Part 9

I toil as I have never toiled before. I come early and go late and frequently have my lunch sent in from the adjoining delicatessen, powdered no doubt by the contiguous junk house, and the "boss", as the others call him, smiles with a rare unction that spells approval.

With difficulty we are actually living on my income. If I had the half of my capital back that I had no business to put into Salmon and Byrd--but ifs inaugurate depressing trains of thoughts. My library alone stands between me and disaster, so like a prudent man of business I have begun a catalogue of it and I am training Alicia to help me. I must not again be caught by so desperate a prospect as recently faced me.

How my little household had been affected by my late slough of despond I realize only now that I have passed it. Laughter and high spirits seem to have been uncorked again. We play and we rollic and chatter, more than in the early days of our _vie de famille_--how long ago is it?--something less than a year, no longer!

It is now the end of September and the schools have reopened. We are all sanely and industriously busy, like a normal American family, and as though its so-called head were an adequately competent being, and not the bungling masquerading amateur that he is. "Who never ate in tears his bread"--well, we have made intimate acquaintance of poverty and we fear it less than of yore--though we hate it more. It may be an impostor, but who maintains that all impostors are harmless? I certainly would deny that premise, so--we are cataloguing the library.

"Here is 'The Anatomy of Melancholy' by Burton," announces Alicia, taking down a volume.

"Small quarto, printed at Oxford, 1621," I finish for her.

"Yes," she breathes, marveling wide-eyed. "How can you remember such things, Uncle Ranny?" for so I have asked her to call me.

"How can I remember?" I ask in surprise. "How can I remember that you are Alicia Palmer, close to the towering age of fifteen, or that Jimmie Pendleton is five?"

"But we--are people," avers Alicia, "and we are--yours." I own to a slight thrill at this sweet investiture, implicit in her words, but I seem obtuse to it.

"But so is a great book a person," I sententiously inform her, "and 'Oxford, 1621', means a first edition, Alicia--not merely a person but a personage. That book is as proud an aristocrat as though it were plastered with coronets and simply throbbing with Norman blood. There is a whole heraldry about it--it is a prince among books. And all, Alicia, because it aroused men's interest and has given them delight from about the time the Pilgrims first landed at Plymouth. It's a book that could take Doctor Johnson out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. Also, if the worst came to the worst, it could feed us for a time, and that is very important, isn't it, Alicia?"

"Yes," she breathes in awe which for some reason delights me. "What a wonderful thing it must be to write a great book." And she fingers the next volume with even greater reverence.

"The 'Life of Edward Malone', by Sir James Prior," reads Alicia. "Is that a prince among books, too?"

"No," I answer. "That is just a friend. Malone, you see, was crossed in love in the days of Doctor Johnson, and by way of consolation became a book-collector and a Shakesperian commentator. They say the Irish are fickle. But here is one who could never love again. So whenever I read his life, I think I see through a sort of mist the lovely lady whom he lost and all about him is curiously dear to me. He wouldn't feed us for very long, Alicia, but he has given me many hours of pleasure."

"Are book-collectors people--crossed in love?" she inquires with gentle subtlety, and I am surprised that one of her youthfulness should be arrested by that particular point.

"If you mean me," I answer quietly, "then I can tell you that I wasn't. No one ever loved me enough to cross me. I am a collector by a sort of--spontaneous degeneration."

Alicia throws her fine young head back and peals with delicious laughter. Afterwards I catch her smiling to herself as she copies down the titles.

I am amazed to note how lovely that child has become since she has been here. Her thin, frightened expression has given way to one of happy confidence. All too soon she will be enriching some young man's life with happiness. Her interest in my musty old books has given her a value of companionship in my eyes that I trust I shall not exaggerate at the expense of my niece and nephews--though Alicia is hardly one to take advantage of such a situation. Nevertheless, I must be on my guard.

After all, though she is the chartered, custodian of the others, and _quis custodiet ipsos_--who shall watch over Alicia? Obviously, it is my task to improve her mind in order to make her the better guardian for them.

And Alicia's mind is improving apace.

"Uncle Ranny," she inquired the other day, "may I ask what that first edition of Boswell's 'Johnson', cost you?"

"It costs me nothing but a sleepless hour now and then," I told her. "It is not paid for. But I owe Andrews four hundred dollars for it. God knows when I shall pay it. But why do you ask, Alicia?"

"I have just read in _Book Prices Current_ that a copy was sold by Sotheby's in London for one hundred pounds."

"Already!" I murmured and I was lost in admiration not of the accretion in value--I am used to that--but of the girl's facility in acquiring the interest and the jargon of my hobby.

"Oh, Mr. Andrews must have a wonderful place!" she exclaimed. "That must be a splendid business. Where is he? How I'd love to see it!"

"You shall some day, Alicia," I told her. "He is in Twenty-ninth Street, and an excellent fellow he is."

I then explained to her how Andrews had insisted upon planting the book on my shelves.

Alicia gazed at me in silence for a moment, then suddenly tears glittered in her eyes.

"It's because of us," she said, with a quivering lip, "because we came that you couldn't buy it!"

"Don't talk rubbish, Alicia," I flared at her. "A collector gets almost as much pleasure in thinking of books he can't get as in those he buys. Don't you think you alone are worth more to me than an old Boswell?"

"No," she murmured gloomily, "but I'm going to try to be."

*BOOK TWO*

*CHAPTER XII*

Many months have passed since I last made an entry in this, which I mean to be a record of my life for later years, when I am grown old and white and memory gives back vividly only the days of childhood.

It must be that the stoking of the furnace below all winter, or else my absorption in Visconti's, has banished reflection upon events from out of my mind. It is not reflection that was banished, however, but only the energy to record it. The folk who work the treadmill leave few records behind them. And I am of the treadmill, occupant of an office chair, one of the gray mass of dwellers in the suburbs of life.

The office of Visconti's, that was at first like a queer old wharf in some foreign city to a ship from distant parts, has grown familiar and almost homelike, so that I feel the barnacles gathering about my hulk at the mooring place.

It is ever the same. I come and I labor and I go. The chair and the desk await me of a morning and by ten o'clock it is as though I had never left them. I go forth of an afternoon into freedom and feel a momentary desire to wander about as of old. The bland frontages of New York still have a lure for me. But the nestlings for whom I am laboring are at Crestlands and to them I automatically hasten my steps.

But is all that about to end?

To-day, for the first time since his disappearance, I heard of poor Laura's husband,--Pendleton.

For to-day I have received an astonishing letter from Dibdin, and it is that, I suppose, which has stirred me to writing again.

"Be prepared," Dibdin's letter begins, after his usual abrupt manner, "be prepared for a sort of shock."

"A week ago I arrived in Yokohama with half a schooner-load of stocks and stones, carvings, idols, etc., homeward bound.

"If you have ever been in Yokohama you will remember the Grand Hotel on the Bund." Yes, I do remember. It was the one bright spot for me in Japan on my brief and disappointing journey six years ago. Heaven knows why I went there. Once I had viewed the Temples at Nikko, the sacred deer on the Island of Miyajima and the volcanic cone of Fujiyama, there was nothing else to do. I am not an ethnologist and there were no bookshops. While awaiting my steamer, the only refuge was that self-same Grand Hotel at Yokohama, where you can still sit in a chair facing a window, as commercial travelers in provincial hotels in America sit, and look out across the water towards Tokio, and smoke and idle and gossip. Of an afternoon there is tea with excellent little cakes--served by Japanese girls in kimonos so gorgeous that even a geisha would be too modest to wear them in the street. The color, however, is meant for western eyes. The ladies, American and English from Tokio and thereabout, wives of commission merchants, agents, naval officers, diplomats, tourists, gather around and do what they can to annihilate reputations,--as is the way the world over.

There is also a bar--the longest in Asia. Incidentally, every bar in the East is the longest and men from Hongkong, Shanghai, Peking, Kobe and Yokohama carry the measurements of their respective bars in their heads for purposes of competitive argument. We all need something to brag about, and there's little else in those parts. When the ladies have finished their tea and have gone to their rooms or their 'rickshaws, the bar at the Grand is the next halting stage for the men. I have not thought of it for years, though it is vivid enough to me now. It is one of the five points on the globe where, if you loiter long enough, you are certain to encounter every one you ever knew. But--Pendleton!

"If you remember this setting," runs Dibdin's letter, "you will realize how easy it was even for a bear like me to pick up quickly the gossip of the place and, incidentally, the legend of Patterson. Patterson I learned was a drifter, an idler, a gambler, and a staunch support of the Grand bar. He is adroit, suave, pleasant, shifty--an American. Some trader found him on the beach in the Marquesas, took him along for company among the islands and ultimately landed him here. He has traded in skins, in silk, in insurance; is said to have all but killed a man in a card brawl and has cleaned out many a tourist at poker. Now, he is no longer allowed to play cards at the Grand.

"I had a curiosity to see this bird of plumage and two days ago, Mainwaring, the excellent manager of this hotel, pointed him out to me.

"Judge of my amazement, as novelists say, when I recognized in Patterson none other than the author of all your troubles, your vanished brother-in-law--_Pendleton!_

"Will it surprise you to learn that my first emotion was a desire to rush upon him as he leaned across the bar and drive a knife into his back?

"Instead, however, I got Mainwaring to introduce me and if Pendleton was surprised, he concealed it successfully. Presently he was drinking my liquor and chattering about the islands from which I am a recent arrival. If I disguised the cold rage I felt against the man you must give me credit for more diplomacy than you ordinarily do.

"'You talk like a New Yorker,' I presently let fall in a casual manner.

"'Ah, there you have me!' he threw out in a blandly mysterious sort of way. 'Truth is, I don't know where I come from!'

"In short, he tried on the lapsed memory sort of thing. Woke up one day to find himself at Manila. Didn't know his own name or who he was or whence. Initials on his linen were J.P. so he took the name of Patterson--as good as any other, and so forth. Very sad. But then one must take life as one finds it. Some of us are elected to martyrdom in this world. That, you understand, was his drift.

"'Well,' I told him calmly, 'if you really want to know who you are, I can tell you.'

"He turned, I thought, a shade paler, but he played his part smoothly.

"'You don't mean it!' he exclaimed with a quite seraphic ecstasy. 'You know me! My God, man, you are my deliverer come at last!'

"'You are Jim Pendleton,' I told him quietly and then I told him a few other things. My reasoning was like this: If he is the thorough hound I thought he was, he would have an excellent chance of bolting--and good riddance. If there was a shred of decency left in the man, now was the time for it to show.

"Well, he surprised me. I saw real tears in his eyes. He begged for every detail I could give him. His voice broke when he tried to ask questions about Laura and the kids. He has not bolted. He is quite pathetically attached to me. I am dashed if I can tell whether it's real or not. I don't believe for a minute in the lapsed memory dodge, but I am flabbergasted. He seems so pitifully keen for every scrap I can tell him. Maybe the poor brute is really ashamed of his past and is trying only to save his face under this rigmarole of lost identity? He clings to me and I have him, so to speak, under observation. If it should even seem remotely possible to make a man of him again, don't you think the risk of bringing him home might be worth taking? I don't know, I don't know. I shall use the best judgment I've got about me, but don't for a moment think I'll let you down. It's your interest I'm thinking of and the interest of the kids.

"I can't leave here for several weeks yet. That ought to give me time to take his measure. I know what he has been. Question is, can a leopard change his spots, or a beachcomber his character? We'll see, Randolph, my boy, we'll see what we see. Hard luck is hard luck, but this man--well, I needn't tell you. There is such a thing, to be sure, as trying back. I'd like to have a second chance myself, if I behaved like a villain. But of this fellow I am far from sure. I will say, though, that he's drinking less and trying to keep decent not only in my own sight, but to the surprise of all the white colony here.

"You will hear from me again before long."

As I read, I felt gradually overshadowed by the immense somber fact conveyed in this letter. It was like a black cloud bank that comes up swiftly, blotting out the sun from over the landscape. It was not a thing to blink, to wave aside or to dismiss with a shrug of the shoulders. It was instant and tyrannous, demanding anew urgent thought and decision. Fortunately I am no longer the same creature that was bodily hurled from tranquillity and leisure, like a monk from his cell, into the cold wind-swept ways of life. I seem a little less like chaff in the breeze. My backbone seemed actually to stiffen and settle as I posed the problem.

The problem is the fate of the children. To receive and re-create Pendleton means to give them up.

Well--and did I not assume their care only because there was none else? Now there would be--there might be--some one else. Pendleton has a legal right to his own children and, if he could establish it satisfactorily, no doubt a moral right as well.

The advent of Pendleton might prove to have incalculable advantages for myself. Here, on the one side, is the treadmill. On the other there is, or there was, ease and leisure and dreams. My small competency is gone in the wake of that man's destructive progress. But for myself, I might manage an easier and more agreeable way of subsisting than the way of Visconti's. Those are the cold facts, clearly enough--but somehow they will not let me rest. My world has been violently jarred, for all my painful calmness, and I seem unable to fit the parts again into exactly the old solidity of groove and joint. There are lurking interstices which I cannot fill. "Who is Kim--Kim--Kim?" the hero of an unforgettable tale was wont to ask himself. And he felt his soul floating off and dipping into the infinite. Likewise, I ask myself now, Who is Randolph Byrd? And the startling truth returns that the children in my house and I are inseparable, that I and they are one!

With this and the fact that Pendleton is in all likelihood coming back to claim them, I am, pending further news from Dibdin, left to grapple. At any rate, Dibdin also is returning.

It is now the spring and the year is beginning to smile again. I have been prospering at Visconti's and my income is now again the same as it was before ever the children came to me--before I became a business man. But there is not a soul to whom I can confide my new dilemma.

There is Minot Blackden, the glass stainer, whom I have finally discovered to be a near neighbor of Visconti's. To be exact, his studio and living quarters are in King Street, and we sometimes have our lunch together. But Blackden is so much in the grip of his medieval art that it gets into his food, stains his tapering hands and even spatters upon his finely pointed blue-black beard. All he can see in me is the Philistine who has cast all else aside for the sizzling fleshpots. When I chanced to mention having four children in my house, he looked upon me as a bird-of-Paradise might look upon a polar bear; I was to him a visible but incredible symbol of something strange and gross. There is nothing placid or resigned about Blackden. He is intense, incandescent.

"Do you realize," he said to me, "that I am restoring a lost art to the world?"

"But does it give you food?" I asked him.

"What does food matter?" he expostulated. "What does anything else in the world matter?"

Nevertheless, he was eager to take up my suggestion concerning the writing of a booklet upon his new craft and he has been sending it out broadcast. But so intensely devotional is his attitude to the whole business that I have not the face to suggest payment for the work, nor has he referred to it again. I know little of his art, but I know that his returns are increasing. It is obvious that I cannot burden a soul, burning with that gemlike flame of Blackden's, with any such confidence as the impending return of Pendleton. At times I think that Minot Blackden and Gertrude Bayard ought to marry each other. They are both so single-minded and so absolutely sure of themselves. But in the meantime there is no one I can talk to.

No--absolutely no one.

Walking to Grand Central station these brilliant afternoons is a thing I cannot resist. It is the only exercise I get. Crossing Washington Square, I strike into Fifth Avenue and by the time I reach Fourteenth Street I have a delicious sense of losing myself, of merging into the crowd, that is very soothing after a day in the office. There is nothing so stimulating as the energetic crowd in Fifth Avenue. At Brentano's bookstore I usually pause and scrutinize the window. I am very sound in the latest novels and the newest developments in stationery.

To-day, as my eyes were feasting on the cover jacket of Mr. Arnold Bennett's latest, a lady coming down the avenue likewise paused before the window and as we glanced at each other I found I was facing Gertrude. Of course she had a perfect right to cut me. She smiled uncertainly instead and put out her hand.

"Hello, Ranny," she murmured casually. "No reason why we can't meet as friends, is there?"

"Not the least in the world," I returned hastily. "Why should there be?"

"I didn't know--but of course you always were a sensible person."

I grinned in my guilty fashion.

"How is everything?" she continued brightly. "I heard--about your firm. You in business now?"

I mentioned my connection with Visconti's Banca e Casa Commerciale.

"You're a sort of hero of romance," she smiled speculatively over my head. "And the kiddies," she added, "they all right?"

"Going strong." She made no reference to Alicia but I thought it only decent not to leave her in doubt. "Everything in my household is about the same," I said. She nodded.

The years of our friendship flashed through my mind, with a sense of regret at the passing and crumbling of human relations. Gertrude would quite naturally have been the one I could have talked to concerning the probable return of Pendleton. Then, on a sudden occurred one of those coincidences which invariably surprise me. For what Gertrude uttered quite carelessly as though merely to fill the conversational pause, was this:

"No news of their father, I suppose?"

I have never yet lied to Gertrude. I detest lies in general. I was silent. My face must have betrayed me. Gertrude glanced into my eyes and in a startled voice she queried:

"_Have_ you?"

Briefly, without going into detail, I told her.

"Why, Ranny," she exclaimed with a new manner, in a new voice, "that's the most wonderful thing I ever heard. Wonderful! That's the greatest luck for you. Your troubles will be over!"

"Ah, will they?" I speculated ruefully, rubbing my cheek. "That's the problem. Shall I be able to trust the children to him again?"

"Don't be a--foolish!" she retorted in almost her old manner. "The responsibility will make a man of him again. Besides--you'll have to. They are his. I should think you'd jump for joy at the relief. Dear me, what a story!"

"Oh--er--I must beg you not--not to mention a word of this to any one," I stammered. "You understand--it's a ticklish business--for the children's sake."

"Don't be absurd," she retorted impatiently. "I don't blab. Will you promise to let me hear how--how things come out?" I promised.

At this moment Minot Blackden, his eyes blinded by visions of rose windows, no doubt, bore down and all but collided with us. I introduced them mechanically to mitigate his apologies and left them both bound in the same direction southward. Gertrude waved a hand gayly.

"I'll expect good news!" were her parting words.

So I have told some one, I reflected, as I made my way toward Grand Central, and Gertrude expressed what all the world would say: "I ought to jump for joy at the relief. Besides, I shall have to turn them over to Pendleton." The wheels of the train I somberly boarded kept insistently repeating the same self-evident opinion. In addition there was the sickness of death in my soul for the folly of having given the thing away to Gertrude, of all people.

I wish I were not obliged to parry social invitations just at present. The excellent Visconti who had asked me to dinner two or three times during the winter, has suddenly taken a notion to ask me at least once every week. I hope I am not grown so churlish but that I appreciate his well-meant courtesy. But the fag is too great.

He has a house in Thirteenth Street neighboring on St. Vincent's Hospital, and he also has a motherless daughter, Gina, abounding in vitality, who must be amused. The proximity to the hospital, he intimates, the smell of carbolate and iodoform, depress young blood, and Gina, being super-American, must not be allowed to remember that there is anything unpleasant in life. I trust I am not the only vessel chosen to bring more lively spirits to that girl.

The effort for me is immense. I go to Crestlands after office hours, dress, return to town, and then make a late train for Crestlands again. The food is excellent and Gina sings prettily in a soprano as rich as her coloring. But the next morning Visconti's does not enjoy the fruit of my undimmed energies.

More recently, Visconti has urged me not to dress and in that I see the fine hand of Gina at work. As an American-born girl, Gina is quick and eager to read the signs and weather indications. And though I am becoming dexterous in excuses, I dined at the Visconti's last night nevertheless. Gina sang the _Sole mio_ and _Una voce poco fa_ and even told my fortune in cards, predicting that I should "be married a second time."

"But never a first time?" I queried simply.