The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

by Henry James Forman

The lad Randolph was now shamed into a little manliness.

"Yes, we do, Uncle Ranny," came forth in his throaty voice. "That's just it—we—we love each other. And—'Licia has promised to be engaged to me 'til I am through college and get a job."

"I suppose it had to come, Uncle Ranny," explained Alicia with what seemed to me a very labored serenity. "We grew up together. We have been such chums and—and Randolph seemed to—to need me. Don't you see, Uncle Ranny?" There was a piteous note of appeal in her voice which only seemed to lacerate me the more. But I could not speak.

The sunshine had gone out of the April afternoon. Waves of darkness seemed to be beating over me, and the strength and energy of a few minutes back had oozed out of me like so much water. So weak and shattered did I feel that on a sudden I was seized by a panic fear of collapse.

"Please leave me now," my lips, strange cold dead things that seemed in no way a part of my body, brought forth mechanically, yet with heavy effort. "It's—it's a shock—we'll discuss it later." I do not envy those two the sight of my face at that moment. I am pretty certain Randolph did not see it, for he turned away, but I am in doubt about Alicia. Her eyes were brimming with tears and she came toward me with a sudden curious movement of the hands, as though she felt rather than saw her way. Then abruptly her hands dropped to her side and she paused and turned back sharply.

They left me then, both of them. I remained alone—crushed, stunned, alone.

And suffering agony though I am, there is now in me a strange new sense of familiarity with suffering. Anguish and heartache, thank God, are no longer novelties. That much anodyne the sheer business of living does bring to one. I am as sensitive to them as ever I was in my prehistoric days of ease and leisure and reclusion, but they are old acquaintances now. I must go on, hiding my dolor as best I can, working for the sunny comely lad, Jimmie, so brilliant with promise, for the grave sweet-faced Laura, replica of her mother, and—yes—for Randolph and Alicia. I cannot rant and I must not betray any grief or make a spectacle of myself before them. I must carry on.

"Small as might be your lamp," observes the sage of Belgium, "never part with the oil that feeds it, but only give the flame that crowns it."

A poor and tenuous oil is that of my peculiar lamp, a petty flame and a murky result. But such as they are, I must guard them.

I cannot down the feeling, however, that there is some mystery, some secret reason behind this lightning-like development between Alicia and the boy. With a leaden heart I must record it that he has proven a disappointment to me. His mediocrity as a student concerns me less than his general tendency to shiftiness, his unsteady eye and his heavy drooping nether lip when he tells me that he "spent the night with the fellows at the frat house", that "a fellow's got to associate with friends of his own age", that "he's got to make friends", and so on. He is through his allowance four days after receiving it and repeatedly begs for more. More than once I have caught the odor of alcohol about him as he came in late at night, and only the fact that he is Laura's boy and that I have reared him has made me condone his many offenses.