Part 16

"But of course there is somebody looking for Alicia," I informed him.

"Yes, I know, Uncle Ranny--a policeman! What does a policeman know about girls like Alicia? I--we talked a lot, she and I," he stammered. "I have a hunch I could sort of tell what she'd _think_ of doing if she left home. Let me have a try at it, Uncle Ranny, please. It'll only be a few nickels in carfare."

"Certainly, my boy," I put my arm about his shoulders. To frustrate young intentions simply because they are young has never appealed to me as wisdom. "Come into town with me by all means. I am certain Alicia will come back"--he could not know the effort this easy answer was costing me--"but there is no reason why you shouldn't try to find her." I had thrown off any mask of secrecy with all excepting Jimmie. Insincerity is a difficult habit to wear.

"Thanks, Uncle Ranny," he answered with suppressed jubilation, and for the first time in our common history I suddenly felt that I had a companion in Randolph--that he was growing up.

When he left me at the station, charged with avuncular instructions that he was to telephone me at various times of the day and that he was to lunch with me if he could, I had a tender impulse to embrace this lad, Laura's first-born, before all the concourse. But I knew he would be shamed to death by such a demonstration. So I tapped him on the shoulder and we parted grinning to keep each other in heart. I experienced a fleeting intuition that Alicia would be restored to us, but I expected nothing at all from Randolph's romantic quest for her.

My heart went out to the boy as I saw him merge and lose himself in the crowd; I felt very tenderly not only toward those of my flesh, but to all young things facing the hurly-burly of this oddly jumbled sphere.

I was becoming an ogler in my old age. Every young girl I saw in the streets, in cars, at crossings, I scrutinized searchingly, with painful leapings of the heart, when any of them in the slightest particular resembled Alicia. And the melancholy truth came to me that you can build a life to any design you please, but only a miracle will keep it intact.

Visconti was in the office when I arrived and he was kindness itself when he saw my face.

"_Caro mio!_" he grasped my hand. "Something serious?"

"Some domestic trouble--a little painful," I stammered, and he saw that I did not wish to speak of it. And the vast loneliness of human beings traversing their orbits on earth struck me as I sat heavily down to my work. What did I know of Visconti--or Visconti of me? For ages I had worked near him and I knew he trusted and had what is called regard for me. Yet the planets in trackless space knew more of each other. I believe he knows that I am a middle-aged bachelor and I know he has a daughter who is the apple of his eye--and he pays the wage by which I live. But what else did we know? He had lost a deeply loved wife and remained a widower. My heart warmed to him in a sudden sympathy. As though reciprocating, he came bustling to my desk a minute later and bending toward me whispered:

"Do not forget that your time is your own--if your _demarches_--private business--do not forget!" I thanked him but he waved his pudgy hand in sign of friendly deprecation of formalities.

... com 'e duro calle Lo scendere e il salir per l'altrui scale,

lamented Dante. Yes, hard is the path, the going up and down other people's stairs, when you depend for your livelihood upon them. But Visconti in his manner endeavored to make his "stairs" those of a friend.

There was no word from Randolph that morning and my heart grew every moment heavier.

I seemed to require no food. I straggled aimlessly during the noon hour through mean streets, from Bleecker Street to Abingdon Square, in a world of listless women and dirty children, a desert, ghostly world, drab and wretched.

Shuttling back and forth, all but inanimate, I passed Minot Blackden's studio, but with sudden horror recoiled from entering. I was driven about like a leaf. I was a shadow in a world of shadows.

Towards four o'clock I rose heavily from my desk, determined to drag myself to police headquarters in search of Sergeant Cullum. I expected nothing from him, but, still, he might utter a word of hope.

At that moment my telephone rang. It was Randolph!

His voice was charged and crackling with excitement and importance.

"Will you meet me at Brentano's, corner Twenty-sixth Street and the Avenue right away?"

"Why," I said piteously--"tell me, in God's name--have you news?--what d'you mean?"

A swirl of hope and apprehension swept me like a wave and left me gasping.

"Yes, Uncle Ranny," was the chuckling reply. "I have news--she's--I know where she is--Come right over!"

And without giving me a chance to say more, the young devil hung up the receiver. I cursed the boy in my heart for being a boy--for his callousness to another's suffering.

Exactly how I reached that corner, I cannot now remember. I did not walk and yet I cannot for the life of me recall what manner of conveyance I used. So much happened in my mind during that transit that external matters left absolutely no impression upon it. The first impression I do recall is the shock of blank chagrin that struck me like a shot in the vitals when I saw Randolph standing jauntily alone at the corner, staring at the passing crowd. Alicia was not with him.

Yet how important the young rascal suddenly seemed in my eyes. He alone in all the world had present knowledge of her. I could have fallen upon him and hugged him then and there--and shamed him to death.

"Where--where is she?" I blurted out. "I thought you--tell me, in heaven's name!" and I seized hold of him fiercely, as though he were a pickpocket caught in the act. He glanced at me with humorous cockiness and laughed. Then suddenly conscious that people were staring at us, and that a policeman was speculatively watching our encounter, he hastily put his arm through mine and drew me away.

"Come on, Uncle Ranny, I'll lead you to where she is."

"You amazing boy!" I muttered. "But are you really sure?"

"Sure I'm sure!" he crowed. "I think it's nothing to be a detective. I believe I'd make a good one," he bragged.

"Brag, you young devil," I thought indulgently, but I made no audible reply and merely made him walk faster.

He was leading me into Twenty-ninth Street beyond Brentano's and to my amazement I found myself at the well-remembered door of Andrews' bookshop.

"Here!" I cried in stupefaction. He nodded, grinning as though he expected an oration of praise for his acumen then and there. He did not get it. I rushed in wildly, like a mad man, into those silent precincts where so often I had passed blissfully silent hours. Who would desire a garish light in this pleasant temple? For a moment I seemed to be in utter darkness.

"Kind of dark," murmured Randolph, "but I spotted her."

On a sudden my dilated eyes encountered two human beings simultaneously in their line of vision. Andrews was standing in dignity in the middle of his shop like a monarch about to receive royalty, and behind him, at a desk in the rear, a girl was bending over some writing, an electric light illumining her fair head.

The girl--yes!--It was Alicia!

I felt the effect of a sharp blow over the heart and, brushing the astonished Andrews aside, I made a crazy leap toward her.

"Why, Mr. Randolph Byrd!" began Andrews. "Haven't seen you--"

"Alicia!" I cried out in what sounded even in my own ears like a sob.

"Oh, Uncle Ranny!" She jumped from her chair with a little scream, and, before I knew it, I was pressing her to my heart with a quivering convulsive joy that choked all utterance.

She gasped in pain, the poor child. But when my arms relaxed, she lay sobbing happily against my heart.

Randolph was so scandalized that he sullenly turned his back upon us. Andrews was watching us with discreet and sober interest.

"My dearest child!" I whispered, still in a sort of trance of ecstasy, and Alicia, with the tears trickling down her face, murmured softly.

"Oh, how glad I am I'm found! And there's Randolph," she added with a happy laugh.

Her last words suddenly woke me out of my trance. I loosed my arms and stood for an instant baffled, uncertain, shamefaced.

"What are you doing here?" I then brusquely demanded with stupid severity to conceal the turbulent emotions within me.

"I--oh, didn't you get my letter?" she faltered. "I tried to explain--I had nowhere to go--" her lips were quivering--"he told me what a burden I was--I seemed to be only making a lot of trouble--and I had nowhere to go," she wept.

"He? Who? Andrews?" I demanded harshly.

"No, no!--Mr. Pendleton," she was sobbing again.

"Ah, of course, Pendleton." I felt myself turning livid with hate for the man whose purpose in life seemed to be to wreck my own.

"And did Andrews know you were my--my ward?"

"Oh, no, Uncle Ranny," and her voice was like a child's tired of crying. "I meant to tell him later--after I told you. He just took me without--anything."

Glancing now toward Andrews, I found him discreetly standing, still in the middle of his shop, but somehow he had managed to draw my scandalized nephew into conversation to afford me the courtesy of a greater privacy. My heart went out to him in affection as never before.

"Andrews!" I called, pulling myself together to a semblance of dignity. Andrews gave a nod to Randolph and without any unseemly haste approached me, pleasantly smiling.

"This is my ward--Miss Alicia Palmer," I managed to say with forced calmness.

Andrews bowed ceremoniously as though he were meeting the owner of the Huth library or Bernard Quaritch. Yet there was a curious twinkle in his shrewd old Scotch eyes.

"Like all young women of the present day," I went on, with astonishing glibness--that is at its best when a man is lying for a woman--"she wanted to prove her independence by scorning my poor protection, Andrews--to earn her own living--you understand, Andrews?"

"Indeed--indeed?" said Andrews. "And she can earn it, too. Now I understand the mystery. She recognized a second edition of 'Paradise Lost' at a glance. Your training, Mr. Byrd--your salary is advanced, Miss Palmer."

Alicia smiled, blushing faintly, and in that smile I suddenly realized how much of the child still clung to this well-grown young woman--how much of the child, no doubt, remains clinging to every woman. She was pained, distraught, suffering, yet she seemed to feel that she had done something very courageous and dignified. And it was to her dignity I hung on with tenacity, for instinctively I recognized that this was a turning point in her life--that the woman was now putting away the child in the cradle of the past.

"I think I shall ask you to release her, Andrews." I laid a hand upon his shoulder. "Some day I shall explain to you more fully. It's been--but never mind that. I should like to take my ward home--with your permission?"

"Certainly, certainly," he affirmed with spontaneous vehemence. "But come in soon, both of you--she's of our stripe, Mr. Byrd--she loves the good things!--come in both. I expect to have some new things from Professor Gurney's library that'll delight you."

"We shall indeed, my dear Andrews. Get your hat, Alicia." And as she turned away for her things, I managed to murmur this much to the kindly Andrews:

"I shall never forget your conduct in this matter, Andrews--you're a great bookseller, but, man dear, you're even a greater gentleman!"

And with as little delay as possible we left the shop.

A spate of questions boiled in my brain and foamed up like turbulent waters backed by a dam. But all at once I came to a sharp decision.

I knew enough. It was that devil Pendleton that had filled her mind with the thought that she was a burden until the poor child was wild with a frenzy of distraction. But he had not been able to trust to his persuasions. Then there was the scene of that dreadful evening when, in her bewilderment, she realized herself as an apple of discord, a shatterer of families. I believed I understood enough.

"Where did you sleep, Alicia?" I asked her nonchalantly.

"I have a little room in Twenty-fourth Street," she answered simply. "I haven't paid for it yet. The landlady wanted money in advance, but I told her I didn't have it, so she let me stay, anyway."

"Let us go there, my dear, and settle it now."

"Yes, Uncle Ranny," she murmured low.

"I've got to hand it to you, 'Licia," broke out Randolph, emerging from his silence. "You're a true sport--for a girl!" Whereat we all burst into happy laughter.

And for the rest of our peregrinations as well as in the train, the lad could not take his eyes from Alicia in sheer amazed admiration. It was as though he were seeing her for the first time.

*CHAPTER XX*

Had I time to speculate philosophically, I could expend much of it in wondering why pure joy cannot be recorded. Perhaps because we experience so little of it.

Of sorrow and tribulation we strange creatures that are men can give a pretty fair account. From Job down we have excelled in it. But before sheer joy we are dumb. I can only repeat to myself the poor colorless words that I am happy, happy, happy as the day is short.

For one brief space of reaction after finding Alicia, the senses reeled, the worn body and mind swooned into a sort of deliquescence of lassitude, the eyes smarted with unshed meaningless moisture, the overdriven heart throbbed with a vast supernal relief, coextensive with the universe. Then, swiftly, with an almost audible sound, that unnerved brain slid into its customary shape of health, more wholesomely joyous than ever before, and all the world was bathed in freshness.

The blue of the sky was fairer, the sunlight purer, and even the poor suburban grass of Crestlands autumnally waning, glistened with the verdure and brightness of a new creation. But who can describe happiness?

Pendleton is gone, Alicia--the children are here.

No eight words in the language of Shakespeare and Milton have ever breathed to me the same meaning as those eight words. Yet what do they signify on paper?

All Europe is in a turmoil, and the Germans have all but taken Paris, yet this, I perceive, is my first mention of a vast catastrophe. What tiny self-absorbed creatures are men! People are dying and suffering by the thousands, yet we cisatlantians scan the headlines and pursue our own ends in the accustomed way. What though half the planet is in peril--I have reconquered my home!

Why, I wonder, had I ever imagined myself to have a horror of home? A home is a little island of personal love in the vast impersonal chaos of existence--and pity him or her who never lands upon that island.

Of nights, occasionally, I now indulge myself in a fire on the hearth. The wood that burns brightest, I note, leaves only a little heap of white ashes. When my eyes rest upon Alicia, or I see the children flitting about, or hear their ringing voices through the house, I experience a wonderful contentment that I am the fire at which they may warm their hands. I, who once entertained fantastic visions of future greatness, of name and fame, now feel content to become a little heap of white ashes.

Sergeant Cullum, excellent man, journeyed out here two days after I had found Alicia, a day after the legal ceremony of adoption, to apprise me that "he believed my ward to be in Baltimore." I was about to burst into uncontrollable laughter, but my conscience smote me and I was ashamed. In my vast relief I had wholly and selfishly forgotten this good man who was still upon the quest. What power of divination or answer to prayer had directed his thoughts to Baltimore, I cannot imagine. But with my contrite apology and thanks went a gift that I trust has soothed his ruffled feelings. We parted in friendship. Oh, excellent thaumaturgic policeman!

Randolph burst into a loud sniffing laugh when I told him and Alicia of Sergeant Cullum's visit and the Baltimore "clew."

"Oh, cops are idiots!" he chuckled arrogantly and looked toward Alicia with a haughty proprietorial air. "They don't know _anything_! Didn't take me long to dope out where to look for 'Licia," he boasted. "I figured it out like this: 'Licia is bugs on your old books. She was looking for a job to earn her own living, wasn't she?" Alicia bent her head, still shamefaced over the episode. "What'd I do? I'm strong on engines. Wouldn't I go to a place where they make or sell engines? Well, with her it was books. I went around to some book places--'n' then suddenly I had a hunch: Andrews--that you and she always jaw about. I looked him up in the 'phone book. An' sure enough, when I went round and peeped in through the door, I saw Alicia upon a ladder handling some of those old books there. I thought I'd go in and call her down, but then I thought 't would surprise her more if you and I came in on her together--and I beat it hot-foot to a 'phone. Cops!--They'd say, Baltimore--South America--anything, so it sounds good!"

And again his glance wholly appropriated Alicia. The youngster seems to think he invented her. But I am full of gratitude to that boy.

The closure of the Stock Exchange and the abrupt slowing up of financial business has filtered like a shadow even into Visconti's and is giving me some unhurried hours in which to ponder the future.

How many middle-aged bachelors, I wonder, have conjured similar visions, constructed the same castles of thin air? To educate Alicia, to serve and to love her until my love surrounds her so that she cannot choose but return it--to create a woman Pygmalion-like out of this very sweet Galatea--what could be more blissful? Alicia is now in her teens. But suppose she were sweet-and-twenty, could she ever think with anything but filial affection of a man nearly twice her age who stands to her in _loco parentis_?

Like a lovesick boy who pulls at the faint intimations of his mustache and searches the newspaper for cases of marriage at seventeen, I eagerly scan the prints and cudgel my memory for such unions as ours would be. But the papers are filled with war and rumors of war. It comes to me suddenly that a certain aged Senator has not so long ago married his ward, under even a greater disparity of ages--and I am absurdly happy. I see myself with Alicia matured and radiant, ever young--living a life of bright serenity, calling endearing names.

"Did I hear it half in a doze Long since, I know not where? Did I dream it an hour ago, When asleep in this arm-chair?"

But this is folly. Tennyson is out of fashion and there are greater fools than old fools. I ask too much of the high gods. Enough has already been given to a crusty bookworm like me. Suppose I had married Gertrude! The children's voices would never have made music for my ears. Nevertheless, Alicia shall have the best education I can give her.

Visconti must be aging, I fear, for he has taken to repeating himself. He has told me often before that his daughter Gina is the apple of his eye, but during these somewhat listless days in the office in which "extras" figure largely and strategy is the one indoor game, he has been going into more detail.

I dined at his house last night and to-day he asked me again to dine on Saturday. I dislike refusing him and I like lying less. But I declined on the plea of an engagement.

"I always forget," he returned with a laugh, "that a young man is not _un' burbero_ of a widower like me--that a young man, in short, has engagements."

I made some sort of deprecating noise. He talks as though I were twenty-two, and I like him for it.

"But you see, _amico mio_," he went on explaining, "it is like this: Gina, the _carissima bambina mia_, is the apple of my eye. And she must be--what do you call it--amused--amused, made gay, bright--you see?"

I signified my clairvoyance.

"She is nineteen--a _fanciulla_ of nineteen, she must have much--eh--amusement, not so?"

He is fond of the Socratic method and I humored him.

"But doesn't she go to parties--has she no girl friends?"

"Ah, _sicurissimo, sicurissimo_. But a girl--nineteen years--it is young men in the house that amuse her, eh?" And he slapped me on the back and roared with laughter of a boisterous heartiness that somewhat, as novelists say, "took me aback."

I have not exactly been seeing myself in the guise of a youth cut out to amuse Gina Visconti.

"How of Sunday?" he asked, with a sudden quizzical soberness. "Sunday you can come?"

I regretted his insistence, but somewhat laboredly I explained that I am weakly addicted to books; and that Sunday was the single day when I could sit among my books and--

"Ah, but of course!" gravely. He understood full well that I was a student, a scholar, who outside office hours pursued a higher life, and so forth.

I felt mawkish and mean but I clung to my Sunday.

"Monday, then--shall we call it Monday?" he pressed.

I could not be so churlish as to decline further. But I hardly knew why a sense of uneasiness stole into my bosom after his subsequent words.

"The _fanciulla_," he went on, thoughtfully vehement. "She is all I possess--all in the world. At my death she shall possess everything I have. She has it now! For whom then do I work if not for Gina? As for me, I could go back to Italy--maybe. I have enough. But Gina--she is American girl--ah!" and he kissed his finger tips with unction. "She is fine American girl!"

Having said that, he veered into talk about Belgium, Von Kluck and general strategy.

But why should he so persistently sing the praises and prospects of his daughter to me, a clerk in his office?

I had a sudden impulse to go to him and unbosom myself on the score of my own _bambimi_ and my own aspirations for them--but somehow I could not. That is an island girdled, not only by ordinary reticence, which is with me a vice, but by a host of emotions like those flames that circled the sleeping goddess. I am not a Latin; I cannot bubble forth my inmost hopes or flaunt my heart upon my sleeve.

Sunday evening--after a wonderful walk with Alicia through the already waning woods of Westchester. There has been a certain air of gravity overhanging her, of contrition perhaps, that stabbed with pain. I realized then to what degree her blithe spirit and the starry laughter of her eyes had been the wine of my recent life. I could not tolerate her seeming depression. Besides, there was the matter of her education to be discussed. Jimmie clamored to go with us, but this time even his privileged position did not avail him. I desired to be alone with Alicia.

Was it my mood, I wonder, or do the woods in reality begin to whisper a farewell in the decline of the year? Every tree, even to the youngest sapling, seemed to nod to us as we walked and to rustle a murmur like the leavetaking of a pilgrim bent on a lengthy journey. I have ever been impatient of reading descriptions of nature and have chimed with the scoffers at the pathetic fallacy. Nevertheless, I can bemuse myself for hours listening to the wind among the tree tops or gazing at the haze upon the hills; and in a slow measured rhythm, as if having endless time before them, they invariably spell a message,--a message infinitely sad, but for the creative laughing sun that rides triumphant, high over all.

"Come, Alicia!" I broke out brusquely, joining the sun in his laughter, "we have some bright things to talk over. Don't let us allow the woods to lull us. They are going to sleep; we are not. Here you are ready for college. Isn't that soul-stirring?"

She emerged from her reverie as a person shaken from a drowse and smiled with, a distant look in her eyes.