Only some fifteen hours have passed and the world is changed to a dazzling brilliance.
Alicia would not leave me, poor overwrought child. She has refused to go to bed and insisted upon staying near me, upon "meeting the dawn" with me. She now lies stretched upon my couch, covered over with a rug, and she has just been overtaken by slumber.
And her presence there under my eyes, Randolph Byrd, is the nearest taste of Heaven that you and I have known, or possibly ever will know, in this life. It is dawn enough for me now and for you, my friend—a dawn so resplendent that I for one shall never desire a brighter.
And since there can be no more sleep for me this night, and since this may be the last entry for you in these memoirs, for many a day, if not forever, I shall endeavor to still the flying heart, the mad exultation rioting in my veins, by noting down for you, how sketchily and incoherently soever, the momentous occurrences of the youngest hours.
It came about—but has it come about? Or is this some mad dream from which I shall wake to the old somber reality? How can a dark turbid current so suddenly bring one out into a flashing, sparkling, sunlit lagoon, overhung with a verdure so rich and lustrous it would seem to have come fresh from the Creator's hand? I hear birds piping in wondrous music, or do I imagine it? But I began by telling you I should be incoherent.
It must have been some time past midnight when I screened the fire, put out the lights and wearily, in darkness, made my way up the stairs.
The fire had unaccountably and fitfully smoked to-night and I remember the last thing I did was to take out Fred Salmon's gold-colored certificates from the safe, examine them with smarting eyes and then gaze in sleepy astonishment at the quotation of Salmon Oil in the newspapers. According to that the shares were now worth twenty-six thousand dollars! It seemed incredible, absurd. And the year was up and I might sell the stuff. Like a miser who has nothing else in life to look for, I gazed spellbound at those securities in whose security I even now could not believe. But unlike the miser of fiction, but like my dull, stupid self, I neglected to replace the crackling papers, though I did put the Valdarfer Boccaccio in and closed the safe.
In the upper passageway, I distinctly recall walking on tiptoe so that Alicia might not be disturbed. Was it hallucination I wonder, or did I actually hear like a sighing whisper through the darkness,
"Good night, Uncle Ranny!"
I am always imagining her voice and her gestures in my brain. I must ask her when she wakes up. At any rate, that mysterious whisper it was, or the hallucination of a whisper, that stirred me into wakefulness again. I began to undress and paused, realizing that I was now too wakeful to sleep. I donned a dressing gown over my waistcoat, adjusted the light and lay down upon the bed with Baudelaire's "Fleurs de Mai" in my hand. A little of Baudelaire had the effect upon my mind of rich food upon a furred tongue. Why, I wondered, do I keep that gloomy book upon my bedside table? I threw it down in disgust and took up a volume of Florio's Montaigne instead.
To read and enjoy Montaigne is a certain sign of middle age. I have long enjoyed Montaigne. A French verse to the effect that "a peaceful indifference is the sagest of virtues" came into my head and with sudden violence I threw away Montaigne.
I was not middle-aged. I was not indifferent. The heart of frustrated youth in me was crying out for life and love! Alicia was two doors away from me. She did not love my nephew. Could I not, if I plucked up energy and resolution, make her love me? Was I then so irrevocably Uncle Ranny? I leaped up feverishly, lifted the shade and looked out upon the blinking stars. Their message was a very simple one. From Virgo to Cassiopeia, from the Pole star to the farthest twinkler they seemed to say:
"The trifling planet Earth is yours—if you know how to use it."
With a muffled tread I paced the room agitatedly. This affair between Alicia and Randolph was absurd. Randolph was unfit for the very thought of marriage. A wise parent would know how to deal with the situation. But, alas! I was neither wise nor a parent. Nevertheless I must find a way of liquidating this business not later than to-morrow. It could not go on. The lamplight showed me in my dull perplexity and I turned it off angrily and again threw myself on the bed to think in Egyptian darkness.
On a sudden I heard a low murmur of voices without. It is seldom that voices are heard late at night in our secluded situation. Possibly the policeman exchanging comments on the night with some solitary passer-by. A moment later, however, I heard a key inserted in a lock and a door open. My nephew Randolph returning home at last! Then to-morrow would be the same? I asked myself. Alicia would turn over the cheque to him and all would go on as before? No, no, that could not be. Yet what could I do? Turn the boy adrift, Laura's boy, and revolt Alicia's spirit—make her hate me? What a horrible impasse!
I listened for Randolph's footsteps on the stairs, but there was no sound. Suppose I were to call him into my room and tell him that I knew all—appeal to his better nature. Was not that what parents were obliged to do the world over? I should talk tenderly to the boy—but in my heart I own I did not feel tenderly toward him.
Still there was no sound of steps on the stairs.
The black darkness made the tension of waiting intolerable. I switched on the light and automatically made toward the door. Then all at once the low hum of voices overtook me. Had Alicia descended to meet him? No—I had not heard her door. Surely Randolph in his sober senses would not bring friends of his to the house at this hour! I looked at my watch; it was twenty minutes past two!
Noiselessly I opened my door and in the soft moccasin slippers I was wearing tiptoed down the hall. At the top of the stairs I paused to listen. Primeval instincts of alertness stirred within me. My heart was throbbing against my throat and I literally felt my eyes dilating in the darkness. I found myself smiling at the primitive machinery that is set in motion within us, slumber though it might, at the slightest provocation. Still treading softly I descended the stairs.
No light was showing anywhere. The darkness was absolute. What under heaven could be the meaning of that? The primitive instinct of the stalker was again to the fore. At the foot of the stairs I paused. Sounds were audible. They came from my study!
"Upon my word!" I thought with indignation. The young man could not possibly be in his right mind. The study door was closed, but through the slightest of chinks between door and lintel, left evidently to obviate the noise of the clicking fixture, I perceived a faint, fitful spot of light flickering about, like the light of Tinker Bell in "Peter Pan."
With a slight pressure I pushed the door gently ajar. Randolph, with a small spotlight in his hand, was standing at my desk. Except for the circle of light about him the room was in darkness. The rim of his hat shading his eyes, he was scanning the Salmon Oil certificates; with his trembling left hand he was counting them, under the quivering spot of light proceeding from his right.
"Eight—nine—ten!" I heard him breathe heavily. "A hundred each!"
I stood stock-still, overwhelmed, scarcely breathing, frozen with a sickening shame of horror. The meaning of it was so crushingly plain!
"Take two of them!" I heard a mysterious hoarse whisper coming from the window. "Put the rest back. He'll never miss 'em."
"All right," whispered Randolph, with quaking huskiness.
"Give 'em to me!" came from the window.
My power of motion at that instant suddenly flooded back into my muscles. I lifted my hand as though fearful of rending the darkness, pushed the switch-button inside the door and the room was bathed in light from the single lamp on my table—intense after the pregnant darkness.
Then a vision that sent a chill shock through my nerves and stunned all senses left me gaping—petrified.
In the window was framed the abhorrent, dilapidated parody of the face of Pendleton!
It could not be! was the thought sluggishly struggling through my numbed brain. It was a nightmare.
Then a sudden sharp cry threw me into a momentary tremor. I wheeled about.
Alicia, fully dressed, with one hand to her eyes, was leaning against the doorpost!
Without speaking, I automatically bounded forward to the window. The muffled sound of heavy steps running on the turf fell upon my ears and dimly, through the starlit darkness, I caught a glimpse of the stooping bulk of a large man receding down the slope, toward the brook.
Had my senses been tricking me or had I really seen the face of Pendleton?
"Who was it?" I cried fiercely to Randolph, still hanging stupefied and immobile, with blank terror upon his features, over my desk.
He made no answer.
"Sit down over there!" I commanded sharply. As one under the influence of a drug or a hypnotic spell, the boy loosely moved to obey, but remained standing irresolute at my chair, a mass of helplessness, his head dropping limply on his chest.
Anger and pain struggling for mastery within me, I turned abruptly to Alicia.
"Haven't you been asleep, child? Better go upstairs—please go," I entreated.
"No, I won't!" she retorted with a cry of passionate vehemence and with a rush she flung past me toward Randolph.
"So that is what you wanted the money for!"—she shook with the fury of her emotion—"to give to that brute! And he has got you—got hold of you—come back to make a thief of you!"
Then it was Pendleton. I was not mistaken!
"Why do you suppose I engaged myself to you, you poor contemptible weakling! Do you suppose I am in love with you?" Her tears gushed forth, and she rocked her arms passionately. "Love a thing like you? I wanted to keep your weakness and your spinelessness from Uncle Ranny—to save him from the pain he is suffering now because you're a thief! You promised, promised me over and over you'd keep straight—wouldn't gamble—wouldn't drink—over and over—" she wailed with the anguished note that drags on tears—"and this is what you've got to! Stealing! And from Uncle Ranny of all people, who's been father and mother to you—everything in the world! If I didn't adore him more than anybody on earth; do you think I would have looked at you? Oh, how I wish I could beat you to a pulp!" She lifted her hands on high and for one fascinated instant I actually thought she would.
"I wish I could feel sure of never seeing your face again!" she concluded, collapsing with her own anger.
Slowly, under the blows of her words, the boy lifted his eyes, eyes smoldering with shame, with abject misery, with the hopeless pathos of the weak.
"Then you never cared a damn?" he muttered.
"No—I never cared a damn—in your sense!" she cried, forgetting all restraint in her passionate exasperation. "And I never can and never will now. I'd hoped you'd become a man. But I'm through with you for good!"
I had been standing aside, awed, involuntarily spell-bound with the aloofness and indecision of surprise. I now made a move toward Alicia, to lead her away. "If I didn't adore him more than anybody on earth." I ought not to have heard that. But I had and my pulses began to throb anew.
A sudden loud rapping at the door, however, startled us all out of our tempest of pain into a common alertness. I glanced at the huddled form of Randolph, at the still quivering figure of Alicia.
"I'll see who it is!" I muttered, moving toward the hall. Alicia stood for a moment irresolute, and then ran out behind me and disappeared in the darkened dining room.
"What," it flashed through my mind as I unlocked the door, "what if Pendleton was caught—the father of Laura's children, snatched like the thief he was, in his flight?"
And I felt the prickling sensation of sweat against my clothes as I swung open the door.
The mounted policeman, Halloran, was looming in the doorway. He was clutching by the arm a hulking figure in a shabby top coat, a man, a man panting like a beast, who was shrinkingly, miserably averting his face from the light.
"I saw this man running away from your house just now," began Halloran briskly. "Mighty suspicious, he looked—running away this hour of the night. Picked him up—to see if they was anything wrong."
I peered at the indistinct features of the man.
It was the dissipated ashen-white, almost leprous face of Pendleton.
With an incredible swiftness I felt my mental machinery working. Something must be done. All hate of him and all fear of him vanished from my mind before a faint lucid beam of a sort of indolent humor.
"That you, Jim?" I queried, peering more closely. "Hello, Jim!" I greeted him in a jocund undertone, bringing my voice round, with a great effort, to a pitch of naturalness.
"No, officer," I went on glibly. "Nothing wrong. This man was here on a business matter. Left late. Running for a train, I suppose—weren't you, Jim?"
"Yes," came hoarsely from Pendleton, and a quiver of triumph ran down my spine.
"There'll be a train—let's see—" I fumbled. The policeman glanced quizzically from one to the other of us, then shrewdly interposed:
"Train to N'York at three-seven. No use running," he grinned. My ear, hypersensitive at that moment, seemed still to catch a note of doubt in the zealous constable's voice. And when I longed to fling out, in the words of the ballad—
He is either himsel' a devil frae hell, Or else his mother a witch maun be,
I heard myself saying calmly, "Thank you, officer." Then to Pendleton:
"Don't you want to come in and spend the night after all, Jim?"
"No, I better go," mumbled Pendleton, edging away.
"Sorry to have troubled you, gentlemen," apologized Halloran suavely. "But you know—so many robberies in the suburbs—orders is to look out extry sharp. Good night to ye, Mr. Byrd. Good night, sir," he nodded with ill-concealed contempt at Pendleton.
"Good night," muttered Pendleton and slouched off heavily down the gravel path.
"No harm done," grinned Halloran, looking queerly after his recent prisoner. "But I could have sworn—" I interrupted him with a boisterous laugh.
"Not at all, officer. Sorry you had the trouble—many thanks for your watchfulness. See you to-morrow."
"All right!" he responded with smart alacrity. "Good night, sir." I closed the door.
In the room the lad Randolph sat alone, somewhat straighter now, gazing before him. He must have heard the colloquy at the door.
"Well, Randolph," I approached him quietly, "now what do you want to say to me?"
He did not answer for a space. Finally he spoke:
"What are you going to do with me, Uncle Ranny?"
My anger against him had subsided. I saw only the frail young mortal, Laura's son, whom I had undertaken to make a man of—and I had failed!
"What do you think I ought to do with you?" I queried gently. There was no longer even rancor in my heart.
"Put me away, I guess," he answered dully. "That's what I deserve."
"When did you first meet your—your father?" I found myself wincing at the word, but after all Pendleton was his father.
"About three weeks ago," was the reply.
"How did it happen?"
"He came here and followed 'Licia and me to town one morning on the train. He watched for me till I came out of lecture and then he spoke to me."
"What did he say?"
"Oh, asked whether I'd forgotten him, took me to lunch and told me you gave him a rotten deal—took his children away from him—sent him into exile, and so on."
"Didn't he tell you that he deserted your mother and you three children and that your mother died of it?"
"No," said Randolph wearily, "but I knew that. Oh, you needn't think I took to him right off the bat."
"Didn't he tell you that he went away of his own desire—after a horrible scene with—with Alicia?" I felt the truth must be told the boy now. "Didn't he tell you that I gave him money to go and that only recently I sent him more money to San Francisco, because he wanted to get back to the East?"
"No," said the boy in wide-eyed amazement. "He said you had taken everything from him because of the mistake he'd made—and tried to keep him down. That's what first began to get me. Oh, what's the use, Uncle Ranny? It's a hard thing to say, but I guess he's pretty rotten, even if he is my father. He got me drunk to-night to do this—" he waved his hand heavily toward the desk. "Said there was some island he'd found where he wanted to raise copra or cocoanuts or something—end his days—-if he only had a little money—that's why.—But what's the use, Uncle Ranny," he went on in the same weary tones, "I'm through with him. I don't care a curse about him now. What are you going to do with me?"
A great tenderness for the boy stabbed at my heart. I longed to comfort him as I could comfort Laura or Jimmie. Was he not their brother and as much as they my child? Like a disease, misfortune and dishonor had suddenly attacked him. My breast was simmering with bitter self-reproach.
"Come, Randolph," I put my arm about his shoulder. "Pull yourself together. We must live this business down. There's your education to be thought of. You must finish, don't you see?"
"You mean—you'd give me another chance?"
"Yes, Randolph," I answered huskily, "and still another." At that moment I felt I could have given him seventy-times seven.
"Well, then," he answered, with the first gleam of interest I discerned in him, "will you let me go ahead and enlist?"
"Enlist," I recoiled from that. "In the army, you mean? You are so young."
"I mean in the navy—I want to do it, Uncle Ranny—I must do it—That's the only way I can begin again. I can't stay round where Alicia is."
My heart went utterly out to the boy in his misery. I knew not what to say to him. The pangs of despised love!
"Alicia has been your—" but it was futile to talk to him of Alicia.
"Go to bed, my boy," I said, gently urging him toward the door. "Get some rest and still your poor nerves. To-morrow we shall discuss and settle this matter in your best interests. Remember you are surrounded by your friends." With a faint gleam of gratitude in his eyes, he shuffled out unsteadily and I pressed his hand as we parted at the door. I heard him moving about in his room.
Then I realized that I must find Alicia.