Had I time to speculate philosophically, I could expend much of it in wondering why pure joy cannot be recorded. Perhaps because we experience so little of it.
Of sorrow and tribulation we strange creatures that are men can give a pretty fair account. From Job down we have excelled in it. But before sheer joy we are dumb. I can only repeat to myself the poor colorless words that I am happy, happy, happy as the day is short.
For one brief space of reaction after finding Alicia, the senses reeled, the worn body and mind swooned into a sort of deliquescence of lassitude, the eyes smarted with unshed meaningless moisture, the overdriven heart throbbed with a vast supernal relief, coextensive with the universe. Then, swiftly, with an almost audible sound, that unnerved brain slid into its customary shape of health, more wholesomely joyous than ever before, and all the world was bathed in freshness.
The blue of the sky was fairer, the sunlight purer, and even the poor suburban grass of Crestlands autumnally waning, glistened with the verdure and brightness of a new creation. But who can describe happiness?
Pendleton is gone, Alicia—the children are here.
No eight words in the language of Shakespeare and Milton have ever breathed to me the same meaning as those eight words. Yet what do they signify on paper?
All Europe is in a turmoil, and the Germans have all but taken Paris, yet this, I perceive, is my first mention of a vast catastrophe. What tiny self-absorbed creatures are men! People are dying and suffering by the thousands, yet we cisatlantians scan the headlines and pursue our own ends in the accustomed way. What though half the planet is in peril—I have reconquered my home!
Why, I wonder, had I ever imagined myself to have a horror of home? A home is a little island of personal love in the vast impersonal chaos of existence—and pity him or her who never lands upon that island.
Of nights, occasionally, I now indulge myself in a fire on the hearth. The wood that burns brightest, I note, leaves only a little heap of white ashes. When my eyes rest upon Alicia, or I see the children flitting about, or hear their ringing voices through the house, I experience a wonderful contentment that I am the fire at which they may warm their hands. I, who once entertained fantastic visions of future greatness, of name and fame, now feel content to become a little heap of white ashes.
Sergeant Cullum, excellent man, journeyed out here two days after I had found Alicia, a day after the legal ceremony of adoption, to apprise me that "he believed my ward to be in Baltimore." I was about to burst into uncontrollable laughter, but my conscience smote me and I was ashamed. In my vast relief I had wholly and selfishly forgotten this good man who was still upon the quest. What power of divination or answer to prayer had directed his thoughts to Baltimore, I cannot imagine. But with my contrite apology and thanks went a gift that I trust has soothed his ruffled feelings. We parted in friendship. Oh, excellent thaumaturgic policeman!
Randolph burst into a loud sniffing laugh when I told him and Alicia of Sergeant Cullum's visit and the Baltimore "clew."
"Oh, cops are idiots!" he chuckled arrogantly and looked toward Alicia with a haughty proprietorial air. "They don't know anything! Didn't take me long to dope out where to look for 'Licia," he boasted. "I figured it out like this: 'Licia is bugs on your old books. She was looking for a job to earn her own living, wasn't she?" Alicia bent her head, still shamefaced over the episode. "What'd I do? I'm strong on engines. Wouldn't I go to a place where they make or sell engines? Well, with her it was books. I went around to some book places—'n' then suddenly I had a hunch: Andrews—that you and she always jaw about. I looked him up in the 'phone book. An' sure enough, when I went round and peeped in through the door, I saw Alicia upon a ladder handling some of those old books there. I thought I'd go in and call her down, but then I thought 't would surprise her more if you and I came in on her together—and I beat it hot-foot to a 'phone. Cops!—They'd say, Baltimore—South America—anything, so it sounds good!"
And again his glance wholly appropriated Alicia. The youngster seems to think he invented her. But I am full of gratitude to that boy.
The closure of the Stock Exchange and the abrupt slowing up of financial business has filtered like a shadow even into Visconti's and is giving me some unhurried hours in which to ponder the future.
How many middle-aged bachelors, I wonder, have conjured similar visions, constructed the same castles of thin air? To educate Alicia, to serve and to love her until my love surrounds her so that she cannot choose but return it—to create a woman Pygmalion-like out of this very sweet Galatea—what could be more blissful? Alicia is now in her teens. But suppose she were sweet-and-twenty, could she ever think with anything but filial affection of a man nearly twice her age who stands to her in loco parentis?
Like a lovesick boy who pulls at the faint intimations of his mustache and searches the newspaper for cases of marriage at seventeen, I eagerly scan the prints and cudgel my memory for such unions as ours would be. But the papers are filled with war and rumors of war. It comes to me suddenly that a certain aged Senator has not so long ago married his ward, under even a greater disparity of ages—and I am absurdly happy. I see myself with Alicia matured and radiant, ever young—living a life of bright serenity, calling endearing names.
"Did I hear it half in a doze Long since, I know not where? Did I dream it an hour ago, When asleep in this arm-chair?"
But this is folly. Tennyson is out of fashion and there are greater fools than old fools. I ask too much of the high gods. Enough has already been given to a crusty bookworm like me. Suppose I had married Gertrude! The children's voices would never have made music for my ears. Nevertheless, Alicia shall have the best education I can give her.
Visconti must be aging, I fear, for he has taken to repeating himself. He has told me often before that his daughter Gina is the apple of his eye, but during these somewhat listless days in the office in which "extras" figure largely and strategy is the one indoor game, he has been going into more detail.
I dined at his house last night and to-day he asked me again to dine on Saturday. I dislike refusing him and I like lying less. But I declined on the plea of an engagement.
"I always forget," he returned with a laugh, "that a young man is not un' burbero of a widower like me—that a young man, in short, has engagements."
I made some sort of deprecating noise. He talks as though I were twenty-two, and I like him for it.
"But you see, amico mio," he went on explaining, "it is like this: Gina, the carissima bambina mia, is the apple of my eye. And she must be—what do you call it—amused—amused, made gay, bright—you see?"
I signified my clairvoyance.
"She is nineteen—a fanciulla of nineteen, she must have much—eh—amusement, not so?"
He is fond of the Socratic method and I humored him.
"But doesn't she go to parties—has she no girl friends?"
"Ah, sicurissimo, sicurissimo. But a girl—nineteen years—it is young men in the house that amuse her, eh?" And he slapped me on the back and roared with laughter of a boisterous heartiness that somewhat, as novelists say, "took me aback."
I have not exactly been seeing myself in the guise of a youth cut out to amuse Gina Visconti.
"How of Sunday?" he asked, with a sudden quizzical soberness. "Sunday you can come?"
I regretted his insistence, but somewhat laboredly I explained that I am weakly addicted to books; and that Sunday was the single day when I could sit among my books and—
"Ah, but of course!" gravely. He understood full well that I was a student, a scholar, who outside office hours pursued a higher life, and so forth.
I felt mawkish and mean but I clung to my Sunday.
"Monday, then—shall we call it Monday?" he pressed.
I could not be so churlish as to decline further. But I hardly knew why a sense of uneasiness stole into my bosom after his subsequent words.
"The fanciulla," he went on, thoughtfully vehement. "She is all I possess—all in the world. At my death she shall possess everything I have. She has it now! For whom then do I work if not for Gina? As for me, I could go back to Italy—maybe. I have enough. But Gina—she is American girl—ah!" and he kissed his finger tips with unction. "She is fine American girl!"
Having said that, he veered into talk about Belgium, Von Kluck and general strategy.
But why should he so persistently sing the praises and prospects of his daughter to me, a clerk in his office?
I had a sudden impulse to go to him and unbosom myself on the score of my own bambimi and my own aspirations for them—but somehow I could not. That is an island girdled, not only by ordinary reticence, which is with me a vice, but by a host of emotions like those flames that circled the sleeping goddess. I am not a Latin; I cannot bubble forth my inmost hopes or flaunt my heart upon my sleeve.
Sunday evening—after a wonderful walk with Alicia through the already waning woods of Westchester. There has been a certain air of gravity overhanging her, of contrition perhaps, that stabbed with pain. I realized then to what degree her blithe spirit and the starry laughter of her eyes had been the wine of my recent life. I could not tolerate her seeming depression. Besides, there was the matter of her education to be discussed. Jimmie clamored to go with us, but this time even his privileged position did not avail him. I desired to be alone with Alicia.
Was it my mood, I wonder, or do the woods in reality begin to whisper a farewell in the decline of the year? Every tree, even to the youngest sapling, seemed to nod to us as we walked and to rustle a murmur like the leavetaking of a pilgrim bent on a lengthy journey. I have ever been impatient of reading descriptions of nature and have chimed with the scoffers at the pathetic fallacy. Nevertheless, I can bemuse myself for hours listening to the wind among the tree tops or gazing at the haze upon the hills; and in a slow measured rhythm, as if having endless time before them, they invariably spell a message,—a message infinitely sad, but for the creative laughing sun that rides triumphant, high over all.
"Come, Alicia!" I broke out brusquely, joining the sun in his laughter, "we have some bright things to talk over. Don't let us allow the woods to lull us. They are going to sleep; we are not. Here you are ready for college. Isn't that soul-stirring?"
She emerged from her reverie as a person shaken from a drowse and smiled with, a distant look in her eyes.
"Bright things," she murmured pensively; "everything that has happened to me since I came to you has been bright, and everything soul-stirring. That's what makes it so hard, Uncle Ranny—I have been so useless. What good am I?"
I laughed uproariously enough to make the woods shake. Did Alicia know how much I enjoyed combating such statements or did she really mean it?
"You have been—" I wanted to tell her banteringly that she had been a burden and a drag upon my household, a weight not to be borne—but I perceived that she was more than serious. She was sad.
"Now you are, of course, talking nonsense," I answered flatly. "But there is college before you; that ought to cure all that. Perhaps you're a little morbid. Bright associations will change that."
"But how," she protested, "can you talk of sending me to college—with all the expense? And I so worthless?"
"We won't discuss that, my child," I broke in. The expense had indeed occupied my mind—but I had formed a plan for that. "Tell me what you would like best to study—to be?"
"That's the trouble, Uncle Ranny," she replied pathetically. "What can I be?—Perhaps I might work for Mr. Andrews?"
"Modern girls," I informed her, "judging by our fiction, invariably develop literary, dramatic or histrionic talent. She must act, write fiction, or preferably plays. Journalism and settlement work are no longer fashionable. If the worst comes to the worst, they turn militant suffragists, but even that is on the wane; but the two careers are not incompatible. Don't you feel the urge in your young bones? Which of the arts is it that is calling you? The pen? The stage? Speak, Alicia—for this is the critical hour!"
She detected raillery in my voice and laughed softly.
"I know you are making fun of me, Uncle Ranny," she said, "but it's not of me alone. All the same, I wish I did have some talent, but, oh, I know I haven't! Sometimes—I wish—I think—oh, Uncle Ranny, I am ashamed to tell you what I—" and without finishing her sentence she covered her face with her hands and I noted that her neck was suffused with a deep blush.
"But you must tell me, my dear," I gently took her hands from her face. "Haven't I just become your parent and guardian by ironclad legal adoption? And a terribly stern parent and guardian I am—make no mistake about that!"
"Well," she gazed downward shamefacedly, still exquisitely blushing, "I suppose I must, then. Sometimes I think, Uncle Ranny," she went on with deliberate firmness, "that there is one thing girls always think of, but never talk about—that is more important than any of the others. Oh, I suppose I am terribly improper and immodest, but if I am, it's because—I don't know any better—so you'll have to forgive me. But, oh, I suppose—he'll come some day and—to—to make a home and—and to bring up children seems—more wonderful than anything else! You've made me say it, Uncle Ranny!" she turned away with tears of vexation—"I suppose I am horrid—but you've made me tell you and I told you. Can't a girl study to be—for that—as for anything else?" And still tormented by her brazen immodesty, she plucked yellowing leaves agitatedly and scattered them to the winnowing breeze.
As she was turned from me, she could not have seen my arms going out suddenly as if to take her, and then falling again to my sides. I longed to embrace her and to crown her with all the glory of womanhood. But my conscience warned me away. In my heart, however, happiness leaped up like the lark I have never seen and warbled joyously a divine melody that I had never heard. It required courage for Alicia, a young girl, to confess what she had confessed. And courage joined to all the other qualities I knew her possessed of must produce the best that is in womanhood.
It is a commentary on our times that Alicia, a girl ready for college, was ashamed of what she had told me!
I was a fool to press her further, I suppose, but then and there I determined to be at least as brave as was Alicia.
"Have you," I asked, hoping my voice was not shaking, "have you already some one in mind?" She shook her head vehemently, still plucking at the leaves, I could not repress a profound sigh. "What does he look like in your mind's eye, Alicia? What is your vision of him?" I knew I was courting pain, but there are moments when even torture is irresistible.
"I hope he will be strong—and fine—and manly," she murmured as if to herself—"and have at least some of your—goodness, Uncle Ranny." Every attribute of that hypothetical "he" was a reproach to my infirmities—a blow at my peculiar weaknesses. But I had invited it. The ideal of a girl never errs. It is her emotions that may lead her astray. Oh, yes—she credited me with some "goodness." Few are the women, however, who choose a man for his goodness. In my quality of "Uncle Ranny" I was "good." I stood for a moment in silence, writhing with anguish, alternately conjuring up and banishing the hatefully magnificent creature of Alicia's dreams. But at last I gripped my soul with sudden resolution. Now at least she was mine; and I must accustom myself to the idea of her being some one else's at the earliest moment—to the inevitable renunciation. She had innocently and adorably honored me with her greatest confidence: For the present, at least, I must make the most of my little happiness.
"Come, dear," I gently touched her on the shoulder. "You have told me what I wanted to know." I put her hand through my arm and we strolled on slowly. "We are horrible old fogies, Alicia, and we mustn't tell a soul about our views—or we should be ostracized and possibly jailed. But nothing you could have said would have made me happier than what you have just told me. I know of no greater career than the one you have chosen. And college, much or little as you like of it, can serve you for a finer womanhood no less than it can for anything else. In fact, more, I think." From still swimming eyes she gave me a sidelong glance mingled so much of gratitude, shame and pride, that I laughed aloud.
"There is one thing you've got to make up your mind to, Alicia." I drew her close to my side. "You must come and tell me everything that's on your mind without repression. Don't forget, my dear, that I am your father, mother and most intimate friends. Think how sorry we should both have been if you had suppressed and hidden what you have told me."
"Yes, Uncle Ranny," she breathed and very sweetly in a way to melt the heart of a man, she lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it. I was irreparably "Uncle Ranny!"
I dared not make a movement in return. At that moment I might have betrayed more than ever again I could hide. But the woods were now of another hue; the invisible lark was still singing, albeit a sadder strain.
We decided that Alicia is to enter Barnard next week and commute with me on the daily train.