. A pistol of all things! What could have made the little apes think of that? What a text for a cynic! Perhaps every bride ought to receive a pistol as part of her wedding dower? They then proceeded merrily to eat bits of cake and to laugh and chatter like any other wedding guests. I closed my door softly and for a space I was lost in reflection. For it suddenly came to me that to approach life with anything less than the playful zest of children was a grim, a fatal error.

It was odd that Gertrude should have chosen that hour to evince the only sign since her decision that she had any memory of me. When she came in, preceded by the knock and laconic announcement of Griselda, the first words she spoke were:

"Well, Ranny, and how is domesticity?"

"Highly educative," I told her, as I ministered to her usual wants. "I have just learned the proper way of marrying a woman."

"Indeed?" murmured Gertrude, somewhat sourly, I thought, "and how is that?"

"It's not the alderman that is important," I informed her. "It's done with a hundred kisses and a pistol." In reply to her look of incomprehension, I described to her the episode of the dining room. To my surprise Gertrude could see no humor in that.

"What a child you are, Ranny," she shook her head sadly. "And I thought that with all your faults you were a serious person."

"That must have been your fundamental mistake about me," I answered somewhat sheepishly and yet nettled. "I fear I am not half as serious as the children are."

"No," said Gertrude. Then after a brief pause,

"Have you decided yet that the children ought to be sent away to schools?"

"Why, no, Gertrude! Such a thing has not entered my head since--since we talked of it," I told her.

"Ranny," she solemnly leaned forward, "I think I know what's troubling you. You needn't be so foolishly proud with me. It's a question of money, I take it. Well, I'm ready to help out with their bills. I know these things are expensive. I am willing to set aside part of my income for their bills. We could arrange that part of it somehow. Why, you foolish boy, won't you take me into your confidence?"

"It isn't that--at all," I stammered. "Why won't you understand--it's the children themselves. How can I throw them over?"

"You don't think you're doing anything for them here--you and this foundling-asylum girl, who comes from goodness knows what parents? Better let me manage this--"

Curiously, I felt offended at her speaking thus of the girl Alicia who seems as integrally a part of my charge and household as any of the rest.

"It's very good of you, Gertrude," I muttered, "to offer so much. But to take money from you for my sister's children is--out of the question." This put her more than ever out of temper.

"I never knew any one quite so idiotic," she retorted caustically. "You can do nothing yourself and you won't let anybody who can, help you." And after smoking in silence for a few minutes, Gertrude turned from me in disgust. Very smartly dressed she was, too, with a most becoming winter hat and handsome furs. I should like to please Gertrude. But she seems unable to grasp my point of view, namely, that touching those children I feel my responsibility to be personal.

"If only some one nearer to them than myself turned up," I murmured abjectly, "you'd see me bundling them out so quick it would make their little heads buzz."

"Nearer," she repeated vaguely, "when you know there is no such person."

"Their father, for instance," I explained. "I have no reason to think him dead. Laura had always felt certain he was alive. There are all sorts of explanations possible for his absence. He may come back, you know."

Gertrude laughed at me bitterly.

"The only likely explanation," she retorted, "is that he was tired of his wife and children. He is probably having a good time somewhere with some one who knows how to hold him."

That was a phrase that stung me. Why must she slur my poor sister now in her grave? I bowed my head but I could not reply even though I admit to a feeling of gloomy certainty that Jim Pendleton will never return.

"Good-by," said Gertrude, smiling grimly at me.

"Au revoir," I answered, letting her out. But she paid no further heed to me.

Why I should vent my undeniable irritation upon Alicia I do not know. But I called her into my study as soon as Gertrude had gone and she entered smiling brightly. The child, I believe, looks considerably happier than she did when first she came here and her eyes are less wistful. I was conscious of the sternness of a hanging judge upon my visage. But Alicia ignored my mood. Possibly she has found me out and knows that I am least to be feared when in appearance most despotic.

"Alicia," I began severely, "how are the children getting on? Are they all right?" (What an imbecile query!)

"Oh, yes, sir," she wonderingly answered.

"I mean--are they happy here?" I scowled at her.

"Yes, sir--they think it's lovely."

"Are they--are they afraid of me?" I demanded austerely, looking grimly at my finger nails.

"No-o, sir," she stammered, "they--they are not."

I was terrifying the child, I realized with a pang. But when I looked up suddenly the little vixen seemed to be struggling with laughter--though that can hardly be. She had the manners to turn away. An attaching little baggage is this child, but I'll have no nonsense.

"And you--" I pulled her up sharply, too sharply perhaps, whereat I grinned in mitigation--

"Do you feel competent to go on taking care of them?"

"Oh," she gasped--no suspicion of laughter now--"I just love it--Oh, you're not thinking of--of sending me away, after all, Mr. Byrd?"

There was a catch in the poor girl's voice and I felt stupid and brutal.

"No--no," I growled judicially. "Not at all. I merely wanted to make sure that there is no trouble of any sort. I suggest that you report to me every day or two upon anything that occurs to you--that you think I ought to know."

"Yes, sir," she faltered, "I will, sir."

"Have they clothes and shoes and things--warm enough for this weather?"

"Oh, yes, sir--heaps," she answered, smiling again.

"And you, have you everything you need?"

"Why, yes, sir--I think I have." Her shoes seemed thin and worn. I was in no mood to be superficial or evasive.

"Are those the best shoes you have?"

"Yes, sir," she answered faintly. Her calico frock also seemed extremely thin.

"That is all," I dismissed her curtly. "Ask Griselda to come to me, please."

"Griselda," I began, genial enough to one that is not in awe of me, "I wish you would look over the girl Alicia's wardrobe and get her whatever she needs in the way of shoes and things. Would you mind doing that?"

"Ay, I'll do it, Mr. Randolph. I know some cheap places in Fourteenth Street--"

"Heaven forbid, Griselda," I interrupted her. "I won't have that. There is enough inequality and heart-burning in the world without putting it among children. No, no. Buy the things where you bought the others--for Miss Laura's children."

Griselda laughed hoarsely.

"You'll not begin ruining the lassie with gaudy clothes!" she exclaimed.

"No, Griselda, I'll not. Good clothes have never yet ruined anybody," I gave her as my genuine conviction. "It's the other way about. It's poor clothes eat at the vitals of your self-respect like the fox in the tale of the Spartan lad."

"Have ye gone into the bills for the clothes for the bairns?" she flung at me.

"Not yet," I answered mildly. "But I'll make a walking tour through them one of these days."

"You'll walk backwards when you do, I'm thinking," flung out Griselda, and disappeared, muttering. In Griselda's lexicon extravagance is synonymous with crime and even outtops it. But she is certain to do as I ask.

There was a book auction to-day. And two days having elapsed since my interview with Gertrude I was sufficiently myself, when I lay down the paper announcing it, to think of going. The news of an auction still has the effect upon me that a bugle might exert upon some battered, superannuated cavalry horse. Despite the rise of the plutocratic collector, despite the shoals of dealers who have made of book-buying almost an exact science, I still dream of encountering one day the fortune of Edward Malone, who, late in the eighteenth century, bought Shakespeare's sonnets in the edition of 1609 and a first printing of the "Rape of Lucrece", all for two guineas.

I had already conducted Jimmie to his kindergarten. On the way, as he nestled his hand more firmly in mine, he looked up at me with a humorous smile and informed me that "we men have won'erful times together." It gave me a curious thrill and I felt grateful even for this companionship in my solitary life which Gertrude and so many others find foolish and despicable.

I was letting myself out at the front door when a plain, large-mouthed young woman of perhaps thirty, austerely garbed in black, stood facing me. I remained for a moment bereft of speech and then, of course, I foolishly apologized, I don't know why--perhaps for encumbering the earth.

"You wish to see Griselda?" I mumbled, with my hat in my hand.

"No," she declared, scrutinizing me in the murky hallway. "I want to see Mr. Randolph Byrd."

"I am he," I told her.

"I should like to talk to you," she said in a low voice. Mentally I waved a sad farewell to the book auction and to any bargains it might hold and led the way to my study.

"I am at your service," I told her, grinning, and all but offered her a cigarette.

"It's about the little girl, Alicia Palmer," she began hesitantly as though she had something dreadful to impart.

"Are you her teacher?" I wonderingly asked.

"No, Mr. Byrd, I am from the Home for Dependent Children--I am one of the inspectors."

"Ah, I see. You wish to--to inspect her," I blundered on stupidly, whereat she laughed.

"No--not exactly," she smiled. "To tell the truth, Mr. Byrd, I wish to inspect you--"

"Well, this is all there is of me," I broke in.

"And I want," she added, "to take her back to the Home."

"Take her back!" I cried, stung by something in her tone. "But--but why?"

"We don't allow our girls to live in the homes of bachelors," she murmured, lowering her eyes for an instant.

"Oh!" I gasped feebly. It is my eternal wrongness that seems to be at the bottom of everything. The picture of the children upon my hands without the girl Alicia swept me with a chill dismay.

"It ought to have been reported to us," she said reprovingly. "It really ought."

"What ought to have been reported?" I groped in bewilderment.

"The change--the transfer. We sent Alicia to Mrs. Pendleton," she explained. "When Mrs. Pendleton--er--died, we ought to have been notified--so we could look after her."

"I understand," I murmured weakly. "You see, my sister's death was so sudden that nobody thought of such things. I didn't even know she had taken this girl from your Home."

In my blundering way I then explained to her how the children came here, of their attachment to Alicia and of my own absurd dependence upon her--which I abruptly realized. I told her quite truthfully, I believe, that now the children could not get on without her. And the bitter thought assailed me that nothing in this world that is pleasant or fitting or agreeable can long be left unshattered; that everything human and sweet and tranquil must be by some human hands undone. What a miserably destructive race we are!

"Well," I concluded sadly, "I suppose now you'll take her away--and what I shall do with these three children is beyond me."

To my surprise, as I looked up, I distinctly saw a tear glisten in her eye. She looked away.

"You have a great many books," she observed with nervous irrelevance.

"The result of a misspent life," I sighed.

"Well, I don't know what to do or say," she said, rising awkwardly. "I'd like to see Alicia and--the other children. And I'll have to report--I shall call up the matron of the Home on the telephone."

"Won't you do it now?" I eagerly prompted.

"I'd better see Alicia first, I think--when will she be in?"

"At lunch time," I said; "won't you stay, or come to lunch?"

She seemed to recall that this was that obscene environment, the home of a bachelor.

"No, thank you," she murmured primly. "I'd better come again in the afternoon. Would three-thirty do all right?"

"Admirably," I told her.

"I'll do the very best I can," she reassured me.

"That's very good of you," I answered from a grateful heart.