"I have been an atrocious fool. It is high time I should get to know it."
A week later I found four new tiles with designs of Fra Angelico's angels installed in the places of the reprobate Biblical women.
IV.
"Wer zum ersten Male liebt, Sei es auch glücklos ist ein Gott."—HEINE.
During the following week, Storm and I, with the aid of the police, searched New York from one end to the other; but Emily must have foreseen the event, and covered up her tracks carefully. Our seeking was all in vain. In the meanwhile the baby was not neglected; my friend's third room, which had hitherto done service as a sort of state parlor, was consecrated as a nursery, a stout German nurse was procured, and much time was devoted to the designing of a cradle (an odd mixture of the Pompeiian and the Eastlake style), which was well calculated to stimulate whatever artistic sense our baby may have been endowed with. If it had been heir to a throne, its wants could not have been more carefully studied. Storm was as flexible as wax in its tiny hand. Life had suddenly acquired a very definite meaning to him; he had discovered that he had a valuable stake in it. Strange as it may seem, the whole gigantic world, with its manifold and complicated institutions, began to readjust itself in his mind with sole reference to its possible influence upon the baby's fate. Political questions were no longer convenient pegs to hang pessimistic epigrams on, but became matters of vital interest because they affected the moral condition of the country in which the baby was to grow up. Socialistic agitations, which a dispassionate bachelor could afford to regard with philosophic indifference, now presented themselves as diabolical plots to undermine the baby's happiness, and deprive her of whatever earthly goods Providence might see fit to bestow upon her, and so on, ad infinitum. From a radical, with revolutionary sympathies, my friend in the course of a year blossomed out into a conservative Philistine with a decided streak of optimism, and all for the sake of the baby. It was very amusing to listen to his solemn consultations with the nurse every morning before he betook himself to the office, and to watch the lively, almost child-like interest with which, on returning in the evening, he listened to her long-winded report of the baby's wonderful doings during the day. On Sundays, when he always spent the whole afternoon at home, I often surprised him in the most undignified attitudes, creeping about on the floor with the little girl riding on his back, or stretched out full length with his head in her lap, while she was gracious enough to interest herself in his hair, and even laughed and cooed with much inarticulate contentment. At such times, when, perhaps, through the disordered locks, I caught a glimpse of a beaming happy face (for my visits were never of sufficient account to interfere with baby's pleasures), I would pay my respectful tribute to the baby, acknowledging that she possessed a power, the secret of which I did not know.
But in spite of all this, I did not fail to detect that Storm's life was not even now without its sorrow. At our luncheons, I often saw a sad and thoughtful gloom settling upon his features; it was no longer the bitter reviling grief of former years, but a deep and mellow sadness, a regretful dwelling on mental images which were hard to contemplate and harder still to banish.
"Do you know," he exclaimed once, as he felt that I had divined his thoughts, "her face haunts me night and day! I feel as if my happiness in possessing the child were a daily robbery from her. I have continued my search for her up to this hour, but I have found no trace of her. Perhaps if you will help me, I shall not always be seeking in vain."
I gave him my hand silently across the table; he shook it heartily, and we parted.