Part 5

"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.

Farewell, auctions! Farewell, peace! Once again I am in troubled waters, predestined like a bit of flotsam to bob about only in storm. Obscurely, deep within me, I long for power to do everything, to arrange everything, to make my world swing about me rhythmically instead of my lurching about it drunkenly. Even on this secret page, meant for no eyes but mine, I would pour out my grief and tragedy, the eternal underlying sadness of life--and then rise up a man of will and energy to manage my affairs. Instead, I can only weakly scribble ineptitudes to while away the time until a poor underpaid girl inspectress returns to pronounce sentence upon me. Am I, or am I not, to be allowed to live within hailing of tranquillity? Gertrude, I am wretchedly afraid, was right after all. What business has a manikin like myself to look with bold eyes upon duty, or to grapple with responsibility which an ordinary man would assume as if adding another key to his key-ring--to pocket and forget?

Falstaff could not have been more genial or hilarious than I feel at this moment, nor yet the ancient Pistol. When I left the dining room a few minutes ago, my dignity would have suffered permanent eclipse had the children espied me after I closed my door. I capered about the room like some rheumatic goat lilting a wild melody _sotto voce_.

The inspectress has pointed her thumbs upward. I hardly know whether Alicia, the children or Griselda decided the issue favorably.

"Do you wish to see Alicia alone?" I asked the inspectress when she returned. She will never know, that nice plain girl, with what tension I had awaited her. No lover she may have had has ever kept a tryst for her more tremulously--or she would not now be Miss Smith.

"No," was her reply, "she is only a child. I want to see her with the children." Alicia was already prepared and, I am bound to admit, partially primed.

"Here is Miss Smith, come to see you, Alicia," I announced with assumed lightness, as I ushered the lady in. Oh, it was very distinctly "ushered."

"How do you do, Alicia," Miss Smith held out her hand, melting at the sight of the children in the midst of play. "How are you--well and happy?"

"Oh, so happy!" answered Alicia, coming forward with flushed cheeks. "I am so glad you came."

"But why didn't you write us, child?" was the gentle remonstrance.

"I am awfully sorry, Miss Smith," from contrite Alicia. "But the time passed so quickly--I was just going to--and I had to get new clothes--and there are so many things to do."

Miss Smith looked down at Alicia's clothes dubiously. Perhaps she thought their quality too ruinously good for one of the inmates of her Home. She then glanced at the silent, wondering children.

"Hello, Miss Smith!" they cried in broken chorus, catching her eye. It was she who had originally brought Alicia to them. "You won't take Alicia away, will you?" Laura spoke up bravely.

"Why, dear?--Wouldn't you like to have her go away?" she returned, smiling uncertainly.

"No! We wouldn't!" replied all the children actually in one voice, with little Jimmie loudest, whereat we both laughed.

"Who," demanded Randolph sternly, "will sew our buttons on?"

"And who'll give me my baf?" cried Jimmie.

"Or help us with our lessons?" put in Laura.

"Well, we'll see!" Miss Smith came back brightly. I believe that young woman is genuinely fond of children. "What are you playing just now?"

They all began to explain at once.

"Shall I leave you with them?" I murmured.

"Yes--I'll stay a minute or two," she nodded--and I tiptoed out to await doom.

When I returned a few minutes later, I heard to my surprise Griselda's voice, just before I opened the door, rising to the full height of her indignation:

"If this is no fitting, then nothing is fitting--" whereupon I opened the door.

The children had disappeared. Griselda with flashing eyes was literally towering over poor Miss Smith. Evidently Griselda had been bearing testimony. Most excellent witness, Griselda! What chance had any Miss Smith against a rock of sheer personality like Griselda?

"It's all right," Miss Smith announced, smiling faintly as I entered. "I called up the matron this noon and she left it in my hands. This is an exception--the first of its kind in our institution--but I mean to let Alicia stay. She--she seems so happy here," she added, faltering.

"That's very gracious of you," I bowed. "I thank you. Shall we--tell them your decision?"

Griselda opened the door of the bedroom where they all had been cooped up like so many frightened little hares, and Randolph, unable to contain himself, demanded eagerly:

"Can she stay?"

"Yes," nodded Miss Smith, and wild shouts must have shattered the nerves of the other tenants. Jimmie, as a mark of highest favor, ran to Miss Smith and held forth his arms to be taken up into hers. He could not bestow a greater confidence. Alicia dabbed some happy tears from her cheeks. I begged Miss Smith to stay to tea with them, and unobtrusively escaped. Now my mind is agog with triumphant imaginings. If ever I become President, Griselda of a certainty shall be my Secretary of State.

*CHAPTER VII*

Now that the Christmas holidays have passed and I have been casting up accounts, the uneasy knowledge has come to me that I am no longer living on my income. The freshet of bills is surging about me yet. Perhaps I have been improvident, but I have not bought a book in ages. Andrews, the bookseller, informed me the other day, with an expression more of sorrow than of anger, that though he couldn't comprehend my unaccountable refusal of the Boswell, he had not the heart to offer it to any one else. He was holding it still, he declared, in order to spare a friend regrets.

"Sell it, Andrews, for God's sake--sell it," I told him.

"But you've had your order in for three years," he protested, "and never canceled it. Now suddenly you refuse it. That must mean something!"

"It means--I'll tell you what it means, Andrews: I have acquired a young family." I then briefly explained to him my situation.

"You don't tell me, Mr. Byrd--you don't tell me!" he repeated over and over. "Then this is what I do," he announced with a sudden ferocity of decision. "I hold that work, if I have to hold it for ten years, until such a time as you feel you can take it. Only I am so short of room here," he added blandly, "will you not store it for me on your shelves?"

"Why, you--you Samaritan!" I laughed in my embarrassment, clapping him on the shoulder. "What are you trying to do--make a bankrupt of me?"

"If you will include it under your insurance--" he answered--"but never mind: I'll insure it myself." And then he talked of something else. He was as good as his word. Before I reached home that Boswell was here and is now on my shelves. I have been gloating over that epic of personality and it occurs to me that Johnson and Griselda are kindred of the spirit.

Two months! It is incredible. Years must have passed since the children have come here. My past life seems remote as ancient Egypt. This morning came a letter from Biagi of the Laurentian, asking why he did not hear from me, when was I coming to Florence, and adding that at Oxford also some Brunetto Latini material has been recently unearthed and that I might stop on the way and examine it. I laughed. Gone are those days, never, I fear, to return. If only I could smell a good old parchment once again! I still remember the thrill I felt when Biagi first showed me the vellum script of Sophocles at the Laurentian. I could actually see the scribe in the Byzantium of the eleventh century reverently copying the lofty beautiful words, in a spirit of high worship, his pale cheeks flushed with his pious task. I _was_ that scribe! Why, I ask, was that strange and eager feeling implanted in my particular bosom? Could it be that in some past age, I was myself the scholarly Greek?--But that is nonsense.

If only I could pay my bills. Yet I dare not touch the trifle Laura left to her children. That must remain for emergency.

And on May first we must change our quarters. The renting agent, a decent enough little person, was very apologetic.

"I have kids myself," he informed me deprecatingly, "and I know what it is. But you understand. A bachelor is one thing and four children is quite another. Makes a difference." I told him that I was more or less aware of the difference it made.

"And these people here, in this here, now, building," he explained, "they're so nasty nice--they can't stand the sight of a kid, let alone the sound." I made no comment, for too recently had I been just so nasty-nice.

We shall have to seek some pastures new.

Fred Salmon, as good as his word, has actually looked me up.

I don't know why the mere entry of that breezy Mohock into the room brought my unwilling fatherhood into a relief ten times sharper than I had felt it before. I suddenly felt myself a gawk and a failure before a man of the world--even though I did not wholly respect the man of the world. Once more I was acutely aware of lost freedom. Abstract Freedom, out of which I had stepped as a man steps from life into death.

Luckily Fred is not one to beat about the bush.

"You remember," he began, skillfully rotating the mutilated end of a cigar between his teeth, "my telling you at the club the kind of business you'd be suited for?"

"A bond salesman or a dog fancier," I answered promptly.

"Have you gone into anything?"

I replied in the negative.

"Well, I'm thinking of starting something," he announced solemnly.

"A dog kennel?" I queried.

"No--a bond business, Ran."

"I wish you luck, my boy," I told him.

"None of that--" he grinned, "I want you to go in with me."

I gazed at him in speechless astonishment.

"Have I said a bellyful?" he demanded, removing his vile cigar.

"A--yes," I gasped, "and more."

"Ha! That's the way I am," he laughed. "Ideas come to me and I act upon them."

"But--what have I done--" I began, stammering, "to deserve this--"

"You're the man for my money," he erupted boisterously, "I sometimes make a mistake in picking a horse, but never in picking a man, Ranny, my boy, never!"

When Henry the Fowler was tranquilly snaring finches and news was suddenly brought him that he had been elected Emperor, I doubt whether he had felt more completely graveled than did I at that moment. But to be serious with Fred Salmon was just then beyond me.

"You have come to the right man, this time, Fred," I gave him back a parody of his own tone, "not a doubt of it!"

"You bet I have, old Hoss," he cried, "don't I know it?"

"That is," I went on, "if fitness, training, experience, capacity, predilection and abundance of capital are factors, you have selected the one man--"

"Yah!" broke in Fred, "I know all about that. Don't try the sarcastic with me, old boy. I know all you can say and a darn sight more. But I told you it's the cut of your mug I want. What good is the best trained two-year old if he's a hammer-head? It's with a man as with a horse. You've got the right look to you--and that's what counts!"

The mockery of my thanks and all further attempts at clumsy satire were utterly ignored by Fred.

"You're comfortably fixed, I know," he said, ruminatively scanning my books, which curiously suggest wealth to every one. "But dash it all, man, you must want more money for something or other--more books, maybe. Everybody wants more something. I know," he ran on, "it isn't every fellah makes up his mind on the dot the way I do. You've got to turn it over in your so-called bean, I suppose. All right. But remember--I don't take no for answer."

"With that trifling limitation, I assume, I have a wide liberty of choice?" I ventured.

"Oh, yes," he grinned. "Outside the fact that you're coming in, you can go as far as you like. Salmon and Byrd!" he exclaimed suddenly. "How's that for a firm name? By gosh!--There's genius in it! May have been that which was driving me to you. I never go wrong. Salmon and Byrd--Gad! It's so good it scares me!"

"Salmon and Byrd," I repeated after him mechanically. "The _menu_ strikes me as incomplete for a _viveur_ like you. Add a little shrimp salad--or at least an artichoke."

He grinned but he would none of my flippancy.

"No, no," he wagged his head. "None of that. Don't spoil a fine thing. It's--what do they call it--sacrilege. A good firm name--it's half the battle. By George! This has been a day's work for me. I didn't know it was going to be so rich. We ought to have a dinner on it at the Knickerbocker--or Claridge's. What d'you say?"

In a flash I saw the vista of Fred's life spread out before me--noise and laughter, ventripotent bouts with costly dishes in expensive places, tinkling glasses--the world of money-making which consists as much in riotous expenditure as in half-jocund half-fanatical getting. It was to this world that Fred was inviting me.

"There will be supper at six o'clock, if you care to stay," I suggested mildly.

"No-no, thanks," said Fred reflectively. "I'd like to. But somehow not to-night. I couldn't. Better come along with me. And we'll work out details."

I resisted his urging, however, and he left me with this Parthian arrow:

"Think it over as much as you like, Randolph, my boy. But it's a go. Nothing you can say against it will hold a candle to the reasons in favor. The firm name alone is worth a hundred thousand dollars. Consider it settled. Never felt so sure of anything in all my life. So long, my boy. You'll hear from me."

He did not even turn his head when he heard my burst of almost hysterical laughter as he was closing the door. Always heretofore I had counted myself, how humble and insignificant soever, as of the priesthood in the temple of fine things. It was abasing to think that Fred had claimed me for the money-changers.

Never again do I wish to experience the martyred minutes of anguish that I have passed through during the last twenty-four hours.

For some reason that none can explain Jimmie suddenly came down with a fever. That bright little whorl of life all at once looked white, refused his food with the pallid pitiful smile of an octogenarian and, in a twinkling it seemed, his cheeks were burning, his eyes glittered dryly and his lips were parched. Called to his bedside, I leaned over him and the air about me seemed to darken. Laura's child was, I believed, dangerously ill. The heart within me turned leaden and even Griselda displayed alarm. Then and there I vowed inwardly that no strangers should have the care of this child if he recovered, so long as I could care for him myself.

The nearest doctor, who occupies a ground-floor apartment below, a brute of a man of thirty-five or so, elected, when he came up, to look wise and inscrutable. Calm and grave, he prescribed oil and with a murmured, "We shall see in the morning" he left me in an agony of doubt and anxiety.

The only person who exhibited any degree of calm was Alicia. And though she is still a child herself I confess to a feeling of resentment against what seemed to me callousness in the face of our perturbation. I saw visions of any number of diseases, of being quarantined, of Jimmie's possible death, of my bearing forevermore a feeling of nameless guilt before Laura's memory. I told them I should sit up the night.

"Oh, no, Mr. Byrd," insisted the girl with sudden vehemence. "Don't do that. I'll make up a place in the dining room and leave the door of their room open. I'll hear him if he wakes."

"I'm afraid, Alicia, you don't take this seriously enough," I told her sternly. She looked at me wistfully for a moment and then faintly smiled.

"Yes, sir, I do," she answered. "But it's no use our all wearing ourselves out at once if it's real sickness. But I don't think it's anything much."

"How can you know?" I demanded suspiciously.

"I just think so," she asserted. "At the Home children were always coming down like this. The next day they were as well as ever again."

"But this is not the Home," I retorted severely. The girl flushed. I saw I had hurt her.

"But he's a child," she insisted doggedly, in a low voice. I shook my head.

"I shall sit up in the study," I told her, "with the door open. I shall hear him if he calls. You'd better go to bed."

Her great haunting eyes looked at me for an instant and she left me. In the study I lighted a fire, drew up the large chair, lighted a cigarette and in dressing gown and slippers composed myself for the night, determined to spend it waking.

In my mind were revolving many things. Fred Salmon's absurd proposal, the strange trick of circumstances that had suddenly made me responsible for a houseful of children, the whereabouts of Dibdin, the amazing multiplicity of bills, the little lad's burning fever. Drowsiness began to assault my eyelids before the glowing fire. To combat it, I took down that sonata in words, Conrad's "The Nigger of the Narcissus", and reread the description of the Cape storm, which is not a description so much as the expression of the storm itself. As always in reading that book, I was overawed to the point of pain by what language can do. And pondering upon that, I allowed myself to doze off for a few seconds. Suddenly I awoke with a tremor and looked at my watch. To my amazement it was half-past six in the morning.

Abjectly guilty, I stole out and tiptoed into the dining room. The light was burning. I saw three chairs with a crumpled pillow upon them and Alicia, smiling drowsily, was gliding out of the children's room.

"How is he now?" I asked in a muffled tone, thinking basely to give her the idea that I had watched the night through.

"Sleeping quietly," was the reply. "His fever is mostly gone."

"That's splendid," I murmured sheepishly. "You are up--er--early, aren't you?"

"I just lay here on these chairs," she answered quietly. "I looked in at Jimmie about every half hour. He had a very good night." With a sharp pang of annoyance mingled with relief, I felt myself stark and unmasked. We gazed at each other in silence for a moment, and then I broke into muffled laughter, in which she softly joined. And though I felt myself a fool, I vow I could have hugged that child to my heart of hearts for her sense of humor no less than for her silent unfailing constancy.