Part 4

"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.