Harper's Round Table, February 25, 1896

by Various

Of these Margaret, the eldest, was now a leader of San Francisco society, while John, who was eight years older than Alaric, had shown such an aptitude for business that he had risen to be manager of his father's bank. There were other children, who had died, and when Alaric came, last of all, he was such a puny infant that there was little hope of his ever growing up. Because he was the youngest and a weakling, and demanded so much care, his mother devoted her life to him, and hovered about him with a loving anxiety that sought to shield him from all rude contact with the world. He was always under the especial care of some doctor, and when he was five or six years old one of these, for want of something more definite to say, announced that he feared the child was developing a weak heart, and advised that he be restrained from all violent exercise.

From that moment poor little "Allie," as he had been called from the day of his birth, was not only kept from all forms of violent exercise and excitement, but was forbidden to play any boyish games as well. In place of these his doting mother travelled with him over Continental Europe, going from one famous medical spring, bath, or health resort to another, and bringing up her boy in an atmosphere of luxury, invalids, and doctors. The last-named devoted themselves to trying to find out what was the matter with him, and as no two of them could agree upon any one ailment, Mrs. Todd came to regard him as a prodigy in the way of invalidism.

Of course Alaric was never sent to a public school, but he was always accompanied by tutors as well as physicians, and spent nearly ten years in a very select private school or pension near Paris. Here no rude games were permitted, and the only exercise allowed the boys was a short daily walk, in which, under escort of masters, they marched in a dreary procession of twos.

During all these years of travel and study and search after health Alaric had never known what it was to wish in vain for anything that money could buy. Whatever he fancied, he obtained without knowing its cost or where the money came from that procured it. But there were three of the chief things in the world to a boy that he did not have, and that money could not give him. He had no boy friends, no boyish games, and no ambitions. He wanted to have all these things, and sometimes said so to his mother; but always he was met by the same reproachful answer, "My dear Allie, remember your poor weak heart."

At length it happened that while our lad was in that dreary pension, Mrs. Todd, worn out with anxieties, cares, and worries of her own devising, was stricken with a fatal malady, and died in the great château that she had rented not far from the school in which her life's treasure was so carefully guarded. A few days of bewilderment and heart-breaking sorrow followed for poor Alaric. Many cable-grams flashed to and fro beneath the ocean. There was a melancholy funeral, at which the boy was sole mourner, and then one phase of his life was ended. In another week he had left France, and, escorted by one of his French tutors, was crossing the Atlantic on his way to the far-distant San Francisco home of which he knew so little.

He had now been at home for nearly three months, and of all his sad life they had proved the most unhappy period. His father, though always kind in his way, was too deeply immersed in business to pay much attention to the sensitive lad. He did not understand him, and regarded him as a weakling who could never amount to anything in the world of business or useful activity. He would be kind to the boy, of course, and any desire that he expressed should be promptly gratified; at the same time he could not help feeling that Alaric was a great trial, and wishing him more like his brother John.

This bustling, dashing elder brother had no sympathy with Alaric, and rarely found time to give him more than a nod and a word of greeting in passing, while his sister Margaret regarded him as still a little boy who was to be kept out of sight as much as possible. So the poor lad, left to himself, without friends and without occupation, found time hanging very heavily on his hands, and wondered why he had ever been born.

Once he ventured to ask his father for a saddle-horse, whereupon Amos Todd presented him with a pair of ponies, a cart, and a groom, which he said was an outfit better suited to an invalid. Alaric accepted this gift without a protest, for he was well trained to bearing disappointments, but he used it so rarely that the business of giving the ponies their daily airing devolved almost entirely upon the groom.

It was not until Esther Dale, one of the New England cousins whom he had never seen, and a girl of his own age, made a flying visit to San Francisco as one of a personally conducted party of tourists, that Alaric found any real use for his ponies. Esther was to remain in the city only three days, but she spent them in her uncle's house, which she refused to call anything but "the palace," and which she so pervaded with her cheery presence that Amos Todd declared it seemed full of singing birds and sunshine.

Both Margaret and John were too busy to pay much attention to their young cousin, and so, to Alaric's delight, the whole duty of entertaining her devolved on him. He felt much more at his ease with girls than with boys, for he had been thrown so much more into their society during his travels, and he thought he understood them thoroughly; but in Esther Dale he found a girl so different from any he had ever known that she seemed to belong to another order of beings. She was good-looking and perfectly well-bred, but she was also as full of life and frisky antics as a squirrel, and as tireless as a bird on the wing.