Part 10

"Oh, then you've never been married at all!" Gina exulted, and she energetically read the cards for me afresh. Her sortilege evidently is not a perfect science. But it occurs to me that by means of it the clever Gina found out more about my personal life than ever I had vouchsafed to her in all our acquaintance.

When I returned home I found Alicia in my study sitting late over the catalogue, a copy of which she is now completing. She jumped from her chair.

"Oh, I am so glad you've come, Uncle Ranny," she clapped her hands joyously. "I have found something we have overlooked."

"What is it, Alicia?" And my gaze was, I admit, fascinated by her flushed cheeks and starlike eyes sparkling with excitement. She seemed the Muse incarnating those books, the very spirit of beauty they enshrine. And yet she is not quite sixteen.

"It's Shelley's 'Alastor'!" she cried. "And it's so thin that it had slipped in between the covers of another book. It's a first edition--1816, isn't it?"

"Yes, Alicia. And a very beautiful poem besides."

"Oh, isn't it!" she cried in exultation. "I have read it all, Uncle Ranny, and do you know what I found out?"--and her voice became more solemn--"it is your life Shelley was writing!"

I laughed uproariously.

"Yes, he did!" flashed Alicia. "Only your life is so much better. He was so absorbed in himself, Alastor, that he died in his loneliness. And you--you are simply surrounded by people who love you. You--!"

And then, I regret to record, self-consciousness overtook Alicia. She became aware of her own vehemence and blushing furiously made as if to run out of the room.

My position of vantage near the door enabled me to stop her.

"Wait, my dear," I endeavored to lift her lowered chin. "Enthusiasm is nothing to be ashamed of. It's one of the finest things in life. And I'll tell you more--we are always applying to ourselves everything we read in books."

"Isn't that," murmured Alicia shamefacedly, "why people love books?" Foolish girl--to wake the sleeping pedant in me!

"Not altogether, Alicia. When we get older we become less personal. I love books because they hold the truth and the wisdom of men's minds. And aside from life and love, Alicia, wisdom and truth are the greatest realities in the world. There is death, of course, but who cares to dwell upon death?"

"I always did think that life and--and--love were greater than books," stammered Alicia earnestly. "And now that you yourself say so, I am sure of it!"

Astonishing child! When has she had the time to speculate upon the magnitude of life and love? Always that young thing keeps revealing herself to me afresh. I looked at her in silence for a moment. Here was a better counselor than any one, Dibdin excepted, with whom I might discuss the impending return of Pendleton.

"Alicia," I began in another tone, "there is something I should like to talk to you about. It's criminally late, I know, and you ought to be in bed, but since you will dissipate on the catalogue, I'll keep you up a little longer." I led her back to a chair and she gazed at me wide-eyed.

"Is it anything about--the--children?" she whispered, somewhat frightened.

"Yes--in a way--it is about the children. But more particularly it is about their father. Have you ever heard of him?"

"Their father!--I thought he was dead!" she murmured, awe-struck.

"There were times when we all thought so. He disappeared some years ago. But he's alive, Alicia. I've just heard from Dibdin, who found him in Japan." Her eyes grew wider.

"How terrible!" she breathed. "Does he know all--that has happened?"

"He does now--of course he didn't until Mr. Dibdin told him." And then this occurred to me. Ought I to shield Pendleton to the extent of telling her positively that he had lost his memory or identity? No. A confidant deserves scrupulous honesty, even if that confidant be as young as Alicia. "He told Dibdin," I went on, "that he lost his memory of the past and found himself one day stranded in Manila. Led rather a wild and worthless life afterwards--people who lose their memories seem to do that."

"Do you think that's true?" she queried.

"I don't know, Alicia, but when he comes back I suppose we'll have to accept that version. Dibdin will have some advice on that point, I feel sure."

Alicia remained silent for a time lost in reflection. Her child's face in her perturbation was the face of a grown woman.

"Do you think he'll want to take back the children, Uncle Ranny?"

"That's the crux of the whole matter, Alicia. I don't know. But if he does, he'll have a right to do so, of course; they are his."

"Oh, oh!" and her hands flew up to her face in a gesture of poignant despair. "Turn them over to such a man! Is that the way the world's arranged?"

I smiled gloomily. I saw that there was no need of comment upon the arrangement of the world. This girl young in her teens understood it as well as any one.

"Then I'd have to go, too," she uttered hoarsely with a dry sob of bitterness in her throat.

"Not necessarily," I interposed.

"Oh, yes, I should," she insisted doggedly, as though driving something painful into her flesh. "But it doesn't matter about me. But, Uncle Ranny, you won't--you can't give them up! They're all so happy here. Little Jimmie and Laura and Randolph! What chance would they have of growing up fine--away from you---with a man like that? You won't let them go--you won't, you won't! Oh, it would be horrible, horrible!" she ended passionately.

"Listen, my dear," I tried to calm her. "I had no wish to harrow your feelings. I told you because you love the children--and we must face all this together. I shall want your help, your support." She flashed a sweet look mingled of pride and gratitude.

"After all you--have been through," she murmured incoherently. "But why don't you do this, Uncle Ranny!" and with the quick transition possible to youth, she was again alive, eager, excited, this little fellow conspirator of mine. "Why don't you let him come here and live right in this house for a while? We'll be awfully crowded," she ran on with flushed energy, "but we'll find room for him. And let's be awfully nice to him--and believe everything he says. Then we could watch him, and I just know we'll find out whether he's all right or not!"

I laughed at her enthusiasm.

"You forget, Alicia," I informed her, "that even if he shouldn't prove all right, he is still the father of those children."

"I don't care," she returned stoutly. "If he's bad and sees that we see he's bad, he wouldn't have the face to take them away from here. Even a bad father wants his children to be all right!"

"And how in the world do you know that, you astounding infant?"

"Oh, I know!" with a triumphant laugh, "At the Home--some fathers brought their children and cried--one of them did--because he was so bad he didn't think he was fit to have a child near him. I had tiptoed into the matron's office, and I heard him!"

"Perhaps he didn't want to support the brat," I scoffed to cover up my wonder.

"Well, and do you think he will?" Alicia snatched at my words. "A man who ran away from them, loafing round for years? Oh, it will be easy, Uncle Ranny!" she chuckled. "He couldn't fool us!"

"And why, my little Portia, couldn't he?"

"Because," said Alicia thoughtfully, "he will always be thinking of himself and we--won't."

"You mean," I pressed, delightedly, "he'll be self-conscious and give himself away, the while we are clothed in our rectitude?"

"Yes!" she cried, with a laugh. "We'll be thinking of Jimmie and Laura and Randolph--and it's always easier to think what to do when you're thinking of somebody else--not of yourself."

"And did you discover that also in the matron's office at the Home?" I leaned toward her in amazement.

"No," she bent her gaze downward, "I learned that right here."

I kissed Alicia upon the cheek. It lies heavy at my door that I have shown her too little affection in the past merely because she is not related to me. It startled me to realize that dear to me as Laura's children are, Alicia is the dearest of them all.

As with a gentle good night she slipped away, a profound sigh of relief escaped me. That child succeeded in almost wholly blotting out my feeling of bitter perplexity after talking with Gertrude. Do Alicias upon growing older turn into Gertrudes, I wonder? No, I think not. Surely not.

I now look to the return of Pendleton almost with equanimity.

*CHAPTER XIII*

I am agitated like a hen with a newly hatched brood.

It has suddenly been revealed to me that the complacency with which I have been regarding my care and rearing of the children is abysmally false and wholly unjustified.

They are not properly clothed for New York and even here in Crestlands they seem on a sudden pitifully shabby. The competition in that sort of thing in a suburb is keen. Everybody's children seem better dressed than my own and yet, do what I will, I cannot afford to spend more. Randolph's high-school dignity is positively impaired by clothes which he is constantly outgrowing. And the rate at which Jimmie wears out trousers and soils white suits is simply unbelievable. Laura alone seems to have the gift of always keeping her things fresh and wearing them as though they were new.

As for Alicia, that girl ought to be clothed in purple, at least figuratively, if only I could afford it. It seems to me I cannot live another day unless I procure for Alicia a large collection of frocks and blouses and shoes and whatever else would set off that faunlike creature, compact of energy and grace. For almost daily that child grows more beautiful in a way that pulls at my heartstrings.

I trust I am no idiotic parent, or foster parent, to rave about her eyes and complexion and the like. I am as dispassionate as any one can well be. But truly there is something starlike in her eyes and at times, when she is sewing or reading or working on my eternal catalogue, I surprise her pensive, absorbed in some long thoughts of her own that not for worlds would I disturb. At such moments I am absolutely fascinated by those soft pools of light that irradiate her face.

Are other girls like that at her age, I wonder? It seems scarcely conceivable. At any rate, I have never seen any others like her. But then, I have seen so few.

The truth remains, however, that I positively must dress her better. Even my dull fancy joyously leaps at the vision of Alicia beautifully dressed and diffusing sweetness and fragrance through the house. Of course, I cannot single her out. There is Laura, too. And it might seem invidious, although as the eldest of them all, Alicia is entitled to especial consideration. I cannot moreover allow Pendleton to observe that I have kept his children shabby. Few are the claims that Pendleton can legitimately array against me, but the shabbiness of the children would too flagrantly proclaim my failure. Nor does Dibdin know as yet my rake's progress since Fred Salmon made a business man of me.

But where am I to get the money for clothes when the mere routine of subsistence absorbs it all? There is still Dibdin's yellowing cheque intact, but I cannot use that--no.

Ah--I have it! I shall sell "Alastor!"

Since I had overlooked it, I shall merely assume I never had it. In its Riviere binding "Alastor" should bring at least two hundred dollars and may bring more. Heaven knows it cost me more. It holds some marginal memoranda by Leigh Hunt, which should not detract from its value. Since Alicia opines that my life is more laudable than Alastor's because there are those who love me, she shall profit by her judgment. "Alastor" shall be sacrificed for her soft and lovely frocks.

Sooner or later I had to come to it. What is a volume more or less compared to the happiness of a household? I am glad I have decided this. So farewell, "Alastor, Spirit of Solitude!"

I seem to be possessed by the mad feverish spirit of carnival.

Having sold my "Alastor" by means of an advertisement in the Sunday _Times_ for two hundred and twenty-five dollars, I experienced a sensation of richer blood in my veins by that accession of wealth. "Alastor" has clothed all my family. I am sorry for the old woman who lived in a shoe. She possessed no library. The moral is obvious. What though I parted with a little bit of myself when I parted with that book, I have engrafted something else in its place. For the children also are myself.

I do not delegate Griselda any more to do the buying for them.

First I took Jimmie and Randolph to a men's outfitting shop where the atmosphere is august. Alicia offered to come along, but though Jimmie is hotly attached to her, he was vocal with objections.

"This is men's business," he cried, "and us men must go alone."

"_We_ men," corrected Laura, laughing and kissing him.

"_Us_ men know how to talk!" he retorted, violently rubbing the kiss from his cheek. Kisses, he implied, were all very well in their place, but not at important crises in masculine lives, not when the _toga virilis_ was hanging grandly from their shoulders.

"Come on, old man," Randolph interposed with a wink in my direction, and Jimmie's wrath was appeased. The "old man" soothed and uplifted him to the proper pitch of virile dignity.

The seventy-five dollars laid out upon those two boys have given me more satisfaction than anything else recently--until I spent the balance upon the girls. Men's shops are prosaic and dull compared with those Greek temples that line Fifth Avenue with feminine apparel. As the paymaster for the boys I was unnoticed. As the "uncle" of the two girls opening the door to heart's desire, I was an object of almost affectionate solicitude to the saleswoman. They were alert to help and advise. What a freemasonry, an empire within an empire, is the domain of women's clothes! In the latest slang and in words from Shakespeare the jaded saleswomen were eager to interpret my wishes.

"I want some frocks and things for these girls," I announced boldly in one of the great shops. "Not too expensive but things nice girls ought to wear."

"I know," nasally asserted an efficient blonde, ceasing her mastication and mysteriously secreting what she was chewing somewhere in her capacious mouth. "Somethin' nice and classy--and quiet, but--_you_ know!"

"Er--precisely--"

"Neat but not gaudy?" put in her more pallid, more "cultured" companion, with a faded smile to complete the specification.

"Ah--exactly so," I murmured and Laura seemed to experience a difficulty in restraining herself from giggling.

Alicia, however, with the simple directness that is hers, proceeded quietly to mention voiles and organdies and soon the discussion became technical and I helpless. I thought it wise to whisper to Alicia the amount of money at her disposal. She gasped her astonishment with a blush and then a beautiful light of gratitude and pleasure leaped into her eyes and I believe the child was going to cry. I turned away quickly, and steadily she proceeded with the business in hand.

To the lady who quoted Polonius, the neat but not gaudy one, I intrusted the selection of those things that I was not to see; she was sincerely gratified at my confidence and, I believe, conscientious.

There was just about enough change left for refreshments at Huyler's for the girls and paterfamilias. Gay were the spirits in which we three traveled homeward. How ridiculous Gertrude would make me, if she knew it!

I felt excitement and happiness bounding in my veins, a new quality of those emotions, the like of which I had never experienced before. And my heart positively missed a beat when the crushing thought struck me: Must I now lose these young creatures and pass again into the emptiness of life?

We Americans are like the French in that we think our climate the best in the world. Or, if not the best, at least so far superior to many others that, like the French, we are steeped in vanity about it.

Of Saturdays I reach home early after midday, yet it has been persistently and infallibly raining every Saturday afternoon the entire blessed spring. If perchance I want to take a walk and breathe some air, I cannot stir out of the house.

Yet a nervous restlessness possesses me: I must have some diversion. It suddenly occurred to me to ask the girls to put on their various new frocks that came last evening. For a moment I was a little ashamed at the thought. But at bottom, I suppose, every male is a Persian Ahasuerus, desirous of displaying and gloating over the beauty of his women folk. I have no doubt but that the king secretly admired Vashti even though he was wroth at her disobedience.

Laura, it appeared, was in the next street at the house of a school friend, but Alicia complied eagerly, displaying anything but the suffragette indignation of Vashti. She was, in fact, eager to parade her frocks with quite feminine excitement.

In her clinging voile, in soft-tinted organdie, in white slippers and silk stockings, Alicia appeared,--a vision surprising, disturbingly radiant with youthful charm. There was something with a blue sash that made her simply exquisite, the very incarnation of grace. Her hair gathered tightly at the nape of her neck and then spreading out into a great brush, a cloud of shimmering fine gold on her shoulders, seemed the only mark of childhood left that prevented me from being like another St. Anthony, miserably afraid of her.

I know not what devil possessed me to ask her to go and put up her hair before she took off that frock. How different must have been the character of Persia's queen. For Alicia ran out of the room and almost in a twinkling she was back with her hair up.

I sat for a moment staring at her speechless, dry-lipped and open-mouthed. For before me, flushed and sparkling, stood the most adorable young creature I had ever seen. Why should there be so much mystery in feminine hair?

"You--you--_child_!" I blurted out finally in a sort of choleric tenderness. "How dare you look so beauti--so grown up in my house!"

A peal of excited laughter was her answer and she made as if she would rush toward me with open arms, as might an affectionate child eager to caress an indulgent parent--and then on a sadden she checked herself, a blush suffusing her cheeks and her very ears.

"Go call Griselda," I commanded, to cover her confusion, "and show her the young woman we've been harboring in the guise of a child."

Alicia ran out of the room to comply and for a moment I remained sitting in my chair as under a spell. Then I rose hastily to dispel such nonsensical emotions and left my room, only to come face to face with Alicia and Griselda in the dining room.

"Oh, ay--yes!" muttered my aging Griselda, her swarthy countenance hot from the kitchen stove, looking more forbiddingly sybilline than ever, "It's all over!" she added mysteriously.

"What do you mean--all over?" I demanded a little stupidly, though dimly I suppose I understood her.

"The young besoms grow up sae fast, it's a meeracle they dinna wed in their cradles!"

"Wed!" I cried in disgust at the word. "You women are always thinking of only one thing--even you, Griselda. Go," I turned to Alicia, "let down your hair again this minute, so you won't put such wild notions into Griselda's frivolous mind."

Alicia laughed deliciously and even Griselda with a sort of dark twisted smile reiterated:

"Oh, ay--the young besoms!" Whereupon my young woman impulsively threw her arms about Griselda and kissed the brown cheek with gusto. Griselda returned by pinching Alicia's cheek fiercely.

My nephew Randolph and a companion, a tall gawky boy coming into the house at that moment, stood in their raincoats at the dining-room door and gaped, blocking Alicia's path.

"I say! Look who's here!" my young hopeful exclaimed with a low whistle, wagging his head from side to side. The other boy merely stared in dumb awe, twisting his wet cap in his fingers. That gawk and Alicia are the same age, yet--the difference!

"Let her go through and unmask," I waved them aside and Alicia, with her head down, ran laughing out of the room.

I returned to my chair and sat down as one dazed. My policy henceforth will be to frown on suchlike tricks--though I myself had instigated this one. What an occupation for a man of books and tranquillity--one who desired to write of Brunetto Latini--to add to the body of scholarship upon Dante!

And suddenly I put my head down on my arms and laughed long and I am sure quite meaninglessly.

For if I were a woman, I might just as easily have sobbed in a way to tear out the heart. Decidedly the suspense of awaiting news from Dibdin regarding Pendleton must be undermining my nerves.

I am gey ill to live with.

I seem to myself like the irascible old gentlemen in the comedies with the prithees and monstrous fine epigrams, forever taking snuff--save that there is no comedy about me.

I take down books and I cannot read them. What pleasure I used to experience in leaving some of the leaves uncut in fine editions so as to cut them on further readings! I have tried to extract that joy by cutting some recently, but there is no joy in it.

Why am I so certain that Pendleton will take away all these that I love and leave me desolate? All his past seems to argue against the probability. Yet constantly I see before me the picture of their going in a body with that man while I stand speechless, attempting to smile benignantly. How we dramatize ourselves, even the least imaginative amongst us! And all the time I feel as though great gouts of blood were dripping, dripping from my heart in nameless anguish.

Alicia, that divine child, is watching me unobtrusively though closely, whenever she can. She surrounds me with comforts and attentions. But like some sick owl, I prefer to brood alone.

The somewhat isolated position of my chalet on the rock and the lack of a wife in the household has saved me from making intimate acquaintances among my Crestlands neighbors. But there is one young man, Judkins, an architect in the stucco house opposite, who strides over to my porch and insists upon talking of his performances at golf.

"Ought to join the Club," he keeps reiterating. "Nothing like eighteen holes to take the kinks outa your brain after the hullabaloo in the city."

"Er--do I seem to have many kinks?" I ask, whereat he laughs in his harsh voice.

"All got 'em!" he cries. "Can't get away from 'em. Books!" he adds explosively, "books are no good! They give you the willies!"

And that man claims to have studied at the Beaux Arts! Edmond de Goncourt, that neurasthenic philosopher, prayed that he might make a hundred thousand francs from his play "Germinie Lacerteux," so that he might buy the house opposite and put this notice on it: "To be let to people who have no children, who do not play any musical instrument, and who will be permitted to keep only goldfish as pets." As for me, I should waive the children, the pets and the musical instruments; I would merely say, "No proselyting golfers need apply."

Alicia, to mitigate my mood, I suppose, devised a picnic in the woods. No one was to come save the children and I and that gawky companion of Randolph's, the boy John Purington, lest Randolph should be bored. Randolph, it appears, is easily bored. The consciousness of my recent hypochondriac behavior led me to accept the suggestion with alacrity.

The luncheon Griselda prepared was packed in paper boxes by Alicia and together, _en masse_, our little procession set forth and made its way to a grove less than two miles distant bordering on the great Croton aqueduct.