Читать книгу The Man Who Lived in a Shoe - Henry James Forman - Страница 5

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.

"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.